Liberals Only Talk About Prison Reduction and Police Accountability to Trick the Gullible Black Votary: Efforts to Reduce the Mostly Black Jail Population End in LA, NYC, Chicago, Philly, etc.

/

ABOVE CORPSE JOE DURING THE CAMPAIGN USING GEORGE FLOYD’S FAMILY FOR A PHOTO OP.

NEUROPEON BIDEN BEGGED AND BEGGED BLACKS TO VOTE FOR HIM AND HE PROMISED “TO ROOT OUT SYSTEMIC RACISM IN OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND TO ENACT POLICE REFORM IN GEORGE FLOYD’S NAME.” HE ALSO pledgeD to “strengthen America’s commitment to justice and reform our criminal justice system.” THIS WAS ALL BULLSHIT THAT THE GULLIBLE BLACK VOTARY WANTED TO HEAR OR PROOF THAT HE WILL STAND FOR WHATEVER GULLIBLE BLACKS WILL FALL FOR. ACCORDING TO THE BRENANN CENTER BIDEN HAS MADE ‘LITTLE TO NO PROGRESS.’

Decarceration is Incompatible with White Supremacy’s Goal of PLACING LARGE NUMBERS OF NON-WHITE PEOPLE INTO Greater Confinement.

From [HERE] More than two years after instituting policies to keep more nonviolent offenders out of jail to reduce populations during the pandemic, California’s biggest metropolitan areas are making a U-turn in the midst of rising crime.

Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara are among the counties that recently stopped setting zero bail for certain misdemeanors and nonviolent felony offenses.

Such pandemic-era policies were separate from broader criminal justice reform moves over the past few years that have included laws limiting the use of bail and new approaches by district attorneys who won office on platforms de-emphasizing incarceration.

Those were driven by advocates and lawmakers who said that harsh prison sentences did little to reduce crime and that bail was unfair for people too poor to pay it.

The policies instituted at the start of the pandemic, meanwhile, were public-health measures meant to quickly depopulate jails, which were home to numerous outbreaks of the then-new coronavirus. The U.S. jail population plunged 25% in 2020 from mid-2019, to about 550,000, its lowest level in nearly a decade, according to federal data. 

California made such policies optional in mid-2020, a few months after instituting them that spring. But counties that are home to some of the state’s biggest cities kept the policies in place until this summer, after increases in crime sparked public calls for a tougher approach. In San Jose, Mayor Sam Liccardo said the pandemic jail policies were among the reasons that 43 people were arrested and then released without bail on at least 10 separate occasions between January 2020 and April 2022. Officials of Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, have disputed his claims.

“The zero-bail experiment largely failed,” said Mr. Liccardo, a Democrat. “There is a compelling reason to rethink cash bail to ensure it does not perpetuate the racial and economic inequities inherent in the criminal justice system, but we have seen too many violent and repeat offenders put out into our community without sufficient supervision, drug treatment or constraints.”

Nationwide, jail populations have risen but were 15% below their prepandemic levels as of the end of 2021, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for reducing prison populations.

Homicide rates have increased nationwide over the past two years, but have edged down in the first half of 2022, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

That has put district attorneys known as progressive prosecutors, in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, on the defensive. Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled in June by voters angry over rising crime. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants the state to do more and has been drawing attention to examples of suspects who were released and went on to commit other crimes. [MORE]

Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans.

Nationally, one in 81 Black adults per 100,000 in the U.S. is serving time in state prison. Wisconsin leads the nation in Black imprisonment rates; one of every 36 Black Wisconsinites is in prison.

In 12 states, more than half the prison population is Black: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Seven states maintain a Black/white disparity larger than 9 to 1: California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

Latinx individuals are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that is 1.3 times the incarceration rate of whites. Ethnic disparities are highest in Massachusetts, which reports an ethnic differential of 4.1:1. [MORE]

For 8 Minutes 7 Cops and 2 Paramedics Stood and Watched as a Latino Teen Hung Himself, but None Intervened at Rikers, a Reprehensible Jail Run by Liberals. 4 Cops Now Charged w/Felonies

/

From [FTP] Eight minutes — this is the amount of time multiple officers and a captain stood by and watched as 18-year-old Nicholas Feliciano wrapped a homemade noose around his neck and proceeded to hang himself in a jail cell. More than a half dozen officers and jail staff did nothing as he hung from his neck, flailed around before going completely limp.

Only after watching the 18-year-old go still and his lifeless body hang limp in the jail cell did anyone move to cut him down. On Nov. 27, 2019, the rope was cut and Feliciano's limp body slammed to the floor.

According to court documents, Feliciano used a sweater to try to hang himself from a U-shaped piece of metal in the ceiling above the toilet. The ceiling fixture was supposed to have been removed after another detainee had used it to attempt suicide six days earlier. It was not.

For seven minutes and 51 seconds, seven correction officers, a captain and two paramedics walked by or watched on from a guard station as Feliciano hung himself, and according to the surveillance footage, not a single one of them acted.

For three years as Feliciano remained hospitalized with severe brain damage, requiring round-the-clock care, not a single one of the officers faced charges, and, in fact, they all continued to collect their paychecks from the New York City Department of Corrections.

Last week, however, that changed and Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney who has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, filed felony charges against four of the officers involved.

The NY Times reports:

A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said that the cases against the guards took nearly three years to prosecute because the city Department of Investigation brought them first to federal prosecutors before taking them to Ms. Clark’s office.

Charged with official misconduct and reckless endangerment on Monday were the correction captain, Terry Henry, 37, and Officers Kenneth Hood, 35, Daniel Fullerton, 27, and Mark Wilson, 46. All four men pleaded not guilty and were released without bail. Their lawyers declined to comment.

Mr. Feliciano’s family welcomed the charges against the officers on Monday but said they were too slow in coming.

“These officers should have been indicted a long time ago instead of still working at Rikers Island while Nicholas was still in the hospital trying to live,” Feliciano’s grandmother, Madeline Feliciano, said in an interview. “It hurts. It’s very painful. It is devastating to see him the way he is because of somebody’s negligence.”

Despite the fact that four other officers were present and watching Feliciano hang himself, none of them have been charged or fired and all but one is still working at Rikers. [MORE]

Since 2020 Nearly 200 Georgia Prison Employees Arrested and Charged with Crimes

/

From [EJI] A list obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows 195 people working for the Georgia Department of Corrections were arrested for crimes related to their jobs between the start of 2020 and June 30, 2022.

Most of the arrested employees are corrections officers, the AJC reports, and 69 of the arrests involved drugs—including a case where two corrections employees allegedly tried to smuggle methamphetamine inside a Hot Pocket.

The list shows that 21 arrests involved a charge of battery, including four employees accused in the beating of a handcuffed man at Rutledge State Prison in Columbus, Georgia, in September 2021, the AJC reports.

A fifth employee accused of beating a person incarcerated at Rutledge in a separate incident is also among the listed arrests.

Nine GDC employees were arrested for sexual assault. The AJC reports that these arrests included four people accused in assaults against people incarcerated at Georgia’s largest women’s prison, Lee Arrendale State Prison.

A teacher at Autry State Prison was also among those arrested for sexual assault against a person in custody, according to the AJC.

In September 2021, even as a Justice Department investigation into sexual violence against lesbian, gay, and transgender people by staff and other incarcerated people was underway, federal prosecutors launched a statewide investigation into Georgia’s failure to adequately protect people from violence in its prisons.

Earlier this month, two of the men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery asked the court sentencing them on federal hate crime charges to keep them in federal custody, citing the extreme violence in Georgia’s prisons. The federal court denied the request.

Private Autopsy of Black Death-Row Prisoner Joe Nathan James Shows Uncivilized Authorities Subjected Him to a Torturous, Hours-long Murder Process. Experts say the Longest Execution in US History

/

From [DPIC] A private autopsy of Alabama death-row prisoner Joe Nathan James, Jr. suggests that unqualified corrections personnel subjected him to a torturous, hours-long execution process in a botched execution that experts say was the longest since the advent of lethal injection forty years ago.

The autopsy findings, described by reporter Elizabeth Bruenig in an August 15, 2022 exposé in The Atlantic, document multiple failed attempts to set an intravenous execution line, puncture wounds in Mr. James arm muscles that appear to be unrelated to efforts to insert the IV, multiple unexplained incisions, and bleeding and bruising around Mr. James’ wrists where he was strapped to the gurney. Bruenig called the execution “lengthy and painful," and a doctor who attended the autopsy said the execution team that carried it out “was unqualified for the task in a most dramatic way.”

The report belies the representation by ADOC Commissioner John Hamm that “nothing out of the ordinary” occurred during the three-hour period between the scheduled start of James’ execution at 6:00 p.m. on July 28, 2022 and the time the curtain to the execution chamber was opened at 9:02 p.m. to reveal a motionless and nonresponsive James on the execution gurney.

The autopsy, which was conducted August 2, 2022, several days after the official post mortem examination, was funded by the human rights organization Reprieve US on behalf of James’ family. Bruenig, who witnessed the private autopsy, along with noted Emory University anesthesiologist Joel Zivot, wrote that James’ “hands and wrists had been burst by needles, in every place one can bend or flex” during a “lengthy and painful death.“ The “carnage” on his body, she said, indicated that “[s]omething terrible had been done to James while he was strapped to a gurney behind closed doors without so much as a lawyer present to protest his treatment or an advocate to observe it.”

Reprieve executive director Maya Foa estimated that the execution took between three and three and a half hours to carry out from the time the execution team first attempted to insert the intravenous execution line. Reprieve’s review of 275 botched U.S. executions since 1890 found that it was the longest botched execution on record. 

Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham said in a statement that “There is no question that this is another botched execution, and it is among the worst botches in the modern history of the U.S. death penalty.” It is the longest botched lethal-injection execution in the 40-year history of that execution method, followed by Alabama’s 2½-hour failure to establish an execution line in the aborted February 2018 execution of Doyle Ray Hamm.

Over the Objections of the Victims Family Texas Murdered a Laotian Man Whose Conviction Relied on Discredited Forensics to Get Revenge for the Victims Family. He was Unarmed and Strapped to Chair

/

From [DPIC] Texas authorities murdered a Laotian man who fatally stabbed a white suburban Dallas real estate agent more than 16 years ago, the second execution this year in what has been the nation’s busiest death penalty state.

He was unarmed and strapped to a chair. [MORE]

Kosoul Chanthakoummane is the second defendant of color in less than a month to be put to death over the objection of the victim’s family.

Chanthakoummane was convicted and sentenced to death in Collin County for the 2006 murder of Sarah Walker, a real estate agent who was found murdered in a model home. He has long maintained his innocence. 

Chanthakoummane’s conviction relied on bite-mark analysis and witness hypnosis, two discredited forensic techniques, and statistically flawed DNA testimony. The son of Laotian refugees who escaped to the United States during the Vietnam war, Chanthakoummane admits that he stopped in the model home because he was having car trouble. While there, he says, he got a glass of water from the sink, leaving behind his DNA. Prosecutors say his DNA was found under Walker’s fingernails and in various locations throughout the house.

Walker’s father, Joe Walker, said in a video, “I don’t have any hate towards him at all. I don’t want him put to death.”

When her body was discovered, Sarah Walker had a bite mark on the back of her neck. Prosecutors retained forensic dentistry consultant Brent Hutson to try to link Chanthakoummane to that bite. Hutson made a mold of the bite and, using Adobe Photoshop, compared it to a mold of Chanthakoummane’s teeth. At trial, Hutson testified that he was “unable to exclude [Chanthakoummane] from that population of individuals that could have inflicted this injury.”

Bite mark evidence is notoriously unreliable and was been discredited by the National Academies of Science, which, in its landmark August 2009 report by its National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, found “no evidence of an existing scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others.” As of 2019, false bite mark testimony had been implicated in 31 wrongful convictions. In 2016, the Texas Forensic Science Commission joined the National Academies in concluding that “there is no scientific basis for stating that a particular patterned injury can be associated to an individual’s dentition,” and recommended that bitemark testimony no longer be permitted in criminal cases.

Prosecutors also presented testimony from two witnesses who testified that they had seen a “man of Asian descent” walking toward the model home on the day of Walker’s murder. However, Texas Ranger Richard Shing had hypnotized the witnesses, encouraging them to use their “mind’s eye” to imagine the suspect from different angles. Hypnosis of witnesses and suspects was widely used by the Texas Rangers until 2021, when they suspended its use because it can lead to false or misleading testimony.

In seeking the death penalty against Chanthakoummane, prosecutors ignored the vocal objections of the victim’s family. At Sarah Walker’s funeral, her father asked those in attendance to pray for her murderer. He also told prosecutors that he did not want them to seek the death penalty. In a video, Joe Walker, who has since died, said, “I’d be foolish to say I wasn’t angry about [the murder]. But I’m not angry enough to reject the Lord and his teachings. … Our Lord said that the greater the sinner, the more entitled they are to mercy.” 

In 2017, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) granted Chanthakoummane a stay of execution and directed the trial court to hold a hearing on his junk science claims. At that hearing, Chanthakoummane presented expert testimony that the hypnotically refreshed testimony against him was unreliable, that bite-mark identification testimony has no scientific validity, and that the prosecution testimony on DNA relied on erroneous data in the FBI DNA database and flawed statistical methodology. The trial court rejected his claims, signing the proposed factfinding submitted by Collin County prosecutors verbatim.

In 2020, a badly divided TCCA voted to uphold his conviction and death sentence. Four judges agreed that Chanthakoummane had shown that the prosecution had presented false DNA testimony, but found that proper DNA analysis would still have pointed to him as having been present at the crime scene and the contributor of DNA found under the victim’s fingernails. The majority also agreed that the bite-mark testimony had been discredited, but deemed its use harmless in light of the remaining evidence against him. The court also rejected Chanthakoummane’s challenge to the use of hypnotically-induced testimony on procedural grounds, saying that the flawed nature of the practice was already known and should have been raised at the time of trial. Three judges dissented, saying the court should have agreed to review the constitutionality of the hypnosis evidence.

Chanthakoummane is one of sixteen defendants sentenced to death in Collin County, three-quarters of whom have been Asian (2), Black (3), or Latinx (7). Seven of those defendants have been executed, five of whom were Black (2) or Latinx (3).

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules that Arkansas’ 3 Drug Protocol Used to Murder the People on It's Mostly Black Death Row Is not Cruel and Unusual Punishment Under the Imaginary 8th Amendment

/

Although Arkansas is Only 16% Black, It's Death Row is 50% Black

From [HERE] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Tuesday held that Arkansas’ three-drug execution protocol does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The case, Stacey Johnson v. Asa Hutchinson, was initially brought by death-row prisoners seeking to avoid the execution protocol in Arkansas. Though Arkansas’ supply of the three drugs has expired, the ruling means that the death-row prisoners still could face execution.

Arkansas death row is 50% Black despite the state being overwhelmingly white, 68%.

The court affirmed an earlier district court ruling which also found the death-row prisoners failed to establish that the three-drug execution protocol violated the Eighth Amendment. Death-row prisoners first brought the case in 2017 when Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson scheduled their execution ahead of when the state’s supply of one of the drugs was set to expire. Four of the scheduled executions occurred, but courts halted the other four. At the time, the prisoners asked the court to find the three-drug execution protocol in violation of the Eighth Amendment and to stay their executions.

Following trial, the district judge ruled that the death-row prisoners failed to prove that the three-drug execution protocol created a substantial risk of severe pain. The judge also noted that the death-row prisoners failed to present a feasible alternative to reduce the risk of severe pain they alleged was presented by the three-drug execution protocol.

The three-drug execution protocol used by Arkansas relies on midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Midazolam is meant to sedate the death-row prisoner. Vecuronium bromide then stops the lungs. That is then followed by potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

At issue before the appeals court was whether the district court erred in finding that the three-drug execution protocol presents an unsubstantial risk of severe pain. At the heart of the death-row prisoners’ argument was the so-called “ceiling effect” presented by midazolam. The prisoners argued that while the drug effectively sedates the death-row prisoner, they are still aware of the pain that comes with the issuance of the second and third lethal drugs. Both the state and the prisoners presented competing scientific evidence.

Ultimately the court found “With no scientific consensus and a paucity of reliable scientific evidence concerning the effect of large doses of midazolam on humans, the district court did not clearly err in finding that the prisoners failed to demonstrate that the Arkansas execution protocol is sure or very likely to cause severe pain.”

Arkansas has not executed any death-row prisoners since the start of the case in 2017. Arkansas’ supply of the three drugs used in the execution protocol has since expired and has not been replaced.

Black Homeowners in an Affluent White Area File Suit Alleging a White Realtor, “20/20 Valuations” and loanDepot Undervalued Their Home in a Racial Conspiracy to Deny their Refinance Loan

/

From [HERE] Claiming racial discrimination, a pair of Black homeowners in an affluent neighborhood of Maryland called Homeland claim in a federal complaint that they missed out on historically low interest rates because Loandepot.com would not refinance their mortgage on the basis of a low appraisal conducted by 20/20 Valuations.

The complaint states:

Plaintiffs Dr. Nathan Connolly and Dr. Shani Mott bring this action for damages, injunctive relief, and declaratory relief against Defendants Shane Lanham, 20/20 Valuations, LLC, and loanDepot.com, LLC (“loanDepot”), to seek redress for violations of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq., the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982, and Maryland Fair Housing Laws, Md. Code, State Gov’t § 20-702 et seq.

Defendants Lanham and 20/20 Valuations discriminated against Plaintiffs by dramatically undervaluing their home in an appraisal because of Plaintiffs’ race and their home’s location adjacent to a Black census block, notwithstanding that it is also located within Homeland, an affluent, mostly white neighborhood. Defendant loanDepot discriminated against Plaintiffs by knowingly relying on that appraisal to deny Plaintiffs a refinance loan and retaliating when Plaintiffs explained why the appraisal was discriminatory.

Homeland is a historic neighborhood in Baltimore. It is predominantly white. Plaintiffs bought a four-bedroom, 2600 square foot single-family detached house in Homeland and moved there in 2017. They are professors at Johns Hopkins University. Both are Black.

Plaintiffs applied to Defendant loanDepot in mid-2021 to refinance their existing mortgage debt and take advantage of historically low interest rates. loanDepot approved their application for a loan with a 2.25% interest rate, subject to confirming the $550,000 estimated value of the home with a formal appraisal. loanDepot’s loan officer wrote to Plaintiffs that “we should be good” because the estimated value was “pretty conservative.”

loanDepot contracted with Defendant Shane Lanham’s company, Defendant 20/20 Valuations, for the appraisal.

Lanham conducted the appraisal, which was inconsistent with professional appraisal standards in many ways. He improperly limited his search for comparable recently-sold properties to a very small portion of Homeland, north of Northern Parkway (and, still, chose a comparable from outside the neighborhood boundary); failed to consider houses throughout Homeland, both north and south of Northern Parkway, that were more similar to Plaintiffs’ house than ones he used for his valuation; made excessive downward adjustments to the sales prices of the houses he used; failed to make appropriate upward adjustments to reflect features those houses lacked but that Plaintiffs’ house has; and failed to account for substantial improvements Plaintiffs made to their home in 2020. Lanham also questioned whether Plaintiffs were legitimate residents of Homeland by asking if they paid dues to the Homeland Association.

Lanham appraised Plaintiffs’ home for only $472,000, over $75,000 below the loan officer’s “conservative” estimate of value. Defendant loanDepot denied Plaintiffs’ loan application because of the low valuation.

Plaintiffs were shocked at the appraisal and recognized that the low valuation was because of racial discrimination. They told this to their loanDepot loan officer and challenged the appraisal in a detailed letter.

loanDepot maintained its application denial and did not provide any substantive response to Plaintiffs’ communications about the discriminatory and flawed nature of the appraisal. Instead, the loan officer stopped responding to Plaintiffs’ phone calls.

Plaintiffs applied to another lender in early 2022 to refinance their mortgage debt. This time they “whitewashed” the house prior to the appraisal, removing the many indicia that a Black family lived there, such as family photos and their children’s drawings of Black people, and replacing them with items borrowed from white friends. Plaintiffs enlisted a white colleague to be present when the appraiser came and stayed away from the house themselves.
The home appraised for $750,000. Plaintiffs obtained their refinance loan on that basis, but at a higher interest rate than they would have received from loanDepot. Defendant Lanham’s dramatically lower valuation reflected his beliefs that a

Black family did not genuinely belong in Homeland and could not be the owners of a higher- valued home, and also that their home was less valuable because it was at the edge of an area with a predominantly Black population. Lanham violated professional standards to devalue Plaintiffs’ home because of these racist beliefs. Defendant loanDepot relied on Lanham’s appraisal despite being informed that it was infected by discrimination and stopped answering or returning Plaintiffs calls once they challenged the appraisal on that basis.

Defendants’ actions reflect intentional racial discrimination and retaliation against Plaintiffs for identifying those actions as discriminatory. Defendants’ actions have caused financial and emotional injury to Plaintiffs for which they seek declaratory and injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages. [MORE]

Catholic Order of Jesuit Priests, who Unjustly Enriched Themselves Off Slave Labor and Sales for Over a Century, Claim its Struggling to Raise Money after Promising to Atone for African Genocide

/

From [HERE] A prominent order of Catholic priests vowed last year to raise $100 million to atone for its participation in the American slave trade. At the time, church leaders and historians said it would be the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to make amends for the buying, selling and enslavement of Black people in the United States.

But 16 months later, cash is only trickling in.

The Jesuit priest leading the fund-raising efforts said he had hoped that his order would have secured several multimillion-dollar donations by now, in addition to an initial $15 million investment made by the order. Instead, only about $180,000 in small donations has flowed into the trust the Jesuits created in partnership with a group of descendants whose ancestors were enslaved by the Catholic priests.

Alarmed by the slow pace of fund-raising, the leader of the group of descendants that has partnered with the Jesuits wrote to Rome earlier this month, urging the order’s worldwide leader to ensure that the American priests make good on their promise.

The American Jesuits, who relied on slave labor and slave sales for more than a century, had discussed plans last year to sell all of their remaining former plantation lands in Maryland, the priests said. They discussed transferring the proceeds, along with a portion of the proceeds of an earlier $57 million plantation sale, to the trust. Money from the trust will flow into a foundation that will finance programs that benefit descendants, including scholarships and money for emergency needs, and promote racial reconciliation projects.

But the remaining land has yet to be sold and the proceeds from prior land sales have yet to be transferred to the trust, Jesuit officials and descendants say.

“It is becoming obvious to all who look beyond words that Jesuits are not delivering in deed,” Joseph M. Stewart, president and chair of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, wrote in his letter to the Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general. “The bottom line is that without your engagement, this partnership seems destined to fail.”

In his letter, Mr. Stewart warned that “hard-liners” within the order maintained the position that they “never enslaved anyone and thus do not ‘owe’ anyone anything.”

In an interview, Mr. Stewart said he believed that the Jesuit leadership remained committed to the partnership, describing ongoing meetings and conversations. The point, he said, was that the descendant community needed the priests to do more than talk. [MORE]

Political Activity on Campuses a Thing of the Past? Colleges Function as 'Corporate Profit Centers' Producing Cloned Mandroids (docile, conformist sheeple) ‘Strangely Oblivious’ to Corporate Power

/

From [RALPH NADER] When it comes to corporate power and control over their lives, now and into the future, today’s college students are perilously dormant.

When it comes to putting pressure on Congress to counter the various dictates of corporatism, there is little activity other than some stalwarts contacting their lawmakers on climate violence.

Much of campus activity these days focuses on diversity, tuition, student loans, “politically correct” speech demands and conforming conduct.

This campus environment is strangely oblivious to the corporate abuses of our economy, culture and government. This indifference extends to the endless grip of corporate power over the educational institutions that the students attend.

Companies see universities and colleges as profit centers.

Corporate vendors influence or control the food students eat on campus, down to the junk in vending machines, along with their credit cards, iPhones, very expensive textbooks and, of course, student debt.

College boards of trustees are dominated by corporate executives or corporate-affiliated people.

Corporate science is — as from drug companies, biotech, military weapons and fossil fuelcompanies — co-opting, corrupting or displacing peer-reviewed, academic science, unencumbered by corporate profiteering.

Corporate law firms dominate law schools, with few exceptions, seriously distorting the curriculum away from courses on corporate crimes and immunities and courses that show how corporations have shaped public institutions such as Congress, state legislatures, and the Pentagon along with state and federal regulatory agencies.

Business schools, except for a few free-thinking professors, are finishing schools for Wall Street and other businesses. They operate in an empirically starved environment regarding what is really going on in the world of global corporate machinations, while feeding their student’s dogmatic free-market fundamentalism.

Engineering departments narrowly orient their students toward corporate missions, without educating them about the engineering professions’ ethical and whistleblowing rights and duties.

Social science courses are largely remiss as well. There are very few courses on plutocratic rule and uncontrolled big-business ways of getting commercial values to override civic values.

Teachers may be wary of raising such taboo topics, but the enthusiastic student response to Professor Laura Nader’s course on “Controlling Processes” at The University of California, Berkeley over the years might indicate deep student interest in courses on top-down power structures.

Active students in the 1960s and 70s took their environmental, civil rights and anti-war concerns directly to Congress. They, with other citizen groups, pushed Congress and got important legislation enacted.

Students in about 20 states created lasting full-time student advocacy groups called Public Interest Research Groups or PIRGs.

Today the PIRGs are still making change happen in the country. However, few new PIRGs have been established since 1980.

Students need to embrace how important, achievable and enduring such nonprofit independent PIRGs can be. With skilled advocates continuing to train students in civic skills and providing students with extracurricular experiences for a lifetime of citizen engagement, the PIRGs create a vibrant reservoir for a more functioning democracy.

As a leading European statesman, Jean Monnet said decades ago — “Without people nothing is possible, but without institutions nothing is lasting.”

Students need to think about the civic part of their years ahead and focus on building the pillars of a democratic society that dissolve the concentrated power of giant corporations and empower the citizenry as befits the “We the People” vision in our Constitution.

"The Military Industrial Academic Complex" and "The Illusion of Wisdom:" US Universities are Pipelines to the Defense Industry - Knowledge in Service of Weapons of Destruction, Surveillance and Death

/

From [HERE] In his 1961 farewell address, Dwight D Eisenhower warned the nation against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. But a lesser known part of the speech was addressed to universities: “In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

We didn’t listen.

For the better part of the pandemic, I’ve been researching the defense industry’s ties to college campuses as part of an investigative fellowship for the magazine In These Times. On 11 August, we published a 4,300-word feature article on Lockheed Martin’s sweeping recruitment on college campuses.We found an environment in which Stem students are funneled into the defense industry through recruitment, research, financial assistance or some combination of the three.

Lockheed offers cash-prize competitions, scholarships and paid internships to students which have served as pipelines to employment. In 2020, the company hired 2,600 interns and claimed over 60% of graduating former interns converted to full-time jobs.

On campus, Lockheed has set up recruiting tables in the lobbies and hallways of student buildings and hosts workshops on everything from space exploration to résumé-building. At the University of Texas at Arlington, a $1.5m donation resulted in one of their buildings being renamed the Lockheed Martin Career Development Center.

But the company’s signature recruiting event, which is hosted at more than a dozen universities, is something called Lockheed Martin Day. Recruiters attract students with virtual reality demos, flight simulators and, in some cases, landing their helicopters directly on campus. Company officials have been known to offer on-the-spot job and internship opportunities to students during the event.

Additionally, Lockheed has poured resources into the financial support and recruitment of students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), earning its place as the number one industry supporter of HBCU engineering institutions for seven years in a row.

But before anyone says this is a good thing, it’s worth pausing to ask ourselves how we got here in the first place.

When Black women hold the highest average student loan debt ($41,466), it’s hard to argue against additional financial support no matter where it comes from. Unless you start with a more basic question: why do Black women graduate with the largest debt burden? Why are HBCU endowments, on average, 70% smaller than other universities?

Why is $1.7tn for Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet considered a worthwhile investment but $1.7tn in student debt relief considered a handout?

Why is $1.7tn for Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet considered a worthwhile investment but $1.7tn in student debt relief considered a handout?

The answer boils down to what priorities we set as a nation and the investments we are willing to make based on those priorities.

US Housing Affordability in June Was the Worst Since 1989

/

From [HERE] It was more expensive to buy a U.S. home in June than it has been for any month in more than three decades, as record-high home prices collided with a surge in mortgage rates.

The National Association of Realtors’ housing-affordability index, which factors in family incomes, mortgage rates and the sales price for existing single-family homes, fell to 98.5 in June, the association said Friday. That marked the lowest level since June 1989, when the index stood at 98.3.

Existing-home sales have declined for five straight months. During that period, interest rates shot up while home prices steadily climbed, leading to the sharpest erosion of affordability for the U.S. housing market in years and pricing more buyers out of the market. Even with fewer transactions, prices continue to rise from a year ago because the number of homes for sale around the U.S. remains below historical levels.

The drop in affordability makes it especially hard for first-time buyers to enter the market and access the main path for the U.S. middle class to build wealth. First-time buyers typically need to save up for a down payment and can’t benefit from selling a previous home.

Conditions have eased a bit in recent weeks. Mortgage rates hit a 13-year high in June but have ticked lower since. Some sidelined buyers re-entered the market in July and August, according to real-estate agents.

“Thankfully, the worst in affordability could already be over for this cycle,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Mortgage rates have calmed down in recent weeks, and the consistent wage growth ... is narrowing the gap with home-price growth.”

Existing-home prices have jumped 46% nationally in the past three years, according to NAR, fueled for much of that period by buyers seeking more space during the pandemic. Still, home buying remained relatively affordable in 2020 and 2021 because mortgage rates dropped to record lows, offsetting much of the price increases for buyers. [MORE]

Cops Want to Kill Blacks and Any Excuse Will Do: Video Shows White Denver Cop Shoot Black Man After He Put Gun Down, Put Hands Up. In Disregard of Life Cops Shot in Front of a Crowd, Hit 6 Bystanders

/

From [HERE] and [HERE] The Denver Police Department has released the bodycam video of the police shooting that left six bystanders injured in Lower Downtown on July 17.

Police say they shot Jordan Waddy after he pointed a gun at them. But the newly released video tells a different story, as it shows Waddy tossing his gun and putting his hands up just as officers began firing.

Bodycam video shows Waddy pulling the handgun from the lefthand side of his hoodie and throwing it onto the ground as he raises both hands into the air before police began firing at him from the front and the side.

Yamilette Bravo said “He did put the gun down, he threw it down and he backed away. He was in a surrendering position and yet they still shot,” Bravo said.

“There are so many civilians in that area, you basically shot innocent people. Why couldn’t you think of different ways?” Murillo inquired after watching the video.

Both students say the trust is trying, especially after seeing this video, which has now led to many people wondering what to do in this situation.

Guadalupe Murillo observed: “He did surrender, he did what almost everyone should do and officers still shot him, which is very disturbing for me.”

“I think also punishment. They did shoot innocent people. What’s going to be their punishment? If I were to go out on the street and I had a gun and I shot someone, I know I would have to serve time, I know I would have a punishment,” Bravo explained.

In a news conference, Matt Clark the commander of the Denver Police Department’s Major Crimes Division said the officers attested they had feared for their lives or the lives of their fellow officers, so they fired their weapons.

The officer on the sidewalk, who was several feet away to the right of Waddy, said he was aware of the crowd outside the Beer Hall and “explained he worked to obtain a clear sight picture of Mr. Waddy before firing one round. The officer stopped firing their weapons when they believe Mr. Waddy was no longer a threat,” Clark said in a critical incident briefing. 

The video show the cops statements are lies.

Investigators have not found any evidence that Waddy ever fired the weapon they say he pulled and the officers who fired their guns did not alert the crowd they were going to shoot, nor did they tell them to clear the area beforehand as they did not have time to do so, the commander said. [MORE]

Sacramento to Pay Only $1.7M to Stephon Clark’s Parents. White Cops Murdered Black Man, Shot at Him 20X Without Warning as he Held a Phone in Backyard and After he Fell to His Hands and Knees

/

From [HERE] The city of Sacramento on Friday said it had agreed to pay $1.7 million to the parents of Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man who was shot seven times by city police officers in March 2018.

The payment settled the final portion of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by his parents and ends the family’s legal action against the city, the city attorney, Susana Alcala Wood, said in a statement.

Mr. Clark was 22 years old when two officers in the Sacramento Police Department chased him into his grandmother’s backyard and shot at him 20 times, killing him. His death ignited widespread protests in the capital city and prompted the city and the state to change their policies around the use of deadly force by police officers.

In October 2019, the city agreed to pay $2.4 million to Mr. Clark’s two sons, then ages 2 and 5, after his family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and the two officers involved in the shooting. A later court ruling left his parents as the sole remaining plaintiffs, the statement said.

The two white officers who shot Mr. Clark, Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, did not face criminal prosecution because Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a racist suspect liberal democrat declined to file charges. In fact she has Not Charged Any Cop in Over 30 Separate Shooting Investigations

Both white officers are still employed by the police department, a police spokesman said.

"The involved officers . . . fired 20 shots striking (Clark) approximately eight times," including shots as he was going to the ground and shots after he had already went down to the ground. At the time of the shooting, DECEDENT was unarmed, with nothing but a cell phone in his hand.”

"The conduct of officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet was willful, wanton, malicious, and done with reckless disregard for the rights and safety" of Clark, the lawsuit alleges. It says the officers violated Clark's basic civil rights.

At the time of the shooting Clark posed no immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to either Officers TERRENCE MERCADAL or JARED ROBINET, or any other person, especially since he was unarmed and since he was going to the ground or already on the ground when he was shot, including multiple shots to his back.

Officers did not give Clark a verbal warning that deadly force would be used prior to shooting him multiple times, despite it being feasible to do so and they did not issue appropriate commands to Clark. Further, the involved officers did not announce themselves as police prior to the shooting.

Further, Clark was not suspected of committing any serious crime, the involved officers did not observe him commit any crime, the involved officers had no information that he was armed with a weapon, and there was no information that he had physically injured anyone.

The involved officers shot Clark even though he was not an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officers or anyone else and there were other less than lethal options available. Officers TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET did not show a reverence for human life.

The involved officers are responsible for every single shot they fired and this was not an immediate defense of life situation.

After striking Clark approximately eight (8) times, TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET did not provide or summons timely medical attention for Clark, who was bleeding profusely and had obvious serious injuries, and TERRENCE MERCADAL and JARED ROBINET also did not allow and prevented responding medical personnel on-scene to timely render medical aid/assistance to him. [MORE]

An analysis of police video footage by The New York Times found that the police officers continued to shoot Mr. Clark after he had fallen to his hands and knees.

The killing ignited protests to demand accountability, with demonstrators stopping traffic in downtown Sacramento and on a major interstate that runs through the city.

Mr. Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, said at a news conference on Friday that he would continue to call for the officers involved to be fired, charged and prosecuted, the local NBC affiliate KCRA reported.

“There’s no reason I should be out here talking about my brother’s legacy, defending my brother’s legacy, when the officers who murdered him should be proving their innocence in court,” Mr. Clark said. “We always have to relive the death of Stephon.”

Stevante Clark said that he had organized a protest for Saturday afternoon and that events would be held throughout the weekend in honor of what would have been Stephon Clark’s 27th birthday on Aug. 10.

“Stephon Clark’s death was a tragedy that brought pain and sorrow to his family and to our entire city,” the mayor of Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg, said in the city’s statement about the settlement. “Everyone wishes this heartbreaking event had not occurred.”

Investigations by the city, county and state and federal agencies found that the officers acted within the rules of the police department and the laws of the state.

“The fact that the officers acted within the law does not diminish the tragedy of what occurred,” Ms. Alcala Wood said in the statement. “This case has led our city to implement meaningful improvements to policy, and it will continue to do so.”

Mr. Clark’s death prompted California to raise the legal standardfor when police can use deadly force to “only when necessary in defense of human life.” Previously, the law allowed for the use of deadly force when “reasonable.”

The Sacramento Police Department also updated its body camera, foot pursuit and use-of-force policies.

Although Lexington, Mississippi is 85% Black, Elite Whites are in Control of Everything of Value. Said Phenomenon which Defies Statistical Laws of Probability is Finally Questioned in Police Lawsuit

/

THE WORLD IS 90% NON-WHITE BUT EVERYWHERE WHITES AND BLACKS LIVE TOGETHER THE WHITES ARE IN CONTROL. THERE IS NO SYSTEM OF BLACK SUPREMACY IN EXISTENCE

Truthout reports that “A flagrantly racist and violent ex-cop is bringing national attention to a small town in Mississippi where Black residents say they were systematically “terrorized” by police and the court system. Civil rights advocates condemn the officer’s actions and say they are a symptom of a larger problem that extends far beyond one rural community and a “bad apple” among the local police.

A lawsuit filed in federal court this week claims white police in the rural, majority-Black town of Lexington, Mississippi, targeted Black residents and subjected them to false arrests, brutality, excessive fines and unreasonable searches. The department’s discriminatory intent was made clear by a leaked recording of Sam Dobbins, the former police chief, hurling racist and homophobic slurs and bragging about killing 13 people as an officer, the lawsuit argues. In the recording, Dobbins relishes the idea that residents “fear” him.

Dobbins made national headlines after a Black officer secretly recorded 17 minutes of audio capturing his former boss repeatedly using words such as “faggot” and “N—–” while boasting about police brutality. Dobbins patrolled the streets of Lexington “with impunity” despite a well-known history of harassment, racist remarks and allegations that he jailed a man on bunk charges while working for a different Mississippi county in 2013 and nearly beat the man to death, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which first revealed the audio recording. The officer who secretly recorded Dobbins reportedly resigned on July 19.’

Local aldermen voted 3-2 to fire Dobbins on July 20 to applause from Black residents. However, those residents and activists say the problem of racist policing in Lexington and across the South is much bigger than Dobbins. Jill Collen Jefferson, founder and director of JULIAN, the Mississippi-based civil rights group that filed the lawsuit, said it’s time to shine a light on the ongoing racist abuses in Lexington. Representing several local Black plaintiffs, the group is asking a federal judge for a temporary restraining order on Lexington police to protect Black residents.

Civil rights groups and local plaintiffs are also calling on the Justice Department to investigate, as federal officials have done in larger cities with patterns of racist police abuse, a practice that was temporary halted under former President Donald Trump before resuming under President Joe Biden. Allegations included in the lawsuit also come from witnesses working for the Lexington police, who reported that Dobbins and other officers brutally beat residents after handcuffing them or dragging them out of the back of patrol cars. 

“There needs to be a formal, federal investigation, and not just of the one office or two offices or the police department, but of this entire town,” Jefferson said in an interview. “It’s really hard to explain [to outsiders], but every branch of government in Lexington is corrupt, every branch of government is controlled by white supremacy.”

Of Lexington’s roughly 1,800 residents, about 85 percent are Black, but former Police Chief Dobbins, the local prosecutor, the judge, the mayor, and other top officials are all white and politically intertwined with one wealthy white family, according to Jefferson. Katherine Barrett Riley, the city’s attorney and a member of the family Jefferson described, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Despite his checkered past, Dobbins was hired by city officials to “control” the local Black population and boost revenue with fines and legal fees, Jefferson said. Residents reported hundreds of roadblocks set up in the tiny town to target and stop Black drivers. Two plaintiffs, both Black men, say they were targeted and arrested on bogus charges — including for possessing marijuana that was allegedly planted by police — after speaking out about police harassment at a community “know your rights” meeting earlier this year.

Former resident Tasha Walden said she fled Lexington and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to protect her family from Dobbins, who repeatedly wrote baseless tickets and made “repeated excuses” to arrest her son without a warrant. Walden’s son, who followed her and now lives in Memphis, is one of several plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which lays out a disturbing pattern of racial profiling, excessive force and sexual harassment by Lexington police.

“It’s a nightmare, it’s terrible, people are afraid to even walk down the street to go to the store to pay bills, because every time Black people come out, it’s always a problem,” Walden said over the phone on Thursday. “No matter if you ride or if you’re walking, it’s still a problem, especially the young Blacks, the younger generations, it’s a problem for them.” [MORE]

Anon states:

Q: Are you saying blacks cannot be racist toward whites?

A: That’s correct. Of course, all people can be hateful or prejudiced. Those terms describe individual behaviors, not systematic power. Racism is the COLLECTIVE behaviors of a group. A white individual within a system of racism/white supremacy has the implicit or explicit support of that system IF they choose to practice racism.

If a poor man robs a rich man at gunpoint that doesn’t mean the poor man is more powerful (economically and politically) than the rich man. The poor man is an individual who committed a crime of opportunity. There are no powerful institutions or systems that support his right to rob the rich man, but there are institutions and systems that allow the rich man to rob the poor man - which is why he doesn’t need a gun to do it.

A black person who mistreats a white person doesn’t mean black people are more powerful (economically and politically) than white people. Never confuse the actions of a black individual (or a group of black individuals) that mistreats someone white as proof that black racism exists. Their “power” is limited ONLY to what they can do as individuals. There are NO black institutions or systems that support, defend, or finance the right of blacks to mistreat whites.

There are NO black individuals or black organizations that have the power to strip whites of their collective right to live where they want, work where they want, get an education wherever they want, or control what white people do collectively in ANY area of human activity. There are NO black institutions that are more powerful than white institutions. Therefore, blacks do not have the COLLECTIVE POWER to diminish the quality of life for the white collective. [MORE]

SYSTEM OF RACISM WHITE SUPREMACY IS A BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM OF SURVIVAL. In reality, persons who classify themselves as Whites make up less than 10% of the world's population. That is, 90% of the world's population of 7 billion people are non-white. [MORE]

Dr. Bobby Wright observed, “although the world is 90% non-white, everywhere one finds whites and blacks in close proximity to each other, whether it is Chicago or Zimbabwe, the whites are in control. Yet Blacks rarely question this extraordinary universal phenomenon which defies every know statistical law of probability.” [MORE]

Dr. Amos Wilson, a true rebel to lionize, similarly stated, "[Blacks] must question how is it that a minority people [whites], a very small percentage of mankind, a people who are essentially resourceless in terms of their natural resources, maintain the power they have. Why is it that the peoples [Afrikans] whose lands contain the wealth of the earth are the poorest people? This implies that there must exist a political, social situation wherein the mental orientation of our people must be so structured that the power and the ability of the Europeans to rule this earth are continually maintained.' [MORE] 

Dr. Blynd explains, "Racism is not individualistic, but institutional, cultural, economic, political, linguistic, self-perpetuating and systematic." White Supremacy is a “power group dynamic” involving the relationship between whites and Blacks in a vast system of unequal power. It is economic discrimination by one group over and against another for the purposes of subjugation and/or maintaining the imbalance of power through cooperative control, misinformation, indoctrination, genocide and oppression. [MORE] 

Fuller states, "in a socio-material system dominated by White Supremacists, all major decisions involving non-white people are made by White Supremacists. The White Supremacists are their bosses, their masters, and their major decision-makers. Whatever a Black person gets, and/or is allowed to keep, is the result of decisions made by White Supremacists. This is the functional meaning of White Supremacy (Racism) that many people — particularly non-white people — prefer not to acknowledge. 

Wilson asks Black people, 

‘Who has control of your food? Who has control of your electricity? Who has control of your water? Of your jobs? Who tells you what to wear when you go to work? Who tells you when to come to work...when to leave...when to go to lunch...how to speak...how to write...how to do this...how to do that...and how are these things taught, and how they are conditioned?"-- It is by reward and punishment. " You do this you get paid; you don't do this you don't get paid; you get a raise, you get docked. What do we have here?’

To live under the power of another people is to be created by that people. To be rewarded or punished by that people is to be created by that people. We are living under them as the result of the exercise of the power of another people over us. Therefore, if we wish to change this situation (i.e., the conditions under which we live), then we must change the power relationships. If we are to prevent ourselves from being created by another people and are to engage in the act of self creation, then we must change the power relations.’ [MORE]

NAACP Confuse 'Demands' with Begging and 'Public Servant' with Master. Authorities Keep Policies, Reports Secret in Fanta Bility Case. 8 Yr Old Girl Murdered by Cops who Fired Recklessly Into a Crowd

/

Larken Rose explains, “In the United States there is a ruling class and a subject class, and the differences between them are many and obvious. One group commands, the other obeys. One group demands huge sums of money, the other group pays. One group tells the other group where they can live, where they can work, what they can eat, what they can drink, what they can drive, who they can work for, what work they can do, and so on. One group takes and spends trillions of dollars of what the other group earns. One group consists entirely of economic parasites, while the efforts of the other group produce all the wealth. In this system, it is patently obvious who commands and who obeys. The people are not the “government,” by any stretch of the imagination, and it requires profound denial to believe otherwise.” [MORE]

Among other things FUNKTIONARY describes the NAACP as the Negro-Anglo-American Corporate Preserve or National Association for the Advancement of Confused People. [MORE]

From [HERE] The NAACP Darby branch and several community groups on Thursday called on the Sharon Hill mayor, police chief and borough council to release current police policy and procedures on deadly force.

Sheila Carter, president of the NAACP Darby branch, said she filed a freedom of information request on Aug. 2, seeking the deadly force policies and the contents of a heavily redacted report on the nine-month investigation by Kelley Hodge, a lawyer at Fox-Rothschild LLP, into the shooting death of Fanta Bility last August.

“If I am not going to get the recommendations from Ms. Hodge, then give me and the residents of Sharon Hill and as president of the NAACP, a copy of the policies and procedures that are in place for your officers,” said Carter, who is a Sharon Hill resident and a former county police officer.

Carter made her comments at a news conference outside of the Sharon Hill Borough Council Hall. She was joined by Cathy Hicks, president of the NAACP Philadelphia Chapter; Malcolm Yates, convener of the Delaware County Black Caucus; Alascal Wisner, executive director of the Minority Center for Participation and a representative of the United Coalition for Fanta Bility.

Bility was shot in August 2021 as she walked with her mother following a football game at Academy Park High School.

Three officers, identified as Brian Devaney, Sean Dolan, and Devon Smith, fired their weapons as the game was letting out in response to gunfire they heard in the vicinity that was unrelated to the football game.

They fired 25 shots at a black Chevy Impala, which they believed was where the shots were coming from.

That vehicle was passing the exiting crowd, which included Bility. Each officer was charged with 10 counts of reckless endangerment and one count of manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, according the to the charging documents.

After a grand jury investigation, three Sharon Hill police officers were arrested in January and charged by Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer with manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

The police officers have been released in lieu of $500,000 unsecured bail and are awaiting trial.

In a letter to the Sharon Hill mayor, Borough Council and police chief, Carter wrote:

“As a community leader and resident of Sharon Hill, I have a right to know what rules and regulations, policies and procedures you have in place to ensure all residents, including myself and my family feel safe. I have a right to know that all officers are properly trained to be able to respond to active shooter incidents without doing harm to innocent bystanders. As a mother, my heart aches for Fanta’s family. The tragedy that took place on August 27, 2021 should have never happened. We all know and can agree to that fact. The Bility family is still in mourning and, they, along with the residents and leaders of Sharon Hill and vicinity are left one year later with more questions than answers. Therefore, we are asking for you, the Mayor and Police Chief, to provide the public with some answers. Having this information won’t bring Fanta back, but it will allow us to feel safer and know that the Sharon Hill Police Department has policies, procedures and proper training for officers in place to ensure what took place last year never, ever happens again. In order to make things right, you have to acknowledge what went wrong and tell us how you are correcting the problems that exist within the department. Full access to the independent report that was commissioned by Borough Council would do that, but in the interim, we hope you will do the right thing. Transparency is key and the residents of Sharon Hill and our community deserve answers and information.”

Carter and the group planned a protest at the Sharon Hill Borough Council meeting Thursday evening (after Tribune presstime) to address the Council and “ensure what took place last year in the case of Fanta Bility never happens again.”

On Aug. 2, the borough released its heavily redacted version of a police report about procedures. At the time, the Sharon Hill Borough Council solicitor, Courtney Richardson, said the goal of the report was to “provide measurable information that can guide future planning, training and resources allocation.”

But releasing the redacted report was a public relations disaster and was blasted by Bruce L. Castor Jr., the attorney representing the family of Fanta Bility, who said the report was “completely unacceptable.”

According to the DA’s office, the tragic incident started with gunshots on the 900 block of Coates Street in Sharon Hill after a verbal altercation between a 16-year-old Sharon Hill teenager and Hasein Strand, 18, of Collingdale.

The DA’s office said the gunfire included two shots in the direction of the police officers, who were monitoring the crowd leaving the stadium after that night’s football game.

The police officers discharged their service weapons in the direction of the Academy Park football field. The investigation by Stollsteimer’s office concluded that the shots from one of the officers killed Fanta and wounded three others who were passengers in a car traveling nearby.

Genocide: UK Government Data Shows 1,000 More People than Usual are Dying Each Week from Illnesses and Conditions Other Than COVID. Since May, Nearly 10,000 More Deaths than the 5yr Average

/

From [DAVID ICKE] and [HERE] and [HERE] The effects of lockdown could be causing more deaths than Covid as nearly 10,000 more deaths than the five-year average are recorded, ONS data has found.

Released on Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics’ figures for excess deaths in the UK has revealed that about 1,000 more people than usual are dying each week from illnesses and conditions other than Covid.

This makes the rate for excess deaths 14.4 per cent higher than the five-year average, meaning 1,350 more people have died than usual in the week ending 5 August.

Covid-related deaths made up for 469 of them, but the remaining 881 have ‘not been explained’. Since the start of June, nearly 10,000 more deaths unrelated to Covid have been recorded than the five-year average, making up around 1,089 per week.

This figure is over three times the number of people who died from Covid, 2,811, over the same period.

ONS analysis takes into consideration the ageing population changes, yet still found a ‘substantial ongoing excess’.

The Telegraph has reported that the Department of Health may have ordered an investigation into the concerning numbers as there is potential for them to be linked to the delays in medical treatment as a result of the ongoing strain on the NHS.

Lockdowns pushed back treatment for conditions including cancer, diabetes and heart disease, with the British Heart Foundation telling the publication it was ‘deeply concerned’ by the findings.

The Stroke Association said it had been anticipating the rise in deaths for some time.

Noting a ‘disturbing’ number of mental health conditions, undetected cancers and cardiac problems, chief executive of private GP service Doctorcall Dr Charles Levinson said: ‘Hundreds and hundreds of people dying every week, what’s going on?

‘Delays in seeking and receiving healthcare are no doubt the driving force, in my view. Daily Covid statistics demanded the nation’s attention, yet these terrifying figures barely get a look in. A full and urgent government investigation is required immediately,’ he told the Telegraph.

Only last week England-wide statistics showed that emergency care standards in hospitals hit an all-time low, with over 20,000 patients facing a 12+ hour wait for medical treatment.