The Niggerization of America

"Against a historical backdrop of a people who have been so terrorized, traumatized and stigmatized that we have been taught to be scared, intimidated, always afraid, distrustful of one another and disrespectful of one another.

When you niggerized you unsafe,unprotected,subject to random violence,hated for who you are and you become so scared that you defer to the powers that be and are willing to consent to your own domination"

Cornell West

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Unarmed Newport News man shot by police tells his story

Corey Moody was shot during a traffic stop in December 2012. Newport News police initially claimed Moody shot at them but no firearm was ever found.








By Ashley K. Speed, akspeed@dailypress.com

NEWPORT NEWS — When the shooting stopped, Corey Moody says police pulled him out of his bullet-ridden car.

He could feel nothing from the waist down. His spinal cord had been struck by police officers' gunfire — gunfire intended for someone who was armed.

"They dragged me out the car and put the gun to my head," Moody said in an interview at his home last week. "They said the best thing for you now is to tell us where the gun at."

There was no gun to show police on Dec. 12, 2012, because Moody was unarmed.

Police say they fired at Moody to protect a fellow officer and because they thought Moody was reaching for a gun in the console of his car.

Hours after the shooting, a doctor told Moody that he wouldn't be able to walk again. Moody, 41, lives in Hampton with his mother, who has taken care of him since the shooting. The two were hopeful that the city would find fault with police for the shooting, but they recently learned that a July report from the prosecutors' office exonerated the officers from any criminal wrongdoing.

The police and city attorney were notified in June that a lawsuit was going to be filed against them. A federal lawsuit will follow later this year alleging a violation of Moody's civil rights, said Timothy Clancy, Moody's attorney.

Clancy says that several explanations of what led to the shooting have come from police — all of which he and Moody deny.

"One story was that Mr. Moody and police exchanged gunfire … then another story was that Mr. Moody was reaching into a console and ignoring police officers — we vehemently deny that,"

Clancy said. "The last story is the allegation that Mr. Moody was dragging a police officer and that somehow justified shooting Mr. Moody and causing him to be paralyzed."

Newport News police spokesman Lou Thurston said department officials declined to comment on the case due to the pending lawsuit. Two phone calls to the prosecutor's office seeking comment were not returned.

State charges go federal

Newport News police detective Danielle Hollandsworth was one of the officers who fired at Moody the night of the shooting, according to a seven-page prosecutor's report.

This wasn't their first encounter. The two had crossed paths in March 2012 at 44th Street and Baughman Court. Hollandsworth had approached Moody while he was in a parked car, and she used his driver's license to check for outstanding warrants, according to a federal affidavit.

Hollandsworth saw no active warrants for Moody. She then asked Moody if he had any weapons on him. Moody answered "no," but told her that she could search him.

n Moody's front pants pocket, Hollandsworth found a clear plastic bag "that contained a napkin that emitted a strong chemical odor" associated with the odor of cocaine, according to the affidavit. A spoon with suspected cocaine residue and about $2,321 separated in three bundles was also found.

Later that day, police searched Moody's home in Hampton and confiscated several items, including a 9mm handgun, according to the affidavit. Police also confiscated 170 grams of cocaine. Moody was charged with distribution of cocaine and a firearms offense.

Court records show that charges against Moody were elevated to federal offenses in late October. When a defendants' case is transferred from state court to federal court, the federal warrant is often served on the defendant during his or her state court appearance. Clancy says neither he nor his client was ever notified before the shooting that the charges against Moody had gone federal.

The federal charges made Moody a sought man.

Wanted man

The night of the shooting, Newport News police detectives Hollandsworth and Russel Tinsley were in an unmarked car monitoring city streets after a recent homicide, according to the prosecutors' office report. While on patrol, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration contacted Hollandsworth to tell her that Moody was wanted on a federal warrant. The agent gave Hollandsworth a description of a blue BMW they believed Moody was driving.

Police located a car that matched the description, just before 7 p.m. on the 35th Street overpass to Interstate 664. Once spotting the car, officers ran a check of the license plate and saw that it was registered to Moody's mother. They waited for the driver to make a traffic violation before stopping the car, according to the report, which says the driver made an improper lane change.

Hollandsworth recognized Moody when she approached the car.
Officers Randy Gibson and Ryan Norris were on the scene as backup.

The details of what happened next differ between Moody and police.

Officers say that Moody initially complied with an order for him to place his hands on the steering wheel, but then removed his hands and reached for the center console of his car. Moody denies that he reached for the console.

Moody and Clancy declined to give a step-by-step account of what happened the night of the shooting, because of the pending lawsuit. They did provide some details.

Moody said he leaned over into the passenger seat with his hands over his head during the shooting.

"I was laying down when I got shot and my whole body just seemed like …" Moody said, his voice trailing off. "My legs lifted up under the steering wheel."

Moody said that he tried to get away from police by putting the car in neutral.

"I couldn't stop the car and they were still shooting through the car," Moody said. "I just kept on hearing bullets coming through the car … I feared for my life…They laid me on the cement and put a machine gun to my head. They said the only thing that can help you right now is to tell me where the gun is at?"

Moody told police he didn't have a gun.

Police initially said there was an exchange of gunfire between police and Moody. A day after the shooting police said no other weapons had been recovered except for the officers' guns.

Nearly a week later, police released a statement saying, "It does not appear that the suspect fired a weapon."

An unarmed man

After Moody was pulled over, Tinsley came to the driver's window and asked Moody to keep his hands on the steering wheel, according to the report.

Moody "initially complied" until Tinsley attempted to place handcuffs on his left wrist.

"Moody immediately jerked his left hand away and then reached toward the center console with both hands," according to the report. "Tinsley repeatedly commanded, 'Don't reach!' Tinsley did not know what Moody was reaching for."

Tinsley leaned into the car, grabbed Moody's shirt and arm, but was not able to detain him, according to the report, which says that Moody grabbed the emergency brake, pushed the lever down "while continuing to reach for something in the center console."
"Hollandsworth could hear Tinsley repeating the commands to Moody, 'Don't reach!' as Moody continued to struggle with Tinsley," the report states.

Moody "ignored the repeated commands" and continued to reach his hands down and toward the center console, the report states. Hollandsworth, who was on the rear driver side, fired one shot into the car. Her shot didn't hit Moody.

"Gibson stated he saw Tinsley falling and it looked as if he went below the window line of the car," according to the report. "Gibson was concerned that Tinsley would be run over or dragged by Moody. Gibson continued to command Moody to stop.

As Moody was attempting to drive away, Gibson fired his weapon."
Gibson, who was on the passenger side of the car, fired his gun four times, according to the report. Two of the bullets hit Moody in the back and thigh.

During the shooting Tinsley was hit by "multiple bullet fragments," causing cuts to his face and a fractured nose, according to the report. Initially police were investigating whether a gunshot had caused his injuries.

Deadly force warranted?

"There was absolutely no reason to send two unmarked cars, wait to pull over an unsuspecting Mr. Moody, armed to the teeth, and engage in this behavior that led to my client being in a wheelchair," Clancy said.

The prosecutors' office ruled the amount of force used by officers was not excessive.

"From the perspective of both Detective Hollandsworth and Detective Gibson, probable cause existed to believe that Corey Moody posed a threat of serious physical harm to Detective Tinsley and, therefore, the use of deadly force was legally permissible to prevent that harm," according to the report.

All four officers involved in the shooting have returned to work.
In Newport News, officers are allowed to use deadly force under three circumstances, according to the department's operational manual:

•To protect the officer or another person from what is reasonably believed to be an immediate threat of death.

•To prevent the escape of a fleeing felon when an officer has probable cause that the suspect will pose a significant threat to human life.

•To destroy an animal that represents an immediate threat to public safety.

There are limitations on officers' ability to use deadly force.
According to the manual, officers are not allowed to shoot from a moving vehicle except as a last resort, or shoot at a person in a moving vehicle if it is driven in a way that could harm the officer or others.

"I don't think an officer has to see a gun," said Mengyan Dai, an assistant professor in the sociology and criminology department at Old Dominion University. "Based on their experience, they can make good judgment about what to do next."

Dai said it's enough for an officer who "perceives a threat" to fire his or her weapon.

Ronald Bacigal, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said a lot of cases involving police come down to "he said, she said. If you don't have film to go on or a witness, it's a question of 'Who do you believe?' "

Bacigal said more and more police agencies are getting cameras to prevent "he said, she said" situations.

There were no cameras the night of the shooting, Thurston said. Newport News police are in the process of getting more cameras for their officers. More than 40 officers are equipped with cameras that they wear on their bodies to record every interaction with the public.

In Newport News and Hampton, police-involved shootings are investigated by the prosecutors' office, which is the case for many cities across the country. Some localities will ask another outside agency to investigate these types of cases. The commonwealth's attorney's office rendered its report based on information provided by Newport News police about the shooting.

Moody was not consulted for his version of the shooting.

"No one reached out to Mr. Moody, his family, his attorney and asked for his side of events before the police were exonerated," Clancy said.

"Mr. Moody's redress is going to be in a federal courtroom seeking damages for what the police officers and the city of Newport News did."

'My life has changed'

There are moments of anger when Moody discusses the shooting, but other emotions are more noticeable. His tone is heavy with sadness and disappointment. He is a soft-spoken man who doesn't raise his voice even while retelling noticeably tough memories.

Though he had no feeling in his legs after the shooting, Moody wasn't thinking he would be paralyzed. He thought it was a temporary injury that could be fixed at the hospital. A few hours after being in the hospital, the doctor came to talk to him.

"He came in there, ran me through the machine and said, 'I don't' think you're going to be able to walk again.' It was devastating," Moody said.

The bullet is still wedged in his back. Doctors won't remove it because it could cause more damage, said his mother, Shirley Johnson. Most days he spends in the bed. When he's not sleeping, he's back in his wheelchair.

The long stints in the chair have caused painful bed sores that his mother treats to make sure they don't worsen. He goes outside occasionally using a wheelchair ramp built onto the back of the one-story house.

His medical bills are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moody uses Medicaid to fund his care. He no longer goes to physical therapy, but wants to return in the future.

Moody's federal charges are pending, with no new court date set.
Johnson said her faith in God has sustained her through her son's injury. Johnson says she has had to care for other family members with health needs before the shooting. She gets up every day around 6 a.m. to get herself ready for the day. She wakes Moody an hour later. The task of getting clean for the day is not simple. Getting Moody prepared to take a bath can take up to 15 minutes.

"I have to dress him every day, put him in the tub," Johnson said. "We don't really have the facilities to do that because the wheelchair is too large for the bathroom door and I'm pulling on him with another little scooter pushing him in the bathroom. Then I have to lift his legs over that, then he has to pull up around my neck and I have to set him on the chair to get a bath."

Moody is silent as his mother explains their bath routine.

"It's devastating," Moody says. "My life has changed."
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The Oppression of Black people and the Crimes of this system

“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”

Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?

If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.

Think what that means: that without even being told, you knew these victims of police murder and brutality were Black. Those cases—and the thousands more like them that have occurred just in the past few decades—add rivers of tears to an ocean of pain. And they are symptoms of a larger, still deeper problem.

But some today claim that America is a “post-racial society.” They say the “barriers to Black advancement” have been largely overcome. Many go so far as to put the main blame for the severe problems faced by Black people today on…Black people themselves. Others claim that better education, or more traditional families, or religion, or elections will solve things.

CLICK FULL STORY

2012: A Brave New Dystopia

by Chris Hedges

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.



Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement.

Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”


The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass.


The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”


The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”


Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.

“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”

The Police Murder of Tarika Wilson

On January 4, a police SWAT squad broke into the home of Tarika Wilson in Lima Ohio. They shot Tarika dead and wounded her 14 month old son Sincere. The vocal outrage among Lima’s Black community has revealed a long and bitter history of police racism and brutalization.

LIMA, Ohio — The air of Southside is foul-smelling and thick, filled with fumes from an oil refinery and diesel smoke from a train yard, with talk of riot and recrimination, and with angry questions: Why is Tarika Wilson dead? Why did the police shoot her baby?

“This thing just stinks to high heaven, and the police know it,” said Jason Upthegrove, president of the Lima chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “We’re not asking for answers anymore. We’re demanding them.”

Some facts are known. A SWAT team arrived at Ms. Wilson’s rented house in the Southside neighborhood early in the evening of Jan. 4 to arrest her companion, Anthony Terry, on suspicion of drug dealing, said Greg Garlock, Lima’s police chief. Officers bashed in the front door and entered with guns drawn, said neighbors who saw the raid.

Moments later, the police opened fire, killing Ms. Wilson, 26, and wounding her 14-month-old son, Sincere, Chief Garlock said. One officer involved in the raid, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, a 31-year veteran, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Beyond these scant certainties, there is mostly rumor and rage. The police refuse to give any account of the raid, pending an investigation by the Ohio attorney general.

Black people in Lima, from the poorest citizens to religious and business leaders, complain that rogue police officers regularly stop them without cause, point guns in their faces, curse them and physically abuse them. They say the shooting of Ms. Wilson is only the latest example of a long-running pattern of a few white police officers treating African-Americans as people to be feared.

“There is an evil in this town,” said C. M. Manley, 68, pastor of New Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church. “The police harass me. They harass my family. But they know that if something happens to me, people will burn down this town.”

Internal investigations have uncovered no evidence of police misconduct, Chief Garlock said. Still, local officials recognize that the perception of systemic racism has opened a wide chasm.

Surrounded by farm country known for its German Catholic roots and conservative politics, Lima is the only city in the immediate area with a significant African-American population. Black families, including Mr. Manley’s, came to Lima in the 1940s and ’50s for jobs at what is now the Husky Energy Lima Refinery and other factories along the city’s southern border. Blacks make up 27 percent of the city’s 38,000 people, Mr. Berger said.

Many blacks still live downwind from the refinery. Many whites on the police force commute from nearby farm towns, where a black face is about as common as a twisty road. Of Lima’s 77 police officers, two are African-American.

“If I have any frustration when I retire, it’ll be that I wasn’t able to bring more racial balance to the police force,” said Chief Garlock, who joined the force in 1971 and has been chief for 11 years.

Tarika Wilson had six children, ages 8 to 1. They were fathered by five men, all of whom dealt drugs, said Darla Jennings, Ms. Wilson’s mother. But Ms. Wilson never took drugs nor allowed them to be sold from her house, said Tania Wilson, her sister.

“She took great care of those kids, without much help from the fathers, and the community respected her for that,” said Ms. Wilson’s uncle, John Austin.

Tarika Wilson’s companion, Mr. Terry, was the subject of a long-term drug investigation, Chief Garlock said, but Ms. Wilson was never a suspect.

During the raid, Ms. Wilson’s youngest son, Sincere, was shot in the left shoulder and hand. Three weeks after the shooting, he remains in fair condition, said a spokeswoman at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.

Within minutes of the shooting, at around 8 p.m., 50 people gathered outside Ms. Wilson’s home and shouted obscenities at the police, neighbors said. The next day, 300 people gathered at the house and marched two miles to City Hall.
“The police can say whatever they want,” Tania Wilson said. “Even before they shot my sister, I didn’t trust them.”

More Than Half of ‘Armed’ Suspects Shot by LA Sheriff Were Not Armed

A new study has found that in most shootings in which Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies fired at suspects who appeared to be reaching for a weapon, the suspect turned out to be unarmed. And in the last six years, all but two of those people shot were black and Latino, according to the study by the Police Assessment Resource Center for LA County Supervisors.
Over the past six years, approximately 61 percent of all suspects shot because an officer believed they were armed were confirmed to be unarmed at the time of the shooting. A little more than half of those suspects were holding an object such as a cell phone or sunglasses that was believed by deputies to be a possible firearm.
The analysis also found that 61 percent of those shot at by deputies were Latino, 29 percent black and 10 percent white. The LA Times provides some more context: “Waistband shootings” are particularly controversial because the justification for the shootings can conceivably be fabricated after the fact, according to the county monitor’s report. The monitor was careful to point out that the report wasn’t making the case deputies were being dishonest, simply that the spike in those shootings left the department vulnerable to criticism.
Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors, also found a rise in shootings in which deputies didn’t see an actual gun before firing. In those cases, the person may have had a weapon on them, but never brandished it.
Those shootings spiked by 50% last year, according to the report. Last year also had the highest proportion of people shot by deputies who turned out to be unarmed altogether.
The sheriff’s department says these figures are not surprising because deputies patrol areas in south and east Los Angeles County that are home to “a plethora of black and Latino gangs,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.
But Bobb, the special council to county supervisors and the author of the report says training and time on the job has a lot to do with how officers react when suspects hands move. “Knowing that black and Latino men are more likely to be shot or shot at … the sheriff’s department should be doing a better job to reduce as far as possible mistaken shootings,” Bobb wrote.
His report found that in almost a third of shootings deputies had received no relevant training in the past two years.