They real­ly do not care what you think, they are going to do. what they feel like doing, to hell with you and your protest.

By Dylan Lovan

A Louisville police offi­cer who fired the fatal shot that killed Breonna Taylor has a new job in law enforce­ment in a coun­ty north­east of the city.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday con­firmed the hir­ing of Myles Cosgrove, who was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in January 2021 for vio­lat­ing use-of-force pro­ce­dures and fail­ing to use a body cam­era dur­ing the raid on Taylor’s apart­ment, WHAS-TV reported. 

About a dozen peo­ple showed up in down­town Carrolton Monday morn­ing to protest his hir­ing, hold­ing signs and chant­i­ng, “Cosgrove has got to go.” “I think he should be in jail,” said Haley Wilson, a 24-year-old res­i­dent of the small Kentucky town near the Ohio River.
Investigators said that Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the apart­ment after Taylor’s front door was breached dur­ing a nar­cotics raid on March 13, 2020. Thinking an intrud­er was break­ing in, Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot from a hand­gun at the offi­cers. Officer Jonathan Mattingly was struck in the leg, and the offi­cers returned fire, killing Taylor in her hallway.

Days ago, I wrote about the pan­dem­ic of police killings in the United States sit­ting num­bers that ought to straight­en the spine of con­sci­en­tious peo­ple everywhere.
Race rela­tions are not get­ting bet­ter in the United States; in fact, they are get­ting worse, accord­ing to the data trends.
At the cen­ter of this prob­lem stands one gov­ern­ment agency that has tak­en it upon itself to be the guardian of white suprema­cy, speak­ing of the police.
The police are not the only gov­ern­ment agency through which racism is dis­pensed to peo­ple of col­or in the United States. Racism is in every fiber, every pore of America. It is part of the DNA of the nation; nev­er­the­less, the Police is the agency that inter­acts with mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty with guns and the pow­er to kill us. 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/

We are hav­ing a con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion on this impor­tant issue. 

Police bru­tal­i­ty in the United States is the unwar­rant­ed or exces­sive and often ille­gal use of force against civil­ians by U.S. police offi­cers. Forms of police bru­tal­i­ty have ranged from assault and bat­tery (e.g., beat­ings) to may­hem, tor­ture, and mur­der. Some broad­er def­i­n­i­tions of police bru­tal­i­ty also encom­pass harass­ment (includ­ing false arrest), intim­i­da­tion, and ver­bal abuse, among oth­er forms of mistreatment.

Americans of all races, eth­nic­i­ties, ages, class­es, and gen­ders have been sub­ject­ed to police bru­tal­i­ty. In the late 19^th and ear­ly 20^th cen­turies, for exam­ple, poor and work­ing-class whites expressed frus­tra­tion over dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing in north­ern cities. At about the same time, Jewish and oth­er immi­grants from south­ern and east­ern Europe also com­plained of police bru­tal­i­ty against their com­mu­ni­ties. In the 1920s many urban police depart­ments, espe­cial­ly in large cities such as New York and Chicago, used extrale­gal tac­tics against mem­bers of Italian-immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties in efforts to crack down on orga­nized crime. In 1943 offi­cers of the Los Angeles Police Department were com­plic­it in attacks on Mexican Americans by U.S. ser­vice­men dur­ing the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, reflect­ing the department’s his­to­ry of hos­til­i­ty toward Hispanics (Latinos). Regular harass­ment of homo­sex­u­als and trans­gen­der per­sons by police in New York Citycul­mi­nat­ed in 1969 in the Stonewall riots, which were trig­gered by a police raid on a gay bar; the protests marked the begin­ning of a new era of mil­i­tan­cy in the inter­na­tion­al gay rights move­ment. And in the after­math of the 2001 September 11 attacks, Muslim Americans began to voice com­plaints about police bru­tal­i­ty, includ­ing harass­ment and racial pro­fil­ing. Many local law-enforce­ment agen­cies launched covert oper­a­tions of ques­tion­able legal­i­ty designed to sur­veil and infil­trate mosques and oth­er Muslim American orga­ni­za­tions in an effort to uncov­er pre­sumed ter­ror­ists, a prac­tice that went unchecked for at least a decade.

Notwithstanding the vari­ety among groups that have been sub­ject­ed to police bru­tal­i­ty in the United States, the great major­i­ty of vic­tims have been African American. In the esti­ma­tion of most experts, a key fac­tor explain­ing the pre­dom­i­nance of African Americans among vic­tims of police bru­tal­i­ty is antiblack racism among mem­bers of most­ly white police depart­ments. Similar prej­u­dices are thought to have played a role in police bru­tal­i­ty com­mit­ted against oth­er his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed or mar­gin­al­ized groups.

Whereas racism is thought to be a major cause of police bru­tal­i­ty direct­ed at African Americans and oth­er eth­nic groups, it is far from the only one. Other fac­tors con­cern the unique insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture of urban police depart­ments, which stress­es group sol­i­dar­i­ty, loy­al­ty, and a “show of force” approach to any per­ceived chal­lenge to an officer’s author­i­ty. For rook­ie offi­cers, accep­tance, suc­cess, and pro­mo­tion with­in the depart­ment depend upon adopt­ing the atti­tudes, val­ues, and prac­tices of the group, which his­tor­i­cal­ly have been infused with anti-black racism. (bri​tan​ni​ca​.com)

Whether a soci­ety is demo­c­ra­t­ic or total­i­tar­i­an, it needs a body to enforce the laws or decrees. We call those who do the enforc­ing ‑the police. No mat­ter how dis­gust­ed we are with the police and want them gone, what­ev­er they are replaced with will car­ry out the same func­tions. So essen­tial­ly, we would be replac­ing the police with a new police of sorts.
So it is rea­son­able to say some polic­ing body is nec­es­sary, whether to enforce the laws in a democ­ra­cy or to sup­press the pop­u­la­tion in an autocracy.
I went to lengths to estab­lish the fore­gone because we live in a soci­ety where truth and com­mon sense are in short sup­ply. Critiquing what some peo­ple wor­ship means you are anti-that body. Not that I care about their inabil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly or their will­ful igno­rance. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​a​s​s​i​v​e​-​e​x​p​a​n​s​i​o​n​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​e​n​h​a​n​c​e​d​-​b​y​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​a​n​d​-​o​t​h​e​rs/

Police are killing peo­ple at an alarm­ing rate in the United States. Each year the num­ber of peo­ple police kill is high­er than the pre­vi­ous year. The Federal Government has not demand­ed that the 18,000-plus police depart­ments across the coun­try report to it the peo­ple they kill. The Congress, with Republican majori­ties in the House and Senate at vary­ing times, will not pass leg­is­la­tion mak­ing it manda­to­ry for police to report the num­ber of peo­ple they kill each year accu­rate­ly. Notwithstanding, as a result of pub­lic out­cry and demand for account­abil­i­ty, var­i­ous Organizations and News Organizations have start­ed keep­ing coun­ty, using death records, etc, to present to the peo­ple an idea of the body count each year.
In 2021, there were 1,048 police fatal shoot­ings. In 2022, there were 1,096 fatal police shoot­ings. As of March 27, 2023, 238 peo­ple were killed at the hands of police, 30 of the Black, accord­ing to [sta​tista​.com]. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​p​o​s​e​-​e​x​i​s​t​e​n​t​i​a​l​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​-​t​o​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​m​e​n​-​o​f​-​c​o​l​o​r​-​s​t​u​dy/

The University of Illinois Chicago esti­mates con­ser­v­a­tive­ly 250,000 civil­ian injuries are caused by law enforce­ment offi­cers annually.
In the U.S., dur­ing a giv­en year, an esti­mat­ed 1 mil­lion civil­ians expe­ri­ence police threat of or use of force result­ing in a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate of 85,000 non-fatal injuries requir­ing hos­pi­tal treat­ment and 600‑1000 deaths. Both Black/African-Americans and Hispanics/​Latinos are twice as like­ly to expe­ri­ence the threat of or use of force dur­ing police-ini­ti­at­ed con­tact (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Based on CDC data, Black African-Americans are more than twice as like­ly to be killed and almost 5‑times more like­ly to suf­fer an injury requir­ing med­ical care at a hos­pi­tal com­pared to white non-Hispanics.
Black males com­prise 6.1 per­cent of the US pop­u­la­tion but 24.9 per­cent of all per­sons killed by police. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​u​n​i​o​n​-​c​o​n​f​i​r​m​-​w​h​y​-​d​e​f​u​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​i​s​-​s​o​u​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​cy/

Fatal police shoot­ings of unarmed Black peo­ple in the US are more than three times as high as of Whites, accord­ing to the Journal of Epidemiology and com­mu­ni­ty health.
Many of the peo­ple shot and killed by American police are unarmed. As is expect­ed, unarmed blacks are killed at an alarm­ing­ly high­er rate than whites.
Having looked at the cir­cum­stances that pre­cede many of the shoot­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly of Black cit­i­zens, sev­er­al experts have said deci­sive­ly that they could be avoid­ed. Those sen­ti­ments echo what I have writ­ten time and again. Police are com­mit­ting mur­der and are get­ting away with it because Prosecutors and Courts con­tin­ue to (a) move the goal­post as to what’s law­ful and (b) pull the wool over the eyes of the fam­i­lies of mur­dered victims.
I total­ly get the seri­ous­ness of each encounter that involves guns. Nevertheless, police offi­cers have been killing peo­ple unnec­es­sar­i­ly by (a) esca­lat­ing rather than de-esca­lat­ing minor or non-issues and (b) by con­tin­u­ing to shoot vic­tims after they are ren­dered life­less and then pre­tend­ing to ren­der first aid to the corpse after they cuff the already dead person.
As I have repeat­ed­ly said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, hav­ing been taught that the pub­lic is an ene­my and that their only focus is to go home to their fam­i­lies has turned minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties into ver­i­ta­ble bat­tle­fields for police to exact vengeance on the poor and defenseless.

They are also trained to con­tin­ue to shoot until a threat is neu­tral­ized. However, the courts have made it abun­dant­ly clear that it is not the pre­rog­a­tive of courts to Monday- morn­ing-quar­ter­back what police do in the heat of the moment.
This has opened up a pan­do­ra’s box of sub­jec­tive abuse.
The objec­tive stan­dard is now the sub­jec­tive stan­dard of every cop with a bad atti­tude and entrenched racial animus.
The con­se­quence has been dev­as­tat­ing for the Black com­mu­ni­ty; not only that cops esca­late minor infrac­tions or no infrac­tion at all to jus­ti­fy lethal force, but with the bar­bar­ic esca­la­tion of lethal force they use long after the sub­ject of their ire is down or dead.
Here are just a cou­ple of the cas­es of which I refer.
Despite what the Police, their unions, their sup­port­ers, and the com­plic­it cor­po­rate media tell you, these are unmit­i­gat­ed acts of depraved indif­fer­ence to human life.
(1) In the ear­ly hours of February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean stu­dent named Amadou Diallo was gunned down by NYPD cops who fired a hail of 41 bul­lets at him; 19 of those bul­lets hit and killed him. Amadou Diallo had com­mit­ted no crime. Diallo was Black.

(2) On August 9, 2014, police offi­cer Darren Wilson shoots and kills Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenag­er, in Ferguson, Missouri, a sub­urb of St. Louis. Protests and riots ensue in Ferguson and soon spread across the coun­try. Darren Wilson fired 12 shots at Michael Brown, six of which hit and killed him. Michael Brown was Black.

(3 On October 20, 2014, in Chicago, Illinois. Jason Van Dyke, a cop, fired a hail of bul­lets at Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old boy walk­ing down the street alleged­ly with a knife in his hand. The 17-year-old was shot 16 times as he walked away from police. The Chicago Police Department and then Mayor Rahm Emanuel saw the video of the mur­der yet kept it from the pub­lic for over a year until a judge ordered them to release it. Laquan McDonald was Black.

(4) An unarmed Sean Bell was shot and killed in Queens, NY by mem­bers of the New York City Police Department on the morn­ing of November 25, 2006. Sean Bell was mur­dered on the very day he was to mar­ry his fiancé.
The cops fired over 50 bul­lets into Bell’s car, claim­ing they heard some­one say, ‘yo, get my gun,’ as Bell and his friends left a night­club. They also lied that there was a fourth man in Bell’s car who might have fled with the phan­tom gun.
There was no men­tion of a fourth per­son with Sean Bell and his two friends.
New York Daily News colum­nist Juan Gonzalez report­ed that in the hours imme­di­ate­ly after the shoot­ing, there was no men­tion of a fourth man in police calls, and no search was launched for the alleged armed man. Sean Bell was Black.

(5) June 2022 Akron, Ohio Police fired 90 plus bul­lets at a flee­ing 27-year-old Jayland Walker, who they say refused to stop dur­ing a traf­fic stop. Walker was hit with 46 bul­lets, accord­ing to the coroner.
April 2023, a white grand jury returned a no true bill, mean­ing that no cop would be held account­able for the slaugh­ter of Jayland Walker.
Walker was slaugh­tered, but he did not have a gun. Police lat­er claimed that there was a gun in his car, which meant noth­ing, even if he had a gun in his car. He was slaugh­tered with­out a gun in his hand.
Needless to say, Jaylan Walker is Black.

Here is an impor­tant bit of infor­ma­tion that cer­tain politi­cians, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and police do not want you to know the lev­el of force that police use to sub­due a sus­pect should be pro­por­tion­al to the force used by the subject.
A flee­ing sus­pect not shoot­ing at police or some­one else pos­es no risk or dan­ger to police or the pub­lic and, there­fore, can­not be law­ful­ly gunned down by police. Killing a flee­ing per­son is not only unlaw­ful, but it is also bla­tant­ly immoral and a grotesque act of sub-human bloodlust.
Every bul­let fired after that first one that caused a sus­pect to fall to the ground is an act of mur­der. But in America, it has become the norm for a sin­gle Black man to be gunned down by police, sus­tain­ing more bul­lets than it takes to kill a ful­ly grown elephant.
The dis­re­spect­ful thing about it is that they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe we are too stu­pid to see that they have mere­ly switched from wear­ing sheets to mur­der us and have donned police uni­forms to do it.

On the oth­er hand, vio­lent white mass mur­der­er like Dylan Roof was tak­en in alive and fed a fast food lunch by ador­ing cops.
The Buffalo, New York shoot­er Payton Gendron was tak­en alive with no scratch on him.
David Depape was arrest­ed alive after a vio­lent home inva­sion and attack on Paul Pelosi, the hus­band of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Fransisco, California.

A 21-year-old white man is accused of using a Smith & Wesson semi­au­to­mat­ic rifle to kill sev­en peo­ple and injure more than 30 dur­ing a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. A cell­phone video of his arrest shows the con­trolled actions of police fol­low­ing the car­nage to take him into cus­tody safely.

The FBI recent­ly released a report on active shoot­er inci­dents that occurred in 2021, not­ing that the gun­men were killed by police in 14 of the 61 inci­dents. In 30 cas­es, the gun­men were appre­hend­ed — most at anoth­er loca­tion after the shoot­ing — and four of those inci­dents end­ed when armed and unarmed civil­ians engaged with the shoot­er to stop the threat.

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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.
Check out Mike’s Podcast on Youtube @ mikebeckles

Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl shot by an 84-year-old white man after he mis­tak­en­ly went to the man’s house intend­ing to pick up his younger sib­ling brothers.

Ralph Yarl made nation­al head­lines after the teen was shot and wound­ed on April 13 when he rang the door­bell of the wrong house in Kansas City, Missouri.
A par­ent asked the teenag­er to pick up his younger twin siblings.

Ralph had made an error com­mon in Kansas City, dri­ving to a house on Northeast 115^th Street instead of Northeast 115^th Terrace, a block away. He pressed the door­bell and wait­ed out­side the front door for what felt like a long time; he told the police lat­er. Andrew Lester, who had just gone to bed, got up and opened the inside door while hold­ing a revolver, accord­ing to a prob­a­ble cause state­ment from investigators.
Lester told a police offi­cer after the shoot­ing that he saw a Black male “pulling on the exte­ri­or storm door han­dle.” This was one of the few areas of dis­agree­ment: When inter­viewed by a detec­tive, Ralph said he only rang the door­bell and did not pull on the door. 

Within moments, Lester began shoot­ing through the glass of the exte­ri­or storm door; afraid that a break-in was in progress, he told the police. Ralph was shot in the head and then in the arm. “Don’t come around here,” he remem­bers Lester say­ing, accord­ing to a detec­tive. He got up and ran away, try­ing to elude more gun­shots; he told the police. (From the New York Times)

Cheerleaders leav­ing prac­tice were shot after get­ting in wrong car, teen says…

Two Texas cheer­lead­ers were shot, and one of them crit­i­cal­ly injured, ear­ly Tuesday after one girl mis­tak­en­ly got into the wrong car in a gro­cery store park­ing lot.
Police arrest­ed Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, with dead­ly con­duct, a third-degree felony, in what they called “an alter­ca­tion … in the park­ing lot of HEB” in which “mul­ti­ple shots were fired into a vehi­cle.”One of the vic­tims was iden­ti­fied by her coach as Payton Washington, an 18-year-old high school senior and cheer­leader for the Round Rock Independent School District near Austin. Washington “sus­tained seri­ous injuries” when she was shot in the back and one leg, police said. She was trans­port­ed to a hos­pi­tal by heli­copter and is in crit­i­cal condition.
The young women thought they had got­ten into the wrong car, believ­ing they were enter­ing their friend’s car, accord­ing to the reporting. 

After real­iz­ing their mis­take, they exit­ed the car and then went into the right car, upon which Rodriquez approached them, they attempt­ed to apol­o­gize for the mis­take, but he respond­ed with gun­fire. “He pulled out a gun, and then he just start­ed shoot­ing at all of us, one young lady said.

Woman Shot Dead in New York After Pulling Into Wrong Driveway: Police says…

Kaylin Gillis was in a car with three friends look­ing for anoth­er friend’s house in the rur­al area of Hebron, New York, on Saturday night when they mis­tak­en­ly turned down the wrong driveway.
After the vehi­cle had been in the dri­ve­way for a “very short time,” Kevin Monahan came out of the res­i­dence and fired two shots as the group of friends was exit­ing the prop­er­ty, police said. One of the shots struck Gillis.
Monahan has been charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der.

These are only a few of the events that occurred over the last few days in this cul­ture of racial ani­mus and guns. But it rep­re­sents only an infin­i­tes­i­mal and minute per­cent­age of the killings. It does not include the almost dai­ly mass shoot­ings inside church­es and oth­er places of wor­ship, schools, Gyms, night­clubs, movie the­aters, hair salons, Bars, and every­where peo­ple congregate.
This does not include the oth­er shoot­ings that occur each day that are not con­sid­ered mass events.
The polit­i­cal right has said that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That did not help the stu­dents in Uvalde, Texas, as the so-called good guys with the guns and bul­let­proof vests hid while the shoot­er mas­sa­cred tiny children.
Who are the good guys with guns?
Is Kevin Monahan a good guy?
Is Pedro Tello Rodriguez a good guy with a. gun?
What about Andrew Lester? Is he a good guy with a. gun?

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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.
Subscribe to Mike’s Podcast @ Mikebeckles- on Youtube.

In south­east Oklahoma, the sher­iff of McCurtain County, one of his inves­ti­ga­tors and a coun­ty com­mis­sion­er are accused by a news­pa­per of dis­cussing killing a local reporter and lament­ing that mod­ern jus­tice no longer includes hang­ing Black peo­ple. The explo­sive accu­sa­tions were pub­lished this week in the McCurtain Gazette-News. According to the news­pa­per, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, inves­ti­ga­tor Alicia Manning and District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings were part of an impromp­tu dis­cus­sion after the March 6 meet­ing of the coun­ty Board of Commissioners. The Gazette report­ed that it is in pos­ses­sion of the full audio record­ing of the dis­cus­sion. The FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office also have copies of the record­ing, accord­ing to the newspaper.

A por­tion of the audio record­ings was released online over the week­end, and while the audio matched some of the quot­ed mate­r­i­al in the sto­ry, The Oklahoman could not iden­ti­fy who the speak­ers were in the record­ings. None of the alleged­ly record­ed indi­vid­u­als could imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment. Chris Willingham is the reporter for the Gazette who was dis­cussed in the record­ings. He is also the author of the arti­cle. Willingham declined to com­ment on the sto­ry, cit­ing ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion between him­self and the sher­if­f’s office. During the dis­cus­sion, which was record­ed with­out the trio know­ing, the Gazette report­ed Manning say­ing she need­ed to take some pack­ages to a ship­ping cen­ter near the newspaper’s office.

“Oh, you’re talk­ing about you can’t con­trol your­self?” Jennings alleged­ly said. In response, Manning alleged­ly said: “Yeah, I ain’t wor­ried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m wor­ried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his ass, would have wiped him and used him for toi­let paper … if my dad­dy hadn’t been run over by a vehi­cle, he would have been down there.” Jennings replied that his 86-year-old father, in response to an opin­ion pub­lished in the news­pa­per, once “start­ed to go down there and just kill him,” accord­ing to the Gazette. “I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings alleged­ly said. Clardy, the sher­iff, alleged­ly said he had the equip­ment. “I’ve got an exca­va­tor,” Clardy is accused of say­ing dur­ing the discussion.

Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings alleged­ly said. Jennings alleged­ly talked about know­ing hit­men in Louisiana who could “cut no (exple­tive) mer­cy.” A brief dis­cus­sion about assault­ing local judges fol­lowed, accord­ing to the Gazette. Jennings, the com­mis­sion­er, then dis­cussed how many peo­ple might run for sher­iff, accord­ing to the news­pa­per sto­ry. “They don’t have a god­damn clue what they’re get­ting into,” he said. “Not this day and age. I’m going to tell you some­thing — if it was back in the day, when Alan Marston would take a damned Black guy and whoop their (exple­tive) and throw them in the cell, I’d run for (exple­tive) sher­iff.” Clardy respond­ed by say­ing, “Yeah, it’s not like that no more,” the news­pa­per report­ed. Jennings then said Black peo­ple have more rights than oth­ers, accord­ing to the Gazette.

HUNDREDS OF TEXANS con­verged on the cap­i­tal this week to oppose a new state-led secu­ri­ty force that would enlist civil­ians to track and cap­ture undoc­u­ment­ed people.
In a hear­ing that stretched into the wee hours of the morn­ing Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives heard tes­ti­mo­ny from first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dents, undoc­u­ment­ed activists, par­ents, and chil­dren about the inher­ent dan­gers of House Bill 20. The author of the con­tro­ver­sial pro­pos­al, Republican Rep. Matt Schaefer, mean­while, was grilled by his Democratic coun­ter­parts over his bill’s log­i­cal and con­sti­tu­tion­al implications.

In his most exten­sive pub­lic defense of his bill to date, Schaefer, the founder and chair of the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Texas Freedom Caucus, col­lapsed the issues of fen­tanyl over­dos­es and migra­tion, ignor­ing facts and evi­dence to argue that migrants are respon­si­ble for a wave of death and suf­fer­ing that exceeds the worst episodes of nation­al trau­ma in mod­ern American his­to­ry. Pointing to nation­al over­dose sta­tis­tics, he described “a scale of death far greater than Pearl Harbor, the attacks on ⁹⁄₁₁, or the total­i­ty of the Vietnam War.”

“So much fen­tanyl is com­ing across the bor­der, it’s unre­al,” the Texas law­mak­er said before pro­ceed­ing to con­flate and mis­rep­re­sent sev­er­al issues regard­ing migra­tion and drugs.

As fed­er­al offi­cials, bor­der researchers, and jour­nal­ists have doc­u­ment­ed ad nau­se­am, most fen­tanyl ille­gal­ly traf­ficked into the United States comes through U.S. ports of entry, often in vehi­cles dri­ven by U.S. cit­i­zens; accord­ing to U.S. Sentencing Commission data cit­ed in Wednesday’s hear­ing, 86 per­cent of defen­dants con­vict­ed of smug­gling fen­tanyl through ports of entry are U.S. citizens.

Migrants, on the oth­er hand, over­whelm­ing­ly cross the bor­der between ports of entry, thanks to suc­ces­sive bipar­ti­san poli­cies that have made admis­sion at the ports — includ­ing pur­suit of asy­lum claims — all but impos­si­ble. Customs offi­cers who work the ports where most of the drugs are cross­ing are dis­tinct from the Border Patrol agents who work between them, under­min­ing a cen­tral argu­ment Schaefer made that Mexican orga­nized crime uses migrants to pull away U.S. offi­cials who would oth­er­wise be inter­cept­ing drug flows.

“Many of them are com­ing here just for a bet­ter life and make won­der­ful neigh­bors,” Schaefer said of the migrants them­selves, but “some of them are crim­i­nals — rapists, gang mem­bers, MS-13.” To address the threat, Schaefer has pro­posed the “Border Protection Unit,” a new secu­ri­ty force com­posed of law enforce­ment per­son­nel and pri­vate indi­vid­u­als alike, answer­ing direct­ly to the gov­er­nor in a mis­sion to “arrest, detain, and deter indi­vid­u­als cross­ing the border.”Read the full sto­ry here: https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​4​/​1​4​/​h​u​n​d​r​e​d​s​-​t​u​r​n​-​o​u​t​-​t​o​-​d​e​n​o​u​n​c​e​-​t​e​x​a​s​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​v​i​g​i​l​a​n​t​e​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​s​q​u​a​d​s​-​p​o​l​i​cy/

FBI agents dis­cov­ered the texts last month after search­ing the res­i­dences and seiz­ing the phones of sev­er­al Antioch offi­cers amid a probe into alle­ga­tions of fraud, bribery, drug dis­tri­b­u­tion and civ­il rights breaches.
The names of 17 California-based police offi­cers sus­pect­ed of using racist epi­thets, jokes and memes in text con­ver­sa­tions are now pub­lic information.
According to the East Bay Times, Contra Costa County Judge Clare Maier issued a warn­ing before dis­clos­ing the names, say­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions’ foul nature could “incite fur­ther hate or racial animus.”
However, she con­tend­ed that the California evi­dence code should not be used to pro­tect infor­ma­tion about the texts, includ­ing the Antioch police offi­cers’ iden­ti­ties. Maier said the inflam­ma­to­ry com­mu­ni­ca­tions start­ed in September 2019 and con­tin­ued until January 2022, when FBI agents seized the offi­cers’ phones and oth­er items.

“I’ve had my eye on Antioch for a long time,” civ­il rights attor­ney Adante Pointer said Friday, accord­ing to the Times. “This is proof-pos­i­tive what peo­ple who have been watch­ing Antioch already knew — that it is full of offi­cers who do not deserve to wear the badge.” The ros­ter of embat­tled offi­cers includes Rick Hoffman, the head of the Antioch Police Association. Hoffman — who has fre­quent­ly crit­i­cized Antioch may­or and police reform advo­cate Lamar Thorpe — is one of at least eight Antioch offi­cers on leave because of the texts. Six oth­er offi­cers whose alleged crim­i­nal activ­i­ty is already being looked at by the FBI — Devon Wenger, Eric Rombough, Andrea Rodriguez, Calvin Prieto, Morteza Amiri and Tim Manly, who has resigned — are also list­ed. While Maier did not spec­i­fy what each offi­cer sent out, she described the mes­sages as “deeply dis­turb­ing” and direct­ed toward “mem­bers of the Black and Hispanic community.”
Investigators accused Rombough, Manly and fel­low offi­cers Jonathan Adams, Scott Duggar, Joshua Evans, Robert Gerber, Brock Marcotte and Thomas Smith of men­tion­ing four alleged Oakland-based ENT gang mem­bers in texts sent over a 10-day peri­od in March 2021, when Antioch police were eaves­drop­ping on the sus­pects’ phones.

Contra Costa County courts will deter­mine whether or not the mes­sages are suf­fi­cient grounds for drop­ping any charges lodged against peo­ple the offi­cers were inves­ti­gat­ing. That includes any­one the offi­cers men­tioned explic­it­ly in the texts and any Black or Latino per­son inves­ti­gat­ed or detained, since they might claim they faced dis­crim­i­na­tion because of their race.
“It’s no won­der why the pub­lic has lost faith in law enforce­ment,” said Pointer, the Times report­ed, “and why we see Black and Brown peo­ple over­rep­re­sent­ed in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem when the peo­ple admin­is­ter­ing it are racist.”
The evi­dence will like­ly reap­pear in oth­er crim­i­nal tri­als involv­ing those par­tic­u­lar police offi­cers and the oth­er law­men Maier men­tioned: Aaron Hughes, Brayton Milner, John Ramirez and Kyle Smith.
The FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of fraud, bribery, drug dis­tri­b­u­tion and breach­es of civ­il rights linked to using force with­in the Antioch and Pittsburg police depart­ments. The agency dis­cov­ered the offi­cers’ texts last month after exe­cut­ing search war­rants at the res­i­dences of sev­er­al offi­cers, arriv­ing at the police sta­tion to con­fis­cate phones and oth­er per­son­al belongings.

Michael Rains, the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Antioch police offi­cers, said he hadn’t received any text mes­sages and is unaware of their alleged con­tent. Racial con­flict has been sim­mer­ing for years in the north­ern California city of about 100,000 peo­ple as gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in the west­ern Bay Area uproot­ed San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond res­i­dents and moved them into the deep East Bay. Antioch had a 65 per­cent white pop­u­la­tion in 2000. According to cen­sus data, the Black pop­u­la­tion has expand­ed from 10 to 20 per­cent dur­ing the past two decades, notes the Times, while white inhab­i­tants account for 39 per­cent, and Latinos or Hispanics make up 34.5 per­cent of the city’s residents.
According to Mayor Thorpe, Antioch’s police depart­ment would “absolute­ly” face staffing chal­lenges because of the num­ber of offi­cers now on leave. “But if that’s what they’re doing (mak­ing racist and homo­pho­bic texts),” he said, “I don’t want them here.”

.….….…

This is white mass mur­der­er Connor Sturgeon who mas­sa­cred five (5) peo­ple and wound­ed nine (9) oth­ers at a bank on Monday in a shoot­ing ram­page in Louisville, Kentucky while live-stream­ing the attack.

This cold barefaced mass killer is being san­i­tized across the cor­po­rate media as a vic­tim who has had mul­ti­ple con­cus­sions; one pub­li­ca­tion intro­duced him as a grad­u­ate of the University of Alabama.
Who the f**k cares?
The pub­li­ca­tion went on to posit that the mass mur­der­er has a mas­ter of sci­ence degree from the same university.
Sturgeon had learned he was going to be fired from the bank and wrote a note for his par­ents and a friend that he was going to car­ry out a shoot­ing at the bank, CNN reported.
It seems to me like he was a reg­u­lar­ly dis­grun­tled work­er who was mad he was about to be let go and decid­ed to go postal on his col­leagues. What does his bona fides have to do with him car­ry­ing out this bar­bar­ic act?
To add insult to injury, he left a note to his par­ents and a friend telling them of his mali­cious intent. That goes to pre­med­i­ta­tion or mens re.a , guilty mind. Livestreaming his ram­page was icing on the cake.
Neither his for­mal edu­ca­tion nor sports injury should be men­tioned in this sav­age’s onslaught snuff­ing out inno­cent lives.

.…

Murderers are mur­der­ers, regard­less of their skin col­or. We will not accept attempts to white-wash the bar­barism inher­ent in white mass mur­der­ers being per­pet­u­at­ed by the whol­ly owned white cor­po­rate media.
I will not stand in defense of black killers, nor will I stand in agree­ment with the san­i­tiz­ing of white ones.
Black men who com­mit mur­ders are char­ac­ter­ized as thugs and ani­mals. If a black man who kills a sin­gle per­son is a thug and ani­mal, what is the def­i­n­i­tion of a white man who does worse by tak­ing more lives?
The con­tin­ued bom­bard­ment of our psy­che by the fas­cist white pow­er struc­ture through the cor­rupt cor­po­rate media has gone on for too long. We no longer accept the implic­it bias­es fed to us; we are quite capa­ble of think­ing for ourselves.
The right-wing attacks on social media apps like Tik Tok, sup­port­ed by some in the Democrat par­ty, are all about get­ting back con­trol of the minds of the peo­ple and pro­hibit­ing the peo­ple from get­ting infor­ma­tion to each oth­er with­out government/​corporate input.
It is anoth­er attack on ‘woke’ some­thing they are des­per­ate­ly afraid of, black peo­ple begin­ning to think for themselves.
Well, at least a few of us.

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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 way-over­board freak­out response of the Republican super­ma­jor­i­ty in that body was dwarfed only by the con­de­scend­ing and racist respons­es of the indi­vid­ual mem­bers of that body as they fired off ques­tions, made alle­ga­tions, and talked down to the two young elect­ed offi­cials who were their equal.
The con­de­scen­sion and the racist snarls were sim­i­lar only to the white race sol­diers who dou­ble as police offi­cers when they encounter young black men on America’s streets. The Republican lynch mob all but for­got they were talk­ing to two intel­li­gent, high­ly com­pe­tent young men in 2023, not two young men they intend­ed to lynch after church ser­vice in bygone years.
The bla­tant Racism, Xenophobia, Transphobia, Islamaphobia, and Homophobia unearthed across the United States is symp­to­matic of a dying rat­tlesnake that is still dan­ger­ous even with its head chopped off.
Book ban­ning, stop­ping peo­ple from vot­ing, chang­ing school and col­lege cur­ric­u­la, and killing peo­ple who do not look like them is a los­ing strat­e­gy long-term.
This regres­sive strat­e­gy by the polit­i­cal right gains its sus­te­nance from the con­tin­ued pas­siv­i­ty and dis­in­ter­est of 41.6 mil­lion Black peo­ple in the United States. Coupled with their over one tril­lion dol­lar spend­ing pow­er annually.
No oth­er eth­nic group with that much pow­er would tol­er­ate what is dished out to African-Americans dai­ly, yet this sleep­ing giant seems to be more inter­est­ed in per­pet­u­al victimhood.

Some have been so bru­tal­ized and beat­en down, bat­tered and bruised, that they have thrown in their lot with the tor­menters. How else would you char­ac­ter­ize the likes of Clarence Tom-Ass, the coon­ing Tim Scott, or even the sor­ri­ly igno­rant Herschel Walker, or the bed-wench Candace Owens?
Stockholm syndrome?
Maybe!!!
Or, maybe some peo­ple were real­ly cre­at­ed to be door­mats, regard­less of where grov­el­ing gets them for sell­ing their souls. Placing a door­mat on your fan­cy din­ing table and claim­ing it is a beau­ti­ful table­cloth does not change the fact it is a dirty doormat.
There is talk that both young men will be returned to their elect­ed posts. We will await the out­come of that. In the mean­time, I hope peo­ple are wak­ing up to the real­i­ty that they need to get up, go out, and vote in all elec­tions. African-Americans have a habit of only vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in appro­pri­ate num­bers. Those who toiled were bat­tered and bruised to give them the right to vote should nev­er die in vain because you are too lazy and igno­rant to go out and vote.
The super­ma­jor­i­ty in the Tennessee state­house may be attrib­ut­able to peo­ple not going out to vote, even though ger­ry­man­der­ing and vot­er sup­pres­sion are also par­tial­ly responsible.
The Republican par­ty will stop at noth­ing to retain white suprema­cy, which includes over­throw­ing the duly con­sti­tut­ed gov­ern­men­tal order of the United States.
January 6^th, 2021 was prece­dent; they may not fail on the next attempt.

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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.

On Friday, a Trump-appoint­ed Federal Judge in the state of Texas, Matthew Kacsmarryk, halt­ed the Food &Drug Administration’s approval of the Abortion pill mifepristone.
The deci­sion was expect­ed for weeks, and so was the deci­sion hand­ed down by the right winger. Following in line with the deci­sion of the right-wingers on the Supreme Court who struck down the almost five decades old Rove V Wade deci­sion that legal­ized a wom­an’s right to choose on Friday, June 24, 2022.

In this fight in which the Republican par­ty and its caved-welling sup­port­ers believe they have a right to dic­tate to peo­ple what to do with their own bod­ies, among oth­er things, I have an idea.
The major­i­ty of the American peo­ple believe that Roe V Wade was improp­er­ly struck down. Yet, the right-wing cabal on the Supreme Court upend­ed almost five decades of prece­dent most Americans alive have enjoyed.
This was the unelect­ed body tak­ing away rights, some­thing the court should be restor­ing to the American people.
That said, how about the women who love dic­ta­tor­ship live in the red states where white men get to con­trol their bod­ies, deter­mine how they spend the wealth their fathers leave them as it was in times past and con­trol all aspects of their lives?
Oh, and while we are at it, how about they are not allowed into Democratic-run states for any reason?
I believe most peo­ple liv­ing in California, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Washington State, and oth­er Democrat-run states would have no prob­lem not vis­it­ing those red states, now ver­i­ta­ble mini dictatorships.
Sounds unreasonable?
Well, so is the idea of a group of peo­ple in the minor­i­ty deter­min­ing how the major­i­ty live their lives.

By Jayla Withfield-

The com­plaint comes months after the Justice Department announced an inves­ti­ga­tion into the police depart­men­t’s employ­ment practices.

A 21-year vet­er­an of the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department filed a law­suit last month against the agency, alleg­ing that he was forced to meet ille­gal tick­et quo­tas and tar­get minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. The com­plaint came months after the Department of Justice announced an inves­ti­ga­tion into the police department’s employ­ment prac­tices and alleged dis­crim­i­na­tion against Black offi­cers. Edward Williams, a white man, alleges that over the last sev­en years, the depart­ment has threat­ened to demote offi­cers to the overnight shift if they didn’t ful­fill tick­et quo­tas. “When I first was con­tact­ed in regards to this mat­ter, I had to look into it, because I didn’t know that tick­et quo­tas were not legal,” Gerald Gray, Williams’s attor­ney, told Yahoo News. Ticket quo­tas have been ille­gal in Missouri since August 2016. The law states: “No polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion or law enforce­ment agency shall have a pol­i­cy requir­ing or encour­ag­ing an employ­ee to issue a cer­tain num­ber of cita­tions for traf­fic vio­la­tions on a dai­ly, week­ly, month­ly, quar­ter­ly, year­ly, or anoth­er quo­ta basis.” “But even with these laws in place, there’s either sub­tle or overt tick­et quo­tas that are occur­ring all the time,” Jay Beeber, direc­tor of pol­i­cy and research at the National Motorists Association, told Yahoo News.

According to Williams’s law­suit, KCPD sergeants ranked offi­cers by their tick­et counts and rep­ri­mand­ed offi­cers with low tick­et num­bers by tak­ing away their duties and ben­e­fits and giv­ing them unsat­is­fac­to­ry marks on eval­u­a­tions. While tick­et quo­tas are ille­gal in sev­er­al states, Beeber says, they still exist behind closed doors because of the rev­enue they bring in. “There are lots of exam­ples around the coun­try where a lot of [cities’] bud­get comes from tick­ets, and so for their offi­cers, that’s their main job,” Beeber said. In 2016, Kansas City police wrote approx­i­mate­ly 18,000 traf­fic tick­ets each month. From 2021 to 2022, Kansas City’s bud­get includ­ed $6.6 mil­lion from traf­fic vio­la­tions. The Kansas City Star report­ed that “a drop of 25% would cost the city more than $1.6 mil­lion in rev­enue.” Other cities also use tick­et­ing to fund their bud­gets. For instance, in Chicago, tick­et­ing brought in near­ly $264 mil­lion in 2016, adding up to about 7% of the city’s oper­at­ing bud­get. And experts say tick­et quo­tas hit mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties the hard­est. “They are cre­at­ing a huge finan­cial bur­den in these com­mu­ni­ties,” Beeber said.

In Missouri, Black peo­ple make up only 11% of the pop­u­la­tion, but they “are sub­ject­ed to more than 42% of traf­fic stops. In con­trast, white peo­ple in Missouri make up 80% of the state’s pop­u­la­tion and account for less than 25% of all traf­fic stops,” Tom Bastian, deputy direc­tor for com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the ACLU of Missouri, told Yahoo News. According to legal experts, Missourians have been con­cerned with bias in traf­fic enforce­ment for decades. In 2000, the state passed a law that cre­at­ed the annu­al Vehicle Stops Report to track dis­par­i­ties in who is pulled over by police. In 2021, a report found that Black dri­vers were pulled over at a high­er rate than white dri­vers. “Part of that is a socioe­co­nom­ic thing; those neigh­bor­hoods tend to be poor,” Benjamin Easter, a Kansas City crim­i­nal defense lawyer, told Yahoo News. “And so peo­ple are going to have cars with more things wrong with them. They’re going to have more reg­is­tra­tion issues with their car, etc.”

But Easter says the root of the prob­lem is that police in Kansas City aren’t account­able to the local res­i­dents. While most cities con­trol their police depart­ments, the KCPD is run by a five-mem­ber board of police com­mis­sion­ers, four of whom are appoint­ed by the Missouri gov­er­nor and one of whom is the may­or. “This is just anoth­er strong case [for] why we need local con­trol of the police here in Kansas City. The police chief and the local police are appoint­ed by the state com­mit­tee rather than a local enti­ty,” Easter said. Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves denied Williams’s alle­ga­tions in a state­ment released on March 22. “Our depart­ment is ded­i­cat­ed to polic­ing that is both equi­table and fair in all aspects of our duties. We do not direct enforce­ment activ­i­ties based on demo­graph­ics. We do direct traf­fic enforce­ment in high crash loca­tions as well as cit­i­zen traf­fic com­plaint loca­tions,” Graves said. “I find these alle­ga­tions very con­cern­ing and will imme­di­ate­ly ensure the Traffic Division is remind­ed to oper­ate and enforce laws appro­pri­ate­ly.” But legal experts say tick­et quo­tas are not uncom­mon in the U.S., and they doubt things will change any­time soon. “I per­son­al­ly have a hard time believ­ing that [ille­gal tick­et quo­tas are] going to stop with­out some dras­tic change in lead­er­ship at the Kansas City Police Department,” Spencer Webster, a local attor­ney, told Yahoo News. Williams is request­ing a tri­al by jury and seek­ing mul­ti­ple damages.

The fed­er­al law­suit over the con­tro­ver­sial 2019 police killing of Danquirs Franklin out­side a Burger King in west Charlotte may be heard by a jury after all. In a pow­er­ful and unan­i­mous rever­sal Tuesday, three judges from the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals over­turned a low­er court deci­sion in Charlotte last year that grant­ed immu­ni­ty to Wende Kerl, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg offi­cer who fatal­ly shot Franklin. In his November 2022 deci­sion to dis­miss the com­plaint filed by Franklin’s moth­er, Deborah, Senior U.S. District Judge Graham Mullen said Kerl like­ly made a mis­take when she fatal­ly shot Franklin on March 25, 2019. “But because a court must not judge (police actions) with the ‘20÷20 vision of hind­sight,’ the ques­tion is whether Officer Kerl’s mis­take in shoot­ing Franklin was rea­son­able. The answer is yes,” Mullen wrote.

Likewise, the appeals court cit­ed Kerl for errors in how she and a fel­low offi­cer respond­ed to the call at the Burger King four years ago. Unlike Mullen, how­ev­er, the three judges from the country’s sec­ond-high­est court said those errors were so seri­ous that they dis­qual­i­fied Kerl from receiv­ing the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty that Mullen had grant­ed.“It is not lost on us that we issue this deci­sion from the calm of a cour­t­house,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote. “In mak­ing our deci­sion, we have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to replay the unfor­tu­nate events of that March 2019 morn­ing. Unlike us, Officer Kerl could not press pause or rewind before deter­min­ing whether Franklin posed an immi­nent threat. “Still, we remain res­olute that qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty is not appro­pri­ate for the dis­po­si­tion of this case. The offi­cers rushed head­long onto a scene that had sub­sided, estab­lished no dia­logue, and shout­ed at Franklin loud­ly enough that they did not hear him try to com­mu­ni­cate back.

“In their zeal to dis­arm Franklin, it hard­ly occurred to the offi­cers that their com­mands defied real­i­ty. As a result, Franklin faced a catch-22: obey and risk death or dis­obey and risk death. “These facts enti­tle a jury of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to decide whether Officer Kerl shot Franklin unlaw­ful­ly.” Deborah Franklin’s attor­ney, Luke Largess of Charlotte, wel­comed the rul­ing. “We are very grate­ful for the deci­sion and hope we can get the mat­ter resolved or have a tri­al if we can­not,” he said in an email to The Charlotte Observer. Lori Keeton, who rep­re­sents Kerl, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond Tuesday to an email seek­ing com­ment. While the opin­ion upheld Mullen’s deci­sion to throw out one of Deborah Franklin’s claims against the City of Charlotte, it restored the claims against the city for neg­li­gence and wrong­ful death. Lawrence Coley, a spokesman for the City of Charlotte, told the Observer in an email that the city does not pub­licly com­ment on pend­ing legal mat­ters. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the appel­late pan­el found that “a rea­son­able jury could con­clude that Franklin did not pose an immi­nent threat to the offi­cers or any­one else. “Under those cir­cum­stances, we con­clude that Officer Kerl vio­lat­ed the Fourth Amendment.”

Qualified immunity

The appeals court deci­sion reopens one of Charlotte’s most con­tro­ver­sial police shoot­ings. It also returns the city to a nation­wide debate over the broad court pro­tec­tions afford­ed police use of dead­ly force. By law — and based large­ly on a Supreme Court rul­ing in a Charlotte case — police can use their firearms when they face a “rea­son­able” threat of death or seri­ous injury, a high­ly sub­jec­tive stan­dard at times. In August, for one exam­ple, the Cabarrus County District Attorney’s Office declined to pros­e­cute a for­mer Concord police offi­cer, find­ing that Timothy Larson act­ed rea­son­ably and with­in the law when he shot an unarmed man behind the wheel of Larson’s patrol vehi­cle four times in February 2022. Larson called his depart­ment to report the inci­dent, then opened fire again. Nonetheless, the appeals court’s deci­sion Tuesday placed lim­its on the use of “qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty,” a legal prin­ci­ple that grants police and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the com­plaints can show that the offi­cials vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.”

Supporters say the prin­ci­ple rec­og­nizes the volatile, life-or-death nature of police work. Critics con­tend that some courts have used qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty as an over­ly broad shield against police law­suits. While he joined the deci­sion to revive the Franklin law­suit, Fourth Circuit Judge Harvey Wilkinson, a con­ser­v­a­tive legal icon, also vouched for qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, describ­ing it as a “ten­able com­pro­mise” between the “reac­tive” dynam­ics of police work vs. the delib­er­a­tions of the courts. “The chance to delib­er­ate, though essen­tial, brings with it the temp­ta­tion to sec­ond-guess,” Wilkinson wrote in his con­cur­ring opin­ion. “Qualified Immunity places a brake upon the judg­ment that days and hours may impose upon min­utes and sec­onds, thus assur­ing that the dif­fer­ent rhythms of the cham­bers and the street may be fruit­ful­ly rec­on­ciled.” The Franklin case was one of three law­suits aris­ing from con­tro­ver­sial police shoot­ings that were dis­missed by Charlotte fed­er­al judges in the past year before they could be heard by a jury. In the oth­er two law­suits, the judges ruled that police offi­cers act­ed rea­son­ably in fatal­ly shoot­ing Ruben Galindo of Charlotte and wound­ing Timothy Caraway of Pineville. Both cas­es have been appealed to the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.

‘In a blink’

The Franklin shoot­ing divid­ed the city. District Attorney Spencer Merriweather declined to pros­e­cute Kerl, say­ing in August 2019 that he couldn’t prove that the offi­cer had been unrea­son­able in view­ing Franklin as a poten­tial dead­ly threat. However, the city’s Citizen Review Board, for only the sec­ond time in its 23-year his­to­ry, went against the police department’s deci­sion not to dis­ci­pline Kerl. “CMPD clear­ly erred in find­ing the Franklin shoot­ing jus­ti­fied,” board chair Tonya Jameson said at the time. The dead­ly con­fronta­tion on March 25, 2019, arose after an enraged and errat­ic Franklin stormed into the Burger King that morn­ing search­ing for the new boyfriend of the moth­er of Franklin’s chil­dren. Franklin, bran­dish­ing his pis­tol, chased the boyfriend out a kitchen door. Later, he pushed his for­mer girl­friend to the ground and punched the glass of the front door, cry­ing out in anger. Kerl and Officer Larry Deal answered the 911 call in sep­a­rate cars. By the time they arrived, accord­ing to the law­suit, Franklin had calmed down, cry­ing and pray­ing in the park­ing lot with the restau­rant gen­er­al man­ag­er, who was sit­ting in his car as Franklin squat­ted near­by. Deal arrived at the scene, angled his car, hid behind the driver’s door and yelled at Franklin to show his hands.

Kerl walked in front of Deal’s car, leav­ing her­self ful­ly exposed, and point­ed her gun at Franklin. Both offi­cers yelled repeat­ed­ly for Franklin to drop his weapon, which was not exposed at the time. Kerl’s body cam­era video showed Franklin slow­ly pulling the gun from his jack­et, point­ing the bar­rel away from the offi­cers while he low­ered the weapon to the ground. Kerl fired twice. Franklin, mor­tal­ly wound­ed, looked at Kerl in appar­ent dis­be­lief. “You told me to …” he said. In its rul­ing, the appel­late judges ruled that Kerl and Deal reignit­ed what had been a de-esca­lat­ing inci­dent. “Watching the events unfold, one can­not help notic­ing that the inten­si­ty of the sit­u­a­tion emanat­ed not from Franklin, but from the vol­ume and vig­or of the officer’s com­mands,” Gregory wrote. “Officer Kerl expect­ed to con­front a gun-wield­ing man threat­en­ing the pub­lic. Instead, she encoun­tered Danquirs Franklin, crouch­ing qui­et­ly and dis­turb­ing no one … Even so, for forty-three sec­onds the offi­cers shout­ed unremit­tent com­mands to drop a weapon no one could see. “As Franklin retrieved a firearm from inside his jack­et and it fell to the ground, Officer Kerl shot Franklin twice. “In a blink, Franklin was dead.”(from yahoo)

This sto­ry appeared @Yahoonews today. This case exem­pli­fies why the Fascist Republican par­ty con­tin­ues to push for states’ rights as they try to demo­nize the fed­er­al Government.
The idea is to con­tin­ue the sys­tem of oppres­sion and abuse that the United States has engaged in since the start of the Republic. More impor­tant­ly, the sto­ry speaks to the unchecked pow­er placed in the hands of police to make deci­sions they are not qual­i­fied to make but deci­sions that are extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to peo­ple they want to use the col­or of the law to oppress.

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A Georgia cou­ple say they are grap­pling with “inde­scrib­able pain” of los­ing cus­tody of their five chil­dren — ages 7, 6, 3, 2 and 4 months — after a traf­fic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol that civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions have called “tar­get­ed.”

“I’m used to wak­ing up every two to three hours to breast­feed or when it’s time to go to school, wak­ing the kids up, going to school, going to the bus stop. We alter­nate,” Bianca Clayborne, the moth­er of the chil­dren, told Yahoo News. “When it’s time to come from school, we see the bus. It’s painful because our kids are not com­ing off the bus.”

More than a month ago, on Feb. 17, a Tennessee state troop­er pulled over Deonte Williams, the chil­dren’s father, for an alleged traf­fic vio­la­tion. The fam­i­ly had been trav­el­ing from their home near Atlanta to Chicago for a relative’s funer­al. Police say that he was stopped because he had dark-tint­ed win­dows and was dri­ving in a left lane with­out active­ly pass­ing. The state troop­er searched the car after say­ing they smelled mar­i­jua­na and claimed to have found five grams of it. The troop­er arrest­ed Williams, while Clayborne was cit­ed and released.

According to court records, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services approached Clayborne’s car in the park­ing lot of the Coffee County Justice Center where she fol­lowed Williams after he was arrest­ed. They tried, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to get the moth­er to sub­mit a urine test while she wait­ed with her chil­dren in the park­ing lot.

“The moth­er became very defi­ant and locked her­self and the chil­dren in the vehi­cle,” court records stat­ed. “Officer Crabtree then placed spike strips around the vehi­cle so the moth­er would not leave the premises.”

Hours lat­er, as Clayborne was sit­ting down at the jus­tice cen­ter wait­ing for Williams’s release, DCS per­son­nel approached her and removed her chil­dren. The agency says that the chil­dren were “depen­dent and neglect­ed” and there was “no less dras­tic alter­na­tive to removal available.”

Court records from Coffee County show that the cou­ple was charged with sim­ple pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, a mis­de­meanor in Tennessee, on Feb. 21.

According to the Tennessee Lookout, the par­ents were asked to sub­mit urine drug tests when they appeared before a Coffee County juve­nile judge. Williams test­ed pos­i­tive for THC, the active ingre­di­ent in mar­i­jua­na, on a urine drug screen admin­is­tered Feb. 23. Clayborne test­ed neg­a­tive for THC.

The agency then amend­ed their claim on Feb. 24, claim­ing the chil­dren should be deemed “severe­ly abused” after results of a rapid hair fol­li­cle test came back pos­i­tive from both par­ents for metham­phet­a­mines, oxy­codone and fen­tanyl. Clayborne and Williams have denied the use of those drugs. A Coffee County court admin­is­tra­tor told the Lookout that rapid hair fol­li­cle tests are inad­mis­si­ble in court. One expert said that the tests can be unre­li­able, and the fact that court staff are not trained lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cians can lead to “too many false positives.”Read the full sto­ry here.https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​p​a​r​e​n​t​s​-​p​l​e​a​d​-​f​o​r​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​k​i​d​s​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​c​h​i​l​d​r​e​n​-​t​a​k​e​n​-​i​n​t​o​-​c​u​s​t​o​d​y​-​d​u​r​i​n​g​-​t​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​s​t​o​p​-​0​9​0​0​0​5​9​9​2​.​h​tml

By Trevor Aaronson

April Rogers, left, a police offi­cer who went under­cov­er for the FBI in the Colorado Springs activist com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a hous­ing-rights march dur­ing which sev­er­al activists were arrest­ed. Photo cour­tesy of Chinook Center.

Rogers began vol­un­teer­ing reg­u­lar­ly to help with admin­is­tra­tive tasks. Several orga­ni­za­tions used the Chinook Center as an office, includ­ing a local ten­ants’ union and a group that orga­nized racial jus­tice demon­stra­tions, and Rogers had access to their mem­ber­ship records and email accounts. Christiansen didn’t know that Rogers, rifling through var­i­ous files, was feed­ing infor­ma­tion to the FBI.

For a year, Rogers went unno­ticed as she spied on activists from the inside.

On July 31, 2021, the Chinook Center activists orga­nized a hous­ing rights ral­ly to coin­cide with the city’s 150^th-anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. Rogers and oth­er demon­stra­tors marched down the city’s streets, many car­ry­ing “Rent Is Theft” signs and wear­ing red shirts that read “Housing Is a Human Right.”

The activists did not know that Colorado Springs police, work­ing with the FBI, planned to arrest sev­er­al of them that day.

In body-cam­era footage, Colorado Springs police Officer Scott Alamo revealed an intel­li­gence report filled with pic­tures of local activists tak­en from social media. Credit: Colorado Springs Police Department.

“Boot to the Face”

Sitting in a police cruis­er, Officer Scott Alamo wait­ed for the pro­test­ers. His body cam­era record­ed him talk­ing to oth­er offi­cers in the car.

“Well, boys,” Alamo said. “We sit, we wait, we get paid.”

Alamo pulled out a report with pic­tures of the activists they intend­ed to arrest. The report, which Alamo acci­den­tal­ly revealed on his body cam­era, appeared to be a prod­uct of an FBI pro­gram known as Social Media Exploitation, or SOMEX, which allows the FBI and local police to mine social media for infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual Americans with­out war­rants. The pho­tos in the report weren’t mugshots; they were images from social media, includ­ing Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Internal records obtained by The Intercept last year revealed that the FBI and the Chicago Police Department used SOMEX to col­lect infor­ma­tion about racial jus­tice demon­stra­tors in that city. Additional doc­u­ments obtained by the nation­al secu­ri­ty-ori­ent­ed trans­paren­cy non­prof­it Property of the People show that the FBI mon­i­tored social media activ­i­ty, includ­ing Twitter posts and Facebook event pages, of racial jus­tice activists in Washington, D.C., and Seattle. These inter­nal doc­u­ments also revealed that the FBI want­ed to keep its social media activ­i­ty secret. One doc­u­ment described the FBI’s need for new soft­ware solu­tions that could pro­vide more inva­sive data min­ing of social media while main­tain­ing “the low­est dig­i­tal footprint.”

As Alamo looked at the SOMEX report, he focused on a pho­to of Jon Christiansen tak­en from one of his social media profiles.

“Professor?” Alamo asked his col­leagues in the car, refer­ring to Christiansen’s posi­tion as a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at a local col­lege. He con­tin­ued flip­ping through the report. “Boot to the face,” Alamo announced glee­ful­ly. “It’s going to happen.”

And it did. More than a dozen cops stormed into the hous­ing march look­ing for activists whose pho­tos they’d seen, includ­ing Christiansen and Johnson, the man who’d got­ten into the alter­ca­tion at the demon­stra­tion a year earlier.

Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, an activist and Colorado-based staffer for Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet at the time, was walk­ing her bike just beyond the mêlée. “And I see what I thought was a bunch of cops dog-piled on the entire crowd,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Holy shit, they’re com­ing for every­body, then? What the fuck?’ Just shell-shocked.”

As she turned around, Armendariz Unzueta saw a police offi­cer dressed in riot gear charg­ing toward her. Her fight-or-flight response kicked in. Another officer’s body cam­era cap­tured the encounter.

“I just threw my bike down and was like, ‘Bitch, you’re com­ing for me?’” Armendariz Unzueta said. “That’s the hon­est truth.”

The bike’s bell gave off a short ring as it hit the con­crete, land­ing between Armendariz Unzueta and the charg­ing offi­cer. The bike did not touch the offi­cer, who side­stepped it and con­tin­ued toward the crowd of demonstrators.

“I just react­ed,” Armendariz Unzueta told me.

Armendariz Unzueta was wear­ing a bike hel­met, over­sized sun­glass­es, and a face mask, mak­ing her dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy from the video. But police, work­ing with the FBI, knew where to look — no war­rant need­ed — for their most-want­ed cyclist: social media.

“Sometimes You’ve Got to Laugh to Keep From Crying”

A Colorado Springs detec­tive assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force start­ed look­ing for the mys­te­ri­ous masked woman with the bicy­cle. Daniel Summey pulled up the social media accounts of known Chinook Center activists and then searched their friends lists. From there, Summey found Armendariz Unzueta’s accounts, includ­ing pho­tos in which she wore the same shoes and hel­met that could be seen in the police body-cam­era footage.

“I Never Saw Any Grenades”

Rogers, mean­while, began to invite young male activists to her apart­ment. In a record­ing I obtained, an FBI agent in Colorado Springs con­firmed that meet­ings between Rogers and at least two activists occurred. Although the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sex­u­al encounter appeared to be implic­it in the invi­ta­tions, the meet­ings took unex­pect­ed turns.

One of the activists lured to a meet­ing with Rogers described walk­ing into the apart­ment. “And there’s two guys sit­ting there with her,” he said. The activist asked not to be iden­ti­fied because he feared that being pub­licly asso­ci­at­ed with an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion could cost him his job.

Rogers asked if he could find her an ille­gal gun to buy, the activist recalled. “I’m not going to sell one to you ille­gal­ly,” the activist, a firearms enthu­si­ast, told Rogers and her two com­pan­ions. He then left.

Rogers invit­ed over a sec­ond man, Gabriel Palcic, who was active in the ten­ants’ union that kept its paper­work at the Chinook Center. Like the first activist, Palcic entered the apart­ment to find two men with Rogers. They said their names were Mike and Omar. “Mike was miss­ing his left leg from the knee down. Omar was kind of a Middle Eastern-look­ing guy with a big beard,” Palcic told me. “Both had tat­toos. Both were very buff.”

Palcic said Mike and Omar claimed to be truck­ers who traf­ficked in ille­gal weapons. They told him they could get grenades, TNT, and AK-47s, and they asked if he want­ed to buy anything.

Intrigued, Palcic met Mike and Omar sev­er­al more times; dur­ing one encounter, they showed Palcic what they claimed was a ful­ly auto­mat­ic AK-47. “I nev­er saw any grenades or TNT or any of that oth­er shit they were talk­ing about,” Palcic told me.

Palcic con­tin­ued to hang around with Mike and Omar because they were gen­er­ous, buy­ing him meals, drinks, and cig­ars when they met. “There were a few times where they were obvi­ous­ly pump­ing drinks into me,” Palcic remem­bered. “‘Yeah, do you want anoth­er dou­ble shot of that 16-year Scotch?’”

But Palcic even­tu­al­ly told the two men he didn’t want any weapons and stopped return­ing their calls and text mes­sages. Palcic has not been charged with a crime, accord­ing to pub­licly avail­able court records.

Not long after, Armendariz Unzueta, the woman accused of assault­ing a police offi­cer with her bike, was grant­ed access to the evi­dence in her case, which includ­ed police body-cam­era video from the day of the inci­dent. Among the footage was the record­ing from Alamo’s body cam­era, which cap­tured the offi­cer flip­ping through the report filled with social media pho­tos of activists.

Alamo’s body cam­era cap­tured some­thing else that day. In the record­ing, he men­tioned that there were police offi­cers secret­ly among the pro­test­ers at the hous­ing march. He said there were two under­cov­er cops and four plain­clothes offi­cers. He then looked at a pho­to on his phone.

“A pic­ture of April, with her giant boobs,” Alamo said and laughed, appar­ent­ly refer­ring to one of the under­cov­er offi­cers in the crowd.

The activists at the Chinook Center watched the video. At the time, they didn’t know who April Rogers was. “There was a process of elim­i­na­tion,” Jon Christiansen said. “And then even­tu­al­ly we were able to tri­an­gu­late that April Rogers was Chelsie.”

That’s when Rogers dis­ap­peared from the activist scene in Colorado Springs.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​3​/​2​1​/​f​b​i​-​c​o​l​o​r​a​d​o​-​s​p​r​i​n​g​s​-​s​u​r​v​e​i​l​l​a​n​ce/