BWB

Your City of Miami Police Department (Motto: "He fell down...a lot...that's how he broke his nose") "engaged in a pattern of excessive force that  led to a high number of shootings by officers...that resulted in the deaths of seven young black men over an eight-month period in 2011."  So found a Justice Department study according to the NY Times here. 

"The findings, released on Tuesday, came after a two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and they identified “troubling” practices, including delays in completing investigations of officer-involved shootings, questionable police tactics and a lack of adequate supervision. From 2008 to 2011, officers intentionally fired their weapons at people 33 times, the investigation found."

"The Justice Department noted that its own investigation would have been completed sooner if not for the Police Department’s “frequent inability to produce necessary documents in a timely fashion.”

Rumpole notes:  Sort of explains why we can never get a police report in discovery. 

But Miami doesn't have bragging rights all to itself. The JAA Broward blog reports that Broward PD Howard Finklestein called Broward SAO Mike Satz....(steady now) a racist, and the chief law enforcement officer overseeing racist police departments. Those accusations were based on this ACLU report.

Finklestein wrote this letter to Satz in which he noted that the ACLU report found that in 2010 Broward ranked 18th in the nation  for racial disparity in Marijuana Arrests (it is rumoured Satz immediately demanded to know why Broward was not ranked higher) and that African-Americans in Broward are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white residents of Broward. 

So there you have it. The City of Miami shoots people recklessly and then covers it up, and Broweird arrests and prosecutes  you for BWB (Breathing While Black).

For shame!

See You In Court. 

Next up: Judge Emas and minimum mandatory sentences: a hero emerges.