Missouri march seeks justice for black teen killed by police

n">(Reuters) - Activists protesting police treatment of black Americans concluded a 120-mile (190-km) march from Ferguson, Missouri to the Missouri governor's mansion on Friday, ending a 'journey for justice' tied to the police killing of an unarmed black teenager.
More than 100 protesters shouted "hands up, don't shoot" and other slogans as they rallied in the rotunda of the state Capitol in Jefferson City.
The demonstrators walked through a cold rain as they concluded a march that began Nov. 29 and was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in a statement Friday he had met with NAACP leaders and was "confident that together we can make meaningful change... and build a future of greater peace, opportunity and fairness for all.”
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said he would also meet with NAACP leaders later on Friday.
The civil rights group organized the march after a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for shooting to death unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
In an atmosphere at times reminiscent of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, the protesters said they encountered counter-demonstrators and hecklers along the way.
"For many, the fight has never ended," said NAACP staff member Jamiah Adams, who participated in the march.
In the small town of Rosebud, Adams said a group that included Ku Klux Klan members met the marchers with racist signs, epithets and fried chicken and watermelon, foods typically associated with racist stereotypes of black people. Someone broke a window of a bus accompanying the marchers in an incident that remains unexplained, she said.
The NAACP is calling for a number of changes, including the ouster of the Ferguson police chief, an end to racial profiling by police and the demilitarization of local police authorities.
Brown's Aug. 9 death, and the lack of charges against Wilson, have prompted expanding protests over what activists say is deeply engrained hostile treatment of African Americans by police, and an unequal justice system that refuses to hold police accountable.
In recent days, protests have spread to many major U.S. cities, after a grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict a white police officer in the New York City borough in the death of a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally selling cigarettes. Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold as officers tried to arrest him.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Mo.; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Christian Plumb)

View the original article here

Protests against police violence flare for third night in New York

By Robert MacMillan, Andrew Chung and Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK Fri Dec 5, 2014 11:58pm EST

1 of 33. A female protester, demanding justice for Eric Garner, holds a placard in Brooklyn, New York December 4, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Elizabeth Shafiroff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Protesters in New York and other cities rallied for a third night on Friday denouncing the use of deadly force by police against minorities, even as prosecutors said they would consider charges against an officer in the fatal shooting of a unarmed black man in November.

The slaying of Akai Gurley, 28, gunned down in a dimly lit stairwell in the New York borough of Brooklyn, was the latest in a string of lethal police actions feeding U.S. public outrage over what many perceive as racially based violence by law enforcement.

This week's wave of angry but largely peaceful protests began Wednesday when a New York grand jury declined to bring charges against white officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black 43-year-old father of six.

Garner, who had no weapon, was being arrested on suspicion of selling cigarettes illegally. A videotape of his confrontation with police on Staten Island in July showed Pantaleo's arm across Garner's neck as he is subdued by four officers, then Garner was pinned face down to the pavement as he repeatedly gasps, "I can't breathe" - a phrase protesters have adopted as a rallying cry.

The decision sparing Pantaleo from prosecution was announced nine days after a Missouri grand jury chose not to indict a white policeman for the shooting death in August of an unarmed black teenager in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, spurring two nights of arson and unrest there.

Then on Thursday in Phoenix, Arizona, another unarmed black man was shot dead by a white police officer during a scuffle, leading to protests in that city.

"The government has created a monster and the monster is now loose," said Soraya Soi Free, 45, a nurse from the Bronx who has been protesting in New York.

MARCHERS INVADE APPLE STORE

After two nights that saw thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets and blocking traffic in Manhattan, the turnout on Friday saw only hundreds as a cold, steady rain fell.

But in a surprising departure from previous nights, more than 100 people stormed into an Apple Store to stage a brief "die-in," sprawling on the floor as shoppers and employees watched. They left without incident after about five minutes.

Similar demonstrations were staged at Macy's flagship department store in Herald Square and at Grand Central Terminal, one of the city's two main rail stations. As they did at the Apple store, police stood by but allowed the protesters to briefly occupy both locations.

Some Manhattan retailers have curtailed their hours in response to the recent unrest, including Best Buy Co Inc and Target Corp.

Meanwhile, nearly 100 people, including local civic leaders, huddled under umbrellas near the site of Garner's death for a candlelight vigil on Staten Island.

"This is a movement, a rainbow of people," the Rev. Demetrius Carolina of the First Central Baptist Church told the racially mixed crowd.

A dwindling group of marchers who pressed on through the rain were confronted by police on Manhattan's lower East Side before midnight. Police arrested several protesters.

Among them were Chloe Dewberry, 22, who had shrugged off the chilling downpour.

"No one ever got anywhere by giving up when it got tough," she said. "I'm so enraged, I don't even notice."

Protests also unfolded in Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C., where marchers echoed demonstrators across the country, chanting "Black lives matter," and "I can't breathe."

Renee Alexander, 44, a nurse from Woodbridge, Virginia, who joined about 200 protesters in downtown Washington, expressed outrage over the video images of Garner's death.

"It's heartbreaking for me to watch, over and over on TV, how his life was cut short on the street, just like a dog,” she said. "They had no respect for him. No human being should die in the street like that - choked to death.”

NEW CASE IN BROOKLYN

Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said on Friday he will convene a grand jury to consider charges against the New York City officer who shot Gurley. Police there have said the officer, Peter Liang, may have accidentally discharged his gun.

At a news conference with Gurley's relatives on Friday, Kevin Powell, the president of the advocacy group BK Nation, called the shooting part of a "series of modern-day lynchings."

Gurley's mother, Sylvia Palmer, tearfully demanded justice.

In Cleveland on Friday, the family of a 12-year-old boy fatally shot by police filed a lawsuit against the city, a day after the federal government found the police department systematically uses excessive force.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, activists on Friday concluded a 120-mile (190 km) protest march to the Missouri governor's mansion from Ferguson, where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death in August by a policeman who initially stopped the teenager for walking in the street.

Some witnesses to the confrontation told a grand jury that Brown had raised his hands in the air before he was killed, though others contradicted that testimony.

More than 100 protesters shouted, "hands up, don't shoot" and other slogans as they rallied in the rotunda of the state capitol in Jefferson City.

Unlike the Aug. 9 slaying of Brown, Garner's encounter was captured on video. Pantaleo could still face disciplinary action from an internal police investigation, his lawyer said. Chokeholds are banned by police department regulations.

Pantaleo told the grand jury he used a proper takedown technique and denied putting pressure on Garner's neck, according to his lawyer, Stuart London. The city's medical examiner has said Garner's death was caused by compressing his neck and chest, with his asthma and obesity contributing.

Pantaleo has been accused by other blacks of violating their civil rights while he was on patrol. Court filings obtained by Reuters show that four African American men have sued Pantaleo over two separate 2012 incidents, claiming they were stopped, strip-searched and arrested without cause.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Justice Department will pursue civil rights investigations into both the Missouri shooting and the New York case, though legal experts have said federal charges for the two officers are unlikely.

(Additional reporting by Frank McGurty, Joseph Ax, Ellen Wulfhorst, Scott Malone, Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne; Writing by Steve Gorman and Joseph Ax; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Grant McCool, Ken Wills & Kim Coghill)

View the original article here

Top U.S. justice official promises probe after NYC police chokehold death

Please log on to use the internet hotspot service


Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Police conduct militarized raid on wrong home, explode bomb near 2-year-old, burning him and causing shrapnel damage

(NaturalNews) On the night of April 2, 2014, in Oxnard, California, Jose Salinas, his wife Paulina and their three young children were awakened by a commotion just outside of their condominium. When Jose pulled back the curtains of the bedroom to see what was happening, there was a police officer pointing a gun at his face.
At that point, the police broke the front windows of the Salinas residence and threw in three smoke bombs. The officers then burst through the front door, guns in hand, and shouted, "Get down and put your hands to your head!"
Jose and Paulina were handcuffed at gunpoint and shoved to their knees while two of their children, a ten-year-old girl and six-year-old boy, were pushed into a corner of the room.
When the officers began to make their way to the bedrooms, the mother and older children told them that there was a two-year-old inside one of the rooms. Ignoring them, the police advised them to cover their ears and tossed a smoke bomb into the room, where two-year-old Justin Salinas stood near the door.
The smoke bomb exploded, causing burns and shrapnel cuts to Justin's foot.
Although the "no-knock" raid on the home was apparently a complete screw-up on the part of the police -- the suspect they were looking for had moved out four months prior, before the Salinas family moved in -- the cops held them captive for four hours.
On November 17, the Salinas family filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against the Oxnard Police Department and the City of Oxnard, seeking damages for "assault, battery, trespass, false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress," according to Courthouse News Service.
A police press release from April said that the raid was part of a "multi-location search warrant operation" in which several law enforcement agencies were involved in rounding up suspected gang members.
The press release mentioned that a two-year-old had sustained minor injuries during the raid but made no mention regarding whether it was a case of mistaken identity.
But records show that one of the suspects in the case, Frank Ruiz, had previously lived in the home.
The lawsuit states:
The incident left each member of the Salinas family physically and emotionally shaken, traumatized and in constant fear for their safety. They now feel that their home is a dangerous place to live and are scared to death and rattled by any noise they hear at night.
The complaint, filed on behalf of the Salinas family by Ron Bamieh, of Ventura law firm Bamieh & Erickson, also says that Justin is now "afraid of the dark and of people in general" and that the other two children "suffer recurring nightmares, and are terrified of sleeping alone."
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Each year, police conduct some 80,000 no-knock raids throughout the country. Too often, innocent citizens are targeted by mistake, and in some cases they are being injured or even killed.
In a similar case which occurred in Georgia in May, a 19-month-old boy was severely burned when officers threw a flash-bang grenade into his bedroom during a raid. In this incident, too, the suspect was not present and no guns or drugs were found in the house.
Another case in Georgia eight years ago involved the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman in a situation where police raided the wrong home.
The over-militarization of police forces and overuse of SWAT team tactics has become a serious problem in America. And in far too many cases, innocent people have become the victims of violence and brutality on the part of the police.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.courthousenews.com
http://www.wnd.com
comments powered by Disqus
View the original article here

Kabul police chief quits after South African family die in Taliban attack

By Kay Johnson and Jessica Donati
KABUL Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:43am EST

1 of 2. Smoke and fire rise from a foreign aid workers' guest house after a Taliban attack in Kabul November 29, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani
KABUL (Reuters) - The Kabul police chief resigned on Sunday after Taliban gunmen killed three members of a South African family in the capital, while officials said Afghan forces had ousted insurgents trying to seize former U.S. and British base Camp Bastion in the south.
Taliban fighters breached the perimeter of Camp Bastion in the southern Afghan province of Helmand three days ago, just one month after the base was handed over to the Afghan army.
The latest Taliban attacks have dented confidence in the country's security force and added to concern the police and army will struggle to hold strategic territory after most foreign troops pull out at the end of 2014.
The guest house attacked by the Taliban in Kabul on Saturday, the third attack on a foreign guest house in 10 days, was home to staff of the U.S.-based charity Partnership in Academics and Development (PAD).
PAD said on its website that three people were killed by insurgents who used guns and explosives. They were identified as members of the same South African family - a father and his two teenage children - by a colleague of the mother, who was not in the compound at the time.
The family had lived in Afghanistan for nearly 12 years, with the father running the charity and the mother working as a doctor at a Kabul clinic, the colleague said.
The Taliban said on Saturday they had attacked the foreign guesthouse because they believed it to be a Christian center. This was the second time this year the Taliban targeted a group that it said had links to Christianity.
The 17-year-old son had been applying to universities in the United States, while his sister was 14, according to their mother's colleague, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.
Kabul's police spokesman declined to comment on the reason for the chief's resignation.
"We can only confirm... he will not continue his job as police chief anymore," Hashmat Stanekzai said.
PAD, which supports education in Afghanistan, could not be reached immediately for comment.
Violence across Afghanistan has surged this year as the Taliban and their allies have stepped up their activities ahead of the scheduled withdrawal of most international troops by the end of next month.
Over the past 10 days, three compounds used by foreign organizations have been hit by armed attackers. In separate attacks in Kabul, two American soldiers, two British embassy workers and dozens of Afghan civilians have died.
In Helmand province, Afghan soldiers ousted a group of Taliban from Camp Bastion after a third day of fighting. At least five soldiers were killed in the battle that started late on Thursday.
By Sunday, troops were clearing the part of the sprawling base that had been seized by a few dozen insurgents, according to the governor's spokesman, Omar Zwak.
Violence in another part of Helmand added to the weekend toll, Zwak said, with 12 soldiers dying in Sangin district after their smaller outpost was attacked.
(This story has been refiled to fix layout of third paragraph, no change to text)
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Richard Borsuk and Raissa Kasolowsky)

View the original article here

Hong Kong protesters clash with police near heart of financial district

HONG KONG Sun Nov 30, 2014 9:41am EST

1 of 3. Police use pepper spray during clashes with pro-democracy protesters close to the chief executive office in Hong Kong, November 30, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Tyrone Siu
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hundreds of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists scuffled with police on Sunday as they tried to encircle government headquarters, defying orders for protesters to retreat after more than two months of demonstrations.
With the crowds chanting "surround government headquarters" and "open the road", hundreds of people made their way to the buildings in Admiralty, next to the city's central business district and some of the world's most expensive real estate.
Police used pepper spray to disperse the protesters, dragging two to the ground before arresting and cuffing them with plastic ties and taking them away. Scores of demonstrators held up umbrellas, which have become a symbol of the pro-democracy movement, to protect themselves from pepper spray.
The scuffles came after two student groups, who have led the two-month long civil disobedience campaign, urged supporters to escalate their actions at the main protest site in the city's government neighborhood of Admiralty.
Protesters are demanding free elections for the city's next leader in 2017, not the vote between pre-screened candidates that Beijing has said it will allow.
The flare-up comes after four nights of clashes in the gritty, working class district of Mong Kok, across the harbor from Admiralty, after police on Wednesday cleared that area -- one of the city's largest and most volatile protest sites.
The latest clashes underscore the obstacles authorities face as a restive younger generation challenges Beijing's grip on the financial hub and demands for greater democracy.
Twenty-eight people were arrested in the unrest on Friday night and early Saturday in Mong Kok, which is packed with shops, street stalls, jewelry shops and restaurants.
The democracy movement represents one of the biggest threats for China's Communist Party leadership since its bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy student protests in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The Hong Kong rallies drew more than 100,000 on to the streets at their peak. Numbers have since dwindled to a few hundred and public support for the movement has waned.
(Reporting by Clare Baldwin, James Pomfret and Diana Chan, Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Crispian Balmer)

View the original article here

Ferguson police officer who killed black teen resigns from force

By Daniel Wallis and Edward McAllister
FERGUSON, Mo. Sat Nov 29, 2014 11:01pm EST

Officer Darren Wilson is pictured in this undated handout evidence photo from the August 9 Ferguson Police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, released by the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office on November 24, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office/Handout via Reuters
FERGUSON, Mo. (Reuters) - The white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb has resigned, his lawyer said on Saturday, as activists set out on a 120-mile (193-km) march to protest the killing and a grand jury's decision not to indict him.
The resignation of Darren Wilson from the Ferguson, Missouri, police force comes nearly four months after he killed 18-year-old Michael Brown and days after the announcement that he would not face criminal charges.
The incident, which has led to months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, has reignited a debate over race relations and the use of police force in the United States.
Neil Bruntrager, an attorney for Wilson, confirmed that the officer had submitted his resignation, a move that was long anticipated, no matter the outcome of the grand jury's deliberations.
"In terms of his safety, it is probably the best thing for him," said Cynthia Burnes, 26, a nurse's assistant from St. Louis who was among about 50 people gathered in front of the Ferguson police headquarters on Saturday evening. "He is black-listed from this moment on."
A man was arrested at the scene after he knelt in the middle of the street with his hands raised, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot," a common refrain at Ferguson protests.
In a letter published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Wilson said he had been told that "my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow."
Wilson, who said he was acting in self-defense when he shot Brown, said he wanted to wait until after the grand jury's decision before he made his decision to resign, according to the letter.
After a night of arson and looting in Ferguson following the decision, demonstrations this week spread to other major U.S. cities, with some of the protests targeting shopping malls on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, as the holiday shopping season got under way.
On Saturday, activists shifted gears by setting off on a seven-day march from Ferguson to Jefferson City, the state capital. The march, reminiscent of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The NAACP is calling for a reform of police practices, a new police chief in Ferguson and a national law to prevent racial profiling by police.
More than 150 people set out on the "Journey for Justice" from the Canfield Green Apartments, near the spot where Brown was shot and killed, with some marchers singing the decades-old protest song "We Shall Overcome."
Sandra Henry, 53, a registered nurse from St. Louis, said she was marching to press for reform of police practices.
"This isn't just about St. Louis. We are speaking for other cities, other countries too," Henry said.
All told, about 100 marchers were expected to make the entire journey, with about 1,000 expected to be part of the final leg of the march, said NAACP staff member Jamiah Adams.
By nightfall, a dozen people had gathered at the Ferguson police station, the scene of some of this week's worst riots. No police officers were standing out front but a small crew of national guard lingered in the back.
The shooting and its aftermath are taking a toll on the state's finances. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has called for the state assembly to convene for a special session to approve more funds for the Missouri Highway Patrol and the National Guard after months of protests over Brown's death.
In New York, activists rallied in Harlem on Saturday to draw parallels between Brown's death and what they see as other cases of unjustified police violence.
(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Clelia Oziel, Dan Grebler, Gunna Dickson and Clarence Fernandez)

View the original article here