A Reasonable and Justified Manner? A Profoundly Bigoted Lens

Stephon Clark, 22, another unarmed American citizen
shot and killed by police

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's announcement on Tuesday, that his office will step in to oversee the investigation into the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by two Sacramento Police Department officers last Sunday night, does address some concerns expressed by outraged community members about the ability of SPD to conduct an impartial investigation into its own officers.

But it's hard to say how much comfort that's going to bring Clark's family members considering he was shot multiple times for holding a cell phone.

As more detailed information about this incident begins to trickle out, a familiar narrative from the Sacramento Police Department is already beginning to unfold - the now familiar claim that the two officers who fired 20 shots at Clark (including shots fired when he fell to his hands and knees) did so because they feared for their lives.

The two officers were reportedly called to the scene in response to someone reportedly breaking the windows of cars in the neighborhood, when they confronted Stephon Clark in the backyard of the home where he lived, they claim he advanced or moved towards them with something in his hand.

Seconds later an officer yelled "Gun!" and the two officers fired 20 shots; the object in Clark's hands turned out to be a cellphone.

He was shot about 60 seconds after the SPD officers on the ground first encountered him - adding to the already-suspicious fatal shooting is the fact that one of the officers can be heard telling another to mute the sound on his body camera immediately after the shooting, right before the audio cuts out.

The arc of this investigation is obviously going to take a long time, especially given the growing media attention, mounting public outrage, and the involvement of the state attorney's office.

But one of the things that troubles me about this shooting is that the officers themselves claim that they were sent to the scene in response to reports of a man breaking car windows.

21-year-old Isaiah Malailua 

Now that's clearly a crime warranting a quick police response, but is that the kind of situation that calls for discharging a weapon?

The violent response of the two Sacramento PD officers to a black man holding his cellphone in his own backyard is remarkably different from the Chicago PD's response to an armed white man arrested in Chicago's Union Station on Friday.

According to an article by Chicago Tribune reporter William Lee, a California man named Isaiah Malailua (pictured left) was arrested at an Amtrak ticket counter wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a 9mm handgun.


Authorities quickly apprehended him after police K-9 dogs detected the odor of explosive residue on a duffel bag that belonged to Malailua that was found in another part of the station.

Now obviously I'm not suggesting that Chicago authorities should have just yelled "Gun!" and started firing in the middle of a crowded train station - they did the right thing, they located him, surrounded him and took him into custody.

The point I'm making here is that the officers who arrested Malailua in Chicago knew he was potentially dangerous because a Greyhound bus ticket with his name on it was found inside the duffel bag with the explosive residue on it that was detected by the K-9 - they also found police SWAT gear inside the bag that he'd apparently stolen from the NYPD.

So they knew who he was, and when they found him at the ticket counter he had a handgun on him and was wearing a bullet-proof vest - that's got "potential mass shooter" written all over it.

Considering recent events and the fact that Malailua was inside a crowded major urban transit hub, authorities on the scene could have been justified in shooting him, but they didn't.

What role did Malailua's skin being white have to do with how the Chicago authorities treated him?

Stephon Clark's brother Stevante leads a protest chant
during a City Council meeting Tuesday night

Contrast his arrest with the Sacramento PD's response to reports of someone breaking car windows in a neighborhood last Sunday night - where they shot and killed Stephon Clark about a minute after encountering him.

In Sacramento, the SPD had no idea who Stephon Clark was - they saw his skin color and flipped the fuck out.

Now if I was a cop, and I'm not, a report of a suspect breaking car windows on the street could sound like garden variety juvenile vandalism.

Or worse, maybe someone under the influence of heroin, crystal meth or crack desperately looking for a quick score to sell something to get high.

It's hardly the modus operandi of a professional car thief, so someone breaking car windows sounds either desperate or stupid - it makes a lot of noise, attracts a lot of attention in a neighborhood after 9pm at night, and it increases the chances of getting busted by the cops.

Does that sound like a situation where you go in with a gun drawn ready to fire shots at the first person you see?

Or does it sound like the kind of situation where it's better to ascertain who it is and what's going on?

Granted it was dark out, but responding SPD officers had a police helicopter hovering overhead that had guided them to the general location, and based on the audio that was released, the SPD officers didn't identify themselves as police officers when they encountered Stephon Clark.

If you haven't already seen it, take a look at this body cam footage when the two SPF officer come upon Clark in his grandmother's backyard - it's not bloody or anything, you can't see the actual shooting.

No charges: Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni
and Howie Lake, II

The officer's first words at 9 seconds into the video sound like "Show me your hands! Gun!" 

He's out of breath and says the words so fast it's hard to hear what he's saying - plus the police helicopter is hovering overhead.

About 6 seconds later the officer yells, "Show me your hands-Gun-Gun-Gun!" and both officers just start firing shots.

It's the initial contact that's troubling.

In some ways it reminds me of the initial contact that Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni and  Howie Lake, II demonstrated when they first encountered 37-year-old Alton Sterling in front of the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the early morning hours of July 5, 2016.

The two officers were responding to an anonymous caller alleging a man was waving a gun around in front of the store, they pulled up, approached Sterling (who was known to sell CD's outside the store), interrupted a conversation he was having with two women and told him to put his hands on a car.

Not having done anything illegal and not knowing what the officers wanted with them, Sterling protested and tried to pull away - at which point one of the officers pointed their loaded gun at Sterling and said:

"Bitch, I'm gonna kill you." 90 seconds later Alton Sterling was shot dead at point blank range while on the ground pinned on his back by both officers - Salamoni fired six shots from his weapon.

There was no, "Police officer, we need to speak with you." or "Show me your hands!" or "Freeze! Police officer!"

Alton Sterling seconds before
being shot by Salamoni

They literally pulled up, pointed a loaded handgun at his head and said, "Bitch, I'm gonna kill you."  - and they did.

The last time I blogged about Salamoni and Lake back on May 5, 2017 was just after the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions announced they would not pursue criminal charges against either man.

As you likely heard, on Tuesday Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the state would not be filing criminal charges against either Salamoni or Lake.

This despite the store owner Abdullah Muflahi saying that Sterling was not waving a gun or threatening anyone, and never brandished a gun or threatened the two officers with it at any point.

Muflahi, who witnessed the shooting, says Sterling had no idea why the two policemen were even there when they threw him on the hood of a parked car and tasered him before wrestling him to the ground.

In an April 15, 2012 op-ed in the New York Times published two months after the violent racist psychopath George Zimmerman stalked, attacked then shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, journalist and author Brent Staples observed:

"Young black men know that in far too many settings they will be seen not as individuals, but as the 'other', and given no benefit of the doubt....Society's message to black boys - 'we fear you and view you as dangerous' -  is constantly reinforced. " 

In his lengthy statement to the press on Tuesday, after stating that probable clause (rather than an actual crime), the presence of drugs in his system and resisting an arrest for something which he was never informed, were all contributing factors in Alton Sterling being shot and killed, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry concluded "that both officers acted in a reasonable and justified manner in the shooting death of Mr. Sterling."

Writer Brent Staples

The question now facing the Sacramento City Council, the California State Attorney's Office and the Sacramento Police Department is one which members of the community who protested during a City Council meeting on Tuesday night have already raised:

Were the two Sacramento PD officers who fired 20 shots at Stephon Clark while he was in the backyard of his own home acting in a "reasonable and justified manner"?

The answer, which must come from a court of law, will obviously take time to articulate and materialize.

But it should be viewed in the context of the words of Brent Staples from his op-ed written in the wake of Trayvon Martin:

"Very few Americans make a conscious decision to subscribe to racist views. But the toxic connotations that the culture has associated with blackness have been embedded in thought, language, and social convention for hundreds of years. This makes it easy for people to see the world through a profoundly bigoted lens without being aware that they are doing so."

It's that lens that lies at the heart of the death of Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark, Trayvon Martin and so many other men of color in this country.

Tried, convicted, sentenced and executed in a span of minutes - far from any court of law, denied the right to legal counsel guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and brutally silenced before having the chance to testify on their own behalf.

And as the cases of Alton Sterling and Trayvon Martin both demonstrated, found complicit in their own deaths and cruelly forced into the unfathomable role of being silent witnesses for their own prosecution by a judicial system that views plaintiffs and defendants through "a profoundly bigoted lens."

There's nothing remotely reasonable or justified about that.

Rokhaya Diallo Speaks Truth to Power in France

Outraged parent Ana Marie Cox protesting the killing
of school cafeteria manager Philando Castile in 2016

For many Americans, the terms "Stop and Frisk" and "Driving While Black" have become synonymous with the systematic abuse of police power.

Terms that have become symbolic of the overreach of some law enforcement organizations who intentionally and disproportionately target, and stop, people of color - too often for no discernible reason other than the color of one's skin.

African-American Minnesota cafeteria manager Philando Castile is a sad, but prime example.

As I blogged about back on June 10th, the former St. Anthony, Minnesota PD officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over for a broken taillight back on July 6, 2016.

Before that fateful stop, remarkably, Castile had been pulled over by various local Minnesota police officers between 49 and 52 times over a 13-year period for mostly minor infractions like failure to use a turn signal.

Within 74 seconds of pulling Castile over, an unhinged Yanez fired seven shots into the car at point blank range, (with Castile's girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat and her four-year-old daughter in the backseat) killing an innocent man who'd committed no crime, and had done nothing to threaten Yanez aside from comply with a verbal order to produce his identification from his wallet.

While unjustified traffic stops based on racial bias continue to be an issue in many parts of America, the positive news is that stop-and-risks in the city most notorious for their use, New York, have plummeted since being phased out in 2104 under current 2nd-term Democratic NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.

And as James Cullen reported in an article for the Brennan Center For Justice in 2016, the elimination of stop-and-frisk did NOT lead to an increase in crime as some conservative politicians (including former Mayor Mike Bloomberg), right-wing media pundits like Rudy Giuliani, and some members of the NYPD insisted that it would.

In fact, in total contrast to the dystopian crime-ravaged wasteland Trump described in his demented inauguration address back in January, as Ashely Southall reported for the New York Times last Wednesday, crime levels in New York City are as low as they've been since the 1950's.

But as recent international headlines indicate, stop-and-frisks and the use of the law to unfairly target, and disproportionately stop racial and ethnic minorities have been generating controversy, and police-related deaths, in France.

French journalist Rokhaya Diallo 

Last Thursday, the editorial board of the New York Times published an op-ed taking the French government to task for removing French journalist Rokhaya Diallo (pictured left) from the advisory board of the French Digital Council - which the Times described as "an independent board dealing with digital technologies and their impact on society".

She wasn't removed from the FDC advisory board because of some embarrassing personal scandal, or because she wasn't qualified to serve.

Ms. Diallo was apparently removed by the government of French President Emmanuel Macron because of a conservative backlash that might be seen in America as a kind of knee-jerk, reverse political-correctness run amok.

Over the past couple years, she has emerged as a leading vocal critic of some of the stunning displays of authoritarian overreach by French police that have resulted in the injuries and deaths of a number of young men of color - most of them Muslims of African or Arab descent.

According to the Times, her public accusations that such conduct is reflective of institutional racism within France have rankled conservatives, including French education minster Jean Michel Blanquer, who threatened to sue a French teachers union last month "for using the words 'institutional racism' during educational workshops in ethnically diverse Seine-St. Denis northeast of Paris. Mr. Blanquer has also threatened to sue Ms. Diallo." 

Back in May, President Macron famously beat his far-right extremist candidate opponent Marine Le Pen in a widely-watched national election (in part) with a promise to "fight the divisions which undermine France".

But the excitement of those elections seven months ago has faded.

French President Emmanuel Macron

And the 39-year-old Macron had no prior experience governing as an elected leader and ran as an independent without the support of a traditional French political party.

Now facing the political reality that he needs the support of conservatives to enact the kinds of policies that got him elected, he yielded to pressure from French conservatives and Ms. Diallo was removed from the FDC advisory board. 


The president of the board, venture capitalist Marie Ekeland, resigned in protest over the widely-condemned decision along with most of the other board members she'd tapped.

It's a pretty sad reflection of a European nation with such a proud tradition of "liberty, equality, fraternity" and free speech to remove a young progressive voice from a (supposedly) independent advisory board because some people are uncomfortable with what she thinks and says.

Particularly a young journalist of color who speaks up for the rights of a group that is increasingly marginalized from mainstream French society in the economic, political and social sense - alienation which is a huge factor in some French Muslims self-radicalizing and identifying with (or being recruited by) ISIS in the first place.

As the Times op-ed notes, in 2016 Diallo produced and directed a documentary titled From Ferguson to Paris: Guilty of Being Black - an analysis of the growing problem of French police using excessive physical, and deadly force in the wake of confrontations arising from the huge spike in stop-and-frisk identity checks that overwhelmingly target Muslims and people of color.

These kinds of identity checks grew exponentially in France in the wake of the horrifying wave of  terrorist attacks that took place in multiple venues across Paris on Friday November 13, 2015.

Far-right French supporters of the National Front
rallying in honor of Joan of Arc in 2015 [Photo - Alamy]

Attacks coordinated and committed by Islamic extremists which left 130 innocent people from multiple countries dead, and hundreds more wounded and traumatized.

Those attacks unfolded at a time when many Europeans, including some French citizens, were already expressing a simmering resentment over the thousands of illegal immigrants fleeing war-ravaged nations in the Mid-East and Africa who were desperately seeking refuge in towns and cities across Western Europe.


That anti-immigrant resentment also found an outlet of expression in a resurgent nationalist / populist political movement that has seen once-marginalized right-wing extremist political parties capture seats in parliaments across Europe - including the National Front in France.

For many French citizens, that resentment was further fueled by a string of terrorist attacks starting in 2012 that rocked the country - including the mass shooting at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, 2015 that left 17 people dead and 22 wounded.

And the beheading of Herve Cornara in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France by a radicalized Islamic French Muslim of North African descent named Yassin Salhi who also attempted to blow up a factory by ramming a vehicle into a bunch of gas cylinders on June 26, 2015.

From a domestic security standpoint, given the sharp increase in the number of home-grown "self-radicalized" French Muslims who've been engaged or connected to the slew of terrorist attacks that have struck France since 2012, it's understandable that French authorities would try and target areas with high concentrations of Muslims in an effort to try and prevent such attacks from happening. 

The uncomfortable truth about stop-and-frisk
in NYC; stats from NY Civil Liberties Union 

But it's also fair to say that some overzealous French police officers were engaged in taking out their frustrations on innocent people of color in an effort to "hit back" at an elusive target.

Unfortunately, just like stop-and-frisk in New York City, the overwhelming majority of people being stopped repeatedly were innocent French people of color who had nothing to do with terrorism or any other kind of illegal activity.

As The Guardian reported back in 2015 these kinds of random stop-and-frisks have also been successfully challenged in a French appeals court, as in the case of 13 men, all of whom were either of African or Arab descent, none of whom had a criminal record, who'd all been stopped multiple times by French police for humiliating ID checks.

The French court awarded all of the men modest financial compensation.

Now I'm no security expert, but are spot ID checks and stop-and-frisks of mostly people of color really the best way to stop some person who's sitting in a room alone watching ISIS propaganda online getting motivated to commit some kind of heinous terrorist attack on an innocent person or people?

Or are such actions only further stirring up the kind of anti-government resentment that already exists in already-marginalized communities? Thus serving the recruitment efforts of terrorists trying to target those alienated populations as they do in other countries like the U.S.?

There's no easy answer to those questions, but if you want to get a better sense of the repercussions of French police using undocumented stop-and-frisk against young French men of color, take a few minutes to read an op-ed Rokhaya Diallo wrote for Essence Magazine last August titled, "Police and Racism Kill In France Too". 

Just under a month after a slim majority of the 30 million-plus British citizens voted for the UK to "Brexit" the European Union on June 23, 2016, driven in part by the same kind of anti-immigrant hysteria being peddled by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, a 24-year-old black Muslim Frenchman named Adama Traorie´ got into a confrontation with French police who were trying to arrest his older brother Bagui.

Adama Traorie´'s sister Assa (2nd from right) joins
thousands of protesters July, 2016 [Photo - AFP/ Getty]

As Ms. Diallo noted in her Essence op-ed, on or about July 20, 2016, Traorie´ died of asphyxiation while in police custody on the day of his 24th birthday.

For perspective, this incident took place just about fifteen days after former Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez fired seven shots into Philando Castile's car, killing him.

The death of Traorie´, subsequent protests, and disturbing allegations of an attempted police coverup, forced the issue of French police brutality into the mainstream spotlight in France.

Frankly, Americans who wish to see the implementation of meaningful reforms in policing to prevent this kind of abuse of police authority can't just get angry when it happens here in the United States.

Those who care have a responsibility to use peaceful dissent and political activism to channel outrage and concern over the same kinds of incidents that happen in other countries into substantive change that can take root globally.

Because this ongoing issue is reflective of a deeper systematic racism that's not bound by borders.

Rokhaya Diallo's passion and commitment to end unjustified police brutality in France and beyond isn't just going to get swept under the rug as a result of conservative French authorities pressuring the Macron government to boot her off of an independent advisory board.

Aided by social media, the ability of more people to see her documentary and a growing global presence thanks to attention from mainstream French, British and American media, Ms. Diallo's voice and influence is growing.

French police conducting a stop-and-frisk on a
young French citizen in 2011 

Many Americans (including myself) really weren't aware of Adama Traorie´'s death at the hands of French police in July, 2016 in part because our national news media was so consumed with the unjustified fatal shooting of Alton Sterling at the hands of two Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers in the early morning hours of July 5, 2016 - then Philando Castile's death just a day later in Minnesota.

But Rokhaya Diallo's (and other activist's) efforts are important.

They've helped people around the world learn the name, and story, of Adama Traorie´.

As well as young men of color like Hakim Ajimi, who died after French police used an illegal choke hold on him that crushed his thorax in 2004, or Lamine Dieng who was in police custody when he died of asphyxiation inside a French police van in 2007.

French authorities have every right to take proactive steps to protect their citizens from the kinds of violent terrorist attacks that have seized the world's attention.

But killing innocent people is an unacceptable way to achieve that goal - and as the editorial board of the New York Times observed, French President Emmanuel Macron is going to have to decide if the time-honored French concepts of "liberty, equality, fraternity" are just words, or an important part of his long-term vision for the country who elected him into office, in part, to reject the divisive politics of the far right and bring the country back together.

That's an important question as we head into 2018, not just in France or the United States but everywhere where injustice has become a part of government policy.

Well that's it for now, I'm off to join some friends in Princeton to ring in the new year.

2017 has certainly been one heckuva ride.

Here's to better things in 2018, thanks again for checking out the blog and I hope to see you back here next year.  -CG

Justice For Alton Sterling & The Social Cancer of Hate In America

Uncharged: officers Blaine Salamoni & Howie Lake

From a purely legal standpoint, the likelihood that the Department of Justice was going to file federal charges against Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake, the two Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers who shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling back in 2016, was slim to start with.

But from a human perspective, it's a rather poor reflection of the DOJ that Sterling's family had to learn that federal charges wouldn't be filed in the news.

According to a family spokesman, no one from the DOJ had bothered to contact the Sterling family by the time the Washington Post broke the story on Tuesday afternoon.

Given the high profile and delicate nature of the case, and its broader implications on the racial fabric of America, and the increased focus on the conduct of law enforcement, that's inexcusable.

Let's take a quick look back at what happened last summer.

At around 12:35am back on the night of July 5, 2016, officers Salamoni and Lake responded to an anonymous phone call reporting that a man selling CD's was waving a gun and threatening a homeless man at in front of the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge.

Despite the fact that the owner of the store Abdullah Muflahi later said that Sterling was "not the one causing trouble", Salamoni and Lake confronted Sterling, tasered him multiple times and slammed him on the hood of a car before wrestling him to the ground.

Sterling seconds before being shot

While both officers were on top of Sterling, pinning him to the ground, one of the two officers yelled that Sterling had a gun after seeing the butt of a .38 caliber handgun in his pocket during the struggle.

If you look at the photo on the left taken seconds before Sterling was shot, you can clearly see one of the officers' left knee pinning Sterling's left arm to the ground while pointing his handgun directly in Sterling's face with his right hand.

The other is pinning Sterling's thigh and Sterling is clearly on his back; does it look like Sterling is overpowering them?

Moments later Salamoni was heard yelling, "Lake, he's going for the gun!" and six shots were fired into Sterling's chest and back at point blank range, killing him.

Multiple witnesses said Sterling never made an attempt to go for his gun, and in an NBC News interview, the store owner Abdullah Muflahi said that  "Sterling never wielded the gun or threatened the officers."

Take a couple minutes and watch Muflahi's interview on MSNBC, he's the one who videotaped the incident from the angle seen in the photo above - he said he never saw Sterling go for a gun, and the handgun he had on him didn't even appear until after the cops had shot him and went into his pocket and took it out.

Muflahi said he knew Alton Sterling for six years and that he allowed him to sell CD's outside the store because he never caused problems of any kind.

According to evidence gathered during the course of the DOJ investigation, Chris Stewart, one of the attorneys representing the Sterling family, says that when Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake first arrived at the scene of the incident last year, one of them walked up to Sterling, pointed a hand gun in his face and said, "Bitch, I'm gonna kill you."

That's the very first thing they said to Sterling, before ascertaining any evidence that he'd even done anything wrong.

Alton Sterling

They didn't ask to speak with him.

They didn't ask him if he'd threatened anyone, they didn't introduce themselves and say that had a few questions for him.

As Muflahi the store owner told MSNBC, they didn't even tell Sterling why they were there - they just pointed a gun at his face and threatened to kill him.

The subsequent protests that took place in Baton Rouge and elsewhere as thousands of people expressed outrage over the shooting were seen around the globe.

And tragically, Salamoni and Lake's actions led to the loss of more innocent lives, as two weeks later on Sunday July 17th an enraged 29-year-old former U.S. Marine named Gavin Long drove to Baton Rouge from his home in Kanas City and shot and killed three Louisiana police officers and wounded three others in a disturbing act of retribution.

Despite all that, and public pleas from the Sterling family to the DOJ, no one from the Department of Justice even bothered to contact them and explain why no charges would be filed in Alton Sterling's violent death.

Considering that the DOJ's budget for fiscal year 2016 was $28.7 billion and they have at least 117,298 federal employees, you'd think they'd have the resources and presence of mind to make sure that the someone in the department visited, or at the very least picked up a phone and called the Sterling family to let them know.

It was only after news of no federal charges being filed went public on Tuesday that officials from the DOJ contacted the Sterling family to inform them on Wednesday according to Chris Stewart, one of the Sterling family attorneys.

Urban League CEO Marc Morial

All of this begs the very real question: is this an indicator of the Trump administration's plans for public policy in terms of federal oversight of state and local law enforcement in cases of clear excessive use of force by police, or racially-biased policing?

Is this the kind of interaction with the Department of Justice that people of color and Hispanics in America who've had their rights violated can expect under Jeff Sessions?

It would seem so according to "Protect Our Progress: The State of Black America 2017", the annual report issued by the Urban League on Tuesday that examines economic well-being, healthcare, education and criminal justice to gauge the outlook on quality of life for African-Americans for the next four years under the Trump administration.

From my perspective, the DOJ's bungled handling of delivering the news of the decision not to file federal charges against police officers Salamoni and Lake in the death of Alton Sterling is a reflection of the chaotic flip-flop hypocrisy of Trump's presidency.

Back on August 17, 2016 as he was polling at 1% with African-Americans, he gave a speech near Milwaukee after two nights of protests in the city after police shot and killed a black man - Trump said, "There's no compassion in tolerating lawless conduct for anyone."

In the same speech he said, "I'm asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different and much better future."

But once he was in office his Department of Justice tried to undo agreements on policing reforms that had been carefully negotiated with police departments with histories of rampant racially-biased policing in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

And Justice For All?

During the 2016 campaign he lambasted political opponents for being involved in military conflicts in the middle east, even though he himself said he supported military action in Iraq on the Howard Stern Show in '02.

Once in office he ordered the U.S. Navy to fire 59 missiles into Syria and dropped a massive bomb on Afghanistan.

Now he's sword-rattling with North Korea.

When Trump was trying to bash China to enflame disenfranchised American workers who've watched their jobs disappear overseas to vote for him during the election, he promised he would label China a currency manipulator within the first 100 days of being in office.

But on April 6th the Chinese government approved three trademarks for his daughter-wife Ivanka's clothing line - six days later on April 12th, just days after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump famously reversed months of anti-Chinese campaign rhetoric and announced that China was "not a currency manipulator."

The only consistent thing about Trump and his presidency is that he lies and changes his policy positions almost daily to suit his own needs.

And so while he tried to woo African-Americans with fake assurances that he would bring "law and order" to communities around the nation last year during the campaign, last week his Department of Justice decided not to use its vast resources to ensure law and order for Alton Sterling.

As Urban League CEO Marc Morial was quoted as saying about the prospects for quality of life for African-Americans under Trump according to a Washington Post article by Tracy Jan on Tuesday:

Alton Sterling's son calls for peaceful protests in
the wake of his father's shooting

"The social cancer of hate continues to metastasize, thriving in a climate conducive to hostility towards religious and racial minorities, permeating even at the highest levels of national discourse and threatening to further crack our fractured nation."

When Trump delivered his inauguration speech on January 20th, he said he wanted to unify the country.


So what's his goal with refusing to even comment on the Sterling case? Or the case of Jordan Edwards in Texas?

By willfully turning a blind eye to the epidemic of racially-biased policing in this nation, evidenced by innocent unarmed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards being shot in the head with a rifle six days ago by recently-fired Texas police officer Roy Oliver, he's allowing the social cancer of hate to spread.

Trump's the guy who finds time to Tweet about Arnold Schwarzenegger's crappy ratings on NBC's The Apprentice, but on cases of overt violence against ethnic and religious minorities? Silence.

By refusing to show even a shred of leadership on this issue, or use the power of the DOJ to ensure justice for all, Jeff Sessions and Trump are, as the dissident Soviet writer, teacher and activist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote, "ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."

And so the task of holding Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake legally responsible for killing Alton Sterling falls upon the state of Louisiana - that's an aspect of law and order that the Trump administration clearly wants nothing to do with.

Sunday Bloody Sunday In Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge PD officer Markell Morris

Yet another shocking act of terror committed by another disturbed lone gunman armed with an assault rifle and a twisted personal agenda.

Another bloody consequence of the almost unrestricted access to firearms in America.

On Saturday I had to work so yesterday, Sunday, was my one day off - but it didn't really feel like a day off.


The news that a disgruntled former Marine murdered three law enforcement officers on Sunday morning left me feeling numb.

While Gavin Long left a slew of social media posts that offer a glimpse into his anger and frustration over the killing of Alton Sterling by two Baton Rouge PD officers, his violent response cannot simply be pinned on a legitimate protest movement.

Long's incomprehensible decision to shoot six members of the law enforcement community took the lives of three innocent people and forever altered the lives of family, friends and associates who knew them.

His actions on Sunday morning didn't vindicate anyone, or right a wrong, it marked him as a ruthless killer, dishonored his service in the Marine Corps, and did a disservice to the millions of people who are using peaceful means to demand an end to the disproportional use of deadly force against people of color by some members of the police community.

His actions also undermine the legitimate protest movement against police brutality and excessive use of force and the apparent unwillingness of local, municipal and state justice systems to hold officers who use unjustified force accountable for their actions - just today we learn that a fourth Baltimore PD officer was acquitted of the heinous death of Freddie Gray while in the custody of the BPD.

Baton Rouge police killer Gavin Long 

What was going on in the mind of Gavin Long?

Since this just happened yesterday, results from the investigation will take time obviously, but knowing that he was a decorated Marine begs the question: 

Did undiagnosed, or untreated, Post Traumatic  Stress Disorder from his time as a Marine serving abroad in Iraq play a part?

Some of his associations certainly raise questions.

He's allegedly been linked to anti-government "sovereign citizen" groups that refuse to pay taxes or recognize the authority of police or courts; not unlike another paranoid ex-soldier who took the lives of innocent people, convicted Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.

  

CNN reports that an email linked to the shooter Gavin Long shows he was associated with a group called 'Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance'. 

The group's mission statement describes their elusive purpose to help people who've been, "Marginalized and abused by...Remote Brain Experimentation, Remote Neural Monitoring, of an entire humans body.

Despite Long's fragile mental state and association with fringe groups prone to a radically distorted view of reality, conservatives have been quick to use the demented act of a single individual to try and score cheap political points on the eve of the start of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Why? Open carry activist outside the convention

Trump immediately took to Twitter to blame the actions of an unbalanced lone gunman to try and cast blame for the incident on President Obama, childishly admonishing a two-term president with a law degree from Harvard for not having "a clue." 

The Republican candidate tried to fan the flames of hysteria by suggesting the "our country is a divided crime scene, and it will only get worse!"

Sage observations from the presumptive GOP nominee for the White House.

Trump's divisive Twitter posts made no mention of how Gavin Long was able to acquire at least two assault rifles and a hand gun in the first place; and carry them across state lines from Missouri to Louisiana.

No, Trump's political advisers likely encouraged him to "go Benghazi" and try and seize on a frustrated and dismayed American populace by trying to make the post-shooting narrative about the president and Hillary Clinton, in part to appease the NRA by not making the issue about the loaded assault rifle that Long used to kill three police officers and wound three others.

According to the latest statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, this (latest) heinous act in Baton Rouge is one of 29,113 gun incidents in the United States in 2016, and one of 7,503 deaths caused by guns this year.

The outrage over this incident is shared by most Americans, including the family of Alton Sterling who was gunned down on video recently by two members of the Baton Rouge PD, but the fiery rhetoric by some conservatives has been toxic and divisive.

I'm listening to NPR's coverage of the Republican convention and earlier they mentioned that a group of armed militia types were seen marching outside the convention center in single file, and Republican Governor John Kasich ignored a call from Cleveland's largest police union to place a temporary ban on Ohio's open-carry laws during the RNC event - he said there was nothing he could do about it even though he's the governor.

So Republican open carry activists are walking around public places in downtown Cleveland with loaded weapons; it's a reflection of a distorted view of reality in which Trump and his supporters seem to exist.

No question that recent high profile incidents of violence have shocked us all.

But the Brennan Center for Justice reports that crime rates in America are at a 30 year low, meanwhile inside the Quicken Loans Arena, the theme of tonight's RNC event?

"Make America Safe Again."

Scapegoating Freedom Of Expression

Mourners seek comfort in downtown Dallas 

The decision of 25-year-old Micah Jones, a deeply disturbed former member of the U.S. Army Reserves who'd served abroad in Afghanistan, to use a peaceful demonstration in downtown Dallas to senselessly murder five law enforcement officers last Thursday night was a heinous act of murder with repercussions that will continue to echo across the nation for years to come.

Was this latest mass shooting in America truly motivated by racial hatred as the suspect's words to police negotiators would seem to suggest?

Or did the events of the past week that surrounded the senseless deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota serve as some kind of deep psychological trigger that (in his mind) served as what he saw as some kind of moral justification to set in motion the killing spree he unleashed on innocent men?

It's obviously way too early to understand exactly what set him off, we may never really know.

But Jones' statements and the apparent support he expressed for black nationalist groups on his Facebook page sound eerily like those of the Orlando nightclub mass shooter Omar Mateen; who told negotiators that he embraced two different radical Islamic groups that totally oppose one another, and that he hated homosexuals even though there is evidence to suggest that he himself was homosexual.

As depraved as Jones' actions in Dallas, and the thinking that prompted them were, the reality is that they had nothing to do with the wider protest movement against the rampant killing of people of color in America by some police officers.

Ex-San Jose PD detective Ron Martinelli

It's been astonishing to see how quickly some people have moved to vilify the Black Lives Matter protest movement as some kind of insidious plot.

For example, yesterday Michel Martin hosted a segment on NPR's All Things Considered that listened to various views on the events of the past week exclusively from the perspective of current or former law enforcement professionals.

She spoke with Ron Martinelli, a former officer and detective who served 25-years with the San Jose, California Police Department.


Martinelli, who makes a handsome living working as a paid court witness giving expert testimony on police tactics and procedure, claimed that Black Lives Matter is engaged in a "war" on police.

When pressed to explain, Martinelli told Michel Martin that Black Lives Matter, "...want to defund law enforcement. They want to diminish their involvement in the community and their stature, and they basically want to dissolve law enforcement. 

And the reason is because police officers are protectors of the rule of law, and the Black Lives Matter movement is a black nationalists revolutionary Marxist movement that is tied into a much larger international movement referred to as One World One Struggle." 

Of course, none of those things are true, but click the link above if you want to read a full transcript of his comments.

He's one of many conservatives in this country who've seized on the heinous actions of a lone, mentally disturbed gunman to mischaracterize a grassroots protest movement that was formed by three women in the wake of the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and killer George Zimmerman's being acquitted of any legal responsibility for his death.

Activist DeRay McKesson

The tone of some of these comments (and others opposed to the BLM movement) are dismissive of nationally-recognized BLM activist DeRay McKesson's 1st Amendment rights to free speech.

As was widely reported, he was arrested (on live video stream) Saturday night by Baton Rouge police for allegedly stepping over a white line onto a roadway during a protest against the killing of Alton Sterling.


News of his arrest exploded on social media.

Funds for his legal defense and that of other protesters arrested in Baton Rouge poured in from around the world and the phone number of the Baton Rouge Police Department was posted online for people to call to demand his release.

As video of his arrest under false pretense spread around the globe and backfired for the Baton Rouge PD, McKesson was released earlier today.

But despite that, as I was reading through the reader comments on a New York Times story about his arrest this morning, many people have reduced his commitment to speaking out against the rampant and unwarranted use of deadly force by some members of U.S. law enforcement to a simplistic exercise in vanity - I'm not sure where that's coming from.

The killing of five Dallas police officers by a madman was wrong, and maybe Texas legislators need to rethink the absurd open carry laws that let people stroll around the streets armed with loaded assault rifles like it's Mogadishu instead of a major American city.

But it's also wrong to channel outrage over the murder of those poor officers onto DeRay McKesson, and use him as a scapegoat for the racial tensions that have simmered beneath and above the surface of this nation for decades.

He didn't start the fire. So instead of blaming him for pointing to the flames, maybe some of the critics calling for his head should spend a few minutes and actually listen to the man speak, as he did in a revealing interview on the Brian Lehrer Show earlier this year during an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Baltimore.

He's a rational, highly intelligent advocate for justice who speaks eloquently on issues related to the impact of race on the American landscape - to reduce him to the kind of one-dimensional "narcissistic anarchist" stereotype being peddled by conservative talking heads is to completely miss the man and what he's actually about.

In the meantime protests over the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile continue in cities across the United States.

What does it say about this nation that some Americans seem angrier about protesters exercising their 1st Amendment right to express outrage over unjustified police killings, than they are about the police killing people of color for no reason?

The high profile deaths of seven people last week were the result of unspeakable acts; but is the expression of the 1st Amendment right to free speech and to assemble a worse act than intentional police misconduct that results in the unjustified loss off life?

Philando Castile's Broken Taillight

Killed during a traffic stop: Philando Castile

If you want a sense of just how far this nation has veered from the ideals and principles on which it was founded, look no further than the Minneapolis / St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

Not 48 hours after Alton Sterling was killed by two Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers who shot him multiple times in the back and chest (even though they had him pinned to the ground), the world is horrified by yet another killing of an African-American man by an apparently trigger-happy police officer.


As you've likely heard, the circumstances are beyond disturbing.

Philando Castile, a 32-year old school cafeteria manager who'd worked at the J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet school for over 12 years where coworkers said he knew all the kids by name, had just gotten a haircut and gone grocery shopping in preparation for his birthday with his girlfriend Diamond "Lavish" Reynolds and her four-year old daughter when an as-yet unnamed member of the St. Anthony Police Department pulled them over for a broken taillight.

How this officer shot him four to five times almost immediately after asking Castile for his ID remains a mystery, but his girlfriend managed to use her cell phone to live-stream what happened moments after the shooting live on Facebook.

The video that's been widely shown actually flipped the perspective, Castile was the driver and Reynolds was in the passenger seat - her young daughter was in the car at the time of the shooting and what prompted a police officer to pull out his gun and start firing at point blank range with a little girl in the back seat is totally beyond me.

Regardless,Castile became one of the 506 people shot and killed by members of American law enforcement this year so far; 123 of them African-American.

In last night's blog I made my feelings pretty clear on the crisis of biased police practices and rampant police misconduct

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton

The Governor of Minnesota Mark Dayton, speaking to crowds gathered in front of the Governor's Mansion earlier today, asked the pertinent question on the minds of millions of Americans right now, "Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers were white?"



Obviously I am not the only person genuinely angered over the events of the past 48 hours, events which come in the wake of similar killings that garnered global attention over the past few years that constitute what the New York Times quoted Governor Dayton as calling, "a pattern of violence towards blacks."

But rather than simply repeat what I wrote last night, and have written in dozens of other blogs over the years in the wake of the unjustified killings of  black, white and Hispanic men, women and children by members of law enforcement, the words of an experienced American law-enforcement expert offer needed insight.

Former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper

I think it might be more instructive to listen to the analysis of former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper.

During a really thought-provoking interview on The Brian Lehrer Show this morning on WNYC, Stamper spoke in depth about the mindset of frightened police officers and how they lose both perspective and self-control.

The harrowing 9-minute videotape, is not easy to watch, but I think everyone needs to see it.

It's clear that the officer, still pointing a loaded handgun at Castile as he is bleeding to death from his gunshot wounds, is in a heightened state of fear and is on the verge of hysteria as Reynolds talks to the camera.

It's outrageous that this travesty was the result of a guy being stopped for a broken taillight.

At the gym earlier today, I was watching live coverage of FBI Director James Comey testifying before the House on the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, Maryland Congressman Elijiah Cummings in his closing remarks, took a few moments to urge Comey to use the resources of the F.B.I to find a way to address this disturbing and deadly trend in America.

A lot of people including myself are hoping for some kind of direction from the federal government in terms of the investigation of this case; because right about now there is zero faith in the ability of local and state police to conduct an objective and thorough analysis of what happened on this quiet suburban street last night.

Or determine how an upstanding citizen with no criminal background who was fully employed at a school and taught to respect members of law enforcement, ended up shot dead because the taillight of his car was broken.

Gov. Mark Dayton addresses protesters [Getty Images]

As New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said today in response to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, these unjustified killings represent a "Horrible American pattern that has to end."

Without some kind of decisive landmark action on the part of the Justice Department, action which has been sorely lacking in the wake of the slate of police shootings that have taken place across the nation in recent years, I don't know how this pattern is going to end.

Not as long racially biased policing and the systematic use of unwarranted and excessive use of force in this nation goes unchecked by courts of law.

I've had a left front running light that's been out on my Honda CRV for the past couple weeks, it's been so busy at work I've been putting it off.

After work tomorrow I'm driving right over to Princeton Honda and getting it replaced, because the brutal reality in 21st century America is that things like that can get you killed if you're black and in the wrong place at the wrong time; and run into the wrong cop.

As poor Philando Castile's broken taillight makes abundantly clear.

Alton Sterling's Death - Use of Force Gone Wrong

Cameron Sterling & Quinyetta McMillan earlier today

Another July, yet another senseless death at the hands of overzealous police officers responding to a non-violent civil offense.

The world is once again stunned over video showing police officers killing a man who's already restrained on the ground.

Last night two officers from the Baton Rouge Police Department shot and killed 37-year old Alton Sterling after a confrontation escalated over, of all things, Sterling selling CD's outside of a small store. Not drugs or weapons. CD's.

Earlier today I listened to some audio excerpts from the press conference in Louisiana earlier this morning where Quinyetta McMillan, the mother of Alton Sterling's 15-year-old son Cameron, read a statement to the media about the impact of Sterling's death.

If you haven't heard it, McMillan read her statement with remarkable composure, but it was difficult to concentrate on her words with the sound of Sterling's son Cameron crying softly as he tried to cover his face (pictured above), watching this child, clearly traumatized over watching video of his father's violent death, brought this incident into a human perspective.

While preliminary reports indicate police responded to the scene based on a 911 call from what media reports have described as "an anonymous caller" reporting an armed man, during her press conference this morning Quinyetta McMillan insisted Alton Sterling was simply selling CD's.

Thus far there's no definitive evidence that Sterling had a gun or attempted to point it at the two officers who had him pinned to the ground.

Judge for yourself, if you watch the cell phone video taken at the scene by a horrified bystander, Sterling is standing by the front of the car arguing with the police officers, but there's nothing in his hand, nor is he threatening them with any kind of weapon.

While an investigation is just getting started, and all the facts are not yet known, the parallels between this case and the death of Eric Garner two years ago on July 17, 2104, are disturbingly similar.

Alton Sterling

Two heavyset African-American men, fathers of children with families, engaged in selling items of relatively little value to make a few bucks being confronted by white police officers who somehow escalate a remarkably minor civil infraction to the point that they feel the use of deadly force is justified.  

Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes on a street in Staten Island in the neighborhood where he lived.

After members of the NYPD confronted and attempted to arrest Garner, officer Daniel Pantaleo placed Garner in an illegal choke-hold even as he was already on the ground being restrained by other officers, rendering him unconscious - minutes later he was dead.

Despite the video evidence, a grand jury declined to press charges, Daniel Pantaleo is working the streets of New York as a police officer as you read this.

It's way too early to tell what the outcome of this case will be as far as the two officers being held responsible for Sterling's death, but a federal investigation is underway.

Baton Rouge PD officer Blane Salamoni 

But there were Justice Department investigations into the death of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray too - thus far no one was held legally responsible for their deaths.

The two officers have been identified as Howie Lake, II and Blane Salamoni (pictured left), and it is interesting to note that the New York Times reports that Salamoni's father Noel Salamoni is a captain of special operations on the Baton Rouge police force.

As I've often said in far too many entries on this blog, at some point this country needs undertake a serious examination into what is going on inside the minds of police officers who are so quick to resort to the use of deadly force in situations that don't warrant it.

Especially when the victim is a person of color in a nation in which entrenched racial bias in policing is a problem in police departments across the country.

It's hard to watch, but take a close look at that cell phone video, watch the officer nearest to the camera remove his handgun from his holster even as he's on top of Sterling.

Obviously I can't understand what was going on in his mind at that moment before Sterling was fatally shot in the chest and the back, but viewed from the standpoint of a civilian who has seen too many of these videos, did he think his life was threatened by a man already pinned to the ground by two officers?

Or did the race of Alton Sterling unconsciously make him seem more of a threat than he actually was in the mind of the man who shot him?

As in many things, perception is everything, but in this case, from what we know so far, it seems perception was the difference between life and death.