Tag Archives: charleston

Here’s What Appears to Be Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto

by MadeleiFerraro Posted on June 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A more than 2,000-word manifesto that appears to have been authored by Dylann Roof, the suspected shooter in Wednesday’s church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, emerged Saturday morning. If confirmed to be authentic, the website, which also contains a trove of disturbing images, will no doubt become key evidence for law enforcement officials, who are investigating whether the murders of nine congregants at Emanuel AME church will prove to have been a hate crime or an act of domestic terrorism. (Text of the manifesto appears below.)

The writing, posted on a crudely designed website called “The Last Rhodesian,” makes specific reference to a motive for attacking in Charleston: “I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.”

There is other racially tinged material. “The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case,” the writing says. “It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.”

The metadata embedded in the photos indicates that they were created from August 2014 up to the day of the shooting, June 17, 2015. Several show him posing with a handgun or a Confederate flag, or both, and one shows a picture of the gun placed next to seven bullets. Another photo depicts Roof burning an American flag.

The site concludes with a subheading, “An Explanation,” that in part reads: “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

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Last Rhodesian Manifesto (PDF)

Last Rhodesian Manifesto (Text)

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Here’s What Appears to Be Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What Appears to Be Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto

Murdered State Senator Clementa Pinckney Made This Haunting Speech About Walter Scott

by MichellSauer Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the victims of Wednesday’s horrific shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was state Senator Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor. Much has already been written about Pinckney’s dedication to public service from a young age, and his rich life in the church. My colleagues are updating a full list of the nine victims as more information becomes available. In the meantime, here’s another memorable moment from Pinckney’s leadership in the South Carolina Senate.

Back in May, the senator delivered this stirring (and now haunting) call to action following the death of Walter Scott—the unarmed black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer in North Charleston, just six miles north of where Pinckney and others were murdered. Here’s Pinckney on the Senate floor, rallying support for the adoption of police body cameras. Watch and read below:

Transcript:

Today, the nation looks at South Carolina and is looking at us to see if we will rise to be the body, and to be the state that we really say that we are. Over this past week, many of us have seen on the television, have read in newspapers, and have seen all the reports about Walter Scott, who, in my words, was murdered in North Charleston. It has really created a real heartache and a yearning for justice for people, not just in the African American community, but for all people, and not just in the Charleston area, or even in South Carolina, but across our country.

…But the next week, Thomas was there, Jesus walked in, he said, “I won’t believe until I see the nails. I won’t believe until I can put my hand in your side.” And it was only when he was able to do that, he said, “I believe, my Lord and my God.”

Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, when we first heard on the television, that a police officer had gunned down an unarmed African American in North Charleston by the name of Walter Scott, there were some who said, “Wow. The national story has come home to South Carolina.” But there were many who said, “There is no way that a police officer would ever shoot somebody in the back 6, 7, 8, times.” But like Thomas, when we were able to see the video, and we were able to see the gun shots, and when we saw him fall to the ground, and when we saw the police officer come and handcuff him on the ground, without even trying to resuscitate him, without even seeing if he was really alive, without calling an ambulance, without calling for help, and to see him die face down in the ground as if he were gunned down like game, I believe we all were like Thomas, and said, “I believe.”

…We have a great opportunity to allow sunshine into this process. It is my hope that as South Carolina senators, that we will stand up for what is best and good about our state and really adopt this legislation and find a way to have body cameras in South Carolina. Our hearts go out to the Scott family, and our hearts go out to the Slager family, because the Lord teaches us to love all, and we pray that over time, that justice be done.

(Video h/t Michael Adams)

Taken from – 

Murdered State Senator Clementa Pinckney Made This Haunting Speech About Walter Scott

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Even If Walter Scott’s Family Wins in Court, the Cop Won’t Pay a Dime

by glasulmaramuresuluianunturi Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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The family of Walter Scott, the man who died on Saturday after being shot eight times by North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, has decided to sue Slager, the city of North Charleston, and its police department. The civil lawsuit, which will seek damages for wrongful death and civil rights violations, follows murder charges already filed against the now-dismised officer.

Scott’s family is hardly the first to seek civil damages after a police killing. In recent months, relatives of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner have all pursued civil court claims, where success isn’t contingent on a criminal ruling against any police officer. But in the event that the Scott family wins a settlement, it’s highly unlikely that Slager himself will have to pay. As I reported in January:

Instead, taxpayers will shoulder the cost. Between 2006 and 2011, New York City paid out $348 million in settlements or judgments in cases pertaining to civil rights violations by police, according to a UCLA study published in June 2014. Those nearly 7,000 misconduct cases included allegations of excessive use of force, sexual assault, unreasonable searches, and false arrests. More than 99 percent of the payouts came from the city’s municipal budget, which has a line item dedicated to settlements and judgments each year. (The city did require police to pay a tiny fraction of the total damages, with officers personally contributing in less than 1 percent of the cases for a total of $114,000.)

This scenario is typical of police departments across the country, says the study’s author Joanna Schwartz, who analyzed records from 81 law enforcement agencies employing 20 percent of the nation’s approximately 765,000 police officers. (The NYPD, which is responsible for three-quarters of the cases in the study, employs just over 36,000 officers.) Out of the more than $735 million paid out by cities and counties for police misconduct between 2006 and 2011, government budgets paid more than 99 percent. Local laws indemnifying officers from responsibility for such damages vary, but “there is little variation in the outcome,” Schwartz wrote. “Officers almost never pay.”

Schwartz’s study did not include North Charleston or any other law enforcement agency in South Carolina. But if other jurisdictions serve as any indication, Slager likely won’t pay a dime, even if a jury finds him guilty of murdering Scott. Out of the 7,000 cases of police misconduct Schwartz studied, only 700 officers were convicted of a criminal charge. And only 40 officers ever contributed to a civil settlement out of their own pocket.

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Even If Walter Scott’s Family Wins in Court, the Cop Won’t Pay a Dime

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White Police Officer Is South Carolina’s Third Charged in Past Year for Killing an Unarmed Black Man

by DelbertHaskell Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Michael Slager, the North Charleston police officer who on Tuesday was charged with the murder of 50-year-old Walter Scott, is one of at least three white officers in South Carolina over the past year to be charged in the shooting death of an unarmed black man. The South Carolina cases, all of which are ongoing, seem to stand in contrast to proceedings around recent high-profile killings by police in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, and Cleveland, including the swift reaction by authorities in North Charleston to harrowing footage of Scott’s killing that surfaced Tuesday. “I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw,” police chief Eddie Driggers told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday, not long after the city’s mayor announced Slager’s firing.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Have to Pay a Dime in Damages


Philadelphia Cops Shoot and Kill People at 6 Times the Rate of the NYPD


Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men


Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill


Hereâ&#128;&#153;s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People

But data shows that the response to Slager’s case is a rare exception. Between 2010 and 2014, according to Columbia, South Carolina’s the State newspaper, at least 209 suspects were shot at by police in South Carolina, including 79 people who died. In only three of the 209 cases were officers investigated for misuse of force, and none have been convicted. Among the suspects killed, 34 were black and 41 were white (in four cases the suspect’s race is unclear), and about half of all suspects shot were black, according to the data gathered by the State.

This mirrors what we know about the national landscape, although data on officer-involved shootings is far from comprehensive and broad patterns are difficult to discern. As Mother Jones has reported previously, officer-involved killings seldom lead to a charge, let alone a conviction. L. Chris Stewart, an attorney representing the Scott family, told the Los Angeles Times he believed that the video was the only reason Slager is facing charges.

There are key differences between the eyewitness video from Scott’s case in North Charleston and the one that captured Eric Garner’s death in New York, says Delores Jones-Brown, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The video of Scott’s shooting “makes it almost impossible to claim that the victim was resisting arrest with violence,” she says, or to suggest that the victim’s general state of physical health caused his death, as police did in Garner’s case. The video makes clear that Scott was running away when he was gunned down, she says. “So, where is the threat that would justify such a violent police response?”

Here are the two other recent cases in South Carolina:

In what appears to be a coincidence of timing, on Tuesday a grand jury in North Augusta charged police officer Justin Craven for the February 2014 shooting of Earnest Satterwhite Sr., a 68-year-old black man who’d driven away after Craven tried to stop him for a traffic violation. A prosecutor had sought to charge Craven with voluntary manslaughter, but the grand jury reduced the charge to a misdemeanor: firing a gun at an occupied vehicle. According to a report from the Associated Press, Satterwhite had been arrested and convicted multiple times for traffic violations, including DUIs, but he had no record of violence nor physical altercations with police on his criminal record.

In December 2014, a grand jury indicted former Eutawville police chief Richard Combs for murder in the May 2011 shooting death of 54-year-old Bernard Bailey. Combs had issued Bailey’s daughter a traffic ticket, and when Bailey went to the town hall to contest it, he and Combs got into a physical altercation. Combs shot Bailey twice in the chest. The US Justice Department cleared Combs of criminal wrongdoing in 2013, but last August, after Eutawville agreed to pay a $400,000 wrongful-death settlement to Bailey’s family, a local prosecutor brought the murder case to the grand jury.

Source:  

White Police Officer Is South Carolina’s Third Charged in Past Year for Killing an Unarmed Black Man

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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

by CarriRosado Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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A white police officer in South Carolina was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, after a shocking video emerged showing him fatally shooting an unarmed black man attempting to flee from the scene. The video, which was first published in the New York Times, captures the lethal confrontation between Officer Michael Slager and Walter Scott that quickly ensued during a traffic stop, which included Slager firing eight shots at Scott.

Slager originally told police that Scott had stolen his Taser and attempted to use it against him. This narrative was largely accepted by police authorities, at least according to what they initially told local media. The first report of the fatal encounter reported by the Post and Courier on Saturday ran with the headline, “Man shot and killed by North Charleston police officer after traffic stop; SLED investigating”:

An officer’s gunfire disrupted a hazy Saturday morning and left a man dead on a North Charleston street.

Police in a matter of hours declared the occurrence at the corner of Remount and Craig roads a traffic stop gone wrong, alleging the dead man fought with an officer over his Taser before deadly force was employed.

The officer’s account, witness statements and other evidence gathered from the scene are now the subject of a State Law Enforcement Division investigation to determine whether the shooting, the state’s 11th this year involving a lawmen, was justified.

A statement released by North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him.

That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and attempted to use it against the officer.

The description reads eerily similar to police deaths that occur all around the country. If it had not been for the video’s eventual publication, it’s easy to imagine this being the press’ final narrative of how Scott died. Oftentimes, newspapers struggle to report anything more than what law enforcement agencies tell them.

In the case of the Post and Courier’s first story, the paper’s note that “in a matter of hours” police were quick to label the incident nothing more than a “traffic stop gone wrong” is revealing, as the video that has since surfaced clearly shows a very different account: Slager shoots Scott in the back multiple times; an object that appears to be Slager’s Taser is placed next to Scott’s body as he lays handcuffed on the ground.

It’s unclear when authorities became aware that a video of the incident existed, but on Monday, Slager appeared increasingly defensive. Speaking through an attorney, he doubled down on his actions to the same paper, saying he had “felt threatened” by Scott and needed to “resort to deadly force”:

A North Charleston police officer felt threatened last weekend when the driver he had stopped for a broken brake light tried to overpower him and take his Taser.

That’s why Patrolman 1st Class Michael Thomas Slager, a former Coast Guardsman, fatally shot the man, the officer’s attorney said Monday.

Slager thinks he properly followed all procedures and policies before resorting to deadly force, lawyer David Aylor said in a statement.

Monday’s developments filled in some of the blanks in what was South Carolina’s 11th police shooting of the year.

By Tuesday, the Times and the Post and Courier had obtained a bystander’s footage of the incident and the stories published that day are a direct about-face of the initial account, with both papers leading with news of the officer’s arrest and murder charge. The Post and Courier’s lead below:

A white North Charleston police officer was arrested on a murder charge after a video surfaced Tuesday of the lawman shooting eight times at a 50-year-old black man as the man ran away.

Walter L. Scott, a Coast Guard veteran and father of four, died Saturday after Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, 33, shot him in the back.

Five of the eight bullets hit Scott, his family’s attorney said. Four of those struck his back. One hit an ear.

In just a few days, the account’s drastic evolution in a single newspaper highlights yet again the problems surrounding police reporting—issues that have received national attention following recent events in Ferguson and New York City. Scott’s tragic death underscores the power video can bring to police accountability. As Scott’s family said during an appearance on the Today show Wednesday, this video helped an officer avoid a successful cover-up. “It would have never come to light,” Walter Scott Sr, Scott’s father, said. “They would have swept it under the rug, like they did with many others.”

See the original article here:  

The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

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Leave it to West Virginia to confuse its students about science

by RicoGwynne Posted on January 5, 2015

Leave it to West Virginia to confuse its students about science

By on 5 Jan 2015commentsShare

The campaign by special interests and right-wing politicians to inject climate skepticism into public school classrooms has gone on for years. In 2014, it hit Texas, Kansas, and Wyoming. Now West Virginia has become the latest science-education battleground.

Members of the state school board were unhappy with the national Next Generation Science Standards, a blueprint for teaching science in schools, even though it had already been watered down on the topic of climate change to the satisfaction of the climate change–denying Heartland Institute.

One board member was concerned about the effect that teaching climate science would have on the coal industry, reports The Charleston Gazette. Another took issue with the science itself: “There was a question in there that said: ‘Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century,’” school board member Wade Linger told the newspaper. “If you have that as a standard, then that presupposes that global temperatures have risen over the past century, and, of course, there’s debate about that.”

No, there’s not. There’s no question that temperatures have risen over the past century. Any “debate” is over why temperatures have risen — and it’s hardly much of a debate, as 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activity is the primary cause.

Well so anyway, because the opinions of the world’s scientists are, cumulatively, worth slightly less than those of Mr. Wade Linger, the board made some changes, detailed here by Ryan Quinn of The Charleston Gazette:

The changes, for example, added “and fall” after “rise” to a proposed standard requiring that sixth-graders “ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.”

The other changes West Virginia Department of Education staff members made in response to Linger’s concerns were:

Original ninthgrade science requirement: “Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.”
Adopted version: “Analyze geoscience data and the predictions made by computer climate models to assess their creditability [sic] for predicting future impacts on the Earth System.”
Original high school elective Environmental Science requirement: “Debate climate changes as it [sic] relates to greenhouse gases, human changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and relevant laws and treaties.”
Adopted version: “Debate climate changes as it relates to natural forces such as Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse gases, human changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and relevant laws and treaties.”

Milankovitch cycles are long-term changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun, and some who do not believe in man-made global warming use that theory as the basis of their assertion that the Earth is simply in a natural warming period.

Never a good sign when a newspaper has to insert “sic” more than once into a state’s teaching requirements.

The school board’s break with mainstream science is concerning to education advocates and many parents. One nonprofit, Climate Parents, will petition the school board to throw out its inaccurate changes before they’re implemented in 2016.

Source:
Climate change learning standards for W.Va. students altered

, The Charleston Gazette.

Climate groups oppose changes to W.Va. science standards

, The Charleston Gazette.

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Leave it to West Virginia to confuse its students about science

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Another day, another river ruined by a big coal-industry spill

by ColinEllzey Posted on February 13, 2014

Another day, another river ruined by a big coal-industry spill

By

Appalachian Voices

The coal power industry has dumped a lot of toxic crap into yet another river. This latest incident is not to be confused with the spill of toxic coal-cleaning chemicals that poisoned a West Virginia river last month and left 300,000 people without drinking water. Nor is it to be confused with a huge coal-ash spill from a retired power plant in North Carolina earlier this month.

No, this is a whole new spill.

Patriot Coal accidentally let more than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry loose from a coal processing facility in West Virginia. Six miles of Fields Creek, which flows into the Kanawha River, was blackened by the slurry spill. The slurry contained fine particles of processed coal, which includes heavy metals, and coal-cleaning chemicals.

“When this much coal slurry goes into the stream, it wipes the stream out,” said Randy Huffman, head of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). “This has had significant, adverse environmental impact to Fields Creek and an unknown amount of impact to the Kanawha River.” But officials say drinking water has not been affected, at least not yet. 

The nonprofit Appalachian Voices has conducted tests of the affected area: “The water in the creek was extremely turbid and was a dark grey, almost black color. Significant sediment had already built up on the banks,” the group reports.

The Charleston Gazette has the disturbing tale of what went wrong this time:

The spill was caused by a malfunction of a valve inside the slurry line, carrying material from the preparation plant to a separate disposal site … according to DEP officials.

The valve broke sometime between 2:30 and 5:30 early Tuesday morning, Huffman said at a news conference Tuesday evening. Patriot Coal did not call the DEP to alert them of the leak until 7:40 Tuesday morning, Huffman said. Companies are required to immediately report any spills to the DEP.

There was an alarm system in place to alert facility operators of the broken valve, but the alarm failed, so pumps continued to send the toxic slurry through the system. There was a secondary containment wall around the valve, but with the pumps continuing to send slurry to the broken valve, it was soon overwhelmed and the slurry overflowed the wall and made its way to the creek. …

“Had the alarms gone off and warned the operator that the pipe was leaking, the shutdown could have been done in time for the secondary containment to contain the material that leaked,” Huffman said.

Neighbors of Patriot Coal’s processing facility in Kanawha County have been seeing a lot of coal slurry in recent years. Smaller such spills occurred from the same Kanawha Eagle facility in November of 2013, leading to a $663 fine, and in 2010, which resulted in a $22,400 fine.

The recent rash of river-spoiling accidents is awful, but, hey, at least the companies that are ruining our environment have all-American names — like Patriot Coal and Freedom Industries.

Here’s video of the latest spill from Appalachian Voices:


Source
‘Significant’ slurry spill blackens Kanawha creek, The Charleston Gazette
BREAKING: Another Coal-Related Spill Reported In West Virginia, Appalachian Voices

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Another day, another river ruined by a big coal-industry spill

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West Virginia caught unprepared for contamination of water supply, despite warnings

by Laura Posted on January 13, 2014

West Virginia caught unprepared for contamination of water supply, despite warnings

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West Virginia officials knew that a supplier to the coal industry was storing a toxic chemical near the Elk River that had the potential, if it leaked, to poison the water supplies of hundreds of thousands of people.

Last week, it did just that. The chemical leaked from one of Freedom Industries’ tanks into the river, triggering an emergency and urgent warnings that residents and businesses should avoid using tap water.

So why are state officials now scratching their heads and sounding surprised about the disaster? Here’s some excellent reporting from the Charleston Saturday Gazette-Mail, asking why there was no plan in place for dealing with such an emergency:

Last February, Freedom Industries sent state officials a form telling them the company stored thousands of pounds of a coal-cleaning chemical called 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol in the storage tanks at its Etowah River Terminal. …

Freedom Industries filed its “Tier 2″ form under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act. State emergency response officials got a copy. So did emergency planners and responders from Kanawha County.

Under the law, government officials are supposed to use chemical inventory information on Tier 2 forms, like Freedom Industries’, to prepare for potential accidents. …

Now, all manner of federal, state and local agencies are rushing to truck in water and otherwise see to residents’ needs, following Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s declaration of a “state of emergency” and President Obama’s order to provide federal assistance.

Those same agencies and public officials, though, have said they know little about the chemical involved. They’re all acting a bit surprised that this mystery substance was being stockpiled so close to a crucial water intake, and shocked that something like this could have happened.

More than 100 people have fallen ill from the poisoned water. The federal government has distributed more than 350,000 gallons of bottled water to residents in the area. (Now that’s an appropriate use for bottled water.)

Here’s the latest on the whole mess from Bloomberg:

Residents face a fifth day without drinking water as state and water authority officials said tests showed contamination levels low enough for it to soon to be safe for consumption. Testing in the last day found levels of the chemical below one part per million at the treatment facility, the cutoff point for officials to begin testing it around the state.

“Things are looking right,” Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, said in a press conference yesterday. “They’re trending in the right direction.”

Local restaurants such as Bluegrass Kitchen and chains and convenience stores were being allowed to reopen after having to shutter because of the contamination. The Kanawha-Charleston Health Department listed a dozen restaurants and more than 150 pharmacies, grocery stores and other food shops that conditionally reopened as of yesterday at 12:30 p.m.

If only some common sense had been on tap in the state’s emergency-planning offices in recent months.


Source
Why wasn’t there a plan?, Saturday Gazette-Mail
West Virginians Face Fifth Day of Water Restrictions, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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West Virginia caught unprepared for contamination of water supply, despite warnings

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Another miner death at a mine linked to Massey Energy

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2012

Another miner death at a mine linked to Massey Energy

By Philip Bump

A miner in West Virginia was killed last night.

From Ken Ward, Jr., at the Charleston Gazette:

The accident occurred at about 1:30 a.m. today at White Buck Coal Co.’s Pocahontas Mine near Rupert. This is a former Massey Energy operation now controlled by Alpha Natural Resources.

According to state officials, the miner was caught between a scoop and the continuous mining machine — a type of accident that is becoming all too common in the coal-mining industry [PDF]. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for the Obama administration to move on two regulatory proposals that would help prevent these sorts of fatal accidents.

State officials have identified the miner who was killed as Steve Odell of Mt. Nebo. He had three years of mining experience and was a certified electricial.

As Ward also notes, the White Buck mine was once run by David Craig Hughart, who this week pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy including one related to violations of health and safety standards.

According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, mining deaths and injuries have dropped dramatically over the years. But then, so has the number of miners. Mining was still one of the most dangerous jobs in America last year.

Coal keeps getting more expensive.

Source

Another W.Va. coal miner dies on the job, Charleston Gazette

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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