A brief history of police violence and backlash
July 2013: Sickened by the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer, labor organizer writes on Facebook, "I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter." Her friend Patrisse Cullors turns the last bit into a hashtag.
March 2014: In a Pew poll, 46 percent of Americans agree that "our country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites."
July 2014: Eric Garner is choked to death by an officer on Staten Island, New York. His last words, "I can't breathe," become a civil rights slogan.
Aug. 2014: A white cop in Ferguson, Missouri, kills black teen Michael Brown, sparking weeks of protest. Police deploy riot gear, armored vehicles, and sniper rifles, while demonstrators adopt a "hands up, don't shoot" posture based on claims that Brown had his hands up when he was shot. On Twitter, #BlackLivesMatter takes off.
Oct. 2014: A Chicago cop shoots Laquan McDonald 16 times. Police officials claim the teen was approaching officers with a knife -- a union rep says he "lunged" -- but the city won't release dash-cam footage.
Nov. 22, 2014: Tamir Rice, 12, is killed by a Cleveland officer as he plays with a toy gun in a park.
Nov. 24, 2014: A Ferguson grand jury declines to indict Officer Darren Wilson, Michael Brown's killer. More protests. Critics of #BlackLivesMatter respond with #All Lives Matter.
Nov. 30, 2014: Five St. Louis Rams players walk onto the field for a game in the "hands up" position.
Dec. 3, 2014: The NYPD officer who choked Eric Garner escapes indictment. Days later, LeBron James and other NBA players don "I Can't Breathe" shirts at pregame warmups.
Dec. 18, 2014: The White House announces a new task force to "strengthen trust among law enforcement officers and the communities they serve."
Dec. 20, 2014: Two NYPD officers are ambushed. Their killer, a black man, had posted a photo of his gun on Instagram: "I'm Putting Wings On Pigs Today."
Jan. 2015: #BlackLivesMatter tweets average 10,000 a day.
March 2015: A Department of Justice report says Ferguson police employees sent racist emails and targeted black residents with nuisance citations to generate revenue.
April 2, 2015: A white sheriff's deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma shoots black suspect Eric Harris after a foot chase. "I'm losing my breath," Harris leads in a video. "Fuck your breath," another officer responds.
April 4, 2015: Walter Scott is fatally shot as he tries to flee from Officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina.
April 19, 2015: Freddie Gray dies of his injuries after a "rough ride" in a Baltimore police van.
May 2015: "I have heard your calls for 'no justice, no peace,' " prosecutor Marilyn Mosby says as she announces charges against six officers in the Gray case. The White House task force releases its report: Police must "embrace a guardian -- rather than a warrior -- mindset."
June 2015: Rapper Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" video depicts him being shot by police. It garners about 70 million YouTube views and wins two Grammys.
(This brief history to be continued in a future blog)
Showing posts with label Tamir Rice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tamir Rice. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Troublesome and Stressful Sides of Law Enforcement Life
1) The Tamir Rice Settlement
Tamir Rice was the 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in a Cleveland, Ohio park, who was fatally shot about two seconds after a police officer exited his vehicle. Commenting on the $6 million settlement with the Rice family, the Cleveland police union said: "We only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms." A Twitter post interpreted the statement as: "I hope you use the settlement from us shooting your son dead to teach kids how not to get shot dead."
Stephen S. Loomis, the president of the police union, threatened to tell his officers not to work security at Cleveland Browns' games unless running back, Isaiah Crowell, takes down his social media post depicting the death of a police officer. Crowell had already apologized to Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams by phone. He had also posted a written apology on Instagram and quickly deleted it.
Loomis had blasted a group of community leaders' plans to bypass prosecutors and seek changes in how to respond to the shooting death. The clueless union chief said: "It is very sad how miserable the lives of these self-appointed activists, civil rights leaders, and clergy must be." "I can't imagine being so very consumed with anger and hatred."
2) Police Sex Scandal
This past month, seven former and current Bay Area (San Francisco) law enforcement officers were charged with criminal behavior in connection with allegations that the officers had sex with a teenager. The 19-year-old has said she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers and a total of about 30 instances of sexual activity with other police agency officers. Some of these acts occurred when she was still underage. Oakland's mayor said four officers would be fired and seven suspended without pay.
3) The "Thick Blue Line" Resists Reform
Despite outcries and urgent calls for reform of police use of excessive force against minorities, police unions have resisted attempts to change the status quo, attacking their critics as enablers of crime. A study of collective bargaining by big-city police unions, published this past summer by the reform group, Campaign Zero, found that agreements routinely guarantee that officers aren't interrogated immediately after use-of-force incidents and often insure that disciplinary records are purged after three to five years. Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, has found "a culture of impunity." "For the past fifty years, police unions have done their best to block policing reforms of all kinds." "And though conservatives regularly castigate public-service unions as parasites, they typically exempt the police." [1]
4) Police Fabricating Charges
Michael Picard was videotaping the police when one trooper illegally seized his phone. A Connecticut trooper, not knowing the phone was still recording, begin shouting: "Let's give him something!" Another trooper suggested: "We can hit him with creating a public disturbance." "Gotta cover our ass,"said a third.
5) Police Suicides
The National Police Suicide Foundation puts police officer suicides in the 400-a-year range, which would mean a rate of 53 suicides per 100,000 officers. Another advocacy group, the Badge of Life organization, puts the rate at 14 to 17 suicides per 100,000. The rate among the general population is 11 per 100,000, according to the Badge of Life. The 141 suicides verified for 2008 by the Badge of Life, were almost three times the number of officers killed by felons. [2]
According to Robert Douglas, executive director of the National Police Suicide Foundation, "The number one reason why officers commit suicide is a breakdown of the family unit, and part of that is the extramarital affair." Douglas added that the police training academies do not teach communication skills in relation to families. The suicide numbers might be higher, because there are no uniform reporting standards and police departments often try to hide or cover up officer suicides; furthermore, of the 18,000 police agencies in the United States, less than three percent of those agencies have police suicide awareness programs.
ADDENDUMS:
*North Carolina's House Bill 972 restricts the disclosure of police dash/body camera video and audio to the public (including the families of those affected) without a court order.
* In the fatal choking case of Eric Garner in New York City, the only one charged with a crime was the videographer.
*Duke Energy maintains that the ash produced in its manufacturing process is no more toxic than rocks and dirt, which also contain heavy metals. North Carolina's environmentalists disagree: "The metals have been concentrated in the ash and can pose serious health problems when they contaminate drinking water sources." Sam Perkins, Catawba Riverkeeper, says that contaminated groundwater has been found at each of 33 sites. [3]
*"During the Civil War, more than a quarter of a million Southern men died, creating the phenomenon of a vast number of female-headed households throughout the region. Mass incarceration during the War on Drugs has produced a similar phenomenon among African-American households." [4]
Footnotes
[1] James Surwiecki, "The Thick Blue Line," The New Yorker, September 19, 2016.
[2] Dennis Domrzaliki, "APD's Sexcapades Taking Their Toll," ABQ Free Press, September 7-20, 2016.
[3] Tristram Korten, "State of Denial," Sierra, September/October 2016.
[4] Jelani Cobb, "The Home Front," The New Yorker, August 29, 2016.
Tamir Rice was the 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in a Cleveland, Ohio park, who was fatally shot about two seconds after a police officer exited his vehicle. Commenting on the $6 million settlement with the Rice family, the Cleveland police union said: "We only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms." A Twitter post interpreted the statement as: "I hope you use the settlement from us shooting your son dead to teach kids how not to get shot dead."
Stephen S. Loomis, the president of the police union, threatened to tell his officers not to work security at Cleveland Browns' games unless running back, Isaiah Crowell, takes down his social media post depicting the death of a police officer. Crowell had already apologized to Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams by phone. He had also posted a written apology on Instagram and quickly deleted it.
Loomis had blasted a group of community leaders' plans to bypass prosecutors and seek changes in how to respond to the shooting death. The clueless union chief said: "It is very sad how miserable the lives of these self-appointed activists, civil rights leaders, and clergy must be." "I can't imagine being so very consumed with anger and hatred."
2) Police Sex Scandal
This past month, seven former and current Bay Area (San Francisco) law enforcement officers were charged with criminal behavior in connection with allegations that the officers had sex with a teenager. The 19-year-old has said she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers and a total of about 30 instances of sexual activity with other police agency officers. Some of these acts occurred when she was still underage. Oakland's mayor said four officers would be fired and seven suspended without pay.
3) The "Thick Blue Line" Resists Reform
Despite outcries and urgent calls for reform of police use of excessive force against minorities, police unions have resisted attempts to change the status quo, attacking their critics as enablers of crime. A study of collective bargaining by big-city police unions, published this past summer by the reform group, Campaign Zero, found that agreements routinely guarantee that officers aren't interrogated immediately after use-of-force incidents and often insure that disciplinary records are purged after three to five years. Samuel Walker, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, has found "a culture of impunity." "For the past fifty years, police unions have done their best to block policing reforms of all kinds." "And though conservatives regularly castigate public-service unions as parasites, they typically exempt the police." [1]
4) Police Fabricating Charges
Michael Picard was videotaping the police when one trooper illegally seized his phone. A Connecticut trooper, not knowing the phone was still recording, begin shouting: "Let's give him something!" Another trooper suggested: "We can hit him with creating a public disturbance." "Gotta cover our ass,"said a third.
5) Police Suicides
The National Police Suicide Foundation puts police officer suicides in the 400-a-year range, which would mean a rate of 53 suicides per 100,000 officers. Another advocacy group, the Badge of Life organization, puts the rate at 14 to 17 suicides per 100,000. The rate among the general population is 11 per 100,000, according to the Badge of Life. The 141 suicides verified for 2008 by the Badge of Life, were almost three times the number of officers killed by felons. [2]
According to Robert Douglas, executive director of the National Police Suicide Foundation, "The number one reason why officers commit suicide is a breakdown of the family unit, and part of that is the extramarital affair." Douglas added that the police training academies do not teach communication skills in relation to families. The suicide numbers might be higher, because there are no uniform reporting standards and police departments often try to hide or cover up officer suicides; furthermore, of the 18,000 police agencies in the United States, less than three percent of those agencies have police suicide awareness programs.
ADDENDUMS:
*North Carolina's House Bill 972 restricts the disclosure of police dash/body camera video and audio to the public (including the families of those affected) without a court order.
* In the fatal choking case of Eric Garner in New York City, the only one charged with a crime was the videographer.
*Duke Energy maintains that the ash produced in its manufacturing process is no more toxic than rocks and dirt, which also contain heavy metals. North Carolina's environmentalists disagree: "The metals have been concentrated in the ash and can pose serious health problems when they contaminate drinking water sources." Sam Perkins, Catawba Riverkeeper, says that contaminated groundwater has been found at each of 33 sites. [3]
*"During the Civil War, more than a quarter of a million Southern men died, creating the phenomenon of a vast number of female-headed households throughout the region. Mass incarceration during the War on Drugs has produced a similar phenomenon among African-American households." [4]
Footnotes
[1] James Surwiecki, "The Thick Blue Line," The New Yorker, September 19, 2016.
[2] Dennis Domrzaliki, "APD's Sexcapades Taking Their Toll," ABQ Free Press, September 7-20, 2016.
[3] Tristram Korten, "State of Denial," Sierra, September/October 2016.
[4] Jelani Cobb, "The Home Front," The New Yorker, August 29, 2016.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Prosecutors Not Doing Their Jobs
Yesterday it was announced that the grand jury convened in Cleveland, Ohio decided not to indict the police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death. Tamir Rice was shot and then died in the hospital in November 2014, which means that the grand jury must rank as the of the most dilatory grand juries in living memory. The case was not complicated, because what happened before and after the shooting was caught on video.
Although the grand jury should rightly be severely criticized for taking so long to reach a decision, the greater blame should fall on the prosecutor for not doing his job. The prosecutor, in effect, served as the defense attorney for the officer who did the fatal shooting, instead of doing the job of evaluating the evidence and determining if there is sufficient evidence to bring an indictment to the grand jury. Grand juries do not make decisions on guilt or innocence: they determine if sufficient cause is provided to bring an indictment.
The police officer in question shot young Tamir an estimated two seconds after he exited his vehicle. He did not order Tamir to drop what he was holding or question him. If the police officer feared for his life, he had a rational alternative. He could have crouched behind his vehicle and from there ordered of cajoled Tamir to drop the gun and walk away.
There are two prongs to the argument that the shooter should not be held to account in the Rice case: the first is that the dispatcher did not convey the information that the 911 caller said it might be a boy with a toy gun and the second was that Tamir Rice was an unusually large 12-year-old. These are very weak reeds on which to rest a defense, given that the police officer had an alternative as described above. Also, the dispatcher should have suffered some sort of adverse action for not providing vital information.
The prevailing narrative is that police officers --- and sheriffs deputies, for that matter -- put their lives in danger every day to serve and protect the police. We now have a very large body of evidence that these law enforcement officers have an exaggerated fear of their own safety and will put that above preserving the life and limb of those citizens with whom they come into contact, even when the threat seems to be minimal to a reasonable person. Thus, when the St. Louis police shot to death a man who may have had a small knife in his hand, the shooting was determined to be justifiable, because the St Louis Police Department has a policy that anyone with a knife in view may be fatally shot if he/she enters a 25-foot circle of protection. Luquan McDonald, the 17-year-old Chicago teen was shot numerous times after he had fallen prone on the street. The police report said he made a menacing gesture with a knife while lying on the street. The video of the shooting and its aftermath doesn't show any movement on the part of McDonald. I have seen another video of a male lying on his stomach, but head raised and a right hand clasping a knife, stretched out in front. He was shot to death, because, as claimed by the police, he represented a threat to others. Unless and until he rose up and began to charge someone with the knife thrust out in front, he represented no threat to anyone.
We have regressed to the point in the United States where it is very difficult to indict a law enforcement officer for excessive use of force and virtually impossible to convict him/her if brought to trial. Prosecutors are even more protected, as in many legal jurisdictions they can't be held to account for serious misbehavior, such as railroading an innocent person to prison or even Death Row.
Although the grand jury should rightly be severely criticized for taking so long to reach a decision, the greater blame should fall on the prosecutor for not doing his job. The prosecutor, in effect, served as the defense attorney for the officer who did the fatal shooting, instead of doing the job of evaluating the evidence and determining if there is sufficient evidence to bring an indictment to the grand jury. Grand juries do not make decisions on guilt or innocence: they determine if sufficient cause is provided to bring an indictment.
The police officer in question shot young Tamir an estimated two seconds after he exited his vehicle. He did not order Tamir to drop what he was holding or question him. If the police officer feared for his life, he had a rational alternative. He could have crouched behind his vehicle and from there ordered of cajoled Tamir to drop the gun and walk away.
There are two prongs to the argument that the shooter should not be held to account in the Rice case: the first is that the dispatcher did not convey the information that the 911 caller said it might be a boy with a toy gun and the second was that Tamir Rice was an unusually large 12-year-old. These are very weak reeds on which to rest a defense, given that the police officer had an alternative as described above. Also, the dispatcher should have suffered some sort of adverse action for not providing vital information.
The prevailing narrative is that police officers --- and sheriffs deputies, for that matter -- put their lives in danger every day to serve and protect the police. We now have a very large body of evidence that these law enforcement officers have an exaggerated fear of their own safety and will put that above preserving the life and limb of those citizens with whom they come into contact, even when the threat seems to be minimal to a reasonable person. Thus, when the St. Louis police shot to death a man who may have had a small knife in his hand, the shooting was determined to be justifiable, because the St Louis Police Department has a policy that anyone with a knife in view may be fatally shot if he/she enters a 25-foot circle of protection. Luquan McDonald, the 17-year-old Chicago teen was shot numerous times after he had fallen prone on the street. The police report said he made a menacing gesture with a knife while lying on the street. The video of the shooting and its aftermath doesn't show any movement on the part of McDonald. I have seen another video of a male lying on his stomach, but head raised and a right hand clasping a knife, stretched out in front. He was shot to death, because, as claimed by the police, he represented a threat to others. Unless and until he rose up and began to charge someone with the knife thrust out in front, he represented no threat to anyone.
We have regressed to the point in the United States where it is very difficult to indict a law enforcement officer for excessive use of force and virtually impossible to convict him/her if brought to trial. Prosecutors are even more protected, as in many legal jurisdictions they can't be held to account for serious misbehavior, such as railroading an innocent person to prison or even Death Row.
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