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    We demanded justice after George Floyd’s death. Donald Trump made things worse, but we fight on | Al Sharpton

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    Yesterday, I led a private memorial service at ​George Floyd’s graveside​, along with his family, in Houston, Texas. Once that was over, we visited the housing project where Floyd and his siblings grew up.Half a decade after Floyd was taken from them, they were keen, as are we, to ensure his life and legacy will not be forgotten – and to remind the world why the fight for police accountability continues.He died in front of the entire world. Everyone saw the phone footage of the incident where a white officer in Minneapolis kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”, and cried out for his mother. His desperate pleas for help were ignored by those sworn to serve and protect the public; but they were heard in every corner of the globe.The movement for police reform gained renewed fire, and people from all walks of life demanded systemic change and the protection of Black lives. Five years later, while the officer convicted of Floyd’s murder is behind bars, the current climate in the US and regressive actions from those in power have set us back and prevented substantive police accountability.Just a few days shy of this sombre fifth anniversary, Donald Trump’s department of justice announced that it would back away from cases to force reforms on police departments – including in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed. This outrageous decision is not a surprise; it is just the latest roadblock in the fight for police reform and justice. It is an insult to the mothers, fathers, children and loved ones of all those killed at the hands of law enforcement. The consent decrees and small incremental changes that were achieved after tireless advocacy, organising, protests and political courage have been dismantled by a department that should be protecting the civil rights of individuals, not eliminating them.This move isn’t just a policy reversal. It’s a moral retreat that sends a chilling message that accountability is optional when it comes to Black and Brown victims. Trump is shamelessly weaponising the justice department against marginalised communities. The decision to dismiss these lawsuits with prejudice solidifies a dangerous political precedent that police departments are above scrutiny. The timing is no coincidence; it is an insult to Floyd’s family and the loved ones of victims such as Sandra Bland, Tyre Nichols, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and countless others whose names we may never even know.View image in fullscreenI remember delivering the eulogies for Floyd (one in Minneapolis and one in his native Houston) like it was yesterday. There was so much frustration, anger, disgust and exhaustion permeating throughout the US and, in turn, in many nations across the world. In fact, his death sparked global protests against racial injustice, particularly at the hands of law enforcement. Many young people mobilised and hit the streets for the first time, and more than 200,000 folks joined us in the nation’s capital for a march on Washington in August 2020 to call attention to ongoing police injustice. Despite a pandemic, hundreds of thousands from all races, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds protested alongside my organisation, National Action Network (NAN), as we led this march through the streets of Washington.Much has changed. In the wake of Floyd’s killing, and amid calls to respect Black lives, many corporations made commitments to continue diversifying and investing in our communities. Now we are watching many of those same companies turn their backs on their own diversity, equity and inclusion policies, capitulating to a rightwing government. The 2021 conviction of Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed Floyd, represented one of the first major cases in which someone in law enforcement was held accountable for their actions. But now some conservative groups and individuals are pushing for Chauvin to receive a pardon from the president. Such action would be the height of throwing salt into an already achingly deep wound. It should not be entertained for a moment.Some (particularly those in power at the moment) would like to distort reality and act as though police brutality and misconduct aren’t current problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to Mapping Police Violence, police in the US have killed 456 people so far this year (as of 23 May). In fact, there has only been a single day when police haven’t killed a person in 2025. And as it highlights, Black people are 2.8 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement than their white counterparts. This is why we still march, this is why we still put pressure on elected officials and corporations.For several months, NAN and I have been leading “buy-cotts” to support businesses such as Costco who remain firm in their DEI commitments. I have had meetings with PepsiCo’s chair and the CEO of PepsiCo North America, as well as Target’s CEO. Recently, I joined fellow leaders of national civil rights organisations for a meeting with top Google executives. And on 28 August, NAN will lead a march on Wall Street to defend DEI, remind corporations of their own promises in the wake of Floyd’s death, and reiterate that we will only spend our dollars where we are respected.When I stood in front of mourners five years ago at Floyd’s funeral, I said that his story has been the story of Black people, because the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is because society kept its knee on our neck. Well, just as we loudly proclaimed around the world then, we say it again, remembering George Floyd, remembering all the victims: get your knee off our necks. Do it now.

    Rev Al Sharpton is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and radio talkshow host More

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      Trump Administration Pulls Back From Local Police Oversight Across U.S.

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      The Justice Department said that it would abandon efforts to overhaul local policing in Minneapolis and other cities with histories of civil rights violations.The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to scrap proposed agreements for federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., as part of a broader abandonment of efforts by previous administrations to overhaul local law enforcement across the United States.Justice Department officials said they planned to drop cases filed after incidents of police violence against Black people in Minneapolis and Louisville, and to close investigations into departments in Memphis; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Trenton, N.J.; and Mount Vernon, N.Y., as well as a case against the Louisiana State Police.In those cities and states, Justice Department officials said, they were retracting Biden-era findings that police departments had violated the constitutional rights of residents and were declaring those findings to be misguided.The announcement came four days before the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. That act of violence, caught on video, inspired national outrage and worldwide protests against police violence targeting Black Americans.It also resulted in a withering federal report that found that the Minneapolis Police Department had routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people and had used deadly force without justification. After nearly two years of negotiations, the Justice Department and the city submitted an agreement to the court in January calling for federal oversight of the Police Department’s efforts to address the issues.That arrangement, known as a consent decree, was similar to court-approved agreements between the federal government and at least 13 other cities whose police forces have been accused of widespread civil rights abuses, including Los Angeles, Newark and Ferguson, Mo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      D.C.’s Planned Removal of Black Lives Matter Mural Reflects Mayor’s Delicate Position

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      Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision comes amid calls by the president and other Republicans for more federal control of the city.On Wednesday morning in downtown Washington, D.C., Keyonna Jones stood on her artwork and remembered the time when she and six other artists were summoned by the mayor’s office to paint a mural in the middle of the night.“BLACK LIVES MATTER,” the mural read in bright yellow letters on a street running two city blocks, blaring the message at the White House sitting just across Lafayette Square. In June 2020, when Ms. Jones helped paint the mural, demonstrations were breaking out in cities nationwide in protest of George Floyd’s murder. The creation of Black Lives Matter Plaza was a statement of defiance from D.C.’s mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, who had clashed with President Trump, then in his first term, over the presence of federal troops in the streets of her city.But on Tuesday evening, the mayor announced the mural was going away.Ms. Jones said the news upset her. But, she added of the mayor in an interview, “I get where she is coming from.”The city of Washington is in an extraordinarily vulnerable place these days. Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would end D.C.’s already limited power to govern itself, stripping residents of the ability to elect a mayor and city council. Mr. Trump himself has said that he supports a federal takeover of Washington, insisting to reporters that the federal government would “run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely, flawlessly beautiful.” In recent days, the administration has been considering executive orders in pursuit of his vision for the city.Potential laws and orders aside, the administration has already fired thousands of federal workers, leaving residents throughout the city without livelihoods and, according to the city’s official estimate, potentially costing Washington around $1 billion in lost revenue over the next three years.Given all this, Ms. Bowser, a Democrat, described her decision about Black Lives Matter Plaza as a pragmatic calculation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Suggests Black Lives Matter Plaza Will Be Painted Over

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      The announcement came just a day after a Republican congressman introduced legislation threatening to withhold millions in federal funds from the city unless the street mural was removed.The mayor of Washington, D.C., suggested on Tuesday night that the giant Black Lives Matter mural that was painted in the summer of 2020 on a street within view of the White House would be painted over.The announcement from the mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, about “the evolution of Black Lives Matter Plaza” came just a day after Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia, introduced legislation threatening to withhold millions in federal funds from the city unless the giant yellow words were removed from the street and the plaza renamed.In a post on X, the mayor said that the plaza would instead be part of a citywide project in which students and artists would create new murals to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.The Black Lives Matter mural “inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference,” wrote Ms. Bowser, a Democrat. “The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern.”The mural was painted on the morning of June 5, 2020, just days after federal authorities used chemical spray and smoke grenades to clear protesters so that President Trump could walk to a historic church near the White House and pose for photographs holding a Bible.At the time, cities across the country were convulsing with demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd. Ms. Bowser and Mr. Trump quarreled throughout that week, with the Washington mayor meeting with protesters and urging the president to pull federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops out of the city.Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, the city’s vulnerability has become glaringly clear. Republican lawmakers have introduced numerous bills aimed at the city, including one that would eliminate home rule entirely — a power to elect local government that city residents have had for more than 50 years.Washington’s self-government is limited as it is, with all local legislation subject to congressional oversight and much of the criminal justice system, including judges and prosecutors, in the hands of the federal government. But Mr. Trump has championed a complete federal takeover of the city.He has already gotten involved in city matters, including in one case that sparked protests and outrage in the fall of 2020. Within days of taking office, Mr. Trump pardoned two police officers who had been convicted of conspiracy and obstructing justice in the death of a young Black man who died after a police chase. More

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      in Elections

      Why Botham Jean’s Family Won’t Get $100 Million Awarded by Jury

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      Cities have paid out billions of dollars in police misconduct cases, but depending on the case, families may not receive any money at all. A recent $100 million penalty for a police shooting case in Dallas may never lead to a payout.The family of George Floyd received $27 million after he was killed by police officers in Minneapolis. The family of Breonna Taylor got $12 million. Richard Cox, who was paralyzed after a ride in a police van in New Haven, Conn., got $46 million.But the family of Botham Shem Jean, who was killed by an off-duty officer, Amber R. Guyger, as he watched television in his apartment in Dallas in 2018, may never see a penny.That is not because the courts did not value his life. On Tuesday, a jury awarded his family almost $100 million. The difference lies, rather, in who was held responsible for his death.How do police violence cases usually work?In many high-profile cases of police violence, the city or county where the misconduct occurred is responsible for any payout connected to wrongful death or injury. Those taxpayer-funded payouts have amounted to billions of dollars: In 2023, New York City paid nearly $115 million in police misconduct settlements, according to an analysis by the Legal Aid Society.Awards to victims or their families can vary greatly, depending on factors such as the projected earnings over a victim’s lifetime, the sympathies of juries in a given jurisdiction and the amount of publicity generated by the case. Some families win money in civil rights claims even when the officers involved are not criminally charged or disciplined.But in order to have a successful case, plaintiffs must surmount at least two significant legal obstacles. First, officers are granted qualified immunity from lawsuits if victims cannot show that the officers have violated their “clearly established” rights. Second, municipalities can be held responsible only if the plaintiff’s rights were violated because of a negligent policy or practice — for example, if the police department had ignored previous bad behavior on the part of an officer or had failed to properly train its officers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      If Trump wins the election, US protest movements could face serious crackdowns

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      This is the first part of the standfirst This is the second part of the standfirst Headline what’s at stake?
      The Knox county commission was questioning a property developer one evening in April three years ago when protesters quietly filed in to their auditorium and raised their fists in the air.A week earlier, police had shot and killed 17-year-old Anthony Thompson Jr in a bathroom at his high school after they found him with a gun. Protests erupted in Knoxville, the county seat and largest city in eastern Tennessee, and one the loudest voices speaking out was Constance Every, who had organized demonstrations in the city during the national outrage that followed George Floyd’s death less than a year earlier. Now, she was in the county commission chamber with about two dozen others, intending to press them for the release of police body-camera footage that captured Thompson’s death.As the protesters lined up near the meeting room’s back wall, Every, who was wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt, retrieved from her backpack a white T-shirt Thompson’s aunt gave her, which read: “Who do you call when the murderer wears a badge?” Then, she pulled out an electronic bullhorn, and sounded the siren.“Knox county, county commission, your meeting is over,” Every said through the bullhorn, as the protesters clustered around her. “’Cause what we’re not going to tolerate is that we got a kid who was murdered at Knox county schools, and y’all going to carry on like these children don’t deserve to have their rights and other factors. It is not OK, what you all are doing, whatsoever.”View image in fullscreenWithin seconds of the siren going off, sheriff’s deputies, both in uniform and in plainclothes, converged on Every, grabbing her and some of her group, and marching them outside. While many kept silent as they left, Every did not. “I have not broke any laws! I am exercising my right to peacefully assemble and use my freedom of speech, you fucking murderers!” she shouted.The disruption lasted just over 70 seconds. But for Every and the six others arrested in the commission chambers, it marked the beginning of a three-year legal saga, after the county prosecutor charged them with disrupting a lawful meeting – a misdemeanor for which Tennessee’s Republican leaders had just months earlier doubled the punishment.Since Floyd’s death in May 2020, Republican-led states have enacted laws expanding the definition of rioting to encompass protesters who stayed peaceful when others did not, protecting drivers who run over demonstrators that block roads and enhancing penalties against protesters who target oil and gas infrastructure and deface monuments. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), which tracks the legislation, has found that hundreds of proposals have been made by state and federal lawmakers nationwide, and more than two dozen signed into law.The push comes as the GOP’s standard bearer, Donald Trump, campaigns for the presidency on a platform that includes suppressing protests. He has vowed to deploy the national guard “where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order”, while simultaneously promising pardons for people convicted over the January 6 insurrection. As president, Trump reportedly encouraged the military to shoot protesters, and, this year, allies such as the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, have said the national guard should be used against college students demonstrating over Israel’s invasion of Gaza.If he returned to the White House, Trump could direct a militarized response to protests and pressure congressional Republicans to pass legislation that would impose nationwide penalties like those already in effect in Tennessee.Tennessee is a thoroughly red state where the GOP holds a supermajority in its general assembly. Last year lawmakers temporarily expelled two Black Democratic representatives who staged a noisy protest calling for gun control legislation in the state house chamber. In August 2020, Republicans passed a bill that increased penalties for blocking a street or sidewalk and created a new felony offense for protest encampments on state property, in addition to making disrupting a meeting a more severe category of misdemeanor.The Republican governor, Bill Lee, justified the legislation as necessary to prevent “lawlessness”, and in the years since, he has signed two more anti-protest bills, one of which made blocking roads a felony, and the other of which expanded the definition of aggravated rioting and created a mandatory minimum sentence for people convicted.View image in fullscreen“These laws that we are seeing in Tennessee are really representative of the kinds of tactics that we’re seeing nationwide in response to particular protest movements,” said Nick Robinson, a senior legal advisor at ICNL’s US program.To Amelia Parker, a Black Lives Matter activist who now serves on the Knoxville city council, it is not surprising that Every wound up being perhaps the first person to run afoul of such laws.“She’s one that authorities would want to make an example out of. They definitely would not want another Constance,” Parker said.An African American army veteran who is disabled with post-traumatic stress disorder from two tours in Afghanistan, Every became politically active after struggling to find services during a period of homelessness in Knoxville, the home town she returned to after leaving the military.“I’m not a sugar-coater, I’m not a person that’s going to come in and say, ‘with all due respect’. I’m not that,” Every said in an interview from her apartment, where a framed photograph of her speaking to protesters in a police station parking lot in the days after Floyd’s death hangs over the couch.“I’m going to come in and tell you straight to your face the failures, the problems, and more importantly, you holding this role as a political, elected body or member, that you should hold a lot of accountability for what’s happening.”Her leadership of the 2020 protests, which in Knoxville were generally peaceful, put her on the radar of local authorities, she believes. Tensions in the city escalated again following Thompson’s shooting on 12 April of the following year at Austin-East, a predominantly Black high school where, in the few months since the new year, four students had already died in shootings in its neighborhood.Officers went to the school that afternoon to find Thompson after his ex-girlfriend reported him for assaulting her earlier in the day and warned he was known to carry a gun, an investigation by Knoxville’s police department would find. In a lawsuit filed against the city and the four officers involved in his death, attorneys for Thompson’s mother and his best friend would write that he carried a pistol because his ex-girlfriend’s family had threatened him, and because the streets around the school were unsafe.The fours officers looking for Thompson found him in a bathroom stall with a gun. A struggle ensued, and after Thompson’s pistol went off and hit a garbage can, one of the officers fired twice, fatally wounding the teenager and injuring a school resource officer.Days later, the Knox county district attorney general, Charme Allen, said she would not prosecute the officers who encountered Thompson. The lawsuit filed by his mother and friend was dismissed by a federal judge, who found the officers had qualified immunity – the controversial doctrine that limits law enforcement officials’ liability for some lawsuits. Their attorney has appealed the decision.Every and other activists in Knoxville remember an atmosphere of distrust in the days after Thompson’s death, which was worsened by authorities’ decision to initially describe him as an “active shooter” and lead the public to believe the teenager was responsible for wounding the school resource officer, when he was in fact shot by one of their colleagues. They decided to hold protests to demand more details of what really happened, including the release of footage from the cameras the police were wearing on their uniforms.“We knew we had to double down and, as activists, that we had to really rally around each other and dig in on having fortitude to ensure we put a spotlight to this,” said Calvin Skinner, a Baptist minister who has collaborated on social justice work with Every, and was arrested at the county commission meeting.Days after Thompson’s death, Every, Skinner and others disrupted a school board meeting without issue. But when they went to the county commission meeting a week after the teen’s fatal wounding, they knew something was off. Dozens of sheriff’s deputies were waiting for them, and signs had been posted warning of the state’s law.In the past, disruptions had not been uncommon at the Knox county commission. Like many local governments, the body had just weathered a tense period as they dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic, during which protesters opposed to mask mandates would sometimes start shouting at them during meetings, recalled the former county commissioner Dasha Lundy. The same thing would happen when people grew upset over zoning decisions, she said, but, to her knowledge, nobody from either group was arrested.“I keep going back to the people who were not supportive of [mask mandates] and how they were interrupting our meetings, but they just so happened to be white folks,” said Lundy, who was the sole Black commissioner during her four years in office.“They just tell them, be quiet, do this, whatever. They interrupted the meeting too, but we don’t want to talk about that.”After Every began talking, the commission’s then chair, Larsen Jay, a Republican, gaveled the meeting into a 10-minute recess. When it resumed, he called the disruption “clearly a staged set-up for one purpose: to draw attention, to draw in police reaction, and to make this commission put in a very bad position”. He then added that anyone who wanted to speak could sign up for their public forum.The seven protesters who were removed from the commission chambers were jailed for a few hours, then released and charged with disrupting a meeting. That was one of the offenses that the Tennessee general assembly had raised penalties for in their bill passed after Floyd’s death, upgrading it from a class B misdemeanor to class A, the most serious category that carries a maximum jail sentence of just under 12 months.View image in fullscreenThough the protesters were a multiracial group, Every believes their cause made them a target. “If we were talking about anything else than Black Lives Matter, [there] probably would have been a whole different approach,” she said.A spokeswoman for the Knox county sheriff, Tom Spangler, said he was unavailable to comment. A spokesman for Allen, the district attorney general, said she declined to comment, because the case was still “pending”.The arrest came as a surprise to Mary Winter, a white Ihop manager who had traveled from a Tennessee city nearly two hours west to attend the protest. She didn’t think she was in danger of breaking the law and had walked into the chamber holding Every’s phone, which was streaming the protest on Facebook. That video, as well as another recorded by the Knoxville News Sentinel, shows that Winter stayed silent until she was detained, but in an affidavit, the deputy who arrested her accused her of disrupting the meeting by “yelling and encouraging others to do the same”.“This sworn statement of this officer in my arrest affidavit, that was the basis for my being arrested. And it flat-out did not happen,” Winter said.Shortly before the trial started on 8 April, Winter opted to plead guilty in exchange for six months of unsupervised probation and paying court costs. She was already on probation for felony attempted murder after shooting her husband, with whom she said she was in an abusive relationship, and feared a conviction that would send her to jail. Two other protesters, Carrie Hopper and Kevin Andrews, also took plea deals.At the trial, attorneys for Every, Skinner and two co-defendants, Gavin Guinn and Aaron Valentine, attempted to convince the jury that prosecutors had failed to prove that they had “substantially” disrupted the meeting, as the statute demanded. Every testified that they never intended to halt the commission’s meeting, because that would defeat the purpose – rather, they wanted the lawmakers to use their power over the district attorney general’s budget to have the body-camera footage released. The video was made public two days after the protesters’ arrest.View image in fullscreenThe trial also answered the question of how the sheriff’s department was aware of Every’s plans: they had been monitoring her Facebook account.“We’ll check various activist groups, activist individuals, individuals who somebody calls to us about and says they have concerns. And one of those individuals was Ms Every,” testified John Sharp, a sergeant in the Knox county sheriff’s office’s narcotics division, one of the plainclothes officers that removed Skinner from the commission chambers.Both sides questioned Jay about why the mask mandate protesters were not arrested when they were disruptive. The commission chair replied: “I’m not aware that they got arrested” but “several of them were escorted out of the room after being disruptive. I don’t know what the result of their actions were afterwards.”“And you say [these two parties] disrupted your meeting in similar ways?” asked Mike Whalen, Skinner’s attorney.“Yes, basically shouting out and disrupting it from an auditory perspective,” the commissioner replied.The prosecution, led by the deputy district attorney, Sean McDermott, put Every’s use of the bullhorn, and the protesters gathering around her, at the center of their case.“Did any of the mask people pull a siren and announce that your meeting was over?” McDermott asked Jay. “No,” he replied.In his closing argument, McDermott said: “The group was acting as one. They were protecting the one with the bullhorn, surrounding her, making it more difficult, slowing law enforcement down, stopping the meeting.”After about six hours of deliberations, the jury found Every guilty, but acquitted the three other defendants. She was sentenced to nearly a year of probation. Her attorney, Andrew Beamer, has appealed the verdict.Even with the heightened penalties, it was unlikely that Every would have been sentenced to jail, Beamer said. But he believes the new law serves as a “shot across the bow of everybody, that they weren’t going to let you protest in this way.“I think that the state saying, ‘hey, we care about these protest laws, let’s charge people.’ I don’t think that was lost on the county here.” More

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      Sheriff Resigns After Backlash Over Sonya Massey’s Shooting Death

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      Jack Campbell, the sheriff of Sangamon County, was criticized for hiring the deputy, who has now been charged with murdering Sonya Massey in her home last month.Jack Campbell, the Illinois sheriff whose deputy was charged with murder after fatally shooting a Black woman in her home last month, said Friday that he would leave his position by the end of the month amid calls from the public and the governor that he do so.The sheriff said in a statement obtained by WAND, a local television news station, that the “current political climate” made it impossible for him to continue in his role leading the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office and that he would retire no later than Aug. 31.Sheriff Campbell had previously said he would not resign as he faced criticism for having hired Sean Grayson, the white deputy who shot Sonya Massey, 36, despite knowing that Mr. Grayson, 30, had two convictions for driving under the influence on his record, including one that had led to Mr. Grayson’s premature discharge from the Army in February 2016.Mr. Grayson fatally shot Ms. Massey at her home in Springfield, Ill., on July 6 after she had called the emergency services because she believed an intruder was in her home.The day before, Ms. Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, had called 911 to alert the authorities that her daughter had been having a mental breakdown and was in a vulnerable state.“I don’t want you guys to hurt her, please,” she told a dispatcher on the morning of July 5.Sheriff Campbell, who was elected in 2018, fired Mr. Grayson on July 17 after an investigation into the deputy’s shooting of Ms. Massey by the state police resulted in a murder charge. On July 22, his department released footage of the shooting from Mr. Grayson’s body-worn camera.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutor Drops Murder Charges Against Minnesota Trooper Amid Pushback

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      The prosecution of Ryan Londregan, a white Minnesota state trooper who fatally shot a Black motorist last year, sparked rare bipartisan outrage. The top prosecutor in Minneapolis has dropped murder charges against a state trooper who fatally shot a motorist last year after a traffic stop, her office said on Sunday, a stunning turnaround in a case that ignited a political firestorm.The trooper, Ryan Londregan, had been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Ricky Cobb II. But the prosecutor, Mary Moriarty, a longtime public defender who was elected Hennepin County attorney in 2022, said she concluded that the evidence was too weak to take to trial.For months, Ms. Moriarty defended the murder charges amid criticism from both Democratic and Republican officials, as well as law enforcement officials. In a statement on Sunday, she said that the announcement dismissing the charges was “one of the most difficult I’ve made in my career.”The pushback over the charges reflected a shifting view on policing in the state four years after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national outcry over racism and abuses by law enforcement. Mr. Cobb, 33, was Black; Trooper Londregan, 27, is white. Ms. Moriarty took office promising sweeping changes in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s murder, including stronger efforts to hold officers accountable for misconduct. Civil rights activists had hailed her decision to charge Trooper Londregan as courageous. Gov. Tim Walz, a fellow Democrat, had voiced his unease and made clear that he was considering using his legal authority to remove the case from her purview. In recent months, six of the state’s eight members of Congress issued statements criticizing the prosecution. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Texas’s pardon of a man who killed a Black Lives Matter protester is chilling | Tayo Bero

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      This month, the Texas state parole board unanimously recommended the pardon and release of convicted killer and former US army sergeant Daniel Perry, along with the restoration of his firearm rights. Perry had been working as an Uber driver in July 2020 when he shot and killed Garrett Foster, a white man who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with his Black fiancee. Perry was later indicted for murder, tried, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison by an Austin jury.Almost a year from the date of his sentencing, Perry’s pardon was granted by Texas governor Greg Abbott, and he now walks free. As terrifying as the initial incident was, this pardon sends a chilling message: that politically motivated killing is OK, and that politicians are more focused on pandering to political pressure than protecting people’s lives.During Perry’s trial, it emerged that in the weeks before he killed Foster, he had shared white-supremacist memes and talked about how he “might have to kill a few people” who were demonstrating outside his house in 2020. He also compared the Black Lives Matter movement to “a zoo full of monkeys that are freaking out flinging their shit”. And days into nationwide protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Perry sent a text message saying: “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”Perry described shooting Foster as an act of self-defense. Yet according to trial testimony about the day Foster died, Perry had seen the predominantly Black group of protesters gathered across the street from him, ran a red light and drove his car right into the middle of the protest. When Foster – who was legally carrying a firearm but had not, according to some eyewitnesses, threatened Perry – approached Perry’s car, he shot him dead and sped away.In rehashing this horrendous incident, the question on my mind is: how do you justify “pardoning” a person like this? Condemning Perry’s release isn’t about believing in carcerality or wanting to keep people in prisons, mind you; it’s about how we get to this point as a society, whom we grant permission to kill, and how we treat the people involved in a tragedy like this in its aftermath.Abbott – who rarely issues pardons, and has generally only pardoned low-level, nonviolent offenders – had faced pressure from conservative media figures to grant Perry one. Rightwing pundits like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and even Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi squeezed him publicly about Perry’s conviction. It doesn’t seem like Abbott needed much convincing, though, seeing as he directed the parole board to review Perry’s case just one day after he was convicted.There’s also the question of how we got here. Foster’s death and his killer’s subsequent pardon are the direct result of a government that’s more beholden to wealthy gun lobbyists than concerned with commonsense legislation that literally saves lives. Foster’s death was, in part, the result of a tragic meeting of Texas’s notoriously loose stand-your-ground self-defense laws, which Perry’s supporters claim he was upholding when he shot Foster, and the state’s “open carry” laws, which Foster was legally exercising when he had his rifle slung over his shoulder during the protest.Alan Bean, the executive director of the Texas-based civil rights advocacy group Friends of Justice, summed up the implications of Perry’s case succinctly.“If one guy with a gun feels threatened by another guy with a gun, murder is permissible. If both men felt threatened, the resulting tragedy would technically be ruled a no-fault double-homicide,” he wrote after news of the pardon went public.Even Texas police aren’t blind to the ways that open-carry laws are exceptionally dangerous and nonsensical. “We were completely opposed to ‘license to carry’ because anytime there’s more guns, there’s a problem,” Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston police officers’ union, said back in 2021.If there was any doubt that Abbott doesn’t care how problematic these laws are, even after what happened to Foster, consider that he used his pardon announcement to reaffirm that “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney”.These are scary words to hear from your elected official after a tragedy that could have been avoided with better gun laws. Abbott continues to signal to gun-toting rightwingers that they can go around murdering people they don’t agree with, and that they will have the full force of the law to back them up.Foster’s mother, Sheila, spoke to the New York Times after the pardon, and her words are haunting in their truth. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said over the phone. “It seems like this is some kind of a political circus and it’s costing me my life.”
      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More