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A move by police in Clarendon to target young men wearing hoodies (sweaters with a covering for the head and ears) for increased searches and questioning has been described by at least one human rights advocate as "discriminatory" and "profiling".

Head of the Clarendon Police Division Superintendent Vendolyn Cameron Powell had said that the drive to stop and search young men wearing hoodies was part of efforts to combat crime in the parish. She also questioned why anyone should need to wear hoodies in Jamaica's tropical climate.

But yesterday afternoon, human rights advocate Horace Levy, the executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, lashed out at the move to target men wearing hoodies.

"There is no right (on the part of the police to implement such a strategy) to me. Just because there are some crimes being committed by guys with hoodies, you are to start searching every hooded guy? It's a style and a matter of self-identification!" Levy told The Gleaner.

"I disagree with the police stopping and searching everybody wearing a hoodie. The police are to have a good reason for searching somebody to begin with. They don't have the right to just stop and search everybody. To add to that, if they are stopping and searching everybody wearing a hoodie, that's profiling, and that's being quite discriminatory," Levy said.

Claims of profiling were central to the 2012 case around the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, United States, who was shot and killed by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Zimmerman had followed Martin and got into an altercation with the black teenager after describing him to a 911 operator as appearing suspicious and wearing a "dark hoodie".

It later turned out that Martin had been walking home after purchasing Skittles at a nearby convenience store, but Zimmerman was, in 2013, found not guilty of second-degree murder after a less-than-one-month trial.

Yesterday, in explaining the rationale behind law enforcement's stance with regard to the wearing of hoodies, Powell said that the Clarendon police have received "quite a number of" reports where men dressed in hoodies commit crimes in the parish.

"If you look at the reports from most of our crime scenes - murders, shootings, break-ins, robberies - a common feature is men dressed in hoodies," Powell told The Gleaner yesterday.

"As a result, we are looking out seriously for persons so attired, walking around with offensive weapons, especially when they appear in my town centre and roadways connected to the town centre."

Powell also suggested that persons wearing hoodies actually attract attention to themselves.

"I mean, they are dressed in hoodies in daylight, sun barking, and (a hoodie) is cold-weather wear. So, we have interest in those persons. Information collected from crime scenes advises us that persons with handkerchiefs tied around their faces, around their heads, feature in quite a number of major crimes."

Powell pointed out that this strategy was not new to the island as other police divisions have already adopted a zero-tolerance approach towards the wearing of hoodies.

She encouraged residents who see men in their communities wearing hoodies and other coverings of the face to call the police and make a report.

Go here to read the rest:
Hoodies off - Levy cries foul as Clarendon cops target young men sporting face-hiding sweatshirts - Jamaica Gleaner

TIME

Judge Denies 'Stand Your Ground' Defense In Movie Theater Shooting 5newsonline.com The case represents another look at Florida's stand your ground law, which most famously surfaced in George Zimmerman's 2013 trial in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman's defense did not invoke the statute, but the law was included in ... No, Sir, You Cannot Shoot and Kill Someone Because They Are Texting During The Movie PreviewsThe Root Judge Rejects 'Stand Your Ground' Defense In Florida Theater Shooting CaseWABE 90.1 FM 'Stand your ground' defense denied for ex-cop in theater texting killingfox13now.com all 52 news articles »

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Judge Denies 'Stand Your Ground' Defense In Movie Theater Shooting - 5newsonline.com

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Florida already has a Stand Your Ground law, which removes any requirement that a citizen attempt to flee a life or death attack before using lethal force to stop the aggression. To use the law in court, defendants must prove at a pretrial hearing that they reasonably believed that they were threatened with grave bodily harm.

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State GOP lawmakers want to take the law one step further, shielding the right to armed self-defense by putting the onus on the state and forcing prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendants claim to self-defense was not valid.

The NYTalready opposes Stand Your Ground and believes the defects of the law were seen in the example of George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin in self-defense. The paper suggests the proposed changes to the law only make itworse.

According to NYT:

Under the proposed change, prosecutors would essentially have to try a case twice, at a hearing and then at the trial, while making it easier for defendants to claims a right to shoot first (or stab or club or otherwise attack someone) and argue against prosecution on the basis of their fears.

NYT points to an American Bar Association study which concluded that the passage of Stand Your Ground in Florida has been followed by an increase in homicides, diminished victims rights and heightened racial injustice in enforcement.

A couple of points need to be made: First, Zimmermans defense was based on a claim that he acted in self-defense, not on an appeal to Stand Your Ground. It follows that he was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, not Stand Your Ground.

Secondly, far from increasing racial injustice, Crime Prevention Research Centers John Lott has shown that Stand Your Ground greatly benefits blacks in Florida. In his latest book, The War On Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, Lott writes, From 2005 through October 1, 2014, blacks made up 16.7 percent of Floridas population and 34 percent of the defendants who invoked Stand Your Ground. He added, Black defendants who invoke this statute are actually acquitted four percentage points more frequently than white who use this very same defense.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

Excerpt from:
NYT Lambastes Florida GOP for Shielding Citizens' Right to Armed Self-Defense - Breitbart News

The National Council of Negro Women held a vigil last Sunday to reflect on the death of Trayvon Martin.

Myracle Clay-Bennett, President of the National Council of Negro Women has been aware of just how intricate race relations between the government and its people have been for some time. To raise awareness, her organization held a vigil for Trayvon Martin, and afterwards showed the documentary "13th".

"13th" outlines the history of anti-black rhetoric and mass incarceration in our nation's past and how it has permeated the present. According to the documentary, large corporations have an astounding amount of input in legislation.

"Many people are ignorant to the fact, and it's very important to know since the people who the laws affect are the same ones giving their money to these corporations," said Bennet.

One such law was the Floridian "Stand Your Ground" law, a law found to be "inconsistent" with the right to life according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

I do believe this documentary will open some minds and hearts, but I dont believe it will open everyones, said Kimberly Clark, 2nd Vice President. The country has been trained to dehumanize and reduce the African American community through propaganda, media and ideologies passed down from society.

The "Stand Your Ground" legislation was the defining moment in the Trayvon Martin case and is how George Zimmerman was proven not guilty.

The law was introduced by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a company that writes template legislation for politicians, and numerous corporations have a hand.

If you happened to miss the vigil and are curious, you can still find the documentary on Netflix.

For the National Council of Negro Women, this vigil and documentary was the voice of so many they felt suffered from indignities of the legal system.

See the rest here:
National Council of Negro Women held vigil for Trayvon Martin - The George-Anne

Black in America means fear of mistreatment

Here I go again. It's impossible to explain to people like March 2 letter-writer Tom Anderson what it's like to be black in America. Although he mentioned a valid fact, Ill bet he never had to tell his son (if he has one) not to disrespect a police officer or he'd get his head beaten in.

Even though I'm old enough to have lived through the many injustices of a "Jim Crow" South, and then found out what it was like to live in the North, fear of mistreatment has always been a part of being black in this country.

In the Jim Crow South, for example, it was fashionable to send black men to Vietnam when they couldn't vote in their home state.

More recently, we've had eight years with a black president, and it seems more incidents of injustice against blacks have surfaced.

Anderson should stop trying to justify why Trayvon Martin got killed. If Trayvon had been white, in my view, George Zimmerman never would have followed him. Trayvon was followed because he was black and wearing a hoodie. That made Zimmerman angry, especially after being told by the police dispatcher to stop following Trayvon.

That gun Zimmerman was carrying told him to keep it up. I think the charge should have been manslaughter, not murder. I'm a retired cop, and I can tell you of incidents I witnessed where blacks were treated unfairly.

Charles L. Perry-Kelly Casselberry

I am appalled at the WikiLeaks revelations of the un-constitutional capabilities that have been developed or considered by the CIA. In particular, I refer to:

Hour by hour, further atrocities are coming to light. Our elected officials are hired to protect us from exactly this type of overreach. They pledge to defend the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment.

Please, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Sen. Bill Nelson and Sen. Marco Rubio, take actions to initiate and/or support new legislation to provide oversight to the CIA, and perform audits to ensure compliance with the Constitution.

No government should ever have these unchecked powers. The consequences of these powers staying intact appear to be a clear and present danger to the republic, for obvious reasons.

Joshua McConkey Orlando

I cannot believe the Wednesday letter to the editor by Cindy Singleton, a former teacher of Christopher Redding Jr. She describes him as smart, articulate, athletic. Perhaps he was. But dont forget he shot a deputy sheriff. He could have killed that deputy, and if he had been successful at that, he probably would have shot the other deputies who were there.

Yes, all lives matter, as Singleton writes. So do the lives of the law-enforcement officers; so do the lives of the elderly women whom he was suspected of robbing. My life matters, too. I am an elderly lady who is afraid to go shopping because of others like Redding out there.

Alice Russell Deltona

Link:
Being black in America means fear of mistreatment: Letters - Orlando Sentinel