US policing

‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shooting

Texas law enforcement agencies are facing escalating criticism over their response to the mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, after it emerged that the gunman remained locked inside a classroom for up to an hour while large numbers of police officers were amassed outside the room without taking any action.

At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Texas authorities confirmed that the shooter had been locked inside a classroom for an hour before he was confronted and killed. He committed all his 21 murders inside that room – including 19 children and two teachers.

“Numerous” police officers had assembled just outside the room, the authorities admitted, but did not make any attempt to break through the door during that hour. Instead, they decided to pull back and wait until a specialist tactical unit arrived, while evacuating other children and staff from the building.

Victor Escalon, the south Texas regional director of the state’s department of public safety, told the press conference that armed officers arrived at Robb elementary about four minutes after the shooter entered through an unlocked side door at about 11.40am on Tuesday. Yet it was “approximately an hour later” that a tactical team of US Border Patrol arrived at the school, burst into the classroom and killed the gunman.

Asked whether the police officers could have broken into the classroom earlier than an hour into the massacre, Escalon replied: “There are a lot of possibilities. There were numerous officers at that classroom. Once we interview all those officers we’ll have a better idea.”

Escalon appeared to admit that mistakes might have been made when he alluded to the small-town nature of Uvalde, a community of about 20,000 residents close to the Mexican border. “Could anyone have gone [into the classroom] sooner? You have to understand, this is a small town,” he said.

The law enforcement chief’s account of the timeline of the massacre came as the police faced growing pressure to explain how such a devastating gun rampage could have been allowed to unfold over such an exceptional length of time. Hours earlier, it emerged that parents of children trapped inside the school during the rampage had pleaded with officers to do more to stop the carnage even as it was happening.

The Associated Press reported that as the massacre was unfolding, several parents and other local people expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school. Juan Carranza, who lives beside the school, told the news agency he witnessed women shouting at officers: “Go in there! Go in there!”

'Our kids are in there': parents yell at police to enter Texas school – video — ‘Our kids are in there’: parents yell at police to enter Texas school – video

Javier Cazares, whose 10-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed, told AP that police appeared unprepared.

“More could have been done,” he said.

He said he and other residents gathered outside the school started to plan their own rescue mission as the gunman remained locked inside.

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said.

A video recorded by residents and posted on social media captured in real time the anger of parents at the spectacle of armed police standing outside the school and not going in. “They are all fucking parking outside, man – they need to go in there, they are all in there. The cops aren’t doing shit but standing outside,” shouted one father.

A distressed mother yelled: “I’m going to go. All these kids are in the school and they are just standing there. Our kids are there, my son is right there.”

As tension mounted, a police officer is filmed trying to push parents back from the side of the school. “You know that there are kids, right? There are little kids. They don’t know how to defend themselves from the shooter,” the father said.

It is not clear whether more prompt police action to break into the classroom and take out the shooter could have saved any of the 21 lives lost. Escalon told the press conference that most of the killing appeared to have occurred early on.

“The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning. Numerous, I’d say more than 25,” he said.

Further agonising details of the shooting emerged on Thursday. A 10-year-old boy in the next classroom described how he crouched with a friend under a desk. The boy said at one point the shooter entered his classroom and threatened him.

Uvalde was the 213th mass shooting in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent database. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.

Robb elementary was the 27th US school to have experienced a shooting this year, Education Week reported.

The horror of so many children dying in a classroom has prompted renewed soul-searching at all levels of American public life. Joe Biden attempted on Wednesday to counter resistance from Republicans in Congress to basic gun regulations by saying that “the second amendment is not absolute”.

Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, which saw the devastating Sandy Hook school shooting almost a decade ago in which 20 young children were killed, is leading attempts to enlist Republican support for gun control reform. He is known to have spoken with two Republican senators – Susan Collins from Maine and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania.

The talks are focusing on FBI background checks for all firearms sales and a so-called “red flag law” to confiscate guns from individuals who might harm themselves or others.

At a rally in Washington held by Everytown For Gun Safety on Thursday, Murphy said he was engaged in bipartisan conversations to try to make the streets and schools safer. “I hope we will find that common ground, we are going to work our tails off to achieve that compromise,” he said.

The gun debate has been most intense in Texas as the state deals with yet another mass shooting. Some of the deadliest events in recent times have taken place in Texas, including the 2017 attack on a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs that killed 25 and the 2019 rampage in a Walmart in El Paso that left 23 dead.

The Republican-controlled state legislature continues to loosen already minimal gun regulations, in the name of what political leaders call second amendment “freedoms”. A year ago the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a new provision that allows Texans to carry handguns in public without a license or training.

Abbott was confronted on Wednesday as he held a press conference over the Uvalde shooting by Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat running against him in November.

“This is on you until you choose to do something different,” O’Rourke interjected from the audience. “This will continue to happen, somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed.”

O’Rourke was escorted out of the room as the Republican mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, called him a “sick son of a bitch”.

'This is on you': Beto O'Rourke calls out Texas governor for inaction after school shooting – video — ‘This is on you’: Beto O’Rourke calls out Texas governor for inaction after school shooting – video

Ted Cruz, the Republican senator for Texas, was confronted by some hard facts by Sky News and ended up walking away from the camera complaining about “propaganda”. Asked for his response to the massacre, Cruz played an emotive card, saying in a shaking voice: “There are 19 sets of parents who are never going to get to kiss their child goodnight again.”

Pressed by the Sky News reporter on why the epidemic of mass shootings happens only in America, Cruz walked away from the interview, saying: “Stop being a propagandist.”

The ratio of firearms to population in the US far outstrips any other country in the world and is more than double the rate of the second country, Yemen, which is undergoing a brutal civil war. The US also has a dramatically higher rate of gun deaths than any other high-income country.

Further heated confrontations are expected on Friday when the National Rifle Association, the lobby group that has been the most vociferous opponent of gun safety laws, holds its annual meeting in Houston. Abbott will be among the speakers. So will Donald Trump.

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Teen who filmed killing tells court George Floyd was ‘begging for his life’

The woman who recorded the shocking video of Derek Floyd’s death that prompted mass protests for racial justice around the world has told the Derek Chauvin murder trial of her feelings of guilt at being unable to intervene to save his life.

Darnella Frazier, who at times sobbed as she gave evidence on the second day of Chauvin’s trial in Minneapolis, said that she still loses sleep over the killing of the 46 year-old Black man.

“I ended up apologising and apologising to George Floyd for not doing more,” she said.

But, Frazier added, it is not about what she should have done.

“It’s what he should have done,” she said in apparent reference to the Chauvin.

Frazier was 17 when she recorded the video as a bystander.

Chauvin, 45, who is white, has denied charges of second- and third-degree murder, and manslaughter, over the death of Floyd last May. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge

Frazier’s more than nine-minute video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he lies prone on the ground outraged millions of people in the US and beyond in part because the now former Minneapolis police officer ignored increasingly desperate pleas from Floyd as he repeatedly said he could not breathe.

Prosecutors have presented Frazier’s video as compelling evidence of Chauvin’s guilt.

“You can believe your eyes, that it was homicide, it was murder,” one of the prosecutors, Jerry Blackwell, told the court in his opening statement on Monday.

Frazier, who is now 18, said she began recording the incident because Floyd looked “terrified and scared, begging for his life”.

She was so horrified by coming across the scene that she told her younger cousin to go into a food store so she would not have to see it, the court heard.

The prosecution used Frazier to reinforce the case they are building that Chauvin maliciously kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even when it was clear the detained man was not resisting arrest and was increasingly in danger.

Frazier said that despite the appeals from the crowd, Chauvin did not ease up as he pinned Floyd down.

“He had like, this cold look,” she said. “It seemed as if he didn’t care.”

At another point, Frazier said Chauvin reacted to appeals from the crowd by increasing the pressure on Floyd.

“If anything he was kneeling harder, like he was shoving his knee into his neck,” she said.

The prosecution’s questioning of witnesses through the second day sought to established that police officers did nothing to help Floyd despite his growing distress and struggle to breathe.

Prosecutors also sought to head off defence claims that Chauvin’s actions were influenced by threats to his and other officers safety from an increasingly alarmed crowd of bystanders.

Frazier denied defence claims that the police were threatened by the growing crowd. She said they wanted to intervene to help Floyd, who was in distress.

“Anytime anyone tried to get close, they [the police] were defensive,” she said.

Frazier said she felt threatened by the police officers, including Chauvin, who put their hands on the containers of mace spray that officers carry.

Genevieve Hansen, a Minneapolis firefighter with emergency medical training who was off duty and passing by, testified that the police would not let her give medical attention to Floyd.

“He wasn’t moving and he was cuffed. Three grown men putting their weight on was too much,” she said. “It didn’t take me long to realise that he had an altered state of consciousness.”

Hansen said her training told her that he needed immediate help.

“What I needed to know was whether he had a pulse anymore,” she told the court.

Hansen said she identified herself as a firefighter with medical training to one of the officers, Tou Thao, who was not restraining Floyd but was keeping onlookers at bay and in effect standing guard for Chauvin.

She said Thao responded that if she really was a firefighter she should know better than to get involved.

“I tried to be reasonable and then I tried to be assertive,” she said. “I pled and was desperate.”

Hansen said she felt helpless because there was a man being killed in front of her and she was denied the opportunity to help him.

Earlier in the day, another witness to Floyd’s death said that he called the emergency services during the incident because “I believed I witnessed a murder”.

Donald Williams, a mixed martial arts fighter, said he pleaded with Chauvin to stop what he termed a dangerous “blood choke” on Floyd.

“You could see that he was going through tremendous pain,” said Williams. “You could see his eyes go back in his head … You could see he was trying to gasp for air.”

Williams told the closely watched trial he was prevented from intervening to help Floyd by Thao who pushed him in the chest and back on to the curb.

Williams said he raised his voice in anger but did not otherwise intervene “for fear of myself and fear of people around me” from the officers.

As Floyd was taken away by ambulance, Williams called the 911 emergency number to report what he believed to be a crime – essentially calling the police on the police.

He can be heard repeatedly saying “murderers bro” on the call, audio of which was played in court.

On cross examination, defence lawyer Eric Nelson put it to Williams that he was increasingly angry and threatening as he taunted Chauvin by calling him “a bum” at least 13 times, “a bitch” and telling him that “within next two years you will shoot yourself”.

Williams denied he was letting his anger get the better of him.

Thao – and two other officers who were next to Chauvin and helping restrain Floyd – are scheduled to be tried together later this year on charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.

The trial continues.

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Prosecutors accuse Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd as trial starts

Prosecutors accused former police officer Derek Chauvin of killing a defenceless George Floyd by “grinding and crushing him until the very breath, the very life, was squeezed out of him”, at the opening on Monday of a murder trial regarded by millions as a litmus test of US police accountability.

The prosecutor, Jerry Blackwell, told the jury that the death of Floyd last May, which reignited the Black Lives Matter movement and set off months of protests across America and around the world, was caused by Chauvin keeping his knee on the neck of the dying man for more than nine minutes even after he stopped breathing.

“What Mr Chauvin was doing, he was doing deliberately,” Blackwell said as he outlined his case to the jury in the court room in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed.

The prosecutor said Chauvin used excessive and unreasonable force “without regard for Floyd’s life”.

Blackwell said it was “an assault” that led to the victim’s death.

Chauvin, 45, has denied charges of second- and third-degree murder, and manslaughter, over the death of the 46-year-old African American man who was detained on suspicion of trying to buy cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill last May.

The former officer, who was fired, faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charges.

Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, told the jury in his opening statement that the evidence will show that Floyd was under the influence of drugs and that the force used against him was reasonable because of his behaviour.

Outside the fortified courthouse, the Floyd family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, declared the trial a test of American justice and said that the world is watching.

“Today starts a landmark trial that will be a referendum on how far America has come in its quest for equality and justice for all,” he said.

A group of protesters held signs that read “Minneapolis will never forget George Floyd” and “Mr George Floyd is not on trial, Derek Chauvin is”.

'America's on trial': family and supporters take a knee for George Floyd – video — ‘America’s on trial’: family and supporters take a knee for George Floyd – video

Blackwell showed the jury a nine-minute-and-29-second video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, the footage that had shocked millions of Americans last year and prompted the huge racial justice protests that swept the US and beyond.

“You can believe your eyes, that it was homicide, it was murder,” he told the jury, some of whom had not seen the video before.

In the recording, Floyd can be heard saying 20 times that he could not breathe and 10 times that he was dying.

He repeatedly called out for his dead mother. Blackwell said that the dying man can also he heard to say “Tell my kids I love them” and “I’ll probably die this way. I’m through, I’m through. They’re going to kill me.”

Blackwell said that Floyd was no longer breathing for the last minute that Chauvin was kneeling on his neck.

The prosecutor said that the officer not only failed to fulfill his legal duty to help Floyd but stopped anyone else from assisting him, including a firefighter trained in first aid.

Blackwell said that even when Chauvin was told by a paramedic that Floyd no longer had a pulse, the police officer kept his knee in place.

“You’ll see that he does not let up. He does not get up. Even when Mr Floyd does not even have a pulse, it continues on,” he said.

He said the jury will hear testimony from a police officer who arrived on the scene while Floyd was held down who will say that at that point there was no need for the force used by Chauvin.

The prosecutor also said that the Minneapolis police chief, Medaria Arradondo, who fired Chauvin shortly over Floyd’s death, will testify that the former officer’s conduct was “not consistent” with Minneapolis police department training or protocol.

“He will tell you it’s excessive force,” Blackwell said.

The prosecutor said that Floyd’s arrest was unnecessary in the first place as passing a counterfeit bill, even if intentional, is a misdemeanour for which the police could have written a ticket.

Nelson said in his opening statement that he will show that his client’s behaviour was reasonable under the circumstances because Floyd was under the influence of drugs at the time of his arrest.

He said witnesses testify that Floyd had taken opioid pills shortly before he was detained and that at times he “passed out”.

“The evidence will show that when confronted by police, Mr Floyd put drugs in his mouth in order to conceal them from police,” he said.

Nelson said that Floyd took a “speedball” of opioids and methamphetamine, and that as a result he was struggling violently against arrest which necessitated use of force.

“Derek Chauvin did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career,” he said.

The outcome of the trial may well centre on the cause of death.

Nelson said medical evidence will show the presence of drugs as well as other medical issues including coronary disease and an enlarged heart were the cause of death. He said there is no medical evidence of asphyxiation.

The official autopsy and an independent autopsy at the time concluded that the main cause of death was homicide.

Blackwell said: “This was not a heart attack.”

The first prosecution witness was a 911 dispatcher, Jena Scurry, who told a police supervisor she was concerned at seeing the officers “sat on this man” in a live feed from a street camera.

Blackwell said of Scurry’s testimony that “she called the police on the police”.

Later in the afternoon, prosecution witness Donald Williams, 33, told how he watched Floyd “slowly fade away” from close by, even as bystanders implored and berated the police holding him.

Williams told the court that he could hear and see Floyd in distress and his martial arts experience indicated to him that Chauvin was choking out Floyd as he kneeled on his neck.

The jury, and the public watching in court or around the world by livestream, was shown some devastating clips of Chauvin allegedly “shimmying” in what Williams said was a martial arts move, altering his position very slightly so that it put more pressure on – as a fighter does when they have someone in a hold.

Williams heard Floyd talking about how much pain he was in, his distress as he said he couldn’t breathe, apologized to the officers and begged for his life.

“The more that the knee was on his neck, and the shimmying going on, the more you see him [Floyd] slowly fade away. His eyes rolled to the back of his head,” Williams said.

He described Floyd dying “like a fish in a bag”.

Williams described the knee-position as a dangerous “blood choke” intended to cut Floyd’s airway.

Williams has previously been heard but unseen shouting angrily at the police from the sidewalk, calling Chauvin a “bum” and accusing him of enjoying what he was doing, as Floyd suffers and begs.

The trial continues.

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‘Everything is riding on the outcome’: Minneapolis braces for Chauvin trial

The city of Minneapolis and millions across the US and around the world are bracing for Monday’s opening arguments in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, who was Black, in the city last May.

Floyd’s death regalvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and set in motion the biggest US civil rights protests since the 1960s.

After bystander video went viral showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes during an arrest attempt, Americans coast to coast and thousands in cities overseas took to the streets.

Chauvin has denied the charges of murder and manslaughter against him and prosecutors are due to set out their case in the heavily fortified court building in downtown Minneapolis on Monday morning, in one of the most significant police brutality trials in US history.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defence attorney, has not said whether the former officer, who was fired shortly after Floyd’s killing, will testify.

The defence team will try to focus the jury on aspects such as the fact that the opioid fentanyl was found in Floyd’s system, as well as methamphetamine, and that he had underlying health conditions.

The official autopsy concluded that Floyd’s death was a homicide.

Keith Ellison, the prominent Minnesota attorney general, leads the prosecution team and will rely heavily on the damning video that shows Floyd pinned to the street with Chauvin kneeling on his neck, a hand in his pocket, seemingly impervious to Floyd’s waning cries that he can’t breathe.

Darnella Frazier, who was just 17 when she recorded the video that went viral, as two other police officers restrained Floyd’s torso and another fended off bystanders, will be called as a witness.

Members of Floyd’s family were expected to attend a vigil and protest on Sunday night at the spot where their 46-year-old relative died, a junction in southern Minneapolis now known as George Floyd Square.

Mileesha Smith, one of several community members who look after the square, which is marked with barricades, murals and tributes, said Floyd was part of a long history of police-involved deaths not just in the US, or Minnesota, but in that exact neighbourhood, with little justice forthcoming.

“George Floyd wasn’t the first person to be killed by police on this block, but [in the past] media wasn’t the way that it is and a lot of it got swept under the rug”

She was at work at an elderly care facility last May when the incident took place.

“I happened to look up at the TV and see that somebody is dying in the neighborhood I grew up in. Somebody died, flat out in front of the store that I grew up eating at,” she told the Guardian, adding: “How do we prevent this from happening? That could be my son. I have two sons.”

Public and media presence in the court room is severely restricted because of coronavirus.

For the first time in the state of Minnesota, TV cameras are able to film a full criminal trial, which Court TV is livestreaming.

But the public is watching for signs that police officers can be held accountable when someone dies in their custody.

Civil rights attorney and commentator Areva Martin said: “The family is seeking justice, the public is seeking accountability.”

“Historically, jurors have been reluctant to hold police officers accountable … What the US is showing is that it’s well past due to end systemic racism in policing, and that police officers are not above the law,” she told the Guardian.

Martin added: “The world is waiting to see if the US will be courageous enough to stand up to a system that has a history of violating the rights of African Americans and, rather than protecting those lives, has actually destroyed them.”

Keith Mayes, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s department of African American and African studies, said a conviction was necessary for policing to be reformed.

“Everything is riding on the outcome of the trial,” he said.

“Yes, Chauvin is on trial, and it’s about the Floyd murder. But an argument can be made it’s about all the other folks that didn’t receive justice, too,” he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The right to peaceful protest will be respected during the trial, the city has pledged.

The three other police officers, all since fired, too, will stand trial in August for aiding and abetting murder.

On 12 March, Minneapolis agreed to pay a record $27m settlement to Floyd’s family.

Smith said: “I’m not saying that that settlement shouldn’t have been given, but the authorities are so quick to give to the dead and don’t invest in the life of Black people while they are living … things that people are trying to keep in the dark, housing, jobs.”

The case is expected to last for most of April and the verdict l will be closely watched after a year in which people demanded and took bold action toward systemic change, said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist in Minneapolis.

The former Minneapolis NAACP branch president has watched her community rise up in response to unchecked police violence, only to have their spirits crushed by an acquittal and lack of grand jury indictments in previous police killings, such as the high-profile cases of Philando Castile, a Black man killed by police in a nearby suburb in 2016, and Jamar Clark, a Black man killed by city police in 2015.

“We have for too long lived inside of a culture of ignorance, not just in the US but worldwide,” she said.

“I don’t think that this country in particular, but the world itself, has ever had to reconcile the mistreatment, the abuse and the dehumanization of Black folks. But for some people, they’re now beginning to see we have a problem, and we need to begin to take steps to address these problems.”

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Virginia Beach man shot and killed by police was college football player

A man shot and killed by a police officer at a Virginia oceanfront resort area was a college football player whose death has stunned his former teammates and head coach.

Donovan Lynch, 25, of Virginia Beach, was an offensive lineman for the University of Virginia’s College at Wise during the 2017 and 2018 seasons and a 2019 graduate of the school, the Bristol Herald Courier reported.

Head football coach Dane Damron told the newspaper that Lynch was a good player and an outgoing man. He recalled meeting with Lynch and his parents in their home when he was recruiting him.

“He was in my house a lot of times as well, going through a cooking class my wife did with some of my players,” Damron said. “He never met a stranger. He’ll certainly be missed.”

Lynch was one of two people killed in shootings that also wounded at least eight others on Friday night in Virginia Beach, according to police.

Police initially said that an officer “encountered an armed citizen” and fatally shot him. The Virginia Beach police chief, Paul Neudigate, later said investigators found a firearm “in the vicinity” of the shooting but didn’t immediately have any evidence that it belonged to Lynch, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

Neudigate said the officer who killed Lynch was wearing a body camera but, “for unknown reasons”, it was not activated.

“We would like to provide the community answers. At this point we do not have them,” the police chief said Saturday.

The officer who killed Lynch has been placed on administrative leave, police said. He has been with the department for five years and is assigned to its special operations division.

Also killed in a separate shooting was Deshayla E Harris, 28, of Norfolk. Investigators believe Harris probably was a bystander struck by stray gunfire. No arrests were immediately made in her killing.

Police say the bloodshed occurred during a string of shootings that started shortly after 11pm on Friday along a crowded strip of hotels, clubs and restaurants.

Investigators believe the first shooting stemmed from a fight involving a group of people, police said. Three men were arrested on charges stemming from the initial shooting, including felonious assault and reckless handling of a firearm.

Lynch’s father told WAVY-TV that his son was “a father’s dream”.

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Maryland police video shows officers threatening, screaming at crying child

A police department in Maryland has released body camera video that captured two of its officers berating a 5-year-old boy who had walked away from his elementary school, calling him a “little beast” and threatening him with a beating.

The video released by the Montgomery county police department shows one of the officers repeatedly screaming at the crying child, with her face inches from his.

“Oh, my God, I’d beat him so bad,” the officer said in the child’s presence before telling him, “You do not embarrass me like this at school.”

The Washington Post reports that the police department and the county’s public school system declined to address the incident in detail, citing a pending lawsuit from the boy’s mother.

“There is no excuse for adults to ever speak to, or threaten, a child in this way,” the school system said in a statement. “As parents and grandparents, we know that when families send their children to school, they expect that the staff will care for them, keep them safe and use appropriate intervention processes when needed.”

A police department spokeswoman told the newspaper that the two officers in the video remain employed by the department after an internal investigation.

The officers found the boy about one block from East Silver Spring elementary school and drove him back to the school, where they were met by a school administrator. The video shows an officer forcing the crying child onto a chair in the principal’s office.

“Shut that noise up now!” the other officer shouted near the boy’s face. “I hope your momma let me beat you.”

One of the officers pulled out his handcuffs and closed one of loops around the child’s right wrist.

“You know what these are for?” he asked the boy. “These are for people that don’t want to listen and don’t know how to act.”

Montgomery county council member Will Jawando said the video “made me sick”.

“We all saw a little boy be mocked, degraded, put in the seat of a police car, screamed at from the top of an adult police officer’s lungs, inches from his face. This is violence,” Jawando said.

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Georgia officer condemned for saying Atlanta shooter was ‘having a bad day’

A Georgia sheriff’s captain has faced widespread criticism for appearing to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, as “having a really bad day”.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.

“They got that impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it. He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Baker said.

Aaron Rupar
(@atrupar)

“Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did” — a law enforcement official explains Robert Aaron Long’s decision to kill 8 people in a strange manner pic.twitter.com/u0zFcqjbNK

March 17, 2021

His remarks with were met with swift condemnation on Twitter from many users who saw them as minimizing Long’s brutal attacks.

The backlash against Baker compounded on Wednesday evening, when several news outlets reported that he had previously shared images on Facebook of T-shirts that contained a racist slogan about China and the coronavirus.

BuzzFeed News reported that in 2020, Baker shared an image of T-shirt with a logo that parodied Corona beer and read “Covid 19: imported virus from Chy-na”.

BuzzFeed reported that the post was reportedly hidden after the outlet inquired about it.

The Daily Beast reported that the posts on Baker’s Facebook account were first noticed by a Twitter user, and that the T-shirts appeared to have been made by a company that was owned by a former deputy sheriff for Cherokee county.

Meanwhile, statements from police that Long had declared Tuesday’s attack was not racially motivated spurred further outrage and widespread skepticism. Police say Long claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and authorities have said that he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of “temptation”.

Many on Twitter pointed out that the sexualization of Asian women and racism are impossible to disentangle.

The state representative Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia house of representatives and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color, said that the shooting appeared to be at the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia”.

Asian American communities across the country have been on heightened alert since the attack, which comes amid a surge in anti-Asian violence during the past year. Donald Trump repeatedly demonized China over the coronavirus outbreak.

Long faces eight counts of murder and one count of assault. The Cherokee county sheriff’s office has so far revealed the identities of the four victims killed, including 33-year-old Delaina Ashley Yaun, 54-year-old Paul Andre Michels, 49-year-old Xiaojie Yan, and 44-year-old Daoyou Feng.

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Andrea Sahouri on her BLM protest arrest: ‘I was the only journalist of color and the only journalist arrested’

Six days after the murder of George Floyd, the Des Moines Register journalist Andrea Sahouri went to work.

The public safety reporter was assigned to cover one of the many protests against police brutality happening around the country, set to take place outside Merle Hay Mall, a shopping complex near the city center of Des Moines, Iowa.

Little did Sahouri know, she would would be arrested that day, and fall victim to the excessive use of force she was meant to be reporting on. CNN called her story: “a scene you should not expect to see in the United States” and “stunning to many press freedom advocates”.

Police officers are shown arresting Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri after a Black Lives Matter protest she was covering on 31 May 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa, was dispersed by tear gas. — Police officers are shown arresting Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri after a Black Lives Matter protest she was covering on 31 May 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa, was dispersed by teargas. Photograph: Katie Akin/AP

During the waves of protests following the murder of yet another Black American at the hands of law enforcement, Sahouri became one of 130 journalists arrested in 2020, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker. She was one of 14 to face criminal charges – making her case exceptionally rare in the US.

Sahouri, 25, has spent the last 10 months of her life fighting those charges, which included “failure to disperse” and “interference with official acts”. If convicted, she would have had to pay a fine and spend a month in prison.

In a courtroom last week, Sahouri breathed a sigh of relief after she was acquitted of all charges.

“I’m just feeling really powerful,” she said over Zoom, explaining how it felt to be found not guilty.

“And relieved. I had like over 200 unchecked text messages. I can’t even look at my Twitter. Every time I do, it is overwhelming. I just received a lot of support from every corner of the globe so that was just a super surreal feeling. At one point, Amnesty [International] had launched a school-level campaign and there were these students in Sweden who had signs that said ‘we stand with Andrea.’ They sent me pictures of them holding up the signs.”

Denise Bell of Amnesty International said: “Journalists must be able to report on scenes of protest without fear of retribution. The right of the media to do their work is essential to the right of freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly. Clearly, the jury saw these charges for what they are – completely ridiculous.”

On 31 May, Sahouri was arrested by a Des Moines police officer while she was peacefully working. She called the event “a very traumatizing experience”. The photographs of her in sneakers, jeans and a tank top, restrained and surrounded by police officers were shared widely across social media and news outlets around the world.

Recounting the incident, she said: “I look back and I see an officer coming out of nowhere. Like charging at me. I thought at that moment: ‘Put up your hands. Stop. Don’t run from police, Comply.’ I immediately put up my hands and said multiple times that I was press. The officer instead grabbed me, pepper-sprayed me directly at close range to my face and said ‘That’s not what I asked.’”

The officer, Luke Wilson, claimed he believed Sahouri was a protester because she was not wearing any press identification. Other local journalists on the scene as well as Sahouri’s colleague, another Des Moines Register reporter Katie Akin, informed the officer that Sahouri was, in fact, a journalist. Bodycam footage from another officer shown during Sahouri’s trial captured her telling officers she was just doing her job.

During Wilson’s testimony on the first day of trial, he said he did not “have a whole lot of conversation” with Sahouri. “Once I determined she wasn’t leaving, I had to take action.” He maintained that he didn’t know she was a journalist.

“I just didn’t understand it,” Sahouri said. “I had the same employee badge that Katie had shown the officers, but it wasn’t on me. I kept saying ‘I have a badge’ but they didn’t want to see it.”

Sahouri, along with then boyfriend Spenser Robnett, were pepper-sprayed, zip-tied, and placed in the back of a police van where she recorded a video explaining what just happened. Wilson failed to turn on his body camera though he was required to. The pair were taken to Polk county jail.

A press badge for Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri features her jail booking photo from her 31 May 2020 arrest. Photograph: Andrea Sahouri/AP

Asked why Sahouri, who is Palestinian American, thought she was arrested while other journalists at the protest were not, she said: “Great question. I am left to wonder that as well. It’s hard for me to speculate someone’s motives, but it’s been brought to people’s attention that I was the only journalist of color at the scene and I was the only journalist arrested at the scene. I’m just gonna let the facts speak for itself. I couldn’t tell you what someone’s motives are.”

Sahouri called the the months following the arrest “stressful”.

“It really came it waves. I didn’t realize the extent of how traumatizing it was to experience something like that. I realized how anxious I would get about little things like having to text a police officer about a crime I had to write about. There were a few days that were just harder.”

In a statement urging the Polk county attorney to drop all charges brought against Sahouri, Bruce Brown, executive director of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said: “Law enforcement should never have arrested Andrea Sahouri in the first place simply for doing her job as a reporter, and the decision to move forward with her prosecution flies in the face of the first amendment.”

The prosecution refused to drop the charges. Sahouri said there was nothing left to do but place trust in her “extremely smart and skilled” legal defense team, paid for by her paper’s parent company, Gannett Media.

Before and during her trial, Sahouri also had the support of Columbia’s journalism school, where she obtained her master’s degree.

“I didn’t study journalism undergrad but it was my senior year and I was like ‘you know, I really like to talk to people. I love to amplify others’ voices’. I love to write. I’m good at talking to people and I don’t really like a normal office setting. I had a passion for documenting history, telling stories and informing communities.”

She said her background had inspired her to pursue journalism as a career.

“I’m a Palestinian American and I actually grew up really frustrated with the media because I had always felt like there was never the Palestinian narrative. They would talk about Palestinians but never include Palestinian voices and that really frustrated me. I didn’t understand it.”

Sahouri is sure to cover more protests in the future. Apart from maybe carrying her press pass on her person, she won’t be doing anything differently.

“I’m not going to change my behavior. I did my job and I did it correctly. I did my job while complying with police orders and that’s what the evidence exactly showed. The jury decided as well.”

Sahouri also said she refuses to let this experience taint her outlook on her career. After taking one week off to relax, she is looking forward to getting back to work.

“I really want to get into investigations … That’s really a big passion of mine. I’m just excited to continue to do my job.”

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Minneapolis to pay George Floyd’s family $27m in police custody death lawsuit

The city of Minneapolis has agreed to pay $27m to settle a civil lawsuit with the family of George Floyd, just weeks before the trial is scheduled to begin for the former police officer charged with his murder.

The city council unanimously approved the settlement on Friday. The council emerged from closed session Friday to announce the move, which includes $500,000 for the neighborhood where Floyd was arrested.

Floyd, who was Black, was declared dead on 25 May 2020 after Derek Chauvin, a former police officer who is white, pressed his knee against his neck for about nine minutes. Floyd’s death sparked mass protests in Minneapolis and across the US and led to a national reckoning on racial justice.

More details soon…

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Independent review criticizes LA police for handling of George Floyd protests

The Los Angeles police department has been criticised over its handling of the widespread protests that broke out over the summer after the death of George Floyd, with an independent review finding that poor planning led to chaos and mass arrests.

The review, commissioned by the city council following nationwide demonstrations last year, was released on Thursday as the trial opens in Minneapolis for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged with killing Floyd on 25 May 2020.

“On May 27 and 28, the protests in downtown Los Angeles were marred by an escalating level of violence and criminality. Initially, the (Los Angeles police) department treated these as isolated incidents, rather than as a manifestation of a larger expression of outrage that was spreading across the United States,” the report said.

The LAPD did not immediately respond to the report.

The review, headed by the criminal defense attorney Gerald Chaleff, found that LAPD commanders failed to establish a clear command structure for directing its response to the outbreak of violence, leading to a “chaos of command” that left officers unsure of who was in charge as events unfolded.

“It appears the department believed that if protests arising out of George Floyd’s death occurred in Los Angeles that they all would be peaceful,” the report’s authors said. “In interviews with the review team, interviewees said they were surprised at the violence that occurred in the afternoon and evening hours at some protests.”

Other mistakes cited in the analysis included poor training of officers in use of non-lethal weapons, and failing to anticipate that the protests could spread beyond the city’s downtown and lack of field jails.

“Thousands of people were arrested throughout the protests without a clearly articulated plan for detentions, transportation and processing,” the report said. “Those arrested were detained at the scene of the arrests for hours, handcuffed on the pavement, detained in buses, and taken to remote locations, without water or the use of bathroom facilities.”

The report also noted that the protests occurred during the pandemic, meaning that “officers and those arrested were in close proximity, not socially distancing, many without masks and thus at risk of being exposed to the Covid-19 virus.”

Between 29 May and 2 June, the LAPD arrested more than 4,000 people, the report stated.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD in connection with these arrests and injuries incurred during these protests. “There are reports that people were struck in the face and head, causing significant injuries, some of which required surgery,” the report stated. “Not all people struck with less lethal munitions during the protests were engaging in criminal behavior. This appears to be in part due to the complex and rapid movement of the crowds and at times a lack of adequate training.”

In all, the 101-page report had 67 findings and listed 10 recommendations that included a periodic audit that the LAPD is in compliance with all lawsuit settlements, an extensive study of less-lethal munitions, an update on use-of-force directives in large crowds and more instruction regarding the use of less-lethal munitions on crowds.

The report noted that during the protests, 106 officers suffered injuries from “dangerous objects being thrown at them, lasers used to injure their eyes, and other methods used to injure the officers and incite the crowd of protesters”. In addition, 141 LAPD patrol cars were severely damaged and six were destroyed by fire and other forms of vandalism. Yet “despite the provocations, the police must be able to effectively address those who are committing criminal acts and causing disruption,” the report states.

“One of the fundamental duties of policing is to protect the first amendment right to free speech, assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” the report reads. ”

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