Video: APD officer repeatedly punched suspect in back of head during arrest

http://keyetv.com/news/local/video-apd-officer-repeatedly-punched-suspect-in-back-of-head-during-arrest

A Facebook videoshows an Austin Police officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the back of the head during an arrest.

APD says the man in the video is Sisto Quiroz, 31. He was arrested for a forgery warrant and resisting arrest.

Court documents say last December Quiroz broke into a woman's mailbox and stole a check made out to her for more than $1,000. He tried to cash it at a check cashing business in Southeast Austin but was denied after the clerk called the company that wrote the check to verify it was indeed made out to him.

Further details on the arrest were not immediately available. But APD did release the following statement:

This case is still being reviewed by the Chain of Command. The individual arrested has been identified as Sisto Quiroz, arrested for warrant and resisting arrest.

Video Reportedly Shows Navajo Woman did not Raise Scissors Towards Winslow Police Officers

http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/video-reportedly-shows-navajo-woman-not-raise-scissors-towards-winslow-police-officers/

WINSLOW, ARIZONA— David Villaescusa, a former corrections officer with the Arizona Department of Corrections, stayed up all Sunday night awaiting confirmation of the death of his cousin, Loreal Tsingine, 27, who he helped raise since she was 10.

“I took her in after her father died. Her mother was an alcoholic and died when Loreal was 19. She lived with me off and on since she was ten. Even now, she would come to my house to do laundry. She called me, dad,” said Villaescusa.

Mingling in the crowd with other members of the public, he did not immediately identify himself as being a relative of the young mother, who was reportedly shot five times by Winslow Police Officer Austin Shipley on Easter Sunday afternoon.

Shipley was one of two officers who responded to a reported shoplifting of beer from the Circle K in Winslow. The shoplifter was described as a Native American female wearing gray sweatpants and a white top.

Two blocks from Villaescusa’s house, the two officers attempted to apprehend Tsingine.

According to the police press release, while attempting to take the subject into custody, a struggle ensued. The subject displayed a weapon which the responding officer perceived as a substantial threat. The officer discharged his weapon resulting in the death of 27-year-old Loreal Tsingine.

“She had a pair of scissors that she used to cut her hair split-ends,” states Villaescusa. “She stood only five feet tall and weighed less than 100 lbs. Shipley, on the other hand, is over six feet tall and weighs over 200 pounds. I don’t think he had to shoot her.”

Villaescusa maintains he overheard the other officer tell backup officers that Shipley got “trigger happy.”

“I had to wait until 4:00 a.m. before the police told me the person killed was Loreal,” Villaescusa told Native News Online.

Tsingine’s death is being investigated by Arizona Department of Public Safety, which is standard operating procedure for a police department the size of Winlow’s.

According to Villaescusa, a private citizen videotaped the deadly shooting with his smartphone.

“I watched the video. She never raised those scissors towards the officer. It has been reported she stole a case of beer from the Circle K. I did not see any beer in the video,” says Villaescusa.

Villaescusa says the video has been sent to law enforcement. The private citizen does not want publicity.

Raul Garcia, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety told Native News Online, he could not comment on whether or not there is a videotape of the deadly incident.

On Wednesday, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called for an independent investigation into the shooting death of Tsingine by Winslow police officer Shipley, who has been placed on leave.

Unable to Pay $100 Bail, Homeless Man Dies in New Hampshire Jail

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/us/unable-to-pay-100-bail-homeless-man-dies-in-new-hampshire-jail.html

In their last conversation, Jeffrey Pendleton told his father that he was doing well, living in New Hampshire with a woman and working at a Burger King restaurant.

About four months later, a different story unfolded. Mr. Pendleton was homeless, and on March 13 he was found dead in a jail cell in Manchester, where he was being held for a misdemeanor because he could not pay the $100 bail.

“The police told me to talk to the detective in New Hampshire,” Mr. Pendleton’s father, Joseph, said Friday from his home in Palestine, Ark. “He said they did a cell check, and found him unconscious. Then two hours later he was dead.”

His family buried him last week in Palestine, but the authorities are still investigating how the 26-year old black man who had no known health problems died so suddenly.

“They said they did not find anything wrong with the body, that he shouldn’t have been dead,” the elder Mr. Pendleton said he was told by the coroner. “What they found was a healthy 26-year old man.”

Jennie V. Duval, the deputy chief medical examiner working on his case, said Mr. Pendleton’s autopsy was inconclusive and the official cause of death was awaiting the toxicology report, with blood test results not expected for four weeks.

“There was no naked eye evidence of trauma or disease,” Ms. Duval said. “We definitely ruled out foul play.”

Mr. Pendleton’s death has drawn attention to New Hampshire’s practice of putting in jail people who cannot make bail, often on misdemeanor charges. As The New York Times has reported in a series of reports, specialists say the money-based bail system in the United States routinely means that poor defendants are punished before they get their day in court, often keeping them incarcerated longer than if they had been convicted right away.

Last month, the Justice Department sent a letter asking state chief justices and court administrators around the country to change their practices on fines and fees. The aim, it said, was to avoid the harm that falls on people who are unable to pay, and who “lose their jobs and become trapped in cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape.”

The department urged the courts to consider alternatives to jail for defendants unable to pay fines and fees.

“Bail that is set without regard to defendants’ financial capacity can result in the incarceration of individuals not because they pose a threat to public safety or a flight risk, but rather because they cannot afford the assigned bail amount,” the letter said.

Mr. Pendleton was arrested on March 8 at about 10 p.m. at a house in Nashua, where the police were sent to help probation and parole officers. Officers discovered two warrants for Mr. Pendleton’s arrest for nonpayment of fines: one for disorderly conduct and the other for a city ordinance violation, said Capt. Eric Nordengren of the Nashua police.

Mr. Pendleton was taken to the Nashua police station, where they found a small quantity of marijuana, and then to the county jail in Manchester, Captain Nordengren said. In a preliminary appearance in Nashua District Court, his bail was set at $100, which he was unable to pay.

Then on March 13, Mr. Pendleton was found unconscious in his cell at 2:45 p.m. and could not be revived; he was pronounced dead at 3:19 p.m., the jail said in a statement. “There appeared no indication that Mr. Pendleton was in any form of distress,” David Dionne, the jail superintendent, said in a report by The Union Leader.

A court document said that Mr. Pendleton was to have been held on the “act prohibited” misdemeanor charge until a hearing on April 7.

“That’s approximately one month,” said Gilles Bissonnette, a director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire who had provided Mr. Pendleton with legal support. “At that point, he would have effectively served his sentence before he ever had an opportunity to contest the charge — an outcome that only a poor person would be confronted with.”

Mr. Pendleton’s ordeal also garnered some attention because he had previously won settlements worth thousands of dollars against two New Hampshire cities for run-ins with the police.

The City of Nashua agreed to pay $15,000 to settle a civil claim by the A.C.L.U. and Mr. Pendleton after he was arrested in 2014 for walking in a public park, according to a copy of the settlement provided by Mr. Bissonnette. About $10,315 went to Mr. Pendleton and the rest to the A.C.L.U. in New Hampshire.

The following year, the City of Hudson agreed to pay $37,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. for Mr. Pendleton that said the police issued him a summons for panhandling, which they said was illegal. Mr. Pendleton was allotted about $7,000 of that money.

According to the Hudson lawsuit, Mr. Pendleton arrived in the Nashua area in 2009 and worked in low-wage jobs at fast-food restaurants. He had been homeless since a divorce in 2013, then lost his job and started sleeping in the woods.

Mr. Bissonnette said his office did not have significant contact with Mr. Pendleton after the cases were resolved with settlements. Asked why Mr. Pendleton was unable to pay the $100 bail last month, he said, “I don’t know that answer.”

How about when the cop shoots himself in the leg while trying to shoot a dog?
 

A Sheriffs Deputy was trying to serve an eviction notice and a female pit bull ran up and barked at the deputy when he entered the dog's yard.

The dog didn't attack the Deputy, just barked at him.

Parents called 911 to help suicidal daughter — and ‘police ended up putting a bullet in her’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/04/06/parents-called-911-to-help-suicidal-daughter-and-police-ended-up-putting-a-bullet-in-her/?postshare=1821459940964031&tid=ss_tw

Melissa Boarts’s family was frantic to find her.

They said the 36-year-old suffered from manic depression and had been threatening to slit her wrists when she jumped into her car Sunday and went for a drive down Interstate 85, toward Auburn, Ala.

Her twin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she started tracking her sister’s movements via GPS and calling out the route to their parents. At one point, they caught a glimpse of her SUV before she disappeared.

Finally, she stopped.

“We were afraid she was going to hurt herself,” her mother, Terry Boarts, told the newspaper. “We figured she was going to bleed out right there.”

The parents called 911 for help.

But instead of assisting, “police ended up putting a bullet in her,” they said in a statement issued by the family’s attorney.

Auburn police said Melissa Boarts charged at them with an unidentified weapon Sunday, prompting an officer to open fire and kill her.

Now the family is pursuing legal action.

Julian McPhillips, the attorney for the family, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the parents believe Boarts may have had a pocket knife — “but certainly no gun” — and argued that shooting her was “totally unjustified.”

“They are all deeply mourning and deeply hurt,” McPhillips said of her family.

Boarts is one of at least 262 people who have been fatally shot by police so far in 2016, according to a Washington Post database. At least 41 of those killed by police were carrying a knife or other blade, and about a quarter of all police shooting victims were mentally ill or experiencing an emotional crisis.

People with untreated mental illness are 16 times as likely to be killed during a police encounter as other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement, according to a study from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

McPhillips said the Boarts family intends to pursue the case “very vigorously,” demanding dash-camera and body-camera footage from the scene.

“It’s difficult to get true justice,” he said, “because you can’t bring somebody back to life.”

After Melissa Boarts disappeared Sunday, her mother went looking for her, with her 2-year-old granddaughter in tow.

“We were able to find out she was headed on the interstate going to Auburn,” Terry Boarts told the Montgomery Advertiser. “She was threatening to slit her wrists with a knife.”

Terry Boarts told the newspaper that she called police and told them her daughter was “having mental issues — that she was bipolar, that she had been really depressed, that she was saying she was going to cut her wrists.”

She said she told the authorities that her daughter had a knife.

Auburn police said officers responded at about 3:40 p.m. to a call about a suicidal motorist on Interstate 85 and followed the vehicle until the driver stopped on Red Creek Road in Macon County.

Police said she “exited the vehicle armed with a weapon and charged the officers in a threatening manner at which time the officers discharged their weapons, striking the driver.”

The Macon County Coroner told Al.com that Boarts died from a single gunshot wound.

Police vehicles, a helicopter and ambulances swarmed the scene, according to reports.

The Boarts family told the Montgomery Advertiser they were informed there had been a fatality.

“We’re still assuming the road ended and she hit a tree,” Terry Boarts told the newspaper. “They never told us she had been shot.”

The woman’s twin sister, Melinda Boarts, said police finally came back and said “they shot her.”

Her father, Michael Boarts, who worked 25 years as an officer for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said it was “absolutely outrageous.”

“There was absolutely no justification for it and we are all in deep mourning,” Michael Boarts said in the statement through the family’s attorney.

Since January 2015, The Post has tracked more than 1,100 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers, with one in four involving someone who was either in the midst of a mental health crisis or was explicitly suicidal. A Post analysis has found that in half of those cases, the officers involved were not properly trained to deal with the mentally ill — and in many cases, officers responded with tactics that quickly made a volatile situation even more dangerous.

Auburn police called it a “tragedy for the Boarts family as well as the officers involved.”

“Officers within the Auburn Police Division have encountered thousands of situations involving those with weapons or individuals intending to harm themselves,” police said in a statement. “It has been nearly 40 years since an Auburn Police Officer was required to use force that ended in the death of another. It is unfortunate when someone intends to harm themselves and involves law enforcement to do so.

“Officers within the Auburn Police Division are trained to deal with disturbed individuals and have experience in doing so.”

The State Bureau of Investigations, Macon County Sheriff’s Department and Macon County Coroner’s Office are investigating the incident, according to news reports. Findings will be released to the Macon County District Attorney.

Family of woman who died in Los Angeles jail disputes coroner's suicide report

http://abc7.com/news/family-of-woman-who-died-in-la-jail-disputes-coroners-suicide-report-/1273367/

Family and friends demanded answers outside the Los Angeles Police Department's Metropolitan Detention Center Friday night after 36-year-old Wakiesha Wilson was found dead in her jail cell.

Coroner's officials say Wilson hanged herself, but her family says that makes no sense.

"I don't believe that, my daughter would not kill herself. It's not like this is the first time she's been incarcerated. No, she had too much to live for," said Wilson's mother, Lisa Hines.

Wilson had a 13-year-old son, and her family says she was not suicidal.

Her family last spoke to her on Easter morning. They say they went over details of her hearing, which was scheduled for Tuesday. She was expected to be released and told them she would call back later that night, but she never did.

"She planned on coming to my house. She told us to come to court because she was coming back home with me," Wilson's cousin, Quanesha Francis, said in tears.

Her family went to court Tuesday, but Wilson never appeared. After repeatedly trying to get an answer as to where Wilson was, her mother says she was given a number on Wednesday and was asked to call the coroner's office.

"They knew when I was at court. They knew Monday when I called. They knew Monday because she died Sunday," Hines said.

An attorney hired by Wilson's family, Jaaye Person-Lynn, says he wants to know why the department never notified her family and says there are serious questions about what may have happened prior to Wilson's death.

"We know there was some kind of disagreement with a detention officer or an LAPD officer. We know that after that disagreement she passed away," Person-Lynn said.

The attorney says Wilson was bipolar but believes that had nothing to do with her death. The LAPD says it can't comment on the ongoing investigation.

Video shows San Antonio school officer body-slamming girl

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/video-shows-san-antonio-school-officer-body-slamming-girl/?linkId=23139802

Officials in San Antonio were investigating video that apparently shows a school district police officer body-slamming a middle school student to the ground.

In the video, a uniformed officer is seen struggling with a girl, then slamming her to the ground. The officer appears to handcuff the girl before having her stand and leading her away.

Gloria Valdez, the 12-year-old girl's mother, told CBS affiliate KENS it was completely uncalled for.

"Supposedly he was threatened by her that she kicked him, but in the video her legs never went up," Valdez said.

Valdez's daughter did not want to go on camera but told KENS that she was having a conversation with another girl when a crowd surrounded them. She said that's when the officer put his hands on her.

"All he had to is grab her and put her to the side," Valdez said.

A spokeswoman for the San Antonio Independent School District said the officer has been placed on paid leave.

Leslie Price told the San Antonio Express-News that the video posted online shows part of a verbal confrontation between two students at Rhodes Middle School on March 29.

The district did not identify the officer or the student. The person who posted the video said the officer was Joshua Kehm.

"This video is very concerning, and we are working to get all of the details," Price told the newspaper. "We certainly want to understand what all occurred, and we are not going to tolerate excessive force in our district."

Valdez said the force was so powerful it knocked her daughter out.

"She was, I guess, unconscious. She doesn't remember being arrested with handcuffs," Valdez noted. "[She's] bruised because of how she was hit on the cement."

Valdez just hopes something good will come out of this

"I just want justice for my daughter," Valdez said. "How do we know this officer won't do it again to another student."

Cops, K9 Attacked This Man and They’re Covering Up His Death

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/07/cops-k9-attacked-this-man-and-they-re-covering-up-his-death.html?source=socialflow&via=twitter_page&acco unt=thedailybeast&medium=twitter

When police came to Pamela White’s work on March 31 last year, they told her that her son had died of a heart attack on his way to the hospital.

What they didn’t say was that Phillip White died after Vineland, New Jersey police officers Louis Platania and Rich Janasiak tackled him and sicced their canine on him.

Since then, authorities in Cumberland County have refused to provide Pamela with an autopsy for her 32-year-old son because of the ongoing investigation.

“I just went ballistic and started crying,” she remembers of the day police showed up at her work with the grim news.

911 audio released the week after Phillip’s death showed police were called because White was acting strangely and yelling in the street. People started coming out of their homes when they heard the commotion and at least two began filming when officers arrived and got rough with Phillip. (A truck driver passing by leaned out of his window to tell the officers to lay off, Pamela said.)

In one recording, an officer straddles White and punches him as the police dog is called over. Both officers continue to assail White, who was not armed. Toward the end of the video, White can be seen panting heavily as the police dog pulls at his arm, flailing limply.

“Yo, get that dog off of him,” one of the men recording the scene says. “He’s knocked out!”

“He’s not even moving,” the man continues. “Get that dog off of him!”

“I haven’t seen it,” Pamela said with disgust of the video. “Whenever it pops up I just click away from it. I know what I know from what everyone has told me, and that’s more than enough.”

In addition to roughly handling White, the cops then tried to cover up the incident.

“You see what happened? All of it?” one officer asks a bystander. When the person confirms that the arrest was recorded, the cop replies, “I’ll need your information and I’m going to take your phone.”

Filming police as long as you aren’t interfering with them is legal in New Jersey, which even the president of the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police recognizes.

In a second video, White is seen turned over onto his stomach and straddled again as an officer handcuffs him. What is not seen is when or how he was put into an ambulance. More importantly, however, is what we don’t have: an autopsy.

“It took a long time until we were even able to get the death certificate in this case,” said Stanley King, attorney for the White family. King says the police dog bit White’s upper torso, and we can see in the video the dog also bit his arm.

More than a year later, authorities in Vineland, New Jersey continue to refuse releasing Phillip’s autopsy or even his official cause of death to his family. The excuse is that autopsy results could taint a potential grand jury pool reviewing the death, but that didn’t stop the officers’ attorneys from publicly speculating that White was on PCP.

“We expect that the autopsy will demonstrate there was nothing physical about his person that caused his death,” the attorney told the press on April 8 last year, noting the “super-human strength” that comes with PCP use.

Harold Shapiro of the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, who is in charge of the investigation, had no comment when asked if it was possible that the attorney could have viewed White’s autopsy before the family does. But one thing about the attorney’s statement is clear: he is working with more information about White’s death than his own family.

Shapiro also would not say whether a grand jury has been convened to consider possible charges against the officers—despite a July 2015 directive from the New Jersey attorney general that states a grand jury of 23 citizens must be convened when police use deadly force, save a few circumstances.

Shapiro, as he has for the last year, simply repeated his no comment mantra.

“I cannot comment on anything involved with this because it is an ongoing investigation.”

Still, Pamela waits.

“Under any circumstances it would be hard, but for him to be gone in the manner that he was taken, it just breaks my heart,” she told The Daily Beast of her son. “I feel that Phillip should be here with me.”

If White died of a heart attack—as police initially told his mother—and if he attacked police as some have claimed, the officers will likely not be charged when the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office finally releases its decision.

But why sit on an autopsy report that confirms this for more than a year?

“I’m sure they are waiting for the public furor to die down, and that’s normally the case in these types of situations.” King said. “I’m extremely nervous that this year of this investigation does not bode well for Mr. White.”

A prosecutor or the attorney general’s office can refuse to release autopsy results if an ongoing investigation is underway, according to a 2005 New Jersey law. The Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office cited that law in its denial of The Daily Beast’s request for White’s autopsy report last June.

Both the 2005 law and the 2015 directive firmly state that zero information regarding a police use of force incident should be released while the investigation is ongoing, hence Shapiro’s tight-lipped treatment of the case. Both also firmly state that anyone found to have leaked information should be legally punished. Maybe that will apply to the officers’ attorney, maybe it will not.

“They had their little smear campaign,” Pamela says.

Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae recused herself from the case because she knows Pamela White personally, so the task fell on Shapiro, the assistant prosecutor.

“I’ve been hearing literally for months now that they’re hoping to be able to release the findings in no short order however I’ve seen nothing,” said King, the attorney for the White family. “I am at a loss as to why this investigation has taken so long.”

Shapiro’s own office has shown it can conclude a use of force investigation in a more reasonable amount of time. It took the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office eight months to determine that the officers involved in Jerame Reid’s death in nearby Bridgeton, New Jersey should not be charged. The office refused to release any information about the incident at the time, because it said a grand jury would look into Reid’s death.

But we don’t know if a grand jury has been convened for White. A simple yes or no question was met with untold variations of “no comment” on Tuesday by Shapiro. The 2015 directive requires grand juries “unless the undisputed facts of the case indicate that the use of force was justified under the law.”

King believes the facts surrounding White’s death are far from undisputed.

“I have no doubt that the force that was used was unreasonable and excessive,” he said.

As the one-year anniversary of her son’s passing came and went, Pamela White has waited. Meanwhile Shapiro has refused to answer any questions regarding the case over the past year, and the cause of Phillip’s death remains a matter of pure speculation.

“It just hurts me to see my grandchildren crying,” she said of Phillip’s fatherless children. “It hurts for me to sit here expecting a knock on the door, for him to come knocking and asking what I’m cooking, or for him to call me. It’s just traumatizing; there’s no other way to put it.

“My life has been forever changed by his death.”

Still, she waits.

Cop charged with two felony sexual charges but judge drops them to misdemeanor battery on a 9-year-old
 

Judge clears cop of sex assault of colleague's 9-year-old, orders counseling

By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune

A Cook County judge who had cleared a longtime Chicago police sergeant of the sexual assault of a colleague's young daughter, convicting him instead of misdemeanor battery, ordered the cop Wednesday to undergo up to two years of sex offender counseling.

In explaining the unusual move, Judge Charles Burns said prosecutors had failed at trial to prove, as required by law, that Dennis Barnes fondled the girl for his own sexual arousal, yet the judge said he believed "something was going on, and that's something that I find disturbing."

The alleged victim's mother, herself a Chicago police officer who had invited Barnes to her home for the first time for a family barbecue, blasted the judge's decision, saying she felt Barnes had been given preferential treatment because he was a Chicago cop.

"I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it because of all the evidence," she said, wiping away tears after court Wednesday as she recalled the judge's decision to find Barnes guilty of a lesser, nonsexual offense after a short bench trial in January. "The judge even admitted that it disgusted him, so why would you say it's only a misdemeanor battery?"

The Tribune is not naming the mother or her daughter because of the sexual nature of the allegations. The girl was 9 at the time of the alleged assault in August 2014.

Barnes was charged with felony attempted predatory criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The 27-year department veteran resigned from the force three months after he was charged, a police spokesman said.

Barnes apologized Wednesday to the judge but said his actions that day were accidental. His attorney, Michael Clancy, told the judge his client had been drinking for hours that day.

"I'm deeply, deeply regretful," said Barnes, 63. "Whatever it was, was an accident, but I feel sorry for her."

The judge rejected that claim in sentencing Barnes to 60 days in Cook County Jail in addition to placing him on intensive probation intended for sex offenders for two years. In addition to counseling, Barnes will undergo a psychological evaluation to determine if he has pedophile tendencies or other issues.

"I don't believe this was incidental contact," Burns said. "I don't believe it was an accident."

Barnes two weeks before reporting to jail but ordered that he immediately be placed on electronic monitoring.

Prosecutors alleged that Barnes was "grooming" the girl for the alleged assault after arriving at the family's home, reading a book with her for an hour and letting her play with his cellphone before sitting next to her on the couch as she watched a movie with her brother, then 15.

He massaged her feet, rubbed her legs and then reached into her shorts and attempted to sexually assault her, prosecutors alleged. When her mother entered the room, the girl began crying and told her what had happened.

"(Barnes) told the victim that he was her mother's boss," Assistant State's Attorney Tracy Senica told the judge. "And she testified that she didn't scream because she didn't want to get her mom into trouble."

The mother was outraged that Barnes escaped a sex-related felony conviction, saying she felt any "normal citizen" wouldn't have caught such a break. She also was disappointed with the 60-day sentence.

"I mean I've never heard of anybody being charged with two felony sexual charges and then getting a misdemeanor battery," she said. "I've never heard of that, and I've been doing this job a long time."


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...406-story.html

San Francisco police shoot, kill homeless man with knife

http://www.kcra.com/news/san-francisco-police-shoot-kill-homeless-man-with-knife/38929690?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_c ampaign=KCRA%203&Content%20Type=Story

San Francisco Police officers shot and killed a homeless man carrying a knife, the third fatal shooting of a minority suspect without a gun over the last two years.

The shooting Thursday morning in the city's Mission District neighborhood comes amid the department's attempt to reform its "use-of-force" policies and repair an image battered by two separate incidents of officers exchanging racist and homophobic text messages.

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr says two officers shot the unidentified Latino man after he refused demands to drop a knife and after the suspect was shot four times with nonlethal beanbags.

The incident was the second fatal shooting of a knife-wielding suspect since December. The previous shooting of knife-wielding black man along with the fatal shooting of a Latino man carrying a stun gun In March 2014 and the recent texting scandals has led to several protests, calls for the chief's firing and wrongful death lawsuits.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently agreed to requests from Suhr and Mayor Ed Lee to review the department's procedures and policies. Suhr has called in outside law enforcement experts to help the department develop less lethal responses to suspects not carrying guns.

The latest incident began Thursday morning when city homeless outreach officials checking on residents living in tents called police to report a man carrying a knife, Suhr said. Suhr didn't identify the man, who officers reported charging at them before firing.

Seven bullets casings were found and the kitchen knife recovered, Suhr said. The blade was 10 inches to 12 inches long, and witnesses described it as a chef's knife, he said.

Two witnesses say a language barrier may have contributed to the shooting. John Visor and Stephanie Grant said they lived in a tent in the same encampment as the suspect and say he spoke only Spanish and that the officers barked their commands to drop the knife in English.

Visor, 33, and Grant, 31, say the man was confused and walking in a circle when the officers hit him with the beanbags and then opened fire with guns. They say the man had stuffed the knife into his waistband before he was shot.

"Everybody carries something for protection here," Visor said. "He didn't have the knife in his hand when he was shot."

Visor and Grant knew the man only as Jose. They said Jose liked to collect bottles and cans for recycling and enjoyed kicking a soccer ball, sometimes late into the night and to the occasional annoyance of pedestrians.

"He never hurt anybody," Visor said. "He just liked to pick up cans."

The mayor said in a statement that "we are all striving to make sure officer involved shootings are rare and only occur as a last resort." Lee said he has requested an independent investigation from the Office of Citizen complaints in addition to the customary investigations by the Police Department and district attorney.

The last previous fatal shooting that involved San Francisco police occurred on Dec. 2, when five officers fatally shot Mario Woods 20 times, including six times in the back, in an incident caught on video.

Woods' family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

On Wednesday, the city's police commission agreed to reconsider its ban on arming San Francisco police officers with stun guns because of the Woods incident and the 2014 police shooting death of Alex Nieto, a college student carrying a stun gun that officers mistook for a handgun. Nieto carried a stun gun for his job as a security guard.

A federal grand jury earlier this year ruled the officers acted appropriately and refused to award Nieto's family any damages after a trial in San Francisco.

San Francisco is one of only two of the nation's largest cities in the country that do not equip officers with stun guns.

Man with knives killed by Sacramento police; 3 officers on leave

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article70710997.html

A use of force investigation is underway after Sacramento police shot and killed a man armed with knives whom officers say came toward them in an aggressive manner Friday morning in South Sacramento.

Three police officers who fired shots during the incident are on administrative leave, according to the police department.

The incident started with reports of a man acting suspiciously. He was detained, but escaped custody and was later shot on a nearby street. The man was killed. The officers were uninjured, said Sacramento police spokesman Sgt. Bryce Heinlein.

As soon as they opened the door he took off running

Resident Jeffery Jones, describing how a man escaped from the rear of a police car. The man was soon after shot and killed by police

Police said the incident began on the 7600 block of Prescott Way, which is in the Parkway neighborhood near Mack Road and Center Parkway.

At around 6:30 a.m. Friday , longtime area resident Jeffery Jones said he saw a man wandering the neighborhood looking drugged and confused.

“I said ‘What can I do for you,’ ” Jones said. “He said ‘I’m lost.”

The man walked away, but continued looking into homes, Jones said.

At around 8 a.m., officers arrived, questioned the man and then placed him in the back of a patrol car. As they were still trying to determine whether a crime had been committed, the man was not handcuffed, said department spokeswoman Traci Trapani. Jones said as they were taking his statement, the man started violently kicking at the windows.

“As soon as they opened the door he took off running,” Jones said.

The officers followed in their patrol cars, but the man eluded them by climbing into backyards, police said.

Police said the man jumped from one backyard to another and broke into at least one home. A woman, who was in her backyard when the man came over the fence with a meat cleaver and a butcher knife, screamed before running inside and locking the sliding glass door, Trapani said.

The man followed, breaking the glass, sending the fleeing woman out the front door where she called for help, Trapani said.

Later the man appeared from behind a parked car and confronted officers.

“ At that point he verbally challenged the officers and at that point officers fired their weapons,” Heinlein said. “He was struck and he is deceased.”

Heinlein said he the man took an “aggressive stance” towards the officers, but couldn’t say how close the suspect was to the officers or whether the man was charging at the officers.

It’s not yet known how many shots were fired. Representatives from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office will review the circumstances of the shooting.

The sprawling crime scene set the neighborhood abuzz as people nearby speculated on whether the use of lethal force was justified.

“Terrible” was the conclusion reached by area resident Wendell Smith, who said officers should have disarmed the man.

“If it were a gun its a different story,” Smith said.

Sandy Keller, who was in the area to drop off her kids at choir and drama rehearsal, leaned more toward trusting the cops’ instinct and training.

“I’m not going to make a judgment against a police officer,” Keller said, noting that a California Highway Patrol officer was badly injured in Sacramento Thursday by a motorist who allegedly ran over him on purpose.

“We don’t know the whole story,” Keller said. “Obviously the officers felt justified.”

Former South Carolina police officer pleads guilty in fatal shooting of black man, gets probation

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20160411/PC16/160419852/former-south-carolina-police-officer-pleads-guilty-in-fatal-shooting-of-black-man

A white former North Augusta police officer pleaded guilty Monday to misconduct in office after fatally shooting an elderly black motorist two years ago, a case that raised questions about deadly force tactics and the public’s right to see dashcam videos of police shootings.

A judge sentenced Justin Craven, 27, to three years of probation and 80 hours of community service after he entered the plea in the death of Ernest Satterwhite, 68, the Aiken Standard reported.

In video released by the State Law Enforcement Division, Justin Craven can be seen rushing toward the driver’s side of the car, lunging in for a split second and then pulling back to fire.

In announcing a penalty that included no imprisonment, the judge said the shooting wasn’t like other officer-involved killings that have garnered notoriety in recent years, alluding to Walter Scott’s death last year in North Charleston.

Yet family members and their lawyer who had seen the video have said it was just as disturbing. Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, saw the video months ago and said it shows Craven had no business getting probation.

“The reality is that he murdered that man, in my opinion, and got away with it,” said Neal, a black Democrat who has spent decades speaking out against racism in law enforcement and demanding accountability through data and police cameras.

A video released by the State Law Enforcement Division to The Post and Courier showed Craven following a Chrysler Sebring weaving through traffic and then onto a dirt road. Satterwhite then parked next to his house, and Craven can be seen rushing toward the driver’s side of the car, lunging in for a split-second and then pulling back to fire.

After the guilty plea, Craven’s attorney told The Associated Press his client shouldn’t have run up to Satterwhite’s car at the end of the 13-minute chase.

“His mistake in judgment was approaching the car and getting too close. He had to make a split-second decision instead of like now, when everyone gets all the time they want to analyze it.” Jack Swerling said his client thought about going to trial to clear his name but feared that would be difficult with several other police shootings in the news.

The Satterwhite shooting highlighted a nationwide problem uncovered by The Post and Courier last year: officers who fire into cars to stop suspects.

The newspaper’s “Shots Fired” analysis found that officers routinely said they fired because they feared for their lives. But a closer inspection of many of these cases showed that officers were in little or no danger.

Criminal justice experts say departments should prohibit officers from firing at vehicles and instead train them to get out of the way.

Like many other police shootings, Satterwhite’s death also raised questions about whether videos should be released quickly to the public. Authorities had kept dashboard camera footage under wraps for more than two years, a delay that some argued violates the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Neal said the failure to release the footage “smacks of a cover-up.”

Craven’s guilty plea came as the General Assembly is considering a bill requiring dashcam footage to be released immediately when it “involves an officer involved incident resulting in death, injury, property damage, or the use of deadly force.” The Senate passed the bill last week, and the House is expected to take it up this week.

The shooting stems from the night of Feb. 9, 2014, when Craven spotted a Chrysler Sebring that veered in and out of a lane. Craven turned on his blue lights, and Satterwhite turned in to a Wal-Mart parking lot. Craven followed Satterwhite as he drove back onto a road and struck a mailbox and another car. Satterwhite then drove toward Edgefield in what an attorney for Satterwhite’s family would call a “low-speed chase.”

Satterwhite eventually pulled into the driveway of his home. An incident report said that “a struggle ensued between Officer Craven and the suspect over Officer Craven’s duty weapon. At that point, officer Craven discharged his duty weapon at the suspect an undetermined amount of times.”

After the Satterwhite shooting, an incident report by the Edgefield County Sheriff’s Office said that Craven approached the driver’s side door and “fired three or four shots into the vehicle and stated, ‘the suspect grabbed my gun.’ ” According to Carter Elliott Jr., the Satterwhites’ attorney, the video shows Craven lunging into the car with his gun drawn and then firing his weapon. “Why would you do that?” he told the newspaper last year. “The guy had stopped and was parked in his own driveway.”

Elliot viewed the video as part of his lawsuit against North Augusta and Edgefield. It showed Craven moving toward the driver’s side of Satterwhite’s car and lunging toward him, Elliott said. It appears that Satterwhite then raised his hands in surprise, not as if he was grabbing a weapon, the attorney said. Craven then pulls back and starts shooting, he said.

No weapon was found in Satterwhite’s car.

“There was no question about that,” Elliott told the newspaper.

The shooting was captured on Craven’s dashboard camera. But SLED, which investigated the shooting, and the North Augusta Department of Public Safety denied The Post and Courier’s request to release it.

Satterwhite’s family settled the lawsuit last year for $1.2 million. All told, South Carolina towns and cities halve paid more than $25 million to settle lawsuits from officer-involved shootings, according to the newspaper’s “Shots Fired” database.

A prosecutor wanted the North Augusta police officer charged with voluntary manslaughter, which carries up to 30 years in prison, but a grand jury refused to indict Craven. He later was charged with a felony — discharging a gun into an occupied vehicle. But Craven eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser misdemeanor misconduct in office charge, which carries up to a year behind bars.

Neal, the representative, said the Satterwhite case was inconsistent with what happened in the Scott shooting. “In one case, an officer is charged appropriately with murder. In another, a misdemeanor. I feel for the family.”

Emotional and financial injury
 

EXCLUSIVE: NYPD kicks wrong family out of their home in nuisance case, seeking drug dealers who left 7 months earlier

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-kicks-wrong-family-home-nuisance-case-article-1.2597105?utm_content=buffer4c4af&utm_medium=socia l&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsT w

The NYPD got an order kicking a family of four out of their Queens apartment by telling a judge it was a drug den — but the dealers had moved out seven months earlier.

A lawsuit to be filed in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday details an egregious case of the NYPD’s use of the nuisance abatement law — a controversial tool in which cops are able to get a temporary order barring people from their homes without first giving them the opportunity to appear before a judge.

The bungled operation left Austria Bueno, 32, a housekeeper, crashing at a hotel and on a relative’s floor, beside her two sons and husband, for four nights, as they waited for their first court date.

“Everybody cried. Me, I was crying like a baby,” Bueno told the Daily News. “I don’t deserve that. My kids don’t deserve that either.”

Her lawsuit, which cites The News and ProPublica’s ongoing investigation into the NYPD’s misuse of the nuisance abatement law, seeks to have the legislation and its provision for secret lockout orders declared unconstitutional.

A News analysis found the number of cases filed by the NYPD has dropped substantially since the first investigation was published in February.

Bueno’s ordeal began before she even got to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City. Police say a confidential informant purchased crack at her future apartment twice in January 2015. A subsequent search turned up crack, weapons and $21,500.

Austria Bueno returned to her apartment only to find two neon-colored stickers taped to the door saying anyone who entered would be arrested.

Bueno and her family moved into the apartment in August.

On Dec. 11, a Friday, Bueno returned home after picking up her sons — ages 6 and 15 — from school to find a stack of legal papers and two neon-colored stickers taped to her door saying anyone who entered would be arrested.

She was told to come to court the following Tuesday.

That night, the Bueno family slept at a hotel for $208. The following three nights, the family slept on the living room floor of her mother-in-law.

Bueno said she missed three days of work, resulting in a reduced paycheck. Her husband also missed work, and her youngest son was unable to attend school one day because he couldn’t retrieve a clean school uniform.

The NYPD did not even bother to contact the New York City Housing Authority to determine if their targets still lived in the home they were asking a judge to close — despite filing the request 10 months after the search, claiming it “is currently being operated, occupied and used illegally,” Bueno’s suit says.

Bueno said she called 911 the night she was locked out, then went to the NYPD’s housing precinct stationhouse the following day, but was told both times she had to wait until her court date on Tuesday. She said she went to court a day early, but was told the same thing.

After her lawyer explained the situation at her first court date, Bueno was allowed back into her home. Rather than apologizing for the terrible mistake and dropping the case, the NYPD’s attorney dragged it on for three months in an effort to get Bueno to sign a settlement waiving her right to sue, the lawsuit says. She refused.

“When they have to do something like that, they’re supposed to know 100% that the person they’re still looking for is still living in the apartment,” Bueno said.

Her suit will also seek unspecified damages.

“We believe that this is an unlawful process,” Bueno’s attorney Robert Sanderman said. “Literally, people are being evicted and their life is being destroyed based on mere allegations that are hardly ever verified. It just flies in the face of the Constitution.”

City Public Advocate Letitia James — who wrote a letter to city Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter slamming nuisance abatements following The News’ coverage — was outraged by Bueno’s ordeal. “It is disgraceful that the city is displacing people from their homes without due process,” James said.

A police spokesman and the Law Department declined to comment.

In response to The News and ProPublica’s investigation, Carter said last month that his office would review its nuisance abatement procedures to ensure that secret lockout orders “would only be used in cases of appropriate urgency,” and would not apply to household members who haven't been accused of a crime.

Meanwhile, the number of nuisance abatement actions filed by the NYPD has dropped significantly since The News and ProPublica’s investigation.

The NYPD filed 28 nuisance abatement actions in state supreme courts between Feb. 4, when the investigation was first published, and April 11. The NYPD filed 161 cases during the same time period in 2013, and 101 during the same time period in 2014.

The department has filed just two nuisance abatement actions since March 25, when The News published a followup that quoted two former attorneys in the NYPD’s civil enforcement unit, which handles such cases, as saying the unit had no requirement or procedure to independently verify the claims it files in nuisance abatement actions, or to even check if anyone is still living in the house it is seeking to close.

However, judges have continued to grant temporary closing orders on businesses and homes, even in cases where the evidence is months old, despite state Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Fern Fisher’s advisory notice recommending that they limit the practice.

Not a death or injury but a cop aching to hurt a kid, unfortunately for the cop, the kid has a dashboard cam
 

13 prison officers fired for negligence, violating policies

http://www.12news.com/news/local/valley/13-prison-workers-fired-for-negligence-violating-policies/135307090

Thirteen correctional officers were fired and six others were disciplined in a move we’ve never seen before from the Arizona Department of Corrections.

It’s in response to an investigation into the suicide deaths of two inmates and violations of policies and ethics.

Video released by the DOC shows the moments a correctional officer at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Perryville found an inmate, Cynthia Apkaw, 25, hanging from her cell.

She had a rope around the air vent, attached to a bed sheet around her neck.

Could the correctional officers have saved her August of 2015? They tried with chest compressions and other life-saving measures, but she was pronounced dead after midnight.

According to an investigation released by the DOC, entries in a Correctional Service Journal were not accurate.

It shows checks were made every half-hour, but security footage contradicts that, showing a pill call at 4:41 p.m. that day. The officer is not seen coming back to the inmate's cell until 7:03 p.m. -- two hours and 22 minutes later.

Another incident occurred when officers attempted life-saving measures on Scott Saba, 45, back in February.

Officers found him with an electrical cord around his neck. The weight of his body blocked the cell door from opening. It took officers more than five minutes to pry it open.

The DOC’s investigators revealed two days prior, Saba tried to make 56 phone calls, and during one of them he's heard explaining part of the Bible.

A correctional officer observed Saba acting “paranoid,” and the inmate also asked to get out of his cell because he "wasn't feeling good."

That complaint went ignored; the correctional officer failed to notify the medical department about Saba’s comment.

The reports from this incident also show that correctional officers lied about the time they performed one of their security sweeps, and one turned in keys and a radio before clocking out.

Saba was in prison for a drug-related crime. He has small children and comes from a prominent family who owns Saba's Western Wear in Scottsdale.

Evaluation of his mental health score is mentioned twice in the report.

The Department of Corrections has not revealed what his scores were leading up to his death.

Click link for videos
 

Cook County sheriff releases excessive force videos

http://wgntv.com/2016/04/15/report-cook-county-sheriff-to-release-excessive-force-videos/

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has decided to release videos documenting cases of excessive force against jail inmates.

“The public has a right to know when officers abuse the public trust as well as the ramifications of that abuse,” said Sheriff Dart.

The videos correspond to six individual cases, involving 14 officers. Five officers were fired, one resigned, and the other eight were suspended without pay ranging from 45 to 180 days, according to The Sun-Times.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says no prison has released video like this before. But he says the public has a right to transparency.

The Cook County Sheriff invested more than $10 million to install more than 2,400 cameras throughout the jail compound.

Cara Smith, of the Cook County Sheriff's Department says they're valuable in bringing transparency.

"Cameras are a great deterrent. They're also a great tool to exonerate staff when complaints made against them are false and to hold them accountable," Smith said.

The officers’ union is reportedly threatening to sue over the release of these videos.

I am going to go out on a limb here to say this never, ever, would have happened to white kids in an affluent part of town!
 

First-graders cuffed, arrested, charged; Murfreesboro outraged

USA TODAY NETWORKJessica Bliss, The (Nashville) Tennessean
April 20th, 2016

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Police handcuffed multiple students, ages 6 to 11, at a public elementary school in Murfreesboro on Friday, inspiring public outcry and adding fuel to already heightened tensions between law enforcement and communities of color nationwide.

The arrests at Hobgood Elementary School occurred after the students were accused of not stopping a fight that happened several days earlier off campus. A juvenile center later released the students, but local community members now call for action — police review of the incident and community conversation — and social justice experts across the country use words such as "startling" and "flabbergasted" in response to actions in the case.

Parents and community members sharply criticized the arrests of the students at a church meeting Sunday. The Murfreesboro police chief on Sunday cited the incident as a learning experience, a chance to "make things better so they don't happen again." The city manager said Sunday: "If something needs to be corrected, it will be."

It remains unclear exactly how many children were arrested. State law prohibits the release of juvenile law enforcement records, and police have denied a media request for the information. Murfreesboro police didn't say what state law the kids violated, but parents of several of the arrested children say the kids were charged with "criminal responsibility for conduct of another," which according to Tennessee criminal offense code includes incidents when a "person fails to make a reasonable effort to prevent" an offense.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...m_content=link

NYPD detectives charged with assaulting postal worker who accidently gave directions to cop killer

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-detectives-charged-assaulting-postal-worker-article-1.2608423?cid=bitly

Two NYPD detectives have been arrested for assaulting a postal worker who unwittingly gave an assassin directions to a Brooklyn housing project where the maniac killed two police officers, officials said Wednesday.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown charged Detectives Angelo Pampena, 31,and Detective Robert A. Carbone, 29, with assault.

Pampena and Carbone are accused of dragging Karim Baker out of his car on Oct. 21, 2015, and punching and kicking him.

Baker was in his postal uniform at the time, officials said.

As the assault, which was first reported by the Daily News, was investigated, Pampena filed a false affidavit claiming that the fight broke out after Baker’s car was found parked in front of a hydrant — but surveillance video of the area shows he was parked legally, officials said.

The Queens DA’s office requested $10,000 bail, but the two detectives were ordered released without bail after a brief court appearance on Wednesday.

They will return to court to respond to the charges in June, according to a Queens DA spokeswoman.

Baker and his attorney claim that the Fed Ex worker turned postal employee has been repeatedly harassed by police after he unknowingly directed Ismaaiyl Brinsley to the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant just before Brinsley shot and killed Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in December, 2014.

For months after the assassination, Baker said he has been stopped by police about 20 times — but never ticketed — for traffic infractions by vengeful cops before he was attacked by Pampena and Carbone.

“I have nothing in my heart against law enforcement at all,” Baker, the son of a former correction officer, told the News in November.

Pampena is a nine-year veteran of the NYPD. Carbone has been with the department for eight years.

Both have been suspended pending the outcome of the case.

Sheriff Hailed Cops as Heroes, But Dashcam Shows them Listen to 3 Girls Scream as they Drowned

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/dash-cam-video-reveals-cops-lied-save-drowning-teens/#mlw7DHydWkiAW1Lf.99

Newly released dash cam footage reveals a Florida sheriff lied last month when he falsely claimed that his deputies took off their gun belts and attempted to save three drowning teenage girls. Instead of attempting to rescue the dying teens, the deputies can be seen on video standing beside the pond while listening to the girls’ final screams.

According to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, a friend asked 35-year-old Damien Marriott to drive the three teenage girls to Child’s Park on Wednesday, March 30. For some reason, Marriott reportedly stopped at a Walmart to buy a TV when he left his keys in the ignition with the engine running along with three girls that he did not know sitting in his 1990 Honda Accord. Although Child’s Park closes at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays, Marriott did not return to his vehicle or report his car stolen until 8:30 p.m. that night.

Several hours later, deputies reported seeing the Honda run a red light without its headlights on during a pursuit. Entering the back of a cemetery, the girls accidentally drove the Honda into a pond as deputies exited their vehicles and remained standing on shore.

While the Honda submerged into the swamp, a recently released police dash cam video recorded a deputy exclaiming, “I hear them yelling, I think!”

As the video moves forward another deputy can be heard saying, “They’re done. They are 6-7, dude.”

“They were yelling,” a deputy responds. “I thought I heard yelling.”

“As it was going down,” the other deputy interjects. “But now, they’re done. They’re done.”

Although Sheriff Gualtieri announced at a press conference that his deputies flung off their gun belts and dove into the swamp in a failed attempt to save the teenage girls, police dash cam video actually shows the deputies standing near the shore listening to the girls scream to death.

Two hours later, a tow truck pulled out a vehicle containing the deceased bodies of 16-year-old Dominique Battle from St. Petersburg High School, 15-year-old Ashaunti Butler from Dixie Hollins High, and 15-year-old Laniya Miller from Gibbs High.

“My daughter was not perfect,” Miller’s mother, Natasha Winkler, recently told ABC Action News through tears. “What 15-year-old is?”

Despite the fact that the sheriff initially released false information and his deputies likely provided false reports claiming they tore off their gun belts and dove into the murky water to save the dying teen girls, no criminal charges have been filed against any of the deceitful deputies. Caught on police dash cam video, the deputies clearly falsified their reports after standing around while callously listening to the drowning girls die.

Cape cop suspended after March excessive force incident

http://www.abc-7.com/story/31795731/cape-cop-suspended-after-march-excessive-force-incident

A Cape Coral police officer received an 80-hours unpaid suspension after using force on a drunk person in a parking lot last month in a viral video.

It happened across the street from Dixie Roadhouse in a parking lot on March 13.

Brittnie Fails admitted to being drunk and had no problem being arrested for it. But she did have a problem with what she says was excessive force used to detain her.

The video shows the officer grabbing Fails and throwing her to the ground after she was arguing with her boyfriend.

Since the video's release, the officer was placed on administrative duty.

The incident was recorded on a bystander's smartphone and the video that was posted online went viral.

There were no criminal charges against the officer as reviewed by the state attorney.

The Professional Standards Bureau's internal affairs investigation found that the subject officer in violation of department policy for conduct unbecoming, improper use of force, and failure provide medical aid in a use of force incident.

The suspension will begin Monday, April 25.

My version of the correct headline: 13 year old child with a toy gun was shot running away from two plain clothes police in an unmarked car

Baltimore police investigate officer's shooting of teen who had replica gun

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/28/us/baltimore-13-year-old-shot/index.html

A Baltimore police officer shot and wounded a 13-year-old boy who was carrying a replica handgun.

The teen, who police say is expected to recover, was shot at the end of a foot chase Wednesday after officers spotted him walking down the street. They pursued the boy thinking he had a real gun, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told reporters.

It turned out to be a pellet gun, Davis said.

But he said, "It's a dead-on ringer for a Beretta 92FS semiautomatic pistol."
The officers who chased the teenager -- detectives assigned to the department's intelligence unit -- identified themselves before shooting him, Davis said.

He said he did not know why the teenager had the pellet gun or why he ran. He said officers had interviewed the teen's mother and that she knew he had left the house with it.

He defended the officers' actions, saying officers couldn't have known the gun was a replica, but even then, replica guns have been used in crimes before. Officers, he said, had no idea what the teen's intentions were.
"We can't allow someone to walk down the street in broad daylight anywhere in Baltimore with what looks like to be a semiautomatic pistol in his hand," Davis told reporters.

The shooting came on the first anniversary of violent protests over the death of Freddie Gray while in Baltimore police custody.

It also occurred two days after the city of Cleveland agreed to pay $6 million to the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who died in 2014 after police shot him while he was in possession of a replica handgun.

While police spokesman Detective Donny Moses said Baltimore was quiet overnight and into Thursday, reaction was mixed on social media.

"We have more questions than answers today," Baltimore civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson said on Twitter. "Why did the Baltimore officers approach the 13 year old child? Why did they shoot him?"

One Twitter user told Baltimore police, "Awesome job! I hope you arrest his mother for negligence or contributing to delinquency. She's unfit."

But on Facebook, Darren Willis said in a reply to the police update on the incident that "cop kissing jerks" praising the department had missed the point.

"How was he to even know they were cops? He was 13 and ran away from grown-assed men who were strangers and armed. Details matter. I know, blame the target and the mom. It's easy for racists and idiots."

Florida officer fired for hitting handcuffed woman, authorities say

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/29/us/jacksonville-rookie-officer-fired/index.html

A Florida police officer has been charged with battery and fired for repeatedly striking a handcuffed woman in custody, authorities said.
Officer Akinyemi Borisade, 26, has worked with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office for a year, Undersheriff Pat Ivey said.

The incident started Wednesday after Borisade arrested a woman at a local bar for trespassing and resisting arrest.

Police responded to the scene after the woman, a new employee at the bar, got into an argument with her employer and was asked to leave.

When police arrived to escort her out of the property, she became belligerent, authorities said.

She refused to be handcuffed and tried to kick and bite the officers, CNN affiliate WJXT reported. It said while she was in the patrol car, she continued kicking and had to be restrained.

Officers transported her to Duval County Jail.

Multiple strikes

In a video released by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, she's seen kicking Borisade, who was one of the arresting officers. He responds with multiple strikes to her midsection.

Corrections officers who saw the incident talked to their supervisors about it, according to the affiliate.

"There are ways this could have been dealt with without striking her," Ivey said at a news conference. "There was no need to strike her."

The woman has been released and has no pending court date, authorities said.

Battery charges

Borisade was charged with battery and terminated by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office on Thursday. Since he's been on the job since March last year, he is within the 18-month probationary period mandated by his employer.

As a probationary officer, he cannot appeal his firing and will not be afforded civil service protections following his termination, according to Ivey.

CNN's attempts to reach an attorney for him have been unsuccessful.

Update
 

Video footage outside Jamycheal Mitchell's cell no longer exists

http://www.richmond.com/news/article_b6c51cce-7d99-555e-86df-bab012b52162.html



Video images captured outside Jamycheal Mitchell’s cell at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in the days and hours leading up to his death no longer exist, even though an attorney representing the mentally ill man’s family says he asked the jail’s superintendent to preserve it.

The only people who saw the video before it was recorded over are employees of the jail, said Lt. Col. Eugene Taylor III, an assistant superintendent at the jail.

Taylor said the video was not saved because it did not show any type of criminality or negligence, but the attorney representing Mitchell’s family said the jail should not have the authority to make that judgment call on its own.

“You have a death of a severely emaciated person who was mentally ill in his cell,” said Mark Krudys, an attorney representing Mitchell’s family. “Those circumstances are highly unusual, and you would have thought they would have preserved anything and everything related to those circumstances, including the videotape.”

Mitchell, a 24-year-old Portsmouth resident, was confined at the jail for 101 days last year after he allegedly stole $5 worth of snack food from a convenience store.

He died in August awaiting transfer to Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, where a judge had ordered him to be placed after finding Mitchell incompetent to stand trial.

Mitchell weighed 190 pounds when he arrived at the jail on May 11 and weighed 144 pounds during the autopsy performed after he died Aug. 19, Taylor has said.

The Medical Examiner’s Office in Norfolk said he died because of a heart defect and “wasting syndrome,” or extreme weight loss.

Jail officials have declined to release the results of an internal investigation, which Taylor has said clears jail employees of wrongdoing.

In an interview earlier this month, Taylor told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that video images outside Mitchell’s cell showed him receiving food through a slot in the heavy steel door.

The cell had concrete walls and only a small window in the door. The cameras did not show whether Mitchell actually ate his food, Taylor said.

“There was no indication that Mr. Mitchell was not eating,” Taylor said. “If the officers had any indication that he was not eating his food, he would be placed on what is determined to be suicide watch or hunger strike.”

***

The Times-Dispatch requested a copy of the video outside his cell through a Freedom of Information Act request, but the request was denied because the video does not exist.

“There is no security footage taken outside of Mr. Mitchell’s cell during his incarceration at Hampton Roads Regional Jail,” Superintendent David L. Simons wrote in a response to The Times-Dispatch’s request.

When asked to clarify whether or not such video existed, Taylor said the video taken at the time Mitchell was incarcerated was part of an old system that automatically recorded over existing video every 18 days.

Fourteen days after Mitchell died, Krudys said his office hand-delivered a letter addressed to Simons that requested the jail preserve “all records, documents ... videos and other electronic/digital media, and all other tangible things concerning Mr. Mitchell.”

Krudys provided a copy of the Sept. 2 letter last week to The Times-Dispatch after he was told the video no longer existed.

He said the jail was obligated to have kept, at the very least, the last four days of Mitchell’s life — a critical time period that would have shown what kind of medical care he received in his cell — because his firm delivered its request to preserve records 14 days into the 18-day loop.

Jeff Rosen, an attorney with Virginia Beach-based Pender & Coward who is representing the jail, said he could not comment on Mitchell’s case because Krudys has said he intends to file a lawsuit on behalf of the family.

When asked why the video was not saved even after Krudys requested that officials keep it, Taylor said it had been recorded over because the jail did not have any reason to keep it.

“If there’s nothing on the video that’s going to show any type of criminality or negligence, we’re not going to maintain it,” Taylor said.

“We only save video whenever there’s something significant we need to review.”

Asked if an inmate’s death qualified as a significant event, he said: “For example, if an individual is in their cell and something occurs and we look at the video, and the cell door doesn’t open, no one goes in, no one goes out, and there’s no negligence, there’s no reason for us to maintain that.”

Mitchell, who often soiled his cell with his own feces, was supposed to be checked at least 49 times a day — every 30 minutes by guards and at least once a day by medical staff. The cameras presumably would have recorded how often he was seen by guards and how often his quarters were cleaned, Krudys said.

“Were medical rounds being undertaken?” he said. “Were any medical staff going in to see him to take vital signs? Were social workers going in to see him? All of those types of things. How is he being treated?”

The Mitchell video was viewed by Taylor and the jail’s internal investigators but was not seen by outside agencies such as the Office of State Inspector General, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, or Portsmouth police, all of which conducted inquiries into Mitchell’s death.

It’s not clear from the reports issued by the inspector general’s office or the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services whether investigators with those agencies attempted to view the jail’s video taken outside Mitchell’s cell.

It’s inappropriate that the jail made the final determination about whether the video contained information of significance, Krudys said. The cameras presumably would have been able to capture how often Mitchell was offered food, how much food typically was on his trays, and whether the trays came back empty.

Taylor said he saw Mitchell receiving food through a slot in the door on the videos, and he saw empty trays returned. It’s unclear whether Mitchell flushed his food down the toilet or otherwise disposed of it in his cell.

Krudys does not take jail officials at their word that Mitchell was fed consistently, given his extreme weight loss.

***

Jamie Fellner, a senior adviser with Human Rights Watch who has written extensively about the treatment of mentally ill people in prisons and jails, said video is “hugely important” in death investigations.

“It is truly reprehensible that, in a case like this, it was allowed to be taped over,” Fellner said. “If policy permitted that, then the policy needs to be changed.

“Obviously when there is a death — even if in their judgment the recording showed nothing of interest — it should be preserved.”

Fellner had many of the same questions as Krudys: How often was Mitchell fed? Did medical staff assess him? If he wasn’t eating, why wasn’t he taken somewhere with adequate mental health care?

“Negligence and indifference can be as lethal as affirmative physical abuse,” Fellner said. “The staff doesn’t have to beat up someone to kill him; they can kill him by not paying attention to his needs.”

Video obtained by the CBS news program “60 Minutes,” which aired April 17, showed guards repeatedly checking on a man jailed at Rikers Island in New York City. Like Mitchell, Bradley Ballard was schizophrenic and soiled his cell with feces.

Ballard repeatedly flooded his toilet, and a maintenance worker cut off water to his cell, according to the “60 Minutes” report.

The stench grew so strong, guards could be seen in the video spraying air freshener outside his cell, and an inmate delivering food through a slot in the door covered his nose with his shirt.

Medical help wasn’t called until Ballard had been locked in the cell for six days. His quarters were “grossly unsanitary,” according to the report.

An officer asked Ballard if he could get up on his own. “I need help,” Ballard said.

He went into cardiac arrest and died hours later, according to the report.

His death was ruled a homicide by the city’s medical examiner, who called his medical and custodial care “so incompetent and inadequate as to shock the conscience.” No one has been charged with a crime.

In Virginia, Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid released video footage last year of a six-member “extraction team” attempting to shackle 37-year-old inmate Natasha McKenna of Alexandria at the Fairfax jail.

As soon as the cell door opens and McKenna emerges naked, she can be heard saying, “You promised that you wouldn’t kill me. I didn’t do anything.”

The men, several of whom wore what appeared to be biohazard suits, wrestled her to the ground. They shocked her with a Taser four times after she was restrained.

McKenna stopped breathing and was taken to a hospital, where she died days later.

“Since Feb. 3 of this year, there have been numerous media reports about what allegedly occurred,” Kincaid said in a video introduction to the recording. “There is no better way for me to share what actually occurred than to make this video available for the community to view in its entirety.”

Her death was ruled an accident, but Kincaid banned the use of Tasers and changed the way the department handles mentally ill inmates.

In Virginia Beach, Sheriff Ken Stolle allowed the family of a 31-year-old woman who died in jail to review video taken from her cell in 2011, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

Last week, Stolle said there are more than 500 cameras in the Virginia Beach jail, and the system begins recording over old video every 30 days. But video that captures critical incidents that need to be investigated typically is kept for about three years.

Without seeing the video from outside Mitchell’s cell, Stolle said he could not say whether it contained pertinent information but, if it did, “the logical standard is to keep that evidence to be reviewed.”

No Charges for Police in Virginia Man's Death After Repeated Tasings

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-charges-police-virginia-mans-death-after-repeated-tasings-n566386

Prosecutors have decided not to charge police officers in the death of Linwood Lambert, a Virginia man who died in police custody after repeated tasings in May 2013, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Virginia prosecutors briefed Lambert's family about the decision on Monday, two days before the third year anniversary of the incident in South Boston, Va.

"We waited three years to get back to the same place, where these officers are not going to be held accountable for their actions," said Gwendolyn Smalls, Lambert's sister, after leaving the meeting Monday evening.

According to another source with knowledge of the inquiry, the lead prosecutor, Halifax County Commonwealth's Attorney Tracy Quackenbush Martin, investigated whether the repeat tasings were the actual cause of Lambert's death — while another prosecutor, Michael Herring, Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Richmond, focused on whether the officers had the criminal intent to harm or kill Lambert.

The prosecutors are expected to release a report of their findings on Tuesday.

Tom Sweeney, who represents Smalls in a civil suit against the police, said he "was disturbed to learn" that the prosecutors "reached out to a paid consultant for Taser International analyzing the decision on whether or not these officers acted within the law."

The three officers discharged their tasers 20 times during the incident, including while Lambert had his hands and feet bound — a violation of police rules.

The incident had been under investigation since it occurred in May 2013, and drew renewed scrutiny after video of the tasings were exposed by MSNBC in November 2015.

Police files files obtained by MSNBC also suggested police misled investigators about the incident.

Lawyers for the officers have denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Police initially took Lambert into custody not as a suspect, but to bring him to the ER for medical care after reports that he was acting erratically in a hotel room. He broke their squad car window when arriving at the hospital entrance, where police then tased him repeatedly, shackled his legs, and then removed him from the hospital and took him to jail, where he died.

In the civil suit regarding his death, his family is arguing police had an obligation to provide him the medical care they initially offered.

Sweeney says the suit is currently on appeal, focusing on a lower court's ruling "regarding the initial tasings" and whether the police violated the Constitution by depriving Lambert "of medical care."

Apart from the local investigation and the civil suit, the FBI also recently opened an inquiry into the incident.

Smalls, Lambert's sister, says that a separate inquiry is welcome because she does not think the local prosecutor was fair or impartial.

"It's unbelievable, her theory was more supportive to the police officers, because her husband is a sheriff and she works with the police," Smalls told NBC News.

That prosecutor, Martin, did not immediately return calls on Monday evening. She has previously said she would take a thorough and fair approach to the case and follow the facts where they lead.

Michael Slager charged with federal civil rights violation, obstruction in Walter Scott shooting

http://www.postandcourier.com/20160511/160519884/michael-slager-charged-with-federal-civil-rights-violation-obstruction-in-walter-scott-shooting

A federal grand jury this week indicted former North Charleston officer Michael Slager on charges of a violating civil rights law and misleading investigators in Walter Scott’s death, a rare measure in police shootings that gives authorities another route to reach a conviction.

S.C. civil rights cases

Since 1993, nine public officials in South Carolina have been charged with deprivation of civil rights in six different federal cases. Sorted by the year they were filed, those are:

2016: North Charleston police officer Michael Slager indicted in the April 2015 shooting death of Walter Scott.

2010: Greenville officers Jeremiah Milliman and Matthew Jowers got three years of probation for assaulting homeless people, some of whom were handcuffed, for a laugh.

2009: S.C. Highway Patrol Lance Cpl. Alexander Richardson entered pretrial diversion and served 100 hours of community service for hitting and injuring a fleeing suspect with a patrol car in April 2009.

2000: David Grice, a polygraph examiner, was fined $250 for his role in secretly videotaping a conversation between a murder suspect and a defense attorney in May 1995. Civil rights charges against Assistant Solicitor Francis Humphries Jr. and Lexington County Deputy Scottie Frier in the same case were dismissed.

1995: Archie Lee got a year in prison for fondling women in the early 1990s during his time as an Horry County magistrate.

1993: Moses Cohen Jr. was sentenced to 15 months in prison for beating up men in the late 1980s while serving as police chief in Fairfax, a town in Allendale County.

Slager is charged with three crimes. The chief among them is deprivation of civil rights under the color of law, a statute barring abuses of power that violate federally protected “rights, privileges or immunities.” The indictment alleges that he was acting with his authority as a policeman when he used excessive force — a violation of the Constitution — by shooting Scott five times from behind.

He also was indicted on counts of using a firearm in a violent crime and obstruction of justice after he told state investigators that Scott was coming at him with his own Taser when he fired. A video showed Scott running away.

The officer is white and Scott was black, but race is not alleged to have played a role.

The charges could serve as a backstop if the state’s murder case against Slager, 34, were to fail. Putting him on trial in both state and federal courts for the same shooting would not be double jeopardy because the alleged crimes are different.

No minimum prison term would come with a conviction on the civil rights charge. Because Scott died, the maximum sentence is life behind bars. Execution is sought only under the rarest of circumstances that are not present in this case, experts said.

An arraignment of Slager is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Charleston. Scott’s family plans to discuss the development after the proceeding.

His killing came during close scrutiny of law enforcement tactics and uses of force nationwide. Video of the death made it an especially poignant moment in that debate and prodded the U.S. Department of Justice to step in.

The grand jury, which first met nearly a month ago, handed down the indictment Tuesday. Officials kept it under wraps until making it public Wednesday. It makes the case one of the few high-profile American police killings in recent years to result in a federal criminal charge. In South Carolina, Slager is the ninth public official since 1993 to face the civil rights count, records show, but he is the only one of those accused in a shooting.

Such prosecutions are relatively rare in police shootings, said Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies policing. It reveals the government’s eagerness to weigh in on controversial police killings like Scott’s regardless of actions taken in state courts, he said.

“The feds may be prosecuting because they think it’s important to use this case to send a message,” Stoughton said, “and that message might not be sent if officer Slager were just prosecuted and even convicted on the state charges.”

Slager’s lawyer in state court, Andy Savage of Charleston, has said that such a development would have a significant negative impact on the defense. The attorney has maintained, though, that his client’s actions were justified.

It was not immediately clear who would represent the former officer on the federal charges. Savage said he is committed to defending Slager only in state court, where he has worked for free.

The indictment came more than a year since April 4, 2015, when Slager pulled over Scott’s Mercedes-Benz for a broken brake light. The patrolman acted professionally, his attorney said, as Scott, 50, couldn’t provide documents for the car.

As the officer checked with dispatchers on Scott’s identification, the motorist got out and ran. Slager gave chase and tried to use his Taser, but the stun gun had little effect.

A struggle followed. Slager’s attorney said later that the officer suffered a beating and that Scott grabbed the Taser.

Nearby, a bystander filmed the final moments of the scuffle with a cellphone. The video shows the stun gun fall, then Scott turn and start running again. Slager drew his .45-caliber pistol and fired eight times with Scott’s back turned to him. Scott fell.

After the gunfire, the officer is seen picking up the Taser and dropping it near Scott’s lifeless body. Seconds later, he plucked it from the ground and returned it to its holster.

Three days passed before he was arrested.

In state court, a grand jury indicted Slager on a murder charge that carries between 30 years and life in prison. He was freed on bail in January to prepare for a trial now set for Oct. 31.

Prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and FBI agents, meanwhile, worked on building their own case.

The federal government in recent years has zeroed in on allegations of police misconduct and opened its own probes into controversial deaths of black men. The cases included the 2014 killings of Michael Brown in Missouri, Laquan McDonald in Chicago and Eric Garner in New York, along with Freddie Gray’s death last year in Baltimore.

In 2014, the FBI reported getting 72 criminal indictments for deprivation of civil rights, but none of them came in the high-profile deaths. Scott’s is the first of those cases to prompt the indictment.

The four-page indictment is signed by U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles, South Carolina’s chief federal prosecutor, and Principal Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who leads the Civil Rights Division in Washington. It revealed for the first time some details of Slager’s interview with State Law Enforcement Division agents in the hours before his arrest.

“Slager knowingly misled SLED investigators by falsely stating that he fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser,” the document alleged. “In truth and in fact, as ... Slager then well knew, he repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott when Scott was running away from him.”

While the federal case could serve as a backup if Slager were acquitted in state court, experts said, the civil rights charge also carries a high burden of proof for prosecutors.

Legal concepts on self-defense give defendants leeway to use force against perceived threats. Appeals courts also have ruled that using deadly force on a fleeing felon who poses a threat to the community can be legally justified — a key component to Slager’s defense against the murder charge.

Authorities, though, have said that any danger Slager or the community faced had subsided by the time he opened fire. Representatives of Scott’s family also have called the defense, which highlights evidence of the victim’s alcohol and cocaine use, “smoke and mirrors.”

While state prosecutors must prove their murder case by showing that Slager acted with malice — an evil intent or disregard for life — their federal counterparts must show that he purposefully meant to deprive Scott of a right by using excessive or unreasonable force, said Stoughton, the law professor.

In both cases, intent is key.

Defendants can fight the civil rights charge by arguing that they made an error in good faith — a reasonable mistake in the heat of the moment — instead of a conscious decision to violate a personal right, Stoughton said. Simply playing a video that prosecutors say shows an over-the-top reaction might not be enough to persuade jurors to convict Slager, he said.

“Murder is not easy to prove either,” he said, “but willfully violating someone’s constitutional right in these circumstances is a difficult charge for prosecutors to prove, which is why we see it so rarely.”

Televised Police Chase Ends With Officers Beating Suspect

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/televised-police-chase-ends-with-officers-beating-suspect_us_5733a8d8e4b077d4d6f20ee5?

Police officers beat a suspect on television following a car chase through Massachusetts and New Hampshire on Wednesday.

As news helicopters circled overhead, the driver of the pickup truck involved in the pursuit opened the driver’s door and crawled onto his hands and knees in Hudson, New Hampshire. About eight officers closed in on him, some with their guns drawn, and at least two officers struck the man. One of the officers pummeled the man with repeated blows.

It wasn’t immediately clear which police departments were involved in the arrest.

The chase began when a suspect wanted on multiple warrants refused to stop for police in Holden, Massachusetts, near the state line, according to WCVB. From there, the chase wound through Concord, Littleton, Chelmsford, Billerica, Nashua, Hudson and several other towns.

“Now they’re incorporating the arrest,” a WFXT newscaster said as officers pounced on the man and the ariel camera pulled back. The station’s broadcaster didn’t appear to address the violence as it unfolded.

CBS Boston, which carried the footage, also used euphemisms to describe the action.

“Here’s the video as they approach him, and they take care of him when he gets outside the cab of that truck,” the CBS broadcaster says.

Other news footage captured about 30 seconds from the time the driver steps out of the truck.

“No details on what precipitated this,” a reporter says as the suspect stands with arms handcuffed behind his back. “But it was with great force that they get that guy on the ground.”

Disturbing Video Shows a Cop Brutally Beat a Child for Riding Her Bike, Charges HER with Assualt

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-beats-young-girl-riding-bike-mall-parking-lot/

On May 24, 2014, 15-year-old Monique Tillman and her brother were riding their bikes when they were stopped and this young girl brutally assaulted by Tacoma Police Officer Jared Williams.

Tillman and her brother had done nothing wrong, and were merely targetted by this ‘public servant’ because they had the unfortunate luck to have crossed paths with him.

As the duo travelled home, they cut through a mall parking lot, as they had done countless times before. However, this time, Officer Williams was in that parking lot, in his full Tacoma Police department uniform, yet off-duty, working as mall security. As the teens travelled through the lot, Williams began pursuit of these hardened criminals and accused them of trespassing.

Knowing they’d done nothing wrong, Monique attempted to explain to the officer that they cut through the parking lot all the time on their way home. However, this tyrant was having nothing of it.

As the duo attempted to ride away from a man whose intentions were clearly unscrupulous, Williams attacked. A recently released surveillance video shows the disturbing scene that unfolded next.

This heroic officer ripped the girl from her bike and slammed her up against a parked car with his hand around her neck. As the child struggled to breathe, this abusive tyrant grabbed her by the hair and flung her around like a rag doll.

Clearly overpowering the small child, half his size, the officer wasn’t satisfied with the damage he’d inflicted so far. So, for good measure, Williams pulled out his taser and sent 50,000 volts into this poor girl.

“He was choking me, grabbed me by my hair and tried to slam my face into the concrete. The next thing I know, I’m on the ground being tased,” Tillman said.

Now face down, tasered, handcuffed and brutalized, Williams stood over his victim like a hunter and his kill. He had protected society from the likes of a dangerous brother and sister riding their bicycles.

Williams then arrested Monique and charged her with resisting arrest and, get this, assault on an officer.

After viewing the surveillance video of the incident, however, all of the charges were thrown out.

Vito de la Cruz, Tillman’s attorney, has filed a lawsuit seeking damages from Officer Williams, the Simon Property Group who owns the Tacoma Mall and Universal Protection Services, the private security company in charge of Tacoma Mall security.

“A child riding a bike should not have to worry that a police officer will stop her without legal cause and brutalize her,” said de la Cruz. “Our communities are weary of another African American child being hurt by unwarranted and excessive police force.”

The Free Thought Project reached out the Tacoma PD to inquire about Williams’ current status and if any disciplinary action had been taken. However, our requests for comment were not returned.

Below is what policing in modern day America has become.

Now if you are in the Netherlands, the police return a baby goat to a petting zoo, instead of shooting unarmed teens and tasing teenage girls riding a bike.

I feel so helpless each time I read of another horror.



http://m.imgur.com/pk035qr

Cleveland corrections officer accused of punching handcuffed inmate

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/05/cleveland_corrections_officer.html

A Cleveland City Jail corrections officer is accused of punching a handcuffed inmate.

Jose Quinones, 42, is charged with assault and interfering with civil rights in the Feb. 6 incident. Both charges are first-degree misdemeanors.

Quinones was issued a summons to for a May 31 arraignment in Cleveland Municipal Court.

Quinones took Kosch from the Cleveland City Jail to the Cleveland House of Corrections. Quinones punched Kosch on the left side of the head while Kosch was handcuffed, according to court records.

A city spokesman said Tuesday that Quinones, who was hired by the city in May 2008, was placed on restrictive duty. He will still work at the jail but will have no direct contact with inmates.

A pre-disciplinary hearing has been scheduled with the city. Quinones will not be punished until the criminal case is completed.

No attorney is listed in court records. Quinones could not be reached for comment.

Kosch was arrested Feb. 6 after he failed to appear for court hearings in his 2013 drunken driving case.

Kosch said in a phone interview that he went to court and was taken to the city jail. He said he didn't have his blood-pressure medication with him and started to feel dizzy. He told a corrections officer who took him to see a nurse.

Officials told him he was being shipped to the Cleveland House of Corrections. Kosch said he was walking with Quinones and was upset about not getting medical treatment. He said he felt a dizzy-spell coming on and sat against a wall.

"I had an attitude with him but I didn't provoke him," Kosch said. "I was being demanding because I wasn't feeling good."

Kosch said Quinones insulted him, then handcuffed him. Quinones turned to walk away, then turned around and punched him on the left side of the head, Kosch said.

"My left ear was red and was ringing for a couple of days," Kosch said. "Other than that it was alright."

Kosch eventually pleaded no contest to drunken driving in the case. He was sentenced to take a drug and alcohol abuse class instead of serving jail time.

$5 worth of snack food? He is mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial. He was in a concrete cell with steel doors and a small window to slide food through. For taking 5$ worth of snack food. A mentally ill person. What is wrong with people? How can human beings do this? These are the people who are supposed to protect and serve. What has gone wrong? And why aren't we all up in arms? It is too exhausting I think. It wears you down.

There is a group that are "up in arms". Campaign Zero is doing amazing things.

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

Woman, 27, Shot And Killed By Police In San Francisco

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/05/19/woman-27-shot-and-killed-by-police-in-san-francisco/

Authorities say a 27-year-old woman was shot and killed by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the Bayview district.

The woman was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where she died. Her name was not released.

The shooting happened at Industrial Street and Shafter Avenue.

No officers were injured.

Police Chief Greg Suhr says the woman was driving a stolen car and refused officer’s commands to stop the car. Officers approached her on foot and she drove away. She was then shot by police.

Other details were not immediately available.

The shooting happened in the same neighborhood where Mario Woods was killed when an officer shot him on Dec. 2. That shooting enraged groups of activists and community leaders, prompting calls to fire Suhr.

Exclusive: Inmate Died in Prison, Was Buried Before His Bronx Family Was Notified

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/criminal-justice/2016/05/19/ny1-exclusive--inmate-buried-upstate-without-bronx-family-being-notified.html

With tears rolling down his face, Lonnie Hamilton says he's living a nightmare. His namesake died in prison and was even buried without the family knowing it.

Hamilton: I want to know why my son is dead. I want to know why you buried him without asking me. I want to know why we weren't allowed to properly send him off.
Meminger: Where is your son's body?
Hamilton: I don't know.

Lonnie Hamilton, 22, was doing time at Marcy Correctional Facility, outside of Syracuse. He was convicted in the Bronx of robbery.

His family says they tried to reach him for several weeks and then decided to send him a letter. Looking for his prison's address on May 6, they went on the state's correctional website. They were shocked to see he was listed as deceased. He died on March 18.

"I'm thinking, 'This can't be right. It has to be some sort of typo or joke or whatever.' So we start reaching out to the facility" his father said. "Days later, they finally say he is deceased."

And he was already buried in a cemetery near the prison.

State Corrections tells NY1 it made several unsuccessful attempts to reach the inmate's next of kin, his father. They said the father's phone number didn't work.

Corrections say it also searched Hamilton's belongings for contacts but couldn't find any. They also reached out to police in Georgia, where Hamilton was originally from.

His father says he is easy to find because he's lived in the Bronx for many years and that's where his son was arrested.

"He was picked up, my doorstep. Knock on my door, 'Is your son here?' Taken out of my home," he said. "So they knew where I lived."

"They have nothing in writing at all to date that says their son is deceased. They have no autopsy report of how their son died. They don't know anything," said the Rev. Kevin McCall of the National Action Network.

The family says they were unofficially told their son committed suicide, but they find that hard to believe. They want his body exhumed and their own autopsy done. They are also calling for an independent investigation.

Additional info
 

Woman killed by SF police sergeant IDd as Jessica Williams, 29

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Woman-killed-by-SF-police-sergeant-IDd-as-Jessica-7887427.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twit ter

The woman who was shot and killed by a San Francisco police sergeant Thursday morning after she allegedly attempted to flee officers in a suspected stolen car was identified Friday by the medical examiner as Jessica Williams, 29.

Williams, who the medical examiner said was from the Bay Area, died at San Francisco General Hospital.

Police said there was no immediate indication that the woman was armed or had been driving the car toward officers when she was shot.

Williams was shot one time, and despite the on-scene officers’ attempt to resuscitate her, she died Thursday at San Francisco General Hospital, the officials said.

Williams’ family has been notified of her death, the medical examiner said.

Thursday’s shooting was what many community members and city authorities called the last straw in excessive force from police, more specifically against people of color, igniting a chain of events that ended with Police Chief Greg Suhr’s forced resignation later in the day.

Mayor Ed Lee, who for weeks had brushed off calls from critics of Suhr to fire him, asked for the chief’s resignation during a lengthy meeting with him Thursday afternoon. Lee announced at a City Hall news conference about 5 p.m. Thursday that Suhr had tendered his resignation.

The officers involved in Thursday morning’s shooting, a Bayview station sergeant and another officer, have not been identified by police officials. They were working a special enforcement project that seeks to recover stolen vehicles.

The officers tried to apprehend Williams after spotting her in a parked, stolen car about 9:45 a.m. at Elmira Street near Interstate 280, Suhr told reporters Thursday at the scene. But a witness said she sped away, making it only 100 feet before crashing into a parked utility truck.

The white sedan Williams was driving became wedged beneath the truck, police said. Williams was trying to dislodge the vehicle, by shifting it forward and in reverse, and was not complying with police orders, Suhr said, when the sergeant fired one shot, striking her.

Police removed Wiliiams from the car and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation before paramedics arrived at the scene and took her to the hospital, Suhr said.

There was no immediate indication that she was armed, police at the scene said, but added that they planned to search the vehicle for weapons.

Police said the investigation into the shooting of Williams is still in its early stages.

NYPD cop stripped of gun, shield for pointing gun and punching bystander filming him making arrest in Harlem (WARNING: Graphic language)

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/nypd-points-gun-punches-bystanders-filming-harlem-article-1.2644471?utm_content=buffer866ad&utm_medium=socia l&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsT w

An NYPD cop was stripped of his gun and shield Friday after video emerged showing him pointing his weapon at bystanders filming him — and then punching one of them in the face, cops said.

The plainclothes officer was nabbing a suspected illegal dirt bike rider at an apartment building at W. 134th St. and St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem around 6:40 p.m. Thursday when he whipped out his handgun, aiming it at the onlookers, the video shows.

In another video, the same cop is seen cracking one of the amateur videographers with a right hook outside the building, and tackling him.

The 32nd Precinct officer, whose name was not released, has been placed on modified duty while the episode is investigated, cops said.

The 21-year-old man seen being cuffed in the video, Dayshawn Bettway, was suspected as one of two men on dirt bikes circling cops as they stopped a gray Hyundai sedan double-parked down the block minutes earlier, an NYPD spokesman said.

The car's driver and another man escaped in the confusion.

Police later learned the car had been reported stolen in Connecticut. Cops discovered marijuana and 25 rounds of live ammunition inside.

A sergeant and an officer responded to the scene and spotted Bettway running into the building's lobby.

He was charged with assault after allegedly body-slamming an onlooker who opened his door to see what was going on. He was also charged with reckless endangerment and resisting arrest, police said.

The man seen being punched in the video, 19-year-old Jahnico Harvey, was given a desk appearance ticket on misdemeanor charges of menacing and disorderly conduct, a police spokesman said.

Georgia Police Officers Caught on Camera Allegedly Fatally Tasering Georgia Man – and High-Fiving Afterward

http://www.people.com/article/parents-watch-as-police-allegedly-taser-son-to-death

When Mary Ann Sherman's son started acting erratically after smoking synthetic marijuana last November, she did what she thought was the right thing: She called police for help.

The Florida mom had no idea her 32-year-old son, Chase Sherman, would end up dead after allegedly being handcuffed and then Tasered multiple times by deputy sheriffs. The deadly incident, which played out in front of his parents' eyes, was caught on police body-camera and dashboard videos, which have been obtained by PEOPLE. The videos, taken on November 20, 2015, show Chase Sherman apparently resisting arrest as shouts of "Stop fighting!" can be heard in the background.

"He's got my Taser!" one sheriff can be heard yelling on the videos.

Even though Chase seemed to give up after a minute and a half, saying at one point, "I quit! I quit!" officers continued to Taser him for minutes. In total, he was Tasered 15 times, the family's attorney, L. Chris Stewart, tells PEOPLE.

Just before he seems to stop breathing, the footage shows him saying, "I'm dead."

Sherman's family watched in horror as police dragged his limp body out of the Jeep Patriot onto the highway. Someone on the footage is heard saying, "He ain't breathing. He ain't breathing!"

The video shows one of the deputy officers say, "Dude, I'm [expletive] fired, man." Someone else responds, "Nah, you're good."

After Chase's body is loaded into the ambulance, two sheriffs are seen high-fiving each other. Chase was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead later that day.

"It's really a tragedy because it's an example of how some officers deal with the mentally ill, which is what this is really about," Stewart, the family's attorney, says.

"They knew he was having a mental breakdown and didn't try to deescalate the situation," says Stewart, who successfully negotiated a $6.5 million settlement for the family of Walter Scott, the man fatally shot from behind in April 2015 by a North Charleston police officer after a daytime traffic stop.

"They actually got Chase cuffed easily, but pulling out Tasers escalated the whole thing," Stewart says.

The Shermans are asking the Coweta County District Attorney to take action. "Their whole world was destroyed," says Stewart. "Chase had never had a criminal record. He was engaged to be married. He helped with the family business. He was the nicest guy on the planet. This is a tragedy."

Coweta County District Attorney Peter Skandalakis tells PEOPLE, "This is a tragic case and it's one we are looking at rather closely. I have been a prosecutor more than 32 years and never encountered this type of situation, given all these facts."

Skandalakis adds, "The first decision we have to make is whether a crime was committed and if a crime was committed, then it would go to a grand jury. But at this point we are still looking at all the facts."

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which had completed its investigation in February and sent its findings to the DA, has also reopened the case, says Stewart.

Happy Family Trip Turns Tragic
On November 20, 2015, Kevin and Mary Ann Sherman were in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport, on a layover from their oldest son's wedding in the Dominican Republic to their home in Destin, Florida, when Chase began acting strangely, according to police records.

When he refused to board a plane from Atlanta to Florida, the Shermans decided to rent an SUV and drive five hours home.

Chase told his family and his fiancée, Patti Galloway, he was having a bad reaction to the synthetic drug, Spice. At that point, his mother said the family planned to take him to a doctor when they got home, according to police records. But when the family reached Palmetto, Georgia, Chase began acting erratically in the SUV.

Wanting to get Chase to a hospital, Mary Ann called 911, saying her son "is freaking out" and was "on some kind of drug," according to a statement released by Coweta County District Attorney Peter Skandalakis, who is reviewing the case.

"Chase's parents did what everybody is supposed to do," says Stewart. "You call 911 because it brings help, but in Chase's case, it brought death."

When Coweta County deputies and an EMT responded to the scene, they found Chase "physically combative and would not cooperate in getting out of the back seat," the DA's statement says. It adds, "Multiple attempts were made to subdue Sherman but the Tasers did not seem to have an effect."

The Coweta County Sheriff's Office did not immediately return calls for comment.

CBS News reports that both deputies are still employed with the department, according to Col. James Yarbrough with Coweta County Sheriff's Office. They're identified in incident reports as J.D. Sepanski and S.F. Smith.

In his statement, Skandalakis says, "the review of this case is not complete, the investigation is ongoing and a final decision has not been made concerning the outcome of this case."

Skandalakis's statement adds, "However, in recognition of the great public interest in this matter I have decided to make the body camera and dash board videos available to the media."

Montgomery Co. officer accused of using excessive force on female student at school's prom

http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/144250107-story

A Montgomery County police officer is facing allegations of excessive force at a high school prom. FOX 5 has learned Officer Mauricio Veiga has been removed from his assignment as a school resource officer at Sherwood High School following the outcome of an investigation.

Montgomery County police are looking into the allegations and reviewing surveillance video from the prom held at a local hotel two weeks ago, which allegedly shows an altercation between the officer and a female senior student.

Teachers at the high school who were present at prom filed the complaint against Officer Veiga, a 12-year veteran with the department, claiming he placed a female student in a headlock, tackled her to the ground and then holding her arms behind her back as if he was going to arrest her following a verbal altercation between the teenager and a fellow student.

The father of the high schooler told FOX 5 that he has seen the video of his daughter being restrained by the officer and he agrees that excessive force was used.

He said the video was recorded by a camera in the lobby of the Bethesda Marriott where the prom was held. The victims father does not want to be identified, but says the officer was also wearing a body camera but for reasons unknown, the incident did not get recorded.

Teachers claim Veiga has used questionable judgment before. In one instance, a picture shows him with school faculty pointing a Taser-like weapon towards a teacher's head.

Officer Veiga has been charged with harassment in the past and was also arrested back in 2012 for DUI. Those charges were adjudicated.

Then in 2014, he was charged again with DUI – this time while driving his police cruiser. He was found guilty and ordered to supervised probation. Veiga was subsequently taken off patrol and reassigned as a school resource officer at Sherwood High School.

A few months afterwards, Officer Veiga spoke at a drug and alcohol awareness seminar at Sherwood.

Portland Police Chief Placed on Leave After Forgetting to Mention He Accidentally Shot a Guy

http://gawker.com/portland-police-chief-placed-on-leave-after-forgetting-1778541625?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter& utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

On Tuesday, the police chief of Oregon’s largest city was placed on paid leave after allegedly misleading an investigator about a hunting accident last month.

According to The Oregonian, Portland Police Chief Larry O’Dea failed to tell a responding officer he accidentally fired the shot that hit a friend in the back, instead suggesting the victim shot himself:

O’Dea didn’t identify himself as Portland’s chief or even as a police officer when he was questioned by the deputy who responded April 21 to a 911 call outside Fields, [Harney County] Sheriff Dave Ward said in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

O’Dea and some of his companions at the scene steered the deputy into believing the shooting was a “self-inflicted’’ accident, Ward said.

“We need our Police Bureau operating at its best, and our officers can’t do that when there’s turmoil and confusion surrounding their leader,” wrote Hales. “I am awaiting the outcome of internal and external investigations before commenting about the incident, and urge all Portlanders to do the same.”“I do know it didn’t happen the way it was originally portrayed,” he said.

According to Sheriff Ward, investigators only learned O’Dea was involved when they interviewed the victim almost a month later.

“The victim made it pretty clear he didn’t shoot himself,’’ said Ward. “The victim knew who shot him.’’

While the shooting occurred in April, O’Dea did not inform the public about the incident until reporters asked him about it last week. Portland Mayor Charlie Hales—who was out of town attending a White House conference on gun violence prevention—announced O’Dea’s leave of absence in a prepared statement.

“We need our Police Bureau operating at its best, and our officers can’t do that when there’s turmoil and confusion surrounding their leader,” wrote Hales. “I am awaiting the outcome of internal and external investigations before commenting about the incident, and urge all Portlanders to do the same.”

Emotional pain
 

Middle school student charged with larceny for taking free carton of milk

http://blavity.com/middle-school-student-charged-larceny-taking-free-carton-milk/

Ryan Turk, a Virginia middle school student, was handcuffed and suspended from school over a 65-cent carton of milk.

Turk is a part of Graham Park Middle School’s free lunch program and returned to the line to get his milk, which he said he’d forgotten. When he went back, a police officer accused him of stealing. Turk was handcuffed, taken to the principal’s office and searched for drugs, his mother said.

Police say Turk became disorderly, which is why he was cuffed. Turk admitted to pulling back. His mother said the officer let the situation get out of hand over 65-cents.

Shamise Turk told CBS News 6, “I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m mad. It just went too far. They are charging him with larceny, which I don’t have no understanding as to why he is being charged with larceny when he was entitled to that milk from the beginning.”

The teen is charged with larceny and a school spokesperson said he is suspended for theft, being disrespectful and using his cell phone in school.

“The need for disciplinary action is determined by how a student behaves throughout any given incident,” the school spokesperson said. “An appeals process is in place to ensure the fairness of any disciplinary action.”

EXCLUSIVE: City Hall Held Secret Meeting To Get Story Straight On Laquan

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160526/downtown/exclusive-city-hall-held-secret-meeting-get-story-straight-on-laquan

“Get your story straight.”

Cops will tell you that phrase is code, part of the “Thin Blue Line” code of silence in the Police Department, that signals an expectation to fall in line with an agreed upon narrative of an event regardless of what actually happened.

Apparently, getting your story straight is not a practice unique to the Chicago Police Department.

A few days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Dec. 9 publicly acknowledged that a code of silence exists within the Police Department, his top aides called a secret meeting at City Hall.

The goal: To make sure everybody — top police brass, Chicago Police Board president Lori Lightfoot and members of the Independent Police Review Authority, the independent agency charged with investigating police misconduct — had their story straight, so to speak, before being grilled by aldermen at a City Council joint hearing of Human Relations and Public safety committees in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting, DNAinfo Chicago has learned.

In a Dec. 13 email, top Emanuel-aide Janey Rountree told former acting police Supt. John Escalante, members of the police command staff and others to cancel their own “prep session” for the joint hearing and instead attend a roundtable meeting at City Hall.

“I think it will be really important for CPD to be in the same prep session as IPRA and the Police Board President so everyone has the same information,” Rountree wrote in the email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“I know this conflicts with an internal CPD prep session, so I hope it’s not too much trouble to reschedule yours.”

Rountree’s email also laid out a tentative plan for which members of the Police Department would address questions from aldermen at the hearing. The email, sent weeks before Emanuel removed Escalante as temporary top cop, did not mention Escalante by name.

“Right now, the plan is for Chief [Eugene] Williams and Chief [Eddie L.] Welch to speak for CPD,” according to the email, which also includes a list of questions police brass should be prepared to answer.

“You should review these and decide who else you’ll need in the room, particularly the General Counsel and maybe [Deputy Chief of Support Services] Jonathan Lewin. I think we have some flexibility as to who is testifying,” Rountree wrote.

On Dec. 15, Emanuel’s press secretary Adam Collins followed up with Escalante by emailing him a few things “that came up in our prep yesterday” that included expected questions and answers that were written in first-person that read more like a script than a suggestion.

If Escalante were to get asked “Is there a code of silence in CPD?” Collins offered the top cop exact lines he should say that did not answer the question:

“ – I’ve been part of CPD for more than 29 years, and I’ve been honored to serve with some of the finest men and women I know. I’m sure each of you could share incredible stories about officers in your wards and in your communities who have dedicated themselves to making our city a better place to live.
- But we also need to be honest that in an organization of our size there will be some who break the rules, and unfortunately some who break the law.
- When that happens, those people need to be held accountable.
- And if and when anyone tries to hide information from investigators – they need to be held accountable.
- We have those rules on the books. It’s called Rule 14.
- And we need to uphold it.”

How should Escalante answer if he was asked when Mayor Emanuel found out about the Laquan McDonald shooting?

“A: I have no idea.” Collins wrote in the email.

What if Escalante were to be asked, “Who briefs the Mayor on police-involved shootings?”

Collins wrote: “A: We haven’t had one since I became Superintendent and I couldn’t speak to what Superintendent McCarthy may have done around these instances.”

Escalante, who now serves as the Police Department’s second in command, did not testify before the joint committee until "supper time," eight hours after it began when just 12 aldermen were present, WBEZ's Natalie Moore reported at that time.

At the hearing Escalante read from a written copy of remarks that started, "Good morning," the radio station reported.

Asked about the City Hall script for the hearing, Escalante said, "It’s not uncommon for the police department — similar to other city department and agencies — to work with the Mayor’s office on city announcements and events. As they are hired to do, communications staff regularly provide city officials — including police leadership — with recommendations and pointers on a wide range of topics."

Collins, who was recently promoted as Emanuel’s top spokesman, said the emails show "basic routine interaction" between the mayor's office and city agencies.

"Nothing in here questions the independence of IPRA or the Police Board in any, shape or form. Neither our office nor CPD is involved in IPRA's independent investigative work. All this shows is the basic routine interaction between Mayoral liaisons and city agencies. It is common for the Mayor's office ... to hold prep meetings for agency heads before scheduled committee hearings to ensure that those expected to testify are prepared to answer any and all questions that may be asked by Aldermen during the hearing," Collins said.

"You’d expect nothing less because this type of routine preparation ensures that those testifying are able to provide the Aldermen and the public with full and complete information."

City Council got "spun"

Even after the City Hall prep session and follow-up Q&A scripts, the City Council joint hearing on Dec. 15 turned into a marathon session that the Tribune described as a display of “political posturing” and Ald. Danny Solis (25th) called “a waste of time.”

When Solis on Wednesday learned of the City Hall “prep session” before the joint hearing, the veteran alderman said he remains frustrated by the lack of action being taken to fix the city’s “problem” with the police code of silence and the efforts taken to keep aldermen from getting specifics about the state of the Police Department.

“I think we were definitely spun during that hearing in December. I hope that is still not happening now,” Solis said.

“We have a problem. The cat is out of the bag. We have to figure out how to deal with it. We have got to change at our level. The mayor has responsibility and the City Council has responsibility and the police union has a responsibility to come up with solutions.”

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said he wouldn’t have been surprised by the Emanuel administration's “prep session” if it was just for the Police Department.

After all, "they typically hand out talking points to aldermen telling them what to ask. You can tell because you see some [aldermen] reading something they haven't seen before that's written in language that's not how they usually speak," he said.

But the inclusion of IPRA members and the Police Board boss — who were described in Rountree’s email as part of “all people testifying for the city” — in a City Hall roundtable orchestrated by the Emanuel administration doesn’t seem right to the North Side ward boss.

“I think around the city people see the word ‘independent’ in an agency’s name and they think it’s some other entity; not one that it’s run by a mayoral appointee getting directives directly from [Emanuel’s} 5th Floor office,” Waguespack said.

“I’m not surprised they tried to get everyone lined up to answer the same way especially with the situation so heated. You can understand when it’s a matter of legal review on a controversial situation but this goes way beyond that. It’s political maneuvering and manipulation. That’s [Emanuel’s] M.O. He choreographs everything. When they do that instead of letting people answer honestly they just dig the hole deeper.”

"Was there a cover up?"

Ald. John Arena (45th) said the emails obtained by DNAinfo Chicago show that the Emanuel administration, while being very careful with its messaging related to the Laquan McDonald shooting, "still hasn't leveled with us about what they knew and when they knew it about Laquan. We're still sitting here scratching our heads when it comes to that question."

"Was there a cover-up here? That still needs to be answered. What they knew and how much they knew are the most important questions hanging out there. For me, reading [the emails] adds to that fundamental question that needs to be answered at some point."

The City Hall emails obtained by DNAinfo Chicago shed additional light on how much control the Emanuel administration wields on the day-to-day operations of the Police Department, which is currently the subject of a U.S. Justice Department probe.

The Justice Department investigation, however, has been limited to the policies and practices of the Police Department and, as far as anyone knows, has not been expanded to include City Hall.

Not yet, anyway.

In December, I laid out why the feds should do just that, explaining that Chicago’s mayor “historically sits atop an elaborate pyramid of power designed by the Democratic Machine that cynics will tell you was constructed to preserve a publicly accepted level of crookedness locals refer to, sometimes lovingly, as 'The Chicago Way.'”

An outsider might think Chicago’s top cop runs the Police Department, but it’s Chicago’s mayor who is the real boss. The mayor hires the police superintendent, sets the police budget and, as former police Supt. Garry McCarthy will tell you, calls almost every day for briefings on department doings.

Emanuel’s Corporation Counsel Steve Patton, City Hall's top lawyer, is the guy who negotiates the police union contract that includes provisions that for generations have helped crooked cops escape punishment for misconduct.

And when an officer gets accused of misconduct, Patton is the guy who defends officers in court, sometimes by settling civil lawsuits that have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then there’s the City Hall spin machine that Collins' email appears to show at least attempts to control over almost every word that comes out the top cop's mouth.

Arena stopped short of calling on the feds to take their investigation to City Hall. Instead, the Northwest Side alderman and staunch mayoral critic said he trusts the Justice Department will do what's right.

"The fact that the Department of Justice is investigating is important. That's not an investigation that's easy to subvert. If the Justice Department has a sense that there's more to this they are going to, on their own volition, expand their investigation," he said. "They need to do their work and follow the leads where they go."

Arena clarified his stand by pointing to the words the City Hall Spin Machine had scripted for Escalante in December.

"It's like how they coached Escalante on how to answer about whether there's a code of silence in the police department: If someone breaks the rules they need to be held accountable. If the Department of Justice finds that their investigation leads to the administration they will track down and accordingly hold people accountable," Arena said.

"They won't be held back by any local politics or federal politics and follow the scent where it takes them. When that happens, we'll get the answers."