The city of Minneapolis did not deviate from the script in the matter of the killing of Jamar Clark. In what has become a morbid ritual, each player in the sick, murderous drama clung to their predestined role and did all the predictable things that we have come to expect. The police shoot to kill an unarmed black man within 61 seconds of arriving on the scene; the District Attorney saw no evil and thus there were no charges; the Police Union dutifully recited the get-out-of-prison averment, “the cops feared for their lives;” and the mayor uttered bullshit platitudes.
“My heart breaks for the loss of Jamar Clark’s life, and for the pain felt by everyone involved in this incident. There is a tear that has ripped through our community, one we cannot sew back up.
“The pain felt by everyone...” Really? Who is included in this “everyone”?
Jamar Clark was no angel. Fine, God-fearing zealots who are blessed with the special gift of identifying celestial beings took to the comments sections of the news reports to make sure that we know that Clark was no angel. It is of the utmost importance that we are all aware of the fact that Clark had a criminal record; because if one knows that another human being has failed the heavenly test, then one would understand why it is perfectly okay that they be shot down like dogs in the streets.
What exactly happened to Jamar?
Jamar got into a physical altercation with his girlfriend. Responsible people called 911. The paramedics responded and attended to Clark’s girlfriend. Aggressive, over-hyped police arrive on the scene and in typical fashion slams the young man to the ground and handcuffs him. Witnesses say that Jamar was handcuffed, the police say he wasn’t. Common sense tells us that the man must have been handcuffed because isn’t that why they had to slam him to the ground? The police claimed that Jamar, surrounded by cops, reached for an officer’s gun, at which time the cops became afraid for their lives and the only possible recourse when the cops are in fear for their lives is to shoot to kill.
The cops’ tall tale:
They slammed Jamar to the ground but they didn’t handcuff him
Were they attempting to handcuff him when he “grabbed for the gun”?
Jamar reached for the gun but he didn’t get it
They feared for their lives when he reached for the gun
They had to shoot to stop him from getting the gun out of their hands.
"He just says, 'he's got my gun,' and it was just a screaming, I've never heard Mark ever scream like this before. It was one of the most frightening things I think I've ever heard," Schwarze said, according to the transcript of his interview with the BCA. "I then grabbed my gun and unholstered it. I pointed it at this person's head and I made contact with the tip of my gun, the barrel, the end of the slide, and I was touching the left corner of this person's mouth. And I said, 'Let it go or I'm gonna shoot you.'"
Ringgenberg told investigators, "And then the guy said, 'I'm ready to die.' And that was the worst feeling ever because... my heart just sank right there... I thought I was gonna die at that point... I had no control over my gun."
Then, Schwarze fired a single gunshot to the head.
Jamar Clark lay mortally wounded within 61 seconds of Officers Ringgenberg and Schwarze arriving on the scene to see to a domestic dispute.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.President of the NAACP, Nekima Levy-Pounds, breaks down in tears at the press conference
"Jamar Clark's case did not happen in a vacuum," said Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis NAACP. "It happened in a climate in which police officers are never held accountable when they kill people in the state of Minnesota."
Levy-Pounds said they were anticipating this decision, "when instead we should have confidence that there are checks and balances in our system and that there will be some semblance of justice when unarmed people get killed."
"We will continue to fight for what is right and we know that the struggle is not over," she said later. "This is just the beginning. Justice was not served."
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Minneapolis is 62% white. Every person killed by Minneapolis police over the past several years has been black or Latino. #JamarClark
#Justice for Jamar. The struggle for better policing continues. Please join our fight to get our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act on the ballot in California. Please join us in our fight to get our act enacted into law nationwide. Lives are at stake.
We are rapidly approaching the signature collection phase of our campaign to get the Over-Policed Rights Act on the California ballot. We will be needing your help.
This is a screengrab of the Summary and Title of the Ballot Initiative sent to us by the California Department of Justice:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act as seen through the eyes of the California Justice Dept
We await word from the Secretary of State who will be sending us a schedule with the maximum filing deadline and the certification deadline.
More awesome news! Our law has been submitted as a Resolution to the NAACP. That august body will now discuss and then vote on whether to adopt The Michael Brown Over-Police Rights Act (MBOPRA) at the Legislative Session of the NAACP’s Annual Convention.
The number of people killed since January 1, 2016 now stands at 261. Among those killed this week was 27-year-old Loreal Tsingine.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Loreal Juana Barnell-Tsingine. Officer claims she was armed with a pair of scissors.
A Winslow police officer responded to a convenience store Sunday on a report of shoplifting and found Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old woman who fit the description of the suspect, said Winslow police Lt. Jim Sepi. Tsingine struggled with the officer and threatened with scissors as the officer tried to take her into custody, authorities said.
The officer responded by shooting Tsingine five times on a sidewalk a couple of blocks from the store, said Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Raul Garcia.
Armed with a pair of scissors, maybe having mental challenges, and she ends up dead at the hands of police. Five shots fired into the body of this one woman. Why???!!!
John Waters, the famous Baltimore director, endorsed prominent activist DeRay Mckesson's run for mayor Tuesday afternoon.
In a video released by Mckesson's campaign, Waters says the frontrunners in the crowded face for mayor don't offer real change.
"I realize many candidates wouldn't want my endorsement," Waters says in the video. "Sure, the two frontrunners in election polls would do a good job if they won, but would anything really change? ... Why not let somebody younger and more radical than I am have a crack at it?"
Criminal justice reform groups hailed the unseating of two prosecutors who had bungled major police shooting cases as an important win. “This could be a sea change and might mean that prosecutors might become more accountable to the public,” Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University law professor specializing in criminal law, said via email. “This is largely attributable to Black Lives Matter and the attention paid to prosecutorial decisions about how to proceed.”
Alvarez and McGinty’s defeats were certainly notable. On average, incumbent prosecutors win re-election 95 percent of the time (in districts with more than 100,000 voters, like Cook and Cuyahoga counties, the rate dips to 90 percent). They win re-election slightly more often than state lawmakers, according to a study from Ohio State University’s law school. Between 55 and 80 percent of the time, prosecutors run for re-election unopposed.
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About Support the Dream Defenders
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1. We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
You can receive all future diaries of Support the Dream Defenders in your Daily Kos Stream by clicking here. Then click "Follow," which will make all STDD diaries appear in "My Stream" of your Daily Kos page.
This is a community diary. Please Join us.
You are also welcome to join us on The Porch over at the Black Kos Community group on Friday afternoons at 4 p.m. ET."
