Police Shooting of Mother and Infant Exposes a City’s Racial Tension

[flashl]

Source: NY Times

LIMA, Ohio — The air of Southside is foul-smelling and thick, filled with fumes from an oil refinery and diesel smoke from a train yard, with talk of riot and recrimination, and with angry questions: Why is Tarika Wilson dead? Why did the police shoot her baby?

"This thing just stinks to high heaven, and the police know it,” said Jason Upthegrove, president of the Lima chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “We’re not asking for answers anymore. We’re demanding them.”

Some facts are known. A SWAT team arrived at Ms. Wilson’s rented house in the Southside neighborhood early in the evening of Jan. 4 to arrest her companion, Anthony Terry, on suspicion of drug dealing, said Greg Garlock, Lima’s police chief. Officers bashed in the front door and entered with guns drawn, said neighbors who saw the raid.

Moments later, the police opened fire, killing Ms. Wilson, 26, and wounding her 14-month-old son, Sincere, Chief Garlock said. One officer involved in the raid, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, a 31-year veteran, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

NY Times

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/30lima.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1201701894-YpC9MECnA2e/O1tgETQ3tg

---

More 'collateral damage' from the ‘war’ on drugs.

[madmom]

1. WOW! this is not far from me, I didn't realize it had gotten this bad.

[lonestarnot]

3. You've not seen anything yet. The world as we knew it is

crumbling and fast.

[madmom]

6. I know and it scares the shit out of me!!!!

[lonestarnot]

8. Hang in there madmom!

:hug:

[madmom]

11. aw suxs, thanks lonestarnot, we all need a hug every now and then...

:yourock:

[jasmine621]

2. This is sad in many, many ways.

I remember the treatment received by MLK in the 60's in Ohio. The smoldering problems of racism, unemployment, poor education, and the income gap are a much bigger threat to our nation than al-qaeda.

[flashl]

5. There are pockets across the country where large minority

populations are trapped with no hope and living?? in chronic depressed economies that is not of their makings.

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. "But She Has Six Kids With Five Men!"

I'm just waiting for the knuckledraggers to pull out that one :eyes:

[sasquatch]

7. Henceforth, she's expendible

[sasquatch]

9. The good news is that this happened in Ohio and not in the South so there's a better chance for ....

justice. If this was Florida the DA and the Sherriff would rig the jury and the Judge would make sure there's a show trial to get them acquitted.

[tuckessee]

12. LOL!

Are you serious? Cops don't get punished anywhere.

[noonwitch]

16. That's not true-you ever hear of the Malice Green case?

Two Detroit cops were found guilty of 2nd degree murder. Budzyn won his appeal and was resentenced under manslaughter, but Nevers' 2nd degree conviction stuck. He should be out now, though, he's served his minimum and he's dying of cancer. Both cops served time, though, and were found guilty.


Of course, the white people in the rest of the state were so upset with this, that the legislature totally redid Detroit's court system. Detroit had had their own court, unlike every other county, because it was a tradition that pre-dated statehood. The legislature decided that it had to be merged into the Wayne County courts, and judges had to be elected county-wide.

[gratuitous]

10. This is "racial tension"

I wonder what it would be called if it had been a black officer gunning down a white woman and her child in their home? Fortunately, white people don't do drugs, so we'll never have to grapple with that question.

[High Plains]

13. This is just the latest example of this sort of police heavy-handedness.

Check out this report on the excessive use of police raids: "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Policing in America," by Radley Balko. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

Yes, I know it's a Cato publication, but I would hope people would read it anyway, quite enlightening.

My organization, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, is leading an effort to bring a stop to these raids. You can join the campaign here: http://ga0.org/campaign/enough_is_enough

[LeftyMom]

14. Lima's been like that forever.

It's an impoverished industrial shithole surrounded by more prosperous towns, and because it's a ill-maintained, crime ridden dump it's cheap, so it's where almost all the poor people and people of color in the area live. The next towns over (Bluffton and Findlay) are loads nicer, but they're also whiter than freshly bleached socks.

My kid's Dad was born in Lima. His birth mom still lives there, in a sturdy little house with hardwood floors that cost her $28K at the height of the real estate boom (Lima may be a shithole, but it's sure affordable.) His adoptive family raised him in Bluffton, where they have the cutest little house on Main Street, a well tended garden, and a life that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. The two houses are perhaps 15 minutes apart, but the two towns could not be more different.

[Bo]

15. War On Drugs ....again

......evil is as evil does...

[flashl]

19. Drugs Evil? Classification perhap?

America's Love-Hate Relationship with Drugs

Many prescription drugs have effects similar to those of illegal drugs. But we still view some users as criminals -- the others as patients.

...

When we recognize that psychotropic prescription drugs are chemically similar to illegal psychotropic drugs, and that all of these substances are used for similar purposes, we see two injustices. First, we see the classification of millions of Americans as criminals for using certain drugs, while millions of others, using essentially similar drugs for similar purposes, are seen as patients. Second, we see a denial of those societal realities that compel increasing numbers of Americans to use psychotropic drugs.

It is politically -- and economically -- incorrect for the corporate press, dependent on Big Pharma advertising revenue, to compare psychiatric drugs with illegal drugs. However, the psychiatry drug textbook A Primer of Drug Action notes that individuals who have used cocaine have difficulty distinguishing between the subjective effects of cocaine and dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) when both are administered intravenously.

[FiveGoodMen]

23. War on freedom, really.

* Some drugs are legal.

* Until recently crack was penalized more severely than cocaine (black people used crack more and whites used cocaine more).

* Rich, well-connected people have ways of getting out of these things if they're caught.

Eventually, everything will be illegal (if we keep going the way we're going) and privileged people won't be subject to the law (like Bush isn't right now). Then anyone that the powers that be don't like can go to jail and there won't even be a semblance of equal treatment. That's where the War on Drugs is heading. And I think that's its real intent.

[Winterblues]

17. Why was a SWAT Team involved at all?

This sounds like a common drug bust, so why the SWAT Team? Was there a hostage situation or something?

[Blue Diadem]

18. They use SWAT for drug busts, at least around here they do.

Problem is, what the hell was the cop shooting for? She had that baby in her arms. They knew kids were there too. One of them said they saw kids toys in the yard.

[AX10]

20. Most of the time, SWAT teams are not needed.

It's all part of the "war on drugs". Thanks Ronnie. :puke:

[High Plains]

22. Give 'em a SWAT team and they will find a use for it

They were supposed to be for the rare hostage or barricaded armed suspect situation.

But there aren't that many of those. So now, through a perverse sort of mission creep, we get paramilitarized police units doing routine drug busts as if they were fighting Al Qaeda in Baghdad.

That shit cost the life of a cop in Chesapeake, Virginia, last week. It's not just civilians.

[bean fidhleir]

21. I'd like to know who posted this

so I could (metaphorically) shake her/his hand and say 'right on!':