Is the police abusing their authority?

The police are a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. The police are here to protect us, not treat us wrong or lie on us, mainly African Americans, citizens. I have two friends that were murdered by our very own Austin Police, Nathaniel "Slick" Sanders and Byron "Lil'B" Carter Jr.

Slick,18, was shot and killed May 11, 2009 by Officer Leonardo Quintana. Slick was sleep in the back seat of a car that looks like a car the police had got a report on a couple of days prior to this incident, of robbery and shooting. The police said it looks as if Slick was reaching for a weapon so Quintana fired and killed him while he was still in the back seat. People, (200+), were so angry that they started a riot.
Lil'B, 20, was shot and killed May 31, 2011by Officer Wagner. The bike officers say that they were following Lil'B and his friend Lee because they looked suspicious. The officers found them in a parked vehicle. They, Lil'B and Lee, drove off hitting a parked Jeep and an officer. The officer was treated for a ruptured Achilles tendon, which was not serious enough to take a life, if you ask me. There were other actions that they could have took, like shooting at the tires to stop the vehicle from moving. Lil'B was found dead a couple of blocks away still in the passenger seat with not only gunshot wounds but with a broken leg. If the action that the police took was all that they said, how did he end up with a broken leg. The driver suffered from minor injuries to his arm. It almost seems as if they were only aiming at the passenger side which doesn't make sense. If you're trying to stop a vehicle and your first reaction is to shoot to kill, wouldn't it be at the driver? The police even tried to blame the driver for Lil'Bs' death, which is not right, you is the one the fired that fatal shot not Lee.

There is no thing that these cases have in common, the surveillance cameras. During Slicks shooting the officer that fired and killed him did not have his camera on. Both officers involved in Lil'Bs' shooting did not have theirs on. It is protocol for them to have it on when they are after a suspect, so why didn't they turn them on. I feel that they, the officers, knew that they were going to abuse their authority so they did not have them on. They probably didn't think it would escalade to that point, but somehow it did. We will never know the truth of what really happened, as they say there are 3 sides to each story.

There is more to these stories than what is being told and we citizens need to acknowledge that. We need to acknowledge the fact there is suspicious behavior going on with these police incidents. We need to come together and take action!

Change After Troy Davis

This article is about the death penalty, abolish the death penalty and the consequences if it is abolished. What has just about everyone questioning our criminal justice system? Troy Davis. For those of you who have little or no knowledge about the this case, Troy Davis is a Georgia man who was executed September 21, 2011 for the 1989 killing of an office duty police offer, Mark MacPhail. "Davis was identified as the shooter by witnesses who later claimed to have been coerced by investigators. He was prosecuted and convicted based on the same dubious eyewitness testimony, rather than forensic evidence."

"Since the verdict, 7 of 9 witnesses in the case changed or retracted their accounts, and new witnesses have pointed to the possibility that another man at the scene fired the weapon." More than half of the witnesses have changed their story, since his execution was based on the witnesses and not forensic science, he should have been a free man. The murder weapon was never found, but the defense lawyers cast doubt on a ballistics test that linked shell casings at the scene to casings found at another shooting, for which Davis was convicted.

The argument about capital punishment being immoral has been a losing one in U.S politics for awhile. I feel that capital punishment will be good to abolish, so we will not execute the innocent. "If capital punishment disappears in the United States, it won't be because voters and politicians no longer want to execute the guilty. It will be because they're afraid of executing the innocent." Davis case has millions wondering about our system, he received a level of legal assistance, media attention and activist support.

The consequences of not having the death penalty "can be brutal, overcrowded, rife with rape and other forms of violence- a life long prison sentence can prove to be more cruel and unusual then a speedy execution." People may not think of this as justice, I will not think of this as justice if something was to happen to my family, but before we execute someone we need to be positive that the inmate is the one that did the crime based on forensic evidence.

The Troy Davis case has shed some light on issues we the americans prefer to ignore; the overzealousness of cops and prosecutors, the limits of the appeals process and the ugly conditions, the more than 2 million Americans currently behind bars face. We want a judicial system that we can trust with matters of life and death, a system that can protect us from wrongful execution.

Minnpost

Statesman

 

Bad President? Prove it!

There's a lot of people that is saying that President Obama is a "Bad President," but what I have not heard was why. Obama is doing pretty well considering how the economy was before he became President. Of course he has made some mistakes but who hasn't. Everybody is not perfect. In this commentary he list a few things where critics say he messed up at, but there's also an example of someone doing worse.

'He should have pushed for a much bigger stimulus in 2009. That's the view of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, now gospel among liberals. It's true economically but bears no relationship to the political truth of that period. Consider that in December 2008, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a hardcore liberal Democrat, proposed a $165 billion stimulus and said he would be ecstatic if it went to $300 billion. President-elect Obama wanted to go over $1 trillion but was told by House Democrats that it absolutely wouldn't pass. In exchange for the votes of three Republicans in the Senate he needed for passage, Obama reduced the stimulus to $787 billion, which was still almost five times Rendell's number and the largest amount that was politically possible.'

That was a quote from this article that I have heard plenty of people say that's why Obama is a bad president, but what people fail to realize is that Obama has to go through other people for approval of things he want to do. Yes he's president but he don't have that much power.

For everybody that has said, "Obama is a bad President," or anything similar to that should read this commentary and if you have any facts to prove that what was said in this article was wrong please leave a comment.

Statesman

Is it Justice or Murder?

This article is about the death penalty, whether inmates have been wrongfully executed. Perry believes that there were no innocent inmates executed but plenty of citizens believe there were. "A 2008 Harris survey found that 95 percent of respondents felt the system sometimes convict the wrong person in murder cases," and a wrong conviction leads to a wrong execution.

"No sir," Perry said. "I've never struggled with that at all. The State of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place (in) which when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required."

That is Perry's response to the question, Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any of (the executed inmates) might have been innocent?

I feel that if you are a suspect in a murder case and the evidence are pointing toward you, even if they (Forensic Scientist) are not a 100 percent positive, just to give the family of the victims closure and justice, you will be convicted.

There have been over 130 death row inmates released since the 1970s because of the new evidence, including DNA. This proves that there is a possibility that innocent people have been killed/executed.

This article has an example of a possible wrongful conviction, Cameron Todd Willingham. He was executed in 2004 for a 1991 house fire in Corsicana that killed his three daughters. "Post-execution reviews have shown that conviction was largely based on the fire science theories that became outdated and UNRELIABLE." "The case also has sparked controversy about its handling by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, a panel that determined in April that investigators used scienticfically invalid techniques to conclude the fire that killed the three young girls in Corsicana had been intentionally set by their father."

Is it okay for Texas to kill people that have killed as a punishment? I feel that we, Texas, are hypocrites. Hypocrite is a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. Perry said at the debate, If you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is you will be executed." We feel that killing is wrong, yet, we kill those who are found guilty of murder, who could possibly be innocent. I feel that the death penalty should only be given to those that are 100 percent guilty, or only be given to those with actual evidence, not just because of some witnesses.

"Our governor says he has lost no sleep over the notion that Texas might have executed an innocent person. We hope his sound sleep is justified, but it's hard not to have doubts."
Minnpost
Statesman