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Muskogee Bodycam Video Breakdown

Warning: Some readers might not want to watch the video released by law enforcement because of its graphic content.

Oklahoma police released a video Friday from the body camera of a cop who fatally shot a suspect earlier this month.

Muskogee Officer Chansey McMillin, responding to a domestic abuse complaint, approached 21-year-old Terrance Walker outside the Old Agency Baptist Church on Jan. 17, according to local media.

"Just relax for me,” McMillin said. “Why you shaking for? Relax.”

The video shows Walker run away and McMillin give chase. The suspect then stops to bend over and pick up something he has dropped in the street.

From the video, it is not clear what he is attempting to retrieve, but police say it was a loaded semiautomatic pistol.

McMillin fires five shots at Walker, who had set off running again, which strike and kill the young man. The unedited footage shows Walker fall over into a ditch.

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Oklahoma police released a video Friday from the body camera of a Muskogee police officer who fatall …

The church’s pastor ran toward the scene and begged the cop to put his gun down.

“Don’t shoot no more,” he shouted.

“Get back!” McMillin screamed multiple times, while approaching the body.

Other officers arrived on the scene. One found the handgun on Walker’s person before checking his vital signs.

Minutes later, McMillin collapsed onto another cop car. His colleagues tried to comfort him.

“You’re all right, baby. You’re all right, OK? Let’s go to my car, come on,” one said.

Community Reaction From MuskogeePlay video

“F---. Why’d he have to do that?” McMillin said, referring to Walker's attempt to flee.

Walker’s mother, Cassandra, spoke to KXAN after authorities released the body camera footage of her son’s death on Friday. She said she has refused to watch it.

“I have no desire to look at it. I want to remember him like I know him to be,” she told the station. “I wouldn’t want any mother, daughter, wife, grandmother, I would never want somebody to physically see that.”

Walker, who was originally from Austin, Texas, had moved to Muskogee to attend Bacone College on a football scholarship, she said.

Muskogee police Cpl. Mike Mahan said Walker had been threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend, saying he “had a bullet with her name on it,” KJRH reported.

"From everything we can see in the video, the officer responded appropriately," he told KFOR. "This officer had a split second to make that decision. We believe he acted according to his training."

Some local residents told the NBC affiliate that the entire incident is a tragedy, but that they are happy it did not result in the sort of violence seen in other places, such as Ferguson, Mo.

“The other cities that this has happened in, they get pretty riled up about it. But thank God this is … you know, it’s kept – the community is quiet,” Joseph Ingram said.

“I really don’t think that that police officer felt like he had any other choice," said Danita Week, "but I feel really bad for the young man who was shot, too."

Authorities said the incident is under investigation and McMillin has been placed on leave.

In December, President Barack Obama requested a three-year, $263 million investment package to supply more police officers with body cameras.

The White House said the goal is to have 50,000 more body cameras in use within three years.

The proposal came at a time of widespread protests against law enforcement related to the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in August.

Brown’s death and a grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson rekindled a national debate about policing in predominantly African-American communities.

Nairobi (AFP) - Shortly before 11 am on the last Saturday in May, a heavily laden white Mitsubishi truck pulled into the Fuji Motors East Africa car dealership in an industrial neighbourhood on the northern edge of Mombasa.

The truck's cargo was not "household equipment" as declared, but 228 elephant tusks and 74 ivory pieces weighing a total of 2,152 kilograms (4,700 pounds).

When Kenyan police officers raided the car lot five days later, they refused a bribe of five million shillings ($55,000, 49,000 euros), seized the ivory and arrested two men. The bust was one of the biggest in the country's history but the suspected mastermind, Feisal Mohamed Ali, aged 46, had escaped.

Ali was "alleged to be the ringleader of an ivory smuggling ring in Kenya" according to Interpol, and in November the international police organisation listed him among the world's nine "most wanted environmental criminals".

A month later Ali was arrested in neighbouring Tanzania, extradited to Kenya and charged with illegally dealing in wildlife trophies.

It is rare for an alleged ivory kingpin to be caught, and activists hope Ali's trial will shine a light on the shadowy supply chain that funnels ivory from Africa to Asian markets.

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A handout photo provided by the campaign group Save the Elephants on December 9, 2014 and taken on M …

"People who get apprehended are mainly the foot soldiers, the poachers or foreign middlemen," said Mary Rice, executive director of the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, which recently exposed the scale of ivory smuggling out of Tanzania.

"There hasn't been a single kingpin prosecuted," she said.

The poachers commonly targeted by law enforcement officers are paid around $100 per kilo for ivory at source, but they know almost nothing of the resource extraction machinery of which they are small, replaceable cogs.

Experts say that international criminal gangs control the trade, pushing Africa's elephants towards extinction. A joint UN Environment Programme and Interpol study in 2013 said that up to 25,000 African elephants are killed each year to feed an illegal trade worth up to $188 million.

- Mafia-like organisations -

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A handout photo provided by the campaign group Save the Elephants on December 9, 2014 and taken on M …

"Forget about the poachers, this is organised crime," said Ofir Drori, corruption investigator and founding director of Eagle Wildlife Law Enforcement. "It's not an African problem, the trade is international."

The supply end of the global ivory pipeline begins in the besieged nature reserves of East and Central Africa and ends at the Indian Ocean ports of Kenya and Tanzania, from where shipping containers with hidden cargoes of ivory are exported to Asia.

DNA tests on large ivory seizures over the last five years have shown the vast majority is sourced from two areas: Tanzania's Selous Reserve and Central Africa's Congo Basin rainforest. Almost all of it ends up in large, consolidated stockpiles at the ports of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.

"There's been a substantial shift in the nature of the people involved in the ivory trade," said Varun Vira, chief of analysis at C4ADS, who has investigated the criminal syndicates involved.

The modern trade is dominated by a small number of mafia-like organisations capable of paying off -- or putting on the payroll -- a reservoir of hunters and drivers enabled by a network of park rangers, police officers, customs officials, shipping agents and freight forwarders as well as detectives and judges to subvert court cases if things go wrong.

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A bull elephant forages in the evening light on August 7, 2014 at the Ol Jogi rhino sanctuary, in th …

Influential politicians are also paid to "oil the wheels," as one conservationist put it, and to provide the syndicates with high-level protection.

Working in close partnership, Asian and African criminal gangs control the entire supply chain from source to market. The gangs are becoming more integrated with Asian criminals living and working in Africa where they can maintain close control over operations and "nest" illicit businesses within legal import-export companies.

Price said that the Chinese bosses she has investigated in Africa worked hard to limit their exposure. "They never really got their hands dirty. They paid others to do the work," she said.

- Low risk business -

Bribery and corruption facilitate the largely uninterrupted flow of ivory tusks which are commonly shipped in 20 or 40-foot (6 or 12-metre) containers and hidden among legally exported products such as nuts, garlic, sea shells and dried fish, or behind false walls and floors.

"There had been this concept that ivory poaching was somewhat opportunistic and being done on a small-scale by local people but the level of sophistication is greater than we ever thought," said Adam Roberts, chief executive of Born Free USA, a wildlife charity.

The growing size of seizures, frequently more than 500 kilograms at a time, indicates the involvement of sophisticated criminal networks able to move huge quantities at a time, according to TRAFFIC, the organisation mandated to monitor the international trade.

Ivory is worth more than $2,100 per kilo at market but with arrests rare, convictions infrequent and penalties low there are few disincentives. "The profits make it worth doing even if you get caught," said Roberts.

When large seizures are made arrests and convictions rarely follow. A recent five-year study of wildlife cases before Kenyan courts found that only seven percent of those convicted of offences against elephants and rhinos actually went to jail, despite the crimes carrying a maximum ten-year sentence.

"It's a miracle for anyone arrested in Kenya with ivory to be jailed," said Drori who co-authored the report for charity Wildlife Direct.

As Ali's trial gets underway conservationists hope that a successful conviction will lay bare the workings of the international syndicates and send a warning to others involved in the illegal trade. "If Ali is what everybody thinks he is then this is a signal flare," said Vira.

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White House going nuclear on Netanyahu

January 24, 2015 | 11:07pm

Thou shall not cross Dear Leader.

With their gutter sniping failing to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned March speech before Congress, White House aides are unloading their full arsenal of bile.

“He spat in our face publicly, and that’s no way to behave,” one Obama aide told an Israeli newspaper. “Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.”

It is pointless to say petty threats do not become the Oval Office. Trying to instruct this White House on manners recalls what Mark Twain said about trying to teach a pig to sing: It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Still, the fury is telling. It reminds, as if we could forget, that everything is always about Obama.

How dare Israel be more concerned with the existential threat of Iranian nukes than with Obama’s feelings? And what do members of Congress think they are, a separate branch of government or something?

Yes, the presidency deserves respect, even when the president doesn’t. Although Obama routinely ignores lawmakers and their role in our constitutional system of checks and balances, there is an argument afoot that Congress should have taken the high road and consulted him before inviting Netanyahu.

The argument has a point — but not a compelling one. To give Obama veto power over the visit would be to put protocol and his pride before the most important issue in the world.

Photo: AP

That is Iran’s march to nuclear weapons, and Obama’s foolish complicity. His claim at the State of the Union that “we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material” would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. The claim earned him three ­Pinocchios, with four being an outright whopper, by The Washington Post.

Outside the president’s yes-men circle, nobody believes the mad mullahs will voluntarily give up their quest for the bomb. International sanctions made life difficult for the regime, especially with oil prices cratering, but Obama ­relaxed restrictions with nothing to show for it except negotiations where he keeps bidding against himself.

He is desperate for a deal, and the Iranians know it, so they want to keep talking. They are gaining concessions and buying time, which means a reversal of their weapons program becomes much harder to achieve.

The ticking doomsday clock is what led to the remarkable comments by Democrat Robert ­Menendez. After Obama warned that more sanctions, even if they would not take effect unless the talks collapsed, could scare off the Iranians, the New Jersey senator said Obama was repeating talking points that “come straight out of Tehran.”

That’s a zinger for the ages — and has the added advantage of being true.

Any deal that leaves Iran with a capacity to make a nuke in weeks or months will ignite a regional arms race. As I have noted, American military and intelligence officials believe a nuclear-armed Iran will lead to a nuclear exchange with Israel or Arab countries within five years.

Israel has the most to lose from an Iranian nuke, and ­Netanyahu can be expected to articulate a forceful argument against Obama’s disastrous course. That’s why House Speaker John Boehner invited him, and it’s why the president is so bent out of shape and refuses to meet with Netanyahu. He doesn’t want Americans to hear the other side.

But we must. And Congress must not shirk from its duty to demand a meaningful agreement with Iran, or none at all.

An extra layer of sanctions waiting in the wings is good backup, but another pending bill is more important. It would demand that any agreement come before the Senate for a vote.

Naturally, Obama opposes it, but that’s all the more reason why it is needed. As Ronald Reagan famously said about Soviet promises, “Trust but verify.”

So must it be with Iran and, sadly, our own president.

Tipping off the enemy

A front-page story in The Wall Street Journal is a stunner — for all the wrong reasons. Under the headline, “US, Iraq Set Sights on Mosul Offensive,” it lays out plans for a summer attack against Islamic State, including the locations and numbers of allied Kurdish fighters and which Iraqi units will lead the charge.

Most shocking, the source is Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top American commander in the Middle East. He told the Journal US ground troops might be involved and that the military “would do what it takes.”

What the hell is going on? Since when does the military give the public, and the enemy, advance notice of battle plans? Has Gen. Austin lost his mind?

This is nuts.

Andy is in one Shel of a mess

Don’t be surprised if Gov. Cuomo looks as if he’s missed a meal or two. Preet Bharara is eating his lunch.

A day after Bharara, the Manhattan US attorney, busted Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, he urged the public to get mad as hell and demand an honest government.

“Wherever corruption is on the rise, that means democracy is on the decline,” Bharara said, calling Albany “a cauldron of corruption.”

The prosecutor also mocked the infamous “three men in a room” phenomenon, asking pointedly, “When did 20 million New Yorkers agree to be ruled like a triumvirate in Roman times?”

The brilliant performance earned a ringing ovation from his law-school audience — and nervous silence in the Capitol. There, legislators huddled quietly in little groups or scurried to the safety of their offices. If there is a “Dump Silver” caucus, nobody has seen it.

Cuomo’s odd behavior is the most troubling. After ducking a reporter’s question Thursday about Silver’s fate, the governor went silent, missing yet another chance to claim the role of honest reformer.

He’s already in Bharara’s sights after abruptly closing the Moreland panel while it was investigating Silver’s outside income. And the prosecutor promises more political cases, each of which will stain Cuomo’s reputation.

As head of the Democratic Party, the least Cuomo should do is demand that Silver step aside as speaker. As governor, he should simply refuse to negotiate with someone so thoroughly disgraced.
He must decide soon: Silver says he will return to work Monday and carry on business as usual.

So which side are you on, Governor: Do you stand with Silver or Bharara?

Blas’ strange bedfellows

Mayor de Blasio’s praise for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as a “man of integrity” after Silver was charged with taking $4 million in payoffs and bribes is raising hackles, but bad taste is par for the de Blasio course.

Remember, he sees Al Sharpton as “a blessing for this city” despite Sharpton being a serial tax scofflaw who owes a reported $4.5 million.

“The more people criticize him, the more I want to hang out with him,” de Blasio said.

Maybe the mayor just has a thing for crooks.

"I am Kenji Goto Jogo," the journalist is heard to say in the video, which was directed toward his family. "You have seen the photo of my cellmate, Haruna, slaughtered in the land of the Islamic Caliphate. You were warned. You were given a deadline, and so my captives acted upon their words."

The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, had demanded a $200 million ransom for the release of the two men. The 72-hour deadline passed on Friday. Abe refused to pay a ransom.

In the video Saturday, Goto said the Islamic State had changed its ransom demand and no longer wanted money.

"Their demand is easier. They are being fair. They no longer want money. So you don't need to worry about funding terrorists. They are just demanding the release of their imprisoned sister Sajida al-Rishawi," he said.

Sajida al-Rishawi is a female suicide bomber dispatched by al-Qaeda in Iraq to attack a hotel in Jordan in 2005, SITE reported. She survived when her explosive belt failed to detonate. Al-Rishawi was arrested by Jordanian authorities at the time of the attack on the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman that killed 57 people, many of whom were at a wedding reception.

She was later shown on Jordanian TV confessing to participating in the attack, BBC reported. Jordanian police said she was the wife of one of three Iraqi male suicide bombers involved in the assault.

"My husband wore one (bomb) belt and I another — he told me how to use it," she said, explaining that he took one corner of the hotel and she took another.

"There was a wedding in the hotel. There were women and children," she said. "My husband executed the attack. I tried to detonate and it failed. I left. People started running and I started running with them."

Goto was abducted after entering Syria to search for Yukawa, the 42-year-old founder of a private security firm who was taken captive in August, according to reports on Japanese television.

In a video released Tuesday, both men were shown wearing orange clothing and kneeling in the desert on either side of a masked militant holding a knife.

Japanese media, citing unnamed officials, reported this week that Goto's wife had received an e-mail in December demanding a ransom of about $17 million. But Suga said there has been no direct contact with the militants.

The Islamic State has carried out previous threats, posting videos showing the beheading of American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British hostages David Haines and Alan Herring. Both the U.S. and Britain reject paying ransoms to free hostages.

Contributing: Gregg Zoroya; the Associated Press

Mariupol (Ukraine) (AFP) - World leaders ramped up pressure on Moscow Sunday to stop pro-Kremlin rebels from embarking on a major new offensive in eastern Ukraine after rocket fire killed at least 30 people in a strategic government-held port.

The mayor of Mariupol's office said 97 people were also wounded by dozens of long-distance rockets that smashed into a packed residential district early in the morning and then again shortly after noon.

"Obviously, everyone in the city is very scared," Eduard, a native of the city of half a million, told AFP.

A fellow resident named Pavlo described dazed survivors helping wounded victims to climb out of the concrete rubble of Soviet-era apartment blocks and navigate streets strewn with shattered glass.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the rocket fire came from two locations "controlled by the 'Donetsk People's Republic'".

The attack on the last Kiev-controlled major city in Ukraine's restive east, which links separatist territory with Russian-occupied Crimea, drew ire from Western leaders, who blame Moscow for stoking the conflict that has claimed more than 5,000 lives.

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People stand beside a body after shelling in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on 24, 201 …

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, cutting short a trip to Saudi Arabia to chair an emergency National Security and Defence Council meeting in Kiev, vowed to "defend our motherland the way real patriots do -- until a full victory".

US Vice President Joe Biden, after a phone call with Poroshenko, warned that costs would "continue to rise" for Russia, which the White House accuses of sending troops and weapons to help the separatists -- a change Moscow has repeatedly denied.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also denounced the rebel groups for launching a fresh offensive, in violation of a September peace treaty, "and particularly their provocative statements about claiming further territory".

- 'Tribute for our dead' -

Leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Zakharchenko on Saturday claimed that "today, we launched an offensive against Mariupol", in quotes carried by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.

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A man stands beside the covered body of a man who died after shelling in the southern Ukrainian port …

Although he later said his forces were still "saving their strength" and had "conducted no active operations in Mariupol", he described the potential capture of the industrial port as "the best tribute possible for all our dead".

The attack drew an angry response from Ukraine's pro-Western government, with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk calling on the UN Security Council to censure Russia for allegedly spearheading the militants' advance.

But an attempt to agree a text, spearheaded by Britain, failed. Western diplomats blamed Russia, which has veto power as a permanent member of the council, for stonewalling, but Russia said the UK's insistence on condemning the rebel forces was the issue.

Western leaders watched with worry as violence once again threatened to spiral out of control in what has already been one of Europe's deadliest and most diplomatically-explosive crises since the Cold War.

Both the EU and the US have imposed sanctions on Russia for fuelling the bloody nine-month conflict with troops and weapons -- an accusation Moscow has repeatedly denied.

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A man stands inside a building damaged by shelling in Mariupol, southern Ukraine, on January 24, 201 …

US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Russia to "end its support for separatists immediately, close the international border with Ukraine and withdraw all weapons, fighters and financial backing".

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also urged Russia to "stop destabilising Ukraine", while German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the situation was "very dangerous".

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned the latest escalation "would inevitably lead to a further grave deterioration of relations between the EU and Russia".

Latvia, which holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency until July, called for an emergency meeting of the bloc's foreign affairs council next week.

- Link to Crimea -

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Ukrainian rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko (left) stands next to kneeling captive soldiers in Don …

Mariupol, a city on the southeastern Sea of Azov, provides a land bridge between guerrilla-held regions to the east and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that Russia annexed from Ukraine last March.

It has been a key strategic flashpoint in the Ukrainian conflict, which began when deadly protests in Kiev last winter toppled Ukraine's Russian-backed president and saw the country anchor its future to the West.

A rebel assault on the port in August saw Kiev repel the attack at such heavy cost that it prompted President Poroshenko to agree to a September 5 ceasefire. That truce was, however, followed by further clashes that killed at least 1,500 people.

The separatist leader of Donetsk on Friday said he was launching an offensive to seize eastern lands still controlled by Kiev, a day after his men flushed out Ukrainian troops from a long-disputed airport in Donetsk.

Western diplomats linked the rebel's advance to a new infusion of Russian troops -- firmly denied by the Kremlin -- designed to expand separatist holdings before the signing of a final truce and land demarcation agreement.

Ukraine claimed on Monday that Moscow had poured nearly 1,000 more Russian soldiers and dozens of tanks into the southeast in order to secure control over factories and coal mines that could help the rebels build their own state.

Putin quickly rejected the charges and blamed Kiev for the latest surge in deaths.

"Artillery is being used, rocket launchers and aviation, and it is used indiscriminately and over densely populated areas," Putin said on Friday.