Another American city erupts in violence. This time it’s Baltimore Maryland over the death of Freddy Grey who died from a severed spine while in Police custody. It is the same as usual Grey was a criminal with an expansive rap-sheet. Police effect a violent arrest took him into custody and now he is dead.
citizens make their voices heard
For some in the White community it’s no big deal it’s just another nigger dead. For the black community it is one more example of police acting as judge jury and executioner. Many in the Black community believe racial diversity in police departments is the answer to the epidemic of police brutality in America. I disagree it has anything to do with the way police behave.
America’s police departments have displayed a tone-deafness to police murder of citizens
Lost in the noise as always, is the never ending litany or peripheral issues affecting the African-American community, it makes good talking points until the winds died down and it’s back to the status-quo. The fact of the matter is that police departments have to take responsibility for the actions of the people they put into the communities to act as police officers.
Violence erupts following funeral for Freddie Gray in Baltimore
During Martin O’Malley’s administration as mayor, the department had become 43% African American.[25] While progress has been made to improve the department’s relationship with Baltimore’s now majority African American community, improvements are still being made to the department which for several years has been subject to criticism for its treatment of African American citizens. Police community relations have remained strained with the war on drugs that has plagued several African American neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore and coincidentally enough, many of the most despised officers in several of Baltimore’s African American neighborhoods are also African American.wikipedia.
Freddy Gray Protest Erupts In Chaos As Baltimore Police Cars Get Smashed
How long do they think they will be able to sustain the simmering cauldron of anger and resentment that is threatening to engulf us all? When Dr.King marched and fought over 50 years ago the number one issue facing black Americans was police brutality. Today the problem is the same. States in America have demonstrated a maddening tone-deafness in dealing with the issues of police brutality and murder. Governors elected by the people stand with police abuse of black citizens. American Governors reaction to police abuse withing their states have the predictable default position of mobilizing the national guard.
This is a powder keg…
The truth is some are afraid to tackle police unions and others do not care to do anything about the problem. The police should take no comfort in the silence or tacit acquiescence of some within the white community who support them when they engage in criminal conduct. They are the ones who will face the music when the palpable anger becomes too much to be kept under a lid. They can talk about looting and destruction of property all they want, rather than condemn they better learn the pertinent lessons real fast. We shall overcome will not appease this generation .…
Freddie gray’s spine severed while in the custody of Baltimore Police…
There is a war going on in America. It’s not the war on terror they tell you about, it is the war on black men by their own Government. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that over 100 Americans were killed at the hands of police in just the month of January. Digest that just for a minute.….…
Every time there is a police killing, the police and their supporters, including elected officials move the goal-post on the latitude cops have under the laws o kill black people. We have seen an unarmed Michael Brown killed and left in the streets of Ferguson like a piece of road-kill. We are told that the cop had every right to fire those bullets into him because he was a thug who deserved to die. Now we know that it’s okay for the police to exterminate those in society white people do not like, what better way to do it than under the cover of the law?
We watched as Eric Garner had the life squeezed out of him by Daniel Pantaleo ‚a Staten Island cop. The system tells us there was no crime committed , despite Garner repeatedly telling the bunch of savages on top of him that he couldn’t breathe. Garner had committed no crime, and certainly had a right to resist being harassed and or arrested. Long Island Congressman Peter King a Republican tells us if someone can’t breathe they can’t speak. King is not a Doctor, neither is he qualified to speak on medical issues. It did not prevent the ignorant jackass from opening his pie-hole and making himself look even more stupid than his appearance.
What happened to telling someone “you are under arrest”? Why do cops go out looking to abuse and kill people? Don’t you dare tell me they do not go out looking to kill people!! many of them do. Let’s cut the bull.. They do not serve the interest of the public, well not the black segment. Which may argue why so many whites have no problem with the mass police slaughter of blacks in America. Every little jackass of a cop now sees himself/herself as a Rambo super-cop. The most inconsequential , trivial situations are immediately escalated in order that they may show they have the power to take life and inflict pain. Just how much longer do they believe they will get away with this.
Why does every simple arrest always have to be about 6 guys piling onto a single suspect? In many cases confrontation could easily be avoided if officers simply ask suspect to turn around and submit to being arrested. Why does every arrest have to be escalated into a Rambo style take-down? The simple truth is many of these guys running around as cops see some sections of the population as the enemy. Many have returned from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They have been given homes in Police departments all across the country. In many instances the hardware at their disposal are the same as that which they had on the battlefields. Everything is in place. They need an enemy and a war.….. This is not to say every soldier who returned and became a cop is a danger to the public, but many are. Neither does it mean that there aren’t many non-military psychopaths wearing police uniforms who get to act out their aggression on America’s most hated race, while hiding behind a badge. Since Barack Obama was elected President there has been a massive rise in white groups all across the country. So too has there been more and more instances of white supremacists in America’s police departments. It is no coincidence that there are more slaughter of blacks by whites dressed up in police uniforms than at any other time.
Whether it’s multiple rounds into the bodies of the unarmed Michael Brown , Tamir Rice, John Crawford,and the scores of faceless others. Whether it’s the choking death of Eric Garner as he pleads with them to release their death grip. Or whether its the severed spine of Freddie Gary, the list of police atrocities go unabated while states do nothing to harness the wanton waste of life by their Agents. This carnage did not start yesterday, it won’t end tomorrow. It will end when black people make it end. It did not begin with 41 bullets which snuffed out the life of Amado Diallio , neither did it begin with the savage barbaric act of sodomy on Abner Louima by a NYPD monster named Justin Volpe. It continue to happen because pro police racist demagogues continue to spread the lie that America’s police are the best in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Freddie Gray, arrested by Baltimore police on April 12, died a week later of a severed spinal cord.
Baltimore cops twisted Freddie Gray like “origami,” says the man who filmed the fatally wounded 25-year-old’s arrest. Witness Kevin Moore is speaking out on the confrontation between police officers and Gray, who died of a severed spinal cord. “They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami,” Moore told the Baltimore Sun. “He was all bent up, and the officer had his knee in his neck. He was just screaming, like screaming for life.“The death of Gray a week after the April 12 bust inflamed tensions between cops and black residents with the police union boss describing protesters as a “like a lynch mob.” Union boss Gene Ryan acknowledged demonstrations had been peaceful but blasted protesters’ “rhetoric” after Gray’s death.
“In fact, the images seen on television look and sound much like a lynch mob in that they are calling for imprisonment of these officers without them ever receiving the due process that is the Constitutional right of every citizen, including law enforcement officers,” Ryan said in a written statement. The controversial description infuriated critics who bashed the union leader as impossibly tone deaf to one of the grimmest reminders of racial injustice in this country’s history. “We’ve been the victims of the lynching and now we’re the lynch mob?” Gray family attorney Billy Murphy told the Baltimore Sun. “The president of the police union called peaceful protests and the anger at the death of a man to severe and unfathomable injuries while in police custody a lynch mob? It doesn’t get more insensitive or insulting than that. These remarks illustrate why black people and the police don’t get along.”
Ryan should rethink his priorities, the attorney said. “He needs to issue an apology at the speed of light and focus on the more important issues of how this black man didn’t deserve to die and have his spinal cord severed and his neck broken — how that happened,” Murphy told the Baltimore Sun. Ryan later backed off the inflammatory language. “Maybe I need to reword that,” he said at a news conference. Gray could be heard in a cell phone video screaming as two officers dragged the handcuffed 25-year-old to a police van and loaded him inside.
The union rushed to support the six officers involved while laying blame for the arrest on Gray, who was carrying a pocket knife when he was stopped.“Had he not had a knife or a an illegal weapon on him, he would have been released after the proper paperwork was done,” union attorney Michael Davey said at a news conference.
Walter Scott’s death in South Carolina, at the hands of now-fired North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, is one of several instances from the past year when a black man was killed after being pulled over while driving. No one knows exactly how often traffic stops turn deadly, but studies in Arizona, Missouri, Texas, Washington have consistently shown that cops stop and search black drivers at a higher rate than white drivers. Last week, a team of researchers in North Carolina found that traffic stops in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, showed a similar racial disparity — and that the gap has been widening over time.
The researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill analyzed more than 1.3 million traffic stops and searches by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers for a 12-year period beginning in 2002, when the state began requiring police to collect such statistics. In their analysis of the data, collected and made public by the state’s Department of Justice, the researchers found that black drivers, despite making up less than one-third of the city’s driving population, were twice as likely to be subject to traffic stops and searches as whites. Young black men in Charlotte were three times as likely to get pulled over and searched than the city-wide average. Here’s a chart from the Charlotte Observer’s report detailing the findings:
Michael Gordon and David Puckett, Charlotte Observer
Not only did the researchers identify these gaps: they showed that the gaps have been growing. Black drivers in Charlotte are more likely than whites to get pulled over and searched today than they were in 2002, the researchers found. They noted similar widening racial gaps among traffic stops and searches in Durham, Raleigh, and elsewhere in the state.
Black drivers in Charlotte were much more likely to get stopped for minor violations involving seat belts, vehicle registration, and equipment, where, as the Observer’s Michael Gordon points out, “police have more discretion in pulling someone over.” (Scott was stopped in North Charleston due to a broken brake light.) White drivers, meanwhile, were stopped more often for obvious safety violations, such as speeding, running red lights and stop signs, and driving under the influence. Still, black drivers — except those suspected of intoxicated driving — were always more likely to get searched than whites, no matter the reason for the stop.
The findings in North Carolina echo those of a 2014 study by researchers at the University of Kansas, who found that Kansas City’s black drivers were stopped at nearly three times the rate of whites fingered for similarly minor violations.
Frank Baumgartner, the lead author of the UNC-Chapel Hill study, told Mother Jonesthat officers throughout the state were twice as likely to use force against black drivers than white drivers. Of the estimated 18 million stops that took place between 2002 and 2013 in North Carolina that were analyzed by Baumgartner’s team, less than one percent involved the use of force. While officers are required to report whether force was encountered or deployed, and whether there were any injuries, “we don’t know if the injuries are serious, and we don’t know if a gun was fired,” he says.http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/north-carolina-traffic-stops
US President Barack Obama’s breeze through Jamaica may be a savory moment for the Portia Simpson Miller led administration in Kingston, but Jamaica will see precious little from his pit-stop tour though the Island Nation.
China’s growing influence in the region is not lost on Washington. As such traditional allies has largely been ignored since Obama took office. Jamaica’s pit-stop stop in was not much more than a farewell tour for Obama on American tax-payers dime. Chinese influence is on the rise in the Caribbean and Latin America, as it is in many other regions of the Globe. As America grapples with maintaining it’s empire , while juggling hot-spots some created from ill-advised wars, the Chinese are largely allowed a free hand in Africa and the America’s. Of course the Chinese come with cash and lots of it. The Caribbean like other regions of the world has seen America’s influence challenged by Chinese cash. Unlike the Soviet-era Ideological clash between east and west, this clash of influence is all about who has money to dole out. Obama understand loyalties are influenced by money so a quick pit stop to an old ally Jamaica will keep the Jamaicans happy for a few more years. Relaxing the embargo on Cuba .…. That’s a different matter , after half a century of economic blockade the Cuban Revolution is still intact. The last thing America needs is a new set of communist leaders after the Castro brothers exit the stage who are friendly with a belligerent Russia and a cash-strong emerging China.
For it’s part, Cuba ever anxious to shed the shackles of economic strangulation will be willing to play ball with America. Already the Cuban President Raul Castro has demonstrated his affection for Obama, saying Obama is a honest man. Of course Obama will be looking to extract some valuable concessions from the Cubans in order to start normalizing relations between the two countries. The America right-wing will not relent unless it subjects it’s enemies to embarrassment and humiliation. As such, Barack Obama will be forced to demand stiff concessions from Cuba before the Right wing Republicans and even some Democrats will be willing to consider normalizing relations with the communist Island.
Cuba has been home to many dissidents some of whom have fled from America. The question now, is whether Cuba flush with excitement will offer up these political prisoners to curry favor with America. After all they have no economic value. They have already served their purpose as propaganda pawns in the 50-plus year long psychological war between the two countries. Only time will tell.…
The normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations could mean a drastic change for two most-wanted American fugitives after decades of living free on the island nation.
“We believe that the strong U.S. interest in the return of these fugitives will be best served by entering into this dialogue with Cuba,” Obama said.
Former New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez listens as the guilty verdict is read during his murder trial at the Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River, Mass., Wednesday, April 15, 2015. Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Odin Lloyd in June 2013. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. (Dominick Reuter/Pool Photo via AP)
A jury has found Aaron Hernandez guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd.
On Wednesday, Judge E. Susan Garsh sentenced Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end, to life without the possibility of parole for killing Lloyd on June 17, 2013. The sentence was mandatory.
The jury found that the ex-NFL player merited the conviction by “reason of extreme atrocity or cruelty.”
Hernandez, 25, and two accomplices picked up Lloyd, 27, a landscaper who played semiprofessional football, at his home on the pretext that they would party together. Instead they drove through the darkness to an industrial park in North Attleborough near the football player’s spacious home, where Hernandez shot Lloyd several times with a .45-caliber Glock pistol, including two kill shots to Lloyd’s chest as he writhed in pain on the ground.
The jury also convicted Hernandez on weapons and ammunition possession charges.
Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, wept openly in court after hearing the verdict.
In a statement read after the judge handed down the conviction, Ursula Ward, Lloyd’s mother, called her son the “backbone” of her family.
“My heart stopped beating [when he died],” Ward said. “I wanted to go into the hole [with Odin].”
Deliberations stretched out seven days before jurors in Bristol County Superior Court announced their decision on Wednesday morning. Testimony in the trial lasted about two months and was at times interrupted by severe weather.
A court officer places handcuffs on the wrists of former New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez after the guilty verdict was read during his murder trial at the Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River, Mass., Wednesday, April 15, 2015.
Hernandez’s defense admitted that he witnessed the shooting of Lloyd but argued that he has no reason to throw his career away by killing someone. The prosecution was never able to establish Hernandez’s motive, according to WCVB.
“Did he make all the right decisions? No,” his lawyer, James Sultan said during closing arguments. “He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something, a shocking killing, committed by someone he knew. He didn’t know what to do, so he just put one foot in front of the other.”
Hernandez’s alleged accomplices, Ernest Wallace Jr. and Carlos Ortiz, will be tried separately.[Huffingtonpost.com]
Events happening in the world today may be compared, and cross referenced with Biblical prophesies so that even those in doubt may arrive at a spiritual consensus that the second coming of Jesus Chris is imminent. Christianity is the only Religion which is backed up with prophetic foretelling of events to come. It becomes necessary then, that Christians look up for when we see these things we know our Redemption is nigh. We cannot be concerned about what insult, abuse or scorn the world chooses to heap on us. After all Jesus Christ suffered it all on our behalf. As children of God we must be prepared to extol the virtues of Jesus Christ and live with the consequences. Truth and Justice, are uncompromising and un-compromised. I pray God’s grace on our Kenyan brothers and sisters who claimed their christian faith, and died because of them. Matthew 16:25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. May their souls rest in peace until Jesus returns to usher them onto himself. The promise of God’s word is sure, you can bet on it. The word of the Lord did say this day would come. Matthew 24:9:9“Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.10“At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Matthew 10:17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. John 15:19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
Where is the christian church? Is the church going to continue to preach prosperity gospel? Are Christians going to go along to get along? We have a choice to make, chose ye now whom ye shall serve>. Peace be onto you… See more in our inspiration page onchatt-a-box.comand share it with your neighbors.
Islamist extremists Al Shabaab shot dead 36 non-Muslims in an assault on a labourers’ camp in north-east Kenya last Tuesday.
Almost all of those killed were Christians; area church leaders believe that they were targeted for their faith.
The attack took place at about 1am at a quarry in Kormey, nine miles from Mandera on the Somali border, where labourers were sleeping in tents. Most are said to have been from central and eastern Kenya. The extremists reportedly separated out the non-Muslims then shot or beheaded them.
Earlier that night, gunmen had stormed a social club in Wajir, about 60 miles from Mandera, killing one man and wounding 13 others. The club is associated with non-Muslims; most local Muslims do not drink alcohol. These attacks came just ten days after up to 28 Christians were killed in the same area (Prayer Alert, November 24).
Al Shabaab has admitted responsibility for Tuesday’s massacre. In response, Kenya’s Interior Minister was dismissed and the national police chief resigned.
(Source: Morning Star News)
For more information about persecuted Christians in Kenya, read the latestRelease magazine.
Please pray for Christians in Kenya, amid mounting persecution. Pray that they will draw close to Jesus, ‘the author and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2).
Pray that God will comfort relatives and friends of those killed at Kormey. Pray for wisdom and firm resolve for Kenyan officials trying to combat extremism.
NEWSUPDATE The next hearing in the appeal of Egyptian Christian Bishoy Armia Boulos (formerly Mohammed Hegazy) is scheduled for December 28, when a verdict is expected. On November 23, his lawyers made a compelling defence against Bishoy’s five-year conviction for documenting religious persecution in Minya (Prayer Alert, November 14). After that hearing, Bishoy was held temporarily in solitary confinement in what has been described as an ‘execution cell’; he was later returned to Tora Prison, south Cairo. Please pray that Bishoy will be acquitted. (Source: Release contacts)http://www.releaseinternational.org/kenya-christian-workers-murdered-for-their-faith/#!prettyPhoto
It’s never ending, a situation in law enforcement which ought to end rather mildly with the arrest of a suspect, ends with the suspect dead. Oh by the way the suspect is male and just happen to be African-American. Welcome to the era of the American Warrior cop. It is sickening what is happening and it really begs the question , “who the hell will save Black-America? I ask this because Black-America is blissfully unconcerned about it’s own survival.
Eric Harris was shot and killed by a reserve deputy who fired his gun after allegedly mistaking it for his taser, according to a statement from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.
It was a mistake. That’s the blasé explanation Oklahoma officials gave after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white deputy who accidentally pulled his gun when he meant to use his Taser. The encounter was captured on a disturbing video released by police on Friday — nine days after the fatal Tulsa shooting.
Harris bolted from officers who were trying to arrest him for selling a 9 mm. semiautomatic pistol and ammunition to undercover cops. Harris, who was unarmed, had reportedly done time for assault and battery on an officer. He was “absolutely a threat when going down,” Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark said at a news conference.Sheriff’s Capt. Billy McKelvey claims the arresting officers were not aware Harris had been shot, despite the gunshot noise and Bates’ admission. They called paramedics and firefighters, and rendered aid when they realized, McKelvey said. “He made an inadvertent mistake,” McKelvey said. Sgt. Dave Walker told the Tulsa World that police“would not investigate the death unless the sheriff’s office asked them to, and they have not asked us to.”
“He shot me! He shot me, man. Oh, my god. I’m losing my breath,”Eric Harris says as he struggles on the ground following the April 2 shooting, which flew under the radar until video emerged a week later. “Fuck your breath, “Shut the fuck up!” One of the Savages shouted at Harris. “You shouldn’t have fucking ran!” another of the savages screamed. Eric Harris was pronounced dead less than an hour later. In actuality he may have died right there as the bunch of savages dressed in police attire knelt on his head and kept squeezing as the life drained out of him. Eric Harris died as Eric Garner did. As tens of thousands, arguably millions, tens of millions over the decades, have died at the hands of white Americans and their enforcers.
FUCKYOURBREATH
Robert Bates, 73, shot to death suspect Eric Harris in Oklahoma after pulling out his gun instead of his taser, authorities said.
The narrative surrounding the murder of Eric Harris is that 73 year-old Robert Bates the pay-to-play wannabe cop should not have been involved in the sting operation which brought Harris down. The totality of the discussion completely excludes the fact that there was absolutely no need to initiate the use of a taser under the conditions in the video as there were several cops on top of Harris who was already subdued, including kneeling on his head. I used the term murder in this case despite what we see in the video of mister Bates’s apparent shock after firing his weapon. I do not believe Robert Bates is guilty of murder. As a former police officer, I am inclined to give him the benefit of what we saw in the video. He did not intend to pull and fire his weapon into Eric Harris. The Department which allowed him to participate in that sting must be held accountable. The real murderers are the other savages, those who shouted expletives at a subdued Eric Harris, ridiculing his claim that he was losing his breath. Eric Garner was choked to death on Staten Island by macho cop Daniel Pantaleo . Garner told police several times he could not breathe, Pantaleo kept up the pressure until Eric Garner was dead. The NYPD and it’s supporters still do not get it, they claim if you cannot breath you cannot talk. What absolute ignorance. By that measure they are allowed to apply pressure to a suspect until he cannot speak. Only then are these demons convinced that someone may actually be having serious problems breathing. When they have no breath left. As the world saw Eric Garner is laying in a cemetery. Daniel Pantaleo did not even have to answer to a court of law for murdering him in plain view of the entire world. There is a callous disregard for the life of black people in America. The police are just the enforcers, the real problem is the white structure which stands behind and allows it because it serves their interest.
The Wall Street Journal one of the Nation’s leading Conservative Publication,and an entity no one could accuse of being slack in it’s support of cops,stated in a Aug. 7th.2013 Article Titled, Rise of the warrior cop. Quote: “Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment — from bayonets and M‑16 rifles to armored personnel carriers — American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post‑9/11 anti-terrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties”.
Eric Harris was shot and killed by a reserve deputy who fired his gun after mistaking it for his taser, according to a statement from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.
The perceived wrongdoers are America’s black male. Every arrest is escalated into a military style event. Events which under normal circumstances would not raise an eyebrow were they done in the normal ways of policing. The idea that a suspect would run seem to be something inconceivable these days. One of the reason for this are laws which make it a crime to run from police. This gives the new warrior cop the idea that he now has the right to murder a fleeing suspect. The warrior cop is now cop, prosecutor, judge and executioner. To hell with the presumption of innocence, to hell with due process. Welcome to the world of the Patriot Act and the new police state.
At the beginning of this Article I asked who “who will save Black-America? I asked that question in the context of the way in which the black talking-heads who happen to make it onto television allow the discussion to go. They all seem somehow stuck in the throes of slavery , unable to extricate themselves from the narrative designed by the slave-master. The killing of Eric Harris was avoidable. Yes Harris was engaged in a crime but if America is to be believed, cops do not get to apply the death penalty at their leisure and discretion.
A fleeing suspect is not an anomaly, faced with prison people run , it is a normal human reaction. It is not a licence for sadistic savages to kill someone. More and more the world is getting a view into the sordid belly which is America’s mythological Justice system. A system which systematically allows it’s agents to unlawfully kill it’s own citizens without consequence, while berating other nations about civil and human rights. The hypocrisy is stunning yet understandable by those who always maintained that America’s criminal Justice system was actually two separate systems, one for whites and one for everyone else. The poor pathetic black talking heads are unable to see that the real tragedy of Eric Harris’ killing is not that he was shot by an old man, but that after he was shot a group of savages acting under the auspices of the law, knelt on his head until he was dead, all while hurling expletive-laced insults at him.
The new default position is that a black man who was ticketed as a college student for jay-walking may be justifiably killed forty years later, because he received that ticket. Now anyone familiar with America’s system of justice understands how young black men are targeted by law-enforcement. For a young black male to avoid police contact he must almost make himself invisible. This makes every black male killed by police, deserving of death. Until the almost 40 million black people in America decide enough is enough there will be no change.
Robert Bates, 73, shot to death suspect Eric Harris in Oklahoma after pulling out his gun instead of his taser, authorities said.
It was a mistake.
That’s the blasé explanation Oklahoma officials gave after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white deputy who accidentally pulled his gun when he meant to use his Taser. The botched encounter was captured on a disturbing video released by police on Friday — nine days after the fatal Tulsa shooting.
“F— your breath,” a callous officer can be heard saying. “Shut the f— up!”
Reserve Deputy Robert Bates, 73, (below) shouted “Taser! Taser!” before pulling the trigger on his gun, firing a round into Harris.
“I shot him!” the former policeman says, dropping his gun. “I’m sorry.”
Bates was assisting other deputies who were trying to take Harris into custody after the felon fled from police during a sting operation, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office’s said.
“You shouldn’t have f — –g ran!” another deputy screams, as Harris is held down by his neck and head.
Eric Harris was shot and killed by a reserve deputy who fired his gun after mistaking it for his taser, according to a statement from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.
Harris, who was in his 40s, was pronounced dead about an hour after the shooting, authorities said.
He had bolted from officers who were trying to arrest him for selling a 9 mm. semiautomatic pistol and ammunition to undercover cops.
Harris, who was unarmed, had reportedly done time for assault and battery on an officer.
He was “absolutely a threat when going down,” Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark said at a news conference.
Sheriff’s Capt. Billy McKelvey claims the arresting officers were not aware Harris had been shot, despite the gunshot noise and Bates’ admission. They called paramedics and firefighters, and rendered aid when they realized, McKelvey said.
“He made an inadvertent mistake,” McKelvey said.
Sgt. Dave Walker told the Tulsa World that police “would not investigate the death unless the sheriff’s office asked them to, and they have not asked us to.”
This weekend, the Bundy ranch in Nevada will host a reunion to celebrate owner Cliven Bundy’s continued lawlessness. Bundy became a hero of the far-right a year ago when his refusal to pay 20 years’ worth of federal grazing fees for his cattle — totalling $1.1 million—brought federal agents to collect, which Bundy and several hundred armed right-wing militia members repelled with a show of force. Fox News and other right-wing news outlets raced to the ranch to report on what Bundy supporters called the “Second American Revolution” and the “American Spring,” the moment when the rhetoric of “tyranny” and “totalitarianism” under President Obama would materialize into actual armed conflict against the loathsome federal government.
For anyone confused about whether a political movement which celebrates the Second Amendment and rallies around an iconography of war and rebellion is interested in actual combat against the “liberal” federal government, the Bundy affair answered any remaining questions: Yes, the prospect excites many far right-wing conservatives like nothing else. Fox News’ Sean Hannity was giddy in his initial introduction of Bundy as someone threatening a “range war” against the federal government. Fox News covered the ranch saga daily, with Bundy presented as a hero, and Hannity alone would feature Bundy on his show numerous times over the several weeks of the standoff, at times giving the rebel rancher a primetime microphone multiple times a week to rally right wingers to his cause.
Two extremists, Jerad and Amanda Miller, who traveled to Bundy’s ranch, only to be turned out, would go on to execute two Nevada police officers in June, draping the familiar Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag over the corpses and pinning a note to their government victims saying, “This is the start of the revolution.” Jerad and Amanda heard the call for a “range war” and took it upon themselves to be the vanguard of the Bundy rebellion.
In the end, the two officers were the only casualties and Bundy’s boys went home with not so much as a band-aid, as federal agents were backed down by a veritable army of militiamen. The government blinked, and Bundy was allowed to continue to flout a law he’d decided didn’t apply to him.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is white power.
And this is black vulnerability: In the intervening year since the Nevada showdown, much of America has become outraged by a series of cases of unarmed black men killed by police. The epidemic of police violence against black men has been ongoing for decades, of course, but a confluence of a new public attentiveness and video evidence in some cases has pushed the crisis into the mainstream discourse.
The latest case, the shocking murder of Walter Scott in North Charleston, SC, should be held up for comparison with the Bundy standoff. Before the video surfaced and contradicted his report, Scott’s killer, Officer Michael Slager, justified his use of deadly force by claiming that Scott gained control of Slager’s taser, thus making him a threat worthy of fatal elimination.
So the threat of a 50-year-old black man with a taser is so great that 8 shots into the back can be justified — but line up hundreds of white men on horseback and armed to the hilt with military-grade weapons, and agents of the government are powerless.
A single unarmed black man in Staten Island selling loosies is considered enough of a threat to be choked to death in broad daylight. Yet armed ex-military men protecting a criminal with high-powered rifles trained on federal agents are not enough of a threat to law and order to similarly merit the use of force.
Is that what we learn when we look at the cases? Does the specter of some imagined violent nature of black men exceed the fear stoked by white men with actual guns, actually pointed at state agents, fingers on triggers?
Or is it that the Bundy army was too much of a threat? The simmering anger on the American right since President Obama’s election has seethed just at the precipice of violence, and for Obama’s troops — as they would be viewed — to rightly fire on white people angry about taxes would have no doubt enraged extremists to a degree unseen since perhaps the 19th century. These weren’t the creepy cultists of the Waco standoff; Bundy was a hero headlining Fox News, the Drudge Report, and the other leading conservative news outlets. He would have been a martyr to Tea Partiers and the far right.
The militia and “Patriot” movements have seen “stunning growth” during the Obama years, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks violent extremism. Bloodshed at the Bundy ranch could have very well sparked violence elsewhere, just as the federal sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco during the 1990s animatedthe nascent militia and Patriot movements.
What lesson then have we learned from Cliven Bundy? What lesson do we learn from Walter Scott? Or Eric Garner. Or Michael Brown? Sean Bell?Oscar Grant? Amadou Diallo? Ramarley Graham? Maybe the Huey P. Newton Gun Club in Texas has the right idea. Named after Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton, the group takes advantage of open carry laws in the Lone Star State to patrol their neighborhoods in squads of men and women armed with assault rifles, what Newton and the Panthers did in Oakland in 1966.
But while Panther-style armed resistance might protect some victims from police violence, it’s hard to imagine it remedying the underlying problem: white supremacy and the assumption of black men as almost supernaturally dangerous. That’s why Slager’s initial story about Walter Scott would have probably sufficed, were it not for the video; the perceived threat posed by black men is that great. And it’s why Bundy’s men were permitted to point sniper rifles at state officials and still not be considered a threat worthy of elimination.
Right-wing Obama hatred and hawkish foreign policy instincts can clash in all sorts of colorful, unexpected ways, but credit to freshman senator andnoted piece of work Tom Cotton for this latest twist: neoconservative Neville Chamberlain apologism. If your goal is to describe President Obama as the most naïve amateur in the history of foreign policy, that means you have to massage Chamberlain’s reputation ever so slightly. (Another idea would be to find a more applicable analogue to Obama’s Iran policy than Munich 1938, but we can only ask for so much historical flexibility from neoconservatives.)
Cotton fleshes out the line first provided by Sen. Mark Kirk — that the Obama administration is worse than Chamberlain — in a new interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Lest anyone think that was just an over-the-top expression of frustration from Kirk, Cotton is proving that they intend to work and expand this argument. It’s not a new strain of thought to suggest that history has given Chamberlain an unnecessarily bum rap, but it’s rare to see a neoconservative like Tom Cotton making it. That’s where hyperbolically anti-Obama posturing brings us today.
“Wait,” a shocked, SHOCKED Jeffrey Goldberg asks Cotton, “this is the 1930s to you?” Is it ever not?
Cotton: It’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain to compare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain’s general staff was telling him he couldn’t confront Hitler and even fight to a draw — certainly not defeat the German military — until probably 1941 or 1942. He was operating from a position of weakness. With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012 – 2013 from a position of strength, not a position of weakness. The secret negotiations in Oman. This ultimately led to the Joint Plan of Action of November 2013. So we were negotiating from a position of strength — not just inherent military strength of the United States compared to Iran, but also from our strategic position.
Neville Chamberlain operated from a position of weakness and had little choice but to give all the goodies to ol’ Hitler. Obama is operating from a position of strength, and yet he still is giving all the goodies to Hitler, or whatever the new Hitler thing is. Cotton cannot even bring himself to call the preliminary framework a “deal.” He refers to it again and again as a “list of concessions.” When Goldberg tries to bring up just one of the concessions that Iran is making — reducing “their stockpile from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms of highly enriched uranium” — Cotton brushes it aside as, well, we don’t really know the particulars of that and besides, they are lying liars. He similarly dismisses the provision that the underground center at Fordow won’t be enriching uranium. It would have been nice if Goldberg had made him respond to the fact that Iran went into negotiations hoping to maintain a capacity of 50,000 centrifuges and will walk away with 6,000, pending a final agreement.
Sometimes during the course of a long conversation, a politician will forget that he’s staked out a surprising position — defending Neville Chamberlain, for example — and revert back to a contradictory but familiar comfort zone. And sure enough, by the end of the conversation, Cotton is back to trashing Chamberlain for the “dishonor” he showed at Munich:
Cotton: The world probably wishes that Great Britain had rebuilt its defenses and stopped Germany from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. Churchill said when Chamberlain came back from Munich, ‘You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will therefore be at war.’ And when President Obama likes to say, ‘It’s this deal or war,’ I would dispute that and say, ‘It’s this deal or a better deal through stronger sanctions and further confrontation with [Iran’s] ambitions and aggression in the region.’ And if it is military action, I would say it’s more like Operation Desert Fox or the tanker war of the 1980s than it is World War II. In the end, I think if we choose to go down the path of this deal, it is likely that we could be facing nuclear war.
Helloooo, final sentence! Because that’s the other thing about this interview, is how Cotton matter-of-factly drops hints about the impending nuclear war to which the Obama administration is setting the world on a path. This is another area where Cotton takes contrasting positions depending on the moment: is Iran a rational actor, or is it not? Is it concerned about self-preservation or is it not?
For the most part Cotton treats Iran as a rational actor. “They react to threats that are severe enough,” he says. To him that means not just preserving sanctions, but the credible threat of military action if Iran doesn’t tear apart its nuclear program. Even though the Obama administration has been saying consistently for years that it will take military action against Iran if it isn’t willing to negotiate, Cotton doesn’t buy this, because Tom Cotton doesn’t like Barack Obama.
But then, because the imagery of a mushroom cloud is too effective to pass up, Cotton reverts to treating Iran like an irrational actor, one intent for religious purposes on nuking Israel (and thus bringing about the instant, retaliatory nuclear destruction of itself.) Here, too, Cotton finds himself defending an unlikely partner — the Soviet Union! — as a convenient contrast to Iran. He argues that ”we could always count on the Soviet leadership to be concerned about national survival in a way that I don’t think we can count on a nuclear-armed Iranian leadership to be solely concerned about national survival.” Why not? Well, something about how Iranians say a lot of mean things. “I think it” — Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb — “will probably lead to the detonation of a nuclear device somewhere in the world, if not outright nuclear war.”
The argument of how Iran would act as a nuclear power is hypothetical, because there’s a deal being negotiated right now that would prevent it from becoming a nuclear power, and neither Cotton nor his fellow critics are able to offer a clear explanation for their frequent assertion that this deal ensures Iran gets the bomb. But hey, let’s entertain it anyway. What’s an argument for Iran becoming a nuclear power and this leading to nuclear war? Maybe that Iran going nuclear wouldn’t stop the likes of Tom Cotton and his fellow hawks from pursuing Iranian régime change. That would be a provocative recipe for fireworks, indeed, and it’s something that leads me to believe that the Obama administration is serious when it says that it will do anything to prevent Iran from getting a bomb. Can we be trusted to be the rational actor? Read more @ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/13/tom_cotton_goes_nuclear_the_neocons_obama_derangement_syndrome_reaches_new_heights/
“What this mayor did is what we’ve asked mayors to do all over the country,” Sharpton said of North Charleston mayor Keith Summey, adding, “(Summey) said it best when he said, ‘Wrong is wrong.’”
The Rev. Al Sharpton took to the podium in a South Carolina church Sunday to praise the mayor’s swift response to the police shooting of unarmed black man Walter Scott.
Keith Summey, North Charleston’s mayor, was inside the Charity Missionary Baptist Church along with Police Chief Eddie Driggers as Sharpton hailed them for swiftly firing the officer charged with killing Scott. “What this mayor did is what we’ve asked mayors to do all over the country,” Sharpton said.
“(Summey) said it best when he said, ‘Wrong is wrong,’” the reverend continued. “In the Deep South, a mayor and police chief did what we couldn’t get mayors in the North and the Midwest to do,” he added.
He later led the family in a small vigil at the grassy spot along a secluded path where Scott died April 4. The man charged in his death, Police Officer Michael Slager, 33, was dismissed when video surfaced that showed him pumping five bullets into Scott. Scott, 50, had tried to flee after Slager pulled him over in a routine traffic stop. Slager, 33, has been jailed without bond and charged with murder.
North Charleston, S.C., Mayor Keith Summey (l.) watches as Rev. Al Sharpton (foreground) speaks at Charity Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday in the wake of the killing of Walter Scot
The seemingly cold-hearted crime only became public knowledge because a witness — unseen by Slager — captured it on his cellphone and later shared the video with Scott’s devastated family. Slager told police Scott grabbed for his Taser — prompting the barrage of bullets. “Shots fired, subject is down,” Slager said into his radio as Scott lay unmoving on the grass. “He grabbed my Taser,” Slager said.
Video from Slager’s dash cam was released to the media Thursday. It showed the officer pulling Scott over, and then Scott’s abrupt flight. The dash cam kept recording and later caught an exchange between Slager and an officer who responded to the scene. The officer advised him to “kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened … once the adrenaline quits pumping,” according to The Guardian, a British newspaper. Slager responded with an audible chuckle of agreement. “It’s pumping,” he said, with a short burst of laughter. “What happens next?” he asked. The officer told him he’d be brought to police headquarters and then home.
“It’ll be real quick. … They’re not going to ask you any kind of questions right now. They’ll take your weapon, and we’ll go from there. That’s pretty much it,” said the officer, who was not identified on the tape. The National Bar Association, a predominantly African-American group of attorneys and judges, last week also called for the arrest and indictment of the second officer to respond to the shooting. That officer, Clarence Habersham, filed false information on his police report in an attempt to help Slager’s coverup, the Bar Association claimed.
A video shows South Carolina police Officer Michael Slager (l.) fatally shot Walter Scott (r.), in the back while the victim ran away.
Slager told officials Scott tried to take his Taser — prompting his barrage of bullets. Habersham in his brief report said he tried to give Scott emergency medical aid — but the video doesn’t back that up, the National Bar Association said. Habersham is also seen standing near Scott as Slager walks up and apparently drops an object near the body — possibly the Taser he said Scott tried to grab from him.
Officials didn’t immediately comment on the demand for further police arrests. Sharpton called for an increase of black police officers in an effort to improve community relations and stop the violence. “This is not about black and white, it’s about right and wrong,” he said. “There must be an increase in black officers. … We gotta encourage our youngsters that our community is a community that breeds people that do the right thing. We are not thugs and gangsters,” he told the packed pews. But he also made an effort to keep emotions in check — telling the congregants not to judge all cops by Slager’s actions.
Nothing gets my blood boiling than to hear people on National television parsing and rationalizing away murder. Murder is murder, to the white people who seek to blow smoke up peoples proverbial ass stop already. Not all black people are stupid. You defend murder because it’s not your unarmed loved ones who are being gunned down in cold blood. Lets cut to the chase, when you go on television to talk about law enforcement as if you are the sole authority on how the laws are to be enforced you make yourselves look stupid. We are well aware a lot of you are quite content with police murdering people of color. It’s with the same callous dispatch with which many of you speak about bombing other countries, so we do understand that as long as you are not affected by the killings it, quite kosher.
Now that I have said my piece lets look at some simple rules that police are supposed to abide by . You do not use lethal force[fire at a fleeing person] unless the person poses a threat to your life as an officer or that of another person.
This means if the fleeing suspect has a gun and is firing at the officer while running away the officer is justified in using lethal force to neutralize the threat.[take the suspect out.
An officer may also use lethal force if a fleeing suspect poses imminent threat to the life of another.even though the suspect may not be armed, if the suspect is running away with a child and has expressed an intent to harm the child , an officer is justified in using lethal force.
I Believe by now most people have seen the brutal and callous slaying of 50-year-old Walter Scott by 33-year-old South Carolina cop Michael Slager.
Walter Scott laying face down , and handcuffed with 5 bullets in him.
There is no way to justify what we saw in that video, yet there are people trying their darnedest to make you believe that something may have transpired in the gap between the dash-cam video and mister Santana’s cell-phone video. I am here to tell you that whether something occurred or not , whatever it is, at the time when Michael Slager discharged his weapon 8 times hitting Walter Scott 5 times, Walter Scott was running away. Walter Scott posed absolutely no threat to the armed police officer or anyone else. That is the reason his department quickly fired him and he is sitting in a jail cell on murder charges.
Michael Brown shot several times lay face down , like a dog in the street for hours
Slager’s Department knows when officers may justifiably shoot someone and they know when they cannot legally do so. This was a bad shooting. Not only is it bad it came at a time when there is increased scrutiny of police use of deadly force across the country, in the wake of the killing of several unarmed men largely African-American. I don’t know whether Michael Slager is a racist, that is not my argument. There are African-Americans who say the stop was for a frivolous infraction I disagree . The stop was supposedly about a broken tail light on a Mercedes automobile that Walter Scott was driving. Police have a right and a responsibility to police our streets. They use minor traffic infractions such as broken tail lights to tamp down on more serious offences. Of course Mister Scott supposedly did not have the papers for the car. An officer never knows whats going to happen when he/she initiates a traffic stop. Traffic stops for what appear to be minor infractions sometimes yield great law-enforcement rewards. What upsets people of color is when police abuse the power to make those traffic stops. Using that power to intimidate and harass, or target them for tax revenue. During the stop Officer Slager was pretty courteous, so was mister Scott. Of course none of that matter anymore. There was no justification for the massive escalation which ended in the death of Walter Scott.
Khijame Powell killed unnecessarily by st Louis police.Yes you may be legally justified to kill, but are you morally justified?
Nothing to the contrary they tell you is anything but blowing smoke up your behind. It was murder plain and simple. Slager may be a racist, he may not be a racist, the problem with police is the cultural disrespect they have for black people. Walter Scott is a victim and Michael Slager may very well be a victim of that cultural disrespect as well. Michael Slager would never pull the trigger at a 50 year ‑old white male running away , in which case he would not be sitting in a jail cell today. The entire system is on trial, police officers are not held accountable in America. There is a cult-like worship of cops which creates the impression that they can do no wrong. I too believe in the rule of law. I spent a good part of my life enforcing laws. I have spent my entire life observing and obeying laws. With that said, when the laws are applied unevenly or used as a tool of oppression of any of our citizens then the entire rule of law becomes a lie, and a fraud. The undeniable truth of it all is that police kill because they get away with it more often than not. This lack of accountability creates more killings by those we hire to protect us. Unfortunately for us, the people we hire to protect us are becoming the people who pose the greatest existential threat to us.
No I will not offer a sub-text about the great work officers do and the risk they take ! I will leave that to the unconscionable police apologists whose interests are served by the elimination of the feared black man. Every police officer takes the oath of his/her free will. That included me when I signed up as a young recruit in 1982. I removed a lot of guns from the streets I was also instrumental in helping to secure the incarceration of serious felons during my stint. I have been shot at on many occasions. I did the job in one of the world’s toughest cities, Kingston Jamaica. Oh by the way I was also shot in the line of duty. None of my life experiences taught me that the wanton waste of life we are witnessing by police today in America is justified. Don’t buy it for one minute. The ACLU in a recent report , details that for the month of January 2015 Cops across the United States killed over 100 people. That’s average of 1’200 people annually. https://mikebeckles.com/over-100-people-were-killed-by-police-in-march-how-many-more-will-it-take/
The advent of video and cellphone cameras have opened a window to what people have complained about all along.
States are largely comfortable with the police as fearsome enforcers, after all they are precious little more than tax-collectors. They keep the peasants in check and fill coffers with enforcement revenue, largely on the backs of the poorest and those least able to afford it. What’s not to like ? When was the last time you heard a Governor vigorously speak out in defense of citizens who are victims of police abuse? Even when they are forced to respond to the atrocities happening in their states their reaction is more deference to police than empathy to the victims of their brutish aggression. Cruise down any highway on a sunny day police cruisers everywhere in bushes or have motorists pulled over, sometimes at great danger to the public because of where they chose to pull motorists over. Some still actually believe they are there for their protection.By the way In have a bridge for sale. Cruise down the same highway on a rainy day and you are hard pressed to see a single squad car. If you have a fender-bender you are likely to be told that there are not enough officers and those who on duty are already attending to accidents. The truth is they put them out there to collect revenue when it’s sunny, you are on your own when it rains. These police killings occur because white people want it to . They have no problem with white cops killing black men, they never did. Until the guns are trained on their sons they do not see a problem. You know how it is “those people must be contained”? They were pretty cool with the Klan-lynchings , they are cool with the cop-lynchings. The only thing changed are the uniforms.
Whenever there are glaring indefensible proof that many of America’s cops are murderous sociopaths there is the opposing argument of only a tiny amount of cops are bad. Really ? We have consistently stated in this publication, if you witness a crime by your colleague and you do nothing that makes you an accessory to the crime, if you falsify report to substantiate the lie your criminal colleague proffer, you are equally as guilt as the primary offender. Civilians are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, if they commit perjury. All across America there are inmates sitting in state and federal prions for lying to investigators. Why are cops allowed to falsify reports,plant evidence, and lie to protect their colleagues without consequence? Is the objective to get to the truth in criminal matters, or is it simply about filling jail and prison cells? If this is so the public needs to be told that the police do not have to obey laws like everyone else.
Philly Cops Caught on Camera Beating Man Like a Drum #NajeeRivera.
The controversial marijuana issue was one of many hot-button topics United States President Barack Obama spoke on yesterday during a youth town hall forum held in the Assembly Hall at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Arriving at the hall to a thunderous uproar at 2:55 p.m., Obama showed how infectious the Jamaican culture can be, as after just a few hours into his first visit to the island, he was quite ‘Jamaicanised’ and almost fluent in the island’s patois dialect.
“Greetings, massive! Wha a gwaan, Jamaica? Big up, UWI!” he exclaimed after bursting on stage, receiving deafening laughter and applause. “I have been making myself at home. It is great to be in beautiful Jamaica . I just like the vibe here. I feel right at home and grateful for the warm Jamaican hospitality.” After addressing the gathering for about 15 minutes, he opened the floor to question and answers, as he was determined to engage the young leaders of Jamaica and CARICOM in an interactive session for the just over an hour he spent with them.
Of course, he was questioned on his views on the legalisation and decriminalisation of marijuana and the US’s policy on the issue. But he cautioned that legalising ganja was not a “silver bullet” for solving problems associated with the drug, noting that there are serious considerations which must be given to such a move.
WARNING
He added that although there appears to be many positive outcomes which could result from decriminalisation, a conversation must be held on possible repercussions, including its impact on the illicit drug trade, and even warning that if legalised, a consideration must be given that big companies could very well take over and squeeze out the small man. He said policies must first be developed to decrease the flow of illegal drugs and guns across the region. Jamaica recently passed a law to decriminalise the possession and cultivation of small quantities of ganja. The president promised that once he leaves office, he hopes to island hop in the Caribbean.
After 34 years of service to the Jamaica Constabulary Force Owen Ellington attended an impromptu meeting at Kings House, at the time of the meeting it was reported that Portia Simpson Miller, the nation’s Prime Minister was on a flight out of the country. Peter Bunting the country’s national security minister announced then that he was advised by Ellington that he was stepping down from his post and would proceed on leave July 1st 2014, after which he would formally depart the Department.
Owen Ellington
The nation was never formally told the real reason why the public servant of 34 years suddenly stepped down.
Ellington was a fan of the elites of upper St. Andrew. He was seen as a reformer who had fired unprecedented amounts of officers from the department who were alleged to have contravened the department’s rules or were actively involved in crimes. Ellington also took the controversial step of making the department’s weekly publication (the force orders) a public document. This publication was outraged when Ellington took that step, we felt then and still believe now, that a private internal memo which catalogs personnel and other department protocols has no business in the hands of members of the public, unless through a court order for special circumstances.
Upon hearing of the arrest warrant for Christopher Dudus Coke, Tivoli Gardens has been turned into a fortified community
Security forces go into Tivoli gardens
Ellington was hired as police commissioner under the Jamaica Labor Party Administration of Bruce Golding. He was responsible as police chief, for routing Christopher (Dudus) Coke from his strong-hold in 2010, during which an estimated 73 people lost their lives. Police Officers and members of the military were wounded and killed, police stations were torched, others took sustained gunfire from heavily armed mercenaries. Despite Ellington’s attempts at reform and house cleaning of the force, there were forces at work in Jamaica which were painting a different picture of events. This included the Jamaican’s for Justice,(JFJ), Families against state terrorism (FAST) , the Peace Management Initiative,(PMI) , (INDECOM) and others. Some of these groups became professional agitators against the crime fighting efforts of the police. The head of Jamaicans for Justice Carolyn Gomes, rode to fame on the backs of police, copping a national honor in the process, posing as a champion for social justice.[sic]
INDECOM Commissioner Terrence WilliamsGomes
Gomes and others fed information to their handlers in Washington DC , London, and Ottowa that there was massive illegal killings by the JCF. They created fictitious death squads and created the impression that the members of the JCF were a bunch of murdering lunatics. In many cases their reports were void of data supportive of their claims of rampant extra-judicial killing by police. In other instances their reports used data already credibly debunked. Their one-sided reports did not take into account the number of officers killed or wounded in encounters where lethal force was employed by police. Neither did those reports take into account the brutality and depravity of the country’s criminals. This does not mean that there were not police officers who were engaged in criminal actions. or were in fact guilty of extra-judicial killings. The notion that he entire JCF was an out of control killer organization was far from the truth. Unfortunately for hard working members of the department they had no one in their corner despite their sacrifices, not even Owen Ellington.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, foreground left, was author of the law. Credit J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Charges of massive extra-judicial killings, death squads and the Tivoli events of 2010 are rumored to be the events which cause Ellington to suddenly step aside. At the time Ellington stepped aside he indicated that his decision to retire was based on the need to separate himself from the leadership and management of the Force prior to the beginning of the imminent Commission of Enquiry into the conduct of the Operations of the Security Forces in Western Kingston and other areas during the limited State of Emergency in 2010.
A June 13.2013 New York Times Article reported on the American Federal Law which affects countries with which the United States have bilateral security arrangements. The 16-year-old law that bars American aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights is drawing unusual fire from some top military commanders who say it undermines their ability to train the troops to fight militants and drug traffickers. The complaints about the law’s requirements come from several ranking admirals and generals, including Adm. William H. McRaven, a member of the Navy SEALs who led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and who now heads the Special Operations Command, as well as senior commanders who oversee operations in Africa and in Latin America. At issue is the so-called Leahy amendment, a 1997 provision to a foreign aid bill named after its author, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, which bars the United States from providing training or equipment to foreign troops or units who commit “gross human rights violations” like rape, murder or torture.
U.S. President Barack Obama, center, is greeted by Prime Minister Portia Simpson-
The United States was instrumental in the Christopher Coke issue. They demanded that Coke be extradited after then Prime Minister Bruce Golding said he would not have Gays in his cabinet. The Americans knew full well that Golding was the member of parliament from Tivoli gardens. They also knew that extraditing Christopher Coke was a lose, lose for Golding. It did not matter, they wanted Golding gone, and gone he was. They wanted a puppet in office, they have one.
Emancipation Park to be closed for Obama’s visit — News — Latest News — Jamaica Star
Today Barack Obama is in Jamaica. Jamaicans at home and abroad are ecstatic about Obama’s visit. As Obama visits places and Sites in Jamaica , including the Bob Marley Museum, Jamaica’s euphoria is grossly misplaced. Because of America’s manipulation there is more crime in Jamaica than ever before. More Jamaicans have been deported from the United States than any other nation in this Hemisphere. In many cases the Jamaicans deported were criminalized for minor infractions like selling a few marijuana cigars or for Domestic infractions. On the streets of America, cops killed hundreds of people all across the nation, usually under questionable circumstances. There isn’t even uniformed reporting or cataloging of those killed by police. The victims are more often than not ‚unarmed black men killed by white police officers. Most of the abuses and murder officers commit are brushed aside. Cops basically kill at will,the story is usually the same “I feared for my life”.
the Jamaica Defence Force soldiers on a rehearsal exercises at The National Heroes park in Kingston yesterday where president Barack Obama, will visit.gleaner photo
But none of that matter, police departments receive more and more equipment more and more aid, despite their record of abuse and murder of minority groups in America. So what will Jamaica derive from Obama visit? Obama’s visit is the first of an American president to the country since Reagan did in 1982. Has human rights abuses ceased in Jamaica, which would necessitate a presidential visit? Human rights abuses are more rampant in the United States that at any other time.
U.S. President Barack Obama visits the Bob Marley Museum with tour guide Natasha Clark.
So the whole premise of the Leahy amendment is a self serving talk down to smaller poorer nations. Portia Simpson Miller will have these images of herself and Obama. She will use them as validation for the failed policies of her corrupt kleptomaniac administration. She will say it means her party is on the right track. She will say Obama’s visit is validation of the course she is on and vindication of her personally. In fact , Obama’s visit is nothing more than pay-back to Portia for not being Bruce Golding on the gay issue.
People are always asking President Obama and our First Lady, Michelle Obama how they manage to keep themselves and their children down to earth. Well, basically all you need is a mother to keep it real. Mrs. Obama has that in her mother Marian Robinson, who lives with the family, in the White House, and Malia and Sasha have that with their mother, who keeps it real, even when she’s doing press tours.
Recently, when the First Lady sat down for an appearance on “Live! With Kelly and Michael” they asked her about Sasha and Malia appearance on Time magazine’s “Most influential teens of 2014″ list . While Mrs. Obama could have said some nice, fluffy words and pretended to be honored by the distinction, she dismissed the title as a bit ridiculous.
“Yeah, I don’t know why – they’re not influential; they just live here. They have done nothing to gain any influence.”
In fact Mrs. Obama says she doesn’t even think the daughters have even heard about the article.
“I don’t even think that they realize that they’re influential. I don’t think anybody showed them that article, so don’t mention it!”
Basically, the article said these two were influential because Malia’s appearance at Coachella was more talked about than some of the concert acts and Sasha’s unicorn sweater sold out with a quickness on Asos. So yeah, while they do have some pop cultural pull, Auntie Chelle is generally right, they haven’t done anything yet. They still have plenty of time though.
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