Tag: police brutality

Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore face fresh riots

Police say black-clad May Day marchers hurled wrenches and rocks at officers and hit police with sticks as a Friday evening march through Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood turned violent, injuring three officers — two seriously.

Police responded with pepper spray, pepper balls and flash bang grenades. Officers said several dozen vehicles were damaged. Windows were broken in neighborhood businesses.

Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole said one officer had a dislocated shoulder, a second had a broken wrist, and a third had a burn injury to his leg and ankle. They’re recovering at Harborview Medical Center.

“Thankfully, they’re all conscious,” O’Toole said. “We talked to them. They’re in good spirits. Just happy the situation didn’t become more serious.”

The injuries occurred at 7:30 p.m. when officers issued a dispersal order to the group and attempted to clear the street at Broadway and Howell, Seattle police said.

Protesters hurled bottles, rocks, bricks, wrenches, and other projectiles at police, who responded by utilizing pepper spray and pepper balls to break up the increasingly violent crowd, police said. They added protestors also began pushing barricades and trash cans into roadways, and raided a fenced construction site for items they later burned in the street.

A May Day protest and march through the streets of Downtown Oakland, San Francisco, also turned violent Friday evening, with some businesses and cars being vandalized.

Friday’s protest began peacefully. About 500 people protesting several issues, from police brutality to capitalism, marched from Frank Ogawa Plaza and eventually up Broadway. Later on, vandals went on a rampage. They broke windows of business and vehicles and set a car on fire on the Broadway Auto Row.

One of the marchers said she was okay with vandalism that targeted big business.
“I see it like a game of chess and if one day we can throw rocks at police, right or wrong, however you feel about it, then that’s a day we took a stand. And that, in my mind, to some extent, is a win against the system,” Melissa Crosby said.

Baltimore is bracing for fresh protests this weekend, following a tumultuous week that included looting and arson, the arrival of National Guard troops and the filing of criminal charges against six police officers in the case of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose death in police custody set off the unrest.

Thousands of people are expected here Saturday for a march organized by Malik Shabazz, president of the Washington-based Black Lawyers for Justice and a former chairman of the New Black Panther Party. For nearly two weeks, ever since Mr. Gray died, city leaders have been warning against “outside agitators,” an oblique reference to Mr. Shabazz, who is clearly making them nervous.

“They should be nervous,” Mr. Shabazz said in an interview Friday night. “The youth went off and had a rebellion because the established leadership has not represented them well.”

Source: CBS/NYT

Thousands of white Americans protest racial inequality

Thousand have taken to the streets to protest racial inequality in the US, while thousands more whites have joined a Twitter campaign to publicly confess their sins before the law, in an effort to shatter the criminal stereotyping of African-Americans.

In an attempt to expose police racial prejudice across the United States, Caucasian Twitter users spilled their wrongdoings to the world in a series of confession they have got away with that they believe African-Americans probably would not.

Using the #CrimingWhileWhite, some people recalled them getting away with a number of offences, including grand theft auto, driving violations, and drugs abuse.

Meanwhile, for the second night in a row, thousands of protesters overran the streets of New York, shutting down several major arteries of the city as they expressed outrage over a grand jury decision not to indict an officer for the death of an unarmed black man.

In the aftermath of racial violence that erupted in Ferguson, the latest social media campaign follows other recent high-profile incidents of police’s lethal brutality against black men and the perceived lack of punishment for the white officers responsible.

Michael Brown was shot six times by a white policemen in Ferguson, Missouri in August.

The cases involve Eric Garner who was killed by a chokehold by an NYPD officer in July and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed in Cleveland in November.

Second black teen had gun powder residue on his hands

A black teenager killed by a police officer in St. Louis, coming just two months after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, had gunpowder residue on his hands, jeans and T-shirt, according to crime lab results.

Last Wednesday, Vonderrit Myers, 18, became the second black teenager to be shot and killed by a white officer in as many months. Meyer’s death reignited simmering rage on the streets of St. Louis, which is attempting to recover from the August 9 shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown.

In scenes becoming all-too-familiar for this Missouri city, protesters took to the streets to speak out against “police violence,” while demanding the arrest of Darren Wilson, the white officer who killed Brown in August. A grand jury is considering the evidence against the officer, but has not yet reached a conclusion.

Meanwhile, the forensics results in the latest shooting incident lends credence to the initial police report that Myers fired at least three times at an off-duty police officer. Myers’ family claims he did not own a gun, but police say they found the weapon he allegedly fired at the crime scene.

The identity of the police officer who shot Myers has not been released.

Source: RT

We are above the law declares county attorney

Habersham County, Georgia, U.S., the jurisdiction that allowed intentionally or through negligence a SWAT team to break into a home with violent force in the middle of the night and throw a stun grenade into a baby’s face sending him to a hospital for weeks where he was in life support, has ruled that it would be illegal for the county to pay the baby’s medical bills.

The negligence of the police, and thereby the county, is a triple dose. It was the wrong house. A SWAT team was unnecessary in order to exercise a search warrant for a drug suspect. There was no excuse for throwing a stun grenade into a baby’s crib.

But the county attorney has ruled that the county is not liable for these massive incidences of unbridled negligence.

However, the unjustifiable SWAT team assault on the family in the home was legal.

As the saying goes, “a fish rots from the head.” The rot in government accountability that began in Washington has now reached the local level.