Black Lives Matter

OH? Would you care to find one posting of mine except for dealing with ISIS and similar terrorists that call for any form of violence?

Pretending that our black citizens do not have a homicide and gang related problem is not going to save one life nor in my opinion is a general attacked on the guardians of our peace going to do so.

You're really twisted. ISIS is because of black people, Cops kill black people because black people kill black people. Everything in your mind turns around black people.

Young Black Men Killed by U.S. Police at Highest Rate in Year of 1,134 Deaths

Final total of people killed by U.S. police officers in 2015 shows rate of death for young black men was five times higher than white men of the same age.

By Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland, James Lartey, Ciara McCarthy / The Guardian
January 2, 2016

Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
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Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
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Paired with official government mortality data, this new finding indicates that about one in every 65 deaths of a young African American man in the US is a killing by police.

“This epidemic is disproportionately affecting black people,” said Brittany Packnett, an activist and member of the White House taskforce on policing. “We are wasting so many promising young lives by continuing to allow this to happen.”

Speaking in the same week that a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, was cleared by a grand jury over the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy who was carrying a toy gun, Packnett said the criminal justice system was presenting “no deterrent” to the excessive use of deadly force by police. “Tamir didn’t even live to be 15,” she said.

Protests accusing law enforcement officers of being too quick to use lethal force against unarmed African Americans have spread across the country in the 16 months since dramatic unrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white officer.

Overall in 2015, black people were killed at twice the rate of white, Hispanic and native Americans. About 25% of the African Americans killed were unarmed, compared with 17% of white people. This disparity has narrowed since the database was first published on 1 June, at which point black people killed were found to be twice as likely to not have a weapon.

The Guardian’s investigation, titled The Counted, began in response to widespread concern about the federal government’s failure to keep any comprehensive record of people killed by police. Officials at the US Department of Justice have since begun testing a database that attempts to do so, directly drawing on The Counted’s data and methodology.
The FBI also announced plans to overhaul its own count of homicides by police, which has been discredited by its reliance on the voluntary submission of data from a fraction of the country’s 18,000 police departments. The Guardian’s total for 2015 was more than two and a half times greater than the 444 “justifiable homicides” logged by the FBI last year.

The FBI director, James Comey, said in October it was “embarrassing and ridiculous” that the government did not hold comprehensive statistics, and that it was “unacceptable” the Guardian and the Washington Post, which began publishing a database of fatal police shootings on 1 July, held better records. The Counted will continue into 2016.

Data collected by the Guardian this year highlighted the wide range of situations encountered by police officers across the US. Of the 1,134 people killed, about one in five were unarmed but another one in five fired shots of their own at officers before being killed. At least six innocent bystanders were killed by officers during violent incidents; eight police officers were killed by people who subsequently died and appeared in the database.

More than 21% of deadly incidents began with a complaint to police alleging domestic violence or some other domestic disturbance. About 16% arose from officers attempting to arrest a wanted person, execute a warrant or apprehend a fugitive. Another 14% of killings followed an attempted traffic or street stop, 13% came after someone committed a violent crime and 7% after a non-violent crime.
In addition to those killed after opening fire, 160 people were accused of refusing commands to drop a weapon. Another 157 were said to have pointed or levelled a gun or non-lethal gun at officers. Police alleged that 158 people killed had “charged”, advanced at or fought with officers. And while 79 people were killed after allegedly “reaching for their waistband” or grabbing for a weapon, 44 attacked officers, some with knives and blades.

“It would appear that police officers are often confronting people who are armed, non-compliant and threatening,” said David Klinger an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St Louis.

The extensive demographic detail gathered as part of the study also shed light on the diverse set of people who died during confrontations with law enforcement. The group ranged in age from six-year-old Jeremy Mardis, in Marksville, Louisiana, to 87-year-old Louis Becker in Catskill, New York. Officers killed 43 people who were 18 years old and younger.

Mental health crises contributed directly to dozens of police-involved deaths. In at least 92 cases that led to fatalities this year, police had been alerted over a suicidal person or someone who was harming him- or herself. In 28 other deadly incidents, relatives or associates later said that the person killed had been suicidal before they died.

Of 29 military veterans who were killed by police in 2015, at least eight were said to have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following their service. In all, mental health issues were reported in relation to 246 people killed by police this year – more than one in every five cases. On at least eight occasions, the death was officially ruled a suicide, prompting claims from relatives that officers were escaping scrutiny.

“We have a tremendous problem,” said Dr Daniel Reidenberg, the managing director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention. “In a society where firearms are as prevalent as they are, and where people know law enforcement are trained to respond to a certain situation in a certain way, we have a problem.”

Regional disparities also emerged from the year’s data. Earlier this month, the Guardian published a series of special reports on Kern County, California, where police killed more people relative to the size of its population than anywhere else in the country. Law enforcement officers there killed more people in 2015 than the NYPD, which has 23 times as many officers policing a population 10 times as big.

Following a spate of killings in recent weeks, New Mexico’s 21 deaths in 2015 represented the highest per-capita rate of any state. New Mexico’s rate of one killing by police for every 99,300 residents was more than 10 times greater than that of Rhode Island, where only one person among a population of more than a million was killed by law enforcement.

The death of Kenneth Stephens, 56, in Burlington, Vermont, last week meant that all 50 states and the District of Columbia had at least one death caused by police in 2015.

Only one of the 21 people killed by police in New Mexico, however, was unarmed. By contrast nine of the 25 people killed in New York state were unarmed, and seven of these were black men. While five of Georgia’s 38 deaths followed a suspect being shocked with a Taser – the highest proportion in the country – no Taser-involved deaths were recorded in more than half a dozen states.

In all, 89% of deaths by police in 2015 were caused by gunshot, 4% were Taser-related, 4% were deaths in custody following physical confrontations and 3% were deaths of people struck by police officers driving vehicles.

The Counted found that in at least 255 deaths in 2015, the actions of police officers involved had been ruled justified. These rulings were typically made by a district attorney who worked alongside the department of the officers involved in prosecuting everyday crimes. About a quarter of the justified cases were decided on by a grand jury of the public.

Law enforcement officers were charged with crimes in relation to 18 of 2015’s deadly incidents – 10 shootings, four deadly vehicle crashes and four deaths in custody.

By the end of the year, one officer had been acquitted of charges relating to a fatal shooting in Pennsylvania, and the first attempt at prosecuting one of the officers involved in the deadly arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, had ended in a mistrial. Two deputies in Georgia charged over the in-custody death of Matthew Ajibade were cleared of manslaughter but convicted of cruelty, perjury and falsifying paperwork.

Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green University who monitors the subject, said the number of officers being charged had risen sharply this year. “There is more public awareness, and I do think that in the past few years the veracity of police officers is being questioned more, after their statements were shown to not be consistent with video evidence,” he said.

Jon Swaine is the Guardian's U.S. correspondent based in New York. He previously covered the U.S. for the Daily Telegraph.



Oliver Laughland is senior reporter for Guardian US. Follow him on Twitter@oliverlaughland

That they have acted as judge, jury and executioner have been on-going for too long, but nobody seems to correct this problem. 2016 will be no different.

A court of law should judge people not a gun.

That fine for those who are willing to submit themselves peacefully to a court of law.

Made no mistake the power of all government no matter what their forms rest in the end on force including deadly force to enforce their rules.

Hamilton in regard to the Whiskey rebellion stated that when the government needed to use force to enforce it laws it should do so with overwhelming force as in a Hercules.

We're getting closer to a tipping point. The first thing is to take judging of shooting incidents out of thehands of the police and the local prosecuter. The second thing would be to remove the "real fear of attack/weapon" defense from the law and turn it into a range of charges from murder to some form of manslaughter.

You act like being police is a condition and not a calling. If you think you have whatever it takes to judge on the spur of the moment life and death, you need to be held accountable for your bad decisions.

Thats why you're given training, armor, weapons, tasers, tear gas, a patrol car and the ability to monitor from a distance until you really know if that cellphone is a gun or not. And get to retire in twenty with full pension and benefits. You live by a higher standard, you live a higher standard,you get judged by a higher standard.

This, too:

Grand Juries: How The Tamir Rice Case Lifts The Veil On This Inherently Biased Process

January 1, 2016 by Dylan Donnelly 3 Comments

http://www.copblock.org/150762/grand-juries-how-tamir-rice-case-lifts-veil-on-inherently-biased-process-2/

This post was submitted by Vincent Rivera, Licensed Kansas Attorney

“A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” the saying goes. This is because, in grand juries, prosecutors enjoy zero oversight, leaving them free to present (or not present) whatever evidence they choose without any challenges, and in effect avoiding any political backlash.

For those not familiar with Grand Juries: they do not make a guilty/innocent decision. Their job is decide whether or not probable cause exists to file criminal charges.

Generally, Prosecutors impanel about 24 “grand jurors.” From there, it’s similar to a trial, the Prosecutor calls witnesses, and presents evidence. However, unlike a trial, a Grand Jury, is held in private, there is no judge, and no defense counsel. Thus, the prosecutor is allowed to present any evidence they want without interference or challenges.

Politically speaking, in high profile cases, prosecutors can “stack the deck” to avoid an indictment. Thus, when the Grand Jury fails to indict, it was the Grand Jury’s decision and not the prosecutor’s fault. This allows the prosecutors (who’re often elected) to avoid any responsibility for failing to prosecute.

In the Tamir Rice case, the Grand Jury failed to find probable cause to indict the officer. During that Grand Jury, the Prosecutor went out of their way to call in a “use of force” expert witness, who essentially “rubber stamped” Law Enforcement’s actions. Thus, in essence the Prosecutor presented a case of “justified force” to the Grand Jury and SURPRISE: no indictment.

Suggested reforms:
1) Preliminary Hearings, preform the same job as a Grand Jury in that their purpose is to determine probable cause. However, a preliminary hearing is conducted in open court, before a Judge (who makes the probable cause finding), the accused is present and represented by counsel who can cross-examine witnesses, object to evidence, call defense witnesses and make arguments to the Court.
2) Don’t use “local” prosecutors. Prosecutors work every single day with law enforcement. Moreover almost every prosecutor’s office has attorneys and or staff who are married/dating law enforcement. Clearly, this presents a conflict of interest, with the “fox guarding the hen house.”

These problems could be mitigated if States create a special group of Prosecutors, perhaps from the Attorney General’s office, who investigates all law enforcement shootings.

So a reasonable fear would no longer be a defense and police officers would need to wait until the first bullet go by them or hit them for that matter before they could act.

I wonder how you would find anyone to take the already dangerous job of being a police officer under those conditions.

Tamir Rice had what could not be told from a real 45 in his hands and the other child who sold it to him even warm him to be careful as it look real without the marking band that had been removed from it.

I know you would like to removed reasonable fear from the law but that shooting have all the earmarking of a case of reasonable fear.

There is no validity to the cop saying that he felt endangered most of the time. Didn't you watch the Tamir murder video? You doubt your own lying eyes? Wake up, its not as if the tapes lie.

All they have to say is "I was scared", and stick to it, they get away with murder. That Chicago cop almost got a way with shooting that kid sixteen times. Didn't you see the video?

Why didn't these guys get shot by the cops?

At the very least, we know who the racial bigots are on this thread.

We surely do and it ain't you and me.

CNN analyst: White militiamen aren’t a threat like black protesters because ‘they’re not looting anything’

.............
Roderick told CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday that law enforcement should not react with force to end the militia’s occupation of the federal building.

“The last thing we need is some type of large confrontation because that’s when stuff goes bad,” Roderick explained. “And I think in this particular instance, if we just wait them out, see what they’ve got to say, then eventually, they’re all going to go home.”

Stelter pointed out that many activists had complained if the militia members were “Black Lives Matter protesters or if these were peaceful Muslim Americans then they would be treated very differently by law enforcement.”

“This is a very rural area,” Roderick replied. “It is out in the middle of nowhere. What are they actually doing? They’re not destroying property, they’re not looting anything.”

................


More plus video:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/cnn-analyst-white-militiamen-arent-a-threat-like-black-protesters-because-theyre-not-looting-anything/#.VomFbavirEs.twitter

interesting point since the sheriff in the Malheur situation has said he's scared

if the militia members weren't white, he'd be able to go in there and kill them all without much complaint from the American public

Hell, the militia'd be there strapped and ready to roll. Just wanting to assist with law and especially order.

Even when its disclaimed, "white privilege" is always there to protect RW white folks.

After you have destroy the police forces by making no one willing to take the job I guess we will indeed need the militia.

We will NEVER need those guys.