Florida

Florida deputy's killing of Black airman renews debate on police killings and race

Published

7 months ago

May 16, 2024

Florida deputy's killing of Black airman renews debate on police killings and race

WASHINGTON (AP) — In 2020, the top enlisted leader of the Air Force went public with his fear of waking up to the news that a Black airman had been killed by a white police officer.

Then four years later, a Florida deputy shot and killed Senior Airman Roger Fortson in his apartment.

“I doubt if that police officer knew or cared that Roger was an airman. What he saw was a young, Black male,” retired Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.

After George Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, Wright, who like Floyd is Black, felt compelled to speak publicly about the fears that he and his younger troops had. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he’d worked to serve his country. There were still police who would only see him as a threat.

The national outcry surrounding Floyd’s death pushed Wright to lead some initiatives to better address racial issues within the Air Force. But by his own account, they didn’t go far enough. Fortson’s death has left him wondering if things will ever change.

“Right now, in the midst of what happened to Roger, it’s kind of a big deal. People are talking about it, the Air Force is dealing with it. But in a couple of weeks, it will go away, right?” Wright said.

The investigation into Fortson’s death is ongoing, and the sheriff’s office has not released the name or race of the officer involved.

On Wednesday, Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden went to Hurlburt Field where Fortson served and met with Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, to talk about the next steps.

Sabu Williams, president of the Okaloosa County NAACP branch, was there and said he did not leave with a sense that the sheriff’s office thought Fortson’s race was a factor in the shooting.

But “bias certainly played a role in this thing,” Williams said. “From my perspective, we feel we don’t get the benefit of the doubt. It seems to be a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind of thing.”

In a statement posted to his Facebook page late Wednesday, Bauernfeind said the meeting with the sheriff’s office was productive and that the command would host a town hall in the coming days to talk further about the shooting and the way forward.

There is no government-managed national data collection system that tracks fatalities caused by law enforcement officers. The FBI has a database, but it’s voluntary, and less than two-thirds of local, state, tribal and federal agencies provided data for it last year. In any case, there is no breakdown by race.

Databases kept by private organizations, however, have found that fatal police encounters have risen each year since Floyd was killed and those killings are disproportionately of Black people.

Two databases, one by The Washington Post and another compiled by Campaign Zero, run by academics and activists advocating for police accountability, found that while more white people are killed in police encounters overall, Black people are disproportionately killed by police. Black people make up about 12% of the U.S. population but account for about a quarter of police killings in each of the databases.

In the meeting at Hurlburt, Williams requested that the sheriff’s office pursue de-escalation training and unconscious bias training, which he said the sheriff supported.

The sheriff’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook that they have received the local NAACP’s “list of demands and understand their concerns.” In the meeting at the airfield, the sheriff “emphasized his commitment to do what is right,” it said.

Michael P. Heiskell, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the deputy’s race doesn’t matter when determining whether unconscious bias played a role.

“Whatever the race of this deputy, whether he’s Black, white, Hispanic, whatever — in this instance where this deputy saw a Black person with a weapon and immediately used deadly force, instead of calmly and reflectively assessing the situation, this is it.”

Williams’ NAACP chapter is drafting state legislation it wants to name after Fortson. The bill would require police to use de-escalating language before using force if they encounter someone with a gun who is not being held in a threatening position.

Released police body camera footage shows Fortson had his gun in his hand when he opened his front door, but the barrel was pointed to the floor. Within seconds the deputy shot him, only afterward telling him to drop the weapon.

“A little bit of de-escalation or discussion” by the deputy could have given the airman the chance to put down the gun, Williams said. “He wasn’t given any time.”

MaCharie Dunbar, a board member of the Black Veterans Project, a national organization created to address racial inequality in the experiences of Black service members, said he wonders whether it would have made a difference if Fortson had been in uniform.

“One thing proven true time and again is that if you’re Black in America, it doesn’t matter what kind of job you have, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the house you live in,” said Dunbar, who is retired from the Air Force and had been stationed at Hurlburt Field. “At the end of the day, you’re just Black. And there are some who hold on to this ideology that Black people are dangerous.”

Fortson’s shooting occurred against a wider backdrop of increased attention by the military to racial issues in its ranks. Over the past few years, internal reviews have found significant disparities in opportunities for promotion and uneven military punishments.

But there has been significant pushback against those efforts, with far-right members of Congress criticizing them as being “woke.” Congress this year put caps on what the Pentagon can pay experts in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Wright said that pushback has served to silence much discussion on the issue and, for now, the most helpful thing commanders can do is listen.

“If you’re a white male officer in the United States Air Force, you don’t wake up every day thinking about race,” Wright said. “We have Black airmen and officers that wake up every day and they go into rooms and they’re the only Black person.”

He said commanders need to understand the toll this takes.

“It comes with stress and anxiety. It comes with a feeling of not belonging. And, you know, most of us are taught to just assimilate, right? You know, don’t complain, don’t be the outcast. Don’t be the outsider because, you know, sometimes you get labeled as an angry Black man.”

If airmen don’t feel like they’re supported in their own units, it’s unlikely they will trust opening up to commanders on an issue as big as Fortson’s shooting, he said.

Wright is now thinking about writing another column, and maybe getting involved on the issue again. But he’s not sure what needs to be done to prevent a future incident. Bringing the sheriff’s deputies on base to help them see Black airmen differently won’t fix the problem without a larger, societal change, he said. Asking commanders to have the equivalent of “the talk” with Black airmen that parents have with their Black children about encounters with the police isn’t a solution either.

“I don’t know that commanders could say anything to airmen that would necessarily be helpful about, ‘if the police knock on your door, do this, don’t do that,’ ” Wright said. “Young African American males, they know the drill, right? They already know the story. And, still, it’s not enough.”

Wright has two sons, ages 22 and 27. His heart has been breaking for Fortson’s mother, who buries her 23-year-old son on Friday.

“That could have easily been one of my sons,” Wright said.

___

Lauer reported from Philadelphia. Aaron Morrison in New York City contributed to this report.

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State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com

Published

5 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com

There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.

Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).

The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.

For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.

The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.

The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.

This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.

So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.

Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.

Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.

Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.

Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.

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State attorney says JEA board did not violate Florida’s Sunshine Law

Published

13 hours ago

December 21, 2024

Press Room

State attorney says JEA board did not violate Florida’s Sunshine Law

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The state attorney for northeast Florida said there’s no evidence that members of the JEA board violated Florida’s “Sunshine Law” with discussions surrounding the resignation and replacement of former CEO Jay Stowe.

A source said JEA leaders met at an Avondale coffee shop to discuss the CEO stepping down. It sparked an investigation

In May, a JEA employee filed a complaint with the city’s inspector general prompting the investigation.

The Sunshine Law requires that public business be conducted at publicly-noticed meetings.

In October, the inspector general found that some board members did talk business outside of the meetings but the report made no determination on whether the Sunshine Law was violated and referred the matter to the State Attorney’s Office.

The state attorney’s office conducted its own investigation and said the allegations were “unwarranted and unfounded.”

DOCUMENT: State attorney’s report on JEA Sunshine Law investigation

It said the outside conversations did not involve JEA board business or were not covered by the Sunshine Law. The report also said that even if there had been evidence of a Sunshine Law violation, the fact that the decision to appoint Vickie Cavey as interim, and later permanent, managing director and CEO were made during public meetings would have resolved any purported violation.

Cavey responded to the investigation.

“JEA appreciates the thorough investigation by the State Attorney’s Office,” Cavey said. “The JEA Board recognizes the importance of the Sunshine Law and its obligations to comply. The report determined JEA board members complied with the law and that no criminal conduct occurred. The baseless allegations by a former employee cast a shadow over the good work our board and more than 2,200 employees do each and every day delivering foundational services to Northeast Florida. Maintaining the trust of our community is of utmost importance and this report could not have provided a clearer vindication.”

Board Chair Joseph DiSalvo made this statement in response to the report.

“On behalf of the board of directors, we appreciate the diligent work of the State Attorney’s Office. I think it is important to note their findings reinforce the fact that each member on the JEA Board of Directors fully embrace transparency and Sunshine Law compliance and our commitment to remain above reproach when it comes to ethics and integrity,” DiSalvo said.

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Florida Gators Edge Scheduled to Visit SEC Rival

Published

21 hours ago

December 21, 2024

Press Room

Florida Gators Edge Scheduled to Visit SEC Rival

The Florida Gators look to be losing edge rusher TJ Searcy to the transfer portal after he played two seasons in Gainesville. Searcy may not move too far away as he is reportedly visiting the Auburn Tigers this weekend.

READ MORE: DJ Lagway wins the Gasparilla Bowl MVP

Searcy’s 247Sports transfer portal ranking comes in at No. 90 overall and 12th edge. Evaluating his accomplishments for the orange and blue, he’s clearly a quality player. Still, the Gators should not be overly concerned about losing Searcy and here are two reasons why.

First, the Gators are working with extensive NIL money. According to Saturday Down South’s Neil Blackmon, the buyout money once set aside to replace Billy Napier will go toward improving the Florida football roster, as his quote defines.

“Multiple sources close to the program told SDS that part of the logic in retaining Napier for 2025, as opposed to paying his $26.5-million buyout, half of which would have been due up front, was to use money raised for the buyout in the NIL space this offseason.”

Second, keep in mind that the teams currently competing in the College Football Playoff will see several players enter the transfer portal after their seasons conclude. Thus, even if the Gators do not find Searcy’s replacement from the current crop of players available, more talent will become available.

Third, prior to winning his fourth game in a row to close the season, head coach Billy Napier hinted that the Gators felt pretty good at edge and could still make additions.

“Wish TJ nothing by the best,” said Napier. “And maybe we’re not done there. We’ll see. But just think it’s a product of the world we’re living in, right? So, TJ has done a great job for us. It’s been a productive player. He’s done a good job off the field. Really grown up a lot. Proud of him, nothing but respectful.”

In the end, Florida loses a quality player in Searcy, but it will not be the Gators’ undoing and a comparable replacement should be coming to Gainesville.

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