Police are look­ing into a viral video that shows a white man grab­bing a Black man’s neck in Milwaukee. The attack hap­pened after the white man claimed the Black man stole a bike, NPR reports.

In the clip, which was tak­en on Oct. 10, a 62-year-old white man is on the phone say­ing that he saw a friend of the 24-year-old Black man take the bicy­cle. While he’s talk­ing, his hand is on the 24-year-old’s neck, and his legs are strad­dling the back wheel of the bike the Black man is rid­ing. The per­son record­ing the video, Deangelo Wright, asks him to remove his hand from the younger man’s neck. He oblig­es but gives Wright the mid­dle fin­ger as he does so. The Black man said sev­er­al times that he didn’t touch the bike.

Two chil­dren inter­vened and con­firmed the 24-year-old’s sto­ry. The per­son record­ing, Wright, then told the kids to help find the bike in ques­tion. Later, the white man says the stolen bike is green, but the bicy­cle the Black man is rid­ing is blue. Multiple kids tried to tell the white man that the 24-year-old did not steal his bike. Read more @ :https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​d​i​s​t​u​r​b​i​n​g​-​v​i​r​a​l​-​v​i​d​e​o​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​m​a​n​-​1​4​5​7​0​4​6​9​7​.​h​tml

The wannabe dic­ta­tor Governor in the state of Florida has cre­at­ed a force with­in law enforce­ment whose sole pur­pose is to arrest peo­ple with felonies who have paid their debt to soci­ety and have cast a vote in the state.
Desantis’ plan is to stop black vot­ers from vot­ing but more so to chill the vote of black Floridians who may not be sure whether or not they are eli­gi­ble to vote.

Florida Amendment 4, the Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative, was on the bal­lot in Florida as an ini­ti­at­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on November 6, 2018. It was approved.

What Desantis and Republicans in the Florida state leg­is­la­ture cooked up was a scheme to defy the will of the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the state’s vot­ers by say­ing that there must be leg­is­la­tion to define who gets to vote and who doesn’t.
The sad irony is that those are the exact ques­tions that bal­lot mea­sure amend­ment 4 addressed.
Ron Desantis and Republicans in the state are afraid of the vot­ers, as is evi­dent in states like Georgia, where Brian Kemp ille­gal­ly removed over two hun­dred thou­sand vot­ers from vot­ing rolls because they did not vote in every election.
Kemp purged those rolls as sec­re­tary of state and won the elec­tions by a slim 2% mar­gin over Stacy Abrams.
Desantis elec­tion police are now out in force arrest­ing Black peo­ple who dared to vote, even though they have a legal right to do so.

We can­not doc­u­ment them all; after all, the main­stream media does­n’t both­er report­ing on most of these sto­ries that show what police are doing to American cit­i­zens. The fact is that, but for ordi­nary cit­i­zens act­ing as citizens/​journalists, most of these sto­ries would nev­er see the light of day. Even when these sto­ries get told, the main­stream media is the last to report on them, or worse, they read ver­ba­tim what the police depart­ment gives them to read to the public.
Usually, a pack of lies and smears.
As I have said repeat­ed­ly on these pages, these are not the actions of police offi­cers but out of con­trol race sol­diers oper­at­ing under the col­or of law. KKK, Proud boys, Oath Keepers, National Vanguard, Skinheads, and Aryan Nations are only a few of the groups that have mem­ber­ship in police depart­ments all across the coun­try. The Federal Bureau of Investigations warned many years ago about these groups infil­trat­ing police depart­ments and the mil­i­tary; noth­ing has been done about them.
In fact, every Republican in con­gress vot­ed against kick­ing them out of the army.
Today, even the FBI seems to have been infil­trat­ed by them, accord­ing to some media reporting.
Like the cow­ards they are, these hate­mon­gers know that rid­ing around in white sheets would be extreme­ly bad for their health, so they put on police uniforms.
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Ja’Lana Dunlap, a 22-year-old Black woman in Fayetteville, North Carolina, says offi­cers assault­ed her and unlaw­ful­ly put her in hand­cuffs when she was doing her job as a prop­er­ty man­ag­er. Dunlap’s attor­neys released cell­phone footage this week to show what hap­pened dur­ing the con­fronta­tion with police in September, ABC News reports.
Dunlap said police ques­tioned her when she was tak­ing pic­tures of the prop­er­ty she over­sees on behalf of the own­er, who had received a cita­tion from the city because peo­ple were ille­gal­ly dump­ing fur­ni­ture and trash on the site.
“I was plan­ning to take pic­tures because we had already hired some­body to clean it up,” Dunlap told ABC News. “So, I was just ensur­ing they did their job.”

Dunlap said she fin­ished tak­ing pho­tos and returned to her car when two offi­cers approached her. The offi­cers, who were search­ing for a sus­pect­ed fugi­tive, asked why Dunlap was on the prop­er­ty, the Fayetteville woman said.
After being ques­tioned, Dunlap said she gave her name and explained what she was doing. When an offi­cer asked her to pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, the 22-year-old said she declined to do so.
Dunlap said she knew that North Carolina is not a “Stop and Identify” state, mean­ing peo­ple are not legal­ly oblig­at­ed to pro­vide ID if they haven’t com­mit­ted or been sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting a crime.
“I know my sto­ry checks out,” Dunlap said. “I know if I didn’t do any­thing wrong, I shouldn’t have to give you my ID.”
When the offi­cer con­tin­ued to demand her ID, the prop­er­ty man­ag­er said she start­ed to record the encounter with her phone because she feared for her safety.
Dunlap said anoth­er offi­cer then reached into the car and grabbed her left arm. The young woman can be heard in the cell­phone video as she tells the offi­cers to “please stop.”

Officers even­tu­al­ly asked Dunlap to step out of the car. When she refused, the offi­cers told her to “stop resisting.”
Although some parts of the inci­dent aren’t seen in the video, Dunlap said the offi­cers pulled her out of the car, slammed her against the trunk, and placed her in hand­cuffs. “They were actu­al­ly try­ing to yank me back up with the hand­cuffs behind my back to the point where I had to ask, ‘Y’all, please stop so I can fin­ish throw­ing up.’” Ms. Dunlap said, she has sick­le cell ane­mia, and she began hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing due to the stress. The prop­er­ty man­ag­er said she was released after the offi­cers grabbed her ID from the fan­ny pack around her waist and ver­i­fied her identity.
Dunlap, who says she was left with a bruised hand, filed a for­mal com­plaint to the Fayetteville Police Department.
Gina Hawkins, Fayetteville Police Chief, said in a state­ment that she is mak­ing a for­mal request for an area judge to per­mit the release of police body cam­era footage. The chief also said offi­cers approached Dunlap in an area where a poten­tial­ly vio­lent sus­pect ran away from police.
Dunlap’s attor­ney, Harry Daniels, said he plans to file a fed­er­al law­suit on behalf of his client.
“Quite frankly, I believe that Ms. Dunlap would not be sub­ject­ed, would not be here today hav­ing this dis­cus­sion if she was a dif­fer­ent race.” Daniels told ABC News. “I’m not gonna sug­ar­coat it. I think they intim­i­dat­ed her because she’s a per­son of col­or. And we are here to fight on her behalf.”
Dunlap said the ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence has caused her to resign from her job as a prop­er­ty man­ag­er. (From Yahoo news)

Police offi­cers from Warren, Michigan, alleged­ly struck Tyler Wade so hard that one of his braces came out of his mouth.

A Detroit-area teen has filed a fed­er­al law­suit against police after they alleged­ly attacked him repeat­ed­ly in an inci­dent cap­tured on video.

According to the Detroit Free Press, police offi­cers from Warren, Michigan, alleged­ly punched, kicked and stomped Tyler Wade, now 17, fol­low­ing a chase on June 2. Wade’s attor­ney, James King, said his client had no crim­i­nal his­to­ry or pri­or inter­ac­tions with law enforce­ment. The inci­dent was report­ed­ly cap­tured on police body cam­era and dash­cam footage and record­ed by a civilian.

King claimed that one offi­cer hit Wade nine times in the face with­out anoth­er offi­cial inter­ven­ing. He said Wade also received mul­ti­ple punch­es from anoth­er cop, and his client was kicked twice and stomped at least three times.

Body cam­era and dash­cam footage request­ed as dis­cov­ery in the crim­i­nal case report­ed­ly showed the “night­mare” unfold just as Wade described, King said. According to King, his client fol­lowed all directions.
“People don’t get beat like this and stomped and assault­ed and sav­age­ly attacked by grown men when they com­mit crimes,” King told the Free Press. “This video is sick­en­ing.” King claims Wade tried to evade police by speed­ing away after they stopped him on the sus­pi­cion he was dri­ving a stolen vehi­cle. Police allege that Wade had mar­i­jua­na and threw a gun out of the car — accu­sa­tions that King denies. According to King, the pur­suit end­ed when the car final­ly stopped after crash­ing into a cor­ner and its stop sign. Wade was hand­cuffed and tak­en into custody.

Mississippi teenag­er dies after being shot by police officers.
A Black teenag­er in Mississippi died days after Gulfport police shot him in the head out­side a dis­count store, and his rel­a­tives are ques­tion­ing offi­cers’ actions.
Jaheim McMillan was only 15 years old; he was tak­en off life sup­port after Gulfport police shot him in the head on Thursday at the Family Dollar shop.

The trag­ic real­i­ty at this time is that there is an acute epi­dem­ic of anti-Black racism world­wide. Tragic because actu­al liv­ing, breath­ing peo­ple are being killed by gov­ern­ment agents.
In his Washington Post arti­cle in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Nana Osei-Opare wrote, “Throughout the last cen­tu­ry, the United States has pro­ject­ed itself as a glob­al leader of lib­er­ty, democ­ra­cy, and free­dom. But on ques­tions of race, America has con­sis­tent­ly been on the wrong side of his­to­ry — and the world has noticed.

Occupying the perch it does on the world stage, the United States is unavoid­ably looked at with a keen­er eye than oth­er coun­tries on the ques­tion of human rights than oth­er pow­er­ful nations like Russia, China, Iran, etc.
It is not that peo­ple are more caus­tic in their crit­i­cisms of the US on human rights abus­es but because of the US’s his­to­ry and its con­tin­ued pos­tur­ing and pon­tif­i­cat­ing on the issue while ignor­ing the glar­ing abuse of police vio­lence in its own streets.
Aided by the courts’ police and their unions have become so pow­er­ful that the United States is now a ver­i­ta­ble police state. 

The stan­dard for the use of lethal force over the last sev­er­al decades has dete­ri­o­rat­ed, the bar low­ered so low by the courts that the mere belief in a cop’s mind that some­one may pose a dan­ger to them is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for killing that per­son gun or not.
Opare went on; the U.S. sup­port­ed racist European colo­nial regimes like apartheid South Africa until the 1980s when domes­tic pres­sure led by African Americans pushed it to change course. Additionally, at dif­fer­ent points in its his­to­ry domes­ti­cal­ly, like apartheid South Africa, the U.S. has unleashed the state’s machin­ery — dogs, water hoses, batons, and rub­ber bul­lets or worse — to stymie civ­il rights protests, black anger, and activism against anti-black vio­lence. Images of this police vio­lence cir­cu­lat­ed across the globe, clear­ly con­tra­dict­ing America’s Cold War rhetoric. It showed how total­i­tar­i­an­ism and sup­port for white suprema­cy exist­ed in the U.S.‘s own back­yard.

Anti-Black racism is not con­fined to the United States. However, the sto­ries of state agents bla­tant­ly abus­ing black peo­ple are well doc­u­ment­ed in France, London, and even in war-torn Ukraine. In the United States, as in England, France, and places in between, Police act­ing with the acqui­es­cence of white racist cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to use racist vio­lence against Black peo­ple on racial grounds with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.
In the United States, police Unions donate to the cam­paigns of politi­cians who end up in their pock­ets when they are elect­ed. Worse yet, many local Mayors and pros­e­cu­tors are for­mer cops, which makes it dou­bly dif­fi­cult for the vic­tims of police vio­lence to get a fair inves­ti­ga­tion, much less an indict­ment of killer cops. If you are won­der­ing why we are try­ing to bring these events to your atten­tion, please take a look at this inci­dent that occurred in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Would this have hap­pened to a white woman? You decide.

Look at these Virginia cops; they rammed their patrol cars into a black wom­an’s car where she had two minor chil­dren, includ­ing a one-year-old baby.

Not only did the cops have the wrong car, they hand­cuffed the woman, placed her and her chil­dren, and placed them into the back of their patrol cars.
As hor­rif­ic and unbe­liev­able as their behav­ior was, they weren’t done. Not only did they not apol­o­gize for their mis­take as they should have they were dis­mis­sive and extreme­ly dis­re­spect­ful of her and her com­plaints. Again these are not police offi­cers, as I have been writ­ing about for a long time; these are hyped-up racist crim­i­nal beasts who have zero respect for the peo­ple of col­or they come across daily.
No one in their right mind would believe that any­thing like this could ever hap­pen to a white woman. Worse yet, if they rammed her car with­out know­ing who was inside, they would have fall­en over them­selves to apol­o­gize and cop-splain to her what caused them to act with such igno­rant and moron­ic irrationality.
The woman Jamee Kimble said she was still hurt­ing, hav­ing had a c‑section deliv­er of her child just days pri­or. “This was a very trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion, and for a long time, prob­a­bly for­ev­er for me and my 5‑year-old, this will for­ev­er affect us,” Kimble said.
Kimble said she’s sched­uled to speak to a police depart­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive by phone on Wednesday.
This is the part that gets me riled up; who the f*** do these ani­mals think they are that they will grace her with a phone call instead of find­ing her home and apol­o­giz­ing pro­fuse­ly to her and her children?

Outrage is brew­ing in England fol­low­ing find­ings that police were not liable for the death of a Black man, who died while in their cus­tody. The offi­cers claimed the man was lying about not being able to breathe dur­ing a fatal asth­mat­ic attack and were caught on cam­era dis­miss­ing his cries for release.

A recent­ly released study by The Independent Officer for Police Conduct high­light­ed Ian McDonald-Taylor’s death in a sum­ma­ry and excused the offi­cers that were con­nect­ed to the case of neg­li­gence or wrongdoing.

It said, “We found no indi­ca­tion that any per­son serv­ing with the police may have com­mit­ted a crim­i­nal offense or behaved in a man­ner that would jus­ti­fy the bring­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary proceedings.

The report by the watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished at the end of August got the sto­ry wrong, some peo­ple have expressed.

Over three years ago, the 54-year-old was detained after a mas­sive fight

Officers had the man lying down on the ground on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton on June 29, 2019, with his wrists hand­cuffed. While they had him pros­trate, he is heard on police body­cam yelling out to them, “I’m fad­ing, I’m going to die.” In response to his remarks, one of the police offi­cers said his com­plaint was “a load of nonsense.”

McDonald-Taylor report­ed­ly was suf­fer­ing from acute asth­ma and died from car­diac arrest exac­er­bat­ed by the incident.

On Wednesday, Sept. 28, the same agency pub­lished its annu­al report on police-involved deaths, doc­u­ment­ing the demise of mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als who died dur­ing or fol­low­ing their con­tact with police over the last two years. Eleven deaths were doc­u­ment­ed in or fol­low­ing police cus­tody, the Daily Mail reports.

Some of their deaths were caught on cam­era like the death of drill rap­per Chris Kaba and Oladeji Omishore, a man suf­fer­ing from a men­tal health crisis.

The fam­i­lies of both men believe their police-involved deaths were direct­ly influ­enced by a sys­temic prej­u­dice against Black peo­ple with­in the MPD. They are cur­rent­ly work­ing with the char­i­ty Inquest to do out­reach to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to look into both men’s cases

That’s espe­cial­ly so, con­sid­er­ing their 2020 report that affirmed “police bru­tal­i­ty” and human rights vio­la­tions by law enforce­ment against Africans and peo­ple of African descent” in var­i­ous coun­tries, includ­ing the United Kingdom, high­light­ing the death of anoth­er Black Brit by the police named Kevin Clarke.

As a result of the inves­ti­ga­tion, the IOPC reopened his case and deter­mined the offi­cer used an inap­pro­pri­ate hold on him, caus­ing his death.

The fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers of McDonald-Taylor are dis­ap­point­ed the watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion did not see the fin­ger­print of racism in this death, despite the footage being available.

Bodycam footage played in the court­room cap­tured him plead­ing with the cops, say­ing, “I’m going to die; stand me up now.”

No mat­ter what he said, offi­cers dis­re­gard­ed his peti­tion. One offi­cer was heard report­ing to a sergeant that McDonald-Taylor was “cur­rent­ly on the floor play­ing the whole poor me poor me, he’s going to have to go to the hos­pi­tal though as a mat­ter of course.”

“He’s say­ing he has chest pains he can’t breathe blah blah; it’s a load of non­sense but there we go,” he erro­neous­ly mocked. In the court doc­u­ments, the officer’s name is withheld.

McDonald-Taylor repeat­ed­ly asked for relief, believ­ing with­out it he would die. However, he was nev­er extend­ed med­ical sup­port and was left in the streets with­out his inhaler.

Eventually, he was trans­port­ed to a patrol car. Moments after get­ting into the car, he had a heart attack, prompt­ing offi­cers to call an ambu­lance to the scene. Later that evening, after he was tak­en to Kings College Hospital, he died.

McDonald-Taylor’s case was brought to tri­al and a jury con­clud­ed his death was not a result of the offi­cer neglect­ing to care for him dur­ing his attack. He report­ed­ly also died as a result of car­diac arrest, acute asth­ma, COPD, sit­u­a­tion­al stress, ischemic heart dis­ease and dehydration.

The court was asked to con­sid­er a study that said offi­cers are more like­ly to think a Black per­son, over a white per­son, is fak­ing an ill­ness when being apprehended.

Police denied this could be a fac­tor, but did not deny diver­si­ty train­ing could be use­ful in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing with peo­ple of color.

The deceased’s Michael Cooper, com­ment­ed after the tri­al, “Watching the video footage of Ian fight­ing for breath and des­per­ate­ly plead­ing for help, but being dis­missed and even mocked by police offi­cers, is utter­ly devastating.”

Cooper fur­ther ques­tioned if there was any duty of care on the offi­cers’ part.

“The police are trained to deal with sit­u­a­tions like this,” the cousin said. “Yet they did not do what any­one else would have done and dri­ve him to a hos­pi­tal that was three min­utes away.”

“No one in the UK should die from asth­ma and yet Ian did. How many more deaths will it take before the police take seri­ous­ly a Black man who says he can’t breathe?” he asked.

Another rel­a­tive, McDonald-Taylor’s aunt, Pauline Taylor, hired lawyers from Duncan Lewis to rep­re­sent the fam­i­ly as they seek justice.

She said, “ ‘ I need my inhaler…I can’t breathe…I’m dying.’ These were the last plead­ing words of my nephew. He died on the street beg­ging for help, not from just one, but sev­en police offi­cers who casu­al­ly dis­missed his pleas and even went so far as to laugh and mock him.”

She con­tin­ued, “What more could he have said in those moments to solic­it help and sim­ple humane com­pas­sion from those who are sworn to serve and pro­tect. What has been learned? One offi­cer said that he would do exact­ly the same giv­en the same set of circumstances…May God help us!”

Speaking for her fam­i­ly, she said they are all “bro­ken” because of the loss of her loved one.

“Our pain wakes us each morn­ing and steals into our dreams at night,” Taylor said.

“But in try­ing to heal we rec­og­nize that the dis­clo­sures relat­ing to Ian’s untime­ly and cru­el death can be used as a tool to bring about bet­ter train­ing, effec­tive prac­tice, holis­tic aware­ness and chal­lenge the ugly exis­tence of unbi­ased racism.”

Their pain was not unno­ticed by the IOPC, which offered con­do­lences through its region­al direc­tor Sal Naseem. However, they still believe the offi­cers were in the right.

Naseem said, “We began an inves­ti­ga­tion on 1 July 2019 fol­low­ing a manda­to­ry refer­ral from the Metropolitan Police Service. We looked at all of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing police con­tact with Mr. Taylor, fol­low­ing a report of a dis­tur­bance in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, SW9 on Saturday 29 June 2019 at around 5:54 p.m.”

He con­tin­ued, “We found the offi­cers pro­vid­ed appro­pri­ate care to Mr. Taylor but it was clear that the offi­cers who were with him through­out believed they could not trans­port him to hos­pi­tal in their police vehicle.”

“We drew this to the force’s atten­tion as a pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for learn­ing giv­en in this case, which was a med­ical emer­gency, it took 36 min­utes for the ambu­lance to arrive after the offi­cers called it with­in three min­utes of their arrival and twice request­ed updates on its progress,” he added. “MPS pro­ce­dure does allow for police vehi­cles to be used to trans­port peo­ple to hos­pi­tal in excep­tion­al circumstances.”

According to the offi­cial, the research did not sup­port “bring­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings or com­mit­ted a crim­i­nal offense,” to any of the offi­cers involved.

“During our inves­ti­ga­tion, which con­clud­ed in December 2019, the police offi­cers involved with Mr. Taylor were treat­ed as wit­ness­es and pro­vid­ed state­ments to sup­port the inves­ti­ga­tion,” he said, point­ing to the sig­nif­i­cant video footage reviewed to help them come to their conclusion.

Chief super­in­ten­dent Colin Wingrove, from the Central South Basic Command Unit of the Met Police, also added, “Our thoughts remain with Ian Taylor’s fam­i­ly and friends fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the IOPC inves­ti­ga­tion report.”

“I would like to reit­er­ate the unre­served apol­o­gy I made to the fam­i­ly for the com­ments made by the offi­cer which lacked care, com­pas­sion, and respect when Mr. Taylor was in need of urgent med­ical assis­tance,” the chief expressed.

Wingrove said McDonald-Taylor’s death impact­ed the com­mu­ni­ty tremen­dous­ly, prompt­ing the depart­ment to make some reforms to fur­ther improve “the ser­vice” his depart­ment pro­vides “to the pub­lic, ensur­ing the high­est stan­dards whilst reduc­ing crime and keep­ing peo­ple safe.”

This includes improv­ing offi­cer train­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing direct­ly with the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to rebuild the trust lost over the years.

A woman charged with a mis­de­meanor for record­ing Minnesota police offi­cers hold­ing two Black men at gun­point set­tled her fed­er­al law­suit against the city for $70,000, accord­ing to the Star Tribune. In addi­tion to mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, the city also agreed to pol­i­cy reform with­in the police department.
Arizona recent­ly attempt­ed to make record­ing police encoun­ters ille­gal but they sure­ly weren’t the first to try. Some of these restric­tions don’t look like laws but instead a mis­de­meanor. Take Amy Koopman for exam­ple. Koopman, a white woman, went on Facebook live in 2018 to record an inter­ac­tion between Robbinsdale police and two Black men. She was only one of many peo­ple who crowd­ed around the inter­sec­tion, wait­ing anx­ious­ly to see if the police would fire at the two as their guns were drawn.

The ACLU took on Koopman’s law­suit and demand­ed the pol­i­cy reforms must include Robbinsdale police acknowl­edg­ing that it is in fact legal to be record­ed by cit­i­zens. They must also be sub­ject to dis­ci­pline if they try to retal­i­ate against those who do so by slap­ping them with a mis­de­meanor like they did Koopman.

Koopman stands by her actions and said in a state­ment she hopes “this puts oth­er police depart­ments on notice that there are cit­i­zens who are film­ing them.” Boy, I tell ya. There are plen­ty of traf­fic stop videos I see come across my time­line and as soon as that offi­cer sees they’re being record­ed, they become tense and some­times hostile.

Video record­ing is pret­ty much the only way to catch evi­dence offi­cial mis­con­duct. Though, the proof itself isn’t enough some­times to bring about accountability.

This is what we mean when we talk about this dis­gust­ing racist soci­ety in which even the laws they pass are enforced dif­fer­ent­ly based n the col­or of peo­ple’s skin.
It is a despi­ca­ble and nau­se­at­ing sys­tem of deceit, col­lu­sion and complicity.

By Trone Dowd

Marc Wilson — the Black man con­vict­ed for shoot­ing a 17-year-old in Georgia, despite claims of self-defense — will spend a decade in prison. 

Judge Ronnie Thompson hand­ed down the max­i­mum sen­tence for felony invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter on Tuesday, although Wilson will be cred­it­ed for his time spent await­ing tri­al. The deci­sion brings clo­sure to more than two years of lit­i­ga­tion in a case wide­ly seen as a test for Black Americans’ right to “stand their ground.”

The 23-year-old Georgia native was con­vict­ed on Aug. 31 for the death of Haley Hutcheson. The judge decid­ed against invok­ing a pro­vi­sion of Georgia law which allowed him to sen­tence Wilson as if the charge was a mis­de­meanor instead of a felony, as many of Wilson’s sup­port­ers had hoped.

Wilson said that he was harassed, called racial epi­thets, and near­ly run off the road in his car by three male teens in a pick­up truck on June 14, 2020. Fearing for his life and that of his then-girl­friend who was sit­ting in the pas­sen­ger seat, Wilson fired his legal­ly-owned hand­gun at the truck hop­ing to scare them off. 

But as he found out a day lat­er, one of his three shots struck and killed Hutcheson, who he didn’t know was sit­ting in the vehi­cle. He even­tu­al­ly turned him­self in to police and was charged with felony mur­der and aggra­vat­ed assault.

“I would like you to remem­ber that Marc Wilson saved my life that night,” Wilson’s ex-girl­friend Emma Rigdon told the judge Tuesday. “I tru­ly believe that if he didn’t do what he did, we would’ve both lost our lives that night. Marc is not the rea­son Haley is not here.”

Georgia is one of 36 so-called “stand your ground” states where a per­son can use dead­ly force when­ev­er they rea­son­ably fear for their life. Defense attor­neys for Wilson tried to claim the defense in the lead-up to the tri­al, but the effort ulti­mate­ly fell short, lead­ing to ques­tions about the law’s fair­ness. A 2020 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that between 2005 and 2010, just 11 per­cent of stand your ground cas­es involv­ing a Black shoot­er were seen as jus­ti­fied, com­pared to 45 per­cent of cas­es involv­ing a Black vic­tim and a white shooter. 

The dis­par­i­ty in the appli­ca­tion of the law has been wide­ly crit­i­cized for near­ly a decade, par­tic­u­lar­ly after George Zimmerman was acquit­ted after shoot­ing and killing Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman claimed self-defense because he feared for his life, even though he ini­ti­at­ed con­tact with the 17-year-old. 

In the weeks lead­ing up to Wilson’s sen­tenc­ing, his sup­port­ers open­ly opposed his guilty ver­dict. For one, they argued state pros­e­cu­tors only brought the manslaugh­ter charge to ensure a con­vic­tion in the late stages of the tri­al. While Wilson was ulti­mate­ly found not guilty on both the felony mur­der and aggra­vat­ed assault charges he orig­i­nal­ly faced, the manslaugh­ter charge was brought before the jury dur­ing deliberation. 

They also argued that the judge failed to pro­vide the jury with all of the pos­si­ble less­er charges to con­sid­er. They say the jury should have been allowed to con­sid­er mis­de­meanor invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, which car­ries a penal­ty of up to just one year in prison.

While Tuesday’s sen­tenc­ing presents a dis­ap­point­ing out­come for many of Wilson’s sup­port­ers, the case might not be over just yet. Wilson’s lead defense attor­ney Francys Johnson told VICE News last week that he and his col­leagues were pre­pared to appeal to a high­er court if Wilson was sen­tenced to sig­nif­i­cant time.

“The polit­i­cal pres­sure has been on from Day One to lynch Marc Wilson for the death of Haley Hutcheson. We’re going to con­tin­ue to fight for this young man at each stage,” Johnson said.

A Minnesota coun­ty approved a $1.5 mil­lion set­tle­ment for eight non­white guards who were banned from inter­act­ing with or even being on the same floor as Derek Chauvin.

The eight non­white cor­rec­tions offi­cers who were banned from inter­act­ing with dis­graced cop Derek Chauvin because of their race have received a $1.455 mil­lion set­tle­ment in a dis­crim­i­na­tion lawsuit.

The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners in Minnesota approved the set­tle­ment Tuesday, accord­ing to the gov­ern­ing body, putting an end to the law­suit filed by the defen­dants, who iden­ti­fy as Black, Hispanic, mixed-race, and Pacific Islander.

“We are deeply sor­ry for the trau­ma you expe­ri­enced and the ongo­ing harm this racist inci­dent caused,” board of com­mis­sion­ers Chair Trista MatasCastillo said in a state­ment. “We rec­og­nize this apol­o­gy will nev­er undo the anguish and dis­tress you’ve gone through as a result.”

The law­suit stems from May 29, 2020, the day Chauvin was final­ly tak­en into cus­tody, four days after mur­der­ing George Floyd in Minneapolis. One of the defen­dants, Devin Sullivan, a Black offi­cer who reg­u­lar­ly processed high-pro­file inmates, said that a supe­ri­or, Superintendent Steve Lydon, stopped him from pat­ting Chauvin down when he arrived at the jail. Lydon told Sullivan he didn’t want the offi­cer “doing any­thing he would not nor­mal­ly do,” and removed Sullivan from his post, replac­ing him with two white officers.

Lydon then ordered that all cor­rec­tions offi­cers of col­or were barred from inter­act­ing with Chauvin, and even pro­hib­it­ed them from going to the 5^th floor, where he was being held, accord­ing to the lawsuit. 

The law­suit also claimed that Chauvin appeared to receive spe­cial treat­ment from the white offi­cers who were allowed to enter his floor in the ear­ly days of his time in jail. Two of the plain­tiffs said they saw cor­rec­tions offi­cers enter­ing Chauvin’s cell on secu­ri­ty cam­eras, com­fort­ing him with pats on the back and even let­ting him use a cellphone.

County lead­ers con­demned Lydon’s actions, call­ing them “racist, heinous, high­ly dis­re­spect­ful, and com­plete­ly out of line.”

At the time, Lydon told local news out­lets that he barred the offi­cers from inter­act­ing with Chauvin because he felt a duty to “pro­tect and sup­port employ­ees who may have been trau­ma­tized” by his actions. Lydon was demot­ed from his posi­tion as super­in­ten­dent after the law­suit was filed. 

“The courage of these eight offi­cers can­not be over­stat­ed,” Lucas Kaster, one of the attor­neys for the cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, said in a state­ment. “During an unprece­dent­ed time in our com­mu­ni­ty, the offi­cers took the bold action to step for­ward and speak out against the seg­re­ga­tion and racism they experienced.”

To the plain­tiffs, MatasCastillo said, “No one ever should have ques­tioned your abil­i­ty to per­form your job based on the col­or of your skin.”

In addi­tion to announc­ing the set­tle­ment, the board asked that the sheriff’s office to “take cor­rec­tive action” regard­ing Lydon’s con­tin­ued employ­ment, though it stopped short of ask­ing for his termination. 

The Ramsey County Sheriff’s office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

Chauvin was found guilty of mur­der and sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter for kneel­ing on Floyd’s neck for more than nine min­utes in front of a Minneapolis con­ve­nience store. Earlier this year he also plead­ed guilty to fed­er­al charges of vio­lat­ing Floyd’s civ­il rights. He’s cur­rent­ly serv­ing his 22-year sen­tence in fed­er­al prison.

By Trone Dowd

The North Carolina sher­iff who called his Black col­leagues “bas­tards” and threat­ened to fire them when he took office in 2019 was sus­pend­ed from office by a judge’s order on Tuesday.

Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene, a Republican, has been tem­porar­i­ly removed from his posi­tion until a hear­ing deter­min­ing whether he’ll be per­ma­nent­ly removed is held, on Oct. 24. Greene’s sus­pen­sion was request­ed by Columbus District Attorney Jon David Tuesday, and was grant­ed by Superior Court Judge Douglas Sasser, as first report­ed by local NBC affil­i­ate WECT.

The sus­pen­sion fol­lows sev­er­al days of the Columbus County com­mu­ni­ty demand­ing his resignation.

“There can be no ques­tion that the use of racist lan­guage, direct­ed at all offi­cers of col­or under your com­mand, is con­duct prej­u­di­cial to the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, which brings the Office of Sheriff into dis­re­pute,” David, who’s also a Republican, wrote in his request. “My hope is that you rec­og­nize the harm your state­ments have caused and that you will make the hon­or­able deci­sion to resign.”

Greene made the com­ments in February 2019, just four months after he ran against the county’s first Black head of coun­ty law enforce­ment, for­mer Sheriff Lewis Hatcher. The race was an extreme­ly close one, with Greene win­ning by 34 votes. The tight elec­tion led to months of lit­i­ga­tion to deter­mine the win­ner, dur­ing which Greene sus­pect­ed that Black mem­bers of the depart­ment he was elect­ed to lead were try­ing to secret­ly under­mine him with unspec­i­fied rumors. 

Greene vent­ed his frus­tra­tions over these rumors in phone calls to then inter­im Sheriff Jason Soles, who served as head of the sheriff’s office until a win­ner was determined. 

“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of these Black bas­tards,” Greene told Soles dur­ing one six-and-a-half-minute con­ver­sa­tion. “I’m going to clean house and be done with it. And we’ll start from there.”

“We’ll cut the snake’s head fuck­ing off. Period,” Greene said, in ref­er­ence to Sgt. Melvin Campbell, a Black offi­cer he’d worked with for 30 years before join­ing the Columbus sheriff’s office. “And Melvin Campbell is as big a snake as Lewis Hatcher ever dared to be. Every Black that I know, you need to fire him to start with. He’s a snake.”

Greene didn’t real­ize Soles was record­ing the conversation. 

“And I knew right then, I was like, ‘Wow, this is com­ing from the sher­iff,’” Soles, who is chal­leng­ing Greene for his seat this November, told WECT.

Last Wednesday, Greene adamant­ly denied hav­ing any racial ani­mos­i­ty toward his fel­low offi­cers. The next day, he dou­bled down on the denial, sig­nal­ing he had no plans to step down from his post, despite calls for his removal.

“I have not resigned as the Sheriff of Columbus County. I will con­tin­ue to serve no mat­ter the alle­ga­tions or rumors,” he wrote Thursday.

The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for comment.

The pop­u­la­tion of Columbus County is 30 per­cent Black, accord­ing to the U.S. Census.​Both the North Carolina NAACP and the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union called for Greene’s removal, as well as a review of all the work he’s done since tak­ing office in 2019.

“Columbus County, and in par­tic­u­lar its Black res­i­dents, deserve bet­ter,” the orga­ni­za­tions said in a joint state­ment. “To restore dig­ni­ty and con­fi­dence in the office of the Columbus County Sheriff, we demand a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion of all the activ­i­ties con­duct­ed by his offi­cers since the begin­ning of Sheriff Greene’s tenure – by all rel­e­vant author­i­ties — includ­ing the State Board of inves­ti­ga­tion and the fed­er­al government.”

If I have to explain that your dif­fer­ent skin col­or, the way you talk, the things you have, and where you live do not make you bet­ter than some­one else, just dif­fer­ent, maybe you are inferior.
If I have to explain that God made Fish of dif­fer­ent col­ors, shapes, and sizes and that he made flow­ers, some with thorns, of dif­fer­ent col­ors, oth­er­wise, they would all be just bush­es, that he made them with dif­fer­ent fra­grances in his wisdom.
That he cre­at­ed a cor­nu­copia of col­ors and sizes, shapes, and vari­a­tions to make this world inter­est­ing and fun, not unin­ter­est­ing and dull…
If I have to explain all of that to a human being or any group of humans who are sup­posed to be the most intel­li­gent of God’s cre­ations, then maybe we need to revis­it the idea of what con­sti­tutes intelligence.
No, Sir, Madam, you are not bet­ter, just dif­fer­ent. If all of that is out­side your abil­i­ty to grasp, you are infe­ri­or, not superior.

White racism is per­va­sive in America because the con­ver­sa­tions are being held around the periph­ery and not direct­ly address­ing the can­cer­ous tumor that con­tin­ues to eat away at the nation.
Whites who enjoy the priv­i­leges of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism are reluc­tant and, in most cas­es, refuse to address the issue because they are so used to the perks and priv­i­leges of racism they do not want to give them up. Some don’t even know they are enjoy­ing them.
They will tell you out­right that their ances­tors did not own slaves or that they arrived in America long after slav­ery was abol­ished. Hence, they bear no respon­si­bil­i­ty for what hap­pened before their ances­tors arrived.
Racism is, as I have said repeat­ed­ly, a bad case of igno­rance and illit­er­a­cy, and there is only one cure for that igno­rance, a con­tin­ued edu­ca­tion­al approach.
If you are white in America and you are not stopped and beat­en or mur­dered by police, you are enjoy­ing the fruits of white priv­i­lege. If you live in com­mu­ni­ties designed to keep Blacks out, com­mu­ni­ties with bet­ter roads, bet­ter schools, clean drink­ing water, bet­ter hos­pi­tals and fire ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ties with­out bus depots or huge penal insti­tu­tions, and com­mu­ni­ties in which your chil­dren are not hound­ed by race sol­diers who mur­der them, you are enjoy­ing white privilege.
If you can get a busi­ness loan from a bank or cheat the gov­ern­ment out of tax­es and flaunt it, you are ben­e­fit­ing from white privilege.

Blacks, for their part, will nev­er achieve the desired result, which is to end racism in America. For starters, they are too cute for their own damn good when they talk about the issue. The short­est dis­tance between two points is a straight line. Blacks love to have con­ver­sa­tions about hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions, and they love to have con­fer­ences to deter­mine when and where to have con­fer­ences. Substantively, hard­ly any­thing gets done in the process. Additionally, African-Americans would rather crit­i­cize those who step for­ward to lead than deal with the hell they have lived under for hun­dreds of years.
For starters, racism is not a virus that pops up; and no one knows where it came from or how to find a vaccine.
Racism in America exists because those who ben­e­fit from it want it to con­tin­ue. So let us stop with the niceties and address the issue of racism in America.
Racism is an igno­rant and divi­sive con­cept pro­mul­gat­ed in America by white peo­ple against Black peo­ple and oth­er races.
It is an idea that cre­ates set asides for Caucasians at the expense of every­one else.
There.……
Unless we stop pre­tend­ing that there are no per­pe­tra­tors, only vic­tims, we will nev­er solve this hor­ri­ble dilem­ma. There must be sus­tained pres­sure applied to this igno­ble prac­tice and its prac­ti­tion­ers, fail­ing which the cor­ro­sive can­cer of white racism will be around a hun­dred years from now with our great-grand­chil­dren cry­ing out for help as this gen­er­a­tion is.
Martin Luther King, the most vis­i­ble fig­ure to emerge from the Civil Rights strug­gles of the 1960s before his pass­ing, warned Blacks about ‘the fierce urgency of now.’
In seek­ing to dri­ve home the need for rad­i­cal and imme­di­ate change, King said dur­ing his I have a dream speech in 1963, “We have also come to this hal­lowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the lux­u­ry of cool­ing off or to take the tran­quil­iz­ing drug of grad­u­al­ism.

As much as I am dis­gust­ed by whites who ben­e­fit from racism, I am dou­bly dis­gust­ed by Blacks who use cute lan­guage to describe white racism. Racism, as it stands in America, is a con­struct of oppres­sion cre­at­ed by white peo­ple to oppress Blacks and oth­er races.
There I said it, and it was­n’t hard at all. Unless this sub­ject is broached frontal­ly, as I have done here, white per­pe­tra­tors will sniv­el and bul­ly their way out of tak­ing responsibility.
Laws can­not change peo­ple’s hearts, but it does change behav­ior. Laws go a long way in curb­ing bad prac­tices, but how can the prob­lem of racism which is writ­ten and anchored into the laws passed by leg­is­la­tures, be remediated?
If I had the answer to that ques­tion, I’d be a wealthy man, but I don’t.
The sad real­i­ty is that racism is a white con­struct designed to ele­vate and keep the Caucasian race above all oth­er races and keep it there regard­less of the con­se­quence to the oppressed races.
It is real­ly as sim­ple as that and should be addressed from that rather sim­plis­tic per­spec­tive. We lose sight of the prob­lem when we attach sophistry to the prob­lem-which is what Blacks love to do. We love to hear our­selves talk, so we add flour­ish and sophistry to the con­ver­sa­tions, which then become about peo­ple show­cas­ing their edu­ca­tion rather than address­ing the problems.

White peo­ple who enjoy the fruits of racism are con­tent to see Black folks jock­ey­ing to show who is the most ver­bose and elo­quent because they know noth­ing will be changed by ver­bosi­ty or eloquence.
Racism is not going any­where in America; it was birthed in the repub­lic; it is drilled into each gen­er­a­tion of young white chil­dren because their par­ents believe they have a god-giv­en right to the land they stole, and that’s the bot­tom line.
Every oth­er race must assert its own right to agency, auton­o­my, and self-deter­mi­na­tion with­out flinch­ing or ced­ing an inch of space.
Unfortunately for the repub­lic, there are some who would rather sub­ju­gate them­selves to sec­ond-class cit­i­zen­ship while they await their turn at being assim­i­lat­ed into the racist con­struct of American whiteness.
Hello Raphael Cruz, Marco Rubio, et al.

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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.

Amnesty International final­ly found its voice against a large and pow­er­ful coun­try. Speaking these truths must have been dif­fi­cult for the British-based group that has been aggres­sive in point­ing to per­ceived human rights abus­es in coun­tries with Black and Brown pop­u­la­tions but has large­ly remained silent on worse abus­es in the United States and Europe.
Even when it does speak to the gross incon­sis­ten­cies in the US immi­gra­tion Agencies deal­ing with peo­ple from Haiti, the Agency seems to have more to say about the plight of the poor Haitians than it does about the pow­er­ful United States and its racist policies(mb)

By Nyamekye Daniel

The inhu­mane treat­ment and mass depor­ta­tions of Haitian migrants are anoth­er chap­ter in America’s his­to­ry of anti-Black racism, a new report by Amnesty International finds.

The report was pub­lished on the one-year anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of viral pho­tos and videos that show U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents fling­ing reins at the Black migrants near the U.S.-Mexico bor­der in Del Rio, Texas. The CPD con­clud­ed in July that none of the Haitians were inten­tion­al­ly struck by Border Patrol agents, but it was exces­sive use of force.

The International Amnesty report released on Sept. 22 is based on inter­views with 24 Haitians deport­ed to the island nation between September 2021 and January 2022. It also includes tes­ti­mo­ny from psy­chol­o­gists, aca­d­e­m­ic experts, lawyers, and his­tor­i­cal evidence.“Our research pro­vides ample evi­dence that sys­temic racism is embed­ded with­in the US immi­gra­tion sys­tem, as described by Haitian asy­lum seek­ers inter­viewed for this report,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas direc­tor at Amnesty International.

Amnesty International is a human rights non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in the U.K. The report shows that the U.S. immi­gra­tion poli­cies used to “inter­cept, detain and remove” Haitians since 1970 go against inter­na­tion­al law and are root­ed in anti-Black racism. It is fit­ting­ly titled “They Did Not Treat Us Like People: Race and Migration-Related Torture and Other Ill-Treatment of Haitians Seeking Safety in the USA.”

Since the bor­der inci­dent in September, the U.S. has expelled more than 25,000 Haitians under President Donald Trump’s Title 42 invo­ca­tion. As part of fed­er­al pub­lic health law, the pro­vi­sion requires the depor­ta­tion of asy­lum seek­ers from coun­tries with com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion invoked Title 42 in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. President Joe Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion car­ried out more depor­ta­tions under the pro­vi­sion, however.

“They have also con­tin­ued to evoke the evils of slav­ery by shack­ling and hand­cuff­ing Black Haitians onboard expul­sion flights, inflict­ing fur­ther pain and men­tal suf­fer­ing upon them that amounts to tor­ture under inter­na­tion­al human rights law,” Guevara-Rosas said.

Amnesty International said deport­ing Haitian migrants in hand­cuffs and shack­les caused them “severe psy­cho­log­i­cal pain and suf­fer­ing due to its asso­ci­a­tion with slav­ery and crim­i­nal­i­ty.” It was built on the treat­ment near Del Rio, where agents on horse­back accost­ed Haitian fam­i­lies, which many crit­i­cized as rem­i­nis­cent of slav­ery patrols. The orga­ni­za­tion adds that even though the Biden admin­is­tra­tion inves­ti­gat­ed the inci­dent, they did not speak to the migrants who were impact­ed, “sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­min­ing” the investigation’s credibility.

The report also shows that Haitians had a lack of access to suf­fi­cient food, health care, infor­ma­tion, inter­preters and lawyers dur­ing the process and in deten­tion cen­ters. Children as young as 14 days old were detained. Some were sep­a­rat­ed from their par­ents “in explic­it vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law that pro­tects children’s best interests.”

Someone asked me a few days ago what I thought about the sit­u­a­tion in Iran. I told him hon­est­ly I had no opin­ion on what was hap­pen­ing there because I do not trust west­ern media enti­ties to be objec­tive in their reporting.
My com­ment was in no way an endorse­ment of the Iranian theoc­ra­cy, far from it. My response was gen­uine­ly based on the fact that, but for the Aljazeera net­work, all of the report­ing would pre­dictably be anti ‑Iranian.
Even though they claim to have the inter­est of the peo­ple at heart.
The Islamic State, too, did not trust west­ern media report­ing, Reuters reported.

• British ambas­sador sum­moned over cov­er­age by London-based media.
• Norwegian envoy called in over ‘inter­ven­tion­ist’ speak.
• Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian also crit­i­cized U.S. sup­port for “riot­ers.”

Iran sum­moned the British and Norwegian ambas­sadors over what it called inter­fer­ence and hos­tile media cov­er­age of the nation­wide unrest trig­gered by the death of a woman detained by the moral­i­ty police.
Those who both­er to read what I have to say may be won­der­ing where I am going with this.
The sad real­i­ty is that protests erupt­ed in Iran because of one Government agency that has been the cen­tral agency of oppres­sion all across the globe.
The Police!!!

It was the Iranian police that arrest­ed a young woman. A 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini, who lat­er died in deten­tion after being arrest­ed by police enforc­ing the Islamic Republic’s strict restric­tions on wom­en’s dress, has turned into the biggest protests in years, Reuters reported.
Okay, the idea that there would be a moral­i­ty police defies log­ic, and I am sure many peo­ple did not even know that there was such a thing in the Islamic Republic.

And so it must shock the con­science of peo­ple in west­ern nations like Great Britain, the United States, Canada, etc., that in a coun­try far away on the con­ti­nent of Asia, there is such a thing as a ‘moral­i­ty police. And that the moral­i­ty police could actu­al­ly detain a cit­i­zen lead­ing to her even­tu­al death.
Oh God, how shocking.
The sad real­i­ty is right here in the United States, a Texas cop stopped a young woman, 28-year-old Sandra Bland, because, accord­ing to him, she failed to ini­ti­ate her turn sig­nal before turn­ing. At the very worst, a minor infrac­tion that should result in a cita­tion result­ed in Ms. Bland, a black woman, being arrest­ed by a moron­ic white cop. He first berat­ed and man­han­dled her, esca­lat­ed the stop, then arrest­ed Ms.Bland.
She would be found dead in a jail cell days lat­er. Are you still shocked at what’s hap­pen­ing in Iran?
What is hap­pen­ing in Iran is a direct indi­ca­tor of the val­ue the Iranian peo­ple place on the lives of their fel­low cit­i­zens. Respect is a com­mod­i­ty most police offi­cers do not have for the black com­mu­ni­ty in the United States.

Eric Garner was choked to death by a mur­der­ous NYPD thug Daniel Pantaleo; his crime sell­ing loose cig­a­rettes. A cop mur­dered Philando Castille while he sat in his car strapped in with his seat­belt with his girl­friend and their minor female child. Mister Castile, a reg­is­tered gun own­er, com­mit­ted no crime and did noth­ing wrong.
Breonna Taylor was mur­dered in her home by police who invad­ed her home and shot her to death; she com­mit­ted no crime.
Elijah McClain was mur­dered by Colorado police while walk­ing down the street; mis­ter Mccalain com­mit­ted no crime.
In Minneapolis, Daniel Wright was stopped by police on a war­rant. Mister Wright was shot by a cop Kim Potter who told inves­ti­ga­tors she thought she was taz­ing him.
Andre Hill was mur­dered in Columbus, Ohio, by police as he emerged from the garage of a friend’s house hold­ing a cell phone in his hand. Police shot miser Hill and did not ren­der aid to him as he lay dying and bled out for five(5) min­utes and eleven (11) seconds.

In Tacoma, Washington, state police slammed a patrol vehi­cle into 33-year-old Manuel Ellis and then beat him mer­ci­less­ly until he died. Mister Ellis com­mit­ted no crime and was walk­ing home from the store.
In Atlanta, Georgia, Rashaad Brookes was mur­dered by police, shot in the back after he was accost­ed at a fast food estab­lish­ment, and accused of hav­ing too much to drink.
In Rochester, New York, Daniel Prude was mur­dered by police. Prude, who was naked at the time he was killed, was expe­ri­enc­ing an emo­tion­al break­down. Police arrived and, in attempt­ing to restrain him, slammed his head into the pave­ment and then asphyx­i­at­ed him, accord­ing to the med­ical examiner.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, George Floyd was mur­dered by police, his crime alleged­ly pass­ing a fake twen­ty-dol­lar bill in a con­ve­nience store. Floyd’s mur­der would result in the largest social jus­tice upheaval in the coun­try in generations.
Atatiana Jefferson was mur­dered by police who shot through her win­dow, killing her in her own home in the pres­ence of her 8‑year-old nephew.

Police mur­dered Aura Rosser in her own home; she com­mit­ted no crime. Stephon Clark was mur­dered by police who lied that they thought he was hold­ing a gun after fir­ing more the 20 bul­lets into his body. The 22-year-old was hold­ing a cell phone.
Police mur­dered twen­ty-six-year-old Botham Jean as he sat in his apart­ment eat­ing ice cream. He com­mit­ted no crime.
Police mur­dered thir­ty-sev­en-year-old Alton Sterling in Louisiana as he sold CDs. A cop, Blane Salamoni, threat­ened to kill him, and he then tased and fired six bul­lets into his body. After killing mis­ter Sterling, the cop con­tin­ued to berate him, call­ing him a stu­pid moth­er fucker.
In Charlotte, North Carolina police mur­dered Fonisha Fonville after they were called to her home by her part­ner; instead of help­ing, police shot her to death, then claimed she had a knife.
Police mur­dered 50-year-old Michelle Casseaux after they were called to her home because she had a men­tal episode; instead of help­ing, they shot and killed her.
In New York, police mur­dered Akai Gurley as he walked down the stair­ways in his girl­friend’s build­ing; he had com­mit­ted no crime. 

Gabriella Nevarez, a 22-year-old, was mur­dered by police in Sacramento, California, who shot her after they pulled her over and her car ran into one of their squad cars.
In Cleveland, Ohio, police mur­dered 12-year-old Tamir Rice while the 12-year-old boy played with a toy gun in a park. After they admin­is­tered the fatal shot to the 12-year ‑old Tamir Rice, they wres­tled his 14-year-old sis­ter to the ground, cuffed her, and placed her into the back of the squad car. They offered no first aid to the dying child.
I could go on all day, and I would not even begin to scratch the sur­face of the num­ber of mur­der police com­mit against black peo­ple in this country.
John Crawford mur­dered by police.
Malcolm Lawson. Patrick Dorismond. George Bibbins. Prince Jones. Anthony Lee. Roger Owensby jr. Timothy Thomas. Orlando Barlow. Michael Pleasance. Albert Spruill. Ousmane Zongo. Nathaniel Jones. Timothy Stansbury. Jashon Bryant. Henry Glover. James Brissette. Ronald Madison. Vincent Smith. Sean Bell. David Antjuan Ware. Brandon Washington. Anthony Smashum. DeAunta Farrow. Shawn Watson. Khiel Coppin. Tarika Watson. Edward Lamont Hunt. Frederick Devon McAllister.….….….…names too numer­ous to document.
This is Genocide!!!!

The sin­gu­lar theme that runs through this essay is mur­der by police. All across the United States, these mur­ders are exe­cut­ed, and yet in many cas­es, the per­pe­tra­tors of the vio­lent mur­ders face no con­se­quence. Not at the state lev­el, not at the Federal level.
The Washington Post start­ed keep­ing records of police killings in recent years due to nation­al out­cry and because the Federal gov­ern­ment can­not be both­ered with doc­u­ment­ing police killings. The Post report­ed that near­ly 250 women have been
fatal­ly shot by police since 2015.

The wan­ton mur­der of men and women of col­or in the United States is a seri­ous cri­sis that requires urgent reme­di­al action. Any oth­er race expe­ri­enc­ing that lev­el of state aggres­sion would cast this cri­sis in geno­ci­dal terms. The sad real­i­ty is that because Blacks and American blacks lack the cohe­sion and sense of togeth­er­ness required to put a stop to it, this sec­ond geno­cide con­tin­ues unabated.
To some degree, many American Blacks would rather side with their ene­mies against their own peo­ple or vil­i­fy the peo­ple who are stand­ing side by side with them because they are jealous.
According to the data col­lect­ed by the Post, 89 of the women shot by police were killed in their own homes, not on the pub­lic streets. This data direct­ly speaks to the fact that even in the inner sanc­tum of their own homes, our women are not safe from the maraud­ing thugs who roam around on our dime with the full pow­er of the states, killing and maim­ing whom they choose.
According to the Post, more than 5,600 peo­ple have been killed over­all by police since it began keep­ing records.
Though this num­ber is aston­ish­ing, it is not a com­pre­hen­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the actu­al death toll exact­ed by police on com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in the name of law enforce­ment.https://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​g​r​a​p​h​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​w​o​m​en/

For rea­sons unknown to this writer, this pan­dem­ic of police killings has not caught the atten­tion of the Human Rights Agencies that have a lot to say about police killings in small­er vio­lent nations, even though most of them are based right here in the United States.
So no, my friend, I am not pay­ing atten­tion to the sin­gle death in Iran; there is far more here for me to con­cen­trate on.

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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.

But a state grand jury last year indict­ed three offi­cers and two para­medics on manslaugh­ter and reck­less homi­cide charges in McClain’s death after the case drew renewed atten­tion fol­low­ing the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It became a ral­ly­ing cry dur­ing the nation­al reck­on­ing over racism and police brutality.

The five accused have not yet entered pleas and their lawyers have not com­ment­ed pub­licly on the charges.

In the updat­ed report, com­plet­ed in July 2021, Dr. Stephen Cina, a pathol­o­gist, con­clud­ed that the ket­a­mine dosage giv­en to McClain, which was high­er than rec­om­mend­ed for some­one his size, “was too much for this indi­vid­ual and it result­ed in an over­dose, even though his blood ket­a­mine lev­el was con­sis­tent with a ‘ther­a­peu­tic’ blood concentration.”
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​u​r​d​e​r​-​g​a​n​g​-​a​c​t​i​v​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​l​l​-​p​a​r​t​-​o​f​-​n​o​r​m​a​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​a​c​r​o​s​s​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​ts/

He said he could not rule out that changes in McClain’s blood chem­istry, like an increase in lac­tic acid, due to his exer­tion while being restrained by police con­tributed to his death but con­clud­ed there was no evi­dence that injuries inflict­ed by police caused his death.

“I believe that Mr. McClain would most like­ly be alive but for the admin­is­tra­tion of ket­a­mine,” said Cina, who not­ed that body cam­era footage shows McClain becom­ing “extreme­ly sedat­ed” with­in a few min­utes of being giv­en the drug.

Cina acknowl­edged that oth­er rea­son­able pathol­o­gists with dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence and train­ing may have labeled such a death, while in police cus­tody, as a homi­cide or acci­dent, but that he believes the appro­pri­ate clas­si­fi­ca­tion is undetermined.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, attor­ney for McClain’s moth­er, Sheneen McClain, declined a request for comment.

Dr. Carl Wigren, a foren­sic pathol­o­gist in Washington state, ques­tioned the report’s focus on ket­a­mine, say­ing all the avail­able evi­dence — includ­ing a high­ly crit­i­cal inde­pen­dent review of McClain’s death com­mis­sioned by Aurora last year — point to McClain dying as a result of com­pres­sion­al asphyx­ia, a type of suf­fo­ca­tion, from offi­cers putting pres­sure on his body while restrain­ing him.

He was struck by one pas­sage in the city’s review cit­ing the ambu­lance company’s report that its crew found McClain lying on the ground on his stom­ach, his arms hand­cuffed behind his back, his tor­so and legs held down, with at least three offi­cers on top of him.

That scene was not cap­tured on body cam­era footage, the report said, but much of what hap­pened between police was not because the offi­cers’ cam­eras came off soon after McClain was approached. The cam­eras did con­tin­ue to record where they fell and cap­tured peo­ple talking.

Just because McClain, who said he couldn’t breathe, could be heard mak­ing some state­ments on the footage, does not mean he was able to ful­ly breathe, Wigren said. Ketamine, which slows breath­ing, could have just exac­er­bat­ed McClain’s con­di­tion, but Wigren does not think it caused his death.

A for­mer police offi­cer in a small Texas town was found not guilty of mur­der Thursday in the slay­ing of a Black man who offered a hand­shake as the offi­cer arrived to respond to a call about a fight at a con­ve­nience store. The Hunt County jury delib­er­at­ed for more than five hours before acquit­ting Shaun Lucas of the death of Jonathan Price.
Lucas was an offi­cer in Wolfe City where Price, who had played foot­ball for Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, was a city employ­ee, per­son­al train­er and body­builder with dreams of start­ing his own fit­ness cen­ter. Lucas was charged with mur­der­ing Price the night of Oct. 3, 2020, and fired from the police force five days later.
Wolfe City, about 70 miles (96 kilo­me­ters) north­east of Dallas and near the Texas-Oklahoma bor­der, has a pop­u­la­tion of about 1,500 people.

It was nev­er clear from wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny what trig­gered the fight between Price and anoth­er man. Nicholas Malone tes­ti­fied that he, his broth­er and Price had been drink­ing after the funer­al of Malone’s father when they decid­ed to go to the con­ve­nience store to buy cig­a­rettes. The three lin­gered at the store when Malone heard glass break, and he saw Price get­ting into a scuf­fle with anoth­er man. “My broth­er and I tried to pull them apart,” Malone said, adding that the argu­ment went on “for a few sec­onds” before the two were pulled apart, and every­one seemed to calm down before Lucas arrived.
When Lucas, who is white, answered the report of the fight, Price greet­ed him with an out­stretched hand and an apol­o­gy for the bro­ken glass. Lucas decid­ed Price was drunk and tried to detain him, but Price resist­ed. Lucas used a stun gun when Price approached, then shot Price when he reached for the stun gun, accord­ing to a police affi­davit.

Texas Rangers con­clud­ed that lethal force was not called for in the con­fronta­tion since Price was unarmed. Eleven wit­ness­es at the scene tes­ti­fied that Price was not angry or aggres­sive in his reac­tions, pros­e­cu­tor Steven Lilley remind­ed the Hunt County jury in Thursday’s clos­ing argu­ments. “He’s dead. He was killed that night,” Lilley said of Price. “If it wasn’t nec­es­sary, it was mur­der. Go back and find him guilty.”
Defense attor­ney Robert Rogers con­tend­ed that Lucas had no choice but to shoot Price in self-defense “because he was ter­ri­fied. That’s the only rea­son he fired his gun.”.
Lucas had been with the Wolfe City Police Department for a lit­tle less than six months when he shot Price, accord­ing to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records. His pri­or law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence had been work­ing as a jail­er with the Hunt County Sheriff’s Office for about five months.

I can’t say I feel sor­ry for the ignored male fig­ure that stood there wait­ing to shake the hand of the sym­bol of Black oppres­sion for hun­dreds of years. You get what yu deserve when you fail to rec­og­nize your worth and sub­se­quent­ly allow those who are beneath you to cause you to believe in them enough to stand in line to be touched by them.(MB)

The new king of the United Kingdom, who has been dodg­ing issues of insti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion and prej­u­dice, has made head­lines for seem­ing to snub a Black man griev­ing the loss of Charles’ moth­er, Queen Elizbeth II, who passed away on Thursday, Sept. 8,
Days after these claims of insti­tu­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion made head­lines, on Monday, Sept. 19, Britain’s new lead­ing monarch King Charles III went viral after some­one tweet­ed a video where he appears to shun a Black man in a crowd of white cit­i­zens hop­ing to shake his hand.
The clip, shared by @RamaboduObakeng on Twitter, has been viewed more than 8.4 mil­lion times since it was pub­lished. The user cap­tioned the post, “Black man, you are on your own.”

Thousands of peo­ple turned out to cel­e­brate the Queen in the Palace of Westminster Chapel, and the king and his son Prince William went out to shake hands with the peo­ple who were there to show their respect. The king shook all the white mourn­ers’ hands but skipped the man of color.
The Black man reached out his hand when the monarch was close to him. Charles looked away, try­ing to avoid the man’s face, despite the man con­tin­u­ing to reach out to him.

Some peo­ple com­pared Charles’ response that of the “Sesame Street” char­ac­ter Rosita inci­dent from ear­li­er in the sum­mer. It took place at the Sesame Place theme park on the out­skirts of Philadelphia when one of the adult cos­tumed actors play­ing the role of Rosita seemed to snub two lit­tle Black girls vying for her atten­tion dur­ing a parade. The inci­dent was caught on cell phone video and shared with the world via social media.

The con­tro­ver­sy comes after the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, an African-American mar­ried into the roy­al fam­i­ly, spoke about the dis­crim­i­na­tion she expe­ri­enced as the first bira­cial per­son to mar­ry into the senior branch of the British monarchy.

Markle, while not nam­ing names, has pre­vi­ous­ly spo­ken out about peo­ple being wor­ried about the com­plex­ion of her son before he was born.

The cur­rent hand­shake débâ­cle punc­tu­ates an ear­li­er hand­shake con­tro­ver­sy where sev­er­al refused to shake hands with Markle as she joined her hus­band, Prince Harry, and her in-laws, the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, as they greet­ed mourn­ers who gath­ered out­side of Windsor Castle in England to hon­or the late Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 10.

Still, many believe the King Charles inci­dent was not a snub but sim­ply a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty based on an over­whelm­ing demand to greet him.

One per­son on social media said, “King Charles III shook the hands of many black peo­ple on that day.”

Another per­son said, “He even­tu­al­ly acknowl­edged him by touch­ing him now, Nawa oh. Obviously, he was dis­tract­ed as he got to them but he did acknowl­edge him just like he did his neighbor.”

http://Another per­son said, “He even­tu­al­ly acknowl­edged him by touch­ing him now, Nawa oh. Obviously, he was dis­tract­ed as he got to them but he did acknowl­edge him just like he did his neighbor.”