Black Lives Matter-Ugliness of Racism.

[spaminator]

Rescued lab chimpanzee amazed seeing open sky for the first time
Author of the articleenette Wilford
Published Jun 30, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
Chimpanzee smiles as it looks up
A chimpanzee named Vanilla reacts at seeing the open sky for the first time in a screenshot from a video posted on June 15, 2023 by Save the Chimps. Save the Chimps
A former lab chimpanzee seeing open sky and feeling grass for the first time will warm even the coldest of hearts.


Video shows the chimp, Vanilla, walking around, staring at the vast Florida blue sky in amazement while slowly taking in the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce.


The animal protection organization recently posted the heartwarming video of the 29-year-old chimpanzee exploring her new island home.

Vanilla, who spent most of her life in a New York biomedical research laboratory, appears hesitant at first, looking outside from a doorway.

She then jumps up and down and hugs another chimp before staring up at the sky with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Dwight, the alpha male who’s in charge of the chimps, coaxed her out with open arms,” Dan Mathews of Save the Chimps told the New York Post.

“In the video, you see her going into his arms for a hug,” he detailed. “It is the first time she was outdoors with more than 10 feet of fence around her on all sides from top to bottom,” he said, adding that Vanilla was “clearly elated to have suddenly found freedom.”


The video shows Vanilla being guided by Dwight and another chimpanzee as she explores the wide open spaces and interacts with a group of other chimps.

Vanilla and her sister Shake were welcomed into the sanctuary after spending years in captivity at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) in Tuxedo, N.Y., which specialized in HIV and hepatitis research.

Vanilla was born at the lab and was torn away from her mother shortly after birth, the Post reported.

“It was a horrible lab and protested by animal rights activists for decades. Jane Goodall targeted the place as a hellhole,” Mathews said. “The chimps there watched TV and never saw the light of day.”

Mathews told the outlet that the animals in the lab, which has since shut down, lived in mesh cages that were cleaned by being hosed down so workers didn’t have to release the animals.



After that, Vanilla and Shake were moved to Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit refuge north of Los Angeles that served as “a dumping ground for many animals who were being discarded,” Mathews described.

“The people running it were well meaning” but it was far from ideal.

Vanilla now spends her days foraging for food, swinging on ropes, and taking painting classes, according to Mathews.

“Chimps have 98.8% of DNA similarity with humans,” he said. “Now that Vanilla is out, she hardly goes back to the care-house. Yesterday, she was sunbathing on one of the outdoor platforms.”

He added: “Vanilla has a long future; she can live here for another 30 or 40 years. She seems glad to have her own world, to finally have the closest thing to a natural habitat. She is embracing it.”

From ‘horrible lab’ to her own island: wild life of Vanilla the Chimp

A chimpanzee named Vanilla captured the internet’s heart with a video of her seeing the sky for the first time. It’s a sweet turn after she started life in a “horrible laboratory.…

nypost.com

Rescued lab chimpanzee amazed seeing open sky for the first time

A former lab chimpanzee seeing open sky and feeling grass for the first time will warm even the coldest of hearts.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

U.S. Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, says race cannot be a factor
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Mark Sherman
Published Jun 29, 2023 • Last updated 3 days ago • 5 minute read

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.


The court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.


Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the colour of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Justice Clarence Thomas—the nation’s second Black justice, who had long called for an end to affirmative action—wrote separately that the decision “sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.”


Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

Echoing her dissent, President Joe Biden said he “strongly, strongly” disagrees with the court’s ruling. He urged colleges not to let the ruling “be the last word.”

“They should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America,” Biden said from the White House. He said colleges should evaluate “adversity overcome” by candidates.

Both Thomas and Sotomayor, the two justices who have acknowledged affirmative action played a role in their admissions to college and law school, took the unusual step of reading a summary of their opinions aloud in the courtroom.


In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—the court’s first Black female justice—called the decision “truly a tragedy for us all.”

Jackson, who sat out the Harvard case because she had been a member of an advisory governing board, wrote, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colourblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case. Justice Elena Kagan was the other dissenter.

Two former presidents offered starkly different takes on the high-court ruling.

Former President Donald Trump, the current GOP presidential frontrunner, wrote on his social media network that the decision marked “a great day for America. People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our Country, are finally being rewarded.”


Former President Barack Obama said in a statement that affirmative action “allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it’s up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserveâŠ_âŠand help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives.”

The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.

But that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court. At arguments in late October, all six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice, which had been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978.

Lower courts also had upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian American applicants.


The college admissions disputes are among several high-profile cases focused on race in America, and were weighed by the conservative-dominated, but most diverse court ever. Among the nine justices are four women, two Black people and a Latina.

The justices earlier in June decided a voting rights case in favour of Black voters in Alabama and rejected a race-based challenge to a Native American child protection law.

The affirmative action cases were brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, who also was behind an earlier affirmative action challenge against the University of Texas as well as the case that led the court in 2013 to end use of a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Blum formed Students for Fair Admissions, which filed the lawsuits against both schools in 2014.


The group argued that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions and called for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.

Roberts’ opinion effectively did so, both Thomas and the dissenters wrote.

The only institutions of higher education explicitly left out of the ruling are the nation’s military academies, Roberts wrote, suggesting that national security interests could affect the legal analysis.

Blum’s group had contended that colleges and universities can use other, race-neutral ways to assemble a diverse student body, including by focusing on socioeconomic status and eliminating the preference for children of alumni and major donors.

The schools said that they use race in a limited way, but that eliminating it as a factor altogether would make it much harder to achieve a student body that looks like America.


At the eight Ivy League universities, the number of nonwhite students increased by 55% from 2010 to 2021, according to federal data. That group, which includes, Native American, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander and biracial students, accounted for 35% of students on those campuses in 2021, up from 27% in 2010.

The end of affirmative action in higher education in California, Michigan, Washington state and elsewhere led to a steep drop in minority enrollment in the states’ leading public universities.

They are among nine states that already prohibit any consideration of race in admissions to their public colleges and universities. The others are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.


In 2020, California voters easily rejected a ballot measure to bring back affirmative action.

A poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed 63% of U.S. adults say the court should allow colleges to consider race as part of the admissions process, yet few believe students’ race should ultimately play a major role in decisions. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that half of Americans disapprove of considerations of applicants’ race, while a third approve.

The chief justice and Jackson received their undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. Two other justices, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch, went to law school there, and Kagan was the first woman to serve as the law school’s dean.

Every U.S. college and university the justices attended, save one, urged the court to preserve race-conscious admissions.

Those schools—Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Notre Dame and Holy Cross—joined briefs in defense of Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions plans.

Only Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s undergraduate alma mater, Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee, was not involved in the cases.

U.S. Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, says race cannot be a factor

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Supreme Court ends the last vestige of 'systemic racism' in America
Author of the article:Special to Toronto Sun
Published Jun 30, 2023 • 4 minute read

By Josh Hammer


On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the greatest majority opinion ever written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts.


That one-time Obamacare savior, who in 2012 rewrote the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as a “tax” in order to salvage President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy, this time penned a landmark ruling abolishing something the Left has been clamoring to abolish ever since the 2020 death of George Floyd and the subsequent “Great Awokening” that rocked the republic: “systemic racism” in America.

Oh, that wasn’t the way Thursday’s huge news was framed by MSNBC talking heads and New York Times editorialists? Curious, that.

It is true that the corporate media headlines emanating from Thursday’s consolidated opinion in this term’s twin affirmative action cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, would have you believe that the Court did something closely approximating the opposite of ending so-called “systemic racism” in America. Those wokesters, “identity politics” enthusiasts, Ibram X. Kendi-esque “anti-racism” proponents, Al Sharpton-style race hustlers, and the addlebrained president of the United States himself would all instead have us believe that a far-right, reactionary cabal of jurisprudential troglodytes on the High Court “set us back” on the issue of race.


According to this popular narrative, the SFFA opinion is positively nightmarish; John Roberts might as well be a reincarnation of Roger Taney.

The fact that such a narrative exists — indeed, that it is so popular — says a great deal about the woeful state of intellectual honesty, and indeed basic ethical decency, on the American Left. (That very much includes the two vociferous dissenters in SFFA, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.)

The outcome of SFFA, which mercifully overturns the Court’s muddled mess of affirmative action precedents going back four and a half decades, is every bit as much a vindication of the U.S. Constitution’s colorblindness as was last century’s epochal desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.


The “sordid business” of race-conscious admissions decisions in American universities, to borrow from one of Roberts’ earliest notable writings during his Court tenure (League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, in 2006), has been vanquished in the name of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Even preceding the Constitution, the very equality principle — “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” — of Jefferson’s Declaration itself has been vindicated, as well.

In what world is that fundamentally just result not worth celebrating?

Admissions officers at both public and private universities shall never again be legally permitted to explicitly take race into account when they make admissions decisions. If they do so anyway, they will now face personal liability and be subject for monetary damages. Sure, some officers will try to get creative and toe a very careful line, but how far can they really go when it is their own personal savings on the line? And as the chief justice himself clarified, in a delectable shot across the bow fired at Sotomayor and Jackson: “(D)espite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)”


SFFA is also a vindication of Justice Clarence Thomas, the greatest living American, who has been sounding the alarm on the perils of affirmative action for decades. As Thomas has repeatedly pointed out, and which he reiterated in his magisterial SFFA concurrence, the liberals and progressives who seek to “help” black and Hispanic applicants via affirmative action policies oftentimes do the precise opposite of helping them.

First, there is “mismatch theory,” according to which meritocracy-undermining affirmative action policies empirically harm matriculants and set them up for failure by matching them with universities not reflective of their natural skills and aptitudes. Another word for “mismatch theory” is “common sense”: Anyone who has graduated from an elite university with his/her eyes open, and who is not blinded by voguish “anti-racist” dogma, would agree with the basic proposition. Second, and more important, affirmative action policies cast a presumptive badge of inferiority on minority students who do matriculate at elite institutions, causing both minority students to doubt themselves and other students to view their peers’ placement there with skepticism.


Ultimately, America can either have “equity,” as modern wokesters use the term, or it can have equality — real moral and legal equality under the rule of law. This is a zero-sum game — only one vision of the American regime can prevail in our roiling, cold civil war. In SFFA, the only one of those two visions that is in line with our nation’s colorblind Founding ideals was the one that prevailed; the impostor race-conscious regime vision, which Democrats have championed as far back as John C. Calhoun’s antebellum defense of the “peculiar institution” as a “positive good,” has suffered yet another grievous blow.

As Thomas, a black man who grew up dirt-poor in the Jim Crow South, concluded in his SFFA concurrence: “While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”

In SFFA, the Supreme Court took a giant step toward making Thomas’ “enduring hope” a lived reality. The last trace of genuine, government-legitimized “systemic racism” in America is no more. Good riddance.

Josh Hammer is opinion editor of Newsweek, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project. A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal and cultural issues, Josh is a constitutional attorney by training.

OPINION: Supreme Court ends the last vestige of 'systemic racism' in America

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the greatest majority opinion ever written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts.

torontosun.com

 

[55Mercury]

Rescued lab chimpanzee amazed seeing open sky for the first time
Author of the articleenette Wilford
Published Jun 30, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
Chimpanzee smiles as it looks up
A chimpanzee named Vanilla reacts at seeing the open sky for the first time in a screenshot from a video posted on June 15, 2023 by Save the Chimps. Save the Chimps
A former lab chimpanzee seeing open sky and feeling grass for the first time will warm even the coldest of hearts.


Video shows the chimp, Vanilla, walking around, staring at the vast Florida blue sky in amazement while slowly taking in the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce.


The animal protection organization recently posted the heartwarming video of the 29-year-old chimpanzee exploring her new island home.

Vanilla, who spent most of her life in a New York biomedical research laboratory, appears hesitant at first, looking outside from a doorway.

She then jumps up and down and hugs another chimp before staring up at the sky with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Dwight, the alpha male who’s in charge of the chimps, coaxed her out with open arms,” Dan Mathews of Save the Chimps told the New York Post.

“In the video, you see her going into his arms for a hug,” he detailed. “It is the first time she was outdoors with more than 10 feet of fence around her on all sides from top to bottom,” he said, adding that Vanilla was “clearly elated to have suddenly found freedom.”


The video shows Vanilla being guided by Dwight and another chimpanzee as she explores the wide open spaces and interacts with a group of other chimps.

Vanilla and her sister Shake were welcomed into the sanctuary after spending years in captivity at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) in Tuxedo, N.Y., which specialized in HIV and hepatitis research.

Vanilla was born at the lab and was torn away from her mother shortly after birth, the Post reported.

“It was a horrible lab and protested by animal rights activists for decades. Jane Goodall targeted the place as a hellhole,” Mathews said. “The chimps there watched TV and never saw the light of day.”

Mathews told the outlet that the animals in the lab, which has since shut down, lived in mesh cages that were cleaned by being hosed down so workers didn’t have to release the animals.



After that, Vanilla and Shake were moved to Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit refuge north of Los Angeles that served as “a dumping ground for many animals who were being discarded,” Mathews described.

“The people running it were well meaning” but it was far from ideal.

Vanilla now spends her days foraging for food, swinging on ropes, and taking painting classes, according to Mathews.

“Chimps have 98.8% of DNA similarity with humans,” he said. “Now that Vanilla is out, she hardly goes back to the care-house. Yesterday, she was sunbathing on one of the outdoor platforms.”

He added: “Vanilla has a long future; she can live here for another 30 or 40 years. She seems glad to have her own world, to finally have the closest thing to a natural habitat. She is embracing it.”
View attachment 18636

From ‘horrible lab’ to her own island: wild life of Vanilla the Chimp

A chimpanzee named Vanilla captured the internet’s heart with a video of her seeing the sky for the first time. It’s a sweet turn after she started life in a “horrible laboratory.…

nypost.com

Rescued lab chimpanzee amazed seeing open sky for the first time

A former lab chimpanzee seeing open sky and feeling grass for the first time will warm even the coldest of hearts.

torontosun.com

well...

that's gonna bug tf outa somebody

 

[spaminator]

Police complaints commission overturns Neptune Four decision
Author of the articleostmedia News
Published Jul 04, 2023 • 2 minute read

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission has overturned an earlier decision in the infamous Neptune Four case and allowed an appeal.


The initial decision was made by a hearing officer at the Toronto Police Service’s disciplinary tribunal.


Two Toronto Police officers were found guilty of misconduct for accosting four Black teenagers on Nov. 21, 2011, outside the complainants’ home in the Neptune Toronto Community Housing complex.

Const. Adam Lourenco has now also been found guilty of discreditable conduct for pointing his firearm at the complainants in the encounter.

The OCPC ruled that this use of force was unreasonable and “had the potential to damage the reputation of the TPS in the eyes of a fully apprised reasonable person.”


The governing body, in overturning the hearing officer’s ruling, determined that Lourenco’s conduct did not meet the test to point his firearm: That he did not have reasonable grounds to fear that serious bodily harm or death would occur when complainants YB and BHA moved toward him after he had punched their friend and brother BA to the ground.

In addition, the OCPC found that the hearing officer erred in relying on his own training and experience as a cop when he determined that pointing a firearm was justified under the circumstances.

The threat, the OCPC ruled, from the youth was overstated “given that this was a random stop of young teenagers simply walking outside of their home.

“Of particular significance, the OCPC held, in the face of the officers’ objections, that social context evidence about the racial dynamics between Black youth and police was relevant to the assessment of whether PC Lourenco’s use of force was reasonable,” a statement from the complainants’ lawyers said.


“This is in spite of the fact that neither officer had been charged with racial discrimination.”

Legal eagles said this was the first case in Canada that “specifically found that racial bias has the potential to undermine the reasonableness of a police use of force in police discipline proceedings.”

OCPC did not find whether or not racial bias was present.

“The complainants believe that this case paves the way for future cases to consider the reasonableness of a police officer’s use of force by drawing on the broader systemic racial dynamics,” lawyers for the complainants said, adding the case fuelled negative stereotypes about Black youth and men.

In the same decision, the OCPC rejected the officers’ appeals.

Lourenco and Const. Scharnil Pais had appealed the finding they were guilty of unlawfully arresting YB and MM. Lourenco appealed the finding that his punching of BA amounted to discreditable conduct.

He is now convicted of all three counts initially laid against him. Pais remains convicted of the initial complaint against him.

At a hearing in 2021, Lourenco received a 12-day forfeiture of salary. Pais lost three days of pay.

In 2021, the complainants had hoped the cops would be hit harder and wanted Lourenco to be fired.

Police complaints commission overturns Neptune Four decision

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission has overturned an earlier decision in the infamous Neptune Four case and allowed an appeal.

torontosun.com

 

[55Mercury]

Rescued lab chimpanzee amazed seeing open sky for the first time
Author of the articleenette Wilford
Published Jun 30, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
Chimpanzee smiles as it looks up
A chimpanzee named Vanilla reacts at seeing the open sky for the first time in a screenshot from a video posted on June 15, 2023 by Save the Chimps. Save the Chimps
A former lab chimpanzee seeing open sky and feeling grass for the first time will warm even the coldest of hearts.

I'm sure you weren't intentionally comparing blacks to chimps, and accidently stuck this in the wrong thread.

I guess the rest of you lot came to the same conclusion as not a peep from anyone!

clearly we need more blacks in this forum.

or might they just steer clear of this racism because not a peep from anyone! ?

 

[spaminator]

L.A. County sheriff says deputy punching baby-holding mom in the face was ’completely unacceptable’
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Jul 13, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 2 minute read
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are pictured talking to a mother holding her baby moments before she is punched in the face for refusing to hand over her child.
In this screen grab of a police body cam video, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are pictured talking to a mother holding her baby moments before she is punched in the face for refusing to hand over her child. PHOTO BY LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT /YouTube screen grab
LOS ANGELES — For the second time in a week, the Los Angeles County sheriff decried the use of force by deputies in the Antelope Valley after the Sheriff’s Department released video on Wednesday of a deputy punching a woman twice in the face as she held her baby.

The edited video from body camera footage shows the July 2022 encounter during a traffic stop in Palmdale, northeast of Los Angeles.


At a news conference, Sheriff Robert Luna said he found the punching “completely unacceptable” and has sent the case to the county district attorney’s office, which will decide whether to file criminal charges against the deputy. The FBI also was alerted, Luna said.



Luna said the deputy, whom he didn’t name, has been taken off field duty.

Last week, Luna said two deputies had been pulled from field duty after video surfaced of a deputy in neighbouring Lancaster violently tackling a woman while she filmed a man being handcuffed, then pepper-spraying her in the face on June 24.

In both cases, Luna said he had only lately learned of the incidents. Although the sheriff said state law bars him from detailing specific discipline against deputies, he has said those involved in improper use of force could face anything from additional training to days off or dismissal.

Luna, a former Long Beach police chief, has vowed to overhaul the nation’s largest sheriff’s department since taking it over in December after defeating incumbent Alex Villanueva.


During the July 2022 encounter, deputies stopped a car driving without headlights at night, smelled alcohol, and saw three babies who weren’t in car seats and were being held in their mother’s arms, Luna said.

The male driver was arrested on suspicion of driving on a suspended licence, driving under the influence of alcohol and child endangerment. Four women in the car were held on suspicion of child endangerment. During their arrests, a deputy punched one woman twice in the face after she refused to let go of her child, Luna said.

The video shows one woman’s child being forcibly taken from her as she shrieks, then a second woman sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding her 3-week-old child.

Deputies try to convince her to give them the child, and the mother responds, “You’ll have to shoot me dead before you take my baby,” the video shows. As she resists, a deputy punches her several times in the face, and she is handcuffed.


Luna said he believed the punching was “an isolated incident committed by an individual who will be held accountable.” He said most other employees are doing “incredible work on behalf of 10 million residents.”

Federal monitors continue to oversee reforms that the department agreed to for the Lancaster and Palmdale stations, which are among the busiest in the county.

In 2015, the Sheriff’s Department settled federal allegations that deputies in those stations had engaged in excessive use of force and racially biased policing that included disproportionately stopping or searching Black and Latino people.

L.A. County sheriff says deputy punching baby-holding mom in the face was ’completely unacceptable’

For the second time in a week, the Los Angeles County sheriff decried the use of force by deputies in the Antelope Valley.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

New York City agrees to pay $13 million to 2020 racial injustice protesters in historic class action
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Jake Offenhartz
Published Jul 19, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City has agreed to pay more than $13 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought on behalf of roughly 1,300 people who were arrested or beaten by police during racial injustice demonstrations that swept through the city during the summer of 2020.


If approved by a judge, the settlement, which was filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, would be among the most expensive payouts ever awarded in a lawsuit over mass arrests, experts said.


The lawsuit focused on 18 of the many protests that erupted in New York City in the week following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. With certain exceptions, people arrested or subjected to force by NYPD officers at those events will each be eligible for $9,950 in compensation, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The agreement, one of several stemming from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, allows the city to avoid a trial that could be both expensive and politically fraught.

It comes as many other cities across the U.S. are negotiating their own settlements with protesters who spilled into the streets to decry racist police brutality after Floyd’s death, a period of unrest that saw 10,000 people arrested in the span of a few days.


Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild, which represented the plaintiffs in New York, accused NYPD leaders of depriving protesters of their 1st Amendment rights through a “coordinated” campaign of indiscriminate brutality and unlawful arrests.

Through more than two years of litigation, attorneys for the city maintained that police were responding to a chaotic and unprecedented situation, pointing to some unruly protests in which police vehicles were set on fire and officers pelted with rocks and plastic bottles.

A spokesperson for the NYPD deferred questions to the city’s Law Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

During some of the 2020 protest marches, officers deployed a crowd control tactic known as kettling against peaceful protesters, corralling them in tight spaces and attacking them with batons and pepper spray before making mass arrests.


Adama Sow, one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said their group of marchers were trapped by police without warning. Sow and the other arrestees were placed in zip ties until their hands turned purple, then held in a sweltering correctional bus for several hours.

“It was so disorganized, but so intentional,” Sow said. “They seemed set on traumatizing everyone.”

The city invoked qualified immunity, which protects police officers from lawsuits stemming from lawful work performed in the line of duty, and defended the decision to arrest medics and legal observers as within the rights of the department.

While attorneys for the plaintiffs cited past crackdowns on large demonstrations, including during the 2004 Republican National Convention, as evidence of longstanding “systemic violations” by the NYPD, attorneys for the city said there was no systematic effort to deprive people of their right to protest.


“There is no history — or present or future — of unconstitutional policing,” Georgia Pestana, an attorney for the city, wrote in a memo. “There is no frequent deprivation of constitutional rights.”

The lawsuit named former Mayor Bill de Blasio and retired NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea as well as other police leaders as defendants. Under the settlement agreement, neither the city nor the NYPD is required to admit any wrongdoing.

Protesters who were arrested on certain charges — including trespassing, property destruction, assaulting an officer, arson or weapons possession — will be excluded from the settlement. Those who were seen on video blocking police from making arrests may also be ineligible.

Unlike some other lawsuits related to the 2020 protests, the class action was not meant to force the NYPD to change its practices. There are several other lawsuits aimed at injunctive relief that are ongoing, including one brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James that calls for a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s policing of protests.


Another class action settlement announced earlier this year would award $21,500 to those arrested by police during one demonstration in the Bronx, a payout that could total around $10 million including legal fees.

Separately, more than 600 people have brought individual claims against New York City related to police action during the 2020 protests, according to the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander. Roughly half of them have resulted in settlements and resolutions, costing the city nearly $12 million to date.

Wylie Stecklow, an attorney for the protesters in the class action lawsuit, said the growing cost to taxpayers should serve as a “red flag” for city leaders about the NYPD’s inability to correct its “decades old problem with constitutionally compliant protest policing.”

“While the arc of the moral universe is indeed long, sometimes it needs reform to bend towards justice” he said.

New York City agrees to pay $13 million to 2020 racial injustice protesters in historic class action

New York City has agreed to pay more than $13 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought on behalf of roughly 1,300 people.

torontosun.com

 

[Dixie Cup]

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

View attachment 18778

When has that not been true?

 

[Dixie Cup]

When has that not been true?

Just in the last 5 years or so. Being "offended" was never the HUGE issue it is today. Today, EVERYONE is freakin' offended by something that someone said 5 mins., 10 hours, 2 weeks, 1 year & 100's of years ago. Wasn't in the news like it is today.\, not even close.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Martin Luther King was murdered for saying things that offended people. Lenny Bruce was arrested for saying things that offended people.

 

[pgs]

Martin Luther King was murdered for saying things that offended people. Lenny Bruce was arrested for saying things that offended people.

No he was murdered for upsetting the status quo . As was Kennedy and the continued persecution of Trump . Sad to see from the beacon of freedom .

 

[spaminator]

Florida girl burned by McDonald’s Chicken McNugget awarded $800Gs in damages
Olivia, now 8, calls the scar on her inner thigh her 'nugget' and is fixated on having it removed

Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Jul 21, 2023 • 3 minute read

FORT LAUDERDALE — A South Florida jury awarded $800,000 in damages to a little girl who received second-degree burns when a hot Chicken McNugget fell on her leg as her mother pulled away from the drive-thru of a McDonald’s restaurant.


Lawyers for the family of Olivia Caraballo, who was 4 when she was burned in 2019, were seeking $15 million in damages. Jurors reached their verdict after deliberating for less than two hours on Wednesday, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.


The jury’s verdict form allotted $400,000 in damages for the past four years, and another $400,000 for the future from the McDonald’s USA and its franchise operator, Upchurch Foods. A separate jury decided in May that the company and franchise owner were liable for the injury, which occurred outside a McDonald’s in Tamarac, near Fort Lauderdale.

“I’m actually just happy that they listened to Olivia’s voice and the jury was able to decide a fair judgment,” Olivia’s mother, Philana Holmes, told reporters outside the courtroom. “I’m happy with that. I honestly had no expectations, so this is more than fair for me.”


She testified on Tuesday that Olivia, now 8, calls the scar on her inner thigh her “nugget” and is fixated on having it removed, the newspaper reported.

Lawyers for McDonald’s argued that the child’s discomfort ended when the wound healed, which they said took about three weeks. They contended that the girl’s mother is the one who has the problem with the scar, and told jurors that $156,000 should cover damages, both past and future.

“She’s still going to McDonalds, she still asks to go to McDonald’s, she’s still driving through the drive-thru with her mom, getting chicken nuggets,” defense attorney Jennifer Miller said in her closing argument Wednesday. “She’s not bothered by the injury. This is all the mom.”

Defense attorneys declined to speak after the verdict.


Holmes testified that she had purchased Happy Meals for her son and daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, and was driving away when the nugget fell on the child’s leg. She said that the girl screamed in pain, and when she pulled over in a parking lot, she realized the nugget was lodged between Oliva’s thigh and the seat belt.

The mother testified that at no point did McDonald’s warn her the food might be unusually hot. The company testified they follow food safety rules, which require McNuggets to be hot enough to avoid salmonella poisoning, and that what happens with the food once it leaves the drive-thru window is beyond their control.

While both sides agreed during the trial in May that the nugget caused the burns, the family’s lawyers argued the temperature was above 200 degrees (93 Celsius), while the defense said it was no more than 160 degrees (71 Celsius).


Photos the mother took of the burn and sound clips of the child’s screams were played in court.

The case may stoke memories of the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit of the 1990s, which became an urban legend of sorts about seemingly frivolous lawsuits, even though a jury and judge had found it anything but.

A New Mexico jury awarded Stella Liebeck, 81, $2.7 million in punitive damages after she was scalded in 1992 by hot coffee from McDonald’s that spilled onto her lap, burning her legs, groin and buttocks, as she tried to steady the cup with her legs while prying the lid off to add cream outside a drive-thru.

She suffered third-degree burns and spent more than a week in the hospital.

She had initially asked McDonald’s for $20,000 to cover hospital expenses, but the company went to trial. A judge later reduced the $2.7 million award to $480,000, which he said was appropriate for the “willful, wanton, reckless” and “callous” behavior by McDonald’s.

Florida girl burned by McDonald’s Chicken McNugget awarded $800Gs in damages

Olivia, now 8, calls the scar on her inner thigh her 'nugget' and is fixated on having it removed

torontosun.com

 

[Dixie Cup]

No he was murdered for upsetting the status quo . As was Kennedy and the continued persecution of Trump . Sad to see from the beacon of freedom .

MLK was one person that I admired greatly. I'm sure he's rolling in his grave at what is happening today.

 

[petros]

Here we go again…🤦🏼‍♂️

youtube.com

 

[petros]

Sheriff Threatens Violent Gang Leader 😳

Sheriff Clay Higgins calls out gang leader, Darren Carter. Don't mess with law-enforcement in Louisiana.

youtube.com

 

[spaminator]

word limit

New DNA tests cast doubt on convictions in decades-old Philadelphia murder

Three of the accused have always maintained their innocence, even as they have spent more than half of their lives behind bars.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Authorities probing why police dog was deployed on surrendering man
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Jul 24, 2023 • 2 minute read

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — An investigation has been launched into why an Ohio officer allowed his police dog to attack a truck driver who was surrendering with his hands raised, despite State Highway Patrol troopers urging the officer to hold the dog back.


The lengthy pursuit on July 4 and the ensuing attack were captured on a police body camera. Authorities said the chase began on state highway 35, when officers tried to stop a commercial semi that was missing a mud flap and had failed to stop for an inspection.


State troopers were called in to help with the chase, authorities said. The driver, Jadarrius Rose, 23, of Memphis, Tennessee, who is Black, initially refused to get out of the truck and later defied directives to get on the ground, according to a Ohio State Highway Patrol incident report.

“The suspect failed to stop for marked patrol units with lights and sirens activated,” the report said. He eventually got on his knees and raised his hands in the air.

The body cam video shows an officer with the Circleville Police Department holding back the K9, and a trooper can be heard repeatedly yelling, “Do not release the dog with his hands up!” However, the officer deployed the dog, and it can be seen in the video attacking Rose.


A trooper can be heard yelling repeatedly, “Get the dog off of him!” and Rose appears to be in pain and yelling “Get it off! Please! Please!” before the attack ends. Rose was treated at a hospital for dog bites.

Rose was charged with failure to comply. A phone number or other contact information for Rose could not immediately located. It’s not clear why he refused to stop for the inspector and police. He told The Columbus Dispatch that he couldn’t talk about why he didn’t stop but, when asked about the video, told the newspaper “I’m just glad that it was recorded. What you saw is what, pretty much, happened.”

The name of the Circleville officer has not been released, and officials in that department have not said if he’ll face any disciplinary action. They also declined to comment on the investigation.

Authorities probing why police dog was deployed on surrendering man

An investigation has been launched into why an Ohio officer allowed his police dog to attack a truck driver who was surrendering

torontosun.com

 

[Ron in Regina]

Wow…so the above case in post 1558 relies on the testimony of an unnamed police informant & a guy with an IQ of 69 who I’m assuming was coerced by police. Sounds like a solid case….Not.

An informant also told police she overheard McElwee, Grasty, Johnson and Chappell discussing their involvement in Nickens’s killing, according to the prosecutor’s brief.

In an effort to gain evidence on Grasty, Chester Police Detective Todd Nuttall reached out to the narcotics division to see if they had anything on McElwee, who was mildly intellectually disabled and had an IQ of 69, according to Johnson’s brief. Crazy. Dude is below the borderline threshold of just plain dumb:

Nuttall learned McElwee had twice sold drugs to undercover officers without being charged (???), so he brought McElwee in and interrogated him about Nickens’s killing, according to Johnson’s brief.

For two hours, McElwee denied involvement, but eventually implicated himself and his friends in the slaying. Again, just wow…