“FALLEN HERO” COMES HOME;
HONORED FOR SERVICE, BRAVERY
By Cash Michaels
Staff writer
Led by his family, friends, fellow service people, and even the governor of the state, they all came out to Union Missionary Baptist Church Tuesday to pay they last respects to Spc. Antonio Moore.
The Wilmington native and Hoggard high School alum died in Syria on duty during a rollover crash.
He was 22.
Known for his dedication to duty and infectious smile, Moore was the pride of his family. Gov. Roy Cooper presented Moore’s mother with an American flag, and paid his personal condolences to the family.
““This is a reminder that freedom isn’t free, and that it has a high cost,” the governor said. “This community of Wilmington rallying around this family is an amazing thing and one of the great things about North Carolina.”
Cooper has had flags flown at half-mast since Spc. Moore’s body was brought back to North Carolina last week.
The NHC Board of Commissioners passed a resolution Monday acknowledging Moore’s sacrifice and service.
“We lift his parents, brothers, sister, grandparents, extended family, and all who knew and loved him in our thoughts during this difficult time and always,” the resolution said. “Further, let it be resolved that, in accordance with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s order, flags in New Hanover County and across the state, will remain at half-staff until sunset on Tuesday, February 4, as a symbol of our gratitude and deepest sympathy.”
Spc. Moore’s family was grateful for the outpouring of love and respect.
“We would like to extend our family’s heartfelt gratitude for the community’s overwhelming support as we grieve the loss of our beloved son, brother, grandson and friend,” a statement from the family read. “Tony was larger than life, full of love and proud to serve this country. We take comfort in knowing that he was doing what he loved along with the stories and pictures that have been shared from all of those that knew and loved him. The family is deeply appreciative of the continuous outpouring of love from the citizens of this community and ask all of those wishing to make a monetary donation to allow us time to establish a dedicated account in honor Antonio. Details of the established account will be provided at later time.”
-30
WILMINGTON POLICE CHIEF DONNY WILLIAMS
Let’s not beat around the bush here.
Donny Williams should NOT be Wilmington’s Interim police chief.
Donny Williams SHOULD be Wilmington’s police chief, PERIOD!
We know, we know…it is standard practice for the City Council to name the assistant police chief the interim police chief when the retiring police chief finally calls it a career, as former Chief Ralph Evangelous did on Feb. 1st (and we wish him well in his retirement).
But let’s be real….how much time do we need to know that Interim Chief Williams is a good man, strong leader, and top cop.
Even Chief Evangelous thinks do.
“For the past year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure of watching Assistant Chief Williams help to lead the Wilmington Police Department. His hard work and commitment to community policing continues to be an asset to our agency. I’m confident he will continue to move this agency forward, while focusing on the safety and well-being of our citizens.
“I fully support the decision of the city council,” Chief Evangelous concluded.
The only other endorsement that means more is from the community, and as far as we’re concerned, chief Willams already has that.
He’s a Wilmington native with over 29 years of service to the force, and the people. He knows the WPD inside and out, having served in just about every official capacity.
But beyond being an officer, a police captain, a deputy chief over Special and Criminal Investigations, and overseeing the department’s largest Patrol division, Chief Williams has always made time for our community’s youth, working to expand the Police Activities League (PAL) enrolling over 500 young people per year.
Chief Williams meets all of the requirements of experienced, and educated leadership, with a BA from Mt. Olive College in Management and Organizational Development. He is also a graduate of the Administrative Officer’s Management Program at NC State University.
Williams has also completed the 75th Session of Police Executive Research Forum Senior Management Institute for Police.
And last, but certainly not least, Chief Williams oversaw the design, development, and completion of the Haynes - Lacewell Police and fire Training Facility.
There really is no need for discussion here. We have an accomplished Wilmington native already at the wheel of our city’s police department, who has knocked down the door of every requirement we could ask.
So Wilmington City Council…we all know you have a thing for the dramatic, but let’s be real here. Chief Williams is just about all you could ask for to ensure that the citizens of the Port City are well protected, and respected.
Let’s not wait six months for doing what we all know is the right thing. Make Donny Williams Wilmington’s PERMANENT police chief as soon as possible!
A better servant of the people you simply will not find!
-30-
REV. DR. BARBER AND REV. DR. SPEARMAN
2020 HK ON J MORAL MARCH/RALLY THEME:
“WHEN WE VOTE, WE WIN!”
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
With 2020 being a crucial election year, it should be no surprise to anyone that the theme for this Saturday’s annual HK on J Moral March/Rally, sponsored by the NC NAACP, Repairers of the Breach, and their coalition partners, is “When we Vote….We Win: Save Our Democracy.”
HK on J (the Historic Thousands on Jones Street) is made up of more than 125 North Carolina NAACP branches, youth councils and college chapters from across the state, and members of over 200 other social justice organizations.
Few social justice organizations have fought to protect the right to vote in North Carolina harder than the NC NAACP, previously led by Rev. Dr. William Barber, and now Pres. Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman.
“If they marched then,” says Rev. Barber about the courageous demonstrators who were beaten and attacked by Alabama state police during the 1965 Montgomery to Selma march, “…if they fought then, if they pushed the nation forward then, we must resist the nation going backwards now.”
“When this moral fusion coalition comes together, it breaks many kinds of bread,” says Rev. Dr. Spearman. “What matters most is that we break bread together, because the bread we share strengthens the arms that beat the drum of resistance, and the pushes the rock of reconstruction.”
With the Iowa caucuses taking place on Monday, and the North Carolina primaries coming on Tuesday, March 3rd as part of Super Tuesday…all of it looking forward to the Nov. 6th fall general elections, there is no more important time for the NCNAACP and others to push voter registration and voter empowerment, especially when it comes to addressing issues like poverty, affordable housing, health care, and education.
The HK on J Mass Moral March on Raleigh and People’s Assembly is scheduled for this Saturday, Feb. 8th. Gathering in front of Shaw University (corner of Wilmington and South streets begins at 8:30 a.m.. pre-rally starts at 9 a.m. there. The march begins at 10 a.m. followed by the rally and People’s Assembly.
For more information, visit hkonj.com or naacpnc.org.
-30-
MS. JAZMYNE CHILDS, SURROUNDED BY SUPPORTERS
FORMER NCNAACP STAFFER
SUES FOR $15 MILLION AFTER
SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIM
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
A female former staffer of the NC NAACP has filed suit in Durham Superior Court for $15 million, claiming sexual harassment by her former supervisor, the Rev. Curtis Gatewood.
Jazmyme Childs initially made the bombshell allegations late last year just two weeks before the 2019 NC NAACP State Convention in October. Gatewood initially denied her allegations, but later admitting that his actions “…may have been received as sexual.”
Ms. Childs, 27, is also suing the national NAACP, alleging that when she made her complaints about Gatewood in 2017, the national office didn’t immediately act to suspend Gatewood, even after NCNAACP leadership commissioned an investigation proving her allegations, and sending that report to the national office.
“The NAACP “…is liable for the misconduct for Gatewood because the National NAACP ratified [his ] conduct,’ Childs’ suit alleges.
IN 2017, Ms. Childs was the youth and college field secretary for the NCNAACP. Her lawsuit alleges that because of Gatewood’s sexual harassment, she has suffered from depression, anxiety, nervousness an d insomnia. The legal action seeks over $5 million in compensatory damages, and more than $25,000 in punitive damages per battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress charges.
According to published reports, Gatewood was suspended in September 2019 after Ms. Childs made her allegations public. In January, Gatewood asked to have his membership reinstated.
Neither Ms. Childs, her attorneys, Rev. Gatewood, or officials with the National NAACP were available for comment at press time.
-30-
WERE BLACKS JURORS ILLEGALLY EXEMPTED
FROM CERTAIN CASES BECAUSE OF COLOR?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Did prosecutors deliberately, and illegally, excluded African-American jurors from two recent NC cases because the defendants were also black? That is the question the NC Supreme Court is wrestling with this week, and the High Court’s decision, interestingly, could determine for the first time whether North Carolina officially tolerates racial discrimination in jury selection.
Exempting black jurors from high profile capital cases involving black defendants is nothing new in the state’s legal history. Many will recall how the prosecutor in the infamous Wilmington Ten case in 1972 feigned illness just so that he could ditch the mostly black jury chosen to try the ten civil rights activists, in favor of later choosing a primarily “KKK” jury to guarantee conviction, despite no evidence.
There have been numerous other cases throughout North Carolina’s history of qualified blacks being excluded from jury duty in order to guarantee convictions of black defendants. But white prosecutors have rarely been held accountant for the ploy, known commonly as a preemptory challenge, which allows jurors to be justly excluded for any reason except their race.
In the two cases brought before the seven-member state Supreme Court Monday involving criminally convicted defendants Cory Bennett of Sampson County and Cedric Hobbs of Cumberland County, attorneys argued that African-Americans were excluded from their respective juries only because of their race.
In State v. Bennett, tried in 2016 in Sampson County, prosecutors excluded only two jurors, but both were black. When the defense objected, the judge ignored the challenge and never required the prosecution to explain. But the judge did ask the defense attorney about her strikes against “white Americans.”
Defendant Cory Bennett was convicted of possession and trafficking methamphetamines, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
In State v. Cedric Hobbs in 2014 in Cumberland County, Hobbs was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison (prosecutors sought the death penalty). The prosecutor used eight preemptory challenges, six of them black. When the defense objected, the prosecutor responded that they were “somehow [saying] we’re just racists in this county.”
According to a press release from the Center for Death Litigation in Durham, “ A statistical study showed the prosecutor’s office in this county has a twenty-year track record of removing black jurors at twice the rate that they remove all other jurors. And the prosecutors in this case questioned black jurors very closely on certain issues but did not closely question white jurors who had the same characteristics.”
Two recent studies show that qualified black jurors in North Carolina are twice as likely to be excluded from juries than whites, thus denying black defendants truly a jury of their peers. “Research has also found that juries with two or more members of color deliberate longer, discuss a wider range of evidence, and are more accurate in their statements about cases, regardless of the defendant’s race,” said the Center for Death Litigation, adding. “…[A] recent analysis revealed that North Carolina’s high courts have failed to enforce the law established in Batson v. Kentucky, a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred racially-motivated jury exclusion. In the thirty years since Batson, more than a hundred North Carolina defendants have raised claims of race discrimination against jurors of color. Yet, the state’s appellate courts have never upheld a single one of those claims.”
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 02-06-20
RALEIGH CREATES POLICE ADVISORY BOARD
[RALEIGH] After years of advocacy, and several recent high-profile shootings, the Raleigh City Council Tuesday established a five-person police advisory board to oversee police policies and procedures. Police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown has long opposed the board, but in a statement issued afterwards, said that she an her department will work it. The advisory Board comes after a another fatal Raleigh police shooting last week.
ASST. SUPT. OF HUMAN RESOURCES FOR NHCPS RESIGNS
[WILMINGTON] Dr, John Welmers, assistant superintendent of Human Resources for New Hanover county public schools has resigned, effective March 1. He is taking earned leave time until then. No reason was officially given. The resignation comes after a third NHCPS employee was recently charged for sexually assaulting a student.
FATHER ACCUSED OF LEAVING HEROIN THAT 1-YEAR-OLD GOT TO
[FAYETTEVILLE] The father of a 1-year-old child has been charge with negligent child abuse after his one-year-old son overdosed on heroin the father allegedly left around the house. The child was treated with naloxone after he was found not breathing. Cumberland county authorities have charged Luis Castellon, 26, after bags of heroin were found in his home. The child ha recovered. Castellon has been ordered not to have contact with his child.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment