FILM REVIEW: The Woman King

It's been quite awhile since I saw a movie in the theaters, but last weekend I saw two of them! The husband and I intended to see Bros opening weekend with another gay couple but when it turned out they couldn't see it until Sunday we decided to go see The Woman King on Saturday, since it had stellar reviews and was only available in theaters. I'm glad we did!

The Woman King is a star vehicle for Viola Davis, the most Oscar-nominated Black actress of all time (and winner of the 2016 Best Supporting Actress for Fences). However, it is also a rarity among studio films, with a predominantly Black female cast. The movie is about the legendary Agojie, the "virgin African Amazons" who were an all-female army in the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the slave era. The film features John Boyega (The Force Awakens, Small Axe), Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad), Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Jordan Bolger and Hero Fiennes Tiffin. The last actor plays Santo Fereirra, the main white character in the film, a slaver from Brazil who is working with the enemies of the Dahomey to buy and ship captured Africans into slavery in the Americas. He arrives with his interracial friend Malik played by the pulchritudinous Jordan Bolger, who is the son of a Dahomey mother and white father.

Of course any film about slavery is effused with violence, but in this case the violence is mainly done by the Black female characters in the film (the Agojie).  The film is set in 1823 and makes clear that both the Dahomey and the Oyo participated in the slave trade, by selling captured African combatants to the slavers. However in the movie, Davis' character, Nanisca, the head of the Agojie decries the practice to King Ghezo (played by Boyega) and argues the Dahomey could and should trade palm oil with the white man instead. The primary conflict in The Woman King is between the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Oyo Empire, who are much larger and to whom the Dahomey pay tribute to. Dahomey refuses to pay tribute and the two nations go to war, with the smaller Agojie army using the superior tactical and strategic prowess of Davis' General Nanisca to eventually become victorious. However, during the main Oyo-Dahomey battle in the movie some of the main Agojie characters we have been following (played by Lynch and Mbedu) are captured and taken to be sold into slavery. Mbedu's character (Nawi) is bought by Bolger's character (Malik) in order to rescue her. (The two had their "meet-cute" moment earlier in the film when Nawi finds Malik bathing in a nearby waterfall and takes his clothes which for me was a highlight of the movie because Malik is phyne!!)

Although being told explicitly by her king not to go and rescue her captured Agojie soldiers, Nanisca goes anyway and along with her most loyal supporters basically destroys the town/port where slaves were being bought and sold and then transported across the Atlantic.

Overall, The Woman King is a well-done, action film (I think I saw someone call it a "a Black female Gladiator or Braveheart") with exceptional performances by Davis and Mbedu. It is exceedingly violent, almost graphically so, since almost all the combat is hand-to-hand with sharp, bladed weapons, a few primitive  guns and some gunpowder-based explosions. Despite the action genre, there is real emotional relationships depicted between many characters, like Nawi and Malik, Nawi and Nanisca, and Nanisca and Amenza (played by Atim). It's one of the best times I have had at the movies in years!

Title: The Woman King.
Director: Gina Price-Bythewood.
Running Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity.
Release Date: September 16, 2022.
Viewing Date: October 2, 2022.

Writing: A-.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A (4.0/4.0).

Star Rating:  ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

QUEER QUOTE: DNC Joint Statement On Trump/Rubio Appearance In Orlando Near Pulse Nighclub

MadProfessah took this picture in Columbus, Ohio on August 2, 2016

The worst mass shooting in United States history happened just under two months ago (June 12, 2016) in Orlando Florida, at a gay nightclub called Pulse. Today Senator Marcos Rubio and GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump are 10 miles from the site of the shooting, both attending a virulently anti-LGBT event called "Rediscovering God in America." The DNC Chair Donna Brazile and DNC LGBT Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes could not let this pass without commentary, which is today's Queer Quote:

"Instead of honoring the memory of those we lost at Pulse two months ago, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have come to Orlando to headline a gathering of some of the nation’s most incendiary anti-gay bigots. We at the DNC join all people of good conscience in expressing our solidarity with the Orlando LGBT community as they continue to grieve the deadliest shooting in American history. We suggest Trump and Rubio disavow these anti-gay extremists who have likened gay people to Nazis and characterized HIV/AIDS as divine ‘penalties' for being gay. Failing to do so will be yet another example of the utter lack of judgment that makes Trump unfit to serve."

This blog post is not an endorsement or non-endorsement of any political candidate but is my (first-amendment protected) commentary on the appropriateness of major political figures attending an event organized by virulent homophobes so close (in time and space) to the site of the Pulse nightclub massacre where literally dozens and dozens of LGBT individuals were killed.

Worst Mass Shooting In US History At Gay Nightclub in Orlando, Florida (50 Dead, 53 Injured)

The worst mass shooting in U.S. history occurred late Saturday night at an LGBT nightclub called Pulse in Orlando, Florida. Omar Mateen, 29, has been identified as the person armed with an AR-15 and a handgun who killed 50 people and wounded 53 others.

President Barack Obama delivered a live address to the nation on the tragedy:

This is an especially heartbreaking day for all our friends -- our fellow Americans -- who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub -- it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.  So this is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American -- regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation -- is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country. And no act of hate or terror will ever change who we are or the values that make us Americans. Today marks the most deadly shooting in American history. The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.

A very sad day indeed!

Long-Delayed Autopsy Report Shows LAPD Shot Unarmed Black Man In Back At Very Close Range

As Mayor Eric Garcetti promised, the official autopsy report on the August 11 Ezell Ford shooting shows that LAPD officers shot the unarmed, mentally-ill 25-year-old Black male three times including once in the back, with that fatal shot occurring so close that there was a muzzle imprint on his skin.

KTLA reports:

The report was made public more than four months after the Aug. 11 fatal shooting, which caused an outcry from family members and supporters who said Ford was complying with officers’ demands and was on the ground when he was shot several times in the back. 

The county Department of Coroner document showed Ford was shot three times: once in the right side, once in the right back and once in the right arm. The first two shots were fatal, the coroner’s report stated. 

In the area of the gunshot wound to Ford’s back, the surrounding skin had a “muzzle imprint,” the report stated. The cause of death, described as a homicide, was listed as multiple gunshot wounds.

Mayor Garcetti released a statement saying that a "full" and "impartial" investigation is underway.

Hat/tip to KPCC

President Obama Makes Statement About Disturbing Police Activity In Ferguson, MO

President Obama has made an appearance where he uses the term "excessive force" in describing the disturbing situation in Ferguson, MO. Obama where the police have been using aggressively militaristic tactics like tear gas, firing rubber bullets at protesters and arresting journalists to "maintain order" in response to community protests about the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American male, on Saturday August 9.

QUEER QUOTE: LGBT Groups Issue Statement On Michael Brown Killing

The fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old Black man named Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri (just outside St. Louis) has been roiling the internets since it happened on Saturday August 9.

LGBT groups are often criticized by other progressive groups, especially African American civil rights organizations for a lack of reciprocity when it comes to coalition work but today comes word of a joint statement from numerous LGBT groups about the heinous Michael Brown killing:

When communities experience fear, harassment and brutality simply because of who they are or how they look, we are failing as a nation. In light of the recent events in Missouri, it is clearer than ever that there is something profoundly wrong in our country. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community cannot be silent at this moment, because LGBT people come from all races, creeds, faiths and backgrounds, and because all movements of equality are deeply connected. We are all part of the fabric of this nation and the promise of liberty and justice for all is yet to be fulfilled. 

The LGBT community stands with the family of Michael Brown, who was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri. We stand with the mothers and fathers of young Black men and women who fear for the safety of their children each time they leave their homes. We call on the national and local media to be responsible and steadfast in their coverage of this story and others like it--racialized killings that have marred this nation since the beginning of its history. We call on policy makers on all levels of American government not to shrink from action, and we are deeply grateful to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice for their immediate commitment to a thorough investigation. At this moment, we are inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies … but the silence of our friends." 

ACLUCenter for Black Equity, Inc.Equality FederationGay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)GMHCHuman Rights CampaignNational Black Justice CoalitionNational Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)National Center for Transgender EqualityNational Gay and Lesbian Task ForceNational Minority AIDS CouncilNational Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA)PFLAG NationalPride at Work, AFL-CIOSoulforceSoutherners on New Ground (SONG)United AIDS

Good work!

Even while on vacation, President Barack Obama has also commented on the shooting, calling it "heartbreaking."

FILM REVIEW: Fruitvale Station

The other half and I saw Fruitvale Station at the Arclight Cinemas Pasadena when I was back in Los Angeles last week. Fruitvale Station is a movie based on the life of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American man who was fatally shot (in the back, while face down on the pavement!) by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in the early hours of January 1, 2009 in front of a group of his friends while taking the train from partying in San Francisco. The shooting was caught live on multiple cell-phone videos that went viral on the Internet in the days and weeks following the killing. Mehserle was eventually charged with murder, the trial was moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles County but he was only found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years. He served 11 months in prison and was released. He was the first peace officer to be tried for murder for a line-of-duty fatal shooting in over 15 years. The Oscar Grant case was a cause celebre for several years and every New Years Day there are events to remember Oscar in Oakland and Northern California.

Fruitvale Station is the movie about the famous Oscar Grant case. It is filmmaker Ryan Coogler's very first film (although it was executive produced by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker) and stars Malcolm B. Jordan (Chronicle) and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (The Help).

Stylistically, Fruitvale Station is somewhere between a documentary and a drama. It is most definitely not a hagiography of Oscar Grant. We seem him make foolish choices as well as bad ones. But the film makes it clear he loved his daughter Tatiana and her mother very, very much. When he is on the floor of the BART Fruitvale Station after being shot he says to the officer who shot him "Why did you do that? I have a daughter." It is an absolutely devastating moment in the film, which is replete with them. Spencer plays Oscar's mom and the two have a very close relationship. She knows that he has a tendency to wander astray and you can see it in her eyes as she watches her son carefully. The other emotionally devastating scene in the film is the one in which we see Oscar's mom get the news about her son's death and then again when she views the body of her son.

A word must be said about the performance of Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. He is absolutely mesmerizing, despite being on screen for almost every scene one never gets bored or uninterested in what he is doing, even when one is annoyed with the choices his character is making. Hopefully this performance will not be forgotten when the end of the year comes around and film accolades for the year are announced.

That being said, even though it is an emotionally draining experience Fruitvale Station is most definitely worth your time and attention to see. It is exactly the kind of film the medium is made for, to impact the audience in a meaningful and lasting way another art form may not have been able to.

Title: Fruitvale Station.
Director: Ryan Coogler.
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for some violence, language throughout and some drug use.
Release Date: July 26, 2013.
Viewing Date: July 30, 2013.

Writing: A-.
Acting: A.
Visuals: B+.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A/A- (3.85/4.0).

FBI Announces Involvement In McMillian Case

The latest news in the murder of Marco McMillian is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation  has announced that it is going to conduct an investigation of the horrifying death of the Black, gay man whose body was found beaten and burned last week. A suspect, Lawrence Reed, has been named in the case.

The action by the FBI is in response to a letter from the National Black Justice Coalition calling for such an investigation, since Mississippi does not have a hate crime law which includes sexual orientation.

NBJC Executive Director Sharon Lettman-Hicks issued a statement:

After speaking extensively with the family, community and anti-violence coalition members like the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), NBJC feels the perpetuation and validation of the “gay panic” defense is irresponsible. The conflicting reports as well as the current racial and anti-LGBT climate in Mississippi is justification enough for a federal investigation. 

NBJC is standing firmly with Marco McMillian’s family so that their concerns do not fall on deaf ears. The details of this case just aren’t adding up. Whether on the basis of race or sexual orientation, hate is hate. If there is the possibility that McMillian was murdered because of who he is, that warrants the Department of Justice’s involvement.

There are conflicting reports about the relationship between the suspect and the victim and concerns have been raised that a "gay panic" defense may be used by the defendant.

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0

Suspect Named In Murder Of MS Black Gay Man

Lawrence Reed, 22, has been charged with the murder of 33-year-old Marco McMillian, the openly gay black man whose body was found in a local river last week. Multiple media outlets have been reporting on the relationship between Reed and McMillian with the Clarion Ledger getting very specific:

Little is known about Reed, 22, except that he graduated from Broad Street High School in the nearby community of Shelby and had since moved into an apartment in Clarksdale. 

Friends of Reed told Memphis television station WPTY that the two recently had met at a Clarksdale bar and became close. Then, sometime either late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, McMillian made sexual advances on Reed, the friends said, adding that Reed is straight. 

The Clarion-Ledger couldn’t reach Reed’s friends, but it’s also the version of events investigators were told. After being hit on, Reed allegedly snapped, strangled McMillian, then drove McMillian’s SUV to the levee west of Clarksdale and tossed his body near the river. 

Friends of McMillian, however, say the two men were romantically involved and quarreled immediately before the slaying.

Hmmmmm, this really is not a good sign. It looks like the people defending Reed are thinking about pursuing a "gay panic" defense, which although it has been banned in California, probably plays reasonably well in front of a Mississippi jury.

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0

Let's Talk About Gun Control!

The New York Times has a great op-ed by Nicholas Krystof today "Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?" where he brings up the topic of sensible gun control in light of the horrific massacre of 20 children under 10 and 7 adults at an elementary school in Newtown, CT on Friday morning.

Here's an important excerpt:

The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns. 

Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to David Hemenway, a public health specialist at Harvard who has written an excellent book on gun violence. 

So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce the carnage.

and then he goes on to make some concrete suggestions that has improved the situation in other countries:

Other countries offer a road map. In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns. The “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands. 

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings. 

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half. 

Or we can look north to Canada. It now requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it imposes a clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two people vouching for them.

How much longer are people going to let the National Rifle Association prevent reasonable regulations on gun ownership that would help reduce the 30,000 Americans who are killed by these instruments of death every year? Come on, people! Let's talk about gun control.

Tom Tomorrow's Take On Gun Laws

Hat/tip to Daily Kos

WATCH: Violent Anti-Gay High School Attack Caught On Video

This anti-gay attack happened in Union-Scioto High School in Chilicothe, Ohio, which has no anti-bullying legislation or hate crime law inclusive of sexual orientation or gender identity. The bully was apparently suspended for three days. As, Dan Savage says, "what does it take to get expelled?" For more information about who to contact to make sure this crime gets prosecuted by the authorities contact:

Chief Roger Moore 

28 North Paint Street  

Chillicothe, Ohio 45601 

Phone: (740) 773-1191

WonderMan has an update on his blog that charges are expected to be charged soon, but that the bully claims he has "mental problems" and "zoned out."

BOOK REVIEW: The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Hunger Games trilogy is the highest profile series of young-adult novels after J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. I read the entire series (see my reviews of the last two books: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and saw all the movies (see my reviews for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and Part 2 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

It's really not fair to compare the two series. For one thing, Harry Potter consists of seven books which are on average well over 500 pages each and take the main characters from a pre-teen innocence through teen-age angst and into full adulthood.

Here is how the author, Suzanne Collins, describes the Hunger Games:

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games.” The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When her sister is chosen by lottery, Katniss steps up to go in her place. 

By definition, The Hunger Games is a much more violent series of books than the Harry Potter books. There are deaths in both, but in The Hunger Games it becomes almost routine. Also, the fact that Katniss is 16 years old when the books begin makes the possibility of sex (or at the very least romance) a very real possibility.

The story revolves around the characters, starting with Katniss Everdeen and her little sister Primrose. Katniss has been feeding her family since her medicine woman mother was greatly affected by the death of her husband and Katniss' father. The relationships which animate the main plots in The Hunger Games is the (love?) triangle between Katniss and Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne. Although love triangles have been done to death in all sorts of fiction, Collins comes up with some novel ways of handling the tension, especially since life and death situations become involved.

A Wikipedia article says that the themes of The Hunger Games are "government control, 'big brother,' and personal independence." I'm not sure that I would agree, I would say that a more precise description of  the main themes are "deception, independence and authoritarianism." Basically, authoritarianism includes both the "Big Brother" aspects of the Capitol and the governmental control that it encompasses throughout the 12 impoverished districts of Panem.

The plot of the first book is based around Katniss and Peeta's experience in the Hunger Games, where the rules are kill or be killed. Obviously, at least one of them survives because there are two more books. What happens is that the scope of the books expands, although they still center around the actions of Katniss, the true goal of Collins is to demonstrate not just the change to Katniss, but also to her hometown and her whole country.

Overall, all three books are well-written and Collins skillfully maintains suspense even while the reader is pretty sure any of the characters we care about will not be killed, the body count is high, and not everyone we care about survives to the end of the third book.

Title: The Hunger Games.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: September 14, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.


Title: Catching Fire.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 391 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: September 1, 2009.


OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.


Title: Mockingjay.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Paperback: 400 pages.
Publisher: Scholastic Press.
Date: August 24, 2010.


OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).


PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

Rash Of Violent Anti-Gay Hate Crimes In Long Beach

Long Beach has been the location of at least three attacks on gay men in the last two weeks.  Long Beach is the third largest city in California and is well-known for a prominent LGBT community. They have an openly gay, Latino city councilman named Robert Garcia who is quoted saying that "These incidents have no place in our city."

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Avila, who was walking ahead of the group, passed a man arguing with a woman on the sidewalk. The man stopped long enough to use a slur against Avila as he passed, he said.
[...]
The man ran away, but Avila and another friend chased him several blocks until police arrived, he said.

The suspect, Jorge Jhovanoy Ibarrias, 21, was arrested and charged with felony battery in addition to a hate crime. He has pleaded not guilty, authorities said.

Three days later, near East 4th Street and Orange Avenue, another man was beaten and called slurs. That case is being investigated as a battery and a possible hate incident, though not a hate crime, Fernandez said. The difference, he said, is that police do not believe that hatred specifically against gays was the initial motivation.

Four days after the second attack, on Sundayabout 1:30 a.m., several men walking on Broadway, two blocks from the site of the initial incident, were approached by another group that used slurs against them, police said. A fight broke out before the groups separated. But the group that made the insults returned shortly afterward with several other people and assaulted three of the men who had been walking down the street, police said.

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0 who posted the video of a local ABC affiliate coverage of the story shown above.

WATCH: 5 Men Arrested In SC Alleged Hate Crime

There's an update on the horrible violent attack on a gay man caught on video in South Carolina two weeks ago.
Thanks to tips from the public who saw the video, 5 men have been arrested.

WATCH: South Carolina Gay Bashing Caught On Video

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

Hate Crimes Against Gays Rise In LA County

111: Hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2007
134: Hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2008
105: Hate crimes based on religion in 2007
120: Hate crimes based on religion in 2008
763: Overall hate crimes in 2007
729: Overall hate crimes in 2008

The Los Angeles Daily News is reporting that the number of hate crimes in Los Angeles County decreased overall, but increased in several categories such as sexual orientation and religion.

Sexual orientation hate crimes rose the most last year, with more than 80 percent targeting gay men and at least nine crimes traced to Proposition 8.

One incident highlighted in the report involved a white lesbian couple walking hand-in-hand on the beach in Malibu. The mother of a white tourist family from Arkansas told them, "You are going to burn in hell!" and dumped her water bottle on one of them and punched one in the face.

"The worst part of the story is that hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are the most violent hate crimes of all," said Lorri Jean, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

"Seventy-three percent of all anti-gay and anti-lesbian hate crimes were violent. And the frightening truth is that equal numbers of LGBT people were targeted in public places as in their residences."

Almost two-thirds of the religious-based hate crimes were anti-Jewish.

LAPD Officers Get No Criminal Charges In 2007 May Day Melee

News You Might Have Missed: The Los Angeles Times reported on Hallloween that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has decided not to press criminal charges against any of the thirty or so officers it had investigated in the wake of the now-infamous 2007 May Day melee in Mcarthur Park.

They described the incident as "unfortunate and preventable" but said that the office was "closing our file and will take no further action in this matter."

Last year, Police Chief William J. Bratton said he planned to discipline 11 officers and called for the termination of four others for their roles in the melee in which police were accused of using excessive force to clear immigration rights demonstrators and journalists.

LAPD officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse a largely peaceful crowd. A scathing internal investigation into the incident blamed poor leadership and overly aggressive tactics by officers in the field.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the melee.

Under the settlement, the department must submit to court oversight of its crowd-control procedures -- another layer of federal involvement that comes as LAPD leaders are impatient to be free of a longstanding and more onerous monitoring program imposed after the Rampart Division corruption scandal.

Curiously, the original L.A. Now report on the D.A. decision which included the previous graphs has been modified ("updated") when the story was moved to the front page of the paper and became:

After a lengthy review, prosecutors said there is insufficient evidence to prove that any of the 30 officers who were investigated violated the law when using force, although some might have used "questionable tactics."

The melee, which occurred at the conclusion of a pro- immigration rally and received national attention, resulted from poor police training, leadership and communication, prosecutors said. Their finding echoed the Los Angeles Police Department's own scathing report on the officers' actions.

Officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting less-than-lethal rubberized bullets in an attempt to disperse the mostly peaceful crowd after a small group of agitators confronted police. Dozens of protesters and journalists were injured as officers cleared the park.

The department's "planning, tactical and command failures" were the backdrop for the officers' actions against "both violent protesters and nonviolent protesters and media personnel," prosecutors said in their report. "The media had innocently and unwittingly positioned themselves in an area directly in the path of officers attempting to clear the park."

In the immediate aftermath, Police Chief William J. Bratton removed a deputy chief and commander from their posts. Deputy Chief Caylor "Lee" Carter retired shortly thereafter.

Bratton also said he planned to discipline several officers and called for the termination of others for their roles in the melee.

But internal disciplinary panels gave no officer more than a 20-day suspension. Some officers, however, were demoted, according to their attorney.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the May Day melee.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League is happy with the result that no more officers will be punished for their actions that day.

The LAPPL is pleased that District Attorney Steve Cooley exercised his prosecutorial independence and made the right decision to not prosecute any officers involved the May Day incident. His review sought only truth and justice, and was not influenced by any political agenda.

As the LAPPL has said all along, there needs to be a thorough review of the facts about what happened on May Day 2007 before passing judgment about officers’ actions. We are pleased and relieved at the outcome of the District Attorney’s investigation, as we were with the Board of Rights hearings in July.

We also said that the public should not be surprised by the final outcome. Removed from the political and media spotlight, the District Attorney and the Board of Rights, which included a civilian member, objectively reviewed the facts and rendered opinions of the officers’ actions based on long- standing Department policy.

The Department’s 2007 May Day report presented to the Police Commission acknowledged that the events that transpired primarily resulted from breakdowns in command structure, planning and communications, as well as training deficiencies.

The League went on record immediately after the incident pointing out the lack of continuous and updated training that partially contributed to the incident. Training is the backbone of good police work – ensuring that officers know not only what to do, but can properly implement the Department’s policies, procedures and expectations in any situation. As a result of the 2007 report, revealing the Department's ill-advised decision to abandon introductory training for new Metropolitan Division officers and to not train all officers for large tactical missions, the Department reinstated training as a fundamental priority.

We would like to point out that that there were many positive actions by officers on that day, as the Department itself has acknowledged. We commend those officers for their professionalism and restraint under difficult circumstances.

We'll see if this is really the last we hear about this incident (I doubt it).

Brandon McInerney Pleads Not Guilty To Hate Crime

Brandon McInerney, the teenager who shot and killed an openly gay classmate in February 2008, has pleaded "not guilty" to murder. The 15-year-old is being tried as an adult.

Ventura County Superior Court Superior Court Judge Bruce Young set a pretrial hearing for Oct. 23 and a trial date for Dec. 1.

[...]

McInerney’s lawyers, Scott Wippert and Robyn Bramson, filed a legal motion Thursday to dismiss the special circumstance of lying in wait that was tacked onto the felony criminal charges by prosecutors after a three-day preliminary hearing.

Attaching a lying in wait special circumstance to a murder charge in a juvenile case, by law, automatically transfers the case to adult court.

[...]

McInerney is accused of murder and a hate crime in the killing of King, who wore female clothing to school and told classmates he was gay. Prosecutors allege McInerney waited 15 to 20 minutes in a classroom before shooting King, constituting grounds for adding the lying-in-wait charge.

McInerney faces as much as 53 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges in adult court. Prosecutors have offered to agree to a sentence of 25 years to life if he pleads guilty to first-degree murder and the hate-crime allegation.

Prosecutors allege McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, subscribed to a white-supremacist philosophy.

Hat/tip Joe.My.God

VIDEO: CNN Report on Iraqi LGBT Killings

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God