Texas Boy,10, Branded Sex Offender for Exploring Girl, 7

I normally don't print e-mails that I have received, but this e-mail is intended for publication, consisting of a comment left at a public blog, along with a public letter sent to a US Congressman by an AfroSpear blogger, addressing the content of the public comment and requesting that this matter of urgent public concern be addressed at the state and Federal levels:

Dear Rep. Jerry Madden:

I received this disturbing note from a mother of a “sex offender”. I did not know that the State of Texas could brand a 10-year old as a sex offender, and hold him criminally accountable for the rest of his life.

Boy 10 and Girl 7 is called “discovery”, as in discovering what makes boys and girls different, sexually. How could you make this a sex crime?

I think we are fattening the cow, with TYC being now in need of building up its population. The railroad is not fixed. Please continue to fix it.

Sincerely,

Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

--- On Fri, 10/30/09, diamonds & jewels <noreply-comment@blogger.com> wrote:

From: diamonds & jewels <noreply-comment@blogger.com>
Subject: [Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)] New comment on Texas Youth Commission Sex Scandal UPDATE.
To: eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, October 30, 2009, 12:26 PM

diamonds & jewels has left a new comment on your post "Texas Youth Commission Sex Scandal UPDATE":

my son is considered a sex offender due to the crime he did 7 yrs ago and it was his first offense. he was 10 and the child was 7. he have been on probation for 2 yrs and since he didn't finish therapy they want to send him to TYC. he haven't had any other victims since the age 10. I don't think it is fair and I am terrified for him to go into TYC. he has no idea what jail is and how this could affect him for life they are talking about sending him on the 8th I don't know which TYC it is yet but I am so scared reading your report have me even scared...I tried to talk to his probation officer, his attorney, his therapist about his mental problem he has a learning disability that attends to make him not comprehend everything to well according to work..I feel this is going to affect his life for good..the system doesn't really know how this affects a child life especially if it was just there first offense..anyways..thanks for the report..it really help me to understand what is really going on in the TYC system. I have a face book I am going to add you to it..okay'

Posted by diamonds & jewels to Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) at October 29, 2009 12:04 PM

Detroit Police Raid Mosque, Kill Black Muslim Leader

Well, it's alright to be a white separatist, but for Black people it's back to the future, the way police raided Panther Party offices across the country and annihilated the leadership.

Meanwhile, Rippa says the US Government has Afghanistan's president's brother on the CIA payroll and has for the last ten years. I don't know that the US Government can implant "democracy" in Afghanistan by offering the populace CIA paid politicians as choices on election day while slaughtering anyone who disagrees with the US puppet Government enough to oppose it militarily.

Let's see what Obama does. By refusing to decide on the 48 additional troops the military has requested, he probably saved a few thousand lives and at least postponed the torture and round up of teenage and adult men that would begin as soon as the US military began kicking in doors, looking for "the enemy."

"Stop Taser Torture – Blogging For Justice Day” on Dec 4 2009.

There has been an annoucement of a “Stop Taser Torture – Blogging For Justice Day” on Dec 4, 2009.

Stay tuned for more information.

The post is being updated.

Police Beat and 3x Electrically Shock a 120 lb Black Woman on Her Own Front Porch

Marlyn Rivas was electrically shocked three times
and beaten by three police officers
on her own front porch

Hat Tip to AAPP at Tasered While Black.

It seems like one of the dangerous places for Black Americans is on the doorsteps of our own houses, particularly when police are involved. Amadou Diallo died in hail of police bullets on his front porch in New York. Professor Gates of Harvard University, was arrested entering his own house. And now Marlyn Rivas, a 26 year-old who weighs 120 pounds, was beaten and electrically shocked three times on the porch of the dwelling where she lived. And then she was charged, of course, with "assaulting an officer."

A 26-year-old woman is alleging she was subjected to excessive force by Portland Police after they Tasered her three times and beat her on her own front doorstep two weeks ago.

One of the officers involved in the alleged incident was former sheriff's deputy Brett Burton, who transferred to the Portland Police Bureau last year, following his involvement in the death in custody of James Chasse, jr. in 2006.

The alleged victim, Marlyn Rivas, was returning from a friend's house party in the Pearl District late on Saturday January 17, where she admits to having drunk heavily. After being dropped at her house in NW Portland by friends, Rivas struggled to unlock the front door to her building, and evidently, another concerned resident of the building called the police. Rivas, who says she does not remember all of the incident, says she remembers being grabbed from behind and yelling, "leave me alone, I live here, this is my house!" The Portland Mercury

Remember the Texas teenage football start who was shot to death in his own front yard just before Christmas. The police just couldn't believe he was driving his own car into his own driveway. That's why I live in Brazil. If somebody shoots me here, it probably won't be someone who is paid with my tax dollars.

Dallas Cop Tickets Woman for Inability to Speak English

Hat Tip to PamsHouseBlend for Youtube video.

At least 39 others ticketed
for the same non-existent traffic "offense".

Here's traffic case from Dallas, Texas so strange that it makes the front page of the biggest online newspaper in Brazil. A non English-speaking mother was driving her children to school when she made an illegal U-turn. A police officer stopped her and gave her a ticket for not speaking English.

[In Portuguese:] Segundo as normas da cidade de Dallas, os motoristas de táxis e caminhões comerciais devem saber comunicar-se em inglês, mas esta regra não se aplica aos condutores de automóveis de passeio. FolhaOnline

[In English:] According to the traffic regulations in the city of Dallas, taxi and commercial truck drivers and must know how to communicate in English, but this rule is not applicable to passenger car drivers. FolhaOnline

The question that comes to my mind is, 'Did the police officer fine her only for not speaking English, or did he also fine her for an illegal turn and for driving without a license?' Here's the answer, according to the Dallas Morning News:

Rookie Officer Gary Bromley cited Mondragon for three violations: disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver's license and "non-English speaking driver. DallasNews.Com

This case was not an isolated incident but occured at least 39 other times. The Dallas Morning News says:

Dallas police wrongly ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English over the last three years, Police Chief David Kunkle announced Friday while promising to investigate all officers involved in the cases for dereliction of duty.

Pending cases will be dismissed, and those who paid the $204 fine for the charge, which does not exist in the city, will be reimbursed, Kunkle said. DallasNews.Com

Now, how can this be understood as anything but an anti-immigrant, anti-brown people application of police color and linguistically-aroused discrimination. The police were effectively telling these Latinos, we don't want you here and we have the law on our side. Only the law the were enforcing didn't exist.

The citations were issued in several different patrol divisions by at least six different officers. One of those officers was responsible for five of the citations, Kunkle said. DallasNews.Com

These, in my opinion, were acts of anti-Latino antagonism unsupported by de jure law, but nonetheless under color of law.

According to department policy, a sergeant must also sign off on all citations. The supervisor who signed off on the Mondragon ticket was Sgt. David Burroughs, 50.

Also Online

Crime blog: Read the citation

"In this case, the field training officer was aware of ultimately what the recruit officer had done," Kunkle said. "The field training officer is going to bear more responsibility than the recruit officer."

Mondragon, a native Spanish speaker, challenged the charge in court and it was dropped, her daughter said. Dallas police said they will drop all charges against Mondragon, who speaks limited English and does have a Texas driver's license.

The statute in question encourages police officers to stop people skin color, hair and facial characteristics indicate that they may not speak English. It's a pro-profiling statute, although news reports aren't clear whether the offense is based in state or federal law.

A reader of this blog recently pointed out that we focus on police abuses where Black people are the victims. That's true. But Black people's skin is normally not really "black." It's brown, just like the skin of many of the Latino people who were pulled over in Dallas, Texas and issued citations under a law that did not apply to them. All profiling based on skin color is a concern for this blog.

One way of understanding profiling is to say that people are targetted because they are Black. Another way of understanding profiling is that people are targetted because their skin is not white. It's really the latter understanding that explains why Latinos and Blacks are pulled over at rates two and three times that of whites; if we had white skin we would be pulled over less often. And that's part of why Black women straighten their hair: to look more white and take advantage of the privileges that accrue to whiteness in the USA. But, obviously straightening their hair doesn't change the color of their skin, which is the basis of most profiling.

Cop Caught on Camera Beating Special Education Student

Was the Black police officer color aroused
to attack the Black student?

Hat Tip to a blog called Child Protective Services: A System Out of Control, and Huffington Post.

CPS: A System Out of Control blog says,

A south suburban Chicago police officer was caught on a security camera beating up a [Black] high school special education student, CBS2 reports.

Marshawn Pitts, 15, was walking down his school hallway when he says a Dolton, Ill. police officer went from berating him for his untucked shirt to slamming him to the ground and beating him.

Many people would assume that since the police officer and the student are both Black, therefore skin color played no role in this police officers apparently unprovoked assault on a student, in which a "face-down takedown" was used, even though it has been banned in a third of the US states because it presents an unacceptable risk of suffocation.

How could this attack have been aroused by skin color if both the attacker and the attacked are Black. Ask yourself whether this Black police officer would have treated a white student in the same way? The fact is that there is immensely more acceptance in our society for police violence against Blacks than for police violence against whites, regardless of the skin color of the police officer. It's the skin color of the victim that determines how the calculus of officer behavior and public outrage will play out.

If the police officer believes he can beat up a student with no professional, financial or personal repercussions, then the lack of a deterrent makes it more likely that a police officer, regardless of skin color, will attack a Black student.

This is why "racism" ideology so often takes us into an analytical dead end. We assume, without any evidence, that people of the same skin color do not calculate the skin color of the victims into their ideation, emotions and behavior. But, when you look at this more from an economic perspective the analysis becomes more clear. By way of analogy, if the supermarket announces that Coca Cola will be sold for half price on Sunday, then both Black and white customers will swarm the store. Their behavior is not based on their skin color, but instead is based on the price of Coca Cola.

Likewise, if Black police officers are sent to break up a melee at a Black high school and white police officers are sent to a white school, there is a higher likelihood that physical confrontations and charges against students will result at the Black school, because the economic and professional consequences of beating up Black students is "cheaper" than at the white school. And there is also a white societal approval that comes to officers, regardless of skin color, when officers beat, arrest and charge Blacks.

So, that answers the question of whether a Black officer can have color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior aroused by the perception of the (Black) skin color of a suspect. Since the price of beating a Black suspect is predictably much less, and since the societal and police departmental approbation is predictably greater, therefore even Black police beat Black arrestees more than they would white arrestees.

A Black officer who tried to use his badge as a license to beat white people up would quickly discover that the license is not nearly as broad as that. As the Dred Scott ante-belum and pro-slavery US Supreme Court decision said, "A Black man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." Obviously,the opposite has never, ever been true, that a white suspect has no rights that a Black officer is bound to respect. Anecdotally, how often have you heard or read or seen in a video that a white member of the public was savagely beaten by a Black police officer?

It's alright for any officer to beat Blacks, regardless of the officer's skin color. White and Black officers who beat white, particularly middle class white suspects, are officers who must offer some credible reason for their behavior toward a white "collar". Meanwhile Dred Scott is still considered good law, in police vs. collar cases, in most USA police departments.