I'm surprised at the statement by the Southern Baptists, given their history of supporting slavery and Jim Crow laws.

It leaves two kinds of people.

Those with a conscience, and those without.

This one reminds me of Andre Stensen, whose last words were the same as Garner's – "I can't breathe."

The cop sitting on his back said "If you can talk, you can breathe."

The ME ruled that Stensen died of a rare, heretofore undiagnosed heart condition, not from suffocation.

You're exactly right, Jamie.

Was hoping you'd chime in on this one, since you were all over that case, and I figured you'd remember that Stensen's last words were exactly the same as Garner's.

The EMT who filed the report resigned and moved away shortly thereafter.

They didn't want Rural Metro to pick him up because he was already dead at the scene, and they didn't want to admit it. That's about the time they started spreading the rumor that he'd had a cocaine-induced heart attack. A registered nurse who was on her way to work that night stopped and was going to offer help. She witnessed chest compressions being administered to Stensen, which meant that his heart had already quit beating on the scene.

Their scenario blew up a few days later when toxicology came back clean.

Stensen was just an ex-con working in Calhoun's kitchen to try to support his family who couldn't afford the high risk auto insurance he'd have to carry to get his license back. He panicked and took off running when he was pulled over while driving Alondo Murphy's car that evening.

Sad, sad state of affairs.

Those were dark days, Jamie, and I've always thought you deserved some kind of medal, or something, for holding Keith and his command staff accountable – particularly with David McGoldrick, whose crime (probable DUI and hit-and-run of two young pedestrians) would never have been solved without your efforts.

The Juan Daniels (shot six times in his basement while threatening suicide with a knife as his family begged them to call his HRM caseworker) case was horrible, as was the Woodfin case (the old man shot of the commode). Both mentally ill, and were executed.

Those were dark days. I think things are getting better.

The thing I said privately back then I've been around long enough to say, eh screw it, people need to know: The reason KPD then and agencies now get away with treating the poor and powerless with such disregard is because no one gives a shit. (Sorry, Ron, for profanity but this calls for it.) Not once back in the, as Betty rightly calls the "dark days" of KPD did you see a protest, read an editorial, even see news coverage beyond mine and Betty's on the details of these killings. And the black leadership in this community? Right. Hey, Tank Strickland, Mark Brown, etc... where the heck were you at when KPD was killing your people? Harold Middlebrook tried. Diane Jordan made some noise. But that was it. And the white leadership? Victor Ashe attacked me, not the problem. I can't even remember who was county mayor cause whoever it was never once gave a rat's butt. County commission? City Council? Blind, deaf and dumb. And the people - well, those were bad people who deserved killing and my God, we need our police to protect our Mercedes and our swimming pools and businesses. Activists? Where were you? We're having freaking protests every other minute right now in Knoxville on all manner of stuff, wages, gay rights, Metro Pulse murder. It was all I could do back then to get Dewey Roberts, NAACP local chief, to give me a statement with any kind of substance to it.
I'm sorry if I sound bitter but even this many years later, I am. I know everyone thinks I'm a diva who makes a career out of mocking criminals. Obviously, you don't know my body of work but that's fine. But whether you believe it or not, I cried at these scenes. I cussed at these scenes. I stamped my feet. Of course, I channeled my energy at getting to the real story, the real facts, but it's a pretty lonely place to be when you watch the body of a tired old man whose only crime was to piss off his neighbors and whose life ended on a toilet be carried out of his house by his killers and no one gave a damn.
All this talk right now with Brown and Garner, it's good. But it won't last and we'll go right back to the way it's always been. It's THOSE people who suffer and we just don't care.
And one more thing. The cop who killed old man Woodfin? Still on the force and recently was involved in another fatal shooting.

And the black leadership in this community? Right. Hey, Tank Strickland, Mark Brown, etc... where the heck were you at when KPD was killing your people?

another good rhetorical question. ask this publicly and you might get branded 'racist.' kudos to Harold Middlebrook for always being out front on these issues ...

but on to the larger picture:

The murder of Emmett Till, the killing of the four young black girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the killing by four officers of Amadou Diallo, and the recent killings of countless young black children and men and women, coupled with the ongoing and egregious incarceration of black men in this country are not isolated expressions of marginalized failures of a system. They are the system, a system of authoritarianism that has intensified without apology.

Henry Giroux, Truthout, December 6, 2014

(link...)

The Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will soon release more of what are being called the Dead Sea Scrolls of Physics, the documents of Albert Einstein. In a 1946 document, he addressed what he called "The Negro Question" on the perceptions an adult immigrant adjusting to life in America.

“We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity,” Einstein concluded, “and shape our lives accordingly. I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes.”

We like to think that we've come a long way since the beginning of my lifetime in 1946 but we still have a long way to go.