From [Ralph Nader] The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran.

Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza—an exposed, defenseless population of 2.3 million people in an enclave the geographic size of Pennsylvania. The Associated Press notes that U.S. military historian Robert Pape believes, “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” and that, “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

Why? One reason is that the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health certifies deaths in Gaza based on reports from hospitals and morgues that were mostly blown up well over a year ago. (They report presently around 73,000 fatalities.) But Hamas has admitted that there are tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble, thousands more blown into bits or incinerated and unidentifiable. They also say their figures do not include the collateral deaths (e.g., spreading fires) from the Israeli military F-16 bombings and relentless shelling of the people of Gaza or the deaths caused by the Israeli government-imposed blocking of food, medicine, healthcare, water, fuel, electricity and shelter. From other conflict zones around the world, the ratio of collateral deaths is anywhere from 3 to 13 times the deaths by violent weaponry.

The Israeli regime is fine with the Hamas undercount because they and the U.S. State Department know the real death toll (along with the injury count) is much, much higher. Hamas knows that on October 7, 2023, the multi-layered Israeli border security apparatus was shaky. They then launched what turned out to be a suicide-homicide assault over the border, resulting in some 1400 deaths as compared with the nearly 1200 people—about 400 of them soldiers and police—shot by the Hamas raiders. To this day, with most Israelis skeptical, Netanyahu has blocked an independent official investigation of the mysterious collapse of the multi-tiered Israeli border security complex.

Netanyahu attributes it to negligence. There were, however, too many separate warnings, including 24-hour Israeli spotters from the Israeli side, plus Israel having the Hamas plans a year earlier, to accept that improbable pretext.

Hamas, on the other hand, doesn’t mind the world media repeating again and again their minimal, identifiable death count. They certainly do not want the realistic estimate death count to further outrage their subjects because Hamas did not protect the civilian population, and did not have any air-raid shelters. Hamas certainly knew what was coming from the ultra-modern, savage Israeli military backed by co-belligerent Joe Biden’s U.S. ultra-modern and lethal military industrial complex.

There is another media reluctance operating. The reports by eyewitnesses, and scholarly and military weaponry specialists, who arrive at minimum and maximum ranges of deaths (most of whom are children and women) bring repulsive denunciations and charges of anti-Semitism.

Moreover, apologists for endless Israeli slaughter, like Bret Stephens, the mouthpiece of Netanyahu on the New York Timesopinion page, have used the low Hamas figures to counter charges of Israeli genocide. If it was genocide, they inaccurately claim, the death toll would be much higher. In 2025, two major Israeli human‑rights organizations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel – each issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (see reporting from Amnesty International).

Well, the death toll is much higher, over 600,000 lives destroyed or over 25% of Gaza’s original population. This leaves an improbable nearly 75% still alive, though most are sick, injured, or dying. Reporting reality would intensify the political, diplomatic, and civic determination to stop the killing, let in adequate humanitarian aid, and move toward resolving this conflict.

Analysts reported by The Lancet, international relief organizations, universities, and UN agencies all estimate hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians from violent bombs, artillery, snipers, and the resultant, related secondary effects noted above.

For example, Professor Emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, back in April 2025 estimated the tonnage of explosives dropped on Gaza was the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs, but more lethal because these daily projectiles are more targeted. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian physician who has served tours of duty at crumbling Gaza hospitals, puts the estimate at “hundreds of thousands of dead.”

In a detailed, footnoted series of reports (“The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”), Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza’s killing fields, has published much probative evidence by dozens of other health workers who experienced the ghastly horrors. These included the deliberate targeting by Israeli terrorist snipers of little children receiving bullets in their brains and hearts. (See Foreign doctors say Israel systematically targeting Gaza’s children: Report – Al Jazeera, September 14, 2025).

The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths.

The respected chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Devi Sridhar, long ago was offering estimates far higher than those of Hamas.

The Hill reported that in November 2023, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified to a House committee that the actual number of Palestinians killed in Gaza was likely higher than the figures then being reported by Gaza health authorities at that time. She was immediately silenced and never again spoke about Israel’s genocidal casualties. The State Department has been blocking a Freedom of Information demand for two years.

The huge Israeli bloc in Congress, of course, has allowed no hearings on the toll made possible by deadly U.S. weapons (including shipping over white phosphorus artillery shells)— costing billions of dollars paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that Israel used white phosphorus munitions in military operations in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border shortly after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Reporters could have gotten informed assessments and estimates about the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza from Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the World Central Kitchen, and other aid groups. Scores of infants and children in Gaza are dying every day from disease, malnutrition, and untreated injuries. There are no healthcare facilities for them. The shameful U.S. newspapers, magazines, television, and radio disrespect the Palestinians in both life and death, something they would never dare to do if the shoe were on the other foot! [MORE]

From [HERE] Palestinian journalist Muhannad Qishta yearns to visit the graves of his sisters – Reem and Walaa – in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, but there is a problem: they no longer exist on a map.

The Sheikh Mohammed cemetery in the Maan area of Khan Younis has been wiped from the map, and replaced by the tents and armoured vehicles of an Israeli military outpost, according to recently updated satellite imagery added to Google Earth.

“Even the dead have not been spared from this war,” Qishta told Al Jazeera. “How will I feel if I go and find the place a desert, without my sisters’ graves to read a prayer over?”

The high-resolution pictures, captured on February 25, 2026, expose a landscape where entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to ash, and the surviving population is squeezed into suffocating encampments that spill onto the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea.

For Palestinians, the updated maps provide a devastating, wide-angle view of an ongoing genocide that has probably killed nearly [2 million people].

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed 94 percent of Gaza’s cemeteries, transforming places of memory into military barracks. [MORE]

Footage released by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem shows the moment an Israeli soldier opened fire on a vehicle in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and killed a seven-month-old baby, Sam Abu Haikal.

The killing occurred on Friday when Sam’s father, Fahd Abu Haikal, was driving home in the city of Hebron, when IDF soldiers appeared on the road. The IDF claimed that a soldier fired on the car after they “perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them,” but the footage from B’Tselem shows the car was slowing down and coming to a stop.

“The footage clearly shows that the Israeli soldier fired at the car as it was slowing to a stop. The car was far from the soldiers and posed no danger to them whatsoever,” B’Tselem said in a statement on the video. [more]

Jad’s father, Youssef Suleiman, was beyond grief. He wept uncontrollably as he bent over his son’s lifeless body, caressing and kissing his face. “I am not able to speak,” Suleiman told Drop Site News. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air. He had removed his son’s backpack and was clutching it to his chest. “My son is 8 years old. What was his crime? He was coming home from school. This is his bag, there is blood on it. This is the bag. This is the bag,” he repeated, unable to continue.

Three Palestinians were killed in the attack, including eight-year-old Jad and a 70-year-old man. Several others were wounded in the strike and brought into Shifa on stretchers, bloodied and wincing in pain.

“You leave your house, not knowing whether you are going to return or whether you are going to die,” Jad’s aunt, Warda Muhaysin, told Drop Site. “There is blood in the streets. It’s enough. Enough…where is the ceasefire people are talking about?” [MORE]

According to Israel’s Channel 13, “all the cameras, memory cards and films that documented the atrocities were collected, but two and a half years later, these materials have not been returned to the communities and bereaved families who are desperate for information, and even feel that someone is hiding it from them.”

Soon after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, special units from the IDF, the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet and Israel’s investigation unit Lahav 433 collected photo and video documentation of the violence, confiscating cell phones, individual cameras, kibbutz security cameras and more. 

“They disconnected what was needed, took it and moved on – that was the last time we saw the materials,” said an Israeli army reservist who participated in the collection mission.

According to the head of the Kfar Aza kibbutz – the site of a number of a series of atrocity hoaxes spun out in the early days after the attack – community members cooperated with investigators at the time. Now, years after the events, these families are wondering why documentation of their loved ones’ fates has yet to be returned to them. 

Even Sabine Taasa, who was made an emblem of Israeli victimhood after her husband and one of her sons were killed on Oct. 7, is now clashing with Israeli authorities over footage of that day. 

Taasa’s 17-year-old son, Or, was killed on Zikim beach. According to Channel 13, Taasa says she saw a video her son filmed in the moments leading up to his death, but when authorities returned his phone to her, no such video remained. The outlet says this is not an isolated incident. 

An IDF probe found that soldiers abandoned civilians hiding in a bathroom there and then left their bodies for a week.

Channel 13 reports that Israeli police claimed Lahav 433 is still investigating the events in kibbutz Kfar Aza and no indictments have yet been filed, so returning evidence at this stage could jeopardize their criminal case. Meanwhile, the IDF rejected all accusations that it is withholding documentation and says it is in the final stages of adopting policies for how this type of evidence will be returned to communities and families. 

On October 7, the Israeli government issued video Hannibal Directive orders which led Apache helicopter pilots and tank gunners to take aim at Israel’s own citizens in the Gaza envelope, supposedly to prevent them from being taken hostage. Israeli Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram personally ordered a tank crew to shell a home in Kibbutz Be’eri, knowing it was filled with Israeli citizens who had been taken captive by Hamas fighters seeking to negotiate a way out of the standoff. A dozen Israelis were killed in the strike, leaving behind “a house full of corpses,” according to the lone Israeli survivor. One Israeli tank gunner from an all-female unit similarly revealed that she was ordered to shell Israeli homes without knowing who was inside. An Israeli police investigation subsequently revealed that Israeli helicopters shelled the Nova Electronic Music festival on October 7. [MORE]

From [HERE] In August 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci received a U.S. intelligence report suggesting the COVID-19 virus was developed in Chinese and U.S. labs as a bat vaccine, that it subsequently leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it contained characteristics that would make it resistant to mRNA vaccines.

The report, authored by Joseph Murphy, a major with the U.S. Marine Corps, and printed on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) letterhead, was part of a tranche of documents Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released Thursday as part of his ongoing congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

The documents show that not only did Fauci receive the DARPA report, but that in an Aug. 25, 2021, email to National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials, he called it “important.” “Let us discuss my going down to the White House to review the report,” Fauci wrote.

The document tranche also contained evidence that Fauci cultivated ties with intelligence agencies at least as early as 2003, the same year he received a CIA report warning of the dangers of genetically manipulating coronaviruses.

Fauci later used these intelligence connections to sway the intelligence community to support the zoonotic theory of COVID-19’s origin, the documents show. [MORE]

The Connecticut Inspector General’s Office, which is responsible for reviewing every police shooting in the state, filed an arrest warrant for former officer Joseph Magnano after a roughly two-and-a-half-month investigation into the shooting.

Magnano, who was fired from his job with the Hartford Police Department in March, was arrested on Monday and arraigned in Hartford Superior Court, where he was released on $50,000 bail.

The criminal charge filed against Magnano marks only the second time that the Inspector General’s Office has sought to prosecute a police officer for killing someone while in the line of duty. 

The special prosecutor’s office similarly charged Brian North, a Connecticut State Trooper, with manslaughter in 2022 after he shot and killed 19-year-old Mubarak Soulemane following a high-speed chase.

North was eventually acquitted by a jury after a week-long trial.

Eliot Prescott, who was appointed as inspector general last year, made the decision to charge Magnano for killing Jones in a relatively short period of time compared to many other investigations that the office has conducted in recent years.

Police body camera footage captured nearly every angle of the shooting in Harford on Feb. 27.

From [HERE] The News4JAX report details a growing controversy surrounding the arrest of 24-year-old Dasaun Williams, whose violent encounter with officers from the Jacksonville (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office (JSO) has sparked public outrage and renewed scrutiny of police use of force. BOSSIP previously reported on Williams’ November arrest during an undercover drug and gang investigation, but body camera footage only surfaced months later after his family obtained and shared it publicly.

The video quickly spread online, prompting widespread concern and dozens of viewer requests for the outlet to investigate whether officers used excessive force. Footage appears to show Williams being struck during the arrest, and images taken afterward show him with a visibly swollen face. Despite this, attorneys for Williams say the official police report makes no mention of any use of force—an omission that has raised serious questions about transparency and accountability within the department.

Williams now faces 27 felony charges, including drug trafficking, selling fentanyl and methamphetamine, and firearms-related offenses. Prosecutors have declined a proposed plea deal, meaning the case is continuing to move through the legal system even as controversy over the arrest intensifies.

From [HERE] Albuquerque will pay $6.5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit after APD shot and killed Jesus Crosby while he held nail clippers.

Police shot Crosby outside APD headquarters in November 2022.

Lapel video shows officers tried to talk to Crosby while he held what they believed was a knife. It was later identified as a pair of nail clippers.

Officers told Crosby several times to drop the item before they opened fire.

Crosby’s family sued the city for wrongful death, arguing armed officers should not have responded to a mental health crisis.

The city and Crosby’s family have now agreed to the $6.5 million settlement.

The city attorney’s office said “the incident should have been handled differently” and said the city continues to improve its response to people experiencing a mental health crisis.

"I think ultimately the jury understood the magnitude of the loss that these two children suffered," John Demas, the attorney representing the family, said. "Their dad was extremely close, very present, loved them tremendously."

Juan Carlos Rodriguez was on the side of Interstate 5 near Sutterville Road helping his brother, who had just run out of gas, when Nangle crossed over the solid white line in an unmarked police car and struck them. Both brothers died.

"This is a police officer who's trained and sworn to protect, and his negligence killed two people, and he had to be held accountable," Demas said.

Nangle was charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

"He was sentenced to some community service,” Demas said.

Demas explained that Jessica Romero, the mother of Rodriguez’s children, then pursued the case in civil court.

"It was important for her to let the justice system play out through the civil case," Demas said.

Last week, the jury returned a unanimous verdict, ordering the city of Sacramento to pay $32 million to Rodriguez’s children, now 10 and 13 years old. [MORE]

Within an hour, police had found a white van, crashed into it twice on purpose, and fired 27 shots at the driver while the vehicle lay on its side, burning. At least eight cops watched as 34-year-old Navy veteran John Andrew Jenuwine bled out and died inside.

Of several inconsistencies in the police response, one stood out: The only physical description provided to the dispatcher was that “two Black guys” were driving the van, and a caller said they’d brandished a handgun at his wife. Jenuwine was white, driving alone, and unarmed.

That’s not what police told Jenuwine’s parents when they contacted them the following evening, 17 hours after killing their son.

“We were told that there was an exchange of gunfire, and that John was killed,” John’s father, Larry Jenuwine, told The Intercept. “Call it naïveté or whatever you want to call it, but our first thoughts were, ‘Oh my God, what did he do, why did he cause this?’” 

On the phone with Larry and Kelly, John’s mother, a deputy with the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office claimed their recently deceased son had a gun. But Jenuwine, an industrial field engineer traveling to repair million-dollar lasers, just had his work equipment; no gun was ever found in his van. And the officers who caused two intentional collisions appear to have violated their own policies, which the department updated after the police killing of George Floyd — testing the limits of post-2020 police reforms. [MORE]

Kohen Kartier Wiley was a 1-year-old child from Senatobia, Mississippi, who was fatally shot by police on June 14, 2026, in the parking lot of a Walmart. The incident occurred while officers were responding to a shoplifting call; state investigators stated that the driver of the vehicle, carrying Kohen and his mother Vellesiya Wiley, drove toward officers, prompting an officer to fire into the car.

Kohen was pronounced dead at a local hospital, and a family friend riding in the vehicle was critically injured. While law enforcement claims the driver nearly struck an officer, Kohen’s mother stated she was attempting to show officers the baby in her arms and that the car was not driving aggressively. The involved officer has been placed on administrative leave, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is conducting an independent probe.

Ben Crump is representing the family.

From [HERE] “One-Year-Old Boy Killed After Officer Fires at Vehicle in Mississippi,” said the New York Times headline (6/16/26). So, a “one-year-old boy”—what most people would call a baby—was “killed after” a police officer fired at a vehicle, but there’s no verb you could use to connect those two things?

The Times subhed continued that pacifying work:

It is not entirely clear what led up to the shooting, but the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said that police officers were responding to a shoplifting call.

“Ohh, shoplifting…!” we’re evidently supposed to say, before turning the page; that might make the baby murder make sense. I don’t need to say that baby was Black.

There will be more coverage of this heartbreaking, infuriating news about cops in Senatobia, Mississippi, called to the five-alarm crisis of someone purportedly shoplifting diapers, opening fire into a car whose driver “allegedly drove toward them.”

But in the meantime, please think hard about reporting that tells you to calm down, that suggests that, just maybe, nothing wrong happened at all. As ABC News (6/18/26) put it in a piece on how the “officer involved in shooting outside Walmart that killed 1-year-old boy” has been placed on leave: “One-year-old Kohen Wiley was killed, according to the family’s attorney.”

So maybe he’s not dead? Or he died from something other than the gun of the “involved officer”? Caution in reporting is valuable, but when it’s mainly deployed to protect the inflicters of state violence (FAIR.org, 7/11/16), you have to ask if it’s really a principle at all.

VERDICT LOOKS RACIST AND PROBABLY IS From [HERE] Karmelo Anthony filed a notice to appeal his first-degree murder conviction, court records show.

Anthony, 19, filed the notice Wednesday, just a day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf to death at a 2025 Texas high school track meet.

The notice is not an official appeal, but is an official declaration that Anthony plans to file an appeal.

Anthony’s family and his supporters have repeatedly claimed he was the victim of racism in the prosecution, which legal experts predicted would most likely take center stage in the appeal.

“They’re going to throw the kitchen sink at this,” Texas criminal defense attorney Jeremy Rosenthal told The Post, explaining “racial allegations of jury strikes” are “the most obvious thing that jumps off the page.”

Those racial allegations arose during the jury selection, when prosecutors objected to three black candidates and Anthony’s attorney claimed the objections were racially motivated.

Prosecutors were then required to explain why their motivations were not racial and said because the individuals were teachers they may have biased sympathies towards either the defendant and victim, who were both high school juniors.

From [HERE] A white sheriff's deputy was found guilty of reckless homicide at trial Thursday for shooting a Black man who was bringing sandwiches to his grandmother's house.

The killing of Casey Goodson Jr. by Jason Meade in December 2020 had provoked outrage in Ohio.

Trial jurors said they couldn't agree on the more serious charge of murder, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial on that count.

Meade, who is White, said his shooting of Goodson — five times in the back and once in the side — was justified because he saw the 23-year-old holding a gun and turning toward him in the doorway of the house in Columbus. But no one else testified they saw Goodson holding the gun he was licensed to carry, and no cameras recorded the shooting.

This was Meade's second murder trial after the first one ended in a mistrial two years ago. He is now the second White law enforcement officer to be convicted in the killing of a Black man in the state since the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minnesota sparked national protests.

Tamala Payne, Goodson's mother, said the guilty verdict gives her family closure and peace. She previously told CBS News that she believed her son had been "murdered in cold blood.

Meade had testified in the first trial that he pursued Goodson after the man waved a gun at him as they passed each other in their vehicles. According to his family and prosecutors, Goodson was holding a bag of Subway sandwiches in one hand and his keys in the other, and was listening to music through earbuds when he was killed.

Meade did not take the stand at his second trial.

Prosecutors also said the evidence suggests the gun wasn't in his hands, but in a flimsy holder under his belt. They added it was found under his body, its safety mechanism still engaged, as Goodson laid mortally wounded on the kitchen floor of his grandmother's house.

Meade, now 47, retired from the Franklin County Sheriff's Department in 2021. He's also a Baptist pastor. His attorney cited Meade's oral and written accounts of what happened, and said the shooting was justified.

Ohio law defines murder as the purposeful causing of a death, while the lesser charge of reckless murder means the defendant acted recklessly in causing a death. The former is punishable by up to life in prison, while the latter carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

he complaint states in relevant part,

“a group of officers tasked to the U.S. Marshals were in the neighborhood to arrest someone that was not Casey and was in no way affiliated with Casey. Jason Meade was working with the task force as a member of their Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (SOFAST) and as a member of their District Fugitive Task Force (DTF). The U.S. Marshals were heavily armed, and Jason Meade was not in uniform and was carrying a rifle.

The SOFAST and DTF did not find their target, however the target’s sister did encounter Meade when he and his colleagues raided her home. As she stated in a Facebook post, “#JasonMeade was already on bullshit before he left my house. Knowing I wasn’t dressed busted in my room knowing I was naked and we had a brief argument as he felt I had ‘plenty of time’ to get dressed. They were aware my brother was AT WORK. Truth be told, they shouldn’t have been on this street PERIOD. It was as simple as communicating with the parties involved.” The sister also later described Meade as a ticking time bomb who was extremely angry and aggressive when inside of her home.

The mission of SOFAST and DTF ended without apprehending their target, and the members of the team began to disperse.

Around this time, Casey had finished his appointment at the dentist. After leaving, Casey went to Subway to buy sandwiches for his family.

As Casey was returning home from Subway, upon information and belief, Jason Meade saw Casey and followed Casey back to his home.

Upon information and belief, Casey arrived home, parked, and exited his vehicle. He grabbed the bag of subway sandwiches, and began walking toward the side of the house to enter through the side door.

Casey was not committing any crime, was not suspected of committing any crime and did not present any threat to Meade or anyone else. He was simply attempting to enter his own home.

Jason Meade—armed with a rifle— targeted and hunted Casey, following him as Casey proceeded towards his house.

Casey proceeded to enter the side door of the house. The side door of the house is comprised of an exterior door with a metal-screen, and a wooden interior door with a lock. Casey opened the exterior door and used his keys to unlock the wooden door. As Casey unlocked the wooden door, Jason Meade opened fire. Casey was entering through the door when Jason Meade shot him to death.

Meade fired six bullets into Casey’s body with his rifle. Two bullets pierced Casey’s back, ripping through his body, bullet’s trajectory exiting through his chest, next to his heart.

Another bullet pierced Casey’s back, about six inches from where the first and second bullet pierced his body, exiting directly left to his chest.

Meade fired another bullet into Casey’s left-lower-back. Unlike Jason Meade’s first, second, and third bullet, the fourth bullet did not rip through Casey’s body. Instead, it blew a chunk of flesh off of Casey’s body.

Meade fired another bullet into Casey’s lower-right-back, ripped through Casey’s body up to Casey’s chest.

A sixth bullet entered Casey’s right buttock and remained lodged directly above his hip bone. At least three of the bullets flew through the metal screen, shattering the glass contained within the door.

Wound mapping provided Bauer Forensics demonstrates that Meade shot Casey all six times while Casey was facing away from him, entering his home.

Nine members of Casey’s family were in the house at that time but did not know that Meade was nearby. They did not hear any alleged orders or commands from Meade.

When Casey’s family heard gunshots and the glass in the metal screen door shattering, they ran toward the door to see what was happening. There, Casey’s family members observed Casey lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding to death.

While still in the house, an officer pointed his rifle at Tamala’s brother, who was holding his three-year old daughter and commanded them to “get out of the house before [he] shoots them too.”

Casey’s grandmother suffered a stroke that night, which caused her to fall and injure her head in her own home—the same place where Jason Meade shot her grandson in the back six times.

This shooting was unjustified, objectively unreasonable, and constituted excessive force, in violation of Casey’s constitutional rights. [MORE]

The Trump Justice Department just sharpened its attack on Washington, D.C.’s gun-control regime, and this time the target is bigger than a single bad law.

In a First Amended Complaint filed May 14, 2026, the United States argues that the District of Columbia, its Metropolitan Police Department, and Acting Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll are violating the Second Amendment by enforcing local laws that ban AR-15-style rifles and suppressors. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks a federal judge to declare those bans unconstitutional and block D.C. from enforcing them.

This is not another private citizen begging the courts to recognize what the Constitution already says. This is the United States government suing the District of Columbia and saying, in plain terms, that D.C.’s gun laws deprive Americans of their civil rights.

That is a major shift.

For decades, anti-gun politicians have treated the Second Amendment like a second-class right. They have banned commonly owned rifles, criminalized ordinary gun parts and accessories, buried lawful owners in registration schemes, and then acted shocked when Americans objected. D.C. has long been one of the worst offenders. This amended complaint puts that record directly in the federal government’s crosshairs.

The filing opens with the point gun owners have been making since Heller: the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing right, not a privilege handed out by politicians. DOJ cites Heller, McDonald, and Bruen to argue that law-abiding Americans have the right to possess and use arms that are in common use for lawful purposes. [MORE]

From [HERE] Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez were charged with manslaughter for the 2018 killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell during an attempted arrest for car theft.

• The Torrance cops were originally cleared of wrongdoing, but ex-Dist. Atty. George Gascón reopened the investigation in 2020 after running a campaign focused on police accountability.

• Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announced late last year he did not believe the case could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Manslaughter charges were officially dismissed Thursday against two Torrance police officers charged in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, a car theft suspect who was holding an air rifle at the time he was killed.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announced his intention to drop the case, which was filed by his predecessor late last year. But Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta delayed a decision on the motion to dismiss due to a number of technical issues over the past six months, before finally ending the case against Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez on Thursday morning. 

Concannon and Chavez were indicted in 2023 for killing Mitchell, 23, in 2018. Mitchell was sitting in his car in a supermarket lot with an air rifle between his knees at the time he was killed. While Mitchell never pointed the weapon at either officer, Concannon told authorities he saw Mitchell reaching for what he believed was a real gun when he opened fire, according to court records.

The case spanned three district attorney’s office administrations. Then-Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey initially cleared the officers of wrongdoing, but Dist. Atty. George Gascón reopened the case and assigned a special prosecutor to review her decision. A grand jury indicted both men in 2023. 

Both officers were investigated amid a racist text-messaging scandal within the Torrance Police Department in 2021, where more than a dozen officers were found to have shared a litany of texts replete with antisemitic and homophobic slurs, promises of violence against Black suspects and jokes about use of excessive force. Concannon was ultimately found not to have sent any racist texts. Chavez did send several messages, according to the district attorney’s office’s motion to dismiss the charges.

Mitchell was Black, and activists have suggested the texts prove racial animus played a role in the case. In one string of messages, officers used the N-word to describe Mitchell’s relatives and joked about what would happen after Concannon and Chavez’s names were made public. 

“Gun cleaning party at my house when they release my name??” Chavez asked, according to the dismissal motion.

“Yes absolutely let’s all just post in your yard with lawn chairs in a [firing] squad,” another replied, according to a district attorney’s office report on the text messages made public during a separate court proceeding in 2022.

The dismissal played out before a half-full courtroom, with Mitchell’s mother flanked by organizers from Black Lives Matter L.A. and other police accountability activists. In the back row sat several supporters of Concannon and Chavez, including a Torrance police officer in full uniform. 

“Please stop protecting them when they’re doing wrong. Because when you do that, it breaks the trust of the people,” Mitchell’s mother, Sherilyn Haines, pleaded to Ohta before he ruled. “They’re going to keep on killing our kids with the same ‘We feared for our life’ speech.”

When Ohta finished reading his 34-page ruling, several protesters chanted Mitchell’s name and yelled at Concannon, calling him a “murderer.” Chavez did not attend the hearing. 

Mitchell’s family was awarded $7.8 million to settle a wrongful death suit in 2022, shortly after a judge granted their discovery request for records tied to the “text message scandal” dating back to 2016. 

The family’s civil attorney, Peter Carr, questioned the rationale behind Hochman’s move to dismiss, arguing prosecutors had been “shifting justification for a pre-determined conclusion” across multiple filings. He noted their initial motion to dismiss argued Ohta had disallowed critical evidence in the case. Ohta later said the district attorney’s description was inaccurate.

In granting the motion, however, Ohta said he found no objective evidence that the district attorney’s office was dismissing the case in bad faith.

“I am profoundly pleased that this nightmare is finally over for my client,” said Chavez’s attorney, Tom Yu. “Police officers all over this country must make split-second decisions every day and unfortunately, some decisions include the use of deadly force.” 

Yu said he believed the shooting was “completely justified.”

Concannon remains on administrative leave with the Torrance Police Department, according to an agency spokesman. Chavez is no longer a Torrance police officer. 

The officers’ attorneys have long argued Gascón overstepped his bounds in reopening the case and that the independent prosecutor he hired, Lawrence Middleton, had made several missteps in filing charges. 

A report generated last year by a special prosecutor Hochman hired to review cases Gascón reopened found that Middleton failed to present relevant exculpatory evidence to grand jurors and improperly instructed the panel on the elements of the crime of voluntary manslaughter.

Middleton, who was fired by Hochman shortly after his 2024 election, was present in court but declined to comment.

Hochman has faced criticism for his handling of police use-of-force cases, with some questioning his decisions to offer lenient plea deals and dismiss charges against several officers. Last month, however, Hochman charged a California Highway Patrol Officer with murder after he caused an on-duty crash that contributed to multiple deaths.

From [HERE] Officials in Louisiana have agreed to a tentative $4.8 million settlement with the family of Ronald Greene, a Black motorist who died following a violent 2019 roadside arrest involving five white police officers, AP reported citing people familiar with the agreement.

The proposed settlement would resolve a federal wrongful death lawsuit filed by Greene’s family after his murder by unaccountable white police officers.

In 2021 after the Associated Press obtained and released body-camera and surveillance footage showing officers from the Louisiana State Police repeatedly punching, kicking and using stun guns on Greene during the arrest near the city of Monroe.

The footage contradicted the official account of the incident.

The settlement agreement still requires approval from the Louisiana Legislature before becoming final.

Federal prosecutors declined charges

Despite the graphic footage and public criticism, federal prosecutors last year declined to file criminal charges against the troopers involved in Greene’s arrest and death. The case was also a low priority to Joe Biden’s DOJ who took no action during his 4 year term.

For nearly two years after Greene’s death, authorities maintained that the 49-year-old died after crashing his vehicle into a tree following a high-speed police chase.

State police initially refused to release arrest footage, fuelling accusations of a cover-up.

However, video later obtained by the the news outlet showed Greene apologising to officers after the chase before being subjected to repeated force.

The footage showed officers using stun guns on the unarmed Greene, wrestling him to the ground and placing him in a chokehold.

Troopers were also seen punching Greene and dragging him face down while his hands were cuffed and his legs shackled.

According to reports, Greene was later left lying on the ground without immediate medical aid.

Traffic stop began over unspecified violation

Authorities never provided a basis for the traffic stop - which means the stop was unconstitutional because it violated the Black man’s so-called 4th Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable stops, searches, detentions and alleged “freedom.” The media, which is white owned and controlled enterprise that defends the system of authority, chose to characterize said 4th Amendment violation “as an unspecified traffic violation" before the encounter escalated into a pursuit and violent arrest.”[MORE]

From [HERE] and [HERE]. In a May 8, 2022, post on X, Wes Moore wrote, “When I was an Army captain and led soldiers into combat in Afghanistan, we lived by a simple principle: Leave no one behind.”

After a yearlong investigation, Spotlight on Maryland found no documentary evidence that Moore led soldiers into combat, but it is representative of how Moore, now governor of Maryland, often speaks about his time in Afghanistan, using language that could lead one to reasonably believe he was a leader of front-line paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne Division and that he experienced direct-fire combat.

It’s a claim Spotlight on Maryland has asked Moore and his superior officer, then Lt. Col. Mike Fenzel, to provide evidence of, but a request they have denied.

Moore’s public narrative about experiencing direct-fire combat predates the 2022 post.

In 2014, a year before releasing his second book, Moore told the USO’s magazine, “On Patrol,” that part of his primary mission in Afghanistan “…was to engage and draw offensive engagements [from the enemy],” something that in military terminology is called a “movement to contact,” which is an operation to establish or regain contact with the enemy typically conducted by combat units such as the infantry, a branch of the Army Moore did not serve in.

The introduction to his 2015 book, “The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters,” also leads readers to believe that Moore was an experienced combat leader. In vivid language, he recounts a firefight he experienced during his 2005-’06 deployment to Afghanistan, saying, “We knew there was a very good chance we’d be shot at when we got to Afghanistan … when I heard those first bullets, for a moment I felt my body flood with fear and tried not to let the fear control me.”

In remarkably descriptive language, Moore writes of “…the sound of shells buzzing past your ears, a flurry of divots [from enemy bullets] leaping out of the earth around your feet.” He talks of leading his paratroopers and responding with “overwhelming force,” then walking away alive and grateful after the engagement with a new resolve to question why his own life matters.

The dramatic account of this firefight was repeated by several news outlets in 2015, while Moore was on tour promoting his book, helping to create a perception in the eyes of many that Moore is a combat hero.

In March 2021, Moore also told soon-to-be Orioles owner David Rubenstein, on his peer-to-peer conversations podcast, that he had seen combat.

Rubenstein asked Moore, specifically, if he had asked for an office job to avoid being shot at in Afghanistan, which Moore refuted, saying, “No, not at all. I was very clear. I went over and led a group of paratroopers as a special operations officer over there working in information operations. And we were very much in the field.”

Moore further said, “I literally within the first days of Afghanistan, I started seeing first-hand, literally when you see your first firefight, you start seeing just what kind of fighting is going on in Afghanistan,” indicating to Rubenstein that within days of his arrival in Afghanistan in August 2005, he had participated in a direct-fire combat engagement.

Military records reviewed by Spotlight show no evidence that Moore, a lieutenant assigned as a brigade headquarters staff officer, experienced firefights in Afghanistan as his public narrative conveys.

He was not awarded a decoration for the firefight he describes, nor was he awarded the Army’s Combat Action Badge. The Combat Action Badge would come later in December for a relatively minor indirect fire incident with no casualties that occurred at the base where Moore’s brigade headquarters was located.

“A brigade-level staff officer’s chances of getting into a firefight are slim and none,” said a retired infantry and special forces officer consulted by Spotlight, who requested anonymity out of concern of being doxxed or attacked online. ”Most staff officers stay tied to the tactical operations center, and if they do have to leave the forward operating base, they usually travel with a security element that would lead any tactical response to an attack.” [MORE]