Last Call For I Left My Sorrow In San Bernardino

Another day in America, another mass shooting.

A man and a woman suspected of taking part in a shooting attack that killed 14 people and wounded 17 at a California social services agency on Wednesday died in a shootout with police hours later, authorities said.

One police officer was injured in the gunfight with the two suspects, who were confronted in their getaway vehicle after fleeing the scene of the shooting in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.

Authorities also detained an individual seen running away from the vehicle, but investigators were not immediately sure that person was involved in the case, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said at a news conference. 

The chief added he knew of no possible motive for the shooting spree, which unfolded at 11 a.m. on the campus of the Inland Regional Center, an agency that serves the developmentally disabled.

The shooting rampage marked the deadliest U.S. gun violence since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, in which 27 people, including the gunman, were killed.

I'd say what I usually do, that I'm numb with despair, but numbness and despair is how these shootings keep happening because our chickenshit Congress refuses to do anything about mass shootings and as voters we refuse to vote whose who do nothing out of office.

So really, these are our fault, America, because we refuse to do anything about it.

Post-Racial America Update

So it turns out that even Southern state cops have their limits when it comes to racism, and that the systematic planting of evidence by cops on black men in Dothan, Alabama for the last couple of decades has finally become too much to bear.

Members of a narcotics investigation squad for the police department in Dothan, Alabama planted drugs and weapons on young black men since the mid-1990s with the approval of their superiors — one of whom is currently the state’s Assistant Director of Homeland Security.

According to the Henry County Report, Andy Hughes was a sergeant in the department while overseeing the unit. But he was also a leader in a neo-Confederate group comprised by squad members, along fellow supervisor Steve Parrish. Parrish, at the time a lieutenant, is currently the city’s police chief.

Documents obtained by the Alabama Justice Project indicate that Parrish and Hughes are frequently mentioned in an internal affairs investigation. However, then-Police Chief John White and District Attorney Doug Valeska did not notify federal or state officials regarding the probe, as is required by department policy.

What we basically have here is white supremacists running the Dothan PD, planting evidence on black men to send them to prison, and getting promoted for it.  One is now chief of the Dothan PD, the other is now the state's Assistant Director of Homeland Security.  Internal affairs investigations were flat out covered up.  The full story linked above is devastating as several officers have agreed to come forward to support a federal investigation.

The documents shared reveal that the internal affairs investigation was covered up to protect the aforementioned officers’ law enforcement careers and keep them from being criminally prosecuted.

Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison. Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement. They hope the mood of the country is one that demands action and that the US Department of Justice will intervene.

The group of officers requested they be granted anonymity, and shared hundreds of files from the Internal Affairs Division. They reveal a pattern of criminal behavior from within the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department and the district attorney’s office in the 20th Judicial District of Alabama. Multiple current and former officers have agreed to testify if United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoints a special prosecutor from outside the state of Alabama, or before a Congressional hearing. The officers believe that there are currently nearly a thousand wrongful convictions resulting in felonies from the 20th Judicial District that are tied to planted drugs and weapons and question whether a system that allows this can be allowed to continue to operate.

Members of the Henry County Report have spent weeks analyzing the documents. The originals, secured at an N.G.O. in Canada, are being shared directly with attorneys in the U.S. Dept. of Justice Civil Rights Division, and are being made available to the lawyers of those falsely convicted that seek to clear their names.

And you are nuts if you think this is the only police department where this is going on.  Loretta Lynch and the DoJ need to be all over this.  A thousand wrongful convictions just in one Alabama city? What about the rest of the country?

It's insanity, and it proves once again that systematic racism is alive and well in America and has been for a very, very long time.

Full Cover Your Ass Mode

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is terrified in the wake of the deaths of Laquan McDonald and Tyshawn Lee, and he's trying to barricade himself in City Hall to hold out against the calls for his resignation by offering up anyone he can get his hands on.  First to go under the bus: Chicago's top cop.

Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has been fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, sources said Tuesday. 

McCarthy was called into City Hall on Monday and when he left City Hall he still had a job. But overnight, the mayor called McCarthy to tell him he was out. 

Headlines from the Laquan McDonald controversy, as well those following the gang execution of Tyshawn Lee, had become too much, according to sources. 

McCarthy appeared “shell-shocked” by the news, sources said. 

But Chicago Police superintendents are like baseball managers and football coaches. They’re hired to be fired. Failure and crises are literally built into the job. When it comes, a head needs to roll. The sacrificial lamb inevitably is the man on top—even though he’s not responsible for the number of wins and losses. 

McCarthy is no different. He’s a fighter who firmly believed he had earned to right to decide when the timing was right to retire from the pressure-cooker job after surviving a serious heart attack more than a year ago. 

But, Emanuel didn’t give him that chance. Although Emanuel is fiercely loyal to his staff and hates the idea of creating political scapegoats, of serving up heads on platters, the pressure to get rid of McCarthy was coming from all sides. Ultimately, it became too intense for Emanuel to resist. 

The final straw appeared to be a front-page editorial in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. That followed the Washington Post and nearly every black elected official in the Chicago area.

Expect more heads to roll.  Expect none of them to be Rahm's.

StupidiNews!

• Both Britain and Germany are expected to approve measures authorizing additional airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria in the wake of last month's attacks in Paris.
• A bipartisan bill in the US Senate would require fingerprints and photographs of visitors from nations that the US allows to waive visas.
• Moscow is warning that NATO expansion to Eastern European countries like Montenegro will result in "retaliatory measures" from Russia.
• The Supreme Court has rejected Texas's request to delay a case involving the President's immigration deferment program until after the 2016 election.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan say they will donate 99% of Facebook shares "during their lives" to charity.