451
EdCons and referring organizations and agencies / Re: Harriet R. Gershman
« on: May 19, 2010, 10:51:18 PM »
Thanks for clarifying that. :notworthy:
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452
The Troubled Teen Industry / Re: Valley View School Abuse
« on: May 19, 2010, 10:46:51 PM »
Assistant Director Daniel Bennison will not be talking about the girl he dragged around with his van or drilling holes in the paddle to cause more injury.
Bennison-Bot anyone?
Bennison-Bot anyone?
454
Web forum hosting / Re: Oh joy, Facility Questions and Answers is porksworded
« on: May 19, 2010, 04:45:50 PM »Quote from: "DannyB II"
:shamrock: :shamrock:
What is everybody talking about here, shit I feel like " Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. WTF........Porksworded
I am just not there......lol.
Danny
Pssst.....http://http://www.urbandictionary.com/
455
EdCons and referring organizations and agencies / Re: Harriet R. Gershman
« on: May 19, 2010, 02:04:25 PM »
Harriet R. Gershman has a nifty little search engine right on her site.
I search Elan and...............
I search Elan and...............
Quote
Elan School:roflmao: more like this http://http://theelanschool.tumblr.com/
Elan School [website]
Post Office Box 578
Poland, ME 04274-0578
USA
Phone: 207-998-4666
Ages: Grades 7 - 12
Gender: Co-Ed
Description: A carefully conceptualized, caringly administered residential community.
Director Name: Deanna Valente
Enroll Info: Offers year-round rolling admissions
Student Profile: Adolescent whose behavior is out of control. Emotional, behavioral or adjustment problems.
Academics: Is a closed SAT site. Students may be able to earn up to three years of high school credits in a two year period. Offers a fully approved junior high, high school and special education program. Those students planning to continue their education in postsecondary schools are challenged through upper-level courses, while those who need intensive remediation are helped to acquire skills necessary to cope in the working world, as well as to open doors to postsecondary education and training. Elan follows State of Maine credit requirements for graduation.
Activities: Has an active athletic program (teams have won several state championships in many sports). Videos are shown every week. Concerts, festivals, local fairs, exhibits, sports events and trips out to dinner, the movies, art museums, planetariums, aquariums, and the theater are organized regularly for students who have earned the privilege. Most entertainment trips are to Portland, where professional hockey and baseball teams are among the attractions. Other trips may be to attend area football games or to go to amusement parks or places of historical or cultural interest. Field trips are scheduled to Boston annually. Trips to various state parks are organized during the summer months. In addition to the regular recreational trips, house trips include canoeing, white-water rafting, snow tubing, whale watching, roller-skating and bowling. Elan students participate in a campus-wide talent show several times a year. Winter and Spring Carnivals are also held.
Counseling: Provides intensive group sessions; individual sessions are on an as-needed basis.
Campus: Two co-educational houses. Each house is self-contained, and holds 65-75 students. Meals are prepared in Elan's main kitchen by two chefs. Meals are served to the students' family style. Between 2 and 8 students share a dorm room. Elan has a central library located in the School House, as well as individual house libraries, all consisting of volumes of fiction and nonfiction. There is a computer lab with iMacs, complete with CD-ROMs, where computer literacy is developed and work in various subject areas is accomplished.
Family Involvement: Visits home are scheduled when appropriate and earned for each individual student.
Length of Stay: Average stay is 24 to 30 months
Philosophy: The program is based on the principle that behavior cannot be changed by simply eliminating negative actions. The adolescent must not only stop antisocial acts, but must also learn a new way of doing things
Financial Assistance: Prep Gate, Sallie Mae,
Staff: Sharon Terry, Executive Director. Faculty members at Elan are certified in their subject specialty and/or special education. Bill Diamond is Elan's Superintendent of Schools.
Tuition/Costs: 12 month year of $49,071.96
Specialties: Elan is licensed by the Maine Department of Education as a private, residential special-purpose school. Elan is also on the approved list of placements for several other states.
456
EdCons and referring organizations and agencies / Re: Harriet R. Gershman
« on: May 19, 2010, 01:00:59 PM »
She sends lots of kids to Hell and makes BIG MONEY.
She handles those pesky pot smoking rich kids who might grow up to think critically if it were not for her "help".
Just keeping the American corprate-o-cracy rolling along.
Torture for Money and she has the prime clients on the North Shore of Chicago.
I don't gamble, but I would bet all of the brewhaha over on the Valley View School subject comes from here. (Harriet's Camp)
:notworthy:
You Elite are so predictable.................
She handles those pesky pot smoking rich kids who might grow up to think critically if it were not for her "help".
Just keeping the American corprate-o-cracy rolling along.
Torture for Money and she has the prime clients on the North Shore of Chicago.
I don't gamble, but I would bet all of the brewhaha over on the Valley View School subject comes from here. (Harriet's Camp)
:notworthy:
You Elite are so predictable.................
457
The Troubled Teen Industry / Re: Valley View School Abuse
« on: May 19, 2010, 12:45:30 PM »Quote from: "Whooter"
My experience reading here over the years indicates that the person who wrote the defamatory remark against Doctor Spiva didn’t take advantage of their time at VV and realized that almost everyone did well after graduation, except themselves, and he/she has flushed their own life down the toilet. People, like the original poster, who have spent their life blaming others for their shortcomings don’t handle, very well, the harsh reality that everyone has moved on except them and in response lashes out and makes comments like they did in the OP. They are easy to spotThe OP is Mathew Eliscu and your first paragraph pretty much sums up my little brother.
Why respond now? Well maybe they just left a myspace group or facebook group planning a reunion and realized they are the only one who is angry and the rest are like the other posters who posted comments about Valley View.
Any first time reader knows that if there were a real legal issue they wouldn’t post it here on fornits before going to the police….. IMO You don’t need a GED to figure this one out.
...
He would be Eliscu3 if he cared about child abuse or anything other than where to get his next fix or who he can con today.
Is Phil Spiva a child Molester? I have no idea.
Time to call Mr. Diamond and get the truth. :on phone:
NUTSACK is a dead giveaway and the responce to this one random thread is all telling.
Valley View caters to the very wealthy and they want to keep it that way!
So for all of you "marketing damage control" idiots you can find me easy enough.
458
Elan School / Re: ELAN school staff are well trained
« on: May 19, 2010, 04:00:36 AM »Quote from: "DannyB II"
:shamrock: :shamrock:
I said I would say no more but just one last thing, Elan was originally put together to take care of drug addicts but they could not make enough money, so then folks like yourself came.
Danny
No so then folks like us came and got abused by folks like you.......get real.
459
Elan School / Re: Hi yuh yuh yuh Marty Kruglik
« on: May 18, 2010, 03:59:16 PM »Quote from: "The Elan Reporter"
The Flyn-bot is a man hater bot and it is recommended to keep it in a male free environment unless you want to see amputated penis's all over the place.
Ya I think this is why I have the Gott-Bot.
Least harmful. Most Entertaining.
460
News Items / Justices Limit Life Sentences for Juveniles
« on: May 18, 2010, 08:47:08 AM »
Justices Limit Life Sentences for Juveniles
http://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/politics/18court.html
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids such sentences as a categorical matter.
“A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.”
The ruling marked the first time that the court excluded an entire class of offenders from a given form of punishment outside the context of the death penalty. “ ‘Death is different’ no longer,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent.
The overall vote was 6-to-3, though that is a little misleading. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority in saying that the inmate who brought the appeal had received a sentence so harsh that it violated the Constitution. But the chief justice endorsed only a case-by-case approach, saying that an offender’s age could be considered in deciding whether a life sentence was so disproportionate to the crime as to violate the Eighth Amendment.
The case involved Terrance Graham, who in 2003, at age 16, helped rob a Jacksonville restaurant, during which an accomplice beat the manager with a steel bar. Mr. Graham was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation for that crime.
The next year, at 17, Mr. Graham and two 20-year-old accomplices committed a home invasion robbery. In 2005, a judge sentenced Mr. Graham to life for violating his probation.
The Supreme Court has carved out categories of offenders and crimes that are not subject to the death penalty, including juvenile offenders and those who do not take a life. Monday’s decision applied those two decisions to life-without-parole sentences.
Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said both national and international practices supported the court’s ruling.
Justice Thomas said the majority was wrong about the facts in the United States and abroad and wrong as a matter of principle to take account of international opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia joined all of Justice Thomas’s dissent and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. most of it.
Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have laws allowing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses. That represents, Justice Thomas said, a super-majority of states in favor of the punishment.
Justice Kennedy responded that a study relied on by Mr. Graham and supplemented by the court’s own research had located only 129 juvenile offenders convicted under such laws. Seventy-seven were in Florida, the rest in 10 other states. Those numbers, Justice Kennedy said, make the sentence “exceedingly rare” and demonstrate that “a national consensus has developed against it.”
Justice Thomas drew a different conclusion from the same numbers. “That a punishment is rarely imposed demonstrates nothing more than a general consensus that it should be just that — rarely imposed,” he wrote. “It is not proof that the punishment is one the nation abhors.”
Justice Kennedy added that the sentences at issue had been “rejected the world over.” Indeed, only the United States and perhaps Israel, he said, impose the punishment even for homicides committed by juveniles.
“The judgment of the world’s nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “demonstrates that the court’s rationale has respected reasoning to support it.”
Justice Thomas disputed Justice Kennedy’s math, saying 11 nations seem to allow the punishment in theory. More important, he said, “foreign laws and sentencing practices” are “irrelevant to the meaning of our Constitution.”
He added that most democracies around the world remain free to adopt the punishment should they wish to. “Starting today,” Justice Thomas wrote, “ours can count itself among the few in which judicial decree prevents voters from making that choice.”
Although the majority limited its decision to non-homicide offenses, advocates may try to apply its logic more broadly to the some 2,000 inmates serving life-without-parole sentences in the United States for participating in killings at 17 or younger.
Justice Thomas questioned the distinction drawn by the majority between killings and other sorts of violent crimes. “The court is quite willing to accept that a 17-year-old who pulls the trigger on a firearm can demonstrate sufficient depravity and irredeemability to be denied re-entry into society,” he wrote, “but insists that a 17-year-old who rapes an 8-year-old and leaves her for dead does not.”
Justice Alito, in a separate dissent that seemed directed to sentencing judges, said the majority’s opinion did nothing to affect even quite long fixed sentences.
Justice Thomas predicted that Monday’s ruling would give rise to years of litigation about just what sort of parole or other processes states must provide to provide the required “meaningful opportunity to obtain release.”
The case decided Monday, Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, was argued in November along with a companion case, Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621. The court declined to decide the second case, which involved Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13.
Instead, the court dismissed the case as improvidently granted, probably because it was beset with procedural difficulties. Mr. Sullivan’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, said his client and everyone else in his situation would be entitled to challenge their sentences under the Graham decision.
As usual in cases involving the Eighth Amendment, the justices debated whether the Constitution should consider, in a one common formulation, “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
Justice Thomas said the court should look to the practices at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted. Given that capital punishment could be imposed on people as young as 7 in the 18th century, he said, Mr. Graham’s punishment would almost certainly have been deemed acceptable back then.
Justice John Paul Stevens, in a concurrence joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, said Justice Thomas’s “static approach to the law” did not allow for societal progress and would entail unacceptable human consequences.
“Justice Thomas would apparently not rule out a death sentence for a $50 theft by a 7-year-old,” Justice Stevens wrote. “Knowledge accumulates,” he wrote. “We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes.”
http://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/politics/18court.html
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids such sentences as a categorical matter.
“A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.”
The ruling marked the first time that the court excluded an entire class of offenders from a given form of punishment outside the context of the death penalty. “ ‘Death is different’ no longer,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent.
The overall vote was 6-to-3, though that is a little misleading. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority in saying that the inmate who brought the appeal had received a sentence so harsh that it violated the Constitution. But the chief justice endorsed only a case-by-case approach, saying that an offender’s age could be considered in deciding whether a life sentence was so disproportionate to the crime as to violate the Eighth Amendment.
The case involved Terrance Graham, who in 2003, at age 16, helped rob a Jacksonville restaurant, during which an accomplice beat the manager with a steel bar. Mr. Graham was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation for that crime.
The next year, at 17, Mr. Graham and two 20-year-old accomplices committed a home invasion robbery. In 2005, a judge sentenced Mr. Graham to life for violating his probation.
The Supreme Court has carved out categories of offenders and crimes that are not subject to the death penalty, including juvenile offenders and those who do not take a life. Monday’s decision applied those two decisions to life-without-parole sentences.
Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said both national and international practices supported the court’s ruling.
Justice Thomas said the majority was wrong about the facts in the United States and abroad and wrong as a matter of principle to take account of international opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia joined all of Justice Thomas’s dissent and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. most of it.
Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have laws allowing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses. That represents, Justice Thomas said, a super-majority of states in favor of the punishment.
Justice Kennedy responded that a study relied on by Mr. Graham and supplemented by the court’s own research had located only 129 juvenile offenders convicted under such laws. Seventy-seven were in Florida, the rest in 10 other states. Those numbers, Justice Kennedy said, make the sentence “exceedingly rare” and demonstrate that “a national consensus has developed against it.”
Justice Thomas drew a different conclusion from the same numbers. “That a punishment is rarely imposed demonstrates nothing more than a general consensus that it should be just that — rarely imposed,” he wrote. “It is not proof that the punishment is one the nation abhors.”
Justice Kennedy added that the sentences at issue had been “rejected the world over.” Indeed, only the United States and perhaps Israel, he said, impose the punishment even for homicides committed by juveniles.
“The judgment of the world’s nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “demonstrates that the court’s rationale has respected reasoning to support it.”
Justice Thomas disputed Justice Kennedy’s math, saying 11 nations seem to allow the punishment in theory. More important, he said, “foreign laws and sentencing practices” are “irrelevant to the meaning of our Constitution.”
He added that most democracies around the world remain free to adopt the punishment should they wish to. “Starting today,” Justice Thomas wrote, “ours can count itself among the few in which judicial decree prevents voters from making that choice.”
Although the majority limited its decision to non-homicide offenses, advocates may try to apply its logic more broadly to the some 2,000 inmates serving life-without-parole sentences in the United States for participating in killings at 17 or younger.
Justice Thomas questioned the distinction drawn by the majority between killings and other sorts of violent crimes. “The court is quite willing to accept that a 17-year-old who pulls the trigger on a firearm can demonstrate sufficient depravity and irredeemability to be denied re-entry into society,” he wrote, “but insists that a 17-year-old who rapes an 8-year-old and leaves her for dead does not.”
Justice Alito, in a separate dissent that seemed directed to sentencing judges, said the majority’s opinion did nothing to affect even quite long fixed sentences.
Justice Thomas predicted that Monday’s ruling would give rise to years of litigation about just what sort of parole or other processes states must provide to provide the required “meaningful opportunity to obtain release.”
The case decided Monday, Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, was argued in November along with a companion case, Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621. The court declined to decide the second case, which involved Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13.
Instead, the court dismissed the case as improvidently granted, probably because it was beset with procedural difficulties. Mr. Sullivan’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, said his client and everyone else in his situation would be entitled to challenge their sentences under the Graham decision.
As usual in cases involving the Eighth Amendment, the justices debated whether the Constitution should consider, in a one common formulation, “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
Justice Thomas said the court should look to the practices at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted. Given that capital punishment could be imposed on people as young as 7 in the 18th century, he said, Mr. Graham’s punishment would almost certainly have been deemed acceptable back then.
Justice John Paul Stevens, in a concurrence joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, said Justice Thomas’s “static approach to the law” did not allow for societal progress and would entail unacceptable human consequences.
“Justice Thomas would apparently not rule out a death sentence for a $50 theft by a 7-year-old,” Justice Stevens wrote. “Knowledge accumulates,” he wrote. “We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes.”
461
The Troubled Teen Industry / How to Deprogram Bullies: Teaching Kindness 101
« on: May 18, 2010, 01:56:50 AM »
How to Deprogram Bullies: Teaching Kindness 101
By Maia Szalavitz Monday, May. 24, 2010
how timely...thanks Maia
http://http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1989122,00.html
By Maia Szalavitz Monday, May. 24, 2010
how timely...thanks Maia
http://http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1989122,00.html
462
News Items / Family grieves death of girl, 7, in police raid
« on: May 17, 2010, 07:04:18 PM »
Family grieves death of girl, 7, in police raid
http://http://www.detnews.com/article/20100517/METRO01/5170340/Family-grieves-death-of-girl--7--in-police-raid
Girl, 7, shot as officer's gun fires during raid; Police were searching house for suspect in prior slaying
Doug Guthrie and Valerie Olander / The Detroit News
Detroit --Charles Jones had just turned in after covering his sleeping 7-year-old daughter on the living room sofa with her favorite Disney Princess blanket when police burst into his east side apartment early Sunday.
"I heard the flash bang and then the gunshot," Jones said about rushing from his bedroom into the hands of Detroit Police officers, who handcuffed him and pushed him to the floor.
An officer hunting for a murder suspect had shot Aiyana Jones through the neck.
The victim's family said police told them the gun discharged because the girl's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, 46, grappled for the officer's weapon. Later Sunday, police spokesman John Roach said the officer and grandmother may have simply collided.
Mertilla Jones was released from custody Sunday afternoon, and it remained unclear if she will face charges. Police held her for more than 12 hours, during which time she also spent several hours hospitalized with what police said were medical issues.
At a press conference in front of the home Sunday evening, Mertilla Jones said there was no struggle: "I hit the floor when I heard them hit the window.
"They blew my granddaughter's brains out. They killed her right before my eyes. I watched the light go out of her eyes. I seen it."
It's been a particularly bloody month in the city. "In my 23 years, I can't remember a two-week period like this," said Detroit Police Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee.
The shooting happened at 12:40 a.m., when officers from the Special Response Team executed a no-knock search warrant on a two-unit flat in the 4000 block of Lillibridge. An officer threw a stun grenade, an incendiary device designed to disorient and distract suspects, through the double panes of a front window, and at least one officer rushed into the downstairs unit.
"I saw them (police) running with my daughter out of the house. They had my mother on the floor, and they just kept me there for like two hours," said Charles Jones, 25. "I knew it was bad, and they probably had my baby at the hospital, because someone asked me if she had any allergies.
"Her blood was everywhere and I was trying to stay calm, but nobody would talk to me. None of them even tried to console me."
Police had been seeking a 34-year-old suspect in Friday's slaying of 17-year-old Southeastern High School student Jerean Blake, gunned down outside a liquor store near the corner of Mack Avenue and St. Jean. Police say they got their man but have not said if he was arrested in the raid on the downstairs or upstairs apartment.
Speaking on behalf of Police Chief Warren Evans, who is on vacation, Godbee said, "This is every parent's worst nightmare. It's also every police officer's nightmare."
Cops: Suspect's car on site
Neighbors said there were rumors all weekend that the person responsible for shooting Blake lived in the house. Godbee said the suspect's car, which matched the description by witnesses to Friday's shooting, was at the location.
"Based on our intelligence, we got a search warrant for the location," Godbee said. "Because of the violent nature of the crime, we thought we were entering a potentially dangerous situation."
But Charles Jones said the downstairs apartment where he lives with his mother was occupied at the time of the raid by four children and six adults.
"If they were watching this place to see if their suspect was here, why didn't they notice all the toys in the yard and all the kids coming and going downstairs?" Jones asked. "They came into my house with a flash grenade and a bullet. They say my mother resisted them, that she tried to take an officer's gun. My mother had never been in handcuffs in her life. They killed my baby and I want someone to tell the truth.
"They came here to kill and they did. They just killed the wrong person. I'd rather it was me. Why didn't they just kill me?"
The girl's mother, Dominika Stanley, wasn't in the apartment at the time of the shooting.
Charles Jones said police confiscated Aiyana's blanket, which had been burned by the stun grenade. He said his daughter also was burned. Family members also moved the blood-soaked sofa to the front porch.
Godbee would not comment on reports that neighbors told officers children were in the house and pointed out toys in the front yard.
He said the search warrant allowed police to search both the downstairs and upstairs units.
"According to our officers and at least one independent witness, the officers announced themselves as police officers before going in," Godbee said.
Godbee stressed that information he released Sunday was preliminary, and that the Police Department planned to launch a full investigation. He also said police are not categorizing the shooting as accidental yet, "although we don't believe the gun was discharged intentionally."
Police offer condolences
Godbee extended an offer of help to Aiyana's family -- and expressed fear that anger might boil over in the community.
"We might be the target of anger," Godbee said. "All we can do is stand ready to offer our condolences to the family, and any help we can give them."
But Charles Jones said he was trying to not be angry. He sat on the porch of his home Sunday, looking stunned and answering the questions of relatives, neighbors and news reporters.
Aiyana Jones actually was growing out of her Disney Princess phase, beginning to prefer the likes of Hannah Montana, said her father. He had programmed a cell phone to play her new favorite song, Justin Bieber's "Baby." Her father said Aiyana loved to sing.
"She was just figuring out what she liked, what she wanted to do with her life," Charles Jones said. "I want this story to be heard. This was a wrongful death."
Godbee called Sunday probably the worst day of his career, and the event a "tragedy of unspeakable magnitude."
"This hurts us all," Godbee said. "We're not robots; we have children of our own."
Deputy Chief James Tolbert said investigators will submit a warrant for the 34-year-old man "as soon as possible." The unidentified officer involved in the shooting was placed on administrative leave.
The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality called Sunday's incident unique in the city's history because of the use of a stun grenade tossed into the crowded apartment. The group will call for investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy of police procedures used in the raid. The organization that has been critical of Detroit Police and the department's tactics hosted a Sunday night candlelight vigil at the home.
"We join with the people of the city of Detroit in wrapping our arms around this family, who have experienced such an unthinkable loss," said Ron Scott, founder of the organization. "In the 14 years I've been doing this, I've seen deaths and blood, but I've never seen anything like this. It's beyond words."
At the vigil, emotions were still raw as family and friends gathered outside the home. Tears rolled down the checks of Breyan Rogers, 13, Aiyana's cousin. "She was just the sweetest little girl," he said.
Erik Saunders, 43, a family friend, said the shooting was reminiscent of civil rights era.
"This is like 1960s all over," he said. "Police have no respect for the citizens of this city."
Saunders derided Evans' zero-tolerance policy.
"It predisposes this kind of behavior," he said.
Sherell Lewis asked where Evans was.
"He should be here," she said.
[email protected] (313) 222-2548 Staff writer George Hunter contributed.
Photos:http://http://multimedia.detnews.com/pix/photogalleries/newsgallery/05162010ChildKilled/index.html
http://http://www.detnews.com/article/20100517/METRO01/5170340/Family-grieves-death-of-girl--7--in-police-raid
Girl, 7, shot as officer's gun fires during raid; Police were searching house for suspect in prior slaying
Doug Guthrie and Valerie Olander / The Detroit News
Detroit --Charles Jones had just turned in after covering his sleeping 7-year-old daughter on the living room sofa with her favorite Disney Princess blanket when police burst into his east side apartment early Sunday.
"I heard the flash bang and then the gunshot," Jones said about rushing from his bedroom into the hands of Detroit Police officers, who handcuffed him and pushed him to the floor.
An officer hunting for a murder suspect had shot Aiyana Jones through the neck.
The victim's family said police told them the gun discharged because the girl's grandmother, Mertilla Jones, 46, grappled for the officer's weapon. Later Sunday, police spokesman John Roach said the officer and grandmother may have simply collided.
Mertilla Jones was released from custody Sunday afternoon, and it remained unclear if she will face charges. Police held her for more than 12 hours, during which time she also spent several hours hospitalized with what police said were medical issues.
At a press conference in front of the home Sunday evening, Mertilla Jones said there was no struggle: "I hit the floor when I heard them hit the window.
"They blew my granddaughter's brains out. They killed her right before my eyes. I watched the light go out of her eyes. I seen it."
It's been a particularly bloody month in the city. "In my 23 years, I can't remember a two-week period like this," said Detroit Police Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee.
The shooting happened at 12:40 a.m., when officers from the Special Response Team executed a no-knock search warrant on a two-unit flat in the 4000 block of Lillibridge. An officer threw a stun grenade, an incendiary device designed to disorient and distract suspects, through the double panes of a front window, and at least one officer rushed into the downstairs unit.
"I saw them (police) running with my daughter out of the house. They had my mother on the floor, and they just kept me there for like two hours," said Charles Jones, 25. "I knew it was bad, and they probably had my baby at the hospital, because someone asked me if she had any allergies.
"Her blood was everywhere and I was trying to stay calm, but nobody would talk to me. None of them even tried to console me."
Police had been seeking a 34-year-old suspect in Friday's slaying of 17-year-old Southeastern High School student Jerean Blake, gunned down outside a liquor store near the corner of Mack Avenue and St. Jean. Police say they got their man but have not said if he was arrested in the raid on the downstairs or upstairs apartment.
Speaking on behalf of Police Chief Warren Evans, who is on vacation, Godbee said, "This is every parent's worst nightmare. It's also every police officer's nightmare."
Cops: Suspect's car on site
Neighbors said there were rumors all weekend that the person responsible for shooting Blake lived in the house. Godbee said the suspect's car, which matched the description by witnesses to Friday's shooting, was at the location.
"Based on our intelligence, we got a search warrant for the location," Godbee said. "Because of the violent nature of the crime, we thought we were entering a potentially dangerous situation."
But Charles Jones said the downstairs apartment where he lives with his mother was occupied at the time of the raid by four children and six adults.
"If they were watching this place to see if their suspect was here, why didn't they notice all the toys in the yard and all the kids coming and going downstairs?" Jones asked. "They came into my house with a flash grenade and a bullet. They say my mother resisted them, that she tried to take an officer's gun. My mother had never been in handcuffs in her life. They killed my baby and I want someone to tell the truth.
"They came here to kill and they did. They just killed the wrong person. I'd rather it was me. Why didn't they just kill me?"
The girl's mother, Dominika Stanley, wasn't in the apartment at the time of the shooting.
Charles Jones said police confiscated Aiyana's blanket, which had been burned by the stun grenade. He said his daughter also was burned. Family members also moved the blood-soaked sofa to the front porch.
Godbee would not comment on reports that neighbors told officers children were in the house and pointed out toys in the front yard.
He said the search warrant allowed police to search both the downstairs and upstairs units.
"According to our officers and at least one independent witness, the officers announced themselves as police officers before going in," Godbee said.
Godbee stressed that information he released Sunday was preliminary, and that the Police Department planned to launch a full investigation. He also said police are not categorizing the shooting as accidental yet, "although we don't believe the gun was discharged intentionally."
Police offer condolences
Godbee extended an offer of help to Aiyana's family -- and expressed fear that anger might boil over in the community.
"We might be the target of anger," Godbee said. "All we can do is stand ready to offer our condolences to the family, and any help we can give them."
But Charles Jones said he was trying to not be angry. He sat on the porch of his home Sunday, looking stunned and answering the questions of relatives, neighbors and news reporters.
Aiyana Jones actually was growing out of her Disney Princess phase, beginning to prefer the likes of Hannah Montana, said her father. He had programmed a cell phone to play her new favorite song, Justin Bieber's "Baby." Her father said Aiyana loved to sing.
"She was just figuring out what she liked, what she wanted to do with her life," Charles Jones said. "I want this story to be heard. This was a wrongful death."
Godbee called Sunday probably the worst day of his career, and the event a "tragedy of unspeakable magnitude."
"This hurts us all," Godbee said. "We're not robots; we have children of our own."
Deputy Chief James Tolbert said investigators will submit a warrant for the 34-year-old man "as soon as possible." The unidentified officer involved in the shooting was placed on administrative leave.
The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality called Sunday's incident unique in the city's history because of the use of a stun grenade tossed into the crowded apartment. The group will call for investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy of police procedures used in the raid. The organization that has been critical of Detroit Police and the department's tactics hosted a Sunday night candlelight vigil at the home.
"We join with the people of the city of Detroit in wrapping our arms around this family, who have experienced such an unthinkable loss," said Ron Scott, founder of the organization. "In the 14 years I've been doing this, I've seen deaths and blood, but I've never seen anything like this. It's beyond words."
At the vigil, emotions were still raw as family and friends gathered outside the home. Tears rolled down the checks of Breyan Rogers, 13, Aiyana's cousin. "She was just the sweetest little girl," he said.
Erik Saunders, 43, a family friend, said the shooting was reminiscent of civil rights era.
"This is like 1960s all over," he said. "Police have no respect for the citizens of this city."
Saunders derided Evans' zero-tolerance policy.
"It predisposes this kind of behavior," he said.
Sherell Lewis asked where Evans was.
"He should be here," she said.
[email protected] (313) 222-2548 Staff writer George Hunter contributed.
Photos:http://http://multimedia.detnews.com/pix/photogalleries/newsgallery/05162010ChildKilled/index.html
463
Elan School / Re: Hi yuh yuh yuh Marty Kruglik
« on: May 17, 2010, 12:55:01 PM »Quote from: "The Elan Reporter"
The older Gott-bots have an active life line that is linked to Jeffery so that it can mimic Jefferys current behavior and feelings. Most likely your Gott-bot is just sending current feed back of Jeffery' s aging process and is not as active anymore. The Gott-bot would need to be sent in the the IMR factory and have it's life line option removed to bring it back to full active life.
That sounds really expensive.
Maybe I can just sit the Gott-Bot in the corner.
I think his head would make a nice planter.
I would opt for a Krug-Bot but I don't really want it around my Grandson.
Flynn-Bot? Dunn-Bot? Claire-Bot?
Damn where did I put that catalog?
464
The Drama Box / Re: ELAN school positive staff testimonies
« on: May 17, 2010, 07:49:08 AM »Quote from: "RavingMad"
STFU FELICE[attachment=0:1oevg7zp]clown_car.jpg[/attachment:1oevg7zp]
465
Elan School / Re: Hi yuh yuh yuh Marty Kruglik
« on: May 16, 2010, 11:02:57 PM »Quote from: "The Elan Reporter"
TY Eliscu!
Hi how are? Hi how are? Hi how are you?
Im great thanks for asking.
Sooooo glad you are back.
Can we upgrade the Gott-Bot?
Mine has a "glitch".
Gott-Bots face no longer turns bright red while yelling and I think the "put her in the corner" sound wav. is corrupted.
Everytime it screams "General Meeting" it automatically shuts down.
this is really sad......
My Gott-bot is pretty old, can I trade it in for a newer model?