Mapping Police Violence
Law enforcement agencies across the country are failing to provide us with even basic information about the lives they take. So we collect the data ourselves.
BLACK PEOPLE KILLED BY POLICE!!! LINKS TO THREADS INSIDE.
- Thread starter Lexx Diamond
- Start date
Police Misconduct Costs Cities Millions Every Year. But That’s Where The Accountability Ends.
If not for inconsistent and shoddy record-keeping, we might know if settlements make a difference in police misconduct.
I was watching this on the news last night after they had a "meeting of the minds" yesterday with Police, local Black leaders, and U of Wisconsin professors.Police Misconduct Costs Cities Millions Every Year. But That’s Where The Accountability Ends.
If not for inconsistent and shoddy record-keeping, we might know if settlements make a difference in police misconduct.www.themarshallproject.org
The Police have given a lot of lip service over those 10 years but the payouts clearly show that they never do shit about policies, they just pay the attention away.
B, I was watching this shit this morning and was not shocked at all. We ALL know this shit is happening. The sherriff sounded like he did not give one fuck and was part of the gang himself. All they have to do is check these MOFO's for the tat. Why they gotta make shit difficult...sorry dumb question.
From LA shelling out 33 million per year on average also says that muhfucka is lying and the lip service continues.
Fifth Circuit Says Tasing A Person Soaked In Gasoline And Setting Them On Fire Isn't An Unreasonable Use Of Force - Above the Law
Where does 'qualified' end?
abovethelaw.com
Fifth Circuit Says Tasing A Person Soaked In Gasoline And Setting Them On Fire Isn’t An Unreasonable Use Of Force
TECHDIRT FEBRUARY 26, 2021
So, here’s where we’re at in the Fifth Circuit: cops can literally set a person on fire and walk away from it.
Judge Don Willett’s incendiary comments opposing qualified immunity notwithstanding, civil rights litigation still remains a sucker bet in the Fifth Circuit, where cops are granted judicial forgiveness more frequently than they are in any other judicial circuit.
Here’s the latest depressing read from the Appeals Court, which can’t talk itself into removing this shield from officers who tased a suicidal man after he covered himself in gasoline, turning a potential suicide into an actual homicide.
Some cops seem to feel suicide threats should be converted into self-fulfilling prophecies. The cops involved here — all Arlington, Texas police officers — turned a distress call from a family member into the very thing the family members were hoping to prevent. From the opinion [PDF]:
Behold the thin blue line that stands between suicide and threats to burn a house down.
With results like these, it’s a wonder why anyone bothers calling the cops. If the family wanted their father dead and their house burned down, they could have accomplished that by doing nothing. Hell, they might possibly have prevented it. After all, the family had more at stake and would have been more willing to de-escalate. But the cops got involved and the rest is QI history.
The question comes down to what a “reasonable” officer would have done under these circumstances. But the court decides in favor of the less-reasonable officers, despite them being warned against doing this by other, more reasonable officers at the scene.
Upon entering, Officer Guadarrama detected the odor of gasoline. A woman directed the officers to a corner bedroom on the east side of the house. There they found Gabriel Eduardo Olivas (“Olivas&rdquoleaning against a wall and holding a red gas can. After turning his flashlight on Olivas, Officer Elliott allegedly shouted to Sergeant Jefferson and Officer Guadarrama, “If we tase him, he is going to light on fire.”
The court says it doesn’t matter than the man was burned to death as a result of being tased. The only thing that matters is whether or not he deserved to be tased. The court says the dead man earned his tasing. The unfortunate byproduct of his tasing — his death, the family home burning down — can’t be held against the officers who set him on fire.
Under this line of thought, the force deployment was reasonable. That at least one other officer on the scene felt otherwise doesn’t matter.
Even if it could reasonably be foreseen that tasing a man covered in gasoline would result in serious injury or death, it was not unreasonable to tase him because of the threat he posed. That following through on this act turned the threat into a reality apparently has no bearing on the outcome. The only thing that matters is whether it was legally permissible to tase him. Everything else is just noise, according to the Fifth Circuit.
Check out the full opinion here.
Fifth Circuit Says Tasing A Person Soaked In Gasoline And Setting Them On Fire Isn’t An Unreasonable Use Of Force
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Supreme Court Rolls Back Another Horrible Qualified Immunity Decision By The Fifth Circuit
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So, here’s where we’re at in the Fifth Circuit: cops can literally set a person on fire and walk away from it.
Judge Don Willett’s incendiary comments opposing qualified immunity notwithstanding, civil rights litigation still remains a sucker bet in the Fifth Circuit, where cops are granted judicial forgiveness more frequently than they are in any other judicial circuit.
Here’s the latest depressing read from the Appeals Court, which can’t talk itself into removing this shield from officers who tased a suicidal man after he covered himself in gasoline, turning a potential suicide into an actual homicide.
Some cops seem to feel suicide threats should be converted into self-fulfilling prophecies. The cops involved here — all Arlington, Texas police officers — turned a distress call from a family member into the very thing the family members were hoping to prevent. From the opinion [PDF]:
Behold the thin blue line that stands between suicide and threats to burn a house down.
With results like these, it’s a wonder why anyone bothers calling the cops. If the family wanted their father dead and their house burned down, they could have accomplished that by doing nothing. Hell, they might possibly have prevented it. After all, the family had more at stake and would have been more willing to de-escalate. But the cops got involved and the rest is QI history.
The question comes down to what a “reasonable” officer would have done under these circumstances. But the court decides in favor of the less-reasonable officers, despite them being warned against doing this by other, more reasonable officers at the scene.
The court says it doesn’t matter than the man was burned to death as a result of being tased. The only thing that matters is whether or not he deserved to be tased. The court says the dead man earned his tasing. The unfortunate byproduct of his tasing — his death, the family home burning down — can’t be held against the officers who set him on fire.
Under this line of thought, the force deployment was reasonable. That at least one other officer on the scene felt otherwise doesn’t matter.
Even if it could reasonably be foreseen that tasing a man covered in gasoline would result in serious injury or death, it was not unreasonable to tase him because of the threat he posed. That following through on this act turned the threat into a reality apparently has no bearing on the outcome. The only thing that matters is whether it was legally permissible to tase him. Everything else is just noise, according to the Fifth Circuit.
Check out the full opinion here.
Fifth Circuit Says Tasing A Person Soaked In Gasoline And Setting Them On Fire Isn’t An Unreasonable Use Of Force
Already trying to test talking points
www.britannica.com
www.law.cornell.edu
.
Racist Trolls gonna Troll
Ninth Amendment | Definition, Text, & Interpretation
Ninth Amendment, amendment (1791) to the Constitution of the United States, stating that the people retain rights absent specific enumeration. The text of the amendment is: ‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the...
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Tenth Amendment
.
Racist Trolls gonna Troll
Last edited:
Furor in Rochester After Police Pepper-Spray Mother With Toddler
A woman accused of shoplifting was sprayed with a chemical irritant and knocked to the ground in front of her daughter, the latest altercation between the police and Black residents.
A woman accused of shop lifting was pepper sprayed and tackled in front of her 3-year-old daughter by a police officer in Rochester, N.Y.Credit...Rochester New York Police Department, via Associated Press
By Sarah Maslin Nir
It was the latest in a series of violent altercations between officers and Black residents that have heightened racial tensions in the city.
The videos of the woman’s arrest threatened to further tarnish the reputation of police department that is already under fire for handcuffing and using a chemical irritant on a 9-year-old girl in January and for the death last of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after officers put a hood over his head and pressed his head to the pavement.
“It feels like our officers are out of control,” Mary Lupien, a City Council member, said in an interview.
A bystander’s video of the woman's arrest, on Feb. 22, first appeared on Facebook the day it happened. But on Friday, the police released the officer’s body-camera footage and a video from a nearby security camera in response to demands from the city’s Police Accountability Board, which reviews misconduct.
Employees at a Rite Aid drugstore had called the police at about 4:30 p.m. that day after the woman refused to leave the store and knocked items to the floor, officials said. The body-camera video shows officers stopping the woman, who is holding her toddler, outside the store.
“Did you steal from that store?” one officer says to the woman. “Oh come on, they said you stole. What’d you take? Tell me the truth!”
The woman can be seen putting the tiny girl down and opening her purse to show the contents to the officer, the video shows. The officer demands that she wait while he speaks to store employees, but she runs across the street, gripping her child’s hand.
The officer catches her in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant and knocks her to the ground as the child begins to scream, the videos show. A second officer arrives and carries the toddler several feet away. The woman gets to her feet and tries to grab the girl.
Then, footage from a nearby security camera shows, the first officer sprays the woman quickly in the face with pepper spray before taking her to the ground again and putting her in handcuffs. For a moment, the child is suspended between her mother and an officer before her mother lets go of her.
The child was not sprayed, officials said.
Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan, Rochester’s interim chief of police, said at a news conference on Friday that the episode was under investigation, but that it appeared the officers had followed department policies. The police, she said, “are authorized to the extent necessary to use certain tactics to get a person under control.”
Chief Herriott-Sullivan described the tussle over the little girl as the officer’s attempt to get the child out of harm’s way.
“They have taken the child to try to protect her and get her out of the way so she is not hurt,” she said.
Chief Herriott-Sullivan took over the department’s top leadership role after her predecessor, La’Ron Singletary, was fired amid allegations that he had participated in a cover-up related to Mr. Prude’s death.
Neither the woman nor the officers involved in the altercation were identified. One of the officers has been assigned to administrative duty, Chief Herriott-Sullivan said. The woman was charged with trespassing, the chief said.
Police officials said that the two officers were among a group that responded to a domestic violence call on Jan. 29 that led to the handcuffing and pepper-spraying a 9-year-old Black girl. Several officers who were involved in that episode have been placed on administrative leave; at least one was suspended.
The police chief’s efforts to play down the woman’s arrest rang hollow for some Rochester residents. The city was rocked by protests last summer after the circumstances of Mr. Prude’s death became public. That unrest returned briefly last week, when a grand jury declined to charge the officers in Mr. Prude’s death after an investigation by the attorney general.
Shani Wilson, the chair of the Police Accountability Board, said that the police had never informed the board about the February episode and that she had pressed for the release of the body-camera footage after stumbling across the bystander video on social media.
“How would we have even known?” Ms. Wilson said. “We are finding out about incidents in the public like everyone else and we are supposed to be the police reform board that is supposed to be changing how we police the citizens here. That’s not how this should work.”
In a statement, Mayor Lovely Warren described the videos as “disturbing.” She said the department was moving quickly on a police-reform plan ordered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last year after protests erupted across the United States after the death of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of the police.
“Change will not come until we have the ability to fully hold our officers accountable when they violate the public’s trust,” Ms. Warren said.
Andre Anderson, the city’s executive deputy chief of police, said the department was introducing new training initiatives that would address issues like “compassion fatigue,” among officers. Also in the works, he said, were new policies for when it is appropriate to handcuff children and the proper approach to detaining people with mental health problems.
Both Mr. Prude and the woman who was involved in the Feb. 22 altercation appeared to have mental health issues when they were being arrested, the police said.
“When we respond to a person in crisis, our priority is to help that person,” Chief Anderson said. “While we may have to get them detained, we need to get them help.”
A woman accused of shoplifting was sprayed with a chemical irritant and knocked to the ground in front of her daughter, the latest altercation between the police and Black residents.
A woman accused of shop lifting was pepper sprayed and tackled in front of her 3-year-old daughter by a police officer in Rochester, N.Y.Credit...Rochester New York Police Department, via Associated Press
By Sarah Maslin Nir
- March 5, 2021Updated 7:53 p.m. ET
It was the latest in a series of violent altercations between officers and Black residents that have heightened racial tensions in the city.
The videos of the woman’s arrest threatened to further tarnish the reputation of police department that is already under fire for handcuffing and using a chemical irritant on a 9-year-old girl in January and for the death last of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after officers put a hood over his head and pressed his head to the pavement.
“It feels like our officers are out of control,” Mary Lupien, a City Council member, said in an interview.
A bystander’s video of the woman's arrest, on Feb. 22, first appeared on Facebook the day it happened. But on Friday, the police released the officer’s body-camera footage and a video from a nearby security camera in response to demands from the city’s Police Accountability Board, which reviews misconduct.
Employees at a Rite Aid drugstore had called the police at about 4:30 p.m. that day after the woman refused to leave the store and knocked items to the floor, officials said. The body-camera video shows officers stopping the woman, who is holding her toddler, outside the store.
“Did you steal from that store?” one officer says to the woman. “Oh come on, they said you stole. What’d you take? Tell me the truth!”
The woman can be seen putting the tiny girl down and opening her purse to show the contents to the officer, the video shows. The officer demands that she wait while he speaks to store employees, but she runs across the street, gripping her child’s hand.
The officer catches her in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant and knocks her to the ground as the child begins to scream, the videos show. A second officer arrives and carries the toddler several feet away. The woman gets to her feet and tries to grab the girl.
Then, footage from a nearby security camera shows, the first officer sprays the woman quickly in the face with pepper spray before taking her to the ground again and putting her in handcuffs. For a moment, the child is suspended between her mother and an officer before her mother lets go of her.
The child was not sprayed, officials said.
Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan, Rochester’s interim chief of police, said at a news conference on Friday that the episode was under investigation, but that it appeared the officers had followed department policies. The police, she said, “are authorized to the extent necessary to use certain tactics to get a person under control.”
Chief Herriott-Sullivan described the tussle over the little girl as the officer’s attempt to get the child out of harm’s way.
“They have taken the child to try to protect her and get her out of the way so she is not hurt,” she said.
Chief Herriott-Sullivan took over the department’s top leadership role after her predecessor, La’Ron Singletary, was fired amid allegations that he had participated in a cover-up related to Mr. Prude’s death.
Neither the woman nor the officers involved in the altercation were identified. One of the officers has been assigned to administrative duty, Chief Herriott-Sullivan said. The woman was charged with trespassing, the chief said.
Police officials said that the two officers were among a group that responded to a domestic violence call on Jan. 29 that led to the handcuffing and pepper-spraying a 9-year-old Black girl. Several officers who were involved in that episode have been placed on administrative leave; at least one was suspended.
The police chief’s efforts to play down the woman’s arrest rang hollow for some Rochester residents. The city was rocked by protests last summer after the circumstances of Mr. Prude’s death became public. That unrest returned briefly last week, when a grand jury declined to charge the officers in Mr. Prude’s death after an investigation by the attorney general.
Shani Wilson, the chair of the Police Accountability Board, said that the police had never informed the board about the February episode and that she had pressed for the release of the body-camera footage after stumbling across the bystander video on social media.
“How would we have even known?” Ms. Wilson said. “We are finding out about incidents in the public like everyone else and we are supposed to be the police reform board that is supposed to be changing how we police the citizens here. That’s not how this should work.”
In a statement, Mayor Lovely Warren described the videos as “disturbing.” She said the department was moving quickly on a police-reform plan ordered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last year after protests erupted across the United States after the death of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of the police.
“Change will not come until we have the ability to fully hold our officers accountable when they violate the public’s trust,” Ms. Warren said.
Andre Anderson, the city’s executive deputy chief of police, said the department was introducing new training initiatives that would address issues like “compassion fatigue,” among officers. Also in the works, he said, were new policies for when it is appropriate to handcuff children and the proper approach to detaining people with mental health problems.
Both Mr. Prude and the woman who was involved in the Feb. 22 altercation appeared to have mental health issues when they were being arrested, the police said.
“When we respond to a person in crisis, our priority is to help that person,” Chief Anderson said. “While we may have to get them detained, we need to get them help.”
NY Legal: Furor in Rochester After Police Pepper-Spray Mother With Her Toddler!
Furor in Rochester After Police Pepper-Spray Mother With Toddler A woman accused of shoplifting was sprayed with a chemical irritant and knocked to the ground in front of her daughter, the latest altercation between the police and Black residents. A woman accused of shop lifting was...
www.bgol.us
Legal: Jury selection on hold for the trial of Derek Chauvin as prosecution seeks appeal for third-degree murder charge
Jury selection on hold for the trial of Derek Chauvin as prosecution seeks appeal for third-degree murder charge Jury selection for the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, was put on hold Monday after prosecutors asked the judge for...
www.bgol.us
Donuts was looking to find something.
Another under the radar killing.
https://outline.com/g7pxUC
$2.5 million settlement in Alabama police shooting but dispute remains: Did Black teen have a gun?
MARCH 23, 2021
Dozens marched from Bienville Square to Government Plaza in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday June 16, 2016 to protest Michael Moore's death. Moore was shot following a traffic stop Monday night. (Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com)
A Black teenager shot by a white officer police after a traffic stop in Alabama. No gun found at the scene. A gun, found later, underneath the body in the hospital. A gun without fingerprints. Demonstrations, contentious public hearings, a federal investigation.
Almost five years later, a $2.5 million settlement has brought an apparent end to a case that that began in Mobile in 2016 with the fatal shooting of Michael Moore by Officer Harold Hurst. The settlement by Hurst resolves a civil suit brought by Moore’s mother, Shunta Daugherty.
In a filing that paved the way for that resolution, U.S. District Judge Terry F. Moorer has evoked one of the case’s most troubling points: The allegation raised in the wake of the incident that police had planted a gun on Moore’s body after he was killed.
“Officer Hurst searched Moore after he was shot, but did not find a weapon,” Judge Moorer wrote in an opinion in September, as he weighed arguments that Hurst and the city should be immune from the claims against them. “On the scene, Officer Hurst told at least two officers that he found a magazine in Moore’s pocket, but after one officer pointed out that Officer Hurst appeared to be missing a magazine from his own carrier, he did not mention it again. Several officers also searched the area and never located a weapon. At this point, paramedics worked on Moore, placed him on a stretcher, and took him to an ambulance.”
The issue of the gun being found at the hospital caused public concern and fueled protests at the time. Hurst was later cleared by a grand jury and a review by the U.S. Department of Justice found that evidence “was insufficient to prove that the Officer willfully used excessive force.”
Speaking for the first time on some of the details of the case, Mobile officials on Monday rejected the notion that Moore did not have a gun.
James Barber, who was chief at the time, and City Attorney Ricardo Woods said questions about the gun and other evidence only arose because of a change in procedure -- which they said had been made to avoid provoking public outrage.
Barber also disputed the account of a missing magazine. “Now I spoke to Hurst briefly, that night,” said Barber. “He never said anything like that to me. Matter of fact, when I said there was a magazine on the ground, he said it was his.”
The judge’s account agreed with police that Moore was pulled over in a stolen Lexus and gave Officer Hurst a false driver license number that night in 2016. And Moorer acknowledged that some of the circumstances were unclear. “At this stage, the facts become heavily disputed,” he wrote of the stop, noting witness accounts of the fatal confrontation vary.
But in his key September ruling, which granted immunity to the city but left Hurst exposed, Moore painted a seemingly stark picture of the discovery of the gun:
“Moore was also searched by a paramedic who also did not find a gun. This search included lifting Moore’s shirt and pulling his shorts away from his body as captured by the body-camera video from Officer Portis,” wrote the judge. “Moore was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center. In the ambulance, Moore’s shirt and shorts were cut by paramedics and still no gun was found. Once in the hospital, Moore was transferred from the stretcher to a hospital bed. Numerous doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel worked on or observed Moore’s treatment. Still no gun was found.”
City attorney Ricardo Woods said this is not the damning factual account it appears to be.
“The insinuation is that the gun was somehow planted,” said Woods. “Even though we know that Officer Hurst and the two witnesses in the car saw Michael Moore with the gun. That’s their testimony. The problem is, the gun was found at the hospital.”
The judge’s opinion does not represent findings of fact, Woods said. Instead, Woods said, he was examining the city’s standpoint from a worst-case scenario, deciding whether they should be shielded from the lawsuit even when “taking the facts and evidence in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff.”
In that light, the judge continued:
“Eventually, after Moore was pronounced dead, a nurse found a firearm after she rolled Moore’s body over. The nurse notified the officer in the room, and the weapon was photographed and recovered. The gun had little to no blood on it despite a large pool of blood under Moore, and when tested for fingerprints, Moore’s fingerprints were not found on the gun or the bullets.”
Barber on Monday disagreed, he said the gun wasn’t lying there clean. “That gun was bloody,” he said.
Barber was police chief at the time and now is Executive Director of Public Safety in Mobile. He said the gun ended up at the hospital because of a decision made after the death of Michael Brown Jr. in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., a fatal shooting which triggered violent clashes between demonstrators, rioters and police.
Prior to that, Barber said, the top priority of Hurst and other patrol officers after the shooting would have been to preserve the scene. Detectives at a shooting might have begun interviewing onlookers, but they too would have kept hands off the body and other evidence. Once paramedics had confirmed Moore’s death, crime scene investigators would have moved in and gathered evidence, including weaponry, with the body still in place.
Michael Moore was shot to death in 2016 during a traffic stop by a Mobile police officer.
But Barber said that in the Ferguson case, the fact that Brown’s body lay in the street fueled community outrage. So Mobile police and fire-rescue leaders changed their policy. If there was an officer-involved shooting, they weren’t going to leave a body in the street.
“Pre-Ferguson, Michael Moore would have lain there until the collection of evidence was complete and the body had been transported,” Barber said.
It also doesn’t signify much that Hurst didn’t find the gun at the scene, Barber said. Searching the scene and logging evidence wouldn’t have been his responsibility. And he said paramedics aren’t expected to search for weapons.
USA Medical Center (since renamed USA Health University Hospital) was a stone’s throw away. Because of the new policy, Moore was bundled into an ambulance as quickly as possible, even though he was presumed to be dead, and taken there for emergency treatment.
Moore, fresh from playing basketball, was wearing shorts. Being able to examine them certainly would help clarify whether they might have held a full-size automatic pistol at all, let alone unobtrusively, through such tumultuous events. Plaintiff filings have described them as having an elastic waistband. Barber said they had a drawstring that would have supported the gun. That discrepancy, like much else in the case, remains untested in the courtroom.
The clothing cut from Moore’s body was not preserved. Attorneys working for Daugherty discovered that in 2018 and sought to charge the hospital with spoliation of evidence. Attorneys for the medical center successfully argued that the hospital, as a state institution, was immune.
“Absolutely nobody should be transported with a gun,” said Barber. “We acknowledged early on that that was a failure on our part, to recover that gun on the scene before the body was transported. But I can also see exactly why it happened, given that the guys are trained one way and now the protocols are changed.”
After the last official review cleared Hurst and by extension the police department, Daugherty filed suit in 2017. The suit initially named Hurst, then was expanded to include the city and USA Medical Center. The Hospital was the first party to win a ruling that it was immune.
Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for his normal shift when he pulled over a stolen car driven by Michael Moore. Consequently he was not wearing a body camera during their fatal confrontation.MPD
That left two Hurst and the city, and attorneys for both parties argued they should be immune as well. In his pivotal ruling last fall, Moorer agreed that the city should be excluded from the case.
That left just Hurst, who faced claims of excessive force, wrongful death and negligence. Regarding excessive force, Hurst argued that he had qualified immunity, an established but somewhat controversial doctrine holding that government officials can have broad immunity from liability for harm done while acting within their official authority.
Hurst, no longer with the Mobile police department, also argued that as an agent of the state in 2016, he had immunity to the other two claims.
Moorer’s ruling was split. He agreed that state law gave Hurst immunity on the negligence claim, but not on wrongful death. He also denied Hurst the refuge of qualified immunity at this point.
The suit took a detour into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, with Hurst appealing Moorer’s denial of immunity. But on Feb. 4 the two sides filed a joint motion, saying they had reached an agreement.
Mario Williams, an attorney for Moore’s mother, told AL.com that the case was settled for $2.5 million, with $1 million going to attorney fees. He said the settlement agreement explicitly allowed him to disclose that information but no more.
All parties, including his client, were prohibited from saying any more, he said. An attempt to reach attorneys who’d represented Hurst drew no response.
Woods said the settlement had been paid by an insurer that covered both the city and Hurst. But since the city had been excluded as a defendant, the settlement was on Hurst’s behalf. No city money was spent on the settlement, Barber and Woods said.
Having successfully argued it was immune to the claims of the suit, the city was a spectator to the settlement, not a party to it. Barber and Woods say they’d rather have had their day in court, a chance to show their evidence and shoot down the allegations of misconduct.
“I was dug in deeper than an Alabama tick not to settle the case,” said Barber.
“Same,” said Woods.
MICHAEL MOORE TIMELINE
Moore’s case prompted protests and controversy in Mobile, sweeping the city up in a national furor over race and policing.
On the evening of June 13, 2016, white Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for duty when he pulled over a car driven by black teenager Michael Moore. Because Hurst had not checked in for duty he was not wearing a body camera, and the circumstances under which he fatally shot Moore were immediately subject to intense debate.
The Mobile incident didn’t immediately make national news but others did. On July 5, the police shooting of a black man named Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge was captured on cell-phone video, creating a furor. One day later, video showed the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn.
On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed and nine more injured in an ambush. Ten days later it happened again in Baton Rouge, where three officers were killed and three more injured. Protests of unjust policing combined with fears that police were being targeted to fuel nationwide tension.
Emotions ran high in Mobile with furious criticism of the way police, city and other officials were handling the Moore case. Demonstrations and rallies remained peaceful.
A timeline of some key developments:
June 17, 2016: A few days after Moore’s death, the Mobile Police Department issued a “fact sheet” and timeline describing the encounter between Moore and officer Harold Hurst. It said that Hurst, on his way to work, saw the Lexus driven by Moore make a left turn that nearly caused a wreck. He pulled over the car and began investigating. He learned the car had been reported stolen, and Moore initially gave him a false ID. He asked Moore to step out of the car.
Among other points, the fact sheet said Hurst had observed a pistol in the waistband of Moore’s pants and fired multiple times when Moore attempted to reach for it. He then fired again when Moore, now wounded and lying on the ground, again attempted to reach for the weapon.
The police sheet said that the gun was found to be stolen and that the car contained other stolen items “from recent vehicle burglaries.” Other than a safe of undisclosed value and an Exxon-Mobil gas card, these items were low-value clutter: An iPhone charger, a USA visor, a container of Axe body spray, a container of gum. To those skeptical of the police account, this was an attempt to prejudice the public’s view of a dead man with information that wasn’t relevant to the actual encounter. Mobile officials never really backed off the depiction of Moore as an armed threat involved in serious offenses.
June 18, 2016: Ronald Ali, then president of the Mobile County NAACP, called for patience as investigations proceeded and said his organization was monitoring the case, indicating this was true at a state and national level.
June 21, 2016: Funeral services and a “celebration of life” were held for Moore, who had turned 19 a few days before his death.
July 7, 2016: Mobile Police Chief James Barber said that Hurst had returned to administrative duty following a period on administrative leave.
July 8, 2016: Despite a swirl of rumors raising fears of a large-scale disruption and/or an outsize response police response, a Black Lives Matter rally and march proceeded without violence.
July 12, 2016: The Mobile City Council began a long and contentious discussion of creating a citizen advisory council on police affairs.
July 13, 2016: At simultaneous rallies in downtown Mobile, one group of demonstrators spoke out against police brutality, while another held a vigil for police officers ambushed in Dallas.
July 18, 2016: Barber said results of investigations into Moore’s shooting “should not be rushed” and that results were not imminent.
Michael Moore's mother, Shunta Daugherty, left, and cousin Gyda Larry attend a rally and march to protest police brutality organized by the Mobile Bay Socialist Alternative in downtown Mobile, Ala., on Friday July 22, 2016.Sharon Steinmann/AL.com
Nov. 1, 2016: Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich announced that a grand jury had determined that Hurst should not face criminal charges. The jury found that “Officer Hurst acted reasonably, justifiably and in accordance with all applicable laws. The officer had a right to protect himself, and a duty to neutralize the threat to innocent civilians in this populated neighborhood.” Rich said the law prevents her from revealing details about the evidence presented to the grand jury or about its deliberations. This left one investigation in progress, being conducted by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
March 2017: Mayor Sandy Stimpson promoted Police Chief James Barber to the position of Executive Director of Public Safety. Assistant Police Chief Lawrence Battiste, Stimpson’s pick as the new chief, was rapidly confirmed by the city council.
Sept. 1, 2017: The Mobile Police Department announced that Hurst, who had been on administrative leave, had resigned.
Sept. 7, 2017: The Department of Justice reported that its Civil Rights Division had closed its investigation of the case. “Given the totality of the circumstances, and conflicting eye-witness testimony, the government cannot disprove the Officer’s claim that he believed that Moore was reaching for a firearm, that he feared for his life, and that he made the split-second decision to defend it,” said the report.
Shortly after the Department of Justice announcement, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement describing the DOJ decision as “the final in a series of investigations associated with the death of Mr. Moore, following parallel reviews by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office.”
May 31, 2020: After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, demonstrations took place in Mobile. At these and other 2020 demonstrations, Michael Moore’s name continued to be evoked by participants.
Dozens marched from Bienville Square to Government Plaza in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday June 16, 2016 to protest Michael Moore's death. Moore was shot following a traffic stop Monday night. (Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com)
A Black teenager shot by a white officer police after a traffic stop in Alabama. No gun found at the scene. A gun, found later, underneath the body in the hospital. A gun without fingerprints. Demonstrations, contentious public hearings, a federal investigation.
Almost five years later, a $2.5 million settlement has brought an apparent end to a case that that began in Mobile in 2016 with the fatal shooting of Michael Moore by Officer Harold Hurst. The settlement by Hurst resolves a civil suit brought by Moore’s mother, Shunta Daugherty.
In a filing that paved the way for that resolution, U.S. District Judge Terry F. Moorer has evoked one of the case’s most troubling points: The allegation raised in the wake of the incident that police had planted a gun on Moore’s body after he was killed.
“Officer Hurst searched Moore after he was shot, but did not find a weapon,” Judge Moorer wrote in an opinion in September, as he weighed arguments that Hurst and the city should be immune from the claims against them. “On the scene, Officer Hurst told at least two officers that he found a magazine in Moore’s pocket, but after one officer pointed out that Officer Hurst appeared to be missing a magazine from his own carrier, he did not mention it again. Several officers also searched the area and never located a weapon. At this point, paramedics worked on Moore, placed him on a stretcher, and took him to an ambulance.”
The issue of the gun being found at the hospital caused public concern and fueled protests at the time. Hurst was later cleared by a grand jury and a review by the U.S. Department of Justice found that evidence “was insufficient to prove that the Officer willfully used excessive force.”
Speaking for the first time on some of the details of the case, Mobile officials on Monday rejected the notion that Moore did not have a gun.
James Barber, who was chief at the time, and City Attorney Ricardo Woods said questions about the gun and other evidence only arose because of a change in procedure -- which they said had been made to avoid provoking public outrage.
Barber also disputed the account of a missing magazine. “Now I spoke to Hurst briefly, that night,” said Barber. “He never said anything like that to me. Matter of fact, when I said there was a magazine on the ground, he said it was his.”
The judge’s account agreed with police that Moore was pulled over in a stolen Lexus and gave Officer Hurst a false driver license number that night in 2016. And Moorer acknowledged that some of the circumstances were unclear. “At this stage, the facts become heavily disputed,” he wrote of the stop, noting witness accounts of the fatal confrontation vary.
But in his key September ruling, which granted immunity to the city but left Hurst exposed, Moore painted a seemingly stark picture of the discovery of the gun:
“Moore was also searched by a paramedic who also did not find a gun. This search included lifting Moore’s shirt and pulling his shorts away from his body as captured by the body-camera video from Officer Portis,” wrote the judge. “Moore was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center. In the ambulance, Moore’s shirt and shorts were cut by paramedics and still no gun was found. Once in the hospital, Moore was transferred from the stretcher to a hospital bed. Numerous doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel worked on or observed Moore’s treatment. Still no gun was found.”
City attorney Ricardo Woods said this is not the damning factual account it appears to be.
“The insinuation is that the gun was somehow planted,” said Woods. “Even though we know that Officer Hurst and the two witnesses in the car saw Michael Moore with the gun. That’s their testimony. The problem is, the gun was found at the hospital.”
The judge’s opinion does not represent findings of fact, Woods said. Instead, Woods said, he was examining the city’s standpoint from a worst-case scenario, deciding whether they should be shielded from the lawsuit even when “taking the facts and evidence in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff.”
In that light, the judge continued:
“Eventually, after Moore was pronounced dead, a nurse found a firearm after she rolled Moore’s body over. The nurse notified the officer in the room, and the weapon was photographed and recovered. The gun had little to no blood on it despite a large pool of blood under Moore, and when tested for fingerprints, Moore’s fingerprints were not found on the gun or the bullets.”
Barber on Monday disagreed, he said the gun wasn’t lying there clean. “That gun was bloody,” he said.
Barber was police chief at the time and now is Executive Director of Public Safety in Mobile. He said the gun ended up at the hospital because of a decision made after the death of Michael Brown Jr. in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., a fatal shooting which triggered violent clashes between demonstrators, rioters and police.
Prior to that, Barber said, the top priority of Hurst and other patrol officers after the shooting would have been to preserve the scene. Detectives at a shooting might have begun interviewing onlookers, but they too would have kept hands off the body and other evidence. Once paramedics had confirmed Moore’s death, crime scene investigators would have moved in and gathered evidence, including weaponry, with the body still in place.
Michael Moore was shot to death in 2016 during a traffic stop by a Mobile police officer.
But Barber said that in the Ferguson case, the fact that Brown’s body lay in the street fueled community outrage. So Mobile police and fire-rescue leaders changed their policy. If there was an officer-involved shooting, they weren’t going to leave a body in the street.
“Pre-Ferguson, Michael Moore would have lain there until the collection of evidence was complete and the body had been transported,” Barber said.
It also doesn’t signify much that Hurst didn’t find the gun at the scene, Barber said. Searching the scene and logging evidence wouldn’t have been his responsibility. And he said paramedics aren’t expected to search for weapons.
USA Medical Center (since renamed USA Health University Hospital) was a stone’s throw away. Because of the new policy, Moore was bundled into an ambulance as quickly as possible, even though he was presumed to be dead, and taken there for emergency treatment.
Moore, fresh from playing basketball, was wearing shorts. Being able to examine them certainly would help clarify whether they might have held a full-size automatic pistol at all, let alone unobtrusively, through such tumultuous events. Plaintiff filings have described them as having an elastic waistband. Barber said they had a drawstring that would have supported the gun. That discrepancy, like much else in the case, remains untested in the courtroom.
The clothing cut from Moore’s body was not preserved. Attorneys working for Daugherty discovered that in 2018 and sought to charge the hospital with spoliation of evidence. Attorneys for the medical center successfully argued that the hospital, as a state institution, was immune.
“Absolutely nobody should be transported with a gun,” said Barber. “We acknowledged early on that that was a failure on our part, to recover that gun on the scene before the body was transported. But I can also see exactly why it happened, given that the guys are trained one way and now the protocols are changed.”
After the last official review cleared Hurst and by extension the police department, Daugherty filed suit in 2017. The suit initially named Hurst, then was expanded to include the city and USA Medical Center. The Hospital was the first party to win a ruling that it was immune.
Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for his normal shift when he pulled over a stolen car driven by Michael Moore. Consequently he was not wearing a body camera during their fatal confrontation.MPD
That left two Hurst and the city, and attorneys for both parties argued they should be immune as well. In his pivotal ruling last fall, Moorer agreed that the city should be excluded from the case.
That left just Hurst, who faced claims of excessive force, wrongful death and negligence. Regarding excessive force, Hurst argued that he had qualified immunity, an established but somewhat controversial doctrine holding that government officials can have broad immunity from liability for harm done while acting within their official authority.
Hurst, no longer with the Mobile police department, also argued that as an agent of the state in 2016, he had immunity to the other two claims.
Moorer’s ruling was split. He agreed that state law gave Hurst immunity on the negligence claim, but not on wrongful death. He also denied Hurst the refuge of qualified immunity at this point.
The suit took a detour into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, with Hurst appealing Moorer’s denial of immunity. But on Feb. 4 the two sides filed a joint motion, saying they had reached an agreement.
Mario Williams, an attorney for Moore’s mother, told AL.com that the case was settled for $2.5 million, with $1 million going to attorney fees. He said the settlement agreement explicitly allowed him to disclose that information but no more.
All parties, including his client, were prohibited from saying any more, he said. An attempt to reach attorneys who’d represented Hurst drew no response.
Woods said the settlement had been paid by an insurer that covered both the city and Hurst. But since the city had been excluded as a defendant, the settlement was on Hurst’s behalf. No city money was spent on the settlement, Barber and Woods said.
Having successfully argued it was immune to the claims of the suit, the city was a spectator to the settlement, not a party to it. Barber and Woods say they’d rather have had their day in court, a chance to show their evidence and shoot down the allegations of misconduct.
“I was dug in deeper than an Alabama tick not to settle the case,” said Barber.
“Same,” said Woods.
MICHAEL MOORE TIMELINE
Moore’s case prompted protests and controversy in Mobile, sweeping the city up in a national furor over race and policing.
On the evening of June 13, 2016, white Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for duty when he pulled over a car driven by black teenager Michael Moore. Because Hurst had not checked in for duty he was not wearing a body camera, and the circumstances under which he fatally shot Moore were immediately subject to intense debate.
The Mobile incident didn’t immediately make national news but others did. On July 5, the police shooting of a black man named Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge was captured on cell-phone video, creating a furor. One day later, video showed the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn.
On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed and nine more injured in an ambush. Ten days later it happened again in Baton Rouge, where three officers were killed and three more injured. Protests of unjust policing combined with fears that police were being targeted to fuel nationwide tension.
Emotions ran high in Mobile with furious criticism of the way police, city and other officials were handling the Moore case. Demonstrations and rallies remained peaceful.
A timeline of some key developments:
June 17, 2016: A few days after Moore’s death, the Mobile Police Department issued a “fact sheet” and timeline describing the encounter between Moore and officer Harold Hurst. It said that Hurst, on his way to work, saw the Lexus driven by Moore make a left turn that nearly caused a wreck. He pulled over the car and began investigating. He learned the car had been reported stolen, and Moore initially gave him a false ID. He asked Moore to step out of the car.
Among other points, the fact sheet said Hurst had observed a pistol in the waistband of Moore’s pants and fired multiple times when Moore attempted to reach for it. He then fired again when Moore, now wounded and lying on the ground, again attempted to reach for the weapon.
The police sheet said that the gun was found to be stolen and that the car contained other stolen items “from recent vehicle burglaries.” Other than a safe of undisclosed value and an Exxon-Mobil gas card, these items were low-value clutter: An iPhone charger, a USA visor, a container of Axe body spray, a container of gum. To those skeptical of the police account, this was an attempt to prejudice the public’s view of a dead man with information that wasn’t relevant to the actual encounter. Mobile officials never really backed off the depiction of Moore as an armed threat involved in serious offenses.
June 18, 2016: Ronald Ali, then president of the Mobile County NAACP, called for patience as investigations proceeded and said his organization was monitoring the case, indicating this was true at a state and national level.
June 21, 2016: Funeral services and a “celebration of life” were held for Moore, who had turned 19 a few days before his death.
July 7, 2016: Mobile Police Chief James Barber said that Hurst had returned to administrative duty following a period on administrative leave.
July 8, 2016: Despite a swirl of rumors raising fears of a large-scale disruption and/or an outsize response police response, a Black Lives Matter rally and march proceeded without violence.
July 12, 2016: The Mobile City Council began a long and contentious discussion of creating a citizen advisory council on police affairs.
July 13, 2016: At simultaneous rallies in downtown Mobile, one group of demonstrators spoke out against police brutality, while another held a vigil for police officers ambushed in Dallas.
July 18, 2016: Barber said results of investigations into Moore’s shooting “should not be rushed” and that results were not imminent.
Michael Moore's mother, Shunta Daugherty, left, and cousin Gyda Larry attend a rally and march to protest police brutality organized by the Mobile Bay Socialist Alternative in downtown Mobile, Ala., on Friday July 22, 2016.Sharon Steinmann/AL.com
Nov. 1, 2016: Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich announced that a grand jury had determined that Hurst should not face criminal charges. The jury found that “Officer Hurst acted reasonably, justifiably and in accordance with all applicable laws. The officer had a right to protect himself, and a duty to neutralize the threat to innocent civilians in this populated neighborhood.” Rich said the law prevents her from revealing details about the evidence presented to the grand jury or about its deliberations. This left one investigation in progress, being conducted by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
March 2017: Mayor Sandy Stimpson promoted Police Chief James Barber to the position of Executive Director of Public Safety. Assistant Police Chief Lawrence Battiste, Stimpson’s pick as the new chief, was rapidly confirmed by the city council.
Sept. 1, 2017: The Mobile Police Department announced that Hurst, who had been on administrative leave, had resigned.
Sept. 7, 2017: The Department of Justice reported that its Civil Rights Division had closed its investigation of the case. “Given the totality of the circumstances, and conflicting eye-witness testimony, the government cannot disprove the Officer’s claim that he believed that Moore was reaching for a firearm, that he feared for his life, and that he made the split-second decision to defend it,” said the report.
Shortly after the Department of Justice announcement, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement describing the DOJ decision as “the final in a series of investigations associated with the death of Mr. Moore, following parallel reviews by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office.”
May 31, 2020: After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, demonstrations took place in Mobile. At these and other 2020 demonstrations, Michael Moore’s name continued to be evoked by participants.
https://outline.com/g7pxUC
$2.5 million settlement in Alabama police shooting but dispute remains: Did Black teen have a gun?
MARCH 23, 2021
Dozens marched from Bienville Square to Government Plaza in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday June 16, 2016 to protest Michael Moore's death. Moore was shot following a traffic stop Monday night. (Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com)
A Black teenager shot by a white officer police after a traffic stop in Alabama. No gun found at the scene. A gun, found later, underneath the body in the hospital. A gun without fingerprints. Demonstrations, contentious public hearings, a federal investigation.
Almost five years later, a $2.5 million settlement has brought an apparent end to a case that that began in Mobile in 2016 with the fatal shooting of Michael Moore by Officer Harold Hurst. The settlement by Hurst resolves a civil suit brought by Moore’s mother, Shunta Daugherty.
In a filing that paved the way for that resolution, U.S. District Judge Terry F. Moorer has evoked one of the case’s most troubling points: The allegation raised in the wake of the incident that police had planted a gun on Moore’s body after he was killed.
“Officer Hurst searched Moore after he was shot, but did not find a weapon,” Judge Moorer wrote in an opinion in September, as he weighed arguments that Hurst and the city should be immune from the claims against them. “On the scene, Officer Hurst told at least two officers that he found a magazine in Moore’s pocket, but after one officer pointed out that Officer Hurst appeared to be missing a magazine from his own carrier, he did not mention it again. Several officers also searched the area and never located a weapon. At this point, paramedics worked on Moore, placed him on a stretcher, and took him to an ambulance.”
The issue of the gun being found at the hospital caused public concern and fueled protests at the time. Hurst was later cleared by a grand jury and a review by the U.S. Department of Justice found that evidence “was insufficient to prove that the Officer willfully used excessive force.”
Speaking for the first time on some of the details of the case, Mobile officials on Monday rejected the notion that Moore did not have a gun.
James Barber, who was chief at the time, and City Attorney Ricardo Woods said questions about the gun and other evidence only arose because of a change in procedure -- which they said had been made to avoid provoking public outrage.
Barber also disputed the account of a missing magazine. “Now I spoke to Hurst briefly, that night,” said Barber. “He never said anything like that to me. Matter of fact, when I said there was a magazine on the ground, he said it was his.”
The judge’s account agreed with police that Moore was pulled over in a stolen Lexus and gave Officer Hurst a false driver license number that night in 2016. And Moorer acknowledged that some of the circumstances were unclear. “At this stage, the facts become heavily disputed,” he wrote of the stop, noting witness accounts of the fatal confrontation vary.
But in his key September ruling, which granted immunity to the city but left Hurst exposed, Moore painted a seemingly stark picture of the discovery of the gun:
“Moore was also searched by a paramedic who also did not find a gun. This search included lifting Moore’s shirt and pulling his shorts away from his body as captured by the body-camera video from Officer Portis,” wrote the judge. “Moore was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center. In the ambulance, Moore’s shirt and shorts were cut by paramedics and still no gun was found. Once in the hospital, Moore was transferred from the stretcher to a hospital bed. Numerous doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel worked on or observed Moore’s treatment. Still no gun was found.”
City attorney Ricardo Woods said this is not the damning factual account it appears to be.
“The insinuation is that the gun was somehow planted,” said Woods. “Even though we know that Officer Hurst and the two witnesses in the car saw Michael Moore with the gun. That’s their testimony. The problem is, the gun was found at the hospital.”
The judge’s opinion does not represent findings of fact, Woods said. Instead, Woods said, he was examining the city’s standpoint from a worst-case scenario, deciding whether they should be shielded from the lawsuit even when “taking the facts and evidence in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff.”
In that light, the judge continued:
“Eventually, after Moore was pronounced dead, a nurse found a firearm after she rolled Moore’s body over. The nurse notified the officer in the room, and the weapon was photographed and recovered. The gun had little to no blood on it despite a large pool of blood under Moore, and when tested for fingerprints, Moore’s fingerprints were not found on the gun or the bullets.”
Barber on Monday disagreed, he said the gun wasn’t lying there clean. “That gun was bloody,” he said.
Barber was police chief at the time and now is Executive Director of Public Safety in Mobile. He said the gun ended up at the hospital because of a decision made after the death of Michael Brown Jr. in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., a fatal shooting which triggered violent clashes between demonstrators, rioters and police.
Prior to that, Barber said, the top priority of Hurst and other patrol officers after the shooting would have been to preserve the scene. Detectives at a shooting might have begun interviewing onlookers, but they too would have kept hands off the body and other evidence. Once paramedics had confirmed Moore’s death, crime scene investigators would have moved in and gathered evidence, including weaponry, with the body still in place.
Michael Moore was shot to death in 2016 during a traffic stop by a Mobile police officer.
But Barber said that in the Ferguson case, the fact that Brown’s body lay in the street fueled community outrage. So Mobile police and fire-rescue leaders changed their policy. If there was an officer-involved shooting, they weren’t going to leave a body in the street.
“Pre-Ferguson, Michael Moore would have lain there until the collection of evidence was complete and the body had been transported,” Barber said.
It also doesn’t signify much that Hurst didn’t find the gun at the scene, Barber said. Searching the scene and logging evidence wouldn’t have been his responsibility. And he said paramedics aren’t expected to search for weapons.
USA Medical Center (since renamed USA Health University Hospital) was a stone’s throw away. Because of the new policy, Moore was bundled into an ambulance as quickly as possible, even though he was presumed to be dead, and taken there for emergency treatment.
Moore, fresh from playing basketball, was wearing shorts. Being able to examine them certainly would help clarify whether they might have held a full-size automatic pistol at all, let alone unobtrusively, through such tumultuous events. Plaintiff filings have described them as having an elastic waistband. Barber said they had a drawstring that would have supported the gun. That discrepancy, like much else in the case, remains untested in the courtroom.
The clothing cut from Moore’s body was not preserved. Attorneys working for Daugherty discovered that in 2018 and sought to charge the hospital with spoliation of evidence. Attorneys for the medical center successfully argued that the hospital, as a state institution, was immune.
“Absolutely nobody should be transported with a gun,” said Barber. “We acknowledged early on that that was a failure on our part, to recover that gun on the scene before the body was transported. But I can also see exactly why it happened, given that the guys are trained one way and now the protocols are changed.”
After the last official review cleared Hurst and by extension the police department, Daugherty filed suit in 2017. The suit initially named Hurst, then was expanded to include the city and USA Medical Center. The Hospital was the first party to win a ruling that it was immune.
Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for his normal shift when he pulled over a stolen car driven by Michael Moore. Consequently he was not wearing a body camera during their fatal confrontation.MPD
That left two Hurst and the city, and attorneys for both parties argued they should be immune as well. In his pivotal ruling last fall, Moorer agreed that the city should be excluded from the case.
That left just Hurst, who faced claims of excessive force, wrongful death and negligence. Regarding excessive force, Hurst argued that he had qualified immunity, an established but somewhat controversial doctrine holding that government officials can have broad immunity from liability for harm done while acting within their official authority.
Hurst, no longer with the Mobile police department, also argued that as an agent of the state in 2016, he had immunity to the other two claims.
Moorer’s ruling was split. He agreed that state law gave Hurst immunity on the negligence claim, but not on wrongful death. He also denied Hurst the refuge of qualified immunity at this point.
The suit took a detour into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, with Hurst appealing Moorer’s denial of immunity. But on Feb. 4 the two sides filed a joint motion, saying they had reached an agreement.
Mario Williams, an attorney for Moore’s mother, told AL.com that the case was settled for $2.5 million, with $1 million going to attorney fees. He said the settlement agreement explicitly allowed him to disclose that information but no more.
All parties, including his client, were prohibited from saying any more, he said. An attempt to reach attorneys who’d represented Hurst drew no response.
Woods said the settlement had been paid by an insurer that covered both the city and Hurst. But since the city had been excluded as a defendant, the settlement was on Hurst’s behalf. No city money was spent on the settlement, Barber and Woods said.
Having successfully argued it was immune to the claims of the suit, the city was a spectator to the settlement, not a party to it. Barber and Woods say they’d rather have had their day in court, a chance to show their evidence and shoot down the allegations of misconduct.
“I was dug in deeper than an Alabama tick not to settle the case,” said Barber.
“Same,” said Woods.
MICHAEL MOORE TIMELINE
Moore’s case prompted protests and controversy in Mobile, sweeping the city up in a national furor over race and policing.
On the evening of June 13, 2016, white Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for duty when he pulled over a car driven by black teenager Michael Moore. Because Hurst had not checked in for duty he was not wearing a body camera, and the circumstances under which he fatally shot Moore were immediately subject to intense debate.
The Mobile incident didn’t immediately make national news but others did. On July 5, the police shooting of a black man named Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge was captured on cell-phone video, creating a furor. One day later, video showed the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn.
On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed and nine more injured in an ambush. Ten days later it happened again in Baton Rouge, where three officers were killed and three more injured. Protests of unjust policing combined with fears that police were being targeted to fuel nationwide tension.
Emotions ran high in Mobile with furious criticism of the way police, city and other officials were handling the Moore case. Demonstrations and rallies remained peaceful.
A timeline of some key developments:
June 17, 2016: A few days after Moore’s death, the Mobile Police Department issued a “fact sheet” and timeline describing the encounter between Moore and officer Harold Hurst. It said that Hurst, on his way to work, saw the Lexus driven by Moore make a left turn that nearly caused a wreck. He pulled over the car and began investigating. He learned the car had been reported stolen, and Moore initially gave him a false ID. He asked Moore to step out of the car.
Among other points, the fact sheet said Hurst had observed a pistol in the waistband of Moore’s pants and fired multiple times when Moore attempted to reach for it. He then fired again when Moore, now wounded and lying on the ground, again attempted to reach for the weapon.
The police sheet said that the gun was found to be stolen and that the car contained other stolen items “from recent vehicle burglaries.” Other than a safe of undisclosed value and an Exxon-Mobil gas card, these items were low-value clutter: An iPhone charger, a USA visor, a container of Axe body spray, a container of gum. To those skeptical of the police account, this was an attempt to prejudice the public’s view of a dead man with information that wasn’t relevant to the actual encounter. Mobile officials never really backed off the depiction of Moore as an armed threat involved in serious offenses.
June 18, 2016: Ronald Ali, then president of the Mobile County NAACP, called for patience as investigations proceeded and said his organization was monitoring the case, indicating this was true at a state and national level.
June 21, 2016: Funeral services and a “celebration of life” were held for Moore, who had turned 19 a few days before his death.
July 7, 2016: Mobile Police Chief James Barber said that Hurst had returned to administrative duty following a period on administrative leave.
July 8, 2016: Despite a swirl of rumors raising fears of a large-scale disruption and/or an outsize response police response, a Black Lives Matter rally and march proceeded without violence.
July 12, 2016: The Mobile City Council began a long and contentious discussion of creating a citizen advisory council on police affairs.
July 13, 2016: At simultaneous rallies in downtown Mobile, one group of demonstrators spoke out against police brutality, while another held a vigil for police officers ambushed in Dallas.
July 18, 2016: Barber said results of investigations into Moore’s shooting “should not be rushed” and that results were not imminent.
Michael Moore's mother, Shunta Daugherty, left, and cousin Gyda Larry attend a rally and march to protest police brutality organized by the Mobile Bay Socialist Alternative in downtown Mobile, Ala., on Friday July 22, 2016.Sharon Steinmann/AL.com
Nov. 1, 2016: Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich announced that a grand jury had determined that Hurst should not face criminal charges. The jury found that “Officer Hurst acted reasonably, justifiably and in accordance with all applicable laws. The officer had a right to protect himself, and a duty to neutralize the threat to innocent civilians in this populated neighborhood.” Rich said the law prevents her from revealing details about the evidence presented to the grand jury or about its deliberations. This left one investigation in progress, being conducted by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
March 2017: Mayor Sandy Stimpson promoted Police Chief James Barber to the position of Executive Director of Public Safety. Assistant Police Chief Lawrence Battiste, Stimpson’s pick as the new chief, was rapidly confirmed by the city council.
Sept. 1, 2017: The Mobile Police Department announced that Hurst, who had been on administrative leave, had resigned.
Sept. 7, 2017: The Department of Justice reported that its Civil Rights Division had closed its investigation of the case. “Given the totality of the circumstances, and conflicting eye-witness testimony, the government cannot disprove the Officer’s claim that he believed that Moore was reaching for a firearm, that he feared for his life, and that he made the split-second decision to defend it,” said the report.
Shortly after the Department of Justice announcement, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement describing the DOJ decision as “the final in a series of investigations associated with the death of Mr. Moore, following parallel reviews by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office.”
May 31, 2020: After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, demonstrations took place in Mobile. At these and other 2020 demonstrations, Michael Moore’s name continued to be evoked by participants.
Dozens marched from Bienville Square to Government Plaza in Mobile, Ala., on Thursday June 16, 2016 to protest Michael Moore's death. Moore was shot following a traffic stop Monday night. (Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com)
A Black teenager shot by a white officer police after a traffic stop in Alabama. No gun found at the scene. A gun, found later, underneath the body in the hospital. A gun without fingerprints. Demonstrations, contentious public hearings, a federal investigation.
Almost five years later, a $2.5 million settlement has brought an apparent end to a case that that began in Mobile in 2016 with the fatal shooting of Michael Moore by Officer Harold Hurst. The settlement by Hurst resolves a civil suit brought by Moore’s mother, Shunta Daugherty.
In a filing that paved the way for that resolution, U.S. District Judge Terry F. Moorer has evoked one of the case’s most troubling points: The allegation raised in the wake of the incident that police had planted a gun on Moore’s body after he was killed.
“Officer Hurst searched Moore after he was shot, but did not find a weapon,” Judge Moorer wrote in an opinion in September, as he weighed arguments that Hurst and the city should be immune from the claims against them. “On the scene, Officer Hurst told at least two officers that he found a magazine in Moore’s pocket, but after one officer pointed out that Officer Hurst appeared to be missing a magazine from his own carrier, he did not mention it again. Several officers also searched the area and never located a weapon. At this point, paramedics worked on Moore, placed him on a stretcher, and took him to an ambulance.”
The issue of the gun being found at the hospital caused public concern and fueled protests at the time. Hurst was later cleared by a grand jury and a review by the U.S. Department of Justice found that evidence “was insufficient to prove that the Officer willfully used excessive force.”
Speaking for the first time on some of the details of the case, Mobile officials on Monday rejected the notion that Moore did not have a gun.
James Barber, who was chief at the time, and City Attorney Ricardo Woods said questions about the gun and other evidence only arose because of a change in procedure -- which they said had been made to avoid provoking public outrage.
Barber also disputed the account of a missing magazine. “Now I spoke to Hurst briefly, that night,” said Barber. “He never said anything like that to me. Matter of fact, when I said there was a magazine on the ground, he said it was his.”
The judge’s account agreed with police that Moore was pulled over in a stolen Lexus and gave Officer Hurst a false driver license number that night in 2016. And Moorer acknowledged that some of the circumstances were unclear. “At this stage, the facts become heavily disputed,” he wrote of the stop, noting witness accounts of the fatal confrontation vary.
But in his key September ruling, which granted immunity to the city but left Hurst exposed, Moore painted a seemingly stark picture of the discovery of the gun:
“Moore was also searched by a paramedic who also did not find a gun. This search included lifting Moore’s shirt and pulling his shorts away from his body as captured by the body-camera video from Officer Portis,” wrote the judge. “Moore was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center. In the ambulance, Moore’s shirt and shorts were cut by paramedics and still no gun was found. Once in the hospital, Moore was transferred from the stretcher to a hospital bed. Numerous doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel worked on or observed Moore’s treatment. Still no gun was found.”
City attorney Ricardo Woods said this is not the damning factual account it appears to be.
“The insinuation is that the gun was somehow planted,” said Woods. “Even though we know that Officer Hurst and the two witnesses in the car saw Michael Moore with the gun. That’s their testimony. The problem is, the gun was found at the hospital.”
The judge’s opinion does not represent findings of fact, Woods said. Instead, Woods said, he was examining the city’s standpoint from a worst-case scenario, deciding whether they should be shielded from the lawsuit even when “taking the facts and evidence in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff.”
In that light, the judge continued:
“Eventually, after Moore was pronounced dead, a nurse found a firearm after she rolled Moore’s body over. The nurse notified the officer in the room, and the weapon was photographed and recovered. The gun had little to no blood on it despite a large pool of blood under Moore, and when tested for fingerprints, Moore’s fingerprints were not found on the gun or the bullets.”
Barber on Monday disagreed, he said the gun wasn’t lying there clean. “That gun was bloody,” he said.
Barber was police chief at the time and now is Executive Director of Public Safety in Mobile. He said the gun ended up at the hospital because of a decision made after the death of Michael Brown Jr. in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., a fatal shooting which triggered violent clashes between demonstrators, rioters and police.
Prior to that, Barber said, the top priority of Hurst and other patrol officers after the shooting would have been to preserve the scene. Detectives at a shooting might have begun interviewing onlookers, but they too would have kept hands off the body and other evidence. Once paramedics had confirmed Moore’s death, crime scene investigators would have moved in and gathered evidence, including weaponry, with the body still in place.
Michael Moore was shot to death in 2016 during a traffic stop by a Mobile police officer.
But Barber said that in the Ferguson case, the fact that Brown’s body lay in the street fueled community outrage. So Mobile police and fire-rescue leaders changed their policy. If there was an officer-involved shooting, they weren’t going to leave a body in the street.
“Pre-Ferguson, Michael Moore would have lain there until the collection of evidence was complete and the body had been transported,” Barber said.
It also doesn’t signify much that Hurst didn’t find the gun at the scene, Barber said. Searching the scene and logging evidence wouldn’t have been his responsibility. And he said paramedics aren’t expected to search for weapons.
USA Medical Center (since renamed USA Health University Hospital) was a stone’s throw away. Because of the new policy, Moore was bundled into an ambulance as quickly as possible, even though he was presumed to be dead, and taken there for emergency treatment.
Moore, fresh from playing basketball, was wearing shorts. Being able to examine them certainly would help clarify whether they might have held a full-size automatic pistol at all, let alone unobtrusively, through such tumultuous events. Plaintiff filings have described them as having an elastic waistband. Barber said they had a drawstring that would have supported the gun. That discrepancy, like much else in the case, remains untested in the courtroom.
The clothing cut from Moore’s body was not preserved. Attorneys working for Daugherty discovered that in 2018 and sought to charge the hospital with spoliation of evidence. Attorneys for the medical center successfully argued that the hospital, as a state institution, was immune.
“Absolutely nobody should be transported with a gun,” said Barber. “We acknowledged early on that that was a failure on our part, to recover that gun on the scene before the body was transported. But I can also see exactly why it happened, given that the guys are trained one way and now the protocols are changed.”
After the last official review cleared Hurst and by extension the police department, Daugherty filed suit in 2017. The suit initially named Hurst, then was expanded to include the city and USA Medical Center. The Hospital was the first party to win a ruling that it was immune.
Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for his normal shift when he pulled over a stolen car driven by Michael Moore. Consequently he was not wearing a body camera during their fatal confrontation.MPD
That left two Hurst and the city, and attorneys for both parties argued they should be immune as well. In his pivotal ruling last fall, Moorer agreed that the city should be excluded from the case.
That left just Hurst, who faced claims of excessive force, wrongful death and negligence. Regarding excessive force, Hurst argued that he had qualified immunity, an established but somewhat controversial doctrine holding that government officials can have broad immunity from liability for harm done while acting within their official authority.
Hurst, no longer with the Mobile police department, also argued that as an agent of the state in 2016, he had immunity to the other two claims.
Moorer’s ruling was split. He agreed that state law gave Hurst immunity on the negligence claim, but not on wrongful death. He also denied Hurst the refuge of qualified immunity at this point.
The suit took a detour into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, with Hurst appealing Moorer’s denial of immunity. But on Feb. 4 the two sides filed a joint motion, saying they had reached an agreement.
Mario Williams, an attorney for Moore’s mother, told AL.com that the case was settled for $2.5 million, with $1 million going to attorney fees. He said the settlement agreement explicitly allowed him to disclose that information but no more.
All parties, including his client, were prohibited from saying any more, he said. An attempt to reach attorneys who’d represented Hurst drew no response.
Woods said the settlement had been paid by an insurer that covered both the city and Hurst. But since the city had been excluded as a defendant, the settlement was on Hurst’s behalf. No city money was spent on the settlement, Barber and Woods said.
Having successfully argued it was immune to the claims of the suit, the city was a spectator to the settlement, not a party to it. Barber and Woods say they’d rather have had their day in court, a chance to show their evidence and shoot down the allegations of misconduct.
“I was dug in deeper than an Alabama tick not to settle the case,” said Barber.
“Same,” said Woods.
MICHAEL MOORE TIMELINE
Moore’s case prompted protests and controversy in Mobile, sweeping the city up in a national furor over race and policing.
On the evening of June 13, 2016, white Mobile police officer Harold Hurst was on his way to report for duty when he pulled over a car driven by black teenager Michael Moore. Because Hurst had not checked in for duty he was not wearing a body camera, and the circumstances under which he fatally shot Moore were immediately subject to intense debate.
The Mobile incident didn’t immediately make national news but others did. On July 5, the police shooting of a black man named Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge was captured on cell-phone video, creating a furor. One day later, video showed the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn.
On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed and nine more injured in an ambush. Ten days later it happened again in Baton Rouge, where three officers were killed and three more injured. Protests of unjust policing combined with fears that police were being targeted to fuel nationwide tension.
Emotions ran high in Mobile with furious criticism of the way police, city and other officials were handling the Moore case. Demonstrations and rallies remained peaceful.
A timeline of some key developments:
June 17, 2016: A few days after Moore’s death, the Mobile Police Department issued a “fact sheet” and timeline describing the encounter between Moore and officer Harold Hurst. It said that Hurst, on his way to work, saw the Lexus driven by Moore make a left turn that nearly caused a wreck. He pulled over the car and began investigating. He learned the car had been reported stolen, and Moore initially gave him a false ID. He asked Moore to step out of the car.
Among other points, the fact sheet said Hurst had observed a pistol in the waistband of Moore’s pants and fired multiple times when Moore attempted to reach for it. He then fired again when Moore, now wounded and lying on the ground, again attempted to reach for the weapon.
The police sheet said that the gun was found to be stolen and that the car contained other stolen items “from recent vehicle burglaries.” Other than a safe of undisclosed value and an Exxon-Mobil gas card, these items were low-value clutter: An iPhone charger, a USA visor, a container of Axe body spray, a container of gum. To those skeptical of the police account, this was an attempt to prejudice the public’s view of a dead man with information that wasn’t relevant to the actual encounter. Mobile officials never really backed off the depiction of Moore as an armed threat involved in serious offenses.
June 18, 2016: Ronald Ali, then president of the Mobile County NAACP, called for patience as investigations proceeded and said his organization was monitoring the case, indicating this was true at a state and national level.
June 21, 2016: Funeral services and a “celebration of life” were held for Moore, who had turned 19 a few days before his death.
July 7, 2016: Mobile Police Chief James Barber said that Hurst had returned to administrative duty following a period on administrative leave.
July 8, 2016: Despite a swirl of rumors raising fears of a large-scale disruption and/or an outsize response police response, a Black Lives Matter rally and march proceeded without violence.
July 12, 2016: The Mobile City Council began a long and contentious discussion of creating a citizen advisory council on police affairs.
July 13, 2016: At simultaneous rallies in downtown Mobile, one group of demonstrators spoke out against police brutality, while another held a vigil for police officers ambushed in Dallas.
July 18, 2016: Barber said results of investigations into Moore’s shooting “should not be rushed” and that results were not imminent.
Michael Moore's mother, Shunta Daugherty, left, and cousin Gyda Larry attend a rally and march to protest police brutality organized by the Mobile Bay Socialist Alternative in downtown Mobile, Ala., on Friday July 22, 2016.Sharon Steinmann/AL.com
Nov. 1, 2016: Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich announced that a grand jury had determined that Hurst should not face criminal charges. The jury found that “Officer Hurst acted reasonably, justifiably and in accordance with all applicable laws. The officer had a right to protect himself, and a duty to neutralize the threat to innocent civilians in this populated neighborhood.” Rich said the law prevents her from revealing details about the evidence presented to the grand jury or about its deliberations. This left one investigation in progress, being conducted by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
March 2017: Mayor Sandy Stimpson promoted Police Chief James Barber to the position of Executive Director of Public Safety. Assistant Police Chief Lawrence Battiste, Stimpson’s pick as the new chief, was rapidly confirmed by the city council.
Sept. 1, 2017: The Mobile Police Department announced that Hurst, who had been on administrative leave, had resigned.
Sept. 7, 2017: The Department of Justice reported that its Civil Rights Division had closed its investigation of the case. “Given the totality of the circumstances, and conflicting eye-witness testimony, the government cannot disprove the Officer’s claim that he believed that Moore was reaching for a firearm, that he feared for his life, and that he made the split-second decision to defend it,” said the report.
Shortly after the Department of Justice announcement, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement describing the DOJ decision as “the final in a series of investigations associated with the death of Mr. Moore, following parallel reviews by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office.”
May 31, 2020: After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, demonstrations took place in Mobile. At these and other 2020 demonstrations, Michael Moore’s name continued to be evoked by participants.
New Mexico eliminates qualified immunity
The bill may make it easier to sue police officers for civil rights violations.
www.axios.com
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) signed a law Wednesday that eliminates a legal defense known as qualified immunity, making it easier to sue government employees, including police officers, for civil rights violations.
Why it matters: New Mexico is now the third state to eliminate qualified immunity as a national debate unfolds on legal protections for police officers sparked by the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Context: Qualified immunity shields government officials from liability in civil rights lawsuits unless they violated a clearly established constitutional right.
- That generally means public officials are shielded from an overwhelming majority of civil rights lawsuits.
- New Mexico's bill allows victims to sue the employer of the individual who violated their rights for damages capped at $2 million.
- "Indeed, good public servants work tirelessly every single day to protect those rights, to ensure them, to safeguard New Mexicans. But when violations do occur, we as Americans know too well that the victims are disproportionately people of color, and that there are too often roadblocks to fighting for those inalienable rights in a court of law."
- “In response to some of the commentary surrounding this measure, I will say: This is not an anti-police bill. This bill does not endanger any first responder or public servant – so long as they conduct themselves professionally within the bounds of our constitution and with a deep and active respect for the sacred rights it guarantees all of us as New Mexicans.”
- "Communities and taxpayers are going to have to pay for it. It will be easier to sue the police, but it won’t bring about police reform," Hebbe said.
And Steve Hebbe can suck a fat baby's dick! Fuck YOU!!New Mexico eliminates qualified immunity
The bill may make it easier to sue police officers for civil rights violations.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) signed a law Wednesday that eliminates a legal defense known as qualified immunity, making it easier to sue government employees, including police officers, for civil rights violations.
Why it matters: New Mexico is now the third state to eliminate qualified immunity as a national debate unfolds on legal protections for police officers sparked by the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Context: Qualified immunity shields government officials from liability in civil rights lawsuits unless they violated a clearly established constitutional right.
What they're saying: “New Mexicans are guaranteed certain rights by our state constitution,” Gov. Lujan Grisham said. “Those rights are sacred, and the constitutional document providing for them is the basis of all we are privileged to do as public servants of the people of this great state."
- That generally means public officials are shielded from an overwhelming majority of civil rights lawsuits.
- New Mexico's bill allows victims to sue the employer of the individual who violated their rights for damages capped at $2 million.
The big picture: Steve Hebbe, chief of police in Farmington, New Mexico, and president of the state’s police chiefs association, told the Wall Street Journal that the law will only "get a few people some justice in state court" and that it won't address more pressing issues, such as police training.
- "Indeed, good public servants work tirelessly every single day to protect those rights, to ensure them, to safeguard New Mexicans. But when violations do occur, we as Americans know too well that the victims are disproportionately people of color, and that there are too often roadblocks to fighting for those inalienable rights in a court of law."
- “In response to some of the commentary surrounding this measure, I will say: This is not an anti-police bill. This bill does not endanger any first responder or public servant – so long as they conduct themselves professionally within the bounds of our constitution and with a deep and active respect for the sacred rights it guarantees all of us as New Mexicans.”
- "Communities and taxpayers are going to have to pay for it. It will be easier to sue the police, but it won’t bring about police reform," Hebbe said.
I hope this is just one of the first dominoes to fall. Well done NM.
All of these reports feel forced. There was a push to stop Asian hate which didn't last long. In the last two weeks black murder has popped up like the new season of a show. There is some design to this. As well as an uptick in "white people are trash" TV (Exterminate the Beasts, They...).
All of these reports feel forced. There was a push to stop Asian hate which didn't last long. In the last two weeks black murder has popped up like the new season of a show. There is some design to this. As well as an uptick in "white people are trash" TV (Exterminate the Beasts, They...).
From David Gray - 1/6: "I need to drive my two-year-old to daycare tomorrow morning. To ensure we arrive alive, we won't take public transit (Oscar Grant). I removed all air fresheners from the vehicle and double-checked my registration status (Daunte Wright)
2/6 and ensured my license plates were visible (Lt. Caron Nazario). I will be careful to follow all traffic rules (Philando Castille), signal every turn (Sandra Bland), keep the radio volume low (Jordan Davis), and won't stop at a fast food chain for a meal (Rayshard Brooks).
3/6 I'm too afraid to pray (Rev. Clementa C. Pickney) so I just hope the car won't break down (Corey Jones).
When my wife picks him up at the end of the day, I'll remind her not to dance (Elijah McClain), stop to play in a park (Tamir Rice),
4/6 patronize the local convenience store for snacks (Trayvon Martin), or walk around the neighborhood (Mike Brown). Once they are home, we won't stand in our backyard (Stephon Clark), eat ice cream on the couch (Botham Jean), or play any video games (Atatiana Jefferson).
5/6 After my wife and I tuck him into bed around 7:30pm, neither of us will leave the house to go to Walmart (John Crawford) or to the gym (Tshyrand Oates) or on a jog (Ahmaud Arbery). We won't even walk to see the birds (Christian Cooper).
6/6 We'll just sit and try not to breathe (George Floyd) and not to sleep (Breonna Taylor)."
2/6 and ensured my license plates were visible (Lt. Caron Nazario). I will be careful to follow all traffic rules (Philando Castille), signal every turn (Sandra Bland), keep the radio volume low (Jordan Davis), and won't stop at a fast food chain for a meal (Rayshard Brooks).
3/6 I'm too afraid to pray (Rev. Clementa C. Pickney) so I just hope the car won't break down (Corey Jones).
When my wife picks him up at the end of the day, I'll remind her not to dance (Elijah McClain), stop to play in a park (Tamir Rice),
4/6 patronize the local convenience store for snacks (Trayvon Martin), or walk around the neighborhood (Mike Brown). Once they are home, we won't stand in our backyard (Stephon Clark), eat ice cream on the couch (Botham Jean), or play any video games (Atatiana Jefferson).
5/6 After my wife and I tuck him into bed around 7:30pm, neither of us will leave the house to go to Walmart (John Crawford) or to the gym (Tshyrand Oates) or on a jog (Ahmaud Arbery). We won't even walk to see the birds (Christian Cooper).
6/6 We'll just sit and try not to breathe (George Floyd) and not to sleep (Breonna Taylor)."
This is what the NFL team The Las Vegas Raiders posted:
What the hell happened to this thread? Started in 2016 and now only 4 pages long.
