G4S guards ignored deportee Jimmy Mubenga’s cries for help, court hears

Jimmy Mubenga
Jimmy Mubenga

source: The Guardian
published: 4 November 2014

Three G4S guards who forcibly restrained an Angolan man during his deportation ignored his repeated cries for help as they held him at the back of an aircraft before he died, a court heard on Tuesday.

Passengers on the plane on the runway at Heathrow airport heard Jimmy Mubenga, 46, shout “I can’t breathe” as the guards pinned him in his seat for more than 15 minutes, the jury was told at the beginning of the guards’ trial for manslaughter.

More than half an hour after the struggle began, Mubenga became “motionless and starry eyed”, the Old Bailey heard. He was taken off the aircraft and pronounced dead at hospital a short time later.

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Eight police officers fired 46 times at my mentally ill son

Milton Hallsource: ACLU
published: 27 October 2014

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Jewel Hall conducted by the ACLU of Michigan about the killing in 2012 of her son Milton by eight police officers.

Parts of her interview appear in the video which also includes footage of the police killing Milton. Today the ACLU of Michigan is presenting this video at a hearing about racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States.

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After Ferguson, new focus on race and policing

Police SWAT Armor Suitsource: Voice of America
published: 15 September 2014

Last month’s fatal shooting of an unarmed African American teen by a white police officer after a street confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri, has drawn a new focus on other such cases throughout the U.S., amid protests and demands by civil rights leaders for investigation of racial bias in aggressive policing.

Barely a week after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, police in nearby St. Louis shot and killed Kajieme Powell, a mentally disturbed 25-year-old black man who held a small steak knife. Two police officers fired within 15 seconds of arriving at the scene where Powell was walking around, seemingly aimlessly, with his hands at his side.

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