Editor’s note

These indict­ments have kin­dled some hope in me for the Merrick Garland Justice Department, and at the same time, it should shine a light on some­thing that I have said repeat­ed­ly, local pros­e­cu­tors and attor­ney gen­er­als can­not be trust­ed to do the right thing when it comes to inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing police crimes. That includes Black prosecutors.
Far too often, we see pros­e­cu­tors who work close­ly with cops local­ly, or are afraid of police unions becom­ing the lag­ging edge rather than the lead­ing edge in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions of crim­i­nal cops.
The fact there is a fed­er­al indict­ment of these offi­cers demon­strates once again that this prac­tice of allow­ing local­ly taint­ed pros­e­cu­tors and attor­ney gen­er­als to be the final arbiters of whether crim­i­nal charges are war­rant­ed goes against the grain of com­mon sense.
It also demon­strates to Black folks that black-skinned folks are not always kin-folks.

Here we have a black-skinned folk, in actu­al­i­ty a coon, refus­ing to fol­low the law because he is a Trump stoolie, he is a dis­grace who should be boot­ed from office.(mb)

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

Four cur­rent and for­mer Louisville police offi­cers have been arrest­ed for their roles in a botched search war­rant that was exe­cut­ed at the home of Breonna Taylor and result­ed in her death. Kelly Goodlett, Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, and Brett Hankison face fed­er­al charges, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday morn­ing. The offi­cers were charged with civ­il rights offens­es, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al use of force, obstruc­tion, and con­spir­a­cy, Garland said. Garland said he spoke with Taylor’s fam­i­ly to noti­fy them of the arrests.

“I share but can­not imag­ine the grief of the fam­i­ly and loved ones of Breonna Taylor from events that result­ed in her death … Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” Garland said. Ben Crump, an attor­ney who spe­cial­izes in civ­il rights and has rep­re­sent­ed Taylor’s fam­i­ly, com­mend­ed the announce­ment of the charges.

“This day is about (Taylor’s moth­er Tamika Palmer), her fam­i­ly,” Crump said. “It’s about Breonna, and all the oth­er Breonnas across America. The Black women who have been denied jus­tice through­out the his­to­ry of this coun­try when they have been abused, assault­ed, mur­dered, raped, and dis­re­gard­ed. “Because of Breonna Taylor, we can say this is a day that Black women saw equal jus­tice in the United States of America.” A court record filed Thursday indi­cates Goodlett was charged with con­spir­a­cy. Conspiracy charges against Jaynes, anoth­er for­mer detec­tive, were also men­tioned in the court record. He was fired from the posi­tion in 2021

According to court doc­u­ments, both Goodlett and Jaynes know­ing­ly fal­si­fied an affi­davit to get a search war­rant for Breonna Taylor’s home where she was killed when police exe­cut­ing the search war­rant fired 32 total shots. Officers fired after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired at them with a legal­ly-owned gun because he thought they were intrud­ers break­ing into Taylor’s apart­ment. The court record alleges that both Goodlett and Jaynes put false and mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion in the affi­davit in order to get the war­rant. The war­rant was one of five obtained by inves­ti­ga­tors who were look­ing into poten­tial drug traf­fick­ing in Louisville, accord­ing to the Department of Justice. The pri­ma­ry tar­get of the inves­ti­ga­tion was Jamarcus Glover, a man who had been pre­vi­ous­ly arrest­ed for com­mit­ting drug offenses

Police doc­u­ments that alleged Taylor was con­nect­ed to drug crimes of her ex-boyfriend, Glover, were obtained by media out­lets. In the doc­u­ments, police out­lined their case for exe­cut­ing a no-knock war­rant at Taylor’s apart­ment, cit­ing jail­house phone calls and oth­er sur­veil­lance tying her to Glover and sus­pect­ed drug activ­i­ty. Glover indi­cat­ed in record­ed jail calls that Taylor was hold­ing mon­ey for him, but he said in a lat­er call from the jail that he didn’t under­stand why police would search her apart­ment. He said the only thing tying him to her house was “bonds,” an appar­ent ref­er­ence to pri­or bond pay­ments made for him by Taylor, accord­ing to the Courier-Journal. In an inter­view with the Courier-Journal, Glover said that the infor­ma­tion police used to tie Taylor to the drug activ­i­ty was mis­lead­ing and incorrect

The offi­cers who car­ried out the war­rant at Taylor’s home were not aware the infor­ma­tion had been fal­si­fied, accord­ing to the Department of Justice. Officials from the Department of Justice said Thursday that Goodlett and Jaynes alleged­ly con­spired to cov­er up the fact that they’d use false and mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion to get the war­rant. In nar­ra­tives list­ed in court records, around March 10 or 11, 2020, Jaynes sent Goodlett a draft of the affi­davit which claimed he ver­i­fied from a postal inspec­tor that illic­it pack­ages were being received at Taylor’s address. Court records allege that Goodlett knew the claim was false. “Despite know­ing that this alle­ga­tion was false, (Goodlett) failed to change the state­ment or object to it,” court records state. After Taylor’s death, Goodlett and Jaynes alleged­ly called, texted and met with each oth­er to dis­cuss the false infor­ma­tion and coör­di­nate a cov­er sto­ry, accord­ing to court records. The two met in a garage on the evening of May 17 and stat­ed they need­ed to “get on the same page because they could both go down for putting false infor­ma­tion in the Springfield Drive war­rant affi­davit.” After an inves­ti­ga­tion at the state lev­el, Hankison was pre­vi­ous­ly the only offi­cer charged over the shoot­ing. He was found not guilty on wan­ton endan­ger­ment charges. Garland said Thursday the Justice Department brings charges “when we believe sub­stan­tial fed­er­al inter­ests have not been vin­di­cat­ed and need to be vin­di­cat­ed.” Hankison and Jaynes had pre­vi­ous­ly been fired from the depart­ment pri­or to Thursday’s announce­ment. The Justice Department said the Louisville Metro Police Department is still under a fed­er­al civ­il inves­ti­ga­tion sep­a­rate from the charges announced Thursday.(From the Herald Leader)

Time and time again, police act like monsters to people of color and are allowed to walk away without consequences. A situation made possible by a system that was designed for them to do exactly what they are doing without consequence. The question for the parents of these children and those who love them is, what are they prepared to do to protect their loved ones since the system refuses ro stop this madness?

By Darrell Smith

A moth­er demand­ed answers Monday after she says her 11-year-old son was chased, tack­led and blood­ied by California State Fair offi­cers dur­ing the fair’s Kids Day. The inci­dent on Tuesday, July 19, brings up fresh alle­ga­tions of racism and exces­sive force from offi­cers. Elk Grove’s Cynthia Martin said at a news con­fer­ence just out­side the Cal Expo gates Monday her son was hors­ing around with friends out­side of a State Fair roller coast­er. That horse­play led fair police to chase down and injure the 11-year-old before ques­tion­ing him for more than 30 min­utes and forc­ing him to sign a no-tres­pass­ing agree­ment with­out his par­ents present. “My child is not the same. He’s with­drawn. He’s scared,” Martin said

Martin’s son stood near her side, his head bowed at times and his hands shoved deep into his jeans pock­ets. The fam­i­ly was accom­pa­nied by Tanya Faison of Black Lives Matter Sacramento and civ­il rights attor­ney Mark Merin. “He’s 11 years old. He’s a child. What makes him dif­fer­ent from any oth­er 11-year-old? I’ll tell you. He’s Black. A Black male,” Sacramento NAACP pres­i­dent Betty Williams told reporters. “It doesn’t mat­ter your age when it comes to soci­ety and law enforce­ment. You are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly and he should nev­er have been treat­ed this way.

Merin has filed a tort claim, pre­cur­sor to a fed­er­al civ­il law­suit against California State Fair. “He’s just a child. They brought him down by chok­ing him. They man­han­dled him and used force, so imme­di­ate­ly there’s false arrest,” Merin told reporters at Cal Expo. “… They obvi­ous­ly used exces­sive force. Then they took him out of the view of his moth­er which vio­lates her due process. This puts Cal Expo on notice that this is a big issue.” Faison is call­ing for offi­cers’ body cam­era and oth­er secu­ri­ty video footage. Williams plans to meet with fair executives

“There is noth­ing that val­i­dates grown men doing what they did to him. There’s no rea­son to tack­le a child,” Faison said. “Any lev­el of injury is unac­cept­able.” The inci­dent is the lat­est involv­ing State Fair law enforcement’s inter­ac­tions with young Black and brown fair­go­ers in recent years. In 2017, two eth­ni­cal­ly diverse groups of teenagers said they were racial­ly pro­filed by State Fair police dur­ing open­ing night before they were eject­ed from the grounds. One girl suf­fered a con­cus­sion and her thumb frac­tured in an encounter with officers

One of the exchanges in 2017, cap­tured on video, showed a 17-year-old girl tack­led to the ground by offi­cers. The girl tack­led by fair police believed she was tar­get­ed because she and her friends were Black. In an unre­lat­ed inci­dent at the same 2017 fair, a Black teen said police began record­ing him on a cell­phone cam­era after a fight between two oth­er teenagers, then fol­lowed him as he walked away. The offi­cer soon called addi­tion­al offi­cers, one of whom shoved him toward the exit. “This isn’t the first occa­sion I’ve been called to try to get jus­tice for some­one for an inci­dent at the State Fair,” Merin said

Martin’s son and a group of six friends were in line for a ride at the fair at the end of the fair’s Kids Day. The group was “horse­play­ing,” Cynthia Martin said, jock­ey­ing to be first in line for the ride. The gate for the ride was closed as rid­ers queued up, but Martin’s son leaped the gate to sit in the front seat of the ride ahead of his friends. A ride oper­a­tor kicked him off and told him to leave the ride, accord­ing to the family’s four-page claim against the fair. He rejoined his friends and was walk­ing with them toward the exit when he noticed they were being fol­lowed by sev­er­al officers.

“In the neigh­bor­hood we live in, most peo­ple don’t look like us. His friends don’t look like him. The oth­ers have blond hair and blue eyes or brown hair and brown eyes,” Martin said. The offi­cers did not approach his friends, she said. The 5‑foot‑3 boy was fright­ened and ran from the group. The offi­cers chased him down and tack­led him to the asphalt. He escaped the first tack­le and sprint­ed toward the gate and his moth­er, but offi­cers caught up to him. He was again tack­led to the ground and then pushed into a gate as fair patrons looked on. Officers car­ried the boy away to a secu­ri­ty trail­er and refused to let his moth­er inside, she said. “They slammed the door in my face. No child should be inter­ro­gat­ed by police with­out their par­ents there,” Martin said. “This was Kids Day, a day when fam­i­lies should be safe com­ing to the fair and not be ter­ror­ized by the police depart­ment and assault­ed and have vis­i­ble injuries and vis­i­ble scars and emo­tion­al scars.

State Fair offi­cials in a state­ment Monday after­noon said they were “dis­ap­point­ed” by the 11:30 p.m. inci­dent, say­ing the 11-year-old was unat­tend­ed and “demon­strat­ing dan­ger­ous behav­ior that put him­self and oth­ers at risk of severe phys­i­cal harm, specif­i­cal­ly climb­ing over a safe­ty fence and almost being hit by a roller coast­er ride.” Fair offi­cials said ven­dors accused the boy of attempt­ing to steal items, accord­ing to fair police, and the boy was briefly detained. A small cut was treat­ed with a ban­dage, fair offi­cials said, and then released to Martin after ques­tion­ing. “We believe the Cal Expo Police fol­lowed all prop­er poli­cies to quell the sit­u­a­tion and keep the minor safe,” the state­ment read. But Martin described a far dif­fer­ent scene, telling reporters that she took her son to a local Kaiser Permanente med­ical cen­ter for fur­ther treat­ment. “He had doc­u­ment­ed injuries around his neck, hips and stom­ach area and area of his upper shoul­ders. He was bleed­ing from his nose. His shirt was cov­ered in blood,” Martin said. “They knew what they had done.”

The state of Louisiana has dis­missed charges against a Black motorist who was incar­cer­at­ed for resist­ing arrest, despite being relent­less­ly beat­en with a flash­light by one of the arrest­ing state troop­ers. Officials who viewed evi­dence regard­ing the case assessed the dis­graced for­mer offi­cer, who assault­ed and arrest­ed the man, was untruth­ful in his account of the 2019 alter­ca­tion and will soon face fed­er­al civ­il and crim­i­nal law­suits con­nect­ing him to the man’s beating.
On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Darwin C. Miller announced his office would drop a bevy of charges against Monroe native Aaron Bowman, 47, relat­ed to a 2019 arrest. After tak­ing over the case in February from District Attorney Robert S. Tew’s office at the request of Bowman’s lawyers, the state’s most senior attor­neys believed the victim’s record on this mat­ter should be cleaned, accord­ing to The Advocate.

Upon view­ing the case, includ­ing footage from the offi­cers’ body­cams, the AG’s office said there is “insuf­fi­cient evi­dence” and “cred­i­bil­i­ty issues asso­ci­at­ed with both the arrest­ing and the assist­ing offi­cers.” Multiple sto­ries about the encounter float­ed between agen­cies about the inci­dent over the last three years.
However, an untruth­ful nar­ra­tive about his con­duct dur­ing the arrest ulti­mate­ly land­ed the vic­tim in jail on July 15, 2019, charg­ing him with improp­er lane usage, aggra­vat­ed flight from an offi­cer, resist­ing an offi­cer by force or vio­lence, and sim­ple bat­tery of a police offi­cer. Now, the man’s defense coun­sel believes jus­tice is on the horizon.
“It’s a step towards jus­tice for him. There’s obvi­ous­ly a civ­il case, which will be the ulti­mate tell of jus­tice,” Keith Whiddon, his lawyer in the crim­i­nal case, said. “But this is at least a small step towards jus­tice for him.”
According to KNOE, Bowman’s oth­er attor­ney, Donecia Banks-Miley, believes the charge should have been dropped in 2021.
“I felt that after Jacob Brown was indict­ed, this would exon­er­ate our client, Aaron Bowman. Just because the footage was already out at that time show­ing that he was beat­en,” she said. “So, I could not for the life of me, under­stand why Aaron still had these charges. Today, we’re just glad that he’s final­ly exon­er­at­ed from these charges, and we want him to feel bet­ter and let the com­mu­ni­ty know that Aaron did noth­ing wrong.”

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is slat­ed to speak at the Republican KKKlan Rally many call CPAC.
Viktor Orbán is a vile white suprema­cist who speaks of his coun­try being at risk of becom­ing a mixed-race one.
One of Viktor Orbán’s advis­ers, Zsuzsa Hegedüs, has resigned and cas­ti­gat­ed Orban for his state­ments on race.
“I sin­cere­ly regret that such a dis­grace­ful stance has forced me to sev­er our rela­tion­ship,” said ms — Hegedüs in her res­ig­na­tion let­ter to Viktor Orbán.
This is the type of speak­er the Republican par­ty is bring­ing to America to speak at their KKK-lan rally.
They are not hid­ing any­more; the Republican Party is an out-in-the-open white suprema­cist party.
Its fight to force white women to have more babies on the one hand and its xeno­pho­bic attack on immi­gra­tion are cen­tral to their belief that America should not be a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety but a white ethnostate.
One major pub­li­ca­tion char­ac­ter­ized Orban’s speech in which he spoke about race mix­ing as one wor­thy of Joseph Goebbels”.

Viktor Orbán is due to trav­el to Dallas, where he will open CPAC Texas, a gath­er­ing of US con­ser­v­a­tives. Orbán counts for­mer US pres­i­dent Donald Trump among his many admir­ers on the American right.
Of course, he does!!!
In the United States, there has been a wild swing to the right that has left many com­men­ta­tors and prog­nos­ti­ca­tors dumb­found­ed. Television talk­ing heads wring their hands as they use mis­lead­ing and nuanced terms to describe what is real­ly hap­pen­ing in the country.
In the mean­time, the Republican par­ty is mov­ing full tilt ahead, tear­ing down the old bul­warks rep­re­sent­ing America’s ver­sion of Democracy.
Since its incep­tion, America’s idea of democ­ra­cy was built on the premise that whites would always be in con­trol of it and decide what it looked like.
The premise of what that democ­ra­cy looked like was great until the num­ber of Hispanics, Black, and oth­er races inside the United States start­ed to be tout­ed among media talk­ing heads as becom­ing a com­bined majority.
Long before minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion data was being talked about and writ­ten about as a force at the bal­lot box, there were built-ins inside the United States Constitution designed to ensure white rule regard­less of racial makeup.
Two US Senators per state tout­ed as a rem­e­dy to pre­vent­ing the drown­ing out of the voic­es of small­er states. The result, a flip, the voic­es of six hun­dred thou­sand plus peo­ple in the state of Wyoming drown­ing out those of 40 mil­lion peo­ple in California and 30 mil­lion in New York state.

The Electoral col­lege, In the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 2000, Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore won the pop­u­lar vote and most of the votes in the elec­toral col­lege, which would make him the 43^rd pres­i­dent of the United States.
Unfortunately for Al Gore, the results of the elec­tion rest­ed on the vote count in the state of Florida.
Al Gore’s oppo­nent, George Bush, a for­mer Governor of Texas, was the son of for­mer Republican one-term President Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan’s for­mer Vice President.
But that was not all; the state of Florid had as its Governor Jeb Bush, the younger broth­er of George Bush and the younger son of Herbert Walker Bush.
An inter­est­ing twist con­sid­er­ing that America came into exis­tence because the founders did not want to acqui­esce to the demands of kings, so we end­ed up with dynasties.
A US Supreme court with a right-wing major­i­ty was more lethal to Al Gore’s chances of becom­ing pres­i­dent. The Supreme court ordered the count­ing of bal­lots stopped.
George Bush was sworn in as America’s 43^rd pres­i­dent; his pres­i­den­cy was an abject fail­ure which saw the war in Afghanistan launched, the ille­gal war in Iraq, water­board­ing of POWs in Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, and a whole slew of rights reduc­tion mea­sures that Americans are forced to live with today. George Bush appoint­ed Samuel Alito to the US Supreme court, and we have seen how con­se­quen­tial that has been.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote by a wide mar­gin over super-moron Donald Trump; the elec­toral col­lege gave the win to Trump. Trump was impeached twice in his sin­gle term.
Donald Trump appoint­ed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barrett to the court. As a result of these three addi­tions to the court-all from the right-wing Federalist Society, Roe V Wade, the almost fifty-year prece­dent giv­ing women the right of auton­o­my and agency over their own bod­ies was struck down by Alito and the oth­er right-wing Federalists on the court.

For all intents and pur­pos­es, the elec­tion of Barack Obama was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. Out of Obama’s ascen­den­cy emerged a full-fledged white suprema­cist move­ment couched as legit­i­mate grass­roots oppo­si­tion to left­ist Obama policies.
Those move­ments were fund­ed large­ly by large donors who referred to them­selves as Libertarians; Charles and David Coch, bil­lion­aire broth­ers who inher­it­ed bil­lions from their father, used their wealth to fund rightwing oppo­si­tion to Obama.
Charles and David Coch were not alone; most of the major cor­po­ra­tions in the coun­try that ben­e­fit from the dol­lars of all Americans sup­port­ed and still fund Republicans and their white suprema­cist agenda.
Companies we rou­tine­ly spend our mon­ey with.
Home Depot, Walmart, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Boeing, UPS, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, The American Bankers Association, The National Beer Wholesalers Association, Banking group Regions Financial, Chevron, Eli Lilly, FedEx, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer, to name a few. 

There is hard­ly any rea­son for any­one to be unin­formed these days; indi­vid­u­al­ly, we may think we can­not change the tra­jec­to­ry of the future. I dis­agree; his­to­ry is replete with instances of the grit and tenac­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als who have shaped world his­to­ry for the better.
Collectively, we can make a dif­fer­ence if only we choose to inform our­selves. The aver­age cit­i­zen walks around with a pow­er­ful com­put­er on their per­son each day. Unfortunately, some are unwill­ing to set aside that device they call their phone even to use a cross­walk or while oper­at­ing a motor vehicle.
Whether that device is Android or IOS, sim­ply press­ing a smart key and ask­ing a ques­tion pro­duces an answer that, even if not 100 per­cent accu­rate, gives the ques­tion­er a gen­er­al idea of any subject.
There is absolute­ly no rea­son to be stu­pid while walk­ing around with a smart device.
Every action tak­en by the right is designed to sup­press the demo­c­ra­t­ic process because they believe they are los­ing the white num­bers game.
Democratic vot­ers refuse to show the same lev­el of tenac­i­ty as white Republicans when it comes to under­stand­ing the elec­toral land­scape. Democrat vot­ers tend to believe they only have to show up dur­ing pres­i­den­tial elections.
The threats to American democ­ra­cy, flawed though it is, are grave.
Voters fail to under­stand this at their own peril. 

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

By Phillip Jackson

Footage shows a Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy chas­ing the man, pin­ning him down and hit­ting him with a stun gun before shoot­ing him in the back.

Every day we talk about America’s filthy dirty cops and the crimes they com­mit, usu­al­ly against mem­bers of the African-American community.
No mat­ter how much report­ing we do on their crim­i­nal­i­ty, it does not even begin to scratch the sur­face of the lev­el of com­plic­i­ty and crim­i­nal­i­ty that runs from top to bot­tom in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem against peo­ple of color.
On the face of it are the cor­rupt morons who say they are law enforce­ment, but the stench per­me­ates much high­er, wind­ing its way through District Attorney’s offi­cers and Judges’ Chambers all the way to the high­est court that lit­er­al­ly gave them the right to lie and to act with impuni­ty through a pol­i­cy called qual­i­fied immunity.
But as bad as qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty is, the courts are a bul­wark of sup­port for police who com­mit crimes against the black community.

READ MORE BELOW 

A Texas man is now free after spend­ing almost six years behind bars based on the untruth­ful tes­ti­mo­ny of a crooked cop. The then-respect­ed offi­cer lied when he said the home­less man owned a cell­phone con­nect­ed to an impor­tant drug bust, an asser­tion that led to the man being con­vict­ed on drug charges and sen­tenced to almost three decades in prison.
On Friday, July 22, Frederick Jeffery walked out of prison as a free man, after the pre­vi­ous day an inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined dis­graced ex-Houston police offi­cer Gerald Goines fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry that placed Jeffrey, then a home­less Black man with a lengthy drug addic­tion his­to­ry, in the mid­dle of a case he was work­ing on.
Read the full sto­ry here.…(https://atlantablackstar.com/2022/07/25/i‑knew-he-was-crooked-da-found-disgraced-houston-officer-lied-to-secure-conviction-that-led-to-a-25-year-sentence-for-homeless-black-man-who-couldnt-afford-a-piece-of-bubble-gum/

Here we have a Black female judge stat­ing the truth to a black defen­dant, ‘stay away from cops’, and the deeply racist and cor­rupt police union that sup­ports and cov­ers up for their filthy dirty mem­bers wants her sanctioned.
If this weren’t so ridicu­lous, we would have a real laugh about it, but it isn’t fun­ny. Recently we saw in Arizona dirty cops ran to their dirty Republican cohorts in the state leg­is­la­ture and had them draft and pass laws lim­it­ing the rights of activists to pho­to­graph cops.
Of course, the equal­ly dirty Republican Governor in that red state, Doug Ducey signed the bill into law. One would say, well, it will not stand con­sti­tu­tion­al muster if chal­lenged; the supreme court will strike it down’.……that will not hap­pen because the high­est court has zero cred­i­bil­i­ty; it is a reac­tionary right-wing court that was pop­u­lat­ed by two pres­i­dents who lost the pop­u­lar vote.
Can you imag­ine those racist, igno­rant? drug and gun plant­i­ng liars demand­ing that an immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied jurist resign for telling the truth about their dirty deeds?
They lie, steal, plant evi­dence, fab­ri­cate evi­dence, but they want respect; that’s a joke!!! (mb)
https://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​2​2​/​0​7​/​1​9​/​w​e​-​a​r​e​-​a​b​s​o​l​u​t​e​l​y​-​o​u​t​r​a​g​e​d​-​a​c​t​i​v​i​s​t​s​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​d​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​l​o​n​g​-​t​e​r​m​-​i​m​p​a​c​t​s​-​o​f​-​a​r​i​z​o​n​a​-​l​a​w​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​i​t​-​i​l​l​e​g​a​l​-​t​o​-​r​e​c​o​r​d​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

HERE IS THE STORY

A Las Vegas police union has asked a judge to quit her posi­tion on the bench after she made a slick remark to a Black man about his choice to engage law enforce­ment. An orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing police has tak­en excep­tion with the court offi­cial, say­ing her com­ments were “dis­parag­ing” to the men and women in blue and inferred those in uni­form have an implic­it bias against cer­tain peo­ple because of their race.

On Wednesday, July 13, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association is call­ing for Erika Ballou, a dis­trict judge, to resign after a video of her remarks she made on Monday, July 11 about the com­pli­cat­ed (and often adver­sar­i­al) rela­tion­ship between African-Americans and the police went viral, reports the Daily Mail.

The LVPPA, which rep­re­sents Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department offi­cers, post­ed the footage on its Facebook page late on Wednesday, blast­ing the judge’s con­tro­ver­sial state­ment days ear­li­er in the caption.

Ballou, a Black woman, said to the defen­dant, who had been arrest­ed on charges of com­mit­ting bat­tery against an offi­cer in the state while on pro­ba­tion, he should have kept his dis­tance from the cop.

“You’re a Black man in America, you know you don’t want to be nowhere where cops are,” She is heard in the video say­ing. “You lis­ten to me, you know you don’t want to be nowhere where cops are. Because I know I don’t, and I’m a mid­dle-aged, mid­dle-class Black woman. I don’t want to be around where the cops are because I don’t know if I’m going to walk away alive or not,” Ballou continued.

The remarks were made dur­ing a hear­ing where the Clark County District Attorney’s Office was seek­ing a revo­ca­tion of the man’s probation. 

A spokesper­son from the LVPPA released a state­ment say­ing, “On behalf of the men and women of law enforce­ment, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association takes excep­tion to Judge Erika Ballou’s dis­parag­ing com­ments about police officers.”

‘We call upon Judge Ballou to resign from the bench. We also ask the Judicial Ethics Commission to sanc­tion her for vio­lat­ing the Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct,” the state­ment con­tin­ued. ‘Among oth­er oblig­a­tions, the rules require the judi­cia­ry to, ‘[A]spire at all times to con­duct that ensures the great­est pos­si­ble pub­lic con­fi­dence in their inde­pen­dence, impar­tial­i­ty, integri­ty, and competence.’

According to the union, the judge demon­strat­ed her own bias “against law enforce­ment” and thus “can­not live up to the stan­dards required of a jurist.” Further, the orga­ni­za­tion con­tends when she claimed that she is nev­er cer­tain if she will “walk away alive or not” after engag­ing with an offi­cer was “both uneth­i­cal and irresponsible.”

“Police offi­cers and the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of our com­mu­ni­ty deserve bet­ter from the judi­cia­ry,” the com­ment concluded.

Union President Steve Grammas com­ment­ed fur­ther say­ing he has spo­ken to offi­cers about Ballou’s com­ments and said “they all felt hor­ri­ble that a judge would make the infer­ence that if this judge was hang­ing around police, that she may not make it out with her life.”

The offi­cers, accord­ing to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, are ask­ing the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline to sanc­tion the judge for what they believe is a vio­la­tion of the Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct, which states all who assume the offi­cer should “aspire at all times to con­duct that ensures the great­est pos­si­ble pub­lic con­fi­dence in their inde­pen­dence, impar­tial­i­ty, integri­ty, and competence.

Paul Deyhle, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the NCJD, said, legal­ly, he is not able to say whether or not a com­plaint has been filed against Ballou, adding, “The com­mis­sion is aware of the news reports con­cern­ing the judge, and any com­plaints filed will be con­sid­ered by the commission.”

This is not the first time Ballou took a con­tro­ver­sial posi­tion about Blackness in the courtroom. 

In 2016, when she was a deputy pub­lic defend­er, she refused to remove her “Black Lives Matter” but­ton in the court­room dur­ing a tri­al where she was rep­re­sent­ing a white domes­tic bat­tery defen­dant at a sen­tenc­ing hearing.

Despite being asked by Clark County District Court Judge Douglas Herndon, now a Nevada Supreme Court jus­tice, she stood firm — but even­tu­al­ly, she acqui­esced after being con­vinced her pin could poten­tial­ly inter­fere with cas­es because court­rooms should be “view­point-neu­tral.”

She lat­er would say wear­ing the but­ton was in response to the police union ask­ing judges not to have “Black Lives Matter pro­pa­gan­da” in court­rooms and that ‘in a free coun­try, I shouldn’t be afraid of the police, but I am.”

Ballou has defend­ed her state­ments from the bench, in remakes shared through the District Court spokes­woman Mary Ann Price, say­ing, “I sup­port prop­er law enforce­ment. What the record shows is that I com­mu­ni­cate with those who appear before me in a man­ner that is straight­for­ward and understandable.”

The judge is not stand­ing alone. The NAACP released a state­ment on Tuesday, July 19, in sup­port of Ballou and her right to free­dom of speech.

The Las Vegas chap­ter of the NAACP said her com­ments “reflect the grim real­i­ty for African Americans” in Clark County and across the nation, adding, “Her state­ments reflect not only her truths but also the community’s truth. People of col­or and African Americans, in par­tic­u­lar, are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killed by police.”

The NAACP chap­ter not­ed research from 2016 that revealed: “Out of 8,990,049 total arrests in the United States, 2,407,003 of those arrests were for Black people.”

Also cit­ed in the state­ment was a five-year detailed analy­sis of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department based on its own data. 

According to the force’s reports, between 2017 and 2021, over 31 per­cent of the peo­ple shot by offi­cers in the LVMPD were Black. A star­tling per­cent­age when one con­sid­ers peo­ple that iden­ti­fy as Black in Nevada make up 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, based on the most recent cen­sus findings.

Nevada state gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics for 2021 also claim 52.7 per­cent of vio­lent crimes are com­mit­ted by Blacks.

The civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion also chal­lenged the LVPPA’s call for her to be sanc­tioned, say­ing, “its mis­placed reliance on the pre­am­ble to the Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct in an attempt to dis­tract the pub­lic from the truth regard­ing police shoot­ings of peo­ple of col­or in Clark County.”

The NAACP’s state­ment con­tin­ued, “It is our posi­tion that Judge Ballou imposed the ade­quate sen­tence while coun­sel­ing the defen­dant that he ‘should have walked away.’” 

“Nothing in Judge Ballou’s state­ments were untrue and the LVPPA’s posi­tion on this issue reflects its defen­sive­ness based part­ly on the fact that the truth hurts.”

Other social jus­tice and advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions like the ACLU of Nevada and the Clark County Black Caucus released oth­er state­ments sup­port­ing the judge. 

No word has been made pub­lic about if Ballou will be sanc­tioned by the judi­cial gov­er­nance body.

Ballou report­ed­ly did revoke the man’s pro­ba­tion at the hear­ing.( orig­i­nat­ed @atlantablackstar)

The sin­gle most vis­i­ble and bru­tal organ of America’s racial oppres­sion of African-Americans since the start of the Republic to the present day has been the police.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​f​i​n​a​l​l​y​-​s​o​m​e​-​a​c​c​o​u​n​t​a​b​i​l​i​t​y​-​f​o​r​-​t​h​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​e​r​s​-​o​f​-​e​l​i​j​a​h​-​m​c​c​l​a​in/

McClain died after an encounter with police offi­cers and para­medics in 2019.

A Colorado judge has found that evi­dence against the five for­mer Aurora police offi­cers and para­medics in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain is strong enough to pur­sue crim­i­nal cases.
Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old mas­sage ther­a­pist and skilled vio­list, died fol­low­ing an encounter with police in August 2019 while he was walk­ing home from a con­ve­nience store. A passer­by had called 911 to report McClain as “sketchy,” as he was wear­ing a ski mask on a warm night. McClain’s lawyer lat­er attrib­uted this to the fact that McClain was ane­mic and often cold. Aurora police offi­cers respond­ed to the scene, grab­bing McClain and using a carotid con­trol hold, which led to McClain say­ing, “I can’t breathe,” and strug­gling against the police, accord­ing to police body cam­era footage.
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/

Paramedics arrived, giv­ing McClain an “exces­sive” dose of ket­a­mine, accord­ing to McCain’s lawyer, and McClain suf­fered from car­diac arrest short­ly after in an ambu­lance. McClain was pro­nounced dead three days later.

The five defen­dants were indict­ed in McClain’s death in August 2021 on sev­er­al charges, includ­ing manslaugh­ter and crim­i­nal­ly neg­li­gent homi­cide, accord­ing to officials.
Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the three offi­cers and two para­medics asked Adams County District Court Judge Priscilla Loew to review the cas­es, argu­ing that there was not enough evi­dence to sup­port the charges against their clients, accord­ing to court documents.
Now, almost a year after the defen­dants were indict­ed by a grand jury on a com­bined 32 counts, includ­ing manslaugh­ter and crim­i­nal­ly neg­li­gent homi­cide, Loew announced on Monday that the case would not be thrown out.

In her order, Loew wrote that based upon the grand jury mate­ri­als, “there is suf­fi­cient evi­dence to estab­lish prob­a­ble cause for each of the counts list­ed in the grand jury indict­ment filed with the court on Sept. 1, 2022.” All five defen­dants have been sched­uled to appear in court for arraign­ment on Aug. 12, accord­ing to court documents.
The Aurora Police Department declined to com­ment on the deci­sion. The city’s EMS depart­ment also declined to com­ment. Iris Halpern, the McClain fam­i­ly lawyer, said that crim­i­nal account­abil­i­ty has been a main goal for Sheheen McClain, Elijah’s moth­er. Halpern said that this par­tic­u­lar case remains impor­tant to McCain because she believes indi­vid­ual account­abil­i­ty is essen­tial, espe­cial­ly in sit­u­a­tions tied to larg­er, struc­tur­al issues such as police reform. “We’ve been stand­ing by the fam­i­ly through­out the case and the pain they’ve suf­fered,” Halpern said. “These are real humans with loved ones, and this issue impacts not only the vic­tim but those around them in the after­math.” Following the 2021 indict­ment of the five defen­dants, the Aurora Police Association Board of Directors released a state­ment in defense of the officers.

Criminal Association stand­ing up for crim­i­nals and doing it under the col­or of law

“There is no evi­dence that APD offi­cers caused his death. The hys­ter­i­cal over­re­ac­tion to this case has severe­ly dam­aged the police depart­ment,” the Aurora Police Association Board of Directors said in a statement.

A bunch of garbage from degen­er­ate mur­der­ers themselves.

The Aurora Police Association has not yet respond­ed to requests from news orga­ni­za­tions for com­ment. Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, calls for a fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion of McClain’s death were reignit­ed. In June 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appoint­ed a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to inves­ti­gate the case and file charges if “the facts sup­port prosecution.
The next month, the Aurora City Council ordered a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tion of McClain’s death, which was released in February 2021.

The coun­cil con­clud­ed that the orig­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion by the Aurora Police Department’s major crimes unit was bad­ly flawed and alleged the detec­tives “stretched the record to exon­er­ate the offi­cers rather than present a neu­tral ver­sion of the facts.” “This case is a text­book exam­ple of law enforcement’s dis­parate and racist treat­ment of Black men,” McClain’s fam­i­ly and their lawyers said in a joint state­ment issued fol­low­ing the report’s release. “Aurora’s con­tin­ued fail­ure to acknowl­edge the wrong­do­ing of its employ­ees only exac­er­bates the problem.”

This writer con­tin­ues to sound the alarm that a police agency inves­ti­gat­ing alleged crimes com­mit­ted by anoth­er depart­ment rep­re­sents an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion is bull­shit, plain and sim­ple. Worse yet, the idea that the same depart­ment inves­ti­gates itself and returns an impar­tial inves­tiga­tive result is beyond ludicrous.
Nevertheless, peo­ple con­tin­ue to be fooled by this three-card-monte trick, while crim­i­nals wear­ing police uni­forms, their unions, and polit­i­cal patrons con­tin­ue to laugh at their stupidity.
In November 2021, the McClain fam­i­ly reached a $15 mil­lion set­tle­ment with the city of Aurora in the civ­il rights law­suit filed over McClain’s vio­lent arrest and sub­se­quent death. It is the high­est police set­tle­ment in the his­to­ry of Colorado, accord­ing to police. The case will con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the defen­dants’ arraign­ment on August 12.
Citizens in com­mu­ni­ties all across the coun­try will con­tin­ue to fork out large sums of mon­ey to pay for the raw, naked, racist aggres­sion vis­it­ed upon inno­cent cit­i­zens by these sub­hu­man brutes oper­at­ing under the col­or of law until they put an end to it.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that this sum comes from the tax­pay­ers, not the mon­sters who bru­tal­ized and killed this inno­cent soul.
(Story orig­i­nat­ed @ABC).

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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.

Sixty-plus years lat­er, after this vicious racist, igno­rant attack, not a damn thing has changed. Police con­tin­ue to be the sin­gle most vis­i­ble per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of white oppres­sion and white racism.

In 1959 — eight days after the release of Kind of Blue and just after record­ing a broad­cast for armed forces radio — Davis was harassed and then vicious­ly attacked by the police out­side Birdland in Midtown Manhattan. Then he was arrest­ed for resist­ing arrest and dragged to the police sta­tion for book­ing and fur­ther harass­ment. You can hear the sto­ry in a clip above from The Miles Davis Story. Davis him­self recount­ed the event in his autobiography:(Adapted from open​cul​ture​.com)

This image caught our atten­tion in a sto­ry about the heat­wave affect­ing Britain, and we were com­pelled to bring it to your atten­tion. Of course, your inter­pre­ta­tions are total­ly depen­dent on how you view top­i­cal issues, so I will leave it right here.

This image could be char­ac­ter­ized as a ten­der moment between two human beings, but I do not care for it; it con­jures up images I would rather suppress.
Your thoughts?

This writer has con­sis­tent­ly stat­ed in this medi­um that cor­rupt cops, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges are the great­est threat to our sys­tem of jus­tice. In this case, a poten­tial­ly guilty man was set free, but the appel­late court saw the case dif­fer­ent­ly than the tri­al judge.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed the mur­der con­vic­tion of a Portland man after find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors dis­missed two men from the jury pool because they were Black, the same race as the defen­dant. The jury, which ulti­mate­ly had no Black mem­bers, found Darian L. McWoods guilty of mur­der by abuse in the death of his 15-month-old daugh­ter, Kamaya Flores, dur­ing a tri­al in Multnomah County Circuit Court in 2018.

In the rul­ing released Wednesday, Presiding Judge Josephine Mooney found that while Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Amanda Nadell offered race-neu­tral rea­sons to strike both prospec­tive jurors, those argu­ments were only a “pre­text.” “Racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the selec­tion of jurors is harm­ful,” Mooney wrote. “The state did not seek to strike sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed jurors who were not Black.” McWoods’ defense attor­ney at tri­al, Josephine Townsend, chal­lenged both dis­missals under the “Batson” rule, refer­ring to a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion pro­hibit­ing the exclu­sion of prospec­tive jurors based on their race. In an inter­view, Townsend not­ed Nadell didn’t use for-cause chal­lenges to remove the two Black jurors. For-cause chal­lenges require evi­dence that the juror in ques­tion can’t be impar­tial. Instead, both strike-outs pro­posed by Nadell were peremp­to­ry chal­lenges — mean­ing the pros­e­cu­tor didn’t have to offer a ratio­nale. After Townsend object­ed, Nadell raised var­i­ous prob­lems with the jurors’ answers to questionnaires.

Judge Christopher Marshall accept­ed both dis­missals with­out com­men­tary. But accord­ing to the appel­late rul­ing, Nadell mis­char­ac­ter­ized one of the dis­missed juror’s answers to the ques­tion­naire, claim­ing he had rat­ed the police as dis­hon­est when in real­i­ty he indi­cat­ed that offi­cers were usu­al­ly truth­ful. In both cas­es, the appeals court found that non-Black jurors had offered sim­i­lar respons­es to the ques­tion­naire as those of the dis­missed jurors. “If you have a cook­ie cut­ter jury,” Townsend said, “you’re not going to have the breadth of diver­si­ty, or the same lev­el or range of life expe­ri­ences that you can mea­sure against the evi­dence and the facts.”

Nadell’s super­vi­sor at the time, Amity Girt, served as the lead pros­e­cu­tor on the case, and Townsend recalled the two work­ing in con­cert. Girt has since entered pri­vate prac­tice. She did not respond to a request for com­ment. In a state­ment, Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office spokesper­son Elisabeth Shepard said the Court of Appeals opin­ion would be used “to fur­ther edu­cate and inform our role in the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.” “The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is a learn­ing orga­ni­za­tion that strives to car­ry out our respon­si­bil­i­ties with integri­ty and humil­i­ty,” she said. “We are com­mit­ted to the ongo­ing pur­suit of a safer, more equi­table sys­tem.” At tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors said the tod­dler died of “com­pres­sion asphyx­i­a­tion,” mean­ing the tod­dler was crushed until she could not breathe. Authorities had pre­vi­ous­ly deter­mined that Flores’ died of methadone poi­son­ing and that McWoods had either inten­tion­al­ly giv­en her the sub­stance or that she took it unknow­ing­ly, as the father had a habit of mix­ing drugs into Capri Sun fruit drinks.

An Alaskan police offi­cer is under inves­ti­ga­tion after being found in a pho­to with a woman flash­ing a “White Privilege” card, accord­ing to The Associated Press. The pic­ture was tak­en dur­ing a traf­fic stop when the MAGA-hat-wear­ing woman was pulled over. She hand­ed the offi­cers the card instead of her license and reg­is­tra­tion. In this case, her lil’ white priv­i­lege pass worked.

Mimi Israelah made a Facebook post claim­ing she was pulled over for weav­ing on the road. She had come into town from California for a Trump ral­ly. She said “Officer Bo” asked her for her license but when she couldn’t find it she hand­ed him a “White Privilege Card Trumps Everything” card instead. “When I saw my White Privilege card, I gave to him if it’s ok. He laughed and called his part­ner. It’s their first time to see a White Privileged (sic) card,” she wrote.
Read more here; https://​www​.the​root​.com/​a​l​a​s​k​a​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​e​d​-​f​o​r​-​f​l​a​s​h​i​n​g​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​r​i​v​i​l​e​-​1​8​4​9​1​7​8​547

This is the only image we could source of the alleged Highland Park, Illinois shoot­er who killed sev­er­al inno­cent peo­ple yes­ter­day and wound­ed sev­er­al more.

Major News orga­ni­za­tions have so far not pro­duced an image of the shoot­er; addi­tion­al­ly, it is a habit of news net­works and cable chan­nels not to dis­play the images of white mass mur­der­ers under the guise that doing so is what they crave.
I guess there is some truth to that, but why is it that the same isn’t true of black crim­i­nals who have their images plas­tered across tele­vi­sion screens for far less seri­ous transgressions?

Police arrest­ed a white male recent­ly for intim­i­dat­ing a Black man. The indi­vid­ual used sub­lim­i­nal threats, thread­ed with racial­ized lan­guage and his flash­ing of firearms.
Bertrand Kleindorfer, a res­i­dent of State College, Pennsylvania, has been charged with a felo­nious count of eth­nic intim­i­da­tion, one mis­de­meanor count each of ter­ror­is­tic threats, sim­ple assault, and dis­or­der­ly con­duct, and one sum­ma­ry count of harass­ment after his alleged vic­tim report­ed him to the town’s police on Tuesday, May 31^st.

He was arraigned on Thursday, June 23, by District Judge Allen Sinclair and was released on an unse­cured bond of $25,000. The Black man, whose name was not released, told the State College police offi­cers he stopped by the Uni-Mart on S. Atherton Street, on his way to work when he was approached by Kleindorfer on May 31. In his report, the man said the 59-year-old, wear­ing a mil­i­tary vest with two hol­stered guns, began fol­low­ing him around the store. At one point say­ing, “It’s pret­ty dan­ger­ous being Black around here.” As he com­ment­ed, the man fur­ther observed Kleindorfer also had an auto­mat­ic gun, that SCP lat­er iden­ti­fied as a repli­ca MP 40 sub­ma­chine gun.
The Maschinenpistole 40, the actu­al name for the weapon Kleindorfer’s gun was mod­eled after, is a weapon of ter­ror, with its roots direct­ly con­nect­ed to Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The firearm is a ful­ly auto­mat­ic-only weapon and was cham­bered for the ubiq­ui­tous 9×19 mil­lime­ter pis­tol cartridge.

The crim­i­nal com­plaint stat­ed Kleindorfer held the gun as if he were aim­ing at peo­ple. He is said to have waved it back and forth, as he spoke about mass mur­der. Other wit­ness­es said they saw and heard the same thing, and that he was mim­ing as if shoot­ing peo­ple the entire day. According to the man’s fil­ing, Kleindorfer asked him if he want­ed to see how his gun worked — offer­ing to take him out­side to show him. When the man declined, the gun­man con­tin­ued to fol­low him through­out the store, tap­ping him on his shoul­der mul­ti­ple times. When the man left the store, the gun­man fol­lowed him out. The vic­tim stat­ed that all he could think about is how his par­ents would feel if he had been shot,” the African-American male said. According to the police, the man was also “in fear for his life” and “felt threat­ened due to his skin col­or.” The pres­i­dent of the local chap­ter of the NAACP, Lorraine Jones, said the com­mu­ni­ty is “mor­ti­fied by the details of this inci­dent.” “It is deeply dis­turb­ing that peo­ple with intol­er­ance and men­tal health issues can access guns,” she said via a pre­pared state­ment. “Often these inci­dents of eth­nic intim­i­da­tion go unre­port­ed due to fear of retal­i­a­tion. I can’t imag­ine how trau­mat­ic this encounter has been for the vic­tim, his fam­i­ly, and the store clerk who wit­nessed the inci­dent.” “Our hearts go out to the coura­geous young man who refused to be intim­i­dat­ed and filed a police report. Our com­mu­ni­ty is very for­tu­nate that there were no casu­al­ties,” she con­tin­ued. A pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing for Kleindorfer is sched­uled for Wednesday, June 29, at 8:30 a.m.

A Connecticut man is fac­ing a pletho­ra of charges for alleged­ly knock­ing an 11-year-old boy off his bicy­cle and telling him to go back to where he came from. The boy’s moth­er believes her child was tar­get­ed because of his race, say­ing a form of this kind of bul­ly­ing hap­pens to their fam­i­ly on a dai­ly basis. Jameson Chapman, 48, has been charged with third-degree assault, risk of injury to a child, and sec­ond-degree breach of peace after he was iden­ti­fied as the man cap­tured on two now-viral videos fea­tur­ing a pre-teen bira­cial boy named Daniel Duncan. A police report notes Chapman told state troop­ers while being processed that the young boy “deserved it.

The man nev­er address­es the child’s com­ments but tells him he doesn’t belong in Deep River. “Get the f**k out of my town,” Chapman says to the child 37 years younger than him. “Where did you grow up? Did you grow up in Connecticut?” The boy says, “No.” “No, you didn’t… So, get the f**k out of my town,” he repeats. One of the videos were post­ed on TikTok by a per­son claim­ing to be relat­ed to Daniel. The text over­laid on the clip said, “We need jus­tice!” “So sad this is hap­pen­ing to our chil­dren. When will this end,” it con­tin­ued. “Deep River CT, man assault­ing my nephew because he is not white! Need jus­tice for Daniel! Just like many oth­ers.” Another video shows the man in a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the city push­ing Duncan, a sixth-grad­er, off his bike.

As he attacked the young boy, the footage shows him yelling, “Get the f*** off your bike.” In a police report, Duncan told offi­cers that Chapman had bumped into his friend while they were rid­ing their bikes. The group attempt­ed to evade Chapman after he cursed at them for a sec­ond time while in a con­ve­nience store. They wait­ed in the park­ing lot for Chapman to leave, but encoun­tered him for the third time, result­ing in the push. The alter­ca­tion has trau­ma­tized Duncan, his fam­i­ly says. The boy’s moth­er, Desiree Dominique, watched the video and said, “went into total shock.” “I could not con­tain my anger,” she remarked. She also said to WFSB, “Daniel is afraid to leave the house. He’s ter­ri­fied to leave the house.” However, she also notes his fear is not square­ly root­ed in the recent alter­ca­tion. She says her chil­dren faced racism every day in Middlesex County town. Another exam­ple, she gave to Fox 61 New was of an assault on a dif­fer­ent son who was shot with a pel­let gun by neigh­bor­hood teens while he was rid­ing in a car

These acts against her chil­dren don’t make Dominique feel great about the plight they are in, liv­ing in this par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty, “I feel very upset. I feel anger. I feel sad­ness. I feel a sense of pow­er­less­ness.” Dominique moved her fam­i­ly to the pre­dom­i­nate­ly white town four years ago. According to the 2020 cen­sus, Deep River has about 4,466 res­i­dents and is one of the least pop­u­lat­ed munic­i­pal­i­ties in the state. White peo­ple make up 91.0 per­cent, com­pared to Blacks at 2.4 per­cent. Racism has been an issue for the town. The com­mu­ni­ty mes­sage board includ­ed deroga­to­ry terms toward peo­ple of col­or. Town First Selectman Angus McDonald said the racist behav­ior seen on the mes­sage board and in the afore­men­tioned cas­es is unac­cept­able. She fur­ther does not reflect the vast major­i­ty of the peo­ple that live in Deep River. Criminal records show that Chapman has a vio­lent past and was con­vict­ed of third-degree assault in 2018. Despite his his­to­ry of vio­lence and his cur­rent charges, Chapman has been released from cus­tody on a $10,000 bail. Chapman is due in Middletown Superior Court lat­er in July.