Just another iteration of America’s ‘warrior’ cops on American streets acting as if the streets are war zones and they are action heroes.
— the way they lie is stunning.

The fam­i­ly of an Atlanta-area 12-year-old killed dur­ing a high-speed chase calls for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into a Georgia State Patrol trooper’s actions.
During a Jan. 10 news con­fer­ence, the par­ents of Le’Den Boykins stood on the steps of the Georgia State Capitol build­ing. They expressed sor­row and frus­tra­tion patrol offi­cers didn’t do more to save the lives of the chil­dren inside the car the night of the incident. 
“They decid­ed to ter­mi­nate somebody’s life for a speed­ing tick­et,” Le’Den’s father, Anthony Boykins, said
The inci­dent occurred dur­ing the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Sept. 10, 2021. Charlie Moore, 37, was dri­ving his Kia Sorento with his son and Le’Den Boykins inside.
Boykins, who his grand­moth­er was watch­ing at his Paulding County home while his par­ents were in Michigan at a funer­al, had been per­mit­ted to go out with his 14-year-old neigh­bor and Moore, the teen’s father, to earn some mon­ey clean­ing park­ing lots on the night of the crash, local sta­tion WXIA reported
Georgia State Patrol told NBC Moore “was ini­tial­ly pulled over short­ly after 1 a.m. by a troop­er for speeding.”

Dashcam video shows the traf­fic stop where Georgia State Patrol Officer David Petersen approached the driver’s side win­dow of Moore’s vehi­cle. Petersen claimed Moore tried to evade him. He asked Moore for his driver’s license, which Moore refused to pro­vide, prompt­ing Petersen to ask him to step out of the vehi­cle. Two Paulding County Sheriff’s deputies arrived sev­er­al min­utes into the traf­fic stop, and Moore asked for a super­vi­sor and ques­tioned what crime he had com­mit­ted. At this point, one deputy smashed the driver’s side win­dow, and Moore react­ed by speed­ing away. A high-speed chase last­ed rough­ly eight min­utes until Petersen hit the back left bumper of Moore’s Kia Sorento per­form­ing the PIT maneu­ver. Moore and the chil­dren inside flipped over into a road­side ditch. Petersen is heard say­ing, “PIT suc­cess­ful, PIT suc­cess­ful,” as the car goes into the embank­ment. The PIT maneu­ver is a method used by police to end pur­suits. The method occurs when a police vehi­cle hits the vehi­cle it is pur­su­ing near its back left or right tire. The vehi­cle is struck and then spun around, allow­ing police to stop the chase. The fam­i­ly claims the troop­ers should have act­ed dif­fer­ent­ly because there were chil­dren inside Moore’s vehi­cle. “They could put a road­block up and pro­tect those kids. They couldn’t fig­ure out any oth­er way than to flip that car over?” Anthony Boykins asked.

While Georgia’s Department of Public Safety pol­i­cy does not explic­it­ly pro­hib­it the PIT maneu­ver because chil­dren are in the car, it requires offi­cers to con­sid­er children’s safe­ty. The Paulding County Sheriff’s Office on scene told WANF, “it was 1 a.m., and it was dark, and the troop­ers were hav­ing trou­ble see­ing who was in the vehi­cle.”
“They killed my son, and the first thing they did was lie to me. I asked them specif­i­cal­ly, did you know there were chil­dren in the car, and they gave a very clear answer, no, we did not know chil­dren were in the car,” Anthony Boykins said.
Radio traf­fic shared by Boykins’ attor­ney, Lee Merritt, indi­cates offi­cers on the scene knew chil­dren were in the vehi­cle. 
A dis­patch­er can be heard on police radio traf­fic say­ing, “there are chil­dren in the car.” An uniden­ti­fied offi­cer responds, say­ing, “There are kids in the car. We’ll try again if I can get up there and pass them.” “There’s the vehi­cle com­ing. They bet­ter stop before they get put in a ditch,” an uniden­ti­fied troop­er said. Merritt asked for the Paulding County pros­e­cu­tor to recuse him­self and allow a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to come in and take over the case last sum­mer. Atlanta NAACP President Gerald Griggs called for Georgia’s attor­ney gen­er­al to appoint a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor again at the news con­fer­ence. He also called for the Department of Justice to inves­ti­gate the case. “It’s been almost 500 days, and there’s still been no action. We’re demand­ing swift and account­able jus­tice in this case. Le’Den was a vic­tim,” Griggs said. “We want jus­tice for our son,” Anthony Boykins said.

Petersen was placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave dur­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by the GBI, then returned to work ear­ly last year, WXIA reports. The Georgia State Patrol told Atlanta Black Star, “We can­not com­ment due to the notice of poten­tial lit­i­ga­tion.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said its only role in the case was to con­duct the autop­sy, and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office said it could not com­ment. Moore was arrest­ed and booked into the Paulding County jail. He faces a slew of charges, includ­ing first-degree vehic­u­lar homi­cide, mur­der dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a felony, reck­less dri­ving, endan­ger­ing a child while DUI of alco­hol or drugs, and flee­ing to elude. He still awaits trial.(AtlantaBlackStar).

As a child grow­ing up, I was quick­ly sen­si­tized to the crit­i­cal issue of apartheid in South Africa and the racial issues plagu­ing the for­mer colonies across the African continent.
Much of my per­son­al mil­i­tan­cy came from my con­tin­ued inter­est in learn­ing all that I could about the oppres­sion that those peo­ple endured. 
I also made it my busi­ness to inform myself about the racial issues in Jamaica, the west­ern world, and all across the globe where anti-back racism existed.
Growing up in the 70s, I was extreme­ly proud of Jamaican lead­ers’ role in the strug­gle to free South Africa from the bondage of white minor­i­ty rule and the igno­ble prac­tice of white supremacy.
I was blessed to wit­ness the dis­man­tling of white rule in South Africa and the inevitable elec­tions, which saw Nelson Mandela elect­ed President of the new South African State. 
Since the death of Mister Mandela, the long strug­gle and the count­less lives lost to gain free­dom from white oppres­sion have fad­ed from the minds of the new generation.
It appears that the same greed, graft, and cor­rup­tion that caused them to sell their broth­ers and sis­ters into slav­ery remains. The task, the need to build and solid­i­fy a strong Afro-cen­tric nation, appears to be out­side their capabilities.
Consequently, the nation of South Africa may be poised to once again be tak­en over by the white minor­i­ty and ruled for hun­dreds more years as slaves and third-class citizens.
If you are a Gazelle on the Serengetti, you will be eat­en. A Lion, on the oth­er hand, will always rule. The future of Black South Africans is in their own hands. If and when they are once again sub­ject­ed to white minor­i­ty rule, no one should lift a fin­ger to free them from it.
Whites liv­ing in the new South Africa should assim­i­late into being like every oth­er South African, no greater, no less; fail­ing to do so, they should find some­where else to live or face the consequences.
When you are in the major­i­ty and con­trol the reins of gov­ern­ment, you do not beg to stop racism; you crush it like a cock­roach and make sure those who would think of it piss their pants just doing so. (mb)
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WHITE MEN CHOKE BLACK BOYS AT SWIMMING POOL

A dis­turb­ing video clip show­ing a group of white South African men ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing a group of Black boys has cap­tured the atten­tion of the world as well as the country’s pres­i­dent. The video post­ed to social media on Christmas Day depicts a few white adult males alleged­ly try­ing to pre­vent or eject a cou­ple of Black boys out of the Maselspoort Resort and Conference Centre’s pool locat­ed in Bloemfontein, South Africa, accord­ing to Times Live. The nation’s top elect­ed offi­cial reassert­ed the constitution’s aspi­ra­tion, say­ing there is no place for racism with­in the country’s bor­ders, while the pub­lic is blast­ing the men as racists. The video first shows the men telling one of the boys to leave the water. Then the men are seen hit­ting and push­ing the child. Another child jumps in to help and is lat­er grabbed by his neck, while a dif­fer­ent man comes up and pulls the kid’s hair. Some of the onlook­ers attempt­ed to stop the men, but their inter­ven­tion seemed to esca­late the ruckus. At the end of the video, a man is chok­ing one of the boys and then jump­ing into the water with him. Another man jumps in, and before the 31-sec­ond clip is over, he also looks to push him down under the water. One boy’s father described the incident.

“As we were relax­ing the boys came and told us that they are being pre­vent­ed from using the pool by a group of white adult males. They said they were told by the men that the pool is only reserved for peo­ple who are booked here,” he said. “We went there with my sis­ter to check on the kids and indeed when we arrived there, we engaged those white folks and they said ‘no, there was a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the kids.’” “They didn’t under­stand,” he con­tin­ued. “They thought that they were not res­i­dents at Maselspoort because the swim­ming pool can only be accessed by res­i­dents and the kids told them we are res­i­dents here. I also told them we are res­i­dents here and we have paid just as they have paid.” However, the men assault­ed the boys after the par­ents left, the father said. Roy Jankielsohn, leader of the Democratic Alliance Free State, urged the vic­tims’ par­ents to press crim­i­nal charges against the men fea­tured in the footage. At least one fam­i­ly, The Nakedi Family, has moved for­ward to get jus­tice for the boys, open­ing a com­mon assault case. The father said he was dis­ap­point­ed that the men were not charged with attempt­ed mur­der. “One of the guys tried to drown the boy, that is attempt­ed mur­der and it should have been reg­is­tered as so but police told us they are only open­ing an assault case,” he said. A police spokesper­son stat­ed the men have been ordered to appear in court.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa com­mend­ed the police for push­ing the mat­ter for­ward, cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple dock­ets, and sub­mit­ting to decide how or if the men should be pros­e­cut­ed. The pres­i­dent said Black and white South Africans have to work to erad­i­cate racist thoughts in the coun­try. “Our con­sti­tu­tion means exact­ly what it says when it declares that South Africa — and that means all of South Africa — belongs to all who live in it,” Ramaphosa said. “As Black and white South Africans, we should be unit­ed in con­demn­ing all man­i­fes­ta­tions of racism and attempts to explain or defend such crimes. Racism is not a prob­lem to be fought by Black South Africans only. The pres­i­dent added it was impor­tant for the cit­i­zens to come togeth­er and “defend” South Africa’s “con­tin­u­ing nation­al mis­sion of rid­ding [its] soci­ety of the divi­sions and the hurts of [its] past.” “We must also be unit­ed in rid­ding our soci­ety of the vio­lence we see in the videos of the inci­dent at the Free State resort, whether such vio­lence comes with racism or not,” Ramaphosa said. “It is deplorable that adults deal­ing with teenagers resort to vio­lence with such dis­turb­ing ease, hurt­ing peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly and offend­ing pro­vi­sions in our Bill of Rights around the secu­ri­ty of the per­son, includ­ing the right to dig­ni­ty and being free of violence.”

Ramaphosa said the law calls for let­ting “inves­ti­ga­tions take their course but under the rule of law we can and must also declare that racism has no place in our soci­ety and racists have no place to hide.” While the politi­cians are call­ing for peo­ple to uni­fy and for jus­tice through the sys­tem, peo­ple on social media are express­ing their out­rage. One of the boy’s sister’s video of the scuf­fle has been viewed over 20 mil­lion times. “Trying to stran­gle and drown chil­dren? I don’t care how much they drank. They would nev­er do this to white kids. They are racist. Full stop,” South African Annika Langa tweet­ed. Another Twitter user, Juwanna Othmani, from Brooklyn, New York, said, “The s – t we as Black peo­ple still going through across the world is dis­gust­ing. How TF is there still seg­re­ga­tion in #SouthAfrica in 2023?!!! This is only days ago. A WHITES ONLY POOL??? Are you sh – in me!!! Community, gov­ern­ment and polit­i­cal par­ties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and the ANC in the Free State also respond­ed, SABC News report­ed. A spokesper­son from the resort, Nick Mitchell, said the estab­lish­ment does not prac­tice or allow any kind of seg­re­ga­tion or racism. Hoping to dis­tance itself from the ugly inci­dent that hap­pened on its premis­es, it referred the details of the inci­dent to the police.“At this moment the police are han­dling the sit­u­a­tion. As men­tioned, there is the police case opened against the par­ties involved,” Mitchell said.

As the United States con­tin­ue to crit­i­cize oth­er nations and their law enforce­ment agen­cies for what they char­ac­ter­ize as human rights abus­es these are the inci­dents that are hap­pen­ing right here in the good old USA.
Police offi­cers not only mur­der peo­ple of col­or for minor traf­fic infrac­tions, but their supe­ri­ors also cov­ered it up. Even polit­i­cal lead­ers help dis­tort the truth and mis­lead the vic­tim’s families.(mb)

Five Louisiana cops were charged Thursday with state crimes rang­ing from neg­li­gent homi­cide to malfea­sance in the dead­ly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, a death author­i­ties ini­tial­ly blamed on a car crash before long-sup­pressed body-cam­era video showed white offi­cers beat­ing, stun­ning and drag­ging the Black motorist as he wailed, “I’m scared!”
These are the first crim­i­nal charges of any kind to emerge from Greene’s bloody death on a road­side in rur­al north­east Louisiana, a case that got lit­tle atten­tion until an Associated Press inves­ti­ga­tion exposed a cov­er-up and prompt­ed scruti­ny of top Louisiana State Police brass, a sweep­ing U.S. Justice Department review of the agency and a leg­isla­tive inquiry look­ing at what Gov. John Bel Edwards knew and when he knew it.
“We’re all excit­ed for the indict­ments but are they actu­al­ly going to pay for it?” said Greene’s moth­er, Mona Hardin, who for more than three years has kept the pres­sure on state and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors and vowed not to bury the cre­mat­ed remains of her “Ronnie” until she gets jus­tice. “As hap­py as we are, we want some­thing to stick.”

Facing the most seri­ous charges from a state grand jury was Master Trooper Kory York, who was seen on the body-cam­era footage drag­ging Greene by his ankle shack­les, putting his foot on his back to force him down, and leav­ing the heavy­set man face down in the dirt for more than nine min­utes. Use-of-force experts say these actions could have dan­ger­ous­ly restrict­ed Greene’s breath­ing, and the state police’s own force instruc­tor called the troop­ers’ actions “tor­ture and mur­der.” York was charged with neg­li­gent homi­cide and ten counts of malfea­sance in office.
The oth­ers who faced var­i­ous counts of malfea­sance and obstruc­tion includ­ed a troop­er who denied the exis­tence of his body-cam­era footage, anoth­er who exag­ger­at­ed Greene’s resis­tance on the scene, a region­al state police com­man­der who detec­tives say pres­sured them not to make an arrest in the case and a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy heard on the video taunt­ing Greene with the words “s — - hurts, doesn’t it?” “These actions are inex­cus­able and have no place in pro­fes­sion­al pub­lic safe­ty ser­vices,” the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, said after the indict­ments, adding that his agency has in recent years made improve­ments aimed at “rebuild­ing trust with­in the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”
Union Parish District Attorney John Belton sub­mit­ted arrest war­rants for all five cops, prais­ing the racial­ly mixed grand jury for hear­ing the evi­dence and say­ing the peo­ple had spoken.

Belton had long held off on pur­su­ing state charges at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, which is con­duct­ing a sep­a­rate crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. But as years passed and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors grew increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal they could prove the offi­cers act­ed “will­ful­ly” — a key com­po­nent of the civ­il rights charges they’ve been con­sid­er­ing — they gave Belton the go-ahead this spring to con­vene a state grand jury. That pan­el since last month con­sid­ered detailed evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny relat­ed to the troop­ers’ use of force and their deci­sion to leave the hand­cuffed Greene prone for sev­er­al min­utes before ren­der­ing aid. And for the first time in the case, a med­ical expert deemed Greene’s death a homicide.
The fed­er­al grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion, which expand­ed last year to exam­ine whether state police brass obstruct­ed jus­tice to pro­tect the troop­ers, remains open, and pros­e­cu­tors have been tight-lipped about when the pan­el could make a deci­sion on charges.
Greene’s May 10, 2019, death was shroud­ed in secre­cy from the begin­ning, when author­i­ties told griev­ing rel­a­tives that the 49-year-old died in a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase near Monroe — an account ques­tioned by both his fam­i­ly and even an emer­gency room doc­tor who not­ed Greene’s bat­tered body. Still, a coroner’s report list­ed Greene’s cause of death as a motor vehi­cle acci­dent, a state police crash report omit­ted any men­tion of troop­ers using force and 462 days would pass before state police began an inter­nal probe.

All the while, the body-cam­era video remained so secret it was with­held from Greene’s ini­tial autop­sy and offi­cials from Edwards on down declined repeat­ed requests to release it, cit­ing ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions.
But then last year, the AP obtained and pub­lished the footage, which showed what real­ly hap­pened: Troopers swarm­ing Greene’s car, stun­ning him repeat­ed­ly, punch­ing him in the head, drag­ging him by the shack­les and leav­ing him prone on the ground for more than nine min­utes. At times, Greene could be heard plead­ing for mer­cy and wail­ing, “I’m your broth­er! I’m scared! I’m scared!” At one point, York orders Greene to “lay on your f — — bel­ly like I told you to!” Union Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher Harpin can be heard taunt­ing, “Yeah, yeah, that s— hurts, doesn’t it?”
Attorneys for York and Harpin said both expect to be found not guilty at tri­al if the charges aren’t dis­missed first. Reached by phone, for­mer Trooper Dakota DeMoss, whose body-cam­era cap­tured much of the arrest, declined to com­ment, say­ing “you guys always get it wrong.” Lt. John Clary’s attor­ney did not respond to a request for com­ment in the cour­t­house. Former state police Capt. John Peters declined to com­ment. Fallout brought fed­er­al scruti­ny not just to the troop­ers but to whether top brass obstruct­ed jus­tice to pro­tect them.
Investigators have focused on a meet­ing in which detec­tives say that state police com­man­ders pres­sured them to hold off on arrest­ing a troop­er seen on body-cam­era video strik­ing Greene in the head and lat­er boast­ing, “I beat the ever-liv­ing f— out of him.” That troop­er, Chris Hollingsworth, was wide­ly seen as the most cul­pa­ble of the half-dozen offi­cers involved, but he died in a high-speed, sin­gle-vehi­cle crash in 2020 just hours after he was informed he would be fired over his role in Greene’s arrest.

The AP lat­er found that Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cas­es over the past decade in which state police troop­ers or their boss­es ignored or con­cealed evi­dence of beat­ings of most­ly Black men, deflect­ed blame and imped­ed efforts to root out mis­con­duct. Dozens of cur­rent and for­mer troop­ers said the beat­ings were coun­te­nanced by a cul­ture of impuni­ty, nepo­tism and, in some cas­es, racism. Such reports were cit­ed by the U.S. Justice Department this year in launch­ing a sweep­ing civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into the Louisiana State Police, the first “pat­tern or prac­tice” probe of a statewide law enforce­ment agency in more than two decades. Scrutiny has also turned to the actions of the Democratic gov­er­nor, who over­sees the state police.
A leg­isla­tive pan­el launched an “all-lev­els” inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s han­dling of the Greene case this year after AP report­ed that Edwards had been informed with­in hours that the troop­ers arrest­ing Greene engaged in a “vio­lent, lengthy strug­gle,” yet stayed most­ly silent for two years as police con­tin­ued to press the car crash theory.

Another AP report found Edwards pri­vate­ly watched a key body-cam­era video of Greene’s dead­ly arrest six months before state pros­e­cu­tors say they knew it even exist­ed, and nei­ther the gov­er­nor, his staff nor the state police act­ed urgent­ly to get the footage into the hands of those with the pow­er to bring charges.
Edwards has repeat­ed­ly said he did noth­ing to influ­ence or hin­der the Greene inves­ti­ga­tion and has described the troop­ers’ actions as both crim­i­nal and racist. But he has yet to tes­ti­fy before the leg­isla­tive pan­el, say­ing he was unable to appear at a hear­ing last month, instead attend­ing a ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for an infra­struc­ture project. “Today’s deci­sion is a long over­due first step toward jus­tice for Ronald Greene’s fam­i­ly and account­abil­i­ty for a bro­ken police sys­tem,” said Alanah Odoms, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Ronald Greene should be alive today.”

_​_​_​AP

By Harriet Ramos.

As the mur­der tri­al of for­mer Fort Worth police offi­cer Aaron Dean entered its fourth day Monday, Dean took the wit­ness stand to tes­ti­fy in his defense and faced tough ques­tions from the pros­e­cu­tion. Monday morn­ing was Dean’s first time to speak pub­licly about the case. “Because this jury needs to hear from me and hear the truth,” Dean said at the start of his tes­ti­mo­ny. Dean recount­ed the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Oct. 12, 2019, and the call that took him to the home on East Allen Avenue where he shot Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, through her bed­room win­dow around 2:30 a.m. Dean and anoth­er offi­cer, Carol Darch, were respond­ing to a neighbor’s call about open doors at the house It was dark on the street, Dean said. He and Darch went to the wrong house first and had to go back to one of the police cars and get the cor­rect address. Dean said they could see the front door of the house was open, though the glass storm door was closed. He doesn’t remem­ber hear­ing any­thing and said he didn’t see signs of forced entry. According to Dean, cup­boards and draw­ers were open and items were “just strewn about inside” the house. It looked to him like some­one had gone through the house look­ing for valu­ables, he testified.
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Dean said he was think­ing “that we had a pos­si­ble bur­glary at that time.” While look­ing inside, Dean switched on his body cam­era. Darch wasn’t wear­ing a body­cam. She said when she tes­ti­fied Tuesday, on the sec­ond day of the tri­al, that she had report­ed her cam­era miss­ing and was wait­ing for a new one to be issued. When they got around to the side door, Dean tes­ti­fied, there was a screw­driv­er near the base of the door, which he thought could have been used in a bur­glary attempt, and lawn equip­ment on the ground. He said what he saw there rein­forced the offi­cers’ mis­tak­en per­cep­tion that they were deal­ing with a bur­glary in progress. When they entered the back yard, Dean said, he went to check the bed­room win­dow. The screen looked intact. He said he looked down to check for pry marks. “As I looked through that win­dow,” Dean said, “low in the win­dow I saw a per­son.” Dean said he just saw a tor­so and “the upper arms were mov­ing” like some­one was reach­ing for some­thing. Dean couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman or what race the per­son was, he testified.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​n​d​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​t​w​o​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​g​o​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

“I thought we had a bur­glar, so I stepped back, straight­ened up and drew my weapon and then point­ed it towards the fig­ure,” Dean said. “I couldn’t see that person’s hands.” Dean, who did not iden­ti­fy him­self as a police offi­cer, shout­ed, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” “I need­ed to see that person’s hands because the hands car­ry weapons, the hands are the threat to us,” Dean tes­ti­fied. “As I start­ed to get that sec­ond phrase out, ‘Show me your hands,’ I saw the sil­hou­ette … I was look­ing right down the bar­rel of a gun,” Dean said. “When I saw the bar­rel of that gun point­ed at me, I fired a sin­gle shot from my duty weapon.” The light mount­ed on his gun shone in his face when the gun recoiled, Dean said, but when his vision cleared he saw a per­son. Dean said he saw Jefferson fall and heard her scream. “I knew that I had shot that per­son,” Dean said, his voice break­ing. Read the full sto­ry here; https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​g​o​o​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​i​o​n​-​h​a​m​m​e​r​s​-​a​a​r​o​n​-​2​3​0​6​4​3​2​1​7​.​h​tml

Almost dai­ly, a Black per­son is mur­dered by police in the United States. This state­ment may sound hyper­bol­ic, but it is not, and it is fac­tu­al. Usually, the vic­tim is unarmed and was stopped or approached by police over some­thing as incon­se­quen­tial as a loud exhaust, alleged dark tint on an auto­mo­bile, a sup­pos­ed­ly bro­ken tail­light, or some­thing so minor that it makes absolute­ly no sense.
A usu­al out­come is a dead man or woman over some­thing no greater than an infrac­tion. An infrac­tion dredged up by local politi­cians to extort mon­ey from the poor res­i­dents they are sup­posed to serve. The out­ra­geous nature of this illic­it scheme is that the police tar­get cer­tain motorists based on their color.
They then ini­ti­ate a traf­fic stop, and while we are on the sub­ject of traf­fic stops, it seems that American police offi­cers get a cer­tain type of high from mess­ing with peo­ple just dri­ving down the road. I nev­er quite under­stood the almost insane desire they have to stop and harass motorists.
The police ini­ti­ate a traf­fic stop on con­coct­ed vio­la­tions; they then harass the motorists with ques­tions about where they are going, where they are com­ing from, if they have weapons in their vehi­cle, how long they lived in town, where they have lived before, demand their social secu­ri­ty and tele­phone num­bers, all of which they have no right to.
The motorists get agi­tat­ed by the false stop and ques­tion­ing and are then accused of not coop­er­at­ing with the ille­gal inquisition.
They are ordered out of their vehi­cle, hand­cuffed, and a canine is called to the scene under the pre­text that the motorist is unco­op­er­a­tive and combative.
The dog hits on the vehi­cle because it expects a treat, so the vic­tim’s vehi­cle is ille­gal­ly searched, which is an end run around the vic­tim’s fourth amend­ment right to be secure in his pos­ses­sions and person.
Suppose they find no drugs or choose not to plant any. In that case, the vic­tim is usu­al­ly arrest­ed any­way and charged with sev­er­al dredged-up offens­es, usu­al­ly Felony obstruc­tion and resist­ing arrest. The case is then pros­e­cut­ed by pros­e­cu­tors just as moral­ly bank­rupt as the badged bandits.
The real­ly hor­ri­ble part is that if you thought a judge would see through the lies and injus­tice, you are sad­ly mistaken.
The mis­con­duct and lies of police and pros­e­cu­tors are all par for the course.
The case result is usu­al­ly decid­ed before the defen­dant enters the court­room. Cop, pros­e­cu­tor, and judge all feed from the same slop trough.
Below is one such out­come. A cop kills an inno­cent unarmed per­son of col­or. The peo­ple protest, and the police inves­ti­gate them­selves and find that the offi­cer act­ed appro­pri­ate­ly. The cop is sent on paid leave dur­ing the fake inves­ti­ga­tion, after which they are pro­mot­ed, and life continues.
The gov­ern­ment has cal­cu­lat­ed that it is far more impor­tant to sub­ju­gate the cit­izin­ery than to wor­ry about police vio­lence, and so it continues.

Here is one such example.
By Phillip Jackson

White women have been an integral part of the genocide and abuse of Black people from the start. Today white women continue to be equal partners in the continuation of racist practices and the campaign to continue the practice of white supremacy in America.

New Jersey author­i­ties are look­ing for a woman who was caught on video hang­ing noos­es next to a cam­paign sign sup­port­ing a Black polit­i­cal can­di­date. The Middle Township Police Department said it received a report about three stuffed ani­mals hang­ing from ropes above a sign sup­port­ing con­gres­sion­al can­di­date Tim Alexander on elec­tion day. Later, they found video footage of a white woman with blond hair hang­ing the stuffed ani­mals from a tree.

The police depart­ment and the coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor have launched a hate crime inves­ti­ga­tion into the incident.
Alexander, who lost his chal­lenge against incum­bent U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew on Tuesday, said he is “dis­gust­ed” by the display.
“It was sick­en­ing. It real­ly was. It was real­ly dis­gust­ing,” Alexander told NBC10. “It real­ly spoke to what I have been talk­ing about on the cam­paign trail, and that is that we have too much divi­sion. We have too much trib­al­ism. We have this sense of us against them.” 
Authorities have released stills of the video footage and are ask­ing any­one with infor­ma­tion to come for­ward. The woman was dri­ving a dark-col­ored Buick with chrome trim and tint­ed win­dows. She parked in the area where the stuffed ani­mals were hung.

Nearly 11 per­cent of Middle Township’s 20,716 res­i­dents are Black, U.S. Census data shows. 
Alexander told ABC 7 that com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers should be respon­si­ble for extreme instances of hate. His oppo­nent and oth­er polit­i­cal lead­ers have con­demned the woman’s actions.
“The inci­dent that took place is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able behav­ior. There is no place for hate in our coun­try, espe­cial­ly in South Jersey,” Drew told ABC 7. “I do want account­abil­i­ty, and quite hon­est­ly, at some point, I just want the per­son to stand up in court, under oath, and say I did this, and this is why I did it.”
Middle Township Mayor Tim Donohue also took to Facebook to denounce the dis­play. “This is not who we are in Middle Township. We stand unit­ed against all forms of racism, hate, threats, and intim­i­da­tion,” he wrote. “If this inves­ti­ga­tion proves charges are war­rant­ed, the perpetrator(s) will be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest extent of the law.”
Alexander said the woman could have spo­ken to him in per­son if she had an issue instead of resort­ing to the racist display.
“You could’ve eas­i­ly come up to me and said, ‘Here are my con­cerns,’ ” he said. “But instead, you want­ed to send out this hate­ful, his­tor­i­cal­ly hate­ful, his­tor­i­cal­ly intim­i­dat­ing state­ment by doing these actions.” This sto­ry first appeared in the (Atlantablackstar)

“This shameless act of cowardice and hate is designed to get attention and divide us. Our priority is protecting the health and safety of our workforce,” reads a statement from Barack Obama’s foundation.

The firm build­ing the Obama Presidential Center sus­pend­ed oper­a­tions Thursday after a noose was found at the site, and it offered a $100,000 reward to help find who was responsible.
Lakeside Alliance, a part­ner­ship of Black-owned con­struc­tion firms, said it report­ed the inci­dent to police and “will pro­vide any assis­tance required to iden­ti­fy those responsible.

“We have zero tol­er­ance for any form of bias or hate on our work­site. Anti-bias train­ing is includ­ed in our onboard­ing process and reit­er­at­ed dur­ing site-wide meet­ings. We are sus­pend­ing all oper­a­tions onsite in order to pro­vide anoth­er series of these train­ings and con­ver­sa­tions for all staff and work­ers,” the firm said.

Former President Barack Obama’s foun­da­tion also released a statement.

“This shame­less act of cow­ardice and hate is designed to get atten­tion and divide us. Our pri­or­i­ty is pro­tect­ing the health and safe­ty of our work­force,” the state­ment said. The Chicago Police Department is aware of the noose and the mat­ter is under inves­ti­ga­tion, said Sgt. Rocco Alioto, a depart­ment spokesman.
An alliance spokes­woman, Lara Cooper, said she could not com­ment on whether it sus­pects a work­er at the site and how the pause will affect the work

City work to pre­pare for con­struc­tion began in spring 2021 with the an offi­cial ground­break­ing the fol­low­ing September. The foun­da­tion has said the cen­ter is slat­ed to open in 2025. Organizers expect it to attract about 750,000 vis­i­tors a year.

Tiffany Cross announced Friday that MSNBC can­celed her Saturday morn­ing news pro­gram after a less than two-year run. The move came after Cross had become a tar­get of attacks from Fox News and pun­dit Tucker Carlson, Huffington Post reported.

In late October, Carlson aired a seg­ment about Cross that swift­ly received crit­i­cism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Fox host told his audi­ence that Cross was foment­ing a “race war” against white peo­ple. Carlson likened “The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” and MSNBC to the Rwandan media out­let Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, which stoked the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Interestingly, MSNBC would bow to the vit­ri­olic slan­der of a putrid race-bait­ing dem­a­gogue who has spent his entire career spread­ing lies and foment­ing white resent­ment and griev­ance. MSNBC President Rashida Jones was “deeply involved” in the call to cut ties with Cross, accord­ing to The Washington Post, which said the net­work allowed the host’s con­tract to lapse. A rotat­ing cast of hosts will fill Cross’ time slot until a more per­ma­nent solu­tion is found, the Post reported.

Tiffany cross’ fir­ing was imme­di­ate and swift after she told a gath­er­ing that the state of Florida was the dick of the coun­try. Cross, whose show aired on week­ends, had been with the net­work for two years but, in recent weeks, had report­ed­ly clashed with man­age­ment over seg­ments on her show.
Ratings per­for­mance — the most com­mon cause of death for tele­vi­sion shows — was not a fac­tor in MSNBC’s deci­sion to pull the plug on The Cross Connection, which aired Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET.

Appearing on Comedy Central’s Hell of a Week with Charlemagne, Cross was asked which state Democrats could afford to lose in the upcom­ing mid-term elec­tions. “Florida lit­er­al­ly looks like the d — k of the coun­try, so let’s get rid of Florida,” Cross said. “Let’s cas­trate Florida.” In the same appear­ance, Cross said that it was impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the Republican Party from “right-wing extrem­ists,” say­ing they had “merged right now”:
Huh.… where is the lie? The Republican par­ty is a white suprema­cist, Insurrectionist fas­cist move­ment. Florida is a state filled with old retired and new up-and-com­ing racists, so what did she say that was a lie?
As they say in street ver­nac­u­lar, ‘it be your own peo­ple’. It appears Rashida Jones was more con­cerned about pro­tect­ing her own job than stand­ing up for Tiffany Cross when she need­ed to.

Ms. Cross tweet­ed the fol­low­ing after her abrupt firing»>

During the sum­mer of 2020, after mur­der­ous police lynched George Floyd in the light of day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there was a mass upris­ing of American cit­i­zens against what they had pre­vi­ous­ly refused to acknowl­edge; bla­tant police mur­der of African-Americans.
In the white house as pres­i­dent was Donald Trump, an igno­rant and vile racist in the vein of Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and a long line of racists to occu­py the office of president.
Trump, angry that Black peo­ple dared to demand equal rights under the laws, warned that “vicious Dogs” would be unleashed on pro­tes­tors who dared to protest against police vio­lence and murder.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​h​a​s​-​n​o​t​-​t​e​c​h​n​i​c​a​l​l​y​-​b​e​e​n​-​a​b​o​l​i​s​h​e​d​-​i​n​-​u​s​-​f​i​n​d​-​o​u​t​-​w​hy/

(13 Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion Sections 1 & 2.) Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion. Congress shall have the pow­er to enforce this arti­cle by appro­pri­ate legislation.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​p​u​t​r​i​d​-​s​t​e​n​c​h​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​r​o​t​-​t​h​a​t​-​p​a​s​s​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​u​n​i​t​e​d​-​s​t​a​t​es/

After the 13^th amend­ment was rat­i­fied, abol­ish­ing slav­ery as it was, slav­ery by oth­er means rapid­ly came into effect because of the clause,” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, which was a delib­er­ate inclu­sion that cre­at­ed anoth­er form of slav­ery albeit by anoth­er name.
As a result of that wig­gle room, African Americans would be tor­ment­ed through peon­age prac­tices, Jim Crow, and oth­er forms of insti­tu­tion­al­ized Government oppres­sion for over 80 years cul­mi­nat­ing in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ments that char­ac­ter­ized the 1960s.
Though sig­nif­i­cant, the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s did not change many of the struc­tur­al built-ins that remain a part of the American legal orthodoxy.
African peo­ple are con­vinced that they are free cit­i­zens of the United States. Still, the 13^th amend­ment, which sup­pos­ed­ly end­ed slav­ery, is the amend­ment that memo­ri­al­ized slav­ery of anoth­er kind, in the words “except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, “speak­ing of slavery.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​d​e​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​i​v​e​-​i​g​n​o​r​a​n​c​e​-​o​f​-​r​a​c​i​sm/

By def­i­n­i­tion, the very words” except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime, lit­er­al­ly incen­tivize the mass crim­i­nal­iza­tion and incar­cer­a­tion of Black peo­ple, forc­ing them back into servi­tude, only by a dif­fer­ent name.
This is not a prac­tice that came to an end; it is 2022, and police are arguably the great­est dan­ger to black peo­ple in the United States.
Pew Research not­ed that Blacks have long out­num­bered whites in U.S. pris­ons, an under­state­ment if ever there was one. But a sig­nif­i­cant decline in the num­ber of black pris­on­ers has steadi­ly nar­rowed the gap over the past decade, accord­ing to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

At the end of 2017, fed­er­al and state pris­ons in the United States held about 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white – a dif­fer­ence of 39,400, accord­ing to BJS. Ten years ear­li­er, there were 592,900 black and 499,800 white pris­on­ers – a dif­fer­ence of 93,100. (This analy­sis counts only inmates sen­tenced to more than a year.) The decline in the black-white gap between 2007 and 2017 was dri­ven by a 20% decrease in the num­ber of black inmates, which out­paced a 13% decrease in the num­ber of white inmates.
Notably, the num­ber of incar­cer­at­ed Blacks sen­tenced to a year or less in prison was not includ­ed in the data. Add the num­ber of Blacks incar­cer­at­ed for pet­ty offens­es, steal­ing a slice of piaz­za, mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion or sale, inabil­i­ty to pay a traf­fic fine, inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness to pay child sup­port, and offens­es of that nature and the data change exponentially.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​a​n​d​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​t​w​o​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​g​o​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​h​a​n​d​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

Efforts by Democrats in some states to end cash bail and have non-vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit minor offens­es be giv­en non-cus­to­di­al sen­tences have also played a part over the same decade in low­er­ing the num­ber of Blacks locked up in American prisons.
The Republican par­ty, which is now a full-fledged Fascist white suprema­cist par­ty, is vehe­ment­ly opposed to these fair and humane ges­tures by the Democrats. So too, are police and their unions that ben­e­fit from the mass incar­cer­a­tion of black people.
In a shock­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing arti­cle in 2021, the Marshal Project detailed the mind-blow­ing sta­tis­tics behind police in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, use of dan­ger­ous canines on non-vio­lent Black peo­ple with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy, includ­ing chil­dren as young as 12 years old.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​d​-​b​y​-​t​h​e​-​f​e​d​s​-​f​o​r​-​s​t​o​m​p​i​n​g​-​o​n​-​a​-​h​a​n​d​c​u​f​f​e​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​a​n​s​-​f​a​ce/
A spokesper­son for the depart­ment told reporters, “Every sin­gle per­son that we caught was in the process of com­mit­ting a felony, they were pos­si­bly armed, and they were resist­ing arrest,” said Capt. Wayne Martin, a long­time K‑9 offi­cer and now com­man­der of the Uniform Patrol Bureau. “If any of those things are absent, we don’t use the dogs.”

It goes with­out say­ing that advo­cates have evi­dence that this cop-splain­ing are total and utter lies; we know they lie rou­tine­ly. The irony, many depart­ments do arrest a larg­er num­ber of armed and vio­lent felons with­out using dogs to inflict cop pun­ish­ment on them. Even more sig­nif­i­cant in America is that the police paid by the pub­lic to pro­tect and serve do not see them­selves as sub­ject to the dic­tates of their boss­es, the citizens.
Police have become pow­er­ful over­lords that law­mak­ers are ter­ri­fied of offend­ing, and this is the def­i­n­i­tion of a police state. For Black Americans, this is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the way things were dur­ing slav­ery, sure, some things have changed, but essen­tial­ly, the more things change in America, the more they remain the same.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​6​0​374 – 2/

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

The Sheriff claimed that race played no part in the stop, which may be true, *may be* because the words of police offi­cers in the United States are not worth the paper they are writ­ten on, thanks to the Supreme Court; they lie like old dirty rugs, with­out suf­fer­ing any consequences.
The Sheriff claims offi­cers could not see who was in the bus as the win­dows were tint­ed. That may be true, but once they approached the bus and spoke to the dri­ver, they sure­ly saw that the stu­dents were Black, and they absolute­ly knew they were col­lege students.
Now, the Sheriff claims he hates racism and can­not prac­tice it as his *jesus* would not allow it; please do not let me laugh until I barf.…
No one should be fooled by the pres­ence of the one black offi­cer; they are gen­er­al­ly there as win­dow dress­ing and are not allowed to make any deci­sions. Worse case is that black cops are worse than white ones, I mean, look at Clarence Thomas (TOM AZZ). Is there a worse judge, jurist, or what­ev­er they call him? He cer­tain­ly isn’t any­thing close to jus­tice so.…
After the offi­cers saw the stu­dents, why did they ask to search the bus?
I ask you to sus­pend your sense of bull­shit for a sec­ond and be real.…… why did they ask to search the lug­gage sec­tion of the bus?
I ask this ques­tion as a for­mer police offi­cer who did actu­al polic­ing, not as a race sol­dier doing race sol­der­ing. As an offi­cer see­ing stu­dents, I would cer­tain­ly have spo­ken to the dri­ver about dri­ving safe­ly, but I damn sure would not have asked to search the stu­den­t’s belong­ings; they would have been on their way.
It was out­ra­geous that they ran the Dog around the stu­den­t’s belong­ings and then rum­maged through their most inti­mate pos­ses­sions, clear­ly vio­lat­ing their four amend­ment rights.
This prac­tice of using canines to do end runs around the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is a prac­tice that has been made pos­si­ble again by the out-of-con­trol right-wing supreme court.
Experts warn that Dogs are wrong up to 70% of the time that they sig­nal a hit, and in any case, they sig­nal a hit because they expect to receive a treat from their handlers.
In the mean­time, the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is out the door, and cit­i­zens are sub­ject to the Gestapo tac­tics like we see in Spartanburg coun­ty South Carolina.
In the end, they found noth­ing and issued a warn­ing to the dri­ver, so the Sheriff’s response was that the stu­dents and the University should have no prob­lem with the stop.
The dri­ver had no author­i­ty to give police per­mis­sion to search prop­er­ty that did not belong to him; that is the first order of busi­ness. The President of Shaw University, Dr. Paulette Dillard, wrote about how out­ra­geous the stop was and that it was rem­i­nis­cent of ear­li­er times in the United States when this was the prac­tice of police.
The Sheriff argued he wish­es racism would die the ugly death it deserves; what the sher­iff does not acknowl­edge is that it is his peo­ple, white peo­ple, who cre­at­ed it, and it is up to white peo­ple to end it.
Once the offi­cers saw that it was a bus­load of stu­dents, they [should] have cit­ed the dri­ver, whichev­er way they chose to, and end­ed the stop there.
Regardless of what police do, no mat­ter how out­ra­geous, there is a seg­ment of the American pop­u­la­tion that sup­ports it; we are not speak­ing to those deplorables; we know who they are.
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»»>

A South Carolina sher­iff said a his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­den­t’s state­ment accus­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers of racial pro­fil­ing in a recent bus stop was “just false.”

Shaw University President Paulette Dillard wrote she was “out­raged” after law enforce­ment offi­cers in Spartanburg County on Oct. 5 stopped a con­tract bus trans­port­ing stu­dents from the his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty in Raleigh, North Carolina to a con­fer­ence in Atlanta.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright empha­sized at a Monday morn­ing press con­fer­ence that police offi­cers stopped the unmarked, “Greyhound-like bus” with tint­ed win­dows because it had been swerv­ing. The stop occurred as part of “Operation Rolling Thunder,” the depart­men­t’s annu­al week­long anti-drug cam­paign in which deputies and offi­cers with agen­cies from around the state patrol the coun­ty’s highways.

Democratic mem­bers of North Carolina’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion last week asked the Justice Department to inves­ti­gate the incident.

Dillard wrote that the scene was rem­i­nis­cent of the 1950s and ’60s: “armed police, inter­ro­gat­ing inno­cent Black stu­dents, con­duct­ing search­es with­out prob­a­ble cause, and blood-thirsty dogs.”

“This behav­ior of tar­get­ing Black stu­dents is unac­cept­able and will not be ignored nor tol­er­at­ed,” Dillard wrote. “Had the stu­dents been White, I doubt this deten­tion and search would have occurred.”

Wright said that a stu­dent helped the dri­ver answer offi­cers’ ques­tions and that none of the stu­dents were asked to leave the bus. A leashed dog “ran through the bag­gage,” turn­ing up noth­ing ille­gal, accord­ing to Wright. Police body cam­era footage show offi­cers search­ing sev­er­al bags in the bus’ under­bel­ly stor­age. The dri­ver received a warning.

“I wish racism would die the ugly, cru­el death it deserves,” Wright said. “If any­thing we’re ever doing is racist, I want to know it, I want to fix it and I want to nev­er let it hap­pen again. But this case right here has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with racism.”

Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller said the offi­cers “did­n’t do any­thing wrong” and could not have known the races of the peo­ple inside the bus when they pulled it over.

Mueller added that the lead­ing cause of death in bus­es and com­mer­cial vehi­cles is dri­ver fatigue. Interstate 85, the high­way where offi­cers stopped the bus, is a “dead­ly cor­ri­dor,” accord­ing to Mueller.

“If my guys see a bus weav­ing in their lane, and they fail to stop it to check that dri­ver to make sure they’re not too sleepy, then we could have a bus­load of Shaw stu­dents that was involved in a trag­ic traf­fic fatal­i­ty,” Mueller said.

Body cam­era footage did not show any Shaw University insignia on the con­tract bus, which had the words “CHAUFFERED TRANSPORTATION” print­ed on its side. The Shaw University Communications Office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to an email seek­ing comment.

The traf­fic stop comes after an April inci­dent in Georgia, where sher­if­f’s deputies pulled over the Delaware State University wom­en’s lacrosse team bus and searched it for drugs. Tony Allen, the pres­i­dent of the HBCU, said he was “incensed” and accused the law enforce­ment offi­cers of intim­i­da­tion and humiliation.

Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman, who is Black, said in May that deputies had found drugs on a dif­fer­ent bus that same morn­ing. The team’s char­tered bus was stopped because it was trav­el­ing in the left lane, a vio­la­tion of Georgia law, accord­ing to Bowman, who said deputies searched the bus after a drug-sniff­ing dog “alert­ed” along­side it. No one was arrest­ed or charged and the dri­ver received a warning.

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Time and again in this medi­um, I have made the point that American polic­ing, or the con­cept of some­thing known as polic­ing, came from or (evolved) from evolved slave catch­ing. I want­ed to use the term evolve but *came from* works bet­ter as the very point of this short essay is that it [has not] evolved.
Over the last sev­er­al years, look­ing at the American body politic, I have ven­tured to opine to some friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers that it would not be too dif­fi­cult if African-Americans lose focus to find them­selves back on plan­ta­tions as enslaved people.
I have been chas­tised by some who argue that could nev­er hap­pen as this gen­er­a­tion would nev­er stand for it.
Today, I am here to admit that I was wrong. My state­ment that Blacks could find them­selves back on plan­ta­tions was com­plete­ly incor­rect because, accord­ing to the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, the igno­ble prac­tice of slav­ery has not been entire­ly abolished.
Now, if you are won­der­ing if I just came upon the word­ing of the 13^th Amendment to the con­sti­tu­tion, I want to set the record straight and clar­i­fy a few points.

THEN…

Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1
Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have the pow­er to enforce this arti­cle by appro­pri­ate legislation.
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

After the so-called abo­li­tion of slav­ery on December 6^th, 1865, lit­er­al­ly every state imme­di­ate­ly began the process of cre­at­ing anoth­er form of slavery.
Remember that the 13^th amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion was writ­ten by men, many of whom believed that Blacks were not human beings and that it was their God-giv­en right to enslave oth­er human beings.
The word­ing of the 13^th amend­ment speaks specif­i­cal­ly to the fact that they were not done with the issue of slav­ery, so they wrote into the amend­ment a clause that would keep slav­ery intact to this very day.
(Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed.)
Reconstruction, the peri­od of rel­a­tive free­dom expe­ri­enced by the once-enslaved pop­u­la­tion, was trun­cat­ed when the Republicans sold blacks out to the Democrats after the bit­ter­ly con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 1876.

The Compromise of 1877 was an infor­mal agree­ment between south­ern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to set­tle the result of the 1876 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and marked the end of the Reconstruction era.
Immediately after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1876, it became clear that the race’s out­come hinged large­ly on dis­put­ed returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina – the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican gov­ern­ments still in pow­er. As a bipar­ti­san con­gres­sion­al com­mis­sion debat­ed over the out­come ear­ly in 1877, allies of the Republican Party can­di­date Rutherford Hayes met in secret with mod­er­ate south­ern Democrats to nego­ti­ate accep­tance of Hayes’ elec­tion. (History)
It was the death knell for Reconstruction.
The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes’ vic­to­ry on the con­di­tion that Republicans with­draw all fed­er­al troops from the South, thus con­sol­i­dat­ing Democratic con­trol over the region. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic again, effec­tive­ly end­ing the Reconstruction era.

The Republican Rutherford B Hayes became pres­i­dent, and with­in two years, all Federal troops sta­tioned in the South to pro­tect and look after the rights and wel­fare of the new­ly freed Blacks were removed.
The treach­ery between the two polit­i­cal par­ties against Blacks result­ed in a sec­ond form of slav­ery known as Jim Crow that last­ed from Hayes took office until the civ­il rights fights of the ear­ly nine­teen six­ties and to some degree to the present day.
Jim Crowe-era laws are still on the books in some south­ern states and arguably across the country.
Laws like loi­ter­ing made exist­ing in Black skin then a crime; it is the same today.
Hundreds of thou­sands of Black men who were scooped up by police and thrown in prison to join what was called the chain gangs died there and were nev­er seen by their loved ones ever again.
Historical record­ings said most end­ed up right back on the plan­ta­tions they were freed from and were mur­dered by their white for­mer owners.

It was no crime to mur­der Blacks because black peo­ple were not con­sid­ered human beings, and accord­ing to the laws, they had no rights that a white man must respect.
When mur­dered, the prisons/​states would send fresh bod­ies to work for free.
The few Blacks who could pur­chase their free­dom dur­ing their slav­ery had to car­ry their free­dom papers to show to any white man who demand­ed to see them.
I hope you are see­ing the nexus now.
Many of those sup­pos­ed­ly free Blacks had their free­dom papers ripped up and were returned to slav­ery by any boun­ty hunter, slave catch­er, or any oth­er white male who felt like it.

NOW…

It is today as it was dur­ing slav­ery and after the recon­struc­tion peri­od end­ed. More and more, we see video evi­dence of mil­i­ta­rized white police dressed like they are going to war, pulling up on peo­ple, most­ly Black Americans, and imme­di­ate­ly demand­ing Identification.
You look sus­pi­cious; show me your ID.
We were called, and some­one said they saw you stand­ing around; show me your ID.
You are tak­ing pic­tures, show me your ID.
You are video­tap­ing; show me your ID.
You are talk­ing back to me; show me your ID.
There is no end to the irra­tional and unlaw­ful demands cops make today; they demand ID from cit­i­zens even though, in most states, police can­not law­ful­ly demand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from some­one who has­n’t com­mit­ted a crime, is about to com­mit, or is sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting a crime.
Yet they do so even when they know they are being video and audio record­ed with threats of arrest for non-compliance.
This is what they are trained and instruct­ed to do. It is; show me your papers, plain and simple.
The American Civil Liberties Union issued the fol­low­ing release to min­i­mize the threat to cit­i­zens police pose (usu­al­ly to peo­ple of color).

Know rights.
Stopped by Police.
Being stopped by police is a stress­ful expe­ri­ence that can go bad quick­ly. Here we describe what the law requires and also offer strate­gies for han­dling police encoun­ters. We want to be clear: The bur­den of de-esca­la­tion does not fall on pri­vate cit­i­zens but on police offi­cers. However, you can­not assume offi­cers will behave in a way that pro­tects your safe­ty or that they will respect your rights even after you assert them. You may be able to reduce risk to your­self by stay­ing calm and not exhibit­ing hos­til­i­ty toward the offi­cers. The truth is that there are sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple have done every­thing they could to put an offi­cer at ease yet still end­ed up injured or killed by the police.
It is a sad and sear­ing indict­ment of the qual­i­ty of polic­ing that obtains in the United States when cit­i­zens need to be cau­tioned about how to stay alive dur­ing encoun­ters with police.
The ques­tion one must ask as we are con­front­ed with this exis­ten­tial threat to life and limb is whether these are the actions of police offi­cers whose job is to serve and pro­tect or that of race sol­diers out to maim and kill.
The police now unlaw­ful­ly demand peo­ple’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, as a crack addict demands crack. So what is behind this stepped up demands for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, even when the laws do not autho­rize it?

The short answer is fill­ing jail cells in the for-prof­it prison sys­tem. You will recall that accord­ing to the 13^th amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion, Slavery is abol­ished, except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States or any place sub­ject to their juris­dic­tion.
It gen­er­al­ly has pre­cious lit­tle to do with crimes but minor infrac­tions issued to poor dri­vers, bro­ken tail­light, missed a court date on that, and a war­rant is issued for the motorist.…usually poor and Black.
Cannot afford to pay the exor­bi­tant fines, and it’s prison for the poor offender.
That’s what the demand for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is about. Additionally, they demand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion so that each encounter is logged in their data­base to be used against the per­son at a lat­er date in any future encounter with police, even though the indi­vid­ual had com­mit­ted no crime.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of a police state, but it is being felt by black Americans in ways their white coun­ter­parts can­not imag­ine because it is not exe­cut­ed on whites in the same way. 

Your rights

• You have the right to remain silent. For exam­ple, you do not have to answer any ques­tions about where you are going, where you are trav­el­ing from, what you are doing, or where you live. If you wish to exer­cise your right to remain silent, say so out loud. (In some states, you may be required to pro­vide your name if asked to iden­ti­fy your­self, and an offi­cer may arrest you for refus­ing to do so.)
• You do not have to con­sent to a search of your­self or your belong­ings, but police may pat down your cloth­ing if they sus­pect a weapon. Note that refus­ing con­sent may not stop the offi­cer from car­ry­ing out the search against your will, but mak­ing a time­ly objec­tion before or dur­ing the search can help pre­serve your rights in any lat­er legal proceeding.
• If you are arrest­ed by police, you have the right to a gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed lawyer if you can­not afford one.
• You do not have to answer ques­tions about where you were born, whether you are a U.S. cit­i­zen, or how you entered the coun­try. (Separate rules apply at inter­na­tion­al bor­ders and air­ports as well as for indi­vid­u­als on cer­tain non­im­mi­grant visas, includ­ing tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers. For more spe­cif­ic guid­ance about how to deal with immi­gra­tion-relat­ed ques­tions, see our immi­grants’ rights sec­tion.)

ID on Demand

March 2010 — By Eric Barker

Recently, on talk radio, the issue as to whether or not a police offi­cer could just walk up to any­body and demand that the per­son present some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was debat­ed. Some thought that cit­i­zens must show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to police when asked and that it may even be a crime not to have iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on you at all times. Others felt the police could­n’t ask us for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and that we don’t have to iden­ti­fy our­selves to law enforce­ment at any time for any rea­son. After all, we have the right to remain silent and not tell the police any­thing, includ­ing our names, don’t we?

The answer to this ques­tion is a def­i­nite maybe and depends on the cir­cum­stances. Generally speak­ing, the courts rec­og­nize that there are three lev­els of encoun­ters between police and cit­i­zens. The first and least obtru­sive is the “con­sen­su­al encounter”. This is where an offi­cer approach­es a cit­i­zen and makes a request, i.e., “Can I see your ID?”. The offi­cer in this sit­u­a­tion has no rea­son­able sus­pi­cion that the per­son is com­mit­ting a crime but, for what­ev­er rea­son, wants to ini­ti­ate con­tact with the per­son. The cit­i­zen is free to com­ply with the offi­cer’s request, ignore the offi­cer and walk away, or tell the offi­cer there is no way on earth he is giv­ing the offi­cer his or her ID. The offi­cer has the right to ask; the cit­i­zen has the right to walk away.

The sec­ond lev­el of inter­ac­tion between cit­i­zens and police offi­cers is called an “inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop”. This is when an offi­cer actu­al­ly detains a cit­i­zen, and that cit­i­zen does not have a legal right to walk away. For an offi­cer to make an inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop, the offi­cer must have a well-found­ed, rea­son­able, artic­u­la­ble sus­pi­cion that the per­son they are detain­ing has just com­mit­ted, is in the process of com­mit­ting, or is about to com­mit a crime. In this instance, if the offi­cer does indeed have this “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” that the per­son is involved in a crime, the offi­cer can detain the per­son and demand that the per­son iden­ti­fy them­selves. However, since there is no law that cur­rent­ly man­dates that we car­ry per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with us at all times (not yet any­way, but I won’t be shocked when that law pass­es), iden­ti­fi­ca­tion some­times can sim­ply be accom­plished by pro­vid­ing a name and date of birth. However, cit­i­zens should not give a false name as many offi­cers have lap­tops in their patrol cars and can quick­ly pull the dri­ver’s license pho­to of the name giv­en. If the pho­to on the lap­top does not match the name giv­en, under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, the per­son could be arrest­ed for giv­ing a false name or resist­ing arrest with­out vio­lence. This is true even if it is deter­mined that the offi­cer’s “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” that the per­son was com­mit­ting a crime end­ed up being not true.

The third and final lev­el of inter­ac­tion is when the offi­cer is mak­ing an arrest. As in the “inves­ti­ga­to­ry stop”, the cit­i­zen is required to iden­ti­fy themselves.

So, if you’re approached by an offi­cer who wants to ask you ques­tions and you don’t real­ly want to strike up a new friend­ship at that moment, sim­ply ask the offi­cer if you are free to leave. If he says yes, you may leave and go about your busi­ness (or con­tin­ue on in your slack­ing off) and walk away. If you are told that you are not free to leave, ask the offi­cer what rea­son he thinks he has to detain you. Make sure you let him know that you know your rights and you’re not acqui­esc­ing to his unrea­son­able and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al demands. Then, when you pick your­self off of the ground and dust your­self off, don’t for­get to ask the offi­cer if you can have your ID back.

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

The pub­li­ca­tion Complex is report­ing that Ye, the artist for­mer­ly known as Kanye West, is no longer a bil­lion­aire, accord­ing to Forbes.
According to the hot-off-the-press report­ing, Ye’s net worth plum­met­ed to a mere $400M.
Now $400M is a lot of mon­ey for peo­ple like me who have none of it, but for pow­er play­ers like Ye, ouch.…. that got­ta hurt.
According to the report, the lion’s share of Ye’s wealth was from his deal with the German sports appar­el com­pa­ny Adidas, val­ued at $1.5 billion.

The artist has been mired in con­tro­ver­sy after he appeared with Candace Owens, a racial provo­ca­teur wear­ing gar­ments embla­zoned with the words “white lives matter.”
He has also been accused of mak­ing a string of anti-Semitic com­ments against Jewish peo­ple and even claimed that the slav­ery of Black peo­ple was a choice.
Several com­pa­nies that did busi­ness with the artiste have since dis­tanced them­selves from him; how­ev­er, Adidas’ deci­sion to cut ties with him has got to hurt the most financially.
According to the report, Ye told an inter­view­er that he had about $120 mil­lion in his account.

Actions have con­se­quences, as they should. One is free to say what­ev­er one wants, but there is a price to pay for say­ing what­ev­er comes to one’s mouth unless you are Donald Trump or FOX misinformation.
Kanye West has tried to align him­self with Donald Trump and the Fox dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work and has made out­landish com­ments that have come back to bite him in the ass.
His com­ments got him kicked off Twitter and Instagram, upon which he expressed an inter­est in acquir­ing the hate plat­form Parler.

Whether or not Kanye, Ye, or what­ev­er he calls him­self is hav­ing a men­tal break­down, it is impor­tant that he try to remem­ber that regard­less of who he tries to be friends with, when the rub­ber meets the road, he is still a black man with some mon­ey. They gave it, and they can take it away.

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Like and share this article.

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

Publisher’s note:
Sgt. Alpha Caldwell, a spokesper­son for the Fayetteville Police Department, said Tuesday she did not know when the footage would be pub­licly released.
But of course, I guess it takes time to alter and destroy cru­cial evi­dence. As I have said time and again, it is incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous that courts con­tin­ue to accept the uncor­rob­o­rat­ed word of police as evi­dence to con­vict any­one, much less peo­ple of color.
And to the peo­ple who are con­fused as to why police offi­cers con­tin­ue to com­mit these acts of aggres­sion against the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly Black peo­ple, ask your elect­ed polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive how they vot­ed on body-cam leg­is­la­tion. Politicians make the laws. Ask them why they vot­ed to make it so that a court order is required to obtain footage that is pro­duced by police body cam­eras when it is the pub­lic that pays for the cam­eras, the footage, the salaries, and the ben­e­fits of the cops.
There was absolute­ly no rea­son for the cops involved to pull the young woman from her care and hand­cuff her. Their lying claims that they were look­ing for a vio­lent per­son in the area should fool no one. Even if they were look­ing for a dan­ger­ous per­son, what did it have to do with the young woman they assault­ed and brutalized?
The sad real­i­ty is that they would under no cir­cum­stances pull a young white woman from her car and abuse her. They decid­ed to engage her based on the col­or of her skin. We see this kind of behav­ior by these moron­ic racist turds in police uni­form. It must come to an end.
(mb)

Lexi Solomon, The Fayetteville Observer

Tue, October 25, 2022, 2:26 PM

This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Yahoonews.……

I expect to be dragged for say­ing this, but that’s okay. I find it laugh­able that a police offi­cer who has been found to have ties to white suprema­cy groups would be giv­en a sus­pen­sion and allowed to return to polic­ing our streets.
Policing is a crit­i­cal dis­ci­pline in the sys­tem of jus­tice that is nec­es­sary for demo­c­ra­t­ic societies.
When the police, the first rung in the jus­tice sys­tem, can­not be trust­ed to be fair, just, car­ing, hon­est, and upstand­ing, the sys­tem can­not work.
When peo­ple do not trust the police and, by exten­sion, the jus­tice sys­tem, they take the laws into their own hands. Street jus­tice becomes the alter­na­tive. In com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in the United States, peo­ple do not trust the police, they are more inclined to han­dle things inde­pen­dent­ly, and the results are out in the open for all to see.
The high vio­lent crime rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty, direct­ly results from the jus­ti­fi­able mis­trust those com­mu­ni­ties have for the police, which has nev­er served their inter­est but has act­ed as over­lords and executioners.
No one expects police offi­cers to be per­fect; offi­cers are humans who are prone to mak­ing mis­takes like every­one else.
Additionally, police offi­cers are asked to deal with and con­tain some of the worst actors in our soci­eties. Those are not easy tasks; car­ry­ing out those func­tions is some­times ugly, messy, and controversial.
Regardless of race or sta­tion, the aver­age per­son sym­pa­thizes with police offi­cers when they make mis­takes or do what soci­ety asks them to do, regard­less of how ugly the process looks.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I was always con­ver­sant that the pow­ers vest­ed in me were giv­en to me by the peo­ple and that it was not sup­posed to be abused or used to abuse the very peo­ple who gave them to me.
The pow­ers vest­ed in police offi­cers are not and should not ever be so absolute that they ren­der police offi­cers immune from account­abil­i­ty to the point of impunity.
The American cop, if not total­ly at the point of oper­a­tional impuni­ty, is dan­ger­ous­ly close to it, made pos­si­ble by the United States Supreme Court.
Citizens are pre­pared to give the police the ben­e­fit of the doubt when they make mis­takes in the exe­cu­tion of their duties and cor­rect­ly so. After all, all cat­e­gories of work­ers make mis­takes on the job with­out being sub­ject­ed to imprisonment.
On the oth­er hand, hard­ly any oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is vest­ed with the pow­er of life and death over the cit­i­zen­ry; the police have that power.
What cit­i­zens are jus­ti­fi­ably incensed about is that on top of the awe­some pow­ers police offi­cers are giv­en, the mech­a­nisms of account­abil­i­ty that have been put in place because police offi­cers and entire police depart­ments abuse their pow­ers don’t even hold police accountable.
On sim­ple issues like body-worn cam­eras, police offi­cers get to deter­mine if they turn on the devices before inter­act­ing with mem­bers of the pub­lic in some munic­i­pal­i­ties. Police offi­cers turn off their body-worn cam­eras when they want to abuse cit­i­zens and are not held account­able. Police depart­ments get to decide in some cas­es whether the pub­lic that pays for the cam­era has a right to the footage on said cameras.
Police depart­ments are allowed to delete or alter footage they deem not use­ful to the lies they tell the public.
At issue in the United States with polic­ing is that the Republican par­ty does every­thing in its pow­er to ensure that the bro­ken polic­ing prac­tices are main­tained and strengthened.
The immense pow­er giv­en to police allows police and pros­e­cu­tors to frame inno­cent cit­i­zens send­ing them to prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole and to the death chamber.
It allows cops to mur­der peo­ple of col­or and then malign their char­ac­ter to jus­ti­fy their demise. This, in effect, is mur­der­ing the vic­tims twice while leav­ing their fam­i­lies with­out redress in the system.
These are not anom­alies; they are well-orches­trat­ed poli­cies and prac­tices that have been put in place to keep one seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion on top and the oth­er in per­pet­u­al sub­ju­ga­tion. (mb)

Here is an example.

The dis­ci­pline of a Chicago police offi­cer who was inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged ties to a white nation­al­ist group became a flash­point dur­ing Friday’s wide-rang­ing police depart­ment bud­get hear­ing, which saw Superintendent David Brown on the defen­sive over dis­con­tent with his pub­lic safe­ty plan, bal­loon­ing over­time costs and more.

Ald. Jason Ervin, 28^th, ques­tioned Brown on why Officer Robert Bakker received only a 120-day sus­pen­sion over alle­ga­tions includ­ing that he didn’t reveal he was inter­viewed by fed­er­al author­i­ties about his alleged past involve­ment with the Proud Boys.

Brown defend­ed the choice not to fire Bakker and said the inves­ti­ga­tion did not turn up suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the offi­cer was affil­i­at­ed with the organization.

“The Chicago Police Department has zero tol­er­ance for any of its sworn mem­bers being mem­bers of hate groups or asso­ci­at­ed with hate groups,” Brown said in his first pub­lic remarks on the case. “The alle­ga­tions put forth on this offi­cer did not sup­port by a pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence, which is the legal stan­dard, that this mem­ber asso­ci­at­ed with or was a mem­ber of a hate group — Proud Boys or any oth­er hate group.

Brown con­tin­ued, “I will just say from a per­son­al note, I’ve been Black a long time. I would not tol­er­ate an offi­cer being a mem­ber of or being asso­ci­at­ed with a hate group.”

A “pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence” means the alle­ga­tions being inves­ti­gat­ed must be more than 50% like­ly to be true. Brown said that was not the case with Bakker’s ties to the Proud Boys, but there were “minor vio­la­tions” relat­ed to incon­sis­tent state­ments from the offi­cer to inves­ti­ga­tors about the extent of his inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the group

Literally every day, we see these instances of blatant police brutality, inhumanity, and monstrosity. Despite overwhelming evidence that policing in America the way it was designed to work is no longer tenable, Republicans and Democrats continue to double down on this egregious concept called policing in its present construct.(mb)

By David Mack for Buzzfeed

Bodycam footage cap­tured Sgt. Eric Huxley stomp­ing on the face of Jermaine Vaughn, whom anoth­er offi­cer had wres­tled to the ground.
By David Mack

On Tuesday, a fed­er­al grand jury in Indiana indict­ed an Indianapolis police sergeant for vio­lat­ing a man’s civ­il rights by using exces­sive force dur­ing an arrest last year.

Body cam­era footage cap­tured Sgt. Eric Huxley stomp­ing on the face of Jermaine Vaughn, who had been hand­cuffed with his hands behind his back, on Sept. 24, 2021. Huxley’s col­leagues were wrestling Vaughn to the ground in the city’s down­town as they attempt­ed to arrest him for dis­or­der­ly conduct

“Stop! You’re done! You’re done! You’re done!” Huxley shouts at Vaughn after kick­ing him in the face.

“There you go. Police bru­tal­i­ty,” Vaughn responds as blood pours from his mouth.