Page 35 - Florida Sentinel 7-3-20

National
Man Charged With Murder Over Shooting At Breonna Taylor Protest In Kentucky
Authorities in the US have charged a man with murder over a fatal shooting at a park in downtown Louisville, Ken- tucky on Saturday night, where demonstrators had gathered to protest the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was shot in her home by police earlier this year.
Tyler Charles Gerth,
27, of Louisville, was named as the victim of the attack by the Jefferson county coro- ner’s office on Sunday.
Police said on Sunday that a man had been charged with murder and wanton endan- germent over Gerth’s death. The suspect, identified by an arrest citation as Steven Nelson Lopez, was wounded in the leg by gunfire from bystanders at the park
A man is arrested by Louisville Metro police after an attempt by protesters to block Liberty Street in down- town Louisville, Kentucky. June 17, 2020
who were defending them-
selves, according to police. Interim Louisville police chief Robert Schroeder said the suspect had been participating in the protests since they began and had been arrested a few times. “He had been repeatedly asked by other members at the park to leave due to his destructive behavior,”
Schroeder said.
Reports of shots fired at
Jefferson Square park were made around 9pm on Satur- day, Louisville metro police said, and Jefferson county sheriff’s department officers performed emergency life- saving measures on Gerth, but he died at the scene. An- other shooting victim across the street at the hall of justice was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
272 NYPD Officers File For Retirement After Black Lives Matter Protests
It’s beginning to look like the whole “To Protects and Serve” motto of police depart- ments across America is more of a self-serving phrase for their egos than a proverb meant to reassure Americans of their tax-paying responsi- bilities.
A few weeks after 170 At- lanta police officers called in sick in response to their brothers in blue being charged in the death of Rayshard Brooks, The New York Post is reporting that members of the NYPD have staged a similar “protest” in response to the anti-police brutality demon- strations that have taken place in the wake of the mur- der of George Floyd.
According to the report a whopping 272 uniformed po- lice officers in New York City have filed for retirement from May 25th through June 24th compared to the 183 officers who filed their farewell pa- pers during the same time pe- riod last year. The 49% uptick in retirements comes in the midst of protests calling for the defunding of the police across America and a looming $1 billion dollar budget cut to the NYPD. A source told the New York Post that the afore-
NYPD
mentioned retirements could signal a “crisis” for the 36,000-member police force in the Big Apple.
“We are worried about a surge in attrition reducing our headcount beyond what we can sustain without new recruits, and are afraid the City Council has not taken the surge into account,” he said.
Police Benevolent Associa- tion president Patrick Lynch said cops are “at their breaking point, whether they have 20 years on the job or only two. We are all asking the same question: ‘How can we keep doing our job in this environment?’ And that is ex- actly what the anti-cop crowd wants. If we have no cops be- cause no one wants to be a cop, they will have achieved their ultimate goal.”
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