Howard Morgan, Black Off-Duty Cop Shot 28 Times By White Chicago Officers, Then Sentenced to 40 Year in Prison

Did Chigago police shoot an anonymous Black man 28 times, discover he was a police officer, and then concoct a cover story to make their actions appear lawful?

As reported by Huffington Post,

 

Morgan was off-duty as a detective for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroadwhen he was pulled over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street on Feb. 21, 2005, the Sun-Times previously reported. While both police and Morgan agree on that much, what happened next is a mystery. 

Protesters and Morgan's family say the second trial amounted to double jeopardy, and claim officers have gone to great lengths to obstruct justice in the case:
... 

Howard Morgan was never tested for gun residue to confirm if he even fired a weapon on the morning in question. 

The State never produced the actual bullet proof vest worn by one of the officers who claimed to have allegedly taken a shot directly into the vest on the morning in question. The State only produced a replica. 

"If they can do this and eliminate double jeopardy and your constitutional rights, then my God, I fear for every Afro-American -- whether they be male or female -- in this corrupt unjust system," Morgan's wife told the Sun-Times.

According to police, Morgan opened fire with his service weapon when four white officers tried to arrest him, which caused them to shoot him 28 times. His family disputes the police officers' account of the altercation. 

Howard Morgan's van was crushed and destroyed without notice or cause before any forensic investigation could be done... 

Howard Morgan was never tested for gun residue to confirm if he even fired a weapon on the morning in question. 

The State never produced the actual bullet proof vest worn by one of the officers who claimed to have allegedly taken a shot directly into the vest on the morning in question. The State only produced a replica.

"Plantations, Prisons and Profits" (New Orleans Times Picayune via NYT)

OP-ED COLUMNIST

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Published: May 25, 2012 5 Comments

“Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.”

That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state’s largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.

[Access the entire NYT opinion piece.] 

 Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison policies have failed. It showcases how private prisons do not serve the public interest and how the mass incarceration as a form of job creation is an abomination of justice and civility and creates a long-term crisis by trying to create a short-term solution.

As the paper put it: “A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.”

Access the the New Orleans Times Picayune eight-part series.

Brian Banks Tries To Move On After Color-Aroused Rape Conviction Reversed

NPR Reports:  Brian Banks spent more than five years in a California prison. Then his accuser recanted.

On All Things Considered

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Mom Defends Son, 6 Yrs. Old, Suspended for Repeating Rap Phrase in School.

There is a pervasive tendency of white American society to toward criminalizing, literally or metaphorically, the behavior and aesthetics of Black people, including even Black children who are little more than toddlers.

By The Admin on May 7, 2012A 6-year-old boy is back at his suburban Denver school after being suspended for three days for reciting a racy line from a popular song.D’Avonte Meadows, a first-grader at Sable Elementary School in Aurora, returned to class Monday after serving out his suspension.D’Avonte was accused of sexual harassment and disrupting other students for allegedly telling a girl “I’m sexy and I know it,” a line from a song by the popular duo LMFAO. He was suspended Wednesday.

In Connecticut grade schools, exemplifying the menace of the criminalizing of Black and brown childhood, 

...skin color and ethnicity are powerful indicators of which children will be arrested in the first place. In fact, when students are arrested on school property, one of every two will be black or Hispanic.

One-third of children in Connecticut are black or Hispanic, but they make up nearly two-thirds -- about 3,000 -- of all children charged with a crime, according to information provided by the state's Judicial Branch, contributing to the state's poor record in disproportionately locking up children of color, national data from 2010 show.
"We are talking about the existence of a schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline," said Scot X. Esdaile, the leader of the state chapter of the NAACP. "This has been a huge concern of ours for years." 

This gross disparity has spurred the creation of state and local initiatives to try to approach the problem at the front end by sensitizing police officers. Also, a bill before the legislature would clearly define when officers in schools should, and should not, be making arrests. 

"It's not that black kids are necessarily committing more crimes. It's about how they're treated when [police] do come in contact," said Waterford police Sgt. Andre Parker. "The only way for kids to get into the system is through us. We are the gatekeepers... If we can fix this disparity at our end then that would help a lot of children."

In Baltimore, police arrested and jailed four children under ten for fighting outside school.  “We’re living in a city where we’re routinely criminalizing young children,” Sonia Kumar, an attorney with the ACLU, said.

Blacks, Slavery and Imprisonment: A Shame We Cannot Escape.

If we could see our situation for what it is, we would storm the walls of America's prisons from within and without, preferring to die at the feet of our captors than to continue in bondage...

Black Americans will eventually look back on the 20th and early 21st centuries with a kind of uncomprehending horror and ask ourselves how, after centuries of slavery, we subsequently submitted to over a century of increasing incarceration that was just as bad as slavery?  

Our numbers are now divided between free Blacks and incarcerated Blacks, just as we were once divided between free Blacks and slave Blacks.  Some of us have been released from prison, perhaps temporarily, just as some of us once bought our freedom from slaveholders, only to be tricked or kidnapped back into slavery again.

Consult the well-publicized Black imprisonment statistics and studies, if you still feel any need to do so, or just skip the following quotation and continue to the meat of this essay:

In the last two-and-a-half decades, the prison population has undergone what the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics director Jan Chaiken last year called "literally incredible" expansion. Chaiken reported a quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since 1975.

( . . . ) 

On any given day, Chaiken reported, 30 percent of African-American males ages 20 to 29 are "under correctional supervision" ‹either in jail or prison or on probation or parole.  

Especially chilling is a statistical model used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to determine the lifetime chances of incarceration for individuals in different racial and ethnic groups. Based on current rates, it predicts that a young Black man age 16 in 1996 faces a 29 percent chance of spending time in prison during his life. The corresponding statistic for white men in the same age group is 4 percent. According to Thomas K. Lowenstein, director of the Electronic Policy Network, 7 percent of Black children- nearly 9 times more than white children- have an incarcerated parent. 

( . . . ) 

Researchers and advocates tracking the impact of mass incarceration find a number of devastating consequences in high-poverty Black communities. The most well known form of this so-called "collateral damage in the war on drugs" is the widespread political disenfranchisement of felons and ex-felons. Ten states deny voting rights for life to ex-felons. According to the Sentencing Project, 46 states prohibit inmates from voting while serving a felony sentence, 32 states deny the vote to felons on parole, and 29 states disenfranchise felony probationers. Thanks to these rules, 13 percent of all Black men in the U.S. have lost their electoral rights- "a bitter aftermath," notes British sociologist David Ladipo, "to the expansion of voting rights secured, at such cost, by the freedom marches of the fifties and sixties." 

In future decades, even America's whites will look back upon on us with pity and condescension, wondering how a people such as we could have tolerated such oppression as our systematic imprisonment without revolting.  And revolting, they will know intuitively, is precisely what they would have done in our circumstances.  They will know in their hearts that they would never have tolerated being treated as we were, incarcerated en masse while our situation was debated in the press, on television, in the halls of Congress, state capitols and in college sociology courses.

Over the last two centuries, the  “so-called, but mis-called, Negro problem” (as Frederick Douglass termed it) has morphed without fundamentally changing: The discussions of Black incarceration today are simply the modern iteration of the discussions of Black enslavement back in the 19th Century, with some insisting that mass incarceration is just and right and must continue unabated, while others argue for abolition.  The slave auctions of antebellum America served the same purpose as the mandatory minimum "plea bargains" and parole revocations of contemporary America: to deliver Blacks into Government-sponsored bondage.  Like slavery, Black incarceration has become an entrenched American industry.

Just as many whites in the antebellum period argued that our inhumanity made our enslavement the natural order of things, now many whites argue that the War on Drugs (which is the single largest rationalization for Black incarceration) necessitates and rationalizes our imprisonment today.

To ensure that whites' consciences will be free of guilt and that Blacks will submit in the belief that we deserve our fate, we are told that Blacks are inherently criminal, just as we were once assured that Black slaves were inherently Godless, animal, inhuman and inferior.

As an American nation, we endlessly ponder the "reasons" (rationalizations and excuses) for Black mass incarceration, without ever simply declaring that it is wrong and cannot be allowed to continue another day, which is the position that the most courageous abolitionists declared and tirelessly argued and insisted upon with respect to the enslavement of themselves and others in their time. 

The question is not what Black people have done to deserve to be imprisoned. The issue is that Black people deserve to be free and we must be free, whatever the cost.

If we could see our situation for what it is, we would storm the walls of America's prisons from within and without, preferring to die at the feet of our captors than to continue in bondage, fabricating garbage at slave wages for capitalist corporations while inside prisons, or waiting for our turn at the wheel during the fleeting and fragile moments when we "free" Blacks remain "free."  In fact, we are never free from the threat of sudden imprisonment.

We each have individual reasons why we cannot revolt, but we cannot escape our collective responsibility.  May God help us, for we will never comprehend tomorrow how we could so cowardly submit ourselves today.

Black Transgender Woman Could Get 40 Months Prison for Defending Herself During a Hate Crime Attack

If you're a white man, like George Zimmerman, you can chase down a Black man on the street, violently confront him, kill him, and then walk free with the likelihood of very little if any jail time.  However, if you are a Black person, like Cece McDonald of St.Paul, Mn, then there are virtually no circumstances under which you can kill an attacker and be thought to have acted in legitimate self-defense.  At The Root reports the case,

In a matter of moments, on a warm summer night last June in St. Paul, Minn., what started out as an innocent trip to a grocery store for Chrishaun "CeCe" McDonald and her friends quickly turned into a street brawl that would result in someone being killed. McDonald, a 23-year-old black transgender woman and college student, and a few of her friends (black people who variously identify as LGBT and straight) passed a local bar, where they encountered two white women and one white man. The man, Dean Schmitz, hurled racist, homophobic and transphobic epithets at the young group of color as they walked by. 

"F--gots!" 

"N--gers!" 

"Chicks with d--ks!" 

And then it got violent.

One of the two white women with Schmitz smashed a beer glass on McDonald's face. People from the bar spilled out into the streets to help the white trio fight the black youths. Somewhere in between fists and insults being thrown, McDonald took out a pair of scissors from her purse and stabbed Schmitz, who died at the scene. 

Despite claiming self-defense, that same night McDonald, after being treated for injuries, was interrogated and ultimately charged with second-degree murder. She was also kept in jail for two months. 

It's incredibly hard to ignore the similarities and the hypocrisy between the killing of Trayvon Martin and McDonald's attack. Both were young and black and walking down the street minding their own business. Both were harassed and attacked for being different. But both had very different outcomes.

As far as the police are concerned today, and the US Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1856:

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race [Blacks], which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. 

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect;

(Anyone who hasn't read the whole Dred Scott decision should do so now, since it is perhaps the single best "history book" on Black people in America in relation to white people.  If you want to know the America your grandparents experienced, and why you still experience some of the same things, then read Dread Scott for free online, today.)

So, returning to CeCe McDonald, can a Black woman who is in fear for her life lawfully kill a white man, where the white man has visible Swastika tattoos and he is threatening her and is engaged in the commission of a hate crime against her?  No, the Black woman probably cannot kill that color-aroused antagonist menacing white man, for a reason that no one requires a law degree to understand:  her skin is brown while his skin is white and they both live in the United States of America.

Nonetheless, consider the following:  If you find yourself in CeCe McDonald's position, go ahead and kill your Nazi-inspired attacker anyway.  You might personally pay a heavy price for it, but your act will serve as a strong deterrent to other people like CeCe's color-aroused antagonist attacker.  People like you all over the country might well benefit when you behave as if you are a white person who has both the de jure right and de facto privilege to defend yourself in the United States of America.

US Supreme Court May Hear Police Pretrial, Extrajudicial Electric Shooting Attack on Black Fetus Case

In what could turn out to be a very important decision on the police use of pre-trial, extrajudicial electrocution and execution devices (electric guns), the US Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a case that exemplifies the unconscionable use of electric force on members of the public.

The New York Times reports:

A Ticket, 3 Taser Jolts and, Perhaps, a Trip to the Supreme Court 

By ADAM LIPTAKPublished: May 14, 2012 

WASHINGTON — There have been many hundreds of varied rulings in the lower courts on when the use of Taser stun guns by the police amounts to excessive force, and sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to bring order to this area of the law. Next week, the justices are scheduled to decide whether to hear an appeal from three Seattle police officers who say they are worried about the future of what they call “a useful pain technique.” 

The case involves Malaika Brooks, who was seven months pregnant and driving her 11-year-old son to school in Seattle when she was pulled over for speeding. The police say she was going 32 miles per hour in a school zone; the speed limit was 20.

Ms. Brooks said she would accept a ticket but drew the line at signing it, which state law required at the time. Ms. Brooks thought, wrongly, that signing was an acknowledgment of guilt. 

Refusing to sign was a crime, and the two officers on the scene summoned a sergeant, who instructed them to arrest Ms. Brooks. She would not get out of her car.The situation plainly called for bold action, and Officer Juan M. Ornelas met the challenge by brandishing a Taser and asking Ms. Brooks if she knew what it was.She did not, but she told Officer Ornelas what she did know. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I am pregnant. I’m less than 60 days from having my baby.” 

The three men assessed the situation and conferred. “Well, don’t do it in her stomach,” one said. “Do it in her thigh.” 

Officer Ornelas twisted Ms. Brooks’s arm behind her back. A colleague, Officer Donald M. Jones, applied the Taser to Ms. Brooks’s left thigh, causing her to cry out and honk the car’s horn. A half-minute later, Officer Jones applied the Taser again, now to Ms. Brooks’s left arm. He waited six seconds before pressing it into her neck.Ms. Brooks fell over, and the officers dragged her into the street, laying her face down and cuffing her hands behind her back. 

In the months that followed, Ms. Brooks gave birth to a healthy baby girl; was convicted of refusing to sign the ticket, a misdemeanor, but not of resisting arrest; and sued the officers who three times caused her intense pain and left her with permanent scars.

Malaika Brooks posed no danger of life or even meaningful physical injury to the police officers or to anyone else.  She was not suspected of a crime of any significance and she would have been subject to the same penalty -- a speeding fine -- whether police succeeded in arresting her or not.  The only need to arrest her arose from her refusal to sign a piece of paper, after which she would have been allowed to go on her way.  Instead, three police officers electrically shocked a pregnant woman three times in her third trimester.

So, the issue is the case can be summarized as,

'is there any conceivable circumstance under which police officers should be held legally liable for using a frequently lethal electric gun on a six months pregnant member of the public, or are there simply no limits whatsoever to when, where and how police can administer pretrial, extrajudicial and potentially lethal bodily shocks at their own whim?'

Republicans are obsessed with "the life of the unborn child," except when the unborn child's mother is a minority woman who was going twelve miles over the speed limit when stopped by police.  As soon as the police authority to use electric guns on speeders is invoked, the rights of the innocent unborn child must yield to the authority of the unrestrained police officer.

It won't matter that the police's behavior could be characterized as "attempted abortion," and no (white or Black) anti-abortion zealots will come to Malaika Brooks' defense.  They certainly will not argue, as they do about abortion doctors, that these policemen should be the targets of an attempted murder because they attempted to murder an unborn child.

Blogger BrotherPeaceMaker observed back in 2007, as this case was in the very first stages of making its way toward the US Supreme Court,

In May of 2005, Malaika Brooks was deep in her third trimester when she was pulled over for a traffic violation by one of Seattle’s finest. When Ms. Brooks refused to sign the citation, a criminal offense in Washington State, the two police officers and their sergeant decided to taser her into compliance. Now a lot of people felt that Ms. Brooks made the choice to be difficult, to be arrested, and to put her unborn fetus at risk. People wrote that a responsible person would have signed the ticket or gotten out of the car when she was informed that she was under arrest. She chose to be belligerent. 

Do none of these people have any experience with pregnant women? 

By the time some women are in their third trimester, the months of discomfort, lack of sleep, urinating so frequently, hormones, and the other myriad of conditions and problems associated with pregnancy can develop a festering pool of highly charged negative emotions. No offense to any mothers or mothers to be but a single pregnant woman can make facing a gang look like a suitable alternative. Some times a pregnant woman will do her best be one, if not the most, unreasonable and stubborn forces of nature. Pregnant women can be childish and demanding. It should be common sense to give them the most benefit of doubt and they should be given a great deal of latitude. 

(...) 

The perception that the police would be justified in using their tasers on a pregnant woman can only be applied to a pregnant woman that is believed to be unworthy of public compassion. And with the lack of public consideration given to the average black woman when one of them come up missing, kidnapped, injured, or murdered it is no surprise to hear people say that the police were perfectly reasonable to use the torture device. These people probably consider the black woman lucky that the officers were equipped with their tasers and didn’t have to use their batons or their firearms.If the woman was Maryann from Sunnydale Farms, Kansas some people would have had a totally different appreciation for the situation. 

There are two female members of the US Supreme Court, but they are part of a para-liberal minority.  The only issue for the Court will be whether to refuse to hear the case at all, which will leave standing police impunity, or how to write a decision in such a way as to make it more or less clear that while a Black woman has no rights that a police officer is bound to respect, nonetheless a white woman in the same situation should be given a little (but not much) more consideration.  But then, these officers and all of America already know that.

Have I predicted the outcome of a case before the US Supreme Court?  Well, at least I have predicted the concurring opinion of Justice Clarence (The Unreasonable, The Obstreperous) Thomas.  This will not be the case in which the US Supreme Court tells police officers to end risking extrajudicial murder of mother and fetus by electric gun. The US Supreme Court might eventually outlaw abortion generally, but not abortions that may result from police's use of electric guns on pregnant mothers to enforce local speeding ticket signature requirements.

Perhaps most shocking is that the police officers involved have expressed no remorse that the Black fetus  survived.

Rhode Island Supreme Court Alludes to "Disproportionate" Force in Esteban Carpio Arrest

Trooper testifies he punched murder suspect Carpio

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Esteban Carpio of his murder conviction.  In a nationally notorious case, Estaban Carpio was convicted of murdering Providence Police Sgt. James Allen inside the Providence police station in 2005.  Police acknowledge that they interrogated Carpio for several hours into the night, without a lawyer, and that they had left Carpio in an interrogation room with a lone interrogator, Police Sgt. James Allen, whom Carpio ultimately killed with the sargeant's own gun.  Then, Carpio jumped out of a window and escaped.

After a manhunt, the police found Carpio and thereafter ensued the events that left Carpio's face so badly beaten that police had to put a plastic mask over his face in order to make his battered head even vaguely presentable (although still shockingly ghastly) for his first court hearing.  In this blog's opinion, the police beating of Esteban Carpio's face, and their all-too-apparent shame at allowing the evidence of that beating to be seen in court, made Esteban Carpio into a national symbol of pretrial and extra-judicial administration of police vigilante punishment.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court points out the "disproportionate number" of officers who retook Carpio into custody (see pages 6 and 7 of their decision), without directly mentioning the metaphorical hamburger that was Carpio's face when he was first presented in Court.

Several officers chased Carpio, brought him down, and  attempted to  subdue him.    A violent struggle ensued.  Despite the disproportionate number of officers and their repeated  commands to Carpio to  cease resisting, defendant kicked and flailed, resisting arrest and attempting to flee.  Eventually, the officers were able to handcuff Carpio and secure him in the police cruiser.

The above description makes it clear that there was a fight and explains the damage to Carpio's face by arguing that Carpio ignored police "commands" to stop resisting.  If such was the case, the police seemed to have followed or interspersed their "commands" with a significant number of intentional blows to the face, perhaps and conceivably with police fists, billy clubs and even their feet.

That seemingly very intentional and violent beating, and the notorious police attempt to cover up the evidence with a white Batman mask, contributed to the founding of the Police Brutality Blog in 2007.  As we pointed out here back then, Regardless of what police believe a man to have done, they should never beat him so badly that they feel compelled to cover up the results of the beating before they present the man in court and before the news media.

When the police have to cover the evidence of their force with a plastic mask, that is the essence and conclusive proof of a level of force which even they believe to have been excessive.  Instead of engaging in a literal "cover up" of their brutality, police should let the public see their bloody confection, to see whether police still retain the public and judicial sympathy that they would like to have in a situation such as this.

The Providence Journal reported today:

BREAKING NEWSR.I. Supreme Court denies appeal of man convicted of murdering Providence police detective
Comments 24 | Recommend  3
May 14, 2012 11:31 am
By Amanda MilkovitsPROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The man convicted of murdering Providence Police Sgt. James Allen inside the police station in 2005 lost his appeal to the Supreme Court.
ESTEBAN CARPIO
Related

• Read the 26-page R.I. Supreme Court opinion

Esteban Carpio had argued that he was mentally incapacitated and thus couldn't be found guilty of murder, and that the trial justice improperly instructed the jury on the question of criminal responsibility. He also argued that his sentence of life without parole was an error. 

As Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg wrote Monday's decision to deny and dismiss Carpio's appeal, she noted "his calm, calculated, and often cunning behavior throughout that fateful day" on April 16, 2005. 

"Any hope of the defendant's rehabilitation is far outweighed by his danger to the community and the indelible scar this offense has left upon the law enforcement community and the people of Providence," Goldberg wrote.

This Rhode Island Supreme court decision probably determines conclusively how Esteban Carpio will be punished for his offenses.  It leaves entirely open the question of who will punish the Providence Police Department for what it did to Carpio's face and for its bold, shocking and probably unprecedented efforts to literally "cover it up." Were it not for this abomination, which is symptomatic of too many others, then the public would likely have felt only sympathy for the entire Providence Police Department at the loss of one of its officers.

Medical Community Agrees: Tasers are Lethal

THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2012 Medical Community Agrees: Tasers are Lethal Eddie G. Griffin, BASG At last, what we have said about tasers is proving true. Common sense and experience should tell us that people can die from being electrocuted, whether from a downed power line or an electrical outlet. But when it comes to a 50,000-volt taser being responsible for hundreds of electrocutions resulting in death, we are in denial. Now a new study shows that “the electrical shock delivered to the chest by a Tasercan lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death.” (“Tasers Pose Risks to Heart, a Study Warns”, NY Times, April 30, 2012) “This is no longer arguable,” said Dr. Byron Lee, a cardiologist and director of the electrophysiology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a scientific fact. The national debate should now center on whether the risk of sudden death with Tasers is low enough to warrant widespread use by law enforcement.” The debate over whether tasers are lethal is over. Taser can and do kill. This conclusion flies in the face of TASER International’s long standing claim that the weapon was non-lethal. This important line of demarcation determines how the weapon is regulated, how officers in the field are orientated and trained in its use, its public acceptance, and its sales. But, of course, the company will not kowtow to the study’s findings, instead rather choosing to allege a profit motive on the doctor doing the study. But the preponderance of evidence gained from medical records, police reports, and autopsy reports show an undeniable correlation, between electrical shocks from tasers and cardiac arrests, resulting in some deaths. Although the conclusion is clear, the medical community is undecided as to how to proceed. Is the risk of sudden death with Taser low enough to warrant widespread use by law enforcement? That, Dr. Lee claims, should be the principal issue in the debate. Wherein, Dr. Robert J. Myerburg, a professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, added, “I suspect the incidence of these fatal events is going to be low and can be minimized by the precautions.” Missing in the perspective is the victim’s point of view from those who have been tased and survive, who call the experience “torture”. That issue raises the bar of the debate. No longer is a debate about overuse and abuse of tasers by police officers, poor training, and discretion in the field. It is no longer a debate about whether 50,000 volts of electricity can kill. But short of death, how much does the taser victim suffer? Are tasers really torture? The subject of torture has been debated throughout the ages. There is no precise definition except as an act of practice that is reprehensible to public conscious. Like the Supreme Court justice who said of pornography, “he knows it when he sees it”. Torture can only be known by those who have suffered it. And, by all firsthand accounts, from police officers tased in training to the man on the street, pinned on the ground, and shocked into submission, TASER IS TORTURE. Eddie Griffin eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com Public Awareness Campaign against Tasers from Google: Eddie G. Griffin & Tasers

George Zimmerman Acknowledges Criminal Acts in MySpace Page that Wishes, "Only to Be a King Again," Says His MySpace Page

George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin, has a MySpace page entitled, "Only to Be a King Again," in which he looks back nostalgically at what he describes as days of engaging in gang violence and criminality, and "driving around" looking for Mexicans with whom to engage in fights.  This is reminiscent of the circumstances in the Trayvon Martin case, in which Zimmerman was driving around armed, looking for people in hoodies, when he came up the unarmed Trayvon Martin.

In the MySpace page, Zimmerman says he was animated by a belief that Mexicans in general are "wannabe thugs messing with people's cars" and that "every Mexican you run into" pulls a knife on you.  Clearly, Zimmerman is motivated -- by vast and all-inclusive generalizations -- to confront Mexicans at random on the street, or at least he has said so:

I love the fact that I can still go back home and crash on my boys couch as if i had never left, I can hit my boy up to handle a lil somethin with my sister and he's at my house with his boys on bikes before i hang up with her! They do a year and dont ever open thier mouth to get my ass pinched. My cousins the cruzado's damn i love yall, shirley and frank DONT PLAY! I gotta be honest I miss that. I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!

Apparently, animus toward other ethnic groups and confronting members of those groups on the street has been part of Zimmerman's character for quite a while.  The question for the judge who set his parole at $150,000 is whether someone who writes online about willfully seeking ethnicity-associated violence on the street can be safely allowed to walk free among the public.  Since he clearly holds animus towards Mexicans and has shot a Black man for wearing a "hoody," how can the Court know that Zimmerman will not commit another color or ethnicity-aroused act while Zimmerman is out on bail?

In the above excerpt, Zimmerman apparently acknowledges having engaged in acts for which someone else was willing to "do a year," without divulging Zimmerman's involvement and alleged potential criminal culpability.

As the ByronCrawford.Com blog suggests,

Revealed: George Zimmerman's old MySpace proves he's probably guilty

The Miami Herald just dug up George Zimmerman's old MySpace profile. Zimmerman's attorney has confirmed its authenticity. You're going to want to click through and have a look. It hilarious. He has lots of great things to say about Mexicans, his ex-hoe and various other crimes he got away with.


http://www.myspace.com/onlytobekingagain


A few excerpts for your reading pleasure:


Things George Zimmerman doesn't miss about Manassas, VA, where he grew up:

I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!

This might not be the first time George Zimmerman got away with shooting someone. From his blog:

Good news???? Bout Damn time!!!!!!! 2 felonies dropped to 1 misdemeanor!!!!!!!!!!! The man knows he was wrong but still got this hump, Thanks to everyone friends and fam, G baby you know your my rock!

Another case involved one of his ex-hoes:

Out come of first case…… Im still free! The ex hoe tried her hardest, but the judge saw through it! Big Mike, reppin the Dverse security makin me look a million bucks, broke her down! Thanks to everyone for checkin up on me! Stay tuned for the A.T.F. charges……

It's curious that the MySpace page remains visible, since it is embarrassing to Zimmerman and could easily be used against Zimmerman by prosecutors and in a civil suit.  The Miami Herald says,

[A] 7-year old Myspace page called “only to be king again” that makes disparaging comments about Mexicans. The Web page, which his attorney confirmed Tuesday is legitimate, makes reference to 2005 criminal cases and a brush in court with a woman who Zimmerman called his “ex-hoe.”

There are several photos of Zimmerman on the page, and in one of them he appears to be wearing the same orange polo shirt that he donned in his 2005 police mug shot. Zimmerman used the name “Joe G.” on the site, and posted a biography that mentions he grew up in Manassas, Va., had recently opened an insurance business and missed all his friends. 

Last month, a Zimmerman Myspace page under the username “datniggytb” was taken down.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/01/2778234/myspace-page-is-latest-salvo-in.html#storylink=cpy

If the page is Zimmerman's and even if it isn't, it points out the current need for defense attorneys to do due diligence and locate information online that might tend to hurt their defense of their clients, particularly when the online posts are seemingly by their clients themselves.

The real issue in the Trayvon Martin case is whether George Zimmerman was predisposed to confront people physically and violently on the street in association with the skin color and ethnicity of the persons accosted, and whether the a fear that arises after pursuing a person on the street in the dark, based in part of the color of that person's skin, can be sufficient reason to kill the person pursued.

If it can be, then every Black person may find that the only safety under law resides deciding to "Stand Your Ground" (rather than run, as Trayvon did) and shoot the pursuer before one is shot oneself.

Another issue involved is whether the criminal justice system takes crimes less seriously when they are committed by a person with lighter skin against a person with darker skin.  Inner-city Mother Goose book of socio-political nursery rhymes included the following poem:

A wise old judge sat in court.
The case was long,
His judgment short:

Why change the way it's always been?
Convict the man of darker skin. 

Did the local police effectively "convict the man of darker skin" when they decided that George Zimmerman had committed no crime when he killed Trayvon Martin.  This case demonstrates that being a descendant of Latinos does not prevent a person from holding anti-Latino animus or anti-Black animus.  Facts about George Zimmerman, his Black and Latino friends with brown skin, focus attention squarely on a question of skin color-associated calculus:  Did Zimmerman feel freer to hunt and kill Martin because Martin's skin was of a color that Zimmerman believed would not be protected by the criminal justice system when Zimmerman's  skin is considerably lighter?   Or was skin color not even the primary issue, with Zimmerman out looking for trouble and willing to shoot anyone wearing a hoodie?

Would the result of the one-night police investigation by the Sanford, Florida Police Department have proceeded in the same manner if Zimmerman had dark brown skin while his victim, Trayvon Martin, had the lighter olive skin color of Zimmerman?  That's what we are currently discussing.