This blog stays updated with cases of Police Brutality against Black Men and the Black Community. These are just the cases that we are fortunate enough to hear about. But, there are several "unsung victims" whose story has never been told or videotaped. Infamous cases such as Rodney King and Oscar Grant are not isolated incidents. They exist amongst a corrupt system of impunity. Who am I? I am a “Concerned Member of the Black Community.”
The New York City Police Department's controversial "stop-and-frisk" program was a major issue for voters going to the polls in the city's mayoral election.
The issue drew widespread attention in August when U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin found "stop-and-frisk" unconstitutional, saying police had relied on a "policy of indirect racial profiling" that led officers to routinely stop "blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white." While she did not halt use of the tactic, Scheindlin appointed a federal court monitor to oversee a series of reforms.
In a dramatic development last week, those reforms were put on hold. On Thursday, an appeals court stayed the changes, effectively allowing police officers to continue using "stop-and-frisk."
We get reaction from a police officer who has spoken out about problems with the program he and thousands of others are asked to carry out. Adhyl Polanco became critical of the NYPD's "stop-and-frisk" policy when his superiors told officers to meet a quota of stops, or face punishment.
Less than two months after Charlotte police shot and killed an unarmed man who was trying to find help after having a car accident, a woman is dead in Michigan under similar circumstances, shot in the head while reportedly searching for assistance late Friday night.
Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old from Detroit, is presumed to have been asking for help when she knocked on the door of a Dearborn Heights home at 2:30 A.M. on Saturday. McBride's family says McBride had been in a car accident and her cellphone was dead. Rather than offering shelter to McBride, however, the homeowner came out and shot her in the head with a shotgun. The buckshot entered McBride's head from the back, according to statements from her aunt, as the girl had already turned to walk or run away from the home. Police reports say the teenager was found dead on the home's front porch.
While the initial stories around McBride's death dubbed it a "possible case of self-defense gone wrong," today police sent a request to the Wayne County prosecutor asking for charges to be filed against the unnamed resident who shot McBride.
"He shot her in the head ... for what? For knocking on his door," McBride's aunt told the Detroit News. "If he felt scared or threatened, he should have called 911."
Michigan's self-defense act, which bears a resemblance to Florida's infamous stand-your-ground law, says that an individual "may use deadly force against another individual anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat" as long as that person "honestly and reasonably" believes deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death, great bodily harm, or sexual assault.
A Dearborn Heights, Michigan, homeowner told police that he shot Renisha McBride in the head when his shotgun discharged accidentally early Saturday morning. McBride was presumably looking for help following a car accident, but the man says he took her for an intruder and mistakenly shot her in the face.
The Detroit Free Press spoke with police Lt. James Serwatowski, who said, "This man's claiming—believed the girl was breaking into the home. And he's also saying the gun discharged accidentally." Serwatowski added that McBride was not shot in the back of the head, as her family has been claiming. "I don't know where the family is getting this," he said. "She was shot in the front of the face, near the mouth."
Police confirmed that McBride was in an accident and said that "some hours transpired" before the shooting, though they have yet to publicly describe what happened in the interim between those two events.
The Wayne County prosecutor's office today said it is awaiting further police investigation before deciding if it will press charges against the homeowner.
http://www.democracynow.org - A sweeping set of changes to the New York City Police Department's controversial "stop-and-frisk" program has been put on hold.
In August, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin found the program unconstitutional, saying police had relied on a "policy of indirect racial profiling" that led officers to routinely stop "blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white."
While she did not halt the use of stop-and-frisk, Scheindlin appointed a federal court monitor to oversee a series of reforms. The city appealed Scheindlin's ruling, saying it made officers "passive and scared" to frisk suspects. On Thursday, it got what it was hoping for, and much more.
An appeals court stayed the changes, effectively postponing the operations of the monitor, while allowing police officers to continue using stop-and-frisk tactics. In a striking move, the court also took the unusual step of removing Scheindlin from the case, saying she had "ran afoul" of the judiciary's code of conduct and compromised the "appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation" by granting media interviews while the case was pending before her.
All of this comes as stop-and-frisk has been a major issue in New York City's mayoral election, which takes place this Tuesday. "The next mayor should consider withdrawing the appeal," says Sunita Patel, co-counsel on the "stop-and-frisk" federal class action lawsuit and a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"Any fair minded and neutral judge to look at the record ... will come up with the same conclusion. There was a nine-week trial, there is 23,000 pages of evidence herel; 8,000 pages of trial transcript. No one could come to a different conclusion than Judge Scheindlin."
Readers familiar with the killings of unarmed individuals in this nation during the past ten tears would probably agree the police execution of Kenneth B. Walker in December 2003 resonates as the most violent brutal shooting of an unarmed human being captured on video.
The police in the video swarmed over Walker like sharks on a feeding frenzy. As Mr.Walker lay helpless and incapacitated he was killed by two shots to the head after being pulled out a vehicle drug agents mistakenly thought was that of a Florida drug dealer. He was unarmed. There were no drugs and no weapon.
Mr Walker was born July 29,1964 only 27 days after the signing of the now famous Civil Rights Acts document which was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. His generation would be the first that would be free of segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. Walker's generation would supposedly not be subject to the past blatant abuses of discriminatory practices in employment and segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.
Although the Civil Rights Act was intended to make Walker and his generation's lives more tolerable than previous generations his death was reminiscent of the murders of blacks who died under the violent white rage and terrorist acts in burnings and lynchings by the Klu Klux Klan.
Mr. Walker's cold blooded death illustrated the callous inhumanity exhibited by the Klan and replayed by the shooter former police officer David Glisson. Glisson was fired from his position as a result of the shooting but never convicted of any crime. His life continues, he has watched his kids mature, celebrate holidays with family and played team softball in his community.
Kenneth Walker's mother and family were only left with memories and sorrows offered by a two minute video of the last violent moments of his life.
Walker's death should remind every black person in this nation that the scourge of death still rest upon the race in America. And the killings of unarmed blacks continue today.
COLUMBUS, Georgia—More than 8,000 people marched January 15 from the Civic Center here to the Columbus Government Center to demand justice for Kenneth Walker and to protest cop brutality and anti-Black discrimination.
Walker, a 39-year-old African American, was killed Dec. 10, 2003, by two bullets to the head fired by Muscogee County deputy sheriff David Glisson. Walker was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by Glisson and other deputy sheriffs from the local police Special Response Team. The cops claimed they were looking for drug dealers who they suspected would be armed. But the police officers did not find any incriminating evidence against the four men nor did they provide any plausible explanation as to how Walker was shot dead. Muscogee County Sheriff Ralph Johnson called the shooting a “tragedy.”
Glisson was subsequently fired from the police department. On November 23, however, a grand jury decided not to indict him after deliberating for about 40 minutes.
Attorneys for Walker’s family filed a civil lawsuit the week prior to the march here, seeking $100 million in damages from the city of Columbus, Glisson, and Johnson, the country sheriff.
Warren Beaulah, Daryl Ransom, and Anthony Smith—the other men in the vehicle where Walker was killed—also filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court January 10 charging that their constitutional rights were violated and seeking damages of $3.5 million.
The men were stopped as they drove down Interstate 185 on that fatal night a little more than a year ago. The three survivors told the press later that the police ordered them to get out of the vehicle with their hands in the air and get on the ground as officers advanced, guns drawn. In the ensuing moments, Walker was shot twice in the head. Beaulah, Ransom, and Smith were then handcuffed and searched. The police found no weapons or drugs in their possession or in the car. The men were taken to the sheriff’s department where they were held in separate cells and questioned by deputies. No charges were ever filed against them.
The march and rally, on the anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., were called by a coalition of civil rights and religious organizations. These include the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Concerned Black Clergy, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, the National Action Network, Rainbow Coalition/PUSH, and the Nation of Islam.
Speakers included Democratic Party politician Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lowery of the SCLC, and others representing the sponsoring organizations.
Days before the march, one of its organizers, Rev. Wayne Baker of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, had predicted that “several hundred” would attend. Instead, thousands turned out, including protesters from Albany, Atlanta, and other cities in Georgia. The big majority of the predominantly Black marchers, however, came from the Columbus area and the towns in Alabama just across the river. This is significant, since Columbus is a relatively small city of about 185,000 people.
In his speech to the rally, Baker demanded a new grand jury be convened in the case.
“Last week statements were made that only a couple of people in Columbus, Georgia, were making a lot of noise about nothing,” said Cheryl Walker, the widow of Kenneth Walker, addressing the crowd. “By your presence here today, we have proved them wrong.”
On January 11, an all-white demonstration of 150 people in support of Glisson had been held at the same location.
Germeka Harvey, 25, told the Militant she came with a friend and their kids “to see that justice be served, because it wasn’t served.”
“I came for Kenny Walker,” said Joshua Maddox, 13. “It’s important to be here.” He said there was a big discussion about the case among students and teachers at his school.
“I came because I want this killing to stop, to support a brother and his family,” said Dr. Andoh, 62, a biologist in Albany, Georgia, who is originally from Ghana. “I know he was killed because of profiling. The Black man in America is like a dog.”
“People need to know that prejudice is alive and well,” said Josie Duffy, 17. “We have a long way to go.”
Renee Benson, 25, added: “I’m here to find out how I can solve the problem of the unjust system.”
A Chicago police officer who admitted to being drunk and was caught on video shooting an unarmed man 16 times after mistaking his cell phone for a gun will face zero charges for the man’s murder.
Chicago Police Officer Gildardo Sierra will not face any criminal charges for the killing of an unarmed man, Cook County prosecutors announced Tuesday, despite video footage (http://www.chicagotribune.com/videogallery/65555204/News/Dash-cam-video-of-police-shooting) that showed Sierra standing over the victim, Flint Farmer, and shooting him multiple times. Prosecutors concluded that Sierra may have reasonably mistaken Farmer’s cell phone for a gun, and therefore was justified in firing off all 16 rounds in his gun at the unarmed man.
Farmer was Sierra’s third shooting in six months, yet the officer remained on the job. The video showed Farmer lying on the ground bleeding as Sierra shot three bullets into his back. An autopsy later determined those three shots in his back were the fatal wounds.
Sierra eventually admitted that he drank “multiple” beers before he went to work that night. However, the city waited more than five hours after the shooting to give him a breath test, so there was no way to tell if he was impaired during the shooting.
The CPD also ruled Farmer’s shooting justified, though Superintendent Garry McCarthy later told the Chicago Tribune that Sierra should not have been allowed back on the street after the two previous shootings. McCarthy said the department had no way of tracking officers’ shooting records.
In the prosecutors’ defense, putting a cop in prison is remarkably difficult. Police officers are allowed to shoot if they fear for their lives, and proving that use of force was “unreasonable” sets a very high bar. Few police who have used force under suspicious circumstances ever face a judge. A 2007 study by UChicago law professor Craig Futterman found that just 19 of 10,149 complains of excessive force, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and false arrests led to a police suspension of a week or more. Individual police officers are also largely protected from damages claims in civil court through “qualified immunity.”
Though Sierra has gotten off essentially scot-free for his actions, Chicago taxpayers are not so lucky. The city settled a lawsuit over Farmer’s death for $4.1 million in December. Chicago has already paid out about $50 million to settle lawsuits from decades of police torture, and recently paid $8.5 million on behalf of an officer who shot a teenager in the back. Other cities plagued by police misconduct have had to shell out similarly large sums; New York taxpayers paid $185.6 million for one fiscal year of lawsuits against officers, and police misconduct cost Oakland, CA more than $13 million in fiscal year 2011.
