Here is a typical example of the Racism we talk about, when the highest court is so immoral and corrupt that it leaves in place the shooting death of a naked, unarmed human being by state agents.
How does a country move forward or even speak to injustice in others when it is so rotten at its own core? (mb)

Supreme Court rejects case of Oklahoma teen killed by police

The Supreme Court won’t hear a civ­il rights case brought by the par­ents of a teenag­er who was naked and unarmed when he was fatal­ly shot by an Oklahoma police offi­cer in 2019.
The high court on Monday reject­ed with­out com­ment the law­suit bought by the par­ents of Isaiah Lewis. Police have said that the 17-year-old was shot after he broke into a home in Edmond and attacked two offi­cers. They have said that a stun gun had no effect on him.
Lewis’ lawyers wrote that on the day he was shot he had inad­ver­tent­ly smoked mar­i­jua­na laced with PCP. His par­ents argued that he was expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis and that police used exces­sive force. An autop­sy report found Lewis suf­fered a total of four gun­shot wounds to his face, thighs and groin. A fed­er­al tri­al court judge had allowed the law­suit against the offi­cer who shot Lewis to go for­ward, but a three-judge pan­el of the 10^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed that rul­ing. The Supreme Court’s deci­sion not to take the case leaves the appeals court rul­ing in place.

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Police chief fires officer, releases video of shooting death.

A north­ern Virginia police offi­cer was fired Thursday after fatal­ly shoot­ing a man last month who had alleged­ly stolen two pairs of sun­glass­es from a busy shop­ping mall. Police also released video of the dead­ly encounter.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis announced the dis­missal at a press con­fer­ence where he also played body cam­era footage show­ing the shoot­ing of Timothy McCree Johnson out­side Tysons Corner Center on Feb. 22.
Two offi­cers who chased Johnson that night fired their weapons, Davis said. The one who fired the fatal round into his chest has been dis­missed from the depart­ment, and the oth­er offi­cer remains on restrict­ed duty as the inves­ti­ga­tion continues.
The offi­cer who was fired, Sgt. Wesley Shifflett, exhib­it­ed “a fail­ure to live up to the expec­ta­tions of our agency, in par­tic­u­lar use of force poli­cies,” Davis said.

Caleb Kershner, an attor­ney for Shifflett, said his client will appeal his dis­missal and expects to be exon­er­at­ed. He said Shifflett act­ed as he was trained to do, using lethal force if he has a rea­son­able belief his life is in dan­ger. Kershner said Shifflett saw Johnson reach­ing for his waist­band as though reach­ing for a weapon. “You have to make a split-sec­ond deci­sion, and it’s a life-or-death split-sec­ond deci­sion,” Kershner said. The video itself shows a night­time chase that last­ed less than two min­utes, with the offi­cers run­ning after him out of the mall, through a park­ing garage, across a street and into a wood­ed area. In a slow-motion ver­sion of the video that police played at Thursday’s press con­fer­ence, it sounds as though two shots were fired after an offi­cer yelled “get on the ground” but just before shout­ing “stop reach­ing.” A third shot is also heard. The video is dim­ly lit and it is dif­fi­cult to see Johnson in any detail once they are out of the mall.

Print shop own­er Carlos Pena is deal­ing with the dam­age caused by a SWAT raid after a fugi­tive holed up in his North Hollywood store. (Brian van der Brug /​Los Angeles Times)For 13 years, Carlos Pena has run NoHo Printing & Graphics in North Hollywood. He has stayed here even as this stretch of Lankershim Boulevard became sketch­i­er, even as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced him to lay off all his employ­ees. “It’s a very cre­ative field of work, but not very prof­itable,” the Salvadoran immi­grant told me half-jok­ing­ly as we walked inside his shop. “But it’s mine.” What was once the show­room was now stripped down to nails, ply­wood and beams. Industrial-sized air con­di­tion­er units and fans sat where dis­play cas­es and T‑shirt racks once were, a reminder of the day last sum­mer when Pena’s life changed forever

On Aug. 3 just after lunch, the 55-year-old was work­ing on an order when he heard what sound­ed like a heli­copter and some­one on a mega­phone. Pena opened the back door, looked toward the street and saw U.S. Marshals Service agents yelling and ges­tur­ing his way. Before he could shut the door, a man hit him on the shoul­der with a met­al object, kicked him out, then holed up inside.

YouTube footage shows mar­shals with heavy artillery and bul­let­proof vests tak­ing posi­tions around NoHo Printing and on near­by rooftops. They then stand down when Los Angeles Police Department SWAT vehi­cles roll into the park­ing lot behind the shop. Popping sounds soon give way to plumes of tear gas.

For 13 hours, Pena wait­ed in a near­by restau­rant as the stand­off con­tin­ued with some­one the cops said was a fugi­tive. He wait­ed so long that the restau­rant even­tu­al­ly asked him to leave because it need­ed to close.

“It was like a movie,” said Pena, shak­ing his head, his voice world-weary. “Out of 10 mil­lion busi­ness­es, that stu­pid dude chose mine.”

Two days lat­er, mar­shals let Pena return to NoHo Printing. Client projects were strewn across the floor. Holes were smashed into doors, walls and even the ceil­ing, which the fugi­tive climbed into by plac­ing a lad­der on a copi­er. He had some­how escaped.

“Look, look,” Pena kept repeat­ing while swip­ing through pho­tos on his smart­phone. “This is a $9,000 print­er that the fugi­tive stood on and broke.”

The worst part, he said, was the stench of tear gas. “You couldn’t be next to it for even a minute with­out gagging.”

No neigh­bor­ing busi­ness­es suf­fered dam­age. Pena had to toss out all his mate­ri­als — ink ton­ers, vinyl rolls, pack­ing mate­ri­als. His land­lord had to strip out all the dry­wall and insu­la­tion. The claim Pena filed with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that although the fugi­tive did destroy equip­ment, it was SWAT’s tear gas that left NoHo Printing “[un]inhabitable.”

A few years ear­li­er, Pena had switched to a cheap­er insur­er, who said events like this weren’t cov­ered under his pol­i­cy. The L.A. city attorney’s office denied his claim in August with no expla­na­tion. The U.S. Marshals Service ini­tial­ly reject­ed his claim, say­ing he hadn’t asked for a spe­cif­ic amount. When he replied with a detailed invoice for about $60,000, the agency denied him again.

Though mar­shals had pur­sued the fugi­tive to NoHo Printing, they argued that LAPD SWAT had engaged in the stand­off, not them. The cer­ti­fied let­ter end­ed by pro­vid­ing Pena with the LAPD’s address and the sug­ges­tion to “pur­sue your claim direct­ly with” the department.

In response to my query, the U.S. Marshals Service said, “Our office can­not offer sub­stan­tive com­ments regard­ing adju­di­ca­tion” of Pena’s claim. When I called up the LAPD’s media depart­ment to con­firm details of the Aug. 3 raid, Officer Drake Madison sug­gest­ed I file a pub­lic records request.

When I sent a list of ques­tions about Pena’s case and also asked what the LAPD pol­i­cy was when offi­cers dam­age a busi­ness in the search for a sus­pect, LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz replied that while Pena’s claims “are under con­sid­er­a­tion, we are unable to com­ment further.”

Pena’s tra­vails make Job seem as lucky as that guy who recent­ly won a $2‑billion Powerball jackpot

Since the U.S. Marshals Service and the LAPD would­n’t give me any answers, I called up two peo­ple who would.

Attorney Arnoldo Casillas, who spe­cial­izes in police mis­con­duct, does­n’t see too many cas­es like Pena’s but con­sid­ers them “my pro bono respon­si­bil­i­ty” because they are so hard to pursue.

He brought up the LAPD’s botched det­o­na­tion of a cache of fire­works in a South L.A. neigh­bor­hood in 2021 that left cars over­turned, homes wrecked and some res­i­dents still unable to return.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore quick­ly apol­o­gized, but “they’re fight­ing tooth and nail to not pay any­thing,” Casillas said. “I’m not sug­gest­ing [Pena’s case] is at the same lev­el, but $60,000 in dam­ages is not a small amount.”

State and fed­er­al statutes “give police a cer­tain amount of dis­cre­tion” when pur­su­ing sus­pects. “Some dish­es are going to break,” he said, so the dam­age “has to be egre­gious to the point that it’s malicious.”

Pena’s claim with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that SWAT fired 31 tear gas can­is­ters inside his shop, which sure sounds egre­gious to me.

It’s hard to get com­pen­sa­tion with­out know­ing the intri­ca­cies of the sys­tem — vic­tims need to file a spe­cif­ic claim with­in six months of the inci­dent and file it the right way, Casillas said.

“I’ve seen cas­es where a law­suit is filed, and the police say they only received a com­plaint, not a claim, and the law­suit can’t go any­where. It’s a pet­ty bulls— way get­ting around to not pay­ing any­thing. They tru­ly don’t care.”

Tanishia G. Wright, direc­tor of the L.A. County dis­trict attorney’s office’s Bureau of Victim Services, called Pena’s case “a very tricky one. … [LAPD] real­ly put him at an extreme injus­tice for that.”

She said her office “luck­i­ly” doesn’t see many sim­i­lar cas­es. It refers peo­ple to the California Victims Resource Center, which offers reim­burse­ment for qual­i­fy­ing dam­ages. Wright’s office has an unclaimed vic­tim resti­tu­tion fund, and “we can tap into that” to try to make up any dif­fer­ence, she said.

When I asked about the LAPD’s pol­i­cy when offi­cers dam­age the prop­er­ty of inno­cent peo­ple, Wright stayed silent.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. “Honestly, I should know. I’m curi­ous to know. We may have vic­tims that might have these questions.”

Both Casillas and Wright offered to speak to Pena about his case.

Pena is enough of a neigh­bor­hood fix­ture that cus­tomers such as Eric Walter have tried to help him nav­i­gate the ordeal.

“In an ide­al world, he should get com­pen­sa­tion for lost rev­enue,” said Walter, a retired ath­let­ic direc­tor for the near­by Oakwood School who has been a cus­tomer for near­ly a decade. “But at this point, he’d be hap­py just to get back to business.”

“My claim is going to be denied,” Pena said. His pierc­ing blue eyes had a thou­sand-yard stare. “If that hap­pens, I’m going to have to sell my house. My busi­ness is final­ly going to be dead.”

We walked to the back room, clut­tered with messy cab­i­nets, a desk and a tub of T‑shirts with an air-tight seal that saved it from the raid.

Pena now works from home, going to his shop only to use the two machines that sur­vived the raid — a cut­ter, along with a copi­er that needs a $1,200 part he can’t afford.

His land­lord is pur­su­ing claims with the LAPD and an insur­er and isn’t charg­ing any rent in the meantime.

“Everyone else gets help,” Pena replied, refer­ring to the recent bribery scan­dals that have plagued City Hall. “Look at all the mon­ey going around the city, and they can’t do any­thing to help?”

We now stood out­side his store­front. A sten­ciled ad on his win­dow offered a spe­cial: Anything print­ed on a T‑shirt for $6.50.

Pena let out a bit­ter laugh. It has been a rough cou­ple of years. His father was suf­fer­ing health issues. He lost his moth­er to COVID-19 in 2020, while he was bat­tling the dis­ease him­self. Even though they were in the same hos­pi­tal, doc­tors did­n’t allow him to say goodbye.

“When doors are closed, they all shut down for you,” he said. “I’ve been going through hell and back. Everything is pour­ing down on me.”

This sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Deputies accused of shoving guns in mouths of 2 Black men

Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s depart­ment being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Justice Department for pos­si­ble civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been involved in at least four vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and anoth­er with last­ing injuries, an Associated Press inves­ti­ga­tion found.

Two of the men allege that Rankin County sher­if­f’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths dur­ing sep­a­rate encoun­ters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trig­ger, leav­ing the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back togeth­er. In one of the two fatal con­fronta­tions, the man’s moth­er said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he could­n’t breathe.

Police and court records obtained by the AP show that sev­er­al deputies who were accept­ed to the sher­if­f’s office’s Special Response Team — a tac­ti­cal unit whose mem­bers receive advanced train­ing — were involved in each of the four encoun­ters. In three of them, the heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ments don’t indi­cate if they were serv­ing in their nor­mal capac­i­ty as deputies or as mem­bers of the unit.

Such units have drawn scruti­ny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severe­ly beat­en by Black mem­bers of a spe­cial police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols’ death led to a Justice Department probe of sim­i­lar squads around the coun­try that comes amid the broad­er pub­lic reck­on­ing over race and polic­ing sparked by the 2020 police mur­der of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In Mississippi, the police shoot­ing of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was vis­it­ing a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hos­pi­tal records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lac­er­at­ed tongue and bro­ken jaw.

Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he point­ed a gun at them; depart­ment offi­cials have not answered mul­ti­ple inquiries from the AP ask­ing whether a weapon was found at the scene. Jenkins’ attor­ney, Malik Shabazz, said his client didn’t have a gun.

“They had com­plete con­trol of him the entire time. Six offi­cers had full and com­plete con­trol of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”

Rankin County, which has about 120 sher­if­f’s deputies serv­ing its rough­ly 160,000 peo­ple, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly white and just east of the state cap­i­tal, Jackson, home to one of the high­est per­cent­ages of Black res­i­dents of any major U.S. city. In the coun­ty seat of Brandon, a tow­er­ing gran­ite-and-mar­ble mon­u­ment topped by a stat­ue of a Confederate sol­dier stands across the street from the sher­if­f’s office.

In a notice of an upcom­ing law­suit, attor­neys for Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said on the night of Jan. 24 the deputies sud­den­ly came into the home and pro­ceed­ed to hand­cuff and beat them. They said the deputies stunned them with Tasers repeat­ed­ly over rough­ly 90 min­utes and, at one point, forced them to lie on their backs as the deputies poured milk over their faces. The men restat­ed the alle­ga­tions in sep­a­rate inter­views with the AP.

When a Taser is used, it’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged into the device’s mem­o­ry. The AP obtained the auto­mat­ed Taser records from the evening of Jan. 24. They show that deputies first fired one of the stun guns at 10:04 p.m. and fired one at least three more times over the next 65 min­utes. However, those unredact­ed records might not paint a com­plete pic­ture, as redact­ed records show that Tasers were turned on, turned off or used dozens more times dur­ing that period.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was brought in to inves­ti­gate the encounter. Its sum­ma­ry says a deputy shot Jenkins at approx­i­mate­ly 11:45 p.m., or about 90 min­utes after a Taser was first used, which match­es the time­frame giv­en by Parker and Jenkins. The deputy’s name was not dis­closed by the bureau.

Police say the raid was prompt­ed by a report of drug activ­i­ty at the home. Jenkins was charged with pos­sess­ing between 2 and 10 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and aggra­vat­ed assault on a police offi­cer. Parker was charged with two mis­de­meanors — pos­ses­sion of para­pher­na­lia and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. Jenkins and Parker say the raid came to a head when the deputy shot Jenkins through the mouth. He still has dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing and eating.

Another Black man, Carvis Johnson, alleged in a fed­er­al law­suit filed in 2020 that a Rankin County deputy placed a gun into his mouth dur­ing a 2019 drug bust. Johnson was not shot.

There is no rea­son for an offi­cer to place a gun in a suspect’s mouth, and to have alle­ga­tions of two such inci­dents is telling, said Samuel Walker, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at the University of Nebraska.

“If there are inci­dents with the same kind of pat­tern of behav­ior, they have their own set of rules,” he said. “So these are not just chance expe­ri­ences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”

Jenkins does­n’t know the name of the deputy who shot him. In the heav­i­ly redact­ed inci­dent report, an uniden­ti­fied deputy wrote, “I noticed a gun.” The unredact­ed sec­tions don’t say who shot Jenkins, only that he was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. Deputy Hunter Elward swore in a sep­a­rate court doc­u­ment that Jenkins point­ed the gun at him.

Elward’s name also appears in police reports and court records from the two inci­dents in which sus­pects were killed.

The sher­if­f’s depart­ment refused repeat­ed inter­view requests and denied access to any of the deputies who were involved in the vio­lent con­fronta­tions. The depart­ment has not said whether deputies pre­sent­ed a search war­rant, and it’s unclear if any have been dis­ci­plined or are still mem­bers of the spe­cial unit.

The news out­let Insider has been inves­ti­gat­ing the sheriff’s depart­ment and per­suad­ed a coun­ty judge to order the sher­iff to turn over doc­u­ments relat­ed to the deaths of four men in 2021. Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom expressed bewil­der­ment that the depart­ment had refused to make the doc­u­ments public.

“(The) day that our law enforce­ment offi­cers start shield­ing this infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic, all the while repeat­ing, ‘Trust us. We’re from the gov­ern­ment,’ is the day that should star­tle all Americans,” Odom wrote.

The AP request­ed body cam­era or dash­cam footage from the night of the Jenkins raid. Jason Dare, an attor­ney for the sheriff’s depart­ment, said there was no record of either.

Mississippi doesn’t require police offi­cers to wear body cam­eras. Incident reports and court records tie deputies from the raid to three oth­er vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men.

During a 2019 stand­off, Elward said Pierre Woods point­ed a gun at him while run­ning at deputies. Deputies then shot and killed him. In a state­ment to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained by the AP, Elward said he fired at Woods eight times. Police say they recov­ered a hand­gun at the scene of the Woods shooting.

Court records place Christian Dedmon, anoth­er deputy who shot at Woods, at the Jenkins raid.

Dedmon was also among deputies involved in a 2019 arrest of Johnson, accord­ing to the law­suit Johnson filed alleg­ing that one of the deputies put a gun in his mouth as they searched him for drugs. Johnson is cur­rent­ly impris­oned for sell­ing methamphetamine.

Other doc­u­ments obtained by the AP detail anoth­er vio­lent con­fronta­tion between Elward and Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. He died in July 2021 after being arrest­ed by Elward and Deputy Luke Stickman, who also opened fire on Woods dur­ing the 2019 stand­off. A grand jury declined to bring charges in the case last October.

In an inci­dent report, Elward wrote that while respond­ing to a van­dal­ism call, he repeat­ed­ly shocked Cameron with a Taser, punched and grap­pled with Cameron at the home of his moth­er, Monica Lee. He said after get­ting Cameron to his squad car, he again stunned him to get him to pull his legs into the vehicle.

After going back inside to retrieve his Taser, deputies returned to find Cameron unre­spon­sive. Elward wrote that he pulled Cameron from the car and per­formed CPR, but Cameron was lat­er declared dead at a hospital.

Lee, who wit­nessed the con­fronta­tion, told the AP that after sub­du­ing her son, Elward kneeled on his back for sev­er­al min­utes. She said when Stickman arrived, he kneeled on her son’s neck while hand­cuff­ing him, and that her son com­plained he could­n’t breathe.

Lee said she lat­er went out­side, hop­ing to talk to her son before the deputies drove him away.

“I walked out­side to tell him good­bye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground scream­ing and hollering.”

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We brought his case to your atten­tion some time ago; here are some new devel­op­ments, accord­ing to root​.com. Everyone knows that in the United States, there are so-called sun­down towns in which black peo­ple are mur­dered sole­ly based on the col­or of their skin. It hap­pened all through­out America’s his­to­ry it is hap­pen­ing today.
In these god­for­sak­en places pop­u­lat­ed with hea­thens, mur­der peo­ple for their skin col­or; what pass­es for law enforce­ment is usu­al­ly com­plic­it in the killings or are the ones who com­mit the murders.
It should sur­prise no one then that the sher­if­f’s depart­ment has cre­at­ed a nar­ra­tive of an ani­mal attack on this young man.
The sad real­i­ty is that based on the emerg­ing evi­dence, ani­mals did attack Rasheeem Carter, two-legged animals.
Why would a per­fect­ly sane young man text his moth­er that he was being chased by white men hurl­ing racial slurs
if he was­n’t?
Oh, by the way, I bet you have not seen or heard this case men­tioned on main­stream media(mb)

https://mikebeckles.com/a‑black-man-was-found-dead-after-he-told-his-mother-he-was-being-chased-police-said-theres-no-reason-to-suspect-foul-play/

The fam­i­ly of Rasheem Carter, a 25-year-old who was alleged­ly mur­dered in the woods of Mississippi, have start­ed try­ing to unlock the mys­tery his hor­ri­fy­ing death. The fam­i­ly told Insider he was last seen on video “run­ning for his life,” though the sheriff’s office debunked their claim. Carter went miss­ing in October 2022 just after send­ing a text to his moth­er, Tiffany, say­ing a truck­load of white men were chas­ing him.

His moth­er recalled the text say­ing, “Me and the own­er of this com­pa­ny are not see­ing eye to eye… If any­thing hap­pens to me [he] is respon­si­ble for it… he got these guys want­i­ng to kill me.”
She also said her son was work­ing at a weld­ing facil­i­ty in order to make enough mon­ey to reopen his seafood restau­rant fol­low­ing its clo­sure dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. However, she said for some rea­son he fled from his cur­rent work in fear for his life. One month lat­er, his remains (sev­ered head, ver­te­brae and spinal cord) were found scat­tered in the woods. The med­ical examiner’s office couldn’t even deter­mine the cause of Carter’s death because his remains were already decom­pos­ing, per CBS42.
Though the Smith County Sheriff’s Department pre­vi­ous­ly killed the notion of foul play being a fac­tor in the inci­dent and even the the­o­ry Carter was being chased, one cryp­tic pho­to con­vinces the fam­i­ly that mal­ice was involved.

You sim­ply have to see this sto­ry. The details are so far-fetched that it tram­ples every façade America has as a free soci­ety where black peo­ple can go about their busi­ness with­out fear of the government.
I have said this before and will con­tin­ue to state this fact. The great­est threat to any Black per­son in the United States is the police.
A black per­son walk­ing or dri­ving down any road or high­way faces the great­est dan­ger from America’s race sol­diers, the police.
The behav­ior of these cops if allowed to stand, would cre­ate a prece­dent that would make it a crime for any per­son to pull up to any place and sit in their car. There was absolute­ly no rea­son that the cop did not walk away except that he saw a black woman and her two daugh­ters, and he decid­ed that he would uni­lat­er­al­ly vio­late their rights and strip them of their dignity.
But the tragedy is not just with their out­ra­geous actions, which should have got­ten them fired and crim­i­nal­ly charged; it is that they were pro­mot­ed and kept on the job to com­mit more rights vio­la­tions cost­ing the tax­pay­ers count­less mil­lions and poten­tial­ly killing inno­cent peo­ple. This should send a chill down the spine of every black man who calls him­self a man and has a wife and chil­dren; I know I do. Do you watch your wife being vio­lat­ed for absolute­ly no reason?
To top it all, they inves­ti­gat­ed them­selves and found they had done noth­ing wrong.
Watch the video below.

Jury awards Black family $8.25 million in wrongful detention by deputies at California Starbucks

A fed­er­al jury award­ed a moth­er and her two daugh­ters $8.25 mil­lion after they were unlaw­ful­ly searched and hand­cuffed by Alameda County sher­if­f’s deputies at a Castro Valley Starbucks on their way to tak­ing one of the young women to a col­lege math test in Berkeley. The women were not phys­i­cal­ly harmed by law enforce­ment, but the dol­lar amount of the award sig­nals that the jurors felt the fam­i­ly’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights had been stripped because of their skin color. 

“I think that every­body rec­og­nizes we all have implic­it bias,” their attor­ney, Craig Peters of San Francisco, said in an inter­view on Monday. “I have it. You have it. We’ve all got it. These offi­cers are no dif­fer­ent. And so, sub­con­scious­ly, there was some­thing going on that made them unrea­son­ably sus­pi­cious of this fam­i­ly. I think that if this same sce­nario hap­pened and these were white women, it would have played out very dif­fer­ent­ly.” The ver­dict was reached on March 1 fol­low­ing a two-day civ­il tri­al before U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco. A jury delib­er­at­ed for 16 hours before award­ing the moth­er and daugh­ters this unprece­dent­ed amount from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

Specifically, the jury found Deputy Steven Holland liable for $2.7 mil­lion to their moth­er, Aasylei Loggervale, and $2 mil­lion apiece to her daugh­ters, Aaottae Loggervale, then 17, and Aasyeli Hardege-Loggervale, then 19. The jury also found then-Deputy Monica Pope liable for $750,000 to both daugh­ters and that Alameda County is liable for the actions of its deputies. It’s pos­si­ble the judge could low­er the award if the coun­ty con­vinces him to do so. But noth­ing has been filed in court to indi­cate that so far. Neither the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office nor Kevin Gilbert, the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the coun­ty, respond­ed for com­ment on Monday. Both Holland and Pope have since been pro­mot­ed. The civ­il tri­al, also lit­i­gat­ed by attor­neys Joseph May and Brian Gearinger, alleged false arrest, inva­sion of pri­va­cy, neg­li­gence, and vio­la­tions of the 1^st, 4^th, and 14^th Amendments. The Loggervales declined to be inter­viewed. Their sto­ry has nev­er been pub­licly told before, and some of their rel­a­tives don’t even know what hap­pened to them or that they won a mas­sive jury amount. But they tes­ti­fied dur­ing the tri­al, and jurors found sided with their account, stem­ming from an encounter on Sept. 20, 2019.

That’s when moth­er Aasylei Loggervale, who is a tax pre­par­er, and her two daugh­ters were sit­ting in their rent­ed Cadillac out­side of Starbucks in Castro Valley. The trio, all of whom are Black, were at the end of their dri­ve from Nevada. They were parked in a dis­abled spot, and were at the cof­fee shop ear­ly to take Aasylei Hardge-Loggervale to a sta­tis­tics test in Berkeley on time. She was attend­ing com­mu­ni­ty col­lege and was plan­ning on trans­fer­ring her cred­its to UCLA. Two deputies, Holland and Pope, were on patrol at the time and approached the rent­ed Cadillac. They told the Loggervale fam­i­ly that they were inves­ti­gat­ing car bur­glar­ies com­mit­ted by uniden­ti­fied Black men. But in fact, one police report shows that the sus­pects were iden­ti­fied as one Black man and one Latino man, Peters said. At first, the Loggervales thought they were being warned about the break-ins and they were grateful. 

But that feel­ing quick­ly soured when the deputies began ques­tion­ing the moth­er about whether she was legal­ly able to park in a dis­abled spot, despite her hav­ing a vis­i­ble plac­ard in her car win­dow. The deputies also demand­ed to see the elder Loggervale’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which she declined to pro­vide. Under the 4^th Amendment, cit­i­zens have the right to be free from unrea­son­able search­es, which includes being asked for ID if an offi­cer can’t artic­u­late that a per­son has com­mit­ted a crime. “Ms. Loggervale did not want to engage fur­ther with defen­dants because as a Black per­son, she feared the encounter could result in seri­ous phys­i­cal harm or death to her and/​or her daugh­ters,” the orig­i­nal civ­il suit stat­ed. Still, the deputies arrest­ed the women, put them in the back of their patrol car and searched their trunk. 

The deputies then claimed that one of the daugh­ters com­mit­ted “bat­tery” when she opened the car door and struck Holland. But the video pre­sent­ed in court showed that when she tried to open the car door to exit, the deputy pushed it closed on her. Video tak­en by the daugh­ters, as well as body cam­era video from the sher­if­f’s office, showed how the stop esca­lat­ed into ten­sion and tears. “What am I being detained for?” the elder Loggervale asked. “I’m informed I can’t go to the restroom.” Holland respond­ed: “Sit in the car, or you’re going in hand­cuffs.” Mother and daugh­ters repeat­ed­ly asked what they were being detained for. They nev­er received an answer. “You have to tell me what you’re detain­ing me for,” the elder Loggervale is heard say­ing. “I do not,” said Deputy Keith Leeper, who had also showed up at the scene. The deputies placed the fam­i­ly in the back of the patrol car, where they were held for about 70 min­utes. They’re heard cry­ing. Loggervale kept ask­ing to use the restroom.
Eventually, the fam­i­ly was let go. None was charged with any crime. During the tri­al, the deputies tes­ti­fied about their ver­sion of events, and how they were out inves­ti­gat­ing car bur­glar­ies. They insist­ed that they were in the right. “The offi­cers would have been well-served to sort of take a good hard look at what had hap­pened and just acknowl­edge some of it,” Peters said. “But instead, they kind of dou­bled down on try­ing to shade facts to try and make this sit­u­a­tion seem not as bad as it was, try to raise some doubt, you know, attack­ing the women.”

An Internal Affairs inves­ti­ga­tion found that the deputies did noth­ing wrong, accord­ing to Peters. Both Holland and Pope are now sergeants. “I think what makes me upset is that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office did­n’t take the ini­tia­tive to cor­rect what to me seems like such an easy thing to have cor­rect­ed ear­ly on,” Peters said. “And instead, they want­ed to sweep it under the rug.” Peters said no one in the sher­if­f’s office seemed to say, “we need to fix this, let’s talk to this fam­i­ly, apol­o­gize, say, ‘Hey, we were wrong, we’re work­ing on this,’ do some retrain­ing. That would have been the respon­si­ble thing to do.” An analy­sis of exces­sive force and wrong­ful death police pay­outs from 2015 to 2020 by KTVU revealed that Alamada County has paid out the most of any law enforce­ment agency in the Bay Area dur­ing that time peri­od. The top two awards, before the Loggervale’s, were for $5.5 mil­lion and $5 mil­lion, respec­tive­ly, stem­ming from injuries and the death of a 20-year-old Fremont man. As for Aasylei Hardge-Loggervale, she made it to her math test that day, 40 min­utes late. She is about to grad­u­ate UCLA this year. But her life, and her sis­ter’s and moth­er’s lives, will nev­er be the same. “They worked hard,” Peters said. “And then this hap­pens and it just shakes your foun­da­tion about the place you live in. I hope that they can recov­er that at some point, but I sus­pect they won’t. I sus­pect that to some extent for the rest of their life, every time they see police offi­cers, every time they’re in a Starbucks park­ing lot, they’re going to remem­ber this.”(foxla)

The United States is a Republican-run coun­try with breaks for Democratic exec­u­tive lead­er­ship when the vot­ers are tired or dis­sat­is­fied with Republican lead­er­ship at the top.
Ultimately, how­ev­er, the coun­try is ruled by Republican poli­cies at the state lev­el leg­isla­tive­ly and book­end­ed by the Supreme Court on the oth­er end.
The man­i­fes­ta­tion of this is evi­dent in even good poli­cies cre­at­ed and enact­ed in the best of times for Democrats, à la, laws like the Affordable Care Act enact­ed under the pop­u­lar Democrat Obama come under con­tin­u­ous assault by Republicans and was saved the last time by Republican John McCain, in his now famous thumbs down vote.
Other Democratic ini­tia­tives passed under exi­gent cir­cum­stances dur­ing Democratic lead­er­ship have also come under increased Republican assault and have either been repealed by Congress or destroyed by the Supreme Court.

In 2016 while a pop­u­lar Democrat, Barack Obama, was in the white house, the John Roberts Supreme Court evis­cer­at­ed the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed under anoth­er Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, in its (Shelby County V Holder) decision.
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, over­rul­ing an ear­li­er deci­sion, Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (Austin), that allowed pro­hi­bi­tions on inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures by corporations.
The deci­sion (cit­i­zens unit­ed) was a crush­ing blow to the work of many, includ­ing the late Republican US Senator from Arizona, John McCain, and for­mer Democratic US Senator Russ Feingold and oth­ers, to stem the flood of dark mon­ey into polit­i­cal campaigns.
The Roberts court ruled that large cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple, and there­fore they were allowed to flood polit­i­cal cam­paigns with end­less streams of cash, drown­ing out the voic­es of the lit­tle man.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, the John Roberts Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade, the land­mark piece of leg­is­la­tion that made access to abor­tion the law of the land. This leg­is­la­tion has been in effect since 1972. 

Many in the pun­dit­ry class bemoaned that fla­grant act of raw judi­cial pow­er as unprece­dent­ed, rep­re­sent­ing the first time in mod­ern his­to­ry that the court had rolled back rights that gen­er­a­tions of Americans had pre­vi­ous­ly enjoyed.
That assess­ment was incor­rect and flawed. The court had only six (6) years ear­li­er destroyed the fire­wall around vot­ing rights in the Shelby County V Holder deci­sion, there­by allow­ing a flood of anti-vot­ing laws all across Republican-run states.
Years ago, hav­ing noticed some of the trends emerg­ing from the polit­i­cal right, I com­ment­ed to some asso­ciates and fam­i­ly mem­bers that Black Americans were in deep per­il of being returned to slavery.
My asser­tions were based two-fold, (1) the anti-black pos­ture adopt­ed by the Republican par­ty and (2) the sense a large part of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty seemed to have that the civ­il rights fights were won and over with.
The prob­lem with hav­ing that sense of com­fort is that the peo­ple teach­ing their chil­dren to hate are doing so with a renewed sense of urgency based large­ly on their sense of enti­tle­ment, griev­ance, fear, and their dwin­dling pop­u­la­tion numbers.
As a con­se­quence, African-Americans adopt­ing a pos­ture that all is well are in grave dan­ger of hav­ing all the gains they were hand­ed by their ances­tors reversed.

Black his­to­ry is being removed from schools and Universities. Teachers risk los­ing their jobs and even going to prison for teach­ing the truth about black his­to­ry, that black peo­ple were here Hundreds of years before the Europeans.
African-Americans are forced to pay huge poll tax­es to secure the right to vote. Long lines mean that vot­ers in urban areas must stand in lines for up to 8 hours to vote.
Standing in line for 6 – 8 hours is a full work­day. It is a poll tax. White vot­ers in sub­ur­ban and rur­al areas are not forced to under­go those indig­ni­ties to exer­cise their franchise.
The Continuation and esca­la­tion of police bru­tal­i­ty and mur­der against African-Americans are a man­i­fes­ta­tion of a process cre­at­ed from slav­ery to keep Blacks in their place.
Even as I write this arti­cle, state leg­is­la­tures are work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to degrade the will of vot­ers in urban areas by remov­ing pow­ers from pro­gres­sive Mayors and Prosecutors and hand­ing them to Republican governors.
They will not stop until they return all Black peo­ple to chains on cor­po­rate plan­ta­tions (farms).

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

A video has gone viral across social media that shows a car sales­man uri­nat­ing on a Black woman’s driver’s license. “I feel so vio­lat­ed,” Leah Jefferson wrote in a Facebook post. “I’m lit­er­al­ly shak­ing, scared and sick to my stom­ach.” The Milwaukee native con­tin­ued to explain her out­rage in her post. On Feb. 26, Jefferson vis­it­ed NH Auto Sales LLC in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to view a 2004 Honda Civic. In the post, Jefferson men­tioned she decid­ed to test dri­ve the car. The 19-year-old claimed she spoke with the car sales­man, Ryan Slaven, before com­ing to the lot. Jefferson recalled giv­ing her driver’s license to Slaven in the lengthy post. “Upon get­ting the keys I had to trade my ID in which I did in front of my friends mom and a ran­dom lady,” she wrote.

After a 30-minute test dri­ve, Jefferson attempt­ed to nego­ti­ate the price with the sales­man but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed against the vehi­cle. After leav­ing the deal­er­ship, she real­ized she had left her ID behind and con­tact­ed Slaven, offer­ing him a $5 Cash App trans­ac­tion to return her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Unfortunately, the car sales­man stat­ed he didn’t have her ID and “wouldn’t return to the office until Monday.” The post White Car Salesman Makes Video Of Him Urinating On A Black Woman’s Driver’s License She Left Behind After A Test Drive appeared first on Blavity. Jefferson admit­ted she was a lit­tle upset but under­stood. She end­ed the sto­ry by reveal­ing she received a shock­ing video through Instagram lat­er that evening. “My LICENSE, my state ID that is my prop­er­ty that I need. The guy in the bub­ble vest is his asso­ciate or boss; they sell cars togeth­er. STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!! I feel so vio­lat­ed dawg, my fam­i­ly address is list­ed in big prints where they lay and sleep and night. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO WITH THIS ONE,” she wrote. Jefferson shared screen­shots of Slaven’s Facebook pro­file, the car lot infor­ma­tion and the video a Snapchat user sent her.

The appalling video shows a man hold­ing Jefferson’s license say­ing, “This is what hap­pens … when you say stu­pid s**t to us.” While the men’s iden­ti­ties in the video are uncon­firmed, Jefferson believed Slaven and a cowork­er were hold­ing the license and record­ing the inci­dent. Another voice is heard in the back­ground, direct­ing the man to place the license on the bumper. The man places the ID on the back bumper of a beige-col­ored pick­up truck with a Wisconsin license plate that reads SG3539. Once the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card is on the bumper, he uri­nates on it. The video clos­es with an image of a Trump Hotel door­mat. The Kenosha Police Department announced it is inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent on its Facebook page. The state­ment began: “KPD is aware of a dis­gust­ing act of dis­re­spect towards a person’s prop­er­ty, a video of which is being wide­ly shared on social media. We have been in con­tact with the vic­tim and are work­ing with that per­son on the inves­ti­ga­tion.” The state­ment con­tin­ued: “KPD is also aware that this video has been viewed, a lot! We are aware of the threats being made to the imma­ture cul­prits and their busi­ness. While we can under­stand that view­ing this video caus­es emo­tion­al reac­tions, we can­not and will not tol­er­ate any acts of vio­lence towards those respon­si­ble or asso­ci­at­ed with the busi­ness or the busi­ness itself.” There have been no reports of arrests made since the video became pub­lic. On Thursday, KPD issued anoth­er Facebook state­ment announc­ing it had referred mis­de­meanor charges to the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office for “two adult men asso­ci­at­ed with the video” for crim­i­nal dam­age to prop­er­ty, dis­or­der­ly con­duct, theft, and unlaw­ful use of com­put­er­ized com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems. However, author­i­ties said they would not “name the sus­pects until they are for­mal­ly charged.”(Yahoonews.com)

The five Black cops who beat Tyre Nichols, result­ing in his death, were imme­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nat­ed, indict­ed, and are await­ing tri­al. My dis­gust with that case is that they are all out on bail. No bail should have been grant­ed to those mur­der­ers because police offi­cers are sup­posed to oper­ate under a high­er stan­dard of care and pru­dence. Notwithstanding, we exist in a police state where the courts have placed police and the state over the rights of cit­i­zens, counter to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. At the time the five black cops mur­dered Tyre Nichols, I point­ed out a fact right here in this medi­um that the only rea­son they were imme­di­ate­ly fired and indict­ed was the col­or of their skin. It is impor­tant to under­stand that only black cops are imme­di­ate­ly fired and indict­ed when cops run afoul of the laws. White police offi­cers are sent on paid leave, if at all, and if an inves­ti­ga­tion is even ini­ti­at­ed, it usu­al­ly results in no find­ing of crim­i­nal conduct.
Such has been the con­tin­u­a­tion of sep­a­rate but equal appli­ca­tion of the laws 69 years after the land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion that struck down the doc­trine of ‘sep­a­rate but equal’ and ordered an end to school segregation.
Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who mur­dered Eric Garner, still has not met jus­tice. Neither have the cops who mur­dered Alton Sterling, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Philandio Castille. 

The list of Black peo­ple mur­dered by police is far too expan­sive to doc­u­ment here. Still, it is impor­tant to note that in case after case where white cops kill unarmed peo­ple of col­or, the stan­dard of account­abil­i­ty is far dif­fer­ent than when black cops are accused of the same crimes. Now God for­bid that it be con­strued that I am advo­cat­ing for those cops who mur­dered Tyre Nichols, far from it.
White suprema­cists who now oper­ate open­ly in America’s Law Enforcement Agencies do so with impunity.
And you thought that after George Floyd, they would stop, huh? Well, not so fast, ladies and gen­tle­men. Police crimes increased after the mur­der of Mister Floyd and the mass protests that enveloped the coun­try in 2020 due to that bla­tant act of mur­der in the light of day.
Emboldened by reac­tionary white suprema­cists in the White House and oth­ers with­in the judi­cia­ry, includ­ing the high­est court police, embarked on a crack­down on dis­sent and peace­ful march­es that may be attrib­uted only to a total­i­tar­i­an state.
The assault on Black peo­ple did not stop with the killing of George Floyd, nor did it stop with the bru­tal mur­der of Tyre Nichols. No, nei­ther of those two mur­ders rep­re­sent­ed an inflec­tion point for America. There were nev­er enough white Americans with the char­ac­ter and lack of hatred to end the dual sys­tem of sep­a­rate but equal that dri­ves police vio­lence; there nev­er will be. This coun­try was built on the false notion that whites are supe­ri­or and enti­tled to be treat­ed thus. They pass it down to their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. It is not get­ting bet­ter. For those rea­sons, Dr. Martin Luther King, before they assas­si­nat­ed him, real­ized that he had inte­grat­ed his peo­ple into a burn­ing build­ing. Thereafter, King warned about what he char­ac­ter­ized as ‘accept­ing the tran­quil drug of gradualism.’
Why?
Because younger white peo­ple are not get­ting less racist, they are get­ting more anti-black.

Did you see this sto­ry in the cor­po­rate-owned main­stream media? Of course not, because this is not what they want you to believe of their race sol­diers. On the oth­er hand, many of you will con­tin­ue to miss these events because you guys are too busy play­ing video games, drink­ing, smok­ing weed, and sag­ging your pants to read and under­stand what’s happening.
Too many of you women are too busy try­ing to pur­chase the new wig, buy­ing fake eye­lash­es, fake nails, fake butts, fake breasts, brand name hand­bags, jew­el­ry, cars, and all kinds of stuff you can­not afford.
At the same time, nei­ther of you, men or women, is set­ting up col­lege funds for your chil­dren, which will empow­er and bet­ter posi­tion them to effec­tive­ly deal with the scourge of anti-black racism in this country.
You have sons and daugh­ters; you are alive. It does not mat­ter how old you are. You are not exempt from this bru­tal­i­ty and genocide.
I saw this quote recent­ly and asked my friend if it was okay to bor­row it. He said it was okay. Thank you, Este.
” If you are not out­raged by injus­tice, you are immoral.”
(MB)

Mississippi Officers Allegedly Tortured 2 Black Men After Accusing Them Of Selling Drugs And
Dating White Women»>

A group of Black lawyers is speak­ing up against mul­ti­ple white police offi­cers in Mississippi who alleged­ly tor­tured two Black men after accus­ing them of sell­ing drugs and “dat­ing white women.”
In a state­ment to News One, the Black Lawyers for Justice orga­ni­za­tion said the offi­cers bru­tal­ly beat and kicked the men, used a Taser on both, and threat­ened to kill them. One of the Black men, Michael C. Jenkins, was shot in the mouth accord­ing to the lawyers. The post-Mississippi Officers Allegedly Tortured 2 Black Men After Accusing Them Of Selling Drugs, And Dating White Women appeared first on Blavity.
Jenkins was stay­ing with Eddie Terrell Parker in a pri­vate res­i­dence when six white offi­cers raid­ed the place with­out a war­rant on Jan. 24, the lawyers said. The offi­cers alleged­ly hand­cuffed the pair after accus­ing them of “dat­ing white women” and “sell­ing drugs.

After restrain­ing the men, the offi­cers repeat­ed­ly kicked, threat­ened, and water­board­ed the pair, Black Lawyers for Justice said. Jenkins’ moth­er, Mary, said police told her that they shot her son because he “dis­played a gun.” “My son was hand­cuffed when he was shot in the mouth by Rankin County offi­cers. My son is still in crit­i­cal con­di­tion and has a long road to recov­ery,” Mary said in a GoFundMe page she cre­at­ed. “With everyone’s con­tin­u­ous prayers and sup­port we’ll be able to get the Justice my son deserves. Not only Justice for him but every oth­er inno­cent per­son male or female that Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has killed. Anything that is donat­ed will be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.” Mary also said there is a wit­ness who said Jenkins didn’t have a gun. “The wit­ness told us that [Jenkins] was beat, tased and hand­cuffed while on his knees,” the dev­as­tat­ed moth­er said. “The wit­ness also stat­ed that they went back and forth tas­ing [Jenkins and Parker] to see ‘who’s taser was the strongest.’”

Black Lawyers for Justice said “Michael has been cling­ing to his life and he is unable to talk, only write.” “Michael has con­firmed in writ­ing that he was in fact hand­cuffed when shot by deputies. For sev­er­al weeks since being shot, Michael has been in ICU at UMMC on life sup­port,” the group stat­ed in a press release to NewsOne. “Michael suf­fered severe injuries to his mouth and head includ­ing hav­ing his tongue sur­gi­cal­ly removed, per­ma­nent dam­age to eye­sight and hear­ing, and suf­fer­ing severe debil­i­tat­ing cog­ni­tive injuries. Surely the psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal trau­ma will last a life­time.” Black Lawyers for Justice is demand­ing for the offi­cers involved to be arrest­ed and crim­i­nal­ly charged as well as all body cam­era footage be released and made pub­lic. Parker, who is not hos­pi­tal­ized, is expect­ed to be present at a press con­fer­ence on Wednesday.

Republicans are try­ing to remove a Black pros­e­cu­tor because she refus­es to do their bid­ding, per­pet­u­at­ing peo­ple’s lock­ing up for minor offens­es and feed­ing the prison indus­tri­al complex.
Their prob­lem with Ms. Gardner is that she dared to indict their crim­i­nal Governor Eric Greitens in 2018.
Be remind­ed that it is up to a judge to deter­mine bail, not the pros­e­cu­tor. So it mat­ters lit­tle whether a pros­e­cu­tor asks that an accused be allowed out on bail; the deci­sion rests sole­ly with the judge. But again, this is a red her­ring by the lying, bul­ly­ing, racist Republicans who are mad that a black woman holds a posi­tion of power.
Kim Gardner is an out­spo­ken advo­cate for police reform. That is the rea­son they want her removed.

On Thursday, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a legal motion to remove St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner from office. The action comes after a cho­rus of elect­ed offi­cials called on Gardner to resign after a dri­ver who repeat­ed­ly vio­lat­ed his bond alleged­ly injured a 16-year-old vol­ley­ball play­er from Tennessee, result­ing in both of her legs being ampu­tat­ed. Bailey, a Republican, and oth­ers have accused Gardner, a Democrat, of neglect­ing her duties because the dri­ver had vio­lat­ed his bond. Gardner, in response, has accused the judge in the driver’s case of deny­ing pros­e­cu­tors’ requests for a high­er bond.
Bailey’s motion, which accus­es Gardner of neglect, rep­re­sents the lat­est bat­tle over Gardner’s han­dling of the office. Gardner, the first Black woman to be elect­ed as St. Louis’ top pros­e­cu­tor, has repeat­ed­ly clashed with Republican law­mak­ers in Jefferson City dur­ing her tenure. While law­mak­ers of both par­ties have crit­i­cized Gardner’s han­dling of the case, some view Bailey’s motion as anoth­er exam­ple of Republicans tar­get­ing a pro­gres­sive, Black official.

Here’s what you need to know about Bailey’s action against Gardner.
WHO IS KIM GARDNER?

Kim Gardner, an out­spo­ken advo­cate for police reform, was elect­ed as St. Louis’ top pros­e­cu­tor in 2016. She won reelec­tion to a sec­ond term in 2020. During her time in office, Gardner has repeat­ed­ly faced back­lash from Republicans over how she’s run the office. Much of that crit­i­cism stems from Gardner’s pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens in 2018.
Last year, Gardner was rep­ri­mand­ed by the Missouri Supreme Court for her han­dling of the inva­sion of pri­va­cy case against Greitens. As part of an agree­ment with the court, she admit­ted to fail­ing to dis­close evi­dence — hand­writ­ten notes — to attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Greitens. Greitens was indict­ed for felony inva­sion of pri­va­cy in the 2018 case, but Gardner dropped the case a day before it was set to go to tri­al. She agreed to drop an addi­tion­al com­put­er tam­per­ing charge against Greitens as part of an agree­ment that coin­cid­ed with Greitens’ vol­un­tary res­ig­na­tion from office. Republican law­mak­ers are also tar­get­ing Gardner’s han­dling of crime in St. Louis. A bill filed this year would allow Republican Gov. Mike Parson to appoint a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to any cir­cuit or pros­e­cut­ing attorney’s juris­dic­tion for five years if he deems there is a threat to pub­lic safety.

WHY DO BAILEY AND OTHER OFFICIALS WANT GARDNER REMOVED FROM OFFICE?

Bailey and oth­er offi­cials, includ­ing Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, want Gardner removed after a motorist who had repeat­ed­ly vio­lat­ed his bond struck and injured a teenag­er in St. Louis this week. Police say Daniel Riley, 21, was speed­ing and failed to yield at an inter­sec­tion when his vehi­cle hit anoth­er car that then struck 16-year-old Janae Edmondson. Riley, who was out on bond for a 2020 rob­bery charge that was dis­missed and refiled last year, had vio­lat­ed the con­di­tions of his bond sev­er­al times, includ­ing by let­ting his GPS mon­i­tor die. Bailey has crit­i­cized Gardner for not fil­ing a motion to revoke Riley’s bond. On Thursday, Bailey said Gardner illus­trat­ed a “con­tin­ued pat­tern of fail­ure” to “dis­charge her moral and legal duties.”
Read more here: https://​www​.kansasc​i​ty​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​2​7​2​5​8​4​1​0​9​.​h​tml

Their lily-white juries will not indict the mur­der­ous scum­bags in uni­form who sav­age­ly mur­der your chil­dren, so you are left to cry and bury your dead right?
In fact, pros­e­cu­tors will not present the facts in a way for the grand juries to indict even if the mem­bers of those juries weren’t soul­less racists.
I wish to point out that they con­tin­ue to shoot while or before demand­ing that sus­pects drop their weapons, and are jus­ti­fied accord­ing to these inves­ti­ga­tions, even though the sub­ject nev­er point­ed a weapon in their direc­tion and are run­ning away.

A grand jury in Mississippi has declined to charge a Gulfport Police offi­cer who fatal­ly shot a Black teenag­er in a park­ing lot in October, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety con­firmed to HuffPost on Thursday. Body-cam­era and dash­cam footage of the inci­dent, which HuffPost obtained through a pub­lic records request, shows Officer Kenneth Nassar fir­ing at least eight shots at 15-year-old Jaheim McMillan out­side of a Family Dollar store in broad day­light. Nassar and anoth­er offi­cer, Benjamin Ford, respond­ed to a 911 call on Oct. 6 that report­ed reck­less dri­ving. An inves­tiga­tive report stat­ed the caller said that “occu­pants inside a sil­ver Kia Soul were bran­dish­ing firearms and wear­ing cam­ou­flage masks.” 

Dashcam footage shows that McMillan and four oth­er teens were sit­ting inside a Kia Soul as offi­cers arrived at the scene and parked. McMillan ran out of the car while try­ing to cov­er some­thing with his sweat­shirt in his hand; anoth­er teen jumped out of the car behind him. The dash­cam footage appears to show a gun in McMillan’s hand as he decides which direc­tion to run, but at no point does McMillan point a weapon toward Nassar. Nassar’s body-cam­era footage shows the offi­cer fir­ing his gun while also shout­ing at McMillan to drop his weapon.

The encounter, dur­ing which Nassar fires eight shots, lasts about five sec­onds. Video shows McMillan falling to the ground, after which point he is no longer vis­i­ble on cam­era. Nassar fires his last shots as McMillan is lying on the ground, accord­ing to the body­cam footage. An autop­sy revealed that a gun­shot to the head killed McMillan. In the footage, the three oth­er teens exit the car with their hands up after Nassar fires his gun. “Get out the fuck­ing car and stay on the ground,” Nassar is heard shout­ing on the footage, and the teens com­ply. While Nassar points his gun at the oth­er teens lying on the ground, a white male walks toward him and ques­tions why Nassar shot McMillan. “You bet­ter have had a good intent. You shot the child? Your ass is going to fuck­ing jail,” the man is heard say­ing. “Sir, step the fuck away,” Nassar shouts. At one point, one of the teens who was inside of the car asks Nassar to check on McMillan because he thinks he died.

Please watch as Colombus, Ohio, police offi­cer Joshua Ohlinger sum­mar­i­ly unloaded six shots at a flee­ing Michael Cleveland. In this sce­nario, the police alleged that Michael Cleveland had a gun. We weren’t there, so even though we know that police offi­cers can no longer be trust­ed to speak the truth and are not even required as a con­se­quence of the carte blanch that the Supreme Court has giv­en them to lie, even to chil­dren, we will accept that he did have a gun.

Here I attempt­ed to dis­sect the video with a clear analy­sis of the law and the way police are sup­posed to oper­ate. Now the police will draw out this sup­posed inves­ti­ga­tion and, in the end, may very well tell the pub­lic and the fam­i­ly of Michael Cleveland that the attempt­ed mur­der of their loved one was jus­ti­fi­able under the law.
It wasn’t!
It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for them to pros­e­cute any­one who has any weapon, let alone a gun because they have already giv­en police per­mis­sion to kill any­one with a weapon. Even peo­ple they believe may have a weapon.
More impor­tant­ly, Michael Cleveland is black, so police are not required to respect him or his right to live.
Separate but equal is still prac­ticed in the United States, as the black cops who killed Tyre Nichols were imme­di­ate­ly fired and charged crim­i­nal­ly. In con­trast, this white attempt­ed mur­der­er has not even been fired.

A black man is recov­er­ing from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds after being shot in the back by police dur­ing a traf­fic stop, but his fam­i­ly and attor­neys are ques­tion­ing why cops even stopped him in the first place.
The Columbus Division of Police released the body cam­era video of the cow­ard­ly shoot­ing of 66-year-old Michael Cleveland in the back in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 5. Officer Joshua Ohlinger shot Cleveland as he ran away at about 3:05 p.m. Cleveland ran after the police pulled him over near Wilson and Stanley Avenues. His attor­ney says he may nev­er walk again. “One of those shots hit him in his spinal cord…and he’s unlike­ly ever to walk again,” said attor­ney Sean Walton.

In this case, a crit­i­cal piece of evi­dence is that at about the 1:06 stage of the video, the cops fig­ured out who was dri­ving the black pick­up truck.
One cop remarked, “Oh, it’s that fuck­ing Michael Cleveland.”
The oth­er cop responds, “Oh, is it”?
Material evi­dence that they both knew who Michael Cleveland was. That the shoot­ing was a pre­med­i­tat­ed case of attempt­ed murder.
After Ohlinger approached Cleveland, Michael Cleveland ran into an alley­way; Ohlinger gave chase.
At around the 1:19 mark in the video, Ohlinger pulls his taser, then puts the taser back and pulls his ser­vice weapon about a sec­ond later.
At about the 1:25 mark, Michael Cleveland, with his back turned to Ohlinger and in full flight, drops what cops say was a gun upon which Ohlinger fires a series of six shits, strik­ing mis­ter Cleveland in the back as he fled.
No ratio­nal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion exists in any coun­try gov­erned by the rule of law for police offi­cers to shoot some­one flee­ing from them. Worse yet, a per­son who had com­mit­ted no crime as far as the cop knew when he decid­ed to approach the individual.
Regardless of Michael Cleveland’s his­to­ry, no cop can be giv­en carte blanche to shoot a per­son down like a rabid dog.

As soon as he parked in a lot behind a build­ing, Cleveland exit­ed his truck and ran between two build­ings, prompt­ing Ohlinger to say, “Hey, sir? Hey, sir?” before chas­ing him.
A few sec­onds lat­er, Ohlinger yelled, “Hey, hands up,” and imme­di­ate­ly unloaded six shots into Cleveland. After shoot­ing Cleveland, Ohlinger yelled, “Show me your hands! Hands Up!” Cleveland replied that he couldn’t. Ohlinger then asked, “Where’s the gun.” “It wasn’t what we expect­ed to see, like my dad falling straight for­ward. We didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” said LaKeya Cleveland. In a slow-motion ver­sion of the video, Cleveland could be seen drop­ping an object on the right side of his body. The police said the item was a gun. 

Ohlinger also shot a 17-year-old boy run­ning from a traf­fic stop last August. He was not pros­e­cut­ed for that crime but was allowed back onto the streets to cause more may­hem in the black community..
NBC4 report­ed that the teen and his 18-year-old pas­sen­ger were both armed and ran from the back seat of a vehi­cle dur­ing the stop. The teenag­er sur­vived and is report­ed­ly sta­ble. Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant said that Ohlinger was on leave for three months fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, which would mean he’d only been back on duty for a few months before shoot­ing Cleveland. Court records showed that Cleveland had a Sig Sauer .40-cal­iber pis­tol on him and was charged with hav­ing a weapon while under disability.
Definition of hav­ing a weapon while under disability.
The Law pro­hibits cer­tain per­sons like fugi­tives from jus­tice, drug depen­dent per­sons, men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent per­sons etc, from acquir­ing, hav­ing, car­ry­ing, or using firearms. If a fugi­tive from jus­tice car­ries firearms, he or she is said to have a weapon while under dis­abil­i­ty.
Example of a state statute (Ohio) on hav­ing weapons while under disability.

(A) Unless relieved from dis­abil­i­ty as pro­vid­ed in sec­tion 2923.14 of the Revised Code, no per­son shall know­ing­ly acquire, have, car­ry, or use any firearm or dan­ger­ous ord­nance, if any of the fol­low­ing apply:

(1) The per­son is a fugi­tive from justice.

(2) The per­son is under indict­ment for or has been con­vict­ed of any felony offense of vio­lence or has been adju­di­cat­ed a delin­quent child for the com­mis­sion of an offense that, if com­mit­ted by an adult, would have been a felony offense of violence.

(3) The per­son is under indict­ment for or has been con­vict­ed of any offense involv­ing the ille­gal pos­ses­sion, use, sale, admin­is­tra­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, or traf­fick­ing in any drug of abuse or has been adju­di­cat­ed a delin­quent child for the com­mis­sion of an offense that, if com­mit­ted by an adult, would have been an offense involv­ing the ille­gal pos­ses­sion, use, sale, admin­is­tra­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, or traf­fick­ing in any drug of abuse.

(4) The per­son is drug depen­dent, in dan­ger of drug depen­dence, or a chron­ic alcoholic.

(5) The per­son is under adju­di­ca­tion of men­tal incom­pe­tence, has been adju­di­cat­ed as a men­tal defec­tive, has been com­mit­ted to a men­tal insti­tu­tion, has been found by a court to be a men­tal­ly ill per­son sub­ject to hos­pi­tal­iza­tion by court order, or is an invol­un­tary patient oth­er than one who is a patient only for pur­pos­es of obser­va­tion. As used in this divi­sion, “men­tal­ly ill per­son sub­ject to hos­pi­tal­iza­tion by court order” and “patient” have the same mean­ings as in sec­tion 5122.01 of the Revised Code.

Bryant avoid­ed ques­tions about why Cleveland was stopped in the first place. She said that the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation was inves­ti­gat­ing while not­ing some­times such cas­es could take up to three years. Cleveland’s fam­i­ly wants the offi­cers to be removed from street patrol until the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing is com­plete. “Again, BCI has this inves­ti­ga­tion,” she said. “We can’t inter­view the offi­cer, we can’t talk about this, this is all part of their actu­al inves­ti­ga­tion. All we can do is actu­al­ly show you what we actu­al­ly saw on the video, so that’s all I can go into right now.” According to a report from ABC6, Cleveland was charged with a weapons vio­la­tion, and pros­e­cu­tors have agreed to pur­sue an indict­ment. His fam­i­ly is call­ing for a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.
So the man who gets six bul­lets placed in his back will be pros­e­cut­ed for hav­ing a weapon in a coun­try with over four hun­dred mil­lion guns, but the attempt­ed mur­der­er is not charged.
The inves­ti­ga­tions into his clear-cut attempt to kill a man run­ning away is like­ly to take up to three years before a deci­sion is made that he act­ed appropriately.
How can any­one have faith in a sys­tem so fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt and inher­ent­ly racist?
Corrupt judges and pros­e­cu­tors are things I talk about as I delve into America’s police vio­lent and mur­der­ous rampage.
Corrupt Prosecutors and Judges con­tin­ue to shield police on the belief that the peo­ple they bru­tal­ize and mur­der are col­lat­er­al dam­age, worth­while casu­al­ties in their so-called war to main­tain order.

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

Imagine sit­ting in your car in a strip mall on New Year’s eve, talk­ing to your fans and sub­scribers on social media. Imagine being glad that you end­ed the year and being excit­ed about the prospects for what the new year, mere hours away, will bring. When sud­den­ly, you have a gun point­ed dead in your chest and some­one threat­en­ing to put a bul­let dead in your chest if you as much as move.

If you have nev­er looked into the busi­ness end of a gun, it may be easy for you to shrug and move on. However, this was no sim­ple mat­ter for a young Los Angeles Rapper Darral Scott, also known as Feezy Lebron, on New Year’s at about 5:45 p.m. as he sat in his car on the 14900 block of Crenshaw Boulevard in Gardena.
The sad thing about what hap­pened to the young man is that civil­ian thugs did not approach him. He was approached by uni­formed thugs paid with [his] tax dol­lars. They threat­ened to end his life for absolute­ly no rea­son if he dared even to move.

“I was scared to death,” Scott said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, “I did­n’t think I was going to make it home to see my kids. The L A Sheriff’s depart­ment is already a cesspool of crim­i­nal­i­ty, includ­ing the unlaw­ful mur­der of count­less inno­cent unarmed and even men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed indi­vid­u­als. Additionally, the morass is report­ed to have crim­i­nal gangs of deputies who com­mit all kinds of crimes against cit­i­zens and then brag about them. Some reports indi­cate deputies wear tat­toos iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as gang mem­bers with­in that sher­if­f’s department.

The depart­ment, in response to the inci­dent, said deputies had not­ed there was a miss­ing license plate on the vehi­cle, but body cam­era footage released by the depart­ment shows the inci­dent quick­ly esca­lat­ed, with one deputy point­ing his hand­gun into the car while Scott had his hands raised. Video shows one deputy reach­ing into the car to pull Scott out. The sec­ond deputy then approach­es the dri­ver’s side of the car and starts to shake a can of pep­per spray. “All right, I’m just gonna spray him, dude, watch out,” he tells his part­ner. “Get out or you’re get­ting sprayed.” “Get out for what?” Scott is heard ask­ing repeat­ed­ly. The deputy then pulls out his hand­gun and points it at Scott, accord­ing to the footage. “You take off in this car, I’m [gonna] shoot you,” the deputy said. “I’m going to make it super easy on you. You put this car on dri­ve; you’re get­ting one to the chest. I don’t care what you got, I don’t care if you got bull— on you but, guess what bro, now you got­ta deal with it.” Scott is hand­cuffed and detained. He was released with a tick­et for a miss­ing license plate.

Imagine approach­ing a car miss­ing a license plate, with no under­stand­ing of why the plate was miss­ing, and your first default is to draw your weapon and threat­en to shoot some­one you have nev­er seen and who has com­mit­ted no crime as far as you are aware.
The thug­gish ani­mals who threat­ened to kill the unarmed young man did so, know­ing full well that their body cams were on. Imagine the lev­el of con­fi­dence they must feel, know­ing that noth­ing will be done to them.
The way these depart­ments are run one would think L A res­i­dents are liv­ing in Mexico and not in the United States. This Sheriff’s depart­ment is a ver­i­ta­ble crim­i­nal enterprise.
According to the New Yorker, whis­tle-blow­ers say that a group called the Banditos func­tions as a shad­ow gov­ern­ment with­in local law enforce­ment. The for­mer sher­iff Alex Villanueva lied that there was no such gang in his department.
“According to a law­suit filed by eight East L.A. deputies and the A.C.L.U., the Banditos gang “con­trols the East Los Angeles sta­tion like inmates run­ning a prison yard.” Leaders, known as “shot-callers,” deter­mined deputies’ hours, pro­mo­tions, even days off. On patrol, they oper­at­ed in the gray areas of law enforce­ment. Gonzalez said that they per­pet­u­at­ed “the code of silence, the cul­ture of the ghet­to gun­slinger.” She added, “What makes East L.A. so unique is it’s embed­ded with­in the Hispanic machis­mo cul­ture and the Hispanic street gangs.”
That infor­ma­tion came from deputies who were shocked at what they saw there.

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

By Nora Neus

An autop­sy report clas­si­fied the death of Gershun Freeman in a Memphis prison last fall as a homicide.

The death of a Black man in a Memphis jail after a fight with cor­rec­tions offi­cers has been clas­si­fied as a homi­cide, accord­ing to a just-released autop­sy report.
Gershun Freeman, 33, died at the Shelby County Jail in Memphis on October 5, 2022. The autop­sy report, con­duct­ed by the coun­ty med­ical exam­in­er and released Thursday, says Freeman “had a car­diac arrest” after the alter­ca­tion, which end­ed in offi­cers restrain­ing him. “CPR was ini­ti­at­ed,” but unsuc­cess­ful. Freeman was pro­nounced dead at the scene. The Shelby County District Attorney’s office is now review­ing his death.

The case is attract­ing atten­tion in a city still com­ing to terms with the vio­lent police beat­ing death of Tyre Nichols on January 7. VICE News has con­firmed that the Nichols’ fam­i­ly attor­ney, Benjamin Crump, will also rep­re­sent the fam­i­ly of Gershun Freeman. Crump’s local co-coun­sel, Jake Brown, told VICE that he has watched sur­veil­lance video of the inci­dent inside the jail. “The video began with Mr. Freeman in an iso­la­tion cell, naked,” Brown said. “And he was shout­ing at the cam­era that was in the cell… there were no sounds and [we] couldn’t make out what he was say­ing, but he was very agi­tat­ed about some­thing, pos­si­bly hav­ing some sort of psy­chot­ic episode.” The autop­sy report not­ed a his­to­ry of psy­chosis. “Not long after, the cam­era switched to one out­side of the cell, and you could see sev­er­al offi­cers come to his door and open it. And it’s not clear why they opened it,” Brown told VICE. “Mr. Freeman ran out of his cell.” At that point, Brown said a group of offi­cers arrived and appeared to try to appre­hend him, “but they were also strik­ing him repeat­ed­ly with batons, fists… at least one offi­cer struck him on the head with what appeared to be a pep­per spray container.” 

“There was pro­nounced strik­ing, [and] I’m not an expert on this but it seemed to be that there could have been more effi­cient ways to get ahold of this guy and sub­due him rather than just strik­ing him. But that’s what was hap­pen­ing,” Brown said. According to Brown, the sur­veil­lance video then shows Freeman run­ning out of the unit, called a “pod,” through mul­ti­ple open doors, and up an esca­la­tor to an upper floor. “When he got to the upper floor, he was sort of sur­round­ed and then sort of set upon by at least three or four deputies, who had him face down on the ground, they were on top of him. And they stayed on top of him for sev­er­al min­utes at least.” Brown said the video shows med­ical per­son­nel in scrubs even­tu­al­ly arriv­ing, and attempt­ing to ren­der treat­ment, but when they picked up Freeman’s body, it was limp and there was a pud­dle of blood under where he had been lying, espe­cial­ly around his head. The autop­sy found Freeman’s cause of death to be exac­er­ba­tion of “car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease due to phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion and sub­d­ual.” The autop­sy clas­si­fies the death as a homi­cide, but notes that it is “not meant to defin­i­tive­ly indi­cate crim­i­nal intent.” The autop­sy also not­ed mul­ti­ple con­tu­sions on Freeman’s body, scalp lac­er­a­tions and mul­ti­ple hem­or­rhages in his head and neck. Brown says one of those hem­or­rhages, a 7 by 3 cen­time­ters on the large mus­cle in Freeman’s neck that runs par­al­lel to the carotid artery, sug­gests con­sis­tent pres­sure applied on Freeman’s neck.

“What we’re look­ing at now is try­ing to deter­mine the like­li­hood that that was the result of a knee on the neck or some kind of choke hold used,” Brown says. His team has com­mis­sioned an inde­pen­dent autop­sy by a foren­sic pathol­o­gist based in Little Rock, Arkansas, which has not yet been com­plet­ed. Freeman had only been booked into the Shelby County jail four days ear­li­er, on charges of aggra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping and domes­tic vio­lence. His bond was set at $75,000. In a state­ment, the Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy says upon learn­ing of the death in October, he “imme­di­ate­ly called in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to inves­ti­gate.” But after receiv­ing the autop­sy report on Wednesday evening, his office announced that its own Justice Review Unit will “review” the TBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion and make a rec­om­men­da­tion to DA Mulroy once com­plete. In a phone call with VICE News, the Shelby County Sheriff’s office declined to com­ment on the case, not­ing that it was an active inves­ti­ga­tion. Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Jr. is cur­rent­ly a can­di­date for may­or of Memphis. The elec­tion is sched­uled for the one-year anniver­sary of Freeman’s death, October 5, 2023. Brown said Freeman’s fam­i­ly wants answers and account­abil­i­ty from the Sheriff’s depart­ment. “They are try­ing to come to terms with the fact that their son went into the Shelby County Jail on his own two feet and, the way his moth­er puts it, he came out with a toe tag.”

Ladonna Paris, 70, a great-grand­moth­er and Black woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, filed a civ­il rights law­suit against the police, the city, and Mayor G.T. Bynum. Alleging that she was attacked and arrest­ed while she was hav­ing a men­tal health cri­sis, Paris said she was ter­ri­fied at the time of the October incident.

“I was mocked, taunt­ed, and bru­tal­ized,” Paris said dur­ing a Tuesday news con­fer­ence and that the video gave her a sur­re­al feel­ing. “It was like watch­ing some­body else, and I would say to myself when they were doing these things, ‘Oh poor Ladonna,’” Paris said.

The inci­dent took place at Phillips Theological Seminary, where Paris was attend­ing grad­u­ate school when wit­ness­es called 911 to report con­cerns over her men­tal state. Upon an ambu­lance arriv­ing, Paris drove to a near­by store where she locked her­self in a bath­room and refused to leave after police arrived, accord­ing to the lawsuit.

“Amid a bipo­lar man­ic episode, which includ­ed para­noia and delu­sions, Ms. Paris was afraid the offi­cers would kill her, so she locked her­self in the bath­room and would not come out,” the law­suit states. According to attor­ney Damario Solomon-Simmons, Officer Ronni Carrocci, who is white, is seen on police video bang­ing on the door to the bath­room where Paris was inside. “You want to get tased … I love my job,” Carroci said as she turned toward the camera.

“She’s so 85,” Carrioca lat­er, and still on video, said using the police code for a per­son need­ing men­tal health treat­ment, accord­ing to Solomon-Simmons.
“She (Carrioca) did all of this on video, know­ing she was on video,” Solomon-Simmons said. “She was so gid­dy about it; it was dis­gust­ing.” Being made aware of the law­suit, the city declined to com­ment on pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion. The law­suit was filed in Tulsa County District Court and alleges 14 civ­il rights vio­la­tions, includ­ing exces­sive use of force, ignor­ing Paris’ med­ical needs, ignor­ing train­ing, and assault.

Paris seeks jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty by the city and police for the offi­cers’ actions, and more than $75,000 in actu­al dam­ages and unspec­i­fied com­pen­sa­tion for puni­tive dam­ages and legal fees, accord­ing to Solomon-Simmons. “We want a judge to say this is not con­sti­tu­tion­al polic­ing; this is unac­cept­able,” Solomon-Simmons said. (Essence​.com)