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NNPA Newswire Special Report: Police Shootings of African Americans

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “When I went to the police academy, which was some time ago, a lot of people were coming back from Iraq, and they were looking for jobs. These people were trained killers because they’re soldiers. And, now you’re putting them not just [on the street] and giving them tactical solider-looking gear. And, they feel like they’re back on patrol in frickin’ Ramallah or Bagdad.”

Published

6 years ago

October 19, 2019

Oakland Post

“Police shooting policies need to change, not only for minorities but for everyone,” said forensic psychiatrist and expert witness Dr. Carole Lieberman. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA)

White Ex-Officer is Working to Change the Culture

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

A police officer’s bullet shattered a window and fatally struck Atatiana Jefferson as she and her 8-year-old nephew played video games inside her Texas home.

Fort Worth Police Officer Aaron Dean, who never identified himself as a cop, and, without warning, fired into Atatiana’s window from outside the home, fatally striking the 28-year-old.

Just a week earlier, Ex-Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger received a 10-year prison sentence for unlawfully entering the home of 28-year-old Botham Jean and murdering him.

Guyger claimed she had worked a late shift, was tired, and entered an apartment she thought was her own. She said she mistook the successful accountant as an intruder.

Both Atatiana and Botham were Black. Dean and Guyger are White.

A study conducted earlier this year by researchers at three universities concluded that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White people.

Researchers found that police will kill roughly 1-in-1,000 Black boys and men during their lifetime. For White boys and men, the rate is 39 out of 100,000.

In the aftermath of the killing of Atatiana, an attorney and former detective spoke with NNPA Newswire about police shootings. Because of the sensitive nature of his current assignment, we will refer to the former officer as Detective Jones.

Jones is working with several police departments to find better training solutions, primarily for situations when officers are interacting with individuals of color.

DETECTIVE JONES:

Among my friends who are police officers, I’m considered one of the more – let’s say liberal, as it were.

I’m hoping we can bridge build and repair relations between my brothers and sisters of varying backgrounds. So, that’s where I’m coming from.

From the police side of things, I’ve seen racist cops.

Unfortunately, a lot of that is because of what the job can do to people.

But I think that the key to the current problems, aside from the racial issue, is what the police chief in Fort Worth said. He used the best possible words when he said we need to hire people with a servant’s heart, not people with a warrior’s heart.

A Soldier’s Mentality

When I went to the police academy, which was some time ago, a lot of people were coming back from Iraq, and they were looking for jobs.

These people were trained killers because they’re soldiers. And, now you’re putting them not just [on the street] and giving them tactical solider-looking gear. And, they feel like they’re back on patrol in frickin’ Ramallah or Bagdad.

You know, when the soldiers are sent off to war, one of the ways that the government makes soldiers more effective is by dehumanizing them — calling them names like bugs.

It’s a good word to make to dehumanize them, and then they come home.

And, it’s not hard for them to jump into things by taking back that concept and using it with minorities. Whatever the minority may be in that community.

The minority could be White people. I know it’s not usually that, but it could be anybody.

So then when they use that language that, you know, aggressive and derogatory language against minorities, it’s just what they were trained to do as soldiers.

And, one of the things I can tell you from personal experience, and I mean, in the department that I was in when I started my law enforcement career in 1999, it was a small department.

And there was only maybe one military guy in there. And he had all the knowledge and the tactical gear and everything. Scary.

As soldiers kept returning home, that was easy pickings for police departments, you know, all over the country. They are hiring all of the time.

So, then the department starts getting, you know, an increasing number of ex-soldiers. And, now they’ve got their own culture. And, within the department, they’ve almost created their own little thing. And the non-military cops see it, and they want to be part of it. So, they start to adopt the attitude a little bit.

It Starts at the Top

You know, here’s what it boils down to — the negative aspects of hiring are so much stronger than the positive aspects. If you hire bad apples, it’s so much worse than the good you get from hiring good apples.

So, a lot of this focuses on hiring the right people. Because when there’s a hillbilly cracker in the office, guess what? That is your department.

On the other side, cops are continually being taunted, and sometimes there are those purposefully agitating elements from the community. And it makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for them to do their job.

I think when it comes to hiring, police departments need to pay more attention to bringing in people who are servants.

They need to pay more attention to training officers.

Another thing, when I was in the police academy, we were trained on how to figure out when to shoot someone as opposed to not shoot someone.

That’s a considerable distinction right there.

In my career, I had a situation where I would have been justified in shooting and killing someone. If I had done that in that particular situation, it would have been perfectly justifiable. But I also had a way out of it, and I got out of it. I didn’t have to kill anybody. The training would have said, kill, it’s the ABC’s. Pull out your gun and pull the trigger.

Training Not One-Size-Fits-All

It’s not possible to train all departments across the country the same way. It’s not constitutional. It’s not practical. The challenge is different from community to community.

A national policy would not work as a state-by-state policy. And what happens is the communities end up electing their head law enforcement officer, unless they’re appointed by other elected officials.

The department should be a reflection of the sentiments of the community. If you’ve got a community that is mostly White and they don’t like Black people or vice versa, then that may well be reflected in the department for sure.

Incompetent Law Enforcement Practices Adversely Impact Us All

The overwhelming majority of Americans will never work for a police department or a law enforcement agency.

Yet, law enforcement impacts all of us in one way or another.

However, African Americans are disproportionately affected. So, everyone has a responsibility to do what we can to not only understand the culture(s) that influence police practices at the local level, but to also raise our voices as impacted citizens when we see problems.

The killing of unarmed African Americans by officers that are sworn to serve and protect has reached epidemic proportions. No citizen, regardless of race or background, should fear being killed by police when he or she is sitting innocently in their home, or in any other non-threatening situation.

“Police shooting policies need to change, not only for minorities but for everyone,” said forensic psychiatrist and expert witness Dr. Carole Lieberman.

“It is shocking that police still aren’t trained more effectively to shoot to disarm and not to kill. Their go-to automatic response seems to be, shoot to kill – especially where it concerns minorities,” Liberman stated.

“This is not only tragic for black people and other minorities, but it is dangerous for the police themselves to cause these neighborhoods to become frightened and then act in a self-protective way which gets misinterpreted by the police.

“To shoot anyone in their own home should carry a severe penalty,” Lieberman concluded.

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

3 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

admin

Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,