Driving down a stretch of the Taconic Parkway in Dutchess County some­time after sev­en one morn­ing recent­ly, we came upon a state police traf­fic stop on a nar­row strip of the two-lane road with no guardrail on either side.
It is a time of the morn­ing when work­ing peo­ple rush to get to work so they can take care of their fam­i­lies. The salaries they earn are hijacked even before they receive them, and tax­es are removed, and there­after, almost every pen­ny they spend is taxed to pay for goods and ser­vices they often­times do not receive.
The traf­fic stop cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for the dri­ving pub­lic based on its loca­tion as motorists head­ing south hap­pened upon it and had to brake sud­den­ly after round­ing the corner.
My wife and I simul­ta­ne­ous­ly won­dered why it was so impor­tant to effec­tu­ate a traf­fic stop at that time of the morn­ing, let alone at that loca­tion, jeop­ar­diz­ing lives to col­lect rev­enue. What traf­fic offense could have neces­si­tat­ed that lev­el of igno­rance and abuse of state power?
To top it off, New York has a “move over’ law that forces motorists to move over and away from emer­gency vehi­cles when they are stopped on the roadways.
Motorists had nowhere to go except over the embank­ment or careen into each oth­er just so some lousy cop could exer­cise authority.
But the New York State Legislature isn’t done. When the morons behold­en to the police unions you elect have noth­ing to do, they find ways to give more pow­er to the police state and take away more of your rights.
They are already plan­ning to broad­en the ‘move-over’ law to include oth­er vehi­cles, not just fire, ambu­lance, and police.
They argue that there are road fatal­i­ties year­ly from motorists crash­ing into emer­gency vehi­cles. They do not include in their nar­ra­tive that the actions of [Police], in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize the lives of the trav­el­ing pub­lic con­trary to the lying nar­ra­tive they spout.
The rapa­cious desire to fleece the American cit­i­zen of their hard-earned resources have seen state and local leg­is­la­tures ramp­ing up non­sen­si­cal laws aimed at fill­ing rev­enue cof­fers, all while lying to a gullible and igno­rant pop­u­la­tion that it is about their safety.
The fact of the mat­ter is that on any bright and sun­ny sum­mer day, dri­ving down Taconic Parkway into the Bronx, you will encounter State and County Police hid­den in des­ig­nat­ed spots and patrolling the park­way. Driving on the Taconic Parkway and Routes 84 and 684, I usu­al­ly count the num­ber of them I see.
However, if there is a lit­tle rain show­er, they all dis­ap­pear. They are not there to help the pub­lic. A fend­er ben­der will result in a long wait. You will be told there is only one troop­er on duty, and he is at anoth­er acci­dent scene. Where did all the rest of them go?
Fewer peo­ple are dri­ving above the speed lim­it; they pre­sume few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to extract stu­pid tax­es from motorists who speed or fail to wear a seatbelt.
It is all about rev­enue col­lec­tion and has noth­ing to do with your safe­ty or mine. So they will con­tin­ue jeop­ar­diz­ing your safe­ty and mine to pro­tect the rev­enue collectors.

A cou­ple of days ago, two French motor­cy­cle cops stopped a 17-year motorist Nahel M in a yel­low BMW motor­car; two oth­er occu­pants were in the car with the young dri­ver. What tran­spired still remains murky, but things esca­lat­ed quick­ly, with one cop threat­en­ing to shoot the young man dead.
He did just that!!!
Since then, vio­lent clash­es have occurred in the sub­urbs around the French Capital, Paris. Thousands of demon­stra­tors have clashed night­ly with French police, and cars and busi­ness­es have been torched, result­ing in many arrest­ed and many cops injured. The traf­fic stop is rumored to have been over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Across the Western world, we see the mass mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police and the heap­ing up of pow­er, includ­ing the right to use dead­ly force on civilians.

Police ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed Nahel drove his car towards them to injure them, but footage lat­er showed he was shot at point-blank range by an offi­cer point­ing his weapon at him through the dri­ver’s win­dow.
Those of you who recall the mur­der of George Floyd will remem­ber Minneapolis police lied that mis­ter Floyd suf­fered a med­ical emer­gency until a video tak­en by a teenage girl sur­faced show­ing Derek Chauvin and the oth­er mur­der­ers assist­ing him end­ed George Floyd’s life.
As it is in the United States, where police are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to act as judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, French police are allowed to shoot when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to risk oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safety.
Of course, allow­ing police to shoot in those sit­u­a­tions opens the door for the types of killings that hap­pened to Nahel M.
If that cop did not feel he could get away with mur­der­ing anoth­er human being over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion, he would not have threat­ened death to the young­ster, and he cer­tain­ly would not have pulled the trigger.

When career politi­cians seek­ing to cur­ry favor with police unions do not have any­thing pro­duc­tive to do, they default to cre­at­ing laws like the one in France that result­ed in the death of a 17-year-old teenag­er. Driving away from a traf­fic stop is com­plete­ly wrong, but the penal­ty [can­not] be to mur­der the offend­er. What kind of soci­eties are we fos­ter­ing if the gov­ern­ment can end the life of cit­i­zens for such frivolities?
[In 2016, at a Paris hous­ing estate, a male cop suf­fered seri­ous burns and was put in an induced coma after a group of youths pelt­ed petrol bombs at his patrol car. Police unions protest­ed and demand­ed a strong response from the gov­ern­ment. Following that inci­dent, the law on the use of firearms by police was amend­ed. Officers were allowed to shoot when faced with one of five sit­u­a­tions — one being when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to pose a risk to oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safe­ty]. Knee-jerk appease­ment to police union cost lives.
Mathilde Panot, pres­i­dent of the left-wing polit­i­cal par­ty La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment for send­ing anti-ter­ror police into work­ing-class areas and says President Emmanuel Macron “knows only repression”.
Writing on Twitter, she adds the gov­ern­ment must repeal the law’s “license to kill” and rebuild the police from the ground up.

This writer con­tin­ues to make the case that hir­ing more police, mil­i­ta­riz­ing them, and empow­er­ing them by pass­ing more bru­tal laws do noth­ing to elim­i­nate crime. Governments have a sacred duty to elim­i­nate injus­tice, pover­ty, and oth­er social mal­adies, which are all ampli­fied by over-polic­ing and white cops who vio­lent­ly inter­act with those under­served com­mu­ni­ties with racial animus.
Hatred for the poor and pow­er­less is not a strat­e­gy. Ultimately the tears and frus­tra­tion of those who are down­trod­den will boil over, cul­mi­nat­ing in a dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment for everyone.
Jobs, some­thing to live for, and equal oppor­tu­ni­ties go much fur­ther in cre­at­ing soci­etal har­mo­ny than anti-ter­ror cops and weapons of war…

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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.

We have all been duped by politi­cians, Police, and their cor­rupt Unions into believ­ing that hir­ing more offi­cers is the solu­tion to the per­cep­tion of grow­ing or esca­la­tion in vio­lent crime statistics.
In many cas­es, the fear and appre­hen­sion ginned up by politi­cians about increas­es in vio­lent crime do not match the real data. Nevertheless, with a large part of the pop­u­la­tion steeped in the roman­ti­cized Hollywood idea of polic­ing, every­one is forced to dole out more tax­es to hire more police, which pro­duces no rec­og­niz­able dividend.
Republicans have used the smoke­screen of esca­lat­ing vio­lent crime to gen­er­ate fear among white vot­ers. Of course, many of these peo­ple do not read or have the com­pre­hen­sion skills to think for them­selves. The way the nar­ra­tive is framed is that Black crim­i­nals in large cities are on a tear; they must be stopped before they devour the frag­ile and inno­cent white population.
When the nar­ra­tive is framed that way, there is no need for it to be fac­tu­al; entrenched racial big­otry is enough to get them to do what­ev­er the par­ty wants, includ­ing rais­ing tax­es to hire more police officers.
Democrats, for their part live in fear of being brand­ed weak on crime, so they too run on the fic­ti­tious idea that vio­lent crime [must] be con­tained, and the way to do it is to hire more offi­cers and con­tin­ue to mil­i­ta­rize the police.
This plays right into the hands of the cor­po­rate pow­ers who need the police, which has become a pri­vate army behold­en to those who con­trol the ‘prison indus­tri­al complex.’

There needs to be an under­stand­ing that peo­ple kill who they are around. Blacks kill Blacks. Whites kill whites, and so on. At the same time, when we look at crime data, the great­est threat to America does not come from Blacks killing Blacks in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. It does not come from Islamic ter­ror­ists seek­ing to exact Jihad on America. The great­est threat posed to American secu­ri­ty comes from the very peo­ple who frame them­selves as patri­ots. People who would have you believe that attack­ing the United States House of Representatives, destroy­ing prop­er­ty, and shit­ting in the hall­ways are acts of patriotism.
From this group comes young men who feel a sense of enti­tle­ment, and when they are not allowed to extract what they feel is owed them, they go out and kill, usu­al­ly slaugh­ter­ing defense­less chil­dren, peo­ple of col­or in places of wor­ship, super­mar­kets, movie the­aters, and oth­er pub­lic places. Young white males gen­er­al­ly car­ry out those killings.
It is gen­er­al­ly under­stood that no mat­ter how wealthy a soci­ety is, some peo­ple will decide to engage in crim­i­nal con­duct. In fact, even rather wealthy peo­ple with enor­mous resources are some­times drawn to the lure of the dark side. Some become wealthy by evad­ing the long arms of the law because of their skin col­or; oth­ers of a dif­fer­ent hue are not so lucky. The pris­ons and ceme­ter­ies are filled with the bod­ies and remains of the latter.

In January 2012, the con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion The Christian Science Monitor not­ed: The last time the crime rate for seri­ous crime – mur­der, rape, rob­bery, assault – fell to such low lev­els, gaso­line cost 29 cents a gal­lon and the aver­age income for a work­ing American was $5,807.……That was 1963.
In the past 20 years, for instance, the mur­der rate in the United States has dropped by almost half, from 9.8 per 100,000 peo­ple in 1991 to 5.0 in 2009. Meanwhile, rob­beries were down 10 per­cent in 2010 from the year before and 8 per­cent in 2009.
The report went on, how­ev­er: Despite strong evi­dence of crime drop­ping over recent decades, the pub­lic sees the reverse. “Recent Gallup polls have found that cit­i­zens over­whelm­ing­ly feel crime is going up even though it is not,” says Professor Fox. “This is because of the growth of crime shows and the way that TV spot­lights the emo­tion­al. One case of a ran­dom, hor­rif­ic shoot­ing shown repeat­ed­ly on TV has more vis­cer­al effect than all the sta­tis­tics print­ed in a newspaper.”
That report also went on to cred­it tech­nol­o­gy and what it char­ac­ter­ized as more effec­tive polic­ing. I dis­agree then, as I do now. Police had no idea what caused the decades-long drop in crime.
The fact is that since the 1980s, there has been a rev­o­lu­tion­ary change across America with the advent of the inter­net and the ush­er­ing in of the dig­i­tal age. As new oppor­tu­ni­ties abound, peo­ple’s lives have been expo­nen­tial­ly changed for the bet­ter, at least for a few decades.
Unfortunately, like every­thing else, there is a down­side to the growth the nation expe­ri­enced, begin­ning large­ly dur­ing the Clinton years, through and despite Bush and through the Obama years.
The COVID pan­dem­ic changed that tra­jec­to­ry, and we are back to the per­cep­tion that the sky is falling, so we need more police.
If the growth of crime shows on tele­vi­sion and the way TV spot­light­ed the emo­tion­al was a fac­tor dur­ing the 1980s, imag­ine what social media has done in ampli­fy­ing crime sto­ries today and why there is the per­cep­tion that crime is going up.

It is exact­ly what pow­er­ful police unions want us to think. The NYPD, the nation’s largest police gang, is very hap­py with the per­cep­tion that the sky is falling, so more mon­ey is made avail­able to pur­chase new toys like more Robos con­trolled by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, drones, and all kinds of gad­gets. And, of course, the oblig­a­tory more police bodies.
In the mean­time, home­less­ness con­tin­ues to increase among the poor in major cities, usu­al­ly run by Democrats who fell for the hok­ie doke of build­ing out large police depart­ments. Or the fake Democrats like the wolf in sheep­’s cloth­ing in New York City who still thinks he is a cop.
All of this, while the large behe­moth of a police force 37,000 strong swarms poor, under­served minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties among the city’s 8.5 mil­lion res­i­dents and arbi­trar­i­ly stops and frisks men as if the laws and their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights mean nothing.
In the Subway, the home­less lives on the trains, and white vig­i­lantes kill a home­less man who asks for food. All around the city, poor home­less peo­ple sleep on bench­es at the sides of buildings.
No one cares about the poor, but they keep hir­ing more cops.

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

The moth­er of a man shot and killed by police says she can’t under­stand why a grand jury decid­ed not to indict the offi­cer who pulled the trig­ger. Vakelvion Holmes staged a one-woman protest out­side the cour­t­house where the grand jury met to raise aware­ness about what she calls an injustice.
“Justice for Eric is all I want. 19 years old,” Holmes shout­ed from a bull­horn near the steps to the cour­t­house recent­ly. “I miss my son. I real­ly do,” she said, with Eric’s 3‑year-old son rest­less and agi­tat­ed near­by. Holmes used her voice to voice con­cern over the grand jury choos­ing not to indict the Clayton County police offi­cer who shot her son, Eric Holmes, back in November.

Clayton County District Attorney Tasha Mosley says she took the case before the grand jury because she believed at the time a crime had been com­mit­ted. She says she is going through the grand jury tran­scripts and body­cam video to see if there’s some­thing her office missed. Mosley says she is also decid­ing whether to take the case back before a grand jury. Holmes had a mes­sage for Mosley dur­ing her protest at the cour­t­house. “Tasha Mosley I thank you. I thank you too to the pros­e­cu­tor. But I’m ask­ing that when you guys go back in front of that grand jury that you explain to them the truth,” Holmes said in her bull­horn. Holmes says the truth is her son wasn’t a threat that day. “We want jus­tice. That’s all I want,” she said. Community activist Meia Ballinger was there to sup­port Holmes. Mosley says she can take the case before the grand jury one more time. She did not offer a time­line for when she would make a deci­sion. Meanwhile, Holmes says she will keep protest­ing until some­one hears her cry.

A police offi­cer accused of shoot­ing his wife in the face has been arrest­ed and relieved of his duties, accord­ing to a Texas police chief. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said in a news brief­ing the shoot­ing hap­pened just after mid­night Monday, June 12, at an apart­ment on the north­west side of the city. 
Officers found the 30-year-old female vic­tim had been shot in the face by her hus­band, an offi­cer with the Houston Police Department, Finner said.
The woman was tak­en into surgery, and her con­di­tion is unknown. “We pray that she’s going to be alright and recov­er,” the police chief said.

Two police­men were arrest­ed for the rob­bery at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston as they attempt­ed to flee the Island. The two cops were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with charges of Robbery with aggra­va­tion. The two were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar rob­bery of two Chinese nation­als in Kingston.
According to reports about 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 6, the two Chinese nation­als were at their whole­sale when they were vis­it­ed by the two police offi­cers dressed in plain clothes.
The police offi­cers showed their ID and pre­sent­ed a doc­u­ment that they said was a war­rant from the Constant Spring Police for the prop­er­ty to be searched for uncus­tomed goods. They were grant­ed access to the busi­ness estab­lish­ment. One of the Chinese nation­als was led to the fam­i­ly’s liv­ing quar­ters upstairs, where a search was conducted.
The police offi­cers found and took J$8.5 mil­lion, along with US$40,000, from a met­al fil­ing cab­i­net and an iPhone 14.
 The vic­tims object­ed and told the offi­cers not to take the fam­i­ly’s mon­ey because it was to pay for cred­it­ed goods.

The offi­cers report­ed­ly told them the mon­ey would be returned and that he should dri­ve behind them to the police station.
However, as the vic­tim was about to get into his vehi­cle to fol­low the police­men, the offi­cers sped off with the mon­ey. The iPhone was tracked and was found dam­aged in the Queensbury com­mu­ni­ty in Kingston. The two cops,Constable Adian Howard Dawkins, 36, of the Saint Andrew South Division and Cons. Norval Warren, 44 years old, also of the Saint Andrew South Division.
The two were arrest­ed as they sought to board a flight for the John F Kennedy Airport in New York.

Yesterday I wrote about the cor­ro­sive cor­rup­tion that poi­sons polic­ing in the United States that is not being addressed in any sys­temic way. There are some­times con­sci­en­tious District Attorneys who are not total­ly afraid of the police or are too deeply com­pro­mised by their Unions to deal with the prob­lem of police cor­rup­tion. Exceptions, like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and a few oth­ers who are try­ing to do the right thing by address­ing this seri­ous problem.
The fight is not with­out mas­sive push­back from the right wing in the coun­try that has man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly con­vince a large swath of impres­sion­able peo­ple that integri­ty in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is the equiv­a­lence of being soft on criminals.
Of course, the peo­ple they dis­par­age as crim­i­nals are usu­al­ly poor, Black, and deemed disposable.
For those peo­ple, the sys­tem is work­ing just fine. The Black peo­ple ensnared and incar­cer­at­ed and even sent to death row is a sys­tem work­ing as intend­ed. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​u​n​c​o​r​r​o​b​o​r​a​t​e​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​t​e​s​t​i​m​o​n​y​-​a​-​t​r​a​v​e​s​t​y​-​t​o​-​j​u​s​t​i​ce/

Writing this arti­cle a mere day ago, I had no idea that this move was afoot to redress this can­cer of police cor­rup­tion. But I also rec­og­nize that this move by these New York City top pros­e­cu­tors is mere­ly the tip of the ice­berg and mere­ly a tiny drip in the buck­et across the country.
It is also impor­tant to process this vic­to­ry with the somber real­i­ty that none of these actions will hap­pen in coun­ties with Republican District Attorneys here in New York State. That includes the racist Staten Island, which is a bas­tion of white suprema­cy right here in New York City. None of this will hap­pen in states run by Republicans because Prosecutors who attempt to do jus­tice to the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed cit­i­zens in those states are hound­ed out of office by the fas­cist Republicans who run those states.
Even with the actions of DA Alvin Brag and oth­ers in New York City, this does pre­cious lit­tle to rat­tle the cage of the cor­rupt NYPD that has oper­at­ed as a crime syn­di­cate since its incep­tion. The idea that adding col­or to this behe­moth will change its char­ac­ter is the same as say­ing that adding new wall­pa­per to rot­ten walls makes a bet­ter house.

Judges are expect­ed to “ensure due process, order, and deco­rum, and always act with dig­ni­ty and respect to pro­mote the integri­ty and impar­tial­i­ty of the judi­cia­ry.”
Hmmm, if only.
Well, it is at least what one States Judicial Qualifications Commission had to say about the con­duct of one Judge it was inves­ti­gat­ing. The alle­ga­tions are that the judge was extreme­ly def­er­en­tial to the pros­e­cu­tion team and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­re­spect­ful and con­fronta­tion­al to the defense team in a sen­tenc­ing phase of a tri­al in which she was the judge picked to over­see the case.
The com­mis­sion com­pris­es judges, lawyers, and ordi­nary cit­i­zens, who review the judge’s con­duct, after which the supreme court of that state gets to make a final decision.
After tes­ti­fy­ing before the com­mis­sion, the judge announced that she would be retir­ing from the bench on June 30. The com­mis­sion said her deci­sion had noth­ing to do with the com­mis­sion’s work.
The com­mis­sion report­ed that the judge acknowl­edged dur­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny that her con­duct dur­ing the tri­al “fell short” of what’s expect­ed of judges and that “her treat­ment of mem­bers of the defense team was at times not patient, dig­ni­fied or courteous.”

I includ­ed the fore­gone para­graph in this short arti­cle because it demon­strates that jus­tice is not always served in the court­room. Even with a team of lawyers, defen­dants are not guar­an­teed a fair tri­al or sen­tenc­ing. In fact, judges are some­times biased even in the motions they grant dur­ing tri­als. A moun­tain of data points to the dis­parate way tri­al judges oper­ate with obvi­ous bias, usu­al­ly to the detri­ment of crim­i­nal defen­dants. This is in addi­tion to pros­e­cu­tors who go out of their way to pros­e­cute cas­es they know are weak and with­out mer­it out of def­er­ence and fear of police and their unions.
One of the dilem­mas the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem faces today is the irrefutable truths of police vio­lence, lies, cor­rup­tion, and out­right bla­tant vio­lent crim­i­nal­i­ty being exposed thanks to social media.
The trav­es­ty is that despite the out­cry and pain of the vic­tims of police cor­rup­tion and vio­lence, courts con­tin­ue to rely on uncor­rob­o­rat­ed police evi­dence to arrive at guilty verdicts.
Instead of uphold­ing the laws equal­ly and fair­ly against cit­i­zens and police alike, begin­ning with the Supreme Court at the top, courts have sought to restrict the rights of the American cit­i­zen to broad­en the pow­ers of the police state.
A cit­i­zen caught lying under oath faces the full force and wrath of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
A cop caught lying under oath faces absolute­ly no penal­ty at all.

In a 2010 Abstract on the Department of Justice’s web­site, Melanie D Wilson wrote; The U.S. legal sys­tem regards police offi­cers as impar­tial fact gath­er­ers, trained to col­lect facts that sup­port guilt and inno­cence. This per­cep­tion is far from the truth, and in real­i­ty, police offi­cers are biased advo­cates attempt­ing to dis­prove inno­cence.
Unfortunately, this real­i­ty con­tin­ues every day in court­rooms across the United States. Police lie, and courts use their lies to con­vict inno­cent cit­i­zens. Black cit­i­zens are at the great­est risk of being vic­tim­ized by this inher­ent bias in most judges and prosecutors.
Some prison reform and abo­li­tion sup­port­ers have argued that race and gen­der are the top rea­sons for the dis­par­i­ty in sen­tenc­ing. Blacks receive almost 10 per­cent longer sen­tences than whites arrest­ed and con­vict­ed for the same crimes.
Some argue that the dis­par­i­ty comes from the way police gin up charges on black arrestees and the way pros­e­cu­tors choose to pros­e­cute those charges. Of course, this expla­na­tion does lit­tle to assuage the claims of racism and fur­ther reveals the intri­ca­cy and sys­temic nature of the racism woven into the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
It is impor­tant to process this infor­ma­tion with the knowl­edge that this injus­tice is not some­thing being done to for­eign­ers, which it was would be inher­ent­ly wrong, but that has been this way against American cit­i­zens, albeit of a dif­fer­ent col­or than white.
In one year, more than 50 mil­lion per­sons in the U.S. have come in con­tact with police dur­ing traf­fic stops, street stops, arrests, traf­fic acci­dents, or res­i­dent-ini­ti­at­ed con­tacts, and 1 mil­lion expe­ri­ence the use of or threat of force. I encour­age cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to film police action uti­liz­ing the court’s guid­ance by allow­ing them space to do their jobs effec­tive­ly and safe­ly. However, do not be bul­lied when they tell you that you must move so far away that you can­not see what they are doing. They will also tell you they do not mind if you record them. Well, it does­n’t mat­ter whether they mind; they do not get to make those decisions.
If the young lady who stu­dious­ly record­ed George Floyd’s mur­der had been afraid and not record­ed the event, Derek Chauvin and his cronies would still be patrolling the streets of Minneapolis.
Remember, they lied that he died from a med­ical emer­gency before they changed their sto­ry after her video sur­faced. America’s pris­ons and jails are filled with crim­i­nals and inno­cent peo­ple. People the police fal­si­fied reports on and per­jured them­selves in court to gain con­vic­tions. In many cas­es, the pros­e­cu­tors know the infor­ma­tion is rid­dled with lies, and so does the judges.
This is what pass­es for justice.

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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.

In the fol­low­ing arti­cle, you will see a vio­lent cop who was allowed to remain unchecked for his entire career, con­tin­ued to bru­tal­ize inno­cent civil­ians until tech­nol­o­gy caught up with him. It was only then that the pow­ers that pro­tect offi­cers like him had no choice but to take action.
You will also see a pros­e­cu­tor bemoan the fact that the cop was con­vict­ed for his crimes even as he pledged that he would pro­ceed with oth­er crim­i­nals against the con­vict­ed cop, declar­ing it a somber moment, speak­ing of the ver­dict. The pros­e­cu­tor also bent over back­ward in oblig­a­tory praise of police, usu­al­ly a sign that they are afraid of the wrath of the police unions that are sup­port­ers of the vio­lent thugs in uni­form regard­less of their crimes against the public.
You will also see the police chief mak­ing the regres­sive argu­ment that it was his depart­ment that inves­ti­gat­ed the com­plaints, which led to the charges against the crim­i­nal cop. It is impor­tant to jux­ta­pose that asser­tion with the pros­e­cu­tor’s state­ment; with­out the video­tape evi­dence, there would have been no case’.
They were forced to act because of the irrefutable evi­dence enshrined in the video evi­dence. That is why it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to record these crim­i­nals when­ev­er you encounter them. Had the young woman not stu­dious­ly record­ed Derek Chauvin’s mur­der, George Floyd Chauvin would not have faced any con­se­quences. In fact, the police depart­ment lied that Floyd suf­fered a med­ical emer­gency and died before know­ing that the video­tape exist­ed of the day­light murder.
The abu­sive cop was found guilty, but the ver­dict is what matters.
The good old boys’ net­work of cops, pros­e­cu­tors, and juries, is what gives rise to cops like this one. It should come as no sur­prise if he receives a slap on the wrist. Judges are a large part of the impuni­ty that char­ac­ter­izes police vio­lence in the United States.
Instead of expand­ing the rights of ‘we the peo­ple’, the courts, start­ing with the Supreme Court, have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­strict­ed the rights of cit­i­zens while expand­ing the police state. (mb)

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Former Fall River police offi­cer Michael Pessoa has been found guilty of assault and bat­tery with a dan­ger­ous weapon, wit­ness intim­i­da­tion, civ­il rights vio­la­tions and fil­ing false reports in the case involv­ing city res­i­dent David Lafrance.

The for­mer city cop was tak­en out of the court­room in hand­cuffs Wednesday after the jury deliv­ered the ver­dict slight­ly after 1 p.m. fol­low­ing a five-day tri­al. Bristol County Deputy District Attorney William McCauley asked Superior Court Judge Renee Dupuis if they could post­pone sen­tenc­ing until Thursday because the vic­tim in the case, David Lafrance, was not at the cour­t­house. Both sides agreed to a June 7 sen­tenc­ing date.

In June 2019, Pessoa was indict­ed on 15 counts for alleged­ly assault­ing four men in sep­a­rate inci­dents, all while they were in cus­tody. One case was dis­missed, and Dupuis ordered that the remain­ing cas­es be sep­a­rat­ed. This is the first of three tri­als he will face. After the ver­dict, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn III said, “The evi­dence showed that Mr. Pessoa crossed the line in his behav­ior that night and he and oth­er offi­cers par­tic­i­pat­ed in a cov­er-up to con­ceal what happened.
All evi­dence is impor­tant, but the video­tape is sig­nif­i­cant because with­out the video­tape, there would have been no case.” Quinn said his office will be pur­su­ing the two oth­er pend­ing cases.
Quinn, after the ver­dict, called it a “somber moment.” “Because a major­i­ty of police offi­cers are serv­ing their com­mu­ni­ty and try to pro­tect them when they do with­in an appro­pri­ate way. He had to be held account­able based on the evi­dence, but it’s still not a reflec­tion on the vast major­i­ty of police offi­cers.” Fall River Police Chief Paul Gauvin said the Pessoa ver­dict is “cer­tain­ly a sad day in the depart­men­t’s his­to­ry.” “But I think it’s impor­tant to note that the Fall River Police Department inves­ti­gat­ed this mat­ter inter­nal­ly, lead­ing to his ter­mi­na­tion. We inves­ti­gat­ed this mat­ter crim­i­nal­ly and assist­ed through all phas­es of the pros­e­cu­tion,” said Gauvin. Despite the fact that the pros­e­cu­tion of Pessoa is over in this case, “we need to move for­ward and con­tin­ue the all-impor­tant work of regain­ing trust and con­fi­dence of this com­mu­ni­ty and restor­ing pride, dig­ni­ty and hon­or of the Fall River Police Department.”

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This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on The Herald News: Former Fall River cop found guilty in police bru­tal­i­ty case