In Seattle, one offi­cer’s mul­ti­ple dead­ly encoun­ters offer a win­dow into this lit­tle-under­stood cor­ner of American policing.
The video is brief but dis­turb­ing: Moments after two Seattle police offi­cers kick down an apartment’s front door, a shirt­less man appears on cam­era, lum­ber­ing slow­ly toward them with a 4‑inch switch­blade in his hand.
Inside a near­by bath­room was the man’s bar­ri­cad­ed girl­friend, who had dialed 911 after she said he threat­ened her life and his own. Within 6 sec­onds, the offi­cers opened fire. Ryan Smith, a Black and Latino 31-year-old, was killed in a burst of 10 shots on May 8, 2019, accord­ing to police records.
The offi­cer who pulled the trig­ger first — and fired eight of the bul­lets that killed Smith — was Christopher Myers, 54, who has earned an array of com­men­da­tions in his three decades at the Seattle Police Department, includ­ing offi­cer of the year and a medal of hon­or. He was once her­ald­ed as an offi­cer with an “unbe­liev­able degree of patience” who cared deeply about the peo­ple on his beat.
Myers, who is white, also belongs to a rare but sig­nif­i­cant class of American law enforce­ment offi­cers: He’s used dead­ly force mul­ti­ple times in his career, fir­ing his gun in four sep­a­rate inci­dents in the last 11 years. Three peo­ple were killed in the shoot­ings and one was seri­ous­ly injured. All but one were peo­ple of color.

The Seattle Police Department declined to say whether Myers act­ed appro­pri­ate­ly in each encounter, though offi­cials gave him an award in at least one case. And accord­ing to the inde­pen­dent unit with­in the depart­ment that inves­ti­gates alle­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing, the Office of Police Accountability, only Smith’s killing was referred for review, and there was no find­ing of misconduct.
In an inter­view with NBC News, Myers attrib­uted his repeat­ed use of dead­ly force to a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, includ­ing threats posed by armed sus­pects, a will­ing­ness to rush toward dan­ger and a con­fi­dence honed through years of expe­ri­ence and tac­ti­cal train­ing. He denied any racial bias in the shootings.
“I don’t expect any of my calls to esca­late into shoot­ings,” he said, adding: “Unfortunately, some peo­ple don’t yield and some­times force the situation.”
Read the rest of the sto­ry here; https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​m​o​s​t​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​n​e​v​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​g​u​n​s​-​s​o​m​e​-​k​i​l​l​-​m​u​l​t​i​p​l​e​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​n​1​2​6​4​795

Prime Minister Andrew Holness on crime in the link below
⇓

https://​fb​.watch/​4​Z​K​F​K​a​u​v​Dl/

UNADULTERATED NONSENSE
When you so-called ‘dom­i­nate the space,’ you are doing so with the bod­ies of police offi­cers and sol­diers who must nec­es­sar­i­ly be pulled from oth­er duties.
We also know that when you ‘dom­i­nate a par­tic­u­lar space,” crime goes down in that space. That is a mat­ter of com­mon sense, but it is a polit­i­cal sleight of hand because the crime pro­duc­ers do not sim­ply give up on crime; they move to a dif­fer­ent “space” and con­tin­ue with their activ­i­ties. This usu­al­ly means that once peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties inex­orably end up over­run with criminals.
The proof that ZOSOS & SOEs do not work lies in the actu­al crime sta­tis­tics. Crime is [not] trend­ing down in Jamaica, so that’s the end of that con­ver­sa­tion. Everything said after that is imma­te­r­i­al and inconsequential.
Sure, crime trends down in spaces so-called dom­i­nat­ed by the bod­ies of the secu­ri­ty forces, but they trend up oth­er areas.
Mister Prime Minister, I am a Jamaica that has worked those streets; stop try­ing to deceive the peo­ple with these statements.
SOE’s & ZOSO’s essen­tial­ly adds up to a whack-a-mole strat­e­gy that does noth­ing about the under­ly­ing problem.
Over the years, I have offered up strate­gies that I know will work; addi­tion­al­ly, many oth­er for­mer offi­cers have offered up strate­gies that we know will work to begin to bend the curb.
[YOUR] unwill­ing­ness to lis­ten to any­one but the sound of your own voice and your ego makes it impos­si­ble for you to step back and say I was wrong.
Your poli­cies on crime have failed.
Antony Anderson’s sup­posed renew­al of the JCF is not a crime-fight­ing strategy.
It is a pre­scrip­tion for disaster.
Under nor­mal con­di­tions, you would prob­a­bly be a good leader, but your dis­dain for police offi­cers and the thank­less tasks they are asked to do makes them pub­lic ene­my num­ber one in your eyes.
The coun­try needs strong anti-crime leg­is­la­tion; it needs truth in sen­tenc­ing, it needs to remove sen­tenc­ing dis­cre­tion for vio­lent crimes from the pre­view of judges.

A for­mer Texas sher­if­f’s detec­tive sus­pect­ed of gun­ning down three peo­ple in Austin was cap­tured on Monday walk­ing along a rur­al road, police said.
Stephen Broderick, 41, was spot­ted in the 12300 block of Old Kimbro Road in Manor at about 7:30 a.m. CST before he sur­ren­dered to respond­ing city police offi­cers and Travis County Sheriff’s deputies, Chief Ryan Phipps said.
“He was armed with a pis­tol on his waist­band but he didn’t resist,” Phipps told NBC News. “He was ful­ly com­pli­ant with our offi­cers’ commands.“Broderick is sus­pect­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing two females and a male a lit­tle before 11:42 a.m. Sunday at the Arboretum Oaks Apartments in Austin, about 18 miles from where the sus­pect was caught on Monday.
Police had received two calls that a man, believed to be Broderick, was walk­ing along Old Kimbro Road, a rur­al path just off U.S. Route 290, Phipps said.
The sus­pect has been booked into Travis County Jail in down­town Austin, the chief added.
Broderick is a for­mer Travis County sher­if­f’s detec­tive who was charged with sex­u­al assault of a child in June, NBC affil­i­ate KXAN of Austin reported.
Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon on Sunday called the triple killing a “domes­tic incident.”
“The vic­tims were all known to our sus­pect,” Chacon added. “And so at this point, we do not think that this indi­vid­ual is out tar­get­ing ran­dom peo­ple to shoot them.”
Elgin High School stu­dents Willie Simmons III and Alyssa Broderick were two of the peo­ple killed on Sunday, dis­trict Assistant Superintendent Al A. Rodriguez said Monday.(NBC NEWS REPORTS)

In the United States Senate, there is a sin­gle African-American Republican Senator; he is Tim Scott of South Carolina.
In the United States, one of the great­est enablers of police sense of impuni­ty when using lethal force when deal­ing with African-Americans, women or men, is the doc­trine of ‘Qualified immunity.’
Qualified immu­ni­ty is not to be found in the US Constitution. It is a [prac­tice] val­i­dat­ed by the US Supreme Court, yup, there we go again, that court.

(1) WHAT IS QUALIFIED IMMUNITY?
In the United States, qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty is a [legal prin­ci­ple] that grants gov­ern­ment offi­cials per­form­ing dis­cre­tionary func­tions immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the plain­tiff shows that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.” (W)

(2) HOW DOES IT WORK?
Under qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, gov­ern­ment work­ers can only be held account­able for vio­lat­ing someone’s rights if a court has pre­vi­ous­ly ruled that it was “clear­ly estab­lished” those pre­cise actions were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. If no such deci­sion exists — or it exists, but just in anoth­er juris­dic­tion—the offi­cial is immune, even if the offi­cial inten­tion­al­ly, mali­cious­ly, or unrea­son­ably vio­lat­ed the law or Constitution.

(3) WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO SHOW THAT A RIGHT IS “CLEARLY ESTABLISHED”
To show that a right is clear­ly estab­lished, a vic­tim must iden­ti­fy an ear­li­er deci­sion by the Supreme Court or a fed­er­al appeals court in the same juris­dic­tion hold­ing that pre­cise­ly the same con­duct under the same cir­cum­stances is ille­gal or uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. If no deci­sion exists, qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty pro­tects the offi­cial by default. For exam­ple, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recent­ly held that a prison guard who pep­per-sprayed an inmate in his locked cell “for no rea­son” did not vio­late a clear­ly estab­lished right because sim­i­lar cit­ed cas­es involved law enforce­ment offi­cials who had hit and tased inmates for no rea­son, rather than pep­per-spray­ing them for no reason.

Injusticeforjustice writes
The clear­ly-estab­lished test requires a vic­tim to iden­ti­fy a near­ly iden­ti­cal ear­li­er deci­sion by the Supreme Court or a fed­er­al appeals court in the same juris­dic­tion. This means that courts will some­times hold that a gov­ern­ment worker’s actions vio­lat­ed the Constitution and then use qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty to let him off the hook. But often, courts do not even address whether a gov­ern­ment work­er vio­lat­ed the Constitution. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2009 deci­sion in Pearson v. Callahan, courts may decide cas­es with­out address­ing whether the actions at issue vio­late the Constitution. Such a sys­tem fos­ters what some schol­ars call “con­sti­tu­tion­al stag­na­tion” since courts may ignore the under­ly­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al issues and decide cas­es under qual­i­fied immunity.

For instance, when a police offi­cer shot a 10-year-old child while try­ing to shoot a non-threat­en­ing fam­i­ly dog, the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the offi­cer was enti­tled to qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty because no ear­li­er case held it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for a police offi­cer to reck­less­ly fire his gun into a group of chil­dren with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. The Court also declined to estab­lish that rule. Not only was the offi­cer let off the hook in that case, but the very same offi­cer could act the same way again and would still be enti­tled to qual­i­fied immunity.

In oth­er words, the court’s desire to pro­tect police from account­abil­i­ty is so strong that it makes no pre­tense about mak­ing com­mon-sense rul­ings. Neither is it con­cerned about the bla­tant incon­sis­ten­cy that obtains with its position.
Such is the rule estab­lished by the court that enables and empow­ers police to vio­lent­ly abuse, maim & kill with the ulti­mate belief that they can­not be held accountable.
It was the lack of con­cern that guid­ed Derek Chauvin; it was that lack of con­cern that guid­ed Jason VanDyke when he put 16-bul­lets into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald’s body; it is what informed Daniel Pantaleo who choked the life out of Eric Garner as he plead­ed and begged for his life, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe until he was dead.
It informs the God Complex of every cop who oper­ates with brava­do rather than a desire to serve with respect.
In its 1967 Terry v. Ohio deci­sion, allow­ing police to con­duct search­es, known as stop-and-frisks, based on the low legal stan­dard of “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,” the court placed racial­ized polic­ing on steroids.
Police were legal­ly autho­rized to use any con­coct­ed rea­son they chose to stop, search & even­tu­al­ly abuse cit­i­zens (usu­al­ly Black *Brown citizens)to their death.
When looked at as explained in sec­tions 2 & 3 above, qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty lit­er­al­ly autho­rizes police to do as they please to whomev­er they please with­out wor­ry that they will face any consequences.
But that is not all; In a 1996 rul­ing, Whren v. the United States, the court dou­bled down on its racist 1967 deci­sion. It decid­ed that police are allowed to use minor vehi­cle infrac­tions as a pre­text to ini­ti­ate traf­fic stops to inves­ti­gate oth­er pos­si­ble unre­lat­ed crimes.
Politico report­ed; In the ear­li­er 1982 case Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the Court made the lethal deci­sion to cre­ate the doc­trine it called “qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty,” which has since allowed police to injure and kill with lit­tle or no con­se­quence unless their con­duct “violate[s] clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known,” a stan­dard that has proven dif­fi­cult to over­come.
The cumu­la­tive impact from these court deci­sions is that the Supreme Court has broad­ly empow­ered police to stop Black dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans under the flim­si­est jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. If the offi­cer injures or even kills the per­son, their fam­i­lies may have no recourse to hold the offi­cer accountable.

In the series of arti­cles I have writ­ten, which may be found on these pages, I con­tin­ue to argue that fight­ing with police is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Demonstrating in front of police sta­tions is basi­cal­ly an effort in futility.
This is not a fight with the pup­pets; the fight rests with the pup­peteers. State leg­is­la­tures, the con­gress of the United States, and the courts are respon­si­ble for what police do.
In pre­vi­ous arti­cles, I have laid out the instances in its his­to­ry that the United States Supreme has act­ed in con­tra­ven­tion of the rights and inter­ests of all peo­ple and African-American peo­ple in particular.
The well-doc­u­ment­ed hos­til­i­ty of the court to the rights of Black peo­ple is an unde­ni­able real­i­ty. The high­est court has squan­dered resectabil­i­ty, valid­i­ty, and authen­tic­i­ty on the altar of racial ani­mus in its rul­ings, the lat­est earth-shat­ter­ing iter­a­tion being the 2013 Shelby coun­ty Alabama vs. Holder stripped away sec­tion 4 (b) of the vot­ing rights pro­tec­tions enshrined in the 1965 vot­ing rights act.
Time and again, the high­est court has demon­strat­ed that at the head of white suprema­cy and all it stands for sits the United States Supreme Court.
Whether the United States Senator from South Carolina is con­ver­sant with these facts eludes me. Nevertheless, Senator Tim Scott oppos­es doing away with qual­i­fied immunity.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday rescind­ed Trump-era lim­its on con­sent decrees, which the Department of Justice has used to enforce reforms in police depart­ments accused of wide­spread mis­con­duct. Garland, ful­fill­ing a cam­paign promise from President Joe Biden, said in a mem­o­ran­dum that the Justice Department “will return to the tra­di­tion­al process” that was in place before for­mer President Donald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion imposed sharp restric­tions on the civ­il-rights tool.

“Together, we will con­tin­ue the Department’s lega­cy of pro­mot­ing the rule of law, pro­tect­ing the pub­lic, and work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with state and local gov­ern­men­tal enti­ties to meet those ends,” Garland said in the memo, which was sent to U.S. attor­neys and oth­er DOJ leaders.
Read the full sto­ry here; https://​www​.cnbc​.com/​2​0​2​1​/​0​4​/​1​6​/​a​g​-​m​e​r​r​i​c​k​-​g​a​r​l​a​n​d​-​e​r​a​s​e​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​l​i​m​i​t​s​-​o​n​-​c​o​n​s​e​n​t​-​d​e​c​r​e​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​.​h​tml

A cou­ple of days ago, I quot­ed Martin Niemoller in an arti­cle. In light of the police vio­lence being report­ed dai­ly in America and the resul­tant silence from cer­tain seg­ments of the white pop­u­la­tion on the one hand, and the mind­less igno­rance on the part of others.
First, they came for the social­ists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
The fol­low­ing sto­ry prompt­ed me to use mis­ter Niemoller’s famous quote once again to dri­ve home the idea that we are all in this togeth­er. That injus­tice to any human being any­where is a threat to jus­tice to all of us everywhere.

A 73-year-old grand­moth­er of nine was pick­ing wild­flow­ers on the side of the road in Loveland, Colorado, last sum­mer when a local cop got out of his patrol vehi­cle and told her to stop — begin­ning a police encounter that ulti­mate­ly left her with bro­ken bones, bruised, and traumatized.
Loveland Police Officer Austin Hopp had been dri­ving behind Karen Garner with his over­head lights on because she was accused of shoplift­ing from a near­by Walmart. But Garner did not appear to notice, accord­ing to body cam­era footage pub­lished by Garner’s attor­ney Wednesday.
Garner has demen­tia and sen­so­ry apha­sia, an inabil­i­ty to under­stand spo­ken and writ­ten speech, accord­ing to a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit filed on her behalf this week against the city of Loveland and three offi­cers involved in Garner’s arrest.
Hopp asked Garner why she didn’t stop after he acti­vat­ed his lights and siren, at which point Garner gave him a blank expres­sion, said some­thing unin­tel­li­gi­ble, and start­ed to move away.
“No, no, no,” Hopp said, accord­ing to body­cam footage.

Hopp then grabbed the 80-pound woman, threw her to the grass, and twist­ed her arms behind her back, body­cam footage shows. Garner was still clutch­ing a hand­ful of wild­flow­ers. A sec­ond cop, Daria Jalali, arrived with­in min­utes and assist­ed in the arrest. Then, Despite Garner’s evi­dent dis­tress and small stature, Hopp pushed her left arm “painful­ly upward,” accord­ing to body cam­era footage and the law­suit. Police repeat­ed­ly threw her on the ground, and hog-tied her on the side of the road — a con­tro­ver­sial restraint that’s been banned by some police depart­ments. Once her feet were bound, Jalali, Hopp, and their on-scene super­vi­sor, Sgt. Philip Metzler, lift­ed her into the back of a police vehi­cle, accord­ing to the lawsuit.
“I’m going home,” Garner cried repeat­ed­ly. As a result of the inci­dent, Garner was left with a dis­lo­cat­ed shoul­der, a frac­tured humerus bone, and a sprained wrist, the law­suit alleges. She was cov­ered with bruis­es by the time she arrived at a hos­pi­tal — although she wasn’t tak­en to the med­ical facil­i­ty until sev­er­al hours after she was first stopped by police, accord­ing to the law­suit. After the law­suit was filed Wednesday and cov­ered by local media out­lets includ­ing KUSA, an NBC affil­i­ate in Denver, the Loveland Police Department said in a state­ment that it’d inves­ti­gate the encounter. Officials added they’d only heard of the inci­dent this week, hav­ing not received any pri­or com­plaints. In the mean­time, the depart­ment has placed Hopp on admin­is­tra­tive leave, and reas­signed Jalali and Metzler to admin­is­tra­tive duties, accord­ing to the state­ment post­ed on the department’s Facebook page.

But Garner’s fam­i­ly wants to make sure this doesn’t hap­pen to any­one ever again — and they’re hop­ing for sig­nif­i­cant changes in per­son­nel, lead­er­ship, and pol­i­cy at the Loveland Police Department. “This is not a ‘sin­gle bad apple’ type of sce­nario,” Sarah Schielke, Garner’s attor­ney in the law­suit, told VICE News. “This is a sys­temic, cul­tur­al, deeply ingrained, com­ing-down-from-lead­er­ship type of atti­tude, where this is not com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing — it’s com­mu­ni­ty ter­ror­ism, practically.”
She added: “If somebody’s dumb enough, in their mind, to not capit­u­late, they’re going to pay for it. Even if you’re an elder­ly dis­abled lady.”
While Garner’s chil­dren were doing their best to keep an eye on her, she slipped out to Walmart the after­noon of her arrest, Schielke said. Later, Garner wound up wan­der­ing out of the store with­out pay­ing for Pepsi, a can­dy bar, a T‑shirt, and some stain-remov­ing wipes — worth less than $14 alto­geth­er. Walmart employ­ees stopped her and took the items back. They then refused her attempt to pay and called the police, accord­ing to the law­suit. Casey Staheli, a spokesper­son for Walmart, said in a state­ment to VICE News: “We stopped the cus­tomer after notic­ing her attempt to take mer­chan­dise from the store with­out pay­ing for it. To pro­tect the safe­ty of our peo­ple, the police were called only after Ms. Garner became phys­i­cal with an associate.”

Hopp found Garner a few blocks away from the Walmart as she was walk­ing home. When Garner appeared con­fused at his ques­tions, he said to her: “You just left Walmart. Do you need to be arrest­ed right now?” Then he tack­led her. At one point, a con­cerned cit­i­zen stopped and asked the offi­cers, “Do you have to use that much aggression?”
“What are you doing? Get out of here,” Hopp said, accord­ing to body cam­era footage. The man, who had pulled over to the side of the road, asked to know who Hopp’s sergeant was, say­ing he had seen the cop throw “that lit­tle kid.” (Garner is 5 feet tall, accord­ing to the law­suit.) “She just stole from Walmart and refused to stop, refused to lis­ten to law­ful orders, and to fight me,” Hopp told the man. “This is what hap­pens when you fight the police. I have to use force to safe­ly detain her. That’s what this is. This isn’t just some ran­dom act of aggression.”
Later, when Metzler arrived and the offi­cers were recount­ing the events of the arrest togeth­er, Hopp admit­ted he “strug­gled” with Garner.

“You’re a lit­tle mud­dy, dude,” Metzler said, accord­ing to body cam­era footage.
“A lit­tle bloody, a lit­tle mud­dy, that’s how it works,” Jalali responded.
The offi­cers were refer­ring to Garner’s blood. She was tak­en to jail and charged with theft of less than $50, obstruct­ing a peace offi­cer, and resist­ing arrest, accord­ing to the Loveland Reporter-Herald, though the Larimer County District Attorney agreed to dis­miss the case in August 2020. The intense encounter with police has still left its scars, though. Garner’s chil­dren have told Schielke that she’s able to find some peace play­ing soli­taire, lis­ten­ing to music, or doing crafts at a mem­o­ry care facil­i­ty, but has oth­er­wise become with­drawn and mis­trust­ful. They not­ed that in the past, Garner was the ulti­mate, crafty home-mak­er, who loved to go to con­certs and play cards. “What lit­tle free­dom and hap­pi­ness Ms. Garner enjoyed in her life as an elder­ly adult with declin­ing men­tal health was, on June 26, 2020, reck­less­ly and delib­er­ate­ly oblit­er­at­ed by the Loveland Police Department,” the law­suit states. Tom Hacker, a spokesman for the Loveland Police Department, said the agen­cy’s pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards unit will exam­ine the inci­dent. “There’s no record asso­ci­at­ed with this event, no frame of video, no shred of any evi­dence that won’t be looked at pret­ty thor­ough­ly,” he told VICE News. It was unclear if the offi­cers named in the law­suit had attor­neys who could speak on their behalf; the local police union didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to VICE News’ request for comment.(From vice​news​.com)

The strug­gle of peo­ple of col­or in America with police vio­lence is well known, well doc­u­ment­ed. In this medi­um, we have con­sis­tent­ly gone back to the gen­e­sis of this prob­lem which has its roots in slav­ery, the deval­u­a­tion of black lives per the ³⁄₅ of a human being decree. This process con­tin­ued to the black man has no rights that a white man is oblig­at­ed to respect, through the black codes which crim­i­nal­ized peo­ple for mere­ly exist­ing in their black skin, redlin­ing in hous­ing, and now to the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, which is a sys­tem of prof­it that exists based on the num­ber of bod­ies that are in jail cells.
Black bodies.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​e​e​p​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​m​p​l​e​x​-​w​e​b​-​w​o​v​e​n​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​b​l​a​c​k​s​-​o​t​h​e​r​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​o​f​-​c​o​l​o​r​-​t​h​a​t​-​a​l​l​o​w​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​e​x​e​c​u​t​i​o​ns/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​w​h​o​-​p​u​t​-​7​-​b​u​l​l​e​t​s​-​i​n​t​o​-​j​a​c​o​b​-​b​l​a​k​e​s​-​b​a​c​k​-​b​a​c​k​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​j​ob/
It is a sys­tem that was designed to sep­a­rate the races, with the police as the new over­seers, a step up from the plan­ta­tion over­seers and slave catchers.
America can­not change polic­ing prac­tices with­out first denounc­ing & dis­man­tling those prin­ci­ples on which the very idea of polic­ing was first imagined.
Ironically, as the prob­lem wors­ens and the threat of mass protests and dis­rup­tions becomes an even more glar­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty like we wit­nessed in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd in Milleopolis, those who sup­port the police state and derive the ben­e­fits from it have dou­bled down with new laws intend­ed to shore up the police state.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​h​a​u​v​i​n​s​-​t​r​i​a​l​-​r​e​m​o​v​e​s​-​t​h​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​h​e​e​t​-​t​h​a​t​-​h​i​d​e​s​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​d​i​s​g​u​s​t​i​n​g​-​h​a​t​r​e​d​-​a​n​d​-​g​e​n​o​c​i​d​e​-​o​f​-​b​l​a​c​ks/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​h​a​u​v​i​n​-​t​r​i​a​l​-​h​a​r​k​e​n​s​-​b​a​c​k​-​7​5​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​t​o​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​b​u​s​e​-​t​r​i​al/

The police are vio­lent and large­ly racist enforcers; that fact goes with­out say­ing. Even at its best, polic­ing does not live up to its stat­ed creed, ‘to pro­tect and serve. Even in major­i­ty-white neigh­bor­hoods in so-called lib­er­al states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and oth­ers, polic­ing is about prof­it. So the cit­i­zens are heav­i­ly taxed and their mon­ey allo­cat­ed to police depart­ments to pay more and more cops, pay for more and more equip­ment, and expen­sive SUVs, so cops can hide out in bush­es to ter­ror­ize motorists dri­ving five (5) miles over the post­ed speed limits.
Never mind that the speed lim­its are gen­er­al­ly so low that it is impos­si­ble to dri­ve at that rate of speed with­out cre­at­ing grid­lock. But that is exact­ly the point, force work­ing peo­ple to dri­ve over the post­ed speed lim­it and then tick­et them to feed the ever-hun­gry system.
This is what activists with brains in their heads mean when they say defund the police. By cre­at­ing the incen­tive for police to con­tin­ue to ter­ror­ize peo­ple using pho­ny ordi­nances and pre­tex­es to jus­ti­fy stops that infringe on their rights, you amp up the pos­si­bil­i­ty for frus­tra­tion and con­fronta­tion, the likes we are wit­ness­ing today.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​d​a​u​n​t​e​-​w​r​i​g​h​t​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​t​o​-​b​e​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​d​-​w​i​t​h​-​2​n​d​-​d​e​g​r​e​e​-​m​a​n​s​l​a​u​g​h​t​er/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​e​t​s​-​u​s​-​e​x​a​m​i​n​e​-​s​o​m​e​-​b​a​s​i​c​-​f​a​c​t​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​i​l​e​m​ma/.’

The police are the face of Government pol­i­cy; get­ting mad at the police is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, as I con­tin­ue to point out. Politicians make the laws and ordi­nances. Mayors and Governors are exec­u­tives in cities, munic­i­pal­i­ties, and States. How the police behave is a mir­ror into the thoughts of those elect­ed lead­ers. The very same elect­ed lead­ers come out and offer up plat­i­tudes and con­cern when their mili­tias kill your loved ones. Why did I use the term ‘mili­tia’? Well, police depart­ments are essen­tial­ly inde­pen­dent mili­tias that oper­ate to ensure the stat­ed goals of states and local gov­ern­ments. In some forms, like the elect­ed Sheriffs, they oper­ate as a law unto them­selves with­out any real over­sight or con­trol. They oper­ate as enti­ties that sell a cer­tain brand of ser­vice to the states and municipalities.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​o​-​i​-​a​m​-​n​o​t​-​w​a​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​r​e​-​c​a​n​-​o​n​l​y​-​b​e​-​o​n​e​-​v​e​r​d​i​c​t​-​g​u​i​l​ty/

https://mikebeckles.com/a‑long-history-of-turning-a-blind-eye-to-white-terrorism-while-killing-black-freedom-fighters/

One of the things we con­tin­ue to do is speak to the impor­tance of elect­ing Democratic can­di­dates; it does not mean that Democrats are the sil­ver bul­let; it sim­ply means that they are the only ones we can lobby.
We also encour­age African-Americans who are Democrats to be edu­cat­ed on the issues and to run for office. After all, the prob­lems that we face will only be solved by us and our engagement.
We con­tin­ue to make a case for African-American lead­er­ship with­in the Democratic par­ty, under­stand­ing full well that we can­not sup­port Black Republicans in any form as we have seen from Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Kentucky’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Texas GOP head Allen West, et al., negroes who have sold their souls to be pat­ted on the back by their white masters.
The reward for those sell­outs, [black skin folks], usu­al­ly comes in the form of a white wife or husband.
Even though the rewards of Black lead­er­ship out­weigh the risks, we can­not ignore Democrat African-Americans like Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of the city of Chicago who has com­pro­mised dig­ni­ty and self-respect and should have no expec­ta­tion that she is deserv­ing of or will receive any respect from now on. 

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​s​h​e​r​i​f​f​s​-​h​e​l​p​e​d​-​l​e​a​d​-​t​h​i​s​-​i​n​s​u​r​r​e​c​t​ion,

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​i​d​-​l​a​w​-​e​n​f​o​r​c​e​m​e​n​t​-​e​x​p​e​c​t​-​t​h​a​t​-​a​-​s​c​o​r​p​i​o​n​-​w​o​u​l​d​-​s​u​d​d​e​n​l​y​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​-​t​o​-​s​t​i​ng/

On March 29^th of this year, Chicago police mur­dered 13 ‑year-old Adam Toledo, Mayor Lightfoot (a black woman, or so we believe), saw the body­cam video of the shoot­ing, then lied to the city of Chicago. Lori Lightfoot said she had pre­vi­ous­ly seen the video. She referred to the mur­der of young Adam Toledo as “excru­ci­at­ing” but would not talk about what she saw because she said it could com­pro­mise ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions by COPA and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. She pre­vi­ous­ly vowed to find the peo­ple respon­si­ble for “putting a gun into the hands” of Toledo, shift­ing the blame away from the offi­cer who shot him.
We also con­tin­ue to edu­cate on how pros­e­cu­tors who are sup­posed to look out for the peo­ple’s inter­est shift to pro­tect­ing police when they kill and abuse cit­i­zens of color.
During the encounter in which Adam Toledo was killed,21-year-old Ruben Roman was arrest­ed; dur­ing Roman’s bond hear­ing, pros­e­cu­tors alleged that Toledo had a gun in his hand when police shot him. We now know that that state­ment was a lie.
At a news con­fer­ence on Thursday ahead of the video’s release, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the details of the boy’s death released in court were cor­rect, essen­tial­ly lying again even though she had seen the video.
What makes this even more galling is that Mayor Lightfoot is not an ordi­nary untrained per­son who can­not make the rel­e­vant dis­tinc­tions of what is legal­ly per­mis­si­ble from what isn’t. She is a trained lawyer by profession.
Right after the Mayor again lied to the peo­ple of Chicago and the entire nation, the state’s attor­neys office know­ing that the video evi­dence would uncov­er the lie sought to cov­er its own ass by issu­ing a state­ment say­ing that its own detail about Toledo hav­ing a gun when he was shot was inac­cu­rate.“ An attor­ney who works in this office failed to ful­ly inform him­self before speak­ing in court,” Sarah Sinovic, a spokesper­son for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, told WGN on Thursday.
That report came only hours before they were forced to release the video Lori Lightfoot fought against releasing.
Even after Lori Lightfoot saw that the kid had no gun and had his hand in the air when the cop, Eric Stillman put a bul­let in his chest, she not only lied to the peo­ple of the city who elect­ed her, she fought to keep it pri­vate, again lying that it would com­pro­mise the investigations.

After the infor­ma­tion was released on Thursday, Mayor Lightfoot made the fol­low­ing state­ment, “I have seen those videos, and they are par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to watch ― espe­cial­ly at the end’. Lightfoot also called for peo­ple to with­hold judg­ment until COPA fin­ish­es its inves­ti­ga­tion. “Simply put, we failed Adam.”
No Mayor, you and your death squad failed not only Adam Toledo, but you also con­tin­ue to fail the entire city that placed its trust in you.
You are a disgrace!!!
This is not the first time that Lori Lightfoot has used her office to try to block the crimes of CPD from com­ing to light.

A team from the Narcotics divi­sion car­ried out a sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion at the Portmore fish­ing vil­lage (Causeway). A joint mil­i­tary team from the St Catherine South divi­sion joined and car­ried a raid upon which two motor vehi­cles were seen and two men appre­hend­ed. One of the vehi­cles, a white Probox motor vehi­cle, is report­ed­ly owned by a police Corporal assigned to the St Andrew North divi­sion. The oth­er vehi­cle is a blue Nissan Caravan minibus.

A Police Corporal who report­ed­ly works at the Constant Spring police sta­tion was appre­hend­ed in den­im uni­form, adorned with police accou­ter­ments. He was searched, and a ser­vice pis­tol was seized from him. Another man who stat­ed that he’s a fish­er­man and a boat cap­tain from port roy­al was found in the police­man’s car.
A pre­lim­i­nary search was done of the minibus; two ille­gal firearms were observed in a bag. Two buck­ets were also seen, but the con­tents were not known at this time. An unde­ter­mined sum of mon­ey was also observed.

Both men were hand­cuffed detained. DSP Hopton Nicholson, Inspector Ian Purrier (SCS shift com­man­der), Woman Inspector Maxine Bernard (Narcotics) are present­ly on loca­tion. Scene of crime per­son­nel is on the way to start pro­cess­ing the scene.
Corporal Maugin Romacan of the Narcotics Division is investigating.

In the con­tin­u­al­ly degrad­ing con­di­tions that mem­bers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force find them­selves fight­ing against vio­lent crim­i­nals, one con­stant they can count on is the ever-present sup­port of cer­tain gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions aid­ing the criminals.
It is not hyper­bol­ic speech to make the case that at every turn, the secu­ri­ty forces are con­front­ed with agen­cies of the state work­ing in direct oppo­si­tion to the intend­ed goal of rid­ding the coun­try of vio­lent criminals.
Having served a decade in that effort and hav­ing remained tuned-in to what is hap­pen­ing on the ground since leav­ing, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing to see the con­tin­u­a­tion of this phenomenon.
For the record, I believe that the appel­late process is impor­tant to over­see, where war­rant­ed, the low­er court’s decisions.
Unfortunately, in Jamaica, unscrupu­lous lawyer­ing, cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials, & a leaky decrepit sys­tem make for exploita­tion of the process, fur­ther erod­ing trust and increas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty for more violence.
Far too often, the Appellate court seems not to under­stand that it has no duty to inter­fere with the low­er court’s find­ings unless there is glar­ing and irrefutable evi­dence of wrong­do­ing or bad conduct.
Instead, the Appellate court func­tions as a last-ditch defense bul­wark, allow­ing the most vio­lent crim­i­nals to walk free on tech­ni­cal­i­ties. Technicalities that would not change rul­ings in any oth­er west­ern court system.
And so we see the court in its lofty ivory tow­er posi­tion con­tin­ue to inter­fere with low­er court rul­ings on the most insignif­i­cant tech­ni­cal­i­ties that have noth­ing to do with the facts of the mat­ter before the court.
Yes, we cel­e­brate when the inno­cent are vin­di­cat­ed in the appel­late court; we should nev­er apol­o­gize for doing so. That is exact­ly what the courts are for. In the same vein, we must con­demn the process when the most vio­lent are released on tech­ni­cal­i­ties because the court of appeals believes in main­tain­ing a purist pos­ture, one that Jamaica can­not afford.

Christopher (Dog-Paw) Linton is a vio­lent mur­der­er who belongs on the gal­lows. Yesterday the Appellate court that does not answer to the Jamaican peo­ple ordered Linton released on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty. Jamaica con­tin­ues to fol­low its Colonial British mas­ter, so vio­lent killers are allowed to stay in Jail and record music, throw par­ties, use drugs, smoke weed, and drink expen­sive whisky. At the same time, the tax­pay­ers are stuck with the bill for their incar­cer­a­tion. And that is in the rare instance that they are caught and con­vict­ed for their heinous killings.
Linton and a cohort were serv­ing a 15 years prison sen­tence for shoot­ing at two police offi­cers; they were appro­pri­ate­ly con­vict­ed in 2013. The Court of Appeal on Wednesday hand­ed down a deci­sion that the evi­dence in the case, where iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was con­cerned, was unre­li­able and ordered their release from prison.
This rul­ing chal­lenges the dis­cre­tion of the tri­al judge/​jury with­out proof of prej­u­dice or malfea­sance. It releas­es two dan­ger­ous killers back onto the streets, putting the lives of Tavern Saint Andrew res­i­dents, where Linton lived, and oth­er areas in ter­ri­ble dan­ger. Opens the police up to more attacks from the two and their cronies. It now expos­es the tax­pay­ers to have to pay huge sums of mon­ey to two vio­lent mur­der­ers under the guise that they were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and incarcerated.
Neither of the robed igno­ra­mus­es who made the deci­sion feel endan­gered from their ivory tow­er posi­tions, but ordi­nary Jamaicans are now in greater dan­ger today than yes­ter­day due to their recklessness.
Ya, please spare me the shit about the process, spare me the yad­da, yad­da about regard­less of who he is, he is deserv­ing of this kind of def­er­ence. Tell that to the peo­ple these ver­min kill and ter­ror­ize, tell that to the chil­dren left behind trau­ma­tized by their terror.
Our coun­try is engaged in a fuck­ing exis­ten­tial war against these mag­gots, so spare me the bullshit.
Since the courts con­tin­ue to stand in the way of remov­ing these dan­ger­ous killers from the streets effec­tive­ly, the police depart­ment has strate­gic deci­sions to make on how it imple­ments & exe­cutes strate­gies when it appre­hends these vio­lent murderers.
This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when it comes to those who would attempt or kill mem­bers of the depart­ment. There are many ways to skin a cat.
This mon­ster will make sure that the streets of the Tavern com­mu­ni­ty run red with the blood of the inno­cent. The next time the police come in con­tact with him under any cir­cum­stances where he vio­lates the law, there should be no doubt about the outcome.
Whatever he does, whomev­er he hurt, the blood is on the hands of the mem­bers of that court that set him free, and they should be held accountable.
This has got to stop!!!

.

.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Two police cops chased a Black man in a red hood­ie across a street in Kinston, N.C., on Monday, April 12^th; after the man fell to the side­walk, one offi­cer pum­meled him repeat­ed­ly with his fists.
The two have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion after the video of the inci­dent went viral. Kinston Police Chief Tim Dilday on Tuesday iden­ti­fied the offi­cers involved as McKinley Jones and Kevin Page.
The beat­en man has been iden­ti­fied as 36-year-old David Lee Bruton Jr.

The video, which was shot and uploaded to Facebook by the bystander, sparked an out­cry among local advo­cates and politicians.

Kim Potter, the for­mer Brooklyn Center, Minn., police offi­cer who shot Daunte Wright was arrest­ed Wednesday and will be charged with sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter, accord­ing to Minnesota authorities.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced the arrest. The Washington County Attorney’s Office will announce charges lat­er this after­noon. Potter is cur­rent­ly being held at the Hennepin County Jail.
Potter shot Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, dur­ing a traf­fic stop Sunday while offi­cers were attempt­ing arrest after dis­cov­er­ing an out­stand­ing war­rant. In body cam­era footage, Wright can be seen pulling his hands free and duck­ing back into the car; Potter yells “I’ll tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!” then fires her hand­gun. Wright died on the scene.
Police offi­cials have char­ac­ter­ized the inci­dent as an acci­dent, say­ing Potter mis­took her hand­gun for her Taser.
“While we appre­ci­ate that the dis­trict attor­ney is pur­su­ing jus­tice for Daunte, no con­vic­tion can give the Wright fam­i­ly their loved one back,” lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Wright fam­i­ly said in a state­ment. “This was no acci­dent. This was an inten­tion­al, delib­er­ate, and unlaw­ful use of force.“Under Minnesota law, a per­son is guilty of sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter if they cause the death of anoth­er through “cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence” and “[cre­ate] an unrea­son­able risk, and con­scious­ly [take] chances of caus­ing death or great bod­i­ly harm to anoth­er.” The charge car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Second-degree manslaugh­ter among the charges faced by fired Minneapolis police offi­cer Derek Chauvin in his tri­al, which is near­ing its clos­ing arguments.
Potter will be rep­re­sent­ed by Earl Gray, a high-pro­file Minnesota defense attor­ney who has pre­vi­ous­ly defend­ed mul­ti­ple police offi­cers. Among his cur­rent clients is Thomas Lane, the for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cer who helped restrain George Floyd. Gray’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.
Potter, who resigned on Tuesday, had served with the Brooklyn Center police force for 26 years. She pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed the local police union and helped train new officers.
“I have loved every minute of being a police offi­cer and serv­ing this com­mu­ni­ty to the best of my abil­i­ty, but I believe it is in the best inter­est of the com­mu­ni­ty, the depart­ment, and my fel­low offi­cers if I resign imme­di­ate­ly,” she wrote in her res­ig­na­tion let­ter. The let­ter makes no ref­er­ence to Wright.
It is rare — but not unheard of — for a police offi­cer to con­fuse their Taser with their gun. Multiple such shoot­ings have occurred in the years since Tasers have become com­mon­ly car­ried by police. Handguns and Tasers dif­fer in a num­ber of ways; hand­guns are heav­ier and made of met­al, while lighter-weight plas­tic Tasers are often bright­ly col­ored to help set them apart. Most police depart­ments, includ­ing Brooklyn Center, require their offi­cers to car­ry their Tasers on their non-dom­i­nant side to help avoid confusion.

In most cas­es, offi­cers who say they mis­took their gun for their Taser have not faced crim­i­nal charges.
One high-pro­file excep­tion was in the 2009 case of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old Black man who died after being shot in the back at the Fruitvale BART sta­tion in Oakland, Calif., by a BART police offi­cer who lat­er said he’d meant to use his Taser on him. That offi­cer, Johannes Mehserle, was con­vict­ed of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter — the California equiv­a­lent to Minnesota’s sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter charge — and ulti­mate­ly served 11 months in prison.
Though Brooklyn Center is locat­ed in Hennepin County, the case is being han­dled by neigh­bor­ing Washington County. The five coun­ties that com­prise the Twin Cities region agreed last year to refer cas­es involv­ing police use of dead­ly force to oth­er coun­ties in the region to avoid con­flicts of interest.
The District Attorney in Washington County, Pete Orput, was first elect­ed in 2010. In his 10 years as D.A., Orput has over­seen a num­ber of police shoot­ing cas­es but has often declined to bring charges.
In a 2012 case where offi­cers shot and killed 19-year-old Mark Henderson as he tried to escape from a motel hostage sit­u­a­tion, Orput told the Woodbury Times he was “sat­is­fied” that the offi­cers behaved appro­pri­ate­ly. A grand jury con­vened by the coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor’s office lat­er cleared the offi­cers of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing. Criminal jus­tice advo­cates have crit­i­cized the use of grand juries in police cas­es, accus­ing pros­e­cu­tors of using them to avoid indict­ing offi­cers. The city of Woodbury even­tu­al­ly set­tled with Henderson’s moth­er for near­ly $1.5 million.
In 2018, the broth­er of a sui­ci­dal 22-year-old named Keaton Larson called 911 for help. Larson was wield­ing a knife, and an offi­cer shot and killed him; Orput deemed that shoot­ing justified.
“This is just anoth­er one of those cas­es that have sad­ly become almost typ­i­cal,” Orput said in an inter­view with MPR News at the time. “A fam­i­ly mem­ber is hav­ing a men­tal health cri­sis… and ends up act­ing out, leav­ing cops no alter­na­tive but to take some­one’s life.”
The may­or of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott, has called on Gov. Tim Walz to reas­sign the case to the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, as he did in 2020 with the offi­cers involved in George Floyd’s death.This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed with NPR.

Having served as a police offi­cer in one of the most dan­ger­ous places in the world and hav­ing been shot at point-blank range while on duty, I try to be restrained in my crit­i­cisms where offi­cers may pre­sum­ably make mis­takes in tense situations.
During my ser­vice, I was nev­er issued with a stun-gun (oth­er­wise knowns as a taser). The fact is that we did not have them, but some of us were equipped with pep­per spray, which came in the form of a can­is­ter attached to our util­i­ty belt.
A can­is­ter of pep­per spray is not the same thing as a taser; it is dif­fer­ent in all aspects and would not feel the same way that a loaded gun could ever be mis­tak­en for a taser, to the extent that could be a possibility.
To the extent that a loaded Glock pis­tol, the stan­dard use weapon of American police, could be mis­tak­en­ly drawn, aimed, and fired in a flu­id sit­u­a­tion with the offi­cer real­iz­ing that he or she is hold­ing a loaded hand gun instead of a taser may go to the offi­cer’s com­pe­tence to have been in that sit­u­a­tion in the first place.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that police offi­cers’ com­pe­tence is not and can­not be quan­ti­fied by the offi­cer’s length of service.
Using an offi­cer’s length of ser­vice as a mea­sure of com­pe­tence and grit under pres­sure would mean less senior offi­cers are nec­es­sar­i­ly less com­pe­tent in the field and vice-ver­sa. No evi­dence or data would reli­ably sup­port that theory.
Experience is not the same as competence.

I under­stand that offi­cers are trained to have their ser­vice weapon on their right side (assum­ing that the right hand is the dom­i­nant hand, while the stun-gun(taser) is worn on the left side using the same variables.
The reverse would be true if the offi­cer’s dom­i­nant hand is his or her left hand.
Whether it is rea­son­able to assume that a trained, expe­ri­enced offi­cer who was report­ed­ly in the process of train­ing junior offi­cers when she drew her ser­vice weapon instead of her taser and killed Daunte Wright is an accept­able defense is for the courts to decide.
It does not rest with her chief to float an acci­den­tal dis­charge the­o­ry to see how it will play in the court of pub­lic opinion.
Within the lay­ers of pro­tec­tion that results in police use-of-force-impuni­ty also exist the lay­er that allows police offi­cers days to con­coct sto­ries in their defense before speak­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors or even their boss­es, even in instances in which they take life.
None of those def­er­en­tial & pref­er­en­tial excep­tions exists for ordi­nary Americans; worse yet, they do not exist for African-Americans, nei­ther do they exist for oth­er professionals.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​u​n​l​a​w​f​u​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​s​-​h​i​g​h​l​i​g​h​t​-​a​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​c​o​m​p​l​i​c​i​t​y​-​b​e​h​i​n​d​-​t​h​em/

Now that we have con­sid­ered a few of the ele­ments that may be con­sid­ered rea­son­able or not, we have come full cir­cle to the ques­tion of “why”?
Was there a need to pull a weapon in the sit­u­a­tion in which offi­cer Kim Potter pulled what she thought was a taser but end­ed up shoot­ing Daunte right to death?
It is almost a cer­tain­ty that because of the flu­id­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion in which mis­ter Danute Wright lost his Kim Potter will be allowed to wig­gle out of a crim­i­nal charge, much less a pros­e­cu­tion & conviction.
The larg­er issue here is the immense pow­ers giv­en to police, not just to inter­rupt the lives of cit­i­zens on the most friv­o­lous of pre­tex­es, i.e., air fresh­en­ers sup­pos­ed­ly impair­ing a dri­ver’s view, bro­ken tail­light, police can infringe on the rights of cit­i­zens, and in many cas­es kill, often­times out of their own fears and biases.
This will not end any­time soon; pro­po­nents of these tac­tics will point to police abil­i­ty to nab seri­ous offend­ers using the legal­i­ties with­in sim­ple traf­fic stops.
The sad real­i­ty is that in these United States, Police depart­ments have been allowed to devel­oped and morph into dan­ger­ous enti­ties that oper­ate out­side civil­ian con­trol. Preferential treat­ments and pro­tec­tions not avail­able to any oth­er work­ers are sum­mar­i­ly giv­en to police.
Police offi­cers are arguably the least edu­cat­ed of any group of work­ers. Yet they are giv­en unprece­dent­ed pow­ers, includ­ing life and death, and a cloak of pro­tec­tion called ‘qual­i­fied immunity.
An oper­at­ing sur­geon who uses a scalpel instead of a nee­dle and ends up killing that patient does not get to walk away and say whoops.
An aver­age mem­ber of the pub­lic who takes the life of anoth­er even under the most rea­son­able cir­cum­stances that are not imme­di­ate­ly deemed self-defense does not get to say whoops.
Neither do they get to walk away (resign) with­out answer­ing to author­i­ties, leav­ing the expla­na­tion to their boss.
American police will not stop killing inno­cent unarmed cit­i­zens; it is too easy to do and too dif­fi­cult to hold them account­able under the present construct.
The trag­ic irony is that the United States con­tin­ues to inter­fere in oth­er nations’ affairs relat­ed to how they enforce their laws, while American police rou­tine­ly kill African-Americans with­out accountability.
There also needs to be an air­ing out at least by the media, of the ‘war­rior train­ing’ pro­vid­ed to American police in some cas­es despite poli­cies against it.
Police train­ing in Israel where the Israeli mil­i­tary and police train American police in the kill-tac­tics they use against Palestinians also con­tin­ue to play out on American streets.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

The fatal offi­cer-involved shoot­ing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright appears to have been an acci­dent, the Brooklyn Center Police Department says.

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said in a Monday news con­fer­ence that the offi­cer who shot and killed Wright, a Black man, dur­ing a traf­fic stop in Minnesota on Sunday appar­ent­ly meant to use their Taser but mis­tak­en­ly fired a bul­let, The New York Times reports.

“It is my belief that the offi­cer had the inten­tion to deploy their Taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a sin­gle bul­let,” Gannon said. “This appears to me, from what I viewed, and the offi­cer’s reac­tion and dis­tress imme­di­ate­ly after, that this was an acci­den­tal dis­charge that result­ed in a trag­ic death of Mr. Wright.”

Police also showed graph­ic body cam­era footage from the shoot­ing, in which the offi­cer can be heard shout­ing “Taser” and, after fir­ing her gun, say­ing, “Holy s — . I just shot him.”

Hundreds of demon­stra­tors gath­ered on Sunday night to protest the shoot­ing, which occurred in a sub­urb about 10 miles from where George Floyd was killed in 2020. Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott on Monday called for the offi­cer’s fir­ing, per the Times, vow­ing that “we will get to the bot­tom of this” and “do all that is with­in our pow­er to make sure that jus­tice is done for Daunte Wright.”

There is ear­ly report­ing of a major traf­fic acci­dent on the high­way that leads from May Pen To Kingston with mul­ti­ple fatalities.
Some of the images are too grue­some to be post­ed here.

This sto­ry has been updat­ed to include some graph­ic imagery since it was first pub­lished, view­er dis­cre­tion is advised. Open at your own discretion.
We will con­tin­ue to pro­vide more infor­ma­tion as they become available.

Sustained gun­fire has been report­ed in Central Village Saint Catherine, and three hous­es have been report­ed burned and one man dead.
These are uncon­firmed reports that we have not been able to ver­i­fy inde­pen­dent­ly; how­ev­er, we will update this break­ing sto­ry as soon as more becomes available.

The U.S. Capitol com­plex was placed on lock­down Friday after a vehi­cle rammed into two U.S. Capitol Police offi­cers, accord­ing to law enforcement.
The sus­pect and a U.S. Capitol Police offi­cer have both died, a law enforce­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive announced at a press con­fer­ence Friday after­noon. Another law enforce­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive added that the event cur­rent­ly “does not appear to be ter­ror­ism-relat­ed,” but not­ed fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion would be necessary.
Capitol Police said in a state­ment short­ly after 2:40 p.m. that the threat has been “neu­tral­ized” and lift­ed the lock­down short­ly after 3 p.m.Capitol Police con­firmed at the press con­fer­ence that the dri­ver jumped out of the car with a knife after ram­ming the vehi­cle into the bar­ri­cade. The dri­ver then lunged toward the offi­cers, at which point the offi­cers shot the suspect.

The sec­ond offi­cer was also injured in the inci­dent, accord­ing to the Capitol Police.
The inci­dent occurred at the North Barricade vehi­cle access point along Constitution Avenue short­ly after 1 p.m., the Capitol Police said. Congress was not in ses­sion when the event occurred, but there has been increased secu­ri­ty pres­ence at the Capitol since the insur­rec­tion that took place there on Jan. 6.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-staff in light of the death of the Capitol Police offi­cer, a spokesper­son for her office said in a statement.
As report­ed by CNBC

By Matt Stieb, Chas Danner, and Margaret Hartmann

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill legal­iz­ing recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na on Wednesday, mak­ing New York the 15^th state to do so. Cuomo signed the bill a day after it passed in the State Legislature. Parts of the law went into effect imme­di­ate­ly, as the New York Times explains Individuals are now allowed to pos­sess up to three ounces of cannabis for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es or 24 grams of con­cen­trat­ed forms of the drug, such as oils.

New Yorkers are per­mit­ted to smoke cannabis in pub­lic wher­ev­er smok­ing tobac­co is allowed, though local­i­ties and a new state agency could cre­ate reg­u­la­tions to more strict­ly con­trol smok­ing cannabis in pub­lic. Smoking cannabis, how­ev­er, is not per­mit­ted in schools, work­places, or inside a car. Other changes will go into effect in the com­ing months when offi­cials cre­ate the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that will gov­ern every aspect of a brand new, high­ly reg­u­lat­ed market.

The long-await­ed leg­is­la­tion legal­izes recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na for adults 21 and over. In addi­tion to per­mit­ting the pos­ses­sion of up to three ounces for per­son­al use, it allows adults to grow three mature and three imma­ture plants at a time and legal­izes the sale of weed with a 13 per­cent sales tax — which the state expects will raise $350 mil­lion in tax rev­enue every year, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing some 60,000 jobs. The leg­is­la­tion also expunges the crim­i­nal records of peo­ple con­vict­ed of mar­i­jua­na-relat­ed offens­es. “My goal in car­ry­ing this leg­is­la­tion has always been to end the racial­ly dis­parate enforce­ment of mar­i­jua­na pro­hi­bi­tion that has tak­en such a toll on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or across our state, and to use the eco­nom­ic wind­fall of legal­iza­tion to help heal and repair those same com­mu­ni­ties,” the bill’s Senate spon­sor, Liz Krueger, said in a press release.

Of the sales tax rev­enue, 9 per­cent will go to the state — of which 40 per­cent will go to fund edu­ca­tion, 40 per­cent will go to sup­port com­mu­ni­ties of col­or that have suf­fered the most from the war on drugs, and 20 per­cent will go to fund anti-addic­tion efforts. The oth­er 4 per­cent of the sales tax will go to local gov­ern­ments. Though cities, towns, and vil­lages will be able to opt-out of allow­ing weed stores in their com­mu­ni­ties, those that elect to allow them will be enti­tled to 75 per­cent of the local share of the sales tax, with the remain­ing 25 per­cent going to the coun­ty. Applications for licens­es to oper­ate mar­i­jua­na-relat­ed busi­ness­es run by women and peo­ple of col­or will be pri­or­i­tized under the new law.

The law will also allow those who have sold mar­i­jua­na ille­gal­ly in the past to have a chance to gain a legal sales license while lim­it­ing the per­mits for large mul­ti-state mar­i­jua­na com­pa­nies already oper­at­ing med­ical dis­pen­saries in New York to four addi­tion­al stores, two of which must be in under­served communities.

“This is a his­toric day in New York, one that rights the wrongs of the past by putting an end to harsh prison sen­tences, embraces an indus­try that will grow the Empire State’s econ­o­my, and pri­or­i­tizes mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties so those that have suf­fered the most will be the first to reap the ben­e­fits,” Cuomo said in a statement.