July 02, 2020

By Quinci LeGardye 

California Black Media 

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) began administering behind-the-wheel drive tests June 26, after a long suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The DMV will only be accepting previously cancelled test appointments, and will make changes to increase the amount of tests each office can administer each day.

Even with plans to increase testing hours, the DMV still expects it will take several weeks to get through these tests and begin accepting new appointments. DMV Director Steve Gordon said, “I’m asking for everyone’s patience as we safely clear the backlog of behind-the-wheel drive test appointments. For all of those Californians who have been waiting, we know how important this is to you.” 

The DMV initially opened on June 11 to customers who had existing appointments, and for transactions that could only be completed in-person, including paying registration for impounded vehicles, applying for a reduced-fee ID card, or reinstating a suspended or revoked driver’s license. According to the D.M.V. website, new appointments are not currently available. 

There will be new testing protocols for behind-the-wheel drive tests to comply with social distancing. All applicants will have to wear a face mask throughout and answer screening questions before the exam. Temperature checks will also be taken in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, and will expand statewide in the coming weeks. 

The DMV’s test administrators will also give applicants pre-test instructions outside of the vehicle. They will wear face coverings and gloves, and will place plastic covers on the passenger seat and floorboard of each test vehicle. Also, at least two windows will need to be down throughout the test for increased ventilation. 

The DMV has also extended the enforcement date for REAL ID, the state’s enhanced identification card to Oct. 1, 2021, a year later than previously announced. After that, travelers will need a REAL ID to travel through T.S.A. checkpoints and to access federal facilities.

June 18, 2020

By Kate Brumback

Associated Press

Prosecutors brought murder charges Wednesday against the white Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks in the back, saying that Brooks was not a deadly threat and that the officer kicked the wounded black man and offered no medical treatment for over two minutes as he lay dying on the ground.

Brooks, 27, was holding a stun gun he had snatched from officers, and he fired it at them during the clash, but he was running away at the time and was 18 feet, 3 inches from Officer Garrett Rolfe when Rolfe started shooting, District Attorney Paul Howard said in announcing the charges. Stun guns have a range of around 15 feet.

“I got him!” the prosecutor quoted Rolfe as saying.

The felony murder charge against Rolfe, 27, carries life in prison or the death penalty, if prosecutors decide to seek it. He was also charged with 10 other offenses punishable by decades behind bars.

The decision to prosecute came less than five days after the killing outside a Wendy’s restaurant rocked a city — and a nation — already roiled by the death of George Floyd under a police officer’s knee in Minneapolis late last month.

“We’ve concluded at the time that Mr. Brooks was shot that he did not pose an immediate threat of death,” Howard said.

A second officer, Devin Brosnan, 26, stood on Brooks’ shoulder as he struggled for his life, Howard said. Brosnan was charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath.

The district attorney said Brosnan is cooperating with prosecutors and will testify, saying it was the first time in 40 such cases in which an officer had come forward to do so. But an attorney for Brosnan emphatically denied he had agreed to be a prosecution witness and said he was not pleading guilty to anything.

A lawyer for Brooks’ widow cautioned that the charges were no reason to rejoice.

“We shouldn’t have to celebrate as African Americans when we get a piece of justice like today. We shouldn’t have to celebrate and parade when an officer is held accountable,” attorney L. Chris Stewart said.

Brooks’ widow, Tomika Miller, said it was painful to hear the new details of what happened to her husband in his final minutes.

“I felt everything that he felt, just by hearing what he went through, and it hurt. It hurt really bad,” she said.

The news came on a day of rapid developments involving race and equal justice. Republicans on Capitol Hill unveiled a package of police reform measures. And the movement to get rid of Confederate monuments and other racially offensive symbols reached America’s breakfast table, with the maker of Aunt Jemima syrup and pancake mix dropping the 131-year-old brand.

Brooks’ killing Friday night sparked new demonstrations in Georgia’s capital against police brutality after occasionally turbulent protests over Floyd’s death had largely died down. Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned less than 24 hours after Brooks died, and the Wendy’s restaurant was burned.

Rolfe was fired after the shooting, while Brosnan was placed on desk duty.

Ahead of the district attorney’s announcement, Rolfe’s lawyers issued a statement saying the officer feared for his safety and that of others around him and was justified in shooting Brooks. Rolfe opened fire after hearing a sound “like a gunshot and saw a flash in front of him,” apparently from the stun gun.

“Mr. Brooks violently attacked two officers and disarmed one of them. When Mr. Brooks turned and pointed an object at Officer Rolfe, any officer would have reasonably believed that he intended to disarm, disable or seriously injure him,” the lawyers said.

But the district attorney said the stun gun that Brooks held had already been fired twice and was thus empty and no longer a threat.

Brosnan’s lawyer, Amanda Clark Palmer, said the charges against the officer were baseless. She said Brosnan stood on the wounded man’s hand, not his shoulder, for a short period of time — seconds — to make sure Brooks did not have a weapon.

Police had been called to the restaurant over complaints of a car blocking the drive-thru lane. An officer found Brooks asleep behind the wheel, and a breath test showed he was intoxicated.

Police body-camera video showed Brooks and officers having a relatively calm and respectful conversation — “almost jovial,” according to the district attorney — for more than 40 minutes before things rapidly turned violent when officers tried to handcuff him. Brooks wrestled with officers, grabbed one of their stun guns and fired it at one of them as he ran through the parking lot.

An autopsy found he was shot twice in the back. One shot pierced his heart, the district attorney said. At least one bullet went into a vehicle that was in line at the Wendy’s drive-thru.

After Brooks was shot, he was given no medical attention for over two minutes, despite Atlanta police policy that says officers must offer timely help, Howard said.

The district attorney said Rolfe and Brosnan had until 6 p.m. Thursday to surrender. He said he would request $50,000 bond for Brosnan and no bail for Rolfe.

The charges reflect a potential “sea change” in tolerance for violence by police, said Caren Morrison, a Georgia State University law professor who used to be a federal prosecutor.

Morrison said the view until now has generally been that officers are justified in using deadly force in a case in which the suspect had a stun gun or other weapon that could cause “grievous bodily harm.”

Later Wednesday there had been reports that Atlanta police officers were walking off the job or calling in sick in protest of the charges against Rolfe and Brosnan. The APD said in a Tweet that it is experiencing a higher than usual number of officers calling out for their shifts but that, “We have enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents.”

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on CNN that many of the department’s partners had been notified just in case they needed to call others in but that “we are fine” (tonight) and that the true test would be on Thursday.

“If we have officers that don’t want bad officers weeded out the force then that’s another conversation we need to have,” Bottoms said.

In the Minneapolis case, Derek Chauvin, the officer who put his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes, has been charged with murder. Three other officers have been charged with aiding and abetting. All four were fired and could get up to 40 years in prison.

In Washington, meanwhile, Senate Republicans announced the most ambitious GOP police-reform package in years, including an enhanced use-of-force database, restrictions on chokeholds and new commissions to study law enforcement and race.

The bill is not as sweeping as a Democratic proposal set for a House vote next week, but it shows how swiftly the national debate has been transformed since Floyd’s death.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research says more Americans today than five years ago believe police brutality is a very serious problem that too often goes undisciplined and unequally targets black Americans.

July 02, 2020

By Aaron Morrison

Associated Press

Spurred by broad public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold a virtual convention in August to produce a new political agenda that seeks to build on the success of the protests that followed George Floyd’s death.

The 2020 Black National Convention will take place Aug. 28 via a live broadcast. It will feature conversations, performances and other events designed to develop a set of demands ahead of the November general election, according to a Wednesday announcement shared first with The Associated Press.

The convention is being organized by the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 organizations.

In 2016, the coalition released its “Vision for Black Lives” platform, which called for public divestment from mass incarceration and for adoption of policies that can improve conditions in Black America.

“What this convention will do is create a Black liberation agenda that is not a duplication of the Vision for Black Lives, but really is rooted as a set of demands for progress,” said Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project.

At the end of the convention, participants will ratify a revised platform that will serve as a set of demands for the first 100 days of a new presidential administration, Byrd said. Participants also will have access to model state and local legislation.

“What we have the opportunity to do now, as this 50-state rebellion has provided the conditions for change, is to say, ‘You need to take action right this minute,’” Byrd said. “We’re going to set the benchmarks for what we believe progress is and make those known locally and federally.”

Wednesday’s announcement comes at a pivotal moment for the BLM movement. A surge in public support, an influx in donations and congressional action to reform policing have drawn some backlash.

President Donald Trump lashed out again Wednesday on Twitter over plans to paint “Black Lives Matter” in yellow across New York City’s famed Fifth Avenue, calling the words a “symbol of hate.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump “agrees that all Black lives matter” but disagrees with an organization that would make derogatory statements about police officers. McEnany was referring to an oft-cited chant of individual protesters from five years ago.

The Black National Convention was originally planned to happen in person, in Detroit, the nation’s Blackest major city. But as the coronavirus pandemic exploded in March, organizers quickly shifted to a virtual event, Byrd said. The first-ever Black Lives Matter convention was held in Cleveland in 2015.

The most recent AP analysis of COVID-19 data shows Black people have made up more than a quarter of reported virus deaths in which the race of the victim is known.

Initial work to shape the new platform will take place Aug. 6 and 7, during a smaller so-called People’s Convention that will virtually convene hundreds of delegates from Black-led advocacy groups. The process will be similar to one that produced the first platform, which included early iterations of the demand to defund police that now drives many demonstrations.

Other platform demands, such as ending cash bail, reducing pretrial detention and scrapping discriminatory risk-assessment tools used in criminal courts, have become official policy in a handful of local criminal justice systems around the U.S.

Full Coverage: Racial injustice

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which organizes in 15 states, said the 2020 Black National Convention will deepen the solutions to systemic racism and create more alignment within the movement.

“We’re in this stage now where we’re getting more specific about how all of this is connected to our local organizing,” Albright said. “The hope is that, when people leave the convention, they leave with greater clarity, more resources, connectivity and energy.”

The coalition behind the convention includes Color of Change, BYP100, Dream Defenders and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which has 16 official chapters nationwide.

Convention organizers said this year’s event will pay tribute to the historic 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, which concluded with the introduction of a national Black agenda. The Gary gathering included prominent Black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Shirley Chisolm, who ran for president, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz.

That convention came after several tumultuous years that included the assassinations of Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and outbreaks of civil unrest, all of which were seen as blows to the civil rights movement.

The upcoming convention builds on more than a century of Black political organizing.

In 1905, civil rights activist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois formed the Niagara Movement after a national conference of Black leaders near Buffalo, New York. In a written address to the country, Du Bois and others decried the rise of institutionalized racial inequality in voting, criminal justice systems and public education.

In the 1950s, William Patterson, founder of the now-defunct Civil Rights Congress, led the effort to charge the U.S. with genocide of African Americans using legal standards set by the United Nation. The resulting petition, “We Charge Genocide,” is an oft-cited document in conversations about fatal shootings of Black people by police in the U.S.

And in 1998, organizers of the Black Radical Congress in Chicago met to strategize ways to beat back attacks on affirmative action policies that helped to diversify higher education and other facets of American life.

Like any large political gathering, consensus is not guaranteed. The National Black Political Convention caused divisions between participating organizations over the Black agenda’s position on busing to integrate public schools and statements on global affairs that some viewed as anti-Israel. Ultimately, the agenda prompted a leader of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, to sever ties with the convention.

Somewhat similarly, the Vision for Black Lives platform and its characterization of Israel as an “apartheid state” committing mass murder against Palestinian people drew allegations of anti-Semitism from a handful of Jewish groups, which had otherwise been supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement’s coalition has more than doubled in size in the years since the first platform, largely because of organizers’ laser focus on issues central to Black freedom, Byrd said.

“That actually is the Black self-determination that our politics require,” Byrd said, “that we don’t just respond to the Democratic Party. That we don’t just respond to the Republican Party. We don’t just say ‘Black lives matter’ and beg people to care. We build an alternative container for all of us to connect, outside of the white gaze, to say this is what we want for our communities.”

The August convention will happen on the same day as a commemorative, in-person march on Washington that is being organized by Sharpton, who announced the march during a memorial service for Floyd, a Black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer held a knee to his neck.

The Black National Convention will broadcast after the march, Byrd said.

August “is going to be a huge month of Black engagement,” she said.

June 18, 2020

By Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro and Zeke Miller

Associated Press

Following weeks of national protests since the death of George Floyd, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that he said would encourage better police practices. But he made no mention of the roiling national debate over racism spawned by police killings of Black men and women.

Trump met privately with the families of several Black Americans killed in interactions with police before his Rose Garden signing ceremony and said he grieved for the lives lost and families devastated.

But then he quickly shifted his tone and devoted most of his public remarks to a need to respect and support ``the brave men and women in blue who police our streets and keep us safe.''

He characterized the officers who have used excessive force as a “tiny” number of outliers among “trustworthy” police ranks.

“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” he said before signing the order, flanked by police officials.

Trump and Republicans in Congress have been rushing to respond to the mass demonstrations against police brutality and racial prejudice that have raged for weeks across the country in response to the deaths of Floyd and other Black Americans. It's a sudden shift that underscores how quickly the protests have changed the political conversation and pressured Washington to act.

But Trump, who has faced criticism for failing to acknowledge systemic racial bias and has advocated for rougher police treatment of suspects in the past, has continued to hold his “law and order.” line. At the signing event, he railed against those who committed violence during the largely peaceful protests while hailing the vast majority of officers as selfless public servants.

Trump's executive order would establish a database that tracks police officers with excessive use-of-force complaints in their records. Many officers who wind up involved in fatal incidents have long complaint histories, including Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with murder in the death of Floyd. Those records are often not made public, making it difficult to know if an officer has such a history.

The order would also give police departments a financial incentive to adopt best practices and encourage co-responder programs, in which social workers join police when they respond to nonviolent calls involving mental health, addiction and homeless issues.

Trump said that, as part of the order, the use of chokeholds, which have become a symbol of police brutality, would be banned ``except if an officer's life is at risk.`` Actually, the order instructs the Justice Department to push local police departments to be certified by a “reputable independent credentialing body” with use-of-force policies that prohibit the use of chokeholds, except when the use of deadly force is allowed by law. Chokeholds are already largely banned in police departments nationwide.

While Trump hailed his efforts as “historic,” Democrats and other critics said he didn't go nearly far enough.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “One modest inadequate executive order will not make up for his decades of inflammatory rhetoric and his recent policies designed to roll back the progress that we've made in previous years.”

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the order “falls sadly and seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice and police brutality that is murdering hundreds of Black Americans.”

Kristina Roth at Amnesty International USA said the order “amounts to a Band-Aid for a bullet wound.”

But Trump said others want to go to far. He, framed his plan as an alternative to the “defund the police” movement to fully revamp departments that has emerged from the protests and which he slammed as “radical and dangerous.”

“Americans know the truth: Without police there is chaos. Without law there is anarchy and without safety there is catastrophe,” he said.

Trump's audience included police officials and members of Congress, and came after he met privately at the White House with the families of men and women who have been killed in interactions with police.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that many tears were shed at the meeting and ``the president was devastated.'' Trump listed the families' relatives who died and said: “To all the hurting families, I want you to know that all Americans mourn by your side. Your loved ones will not have died in vain.”

White House adviser Ja'Ron Smith said it was “a mutual decision” for the families not to attend the public signing. “It really wasn't about doing a photo opportunity,” he said. “We wanted the opportunity to really hear from the families and protect them. I mean I think it's really unfortunate that some civil rights groups have even attacked them for coming.”

The White House action came as Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been rolling out their own packages of policing changes. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the sole African American Republican in the Senate, has been crafting the GOP legislative package, which will include new restrictions on police chokeholds and greater use of police body cameras, among other provisions.

While the emerging GOP package isn't as extensive as sweeping Democratic proposals, which are headed for a House vote next week, it includes perhaps the most far-reaching proposed changes ever from a party that often echoes Trump's “law and order” rhetoric.

It remains unclear whether the parties will be able to find common ground. Though their proposals share many similar provisions – both would create a national database so officers cannot transfer from one department to another without public oversight of their records, for instance – differences remain.

The Republican bill does not go as far as the Democrats' on the issue of eliminating qualified immunity, which would allow those injured by law enforcement personnel to sue for damages. The White House has said that is a step too far. As an alternative, Scott has suggested a “decertification” process for officers involved in misconduct.

During the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder opened a series of civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices that often ended with court-approved consent decrees that mandated reforms. Those included Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown and Baltimore following the police custody death of Freddie Gray.

Hours before he resigned as Trump's first attorney general in November 2018, Jeff Sessions signed a memo that sharply curtailed the use of consent decrees.