She called 911 to report an assault, police kill her. Look at her picture, you better believe those cops are going down. Especially if they aren't white.

http://i.imgur.com/Yo0RzBv.jpg

Minneapolis police officer fatally shoots Australian bride-to-be under mysterious circumstances

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/17/bride-to-be-called-911-for-help-and-was-fatally-shot-by-a-minneapolis-police-officer/

A yoga and meditation teacher living in Minneapolis was fatally shot by police Saturday night after she called 911 to report a possible assault in the alley behind her home.

The woman was identified by family in local and Australian news reports as 40-year-old Justine Damond (nee Justine Ruszczyk), a native Australian who studied to be a veterinarian in Sydney before moving to Minneapolis to be with her fiance, Don Damond. The couple planned to marry next month, but Justine Damond had already taken her fiance’s last name.

The call for help came in just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state agency investigating the shooting. Two Minneapolis Police Department officers went to an alley near her home in the Fulton neighborhood, on the city’s southwest side.

“At one point an officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman,” the statement said.

But the BCA offered few other details on what precipitated the shooting and, it said, neither of the responding officers had turned on their body cameras before the shooting. The squad car camera did not capture the incident, either.

Investigators are looking into whether other video of the shooting exists, the BCA statement said. When the state investigation is completed, the results will be given to the office of Hennepin County Attorney Michael O. Freeman for a review of whether any charges should be filed. A spokesman for Freeman declined to comment Monday about the shooting.

All Minneapolis police officers have worn body cameras since the end of 2016, according to the city, a policy decision that was announced last July, after a black motorist named Philando Castile was fatally shot by a police officer in the Twin Cities area.

“We all want to know more; I want to know more,” Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. “I call on the BCA … to share as much information as they can as quickly as they possibly can.”

The mayor, who represented the Fulton area as a city council member, called the shooting a “tragic incident” and said she has questions about why the officers’ body cameras were not turned on.

“Tonight, I’m sad, and disturbed,” Hodges wrote on Facebook Sunday night. “This is a tragedy — for the family, for a neighborhood I know well, and for our whole city. … There is a long road of healing ahead, and a lot of work remains to be done. I hope to help us along that path in any way I can.

Authorities told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the officers have been placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings.

Three people “with knowledge of the incident” told the Star Tribune that the responding officers pulled into the alley behind Damond’s home. The woman, wearing pajamas, approached the driver’s side door and was talking to the driver, reported the Star Tribune. The officer in the passenger seat shot Damond through the driver’s side door, the three people told the newspaper.

When asked about the Star Tribune report, Jill Oliveira, spokeswoman for the BCA, said only that the investigation is in the very early stages and the state agency will provide details as they become available.

The scant details have left Damond’s friends and family in shock and confused over the circumstances that led to her death.

“Basically, my mom’s dead because a police officer shot her for reasons I don’t know,” Zach Damond, Justine Damond’s stepson-to-be, said in a video posted to the Women’s March Minnesota Facebook page. “I demand answers. If anybody can help, just call the police and demand answers. I’m so done with all this violence.”

He added: “America sucks. These cops need to get trained differently. I need to move out of here.”

Don Damond was away on a business trip when the shooting occurred. His son, Zach, said his future stepmother heard a sound in the alley so she called police “and the cops showed up.”

“She was a very passionate woman, and she probably — she thought something bad is happening,” the 22-year-old said. “Next thing I know, they take my best friend’s life.”

Nancy Coune, office administrator for the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community Center, where Damond has worked as a Sunday speaker and meditation teacher for the past 2 1/2 years, described her as a “nonviolent” person.

“She’s not the type to provoke somebody. She would’ve maybe stepped in and helped somebody,” Coune told The Washington Post. “It’s quite unbelievable … She was sweet. She was beautiful. She was kind. She had a bright light about her. Everybody wanted to be her friend, and this happened to her? In a very low-crime-rate neighborhood? Nobody understands.”

Coune said Damond and her fiance have both devoted their time to making people’s lives better and had talked about helping to improve race relations in Minneapolis. Don Damond is a volunteer at a local prison, where he teaches meditation, Coune said.

Despite Damond’s sudden death, Coune said she and others at the community center are not angry.

“Because that’s so opposite of what Justine was and what we actually teach and practice here,” she said.

Damond’s death has become a top story in Australia, where her photo is splashed across the top of major news sites. Those same sites reported that the shooting has also shocked and confused friends back home.

“How someone teaching meditation and spreading love can be shot dead by police while in her pajamas is beyond comprehension,” Matt Omo, Damond’s friend, told the Australia Broadcasting Corporation.

Alisa Monaghan, another friend, said Damond moved to the United States to “follow her heart” and to find “new life,” the ABC reported.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it is providing consular assistance to Damond’s family.

In a statement released by the agency, Damond’s family in Australia said: “This is a very difficult time for our family. We are trying to come to terms with this tragedy and to understand why this has happened. We will not make any further comment or statement and ask that you respect our privacy. Thank you.”

Friends and family are demanding a federal investigation into her death, News.com.au reported. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Monday.

Damond attended high school in Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s of veterinary science degree in 2002, according to the ABC.

Her personal and business website says she was a qualified yoga instructor, meditation teacher and a personal health and life coach.

The website says Damond’s “interest in supporting people to heal and transform themselves developed after she saw family members suffer greatly from depression, alcoholism and cancer.”

It continued: “After losing much of her family to cancer she has spent many years on a personal investigative journey to discover how habits and disease develop, and how people can change and live in joy, expressing their full potential.”

Three mayoral candidates, Minneapolis NAACP officials and about 250 other friends, family and community members attended a vigil Sunday night where Damond was shot.

“Many of us who have been on the front lines have been warning the public, saying if they would do this to our fathers and our sons and our brothers and our sisters and our mothers, they will do it to you next,” said Nekima Levy-Pounds, one of the candidates and a civil rights attorney. “I really hope that this is a wake-up call for this community to stop allowing things to be divided on the lines of race and on the lines of socio-economic status.”

Friends and neighbors called her a “peaceful, lovely woman” who loved animals and helping others.

“This woman was a beautiful light,” Bethany Bradley of Women’s March Minnesota said at the vigil. “She was a healer. She was loved. And she should be alive. She should still be here.”

Damond is one of at least 524 people fatally shot by police in the United States this year, and the fifth such person in Minnesota, according to a Washington Post database tracking such deaths. Among people shot by police, she represents an outlier: Men make up the overwhelming majority of people fatally shot by officers. Damond is at least the 23rd woman fatally shot by an officer this year, accounting for just over 4 percent of all fatal police shootings.

Damond’s death is the latest to draw scrutiny to how police officers in the Twin Cities area use deadly force.

Last year, an officer from a suburb fatally shot Philando Castile, a local school worker, during a traffic stop that was partially streamed online. Castile’s death in July 2016 set off heated demonstrations that continued for weeks. Protests flared up again last month when a jury acquitted Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who shot Castile, on all counts.

Just weeks before Castile’s death, federal authorities said they would not bring criminal charges in a November 2015 shooting involving Minneapolis police officers. Two officers fatally shot 24-year-old Jamar Clark, whose death sparked demonstrations. The prosecutor announced last year that the officers would not be charged, saying they believed he was trying to grab one of their guns.

A month before Castile’s death, the Justice Department said the officers would not face federal civil rights charges.

Clark’s death prompted a wave of protests outside a Minneapolis police station, demonstrations that eventually saw a burst of violence. Gunfire near the protests injured five demonstrators in November 2015, and prosecutors charged a group of men with the shootings. Last month, two men in that case pleaded guilty, while another had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Cops will lose their jobs, MAYBE dry out in Jail (not prison) until it goes to trial and then get off with time served.

If they are non white -- they should have known better

She was reaching for something? The cops feared for their lives?
Philando was killed 15 minutes away from where she was.
A tragedy no doubt.
But the difference in framing makes me sick.

It's far too early to jump to conclusions and blame the police for this one. Maybe they feared for their lives. Maybe she was harboring thug intent.

Go through her family tree, find one criminal, and use that to justify this. I am waiting for all these results before immediately supporting her side. More facts need to come out and even if they do come out I'll still feel there is more to this story than the results showed.

It's sad that this woman died and y'all can call me jaded but I've seen too many POC get killed for random shit and dehumanized in death to cape for this woman. I'm sorry a life was lost.

kev

Shit feels like some handmaids 1984 shit for real.

Cops just killing folk like it's a video game.

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg


Just trying to share the world - www.JySbr.net

But since its a big story over there too apparently im hoping they aint dropping the ball

#BlueLivesMatter folks are going to work themselves into a frenzy on this.

>#BlueLivesMatter folks are going to work themselves into a
>frenzy on this.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

http://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-officer-who-shot-killed-woman-identified/434975623/#1

A source confirmed that Officer Mohamed Noor was the shooter. Attorney Tom Plunkett is representing the officer, but declined to identify him.

According to a city newsletter, Noor joined the department in March 2015 as the first Somali police officer to patrol the 5th Precinct in southwest Minneapolis. He has a degree in Economics and Business Administration from Augsburg College. Before joining the department he worked in property management in commercial and residential properties in Minneapolis and St. Louis, Mo.

Seems way too convenient for the shooter to be the first Somali on the force.

i know i saw this shit on TV because he was the first Somali on the force and he was proud because i guess there is a big Somali community in Minneapolis and he was happy to serve them and the force was happy because as a Somali he could get more out of the community when there was crimes.

hmmmm.

Also wouldn't surprise me if he was.

Also wouldn't surprise me if he was.

Black officer.

and I'm sitting here thinking: he wasn't Black.

IN MY EXPERIENCE, BLK PPL FROM OTHER COUNTRIES DON'T READILY IDENTIFY AS 'BLACK' - THEY KNOW WHAT COMES WITH THAT.

I read it as CNN alreafdy started to frame 'the nxgga' for whatever happened. however it turns out, it's gon be HIS fault.

but we shall see.

Oh Wait. She's not black, so she will be given the respect of begin a human being.


.
.

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Plato

Not glee, regret, schadenfreude ... just apathy.

The whole shooting scenario seems made up...

She was talking to partner through drivers side window... at some point Noor shoots across his partner... through police door and hits her in abdomen? Wtf

How?

How the hell does a cop shoot a woman in the abdomen from a passenger seat and why would he?

It definitely could be a a misfire but that seems like a stretch.

Im saying...

Was the gun just sitting on his lap? Did he really remove it from holster while seated then shot ACROSS HIS PARTNER.. through a door?

Can't imagine how loud that would be, a 9mm going off a foot or two from your ear in a small enclosed space.

no... HOW it happened just seems wild ridiculous..

And I'm not really buying the "ambush" thing either.

never know

- no body camera

- no dash cam

- no squad car lights

you 'pulled into a dark alley' under the auspices of a sexual assault, heard a 'loud noise' and immediately shot thru the door?

Allegedly there was a man on a bike at the end of the alley who may or may not have seen something.

#HotTake

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/21/538645807/minneapolis-police-chief-resigns-in-wake-of-officer-shooting-australian-woman

No victim blaming
No strong police blaming

Police not coming hard to the cops defense.

It's like the race of the parties has every one is confused on how to react.

killed a white woman. I'd bet that's happened fever than 20 times in the last 50 years in the entire country.

They definitely weren't confused about that.

>No victim blaming
>No strong police blaming
>
>Police not coming hard to the cops defense.
>
>It's like the race of the parties has every one is confused on
>how to react.

*presents Exhibit A*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04IIL2mPCs8

There were about 1000. Are you familiar with them all? If not, how can you characterize this or any other in any way?

The 'wierdness' might not be so weird if you researched it. I'm not trying to be snarky. Just saying...if the narrative of this shooting doesn't match what you're familiar with....maybe the narrative of what you're familiar with isn't representative of the aggregate.

My suspicion is that the only reason this particular shooting hit the news is because she is a white foreignerj shot by a black cop. If she was a white american...this wouldn't be in the news. If the cop was white, it also wouldn't be in the news. It's the combination of those two factors that put this is people's social media streams.

3 people are shot and killed by police everyday. Why did this particular story get press and not the others?

That's bullshit. A pretty unarmed white woman who is about to get married and lives in a nice neighborhood shot by a black policeman after calling 911.

That shit will ALWAYS make the news

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/pennsylvania-officer-acquitted-murder-david-kassick

If you are saying that white americans who are killed by white police receive ample national media coverage please specify so. Pointing to one example (from the Guardian no less) does not make a strong contention for that position. It happens just about twice a day.

So American being built on race, about race, and obsessed with race means people tend to only pay attention to the ones based on race

I think that was my point.

This incident is only in the press because she's Australian and the cop was black.

Quickly

I'm probably using 'in the news' too loosely.

Almost all police shootings are technically 'in the news' or reported on in some capacity. I'm talking about national press, 'going viral', being the basis for protests and thinkpieces and twitter campaigns etc etc etc.

And young people only have exposure to THOSE stories. The ones selected for the public consciousness. And social media creates a platform for tribalistic news paradigms. The historical tragedy of Trump winning is a product of the same thing.

If I'm understanding you correctly. If you're saying that the particularly salient stories get the tweets, FB posts, etc. then you may be right but again those storie lack could get to the top of the heap due to Americans being conditoned to respond to black white stories over white white.

The Freddie Grays murder involved mostly black officers and sparked protests and riots so the argument that it's only or mostly when the skin tones are at oppposite ends of the spectrum that stories spark outrage, interest, etc doesn't hold up.

The responses IMO wouldn't vary much even in the absence of social media.


>I'm probably using 'in the news' too loosely.
>
>Almost all police shootings are technically 'in the news' or
>reported on in some capacity. I'm talking about national
>press, 'going viral', being the basis for protests and
>thinkpieces and twitter campaigns etc etc etc.
>
>And young people only have exposure to THOSE stories. The
>ones selected for the public consciousness. And social media
>creates a platform for tribalistic news paradigms. The
>historical tragedy of Trump winning is a product of the same
>thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Zachary_Hammond

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Geer

In front of his parents. The officer committed suicide so I guess there was some form of justice in that incident

I'm not arguing it doesn't happen. I'm arguing that it is not reported on in the national press and does not enter the collective dialogue of police brutality.

nm

Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by
police in 2015, 40% of them were Black men,
even though Black men make up just 6% of
the nation’s population.

It would be ridiculous to argue that the proportions are the same, or that being black doesn't raise one's risk of such injustices

All im responding to is the notion that "oh now that it's a white person, let's see them suddenly care" ...in reality, most of the time this happens to white ppl, it's not even getting mentioned on CNN etc.

My point has nothing to do with claiming race makes no difference or some bullshit like that

If I'm running into a cop, I'm glad I look like a white guy and not a black guy.

>All im responding to is the notion that "oh now that it's a
>white person, let's see them suddenly care" ...in reality,
>most of the time this happens to white ppl, it's not even
>getting mentioned on CNN etc.
>


Exactly, so your point is that it's usually not
mentioned when it's a white person, and my point
is that there's a reason for that... mainly that
it happens to Black ppl very disproportionatly and
are fed up with this happening to us and have been
for a long time. Also, the cop's info usually isn't
in the news so quickly and the victim is already
on trial.

If there's more to your point, feel free to share.

it would be faulty to assume its going to be treated as a bigger deal when a white person gets killed.


The possible reasons for this are plentiful, but at the end of the day, whatever the reason, it's reality.

Now if you want to discuss reasons, in my opinion, pure speculation, but it serves the status quo for everyone to assume that police brutality isn't an issue that can touch white ppl. It's better because it keeps the matter completely divided along racial lines, making it much harder to garner enough societal momentum to really change matters.

>it would be faulty to assume its going to be treated as a
>bigger deal when a white person gets killed.


We already have plenty of evidence to suggest this.
Let's not act like we're unfamiliar with American
racial double standards.


>Now if you want to discuss reasons, in my opinion, pure
>speculation, but it serves the status quo for everyone to
>assume that police brutality isn't an issue that can touch
>white ppl. It's better because it keeps the matter completely
>divided along racial lines, making it much harder to garner
>enough societal momentum to really change matters.


I was 100% sure you would say this.
One.hundred.percent.
While I think there is some truth to that, it's
also a racist talking point very often cited
to counter protests from Black people out our
disproportionate targeting for this particular
crime against humanity. While racists can
always cite the killing of white people, it
never seems to inspire activism from them...
mainly because you are far from the ones
most targeted by it. In order to stand against
this issue, you'd have to stand with us and
largely on our behalf... so we know how that
goes.

isn't even trying to disagree with you. Putting all kinds of spin on my words when we actually agree. Go elsewhere with all that

All I'm saying is don't expect an automatic media storm when police brutality hits a white person, because it rarely happens that way ...for whatever reason you choose to believe.

All that other shit is you trying to quarrel for no reason. And since police brutality affects black people harder than white people (absolutely no question about it), I think we'd all like to see the broader society including white people feel a bit more invested in this aka it would be good for it to hit home with white folks too aka it would be good if the media didn't brush it under the rug. That's all.

Miss me with that other shit.

I haven't put any spin on your words either, btw.
None at all.

>All I'm saying is don't expect an automatic media storm when
>police brutality hits a white person, because it rarely
>happens that way ...for whatever reason you choose to
>believe.

Cool... but there is already a media storm
around this, and PimpTrick was pointing out
how different the coverage appears.
In elaborating on your point that it's not covered
when the victims are white, you said...
"All im responding to is the notion that "oh now that it's a white person, let's see them suddenly care"
and
"it would be faulty to assume its going to be treated as a bigger deal when a white person gets killed."
PimpTrick didn't say ANY of that, so he's either
proxy for someone else, your misread what he typed,
your point was a diversion, or some combination of the 3.
That's not me sparring... that's just logical.


>All that other shit is you trying to quarrel for no reason.
>And since police brutality affects black people harder than
>white people (absolutely no question about it), I think we'd
>all like to see the broader society including white people
>feel a bit more invested in this aka it would be good for it
>to hit home with white folks too aka it would be good if the
>media didn't brush it under the rug. That's all.
>
>Miss me with that other shit.


Not sure what "other shit" you're talking about,
but I agree with that paragraph for the most part.

Your previous replies read like you're trying to battle me or something, and like you're suggesting and inferring all kinds of lack of concern from my part or that I'm acting like white ppl have it worse, and it sounded like you were trying to lump me in with racists who don't care when this happens to black people.

Text tone can be deceptive, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.


>"it would be faulty to assume its going to be treated as a
>bigger deal when a white person gets killed."
>PimpTrick didn't say ANY of that, so he's either
>proxy for someone else, your misread what he typed,
>your point was a diversion, or some combination of the 3.
>That's not me sparring... that's just logical.
:
I never said PimpTrick said that. I'm just saying, for anyone who might think it would become a bigger deal when a white person gets killed, I don't see that happening.

Now I have been somewhat unplugged from mainstream news for the last several days, so if you say it's becoming a big story, ok...but my guess would be it has a lot more to do with the fact that the killer was a Muslim, and wedge pimps like Michelle Bachman and company are trying to depict this as a semiracial holywar.

If the killer was a black cop, I could see heightened coverage as well. It's juicy and they can play up the whole racial tension angle and ride that story til the wheels fall off.

But in most cases, where the brutalizing or murderous cops are white, we aren't going to see anything about it on mainstream news, even if the victim is white, especially if they're white, which because then there's no sexy hot button TV ratings boom like race, and instead all the focus would be squarely on cops and issues with law enforcement, which they feel wouldn't gain as much ratings as Kim Kardashian's latest shopping fiasco in the wake of Donald Trump's hair malfunction.

When there's no Black outrage, there's no 24 hour coverage. There's a whole grip of Black folks killed by cops no one heard of, nationally.

Freddie gray...still news articles about him. Keith McLeod (go ahead and Googles), not so much.

Philando's mom was over there day one speaking up. BLM folks here have been active. There's no reason to buy into this BS.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/22/black-activists-minneapolis-race-reacted-justine-damond-shooting

In the aftermath of the police shooting of Justine Damond, many on the right of the political spectrum asked on social media: “Where are the protests now?”

The claim was clear: when a black cop killed a white woman, Black Lives Matter, or other African American activists pushing for police reform, would not be quick to protest.

That narrative went mainstream on Wednesday, in a piece by CNN writer Doug Criss. Criss noted that a vigil was held for Damond the day after the shooting, but added that “there weren’t widespread protest marches, like the ones Black Lives Matter held last year after Philando Castile’s shooting death at the hands of an officer in nearby Falcon Heights”.

Criss went on to quote David Love, a journalist who writes on race issues whom Criss said had not “seen too many people from the movement express any anger or outrage about the shooting”.

They spoke too soon. Any doubts about the diverse nature of the groups rallying around Damond’s case were answered on Friday, during a media conference Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges held to explain her decision to ask for the resignation of police chief Janeé Harteau in the wake of the Damond shooting.

Hodges was only a few sentences in when protesters began streaming in the door. One of them, John Thompson, a friend of Philando Castile who has become a fixture at protests after Castile’s death, quickly interrupted her, asking her to resign. Soon afterward he and another community activist, Chauntyll Allen, were leading the now crowded room in chants of “If Justine don’t get it, shut it down”, echoing a similar cry used during the protests against Castile’s shooting.

Whatever one thinks about their tactics, the group of protesters that interrupted that media conference on Friday was diverse, with a large contingent of young white protesters and several long-time black activists in the lead. Was this is a new trend that Criss and Love had missed?

The truth is that black activists have been at the forefront since day one.

Last Saturday night, Damond, a 40-year-old spiritual healer from Sydney, Australia, called 911 to report a possible sexual assault. She was in her pyjamas when she approached the Minneapolis squad car that responded. Officer Mohamed Noor, who was in the passenger seat, shot her through the driver’s side window.

About 300 people attended the vigil, near the crime scene, the next day. Cathy Jones, an African American woman who works as a mail carrier by day, was one of the organizers. Following the police shootings of Jamar Clark in 2015 and Philando Castile last year, she marched at protests with Black Lives Matter and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Last week, she went to South Minneapolis soon after hearing of the shooting, to see how she could help.

It’s never been about race. It’s been about police accountability.
Cathy Jones, activist
“I think it’s important because these are things that affect our community every single day,” she said. “It’s never been about race. It’s been about police accountability.”

Mel Reeves, an African-American man who has been a neighborhood activist for more than two decades, was also part of the group that organized the vigil.

“When these incidents happen it’s important to put as much pressure on the system as possible,” he said. “To get answers, to get justice. It’s important to let the system, the power structure, know that people aren’t going to just lay down.”

While it’s impossible to paint activists of color with one brush – they have different approaches, tactics, affiliations and ideologies – those rallying around the Damond shooting share a belief that her death was caused by the kind of police violence they have been working to stop. They also believe that as, community members, they have a duty to show up.

Jason Sole, the president of the Minneapolis NAACP, also attended the vigil. “We felt like just from a humanitarian perspective, we are not only for black people, we are for all people,” he said, “so that’s why it was important for us to come to the ground and just show our faces.”

The influence of such activists could have been missed by outside observers. While they support the larger movement for police reform and racial equity, they do not necessarily fall under the easily Googled banner of “Black Lives Matter”. BLM has a chapter in Minneapolis that has at times been hugely influential. But it is far from the only group working on issues related to police shootings.

Most black activists have also tried to balance speaking out with deference to Damond’s family and the residents of her neighborhood.

“When we are protesting and we rising up against injustice, we want people to support us and help us out but we don’t want them to take the lead,” Sole said. “I didn’t feel it was appropriate at the Minneapolis NAACP to try and take the lead on this.”

Shaun King, a columnist with the New York Daily News who covers police brutality and Black Lives Matter, says critics questioning the willingness of black activists to address police violence against white victims often do so in error.

“I see regularly, ‘Why don’t you speak out against police brutality that affects white people?” he said. “When people say that to an activist or to me, they clearly don’t have their ears to the ground.

“It didn’t surprise me at all that people from all walks of life showed up from day one there in Minneapolis, because people are bothered by injustice and when they see this, it wasn’t racial.”

The diversity of protesters in Minneapolis was impossible to miss on Thursday, as hundreds marched through Damond’s neighborhood. Also clear was the thread that so many saw connecting Damond’s death with that of Philando Castile. His mother, Valerie Castile, hugged Dom Damond, Justine’s fiance. John Thompson, a friend and coworker of Castile who became an activist after his death, gave an impassioned speech, as he has at many other protests over the last year.

An activist who goes by the name of King Demetrius Pendleton, another organizer of the 16 July vigil for Damond, was also present. He livestreamed protests related to the death of Castile. He was doing the same for Damond.

“The similarity is that the police are trigger happy,” he said. “They are too quick to discharge their firearm. They do not assess the situation.”

In the past two years, in response to community pressure, the Minneapolis Police Department has updated its training procedures and adopted body cameras. The officers who responded to Damond’s call, however, did not have their cameras turned on.

In a media conference on Wednesday, assistant police chief Medaria Arradondo, who is now set to become chief, addressed the “trigger happy” charge by pointing to a move the department made last year to require officers to use de-escalation tactics, and to resort to force only as as a last resort. The “sanctity of life” was a guiding principle for how Minneapolis police officers interact with the public, he said.

On Thursday, then police chief Janeé Harteau disavowed Noor’s conduct, saying Damon “didn’t have to die”. What happened was the result of an “individual officer’s actions”, she said, frustrating activists who believe systemic changes are needed.

Late on Friday, Harteau resigned from her role, at the request of mayor Betsy Hodges.

Another common belief among activists of color protesting Damond’s case is that it might lead to change that could benefit the city. Since Damond was a white woman who lived in a wealthy and influential neighborhood, and since the government of Australia is now supporting her family, they hope the case will at least force the city and police leaders to consider new reforms.

“I just hope that the people from that community rise up,” said Jones. “Her death does not have to be in vain, this tragedy can help the entire city take a serious look at how the police treat communities.

“I would just hope that they continue to speak out for their friend and rise up and say: ‘Enough is enough.’”

It was a given that this officer would be thrown under the bus; black officer, white shooting victim...come on (and lol at the nonsense of people not getting what people mean by, "now folks are caring").

I'm just waiting to see if the Somalian community comes out like the Asian community did for Liang and pressure to roll the sentence back.

>(and lol
>at the nonsense of people not getting what people mean by,
>"now folks are caring").
>

http://abcnews.go.com/US/minneapolis-police-chief-resigns-wake-fatal-shooting-bride/story?id=48783798

Mainstream publications using 'killer cop' in their headlines. Never saw that with Brown or Garner. It's hard to quantify...but my perception is that this cop is getting much less benefit of the doubt compared to other incidents like this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-who-fatally-shot-justine-damond-charged-murder-n831206

for obvious reasons

*African voice*

Gather 'round my broddaz...

Looks like awall my ninjaz gonna have ta start wearin blonde wigs now and colored blue-eye contacts ta keep dem cops dem from
buckin shotz.

Put da word out inna hood near you.
Let us apologize to the sistaz now....
...'cus we finna be at war for
deez blonde wigs.

Shit is CRUCIAL, ock!


Punkazz american justice system. Matter-fak, naw...scratch dat,....run it back....

....we ain't gon' call it 'justice' no mo. Dat shit is "justdem" now. 'Cus thas all dey give a fuck about, JUSTDEM.