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    BAR: Keith Davis, Jr. and Black Political Corruption Archived Message

    Posted by sashimi on January 22, 2023, 9:34 pm

    Margaret Kimberley, 18 January 2023

    Lede: Baltimore police continued to falsely accuse an innocent man when they
    shot and nearly killed him after the Freddie Gray uprisings. Prosecutors as
    always helped to carry out the dirty deeds. Having Black officials in place does
    the people of Baltimore very little good when corruption is rampant.

    Keith Davis, Jr. is free after an ordeal which began when he was shot by
    Baltimore, Maryland police on June 7, 2015. The police claimed to be looking for
    a robbery suspect and chased Davis into a garage where they fired 44 shots,
    three of which struck him. The robbery victim testified that Davis was not the
    perpetrator who attacked him, but the police charged Davis with another crime, a
    murder which took place in a different part of the city. They did this despite
    evidence showing he was also innocent of that charge as well. Five trials
    resulted in either hung juries or judges overturning verdicts. Davis was
    scheduled to be tried yet again but newly elected State Attorney Ivan Bates
    dropped all charges against him on January 13, 2023.

    No one knows how many Black men are like Davis, charged and most often convicted
    wrongfully due to police and prosecutorial misconduct. They languish in jail for
    years, sometimes dying in jail while only a few such cases ever garner public
    attention.

    We do know that the majority Black city of Baltimore is putatively run by Black
    people. Mayors, police chiefs, and prosecutors may be Black, but the racial
    composition of public officialdom doesn't seem to help the people of that city
    very much. The story of police corruption and prosecutorial misconduct in the
    Davis case is not an outlier in Baltimore.

    In November 2017, a Black police detective named Sean Suiter died from a gunshot
    wound to the head. His death was originally ruled a homicide, but the cause of
    death was later changed to suicide. The most important thing to know about
    Suiter is that he was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury about
    corruption in the Baltimore police department. His death occurred the day before
    he was to testify.

    The Harlem Park neighborhood where Suiter died was turned into a "constitution
    free zone" where residents were prevented from leaving or entering or were
    searched by police or were stopped and asked for identification over a six-day
    period. So egregious was the police action that residents filed and won a
    lawsuit against the city of Baltimore. The odd timing of Suiter's death and the
    overkill in investigating an entire neighborhood logically leads to suspicion
    about the official narrative.

    Suiter was part of a group called the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) and one of its
    officers testified that he and Suiter committed robberies together. Officers
    assigned to the GTTF robbed drug dealers, planted drugs on innocent people,
    practiced home invasions, and sold seized drugs and guns themselves.

    The mayor of Baltimore in 2017 was Catherine Pugh. Pugh infamously vetoed a bill
    that would have raised that city's minimum wage, contradicting a campaign
    promise she made to support the increase. She was later convicted of
    fraudulently selling a children's book with the proceeds illegally funneled to
    her campaign. The current mayor, Brandon Scott, first rejected and has now
    accepted campaign contributions from a businessman who gave Pugh $100,000 to buy
    a house.

    The litany of corruption and self-dealing in Baltimore explains why Keith Davis,
    Jr. was victimized with such fervor. Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby
    continued to persecute and prosecute Davis long after many irregularities in the
    case should have resulted in all charges being dropped. Davis had no connection
    to the murder victim, who had himself witnessed a murder just weeks before. The
    prosecution did not share exculpatory evidence with the defense or a judge who
    then overturned one of the convictions. The prosecution presented a jailhouse
    informant whom Davis had never met. Mysterious video footage suddenly appeared
    years after the murder. When these schemes failed, the prosecution charged Davis
    with attempted murder after a fight with another prisoner.

    Why was this one man hounded so much? His shooting occurred just two months
    after a man named Freddie Gray was killed by Baltimore police. The community
    responded with a days-long rebellion. One former police detective said, "[Here]
    they have a police-involved shooting so close to the Uprising. I heard other
    detectives inside Internal Affairs wishing Keith would die because it would've
    been much easier." But he didn't die, and that is why Keith Davis, Jr. became
    one of the most aggressively prosecuted people in United States history, having
    endured trials for gun possession, murder, and a prison fight, all to protect a
    very corrupt system.

    Prosecutor Mosby is now following in the ignominious tradition of other
    Baltimore officials. She will be tried in federal court over charges that she
    falsely claimed financial hardship through the covid related CARES Act to
    withdraw funds from her retirement account. She then used the money to purchase
    two vacation homes in Florida and made false statements on mortgage
    applications. Her husband Nick Mosby is City Council President and is facing his
    own ethics charges.

    In reporting on the Harlem Park lockdown, Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford
    described Baltimore as being "how a plantation operates when the white folks
    leave the Black overseers in charge." The harsh assessment was entirely
    appropriate. Baltimore's Black overseers go to jail for stealing small amounts
    of money in very obvious ways. They are just small-time crooks who have grown
    accustomed to sitting at the top of a struggling city, which was deprived of any
    prosperity by the destruction of the manufacturing sector. Its condition is sad
    and can be clearly seen in the many dilapidated and abandoned buildings that
    once housed living wage jobs.

    The Black misleaders of the Black political class are the errand boys and girls
    of the oligarchy who may choose to abandon a city like Baltimore and leave it to
    those a bit higher up in the plantation pecking order. Of course Black people in
    Baltimore may end up like millions of others, chased out of their cities when
    the capitalist class decides that it is too good to be left to the Black
    overseers. There will no longer be a need to give dumb crooks free reign. If
    Baltimore shares the fate of other cities the overseers and the people they rule
    over will all be gone. But the victory of Keith Davis, Jr., his family, legal
    team, and supporters is historic and will be remembered after the scoundrels are
    gone.
    -- https://blackagendareport.com/keith-davis-jr-and-black-political-corruption

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