Sept. 7, 2014

Poll: 70 Percent of Blacks Think Police Use Excessive Force

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - After the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, an overwhelming number of African-Americans give low marks to police departments for not holding officers accountable for misconduct, using the appropriate amount of force and treating racial and ethnic groups equally, according to a poll by Pew Research Center and USA Today.

Some 70 percent of Blacks say police departments do a poor job of holding officers accountable for misconduct and an equal percentage say police departments do a poor job of treating racial and ethnic groups equally.

Some 57 percent of Blacks think police departments do a poor job of using the right amount of force.

Aug. 31, 2014

African-American Man Killed in Syria Fighting for Islamic Militants
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the NorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Douglas McAuthur McCain, a Black man from the Minneapolis, Minn., area, was killed in Syria, fighting for ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq, the White House has confirmed.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, has announced that McCain, who was born in Chicago and raised in the Minneapolis area, has died.

"We are aware of U.S. citizen Douglas McAuthur McCain's presence in Syria and can confirm his death," Hayden said in a statement Aug. 26. "We continue to use every tool we possess to disrupt and dissuade individuals from traveling abroad for violent jihad and to track and engage those who return.”

Kenyata McCain, a first cousin, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that a U.S. State Department official called Douglas McCain's mother Sunday night to tell her that her son had been killed in Syria over the weekend. His mother lives in San Diego.

The Star Tribune reported that McCain was killed in Marea, Syria, during a gun battle with members of the Free Syrian Army. McCain converted from Christianity to the Muslim faith in 2004.

Family members had recently talked to Douglas McCain, and he said he was in Turkey, which is a common route to Syria. Kenyata McCain noted that on his Facebook page that her cousin supported ISIS or ISIL, which President Barack Obama has tapped as one of the United States' top security concerns. Government officials believe more than 100 Americans have joined ISIS.

The NorthStar News & Analysis sent a request for an interview to Kenyata McCain through Facebook, but she did not respond.

NorthStar also called the U.S. State Department about McCain, but officials did not respond to its request for information, including how they determined he was an American. Several news reports said an American passport and $800 were found on his body.

Douglas McCain’s death occurred shortly after the disclosure of the beheading of American photographer James Foley by ISIS. A video of Foley's execution was released August 19.

NBC News first reported Douglas Authur McCain's death. The network attributed their information to the Free Syrian Army.

The Star Tribune reported that the 33-year-old McCain graduated in 1999 from Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb. Although some reports said he did not graduate.

In recent years, he moved to San Diego, where he worked as a caregiver and assisted in raising his daughter, who is nearly a year old.

Some reports described McCain as Tunisian and Egyptian, but he said on his Facebook page that he was 10 percent African American. While in Chicago, he lived in the Robert Taylor Homes, a giant public housing project on the South Side. The complex has since been demolished.

His Facebook page has been taken down.

Sept. 1, 2014

Holder’s Inaction in Trayvon Civil Rights Case Called ‘Disappointing’
With Michael Brown Case Now Before Him, Has Holder Dropped the Ball on Trayvon Martin?

Trayvon Martin

 

Group assembled in front of the White House Monday holding boxes containing more than 900,000 petition
pushing for Civil Rights violation charges against police officer who shot Michael Brown. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – The NAACP delivered 1.7 million signatures to the U. S. Department of Justice a year ago, requesting a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla.

Despite the outrage and demands for justice after Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to announce a clear answer on his findings in the shooting of the unarmed 17-year-old who quickly became a household name across America. Ben Jealous, the NAACP President who collected many of the names and electronically delivered the signatures says he’s disappointed at the delay, but is still awaiting Holder’s answer.

“Attorney General Holder was very responsive when we initially reached out to ask for answers around Trayvon Martin,” says Jealous, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “It is disappointing that the investigation has gone on for so long without a conclusion when the injustice is so evident. However, I am keeping the faith. I'm encouraged by the swift response Holder's Justice Department has had so far in Ferguson.”

Trayvon Martin was shot dead by Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012. Despite national outcries, a jury found  Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder on July 13, 2013. The case largely centered on a  debate over whether Zimmerman was defending himself although he was the one who confronted and pursued Martin against the advice of a 911 operator.

Using expletives, Zimmerman said on the 911 tape, "They always get away." For civil rights leaders and others, this statement was clear evidence that Martin, wearing a hoodie, was racially profiled by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman. The unarmed teenager was actually only walking home from a store with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea.

After the controversial verdict in the criminal trial, justice seekers, largely led by the NAACP and ColorOfChange, then sought redress through the Justice Department, pushing for an indictment of Zimmerman on a civil rights violation. Holder promised a thorough investigation, but has yet to announce a conclusion.

On Friday, August 29, a group pushing for justice in the Aug. 9 Michael Brown killing by Ferguson, Mo. police officer, Darren Wilson, delivered more than 900,000 signatures on a petition, also in support of a civil rights charge. Holder, who visited the Ferguson amidst unrest over the killing of Brown, who was also unarmed, has again promised a thorough investigation into the case in which witnesses said Brown had raised his hands when shot. A grand jury will determine whether to bring criminal charges against the officer.

Meanwhile in the civil rights investigation against Zimmerman, some say the assumption that the Justice Department couldn't find anything is not good enough. Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, says Holder’s silence on the Martin case could engender a lack of confidence in the Brown and other cases.

“We want an answer,” says Jackson. “The wheels of justice must move quickly or it will erode people’s confidence,” he said, adding he hopes Holder’s response on Trayvon “will come soon.”

The Trice Edney News Wire has attempted several times to attain the Justice Department’s status on the civil rights investigation into the Trayvon Martin case. However, Press Secretary Kevin Lewis has still not responded to two phone calls and an email sent earlier this year. Lewis is former Black Press liaison at the White House under the Obama Administration.

On Nov. 4, 2013, Holder, questioned by reporters at an unrelated press conference, said the Justice Department had not yet decided whether to file charges against Zimmerman, but that the investigation was continuing.

Some civil rights leaders acknowledge that Holder has not given a clear answer, but they are also hoping that both criminal and civil rights charges in the death of Michael Brown will finally bring national change to cases of unarmed Blacks being shot by police.

“Holder is different on this one,” says Barbara Arnwine, executive director and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that called for the civil rights investigation in the Martin case. “He’s not the same man he was at that time,” says Arnwine. She pointed out that since the death of Martin, Holder has “spent two years investigating racial disparities in the criminal justice system” and has begun to push policy changes.

Still there are those who say more should have been done on all fronts.

“The death of Michael Brown makes me angry and disappointed in the lack of progress since the death of Trayvon Martin,” says Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, founder and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He says the greatest sign of hope will be the arrest and prosecution of the police officer who killed Brown.

Benjamin Crump, the attorney for the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, agrees with Ogletree, but indicates that he is currently eying the brown case given eye witness testimony that he was trying to give up when fatally shot.

“Every case is unique,” he said. “All I know about this case is that he was executed.” Crump said he believes the shootings will diminish when “the shooters are held accountable for the killing of our children.”

Report: Progress for Back Men Stalled

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - From the U. S. president to millionaire athletes, these appear to be halcyon days for Black men.

Forty years ago, only a fiction writer could imagine that the nation’s leader would ever be a person of color or that a Fortune 500 company like American Express would ever consider having a Black chief executive.

Today, the growth of Black elected officials and decision-makers shows the remarkable advances that Black men have made in government as well as in business, science, sports, education, entertainment and a host of other areas.

But dig deeper into the statistics for Average Joes, and the picture is of stalled progress overall.

Soaring incarceration rates in the past 25 years and the surge in unemployment during the Great Recession have left Black men, in general, still clinging to the bottom rung of the economic ladder, the same place they were in 1974 and earlier, according to a new report by researchers at the University of Chicago.

Derek Neal and Armin Rick, the co-authors of the report, found that so-called reforms in the criminal justice system have stifled the general advance of Black males and made them more vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment.

Education is a prime example. By 1989, 25 years after passage of the door-opening Civil Rights Act, Black men were rapidly closing the gap with White in completed years of schooling.

Instead of the four-year difference of the 1960s and 1970s, Black adults ages 26 to 35 had by 1989, on average, completed just one year less of school than their White counterparts, while record numbers of Black high school graduates were enrolling in college, technical schools and other higher education training.

However, the impact of increased incarceration has changed the picture. Between 1989 and 2014, the gap in Black-White educational attainment has stopped shrinking and instead widened to nearly 1970s levels, the two researchers found.

They cited continuing wide Black-White differences in math and reading scores on standardized and college placement tests as well as the widening gap in educational attainment.

The rise in incarceration also correlates with lowered employment rates for Black men, particularly since 2008, the researchers found: “Relative to white men in the labor market, black men are in no better a situation than they were in 1974.”

Incarceration is the key factor, the report found. Prisoner numbers have soared in the wake of federal and state policies imposed in the 1980s and 1990s to crack down on crime, including parole abolition, enhanced sentencing guidelines ad three-strike laws that ensure near lifetime imprisonment for repeat offenders.

The report states such policy changes – fueled by grants for prison building – accounted for more than 70 percent of the growth in the prison population between 1986 and 2006. The United States now leads the world in locking up people, with 2.2 million behind bars.

Not surprisingly, Black men have been affected the most, the study noted. Given historical patterns of discrimination, they remain more likely to be arrested, to be convicted and to be sentenced to longer terms than White men.

Combined, local jails and state and federal prisons today house close to a million Black men. Overall, one in four Black males are behind bars or on probation or parole on any given day, according to this report and other studies.

The higher arrest rates, the report stated, are reflected in labor market data. The data show Black men age 21 and over have the highest rate of unemployment among all able-bodied adults.

According to the Labor Department, the most recent data show the unemployment rate for Black men was 10.9 percent compared to 4.9 percent for White men. (Black women, too, have nearly double the unemployment rate of White women, 9 percent to 4.8 percent.)

The picture could change in coming years, the report indicated. The decline in crime rates plus the Great Recession appear to be forcing the debt-ridden federal government and cash-strapped states to re-examine costly prison policies, the report noted.

Now the federal government and states are looking for ways to reduce prison costs by promoting diversion programs, potentially leading to lower incarceration rates down the road. Still, the impact of those policies will continue to be felt for years on the success rates for Black children and adults, the report concluding.