News — police murder

The U.S. Justice Department is exploring the possibility of bringing charges against former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin after videos from a 2017 incident showed him brutally hitting a Black teenager in the head and kneeling on him for almost 17 minutes during a violent arrest, ABC News reported.

Just like Floyd, the teenager allegedly told Chauvin he could not breathe while the former cop had him pinned to the ground with his knee. But Chauvin did not budge. The incident also reportedly left the teenager with a head injury and in need of stitches as the impact with which Chauvin struck him was severe.

The videos in question were reportedly shown to Minnesota state prosecutors last year while they were getting ready for Chauvin’s trial over the May 25 death of Floyd. The former disgraced cop was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of the African-American father on April 20.

“Those videos show a far more violent and forceful treatment of this child than Chauvin describes in his report [of the incident],” Matthew Frank, a state prosecutor who looked into the incident involving the teen, wrote in a court filing. And though state prosecutors did not bring charges against Chauvin at the time, the DOJ could reopen the case.

Witnesses who saw the September 2017 incident testified before a federal grand jury two months ago, ABC News reported. A source also told the news outlet authorities are still investigating the incident and the Justice Department is looking at filing federal charges against Chauvin over the death of Floyd as well as the incident involving the teen.

Prior to the commencement of Chauvin’s trial for Floyd’s death, state prosecutors had reportedly wanted to cite the 2017 incident to the jury to make a case for their argument about the former cop’s attitude while on the job. The judge turned the request down.

Before the judge’s ruling, however, Frank, in court documents, said body-cam footage of the incident “show Chauvin’s use of unreasonable force towards this child and complete disdain for his well-being.”

What happened?

The September 2017 incident occurred when Chauvin and other colleague officers responded to a 911 call about a woman who alleged her 14-year-old son and daughter had attacked her at her home, Frank said, according to ABC News. Following a conversation with the woman after the officers got to the scene of the incident, the teenage boy was instructed to get on the ground but he declined those orders.

Things quickly escalated from there and Chauvin allegedly struck the teenager’s head with his flashlight, grabbed his throat and struck him with the flashlight again. Frank said Chauvin subsequently “applied a neck restraint, causing the child to lose consciousness and go to the ground.”

“Chauvin and [the other officer] placed [the teenager] in the prone position and handcuffed him behind his back while the teenager’s mother pleaded with them not to kill her son and told her son to stop resisting,” Frank wrote, adding that the teenager started bleeding from the ear. “About a minute after going to the ground, the child began repeatedly telling the officers that he could not breathe, and his mother told Chauvin to take his knee off her son.”

Chauvin allegedly knelt on the teenager for almost 17 minutes. The injured boy was arrested and charged with domestic assault and obstruction with force. Paramedics who attended to the boy had to transport him to a hospital for his head to be stitched.

Frank likened Chauvin’s use of force on the teen to that of Floyd’s. The 46-year-old African-American passed away after Chauvin knelt on his neck for over nine minutes despite repeatedly telling him he couldn’t breathe.

“As was true with the conduct with George Floyd, Chauvin rapidly escalated his use of force for a relatively minor offense,” Frank added. “Just like with Floyd, Chauvin used an unreasonable amount of force without regard for the need for that level of force or the victim’s well-being. Just like with Floyd, when the child was slow to comply with Chauvin and [the other officer’s] instructions, Chauvin grabbed the child by the throat, forced him to the ground in the prone position, and placed his knee on the child’s neck with so much force that the child began to cry out in pain and tell Chauvin he could not breathe.”

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, however, dismissed the alleged similarities, arguing that “his client’s action that day was “was reasonable and authorized under the law as well as MPD policy,” ABC News reported. Nelson also argued the teen was “actively resisting” arrest and cited the circumstances surrounding the incident.

A jury in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has found the 45-year-old guilty on all three counts of murder and manslaughter charges. The counts were second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter of African-American man Geoge Floyd.

Chauvin now faces up to 75 years in prison but will await his sentencing per the adjournment of the court.

Earlier in the day, President Joe Biden revealed that he had called Floyd’s family to express his support and wish for “the right verdict”.

“I have come to know George’s family not just in passing. I have spent time with them, I have spent time with his little daughter, Gianna…So I can only imagine the pressure and anxiety they are feeling…I called them.”

Meanwhile, Minnesota declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the verdict.

Earlier civil suit victory

In another conclusion in another lawsuit related to Floyd’s killing, his family will now be paid $27 million in compensation by the city as was settled on Friday, March 12.

The settlement is different from the criminal proceedings that are ongoing against former officer Derek Chauvin and others charged with the eventual demise of the man they accosted for allegedly trying to use counterfeit money. For eight minutes and forty-six seconds that have since been immortalized by the Black Lives Matter movement, Chauvin pinned a knee to the back of Floyd’s head while Floyd pleaded for his life.

Announcing the settlement in March between Floyd’s family and the city of Minneapolis, family attorney Ben Crump said the settlement “sends a powerful message that Black lives do matter and police brutality against people of color must end.” The lawyer who also represents the families of Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor, victims of police brutality, said the payment to Floyd’s family is the biggest pre-trial settlement ever in a case of wrongful death.

Brighter days

Floyd’s death, which was mourned across the world and sparked a global campaign against anti-Black racism, has also yielded a few positive outcomes for those involved with the man.

For instance, actress and singer, Barbara Streisand revealed at the end of last year that she had gifted some of her shares in the multibillion entertainment conglomerate Disney to Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna. The Grammy award-winning singer was quoted as saying: “I sent Gianna videos where I played a little girl in my first television special singing kid songs and my second special a sequence with lots of baby animals”.

Brooklyn Nets star guard Kyrie Irving also bought a house for Floyd’s family in January of this year.

Irving, 28, reportedly gave the Floyd family the funds to purchase the home around five or six months before the new year, sources told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated, according to ESPN. This gesture added to a string of other philanthropic efforts the NBA champion has earmarked.

Last December too, the global literary and human rights organization PEN gave its Beneson Courage Award to then 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, the young woman who filmed the harrowing last few seconds of the life of Floyd.

PEN America said that Frazier received the award for her “sheer guts” that “changed the course of history in this country”.

Anthony Thompson, a 17-year-old student at Austin-East Magnet High School in Tennessee was shot and killed by a police officer in a bathroom at the school on Monday, April 12. But the story which followed immediately that Thompson had fired at and hurt an officer may not be true.

Only two days after saying the bullet which wounded the officer was from Thompson’s handgun, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) released another statement on Wednesday, April 14 saying: “Preliminary examinations indicate the bullet that struck the KPD officer was not fired from the student’s handgun”.

Thompson appeared to have hidden in the restroom as police officers came to his school. The TBI said the officers were responding to a report that there was a gunman on the school’s premises. The statement two days earlier had claimed that “[a]s officers entered the restroom, the subject reportedly fired shots, striking an officer”.

Now, the TBI says shots fired from Thompson’s gun were as a result of a struggle between the officer and the teenager. The wounded officer was shot by another officer.

But even with this development and in spite of the calls from Thompson’s family and other residents, the TBI, the Knoxville Police Department and the Knox County District Attorney General’s Office have reportedly refused to release bodycam footage from the altercation. According to Tennessee state laws, authorities can choose to do this while investigations are ongoing.

Calls to have the bodycam footage publicized are also coming from three of the four police officers who had answered the call to Austin-East Magnet High School. The three officers are currently under investigation.

The mayor of Knoxville, Indya Kincannon, treated the calls by the officers as “an effort to accurately inform the public”. The mayor’s office has also backed these calls because “the public interest is best served by the immediate release of these videos”.

It has been a week since the International Criminal Court (ICC) upheld an earlier acquittal of the former President of Ivory Coast, Laurent Koudou Gbagbo, bringing to an end a decade of legal problems for the 75-year-old who had been charged among others with murder and sexual abuse which marked postelection violence.

After the President of the ICC, Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, a Nigerian, declared on March 31 that “[t]he appeals chamber, by majority, has found no error that could have materially affected the decision of the trial chamber,” Gbagbo would have heaved the most profound sigh of relief he has ever managed. He had always maintained his innocence but the alacrity with which Gbagbo was processed for adjudication has been hailed as the best possible way to deal with powerful men whose reigns see unspeakable inhuman offenses.

Gbagbo was freed along with the Minister of Youth during his presidency, Charles Blé GoudéOn Wedne, a man blamed by loyalists of the current Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, as the one who led the organizational ground game for offensives against rebel alliances from the north as well as against civilians.

Judge Eboe-Osuji also repealed all the conditionalities attached to letting the men go. But as any observer of the politics in the Ivory Coast could tell you, this is a tense never-before-seen moment that will test the fragile peace in the West African country.

Welcomed home?

On Wednesday, Ouattara announced that Gbagbo and Blé Goudé were free to return to their home country if they wanted to. Ivorian authorities, perhaps in anticipation of the present moment, gave Gbagbo an ordinary passport as well as a diplomatic one, depending on which life he chose to live after the ICC’s proceedings.

Gbagbo’s travel expenses, and those of his family as well, will be paid for by the Ivorian state. But Ouattara’s announcement of these packages mentioned nothing about a 20-year prison sentence that awaits Gbagbo from a case tied to embezzlement. He was tried and sentenced in absentia in 2019. It is also not known if the Ivorian government will agree to Gbagbo’s financial demands in line with his importance as a former president.

Jeune Afrique, the pan-African Francophone magazine, has reported that Gbagbo is asking for “a €14,600 [$17,000] monthly allowance plus another €11,400 [$13,500] for transport, gas, electricity, and telephone bills.” These amounts are the same as what he was entitled to when he was arrested by the ICC in April of 2011.

Campaigners for peace and well-wishers will be gladdened by Ouattara’s commitment to involving the state in receiving Gbagbo. However, the president may be expected to go further than that. Gbagbo’s influence may not be insignificant despite being away for about a decade. In Gbagbo, it is possible for elements antithetic to Ouattara to find renaissance.

Religious and ethnic tensions are still very present too, one cannot forget. Ivory Coast still struggles to define what it means by a nation after 60 years.

There are even grounds to doubt what was heralded as reconciliatory efforts by Ouattara’s government last December when Gbagbo was handed the two passports. An African Intelligence report noted at the beginning of this year that the two men had not spoken, with one man waiting for the other to call.

Police brutality against minorities, particularly African Americans, often dominates media discussions. Multiple advocacies to end police killings of unarmed Black men have yielded little results. 

The killing of George Floyd by the police is still fresh in the minds of the Black community. His killing led to massive protests across communities in the U.S. calling for an end to police profiling and killing of minorities.

Several tactics have been devised to capture incidents of police confrontations with Blacks but this has done little to change police attitudes towards Black men and women they arrest or engage.

In search of a comprehensive solution to make Black people feel safe when they get pulled over, arrested, or confronted by the police, a Black-owned firm, WestMason, has come up with an app for minorities to protect themselves.

WestMason has launched a mobile app called MyOneOne to provide a personal security network made up of the friends and families of its users. The app is currently available on Android and iOS, according to Black Business.

Eric Mills, CTO of WestMason, in a Youtube video, explained how the app works. “Myonone is an app to allow minorities in the underserve the ability to create lifelines where groups of individuals or a group of loved ones that you would like to contact in an emergence,” he said.

“Say, you are driving down the street and you get pulled over by the police, you feel unconformable, you feel unsafe, you are in the middle of nowhere and you do not know why you got pulled over in the first place, you can simply tap the alarm button and it will bring up a list of options for you in an emergence. One of those is, ‘I was pulled over by the police,’” he said.

He further explained that “if you feel uncomfortable in that situation, you hit the button, then your live stream is started from your phone where your love ones or your lifeline is alerted, they know you’ve been pulled over and a video automatically starts and they can view it.”

According to him, the significance of the app is that “you know you are not alone.”  The app allows users to:

• Create and maintain a lifeline consisting of friends and family.
• Alert your lifeline when in dangerous situations.
• Livestream from your device to your lifeline. Video is stored in a secure location for future review.
• Send location information to your lifeline.
• Contact emergency services with the same information as your lifeline. Coupled with health information and profile picture.

A Black Mississippi man who was convicted of raping and murdering an 84-year-old White woman and sentenced to death in 1994 has been exonerated after the state Supreme Court “discredited” bite mark evidence that was used to convict him.

In a statement, the Innocence Project, who represented Eddie Lee Howard, said their client was cleared of the crime based on new forensic opinion pertaining to bite marks as well as strong alibis, and new DNA tests that were conducted on the crime scene evidence. The blood and DNA samples taken from the murder weapon did not tie Howard to the murder.

According to CNN, Howard was convicted of the murder after a doctor testified the bite marks found on the body of the victim – Georgia Kemp – matched Howard’s teeth. In August, the Mississippi Supreme Court, however, ruled that the bite-mark comparisons were not substantial enough to link Howard to the murder, writing that “an individual perpetrator cannot be reliably identified through bite-mark comparison.”

“After reviewing the record, we conclude that Howard’s evidence as to the change in the scientific understanding of the reliability of identification through bite-mark comparisons was almost uncontested. Based on this record, we agree with Howard that a forensic dentist would not be permitted to identify Howard as the biter today as Dr. West did at Howard’s trial in 2000,” the court wrote.

In effect, the Mississippi Supreme Court, on August 31, moved to vacate Howard’s conviction after being on death row for over two decades. He was subsequently released from the state’s death row in December and was finally exonerated on Friday, January 8.

“I want to say many thanks to the many people who are responsible for helping to make my dream of freedom a reality,” Howard said in a statement via the Innocence Project. “I thank you with all my heart, because without your hard work on my behalf, I would still be confined in that terrible place called the Mississippi Department of Corrections, on death row, waiting to be executed.”

Howard is among four formerly incarcerated Mississippi natives on death to have been ultimately exonerated as a result of discredited and unscientific forensic evidence, according to the Innocence Project. He is also the 28th person in the United States convicted with bite-mark comparison evidence to be exonerated.

“Mr. Howard was sentenced to death based on unfounded forensics with no physical evidence or witnesses to the crime,” Vanessa Potkin, one of Howard’s attorneys, said.

“Like Mr. Howard, 21 other men and women on death row across the country have had their innocence proven by DNA, including Kennedy Brewer. Mr. Brewer, who is also a Black man, spent 15 years on Mississippi’s death row based on false bite mark evidence. We know there are more innocent people currently on death row pleading for post-conviction relief. The death penalty is the most extreme and irreversible form of punishment. Mr. Howard’s case is a prime example of why we cannot afford to use it when human error is still so prevalent in the criminal justice system.”

In September of 1994, members of the Black Disciples street gang in Chicago decided 11-year-old Robert Sandifer was a little too much even for young men who were putting down rivals, as they would say, on the regular.

Sandifer, who was also called Yummy because he liked cookies, had proven exuberant and conspicuous. The Disciples feared that if they did not rein him in, the prepubescent could become an informant.

Yummy’s tendency to be showy and reckless means the police could grab him. And if they did, they would use the boy to get to the Disciples.

And so on September 1, the Disciples took out Yummy on the railroad underpass at East 108th Street and South Dauphin Avenue.

He was shot in the back of his head by Cragg and Derrick Hardaway, who were 14 and 16 respectively. The pair had ordered Yummy to go down on his knees.

Indeed, there had been a police manhunt for Yummy due to what Chicago’s head of police at the time, Sgt Ronald Palmer said was an initiation gone wrong.

On August 28 of that year, Yummy opened fire on a group of people, presumably from a rival gang, with a 9mm semiautomatic. He immediately fled the scene.

But Yummy also hit 14-year-old Shavon Dean, an innocent young girl who had been around the scene. Dean later died from the bullet wounds.

When rumors spread nationally that the perpetrator of the crime had been an 11-year-old, the shock of the crime was tripled.

Recent debates about what Chicago means to young black men have their foundations from about this time. The frequency of the terrors left so many with questions.

The Hardaway brothers had been sent by the Disciples on August 31 to deal with the problem Yummy had brought the gang. The brothers were later convicted.

Interestingly, the Black Disciples were founded in 1966 as part of efforts to advance civil rights. Along the way, that noble vision was lost.

A 27-year-old Texas man has been accused of killing his wife and two children after he was found lying next to their bodies. Bryan Richardson has been charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of his wife, Kiera Michelle Ware, and their two young children, whose names have not been released, the Copperas Cove Police Department said in a statement.

According to reports, the police were called around 9:32 p.m. Saturday for a welfare check on the family in Copperas Cove after the deceased woman’s brother was not able to reach her.

Upon arriving at the home of the family, the police found “a large amount of blood on the kitchen and living room floors,” according to a criminal complaint obtained by KWTX-TV. A small dog was also found dead in a pool of blood in the kitchen, the complaint stated.

The police officers then found a large pool of blood outside a bedroom that was locked from the inside. They forced open the door and found Richardson lying on a bed covered in blood, with the bodies of his wife and two children next to him, according to court documents. A bloody knife, an empty six-pack of beer and an empty bottle of Trazodone, a prescription antidepressant, were also found in the home.

When the police asked Richardson what happened, he said he did not know, the complaint stated. The officers however found three cuts on Richardson’s left arm which he allegedly said were self-inflicted. Later, Richardson was asked if he was worried about losing his job, his wife or custody of his children. He allegedly responded, “I already lost all of those.”

Richardson, who worked at a GNC vitamin and nutrition shop, is being held on a $2.25 million bond. He has not yet entered a plea.

The Minneapolis City Council, which tried and failed to dismantle the police department in the wake of George Floyd's death, voted early Thursday to shift nearly $8 million from next year's police budget to other city services as part of an effort to "transform" public safety in the city.

The controversial plan was approved unanimously as part of the city's 2021 budget.

Mayor Jacob Frey had earlier threatened a veto to the budget, calling the police cuts "irresponsible" as the city confronts an unprecedented wave of violence and scores of police officer departures since Floyd's death that have left the department struggling to respond to emergencies.

But in a statement early Thursday, Frey praised the council for removing language that would have permanently shrunk the size of the force by about 130 officers in what he described as a "defining moment for our city."

Council members who supported the "Safety for All" plan argued the city could no longer tolerate what they described as a broken system of policing and a department that has been resistant to reform.

“Believe me, this is not an easy vote to take, but I believe it is right,” said Andrea Jenkins, a council member who represents an area of South Minneapolis adjacent to the street corner where Floyd was killed.

The vote came after days of contentious public hearings and deeply emotional debate among council members, who have openly struggled to balance concern about historically high crime across Minneapolis against public calls to reform a police department that has long been accused of racism and excessive force, especially against residents of color.

The budget fight unfolded six months after Floyd’s death, which sparked worldwide protests and a national reckoning on issues of race, social justice and policing.

The 46-year-old Black man died after being handcuffed and restrained face down on a South Minneapolis street by police responding to a 911 call about a counterfeit $20 bill that had been passed at a local convenience store. Following a struggle, then-Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as the man repeatedly complained of struggling to breathe.

Chauvin, who was with the department for 19 years, has been charged with murder, and three other officers at the scene — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao — have been charged with aiding and abetting. All four were fired from the police department and are scheduled to go on trial in March.

In June, days after Floyd’s killing, a majority of the city council promised to defund and dismantle the department and replace it with a new agency focused on a mix of public safety and violence prevention. But some elected leaders have backed off those promises in recent months.

“If we’re considering taking everything out of MPD that’s not an officer with a gun, I don’t believe in that,” Alondra Cano, a council member whose district includes the South Minneapolis intersection where Floyd was killed, said during a hearing Monday.

Frey had proposed a $179 million police budget for 2021, a cut of approximately $14 million from the approved 2020 budget because of declining city revenue related to the coronavirus pandemic. But under the budget approved Thursday, the council would divert $7.7 million from law enforcement to fund alternatives to policing, including mental health crisis teams and additional staffers in the city’s office of violence prevention.

About $5 million of that money came from cuts to a budget for police overtime — a move that Police Chief Medaria Arradondo had strongly discouraged, calling overtime a “necessity” for the department as it copes with staffing shortages and prepares for the trial of the four former police officers charged in Floyd’s death.

The department had been funded for about 880 officers in 2020. But Arradondo told council members Monday that, as of Dec. 1, the agency was down 166 officers — some of whom have permanently left the force and others who have been out on long-term medical leave, many citing post-traumatic stress disorder from the civil unrest that erupted after Floyd’s death.

In a last-minute debate, council members rejected a motion that would have reduced the number of full-time officers to 750 — essentially not replacing the officers who have left. Supporters argued that the amendment would simply take the open positions off the books, as the staffing shortage is unlikely to be solved in the coming year.

“It’s not possible to magically recruit more officers,” said Steve Fletcher, a council member who represents part of downtown Minneapolis. “Open positions do not solve crimes. Open positions do not write tickets. Open positions do not prevent anything. They do not deter anything. They do not create a sense of safety.”

Under the budget plan approved early Thursday, the council set up an $11.4 million reserve fund that would include about $6 million Frey had budgeted for two future recruiting classes, as well as an additional $5 million for police overtime. The police department would have to get city council approval to access the funds — an effort to increase accountability for the department, council members said.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, council members, meeting in a virtual hearing because of the pandemic, heard hours of testimony from hundreds of Minneapolis residents who phoned in their comments about the proposed cuts.

Many invoked Floyd’s police custody death to argue for reduced funding for an agency they said cannot be reformed. Many callers who identified themselves as residents of the South Minneapolis neighborhoods that were burned and destroyed during the civil unrest that erupted after Floyd’s killing blamed police for inflaming the protests and doing little to stop the looting and burning of businesses.

“The actions of the MPD after George Floyd just showed to me how the MPD is irredeemable,” a South Minneapolis resident named Paul, who gave no last name, told the council. “They don’t care about us. They all live in the suburbs, and they don’t prevent any crime. All they do is escalate the situation.”

Others accused the council of acting rashly by reducing funding for the department at a crucial moment in the city and without proof that the alternative policing methods it is embracing will work quickly enough to contain the surging crime and violence.

Doug Tanner, a resident of South Minneapolis, told council members his wife had been carjacked, robbed and assaulted.

“The fact that this council does not even acknowledge there is a problem is irresponsible,” he said. “The crime rate is at an all-time high, and you want less cops on the street. Where does common sense come into the equation?”

Homicides in Minneapolis are up more than 50 percent, with nearly 80 people killed across the city so far this year. Nearly 530 people have been shot, the highest number in more than a decade and twice as many as in 2019. And there have been more than 4,600 violent crimes — including hundreds of carjackings and robberies — a five-year high.