Tag: Race Relations

No Charges For South Carolina Officer Who Dragged Female Student Across A Classroom In Chair

Bossip — Last year a South Carolina school officer’s actions sparked a national debate after a video of him brutalizing a student over a verbal dispute went viral. Many believe ex-cop Ben Fields took it too far by dragging the peaceful young lady across a class room. His actions caused the unidentified student several injuries, including neck injuries and broken bones. Ben Field’s was fired after the incident.

According to the Daily News, termination is the height of his punishment. Field’s supervisor Sheriff Leon Lott said Field’s actions were so despicable, he wanted “to throw up”.

This however, had no effect to bring charges.  Richland County Solicitor Dan Johnson said in a 12-page court report Friday that he found no probable cause to charge the school resource officer because the incident “looked worse on camera”.

Johnson’s report includes statements from a slew of witnesses — one of whom said “the incident looked worse in the video than it did in the classroom.”

The report also included a formal account from Fields himself and he appears to have no regrets about his outrageous actions.

“I realized that I was going to have to physically remove the student from her seat to effectuate her arrest,” he said, adding that the desk only flipped over because the student locked her legs inside it.

“Looked worse on camera?” Um. OK.

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LAPD Releases Footage Showing Them Laughing After Killing Another Unarmed Black Man

Via NY Daily:

Los Angeles police officers found reason to laugh after struggling with a schizophrenic man who died in their custody, new video showed Thursday.

The city paid the family of 56-year-old grandfather Vachel Howard a $2.85 million settlement after they filed suit over his June 2012 death at the LAPD’s 77th Street Station Jail.

The video of the fatal clash between Howard and several officers remained out of public view until ProPublica published the silent security camera footage Thursday.

It’s not clear why the officers were chuckling after a nurse examined the motionless Howard, then walked away to get her stethoscope. A lawyer for Howard’s daughter told the investigative news outlet that the video shows how unnecessary it was for him to die.

“Mr. Howard posed no threat whatsoever,” said V. James DeSimone. “He was down on the ground, six officers on top of him, no guns in the nearby vicinity executing a chokehold where there was no threat to the officers or to anybody else. It’s out of policy, it’s unlawful, and in this case it’s murder.”

The police department and the city attorney’s office, which negotiated the settlement last fall after two years of litigation, declined ProPublica’s request for comment.

The officer believed to have used the chokehold received a 22-day suspension. Other officers at the jail that day said they feared for their own lives.

Howard was arrested June 4, 2012, on charges of driving under the influence, according to a 2013 review by the Board of Police Commissioners. Police suspected he had smoked crack and marijuana and possibly taken PCP.

He told one officer after a strip search that he had a history of paranoid schizophrenia and had not taken his medicine recently. The officers described him as apparently hallucinating after his arrest but cooperative during the search.

The struggle began afterward, when police said he became agitated while handcuffed to a bench and advanced toward a nurse in the jail’s dispensary moments later.

SMH! Another travesty. When will it end? Or has it just begun?

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Texas Woman Kept Undocumented Mexicans As Slaves For 19 Years By Telling Them She Was God

A Texas woman has been finally convicted for enslaving undocumented Mexican women for years. – Bossip

According to Fusion:

A federal jury last week convicted a Texas woman of illegally harboring undocumented Mexican women and forcing them to work as slaves in her home cleaning business for nearly a decade and a half. According to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Olga Sandra Murra, 64, was found guilty of two counts of forced labor and two counts of “harboring an illegal alien.”

Born in Mexico, Murra moved to the United States in 1997, bringing with her a woman identified only as “V.R.” as she settled first in El Paso, and then Forth Worth, according to ICE. The following year, Murra arranged to have another woman, identified as I.G., transported into the U.S. She kept both women’s identification documents.

Once in the country, both women were put to work by Murra, cleaning “three to four homes per day up to seven days per week,” ICE said. They were also required to clean Murra’s personal residence and cook her meals, despite being fed only bread and water themselves. They were not paid for their labor and were forced to turn over all money and earnings from their house cleaning to Murra.

Murra maintained control over the enslaved women with a combination of implied—and on at least one occasion, actual—violence, and religious conditioning. According to ICE:

Murra represented herself to the women as the voice of God on Earth, and required them to listen to religious recordings of Murra reading Bible verses and discussing their meaning while they cleaned homes. She caused both women to believe they would go to hell if they did not obey her.

She also threatened to call immigration officials, reportedly telling the women they would be killed “buried in a field with other illegal aliens.”

Wow, really? SMH! The fact that she herself is of Mexican decent is really atrocious. Join the discussion.