Crime
An attorney says the Florida officers who fatally shot a black American airman entered the wrong apartment
MIAMI (AP) – Deputies responding to a call about a disturbance at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong apartment and fatally shot a Black U.S. Air Force airman who was home alone once they saw him armed with a gun, a lawyer for the man’s family said Wednesday.
Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who worked in the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment at Fort Walton Beach when the May 3 shooting occurred.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson spoke on Facetime with the woman during the meeting.
According to Crump, the woman, whom Crump didn’t discover, said Fortson was alone in his apartment when he heard a knock on the door. He asked who was there, but received no answer. Just a few minutes later, Fortson heard a louder knock, but when he looked through the peephole, he saw nobody, Crump said, citing the woman’s account.
The woman stated that Fortson was concerned and went to retrieve the gun, which Crump said was her legal property.
Crump’s testimony states that as Fortson was returning to his lounge, deputies burst through the door and saw that Fortson was armed and shot him six times. The woman said Fortson was on the ground saying, “I can’t breathe” after he was shot, Crump said.
Authorities said Fortson died at the hospital. The deputy involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave pending the consequence of the investigation.
The woman stated that Fortson didn’t interfere with the Facetime call and believes deputies should have confused the apartment, Crump’s statement said.
“The circumstances of Roger’s death raise serious questions that require an immediate response from authorities, especially given disturbing witness testimony that police entered the wrong apartment,” Crump said.
“We call for transparency in the investigation into Roger’s death and the immediate release of body camera footage to the family,” Crump said. “His family and the public deserve to know what happened in the moments leading up to this tragedy.”
Crump is a nationally known attorney based in Tallahassee, Florida. He has been involved in quite a few high-profile cases involving law enforcement shootings of Black people, including those of Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Tire Nichols and George Floyd.
Crump and Fortson’s family plans to talk at a news conference in Fort Walton Beach on Thursday morning.
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The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately reply to an email and voicemail from The Associated Press in search of comment on Crump’s claims. But on Wednesday afternoon, Sheriff Eric Aden posted a statement on Facebook expressing sadness over the shooting.
“At this time, we humbly ask our community for patience as we work to understand the facts that led to this tragic event,” Aden said.
The sheriff’s office said in a statement last week that a sheriff’s deputy responding to a disturbance call at an apartment complex responded in self-defense after encountering an armed man. The office didn’t provide details about what disturbances deputies were responding to or who called them.
The sheriff’s office also declined to right away discover the responding deputies or their race. Authorities said earlier this week that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the local state’s attorney’s office would investigate the case.
FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the agency was highly unlikely to offer any further comments until the investigation was accomplished.
Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special mission airman, where considered one of his roles as a crew member of the squadron’s AC-130J Ghostrider aircraft was to load the gunship’s 30mm and 105mm guns during a mission.
Fortson’s death bears striking similarities to the deaths of other Black people killed lately by police of their homes, in circumstances through which officers responded to the wrong address or responded to a service call with reckless use of deadly force.
In 2018, a white former Dallas police officer proposed fatally shooting Botham Jean, an unarmed black man, after mistaking his apartment for her own. Former officer Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder the following 12 months and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In 2019, a white former Fort Worth, Texas, officer fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through the rear window of her home after responding to a non-emergency call reporting that Jefferson’s front door was open. Aaron Dean, a former officer, was found guilty of manslaughter in 2022 and sentenced to almost 12 years in prison.
Crump represented the families in each cases as a part of his ongoing efforts to force accountability for police killings of black people.
“What I’m trying to do as much as I can, even sometimes on my own, is to increase the value of Black lives,” Crump told The Associated Press in 2021 after a former Minneapolis officer was convicted of George Floyd’s murder.
Fort Walton Beach is positioned between Panama City Beach and Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle.
Crime
Mueller gives up, says that the policy prevented him from accusing Trump with any crime – the essence
Eric Thayer – Reuters
In his first public comments regarding the investigation in the matter of Russian interference in the presidential election in 2016, a special adviser Robert Mueller said on Wednesday that his hands are sure, Reports.
“Seating the president for a crime was not an option that we could consider,” said Mueller in his comments in the Department of Justice on Wednesday morning.
“According to the long -term policy of the department, the president cannot be accused of a federal crime,” Mueller continued. “The Special Advisor Office is part of the Department of Justice … If we were sure that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would say it.”
Mueller said that the investigation was officially closed and announced his resignation, explaining that even when he relied on it, he didn’t testify before the Congress regarding any offense, stating: “The report is my testimony.”
See how Mueller presents his statement below:
Democrats have been hesitating for a very long time whether to accuse Trump, and residential speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that he’ll divide the nation much more. Her melody has modified a bit. In the press briefing Pelosia said: “The White House is crying for impeachment” Reports.
However, Trump wrote on Twitter that Mueller’s statement was a full dismissal.
Presidential hope. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, everyone weighed on Twitter, saying that Mueller’s statement is a transparent adoption of the baton.
Mueller’s statement explains what those that read his report know: it is a referral to impeachment, and it needs to be operated from Congress. They should.
– Elizabeth Warren (@Ewarren) May 29, 2019
David Cicine, a member of the Court Commission of the Chamber, also said that Mueller’s comments were a call to act. “Now it’s time for Congress to do his work,” said Cicine.
“The next step is for the home judicial commission to open an investigation into the impeachment, to formally start considering whether articles about impeachment should be submitted,” he continued. “The opening of this investigation will allow the Committee to collect evidence, force the presence of witnesses and definitely how to proceed.”
Crime
Ava DuverNay set Donald Trump immediately after he pretended to have amnesia about his role in the criminal account in 1994 – Essence
Getty images
If you might be watching the famous filmmaker Ava DuverNay on Twitter, you already know that he isn’t afraid to call a person who occupies an oval office. On Monday, when Donald Trump tried to change into self -sufficient, where he was about the reform of the judiciary in criminal matters, it was only good that the director of the upcoming Netflix miniseries would gather him quickly.
In Tweet, Trump suggested that, in comparison with many democratic candidates applying for the presidency, he was progressive when it comes to the reform of the judiciary in criminal matters. He arranges it, applauding at the first step he signed at the end of 2018, after which slamming candidates related to the 1994 crime Act.
“Everyone associated with the Crime Act of 1994 will not have a chance to choose,” says Trump. “In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you. On the other hand, I was responsible for the reform of the judiciary in criminal matters, which had great support and helped to fix Bad Bill from 1994!”
It isn’t any secret that each former vp Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders supported the criminal bill in 1994, which disproportionately influenced the black community, but what DuverNay noticed was hypocrisy in all this. The reason why the 1994 bill occurred was the actions of individuals akin to Trump, who only five years earlier, in 1989, appeared on the whole attack on black and brown men-especially five men who became referred to as “Central Park Five”.
“The story that people know is a lie that you fed them,” DuverNay rejects in his tweet. “Your violent rhetoric fed the tensions that led to the invoice from which you pretend you would get distanced. But you can’t hide from what you did to Central Park Five. They were innocent. And they will have the last word.”
https://twitter.com/ava/status/113319383460939776
The director contained a clip from her latest mini-series, which shows the real material from Trump, which informs the NBC reporter Bryant Gumbel that “would like to be well educated black.” His words play his well -documented belief that minorities have unfair benefits in society. “Getting out” for against the law was not a bonus they received on his watch. Trump paid $ 85,000 for 4 full -size ads in the hottest articles in New York to demand their execution.
One could guess that if Trump were in the Congress in 1994, he would probably support a bill that tightened the mass imprisonment of black men. But if speculation isn’t your thing, Trump, amongst many others problematic actionsHe hired the former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, who stays infamous for strengthening the use of use Stop-and-FRISKS which unjustly attacked black and brown communities. In fact, Trump said in an interview in 2016 that he wanted to present this measure at the national level. So yes, it’s.
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