Obama frees 8 crack offenders, including Clarence Aaron

Article by: Adam Serwer

Clarence Aaron, a non-violent drug offender sentenced to three life terms when he was 24 years old, will finally be freed after twenty years behind bars.

Along with seven other people serving time for non-violent drug offenses, President Obama commuted Aaron’s sentence on Thursday, after a two-decade long imprisonment that might have ended sooner if not for a federal official mismanaging his case.

Aaron has been imprisoned since 1993 for his role in a crack cocaine deal. Though it was his first offense, and he was not the drug dealer, supplier or buyer, Aaron, who was 24 at the time, received a harsher sentence than anyone convicted in connection with the case. All eight individuals granted clemency were sentenced under drug laws the penalized crack cocaine offenses 100 times harsher than powder cocaine offenses. That disparity was narrowed in 2010, when Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the ratio of crack to powder sentences to 18 to 1 instead of 100 to 1. All of the individuals granted clemency Thursday have served more than fifteen years in prison, according to the White House.

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Police Nation

A shocking report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MFA) for the Federal Assembly (FA) is urging a new law be passed giving to all Russians traveling to the United States a “warning” that American police officers have entered upon an “unprecedented killing spree” that in the past decade has seen nearly 5,000 innocent civilians gunned down without benefit of either charges being filed, or being convicted of a crime.

Two of the worst American cities for police abuse likely to be visited by Russian citizens, this report says, are Chicago, which was condemned by the United Nations for its practice of widespread police torture, and New York City whose government paid out over $1 billion between 2000-2010 in lawsuit claims related to police abuse, and last year, 2012, had to pay out another $131 million to settle civil rights and police abuse claims too.

Grimly to be noted, this report continues, are that the statistics for the nearly 5,000 people killed by American police officers in the past decade, including 587 killed in 2012 alone, may not even be the true total of these deaths as a study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that US national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.

To the types of people being targeted by these US police “killing machines,” this report says, are many with disabilities and mental illness, including:

Down Syndrome patient Robert Ethan Saylor, 26, who was brutally straggled to death by 3 Maryland sheriff’s deputies on 12 January and whose last words were cries for his “mommy” to come help him.

Mentally ill patient Bobby Bennett, 53, brutally shot by Dallas Texas police officers on 14 October while standing in the street in front of his house not threatening anyone. [See video HERE]

To the “kill first” mentality of American police officers this report cites the 29 November 2012 public execution of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams by Cleveland Ohio police officers, who for daring to flee from police after a traffic stop were chased by 104 police officers for 25-minutes and then gunned down in a hail of 137 bullets.

Even though 63 of the 104 Cleveland police officers were suspended for the execution of Russell and Williams, this report says, no officers in the killing of Saylor or the shooting of Bennett have been charged.

In fact, this report states, the lack of American authorities holding their police officers responsible for killing of innocents is virtually unheard of in the United States and has caused this unprecedented “explosion” of police violence.

Equally to be blamed, this report continues, are America’s wars over the past 12-years that has filled its police departments with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have yet to acclimate to civilian life and are, in essence, still in “combat mode.”

Two of the many examples cited in this report of this “combat mode” mentality held by American police officers include:

Allen Hicks, in 2012, who was arrested by Tampa Florida police officers for “not following orders” and was thrown into a jail cell where he was later found to be having a stroke, and which a few months later he died from in hospital.

Elliott Williams, in 2011, who was arrested by Tulsa Oklahoma police officers on a minor charge and was left in his jail cell for 5 days until he died, all the while being neglected and his health ignored.

What’s even worse, this MFA report warns, is that this unprecedented “killing spree” US police officers are now on is only going to get worse as these once honored guardians of the peace have become more militarized.

And as further warned about the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): “American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war.”

To if the Obama regime will attempt to stop this police “killing spree,” this report concludes, it does not appear likely as President Obama has just nominated as his new Homeland Security Secretary former Pentagon lawyerJeh Johnson, and who has said, “US citizens do not have immunity from assassination when they are at war with the United States.”

And to whom these Obama regime leaders feel they are “at war” with, the MFA says, was recently revealed in US Court documents relating to a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which shockingly revealed that the invasive personal searches conducted by them upon their own citizens has nothing to do with preventing terrorism, but is, instead, designed to make these people as compliant to police authority as possible.

Source: EU Times

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