Ex-Deputy Cleared in Airman Shooting

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A sheriff’s deputy was acquitted of all charges Thursday in the videotaped shooting of an unarmed Iraq war veteran who was a passenger in a car that crashed after a high-speed police chase.

Former San Bernardino County Deputy Ivory J. Webb was found not guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm for opening fire on Elio Carrion, an Air Force senior airman, said Susan Mickey, a district attorney’s spokeswoman.

Webb, 46, who has since left the department, had faced as many as 18 years in prison if convicted. He hugged his attorney and burst into tears after the verdict was read in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

“I’m ecstatic,” Webb said. “I thank God first and foremost. I also want to thank the jurors.”

Prosecutor R. Lewis Cope said he was disappointed but praised jurors, who deliberated for several hours.

“I believe the evidence that was presented was sound and at all times we were very confident in this case, but the jury has decided, and we respect that decision,” he said.

However, Carrion’s father, Heliodoro Carrion, told KCAL-TV he believed justice was not served.

“Everybody saw what happened. We’re in the United States, we’re supposed to have justice over here,” he said.

Carrion has been on light duty at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. A call to his attorney, Luis A. Carrillo, was not immediately returned.

Carrion, an Iraq war veteran home on leave, was a passenger in a Corvette that Webb was chasing Jan. 29 last year when it crashed into a wall in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.

On a grainy, 40-second video clip shot in darkness by an area resident, Carrion can be heard swearing at Webb before the deputy tells him, “Get up! Get up!” Webb, who is shouting expletives, then shoots Carrion in the chest, left leg and left shoulder as Carrion appears to obey the order.

Carrion was hospitalized for several days.

“In our eyes it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt that the officer was unreasonable,” said juror Richard Day. “In our eyes he did everything reasonably that any officer would do in his position.”

Juror Michael Thompson said the video footage didn’t tell the whole story.

“Somebody watches something on television, you can’t assume it to be true,” he said. “You can’t assume it to be what’s real.”

Prosecutors said Carrion did not pose a threat to Webb, who they characterized as angry and not in control of the situation.

Defense attorneys said Carrion’s hand was near his chest moments before he was shot, giving the deputy the impression the airman was reaching for a weapon.

Carrion testified during the trial he and the driver, Luis Escobedo, had been drinking at a barbecue in his honor after a six-month tour in Iraq.

Webb did not take the stand during the four-week trial. Three witnesses testified for the defense, including a tactics expert who said the shooting was justified and an alcohol expert who testified about the victim’s intoxication level.

Ex-deputy cleared in Calif. shooting of airman that was caught on video

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) – Authorities in California say a former sheriff’s deputy has been acquitted of all charges in the videotaped shooting of an unarmed Iraq war veteran.

A jury in San Bernardino found Ivory Webb not guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm.

Webb had been caught on tape shooting Elio Carrion. Carrion was a passenger in a Corvette that Webb had been chasing before it crashed into a wall outside Los Angeles.

The video, shot by an area resident, shows Carrion and Webb swearing at each other before Webb is seen shooting Carrion in the chest, leg and shoulder.

Carrion was hospitalized for several days.

Defense attorneys say Webb was under the impression that Carrion was reaching for a weapon as he got out of the car. Prosecutors say the airman did not pose a threat.

Dems Say March to Racial Unity Not Over

WASHINGTON (Map, News) – A historically diverse field of Democratic presidential candidates – a woman, a black, an Hispanic and five whites – denounced an hours-old Supreme Court affirmative action ruling Thursday night and said the nation’s slow march to racial unity is far from over.”We have made enormous progress, but the progress we have made is not good enough,” said Sen. Barack Obama, the son of a man from Kenya and a woman from Kansas.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, drew the night’s largest cheer when she suggested there was a hint of racism in the way AIDS is addressed in this country.

“Let me just put this in perspective: If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country,” said the New York senator.

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In their third primary debate, the two leading candidates and their fellow Democrats played to the emotions of a predominantly black audience, fighting for a voting bloc that is crucial in the party’s nomination process.

One issue not raised by questioners, the war in Iraq, dominated the past two debates. Queries about AIDS, criminal justice, education, taxes, outsourcing jobs, poverty and the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina all led to the same point: The racial divide still exists.

“There is so much left to be done,” Clinton said, “and for anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes.”

While the first two debates focused on their narrow differences on Iraq, moderator Tavis Smiley promised to steer the candidates to other issues that matter to black America. In turn, the candidates said those issues mattered to them.

“This issue of poverty in America is the cause of my life,” said John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee.

Said Obama: “It starts from birth.”

Obama criticized President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. “You can’t leave money behind … and unfortunately that’s what’s been done,” he said.

Clinton spoke of her efforts in Arkansas to raise school standards, “most especially for minority children.”

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden urged people to be tested for the AIDS virus, noting that he and Obama had done so. Cracked the Illinois senator: “I just want to make clear I got tested with Michelle,” his wife, Obama said drawing laughter from the predominantly black audience.

The debate was held at Howard University, a historically black college in the nation’s capital.

Black voters are a large and critical part of the Democratic primary electorate, making the debate a must-attend for candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination.

A half century of desegregation law – and racial tension – was laid bare for the Democrats hours before they met. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court clamped historic new limits on school desegregation plans.

Clinton said the decision “turned the clock back” on history, and her competitors agreed.

The conservative majority cited the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case to bolster its precedent-shattering decision, an act termed a “cruel irony” by Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent. The 1954 ruling led to the end of state-sponsored school segregation in the United States.

Obama, the only black candidate in the eight-person field, spoke of civil rights leaders who fought for Brown v. Board of Education and other precedents curbed by the high court. “If it were not for them,” he said, “I would not be standing here.”

Biden noted that he voted against confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion. He said he was tough on Roberts. “The problem is the rest of us were not tough enough,” he said, seeming to take a jab at fellow Democrats. “They have turned the court upside down.”

All the Democratic candidates in the Senate opposed the confirmation of conservative Justice Samuel Alito, another of President Bush’s nominees. Clinton, Biden and Obama voted against Roberts; Sen. Chris Dodd voted for his nomination.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the first major Hispanic candidate, said race is about more than passing new laws and appointing new justices. “The next president is going to have to lead,” he said, vowing to do so.

Dodd said “the shame of resegregation in our country has been occurring for years.”

The nomination fight begins in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with relatively few minorities. But blacks and other minority voters become critical in Nevada, South Carolina and Florida before the campaign turns to a multi-state primary on Feb. 5.

About one in 10 voters in the 2004 election were black, according to exit polls, and they voted 9-to-1 for Democrat John Kerry. In some states, blacks make up a bigger share of the voters. In South Carolina, for example, blacks made up about 30 percent of the electorate in 2004, but were more than half of the voters in the state’s Democratic primary.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the country’s only black governor, introduced the candidates with a warning that a dispirited GOP “is not enough to elect a Democratic president nor should it be. We need to offer a more positive and hopeful vision … to run on what we are for and not just what we are against.”

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel also debated.

Ex-’Grey’s’ Star Cites Racism for Firing

LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Grey’s Anatomy” star Isaiah Washington said racism was a factor in his firing from the hit ABC series after he twice used an anti-gay slur. Washington, who initially used the epithet during an onset clash with a co-star, told Newsweek magazine that “someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me.”

He tried to make amends by expressing remorse and volunteering to enter a counseling program to understand how the confrontation got out of hand, he told Newsweek.

“My mistake was believing that I would get the support from my network and all of my cast mates across the board. My mistake was believing I could correct a wrong with honesty and sincerity,” he said in the interview posted online Thursday.

“My mistake was thinking black people get second chances. I was wrong on all fronts,” he said.

His unwillingness to act like a submissive black at work was part of the problem, Washington said.

“Well, it didn’t help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn’t a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn’t speak like I’d just left the plantation and that can be a problem for people sometime,” he said.

“I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that ’some people’ were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her why, because I’m a 6-foot-1, black man with dark skin and who doesn’t go around saying ‘Yessah, massa sir’ and ‘No sir, massa’ to everyone?

“It’s nuts when your presence alone can just scare people, and that made me a prime candidate to take the heat in a dysfunctional family,” he said.

ABC declined comment Thursday. In its one public statement regarding Washington, issued in January, the network said his actions were “unacceptable.”

Washington, who used the slur against co-star T.R. Knight during a confrontation with Patrick Dempsey, repeated the word backstage at the Golden Globes in January in denying the first incident. A public apology to Knight and others followed.

Disney World accused of racial profiling

ORLANDO, Fla., June 28 (UPI) — Efforts to curb loitering in Walt Disney World have lead to charges of racial profiling by some of the teens escorted off the Florida resort’s property. Assisted by off-duty sheriff’s deputies, Disney security officers expelled dozens of youth and banned them from returning to the resort. Emerging details show all but one of those banished were black or Hispanic, leading some teens and their parents to accuse Disney of targeting minorities, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Thursday.

Several Florida State University recruits who were told to leave and cited for trespassing said they are considering filing a lawsuit. Recruit Nick Moody’s father, Philadelphia civil rights attorney Adrian Moody, said he was looking into the incident to determine whether legal action is warranted, the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune reported.

“I’m just trying to understand how you can have such a ban at a public facility. I can tell you this, based on what I know now, it sounds like profiling to me,” Moody told the Tribune. “This is one of those things that, in my view, it needs to be dealt with right now so they can clear their names.”

Disney officials declined comment on the allegations of targeting minorities.

Lessons from Katrina

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps–just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars–25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans–will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response–have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that “those people” left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers–use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African-American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them. This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.

Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union–the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the “good” kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear–do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal–if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self-medication and drug and alcohol abuse, and of course crime.

Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can–housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions, that way no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them–the local African-American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even we do it for other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say “Well, they didn’t even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning.”

Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well-connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts–at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000–that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip-offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims–as critics can say “Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?”

Step Thirty One. Keep people’s attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war–support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists–that always seems to work.

Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on–accuse them of “playing the race card” or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who “just want to go back to the bad old days.” Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers. Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

FRENCHIE ALLEGES RACISM ON ALASKA AIRLINES FLIGHT: It all started when boy said he didn’t want to be near “big black person.”

*Frenchie Davis says she was a victim of racism by a passenger and flight attendants on Alaska Air, and plans to discuss her ordeal in a press conference scheduled for this week in Los Angeles.

      Her rep, however, has already told EUR what went down. Her account is as follows:

      The “American Idol” vet was seated by the window at 1:30 p.m. for a scheduled 1:55 p.m. take off on Friday. A man and his son had the seats next to Frenchie, but the boy complained that he didn’t want to sit next to the “big black person,” Davis’ rep says. 

      The man asked Frenchie to put her armrest down between her and the boy, but Frenchie had already fallen asleep as the plane began to taxi down the runway.

      According to her rep, the man “stands up and shakes Frenchie violently saying wake up and put the armrest down right now. She tells him to take his hands off her.”

      The man allegedly asked flight attendants to call security because this “big black woman is harassing him,” the rep recounts. She says two flight attendants respond, but don’t bother to ask Frenchie to tell her side of the story. They just demand that she move.

      Frenchie tells the attendants that she was attacked, the rep says. But the pilot somehow gets involved, turns the plane around and heads back to the gate, where Frenchie “winds up off the plane and misses her flight to her next professional singing performance,” the rep says. “A few witnesses give her their information and tell her if she needs a witness to call them.”

      Los Angeles community activist Najee Ali is involved and will give remarks at the press conference, scheduled for Thursday morning at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse in L.A.

 

Black Suicide Attempts Worse Than Thought

More U.S. blacks attempt suicide than previously thought, according to a landmark study that could help explode the myth that black suicides are rare because of a mind-set that took hold during slavery.

The first nationally representative study to look at attempted suicide among blacks found that about 70,000 of them try to kill themselves each year and 4 percent, or roughly 1.4 million, attempt suicide at least once in their lives.

That lifetime rate is similar to that of whites but higher than the 2.8 percent found among blacks in previous surveys.

Other research has shown that the actual suicide rate in whites is about twice as high as in blacks, though rising rates among young black men have narrowed the racial gap.

Still, there is a common misconception that suicide is rare in the black community because of cultural and religious beliefs dating back to slavery times. The study strengthens evidence showing that belief is false, said University of Michigan researcher Sean Joe, the study’s lead author.

The findings appear in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers analyzed data from a national survey involving 5,181 blacks age 18 and older. They were questioned about suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts between 2001 and 2003. Data on completed suicides was not included.

The study is the first to look at suicidal behavior among the two leading ethnic groups within the U.S. black community _ African-Americans and Caribbean Americans.

The lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts was much higher among Caribbean-American black men, at 7.5 percent, suggesting that about 53,000 try at least once to kill themselves.

The reasons for that relatively high rate are uncertain. Although the study lacked data on how long Caribbean-American blacks and their ancestors had been in this country, it is likely many were more recent arrivals than African Americans and thus more vulnerable to frustrations with discrimination and other societal pressures, said Dr. Carl Bell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus and expert on mental health issues in the black community.

“There is little or no information that is out there that is well-studied and well-documented. From that perspective, this is a huge contribution” that will help mental health professionals serve the black community, said Bell, who was not involved in the research.

Dr. Paula Clayton, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, pronounced it a landmark study that adds considerably to knowledge about suicide risks in blacks and could improve prevention efforts.

Historically, suicide was taboo in the black community going back to slavery times, at least partly because “it was really frowned on by the black church,” said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard University psychiatry professor and race relations specialist. “It was a stigma and it brought shame to your family.”

Blacks “thought life was supposed to be hard for them,” and that may have helped protect them from suicide, Poussaint said.

Interestingly, suicide attempts in the study were least common among blacks in the South, where that mind-set may linger from slavery times, he said.

While depression is strongly tied to suicidal behavior in whites, anxiety disorders were more common than depression in blacks who attempted suicide in the study. That is an important racial difference that could alert doctors to black patients who might be contemplating suicide, Poussaint said.

La. town’s first black mayor-elect slain

The city council scheduled an emergency meeting Tuesday after the mayor-elect, the first black man elected to lead the largely white town, was found shot to death.

The body of Gerald Washington, 57, was found Saturday night in the parking lot of a former school. He had been shot once in the chest, investigators said. Officials said a pistol was found nearby.

The killing is being investigated as a homicide, but Calcasieu Parish sheriff’s spokeswoman Kim Myers said Tuesday morning that no arrests had been made and the department had no suspects.

Washington, who served three terms as a city councilman, was supposed to have taken office Tuesday as Westlake’s first new mayor in 24 years.

The city council has 10 days to appoint an interim mayor. If it fails to meet that deadline, the governor could appoint someone to lead the town, according to Mayor Dudley Dixon, who is retiring.

Although the southwest Louisiana town of 4,500 is 80 percent white, Washington had no trouble winning election in September.

The retired refinery worker had 696 votes _ nearly 69 percent of the vote _ to 318 for social worker Paula Johnson.

“Mr. Washington is going to be missed by all the people of Westlake,” Dixon said. “It’s one of the most tragic things I’ve heard in a long time. He would be a good mayor.”

Longtime Councilman Dan Cupit said he had been looking forward to working with Washington as mayor. “Westlake lost a good friend,” he said.

Young black men face conspiracy of events

The Rev. Robert Fowler, pastor at Victory Baptist Church, has a way with words. He even has his own definition for the word, “conspiracy,” as in “The Conspiracy to Destroy African-American Boys,” the title of a talk he will deliver at 7 p.m. Thursday at his Las Vegas church. The talk’s underlying point will be that young black men in Las Vegas, like those across the country, are struggling with low graduation rates, high incarceration rates and high percentages of single-parent families and below-poverty households – and that families are where those numbers can be turned around. U.S. Census figures show, for example, that 12.7 percent of black families in Nevada had incomes in 2005 that were 50 percent or less of the federal poverty standard – $19,350 for a family of four. That was more than 2 1/2 times the overall statewide figure of 5 percent. “Normally, the word ‘conspiracy’ is taken to mean when people collate together in secrecy to reach a common end,” Fowler said. “But you can have events conspire together to an end … and what’s happening in our community works against African-American boys in particular.” The pastor emphasized that “this is not a bash ‘the man,’ bash the system talk – this is about personal responsibility.” Fowler, with a congregation of 8,000, is a strong presence in the black community. But he has never addressed the issue of young men in an event of this scope. Thursday night’s talk will be followed by a Friday all-day affair bringing together community churches and public and private agencies that routinely come in contact with young black men, including Metro Police. “There are a lot of events in the last year in the community” – among them, gang murders, police shootings and random violence – that make the event timely, he said. “If we can’t see that our boys need direction, then we’re blind,” he said. Fowler said the family is where support for young black men starts. “If we can build good families, we can have good neighborhoods. If we have good neighborhoods, we can have less crime,” he said. With many black families lacking a father figure, organizations such as 100 Black Men, which mentors young black males, help fill that gap. Shaundell Newsome, vice president of development for 100 Black Men of Las Vegas, said black fathers like him are “outnumbered by negative images” of drug dealers and gang members. “We’re not taking care of our young men,” he said. Fowler hopes the event helps draw the community, government and the church closer together. “It’s not malevolent toward anybody, and the solution involves everybody,” Fowler said.