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Newso the case with m 206:00 EST, Calif. ent a good his parents physi Kevin Cooper. reasonable q allegations of evidenbased on conflicti stayand at 9:00 p.m. reco hisends v juvenile det o er m ex re (AP) – Offi n in u p D ca ’s g ce es sc g ar N ll d te ti ie af t ta y ec A o n st o te m n ab ti isio igators used testing com r beinzoom s out the pering, kee fic evidence canyoplay c games, down n road g struck a mental h ention centers. Inf adolescence living used him at to nail Coab methods an p raising California in Souswim, es early inn to allow anothParticipants . by a polic th in ea er er ta 1 o 9 n ck lt p d G se 8 ro the water slides, and launch of the diving boards. Spin th er h C 2 , stories inves o veral . 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We are located at 1325 Q Street. front g y d ear-o dw McGuire sa the rosecu ed D ensure just uring the ca to arneighbor C that DNA tions’ claim ys groups ice is servisedre mpaign. “N hristopherld daughter Jessica ifane Doug and Peggy belonging toiana Roper came foprw when hof th ev e Admission $4 per person or $13 for 4. an id en im e s, ce al g ,” b o a her former ot nly is it Hughes. Po can d was bigger ut testing in tBring womd with bloo t to chec boyfriend ar a Swimsuit and a Towel. For more information than a hououcall lice foundan 11-year-old inal. She turned proven Anim this case whoelp law enforcemoen dy clothin al C w se cat. o th the bloodie E h n o d t g e u v tr es so w ld en ev o to tr as lv l id co o o th an e a (661)852-7430 or visit www.bakersfieldparks.us y ffi en m cr o ed v ce u an io ce e im d gh it. rs rush at no cost to len imal hospit es over to the is al, wRecreation the state.”, by tr aum police, buttcrim- issubold, he is treadinNgewsom’s decision in African Am the City here it wased&the ble a. of Bakersfield By Tanu Henry they ericans, His carefully on e that Calif the CoSponsored diagnose o per case Dr. Kristi K ornia voters panics and a potentiParks California Black Media watching. ally poDepartment. rause, a vet other mino ac sh ro H e ss e ex la th is ri p ec zi e k er n p ri ts the 11-p eeping hwithout When Coleen Sykes Ray started an organization g bac olitica es liv-number arian, tells Cheshire says in 2017, there were only 35 volunteers is focus stable Conof Thetihigh in California ound (5-kin k into the w th tinpeople ued on on fairnesl sspectrum are with her daughter in 2015 to help homeless women, the who signed up to help count San Joaquin’s homeless housing ilogram) ca page il d af or a permanent address poses a serious problem for an te A d t to r 2 M it ju cGuire visit regains stre stice Stockton, California resident had no idea she, too, would population. In 2019, there were 400 volunteers, which the state as it takes steps to avoid an undercount in the ngth. that if he se ed be homeless four years later. es it again, the bobcat on Fri helped his organization achieve a more accurate count, 2020 Census. h e’ ll is sue a ticket day. Now, she, her husband and two children live in an including the unsheltered homeless population. For African Americans, California’s homelessness crisis for j Extended Stay America hotel in Stockton. The family pays Homelessness is not just a problem for San Joaquin is even more severe. a costly $610 hotel bill every week as they struggle to find county. It’s a statewide issue. Every major city in California “Black Californians make up nearly 7 percent of the a place to live. has been hit by the crisis. Across California, the homeless state’s general population yet are nearly 30 percent of “When you tell landlords you have a Section 8 voucher, population jumped by 16 percent between 2018 to 2019. homeless population,” wrote Mark Ridley-Thomas, a its like saying a dirty word,” says Ray who is African With a total of about 130,000 people without a permanent the INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – An Indiana lawmaker of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, American and works as a Community Outreach Specialist place to live, California has the largest homeless population member who posted nooses under a Facebook story about a black in an open letter to Gov. Newsom in June. Ridley-Thomas for a local public health organization. “It’s heartbreaking in the United States. man pleading guilty to rape is drawing criticism for using Continued on page A8 because we’re good people. I’m working and I’m collegeracist imagery. educated.” Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas, from Seymour, Ray says she gets why landlords refuse to rent their posted a picture of a gallows with two nooses under a properties to her family. Some of them explain that they have been burnt many times by people who pay them with WISH-TV story about Marquise Dozier’s case. vouchers. Other property owners, she says, tell her that it is Lucas says he wanted to punish the man and believes a hassle to have to deal with the Section 8 administration. in capital punishment. Dozier faces up to 72 years in But understanding the landlords’ reluctance – after prison. going great lengths to impress them, only to be rejected in Lucas says he’s previously posted the image under the end - doesn’t make life easier for Ray and her family. stories involving white offenders. Lucas says he isn’t racist They live cramped in a single hotel room, preparing almost and doesn’t believe the photo is. every meal in a microwave, with no sign in sight that they The chair of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus will have a new home soon. blasted the photo. From 2017 to 2019, the number of homeless people in San Joaquin County, where Stockton is the largest Democratic state Rep. Robin Shackleford tells The city and the county seat, tripled, increasing from 567 to Indianapolis Star noose imagery is well-known to be more than 1,500. During that same period in the city of connected to the lynchings of African Americans and the Stockton itself, the homeless population skyrocketed, too, “normalization of racism’’ must end. reaching 921 from 311 people two years prior, according to a 2018 “point-in-time” census report compiled by San Joaquin County. “While we certainly understand that the number of homeless people have tripled in the county, that number might not be a true reflection of what has happened over the last two years,” says Adam Cheshire, Program Administrator for Homeless Initiatives in San Joaquin County.
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Bakersfield
Working, But Still Homeless in California
Bobcat Re “Beach Blast” cove A f er Being H Family FuntNight i Police Car
When will More than $2.7 Billion the State has Invested in Fighting Homelessness and Building Affordable Housing Reach the People who Need It?
Lawmaker Under Fire for Posting Noose Picture
Warren, Sanders Get Personal with Black Christians
(Photo credit:TheHomelessPeriod.com)
Coleen Sykes-Ray Founder and Executive Director of Bags of Hope. (Photo by Jordan Ray)
107 Deadly Force Black Killings Since 2015
Remembering the Victims:
By Antonio Ray Harvey California Black Media Today, Gov. Newsom signed AB 392 into law. The legislation limits when law enforcement can use lethal force in California. In May, less than a week after the Assembly approved the landmark bill that Black Legislative Caucus chair Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) authored, police officers in Walnut Creek, a suburb of Oakland, shot and killed Miles Hall. He was a 23-year-old African-American man. In the police report of the incident, which happened June 2, police officers say Hall threatened his mother before she called them to the scene of the killing. He was reportedly carrying a metal pole. Since Hall’s death, there have been six more policeinvolved shootings in the state. California has one of the highest rates of police shootings in the country. Citing numbers from 2013 to 2017, an advocacy group called Mapping Police Violence, ranked the Bakersfield Police Department the fifth deadliest in the United States. And The Guardian reported that Kern County had the “deadliest police force in the country” in 2015, a ranking determined by the Central Valley county’s high rate of officer-involved shootings per capita that year. According to a Washington Post database tracking police killings of civilians since 2015, there have been a total of 661 police-involved shootings in California over the last 4 years. Of that number, California police officers shot and killed 107 African Americans. Across the country, there have been a total of 4,510 police-involved fatal shootings within that same four-anda-half-year period. Up until Aug 17, 2019, police officers have killed 570 people by deadly force across the country. In California, this year alone, there have been 79 deaths resulting from police officer shootings. Twelve of the those killed were Black Californians. In this report, California Black Media revisits 17 of the most prominent cases of police deadly force involving African American victims in the state since 1998. Tyisha Miller, 19 (Riverside) On Dec. 28, 1998, Tyisha Miller was reportedly unconscious, sitting inside a locked vehicle with a handgun, in full view, in her lap. Police officers, responding to a 911 call from a Unocal 76 station, broke the vehicle’s window in an attempt to reach Miller. Four police officers - two who were on the force for less than a year at the time of the incident - pulled out their
weapons and fired 23 shots. Twelve bullets hit Miller, taking her life. The public later learned that Miller locked her car and fell asleep while the car was idling. She was reportedly waiting for help to fix a flat tire. A friend who was riding with Miller earlier said she had gone back to where they lived to get someone to help them. Over $22 million was spent to settle the case, reports say. The incident prompted then-California Attorney General Bill Lockyer to order reforms to police use-of-force and lethal weapon guidelines. Riverside County’s PressEnterprise reported in Dec. 2014 that the most significant police department changes were described in an agreement known as a “stipulated judgement” brokered between the city of Riverside and Lockyer. “The stipulation became the first of its kind in the county. It was California’s version of federal consent decrees that “mandated changes in departments found to have patterns of discrimination, excessive force or other civil rights violations,” the Press-Enterprise wrote on Dec. 19, 2014.
raised reasonable doubt as to whether it was possible for Rivera to back up the van out of a garage. The judge ruling opened a path for a jury trial in a wrongful death lawsuit expected to begin in November.
Oscar Grant, 22, (Oakland) During the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant, the father of one child, was shot in the back and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle. Before the tragic incident, Grant had been detained on the platform of the Fruitvale BART train station in Oakland. In May, a newly unsealed BART internal report confirmed that Grant’s death was more than likely not an accident and that one of the cops involved lied numerous times about the events leading up to Grant’s death Senate Bill 1421, a California police transparency bill that went into effect this year, made it possible for journalists to make a request for BART’s police report of the incident and release it to the public. SB 1421 is expected to increase accuracy in police reports about the details of officer-involved shootings and cases. On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but not guilty of the murder and voluntary manslaughter charges. He claimed he was reaching for his Taser and not his weapon. Grant’s shooting sparked waves of protests in Oakland and across the country that led to the arrests of more than100 people.
Manuel Loggins, 31 (San Clemente) On Feb. 7, 2012, an Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy shot and killed Manuel Loggins, a U.S. Marine sergeant and married father of three. The officer shot Loggins through the window of his vehicle. According to the police report, Loggins allegedly crashed through a parking lot gate at San Clemente High School while driving his GMC Yukon with his two daughters, then ages 9 and 14, in the car. The officer said he asked Loggins, who was unarmed, to show his hands before he shot him three times. Loggins was reportedly a devout Christian.
James Rivera, 16 (Stockton) James Rivera was shot 38 times by Stockton Police Department officers on July 22, 2010. In 2012, the San Joaquin DA’s office ruled that the deadly use of force was justified, alleging that Rivera was driving a stolen van in reverse at high speed, intending to hit the officers. Then in July 2017, a federal judge for the Eastern District of California said in a 12-page ruling that the officers’ testimonies were inconsistent and that the plaintiffs
Shaleem Tindle, 28 (Oakland) On Jan. 3, 2018, Shaleem Tindle was shot three times in the back by a BART officer in West Oakland. Police alleged that he was in a fight with another man and that Tindle was carrying a gun. The Alameda County District Attorney cleared BART Police Officer Joseph Mateu of all charges related to Tindle’s shooting in October 2018. Tindle was reportedly walking to the BART Station with his fiancée, two young children, and his fiancee’s sister when he got into an argument with another man. The two ended up wrestling on the sidewalk outside a barber shop and taqueria. Police say two shots were fired during the tussle. Officer Mateu heard the shots from his position in a BART Station about a block away. He ran toward the scene where he found the men grappling before shooting Tindle.
Kendrec McDade, 19 (Pasadena) On March 24, 2012, two Pasadena police officers shot and killed Kendrec McDade. The cops said they were responding to a robbery report when they encountered the local football star and Pasadena City College student. McDade was unarmed and had no criminal record. Some witnesses said McDade was at the “wrong the place at the wrong time.” A caller, who reported that a backpack and laptop were stolen at gunpoint, later confessed that the reported strong-arm robbery never occurred. He said he made up the story to get a quicker response from police. McDade, who was in the vicinity when police arrived, allegedly ran when he was approached by the police. The cops, then, reportedly began to pursue him. The officers said they feared for their lives after chasing McDade into a dark alley. They claim McDade turned around and ran toward the patrol call and that he reached for a weapon in his pants. The officers shot McDade four times. Continued on page A7
By BILL BARROW Associated Press COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) _ Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren framed their Democratic presidential bids in personal, faith-based terms Saturday before black millennial Christians who could help determine which candidate becomes the leading progressive alternative to former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders, the Vermont senator whose struggles with black voters helped cost him the 2016 nomination, told the Young Leaders Conference assembly that his family history has shaped his approach to President Donald Trump’s divisiveness and the rise in white nationalism in the United States. “I’m Jewish. My family came from Poland. My father’s whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism,’’ Sanders said at the forum led by the Black Church PAC, a political action committee formed by prominent black pastors. “We will go to war against white nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives.’’ Warren, a Massachusetts senator and United Methodist, quoted her favorite Biblical passage, which features Jesus instructing his followers to provide for others, including the “least of these my brethren.’’ “That’s about two things,’’ Warren said. “Every single one of us has the Lord within us. .... Secondly, the Lord does not call on us to sit back. The Lord does not just call on us to have a good heart. The Lord calls on us to act.’’ Sanders and Warren are looking for ways to narrow the gap with Biden, who remains atop primary polls partly because of his standing with older black voters. Polls suggest that younger black voters, however, are far more divided in their support among the many Democratic candidates. Both senators connected their biblical interpretations to their calls for major changes in how government approaches everything from economic regulation and taxation to criminal justice and health care. “This is a righteous fight,’’ Warren said, who noted that she’s taught “fifth-grade Sunday School.’’ Sanders, while not quoting Scripture as did Warren, declared that “the Bible, if it is about anything, is about justice.’’ His campaign, he said, is about “not just defeating the most dangerous president in modern American history. We are about transforming this nation to make it work for all of us.’’ Black Church PAC leaders described the forums as a way for presidential candidates to reach a slice of the electorate that is often glossed over, even given the emphasis Democrats place on reaching black voters. “Anybody who’s not talking to every community, particularly within the African American community, you’re running a fool’s race,’’ said the Rev. Leah Daughtry, a pastor from Washington, D.C., and member of the Democratic National Committee who co-moderated the forum. Three other 2020 candidates _ Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Obama housing chief Julian Castro and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana – attended the conference on Friday. Mike McBride, a pastor who was Daughtry’s fellow moderator, stressed that the black church and the black community as a whole are not monolithic. Democrats, he said, must reach beyond the traditional Sunday services in places such as South Carolina, the first primary state with a significant black population. “We need candidates to show up on our turf, not always asking us to show up on their turf,’’ he said. Daughtry said all Democratic candidates were invited, and she noted the absence of other leading candidates, including Biden, who is hosting fundraisers in the Northeast this weekend. “He missed an opportunity,’’ she said, to reach “younger black voters who don’t know him like older folks do.’’