Black Teen Smacked In The Face Over A Jaywalking Ticket By White Cop - Was It Justified?

A 17 year-old female was tagged by a Seattle cop who was simply attempting to cite the teen and her 19-year-old cousin for jaywalking. When the girls resisted, watch the video and then decide who was in the wrong.



Thoughts???

Are Negroes in Oakland Overeacting Or Does A Post-Obama America Still Have Issues With Black Men???

Another Black Male Doesn't Live To See Barack Make History

Oscar Grant, 22, was killed New Years Day at a crowded train station in a shooting at a subway in California's Bay Area. And the protests erupted immediately after the young brother was laid to rest in Oakland on Wednesday night. This is deja vu folks, and it's getting really old.

The Oakland Police Department made 105 arrests, including a mass arrest of about 80 people for CNN is reporting are charges ranging from rioting, vandalism to assaults on a police officers and unlawful assembly.

Some protesters lay on their stomachs, saying they were showing solidarity with Grant, who was shot in the back as he was face-down on the floor at a train station. Watch angry protesters in Oakland »

It didn't help that Officer Johannes Mehserle, who is implicated in the shooting, had turned in his resignation and has refused to talk with investigators.

Attorney Christopher Miller released a statement confirming his client's resignation, effective Wednesday. "Officer Mehserle's resignation should allow BART to get back to the business of managing regional transportation and allow the Alameda County district attorney to take primary responsibility for reviewing this matter," the statement said.

Oakland police tried to keep protesters at bay Wednesday night as they smashed car windshields and storefront windows. KTVU footage shows one protester jumping up and down on a police car hood, while another demonstrator pushes a flaming Dumpster up against it.

"We live a life of fear, and we want them to be afraid tonight," an unnamed female protester said. iReport.com: BART protests turn violent

While protests began peacefully with about 500 people gathering at the Fruitvale station where the shooting occurred, soon, a group of about 150 protesters surrounded a police officer. That's when, "the decision was made to use chemical agents to protect that police officer."

The crowd finally dispersed about 11 p.m. after police hemmed in a crowd of rowdy protesters at the downtown intersection of 20th Street and Broadway. There, police cuffed 80 protesters, Thomason said.

David Chai, chief of staff for Oakland African American Mayor Ron Dellums, said Dellums was "out and about" in the streets Wednesday, urging protesters to exercise their frustration productively. Dellums also announced that the Oakland Police Department was conducting its own investigation into the matter.

He said Oakland residents also were "rightfully" frustrated that the investigation has gone on for a week with little development.

The Grant family attorney, John Burris, is pushing Orloff to press criminal charges against Mehserle. Burris has also filed a $25 million claim with BART, alleging wrongful death.

"Without so much as flinching the Officer Mehserle stood over Grant and mercilessly fired his weapon, mortally wounding Mr. Grant with a single gunshot wound to the back," the claim alleges.

BART has until late February to respond.

Burris said that the young men had been celebrating the new year at a popular waterfront tourist spot, The Embarcadero. They were heading home when police pulled them from the train car about 2 a.m.

Witness videos show Grant and two other men sitting against a wall in the Fruitvale station after being pulled off the train. BART reported that they had received a report of an altercation on the train.

Police are seen putting Grant face-down on the ground. Grant appears to struggle. One of the officers kneels on Grant as another officer stands, tugs at his gun, unholsters it and fires a shot into Grant's back.

There have been unconfirmed reports that Mehserle may have mistook his gun for a Taser, but Burris is not swayed. "My view is, this is criminal conduct, period," he said.

Looks like it time the Afrosphere got to work to find out what's really going on here!

Source

With Brothers Dropping Like Flies, Is The Price of Policing Black Neighborhoods Too High?

FEELING LUCKY, PUNK?

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

When I moved to Inglewood, California in 2001, I was moving back after a long time away. I grew up just outside the city limits before my family moved into town when I was 15. It was homey and comfortable back then, with roomy houses, lots of backyards to go around and annual Christmas decorating competitions—middle-class and then some.

But there was simultaneously a sense of encroaching danger, a wariness of other, rougher elements that gave Inglewood a dubious reputation that dogs so many black communities...

When I moved back as a homeowner seven years ago, I found myself mulling over not the fond memories but those dubious elements--was moving back a move up? I was hardly proud of those thoughts, but there they were.

In the meantime, I relaxed into a real community life I hadn’t felt in ages. I talked to people across hedges and picket fences. I walked my dogs at night. I joined the block club that met monthly and planned summer parties and fundraisers. But over time I noticed a kind of stoic refusal to address the less idyllic happenings in town that had always been part of Inglewood’s profile, namely gang activity and shootings.

If the police were involved in the controversial shooting of a citizen—as has been happening frequently over the last year, most recently with the shootings of teenager Michael Byoune in May and postal worker Kevin Wicks last month—people had even less to say.

(Postal Worker Kevin Wicks)

The almost determined indifference to the deaths of mostly young black men was disturbing; at one meeting last year, a neighbor reported the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy in the area like he was reading a routine item from the city hall newsletter.

At meetings like this, I fumed—how could we claim to be about neighborhood improvement and safety but ignore the implications of such shootings? Yet I said nothing. The unfortunate truth is, I understood. We were—are-- grappling with a serious identity crisis that’s rooted in both class and race. Inglewood’s block-club denizens are middle-class strivers who applaud the chain stores and eateries that have appeared over the last several years--Marshalls, Ross, Starbucks, Chili’s.

They see all this as civic progress and want to protect it from the thugs and troublemakers. But the strivers and the so-called troublemakers are black. This means when a shooting death happens, black people have to choose who they are and which side they’re on. With a police shooting, whatever its merits, the stakes are higher: they have to decide whether they empathize more with the cause of social justice or material justice, whether the death of another young black man is simply part of the price to be paid for the material justice and well-being that for black folk has been too long in coming.

Of course, the choice between caring about property values and caring about the welfare of the entire community is eminently false. But that’s gotten lost in all the public concern about stamping out gangs has reached a fever pitch this past year in Los Angeles; “possible gang member” has become an almost generic description for black and brown males under the age of 30 who are apprehended by the police.

But the media-driven divide between black suspects and the rest of us—that is, between bad black folk and good—is mostly an illusion. Inglewood is a town that is not so big and the class gap not so wide that people don’t know each other.

Shooting victims live next door to solid citizens; they are somebody’s son or nephew or godchild. I’ve noticed with growing unease that Inglewood police has gotten an extra layer of law enforcement from the California Highway Patrol: On my dog walks I’ve seen more people getting pulled over, spread-eagled or handcuffed than I have in a long time. They are almost always young, black and male.

Recently I overheard a man on my block sternly warn my 14-year-old neighbor, John, to stay away from the streets and to keep his head down. He told John that trouble awaited young black men like him if he wasn’t careful. I wondered: Did he mean trouble from the police or from other young black men not as upstanding as John? Both. And this very upstanding neighbor of mine made it clear that he was speaking from experience.

I appreciated the guy caring enough to speak up and school a young boy, something black people agree we need more of. But the speaking up and coming together can’t stop at the end of anybody’s particular block. If it does, we’re all as imperiled in Inglewood, and in other black neighborhoods across the country, as John surely is now.

Former LA Weekly staff writer and weekly LA Times Columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan is currently a freelance writer and contributing editor to the Times' Opinion section.

NYC Cop Body Checks Bicyclist, See Amazing Video Here

Everyone needs a little time off from work and this New York City Police Officer is no exception. Everyone's talking about it so here it is...


The cop is Patrick Pogan, a 22-year-old rookie cop, former football offensive lineman and son of a retired NYPD detective. The guy on the bike...

is 29-year-old Christopher Long of Bloomfield, New Jersey. The cop claims that Long the bicyclist, was dangerously making cars change their direction. He then claims Long came at him with the bike, so defending himself, he knocked Long to the ground. Though this video contradicts Officer Pogan, I do believe the New York Football Giants could definitely use his skills in their attempt at another Super Bowl Championship.