True Left

AP: Trooper kicked, dragged Black man who died in custody

A Louisiana State Police trooper has been suspended without pay for kicking and dragging a handcuffed Black man whose in-custody death remains unexplained and the subject of a federal civil rights ...

Yahoo News · yahoo.com

A Louisiana State Police trooper has been suspended without pay for kicking and dragging a handcuffed Black man whose in-custody death remains unexplained and the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.

Body camera footage shows Master Trooper Kory York dragging Ronald Greene “on his stomach by the leg shackles”
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The video shows troopers choking and beating the man, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns and dragging him face-down across the pavement, the attorney told AP.
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York, who turned his own body camera off on his way to the scene, is seen on other body-cam footage yanking Greene's shackles and repeatedly using profanity toward Greene before he died in custody.

“You're gonna lay on your f(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) belly like I told you!” the trooper says at one point, according to the police records.
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The AP last year published a 27-second audio clip from Hollingsworth’s body camera in which he can be heard telling a colleague, “I beat the ever-living f--- out of" Greene before he “all of a sudden he just went limp.”

“It is now undisputed that Trooper York participated in the brutal assault that took Ronald Greene’s life,” said Mark Maguire, a Philadelphia civil rights attorney who represents Greene's family.

Johnny Damon's arrest video shows the treatment of citizens by police is very much a Black-or-white issue

Damon and his wife were combative while blatantly ignoring directives, but police remained respectful.

Yahoo Sports · us.yahoo.com

Johnny Damon's arrest video shows the treatment of citizens by police is very much a Black-or-white issue
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watch the video of former MLB outfielder Johnny Damon and his wife, Michelle, during a February traffic stop in Florida. They are combative, ignore officers' commands, and at one point Damon pushes one of the officer's hands away from his wife.

Never at any point are the Damons mistreated.
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But there have been countless times I've been on social media and seen people say that Black citizens, even children, wouldn't have been killed or choked or slammed to the ground by police "if they'd just complied" with officers' commands.

So why were the Damons treated properly? They were combative. They blatantly ignored repeated directives, particularly Michelle Mangan-Damon.

And yet.

Hawaiian Police Chief's Racism Exposed After Investigation Over Discrimination

The police chief in the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i has a history of racist and discriminatory acts, a recent discrimination investigation has revealed. The Kaua'i Police Commission invest...

Yahoo News · yahoo.com

The police chief in the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i has a history of racist and discriminatory acts, a recent discrimination investigation has revealed. The Kaua'i Police Commission investigation found that Kaua'i Police Department Chief Todd Raybuck violated anti-discrimination policies for several questionable actions including “squinting of the eyes and bowing of the head up and down” and mimicking a Japanese accent while telling stories, reports the Garden Island. The findings, written by commission Chair Catherine Adams on Feb. 26, also noted that Raybuck created a hostile work environment for an officer based on race.

1-year-old 'fighting for his life' after being shot in the head by Houston police, attorneys say

A 1-year-old is "fighting for his life" after being shot in the head by Houston police earlier this month, according to the baby's mother and lawyers.

Yahoo News · yahoo.com

1-year-old 'fighting for his life' after being shot in the head by Houston police, attorneys say
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Daisha Smalls was pumping gas on March 3 when she saw police cars and sirens, she said at a news conference on Tuesday. Smalls said she was sitting inside the vehicle when a man approached and told her to get out of the car. Her son, Legend, was in the backseat.

"I wouldn't give him my car because I let him know that I have a child in my car and that I would not leave my car without my son," Smalls said, describing that the man then sat on her lap and tried to hijack the vehicle.

The police then shot into her car, killing the suspect on top of her and injuring Legend Smalls when a bullet entered his head, Small's attorney, Ben Crump said.
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Crump's co-counsel, Antonio Romanucci, said they are still investigating but that "you can anticipate a lawsuit being filed shortly" because of a violation of the Houston police's mission statement.
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"Why would they shoot knowing she was in the car? Not knowing who else was in the car. There could have been children, there could've been others in the car, but they shot," Crump said. "Regrettably and tragically, little Legend will live the rest of his life with the consequences of their decision to shoot into his mama's car even though they knew she was in there."

Watch Whiteness Work: A White Man Kills 6 Asian Women, and a White Cop Says He 'Had a Bad Day'
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Just hours after 21-year-old Robert Long drove across Atlanta, stopping at Asian-owned spas and systematically killing the women of Asian descent in them (along with two white victims, a man and a woman), Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office gave a press conference Wednesday, during which you might have thought he was Long’s defense attorney.

“He understood the gravity of it,” Baker said, describing the mass killer’s feelings. “He was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”

Excuse me while I try not to vomit out my disgust, outrage and disbelief at this heinous statement from a law enforcement officer the morning after several people lost their lives at the hands of a maniac who, unsurprisingly, managed to be taken into police custody unscathed.

It’s almost a cliche, at this point, to say that it’s impossible to imagine any police officer in this country giving a similarly empathetic description of a non-white man suspected of mass murder. Black men, women and children, have been beaten, pepper-sprayed, choked, shot with ketamine and with multiple bullets while experiencing mental health episodes, walking home from convenience stores and for holding everything from sandwiches to cellphones.

Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. are already living in fear amidst an upsurge in hate crimes that has continued since the coronavirus reached our shores, when the former president quickly launched his racist habit of tying the deadly disease to China, which more racists have followed by casting the blame for the pandemic on random Asian people.

The family and loved ones of all those killed by Long in Atlanta last night are undoubtedly in deep mourning.

But apparently Capt. Baker couldn’t help himself from telling the country the that the victims’ alleged killer was just “having a really bad day,” when he reportedly chose to hunt them down and shoot them.

It’s deeply disturbing whenever we are reminded how far into the realms of inhumane, unbelievable behavior that defenders of whiteness will go to diminish, explain away and understate that very heinous behavior.

What hope do we have for this sickness of white supremacist violence to end if, in a tragedy where women of color were obviously targeted, the people in charge of criminally investigating it are publicly empathizing with the assassin in the IMMEDIATE aftermath?

Indeed, Capt. Baker made sure to publicly pass on the suspect’s word that his actions were “not racially motivated,” but that the women he killed were a “temptation he wanted to eliminate.”

(I should point out here that Baker actually chose to refer to the places the women worked in as being what the killer wanted to eliminate, again providing cover for the white shooter who in actuality specifically “eliminated” HUMAN BEINGS.)

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department has issued a statement that continues to promote the shooter’s own victim-blaming narrative, i.e. that his actions were not racially motivated but in fact are the fault of the massage parlors where he chose to focus his so-called addiction to sex on.
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“I’m not a racist, but...I did target and murder Asian women because I hate them for the way they make me feel,” like truly, is some astonishing percentage of this country just gleefully willing to believe that no one is racist unless he volunteers to wear the label?

Georgia sheriff's spokesman appeared to promote racist shirt

A Facebook page appearing to belong to a Georgia sheriff’s office spokesman who is helping to investigate the recent massage parlor slayings promoted a T-shirt with racist language about China an...

Yahoo News · us.yahoo.com

ATLANTA (AP) — A Facebook page appearing to belong to a Georgia sheriff’s office spokesman who is helping to investigate the recent massage parlor slayings promoted a T-shirt with racist language about China and the coronavirus last year.

“Place your order while they last,” the March 2020 Facebook post said, along with a smiley face emoji.

The Facebook account, belonging to a “Jay Baker,” features numerous photos of Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker going back months, including one in which he is in uniform outside the sheriff's office. The account was deleted Wednesday night.

The discovery of the Facebook post comes amid concerns from some Asian Americans that authorities are not treating the killings, which mainly targeted women of Asian descent, as hate crimes.

Baker also came under criticism for saying Wednesday that the 21-year-old man accused of carrying out the massacres had had a “bad day.”

"Sexpat" Cenk probably secretly agrees with the cop tbh.