Have you seen the fantastic cover of the latest New Yorker? Check it out, click the link to go to the interactive:
The New Yorker
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~ From The Guardian:
Rayshard Brooks Police Shooting Was Homicide, Says Medical Examiner
by, Guardian Staff & Justin Glawe
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And, the protests continue across the country with passion:
~ From CNN: (...has anyone been noticing how many police in different cities and states are resigning ?)
Black Lives Matter Protests Across the US and The World
by, Helen Regan & Steve George
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Update/edit 06/16: Someone is paying attention...the questions are where are these guys going...and how many more will follow in their footsteps ? Joining up with the Klan?
~ From CNN:
Police Officers Across the US Have Quit Their Jobs In Recent Days. Here is Where There Have Been Resignations
by. Christina Maxouris
"Since George Floyd's death three weeks ago, the role of America's criminal justice system has been catapulted to the forefront of national conversation with thousands calling for sweeping changes within the country's policing system.
Protesters have called on their community leaders to hold officers accountable and defund police departments -- in hopes those funds could be redirected toward other programs.
And many local leaders have responded, signing orders changing how departments operate, promising further reform and acting quickly on incidents of police brutality that have surfaced in recent weeks.
But as anger bubbles in parts of the country, some US police departments are facing their own crises and some officers have now opted to walk away.
In Minneapolis
n Minneapolis, at least seven police officers resigned from the department since protests sparked by Floyd's death in late May flooded the city's streets. More than half a dozen officers are also in the process of leaving, a city spokesperson told CNN.
The number of officers who are no longer with the department doesn't include the four men who were involved in Floyd's death and were fired, according to Casper Hill, the city's spokesperson,
"There's nothing that leads us to believe that at this point the numbers are so great that it's going to be problematic," police spokesman John Elder told the Minneapolis Star Tribune of the departing officers, which include both patrol officers and detectives.
"People seek to leave employment for a myriad reasons — the MPD is no exception," Elder said.
Members of the department condemned the actions of ex-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin -- who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes -- in an open letter last week.
"Derek Chauvin failed as a human and stripped George Floyd of his dignity and life. This is not who we are," said the letter, signed by 14 officers. "We're not the union or the administration," the letter says.
In Atlanta
Atlanta became the epicenter of protests this week after a black man was shot in the back and killed Friday night. Following Rayshard Brooks' killing, Atlanta's police chief stepped down and the officer who killed the 27-year-old father was fired. A second officer was placed on administrative duty.
Atlanta police said in a statement eight officers have resigned from the department this month.
"Our personnel data indicates that we have had anywhere from two to six officers resign per month in 2020," Atlanta police said in a statement.
The Atlanta Police Foundation earlier reported that 19 officers had resigned "since the start of social justice protests." The foundation has since retracted that incorrect number.
Prior to Brooks' killing, some were critical of charges that six officers faced after video captured the group violently handling a pair of black college students who were in their car and were stuck in traffic caused by ongoing protests.
Prior to Brooks' killing, some were critical of charges that six officers faced after video captured the group violently handling a pair of black college students who were in their car and were stuck in traffic caused by ongoing protests.
Those critics included Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields, who had already fired two officers involved, and said she didn't expect charges.
Criminal charges "were never part of any discussion that I had with the Mayor or her administration," Shields wrote in the memo provided to CNN by the department. "I called the DA and strongly expressed my concern, both to the appropriateness and the timing of any charges," Shields wrote.
In South Florida
In South Florida, 10 officers resigned from their city's SWAT unit over concerns about safety, saying they feel "restrained by the politicization of our tactics," according to documents obtained by CNN.
The officers sent a letter to Hallandale Beach Police Chief Sonia Quinones, saying they were "minimally equipped, under trained and often times restrained by the politicization of our tactics to the extent of placing the safety of dogs over the safety of the team members."
They also said they were displeased after the command staff took a knee with activists and others during a demonstration on Monday, according to the letter.
"Until these conditions and sentiments are rectified and addressed, we cannot safely, effectively and in good faith carry out duties in this capacity without putting ourselves and our families at this needless increased level of risk," the officers wrote.
The officers resigned only from the SWAT unit, not from the police department, Hallandale Beach City Manager Greg Chavarria said.
The chief told CNN Monday night she was "extremely disappointed" in the officers' decision.
"They walked away from their assignment, they never talked to me in advance and let me know their concerns," she said. "If we're not connecting and we're not communicating, then we're not resolving concerns."
She said what the officers wrote in their memo was inaccurate, adding she didn't kneel to oppose police but to be in solidarity with their community.
"We provided increased training hours, we provided over $100,000 in the last two years in SWAT-specific equipment and then they inaccurately and falsely stated I took a knee in solidarity with the vice mayor, which was not the case. It was in reverence with our community," the chief said.
In Buffalo
n Buffalo, New York, nearly 60 officers resigned from the force's emergency response team over the suspension of two police officers who were caught in a video pushing an elderly protester to the ground.
"Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders," Buffalo Police Benevolent Association president John Evans had previously told CNN affiliate WGRZ.
The two officers captured on video were charged with assault and pleaded not guilty. The 75-year-old protester was seen falling to the ground and bleeding from his head.
The 57 officers that turned in their resignation did not quit from the force -- but made up the entire active emergency response team of the department, the Buffalo mayor's office told CNN.
A few members of the unit are out currently and are not included in the 57 that resigned, according to the mayor's office.
Well, it didn't take long, and it is unclear how long exactly this has been happening ; if not targeting people who are protesting racism, then how about the individuals who are showing up dead ?
 | ||
| Albuquerque police detain members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed civilian group, following the shooting of a man during a protest over a statue of Spanish conquerer Juan de Oñate on Monday, June 15, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal/AP |
Should we expect more of this in the days to come ? Probably.
Who are we dealing with ? (Democracy Now covered this earlier this morning)
"FBI and DOJ reviewing hanging deaths of two black men in Southern California
From CNN's Jon Passantino
The FBI, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and the US Attorney's office for the Central District of California are reviewing investigations into the recent deaths of two black men in Southern California to determine if foul play or civil rights violations played a role.
The deaths of the two men, Robert Fuller, 24, and Malcolm Harsch, 38, occurred in the cities of Victorville and Palmdale 10 days and 50 miles apart. Both deaths were initially reported as suspected suicides by the Los Angeles and San Bernardino sheriff’s departments and are now under further investigation by the local departments.
"The FBI, US Attorney's office for the Central District of California and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division are actively reviewing the investigations into the hanging deaths of two African American men in the cities of Palmdale and Victorville to determine whether foul play or civil rights violations played a role,” a spokesperson for the FBI Los Angeles Field Office said in a statement.
Fuller was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale on the morning of June 10. Nothing but the rope, contents of his pockets, and a backpack that he was wearing were found on the scene, Los Angeles County Homicide Capt. Kent Wegener said Monday.
Investigators are researching Fuller’s medical history and looking for the witness who reported Fuller’s body as well as searching for contacts in Arizona and Nevada. Sheriff’s investigators will also analyze Fuller’s cell phone and are also looking for neighborhood surveillance video.
About 50 miles away, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is also investigating Harsch's death near a homeless encampment on May 31. Investigators there have not recovered evidence of foul play, the sheriff’s department said."
Although there has been an arrest in this case...was she targeted because she was black?
Black Lives Matter Activist Found Dead One Week After She Went Missing In Florida
by, Scottie Andrews & Tina Burnside
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~ From Counterpunch :
From Emmett Till To George Floyd
by, Dan Wakefield
"Several years ago a man called me and apologized for taking my time, but explained he had to speak with me since he was writing about the Emmett Till murder trial and “you are the only one who was there who is still alive.”
I am still here, and I now see headlines comparing the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to that of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.
Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago who had gone to the Mississippi Delta to visit his grandfather, accused of the crime of whistling at a white woman, was found at the bottom of the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.
George Floyd, a 46 year-old man rumored to have passed a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a convenience store was found beneath the knee of a policeman who stared unblinking at a photographic lens as he pressed the life out of a man’s neck.
In both cases, when worldwide attention was brought to the crime –
the journalists from around the country who crowded the stifling Mississippi courthouse, and the protestors who filled the streets of cities throughout the U.S. and the world last week – “outside agitators” were blamed. In Mississippi, the defense attorney suggested the ring found on Emmett Till’s body that identified him was planted there by the agents of some sinister group that was trying to destroy the social order of the South and “widen the gap between the white and the colored people of the United States.”
No group needed to be named, since the local rumor was that the whole Till affair was a plot of the NAACP. I was not surprised when Trump blamed Antifa for the protests, but my favorite response was the United States Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota suggesting that “anarchists” were behind the rioting. Have Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman returned to haunt the streets of America?
The defense attorney in the Till case told the jurors in his summation that he had faith that “every last Anglo Saxon one of you men in this jury has the courage to set these men free.” For many years I thought that the term, “Anglo-sSxon” would never be used again as a rallying cry in American politics – until Trump came along.
What we are now being made to finally face is the fact that slavery is our national legacy, embedded in our way of life. In my report on the Till trial sixty-five years ago in The Nation I wrote that the Delta town of Sumner, Mississippi, where the trial was held, was “based on cotton and the proposition that a whole race of men was created to pick it.”
It is not just the South and it is no longer cotton; the American dream is based on the nightmare of racial suppression. The pandemic provides a rough map of who is free."
Dan Wakefield covered civil rights for The Nation from 1955-1963. His books include New York in the Fifties and Going All the Way.
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Links:
Democracy Now !
Truthout
The Intercept
Counterpunch
P.S. Drug War related executions continue here, but the numbers although high are beginning to pale compared to the COVID deaths. Go here:
Zeta
Stay Safe You Guys.
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