Black News: Elliot Millner Speaks on Gilbert Arenas Gun Charges

Elliot Millner, Legal Advisor for the YBW Coalition, had this to say about the gun charges for NBA Star, Gilbert Arenas:

“It is still very early in the criminal investigation of Gilbert Arenas, and many facts are still unclear, however Arenas could be in some trouble. First, Arenas has prior gun-related charges, having plead no contest to a misdemeanor charge of illegally possessing a concealed weapon while in California in 2003. Also, Arenas not only has D.C. authorities to answer to, but possibly Virginia police as well, given that he transported his guns from Virginia into D.C. It has been mentioned that Arenas may not have had proper registration for the guns in question, and also may have lacked a concealed weapons permit. Virginia accepts concealed weapons permits from certain other states, so that could work in Arenas favor if he had a concealed license permit from another state. In addition, even in regards to registered guns, D.C. prohibits guns deemed to be particularly "unsafe", so if any of Arenas' guns fall in that category, it could lead to other charges. It has been reported that all of Arenas' handguns were unloaded, however we do not know if Arenas stored any bullets in his locker also, which could lead to more charges. Some commentators have discussed the idea of Arenas being charged with assault with a deadly weapon, however given the statements made by most who observed the incidents in question, I see that as highly unlikely. The act of Arenas removing the guns from the locker and placing them out in the open (even if unloaded) could be problematic for him as well.

Ultimately, we will know more about what charges Arenas may face in the next few weeks. It is a sad and ridiculous situation, that was completely avoidable with even a little bit of forethought."

KKK Member Fired from Sheriff’s Office

An Alachua County Sheriff's Office corrections officer who admitted to being an active member of the Ku Klux Klan has been fired.

According to an administrative investigation report, Detention Officer Wayne Kerschner told authorities that he blogged regularly on a KKK Web site, attended a rally in Tennessee and was an officer of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He said his wife was also a dues-paying member.

 

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Black News: Media Matters Talks about the Heather Ellis Case

Racial injustice rears its ugly head again, this time in rural Missouri, where heavy-handed prosecutor Stephen Sokoloff is threatening to impose a lengthy prison sentence on a woman after an altercation at a local Wal-Mart almost three years ago.

In January 2007, 20-year-old Heather Ellis, then a student at Xavier University, and her cousin David went to a Wal-Mart in Kennett, Missouri, near the Tennessee border, in an area commonly known as the Missouri Bootheel.  Kennett, in rural and conservative Dunklin County, which boasts that it seceded from the Union during the Civil War, is overwhelmingly white.

At the check-out line, the pair split up in order to find the shortest line.  When Ellis left her line to join her cousin at a shorter line, customers complained and a store employee accused her of cutting, at which point an argument ensued and a manager notified a security guard, an off-duty Kennett Police officer.  The situation escalated from there:

In the Ellis version, she was shoved by another customer, had her items pushed aside by the clerk and then was short-changed when she finally was checked out. The police affidavit contends, at numerous times, Ellis became belligerent, loud, abusive and cursing when she was told to leave by the store's assistant manager. Summoned by a frantic phone call from her son, as the pair walked out to the parking lot, [Ellis' aunt] Blackmon says she arrived in time to witness her niece being brutalized by police during attempts to place her in a squad car.

[...]

Ellis was charged with disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a police officer. Yet, curiously after being described in the police affidavit as "completely out of control" during her arrest, she was released to the custody of her parents to receive medical attention only 45 minutes after being jailed. However, her arrest triggered a whole series of problems. Although she returned to school in Louisiana, two months later, an attorney hired by the family tried to talk Heather into taking a plea deal offered by powerful Dunklin County Prosecutor, Stephen Sokoloff.

 

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Your Black News: 15 Years in Prison for Cutting Line – Pretrial Has Begun

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Heather Ellis is a college student facing15 years in prison for cutting line at Walmart - visit www.SaveHeatherEllis.com for more details on the national protest to be held in Kennett, MO on November 14.

According to the family, the prosecutor in the case, Stephen Sokoloff, has asked for the trial to be moved to Bloomfield, MO, a town with less than 20 African Americans in it.

Dr Boyce Watkins and Rev. Al Sharpton are planning a march in Kennett to support Heather Ellis.

The Rapper Diddy Weighs in to Support Howard University Student Protests

Diddy has tweeted his way into the fold of the protests going on with students at Howard University regarding problems in delayed financial aid.  Here is a sample of what he has released:

 "NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!!! Let me know if yall need me to come down there yall! I got yall BACK! Let's go!!!"
And just to be clear he's not encouraging violence, Diddy then wrote, "Do what we did and take IT OVER!!!! Let's go! And do it in a peaceful way but DO IT!! ... If your at HU go to the A building now and make sure they feel you!!! And send me updates!!! Let's go!"

COLLEGE STAR SHARES MORE THAN SPOTLIGHT

You might remember Mississippi State forward Jarvis Varnado from such films as "Mississippi State made a major leap in 2008, staring Jarvis Varnado," and "I will block that shot against the backboard and scream in your face," presented by Jarvis Varnado." The last time you saw the talented Mr. Varnado, he was leading the Mississippi State Bulldogs to the SEC tournament title and an NCAA appearance. Varnado has led the nation in blocked shots two years in a row. He's an awfully good player.

And now, he's a walk-on.

The Clarion-Ledger's Kyle Veazey has the scoop (thanks to Truth About It for the Twitter tip, by the way). When Bulldogs coach Rick Stansbury signed John Riek and the still-under-investigation Renardo Sidney, he signed his 13th and 14th players scholarship players. Unfortunately, there are only 13 scholarships available. Most coaches would probably just run a player off, but after mulling it over, Stansbury and the Varnado family came up with a mutual -- and pretty selfless -- solution. Varnado's father explains:

Technorati Tags: black,college,athletes,mississippi

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Falsely Accused Texans Wait for Reparations

By theGrio

About 40 former Texas inmates cleared by DNA evidence are looking forward to a big payday on September 1st.

Texas leads the nation in DNA exonerations. According to The Innocence Project - a legal organization that handles these cases - 241 prisoners have been cleared nationwide in the past 20 years. Thirty-eight were convicted in Texas. Now, the state is trying to make up for their lost time.

The last time Jerry Evans was in a courtroom was 23 years ago when a jury sentenced him to life in prison for sexual assault. But this summer DNA evidence cleared him.

"Had these test results been available at the time of the trial, you would not have been convicted in this case," the judge said at his exoneration hearing.

Evans walked out of prison a free man - cleared of any wrongdoing.

"Now that I look back at it," said Evans, "I wonder now how in the hell I did 23 years in prison."

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Anti-Gay Violence Rises in Black Communities

By Kenyon Farrow

 

The recent shootings in a Tel-Aviv LGBT center that left 2 dead and 15 injured understandably shocked the world. Though incidents in the black community usually receive little or no attention, we have our own problems with homophobic violence here in the U.S.

On July 26th in New Orleans, a 21 year-old born with the name Eric Lee, who dressed in women's clothing and went by the name "Beyonce" was found dead of multiple stab wounds in his apartment. According to The Advocate.com, Lee had been arguing with the three young women who were later arrested and charged with his murder.

With the exception of the accused being women, this story is all too familiar. According to the most recent report for the Anti-Violence Project, while bias violence against LGBT people increased only 2% from 2007-2008, the number of murders jumped 28% over the same period and were at their highest level since 1999.

Of all reported bias violence, 20% were people of African descent. According to the Gay & Lesbian Straight Education Network report one-third of all African-American LGBT students surveyed experienced some form of physical violence in school due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and were the among the least likely of all students of color to report incidents to parents or other school authorities.

Black LGBT children also learn at an early age that to be queer can be mean violence, even if you have a supportive family, which I was lucky to have. But a protective family may not help you in the outside world.

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Man Details Alleged Police Brutality

 

CHICAGO (CBS) ― New allegations of brutality by Chicago police have surfaced. In his

lawsuit, one man claims he was beaten during a traffic stop.

As CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports, the suit names two officers and implicates several others.
"I thought I was gonna die because I couldn't breathe," said alleged police beating victim Curtis Mason Jr.
Blood vessels were broken in an eye and his wrists were allegedly cut by tight handcuffs.

Mason says the injuries he captured with photographs were caused by Chicago police.
"In the beginning, that's what I asked them, 'why am I being arrested' and from that point, it turned into, 'why are you continually hitting me?'" he said.

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Search Warrant Looking for evidence of Drug Addiction in Michael Jackson Case

Search warrants filed Thursday in court in Clark County, Nevada, and carried out at properties of Michael Jackson's doctor imply that investigators looking into his death believe the singer was a drug addict.

The warrants, signed by District Judge Timothy Williams and given to CNN by Las Vegas affiliate KTNV, say "there is probable cause to believe" that searches would uncover evidence at the Las Vegas home and office of Dr. Conrad Murray of excessive prescribing, prescribing to an addict, excess treatment or prescribing, unprofessional conduct, prescribing to or treating an addict and manslaughter.

They cite "probable cause to believe" that the premises contained "records, shipping orders, distribution lists, use records relating to the purchase, transfer ordering, delivery and storage of propofol (Diprivan)."

A source told CNN on Monday that the Texas-based cardiologist allegedly gave Jackson the anesthetic propofol -- commonly known by the brand name Diprivan -- in the 24 hours before he died.

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Man Charged Having Sex With Horse

 

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A South Carolina man was charged with having sex with a horse after the animal's owner caught the act on videotape, then staked out the stable and caught him at shotgun point, authorities said Wednesday.

But this wasn't the first time Rodell Vereen has been charged with buggery. He pleaded guilty last year to having sex with the same horse after owner Barbara Kenley found him in the same stable and was sentenced to probation and placed on the state's sex offender list.

Kenley said she noticed several weeks ago her 21-year-old horse Sugar was acting strange and getting infections again. She noticed things in the barn had been moved around - dirt piled up and bales of hay stacked near the horse's stall at her Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.

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What Needs to be Done to End Racial Profiling

In one week, President Obama covered the waterfront on racial politics. Although, in his address to the delegates at the NAACP's Centennial he said, "an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a jail," he also used the same "personal responsibility" rhetoric as he has every time he has spoken to African American audiences as candidate and president. Just days later, he would answer a question at a prime time press conference regarding the arrest of African American Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that would place him in the middle of the debate on racial profiling.

"Personal responsibility," a Republican vocabulary word born in the Reagan era, plays politically well among moderate and conservative Whites, and even among some White liberals who, unfortunately, have a hard time distinguishing reality from the right-wing noise machine. The "personal responsibility" argument suggests that there is some inherent pathology within African Americans that is disabling. "Personal responsibility" is the modern day replacement for the antebellum term that endured through the middle of the 20th century -- "shiftlessness."

Today, Republicans argue "personal responsibility/shiftlessness" most frequently with the statistic that 70% of African American children are born to single mothers. But according to the Institute for Policy Studies, "the increase in the share of White children living in a single parent home has been much higher (229%) than for Black children (155%) since 1960." Yet Whites are never accused of lacking personal responsibility or preached to about the subject. And sometimes we Democrats, Lefties and Progressives are too quick to repeat what the Right has popularly propagandized without a careful analysis of this rhetoric's roots.

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Gates Charges are Dropped

 

Prosecutors dropped a disorderly conduct charge Tuesday against prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested at his home near Harvard University after a report of a break-in.

The city of Cambridge issued a statement saying the arrest "was regrettable and unfortunate" and police and Gates agreed that dropping the charge was a just resolution.

"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department," the statement said.

Supporters say Gates -- the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research -- was the victim of racial profiling.

Officers responded to the home Gates rents from Harvard after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry," according to a police report.

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