#ben crump

[gwydionmisha]

Far to late, but given how unlikely even a small measure of justice is, I am celebrating anyway.

#Henrietta Lacks #Ben Crump #Thermo Fisher Scientific #HeLa #News

[luckydiorxoxo]

#kenya moore #samuel l jackson #kerry washington #yara shahidi #tracee ellis ross #caleb mclaughlin #naacp image awards #viola davis #angela bassett #marsai martin #regina hall #ben crump

[reasoningdaily]

A Black couple have sued the city of Beverly Hills, alleging their arrest was part of a campaign by its police to arrest Black people for trivial reasons and at disproportionate rates.

The couple’s lawyers, Bradley Gage and Benjamin Crump, said the Beverly Hills police last year set up a task force — dubbed Operation Safe Streets and the Rodeo Drive Task Force — that arrested 106 people, 105 of whom were Black and one of whom was Latino. Gage said the sources of the arrest figures were unidentified retired Beverly Hills police officers who were appalled by the task force’s actions and so shared with him the alleged racial breakdown of who had been arrested.

The impetus for the task force, Gage said, was both the protests over the death of George Floyd and what Beverly Hills police believed were transactions at retail stores using suspected proceeds of unemployment benefit fraud. Gage described the Police Department’s approach to rooting out suspected fraud as, “Gee, that’s suspicious — Black people shopping in Beverly Hills.”

Gage and Crump, who has represented the families of Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others killed by police, raised their allegations Wednesday on the steps of Beverly Hills City Hall. “There is something terribly wrong here,” Gage said, citing what he called the city’s legacy of biased policing.

Gage and Crump are seeking class-action status for their lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The only named plaintiffs are the couple, who were arrested on suspicion of riding scooters on a sidewalk and resisting arrest; it does not appear that Gage or Crump has identified the 104 other people who they contend were arrested.

In a statement, Police Chief Dominick Rivetti said his department created a “Rodeo Drive Team” in response to complaints by businesses and a rise in burglaries, shoplifting, “street gambling, public intoxication, marijuana smoking and more.” The team seized 13 firearms carried by people on Rodeo Drive, said Rivetti, who called this “unprecedented in the history of Beverly Hills.”

Rivetti said the Rodeo Drive unit rooted out fraudulently obtained state unemployment benefits, seizing $250,000 in cash and ill-gotten debit cards. Most of the people arrested by the unit were not California residents, Rivetti said, but they nonetheless possessed debit cards loaded with state funds.

The Times asked the Beverly Hills police for a total number and breakdown by race of the people arrested by the Rodeo Drive unit. Capt. Max Subin, a department spokesman, said officials were gathering the figures Wednesday and would provide them once they had finished.

Gage and Crump on Wednesday highlighted the experience of the Black couple, Khalil White and Jasmine Williams of Philadelphia, who said they were visiting Beverly Hills on vacation in September when they were stopped, arrested and eventually jailed by police.

As five officers handcuffed White, Williams said, she asked an officer for her purse to retrieve their hotel key. Two officers pushed her to a police car, handcuffed her and took her to jail, she said.

“I was scared,” Williams said. “I’ve never been to jail in my life.”

White, who said he was jailed overnight and forced to post a $25,000 bond, was charged in Los Angeles County Superior Court with resisting arrest and falsely identifying himself to police. Williams was charged with falsely identifying herself to police. The charges were dismissed in February, records show.

Crump and Gage alleged that White and Williams’ arrests were part of a campaign to target Black people in the city through its recently formed task force.

The Beverly Hills police “had made up their mind that this Black man was going to jail because this is Operation Safe Streets,” Crump said.

In his statement, Rivetti said police had warned White and Williams earlier the day of their arrest that it was illegal to ride a scooter on the sidewalk, without taking action against the couple. In their second encounter with police, White and Williams provided officers with false information, Rivetti said.

“Our department’s practice is to contact and question individuals when we believe they may be involved in criminal activity or another violation of the law,” he said.

Beverly Hills officials faced criticism last summer for insisting on charging protesters with misdemeanor curfew violations; by comparison, prosecutors for the city and county of Los Angeles declined to charge similarly minor violations of curfews and dispersal orders.

In a summary of the Beverly Hills protests, a police sergeant wrote that for residents who survived the Holocaust and Iranian revolution, the demonstrations over Floyd’s death were “not merely an intrusion of their peace” but “a terrifying reminder of their past.”

The department’s previous chief, Sandra Spagnoli, retired in 2020, beset by allegations that she made racist comments and had sex with subordinates who were later promoted. Spagnoli denied the claims, which she said were raised by disgruntled employees, but the city paid out millions of dollars to settle many of the lawsuits. Gage, who represented several officers who sued Spagnoli, estimated at the time that the city paid about $8 million in settlements, attorney fees and other costs.

#hollywood #racial profiling #hollywood pd #los angeles #ben crump #Black Lives Matter #Beverly Hills accused of creating police task force that disproportionately arrested Black people #beverly hills racial profiling #Black LIves are Over Policed

[blackgirlsreverything]

#ben crump

[ausetkmt]

Ben Crump - The Problem with Policing in America | The Daily Show

"How can you feel in fear of your life when the person is running away from you?" Attorney Ben Crump discusses why the quick arrest of the officers in the Tyre Nichols case should be the blueprint moving forward, why people need to stop justifying unnecessary killings by the police, and whether or not there is incentive to reform policing

#Ben Crump #Ben Crump - The Problem with Policing in America

[dippedanddripped]

KRS-One & George Clinton Are Awarded By Ben Crump

#youtube #George Clinton #krs-one #ben crump #hiphopmusic blog #boogie down productions #National Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump Social Justice Golden Mic Award

[jccheapalier]

The Trayvon Hoax | Full Documentary

#culture #race #black people #society #african americans #victim mentality #black culture #sociology #trayvon martin #ben crump #documentary #george zimmerman #neighborhood watch #trial #activism #political science #Youtube

[arthropooda]

X

#Twitter #X #Ben crump #Federalsburg #Maryland #Black #Brandy james #Darlene hammond #Representation #CBS news #Council members

[247liveculture]

A family is demanding the arrest of a white woman who allegedly shot and killed her Black neighbor, Ajike Owens, sparking outrage and calls for justice in the community.

#Ajike Owens #Florida #justice in the dark #Ben Crump

[chaddavisphotography]

Ben Crump speaks at a press conference in Minneapolis on March 28, 2021 prior to opening statements in the Derek Chauvin murder trial.

#Ben Crump

[djrobblog]

Ed Sheeran narrowly dodged a bullet with ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and a ‘classically simple chord change’ used in Marvin Gaye’s classic

Ed Sheeran narrowly dodged a bullet with ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and a ‘classically simple chord change’ used in Marvin Gaye’s classic #MarvinGaye #EdSheeran #ThinkingOutLoud #LetsGetItOn #TheftOrInfluence

(May 6, 2023). Theft or Influence? On Thursday, May 4, 2023, a Manhattan jury rendered its verdict in the highly publicized case of Ed Sheeran vs. Ed Townsend, a co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 No. 1 classic, “Let’s Get It On.” Not guilty. Or more accurately, not liable for his 2014 smash, “Thinking Out Loud” borrowing too liberally from the now 50-year-old soul classic co-penned by Townsend…

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#Ben Crump #Ed Sheeran #Ed Townsend #Let’s Get It On #Marvin Gaye #Music blog #music news #Thinking Out Loud

[reasoningdaily]

Beverly Hills: 99% of people arrested by ‘safe streets’ unit were Black, suit says

Nearly all the people arrested by a Beverly Hills police taskforce over the past year were Black, according to a new lawsuit which alleges egregious racial profiling in the wealthy California city.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by the prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, alleges that out of 106 people arrested by a Beverly Hills police “safe streets” taskforce, 105 were Black and one was a dark-skinned Latino person. Between March 2020 and July 2021, the unit unjustly stopped and arrested Black civilians who were roller skating, scootering, driving and jaywalking a few feet outside the crosswalk, the suit said.

The unit, also known as the Rodeo Drive taskforce, was set up last year in response to “a significant increase in calls for service in our business community”, according to the city, which is one of the richest municipalities in the US and less than 2% Black.

The plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed as a class action, are Jasmine Williams and Khalil White, a couple on vacation in Beverly Hills last September. They had been riding a scooter when police detained them “without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause”, lawyers wrote, saying officers demanded their IDs to run their names through a criminal database even though they hadn’t committed a crime.

The couple “peacefully” objected to the officers “abusing their police powers” and were subsequently handcuffed and arrested on “multiple fabricated charges”, the complaint said, adding that prosecutors later dropped the charges.

The suit also cited a 2 October 2020 incident when the unit stopped Salehe Bembury, who was then vice-president of men’s footwear at Versace and was holding a Versace shopping bag.

Body-camera footage from that incident shows officers followed him and stopped him for jaywalking, with one saying, “How come you did that? You didn’t want to wait for the light?” The officers immediately asked for his ID, asked if he had weapons on him and then proceeded to pat him down and search him.

“What’s unfortunate is I literally designed the shoes that are in this bag, and I’m being … searched,” Bembury said to the officers, after repeatedly making clear that he was complying and that the officers were making him nervous. When he got his phone out to record, one officer tried to discourage him from filming, saying, “Right now, you’re being detained.” The officers later released him. Bembury posted footage of the interaction on Instagram.

The suit cited another incident in October during which officers stopped a Black driver and Black passenger without cause and eventually let them go without a citation.

The suit is against the police department and captain Scott Dowling, who led the force and “directed his subordinates to seize, interrogate, use force, falsely arrest, and maliciously prosecute any African Americans who traveled on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills”, lawyers wrote in the complaint, which the local news site LAist published on Wednesday.

“That day was very terrifying,” Williams, a nurse, said in a press conference, Spectrum News reported. “I don’t want this to keep happening to anyone, it’s not right.”

The city defended the taskforce on Wednesday, claiming the unit was set up in response to merchants’ complaints about “burglaries, shoplifting, pedestrian and vehicle code violations, street gambling, public intoxication, marijuana smoking and more”. The unit recovered illegal firearms and uncovered unemployment fraud cases, the city said in a statement. Dowling could not be reached.

The city also claimed that Williams and White had been illegally riding scooters on the sidewalk and had “provided false information” to an officer, but their lawyer said that claim was false, which was why charges were dropped.

The city has not disputed the arrest data included in the lawsuit and did not respond to questions about the figures. A spokesman said the task force was no longer in operation.

Bradley Gage, a local attorney also representing the couple, said it was wrong for the city to celebrate the work of the unit and ignore the extreme racial disparities in arrests: “These numbers are outrageous … and they are trying to justify it with a racial stereotype that Black people commit crimes.”

#los angeles #hollywood #white cops #badges and emblems of white supremacy #Beverly Hills: 99% of people arrested by ‘safe streets’ unit were Black #suit says #safe streets racially profiles #racial profiling #hollywood pd racially profiles Black People #Ben Crump #Youtube

[thevitalportal]

#ben crump #vital community #vitalportal #additional information #vital information exchange #thevitalportal #vital media #blacklivesmatter #blacktwitter #additiionalinformation #instagram #vital politics #myvitaltv #vital inc. #ourprogressive #the vital portal

[joe-england]

Let's talk about Memphis, Scorpions, and Movies....

#youtube #memphis #scorpion #beau of the fifth column #police #policing #cops #police brutality #movies #media #tv #cop shows #crash team #crash #ben crump #tyre nichols #justice #training day #scorpion program #denzel washington #rafael perez #rampart scandal #the shield #vic mackey #extreme justice #lou diamond phillips #hollywood #orp967

[soyuria]

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump joins family in calling for action amid racism allegations at Sesame Place

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump joins family in calling for action amid racism allegations at Sesame Place

NEW YORK (WPVI) — Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has joined the family of two young black girls in a call to action after videos emerged showing the children being snubbed by a costumed figure. The group discussed the incident outside Jay-Z’s Roc Nation social justice summit in Manhattan on Saturday and issued a call to action for those outraged by the incident. “We blame the community,…

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#allegations of racism #ben crump #langhorne county bucks #rosita character #sesame place declaration #sesame place video #sesame square parade incident #sesame street #sesame workshop

[trendingtales]

Ben Crump net worth is estimated to be in the millions of dollars. Crump has amassed a sizable fortune through his job as a lawyer.

#Ben Crump net worth #trendingtales #viral #ben crump #dollars #trendingnews