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US: Cops Getting Away With Murder
US: Cops Getting Away With Murder
| Author | Message |
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| Laboryes |
Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 3:17 am
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1959 |
America’s Police Force: a Centuries-Long Crime Spree
By John Reimann On January 1, 2009, young Oscar Grant was killed by a transit cop in Oakland, California. While lying face down with a cop kneeling on his neck, Grant was shot in the back by another cop as a crowd of train passengers watched in horror. Grant, was an African-American; Mehserle is white. Both were in their early 20s, and both had young daughters at the time, but only one will be able to see his child grow up. This was just one in a long string of killings by police in the US. Most of those killings are of black people, especially black men, although women and even children have not escaped this. What made this case different though was the fact that several passengers recorded the murder on the video camera of their cell phones, making it far more difficult for the police to lie their way out of what really happened. (It was reported that the police tried to confiscate the phones, but they failed.) As a result of this and the outcry, the cop who pulled the trigger, Johannes Mehserle, was charged with murder. This was the first time in California that a cop has been so charged for an action in the course of his duty. There were four possible outcomes of this case: Guilty of second degree murder, meaning that Mehserle meant to murder Grant, but he hadn’t planned it in advance; guilty of voluntary manslaughter (meaning he meant to harm Grant, but didn’t intend to kill him); guilty of involuntary manslaughter (meaning the death was more or less an accident); or not guilty of any crime. Minimal Verdict On Thursday, July 8, a jury returned a verdict of guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Thus, a police shooting of a man lying helplessly face down on the ground was considered the equivalent of a careless driver who runs through a red light and kills a pedestrian. Read More _________________ "When people refuse to obey, then democracy comes alive." Howard Zinn |
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