Michael Bennett Arrest

First this –

And some of the fan reaction here on ESPN in responses to racism by the viewers by Dan Le Betard –

 

Van Jones Destroys Chumph’s “Muslim Profiling”

The truth of the matter of Domestic Terrorism…

The vast majority of mass murder, mass shooting, and serial murders committed in America are by young white men. Removing inner city Drug wars as the motivation, a shocking 90% of all mass shootings/murders are done by white males, frequently due to right wing political motivation, racial animosity, and family issues. So…If you are going to racially profile – you would have to look for a white male in their 20’s, typically with right wing leanings, and socialization issues.

Now we know, from Police experience in stopping innocent black folks in the cities, that stopping every white male under 30 wearing cammies would be pointless. At my home in the country, come fall there is nothing unusual about white folks running around in camouflage T-shits, coats or pants – especially in the fall and winter. The vast majority of these folks are not criminals (other than having a 6 times greater probability than a black person of having a little meth or heroin in their pocket), and pose no threat to run around shooting their neighbors at the local WalMart.

Which is why profiling, when used as a method of “Broken Windows” policing is such an abject failure.

 

19 Cops Show Up to Accost Black Woman Entering Her Own Apartment

It now takes 19 Cops to take down a 110lb black woman! Santa Monica?

And as for Mr. Palmer…I think it’s a pretty safe assumption your local Bank Robber and thug life isn’t running around in a Toyota Prius. I mean “Excuse me officer, it’s been 40 miles – would you guys please hold on for 12 hours while I recharge the car?”

19 Officers Swarm Black Woman As She Tries To Get Into Her Own Apartment

Faye Wells

A black woman who got locked out of her Santa Monica apartment is claiming that the actions of police were racially motivated when 19 officers showed up outside her door, some pointing guns at her, in response to her neighbor’s report of a break-in.

Fay Wells, who is the vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation, penned a piece inThe Washington Post today, detailing the harrowing ordeal that took place on Sept. 6 and how she is still shaken up. She writes, “I’m heartbroken that the place I called home no longer feels safe.”

Wells had just gotten back from her weekly soccer game and found that she had locked herself out of her home, and hired a locksmith to open the door for her. But after she got inside her apartment, that’s when things escalated. A large dog was barking in her stairwell, and officers pointed guns at her. They entered her apartment, and an officer pulled Wells’ hands behind her back and took her outside. That’s when she saw an “ocean of officers.” Though Wells says that the officers at the time wouldn’t explain to her why they were there, she later found out that a total of 19 were dispatched and that her white neighbor had reported a burglary at her apartment.

Wells writes:

It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for — my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment — in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city — and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.

It’s still been an uphill battle for Wells, who says she’s had to jump through hoops to get from the Santa Monica Police Department the names of the officers who showed up that night. Even then, the facts don’t match up. She only received 17 of the 19 names from authorities, and the Washington Post got 17 names that didn’t all match up with the list Wells received. She’s since filed an official complaint with internal affairs. The department told the Washington Post that it was within protocol based on this type of call to warrant “a very substantial police response.”

 

Her complaint comes just months after the Santa Monica-Venice branch of the NAACP called for an investigation into the Santa Monica Police Department after 36-year-old Justin Palmer wasarrested and pepper-sprayed by officers while he was charging his electric car at Virginia Avenue Park. Palmer said that officers told him on April 21 that the park was closed at 11 p.m. and he couldn’t be there, even though it wasn’t 11 p.m. yet. Police told him they needed his ID, and he asked why they needed it when he did nothing wrong. Palmer told KTLA that an officer threw him to the ground, his head hit the ground and he blacked out.

Authorities said Palmer “actively resisted” the arrest, but nearly two weeks later, the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office said they would not be filing any charges against Palmer, saying it was partly because the signs at the park weren’t clear about the parking lot being subject to the park hours and “a question concerning when Mr. Palmer arrived in the parking lot and when officers made their initial contact with him.”

The NAACP said in a statement: “This act of excessive force points towards racial profiling that has become a central concern as other residents that are not African American have said they have never been approached by SMPD for charging their vehicles after 11:00 p.m. at Virginia Avenue Park.”

Palmer filed a complained against the city of Santa Monica, claiming the police used excessive force, but the city denied the claim in June. However, Justin Sanders, the attorney of Palmer, who is black, said this isn’t about race, but rather “this can happen to anybody, no matter what your station in life is.”

Wells writes that the NAACP requested info from the Santa Monica Police Department for “demographic information on all traffic, public transportation and pedestrian stops; so far, the department has promised to release a report of detailed arrest data next year.”

 

Texas Cops Create “Honorary White People” To Avoid Racial Profiling

A small sample of “honorary white folks” ticketed by Texas cops. Misidentified in an effort to evade evidence of racial profiling in traffic stops.

If you picked Contestant #12…See your Optometrist…Soonest!

I got news for the station who found this…It isn’t just Hispanics.

Texas troopers ticketing Hispanic drivers as white

Senator says DPS ‘playing games’ with racial profiling data

DPS troopers are inaccurately recording the race of large numbers of minority drivers, mostly Hispanic, as white, according to a KXAN investigation. The agency’s traffic stop data reveals racial profiling reports are likely flawed, according to experts.

Sergio Raul Mejia got a traffic citation for having his license plate on the dash of his truck in Georgetown last May. The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who pulled Mejia over put his race as white on the ticket.

“That’s bad,” said Mejia. “I’m Hispanic. He was not supposed to put white people,” Mejia continued, speaking in broken English. “You don’t think you look white?” asked KXAN Investigator Brian Collister. “No, Hispanic,” replied Mejia.

A Texas law aimed at preventing racial profiling requires peace officers determine and document the race of every driver to whom they issue a written warning, traffic citation or arrest during a traffic stop. The statute says officers must report: “the person’s race or ethnicity, as stated by the person or, if the person does not state the person’s race or ethnicity, as determined by the officer to the best of the officer’s ability.” White and Hispanic are just two categories listed in the law, which treats race and ethnicity the same for purposes of gathering the statistics.

The Texas Racial Profiling statute requires race and ethnicity be treated the same for purposes of gathering the statistics: “Race or ethnicity” means of a particular descent, including Caucasian, African, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or Middle Eastern descent.

But a KXAN investigation discovered DPS troopers across the state are inaccurately reporting the race of minority drivers who are African American, Asian, but mostly Hispanic, as white. KXAN uncovered the discrepancies while reviewing more than 16 million DPS traffic citation records dating back to 2010.

Richard Kai-Tzung Chang got a traffic ticket in Austin from a DPS Trooper last April. Chang is from Taiwan and says he believes its obvious he is Asian. But the trooper documented him as white on the citation.

“I was shocked,” Chang told KXAN. “It’s almost incomprehensible that I could be mistaken for a white male because I don’t look anything like a white male,” Chang continued.

Dominique Deshaun McGrew was arrested last April during a traffic stop near Victoria. In the dashcam video it’s clear that McGrew is African American.  But instead of recording him as black, the trooper recorded him as white.

Pastor Gonzalez Sosa was pulled over for speeding earlier this year in Caldwell County. In the dashcam video obtained by KXAN through an open records request, Sosa speaks Spanish to the trooper and tells him he is from Mexico. But the Hispanic trooper, who also speaks Spanish, documented Sosa’s race as white on the citation…

Lawmakers and media have scrutinized the race of drivers stopped by state troopers since the controversial arrest of Sandra Bland. A DPS trooper arrested Bland, who is African American, in Waller County this summer for a minor traffic violation. She later committed suicide in jail, according to the county coroner. The increasing number of Hispanic drivers reported in DPS racial profiling data has also been the focus of those legislative hearings and news reports. A KXAN analysis of the DPS traffic stop data confirms the number of drivers stopped by troopers and recorded as Hispanic has gone up annually since 2010, while the number of drivers recorded as white has gone down.

But a racial-profiling expert says what we uncovered reveals DPS statistics used to create its annual reports on traffic stops do not add up.

“The under-representation of Hispanics and over-representation of Caucasians on the contact data counts has a significant impact on the analysis of racial profiling trends,” said Dr. Alex Del Carmen, executive director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies at Tarleton State University in Fort Worth. “It is imperative that the citation count is accurately recorded and reported by all police officers that interact with the public. This is the only manner in which we can ensure an accurate representation of motor vehicle stops and trends.”… Read More on This Here…

 

Walking While Black…Not!

Jogger exercising and walking on the wrong side of the road, not using the sidewalk.Local police stop jogger and politely suggest she move across the road to face traffic for safety reasons…

Jogger turns out to be a College Professor of Journalism…And a few days later writes an op-ed in the paper on being “racially profiled”.

Then the Police released the Dashcam footage…showing…absolutely…nothing. Except of course the professor walking on the wrong side of the road on the street instead of the sidewalk.

Anyone else feel someone needs to sit this “professor” down and tell her to STFU?

This is not a BLM moment. It is just a couple of cops doing their job.

I don’t buy the “Rorschach moment” – I see an inability to admit doing something wrong.

Got stopped by a cop one time, while trailering a boat in southern Virginia. Wasn’t speeding, had checked the lights before starting the trip to make sure they were working, the boat was strapped down tight… The cop explained that one of the screws in my trailer license plate had fallen out, and the holder was flopping in the wind and might fall off. I thanked him for alerting me to the fact, which saved me $60 in the cost to replace the plate if it had been lost. Temp fix with a Zip Tie (best thing since Duct Tape!), and on my way.

That is quite simply is a small part of what good Cops do.

Racism? By whom? This video of Texas cops stopping a black professor is a racial ‘Rorschach test’

On Oct. 24, University of North Texas professor Dorothy Bland was walking around her affluent Dallas suburb when she was stopped by police. Bland, who is African American, had been exercising in the street. The cops, who are both white, asked her to walk in the opposite direction so she could see traffic or, even better, to use the sidewalk. Roughly three minutes later, she was on her way.

The short and seemingly simple interaction has proved anything but, however.

Several days later, Bland, who is the dean of UNT’s journalism school, penned an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News claiming that she had been racially profiled.

“Walking while black is a crime in many jurisdictions,” she wrote. “May God have mercy on our nation.”

Dorothy Bland

Corinth Police responded by releasing the officers’ dashcam video of the interaction and claiming Bland had turned a “cordial” stop into a “racial issue.”

“If we didn’t have the video, these officers would have serious allegations against them,” police chief Debra Walthall told Fox News. “Every white officer that stops an African American does not constitute racial profiling.”

Now it is Bland, not the cops, who is facing pressure as nearly 2,500 people have signed a petition urging UNT to fire her.

Although disciplinary action against either the professor or police appears unlikely, the viral video is still generating a heated debate about law enforcement and race relations in this country.

Like Bland, many Americans see the stop as a subtle but significant instance of racial prejudice by police.

“If officers were concerned only about Bland’s safety and her impeding traffic, why did they ask her for her ID? Why did they need her birthdate? Why did they radio in a ‘name check’?” wrote Dallas Morning News writer Leona Allen, who is African American.

“We’re not fools,” Allen added. “Sure looks like they’re calling to check to see if she had outstanding warrants.”

Many others were equally angry — but with Bland.

“As a person of color, this upsets me,” said former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who is also African American. “Particularly against what happened in South Carolina. Particularly as this country is wrestling with very real concerns regarding the police treatment of African American youth.”

“She took advantage of a very innocent and thoughtful police response — walk on the right side of the street — she’s just looking for her Skip Gates moment,” Kirk told the Morning News, referring to the 2009 arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, which led to accusations of racism against the Cambridge, Mass., police officer. “There’s a real danger here.”…

“It’s a Rorschach test,” wrote Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd of the video. “The way we interpret it probably says a great deal about our beliefs, expectations and experiences in a nation that remains woefully divided along racial lines.”

Were it not for America’s simmering debate over race and policing, the incident could be chalked up as an example of the so-called Rashomon effect. The phenomenon, in which different people draw contradictory interpretations of a single event, draws its name from the eponymous 1950 classic film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

What is undisputed is that Dorothy Bland was walking in the street near her Corinth home on the morning of Oct. 24, when she was stopped by two white police officers.

“I was dressed in a gray hooded ‘Boston’ sweatshirt, black leggings, white socks, plus black-and-white Nike running shoes,” Bland’s recounting began. “Like most African Americans, I am familiar with the phrase ‘driving while black,’ but was I really being stopped for walking on the street in my own neighborhood?”

She continued:

Knowing that the police officers are typically armed with guns and are a lot bigger than my 5 feet, 4 inches, I had no interest in my life’s story playing out like Trayvon Martin’s death. I stopped and asked the two officers if there was a problem; I don’t remember getting a decent answer before one of the officers asked me where I lived and for identification.

I remember saying something like, “Around the corner. This is my neighborhood, and I’m a taxpayer who pays a lot of taxes.” As for the I.D. question, how many Americans typically carry I.D. with them on their morning walk? Do you realize I bought the hoodie I was wearing after completing the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education in 2014? Do you realize I have hosted gatherings for family, friends, faculty, staff and students in my home? Not once was a police officer called. To those officers, my education or property-owner status didn’t matter. One officer captured my address and date of birth.

I guess I was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood. I told the police I didn’t like to walk in the rain, and one of them told me, “My dog doesn’t like to walk in the rain.” Ouch!

Bland was clearly angered by the encounter. She compared the stop to other instances in which African Americans have died at police officers’ hands.

“Although I am not related to Sandra Bland,” who died in a Texas jail after a traffic stop, “I thought about her, Freddie Gray and the dozens of others who have died while in police custody,” the professor wrote. “For safety’s sake, I posted the photo of the officers on Facebook, and within hours, more than 100 Facebook friends spread the news from New York to California.”…Read the rest of the article here…

 

 

Sheriff Blames Police KIlling on “National Rhetoric”

Or “Not wanting to jump to conclusions”, this Sheriff and Prosecutor certainly lay out a lot of “conclusions” not yet borne out by evidence. The assertion that this was about “anti-cop rhetoric” and BlackLivesMatter being the most egregious. As the shooter has not been identified, much less apprehended, we have no idea what motivated him. The fact the Police Department is having a hard time getting witnesses to step up would seem to indicate a disconnect between the Police and the community.

Sheriff links ‘national rhetoric’ to killing of deputy in Houston

Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman described the killing of a deputy sheriff at a gas station as a “cold-blooded assassination” and angrily condemned the “very dangerous national rhetoric” about police officers that he said was out of control.

Deputy Darren Goforth, 47, was fatally shot late Friday while filling his patrol car in northwest Harris County.

The suspect, whose image was caught on surveillance video, approached Goforth from behind and shot him several times in the back. He continued to fire even after the officer had fallen to the ground.

The suspect is shown in photos as a dark-skinned male wearing a white T-shirt and red shorts and apparently driving a red or maroon-colored Ford pickup.

Rickman said an intense manhunt was underway and that officers were speaking to several people in connection with the shooting, but that no arrest had been made yet.

Hickman said the killing was unprovoked and that Goforth was apparently singled out only because he was wearing the uniform of a law enforcement officer. The sheriff made it clear he felt the shooting was tied to a national backlash over several recent killings of unarmed black people by police officers.

“When rhetoric ramps up to the point where cold-blooded assassination has happened, this rhetoric has gotten out of control,” he said. “We heard ‘black lives matter.’ All lives matter. Cops’ lives matter too, so why don’t we drop the qualifier and say all lives matter and take that to the bank.”

“Black Lives Matter” is the phrase of a national activist group aimed at addressing the shootings by police officers.

His remarks echoed comments in the same new conference by Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, who said the criticism of police had gotten out of hand.

“It is time for the silent majority in this country to support law enforcement,” she told reporters at the news conference. “There are a few bad apples in every profession, that does not mean there should be open warfare on law enforcement.”

Earlier, sheriff’s office spokesman Deputy Thomas Gilliland said officials were speaking with a person of interest in connection with the shooting and had obtained a search warrant for the person’s home.

Perhaps the Sheriff’s rhetoric might be based on the publicity involving his department and this DWB stop…

And this one…

Which apparently wasn’t the first Harris County Law Enforcement Officer to be accused, indicted, or convicted of rape. Just a few weeks ago, Harris County Deputies strip searched a woman by the side of the road.

This country appears to have some serious and deep problems…The current Chief being one. It doesn’t seem impossible that the “hundreds of women” raped or coerced into sex by Law Enforcement in the county might just be the cause of the current problems.

 

Racial Profiling Bill in Senate

Racial profiling as a law enforcement tool has been discredited in just about every study – but it continues anyway…

Of course I doubt this bill has a prayer of making it through the Republican majority House.

Senate Introduces Legislation to Ban Racial Profiling

Yesterday, the Senate introduced a bill that would ban the use of racial profiling by law enforcement.

The End Racial Profiling Act of 2011, sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin, D. Md., would forbid any law enforcement agency in the United States from “relying, to any degree, on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion…except when there is trustworthy information, relevant to the locality and timeframe, that links a person of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion to an identified criminal incident or scheme.” The bill also requires law enforcement agencies to collect data on routine and spontaneous investigatory activities and authorizes the Department of Justice to provide funds for training on the proper and improper use of race, ethnicity, national origin and religion in policing.
Civil rights groups have long supported legislation banning racial profiling based not only on its discriminatory nature but on the fact that it simply doesn’t work and wastes precious law enforcement resources.

“Racial profiling robs people of their dignity, undermines the integrity of our criminal justice system, and instills fear and distrust among members of targeted communities,” said Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We know from experience that this is the wrong approach. Racial profiling makes us all less safe, by distracting law enforcement from the pursuit of individuals who pose serious threats to security.”

Research has consistently found that despite its ineffectiveness racial profiling is pervasive. A September 2010 Rights Working Group report, which was based on six public hearings held around the country, found that the use of racial profiling is pervasive. And a June 2009 report by Rights Working Group and the American Civil Liberties Union found that African-American and Latino drivers are more than twice as likely to be stopped, searched, or arrested by law enforcement officers as White drivers.

In March, The Leadership Conference released a report that documents how the consensus to end racial profiling has evaporated since 9/11, and how the use of racial profiling has expanded in the context of counterterrorism; fighting drug trafficking and other “street-level” crimes; and in efforts to enforce immigration laws, and called on Congress to pass ERPA.

 

DWB in Missouri

This is becoming more common than being stopped while swarthy in Arizona…

Racial disparity growing in Mo. traffic stops

Black motorists in Missouri are being stopped by police at an increasingly disproportionate rate compared with white and Hispanic motorists, according to a report released Tuesday by the attorney general.

Missouri’s 10th annual traffic stop analysis shows black motorists were 70 percent more likely than white drivers — and twice as likely as Hispanic motorists — to be stopped by law enforcement officers in 2009.

The figures compare the racial breakdown of Missouri’s driving-age population to the racial composition of drivers in more than 1.7 million traffic stops made by 642 law enforcement agencies.

The disparity for black drivers has risen nearly every year since 2001, when Missouri became the first state to publish a report examining the racial demographics of its traffic stops.

 

Reaching For Racism in Response to Terrorism

Once again, the knee jerk reaction of the right is to reach for racism instead of coming up with comprehensive answers to terrorism. In the past, this sort of right wing racism has led to to less efficient and weaker security.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The bomber managed to evade airport security in Nigeria. Whether that is because the airport there didn’t have sophisticated (and expensive) explosives sniffing equipment, the attempted bomber had help – or he simply bribed his way in is unknown. As the son of a wealthy, well known businessman in a country where corruption is rampant – more than likely the answer is the latter.

Once he was in the supposedly “scanned” part of the system, he normally wouldn’t have had to go through security again until he reached his destination. This suggests the “trust level” of the Airport Security at the Nigerian Airport needs to be re-evaluated, and potentially passengers from that airport need to be re-screened prior to boarding another flight – just as they are when flying in from places with little or no security systems. The explosive material he was carrying, PETN is well known, and if he was screened properly would have set off every alarm in the system.

As to the ethnic profiling preferred by Republican fools – granting yet another level of white privilege in freedom from security suspicion stupidly ignores the fact that of the world’s 1 billion Muslims…

Some of them have blond hair and blue eyes.

more about “Reaching For Racism in Response to Te…“, posted with vodpod

 

More Weigh-In on Gates Case – Cosby et al

The Police Officer at the center of this storm, Sgt. James Crowley –

Sgt. James Crowley

Crowley is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling and has taught a class on the subject for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

In radio interviews Thursday morning, Crowley said he followed procedure.

“I support the president of the United States 110 percent. I think he was way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before he made that comment,” Crowley told WBZ-AM. “I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too.”

 

Obama on Gates Arrest – Giant Negro Alert!

Starting out, from MSNBC, the complete text of what President Obama said in response to a question by Lynn Sweet, starting about the 6:27 mark –

Two views – the first from Faux –

This next one  from Rachel Maddow on CNN, with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs –

 

Dr Henry Louis Gates Arrested

Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates, perhaps the most prominent and famous Professor at Harvard was arrested yesterday by Cambridge Police…

For breaking into  his own home.

Black scholar’s arrest raises profiling questions

BOSTON — Supporters of a prominent Harvard University black scholar who was arrested at his own home by police responding to a report of a break-in say he is the victim of racial profiling.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. had forced his way through the front door of his home because it was jammed, his lawyer said Monday.