Georgia corrections officer

A 61-year-old Georgia corrections officer has been fired for the third time in a decade after calling an inmate on suicide watch a racial slur.

Officer Gregory Hubert Brown, a corrections officer at the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office, called a prisoner on suicide watch a “crazy” N-word, according to a colleague and other inmates who were nearby. An official statement from the sheriff’s office released Sunday night offered scant details but said Brown was placed on administrative leave without pay immediately and would be fired from the job within 72 hours.

The racist incident will mark the third time Brown has been fired from a correctional facility job in a decade, according to Georgia Peace Officer recorders obtained by the Atlantic Journal-Constitution. The first was in December 2010, after getting into a heated argument with a fellow corrections officer after he was asked to complete a form keeping track of inmate headcounts at the Coweta County Prison. Records say that Brown replied by threatening the officer with physical violence before pushing him with his chest.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3azgmn/corrections-officer-who-called-black-inmate-the-n-word-is-getting-fired-for-the-third-time?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

Suspect arrested in shooting of two LA sheriff's deputies

After a three-week manhunt, a Los Angeles man was arrested and charged Wednesday with attempting to murder two sheriff’s deputies who were ambushed as they sat in their car.

Deonte Lee Murray, 36, is facing two counts of attempted murder of a peace officer and possession of a firearm after allegedly walking up to the car parked outside a Metro station on Sept. 12 and opening fire, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alleged-compton-gangster-deonte-lee-murray-charged-with-ambush-shooting-of-two-los-angeles-deputies?ref=home?ref=home

UNREDACTED FBI DOCUMENT SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON WHITE SUPREMACIST INFILTRATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

THE FBI HAS long been concerned about the infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacist groups and its impact on police abuse and tolerance of racism, the unredacted version of a previously circulated document reveals.

The FBI threat assessment report was released by Rep. Jamie Raskin, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, ahead of a hearing about the white supremacist infiltration of local police departments scheduled for Tuesday.

A heavily redacted version of the 2006 document had previously been published, one of a handful of documents revealing federal officials’ growing concern with white supremacists’ “historical” interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” A different internal document obtained by The Intercept in 2017 had also noted that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”

The unredacted version of the first document sheds further light on the FBI’s concerns, as early as 2006, about “self-initiated efforts by individuals, particularly among those already within law enforcement ranks, to volunteer their professional resources to white supremacist causes with which they sympathize.”

“Having personnel within law enforcement agencies has historically been and will continue to be a desired asset for white supremacist groups seeking to anticipate law enforcement interest in and actions against them,” the report notes in a section that was previously redacted.n

Another previously redacted section warned of “factors that might generate sympathies among existing law enforcement personnel and cause them to volunteer their support to white supremacist causes,” which could include hostility toward developments in U.S. domestic and foreign policies “that conflict with white supremacist ideologies,” the report warns.

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist-infiltration-fbi/

NYPD attacked peaceful protesters in the Bronx

https://www.theroot.com/nypd-planned-a-brutal-attack-on-police-brutality-protes-1845240552

Human Rights Watch, an organization that specializes in investigating and reporting civil rights abuses all over the world, released a report Wednesday that claims the New York Police Department trapped and then brutally attacked peaceful police violence protesters in a predominantly Black and Latino Bronx neighborhood on June 4.

The report alleges that around 300 protesters marched through the streets of Mott Haven, a lower-income neighborhood in the South Bronx.

From the HRW report:

Less than an hour into the march, and about 10 minutes before an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect, the marchers encountered scores of police officers with riot gear, including helmets, shields, and batons. Bicycle police used their bikes to form a wall and prevented the protesters from moving forward, while other officers pushed from behind – a tactic known as “kettling.” The protesters were trapped, with no way to disperse.

“We were being packed and packed like sardines,” one protester later recalled. Many started chanting, “Let Us Go!” and one person cried out, “You’re gonna kill us – I can’t breathe.”

Just after 8 p.m. and the start of the city-wide curfew – imposed a few days earlier due to looting in other areas– the police moved in on the protesters, unprovoked and without warning, whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, shoving them down to the ground, and firing pepper spray in their faces.

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https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/09/30/kettling-protesters-bronx/systemic-police-brutality-and-its-costs-united-states#

Black Man Who Spoke in Support of Police Fatally Shot by Texas Police Officer

A Black man was fatally shot by a police officer at a gas station in Wolfe City, Texas, Saturday night, and witnesses say it happened while he was attempting to intervene in a domestic situation. According to the man’s family, he was a city worker who was beloved in his community, but what makes this story even more tragic is that just months before the shooting, he spoke in support of police on social media.

According to KHOU 11, police officials haven’t identified the victim or released many details related to the shooting. All they have said so far is that the officer involved has been placed on administrative leave and an investigation by the Texas Rangers into the shooting is underway, but the man’s family identified him as 31-year-old Jonathan Price.

Relatives and friends said 31-year-old Price was a city employee and beloved in the Wolfe City community, about an hour northeast of Dallas.

Marcella Louis was in bed when she got the call about the shooting. She rushed to the gas station to get near her son. 

“And they wouldn’t let me get close to my baby. I just wanted to hold his hand and they wouldn’t let me do that,” Louis said. “I just wanted to crawl over there to him.” 

The mother said she wasn’t surprised to hear her son was trying to intervene in a fight. 

“That’s what he always did, tried to help others. I taught him that all the years,” Louis said. 

Witnesses said a man and a woman were in an argument, and Price tried to step in. The man assaulted Price, and when officers arrived, they used a taser on Price before the shooting.

https://www.theroot.com/black-man-who-spoke-in-support-of-police-fatally-shot-b-1845274563

Oscar Grant case reopened 

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — His shooting on New Year's Day more than a decade ago provided the nation an early look at the Black Lives Matter movement to come.

Now the case of Oscar Grant, 22 and unarmed when he was fatally shot by a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer in 2009, might get another day in court.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced Monday that her office would reopen the Grant case at a time when Oakland, where the shooting occurred, and much of the country is engaged in an angry argument about the policing of minority communities.

O’Malley, who has enjoyed strong support from law enforcement in her election campaigns, did not outline in her statement the direction that the new investigation would take. The BART officer who pulled the trigger, Johannes Mehserle, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2010 and served less than a year in prison.

But Grant’s family for years has called for other BART officers to be held accountable for his killing, which still serves as a raw, unsettled moment in Oakland’s recent history. They asked again for justice as recently as Monday, before O’Malley officially reopened the case.

One officer who was fired but was never charged after the incident was Anthony Pirone, who was shown in video presented in court pulling Grant off the train with such force that some riders protested. Pirone also knelt on Grant’s neck, according to a cellphone video recording of the incident, and shouted racist profanity at him during the struggle.

Grant’s family has called for Pirone to be charged in the past and recently compared Grant’s death to that of George Floyd, the unarmed Black man who in May was filmed as a police officer knelt on his neck on a Minneapolis street corner, killing him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oscar-grant-killing-reopened-oakland/2020/10/06/3067db90-07e4-11eb-9303-4daccec0e227_story.html