To "protect and serve" ALL of us.

  I rarely blog about my personal cases for obvious reasons, but I feel comfortable writing about a client of mine (I will call him Mr. B) because he assured me that it was alright to do so.

Mr. B wants attention brought to his situation because he feels that a great injustice was done to him.

Here is his story:

Mr. B owns a small bordega in  a very rough part of Philly.

On the evening of May 30th he was in his store tending to his day to day business when a gentleman came in and started harassing him over a transaction that was made in the store.

Mr. B alleges that the man gave him a five dollar bill and insisted that it was a twenty, and he wanted more change than Mr. B was willing to give him after he made his purchase.

The man became loud and abusive and started threatening Mr. B and his young daughter who was in the store at the time.

Mr. B called the police and they arrived on the scene in three marked cars. After much discussion,  and evidence gathering, the police decided that the man should go on his way and there was not enough evidence presented to take any further action.

But then it got interesting. A police supervisor (we call them white shirts here in Philly) came on the scene and asked Mr. B if he had a gun. Mr. B said that he did and had a permit to carry it in his store as he carries large amounts of money from time to time, and his store is in a rough area of town.

Mr. B gave the officer his gun and his permit, and he was held and questioned for over two hours while officers prevented anyone from coming into the store.

The officer left with his firearm and permit, and did not write an incident report or give him a receipt for his permit.

This is when Mr. B contacted your truly, as he is now worried about everything that transpired that evening.

Anyway, I am doing what lawyers do, and hopefully Mr. B will have his firearm back real soon.  

The thing is, though, I am thinking of contacting the NRA. I am thinking that this is the type of individual that they should be fighting for.

I have been all over them in the past, but I am going to give it a shot and give them a call on behalf of my client, Mr. B.

I will keep you posted.

I thought about folks like Mr. B when I read the article that I am about to drop on you.

Folks like Mr. B never seem to get the type of justice and proper policing that they deserve.

And yes, here it comes:

Do you think that if Mr. B was in another part of town and looked a little different than he does, that the police superintendent would have reacted in this way when called to his store?

I know; neither do I.

So on to the article.

"On the morning of March 11, 2008, shortly after the bus picked up his twin brothers for preschool, Emill Smith stopped by the house of his mother, Valerie Maxwell, in Chester, Pennsylvania. At 22, he was stocky and athletic, with dark eyes, faint facial hair, and a cursive tattoo on his right hand: "R.I.P. James," in memory of his father, who died in his sleep when Emill was 12. They talked for a while, and he asked if he could pick the twins up from school that afternoon so they could spend time together.

That afternoon, Emill took the four-year-olds to McDonald's and his place before dropping them off at Valerie's: "They almost set the apartment on fire," he joked. "Here, you can have them." As he walked out, he stopped.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"I love you more."

At 7:15 p.m. that night, Valerie dialed Emill's number to make sure he was home in time for his 7:30 curfew, part of his probation for disorderly conduct in a domestic dispute. No answer. A few minutes later, one of Emill's friends rushed in and collapsed.

Emill had been to a neighborhood bar, where a security camera recorded him dancing, hanging out by the pool table, and kissing an old friend on the forehead before leaving. As he got into his car, someone walked up and shot him several times. No one was ever arrested in connection with the crime, and odds are no one will be. That's because, while Chester has one of the nation's highest homicide rates, it has a far lower than average "clearance rate." Not even one-third of last year's 30 homicides have been solved, a rate less than half the national average. Since 2005, 144 killings have gone unsolved.

For generations, black frustration with policing has been best described in a two-part statement: Cops don't care enough to solve crimes in our neighborhoods—they just come and harass our kids. Novelist Walter Mosley even built a best-selling detective series around a tough private investigator who does all the serving and protecting that cops won't do on the black side of town.

The bitter irony is that it was this same complaint that helped spawn the aggressive policing tactics now under attack from Ferguson to New York City. In the 1980s, when crack and heroin syndicates swept through black neighborhoods, black parents and pastors were some of the first and loudest voices to demand a war on drugs. What they got was "broken windows" policing—an emphasis on curbing petty offenses to prevent more serious crime.

What they also got were mandatory minimum sentences for shoplifters, indiscriminate stop-and-frisk sweeps, and deadly choke holds on men selling loose cigarettes. There's little evidence that these tactics contributed much to the national decline in crime. But they did erode trust in law enforcement across many communities—leaving places like Chester increasingly bereft of the protection they badly need. With residents both fearful of police and worried about being targeted for talking to them, detectives can't find the witnesses they need to solve crimes, breeding further distrust and a vicious cycle of frustration. A 2014 New York Daily News investigation found that in 2013, police solved about 86 percent of homicides in which the victim was white. For black victims, the number was just 45 percent. And in high-minority communities like Chester, says David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, clearance rates for murder—and even more so for nonfatal shootings—can get "pathetically low. They can easily fall down to single digits."
 
Founded as the settlement of Upland in 1644, Chester once thrived on industry—its shipyard supplied Union soldiers, its steel mills sustained residents through both world wars, and factories, including a Ford plant, offered good jobs for black and white residents through the 1950s. Residents flocked to movie theaters and nightclubs, and legends like Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played streetball at "The Cage."

But in the 1960s and '70s, companies left Chester for other parts of the county, and the city starved for jobs and tax revenue. Toxic-waste processing plants were among the few businesses moving in as middle-class families headed to the suburbs, leaving the city with nearly half its postwar population. And in the '80s, Chester, like nearby Philadelphia, became a hotbed for organized crime and drug trafficking.

Today, smoke still drifts from the stacks of the Kimberly-Clark plant on the Delaware River, where workers make Scott tissue and paper towels. Up the hill are clusters of well-kept redbrick houses around Crozer Medical Center, the city's largest employer. Across Chester Creek are boarded-up homes and the city's Ruth L. Bennett and William Penn housing projects. Some 75 percent of Chester's residents are African American, a third live below the federal poverty line, and unemployment is at 7.5 percent, nearly 2 points higher than the national average. In 2013, the homicide rate here was more than four times that of Philadelphia and Chicago. And in a city of a little more than 34,000, each death sends ripples throughout the community.

There are at least 120 churches in Chester, including the Temple of Brotherly Love, presided over by the Reverend Calvin Williams. Williams lost a son and a nephew to gun violence, and over the last decade, he and his wife, Patricia, have been visiting crime scenes as often as possible, offering prayer and reflection behind the yellow caution tape. "When brothers and sisters can't get jobs, or this little guy is trying to take care of his mother, he's going to find a way," Williams says. "So it becomes territorial. He's trying to make a living, so he's going to do whatever's he's gotta do."

When Williams heard that Emill Smith, whom he knew from volunteering at Chester High School, had been killed, he headed to his mother's house immediately. When she opened the door, Williams held her tight and said nothing. "He let me cry," Valerie says. "Calvin knew, he just knew how I felt about my children. My children mean everything to me."

Just five months after Valerie buried Emill, police found her aunt Sherrice Alexander-Hill's son Karim Alexander dead in the street behind her home—the first of what would be six homicides that week. Some of the killings seemed to involve retaliatory violence between warring neighborhood crews, according to local news reports. But that's conjecture, because cops haven't solved Karim's murder either.

What determines the likelihood of a murder case being solved? One factor appears to be police response in the hours and days after a killing: According to a study published in the National Institute of Justice Journal, the faster officers secure the scene, notify homicide detectives, and ID witnesses, the more likely it is the killer will be brought to justice.

But that can be hard in a place like Chester, says Cory Long, a community leader who worked on the city's anti-violence task force, because the relationship between police and community is so strained that residents are often reluctant to come forward. Witnesses not only fear police won't protect them from retaliation, they simply don't believe law enforcement will help them find justice.

"Some of these issues have been going on with the same neighborhoods," Long says. "You know, generations under them. One guy gets locked up. His younger brother or cousin or relative will take [the retaliation] on, as they get a little older. It just keeps recycling and recycling." There was a time when homicides mostly resulted from turf wars between neighborhoods, but now, he says, "it has spiraled a little more out of control. It's a free-for-all."

Homicide, at its core, is an intimate crime. In any given city, criminologist Kennedy points out, gun violence is concentrated among a small number of residents in struggling neighborhoods. When someone gets shot, the news travels quickly. "People know what happened," Kennedy explains. "So if the criminal-justice system isn't taking care of this, the likelihood that you'll get your friends and a gun and take care of this goes up." [More here]

Yes, my frustration with how the police do their work continues, and the situation in places like Chester, Pennsylvania  justify my frustrations.

Poor policing and the lack of police involvement will always lead to a breakdown of police and community relationships.

Just ask Mr. B.


 

More news from "post racial" America.

Stories you will never hear on FOX VIEWS and other news outlets like it.

"James Craig Anderson sang tenor in the choir at the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. He’d worked at a car plant near Jackson for seven years, and he enjoyed gardening in his free time. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, a man named James Bradfield, was the legal guardian of a 4 year-old child, and Anderson and Bradfield were raising the child together. This child will not grow up in Anderson’s care, however, because Anderson was killed by a mob of white teenagers.

The murder of Mr. Anderson recalls Jim Crow era lynchings. On a Sunday morning shortly before dawn, a group of teenagers were drinking in the nearby town of Puckett. According to police, one of them told his friends they should leave and “go fuck with some niggers.” Two carloads of the boys then drove to Jackson, where they found Anderson in a parking lot, beat him, and then drove their pickup truck over him. During the beating, some of the teens reportedly yelled out the words “white power.”

Yet, while Anderson’s death may resemble Klan violence from another era, it is hardly a memory from a distant past. James Craig Anderson died in 2011. Three of his killers were sentenced Tuesday by a federal judge.

Judge Carlton Reeves delivered fairly substantial remarks at the sentencing hearing. His full remarks are worth reading in their entirety. In them, he laments the “toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness and unadulterated hatred” that “caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget,” and he lays out the brutal history of racial violence that still defines Mississippi in many people’s minds. Quoting one author’s description of the state, Judge Reeves says that “there is something different about Mississippi; something almost unspeakably primal and vicious; something savage unleashed there that has yet to come to rest.”

This history, according to Reeves, stands in tension with what the judge labels the “New Mississippi.” This is the Mississippi that has struggled to lift the state “from the abyss of moral depravity in which it once so proudly floundered in.” And the murder of James Craig Anderson “ripped off the scab of the healing scars of Mississippi . . . causing her (our Mississippi) to bleed again.”' [Source]

I know I know, we are "post racial" now. And folks like that color arousal agitator, the field Negro, is just looking for racism to chase to stir up folks.

If only that was true.

Sadly, it's not only Mississippi, it's places like Alabama as well. Where police officers can brutalize an elderly man who doesn't speak English because he is...well.. different.

The good news is that the police officer in Alabama has been arrested. And, like the animals in Mississippi, he will have to answer for his crime.

The bad news is that America continues to think that she has turned the corner on racism and ignorance.

"On Tuesday, Anderson’s family found justice. But Anderson remains dead. Mr. Bradfield, a man who cannot even call himself a widower due to another form of unconstitutional injustice, said in a statement to the court that his adopted son sleeps in his bed because “he doesn’t want those people to get me.” The United States of America has a black president. That president appointed a black judge, a black attorney general, and a black prosecutor. And none of these men have the power to restore what a small band of drunk teenagers took away from Anderson and his family.

Almost two years to the day after racism killed James Craig Anderson, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. “Things have changed in the South,” Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his opinion for the Court. “Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” On these points, the Chief Justice is correct. The South is different than it was in 1965. Racial minorities do enjoy high offices, including the office of President of the United States.

But it only took a few boys from a tiny town in the poorest state in the nation to re-create the age of Jim Crow lynchings.

This is what Chief Justice Roberts missed in his opinion scrapping a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on the theory that it did not reflect “current needs.” He missed the fact that racism can be an intensely individualistic crime against reason. A police force can be committed to equality, and a single cop can still fire impulsively on a black suspect. A nation can be committed to universal suffrage, and yet a single state legislature can erect obstacles to the right to vote. Lynchings are now infrequent in the South, but that does not make Anderson’s death any less tragic. And it certainly does not justify eliminating laws banning racially-motivated killings.

We are fortunate to live in a nation where most people do not commit serious violations of the law. Most employers do not act with racist intent. Most cops do not fire their guns unnecessarily. Most teenagers do not follow up a night of drinking with violence. Judge Reeves’ “New Mississippi” is slowly but consistently displacing the old one.

But that does not mean that we should make Roberts’ mistake of blurring the line between less racism and no racism. Anderson did not die due to a racist regime of state-sponsored apartheid, he died because of a small band of hateful Americans."

And because a majority of Americans choose to believe that those "small bands of hateful Americans" do not exist.








 

Lucky Marcus.

Can you imagine who much injustice could have been prevented if we had things such as dash-cams back in the day to keep the po po in check?


Thankfully we have them now. And instead of time spent behind bars (like so many black men out here), Marcus Jeter is a free man, and it is the officers that arrested him who are facing charges.


"As soon as they opened the door, one officer reached in and punched me in my face. As he's trying to take off my seat belt, I'm thinking, 'Something is going to go wrong.'"

Jeter says the cops continued hitting him, telling him not to resist arrest.

"And when they open the [police cruiser] door, about to put me in, the officer hits me in the back of the head again," Jeter said.

The incident began when police responded to a domestic violence call at the Bloomfield home Jeter shares with his girlfriend. No charges were filed, and Jeter says he left after briefly talking to officers.

Police followed, trailing him along the Garden State Parkway. Dash-cam video shows Jeter pulling over and stopping on the highway shoulder.

The two officers pulled out guns.

Jeter didn't get out of the car. He was afraid.

"There was a cop on my left with a gun pointed at me, a cop on the other side with a shotgun," he said.

The video that was not initially turned over -- from the dashboard of a second police cruiser -- shows a third officer coming from the opposite direction, crossing the median and striking Jeter's car. That incident was not mentioned in any police reports related to the arrest.

As soon as prosecutors saw the second video, they dismissed all of the charges against Jeter.

A grand jury has since indicted two Bloomfield police officers -- Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter -- on various charges, including conspiracy and official misconduct.

Trinidad was also charged with aggravated assault. Both officers have pleaded not guilty.

The third officer pleaded guilty to tampering. [Source]

Those prosecutors better not be lying about seeing that video tape, because, if they did, that is grounds for prosecutorial misconduct as well.

Speaking of misconduct, have you all seen the video with the poor dude in the Bronx, who broke no laws, and who was just minding his business on a winter day when all hell broke loose?

Watch the video here and tell me what you think.

Honestly, it's hard to watch, because we all know that if that stranger wasn't there with his camera phone rolling that poor dude would have gotten the serious Rodney King treatment.

He got it hard enough as it is, but believe me, it could have been worse. 

The video tape might have saved the day once again.

It's not hard being young black and smart.

My father -in- law is a wise man. He has always done a good job of taking care of himself and his family, but you would never know what he has or how comfortable he is by outward appearances.

I remember a story he told me just after I met him: He was working for an old white man on a sweet potato farm when he was much younger, and when he saved up enough money to buy a new car and drove it around the farm, the man fired him. He never forgot that, and he wanted to make sure I understood the moral of his story before I went off to the East Coast with his daughter.

Anyway, reading the story about Chris Johnson and the subsequent response the story got from one particular person posting about it, made me think of my father- in- law.

"ORLANDO-Tennessee Titans, star running back, Chris Johnson had some harsh words for the police after they visited his house allegedly because there was a tip about a number of high end cars entering the premises. TMZ reports:

Moments after cops walked out the door, Johnson tweeted, 'Y did the police just walk in my condo saying they think it’s drug activity because it’s alot of traffic but it was the MTV camera crew.'

He added, .'Hard being young, black and rich.. '"

Comment from some person calling himself "The_Donlamb"

'That's what you get when you are simple, black and suddenly becomes super rich, you flash and dash and you get the attention of the rulers of this society; and they will let you know who's still in charge. Do yourself a favor; stay off mtv, buy you a modest home, get you a wife and calm yo black @#### down. because whether you realize it or not, you are still owned by the white slave master for his entertainment, and if you don't break your d###n neck to entertain him, he's going to toss you to the dogs when he's done with you; just ask oj and mike. you ni##@s never cease to amaze me! But you thugged out though! you probably think you larry hoover, or frank lucus huh?"' [Story]

Man you Negroes can be tough with the real talk. *still laughing*

Chris, there is nothing wrong with being young black and rich my brother, but please try not to be young black and broke in a few years because you blew all of your money on things of no value.

Make sure that you take care of your family and invest your money wisely so that your children and grandchildren won't have to work as hard as you did.

In the meantime, go ahead and get your party on, and don't fight the po po when the come knocking at your door. You can't spend your money if you are dead.

Thief!

I have always liked nice pens. I was rocking Cross way back in the day before graduating to Montblancs.

Anyway, because of my attraction to pens, there is a story out of Chile today that caught my eye.

Apparently it seems that the President of the Czech Republic tried to pull a fast one and do the old dissapearing pen act. (Don't you just hate when people do that?) My man gave the writing intrument the once over, and then decided that it was better off in his pocket. Now, as is to be expected, his own people are crying foul. I swear I hate pen theives. The man should be impeached!

But wait, it gets better: It seems that my man is a wingnut. "..Klaus, whose most notable prior controversy was probably his flat rejection of climate change science—a position that he even appeared on Glenn Beck's show to tour.."

Gee, there is a surprise; a wingnut who steals other people's pens. President Pinera, you might want to check your pockets.

Finally, if you want to be named police officer of the year in White Plains, New York, it might help to kill a young black college student.

Dyaaammn! How do you get a promotion? Kill a black family?