Journalist – Historian – Speaker
In response to the recent shooting of Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones, embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel has made a decision – give all cops Tasers. Chicago’s mayor and police superintendent will announce Wednesday afternoon that every police officer who responds to service calls will be equipped with a Taser and properly trained to use it …
There is new video of the death of Linwood Lambert. If police want to have TASERs, which they do and they should, then the people who abuse them have to be held accountable. When three Virginia police officers put Linwood Lambert in a squad car around 5 a.m. on May 4, 2013, they said they …
This is pretty much as bad as it gets. It’s like a scene from a dystopian novel, as bio-hazard suit clad officers take a schizophrenic woman, one who they have already handcuffed, and tase her to death, killing her as she screams in horror. Except that it happened. A mentally ill woman who died after …
I’ve been busy researching several new pieces this week so the blogging has been a bit light. That’s likely to continue next week as well. Bear with me! Good stuff is coming. The most important piece I wrote this week was about the efforts of a radical right-wing group to use Down syndrome prenatal testing …
Everybody pay attention to these next two sentences, ok? If your police force is shooting too many people, TASERs are not the solution. The solution is not to shoot people except in dire circumstances. Thank you for paying attention. Last week, a major report came out in Toronto as a result of the death of …
From Digby, we have another example of what I call the cult of compliance. In Springfield, MO, a panhandler in a Walmart parking lot, Eric David Butts, was confronted by a police officer, Jason Schuck. Butts turned to run away and Schuck drew his weapon and shot him in the back. Later, he claimed that he …