cassket:

Manitoba’s provincial Grand Chief Derek Nepinak compared Manitoba to British Columbia in a statement Friday that described the state of missing and murdered aboriginal women in the two provinces as “eerily similar.”

“While the stories in the Human Rights Watch report are based in British Columbia, they are eerily similar to the stories we hear from victims, families and friends affected by the missing and murdered indigenous issue in our territories,” Nepinak said in a statement released Friday by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

Two days ago, a Human Rights Watch report alleged numerous instances of sexual and physical abuse of First Nations women in northern British Columbia at the hands of the RCMP.

A spokeswoman for Nepinak said the reference was about police dismissing reports about missing women.

“Most of the complaints we hear about against police is that they do not take missing reports seriously and even dismiss them,” Sheila North Wilson said.

She cited a generally a poor attitude toward aboriginal people and aboriginal women. “Not all officers, of course, but (there are) some who make it hard for some of our people to trust police,” she said.

A spokesman for RCMP in Manitoba referred questions to Ottawa headquarters; a spokesperson there was not immediately available. Winnipeg police have yet to respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this week in reaction to the Human Rights Watch report, RCMP Chief Supt. Janice Armstrong said the force wants to get to the bottom of allegations but the Human Rights Watch wasn’t helping police investigate.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper also called on the group to share information with police. The prime minister announced at the same time that the government asked the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP to look into the B.C. allegations.

In Manitoba, approximately 80 cases of missing and aboriginal women date back decades. They are the long-term focus of a joint RCMP-Winnipeg police investigation set up a few years ago.

The report, meanwhile, has raised the profile of the issue nationally this week and has renewed calls for a national inquiry into approximately 600 missing and murdered women in the country.

“AMC, along with the Southern Chiefs Organization and the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak have made repeated calls for a national inquiry… the HRW report gives further evidence for the government of Canada to immediately call (one),” Nepinak said in the AMC statement.

A parliamentary committee was reported Thursday to be close to being struck, its function to try to get some insight into why so many aboriginal women go missing or are murdered in this country.

Kerry-Lynne Findlay, parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice, told the House of Commons Thursday the Conservatives support the idea of creating a committee specifically to look at the root causes of the issue. Thursday was the inaugural Day of Action in honour of the murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada.

For more than a year, families of victims, aboriginal groups and opposition parties have pressured the federal government to call a national inquiry into the issue, but the government has not agreed.

anarcho-queer:

A Washington, D.C. police officer who fired multiple shots into a car with three transgender women and their friends is getting off easy. The officer, 48-year-old Kenneth Furr, was sentenced yesterday “to three years of supervised probation, a $150 fine, and 100 hours of community service,” the Washington Blade reports. The transgender community in D.C. has reacted with outrage.

The D.C. Superior Court Judge, Russell Canan, also sentenced Furr “to five years in prison but suspended all but 14 months of the prison term and credited Furr with the 14 months he already served between the time of his arrest and his trial last October,” the publication reported. The officer was released from jail while he awaits sentencing for his conviction on charges of assault and solicitation for prostitution. Furr was acquitted on the more serious charges of assault with intent to kill with a weapon.

The judge also ordered the officer to stay away from D.C.’s well known areas for transgender prostitution.

“This result is the product of a legal system that constantly devalues trans lives, particularly trans people of color,” Jason Terry, an activist with the D.C. Trans Coalition, told the Blade. “Officer Furr’s defense team actively sought to portray the victims as somehow deserving of this violence, and apparently they succeeded. If roles had been reversed and a black trans woman had gotten drunk and shot a gun at a police officer, the results would be drastically different.”

The case revolves around events that occurred in August 2011. On a Washington, D.C. street, Furr asked one of the transgender woman for sex for money. After the woman refused, Furr followed her to a CVS store and, when he was outside the store, pointed a gun at the transgender woman. After the officer drove away, the group of transgender woman and their male friends followed him, until Furr stopped his car and fired his gun at the car.

Then, “one of the male friends driving the vehicle ducked to avoid being shot and unintentionally rammed the car into Furr’s car, witnesses testified,” the Blade reports. “Furr responded by climbing on the hood of the car occupied by the transgender women and their friends and fired five times through the front windshield, causing three of the occupants to suffer non-fatal gunshot wounds.”

When D.C. police came to the scene, they arrested Furr, who had a “blood alcohol level twice the legal limit under D.C. law,” according to the publication.

The Washington Blade also reports that Furr’s attorney seems to have convinced the jury that Furr was acting in self-defense, which is why he was not convicted on the more serious charges.

While Furr is getting off relatively easy legally, the case will have ramifications for his job. D.C. police spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump told the Blade that Furr “has been suspended without pay and that the department will follow its standard procedure for dealing with an officer convicted of a felony.” The standard procedure, according to the Blade, is that “a felony conviction, especially one associated with violence, usually results in the firing of a police officer.”

panasonicyouth:

ladylokiskidgloves:

Tw: police brutatlity

anarcho-queer:

“Career day” at Tularosa New Mexico Intermediate School went terribly wrong after a 10-year-old boy says a police officer used his Taser gun to show him what cops do to people who don’t follow orders.

Officer Chris Webb of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety is being sued in court after allegedly using his Taser-brand stun gun on a school playground to send 50,000 volts of electricity into a young boy’s body, forcing the child to blackout.

According to the complaint filed on behalf of the child, “Defendant Webb asked the boy, R.D., in a group of boys, who would like to clean his patrol unit,” when the officer came to the school earlier this year. “A number of boys said that they would. R.D., joking, said that he did not want to clean the patrol unit.”

Defendant Webb, the complaint suggests, responded by pointing his Taser at R.D. and saying, ‘Let me show you what happens to people who do not listen to the police.’’ The officer then allegedly fired two barbs from the device at the child’s chest, penetrating his shirt.

“Instead of calling emergency medical personnel, Officer Webb pulled out the barbs and took the boy to the school principal’s office,” the complaint continues. When he attempted to remove the weapon attached to his skin, though, the 100-pound child passed out. Since then, he has been left with scars that are described in court as resembling cigarette burns.

A representative for the child says the boy has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since the incident occurred on May 4.

“The boy, R.D., has woken up in the middle of the night holding his chest, afraid he is never going to wake up again,” guardian ad litem Rachel Higgins tells the court.

“No reasonable officer confronting a situation where the need for force is at its lowest, on a playground with elementary age children, would have deployed the Taser in so reckless a manner as to cause physical and psychological injury,” Higgins adds.

Higgins is now suing the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and Officer Webb on behalf of the child in Santa Fe County Court, where she seeks punitive damages for the boy for battery, failure to render emergency medical care, excessive force, unreasonable seizure, and negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention, Courthouse News reports.

for real this made me sick

this cop should never be allowed to work in any position of authority ever again

spoiler alert: nothing will happen to him because nothing ever does.