“The Mass Black Incarceration State was designed to pre-empt any
insurgency by Black people – But is wholly unprepared to handle armed
revolt from the white Right, from which it also draws much of its police
manpower.”
“How is it that the Superpower of Policing and Prosecution seems to fear a confrontation with groups with names like the Oregon Bearded Bastards?”
By Glen Ford, BAR executive editor The armed right-wing activists that seized control of a federal wildlife sanctuary compound in eastern Oregon have already committed – and conspired to commit – enough serious criminal violations of U.S. law to land each of them in federal prison for the rest of lives. Of course, as Wajahat Ali points out in The Guardian newspaper, if the gunmen were Muslim or Black, they’d already be dead.
This is not a great revelation. Every Black child knows that white lives carry a premium value in the United States, while Blacks are casually killable. In a society where Walking While Black, Driving While Black or simply Breathing While Black is so often treated as a capital crime, the racial double standard is the norm. That’s why it’s insane to think that this society can be made worthy of Black habitation through tinkering with the system, piecemeal reforms, and appeals to the federal government for protection and relief. This is the same federal government that framed poor Black men from Miami and Newburgh, New York, on terrorist conspiracy charges, and that condones conspiracy indictments carrying life in prison for 100 Black youngsters from New York City housing projects based on their postings in Facebook. But the white, rightwing land grabbers who are in armed occupation of federal property can’t seem to buy a confrontation with President Obama’s FBI or any other armed federal agency. How is it, the people of the world must be wondering, that a country that runs by far the world’s biggest prison system, with the most heavily armed cops on the planet, equipped with the most advanced evidence gathering devices known to man – how is it that the Superpower of Policing and Prosecution seems to fear a confrontation with groups with names like the Oregon Bearded Bastards?
“The white, rightwing land grabbers who are in armed occupation of federal property can’t seem to buy a confrontation with President Obama’s FBI.”
The reason is really quite simple: the U.S. criminal justice system was not created to control white militias or greedy ranchers or gun-toting racists and Bible-thumpers. For most of U.S. history, these were prime stakeholders in the American project to build a White Man’s Nation. The gunmen in Oregon have plenty of historical reasons to believe that land-grabbing is their birthright – and that a significant segment of white America empathizes with them. The federal government treads lightly, because white Christian lives do matter.
For almost 50 years, the primary mission of the U.S. criminal justice system has been to control, contain and incarcerate Black Americans. It has spent half a century refining the tools to terrorize Black people on the streets, in their homes and in their schools. It is so efficient at what it does, that one out of every eight prison inmates on the planet is an African American. The Mass Black Incarceration State was designed to pre-empt any insurgency by Black people – not to deal with the Bundy family and the Bearded Bastards of Oregon.
That’s why I think the Lords of Capital are much more afraid of Donald Trump than they are of Bernie Sanders. They think Trump might stir up more of those white bearded bastards, many of whom hate Wall Street almost as much as they do the federal government – which is a real problem for U.S. law enforcement.
The Republican Party stole the presidential election in 2000 and 2004, congressional elections, governorships, and state legislature elections with the help of companies like Diebold, Premier Election Solutions, Election Systems & Software and other Republican-backing corporations that supply electronic voting machines to municipalities. This is how the Republican Party has managed to take over the House of Representatives, the Senate, and state legislatures — Even though the percentage of the electorate that the Republican Party represents has been steadily and significantly shrinking over the past twenty years. Big media won't tell Americans that this has been extremely well documented because that would call the entire "democratic" voting system into question. —Ronald David Jackson
_______________
Compiled by Ronald David Jackson
Republicans Will Take The White House and Keep Congress in 2016 — Via Electronic Vote Stealing
When official exit poll data keep showing Democrats winning yet Democrats keep losing — You know something sinister is afoot.
FAULKNER: How does the party of "no" and the one percent, nakedly obstructionist and grossly unpopular, as you pointed out their congressional approval rating is in single digits with shrinking demographics to boot — How do they wind up rewarded rather than punished when the voters finally get the chance to weigh in?
SIMON: ...It is still verboten in public discourse in America [to discuss] the distinct possibility, in fact the probability, that in the darkness of cyberspace where these computers are recording and tallying our votes by the millions, there are electronic program manipulations taking place that alter the vote counts and with them alter the results of the elections and alter them in a distinct unidirectional pattern towards the right.
Listen To the Entire Interview:
Voting Machines: Computerized Election Theft Dr. Jonathan Simon explains how Republicans, working with companies that provide electronic voting machines, have been stealing elections whenever the vote is close.
Bonnie Faulkner of Guns & Butter (left) interviews Dr. Jonathan Simon.
Man Who Helped George Bush Steal the 2000 Presidential Election Prepares for Run for President — Jeb Bush
How Jeb Bush Stole the 2000 Election for His Brother: Ex-con game — How Florida's "Felon" Voter-Purge Was Itself Felonious
Jeb Bush - Political Criminal: He helped his brother, George Bush, steal the 2000 presidential election,
thus changing the course of American history for the worse. (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)
By Greg Palast
In November the U.S. media, lost in patriotic reverie, dressed up the Florida recount as a victory for President Bush. But however one reads the ballots, Bush's win would certainly have been jeopardized had not some Floridians been barred from casting ballots at all. Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state--Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, both protegees of Governor Jeb Bush--ordered 57,700 "exfelons," who are prohibited from voting by state law, to be removed from voter rolls. (In the thirty-five states where former felons can vote, roughly 90 percent vote Democratic.) A portion of the list, which was compiled for Florida by DBT Online, can be seen for the first time here; DBT, a company now owned by ChoicePoint of Atlanta, was paid $ 4.3 million for its work, replacing a finn that charged $ 5,700 per year for the same service.
Voter Suppression: Greg Palast Explains how Jeb Bush, Kathleen Harris and the Supreme Court Helped George Bush Steal the 2000 Presidential Election
If the hope was that DBT would enable Florida to exclude more voters, then the state appears to have spent its money wisely. Two of these "scrub lists," as officials called them, were distributed to counties in the months before the election with orders to remove the voters named. Together the lists comprised nearly 1 percent of Florida's electorate and nearly 3 percent of its African-American voters. Most of the voters (such as "David Butler," a name that appears 77 times in Florida phone books) were selected because their name, gender, birthdate, and race matched--or nearly matched--one of the tens of millions of ex-felons in the United States.
Neither DBT nor the state conducted any further research to verify the matches. DBT, which frequently is hired by the F.B.I. to conduct manhunts, originally proposed using address histories and financial records to confirm the names, but the state declined,the cross-checks. In Harris's elections-office files, next to DBT's sophisticated verification plan, there is a handwritten note: "DON'T NEED."
Thomas Alvin Cooper, twenty-eight, was flagged because of a crime for which he was convicted in the year 2007. Apparently this time traveler will cover his tracks by moving to Ohio, shedding his middle name, and changing his race. At least 300 "felons" on these lists were convicted in the future, a fact that did not escape state elections workers, who, in June 2000 e-mails headed "Future Conviction Dates," termed the discovery "bad news." Rather than release such perplexing data to the counties, Janet Modrow, the state's liaison to DBT, suggested that "blanks would be preferable in these cases." (The future felonies I found on these lists may simply be those the state neglected to erase; 4,918 other names have blank conviction dates.) The one county that checked each of the 694 names on its local list could verify only thirty-four as former felons. Some counties defied Harris's directive: Madison County elections supervisor Linda Howell refused the purge list after she found her own name on it.
Rev. Willie Dixon, seventy, was convicted of a crime in his youth, but one phone call would have told the state that it had already pardoned Dixon and restored his right to vote. On behalf of Dixon and other excluded voters, the NAACP in January 2001 sued Florida and Harris, after finding that African Americans--who account for 13 percent of Florida's electorate and 44 percent of U.S. felony convictions--were four times as likely as whites to be incorrectly singled out under the state's methodology.
After the election, Harris and her elections chief, Clay Roberts, testified under oath that verifying the lists was the job of county supervisors. But the Florida-DBT contract (marked "Secret" and "Confidential") holds DBT responsible for "manual verification using telephone calls." In fact, with the state's blessing, DBT did not call a single felon. When I asked Roberts about the contract-during an interview for BBC television, Roberts ripped off his microphone, ran into his office, locked the door, and called in state troopers to remove us.
Amid America’s demographic changes, Republicans have exploited every
trick they can think of to stave off actual democracy, where every vote
is respected and equal. One scheme has been to modernize the old
practice of “gerrymandering,” as Beverly Bandler explains.
By Beverly Bandler
In Election 2012, Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the
U.S. House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House
by a 234-to-201 margin. Thus, the second-biggest GOP majority in 60
years was not the will of American voters. It was gerrymandered.
Or, as Republican strategist Karl Rove has said, “He who controls redistricting can control Congress.”
Gerrymandering has become the preferred way for Republicans to defy
the principle of majority rule – or democracy – in an era in which
whites are declining as a percentage of the electorate. In other words,
it’s a way to reduce the political influence of people of color as well
as that of white demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic.
By AP U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the House will not go along if President Barack Obama tries to commit taxpayer money to support a climate accord reached in Paris.
He says Congress has the authority to decide how to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars, "and I don't think that's the best use of our money."
McCarthy suggested that a must-pass year-end spending bill currently in the works could become the vehicle for language blocking any such expenditure.
By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
Why a man armed with an assault rifle stormed a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on Friday and opened fire remains unknown. But the intense politics surrounding the attack at a reproductive health center, which killed a police officer and two others, are already emerging. The violence was celebrated by hundreds of anti-abortion supporters on social media and ignored by nearly every Republican candidate for running president.
Speaking Saturday, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said it was too early to know the suspected gunman’s motivations, but that people could make “inferences from where [the attack] took place” suggesting it may have been motivated by opposition to abortion.
Almost 24 hours after suspected gunman Robert Lewis Dear allegedly walked into the Colorado Springs clinic and opened fire, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz became the first GOP hopeful among a field of 14 to issue a response to the deadly rampage.
“Praying for the loved ones of those killed, those injured & first responders who bravely got the situation under control in Colorado Springs,” Cruz’s campaign published on Facebook and Twitter late Saturday morning. The statement neither mentions Planned Parenthood by name or that the “situation” involved an active shooter.
Right-wing propaganda is formenting terrorism across the United States — Black Lives Matter is not causing violence against police, Republicans are.—Ronald David Jackson
Robert Lewis
Dear: He was driven insane by Republicans and their propaganda arm, Fox News. Both are responsible for the killing of civilians and police officers. Republicans have become America's ISIS. How many will have to die before the Republican Party (America's neo-Nazi Party) is called to account?
‘No more baby parts,’ Suspect in Attack at Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic Told Official
By Wesley Lowery, Danielle Paquette and Jerry Markon
The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others used the phrase “no more baby parts’’ to explain his act, according to a law enforcement official, a comment sure to further inflame the heated rhetoric surrounding abortion.
The attack on the clinic, allegedly by Robert Lewis Dear Jr.,was “definitely politically motivated,’’ said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still underway. NBC News, which first reported the comment, said that Dear also mentioned President Obama in a range of statements to investigators that left his precise motivation unclear.
Yet even as authorities released few details about Friday’s shootings, the politics of the highly charged abortion issue seemed to outstrip their efforts to be methodical. While antiabortion activists denied any knowledge of Dear and said he is not affiliated with their movement, pro-choice activists countered that comments by conservatives against Planned Parenthood had precipitated the violence .
Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, cited “eyewitness accounts” in asserting that Dear “was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion.”
“We’ve seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months,” she said in a statement. “That environment breeds acts of violence.”
Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other health-care services, has been at the center of a political storm as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Republican candidates have denounced the organization, especially after an antiabortion group released a series of surreptitiously filmed videos in which Planned Parenthood officials discussed the techniques and financial aspects of harvesting fetal-tissue samples for scientific research.
By Gayatri Devi
There is an appeal to creationism for certain people: it lies in the ability to submit to a myth without reflection, debate or real understanding. But the ultimate goal in promoting it as a point of legitimate pedagogical inquiry appears to be to coerce the obedience of a superstitious civic collective under a socially and politically regressive leadership.
And it’s being used in this election cycle to counter intellectual and academic freedom in educational institutions.
Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson have both expressed their support of creationism and denial of evolution, with Carson attributing the teachings of evolution to “the Adversary”, Satan. Carson has promised that, if he becomes president, he will make the US Department of Education withdraw federal funding from institutions that show “extreme political bias”.
Carson’s example of “extreme political bias”? A lone professor who asked students to write “Jesus” on a sheet of paper and stomp on it. Carson failed to add to his inflammatory account that the professor used the exercise to prove to his communication students that stomping on the word “Jesus” would be a marked example of a failed intercultural communication strategy.
There are legitimate ways to discuss the Bible critically and aesthetically; in the academic context, that can take the form of courses in literature, philosophy, comparative religion and even law. Like other scriptures, Biblical stories are exemplary texts of literature that promise many benefits for the alert reader. But there is no valid reason to use creationism where more rigorous methods of scientific inquiry are superior.
The Republican presidential candidates’ public obsession with creationism, though, isn’t really about education. It’s about cementing their Christian credentials with the influential evangelical voting bloc by announcing their opposition to all that is not heterosexual, Christian and not “speaking American” – whatever that means.
It can be a winning strategy: a 2014 Gallup poll showed that 42% of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form 10,000 years ago. And a 2014 Pew Research Center poll of American voting behavior found that 78% of white evangelicals voted for Republican candidates, while only 20% voted for Democratic candidates.
The Republican obsequiousness to creationist philosophy might not be so much anti-science as good politics: being pro-creationism often appears to be pandering to a conservative base – a way to whip up intellectually regressive policies to win the “culture wars” and, more importantly, elections.
However, while the rightwing secret handshake of creationism may appeal to a certain base, the future president will have to represent a vast, heterogeneous population in an increasingly globalized world. Letting go of the false sense of superiority – of religion, race, sexual orientation, nationality – might prove to be a decent first step in speaking to the world, and having the world listen in.
Wondering where today's crazy GOP clown-show started?
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" --Sinclair Lewis
Former White House Chief of Staff: Sarah Palin Marked the Moment the GOP Went Off the Rails
By Janet Allon
Wondering where the insanity that is today's GOP started? Look no further than nonsense-spewer Sarah Palin. This is the view espoused by WIlliam M. Daley, former White House Chief of Staff under President Obama from 2011-2012 in Monday's Washington Post.
He makes a pretty good case, first for the fact that the party has descended into utter chaos. "When The Post’s front page declares: 'Republicans are on the verge of ceasing to function as a national party,' it’s time to ask: How did this come to pass?" he opens. How did we get to the side-to-side clown shows of the GOP presidential contest, and the total breakdown of a functioning party in Congress?
The turning point came in 2008, when the party put then Alaska-Governor Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency, despite her utter lack of competency. That is when the party effectively embraced the lack of competence and experience as a virtue. From that flows Ben Carson and Donald Trump as frontrunners for the nomination and a variety of other ills. Daley writes:
Palin’s blatant lack of competence and preparedness needs no belaboring. What’s critical is that substantive, serious Republican leaders either wouldn’t or couldn’t declare, before or after the election: “This is not what our party stands for. We can and must do better.”
By the campaign’s end, GOP operatives were shielding Palin from even the simplest questions. (She had flunked “what newspapers do you read?”). Barack Obama cruised to victory.
Fox snapped up Palin. All bombast, no reason, no compromise ever became both the party's and the network's daily bread. And let's not forget that it was one of the "party's more thoughtful and substantive veterans," a.k.a. John McCain, who ushered in the new era of substanceless sizzle, writes Daley.
Once McCain put Palin on the ticket, Republican “grown-ups,” who presumably knew better, had to bite their tongues. But after the election, when they were free to speak their minds, they either remained quiet or abetted the dumbing-down of the party. They stood by as Donald Trump and others noisily pushed claims that Obama was born in Kenya. And they gladly rode the tea party tiger to sweeping victories in 2010 and 2014.
Now that tiger is devouring the GOP establishment. Party elders had hoped new presidential debate rules would give them greater control. But they are watching helplessly as Trump leads the pack and House Republicans engage in fratricide.
It’s hard to feel much sympathy. The Republican establishment’s 2008 embrace of Palin set an irresponsibly low bar. Coincidence or not, a batch of nonsense-spewing, hard-right candidates quickly followed, often to disastrous effect.
By Jonas Persson
Twenty-five years ago, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson signed the nation's first school voucher bill into law. Pitched as social mobility tickets for minority students, Wisconsin vouchers allow children to attend private, and sometimes religious, schools on the taxpayers' dime.
But as shown by the murky history of the voucher movement, and by the way voucher programs have developed in Wisconsin and other states, racial equity had nothing to do with it. It was a scheme cooked up out of an ideological disdain for public schools and teachers' unions, and first used to actually preserve school segregation in the South.
Today, vouchers bills are on the move in multiple states and on Capitol Hill. GOP presidential hopefuls, who want to boost their free market bona fides for a 2016 run, have been outbidding themselves in touting vouchers as educational panaceas that will not only help minority children close education gaps, but cut corporate and property taxes in the process.
A Nationwide Voucher Program?
On April 15, Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced an amendment to an omnibus education bill that would have spelled the end to federal education aid as we know it.
Under the amendment to the Senate bill, which is a revamp of the No Child Left Behind Act, federal Title I dollars, intended to support public schools with a high proportion of low-income students, would instead follow individual students even if they choose to attend private schools.
This would have paved the way for a multi-billion-dollar nationwide voucher system, siphoning money from public school districts to private and possibly religious schools that—unlike their public counterpart—have no obligation to serve minority, at-risk or special-needs students. These schools are also free to ditch the science curriculum in favor of climate-denial and creationism.
A few months earlier, Congressman Luke Messer (R-IN) bused a bunch of kids to the Capitol to celebrate "National School Choice Week." Among the speakers were Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Their enthusiasm, however, was somewhat dampened by the kids who—for all Messer's emceeing—seemed ill at ease with being displayed as placard-wearing pawns in a political game.
Precisely what kind of school choice Messer had in mind became clear when he introduced a voucher amendment to the House version of the bill. Both Messer and Paul chose to withdraw their respective amendments, but introducing them in the first place is a way of flexing their muscles. Vouchers are gaining traction and Messer, who chairs the Congressional School Choice Caucus, has vowed not to rest until "every kid in America has that kind of opportunity."
By ED WHITE
A member of an elite Detroit police unit is set to stand trial again for killing a 7-year-old girl during a 2010 raid on her house that was captured on video by a reality TV crew.
Nobody alleges that Officer Joseph Weekley intended to kill Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who had been sleeping on a couch near the front door when officers burst through around midnight in search of a murder suspect. But prosecutors charged him with involuntary manslaughter because they believe he handled his submachine gun recklessly, causing the girl's death.
Jury selection starts Monday in Wayne County court, 15 months after Weekley's first trial ended with jurors unable to agree on a verdict.
Weekley was a member of Detroit's Special Response Team, which was sent to an east side neighborhood to capture a suspect in the killing of a teenager outside a convenience store.
Police threw a stun grenade through a window, emitting smoke, bright light and vibrations to confuse anyone inside. Weekley was first through the door, with a shield in one hand and a gun in the other. He claims he accidentally pulled the trigger when Aiyana's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, grabbed his gun. She denies that she interfered in any way.
Police for San Diego city schools have obtained a war-grade armored vehicle from the Department of Defense
Apparently, they plan to use this on public school students: Caiman MRAP acquired
by the San Diego Unified School District Police Department.
By Sarah Lazare
The police department for San Diego’s public schools recently revealed that they have acquired a large armored combat vehicle from the U.S. military.
The $700,000 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle (MRAP), which is designed to withstand blasts from improvised explosive devices and mines, was given to law enforcement for the Unified School District in April. The vehicle was transferred through the Department of Defense’s controversial 1033 program, which authorizes the military to donate what it considers surplus military equipment to police and sheriff departments in the United States, including tanks and weapons used in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This and other federal programs that flood local law enforcement with weapons of war have fallen under increased scrutiny following the crackdown by heavily armed riot police and military service members on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri opposing the police killing of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown. Numerous other San Diego police agencies have received weapons from the military, although the MRAP stands out for its high dollar value.
By CN
A Chicago cop shot an 86-year-old man in the back seven times, killing him in his own back yard, then shot his 91-year-old wife three times and conspired with other cops to maliciously prosecute her, the couple's children claim in court.
Hazel Jones, 91, says she was in her back yard on the South Side of Chicago on April 25 when defendant Chicago police Officer Courtney Hill entered the back yard with his wife.
Jones's husband, Joseph Huff, joined them, whereupon "without justification or provocation," Hill shot her husband eight times - seven times in the back, according to the complaint.
"Defendant Hill then shot Hazel Jones three times."
Their children, Joseph and Lisa Huff, sued Chicago and Hill on Tuesday, in Federal Court.
They claim, inter alia, that "City of Chicago police officers routinely, unlawfully conspire, cover-up and otherwise maintain a code of silence or 'blue wall' to protect their fellow officers who are engaged in misconduct while on duty. Defendant Hill shot and killed decedent Joseph Huff because he was aware of this practice and knew he would be protected by his fellow officers.
By Jaeah Lee
Since a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, one month ago, reporters and researchers have scrambled to
find detailed data on how often cops wound or kill civilians. What
they've uncovered has been frustratingly incomplete:
Perhaps not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies don't keep very good
stats on incidents that turn deadly. In short, it's a mystery exactly
how many Americans are shot by the police every year.
However, as I and othershavereported,
there is some national data out there. It's not complete, but it
provides a general idea of how many people die at the hands of the
police—and the significant racial disparity among them:
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting program records
that 410 people were killed in justifiable homicides by police in 2012.
While the FBI collects information on the victims' race, it does not
publish the overall racial breakdown.
• The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that between 2003 and 2009 there were more than 2,900 arrest-related deaths
involving law enforcement. Averaged over seven years, that's about 420
deaths a year. While BJS does not provide the annual number of
arrest-related deaths by race or ethnicity, a rough calculation based on
its data shows that black people were about four times as likely to die
in custody or while being arrested than whites.
Ronald Ritchie called 911 and claimed a man, John Crawford, was pointing an assault rifle at people inside Walmart. Ritchie was the only shopper who called 911. The police responded to the call and shot Crawford on site, killing him as his children stood by. The assault rifle turned out to be merely a toy gun Crawford was preparing to purchase. Subsequently, upon upon viewing the Walmart surveillance video, Ritchie changed his story and said that Crawford was not pointing the rifle at people. Was Ritchie deliberately trying to instigate a "murder by cop" of a black man, or did he simply change his story to coincide with the Walmart surveillance video?
Michael Wright, John Crawford's attorney, says the Walmart surveillance video shows
Crawford leaning on the toy gun and talking on the phone when police showed up and
shot him on sight. The Ohion attorney general refuses to release the video. (Screen shot from YouTube video)
By Travis Gettys
Some questions have emerged about the witness account that led to the fatal shooting of a man carrying a toy gun inside a Walmart store in Ohio.
Ronald Ritchie, another shopper, called 911 from the Beavercreek retailer Aug. 5 to report a black man “walking around with a gun in the store” – placing other customers under direct threat.
In a recording of the call made to dispatchers, Ritchie claimed the man was pointing the toy gun – which he believed was an AR-15 rifle – at other shoppers, and he repeated those claims to news media after police gunned down 22-year-old John Crawford III.
“He was pointing at people – children walking by,” Ritchie claimed to reporters.
But the 24-year-old — who was the only shopper who called 911 — offered another account last week in an interview with the Guardian.
“At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody,” he said, although he continued to insist Crawford was “waving it around.”
An attorney for Crawford’s family strongly denies that claim, saying surveillance video recorded prior to the shooting directly contradicts the accounts offered by police and Ritchie.
Attorney Michael Wright, who watched a five-minute excerpt of the video with Crawford’s father, has urged Ohio’s attorney general to publicly release the video and other evidence.
Attorney General Mike DeWine has so far refused, saying it would be “playing with dynamite” to do so prior to a grand jury hearing scheduled for Sept. 22.
However, Ritchie claims he was shown the video by officials in the attorney general’s bureau of criminal investigation – and Wright said he intends to file a complaint with DeWine.
“That is very improper,” Wright said, arguing that Ritchie’s statement should be based only on his own recollections.
“(DeWine) said he was concerned that the release of the video would adversely color the perception of the witnesses, thereby making their testimony less accurate,” Wright said.
A spokesman for DeWine declined to confirm whether Ritchie had seen the video, and he declined to comment whether the attorney general told Wright the video could negatively impact witness accuracy.
By Thom Hartmann
It's time to get rid of the United States' racist policing double-standards.
Earlier this summer, Kalamazoo, Michigan police officers were called to respond to reports of man, possibly drunk, acting belligerently and waving around a rifle.
When they arrived on the scene, the Kalamazoo officers found 63-year-old Joseph Houseman, a white man, who appeared to be intoxicated, and who was indeed waving around what looked to be an AK-47 assault rifle.
According to police reports of the incident, as well as dash cam footage and body microphones that were on the officers, it took nearly 40 minutes to get Houseman to peacefully surrender his weapon.
That same video and audio footage reveals how the police officers on the scene deliberated for some time over how to protect the public from Houseman, while protecting his right to openly carry a gun at the same time, under Michigan law.
The officers can be seen and heard talking with Houseman, trying to de-escalate the situation without resorting to violence.
In fact, when Houseman at one point told the officers to shoot him, one of them responded saying, "I don't want to shoot you; I'm not here to do that."
Eventually, the officers were able to subdue Houseman and take his gun, but decided against charging him.
So, in this case, when confronted with a white man who was acting belligerently and waving around a deadly assault rifle in the air, police officers talked the man down, didn't resort to violence or brutality, and were able to bring the situation to a close.
This is how a white guy is treated by police in the US.
Corporal punishment is supposed to banned in public schools - So instead students get 50,000 volts.
"Officers trained for the streets are using dangerous weapons on children
with impunity. These abusive police street tactics have no place in our
schools."
By Courthouse News
Syracuse irresponsibly lets its police officers use Tasers in public schools, leading to excessive force and injuries, two former high school students claim in Federal Court.
Andre Epps and Trevon Hanks claim city police officers assigned to their schools shot them with Tasers without warning, in separate incidents.
"The officers ... were guided by policies and training that failed to acknowledge the important differences between regulating adult criminal behavior and regulating children within the educational environment," Epps and Hanks claim in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit amends a complaint filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Epps in 2010, by adding Hanks as a plaintiff.
By Radley Balko
Watch this video, taken from a police raid in Des Moines, Iowa. Send it to some people. When critics (like me) warn about the dangers of police militarization, this is what we’re talking about. You’ll see the raid team, dressed in battle-dress uniforms, helmets and face-covering balaclava hoods take down the family’s door with a battering ram. You’ll see them storm the home with ballistics shields, guns at the ready. More troubling still, you’ll see not one but two officers attempt to prevent the family from having an independent record of the raid, one by destroying a surveillance camera, another by blocking another camera’s lens.
From the images in the video, you’d think they were looking for an escaped murderer or a house full of hit men. No, none of that. They were looking for a few people suspected of credit card fraud. None of the people they were looking for were inside of the house, nor was any of the stolen property they were looking for. They did arrest two houseguests of the family on what the news report says were unrelated charges, one for a probation violation and one for possession of illegal drugs.
