Thursday, April 15, 2021

REVOLUTION IN AMERICA - Protesters Build Embattlements, Carry Improved Shields During Seige of Minnesota Police HQ

 

Protesters Build Embattlements, Carry Improved Shields During Seige of Minnesota Police HQ

BLM protesters erect shields to protect from police projectiles (Twitter Video Screenshot/Nic Rowan/Washington Examiner)
Twitter Video Screenshot/Nic Rowan/Washington Examiner
BOB PRICE
1,864
3:45

Protesters in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, began placing embattlements on the streets outside the police headquarters building as the city’s curfew approached. They also carried improved shielding to allow protesters to hide from police projectiles while they throw objects at the police.

Washington Examiner reporter Nic Rowan tweeted a video showing protesters erecting “embattlements” on the street to provide cover for protesters attacking police.

A video tweeted by Daily Caller journalist Richie McGinnis shows the defensive tactics in operation as police fire crowd-control munitions.

As the curfew hour approached, police declared the demonstration to be an unlawful assembly.

Following the unlawful assembly, announcement police began deploying gas in an attempt to move the crowd back from the fencing.

Another group began a F**K the Police dance party away from the front lines.

The situation began to escalate as protesters began launching fireworks and throwing projectiles at police officers. The police responded by throwing flashbangs into the crowd, Fox News national correspondent Lauren Blanchard tweeted.

Hundreds of people gathered late Wednesday afternoon outside the Brooklyn Center police headquarters. National Guardsmen and State police moved in to protect the building during the fourth night of protest following the shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by police on Sunday.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions arrested former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kimberly Potter on charges of Manslaughter II. The former officer was processed and released after she posted a $100,000 bond. If convicted on the charge, she could face anywhere from probation to 10 years in state prison.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.


Rioters in Portland Burn Police Union Building After Shooting of Daunte Wright in Minnesota

Antifa sets fire to Portland Police Association headquarters on April 13. (Twitter Video Screenshot/Sergio Olmos)
Twitter Video Screenshot/Sergio Olmos
BOB PRICE
303
5:16

Antifa rioters in Portland, Oregon, set fire to the police union building during a pre-announced “direct action.” Despite the advance notice and the history of attacks on the facility, Portland Police Bureau officers were unable to stop the behavior.

Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officials pleaded in advance with Antifa regarding a pre-announced direct action plan to attack the area surrounding the Portland Police Association office in the Kenton neighborhood. The PPB statement reads:

called “direct action” event this evening at Kenton Park (with a 9 p.m. march). Such events have historically included wanton destruction of public and private property, violence and the active threat of harm by thrown or propelled objects, fire and impact weapons. Similarly advertised events promoted and then engaged in arson and riots.

…

The event advertised tonight may take place in or near the Kenton neighborhood. In the past, violent crowds have targeted the Portland Police Association office and employees with arson and other violent acts in that neighborhood. Violent crowds have also targeted North Precinct, including attempts to burn it down.

At about 10 p.m., protesters arrived and nearly immediately started a fire near the rear of the police union building.

A few minutes later, police report people “using accelerants on a door” to set fire to the police union headquarters.

The rioters painted the name Daunte Wright on the building and then set the doorway on fire, a video tweeted by independent journalist Sergio Olmos shows. A Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer shot and killed Wright as he attempted to resist arrest and flee during a traffic stop on Sunday. Three nights of rioting and looting ensued.

A neighbor attempted to put out the fire with a garden hose. Lack of water pressure and intense heat from the flames prevented the neighbor’s attempt at firefighting from being successful.

Photos tweeted by PPB officials show the intensity of the fire and the damage caused. The police tweet followed the formal declaration of a riot.

PPB officials estimated that about 200 people participated in the pre-announced direct action. Despite the advance notice, police seemed unwilling, or unable to stop the rioters from setting fire to the police association building. Police officer made only a single arrest — Alma Raven-Guido. Officers found a crowbar, spray paint cans, and a heavy marker in her possession.

Officials report the 19-year-old Raven-Guido is facing charges of Arson II.

KATU reporter Dan McCarthy tweeted photos of the damage and a mugshot reported to be of the alleged arsonist.

A few nights earlier, other Antifa rioters set fire to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Breitbart reported. The incident came as ICE officers were inside the building.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

Court Vindicates Black Officer Fired for Stopping Colleague's Chokehold

Jonah E. Bromwich
·5 min read

It was a cold November day in Buffalo, New York, when Officer Cariol Horne responded to a call for a colleague in need of help. What she encountered was a white officer who appeared to be “in a rage” punching a handcuffed Black man in the face repeatedly as other officers stood by.

Horne, who is Black, heard the handcuffed man say he could not breathe and saw the white officer put him in a chokehold. At that point, court documents show, she forcibly removed the white officer and began to trade blows with him.

In the altercation’s aftermath, Horne was reassigned, hit with departmental charges and, eventually, fired just one year short of the 20 on the force she needed to collect her full pension. She tried, and failed, more than once to have the decision reversed as unfair.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

On Tuesday, in an outcome explicitly informed by the police killing of George Floyd, a state court judge vacated an earlier ruling that affirmed her firing, essentially rewriting the end of her police career, and granting her the back pay and benefits she had previously been denied.

“The legal system can at the very least be a mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” the judge, Justice Dennis E. Ward, wrote.

His ruling also invoked the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner, a Black man from Staten Island whose dying words — “I can’t breathe” — have become a national rallying cry against police brutality.

“The time is always right to do right,” added Ward, of the state Supreme Court in Erie County, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

In a statement, Horne, 53, celebrated the decision.

“My vindication comes at a 15-year cost, but what has been gained could not be measured,” she said. “I never wanted another police officer to go through what I had gone through for doing the right thing.”

A lawyer for the white officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, said the city had “always supported any additional judicial review available to Officer Horne and respects the court’s decision.”

The 2006 encounter that led to Horne’s firing began as a dispute between a woman and a former boyfriend whom she had accused of stealing her Social Security check. When officers tried to arrest the former boyfriend, the situation turned violent.

Horne said she saw Kwiatkowski put the man in a chokehold. Kwiatkowski said he had grabbed him around the neck and shoulders in “a bear hug headlock from behind,” according to court documents. In Kwiatkowski’s telling, Horne struck him in the face, pulled him backward by his collar and jumped on him.

An internal investigation cleared Kwiatkowski of all charges; Horne was offered a four-day suspension, which she turned down. After hearings in 2007 and 2008, the Police Department found that her use of physical force against a fellow officer had not been justified.

She was fired in May 2008. Kwiatkowski was promoted to lieutenant the same year.

“Her conduct should have been encouraged, and instead she was fired,” W. Neil Eggleston, a lawyer for Horne, said in an interview.

The dispute between Horne and Kwiatkowski did not end when she left the Police Department. He sued her for defamation and won a $65,000 judgment against her.

Kwiatkowski’s own police career ended under a cloud. He retired in 2011 while facing an internal affairs investigation and was indicted the next year on federal civil rights charges stemming from the arrest of four Black teenagers. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.

After she was fired, Horne worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver, and sometimes lived in her car, The Buffalo News reported. The death of Floyd in Minneapolis, where former Officer Derek Chauvin is now on trial for murder in the killing, brought new attention to her case and the circumstances surrounding it. (Three other officers who were present when Floyd died were also charged in the killing.)

She filed a lawsuit seeking to vacate the firing, citing the case involving Floyd. Shortly before that, she and others in Buffalo had begun to press members of the city’s legislature, the Common Council, to pass a so-called duty-to-intervene law requiring officers to step in when one of their own used excessive force.

The Buffalo Police Department had adopted such a rule in 2019, and last fall the council approved what it called “Cariol’s law” by a vote of 8-1.

Darius G. Pridgen, the council president, said a confluence of factors — including Horne’s advocacy from firsthand experience and the increased scrutiny on police misconduct in the wake of Floyd’s death — had created an environment for action.

“During the protests we were trying to reach for ways to hold bad police officers accountable,” Pridgen said. After the killing of Floyd and the demonstrations that followed, he said, “the timing was perfect.”

The law also gives officers who have been terminated in the past 20 years for intervening to stop the use of force a chance to challenge their firings. In an unusual twist, the suit cited the law named for Horne to argue for that outcome.

Horne’s lawyers said that although she had been fired for wrongfully intervening in an arrest, her actions had been consistent with what is expected of police officers: She had kept a civilian safe.

“And after George Floyd,” Eggleston, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, said, “we really understand what happens if officers don’t act like that.”


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)