Good morning.

With so much abuse and rape happening to women worldwide…so much destruction and murder of our fellow human beings…one can hardly think past the inhumanity between humans that plagues the waves of media, to take a moment and pay attention to the inhumane treatment of animals.

But we must.

Every so often I check in on my four-legged friends, and every time I am blown away, and brought to tears because we humans care so little for those that are bred strictly to give their life, so that we humans can survive ours. It is no wonder that I have become vegetarian a few times in my life. And the times that I have had to turn to meat for my own health reasons, I have sought meat from a family farm that I trust treats their animals kindly. It is the least I can do so that I do not contribute to the horrific animal neglect and abuse in our factory farms. But, I need to do more.

We all need to do more.

This is a recent write from Dr. Mercola. As disturbing as it is, I urge you to watch it. These animals deserve for you to feel uncomfortable for a few moments…they struggle and feel more than uncomfortable every day of their lives. These animals deserve to be noticed…deserve to be heard, when their cries of pain and suffering are ignored.

The Everyday Drink that May Contain Blood, Pus and Drugs

By Dr. Mercola

For all of us who love, respect and share our lives with animals, it is devastating to see this appalling abuse of dairy farm animals.

This video was produced by the non-profit organization Animals’ Angels, an internationally active non-profit organization based in Germany, whose mission is to end the abuse of livestock animals and improve the conditions at auctions.

Unfortunately, this video is not one of a kind.

Many other disturbing videos can be found online, documenting animal cruelty by the food industry and others valuing profit above all else.

Why suggest watching such horrible images?

The videos about cruelty are, unfortunately, a necessary evil as they inform concerned citizens about what is endured by animals entrusted to our care.

Without seeing it, many would simply be unable to believe it exists.

And seeing it has a far more visceral impact and is harder to ignore than reading about it.

Awareness is always the first step toward positive change, and GREAT change is needed to improve the lives of these farm animals.

The main points the film makes are quoted and expanded upon below.

The Disturbing Truth about Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

Most milk no longer comes from cows happily grazing in lush, green fields in the open air, as their advertisements commonly suggest. Most conventional milk comes from cows raised in intensive production systems, also known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). According to Vegan Outreach, farms with fewer than 200 cows are in sharp decline, while the number of very large CAFOs (2,000-plus cows) more than doubled between the years 2000 and 2006. The largest operations have more than 15,000 cows.

About half of the milk sold in the U.S. comes from just four percent of the farms, which are owned by a handful of large corporations.

“Today, most dairy cows are confined to a barren, dry lot, which often holds several thousand animals.”

Most of these large CAFOs have very high animal densities and confine their cows inside barns or in feedlots. Some cows are housed indoors year-round. When lactating, most of the cows are kept tied up in stalls. Cows confined in stalls show signs of stress from social isolation and the inability to lie down, as well as increased susceptibility to a number of diseases. Only USDA-certified organic farms are required to provide some access to pasture for grazing. In 2008, fewer than three percent of U.S. dairy cows were managed on organic farms.

Dairy Cows are Forced into Continuous Birthing and Lactation

As with other mammals, in order to produce milk, a cow must have recently given birth. Dairy cows are forced to start giving birth at about two years of age, then reinseminated about 60 days after every birthing to maintain a yearly schedulei .

“To maintain high milk production, dairy operators want the cows to give birth as often as possible. Reproduction is often manipulated with artificial insemination to ensure the cow will calve and reach peak milk production quickly.”

When lactating, their udders are hooked up to electronic milking machines several times a day, which sometimes inflict electrical shocks, painful lesions, and infections. When producing milk for her calf, a cow will naturally produce about 16 pounds of milk per day. But through genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones such as bovine growth hormone (rBGH), dairy cows are forced to produce 50 pounds of milk per day. RBGH also greatly increases the cow’s risk for mastitis, a painful inflammation of the udder.

Why Some Milk MUST be Pasteurized

“Pasteurized dairy is produced in the filthiest conditions imaginable. Blood, pus, and dangerous pathogens routinely end up in pasteurized milk.”

CAFO animals are given large quantities of antibiotics, vaccines, vitamins, and other potentially toxic drugs to prevent the diseases that would normally overtake them as a result of living in such filthy, overcrowded conditions. Those chemicals get passed along to you in the milk you consume. In fact, using a highly sensitive test, scientists have detected as man as 20 painkillers, antibiotics and growth hormones in samples of cow’s milk.

Newborn Calves are Ripped Away from their Mothers

“Although a cow’s natural life expectancy is between 20 and 25 years, most dairy cows are slaughtered between the ages of four and six.”

Cows can naturally live for 20 to 25 years, but on industrial dairy farms they’re usually killed at about five years of age—that is, if they even live that long. Many dairy cows die by age three or four, exhausted by constant lactation and frequent disease. In some countries where cows are revered, such as India and Nepal, cows are commonly kept as pets. Cows are very social animals, being sturdy yet gentle, and make wonderful pets for families with children.ii Miniature cows are even beginning to be bred as pets in the United States.

“After birthing, the calves are often immediately taken away from their mothers. While the female calves remain on the farm to replace other “spent” daily cows, the male calves, often called the “unwanted by-product” of the dairy industry, are usually shipped to auction and sold to veal operations.”

The female calves are commonly mutilated by tail docking, dehorning, and the removal of “extra teats.” Most female calves are fed colostrum until they are weaned at eight weeks, and then fed a milk replacer or “waste milk” that is unfit to be sold for human consumption. Each year, hundreds of thousands of female calves die between 48 hours and eight weeks of age, mostly due to diarrhea (calf scours) and other digestive problems.

The Torture of Veal Calves

“Many of the bull calves, with their umbilical cords still attached and unable to stand by themselves, are often too weak to survive and die at the auction.”

Many consumers don’t realize that veal is a direct by-product of the dairy industry. Newborn bull calves are taken away from their mothers and shipped off to veal producers for a short life of torture. Some bull calves are killed within a few days of their birth, but many are harvested for veal. These veal calves are typically kept immobilized in tiny crates so that their flesh stays tender, until they are slaughtered at 16 to 20 weeks of age. Their confinement is so extreme that they cannot even turn around or lie down comfortably. This abuse begins as young as one day old.

In order to make their flesh white, the veal calves are fed a low iron, nutritionally deficient liquid diet that makes them ill; they frequently develop anemia, diarrhea, and pneumonia.iii According to John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution and several other booksiv :

“The veal calf would actually have more space if, instead of chaining him in such a stall, you stuffed him into the trunk of a subcompact car and kept him there for his entire life.”

Sickly Animals are Treated Like Piles of Waste

The term “downer” refers to an animal that is too injured, weak, or sick to stand and walk. The leading causes are complications from calving and injuries from slipping and falling, most often occurring within one day of giving birth. The exact number of downer cattle on American farms or feedlots is estimated to be 500,000 animals per year. Most are dairy cows. You can see on the video how these poor animals are mistreated, being pushed around by tractors and forklifts as if they were piles of waste.

“When they reach auction, many dairy cows will be weakened and emaciated. Because of their poor state of health, these animals have a high risk of becoming non-ambulatory.”

Another major factor causing these animals to become ill is their transport to auction. Animals are transported thousands of miles over land and sea, and subjected to enormous stress. Frequently these transports do not meet legal requirements.  The conditions of animal transport are such a huge problem that Animals’ Angels has a division specifically committed to eliminating long-distance transports.v

Unnatural Diets Lead to Painful Udder and Hoof Infections

The natural diet for a cow is grass, but a grass diet doesn’t result in an extraordinarily high milk yield. Therefore, conventional dairy farms put their cows on high grain diets (mostly corn), and diets that are also high in cheap protein, such as genetically engineered soy and animal by-products. These foods are hard for cows to digest and cause health problems. These unnatural diets, combined with filthy and overcrowded living conditions, create an environment in which metabolic disorders and infections are commonplace. Millions of cows are suffering mercilessly and needlessly at the hands of big agribusinesses that fancy themselves as “dairy farmers.”

“By the time they arrive at the auction to be sold to a meat buyer, 33 percent of dairy cows will have developed mastitis, a very painful udder infection. Many cows will be limping and in pain due to laminitis, an inflammation of the hoof.”

Raw Milk may be the Solution for You AND the Cows

If you want to continue consuming milk and milk products, I suggest you get them in the raw from organic dairy farmers who are set up specifically to produce high-quality, clean, nutritious raw dairy products. You can find milk, cheese, and other dairy products in raw form, although it may take a little searching. High-quality raw milk has an abundance of nutritional elements, including:

• Valuable enzymes (which are destroyed by pasteurization)
• Natural butterfat helps your body to absorb and utilize vitamins and minerals (also destroyed by pasteurization)
• Healthy unoxidized cholesterol
• Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which fights cancer and may help reduce body fat
• Omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats in a better ratio than conventional milk

ALL Raw Milk is Not Safe—You Must Know What to Look for

There’s a vast difference in quality between the milk of organically raised, grass-fed “happy cows,” and that from conventionally raised, confined, grain-fed cows.

Raw, unpasteurized milk from CAFOs would be dangerous to consume.

Conventional dairy farms are not typically set up to produce milk that is safe and pure enough to be consumed raw. And really, the very idea of producing mass quantities of milk from huge numbers of cows confined to one area is contrary to the very nature of “healthy” milk. When buying raw milk, it’s important to make sure you’re buying milk that’s been produced with the intention of being consumed raw—and not just unpasteurized milk from conventional dairy operations.

It would cost large industrial dairies an enormous amount of money to clean up their operations enough to turn out milk that would be SAFE to drink raw, since it’s often loaded with blood, pus, hormones, dangerous pathogens and other sludge that you wouldn’t want to ingest under any circumstances.

Realize that when you consume conventional pasteurized supermarket milk, you are likely drinking this sludge—it’s just “cooked sludge.”

Voting with your wallet or pocketbook is the best way to send a message to the factory farm industry that there is a market for ethically raised livestock. By purchasing milk from dairy farmers who are doing things right, you are showing kindness to cows everywhere, decreasing their chances of suffering tragic and miserable lives, one gallon at a time. If you object to factory farming practices and the mistreatment of animals, and you are still buying conventional dairy products, then your actions are not aligned with your beliefs.  If you had a difficult time watching this video but you continue to buy these products, then it may be time to recommit or reevaluate your values.

*******

Readers: Are you an Animal’s Angel? Please dedicate some time in your life to give back to those that gave theirs. Thank you. If you haven’t an affinity for animals, and unfortunately there are many humans who don’t…if nothing drives you but self-preservation, then at least think of what you are putting in your body when you support these factory farms. They’re in it for the profit – they care little about the animals, and not much more about you. Think about it. They’re selling you toxic meat and milk from disease ridden sick cows for your consumption.

peace & love to our four-legged friends. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good morning!

With all of the talk abut women’s contraception, what should be available, what should not, what rights we have over our bodies, what is trying to be taken away, and who is trying to control women and our decisions over our bodies…I can’t exactly point to any republican, including the women, and especially including Rep. Michele Bachmann, (R-Minn), as a supporter of women, when their whole agenda is to control women and take away our right to choose.

So when I watched Bachmann arguing with a straight face in support of a woman’s right to choose, on Meet the Press, my mouth dropped in amazement.

“What we want is women to be able to make their own choices…. You see, that’s the lie that happens under Obamacare. The president of the United States effectively becomes a health care dictator. Women don’t need anyone to tell them what to do on health care. We want women to have their own choices, their own money. That way they can make their own choices for their future on their own bodies.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

********

Readers: Michele Bachmann is saying she and her party want American women to be able to “make their own choices for the future of their own bodies.”  She is a far-right republican who opposes women’s reproductive rights, and here she is speaking passionately, and falsely might I add, as if she is in support of women and their right to choose, live on television.

Where has this woman been? Has Bachmann not a clue about her party’s plan, or has she been lying under a rock and just decided yesterday to peek her size-of-a-pea-brained head out? Because if she was lucid she would know that her party pushes to restrict contraception access, and wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. Does she not know that her party supports transvaginal ultrasounds – basically state-sanctioned rape! Of course she knows. Talk about a false betrayal – Bachmann is displaying false loyalty - Bachmann is a lying sack of shit.

If I have not welcomed Bachman as a member of the LSOS Club, let me do that now.

Anything to say – Blog me.

Peace out. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Good morning.

Two men arrested over Oklahoma ‘hate’ shooting spree

TULSA, Okla. — Police arrested two men early Sunday in connection with the North Tulsa shootings that saw three black people killed and another two injured, police said.

Cops apprehended two white males — 19-year-old Jake England and Alvin Watts, 32 — at 1:47am local time, KOKI reported.

They will be charged with three counts of murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill.

A statement from the Tulsa Police Department said, “Within 24 hours of its formation, the task force ‘Operation Random Shooter’ has completed its mission. Our sympathy goes out to the families of the victims and we hope that our efforts can bring some resolution and closure to these heinous acts.”

“We would like to thank everyone that assisted and more information will be forthcoming in a Sunday afternoon press conference,” it added.

The victims, all black, were seemingly shot at random as they walked in the street during a seven-hour period early Friday.

The killer did not utter slurs before blasting his victims with a small-caliber handgun, said investigators, who are trying to learn if the same weapon was used in each attack.

Police did not rule out the possibility of a hate-fueled rampage.

“If that’s where our investigation takes us, that’s where we’ll go,” Tulsa Police Officer Jason Willingham told The Post.

The shootings took place within three miles in Tulsa’s mostly black north side.

At 1:03 a.m, the gunman shot Dannaer Fields, 49, police said. She was rushed to the hospital where she died.

Three minutes later, he fired at two unidentified men, hitting one in the arm and the other in the torso.

They were hospitalized in critical condition, but are expected to live, said cops.

Before 2 a.m., Bobby Clark, 54, was shot dead, also in the torso.

A fifth victim, William Allen, 31, was discovered in the yard of a funeral home at about 8:30 a.m., police said. He had also taken a fatal shot to the torso.

“We assume that a [fifth] shooting occurred in the same time frame as the last four,” said Willingham.

Homicide Detective Sgt. Dave Walker said investigators have no forensic test results yet, but believe the attacks are linked because they happened at around the same time in the same area and all five victims were out walking.

Fields was found on Charles Shoemaker’s front lawn. Shoemaker said he didn’t hear any commotion before the bloodshed.

“I was awoken by my dog making a bunch of noise around one-fifteen,” said Shoemaker, 43. “I opened my front door and there’s a police officer.

“I didn’t even believe when he told me there was a body on my front yard so I came out.

“It looked like she was laying balled up in the fetal position,” he said.

Cathy Privette, one of Fields’ neighbors, said the victim was deeply religious. “I would give her rides to church,” Privette, 54, said.

She added that Fields, who lived alone, was always dressed as if she was headed to Sunday Mass.

Black community leaders met Friday evening in an effort to calm unrest and promote safety.

The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr., who heads the Tulsa NAACP, told the Tulsa World newspaper that someone seems to be “targeting black people to shoot.”

“I’m on edge for my people,” he said.

Residents of the north side fear an armed bigot is roaming the streets.

“We’re all nervous,” said Renaldo Works, 52, who was getting his hair cut at a salon yesterday morning.

“I’ve got a 15-year-old, and I’m not going to let him out late,” Works added. “People are scared.”

Blakney warned that distrust between cops and the city’s African-American community could prompt vigilantism.

More than a half-dozen citizens have sued the city, claiming wrongful arrest, and almost 40 people have had convictions overturned or sentences cut in a federal corruption probe of the Tulsa police.

“The police chief has assured me they are doing all they can,” Blakney added. “We don’t want anybody else hurt, white or black.”

Shoemaker, one of the few white people living in the neighborhood, said he feared being targeted for retribution.

“I’m always armed,” he warned. “I’m more inclined to carry now,” he said, although he concedes he doesn’t have a concealed weapons permit.

*****

Blog me.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Good morning!

Beryl: Thanks for the good news. This is such huge news,  I just had to give it more blog time here:

Here’s a segment from the Rachel Maddow show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And from the Huff Po:

George Zimmerman In Custody, Charged With Second-Degree Murder In Trayvon Martin Case

The special prosecutor investigating the death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin announced Wednesday evening that George Zimmerman, who told police he shot Martin in self defense, has been charged with second-degree murder.

Zimmerman will plead not guilty to the charges, according to his attorneys. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Zimmerman, who has been in hiding for weeks, is in police custody. Special prosecutor Angela Corey said during a news conference in Jacksonville, Fla., that she would not reveal where Zimmerman was out of concern for his safety. “He is within the custody of law enforcement officers in the state of Florida,” Corey said.

The murder charge indicates prosecutors plan to prove Zimmerman shot Martin with malice, though without premeditation. A manslaughter charge would have required prosecutors to prove only that Zimmerman acted unlawfully and with criminal negligence in shooting the teen.

“The difference between murder and manslaughter is your mental state,” said Mark Geragos, a Los Angeles defense attorney, who is not connected to the case. “To elevate it to murder, you have to have the element of malice.”

In Florida, a grand jury must be convened before issuing first-degree murder charges. On Monday, Corey announced that she would not convene a grand jury, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, in the Martin case.

Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed 17-year-old Martin Feb. 26 in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., where Martin was visiting his father and his father’s girlfriend. Zimmerman served as captain of the neighborhood watch and told police that he shot Martin in self-defense after the teen attacked him. Martin was unarmed at the time of his death, according to police.

On the night of the shooting, Zimmerman was questioned at the police station, but released shortly afterwards. Sanford Police Department investigated and determined there was not enough evidence to refute his claims of self-defense.

The case became a flashpoint in the ongoing national debate over racial profiling and gun control. Attorneys representing Zimmerman have called the shooting a clear case of self-defense under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which gives citizens broad latitude to use deadly force against an attacker if they believe their life is at risk.

Corey called the Stand Your Ground law a “tough” defense to counter, but said her office would fight it if it became an issue at trial. To prevail, the prosecution would have to demonstrate that Zimmerman’s account of events is false, then present the jury with a compelling alternative to the altercation, experts said.

“They will go very hard at (Zimmerman’s) credibility,” said Paul Callan, a defense attorney and former New York prosecutor who is not connected with the case. “This is how prosecutors customarily disprove bogus self-defense claims.”

Martin’s death and subsequent handling of the investigation also sparked national outrage and calls for Zimmerman’s arrest. From the start, Martin’s family and attorneys questioned the impartiality and thoroughness of the police investigation into the teen’s killing.

Law enforcement experts said that Sanford police made key errors early in the investigation and made crucial decisions before important evidence was gathered.

Martin’s cell phone records were not immediately checked. Investigators did not talk with key witnesses for more than a week. While police conducted a criminal background check on Martin, as well as post-mortem drug and alcohol tests, Zimmerman was not subjected to similar tests. It was learned later that Zimmerman was arrested in 2005 for assaulting a police officer.

During the news conference Wednesday, Corey criticized leaks of confidential details about the case that appeared to bolster Zimmerman’s self-defense claims. “So much information on the case got released that never should have been released,” Corey said.

The announcement of the charges comes a day after Zimmerman’s previous attorneys withdrew their counsel, saying they lost contact with him and that he repeatedly ignored their legal advice. They said Zimmerman reached out to Corey’s office directly and had an off-the-record conversation with the Fox News host Sean Hannity without their knowledge.

Trayvon’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, solemnly watched Wednesday’s news conference in Washington on a small television. As Corey read the charges, the slain teen’s parents held hands and watched. “Thank you, Lord,” said Benjamin Crump, the family’s attorney as he patted Martin’s knee. Neither of Martin’s betrayed any emotion as they watched.

After the charges were announced, Fulton said she was thankful for the outpouring of public support. “I just want to speak from my heart to your heart, because a heart has no color,” she said. “It’s not black, it’s not white, it’s red, and I want to say thank you from my heart to your heart.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the more prominent supporters of the Martin family, said the case would not have progressed without “the nameless, faceless people, black, white, Hispanic and Asian … who said ‘take another look at this’.”

“People took their time and money, and stood up and said that that could be my son, that could be my grandson, and because of that this got a second look,” he said. “Even conservatives on the other side of the political spectrum said we’re going to take another look.”

But Sharpton stressed the importance of continuing to seek justice. Zimmerman, Sharpton said, “deserves a fair trial.”

“We do not want anyone high-fiving tonight,” Sharpton said. “There is no victory here. There are no winners here. They lost their son. This is not about gloating. This is about pursuing justice.”

A crowd of nearly 200 people gathered at Allen Chapel A.M.E church in Sanford, the local hub for organizers surrounding the Martin cause.

“The mood is just … happy, but still more like a sigh of relief,” said Traymon Williams, 26, who joined his neighbors at the church after watching Corey’s news conference at home. “It feels just like when you have a headache, a migraine and you take an aspirin and you just can feel the pressure slowly starting to ease.”

But both the defense and prosecution face the challenge of trying a case that has drawn extraordinary media scrutiny, and inflamed passions both for and against Zimmerman. Jury selection will be a crucial and difficult task given the tremendous media coverage afforded to the shooting, experts said.

“This case is won or lost in jury selection,” Geragos said.

For some, the prosecution of Zimmerman may also be a symbolic test of Florida’s ability to conduct a fair trial in a case that has polarized the public and fueled marches and protests across the country. Just last year, Casey Anthony, a young Florida mother accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter, was acquitted of murder, a verdict that many decried as a miscarriage of justice.

“The state of Florida is on trial here,” said Kenneth Nunn. “A law professor at the University of Florida. “Not just Zimmerman.”

*******

Readers: I too say, “It’s about time. Now, time will tell if “justice” is really “just US”. For more information on the charges, check out the documents  on the Huff Po original article.

Social Butterfly: Thank you for posting. I echo your words toward Dr. David Moscrop as well.  And I applaud Moscrop for his illuminating personal experience as well as his continued daily mindful attention to how he treats and responds to women. Yes, many more men could learn from this.

No more time…Got to run. Thoughts? Blog me. 

Peace out.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Good morning!”

Elliot: Trayvon is still on my mind. In light of your comment, this is what I have read lately:

Trayvon Martin Case Spotlights Florida Town’s History Of ‘Sloppy’ Police Work

SANFORD, Fla. — In the summer of 2010, a masked man gunned down Ikeem Ruffin, 17, in an apartment complex on this city’s north side. When police arrived, they found Ruffin dead and another teenager beside the body calling for an ambulance. The next day, police charged the teen with robbery and murder.

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge last August and said another man, still unidentified, pulled the trigger. Teresa Ruffin, the victim’s mother, said the police overlooked important evidence — including a witness who pointed to another suspect — and allowed her son’s killer to go free.

“They didn’t do their job,” Ruffin said of the police.

Ruffin, who is black, said she sees parallels between how Sanford police officers handled her son’s murder and how they investigated the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot to death Feb. 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who told police he acted in self-defense.

Police said they couldn’t refute Zimmerman’s claim and haven’t arrested him, unleashing withering criticism over perceived missteps and favoritism.

“All this with Trayvon is just bringing the light on the Sanford Police Department,” Ruffin said. “This happened for a reason.”

Martin’s killing has sparked national outrage. But it is not the first criminal investigation to upset Sanford’s black community, whose leaders say police have repeatedly failed to properly investigate crimes involving black victims.
A string of recent scandals involving department personnel has added to community anger. In the past three years, officers have been caught demanding bribes from motorists, fabricating evidence and drawing weapons unlawfully.

“They’re notorious for mishandling investigations, not doing any follow-ups on various leads, or saying that they can’t get any leads,” said Turner Clayton, president of the local branch of the NAACP. “When a victim’s loved one asks for an update, the only thing they can say is, ‘We don’t have anything now,’” he said. “Seems like they never get anything at all.”

Sgt. David Morgenstern, a Sanford police spokesman, declined to respond to questions about the Trayvon Martin shooting or allegations of sloppy work in other cases. “We’re not going to be able to comment on any of that,” Morgenstern told The Huffington Post.

Critics of the local police are now seeing their complaints echo on a national stage, with a chorus of prominent civil rights leaders, pundits and politicians joining to denounce the initial Martin investigation as rushed and careless — and biased in favor of Zimmerman. A special state prosecutor and federal authorities are leading the probe of the Martin shooting, and local police face intense outside scrutiny over their interpretation of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law as well as what experts call a failure to follow basic police procedure.

Among other things, George Zimmerman, 28, was not subject to a criminal background check until after he was released from custody. A possible racial slur muttered by Zimmerman on a 911 call was overlooked. Nearly a week passed before important witnesses were interviewed by the police. Perhaps most crucially, investigators failed to access Martin’s cell phone records for weeks.

Those records revealed that just before he was shot, the teen was on the phone with his girlfriend, who said she overheard crucial moments of the encounter between Zimmerman and Martin.

“Those mistakes should not have been made,” said Andrew Scott, former chief of the Boca Raton police department and a national policing consultant. “They were such rudimentary aspects of an investigation.”

Martin family members and their attorneys relentlessly cited these errors, which echoed through the national media and the blogosphere.

“It has fueled the fires,” Scott said. “The credibility of the agency is now in question.”

‘THEY SHOULD HAVE HAD THIS’

Around 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 26, Trayvon Martin left his father’s girlfriend’s house at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community where he’d been staying for about a week, and headed to a 7-Eleven store to pick up some snacks before the NBA All-Star game. The store was a walk of about a three-quarters of mile.

Martin spent much of his trip to and from the store on the phone with his 16-year-old girlfriend back in Miami. The entire day had been much the same, with the two talking in in calls of a few minutes at a time. According to cell phone records obtained by The Huffington Post, Martin was on the phone with the girl from 6:30 p.m. to 6:49 p.m.

Martin made it back to the gated complex just after 7 p.m.

At that point, Zimmerman, patrolling the neighborhood in his vehicle, noticed Martin walking slowly. Zimmerman called 911 to report Martin as a “suspicious person.” The call began at about 7:09 p.m.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something,” Zimmerman tells the 911 dispatcher. “He’s just staring, looking at all the houses … Something’s wrong with him.”

The 911 call lasts just over four minutes. Toward the end, Zimmerman says Martin is running and the sounds of Zimmerman breathing hard can be heard as he describes the location to the dispatcher. Some hear what sounds like Zimmerman muttering a racial slur. “These assholes always get away,” he then says.

The dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he’s chasing the individual. Zimmerman says yes. “We don’t need you to do that,” the dispatcher responds.

At roughly 7:14 p.m., Zimmerman ends the call. Less than three minutes later, Trayvon Martin was dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest from Zimmerman’s Kal-Tec 9 mm pistol, which he carried in a holster on his belt. Police arrived almost immediately and found Martin face-down and motionless in a patch of grass about 70 feet from the back porch of his father’s girlfriend’s house.

Zimmerman told police that he was the victim of an unprovoked attack by Martin and said he shot the teen in self-defense, according to Bill Lee, the Sanford police chief who has since taken a leave from his job.

After pursuing the teen, Zimmerman said he lost sight of him and began walking back to his vehicle. According to an account Zimmerman’s father gave to several media outlets, Zimmerman said Martin approached from behind and angrily confronted him. In Zimmerman’s version, Martin punched the watchman in the nose, dropping him to the ground, and violently banged his head into the sidewalk.

Police have not revealed what evidence they have collected. In an interview with theOrlando Sentinel, police said they found no one who saw the start of the altercation. Police now direct inquiries about the Martin investigation to the state prosecutor”s office, which declined to comment.

One witness, identified only by his first name, told a local television news reporter he saw Martin “beating up” Zimmerman, who was on his back on the ground. But the man did not see the beginning of the clash, according to a close friend who spoke to him about what he witnessed that night. The friend requested anonymity due to high tensions over the shooting.

Martin’s family said police told them the investigation was thorough, but turned up no evidence contradicting Zimmerman’s version of events and failed to establish probable cause that he broke the law.

It is now clear that police overlooked Martin’s cell phone records.

Attorneys for Martin’s family said it wasn’t until weeks later, when Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, was looking through the teen’s cell phone bill that he noticed the timing of the last call. The family and their attorneys then contacted Trayvon’s girlfriend and heard her account of the night. Lawyer Benjamin Crump, who represents the family, recorded an interview with the girl and provided it with Martin’s cell phone records to federal authorities, who by then had joined the investigation.

The logs, obtained by The Huffington Post, show that as Zimmerman was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher reporting Martin as “suspicious,” Martin answered a final call from his girlfriend.

The call began at 7:12 p.m. Martin told her that “some strange dude” was following him, said Crump. She told Crump that Martin slowed to see who was behind him. The girl urged him to run, and he picked up his pace. Martin said he thought the man was gone, according to Crump. Instead, Zimmerman was likely closing in.

“He’s right behind me, he’s right behind me again,” Martin told his girlfriend, according to Crump.

“Next thing she hears is Martin saying, ‘Why are you following me?’” Crump said. “And she hears a voice that says, “What are you doing around here?’ Then she hears what she believes is a push against Martin and the phone crashes to the ground. She can hear them arguing in the background. Moments later, the phone line goes dead.”

Phone records show the call ended at 7:16 p.m. Police arrived roughly a minute later.

Martin’s girlfriend’s contention that Zimmerman shoved Martin at the beginning of the altercation is missing from Zimmerman’s story, lawyers for Martin’s family said. The girl is a minor whose identity is being kept secret by the family attorneys.

The failure of Sanford police to locate and interview the girl was a crucial investigative oversight, according to Gerald S. Reamey, a former police department legal advisor in Texas and law professor and legal scholar specializing in criminal procedure at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

“It really casts doubt on the soundness of the entire investigation when you see something like this,” Reamey said. “They should have had this piece of evidence.”

Federal agents and the special state prosecution team that took over the investigation have now interviewed the girl, the Martin family’s attorneys said. The police gave the results of their investigation to state attorney Norman Wolfinger, who withdrew from the case last month. The governor appointed another state attorney to take over.

‘AN ELEMENTARY INVESTIGATION’

Reamey said it was possible the Sanford police investigation might have reached different conclusions if detectives had interviewed the girl earlier. “It could be quite useful in the interrogation” of Zimmerman, Reamey said. “It also could be quite useful for the investigator to understand at that point that there is some contradictory evidence.”

With the state prosecutor’s investigation still underway, it remains unclear whether the failure to interview the girl seriously harmed the ability to prosecute Zimmerman. But the lapse makes the prosecutor’s job more difficult, Reamey said. “It’s a burden,” he said. “It can make a difference.”

Investigators made another fundamental error by waiting more than a week to interview a young teen who said he witnessed part of the struggle between Zimmerman and Martin, experts said. Eyewitnesses should be interviewed immediately after a crime, before memories fade, said Scott, the former Boca Raton police chief.

“It’s part of an elementary investigation of a very significant crime,” Scott said.

Eight days after the shooting, investigators sat down in Sheryl Brown’s living room to speak with her 13-year-old son, Austin McLendon. Austin, the youngest among those who told police they saw or heard the fight, was standing behind his family’s home the night of the killing, about 20 yards from where it occurred. He recalled seeing a man on the ground, hearing screams and pleas for help, then a gunshot followed by silence.

A 911 recording captured the teen’s impressions that night.

“I saw a man laying on the ground that needed help, that was screaming and then I was going to go over there to try and help him, but my dog got off the leash, so I went and got my dog, and then I heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped.”

The dispatcher asks: “Did you see the person get shot? Did you know the person that was shot, or did you see the person that had the gun?”

“No, I just heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped,” Austin replied.

Investigators pushed Austin to identify the man on the ground as Zimmerman, who was wearing a red jacket, he and his mother said. But he said it was just too dark and he was too far away to be sure.

“It was just too much in detail and I couldn’t give them the answers that they were looking for,” Austin told The Huffington Post.

Scott said an investigator who failed to interview a witness or check cell phone records in a homicide would face serious repercussions. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “There would be consequences with regard to the investigator that would have done that.”

Citing these and other potential errors, including the failure of Sanford investigators to notice what sounds like a racial epithet on Zimmerman’s 911 call, Martin’s family called for an independent investigation.

Sanford city officials responded with a no-confidence vote in the police chief, who stepped aside temporarily. Wolfinger, the state attorney, quit the case the same day.

In an interview last month, Velma Williams, the lone black Sanford city commissioner, told The Huffington Post that growing outrage over the police handling of Martin’s killing was not an isolated incident, and that the town had a “long way to go” toward repairing relations with the black community.

“You have to understand that race plays a role here,” Williams said. “No one is conjuring up any of this.”

“I think that we can begin the healing process and that can only happen if the city government understands that we must face the reality that there are some serious problems in this city,” she said.

RUSH TO JUDGEMENT

For Teresa Ruffin, the Trayvon Martin investigation resurrects painful memories of her son’s 2010 murder.

On the night of June 15, 2010, Ikeem Ruffin, 17, was shot and killed by a masked man during a robbery in an apartment complex in north Sanford. Ruffin had just left work and died wearing his McDonald’s uniform.

Police found 18-year-old Tarance Terrell Moore standing by the victim and calling for an ambulance, but the teen was already dead. The gun used in the killing was never recovered.

The next day, police charged Moore with robbery and murder in Ruffin’s death. He was denied bail and locked in Seminole County Jail awaiting trial.

More than a year later, Seminole County prosecutors dropped the murder charge, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in exchange for a guilty plea to a charge of robbery with a firearm. Moore was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The plea was no comfort to Teresa Ruffin, who believes the police rushed to judgment in the case, in part due to Moore’s history of run-ins with the law. A year before the murder, police charged Moore with shooting at a patrol car, but the charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence.

“He was there, but he wasn’t my son’s killer,” Ruffin said of Moore. “They just wanted to pin it on him and forget about the killer.”

Tim Caudill, Moore’s public defender, declined to comment because the case is still eligible for appeal. At Moore’s plea hearing in August 2011, prosecutors said they no longer believed Moore fired the fatal shot, but maintained he was still involved in the robbery.

Teresa Ruffin said she’s not fully convinced Moore had anything to do with her son’s death. She said she wonders why Moore remained at the scene, crying for help, if he was an accomplice.

“Why wouldn’t he run too?” she said. “It was very strange.”

Ruffin, a pastor, said she feels shortchanged by the police investigation. “They handled it very sloppy,” she said. “They don’t care because it was another black person shooting another black person.”

Such criticisms are hardly unusual. Community leaders and civil rights activists cite a string of homicides involving young black men that they say are unsolved due to lackluster police work.

One crime that rankled black residents is a November 2011 shooting that killed one young man and severely injured two others. Tremaine Patrick, 31, the main suspect, surrendered the next day, reportedly out of fear of street justice. Patrick, who is black, was arrested on suspicion of murder and jailed.

The Rev. Calvin Donaldson, father of one of the men killed in the attack, said police told him several witnesses saw an armed Patrick at the scene. Another witness was prepared to testify that Patrick tried to recruit him as a getaway driver, Donaldson said. Still other witnesses had heard Patrick threaten to kill everyone in the house where the shooting occurred several days before, Donaldson said.

The lead detective, Chris Serino, wanted to press charges against Patrick, Donaldson said, but he was overruled by prosecutors in the office of State Attorney Wolfinger. Serino and state prosecutors would clash again in the Martin case, according to news accounts.

“The investigating officer wanted to levy charges on this young man, but the state attorney’s office stepped in and said no,” Donaldson said. “Just like in Trayvon.”

Patrick was held on unrelated charges for nearly a month, then freed without charges, court records show. Months passed with no action. Numerous calls to police and prosecutors went unanswered, Donaldson said.

“They had a cavalier attitude as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I think it got stuck on the back burner.”

OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS

Donaldson convened religious leaders and local activists disturbed by the lack of police and prosecutorial action on crime in Sanford’s black community. “We were very aggressive about going after the city manager, the police chief and the state’s attorney’s office because of the apathy,” Donaldson said.

Despite the pressure, there were no results — until the Trayvon Martin case exploded, he said. Police and prosecutors suddenly showed new interest in the shooting case. Last week, prosecutors filed murder and assault charges against Patrick.

“I think the heat got to them,” Donaldson said. “I think they decided that they might as well do something in one of these other cases.”

“Nothing happened on my case until Trayvon,” he said. “That’s when my phone started ringing.”

Lynn Bumpus-Hooper, a spokeswoman for the state attorney’s office, disputed that the timing of the charges was related to the Martin slaying. Prosecutors had simply been taking their time to build a strong case, she said.

“It’s not unusual, especially on a murder case, to go as far as you can go before you make the final filing,” Bumpus-Hooper said. “That is what drove the case, nothing else, according to the attorneys who are handling it.”

A string of cases involving police misconduct has also strained relations with the black community. The city fell into the national spotlight in December 2011 after video surfaced of a young white man, the son of a Sanford police supervisor, sucker-punching a homeless black man trying to break up a fight outside a bar. The victim, Sherman Ware, fell, striking his head on a metal pole, and the video shows him lying unconscious while his attacker struts and shouts in full view of dozens of onlookers. He can be heard shouting, “Nigger what? Nigger what?”

Police arrived within minutes and obtained video of the assault and sworn statements from witnesses identifying the assailant as Justin Collison, the son of a Sanford police lieutenant. Collison was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car, but was quickly freed without charges.

Tonetta Foster, Ware’s sister, said the incident reignited racial tensions.

“It’s like a railroad track runs through this place and we’re always on one side and they’re on the other,” Foster said of the town’s racial divide. “And the police, no way we can trust them after all they’ve done to us.”

An investigative report shows that Sgt. Anthony Raimondo, the ranking officer at the scene, placed two phone calls to Collison’s father within minutes of arriving, then overruled a junior officer’s decision to place Collison under arrest.

Instead of charging Collison, the officers released him and filed a request for an investigation into the incident with the state attorney’s office.

The next day, Raimondo — the first ranking officer to arrive at the Trayvon Martin shooting — defended his decision to other officers at police headquarters.

“If anybody has any issues with what happened last night, talk to me,” Raimondo said, according to the report. “But here’s my standpoint on it. I’m not in the business of putting cops’ kids in jail unless I absolutely have to.”

Collison was charged with felony assault only after the video of the attack was broadcast on local television nearly a month later. Raimondo and other officers were later cleared of misconduct, although one senior officer told investigators he believed Collison was afforded preferential treatment because of his father.

Wolfinger, the prosecutor, defended the investigation on Good Morning America.

“So I don’t think, at least from what I can tell, there’s no preferential treatment and certainly not at this office,” Wolfinger said. “I don’t see it.”

BRINGING THE LIGHT

At a town hall meeting organized by the NAACP at Sanford’s Allen Chapel AME Church in late March, men and women with signs calling for “Justice for Trayvon” filled nearly every pew. Children held up bags of Skittles and iced-tea — items Martin carried from the store the night he was killed.

About 1,000 others rallied outside the church in the city’s historic Goldsboro neighborhood, which until Sanford stripped it of its charter a century earlier, was the second all-black incorporated town in Florida.

Hundreds of others, mostly youth, broke off from the rally and marched up 13th Street to the police station to demand the chief’s resignation.

Inside the church, residents came forward one by one with tales of pain they say they suffered at the hands of Sanford police. Their complaints filled page after page of a notebook kept by Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, who’d flown in to take part in the rallies and protests scheduled for the coming days.

People talked of sons and nephews who’d been beaten by police officers. One man said he was shot with a Taser for no good reason. A woman nearly came to tears as she talked of a son who she said was beaten by guards at the city jail last year, suffered a seizure and died in his cell. Others said that their loved ones had been killed and police investigations went nowhere.

Jealous said he’d turn his notebook over to the U.S. Justice Department, hoping the agency will review other cases that may have been given little scrutiny.

“I’ll never forget. One man stood up and said, ‘If you killed a dog in this town they will put you in jail tomorrow,’” Jealous recalled. “Trayvon Martin has been dead for more than four weeks and his killer is still walking around. I think that about says it all.”

Jealous called Sanford a “deeply distressed” town with a police department that has shown “a pattern and practice of abuse and discrimination.”

But he said the spotlight offers a moment of healing and hope.

“Right now, this moment means that parents who may not have gotten justice are more likely to get justice,” Jealous said. “This moment means that a city called Sanford that was in deep crisis long before Trayvon Martin visited it, may finally get something approaching a real resolution to that crisis.”

*********

Readers: This isn’t “sloppy” police work, and we all know it. Even the writer knows it. There aren’t any “errors” or “mistakes”. This is just plain racial driven laziness and negligence that says, “I don’t care about these people, therefore I don’t want to waste anytime solving this.”

Thoughts? Blog me. 

/SB:  Why did I know you would know? Thank you. All is well with me – thanks for asking. I HOPE for you too.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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