Police are often accused of prac­tic­ing racial bias. The head of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in Florida has been relieved of duty after order­ing one of her offi­cers to take that bias to anoth­er level.

The Washington Post reports that dur­ing a staged traf­fic stop involv­ing a mur­der sus­pect that the police want­ed a pho­to and thumbprint from, but didn’t want to tip the sus­pect off, Capt. Penny Phelps issued the fol­low­ing order:

She added, “I just want you to be the neo-Nazi who’s pick­ing on the black guy rid­ing the bike.”

As a result, the sheriff’s office removed Phelps from the mur­der case last month and, after learn­ing of mul­ti­ple alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, have opened an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. Phelps was also relieved of her duties as com­man­der of the major crimes and nar­cotics units.

It’s com­mon for offi­cers to go under­cov­er in order to retrieve infor­ma­tion that would oth­er­wise be unat­tain­able, but con­sid­er­ing the con­tentious rela­tion­ship between police and the black com­mu­ni­ty, Phelps was pur­pose­ly sow­ing seeds of mis­trust that could yield dis­as­trous consequences.

Spokesman Adam Linhardt declined to con­firm if Phelps’s instruc­tions were fol­lowed or go into detail about what penal­ties she is fac­ing. Officials also have yet to deter­mine if Phelps vio­lat­ed depart­ment pol­i­cy and offered no expla­na­tion as to why the sheriff’s office wait­ed so long to remove her from com­mand. Despite all this, her $110,000 salary remains unchanged.

So does that mean she’s keep­ing her job?

“We have to have all the facts first,” Monroe Sheriff Rick Ramsay told the Miami Herald on Saturday, not­ing that Phelps has worked for the sheriff’s office for almost 20 years.

My Pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jesse Voyd Bottoms con­sis­tent­ly preach­es a mes­sage which stress­es that the thing that you need the most from God, is the thing you should give the most.
Simply put, if you want love give love. If you want atten­tion give atten­tion to oth­ers who need it. If you want patience, demon­strate patience to those who need your under­stand­ing. And cer­tain­ly, if you need to be respect­ed, start by show­ing respect to oth­ers.
Obviously, that is a mes­sage the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr needs to hear and under­stand.
In seek­ing to become Donald Trump’s Roy Cohn, Bar has gone over and above the norms to try to gain favor with Trump. From with­hold­ing the Muller report, and cre­at­ing a disin­gen­u­ous sum­ma­ry, to dis­agree­ing with the Justice Department’s own Inspector General’s find­ing that there is no evi­dence that Ukraine had any­thing to do with the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and a raft of oth­er con­tro­ver­sial stances. Barr has demon­strat­ed that this is the seg­ment of his life he wants to be judged by.

In a scathing address to the Federalist Society and lat­er as he addressed the fra­ter­nal order of police, the Attorney General exco­ri­at­ed social jus­tice reform­ers, argu­ing “We must have zero tol­er­ance for resist­ing police”. This will save lives.” Barr sin­gled out pros­e­cu­tors, whom he crit­i­cized for being “social-jus­tice reform­ers” and soft on crime.
He berat­ed those he deemed, not suf­fi­cient­ly respect­ful of police, but the Attorney General nev­er once in either address, chal­lenge those with­in the ranks of police depart­ments who are bru­tal­iz­ing and mur­der­ing inno­cent unarmed cit­i­zens.
Despite the height­ened across the board­’s atten­tion being paid to unlaw­ful police killings and abus­es, [large­ly of African American cit­i­zens], Barr praised police brav­ery and sug­gest­ed that com­mu­ni­ties that demon­strate against police abus­es may see police ser­vices dimin­ished.
In oth­er words, the Attorney General of the United States is advo­cat­ing for the police to with­hold ser­vices to the Black com­mu­ni­ty, which pays the police, to pro­vide polic­ing ser­vices.
It is an offense to receive pay­ment to do a job and not do the job, and yes that is what the nation’s top law enforce­ment offi­cer is threatening. 

But threat­en­ing to with­hold police ser­vices may not be such a bad thing for the African-American com­mu­ni­ty. In fact, res­i­dents may be less afraid of los­ing their lives at the hands of out of con­trol racist cops who have no respect for nei­ther their dig­ni­ty nor their human­i­ty.
Vice News report­ed, that after Chicago Police cut down on bust­ing drug pos­ses­sion and pros­ti­tu­tion after an offi­cer was sen­tenced for killing black teen Laquan McDonald, Chicago actu­al­ly got safer.
The gall and temer­i­ty of the state police union after the sev­en-year sen­tence was hand­ed down to mur­der­er cop Jason Van Dyke, by ask­ing cit­i­zens of the city: “Are you ready to pay the price,” of police offi­cers not feel­ing com­fort­able doing their jobs. 
As far as the dis­cred­it­ed Police union is con­cerned, killing a black teen who was walk­ing away from Van Dyke, was [doing their job].
Not hav­ing its sons and fathers, uncles and broth­ers, cousins and hus­bands mur­dered by police, means the black com­mu­ni­ty may be bet­ter off with­out the kind of ser­vices the police have to offer.

In New York City, the dis­cred­it­ed, police unions encour­aged their mem­bers to defraud the pub­lic which pays their salaries and ben­e­fits, to embark on work slow­down, after Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who mur­dered Eric Garner was final­ly fired.
The result, crime went down. True to form the Chicago police depart­ment denied that they had been on a work slow­down after their actions blew up in their faces.
In fact, an analy­sis of crime data by VICE News showed a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in police activ­i­ty fol­low­ing Van Dyke’s sen­tenc­ing on January 18.
(Arrests by Chicago police offi­cers dropped by near­ly 50% city­wide the evening after the sen­tence came down, and almost 25% in the two weeks fol­low­ing. At the same time, total crime as report­ed by police dropped to the low­est lev­el in at least two decades, a stat con­sis­tent with a polic­ing slow­down. Crime reports aris­ing through street stops, such as drug arrests and weapons vio­la­tions, fell the most pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as offi­cers con­tin­ued to respond to seri­ous inci­dents like shoot­ings). [vice news]

Communities need good police offi­cers, they need offi­cers who respect the cit­i­zens they serve. From time to time offi­cers will find them­selves deal­ing with unsa­vory char­ac­ters who will inex­orably cause them to be less than respect­ful and gen­tile, that is the nature of the job.
Nevertheless, the idea that a com­mu­ni­ty may have more unsa­vory char­ac­ters of a par­tic­u­lar type, does not give police a pass to be dis­re­spect­ful of entire com­mu­ni­ties.
Demanding respect is a sure­fire way to get resent­ment, hatred, and ridicule.
Demanding that an entire com­mu­ni­ty of 47 mil­lion demon­strate feal­ty and rev­er­ence to an organ of gov­ern­ment that has nev­er shown respect to them is sim­ply laughable. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

Dothan, AL — 12 police offi­cers in Dothan, Alabama, who were appar­ent­ly mem­bers of a domes­tic hate group, has been found to have set up and false­ly accused over 1,000 Black men with the inten­tion to put them behind bars even though they were innocent. 

.According to reports, a nar­cotics team con­sist­ing of at least twelve white police offi­cers super­vised by Lt. Steve Parrish, who is now Dothan’s Police Chief, and Andy Hughes, Asst. Director of Homeland Security for Alabama, reg­u­lar­ly plant­ed drugs and weapons on inno­cent Black men.

Once arrest­ed and charged, the wrong­ly accused Black men were not giv­en due process. District Attorney Doug Valeska, who pros­e­cut­ed in those cas­es, was appar­ent­ly aware of the scam and offered pro­tec­tion for the involved offi­cers instead.

More than 1,000 inno­cent Black men were false­ly pros­e­cut­ed and most of them are still serv­ing their sentences.

Over the years, the fam­i­lies of the wrong­ly con­vict­ed Black men were call­ing for jus­tice but it has always been ignored. It was only until a group of con­sci­en­tious White police offi­cers noticed the cas­es and alert­ed the Internal Affairs Division that a full inves­ti­ga­tion ensued.

Authorities con­firmed that an inves­ti­ga­tion on the cas­es are cur­rent­ly ongo­ing and a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor from out­side of Alabama is han­dling the case.(bbnews.com)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHNATHON KELSO . STORY BY JA’HAN JONES 

TALLAHATCHIE COUNTY, Miss. ― In Mississippi, a state where Confederate gen­er­als are still vaunt­ed with high­ways and hol­i­days, there’s an ongo­ing debate over who, if any­one, gets to tell the sto­ry of Emmett Till. Emmett’s lynch­ing in 1955 cat­alyzed the Civil Rights Movement and shed light on a raft of bru­tal­i­ty inflict­ed on Black peo­ple in Mississippi. Many locals want Emmett’s sto­ry memo­ri­al­ized, to retell it so that the grue­some truth is nev­er for­got­ten: The teen’s abduc­tion and mur­der, coor­di­nat­ed by two white men, is count­ed among 580 oth­er lynch­ings that occurred in Mississippi between 1882 and 1968, the most of any state over that span. 

That blood­shed and big­otry are woven into the fab­ric of Mississippi’s his­to­ry ― they emanate from the poplar trees and cot­ton clus­ters, and they weigh heavy on many Mississippians to this day. But oth­ers seek to erase this his­to­ry, repeat­ed­ly mak­ing their denial known with vio­lent and vis­cer­al des­e­cra­tions of Emmett’s mon­u­ments. In June, a pho­to went viral online depict­ing three white Ole Miss stu­dents cheer­ful­ly pos­ing with guns besides a bul­let-rid­dled com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque to Emmett. Ben LeClere, John Lowe and Howell Logan became the pub­lic faces of a wider move­ment of rage against Emmett’s lega­cy in the delta, but they were fol­low­ing in oth­ers’ foot­steps; the sign had pre­vi­ous­ly been shot, scratched and doused with acid. 

Opposing these forces is a group of peo­ple work­ing to keep Emmett’s sto­ry at the fore­front of the American con­scious­ness, among them fam­i­ly mem­bers, local offi­cials, and mem­bers of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission. HuffPost trav­eled to the Mississippi delta in October to meet them on the shore of the Tallahatchie River, where they unveiled a new, bul­let­proof memo­r­i­al to Emmett, bring­ing nation­al aware­ness once again to the fight for his mem­o­ry. That sign, too, was met with big­ot­ed resis­tance ― white suprema­cists used it as a prop for a pro­pa­gan­da video in ear­ly November. But his­to­ry shows that this group of his­to­ri­ans won’t be deterred. For them, pre­serv­ing the sto­ry of the most famous lynch­ing in American his­to­ry is not just about atone­ment, but about own­er­ship of wrongs com­mit­ted and atroc­i­ties inflicted. 

Jessie Jaynes-Diming, Civil Rights Tour Guide 

Jessie Jaynes-Diming con­ducts tours of civ­il rights sites in the Mississippi delta and serves on the board of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission. She took us on a tour of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi, where Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, false­ly accused the 14-year old child of sex­u­al­ly harass­ing her in 1955. This his­to­ry, she said, could be lost if it’s not con­stant­ly retold.

“I think it’s impor­tant to know the his­to­ry, under­stand it and cre­ate con­ver­sa­tions,” Jaynes-Diming said. “The chil­dren from here, and a lot of the adults, were not always aware of this his­to­ry.” She spoke of vis­i­tors from across the globe; inter­na­tion­al tour guests who have a keen inter­est in civ­il rights his­to­ry. As she talked, dri­vers in all sorts of vehi­cles stopped at the site, pulling up and cran­ing their necks out­side their win­dows to eaves­drop. She said when she moved to Mississippi from Chicago, where Emmett Till was orig­i­nal­ly from, she was sur­prised to learn many peo­ple in the delta didn’t know who he was. That dis­cov­ery inspired her to get involved with the civ­il rights tours and the memo­r­i­al commission. 

Ollie Gordon and Airickca Gordon-Taylor, Family

Ollie Gordon, Emmett Till’s cousin, lived with Emmett and his moth­er, Mamie Till-Mobley, for a peri­od when the two were in Chicago. Her daugh­ter, Airickca, runs the Mamie Till-Mobley Foundation, an orga­ni­za­tion hon­or­ing Till-Mobley’s lega­cy as a moth­er and activist in Emmett’s hon­or. They stood in a seed barn locat­ed in the small city of Drew, Mississippi ― the exact barn where Emmett Till was tor­tured and killed before being tossed in the Tallahatchie River. They remem­bered the sac­ri­fice of their fam­i­ly mem­bers and Black com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers before them, who gave every­thing to tell Emmett’s sto­ry. “When Uncle Mose tes­ti­fied against Emmett’s killers, that was the first time a Black man had ever tes­ti­fied against a white man,” Ollie said. “He had to hide out in the grave­yard the night of tes­ti­mo­ny to get out of there, because they would have killed him.” 

Both Gordon and Gordon-Taylor said they’re moti­vat­ed to con­tin­ue com­mem­o­rat­ing their cousin for mem­bers of their fam­i­ly who still live in fear of what an asso­ci­a­tion to Emmett might mean in the Mississippi delta. “We have cousins who were wit­ness­es, and they live in fear today. Some of them won’t talk about it and nev­er have,” Ollie said. Airickca added: “I think the bul­let­proof memo­r­i­al is just say­ing you can shoot it, knock it down, you can throw it in the riv­er, you can steal it, but we’re gonna keep replac­ing it because we’re nev­er gonna for­get Emmett Till.” 
“In defac­ing it, they’re say­ing ‘we don’t want to remem­ber what hap­pened to that 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago.’ But we’re not gonna let you for­get it. 

Dave Tell, Professor 

Dave Tell, a pro­fes­sor at the University of Kansas, walked us through the Sumner Courthouse in Tallahatchie, Mississippi. Here, after a five-day tri­al, an all-white jury returned a not guilty ver­dict for Emmett’s killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant. The jury report­ed­ly need­ed only 67 min­utes of delib­er­a­tion. Tell is the author of “Remembering Emmett Till” and a co-cre­ator of the Emmett Till Memory Project, a dig­i­tal tour of relat­ed sites. His schol­ar­ship inter­ro­gates the mis­lead­ing ways Emmett’s sto­ry has been told over time, from mis­placed mark­ers to mis­in­for­ma­tion about accomplices.

Notably, Tell’s dogged research into civ­il rights com­mem­o­ra­tion revealed how Mississippi offi­cials used pub­lic funds to refur­bish a local gas sta­tion rather than main­tain Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, a crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant site in the sto­ry of Till’s mur­der. Today, the gas sta­tion, which bears no rela­tion­ship to the sto­ry, looks pris­tine while Bryant’s Grocery mere feet away falls to pieces, meek­ly tucked behind a wall of shrub­bery. Frequently, passers­by mis­take the gas sta­tion for the his­toric gro­cery store, and the road­side mark­er com­mem­o­rat­ing the site — con­fus­ing­ly placed between the two — does them no favors. Tell said it’s this sort of research — the sto­ry about the sto­ry of Emmett Till — that Emmett’s sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly has come to appre­ci­ate. “My rela­tion­ship with the Till fam­i­ly has been strong because I don’t want to tell their sto­ry. I don’t want to pre­tend to have any authen­tic sense of what it must have felt like, because that’s their thing. I just want to tell those same sto­ries from the per­spec­tive of peo­ple who live in their shad­ow.” Tell’s efforts in research­ing civ­il rights com­mem­o­ra­tion across the South has uncov­ered repeat­ed instances of local gov­ern­ments misiden­ti­fy­ing or mis­la­bel­ing his­tor­i­cal sites in order to direct grants to their cities and towns.

Tyler Yarbrough is a senior major­ing in pub­lic pol­i­cy at the University of Mississippi. After an Oct. 18 pan­el dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing racism at Ole Miss, Yarbrough and fel­low pan­elist Curtis Hill walked through cam­pus car­ry­ing a des­e­crat­ed mark­er that com­mem­o­rat­ed Emmett, before plac­ing it at the base of a Confederate mon­u­ment near­by. The ges­ture appeared to link the two objects as parts of the same white suprema­cist tra­di­tion. In July, a pho­to cir­cu­lat­ed online depict­ing three Ole Miss stu­dents who are mem­bers of a pro-Confederate fra­ter­ni­ty stand­ing beside the bul­let-rid­dled sign-car­ry­ing guns.

“I just remem­ber a tear falling down my face when we actu­al­ly got to the stat­ue, because I knew all about how that stat­ue has been a ral­ly­ing point for white suprema­cy in our school’s his­to­ry,” Yarbrough said Ole Miss is in the process of remov­ing the Confederate mon­u­ment from its cam­pus and plac­ing it in a near­by grave­yard after months of stu­dent-led protests.

Johnny B. Thomas, Mayor 

Johnny B. Thomas is the may­or of Glendora, Mississippi, a small, finan­cial­ly-strapped vil­lage of few­er than 200 peo­ple. Here, he is pic­tured in the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, a muse­um he runs in Glendora fea­tur­ing repli­ca items relat­ed to Emmett’s case. His father, the late Henry Lee Loggins, has been tied to Emmett’s mur­der for years as an alleged accom­plice believed by some to have been forced to participate.

“I’m think­ing [here in Glendora] is where you’re going to find sto­ries of African Americans that were made to par­tic­i­pate, such as my father, who I believe was made to par­tic­i­pate. African Americans were made to par­tic­i­pate [in Emmett’s killing]. And those African Americans died along with Emmett, as far as I’m con­cerned, but had to stay here and suf­fer as a result.” 

The Center is the only muse­um in the world ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to Emmett, accord­ing to the Emmett Till Memory Project. In addi­tion to a spe­cial­ly made repli­ca designed to look like Emmett’s body in his open-cas­ket funer­al in Chicago in 1955, Thomas also fea­tures in his muse­um a mod­el of the truck J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant used to kid­nap him.

Reverend Williams said his desire to advo­cate in sup­port of Emmett’s lega­cy today has large­ly inspired the fact that Emmett’s sto­ry had been hid­den and silenced in the Mississippi region for a half-cen­tu­ry. “In the delta, Emmett Till was some­thing that had been secret for almost fifty years, man,” he said. “People talked about it, but not pub­licly. And I’ve nev­er been the type of per­son who felt like I was a vic­tim. So that’s why I speak out like I do.”We met Rev. Willie Williams, the co-direc­tor of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, at his church in the small north­ern Mississippi town of Tutwiler. 

Williams was born in the Mississippi delta in 1955, two months after Emmett was killed, and his lin­eage in the delta runs deep. He recalled that few peo­ple in the area ― Black or white ― dis­cussed Emmett’s mur­der when he was a child, fear­ing what could hap­pen if they’d been asso­ci­at­ed with the Till fam­i­ly. Reverend Willie Williams of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission inside the Rollins United Methodist Church in Tutwiler, Mississippi.

Reverend Willie Williams of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, parked out­side The Tutwiler Funeral home where Emmett Till’s body was embalmed in 1955 before being sent to Chicago. The Emmett Till Memorial Commission erect­ed a his­tor­i­cal mark­er to com­mem­o­rate the loca­tion in 2008.

Atlanta, GA — After the pre­mière of the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed docuseries Copwatch America aired on BET, the City of Atlanta pre­sent­ed Atlanta Police Officer Sung Kim with two alter­na­tives: resign or be ter­mi­nat­ed. The for­mer APD offi­cer shot and killed unarmed 21-year old Jimmy Atchison in January 2019. 

Attorney Gerald Griggs teamed up with BET to pro­duce the docuseries pro­vid­ing unlim­it­ed, nev­er before seen evi­dence to the net­work. This is the first time in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion that a major net­work was grant­ed exclu­sive access to an attorney’s investigation.

“It’s going to be raw and uncut, but we are going to ele­vate the voic­es of these fam­i­lies. I want­ed to show peo­ple the prob­lem and then the solu­tion because there is a solu­tion, and that’s the Obama 21^st cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive,” said Attorney Griggs.

Former President Barack Obama con­vened a task force con­sist­ing of 150 par­tic­i­pates — includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from law enforce­ment, elect­ed offi­cials, and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners from 40 cities to iden­ti­fy the best prac­tices to improve the rela­tion­ship between law enforce­ment and the com­mu­ni­ty. Mr. Obama released their rec­om­men­da­tions to the pub­lic and their munic­i­pal­i­ties in 2015. To date, no law enforce­ment depart­ment has imple­ment­ed all the rec­om­men­da­tions, one of the rea­sons BET decid­ed to begin film­ing this project ear­li­er this year.

“Far too often, con­tact between law enforce­ment and black civil­ians ends in vio­lence against inno­cent mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty. It is our hope that this first-of-its-kind-exposé sheds light on the issue, pro­vides solu­tions, and fos­ters a demand for account­abil­i­ty and jus­tice,” said BET Networks pres­i­dent Scott Mills.

The docuseries will also include the cas­es of Veltavious Griggs, Oscar Caine, Eric Garner, Jamarion Robinson, and Nicholas Bolton. Griggs works along­side Chris “City” Mungin, Yonasda Lonewolf, Shar Bates, and Patrick Newbill.

Attorney Griggs has worked as an activist for over 20 years. His work with Jaheem Herrera’s case launched the National Anti-Bullying Movement and strength­ened Georgia’s Anti-Bullying Law. Griggs’ intense inves­ti­ga­tion into the alleged crimes of R&B Singer Robert Sylvester Kelly led to felony indict­ments in sev­er­al states, and Griggs pur­suit of jus­tice into the bru­tal beat­ing of Maggie Thomas in front of her four-year-old daugh­ter end­ed with Atlanta Police Officer James Hines fired in sev­en days. 

Earlier this month, a moth­er who was griev­ing the trag­ic and shock­ing loss of her 4‑year-old child, found her­self lying face down in the park­ing lot of a hotel as Arkansas police hand­cuffed her.

According to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Monday, Shawnda Brookshire, whose daugh­ter Nia died in an Interstate 40 wreck two days ear­li­er, was released by author­i­ties with­out being arrest­ed or charged, after a 20-minute show­down that cul­mi­nat­ed in her being pulled to the ground and threat­ened with a taser.

“My fam­i­ly and I flew to Arkansas to be with my sis­ter yes­ter­day, we checked in to the hotel after spend­ing the day get­ting clothes for my 4‑year old niece’s body today,” her broth­er, Richard Brookshire, the Director of Digital Strategy at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, post­ed on Facebook. “We were exhaust­ed, had just left the funer­al home where my sis­ter and I had seen my niece’s body for the first time and had come to the hotel to get some rest.”

“My sis­ter need­ed to get some fresh air after such an emo­tion­al day and was out­side speak­ing on the phone when ran­dom offi­cers rolled up flash­ing lights in her face. She showed them her hotel key and they got out of the car and asked for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. She said her ID was inside,” he con­tin­ued. “She asked the police what she was doing wrong, they sur­round­ed her. She imme­di­ate­ly called me and my moth­er on the phone and yelled that she need­ed help.”

Brookshire then goes on to share a gut-wrench­ing tale about how he, his moth­er and his legal­ly blind aunt all plead­ed with author­i­ties to show mer­cy on the woman whose child had just died the day before.

HELP: Yesterday, my niece was killed in a trag­ic acci­dent, hun­dreds of miles from home. As my fam­i­ly begins to grieve, a mere 7 days ahead of what was sup­posed to be her fifth birth­day — we need help cov­er­ing the costs of her funer­al arrange­ments.

In response to the family’s expla­na­tion, “the cops said there had been car bur­glar­ies in the area days pri­or and that they were arrest­ing my sis­ter under that sus­pi­cion because she was out­side pac­ing back and forth on her phone (talk­ing to my dead niece’s father). Her fail­ure to pro­vide I.D. when asked was enough for them to place her in hand­cuffs even when they sim­ply could have gone to the front desk and ver­i­fied that she was in fact a guest at the hotel.”

What makes this sto­ry even more dis­grace­ful is that after the fam­i­ly went pub­lic, the West Memphis Police Department imme­di­ate­ly tried to cov­er up the inci­dent and pro­tect the actions of its officers.

“I think it’s impor­tant to note that the West Memphis PD have already begun to spin/​manipulate the sto­ry with dis­hon­est recounts – fail­ing to release body cam footage, hav­ing released dash­board audio with one minute redact­ed and delet­ing their pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter after push­back for its inac­cu­ra­cy and cal­lous­ness,” Brookshire shared while speak­ing to theGrio.

On the released audio, an offi­cer can be heard jok­ing that the woman’s hood­ie alone was prob­a­ble cause for the stop, and he spec­u­lat­ed about how he expect­ed a ruckus once her broth­er showed up, stat­ing, “Damn, her broth­er, too – I thought it was about to be on, son.”

In an attempt to hide their lack of com­pas­sion, Brookshire alleges author­i­ties also, “false­ly stat­ed in a local news inter­view that they’d not been informed of the death,” but says, “my sis­ter tells them clear­ly her daugh­ter died, and showed her hotel key to prove she was a guest at the hotel and asked to be left alone because she’d done noth­ing wrong in the first 2 min­utes of being confronted.”

“They also only released hotel video footage from a cam­era far­thest from the scene in order to avoid releas­ing footage from the cam­era direct­ly above the encounter, which will dis­pute their nar­ra­tive about not slam­ming my sis­ter to the ground and plac­ing their knee on her shoulder/​neck/​back,” he concluded.

Brookshire says the fam­i­ly plans to file a for­mal com­plaint, but at the moment their main con­cern is bury­ing his niece. Her funer­al is on Monday, just one day after what would have been her 5^th birth­day. A GoFundMe has been set up for those seek­ing to pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to the fam­i­ly dur­ing this incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult time.

Ashford, AL — Parents and stu­dents from a high school in Alabama are furi­ous after a racist chat group of teach­ers was dis­cov­ered by a stu­dent. The teach­ers in the chat titled “Bad A B’s” were alleged­ly talk­ing about Black stu­dents, mock­ing them and call­ing them the n‑word.

In the leaked por­tion of the group chat, the teach­ers were talk­ing about a stu­dent named Anastasia Williams who they said was pos­si­bly preg­nant. Other teach­ers then com­ment­ed that she is qui­et and also isn’t the sharpest student.

“I guess she mime sex?” one teacher alleged­ly said.

In anoth­er part of the chat, anoth­er teacher used the n‑word on Preyun Snell, a for­mer stu­dent at Ashford high.

“That n — – so slow he can’t walk and chew gum,” the teacher alleged­ly said.

Preyun said he knew the teacher who used the slur but he did not expect she would do that. Besides, he also had bad expe­ri­ences at the school because of racial inci­dents in the past.

“I don’t like this school, peri­od,” he told WDHN. “They racist, all of these folks racist.”

Moreover, Anastasia said one of the teach­ers apol­o­gized to her after the group chat was leaked.

“She was like she didn’t mean any­thing that she said or any­thing like that,” she said.

The stu­dent who leaked the mes­sages said he saw the chat when a teacher gave him her phone dur­ing school hours. He took a video of it and sent it to numer­ous people.

Several par­ents were angry and said the teach­ers should be fired because they were not set­ting “good exam­ples” any­more. Some even recalled oth­er inci­dents in the past where teach­ers at the school also behaved inap­pro­pri­ate­ly. They said some teach­ers sprayed chairs of stu­dents due to smell and called them less fortunate.

Venissa Wilson, an alum­na of Ashford High School, said she expe­ri­enced issues back when she was a stu­dent there.

“I stood up to them,” she said. “I stayed back and forth from alter­na­tive school because I came to learn, and with the teach­ers doing the same thing when I was in, I just did my days and (came) back because you ain’t gonna bul­ly me.”

Meanwhile, Houston County School Superintendent David Sewell said that the teach­ers, whose names were not released, have been suspended.

“There are a lot of gray areas when it comes to any­thing that takes place on a cell phone,” Sewell said. “I hate that it hap­pened. We try to put poli­cies and pro­ce­dures in place to make sure things like this don’t hap­pen. We’ll go back and try to reinforce.”(Black news)

Just when you thought American police can­not get any more rep­re­hen­si­ble. I mean they choke peo­ple to death in broad day­light. The ver­dict from Investigators; No wrong­do­ing. Shoot flee­ing unarmed peo­ple in the back mul­ti­ple times. Shoot unarmed cit­i­zens mul­ti­ple times who pos­es no threat. Sodomize cit­i­zens and com­mit all man­ner of crimes imag­in­able against the very same cit­i­zens they are sworn to pro­tect. They fal­si­fy reports and open­ly lie in court, when found out, no action is tak­en against them.
In a nut­shell, American cops have become a dan­ger­ous gang of thugs, that pos­es an exis­ten­tial dan­ger not just to Black-Americans, but all peo­ple of col­or.
The sad real­i­ty is that they oper­ate in a sys­tem of impuni­ty cod­i­fied in the leg­is­la­tures, val­i­dat­ed in the judi­cia­ry and egged on by the exec­u­tive branch.

In this lat­est iter­a­tion of the sav­agery of these brutes, a Pima County deputy bru­tal­ly attacked a 15-year-old quadru­ple amputee in Arizona. The child has no arms and legs and he has been arrest­ed and charged along with his 16-year-old friend who record­ed the hor­rif­ic video. 

Local news out­let KOLD report­ed the inci­dent hap­pened in September (the exact date of the video is not clear) while the 15-year-old was liv­ing in a group home. He report­ed­ly got upset with a staff mem­ber and knocked over a garbage can. The police were called and an uniden­ti­fied (social media will sure­ly change that) deputy arrived on the scene. The eight-minute video shows him scream­ing and curs­ing at the child and even­tu­al­ly wrestling him to the floor. 

Bodycam footage shows 19-year-old De’Von Bailey get­ting shot in the back as he ran from police. A grand jury said the offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in killing him.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A grand jury found that two Colorado police offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in killing a black teenag­er who was shot mul­ti­ple times in the back dur­ing a foot chase, the dis­trict attor­ney said Wednesday. As a result, no crim­i­nal charges will be filed against the offi­cers involved in the Aug. 3 death of De’Von Bailey in Colorado Springs, KRDO report­ed, cit­ing El Paso County District Attorney Dan May.
Bailey, 19, was shot three times in the back and once in the arm. In Colorado, dis­trict attor­neys can decide to file charges, send a case to a grand jury or deter­mine police were jus­ti­fied in a shoot­ing. “For De’Von’s fam­i­ly, the deci­sion was like a kick in the gut, but of course we are not one bit sur­prised,” fam­i­ly attor­ney Mari Newman said. “This is the exact result that the sys­tem was designed to yield when a taint­ed inves­ti­ga­tion is pre­sent­ed by a biased pros­e­cu­tor. This is pre­cise­ly why we have been call­ing for an inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor and an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion from the beginning.”

Police body cam­era footage shows offi­cers talk­ing to Bailey and anoth­er man in a neigh­bor­hood about an armed rob­bery that was report­ed near­by. One offi­cer ordered the men to keep their hands up so that anoth­er offi­cer could search them for weapons. Bailey ran as he was about to be searched and was shot after he put his hands near his waist­band. The footage shows him falling to the ground and the offi­cers run­ning up to cuff his hands behind his back.

Police said they found a gun hid­den in Bailey’s shorts. The shoot­ing “is some­thing nei­ther police offi­cers nor cit­i­zens ever want to expe­ri­ence,” Police Chief Vince Niski said in an open let­ter to the com­mu­ni­ty Wednesday. “The loss of a son, a friend, a com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber, is a dev­as­tat­ing event that impacts all of us.” He also said he “ful­ly trusts and sup­ports” the inves­tiga­tive process, not­ing that the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office looked into the death before the dis­trict attor­ney hand­ed the case to the grand jury.

Newman, who was joined by Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers in call­ing for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, said Wednesday she would pur­sue addi­tion­al legal action. “The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as we see time and time again, is skewed in favor of the police,” she said. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the Huffingtonpost​.com.

Mr. Wash was sentenced to life for a crime he didn’t commit. Now he’s an artist with his own documentary

NICOLE KARLIS

Imagine spend­ing one-third of your life in prison for some­thing you didn’t do. Would you bit­ter, angry or resent­ful? For many peo­ple of col­or in America, this is not a mere thought exper­i­ment, but a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. According to a report from the National Registry of Exonerations, inno­cent black peo­ple are 12 times more like­ly to be false­ly con­vict­ed of a drug crime than inno­cent white people.

Fulton Leroy Washington of Compton, California, who goes by Mr. Wash, is one of those who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of such a crime. In 1997, Washington was sen­tenced to life in prison for con­spir­a­cy to man­u­fac­ture the drug PCP. His youngest daugh­ter was two years old at the time. For over 21 years, Mr. Wash served time in pris­ons in Kansas, Colorado, and California. In that time­frame, he taught him­self how to paint after his attor­ney asked him to draw the wit­ness who could help cor­rob­o­rate his sto­ry. Then, in May, 2016, Mr. Wash was one of 58 pris­on­ers who had their sen­tences com­mut­ed by for­mer President Barack Obama. 

Mr. Wash took to con­tin­u­ing to paint after being released from prison, and to date, he has paint­ed near­ly one thou­sand paint­ings, includ­ing por­traits of pub­lic fig­ures and pris­on­ers. Perhaps his most well-known paint­ing is his take on Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation with Abraham Lincoln. In Mr. Wash’s paint­ing, President Obama replaces Lincoln; the eman­ci­pat­ed is Mr. Wash.

Now, Mr. Wash’s life sto­ry is being told in a short doc­u­men­tary titled “Mr. Wash,” pro­duced by WeTransfer and which can be seen on YouTube. Mr. Wash lives in Compton today, paint­ing and spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly, and head­ed to Africa to ful­fill a prayer request and visions of his dreams (more on that here.).
When I sat down to inter­view Mr. Wash in Telluride at the ideas fes­ti­val Original Thinkers, he start­ed by inter­view­ing me. “Who are you?” he asked, fol­low­ing up with more ques­tions about my life. “This what hap­pens when you’re in court. When you’re fight­ing your case and fight­ing for your life, you learn to get the prop­er infor­ma­tion,” he explained. This bit of wis­dom recalls the words print­ed on a shirt sold on his online store: “Reading can seri­ous­ly dam­age your ignorance.” 

Here is the rest of our con­ver­sa­tion, edit­ed for length and clarity.

So can you share more about what brought you to this festival? 

When peo­ple hear that a per­son was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, and he’s out of prison, I believe that in their minds, they have a pre-exist­ing idea of what type of per­son that would be. And when they meet me, their whole real­i­ty change[s]. This is what I’m hear­ing from peo­ple — is that, “I would have nev­er known that you’d been in prison for many years.” They say: “You are not angry, you are not insti­tu­tion­al­ized, you have a dif­fer­ent type of spir­it about you.”

What was that like in 1997 to be wrong­ful­ly convicted? 

It was unbe­liev­able. It was sur­re­al because I was a per­son who was raised up to believe in the sys­tem. And I still do. But, I always —I watched the con­vic­tion, and I thought that it was part of a ploy, that the gov­ern­ment used to weed out the truth. And because I’d nev­er been to these places that they went to, and I nev­er com­mit­ted a crime, I always felt that I was going to go home, once they got every­thing set­tled. But, instead, I learned that they actu­al­ly fab­ri­cat­ed the evi­dence against me to cov­er their own inves­tiga­tive failures.

Who is “they”?

It would be the team task­force. A team of fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cers and agents com­prised of DEA, LAPD, LASD, and BNE.

So, 21 years in jail. Your life changed in many ways. Can share more about what your day-to-day was like, and how that changed in prison?

I think the first year in tran­si­tion was about let­ting go. I had a com­pa­ny, I had employ­ees, I had fam­i­ly, and so the first cou­ple of years was let­ting go of the com­pa­ny, let­ting go of the respon­si­bil­i­ty of my employ­ees and their fam­i­lies. Then, while you [do] that, you’re los­ing your equip­ment, you’re get­ting sued for the con­tracts that you weren’t able to fin­ish, and the com­pa­nies have to have oth­er peo­ple to do it, and now they’re billing you. I had to go through all of that type of stuff, and that was like the first year or two.

And then, fol­low­ing that, the tran­si­tion was about learn­ing more about the law, a lot of read­ing. We have a T‑shirt on Wash Wear that says, “Reading will seri­ous­ly dam­age your igno­rance.” I real­ized how igno­rant I was about the law. And how it had me cap­ti­vat­ed when I was read­ing and find­ing truths. So then, I guess I was com­ing to an aware­ness, that, “wow, the sys­tem is not what I thought it was.”

Then, from there, it became sur­vival, at the same time. All while this is going on, there’s a sur­vival mode because you’re in a new envi­ron­ment, and time is of the essence. You have to try to prove your inno­cence by such and such a time. And if you don’t, you lose the oppor­tu­ni­ty but, you have to sur­vive, while try­ing to do that, and how you bal­ance the two. It became kind of difficult.

Of course. And is that how you turned to painting?

The art came pri­or. It came dur­ing the time in court. We were hav­ing a post-con­vic­tion hear­ing, my attor­ney asked me to draw peo­ple that I worked with, when the gov­ern­ment said that I was pur­chas­ing chem­i­cals to be used in the man­u­fac­ture of ille­gal drugs. And that sketch draw­ing became a piece of evi­dence because they found the peo­ple from that draw­ing. And that became a piece of evi­dence, and that day I cried in court. I could­n’t con­trol it. And I promised God, I would con­tin­ue to prac­tice that type of art, and to share it, freely.

So then how did your art style change when you were in jail? It seems you advanced from sketch­ing to por­trai­ture, maybe.

During that time of incar­cer­a­tion, I quick­ly learned that you can­not become emo­tion­al in prison. If you become emo­tion­al, and show emo­tion, sev­er­al things could hap­pen. One, the guys would think that you was wussy or what­ev­er, and then you become a vic­tim, and you [are] sub­ject to every­thing that you could imag­ine under the sun; beat­ings, rapes, and every­thing else. Two, if you’re espe­cial­ly emo­tion­al around the police, the staff or the insti­tu­tion, then their psy­chi­a­trist would inter­pret it as being that you’re men­tal­ly unsta­ble. So you have anger issues, or you have [some­thing else] — the psy­chi­a­trist will find some kind of box to put you in.

So you have to build your life, your per­son­al­i­ty around — how you nav­i­gate between that, how do you stay strong in front of all the pris­on­ers that you’re with. But also, stay sane in front of the officers.

So the art­work became that vent, that, okay, I’m not going to say what I feel, my feel­ings are mine but, I’m going to paint them. And then I’ll give the paint­ing to the world, and let you inter­pret it, you say what it makes you feel It became a way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and it became a sto­ry­telling process.

So I think when you look at the work col­lec­tive­ly, that’s what you see. If I could ever get all the paint­ings back, and put them in a line, from the very first one, to the last one, it would be a sto­ry that peo­ple look at and say, you go in and out of my mind like this, like a wormhole.

I have a hard time remem­ber­ing what I paint. I don’t know what I paint. If I don’t have a pho­to­graph of it, I don’t know, I paint so many because that’s [how I] stay bal­anced. You have emo­tion­al things that come in, and okay, you put it on a piece of paper, fold it up, put it in an enve­lope. That emo­tion is safe.

Yeah, and I guess that’s kind of how art is. You put some­thing out in the world, and it’s real­ly up to the peo­ple who are tak­ing it in to decide what it means.

Yeah. Speaking of which, I did a cou­ple of pieces, and the insti­tu­tion accused me of try­ing to escape from prison, and seized all my work and pun­ished me. So then, I became afraid to be expres­sive, even of art.

How long did that go on for?

That was for nine­ty days but it was so severe because I was not allowed to paint any­thing. For a peri­od I was kicked out of the art room. I could only look through the win­dows. That was, traumatizing.

Were there any points where you felt like giv­ing up?

No, nev­er to the point of giv­ing up. You can’t give up on life. Life only goes in one direc­tion. Definitely, there’s points where you tire down, your body needs to rest, your mind needs to rest, you need to think about some­thing dif­fer­ent. And you have those lit­tle moments that come in between, from one fol­low­ing to anoth­er. You work three or four months on one doc­u­ment, and you want to dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s, so you write it, rewrite it, read more or research new laws come out, and incor­po­rate it into the doc­u­ment. The new law points to the facts and rea­sons why you shouldn’t be here. And then, once you file it in court, then you know you got to wait. And some­times the wait can be any­where from months to years. You nev­er know. So how do you keep san­i­ty in between that time, for me, that’s when I paint.

And I switch around from five days a week, two days paint­ing, to five days paint­ing, two days, read­ing over case logs. So you get about a month or so of that. One time it went for like … I was in the Supreme court for almost two years, wait­ing on them. So you just wait­ing, in lim­bo. And then what hap­pens, is that, every time you file these types of peti­tions, and all your fam­i­ly get with you, and every­body excit­ed and they with you, and then when you get denied, they’re hurt so bad, that pret­ty soon, they nev­er get excit­ed no more, to help you.

Yeah. So what does your art look like now? Has your art changed since now, you’ve been out of prison?

It has­n’t real­ly changed much. I con­sid­er myself [s]till in prison. I’m still on parole. I don’t fool myself into think­ing that I’m not incar­cer­at­ed because I’m sit­ting here in a restau­rant with you. I still have to report [to my parole offi­cer]. So I nev­er mis­take myself to let myself be part of that delu­sion, that I’m free. I’m not free.

So that’s what hap­pens when peo­ple have that false sense of free­dom. They for­get. So when you asked about how did my art change now that I’m out — I’m not out, and the art has­n’t changed. I’m doing the exact same thing that I did then. I paint por­traits for peo­ple. If you want it paint­ed, I’ll tell your sto­ry. When it comes to telling my sto­ry, I’m still try­ing to fin­ish telling my story.

What do you hope that peo­ple learn from your story?

I hope that they learn [how] to become proac­tive [e]arly. The youth, when they com­ing out of high school, pay atten­tion to the law, and change the law. And I think that instead of always look­ing for news and stuff, to get high­lights, you got to read, and get in there to find out your own future.

What’s next for you?

What’s next for me is this, the end of my jour­ney. When I was in prison,. for some rea­son, the very first paint­ing that I paint­ed was the Amistad, the dead slaves in the ship. At that time, in paint­ing that, I did­n’t know I was born on a plan­ta­tion. Every oth­er pic­ture that I paint­ed of myself, was telling my sto­ry and my jour­ney, I was always in shack­les and chains. All the way until the last pic­ture, the Emancipation Proclamation.

So with that said, the next step in the jour­ney, is, I told a lot of the inmates, they said, “Mr. Washington, what are you going to do when you get out of prison?” They say, you got life now, I don’t have a life, I’m going to get out. What are you going to do when you get out? “I’m going to Africa,” I’d say. In my mind then, I was going to stay and nev­er come back.I guess a part of me will live in Africa for­ev­er in my art, because when I get there I will paint and cap­ture his­to­ry with my brush. I expect to become a visu­al voice for those that can’t find the words to speak.

Grant was accused of chas­ing down and fatal­ly stab­bing Aaron Scheerhoorn, a 28-year old man, near a night club in Montrose, Texas in December 2010. Grant was arrest­ed days after the inci­dent because of a Crime Stoppers tip.

During the tri­al, no one tes­ti­fied about whether the vic­tim and Grant, who was a gang mem­ber and has pre­vi­ous arrest records, knew each oth­er before the inci­dent. He has since main­tained his inno­cence and said that he did not com­mit the crime. But in 2012, Grant was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life in prison for murder.

Just recent­ly, new evi­dence and tes­ti­monies prove his inno­cence. Aside from eye­wit­ness­es who said Grant was not the one who killed the vic­tim, the state DNA expert tes­ti­fied that Grant’s DNA does not match the DNA recov­ered from below the victim’s fingernails.

Moreover, the DNA test, which was even retest­ed by the Innocence Project of Texas and the DPS crime lab, reveals that the iden­ti­fied sus­pect still remains at large.

While his release and exon­er­a­tion are on the process, he could have been released on bond. Last week, Grant was in court for the hear­ing that would allow him to be released on bond, but the judge ruled he will remain in custody.

Another hear­ing is sched­uled in late November but his fam­i­ly was some­how dis­ap­point­ed that Grant would still have to remain in cus­tody and their reunion was post­poned until then.

“We know he’s inno­cent, and we’re gonna fight to the end,” his aunt, Kitsye Grant, told ABC13. “They real­ly need to go and find the right per­son. What I feel bad for is the moth­er of the young man, the vic­tim. They got the wrong person.”

AS IF FERGUSON WASN’T BAD ENOUGH TO THIS STATE’S REPUTATION AS A RACIST BACKWOODS PLACE HERE WE GO AGAIN WITH THESE NEANDERTHALS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City vot­ers on Tuesday over­whelm­ing­ly approved remov­ing Dr. Martin Luther King’s name from one of the city’s most his­toric boule­vards, less than a year after the city coun­cil decid­ed to rename The Paseo for the civ­il rights icon.

Unofficial results vote showed the pro­pos­al to remove King’s name received near­ly 70% of the vote, with just over 30% vot­ing to retain King’s name.

The debate over the name of the 10-mile (16.1 kilo­me­ter) boule­vard on the city’s most­ly black east side began short­ly after the council’s deci­sion in January to rename The Paseo for King. Civil rights lead­ers who pushed for the change cel­e­brat­ed when the street signs went up, believ­ing they had final­ly won a decades-long bat­tle to hon­or King, which appeared to end Kansas City’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the largest U.S. cities in the coun­try with­out a street named for him.

But a group of res­i­dents intent on keep­ing The Paseo name began col­lect­ing peti­tions to put the name change on the bal­lot and achieved that goal in April.

The cam­paign has been divi­sive, with sup­port­ers of King’s name accus­ing oppo­nents of being racist, while sup­port­ers of The Paseo name say city lead­ers pushed the name change through with­out fol­low­ing prop­er pro­ce­dures and ignored The Paseo’s his­toric value.

Emotions reached a peak Sunday, when mem­bers of the “Save the Paseo” group staged a silent protest at a get-out-the-vote ral­ly at a black church for peo­ple want­i­ng to keep the King name. They walked into the Paseo Baptist Church and stood along its two aisles. The pro­test­ers stood silent­ly and did not react to sev­er­al speak­ers that accused them of being dis­re­spect­ful in a church but they also refused requests from preach­ers to sit down.

The Save the Paseo group col­lect­ed 2,857 sig­na­tures in April — far more than the 1,700 need­ed — to have the name change put to a pub­lic vote.

Many sup­port­ers of the Martin Luther King name sug­gest­ed the oppo­nents are racist, say­ing Save the Paseo is a most­ly white group and that many of its mem­bers don’t live on the street, which runs north to south through a large­ly black area of the city. They said remov­ing the name would send a neg­a­tive image of Kansas City to the rest of the world, and could hurt busi­ness and tourism.

Supporters of the Paseo name reject­ed the alle­ga­tions of racism, say­ing they have respect for King and want the city to find a way to hon­or him. They opposed the name change because they say the City Council did not fol­low city char­ter pro­ce­dures when mak­ing the change and didn’t noti­fy most res­i­dents on the street about the pro­pos­al. They also said The Paseo is an his­toric name for the city’s first boule­vard, which was com­plet­ed in 1899. The north end of the boule­vard is list­ed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The City Council vot­ed in January to rename the boule­vard for King, respond­ing to a years­long effort from the city’s black lead­ers and pres­sure from the local chap­ter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion that King helped start.

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a min­is­ter and for­mer Kansas City may­or who has pushed the city to rename a street for King for years, was at Sunday’s ral­ly. He said the pro­test­ers were wel­come, but he asked them to con­sid­er the dam­age that would be done if Kansas City removed King’s name.

“I am stand­ing here sim­ply beg­ging you to sit down. This is not appro­pri­ate in a church of Jesus Christ,” Cleaver told the group.

Tim Smith, who orga­nized the protest, said it was designed to force the black Christian lead­ers who had mis­char­ac­ter­ized the Save the Paseo group as racist to “say it to our faces.”

“If tonight, some­one wants to char­ac­ter­ize what we did as hos­tile, vio­lent, or unciv­il, it’s a mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of what hap­pened,” Smith said. “We didn’t say any­thing, we didn’t do any­thing, we just stood.”

The Rev. Vernon Howard, pres­i­dent of the Kansas City chap­ter of the SCLU, told The Associated Press that the King street sign is a pow­er­ful sym­bol for every­one but par­tic­u­lar­ly for black children.

“I think that only if you are a black child grow­ing up in the inner city lack­ing the kind of resources, lack­ing the kinds of images and mod­els for men­tor­ing, mod­el­ing, voca­tion and career, can you actu­al­ly under­stand what that name on that sign can mean to a child in this com­mu­ni­ty,” Howard said.

If the sign were tak­en down, “the reverse will be true,” he said.

“What peo­ple will won­der in their minds and hearts is why and how some­thing so good, uplift­ing and edi­fy­ing, how can some­thing like that be tak­en away?” he said.

But Diane Euston, a leader of the Save the Paseo group, said that The Paseo “doesn’t just mean some­thing to one com­mu­ni­ty in Kansas City.”

“It means some­thing to every­one in Kansas City,” she said. “It holds kind of a spe­cial place in so many people’s hearts and mem­o­ries. It’s not just his­tor­i­cal on paper, it’s his­tor­i­cal in people’s mem­o­ry. It’s very impor­tant to Kansas City.”

A 61-year-old man has been arrest­ed by Milwaukee police in an acid attack on a stranger who said the assailant told him to “go back to your country.”

Police said they’re inves­ti­gat­ing Friday night’s attack, which left Mahud Villalaz with sec­ond-degree burns to his face and vision prob­lems, as a hate crime and expect the dis­trict attor­ney to bring charges with­in a week. Police didn’t release the name of the man they arrest­ed on Saturday.

Villalaz, 42, described how he parked his car out­side a restau­rant and was approached by the assailant, a white man upset that he was too close to a bus stop. 

“He start­ed talk­ing like, ‘You don’t respect my laws. You can’t invade my coun­try, so go back to your coun­try,’” Villalaz, who is a U.S. cit­i­zen and Latino, told NBC News.

A Milwaukee police spokesper­son char­ac­ter­ized the crime as aggra­vat­ed bat­tery. Alderman Joe G. Perez said he has been assured the sus­pect will face hate crime charges.

This “was a heinous crime that will have a long-term impact on the life of the vic­tim,” Perez said in a state­ment. “We as a com­mu­ni­ty need to come togeth­er to work through our dif­fer­ences and learn to respect one anoth­er and dif­fuse conflict.”

Villalaz said he moved his car after the man’s out­burst. But the assailant, he said, was still there ― and still angry.

Surveillance video shows the two men fac­ing one anoth­er on the side­walk when the assailant, wear­ing a hood­ed coat, sud­den­ly splash­es Villalaz with a cup of liq­uid inves­ti­ga­tors believe was bat­tery acid. Villalaz quick­ly cov­ers his face and lurch­es back­ward, out of the camera’s view, as the assailant, still hold­ing the cup, calm­ly steps toward him. 

“I don’t want this guy near my kids, near my fam­i­ly,” Villalaz, fight­ing back tears, told reporters on Saturday. “My son calls me today, ‘Daddy what hap­pened to you?’ What do I tell him? Some crazy guy did this to me?”
https://​www​.huff​post​.com/

By Elisha Fieldstadt 

The white, for­mer region­al man­ag­er claims racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in her fir­ing, which came after the arrests of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks sparked protests. 

A white for­mer region­al man­ag­er for Starbucks alleges in a law­suit that she was a vic­tim of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion when the cof­fee giant fired her after the arrests of two black men in a Philadelphia store last year sparked local and nation­al outrage.

In the suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, Shannon Phillips alleges she was a 13-year employ­ee of Starbucks, over­see­ing stores in south­ern New Jersey, the Philadelphia area, Delaware and parts of Maryland, when employ­ees at a Philadelphia store called 911 in April 2018 to say two black men were trespassing.

The men, who an attor­ney said were at the store for a busi­ness meet­ing, were arrested.

They were even­tu­al­ly let go after about eight hours in police cus­tody, with a dis­trict attor­ney’s spokesman say­ing there was a “lack of evi­dence” of a crime.

A viral video of the inci­dent drew nation­al head­lines and sparked a wave of protests.

Starbucks did not press any charges, but rather apol­o­gized and, on one morn­ing the fol­low­ing month, closed its more than 8,000 stores across the coun­try for racial sen­si­tiv­i­ty training.

Phillips says in her law­suit that after the arrests she “imme­di­ate­ly took steps to learn addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the events … address strong com­mu­ni­ty reac­tion” and “ensure the safe­ty” of Starbucks’ employ­ees and customers.

She also “took steps to ensure that the retail loca­tions with­in her area were a safe and wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment for all cus­tomers, regard­less of race,” the suit says.

About a month after the arrests, Phillips was ordered to sus­pend one of her sub­or­di­nates, a white 15-year employ­ee, who was a Starbucks man­ag­er but had noth­ing to do with the arrests or the store where they occurred, the suit says. The man­ag­er who was respon­si­ble for the store, who is black, was not penalized.

Her boss­es told her that non­white employ­ees at the store whose man­ag­er they want­ed her to sus­pend had been paid less than white employ­ees. Phillips object­ed, point­ing out that store man­agers have noth­ing to do with deter­min­ing salaries, which are set by a dif­fer­ent divi­sion of the com­pa­ny, accord­ing to the lawsuit.

The next day, Phillips was fired, with man­agers telling her “the sit­u­a­tion is not recoverable.”

Phillips claims in the suit say that she reg­u­lar­ly “received pos­i­tive per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions and relat­ed mer­it dri­ven bonus­es and salary increas­es.” She says she would still have her job if she were not white.

A Starbucks spokesman told NBC News the com­pa­ny denies the law­suit­’s claims: “We do not believe there is any mer­it to it and we’re pre­pared to present our case in court.”

Phillips is seek­ing a jury tri­al and com­pen­sato­ry and puni­tive dam­ages.
First appeared on https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/

I nev­er could quite put my fin­ger on exact­ly what it was about the Vermont United States, Senator Bernie Sanders which scares the s**t out of me.
Maybe it is his dogged pur­suit of the pres­i­den­cy even at the age of 78. It just seems too nar­cis­sis­tic, and over­ly ambi­tious to me. Maybe it is because his one claim to fame is that he marched with Doctor King. Or maybe it’s the fact that he did not stand up for his state’s only black female law­mak­er, state Rep. Kiah Morris, who stepped aside due to racist threats against her and her family. 

Morris wrote that polit­i­cal dis­course had become “divi­sive, inflam­ma­to­ry and at times, even dan­ger­ous.”
One white suprema­cist even threat­ened her life. Morris and her attor­ney have accused the local police of not respond­ing ade­quate­ly to her con­cerns. Despite being an elect­ed offi­cial, she told the news­pa­per, “I could­n’t even find the pro­tec­tion and the jus­tice that my fam­i­ly deserves.” She called the sit­u­a­tion “stun­ning,” accord­ing to (NPR).
It may also be that Bernie Sanders a Brooklyn Jew, one of those who nev­er fail to remind us of the holo­caust, oppos­es repa­ra­tions for African-Americans who forcibly gave free ser­vice to America, arguably for hun­dreds of years.

With all of that, I may very well have been wrong about Bernie Sanders. After all, his seem­ing obses­sion with a cou­ple of issues at the expense of oth­ers may be just the way social­ists are.
But then dur­ing a ques­tion and answer ses­sion at a Historically Black College and University, Benedict College on Saturday, a young black man, a stu­dent, asked the Senator how he should han­dle get­ting pulled over by a police offi­cer.
In typ­i­cal white­ness, the sen­a­tor and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date respond­ed; “respect what they are doing, so that you don’t get shot in the back of the head.” 

This response though incred­i­bly igno­rant, ful­ly explains how white peo­ple sim­plis­ti­cal­ly and dis­mis­sive­ly see the mur­ders and assaults on black peo­ple as not the fault of the racist mon­sters in uni­form, but that of the vic­tims them­selves.
Because of course, all of the inno­cent Black peo­ple who have been stopped and mur­dered by police, from Philando Castille who was mur­dered while dri­ving with his fiancé and stepchild, to Michael Bell who was mur­dered by NYPD uni­formed killers on the very day he was to be mar­ried, did cause their own deaths.

We do under­stand that slav­ery as an insti­tu­tion per­sist­ed some­where between 246 and 400-years in America because of the lack of char­ac­ter and decen­cy by not just those who owned slaves, but by whites who did not.
Most whites did not own slaves, but those who did­n’t, did not care that their fel­low humans were held in servi­tude against their will.
As long as it was­n’t them being treat­ed that way they did not care. That ought to put to rest the alter­na­tive fact[sic] idea, that it was their good­ness which caused slav­ery to be abol­ished, it wasn’t.

The fact that a can­di­date run­ning for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion in 2019 could offer up a solu­tion as infan­tile as the one Sanders did, on the sem­i­nal issue which plagues blacks, the base of the Democrat par­ty, is rather telling.
For as long as this coun­try has exist­ed as a nation, and even before, black peo­ple have borne the brunt of abuse from white peo­ple.
Let us stop pussy­foot­ing around this issue. We have vic­tims and we have per­pe­tra­tors.
White peo­ple do not get to hide or dic­tate how we speak about this issue, or whether we speak about it at all. From the plan­ta­tions to slave patrols, to what we now know as polic­ing, black Americans have been hound­ed abused and mur­dered, and it per­sists today.
Show me your papers!
Let me see your ID!
It’s all the same thing.

Bernie Sanders believes that all Black peo­ple have to do is to con­tin­ue to bow down to their oppres­sors who abuse and kill them under the col­or of law. I won­der whether he would have had the same advice for the prac­tic­ing Jews to Hitler’s assault?
On sec­ond thought, I know he would not. You see, in the same way, Sanders does not believe repa­ra­tions which are owed a mil­lion times over and with inter­est, should be paid to African-Americans, why would he care whether they are mur­dered by police?
It is for those rea­sons that black vot­ers should tell Bernie Sanders to go to hell.

NAACP

Throughout the late 19^th cen­tu­ry racial ten­sion grew through­out the United States. More of this ten­sion was notice­able in the Southern parts of the United States. In the south, peo­ple were blam­ing their finan­cial prob­lems on the new­ly freed slaves that lived around them. Lynchings were becom­ing a pop­u­lar way of resolv­ing some of the anger that whites had in rela­tion to the free blacks.

From 1882 – 1968, 4,743 lynch­ings occurred in the United States. Of these peo­ple that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched account­ed for 72.7% of the peo­ple lynched. These num­bers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynch­ings were ever record­ed. Out of the 4,743 peo­ple lynched only 1,297 white peo­ple were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for help­ing the black or being anti lynch­ing and even for domes­tic crimes.

Was lynch­ing nec­es­sary? To many peo­ple, it was not, but to the whites, in the late 19^th cen­tu­ry it served a pur­pose. Whites start­ed lynch­ing because they felt it was nec­es­sary to pro­tect white women. Rape though, was not a great fac­tor in the rea­son­ing behind the lynch­ing. It was the third great­est cause of lynch­ings behind homi­cides and ‘all oth­er causes’.

Most of the lynch­ings that took place hap­pened in the South. A big rea­son for this was the end of the Civil War. Once blacks were giv­en their free­dom, many peo­ple felt that the freed blacks were get­ting away with too much free­dom and felt they need­ed to be con­trolled. Mississippi had the high­est lynch­ings from 1882 – 1968 with 581. Georgia was sec­ond with 531, and Texas was third with 493. 79% of lynch­ing hap­pened in the South.

Of the lynch­ing that did not take place in the South, main­ly in the West, were nor­mal­ly lynch­ings of whites, not blacks. Most of the lynch­ing in the West came from the lynch­ing of either mur­ders or cat­tle thieves. There real­ly was no polit­i­cal link to the lynch­ing of blacks in the South, and whites in the West.

Not all states did lynch peo­ple. Some states did not lynch a white or a black per­son. Alaska, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut were these few states that had no lynch­ings between 1882 – 1968.

Although some states did have lynch­ings, some of them did not lynch any blacks. Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin were some states that did not lynch any blacks to record.

Quite a few states did, in fact, lynch more white peo­ple than black. In the West, these greater num­ber of white lynch­ings was due to polit­i­cal rea­sons, not racial rea­sons. California, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming lynched more whites than blacks.

It’s sad to think that we look at oth­er coun­tries and deem them immoral for killing their own peo­ple, but we over­look the fact of what hap­pened in the late 1890s to the late 1960s. This is some­thing that we can­not over­look and do not need to try to over­look it.
http://​www​.ches​nuttarchive​.org/​c​l​a​s​s​r​o​o​m​/​l​y​n​c​h​i​n​g​s​t​a​t​.​h​tml

MAY 19, 1918

Walter White was sent by the NAACP to inves­ti­gate lynch­ings in Brooks- Lowndes County, Georgia. The lynch­ing of Mary Turner was one of the inves­ti­ga­tions. Abusive plan­ta­tion own­er, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed.
A week-long man­hunt result­ed in the killing of the hus­band of Mary Turner, Hayes Turner.
Mary Turner denied that her hus­band had been involved in Smith’s killing, pub­licly opposed her husband’s mur­der, and threat­ened to have mem­bers of the mob arrest­ed.
On May 19^th, a mob of sev­er­al hun­dred brought her to Folsom Bridge which sep­a­rates Brooks and Lowndes coun­ties in Georgia. The mob tied her ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, doused her in gaso­line and motor oil and set her on fire.
Turner was still alive when a mem­ber of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife and her unborn child fell on the ground. The baby was stomped and crushed as it fell to the ground. Turner’s body was rid­dled with hun­dreds of bullets.

TENNESSEE 1918

Walter White, The Crisis, May 1918

(Of fair skin and with straight hair, Walter White, assis­tant sec­re­tary for the NAACP, used his appear­ance to increase his effec­tive­ness in con­duct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of lynch­ings and race riots in the South. He could “pass” and talk to whites, but iden­ti­fied as Black and could talk to mem­bers of the African American com­mu­ni­ty. Through 1927 White would inves­ti­gate 41 lynchings.)

Jesse McIlherron was pros­per­ous in a small way. He was a Negro who resent­ed the slights and insults of white men. He went armed and the sher­iff feared him. On February 8, he got into a quar­rel with three young white men who insult­ed him. Threats were made and McIlherron fired six shots, killing two of the men.

He fled to the home of a col­ored cler­gy­man who aid­ed him to escape, and was after­ward shot and killed by a mob. McIlherron was cap­tured and full arrange­ments were made for a lynch­ing. Men, women, and chil­dren start­ed into the town of Estill Springs from a radius of fifty miles. A spot was cho­sen for the burn­ing. McIlherron was chained to a hick­o­ry tree while the mob howled about him. A fire was built a few feet away and the tor­ture began. Bars of iron was heat­ed and the mob amused itself by putting them close to the vic­tim, at first with­out touch­ing him. One bar he grasped and as it was jerked from his grasp all the inside of his hand came with it. Then the real tor­tur­ing began, last­ing twen­ty minutes.

During that time, while his flesh was slow­ly roast­ing, the Negro nev­er lost nerve. He cursed those who tor­tured him and almost to the last breath derid­ed the attempts of the mob to break his spir­it. https://​www​.naacp​.org/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​o​f​-​l​y​n​c​h​i​n​gs/

Michael Harriot

What would hap­pen if a police chief found out one of his offi­cers was a part of a white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion known for vio­lent attacks? What if a jury had already deter­mined that the offi­cer was guilty of vio­lat­ing a citizen’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in a vio­lent attack? What if some­one could prove this cop had actu­al­ly paid dues to the vio­lent, white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion? Could you imag­ine what would hap­pen? Well, if this hap­pened in the lily-white vil­lage of East Hampton, Conn., the answer is:

Nothing at all.

The FBI clas­si­fies the Proud Boys as an “extrem­ist group with ties to white nation­al­ism.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has des­ig­nat­ed them a “hate group.” The New York Times and Wall-Street Journal calls them “far-right.” They were kicked off of most social media plat­forms for espous­ing white nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy. 

Proud Boys were con­vict­ed of gang vio­lence in New York and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the White Lives Matter ral­ly in Tennessee. Former Proud Boys mem­ber Jason Kessler orga­nized the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va., and if you were so inclined, you could have met mem­bers of the “alt-right” fra­ter­nal orga­ni­za­tion protest­ing with neo-Nazis and attack­ing anti-racists in Berkeley, Calif.

Or, if you just hap­pen to be cruis­ing through Connecticut, you can just stop in East Hampton and ask to meet offi­cer Kevin P. Wilcox.

In June, Kristen Clarke, pres­i­dent of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, sent a let­ter to East Hampton Police Chief Dennis Woessner noti­fy­ing the depart­ment that Wilcox, a 10-year-vet­er­an of the force, was a known white suprema­cist. The June 24 let­ter also not­ed that a fed­er­al grand jury had deter­mined that Wilcox vio­lat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of Alan P. Clark dur­ing a 2008 inci­dent that some­how result­ed in Clark get­ting beat in the head with Wilcox’s flash­light. The city even­tu­al­ly reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment in that case and Wilcox con­tin­ued his employ­ment as an officer.

“Officer Wilcox’s asso­ci­a­tion with white suprema­cists on pub­lic plat­forms, as well as his his­to­ry of vio­lence, risks inter­fer­ing with your department’s oper­a­tions by dis­rupt­ing the work­ing rela­tion­ships between the East Hampton Police Department and the com­mu­ni­ty it serves,” wrote Clarke in her let­ter to Chief Woessner.

In response, the chief’s posi­tion was basi­cal­ly: “Yeah, but why y’all always bring­ing up old shit?” explain­ing that Wilcox has retired from racism.

The Hartford Courant reports:

The East Hampton offi­cer, Kevin P. Wilcox, “stopped his asso­ci­a­tion” with the Proud Boys in February, about five months before the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law inquired about his social media con­nec­tions with oth­er group mem­bers, Police Chief Dennis Woessner said.

In a let­ter to the Washington-based civ­il rights group, the police chief acknowl­edged that Wilcox had been a Proud Boys mem­ber and made online pay­ments to a group leader. The rights group described those pub­licly vis­i­ble, online trans­ac­tions as month­ly dues that helped fund the Proud Boys’ “vio­lent or oth­er­wise ille­gal” activities.

But the chief said he reviewed the mat­ter, received an “explana­to­ry report” from Wilcox and closed the department’s inquiry as being “unfound­ed,” with no evi­dence to sup­port a pol­i­cy vio­la­tion. Wilcox “adamant­ly denies being asso­ci­at­ed with white suprema­cists’ groups,” the chief wrote in a let­ter dat­ed Sept. 13.

Woessner claims “there’s no ques­tion” that Wilcox is not a white suprema­cist for a num­ber of reasons:

First of all, Woessner said he inves­ti­gat­ed the Proud Boys’ his­to­ry of vio­lence and hate by using a ground­break­ing inves­tiga­tive tech­nique: He Googled them. That’s not a joke. When reporters asked the god­damn police chief what he knew about the orga­ni­za­tion that has ter­ror­ized peo­ple across the coun­try for years, the chief responded:

“Only what I searched on the Internet.”

Ok, to be fair, maybe Chief Woessner used Bing. Proud Boys say they aren’t racists, they are “anti-polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” and “anti-white apol­o­gists.” The chief also claims he looked at all of the stops Wilcox made since 2018 and not­ed that Wilcox has only stopped white people.

Oh.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Wilcox isn’t racist and this is proof. I would expect that a racist police offi­cer would prob­a­bly tar­get black peo­ple all the time, so I agree with Chief Whitesplainer that Wilcox might not be a white suprema­cist. Of course, the fact that East Hampton is 88 per­cent white and only 1 per­cent black prob­a­bly has noth­ing to do with that.

The Lawyers Committee is demand­ing that the city con­duct a thor­ough review of Wilcox’s traf­fic stops and any com­plaints that may have arisen before the offi­cer turned in his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to the Proud Boys. The group also wants Wilcox fired and a Department of Justice inves­ti­ga­tion into whether anyone’s civ­il rights have been violated.

“The infil­tra­tion of white suprema­cists into police depart­ments is a nation­al cri­sis,” Clarke said in a state­ment. “As com­mu­ni­ties con­tend with ris­ing hate crimes, it is crit­i­cal that African Americans and peo­ple of col­or have faith in local law enforce­ment. Police offi­cers who affil­i­ate with white suprema­cist groups con­tribute to a cli­mate of fear and mis­trust, infect the ranks with bias and racism, and exac­er­bate the divides between com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and the police.”

Although Chief Woessner’s log­ic makes no sense, I would like to declare to the East Hampton Police Department and racist cops every­where that I have for­mal­ly resigned from being stopped, frisked, arrest­ed and shot by white suprema­cists with badges.

Damn. I wish I had known it was that easy

A Fort Worth police offi­cer who fatal­ly shot a woman in her home while she played video games with her 8‑year-old nephew has resigned from the force but still could face crim­i­nal charges, the inter­im police chief said Monday. 

Chief Ed Krauss said Aaron Dean, who is white, would have been fired and is con­sid­ered dis­hon­or­ably dis­charged from the depart­ment. Krauss also said the U.S. Justice Department will exam­ine the case for pos­si­ble civ­il rights violations.

Atatiana “Tay” Jefferson, 28, was shot through her bed­room win­dow ear­ly Saturday by an offi­cer con­duct­ing a wel­fare check. Hours before Krauss spoke Monday, fam­i­ly mem­bers held their own news con­fer­ence demand­ing that the offi­cer be fired and crim­i­nal­ly charged. 

Ashley Carr told reporters her sis­ter was killed by the “reck­less act” of the offi­cer and said the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should take over the investigation.

“There is sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his actions,” she said. “We demand jus­tice for Atatiana thor­ough an inde­pen­dent and thor­ough investigation.”

Added Jefferson’s broth­er, Adarius Carr: “This man mur­dered some­one. He should be arrested.”

Investigators were sched­uled to inter­view the offi­cer Monday, police Lt. Brandon O’Neil said. Police also released audio of a neigh­bor’s calm call to a non-emer­gency phone num­ber that sent police to the home.

Jefferson, who was black, worked as a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The offi­cer has served on the force for 18 months, police said. The shoot­ing took place less than two weeks after for­mer Dallas police offi­cer Amber Guyger was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Botham Jean, a black man shot in 2018 as he ate ice cream in his home.

S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Jefferson’s fam­i­ly, said police not only vio­lat­ed Jefferson’s rights but also made “com­mon sense” mis­takes. And he called the release of a pho­to of a gun found in the bed­room “obscene,” say­ing no con­nec­tion had been made between the gun and the shooting.

“Why this man is not in hand­cuffs is a source of con­tin­ued agi­ta­tion for this fam­i­ly and for this com­mu­ni­ty,” Merritt said

Mayor Betsy Price, speak­ing before Krauss, agreed Monday that the gun found in Jefferson’s home was “irrel­e­vant.” 

“Atatiana was a vic­tim… unjust­ly tak­en from her fam­i­ly,” Price said.

Merrit said the vic­tim’s nephew told him the duo had been up late play­ing “Halo” – with the doors open to enjoy the cool fall breeze – when they heard noise out­side her bed­room window.

“They looked at each oth­er and lis­tened more intent­ly when they heard it again,” Merritt said in a social media post. “Someone was outside.”

Merritt said the nephew described how his aunt went to the win­dow to see who was there.

“Suddenly a man’s voice was scream­ing some­thing he could­n’t make out, and then ‘bang,’ ” Merritt said. Jefferson fell to the floor. Merritt said he did­n’t ask the child what he saw next because he did­n’t want him “to have to relive that” with him.

“I’m hurt. I’m angry. I’m a lit­tle afraid when I’m hon­est,” Merritt said. “I hate this hap­pened to (the nephew). I hate it hap­pened to Tay and her beau­ti­ful fam­i­ly. This has to stop now. Enough.”

O’Neil said neigh­bor James Smith called police at 2:23 a.m. Saturday morn­ing, telling the dis­patch­er it was “not nor­mal” for his neigh­bors to have the doors open and lights on at that hour.

Two offi­cers arrived six min­utes lat­er. They did not park in front of the house, O’Neil said. Body cam­era video released by police shows offi­cers, armed with guns and flash­lights, cir­cling the home. An offi­cer stops at a window.

The video ends with an offi­cer shout­ing, “Put your hands up, show me your hands” before the sound of one gun­shot. Jefferson was killed with a bul­let fired through her bed­room window.

O’Neil con­firmed what the video appeared to show – that the offi­cer nev­er iden­ti­fied him­self as police. He also con­firmed that Jefferson’s nephew was in the room.

Activist Cory Hughes said the com­mu­ni­ty want­ed more than a sus­pen­sion for the officer.

“What we are look­ing for is for this offi­cer not only to be fired but to we are demand­ing that his offi­cer be charged as well, like the crim­i­nal that he is,” Hughes said. “This life mattered.

This fam­i­ly mat­ters. Story orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​www​.usato​day​.com/​n​e​ws/