Uugghh! Louisiana cop fatally shoots 14-year-old ‘four or five times in the back’

[99th_Monkey]

52. The case of Aaron Campbell

This article is from the Guardian 4 days ago, and the Police Union was in lockstep with the perps & bad apples every step of the way.

Portland police's problem with race: 'This city is not as liberal as it thinks it is'
Chris McGreal * The Guardian * 9.20.2014

In early 2010, Portland police officers were dispatched to check on the welfare of a young African American man whose brother had died earlier that day. Aaron Campbell was at his girlfriend’s flat and was said to be distraught over the death of his brother, whom he had nursed before he succumbed to heart disease and kidney failure. A family member called the police, fearing Campbell might be suicidal, and officers arrived to check that he was not going to harm himself or anyone else.

The police quickly established that Campbell was heartbroken, not dangerous, and even exchanged a jokey text message with him that helped put the officers at ease. But then a second police unit arrived, armed with tactical weapons.

It had limited communication with the officers talking to Campbell. It did not know that they had concluded he was fine and they were prepared to leave. Within minutes the unarmed Campbell was dead, following a sequence of events that an incredulous grand jury later said was all the more outrageous because what happened was legal under police regulations in a city that regards itself as one of the most progressive in the US.

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson called Campbell’s killing “an execution”. It prompted a US Department of Justice investigation into a decade of the use of excessive force by the Portland police, from the beating to death in custody of a musician to an officer holding a gun to the head of an unarmed woman before she was shot.

The probe led to a court agreement in August between the city and federal authorities on reforms to police training, use of force and accountability. The Justice Department described what it called a “groundbreaking deal” as introducing “innovative new mechanisms” to ensure community participation in oversight of the reforms with the inclusion of civil rights groups as a party to the agreement. The deal also requires the appointment of an official to monitor changes and the election of a community advisory board on policing.

The federal judge who approved the agreement, Michael Simon, took the unusual step, over the objections of the city’s leadership and the police union, of ordering that its implementation should be reviewed by the court each year to ensure it was being fulfilled.

Civil rights leaders have described the deal as a potential model for co-operation in other cities, such as Ferguson, Missouri, which was rocked by protests over the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer last month.

The Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform, an association of Portland civil rights groups that is a party to the deal, welcomed it as a “major step to creating a true community policing culture”. It said the agreement was important “to prevent a Ferguson upheaval in Portland”.

But the AMA Coalition chair, Reverend LeRoy Haynes, like others pressing for police reform, is also critical of the agreement because he says the Justice Department sidestepped the real issue – race.

“Six percent of this city is black, but about a third of those shot by the police are African American,” he said. “There certainly is a racial issue in this city with police shootings.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/20/portland-police-race-reform-crime