Wednesday, June 17, 2020

I want to thank District Attorney Paul Howard.

There are tears in my eyes for the strong and impressive demonstration of the belief in human rights by the District Attorney.

It was wrong. It was all wrong. Mr. Brooks should be alive today. He is not. His children will always have the reason for his death in their hearts and minds forever. They are without a father and their mother without a husband. 

People's lives are not perfect. Police officers that expect perfect behavior from citizens of this country are not fit for the uniform. The police need to adjust their understanding of human nature and behavior. They need to realize the presence of a police officer is a bit of stress especially if the officer's attention is leveled at a law-abiding citizen.

Today, I heard a District Attorney speak about the egregious behavior of police within their ability to leverage power over a human being that had a life to live. There was just no reason for any of the power exhibited to have been conducted. NO REASON.

I might point to the statement by the District Attorney that the arrests were signed against both officers and each officer had until 6 PM to surrender to the authorities. That is a clear understanding by the District Attorney that the system carries an enormous weight when it comes to the law that exists in the USA. He is not the least bit concerned that the law is not strong enough to allow a surrender rather than an arrest at a suspect's home or otherwise. 

We are civilized people that practice our promise of quality of life with the weight of the rule of law. That rule of law is to be respected. There are enormous choices for police officers when faced with a violation of the law by a citizen. The choices made by the officers that resulted in the death of a father and husband was completely wrong no matter how it is viewed.

The police work carried out that resulted in the death of Mr. Brooks was extremely reckless. Several other citizens sitting in a vehicle in the drive-thru line were assaulted as well by the reckless police behavior. At no point in time did proper police action occur.

I thank the District Attorney Paul Howard. He put forward a magnificent case. 

I hope the building was empty.

Inter-Korean Liason Office is located in North Korea. It served primarily as an embassy with South Korea. It is in a sensitive area of North Korea called the Kaeson Industrial Region. It is an area that was to serve as a joint effort by the Koreas to bring economic growth to the region.

Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye (click here) removed all the South Koreans from the industrial region. It was a hope of the current President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to return a goodwill mission to the region. Recently, North Korea's President Kim-Jong Un and his sister Kim Yo Jong demanded the leaflets crossing their common border from a South Korean activist group stop. That was curtailed but the entire project was not ended. The continued leaflet flights were not condoned by the South Korean government, but, SARS-CoV-2 has given a reason for such demands from North Korea.


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The bombing of the Inter-Korean Liason Office was the next step in ending long sought after talks between the Koreas.

...The two (click here) have agreed a brief but significant list of forward steps: to work on a formal peace treaty, to “ease the sharp military tensions on the Korean peninsula”, to work on reunifying families split between North and South, and to cease propaganda activities against one another from 1 May. They will also establish a joint liasion group to work together on a variety of issues....

The decision by North Korea to bomb the building was a clear indication there is no more desired communications. They are still unhappy about the leaflet transit across it's border. This type of aggression probably will not discourage activists in South Korea.

It is always sad to see such broken efforts toward peace, but, the region will probably be repurposed by North Korea since the joint effort at this point is dead. The worry is what exactly North Korea's plans are for this region and how will it effect the national security of South Korea. 

There are great losses with these new demands and actions by North Korea.

...Kim Yo-jong (click here) first gained international attention in 2018, when she was the first member of the Kim dynasty to visit South Korea. She was part of the delegation to the Winter Olympics, where North and South competed as a joint team.
The 2018 thaw which followed saw her working alongside her brother as he set off on an international diplomacy path, meeting South Korean President Moon Jae-in, China's Xi Jinping and most importantly US President Donald Trump.

The close relationship with her brother and her increasingly senior roles in the political apparatus put her once again in focus in April 2020 during a period when Kim Jong-un seemed unusually absent from any public events....
They just don't seem to value the advances toward peace so much as these all being moves in a chess game. Basically, "What is the next move to win concessions from the West?"

With this break with South Korea, North Korea has solidified it's permanence to it's nuclear program. 

More weak legislation coming out of the US Senate that asks "please" rather than enduring change.

This should have been a bipartisan effort authored by Senators Scott, Harris, and Booker. It would have been a much needed comprehensive legislative effort. Senator Scott is the first minority US Senator from a southern state elected to the US Senate from South Carolina. Senator Booker is from New Jersey and has been a mayor from a large, dynamic city in New Jersey and Senator Harris is from the West Coast where she served as the Attorney General from California and implemented prison diversion programs as a district attorney and a “first-of-its-kind” racial bias training for police officers. While in the US Senate she introduced criminal justice reform.

This is the first time there have been three African-American US Senators serving together. There are also Senators Menendez, Marco, Cruz, Hirono and Cortez Mastro serving together. It would have been magnificent if all the minority members of the US Senate authored an effective bill that would actually result in change.

This legislation is a waste of time. While it threatens to remove money from police forces that continue the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrents, it asks "pretty please" giving those forces a way out of the penalty.

The only way to INSURE "violence against Americans" ends is to mandate bans on deadly techniques currently used by police. The "Qualified Immunity" (click here) statutes governing such deadly techniques and methods must also be revised when it comes to protecting American lives.

The current Qualified Immunity practiced with police are outside the reason for the legislation.

Qualified immunity is a type of legal immunity. “Qualified immunity balances two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Pearson v. Callahan ....

These measures in law were never intended to protect killer cops.

June 17, 2020
By Seung Min Kim and John Wagner

Senate Republicans (click here) on Wednesday unveiled a policing reform bill that would discourage, but not ban, tactics such as chokeholds and no-knock warrants, offering a competing approach to legislation being advanced by House Democrats that includes more directives from Washington.

The Republican proposal, which Senate leaders said would be considered on the floor next week, veers away from mandating certain policing practices, as the Democratic plan does.

Instead, it encourages thousands of local police and law enforcement agencies to curtail practices such as chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants by withholding federal funding to departments that allow the tactics or do not submit reports related to them.

The legislation also requires local law enforcement agencies to report all officer-involved deaths to the FBI — an effort pushed by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is spearheading the GOP bill, since 2015 — and it encourages broader use of body-worn cameras for officers....