21 June 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Custody death man ‘bashed by police’

originally by: The Australian
published: 21 June 2012

An Aboriginal man who died in police custody had been bashed by officers in the weeks before his death and was fearful of them, an inquest into his death has been told. On Thursday the aunt of Kwementyaye Briscoe, who died at the Alice Springs watch house on January 4, spoke in court about the death.

“He had been attacked by two police offices in the company of his girlfriend,” Patricia Morton-Thomas said. “If he ran on the night he died I would suggest it was because he was afraid.”

Ms Morton-Thomas said things needed to change in Alice Springs, with every single member of her family experiencing police persecution in the past.

19 June 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Rodney King, key figure in L.A. riots, dead at 47

originally by: Detroit Free Press
published: 17 June 2012

Rodney King, the black motorist whose 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers was the touchstone for one of the most destructive race riots in the nation’s history, has died, his publicist said today. King was 47. His death was confirmed to the Associated Press by Suzanne Wickham of Harper Collins, who published King’s 2012 book ‘The Riot Within .My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.’

The 1992 riots, set off by the acquittals of the officers, lasted three days and left 55 people dead, more than 2,000 injured and swaths of Los Angeles on fire. At the height of the violence, King pleaded on television: “Can we all get along?”

12 June 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Court upholds Mehserle conviction in Oscar Grant shooting

originally by: www.ktvu.com
published: 8 June 2012

A state appeals court in San Francisco Friday upheld the involuntary manslaughter conviction of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in the killing of an unarmed passenger in 2009.

Mehserle, 30, has already served his sentence for the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant, 22, of Hayward, at BART’s Fruitvale station in Oakland early on New Year’s Day in 2009.

After being convicted in 2010 in a trial that was moved to Los Angeles, Mehserle was sentenced to two years in prison. He was released last year after receiving credits that reduced his time in custody to about a year.