FLORIDA:
"A black man died over the weekend after a confrontation with police outside a gas station, authorities said. No weapons were used during the confrontation, but Marcus Dushane White, 41, of Jacksonville was physically restrained and died after being taken to a hospital early Saturday. Ron Lendvay, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said White ‘‘was acting irrationally and became combative.’’ White’s death is under investigation...."
Notice that he died -- wasn't killed, he died -- and he kinda deserved it.
"A ‘Good Samaritan’ saw a deputy being attacked by Florida man so he fatally shot the assailant" by Samantha Schmidt The Washington Post News Service November 17, 2016
Like what happened in Arizona.
When the man saw a patrol car parked on the exit ramp of a Florida interstate, he witnessed a scene too troubling to ignore: a sheriff deputy being slammed to the ground and beaten by a man in plain clothes.
The passerby, who the Lee County Sheriff’s Office is now calling a good Samaritan, rushed to the two men, telling the attacker he would shoot him if he refused to stop beating the deputy.
The attacker, later identified as 53-year-old Edward Strother, continued to pin down the deputy and attack him, and the deputy struggled to keep his weapon away from him. When the attacker failed to comply to his warning, the passerby shot him three times, killing him, The News-Press reported.
His name wouldn't happen to be Zimmerman, would it?
The deputy, 12-year-veteran Dean Bardes, was treated for his injuries and released from the hospital.
Mike Scott, the Lee County sheriff, commended and thanked the man ‘‘who engaged the crazed assailant and stopped the imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to our deputy,’’ NBC-2 reported.
He did not identify the man, however, the attacker’s brother later criticized the sheriff’s positive response to his brother’s death, and questioned the details of the fight.
‘‘They are calling him a good Samaritan?’’ Strother’s brother, Louis Strother, said to the News-Press. ‘‘Was my brother armed?’’
Kimberly Jenkinson, a Florida woman driving by at the time, told WINK News she saw the man violently throw the officer to the ground.
‘‘He just started punching him and hitting and hitting and hitting,’’ she said. ‘‘I was afraid for the police officer. I thought he was going to kill him.’’
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They must have rotten training in Florida:
"Florida sheriff’s office on trial again over fatal shooting" Associated Press February 12, 2017
LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. — The parents of Seth Adams are sure Sergeant Michael Custer is lying about why he fatally shot their unarmed son in the parking lot of the family’s nursery business nearly five years ago, even though the sheriff’s deputy was cleared by investigators.
The family will get a chance to prove its allegations when a federal civil rights trial against Custer and the sheriff’s office begins Monday with jury selection. The Adams family and their attorneys say ballistics tests, contradictions in Custer’s statements, and observations by his Palm Beach County colleagues undermine his account of Adams as an immediate and persistent aggressor in the confrontation.
Custer and the sheriff’s office have denied wrongdoing. Custer, who had no previous complaints of brutality or violence in his personnel file, said he shot Adams because Adams attacked him for no reason and he feared for his life. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation cleared him of criminal wrongdoing.
This will be the second time in a year the sheriff’s office will be in federal court defending itself in the shooting of an unarmed man. Last February, a federal jury awarded Dontrell Stephens $22 million after finding that Sergeant Adams Lin unjustifiably shot him when he mistook Stephens’ cellphone for a gun. The shooting paralyzed Stephens.....
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Related:
Also see:
Manhunt underway in Orlando after police officer fatally shot
Search underway for suspect in killing of Orlando officer
Suspect in killing of Orlando police officer is captured
"Florida’s governor took a case involving the killing of a police officer out of the hands of its prosecutor Thursday, hours after the prosecutor said her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any cases. The unusual and firm stance against capital punishment by State Attorney Aramis Ayala in Orlando surprised and angered many law enforcement officials, including the city’s police chief...."
Prosecutor opposed to death penalty challenges Florida governor
Took the pulse of the people, did she.
FBI arrests wife of killer in Orlando mass shooting
Judge agrees to release Orlando shooter’s widow before trial
Nightclub shooting victims sue gunman’s employer, wife
That's the staged and scripted Florida nightclub shooting that killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
It's tough for women in Florida:
"A Florida sheriff’s deputy tasered a woman. Then he sent her a cake" Associated Press September 29, 2016
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A Florida’s woman’s lawsuit says a deputy shot her with a stun gun, then apologized with a cake that said, ‘‘Sorry I Tased You’’ in blue frosting.
The cake didn’t cut it for Stephanie Byron. She sued former Escambia County sheriff’s deputy Michael Wohlers in May.
On Monday, the county’s Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission announced it had reviewed the case and placed Wohlers on a one-year probationary period from serving at any law enforcement agency in Florida.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Pensacola, alleges Wohlers violated Byron’s civil rights, committed battery against her and caused her hardships, including physical injuries, monetary loss, medical expenses, humiliation and mental anguish. Wohlers’ attorney wouldn’t comment Thursday but denied the allegations in a court document.
According to court documents, Wohlers was in his full uniform and ‘‘used his apparent law enforcement authority to intimidate, harass, and threaten’’ Byron about her personal life....
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Must have had problems with his mother:
"In Florida on Tuesday, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies arrested an 18-year-old man on charges of killing his mother. Joshua Leon Carmona is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of Tahirih Lua D’Angelo. Carmona said he had been thinking for a long time about killing her, authorities said...."
Related:
Judge thinks Casey Anthony may have accidentally killed daughter
Casey Anthony speaks about her daughter’s death for first time
Poor little girl, and what a story, huh?!
Let's cross the state line into Georgia....
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GEORGIA:
Speaking of mothers:
Giant panda again gives birth to twins
One turned out to gay, but the parents were very supportive.
"Officials: Man in trafficking case forced tattoos on victims" Associated Press March 23, 2017
ATLANTA — Prosecutors say a man accused of holding women against their will in a million-dollar home also forced them to get gang-related tattoos and took the money they made working at a strip club.
Fulton County Magistrate Judge Jaslovelin Lall dismissed 11 of 14 charges against Kenndric Roberts on Thursday. She set a total bond of $80,000 on the remaining charges, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Some of the women told authorities Roberts threatened them if they wanted to leave, but a lawyer for Roberts says the women were free to go. He says they didn’t because they were living well and had signed contracts saying they would share profits from the company he was building....
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Waving it in your face:
"2 get prison for threatening party, waving Confederate flag
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — A white man and a white woman who were among a large group of people waving Confederate flags and threatening violence at a black child’s birthday party in 2015 have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
Jose Ismael Torres, 26, and Kayla Rae Norton, 25, were part of a group of 15 people who disrupted the 8-year-old’s party in Douglasville in July 2015, less than a month after white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine African-Americans at a historic black church in South Carolina.
Roof brandished Confederate flags in several photographs that came to light soon after his arrest and had said he intended to start a race war with the killings. Torres and Norton were found guilty Monday of yelling racial slurs and threatening to kill partygoers, even the children. At one point, Torres aimed a shotgun at the party, prosecutors said.
They sure look like agent provocateurs even if they didn't actually do anything.
Torres was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Norton received six years, news outlets reported.
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Left turn to.....
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ALABAMA:
"Alabama nursing student Brittany Diggs told NBC’s ‘‘Today’’ show Monday that the man who abducted her forced her to drive and tried to withdraw cash from several ATMs before putting her in the trunk. Diggs says she jumped out as the car left a gas station, an escape captured by surveillance cameras. The surveillance video showed Diggs landing on her back before running inside, pleading: “Please help me! Please help me!” Police found the vehicle the next morning, a few miles from the gas station. Diggs was unhurt except for a few cuts...."
Good Lord!
I drove straight on through Mississippi to....
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LOUISIANA:
"Louisiana sheriff’s deputy shot, killed while on-duty" Associated Press March 20, 2017
BATON ROUGE, La. — A sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana is dead after being shot near a movie theater in Baton Rouge, police said Sunday.
Deputy Shawn T. Anderson of the East Baton Rouge sheriff’s office was taken to the hospital after being shot while on duty late Saturday, spokeswoman Casey Rayborn Hicks said. Anderson, 43, was conducting an investigation with another deputy at a strip mall near the AMC movie theater when the shooting occurred.
‘‘Our hearts are broken as we grieve for one of our brothers,’’ Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said.
State Police spokesman Bryan Lee said the deputies were not responding to a police call.
A suspect was shot and injured and taken to a hospital. The condition of the suspect was unavailable.
Anderson began working at the sheriff’s office in 1999.
The deputy was taken from Ochsner Medical Center shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday with a procession of law enforcement vehicles....
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No charges were ever brought.
Now up through.....
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ARKANSAS:
"Arkansas judge accused of sexual misconduct steps down" Associated Press January 04, 2017
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas judge has left office and agreed to never serve on the bench again after a disciplinary panel threatened to administratively charge him with trading sexual favors with female defendants in exchange for their release.
The case marks the second time in a little over a year that an Arkansas judge has faced sexual misconduct accusations.
Carroll County District Court Judge Timothy Parker denied the sexual misconduct charges when he resigned Saturday on the last day of his current term in office, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission said Tuesday.
The panel said Parker admitted to releasing and lowering bail for defendants who were friends or former clients and, in some cases, giving rides to defendants in his own vehicle after he released them.
Parker, who was appointed to the judgeship in 2013, also faces a criminal investigation over the accusations. Jason Barrett, a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the case, said Tuesday that he was reviewing JDDC’s evidence to see if charges were warranted.
The commission said it had video statements from more than a dozen women, recordings of conversations Parker had in jail with women, as well as text messages that back up the allegations.
Parker denied the sexual favor allegations when contacted Tuesday. Asked why he didn’t contest the allegations before the panel, he responded: ‘‘I have young children and I don’t want them exposed to that kind of crap.’’
Parker’s resignation comes just months after another former Arkansas judge was charged with giving lighter sentences to defendants in exchange for sexual favors. Former Cross County District Court Judge Joseph Boeckmann was indicted in October on several federal charges, including wire fraud and witness tampering.
Boeckmann resigned in May after a JDDC investigation. The commission’s investigators found thousands of photos on Boeckmann’s home computers of naked and semi-naked men, many of whom were identified by the commission as former defendants whose cases had gone before Boeckmann both as a judge and as a deputy prosecutor....
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Related:
Ark. judge allegedly offered men reduced sentences in exchange for sexual favors
Arkansas judge is investigated for sex abuse, misconduct
That's the kind of thing that can really piss you off:
"Police on Monday searched for the gunman who fatally shot a 3-year-old boy being taken on a shopping trip by his grandmother in a road rage shooting over the weekend....."
She was driving to slow, and he shouldn't have had a gun.
Time to bury the body:
"New York woman jailed after body found at Arkansas farm" by The Associated Press AP March 10, 2017
DES ARC, Ark. — Authorities say a body found in a suitcase at a farm in Arkansas appears to be that of an elderly man who died in upstate New York.
A woman has been jailed in connection with the death, but investigators are puzzled about why the man’s body was taken more than 1,000 miles and dumped in a field 50 miles northeast of Little Rock.
Arkansas State Police say a 56-year-old New York woman was arrested in Arkansas on Wednesday night in connection with the case. State police say she is being held in the Prairie County jail on a preliminary charge of abuse of a corpse.
Johnstown, N.Y., Police Lieutenant Dave Gilbo suggested the focus now is on what happened after the man died. ‘‘There could be issues with Social Security checks,’’ Gilbo told News 10 ABC.....
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They ‘‘believe he died of natural causes.’’
And then over to.....
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TENNESSEE:
"A Tennessee woman jailed for more than a year after trying to use a coat hanger to abort her 24-week-old fetus pleaded guilty Monday to one felony count in exchange for her immediate release from jail. Anna Yocca, 32, sought medical care at a hospital after attempting the at-home abortion in September 2015, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an advocacy group that helped with her defense. She was later arrested and was initially charged with attempted murder. Under an agreement reached with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty this week to attempted procurement of a miscarriage and was given credit for time served. Her case has alarmed abortion rights advocates concerned by increasingly strict state abortion laws and the election of Donald Trump, who has expressed support for overturning Roe v. Wade and once said during the presidential campaign that women who have abortions should be punished. Yocca’s baby was born by Caesarean section, placed in foster care and later adopted."
He's the father?
That why Melania mad at him?
"NAACP wants inquiry into fatal shooting by Nashville police" Associated Press February 13, 2017
NASHVILLE — The NAACP on Monday called for an expedited investigation by Nashville’s district attorney general and possibly federal agencies after a white officer shot and killed an African-American man who police say was armed while fleeing a traffic stop.
At a news conference with tearful, irate family members of Jocques Scott Clemmons, NAACP Nashville branch president Ludye N. Wallace also called for immediate action from city officials on plans to equip police with body cameras.
Mayor Megan Barry plans to propose $12 million for the cameras in the 2017-18 Metro budget.
Clemmons, 31, was shot in the back and died at a hospital Friday.
According to police, Clemmons had parked his car outside a public housing development and was getting out when Officer Josh Lippert drove up to talk about him running a stop sign. Clemmons was carrying a pistol and charged at Lippert, then ran through the parking lot.
Police said Lippert caught up with Clemmons, the two had a physical confrontation, and Clemmons refused orders to drop his gun. Believing he was in imminent danger, Lippert fired three times at Clemmons, police said. Lippert was in uniform but driving an unmarked police car, according to police.
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Put 'em in the clink:
"A Memphis jail official called the KKK ‘more American’ than President Obama. Now he’s out of a job" by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. The Washington Post News Service November 17, 2016
MEMPHIS — David Barber kept his Facebook profile set to private, but anyone who was friends with him could see the very public nature of his job — right next to the racist posts that made him lose it.
Barber, deputy director of the Shelby County Corrections Center for the past 17 years, resigned amid a controversy over the posts. One showed a photo of President Obama next to a man in a Ku Klux Klan mask and said, ‘‘KKK is more American than the illegal president.’’
Another post, according to the Memphis Flyer, is about the Obama family contending that they had been discriminated against because they’re black. According to the newspaper, Barber commented, ‘‘Arrest convict hang and confiscate all assets.’’
The posts were shared from the page of a group called the Free Patriot, which posts conservative-tinged news stories. Barber could not be reached for comment. He was one of the top officials at a detention facility that houses about 2,600 inmates per day and has a staff of about 1,000 people.
A news release from the Shelby County Corrections Center said Barber offered to resign ‘‘after discussing the offensive nature of the comments and the impact that would have on the corrections center.’’ ‘‘Anyone in a leadership position at Shelby County government is held at a high standard of behavior, both on and off the job,’’ said Shelby County Mayor Mark H. Luttrell Jr.
Shelby County Commission Chairman Melvin Burgess told the Commercial Appeal that he believed Barber should have been fired immediately. ‘‘We’re getting calls now from employees who can’t believe they’ve been working around a man with this level of insensitivity,’’ Burgess said.
--more--"
Related:
"Authorities in Tennessee were searching for four inmates who broke out of jail on Christmas. Media reports quoted the Cocke County sheriff’s office as saying six inmates escaped from the jail early Sunday after removing a toilet from a wall and going through a hole behind it that led to the outside of the facility. The sheriff said that prior plumbing repairs had loosened the concrete holding the toilet and leaking water had rusted bolts. The reports said two inmates were caught by Christmas evening, but four remained on the run. Earlier this month, four prisoners escaped from a jail in Dandridge. They were recaptured....."
That's not fair.
Just want to take a moment of silence before moving up to....
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KENTUCKY:
"Doctor-lawmaker tries to restrict smoking in tobacco country"Associated Press February 20, 2017
FRANKFORT, Ky. — The cultural legacy of tobacco maintains its grip on public policy in Kentucky.
Banning smoking in public places is still a politically perilous position for most of the state’s Republican lawmakers, whose constituents view it as an attack on their personal freedoms.
Dr. Ralph Alvarado — also a Republican — is insulated from this, even though his district includes parts of rural Montgomery and Clark counties where he says smoking bans are met with scowls.
‘‘The comments from people [are], ‘Well what do you expect, he’s a doctor.’ And so I’m almost excused,’’ he said.
State lawmakers have focused most of their attention to the state’s rising death toll from drug overdoses, including opioids, which killed more than 1,200 people last year. During that same time period, more than 8,800 Kentuckians died from tobacco-related illnesses, according to Shawn Jones, past president of the Kentucky Medical Association.
Legal is worst killer but attention on others.
Kentucky had more tobacco-related cancer cases per 100,000 people than any other state, according to a study from 2009 to 2013 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So what?
Alvarado’s first attempts to ban smoking failed. In 2015, he angered his Republican colleagues when he joined Democrats in an attempt to force a vote on a statewide workplace smoking ban.
Last year, Alvarado sponsored a similar bill that had the support of at least one major tobacco company and a promise of indifference from other tobacco interests. But he could not persuade a majority of Republican senators to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote.
Alvarado has since narrowed the legislation and is trying again.
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What about no do they not understand (like the casino and gay people)?
God help us all:
"An atheist’s request for a personalized license plate saying ‘‘IM GOD’’ was denied by the state of Kentucky, which said it might distract other drivers, and would be in bad taste. Bennie Hart says that by announcing ‘‘IM GOD’’ on his license plate, he simply wants to show the impossibility of disproving anyone’s claim to being ‘‘God.’’ Besides, Hart says, he had the same plate for a dozen years when he lived in Ohio, without causing any problems. Hart sued state Transportation Secretary Greg Thomas on free speech grounds, asking a federal judge to strike down some Kentucky laws on personalized plates. Transportation spokesman Ryan Watts says the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation."
Heading east to.....
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VIRGINIA:
"Years after slayings, killer of Va. family faces execution" Associated Press January 16, 2017
RICHMOND — The 2006 murders of a well-known Richmond couple and their young daughters as they were preparing to host a New Year’s party sent shock waves through Virginia’s capital city.
More than 11 years later, some hope the execution of a man convicted in their deaths will close a painful chapter of this community’s history.
‘‘I do not think we should be saddled with the cost of keeping that heinous murderer alive,’’ said Steve Tarrant, who lived near the slain family.
Ricky Gray is scheduled to be put to death Jan. 18 for the murders of 9-year-old Stella Harvey and her 4-year-old sister, Ruby. He has also been convicted of capital murder for killing their parents.
Gray and his nephew Ray Dandridge were looking for a home to rob on New Year’s Day 2006 when they spotted the Harveys’ open door and walked in. The girls and their parents, Bryan and Kathryn Harvey, were found in the basement of their burning home, bound, beaten, and stabbed, with their throats cut.
Gray, now 39, also confessed to participating in the killing of 21-year-old Ashley Baskerville, her mother Mary Baskerville-Tucker, and stepfather Percyell Tucker in their Richmond home less than a week later, but wasn’t tried in that case. Gray and Dandridge said Ashley Baskerville had served as a lookout for them during the Harvey slayings. Gray claims he doesn’t really remember the Harvey slayings because he was high on PCP....
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Also see: Prosecutors: Virginia-to-New York gun ring dismantled
That's going too far north.
"Pawn receipt leads to violin’s recovery" Washington Post March 10, 2017
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Leaving behind his driver’s license likely made it easier for police to catch a man who they said stole a Lexus from a parking lot that had a high-priced violin inside.
The events leading to his arrest began March 1 outside a Barnes and Noble bookstore. Police said Michael G. Rothenberg, 27, of Bethesda, walked up to a woman, pulled out a gun, and demanded her keys and bag. He then fled in her 2004 Lexus, they said.
Three days later, authorities said, Rothenberg robbed at gunpoint a clerk at a 7-Eleven store in Glen Echo, Md.
Detectives say they eventually found a telling clue — Rothenberg’s driver’s license, which they said he had left in the stolen Lexus. And they said he also left a receipt showing that a musical instrument had been sold to a pawn shop.
NBC 4 said the violin is worth $6,000 and was made in 1891 in France. The victim said she was on her way to a music lesson when she was carjacked. A Montgomery County police detective said the violin had been sold to the pawn shop for just $200.
On Monday, Rothenberg was arrested in Frederick. He faces charges of armed carjacking and armed robbery.
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Would have been sweet music for the South had Maryland seceded.
Heading back down now:
Drivers less likely to brake for African American pedestrians, a phenomenon known as ‘‘walking while black.’’
I don't believe that.
"A white nationalist group called White Lives Matter, which calls itself an opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement, has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks extremist groups in the United States. “The White Lives Matter website says their movement is dedicated to the preservation of the white race. That tells you all you need to know,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “They’re against integration, immigration. This is standard white supremacist stuff.” The group, which grew out of a social media meme, argues that white Americans are victims of a genocide caused by factors like the immigration of nonwhite people and marriage between white Christians and nonwhites or Jews, Beirich said. The law center’s designation is meant to draw attention to and increase scrutiny of the group’s activities...."
Isn't it ironic that Jewish supremacists are spewing hate?
Also see: More young whites support Black Lives Matter, poll says
I stand by what I've said: ALL LIVES MATTER -- including ALL the BLACK and BROWN ONES MURDERED by the U.S. WAR MACHINE!
Oh, yeah, somehow THOSE DEATHS never enter into my ma$$ media calculation, nor do I hear them complaining about all the dead southern white boys in all the wars over the last 100 years.
