Showing posts with label North Carolina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Carolina. Show all posts

Cop Who Allegedly Said ‘We Don’t Have Time For This’ Before Shooting Schizophrenic Teen Dead Has Been Indicted

A police officer who allegedly yelled “we don’t have time for this” before shooting and killing a schizophrenic teen has been indicted on manslaughter charges.

Officer Bryon Vassey was one of three officers from different North Carolina precincts to respond to a call by the family of 18-year-old Keith Vidal last month. The teen, who suffered from schizophrenia and weighed just 90 pounds, had apparently picked up a small screwdriver and wasn’t putting it down. But his parents say the two other officers already had the scene under control when Vassey walked in. They say the third officer simply tased Vidal, then took out a firearm and shot him dead, saying “we don’t have time for this.”

Records show Vassey was at the Vidal residence for just 70 seconds before calling in that shots had been fired, reports the North Carolina Star News.

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Justice to sue North Carolina over voting law

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Monday that the Justice Department would sue North Carolina over its controversial new voting law, saying electoral measures approved by the state would discriminate against minorities and “break a system that was working.”

At a news conference, Holder alleged that the electoral law in North Carolina, as well as similar measures that the Justice Department is challenging in Texas, represent a broad threat to the democratic process. In North Carolina, he said, the law would “shrink, rather than expand, access to the franchise.”

“Today’s action is about far more than unwarranted voter restrictions. It is about our democracy, and who we are as a nation,” Holder said. “I stand here to announce this lawsuit more in sorrow than in anger. It pains me to see the voting rights of my fellow citizens negatively impacted by actions predicated on a rationale that is tenuous at best — and on concerns that we all know are not, in fact, real.”

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