Cop Watch: Police Brutality Mega Thread
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/15/san-diego-police-punch-homeless/
Video of San Diego officers repeatedly punching Black man during arrest triggers investigation
Two San Diego police officers are under investigation after cellphone video captured them repeatedly punching a Black man during an arrest in the La Jolla neighborhood this week.
The investigation was announced late Wednesday hours after Jesse Evans, 34, allegedly urinated in public, according to the San Diego Police Department. A woman who recorded the incident, Nicole Bansal, told the The Washington Post that the officers’ response to the situation, which saw police punching him in his face, head and legs, appeared to be “excessive and unnecessary” for a man she believes to be homeless.
“He’s a harmless, houseless man,” she told The Post.
Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, a spokesman for the police department, confirmed in a statement to the San Diego Union-Tribune that authorities were aware of Bansal’s cellphone footage. The officers have not been publicly identified.
The police spokesman noted to the Union-Tribune that internal affairs is investigating the incident and would be reviewing body-cam footage after city officials and critics called for a probe.
Takeuchi didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Video of the arrest comes as the issue of excessive force by police continues to be a pressing matter for law enforcement nationwide.
At around 9 a.m. Wednesday, police said that two officers attempted to talk to the man after they caught him urinating at the intersection of La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, about 13 miles outside downtown San Diego. Takeuchi said the man “would not stop to speak with officers.”
Evans said at a Friday news conference that he never got the chance to relieve himself because the officers came around the corner to interrupt him about indecent exposure.
Evans, who had a large Band-Aid under his left eye on Friday, said he started walking away from the officers, telling them to stay out of his life and lamenting that he hates the country and the culture because of their behavior.
The altercation between Evans and police broke out as he was trying to get away from them to urinate, he said.
Bansal said she sees Evans walking around all the time barefoot with a big orange life vest, often talking to himself. She said she started recording him because officers appeared to approach him aggressively.
In Bansal’s video, officers are seen trying to detain Evans before all three ended up on the pavement. One officer appeared to be on top of Evans and punched him about two times in the head.
“Stop!” Bansal yelled as she was recording. She said her window was down and that she was unsure if the officers heard her.
Evans throws what appears to be a police radio and tries to hit the officer who had struck him, according to video.
Seconds later, the officer in question is heard saying expletives and telling Evans to stop resisting arrest as his fellow officer tries to gain control of the man’s legs. When officers instructed Evans to put his hands behind his back, they again punched his head and legs and continued to tell him to stop resisting.
Takeuchi said in a statement that Evans would not comply despite the repeated commands.
Evans was punched some more by the two officers before additional police showed up on the scene to help with the arrest, video shows.
Bansal can be heard in the video expressing her disbelief at the situation.
“Four cop cars to deal with a homeless man,” she said. “This is insanity. Eight cops. Four cop cars. And they decide to get an ambulance.”
Evans was initially taken to a hospital for medical care before he was released and booked into county jail, reported the Union-Tribune. The man was booked on charges of resisting arrest and battery of a police officer, NBC News reported. He was released early Friday, according to the La Jolla Light.
Bansal said that most of the public restrooms in the area are closed due to coronavirus restrictions, leaving homeless people to find solutions on their own.
Community leaders have agreed with Bansal’s assessment of the arrest. Francine Maxwell, president of the San Diego branch of the NAACP, wrote a letter to the police chief on Wednesday demanding an investigation and wanting the officers to be held accountable.
“To yell ‘stop resisting’ and to continually punch and slap this man was clearly not conducive to calming the situation,” she said. “The SDPD has a de-escalation policy that requires you to use time and space to defuse a situation, rather than immediately move to force.”
San Diego City Council member Joe LaCava, who serves the La Jolla area where the incident happened, called the video “a tragedy and a disgrace.” He said in a statement that the arrest highlights the need for officers to not be placed in situations better suited for behavioral specialists.
“You would not send a doctor to arrest a criminal, police should not respond to mental health situations,” he said. “This event obligated precious resources from the SDPD, the hospital, and the jails. This individual will likely be back on the street unconnected to resources.”
Area advocates have worked to get Evans out of jail and are working with him as he selects a lawyer in the process, said Shane Harris, founder of People’s Association of Justice Advocates, at a Friday news conference. Harris called on the mayor and the police department to release the body-cam footage of the encounter with Evans along with dispatch recordings “to get the whole story in context.”
Evans said that he’s forgiven the officers who hit him but hopes that better-trained people will be hired on the force in the future.
“I hope I’m the last victim of such nonsense to me,” he said. “I hope that we can hire reasonable individuals to look out for us and protect and serve our greater good in a better way and represent us in a better way.”
Video of San Diego officers repeatedly punching Black man during arrest triggers investigation
Two San Diego police officers are under investigation after cellphone video captured them repeatedly punching a Black man during an arrest in the La Jolla neighborhood this week.
The investigation was announced late Wednesday hours after Jesse Evans, 34, allegedly urinated in public, according to the San Diego Police Department. A woman who recorded the incident, Nicole Bansal, told the The Washington Post that the officers’ response to the situation, which saw police punching him in his face, head and legs, appeared to be “excessive and unnecessary” for a man she believes to be homeless.
“He’s a harmless, houseless man,” she told The Post.
Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, a spokesman for the police department, confirmed in a statement to the San Diego Union-Tribune that authorities were aware of Bansal’s cellphone footage. The officers have not been publicly identified.
The police spokesman noted to the Union-Tribune that internal affairs is investigating the incident and would be reviewing body-cam footage after city officials and critics called for a probe.
Takeuchi didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Video of the arrest comes as the issue of excessive force by police continues to be a pressing matter for law enforcement nationwide.
At around 9 a.m. Wednesday, police said that two officers attempted to talk to the man after they caught him urinating at the intersection of La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, about 13 miles outside downtown San Diego. Takeuchi said the man “would not stop to speak with officers.”
Evans said at a Friday news conference that he never got the chance to relieve himself because the officers came around the corner to interrupt him about indecent exposure.
Evans, who had a large Band-Aid under his left eye on Friday, said he started walking away from the officers, telling them to stay out of his life and lamenting that he hates the country and the culture because of their behavior.
The altercation between Evans and police broke out as he was trying to get away from them to urinate, he said.
Bansal said she sees Evans walking around all the time barefoot with a big orange life vest, often talking to himself. She said she started recording him because officers appeared to approach him aggressively.
In Bansal’s video, officers are seen trying to detain Evans before all three ended up on the pavement. One officer appeared to be on top of Evans and punched him about two times in the head.
“Stop!” Bansal yelled as she was recording. She said her window was down and that she was unsure if the officers heard her.
Evans throws what appears to be a police radio and tries to hit the officer who had struck him, according to video.
Seconds later, the officer in question is heard saying expletives and telling Evans to stop resisting arrest as his fellow officer tries to gain control of the man’s legs. When officers instructed Evans to put his hands behind his back, they again punched his head and legs and continued to tell him to stop resisting.
Takeuchi said in a statement that Evans would not comply despite the repeated commands.
Evans was punched some more by the two officers before additional police showed up on the scene to help with the arrest, video shows.
Bansal can be heard in the video expressing her disbelief at the situation.
“Four cop cars to deal with a homeless man,” she said. “This is insanity. Eight cops. Four cop cars. And they decide to get an ambulance.”
Evans was initially taken to a hospital for medical care before he was released and booked into county jail, reported the Union-Tribune. The man was booked on charges of resisting arrest and battery of a police officer, NBC News reported. He was released early Friday, according to the La Jolla Light.
Bansal said that most of the public restrooms in the area are closed due to coronavirus restrictions, leaving homeless people to find solutions on their own.
Community leaders have agreed with Bansal’s assessment of the arrest. Francine Maxwell, president of the San Diego branch of the NAACP, wrote a letter to the police chief on Wednesday demanding an investigation and wanting the officers to be held accountable.
“To yell ‘stop resisting’ and to continually punch and slap this man was clearly not conducive to calming the situation,” she said. “The SDPD has a de-escalation policy that requires you to use time and space to defuse a situation, rather than immediately move to force.”
San Diego City Council member Joe LaCava, who serves the La Jolla area where the incident happened, called the video “a tragedy and a disgrace.” He said in a statement that the arrest highlights the need for officers to not be placed in situations better suited for behavioral specialists.
“You would not send a doctor to arrest a criminal, police should not respond to mental health situations,” he said. “This event obligated precious resources from the SDPD, the hospital, and the jails. This individual will likely be back on the street unconnected to resources.”
Area advocates have worked to get Evans out of jail and are working with him as he selects a lawyer in the process, said Shane Harris, founder of People’s Association of Justice Advocates, at a Friday news conference. Harris called on the mayor and the police department to release the body-cam footage of the encounter with Evans along with dispatch recordings “to get the whole story in context.”
Evans said that he’s forgiven the officers who hit him but hopes that better-trained people will be hired on the force in the future.
“I hope I’m the last victim of such nonsense to me,” he said. “I hope that we can hire reasonable individuals to look out for us and protect and serve our greater good in a better way and represent us in a better way.”
mastermind
Rest In Power Kobe
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/african-americans-sickle-cell-police.html
How a Genetic Trait in Black People Can Give the Police Cover
Sickle cell trait has been cited in dozens of police custody deaths ruled accidental or natural, even though the condition is benign on its own, a Times investigation found.
When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.
No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.
Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.
But the examiner’s determination belied certain facts about that night in October 2016, public records and interviews show. Accused of violating probation in a misdemeanor assault case, Mr. Perry was chased by parole and local police officers through the dark into a stand of trees, where only they could witness what happened next.
He had swelling of the brain, and a forensic investigator reported that he had an open fracture of his right leg. He was covered in dirt, and residents of a nearby housing complex told his family that when the officers emerged from the woods, their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were spattered in blood.
Mr. Perry’s case underscores how willing some American pathologists have been to rule in-custody deaths of Black people accidents or natural occurrences caused by sickle cell trait, which is carried by one in 13 Black Americans and is almost always benign. Those with the trait have only one of the two genes required for full-blown sickle cell disease, a painful and sometimes life-threatening condition that can deform red blood cells into crescent shapes that stick together and block blood flow.
As recently as August, lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted last month of murdering George Floyd, invoked sickle cell trait in an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the case against him, saying that the condition, along with other health problems and drug use, was the reason Mr. Floyd had died.
The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.
In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by the authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, The Times found.
K.C. Cage-Singleton, a 30-year-old landscaper and father of four, was walking in Baton Rouge, La., in October 2009 when two officers approached him because they thought his clothing resembled that of an armed robbery suspect. Records show they chased him into an apartment complex, shocked him with a stun gun and beat him with a baton. The coroner cataloged a slew of injuries, including abrasions, lacerations and broken teeth, but said the manner and cause of his death were “undetermined,” citing “probable” sickle cell trait. The officers were not charged.
Army Sgt. James Brown, 26, had completed two tours in Iraq and was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder in July 2012 when he turned himself in to the El Paso jail to serve a two-day sentence for drunken driving. The authorities said he became violent, and he died after five jailers in riot gear piled atop him, pulled a mesh mask over his head and bound him in a chair. The medical examiner ruled that he had died a natural death caused by sickle cell crisis, and a grand jury declined to bring charges.
Gamel Brown, a 30-year-old property maintenance supervisor, cut his hand on a broken mirror at his home in a Baltimore suburb in January last year, prompting a call to 911. The police who responded said he became “extremely combative,” and they jolted him several times with a stun gun. After he died at a hospital, the medical examiner said that the manner of his death was undetermined — and that it was caused in part by sickle cell trait. The state’s attorney filed no charges.
In three cases, deaths linked to sickle cell trait that were deemed natural or of indeterminate cause were later ruled homicides — as occurred when Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died at the hands of his jailers at a northwest Florida juvenile detention camp in January 2006.
“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chairman of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”
Not every death that is tied to the condition is inherently questionable. Medical experts say sickle cell trait has caused deaths in rare cases of extreme overexertion, especially among military trainees and college athletes. Three of the in-custody deaths identified by The Times involved people who were exercising vigorously in jail yards or running hard before they collapsed — and law enforcement officers said that at most they put handcuffs on them.
In none of the deaths examined by The Times did the person have actual sickle cell disease, though there were instances when imprecise language by medical examiners left the false impression the trait and the disease were the same.
Dr. James R. Gill, chief medical examiner in Connecticut and president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said that pathologists would not be doing a thorough job if they identified sickle cell trait and failed to mention it in their reports.
“We know that this, in the right situation, can cause death, and you can’t just ignore that,” said Dr. Gill, who cited the trait in the autopsy of Lashano Gilbert, a 31-year-old Black man who had died in police custody in October 2014.
Mr. Gilbert, who had attended medical school, suffered a psychotic episode in New London, Conn., and was arrested after jumping on a passing car. His jailers put him in restraints, used pepper spray and a stun gun on him and fit him with a mask to prevent biting. Dr. Gill ruled the death a homicide, though the state’s attorney deemed the use of force “appropriate” and filed no charges.
In interviews, Dr. Mitchell and other medical experts agreed that the trait warranted mention in autopsies, but said any natural or accidental death attributed to it, even in part, should be scrutinized if the person died during or after a struggle with law enforcement.
Many said they suspected some sickle cell determinations might reflect a pattern of bias or conflicts of interest among medical examiners and police officials.
Forensic pathologists, the doctors who conduct autopsies for coroners and medical examiners, were singled out in a hotly disputed studypublished in a scientific journal in February suggesting that racial bias could influence their rulings, though it did not address sickle cell trait.
And coroners and medical examiners have entrenched relationships with law enforcement in many areas, functioning as part of police departments or working closely with them. In California, for example, the elected sheriff serves as coroner in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. Several years ago, two pathologists resigned from the coroner’s office in San Joaquin County there, citing interference by the sheriff with in-custody death reviews. The sheriff denied the claims and lost re-election.
In Mr. Perry’s case, agents with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation sealed his body in a bag before a forensic investigator inspected it. Officers at the scene could not say for sure how he had suffered his injuries, but said it appeared he had tripped and fallen into a ravine. The officers said he had been talkative when they found and handcuffed him, but then he lost consciousness. No efforts were made to revive him with lifesaving equipment when paramedics arrived, records and interviews show, and the “open fracture” documented by the forensic investigator was described in the autopsy as a “laceration.”
Mr. Perry, who was sometimes shy to the point of seeming rude, had his detractors in the neighborhood, his family members said, and records show he had a history of misdemeanor breaking-and-entering, larceny and drunken-driving convictions. The assault conviction that gave rise to the foot chase stemmed from an argument with the girlfriend he was visiting that night, family members said.
Mr. Perry had alcohol and a small amount of cocaine in his bloodstream when he died, and the medical examiner ruled that he had succumbed to “cocaine toxicity in the setting of sickle cell trait,” effectively ending any deeper inquiry. The local district attorney declined to bring charges.
“I find no evidence of any criminal activity or wrongdoing of any kind,” the district attorney, Reece Saunders, wrote in March 2017. “I consider this unfortunate matter closed.”
For Mr. Perry’s relatives, who could not afford a lawyer to challenge the ruling, all that was left was a series of unanswered questions. What had happened in the woods? Why wouldn’t the investigators let them view the body before the autopsy?
“The only people who know what happened are that probation officer and the officers who ran out there,” said Mr. Perry’s half brother, Mario Robinson. “I don’t believe what they said.”
A Nationwide Pattern
To gain a sense of how often medical examiners have used sickle cell trait to explain in-custody deaths, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of autopsy records, court filings and police reports. It examined data on suspicious deaths from more than 30 of the United States’ largest counties, whose jurisdictions cover nearly one in three Black Americans.
The review identified dozens of cases dating to the 1970s and was almost certainly an undercount. In some areas with large Black populations, like New York City, The Times relied on court cases and media reports because relevant medical or identifying data was not publicly available. Other locations, including Wayne County, Mich., which contains Detroit, did not provide the data to The Times before publication.
More in the link
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/african-americans-sickle-cell-police.html
How a Genetic Trait in Black People Can Give the Police Cover
Sickle cell trait has been cited in dozens of police custody deaths ruled accidental or natural, even though the condition is benign on its own, a Times investigation found.
When they carried the body of a 32-year-old Black man named Lamont Perry out of the woods in Wadesboro, N.C., there were no protests over his sudden death in police custody.
No reporters camped at the scene. No lawyers filed suit.
Instead, the final mark in the ledger of Mr. Perry’s life was made by a state medical examiner who attributed his death in large part to sickle cell trait, a genetic characteristic that overwhelmingly occurs in Black people. The official word was that he had died by accident.
But the examiner’s determination belied certain facts about that night in October 2016, public records and interviews show. Accused of violating probation in a misdemeanor assault case, Mr. Perry was chased by parole and local police officers through the dark into a stand of trees, where only they could witness what happened next.
He had swelling of the brain, and a forensic investigator reported that he had an open fracture of his right leg. He was covered in dirt, and residents of a nearby housing complex told his family that when the officers emerged from the woods, their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were spattered in blood.
Mr. Perry’s case underscores how willing some American pathologists have been to rule in-custody deaths of Black people accidents or natural occurrences caused by sickle cell trait, which is carried by one in 13 Black Americans and is almost always benign. Those with the trait have only one of the two genes required for full-blown sickle cell disease, a painful and sometimes life-threatening condition that can deform red blood cells into crescent shapes that stick together and block blood flow.
As recently as August, lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted last month of murdering George Floyd, invoked sickle cell trait in an unsuccessful motion to dismiss the case against him, saying that the condition, along with other health problems and drug use, was the reason Mr. Floyd had died.
The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.
In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by the authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, The Times found.
K.C. Cage-Singleton, a 30-year-old landscaper and father of four, was walking in Baton Rouge, La., in October 2009 when two officers approached him because they thought his clothing resembled that of an armed robbery suspect. Records show they chased him into an apartment complex, shocked him with a stun gun and beat him with a baton. The coroner cataloged a slew of injuries, including abrasions, lacerations and broken teeth, but said the manner and cause of his death were “undetermined,” citing “probable” sickle cell trait. The officers were not charged.
Army Sgt. James Brown, 26, had completed two tours in Iraq and was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder in July 2012 when he turned himself in to the El Paso jail to serve a two-day sentence for drunken driving. The authorities said he became violent, and he died after five jailers in riot gear piled atop him, pulled a mesh mask over his head and bound him in a chair. The medical examiner ruled that he had died a natural death caused by sickle cell crisis, and a grand jury declined to bring charges.
Gamel Brown, a 30-year-old property maintenance supervisor, cut his hand on a broken mirror at his home in a Baltimore suburb in January last year, prompting a call to 911. The police who responded said he became “extremely combative,” and they jolted him several times with a stun gun. After he died at a hospital, the medical examiner said that the manner of his death was undetermined — and that it was caused in part by sickle cell trait. The state’s attorney filed no charges.
In three cases, deaths linked to sickle cell trait that were deemed natural or of indeterminate cause were later ruled homicides — as occurred when Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died at the hands of his jailers at a northwest Florida juvenile detention camp in January 2006.
“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chairman of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”
Not every death that is tied to the condition is inherently questionable. Medical experts say sickle cell trait has caused deaths in rare cases of extreme overexertion, especially among military trainees and college athletes. Three of the in-custody deaths identified by The Times involved people who were exercising vigorously in jail yards or running hard before they collapsed — and law enforcement officers said that at most they put handcuffs on them.
In none of the deaths examined by The Times did the person have actual sickle cell disease, though there were instances when imprecise language by medical examiners left the false impression the trait and the disease were the same.
Dr. James R. Gill, chief medical examiner in Connecticut and president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said that pathologists would not be doing a thorough job if they identified sickle cell trait and failed to mention it in their reports.
“We know that this, in the right situation, can cause death, and you can’t just ignore that,” said Dr. Gill, who cited the trait in the autopsy of Lashano Gilbert, a 31-year-old Black man who had died in police custody in October 2014.
Mr. Gilbert, who had attended medical school, suffered a psychotic episode in New London, Conn., and was arrested after jumping on a passing car. His jailers put him in restraints, used pepper spray and a stun gun on him and fit him with a mask to prevent biting. Dr. Gill ruled the death a homicide, though the state’s attorney deemed the use of force “appropriate” and filed no charges.
In interviews, Dr. Mitchell and other medical experts agreed that the trait warranted mention in autopsies, but said any natural or accidental death attributed to it, even in part, should be scrutinized if the person died during or after a struggle with law enforcement.
Many said they suspected some sickle cell determinations might reflect a pattern of bias or conflicts of interest among medical examiners and police officials.
Forensic pathologists, the doctors who conduct autopsies for coroners and medical examiners, were singled out in a hotly disputed studypublished in a scientific journal in February suggesting that racial bias could influence their rulings, though it did not address sickle cell trait.
And coroners and medical examiners have entrenched relationships with law enforcement in many areas, functioning as part of police departments or working closely with them. In California, for example, the elected sheriff serves as coroner in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. Several years ago, two pathologists resigned from the coroner’s office in San Joaquin County there, citing interference by the sheriff with in-custody death reviews. The sheriff denied the claims and lost re-election.
In Mr. Perry’s case, agents with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation sealed his body in a bag before a forensic investigator inspected it. Officers at the scene could not say for sure how he had suffered his injuries, but said it appeared he had tripped and fallen into a ravine. The officers said he had been talkative when they found and handcuffed him, but then he lost consciousness. No efforts were made to revive him with lifesaving equipment when paramedics arrived, records and interviews show, and the “open fracture” documented by the forensic investigator was described in the autopsy as a “laceration.”
Mr. Perry, who was sometimes shy to the point of seeming rude, had his detractors in the neighborhood, his family members said, and records show he had a history of misdemeanor breaking-and-entering, larceny and drunken-driving convictions. The assault conviction that gave rise to the foot chase stemmed from an argument with the girlfriend he was visiting that night, family members said.
Mr. Perry had alcohol and a small amount of cocaine in his bloodstream when he died, and the medical examiner ruled that he had succumbed to “cocaine toxicity in the setting of sickle cell trait,” effectively ending any deeper inquiry. The local district attorney declined to bring charges.
“I find no evidence of any criminal activity or wrongdoing of any kind,” the district attorney, Reece Saunders, wrote in March 2017. “I consider this unfortunate matter closed.”
For Mr. Perry’s relatives, who could not afford a lawyer to challenge the ruling, all that was left was a series of unanswered questions. What had happened in the woods? Why wouldn’t the investigators let them view the body before the autopsy?
“The only people who know what happened are that probation officer and the officers who ran out there,” said Mr. Perry’s half brother, Mario Robinson. “I don’t believe what they said.”
A Nationwide Pattern
To gain a sense of how often medical examiners have used sickle cell trait to explain in-custody deaths, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of autopsy records, court filings and police reports. It examined data on suspicious deaths from more than 30 of the United States’ largest counties, whose jurisdictions cover nearly one in three Black Americans.
The review identified dozens of cases dating to the 1970s and was almost certainly an undercount. In some areas with large Black populations, like New York City, The Times relied on court cases and media reports because relevant medical or identifying data was not publicly available. Other locations, including Wayne County, Mich., which contains Detroit, did not provide the data to The Times before publication.
More in the link
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/african-americans-sickle-cell-police.html
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
NYPD Officer Says She Faced Discrimination For Wearing A Mask At Police Headquarters
god damn they are trash
god damn they are trash
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
Tyrants test man's daughters ashes and say they were positive for meth
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/21/dartavius-barnes-daughters-ashes-mixup/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/21/dartavius-barnes-daughters-ashes-mixup/
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/n...e-to-breathe-officer-tells-man-before-he-dies
Told him you shouldn't be able to breathe before the man dies
Told him you shouldn't be able to breathe before the man dies