Police Encounters with Citizenry: Ignored Complexities

Police and Communities 

Rochester, Chicago Mayors’ (and others’) “Cover-ups,” Claims, Counterclaims

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ochester Mayor

 “She (Rochester mayor) learned of the death after it happened in March – nearly five months before the community did.”

 Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary quoted by WHAM September 2, 2020: “This is not a cover-up. Let me be clear when I say that: This is not a cover-up whatsoever.”

“… [W]e won’t want to do anything to taint any kind of investigation – whether a criminal investigation or an internal investigation.”

ABC news September 6, 2020: Following release of video footage of the encounter between police and a citizen who died, hundreds of people began demonstrating on the streets of Rochester, some reportedly setting off fireworks (some injuring police officers), and resulting in nine arrests by police.

 In an attempt to “allow protesters to assemble (and) at the same time protect people from injuries and damage to buildings, the mayor “called on the city’s elders to meet at a church … to work to keep the demonstrations as peaceful as possible.”

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper December 16, 2020 after Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary files a lawsuit against the city of Rochester (“alleging defamation of character, hostile work environment and wrongful and retaliatory termination) quoted: “I repeatedly refused to lie for Mayor Warren.” “Pressure to support Mayor Warren’s narrative also came from other city officials.”

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hicago Mayor

Chicago Tribune December 15, 2020: the mayor and the city law department “attempted in court … to block local news station WBBM-Ch. 2 from airing body camera footage of Chicago police officers raiding” the wrong residence and handcuffing a woman who hadn’t time to dress.

The woman had released to the press a copy of the video of the police encounter, after a lawsuit she had filed against the city gained her viewing of the police encounter with the stipulation that, according a judge’s confidentiality order protecting the material, the material not be made public. The woman violated the order and released the video to the press.

Chicago’s former mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had reportedly “fought to keep secret a video showing” a police arrest situation.

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n the 2020 Rochester and Chicago cases, two elements give me pause: Since both subjects of arrest (mistaken or not) were exposed (unclothed), barring public viewing of the video footage 

(1) could be justified on the basis of preserving a person’s dignity or proper modesty; but 

(2) could not be justified on prurient interests or salacious voyeurism of mass media (or any other persons) as these do not rise to the substantive principles of “right to know” or “freedom of press.” Strangers have no “right” to view another’s nakedness.

It is indisputable that U.S. mayors, governors, presidents and other U.S. public officials, at all levels, have a great deal to answer for.

However, an instance of police encounter with an individual (or an individual encounter with police) that has gone wrong is not the moment for rational decision, protest, or lawyerly exploitation. There are always contributing priors. The issue of what some call “police violence” or “police brutality” is deeply, vastly complex. It must be taken (unpeeled) layer by layer, examined in each layer, and solved in each layer ahead of crises, lawsuits, and mass uprising, violent or not.

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mong areas of examination and problem solving are at least these:

• Community environment
• Quality of community relations with law enforcement and with other government offices
• Quality of leadership in public office
• Quality of mental and physical health systems and their personnel
• Quality of law enforcement systems and their personnel
  

A person or group can attack and counter attack yelling “racist racist racist …!” “No I’m not No I’m Not No I’m not …!” or lawyer up to the hilt bringing in billions for the lawyerly class (someone once said “if not for lawyers, we’d have no need of lawyers”) — how did all those priests, scout leaders and athletic coaches get away with preying on the lives of the young? In contemporary society, even the masses lawyer up — one party seeking revenge, the other seeking to cash in. Lawyering is a narrow end, not a community means of solving problems.

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he moment of calling police or lawyering up has moved past the moment of sober problem solving.

Lawyering up and shouting loudly leaves problems and their harmful complexities still intact. Until communities join in community; delve into prior and underling conditions; face multilayered problems, courageously; and set about solving them—until then, they might as well be “Whistling Dixie” (acting in deliberate carelessness); and bequeathing old, deeply rooted, complex problems to succeeding generations.

 

 

 

Sources (news pegs)

Online at WHAM by Jayne Chacko & WHAM Staff September 2, 2020 'This is not a cover-up': Mayor, police chief respond to allegations against RPD officers https://13wham.com/news/local/this-is-not-a-cover-up-mayor-police-chief-respond-to-allegations-against-rpd-officers

D&C “Former RPD chief claims Mayor Warren directed him to lie in Daniel Prude case” Brian Sharp and Will Cleveland https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2020/12/16/former-rpd-chief-singletary-claims-mayor-warren-directed-him-to-lie-daniel-prude-case-rochester-ny/3933888001/

“Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration tried to block TV station from airing body camera footage of police raid on wrong home” by Gregory Pratt Chicago Tribune December 15, 2020 https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-chicago-raid-lightfoot-sanctions-20201215-sc6kd7pukbgppgdtqfpsee7cha-story.html

Cases

Breonna Taylor case Wikipedia “Shooting of Breonna Taylor” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor

• Twenty-six year old Breonna Taylor “was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment on March 13, 2020, when plainclothes officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations.”

• Kenneth Walker, the boyfriend of Taylor, said to have thought the officers were intruders, discharged a firearm striking Mattingly in the leg. The officers returned fire with 32 shots.

• The family of the deceased on May 15, 2020 “filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Breonna Taylor against the officers and the city of Louisville, Kentucky. In mid September 2020, “the Louisville Metro Government (LMG) agreed to pay Taylor’s estate $12 million.”

• Occupants of a neighboring apartment to the deceased woman on May 20, 2020, filed a lawsuit against officers Hankison, Cosgrove, and Mattingly.

• Kenneth Walker, the deceased woman’s boyfriend, in September 2020, “filed a suit against the Louisville Metro Police Department accusing it of misconduct and claiming he did not fire the bullet that injured Mattingly.”

• The lawyer of Jonathan Mattingly, one of three officers who carried out the raid on the deceased woman’s home, announced in October 2020, that “he was filing a countersuit against Walker …, seeking a remedy for the injury that Walker caused;” and claiming “that Walker’s response to the officers raid via a no-knock warrant was ‘outrageous, intolerable and offends all accepted standards of decency or morality.’”

Daniel Prude case
Wikipedia “Killing of Daniel Prude” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Daniel_Prude

A 41-year old man suffering a mental illness and under the influence of drugs (after having been seen and released by a health care institution) suffered injuries on March 23, 2020, while “being restrained by Rochester, New York, police officers.” Daniel Prude “received CPR” at the scene of the arrest “and later died of complications from asphyxia.”

Anjanette Young case

The Moguldom Nation December 16, 2020 “It Was Democrat Rahm Last Time But Now Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Allegedly Involved In Cover-Up for Police” Written by Dana Sanchez https://moguldom.com/323809/it-was-democrat-rahm-last-time-but-now-chicago-mayor-lightfoot-allegedly-involved-in-cover-up-for-police/

A confidential informant provided the address of a man he said was a felon with guns and ammunition.

… [N]ine officers in a botched police raid broke down the door of Anjanette Young’s Chicago townhouse and arrested her … at gunpoint as she was undressing and preparing for bed.…” She told them they had the wrong address. Sometime later, police “realized she was right, released her cuffs and propped her broken front door shut with an ironing board.” Press reports said police had “failed to confirm whether they had the right address before getting the search warrant approved.”

 

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Amy Goodman’s Masterful Masking

Race-baiting Anchorage at Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! regularly shows off American otherness. However, I have never observed one of these “other” professional (natural-born citizen) journalists sitting side by side with Amy Goodman as an equal (co-anchor) of her “Democracy Now” program. Amy Goodman’s co-hosts are Pakistani Nermeen Shaikh, and Puerto Rican Juan González.

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oodman race baits Americans against one another; and masks her not-good intent with a do-gooder’s façade — helping those “coloreds” aka “people of color,” the latter an equally ridiculous expression, as if all people were not sharing some color.

Race-baiting is not always an obvious phenomenon, but its purpose is always to divide, disparage, and misrepresent. Amy Goodman is a master at race-baiting:

The act of intentionally encouraging racism” (or racialism, focusing on race as a distraction) 

“or anger about issues relating to (or cast in terms of) race, often to get an advantage,” political, personal, professional, or otherwise for appearances sake.

Race-baiters “resort to scaremongering— “spreading stories” (untruths, half truths, narrow perspectives, embellishments, misrepresentations) “that make people feel worried or frightened”

Race-baiting is the incitement of racial hatred (not confined to one race), often for political (biased, vested interested, or narrow-minded) purposes. (Source: Cambridge dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/race-baiting)

Lexico gives the term two eras of origin.

As a noun, found in The New York Times newspaper in the 1920s: from race + baiting, naming usage: race-baiter:  (USA) “The incitement or exploitation (a person as inciter, exploiter) of racial hatred, prejudice, or tension, usually (especially in later eras’ usage) for political gain.

 

As an adjective, found in The Chicago Defender newspaper in the 1930s: from race + baiting, descriptive usage: race-baiter, race-baiting (USA): “of, engaging in, or characterized by race-baiting” (Source: Lexico https://www.lexico.com/definition/race-baiting)

Merriam-Webster’s definition of race-baiting — “the making of verbal attacks against members of a racial group,” its origin set in the early 1960s — is too general (a blatant colloquialism lacking substantive meaning) to accurately define the term. (Source: “Race-baiting Definition of Race-baiting by Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com)

Another commentary on race-baiting uses a key term, “divide”:

“It is important to understand the divisive nature of the various, different senses of race-baiting before using the term.”

The key word here is “divisive” in that the race-baiter is always divisive (a divider by intent), regardless of his or her stripe, creed, color, sex, sexuality, orientation, ideology, partisan path or expedient allegiance; regardless of the label by which he or she identifies, or is identified. Whether pandering or promoting, the intent is to divide, “us” from “them.” 

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oodman is always the (unspoken) “us” separate from and greater than the overt “them”— the latter the “victims,” the poor creatures, the pitiful and pitiable colors she parades before the public. Never to share her anchor’s perch.  

Goodman is a master subliminalist, a clever, below-the-radar race-baiter. Her guests (“them”) on Democracy Now! seem to fall for her masking every time. They acquiesce or succumb, for a few minutes of “fame” or self-humiliation, to becoming her partners, co-conspirators in mass indoctrination of division.

If a person is just “colored,” just “black”, just “Latinx”, just this or that sex or sexuality— the person doing the naming (the person whose name is so limited) is being disparaged. These variations are not self-made, not accomplishments like being a sculptor or composer or dancer or carpenter or plumber. They were there at birth; or they are convenient characterizations, boxes, divides, ghettoes, compartments.

Never have I heard on Democracy Now! a panel of (multicolored) Americans together (not Americans separate and unequal) in in-depth discussion of America’s (and Americans’) problems.

• People relations
• Public and media relations
• Public and government relations
• The breakdown and severing of America’s vital institutions, including broad governmental and constitutional institutions, local, state and federal health, education, and welfare institutions
  

Democracy Now!’s modus operandi [“white” people for “white stories,” “black” people for “black stories,” “brown” people for “brown stories” (has anyone ever really seen a black, brown, white person)] is designed to DIVIDE and weaken individual Americans, and the whole body politic!

 

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N’s race-baiting headlines: a sampling  

2006

“‘Poor People, Disabled People, People of Color Are Not Welcomed Back to New Orleans’–Activists Paint Grim Picture of Struggling City” April 10, 2006 https://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/10/poor_people_disabled_people_people_of

2017

“‘Billion-Dollar Mistake’: Democrats Neglect People of Color While Failing to Woo White Trump Voters” July 31, 2017 https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/31/billion_dollar_mistake_democrats_neglect_people

2018

“Modern-Day Redlining: Banks Face Probes for Refusing Home Loans for People of Color” February 27, 2018 https://www.democracynow.org/2018/2/27/modern_day_redlining_banks_face_probes

2020 (June)

“Fear Grows of Modern-Day Lynchings as Five People of Color Are Found Hanged” Headline June 18, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/18/headlines/fear_grows_of_modern_day_lynchings_as_six_people_of_color_are_found_hanged

November 2020

“Bree Newsome & Prof. Eddie Glaude: The Black Lives Matter Movement Helped the Democrats Defeat Trump” November 9, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/9/2020_election_democratic_party_future

“San Francisco DA Charges Police Officer over Killing of Unarmed Black Man in 2017” Headline November 24, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/24/headlines/san_francisco_da_charges_police_officer_over_killing_of_unarmed_black_man_in_2017

(2) “Omaha Protesters Demand Justice for Kenneth Jones, African American Man Killed by Police” Headline November 24, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/24/headlines/omaha_protesters_demand_justice_for_kenneth_jones_african_american_man_killed_by_police

(3) “Florida Police Face Investigation into Officers’ Killing of Two Black Teens” Headline November 24, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/24/headlines/florida_police_face_investigation_into_officers_killing_of_two_black_teens

(4) “As 2020 Sets Grim Record for Trans Killings, Advocates Call for Holistic & Uplifting Media Coverage” November 24, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/24/tori_cooper_anti_trans_violence_2020

(5) “Juan González Remembers NYC’s Only Black Mayor David Dinkins & Vieques Activist Carlos ‘Taso’ Zenón November 24, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/24/david_dinkins_carlos_taso_zenon

“Bree Newsome & Prof. Eddie Glaude: The Black Lives Matter Movement Helped the Democrats Defeat Trump” November 26, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/26/bree_newsome_prof_eddie_glaude_the

(2) “Juan González: Mainstream Media Has Missed the Real Story About Latinx Voter Turnout” November 26, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/11/26/juan_gonzalez_the_media_has_it

December 2020

“‘Part of the Solution’: Meet the Black Doctor Who Joined a Vaccine Trial After Her Dad Died of COVID” December 1, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/1/racial_disparities_healthcare_dr_chris_pernell

“Black Mother Attacked by Philadelphia Police Speaks Out: ‘My Son Is Petrified’” Headline December 4, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/4/headlines/black_mother_attacked_by_philadelphia_police_speaks_out_my_son_is_petrified

“Family Demands Justice for Casey Goodson Jr., 23-Year-Old Black Man Killed by Ohio Police” Headline December 7, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/7/headlines/family_demands_justice_for_casey_goodson_jr_23_year_old_black_man_killed_by_ohio_police

(2)

“Black Voters Matter: Group Sues Georgia for Purging 200,000 Voters Ahead of 2020 Election” December 7, 2020 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/7/georgia_voter_registration_voter_suppression

 

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.S. Public officials for forty years, in the peace era, in the post Cold War era, have been sending young men and women to kill and be killed and maimed in countries, against people who threaten no one—least of all the most heavily nuclear armed nation in the world, the United States or its people.

As U.S. politicians and their allies and revolving-door think tankers enrich themselves selling armaments, advising on war making, arming nations, and provoking violence and hostility among nations—they are simultaneously, with all of their influence, driving Americans and America into the garbage bin.

Not only are they neglecting the environment generally; but they polluting it by continuously encouraging extreme consumerism whose throwaways fill and overfill landfills whose stuff and fumes are then transported to poor U.S. communities, and to foreign nations whose laborers provide cheap imports (nations against whom American leaders conduct endless hostilities, demonize, condescend to, and ridicule).

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ubstantive and compelling issues face our country. A crying need to change and change course is being neglected. Not even being considered. America’s people and the bonds that bind them (us) are being destroyed.

Politicians bicker among themselves. Gorge themselves on the public treasury. Preen and posture in their pinnacle of influence. Blame other nations and peoples for their utter and deliberate failures.

Americans keep sending them back to Washington. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! keeps baiting races. America and Americans keep falling farther and farther apart.

It’s past time to wise up, overcome ourselves, and come together for Americans and America.

 

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Never-Enough Dope Dance

Entrenched Panderer proposes MORE Gasoline on Flames

U.S. public officials can’t enact, pass and make permanent policy ensuring quality education for all Americans.

They cannot design and conduct an efficient, incorruptible, broadly participatory electoral process.

 

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hey can’t end poverty and homelessness by ensuring quality (adequate and updated) education, pre and in-service training, apprenticeship; living-wage earnings for workers sufficient for them to afford decent nutrition and basic shelter — permanent housing; not homeless shelters, camps, or makeshift hovels on streets, in alleyways, or under bridges.

U.S. public officials cannot ensure easy access to basic, quality medical and well-being care, health and fitness care — not merely fiddling with palliatives, drugs and drug costs, pandering to drug makers, marketers and traffickers.

They cannot lead by example, encourage, and help enable a population of socially and civically engaged citizens.

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owever, they can propose peddling dope to the masses.

 Nadler notes 

Jerrold Lewis Nadler is a 73-year-old entrenched lifer rising from the New York State Assembly, sitting in the U.S. Congress, and powering the House Judiciary Committee (1977 – present).

On Capitol Hill, Nadler serves Manhattan’s west side (Upper West to Battery Park, World Trade Center; Manhattan’s Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village neighborhoods; Brooklyn’s Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Borough Park and Bay Ridge; tourist destinations as the Statue of Liberty, New York Stock Exchange, Brooklyn Bridge, and Central Park).

Nadler and impeachment

The Congressman was quoted describing the William Jefferson Blythe II (Clinton) impeachment as a “partisan railroad job.” While sitting on the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, Nadler barred efforts to bring impeachment hearings for former president George W. Bush and vice president Richard “Dick” Cheney reportedly in 2007 calling the proceedings “pointless and … distract(ing) from the presidential election.”

U.S. Representative Lance Carter Gooden in 2019 accused Congressman Nadler of “unlawfully beginning impeachment proceedings” prior to House authorization against sitting President Donald Trump. Gooden introduced a resolution to remove Nadler from the House Judiciary Committee chairmanship. 

In 2020, Nadler was “one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives to conduct impeachment proceedings of Donald J. Trump.”

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adler’s Dope sidestepping Dance

The New York City U.S. Representative in 2019 “introduced the “Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act.”

H.R.3884 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)
Sponsor: Rep. Nadler, Jerrold [D-NY-10] (Introduced 07/23/2019)
Committees: House - Judiciary; Energy and Commerce; Agriculture; Education and Labor; Ways and Means; Small Business; Natural Resources; Oversight and Reform
Committee Reports: H. Rept. 116-604
Reported to House, Part I (November 27, 2020)
Latest Action: House - 12/03/2020 Rule H. Res. 1244 passed House.

MORE: Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement

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adler’s Decriminalization of Marijuana Bill 
Removes marijuana from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act and eliminates criminal penalties for an individual who manufactures, distributes, or possesses marijuana. AND

• replaces statutory references to marijuana and marihuana with cannabis
• requires the Bureau of Labor Statistics to regularly publish demographic data on cannabis business owners and employees

After handing out dope (like promising to pay for schools with lottery profit) comes the pretense of mopping up its effect, while continuing to pander to narrow interests

 

• establishes a trust fund to support various programs and services for individuals and businesses in communities impacted by the war on drugs
• imposes a 5% tax on cannabis products and requires revenues to be deposited into the trust fund
• makes Small Business Administration loans and services available to entities that are cannabis-related legitimate businesses or service providers

gobbledygook and snare

 

• prohibits the denial of federal public benefits to a person on the basis of certain cannabis-related conduct or convictions
• prohibits the denial of benefits and protections under immigration laws on the basis of a cannabis-related event (e.g., conduct or a conviction)
• establishes a process to expunge convictions and conduct sentencing review hearings related to federal cannabis offenses

Think tank, University, nonprofit profit takers’ farmed-out cuts factored in

• directs the Government Accountability Office to study the societal impact of cannabis legalization.

Nadler’s Bromides: Politician Caught Dancing

“It’s past time to right this wrong nationwide and work to view marijuana use as an issue of personal choice and public health, not criminal behavior.” (emphasis added)

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hen “righting a wrong” sets up a boomerang with clearly identifiable self-fulfilling, broad societal consequences, the act proposed is neither prima facie nor a veiled attempt to right a wrong. The act merely panders to narrow and passing interests. In its careless conjuring, its dance of deceit, the act sidesteps; it fails deliberately to either address or solve fundamental problems. It enviably compounds problems.

This is the pattern and character of America’s entrenched politicians. They throw up (and grow rich on) distractions. They blame some other person, place, thing, or fiction. They create and multiply crises for others to clean up, deal with, suffer through down the road.

We have deep and deeply serious health and welfare problems in this country. We have a society in distress.

An entrenched cretin on Capitol Hill, who pours gasoline on flames, who (taking his cut upfront) proposes selling dope to the sick and to a deeply distressed society presents a clear and present danger to all society. A public servant who fails to serve the needs of the people; a public official who fails to provide for the common defense (not militarism) and promote the general welfare of the people of the United States does not deserve a place in their government.

Congressman Jerrold Lewis (Jerry) Nadler (and many like him, male and female) should have been retired long ago — recalled, rejected, deselected, and removed from public office.  

Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Nadler
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3884
https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=N000002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Nadler
https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/SearchResults
https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=G000589
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Gooden

 

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