Ferguson / Staten Island Decisions -- No Indictments

So we now trust the police to decide which laws to enforce and which ones to ignore? A law enforcement Veto over democratically passed laws?

 

Federal executive branch doing the same thing.

 

The search function here needs heavy lifting -- so difficult to pinpoint specific posts or whatnot.

Anyway ...

Idaho: Potatoes and Triggers for Life!

Tells the Feds to take a flying fugget. http://benswann.com/breaking-idaho-...ation-nullifying-all-future-federal-gun-laws/

 

Civil War II, Electric Boogaloo: This Time, It's About Guns

 

Finally Justice served. The cop in Brooklyn stairwell shooting was indicted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/n...-to-brooklyn-residents.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

Interesting that the family of the victim turned down requests from Al Sharpton to be involved in the case and it
remained low profile.

 

Boom, your obsession with Sharpton is bordering on unhealthy.

 

DOJ: No charges for Zimmerman

I never realized that this case was still even open.

Trayvon Martin: DOJ Set to Announce No Charges Against George Zimmerman - ABC News

 

The part of me that uses the "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" argument for why Zimmerman should have been indicted is perturbed right now that he's not going to see any (more) jail time for shooting an unarmed kid during an altercation that he instigated.

The rational part of me knows the DOJ is making the right call here. The same ambiguities that got Zimmerman off in the criminal trial will get him off in a civil rights trial.

It royally stinks that a guy who follows a kid, disregards a dispatcher's instruction to not approach the kid, makes the kid feel like he needed to defend himself (although why the kid just didn't go home and stay home or himself call the cops will forever be an unanswered question) and subsequently shoots the kid when he is getting his ass kicked is going have as his official record that he acted with justifiable force in this incident. It's just wrong, but legally, after that trial, there was nothing more to be done.

 

I know it's two months too late but....



John C. Calhoun approves.

 

Eric Garner died a year ago today, and while his death was surely a tragedy, the god news is that he did not die in vain.

His family settled a wrongful death claim with the City for $5.9 million:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/n...-settled-by-new-york-city-for-5-9-million.htm

And, in what might be his lasting legacy, arrests for selling untaxed cigarettes in New York City are down 33%.

The NYPD has made nearly 33% fewer arrests citywide so far this year for selling untaxed cigarettes, the crime Mr. Garner was suspected of during a deadly confrontation on Staten Island last summer.

While department officials declined to discuss the drop in arrests, experts say it may reflect officers’ concerns over personal or professional liability, as well as a growing reluctance to make an arrest over a minor offense.

Loose Cigarette Arrests in NYC Drop in Year After Eric Garner’s Death - WSJ

 

They're just busy trying to check the city's murder rate, which is up, depending on who you believe, 15-20 percent.

 

2 Outside Reviews Say Cleveland Officer Acted Reasonably in Shooting Tamir Rice, 12

Two outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun.

Those opinions, reached separately by a Colorado prosecutor and a former F.B.I. supervisory special agent, were released Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will ultimately present evidence in the case to a grand jury to decide on possible criminal charges.

“The question is not whether every officer would have reacted the same way,” Kimberly A. Crawford, the retired F.B.I. agent, wrote in her report, which noted that Officer Loehmann had no way of knowing Tamir’s gun was fake. “Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether a reasonable officer, confronting the exact same scenario under identical conditions could have concluded that deadly force was necessary.”

The reports, which were commissioned by the prosecutor’s office, come almost 11 months after the shooting outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014. Footage of the shooting was captured on a surveillance camera, and Tamir’s name quickly became among the most prominent in a series of black men and boys whose deaths at the hands of the police were memorialized in Twitter hashtags and protest chants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/u...-shooting-tamir-rice-12.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0