You’re A Black Man In America’: Las Vegas Judge Becomes Target Of Police Union For Telling Man To Stay Away From Cops

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

HERE IS THE STORY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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