The 'Crime' Of Walking While Black.....the DEADLY consequences for a 16 year old.

[Charles Drago]

Robert "The Whacky Wanker" Morrow has posted on the EF Swamp the following thread:

"Here are some good JFK assassination books to read"

Now comes "Bob Gaebler" with "A really good law website frequently reviews State v. Zimmerman".

Good. Really good.

But not quite good enough.

Don't unpack your bags, "Gaebler."

[Peter Lemkin]

Unarmed National Guardsman Shot Dead by NYPD

An unarmed 22-year-old Hispanic-American man has been shot dead by New York City police. Noel Polanco was driving on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens when police approached him at a traffic stop. Police say Polanco was shot after reaching for something in his vehicle, but a witness says his hands remained on the steering wheel the entire time. Polanco was an Army National Guardsmen who had hoped to one day join the police force. He was traveling with an off-duty police officer when he was killed. On Sunday, dozens of people rallied outside NYPD headquarters to protest the shooting of another person of color, Mohamed Bah, who was shot dead inside his Harlem apartment last month after reportedly lunging at police with a knife.

[Keith Millea]

The stupid (Ex-NYPD) cop said he was in a shootout.He actually shot himself in the foot.:monkeypiss:

September 19, 2012


The Shooting of Alan Blueford
Searching for Answers to a Police Killing

by DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM
Oakland.

All summer long the slaying of teenager Alan Blueford by a police officer festered in the city of Oakland, a metropolis already stained by its troubled police department which for nearly ten years has been spiraling toward federal receivership due to its institutionalized culture of brutality and misconduct. It was no surprise then that the first meeting of the City Council last night, in its new session after the Summer recess, was met by over one hundred outraged protesters and the family of the young man whose death at the hands of OPD frustratingly remains a mystery, with all known facts indicating an unjustifiable murder. The internal police department investigation of Alan Blueford's killing drags on, as do virtually any and all other official investigations, studies, and reports intended to bring about transparency and accountability within Oakland's police department. Nothing seems to be working.

"According to the Coronor's report, my son's body was removed at 1:25 in the morning," said Alan's father, Adam Blueford, before the council, describing the haste with which the police cleaned up the scene of Alan's demise. "How can a murder investigation be done in less than one hour?!" he asked incredulously.

Alan Blueford was shot by officer Miguel Masso around 12:25 am on the morning of May 6 around 92nd Avenue and Birch Street in deep east Oakland after a brief foot chase. Alan had been waiting with a friend for a ride home after watching a boxing match. Police initially said Alan was in a "gun battle" with the officer, but then backpedaled when evidence showed Blueford hadn't fired a shot. There had been no shootout, only a one way volley of gunfire. Blueford had committed no crime or offense prior to being confronted and chased by the police.

The next police claim, that Blueford was taken to the hospital after being wounded, was also later proven false; days after his death it became known that Alan died on the scene from gunshot wounds. The officer, who it turns out also shot himself in the leg, was taken to the county medical center. These were only the first false reports in a series of troubling claims. "Lies," say the family.

"Why did this cop chase my son five blocks and murder him? He had no reason to stop or Chase my son," said Mr. Blueford as members of the public murmured in support. The family has not yet sued the city over Alan's death, even though they have retained the services of John Burris, a renowned civil rights lawyer who sued Oakland in the early 2000s over a particularly violent clique of cops known as the Riders, and set in motion federal oversight of the police department. The Blueford's say they simply want justice and lasting changes that will prevent future police violence.

The deep east where Alan Blueford was killed is a part of Oakland devastated by the economic crash and foreclosure crisis that commenced in 2008. But the problems there go back much further. Blocks around 92nd Avenue encompass a region that was attacked by decades of divestment by both the Bay Area's white middle class who fled to East Bay suburbs, and by corporations which shut down local factories sited on Oakland's waterfront and busy railway and freeway corridors. Banks redlined much of east Oakland for decades, and only began extending credit through subprime loans in the late 1990s, often in a very predatory manner.

Local and state leaders abdicated any responsibility to the area's growing black population and abandoned it, lavishing state resources instead on Silicon Valley, San Francisco, downtown Oakland, and nearby suburbs. While in the 2000s downtown Oakland, picturesque Lake Merritt, and the "Temescal" neighborhood were loci of artsy gentrification and real estate developments, the deep east declined further, sharing in none of the associated benefits of urban revitalization efforts promoted by various mayors, most notably Jerry Brown.

Meanwhile the police department spiraled out of control, disfigured by their own gangs of criminal officers who have infamously brutalized and framed hundreds of residents, and more systematically shaped by an internal rank and file culture that holds Oakland's majority population in open contempt. Today 91 percent of OPD officers live outside city limits, mostly in majority white suburbs where the schools haven't been destroyed by decades of tax cuts, and the where the Black population is less than 5 percent to Oakland's 30 percent, places where there are jobs, clean air, and parks. In many Oakland neighborhoods, especially in East Oakland, cops are seen as an occupying army of outsiders, mercenaries prone to make arbitrarily brutal, even lethal decisions when patrolling, especially when approaching young Black and Latino men (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/the-hi...id=3306199).

Family members of Alan Blueford have taken to speaking of a cover up, a purposeful effort by the Oakland Police Department to suppress the truth, an effort aided in no small part by the inaction of a do-nothing City Council that has become all the more paralyzed in an election season. In a city divided by sharp racial lines and harsh economic inequality, Oakland politicians skirt a fine line between pandering to the city's hill residents, mostly white middle and upper class homeowners who demand a Reaganesque war-on-crime politics and low taxes, and the working class flatlands majority who are as worried about the cops killing their children as they are about drug dealers and car jackers.

The City Administrator, a power-hungry technocrat trained in the purposefully de-politicizing profession of city management, Deanna Santana, seems more interested in preventing a federal takeover of the police force than undertaking a genuine effort to weed out bad cops and rebuild a department capable of respecting and protecting Oakland's majority of working class residents. In fact Santana has been as much an obstacle to police accountability as anyone else in her short tenure as the city's de-facto boss (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/deanna...id=3341245).

Alan Blueford's mother Jeralynn opened the public comment period of Oakland's first City Council meeting of the new session demanding answers: "We still don't have the police report, Mr. Reid," she complained, calling out Larry Reid, a fifteen year veteran of the Oakland City Council and major political force in city politics. "Back in May we came here asking for your help. You came to our son's services, Mr. Reid, saying you would help." The seeming inaction of Council members over the summer to provide the Blueford family and community with answers about Alan Blueford's death has stoked widespread outrage. Monthly rallies downtown and in East Oakland routinely drew dozens of concerned residents. It's not uncommon to randomly spot posters pasted to light posts around town with Alan Blueford's face and the word "justice" printed boldly across the top. It's equally common to spot youngsters sporting t-shirts with Alan's handsome face. An image of Alan dressed in a white tux with bow tie, probably for his prom, has become a symbol of the movement.

"Where's Howard Jordan!" The public at last night's council meeting took every spare moment to demand the appearance of Oakland's chief of police who was scheduled to give a crime reduction strategies report, but who was nowhere in sight.

"Howard is a coward!," rang another chant after it became clear the brass would not make an appearance. There again would be no answers forthcoming as to why a young black man guilty of no crime was summarily gunned down by a police officer. It quickly became clear the city would not even provide the police report that the family had been demanding for months.

Speaking shortly after Blueford's family was Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, the young man who was executed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Officer three years ago on New Year's Eve. Johnson became a leader of the Oscar Grant Movement and was key in organizing the rallies and articulating the sentiment that drove the rebellion of Oakland youth following Grant's murder. That rebellion, as painful and costly as it was, was widely credited for forcing the local power structure to take action, and to charge a police officer with manslaughter.

Johnson warned the Council of the consequences of their inaction: "We have an opportunity to resolve this before it turns violent. It behooves you to at least investigate officer Masso and fire him for lying, and for his violation of the police officer's code of conduct." Echoing sentiments held widely in Oakland's neighborhoods where the police are viewed as a brutal occupying force that often brings summary judgement and death, Johnson warned, "This has to be addressed before the community explodes." These days it's a matter of conjecture as to what will happen first; will the community explode from grief and anger at police brutality, or will the police department implode from its own misconduct and ineptness?

After hearing an hour of testimony from Blueford's family and a few supporters, City Council president Larry Reid called for a ten minute break. It could have been an attempt to disrupt the momentum of the public's call for the police chief, and answers to the dubious circumstances Alan Blueford's killing. It could have also been a goodwill effort to contact the police chief, and have him produce the report on Alan's slaying.

After twenty minutes of this ten minute break, with the public impatiently waiting and council members walking among them, attempting to feel the pain and demonstrate concern, it became clear to many that the council had either executed a stalling tactic, or else the city's police chief was refusing to appear. After thirty minutes a chant again arose "Where's Howard Jordan!? Where's Howard Jordan!?"

Ignacio De La Fuente, the longest serving member of the Council reconvened the meeting while Reid was elsewhere, perhaps attempting to broker some kind of face-saving appearance. De La Fuente unfortunately attempted to move the city onto other business, creating an irony fit for the ages. On the city's agenda was a resolution that would deem Oakland a "city of peace," formally stamping September 21 as Oakland's "international day of peace." The City Clerk's recital of the absurdly timed and obviously inappropriate peace resolution elicited an angry and flabbergasted boo from the audience, and a new chant "no justice, no peace!"
"No justice, no peace!"

The chambers became a deafening roar of booing, chanting, clapping and whistling, all
intended to prevent any business as usual from occurring until the police chief appeared or substantive answers were provided to address Alan Blueford's death.

Within minutes Council president Larry Reid re-entered the chambers attempting to gain control of the meeting, but it was too late. Months of abdication and irresponsibility by the city's leaders had allowed a questionable killing of a teenager to go unanswered, even while new facts emerged that indicated Alan Blueford was quite simply murdered. There was no way the people of Oakland seemed ready to entertain any business as usual.

Reid picked up his papers and made for the exit under a storm of jeers and cries of "shame!" from the galleries. "We'll be back!, We'll be back," chanted Alan Blueford's family and their supporters who exited City Hall to gather on its steps in the early evening darkness for a rally.
"I can't bring Alan back, but I can stand up for him today," said Jeralynn Blueford.

Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist and author who lives and works in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.


And the next board meeting:Near riot
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/05/s...y-council/

[Keith Millea]

FREEDOM SHRUGGED.....

Published on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 by The Nation

The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD's Stop-and-Frisk Policy

A secret audio recording of a stop-and-frisk in action sheds unprecedented light on a practice that has put the city's young people of color in the NYPD's crosshairs.



http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/10/10

[Peter Lemkin]

Thanks for that Keith...an important little video....a little glimpse at a very BIG problem.....

[Keith Millea]

I have to change my opinion about this shooting.The teen apparently pulled a gun on the officer.This would give the officer full authority to use deadly force.That's the way it is.......:nono:

Oakland cop cleared in slaying of teen

Teen who died pointed pistol at officer, report says

Demian Bulwa

Updated 10:31 p.m., Tuesday, October 9, 2012

• Alan Blueford, 18, was shot to death by an Oakland police officer on May 6. Photo: Blueford Family / SF
  
• Alan Blueford, 18, was shot to death by an Oakland police officer...
  
  (Page 1 of 2)
  The Oakland police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Alan Blueford during a foot chase this year acted in self-defense and will face no criminal charges, Alameda County prosecutors said Tuesday.
  
  In an 18-page report on the controversial May 6 shooting, Senior Deputy District Attorney Kenneth Mifsud said Officer Miguel Masso shot Blueford three times in the chest and left shoulder after the fleeing teenager pointed a loaded semiautomatic pistol at him.
  
  "Officer Masso actually and reasonably believed that his life was in danger after he had made eye contact with Mr. Blueford and that if he did not shoot, he would be killed," Mifsud wrote.
  Mifsud quoted Masso - whose account of the shooting was revealed for the first time - as saying he "went into survival mode."
  
  The officer shot himself in his right foot during the chaotic encounter, the prosecutor said, and had to be carried from the scene because he "was in a state of shock and unable to move his legs."
  
  The shooting happened just after midnight at 92nd Avenue and Birch Street. The prosecutor said a 9mm pistol - a .380-caliber Sig Sauer P230 - was found "several feet" from where Blueford was shot, and had his left thumbprint on its ammunition magazine.
  
  Mifsud noted that the gun had been taken during the burglary of a police officer's home in Mountain House on Nov. 29, 2011 - "some 12 miles from Blueford's residence in Tracy."
  
  Two sources said the burglary victim did not work for the Oakland police force. According to the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department, the thief kicked in two doors, then made off with a safe holding six firearms.
  
  Blueford's father, Adam Blueford, said Tuesday that he was disappointed by the district attorney's conclusions.
  "We thought it might go this way," he said. "My son didn't commit any crime at all other than running. This is alarming."
  
  The report was made public Tuesday but was given to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan on Oct. 3, the day after Jordan - under pressure from Blueford's family - released a set of investigative reports into the shooting.
  
  The family has led demonstrations against the shooting and has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming Blueford did not have a gun when he was shot and did not pose a lethal threat.
  
  The family's supporters protested angrily at a City Council meeting last month, prompting officials to shut down the meeting and draft new rules limiting public access to the chambers.
  The family's attorney, John Burris, said he was not surprised by the report.
  
  "The standard of proof (in a criminal prosecution) is beyond a reasonable doubt, and without a video, it's very difficult to prosecute a police officer," he said.
  
  When Blueford was killed, he was nearing graduation from Skyline High School in Oakland, where he commuted to attend. He had earlier been convicted of a burglary in San Joaquin County, police said.
  
  Masso was hired in 2008 after working as an officer in Morgan Hill and New York, and as a military police officer for the Army.
  
  The report by the district attorney's office said Masso and his patrol partner, Officer Joe Fesmire, watched Blueford and two companions from afar as one of the other teens "moved his right hand to his waistband" as if he was concealing a gun, and then appeared to toss something through a fence.
  
  After the officers got out of their patrol car and detained the teenagers, the report says, Blueford initially complied with orders to sit down before jumping up and running.
  Masso said he gave chase because he thought Blueford might have a gun.
  
  According to the report, Masso said he shouted 10 to 15 times at Blueford, ordering him to stop, and threatened to shock him with a Taser. The officer said Blueford ran for nearly three blocks with his left hand on his jeans and his right hand at his waist, as if he was armed.
  
  Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakl...z290bl19eH
  

[Peter Lemkin]

Stop And Frisk Violated Rights Of New Yorkers, Judge Rules

Posted: 08/12/2013 9:42 am EDT | Updated: 08/12/2013 12:56 pm EDT


A judge has ruled that the NYPD's controversial use of the stop-and-frisk tactic violated the rights of thousands of New Yorkers, The New York Times reports. Judge Shira Scheindlin's decision Monday called for a federal monitor to watch over the police department to ensure cops are in compliance with the constitution.
From the Associated Press:

The New York Police Department deliberately violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers with its contentious stop-and-frisk policy, and an independent monitor is needed to oversee major changes, a federal judge ruled Monday in a stinging rebuke for what the mayor and police commissioner have defended as a life-saving, crime-fighting tool.U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin said she was not putting an end to the policy, but rather was reforming it. She did not give many specifics on how that would work but instead named an independent monitor who would develop reforms to policies, training, supervision, monitoring and discipline. She also ordered that officers test out body-worn cameras in the police precinct where most stops occurred.
"The city's highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner," she wrote. "In their zeal to defend a policy that they believe to be effective, they have willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy of targeting `the right people' is racially discriminatory."
For years, police brass had been warned that officers were violating rights, but they nevertheless maintained and escalated "policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations," Scheindlin wrote in a lengthy opinion.
She also cited violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
"Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often," she said. "The NYPD's practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD's standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods."

Four men sued the department in 2004, saying they were unfairly targeted because of they were minorities. Scheindlin issued her ruling after a 10-week bench trial, which included testimony from NYPD brass and a dozen people - 11 men and one woman - who said they were wrongly stopped because of their race.
She found that nine of the 19 stops discussed at the trial were unconstitutional, and an additional five stops included wrongful frisking.
Stop and frisk is a constitutional police tactic, but Scheindlin concluded that the plaintiffs had "readily established that the NYPD implements its policies regarding stop and frisk in a manner that intentionally discriminates based on race."
There have been about 5 million stops during the past decade, mostly black and Hispanic men. The judge said she determined at least 200,000 stops were made without reasonable suspicion, the necessary legal benchmark, lower than the standard of probable cause needed to justify an arrest.
The class-action lawsuit was the largest and most broad legal action against the policy at the nation's biggest police department, and it may have an effect on how other police departments make street stops, legal experts said.
Lawmakers have also sought to create an independent monitor and make it easier for people to sue the department if they feel their civil rights were violated. Those bills are awaiting an override vote after the mayor vetoed the legislation.
The court monitor would examine stop and frisk specifically and could compel changes. The inspector general envisioned in the legislation would look at other issues but could only make recommendations.
The city had no immediate response to the ruling, but officials planned an early afternoon news conference to discuss it.
City lawyers had argued the department does a good job policing itself with an internal affairs bureau, a civilian complaint board and quality assurance divisions.
The judge rejected their arguments. "The city and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect population," she wrote. "But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent - not criminal."
Scheindlin appointed Peter L. Zimroth, the city's former lead attorney and previously a chief assistant district attorney, as the monitor. In both roles, Zimroth worked closely with the NYPD, the judge said. He did not respond to a call seeking comment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, the nonprofit group that represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement: "Today is a victory for all New Yorkers. After more than 5 million stops conducted under the current administration, hundreds of thousands of them illegal and discriminatory, the NYPD has finally been held accountable. It is time for the city to stop denying the problem and work with the community to fix it."

Police stops in New York CIty have soared some 600 percent over the past decade since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office. New York's finest stopped and interrogated people 684,330 times in 2011, according to The Wall Street Journal. 92 percent of those stopped were males, and 87 percent of those stopped were black or Hispanic.

[Peter Lemkin]

George Zimmerman's Wife Expresses Doubt About His Innocence in Travyon Martin Case

George Zimmerman's estranged wife, Shellie, is expressing doubts about claims Zimmerman acted in self-defense when he killed Trayvon Martin. Shellie Zimmerman has filed for divorce and recently called 911 to report George Zimmerman had threatened her and assaulted her father. She was interviewed by NBC's Matt Lauer.

Matt Lauer: "So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed?"

Shellie Zimmerman: "I think anyone would doubt that innocence because I don't know the person that I've been married to."

[Peter Lemkin]

Relatives of a slain African-American man in Georgia are accusing police of shooting him dead without cause in his own home. Police were apparently summoned to the home of Jack Lamar Roberson by accident after his fiancée called 911 to seek emergency medical help. Roberson was diabetic and had apparently been acting erratically. When police showed up instead of an ambulance, officers say Roberson was armed with two knifes. But his fiancée, Alicia Herron, tearfully denied the police account.

Alicia Herron: "He didn't have nothing in his hands at any time or period at all before they came, any time while they was here, or anything. They just came in and shot him. He didn't say nothing. The police didn't say nothing, anything. It was like a silent movie. You couldn't hear anything. And all you heard was the gun shots go off, and I seen them going into his body, and he just fell down."

[David Guyatt]

Relatives of a slain African-American man in Georgia are accusing police of shooting him dead without cause in his own home. Police were apparently summoned to the home of Jack Lamar Roberson by accident after his fiancée called 911 to seek emergency medical help. Roberson was diabetic and had apparently been acting erratically. When police showed up instead of an ambulance, officers say Roberson was armed with two knifes. But his fiancée, Alicia Herron, tearfully denied the police account.

Alicia Herron: "He didn't have nothing in his hands at any time or period at all before they came, any time while they was here, or anything. They just came in and shot him. He didn't say nothing. The police didn't say nothing, anything. It was like a silent movie. You couldn't hear anything. And all you heard was the gun shots go off, and I seen them going into his body, and he just fell down."

It's just too sick to properly contemplate.