searchingforknowledge:

frank-e-go-boom:

TW: Police Violence, State Sanctioned Terrorism

anarcho-queer:

NYPD Enters Building Without A Warrant, Breaks Landlords Leg And Handcuffs Her To Hospital Bed For 17 Days

A Brooklyn landlord says she was shackled to a hospital bed for 17 days after cops broke her leg during a wrongful arrest in the hallway of her Flatbush building.

Karen Brim, 42, claims an NYPD officer threw her to the ground, severely fracturing her left leg, after she identified herself as the owner of the Utica Avenue building and asked why the cops were there, according to a new lawsuit.

The single mother was arrested and brought to Kings County Hospital, where she needed multiple surgeries, plates and screws to fix the bones broken in a tussle with Officer Timothy Reilly.

Adding insult to injury, court papers say, was the way police restrained her for more than two weeks during her hospital stay, with one officer posted outside her room.

“She was hand- and ankle-cuffed to her hospital bed,” lawyer Marshall Bluth told The Post. “They would not allow family or friends to enter. She wasn’t presented before a judicial hearing officer for 17 days. It was pretty egregious.”

A state court spokesman said the 24-hour standard for arraignment in criminal cases doesn’t apply when defendants are hospitalized.

But Brim was conscious and incapable of fleeing because of her injuries and could have been arraigned at any point, Bluth said.

“She’s not a flight risk. She cannot run out of the hospital. There’s no need to handcuff and ankle-cuff her. Being handcuffed to a bed — it’s like being a caged animal. It’s outrageous,” he said. “It’s beyond belief. Not for one day, not for one week, but for 17 days?”

The confrontation with cops unfolded on April 30, 2012, when Reilly, Officer Ralph Giordano and an unidentified partner spotted four neighborhood teens hanging out on a roof adjacent to Brim’s building. They chased the youths into Brim’s building, entering via the roof, as Brim was mopping a hallway, according to a police source and Brim’s Brooklyn federal court lawsuit.

Brim claims things got physical when she protested that the kids were visitors and not trespassing.

Cops maintain that Brim was the violent one — swinging a broom at Reilly, smacking him in the head and putting her hand around his neck, according to a criminal complaint.

The cops arrested the teens — Brenado Simpson, Clifton Bailey, Robean Romans and Distephano Destin — for trespassing. The charges were later dropped, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said.

Brim was charged with assault, resisting arrest, menacing, harassment and obstructing governmental administration. Her criminal case is pending.

Brim insists in court papers the cops lied.

“She’s mopping the common areas, as she does once every two weeks or so, and suddenly police officers descend from the roof into her building and proceed to beat her up, basically,” Bluth said. “No one really knows for sure why they did this. They basically stormed her building.”

The cops did not have a warrant, according to Brim, who’s owned the three-story building for more than a decade and operates a beauty salon on the first floor.

Brim is seeking unspecified damages in her lawsuit, which accuses the officers of using “unnecessary and unreasonable” force, false arrest, falsifying evidence and violating her constitutional rights.

It was the second time in a year officer Reilly was accused of being violent with the public. Brooklyn resident Samuel Semple sued the city last year after Reilly allegedly “forcibly dragged” him out of a restaurant. Semple, who suffered minor injuries, got a $10,000 settlement in January.

The city will review Brim’s allegations once it gets a copy of the lawsuit, a Law Department spokeswoman said.

protecting and serving…

(via writingrhythmandretail)

erihs:

lzzzbth:

yeah

so

caitlin moran legitmately just told me that she could not give a shit about the representation of WOC. SHE JUST SAID THOSE EXACT WORDS. as one of the most prominent feminists in the UK today, her particular brand of white middle class feminism is THE FUCKING PITS AND I HATE HER. please excuse my rage but CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS.

her book is called ‘how to be a woman’. HOW TO BE A FUCKING WOMAN.

can i not be a woman if i think representation of WOC in modern media is really important? more important than the representation of white women?

fuckkkkk her

caitlin moran needs to stop. when she was talking about her book How To Be A Woman she was like “it’s not that other kind of feminism that’s a bit scary and awful, this is funny feminism that’s mainly just about ridiculous things to call your breasts.” yah way to go forward with feminism by calling people that actually take it seriously awful? ok moran o k

(via meggannn)

edwardgoblinhands:

NYPD officers stop-and-frisk black teen for being ‘a f*cking mutt’

New York Police Department officers berated a young African-American man named Alvin during a so-called stop-and-frisk in 2011, an audio recording obtained by The Nation revealed.

In the clip, the officers tell Alvin that he is being stopped because he kept looking at them with his hood up. As he was being searched, one officer threatened to arrest Alvin for “being a fucking mutt.” Another officer added: “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”

But the officers were apparently unable to find anything illegal on Alvin and he was not arrested.

“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me. I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back,” Alvin told The Nation.

New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy allows police officers to stop, question and search anyone who looks suspicious. The policy is aimed at finding illegal guns and drugs, but has face a slew of criticism from those who contend the aggressive searches target ethnic minorities.

The NYPD detained 684,330 people in 2011 under the city’s stop-and-frisk policy. At least nine out of 10 people stopped were innocent, and 87 percent of them were either black or Latino.

(via moniquill)

afrogeekgoddess:

(warnings for discussion of murder, racism)

thegoddamazon:

thatlupa:

aliceinnappyland:

silentlydrawn:

I was going to tell you about the huge turnout today at the US Senate, the most powerful legislative body in the world ! About the overflow crowd at the hearing on hate crimes and the threat of domestic extremism held in the wake of the massacre at the Sikh Gurudwara in Wisconsin on a day, August 5, 2012, that will never be forgotten. 

Instead, here are excerpts from the testimony of an 18-year-old Sikh boy, Harpreet Singh Saini, who lost his mother, Paramjit Kaur Saini, in that terrible tragedy. Hardly able to hold back his tears, Harpreet told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights….

“A little over a month ago, I never imagined I’d be here. I never imagined that anyone outside of Oak Creek would know my name. Or my mother’s name, Paramjit Kaur Saini. Or my brother’s name, Kamaljit Singh Saini. Kamal, my brother and best friend, is here with me today.

As we all know, on Sunday, August 5, 2012, a white supremist fueled by hatred walked into our local Gurudwara with a loaded gun. He killed my mother, Paramjit Kaur, while she was sitting for morning prayers. He shot and killed five more men - all of them were fathers, all had turbans like me.

And now people know all our names: Sita Singh, Ranjit Singh, Prakash Singh, Suvegh Singh, Satwant Singh Kaleka.

This was not supposed to be our American story. This was not my mother’s dream….

It was a Tuesday, two days after our mother was killed, that my brother Kamal and I ate the leftovers of the last meal she had made for us. We ate her last rotis - which are a type of South Asian flatbread. She had made the rotis from scratch the night before she died. Along with the last bite of our food that Tuesday came the realization that this was the last meal made by the hands of our mother that we will ever eat in our lifetime…..

Senators, my mother was our biggest fan, our biggest supporter. She was always there for us. She always had a smile on her face.

But, now she’s gone. Because of a man who hated her because she wasn’t his color? His religion?

I just had my first day of college. And my mother wasn’t there to send me off. She won’t be there for my graduation. She won’t be there on my wedding day. She won’t be there to meet her grandchildren.

I want to tell the gunman who took her from me: You may have been full of hate, but my mother was full of love.

She was an American. And this was not our American dream….

Senators, I came here today to ask the government to give my mother the dignity of being a statistic. The FBI does not track hate crimes against Sikhs. My mother and those shot that day will not even count on a federal form. We cannot solve a problem we refuse to recognize.

Senators, I also ask that the government pursue domestic terrorism with the same vigor as attackers from abroad. The man who killed my mother was on the watch list of public interest groups. I believe the government could have tracked him long before he went on a shooting spree.

Finally, Senators, I ask that you stand up for us. As lawmakers and leaders, you have the power to shape public opinion. Your words carry weight. When others scapegoat or demean people because of who they are, use your power to say that is wrong.

So many have asked Sikhs to simply blame Muslims for attacks against our community or just say, “We are not Muslim”. But, we won’t blame anyone else. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

I also want to be a part of the solution. That’s why I want to be a law enforcement officer like Lieutenant Brian Murphy who saved so many lives on August 5, 2012. I want to protect other people from what happened to my mother. I want to combat hate - not just against Sikhs, but against all people. 

Senators, I know what happened at Oak Creek was not an isolated incident. I fear it may happen again if we don’t stand up and do something.

I don’t want anyone to suffer what we have suffered. I want to build a world where all people can live, work and worship in America in peace.

Because you see, despite everything, I still believe in the American dream. In my mother’s memory, I ask that you stand up for it with me, today, and in the days to come…”

Hope it touches every heart !!

Photo: Harpreet Singh Saini after testifying in a hearing on hate crimes and the threat of domestic extremism in the US Senate, earlier today. At left is Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (Democrat-Illinois), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights

Source

“give my mother the dignity of being a statistic.”

“give my mother the dignity of being a statistic.”

“give my mother the dignity of being a statistic.”

That hit me like a punch in the gut…

^^^^

This makes me fear for my own family…but that statistic line floored me. The fact that citizens of color have to beg the government to be even a negative statistic is completely mind-boggling.

(Source: honeymanifesto)