On December 25, missing fourteen year old A'kiera Burrell Sledge, from Kansas City, Missouri, finally called her mother from an untraceable number. This is great news for Iyonna Burrell, who, prior to this phone call, had no real idea what had happened to her daughter. A'kiera has a history of running away from home, and was taken into state custody and placed in Crittenden because of it. Iyonna has not lost parental rights, just custody, but when her daughter disappeared while in the state's custody, she was treated as if no one owed her any answers. This is simply not true. What's really going on is that a facility that accepts monies from state funded insurance failed to protect a child in it's custody, and when the parent demanded answers, pretending she had no right to answers was the most convenient way of blowing her off. Unfortunately, the court in Kansas City, Missouri is vested in covering for Crittenden, and refuses to establish a profile with NCMEC for A'kiera. No one has forced Crittenden to turn over it's security footage from the cameras that provide surveillance around the perimeter twenty-four hours a day. Crittenden, so far, has gotten away with falsely stating that there is no surveillance footage.
At least Iyonna Burrell knows her daughter was alive on Christmas. A'kiera has been missing since the last week of November. She does not wish to live at Crittenden anymore. Missouri will not allow her to live with her mother, and as of late, will not even allow her mother to advocate for her while she is a missing child. Missouri was not making any efforts in improving communication between mother and daughter, and it appears that Crittenden just wanted to make sure that A'kiera was not reported missing too close to the middle of the month, lest they lose the funding for A'kiera's enrollment in their program. Or something like that. Any time stamped video footage of A'kiera leaving the facility might mean Crittenden would owe the insurance company or the state a prorated refund. The only other reasons for discouraging communication between A'kiera and family members and for withholding the surveillance footage are much more sinister.
Right now, A'kiera needs her mother more than she needs anything. The state of Missouri needs to realize it's failure in this case, and either return A'kiera to her mother or find a family member or friend who can keep A'kiera until communication and balance can be established. Telling Iyonna not to parent is one and the same as telling A'kiera she can't have a mother, at this point; and that is morally repugnant. Why can't there be an advocate, or legal counsel, for A'kiera? If there was, how would she know who to contact, and who to trust? If someone can answer those questions for her, she might place another phone call to her mom.
Kendrick Johnson, a seventeen year old Lowndes County Georgia student, didn't come home from school one day in January of this year. He didn't make it to a basketball game, either. On January 11, he was found deceased, rolled up in a gym mat. The death was ruled an accident, and some truly insane speculations were made concerning how he got into the gym mat. No evidence was analyzed, no witnesses were interviewed, the crime scene wasn't even taped off; Kendrick was found shortly after ten in the morning, and police did not investigate the surroundings or begin to look for evidence until after three in the afternoon, even though Georgia law requires that the coroner be called immediately when police discover a body. During the five hour interim, the gymnasium was in use. It would seem that police already somehow "knew" the death was an "accident".
That's exactly how Bill Watson, the Lowndes County coroner, ruled Kendrick's death: as an accident. A second autopsy was done at his parents' request and expense, and that autopsy yielded different findings. Kendrick Johnson actually died of "unexplained, apparent non-accidental blunt force trauma"....CNN, quoting the medical report. Kendrick's parents were also told by the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney that Kendrick was alone in the gym when he died. Yet the surveillance taken on that day shows other students in the gym at the same time. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, L. Warren Turner, Jr., the attorney for the school, told Anderson Cooper that there were other students present in the gym. The very same attorney had previously joined the Georgia Bureau of Investigations in an unsuccessful effort to convince the community that Kendrick was alone when he died. The information is obviously conflicting, yet the lawyer does not acknowledge the problem. Rather than admit wrongdoing on the part of the school, which owes it's students better and more competent supervision, he leaves Kendrick's parents with the task of paying their own lawyer to challenge him, even though he knows that in protecting the school, he is at cross purposes with student safety, perverting justice, allowing a killer to remain at large, and sending a clear message to any would-be bullies that the school is more concerned with protecting it's public image than protecting any underage crime victims.
Anderson Cooper has as much of the footage from the day Kendrick died as he was able to get from the school. The reader should also note that law enforcement did not even peruse this video before the death was initially ruled accidental. Had Kendrick been white, would this investigation have been handled differently?
The Lowndes County coroner, Bill Watson, made yet another interesting comment. In addition to getting away with covering for a school where homicides go uninvestigated and covering for a police department that has agendas that are more important to the local sheriff than impartial enforcement of the law, Watson wants Anderson Cooper to redact the whole interview between himself and Cooper! Fat chance! Watson may be able to manipulate the journalists and advertisers who produce the local news where he lives, but he does not own Anderson Cooper or CNN!
For some reason, ego-driven police officers do not seem to like citizens bearing cameras and cell phones. Especially if said citizens decide to film or record certain encounters with said police officers. It would seem logical to simply behave in a civil manner and use manners, good ones, when dealing with the public; but instead, many police officers would rather behave badly and unlawfully,
grabbing and destroying any cell phone or camera footage of their actions. They don't want the public to know about the children they deliberately endanger or the middle-aged moms and housewives they assault and batter when prosecutors need to intimidate entire communities.
The video above shows some police officers in Pennsylvania harassing a tenant because they wanted to serve an arrest warrant on her landlord, who had neglected to mow the lawn. Yes, you read that correctly; there was an arrest warrant for someone because he didn't mow the lawn! The tenant at the property got some footage of the cops who came to her door and harassed her, and the prosecutor actually defended them. It's too bad he is unaware of a recent case which originated in Kansas, and was eventually decided in favor of the defendant in the Supreme Court.........specifically, the only time the police can barge into someone's home or apartment uninvited without a warrant or probable cause is when an immediate danger presents itself, and an "immediate danger" is specifically defined as a weapon in the hand of the person who answers the door, not anywhere else inside the house.
Record and film all contact with law enforcement. Have your children do the same.
The police in Missouri are allowed to release footage from police cruisers' dashboards along with arrest reports as public information, unless this is contraindicated because said footage is evidence. In Debbie Bradley's case, as per the night she reported her infant daughter, Lisa Irwin, missing, police will only release a portion of the footage, not all if it. Is it possible that there may be enough evidence, one day soon, to charge Mrs. Bradley (not Mrs. Irwin) with a crime, and the footage from the police car will be part of the evidence against her? Because keeping all evidence under lock and key until requested by her attorney for discovery is probably more strategic than putting it on the news. What'd you do with your baby, Debbie?
