“IF YOU FUCK WITH ME I’M GOING TO BREAK YOUR LEGS”

How many more of these stories do I need to post before we admit that we have a police problem, and it’s not “just a few bad apples”?



“Can you tell me why I’m being arrested?” Hamza Jeylani asks an officer in a video captured on his cell phone.

“Because I feel like arresting you,” the officer, who the American Civil Liberties Union identifies as Officer Rod Webber, replies in the short video.

This exchange happens after Webber calmly threatens Jeylani, who does not appear to be offering any resistance whatsoever. “Plain and simple,” Webber tells Jeylani, “if you fuck with me I’m going to break your legs before you even get a chance to run.”

According to the ACLU, Jeylani and four of his friends — all of whom are black teenagers — were pulled over after making a U-turn in a parking lot in South Minneapolis. The four young men had been playing basketball at a YMCA. Despite Officer Webber’s statement that Jeylani was arrested because the cop felt like arresting him, the police claim that they suspected the four youth of stealing the car they were driving.

Jeylani, however, says that the driver of the car had documents showing that he owned the car. And the ACLU adds that “police said the stolen car they were after was a blue Honda Civic. The teenagers, however, were driving a blue Toyota Camry.”

The video of Jeylani’s arrest was released alongside a report detailing racial arrest patterns in Minneapolis. It concludes that African Americans in Minneapolis “are 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for low-level offenses, like trespassing, disorderly conduct, consuming in public, and lurking.” Meanwhile, Native Americans are “8.6 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people.”

When cops go rogue and get sued and lose, it should come from their pension fund and not tax payers’ dollars. That might deter the “protecting and serving” the shit out of the black community!

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

IN BARSTO CALIFORNIA BLACK PREGNANT WOMEN GET TREATED DIFFERENTLY THAN WHITE WOMEN

Officials with the city of Barstow, California insisted this week that officers had acted properly when they used force to arrest a pregnant woman who refused to show them her identification, even though the charges were later dismissed.

In police body camera video obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), an officer is responding to an apparent traffic dispute between Charlena Michelle Cooks, who is 8 months pregnant and black, and an unidentified white woman.



From THE RAW STORY:

The officer first talks to the white woman, who accuses Cooks of acting “all crazy.”

“I don’t see a crime that has been committed,” the officer admits after examining the woman’s car. After promising the woman a police report, the officer heads over to talk to Cooks.

Cooks explains that the argument occurred because the woman disagreed with the way she was driving in the parking lot. Cooks also said that the woman frightened her daughter, who was in second grade.

“She called the police for whatever reason, I don’t know,” Cooks says. “Should I feel threatened by her because she’s white? Because she’s white and she’s making threats to me?”

At that point the officer asks for Cooks’ name, but she insists that she does not have to tell him.

“I actually do have the right to ask you for your name,” the officer replies.

“Let me make sure,” Cooks says as she makes a phone call to someone.

The officer says he will give Cooks two minutes to verify his right to ask for her identification. But less than 20 seconds later, the officer and a colleague are performing a painful wristlock takedown on Cooks. The pregnant woman screams as she is forced belly first into the ground.

“Why are you resisting?” the officer demands.

“Please! I’m pregnant!” Cooks exclaims. “Please, stop this!”

ACLU SoCal staff attorney Adrienna Wong pointed out that Cooks had a right to refuse to show her ID.

“It would be a wrongful arrest, but it would be an arrest,” she noted. “Even if an officer is conducting an investigation, in California, unlike some other states, he can’t just require a person to provide ID for no reason.”

“Officers in California should not be using the obstruction law, Penal Code 148, to arrest someone for failing to provide ID, when they can’t find any other reason to arrest them,” Wong added.

ACLU SoCal staff attorney Jessica Price observed that Cooks, who is black, was handled very differently than the white woman.

“Imagine getting wrestled to the ground and handcuffed in front of your child’s elementary school,” Price remarked. “Imagine interacting with other parents afterwards. Imagine what kids who saw the incident tell your child. And if you think the whole incident happened because of your race, how does that impact your view of police?”




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STAFF WRITER

TEACHERS TO JAIL FOR TEACHING "HARMFUL" MATERIALS

A lawmaker in Kansas is seeking to criminalize the distribution of “harmful” materials to minors in schools, lifting an exemption for teachers using approved materials. Advocates working against the bill worry it will have a “chilling” effect on teachers in the state.

“It’s purely a reaction to this instance of this one particular sex ed poster,” said Micah Kubic, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, who testified against the bill. “This poster must be the most impactful poster in the history of the poster.”

The text-only poster, displayed in Hocker Grove Middle School in Shawnee, Kansas, in 2014 was titled, “How Do People Express Their Sexual Feelings?” and included the words “hugging,” “grinding” and “anal sex.” Kubic said the bill is unnecessary. “The teacher who put that up was disciplined by the school almost immediately after that parent complained,” he said.

“There was a list of sexual acts, some of which were highly offensive,” Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook told KMBC 9 News. Pilcher-Cook previously introduced a bill that would criminalize surrogate parenting, saying “you are creating a child purposely that you know is not going to have a biological mother.”

The bill would criminalize displaying material to minors that is “harmful,” including “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse when the material or performance.” The bill looks likely to pass the state Senate this week, and carries a penalty of up to six months in jail. Kansas already has a law that protects minors from “harmful” material, mainly to prevent adults from distributing pornography to minors. As it is written now, the law includes an exemption for teachers, but this bill aims to remove that exemption.

ACLU Kansas and teachers worry that the language is overly broad, and that teachers could be targeted for things that are part of a normal curriculum, including books with sexual or controversial themes like Huckleberry Finn. A lesson an anatomy, say, might be dicey for a biology teacher, or an art history class could be scrubbed because some of the content included nudes.

Marcus Baltzell, communications director at the Kansas National Education Association, warned that teachers already worry about the effect. “One person’s objection about something is now putting a blanket of silence, a blanket of censorship over an entire state. Is that what we want?”

“It makes me feel like I need to self-censor,” Baltzell, who is a certified teacher, said. “Now I have to consider anything that would have any kind of text or imagery or anything that would be remotely questionable by say one individual I can be brought up on charges for that.”

Baltzell pointed out that there are already rigorous standards in place to deal with parents who object to materials presented by teachers. “This is a solution in search of a problem,” he said.

Another bill inspired by the poster that inspired the “harmful” materials bill would require schoolchildren to “opt in” to sex ed rather than “opt out.” Baltzell, though he didn’t comment on the details of the state’s sex ed program, did note that an opt in standard is harmful. “We think that’s difficult and dangerous for the child who needs this education but doesn’t have that same active and involved parent that another student does,” he said.

According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, Kansas’ statewide curriculum already prescribes “a complete program of abstinence until marriage in human sexuality that is developmentally appropriate, including information about sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.” Research has shown that students educated in an abstinence-only environment tend to have sex earlier and more often than students educated with more comprehensive materials.

ACLU Kansas’ Kubic pointed out that there are only three other states that currently have “opt in” requirements. “We’ll be going in the wrong direction,” he said.

Crossposted from thinkprogress

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STAFF WRITER

MAYBE THEY ARE GETTING THE MESSAGE?

HATING FOR REPUBLICAN JESUS

On January 31, the Mississippi Senate unanimously passed SB 2681, a bill that adds “In God We Trust” to the state seal. It also contained language just like that in Arizona’s freshly-vetoed bill that would allow people to use religious beliefs as a defense in civil cases — thereby instituting the same “license to discriminate” that prompted a national backlash in Arizona. The bill passed under the radar, without any discussion about whether it was anti-LGBT, but thanks to pressure from the ACLU, the bill is receiving a significant rewrite.

Late Wednesday night, the Mississippi House Civil Subcommittee voted to strike all of the problematic language that would have protected discrimination. Instead, the bill will resemble the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) that 18 other states have. These laws, along with their federal counterpart, help protect individuals’ religious practices from government intrusion without allowing them to be imposed on others.

Mississippi is only the latest state to scrap, stall, or defeat a “license to discriminate” measure disguised as “religious liberty.” In addition to the veto in Arizona, bills were defeated this week in Ohio, Indiana, and Georgia and last week in Kansas, Maine, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Idaho. Missouri is currently the only state where such a bill is still on the table.





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