Video raises questions about Conn. priest's arrest

JPUSC · Mar 14, 2009

Video raises questions about Conn. priest’s arrest

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/upload/2009/03/022709_027.jpg

EAST HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A priest who monitors law enforcement treatment of minorities with a video camera released footage that appears to contradict the police account of his own arrest.

A police report says the Rev. James Manship was confronted and arrested Feb. 19 because he was holding an “unknown shiny silver object.” But a 15-second video released this week by Manship’s attorneys shows East Haven police Officer David Cari asking Manship, “Is there a reason you have a camera on me?”

“I’m taking a video of what’s going on here,” Manship replies.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, what I’m going to do with that camera,” Cari says as he approaches the priest. The tape then goes blank.

The arrest has reignited the debate about racial profiling and ethnic discrimination in East Haven, a working-class community of about 28,000 that borders New Haven. The shooting death of an unarmed black man by an East Haven officer in 1997 sparked harsh criticism by minority groups that has lingered. Manship and his parishioners say officers have been unfairly targeting Hispanics in recent months.

Chacon, a 36-year-old immigrant from Ecuador who moved to the U.S. 15 years ago and a parishioner of Manship’s church, said she had called the priest to her store that day because the two officers were confiscating license plates displayed on the store’s wall, saying they were illegal. She and her husband, Rodrigo Matute, were given a $372 ticket.

She said the seizure and ticket were part of a pattern of racial profiling against Hispanics by town police over the past eight months.

“I don’t know why it happened,” Chacon said of the priest’s arrest and the seizure of the license plates. “We work very hard and … everything we do is legal.”

Keefe said there has never been a complaint, oral or written, about town officers harassing Hispanic people. If a complaint were filed, city officials would look into it, he said.

Last weekend, anti-immigrant fliers apparently printed by a white supremacy group were left in front of Chacon’s store, she said. And on Monday, someone broke the window of her home’s basement door, she said.

“I’m very scared,” Chacon said.

google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jRpD__HKwH3BnXMC85MtgBMiUoSAD96TDEI82

youtube.com/watch?v=ySYxlp9fa_k

What’s up with Connecticut? First, they try to interfere with the Catholic Church, now the authorities and white supremacy groups are targeting minorities?

Maybe there’s something to that prediction Evangelical preacher David Wilkerson made:

“For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City,” he wrote. “It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago. There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath.”

Nordar · Mar 14, 2009

I think the World is running amok, with the good ole US of A leading the charge!

JPUSC · Mar 14, 2009

Video raises questions about Conn. priest's arrest

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