Victory for Activists: Deandre Cooper is Going Home

[nadinbrzezinski]

Photos: Tom Abbott

June 26, 2015 (San Diego) Deandre Cooper, one of the young men caught in the 192.5 dragnet, is going home today. While he had to take a plea from the court, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Frasier set the original sentence aside.

Before the Judge read his decision, the Government stated that Cooper “has changed his life and this has been due to the support of his mother.” The prosecutor added, “we hope that with this sentence he is able to remove himself from the situation.”

Judge Frasier then asked about Cooper’s status with the 9\5 Grimms Gang and that he was at the lesser end of the scale. Which the State agreed. They were asked how they got to the three year of probation.

http://reportingsandiego.com/2015/06/26/victory-for-activists-deandre-cooper-is-going-home/

We did video this, but ... I will not run video of a young AA man in "county blues" and in shackles.

There is plenty of academic writing on this and how the media plays a role in perpetuating stereotypes. So I extracted the photo and cropped him out. I posted a comment on this at GD... my view, Media needs to stop doing that. There is a lot of academic papers on how that is unhelpful regarding racism in the United States.

Of course it was ignored. But hey, not like that particularly shocks me.

But that is my ultra small, grain of salt on this. I made a decision, we made a decision to mostly not run photos of children to protect them. We also made the decision to try to avoid activating implicit bias a while ago. So we are hyper conscious in photos we run, and also videos.

Here is the thread if anybody is interested...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026908555

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I need to update this.

Since Deandre is under the custody of the state, he is still in prison. There is a hold that was not removed on Friday in a timely manner. God I hate the system at times. But the lawyer did not do this apparently. So until Monday. This us a lifetime and really has angered both mother and son.