Enforcers category archive

In The Charlotte Observer, Tonya Jameson recounts the experience of being accused at gunpoint by an off-duty policeman of stealing a car which she had legally purchased. At the time, she was in the seller’s driveway putting the new license plates on the car so it could be legally driven from the seller’s home.

The officer in question was not disciplined.

Here’s a snippet from the article regarding why the officer was not disciplined (emphasis added):

Chief Rausch (of the officer’s police department–ed.) said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

Follow the link. Read the whole thing.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you can’t make this stuff up.

Words fail me.

Elie Mystal reflects on the murder of Philando Castile.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., remarks on the deployment of yet another Get Out of Jail Free card, this time via passivity.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., excoriates Attorney-General Jeff Sessions’s intent to somehow emasculate consent decrees governing how certain police departments treat Not White persons. A snippet:

These decrees are agreements for federally monitored reform of training, policy and procedure of troubled cop shops. They are in effect in 14 cities, including Ferguson and Cleveland. Four other cities – Miami is one – made agreements to reform without federal oversight.

In a memo released last week, Sessions worries about tarring police with the actions of a few “bad actors.” Yet DOJ investigations repeatedly found that, far from being isolated events, police abuse – unlawful stops, searches, harassment and beatings targeting African-American citizens – were endemic to the very culture of these departments. They were not flaws in the system. They were the system.

Solomon Jones watches Jeff Sessions bring back the good old days.

Sessions’ decision to order a broad review of federal agreements with dozens of law-enforcement agencies is nothing short of an attack on black and brown people. After all, those agreements were necessitated by systemic police abuses targeting minority communities. Attempting to pull out of those agreements – most of which have already been approved in federal court – delivers an indisputable message: Black lives don’t matter to the Trump administration.

Read the rest.

In these parts, there have been several instances of black persons imprisoned for minor, almost miniscule crimes, dying in jail from neglect, with this being perhaps the most unspeakably egregious case.

Meanwhile, a rich white banker convicted of bribery and bank fraud gets a “Get Out of Jail Free” card because he has high blood pressure.

The editorial cartoonist for my local rag is not amused.

Read more »

Perhaps you heard about the cop who tried to roust an Uber driver who refused to get out his car when ordered and who recorded the incident to boot; the driver turned out to be a Not Black lawyer. Here’s bit from the story as reported in the Raleigh News and Observer:

A Wilmington (North Carolina–ed.) police officer was caught on camera telling an Uber driver that it’s against the law to record police.

There is no such law.

Now comes Barry Sanders a-wondering:

Can you imagine, though, if Jesse Bright had been named Jamal Bright or Daquan Bright or Hector Gonzalez Bright and had asserted his right to keep filming, and then on top of everything else had refused to get out of the car?

Follow the link for his answer.