Miami Firefighter Fired after Making Truthful Statements, “Cops exist for the government to exercise its monopoly on violence. All cops are good for is protecting rich property owners, status quo”

From [HERE] and [HERE] A white Miami firefighter has been fired after text messages surfaced of him criticizing law enforcement.

• The firefighter texted "who cares?" regarding the death of a Miami-Dade police officer, per reports.

• The firefighter later apologized, saying the deceased police officer "did not deserve any of this."

A Miami firefighter has been fired after text messages surfaced of him harshly criticizing law enforcement following the death of a Miami-Dade police officer.

Kevin Newcomb of the City of Miami Fire Rescue was removed from duty and then fired on Friday following "antagonistic" messages he sent in a group chat about fallen Miami-Dade Police Officer Cesar Echaverry, a spokesperson told WSVN 7News.

Echaverry, 29, was critically injured in a shooting on Monday, and he died in the hospital two days later, 7News reported.

"Who cares? Another dead cop, probably against gun control. They didn't give an [expletive] when kids were dying in that school shooting they stood outside," Newcomb wrote in a group chat, per 7News.

He appeared to be referring to the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where hundreds of law enforcement officers were criticized for waiting over an hour before confronting the shooter, who killed 19 students and 2 teachers.

Newcomb's text message continued:

"Cops exist for the government to exercise its monopoly on violence. They want the whole world to stop when one of theirs goes down. How many idiots I had to transport with honor guard their dead bodies from coronavirus because they all were too stupid to wear masks or get vaccinated? All cops are good for is protecting the rich property owners and the status quo. Everything else is a farce. [Expletive] the police."

Miami Fire Rescue Chief Joseph Zahralban said Newcomb's texts make it "impossible" for him to "carry out his duties as a first responder in the City of Miami," according to 7News.

"We have confirmed that the firefighter in question authored a written statement using a social media platform that demonstrated a disregard for human life, demonstrated a violent and antagonistic stance towards civil servants and represented conduct unbecoming of a Miami Firefighter," Zahralban said in a statement, per 7News.

In a statement to 7News, Newcomb apologized for writing the text messages.

"I am writing this to apologize for the statements that have been circulating that I made earlier this week with some friends in a private chat," Newcomb told 7News. "I sincerely apologize to those closest to officer Echaverry who have been made to feel more pain because of my words. I wish I could take them back."

He added: "I hope that my actions do not continue to distract from the mourning of Officer Echaverry, who did not deserve any of this."

In Kobe Bryant Photo Trial StrawBoss Sheriff [a sophisticated liar] Retracts Previous Statements that Cops Collected Pics of Dead Bodies and says He Ordered Cops to Destroy Photos (evidence) to Help

From [HERE] Vanessa Bryant, the surviving wife of Laker star Kobe Bryant, told the court on Friday, "I live in fear, every day, of being on social media and having the photographs pop up." She was referring to crash site photos taken by sheriff's deputies and LA County Fire officials on the day of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, daughter and seven others.

Bryant has sued the county over its handling of the photos. But for the first eight days of the trial, nearly everything about them has been the subject of dispute: how many there were, what exactly they showed, why they were taken and why they were shared. The photographs have never been published. But both Bryant and the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, Christopher Chester, whose wife and daughter were also killed in the crash, say they remain haunted by the possibility that the graphic images may one day surface. 

Friday's emotional testimony by Bryant was one of the first times she's publicly addressed the crash and the controversy surrounding the photos. She told the court she was "devastated" to learn that the photos were taken, that her first instinct was to "run down the block and just scream."

"I expected them to have compassion, respect," she said, referring to the first responders. "My husband and my daughter deserved dignity." 

"Every night," she said, "I think about what was done to them." 

Later, she said that she sometimes pictures the deputies sharing the photos with each other and laughing about them. She said the fear of the photos being disseminated to the public has given her panic attacks.

During cross examination, Mira Hashmall, the attorney representing LA County in the case, suggested that Bryant's panic attacks may have come from other sources. For example, she pointed to numerous companies, foundations, trusts and LLCs all run — at least on paper — by Bryant.

"On top of everything else, you're juggling a business empire, it sounds like," Hashmall said. She added that perhaps the lawsuit itself was adding to her stress. 

"I'm willing to go through hell and back to get justice for my husband and daughter," Bryant answered. 

In their opening arguments, attorneys for Bryant and Chester described some of the crash site photographs taken by a sheriff's deputy and two fire department officials, as close-up shots of human remains, gruesome shots of headless torsos, severed limbs and organs scattered on the charred ground. Some depositions given by first responders, as well as early interviews conducted by the sheriff departments internal affairs division, backed that story up.

Sheriff's deputies and fire department officials now claim the pictures were wide shots, depicting the crash site as a whole and not focused on human remains. Deputies also say that the photographs served a real investigative purpose: they documented a scene which may have been about to be altered, and they helped first responders understand the scope of the scene. They could also have helped identify the helicopter. 

The plaintiffs, meanwhile, have argued that deputies took the photos as macabre souvenirs or trophies. Their narrative was bolstered by news interviews given by Sheriff Alex Villanueva in the weeks following the crash. At the time, the elected sheriff of LA County told media that the only people who had a legitimate reason to photograph the crash victims were from the coroner's office and the National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency. He also said there was long-standing practice of deputies collecting horrific photos of dead bodies from crime scenes and keeping them in so-called "death books."

After Bryant's testimony, the plaintiffs rested their case. As their first witness, the county called Sheriff Villanueva, in part to explain those early interviews. He attempted to do so by explaining that he was speaking with limited information and hadn't been "educated" about the procedures governing crash site photos taken by personal cellphones. The situation, he said, was unique — "the first, to my knowledge."

He defended the actions of some of his deputies, saying that the deputy who initially took the pictures "did his job," and that some of the photos were shared for legitimate reasons. 

A key issue in the trial is just why Sheriff Villanueva ordered the photos deleted, an act that the plaintiffs have argued amounted to the destruction of evidence, perhaps even a cover-up.

But the sheriff said deleting the photos was the only way to prevent them from getting out.

When he first heard of the existence of the crash site photos, he told his staff, "These photos can never see the light of day." Soon, all the deputies who'd taken and received the photos were asked to come in to discuss the situation. But some wanted to have an attorney with them. That, said Villanueva, would have taken too long.

"In football, they call it an audible," said Villanueva. He took what he called a "bold step": he offered the deputies "amnesty," as long as they came forward then and there, deleted the pictures, and told investigators who they'd sent them to. As long as the images never appeared online, the officers would walk away with only a "performance log entry" — essentially a warning. 

"That was the bargain that got them into the station," Villanueva testified. "And it worked." He added: "That was our primary concern: making sure the photographs never got out. Then accountability. We had to choose one or the other, and we chose correctly." He added later: "The fact that [they] haven't ended up on social media tells me they've done a thorough job."

Earlier, Hashmall had asked Bryant if deleting the photos hadn't been the right thing to do — that is, hadn't that made it less likely they would get out. Bryant responded: "It made it less likely to be able to recover evidence."

The trial resumes Monday, with closing arguments expected early in the week.

Fort Worth DA Urges Court to Reverse Black Man's Sentence b/c the White Trial Prosecutor ​‘Blatantly Lied’ to Jury that Victim’s Family Wanted Death Penalty and Committed Perjury to Cover up the Lie

From [HERE] The Tarrant County District Attorney’s office has asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to vacate Paul Storey’s death sentence, saying that his trial prosecutor “blatantly lied” to his jury that the victim’s family wanted the death penalty and subsequently committed perjury in state post-conviction proceedings to cover up that lie. 

In an extraordinary filing on August 17, 2022 shortly after being granted permission to reenter the case to “set the record straight with respect to the veracity of [former Assistant Tarrant County District Attorney Christy Jack’s] statement” to the jury, county prosecutors asked the TCCA to reconsider its prior decision in 2019 to uphold Storey’s death sentence. Quoting Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent from the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to review Storey’s case, Tarrant County prosecutors wrote: “Former Tarrant County Criminal District Attorneys Christy Jack and [post-conviction prosecutor] Robert Foran committed ‘serious … prosecutorial malfeasance’ during Storey’s trial and then ‘ran out the clock by failing to disclose [it] throughout Storey’s initial postconviction proceedings.’” This, the reconsideration motion argued, “is the very antithesis of due process.”

Storey was convicted and sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of Jonas Cherry during a 2006 robbery of a Fort Worth putt-putt golf course. Prior to Storey’s trial, Cherry’s mother and father, Judy and Glenn Cherry (pictured), told Jack that they did not want the death penalty imposed for their son’s murder. Prosecutors offered Storey and co-defendant Mike Porter, whom one juror later described as the leader, life sentences if they agreed to plead guilty. Porter took the deal, but Storey did not. Despite the Cherrys’ views, Jack told the jury “[i]t should go without saying that all of Jonas’s family and everyone who loved him believe the death penalty is appropriate.”

The motion filed in the TCCA bluntly asserts, “As we now know, this was a lie.”

In March 2017, Cherry’s parents sought clemency for their son’s killer. In a letter to the Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson, Gov. Greg Abbott, state District Judge Robb Catalano, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, they wrote that, as a result of their “ethical and spiritual values,” they strongly oppose the death penalty, and said “[w]e do not want to see another family having to suffer through losing a child and family member.” Storey’s execution, they wrote, “will not bring our son back, will not atone for the loss of our son and will not bring comfort or closure.”

Storey was originally scheduled to be executed in April 2017, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals(TCCA) stayed his execution so the trial court could consider whether the prosecution knew its argument that the Cherry family wanted the death penalty was false and whether the family’s opposition to the death penalty in the case constituted newly discovered evidence. 

After hearing testimony from nineteen witnesses, Judge Everett Young overturned Storey’s death sentence, holding that the prosecutor’s argument was false, that Jack had “made the argument intending it to affect the jury’s verdict,” and that she “was aware of [its] falsity” when she did so. However, on appeal in October 2019, the TCCA reinstated Storey’s death sentence without reaching the merits of the prosecutorial misconduct claim, holding that the claim was procedurally barred because Storey had not proven that his post-conviction lawyer, who was deceased, could not have discovered the Cherry’s opposition to the his death sentence in time to raise the issue earlier.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in July 2022.

When the TCCA returned the case to the trial court in 2017, District Attorney Sharen Wilson asked for her office to be recused, noting that Storey’s trial lawyer, Larry Moore, had become First Assistant District Attorney. This, she said, placed Tarrant prosecutors “in the untenable position of being both prosecutor and witness.” With the testimony complete and Moore walled off from involvement in the case, Wilson in July 2022 asked and received permission for her office to reenter the case to address what it described as “Christy Jack’s blatant disregard for candor to the tribunal.”

Asking the TCCA to reconsider its determination that Storey had failed to prove that his post-conviction counsel could not have discovered that Jack’s argument was false, Wilson argued, “There is simply no way Storey’s initial state habeas counsel­—well-known for his diligence and his work ethic—could have discovered that Ms. Jack had lied during her closing argument when no one had any reason to believe that was the case, when not a single note in the State’s trial file suggested that was the case. … Whatever diligence requires of defense counsel …, it cannot possibly require them to search for, much less find, something hidden from them which they do not even know to search for.” 

Summarizing why Tarrant County prosecutors now believe Storey’s death sentence should be overturned, Wilson wrote: “In 2008, Ms. Jack and Mr. Foran failed to disclose favorable, material evidence to defense counsel. Ms. Jack compounded this action when she blatantly lied during her closing argument at trial. Ten years later, Ms. Jack and Mr. Foran compounded that lie even further when they gave perjured testimony to cover up the fact that Ms. Jack had violated Storey’ s right to a fair trial …. Storey should, at the very least, be granted a new punishment trial. Justice demands it.” 

In a statement provided to Fort Worth television station WFAA, Jack said: “I stand by my statements to the jury and my testimony during the hearing. I even went so far as to take — and pass — a polygraph related to the truthfulness and veracity of my testimony.” 

Jack asserted that she still has a note from the Cherry family “thanking me for speaking on their behalf after the jury returned their unanimous decision for capital punishment.” “I respect that, with the passage of time, the family has forgiven Paul Storey,” Jack said. “Their compassion demonstrates the type of people they are.”

White Louisville Cop Pled Guilty to Conspiracy in Breonna Taylor case. Liar Cop Filed a False Police Report and Lied to Judge to Falsify Search Warrant Which led to Black Woman Being Shot to Death

From [HERE] In a guilty plea filed Tuesday, former Louisville detective Kelly Goodlett admitted to helping falsify a search warrant, then filing a false report in the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor. The plea marked the first conviction in the case, which, along with the murder of George Floyd and other acts of police brutality, set off a summer of racial justice demonstrations in 2020.

Goodlett pleaded guilty to the federal charge of conspiracy, which could lead to a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Taylor, 26, died of gunshot wounds in March 2020 after plainclothes police burst into her apartment during a drug probe.

Goodlett’s attorney, Brandon Marshall, and Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Aug. 12, Goodlett’s plea was confirmed during an online hearing before Magistrate Judge Regina S. Edwards in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Kentucky. Goodlett was released from that hearing on a $10,000 bond and ordered to remove all firearms from her home and give up her passport.

Goodlett resigned after she and three former colleagues, Sgt. Kyle Meany and former detectives Joshua Jaynes and Brett Hankison, were charged in Taylor’s death. Meany’s termination was announced by the department last week. But unlike the others, Goodlett was not indicted. Rather, her charges were filed in a sealed “information,” which analysts said usually indicates that a defendant has agreed to a plea deal with the government.

Meany, Jaynes and Hankison have pleaded not guilty, court records show. Hankison was the only police officer to also be charged at the state level, and he was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges this year for shots that entered a neighboring apartment. Like Goodlett, Jaynes and Meany are charged with falsifying the search warrant affidavit. Prosecutors allege that the two men knowingly included outdated and false information, and Goodlett’s testimony could be crucial in their cases.

A Special, White, Liberal Prosecutor says No Charges for the White Cop who Murdered Rayshard Brooks. Black Man Shot in the Back Posed No Threat as He Fled in Wendys Parking Lot in Liberal Atlanta

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER IN RACIST SYSTEM. From [HERE] A specially appointed prosecutor announced Tuesday that he will not pursue charges against the two white Atlanta police officers who clashed with Rayshard Brooks during a 2020 encounter that ended with the 27-year-old Black man's fatal shooting.

Pete Skandalakis, a racist suspect executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia, said he believes Officer Garrett Rolfe, who shot and killed Brooks in June 2020, acted appropriately. He also said the second officer involved in the encounter, Officer Devin Brosnan, will not be charged.

"Given the quickly changing circumstances, was it objectively reasonable that he used deadly force? And we conclude it was," Skandalakis said.

[Wow he sounds more like a defense attorney for authoritarians than a so-called public servant tasked with the assignment of holding government agents accountable for murder. If Rayshard shot a fleeing white cop in the back at a Wendy’s, would he get the same treatment? Of course not b/c cops are special representatives of authority and the law of the jungle applies to them in their interactions with mere mortals. Authority, which is the government’s ability and implied moral right to forcibly control citizens and that, consequently, citizens have a moral and legal obligation to obey, does not come from people nor is it derived from any natural source. So how did authorities acquire such fantastic powers and exemptions from morality?]

Skandalakis was appointed last year to take over the case after a judge allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to recuse herself and her office. Willis had cited concerns about the actions of her predecessor, who announced a murder charge against Rolfe less than a week after the shooting. Willis is a special Black rolebot working hard to prosecute Trump for election fraud on behalf of white liberals. How that helps Black people in Atlanta is another white supremacy mystery?

Police responded on June 12, 2020, to complaints of a Black man sleeping in a car in the drive-thru lane of a Wendy's restaurant. Police body camera video shows the two officers having a calm conversation with Brooks for nearly 40 minutes.

White police officers said he resisted arrest after failing a field sobriety test during the Friday night incident. After a struggle they shot him as he fled away from them.

Video shows Brooks on the ground outside his car, struggling with two police officers.

Brooks grabbed the Taser of one officer. After a few seconds, Brooks broke free from the officers and began to run from police. One officer then used a Taser on him. The pair then run out of the frame of the video. 

Seconds later gun shots are heard along with someone yelling "I got him!" The video then shows Brooks prone on the ground. The black man posed no threat as he fled away from the white cop; at the time of the shooting the white cop had to have been at least 30 feet away from him. He was smart to run - they were trying to kill him.

Skandalakis said he believes that context had an impact on how the events unfolded and acknowledged that encounters between police and the African American community are sometimes "very volatile," but he said he doesn't believe race played a role in this instance.

"This isn't one of those cases," he said. "This is a case in which the officers were willing to give Mr. Brooks every benefit of the doubt and, you know, unfortunately, by his actions, this is what happened."

Autopsy Corroborates Video; San Bernardino Cops Shot Robert Adams 7X in Back. Media and Authorities Weren't Sure b/c Racists are Mind Blocked in the Presence of Color, Unable to See Things as They Are

From [HERE] Preliminary findings from an independent autopsy suggest that a 23-year-old man who was killed by police in San Bernardino last month was shot seven times from behind.

Robert Adams was shot to death by police on the evening of July 16 in a parking lot in the city of San Bernardino. The shocking video shows an unmarked car driving slowly through a parking lot. Adams—who was working as a security guard and pacing around the lot—saunters toward the car with a handgun in his right hand. About 15 seconds later, two officers jump out of the vehicle with guns drawn.

Adams is seen immediately running off in the opposite direction. The video never shows him point his handgun at the pursuing officers, but he appears to be shot less than five seconds after the cops hopped out of the vehicle—his arms flailing in the air before he collapses onto the asphalt between two cars.

The autopsy diagram indicates Adams suffered a bullet wound in his back and wounds to his arm, thigh and ankle. None of the bullets had a front-to-back trajectory, meaning he was shot from behind, said civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the victim’s family. 

“There was no reason for them to shoot this Black man running away from them,” Crump said at a televised news conference Friday. 

San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman said last month in a video statement that two uniformed police officers in an unmarked car went to the parking lot behind several West Highland Avenue businesses after hearing from “a citizen informant” that a Black man there was armed with a handgun. 

“Why would [they] show up with undercover police officers?” Crump said Friday. “Why wouldn’t [they] show up with an identifiable, marked police vehicle?”

Police body camera and surveillance camera footage released by the department show Adams reaching into his waistband and holding a black object in his right hand as the unmarked police car pulls into the parking lot. 

Adams’ mother has said her son was on the phone with her and was holding his cellphone when the police arrived. 

Goodman said Adams had a gun in his right hand. A loaded 9-millimeter handgun was recovered from the scene of the shooting, he said. 

The security camera footage shows Adams slowly walking toward the police officers’ gray sedan, and then the officers getting out of the car with their guns drawn and pointed at Adams. 

The officers “gave Adams verbal commands” as they got out of the car, Goodman said. But audio of the first 30 seconds of the interaction was not recorded by police body cameras, and the nearby security camera did not record any audio. 

The videos show Adams turning and running toward two cars in the parking lot. As he runs, he looks back toward the officers over his left shoulder, with what police say was a gun in his right hand. 

Footage from one officer’s body camera shows him firing at Adams, who died at a local hospital that night. 

“I am in pain,” said Tamika King, Adams’ mother, on Friday. 

“I won’t see my son walk through that door no more,” she continued. “I won’t see his beautiful smile. I won’t have his love and loyalty that he had for his family no more.”

ACLU Lawsuit says Arizona's New Law Banning People from Recording Police Violates so-called "First Amendment Rights"

From [HERE] It is disturbingly easy to find examples of law enforcement wielding brutal violence against people while claiming to protect or safeguard. Black and Brown communities in particular have long-experienced disproportionate targeting and violence at the hands of law enforcement, and this violence is too frequently lethal. Whether people are exercising their constitutional rights to protest, driving, experiencing a mental health crisis, or even sleeping — there are far too many instances of law enforcement encounters causing harm.

Arizona recently passed a law that makes it a crime, punishable by up to a month in jail, for people to record videos within eight feet of police activity.

One of the best tools available to hold law enforcement accountable is a video camera —in other words, the right to record. The First Amendment protects our right to record police engaged in official duties. Every federal circuit to consider the right to record — seven out of 13 circuits — has held that this right clearly exists, and most have specified that it applies to law enforcement. In recent years, there have been numerous, tragic deaths at the hands of police that were recorded by civilian bystanders, and that footage has been critical to pushing back on unchecked police brutality. But now, this essential right is under attack.

Arizona recently passed a law that makes it a crime, punishable by up to a month in jail, for people to record videos within eight feet of police activity. Specifically, it prohibits people from recording police if they are within eight feet of an area where the person “knows or should reasonably know” law enforcement activity is happening. This law is a blatant attempt to gut First Amendment protections for recording police. That is why we are suing Arizona to challenge this unconstitutional law, and urging the court to immediately prevent it from going into effect.

The ACLU is suing Arizona to challenge this unconstitutional law, and urging the court to immediately prevent it from going into effect.

Unsurprisingly, members of law enforcement commonly attempt to interfere with recordings of their conduct or harass those who have recorded them in violation of the constitutional right to record. The Arizona law, too, has been framed as “preventing violence and misunderstandings, preventing the destruction of evidence and preventing police officers from harm,” but it makes shockingly little effort to hide its true purpose — preventing people from exercising their constitutional right to record. Under this law:

• Standing within eight feet of “law enforcement activity” and holding up a cell phone without making a video recording would be perfectly legal.

• Only “video recordings” are targeted — not writing on a notepad, texting, or setting up a painting easel within eight feet of an officer.

• “Law enforcement activity” is defined extremely broadly — including simply “enforcing the law.” In essence, this boils the restriction down to recording “within eight feet of a police officer.”

• An officer can “create the crime”: Legally recording an officer outside of the eight-foot distance would turn into a crime if the officer moved closer to the person recording and got within eight feet of them.

The law also contains toothless exceptions to the eight-foot distance requirement for recording within a private and indoor place, a vehicle, or when you are the subject of the police interaction. However, each of these “exceptions” falls away as soon as a “law enforcement officer determines that the person is interfering in the law enforcement activity” or, in the case of individuals indoors, that it is “not safe to be in the area.” In other words, each exception problematically maintains the power of any officer to shut down the recording based on a subjective determination in the moment of what “interferes” with their “law enforcement activity.” To make matters worse, “interference” is not defined at all.

This law is a violation of a vital constitutional right and will severely thwart attempts to build police accountability. It must be struck down before it creates irreparable community harm.

White Chicago Cop Charged with Felony Battery after he is Caught Kneeling on a Latino Teen’s Back while Working Off-duty for an 'Auxiliary Police Force' that Only Surveils Non-Whites [white folks]

From [HERE] A Chicago police officer who was caught on video placing his knee on the back of a 14-year-old boy after falsely accusing him of stealing a bicycle last month was charged Thursday with two felonies.

Michael Viterallo who was off-duty was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct. He turned himself in earlier today.

But the family of the boy is wondering why he was not arrested the day of the incident.

The incident took place on July 1 in front of a Starbucks in Park Ridge, a Chicago suburb.

The boy, Josh Nieves, was trying to move the bike out the way because it had been left on the sidewalk blocking his path, according to his mother.

But when the boy placed his hands on the bicycle, the cop pounced on him, Nicole Nieves, the mother, posted on Facebook two days after the incident.

The video shows the boy’s friends telling the cop to get off, eventually pushing him off. The video then ends.

“He’s taking my son’s bike,” Viterallo told the other teens while planting his knee on the boy’s back.

“No, he’s not,” one of the teens responded.

Four Park Ridge police officers showed up responding to a call of a fight in progress. They took statements but made no arrests. The agency posted a press release on its Facebook page today explaining they needed to first conduct a proper “investigation.”

The boy’s parents accused the cop of profiling because the boy is of Puerto Rican descent.

A Latino Man had the Audacity to Cuss at a White Providence Police Captain After He Was Issued a Parking Ticket, so said Cop Handcuffed Him and Slammed His Face Into the Street. Cop Charged w/Assault

From [HERE] A white police captain was charged with simple assault Thursday after he was caught on video slamming a Latino man’s face into the street when the man had already been handcuffed and was not resisting.

But Providence Police Captain Stephen Gencarella is insisting he was the victim, claiming he was the one injured in the incident which took place in July.

The 25-year veteran cop has been on “paid injury active-duty status” since the incident collecting his $105,730-a-year salary, according to WPRI. The department has not explained the nature of his injuries.

Meanwhile, the department’s police chief, Colonel Hugh T. Clements Jr., has informed Gencarella that he will be fired for multiple departmental policy violations.

But Gencarella plans on fighting the termination under the state’s Law Enforcement Bill of Rights which gives cops added protection from the actual Bill of Rights that protects us all.

The incident took place on July 3 during the city’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration after Providence Police Lieutenant Matthew Jennette came across a car that was double-parked and called a tow truck company to have it towed away.

The owner of the car, Armando Rivas, 21, came back to his car while the cop was waiting for the tow truck and became irate upon learning his car was going to get towed.

Police say Rivas began swearing at the cop who responded by attempting to arrest him. But police say Rivas began resisting which was when Gencarella rushed over to assist with the arrest.

The video begins with the two cops trying to arrest him, showing a brief struggle before the cops were able to handcuff him.

But then Gencarella grabs Rivas from the back of the head, slamming his face into the streets.

“Stop moving!” one of the cops yells but the video shows he was not moving.

Gencarella’s attorney, Michael Colucci, told local media his client was fearing for his life because he believed Rivas had a gun.

“The suspect, loosely cuffed and not yet searched, was observed reaching toward an area of his waistband that contained what appeared to be a firearm and was subsequently confirmed to be a knife stowed in a gun holster, Colucci said.

Black Gun Owner Discovers "Rights" are Just Favors from Master in Liberal Cleveland. Suit Filed after White Cops Arrested Him for Carrying a Gun, which the Ohio and US Constitution Say Citizens Can Do

The quality of Black citizenship is so low that; no matter what the law says, Blacks are prohibited from possessing guns. [MORE] According to FUNKTIONARY

adherent rights – privileges disguised as so-called “rights” created by men via deceptive word-manipulation in written form called “symbolaeography,” and legal documents. 2) privileges granted by an apparent or putative authority at the expense of one's inherent or unalienable ‘rights.’ (See: Inherent Rights & Rights)

REALITY 101 – THE DISTURBING AND PERHAPS EVEN ASTONISHING FACT THAT TRUTH AND REALITY ARE INCOMPATIBLE. FOR UNCOUNTED CENTURIES WE’VE WANDERED TRUTH’S DESERTS, WASTING LIFE ALONG THE WAY. THE CAUSES OF OUR FAILURES AND THEIR REMEDIES WILL NEVER BE FOUND WHERE MOST PEOPLE WASTE TIME ARGUING. THAT RULES OUT RELIGIOUS OPINION, THE MAKING OF LAWS, POLITICS, SCIENCE, IDEOLOGIES, SCIENCE, ECONOMICS, PSYCHOLOGY, TRADITIONAL EDUCATION, SOLCIOLOGY, OR OTHER SUPERFICIAL ANALYSES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR. OH, THEY HAVE THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS (ALBEIT LIMITED), TO BE SURE, BUT UNTIL AND UNLESS WE GO DEEPER TO EXPLORE THE IDEAS WE HAVE ABOUT REALITY AND ITS ATTRIBUTES, WHICH UNDERLIE ALL ARGUMENTS, WE STUMBLE BLINDLY ALONG. UNDER ALL IS INFINITY. THE MOST IMPORTANT FACT OF EXISTENCE THE WORLD KNOWS NOTHING OF IS THAT REALITY IS A STATE OF INFINITY, WHICH IMPLIES UNCERTAINTY, CHANGE AND IMPERFECTION. THE SECRETS OF INFINITY BRIDGE THE GULF BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT COULD BE. THE IMPLICATIONS OF INFINITY HOLD THE PROMISES OF INFINITY: FREEDOM, CREATIVITY AND LOVE. IN THE PROMISES OF INFINITY ARE THE ANSWERS TO EVERYTHING! WE MUST FIRST JUDGE CIVILIZATION BY ITS CONSCIOUSNESS; JUDGE CONSCIOUSNESS BY ITS TRUTHS; AND JUDGE TRUTH BY REALITY. THEN, CHANGE CIVILIZATION BY CHANGING ITS CONSCIOUSNESS. CHANGE CONSCIOUSNESS BY CHANGING ITS TRUTHS; AND CHANGE ITS TRUTHS BY CHANGING ITS UNDERSTANDING OF REALITY. [MORE]

From [HERE] A Black man arrested while openly carrying firearms on the city’s East Side, is suing the city and more than a dozen police officers in federal court.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, alleges the city violated Antoine Tolbert’s civil rights when he was arrested and brought to jail overnight on May 23,, 2022.

It’s legal to openly carry firearms in Ohio.

Tolbert had a shotgun in his hand and a handgun in a holster as he walked down St. Clair Avenue. He’s part of a local activist group called New Era Cleveland that conducts armed security patrols as a way to help prevent gun violence and has spoken to classes of police cadets about policing in Cleveland.

Body camera footage from the incident shows the first officers at the scene allowing him to continue without being arrested, with one describing an arrest as a “lawsuit waiting to happen.” But when a sergeant named Lance Henderson arrives, he makes the decision to arrest Tolbert.

“He can’t walk down the street with a firearm in his hand,” Henderson told an officer at the scene. “Holster is one thing. But walking down the street with a firearm in his hand. Can’t do that.”

Initial police reports indicate Tolbert was arrested for inducing panic and carrying a concealed weapon but was released without formal charges. On body cam footage, Sgt. Henderson can be heard saying the charges include improperly handling a firearm, which applies to carrying a gun in a motor vehicle.

“Officers cannot merely just decide to arrest somebody, detain somebody and take them down to the county jail just because they don’t like something that they’re doing,” said Tolbert’s attorney, Tiana Bohanon. “He had not been carrying any concealed weapon and he had not been improperly handling a firearm inside any motor vehicle.”

Tolbert is asking for damages from the city of Cleveland and 14 police officers involved in the incident.

In addition to spending the night in jail, Tolbert lost a new job at the community development organization Burten, Bell, Carr. He was also forced to move out of his house temporarily because his wife’s ex-husband was using video of the encounter to seek full custody of their young child.

Judges Ordered to Pay More than $200 Million to Victims of Juvenile Detention in “Kids for Cash” Corruption Scheme

From [HERE] A federal judge on Tuesday ordered two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated the “kids for cash” corruption scandal to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of their victims.

“Although most memories fade over the years, certain events are so punctuated by overwhelming circumstances and emotions that no amount of time can erase their mark,” wrote U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner of the Middle District of Pennsylvania in his decision. “Tragically, for many young citizens of our Commonwealth, the day they were adjudicated delinquent by former judge, now convicted felon, Mark A. Ciavarella … is such an event.”

The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal have coverage.

Ciavarella, who along with his co-defendant Michael T. Conahan presided in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, advocated for the closing of the county’s juvenile facilities and construction of new for-profit detention centers in 2002. According to Conner’s memorandum opinion, the former judges received payouts of more than $2.7 million for helping to build and then fill the PA Child Care and its sister facility, the Western PA Child Care, between 2003 and 2007.

In 2009, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court authorized a special master to vacate and dismiss with prejudice all the juvenile court cases in which Ciavarella entered adjudications of delinquency or consent decrees during the five-year period in which he received kickbacks. According to the Associated Press, about 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids were thrown out.

Ciavarella was convicted in 2011 for racketeering, mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy and filing false tax returns and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Conahan was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison in the same year after entering a guilty plea in the case.

Conner heard testimony from 282 plaintiffs and 32 parents in a civil lawsuit against the judges last year, noting in his opinion that “they recounted [Ciavarella’s] harsh and arbitrary nature, his disdain for due process, his extraordinary abruptness, and his cavalier and boorish behavior in the courtroom.”

In one case involving a 14-year-old who appeared with her mother for an unpaid underage drinking citation, Ciavarella told her that if she “liked to drink like the bulldogs” she “could get locked up like them too,” Conner said. Ciavarella wouldn’t let the girl hug her mother before sending her to juvenile detention, Conner added.

According to Conner, another teenager who was 16 spent nearly a year in juvenile detention for driving without a license the wrong way on a one-way street. She told the court that Ciavarella said, “I want you to count the number of buttons on your blouse, and that’s the number of … months that you’re going away for.”

“The court heard numerous accounts of senseless detentions,” Conner said in his opinion. “Of the 282 former juveniles who testified, 79 were under the age of 13. One individual testified that he was only 8 years old when he was first adjudicated by Ciavarella.”

Many of these plaintiffs were detained for lengthy amounts of time for minor infractions, including smoking on school property, stealing candy and jaywalking, Conner said. They described being shocked when they were immediately handcuffed and shackled and also spoke of harms from their exposure to people in juvenile detention who were charged with armed robbery, arson and other violent felonies.

Conner said the plaintiffs missed school and life events, and many were later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Some admitted to contemplating suicide and self-medicating with illegal drugs.

“Plaintiffs are the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions,” said Conner, who awarded them $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages. “The law is powerless to restore to plaintiffs the weeks, months and years lost because of the actions of the defendants.

“But we hope that by listening to their experiences and acknowledging the depth of the damage done to their lives, we can provide them with a measure of closure and, with this memorandum opinion, ensure that their stories are never forgotten.”

New Study Reveals the CIA Used Incarcerated Black People as Guinea Pigs in MKULTRA and Brainwashing Experiment w/No Scientific Merit. Tortured and Dosed Them with Unsafe Levels of Psychoactive Drugs

From [FTP] By now, many will be familiar with Project MKULTRA. For decades, the CIA conducted highly unethical experiments on humans in order to perfect brainwashing, mind control and torture techniques.

Perhaps the program’s most notorious aspect was the administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs to targets, particularly LSD. These substances were brought to Langley’s attention in 1948 by Richard Kuhn, one of 1,600 Nazi scientists covertly spirited to the U.S. via Operation Paperclip following World War II. When MKULTRA was formally established five years later, some individuals consulted directly on the project.

The unwitting dosing of U.S. citizens with LSD is infamous; among those spiked were CIA operatives themselves. That the Agency exploited mental patients, prisoners, and drug addicts for the purpose – “people who could not fight back,” in the words of an unnamed Agency operative – is less well-known.

A study by academics at the University of Ottawa’s Culture and Mental Health Disparities Lab sheds significant new light on this underexplored component of MKULTRA and illuminates a hitherto wholly unknown dimension of the program; people of color, overwhelmingly Black Americans, were disproportionately targeted by the CIA in its service.

SPOKEN OF AS ANIMALS AND TREATED AS SUCH

In 1973, due to fears CIA covert action might be officially audited in the wake of the Watergate scandal, then-Agency chief Richard Helms ordered all papers related to MKULTRA destroyed.

Tens of thousands of documents somehow survived the purge. Even more conveniently, a significant portion of the research yielded by the project’s experiments was published in freely-accessible, peer-reviewed scientific journals, as over 80 private and public universities, prisons, and hospitals – whether knowingly or not – conducted psychedelic drug experiments on behalf of the CIA. While LSD was the preponderant substance of interest, the effects of DMT, mescaline, psilocybin, and THC were also extensively explored.

In all, the University of Ottawa team analyzed 49 of these papers, published from the 1950s to the 1970s. Forty percent related to experiments conducted at the Addiction Research Center in Kentucky, which the CIA directly managed.

The site included a prison for individuals charged with violating narcotics laws, a “special ward” for drug research, and a prison populated by purported “addicts.” Researchers employed there avowedly preferred to perform tests on former and current drug users, as they were considered to be “experienced” in the effects of illicit substances and therefore better able to give informed consent than the abstinent. In practice, the CIA’s guinea pigs frequently had no idea what was being administered.

In analyzing available literature, the academics examined participants’ stated race and ethnicity, recruitment strategies, methodology, and potential dangers to participants. All studies used captured, incarcerated test subjects, coercive incentives for participation, unsafe dosing levels, and had questionable scientific merit.

In almost 90% of cases, at least one ethical violation was identified, over three-quarters employed a high-risk dosing schedule that would be unacceptable under modern guidelines, and 15% used participants with psychotic disorders. Roughly 30% exploited people of color.

While in many studies, the race or ethnicity of test subjects was not recorded, further investigation by the Ottawa academics revealed Black Americans were significantly overrepresented in the recruitment sites from which test subjects were drawn. It is inevitable that the actual number of MKULTRA studies that abused people of color is far larger. For example, while people of color constituted just 7% of Kentucky’s population at the time of experiments at the Addiction Research Center, Black and Mexican Americans represented 66% of the site’s inmate population.[MORE]

If You’re Black, Pro-FBI and Support Unrestrained Searches Then You Possess a ‘GOINTELBRO’ Mind and Accept White Liberals’ Agenda as Your Own. Blacks Parroting Trump Obsessed Dems Subvert Themselves

As Defined in FUNKTIONARY

GOINTELBRO – Government Operative Incognegro Notifying The Enforcers Liberating Blackamerica’s Racist Oppressors. A Gointel-bro is a sorry-ass sophisticated hanky-head, coin-operated, Sam-Bohican, Snigger on the payrolls of the F.B.I. (or any other alphabet threat agency) as an undercover informant to foment divisiveness in Blackamerica’s ongoing centuries-long struggle for socioeconomic advancement as a people. Sniggers are equal in intent, and bound by the same flaw—covertly soul-selling out the potential self-determination of his people for the sake of his Massa’s overtly racist, statist or fascist law. (See: Snigger, COINTELPRO, Sambo, Black Flask Brigade, BOHICAN & Coin-Operated)

According to FUNKTIONARY:

propaganda – a psychological technique and means by which the lawless confound the lawful (dwellers upon the land). 2) any message intended to influence whether true or false. 3) disinformation used as programming that in its absence wouldn’t stand up itself nor stand up for itself by itself. 4) the over-preponderance of a certain message that is designed to impose certain forms and frames of reference and patterns of thought the objective of which being to subjugate a people. . . Propaganda is to be used as subversion, which is the undermining or detachment of the loyalties of significant social groups and their transference to the symbols and institutions of the aggressor-oppressor. “It is a political necessity to destroy the African consciousness of colonialized Africans or African people.” ~Dr. Amos N. Wilson. [MORE]

By [MARGARET KIMBERLY] Why would Black people laud the FBI or criticize protection against self-incrimination? The unrestrained FBI search of Donald Trump's home has reawakened Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Progressives love the FBI? Leftists embrace the Espionage Act? Of course, one man is responsible for this madness, and he is none other than Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States. The fallout from the FBI search conducted at Trump’s home shows the rank confusion spread by people who call themselves liberal but who are as dangerous as anyone on the right. From the moment that Trump announced the raid they were in full fascist mode, even as they claimed to be fighting fascism.

Trump did what he usually does, play fast and loose with the truth. Of all former presidents only he would ignore subpoenas and claim to have declassified documents when he hadn’t done so. He can’t get out of his own way and thus makes himself a target. But Democrats should know that the search is seen as nothing more than a personal attack against him. Millions of people who love Trump will love him all the more and conclude that the raid was meant to keep him from running for president again. Liberal dead-enders will be happy, but everyone else will say that something rotten was conducted at Mar-a-Lago.

Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the documents were subpoenaed but the former president didn’t respond. The FBI search warrant states that the search encompassed three different issues: gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act; concealment, removal, or mutilation concerning the handling of records and reports; and the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy, which is part of a section dealing with obstruction of justice. The warrant also states a search for information on Roger Stone and on the President of France.

Aside from the item descriptions, no one knows what Trump had or what the FBI found. Leaks from the Justice Department indicate something about nuclear weapons, but no one knows what that means. The lack of information hasn’t stopped the speculation which Trump always causes. There is conjecture that he was selling information to Russia or to Saudi Arabia or was plotting some other treason. There are even claims that documents were buried with his recently deceased ex-wife. It is fascinating that there can be so much guesswork about issues no one can know.

The years long Russiagate investigation is responsible for ordinarily sensible people losing their minds. Hardly anyone recalls that the charge of collusion was actually disproven, that Robert Mueller only indicted for process crimes, such as those which occur when people let down their guard and talk to the FBI. Most Americans who know the name Paul Manafort think he was a Russian spy but don’t know that he went to jail for tax and bank fraud. Propaganda works very well when it is repeated over and over again.

Worse than the silly Trump inspired derangement is the way that those who call themselves left or progressive have chosen to defend federal law enforcement and bad legislation like the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is a relic from the earliest days of the cold war, and Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Palmer Raids which targeted the left for persecution and prosecution. Barack Obama used it more than all previous presidents combined in order to prosecute journalists who published what the state didn’t want us to know. As for the FBI, its Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, created dissension in the liberation movement, targeted individuals for prosecution, spied on Martin Luther King and told him to commit suicide, and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark among others. The FBI continues to use informants to entrap Black people in phony terror cases.

It is truly shameful to see Black people exalt the FBI and act as if punishing Trump is the organizing principle of all political activity. The Trump organization is also under investigation by the New York Attorney General and the former president refused to answer questions put to him in a deposition. The right to remain silent is one of the most important in American law and should be used a lot more often. But copagandatelevision shows and Trump hatred have caused their own form of insanity, and his exercise of a fundamental right was widely lampooned. No one should ever be condemned for utilizing their fifth amendment right, not even Donald Trump.

Of course, this spectacle is also used to deflect from Biden administration failures. His approval rating is still low, for the simple reason that he didn’t do what he claimed he would for American voters. He continues to pour public money into the losing effort in Ukraine and needlessly provokes Russia and China. But who is paying attention if there is speculation that Trump put files in Ivana’s casket? [MORE]

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]

[A Major Goal of Racism White Supremacy is to Put Non-White People in Greater Confinement] The US Leads the World in Incarceration with 2.2 million people in prisons & jails; 67% are Non-White

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).