THE SAN BERNARDINO
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AMERICAN
“A Man In Debt is So Far A Slave” -R.W. Emerson
NEWSPAPER A Community Newspaper Serving San Bernardino, Riverside & Los Angeles Counties
March 3, 2022 Thursday Edition
Volume 52 No. 46 Mailing: P.O. Box 837, Victorville, CA 92393
Office: (909) 889-7677
Email: Mary @Sb-American.com
Website: www.SB-American.com
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance those of whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Three Former Minnesota Officers Who Watched George Floyd Die are Convicted By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor
Darnella Frazier. What resulted was worldwide attention on police brutality, the general treatment of Black people in the U.S. and a “racial reckoning” that endured conversation and financial pledges of support toward equal rights. In 2021, Chauvin was convicted of murder and sentenced to 22 and a half years behind bars. Former officers Kueng and Lane are seen on the video assisting Chauvin to restrain Floyd after he was handcuffed and placed face down on the pavement on a Minneapolis street.
The prosecution argued that the officers knew that Floyd was in medical trouble and did nothing though they had a duty to intervene. Attorneys for the three officers argued that the three more junior officers trusted Chauvin and were not aware that what he was doing was illegal. The decision on the three officers arrived after 13 hours of deliberation. Their trial was a month long. “The Justice Department will continue to seek accountability for law enforcement officers whose
actions, or failure to act, violate their constitutional duty to protect the civil rights of our citizens,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Feb. 24. “George Floyd should be alive today,” he added. Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist and the host of the podcast BURKEFILE. She is a political analyst who appears regularly on #RolandMartinUnfiltered. She may be contacted at L B u r ke 0 0 7@ g m a i l .c o m and on twitter at @LVBurke
“Ashamed”: Newspapers Apologize for Decades of Negative Coverage on Black Communities By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor
The review of the historical coverage of Blacks by many large newspapers also highlights the lack of diversity that continues to persist even in newsrooms in cities with large Black populations. In a stark reminder of the importance of the Black Press established in the U.S. in 1827 by Sam Cornish and John Russwurm, American papers are beginning to analyze their coverage of African Americans. In at least two instances that historical analysis by the newspapers themselves has been followed by an apology. The papers in the predominantly Black cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia and Kansas City studied and confronted decades of negative news coverage on Black communities.
The efforts also highlight the lack of diversity that continues to persist even in newsrooms in cities with large Black populations. The Kansas City Star, established in 1880, issued an apology to their readership for what they admitted was consistently negative coverage of the local Black community. The Star’s apology, published in Dec. 2020, entitled The Truth in Black and White; An Apology From the KC Star, stated, “Our reporters searched court documents, archival collections, cong ressional testimony,
Clifton Harris
The LA Police Commission Meets Regarding Pretexting By Police For Car Stops By Clifton Harris
A jury convicted Tou Thao, 36; Alex Kueng, 28; and Thomas Lane, 38 of violating the constitutional rights of George Floyd. On February 24 in a St. Paul, Minneapolis federal courthouse, a jury convicted Tou Thao, 36; Alex Kueng, 28; and Thomas Lane, 38 of violating the constitutional rights of George Floyd. This case is likely the first time in history that a federal court has charged police officers for failing to intervene when witnessing police brutality by another officer. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s killing was captured on video by a teenage bystander,
Editorial Highlights from the desk of
minutes of meetings and digital databases… Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found — decades of coverage that depicted Black Kansas Citians as criminals living in a crime-laden world. They felt shame at what was missing: the achievements, aspirations and milestones of an entire population routinely overlooked, as if Black people were invisible.” The Star went on to verify that Black news in the community was consistently underplayed and ignored. Their apology, which arrived months after the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd, was part of the effort around the country resulting from Floyd’s death that galvanized discussions on race in America. On February 18 of this year, the Baltimore Sun did the same as the Kansas City Star. “The Baltimore Sun frequently employed prejudice as a tool of the times. It fed the fear and anxiety of white readers with stereotypes and caricatures that reinforced their erroneous beliefs about Black Americans. Through its news
coverage and editorial opinions, The Sun sharpened, preserved and furthered the structural racism that still subjugates Black Marylanders in our communities today,” the Sun editorial board bluntly stated. “A f r i c a n Americans systematically have been denied equal opportunity and access in every sector of life — including health care, employment, education, housing, personal wealth, the justice system and civic participation. They have been refused the freedom to simply be, without the weight of oppression on their backs,” the Baltimore Sun editorial Board continued, adding that they were “ashamed” of past coverage of the Black Community. The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article by Wesley Lowery analyzing the Philadelphia Inquirer’s history on race and the newsroom’s lack of diversity. “Mentions of Black Philadelphia appeared in the white papers primarily through the lens of crime. To read The Inquirer then would leave one wondering if continued on page 3
The Los Angeles Police Department defines a pretextual stop as one in which officers conducting a minor traffic or code violation escalate it into an investigation of a more serious crime unrelated to the initial violation. According to the Office of the Inspector General, there were "pretty substantial racial disparities" in stops, many of which were pretextual stops, conducted by the department in 2019, and "a fairly small number of them yielded evidence of serious crimes or ended up resulting in any kind of arrests." Those findings led the commission to request that the department update its policy, according to Commission President William Briggs. "Those pretextual stops do not result in guns being taken off the streets, those pretextual stops do not result in curtailing murders and curtailing shootings... there is no data that anyone can point to that establishes that pretextual stops curtail violent crime in our city," said Briggs, adding that data collected for the Racial and Identity Profiling Act "shows just the opposite." Under the updated policy, officers making a pretextual stop will have to articulate on their body-worn video cameras the reason for the change. "A n off icer's t raining, experience and expertise may
be used in articulating the additional information the officers used to initiate the stop," the policy update states. The policy also states that pretextual stops can only happen if officers "are acting upon articulable information" and not a "mere hunch or on generalized characteristics," including race. Failure to articulate the information that prompted the officer to make a pretext stop will result in "progressive discipline beginning with counseling and retraining." The policy adds that discipline will escalate as more violations of the policy are made. City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson joined the police commission meeting and called the policy update a "huge step in the right direction." He noted that public trust in the police is "so easily degraded when a person is stopped and they can't figure out why they were stopped or that the reason they were given just doesn't add up for them." He added, "I don't know of an African American male driver, (and) I know very few Latino male drivers, who don't have half-a-dozen stories about being stopped by police for reasons that didn't make sense." "It's clear to them, or at least leaves the impression, that: `I am a person, I'm an individual in this space and for some reason, this officer has decided that I'm continued on page 7
MISSION STATEMENT Clifton Harris /Editor in Chief Investigative Reporter sbamericannews@gmail.com Mary Martin-Harris / Editor Legal /Display Advertising (909) 889-7677 Clifton B. Harris / Audio Engineering Editor Digital Online Banner Advertising (909) 889-7677 The San Bernardino American News was established May 6, 1969. A legally adjudicated newspaper of general circulation on September 30, 1971, case number 15313 by the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News subscription rate is $59.00 per year. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News is committed to serving its readers by presenting news unbiased and objective, trusting in the mature judgment of the readers and, in so doing, strive to achieve a united community. News releases appearing in the San Bernardino AMERICAN News do not necessarily express the policy nor the opinion of the publishers. The San Bernardino AMERICAN News reserves the right to edit or rewrite all news releases.