Excerpt: "Federal prosecutors said on Tuesday they are investigating the shooting death of a black man in the back of a Louisiana police car that had previously been ruled a suicide."
Victor White's family is calling for a federal investigation into his sons death. (photo: NBC News)
DOJ Investigates Shooting of Louisiana Man Whom Police Claim Committed Suicide in Their Car
03 September 13
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ederal prosecutors said on Tuesday they are investigating the shooting death of a black man in the back of a Louisiana police car that had previously been ruled a suicide.
The family of Victor White III, 23, who died in March while handcuffed and in the custody of the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, has disputed a coroner's finding that he killed himself.
"This tragic incident deserves a full review of the evidence," Lafayette-based U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley said in a statement. "Our objective is to discover the truth."
Benjamin Crump, attorney for the White family, said the incident is similar to the 2012 death in Arkansas of Chavis Carter, calling them both "Houdini Handcuff" cases, in reference to famed escape artist Harry Houdini.
Like White, Carter was shot while handcuffed in the back of a police car, with his death ruled a suicide.
The federal probe of White's death, which is being carried out by Finley's office together with the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, will "supplement, rather than supplant" an ongoing state police investigation into his death, Finley said.
"Once the investigation is complete, we will carefully review the results to decide if any prosecutable violations of federal criminal civil rights statutes occurred," she said.
White died in early March in Iberia Parish, about 100 miles west of New Orleans, after being stopped by police in connection with a fight, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper.
The Louisiana State Police initially said that White was shot in the back, the Advocate reported, while the subsequent coroner's report - which corroborated his death as a suicide - found he was shot in the chest.
The Louisiana State Police and the Iberia Parish coroner did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
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T-Rump is not worthy to shine Karrem's shoes (sic). He can't say that, but I can.
As for unemployment: I can't recall just when that statistic was first published, but it is one of the most bogus of all of the standard economic statistics, none of which mean quite what they seem to. To begin, it is no. 3 in a set of six "measures of labor underutilizatio n," none of which means much in the absence of the other five PLUS the Labor Force Participation Rate. If there were some way to measure labor underutilizatio n in a single number--which there CANNOT BE--it would likely be well above ten percent, and one of the HIGHEST for times when the economy was not in recession.
Any card carrying economists out there want to discuss that subject? BRING 'EM ON!
I am just one year older than Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, but white, and I too was significantly influenced by "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." I read it when I was 21, possibly about the same time he did, but I'm sure he understood a lot more of it than I did at the time. It's high time I read it again, and you should too.