Newspaper Page Text
VOLUMLE 17 No. 857
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At last!
GBI completes Davis probe
BAfter four months,
the long-awaited report
is delivered to district
attorney Danny Craig and
the FBI which is set to
begin its own investigation.
By Frederick Benjamin Sr.
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGDSTA
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation turned
over the completed investigation on the Alfaigo
Davis shooting to district attorney Danny Craig
and FBI senior supervisory agent Harold Harrison
on Wednesday. The report comes a full four months
after Mr. Davis was shot to death by Richmond
County Sheriff’s deputies Gary Clark Jr. and Nicho
-las Capobianco. Mr. Davis’ death touched off a
wave of emotion from the city’s black community
because he was unarmed and some witnesses at
the scene have reported that he was attempting to
give up before he was shot to death. Mr. Davis was
black and the two officers are white.
GBI officials have been telling the media for
months that the delay was caused by a backlog of
cases at the bureau’s crime labs. Some members
of the community saw the delay as a tactic used to
neutralize growing public outrage and calls for
justice.
The completion of the GBI probe marks the
beginning of an independent investigation by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to agent
Harrison, the FBI must complete its probe in 21
days. But unlike the GBI report, the district
attorney’s office will not be shared with local
authorities.
“We will not provide a copy of our report to the
district attorney,” Mr. Harrison said. “Once our
investigation is complete, we will send the com
plete GBI report and our report to the U.S. Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division. There, an
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Religion: Mormons mum on internal racism Pagesß
Serving Metropolitan m@ South Carolina and the Central Savannah River Area
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“We will not provide a copy
of our report to the district
attorney. Once our investigation is
comglete, we will send the complete
GBI report and our report to the
U.S. Justice Department’s Civil
Rights Division.” ' .
—Harold Harrison,
FBI senior supervisory resident agent
attorney will be assigned to the case,” he said.
Whereas the district attorney will decide whether
a presentment will be made to a local grand jury —
astep most observers feel will be taken —the Justice
Department will make a determination of whether
the two officers should be prosecuted for violating
Davis’ civil rights. A similar situation occuredin the
infamous Rodney King beating. The officers in
volved in the King beating were tried on local and
then federal charges. They were cleared at the local
level, but procecuted and punished at the hands of
the feds.
Federal officials will review the two-inch thick
GBI report in its entirety. “Page by page and
sentence by sentence,” Mr. Harrison said.
They will then conduct interviews and perform
crime scene tests that may have been overlooked by
the GBI
Once the report gets to the Justice Department,
however, there’s no way to predict how soon a
decision could be made, agent Harrison said.
“This agency [the civil-rights division of the Jus-
University Hospital ACE program
gets $75,000 financial boost
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State Senator Charles W. Walker prepares so present check
to Thomas E. Dohrmann, Ed.D., superintendent of Columbia
County Schools. Also present is Robert C. Oshorn Jr., Chair
ACE advisory Board and ASU president, Dr. William
Bloodworth. Photo courtesy University Hospital
- AUGUSTA
University Health Care Foun
dation received a $75,000 grant
from Senator Charles Walker from
state funds that will be available
July 1 to support the ACE (Ac
tions, Consequences, Expecta
MAY 28 - JUNE 3, 1998
tice Department] receives all of the civil rights
complaints from around the country,” he added.
“The attorney that will be assigned has a
caseload... Typically, they don’t drag on forever.”
Regardless of the outcome of the federal probe,
local prosecutors will have to move forward. Either
the officers will be cleared of any wrongdoing. They
say that Mr. Davis was attempting to run them down
with his vehicle and used deadly force because they
feared for their lives.
The Davis family, however, want the police charged
with murder. Their attorneys are poised to name
Sheriff Charles Webster as a defendant in a legal
battle that will likely challenge the professionalism
of the local sheriff’s department, sources close to the
family legal team say.
The Richmond County Sheriff’s Department has
steadfastly refused to consider obtaining any profes
sional accreditation —the very kind that would
likely neutralize the kinds of charges sure to be
leveled at the department in the cominglegal battles.
Sources say evidence exists that will prove the
police used excessive force in attempting to subdue
Davis.
Reports of the use of excessive force by the officers
involved in the Davis shooting will certainly be
reviewed as will the record of the department in
general. - Augusta Focus has published numerous
accounts of citizens’ complaints of police brutality
and the department has had charges of police brutal
ity leveled at it in the past.
Despite talk of establishing a citizen’s review board
to monitor complaints of police brutality, the depart
ment and community groups have not made much
progress. : :
tions) Program at University Hos
pital. The check was presented at
the May 21 meeting of the
Foundation’s ACE Advisory Com
mittee.
The grant from supplemental
state funds will be used by Univer-
Did the cops
murder Alfaigo
Davis?
District Attorney Danny
Craig must study the GBI
report and decide
whether Gary Clark Jr. (c)
and Nicholas Capobianco
(v) opened fire on un
armed Alfaigo Davis (l)
without justification
sity Hospital to expand the pro
gram originally targeted at sixth
grade students to elementary stu
dents, starting with thefifth grade.
Last year, the program made
20,387 contact hours with students
in more than 700 classes in some
50 schools in nine Georgia and
South Carolina counties.
Sincethe programbegan in 1992,
the response from teachers, prin
cipals and school superintendents
has been positive, resulting in re
quests to increase the program to
include after-school activities and
additional subjects in the health
and science classes. The state
funds will be used to accomplish
these goals. Specifically, the grant
will help fund additional ACE in
terns from local colleges to teach
the program’s curriculum; create
and administer a pre- versus post
evaluation tool; to stay afresh on
the latest and best teaching, tech
nology and curriculum, and to
purchase visual aids to accompany
each lesson.
The goal of the ACE Program is
to better prepare young people to
make choicesthatlead to healthier
consequences regarding physical,
See ACE, page 3A
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Serena Williams reacts after defeating Jana
Nejedly of Canada 6-2, 1-6, 6-4 in the first
round match of the French Open tennis
tournament at Roland Garros stadium in
Paris on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)
Massachusetts
woman to walk
to Africa to retrace
slave trade route
AMMERST, Mass.
(AP) For Ingrid Askew,
it will take one year and
thousands of milesto walk
through some of history’s
darkest moments.
Askew is part of a group
that plans to set out Sat
urday to walk to Africa in
an effort to retrace the
trans-Atlantic slave trade
that furnished America
and Europe withslaves for
360 years.
The 100 participants in
the Interfaith Pilgrimage
of the Middle Passage will
cover 7,000 miles — but,
according to Askew, the
trek will be grueling be
cause of the sights she’ll
see, not the distance she’ll
walk.
“We're going to be go
ingtoslaveauction blocks,
sites of lynchings and
slave-ship ports,” Askew
said from her home in
Ambherst. “Prayer has to
be brought in because of
theegregious history we’re
going to be looking at.”
The group will walk 15
miles a day and sail across
the Atlantic to dramatize
one of the most painful
episodes of the world’s
past, said Askew, a stage
director and black activ
ist,
“It was never written in
our history booksin school
how people were forced
into horrendous slave
ships, how people were
forced away from their
families and often died in
theships’ holds,” she said.
“It’'s such an evil and ugly
thing.”
“We were just taught
that slaves were brought
from Africa, they picked
sugar cane and cotton and
helped build thecountry,”
Askew said. “And they
were happy and sang
songs.”
The trip is scheduled to
begin Saturdayin Leverett
and then wind down the
East Coast, through cities
such as Bpston, Washing-
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ton, Charlotte, N.C., and
New Orleans.
_ Duringthegroup’sstop
in Boston June 7 to 9,
their planned visits in
clude Columbus Park in
the North End, where
slaves were sold into
bondage, and Copp’s Hill
burial ground, where
many freeblacks werelaid
to rest.
The group will then sail
tothe Caribbean Islands,
Brazil, and finally
Senegal. Once in Africa,
the pilgrims will walk
down the west coast,
where the slave trade
prospered, to Angola.
They plan to be trans
ported to their last stop,
Cape Town, either by bus
or boat, in May 1999,
Askew said. Not all will
walk theentiretrip; some
will join or leave along
the way.
Askew said partici
pantswillrelyon thekind
nessof strangersand plan
to sleep in such places as
the homes of locals or on
gymnasium floors. The
trip’s advisers include
Harvard professor apd
author Cornel West and
U.S. Rep. John Conyers,
D-Michigan.
The walk was largely
organized by Sister Clare
Carter, 47, a white Bud
dhist nun who lives in
Leverett and hatched the
plan for the trip while on
a similar walk in 1993 in
Sri Lanka.
“] felt there has tobe a
way we can express our
real heart and humanity,
to change, atone, and to
heal,” Carter said.
The Middle Passage
was partof the triangular
slave route on which Eu
lions of Africans to the
Americas for sale. Most
weredelivered to the Car
ibbean and Brazil, but
Americareceived about 6
percent of the slaves.