It was just three years ago that the U.S. Justice Department abruptly ended the grand jury investigation of Indiana dairy farmer David Hochstetler, the day before he was due to testify. Under grand jury rules, he wouldnt have been allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would he have been able to cross-examine any witnesses against him. The entire proceeding would have significantly favored the prosecutor (though the requirement that grand juries provide indictments on a “capital or infamous…. crime” is part of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment designed to protect rights by placing the decision in the hands of ordinary citizens).
I have long wondered how it was that objections from an obscure Indiana county sheriff could have caused the mighty U.S. government to back off from a legal process that was likely headed toward the filing of serious criminal charges against Hochstetler in connection with campylobacter illnesses linked to, but never fully connected with, the raw milk producer. The charges were likely the brainchild of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, designed to cast a pall on the fast-growing private market for raw milk.
Finally, clarity has come, oddly enough, in the failure in just the last couple weeks of two grand juries, in Missouri and New York, to indict police officers in connection with the killing of unarmed black men.
How was it that two different local grand juries could fully clear the cops involvednot even indict on some kind of manslaughter charge even when one of the killings was video recorded for all the world to see that the unarmed victim was choked to death?
CBS News had an intriguing assessment of the grand jury system, including an interview with a legal expert from the Cato Institute who said, If prosecutors want an indictment, they will get an indictment. If they dont want one, it wont happen.
Why wouldnt they want indictments in either the Missouri or New York cases? Because the prosecutors didnt want to alienate the police, whom they work with day in and day out, according to the Cato Institute expert. What he was saying is that the police are often witnesses who testify against accused robbers, murderers, and rapists. The cops cooperation is often essential to getting convictions. Few prosecutors are going to do anything so significant as getting police officers indicted on serious criminal charges, and risk alienating all their colleagues, so much so that they might suddenly have amnesia or be unavailable to help put other bad guys away. Maybe more threatening to prosecutors, uncooperative police can wreck the track records of ambitious prosecutors, making re-election or advancement to another elective office difficult.
And that, I realize, is likely why the U.S. Justice Department backed off in going after David Hochstetler three years ago. Its prosecutors not only didnt want to tangle with Rogers, but also didnt want to tangle with other sheriffs who likely would have become alienated if the government was not only steamrollering Hochstetler, but ignoring Rogers .especially if the law enforcement officer was continuing to complain publicly about violations of Hochstetlers rights to supply food privately to eager buyers. Just cut the whole affair off and make it go away was the Justice Departments wise appraisal; as it was, the sheriff, Brad Rogers, received an award from a sheriffs group for Meritorious Valor for standing up to the Justice Department.
I should add that the issue of grand juries is apart from the racial issue around the Fergusion and Staten Island cases. Unfortunately, the two issues get tangled up. White police often have a racial problem with non-whites they are supposed to be protecting. But I dont believe the prosecutors in Ferguson or Staten Island were racially motivated in seeing to it the cops got away with possibly serious crimes. I think the prosecutors were motivated by narrow professional self interest. While such narrow professional self interest may have rescued an Indiana dairy farmer, it doomed prosecution of two highly questionable cops. The legal system can be very unfair.
For those taking AG Eric Holder’s comment seriously = that we need an honest dialogue on race = I strongly recommend you get the FACTS … including sworn testimony from 6 witnesses ( Negroes, mind you, each of whom was there at the scene) who convinced the Grand jurors that the officer had fired in self-defence, after previously being slugged twice in the head, as he sat in the patrol car, and that the “teen” [ Mr Brown, 6 foot 2, 220 pounds ] was rushing at him in a full-on football tackle mode.
What happened in those two instances, is only more tragic outworking of what the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, said, ie. ‘these two races cannot live together in the same country’. And to all the bleeding-heart lib~tards : before wasting precious space on this forum, educate yourself. Read the comments on Jared Taylor’s “American Renaissance” website, for quite a lot more intelligent commentary than you’re going to get from the lame-stream propaganda outfalls and professional race-baiters.
Don’t know why, Gordon, but I figured you might have a problem with some of what I said. The fact is that Michael Brown was unarmed, never pretended to be armed, and was hit by 7 or 8 bullets, not 1 or 2. The officer never had to be cross-examined about his version of what happened. The circumstances of the kid’s death was, at the least, “questionable.” My main point, though, was that the situation was questionable enough that if the prosecutor wanted an indictment on some sort of manslaughter charge, he could have told the grand jury he wanted that, and almost certainly gotten it. The prosecutor didn’t want that, though, and made that clear to the grand jury….so he didn’t get an indictment. That’s how grand juries work.
We can’t do a comparison because the U.S. rate is unknown. The Wall Street Journal just did an in-depth investigation, and found that hundreds of death-by-cop cases are never recorded.
“A Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest data from 105 of the countrys largest police agencies found more than 550 police killings during those years were missing from the national tally or, in a few dozen cases, not attributed to the agency involved. The result: It is nearly impossible to determine how many people are killed by the police each year.”
http://online.wsj.com/articles/hundreds-of-police-killings-are-uncounted-in-federal-statistics-1417577504
I’m afraid that the deeper they go on this situation, the worse it gets. Without video cameras around, the cops have had carte blanche, since their word is always accepted over anyone else’s. The main hope in deterring the cops comes from them having body cameras. Initial results show problems with cops go way down once they have cameras.
What ever happened to right and wrong?
Why is this, you scratch my back and Ill scratch yours philosophy so entrenched in our societies?
Ken
Lets set the scene, you have a 6 ft 4 inch, 290 pound man, strong arming you while you are sitting in your SUV, he attempts to get your weapon and punches you at least twice in the face. The witnesses even stated he was leaning INTO the car. Let me be clear, NO cop is going to try and pull anyone in through their car window, that is just ludicrous. Fists can be a weapon, just look at all those people who have been victims to the “knock out” game, some are dead and some aren’t quite right anymore physically and mentally.
Do you think the cops vision was normal after being struck at lest twice in the face? Probably not. Just to be clear, cops are NOT trained to shoot to wound-that is only in movies and on TV, you pull your weapon, you fire until the perp stops. One shot was to the hand that occurred in the car- guess he shouldn’t have tried taking the cops weapon, should he? Shooting a person, especially such a large person in the arm is not going to stop them. The witnesses stated he was charging/running/moving back towards the cop. They heard the cop say things, they couldn’t say what the cop was saying, there was a pause in firing and Brown kept coming. The witnesses story collaborated with the cops. His death was not questionable. THAT is why there was no indictment.
As for the “choke-hold” The video shown in the mainstream media is not the complete video. He was breaking the law, he was resisting arrest, he was a repeat offender, one of the store keepers wanted him away from the area (many don’t want law breakers around their place of business, it can drive away customers). Did you read the actual complete autopsy- not what minimal garbage the sensation seeking media spews?
In the video, you can see his eyes open and he says something when they lift him onto the stretcher for the ambulance. Imagine that, he was alive. He apparently had a heart attack in transit to the ER. He had health issues, apparently asthma and grossly over weight. Obviously he had cardiac issues too. I wonder if that was contributed to possibly doing drugs at some point in his live? That is a side effect of many street drugs- cardiac issues. How many seconds did you count that the cops arm was at the throat? Less than 10? If his throat was damaged he would not have been able to speak at all, it would have been garbled grunting.
As per his daughters interview, apparently it is ok to commit minor crime, it was not like he did rape or murder….twisted thinking there.
Lesson learned: you break the law, you get arrested, you resist arrest and they take you down and suffer consequences.
FBI-UCR http://www.fbi.gov/ /2013/crime-in-the-u.s. /tables/table-43
” In 2013, 68.9 percent of all individuals arrested were white, 28.3 percent were black, and 2.9 percent were of other races.
Of all juveniles (persons under the age of 18) arrested in 2013, 63.0 percent were white, 34.4 percent were black, and 2.7 percent were of other races.
Of all adults arrested in 2013, 69.6 percent were white, 27.6 percent were black, and 2.9 percent were of other races.
White individuals were arrested more often for violent crimes than individuals of any other race and accounted for 58.4 percent of those arrests.
Of adults arrested for murder, 52.1 percent were black, and 45.5 percent were white.
Black juveniles comprised 53.3 percent of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes. White juveniles accounted for 59.7 percent of all juveniles arrested for property crimes.
Of juveniles arrested for drug abuse violations, 73.0 percent were white.
White juveniles comprised 54.4 percent of juveniles arrested for aggravated assaults.”
The police are not out of control. There are a few bad apples that need to be removed from the job. The majority are good. I would also like someone to tell me how blacks are targeted when over 3 times as many whites were killed and/or arrested more than any other race?
Sylvia, I agree with you that the majority of cops are decent people. I just heard a cop being interviewed on the radio, estimating that only about 5% of his fellow cops are bad apples. The problem is that a few bad apples taint the whole barrel. The challenge is finding and getting rid of those bad apples. Unfortunately, it’s tough to fire cops, just like it’s tough to fire teachers. The Staten Island cop who used the choke hold had been sued a couple times already. Even a number of his fellow cops wanted to see him indicted. But the prosecutor reluctance to piss the police union off took precedence.
but America has known all that since Reconstruction. Rather than tell itself the Truth, America hides out in myths about “equality of outcome”
Marcus Garvey had one of the right answers … but of course he was framed-up, imprisoned, and exiled
Nobel Prize Winner James Watson’s mistake was ; pointing out that ‘people of the same racial make-up, ie. genotype, act similarly in groups’
Cops get away with what we citizens call murder… Simple as that. There is no excuse for use of lethal force the very second that there is “no further an immediate threat” of very serious injury or death. In both cases mentioned above the cops were given a pass by Grande Jury wimps. The cops will continue to kill because we the people tolerate it!! When the juries change their positions, the cops will change their ways. Until then… Stay far away from cops in general. In spite of the good guys, bad guys lurk in law enforcement departments all over America and you do not want to be the one to find the bad apple. When I complained of police abuse as a paramedic, I was dragged through intense abuse and literally forced into retirement. Police are getting what they deserve right now. Body cams are a good start and will shine the light of truth for all to see.
Was the cop right for revving the engine-no. Was my brother right for being an ass-no. As to what happened in the elevator, I can only guess that my brothers temper got the better of him and he got the consequences. Do I feel sorry for him-Nope. Perhaps he learned to curb his temper some.
My sister said that the cops basically ignored his foul mouth at first and tried talking with him. She had said they tried talking to him about the illegal turn he did and they tried to engage him in talking about his “sweet” car. My brother, to this day can still be an ass, though he has mellowed a tad.
Just think, had he just said he was sorry (or whatever) for making the illegal turn and been polite, they would not have asked him to get out of the car. When you act like an ass or a jerk, you tend to be treated as such.
I can only imagine the amount of asses and jerks cops run into daily. I’ve seen it in the medical environment too. And yes, they are reported, complaints filed and there is no doubt that many administrators would like to fire them. Litigation in one form or another makes it so you have to make sure all your T’s are crossed and I’s dotted. I saw it in Texas, and that’s a right to hire/fire state and there was no union. They had so many complaints from staff AND patients, yet it took over 2 years before they fired that nurse. Saw it with a nurses aid too and also before I became a nurse, when I was an EMT/firefighter. You wouldn’t believe how many had the “God” syndrome!
As a ex paramedic you know that if someones throat was damaged from a “chokehold” they sure as hell would NOT be able to say “I can’t breath”. It would have been garbled grunts or high pitch sounds from air trying to escape. Clearly the man on the ground was suffering from neither.
Yup stay away from all the asses of the world, become a hermit. It isn’t illegal to be an ass.
Again …. It is we the people and our failure to indict the bad apples that encourages and reinforces bad behaviors. When society decides that only humans with compassion are allowed to be peace officers, then we will have peace officers. Until then, stay the hell away from cops and if you ever meet one suck up, kiss up and do what ever you need to get some real distance. You have no idea what “call” they just came off of , what motivates them, or what lurks in their personel files. My apologies to all peace officers that are truly compassionate.
Our conscience is described as an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.
Hmmm! Where did that voice come from and why is there such a disconnect at times from it?
The following quotes bears repeating
Biochemist Dr. Duane Gish states The teaching of evolution to young people convinces many of them that they are hardly more than a mechanistic product of a mindless universe, that there is no one to whom they are responsible that they are only responsible to themselves. The changes for the worse which we have seen in society in the past 50 years are the predictable result of indoctrination in evolutionary philosophy.
In his 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address entitled, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”. Evolutionist William B Provine., Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University states,
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”
Any philosophy that caters to our ego, will nurture arrogance and inflame self-centered, malevolent, sadistic behaviors. No philosophy is immune from this, including a supposedly divinely driven one.
It is only through Christs example and teachings that we can truly attain or nurture the humility necessary to overcome our ego driven tendencies.
Ken
Mark, people like you are no better than the media and politicians who lie and/or twist the truth so much to obtain their own agenda. You are right up there with the sharptons et al. He was a walking Code Blue.
‘Garner did not die of asphyxiation. The preliminary autopsy showed NO DAMAGE TO Garners WINDPIPE OR NECK BONES.’ Imagine that.
‘So what was Pantaleo doing? He was applying a submission hold, which is not barred by the NYPD.
It appears that the so-called chokehold was instrumental in triggering Garners pre-existing health problems and causing his death, but Garner was not choked to death, as the media seems to maintain.
According to Garners friends, he had several health issues: diabetes, sleep apnea, and asthma so severe that he had to quit his job as a horticulturist for the citys parks department. He wheezed when he talked and could not walk a block without resting, they said.
‘ In the Garner matter, if the suspect had possessed the health and strength he projected he would not have been seriously harmed, in spite of his unlawful resistance. And he would not have been arrested if he not repeatedly and stubbornly broken the law. We must obey the law. We must not resist arrest. Those are not difficult notions to cognize.He may not have been fully aware of his several physical debilities, Certainly the officers were not qualified to detect his cardiac, respiratory and other problems.
A supervisor and 4 EMTs at the scene did not note any need for special treatment. He died of cardiac arrest; not from a breathing problem. ((Geesh if they didn’t see any need for special treatment…BTW-the supervisor was a female black officer on the scene from beginning to end who did not do anything but stand around in the video))
Use of any other sort of force very probably would only have exacerbated the situation. Then, too, please look very carefully at the video and see if you can find a carotid choke or a respiratory choke being used. It looks more like a takedown headlock to me. A carotid choke would have rendered him unconscious in seconds. A respiratory choke would have made it impossible for him to talk.Few people have applied a lot of chokes in street fights and thus cannot judge such situations because of their ignorance.’
There are other people in the video as well, and another ‘friend’ of Michael’s joins in on the abuse. The email stated that this same video was shown to the Grand Jury (it is NOT a YouTube video–it is an MP4). By the time they were done beating on that old man (they took something away from him), he couldn’t even walk straight, and staggered away, while holding a hand on his back.
I got another email from someone else fairly recently, and it had information on Michael’s mom and stepfather. Very interesting, and I doubt the media showed any of that (I didn’t follow this case as far as in the usual media).
for instance
http://dailykenn.blogspot.ca/2015/01/gentle-giantesses-video-record-beating.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/pasoH+%28DailyKenn.com%29
What does this have to do with milk? Ill keep on saying it : The Campaign for REAL MILK is a flashpoint in that race war : the globalist fascisti versus white folks … our inheritance of milk and honey being stolen from us under color of law
I’m not prejudice by any means, and I don’t care what color you are. You can be pink with purple polka dots and wings, but it doesn’t matter to me. If you don’t want to be treated like you are a savage, then don’t act like one. Gentle Brown Giant my white hiney.
Earlier this week (local to me), someone was shot by cops after he waved a gun at them. They shot at, but did not kill him–it was also in a parking lot in a shopping center. Everything stemmed from a domestic dispute/battery that happened earlier, and state police were looking for him. Every player in this was white.