Recently, members of Rochester Indymedia sat in on the latest iteration of Tyquan Rivera's court case. We were moved to witness this process first-hand because of the disturbing imbalance in the corporate media coverage of the proceedings we'd seen thus far. According to an eyewitness present at the time, the alleged shooting of the police officer by Rivera was precipitated by police brutality—an un-provoked beating that officers inflicted on Rivera and others, just prior to the shooting. This information, well known in Rivera's community, has only been reported in one media outlet, a morning radio program. We found the experience of watching the court proceedings in Rivera's case to be a strange brew of truth being lost between the lines of the prosecution’s witness testimonies mixed up with absurdly dysfunctional, if not incompetent, corporate media behavior. We'd like to share some of our observations that day with our Indymedia readers.

June 11, 2009—Tyquan Rivera was in Judge Joseph Valentino’s Supreme Court for a pretrial hearing regarding testimony from witnesses who saw Rivera near the scene of the shooting of Rochester police officer Anthony DiPonzio on January 31, 2009, or knew him before the shooting. Rivera, 15-years-old, was charged earlier this year with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree. If convicted, Rivera could be imprisoned for up to 10 years. By virtue of being 14-years-old when the shooting occurred, he was spared being sentenced as an adult. District Attorney Mike Green was arguing the case for the state; Defense Attorney Culver Barr was present to represent Rivera.

Additional Information: Digging for Truth in the Tyquan Rivera Case | Let’s Not Retreat into Cocoons of Expedient Simplicity and Pretentiousness

Audio: Eye-witness e-mail account of police brutality before Tyquan Rivera allegedly shot into police as read on WDKX on February 4th, 2009

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