Why is VA treating its black students like criminals? [answer = The System of Racism/White Supremacy]

Black Kids in VA are Disproportionately Turned Over to Cops at Nearly 3X the National Rate. From [HERE] A QUAINT idea about school discipline is that students who are unruly and disobedient, or who get in minor scrapes or hallway shoving matches, will be dealt with sternly by teachers and principals. If only. In fact, in a staggering number of such cases, the students, who are often preteens in elementary and middle schools, are referred to police and the courts — a wildly disproportionate response that can stigmatize children at school and, in some cases, be a stain on their records for years.

In the most comprehensive study on the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, published by the Center for Public Integrity in 2015, Virginia schools were the worst offenders, shunting disobedient kids to law enforcement at nearly three times the national rate. The state’s record amounted to a criminalization of rowdiness and run-of-the-mill juvenile behavior, as well as an abdication of responsibility, lack of training or both on the part of adults who nominally run things at public schools.

Based on Education Department data collected in the 2011-2012 school year, researchers found that Virginia was reporting students to the authorities at a rate of about 16 for every 1,000 students; the national average was 6. Just as striking, the report said, was that the most frequent reporters were middle schools, whose students are usually 11 to 14 years old. Nearly half of criminal complaints were issued to students younger than 14 — in some cases much younger.

Typically, the complaint lodged against students is disorderly behavior, a catchall that can mean anything from a temper tantrum to a balled fist to a brawl. State law doesn’t require that law enforcement be notified of such conduct by minors, but many Virginia schools do it anyway. In the state, and nationally, students referred to law enforcement are disproportionately African Americans and children with disabilities. In Virginia, where blacks are 23 percent of the student population, they were nearly 40 percent of those referred from schools to juvenile courts.

The impulse prompting schools to hire police has spread since the massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. It amounts to a massive overreaction on the part of educators who, though justifiably determined to maintain safety for students in their care, ended up adopting hair-trigger policies. A more level-headed approach would emphasize de-escalation training for the police and security officers who work in schools, diversion programs to deal with relatively minor offenders without turning them over to the courts, and clearer rules set by the schools themselves.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has spoken out forcefully against disciplinary policies that criminalize conduct once handled in school. A new state law is in place to encourage local school boards to develop alternatives to suspending students, including counseling, community service and mediation. That’s a promising start. Lawmakers will have to keep the pressure on to tamp down what amounts to massive overreaction on the part of school authorities.

DA Seeks 8 yrs in prison for Chicago Cop who Fired 16x at Black Teens in Car Moving Away From Him & After Crash

From [HERE] and [HERE]  Federal prosecutors are asking for an eight-year prison sentence for Chicago police Officer Marco Proano, calling his decision to fire 16 shots into a moving vehicle filled with unarmed teens an egregious violation of his training that further undermined public trust in the police.

Proano, an 11-year department veteran, was convicted by a jury in August of two felony counts of using excessive force in violation of the victims' civil rights. The December 2013 shooting was captured on video by a police dashboard camera. Proano is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 20.

In asking for the eight-year term, prosecutors said in a court filing Monday that Proano could have killed all six teenagers when he fired indiscriminately into a reportedly stolen Toyota but that by “sheer chance” the bullets wounded only two.

Still, Proano’s blatant use of excessive force — as well as his attempts to justify his actions after the fact — “added another dimension” to the seriousness of the case and exacerbated the already-strained relationship Chicago police have with the communities they serve, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Georgia Alexakis and Erika Csicsila wrote in the 23-page sentencing memo.

“(Proano) gave the community reason to doubt law enforcement’s intentions and reason to believe that it cannot have faith that law enforcement will serve all citizens equally,” the filing said. His actions also “impugned the integrity” of other officers “who go to work every day and fulfill their oath to serve and protect,” according to the filing.

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Black Man Claims White Cops Broke his Spine & Failed to Provide Medical Help - Seeks $10 Million from Riverside NJ

From [HERE] A Black man seeks damages of at least $10 million in a lawsuit alleging white Riverside police officers broke his spine after responding to a dispute at a gas station.

Robert W. Franklin Jr., 52, also asserts officers ignored his pleas for medical help, leaving him in a cell “in excruciating pain” for hours.

And the Greensboro man claims a municipal prosecutor pursued “trumped-up” charges against him in an effort to derail Franklin’s lawsuit against the township and its police officers.

The suit contends the officers’ actions were motivated “solely or in part” by racial bias against Franklin, who  is black.

Franklin is seeking damages for false arrest, excessive force and malicious prosecution, among other alleged civil-rights abuses.

According to the suit, he was injured on May 28, 2016, after a dispute over $15 worth of gas at a Fairview Street service station.

The suit says Franklin paid for the gas with a $20 bill, took his change, and gave a $2 tip to the station attendant. It contends the station employee then claimed Franklin had not paid for his gas and demanded an additional $15.

After the men argued, both agreed to call police to the station, the suit says.

It contends two white officers – Michael Megara and Timothy Morano – had a “lengthy discussion” with the attendant and his manager, but “intimidated (Franklin) and unlawfully ordered him to pay.” It is not clear whether the attendant was also white. 

The suit contends Franklin was “non-threatening and non-antagonistic,” but was also “upset and did fear for his safety.”

It says he agreed to pay for the gas a second time, but the officers “continued with their verbal attacks, insults and even threatened taking Franklin to jail if he did not shut the f- up."

The suit alleges Franklin gave the attendant another $20 bill, told him to keep the change and “verbally expressed his dissatisfaction” with the officers’ actions.

Less than a minute later, the suit continues, one or both of the officers “yanked Franklin out of his vehicle and slammed his head into a gas pump.” It alleges Franklin was “slammed … with such force that the pump swayed back and forth.” The officers dragged Franklin to a patrol car and threw him into the back seat, according to the suit.

It says Franklin asked to be taken to a hospital but instead was held in a police station cell for three hours. It says an ambulance was called to take him to Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro, where doctors determined he should be treated at the trauma unit of Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

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17 State Attorney Generals Oppose Nationwide Concealed-Carry Gun Bill

From [HERE] Attorneys general from 17 US states urged Congress in a letter [text, PDF] Monday to abandon legislation that would require states to validate concealed-carry gun permits issued in another state, regardless of their own gun law restrictions.

The attorneys general argue that the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 [text, PDF] could "lead to the death of police officers and civilians, the proliferation of gun traffickers, and acts of terrorism and other mass violence."

They further argue, "Under the legislation, our residents would lose the protections that their legislators and law enforcement agencies have deemed appropriate, in favor of rules made by States legislating for very different local conditions. Rather than creating a new national standard for who may carry concealed firearms, these bills would elevate the lowest state standard over higher ones and force some States to allow concealed carry by people who do not qualify under their laws. The House bill would override some state laws that prohibit carrying concealed weapons in bars, schools, shopping malls, movie theaters, subways or parks. States would not be able to enforce those restrictions." Attorney General Kilmartin of Rhode Island argues [press release] that the bill would weaken local prohibitions on violent misdemeanor offenders, domestic abusers and other similar non-felony offenders whom some states have determined pose a danger.

The 17 states in opposition of the bill are: New York, Massachusetts, California, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia, Rhode Island, District of Columbia, Delaware, Iowa, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, New Mexico, Washington and North Carolina.

Is Dying for Uncle Brother & his American Empire Heroic?

From [MintPress] Predictably, the news media spent most of the week examining words Donald Trump may or may not have spoken to the widow of an American Green Beret killed in Niger, in northwest Africa, in early October. Not only was this coverage tedious, it was largely pointless. We know Trump is a clumsy boor, and we also know that lots of people are ready to pounce on him for any sort of gaffe, real or imagined. Who cares? It’s not news. But it was useful to those who wish to distract Americans from what really needs attention: the U.S. government’s perpetual war.

The media’s efforts should have been devoted to exploring – really exploring – why Green Berets (and drones) are in Niger at all. (This is typical of the establishment media’s explanation.)

That subject is apparently of little interest to media companies that see themselves merely as cheerleaders for the American Empire. For them, it’s all so simple: a US president (even one they despise) has put or left military forces in a foreign country – no justification required; therefore, those forces are serving their country; and that in turn means that if they die, they die as heroes who were protecting our way of life. End of story.

Thus the establishment media see no need to present a dissenting view, say, from an analyst who would question the dogma that inserting American warriors into faraway conflicts whenever a warlord proclaims his allegiance to ISIS is in the “national interest.” Patriotic media companies have no wish to expose their audiences to the idea that jihadists would be no threat to Americans who were left to mind their own business.

Apparently, the American people also must be shielded from anyone who might point out that the jihadist activity in Niger and neighboring Mali is directly related to the US and NATO bombing of Libya, which enabled al-Qaeda and other Muslim militants to overthrow the secular regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi. That Obama-Clinton operation in 2011, besides producing Qaddafi’s grisly murder and turning Libya into a nightmare, facilitated the transfer of weapons and fanatical guerrillas from Libya to nearby countries in the Sahel – as well as Syria. Since then the US government has been helping the French to “stabilize” its former colony Mali with surveillance drones and Green Berets based in Niger. Nice work, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. (Citizen Trump was an early advocate of US intervention in Libya.) Need I remind you that the US/NATO regime-change operation in Libya was based on a lie? Obama later said his failure to foresee the consequences of the Libya intervention was the biggest mistake of his presidency. (For more on the unintended consequences for the Sahel, see articles here, here, and here.)

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Witnesses—Black Man Still Moving & Conscious 20 Minutes into Execution [Murder] by Alabama w/ Experimental Drug

From [HERE] Alabama executed Torrey McNabb on October 19, amid questions of state interference in the judicial process, resulting in another apparent failure by the drug midazolam to render a prisoner insensate during an execution. Alabama prison officials defended the execution—which took 35 minutes—as conforming with state protocol, most of which has been withheld from the public.

Montgomery Advertiser execution witness Brian Lyman reported that at 9:17 p.m., twenty minutes into the execution and after two consciousness checks, "McNabb raised his right arm and rolled his head in a grimace" and then fell "back on the gurney." 

Associated Press reported that his “family members and attorneys who witnessed the execution expressed repeated concerns to each other that he was still conscious during the lethal injection.” 

Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn, racist suspect in photo, dismissed McNabb's responses as "[i]nvoluntary movement," which he said were not unusual. "I’m confident he was more than unconscious at that point," he said.

McNabb had been challenging the state's execution protocol in court for more than a year at the time Alabama issued a warrant for his execution. He had won an appeal permitting his case against the state's use of midazolam to move forward to trial, and the Alabama federal courts had issued an injunction stopping the execution so that judicial review of the state's execution process could take place.

However, on October 19, the U.S. Supreme Court, over the dissents of Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, lifted the injunction, vacating the stay and permitting the execution to proceed. Two-and-a-half hours after the execution was scheduled to begin, the Supreme Court denied another last-minute stay application, without dissent, and the execution proceeded.

The execution capped a dramatic 48 hours during which Texas courts halted two other executions that had been scheduled for October. On October 18, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had stayed Clinton Young's October 26 execution to permit an evidentiary hearing on his challenge that newly discovered gunshot residue evidence showed that the state's lead witness was the actual killer in his case, and a Texas trial court had stayed the execution of Anthony Shore to investigate allegations that he may have colluded with another death-row prisoner to falsely confess to the murder for which that prisoner had been condemned. McNabb's execution was Alabama's third and the 21st in the United States in 2017.

New Study: Death Sentences More Likely When the Victim is white & Less Likely when the Victim is Black in PA

From [HERE] A new study of capital punishment in Pennsylvania found that death sentences are more common when the victim is white and less frequent when the victim is black.

The report, which drew from court and prosecution records over an 11-year period, concluded that a white victim increases the odds of a death sentence by 8 percent. When the victim is black, the chances are 6 percent lower.

"The race of a victim and the type of representation afforded to a defendant play more important roles in shaping death penalty outcomes in Pennsylvania than do the race or ethnicity of the defendant," according to the 197-page report obtained by The Associated Press.

Penn State researchers produced the $250,000 study for the Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, and its findings are expected to be incorporated into a separate, ongoing review of the state's death penalty that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has said could affect the death penalty moratorium he imposed shortly after taking office in 2015.

The report also found the prosecution of death penalty cases varies widely among counties, calling that variation the most prominent differences researchers identified.

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Ohio State Un-invites Richard Spencer [Provoking Violence & Making Criminal Threats is Not Non-Violent Protest]

From [HERE] Officials at Ohio State University won’t allow noted white nationalist Richard Spencer to rent space on campus, citing safety concerns after several of his supporters opened fire on counter-protesters at the University of Florida.

The events in Florida, of course, aren’t the first time that a white supremacist event has recently turned violent. In August, amid a “Unite the Right” rally at the University of Virginia, 19 people were injured and one woman was killed by a man who drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

In a letter from an attorney representing Ohio State sent on Friday, the lawyer noted the university was concerned that hosting Spencer would pose a “substantial risk to public safety, as well as material and substantial disruption to the work and discipline of the University.”

According to the letter, Ohio State officials came to this conclusion after this week’s events at the University of Florida, where three of Spencer’s supporters were arrested and charged with attempted homicide after they fired into a crowd of counter-protesters following Spencer’s speech. Counter-protesters were ultimately unharmed.

Now, the University of Florida is left with a $600,000 bill for the increased security — one that will ultimately trickle down to taxpayers — required for Spencer’s appearance on campus. Hundreds of police officers, as well as SWAT teams and snipers, mobilized at the school to help keep the peace.

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[Media Underreports on Neo-Nazis & White Terrorists] Cable News Ignores Murder Attempt at Richard Spencer "Rally"

From [HERE] Since white nationalist Richard Spencer’s October 19 speech at the University of Florida, there has only been one mention across the three major cable news networks -- CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News -- that three of Spencer’s supporters were charged with attempted homicide for allegedly shooting at counterprotesters outside the event.

NBCNews.com reported that three of Spencer’s apparent neo-Nazi supporters -- Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears, and Colton Fears -- were arrested outside of Spencer’s speech, after one of them fired “one shot, which hit a nearby building” after the others in the car urged him “to shoot at the protesters.” NBC News also noted that the supporters “displayed Nazi salutes and shouted chants about Hitler.”

Spencer is “one of the country’s most successful young white nationalist leaders” and was one of the leading forces behind the violent August 12 white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed.

Across the three cable networks, MSNBC’s AM Joy was the only program that mentioned that the Spencer supporters were arrested after they “literally fired shots at anti-fascist protesters.” During the segment, ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson noted that he had interviewed Tenbrink after his involvement in the Charlottesville rally, and that Tenbrink told Thompson, “‘I hate the leftists. The leftists are evil. They’re bringing degeneracy to our country. … I’m fighting against multiculturalism, the press of multiculturalism on Western society, and I’m fighting for my children.’” Thompson added, “Fast forward to this week, he shows up in Florida at the Richard Spencer event, and according to police, opens fire on counterprotesters with a handgun.”

Terrorism perpetrated by right-wing extremists and white nationalists is often undercovered in the media. When the Trump administration released a list of supposed “underreported” terror attacks, it neglected to include numerous instances of terror and killings committed by white nationalists. In fact, white extremists are currently more dangerous than other extremist groups in the United States. As Foreign Policy reported in August, “the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year”

Methodology

Media Matters searched SnapStream transcripts for CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Thursday, October 19, the day of Spencer’s rally, through Saturday, October 21, and between 6 a.m. and 12 p.m. on Sunday, October 22, for the terms “Spencer,” “Tenbrink,” “Fears,” "white nationalist," "white supremacist," "Florida," or variations of the term “shot” and “shoot.”

Puerto Rico’s Death Toll Probably 10X the official number: Govt Requiring Unusual Process to Verify Deaths, 450 Dead Estimated

From [HERE] and [HERE] It was exactly one month ago that Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, leaving nearly total devastation in her wake. While the official death toll was raised to 49 on Friday morning, after a resident succumbed to a bacterial disease that is caught through an animal’s urine, research indicates that the real number of fatalities is probably closer to 450.

Public Radio International recently interviewed Vox editor Eliza Barclay about the facts and fiction of what’s happening on the ground. When asked about the method officials are using to tally the number of fatalities, Barclay said that “we don’t have a super clear sense of exactly how they’ve been doing it. But one thing they’ve been doing is requiring that every single body be inspected by officials from the Institute for Forensic Science. And then they’re also saying that they need to do interviews with family members to confirm that a death definitely resulted from the hurricane. So it seems, at least, like a pretty strict set of requirements in order to attribute a death directly to the storm.”

Still, with officials originally claiming that just 16 people had died as a result of Hurricane Maria — and Trump using that number as proof of “his” success in dealing with the catastrophe — the numbers just didn’t seem right to Barclay and her colleagues. So they decided to dig deeper.

“We knew from reports on the ground, and investigative journalists who’ve also been looking into this, that this was very likely way too low of a number. So we decided to basically go through and look at all the Spanish and English news sources we could find and we compiled our own numbers based on those reports. We found a total of 81 deaths linked indirectly or directly to the hurricane, that included what — at the time of our report — was 45 official deaths, and then there was another 36 that we found that were not showing up in that official count. And then we found another 450 reported deaths, and another 69 missing.”

Barclay was clear that these are “squishy” numbers, not hard evidence that Vox was able to calculate the exact total of deaths. “But they indicate that there’s probably a lot of deaths out there that they’re not accounting for in San Juan.”

16. 48. 49. 500. It’s all practically the same, right?

El Vocero, a local newspaper, reported that there are 350 bodies awaiting autopsies, though it’s unclear how many — if any — were at the Institute of Forensic Sciences before the hurricane struck. Even so, that’s a big discrepancy.

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According to Former Governor: Doctors in Puerto Rico Forced to Perform Surgeries by Cellphone Light

From [HERE] and [HERE] While Moron Donald Trump is busy characterizing his administration’s response to the devastation in Puerto Rico as a “10,” doctors appear to be performing surgeries by the light of only cellphones.

On Saturday, Puerto Rico’s former governor Alejandro García Padilla, who served from 2013–2016, tweeted a photo of an operating room with doctors working in near–darkness, the theater lit by handheld cellphones. “This is what POTUS calls a 10!” García wrote.

Yet, while the humanitarian crisis continues, the president of the United States busies himself by golfing, issuing misleading statements about his administration’s emergency response, and seeking validation despite his incompetence.

Despite the fact that the USNS Comfort, a massive, state–of–the–art floating hospital, has been stationed off Puerto Rico’s coast for over two weeks, many patients simply can’t access it, or the care they need, due to washed out roads, a lack of medical air transport, and an inefficient and confusing bureaucratic process governing admission to the ship. 

The USNS Comfort is capable of performing surgical operations and providing post–operative care, but only 33 of 250 beds are being used. According to CNN, “Clinics that are overwhelmed with patients and staff say they don’t even know how to begin sending cases to the ship.”

The process for sending patients to the USNS Comfort, CNN says, is as follows:

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the official protocol is for patients in need to go to their nearest medical facility. If that facility is unable to provide care, a doctor there should contact the medical coordinating center in San Juan.

Someone there will then determine whether a patient needs to be transferred to a hospital on the island and which one. In some cases, a determination will be made to transfer a patient to the US Army Combat Support Hospital in Humacao, which has 44 beds and has been operational since Sunday.

Last Thursday, during a White House news conference with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, Trump called his response to the crisis a “10.” That was supposed to be 10 out of 10, but San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz had a different grade for the president, saying he rated a “10 out of a scale of 100,” which is “still a failing grade.”

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