‘I just don’t understand how any of them can sleep’: Parents of seven-year-old allegedly maced at Seattle protest speak out against police

Louise Hall,The Independent•June 15, 2020

The parents of a seven-year-old child who was allegedly sprayed with mace by police at a peaceful protest in Seattle have spoken out about the traumatising incident.

Footage of the protest that showed the boy screaming in pain while protesters attempt to help by using a milk-like substance to wash the child’s eyes went viral online at the beginning of June.

The video also shows protesters confronting the officers allegedly involved in spraying the child and asking for their badge numbers. One officer allegedly refused to give the protesters his badge number.

Mando Avery, the father of the seven-year-old, told The Guardian that he and his son had just finished praying with members of their church as part of a peaceful anti-racism protest when a police officer fired mace at the group which hit his son in the face.

When asked by the newspaper what he would say to police about the alleged incident he said: “I would say that you were targeting my boy.”

“I don’t know if you were trying to set an example and strike fear into him. You did a great job,” Mr Avery said.

The boy’s father also claimed that officers and a group of emergency medical technicians standing about a block away did not try to assist his son.

“No officer, who’s paid to protect, chose to stand up, break the ranks, go help this child,” he told the outlet.

“I just don’t understand how any of them can sleep.”

The child’s name is being withheld to protect his privacy.

The Guardian contacted the Seattle police department for comment, and was referred to the city’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA), which said it was expediting its investigation into the incident.

The OPA reportedly said the “child pepper spray case” was “currently being investigated. We should have a public update on the progress soon.”

The department reported at least 12,000 complaints, of which a majority were related to Mr Avery’s son, the newspaper reported.

Protesters who witnessed the scene and posted the video had previously called on people to file complaints with the department.

Shenelle Williams, the boy’s mother, told the newspaper that hearing her son’s scream was the “most gut-wrenching feeling”.

“I kind of feel like a failure as well,” she said, “because I feel like I couldn’t protect him, but there was nothing that we could do at that time to prevent it.”

The Seattle Police Department recently banned the use of tear gas at protests for 30 days.

The family have received some criticism online about bringing their young child to the protests, but said that when they arrived they had seen other families and young children, saying that it had initially felt “completely safe”.

“We just wanted to stand up for what was right,” Mr Avery said. “Ultimately our boys will become men and our daughters will become women. And they will ultimately have to face some of the same racial injustices. And enough is enough. Black lives matter,” he told The Guardian.

According to the newspaper, the family is working with a lawyer before deciding on the next steps going forward.

Evan Hreha, the 34-year-old hairstylist who filmed the footage of the alleged incident, told the newspaper that he confronted the officer he believed had maced the boy and said that he would post the video online.

Mr Hreha, said he was later arrested by police a week after posting the footage, with police alleging that he had pointed a laser in an officer’s eye.

There are currently no pending charges against Mr Hreha and no sign of any “documentation with any narrative about the incident that allegedly justified his arrest”, his lawyer, Talitha Hazelton said.

Mr Hreha, who is white, was reported to have been denied bail and held for two days. He told the newspaper that he believed his arrest was a response to him posting the footage online.

“It’s woken me up a bit,” he said. “It just kind of shattered that false narrative that was in my head that cops always protect and serve.”

The Guardian contacted the Seattle Police Department for comment, and was referred to the OPA, which said it did not know if a complaint had been received about Mr Hreha’s arrest.

Seattle Police Department referred a further request for comment to the city attorney, according to the report, which said the police department had not yet referred the case.

The Independent has contacted the Seattle Police Department for comment.





The Seattle police were accused of macing a 7-year-old boy at a Black Lives Matter protest. The protester who filmed the aftermath was held in jail for 2 days a week later.

INSIDER•June 15, 2020

Video captured at a Seattle Black Lives Matter protest on May 30 showed a young boy who was said to have been sprayed with mace by the police.
Screenshot/Evan Hreha

A Seattle protester who captured video of a distressed young boy who was said to have just been maced in the face by the police at a Black Lives Matter demonstration on May 30 was himself arrested a week later.

Evan Hreha had posted the video to social media. The video caused 11,000 complaints to be filed to Seattle's Office of Police Accountability, Seattle's Komo News reported.

Hreha attended another peaceful protest in Seattle on June 7. Following the protest, he told The Guardian, he was confronted by several officers who told him he "had been identified as someone who pointed a laser in an officer's eye." He was denied bail and held for two days in jail but was not charged with a crime.

Hreha told the outlet that he believed his arrest was in retaliation for the video he captured of the young boy.

Video footage captured at a Seattle protest on May 30 showed a small child in distress.

The footage was posted online by a man named Evan Hreha, who attended the Black Lives Matter demonstration and said the child in the video had just been maced by the police.

"First person maced is a little girl," Hreha wrote in a caption alongside the video, originally mistaking the young child for a girl. "What the f--- is wrong with you people."

Several days later, after he had attended another Black Lives Matter protest, Hreha was arrested on suspicion of unlawful discharge of a laser. He was held in jail for two days before being released, according to King County Jail records.

Hreha, who was not charged with a crime, told The Guardian that he believed his arrest was in retaliation for the video.

"It just kind of shattered that false narrative that was in my head that cops always protect and serve," Hreha told the outlet.
What happened at the protests

Protesters shouting at law-enforcement officers on May 30 in Seattle.
Karen Ducey/Getty Images

Hreha had been attending a Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle on May 30. Mando Avery was also there with his family, including his 7-year-old son, he told The Guardian.

Mayor Jenny Durkan announced a 5 o'clock curfew that night to quell protests inflamed by the death of George Floyd, who was killed following an arrest in which a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. According to The Seattle Times, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington activated the National Guard shortly after the curfew began.

The day began with several peaceful rallies, though police officers used flash bangs and tear gas to break up crowds that continued protesting into the evening. There were reports of break-ins and looting in downtown Seattle. Seattle's police chief, Carmen Best, said in a statement that 27 people were arrested that evening.

Hreha told Komo News that around the time he shot his video, roughly 50 people were "facing off against the cops" at about 3 p.m. during a peaceful protest at Seattle's Westlake Park.

But Avery told The Guardian the police turned on the protesters seemingly unprovoked. He said his 7-year-old son was hit in the face with mace.

"I would say that you were targeting my boy," Avery told The Guardian, addressing the police. He said he didn't know whether the police "were trying to set an example and strike fear" into his son but was most upset that no officers or medical technicians stepped in to help.

Hreha's video begins with the young boy clutching onto his father while screaming. Several protesters attempt to spray the boy with water, while another appears to douse him in milk to try to stop the burning.

According to Komo News, Hreha's video caused 11,000 complaints to be filed to Seattle's Office of Police Accountability.

Andrew Myerberg, the director at the Office of Police Accountability, told Komo News the agency would be "actively investigating" an officer believed to have been involved in the incident.

On June 7, Hreha attended another protest, where he told The Guardian he helped hand out free hot dogs to demonstrators.

Hreha told the outlet he was surrounded and arrested on his way home by several officers and "had been identified as someone who pointed a laser in an officer's eye" during the protest, an allegation he denies.

The King County prosecuting attorney said in a tweet on June 8 that charges were not filed against Hreha but that the Seattle Police Department would be sending the case to Seattle Municipal Court "for consideration of a misdemeanor charge."

The Seattle Office of Police Accountability did not immediately respond to Insider for comment about the macing allegation and Hreha's allegation of retaliation.

Read the original article on Insider

NYPD says 'no criminality' after officers fall ill after drinking milkshakes at Shake Shack in Manhattan

WHY WE HAVE WORKPLACE HAZARDOUS MATERIALS LABELLING RULES

UNLABELLED OR MISLABELLED CHEMICALS ARE A COMMON PROBLEM IN THE WORKPLACE

The New York Police Department found no criminality after officers became sick Monday night from shakes they got at a Shake Shack in downtown Manhattan, Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison tweeted early Tuesday. Sources told CBS New York it appears the incident was accidental, possibly the result of cleaning solution that wasn't properly removed from the shake machine.

Harrison tweeted that, "After a thorough investigation by the NYPD's Manhattan South investigators, it has been determined that there was no criminality by Shake Shack's employees."

Police – and the police union -- initially suspected an employee may have contaminated the shakes with bleach.

The officers were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where they were treated and released. A shake sample was taken to a lab for testing, police said.

The Police Benevolent Association said the officers were assigned to a protest detail. There have been numerous racial justice demonstrations in the area since the George Floyd's death – some marred by clashes with police.

Before word came down that no foul play by Shake Shack employees was discovered, the PBA was quick to express its outrage over the incident on Twitter:

#BREAKING When NYC police officers cannot even take meal without coming under attack, it is clear that environment in which we work has deteriorated to a critical level. We cannot afford to let our guard down for even a moment. pic.twitter.com/fbMMDOKqbV

— NYC PBA (@NYCPBA) June 16, 2020

Also before the determination that none of its workers was implicated, Shake Shack tweeted that it was "horrified":

We are horrified by the reports of police officers injured at our 200 Broadway Shack in Manhattan. We are working with the police in their investigation right now.

— SHAKE SHACK (@shakeshack) June 16, 2020

Later, the company said:

Our team is working hard to get the full picture. In the meantime, we’re relieved to hear the officers are all okay. https://t.co/rjJYFSYjZc

— SHAKE SHACK (@shakeshack) June 16, 2020

AS I HAD SUSPECTED AT THE FIRST, WITH MY TRAINING IN CHEMICAL SAFETY THIS WAS A FAILURE TO LABEL A TOXIC CHEMICAL PROPERLY SO IT RESULTED IN THIS UNINTENTIONAL POISONING WHICH THE POLICE UNION FAILED TO THINK OF BEFORE BEAKING OFF 

NYPD officers hospitalized after drinking milkshakes from Shake Shack

The New York Police Department investigated whether three of its officers were poisoned after drinking milkshakes Monday night at a Shake Shack restaurant in Manhattan.

The officers complained of "not feeling well" before being hospitalized and later released, the NYPD said in a statement to USA TODAY, and Shake Shack said via Twitter that it was "horrified" and working with police.

The Detectives' Endowment Association, the labor union that represents 20,000 active and retired New York City Detectives, condemned the incident as an attack on police, claiming on Twitter that the officers were "intentionally poisoned by one or more workers."

However, Chief Rodney Harrison, NYPD's chief of detectives, tweeted early Tuesday: "After a thorough investigation by the NYPD’s Manhattan South investigators, it has been determined that there was no criminality by shake shack’s employees."

GRIFTER NATION

GoFundMe froze $350,000 in contributions after Black Lives Matter supporters mistakenly donated to an unaffiliated group with the same name
Tyler Sonnemaker Business Insider•June 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter murals have been painted by activists in several US cities in recent days. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images


GoFundMe has frozen $350,000 in donations to a group called Black Lives Matter Foundation after BuzzFeed News informed it the group was unaffiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.


The foundation's founder told BuzzFeed News the group had a different mission from that of the anti-white-supremacy movement: "unity with the police department."


Employees from companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox also raised over $4 million for the group through the charity platform Benevity, which told Business Insider the funds had not been distributed to the group.


GoFundMe and Benevity told Business Insider they're working with donors and campaign organizers to get the funds to the intended places.

Donors looking to support the global Black Lives Matter movement raised an estimated $4.35 million in June for an organization called Black Lives Matter Foundation, but most of those funds are now in limbo after BuzzFeed News discovered that the foundation was unaffiliated with the movement.

Black Lives Matter Foundation is based in Santa Clarita, California, and was founded in 2015, BuzzFeed News reported. Robert Ray Barnes, the founder and sole paid employee of the foundation, told the outlet that the two groups had nothing to do with each other and had vastly different missions.

"Our whole thing is having unity with the police department," Barnes told BuzzFeed News in a report Monday.

Despite differing approaches to ending racial injustice and police brutality, their similar names led many donors and supporters to give to Barnes' organization, mistakenly assuming it was associated with the global movement, according to BuzzFeed News.

After George Floyd's killing following an arrest in Minneapolis prompted donations to begin pouring in to racial-justice organizations, people organized campaigns on charity sites like GoFundMe and employers offered to match donations using platforms like Benevity, and both listed Black Lives Matter Foundation as a recipient option.

Employees from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox took advantage of their company's donation-matching programs via Benevity to help raise over $4 million for Black Lives Matter Foundation, according to BuzzFeed News (while both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston listed the organization as an eligible organization in letters to employees).

BuzzFeed News said neither platform appeared to be aware that Black Lives Matter Foundation and the global Black Lives Matter movement weren't connected until it contacted them, and now they've halted donations to the group and are trying to get the funds to the intended recipients.

A GoFundMe representative told Business Insider that the company used the PayPal Giving Fund database to enable people to donate to causes and that it's working with PayPal to redirect funds.

The representative said "180 campaigns have recently raised money for the Black Lives Matter Foundation, raising $350,000," continuing: "GoFundMe placed all funds on hold and we are working with PayPal and the campaign organizers to ensure all of the money raised is transferred to the Black Lives Matter movement via their fiscal sponsor."

"A number of donors have recently given to PayPal Giving Fund in support of the Black Lives Matter movement by making donations through one of our platform partners," a PayPal representative told Business Insider. "We are diligently looking into the matter and working with the donors, our partners, campaign organizers, and charities involved to ensure that the funds are granted as quickly as possible."

A Benevity representative told Business Insider the $4 million in funds mentioned in the BuzzFeed article "have not been distributed to Black Lives Matter Foundation per our standard vetting and disbursement process."

"No funds will be going to the Black Lives Matter Foundation as they've been deactivated from our platform," the person added. "Benevity is working closely with our clients to redirect the funds to other social justice cause."

The Black Lives Matter movement that has gained global attention in recent weeks began as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) following the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and became more widely known as simply Black Lives Matter in 2014 after a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The movement's official organization, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc, wasn't registered as a corporation in Delaware until 2017, and its nonprofit fundraising arm is called Thousand Currents.

Barnes defended his organization's name, even claiming the global movement had "stolen" his name and idea, according to BuzzFeed News, even though it was widely recognized before he started the foundation.

A representative for the Black Lives Matter movement told BuzzFeed News that the Santa Clarita group was "improperly using our name" and that the movement planned "to call them out and follow-up."

Barnes did not disclose how much his foundation had raised in total but said he planned to use the funds for community and police bonding events, according to BuzzFeed News. As the publication noted, however, the California attorney general's office in December sent the foundation a cease-and-desist order, which accused it of failing to properly register with its office and file annual financial reports and barred it from disbursing any funds without permission.

ICONIC MY BLACK LIFE MATTERS

As incidents of police brutality multiply, historians hear echoes of 18th-century ‘slave patrols’


Marquise Francis
National Reporter & Producer,
Yahoo News•June 15, 2020

George Floyd protesters face violence from police — and civilians who disagree with the cause

As protests over the death of George Floyd continue, mostly peacefully, videos of alleged violence and excessive force on the part of law enforcement are spreading on social media. Several videos showing violence on the part of civilians who appear to be opposed to the demonstrations have also surfaced.

Millions of people around the world, caught up in the tragedy of black Americans killed by police and white vigilantes, have taken to the streets in recent weeks to march for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others. At the same time there have been counter demonstrations, generally much smaller, by racist groups including remnant groups of the Ku Klux Klan, and unrelated protests against coronavirus lockdowns by largely white, conservative, armed mobs.

It is hard not to notice that the police have treated the two kinds of protests very differently.

In February, police escorted more than 100 masked members of a white nationalist group on a march through Washington's National Mall. Patriot Front members shouted, "Reclaim America!" and "Life, liberty, victory!" as officers protected them against possible attacks.

In April, hundreds of protestors, many armed, entered the Michigan Capitol building and crowded halls and staircases demanding that the state legislature not extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus stay-at-home order. One of the protesters carried a doll dangling from a noose. Police stood by placidly as demonstrators jeered and shouted from much less than six feet away.

Protestors try to enter the Michigan House of Representative chamber and are being kept out by the Michigan State Police after the American Patriot Rally organized by Michigan United for Liberty protest for the reopening of businesses on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on April 30, 2020. Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Also, in Rome, Ga., a viral video captured police calmly patrolling a KKK rally in full regalia.

In contrast, there have been a significant number of reports, many caught on video, of law enforcement instigating violence or mistreating law-abiding citizens during peaceful protests, most famously when law enforcement and National Guard personnel cleared demonstrators outside the White House for President Trump’s photo op at an Episcopal church two weeks ago. After first denying it, the Secret Service admitted last week that pepper spray had been used on the crowd.

In another instance, a video that has gone viral shows a peaceful protest last week in East Meadow, N.Y. An officer stepped into the path of a protester and stopped short, causing the marcher to bump into him. Police officers then swarm the protester and knock him to the ground, arresting him.

Police claim the march was impeding traffic.

Another video shows an NYPD officer pulling down a peaceful protester’s mask to pepper spray a young man in the face at point-blank range late last month.

Earlier this month, in Buffalo, a 75-year-old protester was pushed to the ground by two police officers during a Floyd protest. The push led to the man’s head hitting the pavement and he was left to bleed as officers walked past him. He was taken to the hospital with a brain injury.

On June 7 in Seattle, police clashed with a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration, dispersing marchers with flashbang grenades and pepper spray and pushing some demonstrators with a police bicycle.

“This has been going on underneath my apartment for several days now,” said one local resident, @menilivne, who has filmed the nightly procession told NewsFlare. “Peaceful protesters stand in front of barriers that the police set up. Eventually, the police do something to provoke the protesters. Sometimes they approach them and start moving the barrier. This leads to a scuffle where the police use flashbangs, and in the past tear gas, too, against the protesters.”

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - MAY 30: Police advance on demonstrators who are protesting the killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Medics and journalists also have been targeted by police and even arrested for doing their jobs. One medic in Brooklyn pleaded to officers as he was arrested for giving first aid to someone. In another instance, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while broadcasting live on air in Minneapolis.

While there are many additional examples of police and Black Lives Matter protestors coexisting peacefully, you cannot find many, if any, videos of Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist or armed militia groups, having violent confrontations with police. The injustice harkens back to the very origins of policing in the U.S., in volunteer patrols charged with keeping African-Americans in their place and hunting runaway slaves.

Dating back to the 1600s, the British colonies that would later become the United States enlisted citizens of towns and cities to patrol their own communities and maintain order. Later in the 1700s, early policing evolved into slave patrols, responsible for heading off slave rebellions and preventing enslaved people from escaping. The inception of policing in America was built on keeping black lives in order.

“Policing has a historical base of controlling and containing black people,” Delores Jones-Brown, Professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College told Yahoo News. “We can talk about the overseers on plantations, where black [bodies] were controlled, followed by Jim Crow where police were in charge of controlling black people. In some ways everyone knew what was incorrect and immoral, but police were in charge of enforcing this law. There is over 300 years of this.”

July 11, 2009 in Pulaski, Tennessee. (Getty Images)

The first iteration of the KKK came about in the late 1860s, around the Reconstruction era, in southern parts of the U.S. Klan members sought the restoration of white supremacy through intimidation and violence aimed at the newly enfranchised black freedmen. The hate group terrorized black communities by carrying out lynchings and destroying black schools.

In more recent times, there have been disturbing signs of connections between the KKK and some law enforcement agencies and individuals.

In September 2019, a Michigan police officer was fired after KKK memorabilia, including a framed KKK application, was found in his home. The officer said the items were part of his antique collection.

In 2014, a Florida town was rocked by the news that two Fruitland Park police officers were allegedly members of the local KKK. One officer was later fired and the other resigned.

Police officers have been known to post hateful and racist messages on social media or dressing up in black face. One expert who studies hate and extremism says this reflects the systemic racism that runs through every American institution, including policing.

“If we contend that systemic racism runs across institutions in society, including police departments … to the extent that people of color are to be stopped by police, frisked and disproportionately killed in interactions by police, it stands to reason that the [issues] that are brought by citizens have some merit,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino in an interview with Yahoo News. “It stands to reason that the same kind of bias is similar with respect to rallies.”

Levin added that in the wake of tense protests between officers and community members, the only solution is for the two sides to work together towards change, to get beyond the optics of police throwing Black Lives Matter protesters to the ground, and police treating racist mass murderer Dylann Roof, who shot up a prayer meeting at an African-American church, to a meal from Burger King after his arrest.

“What activists have to do as well as police is roll up our sleeves together and figure this out,” Levin said. “This includes the development of self-policing by rallygoers.”

The idea of self-policing and any kind of policing reform is now the subject of a push by many top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The “Justice in Policing Act” would be the most transformative policing reform legislation of its kind, banning chokeholds in all jurisdictions and requiring local police departments to send data on the use of force to the federal government. Democrats plan to present this bill to the House floor by July 4 — and Republicans plan to present their own plan.

Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat from California and chair of the Democratic Black Caucus, and House and Senate Democrats raise their hands when asked about the viability of their bill during a news conference unveiling policing reform and and equal justice legislation at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, June 8, 2020. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Despite the evident difference in policing at rallies, and the fact that the KKK has a long history of killing black people dating back to the mid-1800s, President Trump announced last week that he is seeking to label anti-fascist group Antifa as a terrorist organization, not the KKK.

“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Trump tweeted on May 31.

The only caveat is, he can’t do this. The federal government only has the authority to designate foreign groups as terrorist organizations. There is no domestic terrorism statute under which to label U.S.-based groups.

“We don’t have federal legislation that mandates what the criteria for labeling a domestic terror group is,” Levin said. “We can develop that, but if we are going to do that and allow the government to interfere with peaceful First Amendment activity, do we feel comfortable with them interfering with domestic actors?”

The latter becomes a complex issue of whether to condemn hate or start a precedent of limiting free speech that may be harmful. All the while, the numbers show hate crime is growing. Hate crime hit a 16-year high in 2018, according to an annual FBI report. The biggest spikes in hate crime took place in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the largest cities in the nation, according to Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

Yet polling shows most Americans sympathize with the nationwide protests. A new Reuters poll found 64 percent of American adults were “sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,” while 27 percent said they were not and 9 percent were unsure.

The protests have helped energize the Black Lives Matter movement, which has gained newfound momentum since it began in 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of teenager Trayvon Martin. While in its early days it was frequently met with the counter-slogan “All Lives Matter,” BLM is now widely recognized as an appropriate call to redress centuries of injustice, a rallying cry for equality in the name of humanity. The movement has always and continues to seek to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes,” according to its website.
A young boy raises his fist for a photo by a family friend during a demonstration over the Minneapolis death of George Floyd while in police custody on May 31, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
With the latest wave of activism, at least public perception appears to be changing. In 2017, a poll by Reuters/Ipsos/UVA Center for Politics, revealed that 39 percent either strongly or somewhat agree with the idea that white people are the primary victims of racism. Just 32 percent supported Black Lives Matter, which at the time was associated in the public mind with NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who provoked outrage, from President Trump among others, by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before games to protest police brutality and systemic racism.

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll has found that a significantly larger number of Americans are changing their minds on NFL sideline protests. A majority of Americans (52 percent) now agree that it is “OK for NFL players to kneel during the national anthem to protest police killings of African Americans.” In 2018, according to another Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 35 percent agreed with Kaepernick’s right to protest.

Having spent five years as an NYPD officer from 1985-1989, Levin believes that transparency is the only way for the police to regain trust in the public.

“One of the best things police can do is to have greater transparency to enforcement,” he said. “The issue is not only bias we have to address, but addressing standards in policing in which rallies and demonstrations are included. This includes training of different kinds of gatherings. A peaceful demonstration that is fixed is different than one that moves.”

Jones-Brown says President Trump contributes to the problem. “In D.C. you have the leader of the free nation, who doesn’t believe it’s a free nation. And whether overt or thinly veiled, [he consistently] comes out against people of color,” she said. “Police have been emboldened to act out towards black people.”

The world is watching — and joining in — as Americans march for change. Jones-Brown believes history continues to rear its head time and time again at these moments.

“We know there is vitriol from the Blue Lives Matter movement,” she said. “[It’s emphasized by] the position of black people in America and those who say black people should be subordinate. You see people say ‘How dare you?’ And the police have always been the force to keep you in your place.”

_____

NINA SIMONE MISSISSIPPI GODDAM

Families Challenge Suicide in Deaths of Black Men Found Hanging From Trees

Families of black men found hanging from trees in California dispute suicide claims

Sandra E. Garcia, The New York Times•June 15, 2020

The families of two black men who were found hanged from trees in Southern California are asking authorities to further investigate their deaths.

The family of Robert L. Fuller, 24, disputed authorities’ initial pronouncement that he died by suicide. The family of Malcolm Harsch, 38, is worried his death will also be ruled a suicide.

Harsch was found at 7 a.m. on May 31 near a homeless encampment in Victorville, California, where bystanders told authorities he was living. There were no indications of foul play but the investigation was continuing, according to a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department.

The Victorville Fire Department found bystanders performing CPR on Harsch when it arrived at the scene, according to Sue Jones, the public information officer of the city of Victorville. Firefighters took over and tried to restore Harsch’s heartbeat, but they stopped after 20 minutes.

“We grieve for Malcolm’s family and extend our deepest condolences,” Jones said. “Malcolm Harsch’s life mattered.”

Harsch’s relatives were told by the coroner’s office that his autopsy was completed, said Harmonie Harsch, Malcolm Harsch’s sister, but they were not informed of the cause of death.

“We are really just trying to get more answers as to what happened,” Harmonie Harsch, 29, said in an interview Sunday. “My brother was so loving, not only to his family but even strangers. It is not like him.”

Malcolm Harsch moved to California 14 years ago from Ohio, Harmonie Harsch said.

“He loved doing tattoos, he was very artistic,” she added.

Harmonie Harsch said she was conducting her own investigation into her brother’s death.

“It has been stressful,” she said. “It doesn’t sound right.”

Around 50 miles west of Victorville, in Palmdale, California, Fuller’s family questioned authorities’ pronouncement that his death was considered a suicide.

At a rally for Fuller on Saturday, Diamond Alexander, his sister, said through tears that the initial resolution on her brother’s death “did not make sense.”

“Everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right,” she said, according to video of the rally in Palmdale. “We’ve been hearing one thing. Then we hear another. And we just want to know the truth.”

A passerby discovered Fuller’s body hanging from a tree in Poncitlán Square, across from Palmdale City Hall, at around 3:39 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Though the investigation was continuing, authorities noted in their news release that “Mr. Fuller, tragically, committed suicide.” Fuller’s autopsy has not been completed, authorities said.

“My brother was not suicidal,” Alexander said. “He wasn’t.”

The men’s deaths have struck a chord with people in northern Los Angeles County and across the nation as many have protested against racism and police brutality for over two weeks, in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

A petition demanding for a full investigation into Fuller’s death had over 215,000 signatures as of Sunday afternoon.

At a news conference held by officials at Palmdale City Hall on Friday, residents made it clear that they did not trust that local authorities would properly investigate Fuller’s death. They demanded an independent review and transparency.

“Why was it right here in public, in front of City Hall, next to a church, in front of a library?” one woman said. “Why was it like that? Who would do that? No black man would hang himself in public like that.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

Tulsa, site of next Trump rally, has a place in the memory of black Americans — a terrible one


Ellis Cose,  Yahoo News•June 16, 2020

Black community leaders slam Trump's Juneteenth Tulsa campaign rally

Trump campaign officials knew, according to the Associated Press, that planning a rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Juneteenth, a celebration of African-American emancipation, was offensive. They just didn’t know how offensive. They didn’t realize that some people would put it nearly on par with scheduling a Nazi rally at the gates of Auschwitz on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.
Why is Tulsa’s history so allegorically powerful? Because it showed the debased lengths to which white Americans, well into the 20th century, would go to destroy black lives and crush the hopes of black people for a better life, literally into dust.

According to Trump, his black friends (and I will take him at his word that he has some) convinced him that this Juneteenth, as America endures a huge racial reckoning, might not be the best time for his rabid supporters — some of whom, based on past experience, would come carrying Confederate flags — to descend on Tulsa.

Instead they will gather there the following day, June 20. But for black Americans, the location will still evoke memories of an epic episode of mob violence and racial cleansing.

Smoke coming from damaged properties following the Tulsa Race Massacre in June 1921. (Oklahoma Historical Society/Getty Images)

The nightmare began on the evening of May 31, 1921, after rumors raced through Tulsa that a black shoeshine boy had assaulted a 17-year-old white elevator girl. “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator” read a Tulsa Tribune headline.

Talk of lynching quickly took root. A mob gathered around the county courthouse where the black teen, Dick Rowland, was being held. The mob screamed for Rowland to be brought out. A small group of black war veterans armed themselves and went to the courthouse, hoping to protect him.

Angry words were exchanged, shots were fired and people lay dead in the street. The mob became an avenging army intent on destroying the Greenwood District, the most prosperous black community in America. The mob was joined by National Guardsmen and police. There were (unverified) reports of police-commandeered planes dropping nitroglycerin bombs as Tulsa’s whites contained what they described as a “negro uprising.”

When the mob was done, a 35-block area had been destroyed and some 10,000 blacks were homeless. The Red Cross, which conducted a major relief operation in the aftermath, estimated the death toll at perhaps 300.

The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Newspapers of the time attributed the outbreak to the usual suspects. “Negro Reds Started Riots,” shouted the Los Angeles Times. The San Francisco Chronicle blamed “Bolshevik Propaganda.” In a generally sympathetic commentary, the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out that blacks “fought for their country, just as the whites did. ... But it should not be forgotten that the strain of savagery in the race is not yet eliminated.”

The black-owned Philadelphia Tribune had a different view: “Once again has the attention of the world ... been called to the inhuman and brutal side of the American white man in his dealing with the colored people of this country.”

Tulsa’s was not an isolated incident. In the aftermath of the war to “save democracy,” white Americans set out to eradicate black hopes of equality. In 1919, violent riots had broken out in numerous cities, including Chicago, Washington, D.C, and Omaha. The worst was in the small town of Elaine, Ark.

The Arkansas Democrat blamed black radicals. In truth, those radicals were simple sharecroppers eager to unionize and get a better price for their cotton. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas describes the anarchy there as “by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States.” It says something sad and profound that in neither Tulsa nor Elaine do we even know precisely how many were killed — just that there were a lot.

Whites inevitably blamed the violent outbreaks on blacks. The Chicago Tribune slammed the black press for spreading “propaganda” about racial equality. Such nonsense, concluded the Tribune, “is most generally ascribed to two causes: The presence of negro soldiers in France, where French women of the lower classes accepted them as equals, and the presence of an increasing number of agitators among negroes.”

National Guard troops, carrying rifles with bayonets attached, escort unarmed African-American men to a detention center after the Tulsa Race Massacre. (Oklahoma Historical Society/Getty Images)
A century later, at long last, we seem prepared to remember those long-redacted chapters of history free of the denial, excuses and victim blaming of the past. Encouragingly, substantial numbers of whites are listening to black peers. Several years ago I wrote “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” a book explaining the intense frustration experienced by America’s rising black middle class. I advised black readers about the danger of pointing out racism at work. In all likelihood, I warned, such behavior would be met with a white wall of denial that might destroy their careers.

In the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, and of countless videos documenting racial bias, whites are finally accepting the fact that blacks have not been lying all these years. Finally, we are seriously debating whether the price of social order is the loss of so many black lives.

But there is an even deeper question. Why have we embraced an approach to policing that results in the deaths of so many civilians, white as well as black? European police typically kill a fraction of the number of people per capita that American cops do. World Population Review calculated that American cops kill at a rate of 28.4 per 10 million people annually, compared with a rate of 3.8 in France, 1.3 in Germany and 0.5 in the United Kingdom. In Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the number of people killed by police in a typical year is zero. In Iceland, cops don’t even carry guns.

Last year in Norway, after an eight-hour standoff, police shot a man wielding a machete and a chain saw. His was the first police fatality of the year. Norway Today noted that police had fatally shot only five people in 15 years. In all such cases, the person was armed.

When I asked a Norwegian journalist about the difference in American and Norwegian statistics, she replied, “Police violence has never been an issue here. Actually, we mostly regard the U.S. handling of so many things as both extremely uncivilized and immature.”

There is a rich irony in our current reality, which finds us governed by the most dishonest, least grown-up president in history as we finally face some difficult truths — and perhaps take some tenuous steps toward maturity.

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Ellis Cose is the author of “Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU’s 100-Year Fight for Rights in America” (from which parts of this article are drawn) and “The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America,” both due out this year. https://elliscose.com/ Twitter: @EllisCose.


Tulsa Race Massacre / The Tulsa World Library
See all of the coverage of the race massacre in this special report.

Tulsa World editorial: This is the wrong time and Tulsa is the wrong place for the Trump rally


Donald Trump addresses a crowd during his rally at the Mabee Center in Tulsa on Jan. 20, 2016.
IAN MAULE/Tulsa World

President Donald Trump is coming to town this week for a campaign rally.

It will be his first since such events were suspended earlier this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown.

We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city.

Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic. The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn’t make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea. There is no treatment for COVID-19 and no vaccine. It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow.

The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK.

This is the wrong time.

Tulsa and the nation remain on edge after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump, a divisive figure, will attract protests, the vast majority of which we expect to be peaceful. But there may also be confrontation and inappropriate behavior from some. His 2016 Tulsa rally provoked a heated response for some, and his ability to provoke opponents has only grown since then.

Again, Tulsa will be largely alone in dealing with what happens at a time when the city’s budget resources have already been stretched thin.

There’s no reason to think a Trump appearance in Tulsa will have any effect on November’s election outcome in Tulsa or Oklahoma. It has already concentrated the world’s attention of the fact that Trump will be rallying in a city that 99 years ago was the site of a bloody race massacre.

This is the wrong place for the rally.

When the president of the United States visits your city, it should be exciting. We think a Trump visit will be, but for a lot of the wrong reasons, and we can’t welcome it.

Larry Kudlow Vows End To $600 Unemployment Aid As 'Disincentive' To Work
THE REAL DISINCENTIVE TO WORK IS THE FAILURE OF EMPLOYERS TO PAY A LIVING WAGE

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost•June 14, 2020


President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday vowed an end to an extra $600 a week in unemployment payments for the jobless, calling it a “disincentive to work” — assuming there is work.

Kudlow’s dismissive attitude about the payments amid massive unemployment amid the COVID-19 pandemic was a dramatic contrast to his defense of the Payment Protection Plan for businesses, which can use the forgivable public loans to pay exorbitant executive salaries.

He insisted to Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the extra unemployment aid “might have worked for the first couple of months,” but “it’ll end in late July.”

Kudlow insisted that “almost all businesses ... understand” that the $600 additional benefit is “a disincentive” to work. “I mean we’re paying people” without jobs “not to work,” he added. “It’s better than their salaries would get.”

He said the Trump administration is considering a “reform measure” that might provide an incentive to return to work — but that it won’t be as much.

The extra aid is in addition to regular unemployment payments that can be as low as an average of $250 a week in some states.

Kudlow’s comment assumes there will be jobs for everyone now collecting on unemployment, even though many experts predict jobless numbers will remain in the double digits at least until year’s end.

Tapper said he has a “tough time really believing that people don’t want to go back to work.” He also pointed out that some workers’ jobs aren’t coming back, which Kudlow called a “fair” point.

“I personally agree with you; I think people want to go back to work,” Kudlow added, undercutting his own claim.

The mediocre aid to the average worker came up as Kudlow staunchly defended the Trump administration’s refusal to reveal the recipients of some $500 billion in PPP aid to business owners — even though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin promised the massive taxpayer aid would be “transparent.”

PPP loans become grants if the money is spent on particular costs, such as rent, utilities and payroll — including salaries up to $100,000. Only 9% of Americans earn $100,000 a year or more, leaving the 91% of taxpayers who earn less to subsidize the top rate covered by public PPP funds.

Tens of millions of PPP dollars are going to prop up wages in wealthy publicly traded corporations and companies owned by wealthy Trump donors.

The Heroes Act passed by the House would extend the $600 additional weekly unemployment benefit for workers through the end of January 2021. No similar legislation has been passed by the Senate.