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Black and Brown Families of Victims Unite on National Day Against Police Brutality

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By R. Zamora

In San Diego 897 people have been killed by law-enforcement since the 1950s. My cousin, Jonathon Coronel, is among these statistics. My cousin was unarmed and surrendered on the ground, yet still shot 22 times by San Diego Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher Villanueva.

As if riddling one body with 22 hollow-point bullets wasn’t terrorizing to our community enough, Christopher Villanueva tortured another human being to death, Sergio Weick, just eleven months prior to murdering Jonathon Coronel. Villanueva fired 26 gunshots onto Sergio Weick. Someone who is firing excessive shots, so excessive that he had to reload his gun, onto one human being clearly does not fear for his life but rather enjoys asserting his deadly power.

Officers like him have been empowered to continue their terrorizing behavior thanks to the District Attorney’s refusal to charge any officers that have overstepped their boundaries for murder. Between 2005 – 2015 there have been 155 police killings and all have been deemed “justified” by the District Attorney’s office. Summer Stephan is continuing this legacy by refusing to hold police officers accountable for illegal behavior, ultimately condoning the stripping of due process. She is expanding police officer’s role into one of judge, jury, and executioner.   [Read more…]

Trump and Saudis Conspire to Cover Up Murder of Washington Post Journalist

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

It’s not unusual for governments to cooperate in investigating an international crime. It’s a little less common for governments to put their heads together in an attempt to dream up an acceptable alibi for why a Washington Post journalist was literally taken apart one finger at a time.

With the Turkish government releasing grisly information on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the US government should be pressuring the Saudi leadership for the facts about the brutal murder of a US resident journalist. And according to a report from the Washington Post, the US and Saudi governments are cooperating … but to cover up a crime, not find the truth.   [Read more…]

Homelessness Can’t Be Solved with Fines and Arrests

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By John Tharp & Maria Foscarinis / OtherWords 

When San Diego resident Gerald Stark’s rent increased and he couldn’t afford another apartment, the retired union pipefitter moved into his RV.

But because he lacked an address, San Diego law made it almost impossible for him to park his RV legally. Soon the city confiscated it, leaving him out on the streets.

There, he was ticketed for violating another law prohibiting sleeping in public. Faced with thousands of dollars in fines and fees he was unable to pay, Stark lived every day in fear of being arrested — for simply trying to survive.   [Read more…]

UPDATED With Suggestions | An Explainer on Electing Judges in California

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What to do about voting for or against judges is a thing this year. I’m hoping today’s column will answer some of the questions readers have asked in recent days.  

The attention paid to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has made a lot of people take notice of the judicial contests appearing on their ballots. At least that is what I assume is going on, having researched and/or produced a half-dozen or so voter guides since 2012.

San Diegans who have heard, read, or seen campaign materials about many candidates and propositions open up the ballot and are confounded by seeing 16 judicial contests for people they know nothing about. (There’s a seventeenth contest, and we’ll get to it further down in the story.)

Who are these people listed for California’s Court of Appeals and Supreme Court and why are we being asked to vote on them?   [Read more…]

Pain and Suffering at the SDPD | My Reporter’s Life, Part One

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I worked for the San Diego Evening Tribune for approximately eight years and 11 months.  I was just 13 months short of being vested in the retirement program when I quit. That’s okay.  

If I’d stayed on at the paper I might have gone fully crazy.  

I was 28 when the Trib hired me out of a small-town daily in New Jersey’s rural northwest. I think somewhere I still have a picture of myself at the Sussex County Fair — taken by the staff photographer who’d accompanied me — as I tried to milk a Holstein. Standard stuff for small-town dailies back then.

I asked the wise guy Italian Assistant Managing Editor named Larry Lusitana why he’d hired me, and he said: “We’ve had good luck with people from New Jersey.”  It was only after I’d left the paper that I found out Lusitana was from that state.   [Read more…]

Senator Diane Feinstein Latest Target of Trump Rally’s “Lock Her Up” Chant

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“It’s not just an assault on norms, the rule of law, and due process they claim to love, it’s a downright creepy attempt at intimidating women.”

By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Two days after apologizing to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh “on behalf of our nation” for subjecting him to one Senate hearing and a brief FBI probe into several sexual assault allegations against him before allowing him to be confirmed to his lifetime appointment, President Donald Trump clearly dropped the pretense of defending “due process” as he laughed along as audience members chanted “Lock her up!” after he criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein in Iowa on Tuesday night.

At Trump’s suggestion during a campaign-style rally in Council Bluffs that Feinstein leaked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s letter regarding her allegations to the press, the audience erupted in the chant as the president smirked and seemed to enjoy the moment.   [Read more…]

Presumed Innocent … But Locked in Cages Nonetheless | Video Worth Watching

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I’m guessing that when Chris Hayes saw the coverage of Trump’s recent rally in Mississippi, some button got pushed. This is the rally where Trump lamented the disregard for the principle of “Innocent until proven guilty” (particularly as it related to his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh) and yet the crowd later repeatedly chanted “Lock her up” referring to Hilary Clinton’s unsubstantiated misdeeds! Irony is indeed dead.

The more galling aspect of this situation for Chris, though, is the disparity in the treatment of accused citizens—between the privileged few (such as Trump and Kavanaugh) and the rest of us, as evidenced by the treatment of Kalief Browder, the teen arrested in 2010 when sixteen years old, and when unable to post bail, imprisoned for three years in extremely violent conditions at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Riker’s Island while awaiting trial.   [Read more…]

Kavanaugh Confirmation: White House Whitewashed FBI Report Gives Cover to Swing Republican Senators

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News reports from this morning indicate that Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation is now very likely because the whitewashed FBI report is giving cover to swing Republican Senators. This despite the failure of FBI investigators to interview neither Christine Blasey Ford nor Kavanaugh and nor at least 40 other witnesses who could give corroboration to Ford’s sexual assault allegations.

The newly-released 46 page FBI report is being called “incomplete” by Democrats and the White House is being blamed for restricting the scope and breadth of investigators. Reportedly, 10 people were contacted and only 9 interviewed by agents. That’s 9 people in the 5 day period (less than 2 a day – wow!). Also, the third woman to come forward, Julie Swetnick, was not contacted by the FBI. Also the second accuser Debra Ramirez gave agents a list of 20 people who come corroborate her accusations against Kavanaugh. None – again, none of them were contacted.

The report is also being called “a sham”, “a whitewash” by critics. Yet, this morning swing GOP senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake stated it was enough for them. Which means it’s very likely they’ll vote to confirm.   [Read more…]

Poli-trick-ians Like Summer Stephan and Myrtle Cole Have Got to Go

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Nothing that these Establishment politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) do surprise me anymore, but it still disgusts me. I pray we learn our lesson from June’s election.

Remember when then-candidate, Summer Stephan suggested to the Union-Tribune she was a reformer? Remember when she told voters that she believed law enforcement officers were not above the law? Remember when she said she cared deeply for victims and victims’ families?

All lies. Since being in that seat, she’s cleared every officer involved in the shootings and deaths of San Diegans. Most recently, on September 21, she cleared every officer involved in the death of Earl McNeil although the Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide.   [Read more…]

Trump Mocks Kavanaugh Accuser; Republican Crowd Chants “Lock Her Up”

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Donald Trump mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a rally Tuesday night because of course, that’s what one of the worst people in the world would do.

Trump highlighted the things Ford didn’t remember about being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh—the exact address, the exact date—rather than the things she did remember—being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh as he laughed, and called into question her recollection of having had one beer rather than acknowledging the widely shared accounts of Kavanaugh as a frequent, sloppy, aggressive drunk.

  [Read more…]

Immigrant Children Carted Off in the Dead of Night to Trump’s Texas Tent Camp

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

With detention facilities overflowing due to President Donald Trump’s monstrous immigration policies—which have sent the number of children detained by the U.S. government soaring to a record 12,800—the Trump administration is reportedly carrying out dead-of-night “mass transfers” of children from foster homes and shelters to a crowded Texas tent camp, where they have no schooling and limited access to legal services.

According to the New York Times, more than 1,600 “migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in South Texas.”   [Read more…]

Text of the Declaration by Julie Swetnick, the Third Women to Accuse Kavanaugh of Sexual Misconduct

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In her sworn statement, Swetnick says that she “fully understands the seriousness” of her accusations and charges that she was “gang-raped” when she was a high school student at a party where Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were both in attendance.

Represented by attorney Michael Avenatti, a third woman, Julie Swetnick, came forward publicly on Wednesday to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of gross sexual misconduct when he was a young man.

In her sworn statement, Swetnick says that she “fully understands the seriousness” of her accusations and charges that she was “gang-raped” when she was a high school student at a party and that Kavanaugh, and his friend Mark Judge, were both “present.”

She also says she that Kavanaugh and his friends were known at the time for “targeting” girls with alcohol and drugs in order to take advantage of them sexually, and that she has “a firm recollection” that Judge and Kavanaugh were among the “boys lined up outside rooms at many [other] parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room.”   [Read more…]

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