Outrage And Sorrow After Teen Shot Dead By Police

 

Following the shooting of 18-year-old man by a police officer in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, an outraged community gathered to demand answers. Michael Brown, a black teen and recent high school graduate, was shot dead in the city north of St. Louis on Saturday. The victim’s grandmother said she found her grandson’s body in the street, shortly after seeing him walking near her home, the Associated Press reports. A spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department confirmed that a Ferguson police officer shot the man, but provided no further details on why the shooting occurred. Witnesses said that Brown was unarmed, KMOV reports.

 

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Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

‘I was not going to cower:’ Man who shot unarmed Michigan teen takes the stand

A Michigan man accused of gunning down Renisha McBride took the stand in his own defense Monday.

Source: www.cnn.com

 

Trigger happy United States.

 

Why Did Police Arrest This Man In Front of His Kids at Eric Garner’s Funeral? [VIDEO]

 

After the funeral, as Kirkpatrick, Bryant and his children were leaving the church, they were approached by a group of plainclothes cops. Kirkpatrick says he was asked, “Is that your cousin, Calvin Bryant?” When he confirmed Bryant’s identity, he says, police followed them down the block and arrested Bryant.

In addition to an outstanding bench warrant, Bryant was charged with resisting arrest. According to the arrest document, “The defendant did resist a lawful arrest by flailing the defendant’s arms and pushing the deponent while the deponent attempted to place the defendant in handcuffs.”

Bryant and Kirkpatrick vehemently deny that accusation. “I didn’t resist arrest,” Bryant says. “I didn’t have time. I was holding my kids’ hands so I wouldn’t have been able to throw my hands up.”

What Bryant and his lawyers do find troubling is the time and place of an arrest that could have been made somewhere else, and at any other time.

“Why on earth choose this moment?” asks Scott Hechinger, one of the lawyers working on Bryant’s case. “There’s about a million other ways to arrest this guy. Get him at his house the day before, the day after, any time over the last four years. Why choose the funeral service—the service that they caused—to inflame tensions? The timing just makes you wonder: Is this to make a statement?

 

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Source: www.vice.com

New Yorker who died after apparent chokehold during arrest is mourned

 

The mourners trickled slowly into the crowded church. Inside, a huge man lay in a white casket topped by white and yellow flowers — a man who in life was known to few outside his Staten Island neighborhood.

In death, though, Eric Garner has become a symbol of policing gone awry: He was videotaped as he was put into an apparent chokehold by police officers. His case has jolted a city that began the year with a new mayor, Bill de Blasio, and a new police commissioner, William J. Bratton, vowing better lives for people such as Garner: black men living far from the glassy skyscrapers and shaded brownstones of the well-heeled.

 

 

Civil rights leaders and other New Yorkers say Garner’s death July 17 shows the need for faster change in the New York Police Department.

“People in all five boroughs are fired up. They’re fired up right now because we don’t like this,” said Isaac L. Mickens, a pastor, community activist and friend of Garner’s family. “We need action.”

 

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Source: www.latimes.com

The death penalty dramatized – Los Rakas – Sueño Americano – YouTube

 

Music video by Los Rakas performing Sueño Americano. (C) 2014 Universal Music Latino

Source: www.youtube.com

 

The death penalty. Murder for murder. Barbaric. 

 

Fruitvale Station

 

“Fruitvale Station” (2013) is an American film about the last day of Oscar Grant’s life. On January 1st 2009, Grant, an unarmed Black man, was shot in the back by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, California. Octavia Spencer plays his mother. Ryan Coogler writes and directs, his first film. It won an NAACP Image Award, an award at Cannes, but no Oscar.

 

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Source: abagond.wordpress.com

 

I saw this movie. It has excellent acting and cinematography, it’s entertaining, and of course it’s heartbreaking like crazy.

 

@getgln

 

Autopsy Report Alleges Clayton Lockett Execution Doomed By Staff Error

See on Scoop.itCommunity Village Daily

 

Comments by an attorney from the Death Penalty Clinic at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law lay out the details of the team’s handling of the execution, which led to the heart attack that eventually killed him:

“The improper placement of the IV used in Mr. Lockett’s execution is just one factor that caused his prolonged and painful death,” said Megan McCracken, an attorney with the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. “The three-drug protocol that was used exacerbated the pain and suffering that Mr. Lockett faced by needlessly paralyzing him and subjecting him to the pain of potassium chloride. Moreover, the state had no plan for contingencies in the event that the execution did not go as planned, as clearly happened here.”

There are also concerns of how properly trained personnel were regarding the execution. The Department of Corrections timeline revealed that the IV was applied by a phlebotomist and later confirmed by the state. When a local news outlet questioned the matter, the state reversed their statement and said that an unnamed EMT was the person to apply the femoral vein IV. According to the state’s execution protocol, a physician should have set the IV, and not a phlebotomist.

 

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Community Village‘s insight:

 

I thought that physicians took the Hippocratic Oath and were not allowed to harm people?

 

@getgln

See on thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

Racial Inequality Is Getting Complicated. Eric Holder Explains How.

 

“This weekend, on the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board, Attorney General Eric Holder delivered an important speech on race and inequality. He emphasized the persistence and power of social stratification, compared with the superficiality of racist remarks by Cliven Bundyand Donald Sterling. Holder called for an “honest, tough, and vigorous debate,” setting aside simplistic answers and instead speaking “forthrightly about these difficult issues.””

 
See on www.slate.com