black…MYstory

Last month, 14-year-old DeOnte Rawlings died after being shot in a confrontation with two off-duty D.C. police officers. Now, the results of his autopsy are raising some very serious questions about police actions in this incident.

According to the police account, Officer James Haskel solicited the help fellow officer and friend Anthony Clay to help him find a minibike Haskel believed had been stolen from his home. So the two off-duty officers, out of uniform, went riding around looking for it. They came up DeOnte, who was riding the minibike.

The officers claim DeOnte shot at them and Officer Haskel exited his vehicle, pursued DeOnte on foot and shot him.

However, the recent autopsy report is somewhat disconcerting. First, it clearly indicates that DeOnte was shot in the back of the head. Secondly, there was no gunshot residue on his hands or fingers, which could very well have been there if he had indeed fired a gun. Thirdly, DeOnte’s family says that there was no gun recovered at the scene. Finally, there were serious traumatic injuries to the side and back of his body. These could have come from the fall or they could have come from him being hit.

Currently, this case is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and DC police.

Personally, I believe something stinks here. Armed, off-duty police officers, out of uniform, tracking down stolen property and end up in an encounter killing a 14-year-old? Call me paranoid or conspiratorial but, I smell a cover-up.

Popularity: 37% [?]

I honestly believe that the tactics once used solely to suppress dissent from people of color are now being utilized on the public at large. As black people, we know of the long history of COINTELPRO and its devastating effects on our forward progress as a people but, I believe that, in addition to it being a program, it was also a grand experiment. America didn’t squeal too loudly when it happened to people who didn’t matter much so, perhaps, it might not squeal much if enacted on America as a whole.

In post-9/11 America, we continue to silently accept the erosion of our rights and “experiments” like these continue to go on using people who still don’t matter much as the test subjects.

I say all that to say this — once again, another program has been uncovered that shows us just how badly we can expect our rights to be trampled. During the last Congress, the Posse Comitatus act of 1878 was abolished. You don’t know what it is, you say? Don’t be ashamed — until last year, I didn’t know either. The act basically said that the U.S. military could not be used against U.S. citizens. Now, some in power recognized that U.S. citizens may not easily accept having the last of their rights stripped from them, should martial law be declared so, they had a brilliant idea — they would train members of the clergy to suppress opposition. These groups, known as “Clergy Response Teams”, are U.S. Government-trained ministers who are deployed into areas under martial law to help quiet things down.

Now, just as I hypothesized, people of color were used as the guinea pigs of this experiment. A “Clergy Response Team” was used in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.

Sounds Orwellian, you say? Just check out this excerpt from the piece on them:

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Yes, you read right — Homeland Security and the clergy working hand-in-hand to “diffuse” these situations.

But, this part is even more chilling:

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

A few weeks back, I wrote about how mega-preacher Creflo Dollar had written a letter to his followers admonishing them to be unquestioningly loyal to the guidance of George Bush. Please trust, such calls did not begin or end with Creflo Dollar so, we have to believe that this message was played out in congregations across this country. Now, this program seem to be its next, logical evolutionary step.

Below is the link to the video of KSLA’s story on this program.

See video here

Popularity: 54% [?]

Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished. According to Leslie Donaldson, she was breaking up a fight between neighborhood kids when sheriff’s deputy David Clark came upon the scene. Clark stated that he tazed one of the boys fighting and that Ms. Donaldson raised her arms to him in a manner he perceived as threatening and he tazed her in the stomach.

The problem — Donaldson is 8 months pregnant.

Clark says he had no idea Donaldson was pregnant. Ms. Donaldson was arrested for battery but, has filed a complaint about her handling at the hands of Officer Clark.

The sheriff’s office is currently investigating this incident.

Popularity: 26% [?]

A recent report released by two of NYPD’s counterterrorism experts should raise a red flag to anyone who actually cares about the Constitution. A byline in an article about this report tells it all. The report calls for “increased domestic surveillance and pre-emptive action against American Muslims who might become ‘homegrown terrorists’ by visiting Internet sites.”

Think about this…we need to go after Muslims for visiting web sites.

Okay, I know, this is where someone says “…but 9/11 changed everything.” However, read this passage from Nat Parry’s article, calling attention to the hypocrisy of it all:

Arguably, there has been more reason to fear right-wing militia types like Timothy McVeigh (who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing) or Cuban terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles (now protected from deportation by the Bush administration despite his role in repeated terror attacks).

Yet, after angry white male McVeigh car-bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, there was no talk of suspending the Constitution or rounding up right-wing militia members for pre-emptive detention. Law enforcement simply tracked down the conspirators and punished them through the normal criminal justice system. (McVeigh was executed and his co-conspirators were sentenced to prison terms.)

Many right-wing extremists also have their hatreds fueled not just by like-minded Web sites but by talk radio and TV personalities, such as Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, who flippantly use hostile, even threatening, language against political enemies.

Indeed, if Silber and Bhatt based their report on actual killings by domestic terrorists – rather than concentrating on a handful of thwarted Muslim plans and even theoretical threats – they would have written a report that not only took aim at violent jihadist Web sites but at hate talk on right-wing radio and TV shows.

Tell the truth and shame the devil, Mr. Parry.

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All right, Republican sheep, let’s hear how you don’t want Democrats taking over because they’ll increase taxes.

Well, somebody has to pay for this mess.!

What mess am I talking about? Okay, let me explain. Back in January, I talked about how George Bush has singlehandedly doubled our foreign debt (now over $2 trillion). The country that holds the lion share of our debt is China.

In that post, I stated the following:

Do you think they may get some say in our foreign policy? If China were to sell off all its U.S. currency, we could see an almost immediate collapse in our economy.

Well, guess what? They do get a say. Today, I read the following:

The Chinese government has hinted that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds, potentially triggering a crash in the dollar, if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation, The Telegraph reported.

The paper said that two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that China may use its 1.33 bln usd of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Xia Bin, finance chief at China’s Development Research centre, which has cabinet rank, commented last week that China’s foreign reserves should be used as a ‘bargaining chip’ in talks with the US, the report said.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went further yesterday, indicating that China had the power to set off a dollar collapse, if it chose to do so, The Telegraph said.

Right now, China may hold as much as much as $900 billion in U.S. bonds.

So, yes, we do need taxes “raised”, which means a rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Otherwise, you Republican cheerleaders, who can’t afford an economic collapse any more than the rest of us, will find yourselves victims of the same economic depression as the rest of us.

Popularity: 54% [?]

After three years, a case that has further strained relations between police and Milwaukee’s black community has come to an end. Three police officers have been found guilty in the brutal beating of Frank Jude Jr. and Lovell Harris at a party at one of the officers’ house.

After deliberating about 30 hours, the federal jury of eight women and four men found Jon Bartlett, 35, Andrew Spengler, 28, and Daniel Masarik, 27, guilty of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Jude and his friend Lovell Harris and of assaulting Jude while acting as officers. The assaults happened outside an off-duty officers’ party at Spengler’s house in October 2004.

…

On Oct. 24, 2004, Jude, Harris and two women had gone to the party in Bay View, where they were accused of stealing Spengler’s badge. No badge was ever found, and no one was charged with theft.

Harris was cut in the face before he escaped. Jude was punched and kicked repeatedly in the head and body, threatened with a knife and gun, injured by objects jammed in his ears and by his fingers being yanked back, witnesses said.

Jude, who is biracial, and Harris, who is black, both said their white attackers used racial slurs

Perhaps cases like this will put officers on notice that this will not be tolerated. Doing your job and brutalizing people are not the same thing.

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This is a prime example of how to exacerbate a situation.

Across the country, police are cracking down on gangs. Good, right? However, the methods of enforcement are actually creating stronger gangs.

It seems that by locking up young people, particularly those as young as 12, for extended prison sentences, is putting them into situations where they can interact with other gang members and actually form stronger gang allegiances.

This is based on a report today from the Justice Policy Institute, a D.C. think tank.

While critics call the findings as coddling criminals, the report actually deals with the need to address the root causes of why people join gangs:

Arthur Lurigio, other academics and gang intervention workers have echoed elements of the report that found gangs need to be viewed as a symptom of other problems in poor communities, such as violence, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and unemployment.

The report says Los Angeles and Chicago are losing the war on gangs because they focus on law enforcement and are short on intervention.

Sadly, reports like this will be placed on the back burner until we get people in positions of power who are more interesting than treating the disease than the symptoms.

Popularity: 34% [?]

A recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics almost sounds heartening. It states that, by a small margin, black were actually less likely to be pulled over than any other group. But, like the saying goes, “the devil’s in the details.”

A closer analysis reveals something very interesting. Even though the black driver is the least likely to be pulled over, this group represents those who undergo the most vehicle searches. While only 3.6 percent of white drivers were subject to searches, more than twice that percentage (9.5 percent) of black drivers had their vehicles searched.

Of course, the bureau says that this is not proof of profiling but, journalist Eugene Robinson brings forth some interested analysis on this report.

The report says the “apparent disparities” between racial groups “do not constitute proof that police treat people differently along demographic lines,” since there could be “countless other factors and circumstances” that go into the decision of whom to spread-eagle on the hood.

All right, those figures alone might not constitute “proof” of bias that would convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. They are pretty compelling, though, especially when you also consider that black and Hispanic drivers are much more likely to experience “police use of force” than whites.

And besides, the following paragraph in the report pretty effectively demolishes that “move along, folks, nothing to see here” disclaimer about bias:

“Police actions taken during a traffic stop were not uniform across racial and ethnic categories. Black drivers (4.5 percent) were twice as likely as white drivers (2.1 percent) to be arrested during a traffic stop, while Hispanic drivers (65 percent) were more likely than white (56.2 percent) or black (55.8 percent) drivers to receive a ticket. In addition, whites (9.7 percent) were more likely than Hispanics (5.9 percent) to receive a written warning, while whites (18.6 percent) were more likely than blacks (13.7 percent) to be verbally warned by police.”

More and more, this truth is harder to cover up, especially when numbers are there to help tell the story. Racial profiling is very real and, as more data is compiled, this only becomes more evident.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Maybe it’s just me but, when I think of rapper who might be considered dangerous or a threat, the name P. Diddy just doesn’t come to mind.

However, in the run-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York Sean “P. Diddy” Combs was one of several rappers/singers who were put under surveillance by the NYPD.

In addition to Combs, rappers such as Jay-Z and LL Cool J were also under surveillance. Want to hear something even more bizarre? Alicia Keys even made the list.

This was revealed after the New York Civil Liberties Union released 600 pages of previously-classified documents obtained by the NYCLU as a result of their suit against the city on behalf of demonstrators who were arrested around the time of the convention.

So, how did the rappers come under scrutiny? Well, they had the temerity to attend a rally held by the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, which looks to do such things as to get more people registered to vote and to encourage them to become more politically-active. So, in a twist of irony, rappers find themselves under police scrutiny for doing something that is not just legal but, also, positive and civic-minded.

This is just another example of how our civil liberties are being trampled. There definitely needs to be a change in the political climate of this country. Let’s just say, for me, January 2009 can’t come quickly enough.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Surprise!  Racial disparities exist in police encounters with black or brown motorists vs white motorists.  A recent report from a study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that, when stopped:

• Black drivers are nearly 3 times more likely and Hispanic drivers are over twice as likely to be searched than white drivers.
• Black drivers where over twice as likely and Hispanic drivers about 1.5 times as likely to be arrested as their white counterparts.
• Black drivers were over 3 times as likely and Hispanic drivers were nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be the subject of threat or force by an officer.

The bureau says that this does not indicate racial profiling but, one has to question a couple of things.  The first is why, when much fewer drivers are black and Hispanic, is everyone being stopped at the same rate?  With white drivers being in so much greater a number, why aren’t they stopped more?  The second is why is the arrest rate of these minority driver at a rate of 2 times or more the white driver?

Unfortunately, the bureau is trying to ignore the obvious — minorities are policed differently in this country.  Until we address how we are policed, these reports will only continue to show what we already know.

Popularity: 70% [?]