St Paul Approves $1.3M for Police Shooting of Marcus Golden. White Supremacy Mystery Remains Unsolved as Footprints and Tire Tracks in the Snow and Bullet Casings Show Cops Murdered Him as He Fled

From [HERE] St. Paul City Council members have approved a $1.3 million settlement with the family of Marcus Golden, eight years after the 24-year-old Black man was shot and killed by police.

The settlement, approved Wednesday, will dismiss officers involved in Golden's death as defendants in the lawsuit while granting his aunt Monique Cullars-Doty $1.3 million in damages, medical liens and attorneys' fees. Since her nephew's death in 2015, Cullars-Doty has been a visible activist in the Black Lives Matter movement and others decrying police brutality.

The city has also agreed to reserve an area for a memorial bench and plaque dedicated to Golden's memory along the lakeside of Como Park. His family must pay for it.

As part of the settlement, Golden's family will recommend one of their family members join the St. Paul Neighborhood Safety Community Council within six months.

Golden died on Jan. 14, 2015, after officers responded to a 911 call of a man texting death threats from an apartment building's parking lot. The caller identified himself as the ex-boyfriend of Golden's ex-girlfriend, and claimed that Golden stalked him before sending threats. He also said that Golden owned a gun but did not know if he was possessing it.

Officers Dan Peck and Jeremy Doverspike found Golden parked in an SUV behind the apartment building around 2 a.m., exited their squad car and ordered Golden to get out of his vehicle. He refused, and police say that Golden accelerated at high speed towards Doverspike — nearly hitting him.

That's when Peck and Doverspike shot at Golden, striking him before his SUV crashed into parked vehicles. Medics gave him aid, but Golden died on the scene. Police claimed he had a loaded gun within reach when he was killed.

However, the Reinvestigation Workgroup found that it was unlikely that Golden drove towards the cops. The group said that the footprints and snow tracks in the snow demonstrate that he drove around cops and they chased on foot and fired at him. The report also shows that the gun cartridge casings don’t support the police version of events parroted by white media.

The Reinvestigation Workgroup issued an 87-page report on Marcus Golden’s case and summarized some main points at the January 19 press conference, ranging from analyzing prints in the fresh snow, to doctored reports of 911 calls. Golden’s gun was seemingly planted in the car after it was found in a shockingly brazen search of his room at this grandparents’ house right after he was murdered. Police told lies about Marcus’ character and background, manipulating things to try to make him appear unhinged. The exposure of these facts meant, as CUAPB says, “Officers Doverspike and Peck faced the very real possibility of being tried for murder in a civil trial.”

The Reinvestigation Workgroup summary was posted online after the press conference.

The St. Paul NAACP president called for an independent investigation the day of the shooting, saying that the review would "solidify" the relationship between community and police while restoring confidence in the review process. An attorney for Golden's family also called for a civil rights investigation into the case.

Around four months after Golden's death, a Washington County grand jury cleared Peck and Doverspike of wrongdoing. Predictably, the secretive, law-enforcement-driven grand jury process said its cops did not murder Marcus Golden. Doverspike and Peck are still on the force. [MORE]

Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Minnesota organization focused on deterring police violence that investigated the case, say they have unveiled new details about the circumstances around Golden's death. That report will be released Thursday.

"Since the day he was killed, Marcus' family has worked to clear his name from lies told by St. Paul police to justify his killing," CUAPB said in a statement, adding that their own investigation, aided by a hired ballistics expert, "uncovered and documented many new facts about the incident that repudiate the initial investigation and paint a very different picture of what happened to Marcus at the hands of police." [MORE]