Justice

by

Virginia Cop Sentenced To A Mere 3 Years For Killing Unarmed Woman

 

She has a name; Patricia Cook. She was killed in Culpeper, Virginia on February 9, 2012.

Patricia was 54 years old. No one knows why she was in the parking lot of Epiphany Catholic School, but while there, she was approached by Culpeper Police Officer Daniel Harmon-Wright.  Officer Harmon-Wright said he received a call of a suspicious vehicle.

Wright fired two shots into Patricia’s vehicle. The first two rounds, fired at point-blank range, tore into Cook’s face and arm. Patricia managed to drive away, but Harmon-Wright did not stop shooting. He shot Patricia 5 times; a round entered her brain, and the another round severed her spine and veered into her heart.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: blackbutterfly7.wordpress.com

by

Protestors say Utah cops kill unarmed man – CNN Video

 

Protestors in Salt Lake City say police are withholding evidence from the public in the shooting death of Dillon Taylor.

Source: www.cnn.com

 

Aunt says that when he reached to pull up his pants so that he could kneel down, then he was shot twice. Once in the chest and once in the stomach.

 

by

NYPD Chief Ignores A Quarter of Police Misconduct Rulings

 

It’s rare enough that citizens file complaints against the police and even rarer that those complaints are investigated. So, it’s appalling to hear that in 25% of cases where a NYPD police misconduct review board ruled that an officer be disciplined, Chief Bill Bratton did nothing. The New York Times has the story:

In the first six months of 2014, the department has declined to sanction officers in over 25 percent of cases in which the board found cause for discipline. That rate is near the high end of what was seen during the last years of the Bloomberg administration, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly were generally hostile to external oversight.

How officers are disciplined has come under new scrutiny following the death of Eric Garner during an arrest that included, the city medical examiner said, the use of a chokehold, which is banned by…

View original 168 more words

 

Source: thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

by

Migrant Workers sue for being underpaid, poor housing, unsafe transportation and inadequate water

 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Grand Rapids, accuses Johnston, Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer and two recruiters of violating federal wage and migrant labor laws.

 

…allegations include poor housing, unsafe transportation to the fields and inadequate water.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.usaonrace.com

by

Why All Communities Must Demand an End to Police Brutality

 

The images out of Ferguson, Missouri, these past two weeks have been shocking: tear gas blanketing suburban streets, law enforcement creating a war zone and defiant protesters braving it all. But it is important to remember that what started Ferguson’s fight is far too common: the police killing of an unarmed black teen.

African-Americans are the primary targets of law-enforcement profiling and violence, as the killings of Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Jonathan Ferrell and Eric Garner all attest. But during this past week, Latino, Asian-American, Arab-American and Muslim organizations have all released statements of solidarity informed by similar experiences with discriminatory law enforcement practices, as well as an urgency to collectively identify and implement solutions.

 

– Click through for more –

 

 

 

Source: www.thenation.com

by

Death by Law Enforcement: What the data tells us – and what it doesn’t

 

“When a police officer kills someone while trying to stop a crime or make an arrest, government agencies classify the death as a legal intervention. The death of Mike Brown, the 18-year-old and unarmed teenager killed by a police officer earlier this month in Ferguson, Missouri will likely be classified under this term when it comes time to report the circumstances of his death to the national databases that track such information.”

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: sunlightfoundation.com

by

‘A cemetery for our people’: Guatemalan consul sees life and death of Texas migrant crisis

In 2013 Alba Caceres sent back 48 bodies from South Texas. But it’s not the dead she worries about so much as the living

Source: www.theguardian.com

 

It’s not just a Texas migrant crisis.

 

Click through to see the map showing how many human remains were found in border states.

 

by

WHAT STANDS BETWEEN US – Lee Mun Wah

 

James Baldwin once said that “America is one tough town.” Those words came back to me as I thought of what is going on these past few weeks in Ferguson, Missouri. So much of the focus has been on the issue of a white police officer killing a young black man, Michael Brown, but almost nothing is said about the environment that creates these types of scenarios that are becoming all too familiar in describing the state of racial relations in the United States, particularly how they negatively impact African Americans.  Often, when the issue of a racial divide arises or is even intimated, denial and shock quickly fills the room, as was evidenced in the past two days when an all white male Fox News panel showed disdain for Capt. Ron Johnson (who is Black) for sympathizing with the African American community over the killing of Michael Brown. Bo Dietl, immediately said, “We’re dividing black and white again. America has no color, it’s all one color.” So often times I have wondered…so, what is that ‘one color’ and what would it mean if we did see color?

Soon afterwards, the mayor of Ferguson declared that “There’s not a racial divide in Ferguson.” One of the great myths in this country is that if we say that ‘everything is fine’ loud and long enough, the problem will go away. This is perhaps because as someone once said, “When the truth becomes too hard to bear, we create another.”

 

So what kinds of environments, attitudes, and behaviors ‘create’ a racial divide?  First of all, having an almost all white police force creates an ‘ethnic vacuum’ that shields the white officers from ever having to see outside their ‘white bubble’ or to get feedback on their actions and attitudes from someone who is non-white. Another is never interviewing officers prior to hire to see if they possess any racial prejudices towards any particular group of people and how that might heighten their perceptions and feelings of distrust and fearing for their safety. This may explain why so many blacks are shot repeatedly, sometimes over twenty times.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.stirfryseminars.com

by

Task force studying law enforcement issues to be paid

 

“Sonoma County supervisors this week unanimously approved the allocation of $40,000 from the county’s general fund to compensate members of an appointed task force studying law enforcement issues in the wake of the fatal Andy Lopez shooting last year.”

 

– Click through to for more –

 

Source: www.pressdemocrat.com

by

Man Savagely Beaten By Police On Video May Now Be Deported [VIDEO]

 

“A man brutally beaten by police in June after he surrendered and lay down on the ground is now at risk of being deported.

Police officers in Santa Ana, California, beat Edgar Vargas Arzate on June 20, according to surveillance video of the incident and interviews with Arzate’s attorney. Arzate, who has struggled with addiction and mental health issues, went to visit the house of a friend, apparently not realizing that the friend no longer lived there, according to his attorney, public defender Frank Bittar. The new residents saw Arzate mumbling incoherently outside their house and called police.

Arzate ran when he saw the officers, leading them on a roughly four-block chase before he surrendered in the front yard of a neighbor’s home, Bittar said. In the video, Arzate can be seen lying facedown on the ground. The officers then begin to savagely beat Arzate, punching, kicking and swinging a flashlight at him.


In the video, two officers on the opposite side of the fence look up and appear to notice the surveillance camera, then say something to the officers beating Arzate, who quickly move him out of view of the camera.

“He’s lucky he wasn’t put in a wheelchair,” Bittar told HuffPost.

Once he was taken into custody, Arzate was charged with assaulting a police officer. The charge was then enhanced to a higher-level felony when police accused him of having “personally inflicted great bodily injury” on one particular officer who claimed to have broken his hand, according to the charging document.

On Monday, Arzate, 27, who came to the U.S. without documentation as a teenager, was riding with family members to a preliminary hearing to face the charges. Suddenly, three unmarked cars pulled the family over and Arzate was quickly taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“They stopped them and made everyone get out of the car and then arrested my brother,” said Araceli Vargas, Arzate’s younger sister. “Right now he’s under immigration hold and we’re just waiting on a bail so we can get him out of jail again. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, honestly.”

“My mom told me that the ICE agents made her feel less than human,” Vargas continued. “My dad was so disappointed in the system. My grandpa was so scared, he’s been in bed since. My aunt started crying. Nothing had happened since June, he was just living his normal life, but we have cameras here and we saw the cars that stopped my brother yesterday morning — it was a gray Chevy Impala — they didn’t have markings, but they had been spying on us. They passed by the house at least four times that morning, so they knew what they were doing. Why did they wait until we were leaving the house and going to court?””

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com