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tamir rice
This is American Terrorism: White Supremacy's Brutal, Centuries-Long Campaign of Violence
There's a war being waged against Black Americans, whether white America wants to admit it or not
Jun 19, 2015
The evidence is clear. The reports are in. There is no other conclusion. It's 2015, and Black people in America are under a sustained and lethal terrorist attack.
In North Charleston, S.C., not too far from the place where the A.M.E. terrorist attack on 9 Black church members took place, Walter Scott was shot several times in the back as he fled from police on foot, posing no immediate threat. In Staten Island, N.Y., Eric Garner was choked to death by officers as he gasped for air, exclaiming: "I can't breathe." In Baltimore, MD, a frightened Freddie Gray fled from Brian Rice and two other white officers on foot. By the time he was placed in the police wagon, his leg had been broken. By the final time he was removed from the wagon, three of his vertebrae had been cracked and his voice box had been crushed.
In Barstow, Calif., a pregnant Black woman named Charlena Michelle Cook was viciously thrown to the ground as she screamed and pleaded, telling the officers: "Please! I'm pregnant." Recalling the incident later, Cooks stated that officers treater her "like an animal, like a monster, like I didn't exist, like I was not human." In St. Louis, Mo., protester Kristine Hendrix was walking home on the sidewalk when an officer cut off her and a male colleague and then proceeded to use a Taser on her twice as she lay on the concrete writhing and screaming in pain. She was able to capture the incident on her cellphone and the police are currently under investigation.
In the last month alone, the accounts of racial terror reports have been trickling in. We've witnessed former Officer Eric Casebolt verbally and physically attack a group of Black teenagers in McKinney, TX, forcing Black boys to lie down and then violently slamming Dejerria Becton to the ground. He then put his knee on her back, placed his weight on her body, and ignored her pleas for relief. All the while, he allowed Brandon Brooks, a white teenager, to stand and walk around freely. (Thankfully, Brandon used his privilege to film the entire incident.)
Then in Fairfield, Ohio, a whole gang of white police officers brutally accosted, pepper sprayed, choked, and slammed the family of Krystal Dixon to the ground as a young white male in his swim trunks forced his forearm onto the throat of a young Black teenage male as we was already being arrested by a white cop. A white female cop grabbed a young Black girl by the back of her neck as the other white male cops viciously manhandled other Black teenage girls, so much so that a 12-year-old has her jaw broken along with 3 ribs cracked by white Fairfield police. It ended up with a picture of a young girl in the hospital looking like this, with a solitary tear streaming down her face.
In a nation that saw 3,959 lynchings of Black people committed by an assortment of white American terrorists between 1877-1950 with no one punished for these nearly 4,000 atrocities, history reverberates through these most current traumatic incidents. This is a nation that has ignored multiple instances of mass anti-Black mob violence carried out by thousands of whites in the following cities:
- Wilmington, North Carolina (1898)
- Atlanta, Georgia (1906)
- Springfield, Illinois (1908)
- St. Louis, Missouri (1917)
- Chicago, Illinois (1919)
- Elaine, Arkansas (1919)
- Washington, DC (1919)
- Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921)
- Rosewood, Florida (1923)
This list only includes three of the 25-plus cities where Black people were met with white supremacist mob violence during the Red Summer of 1919. All told, thousands of Black lives were wiped out during these and other instances of racial cleansing. White supremacist racial cleansing destroyed intact and thriving Black communities and business districts, directly stunting Black economic growth and constraining the viability of future community health and wellness.
In a nation that witnessed the death of 4 girls and the injury of another at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, church by members of the arch-terrorist organization Ku Klux Klan, the slaughter of nine unarmed Black churchgoers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church and the assassination of Pastor and State Senator Clementa Pickney stirs up the ghosts of America's haunted past. Dylann Roof brutally murdered us as we worshipped in our sacred space. Dylann Roof butchered us as we talked with the "God of our weary years, God of our silent tears."
Meanwhile, the same media that declared a deadly shootout between biker gangs in Waco, TX, a "brawl," has labelled the murder of 9 in Charleston a "shooting." But this was no mere shooting. It was a cold-blooded, pre-meditated, white supremacist terrorist attack that ended the lives of nine unarmed Black people in the same church co-founded by the revolutionary Denmark Vesey, who sought to overthrow America's wicked regime of human bondage and chattel slavery.
The terrorist Dylann Roof has been caught, but the threat has not abated. Whether at swimming pools or churches, whether on suburban sidewalks or city streets, there is no place Black folk are safe from the police use of excessive force or guns of a white supremacist assassin. History has shown that white supremacist violence is grossly systemic and is an existential threat to Black people living in America.
We have not overcome. We are not post-racial. We are at the crossroads. The world is upside down when Dylann Storm Roof, James Eagan Holmes, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are captured alive while Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, and Aiyana Stanley-Jones lie in an early grave. The question now is: will white Americans confront the ideology of white supremacy and uproot it from every policy, practice, and community? Because domestic American white supremacist terrorism must end.
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In Rare Move, Community Seeks Murder Charges for Cops Who Killed Tamir Rice
By filing affidavits, 'citizens are taking matters into their own hands utilizing the tools of democracy as an instrument of justice'
Jun 09, 2015
Forced by a sluggish and dysfunctional justice system to take matters into their own hands, a group of community leaders, clergy, and civil rights activists in Cleveland will ask a judge on Tuesday to order the arrest of the officers who killed Tamir Rice, the black 12-year-old shot dead in November while carrying a toy gun in a park.
The community group will make its announcement at a 11 am press conference Tuesday morning. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the group plans to file several affidavits under a rarely used state law asking a Cleveland Municipal Court judge to issue arrest warrants for Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback in connection with the November 22 shooting. That law, passed in 1960, allows any person with knowledge of the facts of a case to file sworn affidavits asking a judge to find probable cause to sign off an arrest warrant.
The group is seeking charges including aggravated murder and manslaughter.
"We are still waiting for the criminal justice system to enact justice in the name of Tamir Rice," said Rev. Dr. Jawanza Colvin, pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, in a press release. "It has been more than six months since his tragic death and, yet, the people still have no answers and no one has been held accountable. Today, citizens are taking matters into their own hands utilizing the tools of democracy as an instrument of justice."
The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office completed its investigation into Rice's death earlier this month, and handed its findings over to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty's office. Now, McGinty's office will review the evidence and present it to a grand jury, a process that could take weeks.
The New York Times notes that "[i]n cases involving police officers, prosecutors are more likely to let grand jurors hear conflicting testimony or see evidence favorable to the officer."
The case would still eventually be sent to a grand jury if the community group succeeded. Ohio's constitution guarantees a person charged with a felony the right to have their evidence heard by a grand jury, which could hand up an indictment charging the officers, or decline to indict them. However, if the group's affidavits are approved, the officers' arrest would be followed by a public hearing, which community members said would be preferable to allowing prosecutors to operate in secret.
The Times writes that "[t]he highly unusual move is the latest sign that some African-Americans in Cleveland and around the country have lost confidence in a system that they see as too quick to side with police officers accused of using excessive force against blacks."
As Walter Madison, a lawyer for Rice's family who worked with the community leaders as they planned to seek charges, told the Times: "The writing is on the wall...If you look at every other instance, it ends up unfavorable to the families."
At the end of May, a white police officer in Cleveland was acquitted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man and woman in 2012; also last month, a prosecutor in Wisconsin said a police officer in Madison, Wis., will not face criminal charges for fatally shooting Tony Robinson, who was mixed race and unarmed, earlier this year. In New York, a grand jury did not indict in the death of Eric Garner, who had been put in a chokehold by a police officer. And state and federal authorities said there was no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Tuesday's development comes on the heels of the announcement of a settlement between the city of Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice, following a deeply critical investigation that found an unconstitutional "pattern or practice of the use of excessive force."
In an interviewColorlines last week, Tamir's mother, Samaria Rice, recalled her dead son as "a kind and loving person, above all. And Tamir was very talented in all sports. He was my All American star. He could have been next LeBron James, I really believe that. He was advanced and not the average child because I made things available to him. I have sacrificed a lot for my children."
She added: "This is a nightmare and I have not woken up."
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Newly Released Tamir Rice Shooting Footage Shows Cleveland Officers Tackling Sister
Extended security video shows aftermath of shooting as police refuse to aid Rice, handcuff teen sister
Jan 09, 2015
EXTENDED VIDEO Tamir Rice shooting incidentFull video of Tamir Rice shooting incident. CLEVELAND - Cleveland Police have released the full video of the November 22 ...
(Warning: The video above contains disturbing images.)
Newly released footage of the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November shows Cleveland police officers delaying first aid to Rice while he was still alive and tackling and handcuffing Rice's sister as she attempted to reach her wounded brother.
An extended surveillance video from the Cudell Recreation Center, which captured the incident, was obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group on Wednesday after city officials initially refused to release it. Other outlets received the video on Thursday.
The footage shows Rice's 14-year-old sister, Tajai, attempting to run to her brother's aid as he lay bleeding in the snow, only to be intercepted by two officers--including Timothy Loehmann, who shot Tamir--who pin her down on the ground, handcuff her, and place her in the backseat of their cruiser.
Loehmann and the other officer, Frank Garmback, are also shown refusing to administer aid to Rice for several minutes after the shooting. Neither moves to help the boy until a third man, identified by police as an FBI agent who was in the area, enters the frame and seems to attend to Rice for the first time in the four minutes that have passed. Paramedics arrive eight minutes after the shooting.
Walter Madison, an attorney representing the Rice family, called the video "shocking and outrageous."
"This has to be the cruelest thing I've ever seen," Madison said. He added that the officers displayed "overwhelming indifference" to Rice.
"No one thinks that it's appropriate to try to save him," Madison said. "The first person who does is not affiliated with the Cleveland police department. This is the level of service that makes people very upset and distrustful of law enforcement."
Loehmann shot Rice within seconds of pulling up in front of the boy as he played with a toy gun in a city park on November 22. Rice died hours later. The video confirms statements previously made by Rice's mother, Samaria Rice, who said at a December 8 press conference that her daughter was handcuffed and detained while trying to help Tamir, and that officers refused to help him while he was still alive. Tajai Rice also made similar statements on NBC's Today show in December, telling host Lester Holt, "I ran to the gazebo, and I couldn't get there all the way to him, because the officer attacked me, threw me on the ground, tackled me on the ground, put me in handcuffs, and put me in the back of the police car, right next to his body."
Loehmann was hired by the Cleveland police department after failing a written test to become a deputy with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's department, as well as forces in Akron, Euclid, and Parma Heights, records show. His action in the video "really explains why," Madison said. "This is not the professional standard we would expect or deserve, and the city of Cleveland put him in the position to allow this to happen."
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