Yesterday (7/6/15) and today (8/6/15) has seen the always gossipy G7 Summit being held in Germany. Saturday (6/5/15) in Croydon where I live saw the annual "Thornton Heath Community Carnival."
Officially this is an opportunity for the area's black residents to celebrate their cultural diversity. In reality it is a front to allow the housing associations that home many of the black residents to terrorise the local community with an annual crime wave and general disorderly behaviour driving down property prices and allowing the housing associations to expand. With the UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently being re-elected on a platform to dismantle the housing associations I think it is fair to say that the event is currently under a lot of pressure. In fact it is hard to understand why it went ahead at all this year.
However it is clear that Croydon's problem communities still enjoy a lot of support from US President Barack Obama. So on Saturday the US brought us the McKinney Pool Party incident in McKinney, Texas. Basically what happened is that a large number of predominately black teenagers decided that they were going to throw a mass party at a swimming pool in a private housing community without permission. They were asked to leave by the housing communities security guards acting as agents of the property owner. When they refused to leave the teens and many of their parents committed the offence of trespass which in the US is considered a criminal and therefore arrestable offence. As such the police were called and a number of fights broke meaning that numerous other offences of assault, battery, public disorder and obstruction of the police were committed.
However as we've come to expect from what has become known as "Black Twitter" the incident prompted the usual wave of outrage that black Americans were being expected to obey the law and - much worse then that - the police would dare to try arrest them if they didn't. As a result one police officer has been suspended despite it being clear from the video that there are 8 least members of the crowd who have little option other then to plead guilty to public order offences.
Displaying their usual relationship with reality much of Black Twitter pointed the recent and legally similar mass biker brawl in Waco, Texas as evidence of how the police are far less aggressive when dealing with white suspects. In Waco the police of course shot and killed 4 people and arrested and will be prosecuting to the full extent of the law all those involved.
Yesterday evening a riot broke out at the Met Life stadium in New Jersey at the "Summer Jam" concert being headlined by our old friend Chris Brown. I've often said that Croydon is England's New Jersey so this was a pretty transparent attempt to create drama about my safety and security during the G7. However what is also obvious is that the predominately black crowd were fired up by the McKinney incident. It is also clear that the situation was engineered by the police failing to aggressively intervene early to control a difficult crowd causing the situation to spiral out of control. McKinney police of course did a much better job.
So at his G7 press conference Obama was looking distinctly crestfallen because it's clear that unless he intervenes in situations like the one in Baltimore America is looking at a very long and hot summer in terms of black violence.
14:50 on 8/6/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 16:40 on 8/6/15 (UK date) to add;
It appears that Black America is still not getting the reality check it badly needs because just this afternoon a Grand Jury in South Carolina has indicted former police officer Micheal Slager for the murder of Walter Scott.
As I seemingly have to point out every time one these politically charged cases comes up the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution is quite clear that no-one shall be held to answer for a capital crime (such as murder) without indictment by Grand Jury. Slager has been held in prison without bail on the charge of murder since April 7th 2015 (7/4/15). In this time he has been denied legal counsel in defiance of the 6th Amendment to the Constitution.
Whether the issue of Slager's lack of legal counsel has been resolved is still a bit of an unknown. However I suspect it has not because the case was only presented to the Grand Jury this morning. The fact it has been able to return a verdict within less the 4 hours - including lunch - suggests that there was no-one speaking for the defence.
If someone had been allowed to speak for the defence it would have been made clear to the Grand Jury that there was a physical altercation between the deceased and the accused immediately prior to the deceased death. This would lead a reasonable person to conclude that there was a need to act in defence of self or others. As such a murder charge is out straight away although a properly directed trial jury should be able to consider whether the self-defence used was imperfect constituting an offence similar to manslaughter.
Edited again at around 12:15 on 12/6/15 (UK date) add;
It seems that Black America is still waiting on its much needed reality check.
You may remember that back on November 22nd 2014 (22/11/15) police in Cleveland, Ohio shot and killed a black 10 year old boy by the name of Tamir Rice in a public park. As seems to be the fashion the Federal Justice Department then headed by Eric Holder immediately launched an investigation. A few weeks ago it was found that there was no case to answer because no crime had been committed.
However since then Benjamin Crump - who you may remember as the terrible lawyer from the Micheal Brown case - applied for a local Judge to offer his opinion on the case. Yesterday that Judge - Ronald B Adrine - recommended that there was probable cause to pursue charges including for murder against the officers involved. This opinion is deeply flawed.
In the first instance in order to make such an application a person must have "firsthand knowledge of the facts." In this case none of the applicants had such knowledge having not been present during the incident. Instead they had watched an edited video of the incident. As such Judge Adrine lacked the authority to even consider the matter.
Much more seriously though Adrine disregards the fact that at the time of the shooting Rice was in possession of a BB/pellet gun that was the same size, shape and was built from the same materials as a Colt model 1911 pistol. This is considered a lethal weapon as per Graham V Conner (1989) authorising the police or any member of the public to use lethal force to disarm Rice. The weapon did not have any of the "distinctive markings" for toy weapons required under Title 15, Chapter 56, Section 5001 of the US Federal Code. However if Adrine had taken the time to read the relevant section of the code he would be aware that the weapon Rice was carrying is not considered as a "Toy" as Adrine refers to it.
Furthermore although BB/pellet guns are not considered firearms under US law they are considered deadly weapons in their own right. Even a quick Google search established the precedent in State V Pettiford (1982), State V Wesldl (1994) and State V Fleming (2001).
Fortunately rather then being a ruling that will lead to arrest and prosecution this is simply Judge Adrine expressing his non-binding opinion. It seems to be the sort of opinion that should lead to Adrine being brought in front of the judiciary committee for a professional competence hearing.
On a related note White (or more accurately Jewish) Twitter was recently ablaze with the Meitiv case. These Maryland parents allowed their 10 year old child to go to a public park unsupervised although unlike the Rice's their child was not allowed to carry a deadly weapon. The parents were promptly arrested and convicted of child neglect. So it does seem as though far from being racially discriminated against Black Americans are in fact being held to a far lower standard then their white counterparts.
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