5/10/2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015

Police Mass Murder Fact
As of May 1, 2015, 387 people have been killed by police since January 1, 2015 (that's a total of 120 days.) That's 3.225 people per day, on average.

http://killedbypolice.net/

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's $150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.  

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

 Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Amn3.pngMayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Mumia Needs Medical Care

Dateline Wed. May 6th.

On Saturday Pam Africa and Abdul Jon visited Mumia Abu-Jamal at SCI Mahanoy. He was weak, stable, and alert.  The visit ended so that he could get rest.  Mumia is still in the infirmary.  He has been able to call his wife Wadiya Jamal.   After being denied a visit  on Monday 4/27, (the prison is closed for any visits on Tues & Wed) on Thursday April 30, Mumia's Attorney Bret Grote Abolitionist Law Center met with Mumia for 3.5 hrs. This was in the immediate wake of Grote having submitted an expert medical recommendation letter to the Dept. of Corrections. This letter from Mumia's doctor outlined the need for Mumia to undergo immediate and thorough diagnostic tests in search for the cause of his persistent and recently life threatening conditions. Conditions which the prison has allowed to become nearly lethal. 

On Friday, prison medical staff informed Mumia that they were going to proceed with the first diagnostic test recommended in the expert medical letter. This skin biopsy occurred Monday May 4th. Oversight and close monitoring of these tests is crucial.  The prison is preventing Mumia and Mumia's doctors from adequate oversight and input. Because communication is being limited by prison officials Mumia does not have access quickly enough to information he needs to advocate for his own care.   We are clear that Inadequate testing, delays, and any deviation from the medically necessary course of treatment, will be challenged by Grote's legal team, whom are prepared to act.

Obtaining a diagnosis is of paramount importance at this moment.

Mumia remains seriously ill. Public pressure has been key every step of the way, and remains extremely important.  Please keep up the calls, emails and faxes. Demand that (1) Adequate diagnostic testing be done (2) That Mumia's doctor is able to communicate freely and regularly with the prison infirmary physicians who are delivering Mumia's medical care (3) His doctor has meaningful and regular phone access with Mumia. (There are no phones in the infirmary, his calls are limited to 15 mins and and he has limited access to the day room where the phones are). (4) And allow Mumia's chosen doctor to conduct an onsite medical examination.  

Noelle Hanrahan, P.I. Director Prison Radio

https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/585261

Take Action Now!
Demand that the Department of Corrections permit Mumia to have an examination by his doctor! Click here to call and fax the Prison and State officials and state our demands.

http://www.prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/letters/pdf/Eyes%20on%20Mumia_1.pdf

Mumia needs his own physician specialists!  Please donate now to help make this possible.  Please got to the web site below and give as generously as you can.

Donate at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mumia-abu-jamal-needs-medical-care-now

and…
Sign the petition
to help save—and free—Mumia.
Go to:

https://www.change.org/p/john-e-wetzel-pa-secretary-of-corrections-tom-wolf-pa-governor-stop-the-medical-execution-of-mumia-abu-jamal-by-neglect-and-malpractice-3

Also,
We need to keep up the pressure
with phone calls:

Let SCI Mahanoy Superintendent John Kerestes and Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel know we insist that Mumia have medical specialists of his own choosing, and that they have daily access rights to examine and treat him. Also let them know that Mumia’s family needs regular and frequent visitation rights.

SCI Mahanoy
Superintendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158

SCI Mahanoy
Chief Health Care Administrator Steinhardt
(570) 773-2158

Christopher Oppman
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
(717) 728-5309

John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109

NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!

Mumia is Innocent! Free Mumia Now!

This message by:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
20 April 2015

Call now to demand freedom and medical care for Mumia:

Often when we call in, prison and state officials have taken their lines off the hook. Know that every action matters, even when they don't pick up. If they don't answer, please leave a voicemail:

John Wetzel, PA Secretary of Corrections: 717-728-4109

Governor Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500

SCI Mahanoy: 570-787-2500

For a full list of addresses and faxes, visit prisonradio.org
Support Prison Radio

$35 to become a member.

$50 to become a member and receive a beautiful tote bag. Or call us to special order a yoga mat bag.

$100 to become a member and receive the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

$300 to become a member and bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1,000 (or $88 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Thank you!


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Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air. 

Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:

     Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
     Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech


Copyright © Prison Radio

www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Our mailing address is:

Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141

http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd

Donate Now

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:

JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.

Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious

and social organizations.

SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html

Write: Lorenzo Johnson, DF 1036

            SCI Mahanoy

            301 Morea Rd.

            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:

              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC


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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
   

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist." 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.



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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

 November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.

It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.

Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General

2200 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-2200

Army Clemency and Parole Board

251 18th St, Suite 385

Arlington, VA 22202-3532

Directorate of Inmate Administration

Attn: Boards Branch

U.S. Disciplinary Barracks

1301 N. Warehouse Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:

The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help.

A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!


Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) Lawsuit Leads to New Limits on Solitary Confinement at Juvenile Prisons in Illinois
By




2) Tamir Rice’s Mother Asks Ohio Authorities to Finish Inquiry
By RICHARD FAUSSET




3) Negative View of U.S. Race Relations Grows, Poll Finds
By




4) For Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers, a Difficult 2014 Still Paid Well
By





5) Horrified mother says school officials choked her 7-year old son
Posted on by in , , , , ,
http://iloveblackpeople.net/2015/05/nj-mom-says-school-security-guard-choked-7-year-old-son/




6) ‘A Conversation About Growing Up Black’
By JOE BREWSTER and PERRI PELTZ 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opinion/a-conversation-about-growing-up-black.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0 




7) Inquiry to Examine Racial Bias in the San Francisco Police
By
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/san-francisco-police-department-racial-bias-investigation.html?ref=us




8) California: Killing by Officer Is Investigated
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





9) Cops kill an unarmed Black man in Venice: What do we have to burn down to make the news?
Saturday, May 9, 2015
by

10) Police Killings Rise Slightly, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise
By and SARAH COHEN










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1) Lawsuit Leads to New Limits on Solitary Confinement at Juvenile Prisons in Illinois
By

CHICAGO — A settlement to a federal lawsuit will sharply limit the practice of solitary confinement in juvenile correctional facilities run by the state of Illinois, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois announced on Monday.

The settlement, which resolved a lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. of Illinois against the state, requires that the juvenile inmates spend at least eight hours a day outside their cells, said Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. of Illinois. The new policy also requires that the inmates in isolation continue to receive education and mental health services.

“What we would say is that if you get to leave your room and be in the company of staff, and have the opportunity to talk to them for eight hours every single day, there’s no longer solitary confinement,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You don’t need to use solitary confinement to keep a prison safe. We think that these new rules are consistent with running a safe and rehabilitative prison system.”The policy makes Illinois the latest state to enact a less restrictive approach to running its juvenile correctional facilities. Advocates for juveniles have long argued that solitary confinement is counterproductive, causing young people to suffer paranoia and depression. A review by the Department of Justice found that more than half of the suicides in juvenile prisons occur during solitary confinement.

Natalie J. Kraner, a lawyer with the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest, the pro bono arm of the law firm Lowenstein Sandler, said that Illinois had become one of 20 states to prohibit the use of solitary confinement as a punitive measure.

“I think we’re slowly moving away from it,” she said. “The country is recognizing the harms that come from the use of solitary confinement, especially when you’re talking about juveniles.”

The new Illinois rule applies to the six state-run juvenile facilities that house close to 700 youths; the smallest currently holds 24, and the largest 238. Solitary confinement may be used in certain situations if a youth is considered a threat to others, but only for short periods of time. The new confinement rule does not extend to the hundreds of other young people who are in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections. A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, Mike Theodore, said state officials were pleased with the settlement.

"We believe this policy is consistent with prevailing federal rules and national best practices,” Mr. Theodore said. “Department of Juvenile Justice staff have been working diligently over the last year to begin to comply with the new directive.”

Similar lawsuits have challenged juvenile solitary requirements in Mississippi, New York and Ohio. As a result, those states now require inmates to be out of their rooms for at least four hours a day. Some states allow confinement for only a few hours each day, but there are still nine states that place no limit on the amount of time that a juvenile may spend in punitive solitary confinement.

In September, the New York City Correction Department ended solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-old inmates at the Rikers Island complex. In January, the city agreed to extend the ban to all Rikers inmates 21 and younger. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan had issued a report criticizing the department’s policies for teenage inmates, calling the use of solitary confinement “excessive and inappropriate.”

The A.C.L.U. of Illinois filed the lawsuit, R.J. v. Jones, in 2012 to improve conditions at the state’s juvenile facilities. The policy announced on Monday was approved in April by Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of Federal District Court.

Elizabeth Calvin, a senior advocate in the children’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, said that solitary confinement was particularly damaging to juveniles. “I think there’s a growing recognition that putting children and youth into isolation is not a way to address the problems that these young people have,” she said. “If we’re talking about teens, we’re talking about individuals who are still developing, neurologically and socially. Those are tasks that require social interaction.”


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2) Tamir Rice’s Mother Asks Ohio Authorities to Finish Inquiry
By RICHARD FAUSSET

The mother of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer while playing with a fake pistol, pleaded on Monday for the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department to conclude its monthslong criminal investigation into the matter.

At a news conference in front of a Cleveland courthouse, an emotional Samaria Rice and a team of lawyers for the boy’s family expressed frustration that the investigation was continuing more than five months after her son was shot on Nov. 22. John O’Brien, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, would not comment Monday when asked when the investigation might be finished.

“In less than a second my son is gone,” Ms. Rice said. “And I want to know how long I’ve got to wait for justice.”One of the lawyers for the family, Walter Madison, compared the situation to the recent death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Mr. Gray and Tamir were both young black males who died after being confronted by the police. Marilyn J. Mosby, the Baltimore state’s attorney, filed charges against six police officers in connection with Mr. Gray’s death on Friday, less than two weeks after his death. The surprisingly swift response was praised by many Baltimoreans, but was criticized by the police as a politicized rush to justice.

“All we want is the same here in Cleveland,” Mr. Madison said. The investigation, he said, was “going slower than molasses in the summertime.”

Protesters nationwide have held up the death of Ms. Rice’s son as one of numerous recent examples of the excessive use of police force against African-Americans.

The 12-year-old was shot by Officer Tim Loehmann after he and his partner, Frank Garmback, responded to what they believed to be an urgent situation unfolding in the park where Tamir was playing with a gun, a Colt pistol replica that shoots plastic pellets.

The officers did not know upon arriving on the scene that a caller to Cleveland’s 911 system had reported that the gun Tamir was holding was “probably fake.”

An orange safety tip on the gun meant to distinguish it from a real gun had either been removed or fallen off. Officer Loehmann shot Tamir within two seconds of arriving in his squad car, raising doubts about police assertions that the boy had been warned to raise his hands three times.

Michael P. Maloney, a lawyer for Officer Garmback, and Henry Hilow, a lawyer for Officer Loehmann, wrote jointly in an email that they were “confident that no charges will be filed” after the investigation. “Our clients are entitled to the fair and deliberative process the law requires,” they wrote on Monday. “This process takes place in the courthouse, not on the street.” Both officers remain employed and on “light duty” status.

Upon the completion of the sheriff’s investigation, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office will review the case and present it to a grand jury, which will decide whether or not to indict the officers, said Joseph F. Frolik, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

The Rice family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the officers and the city, and lawyers for the officers have asked that it be stayed until the criminal investigation is completed.



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3) Negative View of U.S. Race Relations Grows, Poll Finds
By

Public perceptions of race relations in America have grown substantially more negative in the aftermath of the death of a young black man who was injured while in police custody in Baltimore and the subsequent unrest, far eclipsing the sentiment recorded in the wake of turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., last summer.

Americans are also increasingly likely to say that the police are more apt to use deadly force against a black person, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.

The poll findings highlight the challenges for local leaders and police officials in trying to maintain order while sustaining faith in the criminal justice system in a racially polarized nation.Sixty-one percent of Americans now say race relations in this country are generally bad. That figure is up sharply from 44 percent after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed in Ferguson in August, and 43 percent in December. In a CBS News poll just two months ago, 38 percent said race relations were generally bad. Current views are by far the worst of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The negative sentiment is echoed by broad majorities of blacks and whites alike, a stark change from earlier this year, when 58 percent of blacks thought race relations were bad, but just 35 percent of whites agreed. In August, 48 percent of blacks and 41 percent of whites said they felt that way.

Looking ahead, 44 percent of Americans think race relations are worsening, up from 36 percent in December. Forty-one percent of blacks and 46 percent of whites think so. Pessimism among whites has increased 10 points since December.

The poll finds that profound racial divisions in views of how the police use deadly force remain. Blacks are more than twice as likely to say police in most communities are more apt to use deadly force against a black person — 79 percent of blacks say so compared with 37 percent of whites. A slim majority of whites say race is not a factor in a police officer’s decision to use deadly force.

Overall, 44 percent of Americans say deadly force is more likely to be used against a black person, up from 37 percent in August and 40 percent in December.

Blacks also remain far more likely than whites to say they feel mostly anxious about the police in their community. Forty-two percent say so, while 51 percent feel mostly safe. Among whites, 8 in 10 feel mostly safe.

One proposal to address the matter — having on-duty police officers wear body cameras — receives overwhelming support. More than 9 in 10 whites and blacks alike favor it.

Asked specifically about the situation in Baltimore, most Americans expressed at least some confidence that the investigation by local authorities would be conducted fairly. But while nearly two-thirds of whites think so, fewer than half of blacks agree. Still, more blacks are confident now than were in August regarding the investigation in Ferguson. On Friday, six members of the police force involved in the arrest of Mr. Gray were charged with serious offenses, including manslaughter. The poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday; results from before charges were announced are similar to those from after.Reaction to the recent turmoil in Baltimore, however, is similar among blacks and whites. Most Americans, 61 percent, say the unrest after Mr. Gray’s death was not justified. That includes 64 percent of whites and 57 percent of blacks.

The nationwide poll was conducted from April 30 to May 3 on landlines and cellphones with 1,027 adults, including 793 whites and 128 blacks. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults, four percentage points for whites and nine percentage points for blacks. See the full poll here.




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4) For Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers, a Difficult 2014 Still Paid Well
By

For investors in hedge funds, like big pension funds, 2014 was not a lucrative year. But for those who managed their money, the pay was spectacular.

The top 25 hedge fund managers reaped $11.62 billion in compensation in 2014, according to an annual ranking published on Tuesday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

That collective payday came even as hedge funds, once high-octane money makers, returned on average low-single digits. In comparison, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index posted a gain of 13.68 percent last year when reinvested dividends were included.

Still, the men (no woman has ever made the cut) at the top of the hedge fund universe now run firms that are bigger than they have ever been. Their influence is growing beyond the industry and even beyond Wall Street. They lobby in Washington, donate to political campaigns nationwide, and can pick their advisers from a pool of former central bankers.

Topping the list is Kenneth C. Griffin, who started by trading convertible bonds out of his dormitory at Harvard. He took home $1.3 billion last year. James H. Simons, a former National Security Agency code breaker who makes billions of dollars every year from his hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, earned $1.2 billion. And Raymond Dalio, who runs the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, with more than $170 billion in assets under management, reaped $1.1 billion.

In close fourth was William A. Ackman, who is known for making large and concentrated bets, and for being outspoken about them. Mr. Ackman earned $950 million in 2014.

The pay estimates are based on the value of each manager’s stake in his firm and the fees charged. Investors in hedge funds generally pay an annual management fee of 2 percent of the total assets under management and 20 percent of any profits.

For the average person, these sums are extraordinary. But the overall pay for top earners was down by hundreds of millions of dollars in 2014. These managers made just over half of the $21.15 billion earned by the top 25 in 2013.

Still, what makes such nine- and 10-figure paychecks remarkable for 2014 is that many of the top earners had mediocre performances at best. Only half of the top 10 earners recorded returns that exceeded that of the S.&.P 500.

For investors, 2014 was the sixth consecutive year that hedge funds have fallen short of stock market performance, returning only 3 percent on average, according to a composite index of 2,200 portfolios collected by HFR, a firm that tracks the industry. Hedge funds are lightly regulated private pools of capital open to institutional investors like pension funds, university endowments and wealthy investors.

Such large investors continue to shovel money into the $2.9 trillion hedge fund industry, desperate to make returns in an environment of near-zero interest rates. So far this year, $95 billion of new capital has flowed in.

In terms of performance, Mr. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital and Mr. Griffin’s Citadel were standouts. Pershing Square’s two funds gained 36 percent and 40 percent, the best returns in the 2014 ranking. Citadel posted returns of 18 percent to investors in its flagship Kensington and Wellington funds. Both Mr. Ackman and Mr. Griffin declined to comment for this article.

At Renaissance, the best-performing equities fund was up 14.5 percent, and its institutional futures fund gained 7.4 percent. Mr. Simons’s wealth, however, is tied up in the firm’s secretive Medallion fund, which manages only employees’ money and has earned average annual returns of more than 30 percent over two decades.

Elsewhere, returns were more modest.

Mr. Dalio’s Bridgewater started the year strong, with well-placed bets on interest rates in Europe and the United States, but momentum slowed in the second half of the year. He made 3.6 percent and 8.7 percent in his two main Pure Alpha funds. Mr. Dalio’s spokesman declined to comment.

Some notable managers were missing from the Alpha list entirely. The billionaire financier John A. Paulson did not make the cut because his Paulson & Company hedge fund lost money in 2014. Mr. Paulson, an inveterate art collector whose office is lined with Alexander Calder watercolors, was the second-highest earner in 2013, reaping $2.3 billion. He declined to comment.

And some of the most prominent names on past Alpha lists are no longer counted, having converted their hedge funds into family offices, managing chiefly their own money. Among them are George Soros, Steven A. Cohen, Carl C. Icahn and Stanley Druckenmiller.

Computer scientists whose firms use quantitative strategies were among the top earners last year. Mr. Simons employs astronomers and physicists and uses computer programs to scan reams of data in search of patterns to make investments, for example.David E. Shaw, whose $36 billion D. E. Shaw firm hires data scientists to build algorithms for trading, made $530 million in 2014. Mr. Shaw, who has a computer science Ph.D. from Stanford, is no longer involved with the daily management of D. E. Shaw’s investments. A spokesman for D. E. Shaw declined to comment.

In a year when managers complained about unnavigable markets, with the leading central banks keeping interest rates low, hedge funds that employed a variety of strategies fared better.

Israel A. Englander took home $900 million after his firm, Millennium, made returns of 12 percent in 2014. Based in New York, Millennium uses a platform model to invest with 170 individual managers who each use their own trading strategies. Mr. Englander does not charge a management fee. Instead, investors share the costs of running the firm.

The highest-earning managers have also emerged as leading political donors. For example, Mr. Griffin, whose $26 billion firm, Citadel, is based in Chicago, was the single largest backer for Rahm Emanuel’s successful second-term mayoral campaign, donating more than $1 million. (Last month, Citadel hired Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, as a senior adviser.)

Mr. Simons, who stepped down from day-to-day management of his $25 billion firm, Renaissance, in 2010, has been a significant political supporter of the Democrats, donating $8.3 million in 2014 alone. A spokesman for Mr. Simons declined to comment.

Activist investors, once the scourge of corporate America because of their strategy of buying up large stakes in companies and then throwing their weight around with management, came out on top, too.

Larry Robbins, an activist investor who prefers to be called a “suggestivist,” made $570 million in 2014. He made a fortune for himself and his investors in 2013 after winning a proxy contest against Health Management Associates. Mr. Robbins has also made a windfall betting on health care stocks like Humana, Thermo Fischer Scientific, HCA Holdings and VCA. A spokesman declined to comment.

One group of hedge fund managers known as the Tiger Cubs also made the top of list. Protégés of Julian H. Robertson, they are named after his firm, Tiger Management.

One of them was O. Andreas Halvorsen, the founder of Viking Global Investors, who earned $450 million last year. A former Norwegian Navy SEAL, Mr. Halvorsen is fiercely competitive; he came in eighth for his division several years ago in an Ironman race that included swimming, running and cycling.

Chase Coleman made $425 million last year. His firm, Tiger Global Management, reported steady returns for investors. The Tiger Global fund reported gains of 16.9 percent and Tiger Global Long Opportunities of 15.5 percent. The firm also makes venture capital investments in start-ups. A spokeswoman for Mr. Coleman declined to comment.



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5) Horrified mother says school officials choked her 7-year old son
Posted on by in , , , , ,
http://iloveblackpeople.net/2015/05/nj-mom-says-school-security-guard-choked-7-year-old-son/

The school-to-prison pipeline has become something that parents around the nation dread as a threat to the freedom and security of their children. Kids in school are being managed with more and more strong arm tactics, and it’s leading to very interesting complaints from parents who feel that their children have been either mistreated or unjustly incarcerated.


This mother may have a point, or at least deserve some answers. She says that her 7-year old son was put into a chokehold by a school employee, who was attempting to restrain him. No reason has been given that Ne’rek Johnson needed to be restrained or if he was attempting to hurt another person. But his mother wants to know what happened to her son.

Karen McMillan says that her child is a first-grader at Barack H. Obama Elementary School. He went to the hospital overnight after the incident, which occurred last Friday. She says that he has no long-term injuries from the chain of events, so he’s going to be OK. However, she does want to understand what happened.

“We are investigating institutional abuse by a security guard,” said Asbury Park Acting Police Chief Anthony Salerno.

The child was taken to Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune. His staying overnight appears to be for reasons of observations and as a precaution.

Officials say that at the time the boy was restrained, he was throwing a tantrum, kicking chairs, rolling on the floor and getting upset because the teacher would not allow him to go outside and play. The security guard says that he was trying to help the child when he started hyperventilating. That’s when the story gets murky.

McMillan claims that her son felt like he was going to throw up, but the security guard held him too tight. The claims that this represented excessive force on the young child.

I feel disgusted because I would never put my hands on a child,” McMillan said. “They make it seem like my son is an animal.”

District spokeswoman Chanta Jackson said the security guard has been placed on paid leave, pending an investigation.

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6) ‘A Conversation About Growing Up Black’
By JOE BREWSTER and PERRI PELTZ 

Imagine strangers crossing the street to avoid you, imagine the police arbitrarily stopping you, imagine knowing people fear you because of the color of your skin. Many of this country’s young black men and boys don’t have to imagine.

In this Op-Doc video, “A Conversation about Growing Up Black,”we ask African-American boys and young men to tell us candidly about the daily challenges they face because of these realities. They speak openly about what it means to be a young black man in a racially charged world and explain how they feel when their parents try to shelter and prepare them for a world that is too often unfair and biased.

As we debate the headlines about the deaths of young black men and police misconduct, from Baltimore to Ferguson to Staten Island, we fear our society is turning away from the painful conversations that need to be had at home, in our own communities, schools and families. Focusing our attention on the nation’s latest racial hot zone often devolves into the same old invectives about race and politics, and we lose sight of the bigger picture. Worse, it allows us to avoid the painful discussions we need to have with our young people about their concerns, and the role we each may play in them. We can be a part of the solution only if we dare to open up and have the conversation.
Joe Brewster and Perri Peltz, are New York-based filmmakers. Mr. Brewster’s previous Op-Doc is “An Education in Equality.” Following “A Conversation With my Black Son,” this is the second in a series of videos that foster discussions about the state of race relations in America.


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7) Inquiry to Examine Racial Bias in the San Francisco Police
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/san-francisco-police-department-racial-bias-investigation.html?ref=us

First came disclosures of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by officers of the San Francisco Police Department. That was followed by the discovery that sheriff’s deputies had been gambling on forced fighting matches between inmates at a city jail.

Then on Thursday, the San Francisco district attorney announced that he was expanding the investigation of the city’s police and sheriff’s departments to examine whether those agencies have a deep-seated culture of systemic bias that has led to unlawful arrests or prosecutions.

In a year in which many of the nation’s major cities have been rocked by protests after the fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans, the broadened inquiry made clear that even a city known for its liberal politics can be buffeted by accusations that its officers behaved in a racially biased manner.

African-Americans in San Francisco have complained for years about harassment and the use of excessive force by the police. And while African-Americans make up about 5 percent of the city’s population, they account for half of its arrests and jail inmates, and more than 60 percent of the children in juvenile detention, according to city statistics.

In Baltimore on Wednesday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake acknowledged a “fractured relationship between the police and the community” in her predominantly black city and asked the Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Police Department to determine whether officers had engaged in unconstitutional patterns of abuse or discrimination.

At a news conference in San Francisco announcing the expanded inquiry, the district attorney, George Gascón, acknowledged that the racist text messages had particularly undermined public confidence in both his office and the local criminal justice system.

He also said he believed that the city’s tradition of inclusiveness would allow it to avoid the tumult in Ferguson, Mo., and other cities where racial bias has been found to have played a role in the actions of police officers.

“In the last few months, we have seen city after city where police use of force or other police activity is coming to the light and indicating that racial animosity and other types of biases play a significant role,” he said. “I think at one point we felt we would be immune from that type of activity.”

Concerns that the San Francisco Police Department may be rife with racial bias were reignited in March when racially inflammatory text messages sent between 14 police officers became public as part of the federal corruption trial of two San Francisco officers.

Mr. Gascón, a former San Francisco police chief, said Thursday that a task force of prosecutors had already been scrutinizing some 3,000 cases — including about 1,600 convictions — related to contacts or arrests made by the 14 police officers during the last decade to determine if biases had led to any unlawful arrests or wrongful prosecutions.

The investigation by the panel, which will add three former judges as investigators, will now be broadened to include an examination of whether entrenched biases exist in the 2,000-member department.

“If just one individual was wrongly imprisoned because of bias on the part of these officers, that’s one too many,” Mr. Gascón said. “What is the potential impact in our justice system when a juror in a criminal trial questions the credibility of the arresting officer on the evidence that is being presented because they believe that this process may have been influenced by racial or homophobic bias? Can justice prevail under such conditions? Probably not.”

The text messages the officers exchanged discussed lynching African-Americans and proposing that African-Americans “should be spayed.” One text read “White Power.” Some referred to African-Americans using a racial slur.

Other texts contained denigrating comments about gays, Mexicans and Filipinos, who make up a significant number of residents in one of the nation’s most culturally diverse cities.

In recent months, there have also been a number of cellphone videos posted online of San Francisco police officers apparently mistreating citizens — many of them African-American — including one in which an officer nearly tipped a disabled man out of his wheelchair onto the street.

“Shame, shame, shame on San Francisco,” Rev. Amos C. Brown, president of the San Francisco office of the N.A.A.C.P., said at the news conference. “We cannot claim with integrity and honesty that we are first-class, inclusive, loving.”Greg Suhr, the police chief, had no immediate comment Thursday, but he has moved to fire seven officers who sent and received the racist text messages. An eighth officer has resigned.

“We have cooperated with the district attorney and handed them the requested documents so they could conduct their audit,” the police department said in a statement. “The D.A. has to review the cases and it’s their responsibility to determine if there is any bias in those cases.”

In addition to the text messages, the task force is also investigating gladiator-style fights among San Francisco jail inmates that the city’s public defender, Jeff Adachi, has said were arranged by sheriff’s deputies. The jail guards, according to a report by Mr. Adachi, bet on the fights and threatened inmates with violence or withheld food if they did not take part.

A third area being examined is the possibility that hundreds of convictions in criminal cases may have been compromised by analysts at the police laboratory who appear to have improperly handled DNA samples.

The broadening of the panel’s focus was met with relief by residents who have long questioned police behavior and arrests made in Bayview-Hunters Point and other African-American neighborhoods.

“Fighting for civil rights is really part of the San Francisco culture and legacy and so it only makes sense that we move forward on this,” said Malia Cohen, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors who has urged a similar inquiry in the past.

The text messages were disclosed in March as part of a federal corruption case against Ian Furminger, the former sergeant who sent many of the messages.

Mr. Furminger, a 20-year veteran convicted in December 2014 of stealing money and property from suspects, has been sentenced to 41 months in prison. As part of the case, prosecutors revealed that he had sent and received a number of the text messages.

The expanded district attorney’s task force will now include Cruz Reynoso, a former California Supreme Court justice; Dickran Tevrizian, a retired federal court judge; and LaDoris Cordell, a former Superior Court judge, who was once a vice provost at Stanford University. The panel is expected to conclude the investigation by the end of the year, officials said.


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8) California: Killing by Officer Is Investigated
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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9) Cops kill an unarmed Black man in Venice: What do we have to burn down to make the news?
Saturday, May 9, 2015
by


Another unarmed black man was murdered by the police in Venice Beach, CA on Tuesday. His name was Brendon K. Glenn. He was young, just 29. He was new in town and homeless. He is reported to have had mental problems and was drunk on Cinco de Mayo. He had a reputation for giving people hugs whether they wanted them or not but when he tried to hug the bouncer at the Townhouse bar on Windward Ave around 11:30PM, he called the cops. The cops asked Brendon Glenn to show some ID, and when he went into his pocket, one of the cops shot him dead, according to witnesses.
Having this happen in our community, fresh on the heels of the murder of so many unarmed black men in the past year including Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in Stanton Island, John Crawford in Beavercreek, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles, Dante Parker in Victorville, Naeschylus Vinzant in Aurora, Tony Robinson in Madison, Anthony Hill in Atlanta, Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, Kajieme Powell in St. Louis, Dante Parker in San Bernardino, Tyree Woodson in Baltimore, and so many others, the people of Venice were outraged. Many held an all night vigil at the scene of the murder the next night. Even LAPD police chief Charlie Beck expressed his doubts, saying:

“Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that, I have not seen those extraordinary circumstances.”
Naturally the police protective league was outraged. There was a hastily called community meeting on Thursday evening that packed the auditorium at Westminster school on Abbot-Kinney Blvd. Many city official and what looked like about half of the LAPD were also in attendance.
Since the shooting, the protests and demonstrations have come non-stop and the shooting has been all over the news in Los Angeles, but it you live outside of Los Angeles you probably haven't heard the news. That is the rather unique prospective I have had on these events because I have been in Texas for work this week. I heard about it from friends. I found more by watching local LA news on the Internet and YouTube, and I waited all week in vain to hear mention of yet another unarmed black man gunned down by police on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC.

When I wasn't at work, I have been stuck in the hotel with nothing to do but watch the news, so I don't think I've missed the reports. Yesterday morning's news was all about the police. They were still bring non-stop coverage of events relating to the Freddie Gray murder, include live coverage of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch's press conference announcing a new investigation of the Baltimore police and live coverage of the cop funeral in New York City, but of Brendon Glenn and the police murder in Venice, not a word. Its as though there was a news black out about this death in Venice that was only revealed to me because I have local connections. It made me wonder how many other unarmed black men had been gunned down by police this week and have gone unreported. Because that is the real scandal, not just the individual circumstance of the killing of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and others that managed to break through to the national news, but the on-going rate at which black men are slaughtered by the police in the United States, and that is what I think the media is trying to hide by refusing national coverage of the death of Brendon Glenn. The people of Venice have protested vigorously, but so far they have protested peacefully, and maybe that is the problem. So my question to CNN, Fox News and MSNBC is:

What do we have to burn down to get you to cover this story?

I hope its not the local CVS Pharmacy, because its right across the street from me and very convenient. But if putting the torch to it is the only way to get the national media to recognize the death of Brendon Glenn, then I say "Burn it down!"

And to the media moguls and politicians who cry crocodile tears whenever property is destroyed in a riot, I say, I hold you responsible because you work to cover up these murders and people have learned from long and bitter experiences that the only way they can get recognition for the grievous loss of human life in such cases is to destroy something dear to the powers that be - their property.

 

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10) Police Killings Rise Slightly, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise
By and SARAH COHEN

Their names have become both a litany and rallying cry: Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter L. Scott. And now Freddie Gray.

Since Mr. Brown was fatally shot in an encounter with a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in August, so many unarmed black males have died in police confrontations that even President Obama noted this week that “it comes up, it seems like, once a week now, or once every couple of weeks.” Calling such encounters “a slow-rolling crisis, he added, “This is not new and we should not pretend it is.”

But determining the prevalence of such killings is no easy matter. The use of force by the police — against minorities and whites alike — is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details.What official data exists suggests that the number of killings by police officers has crept upward only slowly, if at all, in recent years. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers, ranged from 397 to 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year.

Federal experts have long acknowledged that that estimate is too low, and a handful of more recent, unofficial reports — online databases compiled and fact-checked by volunteers — place the toll much higher, at about 1,100 deaths a year, or three a day. Yet they do not suggest that the pace of police killings or the racial composition of victims as a group has changed significantly in the last two years or so.

A number of criminologists believe police homicides are near their nadir. In New York City, for example, 91 people were fatally shot by police officers in 1971 — and a record-low eight in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. In Los Angeles, officers used “categorical” force — gunfire, chokings and other violence that could lead to death — in 84 of nearly 149,000 arrests in 2012, down 17 percent in seven years.

That data suggests that any perception that higher numbers of unarmed African-Americans are being killed by the police in recent months is driven by citizens’ postings of unsettling cellphone videos and pictures, like that of police officers dragging Freddie Gray, his legs apparently not working, into a van.

“People are shocked by all these shootings,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who is an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York. “But they’ve always been there.”

But it also means that lethal force by the police is a steady problem that is causing police departments across the country to debate whether they need to change procedures and training.

At the riot-scarred intersection of Pennsylvania and West North Avenues in Baltimore on Tuesday, Robert Wilson, a Baltimore high school graduate, said the frustrations that sparked civil disorder there spread well beyond those who took to the streets this week.

“What the media doesn’t understand is that growing up in this society is poverty, it’s police brutality, it’s rat-infested houses, it’s your friends dying,” Mr. Wilson said.

For most officers, firing a gun is among the rarest events in their careers. But training and the law-enforcement culture condition officers to regard themselves as perpetually threatened. And while many officers on high-crime patrols learn to sense and respond to danger, experts say, less experienced officers may see their training as a license to use force — not a restriction.

Some criminologists say the very nature of police work and training can inure officers to the violence they see, and make deadly force seem more reasonable in risky situations. Last October, Milwaukee’s police chief fired a 38-year-old officer who had shot and killed a mentally ill man during a fight — not because the shooting was deemed unjustified, but because he had not followed training in handling citizens with mental illness that might have avoided the fight altogether.

“So much police training, from beginning to end, deals with police facing the fact that even the most innocuous circumstance can result in an officer’s death,” said Michael Jenkins, a University of Scranton assistant professor of criminal justice. “I understand that stress in their day-to-day lives. But as a profession, they need to place that potential for harm within its proper context.”

For years, the F.B.I. report on justifiable police homicides and other federal estimates of police homicides have understated the problem. Only recently have online databases compiled by volunteers begun to produce a more accurate picture. Two of the more prominent ones, Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police, each logged about 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014. Their totals are higher when police-related deaths, such as fatalities in high-speed car chases or suicides in standoffs, are included.

Because the records of killings are drawn mostly from news media reports, some crucial details, including the race of officers and suspects, often are missing.

Yet even those spotty numbers shed new light on the nature of police killings.

Fatal Encounters, maintained by D. Brian Burghart, the publisher of The Reno News and Review, may be the most meticulous aggregator of reports of killings by the police. The data, covering killings from 2013 to the present, reinforces federal statistics in one broad respect: In police homicides in which the victim’s race is identified, African-Americans account for about three in 10 deaths, and whites roughly half.“Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by cops as are whites, on a per-capita basis,” said Dr. Moskos of John Jay. But part of that is because of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods.

“Blacks are four or five times as likely to be victims of homicides, and they are five times as likely to feloniously kill a cop,” he said.

Crowdsourced data goes well beyond federal statistics — and offers intriguing results.

Relying on data gathered by Fatal Encounters, The New York Times ranked states by their rates of police-involved homicides per 100,000 residents. The result: Among the lowest were populous states like Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York whose big cities — rightly or wrongly — are often seen as crime-prone. And some of the states with the highest rates — up to six times greater, in fact — were less populous and generally western states like Montana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Why? Medical care could be one reason; shooting victims in rural areas may be far from a trauma center and unable to get care, Dr. Jenkins said. But sociological factors also could be at work. “We know the South and Southwest are generally the most violent areas, per capita, compared to the rest of the country,” he said.

Even within individual states, some police departments have a record of killing suspects at rates far higher than others. On both government and crowdsourced databases, some big cities like Phoenix and smaller ones like Albuquerque and Oklahoma City stand out for the unusual number of police killings reported relative to their size.

And homicide victims are not cut from one cloth. In the 18 months ending last December, at least 18 percent of police killings documented in the Fatal Encounters data involved victims who were mentally ill, and an additional 7 percent involved drugs or alcohol. Mr. Burghart and some experts said the true share probably was higher.

That fact is important, they said, because it suggests that police homicides could be reduced if officers were better trained to recognize and deal with mental instability — or, for that matter, any of the circumstances that end in needless deaths.

“Too much of police investigations into killings revolves around the immediate circumstances,” Dr. Jenkins said. “We need to step back and ask what got us to that place. What got the person who is now deceased into the position where he acted the way he did? And those questions are not being asked.”




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