Law enforcement officials in Gainesville, Florida, are investigating attempted sexual assaults on women near and on the University of Florida campus.
Source: www.cnn.com
Author: Glenn (Freedom of Movement) Robinson
Doubts cast on witness’s account of black man killed by police in Walmart
‘He was stood so still’
Crawford was a high school graduate who had two young sons. On the evening of 5 August he was at the Walmart in a suburb of Dayton, with his girlfriend, Tasha Thomas. They were to buy ingredients to make S’mores for a family cookout, according to his family’s attorneys.
The couple separated inside the store. Crawford began a conversation on his mobile phone with LeeCee Johnson, the mother of his two sons. Walking in the sporting goods section, he approached a shelf and picked up a MK-177 BB/pellet air rifle, which was already unboxed.
“He never put the phone down,” said his father. “He just kind of picked the rifle up and carried it, was walking around with it.”
From this point, the Crawford team’s description of what is shown in the surveillance footage differs radically from Ritchie’s recollection, which he insisted was also backed up by the recordings from the Walmart cameras.
Crawford’s father and attorneys said that the footage showed the 22-year-old walking from one aisle to the next with the BB rifle at his side and in his left hand, pointed at the floor except for one notable movement.
“I would think that the rifle maybe got heavy to him,” said his father. “He kind of swung it like you carry it on your shoulder, then he immediately put it back down.”
“You can clearly see people walk past him, and they didn’t think anything about it. Everybody was just kind of minding their own business,” his father added. “He wasn’t acting in any type of way that he would have been considered menacing, if you will.”
Ritchie, however, says Crawford was “waving the weapon around”, causing the muzzle to move in the direction of passersby, including him and his wife, April. “And even still, it’s a gun in Walmart, in a public place, inducing panic,” said Ritchie.
The Crawford family’s attorneys contend that Ohio’s “open-carry” law means that he could have been legally holding the rifle in the store even if it had been a full-powered firearm. “We never saw him waving this rifle in front of kids or people,” said his father.
Crawford arrived at the pet products section in the next aisle, estimated at 60 yards from where he had picked up the item. Then, his family and their attorneys say, at about 8.20pm, he stopped and stood still for about six minutes. “With the rifle pointed down and the cell phone up in his right hand,” said his father, he stayed there facing a shelf, apparently preoccupied by the call.
“He didn’t move,” said his father. “He was stood so still, in fact, we thought the track had actually stopped. I asked the technician ‘what’s going on?’ and he said ‘Well, the reel is still running Mr Crawford, look at the time’.”
Ritchie, on the other hand, stated that at this stage, Crawford was “pointing [the BB rifle] at things, like moving things around the shelf with the gun.”
At about 8.26pm, armed police officers responding to Ritchie’s 911 call five minutes earlier come into view on the footage, according to those who viewed it. Within seconds, Crawford was shot twice and pounced on. He was taken to hospital but died from his wounds.
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Source: www.theguardian.com
Beyond Dialogue: What We Can Do To Stop Police Violence
What can actually be done about implicit racial biases, especially in policing?
“The policy is as simple as it is ingenious: Whenever possible, the police officer pursuing a suspect cannot be the same officer to apprehend a suspect or use force.”
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Source: www.nationaljournal.com
A Video Survey of Police Interactions: Inequality in Black and White
Comparing examples of white and black Americans’ encounters with police seems to present undeniable evidence of injustice. But does this type of footage ever make a difference?
Source: www.theroot.com
Obama draws flak over immigration reform delay
Insisting that factors beyond his control had created an untenable political situation, President Obama said Saturday that he would postpone his promised executive action to make drastic changes to the immigration system — a delay that leaves tens of thousands of immigrants open to deportation and millions more in limbo.
Source: www.latimes.com
Andy Lopez mural goes up in Roseland
Three miles from where 13-year-old Andy Lopez was shot and killed by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy nearly a year ago, a mural of the boy went up.
Santa Rosa artist Mario Uribe installed Friday the temporary 8-foot-by-16-foot mural along the side of a vacant gas station at West Avenue and Sebastopol Road in the heart of Roseland. It’s one of the busiest intersections in the southwest Santa Rosa neighborhood, which was rattled by the fatal Oct. 22 shooting by Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus, who reportedly mistook the airsoft BB gun Lopez was carrying for an AK-47 assault rifle that it was designed to resemble.
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Source: justicecoalitionforandylopez.com
DOJ Investigation Of Ferguson Police Department
On August 29, 2014, I wrote that when searching for a copy of the $40 million lawsuit filed against the Ferguson, MO police department, that I discovered other lawsuits that name various Ferguson police officers as defendants. In that post, I also wrote that the U.S. Department of Justice has a division to receive and investigate complaints against law enforcement who violate civil rights under color and claim of official right. Considering that some citizens of Ferguson stated that no private attorney was willing to go against Ferguson, it was my opinion that their only option was to file complaints with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
Today, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held a press conference announcing that the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the Ferguson police department. The video is below. Please note that he says the investigation includes if the Ferguson police department has violated the constitution and/or federal law. Those are two different things under the DOJ.
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Source: blackbutterfly7.wordpress.com
Suicide, Kids Giving Up Hope: A Heartbreaking Local Story and Memories Of Losing My Friend To Suicide At A Young Age
Last night I first heard the news that an 11-year-old San Tan Valley, Arizona boy whose father was a police officer committed suicide. Samuel Epps, 11, became upset after an argument with his father, went into his parent’s bedroom, locked the door, took his father’s unsecured 9mm handgun and fatally shot himself in the head. Every indication pointed to suicide and not an accidental shooting.
Initial reports stated that there was no known mental health conditions the boy suffered with nor was there ever any indication he had thoughts of hurting himself or thoughts of suicide. Sadly in Arizona there is no law that requires a gun be locked up and kept out of the reach of children. There are laws on neglect though which this case could fall under.
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Source: worldhumanrights.wordpress.com
Gawker Uncovers Trove NYPD Horror Stories
Media outlet Gawker is currently running an ongoing series documenting horror stories of reader run-ins with the NYPD. With “NYPD Harassment Stories,” writer Jason Parham is attempting to shed light on some of the department’s under-reported incidents of brutality.
“Police brutality, which we believe should be treated as a national crisis, is not limited to streets of New York or Los Angeles,” writes Parham. “But examining the actions of the country’s largest and most famous police force, and giving a voice to the victims of its violence, is a start.”
Here’s one reader’s story:
The incident happened about 2 years ago to my husband. My husband is a Dominican of dark complexion. He was exiting the 4 train in the Bronx after a long day of work, at the time he was working security. He saw some one he knew being stopped by the cops made eye contact with the police and kept it…
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Refugees and Dissidents
By Matt Hanson
Introduction
In North America, and elsewhere around the world, for example in Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Italy, there is a growing antipathy for migrants. The United States and Canada are not alone in the increasing volume of political distaste for migrants. In the United States in particular, there is an inherent contradiction within this debate, and this crisis of asylum, as concerns the identification of migrants as invaders.
With unabated trends favoring economic globalization, such as the overshadowing precedence of international free trade agreements, wealthy nations have a greater responsibility to receive economic migrants, and equally, forced migrants fleeing life-threatening persecution. To deny this responsibility is to reject the foundations of humanity, and to delegitimize the standard of national boundaries as security zones. Instead, national boundaries fulfill their original purpose, militarized demarcations, where the history of an invasion has simply taken another form.
In other words, the misperception of migrants as invaders exposes the fundamental myth of the modern nation state as a cultural, social, political, or economic distinction. As is most apparent outside of North America and Europe, however within as well, cultural, social, political and economic phenomena observably transcend state boundaries, merging in varying forms transnationally. Similarly, all people, as such, are a part of the transnational social capital that exists in every nation individually, and collectively throughout the globe. The inequalities of the global marketplace are manifest in the story of the modern immigrant.
Immigrant is a very different term than migrant. With its special legal, political, social and cultural ramifications, immigration is a process whereby a foreigner resides permanently in a country other than that of their origin. Immigration also connotes official identification, as recognized by the country wherein one is immigrating. Whereas migration is a primordial concept, immigration entails the officialdoms of international law, and domestic policy.
Anti-immigration is the result of geopolitical insecurity, while deeply rooted in forms of racism steeped in multigenerational, and colonialist inequality.
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Source: unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com