Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 9-11-18

National
Dallas Officer Arrested On Manslaughter Charge
Atlanta Mayor Orders All ICE
DALLAS (AP) — A white Dallas police officer was ar- rested Sunday on a manslaughter charge in the off-duty shooting of a Black man who was her neighbor, Texas authorities said.
Officer Amber Guyger was booked into the Kauf- man County Jail, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a news release. The department said the investi- gation is ongoing and that no additional information was available.
A jail employee said Guyger was released on bond. Kaufman County Jail online records show that Guyger was in custody there. Her mugshot is also available on the public site. She was being held on $300,000 bail, but she was able to post that amount and was being released.
Guyger fatally shot 26- year-old Botham Jean on Thursday at Jean's apart- ment. Lawyers for Jean's family had been calling for Guyger's arrest, saying the fact that she had remained free days after the shooting showed she was receiving fa- vorable treatment. They held a news conference Sun- day night, shortly before the arrest was announced, mak- ing another plea for the offi- cer to be taken into custody and saying their team had presented new evidence — a witness and video footage — to prosecutors. They didn't provide details.
The family attorneys weren't immediately avail- able for comment after the arrest came.
S. Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys for Jean's family, said Saturday that the man's loved ones weren't calling on the authorities to jump to conclusions or to deny Guyger her right to due process. But Merritt said they wanted Guyger "to be treated like every other citizen, and where there is evidence that they've committed a crime, that there's a warrant to be is- sued and an arrest to be made."
Guyger, 30, is a four- year veteran of the police
BOTHAM JEAN
force. The Dallas Police De- partment released her name Saturday night.
Police Chief U. Renee Hall said the day after the shooting that her depart- ment was seeking manslaughter charges against Guyger. But she said Saturday that the Texas Rangers, who have taken over the investigation, asked her department to hold off because they had learned new information and wanted to investigate fur- ther before a warrant was is- sued.
Jean's family has also hired attorney Benjamin Crump, who is best known for representing the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Martin, a Black, unarmed 17-year- old, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volun- teer in 2012 in Sanford, Florida. Brown, a Black, unarmed 18-year-old, was shot and killed by a white police officer in 2014 in Fer- guson, Missouri.
According to police, Guyger shot and killed Jean after returning in uni- form to the South Side Flats, where they both had apart- ments, following her shift. She reported the shooting to dispatchers and she told of- ficers who responded that she had mistaken Jean's apartment for her own.
Many questions remain about what led Guyger to shoot Jean. Hall said the officer's blood was drawn at the scene so that it could be tested for alcohol and drugs. Investigators haven't re-
AMBER GUYGER
leased the results of those tests.
Jean's mother, Allison Jean, wondered whether race could have been a fac- tor. Her son, who grew up in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia before attending college in Arkansas, isBlack. Guyger is white.
"If it was a white man, would it have been differ- ent? Would she have reacted differently?" Allison Jean said Friday.
Sgt. Mike Mata, presi- dent of Dallas' largest police employee organization, the Dallas Police Association, on Saturday called for an "open, transparent and full investi- gation of the event," the Dal- las Morning News reported. He described Jean as an "amazing individual" and said that "if the grand jury deems necessary, this officer should have to answer for her actions in a court of law in Dallas County."
Friends and family gath- ered Saturday at the Dallas West Church of Christ to re- member Jean, who had been working for accounting firm PwC since graduating in 2016 from Harding Uni- versity in Arkansas, where he often led campus reli- gious services as a student. They described Jean as a devout Christian and a tal- ented singer.
"Botham did everything with passion," Allison Jean told the prayer serv- ice. "God gave me an angel."
His uncle, Ignatius Jean, said the killing has devastated the family and left it searching for answers.
Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor
Keisha Lance Bottoms
signed an executive order Thursday declaring that the city will no longer hold anyone in jail at the request of U. S. Immigration and Customs En- forcement.
The order also called for all ICE detainees to be transferred out of the Atlanta city jail, the Atlanta Journal-Constitu- tion reported.
“Atlanta will no longer be complicit in a policy that inten- tionally inflicts misery on a vul- nerable population without giving any thought to the hor- rific fallout,” Bottoms told re- porters ahead of signing the executive order. “As the birth- place of the civil rights move- ment we are called to be better than this.”
This summer, Bottoms signed a different order that stopped the jail from accepting any new ICE detainees, as Trump implemented a zero tolerance illegal immigration policy that resulted in an in- crease in separation of migrant children from their families
MAYOR KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS
who crossed the border ille- gally.
Bottom’s new executive order was signed the same day the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services announced a pro- posal to withdraw from the Flo- res Settlement Agreement.
That agreement limits the government's ability to detain immigrant children after 20 days, and the Trump adminis- tration’s proposal would by- pass that standard in order to detain families together while the adults are prosecuted for il- legal entry.
Detainees To Be Transferred
Out Of The City's Prison
George Zimmerman Threatens The Lives Of Beyonce & JAY-Z: ‘And I’m Bringing Hell With Me.’
BEYONCE AND JAY-Z, GEORGE ZIMMERMAN (INSET)
George Zimmerman is back in the news again — and he’s once again proving he con- tinues to be one of the worst people on the planet.
The man who infamously was acquitted by a Florida jury over the shooting death of in- nocent 17-year-old Trayvon Martin back in 2012 is once again making news for all the wrong reasons: he appears to have made menacing death threats to both JAY-Zand Be- yonce.
In a series of text message screenshots obtained over at The Blast, Zimmerman
says Jay is “a bitch,” while also calling Beyonce “a broke whore,” — which, we all know isn’t true aside from being dis- respectful and childish.
Worse than that, though, he also warned Jay and Bey with a pretty direct threat:
“And I’m bringing hell with me...IfIseeeitherofthemin my life, they’ll find themselves inside a 13-foot gator.”
The threats on their lives will appear in the upcoming fi- nale of Jay’s six-part docu- mentary series on Martin, Rest In Power, which airs on the Paramount Network.
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