Another Black per­son lost her life at the hands of the very peo­ple who are sup­posed to pro­tect them.
This time anoth­er cop, in the state of Texas fired from out­side into a wom­an’s home killing her on the spot.
How on earth can police offi­cers who are trained con­tin­ue to lie that they are threat­ened or afraid when they can sim­ply take cov­er and wait to see what’s going on?
In this case, a beau­ti­ful 28-year-old young woman was mur­dered in her own home as a white cop could­n’t both­er to step back, when he could sim­ply shoot her. And shoot her he did, killing her on the spot.
Now wait for the cam­paign of lies and the char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion to begin. This is sure to fol­low, as a form of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Unlawful killing her.
Another beau­ti­ful life is snuffed out by state-fund­ed mur­der­ers.
It has become clear that African-Americans can­not, and should not call the police for any­thing.
Calling for police ser­vices, which the black com­mu­ni­ty pays for, has become a mat­ter of life and death.
Whether wrong or right, black peo­ple are mur­dered as soon as they come in con­tact with police.
When will this out­ra­geous assault come to an end?
Would this cop have fired into a home in a white neigh­bor­hood, you be the judge?

SEE STORY BELOW

A Fort Worth police offi­cer check­ing out a res­i­dence with an open door opened fire on a 28-year-old woman inside her home. 

A Fort Worth police offi­cer check­ing out a res­i­dence with an open door opened fire on a woman inside her home, killing her, author­i­ties said.

The shoot­ing ear­ly Saturday occurred less than two weeks after a police offi­cer in near­by Dallas was found guilty of mur­der for fatal­ly shoot­ing a man in his home in 2018. In both cas­es the offi­cers are white and the vic­tims were African American.

In the Fort Worth shoot­ing at 2:25 a.m. Saturday, author­i­ties have the offi­cer’s body-cam­era footage.

According to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, the imagery shows the per­spec­tive of the offi­cer out­side a home, peer­ing inside a win­dow using a flash­light, spot­ting some­one inside stand­ing near a win­dow and telling her, “Put your hands up — show me your hands,” before open­ing fire.

Fort Worth police say one shot was fired.

Officers entered the home and began pro­vid­ing emer­gency med­ical care to the woman but she was pro­nounced dead, police said.

The Tarrant County med­ical exam­in­er iden­ti­fied her as Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, 28, accord­ing to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.

A gun was found inside the home, police said, but it was­n’t clear if the woman was near it at the time of the shooting.

Neighbor James Smith said he called a police non-emer­gency num­ber when he noticed the open door.

If you don’t feel safe with the police depart­ment, then who do you feel safe with?” he said.

Amber Carr, Jefferson’s sis­ter, ques­tioned the offi­cer’s train­ing. “I just don’t under­stand,” she said.

The offi­cer, who has been with the depart­ment since April 2018, was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave while the shoot­ing is under inves­ti­ga­tion. The depart­men­t’s major case and inter­nal affairs units and the Tarrant County dis­trict attor­ney’s law-enforce­ment inci­dent team will con­duct the investigation.

Police said evi­dence would be for­ward­ed to the dis­trict attor­ney “to deter­mine the final outcome.”

The body-cam­era footage, with the excep­tion of imagery of the inte­ri­or of the home, would be released, police said.

The September 2018 killing of Botham Jean in Dallas sparked nation­al head­lines. The then-offi­cer accused of mur­der­ing her neigh­bor said she had mis­tak­en­ly entered the wrong apart­ment after a long shift on patrol when she believed some­one was in her home and opened fire.

Amber Guyger was sen­tenced to 10 years behind bars.Dennis 

Camden County, GA — Zechariah Presley, a for­mer police offi­cer from Georgia who killed Tony Green, a 33-year old unarmed Black man, after shoot­ing him mul­ti­ple times while he was flee­ing, has been acquit­ted of his manslaugh­ter charges. 

He was only found guilty of vio­lat­ing his oath of office, and will face one to five years in jail if con­vict­ed. He was ordered to be jailed pend­ing sen­tenc­ing on October 18.

The case stemmed from the inci­dent in June 2018 where­in Presley fol­lowed Green’s car as he thought he was dri­ving with a sus­pend­ed license. As seen on a dash cam­era video, Green even­tu­al­ly stopped the car, went out then ran away before he briefly returned to the car to grab an uniden­ti­fied object then ran again.

Presley then chased Green on foot. Presley’s body­cam caught the inci­dent, but it was not clear­ly vis­i­ble. Only the sound of the repeat­ed taser­ing fol­lowed by eight gun­shots can be heard.

According to an autop­sy report, Green was hit all eight times, one to his chest and the rest was to his back and hips. Small amounts of alco­hol, mar­i­jua­na, cocaine, and a tran­quil­iz­er were alleged­ly found in his system.

“He admit­ted that he killed Tony Green in cold blood,” Pastor Mack De’Von Knight, whose church Green attend­ed, told the Associated Press. “To me, it’s hunt­ing sea­son for the young black man and we’re being gunned down in the streets and there’s no reper­cus­sions, there’s no con­se­quences for these officers.”

However, Presley’s lawyers claimed that he feared for his life since he thought that what Green grabbed when he returned to the car was a gun. Investigators deter­mined the object was a cellphone.

“Tony Green was not shot because of mis­de­meanor offens­es,” defense attor­ney Adrienne Browning said in her clos­ing argu­ment. “He was shot because of bad deci­sion after bad deci­sion, until the threat was over­whelm­ing and Zech feared for his life.”

Jury takes just six hours to find Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ shooter Michael Drejka GUILTY of manslaughter for killing an unarmed black man in a row over a disabled parking spot

• McGlockton was gunned down by Drejka dur­ing a July 2018 park­ing spot dispute
• After just three days of tes­ti­mo­ny, lawyers gave clos­ing argu­ment on Friday
• A jury found Drejka guilty of manslaugh­ter and he will be sen­tenced October 10
• He faces a min­i­mum of nine-and-a-half-years in jail up to a max­i­mum of 15 years
• McGlockton had come out of the store while Drejka was con­fronting his girlfriend
• The girl­friend had parked in a dis­abled spot and Drejka was unhap­py about it 
• Surveillance footage cap­tured the shoot­ing and showed him draw­ing his gun four sec­onds after he was pushed over by McGlockton

A Florida man on tri­al for manslaugh­ter for killing an unarmed black man in a 2018 ‘Stand Your Ground shoot­ing’ has been found guilty of manslaugh­ter. Markeis McGlockton was shot and killed by Michael Drejka dur­ing a dis­pute over a dis­abled per­son­’s park­ing spot at a Clearwater con­ve­nience store. Drejka, 49, admit­ted to shoot­ing McGlockton last year, but his defense team unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to argue it was self-defense, reignit­ing a fierce nation­al debate on the con­tro­ver­sial law. The gun­man will be sen­tenced on October 10 and faces a min­i­mum of nine-and-a-half-years in prison and a max­i­mum of 15 years, accord­ing to Florida state law.

Michael Drejka (pic­tured top) is shown in court on Friday, before the jury was sent out for delib­er­a­tions. He declined to tes­ti­fy. Drejka, 49, shot and killed Markeis McGlockton (below), 28, in July 2018 in an argu­ment over a park­ing spot

The 49-year-old had been argu­ing with McGlockton’s girl­friend over a park­ing spot in a dis­abled bay out­side a food store in Clearwater, Florida. He did not have any­one in his vehi­cle and is not dis­abled him­self but he said see­ing peo­ple abus­ing hand­i­cap spots upset him. 
Jury delib­er­a­tions last­ed rough­ly six hours, it was report­ed, with a short break at around 9:30pm when jurors request­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the instruc­tions for decid­ing guilt or inno­cence. When McGlockton emerged from the store, he pushed Drejka over. Drejka reached for his weapon and shot him in the chest, killing him. Members of McGlockton’s fam­i­ly wept as the ver­dict was read and hugged and shook hands with the pros­e­cu­tors after the court was adjourned.

‘This con­vic­tion does­n’t bring our son back, but it does give us some sense of jus­tice because far too often the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem fails us by allow­ing peo­ple who take the lives of unarmed Black peo­ple to walk free as though their lives meant noth­ing,’ McGlockton’s moth­er, Monica Robinson, said in a state­ment. ‘We are hope­ful that this con­vic­tion will be a brick in the road to chang­ing the cul­ture of racism here in Florida.’ McGlockton’s father, Michael McGlockton, said on the court steps fol­low­ing the ver­dict: ‘It’s been well over a year… but my fam­i­ly can rest now. We can start putting the pieces back togeth­er.’ Michelle Rayner, attor­ney for Markeis McGlockton’s par­ents, said: ‘I want to express thank­ful­ness and grate­ful­ness to the law firm and the office of the state attorney.

‘It was very clear it was­n’t just anoth­er case. It was very clear… that you sought to make the jury remem­ber to make the world remem­ber that Markeis mat­tered. ‘We’re thank­ful the jury got it right. We’re thank­ful that the jury saw that we saw — that a park­ing lot vig­i­lante with an ax to grind, mur­dered Markeis Mcglockton. ‘There are oth­er fam­i­lies that do not have jus­tice for their loved ones and so while we will cel­e­brate that we will also con­tin­ue stand­ing in the gap for those fam­i­lies. ‘So once again we are incred­i­bly thank­ful to the pros­e­cu­tion, we’re grate­ful to the jurors of this case that they saw what they saw and I’m so proud and hon­ored to stand here with Markeis’ fam­i­ly.’ Michael McGlockton, Markeis’ father added: ‘It’s been well over a year… but my fam­i­ly can rest now. We can start putting the pieces back together.’ 

Drejka’s attor­neys argued that he thought he was at dan­ger and for that rea­son, he should be found inno­cent. Prosecutors, how­ev­er, said sur­veil­lance footage of the inci­dent proved that he was not in dan­ger and that he shot too soon, with­out prop­er­ly assess­ing the risk. ‘This is real­ly a cut and dry case. There’s no mis­in­ter­pret­ing that Markeis McGlockton was going back­ward,’ he said, in ref­er­ence to the fact that McGlockton was walk­ing away from Drejka when he was shot. ‘Did Michael Drejka rea­son­ably believe he was about to die? Did he believe he was about to be beat­en to a pulp? No,’ Scott Rosenwasser told the jury. ‘You can­not shoot an unarmed retreat­ing man, regard­less of if he’s pushed you,’ he went on. 

Prosecutors said he thought of him­self as a ‘vig­i­lante enforcer’ who had a ‘pet peeve’ about able-bod­ied peo­ple park­ing in dis­abled spots. ‘He’s got a pet peeve… he takes it upon him­self to be the enforcer. He’s a park­ing lot vig­i­lante,’ he said. He also crit­i­cized the way Drejka used police ter­mi­nol­o­gy while being inter­viewed by detec­tives when he had no law enforce­ment back­ground. ‘How many civil­ians walk around say­ing ‘neu­tral­ize’ and ‘neg­a­tive’. Those are law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary terms. Nobody talks like that. But he does. ‘He goes to enforce a spot at a con­ve­nience store, not like it’s his own prop­er­ty, and then he’s like, ‘I can’t believe she would talk back to me like that.’ ‘That’s his men­tal­i­ty,’ he said. Drejka’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed expert wit­ness­es to try to hold up his Stand Your Ground Defense. 

In his clos­ing argu­ment, one of his lawyers told jurors to ‘use your com­mon sense’ and said it was entire­ly rea­son­able for him to pre­sume that McGlockton was going to hurt him. ‘He was­n’t going out there to hug him. Come on! Use your com­mon sense,’ attor­ney John Trevena said. ‘Your fun­da­men­tal right is to stay alive,’ he said, adding that Drejka ‘did not have the phys­i­cal capac­i­ty to defend him­self against such an aggres­sor.’ Trevena also chipped away at pros­e­cu­tors’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of him as trig­ger hap­py and said he had legal­ly owned a gun with­out fir­ing it for 25 years. ‘You’d think if some­body was itch­ing to use a firearm, if that was their agen­da, you would­n’t have found some­one in 25 years’ time?’ he added. ‘No one is dis­put­ing that he shot this man. It’s all on video,’ he said. He added that he felt pros­e­cu­tors had ‘manip­u­lat­ed’ the jurors. 

The defense focused on the term dead­ly force and how it applies to cit­i­zens and not just law enforce­ment under the law. They asked the jury to con­sid­er not whether McGlockton was actu­al­ly pos­ing a threat, but whether they think it was rea­son­able for Drejka to assume that he was and draw his weapon. The pros­e­cu­tion tore it apart and said they jury ought not to rule on what Drejka per­ceived as a threat, but what a rea­son­able per­son would per­ceive as a threat. The defense tried to use a real gun as a prop at one stage to try to make their case but the judge did not allow it. The defense pre­sent­ed just three wit­ness­es. Drejka chose not tes­ti­fy, telling the judge through a state­ment: ‘I pre­fer not to tes­ti­fy.’ The pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed more than 17 wit­ness­es. They also played a video of his inter­view where he told the cops: ‘I shoot to save my own a**. And that’s that.’ 

Elsewhere in the inter­view he said he thought McGlockton was going to kick him. ‘It hap­pened so fast and that was that. …I thought kicks were com­ing or at least he’d be on top of me. ‘As I come out I start draw­ing my weapon. As I start lev­el­ing off my weapon, he makes his next step towards me and 21-foot rule. ‘It hap­pened so fast and that was that. …I thought kicks were com­ing or at least he’d be on top of me. ‘I’m think­ing he’s com­ing to do the rest of it… what­ev­er beat­ing was com­ing after that. If he’s gonna hit me that hard to begin with from blind­side from the get-go, what else should I expect? ‘He bare­ly made the sec­ond step before I pulled the trigger.

At one point in the hour long inter­view, Drejka got on the ground and mim­ic­ked how he’d shot McGlockton. He said that even though McGlockton was unarmed, he did not know that and that he thought his life was in dan­ger. Drejka said he feared he was going to ‘fin­ish what he start­ed’ when he pushed him over and that he was try­ing to pre­empt it. The shoot­ing was cap­tured on sur­veil­lance videos out­side the store. The footage shows McGlockton edg­ing away from Drejka when he was shot. 

When the detec­tive told Drejka that instead of approach­ing him, he was back­ing away, Drejka said he ‘dis­agreed’. The detec­tives found it unusu­al that Drejka knew so much about the 21ft rule — a term invoked by law enforce­ment which refer the dis­tance a sus­pect can trav­el towards an offi­cer by the time they have iden­ti­fied a threat and pulled their weapon. There was also tes­ti­mo­ny from a police train­er who was famil­iar with the 21ft rule. He said the Drejka was wrong to invoke it and said it did not apply in his case. Among oth­er wit­ness­es was Noël Palma, the med­ical exam­in­er who per­formed an autop­sy on the vic­tim’s body. The bul­let trav­eled through his left lung and pierced his heart and right lung, caus­ing him to die ‘pret­ty quick­ly.’ Other state wit­ness­es includ­ed a doc­tor who deter­mined McGlockton had ecsta­sy in his sys­tem at the time of his death. On Wednesday, the dead man’s girl­friend, who wit­nessed his death with her chil­dren in the back of her car, said she remem­bered think­ing that she want­ed Drejka to leave her and ‘her babies alone’. There was also tes­ti­mo­ny from a dif­fer­ent black motorist who Drejka threat­ened to shoot for park­ing in the same dis­abled spot four months before McGlockton’s death.

‘Parking lot vig­i­lante’ Michael Drejka had a ‘pet peeve’ for peo­ple improp­er­ly using dis­abled spots and viewed him­self as ‘the enforcer’ 

Throughout the tri­al, there was lit­tle men­tion of Drejka’s back­ground or why he was so irate when McGlockton’s girl­friend parked in the dis­abled spot. 

He is not dis­abled and there was no one else in his car. 

But through­out the inves­ti­ga­tion, it emerged he had pre­vi­ous­ly told peo­ple he became upset when he saw able-bod­ied peo­ple abus­ing the park­ing spots. 

WHAT IS THE ‘21ft RULE’ MICHAEL DREJKA TRIED TO USE TO JUSTIFY KILLING 

The 21ft rule, oth­er­wise known as the Trueller rule, is invoked my law enforce­ment and taught in train­ing exer­cis­es.  It refers to the dis­tance — 21ft — a sus­pect may trav­el towards an offi­cer dur­ing the time it can take an offi­cer to iden­ti­fy a dead­ly threat and draw their weapon to stop them.  It orig­i­nat­ed from a Salt Lake City detec­tive, Sergeant Dennis Tueller, and applied at the to knife attacks. The detec­tive test­ed how long it took in drills for peo­ple to cov­er 21ft, and found that it could be cov­ered in just 1.5 sec­onds.  While it is well known among law enforce­ment ranks, it is not com­mon knowl­edge among civil­ians.  Prosecutors said it was unusu­al for Drejka to fix­ate on it giv­en he has no back­ground in law enforcement. 

His moth­er-in-law is hand­i­capped and he had a high school sweet­heart who was also dis­abled and is now dead, he told some. Prosecutors said he was a ‘vig­i­lante enforcer’ with a ‘pet peeve’ for peo­ple who parked in the spots improp­er­ly. ‘He’s got a pet peeve… he takes it upon him­self to be the enforcer. ‘He’s a park­ing lot vig­i­lante,’ he said. Drejka and his wife, who has not been named pub­licly and has spo­ken only on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty after receiv­ing death threats in rela­tion to the case, have been mar­ried since 2010. She gave an inter­view after the shoot­ing last year to say that she was stand­ing by him, but she oth­er­wise has not spo­ken. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a tree trim­mer but stopped when he injured him­self. Originally from Delaware, he moved to Florida and got mar­ried in 2010.

Since then, he has worked as an Uber dri­ver but he gave up that job when his car became ‘inop­er­a­ble’, accord­ing to pre­vi­ous state­ments from his attor­ney. Drejka was described as a fre­quent cus­tomer of the food store where the shoot­ing took place and the own­er, who was among the state’s wit­ness­es, char­ac­ter­ized him as a ‘nosy’ per­son. He is nev­er thought to been giv­en police or law enforce­ment train­ing but was quick to make ref­er­ence to the 21ft rule when being ques­tioned by police in the hours after the attack. The 21ft rule refers to the dis­tance a sus­pect may be able to trav­el towards an offi­cer in the time that they have iden­ti­fied a threat and have drawn their weapon. Drejka said he invoked it when McGlockton was stand­ing in front of him and said he thought he was going to be harmed if he did not shoot.

But experts picked apart his sto­ry, say­ing the rule did not apply, because McGlockton was nei­ther mov­ing towards him nor was he 21ft away from him. They also ques­tioned whether he posed any real threat since there was no weapon drawn. Drejka drew his weapon and fired it four sec­onds after McGlockton pushed him to the ground. 

Schand was then-21-years old when he was sen­tenced to life with­out parole after being con­vict­ed of shoot­ing and killing Victoria Seymour, a moth­er of three, dur­ing a rob­bery of a drug deal­er out­side a club in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1986.

Schand, who was then pegged as a “trou­ble­mak­er”, was appar­ent­ly tar­get­ed by local detec­tives who alleged­ly “showed a pho­to of Schand wear­ing sun­glass­es to one of the drug deal­ers and told him that Schand ‘had shot Ms. Seymour’,” accord­ing to his lawsuit.

Brothers David and Charles “Heavy” Stokes, who were the drug deal­ers and two of the wit­ness­es, iden­ti­fied Schand as the gun­man. Years lat­er, they and the oth­er wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied that he is the gun­man changed their state­ments and said that the detec­tives had coerced them into lying.

Schand’s case has reached to Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based non­prof­it that helps release those who have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, and helped find new evi­dence in his case.

He was offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ed in 2013 and his con­vic­tion was over­turned. The state, how­ev­er, did not apol­o­gize and admit any wrong­do­ing. They only ini­tial­ly agreed to pay him $450,000.

After two years, he filed a law­suit against the city of Springfield and the four police offi­cers whom he claimed vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights for fram­ing him for the crime he did not com­mit which land­ed him in jail. In his com­plaint, Schand accused the police of hid­ing evi­dence, coerc­ing the wit­ness­es to lie, and manip­u­lat­ing the pho­to line­ups of suspects.

Last Friday, the jury ruled in Schand’s favor and award­ed him $27 million.

“After all this time, this is the first time there was some acknowl­edg­ment that some­one [had] done some­thing in my wrong­ful con­vic­tion, some­one was respon­si­ble for it,” he told NPR. “And, you know, that was almost bet­ter than the mon­e­tary damages.”

Heather McDevitt, his attor­ney, was equal­ly grate­ful for the rul­ing, espe­cial­ly because of the jus­tice they received.

“What are 27 years of a person’s life worth?” said McDevitt. “That’s a very inter­est­ing philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion. There are expe­ri­ences that can nev­er be recre­at­ed. There’s the pain and suf­fer­ing and sub­jec­tion to vio­lence and iso­la­tion and loneliness.”

Schand, who is now 55-years old, is liv­ing with his wife and three sons. He cur­rent­ly owns three sand­wich and smooth­ie shops and said that he does not rely much on the mon­e­tary award giv­en to him.

“Nothing is going to change much. It’s only mon­ey, I don’t have it yet and I don’t know if I ever will,” he told local media, not­ing that the city is plan­ning the appeal the decision.

News out of Kingston Jamaica is that for­mer edu­ca­tion Minister Ruel Reid, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Maritime University Fritz Pinnock, and a JLP parish Councillor have been tak­en into cus­tody by local police ear­ly Wednesday morn­ing.
Reid and Pinnock have report­ed­ly been under police inves­ti­ga­tions for months. (According to the Jamaica Gleaner) The months-long probe involves the Major Organised Crime Agency (MOCA) and the Financial Investigation Division (FID). Reid resigned on March 20 amid the cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions and yes­ter­day, Pinnock was sent on spe­cial leave with imme­di­ate effect pend­ing the out­come of the probe. Law enforce­ment offi­cers swooped down on Reid’s St Andrew house at 5 o’clock this morn­ing, the same time they arrived at Pinnock’s Hellshire home in Portmore, St Catherine in unmarked vehi­cles. MOCA detec­tives are also at the St Ann home of Jamaica Labour Party Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence.

Already the par­ti­sans are all over social media crow­ing on the one hand and lament­ing on the oth­er. Those opposed to the JLP are exu­ber­ant, those sup­port­ive of the par­ty are incred­u­lous that mem­bers of their par­ty could be arrest­ed by the police.
At this time we will not com­ment on the speci­fici­ty of the case because we have not seen the indict­ment.
Sufficing to say, how­ev­er, whether these accused are inno­cent or guilty, this is a good day for the rule of law.
Jamaicans are not used to see­ing police offi­cers raid­ing homes and arrest­ing politi­cians, regard­less of how low on the food chain they fall.
Simply put, the high com­mand of the JCF has been so com­pro­mised through polit­i­cal-affil­i­a­tions, feal­ty, and cow­ardice, that the prospect of the JCF con­duct­ing seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions against peo­ple with pow­er has been zero.
Despite the tril­lions of dol­lars siphoned from the Jamaican peo­ple, the Island’s Teflon politi­cians have all avoid­ed inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion, with the excep­tion of two.
(1) J.A.G Smith of the JLP spent time in prison for fraud and (2) Kern Spencer of the PNP who was indict­ed but not con­vict­ed because a sit­ting Magistrate (Judith Pusey) used her posi­tion to stymie the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Spencer being held to account for the crimes alleged against him.

This writer makes no state­ment of guilt or inno­cence regard­ing the accused. In fact, the his­tor­i­cal incom­pe­tence and lack of case prepa­ra­tion for which the JCF is infa­mous, is enough to inspire cau­tion.
Nevertheless, (inno­cent or guilty), the arrest of these accused, sends the right mes­sage to those who believe that their posi­tions of pow­er insu­late them from the reach­es of the law when they decide to trans­gress our laws.
This should not be a glee­ful moment, nei­ther should it be a sad moment.
Supporters of both polit­i­cal par­ties should see this moment as a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of our fledg­ling demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.
It should say to each and every Jamaican,” the laws apply to every­one, regard­less of their sta­tion”.
For the gov­ern­ing JLP, it is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to say “we don’t want crim­i­nals in our par­ty” and for the PNP in oppo­si­tion, it is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take heed that crim­i­nal mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic resources will not be tol­er­at­ed.
Regardless of the out­come of this case, today is a good day for the rule of law, and for law-abid­ing Jamaicans, regard­less of their politics. 

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.

Oakland, CA — Jonathan Bandabaila, a 19-year old Black teen from Oakland, has been miss­ing since May, and his fam­i­ly is express­ing their dis­ap­point­ment with the Oakland Police Department. They alleged­ly man­aged to send out a search notice about a miss­ing dog with­in 2 days, but it took almost 4 months to issue a sim­i­lar search notice for their loved one.

Jonathan was report­ed­ly last seen on May 3^rd after he left his home to attend a soc­cer tour­na­ment. His car was found the next day parked in the west­bound direc­tion of the San Mateo Bridge.

Police also recov­ered some of his belong­ings inside the car, such as his soc­cer uni­form, gears, and clothes he planned to wear to an upcom­ing for­mal event.

His broth­er, Harrison Bandabaila, described Jonathan as an “amaz­ing per­son” and said they had no idea why he would just disappear.

“I don’t think he ran away. There were no signs of depres­sion or men­tal ill­ness. He was hap­py,” he told East Bay Times.

Meanwhile, Harrison claimed the police seemed not to show con­cern about his brother’s vanishing.

“One of my family’s com­plaints was that the Oakland Police Department put out a memo that there’s a dog miss­ing — two days after it went miss­ing — yet it took them 149 days to put out that Jonathan was miss­ing,” Harrison said in a recent inter­view on Sirius XM’s The Clay Cane Show. “Like, it’s very frustrating.”

He added that they couldn’t help but be dis­ap­point­ed with the fact that Jonathan’s dis­ap­pear­ance appar­ent­ly did not have enough news cov­er­age. He said his moth­er watch­es cable news every night, hop­ing to see a sto­ry about it, but to no avail.

“There are oth­er situation’s going on in our soci­ety, in our com­mu­ni­ty and they (the media) are report­ing about stuff that, you know — it’s some­thing to report on, there are impor­tant things. But there are oth­er things more impor­tant than that.”

Moreover, his fam­i­ly is offer­ing a $2,500 reward to any­one who has infor­ma­tion lead­ing to Jonathan’s whereabouts.

It is shock­ing, the sense of apa­thy and unwill­ing­ness of America’s Black pop­u­la­tion to take its future into its own hands in a uni­fied and decid­ed way.
Statistical data and analy­sis show we do bet­ter when we unite, yet the data is sum­mar­i­ly ignored and dis­card­ed. There is almost a sense of res­ig­na­tion to the idea of sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship in some quar­ters. In oth­ers, the absurd expec­ta­tion is that the white man will even­tu­al­ly change, act human, and right some of the wrongs he did. Equally absurd, is the notion that all we have to do is pray.
( I thought I read some­where that faith with­out works was dead).

The fic­tion­al Doctor Huxtable (Bill Cosby) told his son, Theo, (Malcolm Jamal Warner ) that his brain would not explode if he stud­ied and retained what he had read.
My expe­ri­ences when talk­ing about the issues, hav­ing had numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions with many and var­ied African-American friends and asso­ciates, are either blank stares or dis­in­ter­est­ed indif­fer­ence.
On rare occa­sions, some­one [woke] seems to care, or is appro­pri­ate­ly informed on the real­i­ties of the issues at hand, we gen­er­al­ly dis­agree on the approach­es nec­es­sary to reme­di­ate those issues.
The tragedy in my hum­ble esti­ma­tion, is not the lack of “militancy”,(though nec­es­sary), it is the lack of his­tor­i­cal curiosity.

The issues of which I speak are not of grav­i­ta­tion­al fields and black holes, they are rather sim­ple issues, like, school board meet­ings. Voting. Paying atten­tion to the issues. How issues affect peo­ple’s lives. How apa­thy and the lack of curios­i­ty about the issues, and the will to par­tic­i­pate in the process, empow­er oth­ers who do not care about our inter­ests, to cre­ate poli­cies anti­thet­i­cal to our well-being.
Sadly, we either delve in blind reli­gios­i­ty on the one hand, or immerse our­selves in mind-numb­ing excur­sions of las­civ­i­ous plea­sures and enter­tain­ment.
We ignore our own inter­ests as if they are some­one else’s prob­lems, oth­er peo­ple’s bat­tles to fight. We delight in neg­a­tiv­i­ty and infan­tile clich­es, that’s where we rev­el and find com­mon cause.

We seem to care pre­cious lit­tle about the intran­si­gent and can­cer­ous prob­lem of racism, police-abuse, the dis­parate jus­tice, and edu­ca­tion sys­tems which exist.
I am dis­tressed that to a large extent and sad to say, the lev­el of aware­ness on the part of my African-American broth­ers and sis­ters is woe­ful­ly lack­ing, as opposed to peo­ple from Africa or the Caribbean.
Shockingly, it is as if a plu­ral­i­ty of the peo­ple with whom I con­verse lives in total dark­ness and have pre­cious lit­tle curios­i­ty about events hap­pen­ing in their country.

Video games, Reality TV, Netflix movies gar­ner much of the atten­tion of our peo­ple on the one hand, and cult-like reli­gios­i­ty pret­ty much occu­pies the mind of oth­ers. Even though the aver­age African-American with whom I cross paths have smart­phones and unlim­it­ed data.
The data is hard­ly ever used for edu­ca­tion and or infor­ma­tion. Entertainment is the num­ber one thing the data is used for.
During President Obama’s Presidency, one good­ly gen­tle­man asked me, “is Obama still in there”?
I stood there with my mouth agape, caught between the desire to lash out at him, yet frozen in dis­be­lief, unable to get over the shock of his dis­in­ter­est.
How could he not know who the pres­i­dent of the United States was?
If you have no idea who the pres­i­dent is, how do you know who your sen­a­tors, congressmen/​women, state and local leg­is­la­tors are?
After all that Black peo­ple sur­vived in America, he could not both­er to be awake for the dura­tion of the first black presidency.

It is I believe, these twin demons of blind reli­gios­i­ty and lack of curios­i­ty which will keep Blacks in America mired in the mud and morass of per­ceived infe­ri­or­i­ty for gen­er­a­tions to come.
It is exact­ly as a result of these twin demons which caus­es our ene­mies to brush us aside as inconsequential,.….unworthy of respect and dig­ni­ty.
It is for those rea­sons which cause every eth­nic group which enters the United States, (no mat­ter how poor and dis­pos­sessed), to look at us as the peo­ple least wor­thy of respect.

Instead of tak­ing seri­ous­ly these crit­i­cisms and engag­ing in intro­spec­tion the default response is to cas­ti­gate and demo­nize the mes­sen­ger.
No one wants to hear that the things they have believed all their lives are pro­pa­gan­da and lies fed to them in an effort to keep them sub­ju­gat­ed and befit­ting the stereo­typ­i­cal per­cep­tions of ³⁄₅ of a human being.
”[Yes but],” gen­er­al­ly fol­lows any state­ment of fact which cuts against the grain of the reli­gious dog­ma we have been force-fed all our lives. “Yes, “I hear your facts, “But, “I am dis­card­ing your truth, because I don’t want to both­er learn­ing any­thing new, even if its the truth.

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.

MB

I watched and lis­tened to bits and pieces of the Amber Guyger mur­der tri­al days ago. Full dis­clo­sure, I missed most of the tri­al itself but watched the sen­tenc­ing phase.
I missed the tri­al because I have zero con­fi­dence in the American jus­tice sys­tem to hold a white cop account­able for mur­der­ing a Black per­son, much less a white female who hap­pens to be a cop.
Some friends of mine thought dif­fer­ent­ly, because it hap­pened to be a jury tri­al, and so they were hyped that for once the sys­tem would give African-Americans a sec­ond dose of the O.J Simpson adren­a­line, this many years later.

Me, I have no such delu­sions about any degree of equi­ty in the sys­tem I have watched up close for so many years.
I have seen a black woman sen­tenced to five years in prison for ille­gal­ly using a wrong address so she could get her child into a good school and a white woman who paid thou­sands to get her kid into an ivy league col­league get a cou­ple of weeks in a coun­try-club jail as pun­ish­ment.
We have seen a black woman Marissa Alexander receive twen­ty (20) years for fir­ing her gun into a ceil­ing to ward off her abu­sive hus­band, nine days after giv­ing birth to their child in Florida, a state with stand your ground laws.
We have seen Kelontre Barefield, 23, receive a (45) year sen­tence after plead­ing guilty to the shoot­ing death of a police dog.
We have also seen count­less­ly inno­cent and unarmed Black men gunned down in hails of police bul­lets and no one held account­able.
And who can for­get the National Kerfuffle that was cre­at­ed around for­mer NFL quar­ter­back Michael Vick’s alleged involve­ment in a dog­fight­ing ring?
Vick was even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to 27 months in fed­er­al prison, even though there was zero evi­dence that Vick him­self had per­son­al­ly hurt a sin­gle dog.

Cyntoia Brown served fif­teen (15) years in a Tennessee prison for an inci­dent that occurred when she was a mere 16-year-old girl.
Cyntoia was sen­tenced to life in prison in the shoot­ing death of 43-year-old Johnny Allen.
Allen was found dead of a sin­gle shot to the back of his head.
Brown who nev­er denied pulling the trig­ger, said she was sent by her then-24-year-old boyfriend and pimp to make mon­ey. According to Brown, Allen picked her up at a Nashville Sonic restau­rant, bought her food and then took her to his home. She said he want­ed to have sex with her, and intim­i­dat­ed her by point­ing out the guns he owned and his expe­ri­ence as a mil­i­tary sharp­shoot­er. Brown shot Allen as he lay in bed, say­ing she feared he was reach­ing for a gun. 
Regardless of where the truth lies, Cyntoia Brown received a life sen­tence for a crime she com­mit­ted at the ten­der age of six­teen, and had been a vic­tim of sex traf­fick­ing.
She was insti­tu­tion­al­ized for more than half of her life. Eight years lat­er, in 2012, a U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing found sen­tenc­ing juve­niles to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.
Needless to say, Jonny Allen just hap­pened to have been a white man. His sup­port­ers at the time said they did­n’t believe Allen propo­si­tioned Brown, only that he was try­ing to help her stay off the streets.
Ya.……

I got­ta say though, the fore­gone is real­ly not the cen­tral tenet of what I want­ed to say today.
Instead, I want­ed to talk a lit­tle about what I per­son­al­ly observed in State District Judge Tammy Kemp’s court­room.
I must admit that hav­ing spent many hours in court­rooms as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer, and hav­ing spent eons of time watch­ing tri­als, both, as a writer, and some­one focused on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, I found Judge Kemp’s man­ner­isms pecu­liar, to say the least.
I’ll also admit that while watch­ing the sen­tenc­ing of Guyger I shed a few tears.
Those tears fell for the Jean Family, I know what it feels like to lose a son who was like a bright light, albeit under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.
My tears flowed even more freely because of the intran­si­gent stub­born­ness of the injus­tice which still per­vades the American Justice sys­tem.
I thought to myself, and told my wife, if this tri­al was up to judge Kemp, Amber Guyger would be home free.
In the end, Amber Guyger was [kin­da] held respon­si­ble for the bla­tant unpro­voked mur­der of Botham Shem Jean. Her sen­tence for killing mis­ter Jean, 10 years. A tiny slap on the wrist.

Of course, to many in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty unused to see­ing mur­der­ous cops held account­able, this is some kin­da start.
For oth­ers, the ver­dict is just anoth­er exam­ple that for Black peo­ple in America, no mat­ter how dis­tin­guished they are, their lives can be snuffed out, and there is hard­ly any con­se­quence to police, even when they are sit­ting in their homes watch­ing tele­vi­sion and enjoy­ing a bowl of ice cream.

Before we talk about the impro­pri­ety of a sit­ting judge hug­ging a con­vict­ed mur­der­er, there were oth­er things which just seemed odd to me and I expect oth­er observers, oth­er than myself may have had a prob­lem with what we observed.
For exam­ple, a uni­formed Black female police offi­cer in the court­room, brush­ing back Amber Guyger’s blond hair, seemed to sym­bol­ize to me that no mat­ter their posi­tion, some Black-Americans are still not con­ver­sant that they are no longer on the plan­ta­tion.
Regardless of the fact that Guyger may have been a col­league, it was high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate that a uni­formed offi­cer was in open court act­ing like (Mammy).
In that very court­room, evi­dence was led that the then alleged mur­der­er Amber Guyger had mocked Doctor King’s death and espoused vio­lent killings.
As far as for­give­ness is con­cerned, I am all for it, nev­er­the­less, the very Bible which demands for­give­ness of us was used to keep us enslaved.
It seems to me that the only time that for­give­ness becomes a dis­cus­sion top­ic, is when white peo­ple seri­ous­ly aggrieve Blacks and are to be held account­able.
I am not opposed to the young broth­er of Botham for­giv­ing Amber Guyger and telling her he loves and for­gives her. It is his right. I am doubt­ful how­ev­er that con­tex­tu­al­ly, the young Jean has a full appre­ci­a­tion of America’s entrenched injustice.

The idea that a sit­ting judge would embrace (a just con­vict­ed) mur­der­er seemed way beyond the pale for me.
It may cer­tain­ly be the Christian thing to do but why are Blacks the only offi­cials sup­posed to demon­strate mer­cy and Christian for­give­ness on the rare occa­sions they get to decide?
I care noth­ing about the fact that Judge (weirdo) Tammy Kemp hand­ed Guyger a Bible. I am yet to see one sin­gle instance of a white Judge demon­strat­ing that kind of com­pas­sion to a Black con­vict. Where is their human­i­ty when they have pow­er?
Never have I seen it. Judge Kemp’s deci­sion to allow the Jury to con­sid­er the “sud­den pas­sion” defense which experts assert does not apply to Amber Guyger, may very well have impact­ed the Jury’s deci­sion to let her off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

Jude Kemp’s deci­sion to also act as “Mammy,” destroys the myth which many Blacks seem to embrace, that Blacks can change the injus­tice sys­tem when they hold posi­tions of pow­er in it.
Understandably Judge Kemp had to abide by the jury’s deci­sion, but her actions made it clear she was more con­cerned with pleas­ing her back­ers, rather than act­ing accord­ing to prece­dent.
Even before the dis­grace­ful hug, I thought from her body lan­guage Kemp would rather allow Amber Guyger to walk free.
Former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill — crit­i­cized the judge’s action as “unac­cept­able.“
I’m with her!
I won­dered whether I was being fair to Judge Kemp even as I was both­ered by what I saw. Maybe I was being too sensitive.

And then wal­lah…
No, you were not wrong Mike, there is always some­thing under the sur­face. Something deep­er than the self-right­eous Black Christians who refuse to think out­side the brain­washed and blink­ered box can com­pre­hend.
These pub­lic offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and oth­er lead­ers, are all behold­en to the pow­er­ful police unions whose endorse­ment they seek, while tac­it­ly sur­ren­der­ing your rights and mine, for those endorse­ments.
If you believe that hav­ing black police offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors, judges or leg­is­la­tors guar­an­tees jus­tice, guess again.
In fact, the Dallas Police Chief is black, one of the pros­e­cut­ing attor­neys was black and of course, [Mammy] Kemp is also Black.
Clarence Thomas’s actions on the Supreme Court ought to have dis­pelled that myth long ago.

The indoc­tri­na­tion of Black peo­ple through Religion has been a mas­ter­ful stroke of genius on the part of the white oppres­sors.
Today, even when American Blacks sit in seats where they have the abil­i­ty to wield pow­er, they are so social­ized to be in servi­tude that they can­not help act­ing like servile fools.
Additionally, there are mil­lions more, who agree with their slav­ish def­er­ence, because they too are slaves to the brain­wash­ing.
It is a sad despi­ca­ble spec­ta­cle to behold. 

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.

Two things are hap­pen­ing as a result of the bla­tant racist poli­cies inher­ent in American police train­ing and prac­tices.
(1) Innocent peo­ple, and more specif­i­cal­ly, African-Americans and oth­er peo­ple of col­or are los­ing their lives.
(2) Cops will more and more be held account­able when they abuse, or take the lives of the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect.
The lack of respect for the dig­ni­ty of Black peo­ple in America has nur­tured and nour­ished a dan­ger­ous cul­ture of dis­dain and dis­re­gard which has cost count­less peo­ple of col­or their very lives.
This is noth­ing new, but with the advent of social media and cell phone cam­eras, much of what has been occur­ring under the cov­er of dark­ness has start­ed com­ing to light.
False arrests, lying on police reports, fal­si­fy­ing police reports, fram­ing inno­cent cit­i­zens, and a host of oth­er ille­gal and immoral acts have been brushed aside and secret­ly sup­port­ed by peo­ple in pow­er, [ie] (Judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and Legislators ).
They know that a lot of the peo­ple who get dragged into the court­rooms by these cops are inno­cent as hell yet they press ahead with pros­e­cut­ing and sen­tenc­ing the inno­cent rather than rep­ri­mand and hold police account­able.
In many cas­es, cops are caught lying under oath, [per­jury] is a felony, yet the cor­rupt pros­e­cu­tors and judges take no action against them.
Subsequently, their depart­ments take no action against them.

It was that indif­fer­ence to black lives, and the knowl­edge that he would not be held account­able which caused a los­er, a com­mu­ni­ty punk, George Zimmerman to feel free to extin­guish the life of Trayvon Martin.
He was right. Even though he isn’t white, he believed him­self to be, and there­fore enti­tled to the extra priv­i­leges which come with paler skin.
As far as the jus­tice sys­tem is con­cerned, George Zimmerman was cor­rect in his assump­tions.
It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Michale Slager a police offi­cer, to gun down Walter Scott in South Carolina, and lied that he tried to take his taser.
If a con­sci­en­tious per­son had not secret­ly video­taped the entire inci­dent Walter Slager would still be a cop in South Carolina today.
That per­va­sive cul­ture of kill them and go home to your fam­i­ly, caused a cow­ard­ly punk wear­ing police uni­form to snuff out the life of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice for hold­ing a toy gun in a pub­lic park where chil­dren are sup­posed to play in safe­ty.
By virtue of his black skin young Tamir Rice was not afford­ed the inno­cence of being a twelve-year-old play­ing with his toy gun as most of us did.
He was gunned down by peo­ple his par­ents paid a salary to keep him safe.

It was that indif­fer­ence that caused Chicago cop, Jason Van Dyke to fire six­teen bul­lets hit­ting Laquan McDonald sev­er­al times killing him, even though he was walk­ing away from him.
In that case four(4) oth­er cops were fired from the depart­ment and Van Dyke was found guilty of mur­der­ing McDonald.
It caused rene­gade NYPD cops to fire 41 bul­lets at Amadou Diallo hit­ting him 19 times, killing him.
Reckless, depraved, uncon­cerned about the human­i­ty of mis­ter Diallo. Rudolph Guiliani the then Mayor of the city had giv­en them the green light to dis­re­gard the human­i­ty of the African-American pop­u­la­tion in the city.
The killing of Amadou Diallo would be only one of many peo­ple mur­dered and abused in the most grotesque man­ner by mem­bers of the NYPD.
The most base and crass dis­re­spect imag­in­able. A dis­re­spect which no sane per­son would ever con­tem­plate com­mit­ting against an ani­mal. That most grotesque of dis­dain and utter con­tempt was exact­ed on Abner Louima when he was assault­ed, bru­tal­ized, and sex­u­al­ly abused in 1997 by NYPD thugs, Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese, and oth­ers.
In what should have been one of the safest places for any­one to be, Abner Louima was sodom­ized in the bath­room of a NYPD precinct-house by the afore­men­tioned depraved and sadis­tic ani­mals in uniform.

The list is long: Eric Garner. Philando Castile,. Sandra Bland alleged­ly mur­dered in a Texas jail after a cop pulled her over alleg­ing that she failed to indi­cate before mak­ing a turn.
John Crawford mur­dered by cops in a Walmart for hav­ing a rifle he was hold­ing, even though Walmart sells the guns.
The ques­tion must be, “Would a white man be mur­dered for hav­ing a rifle, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a store in which a large part of their busi­ness is gun sales?
The answer is no!
The dis­re­spect and indif­fer­ence are so per­va­sive that even those who do not hide behind badges feel empow­ered to take the lives of Black peo­ple just because. 

Take for instance Michael Dunn who fatal­ly shot a teenag­er dur­ing a November 2012 argu­ment sparked by loud rap music at a Jacksonville gas sta­tion.
The South Patrick Shores soft­ware devel­op­er was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole for killing Jordan Davis, 17. Prosecutors said Dunn fired 10 shots at a red Dodge Durango car­ry­ing Davis and three oth­er black teenagers dur­ing a Black Friday park­ing-lot dis­pute over the teens’ boom­ing music.
There is not enough time or place in this arti­cle to doc­u­ment the myr­i­ad instances in which this bla­tant dis­re­gard for Black lives, has caused African-Americans their lives.
This leads us to Dallas Cop, 31-year ‑old Amber Guyger who killed the accom­plished 27-year-old Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment. 

Sept. 6, 2018 — Botham Jean, an accoun­tant at the inter­na­tion­al audit­ing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, is in his apart­ment eat­ing ice cream when Guyger, who has just capped off a 13 1/​2‑hour shift as a Dallas police offi­cer by help­ing a SWAT team arrest three sus­pect­ed rob­bers, enters through his unlocked door and fatal­ly shoots him in the chest after mis­tak­ing him for a bur­glar. Moments after the shoot­ing, Guyger real­izes she is in the wrong apart­ment.
Those are Guyger’s allegations.

Sept. 9, 2018 — An arrest war­rant is issued for Guyger, charg­ing her with manslaugh­ter. She is released on $300,000 bond and put on admin­is­tra­tive leave from her job. Guyger, accord­ing to an arrest war­rant affi­davit, told inves­ti­ga­tors she arrived home from work about 10 p.m. and mis­tak­en­ly parked her pick­up truck on the fourth floor of the build­ing instead of the third floor, which cor­re­spond­ed to her apart­ment. She claimed she then walked down a hall­way to an apart­ment she thought was hers, but when she insert­ed the key she found the door was slight­ly ajar. As she entered the apart­ment she heard some­one inside and saw a “large sil­hou­ette” in the near­ly com­plete­ly dark­ened apart­ment that she thought was a bur­glar. She fired twice after telling the person she believed to be an intrud­er to show his or her hands, author­i­ties said. 

Jan. 20, 2019 — A woman who filmed the after­math of the shoot­ing of Jean claims in an inter­view that she has been receiv­ing death threats and was fired from her job after she uploaded the video to social media. The footage shows an appar­ent­ly dis­tressed Guyger, still in her police uni­form, talk­ing on her phone as she paces back and forth out­side Jean’s apart­ment on Sept. 6. 

April 30, 2019 – The 911 call made by Guyger after she shot Jean is obtained by ABC Dallas sta­tion WFAA. In the call, Guyger repeat­ed­ly tells a dis­patch­er, “I thought it was my apart­ment,” and says, “I’m going to lose my job.”
Amber Guyger was more wor­ried about her job than the fact that she had just killed an inno­cent man in his own home.

Amber Guyger was just found guilty of mur­der in a Dallas County court yes­ter­day. On Sept. 11, 2018 — Lee Merritt, an attor­ney for Jean’s fam­i­ly, calls Guyger’s sto­ry “high­ly implau­si­ble.” Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said at the time she had not ruled out a mur­der indict­ment. She made true on her words.
The fact is that even if one agrees with Miss Guyger’s sto­ry there are some fun­da­men­tal flaws in what she did, even if she thought there was an intrud­er in her home.
She did not call for back­up as she was sup­posed to as per pro­to­col. She nev­er once claimed that she saw a gun or any oth­er weapon in mis­ter Jean’s hand.
In fact, the evi­dence is that mis­ter Jean dressed in a T‑shirt and a pair of shorts was set­tled on his couch eat­ing a bowl of ice cream.
Miss Guyger could have tak­en pro­tec­tive cov­er and called for back­up as I stat­ed ear­li­er, after all, who would want to kill an intrud­er in their own home?
Without ever see­ing a weapon or being attacked Amber Guyger lied that mis­ter Jean was advanc­ing on her when she shot him. Ballistics experts even­tu­al­ly debunked that lies as the tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let showed that the 5 – 3″ Guyger shot the 6 -+ Jean as he was in a crouch­ing posi­tion.
Arguably shot as he was fright­ened at some­one in his home and was about to get up from the couch.
Nevertheless, Amber Guyger felt at lib­er­ty to put down the Black man in what she thought was her apart­ment and so she put two bul­lets in mis­ter Jean’s body, one of which went straight through his heart.
Would she have shot at a white man giv­en sim­i­lar circumstances? 

At the sen­tenc­ing phase of the tri­al on Wednesday, the defense trot­ted out an alleged for­mer drug abuser, a 67-year-old African-American woman who claimed that Guyger influ­enced her to clean up her life. She tes­ti­fied that she was influ­enced to change her life and that Guger attend­ed her grad­u­a­tion after she had com­plet­ed her grad­u­a­tion.
Ironically, she then tes­ti­fied that she begged for Guyger to attend the event, was so it was not some feel­ing of love or com­pas­sion that Amber Guyer had for her.
In fact, at the time Guyger met her in a drug den she wrote her a tick­et, so much for her car­ing, lov­ing spirit.

Immediately after the death of Botham Shem Jean ele­ments with­in the Dallas Police Department released what they thought would be dam­ag­ing evi­dence that Botham Shem Jean deserved to be mur­dered in his own home.
This is a prac­tice of American police when they mur­der black peo­ple, they then assas­si­nate their char­ac­ter as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their killing.
Fortunately, as evi­dence of the young man’s char­ac­ter began to emerge they shelved that strat­e­gy. The alle­ga­tions that they had found mar­i­jua­na dust in mis­ter Jean“s apart­ment would have been enough to jus­ti­fy the death of many young African-Americans. It would not hold water for the accom­plished and upright young man from St Lucia who attend­ed a Christian col­lege, had a bunch of white friends and had done tremen­dous work in his young life help­ing peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty.
The smear would not work, so they jumped off the Amber Guyger ship and tried to save them­selves the shame.

In the end, it may be the text mes­sages between Amber Guyger and the oth­er morons in the Dallas Police depart­ment which will be her ulti­mate undo­ing as it relates to the sen­tence she receives.

n March 2018, her work part­ner and lover Officer Martin Rivera texted her, “I was at this area with 5 dif­fer­ent black offi­cers !!! Not racist but damn.”

“Not racist but just have a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing and it shows,” she responded.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day that year, anoth­er cop also texted her to com­plain about a parade in the civ­il rights activist’s hon­or: “When does this end lol.”

Guyger respond­ed: “When MLK is dead … oh wait …”

And just two days before she killed Jean, a friend texted her that they had recent­ly adopt­ed a German Shepard that “may be racist.”

“It’s okay .. I’m the same,” Guyger respond­ed. A minute lat­er, she added: “I hate every­thing and every­one but y’all.”

According to NBC News, Guyger also once shared a pic­ture of a mil­i­tary sniper with the text: ” Stay low, go fast; kill first, die last; one shot, one kill; no luck, all skill.”
Yes, racism is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Black com­mu­ni­ty but the cost to white America is begin­ning to add up as well.
In the end, Amber Guyger would receive only ten years for mur­der­ing Botham Shem Jean in his own home. According to state law, she will be eli­gi­ble for parole after serv­ing five of those ten years. She is now 31-years-old, by all accounts she will walk out of prison at the ten­der age of 36 and live a full life. Botham Shem Jean is only a mem­o­ry.
After the ver­dict sup­port­ers of mis­ter Jean left the court­room shout­ing” no jus­tice no peace”. And so it continues.

This arti­cle was updat­ed from its orig­i­nal form after publication.

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.

Guyger, 31, says she entered Botham Jean’s home by mis­take and shot him dead because she thought he was an intruder

A Texas jury has found a white for­mer police offi­cer who shot a black neigh­bor in his own apart­ment guilty of murder.

Amber Guyger fatal­ly shot Botham Jean in his apart­ment in Dallas on 6 September last year. The 31-year-old claimed she parked on the wrong floor of the com­plex by mis­take and entered Jean’s flat, think­ing it was hers.

In emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny last week, Guyger said she shot the 26-year-old because she thought he was an intrud­er and feared for her life. She was fired from the Dallas police depart­ment and indict­ed on a mur­der charge.

The jury had been sequestered because of the high pro­file of the case. Jean’s death was wide­ly cov­ered in the media and prompt­ed protests in Dallas against police bru­tal­i­ty and racism.

Jurors spent sev­er­al hours delib­er­at­ing on Monday, the sev­enth day of the tri­al, and con­tin­ued on Tuesday. They had to decide if Guyger had a valid defense under Texas’ so-called “cas­tle doc­trine”, a stand-your-ground law. Judge Tammy Kemp con­tro­ver­sial­ly ruled on Monday that it could fac­tor into their deliberations.

The law allows for the use of dead­ly force in self-defense by civil­ians on their prop­er­ty. Guyger’s lawyers argued that she thought she was in her home when she killed Jean and sin­cere­ly believed her life was under threat.

A pros­e­cu­tor, Jason Fine, told the jury the “cas­tle doc­trine” should not apply: “It pro­tects home­own­ers against intrud­ers – and now all of a sud­den the intrud­er is try­ing to use it against the homeowner.”

He described much of her tes­ti­mo­ny as “garbage”, argu­ing that it was absurd for a trained police offi­cer to miss numer­ous signs in the com­plex that she was one floor too high, and that Jean, who was unarmed and set­tling down on his couch to watch tele­vi­sion and eat ice cream, did not rep­re­sent an urgent dead­ly threat.

Rather than act rea­son­ably, pros­e­cu­tors alleged, once Guyger decid­ed there was an intrud­er in “her” apart­ment she burst in like a “com­man­do”, ful­ly intend­ing to shoot.

Guyger plead­ed not guilty. Murder car­ries a poten­tial life sen­tence. Kemp allowed the jury to con­sid­er con­vict­ing her of manslaugh­ter, which typ­i­cal­ly car­ries a sen­tence of between two and 20 years.

Dara Sharif

The two Sacramento, Calif., cops who shot and killed an unarmed Stephon Clark as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard last year not only will face no charges — but they have been cleared to return to duty.
Minutes after the Justice Department decid­ed not to pur­sue civ­il rights charges against Officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet in the March 2018 shoot­ing death of Clark, Sacramento police on Thursday announced they had cleared them as well, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Echoing the Justice Department’s find­ing of no cul­pa­bil­i­ty on Mercadal’s and Robinet’s parts, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said, “The use of dead­ly force, in this case, was law­ful. Our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed that there were no vio­la­tions of depart­ment pol­i­cy or train­ing.” But while that find­ing came as no sur­prise, no mat­ter how unwel­come for Clark’s fam­i­ly, Hahn’s next state­ment was jar­ring: “The offi­cers involved in this case will return to full, active duty.” Clark’s broth­er, Stevante Clark, in a Facebook mes­sage he post­ed Thursday as he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers met with DOJ and Sacramento police offi­cials, expressed bit­ter­ness about the outcome.

“These peo­ple have failed when it comes to #Accountability,” he wrote, the Sacramento Bee reports, lat­er telling the paper: “I’m not sur­prised or shocked, we’ve been denied jus­tice for gen­er­a­tions. The only thing that caught me off guard, was Chief Hahn is let­ting one of the offi­cers back to patrol on the streets. That is fucked up. Our streets are not safe with a mur­der­er on the streets.”
Stephon Clark was only 22 when he was killed the night of March 18, 2018, as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard. Police who arrived on the scene after a report of some­one try­ing to break into cars in the neigh­bor­hood say they mis­took the cell­phone Clark was hold­ing for a gun when they opened fire. Clark’s death sparked protests and calls for jus­tice.
However, Sacramento’s dis­trict attor­ney ear­li­er this year also cleared the offi­cers. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert called Clark’s death “a tragedy,” but found that under the cir­cum­stances the police had a “rea­son­able belief that they were in immi­nent dan­ger.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at https://​www​.the​root​.com/​s​a​c​r​a​m​e​n​t​o​-​c​a​l​i​f​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​a​n​-​u​n​a​r​m​e​d​-​1​8​3​8​5​0​9​200

Last month, Rob Mathis and his wife were tour­ing Anderson’s home that was for sale when they saw a framed KKK doc­u­ment with a title “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Application for Citizenship.” Mathis, who is also an Army vet­er­an, imme­di­ate­ly shared it on a now-viral Facebook post, say­ing he felt disgusted.

“I feel sick to my stom­ach know­ing that I walk to the home of one of the most racist peo­ple in Muskegon hid­ing behind his uni­form and pos­si­bly harass­ing peo­ple of col­or and dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties,” Mathis said in the post, adding that he also saw Confederate flags through­out the home.

Mathis did not divulge Anderson’s name on the post but com­menters iden­ti­fied him. The Muskegon Police Department, where Anderson had been serv­ing as a police offi­cer for 20 years, acknowl­edged the post and said that Anderson could be “in pos­ses­sion of cer­tain items asso­ci­at­ed with a white suprema­cy group.” He was placed on leave pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion since August 8.

Moreover, the recent inci­dent could reopen a case in 2009 where Anderson fatal­ly shot Julius Allen-Ray Johnson, a 23-year old unarmed Black man. Back then, he was cleared of any wrong­do­ing since it was ruled that he act­ed in self-defense. But the results of the inves­ti­ga­tion could change that.

“Whether or not offi­cer Anderson has racist ten­den­cies or not, would that move the nee­dle one way or anoth­er?” Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson told MLive in August. “I guess I can’t answer that ques­tion. I don’t know. I need a com­plet­ed inter­nal investigation.”

It has yet been known if the case would be reopened now that Anderson is already terminated.

Although it was not specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed in the Muskegon Police Department Policy and Procedure Order that pri­vate dis­play of racist mate­ri­als is ille­gal, it high­lights that offi­cers should not act in a way that would com­pro­mise pub­lic trust.

“Police offi­cers will, there­fore, avoid any con­duct that might com­pro­mise integri­ty and thus under­cut the pub­lic con­fi­dence in the offi­cer or this law or this law enforce­ment agency,” it said.

Pennsylvania State Police, inves­ti­gat­ing one of their own for alle­ga­tions of racial bias, have (sur­prise!) cleared them­selves of any wrong­do­ing.
The inci­dent in ques­tion took place on July 8, when two white state troop­ers pulled over Rodney Gillespie’s car after he briefly crossed over the cen­ter lines of a nar­row, wind­ing two-lane road.

After state police turned on their lights, Gillespie drove one more minute down the road before turn­ing into the dri­ve­way of his home. The rea­son, Gillespie told police at the time, and to BuzzFeed News lat­er, was because he feared what pulling over on an unlit road with no passers­by would beget.

“I knew my house was lit with lights,” Gillespie told BuzzFeed News last week. “What oth­er place do you think is safer than your house?”

Dashcam footage of the event released by police last Friday shows troop­er Christopher S. Johnson, a recent police acad­e­my grad, bark­ing at Gillespie to get out of the car. He ques­tioned the 52-year-old phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal exec­u­tive about why he hadn’t pulled over sooner.

“This is a small street, I didn’t want to get killed,” he responds. When Johnson says the offi­cers’ hearts were rac­ing because Gillespie had con­tin­ued dri­ving, he con­tin­ues, “you all kill black peo­ple, I didn’t want to get killed.”

“You want to know how to get hurt? Not stop­ping for police. You’re run­ning,” Johnson replies. When Gillespie explains that he was “just scared,” Johnson takes offense.

“Listen, one of my best friends, that’s a troop­er that works with me, is black. I don’t want to hear that black non­sense,” the troop­er says.

The two offi­cers end up hand­cuff­ing Gillespie for sev­er­al min­utes before giv­ing him a traf­fic ticket.

While Pennsylvania State Police found troop­ers “could have more effec­tive­ly deesca­lat­ed the sit­u­a­tion” once Gillespie had pulled over, the agency found the com­plaint of bias-based pro­fil­ing “was not sus­tained,” accord­ing to a state­ment released last Friday. State police also point­ed out that the offi­cers’ micro­phones were turned off at sev­er­al points dur­ing the inci­dent — a vio­la­tion of police protocol.

Watching video of the inci­dent, Gillespie point­ed out to BuzzFeed News two note­wor­thy state­ments offi­cers made that were not picked up by their microphones:

The first was that police said they fol­lowed him when he passed their car because of recent break-ins. The sec­ond was that offi­cers asked him who his “girl­friends” were, refer­ring to his wife Angela and his 17-year-old daugh­ter Jaida, who was sleep­ing in the back seat (his elder daugh­ter Jasmyn, 22, was not in the car). 

“As an African-American, as a man, try­ing to take care of his fam­i­ly, I felt like there was a lit­tle bit of … [police offi­cers] try­ing to egg me on, emas­cu­lat­ing me, right in front of my fam­i­ly,” Gillespie said. In a sep­a­rate inter­view with ABC fol­low­ing the agency’s deci­sion, Gillespie said he plans on suing the state police to force changes through.

“This has nev­er been about me. It’s about mak­ing sure it doesn’t hap­pen to oth­ers,” Gillespie said.

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer inves­ti­ga­tion found Pennsylvania state police offi­cers — 92 per­cent of whom are white — had received 32 com­plains of racial bias since 2016. The depart­ment has cleared every sin­gle offi­cer in that time of any wrong­do­ing. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​www​.the​root​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​n​o​n​s​e​n​s​e​-​p​e​n​n​s​y​l​v​a​n​i​a​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​a​y​s​-​i​t​s​-​o​f​f​i​-​1​8​3​8​3​7​3​754

Louisville, KY — Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky, has report­ed­ly declined $1 mil­lion in schol­ar­ship funds that Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter donat­ed ear­li­er this month. As a result, 10 stu­dents who were ini­tial­ly promised the schol­ar­ship will no longer receive the funds and they are disappointed. 

However, the admin­is­tra­tors at Simmons College said an inter­nal prob­lem between the com­pa­ny and its founder is what real­ly caused the can­cel­la­tion of the schol­ar­ship donation.

“It felt as though some­one has tak­en weapons of mass destruc­tion and flown them into the hopes and dreams and aspi­ra­tions of some of America’s most vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents,” said President Rev. Kevin Cosby about the company’s appar­ent deci­sion to no longer make the donation.

But then, the restau­rant chain claimed that the admin­is­tra­tors at the col­lege were the ones who reject­ed the schol­ar­ship funds through email.

“Thank you for our dis­cus­sions on how to help sup­port the stu­dents of Simmons College of Kentucky,” Von Purdy, Simmons’ direc­tor of devel­op­ment said in the email that was recent­ly released. “In light of recent news, it is best to decline your schol­ar­ships at this time and per­haps look at oth­er ways to part­ner in the future.”

Still, the col­lege main­tained that the email was sent only because a Papa John’s exec­u­tive told them to do so.

Despite what appears to be a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Papa John’s report­ed­ly made a dona­tion of $30,000 to the col­lege. It has yet been clear if the dona­tion will go toward the stu­dents’ scholarships.

Prior to that, John Schnatter, the founder and for­mer chair­man of Papa John’s Pizza, donat­ed $1 mil­lion to Simmons College. It comes about a year after he was forced to step down as chair­man of the restau­rant chain after he alleged­ly used the n‑word dur­ing a meeting.

If you know Jamaicans well you know that Jamaicans are going to find a way to make a liv­ing wher­ev­er they are, one way or anoth­er.
And true to form, some­times our quest to sur­vive does not always lend itself to por­tray­ing us in the best light pos­si­ble.
Take for instance Jamaica’s taxi-oper­a­tors and oth­er pub­lic trans­port oper­a­tors, their law­less­ness and seem­ing refusal to obey any rules of the roads.
Or the peren­ni­al dol­lar vans which tra­versed Nostrand, Flatbush and oth­er avenues in Brooklyn or any of the oth­er thor­ough­fares in Queens and the Bronx, New York’s out­er Boroughs.
Of course in a small city like Poughkeepsie, a city of just over 30’000 res­i­dents, set on the banks of the Hudson River , in the beau­ti­ful Hudson Valley, Jamaican taxi-oper­a­tors are also to be found ply­ing their trade. 

With the Jamaicans are some Arabs, Hindus, and even some whites. The dis­rup­tive unruly image you may have in your head about how they may behave is not the real­i­ty in Poughkeepsie. They are forced to line up in one area by the train sta­tion and await pas­sen­gers emerg­ing from the Metro-North line.
Poughkeepsie is the last stop for the Metro-North trains even though the Amtrak trains con­tin­ue fur­ther north.
Jamaicans have always com­plained about how they are treat­ed by the author­i­ties, many feel tar­get­ed by the police and by City-Hall over­all.
One could argue that when forced to abide by rules many of our peo­ple are not very com­fort­able.
Or we may also accept that as peo­ple of col­or we are some­times held to more exact­ing stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty than oth­ers.
Regardless of where the truth lies, the emer­gence of Uber and Lyft have not exact­ly helped the taxi-oper­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly because they all oper­ate as a splin­tered group of indi­vid­u­als.
They nev­er both­ered to cre­ate an umbrel­la group under which to oper­ate, which could poten­tial­ly give them some auton­o­my and cur­ren­cy when they are forced to deal with the author­i­ties or just for their own survival.

On the periph­ery of that group of oper­a­tors are oth­ers, which includes Jamaicans, African-Americans, Mexicans and oth­ers who com­pete for the dwin­dling dol­lar of not just the rail­road com­muters, but for the some­times rau­cous and ine­bri­at­ed stu­dents of the near­by Marist College.
Many of the dri­vers who trans­port stu­dents from the down­town Poughkeepsie water­ing holes back to the Marist cam­pus have devel­oped a rap­port with stu­dents who have their phone num­bers and call them when they need to be tak­en to or from the water­ing holes and restau­rants.
As a con­se­quence, some of those oper­a­tors have large vans rather than cars.
At $3 or so per per­son for the short trip, a load of five or upward makes the trip worth­while for these men who are fight­ing to survive.

Unfortunately for them, the Town Of Poughkeepsie which almost encir­cles the city, has a police depart­ment which exem­pli­fies the enforcer men­tal­i­ty.
The Department’s head­quar­ters which is a ver­i­ta­ble quick walk­ing dis­tance from the city line has an almost Lilly-white work­force. Though the city itself has a mixed pop­u­la­tion the town is less so.
Below is a break­down of the city of Poughkeepsie racial break­down from the last census.

• White: 48.06%
• Black or African American: 37.59%
• Other race: 7.37%
• Two or more races: 5.23%
• Asian: 1.32%
• Native American: 0.39%
• Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.04%

According to NY home­town loca­tor, The Town Of Poughkeepsie is a County Subdivision of Dutchess County. The sub­di­vi­sion has a T1 Census Class Code which indi­cates that the Town Of Poughkeepsie is an active coun­ty sub­di­vi­sion that is not coex­ten­sive with an incor­po­rat­ed place.

There is hard­ly any crime to speak of in the Town of Poughkeepsie, nev­er­the­less, it is cus­tom­ary to see the Towns police depart­ment, the County Sherrif’s depart­ment, and State Police units, all doing traf­fic stops in the town and city.
The Town of Poughkeepsie munic­i­pal court is a bee­hive of activ­i­ty, a ver­i­ta­ble mon­ey pit, as res­i­dents from all around, are dragged in to pay exor­bi­tant traf­fic fines cops in the three depart­ments dreamed up.
It was one of these cops who stopped a Jamaican oper­a­tor whom I will refer to as Joe Brown as he head­ed out to Route 9 in his van toward Marist College and was pulled over by Town of Poughkeepsie cop J Roosa.

Mister Brown explained how he was pulled over by Roosa for not using a turn sig­nal to turn right onto Rt 9 North from Washington Street.
The fact of the mat­ter is that there can be no left turn onto Rt 9 from where mis­ter Brown was. It is a one-way north­ward only. So the idea of using a right turn sig­nal when the only turn is a right turn becomes aca­d­e­m­ic.
But that was only a guise it seemed, the offi­cer had oth­er ideas as to why he ini­ti­at­ed the stop. Generally, they are so excit­ed to pull motorists over that they do not even know the laws they are try­ing to enforce.
A Sheriffs’ deputy once pulled me over after I drove through a yield sign while his vehi­cle was at a dead stop on the red light.
He hur­ried­ly drove through the red light and pulled me over and demand­ed my papers.
As I reached for my papers, I asked why he stopped me? He respond­ed that I did not stop at the yield sign. I asked him whether he under­stood what yield meant? He answered in the affir­ma­tive, and so I asked him who should I have yield­ed to? He said his vehi­cle. I asked him why would I yield to him if he was at a dead stop on a red light? He smiled, wished me a good day and walked away. 

Mister Brown though alone in his vehi­cle was not so lucky, as offi­cer J Roosa was incensed that he told him he was record­ing the stop.
Mister Brown explained that the cop berat­ed him ver­bal­ly and told him he did not care about being record­ed.
When an offi­cer behaves in a man­ner that is dis­re­spect­ful to a mem­ber of the pub­lic and tells that per­son he does not care, that cop is oper­at­ing under a cer­tain amount of knowl­edge that he and his col­leagues do not have to be account­able to any­one.
After all, the heav­i­ly beard­ed black man declar­ing his right to record the ille­gal stop, must have enraged that white offi­cer? How dare he chal­lenge his author­i­ty to be lord and mas­ter over him?

Nineteen tick­ets lat­er, mis­ter Brown was sent on his way by that police offi­cer who took an oath to pro­tect and serve the com­mu­ni­ty. But he did not do that, in a final act of den­i­gra­tion and humil­i­a­tion, offi­cer J Roosa alleged­ly threw the tick­ets into mis­ter Brown’s van, instead of hand­ing them to him.
Officers in the Town of Poughkeepsie extract a good salary from tax­pay­ers who live in that munic­i­pal­i­ty.
Some report­ing indi­cates that they earn some­where in the range of $84K-$95K annu­al­ly. We have not been able to ver­i­fy whether these num­bers are indeed cor­rect.
There is a long and detailed his­to­ry of their dis­re­spect­ful and racist atti­tudes toward peo­ple of col­or.
These are the abus­es of pow­er that run the length and breadth, and all across America.
In every nook and cran­ny of the myr­i­ad police depart­ments which are gen­er­al­ly always staffed with all white offi­cers.
Luckily for mis­ter Brown, the judge saw through the abuse of pow­er and threw the entire lot out.
Despite hav­ing done noth­ing wrong mis­ter Brown was still forced to pay $20 in court cost. Though he was brought before the court ille­gal­ly, he still had to pay some­thing to oil the machin­ery of injustice.

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.

Seminary, MS — Louie Revette, a 38-year old white man, has plead­ed guilty to the racist act of burn­ing a cross out­side the home of an African-American fam­i­ly on October 2017. He was con­vict­ed of sev­er­al charges in con­nec­tion to the crime and he recent­ly received his sen­tence of 11 years in fed­er­al prison. Revette was report­ed­ly con­vict­ed on one count of using fire in the com­mis­sion of a fed­er­al felony, inter­fer­ence with hous­ing rights and a fed­er­al civ­il rights vio­la­tion in con­nec­tion to the incident.

During his tri­al, Revette was remorse­ful and said that he wish­es he could take it back. He said, “I want every­one to know I’m not proud of what hap­pened. I hate what I did. I can­not even believe I did that. I’ve nev­er done any­thing like that before in my life.”

Revette entered a guilty plea in April and con­fessed that he went to a major­i­ty-Black neigh­bor­hood in Seminary, Mississippi, to burn cross­es that he him­self cre­at­ed at his home with his accom­plice Graham Williams, who also plead­ed guilty.

Both Revette and Williams said they did the racist act in an attempt to “threat­en, fright­en, and intim­i­date” Black res­i­dents due to their race and color.

“Those who instill fear and ter­ror into our neigh­bors and our fel­low cit­i­zens because of the col­or of their skin will face the full weight and force of the law from the U.S. attorney’s office,” Mike Hurst, U.S. attor­ney for Southern Mississippi, said in a state­ment from the Justice Department. “There is absolute­ly no place in our soci­ety or our coun­try for this type of behav­ior, and we will do all that we can to pre­vent these racist acts and bring to jus­tice those who are intent on com­mit­ting these crimes.”

Judge Keith Starrett described the defen­dants’ actions as a “big deal.” He said, “It is not an act of courage to come in the night and try to intim­i­date somebody.”

Meanwhile, pros­e­cu­tors want­ed a harsh­er sen­tence for Revette say­ing that he even tried to recruit more oth­ers to join him in burn­ing cross­es. Rose Marie Shears, the grand­moth­er of one of the vic­tims, said Revette and Williams should have to be in prison for 20 to 40 years for their crime.

“I thought that ‘those days’ were over,” she told fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor Julia Gegenheimer. “This act has brought it all back.”

Graham Williams, who faces up to 30 years in prison, is sched­uled to be sen­tenced on November 5.

American police rou­tine­ly fal­si­fy and plant evi­dence, lie under oath, and crim­i­nal­izes young Black men as a mat­ter of course.
But worse, young African-American males are are at much greater risk of being killed by police than young men of any oth­er eth­nic group.
Black men over and over, wind up in the for-prof­it Prison Industrial com­plex, which works like a ham­ster wheel from which many nev­er man­age to extri­cate them­selves.
The entrenched strat­e­gy works to keep the for-prof­it prison cells filled with black bod­ies and cre­ates, the dys­func­tion in the black fam­i­ly that enhances the con­cept of white suprema­cy.
As a con­se­quence, young African-American men devel­op expan­sive crim­i­nal records, iron­i­cal­ly, many have nev­er com­mit­ted any real crimes in their life­time.
Regardless, the expan­sive crim­i­nal records they accrue, is used to jus­ti­fy mur­der­ing them, by.… you guessed it, the very same police.
The trav­es­ty is not just that police do what they do, but that pros­e­cu­tors and the courts do noth­ing to stop these nefar­i­ous practices.

How, you ask, is it pos­si­ble that one can end up with an expan­sive crim­i­nal record with­out com­mit­ting a sin­gle crime?
If that is your ques­tion, you are not alone, I too was incred­u­lous that many peo­ple with crim­i­nal records have nev­er com­mit­ted a crime in their entire lives.
It took me many years of see­ing American police abuse,[see; https://​www​.pbs​.org/​k​e​n​b​u​r​n​s​/​t​h​e​-​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​-​p​a​r​k​-​f​i​ve/ ] that it became clear to me, that there has always been a sys­tem­at­ic strat­e­gy to crim­i­nal­ize young black men and women where pos­si­ble, incar­cer­ate them and even­tu­al use the crim­i­nal records they gave them to jus­ti­fy their erad­i­ca­tion from soci­ety.
If you are not offend­ed by that you are a part of the problem.

None of the fore­gone changes the fact that many young Black men do com­mit crimes they ought not to have com­mit­ted, and for those, there is no defend­er in this writer or from this medi­um.
The strat­e­gy did not nec­es­sar­i­ly tar­get African-America women per se. they who design the strate­gies under­stood that when men are removed from the home the chil­dren are gen­er­al­ly expect­ed to fol­low the fathers into the for-pay prison indus­tri­al com­plex.

However, not all of the women have caved to the pub­lic assis­tance, of [sec­tion-eight] which takes care of the major­i­ty of the rent and the [food stamps] which pro­vides the most basic dietary sus­te­nance.
Those, of course, comes with the oblig­a­tory, “you can have no men here or you lose these ben­e­fits”.[sic]
And so the cycle continues.

What they nev­er bar­gained for, were those African-American women who would beat the odds and edu­cate them­selves. These women have become a force to be reck­oned with.
And now as we have seen with Sandra Bland and oth­ers, includ­ing women in the “Black lives mat­ter move­ment”, Black women are not shield­ed from police vio­lence either.
This is not a new con­cept, it was the strat­e­gy which came into exis­tence after the Emancipation Declaration. Criminalizing the new­ly freed Blacks became the top pri­or­i­ty for states, and they went about it with fervor.

Today the strat­e­gy is the very same. A young black man walk­ing down the street is approached by a cop who grabs and orders him around.
He protests and is thrown to the ground and accused of resist­ing arrest, a (felony), com­mit­ting bat­tery on a police offi­cer, a (felony), and just to make it stick, Jay-walk­ing as the [con­coct­ed] rea­son for stop­ping the young man in the first place.
[It has to be all jus­ti­fied right]?
The judges will see through the lies. I hear you think­ing? Wrong! The judges, pros­e­cu­tors, police, and every­one else are all parts of well-oiled machin­ery of [injus­tice].
Even if that young man is not con­vict­ed on a felony on his first offense, he is now in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. And so he is giv­en pro­ba­tion for two years and the stip­u­la­tion is that he must report to a pro­ba­tion offi­cer for the dura­tion of the two years.
He must also[not] come in con­tact with law-enforce­ment while he is on pro­ba­tion. He must also not asso­ciate with any felons either. The only prob­lem is that they had already made felons of lit­er­al­ly every­one he knows in his small world of a few city blocks.
And so he tries his best not to come in con­tact with law enforce­ment. Understandably, he is now angry, because he did noth­ing wrong, to find him­self in this restric­tive and humil­i­at­ing posi­tion.
His only crime has been, to be born in his black skin.
But what the stip­u­la­tions in his pro­ba­tion does not do, is pre­vent law-enforce­ment from com­ing in con­tact with him, and report­ing the con­tact to his pro­ba­tion offi­cer. Or worse, some oth­er cop arrests him for look­ing at him the wrong way.
Either way, he is now tak­en into cus­tody by parole and serv­ing the two-years sen­tence he was giv­en and placed on probation.

And now you start to see how this all comes into being, but they are not done with him yet.
So he does his time, and yes he is angry as hell, he just did two years because some cop decid­ed he want­ed to show him who was boss.
Nevertheless, he heads home and tries to find a job. Place after place he goes but door after door is closed in his face. He finds out that no one will hire some­one who have been arrest­ed, much less some­one just released from prison.
Dejected, he stands on the cor­ner which just hap­pens to be a des­ig­nat­ed high crimes drug area, nev­er mind that his entire com­mu­ni­ty which is gross­ly under-served is one mas­sive ghet­to, and for all intents and pur­pos­es could in total­i­ty be des­ig­nat­ed a drug-infest­ed area.
And so he is arrest­ed for being in a high crime area (police des­ig­na­tion), in the process of being arrest­ed [again] he lash­es out at the cops who have turned his life into a liv­ing hell.
Sixteen bul­lets lat­er his body lays on the street cor­ner, his lifeblood drain­ing from his body becomes part of the dust and grime on the street on which just min­utes ear­li­er he stood, full of life and hope, try­ing to under­stand how to sur­vive in this hos­tile place.
His arrest and prison time jus­ti­fies his mur­der. The cops receive paid vaca­tion, and life goes on as if he nev­er existed.

It is for this rea­son that I find the United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights and oth­er groups to be hyp­o­crit­i­cal in the way they report on Human Rights Abuses in the devel­op­ing world, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ignor­ing the press­ing and bla­tant dai­ly mur­der of peo­ple of col­or by America’s mil­i­ta­rized police.
I under­stand that the task of fol­low­ing up on these cas­es may be mon­u­men­tal and may even be out­side the capa­bil­i­ties of the UN.
After all, the Federal Bureau of Investigations itself does not have any idea how many peo­ple America’s thou­sands of police depart­ments kill each year.
The fact is that they are not required to even report to Federal Authorities, how many peo­ple they slaugh­ter each year.
Why do you think this is so?
The answer is in the skin col­or and social sta­tus of those who are mur­dered, even when they are unarmed and pos­es no threat to police.
Consistently, Prosecutors, their fraud­u­lent grand juries reg­u­lar juries and the Judges have failed to indict and con­vict these mur­der­ous mon­sters, and so they con­tin­ue to kill with impunity.

According to VOX​.com; Police offi­cers in the US shoot and kill hun­dreds of peo­ple each year, accord­ing to the FBI’s very lim­it­ed data — far more than oth­er devel­oped coun­tries like the UK, Japan, and Germany, where police offi­cers might go an entire year with­out killing more than a dozen peo­ple or even any­one at all.
The Los Angeles Times reports that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, accord­ing to a new analy­sis of deaths involv­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers. That makes them 2.5 times more like­ly than white men and boys to die dur­ing an encounter with cops. The analy­sis also showed that Latino men and boys, black women and girls and Native American men, women, and chil­dren are also killed by police at high­er rates than their white peers. But the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of black males was par­tic­u­lar­ly striking.

At least two news orga­ni­za­tions built data­bas­es to try to account for as many fatal police shoot­ings as pos­si­ble. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts, and two of its cen­tral find­ings were that peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es made up large num­bers of those killed by police, and that very few offi­cers were ever pros­e­cut­ed for even the most ques­tion­able of fatal encoun­ters.
As a Pro-Publica arti­cle puts it; “It’s the Blue Lives Matter More the­o­ry of polic­ing.” “When in doubt, shoot. If you can shoot, you should shoot. If you have the choice of wait­ing that one sec­ond to see if you could pro­tect the citizen’s life and put your own life at risk, you must take the citizen’s life.” 

In case after case rather than show respect to the fam­i­ly of peo­ple they have mur­dered in cold blood police depart­ments, and indeed the oth­er police depart­ments which are assigned to inves­ti­gate these killings, spend their time try­ing to dig up dirt with which to smear the dece­dent rather than try­ing to fig­ure out what exact­ly hap­pened.
In one case which gar­nered nation­al atten­tion in the state of West Virginia, a sui­ci­dal man who was killed by police in a town called Weirton.
His car towed from in front of his home, after police killed him.
The offi­cer who ini­tial­ly respond­ed to the domes­tic call rec­og­nized that the young man was in cri­sis and did not shoot him even though he rec­og­nized that he had a gun.
The gun was point­ed toward the ground. Other respond­ing offi­cers imme­di­ate­ly shot and killed the man. The ini­tial offi­cer who sought to de-esca­late the sit­u­a­tion by talk­ing down the young man was fired for not killing him.
State police inves­ti­ga­tors com­piled records of every brush the dead man might have had with the law: a DUI that was dis­missed; a pur­port­ed role as a get­away dri­ver dur­ing an alleged assault in Ohio.
The offi­cial state police report includ­ed a claim by author­i­ties in Ohio that had they encoun­tered the man when he was alive, they would have arrest­ed him.
So much for the so-called integri­ty of inves­ti­ga­tions done by oth­er police agen­cies.
Police inves­ti­gat­ing police should give no com­fort to aggriev­ed families.

The pre­vail­ing cul­ture is that offi­cers are [ori­ent­ed] to shoot in con­cert with each oth­er, in order to back up and jus­ti­fy each oth­er’s legit­i­ma­cy to shoot in the first place.
On February 4^th, 1999 NYPD cops fired 41 bul­lets at 22-year-old Amadou Diallo, 19 of those bul­lets struck mis­ter Diallo killing him.
Out of that deranged and despi­ca­ble behav­ior by NYPD cops, the depart­men­t’s [cop­splained] why 41 bul­lets were fired at a sin­gle indi­vid­ual.
The term con­ta­gious fir­ing was born.
It became clear to the world then, that American police were not in the busi­ness of shoot­ing to save their own lives or the lives of oth­ers, they were shoot­ing to ensure that the vic­tim of their vio­lence nev­er gets to tell his side of the sto­ry.
For years I have advanced the argu­ments as a for­mer police offi­cer from a very vio­lent cul­ture, and hav­ing being shot in the line of duty, that police offi­cers should be taught to shoot only because they have to, not because they can. Compassion is not cow­ardice.”
Police offi­cers must not employ lethal force sim­ply because then can get away with killing.
That whole con­cept of shoot­ing to kill, under the guise of offi­cer safe­ty, defeats the very con­cept of good policing.

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.

THIS ABSOLUTELY HAPPENS DAILY NOW

Byron Lee Williams was unarmed and died less than an hour after con­tact with police.

Byron Lee Williams was on rid­ing his bicy­cle in Las Vegas, Nevada when he was stopped by police. Less than an hour lat­er, he was dead and his fam­i­ly is now speak­ing out.
On Sept. 5, around 6 a.m., Williams was rid­ing his bike that alleged­ly didn’t have a safe­ty light. According to KTNV, when two offi­cers, Benjamin Vazquez, 27, and Officer Patrick Campbell, 28, tried to stop him, he took off and even­tu­al­ly began run­ning on foot.

The offi­cers caught up to him and told Williams to get on the ground. While being cuffed, Williams told the offi­cers he couldn’t breathe. The Las Vegas Sun reports an offi­cer was heard telling him: “Yeah, because you’re tired of (exple­tive) run­ning.”
Williams was alleged­ly strad­dled by one of the offi­cers, who had his knee pinned against Williams. “Pressure on your butt, that’s all,” said one of the offi­cers. Williams con­tin­ues to com­plain about not being able to breathe.

“As they were tak­ing him to the patrol car, Williams appeared to pass out. Officers called for assis­tance and the Las Vegas fire depart­ment arrived sev­er­al min­utes lat­er,” KTNV reports. The 50-year-old lat­er died in hos­pi­tal. Williams was armed and the police claim he had drugs in his pos­ses­sion as well.

The fam­i­ly is say­ing the death was unjus­ti­fied. At a press con­fer­ence, his daugh­ter said, “Byron Lee Williams did have peo­ple who cared about him.” His niece also added, “He was loved, he was a changed man, it needs to be known that he changed his lifestyle.” At the press con­fer­ence, where body cam footage was showed, Asst. Sheriff Hank decid­ed to focus on Williams’ “exten­sive crim­i­nal his­to­ry.” He also claimed he had “abscond­ed from elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing and police were look­ing for him.”

Jeffrey E. Thompkins, who is iden­ti­fied as Williams’ step­son, claimed the footage the fam­i­ly saw was “doc­tored” and “that up to 40 min­utes had elapsed between the traf­fic stop and images that he said showed his step­fa­ther life­less on the con­crete, mean­ing that he didn’t die on the way to the hos­pi­tal, as the fam­i­ly was told.” The offi­cers were placed on rou­tine leave as the fam­i­ly is ask­ing for the inves­ti­ga­tion to con­tin­ue. See the press con­fer­ence below: