The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie

Let see a drug addict who had try to murder someone else a few hours before would not submit to arrest after being subjected to non legal force finally had the police subject him to legal force and the complain is what?

Perhaps they should had let him go to attack someone else?

WATCH: Exclusive Interview with Albert Woodfox of Angola 3, Freed After 43 Years in Solitary Confinement
The former Black Panther spent more time in solitary confinement than anyone in the United States, much of it in a six-by-nine cell for 23 hours each day.
By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now!
February 22, 2016

http://www.alternet.org/activism/watch-exclusive-interview-albert-woodfox-angola-3-freed-after-43-years-solitary-confinement

Photo Credit: Democracy Now!
Albert Woodfox was released Friday after he entered a plea of no contest to charges of manslaughter and aggravated burglary of a prison guard more than four decades ago. Prior to Friday’s settlement, his conviction had been overturned three times.

Albert Woodfox was serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola when he and fellow prisoner Herman Wallace were accused in 1972 of stabbing prison guard Brent Miller. The two men always maintained their innocence, saying they were targeted because they had organized a chapter of the Black Panther Party to address horrific conditions at the Angola prison, a former cotton plantation. Woodfox, Wallace and and a third man, Robert King, became collectively known as the Angola 3. For decades, Amnesty International and other groups campaigned to free the three men. Woodfox was the last remaining member of the group to be locked up. Today we speak to Woodfox and King, who was freed in 2001 when his conviction for killing a fellow inmate was overturned. Herman Wallace was freed in 2013, just days before he died from cancer.

Watch: Video and full transcript below:
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RENÉE FELTZ: After more than 43 years in solitary confinement, Albert Woodfox is a free man. Woodfox has spent more time in solitary confinement than anyone in the United States. He was released from prison in Louisiana on Friday after four decades. The former Black Panther was kept in a six-by-nine cell for 23 hours each day. Albert Woodfox was released Friday after he entered a—a plea, I’m sorry—a plea of no contest to charges of manslaughter and aggravated burglary for a prison guard who was murdered more than four decades ago. Prior to Friday’s settlement, his conviction had been overturned three times. On Friday, Woodfox left Feliciana Parish jail, where he been held pending his trial, and headed to his mother’s gravesite.

ALBERT WOODFOX: I need to go say goodbye to my mother—I wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral when I was in Angola—and my sister, as well.

RENÉE FELTZ: Albert Woodfox was serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola when he and fellow prisoner Herman Wallace were accused in 1972 of stabbing prison guard Brent Miller. The two men have always maintained their innocence, saying they were targeted because they had organized a chapter of the Black Panther Party to address horrific conditions in Angola prison, a former cotton plantation.

Woodfox, Wallace and a third man, Robert King, became collectively known as the Angola 3. For decades, Amnesty International and other groups campaigned to free the three men. Woodfox was the last remaining member of the group to be locked up. Robert King was freed in 2001 when his conviction, that he had killed a fellow inmate, was overturned. Herman Wallace was freed in 2013, just days before he died from cancer. But the state of Louisiana refused to release Woodfox until now.

AMY GOODMAN: After Albert Woodfox’s first conviction was overturned, Louisiana successfully tried him a second time in 1998. Then, in 2014, a federal judge ruled he should be set free on the basis of racial discrimination in his retrial. When then-Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell announced plans to try Woodfox yet again, U.S. Middle District Court Judge James Brady ordered his release based on five factors: quote, "Mr. Woodfox’s age and poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light of the unavailability of witnesses, this Court’s lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over forty years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over forty years ago," unquote. But the U.S. Fifth Circuit then approved Woodfox’s continued detention. Albert Woodfox was released on Friday after he entered a plea of no contest to charges of manslaughter and aggravated burglary.

Well, joining us now in a broadcast exclusive from New Orleans PBS station WLAE is Albert Woodfox himself, giving his first televised interview since his release on Friday. Also joining us there is Robert King, the other surviving member of the Angola 3. And Albert Woodfox’s attorney, Billy Sothern, also joins us from New Orleans.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Albert Woodfox, how does it feel to be free?

ALBERT WOODFOX: I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but it feels great.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you talk about what happened on Friday as you left the parish jail in New Orleans? This was after 45 years in prison, 43 years in solitary confinement. You’re the longest-standing prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States.

ALBERT WOODFOX: I guess, you know, for a moment there, everything seemed surreal. And we had to sit around, about an hour and some, waiting on the final documents to be faxed to the West Feliciana detention center. And when that finally happened and, you know, my brother and my attorneys, they walked out with me, and family and friends began to express joy and excitement. And we got in my brother’s car, and we slowly drove. And we answered a few questions, and then we proceeded to go say goodbye to my mother.

AMY GOODMAN: You visited your mother’s grave?

ALBERT WOODFOX: Yes, I did. Well, we weren’t able to see her because of the time involved. When me and my brother got there, the cemetery was closed. So we went to another cemetery where I could say goodbye to my sister and my brother-in-law, who passed away while, you know, I was still in Angola.

RENÉE FELTZ: Albert, it’s so great to have you join us. Can you explain the significance of going to visit your mother’s gravesite and why that was the first place that you wanted to go?

ALBERT WOODFOX: Well, when my mom passed away, I had made a request to go to her funeral and say my final goodbye. Warden Burl Cain denied that request. And the same thing happened with my sister when she passed away. My family and friends had made arrangements to allow me to go and say goodbye. Again, Warden Burl Cain denied that. So, for some years now, there has always been this emptiness when it came to my mom and my sister, because I never had a chance to say a final goodbye. And so, that’s why it was important that one of my first acts of being free was to relieve that burden off of my soul.

AMY GOODMAN: Albert, you were in solitary confinement for more than four decades at Angola, this what’s known as a plantation prison, known for the country in Africa where enslaved men and women were brought from and serving at that plantation, enslaved at that plantation. Then it became a prison, where thousands of mainly African-American prisoners are held. Describe your cell, where you lived.

ALBERT WOODFOX: Well, I lived in a concrete cell with bars in the front of it. As you enter the cell, there is a metal bunk attached to the wall, and there is also a combination sink and toilet bowl against the back wall.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you keep your sanity? Explain how many hours a day you were kept in this cell. Were you ever allowed out?

ALBERT WOODFOX: Well, we got one hour a day. You know, when we were first put in CCR in ’72, myself, Herman Wallace and Robert King, we knew that if we had any chance of maintaining our sanity and, you know, not allowing the prison system to break us, that we had to keep our focus on society and not become institutionalized where we were only concerned with the things that were going on in the prison.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say "we," when you were allowed to go out, did you go out alone or with other people for the hour a day?

ALBERT WOODFOX: Yeah. Well, when we first were put in CCR, they used to let everybody out who wanted to shower on the tier, to take the hour together. But as time passed and some of the inmates started to protest some of the things that were going on, then, in order to dilute unity, they started letting us come out one at a time.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you able to read in your cell?

ALBERT WOODFOX: Yes. It was one of the tools we used to remain focused and to stay connected to the outside world.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you read?

ALBERT WOODFOX: History books, books on Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin—you know, just any kind of literature that I could basically get a hold of.

AMY GOODMAN: And how often were you allowed to see visitors?

ALBERT WOODFOX: At that time, the visiting system, you were allowed 10 people on your approved visiting list, and each person could visit twice a month. But, you know, because of the long distance and the economic situation, my family was not able to come as much as they would have liked to. So, they tried to come at least once a month.

Rattling the Bars: The Purgatory of Prison, Life With(out) the Possibility of Parole
Why do parole-eligible inmates remain in the purgatory of prison?
By Eddie Conway / The Real News Network
February 23, 2016

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11 COMMENTS

Photo Credit: The Real News Network

Editor's Note: In this Episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway examines the history and politics behind Maryland's parole system. This episode features former prisoners who have spent decades in Maryland's prison system, scholar activists from The Sentencing Project, and local politicians who are directly involved in reforming criminal justice policy.

Watch: The full segment below:

If this arm robber had been a white KKK member instead of a black panther I wonder if Bob would had been crying that this man, who had been convicted by two juries of murdering a prison guard, would feel that an injustice had been done to him?

If that KKK member actually hadn't done anything and spent 30 years over property crime and false evidence, I would.

And even if I wouldn't, it would have no bearing on this case. You claim education. I highly doubt it because of your resort constantly to situational ethics.

Carlysle (Carl) Briscoe was a Nazi and KKK. In 1970 or so he burnt down the Black Panther head quarters in Indianapolis.

He was also a good friend of mine and he died in prison around four years ago and I miss him terribly.

I didn't care for his politics and my wife didn't much care for him but my kids and my dog LOVED him. He was kind to animals and loved his cats.

Google his name. There's not a day I don't think about him.

For your information armed robbery is not just a property crime it is threatening to killed people if they do not surrender their property.

Any victim of such a robbery that you consider only a minor property crime would be in reasonable fear for their lives and would legally be allowed to used deadly force for example to defend their lives.

To sum up armed robbery is not just a robbery/property crime.

As far as false evidence is concern two juries not just one found otherwise in relationship to the murder charge at least.

PS I personally would not have either a black panther of a KKK member as a friend of mine but to each his own.

A Texas officer is in trouble after being caught on tape using excessive force.
By Arturo Garcia / Raw Story
March 15, 2016

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Raw Story

A police officer in Fort Worth, Texas is under investigation following the release of video footage showing him trying to use his pepper spray against a group of motorcyclists who were not interacting with him.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram identified the officer as “W. Figueroa,” using the name listed for him in an incident report on Sunday.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Figueroa had pulled over a pickup and was citing the driver, Brittany Botella, and her passengers for blocking traffic while filming the bikers.

The footage shows Figueroa pull out his spray canister and fire it toward the bikers, who were passing by the traffic stop on US route 287. It was later posted on Facebook and YouTube by a member of the group, Chase Stone.

Stone said that he was part of a group of 200 riders who took part in the ride to “welcome back” riding weather.

One of the passengers, Grace Cho, said in the Facebook post she was sitting in the back of the pickup at the time of the incident, and that some of the pepper spray blew into her face. Stone later corroborated her account.

“I looked over and I see the people in the back of the truck ducking, covering their eyes,” he said. “They were covering their mouths and seemed to be in distress. I was like, something is going on.”

Authorities told the Star-Telegram that they received several calls accusing Stone’s group of reckless driving and obstruction of traffic. Jack Kinney, the rider who shot the video, accused police of conducting a “propaganda campaign to try to mitigate the damage.”

“What’s in the video? The people at that time, they weren’t committing any crime,” he said. “They were driving slower than the speed limit and they got pepper sprayed for it.”

Figueroa has been with the department for six years. He has been taken off patrol duties for the duration of the investigation.

Watch the video, as posted by the Star-Telegram, below.

Link?

The End of Discriminatory Policing in Ferguson?
Source: The Atlantic

The Ferguson, Missouri, City Council reversed its previous position and voted Tuesday night to accept the changes to its courts and police departments that were recommended by the U.S. Justice Department in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by a police officer.

The council voted unanimously, 6-to-0, to accept the Justice Department’s changes, and likely spared itself from an expensive legal battle.

Under the Justice Department’s recommendations, officers would take a diversity-training course and would be trained to first de-escalate a situation. Additionally, the city would buy software and hire staff to review arrest data to prevent discrimination, and all supervisors and officers would be fitted with body cameras within 180 days. The arrangement would also require Ferguson to hire an independent monitor to ensure the city lives up to the agreement.

After Brown’s death, the government released a report that found Ferguson’s officers regularly and unconstitutionally stopped and searched blacks in the community. It also found the courts used officers as a way to generate revenue through constant harassment and unnecessary fines.

<more>

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/ferguson-discriminatory-policing/473982/

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/texas-cop-under-investigation-after-video-shows-him-pepper-spraying-bikers-no-reason

San Antonio Man Paralyzed After "Mistaken Identity" Beating Files Federal Lawsuit Against SAPD, Officers
Posted By Michael Marks on Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 3:31 PM
Rogelio "Roger" Carlos - CARLOS FAMILY

Rogelio “Roger” Carlos, who was mistakenly beaten by San Antonio Police officers and paralyzed during a surgery to heal injuries he suffered, has filed a federal lawsuit against the San Antonio Police Department, the City of San Antonio and several police officers.

Carlos, who filed the lawsuit with his wife on Thursday, March 10, was struck multiple times by the officers, who were pursuing a suspect wanted on drug- and weapons-related possession charges. In a November surgery to relieve pressure on his vertebrae, Carlos was paralyzed from the chest down. He and his wife have three young sons.

The police officers listed in the complaint include Carlos Chavez, Virgilio Gonzalez and an unnamed officer called "Detective John Doe." The officer's identity was withheld from the lawsuit because he is an undercover drug task force officer embedded with SAPD.

The officers were initially given 15-day suspensions for the event, which was later shortened to five days. The FBI is currently investigating the case, according to KENS.

The Carlos' have set up a GoFundMe to help with medical bills.

Tags: Roger Carlos, San Antonio Police Department, Lawsuit, Image

Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/21/death-by-gentrification-the-killing-that-shamed-san-francisco

Alex Nieto was 28 years old when he was killed, in the neighbourhood where he had spent his whole life. He died in a barrage bullets fired at him by four San Francisco policemen. There are a few things about his death that everyone agrees on: he was in a hilltop park eating a burrito and tortilla chips, wearing the Taser he carried for his job as a bouncer at a nightclub, when someone called 911 on him a little after 7pm on the evening of 21 March 2014. When police officers arrived a few minutes later, they claim Nieto defiantly pointed the Taser at them, and that they mistook its red laser light for the laser sights of a gun, and shot him in self defence. However, the stories of the four officers contradict each other, and some of the evidence.

On the road that curves around the green hilltop of Bernal Heights Park there is an unofficial memorial to Nieto. People walking dogs or running or taking a stroll stop to read the banner, which is pinned by stones to the slope of the hill and surrounded by fresh and artificial flowers. Alex’s father Refugio still visits the memorial at least once a day, walking up from his small apartment on the south side of Bernal Hill. Alex Nieto had been walking on the hill since he was a child: that evening his parents, joined by friends and supporters, went up there in the dark to bring a birthday cake up to the memorial.

Refugio and Elvira Nieto are reserved people, straight-backed but careworn, who speak eloquently in Spanish and hardly at all in English. They had known each other as poor children in a little town in central Mexico and emigrated separately to the Bay Area in the 1970s, where they met again and married in 1984. They have lived in the same building on the south slope of Bernal Hill ever since. She worked for decades as a housekeeper in San Francisco’s downtown hotels and is now retired. He had worked on the side, but mostly stayed at home as the principal caregiver of Alex and his younger brother Hector. In the courtroom, Hector, handsome, sombre, with glossy black hair pulled back neatly, sat with his parents most days, not far from the three white and one Asian policemen who killed his brother. That there was a trial at all was a triumph. The city had withheld from family and supporters the full autopsy report and the names of the officers who shot Nieto, and it was months before the key witness overcame his fear of the police to come forward.

Nieto died because a series of white men saw him as a menacing intruder in the place he had spent his whole life. They thought he was possibly a gang member because he was wearing a red jacket. Many Latino boys and men in San Francisco avoid wearing red and blue because they are the colours of two gangs, the Norteños and Sureños – but the colours of San Francisco’s football team, the 49ers, are red and gold. Wearing a 49ers jacket in San Francisco is as ordinary as wearing a Saints jersey in New Orleans. That evening, Nieto, who had thick black eyebrows and a closely cropped goatee, was wearing a new-looking 49ers jacket, a black 49ers cap, a white T-shirt, black trousers, and carried the Taser in a holster on his belt, under his jacket. (Tasers shoot out wires that deliver an electrical shock, briefly paralysing their target; they are shaped roughly like a gun, but more bulbous; Nieto’s had bright yellow markings over much of its surface and a 15-foot range.)


Oh, and by the way, the Niners' colo(u)rs are garnet and gold, not red and gold.

Ex-deputy accused of sex abuse found dead in Missouri jail
Source: Associated Press

Ex-deputy accused of sex abuse found dead in Missouri jail

Updated 1:39 pm, Sunday, March 27, 2016


STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. (AP) — Missouri state police are investigating the jail death of a former sheriff's deputy who was facing federal and state charges of sexually abusing women and enticing a minor into prostitution.

Marty Rainey was found dead Saturday morning in the Ste. Genevieve County jail, sheriff's Maj. Jason Schott told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1VOUC06 ). The death of the 52-year-old Rainey, who lived in Sullivan and formerly worked as a deputy in Gasconade County in east-central Missouri, appears to be a suicide, Schott said. He declined to say whether Rainey had been on suicide watch.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol's investigation of the "in-custody death" is standard procedure, Schott said.

Court documents allege Rainey would threaten or coerce women into having sex while he was on duty.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Ex-deputy-accused-of-sex-abuse-found-dead-in-7209802.php

California deputy accused of bribing witnesses in videotaped beating
Source: Reuters

California deputy accused of bribing witnesses in videotaped beating

Reuters
1 hour ago

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A veteran police officer accused of bribing witnesses in the brutal beating of a man has been placed on leave during an investigation of the "horrific" allegation, a San Francisco Bay Area sheriff said on Tuesday.

This is the third officer to be placed on leave in connection with the beating last November, which caused a sensation after security camera video of the incident went viral.

The two sheriff's deputies seen pummeling the suspect on the video, Luis Santamaria and Paul Wieber, were previously placed on leave. The officer accused of bribery has not been officially identified.

The news comes amid heightened scrutiny of police use of force after several notable confrontations with suspects that have triggered protests across the country over the past two years.




Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/california-deputy-accused-bribing-witnesses-videotaped-beating-232110450.html

If this is similar to the Rodney King happening as the heading on top of the video claimed we had a man who stole a car and then force the police to go on a high speed chase that endanger the life of every men women and child on the highways at the time.

Somehow I can not feel too sorry for such an asshole even if the police after being able to run him down used too must force on him.

Rodney King should not had gotten a get out of jail cards free either with a fat settlement even if all the cops should had been fired as only due to god being in a good mood that night was not innocent men women and children not killed due to the actions of King that night.

Idiot. It doesn't matter what he did. He surrendered and the cops beat him. If there were more charges to be made then charge him. Cops are to arrest, not punish. You of all people should be able to appreciate that. Courts and Juries determine guilt and punishment and beat downs by cops are mentioned nowhere in law as "OK".

What are the odds you might read the Attorney General/Justice department report that tells what really happened?
That is what I thought.

More importantly: I read Justice's report on Ferguson and it absolutely scathes Ferguson and Ferguson PD.

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf