Black security guard wanted to be a cop — then police mistakenly killed him, pastor says

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article221526770.html

For Patricia Hill, the pastor of Purposed Hill in Chicago, the police killing of 26-year-old Jemel Roberson is especially hard to understand.

That’s because Roberson, along with being a musician for nearby churches, had dreamed of being a police officer, Hill told WGN-TV. He was working at Manny’s Blue Room, a bar in Robbins, Illinois, as an armed security guard when shots rang out early Sunday morning, she said.

“The very people that he wanted to be family with took his life,” Hill told WGN-TV.

When police arrived to help, they found Roberson armed with a gun and on top of another patron at the bar as he tried to stop the fight until authorities arrived, witness Adam Harris told Fox32.

“The security guard that got killed, he caught somebody and had his knee on him the whole time,” Harris said, according to Fox32. “Just waiting on the police to get there. I guess when the police got there, they probably thought he was one of the bad guys, cause he had his gun on the guy and they shot him.”

But Harris told WGN-TV that “everybody” tried to warn the responding officers that Roberson was a security guard who was trying to subdue a suspect — and not a threat.

“Everybody was screaming out ‘security, he was a security guard,” Harris told the outlet, “and they still did their job and saw a black man with a gun and basically killed him.”

Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the Cook County sheriff’s office, told The Chicago Sun-Times that officers first got word of gunfire at the bar sometime after 4 a.m. on Sunday morning. Four people had been shot inside the bar after an argument had broken out, police say, and a responding officer from the Midlothian Police Department fired at Roberson.

He later died at a nearby hospital, according to CBS Chicago, while the four others are being treated for their injuries.

The Midlothian Police Department told The Chicago Sun-Times in a statement that Illinois State Police are investigating the shooting.

“It is the policy of the Midlothian Police Department to utilize the Illinois State Police Public Integrity Task Force for any officer-involved shootings so we can ensure transparency and maintain public trust,” Midlothian police said, according to the newspaper.

As that investigation continues, some have questions about whether this could have been prevented.

Walter Turner, a pastor at New Spiritual Light Baptist Church in Chicago, said he shared a good relationship with Roberson, who played the organ at his church, according to WLS. He expressed confusion at 26-year-old’s sudden killing.

“How in the world does the security guard get shot by police?” Turner said, according to WLS. “A young man that was literally doing his job and now he’s gone.”

In 2012, 31 percent of the people killed by police officers in the U.S. were black — even though they make up just 13 percent of the overall population, according to an analysis of FBI data from Vox.

Leaked video: Brusly officer slams middle school student twice; police chief shocked

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_61780be0-e867-11e8-a178-472292a1bc31.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twi tter&utm_campaign=user-share

Video footage of a police officer wrestling with a 14-year-old Brusly Middle School student last month has leaked in the midst of a Louisiana State Police investigation into allegations of excessive use of force by that officer and one other, authorities said Wednesday.

The footage shows former Brusly Police Officer Anthony "Kip" Dupre, who at the time had recently become the school resource officer, wrestling with the student and slamming him to the ground twice in the school's office as school staff watched on Oct. 5.

A top police official in Brusly said Dupre later claimed the student had reached for his pistol during the struggle, and the video appears to show Dupre handing his holstered weapon to a school staffer to get it clear of the melee on the floor of the school's administrative office.

WAFB broadcast the surveillance video of the incident Wednesday evening, saying it had been sent to the television station by an anonymous source.

Brusly Police Chief Jonathan Lefeaux said his officers obtained the school office surveillance video Oct. 8 or 9 and, once he saw it, decided to turn it over to Louisiana State Police for a possible investigation.

"Once I seen the video, I said, 'Oh, Lord,' … you know, so that's when I called them to look at it," Lefeaux said.

WAFB reported the State Police investigation is nearing completion, but Lefeaux told The Advocate he could not speak to that. Trooper Bryan Lee, spokesman for State Police Troop A, said the investigation "is still ongoing."

Tony Clayton, chief felony prosecutor for the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office, said the office plans to bring the incident before a West Baton Rouge Parish grand jury no matter what the State Police probe finds.

"The optics to this one are bad, and I'm going to put it before the public and let them make the determination what to do with it," Clayton said Wednesday night.

Citing anonymous sources, WAFB's report says that the student later admitted to reaching for the officer's gun and that the student had previously fought with other officers on at least two occasions.

Lefeaux told The Advocate he was familiar with prior incidents related to the teen that happened outside the school but didn't share more details.

Lefeaux said Officer Dupre had originally been called to the school office the morning of Oct. 5 while he was heading to work. The youth was reportedly acting out and wanting to go home, Lefeaux said.

WAFB reported the student was trying to make a phone call to be picked up after getting into an argument with the vice principal.

Though the school surveillance camera appears to be mounted near the ceiling, a full view of the scuffle is blocked by the office's front desk. The officer and student appear to be on the ground below the front desk for much of the struggle, with only Dupre's head, shoulders, arms and the youth's feet visible for long stretches in the five-minute video.

In one, roughly 30-second period, however, Dupre can be seen rapidly thrusting his right shoulder and arm up and down apparently toward the youth, as if punching him, while the much larger man had the teen pinned to the ground. Lefeaux estimated Dupre is about 6-feet 2-inches tall and pushing 300 pounds.

Seconds after the right arm jabs, Dupre can be seen passing a gun back behind himself with his right hand to a school employee, who put the gun behind the front desk and away from the fray.

Dupre then appears to speak on his police radio just seconds before getting the teen in a headlock, lifting him upside down so his legs and feet were pointing up in the air and whipping the teen's body back around to the ground.

Dupre and the second officer, Dan Cipriano, who arrived near the end of the struggle, eventually get the student in handcuffs and escort him out of the office.

Dupre, who has about two decades of law enforcement experience, and Cipriano were initially placed on paid leave last month but resigned last week, Lefeaux said.

Lefeaux said he had asked for the officers' resignations because he believes the nature of the incident would have made it hard for them to continue to work in the community. Both men had been with the police department in this West Baton Rouge community for about three years.

Lefeaux added neither officer had his body camera on during the incident for reasons that remain unclear.

The police chief said he didn't know the student's status at the school. Attempts to reach school system officials Wednesday night were unsuccessful.

KSP trooper accused of punching man remains on duty, but investigation remains hidden

http://www.wdrb.com/story/39491542/ksp-trooper-accused-of-punching-civilian-remains-on-duty-but-details-of-investigation-stay-hidden

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Kentucky State Police trooper accused of punching road construction workers is still on the job and facing a federal lawsuit, but state police won’t release details about its investigation of the incident.

The workers say Trooper Anthony Harrison drove too fast toward their work zone near Fort Knox late one night in September 2017, adding that he stopped his personal car abruptly, confronted the workers and started arguing.

They also said Harrison lunged for one of their phones and punched one of them. Four of the workers then pinned him on the pavement until police arrived. Much of the incident was caught on cellphone video.

Two of the workers said Harrison was angry about not seeing the crew and their equipment in a closed-off and marked traffic lane. He was off-duty at the time.

Harrison was not charged with a traffic violation or a crime. Instead, after an internal investigation, Harrison was suspended without pay for four days. He’s since transferred to Bowling Green, where he remains a state trooper.

Earlier this month, WDRB News obtained a memo closing the internal investigation that stated charges of “conduct unbecoming” were substantiated.

In spite of a request under the Kentucky Open Records Act from WDRB News last month for the full internal investigation, KSP only provided the disposition of the investigation and no other details.

“Full IA investigations are not available for release per open records,” KSP Spokesman Josh Lawson said. “The complaint and the final disposition is what is provided.”

Other agencies, such as Louisville Metro Police, do provide full investigative files after the disposition of the investigation.

Harrison is also facing a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by three of the workers involved in the incident. The lawsuit alleges that Harrison punched workers multiple times.

An attorney for Harrison could not be reached for comment.

The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

U.S. Marshals: Cuyahoga County deprives inmates of food, water and Constitutional Rights amid string of seven deaths

https://www.cleveland.com/expo/news/erry-2018/11/9b3d3f3cc89150/us-marshals-cuyahoga-county-de.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County fails to provide jail inmates with the basic necessities they to need live. It withholds food and water and doesn’t provide medical and mental health care for inmates, according to a blistering report released Wednesday by the U.S. Marshals.

The report says that the inmates’ constitutional rights are routinely violated.

The report offers a clear picture of a jail rife with deplorable conditions, described by marshals' investigators as inhumane.

The jail investigation comes after the deaths of seven inmates between June 10 and Oct. 2. Cleveland.com learned of the seventh death during some two months of investigating the jail. Three of those inmates committed suicide. Fifty-five other inmates tried to take their own lives within the past year, the marshals found.

The county doesn’t investigate what led to the deaths, the report says.

Among the findings in the 52-page report made public Wednesday:

· Warden Eric Ivey withholds food as punishment and inmates aren’t fed properly.

· Jail staff shut off water to toilets and sinks.

· Pregnant women are forced to sleep on mats on the floor.

· Vermin infest the kitchen.

· Inmates sometimes are denied toilet paper and toothbrushes.

· Officers decked out in paramilitary gear routinely threaten inmates until they fear for their lives, going so far as to call some prisoners snitches in front of other prisoners.

· Medical staff lack proper licenses to provide treatment.

· Inmates with mental illness are denied care, even while they’re in isolation.

· Children are housed with adults.

· Inmates spend long stretches of time locked in their cells, sometimes up to 27 hours at a time, once for 12 days in a row.

The problems are so egregious that the U.S. marshals say the county won’t be able to fix them in a timely manner.

The marshals’ team that performed the review consisted of U.S. marshals from Washington and Cleveland, and FBI agents who investigate civil rights violations and economic fraud.

“They need to have a strong leader to implement all of these changes,” U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott said of the jail. “They need a strong leader with corrections experience to make it up to standard with other jails. I have full confidence in the sheriff that he’s going to find someone who is able to do that.”

Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish asked for the marshals' review. His top jail official, Ken Mills, resigned last week ahead of the release of Wednesday’s report.

In an interview Wednesday, Budish said he based his previous conclusions about jail safety and conditions on state inspections that never raised the breadth of the issues raised after the marshals' investigation. Budish and Sheriff Clifford Pinkney said they were stunned by the marshals' findings.

The report was made public just days after the former jail director Ken Mills tendered his resignation shortly after the U.S. marshals’ presented its preliminary findings to county officials.

Budish said that fixing the problems in the jail is now his top priority, but both he and the sheriff acknowledged that significant changes in leadership at almost every level is needed.

“We need to make sure that our prisoners and our staff is safe in the jail. That is number one,” Budish said.

The list of findings by the marshals is long, and at times, overwhelming. Cleveland.com is providing the full list so that the public, which foots the bills for the jail, can understand the magnitude of the problems.

Former Jail Director Ken Mills, who resigned last week ahead of a scathing U.S. Marshal report about the conditions of the county jail, talks April 5 about the opening of the Bedford Heights Jail. (Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com)
County doesn’t investigate jail deaths

After seven county inmates died this year, Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said the Sheriff’s Department would investigate what led to the deaths. That never happened, the report says.

The county never performed post-mortem reviews and provided the marshals with insufficient and unclear answers about the recent deaths, including two that remain unexplained today. The county doesn’t review its own policies, procedures or any other possible contributing factors to the deaths.

There are no debriefing reports or mortality reviews, no required documentation, minutes of debriefing, medical summaries, timelines of incarceration, notifications, or autopsy reports in the county’s case files in the medical unit, all in violation of county policy.

The warden kept no files regarding the deaths.

The marshals also found that after every inmate death, someone took the housing unit’s logs, which document routine information, emergencies, and unusual incidents. Someone removed the logs and replaced them with a new one. Those new logs never mentioned why it was necessary to start new logs.

The marshals also had issues uncovering any information about inmates and said their records are stored in various locations throughout the jail, making them difficult to find. The jail has no central place for all inmate records.

Jail officials, along with Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, far right, at an April 5 ribbon cutting ceremony at the Bedford Heights Jail.
Inmates with medical and mental illness don’t get treated

The jail’s most vulnerable inmates, those with chronic and mental illnesses, are denied consistent and proper treatment. Some nurses and medical staff don’t have the necessary qualifications to administer health care.

Medical files provided to the marshals were surprisingly deficient. Of 10 nurses hired in October, no records were available for review. Of the files provided, four medical staff members had expired professional licenses; one nurse had no license on file; one medical staff member was not certified to perform CPR and two had only partial CPR certifications; a medical technical assistant had no diploma, and a nurse and nurse practitioner had board actions against them with no documentation of their disposition.

Inmates with serious mental-health needs, developmental disabilities, physical impairments, or inmates who are frail or elderly don’t get specialized treatment that takes into account their conditions.

Some inmates with mental illnesses who are placed in isolation don’t receive the mental health care they need, and never receive mental-health treatment for the entire time they’re in isolation. They don’t have access to therapeutic activities either inside their cell or outside their cell.

There’s no documentation of mental-health providers making face-to-face contact with isolated inmates, which violates federal guidelines.

Cleanliness and sanitation in mental-health-care unit is “minimally acceptable.”

Medical staff doesn’t maintain lists of patients who need medical care for chronic health issues. Treatment schedules for those conditions aren’t tracked on a patient-by-patient basis.

There’s a quarterly meeting that identifies problems with health care in the jail, but when a recent meeting found that there were problems administering medicine to inmates, nothing was done about it.

Jail staff “pass” on training about administering medication. The method used to track missed medications involves a numerical code without a description of what that code means.

Medical and mental-health appraisals aren’t conducted within the required 14 days after an inmate’s arrival at the jail. The people that Cleveland police arrest and take to the jail never get an initial medical screening . Medical staff are only made aware of those inmates’ health concerns when they become urgent, such as a “diabetic inmate who has not had his/her insulin for four days, or others who become symptomatic due to not having hypertensive or psychotropic medications.”

Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish speaks before the swearing in of Carole Rendon as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. Joshua Gunter, Cleveland.com
‘Men in Black’ threaten inmates, use excessive force

The Special Response Team, a specialized unit in the jail decked out in riot gear, frequently threatened, harassed and intimidated inmates, sometimes withholding basic necessities as a way to control inmate behavior.

Marshals interviewed 100 inmates who described this team as the “Men in Black” because of their paramilitary uniforms. The marshals also viewed the response team's body cameras to reach their conclusions.

The marshals described a chilling scene where members of the specialized team escorted inmates to interviews with the U.S marshals’ investigators, and officers threatened and intimidated the prisoners and called them “snitches.”

The intimidation was so pervasive that guards bullied inmates in full view of the marshals' investigators. The behavior concerned investigators, prompting them to request that 10 inmates get released from the jail “for fear of SRT members retaliation, and the legitimate fear of detainee/inmate safety.”

The inmates interviewed described the Men in Black as routinely abusive. They placed inmates in isolation or segregation and refused to give them blankets when they were cold. They withheld hygiene products such as toothpaste and toilet paper, forcing inmates to use old towels, rags or clothing.

In one case, a response team officer told an inmate that toilet paper is only handed out on Wednesdays and handed him a paper towel.

The team used excessive force on inmates during cell extractions.

The officers verbally abused the inmates with explicit language and used “prejudice and unofficial authority to dictate and control” inmates.

Child inmates are held in the same areas as adult inmates while assigned to isolation or segregation. This is in violation of federal jail standards.

While child inmates charged as adults are held in the main county jail, they aren’t supposed to mix in with the general adult jail population for their safety.

Those children don’t receive the extra nutrition or exercise they need for development, and don’t receive programs that are educational or aimed at brain development.

They are subjected to the same extreme lockdowns as adults. That means they often don’t have access to hygiene, recreation and time outside of their cells.

A video that a judge ordered Cuyahoga County to release to cleveland.com shows a jail supervisor taking a naked and mentally ill female inmate to the ground and spraying her face with pepper foam.

Another "good guy" with a gun shot dead
 

REVEALED: Black military man, 21, shot dead by cops in Alabama mall shooting did NOT fire gun as police reveal the gunman is still loose

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6423265/New-video-shows-Alabama-mall-shooters-body-shot-dead-cops-gunning-children.html

- Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., the son of a Birmingham cop and a member of the US Army, was shot dead by officers on Thanksgiving Day
- Police were called over reports of an active shooter at the Riverchase Galleria
- A fight broke out and the gunman pulled out a gun and shot an 18-year-old boy twice, also hitting a 12-year-old girl with a stray bullet
- Cops have now confirmed that while Bradford was involved in the altercation, that he was not the gunman
- It's not clear if Bradford was trying to break up the fight or was involved from the beginning
- Authorities are now warning the real shooter is still on the loose
- Officer involved in the fatal shooting has been placed on administrative leave

4 Police Officers Indicted On Federal Civil Rights Charges For Protest Abuses

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/st-louis-police-charged-stockley-protest-crackdown_us_5c005835e4b0d04f48b2516a?tql

Four St. Louis police officers were indicted on federal civil rights charges Thursday in connection with their actions during an unconstitutional crackdown on a protest last year.

A federal grand jury indicted St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers Dustin Boone, 35, Bailey Colletta, 25, Randy Hays, 31, and Christopher Myers, 27, on felony charges that included deprivation of constitutional rights, conspiracy to obstruct justice, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice.

Police officers chanted the streets were “our streets” during the crackdown on protests after a judge found former officer Jason Stockley, who shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011, not guilty.

The indictment alleges that at least three of the defendants “expressed disdain for the Stockley protesters and excitement about using unjustified force against them and going undetected while doing so.” It features text messages between three of the defendants in which they joked about using force against protesters demonstrating against the Stockley verdict.

“let’s whoop some ass,” Myers wrote.

“it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart,” wrote Boone. “We really need these fuckers to start acting up so we can have some fun.”

Boone later wrote that it was a “blast beating people that deserve it” and bragged about chanting “OUR STREETS” with other cops after they locked “fools up on prison busses.”

All four defendants were part of the St. Louis Police Department’s Civil Disobedience Team, which led the police response to protests following the verdict against their former colleague.

The victim listed in the indictment is a fellow St. Louis police officer who was acting in an undercover capacity during the protests. The defendants, the indictment says, used unreasonable force against their colleague, a 22-year veteran of the force referred to as “L.H.” The officers allegedly lied about their conduct against the undercover officer, who was wearing a shirt that revealed his waistband so officers would not think he was armed.

Officer Bailey Colletta, who was in a romantic relationship with Officer Randy Hays, allegedly lied to the FBI about what she knew about the takedown of the undercover officer. She claimed he was “brought to the ground very gently” when she knew he was forcefully slammed to the ground.

A federal judge said last year that officers “exercised their discretion in an arbitrary and retaliatory fashion to punish protesters for voicing criticism of police.” Former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk, who was arrested and violently assaulted by police while reporting on the protest, filed a lawsuit over police actions earlier this year.

Grandma mistakenly booked into all-male Florida jail, staff thought she was transgender

https://www.wfla.com/1632904360

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) - A woman is suing employees of a Florida jail after they allegedly forced her to spend several hours in a cell surrounded by dozens of men, because they suspected she was transgender.

The Miami Herald reports 55-year-old Fior Pichardo de Veloz had come to Miami from the Dominican Republic to witness the birth of her grandchild in 2013, when she was arrested at the airport on an outstanding drug charge. Her arrest report listed her as female and Pichardo de Veloz was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and processed as a woman. She was even strip searched.

Due to her history of high blood pressure, Pichardo de Veloz was examined by a nurse as a precaution. The nurse saw she had been taking hormone pills and questioned her about her gender.

Despite Pichardo de Veloz's denial of being a man, the nurse added a note to her file that read: "Transgender, male parts, female tendencies."

The nurse notified a doctor, who reclassified Pichardo de Veloz as male without an examination, according to an appeals court opinion.

Pichardo was transferred to the Metro West Detention Center, an all-male jail, and shared a cell with about 40 men, who jeered at her yelling "Mami! Mami!", according to the newspaper. She was there for 10 hours and said she was terrified to go to the bathroom and "urinated on herself instead."

Jail workers eventually realized their mistake once family members went to the facility where she was originally processed and asked why she was moved.

Pichardo de Veloz was removed from her holding cell and given a new examination. During that exam, Pichardo de Veloz claimed several male officers laughed at her and someone took a photo.

Once her gender was confirmed, she was moved back to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

Pichardo de Veloz sued the county and jail staff for negligence and "cruel and unusual punishment," but the case was thrown out by a judge who said the jail staffers were protected from a trial for negligence.

In November, the newspaper reports an appeals court ruled the conduct of the nurse and doctor amounts to “deliberate indifference."

"Every reasonable prison officer and medical personnel would have known that wrongfully misclassifying a biological female as a male inmate and placing that female in the male population of a detention facility was unlawful," Judge Frank Hull wrote in an unanimous opinion.

Police allegedly kicked this drag queen to death. Now they’ve been charged.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/police-allegedly-kicked-drag-queen-death-now-theyve-charged/?fbclid=IwAR0zwpV2QhQhvF9VJiv2D_IGW0LTXrvdcNdjDwgR WM80-cJuqais49PmiT8

Four police officers have been charged with inflicting fatal bodily harm in connection to the death of LGBTQ activist and drag queen Zak Kostopoulos.

Video of Kostopoulos’s death surfaced in September, as he tried to get out of a locked jewelry store in Athens and was beaten by the store owner and a bystander.

Police arrived and handcuffed Kostopoulos who was on the ground and bleeding, and witnesses said that police officers and other bystanders kicked him.

He was taken away in a stretcher but died before reaching the hospital.

Related: Two men were thrown into the sea in a brutal hate crime during Pride

Before the video surfaced, the police officers said that Kostopoulos was a drug addict who was trying to rob the jewelry store. The video showed otherwise, and the store owner was arrested after the video went viral.

The autopsy showed that Kostopoulos died of cardiac arrest as a result of the brutal beating. The toxicology report found no drugs or alcohol in his body.

In court on Monday, the police officers were charged with inflicting fatal bodily harm because they caused the victim injuries that led to his death.

The police officers deny the charges, and they have until December 12 to prepare their defense statements.

Kostopoulos’s family said through their lawyer that they want the charges changed to intentional murder and that they’re planning to sue the police department.

Not allowed to sit on the floor?
 

Mom screams ‘I’m begging you’ as police yank her baby in arrest tug of war, video shows

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article222893525.html

Jacqueline Jenkins says she’s still coming to grips with a jarring video that shows police officers tugging away at her daughter’s baby.

“I was devastated to see something like that happen to my daughter and grandson,” Jenkins told WABC. “And how this officer (was) yanking on my grandson to get him out of my daughter’s arms.”

The video shows 23-year-old Jazmine Headley screaming on the floor of a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) center in Brooklyn, New York, as multiple police officers try to pry away her 1-year-old son, according to The New York Post.

A spokeswoman for the New York Police Department says it is looking into the “troubling” video, The New York Daily News reported. Headley has an outstanding warrant for her arrest in New Jersey as well, police say, according to NBC New York.

Police say it happened around 1 p.m. on Friday, when officers arrived to the SNAP center because Headley was obstructing a hallway and acting in a “disorderly” manner, The New York Post reported.

Nyashia Ferguson, who goes by Monae Sinclair on Facebook, captured what happened next on video and shared it online, NBC reported.

Ferguson, who recorded on her cellphone, said Headley sat on the floor because there were no seats available — and then things grew hectic, according to CBS New York.

“The security guard, I guess she came over and told her she couldn’t sit there,” Ferguson told CBS New York. “So she’s like, ‘Where am I going to sit?’ (The security guard) was like, ‘I guess you’re going to just have to stand.’

“She said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna stand with my son,’” Ferguson recalled, according to CBS New York. “She was like, ‘What is the crime? What did I do wrong?’ And then it just escalated.”

Staff at the SNAP center called police, who say Headley refused to leave once they arrived, according to CBS New York.

Video shows the 23-year-old screaming, “They’re hurting my son!” and “I’m begging you” on the floor of the SNAP center as a team of police officers yank at her baby boy.

“Oh my God! Look what they’re doing to her!” one person is heard yelling the background.

“She’s got a f------ baby in her hand,” another person shouts as the officers continue to tug at the child and Headley maintains her grip.

A crowd gathers around the chaotic scene, which ends with Headley exiting the building in handcuffs, the video shows. At one point, an officer takes out a stun gun to try to control the onlookers.

Headley was charged with criminal trespassing, acting in a manner injurious to a child, resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration, reported The New York Post.

She is set to remain in jail until Thursday, when she has a court hearing, according to WABC. Her child is now in the custody of another family member, police say, according to The New York Daily News.

Ferguson’s video has been viewed more than 200,000 times since Friday — and shared nearly 7,000 times.

It caught the attention of Corey Johnson, speaker of the New York City Council, who tweeted that the video is “unacceptable, appalling and heart breaking.”

There are 3 NYPD officers and a sgt. shown ripping a baby out of the hands of a mother in an ACS office. This was the best plan they could come up with? No threat to anyone, no emergency, just brutal disregard for the well-being of mother and child.

New York Attorney General-elect Letitia James told CBS New York that “no mother should have to experience the trauma and humiliation we all witnessed in this video.”

“Being poor is not a crime,” James told the outlet. “The actions of the NYPD in this video are appalling and contemptible.”

In her interview with WABC, Ferguson lamented that the situation didn’t end in a more peaceful way.

“I was just so disgusted and scared,” she told WABC. “I thought the cops supposed to help you — they just straight up came and attacked the lady.”

She Says Rikers Guards Raped Her, Then Warned: ‘This Never Happened’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/nyregion/rikers-rape-guards-federal-lawsuit.html

Two correction officers and their supervisor walked the woman from an intake area to an isolated room in an abandoned area of the Rikers Island jail. There, according to a lawsuit, she was stripped of her clothing, handcuffed to a toilet fixture and sexually assaulted for several hours.

The woman said her attackers included a correction captain and two officers, who raped her and penetrated her with a flashlight. They forced her to perform oral sex and rub one officer’s genitals. She was also compelled to drink soapy liquid, she said, and the officers pepper-sprayed her genitals.

The next day, she said, a correction officer took her from the isolated area to a housing unit in the jail and warned: “This never happened. If it is being heard upstairs, things are going to be worse.”

The disturbing account of a brutal sexual assault in 2013 at the Rose M. Singer Center — the jail that houses women on Rikers Island — was detailed in a federal civil rights lawsuit the woman filed against the city initially under seal in 2015.

Advocates for prisoners say sexual harassment and assault have long been a problem at the women’s lockup, which is known by the initials R.M.S.C. Sexual assault complaints there are double the national average for correctional facilities but are seldom substantiated, a report found.

The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, claims that the city’s Department of Correction is to blame because it does not properly investigate complaints. The suit argues the city violated her constitutional rights by allowing a culture of sexual violence against inmates to persist, and in her case failed to supervise a correction captain who was already under investigation for sexual assault. The woman did not file a complaint with the Department of Correction regarding the alleged attack.

The lawsuit remained under seal while the Bronx district attorney’s office investigated the allegations. The office concluded its investigation in late 2015 without making an arrest. No one was charged, and the case was unsealed, but some documents remain sealed or redacted. Patrice O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, declined to comment about the investigation.

In September, a federal judge allowed the case to move forward, ruling there was evidence the city was doing too little to investigate sexual assault allegations at the jail and discipline its staff, according to a court order made public late last month. The judge granted the woman anonymity in court papers because of the nature of the crime.

“The court concludes that a reasonable juror could find that the city exhibited deliberate indifference in its investigation and discipline practices and that this deliberate indifference caused Doe to be sexually assaulted at R.M.S.C.,” wrote Judge Alison J. Nathan of United States District Court in Manhattan.

The judge added that there was “significant evidence” of “a policy of deliberate indifference to the physical and sexual assault of inmates at R.M.S.C.” She also said in her decision that the failure to investigate and discipline people for sexual misconduct had led to more incidents.

A number of similar complaints have landed in the courts. Last year, the city agreed to pay about $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit by two women who claimed they had been repeatedly raped and sexually abused by a correction officer at Rikers.

The Department of Correction said it has taken steps to address sexual violence. It has a division trained to respond to sexual assault allegations that works with the police’s special victims unit. Eight new investigators have been hired and four more will join the agency by January.

The department also has a 24-hour hotline where inmates can report sexual assault, and an electronic screening tool to identify people at risk of sexual assault and to place them in safer housing.

A spokesman for the City Law Department, Nick Paolucci, declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but said the city takes sexual assault allegations seriously.

“At this stage, the court has not determined the credibility of the plaintiff’s claims, but has ruled that a jury must decide whether the allegations are true,” he said.

The correction captain accused in the assault did not respond to requests for comment. The president of his union, Patrick Ferraiuolo of the Correction Captains’ Association, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Elias Husamudeen, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, would not comment, a spokesman said.

The lawsuit said that the captain was in charge of processing new arrivals and had been accused of sexually assaulting another inmate in 2012. Correction department investigators found that allegation unsubstantiated and removed it from his record, the complaint said.

The captain was also cited by a warden for using excessive force in another case. The warden, however, did not change the captain’s assignment, and the captain retired in 2015. Judge Nathan wrote that the city was on notice that the captain “had a propensity to seriously abuse or sexually assault female inmates.”

Another correction officer named in the lawsuit no longer works in an inmate housing area.

The plaintiff, who was twice detained on Rikers Island, claims that the first sexual assault occurred in October 2013 after she was jailed on a shoplifting charge. She was released that month, but then was jailed again in January 2014 on a charge of credit card fraud, and was again assaulted, her lawyers said in court papers.

“The evidence that was before the court and that we have amassed suggests to us that this conduct was systemic,” said Alan S. Futerfas, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiff.

A report by a former warden, Timothy Ryan, included in the lawsuit said that inmates housed at R.M.S.C. report sexual assault at a level more than double the national average for correctional facilities, but those allegations were rarely substantiated. He concluded that the department’s investigators jumped to “quick conclusions that the assaults could not have occurred exactly as described and thus did not occur at all.”

The Board of Correction also analyzed a sample of 42 investigation reports related to sexual abuse complaints in city jails from January 2010 to December 2017. In an audit released in September, it found significant problems in the investigations, including failure to complete key interviews, review video and testimonial evidence, establish a crime scene and complete investigations in a timely manner.

Mitchell Abramson, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, said the number of sexual assault and harassment allegations that have been substantiated has increased in recent years, reaching 19 this year, up from two in 2015. Of the 44 sexual abuse and harassment complaints substantiated since 2015, 13 include allegations against correction staff, he said.

“It is important litigation like this continues,” said Ellen Resnick, another lawyer representing the woman. “It’s a valuable mechanism to bring public attention to the city’s oversight of Rikers and to compel much-needed reform.”

Florida Man Spent 41 Days in Jail for Heroin — But it was Actually Detergent

https://fox40.com/2019/01/30/florida-man-spent-41-days-in-jail-for-heroin-but-it-was-actually-detergent/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_con tent=5c52cf5e04d3015c71101766&utm_medium=trueAnthe m&utm_source=twitter

MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. — Matt Crull, 29, spent 41 days in jail wrongly accused, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. He was locked up over Christmas and New Year’s. But he and 10 others are out now, and the deputy is fired, according to WPTV.

Crull had a white powdery substance that was found in the driver’s side door, wrapped in plastic with a hair tie around it. Crull says it was Tide laundry detergent. Deputy Steven O’Leary said it was heroin — a lot of heroin.

“I just looked at him baffled and confused because I had no idea as to where 92 grams of heroin came from inside my van,” Crull said.

Crull says he bought his Astro van about three weeks prior for $1,400, so maybe the last owner had left it behind. But the street price of 92 grams, according to American Addiction Centers, could cost more than $18,000.

“He wasn’t fit and just to be a cop,” Crull said.

Crull was parked at a Jensen Beach KFC restaurant, asleep the van on Dec. 5. He admits he had taken a sip of a Budweiser that was in the cupholder.

First paramedics arrived, and then deputies, including O’Leary.

Crull has been in trouble with the law before, but he says nothing like this.

“In the past, when I have gone to jail, it’s been something where I knew I wasn’t going to be there forever. It’s a lot different than going to jail and the charge of trafficking of heroin carries a penalty of 25 years in prison,” Crull said.

He was one of 11 people freed from jail because whatever drug O’Leary said it was turned out to be something legal.

Martin County Sheriff William Snyder distancing his department from O’Leary Monday.

“No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, just based on the law of possibilities there’s always a possibility that one bad apple will slip through,” Snyder said.

“I think that’s just their play that they’re doing to keep their name clear,” Crull said.

All the charges for all 11 people have been dropped.

Crull said he wasn’t sure if he was going to sue.

Opa-locka police corporal caught on camera failing to stop at scene of fatal crash

https://www.local10.com/news/local-10-investigates/opa-locka-police-corporal-caught-on-camera-failing-to-stop-at-scene-of-fatal-crash

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. - Local 10 News has obtained never publicly seen video of what happened the night of a fiery fatal crash in northwest Miami-Dade County in 2017.

In the video, Opa-locka police Cpl. Wuihudson Francois was seen driving away from the crash seconds after impact without rendering any help.

Francis' Buick burst into flames a minute after his car came to rest in front of a transmission shop on Northwest 103rd Street.

"My brother was in the car burning alive," Raymond Francis, Kemar Francis' brother, who is a firefighter in North Carolina, told Local 10 News. "This all could have been avoided."

Authorities said a silver Acura driven by Lanard Gilbert, 21, ran the light at Northwest 103rd Street and 22nd Avenue and slammed into Kemar Francis' car.

Gilbert was apparently trying to get away from Francois, who was pursuing him before the crash occurred.

Francois had spotted Gilbert driving erratically in Opa-locka and followed him out of the city, which is against Opa-locka Police Department rules.

"After the crash, this officer did the exact opposite of what he should have done," attorney Ben Murphey, who has been hired by Kemar Francis' family, told Local 10 News.

Surveillance video from a transmission shop shows Francois' Opa-locka police SUV making a left turn onto Northwest 103rd Street 18 seconds after the massive impact.

He is seen in the video driving away from the crash, like nothing happened.

"It's impossible not for him to see that accident. Why did he turn left?" Raymond Francis said.

"Civilians knew something was wrong. They stopped to help and this police officer didn't? You can't not know," Murphey added.

Kemar Francis' brother said the officer should have stopped and pulled his brother out before the fire erupted.

"Kemar had smoke in his lungs, so we know he was alive when that car was burning," Murphey said. "The police vehicles are equipped with a fire extinguisher."

An eyewitness told a Miami-Dade police officer who arrived at the scene that she was shocked the officer didn't stop.

"We went over there to try to help, but the police didn't try to come over here and help," the witness said.

Video shows the Opa-locka police officer returning to the scene of the crash several minutes later.

Francois told an Internal Affairs investigator that another driver flagged him down to tell him about the crash, but in a deposition he told a different story.

In the deposition, Francois said he was on his way back to the city when the crash call was dispatched out, so he turned around.

Miami-Dade police officers who showed up at the scene raised an eyebrow when Opa-locka officers wanted to leave the scene.

On bodycam video obtained by Local 10 News, a Miami-Dade police officer says, "Opa-locka is about to clear. They ain't tryin' to get none of this."

"Yeah. They started it. They the one chasing him," another Miami-Dade police officer said.

"According to them, they ain't. You know how that go," the first officer responded.

According to the results of an Internal Affairs investigation, Francois violated the Opa-locka Police Department's chase policy.

The policy states officers cannot pursue traffic violators, misdemeanor subjects or people committing property crime under any circumstance.

Franciois was 32 blocks outside his jurisdiction. He did not call his superior, had no emergency lights on, had no sirens on and did not tell Miami-Dade police he was following a possible stolen car that entered their jurisdiction.

Opa-locka police Chief James Dobson first recommended that Francois be terminated.

The chief then changed his recommendation to a demotion.

There is no explanation in Francois' personnel file as to why the chief changed his position.

Dobson won't comment due to pending litigation.

Francois is now part of the Opa-locka Police Department's traffic unit.

Opa-locka police Cpl. Wuihudson Francois did not answer any of Local 10 News Investigative Reporter Jeff Weinsier's questions.

He refused to talk to Local 10 News investigative reporter Jeff Weinsier, who confronted him outside the Opa-Locka Police Department.

"I think he fled because he realized that he had caused a horrific crash," Murphey said.

"I would ask him, 'Why did he leave the scene? Was your job more important than my brother's life?'" Raymond Francis said.

Francois told an I.A. investigator that he was not chasing the car and never heard or saw the crash.

He claimed he made the left turn because he thought the driver of the Acura did the same.

"While the loss of life in this case is unfortunate, we believe that Officer Francois acted appropriately based on the totality of events, and expect that he will be exonerated of any and all wrongdoing after all of the evidence is heard," Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association attorney Anastasios Kamoutsas said.

Because of pending litigation, no one from the city of Opa-locka would talk to Local 10 News about the incident.

"Their position is that we see no liability on our part whatsoever," Murphey said.

This is not the first time Francois has been the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation.

In 2001, Francois failed to property handcuff and secure an arrestee in the back of his patrol car.

That suspect was able to loosen his handcuffs, get into the front seat of Francois' patrol car and take off.

The suspect led police on a high-speed chase until he crashed and the patrol car burst into flames.

As for the incident in which Kemar Francis was killed, Gilbert was charged with eluding police, vehicular homicide and possession of a firearm.

His trial is still pending.

EXCLUSIVE: Body cam video shows alleged Hamden police misconduct

https://www-wtnh-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.wtnh.com/amp/news/news-8-exclusive/exclusive-body-cam-video-shows-alleged-hamden-police-misconduct/1757596319?usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D&amp_js_v=0.1#aoh=15 494565521506&amp_ct=1549456621132&referrer=https%3 A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampsh are=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wtnh.com%2Fnews%2Fnews-8-exclusive%2Fexclusive-body-cam-video-shows-alleged-hamden-police-misconduct%2F1757596319

HAMDEN, Conn. (WTNH) - Last February, Hamden police Officer Andrew Lipford tried to pull over a BMW for a red light violation when the driver allegedly took off. Cops say Victor Medina led them on a chase, ending in the man's driveway where Ofc. Lipford threatened to shoot him.

"If you do something that you're not told you're gonna get shot!" yelled Lipford.

Attorney Frank Cirillo represents Medina. "That is shocking to hear and it seems dangerous," Cirillo said.

But it's what the sergeant on scene says to Medina's passenger, which was caught on body cam that has local Hispanic groups outraged.

"Three letters: I-C-E."

"Using that as an intimidation tactic is a disservice to the community that the police department claims to protect and serve," said Jesús Morales Sanchez of the group Unidad Latina en Acción.

The apparent reference to Immigration and Customs Enforcement came after police repeatedly accused the passenger of faking his inability to speak English. Morales Sanchez said the officers' conduct in the video is unacceptable.

"That just takes away a lot of trust from the police," Morales Sanchez told us.

Civil rights expert, Attorney John Williams, reviewed the body cam video for News 8 and found multiple constitutional violations. Williams indicated two specific concerns, including the level of force used on the driver and the alleged unlawful search of the man's trunk.

Acting Hamden police Chief John Cappiello said he first learned of the video from News 8's Mario Boone. The chief released a statement saying, "I only looked at what you pointed out to us in the video and the two specific areas are concerning to me. I am initiating an internal investigation into this incident," referring to the shooting threat and ICE comment.

"I'm relieved that the chief is now taking a look at this case. I think they would be foolish to take this lightly," Attorney Cirillo said.

Medina was charged with multiple traffic violations, including DUI. The passenger was released without charges.

On Wednesday morning, Hamden Mayor Curt Balzano Leng issued the following statement in reaction to News 8's exclusive story:

"Actions taken by some involved were disgraceful, and certainly not representative of Hamden's values.

I do not expect, and will not tolerate, these types of actions by any of our law enforcement personnel. Acting Chief Cappiello has launched an immediate internal investigation into this incident, and I will work closely with the Chief and the Hamden Police Commission to ensure that that the investigation is as thorough as the situation demands and deserves.

Appropriate action will be taken. As many know, I am a strong supporter of our local law enforcement and respect so many of our public safety men and women that work tirelessly for our community every day. Certain actions taken and words spoken in the video shown today have no business being part of Hamden law enforcement. Period.

Connecticut law clearly dictates our State's legal policy, which every local law enforcement agency must follow related to detaining an individual based on their immigration status. It makes detaining unlawful, with few and very specific exceptions, such as a violent criminal actions or known gang activity. Our local Police follow this policy; we follow it because it is law, because it increases the safety of all our residents and because it reflect our values."

Video of BSO deputy calling a black father ‘boy’ amid foul language sparks complaint

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article225998300.html

The actions of a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy with a history of making false arrests drew a complaint from the Broward Public Defender’s Office after bodycam video from a July 2017 incident emerged last month.

Deputy James Cady confronts Allen Floyd, an African-American father calmly holding his infant, angrily drops f-bombs and calls Floyd “boy” before appearing to grab Floyd by the throat.

Floyd wasn’t under investigation for any crime. Nor was he being belligerent towards Cady in the video from July 25, 2017.

Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein made the latter point in a Jan. 30 letter to newly appointed Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony.

“Deputy Cady’s verbal assault coupled with him choking an otherwise cooperative bystander can only be characterized as unlawful touching,” Finkelstein wrote. “In addition, Deputy Cady’s use of the term “boy” is offensive, condescending and demeaning. It carries racial connotations when used while addressing an adult black male.”

In the official report on the incident, Cady’s presence isn’t even noted, although the video shows he played a key role.

Tony’s response letter said, “Thank you for bringing this matter that occurred in July 2017 to my attention. A cursory search of our system shows that no complaint was made prior to receiving your letter.

“Our Division of Internal Affairs will provide you with a response upon conducting a thorough examination.”

The public defender’s office discovered the video in preparing to defend Johnnymae Dardy, according to the Sun Sentinel. The probable cause affidavit by BSO Deputy Debbra Bridgman said Dardy had been watching Floyd’s baby at the Red Carpet Inn in Dania, where she had a room; the Sun Sentinel said BSO had been called to the motel about Dardy.

The bodycam video picks up with Cady asking Floyd, who is holding his child and sitting on a curb, if he has a separate room at the motel. Then, Cady demands, three times, to see Floyd’s identification. Floyd shows Cady pictures on his phone, apparently to show he’s the child’s father, a gesture Cady disdains.

Finally, after Floyd shakes his head at Cady, Cady says, “OK, fine, I’m going to take her to jail because she’s got a warrant and I’m going to call child services on this kid!” When Floyd starts to say something, Cady says, “Quit f----- with me, boy! You hear me? Get your ID! Now!”

Bridgman’s voice chimes in, “ID!”

Dardy, who had been in the BSO cruiser, appears and Cady says, “Get your ass back in the car! I’m tired of you f----- playing games!”

As Cady angrily repeats his demand for Floyd’s identification, Floyd asks, “Why are you being so hostile?”

Cady answers, “Because you’re giving me s--- and I’m tired of it!”

Eventually Cady says, “I want to know who this baby is going with!” and Floyd replies, “He’s going with me, Allen Floyd.”

Floyd rises from the curb, still holding his child in his left arm. Cady steps toward him. Floyd turns to walk away and says, “Stop calling me ‘boy!’ ”

Cady grabs Floyd by the right arm while Bridgman grabs Floyd’s child from his left arm. Then, the video shows Cady’s left hand holding small papers that, along with Floyd’s torso, partially block the bodycam while his right hand is up in Floyd’s throat area.

When a fuller view is available again, Floyd’s saying, “I ain’t doin’ nothin’!” with his arms spread wide. Bridgman is holding the baby.

The probable cause affidavit doesn’t mention that Cady was among the deputies there. Nor, when later describing Dardy trying to grab the baby from Bridgman’s arms, does it mention how Bridgman came to be holding the child.

Gordon Weekes, executive chief assistant public defender, said that if a person answers a law enforcement officer with his name, as Floyd did several times, he’s identified himself. From that point, officers have many ways to verify identity.

Cady’s personnel file includes previous Internal Affairs investigations for conduct unbecoming an employee (result: unfounded) and use of force (result: exonerated) from a June 2003 investigation; and taking suitable action (result: not sustained) and conduct unbecoming an employee (result: not sustained) from a June 2010 investigation. Despite the result of each investigation, the final recommendation was for a one-day suspension.

The second investigation coincides with the first of two federal lawsuits with Cady as defendant, lawsuits that cost Broward County almost $680,000.

A federal lawsuit for wrongful arrest filed against Cady by Weston resident William Pineiro resulted in Pineiro being awarded $250,000 in total damages, $75,635 in attorney’s fees and $4,183.27 in court costs and interest. Pineiro had been at a party thrown by a Dania Beach couple whose federal lawsuit for false arrest against deputies Cady, Justin Lambert, Randy Villata and Broward Sheriff Scott Israel (as their supervisor) was settled for $350,000.

The complaint described Cady saying, “Shut the f--- up!” when Pineiro said, “Excuse me, officer. That is my truck” as Cady ticketed it. Later, after the couple was arrested and the husband Tasered, Pineiro asked Cady why they were being arrested. The complaint says Cady answered with a curse, (“What the f---, you want to be arrested, too?”), a running tackle and the arrest of Pineiro for obstruction of justice.

Two Miami-Dade cops charged after video catches sergeant slapping a handcuffed teen

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article226772714.html

The home surveillance video was jarring: A Miami-Dade police sergeant suddenly slapping a handcuffed teenager in the face as he is about to be led away to a patrol car.

Prosecutors have now charged the sergeant — and another officer who is suspected of trying to destroy the video surveillance system that captured the slap.

Miami-Dade Sgt. Manuel Regueirowas charged Tuesday with misdemeanor battery, prosecutors announced. Officer Alexander Gonzalez was also charged with a count of third-degree felony tampering with evidence, and misdemeanor petty theft.

“It’s infuriating. This is happening at a time when police and community relations are already stressed,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told the Miami Herald.

Prosecutors plan to detail the case at an afternoon news conference.

The teen was Bryan Crespo, then 18, who was being investigated in March of 2018 for allegedly dealing in stolen airbags.

Miami-Dade police raided his Allapattah home, which had a surveillance camera rolling inside his living room. The footage shows Crespo, shirtless and cuffed, being led away when he was slapped by Regueiro.

Miami-Dade internal-affairs investigators uncovered additional footage, from a home across the street, that appears to show Officer Gonzalez stealing an object covered up in a pillowcase. Investigators believe the item was a battery pack he believed was the recording unit.

A Miami-Dade police lieutenant involved in the case has also been suspended with pay pending an internal affairs investigation. Another officer seen in the video, Jennifer Alvarez, was relieved of duty on Tuesday as investigators probe her role in the incident.

When the footage first emerged last year, Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez said: “The actions depicted in the video are extremely disturbing and in no way represent the core values of our agency.”

Crespo’s attorneys have said they plan on filing a lawsuit against the officer.

GEORGIA WOMAN ENDURED ARREST, MILLION-DOLLAR BOND, AND MONTHS OF JAIL OVER ‘METH’ THAT WAS ACTUALLY COTTON CANDY

https://theappeal.org/georgia-woman-endured-arrest-million-dollar-bond-months-of-jail-over-meth-that-was-actually-cotton-candy/?fbclid=IwAR11DFeFpbz8ovgj4B_WGksdfy_NVPsOytV-H3y3TVfYN9xO3KqZ926hkAc

On Dec. 31, 2016, sheriff’s deputies in Monroe County, Georgia, pulled over David Maynard Morris Jr. His girlfriend at the time, Dasha Fincher, sat next to him in the passenger seat. The deputies told the pair that they initiated the stop because the vehicle’s window tint was too dark. They then said the tint was not in violation of the law but asked to search the car regardless.

Morris consented to the search. Among the trash on the passenger-side floorboard, deputies found what they described as a “blue crystal like substance” inside an open plastic bag. The deputies removed the substance from the bag, sniffed it, and analyzed it with a narcotics field test called Nark II. Fincher insisted that the substance was simply cotton candy—but moments later the test produced a positive result for methamphetamine. She was charged with methamphetamine trafficking as well as possession with intent to distribute the drug. “I was shocked,” Fincher told The Appeal. “I really thought I’d get down to the jail and they’d just have to turn around and let me go.”

On Jan. 11, 2017, Fincher appeared for her first bond hearing where the judge ordered a $1 million cash bond based on the arresting officer’s testimony even though the deputy who had conducted the test, Cody Maples, acknowledged in court that he had no training in drug recognition. Fincher was unable to pay the seven-figure bond and remained incarcerated pending a more sophisticated test of the substance by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). On March 15, 2017, a Monroe County grand jury returned an indictment against Fincher for trafficking methamphetamine and possession of methamphetamine. But just days later, on March 22, she was cleared in the case: The GBI issued a report finding that there were no controlled substances in the blue material. It was, as Fincher maintained all along, cotton candy.

But the conclusion in Fincher’s case did not erase the injustice she suffered: She sat in the Monroe County jail for three months and endured profound trauma while incarcerated. She also joined a long list of people who have been wrongfully incarcerated because of the Nark II tests which have returned false positives for everyday substances such as vitamins, breath mints, and headache powder. Manufactured by forensic kit maker Sirchie, the roadside drug tests were responsible for at least 145 false positives in Georgia in 2017, an investigation by Atlanta’s Fox affiliate found. Nark II produced the highest number of false positives—64—in methamphetamine tests, according to the Fox investigation. “That to me tells me there’s something wrong with this product,” Fincher’s attorney, James Freeman, told The Appeal.

On Nov. 15, Freeman filed a civil rights lawsuit on Fincher’s behalf in a Georgia federal court against the deputies, Monroe County, and Sirchie, claiming that she was wrongfully arrested and jailed, and maliciously prosecuted. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is also facing a federal civil rights lawsuit from Micka Martin, a Georgia woman who says a sergeant struck, punched, and kicked her while she was handcuffed in a booking area at the jail in 2016. The sheriff’s office referred questions from The Appeal about the training that officers receive to the county attorney, who did not immediately respond. Neither Deputy Maples or Sirchie responded to a request for comment.

Fincher also claims in her lawsuit to have suffered emotional distress from her case. The day before her January 2017 bond hearing, Fincher’s daughter-in-law gave birth to twin boys. Later, Fincher’s son visited her at the Monroe County jail to introduce her to her grandsons. During the visit, officers arrested him for a failure to appear bench warrant; a frustrated Fincher then broke her hand on a concrete wall. The next day, it was determined that no warrant existed for her son, and he was freed. A doctor, meanwhile, told Fincher that her injured hand could only be fitted with a brace because of severe swelling. She was advised to return in a week for a full cast, but the jail never transported her for the follow-up visit, according to her lawsuit.

In another incident, Fincher alleges that she was taken to the emergency room for a cyst on her ovaries but was not permitted by jail officials to follow up with a gynecologist as recommended. According to her lawsuit, a female jailer told her to “get over it” because she’d had an ovarian cyst before. Fincher’s daughter also suffered a miscarriage, and she was unable to support her because she was behind bars.

Heather Harris, an expert in forensic analytical chemistry who has consulted with public defenders in Georgia on Nark II tests, told The Appeal that in Fincher’s case the blue food dye was most likely responsible for the false positive result. The reagent in the Nark II test is designed to color react with secondary amines in methamphetamine; a dark blue color indicates a positive result. Harris adds that the tests include a warning that their results must be confirmed by an independent laboratory but that law enforcement has repeatedly relied on the tests to jail people. “It’s not a confirmatory test,” Harris said, “so the problem is the human beings who are misusing the results of the test.”

The March 22, 2017, GBI report that exonerated Fincher didn’t result in her immediate release: She wasn’t freed until April 4, and prosecutors from the Towaliga Judicial Circuit did not nolle prosse (decline to prosecute) the case until April 18. Freeman, her attorney, said he’s not sure why there was such a long period between the lab results and her release but expects an answer to emerge during discovery in the lawsuit. “The very idea that when they pull out this big loose bag, that this is somehow this mass quantity of methamphetamine these great drug dealers are carrying around is just ludicrous,” he said. “Common sense went out the window on this arrest.”

Fincher said she hopes that her lawsuit will result in stricter policies for officers who use roadside drug tests. But most of all, she wants Monroe County to apologize to her. “They just didn’t care,” she said.

8 Colorado Cops Detain Black Man At Gunpoint For Picking Up Trash On His Lawn: ‘This Is My House’

https://thegailygrind.com/2019/03/06/8-colorado-cops-detain-black-man-at-gunpoint-for-picking-up-trash-on-his-lawn-this-is-my-house/?fbclid=IwAR0qltxF_OKDEmVNmObLeEPNpGD1dKltNC8wMIcj 67xCmIVVoun_8rSz-Cw

Boulder police on Monday launched an internal investigation after video surfaced of multiple officers confronting and detaining a black man at gunpoint who was picking up trash at his own house.

Boulder police said one of their officers approached a man sitting in a partially enclosed patio area behind a “private property” sign in the 2300 block of Arapahoe Avenue at 8:30 a.m. Friday and asked him if he was allowed to be there, reports The Denver Post.

The man reportedly informed the officer that he lived and worked in the building, and handed the officer his school identification card, but the officer instead detained the man while he “investigated further.”

The Denver Post reports:

The officer then made a request over the radio for additional assistance to respond, saying the man was uncooperative and unwilling to put down a blunt object. Several other officers, including a supervisor, responded. Police found the object the man was holding is a device used to pick up trash.

Police found the object the man was holding is a device used to pick up trash, and officers left the area.

A roommate began recording the encounter and later shared the video online. The 16-minute video shows his roommate trying to explain that he lives in the building and that he did not have a weapon.

“You’re on my property with a gun in your hand, threatening to shoot me, because I’m picking up trash,” the man can be heard saying. “I don’t have a weapon! This is a bucket, this is a clamp.”

“I’m not sitting down and you can’t make me,” the man says as additional officers arrived on the scene. “This is my property, this is my house — I live here.”

The person recording the video can be heard saying eight officers responded to the scene, some with their guns drawn or their hands on their weapons.

During Tuesday’s Boulder City Council meeting, audience members held aloft trash grabbers and clacked them as Police Chief Greg Testa briefed council members about the incident.

“This is an extremely concerning issue, and one that we are taking very seriously,” Testa read from a prepared statement.

Testa noted that an internal affairs investigation is ongoing, and the initial responding officer is on administrative leave. The probe is expected to take 60 to 90 days, reports Daily Camera.

PARTY GUESTS SUING OVER MASS ARREST FOR LESS THAN AN OUNCE OF MARIJUANA

https://theappeal.org/party-guests-suing-over-mass-arrest-for-less-than-an-ounce-of-marijuana/?fbclid=IwAR1Uxf2FNHzznol2A3-xiCCUtbPrIVzvkSeyxIALEm6Yrggj9nKT2dRUGMo

On Dec. 31, 2017, Nija Guider finished her waitressing shift and headed to a friend’s 21st birthday party in Cartersville, Georgia. She had been at the party for less than an hour when, suddenly, the police arrived. Without a warrant or permission, they entered the house and detained everyone inside. Guider and more than 60 other guests’ wrists were zip-tied.

“Boom, we were all going to jail,” Guider, then 21, recalled.

Each guest was charged with possessing less than an ounce of marijuana that had been found in the home. Some spent days in jail, held under harsh conditions, Guider and other party guests allege. The district attorney’s office would eventually drop charges against everyone. But many of those swept up at the party say the arrest cost them jobs and hurt their reputations.

While Guider was still in jail, her mugshot and those of others arrested were posted on the Bartow County jail website, in violation of Georgia state law, according to their attorneys. By the afternoon of Dec. 31, their mugshots were on the news, underneath headlines about a Cartersville drug bust.

“Everybody was treated inhumanely and talked to like they should expect this,” said Atteeyah Hollie, senior staff attorney at Southern Center for Human Rights.

Now Hollie and her colleagues, along with attorneys from The Merchant Law Firm PC, are helping the arrestees fight back. Today, they filed suit against the city of Cartersville, as well as members of the Cartersville Police Department, Bartow-Cartersville Drug Task Force, and Bartow County sheriff’s office, alleging that the search and mass arrest violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

Cartersville Mayor Matt Santini told The Appeal in an email that because the incident may involve litigation, he could not comment. The Cartersville chief of police and Bartow-Cartersville Drug Task Force did not respond to requests for comment. Bartow County Sheriff Clark Millsap declined to release information without a public records request. That request is now pending.

Sun Choy, who is representing the city, said over email that he could not give an interview “in light of the anticipated litigation.” However, he added, “I am comfortable in saying that we believe that any plaintiff will have to overcome some significant legal hurdles if he/she pursues a claim.”

In addition to recovering financial damages for their clients, the plaintiffs’ attorneys hope to draw attention to the department’s warrantless search practices, which they consider unconstitutional. Nationwide, unlawful searches disproportionately impact people of color, heightening concerns over their use. In this case, according to jail records, more than 50 of those arrested were Black.

‘Exigent circumstances’
Here’s the police account: At about 2 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2017, Cartersville Police Officer Joshua Coker was responding to a report of gunfire in the area when he drove down Cain Drive. Even with his car windows rolled up, he smelled marijuana, according to his testimony at a subsequent hearing.

He then saw four men in front of the home where Guider and others had gathered. Coker requested two other officers in the area join him.

The officers asked the men what was occurring inside; they explained it was a party. The officers then entered the home and announced everyone was being detained, according to police testimony. The majority of the guests were in their late teens or early 20s, according to booking reports.

“I had exigent circumstances to go inside and clear the residence … and make sure of no destruction of evidence prior to the Drug Task Force arriving,” testified Coker.

The exigent circumstance, he said, was that he smelled marijuana. He further explained that it is police department policy to enter a home without a warrant if marijuana is smelled inside or outside the home, “clear the residence for any occupants,” and contact the Drug Task Force, which was formed in 2008 to combat drugs and violent crime in Bartow County.

But, the partygoers and their attorneys say the police response was degrading and unconstitutional. While detained in the house, some of the guests were forbidden from using the bathroom while others, including Guider, were permitted to go only with the door open, according to the complaint. A search warrant for the home was signed at 4:19 a.m., about two hours after the police arrived.

Each guest was then searched—no drugs were found during the pat-downs—put into Bartow County sheriff’s vans, and taken to the county jail, where they sat in the jail garage for “upwards of an hour,” according to the complaint. One person who was denied permission to use the bathroom was told to “just piss on yourself,” the complaint alleges; he urinated on himself inside the van.

When people spoke up about their mistreatment, they were threatened with Tasers, or sent to “isolation cells” for roughly five to seven hours, according to the complaint.

Once inside the jail, they were held for one to three days in crowded cells that felt unheated, and some lacked sleeping pads or blankets, according to the complaint. Each person was strip-searched, including some as young as 17 years old. Some people with medical conditions were denied care, according to the suit.

“One person who experiences seizures informed a jail nurse of her condition but did not receive her anti-seizure medication until the third day of her detention,” the complaint reads. “A pregnant woman was denied prenatal pills and received no care when she vomited repeatedly in a holding cell garbage can.”

When people spoke up about their mistreatment, they were threatened with Tasers, or sent to “isolation cells” for roughly five to seven hours, according to the complaint. The isolation cells did not have beds or blankets.

“Some wrapped toilet paper around their arms, torsos, and feet because they were so cold,” the complaint alleges. “Others exercised to stay warm.”

Sheriff Millsap declined to address these allegations.

Police recovered less than an ounce of marijuana from inside the home, according to the complaint. Outside, they found two plastic bags that allegedly contained cocaine and marijuana, according to police field reports. One person was charged with possession of those bags, but the charge was later dropped after a judge ruled the search was unconstitutional.

‘Scar on their records’
For Guider, the arrest and jail time ruined what was meant to be the start of an auspicious new year. A mother to a 1-year-old, she had struggled with postpartum depression and finding stable housing. But on the cusp of 2018, she felt hopeful. She had a new home and a new job at a Mexican restaurant.

“I was able to buy all my son’s Christmas [presents] and then some on my own for the first time,” said Guider.

She said she was not allowed to make any phone calls while incarcerated. According to the complaint, many of the arrestees were denied phone access.

“I didn’t get to speak to my mom at all when I was in jail,” said Guider. “I just was sending messages through my friends that were bonded out.”

On Jan. 2, 2018, Guider was released on a $1,000 bond. But her new job was already lost. She said her employer told her she was fired because, “Y’all on the news.” Two and a half months later, she found another job. While she was unemployed, she went to food pantries to feed her son, according to the complaint.

“Each of our clients has had their life turned into a nightmare in a lot of ways,” said Gerry Weber, one of the attorneys. “They’ve got this scar on their records that will never disappear.”

Several plaintiffs faced professional repercussions as a result of the wrongful arrest, according to the complaint. One person had to take a drug test when he returned to work to keep his job. A military recruit’s enlistment date was delayed. A high school senior who hoped to attend college on a basketball scholarship was no longer allowed to play on his school’s team.

Robert (not his real name) lost his new job at a window supply company. The position could pay up to $60,000 a year—about $40,000 more than his previous job. While incarcerated, he missed three days of work, according to the complaint.

After he was released, he said he was fired after his employer saw his mugshot.

“That could have been a really good opportunity to make a lot of money,” said Robert, now 23. “I have a son and a girlfriend that I’m trying to marry, so I was looking forward to advancing up in the company.”

It took him more than a month to find another job.

“I just had to start over,” said Robert, who is now a truck driver. “Find a new career.”

Guider hopes the case holds the city and county responsible for what she considered a devastating ordeal. “It’s a different type of hurt when you get arrested for something you didn’t do,” said Guider. “On top of that [you’re taking] losses because of something you didn’t do.”

Police release body-cam video of Willie McCoy killing, showing him asleep in car

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy-police-shooting-video-vallejo

Vallejo police have released footage of the killing of Willie McCoy at a Taco Bell, showing six officers shooting the 20-year-old who was sleeping in his car.

The disturbing body-camera videos show the young rapper had moved his hand to scratch his shoulder before officers opened fire. The footage is consistent with key claims of McCoy’s family, who watched footage earlier this month and said the officers “executed” him while he was not alert or awake. The videos, released after significant pressure, show:

The officers did not try to wake McCoy up or talk to him after they spotted a gun in his lap, and instead pointed their firearms at his head directly outside the car as he slept for several minutes.
One officer said: “I’m going to pull him out and snatch his ass.”
The officers then realized the firearm did not have a magazine in it, noting to each other that if it was loaded, it would have a single bullet in it: “He’s only got one shot if he shoots.”
The officers then appeared to make a plan to fire at him, with one saying: “If he reaches for it, you know what to do.”
McCoy eventually started to move, scratching his shoulder and not yet appearing alert or saying anything to officers, and several seconds later, all six officers fired at him.

Vallejo police officials slowed down the video in the final seconds before the shootings, adding a caption that said “hand reaches to gun on lap”. The videos of the 9 February incident, however, are blurry in that moment and show McCoy’s body moving slightly, but do not capture his hand moving to the firearm, which is not visible in the footage.

Marc McCoy, Willie’s older brother, told the Guardian on Friday that he was glad the public would finally see the video, but was not confident it would lead to justice.

“There’s a thousand videos on YouTube that show police misconduct, whether it’s beatings of citizens or killing them,” said Marc, 50. “It gets dismissed … The Vallejo police saw the video, and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it or that the officers did anything criminal.”

The police department in Vallejo, 30 miles north-east of San Francisco, has repeatedly claimed that the six officers fired out of “fear for their own safety”. The footage, however, shows some of them talking somewhat calmly for nearly five minutes before they opened fire. Two officers began shooting almost immediately after they arrived on scene as backup.

After the officers stopped shooting, they all kept their guns pointed at the car, shouting: “Let me see your hands! Put your hands up!” One said: “Officers are OK.”

Police hit Willie with an estimated 25 shots, including in his face, throat, chest, ear and arms. John Burris, the family’s lawyer, showed reporters graphic photos of Willie’s body at a news conference Friday, saying: “He was shot to pieces.”

He said he plans to soon file a civil rights lawsuit against the officers and police agency.

“They were never trying to be peaceful or de-escalate the situation. It’s about being rough and tough,” said Marc, adding that the police’s plan seemed to be “‘If he moves, I’m gonna kill him’”.

Police also released audio of the 911 call, which came from a Taco Bell employee, who did not express concerns about the driver being threatening or having a gun, but simply said a man was “unresponsive” in his car in the drive-thru: “I’ve already had people try to knock on the window. I have no idea what’s going on.”

His family has said police should have treated this like a medical emergency.

“We all have to come together in some way and put pressure on the politicians to hold police accountable,” added Marc. “It’s crazy that police still have these jobs. It’s crazy that as a country we are not outraged by this conduct.”

One of the officers who fired at Willie had previously shot and killed an unarmed man and is the subject of an ongoing excessive force lawsuit. A second officer was previously sued in a police brutality case. The officers have not commented on the shooting.

Melissa Nold, another attorney for the family, told the Guardian the video made clear that police had no plan to safely handle the situation.

“There’s no attempt to preserve human life,” she said. “It’s terrible to watch … Everyone’s takeaway is he should not have died.”

Police had repeatedly refused to release the video, only giving a private viewing to three relatives and barring their attorney from watching it. But the department published it Friday following a records request and intensifying backlash.

Police officials did not give the family or their attorney a heads-up about their decision to release the video, said Nold, saying it caught them off-guard.

“It’s just a continuing of the insult to injury, the continuous disrespect,” she said. “They’re having to relive it without warning. It’s cruel.”

Willie was a beloved rapper in the Bay Area, whose career was on the rise when police killed him.

He had recently returned from a tour with his group and was likely fatigued that evening, said David Harrison, Willie’s cousin. The video, he said, made clear that Willie was a “sitting duck in that car” and police “didn’t want to give him a chance”.

He added: “This was a racist act.”

LMPD handcuffed a black teen for a wide turn, then told him to 'quit with the attitude'

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/investigations/2019/04/04/louisville-kentucky-police-stopped-frisked-handcuffed-black-teen-for-wide-turn/3210229002/

He was homecoming king at Central High School and had just graduated with several scholarships.

He had never been arrested or in trouble before and had a steady job selling new cars at a major dealership.

But 18-year-old Tae-Ahn Lea is black and lives in Park Duvalle, in Louisville’s West End. And when he borrowed his mom’s car to go get a slushie one day last August, he found himself being pulled over by the Louisville Metro Police Department's Ninth Mobile Division for the most minor of traffic violations — making a "wide turn" onto another street.

Before he was let go 25 minutes later, he was pulled from his car, frisked and handcuffed. His car was searched by a drug-sniffing dog, then by police officers who went through his wallet and even looked under the lid of his drink for contraband.

He was forced to stand on the street, embarrassed, as traffic drove by, with the cuffs chafing his wrists, as one officer asked him, "Why do you have this negative view towards the police?"

Nearly 1 million people have since viewed a video of the traffic stop on YouTube, and more than 17,000 have commented on it. Many said it shows exactly why minorities distrust law enforcement.

"Cops have a habit of making citizens enemies for life," one commentor said.

Police experts who viewed the video for the Courier Journal say that while the stop — except for the frisk — was legal, it was disturbingly disproportionate to the alleged offense and it showed the kind of bad policing that undermines the department's need to be effective.

LMPD Chief Steve Conrad has said that aggressive policing in high-crime areas reduces violent crime. He declined to comment on Lea's stop last Aug. 9, citing a pending investigation of the officers involved.

A police stop turns contentious
"Do you know why I stopped you?" Detective Kevin Crawford asked Lea after pulling him over.

Lea had no idea, he said.

"When you turned … you turned in to the far left lane," Crawford said. "You’re supposed to turn in the right lane."

Lea, expecting to get a citation, followed orders, even asking for permission to reach into his pocket to get his license. But the officer grabbed him by both wrists and pulled him from the car.

"Mama, they are taking me out of the vehicle," he cried out to his mother, who had called on his cellphone.

Three times Crawford asked Lea if he had any drugs or weapons. Three times Lea told him no.

Crawford frisked him, though Lea had done nothing to indicate he was "armed and presently dangerous," as the U.S. Supreme Court requires before such a search.

"Put your hands on the car and spread your feet," Crawford demanded.

"What are you checking me for?" Lea asked. "I told you I didn’t do anything. … Why'd you f------ took me out of the car?”

"We are allowed to," Crawford's partner, Detective Gabe Hellard, said.

"This is some bulls---," Lea said.

"Quit with the attitude," Hellard told him. "Stop the clenching-your-fist thing. We’re here for you. There's a shooting every day. Ain't nobody been nasty to you at all."

Police found nothing on Lea, so they asked permission to search the car. Lea declined, as is his right.

Then they brought in a police dog that they said "alerted" them to contraband inside Lea's mother's 2011 Dodge Charger, although it is not apparent on the body camera footage from the officers who came to the scene.

But it gave police probable cause to search the car.

And to place Lea into handcuffs.

"You're not under arrest, but you are not free to go," Hellard told him. "I'm not going to fight you and I’m not going to chase you. I had to chase some guy last night, and I haven’t recovered from it."

'They approach this young man as a threat'
Experts on policing, including some former officers, used words such as "deplorable" and "depressing" to describe the stop.

They said the officers were doing what they were told — trying to find guns in a high-crime area to cut down on violent crime.

But as former Tallahassee Police Department Officer Seth Stoughton, now a law professor at University of South Carolina, puts it, it is "an excellent example of the difference between lawful policing and good policing."

"They approach this young man as a threat — as a criminal,” said Stoughton. "And that is different than the way we want officers to interact with people."

The authorities also say traffic stops don't work as a crime-fighting tool. A study released in November of nearly 2 million traffic stops in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, found they failed to reduce crime in the short or long term.

'What did you pull him over for?'
Seven minutes had elapsed, but the stop was far from finished.

By now, Lea was handcuffed on a busy street, standing in front of a police cruiser and worried that somebody might see him.

He watched as the police dog jumped from seat to seat and as police tore through the vehicle.

One officer used a plastic crowbar to pry off the cover on the electric window buttons.

A second rifled every item in Lea's wallet after the dog allegedly showed an interest in it.

"Sir, have you had anything in your wallet like narcotics — anything that could have touched your wallet?" canine officer Jeff McCauley asked.

Lea shook his head no.

His mother, Tija Jackson, a juvenile probation officer and private investigator, arrived at the scene, where the three white officers were holding her son.

"What did you pull him over for?” she asked Crawford, who threatens to take her to jail if she doesn't stay back. "There is nothing in there. It's my car."

"I am the detective who pulled him over," Crawford said. "He committed a traffic violation. He conducted an improper turn on to 18th Street.

"Luckily for you, ma'am, everything was captured on body camera," he added.

"Luckily enough for you," Jackson said.

"Oh, really,” the officer replied.

As the search continued, Hellard tries to engage Lea in conversation.

"Have you been in trouble before?" the officer asked.

"None,” Lea shook his head, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

"Anything as a juvenile at all?" Hellard asked.

No, Lea said.

Hellard asked where Lea works. "You say you sell cars at Oxmoor Ford Lincoln?"

"That’s good money," Hellard said. "You actually like a car salesman?"

'If it's a wrong turn, give him a ticket'
Police found nothing in the car.

McCauley announced he was going to try to calm Lea's mother down, but they ended up in a confrontation.

"Are you Mom? Are you doing all right?" he asked.

"I'm pissed off, for real," she said.

"What you pissed off for?" McCauley asked.

"My son … is a working young man," she replied. "He doesn't cause no problems. And they took him out of the car. And he asked, 'Why you taking me out of the car?' And he said, ‘Cuz I can.’

"If it's a wrong turn, give him a ticket," she said.

"That’s not what we’re out here for," McCauley responded. "We are a violent crimes unit.

"We don’t pick and choose where we work. We are told by our commanders, by the chief’s office, where to patrol, and all that is based off criminal violence statistics. The 18th Street corridor, Victory Park, Park Hill, they are the areas we are told to patrol. That’s why we are here.

“We are just doing our jobs to try to make the city a little safer,” he said.

"I don’t want the history,” she interrupted. “I just want to know why my son …”

He cut her off. “I’m trying to explain, but you don’t want to hear it.”

"I'm not here that for that,” she said. “I don’t need the sass. I appreciate you being out here for violent crime. My son is not a violent nothing. He’s never been in JCYC (the Jefferson County Youth Center) — nothing. He got a job.”

“I’m not saying he is a violent criminal."

"So, why is he out of the car in handcuffs?"

"I came over here to try to explain it to you, but you don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to hear the truth."

"If it doesn't have nothing to do with my son, I don’t want to hear it,” she said before walking away. “I am dealing with my son right now."

'Why do you have this negative view towards the police?'
Meanwhile, Lea was still standing on the street in cuffs, which were pulling at his wrists. He’d been out of the car for nearly 20 minutes, as traffic passed by, with him in plain sight.

Hellard was still talking to him.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “why do you have this negative view towards the police? What has ever happened in your life personally where you can give me a good explanation?"

"Absolutely nothing," Lea said.

"So, why are we in this situation?" Hellard asked.

"You!" Lea responded, his voice rising. "F---ing you!"

"We don't know who you are," Hellard said. "I don’t know that you graduated and got several scholarships and have a good job. You can continue with your negative view towards me, I guess. I just figured I would try to understand."

"You will never understand," Lea said.

The stop was winding down.

Driving while black: Lawyer says he was racially profiled in luxury car

Out of the hearing of the mother and son, McCauley complained to other officers that Jackson would "make stuff up" and "spill that over the internet. She’ll get a thousand likes. It’s a disease.”

Then he got in his car to leave. “Good girl, Ripley,” he said to his dog.

Hellard asked Lea, “If I take you out of these handcuffs, are you going to fight me? I know you’re mad.”

The young man, who stands 5 foot 8 and weighs 140 pounds, answers no, and his arms are freed.

Twenty-four minutes after Lea was stopped, Crawford finished writing the citation and handed it to him.

“Have a wonderful day,” he said.

'Nothing about this kid suggested he was a gangbanger'
Two months later, a judge dismissed the traffic citation against Lea.

Neither Crawford nor Hellard, who issued the ticket, showed up in court to defend it.

Policing experts who viewed the video for the Courier Journal, including Margo Frasier, the former sheriff of Travis County, Texas, said it was a "chickens---" violation and obviously a pretext for making the stop.

That itself wasn’t illegal, said Frasier, who later monitored the Austin, Texas, police department and now serves as the federally appointed chief monitor for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana.

And she said police had the legal right to make Lea get out of the car. But she said there was no basis for searching him after he was removed from his car, which made the frisk illegal.

Both the Supreme Court and Louisville police say a pat down may be conducted only on reasonable grounds that the subject is armed and dangerous.

"Nothing about this kid suggested he was a gangbanger who had three AK-47s in the car," she said.

The officers also violated LMPD policy, as set out in its standard operating procedures, by failing to identify themselves and failing to ask if there was a legitimate reason for what the driver did.

Traffic stops have been controversial in Louisville.

The Courier Journal reported in January that black people are cited at six times the rate of white people for possession of marijuana, and that most are charged after being stopped for minor violations.

Lea's stop came about a month before the Rev. Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, was stopped at the corner of 22nd Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard for an alleged traffic violation.

Cosby, who is also president of the historically black Simmons College, later said he was treated like a criminal during the stop, although Conrad announced last month that an investigation found no evidence of racial profiling.

'If I were him, I would have had an attitude too'
In Lea's stop, Frasier and other experts said he showed remarkable patience and restraint.

"If I were him, I would have had an attitude too," she said.

Stoughton, the former Tallahassee officer, said the overarching problem with the stop was not that it was illegal, but that it was inappropriate and counterproductive.

“People obey and cooperate with police when they trust them,” he said. “That view is undermined when they are seen as abusing their authority.”

Even in high-crime areas, most people aren’t criminals, he said, "so it can really rub community members the wrong way when they are all viewed as targets for investigation."

Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina political science professor and author of “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race,” said hot-spot policing like that practiced by Louisville police is a "standard practice" but a "bad idea."

He said his study of 20,000 stops in North Carolina found that most came up dry — that police rarely found guns or other contraband.

"Go to a high-crime area and find a man of color in a nice car," is how Baumgartner described the strategy. "It’s a needle in the haystack approach that isn’t paying off, given it alienates tens of thousands of people a year."

In the Louisville stop, he said, "Obviously it alienated that young man and infuriated his mother, and it didn’t lead to anything. It is one little nick taken out of community relations and the trust the community of police."

In an email, Jessie Halladay, a Louisville Police spokeswoman, said "we see examples of cooperation between police and the community every day."

But, she said, "there is always room for improvement" and the department understands "tension exists between the police and community, particularly as it relates to traffic stops."

She said the agency is "developing a public engagement effort" to be announced in coming weeks “that will lean into our relationship with the community.”

But she said the department won’t reconsider its tactical use of traffic stops because it is "an effective strategy to help control crime."

Lea, who now attends Tri-City Barber College in Louisville and is selling cars again part time, told the Courier Journal the mayor and police chief need to put a stop to such stops.

"They could go wrong very easily, with somebody who had a little more of a temper than me," he said.

Jackson said such pretextual stops only create more friction between the community and police.

She and her son have retained a lawyer, Lonita Baker, and expect to file a lawsuit.

"We want to let people know what they are doing — and not just to my son," Jackson said.

Shocking viral video appears to show deputy slamming teen's head into the ground

https://www.kcra.com/article/shocking-viral-video-appears-to-show-deputy-slamming-teen-s-head-into-the-ground/27222755?fbclid=IwAR227ZE3XA7oy_1Qg9YzrWNvQ4BrQq00 R2K18a_1WDcSAdL690S7xUjbb2o

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. (video from WPLG) —
A Broward County sheriff's deputy is on "restricted administrative assignment" after a video surfaced that appears to show him slamming a teenage boy's head into the ground and then punching the teen in the head.

The video of the Thursday incident appears to show one Florida deputy spraying pepper spray in the face of a teen boy. As the teen appears to walk away with his hands on his face, the deputy follows him, grabs him and slams him to the ground.

Another deputy then jumps onto the boy's back, slams his face into the pavement more than once and punches the teen in the head.

In the background, bystanders can be heard yelling "What are you doing?" and "He's bleeding."

The video, which has since gone viral on social media, has sparked outrage over the deputy's conduct.

Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony released a video statement Friday saying there would be a "thorough investigation" into the incident.

"We will look at this as a fact-finding measure to ensure that we hold folks accountable," said Tony, who was appointed to his position about three months ago. "I was appointed to this position exclusively about accountability and that accountability will be held not just for sake of when we are right, but in the cases where we may be wrong."

The Broward County Sheriff's office said on its website that the Division of Internal Affairs is investigating the incident.

Deputy says he 'had to act quickly'

An arrest report from the sheriff'spffice says detectives with the Tamarac Crime Suppression Team were on "proactive patrol" at the Tamarac Town Square Plaza because of recent student fights at the strip mall. The day before the deputies' encounter, the report says, there had been a large fight that resulted in damage to property and a bystander's vehicle.

The officer writing the report, Christopher Krickovich, said a fight Thursday stopped before he and other deputies walked up. As the crowd dispersed, the deputies saw a teen who had been involved in Wednesday's fight. Krickovich wrote he and another deputy -- identified as Sgt. LaCerra -- approached the teen and put him into custody because he was trespassing.

Krickovich said as he was detaining the teen, he noticed another boy wearing a "red tank top" reach down and try to grab the phone of the teen being detained, the report says. LaCerra told the boy to stay back because Krickovich was on the ground with his back turned, Krickovich wrote in the report.

"At this point, the male with the red tank top, took an aggressive stance towards Sgt. LaCerra," Krickovich wrote. "The male with the red tank top bladed his body and began clenching his fist."

That's when LaCerra sprayed the boy with pepper spray, the report says.

Krickovich wrote in the report that he saw the big crowd of 200-plus students "converging on the two of us," so he jumped on the boy with the red tank top.

"With the crowd closing in and the loud yelling and threats towards us, I pushed down the male to ensure my weight was full on his person so he could not attempt to take flight or fight against us," Krickovich wrote, adding that it felt as though the boy in the red tank was trying to push up while he was pushing down.

"I had to act quickly, fearing I would get struck or having a student potentially grab weapons off my belt or vest," Krickovich wrote.

Krickovich said he punched the boy in the head "as a distractionary technique to free his right hand" from under his face.

The 15-year-old boy, who has not been identified, was taken to Coral Springs Medical Center, cleared and then taken to Juvenile Assessment Center. He was charged with assault, resisting arrest and trespassing, according to CNN affiliate WFOR-TV. He appeared in court Friday morning and was released to his parents.

Mayor says deputy should be fired

Broward Mayor Mark Bogen released a statement Friday condemning the actions seen in the video.

"The behavior of these Broward Sheriff's Office deputies was outrageous and unacceptable," Bogen said. "The officer who jumped on the student, punched the student and banged his head to the ground should be fired immediately. There is no excuse for a law enforcement officer to harm a teenager who was on the ground and who gave no resistance."

Bogen said he also had a problem with the deputy who threw the boy on the ground after pepper spraying him.

"After being sprayed, the teen held his face and walked away," Bogen said. "If the deputy wanted to arrest the student, he could have easily done so without throwing him to the ground. I hope the appropriate authorities investigate this conduct and take the appropriate action."

Celebrities also reacted to the video on social media Saturday.

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers wrote on Twitter: "So wrong!! Hurts me to my soul!! To think that could be my sons. Scary times man."

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr wondered on Twitter "What the hell is wrong with our country? This is insane yet routine. So demoralizing."

Moment cops open fire on unarmed black couple near Yale campus as they sat in car singing along to R&B singer Avant because police wrongly believed their vehicle had been involved in a robbery

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6946347/Police-officers-open-fire-unarmed-African-American-couple-Connecticut.html

Protest erupted along the streets of Connecticut after video surfaced of a police officer opening fire on a vehicle being driven by an unarmed black couple last Tuesday

Stephanie Washington, 22, and her boyfriend Paul Witherspoon III, 21, were shot at by Hamden police officer Devin Eaton and Yale police officer Terrance Pollack as they sat unarmed in their car near Yale university's campus in New Haven.

Authorities believed that the vehicle that the couple was driving had been involved in an armed robbery of a newspaper delivery person at a local Hamden gas station around 4am, CBS News reports.

The two departments then caught up with the vehicle - which was being driven by Witherspoon.

Surveillance footage shows the moment the responding officers jumped our of their SUV and fired multiple rounds at the couple last Tuesday.

During the shooting, Washington was shot in the face and has since been hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, according to university officials.

Witherspoon was left unharmed.

During the CCTV video, police officer Devin Eaton is seen leaping out of the police car and raising his gun towards the vehicle.

He then begins to fire multiple shots at the unarmed couple after Witherspoon abruptly gets out of the vehicle before running away from the car towards the end of the street.

Video from inside the couple's vehicle shows that prior to the shooting, they had been enjoying each other's company and were singing songs to each other.

Officer Eaton has been placed on administrative leave while an investigation into the shooting is ongoing. Pollock was also placed on leave, as standard protocol for any instance when a Yale officer discharges their weapon.

The shooting has led to an outpouring of peaceful demonstrations along the streets from groups such as the Black Lives Matter movement and Yale University students, with protesters claiming the black couple were unfairly targeted.

On Thursday, hundreds of protesters took the streets and blocked traffic near the university as community organizer Kerry Ellington addressed more than 200 students outside Yale University's Woodbridge Hall.

Witherspoon's uncle, Rodney Williams, told CBS News that the incident also sheds light on how police in the country are trained.

He said: 'You need to look at what's really going on with the police ... really look at how the police look at residents period.

'The police could be black, white, Puerto Rican ... it's just a police issue ... I think we need to be respected as human beings and I feel like they really don't.'

The two police officers have now been placed under administrative leave.

Connecticut State Police have said they will release further information on their investigations later this week.

The Mayors of Hamden and New Haven have teemed up with the various police department for a joint Wednesday conference where they worked on curbing such incidents from taking place again.

'Sir, please': Police chief says he's disgusted by video of woman's rough arrest

https://www.kcra.com/article/sir-please-police-chief-says-he-s-disgusted-by-video-of-woman-s-rough-arrest/27266068?fbclid=IwAR2GOEFhPUvDZqAP5H9gTfjgH5ykmKJo DjMsItdIzcrhaIDWATi_QukeplY

Tuscaloosa police have released the bodycam footage of a woman's arrest that ended with her bleeding from her head and two officers on desk duty while they await disciplinary proceedings.

"He made me feel like I wasn't even human. Like I was a piece of garbage. Like I was an animal," said the woman, 22-year-old Jhasmynn Sheppard.

Sheppard was stopped by Tuscaloosa Police on Friday for leaving the scene of an accident, police said. She told CNN that while she was in a small accident, she and the other driver had ironed it out.

She was pulled over as she drove home. As Sheppard looked for her license and registration, the officer asked her to step out of the vehicle and began to handcuff her, according to the video.

At one point, Sheppard said, "Sir, please don't do me like this," and then turns toward the officer and attempts to pull her arm away as he is trying to handcuff her hands behind her back.

An altercation breaks out and another officer becomes involved. Video shows the woman on the ground with the officers on top of her and they can be heard cursing her, calling her "stupid" and threatening to kick her teeth in. One of the officers also appears to hit her with his baton.

"I was thinking this isn't right. This isn't right. All I know I was on the ground. When I looked up he was on the ground too. Next thing I know he tackled me," Sheppard said.

Sheppard said she was arrested for unarming a police officer, resisting arrest and assault. She spent two days in jail and was never given medical attention, though she was bleeding from her head.

Sheppard said no one with the police or the city have contacted her since the arrest, but that she has heard through local media reports that the charges against her may be dropped.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steve Anderson said he was "disgusted" by the actions of the two officers.

The chief said the officers violated department training throughout the incident, and that both are now on desk duty during disciplinary procedures, according WVTM.

Sheppard saw the footage for the first time Wednesday.

"It kind of hurts my feelings every time I see it," she told CNN.

We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct. Now you can read their records.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/

At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade, an investigation by USA TODAY Network found.

Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women. They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses.

Despite their role as public servants, the men and women who swear an oath to keep communities safe can generally avoid public scrutiny for their misdeeds.

The records of their misconduct are filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments. Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed.

Reporters from USA TODAY, its 100-plus affiliated newsrooms and the nonprofit Invisible Institute in Chicago have spent more than a year creating the biggest collection of police misconduct records.

Obtained from thousands of state agencies, prosecutors, police departments and sheriffs, the records detail at least 200,000 incidents of alleged misconduct, much of it previously unreported. The records obtained include more than 110,000 internal affairs investigations by hundreds of individual departments and more than 30,000 officers who were decertified by 44 state oversight agencies.


Among the findings:

Most misconduct involves routine infractions, but the records reveal tens of thousands of cases of serious misconduct and abuse. They include 22,924 investigations of officers using excessive force, 3,145 allegations of rape, child molestation and other sexual misconduct and 2,307 cases of domestic violence by officers.

Dishonesty is a frequent problem. The records document at least 2,227 instances of perjury, tampering with evidence or witnesses or falsifying reports. There were 418 reports of officers obstructing investigations, most often when they or someone they knew were targets.

Less than 10% of officers in most police forces get investigated for misconduct. Yet some officers are consistently under investigation. Nearly 2,500 have been investigated on 10 or more charges. Twenty faced 100 or more allegations yet kept their badge for years.

The level of oversight varies widely from state to state. Georgia and Florida decertified thousands of police officers for everything from crimes to questions about their fitness to serve; other states banned almost none.

That includes Maryland, home to the Baltimore Police Department, which regularly has been in the news for criminal behavior by police. Over nearly a decade, Maryland revoked the certifications of just four officers.

We’re making those records public
The records USA TODAY and its partners gathered include tens of thousands of internal investigations, lawsuit settlements and secret separation deals.

They include names of at least 5,000 police officers whose credibility as witnesses has been called into question. These officers have been placed on Brady lists, created to track officers whose actions must be disclosed to defendants if their testimony is relied upon to prosecute someone.

USA TODAY plans to publish many of those records to give the public an opportunity to examine their police department and the broader issue of police misconduct, as well as to help identify decertified officers who continue to work in law enforcement.

Seth Stoughton, who worked as a police officer for 14 years and teaches law at the University of South Carolina, said expanding public access to those kinds of records is critical to keep good cops employed and bad cops unemployed.

“No one is in a position to assess whether an officer candidate can do the job well and the way that we expect the job to be done better than the officer’s former employer,” Stoughton said.

“Officers are public servants. They police in our name," he said. There is a "strong public interest in identifying how officers are using their public authority.”

Dan Hils, president of the Cincinnati Police Department’s branch of the Fraternal Order of Policemen union, said people should consider there are more than 750,000 law enforcement officers in the country when looking at individual misconduct data.

“The scrutiny is way tighter on police officers than most folks, and that’s why sometimes you see high numbers of misconduct cases,” Hils said. “But I believe that policemen tend to be more honest and more trustworthy than the average citizen.”

Hils said he has no issue with USA TODAY publishing public records of conduct, saying it is the news media’s “right and responsibility to investigate police and the authority of government. You’re supposed to be a watchdog.”

The first set of records USA TODAY is releasing is an exclusive nationwide database of about 30,000 people whom state governments banned from the profession by revoking their certification to be law enforcement officers.

For years, a private police organization has assembled such a list from more than 40 states and encourages police agencies to screen new hires. The list is kept secret from anyone outside law enforcement.

USA TODAY obtained the names of banned officers from 44 states by filing requests under state sunshine laws.

The information includes the officers’ names, the department they worked for when the state revoked their certification and – in most cases – the reasons why.

The list is incomplete because of the absence of records from states such as California, which has the largest number of law enforcement officers in the USA.

USA TODAY's collection of police misconduct records comes amid a nationwide debate over law enforcement tactics, including concern that some officers or agencies unfairly target minorities.

A series of killings of black people by police over the past five years in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Chicago, Sacramento, California, and elsewhere have sparked unrest and a reckoning that put pressure on cities and mayors to crack down on misconduct and abuses.

The Trump administration has backed away from more than a decade of Justice Department investigations and court actions against police departments it determined were deeply biased or corrupt.

In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department would leave policing the police to local authorities, saying federal investigations hurt crime fighting.

Laurie Robinson, co-chair of the 2014 White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, said transparency about police conduct is critical to trust between police and residents.

“It’s about the people who you have hired to protect you,” she said. “Traditionally, we would say for sure that policing has not been a transparent entity in the U.S. Transparency is just a very key step along the way to repairing our relationships."

Help us investigate
The number of police agencies and officers in the USA is so large that the blind spots are vast. We need your help.

Though the records USA TODAY Network gathered are probably the most expansive ever collected, there is much more to be added. The collection includes several types of statewide data, but most misconduct is documented by individual departments.

Journalists obtained records from more than 700 law enforcement agencies, but the records are not complete for all of those agencies, and there are more than 18,000 police forces across the USA. The records requests were focused largely on the biggest 100 police agencies as well as clusters of smaller departments in surrounding areas, partly to examine movement of officers between departments in regions.

USA TODAY aims to identify other media organizations willing to partner in gathering new records and sharing documents they've already gathered. The Invisible Institute, a journalism nonprofit in Chicago focused on police accountability, has done so for more than a year and contributed records from dozens of police departments.

Reporters need help getting documents – and other kinds of tips – from the public, watchdog groups, researchers and even officers and prosecutors themselves.

If you have access to citizen complaints about police, internal affairs investigation records, secret settlement deals between agencies and departing officers or anything that sheds light on how agencies police their officers, we want to hear from you.

Woman With Mental Illness Gave Birth Alone In Florida Jail Cell, Lawyers Say

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tammy-jackson-jailed-woman-gives-birth-cell_n_5cced440e4b04e275d4bb1fe?ncid=tweetlnkushpm g00000067

Behind bars and alone in a Florida jail cell, a pregnant, mentally ill woman complained late at night of contractions and beseeched the prison guards for help. But instead of transporting her to a hospital, the officers chose to phone an on-call doctor who turned out to be uncontactable for hours and ultimately didn’t show up in time to assist in the birth, the woman’s lawyers claim.

In the doctor’s absence, Tammy Jackson, 34, allegedly gave birth to her baby alone in her prison cell — without medical assistance of any kind.

In a scalding letter addressed to Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony, public defender Howard Finkelstein said officers at the special needs detention facility where Jackson was held were fully aware of her pregnancy and mental illness — and yet failed to “protect either Ms. Jackson or her child.”

“It is unconscionable that any woman, particularly a mentally ill woman, would be abandoned in her cell to deliver her own baby,” Finkelstein wrote in the Friday letter, which was first obtained and reported by The Miami Herald.

According to the attorney, Jackson, who was at full term, was being held in an “isolation cell” on April 10 when she alerted officers at around 3 a.m. that she was having contractions. The guards, Finkelstein said, attempted to contact an on-call doctor but weren’t able to reach him for almost four hours. In the interim, Jackson was allegedly left alone in her cell, without medication or assistance.

At around 7.20 a.m., prison staff finally made contact with the doctor who said “he would check on [Jackson] when he arrived at the jail,” Finkelstein’s letter said. Yet, an hour and 38 minutes later, Jackson reported that she was “bleeding but still … isolated in her cell.”

Finally, at around 10 a.m., a prison employee found Jackson with her newborn infant in her arms, the letter said, noting that six hours and 54 minutes had elapsed since the mother first asked for help.

″[In] her time of extreme need and vulnerability, [the Broward Sheriff’s Office] neglected to provide Ms. Jackson with the assistance and medical care all mothers need and deserve,” Finkelstein wrote.

The sheriff’s office told the Herald in a statement that a medical team, including a physician and two nurses, later attended to the mother and child.

“Child Protective Investigations Section was notified, and the baby was placed with an appropriate caregiver,” a spokeswoman said.

Citing court records, The Hill said Jackson was arrested earlier this year on cocaine possession charges and later released, but was arrested again after she failed to report for pretrial services.

Chief Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes described Jackson’s mental illness as “significant.”

Finkelstein, who demanded an “immediate review of the medical and isolation practices in place in all detention facilities” in his letter, said it remains to be seen how the gross negligence” Jackson endured will affect her “already fragile mental health.”

“Not only was Ms. Jackson’s health callously ignored, the life of her child was also put at grave risk,” he wrote.

Community furious after Oklahoma officers shot three children in their head and face while firing at suspect in pizza shop robbery

https://meaww.com/oklahoma-police-officers-identified-shoot-three-children-apprehend-man-armed-pizza-shop-robbery

The names of two police officers who had been involved in the shooting of three children in Hugo, Oklahoma, have now been released more than a week after the tragedy occurred. Hugo Police Department detectives Billy Jenkins and Chad Allen were identified as the officers who opened fire on a vehicle that was being driven by 21-year-old William Devaughn Smith, who was under suspicion of robbing a pizza shop. Choctaw County Jail records indicate that Smith was being held on an aggravated robbery complaint. He had been in custody in Lamar County, Texas, after being released from a hospital there.

The officers' bullets ended up hitting three of the four children who were sitting in the back seat. Olivia Hill, the mother of the four children, told KFOR: "My 4-year-old daughter was shot in the head, and she has a bullet in her brain, and my 5-year-old has a skull fracture. My 1-year-old baby has gunshot wounds on her face. My 2-year-old wasn’t touched with any bullets."

A post on the Hugo, Oklahoma, police Facebook page said a man entered the back entrance of the restaurant, pressed an object to an employee's back and demanded money. Police said the worker handed over money and the robber left.

The police officers later intercepted the suspect and claim that they started shooting because Smith had been trying to run them over with his truck, but many are claiming that this is false. Witnesses say that the officers could have just moved out of the way instead of opening fire, especially considering there were children inside the vehicle.

It is also worth noting that the officers were in plain clothes on that day meaning Smith may not have known the two men approaching his vehicle with guns were police officers. According to TFTP, family attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons said: "If you don’t know if someone is law enforcement or not, it changes things. I don’t know what happened, but that’s concerning to me."

The three children who were shot in the incident have all reportedly been released from the hospital but will continue to deal with "a lot of physical and emotional pain," according to Simmons.

He said: "They are terrified to go anywhere or hear anything. The two-year-old keeps asking about 'Am I going to get shot again'. It’s a bad deal. The child who had a bullet in the brain, there’s some question now that she may have a permanent injury. She might be looking at a lifetime injury."

Whistleblowers describe culture of racism, abuse and cover-ups at Florida prison

https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20190508/whistleblowers-describe-culture-of-racism-abuse-and-cover-ups-at-florida-prison

One former Panhandle prison employee said she filed a written complaint about a correctional officer’s racist behavior, then came into work several days later to another officer dangling a noose made of toilet paper in front of her.

Another former employee said she walked in on a handcuffed inmate being beaten in the medical unit, surrounded by a group of officers. She was suspended one day after filing an incident report about it, and fired within two weeks.

Though both of those employees are now gone, they aren’t alone.

In interviews with the Times-Union, a dozen former and current employees at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution described a culture of abuse, bullying, racism and administrative cover-ups in the mental health dorms. Officers selected inmates they had problems with for unsanctioned forms of punishment: to include physical violence or withholding their food to the point where prisoners lost considerable weight, employees said.

“It frustrates us and makes us angry every time this happens and we report it and these officers are still there working,” said Betty Young, a former activities technician. “They won’t fire them because they’re so short on staff, and they keep them.”

Several employees complained all the way to the top — Warden Walker Clemmons.

There were multiple meetings about the work environment in the mental health dorms between concerned employees and their supervisors, including two with Clemmons in attendance, one as recently as mid-April, according to employees with direct knowledge of the meetings and records obtained by the Times-Union.

The Times-Union isn’t identifying any current employees, who expressed fears of retaliation. It is naming two former employees and used records to corroborate many of the claims.

In interviews with the Times-Union, employees at Santa Rosa also raised concerns about the July 2018 death of Michael Cuebas, which has been ruled a suicide by the Florida Department of Corrections. Specifically, they questioned why Cuebas was allowed to have a sheet in a shower cell, which is against department policy.

Cuebas, who was being housed in the mental health dorm, said he had attempted to hang himself in prison once before in letters to his mother. But he also expressed fear that correctional officers were going to put a hit on him and stage it to look like a suicide.

An inspector with the Florida Department of Corrections Office of Inspector General noted that Cuebas possessed a sheet in the shower cell but did not flag it as improper in a summary report of his investigation.

The Santa Rosa Correctional Institution is a crucial backstop in the Florida prison system. Deep in the Panhandle, the facility is known as the “end of the line,” but not because of its geographic location. Santa Rosa manages several wings of “close custody” inmates — those between maximum and medium security — as well as two mental health dorms.

That means the prison is responsible for some of the state’s most challenging inmates, but also some of its most vulnerable. Employees interviewed by the Times-Union stressed that the facility had seasoned officers who acted professionally as well, but that there was an unwillingness by the administration to hold other officers accountable.

The facility has a capacity of some 2,600 inmates but housed more than 3,300 prisoners from across the state as of the last audit in February 2015. It’s unclear how many of those are from Northeast Florida.

The Department of Corrections said the agency and leadership at Santa Rosa “have zero tolerance for staff who act inappropriately and in contrary to our core values.”

“We do not condone a culture of racism, abuse or coverup,” the agency said in a statement.

Michelle Glady, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the agency couldn’t comment on Young’s firing because she was a Centurion employee and it was not involved in the decision. Centurion is the private medical contractor at Florida prisons.

The Office of Inspector General is reviewing and investigating the allegations, the department added. Glady said the institution had a “track record of ensuring that any individuals involved in misconduct are held fully accountable.”

‘YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS’

Ronald Thornton was one week away from his release date, serving a four-year sentence for cocaine possession, when correctional officers called him out from his cell.

Thornton, a black man, had been fighting with several correctional officers who he said used racist language toward him. He had already been badly beaten once before, to the point where his eyes were swollen shut, according to multiple sources at the prison.

But Thornton wasn’t staying quiet. He continued to call out officers for racist behavior.

On April 9, one month ago, a couple of officers told Thornton they had a going-away present for him, he said — then they told him he had to take a tuberculosis test.

The men led Thornton to the medical unit in handcuffs. It’s one of the few areas in the facility that has no cameras, according to several employees.

“They closed the door and put their gloves on and said, ‘You know what time it is,’” Thornton told the Times-Union. “Then they started hitting me.”

Thornton identified Sgt. Lee Peacock Jr. as one officer who beat him, but could not name others. He said violence against inmates was rampant in the prison. The Department of Corrections would not say whether Peacock was under investigation but confirmed that he is still an active employee there. The Times-Union attempted to reach him directly and through the agency but was unsuccessful.

Young, the former activities therapist at the prison, heard what she described as grunting in the midst of Thornton’s beating, and forced her way into the medical office. One officer whistled out a warning, she said, and when she arrived she saw several officers and some nurses were trying to shield Thornton from her view. Young said Thornton leaned away from an officer and looked to her, and she was able to see evidence of physical injury to his face.

Young, who said she had knowledge of Thornton being beaten up once before, said she called out in surprise at the officers that they were beating Thornton again. The officers simply stared at her and said nothing in response, Young said. She went directly to her supervisor to report the incident, she added.

That same day, Young wrote a report about the beating. She identified Peacock and other officers as being in the medical unit surrounding Thornton when she entered.

The incident report would be her last. Young was suspended the day after she filed it, then terminated a week and a half later, she said.

After Young shared her story with the Times-Union, the newspaper interviewed Thornton, whose recollection of the beating included many of the same details shared by Young, details outlined in records later obtained by the Times-Union. Thornton was released from prison on April 16.

‘GHOST TRAYS’

Officers regularly coerced inmates in the mental health unit by withholding or ruining their food, according to a dozen former and current employees.

Because inmates at the mental health unit are kept in one-man cells, officers deliver trays directly to them.

But sometimes, the officers served “air trays” or “ghost trays,” the employees said. The trays have a lid on top, so they appear to be full on video, but contain no food, they said, adding that officers will also position cups of juice to spill into the tray and soak the meal.

Employees said officers used the trays for coercion or retaliation. For instance, Thornton said that after his beating, an officer came up to the back of his cell, off camera, and told him to file an incident report saying he fell. The officers threatened him with ghost trays, he added.

Several current employees and former employees said officers commonly withheld food to get inmates to change their stories for investigations into abuse or to concoct fictional narratives that would cover up the wrongdoing of an officer.

Another form of retaliation is known as “bucking,” according to employees and former prisoners. To attend state-mandated programs such as group therapy, correctional officers must sign an inmate out of their cell after a contraband search, employees said.

Employees added that certain inmates were consistently being blocked from programs if they fell out of favor with the officers for any reason. When the employees asked officers why the inmate didn’t show up, they were told they refused to be searched, claims that employees would later find out to be false, they said.

Not attending the state-mandated programs can result in the loss of privileges for inmates such as time spent in the day room or the ability to possess radios.

Glady, the department spokeswoman, said that under policy, inmates who do not participate in scheduled activities are interviewed by counselors “to encourage him to participate at the time of the refusal.”

She added that the department’s Central Office “recently” assigned an ombudsman to the facility who is monitoring conditions in the mental health dorms.

‘FALL IN LINE’

Lauren Gaylord, a former activities specialist at the facility, said white officers frequently racially harassed her and other black employees there.

Gaylord did what she thought she was supposed to do in the face of harassment, she said, and reported the officers. But that only led to more problems, according to Gaylord.

During a mental health group meeting she was leading, Gaylord said, a correctional officer appeared outside the window holding a noose constructed out of toilet paper.

The noose appeared again, Gaylord said, several days later, when she was walking into work.

“They made sure when I walked in the quad that they had it dangling for me off of a roll of toilet paper that they had just taken out of a different inmates’ cell,” Gaylord said. “They had it hanging for me when I walked in. I knew it was for me because as soon as I saw it, they pulled it up, they all laughed together and then they balled it up and put it in their pockets.”

Gaylord identified Officer Kyle Hollis and Officer Travis Boswell, who she said dangled the noose in front of her that time. She said Officer Hollis then walked past her “and gave me kind of a, ’You fall in line” kind of smirk and said, ‘Did you see that, Gaylord?’”

Both incidents with nooses occurred last year, Gaylord said, but she could not identify specific dates. Gaylord said she reported the incidents, and the Times-Union has requested copies of those reports.

The Department of Corrections confirmed that Officer Hollis is still employed at Santa Rosa.

Unsettled after hearing about the noose incidents, several employees at the facility — many of them African American — complained about what they described as an environment of racial harassment by correctional officers, according to employees and records obtained by the Times-Union.

The newspaper first heard about the noose incidents from current employees. Gaylord then independently shared many of the same details when contacted by the Times-Union. The Times-Union attempted to reach the officers directly and through the agency but was unsuccessful.

‘ZERO TOLERANCE’

Late last year, employees at Santa Rosa voiced concerns in a meeting with Warden Walker Clemmons, Assistant Warden Michael Pabis and other high-ranking supervisors, according to employees with direct knowledge of the meeting.

The employees wanted to know why Officer Hollis was still working there and believed his actions were captured on video, according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Warden Clemmons said the incident was under review, according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting. He told them he had a “zero tolerance” policy, they said, and that the department’s Office of Inspector General would open an investigation.

For months, the employees who complained assumed Hollis had been fired.


Then, last month, an employee at the prison observed Hollis in a different part of the facility. That prompted another complaint and another meeting with the warden, this time with several more members of the medical health unit staff attending, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Employees who attended the meeting described it as “punitive” and felt the administration was more upset that they had reported the abuses than they were disturbed about the misconduct by officers.

Glady, the department spokeswoman, said “Warden Clemmons has made diligent efforts to ensure all of his employees, to include contract staff, feel comfortable reporting any perceived misconduct without fear of retaliation.”

A representative from Centurion also defended the administration’s actions during the meeting, saying the “warden’s reputation is beyond reproach,” according to several people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

The Times-Union has left multiple messages with Centurion seeking comment but has not yet heard back from the company.

‘THAT’S WHAT THEY DO’

Phyllis Johnson-Mabery, Cuebas’ mother, said she doesn’t believe her son killed himself.

She shared letters Cuebas had written home, expressing fears that officers were going to hurt him, kill him or hire other prisoners to do the job for them.

“They tell me they are going to brutally murder me and cover it up, then tell my family that I did it to myself, or just make something up, because that’s what they do” Cuebas wrote in a letter to his mother dated about a year before he died.

Johnson-Mabery shared an unredacted report on Cuebas’ death that described trauma to his face and head, but attributed those injuries to “when the ligature was untied and the decedent fell onto the tile floor.”

Cuebas was still breathing when he was cut down, the report also noted.

According to the report, Cuebas was hiding the sheet from correctional officers, but several employees questioned how he could have gotten a sheet there in the first place. Inmates are escorted to the shower cells wearing only their boxers, with guards holding them by their arms, they said.

The Department of Corrections faces wrongful death lawsuits not uncommonly, including those that raise questions about deaths that were ruled as suicides by the department’s Office of Inspector General.

Johnson-Mabery said Cuebas “just wanted to do his time, never go back there again, and just get back to his family.”

“I knew he would be different. As a mother, you know,” Johnson-Mabery said. “I knew the Michael I knew was no longer, and that a broken person was coming out. But we were prepared and ready to get him the help that he needed.”

Nogales border agent calls migrants 'subhuman,' 'savages' in text messages

https://tucson.com/news/local/nogales-border-agent-calls-migrants-subhuman-savages-in-text-messages/article_f5a5eb6b-f573-5aa6-b139-1f39e155d7bc.html

A Nogales Border Patrol agent called the people he apprehends “disgusting subhuman s--- unworthy of being kindling for a fire” and asked the president to “PLEASE let us take the gloves off trump!,” federal prosecutors said in court documents.

The statements were made in a text message sent by Agent Matthew Bowen, 39, who is accused of knocking down a Guatemalan man with his Border Patrol vehicle on Dec. 3, 2017, and then lying in a report about the incident, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

Prosecutors Lori Price and Monica Ryan are asking a judge to allow some of Bowen’s text messages to be used as evidence of his “great disdain” for the people he apprehends, which could shed light on his state of mind when he hit the man with his truck.

If a jury were to see the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that he would argue certain terms are “commonplace throughout the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, that it is part of the agency’s culture, and therefore says nothing about Mr. Bowen’s mind-set.”

The language in Bowen’s text messages, some of which “could be perceived as racist or offensive,” would not help a jury determine “whether he, on this occasion, set out to use excessive force to apprehend the alleged victim,” Chapman wrote.

Among the examples the prosecutors cite is an exchange on Dec. 18, 2017, in which an unidentified person asked Bowen: “Did you gas hiscorpse (sic) or just use regular peanut oil while tazing?? For a frying effect.”

Bowen responded, “Guats are best made crispy with an olive oil from their native pais,” using a derogatory term for Guatemalan citizens and the Spanish word for country, pais.

Bowen sent numerous text messages to agent Lonnie Ray Swartz, who was acquitted last year of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges. Swartz was accused of shooting through the border fence in Nogales in 2012 and killing 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez in Mexico during an alleged rock-throwing incident.

After a rock-throwing incident in November 2017, Bowen sent Swartz a text message calling the rock throwers “mindless murdering savages.”

In several text messages, Bowen references “tonks,” a derogatory term for border-crossing migrants. The origins of the term are unclear, but it sometimes is connected to the sound of a flashlight hitting the back of someone’s head. In another explanation, it is an acronym for “temporarily outside native country.”

The term “toncs” also appeared in text messages sent among Border Patrol agents as they planned to raid a humanitarian aid station in Ajo in January 2018, as the Star reported May 8, 2018.

The agents arrested two men who crossed the border illegally and Scott Warren, a No More Deaths volunteer who was accused of illegally harboring the men by giving them food and shelter. Warren is scheduled to stand trial later this month in Tucson’s federal court.

Striking twice

A federal grand jury indicted Bowen, a 10-year veteran of the Border Patrol, on May 30, 2018, on charges of depriving the Guatemalan man of his civil rights under color of law and falsifying records, the Arizona Daily Star reported June 5, 2018.

The following is a narrative of the events that led to Bowen’s indictment, based on a sworn affidavit filed by a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

Around 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 3, 2017, a CBP camera operator in Nogales saw a man who appeared to have just jumped the border fence near the Mariposa Port of Entry, the special agent wrote.

The camera operator followed the man, identified as Antolin Lopez Aguilar, a 23-year-old Guatemalan, as he ran toward a gas station about 100 yards north of the port of entry. Lopez entered an open lot behind the gas station where semitrailers were parked.

Three Border Patrol agents arrived at the lot minutes later. One agent got out of his truck and spotted Lopez hiding under a semitrailer. The agent told him to come out and surrender, but Lopez ran back toward the port of entry.

As Lopez ran away, Bowen quickly turned his truck and “accelerated aggressively into a position behind the running Lopez Aguilar — this maneuver put the front grille of the (truck) directly behind Lopez Aguilar,” the special agent wrote.

As Lopez ran, Bowen “followed closely behind him, striking Lopez Aguilar twice” with the front of the truck.

With the first contact, Lopez “reached back while running and used his hands to ‘push off’ of the hood” of the truck. Seconds later, Bowen accelerated the truck “directly into the back of Lopez Aguilar’s body, knocking Lopez Aguilar to the ground.”

The tires of the truck “came to a full stop within inches of running Lopez-Aguilar over where he lay on the ground,” the special agent wrote.

Bowen jumped out of his truck and handcuffed Lopez. The other two agents arrived seconds later. Bowen handed over Lopez, who still had gravel on his face, to the two agents and drove away.

Lopez was taken to a Nogales hospital with abrasions to his right hand and both knees. He was sentenced the next day to 30 days in federal prison for crossing the border illegally, court records show. The judge recommended he receive medical care as soon as possible.

One of the agents viewed a video of the incident later that day and said he had “never seen anything like that before,” the special agent wrote.

“A little push”

Bowen also is accused of filing a false report about striking Lopez with the Ford F-150 Border Patrol truck.

In a text message to Swartz the day after the incident, Bowen said he gave the man “just a little push with a ford bumper.”

Three days after the incident, Bowen sent a text message to another agent saying if he had tackled the man he still would be doing paperwork.

“I wonder how they expect us to apprehend wild ass runners who don’t want to be apprehended,” Bowen wrote.

After Bowen learned he was being investigated, he sent a memo to the chief patrol agent that offered a different account, prosecutors said.

In the memo, Bowen said he was unfamiliar with the acceleration power of that particular truck and he was trying to get close enough to more easily detain Lopez. He also said he wasn’t sure if the truck struck Lopez.

Prosecutors quoted Bowen stating in the report “in the future, I will adjust my tactics so that accidents like this do not occur.”

Prior accusations

Bowen started working as an agent in 2008 and was placed on indefinite suspension without pay in June 2018 after his indictment, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector said in response to an inquiry from the Star.

Prosecutors filed a motion saying if Bowen decided to testify, they intended to cite previous accusations that he used unnecessary force while making arrests.

In January 2012, the occupant of a car said Bowen searched the car without probable cause and “caused him injuries when he pulled him from the car, threw him to the ground, and handcuffed him,” prosecutors wrote.

Chapman responded that the occupant refused to get out of the car. The driver argued with Bowen and “gave him ‘attitude.’” Bowen then forced him out of the car and onto the ground. No disciplinary action was taken.

In March 2015, an agent said Bowen used unnecessary force when he “tackled the alien to the ground after the alien had stopped running, resulting in an injury to the alien, specifically, a busted lip,” prosecutors wrote.

Chapman said Bowen tackled the person after a group scattered in the desert. The “busted lip” happened when Bowen tackled him from behind and he hit the ground. Bowen received an oral admonishment from his supervisor.

In April 2015, a migrant said Bowen “pulled the alien up from the ground by his handcuffs after the alien tripped and fell while walking down a hill, resulting in an injury to the alien, specifically, abrasions on his wrists,” prosecutors wrote.

Chapman said Bowen was verbally reprimanded by his supervisor.

In September 2015, an agent anonymously reported that a juvenile migrant “was bleeding from his lip and Matthew Bowen bragged about how hard he took the juvenile down,” prosecutors wrote.

Chapman said “numerous interviews failed to corroborate the allegation of excessive force.”

In October 2015, a migrant said Bowen “transported the alien, while handcuffed, on the front of an All-Terrain Vehicle, and intentionally slammed on the brakes, causing the alien to launch forward and injure himself,” prosecutors wrote.

Chapman said officials interviewed witnesses, and the allegation was determined to be not sustained.

Two weeks before the incident with the Ford F-150 in Nogales, Bowen texted to Swartz that he was fed up with the Border Patrol and planned to quit.

“This is a failed agency,” Bowen texted. “Its sad bc BP does really important work but we are treated like s---, prosecuted for doing what it takes to arrest these savages and not given appropriate resources to fully do our job.”

Bowen said he would miss certain parts of the job, such as “the chase of hunting down s---bags with your crew, defeating somebody who thought they were faster than you.”

The Tucson Sector did not address a question about whether the language Bowen used in text messages was common or accepted among agents, but said agents are “held to the highest standards, and any action of misconduct within our ranks will not be tolerated.”

Chapman declined to comment.

Bowen’s trial is scheduled to start Aug. 13 before Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson.

Video Shows New Jersey Man Being Choked and Punched in the Face by Police

https://fox40.com/2019/05/20/video-shows-new-jersey-man-being-choked-and-punched-in-the-face-by-police/

A New Jersey town’s police department is under fire after video was released that appears to show officers choking a 19-year-old and punching him the face multiple times during a violent arrest.

The officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave while the incident is under investigation, Dover Mayor James P. Dodd told reporters Monday.

The incident took place around 2 a.m. Sunday morning in Dover, about 30 miles northwest of Newark, when Cyprian Luke and his friends were on their way to get a tattoo, according to CNN affiliate WABC-TV.

“The Dover Police Department responded to a report that a fugitive wanted for aggravated assault was present in the town of Dover,” Dodd said. “The Dover PD positively identified the suspect as Cyprian Luke. Mr. Luke resisted police efforts to take him into custody.”

The video shows two officers on top of Luke; one appears to be choking the teenager with one hand and punching him repeatedly in the head with the other.

“You gonna roll over on your stomach?” one officer yells.

Luke was charged with two counts of violating a restraining order, one count of criminal mischief and one count of contempt and one count of simple assault. Luke is being held at the Morris County Correctional Facility.

CNN has reached out to Luke and the Dover Police Department, but has not heard back. It is not clear if Luke has obtained an attorney.

Luke spoke with WABC briefly about what happened.

“I know that there was multiple blows, there was multiple macings, after that they was dragging me to the ambulance, because I couldn’t walk,” said Luke.

His younger brother, Christopher, told WABC police didn’t tell Luke they had a warrant for his arrest.

“They just tackled him to the ground. They pepper sprayed him,” Christopher said. “He wasn’t resisting at all. He was trying to cover his face, because they kept punching him.”

Luke’s mother, Mary, said she was devastated and emotional after viewing the video.

“I don’t wish that upon nobody to be put through something like that because we know the police are supposed to help. I know that they do their job, but then again, I don’t know. It’s not supposed to be with force like that,” she told WABC.

Dodd said the investigation of the incident has been turned over to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office who is working in conjunction with the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office.

“I understand that we live in the age of social media where there is a tendency to rush to judgment; however, given the independent investigation now ongoing, I urge everyone to show restraint until all of the facts come out and the independent investigation is completed,” Dodd said.

Dodd said he’s proud of the “great strides” the Dover police have made under its current leadership and that he will “continue to stand by them.”

“I will not let this incident blemish the reputation of the entire force,” he said.

Video Shows Cop Shooting Unarmed Man Through Police Car Window

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/panhandler-shot-philly-officer_n_5ce6ac5ce4b0db9c299423aa?section=politic s&utm_source=politics_fb&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg0000001 3&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&fbc lid=IwAR35JFgT_zb8T0V6ZclxizBLqtFxSjGx0N9m5NSouSod bERhTq0HXGMYSaw

A Philadelphia man is in critical condition after a plainclothes police detective shot him through a car window, authorities said.

The unidentified Philadelphia officer fired his gun four times at the man Monday night after he said the man approached his unmarked police vehicle with his arms extended forward and his hands together. According to the police, the detective thought the man was an armed carjacker.

“The detective indicated he believed that the male was going to rob him,” authorities said in a statement to the media. Investigators did not find a firearm at the scene.

Surveillance video taken from a nearby business captured the incident just before 9 p.m. in Kensington. It shows the man passing several cars stopped in traffic before a puff of smoke appears and he collapses to the ground.

Local outlets have identified the man as 28-year-old Joel Johnson. His family told ABC station WPVI that he has special needs and often panhandles for change.

Johnson is known to extend his arms and rub his fingers together while asking for change, locals told The Philadelphia Inquirer, suggesting that that is what he was doing before being shot.

Brian Cardoza, 24, who lives near the scene, told WHYY-FM that he was drawn outside to what he first thought were fireworks.

“We ran over, and it was the homeless guy we always seen asking for quarters — not for much,” he told the local radio station.

Cardoza said after the man was shot he was immediately handcuffed, searched and put inside of a police car while bleeding from his stomach.

“They pick him up, take him to the sidewalk, drop him on the sidewalk, open the door, and throw him inside the police car like he was garbage,” he said.

Johnson was taken to Temple University Hospital and last listed as being in critical but stable condition, police said. A hospital spokesperson declined to comment on Thursday, citing a request from the victim’s family.

The officer has been placed on desk duty amid an investigation into the shooting. He is only described as 29 years old and a member of the city’s police force since October of 2011.

Monday’s shooting is the fifth police shooting in the city this year, NBC Philadelphia reported.

Another Family Says Chicago Police Pointed Guns at Children During Raid, Handcuffed 8-Year-Old

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/05/28/another-family-says-chicago-police-pointed-guns-at-children-during-raid-handcuffed-8-year-old/#.XO9RfMsnHCd.twitter

Just before they began to get ready for school on a Friday morning, 8-year-old Royal Wilson, his siblings and his mother said they woke up to flashing lights and the sound of a bullhorn.

A swarm of heavily armed Chicago Police and SWAT officers surrounded their house, they said. They were there to execute a search warrant. It was just before 6 a.m. on March 15.

The family was terrified.

“They had their guns pointed at me and my children,” said Royal’s mother, Domonique. “I was very, very scared. Nervous.”

The Wilson family is one of many who have told CBS 2 Investigators that Chicago Police raided their homes and pointed guns at children.

At the time, the Wilson family didn’t know why police ordered them out of their home – in a single-file line with their hands up high. They did their best to obey every command.

“And [the officers said] ‘Walk, walk, walk toward the streets, keep up your hands,’” Domonique added. As she spoke, she and her children demonstrated how police ordered them to exit their home.

It got worse, they said. They saw police officers take out handcuffs.

First, Domonique was cuffed.

Then, police clasped cuffs around Royal’s wrists too.

“They made me stand up straight and hands just behind my back, and they had [the handcuffs] tight,” Royal said. “My mom and my brother told them, I’m a little kid, can you please take them off?”

The children, including Royal, his 9-year-old brother and 6-year-old sister, were crying. Domonique’s adult sons, their girlfriends and a grandchild were also there.

It was 37 degrees, windy and drizzling as the family stood outside in the street – Royal and his mom, with their hands behind their backs, remained handcuffed.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was just scared, my legs were shaking. I was worried about my sister most because she was only 6 years old. I thought that my family was going to get taken away from me.”
–Royal Wilson

Domonique struggled to describe how much it pained her to watch her child in handcuffs. As her children cried, she said she tried to keep her composure for their sake.

“It took the breath out of me, the life out of me,” she said. “I had to be strong in front of my children. You have to be the leader to be strong to tell your children to just stand and be still while I’m being embarrassed, humiliated.”

While the family was outside, they said officers searched their home and tore apart their ceiling in search of illegal weapons and firearm paraphernalia. Nothing was found.

A confidential informant, listed only as “J. Doe” on the complaint for search warrant, claimed one of her adult sons who was visiting had guns in the home. “J. Doe” also told police he “interacted with” the individual “over the past year at [the Wilsons’] residence.”

But police didn’t find any guns, nor did they make an arrest.

Police also wrote in the warrant, obtained three days prior to the raid, that their background search showed the person was last known to be living at a different address.

The family said police left Royal in handcuffs for 30 minutes.

“And when they let go, I had a bruise on my arm,” he said, pointing to the area where police handcuffed him.

Domonique, her adult sons and their girlfriends, who also say they were handcuffed, were held outside for two hours, they said.

Chicago Police told CBS 2 it “makes every effort to ensure the validity and accuracy of all information used to apply for and execute search warrants.” They also said it is not protocol to handcuff children and that initially police did not know Royal’s age. Once they determined his age, they said they removed the handcuffs. You can read their full statement here.

For nearly a year, CBS 2 Investigators have uncovered an alarming pattern of police traumatizing children during wrong raids by screaming and swearing in their presence, pointing guns at them and handcuffing innocent parents and relatives in front of them.

During CBS 2’s mayoral debate in March, Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded to CBS 2’s investigative findings and called for accountability within the police department.

“Obviously, the fact that police officers are breaking into the wrong homes – and we’ve seen across the country that can lead to deadly consequences – that frankly is totally unacceptable,” Lightfoot said. “And that’s something the superintendent [Eddie Johnson] has to own and take responsibility for.”

Attorney Al Hofeld Jr. plans to file a lawsuit against the city on behalf of the Wilson family. It will be his fifth case involving a raid by Chicago Police where families allege guns were pointed at children, traumatizing them.

“They just have a modus operandi where they come with excessive force from the very beginning. It’s a strategy,” Hofeld Jr. said of the police department. “Hopefully, we’re showing the public need for meaningful reform and re-training and new policy.”

CBS 2’s ongoing investigation into how wrong police raids affect children has led to proposed legislation. House Bill 51, proposed by Senator Jacqueline Collins (D-District 16), passed the Senate with a unanimous vote May 28 and is now headed to the House for a vote. It outlines steps officers would have to take when children are present during police activity to ensure they’re safe from harm, both physically and psychologically.

The proposed bill is called the Peter Mendez Act, named after a 9-year-old CBS 2 interviewed in August of 2018. He said Chicago Police officers pointed guns at him when they raided the wrong home. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after the incident.

Domonique said her children are also dealing with emotional trauma after what happened to them.

“[Royal] wakes up every night crying, asking, ‘Why?’” Saying he can’t sleep, thinking they’re going to come back here. Saying he had dreams that they shot us.” —Domonique Wilson

Domonique also said no one from the city came back to fix the smashed drywall in her hallway and bedrooms.

“They violated my home,” she said. “They violated my constitutional rights. It’s not fair at all.”

But it’s the treatment of children in these cases, she said, that angers her the most.

“Nobody should get treated the way that me and my family and all these other families got treated,” Domonique said. “These are children that are being traumatized – being woken up out of their sleep to guns pointed at them, thinking that they’re about to get shot down.”

For months, CBS 2’s investigative unit has been asking the department for data on how often and where raids, including those that are executed at the wrong address or involve children, happen. But they have refused to turn over complete records in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Supt. Johnson has also declined CBS 2’s repeated requests for an interview.

A Timeline of the Phoenix Police Department's Worst Misconduct Scandals

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/timeline-of-the-phoenix-polices-worst-misconduct-scandals-11309123

Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams is doing damage control after hundreds of questionable Facebook posts from Phoenix police officers surfaced last week.

The 282 posts from 97 current and former Phoenix cops showed officers frequently referred to black people as "thugs," called for violence against protesters, denounced Muslims as rapists, and joked about refusing to help citizens who criticized the police.

On Wednesday, a Phoenix New Times investigation found four of the officers whose posts were included in the database had also been accused of killing people. While the head of the Phoenix police union dismissed the criticism as a "hunt for negative spin" that failed to mention officers' positive posts, it's far from the only scandal to hit Maricopa County's biggest police department in recent years. Here's a rundown of some of Phoenix PD's worst misconduct:

2007: Phoenix cop Richard Chrisman shot and killed a man and his dog for no reason.

Richard Chrisman, a nine-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department, shot and killed 28-year-old Danny Rodriguez and Rodriguez's dog for no good reason in 2007.

Responding to a 911 call by Rodriguez's mom, Chrisman went haywire when questioned by the suspect, pulling out his gun, putting it to Rodriguez's head and yelling, "I don't need no warrant, motherfucker." The confrontation ended with Rodriguez and his dog dead on the floor. Chrisman's partner, who was at the scene and watched Chrisman murder Rodriguez, testified at the trial. Chrisman received a seven-year prison sentence.

(Chrisman had previously admitted to planting a crack pipe on a mentally ill homeless woman in 2005.)

March 2010: Homicide detective David Barnes fired after being indicted for perjury.

David Barnes, a onetime homicide detective with the Phoenix Police Department who is now under criminal indictment on perjury charges, was fired this afternoon.

Sergeant Trent Crump, a spokesperson for the city agency, said Barnes learned of his termination from a supervisor during an in-person visit to his home.

"Mr. Barnes is no longer an employee of the Phoenix Police Department," Crump says.

Barnes had been on suspension — with pay — for almost exactly a year. (Yes, taxpayers, the guy collected an estimated $65,000 for sitting on his butt as investigations against him proceeded.)

The ex-cop also faces a misdemeanor charge for allegedly harassing two of his former colleagues, a supervisor, and the supervisor's wife (a homicide detective).

June 2010: Phoenix police officer James Wren charged for shaking down drug dealers.

The Avondale Police Department contacted the Phoenix PD last week to say one of its officers, 23-year-old James Wren, of the Maryvale Precinct, was using traffic stops to steal money from drug dealers.

Avondale police got a tip from an informant who claimed he had conducted two "operations" with Wren where the informant would lead the officer to the cars of drug dealers after a deal had been made.

Wren, according to the informant, would then pull over the car and steal the money.

In one instance, according to court documents acquired by New Times, Wren pulled over a drug dealer, stole his money, and then threw his car keys into the desert before releasing him.

Last night around 10, Wren stopped somebody he thought was a drug dealer who had $40,000 in the car in the 6300 block of West McDowell Road.

The alleged drug dealer was actually an undercover Phoenix police officer.

November 2010: Twenty-five officers investigated for fraud.

Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris insisted this afternoon that the Phoenix Police Department is not a "corrupt organization," as he explained the department's role in the investigation of three Phoenix police officers — and one former officer — indicted for fraud.

In total, 25 officers within the department were investigated by the Attorney General's Office for what basically boils down to a time-theft scam. The scam cost several businesses that hired off-duty Phoenix police officers to act as security guards about $16,000. Included in those investigated by the AG's Office are the department's killer cop, Richard Chrisman, and Sergeant Sean Drenth, who was mysteriously found shot to death near the State Capitol last month. (Four Phoenix cops were later indicted for theft.)

March 2011: A detective who had worked for the department for 12 years stole thousands of Oxycontin pills.

According to police, the detective would steal Oxycontin that was scheduled to be destroyed. As if nobody would notice, the detective would replace it with the over-the-counter pain reliever Aleve.

Cops became hip to the detective's scam after conducting a routine audit of stored evidence. They suspect that in total, the detective tampered with 83 evidence bags, and stole about 2,400 pills. Authorities say it's unclear how long the detective's been ripping off evidence rooms, but say the investigation is ongoing.

Police say it's unlikely the tampered evidence will impact any criminal cases because the drugs were scheduled to be destroyed.

The detective was arrested yesterday after handing in his letter of resignation to his superiors. He faces charges of evidence tampering, theft, and drug possession.

May 2011: Phoenix police officer Patrick Larrison caught on camera body slamming a 15-year-old girl into a wall.

In January, Larrison responded to a call about a fight between the 15-year-old and her mother in the parking lot of the Ombudsman Charter School near 40th Street and Thomas Road.

The girl was drinking in school and had become belligerent before assaulting a teacher. Her mother called police and showed up at the school where the two got into a physical altercation in the parking lot, and the mother apparently tried to restrain the girl until police arrived.

When police showed up, the girl started to walk — slowly — away from the officers.

Larrison, seemingly unprovoked, charges the girl, slams her into the side of the building, knocking her off her feet.

August 2011: Former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon's son, Phoenix police officer Jeff Gordon, received a four-day suspension for having oral sex while on duty.

Phoenix Police Officer Jeff Gordon, son of Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, received a four-day suspension after an internal affairs investigation revealed the junior Gordon was giving and getting oral sex and engaging in other sexual acts on several occasions in 2007 and 2010, while on duty.

Gordon admitted to some incidents, but there are other allegations that remain unresolved, according to police reports.

Among them are that on December 1, 2010, he had nonconsensual sexual contact with a city employee. The allegation is that he slipped his hands under the blouse of a Phoenix employee and actually touched her breasts as he was giving her a massage — while he was on duty — and also sent her two pornographic video texts.

Gordon told investigators that he and the female employee were talking about how stressed out she was, and he started giving her a massage. He admitted that his hands moved from her neck and shoulders to her "upper chest" around her "clavicles" because "he believes it feels good when done to him and would serve as a good de-stressor."

2012: Phoenix detective Chris Wilson sentenced to 23 years in prison for sexually assaulting teenage boys.

Former Phoenix police officer Christopher Wilson was sentenced to 23 years in prison and a lifetime of probation Monday after pleading guilty last month just moments before his trial was slated to begin.

Wilson, who had served for the Phoenix Police Department for 13 years and also served in the U.S. Navy, acted as the department's community liaison to the Valley's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. He was arrested in August 2012 and charged with sex crimes involving minors he had met through the department.

Wilson pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual misconduct with a minor and one count of attempting to commit sexual misconduct with a minor. The victims, a 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, did not attend Wilson's sentencing in Maricopa County Superior Court.

January 2013: Phoenix police arrest about 10 people a day for marijuana possession, a felony in Arizona, and a scandalous waste of police time and manpower.

Phoenix police alone arrest an average of about 10 people a day on suspicion of possession of marijuana.

Phoenix police arrested 2,972 adults and 600 juveniles on suspicion of marijuana possession from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012. That's nearly 3,600, or about 9.8 a day, each day of the year.

The Phoenix arrest figures show that despite the movement toward freedom for marijuana users seen in states with medical-pot laws, like Arizona, and states in which it's legal for adult use, namely Colorado and Washington, local police are still expending an enormous amount of resources on small pot busts.

August 2013: Phoenix police lieutenant Dalin Webb admits to choking his son.

Dalin Webb, a Phoenix police lieutenant who works with teens, admitted to Mesa police on Sunday that he may have choked his teenage son during a domestic dispute.

Webb, 41, was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on suspicion of aggravated assault-impeded breathing, a felony, and misdemeanor disorderly conduct-fighting.

Making this case even more egregious: Webb is a police supervisor in the Mountain View precinct who once oversaw the Phoenix School Resource Officer Program.

The father-and-son fight at the Webbs' Mesa home on Sunday started off with a lot of yelling, a booking sheet shows. When the 17-year-old boy's mom came into a bedroom to find out what the "commotion" was about, his dad gave her a good shove out the door, causing her leg to buckle, the boy told police.

The teen "cursed" at his father for pushing his mom. Webb threw him on a bed and pinned him down. Webb choked him by placing two hands around his neck, limiting his breathing, the teen reported.

2014: Phoenix cop Jeremy Sweet arrested for pulling a gun on people during a road-rage incident.

Jeremy Sweet, 51, has worked for the department's Central Booking Unit for about seven years. On Monday at about noon, he was transporting several prisoners in an unmarked vehicle when he became involved in a "traffic altercation" at about Central Avenue and Lincoln Street, police say.

During the altercation, Sweet is alleged to have pulled out his handgun and pointed it an the occupants of another vehicle. Some of the prisoners in Sweet's vehicle were said to have witnessed the incident. A citizen who also saw what happened called 911 to make a report.

An investigation led to today's arrest, according to Sergeant Trent Crump, Phoenix police spokesman. Crump later told a reporter that Sweet had "lectured" the other driver while pointing his gun.

Police are seeking one count of felony aggravated assault in the case.

June 2015: Phoenix cop Timothy Morris arrested on kidnapping and sexual assault charges.

Jane was still in the backseat crying when Morris leaned down to remove the handcuffs. He re-cuffed her wrists in front of her body and made her get out of the car to perform oral sex.

Afterward, she spit Morris' semen on the ground and wiped her mouth with her shirt. He told her to get back in the car because he was taking her home.

En route, he "told her to say the computer was down if anyone asks her why she was not taken to jail," according to the police report.?

He parked in front of her house a little after 4 a.m. and uncuffed her.

"Maybe I'll see you around," she remembers him saying as he watched her walk to her front door.

July 2015: Ex-Phoenix cop Justin LaClere pleads guilty to sexually exploiting a minor.

Disgraced former Phoenix police officer Justin LaClere changed his plea this week and admitted he was guilty of both luring a minor for sexual exploitation and then having sexual intercourse with her.

Scottsdale Police arrested 32-year-old LaClere, a seven-year veteran of the force, in January 2014 after receiving information that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl at her house while her parents were out running errands.

According to court documents obtained by New Times, the two met on the social media site Whisper, which allows users to upload pictures anonymously and then privately message one another. On January 13, 2014, the high school girl “uploaded a picture of a baby with the text ‘I want to get pregnant but I’m only a teen’ written across it.”

September 13, 2016: Phoenix cops forced a 19-year-old to eat weed, leading to a $100,000 lawsuit.

In the early hours of the morning on September 13, 2016, Castro was driving his BMW through Maryvale when he was pulled over by Phoenix police officers. They found a gun and roughly a gram of marijuana inside his car.

According to the complaint filed in Maricopa County Court, Officer Jason McFadden asked Castro, "Do you want to go home tonight?"

At that point, the lawsuit says, McFadden told him to eat the marijuana or else he would be going to jail.

Castro, who was 19 at the time, also claims in the lawsuit that he tried to record the incident, but McFadden told him that he would get shot if he reached for his phone.

June 2017: Phoenix settles lawsuit with family of unarmed black man killed by Phoenix police for $1.5 million.

Rumain Brisbon had just pulled into the parking lot of his North Phoenix apartment complex on a December day in 2014 and gotten out of the car when a police officer confronted him.

What happened next is disputed. The Phoenix officer, Mark Rine, has claimed that Brisbon reached for his waistband after being told to put his hands up, then started to run away. A struggle ensued, and Rine, who said that he thought that he felt a gun in Brisbon's pocket, fired two shots in self-defense.

Two witnesses — Brisbon's friend Brandon Dickerson, who'd been sitting in his car, and Dana Klinger, his girlfriend — tell a different story, which was reflected in a lawsuit filed in May 2015. It argued that Rine had no probable cause to detain or arrest Brisbon, who had gone out to pick up food at McDonald's for his girlfriend and their 18-month-old daughter.

Wednesday, the Phoenix City Council approved a $1.5 million payment to Brisbon's family, settling claims filed on behalf of his mother, girlfriend, and children.

2018: Phoenix police shot a record number of people last year — more people than the NYPD or the LAPD, the two biggest police forces in the country. The high number itself may not constitute misconduct, but reasons for the deadly trend remain unknown in spite of a later study.

The Phoenix Police Department on Friday released an independent report on last year's extraordinary number of officer-involved shootings, which more than doubled the 2017 number and ranked among the highest in the country.

Those who want a clear answer on why the police shot so many more people will be disappointed.

The report did not point to any definitive cause for the 44 police shootings in 2018 — 23 of which were fatal — but identifies a significant increase in shootings involving armed individuals and people assaulting cops with deadly weapons.

A Distraught Woman May Have Saved A Black Man From Being Shot By Police

https://blavity.com/a-distraught-woman-may-have-saved-a-black-man-from-being-shot-by-police

A distraught Black woman may have saved a young man's life on Friday when she began filming video of his arrest at a gas station in Hawthorne, California.

The woman, who called herself 'Skye,' was in tears as she begged police not to shoot 24-year-old William Ewell. More than 10 officers were at the scene and all of them were pointing their guns at Ewell as he knelt.

The harrowing five-minute video footage was shared on Instagram Live, who spoke to Ewell as he knelt and implored officers to just arrest him instead of shooting him.

"Can somebody put your guns down and please come get him?" she asked.

"Why are your guns pulled on this young man? He has no weapons on him."

While telling Ewell to stay calm and stay still, she told police that her boyfriend, Leroy Browning, was shot to death by police in 2015.

Browning's case was highly publicized because he was shot after he was already in police custody. As Skye describes her own experience with police shootings, she begins to audibly cry and beg the officers not to kill Ewell.

At one point in the video, you can see two officers pointing their guns at Skye while other officers tried to explain why they were arresting Ewell.

Eventually, police approached him and handcuffed him before speaking to Skye about what was happening. In the video, you can hear an officer saying Ewell matched the description of a suspect police were looking for.

In a statement, police say Ewell was allegedly involved in a robbery-assault at the gas station. However, they did not explain why so many officers were needed for the arrest. Furthermore, they did not provide an explanation as to why officers were threatening to use such force against both the suspect and bystander.

They defended their actions by claiming that Ewell was possibly armed, which he was not.

On Twitter, Skye's video sparked outrage. Many questioned why police officers needed to point their guns at Ewell when he was already kneeling and ready to be arrested.

They had the entire police force draw guns on this one black man for "fitting the description" of an "armed robber"

Imagine the everlasting trauma this would have on an innocent person because they "fit the description"

"Can Yall just put your guns away and somebody get him. Don't move. Don't move." 💔

"We're not saying he's a suspect, but we have to figure out what's going on, all right? So try and relax."

That wasn't a figure-out-what's-going-on squad. That was a death squad.

"Can Yall just put your guns away and somebody get him. Don't move. Don't move." 💔

"This happened in the city of Hawthorne, which was a sundown town until the middle of the twentieth century," said Rebecca J. Kavanagh, a public defender in New York City and well known activist.

"Thinking about all of this, it hits me that what while what Skye did is remarkable, and it's incredible that she happened to be there at that exact same time, it's not incredible at all that she lived through a horribly similar experience with her boyfriend."

The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter and Instagram. Many users praised Skye for stepping up to help someone she does not know personally. In the video, an officer asks her why she was speaking up.

Through her tears she said, “I don’t even know him, but I care that much.”

Parents say police pulled guns on them after 4-year-old daughter took a doll from a store in Phoenix

https://www.kcra.com/article/10m-claim-says-phoenix-police-violated-family-s-rights/28041287?fbclid=IwAR3Qrrh4GMjhyZ5mnk656nC3k692seMH X6cvwUP1NrhbIFw2-ZJ-15_Y-MU

PHOENIX —
A Phoenix couple is seeking $10 million from the city after a video showed police officers drawing a gun on them after their 4-year-old daughter allegedly stole a doll from a Family Dollar store.

Dravon Ames and fiancee Iesha Harper said they didn't notice when their daughter walked out with a Barbie from the store last month. They've filed a notice of claim against the city for $10 million, which serves as a precursor to a lawsuit.

Soon after they left the store, Ames said the couple pulled into an apartment complex to drop their daughter off at a babysitter. Then an officer began banging against their window, yelling and threatening to kill them.

"Our hands are up, we're just trying not to get shot, trying to stay calm," Ames said. "He had a gun drawn."

Officer did not identify himself, family says

Ames said there were no sirens or lights to indicate that they were being pulled over beforehand and the officer who was pointing a gun at them did not immediately identify himself as an officer.

The incident took place on May 29, the family said. Police said they were made aware of video on June 11.

In the 12-minute blurred-out video posted on the department's Facebook page, one officer can be seen handcuffing Ames, first on the ground and then against a police car. The officer kicks Ames and can be heard yelling multiple times, "When I tell you to do something, you [expletive] do it."

Another officer appears to be pulling a gun on the passenger side of the couple's vehicle before Harper exits the car, holding a small child, with a second child by her side.

An officer is seen attempting to yank the child from her arms before a bystander offers to take her children.

Harper, who was five months pregnant at the time, said she was terrified.

"I I really thought he was gonna shoot me in front of the kids," she told CNN by phone Friday. She chose to give her two children to a "complete stranger because I didn't trust the police to have her."

During the video, officers can be heard telling her to get her hands up.

The city has 60 days to respond to the notice of claim and the next step is filing a lawsuit, said Thomas Horne, the family's attorney. In his notice, he says the officers committed battery and unlawful imprisonment, among others, and both the police department and city are liable because of "inadequate policies, training, supervision."

The department is investigating

Authorities said the incident is under investigation.

"The Phoenix Police Department takes all allegations of misconduct seriously and for this reason, this incident is currently being investigated by the Professional Standards Bureau," the department said.

It is not clear who recorded the video or what transpired beforehand. There is no body cam footage of the incident, Phoenix Police Department Sgt. Tommy Thompson told CNN.

Thompson said they cannot provide additional information due to pending litigation.

He told KNXV that the officer who is seen sweeping Ames' leg is now on a nonenforcement assignment. The police department has not named any of the officers involved.

Thompson also told the affiliate there was more to it than the claim of the stolen doll, but would not expound on it. The affiliate reported that police said there were other stolen items in the vehicle besides the doll.

While the family's claim said the incident happened "on or about May 29," the police statement said it was May 27.

Police chief 'disturbed' by officer's action

In a video posted to the department's Facebook page Friday, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said she was "disturbed by the language and the actions of our officer."

"I assure you that this incident is not representative of the majority of Phoenix police officers who serve this city," Williams said.

The chief said she began an "immediate internal investigation" as soon as she became aware of the video.

"I wish investigations could be handled instantly, but each one takes time and deserves the due diligence before we can discuss specific details," she said.

Harper and Ames say both their daughters are traumatized, and their 4-year-old has been having nightmares and wetting the bed since the incident.

Their second daughter, just a year old, suffered "dead arm," after the officer tried to yank her from her mother.

The couple is still shaken up too. Ames said he was worried about his children and felt helpless during the incident.

"I'm supposed to protect my family, I'm cuffed up ... I'm hearing my daughter screaming, my fiance being handled. It broke me down so much," he said.

Reverend Jarrett Maupin, a spokesman for the family, told CNN Ames is lucky to be alive.

"He was totally compliant, submissive even still not enough to save him from the ferocious violence of the police department," Maupin said.

The couple says they were both released shortly after the arrest and were not charged.

LINK ~~>>>>> Mapping Police Violence


Here is some current data from the website from last year (2019):

* Police killed 1,099 people in 2019. Black people were 24% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population.

* There were only 27 days in 2019 where police did not kill someone.

* 99% of people killed by police between 2013 to 2019 have not resulted in police officers being charged with a crime. There is no accountability.

There are other interesting data sets which illustrate how people of color (Black or Brown vs White population) are affected by police violence/brutality.

Toward the bottom of the web page, there are other vital links to current news coverage pertaining to the subject of police violence, as well as a way to enter in the name of any police department to find out how they rank in police violence/brutality data. There is also a way to locate your state representative so you can add and express your concern on this vital issue.

Thanks Andrea for your post back in 2015, which cited this organization and it's ongoing mission to educate the greater public.

The role of police needs to be redefined


For too long there has been this blanket protection for police. We've given them the benefit of the doubt, always saying it's a tough job or it's a thankless job or they are putting their lives on the line for our safety. And this is all true. But it shouldn't be used as an excuse or a shield.

Police offers choose their career. And they should be held to a higher standard. Not shielded with excuses. And if they can't live up to the higher standard, they should go find another profession. It seems in almost all cases where there is excessive force, we find out there were prior complaints. Warning signs, really.

We should hire police officers more selectively. Pay them much more. And hold them accountable. Those that show signs that the job is too much should be dismissed.

It doesn't help that MF45 is stoking the flames of a race war. (he is probably salivating at this prospect) trump wants a reason ANY reason to install martial law. Unfortunately, all of this chaos and fear he creates will benefit him in Nov.

With that said, the looting and vandalism is counter-productive. Now, we have stores that are closed, citizens losing their jobs, innocent people being injured.

Taylor Swift called out T---P for his delusional thinking and race baiting and really put herself on the line today, with her tweet taking T---p to task.


And I quote from the CNN news headlines today:

And too, Swift addressed the idea of how T---p thinks like a dictator, how he thinks he is G-D, and will rule over everyone and anything, which is exactly where the notion of martial law comes in. And I quote from the same news article:

There are so many horrible hate crimes going down in Amerika each day, but the latest few (to include the Afro-American man from Minnesota, George Floyd) reflects the horrors in everyday Amerika for those who are not white.



Swift CNN article (LINK)

George Floyd on CNN News (LINK)

Thanks for your post, Ace. :vigil:

My friend posted a photo of her beautiful black sons and said "These are my black sons. God gave them to me and I declare that no weapon formed against them shall prosper! I cancel every assignment of the enemy! I plead the Blood of Jesus over them!They shall live and not die and declare the Works of The Lord in the land of the living! They will be successful and they will prosper! In the Mighty Name of Jesus Amen! I challenge all Mother's of black men to repost this message. Tell the devil that he CANNOT have our men by posting a pic and making your declaration! Our words have power!"

I commented "My privilege is at your family’s service if there’s ever any way it can be a fence against this evil"

She said "you are a sweetheart"

I tapped the heart icon instead of replying, but i wanted to say "I am not a sweetheart. I am a Walpole and a Brewer"

The United Daughters of the Confederacy's Helen Walpole Brewer Library

The Helen Walpole Brewer Library was established in 1996 through a generous bequest of the late Helen Walpole Brewer. It contains microfilm copies of the National Archives Compiled Confederate Service Records and a limited number of regimental histories, family histories, pension records, and cemetery records.

I owe a debt.

By which i mean, if you're a POC reading this, my privilege is at your service, too.

Code Switch Podcast
 

"A Decade of Watching Black People Die"

Eric Garner had just broken up a fight, according to witness testimony.

Ezell Ford was walking in his neighborhood.

Michelle Cusseaux was changing the lock on her home's door when police arrived to take her to a mental health facility.

Tanisha Anderson was having a bad mental health episode, and her brother called 911.

Tamir Rice was playing in a park.

Natasha McKenna was having a schizophrenic episode when she was tazed in Fairfax, Va.

Walter Scott was going to an auto-parts store.

Bettie Jones answered the door to let Chicago police officers in to help her upstairs neighbor,who had called 911 in order to resolve a domestic dispute.

Philando Castile was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend.

Botham Jean was eating ice cream in his living room in Dallas, Tx.

Atatiana Jefferson was babysitting her nephew at home in Fort Worth, Tx.

Eric Reason was pulling into a parking spot at a local chicken and fish shop.

Dominique Clayton was sleeping in her bed.

Breona Taylor was also asleep in her bed.

And George Floyd was at the grocery store.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/86526...ack-people-die

State of Minnesota Files Human Rights Complaint Against Minneapolis Police
 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The state of Minnesota filed a human rights complaint Tuesday against the Minneapolis Police Department in the death of George Floyd by an officer who pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for minutes, even after he stopped moving.

Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced the filing at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Widely seen bystander video showing Floyd’s death has sparked sometimes violent protests around the world. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been fired and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Three other officers involved were fired but have not been charged.

“We know that deeply seated issues exist,” the governor said. “I know it because we saw the casual nature of the erasing of George Floyd’s life and humanity. We also saw the reaction of the community. They expected nothing to happen, because nothing happened so many times before.”

Walz said the investigation into the police department’s policies, procedures and practices over the past 10 years will determine if the force has engaged in systemic discrimination toward people of color, and work out how to stop it. State Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero will lead the investigation.

Lucero’s department will seek an agreement from Minneapolis city leaders and the police department to immediately implement interim measures, followed by long-term measures to address systemic discrimination.

The FBI is also investigating whether police willfully deprived Floyd of his civil rights.

Spokesmen for the police department and the mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The Minneapolis City Council planned to issue a statement on the investigation later Tuesday.

The department enforces the state’s human rights act, particularly as it applies to discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations and public services. Mediation is one of its first-choice tools, but the cases it files can lead to fuller investigations and sometimes end up in litigation.

The Minneapolis Police Department has faced decades of allegations brutality and other discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, even within the department itself. Critics say its culture resists change, despite the elevation of Medaria Arradondo as its first black police chief in 2017.

Arradondo himself was among five black officers who sued the police department in 2007 over alleged discrimination in promotions, pay, and discipline. They said in their lawsuit that the department had a history of tolerating racism and discrimination. The city eventually settled the lawsuit for $740,000.

Earlier Tuesday, an attorney for Floyd’s family again decried the official autopsy that found his death was caused by cardiac arrest as police restrained him and compressed his neck. The medical examiner also listed fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use, but not as the cause of death.

A separate autopsy commissioned for Floyd’s family concluded that that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression.

“The cause of death was that he was starving for air. It was lack of oxygen. And so everything else is a red herring to try to throw us off,” family attorney Ben Crump said Tuesday. He said the Hennepin County medical examiner went to great lengths to try to convince the public that what was shown on bystander video didn’t cause Floyd to die.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that prosecutors are working as fast as they can to determine whether more charges will be filed.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/...er-floyd-death