Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 3-5-19

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There Will Be No Charges For Sacramento Officers Who Fatally Shot Stephon Clark
STEPHON CLARK
House Approves Bill To Expand Gun Background Checks
Protesters gathered Satur- day evening outside police headquarters in Sacramento, California, after the county's top prosecutor announced she would not be filing charges against two police officers who killed Stephon Clark, an un- armed black man who was fa- tally shot in his grandmother's backyard last year.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schu- bert said earlier that the in- vestigation had to decide if officers broke the law.
"When we look at the facts and the law, and we follow our ethical responsibilities, the an- swer ... is no," Schubert told reporters, hours after meeting with the family.
The case last year became a symbol of strained relations between the police and the community as well as racial tensions in the state capital. Once again city officials and community leaders appealed
for peace while bracing for protests
Clark's mother, Se- Quette, told reporters outside a family home in Sacramento that she was outraged.
"They executed my son," she said of the officers. "They exe- cuted him in my mom's back- yard and it's not right."
Schubert described Clark as taking a shooting stance and officers firing after they saw a flash of light that one be- lieved came from a gun being fired. A cellphone was found underneath Clark's body.
Clark was shot seven times, including three times in the back, according to an au- topsy released by the Sacra- mento County Coroner's office. An independent au- topsy found that Clark was shot eight times, with six of those wounds in his back, ac- cording a forensic pathologist retained by Clark's family.
The Democratic controlled House on Wednesday approved a measure requiring federal background checks for all firearms sales and transfers, the first major gun control legisla- tion considered by Congress in nearly 25 years.
Democrats called the 240- 190 vote a major step to end the gun lobby's grip on Washington and begin to address an epi- demic of gun violence, including 17 people who were killed at a Florida high school last year.
The bill is the first of two that Democrats are bringing to the House floor this week as part of an effort to tighten gun laws fol- lowing eight years of Republi- can control. The other bill would extend the review period for background checks from three to 10 days.
Both bills face dim prospects in the Republican-controlled Senate and veto threats from President Donald Trump, who said they would impose un- reasonable requirements on gun owners.
The White House said in a veto message that the back- ground-checks bill could block someone from borrowing a firearm for self-defense or al- lowing a neighbor to take care of a gun while traveling.
Democrats called those ar- guments misleading and said gun owners have a responsibil- ity to ensure firearms are prop- erly handled. The bill includes exceptions allowing temporary transfers to prevent imminent harm or for use at a target range.
The long-delayed bill would merely close loopholes to en- sure that background checks are extended to private and online sales that often go undetected,
Handguns are displayed on a vendor's table at a gun show on Jan. 26, 2013, in Albany, N.Y.
Democrats said.
"People who are felons or are
dangerously mentally ill should- n't have guns," regardless of whether they buy them from a federally licensed dealer or their next-door neighbor, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., a key sponsor who has pushed for expanded background checks since the 2012 killing of 20 ele- mentary school students in Newtown, Connecticut.
"For six-and-a-half years, we had no cooperation from the past majority" in the House, Thompson said. "We couldn't get a hearing on the bill. We couldn't get a vote. Today, we're here to tell you it's a new day. With this (Democratic) major- ity, we have made a commit- ment to address the issue of gun violence."
To demonstrate their sup- port for the bill, Thompson and other Democrats wore or- ange ties, while others wore or- ange scarves, the color used by the movement against gun vio- lence.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D- Pa., said she hopes the symbol- ism will soon become obsolete.
"I long for the day when or- ange scarves are a fashion state- ment, not a cry for help," said
Dean, who was wearing a bright orange scarf.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who was gravely wounded in a 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice, said stricter background checks would not have prevented his shooting or other tragedies.
"What it would do is make criminals out of law-abiding cit- izens," Scalise said. "If you go hunting with a friend and your friend wants to borrow your rifle, you better bring your at- torney with you because de- pending on what you do with that gun you may be a felon if you loan it to him."
Democrats said the bill in- cludes exceptions allowing tem- porary transfers for anyone who feels threatened by a domestic partner or other person. The bill also allows a gun owner to loan their weapon and for use at a target range.
The bill includes a Republi- can amendment requiring that gun sellers notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an illegal immigrant tries to buy a gun. Twenty-six De- mocrats joined with Republi- cans to support the amendment, offered by Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.
Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Com- mittee, opposed the overall bill, saying it "foolishly presumes criminals who flout existing laws will suddenly submit themselves to background checks."
Democrats and other bill supporters are "delusional" if they think "a criminal trading cocaine to another criminal for a firearm will reconsider due to" the background checks bill, Collins said.
Another Black KKKlansman? Black Man Becomes Leader Of Neo-Nazi Party
One of the nation’s largest neo-Nazi groups appears to have an unlikely new leader: a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it.
Court documents filed Thursday suggest James Hart Stern wants to use his new position as director and president of the National So- cialist Movement to under- mine the Detroit-based group’s defense against a law- suit.
The NSM is one of several extremist groups sued over bloodshed at a 2017 white na- tionalist rally in Char- lottesville, Virginia. Stern’s filing asks a federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the group before one of the lawsuits goes to trial.
Stern replaced Jeff Schoep as the group’s leader in January, according to Michigan corporate records. But those records and court documents say nothing about how or why Stern got the po- sition. His feat invited com- parisons to the recent Spike Lee movie “BlacKkKlansman”
in which a black police officer infiltrates a branch of the Ku Klux Klan.
Neither Stern, who lives in Moreno Valley, California, nor Schoep responded Thursday to emails and calls seeking comment.
Matthew Heimbach, a leading white nationalist figure who briefly served as the NSM’s community outreach director last year, said Schoep and other group leaders have been at odds with rank-and- file members over its direction. Heimbach said some mem- bers “essentially want it to re- main a politically impotent white supremacist gang” and resisted ideological changes advocated by Schoep.
Heimbach said Schoep’s apparent departure and Stern’s installation as its leader probably spell the end of the group in its current form. Schoep was 21 when he took control of the group in 1994 and renamed it the Na- tional Socialist Movement, ac- cording to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
JAMES HART STERN
“I think it’s kind of a sad obit for one of the longest-run- ning white nationalist organi- zations,” said Heimbach, who estimates it had about 40 active, dues-paying members last year.
The group has drawn much larger crowds at rallies.
NSM members used to at- tend rallies and protests in full Nazi uniforms, including at a march in Toledo, Ohio, that sparked a riot in 2005. More recently, Schoep tried to re- brand the group and appeal to a new generation of racists and anti-Semites by getting rid of such overt displays of Nazi symbols.
It appeared that Stern had been trying for at least two years to disrupt the group. A message posted on his website said he would be meeting with Schoep in February 2017 “to sign a proclamation acknowl- edging the NSM denouncing being a white supremacist group.”
“I have personally targeted eradicating the (Ku Klux Klan) and the National Socialist Movement, which are two or- ganizations here in this coun- try which have all too long been given privileges they don’t deserve,” Stern said in a video posted on his site.
On Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs suing white su- premacist groups and move- ment leaders over the Charlottesville violence asked the court to sanction Schoep. They say he has ignored his obligations to turn over docu- ments and give them access to his electronic devices and so- cial media accounts. They also claim Schoep recently fired his attorney as a stalling tactic.
A federal magistrate judge
in Charlottesville ruled last Friday that Stern cannot rep- resent the NSM in the case be- cause he does not appear to be a licensed attorney. That did not deter Stern from filing Thursday’s request for sum- mary judgment against his own group.
“It is the decision of the Na- tional Socialist Movement to plead liable to all causes of ac- tions listed in the complaint against it,” he wrote.
Stern served a prison sen- tence for mail fraud at the same facility as onetime Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of three civil rights workers. Killen died in Janu- ary 2018.
In 2012, Stern claimed Killen signed over to him power of attorney and owner- ship of 40 acres of land while they were serving prison terms together. A lawyer for Killen asked a judge to throw out the land transfer and certify that Killen and his family owned the property.
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