SAPD officer fired for repeatedly punching handcuffed pregnant woman still fighting to win back job. 🆘🤕 Suspension records show pattern of Officer Elizabeth Montoya having issues interacting with the public. San Antonio Police officials have released body-worn camera footage showing one of its officers repeatedly punching a handcuffed pregnant woman before leaving her in the street in heavy rain.

The footage provides new insight into the 2018 incident involving Officer Elizabeth Montoya, weeks before she is scheduled to go to arbitration in an effort to win back her job.

It was recorded on the body-worn cameras of Montoya and a second officer at the scene and obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders through an open records request. In all, the Defenders viewed, nearly four hours of body camera footage recorded by Montoya during Kimberly Esparza’s arrest.

Records show Montoya and other officers were dispatched to the 1200 block of San Luis Street, just west of downtown, on July 5, 2018, around 4 a.m.

The footage from Montoya’s camera obtained by the Defenders starts as she attempts to search a barefoot Esparza in the street.

Less than 30 seconds after the clip begins, as the two women struggle, Esparza tells Montoya that she is hurting her baby.

Montoya then accused Esparza of stealing, taking drugs and not caring about the baby’s well-being.

After Esparza tells Montoya she is hurting her arm, Montoya replies, “Good. Are you going to stop?”

Esparza, still struggling and yelling, is then placed on the ground on her stomach.

Montoya tells Esparza that if she kicks her again the officer will break her arm.

Esparza is then picked up and, as Montoya attempts to secure her in the back of an SAPD patrol vehicle, another struggle between the two women ensues.

Footage from the body camera of Officer Joshua Vega, who was standing behind Montoya, shows Montoya reach into the vehicle and deliver a flurry of punches as Esparza screams and struggles.

Vega was later suspended two days for muting his body-worn camera during portions of the incident, SAPD discipline records show.

Grand jury indicts six deputies following death of Fulton jail inmate.👮🔗 A Fulton grand jury on Tuesday indicted six deputy sheriffs on five charges, including felony murder, in the 2018 death of an inmate at the county jail.

The three current and three former deputies also were charged with aggravated assault, battery and violation of oath of office in connection to the Sept. 11, 2018 death of Antonio May, who had been repeatedly shocked with a Taser.

The Fulton District Attorney’s office presented the results of its three-year investigation on Tuesday.

“It is now the duty of my office to prove these charges beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury at trial. My staff and I will continue to work to ensure that justice is done in this case,” DA Fani Willis said in a statement.

May, a 32-year-old father of three from Macon, had been arrested and taken to the Fulton County jail after he was accused of throwing rocks at the windows of the American Cancer Society building downtown. His lawyer, Michael Harper, said May died of cardiovascular collapse due to physical restraints.

May’s family had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the jail and its health care provider in May 2019, alleging “excruciating pain and suffering.”

The suit said May had struggled with mental health issues and had tested positive for amphetamines at the time of his arrest.

Self-Defense? After Rittenhouse, Calls to Drop Murder Charges Against Black Teen Chrystul Kizer

🤔 As millions continue to express shock and disappointment over Kyle Rittenhouse’s recent acquittal, others are focusing on Chrystul Kizer.

Kizer is currently awaiting trial after admitting she killed her sexual abuser in self-defense in 2018. Kizer, who was 17 at the time of the killing, says she set her abuser’s house on fire and stole his car. The alleged abuser, Randall P. Volar III, was also shot in the head.

Since Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted under claims of self-defense for fatally shooting two people and wounding a third during racial justice protests last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, another case in the city is drawing new national attention. Human rights advocates are calling for charges to be dropped in the case of Chrystul Kizer, who faces homicide and other charges for killing her white sex trafficker in 2018 after he drugged her and tried to rape her when she was just 17 years old. Court records show police knew Randall Volar had a history of sexually abusing underage Black girls. Although the court initially ruled Kizer could not use a self-defense argument, an appellate court reversed the decision, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will now consider the ruling. “It has huge ramifications for her, but it also has a huge potential impact for other victims of trafficking,” says reporter Anne Branigin. “We have a very clear case where we are not receiving the same support, the same outcry from folks who got behind Kyle Rittenhouse to defend this young Black woman,” says Wisconsin state Representative David Bowen. “She was trying to defend herself to get out of the sex trafficking she was being abused with.”

DOJ officially closes investigation into Emmett Till killing for second time.🤔 The Department of Justice has for the second time officially closed its investigation into the killing of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who died in one of the most notorious murders of the civil rights era.

Two white men confessed to torturing and killing the teenager, who was visiting his family in Mississippi from Chicago when he was abducted in 1955. The two men admitted to the killing in an interview with Look magazine but were acquitted by an all-white jury weeks after Till's killing. An investigation for new evidence was prompted after Professor Timothy Tyson claimed that a woman who accused 14-year-old Till of making sexual advances toward her recanted her accusation. The woman's accusations had directly led to Till's abduction and killing. cold case investigation into the murder of Emmett Till.

"Today is a day that we’ll never forget," Rev. Wheeler Parker, Till’s cousin, said at a press conference following the announcement.

"Officially, the Emmett Till case has been closed after 66 years," Parker said. "For 66 years we have suffered pain for his loss, and I suffered tremendously because of the way that they painted him."

Ollie Gordon, Till's cousin, said in an interview with ABC News Live that her cousin's fate may have ended differently if he had been killed in the present day.

"I think [there] might have been a different outcome, a different verdict, because the world has moved forward," she said.

Till, 14, was killed in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi after he was accused of whistling at and making sexual advances toward a white woman named Carolyn Bryant -- who has since married and is now known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. He was kidnapped, badly beaten and found in the Tallahatchie River several days later.

An investigation into the 1955 killing was reopened in 2018, following the publication of Timothy Tyson's book "The Blood of Emmett Till," which alleged that Bryant had recanted her testimony that Till had grabbed her and uttered obscenities.

However, during the investigation, Bryant denied that she recanted her testimony in an interview with the FBI. The FBI concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove that she lied to the FBI by denying that she recanted her testimony.

What to know about the trial of Kim Potter, the ex-officer who killed Daunte Wright.👮 Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of Kim Potter, the former police officer from Brooklyn Center, Minn., who said she mistook her handgun for her Taser when she shot and killed a 20-year-old Black man named Daunte Wright in April.

Potter, who is white, faces two manslaughter charges. Her criminal trial is expected to begin in early December.

Both prosecutors and defense lawyers agree the shooting was an accident. But prosecutors, led by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, say Potter's actions were criminally negligent.

Defense lawyers have argued that because Wright was resisting arrest, a use of force was authorized and that Potter was not consciously aware that she was holding her gun and is therefore innocent.

The shooting occurred as the Minneapolis area was already on edge over the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who murdered George Floyd. His trial was then taking place about 10 miles away. After Wright's killing, days of protests roiled Brooklyn Center, a diverse inner-ring suburb just across the city border from Minneapolis.

On the afternoon of April 11, Potter was training a new officer. Together, they pulled over a white Buick. Wright was driving, and his girlfriend was in the passenger seat, according to his family.

The trainee, Anthony Luckey, told Wright that he had been stopped because an air freshener was hanging from his rearview mirror — a minor traffic violation in Minnesota — and because his license plate tabs had expired, according to the criminal complaint.

During the stop, officers discovered a warrant for Wright's arrest over a failure to appear in court on a weapons charge stemming from an incident in which he fled from police the previous summer.

After finding the warrant, Luckey asked Wright to exit the car. But as Luckey attempted to handcuff him, Wright pulled away and tried to duck back inside the car.

As Potter yelled warnings that she would use her Taser, she drew her handgun and fired once, striking Wright in his left side.

Less than a minute elapsed from the moment Wright was asked to step out of the car to the moment Potter fired her gun.

The bullet passed through both of Wright's lungs and his heart, killing him. He was pronounced dead at the scene several minutes later.

Nikole Hannah-Jones on “The 1619 Project,” Teaching Critical Race Theory & White Supremacy on Trial.🔗🤔🌍 Amid a right-wing attack on teaching critical race theory, we speak in-depth with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which reframes U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as the foundational date for the United States. The project launched in 2019 and has been expanded into an anthology of 18 essays along with poems and short stories, even as several states have attempted to ban it from school curriculums. “We should all, as Americans, be deeply, deeply concerned about these anti-history laws, because what they’re really trying to do is control our memory and to control our understanding of our country,” says Hannah-Jones. Hannah-Jones’s new book that she co-edited is out this month, titled “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” along with an adaptation of The 1619 Project for children, “Born on the Water.” Hannah-Jones describes the role of her own teachers in opening her eyes beyond the usual curriculum that excluded the history she has now uplifted. She also discusses the trial of the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery and how she felt when she won the Pulitzer Prize on the same day as one of her heroines, the formerly enslaved pioneering anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells. It was on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans landing in colonial Virginia in 1619 that The New York Times Magazine launched The 1619 Project as a special issue in 2019. It’s now been expanded as an anthology of 18 essays along with poems and short stories that examine the legacy of slavery, dedicated to the more than 30 million descendants of American slavery.

Hertz Customers Have Been Wrongfully Arrested For "Stolen" Vehicles They Actually Rented.😮 Car rental company Hertz faces a lawsuit from over 100 customers who claim that police arrested them after the company falsely reported the rented vehicles as stolen. Hertz filed for bankruptcy in 2020 following significant losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the company’s problems have compounded with some 165 claims related to the arrests. 

The customers claim that they had legal and appropriate rental contracts, but in each case ended up in trouble with police who told them the vehicle had been reported stolen. The first reports of customers facing accusations of theft for their rented vehicle surfaced in August 2020 when Philadelphia-area attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy took up the case on behalf of dozens of claimants, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Jussie Smollett found guilty of lying to authorities in trial over his alleged attack. Smollett faces as much as three years in prison.😮 A jury in Cook County, Ill., has found actor Jussie Smollett guilty of felony disorderly conduct for staging a fake hate crime nearly three years ago.

Prosecutors said the former Empire star arranged for two men to attack him, wrap a noose around his neck and douse him with bleach in downtown Chicago, yelling racist and homophobic slurs — and that Smollett repeatedly lied to the police about the incident.

The verdict was announced Thursday, days after Smollett took the witness stand to tell the jury, "there was no hoax."

Jurors deliberated for a little more than nine hours over two days before finding Smollett guilty on five of the six counts he faced, which were related to a false report he gave on the day of the attack. He was acquitted on one count of giving a false report to police at a later date. That verdict was a resounding message by the jury that, in fact, Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did," special prosecutor Dan Webb said at a press conference after the jury's decision was announced.

Spiritual Moment Of The Day With Apostle Gino Jennings. 😇 Saving yourself In the name Of Jesus Christ Through The Teachings Of Our Living God Jehovah.

Parents of Michigan school shooting suspect are held on $500,000 bond after manhunt. After an hours-long manhunt led to their arrest overnight in Detroit, the parents of the 15-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four students at a high school in Michigan have pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges connected to the deaths.

At an arraignment Saturday morning, lawyers for Jennifer and James Crumbley denied that the pair had fled law enforcement. Instead, they said, the couple had intended to voluntarily appear for arraignment Saturday — a characterization that Michigan authorities appeared skeptical of.

"This case is the saddest, most tragic, worst case imaginable. There is absolutely no doubt that our clients were going to turn themselves in, and it was just a matter of logistics," Shannon Smith, a lawyer representing the pair, said during the arraignment.

A judge has set their bond at $500,000 each. Both parents face four counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the mass shooting in Oxford, Mich., about 40 miles north of Detroit. Each count is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.