An Alabama liquor store own­er has sued after a police offi­cer respond­ing to a rob­bery call at his store punched him in the face and broke his jaw in March 2020. The Decatur Daily reports that Kevin Penn sued the city of Decatur and police offi­cer Justin Rippen on March 11 in fed­er­al court. Penn is Black and Rippen is white. The suit alleges the inci­dent is an exam­ple of sys­tem­at­ic use of “exces­sive force” by the Decatur Police Department that the city often ignores.
The law­suit alleges Penn’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed by ille­gal seizure, false arrest and exces­sive force, seek­ing mon­ey damages.
City Attorney Herman Marks said Thursday his depart­ment hasn’t yet received the law­suit and declined com­ment. Decatur Mayor Tab Bowling said he regrets a law­suit has been filed but referred ques­tions to Marks.
The law­suit alleges the city reg­u­lar­ly receives com­plaints that offi­cers “react with unjus­ti­fi­able vio­lence and false charges when a cit­i­zen speaks up or oth­er­wise asserts his rights as an American citizen.”
The suit also accus­es offi­cers of “using com­mon charges like obstruct­ing gov­ern­men­tal oper­a­tion, dis­or­der­ly con­duct and resist­ing arrest” against local citizens.

“It is well known in the Decatur legal com­mu­ni­ty that Decatur offi­cers fre­quent­ly use these charges, com­mon­ly referred to as POP (p— off police) charges, with­out a legal basis,” the law­suit states. Penn had trapped a shoplifter with an elec­tron­ic lock and the sus­pect was lying on the ground, with Penn hold­ing him at gun­point. Surveillance video shows Penn unload­ing his gun as police arrive. The video appears to show Penn set­ting the gun mag­a­zine down as the offi­cers approach. An offi­cer walked past the sus­pect and told Penn to put down his weapon. Penn refused say­ing, “I have a right to have my gun,” accord­ing to body cam­era video. But police said in 2020 they believed Penn was reload­ing the gun. An offi­cer, who has been iden­ti­fied as Rippen, then appears to punch Penn. Rippen and two oth­er offi­cers wres­tled Penn to the ground and hand­cuffed him, the video shows. Penn was arrest­ed and charged with obstruct­ing a rob­bery investigation.

I intend­ed to say some­thing more detailed on the sub­ject of an imbe­cil­ic white talk show host ques­tion­ing the edu­ca­tion­al bona fides of an immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied black woman, you know the tra­di­tion­al ‘show me your papers’ schtick, but I won’t.
There is no fur­ther need to; we Black mean are going to con­tin­ue to stand up for our­selves and defend our women; first of all, we are not our parents.

OVER TO YOU BROTHER FREDERICK B HAYNES

The Longtime activist who still faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a retri­al tells the Guardian she believes she’s being ‘per­se­cut­ed’ for being outspoken

Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sen­tenced to six years in prison for try­ing to reg­is­ter to vote, says she is grate­ful to be released – but believes the case against her was a “scare tac­tic” to dis­cour­age oth­er peo­ple from cast­ing a bal­lot. Moses was released from prison on bond on 25 February after a judge unex­pect­ed­ly grant­ed her request for a new tri­al, cit­ing evi­dence, obtained by the Guardian, that had not been dis­closed to Moses’ defense.
In her first inter­view since being freed Moses recalled the moment in the court­room when Judge W Mark Ward decid­ed to grant her a new tri­al – and said she was “over­whelmed with joy”. Video shows Moses near­ly in tears and scream­ing in excite­ment when Ward ruled he was grant­i­ng her a new trial.
She knew that judges rarely reverse them­selves and grant requests for new tri­als, but she had been pray­ing Ward would see beyond her crim­i­nal record. “I was very grate­ful that God had allowed him to cor­rect his own mis­take, and that’s what you need in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

But Moses, a long­time activist con­nect­ed to the Memphis chap­ter of Black Lives Matter, still faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a retri­al. Moses says she was unaware she was inel­i­gi­ble to vote, and state offi­cials acknowl­edged they made an error in indi­cat­ing to her that she was eli­gi­ble. Her case has brought renewed focus to the prac­tice, com­mon in many US states, of depriv­ing peo­ple con­vict­ed of cer­tain felonies of their vot­ing rights for wide­ly vary­ing lengths of time, but some­times for life.
Read the full sto­ry here.….https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​2​2​/​m​a​r​/​1​1​/​p​a​m​e​l​a​-​m​o​s​e​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​j​a​i​l​e​d​-​o​v​e​r​-​v​o​t​i​n​g​-​e​r​r​o​r​-​s​p​e​a​k​s​-​out

In the realm of you can’t make this shit up, the senior-most jus­tice on the supreme court, asso­ciate jus­tice uncle oreo TomAss told a gath­er­ing in Lilly-white-Ruby-red Utah, he’s con­cerned efforts to politi­cize the court or add addi­tion­al jus­tices may erode the insti­tu­tion’s credibility.
Really?
What cred­i­bil­i­ty?
Ever since this freak of nature has been on the court, his every vote has been straight par­ty-line what right-wing white peo­ple wanted.

This coon has been front and cen­ter of every bad deci­sion the court has made since he was wrong­ful­ly ele­vat­ed to it by Republican Herbert Walker Bush. With his help, the court has con­tin­ued on its’ wrong-head­ed path of destroy­ing the 1965 vot­ing rights act and is get­ting ready to destroy abor­tion rights, two well-estab­lished and set­tled laws.
What TomAss is con­cerned about is not the court’s integri­ty but that if rea­son­able jurists are added to the 9‑person court, his scorched-earth anti-black cru­sade will be blunted.
I guess his wife Ginny told him what to say because, by him­self, this stain on the black race makes lit­tle or no sense.

Nick Fuentes, iden­ti­fied as a “white suprema­cist” in Justice Department fil­ings, made head­lines last week for host­ing a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence in Florida. His father is also half Mexican American.

The big pic­ture: Fuentes is part of a small but increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble num­ber of far-right provo­ca­teurs with Hispanic back­grounds who spread racist, anti­se­mit­ic messages.

Stay on top of the lat­est mar­ket trends and eco­nom­ic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Driving the news: Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, the for­mer leader of the Proud Boys, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls an extrem­ist group with a vio­lent agen­da, was arrest­ed Tuesday and charged with con­spir­a­cy in con­nec­tion to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

What they’re say­ing: Experts tell Axios far-right extrem­ism with­in the Latino com­mu­ni­ty stems from three sources: Hispanic Americans who iden­ti­fy as white; the spread of online mis­in­for­ma­tion; and lin­ger­ing anti-Black, anti­se­mit­ic views among U.S. Latinos that are rarely open­ly discussed.

• Brian Levin, direc­tor of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University, said in an inter­view that the trend is “part of the muta­tion that takes place as the racist fringe tries to become more mainstream.”
• Racism is deeply root­ed in Latin American and Caribbean nations, where slav­ery was com­mon, Tanya K. Hernández, a Fordham University law pro­fes­sor and author of the upcom­ing book, “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias,” told Axios. “In Latin America, white suprema­cy is alive and well.”
• Even fam­i­lies who have been in the U.S. for gen­er­a­tions can often bring those bias­es with them.
  Read more here…https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​r​i​s​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​i​s​t​-​h​i​s​p​a​n​i​c​s​-​1​7​1​4​0​1​6​3​7​.​h​tml

Stories like these cause me to won­der if it is still plau­si­ble for the tax dol­lars of Black peo­ple in America should go to pay the police. This is what hap­pens when a per­son with a grade school edu­ca­tion and six months of train­ing is giv­en too much power.

A sheriff’s deputy con­fused a Black third-year Roger Williams University law stu­dent as a defen­dant as she entered into a court­room to rep­re­sent a client as part of the school’s crim­i­nal defense clin­ic, she claimed on social media last week. The dean of her law school says that the mis­take is “all too com­mon” and is an exam­ple of “implic­it bias” in courtrooms.
Because she goes to school in Rhode Island, she is allowed to rep­re­sent indi­gent defen­dants, those who have been arrest­ed or charged with a crime but are unable to hire a lawyer due to suf­fer­ing undue hard­ship, in crim­i­nal cas­es under Supreme Court Rule 9.

In order for stu­dents to gain this expe­ri­ence in the state District Court, they are required to work under the super­vi­sion of a licensed attor­ney on the RWU Law fac­ul­ty. She claimed that after the sheriff’s deputy called for attor­neys to line up and pre­pare to enter the court­room, she was sin­gled out and stopped.
Despite being sec­ond in line and pos­sess­ing mate­ri­als need­ed (binders and fold­ers) to rep­re­sent her client in a mis­de­meanor case, the offi­cial asked her, “Are you sure you are in the right court­room? Are you the defendant?”
Crockton took to social media to explain what she says hap­pened that day. “I have nev­er been so embar­rassed in my entire life,” Crockton said in a TikTok video on her @sobrooklyn pro­file. “I felt like cry­ing at that moment. The crazy part about it is you hear sto­ries like this all the time with Black attor­neys, but when it hap­pens to you, it is so vis­cer­al that you don’t even know what to say.” She con­tin­ued, “I lit­er­al­ly have all these binders and fold­ers, and I’m dressed pret­ty nice — not to say that defen­dants don’t dress nice.” 
“Why would you assume that I am a defen­dant? Um, I think we all know why.” Less than a week, 341,000 TikTok views and 3,000 com­ments lat­er, she real­ized that her expe­ri­ence was not an iso­lat­ed occur­rence. Many peo­ple from all over the world were able to recount their own ver­sions of her story.

One per­son said, “This isn’t new. In the UK, crim­i­nal lawyers wear a wig and robes. Black crim­i­nal lawyers still get ‘mis­tak­en’ for defen­dants.” “My broth­er is a lawyer and prac­tices in Texas, and that hap­pens all the time,” anoth­er said. “Same! I’ve had bailiffs ask if I’m the defendant’s moth­er (I rep­re­sent teens),” one woman said, “And I’ve had a judge look past me and ask where the lawyer is.” In a sec­ond video, Crockton shared that the deputy apol­o­gized to her, but she believed it was hollow.
She said once she explained that she was a stu­dent lawyer, he per­mit­ted her admis­sion into the court and said, “Hey, sorry.”
“There was no ounce of emo­tion in that ‘sor­ry,’” she said in the video. Throughout the day, the stu­dent alleged that the deputy con­tin­ued to speak to her con­de­scend­ing­ly. “He act­ed like I had nev­er once in my life stepped foot inside of a court­room, [say­ing] this is where the judge sits, and this is where you sit and when the judge asks you a ques­tion you are to stand up and address him,” Crockton remem­bered. “I’m get­ting pret­ty weird­ed out and very anx­ious because every time he comes up to me, he is say­ing some­thing very patron­iz­ing, and I want this expe­ri­ence to be done.” When her super­vis­ing attor­ney and an RWU law pro­fes­sor, Andrew Horwitz, start­ed talk­ing to her, the deputy came over to the two and only spoke to her white teacher.

She said, “The sher­iff comes over and talks to him and lit­er­al­ly does not even look at me, does not even address me.” 
Horwitz, who serves as the direc­tor of the crim­i­nal defense clin­ic and assis­tant dean for expe­ri­en­tial edu­ca­tion for the school, was lat­er made aware of the incident.
He not­ed, just as the legions of com­ments did, that this was a sys­temic issue that many peo­ple of col­or and women encounter when deal­ing with the court system.
“What it shows is that implic­it bias is a very seri­ous prob­lem in this coun­try,” Horwitz said. 
“It’s very hard to find a sin­gle attor­ney of col­or who has not had the expe­ri­ence of being con­fused for a defen­dant or a lit­i­gant,” he said. “Sadly, we still live in a soci­ety where our pre­con­ceived notions of what an attor­ney should look like con­tin­ue to exclude peo­ple of col­or and, to some degree, women.”
This “implic­it bias” in the judi­cial sys­tem, he states, “is a per­va­sive nation­wide problem.”

“I don’t think there is a way to elim­i­nate the kind of bias we all har­bor,” Horwitz reck­ons. “But I do think we can and should engage in sig­nif­i­cant train­ing so that peo­ple become more aware of those bias­es and devel­op strate­gies to avoid hav­ing those bias­es active­ly harm­ing people.”
RWU Law’s Dean Gregory W. Bowman said that Crockton is “an excel­lent stu­dent” and has a “bright future.”
“Here you have a young woman who is ded­i­cat­ing her future to help­ing oth­ers by prac­tic­ing law,” he con­tin­ues. “And she is pulled out of line and was humil­i­at­ed by it.”
He also stat­ed that the insti­tu­tion will be work­ing with the bar asso­ci­a­tion and the judi­cia­ry “to help address this prob­lem, which is all too common.”
“This is a per­va­sive prob­lem that real­ly must be addressed in all states and by all court sys­tems,” Bowman stat­ed before adding, “and that law schools should take seriously.”
Already, the school is tak­ing steps to address race and law as they pre­pare the next gen­er­a­tion of practitioners.
During the fall 2021 semes­ter, RWU Law became one of the only law schools in the nation that pro­grammed class­es on race and the law as require­ments for the Juris Doctorate. (This sto­ry first appeared in the Atlanta Black Star)

Arkansas high school stu­dents staged a sit-in on their cam­pus after a Black stu­dent was sus­pend­ed for an equal amount of time as a white stu­dent who picked a fight with him dur­ing school hours.
Instigators filmed the alter­ca­tion and post­ed it on social media, spark­ing sev­er­al dis­cus­sions, includ­ing ques­tion­ing the administration’s response to bul­ly­ing and sys­temic racial bias in the school’s dis­ci­pline of young peo­ple. The now-viral video has racked up thou­sands of views and shares.
The fight, insti­gat­ed by a white stu­dent, took place in a lock­er room at Fordyce High School. It is unclear exact­ly when the inci­dent took place, but it was post­ed to Twitter on Feb. 25 by a local activist.
Cellphone video shows a Black teen get­ting dressed, as the “white bul­ly” is bom­bard­ing him with vul­gar state­ments about the child’s mother.
The Black teen is seen try­ing to ignore those insults, and at one point tries to walk away, as the bul­ly is encour­aged by oth­er boys to con­tin­ue the onslaught of ver­bal attacks and threat­ens to phys­i­cal­ly assault him. The video clip, which lasts a lit­tle over 2 min­utes, shows the Black boy even­tu­al­ly respond­ing after being hit by an object and pushed by the larg­er white aggressor.

https://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​3​/​0​8​/​w​h​y​-​d​i​d​n​t​-​y​a​l​l​-​d​e​a​l​-​w​i​t​h​-​i​t​-​t​h​e​n​-​a​r​k​a​n​s​a​s​-​h​i​g​h​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​s​-​s​t​a​g​e​-​a​-​s​i​t​-​i​n​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​-​a​n​d​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​a​g​g​r​e​s​s​o​r​-​b​o​t​h​-​g​e​t​-​s​u​s​p​e​n​d​e​d​-​f​o​l​l​o​w​i​n​g​-​f​i​g​h​t​-​f​r​o​m​-​v​i​r​a​l​-​v​i​d​eo/

Economist Susan M. Collins has become the first Black woman to lead one of the 12 region­al Federal Reserve banks since the cen­tral bank sys­tem was cre­at­ed in 1914.
She was appoint­ed the next pres­i­dent of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on Feb. 9 and will start in her new role in July. Collins has been provost and exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for aca­d­e­m­ic affairs at the University of Michigan since 2020. 
A Harvard- and MIT-trained econ­o­mist with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in gov­ern­ment and acad­e­mia, Collins, 63, is only the sec­ond woman to helm the Boston Fed. Cathy Minehan was pres­i­dent from 1994 through 2007.
Collins will also be on the cen­tral bank’s pow­er­ful Federal Open Market Committee, whose man­date is to pro­mote full employ­ment and sta­ble con­sumer prices. Collins, whose par­ents immi­grat­ed from Jamaica, became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1997. 
In a recent inter­view, Collins indi­cat­ed she would focus on both tra­di­tion­al Fed con­cerns, such as the labor mar­ket, and the kind of com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed ini­tia­tives the cen­tral bank has focused on in recent years. “I’ll note that a com­mon theme through­out my career has been a com­mit­ment to the mis­sion of pub­lic ser­vice to improve lives — whether through edu­ca­tion, research, or pol­i­cy,” she said.
Read the full sto­ry here-https://​fin​u​rah​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​2​/​1​4​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​i​m​m​i​g​r​a​n​t​-​b​e​c​o​m​e​s​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​c​h​o​s​e​n​-​t​o​-​l​e​a​d​-​a​-​f​e​d​e​r​a​l​-​r​e​s​e​r​v​e​-​b​r​a​n​ch/

The two report­ed­ly com­plained to flight atten­dants for over an hour before the Black woman was asked to move to the back row. A California woman claims she had a Rosa Parks expe­ri­ence on a recent Delta Airlines flight when she was asked to give up her seat and move to the back of the plane in order to accom­mo­date two white women. As report­ed by Revolt, Camille Henderson was on her way back to the Bay Area from Atlanta on Feb. 3 when Delta flight atten­dants asked her to give her her seat after the two white women sit­ting next to her in the same row com­plained about not hav­ing enough room.

“They felt like they were tick­et­ed first-class seats, but they couldn’t pro­vide the tick­ets,” Henderson told ABC7 News. The two women report­ed­ly com­plained to flight atten­dants for over an hour before Henderson was asked by air­line staff to move to row 34, the plane’s last row. Henderson shared an audio record­ing with ABC7 News, in which some­one is heard ask­ing her, “Are you fly­ing by yourself?”Henderson con­firms that she is, and the per­son responds, “There’s a seat back there in aisle 34. It’s an aisle seat.”

Read more here…https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​s​a​y​s​-​s​h​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​d​-​1​3​5​4​1​7​5​2​1​.​h​tml

A chap­ter leader in the far-right Proud Boys extrem­ist gang was charged with assault Sunday in Akron, Ohio, after he was record­ed shout­ing racial epi­thets at a black woman and then suck­er-punch­ing her in the face. A man police iden­ti­fied as Andrew Walls, 26, was caught on video out­side a bar in the ear­ly hours of Sunday, stum­bling and scuf­fling with oth­er patrons while spew­ing a tor­rent of racial slurs. His vic­tim, 23-year-old Cameron Morgan, was pass­ing by with a friend when she heard Walls and oth­ers around him scream­ing “Fucking niggers.”
She lat­er told her father that she con­front­ed Walls after real­iz­ing she was the only Black per­son around.
“We were like … ‘You can’t say that. That’s not OK,’” she told her dad, local teacher and for­mer sports­writer David Lee Morgan Jr., who record­ed the con­ver­sa­tion and pro­vid­ed a tran­script to HuffPost.
Video tak­en by Cameron Morgan’s friend shows what hap­pened next: Walls squares up, points his fin­ger at Morgan, and repeats the racist slur, adding: “Bitch, shut your mouth.” He then cocks his right fist and punch­es her direct­ly in the face, the impact of which releas­es a blood-cur­dling pop.
Morgan was treat­ed for a concussion.

David Lee Morgan, Jr.

@DavidLeeMorgan

·

Feb 27, 2022

I’m dev­as­tat­ed right now. My 23-year-old daugh­ter Cameron, who wouldn’t hurt any­one and has a heart of gold, was suck­er punched by this racist guy in Highland Square in Akron last night for no rea­son. She weighs maybe 100 pounds. Can some­one please help me iden­ti­fy him!

Walls kept going after the record­ing end­ed, and dragged Morgan into the street by her hair, her father said. She was shak­en up, he said, and left the scene with­out ini­tial­ly call­ing police.

But once the video began to make the rounds on social media Sunday, activists quick­ly iden­ti­fied the assailant as Walls. They also unearthed a pre­vi­ous sto­ry about him in the local Akron Beacon Journal, which iden­ti­fied him as the vice pres­i­dent of the Akron-Canton chap­ter of the Proud Boys.

Though Walls wasn’t wear­ing his Proud Boys uni­form — a black and yel­low Fred Perry polo — dur­ing the assault, his mem­ber­ship in the gang sug­gests a pre­dis­po­si­tion for vio­lence and big­otry. The Proud Boys, des­ig­nat­ed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by Canada, have close ties to white suprema­cist groups and oth­er extrem­ists, and vio­lence is lit­er­al­ly writ­ten into their rules. (The gang’s high­est rank, known as the Fourth Degree, is giv­en only to mem­bers who com­mit a sig­nif­i­cant act of vio­lence “for the cause.”)
Walls’ chap­ter didn’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.
Reached by phone Sunday, David Morgan’s voice trem­bled as he recalled wak­ing up to see a video on his phone of his daugh­ter being assaulted.
“Soon as we saw it, I was in tears,” he said. “I just cried, because, I just watched some­body punch my daugh­ter, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Morgan said his daugh­ter went to an urgent care clin­ic and was treat­ed for a con­cus­sion after she saw stars and blacked out. Her face swelled up tem­porar­i­ly, to the point where she couldn’t move her jaw.

“She couldn’t real­ly open up her mouth to eat,” he said. Walls was charged with pos­sess­ing a firearm while intox­i­cat­ed and assault, and a war­rant was issued for his arrest. The sever­i­ty of Morgan’s injuries may lead to his assault charge being upgrad­ed to a felony, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. Akron police are also con­sid­er­ing an added eth­nic intim­i­da­tion charge. David Morgan said the rev­e­la­tion of Walls’ Proud Boys affil­i­a­tion changed every­thing for him. He said he was aware of the gang and the nation­al tour of polit­i­cal vio­lence they’d been on since their found­ing in 2016, but he “nev­er thought it would hit home until today.”
“This changes a lot for me, in the sense that, I want to get involved now,” he said. “This hap­pen­ing was time for me to wake the hell up. And I hate that my daugh­ter had to suf­fer that for me to wake the hell up.”

HISTORIC MOMENT FOR AMERICA

A state­ment from the White House

Today, President Biden will announce his intent to nom­i­nate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Jackson is one of the nation’s bright­est legal minds. If con­firmed, she will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Since Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retire­ment, President Biden has con­duct­ed a rig­or­ous process to iden­ti­fy his replace­ment. President Biden sought a can­di­date with excep­tion­al cre­den­tials, unim­peach­able char­ac­ter, and unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to the rule of law. He also sought a nom­i­nee — much like Justice Breyer — who is wise, prag­mat­ic, and has a deep under­stand­ing of the Constitution as an endur­ing char­ter of lib­er­ty. And the President sought an indi­vid­ual who is com­mit­ted to equal jus­tice under the law and who under­stands the pro­found impact that the Supreme Court’s deci­sions have on the lives of the American people.

As the long­time Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the President took seri­ous­ly the Constitution’s require­ment that he make this appoint­ment “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,” seek­ing the advice of Senators in both par­ties. He stud­ied the his­to­ries and case records of can­di­dates, con­sult­ed legal experts, and met with candidates.

A for­mer clerk for Justice Breyer, Judge Jackson has broad expe­ri­ence across the legal pro­fes­sion – as a fed­er­al appel­late judge, a fed­er­al dis­trict court judge, a mem­ber of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an attor­ney in pri­vate prac­tice, and as a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er. Judge Jackson has been con­firmed by the Senate with votes from Republicans as well as Democrats three times.

Judge Jackson is an excep­tion­al­ly qual­i­fied nom­i­nee as well as an his­toric nom­i­nee, and the Senate should move for­ward with a fair and time­ly hear­ing and confirmation.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Judge Jackson has devot­ed the major­i­ty of her career to serv­ing the pub­lic — as a U.S. Sentencing Commission lawyer and com­mis­sion­er; as a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er; and as a fed­er­al judge. Judge Jackson cur­rent­ly serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 2013 to 2021, she served as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia. She has been con­firmed by the Senate on a bipar­ti­san basis three times – twice as judge and once to serve on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Judge Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her par­ents attend­ed seg­re­gat­ed pri­ma­ry schools in the South, then attend­ed Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Both start­ed their careers as pub­lic school teach­ers and became lead­ers and admin­is­tra­tors in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. When Judge Jackson told her high school guid­ance coun­selor she want­ed to attend­ed Harvard, the guid­ance coun­selor warned that Judge Jackson should not to set her sights “so high.” That didn’t stop Judge Jackson. She grad­u­at­ed magna cum laude from Harvard College, then attend­ed Harvard Law School, where she grad­u­at­ed cum laude and was an edi­tor of the Harvard Law Review.

After law school, Judge Jackson served in Justice Breyer’s cham­bers as a law clerk. Judge Jackson served as a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er from 2005 to 2007, rep­re­sent­ing defen­dants on appeal who did not have the means to pay for a lawyer. If con­firmed, she would be the first for­mer fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er to serve on the Supreme Court.

Prior to serv­ing as a judge, Judge Jackson fol­lowed in the foot­steps of her men­tor Justice Breyer by work­ing on the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an impor­tant body, bipar­ti­san by design, that President Biden fought to cre­ate as a mem­ber of the U.S. Senate. Her work there focused on reduc­ing unwar­rant­ed sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ties and ensur­ing that fed­er­al sen­tences were just and proportionate.

Judge Jackson lives with her hus­band, Patrick, who serves as Chief of the Division of General Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital, and two daugh­ters, in Washington, D.C.

Many of you will remem­ber this shock­ing abuse of pow­er and the wan­ton impuni­ty with which this cop shot and seri­ous­ly wound­ed an African-American man for absolute­ly no reason.

Well, a judge has now over­turned the con­vic­tion of the cop who opened fire

In 2016, we saw footage of care­tak­er Charles Kinsey and Arnaldo Rios-Soto being approached by a group of police, result­ing in Kinsey being shot after lay­ing on the ground with his hands in the air. The offi­cer who shot Kinsey, Jonathan Aledda, just had one of his charges over­turned by the South Florida appeals court, report­ed CNN.

Aledda’s con­vic­tion for mis­dem­neaor cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence was over­turned by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, report­ed CNN. His charge were con­sid­ered invalid because pros­e­cu­tors did not allow a SWAT com­man­der who trained Aledda to tes­ti­fy in the June 2019 trial.

From CNN:

In a state­ment emailed to CNN, Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the deci­sion is “dis­ap­point­ing to all who believed that this shoot­ing inci­dent was unnec­es­sary and incor­rect.” The office may ask the appeals court for a re-hear­ing, the state­ment continued.

Eric Schwartzreich and Anthony Bruno, attor­neys for Aledda, told CNN, “We look for­ward to the State drop­ping the charges or in the alter­na­tive to Mr. Aledda being found not guilty.”
“He took the shots because he believed that a hostage was in dan­ger,” Schwartzreich and Bruno said in a statement.

Aledda was one out of 13 offi­cers who respond­ed to the July 2016 inci­dent. Rios-Soto, who has devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, was in the mid­dle of an inter­sec­tion play­ing with a toy while Kinsey tried to bring him back inside. CNN report­ed the toy was a sil­ver truck but offi­cers respond­ed after a bystander report­ed it may have been a gun.

When offi­cers arrived, Kinsey laid on the ground with his hands raised to sig­nal he was non­threat­en­ing and announc­ing he was a care­tak­er. Aledda shot at Rios-Soto three times and hit Kinsey in the hip. In 2017, Aledda was charged with attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, one mis­de­meanor of cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence for shoot­ing Kinsey and one for endan­ger­ing Rios-Soto, per CNN’s report.

Aledda was acquit­ted of his oth­er cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence charges and manslaugh­ter charges in 2019, report­ed CNN.

The chief of police in Castroville, Texas, has been placed on leave after a law enforce­ment offi­cer said he heard the depart­ment head use the N‑word at least three times dur­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion. The offi­cer who made the accu­sa­tion said a body cam­era record­ed the incident.

The Castroville City Council, after hold­ing an exec­u­tive ses­sion, placed Chief Brian Jackson on leave dur­ing a meet­ing Tuesday night that was streamed to Facebook. According to KSAT, Jackson report­ed­ly used the offen­sive lan­guage after a body was found on February 5 near Houston Street and Hwy. 90. Multiple police agen­cies respond­ed to the scene includ­ing the Medina County Sheriff’s Office and Castroville Police Department

According to the report, Jackson was record­ed say­ing the N‑word three times when refer­ring to where the vic­tim was from. 

Castroville Mayor Darrin Schroeder released a statement:

“The City of Castroville does not tol­er­ate dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind. Our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem can­not be shaped by biased polic­ing and unfair judi­cial prece­dents, includ­ing atti­tudes and actions that are root­ed in racism and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion. The emo­tion­al, men­tal, phys­i­cal, and finan­cial impact on our com­mu­ni­ties is a tan­gi­ble expe­ri­ence for too many and must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. The threat of racial vio­lence is real, so we must take seri­ous­ly all words and actions that can be pre­cur­sors to that. Schroeder added, “Everyone deserves due process. We have been noti­fied of alle­ga­tions against Police Chief Jackson and are inves­ti­gat­ing them accord­ing to our poli­cies and with all dili­gence. We believe in all human rights, so we will not dis­ci­pline sim­ply on rumors or hearsay, but we will act deci­sive­ly if we deter­mine guilt of dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Castroville is locat­ed 20 miles west of down­town San Antonio. The city has a pop­u­la­tion of less than 4,000. 

So as you read this sto­ry, you will see exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing in the United States, using the log­ic of crim­i­nal Donald Trump, who did not see crim­i­nals he did not like or want to par­don regard­less of their crimes, except, of course, if they were Black.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has decid­ed to fur­ther politi­cize the vio­lence that crim­i­nal cops per­pet­u­ate on cit­i­zens dai­ly. Violence that result in seri­ous injuries and 1055 dead cit­i­zens in 2021 at the hands of police officers.
Just take a wild guess at the race of the peo­ple abused by the igno­rant, brutish thugs that Gregg Abbott wants to grant clemen­cy to? (Publisher)

Greg Abbott lashed out Wednesday at the local pros­e­cu­tor in his state’s cap­i­tal, float­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of clemen­cy to 19 Austin police offi­cers indict­ed for tac­tics used dur­ing 2020 demon­stra­tions against racial injustice.
Abbott, a Republican, allud­ed to the local police union’s asser­tion that charg­ing the offi­cers was a “polit­i­cal sham” in his first pub­lic state­ment on the indict­ments, includ­ing against two offi­cers involved in injury cas­es that the city has offered to pay mil­lions of dol­lars to set­tle. “In Austin, law enforce­ment offi­cers defend­ed the state Capitol from crim­i­nal assault, pro­tect­ed the Austin Police Department head­quar­ters from being over­run, cleared the inter­state from being shut down, and dis­rupt­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in areas across the city,” Abbott said. “Many offi­cers were phys­i­cal­ly attacked while pro­tect­ing Austin. Those offi­cers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted.”
The gov­er­nor’s state­ment did not men­tion demon­stra­tors who were hurt, includ­ing some critically.

Nelson Linder, pres­i­dent of the Austin NAACP, said the governor’s announce­ment seemed pre­ma­ture and sent the wrong mes­sage on police bru­tal­i­ty. “I think it shows an imbal­ance in the city when it comes to pub­lic safe­ty,” Linder said.
“As a Black per­son and Brown per­son and for every­one else as well, we ought to be very con­cerned about the politi­ciza­tion of police mis­con­duct,” Linder said.
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza’s cam­paign promised to take a tougher stance on police account­abil­i­ty, but he has denied that the charges are dri­ven by politics.
In a state­ment Wednesday, Garza’s office said: “no one is above the law” and that the inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter con­tin­ues. Read the remain­der of the sto­ry here. https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​a​b​b​o​t​t​-​f​l​o​a​t​s​-​c​l​e​m​e​n​c​y​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​e​d​-​a​u​s​t​i​n​-​1​9​2​8​0​5​3​5​6​.​h​tml

Another Black History month is near its end, and the ques­tion from me is, what have we accom­plished as melanat­ed peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly here in America?
Police the domes­tic army of white nation­al­ists con­tin­ue to injure and kill Black peo­ple with [increas­ing] feroc­i­ty, and the sys­tem is unwill­ing to hold them accountable. 
More impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, is the sense of dor­man­cy that still engulfs the major­i­ty of Black America, a com­mu­ni­ty that seems to have not a care in the world out­side of fake wigs, fake hair and nails drink­ing, and las­civ­i­ous endeav­ors- a death spi­ral that is cen­tered on the desire to enter­tain and be entertained.
Whenever atroc­i­ties are com­mit­ted against our peo­ple, it is the minor­i­ty that takes to the streets while the major­i­ty sit and home and hope that the efforts of a few will bring change to the many; some don’t even hope at all.
Even with our best efforts, stay­ing informed, stay­ing alert, vot­ing, chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo, elect­ing peo­ple we can bet­ter lob­by, there are no guar­an­tees that there will be pos­i­tive outcomes.
The fact is that even among those who say they are the least hos­tile, the least anti-black, lurks wolves in sheep­’s clothing.
Hello Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Senema, anti-black Democrats who were elect­ed on a pro­gres­sive agen­da but turned their backs on the agen­da to uphold white minor­i­ty rule.

Many African-Americans still sub­scribe to the irra­tional the­o­ry that race rela­tions will change for the bet­ter… Data do not sup­port that belief, nor is it sup­port­ed by events across America 54 Years after degen­er­ate ele­ments assas­si­nat­ed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr him­self warned against what he char­ac­ter­ized before his death as ‘the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism’ as he elo­quent­ly spoke about ‘the fierce urgency of now. The idea of not suc­cumb­ing to the lies of those who say times have changed, things are bet­ter-the idea that giv­en time America will shed its igno­rant racist past and embrace moder­ni­ty. All lies, the fathers sucked the sour grapes of hatred and big­otry the teeth of the chil­dren are inex­orably set on edge.
The chil­dren of mur­der­ers, rapists, brutish col­o­niz­ers are not about to become good God-fear­ing cit­i­zens who believe in equal­i­ty for human­i­ty. It is insan­i­ty to expect the sons and daugh­ters of your oppres­sors to change and become your sud­den savior.
If it starts dirty, it ends dirty. On every issue ger­mane to the well­be­ing of peo­ple of col­or, ele­ments of the United States gov­ern­ment have been con­sis­tent­ly hos­tile. From the White House to the Supreme Court and mil­lions of homes all across the expanse of the fifty states, it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to dis­crim­i­nate against peo­ple of col­or. The brutish indif­fer­ent dis­play of police act­ing with impuni­ty is the most vis­i­ble exam­ple of those dis­crim­i­na­tor poli­cies man­i­fest­ing themselves.

Redlining is no longer being writ­ten in the law, but Blacks are still exclud­ed from cer­tain neigh­bor­hoods. Blacks who have beat­en the odds and pur­chased homes have their homes under­val­ued by racist apprais­ers. Even when the old redlin­ing laws of the post-recon­struc­tion era are sup­pos­ed­ly not used any­more, the mind­set of the sons and daugh­ters of those who draft­ed those laws are the same and, in many cas­es, worse than their forebearers.
Laws are being passed all across the coun­try to make it expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult to vote; how could this hap­pen, you ask?
The short answer is that the United States Supreme Court in 2013, for no valid rea­son oth­er than to make it easy to roll back vot­ing rights, evis­cer­at­ed the 1965 Voting Rights Act leav­ing it an emp­ty shell.
John Roberts, the Chief Justice and a for­mer Reagan Administration lawyer, is vehe­ment­ly hos­tile to the idea of one man one vote. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bush Appointee, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was destroyed under the guise that it is no longer need­ed because times have changed.
Sure, times have changed, but peo­ple’s hatred has not. The John Roberts Supreme court with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, the now-deceased Antonin Scalia, & Anthony Kennedy ensured that it destroyed set­tled law open­ing the gate for the present assault on vot­ing rights by those who would see Black peo­ple returned to the cot­ton plan­ta­tion and a place of abject servitude.

So what are we doing as a peo­ple to ensure that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren do not become serfs to the chil­dren and grand­chil­dren of those who hate and oppress us? Is it just about com­mem­o­rat­ing the strug­gles of the past, or is it about embrac­ing a new kind of mil­i­tan­cy that demands equal space to breathe on God’s green earth?
How do we devel­op that mil­i­tan­cy if we refuse to edu­cate our­selves about who we real­ly are and not who they say we are?
How do we demand change if we con­tin­ue to believe the lie taught us by our birthright-appro­pri­a­tors that we are a gen­tile peo­ple instead of God’s Hebrew peo­ple cre­at­ed in his image? When will we rise to rec­og­nize the curse of the four hun­dred years is over, and it is a time of Black progress?
Are we going to get up off our rear ends and take what’s right­ful­ly ours, or are we going to con­tin­ue to be behold­en to the teach­ings of the slave Bible?
The idea that things are get­ting bet­ter or will be bet­ter giv­en time has been turned on its head over and over again. The scorched earth assault on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry by the fas­cist right is an attempt to white­wash his­to­ry. They want to super­im­pose a kind and gen­tle face onto the mon­ster of four hun­dred years of white geno­cide against our people.
If you are opposed to the truth of his­to­ry being told to chil­dren, your or ours, it is because you are on the wrong side of history.

There is no they, just us-no, they are not going to give me this or that. You’re damn right about that their fathers and four fathers stole from us. They will con­tin­ue to steal from us unless we rec­og­nize who we are, not infe­ri­or but supe­ri­or, not slaves but enslaved, not sav­ages but the ones who brought sav­ages into the light. We taught them his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, astron­o­my. We taught them that the earth was not flat, but round.
We are a peo­ple who cooked our meat when oth­ers were eat­ing their raw blood drip­ping from it. We are the peo­ple who cre­at­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cils (the sys­tem of gov­ern­ment we now claim to have) and cre­at­ed uni­ver­si­ties; yeah, we cre­at­ed those.
None of that his­to­ry has been taught to African-Americans chil­dren, nor has it been taught to Caucasian children.
For those rea­sons, Ron Desantis in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, the imbe­cil­ic Cuban Ted Cruz, and oth­ers do not want that his­to­ry taught to young American children.
As I said ear­li­er, if you are afraid of the things you did in the past, it is because of what you did wrong. Now, of course, this does not apply to Ted Cruz or Clarence Thomas; they are still enslaved peo­ple who are quite com­fort­able on the plantation…

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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.

I talk about the cor­rup­tion and down­right dis­hon­esty of police offi­cers, their depart­ments, pros­e­cu­tors, and even judges in this forum, and on the rare occa­sion they get it right, I men­tion that too.
However, as you have seen in the case of Amir Locke, who was mur­dered as he emerged from sleep in Minneapolis, courts allow police to break into the homes of inno­cent cit­i­zens and mur­der them with­out consequence.
They did it to Breonna Taylor, who had noth­ing to do with their war­rant, and then arrest­ed and pinned attempt­ed mur­der of a police offi­cer charges on her boyfriend because he dared to defend his home as is his God-giv­en and con­sti­tu­tion­al right to do.
If a fly buzzes past them, that fly is swat­ted down, and charges are pinned against it, but when they wan­ton­ly mur­der inno­cent cit­i­zens, it takes mov­ing moun­tains to have charges prof­fered against them, even when they com­mit the most bla­tant and egre­gious acts of criminality.
Here again, in the case below is anoth­er instance of police going to a home, and when the occu­pant opens fire at them (not know­ing they are state actors) the inno­cent is charged with attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer, and the cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors are will­ing to pros­e­cute the case against an inno­cent person.
This is lit­er­al­ly one of the most cor­rupt sys­tems of jus­tice any­place on plan­et earth. 
When cit­i­zens have no right to defend even the sanc­ti­ty of their own homes, you know, we are liv­ing in a full-fledged police state. (MB)

The Pensacola Police Department says it has launched an inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion after par­ents say a child was hurt while in police cus­tody fol­low­ing last week’s police-involved shoot­ing. It hap­pened after Pensacola Police SWAT offi­cers exe­cut­ed a search war­rant last Thursday morn­ing at a home on N 7^th Ave. Channel 3 has report­ed exten­sive­ly how 24-year-old Corey Marioneaux Jr. has been charged for shoot­ing at one of the SWAT offi­cers after they rammed his door.

Marioneaux Jr.‘s two young chil­dren — ages 1 and 3 — were inside the home at the time. The fam­i­ly argues Marioneaux Jr. shot at the offi­cers because he feared they were intrud­ers. Channel 3 sat down with the kids’ moth­er, Moiya Dixon, on Wednesday. “I was wok­en up by a phone call,” said Dixon, who co-par­ents with Marioneaux Jr. At 5 a.m. last Thursday, the chil­dren — Caion and Cylen — were asleep with their dad at the N 7^th Ave. home. Dixon says she was asleep at her own home. Receiving the alarm­ing phone call, fam­i­ly told her what they knew. Among the info relayed was that her 1‑year-old was injured. “I get out my car like, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?’ ” Dixon said. “And I get my baby and I see his face — and it’s almost unrec­og­niz­able com­pared to how he looked when I left him last.” A pic­ture shows the 1‑year-old’s nose and lip swollen, a scrape on his lip, scratch­es on his nose and sev­er­al bumps on his fore­head. Dixon’s first thought — “Who did this?” On Monday, the Pensacola Police Department sent Channel 3 a state­ment on the child’s injuries. The depart­ment claims both kids were in the back­seat of a car with an inves­ti­ga­tor. The inves­ti­ga­tor got out of the car. Upon return­ing, Pensacola Police says the inves­ti­ga­tor did­n’t notice the child lean­ing on the door. When the inves­ti­ga­tor opened it, police say the child fell out of the car.

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Olivia Iverson
Meanwhile, the father still faces a charge for attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer and lost his job over it. None of them know why police want infor­ma­tion from them for an inves­ti­ga­tion they say Corey Marioneaux isn’t a sus­pect for.

“The child was checked by EMS for injuries. Both chil­dren were lat­er released to fam­i­ly mem­bers,” Pensacola Police goes on to say in its state­ment. Escambia County tells Channel 3 that EMS was called out at 6:40 a.m. for a hem­or­rhage and lac­er­a­tion on a tod­dler. They arrived six min­utes lat­er. The coun­ty could­n’t spec­i­fy what EMS saw and said. But it claims the call was can­celed 20 min­utes lat­er. The tod­dler was not tak­en to the hos­pi­tal by EMS — so Dixon took him her­self. Dozens of pages of paper­work from the hos­pi­tal doc­u­ment the child’s injuries after CAT scans and x‑rays. Dixon claims the Florida Department of Children and Families is inves­ti­gat­ing. DCF has not yet con­firmed this with Channel 3.

Channel 3 asked Dixon on Wednesday what she would say to the Pensacola Police Department. “How could you?” she respond­ed. Channel 3 brought Dixon’s ques­tions to Pensacola Police on Wednesday after the inter­view. The depart­ment said they could­n’t answer them because it has launched an inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion. Additionally, Pensacola Police called off Channel 3’s sched­uled inter­view with Chief Eric Randall that was set for Friday. Chief Randall met with Dixon in-per­son right after Channel 3’s inter­view and “had a con­ver­sa­tion with her,” accord­ing to police. Dixon says he apol­o­gized and promised to inves­ti­gate what hap­pened. “It’s been very dis­turb­ing and over­whelm­ing not know­ing the truth of what hap­pened to my 1‑year-old,” Dixon said. “My 3‑year-old is trau­ma­tized,” she added. “He keeps hav­ing to tell the sto­ry of what his 3‑year-old brain can com­pre­hend of what hap­pened to his baby broth­er. That is hor­ri­fy­ing.” Channel 3 asked Wednesday to speak with Marioneaux Jr. on cam­era, but he declined. He faces a charge of attempt­ed mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer — which he lost his job over. “On top of all of his charges, he has to also think, ‘Now some­body hurt my baby,’ ” Dixon said.

Marioneaux Jr. does­n’t have a crim­i­nal record. Pensacola Police says he is not a sus­pect in the January shoot­ing inves­ti­ga­tion that led police to his home last Thursday morn­ing. Dixon says she has no idea why police would want infor­ma­tion in his home. The fam­i­ly now sim­ply wants answers — what led police to the house and how did their baby boy end up injured in police cus­tody? Channel 3 asked Dixon Wednesday whether they plan to take any legal action. Dixon says they are cur­rent­ly busy try­ing to fig­ure out sim­ple things, like where to sleep. She added they don’t live at the N 7^th Ave. home any­more because they don’t feel safe.

The images tell us a lot about our­selves; are we bet­ter than the oth­er animals?

As I think about the dai­ly killing of peo­ple of col­or by out-of-con­trol cops who are doped up on racism, big­otry, racial ani­mus, and God knows what else, a thought came to me that I would like to share with you.

Here we see three preda­tors sur­round and are about to kill a Wildebeest; more strik­ing­ly, a whole herd of Wildebeest stands pas­sive­ly and looks on as if their sheer advan­tage in size and num­bers mean nothing.
And so we ask the ques­tion, what is it that the Wildebeest believe about them­selves that keeps them from cap­i­tal­iz­ing on their advan­tages in size and numbers?

In the sec­ond image above, we see anoth­er group of preda­tors, albeit from a dif­fer­ent species, snuff­ing out anoth­er inno­cent life as the preda­to­ry cats killed the Wildebeest in the first image.
In the third image, we see a small crowd gath­ered; this crowd is syn­ony­mous with the Wildebeest herd that stood by while one of their own is being killed. These obser­va­tions are [not] a call to arms, but rather a call for reflection. 

Day by day, we see these images and videos of police com­mit­ting crimes against the pub­lic; unnec­es­sary assaults, griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, and death on the peo­ple, while oth­ers stand aside and look.
In this state of tyran­ny in which we as peo­ple of col­or exist, gov­ern­ment agents com­mit crimes that ordi­nary cit­i­zens are exe­cut­ed and impris­oned for, and they do it with impunity.
Some experts attribute this quote to Thomas Jefferson; oth­ers claim not so, I believe we have reached that tip­ping point.
“When gov­ern­ment fears the peo­ple, there is lib­er­ty. When the peo­ple fear the gov­ern­ment, there is tyran­ny.“We, the peo­ple, now live in mor­bid fear of the Government, much the same way that the Wildebeest, though hav­ing the num­bers and supe­ri­or size, are pet­ri­fied of the much small­er preda­to­ry cats that prey on them.

The above image best sums up the car­nage of police vio­lence in America. We have the inno­cent Wildebeest being preyed on by the Lionesses, the Wildebeest, not know­ing their strength or wired to be vic­tims, runs away while the peo­ple who can effec­tu­ate real and mean­ing­ful change to the car­nage watch in delight.
It is what they designed all along. American Policing is [not] bro­ken; it works exact­ly as they designed it.

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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.

Before you process the lat­est iter­a­tion of police con­tin­ued bru­tal attacks on Black Americans, let us remem­ber that the FBI warned from as far back as 2006 that white suprema­cists and neo-nazis were infil­trat­ing police depart­ments; it is also kin­da remark­able that the FBI made those warn­ings even though America’s police depart­ments have been cesspools of white suprema­cy and anti-Black ani­mos­i­ty since the police were first cre­at­ed to keep Blacks in their place.
Ask your­selves what has been done by Federal, State & Local author­i­ties to rein in the blood­thirsty thugs that now roam the streets look­ing to see who they mur­der next?
Zero!!!

The white cam­pus police offi­cer in a recent viral video where he appears to be strug­gling with a Black Purdue University stu­dent has been placed on leave as his depart­ment claims he has been receiv­ing death threats since the encounter at the West Lafayette, Indiana, institution.

A minute-long video that was post­ed on social media shows a strug­gle between Adonis Tuggle, 24, and the uniden­ti­fied offi­cer in the snow on the school’s cam­pus on Friday, Feb. 4. Cries of dis­tress can be heard from Tuggle and a woman believed to be Tuggle’s girl­friend, who appar­ent­ly is record­ing the encounter with her cell­phone. The woman screams, “You’re hurt­ing him. You’re hurt­ing him. Can you take your elbow off his f — — neck? Tuggle is also heard in footage say­ing over and over again to the cop, “You’re chok­ing me. You’re chok­ing me.” “Please help. This offi­cer won’t get off his neck,” the girl­friend shouts toward the end of the clip. “He’s tak­ing it too far. While the officer’s name has not been released by the Purdue University Police Department, the Lafayette Journal & Courier news­pa­per iden­ti­fies him as Jon Selke. Tuggle told The Associated Press that the alter­ca­tion start­ed with an argu­ment between him and his girl­friend that esca­lat­ed to the cam­pus cop punch­ing him in the face and using his elbow to hold him down on the ground by the neck. It end­ed with him being locked up for resist­ing arrest. The junior psy­chol­o­gy major stayed in the jail for an hour and was able to bail him­self out.

He told the AP that some­one had called the police on them as they were argu­ing in pub­lic. Tuggle said they were already cool­ing off when Selke arrived. Tuggle said, “I was already a cou­ple of feet away from my girl­friend,” when the encounter with the offi­cer start­ed. The girl­friend also tried to reas­sure the cop that they were OK, but instead of accept­ing their protes­ta­tions that there was no need for an inter­ven­tion, Selke cursed at them, Tuggle claims. “I told him he had no rea­son to be dis­re­spect­ful,” Tuggle said. “He was yelling at her and she was yelling at him. I told my girl­friend to calm down and I heard him scream, ‘OK, bud­dy, you’re going down,’ and he threw me against the car.” After this, the offi­cer wres­tled Tuggle to the ground and told him to “stop resist­ing.” “He had his hand press­ing my face in the snow. He was smoth­er­ing me, almost as if you were try­ing to drown some­body under­wa­ter,” Tuggle said. “Basically, what hap­pened to George Floyd almost hap­pened to me, except I had an elbow, not a knee, and for­tu­nate­ly, I’m still breath­ing instead of being in a cas­ket.” As the girl­friend start­ed to record the vio­lent inter­ac­tion, she tapped the offi­cer. Tuggle alleges that the cop threat­ened to use his taser on her if she did it again. Tuggle also said that when oth­er police offi­cers arrived, one of them held his leg down while anoth­er held his arm down.

The first state­ment from the uni­ver­si­ty spoke direct­ly to Chief John Cox’s deci­sion to put the offi­cer on leave in light of the atten­tion and what he said were death threats sur­round­ing the inci­dent. “Cox ini­ti­at­ed the leave of absence after the offi­cer and depart­ment received death threats. PUPD is inves­ti­gat­ing the threats,” it read. Cox also released his own remarks sep­a­rate­ly. First, he stat­ed that the encounter was pre­cip­i­tat­ed when a caller to police said “it appeared a woman was being held against her will near Horticulture Drive,” as described by the state­ment. “Any time a PUPD offi­cer uses force in con­nec­tion with an arrest, the depart­ment con­ducts an inter­nal review. PUPD com­menced that review, led by Deputy Chief Lesley Wiete imme­di­ate­ly upon receiv­ing the officer’s report on Friday night,” the state­ment read.
That inves­ti­ga­tion will, under PUPD General Orders, include input from all wit­ness­es to the arrest and take into account all avail­able evi­dence, includ­ing video from offi­cers’ body-worn cam­eras and state­ments from the stu­dents involved. No phys­i­cal injuries were suf­fered in the inci­dent.” Tuggle has secured an attor­ney, Andrew M. Stroth, to rep­re­sent his inter­est in the case. Stroth stat­ed, “We are demand­ing a full and trans­par­ent inves­ti­ga­tion into the exces­sive and unjus­ti­fied attack on Adonis by the Purdue University police officer.”

“We are demand­ing the imme­di­ate release of all the video evi­dence,” he stat­ed. “There is body cam­era police video that police have, that has not been shared with the fam­i­ly or shared pub­licly.” He cul­mi­nat­ed his demands by say­ing, “It’s anoth­er young Black man attacked by a police offi­cer. This took place, trag­i­cal­ly, on a col­lege cam­pus. Thank God he’s OK because the offi­cer had his elbow in Adonis’ neck. Adonis couldn’t breathe.” The Purdue Black Student Union orga­nized a town hall meet­ing to plan what their next points of action are. The hope was to come up with a solu­tion to pre­vent instances like this from hap­pen­ing to oth­er stu­dents, accord­ing to local sta­tion WTHR. One stu­dent said During the meet­ing, “Why do Black peo­ple con­stant­ly have to jus­ti­fy their lives?” Another stu­dent chimed in, “How many more videos of police putting their knees and elbow on a Black person’s neck and throat do we need to see before we real­ize that’s not how arrests are made?”
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels released a state­ment on the inci­dent on Thursday, Feb. 10.
“There are no sub­jects Purdue takes more seri­ous­ly than cam­pus safe­ty, stu­dent well-being, and prop­er police con­duct. On Friday evening, Feb. 4, police received a bystander report of a sus­pect­ed assault on a woman, prompt­ing an officer’s urgent response,” the release start­ed. Daniels shared that the insti­tu­tion “imme­di­ate­ly” start­ed inves­ti­gat­ing the alleged exces­sive use of force by the offi­cer by review­ing his actions and assess­ing the footage, inter­view­ing the wit­ness, and look­ing at “all video evi­dence, includ­ing body-worn and in-car cam­era footage.”

“Should there be a find­ing of mis­con­duct by the offi­cer, appro­pri­ate action will be tak­en prompt­ly,” Daniels promised. “In the spir­it of trans­paren­cy, once the Purdue Police and Indiana State Police reviews are com­plete, all find­ings and evi­dence … will be made avail­able.” The pres­i­dent asks the pub­lic to remain patient dur­ing the investigation.(ABS)