In May 2010 , the United States Department of Justice (”DOJ”) issued three news releases describing criminal proceedings DOJ attorneys charge were motivated by race.  A May 12th news release posted by the DOJ at http://www.justice.gov states that a 23-year-old man has been indicted by a federal grand jury for participating in a civil rights conspiracy in connection with an October 2008 cross-burning near the home of an interracial racial couple in Athens, Louisiana.  In that case, a co-conspirator was convicted this past January for conspiring to burn a cross, using fire to commit a federal felony and obstruction of justice charges stemming from this same cross-burning.  A May 13th DOJ news release states that a federal grand jury in the District of Massachusetts has charged two men in a three-count superseding indictment in relation to the arson of a church.  According to that news release, the superseding indictment alleges that in the early morning of November 5, 2008, within hours of Barack Obama being elected President of the United States, the two men agreed to burn and succeeded in burning the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a predominately African American church.  In a May 17th DOJ news release, DOJ attorneys announced that a white supremacist pleaded guilty to using the Postal Service to send a threatening communication to the president of the Lima, Ohio chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  As stated in the news release, the white supremacist admits mailing a hangman’s noose in order to convey a threat to injure the victim because the victim advocated publicly for better police services for African Americans in Lima, Ohio.  A Civil Rights Division attorney quoted in the news release stated, in part, that “A noose is an unmistakable symbol of hate in our nation, and it was used in this case to intimidate an individual exercising his right to speak out and advocate on behalf of others.”

With respect to the indictments, the DOJ cautioned in the news releases that details in an indictment are allegations and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.  Further information about the DOJ and the laws it enforces is available in the DOJ’s website at www.doj.gov .

In a press release at http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/April/10-crt-380.html , lawyers for the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a federal district judge in Texas has sentenced a Rio Honda, Texas man to three years in prison and five years of supervised release for violating the civil rights and the sexual abuse of females in his custody at a Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas.  According to the April 7, 2010 press release, the former detention center guard pleaded guilty in September 2009 to a six-count criminal information charging him with three counts of abusive sexual contact and three counts deprivation of rights under color of law.  As stated in the DOJ press release, the former guard admitted that on several occasions in March and April of 2008, he snuck into medical isolation rooms at the detention center infirmary to grope female patients and that his actions caused the female victims psychological pain and embarrassment.

The man reportedly worked at the detention center for six-and-a-half years as a guard and was employed by a private company that contracted with the United States government.  In this regard, the DOJ said that when confronted by agents from the U. S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the man admitted to sexually touching five different women.

Trial attorneys with the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted the civil rights case in the U. S. Southern District of Texas.  For more information about the U. S. Department of Justice and its Civil Rights Division, see www.justice.gov .

In a March 24, 2010 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release at http://www.justice.org , the DOJ announced that a federal jury in Sacramento, California has convicted a 28-year-old man of a federal hate crime for assaulting an African-American man in a Chico, California bar.  The conviction occurred after a 3 day trial.  According to the DOJ, the evidence at trial showed that after entering the bar the perpetrator used a racially derogatory term to object to the victim’s presence.  As stated further in the press release, the slur was used several times and, a short while later, without any verbal or physical provocation, the perpetrator approached and punched the victim in the face.

Amnesty International USA, a human rights organization, offers information to the public in its website at http://www.amnestyusa.org about taser abuse, explaining that since June of 2001 more than 351 individuals in the United States have died after being shocked by police Tasers.  In this regard, the organization states that most of those individuals were not carrying a weapon and Amnesty International is concerned that the devices are being used as tools of routine force - rather than as an alternative to firearms.  According to postings by Amnesty International USA, medical studies so far on the effects of Tasers have either been limited in scope or unduly influenced by the weapons’ primary manufacturer, so no study has adequately addressed the impact of these devices on potentially at-risk individuals, including, for example, people with medical conditions and the mentally ill.  Consequently, Amnesty International recommends that police departments either suspend the use of Tasers and stun guns pending further safety research or limit their use to situations where officers would otherwise be justified in resorting to firearms.  In its website, Amnesty International offers stun gun information to the public, including Taser Reports and Briefings by Amnesty International and Taser Policy Recommendations and Campaigning Tools, as well as United Nations Documents on Use-of-Force Guidelines for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Amnesty International USA, a human rights organization, offers information about law enforcement racial profiling in its website at www.amnestyusa.org .  According to Amnesty International USA, racial profiling occurs when race is used by law enforcement or private security officials, to any degree, as a basis for criminal suspicion in non-suspect specific investigations.  In this regard, discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality or any other particular identity undermines the basic human rights and freedoms to which every person is entitled.  Amnesty International USA further reports that racial profiling makes us less safe, inhibits law enforcement efforts and undermines national unity, providing for the public important information pertaining to racial profiling.  In addition, Amnesty International USA invites victims to share their stories and thoughts in order to join the organization in speaking out about serious human rights violations like racial profiling.  As stated by the organization, 26 states have no law explicitly prohibiting racial profiling and 46 states do not ban racial profiling beased on religion or religious appearance.  To help raise awareness about racial profiling and learn more about this important issue, one can visit the Amnesty International USA website.

In a March 3, 2010 posting at its “Blog of Rights,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that the Human Rights Fund (HRF) has released a report profiling how groups like the ACLU have used international human rights standards and strategies to improve people’s lives in the United States.  According to the posting, the report discusses how the ACLU Human Rights Program worked with the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) to make the U.N. Human Rights Committee aware of the problems of racial profiling and harassment of people who live in the Texas-Mexico border region and the overall militarization of the border.  As stated in the blog, residents of that region were the targets of Operation Linebacker, a federally financed law enforcement program meant to target violent crime and drug trafficking at the border.  The ACLU contends that instead of arresting drug runners, the initiative ended up ethnically profiling brown-skinned people.  As a result of the ACLU and BHNR’s advocacy to the U.N., the ACLU reports that the drumbeat of local coverage put pressure on the mayor and legislators in Austin, the state capital, to rethink support for the policing initiative, which was later de-funded.

More information about the ACLU and this report is available at www.aclu.org .

The March issue of Trial reports that a jury has awarded three men $175,000 in a lawsuit against the City of Portland where the plaintiffs alleged that police officers used excessive force.  See, Trial, 3/10, p. 14.  More specifically, the plaintiffs, each of whom is African American, contended that they were subjected to assault, battery, false arrest and excessive force motivated by racial stereotypes.  In this regard, the lawsuit charged that the plaintiffs were returning to their vehicle after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration when they were stopped by police officers as they got into their car in a parking garage.  One plaintiff, who had his seat belt on, immediately informed the officers that he was carrying a gun but had a concealed weapon permit. 

The police officers then allegedly started yelling at the men and drew their weapons, pointing them at the men’s heads as one officer sliced through the seat belt with a knife and the three men were pulled from the car and handcuffed.  The man with the concealed weapon permit was allegedly punched in the groin.  All three men feared they would be shot at any moment.  While the police officers argued in the case that they were just doing their jobs after receiving reports of a fight, the men were not arrested or given any explanation for why they had been stopped.

The jury award occurred in the case Hammick v. City of Portland, No. 0807-09735 (Or., Multnomah Co.Cir. Sept. 28, 2009).

Whether excessive force, assault, battery and false arrest by police occurs in Beaumont, Conroe, Houston or elsewhere, victims of police misconduct may make written complaints to the responsible law enforcement employer and contact an attorney to determine if a police excessive force lawsuit is ultimately appropriate under the particular facts and circumstances of the potential excessive force claim.

African-American News & Issues reporter Tuala Williams wrote recently that Pastor Kyev Tatum, president of the Fort Worth SCLC, is leading the charge amid cries of wrongful death in the matter of Michael Patrick Jacobs, Jr., 24.  See, Tuala, Williams, “Getting Away With Murder!” African-American News & Issues, Vol. 15, Issue 4, 2/24 - 3/2/10, p. 1.  According to the article, Jacobs, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, had stopped taking his medication because it was making him feel sick and began having difficulties inside his parents’ home, so his parents called 911 to request an ambulance.  Police, fire department officers and paramedics arrived, but the police decided to send the fire department and paramedics away, deciding to handle the call as a criminal issue.  As stated in the article, Jacobs continued to behave aggressively and was shot with a taser.  In all, he was reportedly tasered a total of 54 seconds in the presence of witnesses.  It was ruled a homicide by Dr. Nizam Peerwani of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office, who, according to the article, wrote in his report that Jacobs’ died of “sudden death during neuromuscular incapacitation due to the application of a conducted energy device.”  Additionally, an electrical engineer with TASER International testified before a grand jury that the two jolts of 50,000 volts exceeded the limits of use set by the manufacturer since TASER International contends that the weapons are not to be discharged for more than 5 seconds.  While Dr. Peerwani called it a homicide, the grand jury and the internal affairs department of the Fort Worth Police Department did not see it that way.  For his own part, Pastor Tatum was quoted as saying that “In Fort Worth, you can kill a Black man and nobody’ll say anything about it.”  Tatum has asked the U.S. Attorney’s office to pursue a federal civil rights investigation against the police department and Jacobs’ family has filed a federal court excessive force lawsuit.

Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (DOJ) announced in a March 4, 2010 news release posted at http://www.justice.gov that two subsidiaries of American International Group, Inc. have agreed to pay a minimum of $6.1 million to resolve allegations that they engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against African American borrowers.  Brought under the federal Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts, the complaint alleged that African American borrowers nationwide were charged higher fees on wholesale loans made by AIG Federal Savings Bank (FSB) and Wilmington Finance Inc. (WFI), an affiliated mortgage lending company.  According to the DOJ news release, AIG FSB and WFI contracted with mortgage brokers to obtain mortgage applications that were underwritten and funded by the defendants.  In this regard, the DOJ complaint alleged that AIG FSB and WFI failed to supervise or monitor brokers in setting broker fees and this practice had a disparate impact on African American borrowers, who were charged higher broker fees than white, non-Hispanic borrowers on thousands of such loans from July 2003 until May 2006, a period of time before the federal government obtained an ownership interest in American International Group, Inc.  As stated in the news release, AIG FSB and WFI are not currently in the business of wholesale home mortgage lending.

A copy of the complaint, as well as additional information about fair-lending enforcement by the DOJ, can be obtained at http://www.justice.gov/fairhousing .

A sexual assault lawsuit against the city of Brownwood, a Brownwood Police Chief and the Texas Trails Council of the Boy Scouts of America has been settled, according to a February 10, 2010 article posted at http://www.reporternews.com/news/2010/feb/10/brownwood-settles-lawsuit .  In this regard, the Abilene Reporter-News states that the family of the sexual assault victim agreed to a settlement of $300,000.  In the lawsuit, the parents of the victim claimed that none of the entities did enough to protect their daughter, then a 15-year-old member of Police Explorers Post 1150, from a former Brownwood police sergeant who is now serving prison time for two counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child.  According to the article, the settlement will be paid by the insurance carrier, Liberty Mutual and Texas Municipal League.

Whether police officer sexual assault occurs in Abilene, Brownwood, Houston or elsewhere, sexual misconduct victims may contact an attorney to determine if a sexual assault lawsuit is ultimately appropriate under the particular facts and circumstances of the potential civil rights injury claim.