This one really surprises me, I don't recall ever hearing about it.  IMO, it ranks right up at the top of the list of  police-involved shooting deaths for being totally unnecessary.

     During the summer I wrote a post in which I highlighted the difference between what children used to be taught  about police officers and the new lessons they're learning now.  In that post I said that

" it's not a racial divide for the most part, although it can be seen as a color divide. The colors aren't the expected black vs white though, the colors are blue vs all the colors of the rainbow."

 This story shows that more clearly than just talking about it. (You can read the post here.)

Graphic Body-Cam Footage Shows La. Cops Fatally Shoot 6-Year-Old Autistic Boy

     A Louisiana court released footage from November that shows now-former Officers Derrick Stafford, 33, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 24, open fire on Christopher Few’s SUV, apparently unaware that Few’s 6-year-old son was in the car.

     On Wednesday a Louisiana court released body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old autistic boy.

     According to CNN, Jeremy Mardis was riding with his father, Christopher Few, in November 2015 when Marksville, La., police attempted to pull him over. The officers, Derrick Stafford, 33, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 24, claimed that they were attempting to stop Few to serve a warrant, although no warrants were ever issued for Few.

       Few reportedly refused to stop, and the officers gave chase. Officers claimed that the shooting occurred after Few rammed their squad car and was attempting to ram it again. Body-cam footage of the incident appears to show that Few’s car was stopped and his hands were raised when officers began firing on his SUV.

     “I dare say it was not even close to being used as a deadly weapon at that time,” U.S. District Court Judge William Bennett said after releasing the video.

Norris Greenhouse Jr.; Derrick Stafford ex-Louisiana State Police

     Stafford and Greenhouse were both charged with murder last year.

     The video, which is graphic, is about 14 minutes long and includes about a minute of the shooting. The video shows the officers realizing that a kid was in the car. It shows the officers checking the boy’s lifeless body; the video also shows both officers grieving when they learned that a child was in the car. Few was critically wounded.

     CNN notes that some 14 shell casings were found on the scene, and the three bullet fragments found in Mardis’ body all came from Stafford’s gun.

     Prosecutors claim that the footage supports their point that both officers have a history of excessive violence. They note several times when both officers used a stun gun unnecessarily, and in one case Stafford reportedly broke a 16-year-old girl’s arm while breaking up a schoolyard fight, the New York Daily News reports.

     Megan Dixon, Few’s fiancee, told The Advocate last year that Few and Greenhouse had a run-in after the former officer reportedly messaged Dixon on Facebook and visited her home.

     Both officers are currently free on bond. Stafford will face trial in November, according to CNN, while Greenhouse will not go to trial until March 2017.

BY: STEPHEN A. CROCKETT JR. September 29, 2016

Young Girl Makes Tearful Plea At Charlotte City Council Meeting - Kleenex Alert!!

Do we want our children having dreams at night about burying their parent/sibling/cousin/grandparent? Children are more intelligent than we give them credit for. We can only tell fairy tales about their relatives being up in heaven for so long; eventually they're going to ask us why so many people they know are going to heaven. Why are the police shooting so many of their friends' parents/siblings/cousins/grandparents? 

What are we going to tell them?

*I've heard it said about this video that the speech was rehearsed...perhaps it was, but the  tears weren't. 

Evidence That What Seems To Be A Double Standard Is Employed, Even When You Think It's Not

This is an old incident (June 2016) but I am just finding out about it, and I felt I had to use it to make a point. 

      A lot of people have probably used this case as 'evidence' that it is not only black males whose rights are being violated by the police department. They probably argued that it's not a color issue at all,  that it is simply young men who do not obey police commands and who  assault the police. (I saw a phrase something like that posted yesterday as a comment.) I almost thought the same thing myself when I first saw it.  After thinking about it for a few minutes, and rereading it, I realized something. I''m not going to tell  you just yet what it was; I'm going to post the story and let you watch the video, and let you draw your own conclusions.

Video of Mo. Cop Using Taser on Teen for Over 20 Seconds Released

     On Monday a federal judge released the police dashcam video showing a now-former Independence, Mo., police officer using excessive force during the 2014 traffic-stop arrest of then-17-year-old Bryce Masters, the Kansas City Star reports.

     The video of the Sept. 14, 2014, arrest shows then-Officer Timothy N. Runnels using a stun gun on Bryce for more than 20 seconds before dropping the handcuffed teen onto the pavement. Bryce ultimately went into cardiac arrest as a result of the use of force, which led to oxygen deprivation and brain damage.

According to the Kansas City Star, the teen, then a Truman High School senior, almost died.

    Runnels was sentenced to four years in federal prison last week for violating the teen’s civil rights. The video was played during his sentencing hearing. (I could not copy the video, but you can view it here.)

     It was determined that Runnels made the traffic stop because of a Kansas City warrant associated with the license plate on the vehicle that the teen was driving. The warrant was later found to be a mistake.

     A few minutes after deploying the stun gun, Runnels called for an ambulance but reportedly did not check on the teen. By the time the ambulance arrived, Masters was in cardiac arrest. He had to be put into a medically induced coma.

     The brain damage the teen suffered could impact the rest of his life. He recently testified that he is often forgetful and has difficulty focusing.

Read more at the Kansas City Star. 

WHAT I GOT FROM THE VIDEO
     If you watched the video you saw that this teen was.....white! Can this be true? They treat white boys the same as they treat black ones? Isn't that interesting.
     But wait a minute. At one point in the story it said that the officer involved was sentenced to 4 years in  federal prison for violating the teen's civil rights. Now that's something, an officer is actually being punished for his crime!  But the victim didn't even die! How is it that so many have died and the officers walked away scot free, but this time the officer is punished? Could it be that the racial "double standard"  is alive and well and working in this case?  Think about it; obviously the officer did something wrong which was proven on the videotape.  How many videotapes have we looked at where blacks lost their lives when there was no justification for the shooting? In this case,  the victim's civil rights were violated, so the officer was charged. How many cases of civil rights violations as well  as manslaughter have we seen, and the officer was charged? Now, this officer was sentenced to four years in federal prison. How many of the officers in those other cases were even found guilty, let alone sentenced to federal prison??

Justice sure seems to be blind, doesn't she? Or maybe she's just colorblind...

Black Lives Matter, and the Black Policeman Who Filed A Lawsuit Against Obama and Clinton

    Since the last post I've been thinking about what to post next. Sorry I haven't been updating like I should, it's just that it's become so hard to hear/read about the latest killings, and not run out and join the nearest Black Lives Matter chapter.  I usually describe myself as an activist... some family members consider me 'revolutionary' and 'rebellious'. (I'm sure if I told them that I'd ever considered joining BLM that would cement their belief about me.) If being sick and tired, not only of black men and women being killed like it's a game, but of the feelings of  helplessness  and despair; if wanting to do something to stop it makes me 'rebellious', then  I'm just going to have to accept that title and wear it with PRIDE!  I don't want to just sit around and commiserate with others about how sad it all is, and then go back to life as usual as if nothing's happened!! It really makes me sick to my stomach to see so many brothers and sisters  just brush it off as if it has nothing to do with them!  No one is going to come along and fight this battle for you ladies and gentlemen, if we don't fight for ourselves and each other, like our ancestors did during the slavery era,  and during the Civil Rights era, then our race is going to be wiped out, either by assimilation or assassination!! It's great to see whites being a part of BLM protests, as they have been over recent shootings, but they're not the ones that NEED to be doing the fighting! At the end of the day, they're going back to suburbia with their big homes  and fancy cars, while we catch the Metro home to our row-houses and apartments. We're the ones who will be left when the police start knocking on the doors in the wee hours of the morning talking about "We have a description of someone...", or "We got an anonymous tip...".  The white folks (and not by their own doing) will all be home chillin'...

white BLM UK protesters

     Read the full story here  about the BLM-UK protesters in London.  It's not the protesters' fault that they were allowed to go free with only what would be, in our country, suspended sentences. It just shows that the attitudes there are very similar to the ones here. What would have happened to nine black people who shut down the airport and made them cancel 160 flights??

     It can be really difficult to want to keep fighting when there are so many people of color who are either apathetic about the situation (since it doesn't affect them) or who completely disagree with BLM and insist that the charge of racism is false, and that the police are only 'doing their jobs' when they shoot unarmed black men  whose vehicle has broken down in the street.   (Read the story of Terence Crutcher here. WARNING: The videos are graphic and disturbing.)

     The absolute worst of these black people (IMO) are the ones who are cops themselves. How do they deal  with having other black people die all around them, knowing that a lot of them are not  justified shootings, and then having to watch the shooter just walk away? I'll show you how one deals with it...

Dallas Police Sgt. Demetrick Pennie Accuses Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama

               of Inciting Race War and Files Lawsuit!!!

Yes folks, you read it here. A black police sergeant in Dallas has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against BLM and against the President of the United States. What do you want to bet he's a Republican? I mean hey, it was Fox News that reported this!

 Here's a little blurb from the story(You can read  it all here.):  

     Demetrick Pennie, a 17-year veteran and the president of the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation, filed the complaint in federal court Friday, naming Black Lives Matter and public figures such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, the New Black Panther Party, and even President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as defendants.

     Yes, President Obama, the first black president, and Hilary Clinton, wife of the white president who was considered an 'honorary black man'(Read Toni Morrison's description in The New Yorker magazine of 1998;  it's the 9th paragraph at this link.) are in cahoots to incite their supporters to violence against the police.  Any violence perpetuated against the police of course has nothing to do with the blacks being killed by them, it's all Obama and Clinton's fault.

     I've seen a lot of trivial lawsuits in my time, but to ask for $500 million to $1.5 billion  because the president and the presidential nominee have incited the public to violence? I'm not only smh"ing, I'm lol'ing as well!! If a black man ever wanted to make himself  look ridiculous and like a pawn of the white man, this guy has done it (excuse the pun, it wasn't intended) IN SPADES! 

     I wish I could go to sleep, and wake up in the morning only to find that all of this has been a bad dream; the deaths of all those people in suspicious circumstances at the hands of the police, as well as the shooting deaths of the police in Dallas; all the protests and the marches, even the campaign of Donald Trump for president (now that is someone who has incited some violence!), I just wish it would all go away.  One thing at least that we can do, is keep this country from getting any worse; don't let Donald Trump in the White House. Make sure you get out and vote! Personally, I don't care if you write in Mickey Mouse when you go to the polls, just VOTE. Can you imagine what the police departments will be like under a Trump/Republican regime???

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed in this post are those of the author, unless directly attributed to someone else. They do not represent the views of Google or Blogger. 

And Here We Go Again....

It just doesn't seem to end!  Every time  there's another event, I think to myself  "enough is enough, it's got to end now";  but it doesn't end. Not only does another one happen, it's usually one that makes me open my mouth in incredulity at the brutality of it, as well as the stupidity. Sometimes I wonder just what kind of excuse they're going to come up with to try to rationalize their actions , or if they're even going to bother with one at all.  After all, how do you rationalize two officers suddenly just starting to shoot at a man who is sitting at a table eating fried chicken and fries? Even with the "rusty pocket knife" allegedly in his hand, he was sitting,  eating a plate of food! They couldn't have tased him or something? Where was the danger, the threat to their lives?

#DeEscalateDontKill: Black Man Fatally Shot by Florida Cops in His Own Backyard

In the last year, there has been a hashtag directed towards law enforcement all over the nation: #DeEscalateDontKill.

But the police in Broward County, Fla., must have missed the memo.

The Broward Palm Beach New Times reports that police responded to a domestic disturbance call on Friday night and shot and killed a man who was holding a pocket knife—a “rusty pocket knife”—in his own backyard.

The tragedy was set in motion at about 10 p.m. after Gregory Frazier’s sister called 911 because he was arguing with his niece.

By the time police arrived, Frazier, 56, was planted in the backyard of his Pompano Beach home eating chicken wings and fries with a small Swiss Army-style pocket knife in his hand.

The outlet reports that Frazier’s nephew, Quartaze Woodard, says three deputies showed up and told Frazier to get down on the ground. Frazier responded, “Leave me alone.” The deputies repeated the order. Again, Frazier asked them to leave him alone.

Moments later—not one, but two—deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office opened fire. The New Times reports that neighbors say Frazier was hit between five and six times in the back.

Then, after handcuffing him, and removing the handcuffs once they realized he was non-responsive, police attempted to perform CPR. But it was too late.

As per departmental policy, the deputies were placed on paid administrative leave.

“Yes, he had a pocket knife. A rusty pocket knife,” said sister Deborah Frazier to the Miami Herald. “I believe those three cops could have sat down, talked to him, used Tasers, anything, to constrain him.”

She added to the New Times, “I never would have called the cops if I’d known this was going to happen. They just came in and started shooting right away.”

Read more at the Broward Palm Beach New Times and the Miami Herald.

Is There Anyone Who Can Honestly Say They Are Surprised?

I would like to hear from one person who can say honestly that they are surprised by this, who did not already know that if we heard anything at all about this case after the initial flurry of headlines, it would not be what we wanted to hear.

Personally, I am sick to my stomach; I want to cry, I want to rant, I want to blindly run outside and scream at the top of my lungs at how damn unfair it all is. I'm just so tired of this! They beat us up, they kill us, they run roughshod over our rights, our families, even our children, and nothing happens.

 You know the saying that everything goes full circle?(i.e. clothing fashions like bell-bottom pants came back in style, haircuts that were once laughable are now worn proudly) Well, think about it, a few hundred years ago black people were treated like something white people scraped off their shoes after walking through the garden;  how are they treating  black people now? After all the advances this country has made (or we thought had been made) we now find out that we're not really welcome at the table after all.  They're still trying to act like we  don't exist, like we are not people, like black lives don't matter, and if they are confronted with a situation where they have to do something,  what do they do? They go through  a long, drawn-out farce in the judicial system, hoping that they can just ride it out till the furor subsides and everyone has forgotten about it; then they can just  move on, life as usual.  Of course there are those who don't forget, who keep the case alive and in the public eye,  and in those cases what do they do? Read this article:

Ex-S.C. Cop Who Hurled Black Student Over Desk Won’t Face Criminal Charges

A report released on Friday noted that the officer’s behavior looked “worse in the video than it did in the classroom.”

The South Carolina police officer who was fired for violently dragging a young black girl across a classroom over use of a cell phone will not face criminal charges.

The New York Daily News reports that Richland County Solicitor Dan Johnson said in a 12-page court report Friday that he found no probable cause to charge the school resource officer in the dragging incident that sparked national outrage.

The report also notes that a witness statement saying the violent altercation between former Richland County police officer Ben Fields and a Spring Valley high school student “looked worse in the video than it did in the classroom.”

To the rest of us, the October video clearly shows that after the student refused to surrender her phone, Fields assaulted her. He wrapped his forearm around her neck, then flipped her and her desk backwards before dragging her along the classroom floor while keeping her in a tight headlock. Fields then cuffed the student as her classmates cried in horror.

Many across the country were besides themselves in anger, especially in light of another incident caught on video showing an officer throwing a young black girl in a swimsuit thrown down to the ground in Texas, more evidence of the violence that young people of color—girls, too—are regularly subjected to (that officer did not face charges either.)

Fields had no regrets about his actions, according to his statement in the report.

“I realized that I was going to have to physically remove the student from her seat to effectuate her arrest,” he said, adding that the desk only flipped over because the student locked her legs inside it.

Fields’ supervisor, Sheriff Leon Lott —said he wanted to “throw up” upon seeing the video —and fired Fields immediately.
Yet Johnson said Lott’s actions were hasty and may have hampered the case against Fields.

“These administrative actions, taken prior to the completion of the investigation, have been injurious to the prosecution of the case,” Johnson said in the report (which leads one to believe that if the Sheriff didn’t take that action, Fields would still have a job in addition to no criminal charges.)

To add insult to injury, the girl who recorded the video, Niya Kenny, was also arrested after questioning Fields’ conduct.
Kenny and the student who was assaulted were charged with “disturbing schools” charges, which parents protested at the time.

Johnson noted that the charges against both students would be dropped as well.

by ANGELA BRONNER HELM