Daniel Shavers: The Video Doesn't Lie

Victim Daniel Shavers with his two daughters

Over the past few years, the rapid advancements in cell phone technology have led to an explosion in the number of people walking or driving around with video camera capability in their pockets.

Video footage from camera-equipped cell phones have brought some truly shocking examples of excessive use of force and overtly biased policing based on race by some members of law enforcement.

As have body-cams that are now required by a growing number of police departments in the U.S.

Unquestionably, two of the most egregious and chilling examples of deadly police overreaction caught on video in recent memory were the deaths of Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers (pictured above).

The victims in both cases were engaged in non-violent behavior that were minor low-level infractions at best, both men were married fathers, and neither of the officers who killed them (on videotape) faced any legal repercussions for taking the life of an innocent human being.

Let's review the facts of Shavers' death.

On Monday January 18, 2016, Shavers was on his stomach (per the orders of the police training guns on him) crying and pleading for officers not to kill him moments before he was shot and killed in the hallway of a hotel in Mesa, Arizona by former police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford.

A Granbury, Texas resident who worked for a pest control business, Shavers was in Mesa to kill some birds that had gotten inside a grocery store. After inviting two female acquaintances back to his room for drinks, at some point he showed them a pellet rifle with a scope mounted on it that he was planning to use to kill the birds for his job - which he was presumably going to do at night when customers weren't around.

Hotel guests hanging out at the pool below went to the front desk to report someone waving a gun in the window of a room up on the 5th floor of the hotel, and the Mesa PD were called.

Ex-Mesa police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford

When a group of tactical SWAT officers arrived and went to Shavers' room, he'd been drinking but told officers he wasn't intoxicated and willingly complied with their orders.

According to a detailed analysis of the incident by former FBI supervisory agent and St. John's University adjunct professor James Gagliano that was shared with CNN on Tuesday, a review of the full unedited body-cam footage that was released after Brailsford was acquitted (more on that in a moment) revealed that the commanding officer on the scene delivered a series of confusing and contradictory commands to Shavers.

Commands interlaced with needless threats that unnecessarily aggravated a tense situation.

Now the end is tough to watch, but I really want you to watch the body-cam footage for yourself; if you haven't already seen it - it's about five minutes in total.

Listen to the commanding officer's tone of voice and the way he talks to Shavers, watch how Shavers tries to comply with every command given to him; in fact he was complying with the officer's orders to crawl towards them when Brailsford suddenly opens fire with his AR-15 assault rifle and fatally shoots Shavers IN THE BACK five times.

As James Gagliano told CNN: "In a quarter-century of participating in and leading tactical resolution operations, I have never heard a law enforcement professional use such offensive -- almost taunting -- rhetoric. the vocal police officer tasked with directing the operation appeared hell-bent on baiting a confused but receptive and compliant subject into making a deadly mistake."

Click the link above to the right of Brailsford's photo to check out the full text of Gagliano's analysis of how the Mesa PD officer's actions led to the murder of a man in cold blood.

Eric Garner being choked to death on a Staten
Island sidewalk in 2014 - for selling loose cigarettes

And I don't use that term lightly.

To me there's no way to watch that unedited body cam footage, watch a terrified Shavers comply with everything the commanding officer asks him to do, listen to that officer repeatedly and intentionally goad Shavers - and then watch Brailsford fire five shots from an AR-15 assault rifle at point blank range - and not see it as murder.

An unarmed crying man crawling on his belly is a threat? Really?

By the way, two months after Shavers was killed the Mesa police department fired Brailsford for unsatisfactory performance and violations of department policy - including the fact that he had the words "YOU'RE FUCKED" etched into his AR-15.

While Brailsford is not the commanding officer heard yelling like a maniac on the body-cam footage, he was the one who pulled the trigger as a crying Shavers crawled toward the officers as he was told to do.

Last Thursday a jury acquitted Brailsford of all charges including second-degree manslaughter and what confuses me is the fact that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Meyers granted a motion to seal the body-cam footage in spring of 2016 before the trial started.

To me the hardest part is that, like Eric Garner, Shavers is literally posing no threat whatsoever to the multiple officers who are around him - and like Garner, Shavers is pleading for his life.

It was just three years ago that Garner's death gained worldwide attention after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo (who's still on active duty by the way) placed him in an illegal choke hold after the Staten Island father was confronted by a group of officers for selling loose cigarettes on the street.

NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo right after
choking Eric Garner on July 17, 2014

The disturbing video of Pantaleo calmly choking the life out of Garner as he repeatedly rasps, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" as three other officers hover over him is horrifying.

According to statements from eyewitnesses at the scene that were detailed in a recent book by journalist Matt Taibbi about Garner, his death and the failure to indict Pantaleo titled "I Can't Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street", as Garner struggled to breathe a woman ran up to Pantaleo and begged him to stop choking Garner.

He gestured to his gun and kept on choking the man.

The conduct of men like Mitch Brailsford and Daniel Pantaleo does not typify the professionalism demonstrated by thousands of law enforcement personnel who face difficult decisions every day.

But when the law is applied selectively and unevenly, whether it's a traffic stop or a chokehold, it undermines trust in the very institutions empowered to enforce those laws for the public good - and that, ironically, makes "good policing" harder for the thousands of cops who do it the right way.

Ultimately it's a sad statement of America's justice system that when the actions of men like Brailsford and Pantaleo do result in the unjustified deaths of innocent people, and municipal courts fail to hold them legally accountable for taking a human life - too often there is no remedy.

Time will tell though.

Even though Mitch Brailsford walked on second-degree manslaughter charges last week, he may very well still face federal charges for a flagrant violation of Daniel Shavers' civil rights - the same charges that resulted in former North Charleston PD officer Michael Slager being sentenced to 20 years for  fatally shooting unarmed U.S. Navy veteran Walter Scott in the back as he was running away from Slager on April 4, 2015.

Maybe that legal route will eventually lead to justice for Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers.

And some small measure of comfort for Garner's wife and their four children, and Shavers' wife and their two daughters.

After all, as I blogged about last Friday, sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly - and in the end, the video doesn't lie.

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.

Little Gold Statues & Lots of Gun Deaths

Oprah reacts to being mistaken for Whoopi

It wasn't really my plan to "boycott" the Oscars last night.

The idea of black Hollywood heavyweights who are privileged enough to be able to attend the American film industry's premiere awards event staying away struck me as counterproductive to the goal of increasing diversity in the industry - and not supportive of host Chris Rock.

After Website Total Beauty posted a photo of Whoopi Goldberg on the red carpet and confused her with Oprah Winfrey, my guess is Oprah is glad she decided to stay home to watch the Oscars with best friend Gayle King.

Oprah's facial reaction posted online is priceless. Total Beauty? Total ****up.

For me personally, after a long day at work on Saturday, I just didn't feel a particular need to spend 4 hours on a Sunday evening watching an industry awards show.

Instead I opted for periodic updates on the New York Times mobile app as the winners were announced while I caught up on some reading - Russ Belville's Huffington Post blog about the rather sketchy math behind Hillary Clinton's sweeping up Democratic "Superdelegates" in the primaries was quite illuminating.

As for the Oscars, there's been so much discussion, so much written about the Academy's failure to nominate the work of a single non-white performer in the past month that I was kind of worn out from it by the time the actual ceremony came around.

The way I see it, it's 2016, either Hollywood is going to get it, or they won't - either they want to be culturally relevant to an increasingly diverse global film audience, or they don't.

Frankly I'm more interested in seeing how the film industry decides to begin to develop concrete ways to incorporate a wider diversity in terms of casting in front of the camera, hiring in positions behind the camera and in the executive suite - and the kinds of stories that make it through the arduous approval-production process to be made into the kinds of mainstream films that benefit from the extensive marketing campaigns, global theatrical distribution and organized awards campaigns that major studios can bankroll. 

As much as I love film, I guess I just wasn't in a celebratory mood on Sunday.

Chicago memorial for 5 people (including an infant) shot & killed

Even with the extra Leap Year day (thanks to Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.), February is a short month, but it's been a long one in terms of gun violence in this country.

The two recent mass shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan by 45-year-old Uber driver Jason Dalton (who shot eight people and killed six), and last Thursday in the small Kansas town of Hesston where Cedric Ford killed three people and injured fourteen before taking his own life, were just two of an astounding 36 mass shootings that have taken place in the United States in 2016.

According to stats tracked by the non-profit GunViolenceArchive.org, there have been 2,011 gun deaths in the U.S. this year, including 82 children 11-years-old or younger and 438 teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17 killed - 520 kids in two months.

Out of an estimated 7,777 gun-related incidents through January and February, there were approximately 233 defensive uses of a gun.

There have also been an estimated 766 officer-involved shootings in 2016.

Have you seen the comprehensive LA Times report covering each of the victims killed by police in Los Angeles since 2000?

Those, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who've been quick to demonize and dismiss the Black Lives Matters protest movement against excessive use of force by police should take some time and go through the LA Times article; not all of those homicide victims of LA cops were angels, some were innocent.

Many, you have to wonder why they were shot at all - a question that needs to be asked equally of gang members, perpetrators of mass shootings as well as cops prone to use of excessive force.

Ex NYPD officer Peter Liang

I can't honestly recall ever having seen such widespread protests by members of the Chinese-American community as I have in the past few weeks as thousands of people in various cities across the U.S. have  expressed outrage over the recent conviction of former NYPD police officer Peter Liang for manslaughter in the shooting death of Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project building in 2015.

On one hand I think members of the Chinese-American community have a right to be upset over the fact that a scared rookie cop born in Hong Kong gets manslaughter for mistakenly firing his weapon in a dark stairwell and killing Gurley; though he must face responsibility for his actions.

While NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was caught on videotape intentionally using an illegal choke hold on Eric Garner as the man pleaded for his life - not only did Pantaleo face no charges  thanks to a Staten Island grand jury, he's still on paid duty as we speak.

Liang was fired from the NYPD.

And as I've blogged about before, Pantaleo has a history of excessive force and racial bias while on duty - interesting that a rookie Asian-America cop catches the manslaughter charge while the Italian-American cop walks. And two more unarmed Africa-American men are dead.

Granted, it didn't help Liang that he stepped around Gurley's body after shooting him, refused to offer medical aid, then used his phone to call his police union rep rather than call an ambulance.

As Chris Rock observed during the Oscar ceremony, there are some things that happen (or have happened) in this world that make the Academy best acting nomination snubs seem trivial.

But I think the Oscar protests that were taking place down the street from the ceremony last night, and the recent protests by Chinese-Americans over Peter Liang being found guilty of manslaughter for shooting an innocent man walking down the steps with his girlfriend are both linked with the larger Black Lives Matter protests.

Some are about professional snubs, some are about life and death, but they're all related to the wrinkles and tears in the cultural fabric in this nation.

And they're certainly more important than a little gold statue.

No Indictment for Daniel Pantaleo - Cleveland.com Blames Tamir Rice's Parents For Rookie Cop's Fatal Mistake

Grand Central Station 5:33pm - protesters react to no indictment for Pantaleo

'No reasonable cause to bring charges' is becoming a painfully familiar refrain in this nation.

Listening live to New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio's press conference in the aftermath of the failure of the Staten Island grand jury to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner, like many I was left marveling at the sheer magnitude of the dysfunction in our nation's justice system.

While a special grand jury comprised of 23 residents of Staten Island would not indict a cop for using an illegal choke hold that killed a man arrested for selling loose cigarettes, a different Staten Island grand jury did manage to indict Ramsey Ortiz on a shaky gun possession charge - Ortiz is the 22 year-old Hispanic man who filmed the now-famous video of police arresting and killing Eric Garner.

Think about that for a moment.

Since the founding of this country it's been painfully obvious to the nation and the world that not only does the US justice system target and treat people very differently depending on the race and ethnicity of the accused, but now, even in 2014, it's becoming glaringly obvious that there are no meaningful legal repercussions for members of American law enforcement who kill unarmed black men - even innocent people like Amadou Diallo, or more recently in Brooklyn, Akai Gurley.

With each failure of local prosecutors to hold police officers accountable for the taking of human life, the growing racial gap in this nation widens.

These decisions by prosecutors and the courts have the perverse effect of actually energizing conservative Americans who are highly susceptible to the hysteria, bigotry and hatred intentionally generated by right wing media in order to 'divide and conquer' their voter base.

Bizarre hyper-conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's absurd comments about protesters earlier today on her show offer a textbook example.

The Real Ugly American: Right-wing hate radio host Laura Ingraham

Ingraham was pandering to the fears of her audience over the growing protest movement springing up in cities and communities across the nation.

A listener who sounded like Archie Bunker was on the line suggesting that the average "Joe Six-Pack" (media code for angry working-class Republican white guys) like himself would begin coming out onto the streets to confront protesters.

Ingraham disagreed with her conservative caller, suggesting that "our people" won't be coming out to protest because they're "working and have families to support."

Take a moment to listen to the brief clip of the segment of her comments that were posted on MediaMatters.org; listen to the casual tone with which she says it.

Her barely concealed bigotry is laced with common ignorant assumptions. While she suggests that only unemployed black people with no work ethic who don't care about their families have taken to the streets to protest the unchecked use of lethal force by police, take a look at the photo above taken in Grand Central Station on the east side of Manhattan at 5:33pm this evening by a Twitter user - that looks like a pretty diverse group of protesters to me. 

Laura Ingraham asserting to a live radio audience that "our people" (and we know who she means by that...) don't take part in their Constitutional right to protest is as absurd as it is irresponsible.

Perhaps she was in a coma during the spring and summer of 2010 when thousands of mostly white Tea Party activists filled town halls, parks and streets to voice their opposition to the idea of all Americans having access to affordable health care.

Or maybe Ingraham was simply on a different planet in late May of 2010 when a large crowd of Tea Party protesters angered at the Affordable Care Act lined up outside the US Capitol building and hurled obscenities including the word "nigger" at Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus as they emerged from meetings.

The fact that the original Boston Tea Party for which the Koch brother's faux-politcal movement derives it's name was in fact, a riot likely slipped her mind too.

Now I'm really trying to stay on point here, but Ingraham's comments are important to note as they demonstrate the kind of base level ignorance that underlies today's conservative movement with its elevation of warped perception, ignorance, narrow-minded ideology and opinions over facts and truth - but it's typical of the divisive brand of offensive vile that spews out of her mouth on any given day.

When the American court system continually fails to indict law enforcement officers for taking the lives of African-American boys and men in cases where lethal force is clearly not necessary or called for, it serves to reinforce sub-conscious beliefs about the perceived inferiority or violence of people of color.

It lends legitimacy to the deeply ingrained bigotry etched in the minds of people like Ingraham. 

It also sanctions the troubling view of some Americans that the lives of people of color matter less in this nation - some of those Americans are media executives, publishers and journalists too.

12 year-old police shooting victim Tamir Rice

Personally, my vote for the 'Andrew Brietbart Journalism Award' winner this week goes to Cleveland.com (the online media partner of the Cleveland Plain Dealer) for their November 26th expose on the parents of Tamir Rice (pictured left); the 12 year-old boy who was shot and killed by a rookie police officer in a Cleveland park two seconds after he and his partner arrived at the scene in a police car.

As an article by Eric Boehlert on MediaMatters.org reported yesterday, Cleveland.com included a photo of a mug shot of the slain child's father in the November 26th article that was supposedly about the shooting of the child by rookie police officer Timothy Loehmann.

A different article on November 24th detailed a drug charge against Rice's mother from 2013 for which she was sentenced to probation.

Boehlert reported that numerous readers, media experts and even some employees of the Cleveland Plain Dealer expressed confusion as to what any criminal or court records of Tamir Rice's parents had to do with a rookie Cleveland police officer gunning down their child while he was playing in the park.  

As Boehlert's article states: "Depicting black/brown boys and men as violent criminals from poor upbringing is an established media narrative that Tamir didn't quite fit. But Cleveland.com, the website of the city's former paper of record, tried to make him fit into the narrow narrative anyway, by reporting on the criminal misdeeds of his parents instead," wrote former Plain Dealer reporter and columnist Afi Scruggs. "It's an old, but tired trick used by the news media, especially when it comes to a black or brown person being killed by law enforcement."

As Mayor DeBlasio noted during his emotional and personal comments earlier this evening, it's past time that people awaken to the fact that this is an American problem - not just a black or white one.

Prosecutors and police must begin to recognize that if reasonable cause exists to bring charges in the case of a wrongful death, then charges must be brought; regardless of the race of the victim.

I can't put myself in the room with the 23 members of the special grand jury in Staten Island who found no cause to bring charges against officer Daniel Pantaleo.

But for an average reasonable citizen, for anyone who's watched the disturbing video of Eric Garner desperately pleading, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" while Pantaleo holds his neck in a vice grip and four or five other cops secure him, I think most people would come to the conclusion that it was reasonable that the officer had to bear some measure of responsibility for Garner's death in a court of law.

After all, it's not like Daniel Pantaleo was breaking up an armed robbery or arresting a murderer - Eric Garner's only crime was selling some loose cigarettes.

That and being a larger than average black man on a street in America.