John Brown's Body

     On April 12th, 2017, Gwinnett County Officers Robert McDonald and Michael Bongiovanni pulled over Demetrius Hollins, a 22-year-old black man, for a broken light and a missing license plate and ordered him out of his car. In a horrific incident that was caught on video, Hollins, who complied with the officers and exited the vehicle with his hands in the air, was punched by Bongiovanni before being thrown to the ground and handcuffed. While Hollins was lying on the ground in handcuffs, McDonald ran up to him and stomped him in the head. Both officers were fired when the video surfaced the next day, later being arrested and charged with felony aggravated assault. Bongiovanni, who had 67 prior brutality complaints, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years of probation: McDonald took his case to trial and received the same sentence. In January, the lawsuit was settled for $400,000.      On March 1st, 2022, Daniel MacKenzie, a former police officer in Ro...

     Four weeks ago, Kansas City Police Department Officer Eric Develkenaere, who was convicted in November 2021 of armed criminal action and involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of unarmed black man Cameron Lamb, was sentenced to six years in prison. Considering he had no criminal history and faced a maximum sentence of 18 years, it was a fairly good sentence. Square it with that of Kim Potter , who was given two years for the same crime with a higher maximum penalty. As I stated in a previous article , the fact that Develkenaere was granted an appeals bond shows there is work to be done, but the results of the case are generally good ones, as good as they can be in a tragic and senseless killing. Develkenaere's sentence, while holding him accountable, only brings about justice if it changes the deeper problems in the KCPD.      According to a December 2020 study , the Kansas City Police Department is among the top 10 most brutal in the United St...

     Elections have consequences. Let's look at what Congress has accomplished in terms of racial justice alone since January 20th, 2021. The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act not only dedicated national resources to combat the surge in AAPI hate; it also fundamentally changed and strengthened how law enforcement and prosecutors handle hate crimes of every kind. The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act made Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery, the first new holiday since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1983. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act made lynching a federal crime for the first time in U.S. history, finally bringing a close to a 100-year fight with over 200 failed attempts to do so. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is on track to get its first black woman and first public defender ever (as well as have four women seated on it at the same time for the first time in history) within a matter of days with the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson; just today, it was announ...

     February 24th, 2022, believe it or not, was likely a more historic day than April 20th, 2021. The murder case against Derek Chauvin was fairly clear-cut: he murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine and a half minutes. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to federal felonies for murdering George Floyd and assaulting a black child (while still awaiting trial, alongside his wife, for a $100,000 tax evasion scheme). All told, in spite of not getting the sentence of 30 years many wanted, he is likely to spend close to 30 years in prison and will be lucky to get a few miserable years outside prison walls before he dies. The case against the other three was much more contentious: some guessed all would be acquitted, some guessed Lane might be for performing CPR and asking if Floyd should be rolled over, some guessed Thao might for never touching Floyd, etc. At the end of the day, a federal jury made the righ...