Appeals court strikes down Texas voter ID law

Reuters (AUSTIN, Texas). A Texas law requiring voters to show a government-issued form of photo identification before casting a ballot is discriminatory and violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a close decision among a special 15-judge panel, also sent the case back to a district court to examine claims by the plaintiffs that the law had a discriminatory purpose.

The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit, which has a reputation as one of the most conservative federal appeals courts, asked the district court for a short-term fix to be used in Texas in the November general election.

“We acknowledge the charged nature of accusations of racism, particularly against a legislative body, but we must also face the sad truth that racism continues to exist in our modern American society despite years of laws designed to eradicate it,” the court said.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch applauded the ruling and said in a statement, “This decision affirms our position that Texas’s highly restrictive voter ID law abridges the right to vote on account of race or color and orders appropriate relief before yet another election passes.”

Critics of the law said it and similar statutes that have been passed in Republican-governed states were intended to make it harder for minorities such as African-Americans and Hispanics, who tend to support Democrats, to vote. Backers of these laws have said they are necessary to prevent voter fraud.

The court ruled 9-6 that the Texas law had a discriminatory effect. The judges were divided differently on other parts of the ruling.

“We acknowledge the charged nature of accusations of racism, particularly against a legislative body, but we must also face the sad truth that racism continues to exist in our modern American society despite years of laws designed to eradicate it,” the court said.

Challengers of the Texas law have said that up to 600,000 people would be unable to vote if the law was fully in effect.

The law passed in Republican-dominated Texas was one of the strictest voter ID laws in the United States.

A federal judge in Wisconsin on Tuesday softened that state’s law, saying people without a photo ID should be able to vote in November if they agree to sign an affidavit explaining why they could not obtain identification.

A federal appeals court is expected to rule soon on a similar law in North Carolina. A district court judge upheld the measure in April.

“Preventing voter fraud is essential to accurately reflecting the will of Texas voters during elections, and it is unfortunate that this common-sense law, providing protections against fraud, was not upheld in its entirety,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said in a statement.

Melania Trump’s speech was run through a plagiarism checker

College students, take note: if you plagiarize, people will notice.

Melania Trump spoke during the Republican National Convention on Monday night, leaving some viewers with a sense of déjà vu.

Following a tweet from journalist Jarrett Hill, many called out Trump on blatantly plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech from the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Looking at the speeches side by side, they are shockingly similar.

The Washingtonian ran the transcripts of the suspicious paragraphs from Trump’s speech through a comparison plagiarism checker, Small SEO Tools. The results, perhaps predictably, showed that nearly half of the speech was taken directly from Obama’s speech.

“The first half of the excerpt came in at 46 percent non-unique, while the next few sentences registered at 44 percent non-unique,” wrote The Washingtonian.

Mashable also ran the transcripts through the checker, and came up with similar results. The first excerpt, however, came up as 47 percent non-unique.

Mashable also ran the transcripts through the checker, and came up with similar results. The first excerpt, however, came up as 47 percent non-unique.
Mashable also ran the transcripts through the checker, and came up with similar results. The first excerpt, however, came up as 47 percent non-unique.

According to The Washingtonian, citing the plagiarism checker TurnItIn.com, “the likelihood that a 16-word match is ‘just a coincidence’ is less than 1 in a trillion. Melania Trump’s longest match? 23 words.”

This particular type of plagiarism is known as “clone plagiarism,” in which the copier lifts words and phrases verbatim from another source. College professors agree that this kind of copying is not acceptable.

Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies and co-chairwoman of the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, told USA Today, “if I were reading a student paper and two paragraphs were lifted almost verbatim, I would turn the student into the dean and then he or she would decide the student’s fate in terms of the college.”

Still, Team Trump is denying all accusations about the speech, citing everything from My Little Pony to directly blaming Hillary Clinton for the backlash.

Still, let’s hope Team Trump doesn’t turn in any college papers.

How Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama in her convention speech

Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, was receiving plaudits for her speech at the Republican convention Monday night, for its positive message devoid of the political attacks that characterized the vast majority of the rest of the primetime speeches. But then, on Twitter, @JarrettHill first noticed a striking similarity between Trump’s speech and speeches that First Lady Michelle Obama delivered on her husband’s behalf in 2008 and 2012.

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“My parents impressed on me the value of that you work hard for what you want in life,” Trump said at the Republican convention Monday night. “That your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. That you treat people with respect. Show the values and morals in in the daily life. That is the lesson that we continue to pass on to our son.

“We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. [Cheering] Because we want our children in these nations to know that the only limit to your achievement is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Vox pointed out that this seems lifted from Michelle Obama’s Democratic convention speech in 2008:

“And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.

“And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Trump claimed to have penned the speech on her own, mostly.

“I wrote it — with a little help as possible,” Melania Trump told NBC News’ Matt Lauer in an interview Monday.

After the first night of the convention former top Obama adviser David Axelrod was calling Trump’s speech “flat out plagiarism.”

“Whoever did that was grossly irresponssible,” he said on CNN, wondering, “How could anyone be so fundamentally stupid?”

Trump campaign Senior Communications Advisor Jason Miller issued a statement saying, “In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

Public Safety – Examining the Use of Force

 

By Ronald C. Ruecker, Director of Public Safety, City of Sherwood, Oregon
By Ronald C. Ruecker, Director of Public Safety, City of Sherwood, Oregon

As police leaders, we are faced with a constant array of challenges that require our time and attention. Daily, we are confronted with competing demands and everchanging community expectations that require our attention and response. Successfully overcoming these challenges is a daunting task that requires us to do all we can to ensure that our officers and departments are properly trained, equipped, and prepared to protect the communities we serve.

Of all these tasks, there is little doubt that managing and dealing with the questions and problems surrounding the use of force by our officers is one of the most difficult issues that confronts law enforcement executives.

It is an unfortunate reality that law enforcement officers around the world are often required to resort to some form of force in order to enforce the law, protect the public, and guard their own safety as well as that of innocent bystanders. This is particularly true in the United States, where many areas are experiencing increases in violent crime and firearms are widely available for both legal and illegal purposes.

To gain an understanding of the dangerous environment in which our officers operate, one need look no further than the annual report of police officers killed and assaulted compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the year 2006, 58,634 officers reported being assaulted in the performance of their official duties. Of these, 44 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed, and an additional 15,704 were wounded or injured. Tragically, these numbers are certain to rise in 2007.

Despite these daunting statistics, the public rightfully expects law enforcement officers to make a good decision each and every time they use force. This is a very difficult standard to meet, because decisions on use of force are made under exceedingly varied and often dangerous scenarios that require split-second decision making. Because of these facts, state and federal courts have recognized that police officers must be provided with the necessary knowledge and training to make such decisions. As a result, officers are trained to a standard of justification rather than a standard of necessity, because it would be impossible to write an all-inclusive statuteaddressing every possible circumstance requiring the use of force.

Our communities cry out, however, when a statutorily justified use of force is juxtaposed against the community’s expectation of necessity. They reasonably ask, was there another way that officers could have defused the situation? Was the use of force consistent with the level of threat confronting the officers?

In response to these questions, the law enforcement community has striven to minimize the use of deadly force by police officers over the years. As a profession, we have provided and trained our officers in the proper use of an ever-increasing array of lesslethal tools to resolve confrontations without resorting to deadly force. Whether these tools take the form of a firm grip; escort or pain or pressure compliance holds; or other, more aggressive measures such as electromuscular disruption technology, pepper spray, or other nondeadly force equipment or tactics are all significant components of the use-of-force continuum. There is no doubt that these critically important tools and techniques have, over the years, reduced the law enforcement community’s need to resort to deadly force.

To gain an understanding of the dangerous environment in which our officers operate, one need look no further than the annual report of police officers killed and assaulted compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the year 2006, 58,634 officers reported being assaulted in the performance of their official duties. Of these, 44 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed, and an additional 15,704 were wounded or injured. Tragically, these numbers are certain to rise in 2007.

In fact, a 2001 study on use of force conducted by the IACP found that force of any kind was used only at a rate of 3.61 incidents per 10,000 calls for service. Significantly, firearms were the method of force least used.

However, as impressive as these numbers are, I am convinced that we can do better.

It is my belief that as we have increased the tools available to our officers, we have, in some cases, overlooked an equally important issue: training our officers on when not to use the tools we have provided them. In some cases, the ability of law enforcement officers to use their communication skills to end confrontations in nonviolent fashion appears to have decreased as we have increased the number of less-lethal options available to them. I believe that in many ways, communication has become a lost art, and some officers have begun to rely more on technology than on talking. Simply put, this should never be the case, and it is our responsibility as police leaders to ensure that our officers have the communication skills necessary to resolve conflicts, where possible, before force is necessary.

We serve as guardians of both the public and the public trust. The citizens we serve have the right to expect that the use of force is the option of last resort for law enforcement officers. For these reasons, one of the top priorities during my term as president will be to conduct a comprehensive examination of the use of force. Through this process we will ensure that we, as the leaders of our profession, are doing all that can be done to minimize the use of force while still protecting our communities and our officers from harm.

Culled from The Police Chief, vol. 74, no. 12, December 2007. Copyright held by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 515 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314 USA.

Trump names Pence as running mate

Trump (Right)..., Pence, a Catholic, earned a law degree from Indiana University in 1986 and ran two unsuccessful congressional campaigns before getting elected in 2000.
Trump (Right); Pence, a Catholic, earned a law degree from Indiana University in 1986 and ran two unsuccessful congressional campaigns before getting elected in 2000.

Donald Trump put to rest Friday the speculation and revealed the worst-kept secret in Washington: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will be his running mate.

Trump had originally planned to roll out his pick at a news conference in New York on Friday, but postponed the event because of the terror attack in Nice, France. Per his tweet, that event will take place Saturday morning.

While the initial postponement of Trump’s announcement fueled speculation that he might be having second thoughts, it was widely expected that Pence was in line for the job.

The Pence pick follows a very-public vetting process that included meetings in recent days with Pence, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, among others. The selection of Pence, who went from dark horse to leading contender in a matter of days, presumably is aimed at galvanizing support from the party’s conservative base as Trump charges into the Republican nominating convention.

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Pence was selected from a slimmer-than-usual short-list — of candidates not only favored by Trump but also willing to stake their political future on the unconventional and unpredictable White House contender. Several prominent names publicly took themselves out of the running.

Pence, also a former member of House Republican leadership, emerged relatively late in the vice presidential stakes.

But he moved almost immediately to the top of the list, considering he gives the Trump campaign much-needed social conservative credentials without the kind of political baggage that Democrats had hoped to exploit in other finalists like Christie or Gingrich.

Consideration of Pence also put Trump on the clock. Pence faced a Friday deadline to file paperwork to appear on the official state ballot as either a gubernatorial or vice presidential candidate. Under state law, his name could not appear on the ballot twice. Fox News learned Thursday Pence would not seek re-election, a clear sign he was gearing up for the VP announcement. And on Friday, he filed the paperwork to withdraw.

The Hillary Clinton campaign quickly unloaded on Trump’s decision, calling him “the most extreme pick in a generation.”

“By picking Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has doubled down on some of his most disturbing beliefs by choosing an incredibly divisive and unpopular running mate known for supporting discriminatory politics and failed economic policies that favor millionaires and corporations over working families,” campaign Chairman John Podesta said in a statement.

Pence, now in a tough re-election bid, spent 12 years in Congress including as the leader of the House Republican Conference.

While Democrats are hammering his Tea Party ties in Congress, the 57-year-old Pence also could help Trump with critical fundraising, considering the Trump campaign has roughly $1.3 million in the bank as of the last filing, compared with Clinton, whose campaign has $42 million and a network of donors assembled through her lengthy career in politics.

Pence’s deputy chief of staff was a former spokesman for Koch Industries and his chief of staff in Congress later ran the Koch brothers’ political umbrella organization.

Still, Pence is not without some negatives, particularly his handling last year of the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The original law, which he signed, allowed residents and companies being sued by a private party to cite their religious beliefs as a defense. However, critics argued the law would allow discrimination against gays and others.

The national and widespread criticism was so damaging it forced Pence and the state legislature to revise the law to clearly prohibit businesses from denying services to customers based on their sexual preference or gender choice. And it appeared to end Pence’s 2016 presidential aspirations.

But he was considered for VP at a time when many Republicans are steering clear of the Trump campaign and national convention. The usual clamoring to be considered for running mate didn’t happen this year, in part because potential candidates were concerned about Trump’s stances and comments, particularly on immigration, women, Mexicans and Muslims.

Some supporters thought Trump had top-tier candidates in Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and first-term Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who might have helped Trump better connect with women voters.

However, both dropped out earlier this month. Corker declined after appearing with Trump at only one campaign event.

Pence, a Catholic, earned a law degree from Indiana University in 1986 and ran two unsuccessful congressional campaigns before getting elected in 2000.

While in Congress, he opposed President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy, warning it would grow the federal government. In 2006, he unveiled a “no amnesty” immigration plan that called for increased border security and other measures but it did not pass. He also pushed to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood and opposed closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Though Pence ascended the House ranks to eventually become part of the chamber’s GOP leadership, he lost a bid in 2006 to then-Ohio Rep. John Boehner to become the chamber’s GOP minority leader. Pence passed on the opportunity to run for Senate in 2010, then made trips to early-voting states Iowa and South Carolina, which fueled speculation that he would run for president, until he launched his bid for governor in May 2011.

“Pence is a through-and-through conservative,” said Caleb Burns, a Republican strategist and partner in the Washington law firm Wiley Rein, adding Pence could “energize the workhorses of the party.”

He said: “Given the options, Pence was the really the only one who delivered any amount of value to the campaign. … There was no real contingency that either Gingrich or Christie would have given you — neither geographically nor in some pocket of the party.”

Had he not been picked, Pence would have been facing Democrat John Gregg for a rematch of their 2012 gubernatorial face-off which Pence won by a narrow margin; polls this year suggested a rematch would be similarly close.

Trump didn’t meet with Pence and his wife until July 2, at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.

They appeared together at a rally in central Indiana, then at a Trump high-dollar fundraiser in Indianapolis – before Trump ultimately made his choice.

Muslim group erects billboards designed to fight terrorism, Islamophobia

A billboard on Interstate 55 by the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook urges Muslims to speak up if they see other Muslims engaging in suspicious activity. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)
A billboard on Interstate 55 by the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook urges Muslims to speak up if they see other Muslims engaging in suspicious activity. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

A suburban Chicago Muslim group hopes two giant billboards hanging over busy Chicago highways will help to fight terrorism while also combating Islamophobia.

The billboards — which read “Muslims to Muslims: See Something. Say Something. Save Innocent Lives” — went up Sunday, one over Interstate 290, the other over I-55. They were paid for by members of the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook, a community group that over the last two decades has brought an annual Pakistan Day celebration, two cricket fields and a Pakistani-flag hoisting ceremony to the southwest suburb. Two billboards with the same message had hung in other locations around Chicago earlier this summer.

 “We are trying to tell average Americans this is who we are, and we do not condone (terrorism),” said Talat Rashid, founder of the group, who also is a member of Bolingbrook’s Planning Commission and was the suburb’s 2003 Citizen of the Year. “If we see anyone in our community that is off track, we will let the authorities know.”

But some Chicago-area Muslim leaders question the approach, arguing that the billboards perpetuate hurtful misconceptions about Muslims.

Lowering the rhetoric – why activists must listen to Mayor Turner and soften their tongues

By Dr. Anthony Obi Ogbo
By Dr. Anthony Obi Ogbo

Figures still show a law enforcement structure and practice unfavorable to the African-American populace. For instance, it is evident that black people are still more heavily policed. This is to say that if a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested.  Similarly, when black people are arrested for a crime, they are convicted more often than white people arrested for the same offence; or even are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration compared to their white counterparts.

But such disturbing disparity in law enforcement remains more of a legislative challenge than an outmoded tit-for-tat business.  On December 18, 2014, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The focus was to seek knowledge from stakeholders and public involvement to identify best practices in the police process. The Task Force submitted an initial report to the President on March 2, 2015 and released the final report on May 18, 2015.

In May 2016, the Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) of the United States Department of Justice launched the Advancing 21st Century Policing Initiative, which provided operational supports to a regiment of police agencies. This project has since produced supervisory resources for various police agencies to advance best practices.

In April, 2016, Houston launched a deployment of body cameras to police officers making it the largest city to deploy such device for police activities. About 4,100 body cams was projected to be deployed to patrol officers over a 12 to 18 months period. Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner said the cameras would protect the public and the officers. He was right.

Lets lower the rethoric

These strides however do not totally eliminate numerous challenges various communities face with the law enforcement. Just recently, for example, the shooting deaths of two black men within days by police officers have again provoked a wave of such cases that have created numerous protests nationwide in recent months. A Minnesota officer fatally shot a 32-year-old man, Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb. A day earlier, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was equally shot and killed during a confrontation with two police officers outside a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, convenience store where he was selling discs of music and movies. A cellphone video of Sterling’s shooting posted online by a community activist set off heated protests.

Among thousands of reactions from prominent persons over the recent feud between the members of the law enforcement and the community in different parts of the country, a plea by Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner stood out distinctively as what might actually create a neutral ground to again resume a peaceable discourse.  At a press conference on Friday, Mayor Turner in a more conciliatory tone, appealed “Let’s lower the rhetoric and be mindful of what we post on social media. A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  There is every reason why America should listen to this Mayor.

In downright retaliation, some individuals angered by the commotion and killings had turned the triggers against police officers in what has now turned the entire country into a horrifying enclave of insanity and bereavement. A sniper attack in Dallas left five officers dead and six more injured in what is believed to be the deadliest day in the history of the Dallas Police Department.

Similar attacks have also been reported in other parts of the country. Police say officers have been targeted in Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. The Tennessee attack occurred hours before the Dallas carnage. The reasons behind the ambush attacks of the police in Georgia and Missouri are still being investigated, but most likely to be connected with the same killing of civilians in Minnesota and Louisiana.

The increasing feud between the community and members of the law enforcement, without doubt, has taken a different dimension in recent years, even as different organizations and government agencies collaborate on solutions. Discussion forums and campaigns to explore avenues for a more conducive police-community environment linger, but facilitators have often played down on the power of rhetoric in the escalating tension. Some community forums rather than advocate a rapport, have focused on the people’s rights to stand their grounds against the law enforcement. To make it worse, some activists have selfishly injected persuasive catchphrases in the social media to escalate the existing tension, while they would turn around to enjoy the publicity generated out of fear and hot emotions they instigate.

Mckesson could be seen on   news videos restfully posing for the cameras while he was held by the cops, and saying, “I’m under arrest, y'all!”    It was obvious he was enjoying his arrest and excited about the fact that he would use the video clips for his social media self-gratifying campaign.
McKesson… He  was be seen on news videos restfully posing for the cameras while he was held by the cops, and saying, “I’m under arrest, y’all!” It was obvious he was enjoying his arrest and excited about the fact that he would use the video clips for his social media self-gratifying campaign.

While community members who feel connected to these campaign catchwords are busy chanting their voices off on the streets, some activists seek other motives. For instance, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist,  DeRay Mckesson, after he generated enough fund and popularity I his street activism, turned around and announced that he would run for mayor of Baltimore, his hometown. His decision angered critics and colleagues who accused him of double standard. Others accused him of using a charitable movement to selfishly seek a political career.

It is therefore not a surprise that  Mckesson was among 100 others taken into custody Sunday in Baton Rouge, after protesters took to the streets to denounce the recent killings. Mckesson could be seen on   news videos restfully posing for the cameras while he was held by the cops, and saying, “I’m under arrest, y’all!”    It was obvious he was enjoying his arrest and excited about the fact that he would use the video clips for his social media self-gratifying campaign.

It is evident that black people are still more heavily policed. This is to say that if a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested.

The truth is that the power of harsh rhetoric has a major influence on the deteriorating relationship between the community and the police, and some people out there are really taking advantage of these blood-spattered moments to build their political careers. Language has been known to be the most ancient persuasion tool. Noted Plato, the famous Classical Greek philosopher, “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” The skillful manipulation of communal issues through bombastic slogans was big business in Elizabethan era where the power of words is invoked to deal with fundamental sociopolitical engagements. Today, the world has thoroughly changed to a diverse village where language is no longer used as a verbal ammunition, but are composed to build bridges across communities, the people, and their environment.

Respect and support for the law enforcement is not negotiable; respect means, simply, obeying the police while they are on duty, and support means providing them with necessary tools and training to effectively carry out their duties.

The role of the law enforcement in the community is evidently indispensable and could never be diminished through self-gratifying activism and street violence.  It would be hypocritical for community activists and celebrities to post incisive phrases in the social media over the behaviors of a few bad officers, then turn around to sympathize with the police after their members are taken down by the same people they protect. How does the philosophy of “No justice! No peace” fit into a non-violent remonstration category? Where there is no peace, violence automatically rules.

The current war against the law enforcement would not work, but a dialogue on creating a structure to eliminate lapses in the enforcement system remains a sensible approach. Report from the National Emergency Number Association indicates that an estimated 240 million calls are made to 9-1-1 in the U.S. each year. One cannot afford to be twitting hate words against the police on one hand and calling the 911 for help on another hand.

Respect and support for the law enforcement is not negotiable; respect means, simply, obeying the police while they are on duty, and support means providing them with necessary tools and training to effectively carry out their duties. The community activists who raise funds to instruct the community about their rights to challenge the law could as well educate them on simple ways to obey the police at traffic stops and other interrogatory circumstances. It might be right to teach a teenagers how to record police activities with smart phones, but it would also make sense to educate them on how not to wrestle or resist armed officers of the law.

As author, Thomas Sowell wrote, “Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.” Thus, those unscrupulous political activists, and social media snipers who amorally instigate or take advantage of awful bloody moments may listen to Houston’s Mayor Turner and levelheadedly lower down the rhetoric. This would clear the ground for an all-encompassing dialogue toward constructive solutions.

Dr. Anthony Obi Ogbo is the Publisher of Houston’s International Guardian, and the author of “The Influence of Leadership” You may follow International Guardian on FB by clicking >>>>

Sharpton Calls Out NRA: Why Aren’t They Defending Black Gun Rights?

Sharpton said officers must be punished for misconduct, and pushed back at the assertion of New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio that training and neighborhood policing are making a difference nearly two years after the fatal police shooting of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man.
Sharpton said officers must be punished for misconduct, and pushed back at the assertion of New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio that training and neighborhood policing are making a difference nearly two years after the fatal police shooting of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man.

The Rev. Al Sharpton reportedly challenged the National Rifle Association for not defending the gun rights of two black men killed by police last week, chiding the group for seeming to suggest “the Second Amendment is for whites only.”

In a weekly address the activist minister delivers at his headquarters in Harlem, Sharpton declared punishing police officers for misconduct is the only way to prevent incidents like last week’s fatal encounters involving Alton Sterling in Lousisana and Philando Castile in Minnesota,

“Both of them were killed by police based on ‘they had a gun,'” Sharpton said.

“Now I missed the NRA coming out and defending the gun rights they legally had. Where is the NRA? Where is [NRA president] Wayne LaPierre now? Do you have a Second Amendment right or did you not get down, Mr. Pierre, to the 14th, 15th and 16th amendments? Maybe you mean the Second Amendment is for whites only.”
“Where was the gun rights for Castile? Where were the gun rights for Sterling?” he added. “You came to fight for gun rights when gays were played in Orlando. But are you going to meet me in Baton Rouge to stand up for Alton Sterling?”

Sharpton said officers must be punished for misconduct, and pushed back at the assertion of New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio that training and neighborhood policing are making a difference nearly two years after the fatal police shooting of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man.

“When the video comes out, you say wait a minute, the issue is we need training,” Sharpton said. “No, the first issue [is] we need justice. Because once police understand that there is a penalty if you break the law, then you have a new environment to talk about training and changing the culture. But as long as a policeman feels that no matter what he or she does, they will not have to pay for it, they will not take training and they will not take the culture seriously.”

Stopped 52 times by police: Was it racial profiling?

Pro_Police
File photo: Nationally, 13 percent of black drivers were pulled over at least once in 2011, compared with 10 percent of the white drivers, according to a survey by the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

CARLA K. JOHNSON and STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When Philando Castile saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror the night he got shot, it wasn’t unusual. He had been pulled over at least 52 times in recent years in and around the Twin Cities and given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt.

He was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.

Was Castile an especially bad driver or just unlucky? Or was he targeted by officers who single out black motorists like him for such stops, as several of his family members have alleged?

The answer may never be known, but Castile’s stop for a broken tail light Wednesday ended with him fatally shot by a suburban St. Paul police officer, and Castile’s girlfriend livestreaming the chilling aftermath.

The shooting has added a new impetus to a national debate on racial profiling; a day after Castile died, a black Army veteran killed five officers in Dallas at a demonstration over Castile’s killing and another fatal police shooting, in Louisiana.

The Castile video “is pretty horrific,” said Gavin Kearney, who in 2003 co-authored a report to the Minnesota Legislature on racial profiling in the state. “There are things we don’t know about it. But we know there are certain assumptions and biases — whether explicit or implicit — about black men that affect how police officers interpret their actions. And we know white drivers are less likely to be pulled over.”

Court records dating to 2002 show Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor, averaged more than three traffic stops per year and received citations for misdemeanors or petty misdemeanors.

Many charges were dismissed, but Castile pleaded guilty to some, mostly for driving after his license was revoked and driving with no proof of insurance. However, those two charges also were the most frequently dismissed, along with failing to wear a seat belt.

The records show no convictions for more serious crimes.

No recent information is available on the racial breakdown of drivers stopped or ticketed by police in Falcon Heights, the mostly white suburb where the shooting occurred, or in other Minnesota towns. Minnesota is not among the handful of states that require police to keep such data.

But in 2001, the Legislature asked for a racial profiling study and it fell to Kearney, then at the Institute on Race & Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, to conduct it. His study, using information supplied voluntarily by 65 law enforcement jurisdictions in the state, found a strong likelihood that racial and ethnic bias played a role in traffic stop policies and practices. Overall, officers stopped minority drivers at greater rates than whites and searched them at greater rates, but found contraband in those searches at lower rates than whites.

File photo: Survey shows 68 percent of black drivers considered the stops legitimate compared with 84 percent of white drivers.
File photo: Survey shows 68 percent of black drivers considered the stops legitimate compared with 84 percent of white drivers.

The analysis found the pattern was more pronounced in suburban areas. In Fridley, New Hope, Plymouth, Sauk Rapids and Savage combined, blacks were stopped about 310 percent more often than expected.

The St. Anthony Police Department, which employs the officer who shot Castile, did not participate in the study. St. Anthony officials have not commented on Castile’s stop since shortly after the shooting.

It was not immediately clear how much money governments in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area generate from traffic violations. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation following the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, found law enforcement efforts were focused on generating revenue for that city. Most of the tickets and fines were going to blacks.

Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, a passenger in the car, said the two officers who stopped them said the vehicle had a broken tail light. She said one of the officers shot him “for no apparent reason” after he reached for his ID.

Valerie Castile said she thinks her son “was just black in the wrong place.” Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said he did not believe it would have happened to a white motorist.

The officer who shot Castile, Jeronimo Yanez, is Latino. His lawyer, Thomas Kelly, said Saturday that his client reacted to the fact that Castile had a gun, not his race, though Kelly would not discuss what led Yanez to initiate the traffic stop.

“Police understand the concerns about choices made about who gets stopped and what happens when they get stopped,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

But the statistics can’t simply be attributed to racial bias among police.

“When people call the police, they provide a description of somebody engaged in a crime. The police respond to those descriptions,” said Stephens, a former Charlotte, North Carolina, police chief. “That counts for part of the disproportionality that we see in those numbers.”

Last year, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended police departments collect and analyze demographic data on all stops, searches and seizures.

Nationally, 13 percent of black drivers were pulled over at least once in 2011, compared with 10 percent of the white drivers, according to a survey by the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The survey shows 68 percent of black drivers considered the stops legitimate compared with 84 percent of white drivers.

The precise reasons why certain motorists are pulled over more than others are difficult to identify, said Lorie Fridell, an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, who trains police departments through a program called Fair and Impartial Policing.

“Our implicit biases are most likely to impact us when we’re facing ambiguous situations,” Fridell said. “A person reaching into a pocket is ambiguous. If I, as a white, middle-aged woman, reach into my pocket most people aren’t going to experience fear. For a black male with dreadlocks, that ambiguous action would produce fear in many people.”

___

Associated Press writers Jason Keyser in Chicago and Sadie Gurman in Minneapolis and AP data journalists Meghan Hoyer in Washington and Larry Fenn in New York contributed to this report. Johnson reported from Chicago.

11 officers shot, five killed during police protest in downtown Dallas

Rough moment...Eleven police officers were shot ambush-style, including five fatally, in Dallas Thursday night by at least two snipers, amid a protest against the recent police shootings of two black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Minnesota, according to the Dallas Police.
Rough moment…Eleven police officers were shot ambush-style, including five fatally, in Dallas Thursday night by at least two snipers, amid a protest against the recent police shootings of two black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Minnesota, according to the Dallas Police.

This is believed to be the deadliest day in Dallas Police Department history

DALLAS — Five officers have been killed and at least six more injured in a hail of gunfire during a demonstration organized to protest this week’s police-involved shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, Dallas police confirm.

Police Chief David Brown said perhaps up to six snipers ambushed law enforcement, striking 10 officers and a civilian.

“Working together with rifles, (they) triangulated at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going,” Brown said.

SWAT officers corned one of the apparent shooters in a downtown parking garage for several hours until the suspect fatally shot himself about 2 a.m. local time, police said. The assailant, the chief said at an earlier news conference, had been very uncooperative.

“He has told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us — and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and in downtown,” Brown said. Bomb dogs were searching the area, but no explosions had been reported by early Friday morning.

A woman and two men are in custody and being questioned for their possible involvement in the attack, the chief said.

“We still don’t have a complete comfort level that we have all the suspects,” Brown said during a 12:30 a.m. news conference.

Nor do authorities know what motivated the attack. The chief said members of the department had met with protest organizers several times before the event. The event had been peaceful with Black Lives Matter and police on site before shots rang.

“We have yet to determine whether or not there was some complicity with the planning of this, but we will be pursuing that,” he said.

Earlier in the evening, police published on social media a photo of a gun-toting man, with the message, “This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!.” They later said the man had turned himself in, but it remained unclear early Friday if he has any connection to the rampage.

Friends and family told reporters that the man in the photo is Mark Hughes. Despite carrying an assault-style rifle during the march (which is legal in Texas), the man’s relatives were adamant that he was not involved in the shooting.

Dallas Police shield bystanders during a Black Live Matter rally in downtown Dallas on Thursday, July 7, 2016. Multiple media outlets report that shots were fired Thursday night during a Dallas protest over two recent fatal police shootings of black men.
Dallas Police shield bystanders during a Black Live Matter rally in downtown Dallas on Thursday, July 7, 2016. Multiple media outlets report that shots were fired Thursday night during a Dallas protest over two recent fatal police shootings of black men.

Bystanders reported hearing dozens of shots fired near City Hall about 9 p.m. local time. The gunfire terrified hundreds of demonstrators, sending them running for cover.

Witnesses agreed that the shooter or shooters ambushed officers from a multi-story parking garage.

“The cops had no idea who was shooting at them,” Jamal Johnson told KTVT-TV in Dallas. “Everyone knew it wasn’t a firework — it was an actual shot.”

The shooting broke out just hours after President Obama — reacting to the shootings deaths of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana this week — posted an emphatic message on Facebook calling upon all Americans to confront persistent racial disparities between law enforcement and the communities they serve.

“To admit we’ve got a serious problem in no way contradicts our respect and appreciation for the vast majority of police officers who put their lives on the line to protect us every single day,” he wrote. “It is to say that, as a nation, we can and must do better to institute the best practices that reduce the appearance or reality of racial bias in law enforcement.”

The causality count as of 3 a.m. local time:

4 — Dallas police officers deceased
1 — Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer deceased
6 — Officers wounded
1 — Civilian wounded

This is believed to be the deadliest day in Dallas Police Department history, a law enforcement source tells Yahoo News.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the White House and Texas governor’s office both called to offer support.

“It is a heartbreaking morning to lose these four officers,” a visibly shaken Rawlings said prior to the fifth fatality. “To say police officers put their life on the line every day is no hyperbole ladies and gentlemen, it’s a reality. We as a city, we as a country must come together and lock arms and heal the wounds we all feel from time to time.”

Police were requesting that all citizens clear downtown streets in the aftermath of the shooting, but pockets of citizens continued to confront officers on city streets during the wee hours of the morning. The Omni Dallas Hotel, located a few blocks from the mayhem, displayed “Back The Blue” in gigantic neon letters around its building.

Culled from Yahoo News

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