By Doug Porter

A killer targeting homeless humans is likely using San Diego’s transit system to get to his “work…”

…Another human gunned down in Minneapolis for –apparently– being a scary Black person, the day after cops in Louisiana are caught trying to cover their asses following what many are calling an extra-legal execution…

…And a local Congressman is ready to shut down the government to prove his loyalty to an orange-colored racist dog posing as a presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Psycho in Transit?

The Mayor and the SDPD held a press conference on Wednesday afternoon to announce that the ‘person of interest’ in the recent attacks on homeless persons in San Diego had been upgraded to ‘suspect’ status.

Police released digitally enhanced photos lifted from a convenience store video.

From the Union-Tribune:

Police officials said Wednesday that the person of interest seen in images shared with the public is now a suspect. Homicide Capt. David Nisleit said investigators are sure the man committed all four crimes, although he did not detail why they are certain. He implored the public to help find the man, adding that the department has already received many leads, and plans to follow up on every one.

“We really need the public’s assistance,” Nisleit said. “I truly believe that’s how we’re going to make this case. Someone’s gonna recognize this person and give us who it is, and we’re going to find him and arrest him.”

Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Chief Shelley Zimmerman said cracking the case is the department’s highest priority. Officers are informing those who are homeless of the attacks, showing them photos of the suspect, working to connect people with services and shelter, and advising them to be particularly aware of their surroundings.

Local social media reports indicate police interest in public transportation, suggesting they have leads on the killer using buses or trolleys to move around the city. There was one false alarm Thursday morning as police stopped and boarded an MTS bus.

#Black Lives Matter, Except When They Don’t

Officers quicker to shoot black targets in simulations, even when unarmed. #PhilandoCastile https://t.co/unB1oNP0ng pic.twitter.com/Mg8l8e4AXz

— sean. (@SeanMcElwee) July 7, 2016

Two videos concerning Black men shot by police officers are sparking protests in cities around the country.

Videos of a confrontation between two Baton Rouge police officers and a street CD seller named Alton Sterling appear to show the 37-year-old Black man being shot after being pinned to the ground.

Local authorities released a convenience store security camera video of the encounter only after an observer’s cell phone record of the event went viral in social media. The version in the authorities’ possession was just as damning as the one by the eyewitness.

From the Washington Post:

The video of the shooting was captured by chance by members of Stop the Killing Inc, a local anti-violence activist group and documentary team that listens to police scanners and shows up at the scene of potentially violent confrontations to take video. A second video that emerged later in Wednesday appeared to show one of the police officers removing a gun from Sterling’s pocket after he was shot…

…Reed said his group didn’t immediately release the video because it wanted to see how transparent police would be about the shooting.

“You want to see what the police are going to say and how transparent they’re going to be,” said Reed, 43, who has spent most of his life in Baton Rouge. “You know that you’re holding a chess piece, the most important part is to move that piece at the right time.”

But when police did not immediately release body and dash camera footage, and then after activists heard that officers have allegedly seized security camera footage from the convenience store that captured the shooting, Reed and others decided to publish the video. They began posting it to Facebook and Instagram around 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Soon it had gone viral.

The FBI has been brought in to assist with the investigation, as local politicians have gone in front of TV cameras to “tsk-tsk” about how it doesn’t look good for law enforcement. A local district attorney has already opined that the shooting looks justified. 

In Minneapolis the video was live-streamed by the girlfriend of the now-deceased 32-year-old Montressori School employee Philando Castile, starting just seconds after the shots were fired.

From Reuters:

The video began with the woman in the passenger seat describing what had happened moments before. A black man covered in blood sat in the driver’s seat as a police officer pointed a gun into the vehicle.

The woman said her boyfriend had just been pulled over for a broken tail light and explained that he had a gun he was licensed to carry.

“He was trying to get out his ID and his wallet out of his pocket,” she said. “He let the officer know that he had a firearm and that he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm.”

Kai Wright at The Nation struggled to put these latest shootings into some sort of context, concluding that, like so many others shootings before, there would be no justice:

Of course, the ritual of parsing the lives of the dead must also include a consideration of their criminality. It is tradition for news media to report any prior evidence of criminality when covering these cases. A banality of this particular evil is the assumption that people who encounter cops—for that matter, people who have criminal records—have done something, anything meaningfully wrong. We simply cannot hold the idea that someone selling CDs in a parking lot or driving a car with a busted tail light or walking down the middle of the street or peddling loosies on the sidewalk or playing with a toy in the park is enough infraction to end up dead within minutes of encountering a cop; that would undermine the whole premise of authorizing a force of public safety officers. The dead must have some modicum of criminality, present some reasonable threat to the public. So news reports must include Castile and Sterling’s records, supplied by the police agencies that killed them, as though anything in those records could possibly explain their deaths.

In this vein, the now rote ritual of black death will also include much debate about the guns. Both Sterling and Castile were armed. Sterling’s friend, the food mart owner, says he was carrying a gun because he’d been threatened; others say it was a reasonable security precaution given his cash-based business. Castile’s girlfriend says he was licensed to carry his gun and told the officer as much. The details of these guns will be crucial to the debate over accountability for the officers, because the sole legal question is whether the officers reasonably felt themselves or others to be in immediate danger. The answer in court—if any case makes it that far—is very likely to be yes. The law discourages second guessing officers’ split-second, potentially life and death decisions. So there will not likely be justice in Baton Rouge or St. Paul.

Clinton Derangement Syndrome on Display

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Trump Supporter) hot footed it to the press just hours after Utah’s Jason Chaffetz (R-I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But…), who replaced him as chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced an unprecedented hearing into the FBI’s recommendation not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over the use of a private email server.

Issa wanted everybody to know that he thought shutting down the government was an appropriate response.

Chaffetz didn’t get the answers he wanted from FBI Director James Comey this morning on whether Hillary Clinton lied about her email use, settling instead for asking the FBI to review Clinton’s testimony to Congress.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, eager to prove his manhood and get some press, sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asking him to deny any classified information to Hillary Clinton for the rest of the 2016 campaign.   

From CNN:

Republican members of the House Intell‎igence Committee are exploring legislative options to block Clinton’s ability to have classified briefings, but some GOP aides concede the decision is mostly up to the intelligence community.

The top House Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, called the move “as predictable as it is absurd.”

“Providing an intelligence briefing for the party nominees is a sound practice, and is designed both to prepare the candidates for office and to help them avoid representations during the campaign that may adversely affect the national interest before or after election,” he said in a statement. “The call by the House GOP leadership to cancel briefings for Secretary Clinton and brief only Donald Trump is as predictable as it is absurd.”

He added: “With Trump, the question isn’t whether the briefings should occur, but whether they would do any good.”

On This Day: 1846 – The U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey after the surrender of a Mexican garrison.  1882 – Striking New York longshoremen met to discuss ways to keep new immigrants from scabbing. They were successful, at least for a time. On July 14, 500 newly arrived Jews marched straight from their ship to the union hall. On July 15, 250 Italian immigrants stopped scabbing on the railroad and joined the union. 1967 – The Monkees opened a national tour with Jimi Hendrix as the opening act.

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Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

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