Leonard Cure, Oct 2023, Camden county Georgia
This one is as fresh as it gets. Last week, leonard cure, who was wrongly convicted in 2004 of an armed robbery he did not commit. Cure got a life sentence based upon previous felonies and armed robbery convictions.
Last week, he was pulled over by Georgia trooper for driving 90 past the trooper in 70 mph zone. He then increased his speed to over 100 mph before pulling over. The trooper is loud and immediately tells cure to exit the vehicle and head to the back of the truck. Cure is sort of compliant but keeps pausing, leaving the trooper in a dangerous location with speeding traffic only feet away(this is a very important aspect to be examined later). Cure is incredulous when he asks why he was pulled over and the trooper says for speeding. Cure responds with something like “so what” and demands to know by what authority the trooper has to pull him over. Trooper calls for backup stating he has a non compliant subject.
At this point, things quickly head south as the trooper tells cure he is under arrest. Cure says he’s not going back to jail and the trooper tells him that traffic offenses are criminal offenses and then threatens to taser him, which he then does, with no response from cure who then rips the wires from him and starts flailing his arms at the deputy. The two begin to scuffle on the side of the highway and cure strikes the trooper and then begins to choke him and bend him backwards over the bed of the truck. The trooper then pulls out his baton and begins striking cure who responds “yeah, bitch!” When the baton strikes fail to achieve the desired response, the trooper pulls out his firearm and shoots cure under the armpit in a fatal wound. Trooper calls out shots fired and when backup arrives, he begins to treat cure to no avail.
The response was pretty much immediate in the media and activist circle. My favorite celebrity ambulance chaser, ben crump, is hired by the family and he states the following: “
NPR front-loaded its
report with emphasis on Cure's exoneration, his race, and a quote from his family's lawyer,
Ben Crump, claiming, "It is god awful that he would escape that injustice to have his life claimed by more bias. ... Just because you're Black should not be the determining factor whether you get a death sentence for a traffic stop."
SPLC president Margaret Huang said in a
statement, "No one should be shot to death during a traffic stop. ... The brutal and unjust violence Black people have endured at the hands of police must end. Enough is enough."
"The SPLC once again calls for a reimagining of policing in this country that respects the rights of all people," continued Huang. "Leaders at every level must take urgent action to end the culture of anti-Blackness in policing, keep all communities safe and demand accountability until equal justice is a reality for all."
Look, it really sucks that he was falsely convicted and good on the innocence project for proving he was using an atm far away from the scene of the robbery when it occurred. And it also sucks that he was not fairly compensated, only getting 800k for sixteen years of hell, however, his actions on that day were very violent and dangerous and this shooting was absolutely 100% justified. Cure was traumatized no doubt, from being caged for 16 years and however long he was in prison for his previous armed robberies. Dude was definitely traumatized at the thought of going back to jail/prison and this triggered his fight/flight (almost entirely fight) but any person, regardless of race, that chokes and strikes a cop on the side of a busy highway is getting shot when all other lesser levels of force fail. I wish the trooper had come in a little cooler and explained to the guy, based upon PA v Mimms, that the trooper has the right to have the driver or passenger exit the vehicle for safety reasons. My thoughts on this are that it is unsafe to conduct a traffic stop on a busy highway with vehicles traveling in excess of 70 mph. I also think that part of the yelling from the trooper was both stress and the highway noise. If you’ve never been on the side of a highway, two things that will shock you is how loud it is and how much the road shakes and the wind as cars whistle by. On bridges, it’s really bad. Regardless, a cop being a loud dick is one thing-resisting arrest and trying to choke him or fight where you could go out into traffic is another. I have been both parts of that. I have on one or two occasions, been the loud dick (seriously, only a few times because I remember and regret those times and my behavior and learned from it) and I have also fought people on the side of a busy freeway and it is scary af. Shitbag crump and the activist nation have been making this all about race because that’s their only play. This man was already a violent criminal before he was ever falsely convicted, so blaming this totally on that experience is not accurate, but it certainly didn’t help. But the ploys of race and calls for justice are only to generate anger and will scare people into paying him a lot of money to be an ambulance chasing chickenhawk.
The incident
Press conference where brother calls multiple convicted felon “a man of integrity” and crump and family are to meet with prosecutors to determine when/if charges will be filed against trooper.
Longer (50 mins) press conference by crump where he says cure was killed “by Jim Crow bigoted policing” “another black man caught up in racist criminal justice system” “we all know if he was white, he wouldn’t have been shot by police for a traffic stop” and then he blasts Facebook removing the live stream and he accuses law enforcement of having this done or accuses Facebook of doing it(very important because mark my words-crump will try to sue Facebook)
