Conyers: Update on Racial Profiling

[paineinthearse]

See earlier post - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2043103

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000221.htm

Update on Racial Profiling

Recent Coverage of DoJ Suppression of Racial Profiling Report

Last Thursday, I appeared on Mitch Jeserich's news broadcast on Free Speech Radio News to discuss the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics racial profiling report. As I posted last week, the Bureau Director sought to publicize this report, but was blocked and then demoted by his superiors in the Bush Administration Department of Justice. These actions by the Department of Justice are outrageous and I will be calling on my Republican counterpart on the Judiciary Committee, Chairman James Sensenbrenner, to conduct an investigation into this.

Here is the audio from the radio news story - http://johnconyers.com/vertical/Sites/{EF00C507-612C-4BA3-84C0-446C97F7E413}/uploads/{A64C82C0-FB7B-413A-A125-61ADF7CD3270}.MP3

There were also good editorial pieces on this in the Washington Post - http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000221.htm and the New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/opinion/25herbert.html?pagewanted=print


Blogged by JC on 08.29.05 @ 10:02 PM ET

[Independent_Liberal]

1. Kick!

[autorank]

2. Nice work DOJ--anti intellectual and anti public at the same time.

Amazing. This is a pattern. The Halliburton whistle blower in the Pentagon was demoted, this good civil servant is demoted. When will * be demoted?

[HardWorkingDem]

3. What is your definition of "racial profiling"?

Curious how people define this....

[Toots]

4. How would you describe it?

Would a person with an Arabic sounding name and dark skinned be enough for you to want them searched and/or detained? Or would you be apt to think a black man in a predominate white neighborhood should be asked why they are there? That is racial profiling.....

[HardWorkingDem]

5. I would describe it as....(as far as racial profiling only)

stopping a person for the sole purpose of a person's race. Something along the lines of the thought of if a person is a particular race, then that person is probably doing something wrong.

The reason I asked is because how we define something is very important. Here in my area the state govt did a study on traffic ticket statistics and that is as far as they examined the issue. When they looked at the numbers, that is exactly what they did and when the state did that they didn't weight factors at all (for example, I think it is fair to assume that most crime will be found in lower socio-economic areas, therefore that is where most police will be and for a variety of reasons that is where most tickets will be written and this could be regardless of a population's demographic make up).

Here is a question to ponder - not to pick on the south at all, but in our state we have license plates with a white dove on them to represent the prevention of domestic violence. Let's say these same plates exist in a southern state and the authorities receive information that white supremacist groups have been buying these particular plates to express white supremacy. They have also learned that these same groups have been placing crosses on their vehicles near these plates. Now, would it be racial profiling if a police officer stopped a white male driver in a pick up truck with a confederate flag, this type of plate and the white cross while driving very slowly through a predominately black neighborhood?

My point is that I think when more information is learned often times racial profiling is ill defined and includes other things that are not necessarily racial profiling.

[Trevelyan]

6. I think of Menezes, the Brazilian murdered by the London police

one of whom was actually a soldier with experience in IRA bombings.

The excuses of the murder of this man stink to high heavens and even The Guardian which is said to be ignoring stories due to the immense pressure in Britain now to turn it into a police state with a version of the Martial Law being passed under the radar according to the British White Rose website, wrote a disgusted article pointing out the inconsistences in the police story, the eyewitnesses one of whom was a journalist and very sharp in what she saw and heard, and the fact that 4 cameras in the subway which should have caught this shooting ALL MALFUNCTIONED and The Guardian expressed scepticm in the promise of an investigation which may or may not be completed by Christmas since the Brits like Congress drags its heals on investigations and they are never done or competed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1556856,00.htm

Police have footage of Tube death
Ben Russell
08/24/2005 21:06:06

The head of the police complaints watchdog has insisted that investigators have obtained "crucial" CCTV evidence about the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, rejected claims of a cover-up, declaring that "I have all the information that I need" to investigate the events leading to the shooting of the electrician by
anti-terrorist police a month ago.

Speaking after a meeting with a Brazilian delegation in Britain to investigate the shooting, Mr Hardwick insisted that the CCTV footage from the scene of the shooting at Stockwell Underground station was "very helpful".

He refused to clarify whether cameras in the station and the train were working and caught the final moments of Mr de Menezes' life.
~~~~

De Menezes 'shot for 30 seconds'

Witness feared terrorists were attacking train as police fired at Brazilian, leaked statement reveals

Vikram Dodd and Hugh Muir
Friday August 26, 2005
The Guardian


Armed police officers fired at Jean Charles de Menezes for over 30 seconds when they killed him at Stockwell tube station, according to a witness statement made to independent investigators and obtained by the Guardian.

The witness says the shots were fired at intervals of three seconds and that she ran for her life fearing terrorists had opened fire on commuters.The death of the innocent Brazilian, who was mistaken for a suicide bomber, is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Much of the immediate eyewitness evidence after the shooting proved to be wrong.But the witness correctly said that 11 shots were fired - a fact which was not made public at the time.The account from Sue Thomason, a freelance journalist from south London, gives new detail of the shooting and of the terror witnesses endured.

In her statement she says: "The shots were evenly spaced with about three seconds between the shots, for the first few shots, then a gap of a little longer, then the shots were evenly spaced again."Mr de Menezes was killed on July 22 on a tube train after being followed from his flat by undercover officers and soldiers who were hunting terrorists behind failed bombing attacks on London on July 21.

On the morning of July 22 Ms Thomason was on her way to work, and was
reading a book as the train pulled into Stockwell.Her statement to the IPCC says: "When the tube was stationary at the platform at Stockwell I recall shouting, it was a male's voice, it may have come from more than one male. People then started to get out of their seats and look in the direction where the shouting was coming from.

"I recall hearing gunshots... The shooting was coming from the carriage to the left of me. When I heard the gunshots I thought it was terrorists firing into the crowd. I thought about getting behind a seat... After the initial first shots... I left the carriage."

She and other commuters started running along the platform to leave the station.Her statement continues: "While I was making my way to the escalator I remember hearing more shots coming from behind me. I thought that I would be shot in the back... Half way up the escalator I remember looking behind me and hearing two more shots... "Once I got outside the station my legs went.

"I would say there was 10 or 11 shots fired. The shots were ... evenly spaced out (timewise)."She says two IPCC investigators who interviewed her were equipped with a map of Stockwell tube which had key features in the wrong place. This initially led them wrongly to challenge her account.

In an email of complaint to the IPCC she wrote: "If the people investigating such a serious matter... can't even get the plan of the station correct for interviewees to point out where they were, then what chance does the rest of the case have?"

She also says a key detail she gave of the number of shots and the interval between them was missed from her final statement until she insisted it be included: "I'm not anti the IPCC, I just want them to get it right."The IPCC last night said it was unable to comment on the witness statement but in a separate development announced that it had received - and rejected - a complaint from a Scotland Yard firearms officer.

[Orion The Hunter]

7. Kick! Conyers keep up the good work! - EOM