Friday, May 25, 2012

Honor student Brittany Rowley claims she was roughed up cops in Brooklyn in case of mistaken identity

Exclusive: Father says daughter was racially profiled after police thought she matched description of shoplifter


Published: BY  / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS


Brittany Rowley, 15, is suing the police department after she was injured during an arrest.

JESSE WARD FOR THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Honors student Brittany Rowley, 15, is at the center of a $5.5 million lawsuit against the city after she claims she was roughed up by police in Brooklyn in a case of mistaken identity.

RELATED STORIES

AARON SHOWALTER FOR THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Brittany Rowley says police grabbed her as a shoplifting suspect at Park Slope store.

A black teen honor student at an all-girl Catholic high school claims she was roughed up by plainclothes NYPD cops who thought she matched the description of a shoplifting suspect, the Daily News has learned.
Police later realized Brittany Rowley didn’t commit the crime — but she is still haunted by the nightmare she experienced on a Park Slope street and the three hours spent handcuffed to a bench in a police stationhouse.
“It was terrifying,” Rowley, 15, said in an exclusive interview. “It is the most horrible thing I have ever experienced.”
Her father said hes outraged by the incident and on Tuesday filed notice of a $5.5 million lawsuit against the city and Sgt. Jonathan Catanzaro and Officer Stephen Nakao of the 78th Precinct. The court papers allege false arrest and excessive force, including that the sergeant slammed Rowley to the pavement and flung his keys at her.
“I feel my daughter was racially profiled,” Delmus Rowley said.
“They had no proof, just a description of a black young lady with braids,” he added. “It wasn’t necessary to tackle a 15-year-old girl. It was excessive.”
There is no dispute that two black teen girls shoplifted shorts and jeans from Rivet, a clothing store on Seventh Ave., last Friday around 3:30 p.m. A description of the suspects was broadcast by police at 3:44 p.m. — two female black teens, dark hair, one had a ponytail, police said.
Catanzaro and Nakao were patrolling in an umarked car when they spotted Rowley and a friend walking on Prospect Park West. Rowley had braided hair extensions tied together.
Rowley, a freshman at St. Saviour High School, and her friend were going to the library when she noticed a vehicle trailing them.
The accounts diverge at this point. Rowley said the car suddenly reversed and a male yelled, “Get them!” The cops claim they said, “Excuse me ladies,” with their badges out.
Rowley and her friend ran. “I thought we were being abducted,” Rowley said.
Catanzaro tackled Rowley and threw her to the ground. He threw his keys, she said, hitting her leg. She recalled him saying, “Why did you f------ run? I should punch you.”
She claims Catanzaro yanked her up, whipsawing her neck. She says police also snapped on cuffs, causing bruises. Her friend returned and was collared too.
An NYPD official insists the incident was good police work, noting that Catanzaro obtained surveillance tape from the clothing boutique that exonerated Rowley, even after the store manager identified her as the suspect.
“But for him viewing the videotape, the young lady would still be in custody,” said Inspector Kim Royster, an NYPD spokeswoman.
The Rowleys’ lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, said the arrest shows the growing concern civil rights advocates have with the NYPD’s crimefighting tactics.
“It is not a surprise that parents fear more that their children will suffer violence at the hands of the police than from common criminals,” Rubenstein said.
jmarzulli@nydailynews.com


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/honor-student-brittany-rowley-claims-roughed-cops-brooklyn-case-mistaken-identity-article-1.1082895#ixzz1vnmVc1Rl
Posted by at 1 comment:
Links to this post

Champion's mates paint horrid picture of night he died

By Ernie Suggs and Bo Emerson 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just months away from becoming Florida A&M University’s head drum major, Robert Champion still had one more test he felt he had to pass: earning true respect from the rest of the Marching 100.
Enlarge photo
This 2010 photo provided by the Champion family shows Robert Champion, the Florida A&M University drum major who died in a Nov. 19 , 2011 hazing incident.
APThis 2010 photo provided by the Champion family shows Robert Champion, the Florida A&M University drum major who died in a Nov. 19 , 2011 hazing incident.
Enlarge photo
Robert Champion, Sr., attorney Chris Chestnut, and Pam Champion listen and answer questions from the media concerning the release of documents in the hazing death of their son, Robert Champion, on Tuesday, May 23, 2012 in Chestnut's office.
Johnny Crawford, jcrawford@ajc.coRobert Champion, Sr., attorney Chris Chestnut, and Pam Champion listen and answer questions from the media concerning the release of documents in the hazing death of their son, Robert Champion, on Tuesday, May 23, 2012 in Chestnut's office.

Related

More Atlanta area news »

That, at least, was the story police got from some band members who are now charged with beating Champion to death during a hazing ritual on Nov. 19. They said the 26-year-old Decatur resident begged repeatedly to go through the ordeal he thought would finally give him gravitas.
“He was wanting to do it all all season," head drum major Jonathan Boyce told investigators, according to hundreds of pages of documents released Wednesday by Florida prosecutors.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon at their attorney's offices in Peachtree Center, Champion's parents assailed the suggestion that their son wanted to be hazed.
“My son was not the kind of person to go along to get along,” said Robert Champion Sr. “He was brought up to do what was right.”
As for Boyce’s account, Robert Champion's mother, Pam Champion, said: "Consider the source. They're trying to save themselves."
The medical examiner ruled that Champion died of hemorrhagic shock caused by blunt-force trauma.
Eleven of Champion’s band mates -- including four from metro Atlanta -- are charged with third-degree felony hazing. The Atlantans are Boyce, 24, Shawn Turner, 26, Aaron Golson, 19, and Lasherry Codner, 20. Two other students face misdemeanor charges.
FAMU officials have suspended all band activities at least through the 2012-2013 academic year. Longtime band director Julian White, who had been trying to get his job back after a suspension, retired earlier this month.
The more than 1,500 pages of transcripts and 49 audio recordings released Wednesday present a dark picture of a night that saw at least three band members run through a gauntlet of fists, feet, drumsticks and straps on the notorious “Bus C.”
One of the three, Lissette Sanchez, 19, told investigators she was placed in the “hot seat,” as part of her experience. She had to sit in the last seat on the bus, where she was covered with a blanket and beaten with drumsticks for several minutes.
Other band members also described to investigators undergoing the "hot seat" treatment at various times during their Marching 100 careers.
As described by several band members, Champion endured a different ritual called "crossing" Bus C. It involved walking from the front to the back of the bus while other students punched, kicked and struck him with various objects.
In Boyce's account, he said he had refused Champion's requests to undergo the ritual earlier in the season because he didn’t want Champion distracted.
“As being his head drum major, they don’t do anything unless I give them the go ahead,” Boyce told investigators.
But the Nov. 19 game against ancient rival Bethune-Cookman was the last game of the season, so, Boyce said, he allowed the hazing to proceed.
Now, he said, "I feel like I shoulda been a stronger person and kept telling him no."
Both Boyce and Turner told investigators that they arrived at the bus only after Sanchez and Champion's roommate, Keon Hollis, had been hazed and the beating of Champion was almost over.
“The way the procedure goes, you have to make from the front of bus to the back and touch the back wall and it is over,” Boyce said. “By the time I got there, he was a foot or two away from the back.”
Boyce said he made his way through the crowd, climbing over seats, to try to shield Champion.
“I see him reaching (to touch the back of the bus), so I grab him to try to keep everybody off him,” Boyce said. “I am pulling him and I see people kicking him. I put my body around his body and I am pulling him. Me and Shawn.”
After Champion touched the back wall and the blows stopped, Boyce said, “We sat him up on the floor of the bus. He asked for some water. We gave him some Gaterade. Me and Shawn figured, it would be okay. I did it in 2007.”
Asked why he would submit to being beaten, Boyce said: “The purpose? ... it's like a respect thing ... it's sad to say.”
Golson, who was also charged and has pleaded no contest in a second hazing incident, told investigators that he did not get on the bus at all the night Champion was killed. Interviewed 10 days after the death, he said that he was "probably in the hotel," during the hazing.
Investigators asked him several times if he was absolutely certain he was not on Bus C when the hazing occurred.
“Don’t make the mistake of anticipating what we are going to ask," one of the detectives told him. "Don’t get in trouble by telling us something that isn’t true. If you lie to me, that is gonna make it difficult, because we know certain things.”
"I don't know anything that happened with Robert," Golson told detectives, punctuating his comments with nervous laughter.
At Wednesday's news conference, Champion's parents were asked about their reactions to some of the more violent details in the documents. Their attorney, Chris Chestnut, said he had shielded the couple from reading many of those accounts.
As for whether Champion willingly underwent the hazing, Chestnut said that's ultimately immaterial. “He was murdered,” the lawyer said. “No one signed up for that.”
Posted by at No comments:
Links to this post

Exonerated ex-convicts band together in Texas

By

Mark Strassmann
(CBS News) It is an all-too-familiar story in this country: in Dallas, two men who spent more than a quarter of a century in prison for a rape they didn't commit were formally exonerated Monday after DNA testing implicated two other men.
With James Curtis Williams and Raymond Jackson, Dallas County has now cleared 32 convicts in the past decade.
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassman reports this is such a common occurrence, the wrongly convicted in Texas have joined forces to help one another.
At one parade in Lancaster, Texas, six convicted felons were hailed as heroes. All had spent years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
"We're just blessed to have this opportunity here riding around and enjoying our freedom again," said Christopher Scott.
Scott was arrested in 1997 for murdering a man in his neighborhood. A witness identified him as the gunman, but Scott insisted he was innocent. He said he knew he was in trouble "when they found me guilty."
He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
"I thought everyone who went to prison was guilty, and when you see the tables turned on you and you be put in a position like that and you're in prison for something you didn't do, it changes your whole way of thinking," Scott said.
Thirteen years passed before the real killer confessed. Scott was cleared and released in 2009.
Once out, he got help from other men wrongfully imprisoned in Dallas County. They call themselves the Texas Exoneree Project.
"We have a lot of people say: 'Man we know how you feel.' Man, you don't know how I feel. The only person that know how I feel is the guy that has been in position like me. He know how that feel,'" Scott said.
It's a growing fraternity. In the last ten years, more than 30 men in Dallas County have been freed or cleared of wrongful convictions for murder and rape - more than any other place in the country.
The Exonerees help newly released men rebuild their lives by finding them a place to live or helping them get a drivers license.
They have also become a voice for other Texans they say are still wrongfully imprisoned.
"You wish you can help get everybody get out of prison that don't supposed to be there, but you know you are not going to be able to do it," Scott said.
The Dallas District Attorney's office says it's reviewing 200 cases of inmates who could be innocent.
"You obligated to try, to at least help somebody that's in your position, that they say they are crying out for help. Because many days I cried out for help and wasn't nobody out there for me," Scott said.
Texas paid Scott more than $1 million to compensate him for false imprisonment. He used some of that money to open a men's clothing store.
"Sometime when I get up I still pinch myself to see if it's really true or not," Scott said. "No kidding."
Scott once dreamed of freedom, but now he wants justice.
© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Posted by at No comments:
Links to this post

Black people more likely to be jobless in Britain than US

During last three recessions, unemployment among black men was up to 19 percentage points higher in UK than US
Jobcentre
Unemployment for UK black women was at 25%, 26% and 17% in the last three recessions, but 20%, 12% and 13% in the US. Photograph: Rex Features
Black people in Britain are more likely to be unemployed than those in the United States, especially during recessions, with successive UK governments "failing to protect minority ethnic groups", research reveals.
A paper presented on Friday at the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Leeds shows that in the last three recessions,unemployment among black British men was up to 19 percentage points higher than among those in America.
Yaojun Li, professor of sociology at Manchester University, told the conference that in Britain black male unemployment reached 29% in the early 1980s recession, 36% in the early 1990s and 22% in 2011. Unemployment figures for black men in the US were 22%, 17% and 22%.
Black women in Britain were also worse off than those in the US. Unemployment for black women in Britain in the three recessions reached 25%, 26% and 17%, compared with 20%, 12% and 13% in the US. Overall, one in 12 black Britons are unemployed, compared with one in 16 in the US. Li, who examined 2.7m responses from three datasets in the UK and US, said: "There is greater ethnic inequality in Britain than in the USA for both sexes … If you are black you are more likely to be without work in the UK."
The US had long recognised that black people faced entrenched discrimination in the job market, Li said, and had intervened to level the playing field. Britain, he added, had experienced a much more "abrupt and extensive deindustrialisation than the US". Despite this, Li points out, Britain had no equivalent of affirmative action or "federal procurement policy which requires institutions to have staff representative of the population". "These have really helped reduce the unemployment rate among black people there," Li said.
The Guardian reported last month that the current recession had left almost one in two young black people without a job. Li agreed with the analysis, pointing out that the trend had been noted in 2010. "You have to discount those that are economically inactive, including those in education. The student population is very high. Once you just looked at those who are unemployed, then you see that young black unemployment runs at about 50%."
Diane Abbott, the Labour MP whose recent article in the Guardianhighlighted the looming crisis in jobless black youth, said the figures were alarming. "Britain is undergoing a jobs crisis, with unemployment at its highest level in 17 years. This research tells the story of the inequality time bomb that Britain is going to have to face up to."
There has been growing disquiet among charities and companies about the "slow response" from the government, especially given ministerial claims that the coalition would shield the most vulnerable from the effects of the downturn.
"I think that there has been a lack of awareness about the fact that so many black people are starting from such a low economic base that their life chances are so affected," said Tunde Banjoko, chief executive of the welfare-to-work charity Local Employment Access Projects, and an adviser on race to the Department for Work and Pensions.
"In the US there is affirmative action and people do get in on those programmes. But once in they rise on their own merits."
The Department for Work and Pensions said: "We know times are tough for jobseekers and tackling unemployment remains a priority for this government. That is why we introduced the work programme, which provides tailored support to help people overcome any barriers that may be preventing them getting a job. We have also launched the youth contract, which will give half a million young people opportunities through apprenticeships, work experience and a wage incentive for employers."
Posted by at No comments:
Links to this post

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Another FAMU Drum Major Describes Being Beaten


ABC News
By KYLE HIGHTOWER and MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press

A Florida A&M drum major who died after being hazed on a bus was known for his opposition to hazing but agreed to go through a brutal initiation ritual because it was seen as an honor, according to interviews with band mates released Wednesday.
Robert Champion, 26, had asked all season to go through the hazing ritual, known as "crossing over," defendant Jonathan Boyce said.
"It's a respect thing, you know," Boyce told detectives. "Well, he was wanting to do it all ... all season."
Champion died last November after enduring a hazing ritual conducted by other band members on a bus outside a hotel in Orlando where FAMU had played its archrival in football. His death revealed a culture of hazing in the famed band, which has performed at Super Bowls and presidential inauguration parades. An autopsy concluded Champion suffered blunt trauma blows to his body and died from shock caused by severe bleeding.
Champion's parents have said their son was a vocal opponent of the routine hazing in the band.
In an interview earlier this year, Champion's father, Robert Sr., said his son's opposition to hazing made him a target.
Prosecutors in Orlando are releasing more than 1,500 pages of evidence against the 13 people charged in Champion's death last year. Eleven defendants are charged with a third-degree felony and two are charged with misdemeanors.
Drum major Keon Hollis told detectives he went through the same hazing ritual as Champion the night he died. He said there were at least 15 people on the bus and the goal was to get from the front to the back.
He said Champion was the next person to be hazed after him. He said Champion seemed fine immediately afterward, but said he was thirsty. Hollis said he gave Champion some water.
Champion soon collapsed and later died.
Another hazing ritual called "the hot seat" involved getting kicked and beaten with drumsticks and bass drum mallets while covered with a blanket on a band bus called, "Bus C," band member Marc Baron told investigators. Baron isn't charged and wasn't on the bus the weekend Champion died.
Depositions offered clues to the defenses the defendants will use.
Boyce and another defendant, Shawn Turner, claimed they tried to help Champion get off the bus by pulling him through the gauntlet of band members.
"So I grab him to try to keep everybody off him and I grab him and I'm pulling him and I'm pulling him," Boyce told detectives. "People are kicking him so I stopped them from kicking him and I put my body around his body."
Defendant Aaron Golson denied getting on the bus where the hazing took place. He said he got a ride back from the game with a friend.
"I don't know anything that happened with Robert," Golson said.
Golson also told detectives that Champion wasn't into the hazing rituals.
"Man, I'm shock(ed) if that happens," Golson said when told that Champion chose to get on the bus to be hazed.
Another defendant, Caleb Jackson, at first told detectives that he wasn't on the bus when Champion was beaten but then changed his story when he was told that hotel video surveillance showed him getting off the bus. At the time of Champion's death, Jackson was on probation for a felony battery charge.
"I love Robert like a brother, more than ya'll, any, everybody in this band loves this man like a brother, you know what I'm saying," Jackson said.
FAMU's famed Marching 100 band was suspended shortly after the incident, and officials have said it will remain sidelined at least through the 2012-2013 school year.
The school also tried to fire band director Julian White. White's dismissal was placed on hold while the criminal investigation unfolded, but he insisted that he did nothing wrong and fought for months to get reinstated. He announced his retirement earlier this month.
———
Associated Press writers Kelli Kennedy, Curt Anderson, Suzette Laboy, Christine Armario and Jennifer Kay in Miami, Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Matt Sedensky in West Palm Beach and Mitch Stacy in Tampa contributed to this report.
Posted by at No comments:
Links to this post

Kenneth Chamberlain Killing: White Plains Officer Anthony Carelli Cleared Of Charges In Former Marine Shooting

Kenneth Chamberlain Sr

black-voices


The officer who shot and killed 68-year old Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. in his own apartment was cleared of all criminal charges on Thursday.
Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said, "We did everything we could and should do to put before that grand jury every piece of relevant and admissible evidence" but ultimately did not find evidence to bring forth an indictment upon Officer Anthony Carelli, who had been identified as Chamberlain's shooter.
Carelli, along with other White Plains police, showed up at Chamberlain's home on November 19 responding to a mistaken medical alert after the former marine had accidentally triggered a device used because of a heart condition.
Despite Chamberlain's insistence no help was needed, a standoff occurred in which police claim Chamberlain attacked the officers with a hatchet, and that the subsequent shooting had been in self-defense.
Months later, it was revealed the officers had used several racial slurs while storming into Chamberlain's home, even allegedly taunting him with a taser gun.
Chamberlain's son condemned the grand jury's decision on Thursday as a "blatant cover up of the murderous tactics" employed by the police department.
In April, Carelli was scheduled to appear in court for a separate police brutality incident stemming from 2008 in which two twin brothers of Jordanian descentclaimed Carelli and his cohorts used police batons to beat the brothers and called them "rag heads."

As for the usage of racial slurs during the Chamberlain standoff, DiFiore says the White Plains police department has promised to review the matter.
Posted by at No comments:
Links to this post
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)