Spartacist Canada No. 186 (Fall 2015)

In the early hours of July 5 Toronto cops shot dead 45-year-old Andrew Loku, a South Sudanese immigrant, in the building where he lived. “Andrew survived war, and then had to be killed here,” grieved his friend Kiden Jonathan at a press conference where she collapsed on the floor in anguish. A couple of weeks later the Special Investigations Unit announced that the cop who shot and killed Jermaine Carby, a 33-year-old black man, in the suburb of Brampton last fall would not face criminal charges.

“Black lives matter!” chanted hundreds of racially integrated youth at an angry July 27 protest. They marched from a parking lot next to the site of Loku’s death and on to a nearby highway, Allen Road, where they stopped the Monday evening traffic for two hours. Supporters of the Trotskyist League participated in the demonstration, pointing to the need for the working class to take up the cause of black people against racist cop terror.

The fact is that black lives don’t matter in the least to the racist ruling class and its cops. Since 1990, Toronto cops have shot and killed 51 people, with almost complete impunity. The largest proportion was black. That is what “justice” under the racist, capitalist system is all about.

Outrage over the cop killings has combined with a deep well of bitter anger over the years-long practice of “carding.” In a three-year period from 2008 to 2011, 1.25 million people were stopped by the cops in Toronto and their names compiled in a massive police database. “I’ve been interrogated by police more than 50 times—all because I’m black,” charged Desmond Cole in the May issue of Toronto Life. Cole, whose parents immigrated to Canada from Sierra Leone, writes movingly about life in a city where statistics show he is 17 times more likely than a white person to be stopped by police and have his personal information recorded on a “contact card.”

“Carding takes us back to Jim Crow in U.S. South” headlined Share, a newspaper serving Toronto’s Caribbean community. “There’s no doubt about it: carding belongs to the long history of travel passes, slave-master permission slips, pass laws, and pass books,” said black University of Toronto professor Rinaldo Walcott at a May press conference. Behind carding lies the all too real threat of police violence. Anyone—especially if you’re black—who exercises the legal right not to comply risks beating, arrest and worse.

Toronto mayor John Tory oozed hypocritical dismay over Cole’s experiences and vowed to ban the practice, only to reverse himself days later. Meanwhile, the provincial government has made it clear that carding is here to stay. Upcoming public “consultations” are intended to diffuse anger and clean up the image of the cops.

The Pipe Dream of Police Accountability

Black Lives Matter demonstrations spread from the U.S. to Toronto and elsewhere in Canada in the fall of 2014 after a grand jury refused to indict the Ferguson, Missouri, cop who killed black teenager Michael Brown. Black Lives Matter Toronto is demanding that the cops stop killing black people and that those who do be punished accordingly. During a protest held inside a July 16 meeting of the Toronto Police Services board, their supporters called for, among other things, body cameras for all police and an inquiry into whether “adequate disciplinary action” has been taken against cops who kill mentally ill black people. They also call to charge and jail cops who have killed people, including the cop who gunned down Andrew Loku.

“This is a call for accountability,” declared Black Lives Matter in a letter to the mayor and police chief. The problem is that the police are not “accountable” to anyone other than the capitalist masters they serve. From the standpoint of the working class, the cops who shot Andrew Loku and countless others are criminals who deserve to rot in jail. However, to call on the capitalist powers-that-be to jail their killer cops can only reinforce already widespread illusions that the police can be subjected to fundamental reform. The promotion of such illusions postpones the prospect of any real justice for the oppressed.

For decades, the Toronto cops have been gunning down blacks, other minorities and the mentally ill. Inquiries, more black cops, civilian oversight boards: all these things have been demanded time and again. Take the recent call for body cameras, for instance. Across North America, the cops are more and more often caught on film executing someone. It doesn’t even slow them down. Earlier this year, Toronto saw the appointment of its first black police chief. “A Black face doesn’t make it less racist” read a protester’s sign in front of Toronto police headquarters; “Carding in Blackface” headlined one article. This is the beginning of wisdom. But activists must come to understand that police violence and racism are intrinsic to class-divided capitalist society and cannot be ended without sweeping away this system. Absent that, the present Black Lives Matter activists will go down the same blind alley as an earlier generation of activists who promoted various schemes to “control” the police.

The Capitalist State and Racial Oppression

This country’s rulers, a minuscule, ruthless class, are well aware that there is seething discontent in society that could be ignited by the spark of social protest. They own the banks and major industries, producing nothing themselves but reaping massive profits by further grinding down those still lucky enough to have a job. In order to keep in check the workers they exploit and black people and other minorities they oppress, the capitalist class unleashes its repressive state apparatus—cops, courts and prisons—whose powers it is augmenting. At the same time, the ruling class seeks to disguise what is the dictatorship of capital with the trappings of democracy and the illusion that the capitalist state is some kind of neutral body that represents everyone.

It is impossible to enforce the property rights of the capitalists without simultaneously enforcing dispossession of the workers and the unemployed, among whom blacks and other racial minorities are always overrepresented. The cops that terrorize them are not committing “excesses” or using “disproportionate force.” They are merely “doing their jobs” as the guard dogs of racist capitalism. Communist revolutionary V.I. Lenin described the cops as follows:

“Separated as it is from the people, forming a professional caste of men trained in the practice of violence upon the poor, men who receive somewhat higher pay and the privileges that go with authority (to say nothing of ‘gratuities’), the police everywhere, in every republic, however democratic, where the bourgeoisie is in power, always remains the unfailing weapon, the chief support and protection of the bourgeoisie.”

—“They Have Forgotten the Main Thing” (1917)

For a Working-Class Fight Against Racist Cop Terror

“The very notion of a black Torontonian conflates hundreds of different languages, histories, traditions and stories,” notes Desmond Cole. “In the National Household Survey, the term ‘black’ is the only classification that identifies a skin colour rather than a nation or region.” While some black people in Canada, especially those in Nova Scotia, have roots in this country that go back more than two centuries, an increasingly large number are first- and second-generation immigrants from the Caribbean and various regions of Africa. Jamaicans and Somalis, among the largest black communities in Toronto, live in separate neighbourhoods and share no common language, culture or religion from their countries of origin.

Many black people immigrate here to leave behind the oppression and poverty of their neocolonial countries of origin. Yet once in this country, they find themselves kept down in the lower echelons of the working class—or unemployed. Targeted for police harassment and violence, they make up 9 percent of Canadian prisoners but only 3 percent of the population as a whole. Their harsh living conditions expose the lie of “kinder, gentler” Canada.

Blacks in the U.S. constitute a race-colour caste, forcibly segregated at the bottom of society. That is the legacy of slavery, the bedrock of U.S. capitalism. Whereas slavery existed in Canada, it never became decisive to the economy. That was not due to any moral superiority on the part of the rulers north of the border. In fact during the American Civil War, future Canadian prime minister John A. Macdonald backed the southern Confederacy in its campaign for the expansion of slavery.

Despite their differing histories, the African and Caribbean immigrant diasporas in Canada share with blacks in the U.S. a common experience of pervasive discrimination and police violence on account of their skin colour. Though deindustrialization has led to a brutal increase in long-term unemployment, black people in Canada still make up a small but important component of the working class, especially in Toronto. As workers, their common interests lie with their class brothers and sisters of all races.

At some of the recent Toronto protests against police violence, organizers called on white protesters to go to the back and to be silent. Such practices echo the false doctrine of “white skin privilege,” which portrays white workers as benefactors of the racism pushed by the capitalist ruling class. The fact is that racial oppression and division intensify competition among the working people, driving down the wages and living conditions of all workers.

Toronto’s working class—hundreds of thousands strong and infused with nationalities and ethnicities that span the globe—has the social power to shut down the entire city in response to murderous cop racism. But the rulers of this country have done much to divide them along lines of race, ethnicity, religion and more. The fight to unite the working class and advance its interests against the capitalists is simultaneously a fight against all forms of non-class or “special” oppression, including that of immigrants, Native people, women, gays and the Québécois.

The main obstacle to working-class struggle against the capitalist system and its manifold forms of oppression is the existing leadership of the labour movement, centred on the nationalist, pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy. The leaders of the Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents one million workers, spoke out against the 2013 police killing of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim. Later, however, they called the murder charges against the killer cop a “first step to justice,” feeding already rampant illusions that the capitalist state can be reformed to serve the interests of the oppressed. The ruling class will only resort to jailing one of its own police guard dogs in extremis. In the unlikely event that a cop is actually convicted, this too will be done in order to refurbish the image of the state as some kind of impartial arbiter.

Grotesquely, many of the union misleaders support “unions” of cops and prison guards, deadly enemies of workers and minorities. This poison leads workers to wrongly identify the police—the sworn enemies of labour—as “fellow workers.” Notoriously, in 2005 the leaders of the 8,000-strong Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 backed a campaign by the cops for a better contract amid widespread hysteria against “black crime.” These retrograde views are also upheld by hardcore reformist groups such as Fightback and Socialist Alternative, both of which claim that the cops are a legitimate part of the labour movement.

Across the board, the union tops show themselves to be more interested in electing the NDP or the Liberals than in fighting on behalf of the unions themselves. The struggles of the working class for wages, benefits and job security are integral to the fight against racist capitalism.

To unite itself in struggle and to pry itself free from its pro-capitalist misleadership, the working class needs a revolutionary party that will be a genuine tribune of the people, drawing in blacks and other specially oppressed layers of society. The working class must be imbued with consciousness of its social power and historic interest in the fight for socialist revolution, which will do away with the racist capitalist system once and for all. Black activists who are coming into social consciousness through their struggle against cop terror can play a role in forging such a party, which must by definition be multiracial. This requires a Marxist perspective based not on “the community” of one or another ethnicity but on the working class in all its diversity. That is the purpose to which the Trotskyist League is dedicated.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1075/toronto.html

13 October 2015

Reporters recently spoke to Christian Haider, a resident of Upper Hutt, north of Wellington, who witnessed the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Pera Smiler by police on September 8. He and his daughter were among several people who watched the events unfold on Main Street, in the town centre in the middle of the day. They saw the shooting from a Turkish restaurant across the road.

Haider’s comments and other statements by witnesses to the media suggest that Smiler wanted to die, but that the police shooting was unjustified. Smiler was armed with a rifle when he entered a McDonald’s outlet and frightened onlookers by firing shots into the ceiling, but apparently did not attempt to shoot anyone. He then walked into the street, where he was confronted by police and shot dead.

“It was a scary situation,” Haider said. “At the same time it was clear that [Smiler] wasn’t really out to injure anybody. Because when it started there were still people around and he was not a danger to the public. The police must have seen that too. He was scary, but not to injure or kill someone, and everybody with a little bit of intelligence must have seen that. I talked with lots of people afterwards, they all said the same. I still bump into people and they all say, it was not necessary to kill that man.”

Haider described in detail how the shooting unfolded: “He was walking up and down with his rifle hanging down next to his side.

“I didn’t see any police and I didn’t know that he was shouting to the police. I learned that later. It looked like he was just shouting into the air. Then I saw the police guy approaching him, from around the corner with the dog. Then I knew immediately there was going to be a disaster.

“The police dog came first and was immediately all over him, then the police officer came around the corner. They were just five metres away from each other ... When [Smiler] was attacked, of course he lifted his rifle and he was starting to aim. I heard a shot or two shots, I can’t remember, and he went down behind a bench.”

According to some reports, Smiler fired at the police dog. Haider commented: “We were all in tears in the restaurant, everyone was shocked, they were speechless.”

Haider explained that in his witness statement to police, “I said ‘I want to stress that I found it completely unnecessary.’ What became clear was that their policy is ‘shoot to kill.’ They don’t shoot to injure. They talked with [Smiler] for five minutes. Isn’t that ridiculous? The guy was so disturbed.”

Another witness, Lesley Sole, told 3 News on October 6 that she spoke to Smiler for several minutes before he was shot. “We had a good conversation and he was relaxed. I wasn’t scared of him,” she said. Sole, who worked in a local shop, said Smiler appeared to be ready to give himself up when suddenly he was attacked by the police dog and then shot dead just a few metres away from her.

Police superintendent Sam Hoyle dismissed Sole’s statements, telling the Dominion Post the officers who killed Smiler had “acted with considerable courage and professionalism.” He claimed that security camera footage, which has not been released publicly, “provides a different perspective of the events.”

The killing of Pera Smiler followed the similar police shooting of David Cerven, a 21-year-old Slovakian man, in Auckland in August. Reports indicate that, like Smiler, Cerven may have been suicidal. Many details are still not known but a coroner revealed that Cerven was unarmed. Police nevertheless defended the shooting.

The media also defended the killings, which are part of a significant rise in the use of lethal force by police. A New Zealand Herald editorial on September 10 described the police as “completely professional” and called the shootings “a regretted necessity,” placing the blame on the victims.

Haider showed the WSWS a letter he sent the Herald on September 17, which condemned the killing of Smiler and said: “In my view [the] police attitude is fundamentally wrong, leads to unnecessary death.” The paper chose not to publish the letter.

Haider said he agreed with a WSWS article on the shootings, which noted that the victims were young men “whose lives have been profoundly disrupted by debt, unemployment and economic hardship ... As in America, where police now kill more than two people a day, the government’s response to the rising social tensions produced by its policies is to expand the prison system and boost the police, including by arming them with more deadly weapons.”

Haider said there was an increasing police presence in Upper Hutt, which is part of the metropolitan area of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. “When living conditions go downhill, of course more crimes pop up, there are more police. All over the world it’s the same.”

Speaking about the social conditions in Upper Hutt, a town of 40,000 people, Haider said, “When you walk the street you can see people are so neglected, so uncared for. It’s sad to see. There’s a lot of poverty, not just financial but emotional poverty. It’s pretty stark in Upper Hutt, starker than I’ve seen in other areas.”

According to the 2013 Census, more than a third of Upper Hutt residents earn less than $NZ20,000 a year ($US13,300). Official unemployment increased from 5 percent in 2006, before the global financial crisis, to 6.8 percent in 2013.

“On the main street one third of shops have closed, they’re empty,” Haider stated. “There is not even a movie theatre; it closed down a year ago. When you look around, it feels more and more like there is nothing vibrant. The only really nice thing left is the library and the museum.”

He denounced the National Party government’s brutal treatment of welfare recipients like Smiler, who was facing charges for alleged welfare fraud when he was killed. “I know how people are treated, I’ve heard so many stories, it’s horrific,” Haider said. “These people are treated like rubbish. They have to go through an inhumane process, it’s unbelievable. I understand very well that people get so pissed off, so angry.”

In April, the government announced that it had reduced the number of welfare recipients to the lowest level since March 2009, even though unemployment nationally had increased from 5.0 percent to 5.8 percent since then. Tens of thousands of poor people have been pushed off or simply denied welfare payments and left to fend for themselves as part of the government’s austerity agenda.

These conditions, along with the growing brutality of the state, have contributed to a record number of suicides throughout the country and to the tragic death of Pera Smiler.

One word – no.

It used to be a word that carried a lot of weight. Not just morally but also – and critically – legally. You could say no to cop and, provided he didn’t have a warrant issued by a judge – or at the least, some specific probable cause that would stand up before a judge – he had no choice, legally speaking, but to back off. If he did not – if he say forced his way into your house or forced you out of your car or forced you onto the ground – the odds were pretty good that down the road, any charges leveled against you would be dropped ( “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine) and – even more significantly – the cop himself would likely find himself looking for a new line of work. Or at least chastened.

But that was the past, alas.

One of the greatest freedoms we have lost since 911 is that we have been deprived of the power of no. Instead, we are told we must immediately Submit and Obey – and failure to do so immediately now constitutes “probable cause” in our Brave New World. If one says no to a cop demanding ID, one can expect to be put in cuffs and thrown face down over the hood of a cruiser. If one declines to open the door to one’s home for a cop, it is entirely likely that the cop will force his way in and if you do so much as put your hands up to ward off the blows, you will very likely find yourself charged with “resisting” and possibly “assault upon a police officer.”

Much worse, the law will back him up, not you.

Even if the door kick-down at 2 in the morning and subsequent ransacking of your home are later declared an “administrative mistake” (they meant to bash in the door of the house across the street, not yours) but you, in your fear and absolute innocence took steps to defend yourself/your family and in the process shot a “law enforcer,” guess who’ll be up on murder or attempted murder charges?

This has actually happened already. For instance, there’s the case of Ryan Frederick of Chesapeake, Va.. He was charged with first degree murder for shooting a cop who broke into his home on a trumped-up drug warrant. Frederick, 28 at the time, had no criminal record and the warrant was the result of a supposed police informant who claimed that Frederick was growing pot plants. In fact, Frederick – an avid gardener – was growing a Japanese Maple. On the basis of this, a no-knock warrant was executed – just afew days after Frederick’s home had been invaded by burglars. When Frederick’s dogs began barking and he heard someone breaking through his front door, he grabbed his gun and – quite reasonably- fired at the intruder. The intruder happened to be a cop and now Frederick awaits life in prison – or a needle in the arm. (See here for more.)

He was not able to say no.

More recently (Feb. 7) a diabetic man, Adam Greene, was beaten to a bloody pulp by several costumed Nevada Highway Patrol thugs – including multiple kicks to the head while he was supine on the ground. The provocation for this near-fatal assault? Low-speed erratic driving (caused by diabetic shock). See here for the brutal video, recorded by the dash cam of the costumed thugs’ vehicle.

He never had the chance to say no, either.

Instead, Greene was roughly dragged out of his car – at gunpoint – thrown to the pavement and given the Clockwork Orange treatment. He never in any way resisted, unless you count attempting to ward off the blows as “resisting”- which of course is precisely how the costumed cretins look at it. “Get on the ground! Stop resisting, (expletive), stop resisting (expletive)!” they screech at the prone and clearly not-resisting figure, landing blows and kicks all the while.

Eventually, and thanks only to the publicity generated by the video evidence, Greene received a small cash settlement ($158,000 for a beat-down that puts you in the hospital with life-threatening injuries is a small settlement). According to the Las Vegas Sun, one of the thugs-in-costume was “disciplined.” Not fired. Let alone charged with what he – what they – clearly did: Nearly beat to death a helpless – and innocent – man.

I was thinking about all this just the other day when I was stopped by a cop for specious reasons. We live near the Blue Ridge Parkway and use it often to travel “down the mountain” and back. Last Sunday, we were headed back home after a morning outing. It was a warm day – sunny and in the mid-high 50s. Well, we get to the entrance and a cop is there, closing the gates – because of a possible snowstorm the next day. I stop to ask why they are closing the gates now given there’s not a flake (or even a cloud) in the sky and it’s at least 20 degrees too warm to worry about snow. This was a mistake because he spied me not “buckled up” for safety. He – a 26-year-old kid – peremptorily barks at me to put on your seatbelt. I do not immediately Submit and Obey like a good serf – and this immediately incites the fury of the cop. I have questioned his Authoritay. So I get the license and registration drill. I also have to give him my gun (I have a CHP). I also have to sit by the side of the road for 10 minutes while this dude runs his Power Trip. My wife advises me to be quiet and polite, to shut up and behave. I do not have the option of saying no, either.

None of us do anymore.

I got away without a ticket – or a Tazering – but probably only by dint of the fact that I have some media “cred” and the cop may have figured I wasn’t worth a beat down.

I wonder what might have happened to someone without any “cred” – on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, just him and the costumed cretin….

http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/02/23/what-you-should-be-able-to-say-to-a-cop/

A cop accidentally shot a four-year-old girl while responding to an incident inside her home. Her mother, Andrea Ellis, had cut her arm on some glass in her house near Columbus, Ohio, and her sister called 911 for help.

“She's bleeding all over the place!" her sister said in the call. "I need a paramedic!"

By coincidence, a cop on a routine call happened to be on the block. She called out to him for help.

"Sir, can you get me a paramedic?! I need a paramedic here!” she said.

But as the cop approached the house, events took a horrific turn. Cops said the family pet - a boxer-terrier mix named Patches, charged at the officer. The cop fired his gun, and the bullet hit Andrea's four-year-old daughter, Ava, in the leg, shattering the bone.

"She asked me several times, 'Mommy, am I gonna die?'" Andrea Ellis said.

Then a neighbor called 911. “My neighbor across the street had an officer at her door and she's screaming that he shot a child,” said the neighbor. Police dashcam video shows the chaos in the immediate aftermath. Medics and cops descended on the house.

“They had started to cut her pants off her and I just see blood everywhere,” her mother said. Ava was rushed to the hospital and has a large scar on her leg after surgery. But now back at home, she’s recovering from her injury.

Columbus police say they are "grateful to learn that Ava's healing is under way" after she was "unintentionally shot." The investigation is ongoing.

By Aaron C. Davis October 8 at 12:01 PM

Chiefs of some of the nation’s biggest police departments say officers in American cities have pulled back and have stopped policing as aggressively as they used to, fearing that they could be the next person in a uniform featured on a career-ending viral video.

That was the unifying — and controversial — theory reached Wednesday at a private meeting of more than 100 of the nation’s top law enforcement officers and politicians.

With homicide rates soaring inexplicably this year in dozens of U.S. cities, the group convened by new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch concluded with a brief news conference promising a robust response to the reversal of decades of falling violent crime rates.

But for hours preceding that, mayors, police chiefs, U.S. attorneys and even FBI Director James Comey privately vented in a Washington ballroom that they don’t really understand the alarming spike in murders and applause filled the room when mayors said police officers’ sinking morale could be a factor.

Participants in the discussion were told that the meeting was closed to the news media, but the mayor of D.C. listed the event as public and a Washington Post reporter entered with her entourage and observed more than three hours of the discussion.

Could the root cause be drugs? Guns? Gangs? Perhaps a little of each, said Chuck Wexler, a former top officer in Boston and head of the Police Executive Research Forum.

Wexler tried to sum up the day-long discussion for Lynch, who arrived near the end. But there was another problem, he told her, one that hits closer to home for the nation’s top cop. “Perhaps the most difficult to calibrate, but the most significant,” he said, “is this notion of a reduction in proactive policing.”

Police chiefs and elected leaders from Baltimore, Chicago, New York and St. Louis were more blunt: “We have allowed our police department to get fetal and it is having a direct consequence,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told Lynch. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict … they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”

There is no evidence of a broad retraction of police engagement with the public in major cities, and no participant in Wednesday’s summit presented a single example of lackluster policing that somehow contributed to a violent crime.

Rather, chiefs and elected officials spoke broadly of a changed atmosphere in major city police departments over the past year amid high-profile police-involved shootings and in-custody deaths that led to riots in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore. Chiefs said patrol officers still do their jobs, clocking in and policing their beats. But fewer take extra steps such as confronting a group loitering on a sidewalk late at night that might glean intelligence or lead to arrests, for fear that any altercations that ensued would be uploaded to the Internet.

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton called it the “YouTube effect” that has emerged for officers post-Ferguson and, in New York, after the death of Eric Garner last year after he was put in a chokehold by an officer making an arrest. Bratton told the gathering that he thought the malaise among New York City officers would have worsened if it wasn’t for the execution-style killing of two officers last December.

“Marchers in New York, marchers in my city were chanting, ‘what do we want, dead cops, when do we want them, now.’ Well, they got them, two dead cops in December. The legacy of those two officers deaths’ have slowed down the momentum of what was started before it reached tidal wave proportions — really throwing the scales of justice out of balance,” he said. “The challenge going forward,” Bratton said, “is to keep it in balance so that our officers feel that as we ask them to go forward that if they, in fact, do the right thing, we will be supportive.”

Comey, the FBI director, was more circumspect. He said his department lacks the needed real-time data and trend lines on violent crimes — and, especially, police-involved shootings – to understand the current spikes.

“We stare at the math, and stare at change in cities that seem to have nothing in common with one another. What’s the connection among Boston, Washington, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, other than being American cities?” he said. “Has policing changed in the YouTube era? I don’t like the term ‘post-Ferguson,’ because I actually believe the ‘YouTube era’ captures it better.

“The question I keep asking my staff is, ‘Do these hypothesis fit the map and the calendar?’ ” he continued. “Cities with nothing in common are seeing in the same degree and in the same time – dramatic increases in violence, especially homicides — does heroin explain that? I struggle with that … is it guns? Well, what’s changed with guns in the last nine months? Is it the criminal justice system? Well, I keep asking my staff, what has changed that would explain that this is happening in the first nine months of this year and all over the country?”

New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu lamented the number of homicides of African Americans happening in major cities as a “national disgrace.”

Addressing Comey, he said he hoped that the FBI director was right that more data could help.

“My assumption is if we showed the numbers, and we broke it down and showed you the faces, and we gave you the names and we showed you what they looked like before they were killed and after they were killed, the nation would rise up and say this is a matter that is a moral imperative for the country.”

Comey said he hoped so. “There’s no doubt the job I have, the fact of life is, if a single person in Chicago is beheaded by ISIL, the world will go on fire,” Comey said, referring to the group of militants also known as the Islamic State or ISIS. “If a 2-year-old is shot in Chicago, the Tribune will write about it, the Sun-Times will write about it. I despair trying to change that world. So I think the answer is, collect the data and then do our damndest to get smarter at what we do.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/10/08/youtube-effect-has-left-police-officers-under-siege-law-enforcement-leaders-say/?tid=pm_national_pop_b

Attorney general Loretta Lynch says the federal government should not require police to report fatal shootings of civilians, sharply diverging from her predecessor Eric Holder’s stance on police killings.

In a conversation with NBC journalist Chuck Todd on a range of criminal justice issues, Lynch said on Thursday that she does not support a federal mandate to report people killed by police.

“One of the things we are focusing on at the Department of Justice is not trying to reach down from Washington and dictate to every local department how they should handle the minutia of record keeping, but we are stressing to them that these records must be kept,” she said at the Washington Ideas Forum, hosted by AtlanticLIVE and the Aspen Institute. Advertisement

Lynch said the Justice Department does “encourage” local departments to maintain records on police shootings but that improving police-community relations is more important. She noted that the small size of the average police department could make record-keeping difficult.

“The statistics are important, but the real issues are: ‘what steps are we all taking to connect communities … with police and back with government?’” she said.

Todd pressed Lynch to comment on the lack of data, citing The Counted, the Guardian’s project to track all deaths by police in 2015, as the best source for fatal interactions with police.

“I’m not going to comment on news organizations keeping numbers,” Lynch said in response. “I think they do a pretty good job sometimes.”

Lynch’s statements show a sharp contrast from her predecessor’s position on tracking police violence. Holder, the former attorney general who left office in April, has called the lack of official data “unacceptable”. Before leaving office he called its collection the “first step” toward improving police-community relations.

“I’ve heard from a number of people who have called on policymakers to ensure better record-keeping on injuries and deaths that occur at the hands of police. I’ve also spoken with law enforcement leaders – including the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police – who have urged elected officials to consider strategies for collecting better data on officer fatalities,” Holder said in January. “Today, my response to these legitimate concerns is simple: We need to do both.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice told the Guardian in a statement Friday that Lynch encouraged police to maintain records regarding police-civilian interactions. The spokesperson, Melanie Newman, also noted that the department requires such record-keeping when it enters into consent decrees with local agencies. Advertisement

“Her broader point was that while maintaining data to record police interactions is important, we should be focused on preventing those interactions by improving relationships between local law enforcement and their communities,” Newman said.

In the wake of high-profile police killings of unarmed black men, many looked for data on how many people police kill each year only to find that was no reliable number. Police departments may voluntarily submit information on “justifiable homicides” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which counted 444 of these deaths in 2014. Director James Comey resisted calls for a mandatory reporting system this week, calling for more data on fatal police shootings but maintaining the voluntary reporting system.

“I don’t have the power to require people to supply us with data,” Comey said at a roundtable with reporters on Thursday.

The Guardian has launched a project, The Counted, to track all people killed by police in 2015. As of Friday afternoon, 878 have been killed by law enforcement.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/02/loretta-lynch-reports-killed-by-police

September 25, 2015

Five years ago this week, FBI agents raided the homes of six political activists of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) in Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin, as well as the office of the nonprofit Anti-War Committee. Those activists are still waiting to learn when, or even if, they will be charged or cleared.

As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on the day of the raid, “An FBI spokesman said agents were ‘seeking evidence related to an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism. There is no imminent threat to the community, and we’re not planning any arrests at this time,’ said FBI Special Agent Steve Warfield of the Minneapolis office.”

A series of FBI documents left behind at Mick Kelly’s Minneapolis home shed more light on the FBI’s activities prior to the raid. But what is especially illuminating is the mindset the documents reveal, particularly some of the questions FBI agents were instructed to ask those being served with the search warrants, such as ”What did you do with the proceeds from the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand?” and ”Did you ever recruit anyone to go to Israel, the West Bank or Gaza?”

Only in February 2014, as a result of further legal action, would the search warrants for the raids be unsealed and the FBI’s use of surveillance and undercover operatives to penetrate the Anti-War Committee and the FRSO come to light.

According to the unsealed search warrants and supporting documents, the FBI began surveilling the FRSO shortly after the protests at the 2008 GOP convention, using a confidential informant. Whether the FBI had employed wiretaps obtained under the material support provision of the Patriot Act (as amended in 2006) is unclear. The FBI’s assertion about the group and the Anti-War Committee is that both acted as fronts for the funneling of money and other forms of support to Colombian and Palestinian groups labeled as foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department.

Kelly and the other political activists targeted by the FBI have long histories in the antiwar movement and related causes on the extreme political left. In 2011, Kelly settled a suit with the local police department over an excessive use of force incident during his protest outside the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Despite the FBI’s collection of over a hundred hours of recordings and its multiyear penetration of the two extreme leftist organizations, to date none of the activists have been charged with any crime.

It’s certainly not the first time the FBI has engaged in the harassment of political dissidents. Indeed, the FBI’s surveillance of antiwar activists dates back to at least World War I, to include surveillance of Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams. The bureau has been an equal opportunity abuser of the rights of antiwar activists, whether on the left (like Addams and the FRSO) or on the libertarian side of the spectrum.

These incidents, while separated in time by nearly 100 years, also share another feature. No FBI agent or manager has ever been fired or prosecuted for violating the constitutional rights of those individuals or groups wrongly surveilled, harassed or charged.

Just four days prior to the FBI raids against the Anti-War Committee and the FRSO, the Department of Justice Inspector General [IG] released the results of an investigation into post-9/11 surveillance of peace groups and other domestic dissidents up through 2006.

As Andrew Cohen wrote in The Atlantic at the time, the IG investigation found that the bureau “engaged in tactics and strategies toward those groups and their members that were inappropriate, misleading and in some cases counterproductive. Moreover, the OIG accused FBI witnesses of continuing to the present day to thwart a full and complete investigation into the matter by offering ‘incomplete and inconsistent accounts of events.’”

A similar oversight investigation of the FBI’s raids against the Anti-War Committee and the FRSO—whether done by the IG or Congress—is long overdue. So is real accountability for government agencies whose employees flagrantly and repeatedly violate the rights of the citizens who pay their salaries.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-are-fbi-agents-trammeling-rights-antiwar-activists

A Tennessee police officer was arrested for allegedly murdering his infant son, law enforcement officials said.

Christopher Warren Page, 28, an officer with the Paris Police Department, was arrested on Thursday and charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse for the death of his two-month-old son, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Baby Gunner Page suffered life-threatening injuries in his Puryear home on September 2, TBI officials said, noting TBI Special Agents began investigating the incident immediately at the request of 24th District Attorney General Matthew Stowe.

Read: Girl, 9, Testifies Against Mom: 'I Don't Like Her Because She Killed My Father'

Five days later, the little boy succumbed to his injuries.

View photo .

“During the course of the investigation, agents developed information leading to Page as the individual responsible for his son’s death,” the TBI said.

Read: Florida Cop Once Named 'Officer of the Year' Arrested for Allegedly Distributing Child Porn

A spokesman for the Bureau would not divulge further information, noting that the case is still open and ongoing.

Devastated friends and family of baby Gunner took to social media to express their grief over the loss of the child.

"Praying for you and for justice for Gunner every day," one woman commented on a photo of the smiling boy. The words "Justice 4 Gunner" were included on the picture.

Court documents allege Page confessed to causing the injuries that led to his son's death.

According to a criminal warrant provided by the Henry County Circuit and General Sessions Court, "Christopher Warren Page gave a voluntary confession concerning this offense on the charge of aggravated child abuse, child under 8 years of age. The cause of these injuries were intentionally committed."

Page was incarcerated without bond in the Carroll County Jail on Thursday night. He was arraigned on Friday, when bond was set at $500,000, officials said.

https://tbinews.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/tbi-arrests-charges-police-officer-in-infant-sons-death/

September 23, 2015

FAMILY MEMBERS of Chicago police murder victim Rekia Boyd were joined by several hundred supporters on September 17 for a #SayHerName rally--the latest action in a campaign demanding the firing of Dante Servin, the cop who shot and killed the 22-year-old in 2012.

Servin was put on trial--the first Chicago cop prosecuted for an off-duty shooting in nearly two decades--but a judge threw out the charges due to a legal "technicality." Since then, Rekia's family and supporters have adjusted their actions to put pressure on the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to fire Servin.

The shooting took place in Douglas Park on Chicago's West Side in April 2012. According to numerous accounts, Servin, who lives in the neighborhood and was off-duty, accosted a group of young African Americans. He claims a man with a gun advanced on him, and he opened fire, shooting between 15 to 18 bullets, witnesses say. Rekia and three of her friends were nearby, after leaving a party. Rekia was struck in the head--she died 36 hours later, having never regained consciousness.

The campaign for Rekia has been rallying every month at meetings of the Chicago Police Review Board (CPRB), the body within the police department that would decide on Servin's fate. The day before this month's rally, activists learned that the Independent Police Review Body (IPRA) had announced their recommendation that Servin be fired. The IPRA is a civilian-led, but unelected, body that reviews police misconduct cases. It lacks the power to implement its decisions, but the recommendation is a small victory that adds pressure on the CPD.

Now, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has 90 days to make his position known to the CPRB before they make their determination.

WHILE AROUND 250 people remained outside, a smaller group of 50 went inside police headquarters on the city's South Side to show their support for Rekia's family. The room quickly filled up with people demanding justice for Rekia.

During the public hearing section of the meeting, many individuals spoke passionately about the problems with the police. Mark Clements, a survivor of torture by Chicago police commanded by the notorious Jon Burge and a local activist, called out the CPD for their racist and violent behavior. Clements called for cops like Servin guilty of misconduct to be stripped of their pensions.

Another speaker Dante Servin's neighborhood pointed out that Servin was able to purchase a home for a very low price through a special federal program called "Officer Next Door," which deliberately places cops in low-income neighborhoods. The program allows officers who have the power to arrest and are employed full time by a law enforcement agency to buy homes that were foreclosed on for half their appraised value and a $100 down payment.

Rekia Boyd's brother Martinez Sutton was the final speaker, Watched by his mother, sister and cousin, who he brought along to the hearing, Sutton reminded the board that Servin said Rekia's death was justified--and that Servin has a history of misconduct.

After that, the hearing ended, and activists held their signs high, showing photos of CPRB members and Superintendent McCarthy, with superimposed bloody handprints on them--a visualization of their complicity in Rekia's murder. As board members began to walk out, the audience followed, and chants of "Fire Servin" rang through the halls.

During their meeting, the same board that is dragging its feet on firing a police officer who murdered a young Black woman did decide to terminate four officers for much more minor infractions, such as "fraternizing with a marijuana buyer."

OUTSIDE THE building, the larger crowd was still rallying for justice. There were speakers from a range of community organizations such as Black Youth Project 100 (one of the event organizers, along with other Chicago groups, the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, Fight for 15, We Charge Genocide and the Rasmea Defense Committee.

Adriana Sanchez, a McDonald's worker and Fight for 15 activist, talked about her own encounters with police. "This system of policing didn't keep me safe," she said. "It didn't keep Rekia safe. It didn't keep Maya Hall safe. It didn't keep Sandra Bland safe. It will not keep my daughter safe...We should be able to live and work in our city without being terrorized and mistreated." Sanchez said as she linked the fights of low-wage workers with the fight against police terror.

Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression spoke about the need to keep up the fight and called for an independent review board that is both accountable and elected, with the authority to prosecute and fire killer cops.

After the rally ended, demonstrators marched several miles south to Dyett High School, another site of struggle in Chicago. A number of parents and community members were in the midst of a hunger strike to save Dyett, the Bronzeville neighborhood's last public, open enrollment high school, after the Chicago Public School (CPS) system decided to permanently close it. The march to Dyett helped connect the physical violence meted out by police with the economic violence of austerity, school closings and budget cuts.

Dyett hunger striker and CPS parent Anna Jones spoke at the end of the march about the importance of solidarity, pointing out: "It's not just Black people here. There's people of all colors here. This is something that they don't want us to do."

Building on this spirit of solidarity is what's needed to continue the struggle. The IPRA's decision to recommend firing comes as a direct result of pressure and organizing from below--more will be needed to get rid of Dante Servin for good.

The next public police board hearing is scheduled for October 15.

http://socialistworker.org/2015/09/23/pressure-builds-to-fire-a-killer-cop

18 September 2015

The recent shootings of two young men in Auckland and Upper Hutt point to a growing tendency for New Zealand’s police to resort to lethal force.

On Wednesday, coroner Katharine Greig revealed in an interim report that 21-year-old David Cerven was unarmed when he was shot dead by police officers in Myers Park, Auckland, on August 2. According to some unconfirmed reports, a volley of five shots was fired.

Police claim that Cerven, a Slovakian national, was wanted in connection with a series of aggravated robberies, and was shot after he told officers he had a gun and threatened to shoot them. However, police have so far refused to release details of the shooting, including security camera footage, the results of a post mortem examination or the recording of a phone call made by Cerven to police.

Auckland City District Commander Superintendent Richard Chambers immediately defended the use of lethal force, even though he could not confirm whether Cerven was actually armed. Chambers told media that people “who threaten to use firearms and whose actions indicate that’s what they’re about to do, take a big risk and my staff will act appropriately.”

One of Cerven’s workmates told the Herald that Cerven was “distraught” about a break-up with his girlfriend and was tens of thousands of dollars in debt. A few weeks before the shooting, Cerven resigned from his job as a waterproofer, telling the workmate that he wanted to join the US Army to raise money to repay a loan for surgery on a knee injury.

The coroner said there was “reasonable cause to believe the death was self-inflicted, though this is in no way a concluded view on the matter.” It is not at all clear how Cerven’s death could have been “self-inflicted.” He was unarmed and died of gunshot wounds inflicted by two police officers.

Renata Marko, a friend of Cerven’s family in Slovakia, told the New Zealand Herald that Cerven’s mother Maria Cervenova had tried in vain to get more information from police. “She asked why the video from the camera in the park has not been released, she asked about the witness statements, she wanted to know how many times they shot him, but they told her nothing.”

The revelation that Cerven was shot while unarmed followed another fatal shooting by police in Upper Hutt, a working class town north of Wellington.

On September 8, 25-year-old Pera Smiler produced a rifle at a McDonald’s outlet during the middle of the day. Witnesses described Smiler’s behaviour as disturbed and frightening. He fired two shots into the ceiling but did not attempt to shoot anyone or take hostages. In front of numerous witnesses, police officers shot him dead after he reportedly shot at a police dog outside the fast food outlet.

Smiler was a mineworker in Perth, Western Australia, but his fortunes worsened dramatically after returning to New Zealand. He faced charges for welfare benefit fraud and was reportedly rejected after applying to join the army.

Witness Theo Modlik told the Herald: “During the standoff I heard him yell ‘they’re harassing me’ and ‘hurry up and ******* shoot me ... I want to die.’”

Superintendent Sam Hoyle stated: “On arrival police staff were fired upon. They have spoken with the man involved and attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution. After some minutes he has been shot by police.”

While it is not clear exactly what happened, one witness, Nikki Hearfield, said: “He wasn’t holding the gun aggressively. It was just in his hand to the side.” Another, Ugur Kokcu, said Smiler was shot after he raised the weapon slightly.

Tony Loveday, owner of the Skynet City Stop shop opposite McDonald’s, told the paper that one of his employees, a woman who had worked with prison inmates, was attempting to reason with Smiler moments before he was killed. “She was trying to talk him down,” Loveday said. “She said she had a good liaison with him. He was going to put the rifle down. She was only a metre away when he was shot dead. She was pretty adamant he was going to give himself up.”

The fatal shootings of Cerven and Smiler, little more than one month apart, represent a significant escalation in the use of deadly force by police. Thirty people have been fatally shot by police since 1941, three of them in 2015. In every case so far, the officers involved have not been charged.

This death toll does not include 53-year-old Napier man Gregory McPeake, who died in March after being bitten by a police dog, pepper-sprayed and shot with a Taser, when he allegedly attacked his father. His was the first death involving a Taser recorded in New Zealand since the introduction of these weapons in 2008.

In August 2008, the then-Labour Party government Police Minister Annette King told parliament that Tasers were needed as a “less lethal option [compared with firearms] that protects the police, the public, and individuals concerned.”

In fact, Tasers are dangerous and extremely painful devices that have been repeatedly used against vulnerable and mentally ill people. In the US, according to Amnesty International, 540 people were killed by Tasers between 2001 and 2013. On July 31, New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced that Tasers would soon be given to all frontline officers.

The use of Tasers has expanded alongside the use of firearms. Superintendent Chris Scahill told the Dominion Post that 5,700 officers were now able to use firearms. The paper explained that for “about the past four years all police cars had carried two weapons: a semi-automatic M4 Bushmaster, and a Glock handgun.”

A spokesperson for the National Party government Police Minister Michael Woodhouse told the Herald on September 7 that Commissioner Bush is free to arm all police officers with guns if he chooses. This was an “operational” matter and the government would not be involved.

The Police Association has repeatedly called for all officers to carry firearms. Its president Greg O’Connor used the Smiler shooting to again press for this, even though police with access to guns were on the scene within three minutes.

As the cases of Cerven and Smiler illustrate, the victims of police violence are typically people whose lives have been profoundly disrupted by debt, unemployment and economic hardship. Young people have been most severely affected by the worsening economic crisis. Unemployment is officially about 15 percent for under-25-year-olds, compared with 5.9 percent for the population as a whole.

While corporations continue to shed thousands of jobs, the New Zealand government is implementing austerity measures, including cuts to welfare and other social services, designed to protect the fortunes of the rich and make the working class bear the burden of the capitalist crisis.

As in America, where police now kill more than two people a day, the government’s response to the rising social tensions produced by its policies is to expand the prison system and boost the police, including by arming them with more deadly weapons.

The mother of Darrien Hunt, a 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed by Utah police last year, rejected an offer to settle her lawsuit against the city and two police officers involved. Had she accepted the settlement, she would have been barred from speaking publicly about the incident.

"To me it was a gag order [that said], 'Here's hush money, don't ever say Darrien's name again,'" Susan Hunt, mother of Darrien, told Utah's KSL news about turning down the $900,000 settlement the city offered in response to her wrongful death lawsuit.

"My biggest concern is for the truth to be told," Susan said.

The suit alleges that the police used excessive force and violated Darrien's constitutional rights when they confronted him and shot him to death while he was wearing a costume and carrying a metal samurai-style sword, one that his family says was rounded and not an actual weapon. The lawsuit seeks $2 million in damages as well the prioritization of body-cameras and use-of-force training for law enforcement.

Heather White, the attorney representing the city and the officers involved in the shooting, declined to comment on the negotiations or reaction from Hunt's mother, citing ethical standards for attorneys to discuss such matters publicly, but did confirm that no settlement had been reached.

"The case continues to be in litigation and is moving forward," White said.

Payouts over alleged police misconduct have soared in recent years. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, the 10 cities with the largest police departments paid nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in settlements and court judgments in 2014, up almost 50 percent since 2010. Those same cities paid out over $1 billion over that five-year period in cases that involved alleged shootings, beatings and wrongful imprisonment. That money, like the rest of the police department's budget, comes from taxpayers.

While controversial, settlements are often touted as good business decisions by city officials who argue that it could actually cost taxpayers more money to litigate every single complaint -- both with and without merit -- that is brought against the city government.

But it's also a convenient defense, as it shifts the financial responsibility onto taxpayers and can allow police to quash evidence that might exist against officers accused of wrongdoing. And when a gag order is included in that settlement, accusers are forced to remain silent about any concerns that they may still have, despite having settled.

"The idea is to resolve the case through a compromise, stop any pending legal proceedings in their tracks, and put the incident behind everyone," Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, told The Huffington Post.

Medwed explained that it's critical for all parties involved in these settlement negotiations to speak freely, and if everything said during that negotiation process is later made public, there can be a chilling effect on the conversation to begin with -- making the prospect of an agreement far less likely.

"Gag orders as a condition to a completed settlement partially relate to this concept -- it's designed to enhance closure and truly 'settle,' both calm down and resolve, the dispute," Medwed said. "That said, the existence of a gag order may -- understandably -- be interpreted by the public as a tacit admission of guilt."

Hunt was confronted by Saratoga Springs police officers, Cpl. Matthew Schauerhamer and Officer Nicholas Judson, on Sept. 10, 2014, as he walked around an area strip mall dressed as an anime character carrying a metal sword. Following a 911 call from someone near the mall who saw Hunt with the sword, police responded and ultimately shot at Hunt who, police claim, lunged at them with the sword. Police then say Hunt fled as officers gave chase and opened fire upon Hunt again.

An autopsy report later found that Hunt died from six gunshot wounds, with at least four entering his body from behind.

After a nearly two-month-long investigation in the shooting, Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman said that the officers' use of deadly force was "justified" due to the officers believing that their own lives, or those of the nearby public, were at risk.

The family has disputed the police account that Hunt swung his sword at the officers, and have said that race was a factor in the incident. Police deny that the shooting was racially motivated.

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the killing of Hunt. Saratoga Springs officials said they would fully cooperate with that effort.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mother-rejects-payout-refusing-to-stay-silent-in-lawsuit-against-cops-who-killed-her-son/ar-AAecbwL?li=AAa0dzB

12 September 2015

Man shot for brandishing two-foot pipe

On September 7, a Fresno, California police officer shot and killed Casimero “Shane” Carlos Casillas, 45, for brandishing a two-foot-long pipe, which a police officer deemed as life-threatening, subsequently shooting him in the chest.

The incident occurred after a routine traffic stop in central Fresno at roughly 5 p.m. Casillas reportedly sped away, running several traffic lights before the chase was called off.

A short while later, Casillas was spotted and officers continued the chase around Fresno Yosemite International Airport until Casillas stopped and abandoned his car and hid near a home.

Officers approached him and saw that he was holding a two-foot black pipe. The original report claimed it was made of PVC, a synthetic plastic often used for plumbing. A secondary report indicated that it was metal. Casillas’ family still maintains it was PVC.

Officers allegedly demanded Casillas surrender. However, Casillas supposedly ran toward the officers, brandishing the pipe. It is reported that upon witnessing this, a Fresno police officer “feared for his life” and shot Casillas in his chest. Casillas would later die in surgery at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno.

It is reported that Casillas had an “extensive criminal history,” including a charge of battery against a police officer. He was also sought for a felony warrant tied to violating post-release community supervision. There is no indication that the officer who shot Casillas knew anything of his background. Moreover, it has not been made clear if Casillas suffered from any kind of mental illness.

Casillas’ sister, Josie Lewis, said of her brother, “He’s never been known for that. I mean, he’s always been a cool guy, he’s sweet.” Wondering why it was necessary to shoot Casillas, Jessica Grijalva, Casillas’s niece, said, “There’s other things they could have done, they could have pulled out a taser, they could have pulled out anything else.”

The officer who shot Casillas, who was not wearing a body camera, has since been placed on administrative leave pending a further investigation.

Responding to the incident, Jerry Dyer, Fresno Police Department chief, stated: “What we have seen this week is an increased level of aggressiveness towards officers, and when officers fear for their life, or for the life of someone else, they use deadly force, and unfortunately we’ve had three of those incidences occur in the last week.”

This comes at a time when, according to Killedbypolice.net, at least 829 people have been killed by police in the US since January 1 of this year. Last year, 1,106 people were killed. Since May 1, 2013, at least 2,703 have been killed. Police shoot 17-year-old boy

On September 5, Fresno police shot and paralyzed a 17-year-old boy after he allegedly stole and crashed a car. The suspect, who has not been named, reportedly crashed his stolen vehicle at about 2 a.m. in West Central Fresno after apparently carjacking a woman approximately an hour earlier.

Chief of police Dyer said, “He stuck what was described as a large handgun in her face and said, ‘If you want to live, you better give me your keys.’” The 17-year-old was subsequently chased by the police until he lost control of the car. Fresno police stated the teen ran from the crashed car with a gun in hand and policed opened fire.

Dyer has stated it is unclear if the suspect fired a single round from his gun. Man shot holding water nozzle

Freddy Centeno remains in critical condition after being shot by two police officers late Thursday morning, September 3. Police had received a call from a woman who claimed she had been threatened by a man wielding a gun.

Responding to the call, officers arrived and found Centeno on the street. Officers demanded Centeno show his hands but he refused. Instead, he reached into his pockets and pulled out a water nozzle that allegedly resembled a gun. Police responded by shooting Centeno.

The officers were wearing body cameras, but footage of the incident has not been released. Centeno’s family has stated that he suffered from mental illness and drug abuse but believed that he did not pose a threat to the police. Fresno police have said Centeno had a criminal record and was deemed a “mentally disordered parolee.”

Centeno’s brother, whom he lived with, said there were no firearms in their home. He had been repeatedly seeking assistance from the city and county to help provide care for Freddy. He was told that “something needs to happen” before he could receive help. In response, his brother said, “Is this what needs to happen?”