White restaurant manager pleads guilty to abusing, enslaving mentally disabled black worker
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A white South Carolina restaurant manager has pleaded guilty to abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged black employee, according to federal prosecutors.
Bobby Paul Edwards of Conway pleaded guilty Monday to one count of forced labor, according to Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and South Carolina U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Lydon.
Between 2009 and 2014, prosecutors said that he admitted using violence, threats, isolation and intimidation to compel a man with an intellectual disability to work for more than 100 hours a week without pay.
Authorities have said Edwards used force and threats to force John Christopher Smith to work as a J&J Cafeteria cook from 2009 until 2014. Court documents describe beatings with a belt, choking, slapping, punching with a closed fist and burning with tongs used in hot grease.
Smith has been diagnosed with delayed cognitive development resulting in intellectual functioning significantly below average. In a lawsuit against Edwards and the restaurant owner, who is Edwards’ brother, Smith said he wasn’t paid or given time off or benefits.
The suit also accused Edwards of repeated abuse, saying he hit Smith with objects including a frying pan and forced him to work, to the point that the man was so weak he had to be carried home.
Records show Edwards was later dismissed from the lawsuit.
Edwards faces up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines when he’s sentenced later, as well as mandatory restitution to Smith. His attorney didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the case.
Elfen’s EXTRA EXTRA POP Music Video 1985 Tears For Fears Head Over Heels
I bring you Tears for fears Head of heels.
This was when MTV was all about the music videos. I love this song. I love it because of it’s hook and simple lyrics. He’s just a guy in a library trying to serenade the young librarian. Into getting his first date with her. He’s head over heels in love with her. Finely boy gets Girl and you see time has flown by. A love songs without cussing and or degrading the woman he’s pursuing.
DON’T ASK why the music video has a monkey in it. I thought it was weird then and it’s funny weird now.
Couple accused of killing baby, leaving body in hotel freezer
BRONSON, Fla. – A man wanted in connection with the murder of a 6-month-old infant from Georgia was tracked to a hotel in Florida where he was shot by law enforcement.
The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office said Carlton Mathis, 28, was shot early Monday morning while trying to flee in a vehicle. They said Mathis is in custody and receiving treatment at an area hospital.
According to the Dothan, Alabama Police Department, Mathis and Amanda Oakes, 36, are charged with murder in connection with the death of their 6-month-old son, Curtis Oakes.
The baby’s body was found in a freezer at a hotel in Dothan where the couple had been staying. Investigators believe the body had been in the freezer for 5 – 6 days.
Last Friday, the Hall County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia alerted Dothan police about a “possible infant death.”
Investigators in Alabama learned that the couple, who was from Georgia, had been in Dothan but were possibly in Florida.
On Monday, the couple was tracked to an apartment complex in Bronson, Florida, police said.
Police said they tried to make contact with Mathis as he left the apartment. SWAT team member shot him four times after he pulled out a handgun and tried to flee, police said.
He was in stable condition at a Florida hospital and in the custody of the Levy County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators said Mathis and Oakes lead them to the InTown Suites in Dothan where they had been staying. A search warrant was executed and their baby’s body was found in a freezer. Police believe the boy was killed prior to his body being put in the freezer. Foul play is suspected in his death.
Mathis and Oakes are charged with one count of abuse of a corpse. They are being held on $15,000 bond.
Murder charges are expected to be filed once an autopsy is completed and investigators learn how the baby was killed.
via: http://pix11.com/2018/06/06/couple-accused-of-killing-baby-leaving-body-in-hotel-freezer/
Elfen’s R&B TBT Music Video of the week George Benson Give Me The Night musical performance Music Video
George Benson at work Give Me The Night
Elfen’s TBT R&B 1980 George Benson give me the night
I remember this album playing on my mama’s record player. I loved the song blasting Give Me The Night. Years later I discovered she owned almost all his albums. As an 80sblackgirl my home was filled with music all day everyday. George Benson is one of the best Jazz musicians of the 20th century. Mainstream Radio needs give the POWER BACK to Radio Personality AKA Disc Jocky AKA DJ. Because of the DJ George Benson was heard and recognized world wide. If the Gorillaz choose to have George Benson on their new album. Then you know you are collaborating with greatness.
See you next Throwback Thursday! Next week I got some D Train….
Bio
Benson was born and raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of seven, he first played the ukulele in a corner drug store, for which he was paid a few dollars. At the age of eight, he played guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights, but the police soon closed the club down. At the age of 9, he started to record. Out of the four sides he cut, two were released: “She Makes Me Mad” backed with “It Should Have Been Me”, with RCA-Victor in New York; although one source indicates this record was released under the name “Little Georgie”,while the 45rpm label is printed with the name George Benson.The single was produced by Leroy Kirkland for RCA’s rhythm and blues label, Groove Records.As he has stated in an interview, Benson’s introduction to showbusiness had an effect on his schooling. When this was discovered (tied with the failure of his single) his guitar was impounded. Luckily, after he spent time in a juvenile detention centre his stepfather made him a new guitar.*
Benson attended and graduated from Schenley High School.[8][9] As a youth he learned how to play straight-ahead instrumental jazz during a relationship performing for several years with organist Jack McDuff. One of his many early guitar heroes was country-jazz guitarist Hank Garland.
At the age of 21, he recorded his first album as leader, The New Boss Guitar, featuring McDuff. Benson’s next recording was It’s Uptown with the George Benson Quartet, including Lonnie Smith on organ and Ronnie Cuber on baritone saxophone. Benson followed it up with The George Benson Cookbook, also with Lonnie Smith and Ronnie Cuber on baritone and drummer Marion Booker.Miles Davis employed Benson in the mid-1960s, featuring his guitar on “Paraphernalia” on his 1968 Columbia release, Miles in the Sky before going to Verve Records.
Benson then signed with Creed Taylor’s jazz label CTI Records, where he recorded several albums, with jazz heavyweights guesting, to some success, mainly in the jazz field. His 1974 release, Bad Benson, climbed to the top spot in the Billboard jazz chart, while the follow-ups, Good King Bad (#51 Pop album) and Benson and Farrell (with Joe Farrell), both reached the jazz top-three sellers. Benson also did a version of The Beatles’s 1969 album Abbey Road called The Other Side of Abbey Road, also released in 1969, and a version of “White Rabbit”, originally written and recorded by San Francisco rock group Great Society, and made famous by Jefferson Airplane. Benson played on numerous sessions for other CTI artists during this time, including Freddie Hubbard and Stanley Turrentine, notably on the latter’s acclaimed album Sugar.
1970s and 1980s
By the mid-to-late 1970s, as he recorded for Warner Bros. Records, a whole new audience began to discover Benson. With the 1976 release Breezin’, Benson sang a lead vocal on the track “This Masquerade” (notable also for the lush, romantic piano intro and solo by Jorge Dalto), which became a huge pop hit and won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. (He had sung vocals infrequently on albums earlier in his career, notably his rendition of “Here Comes the Sun” on the Other Side of Abbey Road album.) The rest of the album is instrumental, including his rendition of the 1975 Jose Feliciano composition “Affirmation”.
In 1976, Benson toured with soul singer Minnie Riperton, who had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer earlier that year and, in addition, appeared as a guitarist and backup vocalist on Stevie Wonder’s song “Another Star” from Wonder’s album Songs in the Key of Life.
During the same year, 1976, the top selling album ‘Breezin’ was released on the Warner Brothers label featuring the Bobby Womack penned title track and the Leon Russell penned This Masquerade which is now a jazz standard. Both tracks won Grammy awards that year and the LP put Benson into the musical limelight both in the USA and in Europe. Ironically, Benson had been discouraged up until this time, from using his singing skills, mainly as the company decision makers felt he wasn’t competent enough vocally, and he should stick to playing the guitar. It was here that he clearly proved them wrong.
He also recorded the original version of “The Greatest Love of All” for the 1977 Muhammad Ali bio-pic, The Greatest, which was later covered by Whitney Houston as “Greatest Love of All”.[12] During this time Benson recorded with the German conductor Claus Ogerman. The live take of “On Broadway”, recorded a few months later from the 1978 release Weekend in L.A., also won a Grammy. He has worked with Freddie Hubbard on a number of his albums throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
The Qwest record label (a subsidiary of Warner Bros., run by Quincy Jones) released Benson’s breakthrough pop album Give Me The Night, produced by Jones. Benson made it into the pop and R&B top ten with the song “Give Me the Night” (written by former Heatwave keyboardist Rod Temperton). He had many hit singles such as “Love All the Hurt Away”, “Turn Your Love Around”, “Inside Love”, “Lady Love Me”, “20/20”, “Shiver”, “Kisses in the Moonlight”. More importantly, Quincy Jones encouraged Benson to search his roots for further vocal inspiration, and he rediscovered his love for Nat Cole, Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway in the process, influencing a string of further vocal albums into the 1990s. Despite returning to his jazz and guitar playing most recently, this theme was reflected again much later in Benson’s 2000 release Absolute Benson, featuring a cover of one of Hathaway’s most notable songs, “The Ghetto”. Benson accumulated three other platinum LPs and two gold albums.
MF DOOM and Madvillan All Caps Music Video
Just because!! True hip hop!
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs
IT’S MUELLERTIME! As they say in the south I hit dog will holler !
Mueller wants witnesses’ personal phones inspected, say sources Mueller wants witnesses’ personal phones inspected, say sources.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs and potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump, sources told CNBC.
Since as early as April, Mueller’s team has been asking witnesses in the Russia probe to turn over phones for agents to examine private conversations on WhatsApp, Confide, Signal and Dust, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fearing a subpoena, the witnesses have complied with the request and have given over their phones, the sources said.
While it’s unclear what Mueller has discovered, if anything, through this new request, investigators seem to be convinced that the apps could be a key to exposing conversations that weren’t previously disclosed to them.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
Manafort accused of tampering
The revelation that Trump associates are giving Mueller access to their encrypted apps comes as former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is being accused by investigators of tampering with witnesses through the same types of programs.
On Monday, the special counsel filed a claim that Manafort tampered with witnesses after he was indicted in February for money laundering and illegally acting as a foreign agent.
For evidence, Mueller’s deputy listed two apps, WhatsApp and Telegram, that they say Manafort used to contact the witnesses in his case. The filing also says that those conversations were provided to Mueller in May, a month after witnesses say they were approached to provide their phones.
“You do not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start.”
Hear what else Buffett has to say
Representatives from WhatsApp, Signal and Dust did not return requests for comment. A representative for Confide could not be reached.
Encryption to protect privacy
The encrypted applications are used to keep conversations private and give users the ability to have discussions without being monitored.
WhatsApp, for instance, markets itself as a way to securely communicate with people overseas.
“With WhatsApp, you’ll get fast, simple, secure messaging and calling for free, available on phones all over the world,” the website says.
Dust dubs itself a “safer place to text,” and pushes its platform as a way to keep messages secretive as well as giving their users the ability to erase messages off of other people’s phones, according to their website.
“All your messages automatically ‘dust’ (erase) in 24 hours or as soon as they’re read – you choose which,” the site explains.
Dust was also the app reportedly used between longtime Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, a real estate developer who has claimed to have ties to Russian oligarchs, when they tried to complete a deal for Trump Tower Moscow. The plan ultimately fell apart.
Legal experts aren’t surprised
It isn’t surprising that witnesses are voluntarily giving over possible evidence to federal investigators, experts said.
“It’s just more typical for law enforcement to ask for consent for the obvious reason because it’s much easier than applying to a court to get judicial permission,” said Robert Ray, who acted as independent counsel during the Bill Clinton Whitewater investigation.
He added, though, that it’s “not commonplace, but not all that unusual, either,” for prosecutors to seek evidence from witnesses’ phones.
“There’s nothing wrong with asking people to voluntarily provide information to the FBI for whatever investigation,” said Michael German, a retired FBI agent and current fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. “And to the extent that that’s a voluntary action is where the rub is.”
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/06/mueller-team-zeroes-in-on-encrypted-apps-as-witness-turn-in-phones.html
Black Woman Says She Was Forced To Expose Herself At Target To Prove She Didn’t Steal
In an incident characterized as racial profiling by her attorneys, a black Michigan woman says she was forced to expose her body to employees at a Detroit-area Target after being falsely accused of stealing a bikini from the store.
Ashanae Davis, 20, said she had been walking out of a Target in Southfield on May 22 when a male security worker, who was black, grabbed her by the arm and prevented her from leaving.
According to Davis’ lawyer Jasmine Rand, a second security worker, who was white, then handcuffed her client and “dragged” her through the store while yelling loudly that Davis was wearing “stolen bikini panties … underneath her clothing.”
“He said that over and over. Loud enough for other customers to hear and loud enough to publicly humiliate our client,” Rand, a prominent civil rights attorney who has also represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, said at a news conference on Monday.
Davis’ lawyers called this humiliating practice the “Target Walk of Shame,” which they described as a “de facto policy” at Target stores nationwide aimed at embarrassing would-be shoplifters. In 2015, the retailer was sued by a California woman after her 22-year-old son died by suicide after allegedly being subjected to the so-called shame walk.
According to Davis’ attorneys, their client was then escorted to a room, where she was told to lift her shirt and pull down her pants. A white female manager was in the room at the time, as were the two male security workers. The trio found nothing stolen on Davis’ person and eventually allowed her to leave the store.
“At first I was in shock, of course, and it was just very humiliating,” Davis told WXYZ-TV of the ordeal. “I felt degraded. It was sad. I was very upset.”
On Tuesday, Target apologized for the incident and said it had fired one of its employees over what happened. The retailer later told NBC News that it was the black security worker who’d lost his job.
“We want everyone who shops at Target to feel welcomed and respected and take any allegations of mistreatment seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We’re sorry for the actions of our former team member, who created an experience we don’t want any guest to have at Target. Upon reviewing our team’s actions, we terminated the team member who was directly involved and are addressing the situation with the security team at the store.”
Target added that Davis had been stopped because a new bikini with tags still attached was allegedly spotted in her bag. The swimsuit had been purchased from a different store and not from Target, NBC….
READ MORE—–> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ashanae-davis-target-bikini-racial-profiling_us_5b17989be4b0599bc6de6780?utm_medium=facebook&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=main_fb
Teen accused of trying to rape his friend’s mother during sleepover
ARLINGTON, Tenn. — A Tennessee mother says she fought back after her son’s teenage friend allegedly sexually assaulted her during a sleepover.
Jordan Corter, 18, is charged with attempted rape and sexual battery.
Shelby County deputies said Corter was staying at a friend’s house for a sleepover. The mom brought all of the family’s alcohol into her room and locked the door, according to WREG.
Around 2:30 a.m., however, Corter knocked on her bedroom door, deputies said.
When she opened it he allegedly forced himself inside, locked the door and touched her inappropriately. When she fought back, he forced her onto the bed, according to deputies.
She told investigators that she kneed him in the groin, grabbed a pistol and forced him to leave.
The victim went to the authorities the next day.
Arrest records show Corter told police he, “forced the victim to do the things she didn’t want to do.”
He then began crying and said he, “should not be forgiven.”
At Corter’s Bartlett home on Tuesday, Corter’s step-grandfather defended him, and said, “He’s a good kid. He just graduated high school.”
But others said it’s a tough lesson.
“You have to watch who you let in your house, I guess. You can’t be too careful these days,” a resident said.
via: http://pix11.com/2018/06/05/teen-accused-of-trying-to-rape-his-friends-mother-during-sleepover/