“Santa Monica Was A Boiling Point": Protests Are Taking Over White Wealthy Neighborhoods So They Can't Look Away

Protests over the death of George Floyd have culminated in some of the largest civil rights uprisings in history. And white, wealthy areas like Santa Monica are no longer exempt.

Brianna SacksBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on June 5, 2020

Brianna Sacks / BuzzFeed News

David Brown had been demonstrating peacefully, along with a group of other protesters near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica when he felt hands latch onto him. Police officers roughly pulled him out of the crowd. They pushed him — hard. They prodded him with their batons. Then they clapped cold steel handcuffs around his wrists and took him into custody.

“They put me in a van and they slammed those doors,” he said, “and I never heard such a deafening sound as when they closed those doors.”


Hours later, police dropped him off at a gas station on Centinela Avenue, at the Los Angeles city limits. If you go back to Santa Monica, he said they told him, you will be arrested.

“What do you mean ‘don’t go back’?” he said he asked the officers. “I live in Santa Monica.”

Brown, who is Black and has lived in the beach town since high school, had been out on the street because he wanted to witness the movement against police brutality that has swept the country since the killing of George Floyd.

At 59, he is old enough to remember the Rodney King uprising of 1992, when he watched on television as Los Angeles’s historically Black neighborhoods like Crenshaw and Watts went up in flames. This time was different — in Los Angeles at least. This time, he said, protesters got smart and decided: “‘You know what, we’re going to the white neighborhoods and tear up their neighborhoods. We’re going to Bloomingdales, Beverly Hills, the Grove, all those places,’ and that’s exactly what they did.”

It was a deliberate strategy, according to Black Lives Matter LA cofounder Melina Abdullah. In 2013, during a protest over the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman, the group decided to march in Beverly Hills, so that LA’s rich, white residents could not turn away. The tactic worked and, Abdullah said, has since been adopted nationwide.

“We are not willing to enable white folks with wealth to retreat to their places of refuge,” she said.

Which is what brought protesters on Sunday to Santa Monica, a city whose leafy streets are lined with multi-million dollar homes. The protest began on a street near the beach and was mostly peaceful, but a few blocks away, separate groups came in and targeted the heart of a popular shopping area — looting and vandalizing dozens of stores and starting fires. Police moved in and arrested more than 400 people, including some peaceful demonstrators. Authorities later said more than 95% of those arrested did not live in the city.

The destruction and violent clashes in Santa Monica played on televisions across the world. There were scenes of looting and burning, and images of police brutalizing demonstrators, blasting them at close range with rubber bullets.


“Normally, we are able to anticipate when a dispersal order is coming,” Abdullah said. “It’s all out the window this time. Police aren't giving people a chance to decide. They're beating people with batons. Several members were beaten to the point of hospitalization, and that's new for us.”

For some residents of Santa Monica’s historically Black and Latinx neighborhood who participated in the demonstrations, the events in their city felt both surreal and empowering.







Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

“Everything that is so shiny about Santa Monica is now being destroyed in front of everyone’s eyes,” said Jessica Walker, a Santa Monica High School graduate who is now pursuing a master’s degree in child development. She stood in an alley near the promenade that was littered with shoeboxes and water from a broken main as looters spilled out of a shattered store window.

“It’s a rude awakening for Santa Monica natives,” she said, adding that, “with all the pain and suffering Black people have gone through, the looting and damage doesn’t compare.”

For Brown, though the violence across the city, and his own rough detainment, has been painful and complex to process, he said he also felt "more connected to some of his white neighbors."


At 6 feet and 230 pounds, he’s used to being singled out and discriminated against — used to getting pulled over in Beverly Hills because his friend was driving a BMW and having men move closer to their girlfriends when he walks toward them down the street. He makes a concerted effort to fit in and dress clean and crisp, in polos and cargo shorts, and wears a suit and tie to work.

But now, he said he’s “talking to more white people than I have never talked to before. I am seeing a lot of white people out there and it feels like we are more on a common ground. The fact that we can talk, and we can walk together and talk together like we've known each other for a long time. That wouldn't have happened before.”

He was relieved that, this time, it wasn’t South Los Angeles that burned, as it did in 1992 and before that in 1965. Some neighborhoods in South LA still haven’t been completely rebuilt, he knew, whereas the damage in Santa Monica would likely be repaired almost immediately.

At the same time, it hurt to see his city “ruined” because people felt desperate, angry, vengeful, empowered — or were simply opportunists seizing on a moment that burst in the middle of a global pandemic, and its accompanying dire economic situation and historic unemployment rate, to loot succulents from West Elm. He gets it, though. He mostly lives paycheck to paycheck, and he doesn’t know how much more he can take. His income as a Lyft driver has plummeted during the pandemic, and he’s still waiting for his stimulus check and unemployment money to arrive.

Brown has lived in the same rent-stabilized two-bedroom in Santa Monica for most of his life. In 1978, when he was 17 years old, his mom moved him and his two older brothers from Chicago to the then-sleepy beach town.



Agustin Paullier / Getty Images

“She fell in love with it after one vacation,” Brown said of his late mother.

Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood straddles the 10 Freeway at the city’s southern end, near the airport. The neighborhood used to be predominantly Black and Latino, and still has more diversity than the rest of the city. It is also much less wealthy and historically has had more problems with gang violence. Between 1980 and 2013, almost half of Santa Monica’s homicides occurred within those blocks.

Still, the area is changing, squeezed by the gentrification that has swept across Los Angeles and especially along the beach.

“It’s a stark contrast here in just 10 years,” said Oscar de la Torre, a longtime community activist and founder of the Pico Youth & Family Center. “The changes have escalated to a whole new level, and there’s a lot of displacement.”

De la Torre, who also grew up in the Pico area, recalls the rarity of seeing a white person walking down the street in the 1980s and parents cautioning kids not to ride their bikes north of Wilshire Boulevard, because police would “pull you over and ask what you were doing.” As Santa Monica grew, city leaders put all the “undesirable shit,” like the city dump, bus yards, buildings, and infrastructure within that rectangular district. When the crack cocaine epidemic hit, gang violence also spiked.

While it’s gotten better over the years, de la Torre noted that there’s still palpable racism in Santa Monica. There are no Black members on the city council, and the area’s minorities have been eradicated as developers purchase plots and erect multimillion-dollar condos next to rent-stabilized buildings like Brown’s, where mostly Latinx or Black families are still able to live because landlords are limited in how much they can raise the rent.


Samantha Borges
Jessica Walker

Jessica Walker also grew up in the Pico neighborhood, in a rent-stabilized building that’s now sandwiched between brand-new developments filled with mostly white tenants, she said. When she was 16, students at her high school hung a noose around a dummy and chained one of her other Black wrestling teammates to his locker and chanted “slave for sale.” After that, she helped create the Committee for Racial Justice at Santa Monica High School, organized events against racism, and spoke out at school board meetings.

Essentially, she said, she’s spent a lot of her life speaking out against racism and the killing of Black people by police. Until now, she said, she felt like it often has been ignored. That was until people brought their anger and exhaustion to white people’s doorsteps and burned them down. After Santa Monica’s demonstration on Sunday, she plans to attend another protest in Palm Springs on Saturday and is planning yet another one in Palm Springs on Monday. She’s also thinking about next steps: “How are we going to build our Black communities back up? How are we going to reform the justice system?”

“Now shit has really hit the fan, and now everyone is being forced to say something,” she said. “Santa Monica was a boiling point and white people are beginning to see it, especially through these most recent events.”

Nearly 30 years after he watched South LA rise up and evolve into a war zone from his mom’s living room, Brown scrolls through his recent uploads on Facebook, trying to process his own footage of burning restaurants, police firing tear gas in his streets, National Guard vehicles rolling by.

He said he doesn’t know how to feel: “I am electrified and numb.” A few days later, he saw a clip of his own arrest for the first time, and he finally cried. He’s going back out tomorrow.

PROTESTERS And Journalists Are Being Attacked For Exercising The Same Rights

Why are some journalists all too eager to rail against media suppression while downplaying — or even championing — police efforts to harass or arrest protesters?

Shannon KeatingSenior Culture Writer & Editor


Posted on June 6, 2020,


Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

On Tuesday night, I was reporting on the protests against police brutality and racism in New York City when an NYPD officer threatened to arrest me. It was a couple hours after the city’s newly established curfew, and a colleague and I were trying to figure out what was happening at the Manhattan Bridge. Thousands of nonviolent protesters who’d marched from Brooklyn were now being barred entrance into Manhattan by lines of officers in riot gear. All of Confucius Plaza was crawling with police, while a low-flying helicopter buzzed ominously overhead, illuminating the protesters who were boxed in and shouting to be freed. It was one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever seen, in the city I call my home or anywhere.

My colleague Tilli and I were standing with a group of onlookers who were chanting “Let them go!” across from the entrance to the bridge when cops suddenly started pushing us back. We thought they might be about to start kettling the protesters, forming a circle in which to trap and potentially arrest them; it’s a tactic that the NYPD has been using this week to round up people deliberately protesting after the citywide curfew. As I tried to get closer to the crowd on the bridge, I showed an officer my press pass, but he barked that it wasn’t NYPD certified. “You’re in violation of the curfew,” he said. “If you don’t go home now, expect to be arrested.”


The kettling never came to pass. Eventually the protesters were encouraged to turn around and try their luck on the Brooklyn end of the bridge — where a huge police presence awaited them. Some protesters were placed into police custody while most were allowed to march on unimpeded after more than an hour trapped in terrifying limbo. That incident would ironically end up being one of the more peaceful encounters documented between police and protesters in New York City this week. Residents fighting for their right to peaceful assembly — or else simply doing their jobs, as reporters or delivery drivers or legal observers or healthcare providers — have been routinely rounded up, beaten bloody, arrested en masse, and, due to a judge’s recent ruling, detained for 24 hours or more in the city’s coronavirus-infested jails.


Shannon Keating / BuzzFeed News



Not only do the president and his supporters deride the media as the “enemy of the people” and gleefully advocate for our destruction on a daily basis; we’re now seeing police officers across the country blatantly violate journalists’ First Amendment rights, as well as our classifications as essential workers who are supposed to be exempt from curfews in cities like New York. According to a new analysis by the Guardian and Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website specializing in open-source intelligence, there have been at least 148 instances of journalist arrests or attacks during coverage of these protests — they’ve been “blinded, beaten, maced and arrested by police in numbers never before documented in the US.”


Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had seemingly avoided watching any of the other hundreds of stomach-churning viral videos of police brutality against protesters and essential workers, finally spoke up on Thursday night about “the troubling video” of an arrested delivery worker. “Food delivery is essential work and is EXEMPTED from the curfew,” he tweeted. “Same goes for journalists covering protests out doing their jobs. They are essential workers, too.” It remains to be seen whether the NYPD will heed the mayor’s words, but all evidence indicates that yet again, “essential workers” during the coronavirus pandemic aren’t being paid or treated as though they’re really so essential.

When I was able to narrowly avoid arrest on Tuesday and return safely to my home, I thought about how ridiculous — and how troubling — it was that even my supposedly protected status as a reporter almost didn’t protect me after all, as has been the case for multiple colleagues of mine this week. Though de Blasio’s press secretary has indicated reporters shouldn’t need official NYPD-certified press passes to do their jobs at the protests this week, that hasn’t filtered down to police on the ground. Those passes are notoriously difficult to obtain, even for those working at name-brand news outlets, let alone for freelance and citizen journalists. A detective told me the department isn’t even processing press cards until further notice “due to the current situation.” It’s disconcerting that the police are tasked with deciding which journalists can move freely on the streets when the question of their own brutality is currently the biggest story in the world.



Caroline Haskins@carolineha_

Police descending on protesters who were completely peaceful. Completely chaos. People screaming. Police grabbed my arms and tried to cuff me but let me go when I showed my press pass.02:10 AM - 05 Jun 2020
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But I feel even more uncomfortable with the idea that I’ve been afforded any special status at all. As the journalist Wesley Lowery recently pointed out in an excellent Twitter thread, “police have been blatantly ignoring the First Amendment rights of protesters — responding to their constitutionally protected speech with state violence — for years,” and “journalists are not a specially protected class of 1st Amend users. It is no *more* outrageous for a reporter to be targeted with tear gas or rubber bullets or arrest than it is for a citizen peacefully assembling & chanting (no matter how angry) to be met with that same force.”



Wong Maye-e / AP



A police officer shouts at Associated Press videojournalist Robert Bumsted, Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in New York. New York City police officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering protests Tuesday in the latest aggression against members of the media during a week of unrest around the country.


And yet some in our profession — especially those who haven’t experienced discrimination, from the police or otherwise, due to their race or gender or socioeconomic status — are all too eager to rail against journalist suppression while downplaying or even championing police efforts to harass or arrest protesters. The National Press Club earlier this week penned an open letter, signed by 28 press organizations, calling “for police nationwide to halt use of violence, arrests against journalists covering protests,” but made sure to clarify their “utmost respect” for law enforcement. “The job you are being asked to do is difficult and requires extraordinary courage and discipline and we can see that most of you are working diligently to restore a sense of peace and calm to your cities,” the letter begins. “Thank you for your best efforts.” Press freedom is, of course, essential and worth fighting for, but that so many journalism groups would lend their names to a letter commending “most” cops for restoring “peace and calm” when hundreds of protesters are being brutalized on a daily basis is a sign, to me, of an industry in great and terrible crisis.



It’s disconcerting that the police are tasked with deciding which journalists can move freely on the streets when the question of their own brutality is currently the biggest story in the world.



For one thing, to advocate for journalists’ rights without doing so just as passionately for the rights of protesters — which are, again, enshrined in the same constitutional amendment — is to deny that, as Wesley Morris wrote this week for the New York Times, “the most urgent filmmaking anybody’s doing in this country right now is by black people with camera phones.” In the United States and around the world, regular citizens’ abilities to record the abuses and brutalities they’ve faced while fighting for a better future have exposed long-standing injustices like police violence to communities who’d been previously sheltered from it, and therefore inured. A new study from Monmouth University released this week found that 57% of Americans believe police are more likely to use excessive force against black people, compared to 34% in 2016. It was citizen journalists and other social media users who made Ferguson “America’s Arab Spring,” and have continued to do the work ever since.

Nothing about police behavior has fundamentally changed — white people are now just seeing more of it, and are now more likely to actually believe what black people have been telling us for decades. Whether or not reporters with a piece of employer-issued plastic around our necks are on the ground, witnessing and documenting the atrocities or experiencing them ourselves, the ever-mounting video evidence from anyone with a smartphone is increasingly impossible to ignore. When Gov. Andrew Cuomo falsely claims that NYPD haven’t attacked peaceful protesters with batons, a combination of journalist and protester videos can prove him wrong.

The George Floyd demonstrations are just the latest and most incendiary events to trouble the boundaries between journalists and the activists on whom we’re reporting. More reporters are realizing that they need not — and should not — always take law enforcement at their word.


Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images



People use their phones to record the police during a protest in response to the police killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.



In the horrifying incident of Buffalo officers shoving an elderly white man to the ground, where they left him bleeding from the head, police originally said he “tripped and fell.” Even Cuomo stepped in to call for the officers involved to be suspended and investigated, having previously ignored every other appalling video of brutality against Black and brown bodies at the hands of his officers. (The entire Buffalo riot squad has since resigned from the team, though not their jobs, in solidarity with their disgraced colleagues.) Every night we witness brutality and abuse just to wake up to our elected officials denying what we’ve seen with our own eyes. On Friday, de Blasio even accused WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer of not being “objective” for accurately summarizing police activity in New York this week. Luckily, we’re equipped to report the facts. And if officers are harassing and arresting even the people they aren’t “supposed” to, from journalists to lawmakers, what might they be getting up to in the marginalized communities they’ve been over-policing for decades now? Especially when the evidence isn’t captured on video, police testimony puts people in jail every day.

“One reason journalists are conditioned to ignore saying anything on the rights of protesters being violated by the gov is cause they’re scared that would be inappropriate ‘activism,’” Lowery noted in his thread, “while advocating loudly for their *own rights* is seen as necessary and noble.’” That’s why some newsroom leadership — including my own — have discouraged their staffers from contributing to bail funds to free arrested protesters and workers, arguing as Business Insider editor-in-chief Nich Carlson did recently that those donations “call into question our credibility in covering the protests.” (After a Daily Beast report on employee outcry, the company clarified the editor’s comments, referring to the policy as a mere guideline to use “best judgment.”) Most news outlets have ethics guidelines that discourage journalists from donating to “political” causes — the question newsroom leaders face is whether supporting the release of protesters from police custody for exercising their First Amendment rights, as they likely would for journalists, is really a “political” cause rather than one of free speech and human rights.

The burden of supposed objectivity has fallen especially heavily on journalists of color, in particular Black journalists, during the 2020 protests and long beforehand. Karen Attiah of the Washington Post recently noted, “This is another problem with the lack of diversity in our newsrooms. Too many … treat serious life or death issues as their fodder for intellectual calisthenics, while many of us and our communities are literally under siege from dangerous rhetoric and racist policies.”

Every night we witness brutality and abuse just to wake up to our elected officials denying what we’ve seen with our own eyes.


In the past week a wave of Black journalists at the New York Times, as well as hundreds of their colleagues, publicly condemned an opinion piece by Sen. Tom Cotton, which called for a military crackdown on protesters. It was a protest that felt both unprecedented and inevitable — just one of the long-strained dams finally broken during These Extraordinary Times. Not only does the Times have a strict social media policy about criticizing colleagues in public; journalists of color have described being prohibited or discouraged from calling out racism in the industry and beyond it for fear they’ll be labeled biased activists.

At least one New York Times staffer and other (white) journalists have seized the moment to dig in their heels about “safetyism,” quelling “bad opinions,” and the “free exchange of ideas”,” delegitimizing and insulting their Black peers in the process. But the shakeup at the Times over publishing a fascist op-ed offers us the tiniest window into a potential future of journalism that doesn’t have to submit to bothsidesism. Newsroom leaders often seem more concerned about conservatives perceiving them as biased than they are concerned about the prejudice and human rights abuses faced by marginalized communities that include their own employees. In prioritizing false equivalences over truth, these journalists are in dereliction of their duty to their readers and to each other.

Months into the coronavirus pandemic, when antiracist protests have swelled to hearteningly staggering levels — and police crackdowns have responded in kind — journalism is just one of many industries that will have to make a case for itself in whatever world we build out of all this. I hope white journalists can use the opportunity to finally stand in solidarity with Black journalists, and with protesters, and with all workers against state-sanctioned violence. It’s our job to hold abusers of power to account. We can’t stop now. ●




Shannon Keating is a senior culture writer and editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

It Was A Completely Peaceful Protest Against Police Brutality. Then The Cops Attacked.

A peaceful gathering in Manhattan ended with hundreds of police officers attacking people in the streets. Here’s how it unfolded.

Caroline HaskinsBuzzFeed News ReporterRosalind AdamsBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

New York, New York

Posted on June 6, 2020, at 11:22 p.m. E

Caroline Haskins

An entirely peaceful protest in Manhattan ended in chaos, panic, and violence when a mass of police officers in riot gear confronted protesters we were following near Grand Army Plaza, at the entrance to Central Park.

Since an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect on Tuesday to curb looting, there have been nightly clashes between peaceful protesters and police across the city. Looting is down, but the NYPD continues to make mass arrests for curfew violations—sometimes violently. The NYPD did not use tear gas or rubber bullets on this group of protesters, as police have used in other parts of the country. But the rapid escalation of Thursday night’s protest illustrates just how quickly a peaceful march can turn into mayhem.

In the end, police shoved, hit, and arrested dozens of people. BuzzFeed reporters were caught up in the clash. As we tried to record the arrests on video, a police officer shoved one of us with a baton, despite the fact that we had identified ourselves as press. Another officer, in a white shirt, grabbed the other reporter’s arms and was about to handcuff and arrest her, and only stopped after other officers intervened. All around us, batons were swinging and people were running as police rounded up marchers.

The night had begun peacefully. And for a time, it looked as though it was going to remain that way. After a week of protests, the chants were familiar.

“SAY HIS NAME”

“GEORGE FLOYD”

“NO JUSTICE”

“NO PEACE”

“WHOSE STREETS”

“OUR STREETS”

The chants come over megaphones from organizers, from teenagers cupping their hands to their mouths, and from groups of friends holding up signs saying “Black Lives Matter.”

For hours — as the protesters marched in a giant loop starting in Times Square, moving south to Herald Square, west to Chealsea, back east to Union Square and finally north to Central Park — the event was peaceful and relaxed.

Even when the 8 p.m. curfew hit, things stayed calm. Dozens of police officers on bikes and foot trailed the group, and spirits remained high. “It’s our right to peacefully protest,” the crowd chanted, marching down city blocks.

MTA buses and cars beeped their support. Drivers smiled and pumped their fists. The protesters roared back in grateful appreciation. Others handed out water to keep the crowd hydrated on the hot and humid day. Up above, residents standing on their balconies cheered, clapped, and banged pots and pans to show solidarity.

“I love the fact that there’s been support from everywhere, it wasn’t just Black people,” said Angelo La Roche, remarking on the diversity of the crowd. “It really felt amazing to have that love, and feel that vibe and energy from everyone,” the 32 year-old added.

“People just want to protest,” 

READ ON HERE https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/nypd-violence-batons

Philadelphia judge orders release of man on death row for 23 years

WHY I AM OPPOSED TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT


The Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office filed a motion seeking to decline to retry Walter Ogrod for the death of a 4-year-old girl. File Photo courtesy of attorneys for Walter Ogrod

June 5 (UPI) -- A Philadelphia judge on Friday ordered the release of Walter Ogrod, a man who's served 23 years on death row for a slaying prosecutors now don't think he's responsible for.
Philadelphia County Common Pleas Judge Shelley Robins New vacated Ogrod's murder conviction for the 1988 death of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn. Ogrod was sentenced to death in 1996.

"The brutal injustice of Walter Ogrod's case is impossibly tragic," James Rollins, one of Ogrod's lawyers, said in a statement.

"This innocent man and his family lost almost 30 years that they should have spent together. Instead, that irreplaceable time together is gone, lost to a system that keeps making the same mistakes."
RELATED Texas death row inmate seeks stay citing coronavirus pandemic

The ruling ends four months of jostling between the court and Ogrod's attorneys, who sought to have an expedited hearing on his case after their client became ill with symptoms consistent with the coronavirus disease. His lawyers sought to have him released for testing and treatment.

In February, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office filed briefs saying Ogrod was "likely innocent" of killing the girl and was convicted on flawed evidence, including a coerced confession and testimony from discredited jailhouse informants.

"This is a case where no forensic evidence tied Mr. Ogrod to the crime, where eyewitness descriptions didn't match Mr. Ogrod, and where police coerced a false confession from Mr. Ogrod which got many of the facts incorrect about the crime he allegedly committed," Rollins said.

RELATED Florida judge denies new trial for death row inmate in 1985 slaying

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said it has filed an additional motion requesting to decline retrying Ogrod, who was arrested and charged in 1992 for Horn's death.

"I am sorry it took 28 years for us to listen to what Barbara Jean was trying to tell us: that you are innocent, and that the words on your statement of confession came from Philadelphia Police detectives and not you," Assistant District Attorney Carrie Wood told Ogrod during Friday's virtual hearing.

"Not only did this misconduct result in 28 years of your life being stolen, but you were also threatened with execution based on falsehoods. On behalf of the District Attorney's Office, I want to offer my sincerest apologies to you, your family, and friends."

Sharon Fahy, Barbara Jean's mother, also participated in Friday's hearing and said she didn't believe Ogrod killed her daughter, adding that she's "angry that the person who took my daughter's life is likely walking free."

Hannah Cox, the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, welcomed Friday's ruling.

"Walter Ogrod's case is just the latest example of a broken system that risks the life and liberty of innocent people, one of many reasons why so many conservative Republican state legislators nationwide are nowadays seeking repeal of the death penalty," she said.

RELATED Missouri executes Walter Barton by lethal injection

Philadelphia County District Attorney Larry Krasner said if Ogrod is officially declared innocent of the crime, he'll be the 13th person exonerated under his 2 1/2-year administration.

RELATED Judge orders new proceedings or release for Texas death row inmate

ACLU sues Trump, Barr over 'criminal attack' on Lafayette Square protesters

President Donald J. Trump returns after posing with a bible outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo

June 4 (UPI) -- Protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Barr and other top officials on Thursday, alleging their civil rights were violated when police used violent crowd control measures to disperse hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square so Trump could pose for photos before a nearby church.

In the lawsuit filed on behalf of Black Lives Matter D.C. and individual protesters in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs argue that their First Amendment rights to protest and their Fourth Amendment rights were violated when U.S. law enforcement agents fired tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash bombs to force them and other peaceful protesters to disperse Monday evening near the White House.

"Defendants had no legitimate basis to destroy the peaceable gathering," the court filing reads. "Defendants' professed purpose -- to clear the area to permit the President to walk to a photo opportunity at a nearby church -- was a wholly illegal reason for abridging the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and the others assembled in Lafayette Square."

BREAKING: Together with allies, @ACLU_DC is taking Trump, Barr and Esper to court for firing tear gas and other weapons on protesters outside the White House.
RELATED Ohio judge rules Trump cannot claim portion of Stormy Daniels settlement

The use of a chemical weapon was an inhumane violation of the First Amendment.
Our government must be held accountable.— ACLU (@ACLU) June 4, 2020

The use of force to disperse the peaceful demonstrations and the subsequent photos of Trump brandishing a bible before the St. John's Episcopal Church, which had sustained damage from a fire lit in its basement during protests the night before, attracted widespread condemnation from the Democratic Party and the Washington Catholic Diocese as well as some Republicans.
RELATED Largest U.S. mall operator sues Gap for missed rent payments

The White House has compared the photo op to seminal images of American and world leaders showing bravery amid tragedy and said that critics were attempting to politicize the event.
Barr, during a press conference Thursday, said the use of force was not connected to Trump's movement to the church but due to the escalation of the protest in the area and was done to protect federal property and agents by expanding a "buffer zone," stating violent protesters were throwing projectiles amid the peaceful protesters.

"We could not continue to protect the federal property involved and protect our federal agents with such a tight perimeter and so our object was to move it out by one block," he said.

The ACLU argued in the lawsuit, which also names Defense Secretary Mark Esper and several others as defendants, that the actions by the Trump administration are "the manifestation of the very despotism against which the First Amendment was intended to protect."

According to the court filing, Trump and Barr directed the law enforcement agents to disperse the crowd, leaving several protesters injured, some severely.

"The President's shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked and frankly criminal attack on protesters because he disagreed with their views shakes the foundation of our nation's constitutional order," Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement. "And when the nation's top law enforcement officer becomes complicit in the tactics of an autocrat, it chills protected speech for all of us."

RELATED Center for Democracy and Technology challenges Trump social media executive order

The ACLU said more lawsuits will be filed across the country in response to police attacks against protesters and journalists documenting nationwide protests that have rocked the country demanding justice for the police-involved death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died May 25 while in police custody.

The arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, who was seen in video kneeling on a prostrate and handcuffed Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes, has been fired and charged with murder. Three other officers involved in the arrest have been charged with aiding and abetting a murder.

"Across the country, law enforcement armed with military weaponry are responding with violence to people who are protesting police brutality," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement. "The First Amendment right to protest is under attack, and we will not let this go unanswered. This is the first of many lawsuits the ACLU intends to file across the country in response to police brutality against protesters."

DISARM

 DEFUND

DISMISS

COPS

South Korea joins global Black Lives Matter rallies



A South Korean demonstrator holds up a sign in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in downtown Seoul on Saturday. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo

Protesters hold up signs at demonstration against police brutality in downtown Seoul Saturday. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Phot

June 6 (UPI) -- Activists in South Korea held a Black Lives Matter rally Saturday, joining other demonstrations spreading across the globe after the death of George Floyd.

An estimated crowd of some 100 people participated in the BLM rally in South Korea's capital of Seoul.


They began marching from Myeongdong, central Seoul, to Cheonggye Stream, as some held signs reading "Black Lives Matter."

Floyd, an African-American security guard and community leader, died at age 46, on May 25, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, prompting the BLM movement to spread. All four officers involved in Floyd's arrest and death have been charged. Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer, who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly 9 minutes as he was dying, has been charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers involved were charged with aiding and abetting.

Protesters call for convictions of the Minneapolis officers, an end to systemic racism and an end to police brutality, which disproportionately impacts black people.

"We want to show solidarity with the U.S. movement and remember Floyd who was sacrificed due to racism," said Shim Ji-hoon, 34, who organized the event.

Rallies in solidarity with BLM have been held worldwide.

In Australia, thousands protested the deaths of indigenous people in police custody in their country.

NOT 1918, NOT 1928, NOT 1948, BUT 1998

On This Day : James Byrd Jr. lynched in Texas
On June 7, 1998, three white supremacists killed James Byrd Jr. by dragging him for 3 miles behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2020/06/07/On-This-Day-James-Byrd-Jr-lynched-in-Texas/9371590944074/?sl=11


President Barack Obama (L) claps with Louvon Harris (C) and Betty Byrd Boatner, the sisters of James Byrd, Jr., who was a victim of a hate crime, as he delivers remarks on the passing of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, at the White House in Washington on October 28, 2009. On June 7, 1998, three white supremacists killed Byrd by dragging him for 3 miles behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

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UPI Archives:  Texas executes Brewer for dragging death

UPI Archives: Funeral held for James Byrd Jr.

Europeans join global wave of anti-racism protests

AFP / Gabriel BOUYSThousands of protesters gathered outside the US embassy in Madrid

Calling for racial justice, protesters rallied across Europe Sunday, joining a wave of demonstrations sparked by the death of African American George Floyd at the hands of US police.

A video of the incident with Floyd pleading for his life in Minneapolis as a white police officer knelt on his neck has sparked protests worldwide, even as countries continue to discourage large gatherings to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

Several thousand people massed outside the US embassy in Madrid, shouting "I can't breathe", Floyd's last words, and demanding justice.

"Racism knows no borders," said Leinisa Seemdo, a 26-year-old Spanish translator from Cape Verde. "In all the countries where I have lived, I have experienced discrimination because of the colour of my skin."

AFP / Alberto PIZZOLIProtesters raised their fists and held eight minutes' silence in a protest in Rome

Rome's Piazza del Popolo ("People's Plaza") fell silent for eight minutes -- roughly the time the policeman pressed his knee on Floyd's neck -- as thousands of people took a knee in memory of Floyd, their fists in the air.

"We can't breathe," shouted the crowd, after the collective silence.

"It's really hard to live here," said Senegalese migrant Morikeba Samate, 32, one of the thousands to have arrived in Italy after risking the perilous crossing across the Mediterranean.

AFP / Alberto PIZZOLIProtesters carried placards and played drums during a rally in solidarity with the "Black Lives Matter" movement in Rome

Opposition to that wave of migration buoyed the far-right in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

Floyd's death last month has unleashed the most serious and widespread civil unrest in the United States since Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.

The police officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with second-degree murder while three fellow officers face lesser charges.

- 'No Justice, No Peace' -

More than 1,000 people on Sunday also gathered at a Black Lives Matter protest near the US embassy in Budapest.

Hungarian reggae singer G Ras told cheering protesters: "If we want to live in a better world, we need to radically change the way we live."

Almost 4,000 attended two similar events in the Netherlands, while thousands marched in cities across Britain.

Hip-hop artist Stormzy joined protesters marching for a second day running in London despite a ban against large gatherings during the coronavirus.

For the second day running, some demonstrators scuffled with police near Downing Street. There were also clashes outside the US embassy.

AFP / Fabrice COFFRINISome protesters in Lausanne carried placards with the name of 40-year-old Nigerian Mike Ben Peter, who died while being arrested by the city's police two years ago

Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: "These demonstrations have been subverted by thuggery -- and they are a betrayal of the cause they purport to serve. Those responsible will be held to account."

In Bristol, a city linked to the slave trade, the statue of trader Edward Colston was torn down Sunday and thrown into the harbour.

In Lausanne, Switzerland, a black-clad demonstrator's placard read: "my colour is not a threat".

Some protesters there carried placards with the name of 40-year-old Nigerian Mike Ben Peter, who died while being arrested by the city's police two years ago

- Brussels clashes -

Almost 10,000 people marched in Brussels, police said. "The murder of George Floyd has clearly woken up a lot of people," said Ange Kaze of the Belgian Network for Black Lives.

AFP / Aris OikonomouPolice said 10,000 people marched in Brussels

After the demonstration, police arrested around 150 people for vandalism, which the city's mayor, Philippe Close, blamed on "troublemakers and delinquents". Close had authorised the march against the advice of Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes.

A demonstration by 15,000 in Copenhagen ended peacefully.

But there was fighting reported at the end of a protest in Goteborg, Sweden, were almost 2,000 people turned out for a march authorised for just 50 owing to coronavirus restrictions.

Governments are struggling to balance people's need to express their anger, against the risk of protests spreading a disease that has killed more than 400,000 worldwide.

In France, more than 23,000 people demonstrated on Saturday, and football players from a half dozen German teams knelt over the weekend in Floyd's memory.

His death occurred during a pandemic that has disproportionately affected black people and ethnic minorities in mega cities such as London, New York and Rio de Janeiro.

The historic economic recession triggered by virus lockdowns has hammered the poor and marginalised even more.

A combination of economic woes, social tensions and anger at US President Donald Trump's response has refocused attention on racial divides like few other events since the 1960s.

India sends 'man-eater' tiger to lifetime in captivity

AFP/File / STRNearly 225 people were killed in tiger attacks in India between 2014 and 2019, according to government figures

A tiger blamed for killing three people will spend the rest of its life in captivity, Indian officials said Sunday, saying the big cat was "too dangerous" to be allowed to roam free.

The five-year-old male predator, also blamed for attacking cattle, had embarked on a trek more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) long from western Maharashtra state to central India's Betul district in Madhya Pradesh state in 2018.

"We gave it several chances to re-wild but it habitually went into human habitations," Madhya Pradesh's chief wildlife warden, S.K. Mandal, told AFP.

"The only option left was to put it in captivity to ensure both the tiger and humans are safe."

The tiger -- dubbed the "vagabond" or "nomad" by some local media -- was first trapped in December 2018 after its long journey and held in captivity for two months.

The big cat was eventually fitted with a tracking collar and shuttled between a tiger reserve and a national park.

Officials however said it repeatedly strayed and hunted near human settlements, attacking cattle and endangering humans.

Finally the tiger was tranquilised and sent to a zoo in Madhya Pradesh capital's Bhopal on Saturday.

Officials said the decision to capture the adult tiger was taken a few months ago, but was delayed due to the novel coronavirus lockdown.

"It will take sometime for him to adjust to the new environment. We will be monitoring his behaviour," Bhopal's Van Vihar National Park director, Kamlika Mohanta, told AFP.

"As of now it will remain in solitary confinement. A decision to put it on display at the zoo or send it to a (fenced) safari will be taken later."

Human encroachment on tiger habitats have increased in recent decades in the nation of 1.3 billion people, leading to deadly conflicts with the animals.

Nearly 225 people were killed in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019, according to government figures.

More than 200 tigers were killed by poachers or electrocution between 2012 and 2018, the data showed.

India is home to around 70 percent of the world's tigers. Last year, the government said the tiger population had risen to 2,967 in 2018 from a record low of 1,411 in 2006.