The family of Trevon Cole is preparing a lawsuit alleging wrongful death, civil rights violations, and possibly a RICO claim.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2010/aug/22/cop_cleared_killing_unarmed_man

The Las Vegas police officer who shot an unarmed Trevon Cole during a June drug raid over small-time marijuana sales was justified, a coroner’s inquest found Saturday night….

Of about 200 Clark County coroner’s inquests in officer-involved killings since 1976, only one has resulted in a finding of criminal negligence. Whether that near-perfect percentage of acquittals results from exceptionally good police work in Las Vegas, or an inadequate process and institution, depends on who one asks….

Detective Bryan Yant said Cole rose to his feet while moving his hands in a shooting motion and that he saw something silvery or metallic in Cole’s hand. He then fired once, killing Cole… No gun or other silvery or metallic objects were found in the bathroom. But clutched in one of Cole’s hands was a yellow tube of lip balm…

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

READ PREVIOUS ARTICLES ON THIS INCIDENT FROM MALCOLM-CHE.COM

NY candidate: Prison dorms for welfare recipients

"We'll teach them personal hygeine..." - Carl Paladino, candidate for Republican nomination in New York governor's race.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMerqzo-GmOgn5-ch4wz-J0DJ7nAD9HO45H00

NEW YORK — Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, isn’t saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.

But the suggestion that poor families would be better off in remote institutions, rather than among friends and family in their own neighborhoods, struck some anti-poverty activists as insulting.

Paladino is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press.

Throughout his campaign, Paladino has criticized New York’s rich menu of social service benefits, which he says encourages illegal immigrants and needy people to live in the state. He has promised a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if elected.

Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would do work for the state — “military service, in some cases park service, in other cases public works service,” he said — while prison guards would be retrained to work as counselors.

“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes,” Paladino said.

New York, like other states, receives a federal block grant to provide cash and other forms of welfare to very low-income residents. Federal law already requires welfare recipients to do some form of work to receive benefits.

New York’s welfare rolls have grown slightly during the recession, while food stamp eligibility has almost doubled, according to the state.

Paladino told The Associated Press the dormitory living would be voluntary, not mandatory, and would give welfare recipients an opportunity to take public, state-sponsored jobs far from home.

“These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities,” Paladino he said.

He also defended his hygiene remarks, saying he had trained inner-city troops in the Army and knows their needs.

“You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things,” he said.

Ketny Jean-Francois, a former welfare recipient and a New York City advocate for low-income people, said Paladino’s idea shocked her.

“Being poor is not a crime,” she said. “People are on welfare for many reasons … Is he saying people are poor because they don’t have any hygiene or any skills?”

A Lazio spokesman didn’t immediately return a message.

Paladino said he based his ideas on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that paid young unemployed men during the Great Depression to plant trees, build roads and develop parks.

Paladino said he would open the program both to long-term welfare recipients and to people who had lost their jobs during the recession. He said that he didn’t know how he would pay for it but that prisons could be consolidated to make room.

South African state workers are striking over a demand for higher wages. (Reuters: Siphiwe Sibeko)

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=22162

As the recession bites many South African workers are questioning the logic of a system that forces the vast majority of the population to live in poverty, while multinational companies make profits and take their wealth out of the country.

In South Africa the idea that workers won’t fight during a recession is being challenged.

And with these strikes workers are looking for answers on how to root out the inequality that capitalism has entrenched.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-20/south-africa-s-police-out-in-full-force-to-monitor-state-workers-strike.html

South African police clashed with state workers who protested outside government buildings on the third day of a wage strike that has shut schools and clinics.

Police used water cannons to disperse protesters at Johannesburg’s Helen Joseph Hospital today, video shown by Cape Town-based e News Channel showed. Officers broke up a group of strikers who blocked roads to a hospital and a courthouse in the town of Chatsworth in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, police said.

The government “has noted with concern the violent acts of intimidation and public violence” associated with the strike,’’ it said in an e-mailed statement today. “Steps will be taken against strikers or sympathizers who intimidate staff or members of the public, or commit acts of hooliganism, destruction of property or violence.”

While state employees are demanding an 8.6 percent pay increase and a housing allowance of 1,000 rand ($136) a month, the government says it can’t afford to raise its offer of a 7 percent increase and a 700 rand allowance. South Africa’s annual inflation rate is currently 4.2 percent.

Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi met with union officials today “to try and persuade them to understand the government offer,” Dumisani Nkwamba, Baloyi’s spokesman, said by telephone from Pretoria. Asked if the wage offer may be increased, he replied, “absolutely not.”

‘Intensifying’

Unions representing about 1.3 million state workers say their members struggle to get by on their current salaries and that the strike will continue until their demands are met.

“The strike will be intensifying all around the country,” Sizwe Pamla, a spokesman for the 250,000-member National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, said today in an interview.

The rand fell for a second day against the dollar, declining as much as 1.1 percent, to 7,3731. The FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index shed 0.6 percent to 26,989.63 for a third consecutive decline.

Government employees last struck in 2007, when schools, hospitals and immigration offices were disrupted for 29 days, the longest-ever walkout by state workers.

South African laws prevent strikes by certain categories of workers who provide essential services, accounting for about a third of state employees. Even so, many nurses have joined the labor action, said Fidel Hadebe, a Health Ministry spokesman.

‘Quite Severe’

“The impact of the strike has been quite severe in a number of facilities,” he said today by telephone from Pretoria. The provinces of “Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Kwazulu- Natal have been worst-affected.”

Police fired rubber bullets yesterday to disperse workers who entered the grounds of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto township, south of Johannesburg, and tried to prevent patients and doctors from entering.

“We abhor the inhuman conduct of denying doctors and patients access to hospitals and teachers and pupils access to their schools,” the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference group said today in a statement issued to the South African Press Association. “Care is being denied to the weakest and most vulnerable.”

Members of the South African Defense Force were deployed to several hospitals to fill in for striking workers, while critically ill patients who were unable to access treatment at state facilities were transferred to private hospitals.

Reports of Deaths

A pregnant woman who was denied access to a state hospital in the eastern city of Durban gave birth in the parking lot of Netcare Ltd.’s St. Augustine hospital in the city, the company said in an e-mailed statement today.

Several newspapers said patients had died because they had not been treated or received medication. The health department was still investigating the reports, Hadebe said.

“As much as we offer our condolences to those families, we don’t want our members to be blackmailed when they have a legitimate right to strike,” Pamla said. “Hospitals by their nature are places that people go to get saved, but it doesn’t always happen that way” and it can’t be proven that strikers caused the deaths, he said.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, representing 70,000 workers, said today that car and fuel retail-industry workers plan to strike from Sept. 1 after employers failed to meet their demands for a pay increase. Numsa members in the tire and rubber industries will begin a walkout on Aug. 30, the union said.

In this file photo from August 2009, former Salinas Police Officer Christopher Swanson leaves his arraignment with his attorney, Juliet Peck. (File photo by Richard Green)

A former Salinas police officer who shot at an unarmed couple early last year has avoided trial by pleading no contest.

Christopher Swanson faces up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine when he’s sentenced Oct. 1 for a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner.

Swanson, along with fellow Officer Steve Mattocks, was involved in a routine traffic stop Feb. 3, 2009, that turned violent when both officers shot at a sport utility vehicle occupied by Hernandez and driver Adriana Velasquez.

Police investigators have said that, after asking the driver and passenger for their driver’s licenses, Swanson thought he heard a “pop” and saw a muzzle flash and then felt something “hit” his chest.

They have also said Swanson yelled out that he had been wounded, prompting Mattocks to fire, followed by Swanson, at the couple’s car.

The couple were unhurt. But Swanson was never shot at, and no weapon was found in or near the vehicle.

After the shooting, Swanson was let go by the Police Department

Mattocks was not charged. The District Attorney’s Office said Mattocks had reacted reasonably to Swanson’s actions, believing he was protecting his colleague.

‘Cruel’ racist jailed in sex assault

T.J. Turcotte had seen a man struggling with a young woman near 106th Street and 38th Avenue, forcing her toward Charles Anderson Park. He ran to get his brother at a friend's house, then they raced back to search for the attacker. The twins searched and interrupted a violent sexual assault that ended only when the rapist, Ian Drako Bruce, saw the twins approach. The rapist tried to run, but the brothers chased him, struggled with him, and finally pinned him to the ground until police arrived.

LA judge frees thief who got 25 yrs on 3rd strike

From left, Stanford law school students Gabriel Martinez and Reiko Rogozen listen with Gregory Taylor as he wipes away tears during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday, Aug. 16, 2010. A judge on Monday ordered the release of Taylor, a man serving a potential life sentence for stealing food from a Los Angeles church. (AP Photo/Anne Cusack, Pool)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heJ-iitiJR_RYwIjOjOIiybw7Q0QD9HL4OOO0

LOS ANGELES — After 13 years behind bars for trying to break in to a church kitchen to find something to eat, a man who became an example of the harsh sentences allowed by California’s three-strikes law has been ordered released from prison.

A Superior Court judge amended Gregory Taylor’s sentence to eight years already served and the 47-year-old, who was sentenced in 1997 to 25 years to life, will be a free man in a few days.

Tears streamed down Taylor’s face and Judge Peter Espinoza asked a bailiff to get him a tissue.

“I thought I was going to cry too,” said law student Reiko Rogozen, who started working on the case in January as part of Stanford Law School’s Three-Strikes Project, which filed a writ of habeas corpus seeking freedom for Taylor. “He was scared up until the last minute that it wasn’t actually going to happen.”

The district attorney did not oppose the group’s move.

Taylor quietly thanked the court and his lawyers for “giving me another chance … and my family for sticking by me.”

Taylor was arrested in July 1997 while trying to get into the kitchen of St. Joseph’s Church in downtown Los Angeles. He told officers that he was hungry.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Alan McCoy, testified at the original sentencing that Taylor was often given food and allowed to sleep at the church. The priest described him as a peaceful man struggling with homelessness and crack addiction.

Taylor was convicted of third-strike burglary due to two robbery convictions in the 1980s, once for stealing a purse containing $10 and another time for trying to rob a man on the street. He didn’t use a weapon in either case, and no one was injured.

During an appeal, a dissenting state Supreme Court justice said Taylor was a 20th-century version of Jean Valjean, a character imprisoned for stealing bread in Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Miserables.”

Judge Espinoza said the church break-in was not a crime of violence “but drug addiction and homelessness.”

The three-strikes sentencing policies of the 1990s “produced inconsistent and disproportionate results,” he said.

Taylor was taken back into custody and will be released when his paperwork is completed in at least two days.

His mother and siblings applauded during the hearing and beamed in the hallway afterward. His sister, Angela Taylor, remembered the day her brother called with details of his sentence.

“I thought he was lying. Twenty-five to life? That’s crazy,” she said.

Taylor got his GED at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.

“Even in conversations over the phone, he sounds way more mature,” his sister said.

His 78-year-old mother, Lois Taylor, said her son was hungry for a home-cooked meal, so she’s planning a huge barbecue to celebrate.

He plans to live in Pomona with his younger brother who runs a food pantry where he’ll get a job.

Michael Taylor said he and his brothers are planning a West Coast cruise and if Gregory Taylor gets out before they depart Aug. 23, they’ll take him along.

When running for office in 2000, District Attorney Steve Cooley often used the case as an example of how unfair he believed the three-strikes law was. Cooley said if the third strike wasn’t serious and wasn’t violent, three strikes should not apply.

Cooley said Gregory Taylor’s release is “justice long overdue” because his crime was a minor offense.

But Cooley said the three-strikes law doesn’t need to be repealed as long as prosecutors apply it “proportionally,” taking into account the nature of the offense and the defendant’s previous criminal record.

Advocates: AG should do more to fight prison rape

Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship, unveils a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, urging him to adopt prison rape elimination standards, Aug. 17, 2010. Thirty-five organizations signed the letter.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYSdx0omAsX6TLZ4YdS-E64kFilgD9HLG9VG2

WASHINGTON — Advocates for prison inmates on Tuesday accused Attorney General Eric Holder of “dragging his feet” on adopting national standards for preventing rape in prisons.

Justice Department statistics show that an estimated 4.5 percent, or 60,500 inmates, report being victims of sexual assault in federal prisons, said Pat Nolan, vice president of outreach program Prison Fellowship. It happens to almost 1 in 8 juveniles in custody.

But Nolan said proposed national standards — include increasing lighting around facilities, screening staffers for sexual misconduct and independent supervision of prisons — can reduce those numbers in federal and state prisons. In California and Oregon, he said, changes in prison culture were successfully taking hold within a year of adopting standards that address mismanagement and poor leadership feeding the problem.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission submitted its report — including those recommendations — to Holder in June. But the Justice Department declined to comment on a definite timeline or details of national standards. Spokeswoman Hannah August said in an e-mail that a proposal should be ready in the fall.

Advocate Barrett Duke said “tell Holder to stop dragging his feet.”

Holder, in a letter to Congress earlier this year, said he hopes to implement standards for preventing prison rape quickly, and he thinks there’s enough money to do so.

Duke, Nolan and other advocates spoke at a meeting Tuesday at the National Press Club.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said advocates have been working on stopping prison rape since the 1980s.The Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed in 2003, which calls for a zero-tolerance policy regarding prison rape and requires the Justice Department to submit a report on incidents and effects of prison rape by June 30 of each year.

Marilyn Shirley clutched a typewritten speech in trembling hands as she told how a senior officer at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas secluded her, threw her against a wall, raped and sodomized her a decade ago. She was in prison on drug charges.

“The more I begged and pleaded for him to stop the more violent he became,” Shirley said, crying. She takes five pills a day to help her cope.

She said the words her attacker whispered in her ear continue to haunt her: “Do you think you’re the only one?”

Vegas police study policy after drug raid slaying

Sequoia Pearce, who is 9 months pregnant, says she and her fiance, 21 year-old Trevon Cole, thought someone was breaking in to their apartment, so she hid in the closet. "I was coming out, and they told me to get on the floor. I heard a gun shot and was trying to see what was happening and where they had shot him," she said.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/38564290

LAS VEGAS – The head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department promised a review of how drug search warrants are obtained and served following the slaying of an unarmed 21-year-old man during a police raid at a Las Vegas apartment.

Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie told Las Vegas Review-Journal editors that he was troubled that a warrant affidavit said undercover officers bought less than 2 ounces of marijuana from Trevon Cole in the weeks before the June 11 raid.

The officer who shot Cole, Bryan Yant, also claimed incorrectly in court documents that Cole had an “extensive” criminal history in Houston and Los Angeles. The Review-Journal found that was not true.

“I can tell you that when I got my 48-hour briefing on that particular shooting, I had some concerns in regards to the level of narcotics purchased and the level of search warrant that was used,” Gillespie said in an interview reported Wednesday. “It definitely has given rise to me to take a look at what warrants are being served and who is serving those warrants.”

Gillespie, who is running for re-election in November, also promised corrective action if necessary.

Yant, 34, has been involved in three shootings in nine years as a Las Vegas police officer. He is on paid leave pending a departmental review and Clark County coroner’s inquest of Cole’s death scheduled for Aug. 20.

A jury will hear witness testimony and a presentation from prosecutors before ruling whether the slaying was justified, excusable or criminal. The officer and witnesses won’t face cross-examination.

Police have said Cole made a “furtive movement” before Yant shot him dead in the bathroom of a one-bedroom apartment while Cole’s pregnant 20-year-old girlfriend was in the next room. The woman told the Review-Journal that Cole made no movements toward officers, did not have anything in his hands and did not own a weapon.

Gillespie has pleaded for patience from a community on edge following 18 Las Vegas police officer-involved shootings this year. Five cases have resulted in death.

Critics and family members have called for police to release store surveillance tapes following the fatal police shooting July 10 of Erik Scott outside a Costco membership warehouse store in northwest Las Vegas. Scott, 38, was a U.S. Military Academy graduate who had a concealed weapon and permit.

Gillespie said surveillance footage of Scott’s shooting might not exist but store video hard drives had been sent to experts in California for review.

“As it stands right now, we don’t have any (footage),” he said.

An inquest in Scott’s slaying, initially scheduled for Sept. 3, has been postponed indefinitely.

Another Link On The Topic:  Pregnant woman watches as police storm apartment, kill fiance

Rocrast Donnell Mack was beaten to death. Ventress, in southeast Alabama, was one of state's most overcrowded prisons this spring, the latest period for which statistics are available on the prison system's website. Originally designed for 650 men, the medium-security prison held 1,668 prisoners at the end of April.

http://eji.org/eji/node/463

State officials are investigating the death of a 24-year-old nonviolent offender who was beaten to death by guards at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Alabama, on August 4, 2010. Rocrast Mack was serving a 20-year sentence for a non-violent drug offense at the time of his death.

Witnesses report that Rocrast Mack, a young black man, was approached by a female guard while lying in his dorm bed covered with a blanket. He was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior while lying on his cot, told to get up, and then struck by the guard with a metal baton. After being struck by the guard several times, Mr. Mack allegedly punched the guard and then ran out of the dorm into a public area, where he kneeled down on the ground and put his hands behind his head.

In front of dozens of witnesses, several guards approached Mr. Mack and proceeded to beat him severely. He reportedly sustained fractures to his ribs, arms, legs, and skull, and was brain dead by the time he arrived at Jackson Hospital, where he died.

The killing was reported to state police and is being investigated by the Alabama Bureau of Investigation in addition to the Department of Corrections’s own internal investigation. Although Department of Corrections spokesman Brien Corbett said, “An inmate allegedly assaulted an officer and other officers had to intervene. He did later pass of his injuries,” inmate witnesses are reporting that the man was beaten to death by guards.

Ventress, located in rural southeast Alabama, is a state prison housing more than twice as many people as it was designed to hold, and is one of the state’s most overcrowded facilities.

Residents Get No Answers In Police Shooting Case

Decarlos Moore RIP "Moore reportedly reached inside the car for some sunglasses and the reflection off the lenses lead the officer to believe Moore had a gun."

Decarlos Moore's casket is carried by his friends and family. He was killed by police during a "routine traffic stop." He was unarmed.

http://cbs4.com/local/miami.Overtown.police.2.1827739.html

Tuesday night angry citizens met with the Miami Police chief hoping to get answers on the fatal shooting of a civilian, but police say they can’t talk about the investigation at this point.

While Miami Police continue to investigate the shooting of the unarmed man, just a few blocks away dozens of Overtown residents gathered demanding to know why this happened at the. They want to know what will happen to the shooting officer.

Passion and frustration spread through the Overtown church community center during the meeting.

“Our community is literally in a state of police, it’s a police state!” said Overtown resident Grady Muhammad to a panel of community leaders.

The answers many of the residents were seeking did not come.  Police gave no new information on the shooting death of 36-year-old Decarlos Moore. Army vet and rookie Miami officer Joseph Marin shot Moore in the head during a traffic stop July 5th. Moore was not armed.

Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito told the residents his hands are tied.

“We can’t really discuss the aspects of this case, the law does not allow us to do that,” said Chief Exposito.

That was hard for many, including Moore’s cousin Charles Jackson to accept. “We came here for an answer, what happened to our loved one. And no one gave us those answers. We don’t know no more today than what we knew 21 days ago,” he told CBS4’s Natalia Zea.

Moore’s family members stormed out of the meeting.

“This is not about a brother that lost his life, this was a waste of time,” stated Moore’s brother.

The Reverend Richard Dunn, who is also a Miami Commissioner, announced a new blue ribbon panel with leading pastors, lawyers, and scholars — tasked with improving relations between police officers and residents in Overtown.

And, the Police Chief has brought a new Lieutenant to Overtown, who helped bring down crime in Liberty City. But some residents believe Overtown needs to strengthen itself.

One resident told the panel and her fellow community members, “The police might think because there’s so much black on black crime in Overtown that maybe we don’t care or we won’t notice – when there’s a blue on black crime, so maybe we need to come together as a community.”

The Moore family now vows to turn to the State Attorney for answers on the police-involved shooting.