UPDATE: Black Man Tased and Beaten in Peoria, IL.

Tasing of a Black Man Tased - Beaten in Peoria, IL.
Cross posted on African American Political Pundit and The Post-Racial Blog

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Indicted Tuesday were, from left, Peoria police Officers Gerald W.Suelter, 39, Andrew R. Smith, 29, and Jeremy Layman, 31. The charges stem from a chase last May of Bryce R. Scott, 34, who claims he was beaten after he stopped his car and put his hands outside his window near the intersection of Abington Street and Perry Avenue.

As reported by PJ Star, Another Peoria police officer has been charged with official misconduct in connection with the pursuit and arrest of a Peoria man last May who was kicked, stomped and Tased after he apparently surrendered.

A Peoria County grand jury on Tuesday returned a five-count indictment against Jeremy J. Layman, 31, of Hanna City. The officer faces four counts of obstructing justice and one count of official misconduct. Layman posted 10 percent of a $15,000 bond Tuesday to remain out of custody.

Two others, Andrew R. Smith, 29, and Gerald W. Suelter, 39, were also indicted Tuesday for their alleged role in the May 3 incident.

Both men face charges of official misconduct, aggravated battery, battery and mob action. They had already been charged by way of a complaint in mid-March and their bonds were set at $10,000.

Smith and Suelter will next appear in court on April 16 for their arraignment. A court date for Layman has not been set. All three face up to five years in prison on each of the official misconduct charges.

The charges stem from an early morning chase of Bryce R. Scott, 34, who claims he was beaten after he stopped his car and put his hands outside his window near the intersection of Abington Street and Perry Avenue.

Scott, who is facing federal and state drug dealing charges, claims he was pepper sprayed, stomped, kicked, tased and punched after he complied with officers’ requests.

A dashboard camera in a squad car recorded what happened next. After Scott stopped his car, he is surrounded by several officers, who shout for him to comply, which he apparently does. Within seconds, Scott is taken to the ground and is out of the camera’s view.

A prosecutors said at a earlier bond hearing for Suelter and Smith that Suelter repeatedly Tased Scott while Smith allegedly stomped and kicked Scott “at least 20 times, at one point repositioning himself for leverage.”

Layman is accused of stopping the squad car camera from recording. The official misconduct charge for him states “he knowingly concealed, altered or disguised physical evidence concerning the stop and apprehension of Bryce Scott.”

When asked if more officers could face charges, State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said “a review of police officer conduct continues.” More HERE

Post-racial USA after Obama not happening

By NNPA Columnist Nicole C. Lee

Source: Frost Illustrated

Since the Obama-phenomenon began, some commentators have clamored to declare the U.S. racial problems a thing of the past. Mimicking Francis Fukuyama’s notion of the “end of history,” these pundits claim that now that the U.S. has a black president, the verdict is in: people of color can stop worrying. Racism is finished. The glorious post-racial era has begun.

Huh?

Remember election night? When Obama was declared the projected winner, we cheered and hugged. A few minutes later, we were on the streets celebrating with thousands of other black, white and brown strangers. It was a great moment, a confirmation that change is possible. But unlike a fairy tale, happily ever after in this so-called postracial America is not a foregone conclusion.

As the honeymoon begins to wear off, all too soon because of the financial crisis, experts looking at foreign policy will tell you clearly that post-racial America is still executing policies that are anything but “post-racial.”

The Obama administration has decided not to participate in the World Conference Against Racism. This is a United Nation conference whose purpose is to look at the effects of racism in countries and regions, and to develop progress benchmarks that countries agree to meet. The U.S. attended the conference in 2001 only to pull out before agreeing to the document, disagreeing with language about the Israel- Palestinian conflict as well as language about reparations for slavery. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration sent a team to negotiate terms by which the U.S. would agree to participate but in the end, they determined that the U.S. would not participate in this multilateral event.

The WCAR was not a perfect process; the final document was certainly not perfect. But, this conference is one of the most important processes to globally address the legacy and current realities of racism. Where else can people of Africa and the African Diaspora in places like Europe, the Middle East, all over Latin America and even the U.S. come together to address racism and xenophobia, and have their voices heard?

The Congressional Black Caucus has shown leadership in their dedication to still attend the conference despite the administration’s decision. But, it is extremely detrimental for the first administration led by an African American to not send an official delegation to a conference that needs the leadership that Obama can uniquely provide.

Unfortunately, post-racial America also seems to mean that Haitian immigrants still will be afforded disparate treatment. The government of Haiti has requested Temporary Protected Status, a designation that would suspend deportations to Haiti, because four hurricanes hit last year, but the U.S. has refused to grant the request. Haiti is in the midst of a humanitarian disaster. The storms cost Haiti 15 percent of its total GDP, and Haitian children are eating pies made of mud due to the lack of food.

Even though countries in Central America such as El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua have received TPS in the aftermath of natural disasters, Haiti has never received it. In the first 50 days of Obama’s administration, more than 30,000 Haitians received deportation orders.

Mothers are being deported even though they have husbands and children who are U.S. citizens. Young people without families in Haiti are being deported with no safety net. Some have said the policy towards Haiti is not racially based. But, given this disparate treatment and the legacy of poor treatment of Haitians who come to our shores with legitimate claims, what other conclusion can be found? More HERE

Post -Racial

Source: The New Republic

Post-racial by Michael Crowley Even white supremacists don't hate Obama. Post Date Wednesday, March 12, 2008

David Duke was on the phone, talking about Barack Obama. Yes, that David Duke: After a query lodged at his website, the infamous ex-Klansman had responded via a mysterious e-mail address--he appeared in my inbox as "info45." (Duke regularly changes address to combat hate mail--the kind he doesn't like, that is.) Duke said he was traveling in Europe, where he often meets with fellow Holocaust deniers, and agreed to discuss the possibility that the United States might soon elect a black president.

Logo from an anti-Zionist website

Putting it mildly, one would not expect Duke to applaud this development. During Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, after all, Duke said Jackson's election "would be the greatest tragedy ever to befall this country." Warning that "the white majority in this country are losing their rights," Duke announced his own counter-candidacy, one whose main purpose seemed to be hounding Jackson.

Yet, far from railing at Obama's rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, "don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton--or, for that matter, John McCain." Sure, Duke considers Obama "a racist individual," citing his Afrocentric Chicago church. But soon the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People was critiquing Obama as overhyped and insubstantial in terms you might hear from, say, Clinton strategist Mark Penn. "They say he's for change. What change? He's become almost a cult figure. I don't see any shining light around Obama's head. I don't see any halos," Duke said.

Sure, we may not see David Duke strolling around with The Audacity of Hope under his arm any time soon. But his mild tone is still a curious reaction to what white supremacists have long considered a sign of racial apocalypse. "Does Race Still Matter?" asks the latest issue of US News & World Report, which features Obama on its cover. Undoubtedly, it does. But, thus far, Obama is largely delivering on his promise as a post-racial candidate--and hilariously confounding the worldview of white supremacists at the same time. More HERE

Not post-racial at the University of Florida Levin College of Law

It's not post-racial at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Sherrie Russell-Brown, a former law professor at the University of Florida Levin College of LawDean Robert H. Jerry, the University of Florida and its board of trustees as defendants. has filed a racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit against the school and its dean. Her allegations could force the entire faculty to face discovery and a potential trial on actions taken against her and statements made in faculty meetings. She has named

Russell-Brown, an African-American, was passed over for tenure for what she alleges were racial reasons.

Among the allegations, Russell-Brown says that faculty objected to the selection of a black dean because alumni would not relate to an African American. She also says that one professor shoved her

from behind into a white board. She includes alleged references by one professor in class to “a gay Jew” and “a gay Buddhist.” She also says that a professor called one East Asian candidate “Deepak” even though that was not his name and allegedly referred to him being from “India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or whatever.”

Those types of allegations would need to be strengthened in discovery to make out a discrimination claim. She will need to show tolerance or even encouragement for such views. Dean Jerry’s response to past allegations will be central to this discovery. More HERE

A 'Drunken Negro Head' Cookie

Post Racial Blog: It's interesting how the folks at Wonkette find this NYC Bakers bigotry and color arousal "Hilarious." I guess with Wonkette and this NYC Bakers help we will never be Post-Racial. More HERE. More news from the "Post-Racial" blog and the consumerist website about the NYC Baker who is selling 'Drunken Negro Head' Cookies.

Ted Kefalinos, the proprietor of a bakery in Greenwich Village (a neighborhood in New York City), can't understand why the media is having such a field day over his Drunken Negro Head cookies. They're fun! Nobody complained about his dead geese cookies last week! He's got a Cuban brother-in-law! We'd be more willing to believe it was just a bad marketing decision if it weren't for the follow-up comments a customer alleged he made.

A shocked customer tells My Fox NY that Ted Kefalinos, proprietor of Lafayette French Pastry, asked her, "Would you like some drunken negro heads to go with your coffee? They're in honor of our new president. He's following in the same path of Abraham Lincoln; he will get his."

Killing 'nonwhite people' was motive in Brockton shooting spree...

(AP Photo/The Enterprise, Tim Correira) Brockton, Massachusetts -- The Boston Globe reports: A man accused of a horrific rape and killing spree told investigators that he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to "kill 'nonwhite people' such as African Americans, Hispanics and Jewish people," according to a police report filed today in court.

Selma Goncalves, 20

After forcing his way into a home and raping a 22-year-old woman, the alleged assailant, Keith Luke, shot and killed the woman's younger sister, who tried to help her. Luke, 22, then allegedly turned his fury back on the rape victim, firing his gun through a white teddy bear that she clutched in terror, police said.

Down the street, Luke allegedly opened fire and killed a homeless man who happened by pushing a shopping cart. He told police after his arrest that he had planned to go to a synagogue near his home and, "kill as many Jews as possible during bingo night," according to the report. "Luke told us that he intended to shoot himself in the head when he was through."

Rabbi Joshua Cohen of Temple Beth Emunah, a Conservative synagogue in the neighborhood where Luke lives, said a Massachusetts state trooper and Brockton police officer told him this morning that Luke evidently had planned to continue his rampage at the temple. The synagogue has a bingo night Wednesday starting at 6:30 p.m. More HERE

"Post-Racial" America?

H/T No Bulletin

Pam Spaulding reports on a shocking situation at Algiers Point. Her story is excerpted from an A.C. Thompson article in "The Nation." Is this true, or a spoof? You be the judge:

Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

...Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun"--a shotgun--"on them. We chased them down." More HERE

Dispatches from Post-Racial America

Skeptical Brotha says: I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled corporate propaganda to bring some disturbing news from the West Coast. Apparently, the post-racial America that signaled Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States is a fraud. More HERE

Post-Racial?

By Andrew Sullivan. The Atlantic.com

Blumenthal praises Ambers' new piece on how the Obama campaign approached race. Cornell Belcher, one of Obama's pollsters, gives his take:

Belcher resampled the white voters whose racial animus he had measured before. More than half had voted for McCain, but not by an overwhelming margin. Belcher concluded that Obama might have done better among them had he not been black. In 1992, Belcher noted, 85 percent of voters who said the economy was bad broke for Bill Clinton. In 2008, in a verifiably worse economic climate, only 66 percent of voters who said the economy was bad voted for Barack Obama. “The economy is clearly not the only story. I could argue that the economy wasn’t as big an impact this time around as in 1992,” Belcher told me. “You can’t look at that swath of hard-red counties that actually grew even redder and say that we are post-racial.”

Surely the truth is that there is greater polarization on this than ever before. The range of views and feelings in America on race and gender and sexual orientation now has a far wider span than in the past. Crude bigotry endures at one end while total post-racial consciousness grows at the other. This stretches both across generations and regions, creating a bewilderingly complex picture in which everything you could say about America is true in some respect. Americans, to take the gay example, are probably more homophobic and more accepting of homosexuality than any other modern culture. There is Appallachia and Provincetown. And racially, there are those parts of America that actually trended GOP this past cycle - and then a place like Adams Morgan.

To me, this is an overwhelming reason for federalism. America cannot endure as a coherent polity without more of it. By More HERE

track back link

Post-Racial Burning of Black Church

(Photo by Dennis Leger/ Springfield Fire Department)

Springfield firefighters battled the blaze at the building site of the Macedonia Church of God in November.

By Jonathan Saltzman and Brian Ballou, Globe Staff

SPRINGFIELD, MA. -- As reported by the Boston Globe, and linked by African American Political Pundit. More HERE - Three Springfield men, including one who allegedly complained that blacks and Puerto Ricans would have more rights than whites under President Barack Obama, set an arson fire that destroyed the construction site of a mostly black church just hours after Obama's landmark victory, authorities said today.

The men, Benjamin Haskell, Michael F. Jacques Jr., and Thomas Gleason Jr., all of whom are white, poured gasoline on the exterior and interior of the construction site of the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in the early morning of Nov. 5 and later boasted about it, according to prosecutors.

Four days after the fire, which many in Springfield's black community had immediately feared was related to the election of America's black president, Haskell and Jacques drove by burnt rubble with an unidentified associate and laughed, according to the affidavit of an FBI agent.

``We did it,'' Haskell allegedly told to the associate, who later became a cooperating witness. When the associate asked why they set the blaze, Haskell replied, ``Because it was a black church.''

Jacques asked the associate whom he had voted for, the affidavit said. When he replied that he voted for Obama, Jacques uttered a profanity-laced racial epithet and predicted that Obama would be assassinated.

Haskell later admitted to authorities that he helped set the fire and said Jacques had been angry the day before Election Day that the country was going to have an African-American president and that blacks and Puerto Ricans would have more rights than whites, according to the affidavit. More HERE

Roland Martin on Post-Racial

Roland Martin

Source: Essence

Post-racial America? Three police shootings of black suspects shatters that.

It has been interesting to watch so many people talk about how America has moved from a nation fixated on race to one where we are now living in a post-racial world, courtesy of the election of President-elect Barack Obama.

There is no doubt that we crossed a huge hurdle with the election of Obama to the highest office in the land. But that doesn’t mean that the realities of race are not being played out in our communities each day. In Oakland, a semi-riot took place last night after the funeral of Oscar Juliuss Grant III, who was gunned down during a scuffle with Bay Area Rapid Transit officers. Click here to read the Oakland Tribune story on the semi-riot. More HERE

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Does the election of an African American president in 2008 mean “the dream” of a post-racial, colorblind society has arrived? Join the conversation here on The Post-Racial Blog