My per­son­al expe­ri­ences with crim­i­nals should have made me bru­tal and uncom­pro­mis­ing toward those who com­mit crimes. I guess I should want every crim­i­nal arrest­ed, giv­en a sham tri­al, and thrown into a dun­geon, nev­er to see the light of day again.
After all, I was shot in the line of duty as a young police­man, even as I was try­ing to ensure that a cit­i­zen arrived home safe­ly after being threat­ened with death. I was again a vic­tim of ran­dom gun vio­lence; this time, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a night­club. The lat­ter shoot­ing impact­ed my life in ways that can­not be ful­ly explained in a sin­gle article.
I have suf­fered theft in tens of thou­sands of (US) dol­lars as a busi­ness per­son. As a prop­er­ty own­er, I have had van­dals dam­age my prop­er­ty, cost­ing me mon­ey that could have been bet­ter spent.
I should be bit­ter and uncar­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly because the lion’s share of the harm I expe­ri­enced was not at the hands of white peo­ple but blacks in the United States.
Conversely, my expe­ri­ences liv­ing and work­ing with and among whites in the United States have been 98% pos­i­tive. I have ben­e­fit­ted from their coun­sel, net­work­ing, and guidance.
I would be jus­ti­fied, hav­ing expe­ri­enced all of the fore­gone, say­ing let the police treat them (black peo­ple) any old way.….…..but I cannot.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​i​a​s​e​d​-​u​s​e​-​o​f​-​f​o​r​c​e​-​b​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​f​o​r​c​e​s​-​d​e​s​p​i​c​a​b​l​e​-​a​n​d​-​s​h​a​m​e​f​ul/

The con­tin­ued mur­der of Black peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly young black men, by the police con­tin­ues to give me heart­burn. As a lay per­son, but one who served as a police offi­cer, I see the shoot­ings. I look at them through a par­al­lel prism of the laws of the states in which they occur and their depart­ment poli­cies, and in some cas­es, the killings meet the legal stan­dard but fall far short of moral standards.
And so the killings are a sear­ing indict­ment on those who pull the trig­ger and those who pass the laws cre­at­ing false jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for murder.
The immoral laws also serve as a bea­con to the unin­tel­li­gent, who see them as both moral­ly and legal­ly the stan­dard by which every­one should abide. When unright­eous and evil peo­ple cre­ate the laws, we end up with soci­eties of blood­thirsty cheer­lead­ers to mur­der and oth­er immoral acts.
Over the years, I have touched on this sub­ject as a free­lance writer and a for­mer police offi­cer. Police offi­cers are killing peo­ple not because their lives or the lives of oth­ers are in [immi­nent] dan­ger, but because the laws will not hold them accountable.
In video after video, we see police offi­cers cre­ate the pre­text to jus­ti­fy using lethal force legal­ly. They then kill the sub­ject and go through the motions of ren­der­ing first aid, all while yelling out the right words for the body-worn cam­eras they wear.
They com­mit mur­der, then go home to their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er and their chil­dren and go to sleep. It’s all par for the course.

In many cas­es, they mur­der a per­son of unsound mind, expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal episode, or who wants to com­mit sui­cide by cops.
In the vast major­i­ty of the videos I have watched of these inter­ac­tions, the police claim they can­not see what the sub­ject has in hand, or they yell out com­mands at sub­jects hold­ing a knife that pos­es zero threat to them.
Sometimes the object in the hand of the sub­ject turns out to be a cell phone, a tele­vi­sion remote con­troller, or some oth­er benign object. Police offi­cers are heav­i­ly armed with all kinds of accou­ter­ments and weapon­ry, yet they esca­late the sit­u­a­tion by bark­ing con­trar­i­an com­mands, which fur­ther agi­tates and con­fus­es the sub­ject, caus­ing him to react in ways that jus­ti­fy his killing. These sub­jects are almost always black.
A men­tal­ly dis­turbed Black man died in a hail of police bul­lets. Police encir­cled him as he stood out­side his home with an object in his hand. The object turned out to be a TV remote.
Black teen killed four bul­lets to the chest as he awoke from sleep in a Hyuandi motor­car police said may have been stolen.
The cas­es are too numer­ous to men­tion. Time and again, we see cas­es in which, if only the offi­cers act­ed as police offi­cers and not as amped-up sol­diers on a bat­tle­field they could have resolved the sit­u­a­tion at hand with no violence.
To every ham­mer, every­thing is a nail. You know we have lost our souls when we cheer­lead the shed­ding of blood over some rusty met­als, plas­tic, and glass.
The gov­ern­ment will have to with­draw some of the pow­er it has giv­en to the police. We have already seen the signs that the cit­i­zen­ry is get­ting agi­tat­ed. The police must be con­strained; only then will respect for law enforce­ment return.

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.

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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.

It was bound to hap­pen. The ille­git­i­mate killing of unarmed Black peo­ple in the United States by police, the vast major­i­ty of which goes unpun­ished or deemed with­in guide­lines, was bound to spill over into oth­er coun­tries. Canada, Australia, Britain, and oth­ers are now employ­ing the same stan­dard of mil­i­ta­rized polic­ing. As is the case in the US, it is in the UK. So-called con­ser­v­a­tives feel the need to come out in sup­port of police even when they are accused of the most heinous and egre­gious crimes.
The polit­i­cal right is vest­ed in the sol­dier­ing that police pro­vide to white supremacy.
The UK Metropolitan Police claims it is com­mit­ted to root­ing out mis­con­duct. It has dis­missed about 100 offi­cers for gross mis­con­duct over the past year while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly say­ing it could take years to remove all cor­rupt offi­cers. In the mean­time, Londoners of col­or must exist with a force that study after study has con­clud­ed is rid­dled with deep-seat­ed racism, homo­pho­bia, and misog­y­ny. (mb)

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London’s police force said Sunday that some offi­cers are refus­ing to con­duct armed patrols after a col­league was charged with mur­der in the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed Black man.

A Metropolitan Police marks­man was charged Wednesday over the September 2022 death of Chris Kaba, 24. Kaba was killed after offi­cers in an unmarked vehi­cle pur­sued and stopped the car he was dri­ving. He was struck by a sin­gle bul­let fired through the wind­shield as he sat in the Audi car.

The case renewed alle­ga­tions of insti­tu­tion­al racism with­in the London police depart­ment. Kaba’s fam­i­ly wel­comed the mur­der charge against the offi­cer, who has not been pub­licly named. He was grant­ed con­di­tion­al bail and is expect­ed to stand tri­al next year.

Only about one in 10 of London’s police offi­cers car­ry firearms, and the ones that do under­go spe­cial training.

The Metropolitan Police force said Sunday that “a num­ber of offi­cers have tak­en the deci­sion to step back from armed duties while they con­sid­er their posi­tion.” It said offi­cers were con­cerned that the mur­der charge “sig­nals a shift in the way the deci­sions they make in the most chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances will be judged.”

The BBC said more than 100 offi­cers had turned in their firearm per­mits and that police from neigh­bor­ing forces were called in to help patrol London on Saturday night.

The force said it still had “sig­nif­i­cant firearms capa­bil­i­ty,” but had asked the Ministry of Defense to pro­vide assis­tance with “coun­tert­er­ror­ism sup­port should it be needed.”

The request means sol­diers could be called on to do spe­cif­ic tasks the police are unable to per­form, but they won’t per­form rou­tine police work or have the pow­er of arrest.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who is in charge of polic­ing for the U.K.’s Conservative gov­ern­ment, said she would review armed polic­ing to ensure that armed offi­cers “have the con­fi­dence to do their jobs.”

“In the inter­est of pub­lic safe­ty, they have to make split-sec­ond deci­sions under extra­or­di­nary pres­sures,” Braverman post­ed on X, for­mer­ly known as Twitter. “They mustn’t fear end­ing up in the dock for car­ry­ing out their duties. Officers risk­ing their lives to keep us safe have my full back­ing, and I will do every­thing in my pow­er to sup­port them.”

Fatal shoot­ings by police in the U.K. are rare. In the year to March 2022, armed offi­cers in England and Wales fired weapons at peo­ple four times, accord­ing to offi­cial statistics.

It is also extreme­ly rare for British police offi­cers to be charged with mur­der or manslaugh­ter over actions per­formed while they were on duty.

In one of the few cas­es in recent years, a police con­sta­ble was sen­tenced in 2021 to eight years in prison for the killing of Dalian Atkinson, a for­mer pro­fes­sion­al soc­cer play­er who died after being shot by a stun gun and kicked in the head dur­ing an alter­ca­tion. The offi­cer, Benjamin Monk, was cleared of mur­der but con­vict­ed of manslaughter.

Kaba’s shoot­ing came amid intense scruti­ny of the Metropolitan Police. In 2021, an offi­cer plead­ed guilty to kid­nap­ping, rap­ing, kid­nap­ping and killing Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who dis­ap­peared while walk­ing home from vis­it­ing a friend. Another offi­cer, who worked in the same par­lia­men­tary and diplo­mat­ic pro­tec­tion unit, plead­ed guilty in January to com­mit­ting dozens of rapes between 2003 and 2020.

In March an inde­pen­dent review found the London force had lost pub­lic con­fi­dence because of deep-seat­ed racism, misog­y­ny and homophobia.

The force says it is com­mit­ted to root­ing out mis­con­duct, and has dis­missed about 100 offi­cers for gross mis­con­duct over the past year. But it said last week it could take years to remove all cor­rupt officers.

IU offi­cials say for­mer police chief Jill Lees did­n’t fol­low pro­ce­dures when decid­ing two cam­pus offi­cers did noth­ing wrong when they arrest­ed a Bloomington grad stu­dent who failed to pay a $3 park­ing fee.

IU learned of the September 2022 arrest of Moses Baryoh Jr. when noti­fied of a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit he filed in U.S. District Court June 9, accord­ing to a uni­ver­si­ty state­ment released Wednesday.

Attached was near­ly 10 hours of cam­era footage from body and police car cam­eras that show what hap­pened the night two white offi­cers con­front­ed Baryoh, who is Black

The offi­cers went look­ing for Baryoh after he left IU’s stu­dent recre­ation cen­ter at 8:47 p.m. with­out pay­ing the $3 park­ing lot fee. He had cash, and they just take cred­it and deb­it cards. Officers Austin Magness and Charlotte Watts found him in his apart­ment com­plex park­ing lot.

“What’s up, bud­dy? Can you come and chat with me real fast?” Magness says, telling Baryoh to take a seat on the curb. “Can ya’ll tell me what this is about?” Baryoh responds, refus­ing to sit down. Magness tells him to put his hands behind his back, then locks hand­cuffs around his wrists.

“Can I please know why? Can I please know why? Can I please know why?” Baryoh asks over and over. The offi­cers don’t answer. Magness tells him, “You could have made it a lot easier.

Baryoh, wear­ing just gym shorts and ten­nis shoes, gets placed in the back­seat of an IUPD squad car. He admits hav­ing a bag of mar­i­jua­na in his pock­et, and hands it over. Magness pulls a Miranda advise­ment of rights card from his wal­let and reads Baryoh his Constitutional rights.

It’s then the offi­cer tells Baryoh why police came after him. “You have been iden­ti­fied as some­one who left the SRSC with­out paying.”

Magness tells Baryoh he was con­fronta­tion­al when he refused to sit on the curb. “I tried to back up because I was scared,” Baryoh says. He tells Magness that he’s sorry.

“I’m not try­ing to hurt you, regard­less of what the media says,” Magness responds. “This could have all been avoided.”

The offi­cers drove him to jail, where Baryoh wait­ed near­ly an hour sit­ting shirt­less and hand­cuffed on a bench in the police car entry­way. “I by no means think you’re a bad per­son,” Magness says. “You made a poor choice.

“It is with regret that we share that mem­bers of our Indiana University Bloomington Police Department failed to apply IU’s high stan­dards for pur­su­ing and arrest,” said the state­ment, which offered an apol­o­gy to Baryoh and the community.

“We are deeply sad­dened by the behav­ior and actions that took place.”

IU set­tled the law­suit Sept. 5; details are con­fi­den­tial and not avail­able. The set­tle­ment came a week after word got out that Lees was no longer employed by IUPD. Lees could not be reached for comment.

Baryoh accused IUPD offi­cers Magness and Watts of unrea­son­able search and seizure, use of exces­sive force, false arrest and assault. He sued both offi­cers, IU and the IU Board of Trustees.

IU’s state­ment said Lees made the wrong deci­sion when she upheld the offi­cers’ actions. “An ini­tial and stan­dard depart­ment review of the arrest con­duct­ed in October 2022 by the for­mer IUPD police chief con­clud­ed no wrong­do­ing had occurred and no sub­se­quent action was undertaken.”

Preliminary charges sought against Baryoh — theft, resist­ing arrest and pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na — were dismissed.

When Magness went to the park­ing lot after the atten­dant and his super­vi­sor called police, one of the peo­ple heard on the video says, “This is a lot of ridicu­lous­ness for $3 … wast­ing a lot of peo­ple’s time.”

IU investigation into incident

After the law­suit was filed, IU offi­cials reviewed “all asso­ci­at­ed behav­iors, process­es, and pro­ce­dures,” the state­ment said, and “deter­mined that the for­mer IU police chief did not fol­low manda­to­ry review pro­to­cols dur­ing the ini­tial 2022 review.”

What hap­pened? Jill Lees is no longer chief of police at IU-Bloomington

It was then “IU deter­mined that IUPD poli­cies were indeed vio­lat­ed dur­ing this inci­dent” and imposed sanc­tions on those involved. Lees was either ter­mi­nat­ed or she resigned. The Herald-Times has filed a pub­lic records request seek­ing details.

The state­ment said, “all respon­si­ble par­ties with­in IUPD have received dis­ci­pli­nary action,” but did not elab­o­rate. The H‑T filed a request seek­ing details about those sanc­tions as well and has not received a response from IU.

Changes implemented

IU list­ed steps tak­en in addi­tion to dis­ci­pline against Lees and the officers:

• Hiring an out­side con­sul­tant to review the police depart­ment in Bloomington and oth­er IU cam­pus­es “to assess poli­cies, pro­ce­dures, prac­tices, cul­tur­al norms and leadership.”
• Enhanced train­ing on “fair and impar­tial polic­ing, pro­ce­dur­al com­pli­ance, and field operations.”
• Implementing changes “to uni­ver­si­ty process­es such as park­ing enforce­ment, to ensure rea­son­able respons­es in the future.”
• Maintaining an open dia­logue to ensure that “IUPD oper­ates at the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dards aligned with IU’s core values.”

The state­ment said IU “holds our staff, fac­ul­ty, and lead­er­ship to the high­est stan­dards of eth­i­cal con­duct and integri­ty, includ­ing IUPD.”

Letter calls leaders ‘incompetent’

In a relat­ed mat­ter, an anony­mous let­ter has been sent to police offi­cers and oth­ers seek­ing a “vote of no con­fi­dence” in the pub­lic safe­ty lead­er­ship team that over­sees all IU cam­pus police departments.

The let­ter fea­tures pho­tos of Benjamin Hunter, IU’s asso­ciate vice pres­i­dent for pub­lic safe­ty; Steve Adams, IU’s senior direc­tor for pub­lic safe­ty; and Brad Seifers, IUPD’s deputy super­in­ten­dent and the father-in-law of Austin Magness, whose actions were tar­get­ed in the law­suit. Seifers has been appoint­ed inter­im IUPD chief on the Bloomington cam­pus to replace Lees

The let­ter claims a tox­ic work envi­ron­ment at IUPD and calls the three pub­lic safe­ty lead­ers “incom­pe­tent, unpro­fes­sion­al and untrust­wor­thy.” It asks recip­i­ents to reg­is­ter their con­cerns on the back of the let­ter, then send it to the IU trustees in a pre-addressed and stamped enve­lope that was enclosed.

On see­ing the video of this inci­dent, I imme­di­ate­ly post­ed the fol­low­ing com­ment to one of my social media pages:

A TikTok video of Michigan police arrest­ing a 12-year-old boy and putting him in hand­cuffs was an “unfor­tu­nate mis­un­der­stand­ing” that stemmed from the foot chase of a sus­pect want­ed in a sus­pect­ed vehi­cle theft. The video led to three state­ments by Mayor of Lansing Andy Schor and local police by late Friday after­noon. The video appears to show a young, Black male wear­ing neon yel­low shorts and a white T‑shirt being detained by a police offi­cer out­side an apart­ment com­plex. A man tells offi­cers they are trau­ma­tiz­ing his son and the male was put into a police vehi­cle before lat­er being released to the man who said he was the indi­vid­u­al’s father. A video post­ed to TikTok account careyann372 has gen­er­at­ed mil­lions of views and posts through­out social media with users say­ing the boy was detained as he was throw­ing away garbage.The video lasts just more than 4 min­utes. It was not clear where in the city the video was taken.

“Kid tak­ing out trash being harassed by police. Father defend­ing his son. Wrong per­son,” the TikTok poster wrote on Thursday. In a Zoom call with reporters on Friday night, lawyers for the fam­i­ly of Tashawn Bernard asked that police take down its Facebook post, say­ing the pho­to makes it appear as though the shirt Tashawn was wear­ing was white, when it actu­al­ly was gray. The sus­pect police were look­ing for was wear­ing a white shirt, they said. “It does not accu­rate­ly reflect what Tashawn was wear­ing,” said Ayanna Neal of Grewal Law. “They need to take down the post.” Lansing police post­ed an ini­tial expla­na­tion on its social media accounts ear­li­er Friday, fol­lowed late Friday after­noon by a state­ment from Police Chief Ellery Sosebee. “On Thursday after­noon, our offi­cers were inves­ti­gat­ing a string of Kia thefts, includ­ing a spe­cif­ic one report­ed on the 3600 block of W. Jolly Road with mul­ti­ple sus­pects,” the first post on Facebook said. “A wit­ness described a sus­pect as wear­ing neon shorts and a white shirt. A respond­ing offi­cer saw a sub­ject match­ing this descrip­tion and attempt­ed to make con­tact but the sub­ject fled and ran west into the near­by apart­ment complex.

“A dif­fer­ent offi­cer was in the area and saw the young man pic­tured in the viral video wear­ing a very sim­i­lar out­fit and made con­tact with him. The ini­tial offi­cer respond­ed and clar­i­fied that the young man in the video was not the sus­pect who fled ear­li­er. Once this infor­ma­tion was obtained, the young man was released, and offi­cers con­tin­ued to search the area. “We are includ­ing pic­tures of both indi­vid­u­als. We have blurred both pho­tos to pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of the sub­jects.” A pho­to of the peo­ple involved was post­ed, blurred out, along with the state­ment. Posts on X, for­mer­ly Twitter, expressed out­rage over the video and the num­ber of offi­cers involved in the inci­dent. “Just a kid tak­ing out the trash — America,” user Kenny Akers wrote. “This city is pay­ing six police offi­cers to arrest a child for throw­ing out garbage,” user Frank Giugliano wrote. “I hope some­one gets ahold of the young man detained today while tak­ing out the trash because he ‘fits the descrip­tion’ and lifts him up. He will need sup­port around him,” Rob Thomas wrote in a Facebook post. LPD said they hope to put the sit­u­a­tion behind them. “Community rela­tions is a top pri­or­i­ty for us as a depart­ment, from top-down,” the depart­ment wrote. “Our hope is we can put this unfor­tu­nate case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’ behind us and con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the com­mu­ni­ty that we serve.” After 4 p.m., the depart­ment released a state­ment attrib­uted to Sosebee.

“The offi­cers of the Lansing Police Department are work­ing very hard to address the recent car thefts plagu­ing our city. In doing so, yes­ter­day offi­cers detained a young man who was wear­ing sim­i­lar cloth­ing and in the same apart­ment com­plex as an accused car thief who fled from offi­cers on foot. When the offi­cer made ini­tial con­tact, it was near a trash bin but was after he had dis­posed of any garbage. The young man was then released to his father when elim­i­nat­ed as the accused. The com­mand offi­cer on the scene made con­tact with the young man’s father and explained the sit­u­a­tion and apol­o­gized for the mis­un­der­stand­ing. I have reviewed the inci­dent and can con­firm the offi­cer who con­tact­ed and detained the young man was respect­ful and pro­fes­sion­al dur­ing his inves­ti­ga­tion.” “It’s unfor­tu­nate that inci­dents like this occur but through com­mu­ni­ca­tion and shar­ing of infor­ma­tion, we can help peo­ple under­stand the whole sto­ry. We under­stand that some­thing like this has an impact on all par­ties involved,” the state­ment read. “As the Chief of Police, I want to apol­o­gize that this inci­dent had such an effect on this young man and his fam­i­ly. I’m ask­ing for the com­mu­ni­ty to con­sid­er all the facts of the sit­u­a­tion before mak­ing a judg­ment. The rela­tion­ship with our com­mu­ni­ty has been and will con­tin­ue to be a top pri­or­i­ty for the Lansing Police Department.”

And late Friday after­noon, Schor apol­o­gized to the 12-year-old and his fam­i­ly in a state­ment. “The Lansing Police Department made a mis­take in detain­ing the wrong per­son dur­ing a vehi­cle theft inves­ti­ga­tion,” Schor said in the state­ment. “The young man was wear­ing the exact same cloth­ing as the sus­pect, how­ev­er, it was quick­ly con­firmed he was not the sus­pect in ques­tion and he was released. I join Chief Sosebee in apol­o­giz­ing to the young man and his fam­i­ly.” “LPD is in con­tact with the fam­i­ly and pro­vid­ing resources and sup­port for any trau­ma involved. Our offi­cers do their absolute best to pro­tect Lansing, but in this case, a mis­take was made, and we own it and apol­o­gize to those affected.
As Mayor, I once again offer my sin­cere apol­o­gy to this young man.” Attorneys for the fam­i­ly said Tashawn was tak­ing out the trash at his home when he was approached by an offi­cer hold­ing a gun at his side. The boy was put in hand­cuffs and placed into the back of a police vehi­cle. “Our client has been trau­ma­tized by this inci­dent, so much so that young Tashawn does not want to go out­side … even to get the mail,” attor­ney Rico Neal said. “Instead of try­ing put the inci­dent behind them, police should have apol­o­gized to Tashawn and con­sid­ered how they can make the sit­u­a­tion right.” the attor­neys said. Tashawn’s father, Michael Bernard, described look­ing out­side and see­ing his son in hand­cuffs. He said his son “should not have been sub­ject­ed to this treat­ment.” The attor­neys said they were explor­ing “all legal options” for the fam­i­ly, includ­ing a pos­si­ble law­suit. They said the fam­i­ly wants to ensure that the same sit­u­a­tion does­n’t hap­pen to any­one else.

An inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion is under­way and Kenosha activists are speak­ing out after a video shared to social media appears to show a Kenosha police offi­cer repeat­ed­ly strik­ing a man the offi­cer wrong­ly thought was involved in a seri­ous hit-and-run crash.

Police would lat­er find their sus­pects inside a bath­room of a restaurant.

The inci­dent took place July 20 at the Applebee’s off Highway 50 in Kenosha. A crash hap­pened at Highway 50 and Green Bay Road at about 11 p.m.

Police said wit­ness­es described two Black males and one Black female who fled on foot toward Applebee’s. Another wit­ness stat­ed that the female was car­ry­ing a child, accord­ing to police.

An employ­ee at the restau­rant said some “sus­pi­cious peo­ple” were inside the restau­rant and they believed may be “involved,” accord­ing to police. The employ­ee then direct­ed offi­cers to two peo­ple, includ­ing the man seen being arrest­ed in the video, who is Black and hold­ing a baby.

“I’m not doing s — ! Let me the f— go!” the man yelled out as offi­cers attempt to take the baby from him and take him into cus­tody. The baby is even­tu­al­ly removed from the man’s arms and offi­cers throw the man down to his stom­ach. A moment lat­er, an offi­cer appears to begin strik­ing the man on or near his head, yelling com­mands of “Put your hands behind your back!”

Police said, “The male was being detained as the crash was being inves­ti­gat­ed. The male attempt­ed to leave against offi­cers orders and was restrained. He resist­ed and the inci­dent that was caught on cam­era unfold­ed from there.”

The man, accord­ing to police, was not respon­si­ble for the hit-and-run. However, police said he has been charged with dis­or­der­ly con­duct, resist­ing, and obstruct­ing an offi­cer. The female who was with him also received the same charges, and pos­ses­sion of marijuana.

Police then dis­cov­ered the “indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for the hit-and-run” inside the bath­room of the Applebee’s, police said in a statement.

A group of Kenosha advo­cates and activists held a press con­fer­ence Wednesday night. It was orga­nized by Leaders of Kenosha, a non­prof­it that describes itself as “a con­duit for social, trans­for­ma­tive, and restora­tive jus­tice,” accord­ing to its web­site.

Tanya McLean, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Leaders of Kenosha, said “it’s ridicu­lous” that the man was charged and the offi­cers should be ones fac­ing charges. She said there was a com­plete lack of de-esca­la­tion from offi­cers. “It just does­n’t seem that any­one was a voice of rea­son that had a uni­form on,” she said.

“A com­plete lack of dis­re­gard for peo­ple that don’t look like you, that don’t have that uni­form on,” she said. “What is it that just fright­ens you? Because we know that when peo­ple are fear­ful they act in irra­tional ways. So what is that you are so afraid of?”

McLean men­tioned the Kenosha police shoot­ing of Jacob Blake in 2020 as an exam­ple of offi­cers act­ing through fear.

“We don’t want to stand here and have these con­ver­sa­tions about peo­ple being harmed when they’re sim­ply hav­ing a meal with their fam­i­ly,” McLean said.

McLean said the man is from Illinois and he was there to have a meal and got up to change his baby’s dia­per. “I’m not an attor­ney, but if you’re not under arrest, you can walk away, they did­n’t know who these peo­ple were,” she said.

Alex Whitaker of the Kenosha Coalition for Dismantling Racism called for a “thor­ough and trans­par­ent” inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent. Kenosha police said the depart­ment will con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion on the offi­cer’s use of force. Whitaker request­ed a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion as well.

Kimberly Jennings of Greensboro has been charged with two counts of sim­ple assault on a child under 12. Police say Jennings, 62, assault­ed two Black chil­dren at the Sedgefield Gardens Apartments. She has been arrest­ed and tak­en to Guilford County Jail.
According to the vic­tim, 11-year-old Jace Eury, he and his sis­ter Jayla were play­ing in the complex’s pool last week when Jennings hit her. Residents have iden­ti­fied Jennings as the prop­er­ty man­ag­er. Jace stood up for his sis­ter and splashed Jennings with water.

Kimberly Jennings of Greensboro has been charged with two counts of sim­ple assault on a child under 12. Police say Jennings, 62, assault­ed two Black chil­dren at the Sedgefield Gardens Apartments. She has been arrest­ed and tak­en to Guilford County Jail.

According to the vic­tim, 11-year-old Jace Eury, he and his sis­ter Jayla were play­ing in the complex’s pool last week when Jennings hit her. Residents have iden­ti­fied Jennings as the prop­er­ty man­ag­er. Jace stood up for his sis­ter and splashed Jennings with water.

“When I was walk­ing up the stairs to get to the gate, they were ask­ing if I hit her because she had hit my sis­ter first. So I hit her after she hit my sis­ter,” Jace explained. “Then she poured Coke on me and hit me with the bot­tle twice.” Per a Greensboro police news release, offi­cers respond­ed the very next day.

Warrants were obtained and just a few hours lat­er, Jennings was arrest­ed. The footage of the inci­dent has been cir­cu­lat­ing online, which gal­va­nized a gen­er­ous out­pour­ing of pub­lic sup­port. The moth­er of the sib­lings, Jae Eury, is grate­ful but still wants jus­tice for her children.

“What she did to him, if I put one fin­ger on her, I am the one that’s going to be in trou­ble. And that’s just not cool. You hit my child; you hit both of my chil­dren. You’ve been harass­ing my chil­dren all sum­mer long, and all they want­ed to do was just swim in the heat. Just swim, and enjoy them­selves as chil­dren should,” Eury said.

“The out­pour­ing is great, and it makes you feel good that peo­ple are behind you but it’s kind of mak­ing me angri­er like I’m angry,” she con­tin­ued. The fam­i­ly wants Jennings fired and is plan­ning on fil­ing a law­suit against Jennings as well as the prop­er­ty man­age­ment company.

In the two-tiered sys­tem of injus­tice in the United States, you can be crim­i­nal­ized even when you are going about your busi­ness, hav­ing bro­ken no laws. Here is anoth­er case of the glar­ing injus­tice in the sys­tem that has, for all intents and pur­pos­es is a police state, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Black people.
In the sto­ry below a com­plete­ly inno­cent young woman who hap­pens to be black was approached and boxed in by police who mis­tak­en­ly accost­ed her after she left a res­i­dence; cops were called to a bur­glary at a total­ly dif­fer­ent address but screwed up and went to the address they accost­ed her. 
Irate at the fact that she was being detained for com­mit­ting no crime, she respond­ed by push­ing off the cops who attempt­ed to arrest her. As a con­se­quence, she was charged with four felony counts, two counts of resist­ing an offi­cer with vio­lence, and two counts of bat­tery on a law enforce­ment offi­cer. Each is a third-degree felony pun­ish­able by up to five years in prison.
In the land of the free, you have zero pro­tec­tion from the maraud­ing gang of thugs who act on behalf of the states, even when you have com­mit­ted no crime and, worse yet if you are black.
The most out­ra­geous part about it is the com­plic­it judge who wrote;“This repeat­ed vio­lence on the law enforce­ment offi­cers is what led to the defendant’s arrest and four felony charges,” Rowe wrote.
Welcome to Amerikkka…The whole sys­tem is a fraud.

A judge ruled that a Volusia Sheriff’s Office sergeant who respond­ed to the wrong address in Deltona last year for a bur­glary alarm made a “rea­son­able” mis­take and had “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” to stop and detain a woman. In his rul­ing, Circuit Judge Randell Rowe III denied a defense motion that argued the deputy ille­gal­ly stopped the woman and evi­dence against her should be thrown out.
The sit­u­a­tion began when Volusia Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Chad Weaver respond­ed to the wrong address on July 18, 2022. The alarm was on Ainsworth Avenue, but Weaver drove one block over to Academy Avenue. Weaver then stopped a car that he saw leav­ing the house he mis­tak­en­ly thought was the source of the alarm.
Iyanna Rollins, 19, of Oviedo, was try­ing to dri­ve away from the house when Weaver stopped her. When Weaver began to ques­tion her, the sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed. Rollins was accused of strik­ing Weaver and a back­up offi­cer, Deputy Erica Muzzy.
Rollins was charged with two counts of resist­ing an offi­cer with vio­lence and two counts of bat­tery on a law enforce­ment offi­cer. Each is a third-degree felony pun­ish­able by up to five years in prison.

In his Tuesday order, Judge Rowe also cit­ed state law pro­hibit­ing some­one from threat­en­ing force or using force to resist a law enforce­ment offi­cer if the offi­cer “was act­ing in good faith” and is known to be or rea­son­ably appears to be a law enforce­ment offi­cer. “Thus, a defen­dant is statu­to­ri­ly pro­hib­it­ed from using vio­lence to resist her arrest by law enforce­ment offi­cers even if the arrest is ille­gal,” Rowe stat­ed in his order. 

Rowe wrote that Weaver’s traf­fic stop, based on the deputy’s “incor­rect but rea­son­able assess­ment of the facts,” did not vio­late Rollins’ Fourth Amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment pro­tects against unrea­son­able search­es and seizures.
Weaver tes­ti­fied he became sus­pi­cious when Rollins would not tell him why she was at the house. Weaver told her to turn off the car and then reached into the car to turn it off himself.
Rowe wrote that Rollins “became irate and threat­ened to punch Weaver,” jump­ing out of the car and, “yelling and hurl­ing obscen­i­ties” at Weaver.

“The body cam­era video shows her wav­ing her hands around and point­ing her fin­ger in front of the officer’s face, threat­en­ing to spit on him and scream­ing wild­ly. Sgt. Weaver tes­ti­fied that he tried to explain to the defen­dant why he had stopped her but she refused to lis­ten because, as shown in the video, she had become quite irate and out of control.”
While Weaver tried to explain that she was not under arrest and was being secured, Rollins shoved, punched and kicked Weaver mul­ti­ple times, Rowe’s order states.
Once hand­cuffed, Rollins con­tin­ued to phys­i­cal­ly resist and threat­ened to bite and spit on Weaver, Rowe wrote. She also resist­ed and kicked Deputy Muzzy when she was check­ing her hand­cuffs, Rowe wrote.
“This repeat­ed vio­lence on the law enforce­ment offi­cers is what led to the defendant’s arrest and four felony charges,” Rowe wrote.
Rollins’ next court appear­ance is a pre-tri­al hear­ing set for Aug. 15.

The Hollywood roman­ti­ciz­ing of police and the dis­tinct fact that American polic­ing was designed to oppress Blacks to ben­e­fit whites makes polic­ing what it is today. It was bound to become the effi­cient killing machine that it is today, as peo­ple see more atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted and are out­raged to the point of con­fronting this monster.
The bru­tal tac­tics of American polic­ing are now becom­ing the focus of world­wide atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.
The glar­ing out­ra­geous nature of mis­ter Floyd’s killing, unjus­ti­fied by any stan­dard, was a light­ed match to the dried kin­dling that has been the American sta­tus quo for centuries. 
Blacks had no voice in America, so no one saw what was hap­pen­ing to them, and truth­ful­ly no one cared. The police killed whom they want­ed to, and the news media read police bul­letins as if they were facts, which was the end of that.
Consequently, police felt no con­straints to enforce the laws; the laws became what police depart­ments and indi­vid­ual offi­cers said it was.
Black cit­i­zens were caged ani­mals under the sys­tem of oppres­sion, exposed to the whims and fan­cies of the zookeep­ers. Police became gods and rock stars, and Hollywood glo­ri­fied it. Today you can hard­ly turn on your tele­vi­sion with­out being bom­bard­ed with a litany of cop shows that depict cops as good guys who risk life and limb to pro­tect all Americans.…..If only it were true, but it is not. In fact, it is a far cry from what obtains real­is­ti­cal­ly on the streets of poor black neigh­bor­hoods where cit­i­zens live under the vicious and bru­tal bootheels of America’s race sol­diers who oper­ate with the full author­i­ty and pow­er of the states.

American polic­ing was always a bru­tal, racist white enforce­ment gang, so much so that the Apartheid regimes in South Africa and Israel pat­terned their sys­tems from it. American polic­ing nev­er rep­re­sent­ed Black Americans, so the glow­ing and flow­ery roman­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tions white Americans give of police are their expe­ri­ence, not that of Black people.
The trag­ic irony today, how­ev­er, is that the beast has been left untamed for too long, the praise piled ‑on by the white pop­u­la­tion, and the immu­ni­ty it has been giv­en has turned into impuni­ty. Poorer whites are dis­cov­er­ing that this beast destroys more than just the poor and pow­er­less Black community.
Real polic­ing endgames are usu­al­ly the main­te­nance of law & order, the pre­ven­tion and detec­tion of crimes, and the pro­tec­tion of life and prop­er­ty. The American polic­ing cul­ture has served that pur­pose for the major­i­ty white pop­u­la­tion, but it has been an organ of oppres­sion since slave-catch­ing for the Black community.
But now, the lines of demar­ca­tion between how it treats Black Americans and poor whites are not as clear as they once were.
In most civ­i­lized nations, law enforce­ment does not go out look­ing to end the lives of cit­i­zens because it is legal­ly justified.
Some time ago, I wrote in a piece that American cops kill not because they are moral­ly jus­ti­fied in doing so but because they know they will not be held accountable.
When immoral and unjust men and women write the laws, it is easy for unjust men and women to abuse them.
American cops kill not because they are moral­ly jus­ti­fied in doing so but because they do not have to wait to achieve a blood­less out­come. Killing is jus­ti­fied to min­i­mize wast­ing resources. Killing is jus­ti­fied because the vic­tim’s life is deemed worth­less and dis­pos­able. Killing is jus­ti­fied because cops may have already spent a lit­tle time pre­tend­ing to care.
The police, as I said ear­li­er, are [g]ods with the pow­er of judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, the pow­er of life and death. They are [not] ser­vants of the people.
So even though American cops are arguably the best equipped in the world, there is not much empha­sis on sav­ing lives. So a woman with a knife whom they were told was act­ing irra­tional­ly, act­ing as if she was expe­ri­enc­ing a med­ical emer­gency, does not get approached with care and love; she gets mur­dered in a hail of police bullets.
The shock­ing real­i­ty is that the white pop­u­la­tion finds this jus­ti­fied because of one word, the word [knife]. Mental health does not mat­ter, unavoid­able does not mat­ter, less-lethal does not mat­ter, unnec­es­sary does not matter.
And I con­tin­ue to ask the ques­tion, what would they do if they did not have guns? When immoral men and women write the laws, we get the out­comes we get.

Police in Orlando, Florida, shot and killed 32-year-old Rachael Ellis after she alleged­ly charged at them with knives. Police arrived at an apart­ment com­plex on the 12000 block of Pioneers Way around 12:03 p.m. Friday after a call from Ellis’ boyfriend, who told dis­patch­ers Ellis was hold­ing a knife and threat­en­ing to kill herself.
This is nor­mal police behav­ior across America. They get called to a scene where some­one is threat­en­ing their own life, a clear indi­ca­tion of men­tal dis­or­der, and they oblige the vic­tim by end­ing their lives in a hail of tax-pay­er-fund­ed bullets.
There is no out­rage because she had a knife, and worse yet, she [alleged­ly] charged at the demigods.

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

The sub­jec­tive stan­dard of ‘rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,’ when left up to immoral, racist actors, is anoth­er weapon of oppres­sion against mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple in America.
American police, from its incep­tion at best, were always the foot sol­diers of white suprema­cy. It is incon­ceiv­able to imag­ine some­thing designed with mal­ice and hatred to grad­u­ate into a force for good. For those rea­sons, the very con­struct of American polic­ing is so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed that it can­not be remediated.
For starters, it is not as if America is becom­ing a bet­ter nation, one free from its igno­ble racist past; racial hatred is so deeply entrenched into the American body politic that the two can scarce­ly be separated.
In September 2015, a year after a white cop, Darren Wilson, mur­dered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 58 per­cent of Americans said that race rela­tions were wors­en­ing and not improving…
More than 150 years after the 13^th Amendment abol­ished slav­ery in the United States, most U.S. adults say the lega­cy of slav­ery con­tin­ues to impact the posi­tion of black peo­ple in American soci­ety today. More than four in ten say the coun­try [hasn’t made enough progress toward racial equal­i­ty], and there is some skep­ti­cism, par­tic­u­lar­ly among blacks, that black peo­ple will ever have equal rights with whites, accord­ing to a new (Pew Research Center survey).
In 2021 the right-lean­ing (Brookings Institution) stat­ed in an arti­cle that sys­temic racism is not sim­ply a thing of the past but is deeply embed­ded with­in American society.

It is not just that the enforcers of the laws are, in many cas­es, racist jack-boot­ed mur­der­ous thugs who glee­ful­ly live out their most base fan­tasies against Blacks; it is that in many cas­es, the leg­is­la­tures pass unjust­ly writ­ten laws to ensure nefar­i­ous desired outcomes.
The Judges who admin­is­ter the sen­tences apply stiffer sen­tences to Black defen­dants than to whites for the same crimes. According to data, penal­ties are over 40% harsh­er than whites receive.
From minor traf­fic infrac­tions in which police tar­get Black com­mu­ni­ties, which are the poor­est in the nation, for traf­fic enforce­ment, not nec­es­sar­i­ly for real mov­ing vio­la­tions but for ones they dredge up to jus­ti­fy the stops. And, of course, unless there is video evi­dence to con­tra­dict the allow­able pre­tex­tu­al stops, pros­e­cu­tors and judges duti­ful­ly exact fines that the defen­dants can bare­ly afford.
Worse yet, many traf­fic infrac­tions direct­ly result from the dri­ver’s finan­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, bro­ken tail­lights, burnt-out bulbs around tags, etc. So the pover­ty that caused the vio­la­tion in the first place becomes a crime for which the defen­dant is pun­ished with a fine and forced to pay monies to the munic­i­pal­i­ty they could not afford to fix the prob­lem in the first place.
Failure to pay results in an arrest war­rant being issued for the defen­dant. This igno­ble racist type of polic­ing unleash­es the state’s pow­er on the poor­est peo­ple, result­ing in police engag­ing in even more pre­tex­tu­al stops to check dri­vers’ licens­es for war­rants. It is the vicious cycle of state tyran­ny in which peo­ple in the Black com­mu­ni­ty exist daily.

The priv­i­leged sit on the side­lines and opine, why not just obey the laws? The finan­cial pover­ty of the under­class is sur­passed only by the pover­ty of human­i­ty in this priv­i­leged class. Targeting one com­mu­ni­ty for enforce­ment will sure­ly skew the data, cre­at­ing the false impres­sion that the tar­get­ed group has a greater propen­si­ty for law-breaking.
It also incen­tivizes those not tar­get­ed to sit on the side­lines and offer opin­ions bereft of intel­lec­tu­al matu­ri­ty or crit­i­cal think­ing. This class of sheep is use­ful idiots. They recite what they are told verbatim.
To under­stand the duplic­i­ty of the sys­tem, one must have a lived expe­ri­ence. It is not just a vicious sys­tem that unleash­es well-trained killer cops, many of them for­mer mil­i­tary mem­bers, into the black com­mu­ni­ty. It is a skill­ful­ly woven sys­tem from bot­tom to top that is designed to crim­i­nal­ize, ensnare, incar­cer­ate, or worse- as many mem­bers of the Black com­mu­ni­ty as possible.
Blacks are not more inclined to be crim­i­nals; it is that the Black com­mu­ni­ty has been set up to appear that way.
In the video above, you will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see evi­dence of what I speak. This is what obtains for policing.

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

The inci­dent below is sim­i­lar to the 1997 inci­dent in New York City in which Rudolph Guiliani’s NYPD thugs tor­tured and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed mis­ter Abner Loumima in a sta­tion house bath­room result­ing in grave injury to him.
This is what pass­es for polic­ing in the United States 26 years after the Louima night­mare; not a damn thing has changed.
The Abner Louima tor­ture by NYPD ani­mals was one of the more egre­gious inci­dents that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion and atten­tion of the world, but it was far from the first.
The United States has a sor­did his­to­ry of vio­lence against Black peo­ple, with the vio­lence per­pet­u­at­ed against Black cit­i­zens usu­al­ly per­pet­u­at­ed by those in police uni­form or with their acquiescence.
Almost two decades after the FBI warned about white suprema­cists, skin­heads, and oth­er white nation­al­ists infil­trat­ing police depart­ments that were already bas­tions of white suprema­cy, police racial vio­lence gets worse by the day.
Even as the lynch­ings of Black peo­ple have been seen as basi­cal­ly end­ed, police con­tin­ue to lynch hun­dreds of Black peo­ple each year. These killings are car­ried out not by hang­ing on trees in some back­woods but by racist thugs in police uni­forms using the full pow­er and author­i­ty of the state. 
No state, Democrat or Republican-run, has lift­ed a fin­ger to stop it. (MB)
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​en/

JACKSON, Miss. — Deputies accused of beat­ing and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing two Black men before shoot­ing one of them in the mouth, prompt­ing a fed­er­al civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion, have been fired, a Mississippi sher­iff announced Tuesday. 
The announce­ment comes months after Michael Corey Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said six deputies from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department burst into a home with­out a war­rant. The men said deputies beat them, assault­ed them with a sex toy and shocked them repeat­ed­ly with Tasers in a rough­ly 90-minute peri­od dur­ing the Jan. 24 episode, Jenkins and Parker said. Jenkins said one of the deputies shoved a gun in his mouth and then fired the weapon, leav­ing him with seri­ous injuries to his face, tongue, and jaw. 
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey announced Tuesday that deputies involved in the episode had been fired, but he would not pro­vide the names of the deputies who had been ter­mi­nat­ed or say how many law enforce­ment offi­cers were fired. Bailey would not answer addi­tion­al ques­tions about January’s episode.

“Due to recent devel­op­ments, includ­ing find­ings dur­ing our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, those deputies that were still employed by this depart­ment have all been ter­mi­nat­ed,” Bailey said at a news con­fer­ence. “We under­stand that the alleged actions of these deputies has erod­ed the public’s trust in this depart­ment. Rest assured that we will work dili­gent­ly to restore that trust.”
Bailey’s announce­ment also fol­lows an Associated Press inves­ti­ga­tion that found sev­er­al deputies who were involved with the episode were also linked to at least four vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and anoth­er with last­ing injuries. Deputies who had been accept­ed to the sheriff’s office’s Special Response Team — a tac­ti­cal unit whose mem­bers receive advanced train­ing — were involved in each of the four encounters.
Deputies said the raid was prompt­ed by a report of drug activ­i­ty at the home. Police and court records obtained by the AP revealed the iden­ti­ties of two deputies at the Jenkins raid: Hunter Elward and Christian Dedmon. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear whether any of the deputies had attor­neys who could com­ment on their behalf.

The Justice Department opened a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department after the episode. There is no body cam­era footage of the episode. Records obtained by The AP show that Tasers used by the deputies were turned on, turned off or used dozens of times dur­ing a rough­ly 65-minute peri­od before Jenkins was shot. Jenkins and Parker have also filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit and are seek­ing $400 mil­lion in damages.

This is stan­dard prac­tice when cops mur­der against African Americans. On the rare occa­sion there is an inves­ti­ga­tion; it is car­ried out by, you guessed it, oth­er cops from anoth­er depart­ment if they want to seem like they are doing an actu­al inves­ti­ga­tion. At oth­er times the same depart­ment will do a sham inves­ti­ga­tion and find no wrongdoing.
But worse yet, the politi­cians gave away so much lever­age to police unions that even when cops are charged with mur­der and manslaugh­ter and are fired, arbi­tra­tors can decide that the fired mur­der­ers be reinstated.
These arbi­tra­tors are usu­al­ly a sin­gle lawyer bought and paid for by the police unions. This seri­ous­ly is what pass­es for a jus­tice sys­tem in America.
Additionally, as soon as they are fired, anoth­er depart­ment quick­ly hires them to con­tin­ue their mur­der­ous spree against the Black community.(MB)

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Two Oklahoma police offi­cers charged with manslaugh­ter may be back on the streets soon. Arbitrators ruled that the two for­mer offi­cers must be rein­stat­ed and receive back pay even though they fatal­ly shot an unarmed Black man. In 2021, offi­cers Nathan Ronan and Robert Hinkle shot unarmed 29-year-old Quadry Sanders. They were placed on leave before being fired in January of 2022. And last May, they were charged with manslaugh­ter in con­nec­tion with the shooting.

In 2021, Police respond­ed to a call about a man was wav­ing a gun inside of the home of some­one who had a pro­tec­tive order against him. The New York Times speak­ing with the District Attorney, wrote about what hap­pened next:

Mr. Sanders com­plied with an officer’s com­mands to show his hands, accord­ing to the dis­trict attorney’s office, before run­ning back inside. When Mr. Sanders exits the house again, an offi­cer wear­ing the body cam­era moves toward him, direct­ing him to put his hands up and get down on the ground.

The only object vis­i­ble in his hands is a base­ball cap, accord­ing to the dis­trict attorney’s state­ment. Mr. Sanders appears to try to move behind a refrig­er­a­tor sit­ting out­side, and just as he rais­es his hands above his head, one of the offi­cers shoots at Mr. Sanders four times.

Mr. Sanders then falls to the ground, at which time an offi­cer once again says, “Hands! Hands! Hands!”

The footage then shows Mr. Sanders sit­ting up with his hands above his head, and at that moment he is repeat­ed­ly shot, the video shows. Officers shout at Mr. Sanders to “stay down” and “roll over on your stom­ach.” Mr. Sanders, writhing, appears to say “I’m down” and “I can’t breathe.

Sanders was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal, where he suc­cumbed to his injuries. Despite the fact that there was suf­fi­cient evi­dence to bring a manslaugh­ter indict­ment, arbi­tra­tors con­clud­ed that the two offi­cers were unjus­ti­fi­ably ter­mi­nat­ed and had a rea­son­able belief that the use of force was necessary.

This is hard­ly the first time that a police offi­cer who shot an unarmed Black American has been rein­stat­ed. The for­mer Louisville police offi­cer who shot Breonna Taylor in her apart­ment was hired by anoth­er Kentucky police department.

The Lawton Police Department has not made a state­ment about when these offi­cers will return to the police force and how they plan on han­dling the ruling.

From The Root

The next time you hear Americans talk about police brutality or human rights abuses in another country.

A Mississippi civ­il rights lawyer was arrest­ed Saturday after film­ing a traf­fic stop con­duct­ed by offi­cers from a police depart­ment she is suing in fed­er­al court, her attor­ney says.

Jill Collen Jefferson is the pres­i­dent of JULIAN, the civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion that filed a fed­er­al law­suit last year against the Lexington Police Department on behalf of a group of city res­i­dents. Michael Carr, Jefferson’s attor­ney, told The Associated Press she was arrest­ed late Saturday evening after she filmed offi­cers after they pulled some­one over.

The Lexington Police Department did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to request for com­ment in voice­mails and phone calls.

Jefferson was arrest­ed nine days after Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division trav­eled to Lexington to meet with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers about alle­ga­tions of police bru­tal­i­ty in the small town.

Jefferson’s law­suit claims police have sub­ject­ed Lexington res­i­dents to false arrests, exces­sive force and intimidation.

“As an advo­cate for her clients, Jill Jefferson believes that this pat­tern and prac­tice has hap­pened to cit­i­zens in Lexington,” Carr said. “Through this expe­ri­ence, she is show­ing the state, the area and pos­si­bly the nation the cor­rupt prac­tices of this city.”

Carr said Jefferson com­plied with a request to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and ques­tioned why the offi­cers had approached her as she filmed on a pub­lic street. She was arrest­ed and charged with three mis­de­meanors: fail­ure to com­ply, dis­or­der­ly con­duct and resist­ing arrest.

Jefferson was booked in the Holmes County Jail, where she remains pend­ing a court hear­ing, which had­n’t been sched­uled as of Sunday morning.

Carr said Police Chief Charles Henderson even­tu­al­ly agreed to release her with­out post­ing a bond. But Jefferson refus­es to pay a $35 pro­cess­ing fee levied by the jail for her release because she believes her arrest was unlaw­ful.

Im not sure why she pro­duced her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion except to say , “I am an attor­ney”?

Those who would give up essen­tial Liberty to pur­chase a lit­tle tem­po­rary Safety deserve nei­ther Liberty nor Safety. (Benjamin Franklin).
Policing in the United States was nev­er intend­ed to secure the Black pop­u­la­tion. It was cre­at­ed from the prac­tice of slave catch­ing. Slave-catch­ing was done by poor whites, most of whom were for­mer white bonds­men who were kicked out of Europe to the colonies by European pow­ers. This prac­tice of bond­ed slav­ery con­tin­ued up to the civ­il war. 
The poor whites who became plan­ta­tion over­seers and slave catch­ers had no love for the rich plan­ta­tion own­ers. Still, they were more than hap­py to accept the roles of slave catch­ers and over­seers, not just for the perks of sex­u­al pow­er it gave them over Black women and the vio­lence they vis­it­ed over Black men whom they hat­ed the most, but because it gave them a sense of pow­er, some­thing they envied about the planter class.
Replete with guns, whips, and vicious dogs, the slave catch­er was a force of ter­ror against Black enslaved peo­ple who har­bored the thought of flee­ing slavery.
Today polic­ing has not evolved much except that it has got­ten a more sophis­ti­cat­ed arse­nal of tools to harass the African-American population.
When we say ‘defund the police,’ those who ben­e­fit from the ser­vices of the role of police know exact­ly what we mean. Still, they fight vehe­ment­ly, using dis­tor­tions and dis­in­for­ma­tion to ensure that instead of scal­ing back the expens­es wast­ed on police depart­ments, more mon­ey is poured into policing.

Even those who claim to be friend­ly to the Black com­mu­ni­ty fold to the dis­in­for­ma­tion out of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy and vote to give more, rather than less mon­ey, to polic­ing. This usu­al­ly means few­er dol­lars for oth­er, more impor­tant func­tions the com­mu­ni­ty needs. But it suits the white pow­er class whose only inter­est is to ensure Blacks are kept in their place.
At the same time, res­i­dents in large cities, usu­al­ly pop­u­lat­ed heav­i­ly by Black cit­i­zens, are expo­nen­tial­ly more ter­ri­fied of police than they are of oth­er crim­i­nals. The sad real­i­ty is that ordi­nary crim­i­nals are usu­al­ly arrest­ed and made to pay for their crimes. Criminal cops are sel­dom held account­able, and even when arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed for the most egre­gious crimes, judges go out of their way to give them lighter rather than harsh­er sentences.
Consequently, the African-American com­mu­ni­ty has pre­cious lit­tle faith in the sys­tem and an even greater hatred for the idea of polic­ing, and under­stand­ably so.
The NYC​.Gov web­site claims that the New York City Police Department has (approx­i­mate­ly) 34,000 cops, which means one of two things, either the Agency has no idea how many mem­bers it has, which I do not believe is the case, or it delib­er­ate­ly fudges the num­bers it reveals to the pub­lic so it can con­tin­ue to make the case to jus­ti­fy hir­ing more and more peo­ple to that stand­ing army.
Despite the 34,000-man-strong stand­ing mili­tia that is the New York City Police Department, crime con­tin­ues to be a major prob­lem in the city of over 8 mil­lion res­i­dents. If the police were the solu­tion to end­ing crime, New York City would be crime free.
Many of the assaults and oth­er crimes com­mit­ted in New York City are com­mit­ted by the army of uni­formed thugs who roll upon inno­cent youths in their neigh­bor­hoods, harass, bru­tal­ize, and arrest them for com­mit­ting no crimes. That is not to say there aren’t vio­lent civil­ians. Still, the prob­lem is made expo­nen­tial­ly more volatile by the police, who are seen as a source of ter­ror for young men whose only crimes are their black skin and liv­ing in their neighborhoods.

One com­mu­ni­ty in Brooklyn is exper­i­ment­ing with the idea of not call­ing the police. Men in the com­mu­ni­ty are step­ping up to the plate and pro­tect­ing their com­mu­ni­ty from the civil­ian preda­tors who prey on the weak as well as the uni­formed thugs who ter­ror­ize their com­mu­ni­ty and who the res­i­dents are more ter­ri­fied of than the ordi­nary criminals.
See the sto­ry here:https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​h​a​p​p​e​n​e​d​-​b​r​o​o​k​l​y​n​-​n​e​i​g​h​b​o​r​h​o​o​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​d​-​i​t​s​e​l​f​-​1​5​3​0​5​8​7​0​5​.​h​tml

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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.

This hap­pens every god­dam day in America, a coun­try with expo­nen­tial­ly more guns than peo­ple. Yey when police ini­ti­ate traf­fic stops they end up killing peo­ple. Having a per­mit still does not guar­an­tee safe­ty from the bloodhounds.

Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith has placed three police offi­cers on admin­is­tra­tive leave fol­low­ing a fatal shoot­ing on April 23^rd, 2023. 
Just after 9:30 p.m. April 23, Shreveport Community Response Unit con­duct­ed a traf­fic stop at Valley View Drive and Mansfield Road. 
During that traf­fic stop offi­cers encoun­tered Joseph Dewayne Taylor, 33, who was armed. Police said that a strug­gle ensued, and an offi­cer fired. 

SPD said at the scene the offi­cer fired one shot, how­ev­er, Taylor was shot mul­ti­ple times and was trans­port­ed to Ochsner LSU Health where he was pro­nounced dead at 9:57 p.m. 
Sergeant Daniel Denby, Officer Terri Simmons, and Officer Anthony Visciotti were placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the April 23^rd inci­dent. The inves­ti­ga­tion into this inci­dent has been turned over to the Louisiana State Police.

I recent­ly explained that when Police gun down Black men almost dai­ly, it is not out of neces­si­ty; it is out of racial spite. They are killing our peo­ple, and pros­e­cu­tors and the courts are legit­imiz­ing it. In the pod­cast above, I point­ed out the pow­ers police have to use lethal force when that force should stop and that the over­whelm­ing amount of bul­lets being fired at Black men, killing them, are unlaw­ful acts of racial murder.
I also explained that, con­trar­i­ly white mass killers are arrest­ed with­out inci­dent while police sum­mar­i­ly mur­der black men, and the sys­tem jus­ti­fies their murder.
In the sto­ry below, you will see anoth­er exam­ple of police exer­cis­ing patience and care in deal­ing with a white male who is a for­mer con­vinced felon who was also want­ed for sev­er­al mis­de­meanors asso­ci­at­ed with his actions on January 6^th, 2021, at the US Capitol.
A white male, they claimed, fired at them repeat­ed­ly on two sep­a­rate occa­sions, yet they were able to wait and even­tu­al­ly arrest him peacefully.
Yet they tell the Black com­mu­ni­ty that when they mur­der unarmed Black men in a hail of police bul­lets, it is jus­ti­fied. In most instances, they twist them­selves into pret­zels in the lies they tell. Irrational, sub­jec­tive lies about cross-draw motions, plant­i­ng of feet, and con­ta­gious fir­ing, all con­coct­ed bull­shit they create,d which is ampli­fied by the main­stream media.

Jan. 6 Defendant Opened Fire On Texas Police During Welfare Check: FBI