By Nicole Duncan-Smith

After a local Michigan police agency released body­cam footage of offi­cers shoot­ing a 20-year-old man, the com­mu­ni­ty responds with out­rage. As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues about exces­sive force, offi­cials ques­tion how to police effec­tive­ly while “build­ing pub­lic trust” and “engag­ing in tough conversations.

On Thursday, April 28, the East Lansing Police Oversight Commission vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to demand that the police depart­ment release body­cam video of the Monday, April 25 shoot­ing of an alleged­ly armed sus­pect in a gro­cery store park­ing lot. The depart­ment released the footage by the set dead­line, Thursday, May 5.

Someone report­ed see­ing a man, lat­er iden­ti­fied as DeAnothny VanAtten, in a face mask enter­ing the Lake Lansing Meijer gro­cery store with a firearm. The Lansing State Journal news­pa­per describes the call

Dispatchers relayed the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion to offi­cers: “I have a caller that advised for a 20-year-old Black male, he was wear­ing a yel­low and black jack­et with a mask cov­er­ing his whole face except his eyes, pulled a gun out of his car and went inside the store, caller’s advis­ing that the accused walked in through the gro­cery side,” accord­ing to police scan­ner archives. “He’s not threat­en­ing any­body with it, just walked inside the store.”

The ELPD chief said she released the par­tial video in the spir­it of trans­paren­cy. In a press release, the force’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion arm states, “The video footage released cap­tures the events lead­ing up to the shoot­ing, the shoot­ing itself, and the events imme­di­ate­ly after the shoot­ing. The source videos include body-worn cam­era footage and Meijer secu­ri­ty cam­era footage. Some of the video footage (faces, license plates, and iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion) has been redact­ed/​blurred to ensure privacy.

Police Chief Kim Johnson said, “Building pub­lic trust means remain­ing present in chal­leng­ing times, engag­ing in tough con­ver­sa­tions, and being as trans­par­ent as pos­si­ble with our com­mu­ni­ty members.” 

Many are look­ing past the release of the video and ques­tion­ing the inten­tion of the shoot­ing, believ­ing trans­paren­cy, in this case, lies in the “tough con­ver­sa­tion” of why VanAtten was shot instead of the many oth­er tools the force says it has at its disposal.

Parish Hickman is one.

He was also at the shop­ping cen­ter at the time of the inci­dent, “They were quick to shoot,” he stat­ed. “Where did they see the gun at? He didn’t up that [exple­tive] or noth­ing. So why did they just shoot him that quick? He was just try­ing to run.”

Hickman said he believed VanAtten ran from the police, like many Black peo­ple do, out of “fear.” He said, “You Black, and you got a gun? That’s not about to go well.”

In the video, an uniden­ti­fied offi­cer can be heard yelling to VanAtten, “You’re going to get Tased,” and ask­ing him to stop.

Another offi­cer warns, “He’s reach­ing. He’s reach­ing. He’s got a gun.” 

One of the cops shot two rounds. Another cop shot sev­er­al more at VanAtten as he dart­ed between parked cars and an open area until the Black man fell and said, “You just shot me two times, bro,” when the offi­cers reached him.

Approximately eight gun­shots were let off, appar­ent­ly fired from mul­ti­ple guns. The young man was shot once in his right leg and once in the abdomen. Video shows the offi­cers imme­di­ate­ly assist­ing the wound­ed sus­pect before he was rushed to the hospital.

A woman in a yel­low sweat­shirt was near a sil­ver SUV where VanAtten was shot on the ground, and cried out to the offi­cers and said on cam­era, “Do not shoot him. He does not have a f##king gun. Get your gun off of him.”

Despite video footage from the roof of the park­ing lot show­ing they were in the car togeth­er, she says in the video she did not know him.

She screeched, with an infant’s car­ri­er peek­ing out of the car door, “My baby is right here.”

When she went with the child to check to see if the man was OK, after call­ing some­one on the phone, video shows they assume she is with VanAtten and checked her for the miss­ing gun.

She denies hav­ing the gun and con­tin­ues to scream in sev­er­al videos, “He didn’t have no gun. You shot him for no reason.”

In a sep­a­rate video, offi­cers can be heard dis­cussing the chase and how to tend to VanAtten, when one declares what he said he saw, “He had it out.”

Cops dis­cov­ered a sil­ver hand­gun beneath a car parked two park­ing spots away from where they claimed VanAtten was parked. Further test results are pend­ing to deter­mine the own­er of the weapon

Some com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers like Kerrington Kelsey, a leader in the Black Lives Matter Lansing chap­ter, ques­tioned the edit, say­ing, “There was no proof whether that gun that was found on the scene was DeAnthony’s. Whether he even had it in the Meijer, to begin with. Oh wait, that footage — what hap­pened in the Meijer — did not make it to this cut.”

Another BLM leader offered fur­ther insights, “He went into that store to buy corn and mac­a­roni for a cook­out. He left his girl­friend and her eight-month-old baby in the car and said, ‘I’ll be right back’ and, some­where between that con­ver­sa­tion and walk­ing into Meijer, going and get­ting those items and check­ing out, he nev­er made it home.”

Upon his release from the hos­pi­tal, VanAtten was trans­ferred to the Ingham County Jail. He has already been released from custody.

In addi­tion to not releas­ing the full video, ELPD is keep­ing the shoot­ing officer’s name private.

Mike Nichols, who is rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cer, said he was “glad that the body-worn cam­eras and the footage is out there. It con­firms for me what I’ve believed — that is that the offi­cers act­ed rea­son­ably and appropriately.” 

East Lansing City Manager George Lahanas wants cool­er heads to pre­vail with­out any­one rush­ing to judg­ment about the shoot­ing as the inves­ti­ga­tion continues. 

“We want to reas­sure our com­mu­ni­ty that we are lis­ten­ing,” he stat­ed. “We are com­mit­ted to doing the right things in terms of process to ensure that we get the answers that are need­ed, make deci­sions accord­ing­ly and, ulti­mate­ly, move for­ward as a community.” 

By Nicole Duncan-Smith

A Louisiana sheriff’s depart­ment and exces­sive force expert say a deputy was jus­ti­fied when he pushed a Black woman into a mobile home and punched her in the face. The local law enforce­ment agency alleges she was inter­fer­ing with an arrest, while com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers claim the offi­cer used exces­sive force in his engagement.

The inci­dent occurred after MaryLee Breon Robinson refused to back away dur­ing the May 2 arrest of her broth­er, accord­ing to author­i­ties. Authorities report­ed­ly told Robinson she could record, but to stay in her yard. Robinson alleged­ly began shout­ing to her broth­er, “agi­tat­ing” him, accord­ing to officials.

Deputies from the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office arrest­ed Keith Anthony Robinson Jr. on the 1300 block of Paul Frederick Street in Luling, ful­fill­ing a felony pro­ba­tion warrant.

A press release from the sheriff’s office described the young man as “a con­vict­ed felon with a vio­lent his­to­ry” and fur­ther read, “Deputy Henry Sill deployed his depart­ment-issued taser to attempt to sub­due Robinson to take him into custody.

“The taser was inef­fec­tive and Robinson con­tin­ued to flee. An assist­ing offi­cer was able to detain Robinson and take him into cus­tody,” accord­ing to the release.

“While search­ing Robinson after his arrest, a female sub­ject approached deputies while record­ing Robinson and attempt­ing to speak to him. The female was lat­er iden­ti­fied as his sis­ter, MaryLee Breon Robinson, a 30-year-old female from Paul Fredrick Street in Luling.”

While detain­ing the 26-year-old, his sis­ter MaryLee Breon Robinson report­ed­ly yelled at the offi­cers for tas­ing him after he ini­tial­ly ran from the cops. Telling them, “You’re not going to han­dle him like that.”

“As Keith Robinson, Jr. was being placed into the rear of the police unit, MaryLee Robinson approached deputies from the rear of the unit, in the mid­dle of the street. She was again record­ing and shout­ing at Keith Robinson, Jr. and deputies.” Robinson report­ed­ly again was told she could record but to back away from the investigation.

Bodycam footage released on social media by the depart­ment on Tuesday, May 3, shows the arrest of Keith Anthony and Deputy Henry Sill approach­ing Robinson before she runs away from him. As the offi­cer chased down the 30-year-old female, he pushed her into a white mobile home. After she fell, an alter­nate cam­era cap­tured the offi­cer rear­ing back and punch­ing the woman in the face mul­ti­ple times.

In his footage, Sill is say­ing, “She start­ed swing­ing, so I struck her a few times because she’s swing­ing at me.” He also said on cam­era, fur­ther explain­ing his action, “She came around my unit and tried to interfere.”

The officer’s body­cam catch­es her remarks too. Robinson is heard say­ing the offi­cer attacked her for no rea­son, adding, “You don’t beat on a woman like that.”

The woman was charged with inter­fer­ing with a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion, crim­i­nal dam­age to prop­er­ty, bat­tery of a police offi­cer, dis­turb­ing the peace, and resist­ing an offi­cer with force or violence.

Chief deputy Rodney Madere defend­ed his deputy’s action say­ing, “They told her to get back. She didn’t. We allowed her to record. We told her she could con­tin­ue to record. We just need­ed her to get away. She refused. She kept com­ing up to the scene interfering.”

He con­tin­ued, “When he did catch her she swung and punched him in the face. Our offi­cer then was able to push her away to cre­ate dis­tance when she fell to the ground. Our offi­cer came in and she swung a sec­ond time.”

The sheriff’s depart­ment also said the woman “vocal­ized that she would not lis­ten to deputies’ orders.” 

“Deputy Sill moved in to effect an arrest, when MaryLee Robinson swung at Deputy Sill and kicked at him,” the sheriff’s office said.

“Deputy Sill felt his taser hol­ster crack upon MaryLee Robinson’s kick, glanced down, and real­ized his taser was no longer on his duty belt. MaryLee Robinson con­tin­ued to active­ly resist arrest, at which point Deputy Sill used an emp­ty hand dis­trac­tion tech­nique to gain con­trol and take her into cus­tody. This was successful.”

The sheriff’s office is con­duct­ing an admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion into the altercation.

Those who wit­nessed the alter­ca­tion said MaryLee was not close to the offi­cers and not phys­i­cal­ly imped­ing the arrest. They also say the deputy demon­strat­ed abuse.

Her moth­er Miranda Robinson told NOLA​.com, “It’s OK for you to come and do your job, but you don’t have to be so aggres­sive and treat us like we’re animals.

“We’re not ani­mals,” added the 50-year-old. “There’s no hard or harsh feel­ings,” the mom said. “I just want to see him held account­able for his actions and dealt with in the prop­er way.”

Joshae Smith, a rel­a­tive to both Keith Anthony and MaryLee Robinson, said, “It was scary because for a man to be beat­ing a woman like that — and then in front of her kids and they cry­ing. It’s terrible.”

Believing the woman’s civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed, the fam­i­ly con­tact­ed the NAACP.

A lead inves­ti­ga­tor with the NAACP expressed con­cern about the woman’s health after being assault­ed by the offi­cer. Jermeine Luckett, a rep for the civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion, said, “the young lady may pos­si­bly have a con­cus­sion and she has not received ade­quate med­ical care.” 

The sheriff’s office says Robinson was offered med­ical atten­tion at the scene of the arrest but refused it.

Other lead­ers have spo­ken out after see­ing footage of Robinson’s encounter with Sill. Ben Crump tweet­ed about the inci­dent, ask­ing, “Since when does aid­ing trans­paren­cy of a police inci­dent jus­ti­fy such exces­sive force?” 

“He must be FIRED!” he demanded.

The Times-Picayune enlist­ed the pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion of Andrew Scott, a use-of-force expert and for­mer police chief in Boca Raton, Florida, to review the footage. He said, while at face val­ue the footage “looks ter­ri­ble,” Sill was act­ing with­in his author­i­ty because Robinson was inter­fer­ing with the inves­ti­ga­tion. He referred to the officer’s punch­es as “stun strikes,” say­ing they are some­times used to sub­due a sub­ject resist­ing arrest.

The expert said Sill still could have de-esca­lat­ed the sit­u­a­tion by let­ting the woman run away.“In my view, as an expert, what he did was not unrea­son­able giv­en the total­i­ty of the cir­cum­stances,” Scott said. “But it does not look pret­ty. The use of force may be jus­ti­fi­able, but it does not look good.”

By Nyameyke Daniel

Steven Alexander was walk­ing home with gro­ceries after a night shift as an Embassy of Qatar spe­cial police offi­cer in 2018 when a taser-drawn Maryland police offi­cer approached him and demand­ed that he show his cre­den­tials. When Alexander refused, the offi­cer point­ed his firearm at him and demand­ed that he get on the ground. Once he was on the ground, the offi­cer pep­per-sprayed Alexander before putting him in handcuffs. 

As a result, Alexander lost his job, had to fight crim­i­nal charges and suf­fered years of emo­tion­al dis­tress, his attor­neys said. He is suing Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission Police and the police offi­cer for vio­lat­ing his rights and for exces­sive force

Hannah Nallo, one of Alexander’s attor­neys, said he has post-trau­mat­ic stress from what her client refers to as a “life-or-death scenario.”

“This inci­dent real­ly just changed the course of Steven’s entire life,” Nallo said. “He has a very hard time talk­ing about how the offi­cers real­ly almost took his life. Even though it was a few years ago, now, he remem­bers it clear as day when he talks to you about it is just like it just happened.”

M‑NCPPC Police Officer Mel Proctor said he saw Alexander walk­ing through a park­ing lot in the park with a hat that read “Special Police.” Proctor accost­ed Alexander, who told Proctor that he had no rea­son to stop him and con­tin­ued walking.

“The sub­ject con­tin­ued to refuse my com­mands to stop even after I told him that he was now being detained for inves­tiga­tive pur­pos­es,” Proctor wrote in the police report.

Proctor then asked for his cre­den­tials, he wrote. The offi­cer said he pulled out his Taser because Alexander was wear­ing a bal­lis­tic vest and “some­thing around his waist with pouch­es.” He drew his gun because he noticed Alexander had a gun hol­ster on his hip “pro­trud­ing for under his coat.”

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Proctor said Alexander asked him.

Alexander’s lawyers said the man begged for his life.

The offi­cer put this gun back in the hol­ster, and he sprayed Alexander in his eyes because he start­ed to unzip his coat after Proctor told him not to, he wrote. He did not have his body-worn cam­era on dur­ing the interaction.

Alexander’s attor­neys said he was wear­ing his work uni­form, which includes body armor and a badge that reads, “Special Police Officer.”

While Alexander was deal­ing with the effects of the pep­per spray, Proctor slammed him to the ground by the hood of his coat, put his knee in the man’s back, hand­cuffed him and sprayed in his face, the law­suit says.

After restrain­ing Alexander, the law­suit says Proctor found Alexander’s “valid” work iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and badge prov­ing his sta­tus as a spe­cial offi­cer at the Washington, D.C., embassy.

He saw Alexander’s badge hang­ing from his neck, the law­suit says, and police insignia on his shirt.

Proctor wrote in his report that Alexander had “numer­ous expired and one alleged cur­rent Special Police Officer Identification cards.”

“I attempt­ed to make con­tact with per­sons he alleged­ly works for only to get voice mails for peo­ple oth­er than the name he gave,” Proctor wrote.

Alexander was charged with resist­ing arrest, obstruct­ing a police offi­cer, fail­ure to obey a rea­son­able and law­ful order that a law enforce­ment offi­cer makes to pre­vent a dis­tur­bance to the pub­lic peace and imper­son­at­ing a police offi­cer. He spent 10 hours in jail.

Nallo said Proctor went to great lengths to ensure Alexander was ter­mi­nat­ed from his job, where she said he had a “stel­lar” record for nine years. Alexander’s super­vi­sor told him he could come back when he resolved the case, Nallo said.

On May 11, 2018, Prince George’s District Court Judge Bryon Bereano dropped all the charges against Alexander and crit­i­cized the pros­e­cu­tor for pur­su­ing the case.

Bereano said there was no one else present dur­ing the arrest, so no one was actu­al­ly dis­turbed. Bereano also not­ed that even though Alexander did not com­ply with the orders ini­tial­ly, he nev­er attempt­ed to run and try to remove or hide the hat.

Bereano said Proctor also tes­ti­fied that Alexander offered to give him the cre­den­tials after he asked a cou­ple of times, but the police offi­cer told him it was too late.

“On all four counts: The court finds that even look­ing at the light most favor­able to the state, which the court is sup­posed to do at this time, that frankly, Mr. State, don’t take this per­son­al­ly, this is not a case that should have gone for­ward,” Bereano told the prosecutor.

“This is ques­tion­able at best, a law­ful stop. Mr. Alexander did noth­ing wrong oth­er than walk­ing through a park after hav­ing worked a long, hard day, car­ry­ing his belong­ings from work and car­ry­ing his gro­ceries, and a police offi­cer who wasn’t fol­low­ing pro­to­col only exac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion by mak­ing it worse. And that was clear from his own testimony.”

Alexander was nev­er allowed to return to his job. The Qatar Embassy did not respond to requests for com­ment from Atlanta Black Star.

Alexander wished the inci­dent nev­er hap­pened. He was afraid to go pub­lic with the sto­ry out of fear that it may trau­ma­tize his family.

In his law­suit, he is seek­ing mon­e­tary dam­ages. A jury must decide how much Alexander would be award­ed. The state allows Alexander to get up to $400,000 in dam­ages from a police offi­cer. Lawmakers increased the cap to $600,000 start­ing in October 2021, but Alexander filed his case before the thresh­old was raised.

A Spokesperson for M‑NCPPC Police Prince George’s divi­sion LaKeisha Robinson said the agency could not com­ment on pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion. Records show Proctor received a com­mend­able ser­vice award in 2020.

Alexander’s attor­ney Jay Holland said the case is an exam­ple of the lack of account­abil­i­ty and bro­ken cul­ture in polic­ing that would allow an offi­cer to attack a cit­i­zen who was going along in his every­day life. The legal team hopes Alexander’s case and oth­er cas­es like it will pro­voke insti­tu­tion­al change in all police departments.

The M‑NCPPC Police is also at the cen­ter of anoth­er law­suit that pro­vides an inside look at the cul­ture of the depart­ment. In the law­suit a Black M‑NCPPC police offi­cer details inci­dents of racism and humil­i­a­tion that he was hand­ed down by his supe­ri­ors, who also dis­cussed incit­ing race wars and killing Black Lives Matter protesters.

“You don’t leave that at the door when you go out into the field. These are police offi­cers that are com­ing into con­tact with us as cit­i­zens and are com­ing into con­tact with Mr. Alexander,” attor­ney Veronica Nannis said“I think that it kind of does tie back to pos­si­bly the envi­ron­ment that they’re in and sort of what is not only tol­er­at­ed but encour­aged, appar­ent­ly, at Park and Planning.” This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the atlantablackstar

No one should be delu­sion­al about what is hap­pen­ing with Elon Musk’s push to acquire the social media plat­form Twitter.
“I have the mon­ey; now I want the clout.”
It is a con­cept as nor­mal as apple pie; Donald Trump could­n’t make it, but he sure as hell faked it until he did. Only, he did not win fame; he acquired infamy. He will always be remem­bered as the only pres­i­dent installed by a for­eign pow­er, twice impeached in a sin­gle term, and then attempt­ed to over­throw the con­sti­tu­tion­al order to stay in pow­er illegally.

Like Donald Trump, Australian-born Rupert Murdoch inher­it­ed mon­ey from his father. Trump inher­it­ed his father’s real estate busi­ness, and Rupert Murdoch inher­it­ed his father’s news­pa­per busi­ness in Adelaide, Australia.
Trump is report­ed to have squan­dered his father’s for­tune, although arguably cre­at­ing wealth for him­self. However, there are spec­u­la­tors who argue that Trump’s debt to real asset ratio makes him a fail­ure as a busi­ness tycoon.
On the oth­er hand, Murdoch took his father’s Adelaide Newspaper and turned it into a mas­sive con­glom­er­ate across Australia, Great Britain, and the United States.
In the process, Rupert Murdoch cre­at­ed incred­i­ble wealth for him­self and is now report­ed­ly worth a whop­ping B$21.7 at the age of 91.

Rupert Murdoch’s ‘FOX news’ empire in the United States has been noth­ing short of giv­ing alco­hol to a vio­lent mob. FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion and out­right lies have been indif­fer­ent to FCC rules of con­duct, essen­tial­ly act­ing as a super spread­er of mis­in­for­ma­tion, hate, misog­y­ny, and xeno­pho­bia to a coun­try steeped in racism and hatred.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced alle­ga­tions that his com­pa­nies, includ­ing the News of the World, had been reg­u­lar­ly hack­ing the phones of celebri­ties, roy­al­ty, and pub­lic cit­i­zens. Murdoch faced police and gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions into bribery and cor­rup­tion by the British gov­ern­ment and FBI inves­ti­ga­tions in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a direc­tor of News International.
Many of Murdoch’s papers and tele­vi­sion chan­nels have been accused of biased and mis­lead­ing cov­er­age to sup­port his busi­ness inter­ests and polit­i­cal allies. Some have cred­it­ed his influ­ence with major polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in the UK, US, and Australia.

In 2020 the New York Times said Fox News has long exert­ed a grav­i­ta­tion­al pull on the Republican Party in the United States, where it most recent­ly ampli­fied the nativist revolt that has fueled the rise of the far-right and the elec­tion of President Trump. Mr. Murdoch’s news­pa­per The Sun spent years demo­niz­ing the European Union to its read­ers in Britain, where it helped lead the Brexit cam­paign that per­suad­ed a slim major­i­ty of vot­ers in a 2016 ref­er­en­dum to endorse pulling out of the bloc. Political hav­oc has reigned in Britain ever since. And in Australia, where his hold over the media is most exten­sive, Mr. Murdoch’s out­lets pushed for the repeal of the country’s car­bon tax and helped top­ple a series of prime min­is­ters whose agen­da he dis­liked, includ­ing Malcolm Turnbull.

There ought to be no sur­prise that the polit­i­cal right in America would grav­i­tate and fall in love with Rupert Murdoch’s instru­ments of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion that have sup­port­ed white racism cul­mi­nat­ing in the January 6^th attack on the Congress.
There should be no sur­prise that the far right is in a tizzy that anoth­er for­eign-born bil­lion­aire Elon Musk has pur­chased the social media plat­form Twitter.
One of the terms used to describe Musk is ‘LIBERTARIAN” .
The term Libertarian is char­ac­ter­ized as a view in pol­i­tics and phi­los­o­phy that focus­es on lib­er­ty. Libertarianism says that it is usu­al­ly bet­ter to give peo­ple more free choice, and it also says that the gov­ern­ment should have less con­trol over people.
Then again, the same term was used to describe Charles and David Koch, bil­lion­aire broth­ers who grew their father’s empire at Koch indus­tries and used much of their polit­i­cal dona­tions to advance racist right-wing poli­cies in the United States.

Elon Musk was born in Apartheid Pretoria South Africa in 1971. Musk arguably cre­at­ed his own wealth begin­ning with the cre­ation of his web soft­ware com­pa­nies Zip2 and Kimbal.
He is worth an esti­mat­ed 264.6 bil­lion USD today, and now he wants to deter­mine what free speech is in his ‘lib­er­tar­i­an’ way, not accord­ing to the fifth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion or, bet­ter, hav­ing our God-giv­en right to free speech respect­ed, but speech accord­ing to apartheid Elon.
Libertarian free speech, accord­ing to Elon Musk, seems to be to have Donald Trump back on Twitter after he was ban­ished for life from the plat­form for spread­ing lies and misinformation.
This prospect has Twitter employ­ees up in arms as they have no idea what the plat­form is to become under its new own­er, who already has a pen­chant for lies and spread­ing false information.
There are uncon­firmed reports Musk wants Trump back on Twitter, but this may not square with Trump, who has grand designs on his own start­up plat­form called “TRUTH social.” If ever there was irony.
Let us be rea­son­able here; if the reports are true that this newest nar­cis­sist on the block wants Trump back on Twitter, it is all about mon­ey; it has noth­ing to do with free speech.
Just as Rupert Murdoch’s FOX net­work was able to mon­e­tize American racism, Musk believes he too should cash in on the igno­rant can­cer called racism.
Neither Rupert Murdoch nor Elon Musk cares about free speech, nor do they care about the poi­son they are putting into the body politic; they are greedy cor­po­ratists who have seen the poten­tial to become filthy rich from America’s igno­rant and stub­born affin­i­ty for racial animus.
Let us call it what it is…

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

By Nyamekye Daniel

After being framed by a North Carolina police detec­tive, spend­ing more than two decades in prison and fight­ing to be free, Darryl Howard must now take on a new legal bat­tle to get $6 mil­lion grant­ed to him in a wrong­ful con­vic­tion law­suit by a fed­er­al jury in December.
The jury found that retired Durham Detective Darrell Dowdy vio­lat­ed Howard’s civ­il rights by fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence and inten­tion­al­ly con­duct­ing a shod­dy inves­ti­ga­tion. However, Durham’s city attor­ney says the city is legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from pay­ing the mon­e­tary judg­ment on behalf of the rogue detec­tive. Howard’s attor­ney accused the city of “lying” and using legal lan­guage as an excuse.

One of Howard’s lawyers, Nick Brustin, said they plan to do “every­thing con­ceiv­able” to col­lect the mon­ey, includ­ing appeal­ing the case.

“We’re going to make sure that we get our client who’s been through absolute hell every­thing we pos­si­bly can for him,” Brustin told the Atlanta Black Star.

Howard was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 80 years in prison for the mur­ders of a moth­er and daugh­ter in 1995. He was exon­er­at­ed in 2016 after the state appealed a judge’s 2014 deci­sion to vacate his conviction.

The Durham District Attorney’s Office dis­missed his dou­ble-mur­der and arson charges after Howard’s lawyers pre­sent­ed DNA evi­dence exclud­ing him and con­nect­ing two oth­er peo­ple to the slay­ings of Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daugh­ter Nishonda in 1991. Gov. Roy Cooper also par­doned Howard in 2021.

Dowdy alleged­ly obtained false state­ments from wit­ness­es, includ­ing a 17-year-old, to fin­ger Howard for the crime even though he got a tip that a drug gang from New York was respon­si­ble for the mur­ders and sex­u­al assaults. He report­ed­ly added details to their state­ments to make them more believable.

The Durham City Council decid­ed dur­ing a series of closed meet­ings between December and February to deny fund­ing for the judgment.

Durham City Attorney Kimberly Rehberg said the for­mer detec­tive did not per­form his “duties in good faith,” and state law and a city res­o­lu­tion for­bid Durham from using pub­lic funds to cov­er the verdict.

“The city’s hands were tied,” she said.

The city’s res­o­lu­tion cre­ates a uni­form stan­dard for how law­suits are han­dled. According to University of North Carolina pro­fes­sor Rick Su, res­o­lu­tions have no legal effect and are “essen­tial­ly a for­mal state­ment like a for­mal pub­lic press release.”

Durham’s res­o­lu­tion dou­bles down on state law, which states that “noth­ing in this sec­tion shall autho­rize” North Carolina coun­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties “to appro­pri­ate funds for the pur­pose of pay­ing any claim” “if the city coun­cil or board of coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers finds” that “employ­ee or offi­cer act­ed or failed to act because of actu­al fraud, cor­rup­tion or actu­al mal­ice on his part.”

It is the sec­ond time to Su’s knowl­edge that the legal statute has been used to deny an award in the state. It was debat­ed in the 2004 case of Gibbs v. Mayo when a Hyde County com­mis­sion­er fought for the coun­ty to pay his judg­ment after he ille­gal­ly prof­it­ed from a con­tract to repair the coun­ty cour­t­house and health center.

“The court held, and the coun­ty argued that what he did here was actu­al­ly beyond his capac­i­ty as a com­mis­sion­er that essen­tial­ly his wrong­do­ing was tak­ing the con­tract and essen­tial­ly being a con­trac­tor,” Su said, who teach­es state and local gov­ern­ment law.

Brustin said it is the first time in Durham’s his­to­ry that it has refused to pay a judg­ment. He argues that since the city spent mon­ey to defend the Dowdy, they must also pay the judgment.

“It cer­tain­ly per­mits them to do it,” Brustin said. He has vowed to ensure that they fol­low suit.

Howard’s attor­neys must now seek the judg­ment from the detec­tive who receives a pen­sion from the state after a 36-year career. Brustin said the pen­sion is not near­ly enough to cov­er the $6 mil­lion ver­dict and the $4 mil­lion for the city’s legal fees to defend him that the city is now ask­ing Howard to pay. The team also spent about $5 mil­lion to defend the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed man.

“Because we’re forced to, are going to be going after the assets of Detective Dowdy,” Brustin said. “So if that includes Detective Dowdy’s home and those things, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Howard’s legal team also plans to appeal the court’s deci­sion to dis­miss the claims against the city and three oth­er employ­ees and ask for anoth­er trial.

Su said Howard’s attor­neys might bet­ter redeem the mon­ey if they prove Durham had fault­ed on train­ing, over­sight, or negligence.

To hold a city liable for a civ­il rights vio­la­tion, a plain­tiff must show that an offi­cer vio­lat­ed a clear­ly estab­lished con­sti­tu­tion­al right and that the vio­la­tion result­ed from the city’s offi­cial pol­i­cy, an unof­fi­cial cus­tom, or because the city was “delib­er­ate­ly indif­fer­ent” in fail­ing to train or super­vise the offi­cer, Rehberg said.

“In this case, there was no evi­dence that the City of Durham’s ordi­nances, reg­u­la­tions, cus­toms, or poli­cies caused Darryl Howard to be wrong­ly con­vict­ed,” she said.

California, Ohio, Utah and Idaho have sim­i­lar laws that lim­it gov­ern­ments from pay­ing judg­ments to “bad-faith employ­ees.” However, unlike North Carolina’s law, the California statute allows gov­ern­ments to opt out of pay­ing the judg­ment, Su said.

An appel­late court upheld Los Angeles County’s refusal to pay for a judg­ment against cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Chang v. County of Los Angeles in 2016 because his actions “were based on cor­rup­tion, fraud, or malice.”

Brustin said the legal move by the city is part of a series of racial injus­tices against Howard. He point­ed out that dur­ing the tri­al, the city argued that Howard was “not wor­thy” of the $48 mil­lion they were seek­ing because of his crim­i­nal record and drug addic­tion. The city also made set­tle­ment offers “nowhere near” the $6 mil­lion judgment.

“Morally, they have not only an oblig­a­tion to pay Darryl Howard, they had an oblig­a­tion not to defend the case the way they did,” Brustin said. “They had an oblig­a­tion to go back and look at the mis­con­duct and see if it affects oth­er people.”

“They had an oblig­a­tion now to go and make sure that noth­ing like this is hap­pen­ing in their police depart­ment. Instead, all they’ve done is they’ve come up with lies about why they don’t have to pay this.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Atlantablackstar​.com

The Grand Rapids Police Department final­ly has released the name of the offi­cer who shot and killed a Black motorist after he attempt­ed to flee dur­ing a traf­fic stop. Despite local law enforce­ment promis­ing to be trans­par­ent regard­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, the fam­i­ly and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty activists believe the “three-week delay in releas­ing the name” of the cop who shot the man is “offen­sive.”

On Monday, April 25, offi­cer Christopher Schurr, who has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave, was iden­ti­fied as the per­son who fatal­ly shot an unarmed African immi­grant, Patrick Lyoya, on April 4. The deci­sion to make pub­lic Schurr’s iden­ti­ty comes days after Lyoya’s funer­al, held on Friday, April 22 at the Renaissance Church of God in Christ, where Rev. Al Sharpton said, “Every time a young Black man or woman is arrest­ed in this town, you put their name all over the news. Every time we’re sus­pect­ed of some­thing, you put our name out there.

The civ­il rights leader added, before demand­ing the officer’s name be released, “How dare you hold the name of a man that killed this man. We want his name!”

GRPD chief Eric Winstrom released a state­ment, say­ing the city has a “long-stand­ing prac­tice of with­hold­ing names of any employ­ee under inves­ti­ga­tion until the con­clu­sion of an admin­is­tra­tive investigation.”

“Additionally, while it has been a long-stand­ing prac­tice of the Grand Rapids Police Department to with­hold the name of indi­vid­u­als who have not been arrest­ed or charged with a crime – a prac­tice that applies to all pub­lic employ­ees, police offi­cers, and mem­bers of the pub­lic – police reform requires eval­u­at­ing many long-stand­ing prac­tices to ensure our actions are con­sis­tent with the best inter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty and the indi­vid­u­als involved,” he wrote.

He revealed, “the force decid­ed to release Schurr’s name in “the inter­est of trans­paren­cy, to reduce on-going spec­u­la­tion, and to avoid any fur­ther confusion.”
However, lawyers for the deceased’s fam­i­ly disagree.

Ven Johnson said in a state­ment, “An inten­tion­al three-week delay in releas­ing the name of the involved offi­cer, which they clear­ly knew at the moment of the shoot­ing, is offen­sive and the exact oppo­site of being ‘trans­par­ent.’”

“Once again,” he con­tin­ued. “We see the Grand Rapids Police Department tak­ing care of its own at the expense of the family’s men­tal health and well-being.” Kent County Commissioner Robert Womack, a pub­lic offi­cial who has been stand­ing with the fam­i­ly, is pleased with the deci­sion to release Schurr, who joined the force in 2015.

“I’m glad they final­ly released his name after hav­ing nation­al pres­sure from nation­al lead­er­ship com­ing to Grand Rapids,” Womack said.

“The com­mu­ni­ty had been ask­ing for his name for the last 24 days, and when the com­mu­ni­ty heard it would not be released unless he was charged,” he revealed.

After hear­ing that, Womack says he “men­tioned it to Ben Crump and Al Sharpton” and was glad to hear “Al Sharpton speak on the sub­ject in the funeral.”
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​w​a​s​-​a​l​w​a​y​s​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​a​-​p​a​s​s​-​w​h​e​t​h​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​v​i​c​t​i​m​-​i​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​o​r​-​w​h​i​te/

Bodycam, dash­board footage, home secu­ri­ty video and a visu­al from Lyoya’s rid­ing companion’s cell phone show Lyoya try­ing to run away from the offi­cer after he is detained over the valid­i­ty of his vehi­cle registration.

At one point, it appears the 26-year-old is reach­ing for the cop’s taser gun while the two are wrestling. Toward the end, Schurr is hunched over the man before shoot­ing him in the head.

Lyoya’s fam­i­ly has retained foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr. Werner Spitz, who l revealed last week he believed Schurr’s gun was pressed firm­ly into the back of Lyoya’s head before he was shot.

The deceased died from that one injury.

Schurr grad­u­at­ed eight years ago from Sienna Heights University with a degree in crim­i­nal jus­tice, accord­ing to an inter­view he did with MLive in 2014. While in school, he and his then-fiancée were mis­sion­ar­ies in Africa, bring­ing their Christian faith and build­ing hous­es in Kisi, Kenya, which is over 1,100 miles away from Lyoya’s birth­place, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The state­ment on Monday said an offi­cial autop­sy has not been released by author­i­ties, but will be made pub­lic in the near future.

Kent County pros­e­cu­tors said they will be wait­ing on the autop­sy, and for the state police to con­clude their inves­ti­ga­tion before decid­ing to charge Schurr for Lyoya’s murder.

The Savannah Electric Riverside Station plant, a brick behe­moth whose twin smoke­stacks have jut­ted over the city’s sky­line since 1912, once gen­er­at­ed pow­er for Savannah’s homes, street­lights, and trol­ley cars. After it was decom­mis­sioned in 2005, the struc­ture became derelict, an emp­ty shell amid the bus­tle of River Street for more than a decade. Today, it’s the cen­ter­piece of a new enter­tain­ment dis­trict, the prod­uct of a $375 mil­lion over­haul led by hote­lier and Savannah native Richard Kessler. Spread among three build­ings, the ambi­tious restora­tion is anchored by a stun­ning resort-style hotel from Marriott.
The wow fac­tor starts as soon as you step into the lob­by, aka Generator Hall, locat­ed in the colos­sal orig­i­nal pow­er-plant build­ing. There, guests are greet­ed by a life-sized, chrome-dipped dinosaur skele­ton (think A Night at the Museum meets Jeff Koons), enor­mous sparkling geo­des, and oth­er unusu­al arti­facts (like the world’s largest cop­per nugget). These are just a hand­ful of the nat­ur­al sci­ence and Jurassic-era dis­plays scat­tered through­out the prop­er­ty — a nod to its fos­sil fuel days. The indus­tri­al-cool aes­thet­ic con­tin­ues into the 419 rooms, some of which boast exposed brick walls, met­al beams, and dou­ble-height ceilings.
Atlantamagazine​.com

“We have seen so much cor­rup­tion, we’ve seen law­suit after law­suit filed against the city,” said Kayla Griffin, first vice pres­i­dent of the Cleveland chap­ter of the NAACP

Griffin says the East Cleveland Police Department has kept the Cleveland NAACP chap­ter busy with numer­ous com­plaints lodged against the department.

“Men and women are being gunned down, phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed by police offi­cers, thrown in jail but not processed right so being lost in the system.

When you have high speed chas­es that go through the city of East Cleveland and come into the east side of Cleveland as well and destroy prop­er­ty and take lives, so at this point we’re like we can­not con­tin­ue to sit on our hands, we need to call in rein­force­ments,” Griffin said.

Names like Arnold Black, Tamia Chapman, Redrick Ward and Vincent Belmonte are all linked to the city’s police department’s rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive force and brutality.

In response to the alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and police mis­con­duct, the NAACP sent a let­ter to the Department of Justice request­ing the fed­er­al agency step in to over­see the East Cleveland Police Department by obtain­ing a con­sent decree.

“What a con­sent decree does is it puts the city on charge say­ing, you have to clean this up and allows the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to have a say on what’s going on, on the local gov­ern­ment,” Griffin said.

A con­sent decree is an agree­ment entered as a court order between the Department of Justice and a munic­i­pal­i­ty that is enforce­able by the court.

“Consent decrees out­line need­ed changes to use-of-force poli­cies, offi­cer train­ing, trans­paren­cy, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment. Police depart­ments must com­ply with the mea­sures for sev­er­al years before the juris­dic­tion is released from fed­er­al over­sight,” as described by Pew Charitable Trust.

“Over the past three decades, the Justice Department has con­duct­ed more than 70 inves­ti­ga­tions of local police depart­ments although the Trump admin­is­tra­tion did not issue any con­sent decrees,” Pew Charitable Trust reports. 

Griffin says the NAACP was influ­en­tial in the Justice Department step­ping in to over­see the Cleveland Police Department in 2015 after a Department of Justice inves­ti­ga­tion found Cleveland Police engages in a pat­tern or prac­tice of using exces­sive force vio­lat­ing the Fourth Amendment.

The city of Cleveland and the Justice Department entered into a court enforce­able agree­ment to fix prob­lems with­in the police depart­ment and imple­ment police reforms. Activists want the same thing done in East Cleveland.

“It’s clear East Cleveland won’t be able to clean itself up,” said Chris McNeal, an attor­ney and chief legal offi­cer for the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

The city of East Cleveland is on the east side of Cuyahoga County, the same coun­ty Cleveland is locat­ed. It has a pop­u­la­tion of 13,792 and is near­ly 89 per­cent Black accord­ing to the lat­est Census data.

“I call him Pac Man because that’s what every­body on the street calls him,” McNeal said of Vincent Belmonte, 19, who was killed by an East Cleveland police offi­cer on Jan. 5, 2021.

The Cleveland Black Lives Matter chap­ter was help­ful in draw­ing atten­tion to the shoot­ing of Belmonte, by Larry McDonald, an East Cleveland police sergeant.

According to an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation report, McDonald pulled Belmonte over after hear­ing the 19-year-old’s loud muf­fler. Before McDonald could ask for iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion, Belmonte fled the traf­fic stop, lead­ing to a chase.

Surveillance video shows parts of the pur­suit, towards the end of the pur­suit, Belmonte’s car became dis­abled and came to a stop, that’s when the 19-year-old ran on foot. The BCI report says Belmonte ran between a pair of hous­es to jump a fence, but became caught on the fence, that’s when McDonald claimed he saw Belmonte reach for his gun and fatal­ly shot Belmonte.

The com­mu­ni­ty react­ed to the shoot­ing with protests led by the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

“We had height­ened sens­es to real­ly get involved in this case because this is one of many times you had East Cleveland police using as a pre­text they’re going to pull some­one over because they said the car is report­ed stolen,” said Kareem Henton, co-founder of the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

Last October, a grand jury deter­mined McDonald act­ed law­ful­ly and did not bring any charges, but while Belmonte’s fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty activists believe the shoot­ing should not have been jus­ti­fied, the actions of McDonald come as no sur­prise to Henton. “Before this inci­dent, he was one that had been involved in numer­ous inci­dents,” Henton said.

McDonald is among sev­er­al East Cleveland police offi­cers named in the let­ter the Cleveland NAACP sent to the Justice Department. McDonald was also the focus of a WOIO inves­ti­ga­tion where he was alleged­ly caught on body­cam video ask­ing for mar­i­jua­na seized in a traf­fic stop.

The man in the video said to be McDonald is heard telling anoth­er offi­cer, “I’m going to take this weed home, and say look, look, baby, look what dad­dy brought you.”

“The city of East Cleveland just gave him a lit­tle slap on the wrist where he was try­ing to get drugs out of the evi­dence room,” Henton said of the alleged inci­dent involv­ing McDonald.

Within the NAACP’s let­ter, oth­er cas­es described include Arnold Black being beat­en by East Cleveland police detec­tive in 2012, that result­ed Black being award­ed $50 mil­lion dol­lars by a jury in a law­suit he brought against the city.

Other inci­dents high­light­ed include East Cleveland police offi­cers Torris Moore, Antonio Malone and Eric Jones all were sen­tenced to prison in 2016 for keep­ing thou­sands of dol­lars from alleged drug deal­ers, much of it seized through ille­gal search­es and fab­ri­cat­ed reports accord­ing to the Justice Department.

Griffin hopes with more scruti­ny under a con­sent decree, the East Cleveland Police Department can clean up its act. “Personnel reviews, bet­ter equip­ment, updat­ed train­ings and a con­tin­uüm of train­ing and you have a judge over­sees that and man­dates imple­men­ta­tion,” Griffin said of hope­ful out­comes after a Justice Department intervention.

Atlanta Black Star brought the alle­ga­tions of alleged police mis­con­duct to the East Cleveland Police Department, and East Cleveland Police Commander, Dominique King says the NAACP’s let­ter comes as a surprise.

“It is a sur­prise they would not voice their con­cerns with us to allow us to explain to them our process in deal­ing with any alleged mis­con­duct from our offi­cers,” King said.

King went on to defend the police depart­ment which has 46 full-time employ­ees, and its process for han­dling offi­cer mis­con­duct, at least under its cur­rent leadership.

She says any­time the depart­ment is made aware of any alleged mis­con­duct from one of its offi­cers, it launch­es an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and if crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing is sus­pect­ed, out­side law enforce­ment agen­cies are brought in to inves­ti­gate which can include the local sheriff’s office up to the FBI.

Atlanta Black Star asked King to com­ment on Sgt. McDonald being named in the let­ter and alleged­ly caught on tape sug­gest­ing he would take seized drugs. “They were just alle­ga­tions and they proved to not with­stand the test of inves­ti­ga­tions,” King said of McDonald’s alleged mis­con­duct after reit­er­at­ing “we do not tol­er­ate mis­con­duct by our officers.”

Atlanta Black Star also sought com­ment from the city on the num­ber of pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion cas­es it has stem­ming from the police depart­ment, and the city of East Cleveland respond­ed by say­ing, “The City of East Cleveland does not keep that infor­ma­tion to doc­u­ment the orga­ni­za­tion, func­tions, poli­cies, deci­sions, pro­ce­dures, oper­a­tions and/​or oth­er activ­i­ties of its office or offices.”

East Cleveland has a long-stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion of being in a state of a fis­cal emer­gency for its han­dling of its finances, and accord­ing to an Office of Management and Budget report released April of 2022, the city is still at finan­cial risk: “In addi­tion to the rev­enue chal­lenges fac­ing the City, there are a num­ber of legal cas­es against the City which have exhaust­ed appeals with out­stand­ing dam­ages to be paid by the City and addi­tion­al cas­es cur­rent­ly in appeal. These cas­es present the poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant future lia­bil­i­ty that could fur­ther impact the City’s finan­cial solvency.”

“The city of East Cleveland is so poor, they’re essen­tial­ly judg­ment proof, mean­ing that if they vio­lat­ed your con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in the most clear and egre­gious man­ner, you can­not be com­pen­sat­ed because they’re essen­tial­ly insol­vent and they can­not pay their debts,” McNeal said of East Cleveland’s finan­cial risks.

Griffin says the DOJ has not respond­ed to the Cleveland NAACP regard­ing its let­ter sent to the depart­ment in February.

A $500,000 bond is set for a Mobile, Alabama, man who police say killed anoth­er man by hit­ting him over the head with a shov­el and pipe. Prosecutors on the case told a judge at a bond hear­ing they believe the assault might have been racial­ly moti­vat­ed. The attack­er was white, the vic­tim was Black.

Morgan Daniel Barnhill, 27, orig­i­nal­ly told the offi­cers in the Mobile Police Department he struck a man because he thought an unknown bur­glar was break­ing into his shed on March 29.

However, author­i­ties say an inves­ti­ga­tion swift­ly uncov­ered the man who knew the per­son he bashed in the head with two sharp and heavy objects. It was his neigh­bor, a 25-year-old Black man named Etienne Murray.

An offi­cer close to the case said, “Through the inves­ti­ga­tion, it was deter­mined that the alleged vic­tim (Barnhill) inten­tion­al­ly mis­led offi­cers about an attempt­ed bur­glary on the 4300 block of Windy Hill Circle East.”

“Detectives dis­cov­ered sev­er­al incon­sis­ten­cies in Barnhill’s state­ment,” the source con­tin­ued. “And deter­mined he filed a false report claim­ing an unknown male was attempt­ing to break into a shed on his property.”

Barnhill assault­ed Murray with a gar­den shov­el and a pipe and wait­ed hours before call­ing author­i­ties to report his injuries or the alleged crime he said he was pre­vent­ing. Murray died three days lat­er on April 1. 

Police said there were no addi­tion­al details about the inci­dent, call­ing it “an active homi­cide investigation.”

Barnhill’s bail bond was set for $500,000 on April 4. Should the bond be met, he will be required to wear an ankle bracelet and stay on house arrest, WKRG reports.

The deceased’s moth­er said the two men were friends and her son was even invit­ed over to Barnhill’s home for a bar­be­cue. She claimed Barnhill believed Murray stole a purse from his property.

WTVY reports Linday Gayle, Murray’s moth­er, said, “After he beat my baby, he left him there, didn’t call for help, didn’t try for help. If he would’ve called for help, maybe my baby would still be here.”

“I want him to know he has shat­tered my world,” the bereaved moth­er con­tin­ued. “He took my baby, and he didn’t have to do that. If he feels like my child took some­thing from him, why not call the police? Why not han­dle it the right way? Why take the cow­ard­ly way out and beat my child’s head and leave him there?”

The moth­er said she doesn’t “want any­thing bad to hap­pen” to the man respon­si­ble for her son’s death.

“I don’t want him to die because I don’t want any oth­er moth­er feel­ing the pain that I feel right now,” Gayle said. “No moth­er should have to bury her child, espe­cial­ly to sense­less vio­lence like this.”

A bail bond has not been met for Barnhill and he remains incar­cer­at­ed in a Mobile County Jail in Alabama.(AtlantaBlackStar orig­i­nat­ed this story.)

History was made in the United States on Thursday, April 7^th.….….yea… that num­ber ( 7) is the Biblical num­ber that rep­re­sents com­ple­tion. The full United States Senate con­firmed a Black woman to sit on the Nation’s high­est court.
It is a bit­ter­sweet moment for this writer in that though I am thrilled that final­ly a Black woman has been ele­vat­ed to the court, it is shame­ful that we have to be talk­ing about firsts of this kind in the 21^st century.
The num­ber sev­en is espe­cial­ly promi­nent in Scripture, appear­ing over 700 times. From the sev­en days of Creation to the many “sev­ens” in Revelation, the num­ber sev­en con­notes such con­cepts as com­ple­tion and per­fec­tion, exon­er­a­tion, heal­ing, and the ful­fill­ment of promis­es and oaths.
Whether the April 7^th full Senate con­fir­ma­tion of Ketanji Brown-Jackson is part of that Biblical com­ple­tion is up to the the­olo­gians to deci­pher; notwith­stand­ing, this writer believes the rubi­con has been crossed with her confirmation.

In a 53 to 47vote, Ketanji Brown-Jackson was con­firmed and will take her place on the court at the end of the court’s 2021 – 2022 term. Confirming supreme court jus­tices was not sup­posed to be a polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle; nei­ther was it sup­posed to be a plat­form for over­ly ambi­tious politi­cians to grand­stand and make an ass of them­selves, but over the last sev­er­al years, that is what the process has become.
Mitch McConnell’s dis­hon­esty in block­ing Merrick Garland, President Obama’s choice to replace Antonin Scalia, from enter­ing the high court may have poi­soned the process for decades to come.
Additionally, McConnell’s cor­rupt prac­tices in ram­ming through Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barrett, three Trump appointees, have poi­soned the well of advice and con­sent nec­es­sary to seat good justices.

Ketanji Brown-Jackson was con­firmed with all (50) Democratic Senators; she would have been con­firmed with a sim­ple Democratic major­i­ty with Vice President Kamala Harris cast­ing the tie-break­ing vote if no Republican vot­ed for her. However, though vice President Kamala Harris was in the Senate cham­bers, three mem­bers of the Republicans placed pol­i­tics aside and cast their votes for the new justice.
Maine’s Susan Collins, Utah’s Mitt Romney & Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski vot­ed to ele­vate judge Brown-Jackson to Justice Brown-Jackson.
After the vote, the white men and women of the Fascist Republican par­ty hur­ried from the Senate cham­ber; Senator Mitt Romney stood his ground and clapped for an extend­ed peri­od along with Senate Democrats as the his­to­ry-mak­ing sig­nif­i­cance of the moment sank into members.

Along with the white men and women who vot­ed against con­firm­ing judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson are the two Republican Hispanics, Marco Rubio of Florida and Raphael Cruz of Texas.
These men are first-gen­er­a­tion Americans of Cuban par­ents; they have tak­en a hard-line stance against immi­grants and have pushed for laws that would have kept their par­ents and them­selves back in Castro’s Cuba.
Additionally, they have aligned them­selves 100 % behind every anti-black leg­is­la­tion and have gone out of their way to present them­selves as white men.
So it was no sur­prise, at least to me, that the two would toe the par­ty line and, worse. Raphael Cruz made a mock­ery of him­self by ask­ing what he thought were tough ‘gotcha’ ques­tions of the nom­i­nee, then imme­di­ate­ly going to his Twitter feed to see if his name was trending.
It is always impor­tant to remem­ber that Raphael Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The new­ly ele­vat­ed Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson is a native-born American.

Writing over the years has taught me a lot I have become more rea­soned and more reflec­tive. In the decade-long process, I have also learned that some men(gender-neutral) were born to be mere foot­notes in history.
You know.…… Rosa Parks, relevant.….Bull O’Connor, footnote.
Martin Luther King, rel­e­vant, J Edgar Hoover, footnote.
And now Ketanji Brown-Jackson, rel­e­vant, Tim Scott, irrel­e­vant footnote.
Tim Scott is the junior US Republican Senator from South Carolina; he is one of only three African-American United States Senators in the sen­ate; the oth­ers are Corey Booker (D) New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
Nothing pre­vent­ed Tim Scott from choos­ing the right side of his­to­ry and cast­ing a vote to ele­vate the first Black woman to the US Supreme court; Scott chose not to.
By decid­ing to oppose Brown-Jackson, Tim Scott cement­ed his entire career as a US Senator as incon­se­quen­tial, one void of any per­son­al beliefs, mak­ing him­self a sheep and a dis­grace to his race like Clarence Thomas.
Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski had a tough fight last time she was elect­ed, she will have a thought time this go around, but she was not swayed by pol­i­tics or race.…she car­ried out her duties as was demand­ed of her by the constitution.
So did Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.
In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Tim Scott cement­ed him­self as an irrel­e­vant tool, an emp­ty suit, a foot­ball to be kicked around, a shame­less house slave.

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

New body­cam video shows the final moments of life for Antwon Cooper, 34 after he was shot in the head by police min­utes after he was pulled over for a traf­fic stop. The Miami man’s fam­i­ly says the new­ly released video shows he wasn’t armed. Miami police released a body­cam and near­by sur­veil­lance video of the dead­ly shoot­ing of the Black man on March 8. Cooper was pulled over by a Miami police officer

“They still haven’t been able to tell us what the stop was about; they just say it was some­thing with a paper tag,” said Rawsi Williams, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Cooper’s family.

The inves­ti­ga­tion is still ongo­ing, but the new video shows an offi­cer approach­ing Cooper ask­ing for his license and reg­is­tra­tion. Cooper was dri­ving a friend’s car, accord­ing to Williams — although the body­cam video shows Cooper say­ing the car is his. When Cooper failed to pro­duce a license, the offi­cer asked him out of the car, but once he exit­ed the red Nissan Altima and the offi­cer began pat­ting him down, Cooper tried to run away. Bodycam video shows Cooper and the offi­cer tus­sling before the body cam­era falls off on the ground. That’s when a Miami police sergeant arrived on the scene sec­onds lat­er and opens fire, killing Cooper instantly.

Williams says the body­cam video helps counter a nar­ra­tive Cooper was armed, some­thing the fam­i­ly has always denied. “The release of the video by the Miami PD was a vin­di­ca­tion of us and a cor­rob­o­ra­tion of the facts we’ve already put out there,” Williams said.

While a gun did appear at the scene, exact­ly who it belonged to and how it got there is still unclear. Miami police have not respond­ed to request for more infor­ma­tion, but on the day of the shoot­ing, police said, “One of the two sub­jects was armed with a handgun…a hand­gun has since been recov­ered on scene.” Police ref­er­enced a pas­sen­ger in the car at the time of the traf­fic stop, who was not arrested.

As the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues into Cooper’s death, his fam­i­ly has been anguished. “It’s tear­ing me and my wife apart,” Melvin Bryant, Cooper’s grand­fa­ther, said.

“It hurts; a death is a death, but this kind of death, you can’t accept that I can’t accept that, not at all,” said Helen Bryant, Cooper’s grandmother.

Amid their grief, the Bryants say they’ve also been faced with coun­ter­ing anoth­er nar­ra­tive about their grandson’s crim­i­nal past, say­ing he’d turned his life around and had a reg­u­lar job, and his record had no bear­ing on what ulti­mate­ly took his life.

“They just want­ed to smear him like he was such a bad guy, and he wasn’t,” Helen Bryant said of her grandson’s character.

Attorney Frank Allen says Cooper’s crim­i­nal past wouldn’t mat­ter in their fight for jus­tice because the crimes com­mit­ted occurred more than a decade ago.

“Some of the stuff they’re try­ing to pig­gy­back off of in lit­i­ga­tion, that stuff isn’t even going to be admis­si­ble, so a judge isn’t going to admit it, and a judge is not going to con­sid­er it, and a jury isn’t even going to hear it,” Allen said, one of the Cooper fam­i­ly attor­neys, said.

Although the family’s attor­neys have filed a pre-suit for a wrong­ful death fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit, claim­ing Cooper was a vic­tim of exces­sive police force, right now, the fam­i­ly says they aren’t con­cerned about lit­i­ga­tion but would rather exhaust their efforts on more imme­di­ate jus­tice against the Miami police sergeant who fired the fatal shot.

The fam­i­ly has start­ed an online peti­tion call­ing for the arrest of the sergeant.

“Our grand­son got mur­dered in the street by a cop who shot him in the head, and he laid under­neath a cov­er for sev­en hours, we’re not think­ing about a law­suit, we want jus­tice for our grand­son,” Melvin Bryant said.

“Can they give Antwon back to us? They can’t give him back to us, all the law­suits in the world can’t give him back to us,” Helen Bryant asked while lament­ing the loss of Cooper.

“He’ll nev­er be able to get mar­ried, there will be no Antwon junior, he’ll nev­er be able to have chil­dren,” Williams said of the long-last­ing impacts of the shooting.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is still inves­ti­gat­ing the case.
This sto­ry was first report­ed by Atlanta Black Star.

A fam­i­ly is left dev­as­tat­ed after a rou­tine traf­fic stop turned dead­ly for Antwon Cooper, 35, of Miami who was shot by a Miami police offi­cer at point-blank range on March 8. Police claimed Cooper had a gun, but the fam­i­ly says sur­veil­lance video from a near­by school tells a dif­fer­ent story.

Attorneys for Cooper’s fam­i­ly, Rawsi Williams and Frank Allen, say Cooper was dri­ving a red Nissan Altima that belonged to a friend, but when police ran the license plate that prompt­ed a traf­fic stop. Cooper pre­sent­ed an ID but not a driver’s license, which led to the offi­cer ask­ing Cooper to step out of the car.

“Once Mr. Cooper exits the vehi­cle, the offi­cer starts a pat-down on one side of Mr. Cooper. He reach­es out to pat down the left side, and Mr. Cooper turns to run away, but the offi­cer grabs Mr. Cooper by the shirt. He doesn’t even make it any­where,” Williams said.

As Cooper was try­ing to run away, a strug­gle ensued between hIm and the offi­cer until anoth­er sergeant arrived at the scene.

“[The sergeant] walks up to the scene, says ‘get down, get down,’ and just shoots Mr. Cooper in the head,” Williams said of the moments when the sergeant arrived.

“[The sergeant yelled] ‘Get down, get down,’ bam, at a pret­ty close prox­im­i­ty. The kid didn’t have a chance to respond,” attor­ney Frank Allen added of Cooper’s final moments.

Williams says police framed the inci­dent as if Cooper had a gun and threat­ened the offi­cers. She says she does not know who the gun belonged to but reit­er­ates that Cooper nev­er bran­dished a gun through­out the encounter.

“They put out a nar­ra­tive as if the offi­cer was forced to fire because of some kind of lethal threat by bring­ing in the word gun,” Williams said.

“Mr. Cooper was not swing­ing at this offi­cer, he was not punch­ing this offi­cer, he wasn’t kick­ing this offi­cer, he wasn’t bran­dish­ing any weapons at this offi­cer, he wasn’t point­ing a weapon at this offi­cer,” Allen said of the dead­ly police encounter.

Williams says sur­veil­lance video from a near­by school will help prove police should not have shot Cooper. “The sergeant wasn’t wear­ing a body­cam, but thank­ful­ly this occurred right out­side a school and they also had video sur­veil­lance on the out­side their school that points direct­ly at the scene where this occurred so we’ve seen that footage as well,” Williams said.

Williams says the video sur­veil­lance has not been made pub­lic yet, but a pho­to shows the end result, Cooper left lying in the street.

Atlanta Black Star sought more details from Miami police on the inci­dent, but a spokes­woman says because the case is under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and inter­nal affairs, they can­not release any information.

Cooper’s fam­i­ly just held his funer­al over the week­end. The fam­i­ly intends to file a wrong­ful death fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit under sec­tion 1983 claim­ing Cooper was a vic­tim of exces­sive police force.

“They want the offi­cer ter­mi­nat­ed, they want the offi­cer arrest­ed and con­vict­ed for the killing of Mr. Antwon Cooper,” Williams said the fam­i­ly hopes to get out of the pend­ing lawsuit.

Cooper has a crim­i­nal record dat­ing back to 2006 which include armed bur­glary, home inva­sion, and gun charges result­ing in him serv­ing prison time. Williams says he had a job and was work­ing on turn­ing his life around before his run-in with police on March 8.

Is any­one sur­prised by these racist clowns?

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has made it known that he will vote against con­firm­ing President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s high­est judi­cial bench.
As GOP leader in the U.S. Senate, McConnell’s announce­ment was not a sur­prise to many, although Jackson most like­ly will not need his vote. McConnell claimed on Twitter on March 24 that his deci­sion was non­par­ti­san. Some say it may be because of anoth­er bias.

I went into the Senate’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Judge Jackson’s nom­i­na­tion with an open mind,” McConnell said in a March 24 tweet. “But after study­ing the nominee’s record and watch­ing her per­for­mance this week, I can­not and will not sup­port Judge Jackson for a life­time appoint­ment to our high­est Court.” Jackson was ques­tioned about her vot­ing record and sen­tenc­ing prac­tices dur­ing three days of con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz drilled Jackson about crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, which Jackson point­ed out does not relate to her work as a judge.
Cruz used the children’s book “Antiracist Baby” to ask Jackson if she thinks babies are racist. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker applaud­ed Jackson for her resilience and grace dur­ing the ques­tion­ing and her accom­plish­ments. He brought the judge to tears as he high­light­ed the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of her nomination.

“I see my ances­tors and yours,” Booker said. “You have earned this spot. You are wor­thy. You are a great American.”
McConnell also voiced his oppo­si­tion on the Senate floor on the last day of the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings, cit­ing Jackson’s non­com­mit­tal replies about whether she would sup­port a plan to add four seats to the bench. There are cur­rent­ly nine Supreme Court jus­tices. Jackson said the ques­tion is beyond “the prop­er role of a judge.”
“I assumed this would be an easy soft­ball for Judge Jackson, but it wasn’t,” McConnell said. “The nom­i­nee sug­gest­ed there are two legit­i­mate sides to the issue. She tes­ti­fied she has a view on the mat­ter but would not share it.”
Only Congress can expand the court through leg­is­la­tion. Some Democrats have pushed for the change.
McConnell also took issue with Jackson’s lack of pub­lished low­er court opin­ions in the last year. Jackson, who has been on an appeals court for only a year, report­ed­ly had pub­lished two, while oth­er recent nom­i­nees pub­lished hun­dreds lead­ing up to their nominations.

Nearly 6,000 peo­ple respond­ed to McConnell’s tweet. It was also liked by more than 45,000 peo­ple. A num­ber of peo­ple who respond­ed accused the Republican of lying about his impar­tial­i­ty. Several said they were not shocked about his deci­sion. When con­ser­v­a­tive Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, McConnell led Senate Republicans to block President Barrack Obama’s pick Merrick Garland from the bench with­out first hold­ing hearings.
McConnell argued that it was too close to the November 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to con­tin­ue the process. Pundits believe McConnell did not want the Democratic pres­i­dent to nom­i­nate a liberal.
McConnell, how­ev­er, speed­ed the con­fir­ma­tion of for­mer President Donald Trump’s pick Justice Amy Coney Barrett less than two months before the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election. 
Many sug­gest­ed racism was a fac­tor. More than a dozen Twitter users respond­ed to McConnell’s tweet with a pic­ture of him accept­ing a plac­ard in front of a Confederate flag. The pho­to was alleged­ly tak­en at a Sons of Confederate Veterans event in the ear­ly ’90s.

I went into the Senate’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Judge Jackson’s nom­i­na­tion with an open mind. But after study­ing the nominee’s record and watch­ing her per­for­mance this week, I can­not and will not sup­port Judge Jackson for a life­time appoint­ment to our high­est Court.
Senate Democrats are report­ed­ly hop­ing for a full vote for Jackson’s con­fir­ma­tion next month. She needs 51 out of 100 votes to be approved for the bench. There are 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and as a wild card, Vice President Kamala Harris has the tiebreak­er vote. Although it is not clear if Jackson will gar­ner any sup­port from Republicans, West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, a key swing vote in the Senate, announced on March 25 his inten­tions to vote for Jackson, which polit­i­cal pun­dits said is a strong indi­ca­tion that she will get all of the Democrat votes.
This sto­ry first appeared @Yahoonews.com

I don’t under­stand you. You sound like my par­ents. You sound like the peo­ple I grew up with.’ But the lessons he tend­ed to draw from the expe­ri­ences of the seg­re­gat­ed South seemed to be dif­fer­ent than those of every­body I know,” Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson report­ed­ly thought while hav­ing lunch with the jus­tice Clarence TomAss as a law clerk.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was nom­i­nat­ed to fill the seat made vacant by the retire­ment of Justice Stephen Breyer. President Biden has cho­sen Breyer’s suc­ces­sor as he is oblig­at­ed to do constitutionally.
Biden pledged if elect­ed, he would appoint a Black woman to the court if a vacan­cy came up. A vacan­cy came up, and the pres­i­dent kept his word in the per­son of Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
Everyone who pays atten­tion to the racial car­ni­vores must know they would come for Jackson to eat her flesh, and so they have. There are those scat­tered across the soci­ety like the racist right-wing groups that have tak­en out adver­tise­ments prais­ing Clarence TomAss, a Black skinned sell­out who vot­ed against every issue that would uplift Black Americans from the despair and degra­da­tion of hun­dreds of years of white oppression.
For them, Clarence TomAss is a hero, but the mod­ern-day sell­out is that slave who runs and tells Massa which enslaved per­son ran away. The one who asks Massa, ” we sick Massa’?
But there are the clowns in the US Senate, begin­ning with Raphael Cruz, who hates him­self for being born Hispanic rather than a European Caucasian, Josh Hawley, who gave aid, com­fort, and suc­cor to insur­rec­tion­ists try­ing to over­throw the duly con­sti­tu­tion­al order of the United States, and should be in prison, Lindsay Graham, [trump’s] errand boy and the oth­er tad­poles like Marsh Blackburn, and Mike Braun.

It is bad enough when some­one like Clarence TomAss is ele­vat­ed to a posi­tion of pow­er, and he does every­thing with­in that pow­er to abuse any­one, much less one of the most dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try, the black com­mu­ni­ty from which he came.
But it is ten times worse when some­one of TomAss’s char­ac­ter would be held up as a mod­el for Black people.
It is insult­ing to me as a Black man that I share skin col­or with some­one like Clarence TomAss. that is how much I am offend­ed by him.
The insult­ing thing to me is that any­one would dare advance Clarence TomAss as any­thing but a mod­ern Benedict Arnold, unde­serv­ing of the black skin he lives in.
Make no mis­take; I do not dis­like TomAss because his views run con­trary to mine; I detest him because he is an oppor­tunis­tic racial sell­out who has cap­i­tal­ized on the pain of his race to cur­ry favor with his oppressors.
That makes him the low­est life­form in my view.
During slav­ery, the likes of TomAss would get a few scraps of food thrown their way or may have even been allowed into the house. Harriet Tubman was afraid his type would run back to the slave-own­ers and reveal her routes and sup­port struc­ture. His type was the rea­son she report­ed­ly car­ried a pistol.
If we real­ly want to admit the truth, the likes of Clarence TomAss exist­ed on the shores of Africa, and it was his type that made the North Atlantic Slave trade a possibility.
I am not qual­i­fied to explain the psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion that goes into the char­ac­ter of some­one like that, so I leave it up to the experts to fig­ure that out. Sufficing to say that it is not an admirable trait, at least not from the per­spec­tive of pro­gres­sive Black peo­ple who val­ue their auton­o­my, agency, and freedoms.

The real­ly pathet­ic thing for white men is that with four months shy of 246 years of American nation­hood dur­ing which they slant­ed things their way, they are scared shit­less that the wall of lies they cre­at­ed are tum­bling down.
No longer does any­one buy into the pro­pa­gan­da that they alone can do it; because as long as they can­not stop us from enter­ing the pool, we will show them that we are just as good a swim­mer or bet­ter than they are.
Whether it’s med­i­cine, art, sports, law, sci­ence, or what­ev­er, they dom­i­nat­ed only because they were allowed to play alone.
One of the things I hard­ly hear any longer is the need for Black peo­ple to be patient. Dr. Martin Luther King warned about ‘the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism’ before being mur­dered by them 54 years ago.
Anyone who believed that the sons and daugh­ters of rapists and mur­der­ers were going to be bet­ter human beings sim­ply because some water had flown under the bridge was grave­ly mistaken.

These are irre­deemable kinds of humans who do not pos­sess the capac­i­ty to co-exist with oth­ers or com­pete on an equal and lev­el play­ing field.
They see the winds of change, and as I said before, they are scared shit­less. If they can turn the clock back on race, you know, stop the teach­ings of their crimes against Black and Native peo­ples, burn the his­to­ry books, ban future ones on the sub­ject, stop black and brown peo­ple from enter­ing the coun­try and force white women to have more babies they see that as a solu­tion to their deplet­ing numbers.
The sad real­i­ty for them is that no sin­gle one of those things will stop the inevitable brown­ing of America, nei­ther will all of those mea­sures combined.
But if all else fails, they are pre­pared to storm the con­gress, over­throw the 246 years of estab­lished order, and insti­tute a white minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment like the one that exist­ed in South Africa.

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

The U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to legal­ize inter­ra­cial mar­riage, Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, a Republican, argued on Tuesday. Suggesting the his­toric Loving v. Virginia rul­ing by the Supreme Court decades ago was a case of improp­er judi­cial activism, Braun said the court should have left that deci­sion to the indi­vid­ual states, includ­ing those which had already out­lawed inter­ra­cial marriage. 
“When you want that diver­si­ty to shine with­in our fed­er­al sys­tem, there are going to be rules and pro­ceed­ings, they’re going to be out of sync with maybe what oth­er states would do,” Braun told reporters. “It’s the beau­ty of the sys­tem, and that’s where the dif­fer­ences among points of view in our 50 states ought to express themselves.”
The Republican’s larg­er point was to pub­licly dis­suade President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, away from what he described as “activist” behav­ior from the bench.
https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​3​/​2​2​/​s​e​n​-​m​i​k​e​-​b​r​a​u​n​-​s​a​y​s​-​w​a​s​-​t​o​-​l​e​g​a​l​i​z​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​r​a​c​i​a​l​-​m​a​r​r​i​a​ge/