Don't Believe the Hype Its a Sequel: After Four (4) Year Delay, One (1) Cop Out of a Gang of White Cops who Murdered Eric Garner in Broad Daylight Will Face a Non-Public, Administrative “Trial"

DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH WAITING FOR RANDOM JUSTICE IN A SYSTEM OF INJUSTICE, “the by-product of authority and its enforcement through legal fictions.”

From [HERE] and [HERE] More than Four years after Eric Garner was fatally smothered and choked to death by a gang of white cops on a street corner in Staten Island in front of numerous witnesses and cameras in broad daylight, the NYPD says it now plans to move forward with internal disciplinary proceedings against one of the officers involved.

The NYPD officer facing departmental charges in the 2014 death of Eric Garner had a preliminary hearing at police headquarters Thursday. 

The judge rejected demands from Daniel Pantaleo's lawyer to delay the officer's department trial in the death of Eric Garner until July, when time runs out for federal prosecutors to file civil rights charges against him.

The white cop and his attorney have said previously they believe Trump’s Justice Department will not file any criminal charges. Stuart London, the attorney representing Pantaleo on behalf of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said "I discussed the election results with him and he is cautiously optimistic. I am cautiously optimistic that, under the new administration, that the recommendations of the Eastern District that there is no civil rights case would be accepted by Justice, and that Pantaleo can then move forward with his life," London said.

The NYPD internal administrative trial will start May 13 and could take about two weeks, the judge said.

Pantaleo is expected to be prosecuted by the Administrative Prosecution Unit of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which will ultimately make a recommendation to Police Commissioner James O'Neill. The internal NYPD hearing is not a criminal trial, and thus could not result in criminal charges being brought against Pantaleo. If found liable, the 33-year-old Pantaleo could face penalties ranging from the loss of vacation days to firing from the department.  That is, at worst, he could end up losing his job—though even then, it's unlikely that the public would be made aware of the arguments and evidence presented during the hearing, according to Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in police accountability and criminal law. [MORE]

In a white over Black police state you can be lawfully executed by white cop anytime and anyplace. 4 years since the murder of eric Garner, the only person punished has been Ramsey Orta, the Latino man who filmed the episode. He also revealed that the entire grand jury was white. [MORE]

Meanwhile, according to police reform experts and advocates, the city's announcement that it is moving forward with a trial amounts to little more than political theater, and does nothing to clear up the question of why the city continues to employ Officer Daniel Pantaleo and the other officers involved in the incident.

Daniel Pantaleo, who was seen on video administering an illegal chokehold on Garner, remains employed by the NYPD. An all white grand jury put together by white prosecutors, declined to indict him in 2014. Two years later, the Civilian Complaint Review Board determined he should face department charges for the use of the chokehold—though no further action was taken. He's been on desk duty since Garner's death, and reportedly received a $20,000 raise in 2016, bringing his annual salary to $119,996.

Pantaleo also has a lengthy history of misconduct, and had seven pending complaints against him at the time of the fatal arrest, according to documents leaked by a city employee.

"There is no reason that the NYPD could not have moved sooner to hold the officers involved in the killing of Eric Garner accountable," said Johanna Miller, advocacy director at NYCLU. "Not doing so, for years now, has given the appearance of complete impunity at the NYPD, which, given its size and influence, has a ripple effect to police departments across the country. The public deserves to see swift, transparent, and definitive investigations and actions by the police department when officers kill civilians."

Contrary to White Propaganda Promoting Racism & Statism, the US Murder & Crime Rates Continue to Decline [most violent crimes by number & percentage of population are White-on-White crime]

On a daily basis media promoteS statism & WHITE PROPAGANDA, which FUNKTIONARY DEFINES as,

WHITE PROPAGANDA - “A GAME TWO CAN PLAY—WHICH CONSISTS SIMPLY IN REPEATING '"I AM BETTER THAN YOU" AND "YOU ARE UTTERLY UNLIKE (OPPOSITE TO) ME" OVER AND OVER AGAIN; DESPITE THE HISTORICAL RECORD TO THE CONTRARY -

Black-on-Black Crime - a psycho-political euphemism, unwittingly used and abused by African-Americans and deliberately by Caucasians, describing demographic criminal activity in general, as people commit violent crimes on people who live in closest proximity to them, and the violence mostly occurs by those and to those who are held hostage under chronic and cyclical economically disadvantaged circumstances and environments. Do you ever hear of the slogan "White-on-White" crime? Most violent crimes (by number and by percentage of population) take place by Caucasians against Caucasians. Where's the associated terminology? (See Gangbanking & Racism." [MORE]

According to a NY Times study, “The murder rate in the United States in 2018 is on track for the largest one-year drop in five years.

The numbers obviously aren’t final, and the F.B.I. won’t formally report 2018’s murder figures until September 2019.

But based on a comparison of 2017 data and 2018 data for 66 large American cities (population over 250,000), we can observe the trend as it is occurring and offer a reasonable forecast. (The 2018 data I’ve collected is available here).

Murder rose 23 percent nationally between 2014 and 2016 before leveling off in 2017. Major increases in murder in Chicago and Baltimore received much of the national attention, but the increase occurred throughout the country.

In the cities in which data is available, murder has been down about 7 percent on average this year relative to the same point in 2017.

Estimating national trends from a sample of cities can be tricky because big cities tend to overstate national trends. If murder is up substantially in big cities, you can typically expect that the national murder rate is also up, but a little less so. And if murder is substantially down in big cities, you can usually expect a smaller drop nationally.

The Brennan Center in 2017, for example, found a 4.4 percent decline in 29 large cities for which data was available. Yet the F.B.I.’s national murder count was essentially unchanged in 2017 relative to 2016. (It was officially down 0.7 percent, but that was because the F.B.I. revised 2016’s murder total upward, to 17,284 from 17,250.)

The sample of cities we’re using in this article accurately predicted the movement of the national murder change every year but 2002, when murder was down 1.4 percent in the big cities but up 1.1 percent nationally. On average, the sample of cities overstated the national trend by 2.4 percentage points.

If these big cities end the year down about 7 percent from 2017, and if big cities tend to overstate the national trend by about 2.4 percentage points on average, murder should be down by around 4 percent to 5 percent nationally this year.

So far this year, murder in Chicago is down 17 percent in 2018 relative to 2017, accounting for about a third of the drop in the sample. Murder is also down substantially in cities like Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Louisville, Ky.; and Memphis, which all experienced large rises in murder from 2014 to 2016/2017.

The murder rate in Las Vegas is roughly even this year, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, although this does not count the mass shooting outside Mandalay Bay in 2017 that left nearly 60 people dead. Including those numbers — as the F.B.I. did in 2017 — would increase the drop in murder in the sample of cities by about a percentage point.

It’s usually better to take a longer view in assessing murder trends. Far fewer people are murdered each year in the United States relative to the 1980s and 1990s. The country is moving toward the largest national drop in murder since a 3.6 percent decline in 2013.

If murder falls about 4.5 percent nationally this year, the murder rate of about 5 per 100,000 will roughly be in line with 2009’s rate and half of what it was in 1980, the highest U.S. murder rate on record. The accompanying chart shows what the national murder rate since 1960 would look like with a 4.5 percent drop in 2018. [MORE]

According to FUNKTIONARY:

Statism - the belief "citizens"' and "states" exist and the memetic thought patterns supporting such beliefs. 2) the religion of oppression and domination coupled with the science of exploitation and sociopathic control. 3) the opiate of the so-called Elites. 4) a philosophy that idealizes majority rule gang force (authority) over individual authenticity (autonomy). 5) servitude over liberty and statutes over humanity. So long as "states"' are viewed and accepted as natural, normal, reality-based and inevitable, they will continue to violently abstract humans into extinction. Statism is mind control; people both unwillingly and willingly surrender their property (labor being one's most inviolable property) to men and women pretending to be "governors,"" "commissioners," and "presidents" etc. because they believe they are "citizens" of a so-called "state" and must pay their proverbial "fair share" to support such abstractions or fictions of law. Just using statism against itself proves bureaucrats never have a case regardless of what they "charge" someone with. "Statism and it's supporting political theology do not exist in people's minds to promote freedom or protect 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness:" it's pure mind control to divert our attention away from the actions of anti-social individuals (sociopaths) who are so desperate to "protect" us they are willing to kill us and steal our property." -Marc Stevens. (See: DOME. Beliefs, Landmine Legislation, Scrapitalism, Standing, Subject Matter Jurisdiction. Judicial Victimization, States. Holodeck Court, Allegiance. Anarchy, Society, Civilization, Citizens, Monopoly Capitalism The Golem, Government Paradox, Granfalloons, Corporate State. Government, Servitude. Stalinize, Property, Standing & Monopoly).

Redskins 'Discussed' Colin Kaepernick but They Prefer To Support the System of White Supremacy Over Winning or Going to the Playoffs

FUCK A WIN II. From [HERE] If you wanted final proof that Colin Kaepernick is not going to get another shot in the NFL, the Redskins probably just gave it to you. Despite sitting at 6-6 and grasping for air as they sink into the deep end of the playoff race after losing their second quarterback to a broken leg, the Redskins are not interested in signing the former standout quarterback.

Washington is in dire straights right now, having lost first Alex Smith to a broken leg and then Colt McCoy -- also to a broken leg -- on Monday night. The result is starting Mark Sanchez, who looked OK (kind of?) against the Eagles despite signing with the Redskins just a few days prior. 

Asked about Kaepernick, Gruden said the team talked about him but is going in a "different direction."

49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said, “There’s not enough public pressure. There’s nothing that’s going to force a team to [sign him], like Washington who’s in the playoff hunt,” said Sherman, who played for the NFC West rival Seattle Seahawks during Kaepernick’s six seasons in San Francisco. “At first, it was like, ‘Colin Kaepernick’s stats weren’t good enough,’ or, ‘He stopped playing at a high level.’ And then you see some of the quarterbacks that they picked up and you’re like, well, if you’re picking up Mark Sanchez, he’s had some up and down years. Colt McCoy’s the same way. They’ve had up and down years, and Colin has played at a higher level than I would say any of those guys ever performed at the peak of their careers.

“You start to see stuff like that, and it’s almost like teams are purposely making it obvious that they’re freezing him out,” Sherman said. “Unfortunately there has, to this point, been nothing that the courts or the league has done about it, and that’s the disappointing part, because he’s a good football player. He didn’t commit a crime. He didn’t put his hands on anybody, murder anybody, you know, do anything that’s that insanely crazy that he deserves to be banned from our football league.” [MORE]

Kaepernick has led the 49ers to a Super Bowl and two NFC championship games and he threw 16 touchdown passes with four interceptions for them in the last season he played. [MORE]

CBS Sports said “So people want to know why Washington, a team on the verge of making the playoffs, wouldn't exercise every possible opportunity to sign a quarterback who could potentially help them when they're willing to claim a guy who won't be able to help them (he can't play right now) with possible legal charges pending. It's a fair question. People want answers.  [MORE]

Like so many other teams the Redskins also passed over Kaepernick - b/c winning is not everything in the NFL. It is secondary to the system of racism/white supremacy, a global, white over Black system of vast unequal conditions & unequal power that functions in all areas of people activity, including sports & entertainment. Racism is not merely a pattern of individual and/or institutional practice; it is a universal operating "system" of white supremacy and domination in which the majority of the world's white people participate. [MORE]

Racism White Supremacy - psychopathic degeneracy. 2) "The local and global power system and dynamic, structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined, which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labour, law, politics, religion, sex and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet earth—a planet upon which the vast majority of people are classified as non-white (Black, Brown, Red and Yellow) by white skinned people, and all of the nonwhite people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white skin people." -Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, MD. Hate and oppression can never reign. Only love is supreme.

People who classify themselves as White, who wish to be taken seriously, and who are righteous and responsible, will only talk about ending White Supremacy (Racism) and replacing it with Justice. [MORE]

In Incremental Power Grab & Privacy Creep the NYPD Tells Its Subjects It will Use Drones for Emergencies - but Not to Surveil or Shoot Them

From [HERE] and [HERE] The New York Police Department has announced it will soon use a fleet of 14 drones for emergency situations. 

The drone fleet will be used for “searches and rescues, car crash investigations, crime scene documentation, evidence searches at hard-to-access locales, hazardous materials calls, monitoring crowds at large events, hostage and barricaded-suspect incidents, and other emergency situations” the NYPD chief approves.

But the unmanned aerial vehicles to be placed in the hands of the NYPD, are stoking serious concerns about unregulated surveillance among civil libertarians and progressives. The nation’s largest police department—sued in 2012 for illegally spying on New York City Muslims—attempted to quell down fears by insisting that the drones will not be used for unlawful surveillance. 

“Let me be clear,” chief of department Terence Monahan told reporters, “NYPD drones will not be used for warrantless surveillances.”

But civil libertarians are not buying it. 

“The NYPD’s drone policy places no meaningful restrictions on police deployment of drones in New York City and opens the door to the police department building a permanent archive of drone footage of political activity and intimate private behaviour visible only from the sky,” Christopher Dunn, New York Civil Liberties Union associate legal director, said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other anti-surveillance groups have long warned that drones could easily be, and have been, used by law enforcement to track activists—often those who are critical of City Hall and the police—and used for unintended or nefarious means. 

“We believe the new policy falls far short of what is needed to balance the department’s legitimate law-enforcement needs against the privacy interests of New Yorkers,” Mr Dunn said.

The Legal Aid Society of New York also chimed in and stated that the drone fleet would only increase the NYPD’s “unregulated arsenal of surveillance tools.”

The privacy concerns brought forward are not unwarranted.

Since 2002, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division engaged in wide-sweeping religious profiling and warrantless surveillance of Muslims in New York City and to the neighbouring states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey and more.

The Intelligence Division targeted a whole range of Muslim individuals and entities with invasive surveillance: religious leaders, community organisers, mosques, student associations, businesses, nonprofit organisations, and other individuals. 

Recently, in April 2017, several NYPD officers posed as Black Lives Matter activists to spy on them during the escalating anti-police brutality protests in 2014 and 2015, following the cop-involved killings of 18-year-old Michael Brown and 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

The undercover policemen were able to successfully obtain emails and text messages exchanged between organisers, once again sparking concerns over NYPD’s targeting and surveillance of activists and marginalised communities.

Video Shows 2 White Corrections Officers Aggravated Assault on Handcuffed Black Man in Inhumane Louisville Jail, Beaten Unconscious & Hospitalized, Neither Cop has Been Charged

From [HERE] and [HERE] A now-fired white Louisville Metro Corrections officer punched an inmate in the face as his hands were cuffed behind his back, body camera footage shows.

Terry Whitehead, a 19-year-old then-inmate at the Louisville jail, was seated in a jail cell on April 15 explaining to officers why they found toilet paper covering his cell window during routine security checks.

“Whitehead, what are you doing, man?” says an unidentified officer wearing the body camera. “I ain’t never had a problem out of you. Why you gotta spit on us? Sergeants come around. You know how this is.”

Whitehead tells the officers he was using the toilet.

Officer David Schwartz [in photo], who stands inches from the inmate, pulls back his right hand as if to strike him. Whitehead recoils, lowering his torso.

“I do not give you problems like that, Schwartz bro,” he tells the officer.  

Schwartz then punches a seated, cuffed Whitehead in the face.

He walks out of the cell, eventually slamming the metal cell door into the wall twice before walking down the hall.

The incident led to the firing of Schwartz, 47, who at the time was a probationary officer. In his termination letter, corrections Director Mark Bolton wrote the former Marine didn’t have the temperament for the job, and noted there was property damage from his “fit of rage.”

A second probationary officer, Devan Edwards, 21, was also fired by Bolton. His firing letter noted he failed to report the incident and also cited earlier “unprofessional actions” on social media as reasons for his termination.

Both were hired as recruits in September 2017.

Whitehead has filed suit against the two fired officers in U.S. District Court in Louisville claiming excessive force, assault and battery.

He was pepper sprayed, handcuffed and badly beaten, according to the suit, which seeks monetary damages for medical bills and pain and suffering, punitive damages, and a jury trial.

The suit claims Edwards had allowed Whitehead to put the tissue paper over an opening in his cell door for privacy when using the bathroom.

And though Schwartz did order Whitehead to take the paper down, Whitehead was using the bathroom and not able to reach the paper, according to the suit.

The officers and Whitehead got into a verbal argument and “minor scuffle,” leading an officer to use pepper spray. The officers cuffed Whitehead, hit him, then moved him to a different area and continued to hit him, according to the suit.

Both defendants have denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

Whitehead had contusions, swelling and he blacked out because of the assault, according to the lawsuit.

He was taken to University of Louisville Hospital on April 25, more than a week after the incident seen in the video, after he lost consciousness in custody, the suit alleges.

Metro Corrections said at the time that Whitehead was cleared by the department’s medical staff and didn’t appear to have any serious injuries.

The two officers were fired on April 24, after Bolton reviewed the body camera footage and found they had violated the department’s use of force policy.

“What I saw on that video is disturbing and is not reflective of what we expect from our staff,” Bolton said at the time.

Steve Durham, assistant director of Metro Corrections, said in an interview that Edwards was fired because he failed to report the use of force and didn’t seek medical attention for the inmate.

According to documents filed in the pending civil lawsuit, there is an ongoing FBI investigation of the assault captured on the video.

Oakland Settles Case: White Cop Brutally Punched a Handcuffed 14 Yr Old Black Girl in the Face b/c She Asked Questions About Her Unlawful Arrest - same cop pulled a gun on Black Kids in 2014

From [HERE] The city of Oakland will pay a teenage girl and her family $60,000 following an allegation that an officer punched the girl in the face in an excessive use of force.

City Attorney Barbara Parker recommended the City Council approve the settlement at a Dec. 11 meeting “in order to avoid the risk of an adverse jury verdict under the circumstances.”

The payout stems from a Nov. 16, 2016 incident, when police were investigating a shooting at a residence on E Street in East Oakland, according to court records. Miesha Singleton arrived at the home with her 14-year-old daughter as officers were responding, and the mother told officers that her husband and son were inside the residence. Singleton went inside the home despite the police officers’ warnings, city attorneys said.

Meanwhile, a female officer allowed the girl to stay in her mother’s car to care for her infant brother, the girl’s attorneys wrote in court records.

During this time, Officer Anthony Martinelli confronted the girl and demanded she exit the car, according to the family’s attorney. The girl explained that she was in the middle of feeding her brother and it was cold outside, but Martinelli “forcefully yanked” her out of the car and another officer handcuffed her.

As the girl questioned the officer’s actions, “Martinelli brutally punched (the girl) in the face,” her attorneys said.

In December 2017, civil rights attorney John Burris filed a federal suit against Martinelli and the city of Oakland, alleging unlawful seizure, excessive force and other constitutional violations.

Martinelli denied the allegations through court records, saying the girl “did not exercise ordinary care, caution, or prudence to avoid the alleged event.” In a later court document, the city acknowledged that the officer struck the girl but alleged she refused to comply with his orders.

City attorneys wrote that Officer Martinelli tried to pull the girl out of the car but she “physically resisted,” leading him to strike the 14-year-old “with an open hand to distract and detain” her.

Martinelli, who graduated from the police academy in 2013, was involved in another controversial incident in 2014 when he detained an off-duty Black firefighter and his 9 and 11 year old sons at a fire station at gun point that had been accidentally left unlocked. A complaint filed said that the incident terrorized/niggerized the Black man and his sons but after Oakland PD reviewed itself it found that the officer acted within their policy. [MORE]

The City Council’s Dec. 11 vote is mostly a formality. The council authorized a settlement in the case during closed session in September.

Burris said the ordeal was a “horrible experience for the kid. We’re glad to be able to bring some closure.”

The attorney added that the city acted responsibly by settling the case. Of the $60,000, Burris said, $45,000 will be awarded directly and $15,000 will be set aside for any future therapy expenses or schooling for the girl.

Oakland police and city attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Suit Says After Unlawful Stop a NJ Trooper Dragged a Black Woman Out of Her Car, Slammed her Head into the Concrete, Put his Knee in Her Back & Dragged Her to Make False Arrest

From [HERE] and [HERE] A Union County woman who says she was brutally assaulted, falsely arrested and maliciously prosecuted for calling 911 to report that she didn’t feel safe alone with the trooper during a traffic stop in Bridgewater in 2016 has filed a federal lawsuit against the New Jersey State Police.

According to a federal civil lawsuit filed in New Jersey’s district court, Krya Harrison said her “false arrest and malicious prosecution” was a coverup for what really happened during the traffic stop on I-287. She said she was yelled at, dragged from her car to the police cruiser and her head slammed into the concrete.

Troopers and State Police officials were served last week with the suit, which outlined 14 allegations. including unreasonable and excessive force used by troopers and racial discrimination. Harrison describes herself in the lawsuit as an African-American woman living in Union County,

State Police Superintendent Joseph Fuentes, troopers Rafael R. Castro, Nicholas R. Decesare, Jonathan Lopuski, Dana A. Wilcomes, Jeffrey Almeida, and other unnamed troopers are defendants in the lawsuit. A State Police spokesman declined to comment on current litigation.

A timeline of events spread out over two years is included in the suit, and explains how Harrison was indicted twice for calling 911 without a purpose.

A judge dismissed the criminal indictment against Harrison the first time once Harrison’s attorney noted in a motion the state failed to present the troopers the MVR and 911 calls to the jury. However, state indicted her again. This time, a jury acquitted her in September of the same charge involving the 911 call. However, they did find her guilty of a single disorderly person charge and fined her $1,000.

Back in November 2016, Trooper Castro pulled Harrison over as she was driving south on I-287. Castro told her he pulled her over because she passed him on the right shoulder and because he didn’t like the way she was wearing her seatbelt, according to the lawsuit.

During the stop, Harrison called 911 to request a sergeant come to the scene because, she said, she was alarmed by Castro’s demeanor and his failure to stop other cars that had also passed his car on the right. Audio recordings from the 911 call revealed Harrison did request a sergeant, and Castro can be heard telling her that she did not need to call his sergeant.

On Castro’s mobile video recorder, Harrison can be heard saying “I’m scared,” “I’m extremely scared,” and “I’m calling for help because I’m scared.”

Harrison said she got out her license, registration and insurance card but Castro would not take them and then said he was arresting her for not providing those same documents.

Next, the woman said the trooper dragged her from her car, dropped her to the ground and slammed her head into the concrete, stuck his knee in her back, handcuffed her and dragged her across the ground to his patrol cruiser.

Harrison was sitting in the back of the patrol car crying when Castro yanked her arm, told her to “shut the fu-- up" and pushed her head to the floor, according to the lawsuit.

During the violent encounter, Harrison can be heard on the radio transmission screaming asking for help, saying she was dizzy and could not breathe.

Next, other state troopers including Decesare, Lopuski, Wilcomes and Almeida arrived on the scene. Initially, Castro said Harrison refused treatment but troopers did take her to the local hospital where she was examined for a head injury then she was released back into state police custody.

After processing and fingerprinting, Trooper Wilcomes dropped Harrison off at the Bridgewater Mall, and, according to the suit, handed her her license, registration and insurance card along with more than 13 summons issued by Castro, including tickets for failure to possess a driver’s license or registration, maintenance of lamps, failure to wear equipment/seatbelt, improper passing and failure to keep right.

Two days later, Harrison went back to the doctor with neck and upper body pain, and was diagnosed with thoracic spine fracture, left shoulder sprain/strain and neck sprain/strain, according to the lawsuit.

On a Daily Basis Blacks are Denied Basic Rights of Citizenship when They are Routinely Purged from Juries: New NC Study says Prosecutors [mostly all white] Remove 20% of Blacks Available in Jury Pools

UNFIT FOR CITIZENSHIP IN LAWLESS DEMOCKERY. There are only a few ways that Americans can meaningfully exercise their citizenship; enlisting in the military, running for national office, voting and serving on a jury. Jury service is a basic right of citizenship. With the exception of voting, "for most citizens the honor and privilege of jury duty is their most significant opportunity to participate in the democratic process."

Even though the principles of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause guaranteeing the right of African Americans to be free from jury discrimination "have been consistently and repeatedly reaffirmed in numerous decisions,” these Constitutional guidelines are regularly violated through the use of peremptory challenges.

Law professor and researcher Ronald Wright states in the NYT, “Race, as a matter of constitutional principle, cannot factor into the selection of jurors for criminal trials. But in the American justice system, anyone with a bit of common sense and a view from the back of the courtroom knows the colorblind ideal isn’t true in practice.

Racial bias largely seeps in through what’s called “peremptory” challenges: the ability of a prosecutor — and then a defense attorney — to block a certain number of potential jurors without needing to give the court any reason for the exclusion.

The number of challenges allowed varies by state, but commonly 15 or more are permitted. Folk wisdom, among those familiar with the song and dance, is that prosecutors use these challenges to remove nonwhite jurors, who are statistically more likely to acquit, while defense attorneys — who can step in only after the pool has been narrowed by prosecutors — typically counteract by removing more white jurors.

For a long time, the opacity of court records rendered the dynamic as only that — folk wisdom — which has made it difficult to articulate the urgent need to reform this understudied aspect of our system. But now, this informal knowledge has been empirically confirmed, and the case for change couldn’t be more compelling.

My recently published research on juror removal in North Carolina conducted with colleagues at the Wake Forest University School of Law proves — for the first time with statewide evidence — that peremptory challenges are indeed a vehicle for veiled racial bias that results in juries less sympathetic to defendants of color.

Based on statewide jury selection records, our Jury Sunshine Project discovered that prosecutors remove about 20 percent of African-Americans available in the jury pool, compared with about 10 percent of whites. Defense attorneys, seemingly in response, remove more of the white jurors (22 percent) than black jurors (10 percent) left in the post-judge-and-prosecutor pool.

The data also show variety within the state: Prosecutors in urban areas, which tend to have larger minority populations, remove nonwhite jurors at a higher rate than prosecutors do in other parts of the state. Finally, we discovered, to our surprise, that judges also remove black jurors “for cause” about 20 percent more often than they remove available white jurors.

When the dust settles at the close of jury selection, defense attorneys’ actions in the last leg of the process do not cancel out the combined skewed actions from prosecutors and judges. The consistent result is African-Americans occupying a much smaller percentage of seats in the jury box than they did in the original jury pool.

This winnowing of nonwhite jurors is not a quirk of just one state. Earlier this year, investigative journalists in Mississippi and Louisiana collected and published jury data from public records that confirmed similar practices in some areas within those states. And given the parallel results identified in county-level studies and in death penalty cases, the pattern probably holds true for jury selection in most states. [MORE]

White Florida Sheriff Imprisoned Black Citizen to Deport Him to Jamaica in a Demeaning Process Based on Clearly Erroneous ICE Info that he was 7 ft tall when he is 5 ft 7, wrong birthdate, No Accent

1 MONTH A SLAVE. From [HERE] and [HERE] A Black man is suing a local sheriff’s office, saying he was unlawfully detained and nearly deported to Jamaica after Immigration and Customs Enforcement confused him with someone else. [federal complaint [PDF]

Peter Sean Brown, a U.S. citizen who was born in Philadelphia, filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. He claims that authorities ignored his attempts to identify himself as they threatened him with deportation. In the process authorities mocked and demeaned him with ridicule and “jokes.”

In a video released by the ACLU on Monday, Brown described the experience as traumatizing.

“I felt totally, totally powerless,” he says in the video. “I went from angry, because nobody was listening to me, to a really frightful moment because I was literally told at one moment that I was to sign this paper, that they were tired of listening to me lying, and that I had three days and I was being sent back to Jamaica.”

When he showed up at a Florida sheriff’s office for violating probation after testing positive for marijuana, he was told he would be detained and flagged for deportation — to the island of Jamaica — based on a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

Brown repeatedly told officers at the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in Florida that he was a U.S. citizen, and even offered to show his birth certificate, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Brown, 50, had been living in Florida for the last decade, according to the suit.

"Despite his repeated protests to multiple jail officers, his offer to produce proof, and the jail’s own records, the sheriff’s office held Mr. Brown so that ICE could deport him to Jamaica — a country where he has never lived and knows no one," the complaint said.

Brown’s lawsuit argues that the sheriff’s office had enough information to know the ICE hold was incorrect because its own records listed him as being born in Philadelphia. ICE’s report listed the wrong birthdate for Brown and described him as 7 feet tall. Brown is 5 feet, 7 inches tall.

The Sheriff’s inmate file for Mr. Brown confirmed, in multiple places, that he was a U.S. citizen. The file lists his place of birth as “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” in capital letters. This file was available to jail staff throughout Mr. Brown’s detention. He also had a valid Florida driver’s license.

At the same time, Mr. Brown’s friend and manager at Fogarty’s Restaurant (where he worked), Brooke Lynch, independently learned of his ICE detainer. She had heard that Mr. Brown was in jail, so she checked the Sheriff’s online inmate locator. The website indicated that Mr. Brown had an ICE detainer lodged against him. It also contained a number of discrepancies: It indicated that Mr. Brown was 7 feet tall when, in reality, he is 5 feet, 7 inches tall. And it listed an incorrect birthdate for Mr. Brown, which did not match the detainer form.

Upon learning this, Ms. Lynch called the jail and told the Sheriff’s officers that Mr. Brown was a U.S. citizen, and so they could not hold him on an ICE detainer. She explained that he was born in Philadelphia, and that the jail’s listed birth date for Mr. Brown was wrong. The officers simply told her she should call ICE. They did not ask Ms. Lynch for any details about her serious claim. The officers said they would hold Mr. Brown as long as the detainer remained in effect.

The Sheriff’s officers uniformly refused to help Mr. Brown. They explained that—despite his protests—they would hold him on the ICE detainer unless ICE revoked it. They told him he could try to contact ICE, but that the Sheriff’s Office would not help him, and would instead continue to hold him beyond when he would otherwise be released from custody under state law. 30. In response, Mr. Brown told multiple jail officers that he had a birth certificate at home that proved his citizenship. He offered to ask his roommate to send it to the Sheriff’s Office. The officers told him not to bother, because it would not change anything. They said they would hold him on the ICE detainer no matter what, regardless of his birth certificate.

During his time in jail, the suit alleges the officers mocked him, one telling him "‘everything’s gonna be alright’ in a Jamaican accent."

When Brown tried to tell officers he was born in Philadelphia, one guard sang to him the theme of the 1990s sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air," where actor Will Smith raps about being "born and raised" in West Philadelphia.

Mr. Brown twice tried to call ICE from the jail, using the phone numbers listed on the detainer form. But he was never able to reach a live person. On one call, he was sent through an endless loop of automated messages, which never allowed him to speak to an actual person. On the other call, the phone just rang and rang, and never reached a person or even an answering machine.

Justice Department guidance does not legally require jurisdictions to honor ICE immigration detainers, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, though Monroe County is one of several in Florida that formally agreed this year to abide by ICE requests in a pact called a Basic Ordering Agreement.

While he was jailed, Brown filed several formal complaints with Sheriff Rick Ramsay [racist suspect in photo] saying he was being falsely accused, according to the suit. He was told it wasn’t up to the sheriff’s office to determine whether he is a U.S. citizen or not, and so the office would leave the matter to ICE.

"I have been wrongly accused and threatened with deportation from ICE," he wrote in one, according to the lawsuit. "I am and have always been a citizen of the United States."

He filed his first written complaint on April 8, 2018. His complaint explained that he was being held pursuant to “a false immigration detainer,” and further stated in unequivocal terms: “I am and have always been a U.S. citizen.”

On April 11, the Sheriff’s officers responded that they would not help him. The entirety of the response read: “Sir, are you asking to go to the law lib[rary?] We can’t advise you on any legal process.”

The Sheriff did nothing to investigate his citizenship. It did not contact ICE to pass along this urgent information, or ask for a review of Mr. Brown’s files. It did not seek any further information from Mr. Brown or anyone else. It simply held Mr. Brown, in violation of his constitutional rights and after he was entitled to release under state law,

After several weeks of pleas and failed attempts to reach ICE by phone while in custody, Brown’s lawsuit states, he attended his court appearance and a judge ordered an end to his detention on the probation violation.

Instead of releasing Brown, the suit claims, the sheriff’s department re-arrested him on the ICE hold before transferring him to the Krome immigrant detention center in Miami. He was released after a friend sent a copy of his birth certificate to ICE.

Brown spent about a month in jail before he was turned over to the Krome immigration detention center in Miami, according to the lawsuit.

If not for the last-minute intervention of a friend who sent a copy of his birth certificate to an ICE agent, Mr. Brown would have been illegally deported because of the Sheriff’s actions.

After Brown was turned over to ICE, agents agreed to look at Brown’s birth certificate as proof of his citizenship, which his roommate emailed over and ICE determined he was in fact a U.S. citizen, according to the suit.

"After confirming that Mr. Brown was a U.S. citizen, ICE hastily arranged for his release from Krome," the suit said. "Before he left, they confiscated all the documents they had given him regarding his impending deportation."

Ramsay said his office was notified in writing by ICE that Brown had a final order of deportation and that his identity had been confirmed via "biometrics," such as fingerprints or other identifying data.

While ICE is not named in the lawsuit, the case takes aim at the relationship some local law enforcement authorities have with the federal agency. In Monroe County, officials sent Brown's fingerprints to the FBI, which then forwarded those fingerprints to ICE, according to the lawsuit.

The following day, an ICE officer sent a detainer request for Brown, asking that the jail hold him for up to 48 hours beyond the time he would have been released, according to the lawsuit. The sheriff's office agreed to that request and rearrested Brown after he appeared in court on April 26 for his probation violation, despite a judge ordering his release, according to the suit.

The lawsuit accuses the sheriff's office of "carelessly and aggressively" arresting people for ICE under what's known as a Basic Ordering Agreement between the two, where the sheriff's office receives $50 for each individual it holds at ICE's request.

The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claims Brown’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.

Brown's lawyers said his detention caused him to become "severely depressed" and lose his job. The suit asked for the court to award Brown appropriate monetary damages, attorney costs and any other relief the court finds just.

"Mr. Brown was terrified that he could be put on a plane at any moment and deported to Jamaica," the suit said.

It states “Mr. Brown was terrified. As a gay man, he feared that he would be subject to abuse in detention once he arrived in Jamaica. See Human Rights Watch, Jamaica: Unchecked Homophobic Violence, Oct. 21, 2014.”

"It’s shocking and not right that somebody can lose their human rights and have all dignity stripped away simply because someone delivers a piece of paper or signs a form," Brown said in a statement released by the ACLU.

Brown’s story is far from unique.

According to a 2013 study released by Syracuse University, ICE mistakenly issued detainers to 834 U.S. citizens and 28,489 legal permanent residents, or “green card” holders, between 2008 and 2012. The study cast concern on ICE’s ability to quickly detain someone on suspicion alone.

“Having a detainer placed on you, however, even if ICE has mistakenly done so, can have very significant ramifications. Inadequate safeguards exist to prevent such mistakes from happening or to rectify them after they have happened,” the study states.

In an even more egregious case, a New York man named Davino Watson spent three and a half years in detention after being wrongly accused of being in the U.S. illegally in 2008.

Upon Watson’s release, he filed a complaint and was awarded $82,500 in damages. An appeals court in 2017 threw out that ruling, however, determining that the statue of limitation had expired while Watson was still in ICE custody without a lawyer, NPR reported.

“There’s thousands of Americans in the same position as I was,” Watson told New York’s PIX 11 this past spring. “I saw a lot of guys, they had good grounds to fight their case but because they couldn’t read and write, they got deported.”

[master-slave relationship made “transparent"] Racist Suspect Alabama Authorities Pledge Silence after Cop's Fatal Shooting of EJ Bradford: Videos, Public Records Hidden & Cops Remain Unidentified

DO RULERS SERVE SUBJECTS? From [HERE] Authorities in Hoover, Alabama doubled down Monday on their vow of silence in response to demands for information about the circumstances surrounding the police killing of Emantic “EJ” Bradford, Jr. on Thanksgiving night in a shopping mall. [Saudi style]

“While we maintain our commitment to be fully transparent during this process, we must respect the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s request for full cooperation and continue to have faith in the judicial process,” Hoover Chief of Police Nick Derzis said in a statement released Monday explaining the reason behind the continued silence.

On Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson issued a call for justice during his eulogy of Bradford.

“We will have the tape made public. We want transparency, not coverup. Tell the whole story, tell it now. We want justice now. We want fairness now,” the civil rights leader said.

An officer shot Bradford while responding to a mall shooting, gunning down the Black man on sight based on instinctive and implicit racial bias. Police announced immediately after the killing that Bradford was the mall shooter—before admitting its avoidable error when it was later discovered that Bradford’s gun had not been fired, prompting police to change its story. Some witnesses said the 21-year-old was helping others escape the shooting.

The arrest of the actual suspect came Nov. 29.

Bradford’s family has demanded the release of mall video, witness videos and body camera footage of Bradford’s death.

However, Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato, who vowed transparency, has ruled out the release of video and identifying the officers involved in the shooting.

Shortly after the shooting, Hoover turned over the investigation to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, which will determine when — or if — the public will see video evidence from the shooting, as well as whether to identify the officers involved.

In his statement on Monday, the police chief pointed to a Dec. 1 letter he and the mayor received from Alabama Secretary of Law Enforcement Hal Taylor.

Derzis said the letter reiterated Taylor’s objection to “the premature release of any critical information in regards to the investigation.”

Atty says Independent Autopsy Shows Black Man Posed No Threat: Alabama Cop Shot EJ Bradford 3X in the Back as he was Moving Away from Police in Shopping Mall

From [HERE] The man gunned down by police who mistook him for the suspect in an Alabama shopping mall shooting on Thanksgiving night died after being struck by three bullets, all fired from behind him, a lawyer for his family said on Monday.

The official autopsy of Emantic "EJ" Bradford, 21, has yet to be released, but an independent review from a pathologist commissioned by his family indicates Bradford had his back to police when he was shot, civil rights attorney Ben Crump told reporters.

"It clearly demonstrates that EJ posed no threat to the off-duty Hoover Police Department officer who killed him while working a private security detail at Riverchase Galleria mall, since EJ was moving away from him," Crump said.

He said the evidence corroborated accounts of multiple witnesses who said Bradford "was trying to help others."

Two other people were wounded when gunfire erupted on the night of Nov. 22 in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. Bradford was himself fatally shot in the ensuing pandemonium as police arrived and shoppers scattered for cover.

Police said Bradford, a black man, made a chaotic situation worse by drawing his own handgun, leading an officer to see him as a threat and open fire on him. Even after acknowledging the wrong man had been killed, police said Bradford "may have been involved in some aspect" of precipitating events.

The man since accused of being the shooter was arrested a week later in Georgia on suspicion of attempted murder.

By then, the case had attracted wide attention, with protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement branding the shooting as the latest example of police targeting minorities with unnecessary lethal force.

The autopsy review from Crump showed Bradford was struck by bullets to his head, the base of his neck and his lower torso, all entering his body from the back.

Crump called it "the latest egregious example of a black man killed because he was perceived to be a threat due to the color of his skin."

In response, the city of Hoover urged Crump to submit his report to state authorities investigating the shooting.

The city also declined to release any further information for now, including video or autopsy results, in order to protect "the integrity" of the investigation."

To Deceive, Chuck Schumer & Other Racist Suspect Dems Don’t Support a "Border Wall" but Prefer a “Border Fence”’ to Exclude Non-White Migrants & Reinforce the Imaginary Border in their Minds

Borders - arbitrary geographical abstractions - economic and cultural impediments and surprisingly ineradicable. 2) imaginary geographic distinctions and occult political restrictions. Borders are what allows fences (internetworks of stolen goods) to be erected and trafficked through. (See Corporate State, Political Borders & States). - FUNKTIONARY.

From [HERE] Sometime between now and Dec. 7, when the current appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security will expire, Congress needs to provide the agency with another’s year’s funds. A single word has become a sticking point for the politicians who will vote on that funding: “wall,” as in President Trump’s border wall. 

Trump and his Republican allies are demanding billions of dollars for walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats, wanting to be seen as opposing Trump, say that they won’t vote for border walls. But they, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are willing to vote for “fences.”

The current Senate iteration of the DHS appropriations bill contains $1.6 billion for 65 miles of either border walls or border fences — depending on one’s party affiliation — in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. This is an area that received 54 miles of either border wall or border fence in between 2009 and 2010. I live in the Rio Grande Valley, a few miles north of the 2009 border wall and in the vicinity of the new ones: No one here has ever called it a fence. 

Sen. Schumer recently took to the floor to split the fence/wall hair, saying that, “It’s just what we’ve done in previous years — funding for fencing on the border where experts say it makes the most sense. It would protect our border far more effectively and far more quickly than any wall.”

He has also repeatedly said that Democrats have successfully opposed Trump's "concrete wall" — meaning DHS's recent prototype barriers erected near San Diego — which is cold comfort for those of us who live in the path of construction that is every bit as damaging. It also ignores the fact that one of the designs set for construction in South Texas is, in fact, full of concrete and steel.

The previous funding that Sen. Schumer is referring to is the omnibus bill passed just last spring that also gave Customs and Border Protection (CBP) $1.6 billion. When they describe the thing that they will be building through farms and wildlife refuges in South Texas, they do not use the word “fence.”

Instead, CBP says that they plan to build two types of border wall, first 25 miles of what they call “levee wall [which] would be a concrete wall to the approximate height of the levee crest with 18-foot tall bollards installed in the top of the levee wall,” and 8-12 miles of “bollard wall [which] would be 20- to 30-feet high utilizing 6”x6” concrete filled steel bollards.”

But Democratic members of Congress who don’t want to own up to giving Trump his border wall, largely seen as a symbol of racism and xenophobia, still cling to the semantic game in an effort to avoid culpability. Those of us who have been forced to live with border walls know first-hand that whatever name is applied, they inflict tremendous damage. 

I detailed this damage and the likely harm that new walls would inflict in a recent report for the ACLU and other organizations, which can be read here.  I would encourage members of Congress to read it before they vote on border wall funding.

The funds approved by Congress last spring will build the levee walls through the National Butterfly Center, Bentsen State Park and World Birding Center, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Thirty-foot-tall walls of concrete and steel will cut off worshippers from the historic La Lomita chapel, leading the Diocese of Brownsville to assert that "church property should not be used for the purposes of building a border wall [which] would in fact be a sign contrary to the Church’s mission." Farmers, some of whom have held property in their families since the 1760s, will lose riverfront land. Bollard border walls will be built in the Rio Grande floodplain, where they will put communities on both sides of the river at risk of worsened flooding, potentially leading to property damage and deaths. 

And as walls go up, migrants are pushed into more dangerous border crossings, leading to more and more deaths. Calling a 30-foot-tall concrete and steel monstrosity a fence does not change its nature. 

Those of us who live along the border would at the very least appreciate honesty in Congressional debates. Members of Congress can vote for border walls or they can vote against border walls, but either way, they need to own their vote and its on-the-ground impacts.

Semantic games are not appreciated by those of us who will have to live with the consequences.                                         

Video Showed Rolebotic Black Cops Lied to Get Away with Murder: Anthonie Smith Never Reached in His Waistband & Lunged at Riverside Cops, Shot 9X - Jury Awards $2.5M to Black Man's Family

Would Black Cops Shoot a White Man Like That? Scholar Alex Vitale explains, “there is now a large body of evidence measuring whether the race of the individual officers affects their use of force. Most studies show no effect. More distressingly, a few indicate that black officers are more likely to use force or make arrests, especially of Black civilians.” Conversely, it is rare for a black police officer to use excessive force against a white person. [MORE]. Black cops are Obedient Black rolebots plugged into Doggy's operating system. They worship rules, government and logic within the parameters of the lex-icon. [MORE]

From [HERE] and [HERE] A jury on Wednesday, Nov. 28, awarded $2.5 million to the mother of a mentally ill man who was shot to death by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies in Moreno Valley in 2015.

“I’m happy that their verdict was to give my son justice,” said Sybil Davis, 46, mother of Anthonie Smith, 25.

The jury deliberated for three days in the civil trial in U.S. District Court in Riverside before awarding Davis $1 million for the loss of her son and $1.5 million for his pain and suffering, said Davis’ attorney, John Harris of Los Angeles-based Harris & Associates, who filed the wrongful-death lawsuit.

Riverside County and sheriff’s Sgt. Sharee Anthony, who at the time of the shooting was a corporal, were the remaining defendants when the jury reached its decision.

About 3 a.m. on July 16, 2015, Davis had reported that Smith, who was diagnosed as being bipolar and schizophrenia when he was 18, had assaulted a family member at their Fire Avenue home, the Sheriff’s Department said at the time. Deputies tried to talk with him, but he struck one of them in the head before jumping out of a second-story window and fleeing.

About 6 a.m., Anthony and Deputy Deylan Kennedy caught up with Smith in the middle of the road near the intersection of Sunnymead and Perris boulevards, just south of the 60 Freeway. The Sheriff’s Department’s statement immediately after the shooting said Smith was carrying a knife and a hand tool.

Two videos of portions of the shooting were discovered, Harris said: A longer video, of poor quality, from a USA gas station; and a second but shorter video of higher quality filmed by a motorist.

Before that second video started, Smith had lunged at deputies while holding a pair of blue pliers and been shot nine times by Kennedy, Harris said.

The video starts with Smith on his back before getting up and standing unsteadily, the top of his pants at his knees and his hands to his side. It was unclear if he held anything.  Anthony and Kennedy pointed their guns at Smith. Anthony fired, and Smith went down for the final time. The video then shows Smith lying in the road.

The judge dismissed Kennedy as a defendant, Harris said, after ruling that Kennedy was justified in firing at Smith. It was Anthony’s shot, Harris said he believes, that convinced the jurors that Anthony acted recklessly.

“They had concocted a story … that turned out to be a lie – that right before that last shot, Mr. Smith lunged at them. They also lied that he was reaching into his waistband for a weapon,” Harris said. “They importantly said Mr. Smith never went down.”

Harris said he believes the deputies were unaware of the existence of the videos when they made their initial statements to homicide detectives. [MORE]

To Please his Masters with a Perfect Crime-Solving Record, Straw-Boss Latino Police Chief Framed Innocent, Random Black Men: Florida Judge Gives Him Only 3 Yrs Prison

According to FUNKTIONARY:

Straw-Boss - a Sambo who is appointed a certain oversight role for the white power Overseer. It is the job of the Straw Boss to establish a formal organization to effectively and systematically carry out the wishes of the white supremacist power matrix while serving his own personal needs and ends through patronage power. 2) a ranking SNigger. 3) Toby. 4) "Safe Negro." 5) responsible (to the white supremacist ideology) Negro. 6) the gatekeeper for black professional positions gained through (acquiesced) to various sexual positions. 7) Pork Chop Boy. (See SNigger & McNegro)

From [HERE] Over the past few months, the Innocence Blog has reported on the investigation into former Biscayne Park police chief, Raimundo Atesiano, and the two officers who were recently indicted for pinning crimes on innocent black men to obtain a perfect crime-solving record.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael K. Moore sentenced Atesiano to three years in prison. According to the New York Times, Atesiano was found guilty of “commanding officers to arrest black people for crimes they did not commit in order to give the impression that his department was solving crimes.”

“When I took the job, I was not prepared,” Atesiano told Judge Moore on Tuesday. “I made some very, very bad decisions.”

Records uncovered by the Miami Herald suggest that wrongful arrests specifically targeting innocent black people were a frequent practice during Atesiano’s two-year tenure as chief. Atesiano resigned from the Biscayne Park police department in 2014.

One officer quoted in an internal investigation of the department said, “If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through our streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglaries.”

Over the summer, three former Biscayne Park officers who worked under Ateisano while he was chief in 2013 and 2014 were indicted and pleaded guilty to civil rights violations, admitting to making false arrests in some cases. Each officer was sentenced to one year in prison.

Miami-Dade prosecutors are now reviewing criminal arrests made in Biscayne Park while Atesiano was chief. The Miami-Dade Public Defender’s office are looking at cases dating back to 2010, while Atesiano was a patrol cop there, in the hopes of clearing the records of any innocent people who were wrongfully arrested.

“He fabricated evidence. He damaged lives. Even before he was chief, Atesiano issued 2,200 traffic tickets himself in one year, fabricated cases, and wrongfully arrested innocent individuals,” Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez told the Miami Herald. “He created a culture of corruption that has further eroded public trust in the criminal justice system. Just as appalling is the damage Atesiano has done to law-abiding, hardworking, police officers and chiefs.”

Atesiano will remain free until December 10, when he has to report to authorities to serve his sentence.

Chicago Cops Don't Share the illusion that the 4th Amendment Applies to Blacks: 10 Yr Old Boy Detained b/c he Ran from Police [Media Blurs Out Cops’ images to protect the system of White Supremacy]

[As it pertains to white citizen subjects, the Supreme Court has held that without more, flight or running from the presence of cops is not a basis for arrest and does not establish probable cause. [MORE]

Belief is cheap. Doctor Blynd says, "The child who is taught to believe the law will be his protection is the child who will become the victim of its own beliefs."  "Unquestioned beliefs own you." 

The 4th Amendment Exists Only If You Believe it Does! MO County Cops Stop & Search Black Man to Get ID, Find Weed & then Claim They Smelled it Prior to the Stop

MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS. [MORE] Cops so frequently abuse their power that no one—no motorist, no juvenile, no adult, no professional of any kind—could make a compelling argument that constitutional rights afford Black people any real protection from the state.

Proof of a White-Over-Black Police State in New Jersey? NJ.com’s "Force Report" says Cops Disproportionately Assault, Shoot, Detain, Search & Arrest Blacks Despite Record Low Statewide Crime Rate

Copitalism - Police-State authoritarian force, usurped power and repression over men and women wielded in furthering the interests of commerce and the protection of commercial property; any benefit whatsoever accruing to people exists in spite of this corporate Police state monster. - FUNKTIONARY

From [NJ.com] Nearly two decades ago, state officials envisioned a centralized system to track police force and flag bad policies and bad actors. Instead, paper records detailing tens of thousands of violent encounters between police and the public now collect dust in filing cabinets.

The Force Report, a 16-month investigation by NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, found New Jersey's system for tracking police force is broken, with no statewide collection or analysis of the data, little oversight by state officials and no standard practices among local departments.

In an unprecedented undertaking, the news organization filed 506 public records requests and collected 72,607 use-of-force reports. They covered every municipal police department and the State Police from 2012 through 2016, the most recent year of data available. The results are now available at nj.com/force. It is the most comprehensive statewide database of police force ever created and made public in the United States. 

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Murders in NJ: '1967 to '2017

As violent encounters by police appear to be on the rise the overall state wide crime declined for the sixth straight year, according to 2017 data reported by local, county and state agencies to the New Jersey State Police. In fact, murders plunged by the biggest amount in decades with the murder rate apparently reaching its lowest level in more than a half-century of record keeping. [MORE] The state violent crime rate is projected to be lower than the national violent crime rate average by 38.3% and the state property crime rate is projected to be lower than the national property crime rate average by 36.98%. [MORE]

In fact, according to the Brennan Center crime declined nationwide last year in the nation’s 30 largest cities. Nevertheless, the number of Americans incarcerated remains near-record highs. [MORE].

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A black person was three times more likely to be subjected to police force in New Jersey than someone who was white during the five-year period. They were more than twice as likely to be shot, more likely to be pepper sprayed and more likely to be injured or hospitalized by police.

No matter how you parse it, the use of force by police in New Jersey is not equal.

"This is what I’ve known and lived for years," said Milton Hinton, the former president of the Gloucester County chapter of the NAACP.

NJ Advance Media consulted with independent statisticians and analyzed the use-of-force data to present the most complete and accurate picture of how force was used along racial lines. The inequality crops up again and again.

Strictly comparing the number of uses of force by race against the racial makeup of the state’s population, NJ Advance Media found 214 New Jersey cities and towns where black people were more than twice as likely as white people to have force used against them.

(The population was adjusted to include only people between the ages of 10 and 64 to prevent very young and old people who infrequently face force from skewing the calculations.)

Such calculations, however, are criticized because black people are arrested at higher rates than white people. But studies such as the Stanford Open Policing Project found black and Hispanic people are disproportionately subjected to detention and arrest during traffic stops and searches.

In photo Millville (NJ) cop JEFFREY PROFITT who is presently charged with 24 counts of using excessive force, aggravated assault & 10 counts of falsifying evidence, public records in arrests of black suspects. [MORE]

From 2012 through 2016, black people in New Jersey accounted for about 38 percent of arrests, yet they make up only about 14 percent of the adjusted state population.

Even when accounting for the fact that black people are arrested at a higher rate, they are still subjected to force at unequal rates when arrested. There were 173 local jurisdictions where a black person who was arrested was more likely to have force used against them than a white person being arrested. (That's excluding departments with fewer than 25 uses of force.) 

In 30 of those jurisdictions, black people were twice as likely to face police force. In Paterson, a black person being arrested was 5.7 times more likely to have force used against them.

Black people were also more likely to face every type of force police use except for the most basic kind, known as a compliance hold or restraint hold. That's despite the fact that, according to the data, black people were less likely to threaten police verbally or physically during a use-of-force incident.

Grewal, the attorney general, said the racial disparities were “troubling” but declined to comment further, saying he needed to review the data in detail.

Worse yet, the numbers showing how often white people face force are probably inflated because of who wasn’t being properly counted: Hispanic people. According to the data, Hispanic people accounted for 9 percent of use-of-force incidents in the five-year period.

They account for 21 percent of the adjusted population.

Lakewood is one of the few towns in New Jersey that has a formal system for reporting force use against its Hispanic population. The Ocean County town is 21 percent Hispanic by the adjusted population, but Hispanics accounted for about 30 percent of the uses of force from 2012 through 2016.

According to the Brookings Institute, although Black males make up only 7% of the entire population they constitute 34% of all unarmed persons killed by police.

Among the findings:

• While using force is a normal and necessary part of policing, NJ Advance Media found glaring disparities across the state that warrant review. Ten percent of officers accounted for 38 percent of all uses of force. A total of 296 officers used force more than five times the state average, according to the database. 

• Whenever police use force, the stakes are high. At least 9,302 people were injured by police from 2012 through 2016. At least 4,210 of those were serious enough that the subject was sent to the hospital, though reporting of hospitalization is inconsistent. At least 156 officers put at least one person in the hospital in each of the five years reviewed.

• Statewide, a black person was more than three times more likely to face police force than someone who is white. In Millville in South Jersey, black people faced police force at more than five times the rate of whites. In South Orange, it was nearly nine times. In Lakewood, it was an astronomical 21 times.

• The system for reporting use-of-force by police is a mess. Different departments use different forms, making tracking difficult. Officers self-reported incidents, but thousands of reports were incomplete, illegible, lacking supervisory review or missing altogether. At least 62 times, forms were so sloppy the officers accidentally marked themselves as dead.

• New Jersey fails to monitor trends to flag officers who use disproportionately high amounts of force. The state recently implemented a new early warning system to identify potential problem officers but did not mandate tracking use-of-force trends as a criteria, which experts called a gaping hole in oversight.

Caucasional strawboss New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal on Thursday acknowledged the state has for years failed to properly track and stop police officers who might be using unnecessary force during arrests, and pledged wholesale reform to improve the system..

NJ the Only Police State? And this is where liberal statists begin talking about identifying the worst cops, accountability, transparency, creating more diversity and re-training cops. Such “solutions” as reasonable as they sound, misunderstand the purpose of police and the nature of authority.

In the face of the low crime rate in NJ and elsewhere, the increasing disproportionate use of force and sustained levels of high incarcerations reveal the true role of police. [MORE] Cops are used to manage a white over Black system of unequal power and unequal conditions. Their “authority” is used to manage the behaviors of non-white people within this free range prison. In a crimeogenic society elite racists make sure a large number of non-white people live under conditions causing them to commit crimes with a goal towards placing them in greater confinement. Alex Vitale explains “It is largely a liberal fantasy that the police exist to protect us from the bad guys.” He states, racist suspect liberals project

“a fantasy of color blindness that says the police response is merely a professional technocratic response to where the crime is, but ignore the ways in which our society has been structured along racialized lines and the ways in which poverty in the United States is growing and becoming more entrenched. This includes a lot of white rural communities that are suffering from opioids and other kinds of crime problems.

Our political leaders have chosen to define those communities as criminal rather than as communities that are in deep distress because of entrenched joblessness, discrimination, geographic isolation, etc. If they were to admit that the problems in those communities were the result of market failures, rather than individual moral failures, then they would have to intervene in markets in ways that those who put them in office don’t want them to. To address the problems of inequality in any way other than policing is politically unacceptable in our current political environment.” [MORE] 

Liberal reform strategies misunderstand racism/white supremacy because they are apart of it. So-called Black on Black crime is white propaganda. It is “a psycho-political euphemism, unwittingly used and abused by African-Americans and deliberately by Caucasians, describing demographic criminal activity in general, as people commit violent crimes on people who live in closest proximity to them, and the violence mostly occurs by those and to those who are held hostage under chronic and cyclical economically disadvantaged circumstances and environments. Do you ever hear of the slogan "White-on-White" crime? Most violent crimes (by number and by percentage of population) take place by Caucasians against Caucasians. Yet there is no associated terminology [MORE]  

Dr. Amos Wilson explains that alleged Black criminality plays a very important role in defining the collective White American ego and personality. ‘While evoking White American fear and loathing, it reassures them of their vaunted self-worth, their assumed innately superior moral standing, of their self-congratulatory self-constraint in contrast with presumed Black American unworthiness, innate inferior moral standing, inherent criminality, lack of self-constraint and self-control. [MORE] He also states, "the perpetual domination of African Americans by White Ameri­cans psychically requires the White American criminalization of the African male, i.e., the White American perception of the African male as inherently criminal." [MORE] 

At any rate, the continuing pattern of a declining national crime rate blows the logic of such liberal or conservative statist theory about disproportionate arrests and usage of force.

The system of racism/white supremacy is carried out through deception and/or violence. Tactics to diversify police forces, re-train them or wear body-cameras are placebos (like a provisional ballot) to make us feel that change has occurred. With reform in the Spectacle Society we are offered the image and never the reality.

Since Rodney King to this point in history, many episodes have demonstrated cameras only record unlawful police conduct they don’t stop it. Cameras have had a minimal effect on cop accountability and similar to prosecutorial misconduct [such as purposefully not disclosing exculpatory evidence tending to support innocence) done to convict Black defendants, judges and DA’s have subjected cops to serious punishment for lost, undisclosed, edited or remixed police video.

As explained by Neely Fuller, racism is not merely a pattern of individual and/or institutional practice; it is a universal operating "system" of white supremacy and domination in which the majority of the world's white people participate. [MORE] Dr. Frances Cress Welsing further explains, "Within the historic framework of Western civilization and culture (the civilization and culture organized to prevent white genetic annihilation), all white peoples have the spoken or unspoken mandate to participate actively in their collective struggle for global white genetic survival. This specifically means, of necessity, the murder, use of force, greater surveillance, arrest, searches, detentions and movement restrictions of Black and other non-white males whenever it is felt within the white collective to be necessary and, therefore, justified [MORE], Within said context when white police officers [unlawfully stop, detain or search, use force, arrest, falsify reports, plant evidence or execute a Black person, their fellow officers, the police chief, internal affairs, the union, white jurors, judges, prosecutors, citizens and the white media support, defend, and finance the officers “right” to do so. [MORE] In fact, according to the Marshall Project when a white person kills a black man, the killer is eight times more likely to face no legal consequences. The disparity remains no matter the circumstances and has persisted for decades. [MORE]. Additionally, although Black males make up only 7% of the entire population they constitute 34% of all unarmed persons killed by police.

With regard to hiring more Black and Latino cops, Vitale explains, “there is now a large body of evidence measuring whether the race of the individual officers affects their use of force. Most studies show no effect. More distressingly, a few indicate that black officers are more likely to use force or make arrests, especially of Black civilians.” Conversely, it is rare for a black police officer to use excessive force against a white person. In fact, according to Anon, in the history of modern law enforcement there have been only a handful of instances of a black police officer shooting or killing an unarmed white person. This is not surprising but it is absolute proof that the black individual operating within a system of white supremacy cannot mistreat whites even if he or she is wearing a uniform, a badge, and carrying a gun." [MORE].

Dr. Blynd plainly states, “People who are awake see cops are mercenary security guards that remind us daily, through acts of force, that we are simultaneously both enemies and slaves of the Corporate state - colonized, surveilled and patrolled by the desensitized and lobotomized drones of the colonizers.”

Liberal reforms may better conceal the system of RSW but our status as “enemies and slaves” will remain so long as we are subjected to governmental authority in a white over Black system. Accountability for cops purposefully remains incidental, random, accidental or symbolic by design in a system of injustice. Indeed, through the doctrine of sovereign immunity court’s apply the law of the jungle to cops and their relationship to people. We are bound by the written law but those who wrote the law are bound by the law of the jungle. [MORE] Yet unaccountability is merely a symptom of the root problem of governmental authority.

Government “authority” can be summed up as the right to rule. “The concept of “government” is about certain people having some special right to rule. And that idea, the notion that some people – as a result of elections or other political rituals, for example – have the moral right to control others, in situations where most people would not, is the concept being addressed here. It is the idea that some people have the moral right to forcibly control others, and that, consequently, those others have the moral obligation to obey.” [MORE]

According to statist belief “the people” have delegated powers to politicians. And politicians have transferred or given police the moral right to commit acts of unprovoked violence on people. That is, police officers have acquired the moral right to initiate violence and commit acts of aggression against others (by way of so-called “laws”) “to protect” the people for their own benefit. [MORE]

Question here: can you delegate a right to someone that you don’t have? where does authority, the right to rule others, come from? Asked differently, you don’t have the right to initiate unprovoked acts of force against other people - so how can you delegate or authorize another person to do such things? How did police acquire such super-human powers?

Undeceiver Larken Rose states, “Despite all of the complex rituals and convoluted rationalizations, all modern belief in “government” rests on the notion that mere mortals can, through certain political procedures, bestow upon some people various rights which none of the people possessed to begin with. The inherent lunacy of such a notion should be obvious. There is no ritual or document through which any group of people can delegate to someone else a right which no one in the group possesses, And that self-evident truth, all by itself, demolishes any possibility of legitimate “government.

The average person believes that “government” has the right to do numerous things that the average individual does not have the right to do on his own. The obvious question then is, How, and from whom, did those in “government” acquire such rights? How, for example – whether you call it “theft” or “taxation”– would those in “government” acquire the right to forcibly take property from those who haw earned it? No voter has such a right. So how could voters possibly have given such a right to politicians? All modern statism is based entirely on the assumption that people can delegate rights they don’t have.” [MORE]

BW is aware that the creator of this video is now a jesusized GOP statist believer. But like the monk said, “everything is teaching us.”

FUNKTIONARY explains government and authority are empty representations or granfalloons. Rose states, “the belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in “authority” is the arch-enemy of humanity.” 

Dr. Blynd states “There is no freedom in the presence of so-called authority, i.e. outside of one's Self and Self-Nature.) He further states, authority is rule through coercion. The real threat to "authority" is the masses overcoming info-gaps and verigaps through self-knowledge and the proliferation of symbols of opposition, not crime or destruction of property.”

Government and our belief in it is the problem. As explained, people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. [MORE] Governments hold people in prisons called “nations.” The US “prison nation” is a free range prison in which the rulers allow certain “freedoms” but you can always be placed into greater confinement. The “citizens” are the prisoners [citizens are “those who instinctively seek permission or ask themselves whether or not they are allowed to do anything before they act”.] The bottom line reality here is 1) obedience to servitude or 2) jail. Recognizing reality and dropping nonsense that has been programmed into us is rebellion. Advocates for police reform or its abolishment should “see it” for what it really is - petitioning/begging your masters for better treatment on the plantation. Such an approach with a different consciousness is a way to make the best of a bad situation. ‘You thereby express a preference but consent to the authority of no one.’ [MORE] Are there other ways to respond to this situation?

For greater understanding FUNKTIONARY teaches the following:

Prison Nation - U.S. Citizen - Unnecessarily Suffering citizen and enemy of the state -freely deluded to imagine otherwise.

Statism - the belief "citizens"' and "states" exist and the memetic thought patterns supporting such beliefs. 2) the religion of oppression and domination coupled with the science of exploitation and sociopathic control. 3) the opiate of the so-called Elites. 4) a philosophy that idealizes majority rule gang force (authority) over individual authenticity (autonomy). 5) servitude over liberty and statutes over humanity. So long as "states"' are viewed and accepted as natural, normal, reality-based and inevitable, they will continue to violently abstract humans into extinction. Statism is mind control; people both unwillingly and willingly surrender their property (labor being one's most inviolable property) to men and women pretending to be "governors,"" "commissioners," and "presidents" etc. because they believe they are "citizens" of a so-called "state" and must pay their proverbial "fair share" to support such abstractions or fictions of law. Just using statism against itself proves bureaucrats never have a case regardless of what they "charge" someone with. "Statism and it's supporting political theology do not exist in people's minds to promote freedom or protect 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness:" it's pure mind control to divert our attention away from the actions of anti-social individuals (sociopaths) who are so desperate to "protect" us they are willing to kill us and steal our property." -Marc Stevens. (See: DOME. Beliefs, Landmine Legislation, Scrapitalism, Standing, Subject Matter Jurisdiction. Judicial Victimization, States. Holodeck Court, Allegiance. Anarchy, Society, Civilization, Citizens, Monopoly Capitalism The Golem, Government Paradox, Granfalloons, Corporate State. Government, Servitude. Stalinize, Property, Standing & Monopoly).

Corporate Police State - the enforcer of the commodification of life within the Spectacle Surveillance Society. Anyone who thinks that he or she is immune to the baseless destruction of his or her life (including immediate family members) by a "government" or corporation does live in a happy menagerie—enjoy your illusions. (See: GUPI & Judicial Victimization)

Corporate State - an asexual, amoral, fictionalized group-entity "created" and operated by thieves (territorial gangsters) who endeavor via illusion and coercion to enforce slavery in the guise of "civilization," form over reality, and law over humanity. 2) Enfranchised crime. 3) The "Law" of Club & Fang. 4) a Shakedown Racket. 5) "A territorial monopoly of compulsion. As soon as you grant it anything, you have given it everything." -Hans Herman Hoppe. All Corporate States are rogue states by nature. Corporate State is hierarchy institutionalized as the only acceptable and unquestionable decision-making paradigm of rule by the compelled consent of the ruled. Corporate State is created by criminals who use deadly force if you don't comply with their dictates of compelled conformance and you have no other choice than to leave and become domiciled in another similar Rogue State. "The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws." -Tacitus (55-117 A.D.) "The State is basically a protection racket. The fact that it incidentally provides a few beneficial services merely camouflages its essential role as enforcer of the money-commodity (sic) economy, without which most of the artificially maintained conflicts of interest that now provide a pretext for the State would lose their rationale." -Ken Knabb. With respect to taxes and taxation by the Corporate State, the lucid anarchist-activist, Kenneth Rexroth, had this to say: "The state does not tax you to provide you with services. The state taxes you to kill you. The services are something which it has kidnapped from you in your organic relations with your fellow man, to justify its police and war-making powers." (See: Formal Education, Territorial Gangsters, Hierarchy, Democracy, Crime, Stationary Bandits, Monopoly Capitalism, Cooperative Federalism, Corporation, Fascism, Granfalloon, Reification, Constitution, Declaration of Undie-Pendence, Nations, Terrorism, Taxtortion, Crimethlnc., "Credit" & Group-Entity)

"Government" - Latinized Greek ("Gubernatlo" = control; and from the Latin "menre" = mind; "The control of the mind." 2) an abstraction (hoax) created for the sole purpose of making theft respectable and mind-control acceptable. 3) the societal manifestation of mass individual psychological reversal, i.e., the statutes, regulations, agencies, and agents (so-called bureaucrats) needed to threaten and shrink one's comfort zone. 4) a granfalloon. 5) a fiction supported by those who kill on command and steal on demand under the guise of "protecting" their victims.

The outworking of history consistently demonstrates that government will, in spite of the Bill of Rights, arrogate all power to itself eventually, if the people don't act to prevent it. You have rights alright, just don't get caught exercising them, O.K.? "Government" is simply, unequivocally, and always initiation of force or coercion and nothing else.

Official "government" is disorganized, politicized; centralized; canonized and revered initiation of force, but it is no less initiation of force and coercion than any unofficial singular action of the same offensive or violent content.

"Government" is an abstract infinite entity acting as a possessive noun. There is not a single line in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any governmental document that states that a natural person will be left alone as long as she or he does not impose upon another or others.

By commission and omission, all official decrees make clear that a human is regarded as owned property or resource of the god called "Corporate State."

It is controlling the lives, energy and property of others that requires coercive force and this is its sole function.

Endorsing the lie of an imagined abstract collective interest supports the very concept that gives rise to all covert and overt oppression.

"The government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way. It does not keep the country free.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way." -Kirkpatrick Sale. The wayward notion that government redistributes wealth is widely held as sacrosanct as it is patently false. There are redistributes aspects, sure, but that's as close as it gets. "As long as government is allowed to exist, it will everywhere keep growing and getting worse.

Nearly everything that "governments" do (i.e., those with wholly symbolic roles "running" it, and who perform acts in its name) is grounded in fear.

Government will cease to exist when people cease to grant it legitimacy—in other words stop believing in it, stop looking to it for solutions to problems in their lives, and stop supporting it." -Fred Woolworth.

Government has failed at every attempt in 6,000 years of recorded history.

Government atrocities—carried out by irrational functionaries, economic hit men, soldiers, diplomats, emissaries, etc., under every possible flavor or form of government—have littered the bloody pages of recorded history. Government is the indisputable greatest purveyor of murder, mayhem, genocide, exploitation, rape, forced starvation, pillage and chaos in the annals of humanity.

Government does not need to be abolished; merely rendered obsolete through seeing it for what it truly is—a prime manufacturer of poverty, brutal oppression, violence, coercion, conformity and fear.

The monetary genius E.C. Riegel once wrote that petitioning to government is like writing to Santa Claus.

Government has created its own necessity by making people (its fictitious subject-citizens) fearful of the violence it creates by the effects of its very existence— in the form of violent criminals and external aggressors. "Government is men and women providing services on a compulsory basis; pay or get shot. To be legitimate they would have to drop their guns and provide their services on a voluntary basis. However, the moment they do so, they cease to be a government. That's quite the conundrum." -Marc Stevens.

Government is at the root of the cycle of violence—you run to it for protection and run from it out of fear for your life. The Slaughterhouse is to cattle as "government" is to people.

"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." -U.S. "President" Ronald 'McDonald' Reagan.

"The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot." - No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Lysander Spooner.

Men and women calling themselves "government" violently impose themselves on victims labeled "citizens," and "ordain" scriptures called "laws" that define the way "government" sanctions business as a crime by providing services over the barrel of a gun.

What exactly is "government?" Have you ever seen a "government?" While there are varying degrees, "government" very simply is "one man violently controlling the life and property of another man." In some places this violent control is "decreed" to be for the latter's "own good" and "protection" and hailed as the "best system in the world." Because it's based on violence, there are no "states" or "nations," "states" being "voluntary associations."

You may recognize that violent control over a man's life and property is what we like to call—slavery. Slavery is a form of "government," and in most cases, if not all, synonymous with "government." [MORE]

NY High Court Rules Non-White Immigrants are Entitled to Jury Trials for Misdemeanors b/c they are Deportable Offenses

From [HERE] Since noncitizens can be deported after convictions on mere misdemeanors, they are entitled to have those charges decided in jury trials, New York’s highest court ruled 5-2 Tuesday.

The ruling stems from the 2012 prosecution of Saylor Suazo with numerous assault and harassment crimes. Suazo, who remained in the United States illegally after his visa expired, was accused of throwing the mother of his children to the floor, and then choking and beating her. A month later he was charged with criminal contempt after he violated a restraining order.

Before trial, prosecutors had the charges reduced to class-B misdemeanors, which are usually punishable by 90-day maximum sentences and qualify as petty crimes that can be tried summarily without a jury.

Suazo nevertheless could face deportation proceedings if convicted, but the trial judge disagreed that this entitled him to a jury trial.

After the bench trial concluded in 2012, Suazo was found guilty of the assault charge, as well as menacing, obstruction of breathing or blood circulation, and attempted criminal contempt.

A three-judge appellate panel affirmed the judgment, finding that deportation is a collateral consequence of conviction, but the New York Court of Appeals reversed 5-2 on Tuesday.

Writing for the majority, Judge Leslie Stein called it technically correct that deportation is a civil collateral consequence of a state conviction. She also noted, however, that deportation is practically inevitable when noncitizens face even class-B misdemeanors.

“Detention — which closely resembles criminal incarceration — may last several days, or it may last months or years,” Stein wrote.

“A noncitizen who is adjudicated deportable may first face additional detention, followed by the often-greater toll of separation from friends, family, home, and livelihood by actual forced removal from the country and return to a land to which that person may have no significant ties,” the 22-page opinion continues.

Stein wrote that Congress alone should decide whether federal and state criminal law convictions should carry the additional penalty of deportation.

The majority’s ruling cited federal deportation statistics since 1996 showing an increase in deportation in such cases.

In 2017, immigration officials issued more than 142,000 requests for other law enforcement agencies to detain noncitizens rather than release them from criminal custody, Stein wrote. “This connection between the criminal justice system and immigration removal cannot be denied,” she wrote.

As state courts begin now to weigh whether noncitizens are entitled to a jury trial, Stein added that defendants bear the burden of proving they are entitled to one.

Judges Michael Garcia and Rowan Wilson dissented separately from the majority.

In his dissent, Garcia wrote that the threat of deportation does not automatically transport petty crimes into serious ones covered by the Sixth Amendment, and that the U.S. Supreme Court must weigh in on the issue.

Garcia also noted the majority’s ruling carves out special treatment for deportation and could also lead to a right to jury trials in other class-B misdemeanor cases, such as those that result in the loss of public housing.

“It is doubtful that importing federal immigration law into the  penalty analysis was something the Supreme Court intended when it made the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury for ‘serious’ offenses applicable to the states,” Garcia wrote. “In the end, the Supreme Court has the ultimate authority to settle this issue.”

Wilson meanwhile argued that deportation — though disruptive and severe — is insufficient to trigger the Sixth Amendment.

Attorney Mark Zeno of the Center for Appellate Litigation, who represented Suazo, praised the ruling and noted that the D.C. Circuit also has upheld the right to jury trials for noncitizens facing deportation.

A spokeswoman for the Bronx District Attorney Office meanwhile said that the ruling conflicts with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

“We understand that while the Court of Appeals addresses the harsh realities presented by the possible consequence of deportation for noncitizens, its decision presents conflicts with existing Supreme Court precedent that must be resolved,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.

“This decision creates ramifications, including serious backlogs and disparities in the administration of justice, for the courts of this state. We are considering taking the case to the Supreme Court to address the crucial questions this decision presents.”