Agreeeeeeeeeeed




Ohio officer acquitted of killing mom holding baby
August 04, 2008
LIMA, Ohio - A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.

The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.

Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child's fingers had to be amputated.

Officers had been looking for Wilson's boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.

Wilson's family members stormed out of Allen County Common Pleas Court before visiting Judge Richard Knepper finished dismissing the jury.

Outside the courthouse, Wilson's brother, Ivory Austin said he wasn't surprised by the verdict.

"Now he (Chavalia) gets to get back on with his life," he said. "He took my sister's life."

He said he was hoping someone from the police department would at least admit a mistake was made.

"I'm not saying he went up there to kill her," Austin said.

Lima Police Chief Greg Garlock said the jury made the right decision.

"They confirmed what our sense was and our belief was in this," he said.

Prosecutors said Chavalia recklessly fired into a bedroom where Wilson and her six children were gathered.

He fired three times at her even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon, prosecutor Jeffrey Strausbaugh said. "He couldn't tell Tarika had a child in her arms," he said during closing arguments Monday.

Chavalia had testified that he thought his life was in danger when he fired the shots. He said he saw a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door and heard gunshots that he thought were aimed at him. It turned out the gunfire he heard was coming from downstairs, where officers shot two charging pit bulls.

Following the shooting, many residents accused the police department of being hostile and abusive toward minorities. One group led a series of marches through the city to protest what they said was mistreatment by police.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited the city and demanded that the officer who fired the fatal shots and those who planned the raid be held accountable. Chavalia was the only person charged.

Black clergy leaders had criticized the two misdemeanor charges as too lenient.

Defense attorney Bill Kluge told jurors Monday that Chavalia should not be judged on what wasn't known until after shooting, including the fact that Wilson did not have a gun or pose a threat.

"It's Monday morning quarterbacking," he told jurors. "Put yourself in Joe's shoes that night."

The jury's decision, he said in closing statements, will affect officers across Ohio.

"What kind of world would it be if we didn't have police officers," Kluge said. "Joe was doing his duty."





DUTY

Maybe Joey Boy should have seeing and

knowing what, who, where he is shooting

added to his Job description

There is a reason they are called pigs

___________________________________
Turn Turn To The Rain and The Wind

how tragic...
how meaningless are the words...

I know that I'll be in the minority here. Cops have to make split second decisions. Unfortunately he made the wrong one. Suppose that he heard what he heard, saw the shadows moving and fired. Instead of a woman holding a child, she had been holding a semiautomatic gun. It would have been deemed justified. Either way, he shot a human being. Even though he was found not guilty, he still has to live with what he did. It's not easy. I doubt that he went there with the intention to kill anybody. I feel bad for both families.

Suppose
Suppose 26-year-old Tarika Wilson was
really Osama bin Laden
and the Baby was The Anti-CHrisT
The FIVE other Children were jihadist
terrorist, top ranking Al-Qaeda Terrorist
And of three trigger happy shots
at a shadow they really hit and KILLED The Anti-
ChrisT then Osama bin Laden with one of the
FiVE little BLACK Jihadist Al-Qaeda Terrorist
catching the third right between the eyes

The Cop would have been a National Hero

Suppose
Suppose the judge & jury were Black
and they lived on the same drug infested
lower west-side of Lima, Ohio as 26 year old
Tarika Wilson and her six Children.
Wonder where the Cop would be today

One things for certain - that the drug infested
streets of Lima, Ohio are still filled with drugs
and six little Black Kids don't have no Mom
They got plenty drugs on their street tho
and they might get lucky and some other
trigger happy cop blow them away
right out of this sorry ass world they just
got lucky at birth to be born into

Suppose
I Suppose I'll just turn and turn
again to The Rain and The Wind

The cops could have secretly watched the house they intended to storm into, and could have verified if the guy they were looking for was there and whoever else was in that house. They new the owner (obviously the lady who got shot) and that she has kids. They could have watched and got the guy outside, without putting the women and children in danger. Or am I wrong?

well LA you have a point... cops have to make split second decisions... not easy...
and myland said it well...

we live in such a fear-soaked, violence-responding climate we start to lose the ability to get the inside intuition that matters so... or, otherwise, the really good judgment in keeping things in perspective...

maybe there are situations the cops ought not to be put into...
what's the importance of capturing one more drug dealer weighed against losing the mother of 6 children???... our fear and culture of violence put alot of folks in harm's way unnecessarily....

I got curious so I googled this incident. This woman had 8 children by 5 different fathers. All of them had been drug dealers. It was stated that she never let them deal out of the house or near the children. I also read that a SWAT team raided the house. This had to have been planned ahead of time. SWAT teams don't just roam around looking for busts. I don't understand why this was planned with small children in the house. I do know that people do use children as a shield. I hope that wasn't the case here.

I also noticed the comment by the Chief about the small amount of minority members on the force. Unfortunately this is common and not always due to lack of recruiting efforts on the part of the town. I used to live in a town with a fairly large police force. The minority population of the town was large but the percentage of minorities on the police force was small. Fliers were posted and placed in mailboxes in the sections with the large minority population whenever the civil service test was being given or workshops were being held for the police test. They didn't get much of a response.

The whole situation is very sad and I feel sorry for all concerned.

Lee

Are you aware that one American in 100 is currently in prison?
And that private prisons (prisons for profit) aggressively (and successfully) lobby government for mandatory Minimum Sentencing to increase their profits?

And, yes, race has a LOT to do with both enforcement and sentencing.
As Ron Paul has stated, "The so-called war on drugs is actually a war against Blacks and poor people." (That's from memory, it may not be word-for-word)

An excellent source of data is the web page of the Bureau of Justice,
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pubalp2.htm#glance

Here's a frightening quote from that page regarding their predictions for the future:

"If incarceration rates remain unchanged, 6.6% of U.S. residents born
in 2001 will go to prison at some time during their lifetime
• About 1 in 3 black males,
1 in 6 Hispanic males,
and 1 in 17 white males
are expected to go to prison during their lifetime,
if current incarceration rates remain unchanged."

One in three?!?
As a member of the Native community in Canada I can tell you that every single family on every single Reserve ("reservation" to Yanks) is seriously affected by the harassment, arrest, and incarceration of the fathers, husbands, and sons, yet the numbers are nowhere near one in three.

We need peace and freedom, for sure.
And some groups need it more urgently than others!

There are other definitions, but this one works here: Tragedy: An event resulting in great loss and misfortune. (In literature, it's usually something that could have been prevented by the main character/victim.) In this case, none of the individuals directly involved--the minority victims or individual police officers--alone could have prevented it. We all have to contribute to the solution in our own towns and cities. We're way past due.

You are 100% correct! I try to help by volunteering with youth groups, I've been a 4-H leader for 10 years, Girl Scouts before that. If we work with kids hopefully they will be better adults. The kids that work with animals and volunteer to help other are more empathetic when they get older, not so quick to judge. I'm also a teacher in an inner city high school. The things that some of these kids have seen or experienced at their young age, most haven't seen in a lifetime. No child should. The slightest bit of reinforcement in a positive direction can really make a difference. It is up to the community to do so.

this happened recently
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02795.html
i thought i would post it here as well

My thoughts:

How many kids these women have or who/how many fathers there are = irrelevant. That's just the kind of "tintilating" $#i+ they write about to sell newspapers. These people don't live in our world and cannot be judged by us and our standards. Without living in their world, we shall never understand.

Irresponsible use of guns = kills. No matter who is pulling the trigger.

A 65 year old suburban homeowner disquising their prejudice under designer underwear - is just as leathal - as a poor teenaged pusher without a single friend of a different ethnicity - if they've got a gun in their hand.

Its not the gun, its not the person...

The crime is the disinterest of lack of education, equlity and plain old love & concern.

Exactly
She could have been a Sixteen Year Old Virgin baby-sitting
for a couple of dollars and she'd be dead and the baby shot
Nothing in the posted googled information is relevant to the
case, the trial, the charges.
The Victim was an unarmed Woman and an unarmed Baby.
They are Not the defendents
It was the Police Officer, the Swat team, the training, the Leadership,
the DECIDERS that are paid to serve the public, protect the
public - all the public - that need explaining of their actions
and decisions.
And the quotes in the posted AP article don't cut it.
The Googled Info didn't even try.
___________________________

Even The President Of The United States Must Sometimes
Be Held Accountable