Top 5 Live-WURD Tuesday August 4
1. Tremaine Wilbourn, Suspect in Killing of Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton, Surrenders
The man suspected of fatally shooting a Memphis police officer was taken into custody Monday after a nearly-two day manhunt.
Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, who is suspected of killing Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton, 33, surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service office, according to police.
Wilbourn was being questioned Monday evening said Memphis Director of Police Services Toney Armstrong, who added he wasn’t surprised the suspect surrendered. “You have to understand this has been an exhaustive search … he probably thought it would just be in his best interest to turn himself in,” Armstrong said.
Bolton was shot multiple times while conducting a traffic stop in southeast Memphis at Friday night, police said. The driver of the vehicle that was stopped turned himself in on Sunday, but was released without charge.
2. Senate Vote Fails to Defund Planned Parenthood
The Senate voted down a bill Monday that would take away more than $500 million in federal funding from Planned Parenthood after activists published a series of “sting” videos targeting the group.
The Senate voted 53-46, falling seven votes short of the 60 needed to pass the bill.
“We are very proud to have a bipartisan group of senators supporting us today,” Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards said before the vote.
It wasn’t the first effort to take funding away from Planned Parenthood, which operates around 700 health clinics that treat 2.7 million patients a year. But the series of videos published by the Center for Medical progress, an anti-abortion rights group, have unprecedented reach in a world where almost anyone can see them on YouTube.
The Center for Medical Progress admits the videos are edited and has released some full-length versions, as well as transcripts. The group claims the videos show Planned Parenthood illegally profits from selling tissue from aborted fetuses, although the full-length versions clearly show the Planned Parenthood staffers repeatedly denying this.
3. Cosby’s Lawyer: White Accusers Should Have Come Forward Because Cosby Is a Black Man and Would Have Been Target No. 1
Bill Cosby’s attorney Monique Pressley appeared on HuffPost Live Friday and poked holes through the swarm of allegations that Cosby sexually assaulted dozens of women over the course of three decades.
Pressley scolded the media as being biased and wondered why, when information comes out that contradicts some of what the accusers have claimed, reporters haven’t pounced on that information and reported it with the same ferocity with which they report the allegations levied against Cosby.
“When contrary information comes forward, the people who are putting forward the interviews, the people who are doing the reporting, should do both sides. Why aren’t we seeing those?” Pressley asked.
But what was perhaps most revealing was when Pressley spoke about how Cosby’s race would have worked against her client. She argued that even though Cosby was wealthy and powerful, he was still an African-American man.
4. Wolf nominates black retired trooper to head state police
Gov. Wolf on Monday nominated a retired state police major who grew up in North Philadelphia to be Pennsylvania’s next police commissioner.
Tyree Blocker, whose assignments included director of the state police’s bureau of drug law enforcement, is Wolf’s second choice for the job following his controversial and politically costly nomination of Marcus Brown.
Brown, a former head of the Maryland state police, withdrew his name from consideration in mid-June after Wolf failed to get enough support among Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg.
Senate GOP spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher said lawmakers know too little about Blocker to say what kind of support he will get during the confirmation process.
“It’s not like we had any advance warning,” she said. “The Senate’s role is to advise and consent on Senate nominations. In previous administrations there was … more lead time.”
5. Former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson speaks out
A year after fatally shooting unarmed teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Darren Wilson says he and his family have to be careful when they go out.
“We try to go somewhere — how do I say this correctly? — with like-minded individuals,” Wilson told the New Yorker for an extensive profile published online Monday. “You know. Where it’s not a mixing pot.”
The 29-year-old former Ferguson police officer, who received death threats following Brown’s death Aug. 9, 2014, lives in seclusion on the outskirts of St. Louis.
Wilson, who was not indicted in Brown’s killing, told the magazine’s Jake Halpern he hadn’t reflected much on who Brown was because he’d been preoccupied with the protests in Ferguson and the civil lawsuit Brown’s parents filed against him in May.
“You do realize that his parents are suing me?” Wilson said. “So I have to think about him.”
Later, Wilson was asked if he thought Brown was a “bad guy,” or “just a kid who had got himself into a bad situation.”
Click here to read these stories on 900amWURD.
Solomon Jones is an Essence bestselling author and award-winning columnist. He is the creator and editor of Solomonjones.com and morning host on 900 am WURD radio. Click here to learn more about Solomon
