Another black man shot dead by a white police officer – this time in St Louis

#blacklivesmatter #AntonioMartin #berkeley With another black man being shot dead by a white police officer in St Louis has once again raised the sensitive question of relations between the blacks and whites in America. This time it was 18-year-old Antonio Martin, a black teenager, who was shot dead by a white officer – surveillance footage indicate that Antonio Martin had pulled a gun first.
However, the mayor of the St Louis suburb has said that this case cannot be compared to that of Michael Brown because of the fact that here, the man had pulled the gun first. Hence, it was not the same as the case in Ferguson there the teenage Michael Brown was unarmed as was the case with Eric Garner in Brooklyn.
Protesters had clashed with police in Berkeley and, later, a smaller crowd of protesters gathered at the petrol station where Antonio Martin was shot.
Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins has informed that, unlike Ferguson, here the majority of police officers were black. In Ferguson it was mostly white police force policing over a mostly black population. In order to make his point, he added that the mayor is black, the city manager is black, the finance director is black, and the police chief is black. The police officers in Berkeley are more sensitive.

Black-white divide takes an ugly turn – black man kills two non-black police officers in New York

#NYPDOfficers #Brooklyn #blacklivesmatter A black gunman 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley has shot two NYPD Officers in Brooklyn – the two officers are Liu Wenjin and Raphael Ramos. They were Asian and Hispanic respectively. The officers were killed while they were on patrol in Brooklyn and the NYPD police chief has said that they were "targeted for their uniform".
Before shooting them, the gunman had indicated on social media that he planned to kill police in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner, a black man who died when white officers tried to arrest him for selling cigarettes in New York and Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri.
The grand jury did not indict any of the two police officers involved in the killings and Ismaaiyl Brinsley decided to carry out revenge killings.
After killing the officers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area, the gunman ran into a subway station where he shot himself. US President Barack Obama, who is currently on holiday in Hawaii, has strongly condemned the killings of the two NYPD officers.
As per reports it seems Brinsley approached the passenger window of a marked police car and opened fire, striking the Officers in the head. The officers were on special patrol doing crime reduction work in the area of Brooklyn. Incidentally, Brinsley had a history of arrests in Georgia for robbery, disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon and his last-known address was in Georgia, but he had some sort of ties to Brooklyn.

Trigger happy Cleveland cop shoots a 12-year-old black boy carrying a toy gun

A policeman in Cleveland shot and killed Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old boy who was carrying a pellet gun and was in a playground. This is another example of the growing black-white divide that is being seen in the US recently. Samaria Rice, his mother, has said that a friend had given her son the airsoft gun, which shot nonlethal plastic pellets. As recorded in the surveillance video, the boy was shot within two seconds of a patrol car stopping near him. In the opinion of the police, the gun resembled the real stuff.
It is now apparent that the police in America have become trigger happy and probably get frightened at the sight of kids carrying toy guns and playing cops and robbers.
The mother of this kid wants the policeman to be convicted for killing her son who was shot twice in the stomach. The brutality of the police is evident from the fact that she found her 14-year-old daughter crying inside the same police car that had arrived at the scene. The girl had told her mother that she had been tackled and handcuffed by police officers after she became upset because her brother had been shot.
The shooting of 28-year-old Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, the shooting of 18-year-old black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson on 9 August and the shooting of Eric Garner, a father of six, who was killed in July in a chokehold by the New York police are examples of recent incidents of the killing of blacks by white policemen.

The black-white divide in the US grows - another black shot dead in Brooklyn

It is now another black 28-year-old Akai Gurley, who was shot dead by the police when they opened fire in an apartment building in Brooklyn.
Akai Gurley has a two-year-old daughter.
Protesters took to the streets and engaged in violence with the police in which several persons, including policemen, were injured and vehicles were damaged. The protesters hurled bricks, rocks and pipes at the police, who fired tear gas and smoke canisters to quell the crowds.
In the melee, a number of officers were injured and buildings and cars were vandalized or looted.
The shooting of Akai Gurley comes after the shooting of 18-year-old black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson on 9 August and the shooting of Eric Garner, a father of six, who was killed in July in a chokehold by the New York police. Neither of the involved policemen have been indicted by the Grand Jury.
Earlier, another unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin had been shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, a white officer, in Sanford, Florida in 2012 and, in that case also, the killer was released by the court.

Eric Garner chokehold death – another case of black-white divide in the US

The black-white divide is becoming more and more pronounced in the US. It has come to the surface yet again in the Eric Garner case in New York – it is similar to the Ferguson case where an 18-year-old black teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer or the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. In the demonstrations in Ferguson, there were over 100 arrests and destruction of 12 commercial buildings by fire.
In the Eric Garner case, a white New York City police officer was cleared in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man who had been stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. The reason was that Eric had bad heath that caused his death. Chokehold is banned under NYPD policy.
It seems Eric Garner was choked to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo and the grand jury of Staten Island did not indict him in the death of Eric on July 17.
Anyway, the NYPD has stripped Pantaleo of his gun and badge and placed him on desk duty while the case was under investigation. He would be suspended while the NYPD conducts an internal probe that could finally result in administrative charges.,br>

The black-white divide in America - Ferguson police officer who shot dead a black teenager resigns

It was another shocking incident of black-white divide that America witnessed four months back when a white police officer Darren Wilson shot dead a black teenager 18-year-old Michael Brown. It is hard to believe that this can happen in a country where the ‘n**r’ word is taboo and where Martin Luther King lived and Barack Obama rules.
The incident had similarities with that of another white George Zimmerman shooting dead an unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida.
As per latest information, Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown, has resigned from the Ferguson Police Department – he took this decision nearly four months after the confrontation. The incident evoked sharp reactions and led to protests in the St. Louis suburb and across the nation.
Incidentally, the officer had been on administrative leave since the shooting on Aug. 9 and his decision was conveyed by one of his attorneys who added that the resignation was with immediate effective.
It may be recalled that a grand jury had spent more than three months reviewing evidence in the case before declining in November to issue charges against Wilson who had told jurors that he feared for his life when Brown hit him and, therefore, reached for his gun.
Of course, the U.S. Justice Department is still conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a separate probe of police department practices.
Following the shooting, Officer Wilson had gone into hiding and had not made any public statements but broke his silence only after the decision of the grand jury.
Incidentally, Wilson had a clean record and a few months before the shooting, he had received a commendation for detaining a suspect in a drug case.

Ferguson protesters storm City Hall in St Louis because grand jury did not indict the white police officer

Ferguson is tense because here a white police officer Darren Wilson had shot dead a black unarmed teenager 18-year-old Michael Brown. The protesters stormed the City Hall of St Louis demanding that the 12-member grand jury review its decision of not to indict Officer Wilson. They were angry at a grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer for the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. It seems more than 100 extra police officers have been called in after Ferguson protesters stormed into the City Hall in St Louis.
In order to quell the disturbances, the police arrested at least three people and locked down the site.
As per information, those activists who entered the City Hall were part of a group of about 200 protesters who marched and held a mock trial of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson who shot dead Michael Brown on the 9th of August.
Reports indicate that a section of the protesters looted and ransacked local business and even set police vehicles and nearby buildings on fire.
Authorities are believed to have arrested 58 people on Tuesday as compared to about 80 on the previous night and there are reports of arrests from other parts of the county as the protestors continued to express their outrage over the decision of the grand jury.
Incidentally, this incident has lot of resemblances with the case of George Zimmerman shooting dead Trayvon Martin in Sanford Florida – that also was a case of a white neighborhood watch volunteer shooting dead a black teenager. Darren Wilson had shot Michael Brown 12 times!!
Incidentally, the reaction of US President Barack Obama was different in the recent case as compared to the Trayvon Martin case – he has said that the nation is built on the rule of law, and people must accept that the decision made by the grand jury.