Cop uses Taser on man with Alzheimer's at nursing home 'because he wouldn't go to the doctor'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/cop-uses-taser-man-alzheimers-9504960#ICID=sharebar_twitter

Harrowing police body cam footage shows the moment an elderly man was Tasered at a nursing home - 'because he refused to go to the doctor'.

The incident was originally captured in March, but has only just been released to the public.

Video footage shows a 91-year-old man - who suffered from Alzheimer's disease - scuffling with an undersheriff from the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office at a Minneapolis nursing home.

In the original report, it suggested that the elderly man had become violent after refusing to get in a car and attend a doctor's appointment.

The man repeatedly bats the hands of officers as they attempt to coax him out of the nursing home and into the vehicle.

In the clip, the man can be seen struggling with officers as they attempt to subdue him, but he breaks free and tries to run away.

One officer tells the man to relax, but he ignores them, prompting another policeman to shout Taser - before deploying the device.

The elderly man then screams in pain before falling to the floor.

The man's family, who do not want to be identified said he died two months after the incident. They believe the Taser incident weakened his heart and led to his passing.

They also claim that the handcuffs used on the 91-year-old broke his wrists.

At the time of the incident, the Minneapolis Police Department confirmed they were investigating.

The elderly man was taken into mental protective custody to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else at the nursing home.

KWCH News reached out to the Ottawa County sheriff after the body cam footage was released.

He said he believed the investigation had been concluded but was unable to speak on camera.

The nursing home has since introduced new policies and have trained staff to handle similar situations.

No, no, no!!!

I can't take it!

Taserig a 91-year old with Alzheimer's. What the living fuck?

Oh my god. Every time that I think that I can't read something worse, I do.

This one particularly kills me.

Doesn't anyone in authority know how to deal appropriately and kindly with a mentally ill or demented person anymore?

Shooting or tasering are the only two options??

I am beyond floored.

Another type of injury
 

George Will: When a house is seized and it enriches police

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/12/23/george-will-when-a-house-is-seized-and-it-enriches-police/

PHILADELPHIA — For Christos and Markela Sourovelis, for whom the worst thing was losing their home, “Room 101” was Courtroom 478 in City Hall. This “courtroom’s” name is Orwellian: There was neither judge nor jury in it. There the city government enriched itself — more than $64 million in a recent 11-year span — by disregarding due process requirements to seize and sell the property of people who have not been accused, never mind convicted, of a crime.

The Sourovelises’ son, who lived at home, was arrested for selling a small amount of drugs away from home. Soon there was a knock on their door by police who said, “We’re here to take your house” and “You’re going to be living on the street” and “We do this every day.” The Sourovelises’ doors were locked with screws and their utilities were cut off. They had paid off the mortgage on their $350,000 home, making it a tempting target for policing for profit.

Nationwide, proceeds from sales of seized property (homes, cars, etc.) go to the seizers. And under a federal program, state and local law enforcement can partner with federal authorities in forfeiture and reap up to 80 percent of the proceeds. This is called — more Orwellian newspeak — “equitable sharing.”

No crime had been committed in the Sourovelises’ house, but the title of the case against them was the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. 12011 Ferndale St. Somehow, a crime had been committed by the house. In civil forfeiture, it suffices that property is suspected of having been involved in a crime. Once seized, the property’s owners bear the burden of proving their property’s innocence. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards,” says the queen in “Alice in Wonderland.”

In Courtroom 478, the prosecutors usually assured people seeking to reclaim their property that they would not need lawyers. The prosecutors practiced semi-extortion, suggesting how people could regain limited control of their property: They could sell it and give half the proceeds to the city. The “hearings” in Courtroom 478 were often protracted over months, and missing even one hearing could result in instant forfeiture.

The Sourovelises were allowed to return to their house only after waiving their rights to statutory or constitutional defenses in a future forfeiture action. Such action was forestalled when their case came to the attention of the Institute for Justice, public interest litigators who never received the “You can’t fight city hall” memo. It disentangled the Sourovelises from the forfeiture machine, shut down Courtroom 478, and now is seeking a court ruling to tether this machine to constitutional standards.

There might somewhere be a second prominent American who endorses today’s civil forfeiture practices, but one such person is “very unhappy” with criticisms of it. At a 2015 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on forfeiture abuses, one senator said “taking and seizing and forfeiting, through a government judicial process, illegal gains from criminal enterprises is not wrong,” and neither is law enforcement enriching itself from this.

In the manner of the man for whom he soon will work, this senator asserted an unverifiable number: “95 percent” of forfeitures involve people who have “done nothing in their lives but sell dope.” This senator said it should not be more difficult for “government to take money from a drug dealer than it is for a businessperson to defend themselves in a lawsuit.”

IJ’s Robert Everett Johnson notes that this senator missed a few salient points: In civil forfeiture there usually is no proper “judicial process.” There is no way of knowing how many forfeitures involve criminals because the government takes property without even charging anyone with a crime.

The government’s vast prosecutorial resources are one reason it properly bears the burden of proving criminal culpability “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

A sued businessperson does not have assets taken until he or she has lost in a trial, whereas civil forfeiture takes property without a trial and the property owner must wage a protracted, complex and expensive fight to get it returned. The Senate Judiciary Committee might want to discuss all this when considering the nominee to be the next attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions.

And yet another type of injury
 

NYPD suspends officer who posted Snapchat of Brooklyn family in handcuffs

http://abc7ny.com/news/family-nypd-raids-wrong-home-posts-snapchat-of-them-in-cuffs/1670637/

BROWNSVILLE, Brooklyn (WABC) --
A family in Brooklyn is outraged after NYPD officers raided their home, put everyone in handcuffs and then posted a picture of them on social media with the caption "Merry Christmas Its NYPD." The ordeal led to the suspension of an officer.

The Brownsville residents were so upset that not only did they file a report, but they also called 911.

"The worst part was the Snapchats," Kimberly Santiago said. "That's what really got to me."

The photo appeared in the "New York story" feed on Snapchat, which a public collection of photos and videos posted by users in NYC.

Here's a look at the snap:

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/w...t-snap-img.jpg

The photo is under investigation by Internal Affairs, which late Friday said the officer who took the photo has been suspended without pay. The department also said the officers were at the correct address, and had a warrant to go inside the apartment. But they would not disclose why home was being investigated.

"The things that he wrote, it's like, this what you all do?" Santiago said. "If he did that to, picture how many other families he's done that to. And he was the only one standing there watching us."

She said the warrant squad showed up at her apartment around 6:30 a.m. Thursday, and they placed everyone inside the unit in handcuffs during the search.

"Ya'll know that when you came to this house, looking for the wrong person that we don't even know," she said.

She said the officers left after about three hours, and not only did they have the wrong address, but a second picture appeared on Snapchat with the caption "Warrant sweeps Its still a party smh."

"We thought he was texting on his phone," she said. "Because the whole three hours we were sitting here, he was the one standing there. We saw him on his phone, but we didn't think an officer would do that."

The NYPD has declined to name the officer or the squad to which he is assigned.

No Death or Injury but a big WTF!!! Cue Twilight Zone music!
 

California man fights DUI charge for driving under influence of caffeine

Attorney for Joseph Schawb, charged with driving under the influence of a drug when his blood test showed only caffeine, calls the charge unheard of

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco Saturday 24 December 2016 Last modified on Saturday 24 December 2016 04.02 EST

Caffeine may be the “nootropic” brain drug of choice in Silicon Valley, but an hour’s drive north in Solano County, California, the stimulant could get you charged with driving under the influence.

That is according to defense attorney Stacey Barrett, speaking on behalf of her client, Joseph Schwab.

After being pulled over on 5 August 2015, Schwab was charged by the Solano County district attorney with misdemeanor driving under the influence of a drug.

Almost 18 months later, Schwab is preparing to go to trial. The only evidence the DA has provided of his intoxication is a blood test showing the presence of caffeine.

Shcwab was driving home from work when he was pulled over by an agent from the California department of alcoholic beverage control, who was driving an unmarked vehicle. The agent said Schwab had cut her off and was driving erratically.

The 36-year-old union glazier was given a breathalyzer test which showed a 0.00% blood alcohol level, his attorney said. He was booked into county jail and had his blood drawn, but the resulting toxicology report came back negative for benzodiazepines, cocaine, opiates, THC, carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant), methamphetamine/MDMA, oxycodone, and zolpidem.

The sample was screened a second time by a laboratory in Pennsylvania, according to documents provided to the Guardian, where the sole positive result was for caffeine – a substance likely coursing through the veins of many drivers on the road at any given time.

“I’ve never seen this before,” said Barrett. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

Barrett has filed a motion for the case to be dismissed because the charges were not brought until June 2016 – nearly 10 months after incident. If that motion is denied, Schwab will take his case to a jury on 11 January.

Sharon Henry, chief deputy district attorney for Solano County, said in a statement that her office was “conducting further investigation in this matter”.

“The charge of driving under the influence is not based upon the presence of caffeine in his system,” she added.

Barrett counters that if the prosecution has evidence of a different drug in her client’s system, it should have to provided that to her, based on the rules governing criminal procedings.

“I have not been provided with any evidence to support a theory of prosecution for a substance other than caffeine at this time,” she said. “Nor I have received any statements, reports, etc documenting any ongoing investigation since the [toxicology report] dated 18 November 2015.”

Henry declined to comment further, citing the right to a fair trial.

“It’s really stupid,” said Jeffrey Zehnder, a forensic toxicologist who frequently testifies in court cases. Over 41 years, Zehnder said, he had never seen a prosecution for driving under the influence of caffeine.

“If that’s the case, then they better come and arrest me,” he joked.

Zehnder was informed about the case by Barrett, but has not been contracted to testify on either side.

California vehicle code defines a “drug” as any substance besides alcohol that could affect a person in a manner that would “impair, to an appreciable degree” his ability to drive normally.

Making that case with caffeine would be difficult, Zehnder said, because the prosecutor would have to show that impaired driving was specifically caused by the caffeine and not any other circumstances.

“There are no studies that demonstrate that driving is impaired by caffeine, and they don’t do the studies, because no one cares about caffeine,” he said.

As for Schwab, he just wants this ordeal to be over. In a statement provided to the Guardian by his attorney, he said his reputation had been damaged.

“No one believed me that I only had caffeine in my system until I showed them the lab results,” he said. “I want the charges to be dismissed and my name to be cleared.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-solano-county

Video appears to show Fort Worth, Texas police shooting man as he walks away

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/david-collie-video-appears-to-show-fort-worth-texas-police-shooting-as-he-walks-away/

A police dashcam video appears to show a Texas officer shoot a black man as he’s walking away from the officer and not posing any immediate threat.

A lawyer for David Collie released a copy of the video showing the July encounter with a Fort Worth officer and a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy. The officer and deputy were off-duty at the time and working a security detail together at an apartment complex, attorney Nate Washington said Wednesday.

He said Collie was shot in the back, leaving him paralyzed.

Police at the time were searching for two shirtless black men who they believed had committed a robbery near a gas station, Washington said. Authorities said in a news release they issued at the time that Collie pulled a box cutter from his pocket and pointed it at the officers.

Collie was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant but a grand jury declined to indict him.

Fort Worth police did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the incident.

Collie, 33, was walking from work to a friend’s apartment when the officers approached him in the patrol vehicle, Washington said. It was the Fort Worth officer who shot Collie, Washington said, and the video appears to show the officer firing his weapon about 10 seconds after exiting the vehicle and as Collie walked away.

The video was obtained about three weeks ago from the Tarrant County district attorney’s office through an open-records request, Washington said. The attorney said he released the video Tuesday at a news conference at Collie’s insistence because Collie was tired of comments made to his mother by people assuming he must have done something wrong.

Washington said Collie wanted to make clear he “didn’t do anything to threaten an officer.”

Release of the shooting video came just days after the Fort Worth police were in the spotlight over another incident. A cellphone video captured a white Fort Worth officer last week wrestling a black woman to the ground and then arresting her and her two daughters. The officer appeared to be argumentative and escalate the encounter with the woman, who had called police following an encounter between her son and a neighbor. The video has been viewed millions of times.

Man shot by Minnesota officer identified as biology teacher

http://www.kcra.com/article/man-shot-by-minnesota-officer-identified-as-biology-teacher/8555162

MANKATO, Minn. —

A man who was fatally shot by a police officer in Minnesota during a struggle at a hotel was identified Monday as a biology teacher from the Minneapolis area.

Chase Tuseth, 33, was shot early Saturday after an officer was called to a disturbance at a motel in Mankato, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension confirmed Monday.

Tuseth was a 2008 graduate of Minnesota State University and taught at Tokata Learning Center, an alternative high school in the Shakopee School District. He previously taught for three years at Integrated Arts Academy in Chaska.

"He was an innovative teacher," Tokata Principal Eric Serbus told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He was always looking for the next and best way to connect with students."

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigated the shooting, identified the officer as 30-year veteran Gary Schnorenberg of the Mankato Department of Public Safety. Schnorenberg is on standard administrative leave, the agency said.

Investigators said Schnorenberg was called to a Country Inn & Suites in Mankato about 4 a.m. Saturday on a report that Tuseth was behind the lobby counter and was throwing things. Schnorenberg encountered Tuseth in a hallway near the pool and, after successfully using a stun gun, was trying to handcuff Tuseth when Tuseth broke free and began hitting and kicking the officer. Schnorenberg fired, striking Tuseth, who died despite attempts to revive him at the scene. Schnorenberg was hurt during the altercation and treated at a hospital.

The Mankato Department of Public Safety does not use body cameras, the state agency noted. No weapons were found at the scene.

Tuseth's uncle, Mark Liptrap of Spokane, Washington, told The Free Press of Mankato that while he does not dispute the possibility that his nephew was intoxicated, he questions why police needed to use deadly force.

"Chase was just a great kid. He was quiet, just polite," Liptrap said.

Tuseth's car was found in downtown Mankato, miles from the motel. Liptrap said he suspects his nephew took a cab or got a ride with friends to the motel because he did not want to drive.

"In one sense, he was trying to be responsible," Liptrap said.

Tuseth's roommate, Luke Mikkola, was out of town when the shooting happened. Mikkola said Tuseth was not a violent person and owned "no weapons, no guns, no knife, no nothing."

Video shows North Carolina police officer body-slamming a female high-school student

http://www.businessinsider.com/police-officer-body-slams-female-high-school-student-north-carolina-2017-1

Philadelphia Police Investigating Video Of Officer’s Confrontation With Teen

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/01/03/philadelphia-police-investigating-videos-of-officer-fighting/

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A video of a police-involved physical altercation with a 16-year-old girl is making the rounds on social media.

Johnnaa Pendleton, 16, says she’s still wearing the scars from that day.

“It’s all right here,” Johnnaa said.

Police were responding to a huge brawl involving 30 to 40 people in the middle of South 54th Street in West Philadelphia on New Year’s Day when eyewitnesses captured the incident.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross says, “The whole incident was just ugly. Police work is not pretty, this would have been a perfect example.”

Ross spoke candidly about the disturbing video saying it doesn’t tell the whole story of what may have precipitated the incident.

“You cannot see the striking portion where the female admits that she struck the officer,” Ross said. “That is not shown or depicted in the video.”

Johnnaa says, “I feel sick. I have a bruise on my face”

Johnnaa claims she never hit the female officer in the face. She says she was backing away when she was violently thrown to the ground and punched.

“As you see in the video, she’s yanking my hair,” she said.

However, CBS 3’s Natasha Brown reports that Johnnaa told police that she did hit the officer.

Johnnaa says, “At the end of the day I’m still a minor and she’s a grown woman and a cop.”

The officer has been pulled from the streets upon an internal affairs investigation.

Illinois cops surround and beat black man accused of stealing his own car in violent dash cam video

http://fusion.net/story/380291/police-footage-arrest-lawrence-crosby/?utm_campaign=ThisIsFusion&utm_source=Twitter&utm_ medium=social

Just more than a year after the violent—and ultimately wrongful—arrest of a black graduate student, the Evanston, Illinois, Police Department has released dash cam footage of the incident, which one local politician described as “outrageous.”

On October 10, 2015, Lawrence Crosby, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, was pulled over and arrested after he was accused of having stolen the car he was driving, the Daily Northwestern reported. The car, it turned out, belonged to Crosby himself.

In the footage released this week by the EPD, Crosby can be seen exiting his vehicle holding a phone in his upraised hands. When police instruct him to get down on the ground, Crosby begins moving to the front of his car to position himself in front of his own dashboard camera (which can be seen at certain points in the upper lefthand corner of the EPD footage). After not complying with their initial order to get down, Crosby is then grabbed by a group of at least five police officers, kneed until he drops, and—upon hitting the ground—is seen enduring a series of blows from one of the officers.

Officers can heard repeatedly telling Crosby to “stop resisting” while he is being tackled. As he is detained, Crosby tells the police they are on video, before calmly explaining who he is, and that the car belongs to him. He later begins arguing with the officers over whether his Fifth Amendment rights apply in this situation.

Off camera, the woman who initially called the police to report the possibly stolen vehicle is heard explaining her call.

“I feel really, I feel really, like, I didn’t mean to racial profile” she tells the officer, who replies that “he’s got a different issue going on right now.”

Speaking with CBS Chicago, Crosby’s attorney, Timothy J. Touhy, explained that his client was then taken to the police station and charged with “two criminal offenses, for which Lawrence had to stand trial and was acquitted.” Crosby is currently suing the city of Evanston, as well as the officers involved in his arrest, for false arrest and excessive force. EPD officials declined to comment on that lawsuit for the network, although CBS Chicago reports they are currently on full duty.

In a preamble to the dash cam footage, Evanston Police Department Sargent Dennis Leaks acknowledges that Crosby was given “some empty handed strikes to the heavy-muscle region” while on the ground, and that upon review by EPD officials, “it was determined that the force used in this incident was in compliance with our procedures as it pertains to this type of situation.”

Nevertheless, Crosby’s arrest has prompted a number of procedural changes within the department. In his introduction, Leaks went on to explain that “we will no longer require subjects to be proned [sic] during these types of stops.”

“We acknowledge and realize that there are some problematic issues that come with that,” Leaks continued. “Locations of the stop, weather conditions, and it gives a bad perception.”

Local alderman Brian Miller told CBS Chicago that the footage was “one of the most outrageous acts I’ve seen from our officers so far.”

“For two years, I’ve been talking about a pattern with the Evanston police officers not de-escalating minor incidents where it didn’t have to lead to arrest or (other charges),” Miller reportedly said during a city council meeting earlier this week. “If our police officers took a moment to step back and examine the circumstances and de-escalate situations we wouldn’t have these types of situations.”

According to the website Evanston Now, a number of changes to EPD policy and procedures are scheduled to be unveiled by city officials at an upcoming Evanston Human Services Committee meeting.

Police probe: Veteran Lowell cop struck handcuffed student

http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_30724363/police-probe-veteran-lowell-cop-struck-handcuffed-student

LOWELL -- Patrolman David Pender, a 28-year veteran of the Lowell Police Department, will soon learn if he keeps his job after an internal investigation found the officer used unnecessary force in an altercation involving a 16-year-old student at the Lowell High School Career Academy.

The 87-page report, obtained through a public records request by The Sun, has been forwarded to City Manager Kevin Manager who will decide what disciplinary action should be taken against Pender.

The report details an incident that took place on Sept. 15, 2016 at the Career Academy on Smith Street, a grade 9-12 school for youths with behavioral problems.

Pender is said to have handcuffed a student behind his back and ordered the room cleared of any possible witnesses before grabbing the 16-year-old boy by the neck, striking him in the head, and threatening to spray him with Mace.

Lt. Greg Hudon, officer in charge of the Professional Standards Division, conducted the probe.

Pender, a school resource officer (SRO) at the Career Academy, will not be criminally charged, said a spokesman for Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan.

Police Superintendent William Taylor apologized to the student and his family, on behalf of the city. Murphy called the incident "unfortunate and serious."

The incident unfolded during the mid-afternoon hours when the student was suspected of having a bag of marijuana in his pocket.

"Due to the fact that Officer Pender ordered the room cleared, this writer is left with only two witnesses, Officer Pender and (redacted). Officer Pender cannot offer any plausible explanation as to the origin of the marks and bruises," on the victim, Hudon wrote in his report.

"This fact, coupled with (redacted) statements and the additional medical records and photographs and text messages to his aunt, leaves this writer to draw the following conclusion: Based on all available information, this writer finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the allegation of misconduct is sustained, based on the following violation of the rules and regulations of the Lowell Police Department:"

* Prohibited conduct -- unnecessary force, "or the use of more physical force than that which is necessary to accomplish a proper police purpose."

The victim told police that when Pender "released his throat" he "slapped him on the side of his head" and threatened to spray him with Mace "if he didn't shut his mouth."

By all accounts, Hudon wrote, the youth was argumentative, challenged Pender's authority and at one point challenged the officer to arrest him.

"These words do not rise to the level of assaultive behavior or resisting arrest requiring the application of any additional force," Hudon wrote.

The report also includes Pender's account, taken from the officer's arrest report.

Pender wrote the student refused to empty his pockets and became "loud and confrontational." The officer said the student raised his hand to his chest and refused to put it hand down. Noting the student's "agitated state," Pender said he feared the student might assault him.

"I asked school staff to step out of the office area," Pender wrote in the arrest report. "He continued to be loud and disrespectful demanding me to arrest him."

Pender declined to comment through Officer Francisco Maldonado, president of the Lowell Police Association, the union that represents police officers. Pender is union vice president.

Sgt. David Peaslee, the officer in charge of all SROs, had warned SROs about conduct based on an September 2015 incident at a South Carolina school. A school resource officer in Columbia threw female student to the floor when she refused to stand and leave the classroom. A video went viral. The officer was fired.

In the Oct. 29, 2015 email, included in Hudon's report, Peaslee wrote:

"My take on this incident? We lose. A police officer, with his/her gun, spray, PR24 (baton), badge, etc., is always going to look bad on film whenever we attempt to arrest a juvenile student. Protect yourselves. Do not lose your career over a misdemeanor arrest. Act appropriately and attempt to de-escalate every situation. And above all, it is your decision to make an arrest. Not the principals' or house master decision. Summons is always our best option."

Peaslee told Hudon the practice of clearing a room arose as a result of the South Carolina school incident. The practice can be useful because the problem child will not "have an audience to play to."

Clearing a room does not include "clearing security officers or other personnel that would be in a position to help the officer," Hudon wrote. "Sergeant Peaslee expressed he would never want an officer to be in a position of being alone in a room with a student where a misconduct allegation could be made."

In a statement, Taylor said: "I am disappointed in the officer's actions during this incident. The student's behavior was a contributing factor in this event; however, once the student was placed under arrest without incident, the student was subjected to unnecessary force. The entire school community trusts the Lowell Police to care for all students professionally and appropriately. In this incident the officer violated that trust. The student was held accountable by the juvenile justice system; likewise action will be taken to hold our personnel accountable. As superintendent of the Lowell Police Department I have apologized to the parties impacted by the officer's misconduct."

Said Murphy: "This is a very unfortunate and serious situation and the city will take appropriate action." Murphy added he'll make a decision by the middle of next week.

Pender, who earns nearly $87,000 a year, was placed on paid administrative leave Nov. 11.

The Sun reported at the time that DA Ryan was conducting her own investigation. It's unclear precisely why Ryan chose not to pursue criminal charges, but DA spokesman Meghan Kelly said in an email: "While we do not speak to specific investigations when no criminal charges have been filed, there are many reasons why an investigation may not have led to charges. This includes, primarily, our assessment as to whether we have sufficient evidence to sustain our high burden of proof."

However, a Dec. 12 email from Katharine Folger, chief of the DA's Child Protection Unit, to Hudon, a copy of which was acquired by The Sun, said the boy's father "steadfastly maintained" he did not want to pursue criminal charges.

Pender was arrested by Lowell police on New Year's Day in 2013 at his Lowell residence on domestic assault and battery charges. He was immediately placed on paid administrative leave by Kenneth Lavallee, then police superintendent.

Pender's wife declined to press charges. City officials disciplined Pender with 10 punishment days, working for no pay.

Pender was also one of seven Lowell police officers who were accused of sexually harassing a female colleague during an off-duty bus trip to a political rally in Boston in October 1998. Then-City Manager Brian Martin suspended Pender for a year without pay. Pender appealed to the state Civil Service Commission and was successful in reducing his punishment to six months.

Guard Arrested After Beating Of Handcuffed Prisoner Is Caught On Video

Guard Arrested After Beating Of Handcuffed Prisoner Is Caught On Video

A New Mexico corrections officer is facing criminal charges after authorities say he was caught on video beating a handcuffed prisoner at an Albuquerque jail.

The video appears to show an officer, identified as Christopher Facey, 26, attacking and repeatedly punching inmate Joe Garcia, 38.

The incident occurred in late November in a holding room at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

“The first reaction to the video was that the incident shouldn’t have happened to begin with,” Jail Administrator Thomas Ruiz told Albuquerque’s

According to court documents, the graphic video shows Facey lunge at Garcia, who is wearing handcuffs strapped to leg shackles, wrap his hand and arm around Garcia’s head and drive “Garcia’s body into the concrete floor.”

Facey, authorities said, can then be seen punching Garcia several times. When the prisoner falls to the floor, the officer continues the assault and kicks Garcia before dragging him into a room off-camera. Facey is accused of then kicking Garcia in the head.

“The kick was similar to how a person would make a run-up type kick to a soccer ball,” the court documents say.

The assault continued, authorities said, until other officers intervened.

The court documents claim Facey called Garcia a child molester prior to the assault. The inmate reportedly responded with racial slurs.

Joe Garcia was wearing handcuffs when he was assaulted, court documents say.

Bernalillo County Public Information Officer Nataura Powdrell-Moore told The Huffington Post that Garcia was in jail on charges of criminal damage to property and battery. The disposition of his case remains unclear.

Facey was booked Thursday on charges of kidnapping and aggravated battery. According to Albuquerque’s KOB 4 Eyewitness News, he was released from jail after posting $10,000 bond.

The officer is still employed by the Metropolitan Detention Center.

“Officer Facey is on paid administrative leave right now, pending the outcome of an investigation by the Office of Professional Standards,” Powdrell-Moore told HuffPost.

Facey has been employed by the Metropolitan Detention Center since September 2010. Powdrell-Moore said he received “force response to resistance” training from the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office last year.

“We just regret that that has happened because we know it violates public trust, and we apologize for that,” Ruiz told KRQE News.

Police probe: Veteran Lowell cop struck handcuffed student

http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnew...cuffed-student

It's not bad enough that he did this to a kid in handcuffs but he also committed domestic violence against his wife and has a history with his cop buddies of sexually harassing a colleague.

What a prize for the police force.

I particularly like that he still has his job and is paid $87K a year while on administrative leave.

Ain't America great?

St. Paul police officer charged with assault, accused of punching handcuffed 14-year-old

http://www.twincities.com/2017/01/23/st-paul-police-officer-charged-with-assault-accused-of-punching-handcuffed-14-year-old/

Prosecutors charged a St. Paul officer with assault Monday, saying he punched a 14-year-old girl twice in the face when she was handcuffed in the back of a squad car.

The teen had spit in Officer Michael Philip Soucheray II’s face, according to the criminal complaint charging him with a misdemeanor.

Officers were trying to get the girl from an emergency shelter to a hospital because she was reported to be suicidal but was refusing to go, the complaint said. After Soucheray struck the teen with a closed fist, causing her pain, he grabbed the girl “by the jaw and/or face/neck area,” the complaint said. He then called her a “(expletive) bitch,” the court document continued.

Police Chief Todd Axtell placed Soucheray, 38, on paid administrative leave Monday. A police spokesman said they can’t discuss the reason due to state law.

An internal affairs investigation was opened the day after the incident, and the police department asked the Dakota County sheriff’s office to conduct a criminal investigation.

The case was then referred to the Minneapolis city attorney’s office, to avoid a conflict of interest, and they charged Soucheray on Monday with fifth-degree assault.

Soucheray’s attorney, Peter Wold, said in a statement Monday that “this charge is based on a self-defense reaction to a screaming, threatening subject immediately after she had committed a felony assault on Officer Soucheray by intentionally spitting her saliva into his face. Officer Soucheray pushed her away by striking her with such little force that not even a mark appeared on her in the booking photo of her taken within an hour of the incident.

“Officer Soucheray reacted with reasonable force,” Wold continued. “Officer Soucheray regrets the attention this political reaction may bring to his fellow officers at the St. Paul Police Department and does assure them that he will defend himself vigorously against this unfortunate action.”

POLICE RESPONDED TO SHELTER FOR GIRLS

The incident occurred Dec. 1 when officers Chris Rhoades and Soucheray were called to a report of a 14-year-old girl who was possibly suicidal at an East Side shelter for girls, Brittany’s Place. Soucheray tried to talk to the teen, but she refused to answer, the complaint said.

Based on the girl’s behavior, she was going to be transported to a hospital, but she didn’t want to go and “became agitated,” the complaint said. A decision was made that the officers would take her “because she was refusing to go with an ambulance and because she was being uncooperative,” the complaint said.

When Soucheray told the girl that police would be taking her, the girl said she was not going and officers handcuffed her. They escorted her to a squad car, and the teen was screaming and crying.

The girl refused to get in the squad. Rhoades told the teen that if she didn’t, she would be dragged, and the girl went limp, the complaint said.

Soucheray went to the other side of the squad, pulled the girl by the arm into the vehicle and sat her up. The officers tried to put a seatbelt around the teen, but she was resisting, the complaint said. At one point, the girl stood up, turned toward Soucheray and spit in his face.

The location where the girl was coming from is an emergency shelter for girls 10- to 18-years-old who have been sexually exploited, said Dan Pfarr, president and CEO of 180 Degrees, of which Brittany’s Place is a program.

“We have a long working relationship at Brittany’s Place with the St. Paul police,” Pfarr said. “They’re very critical in us keeping the girls safe. The girls have a lot of trauma they’ve experienced, and there are problematic behaviors that occur. The police are well aware of it and are trained. … We do expect them to maintain their composure under stress, and they do, they have. We believe this is an isolated incident.”

When the incident was brought to Pfarr’s attention, he knew it needed to be reported immediately to the police chief.

“We felt we could go directly to Chief Axtell because we knew he would respond appropriately, and he has,” Pfarr said.

The case also came to the police department’s attention through their regular review of use of force, said Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman.

Soucheray is summoned to appear in court March 16.

At the time of the incident, police arrested the girl on suspicion of fourth-degree assault on Soucheray, and she was brought to the Ramsey County Juvenile Detention Center. The day after her arrest, based upon the evidence presented by St. Paul police investigators, the Ramsey County attorney’s office said they declined to charge her.

Pfarr said Monday that the teen “was initially pretty upset and had some physical marks, but she is doing well.”

POLICE CHIEF EXPRESSES DISAPPOINTMENT

Axtell told the police department in an email Monday that it disappointed him an officer’s actions would lead to criminal charges, saying that “(a)s a department, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards.”

In a public statement, the police chief said: “The St. Paul Police Department is committed to serving the city of St. Paul with the highest levels of professionalism. As the department has demonstrated time and time again, when incidents occur that do not meet those standards, swift and decisive action is taken to hold ourselves accountable.”

The department is aware of the charge against Soucheray, Axtell said, but couldn’t comment on the allegations because of Minnesota employment laws.

“We understand the public’s interest in receiving timely, factual answers to questions about this matter, and the department will provide as much information as possible once state law allows us to do so,” Axtell said. “In the meantime, we will respect the legal process and let it play out before commenting further or taking any additional actions.”

After the police department opened the internal affairs investigation Dec. 2, Soucheray was assigned to an administrative role that didn’t include patrol, Linders said. Rhoades is not the subject of an internal affairs investigation, according to the police department.

There is squad video of the incident, but the police department considers it part of the criminal case and won’t be releasing it while the case is underway, Linders said.

Soucheray has been a St. Paul officer for seven years.

He’s been disciplined three times in the past. He received a written reprimand last year for a preventable squad crash; an oral reprimand for a preventable squad crash in 2014; and an oral reprimand in 2012 for failing to attend a scheduled court trial, according to police department records.

Dave Titus, St. Paul Police Federation president, said he suspects the department won’t proceed with the internal investigation until the criminal aspect is complete.

“We’re very disappointed that charges are moving forward,” Titus said. “Mike Soucheray is an outstanding officer with a very good reputation, and the East Side (where he was assigned to patrol) benefits from his work ethic.”

Mpls. officer charged for firing at car

http://www.kare11.com/news/crime/mpls-officer-charged-for-firing-at-car/392183144

MINNEAPOLIS - A Minneapolis police officer has been charged following a November incident in which he allegedly shot at a car full of people after it accidentally struck his squad car.

Efrem Hamilton, 42, of Minneapolis, has been charged with second-degree assault and intentional discharge of a firearm.

According to the criminal complaint, Minneapolis police were called to a fight with shots fired near 408 Third Ave. N. around 2:15 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2016. The officers responding to the scene put out over the radio that a gray, four-door Cadillac may be involved and it was going the wrong way on Third Ave.

Officer Hamilton was off-duty, working at the PourHouse (10 S. Fifth St.) when he heard the shots fired call. He drove to the scene to assist, but never radioed that he was responding, according to the complaint.

As other officers were stopping the Cadillac, a woman driving a dark BMW was following the instructions of officers to back her car down Third Ave. While doing that, Officer Hamilton parked in the middle of Third Ave. The woman backed her vehicle into Hamilton's car.

The complaint states Hamilton jumped out of his car and, without giving verbal commands, fired a shot, striking the BMW. Six people were in the car. No one was injured.

"Police officers have a difficult job," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. "Yet, in this case, Officer Hamilton fired a shot at a car full of people just three seconds after getting out of his car. This is unacceptable behavior by a police officer, endangering the lives of innocent people."

Hamilton's first court appearance has not yet been set.

Two people suffered gunshot wounds in the original shots-fired call. The incident was a result of 30-40 people fighting in the area of 400 Third Ave. N.

Phoenix police release body-camera footage of man's death in custody; sister calls for justice

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/01/26/phoenix-police-release-body-cam-footage-mans-death-custody-sister-calls-justice-muhammad-abdul-muhaymin/97111164/?hootPostID=6ae2012e930da0ddf61697d99d1c7fce

Phoenix police on Thursday released body-camera footage that captured the moments before the in-custody death of a transient man earlier this month.

The release came as the sister of Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin and a handful of activists gathered at Phoenix police headquarters to call for justice in his death.

Muhaymin, 43, was pronounced dead at the hospital on Jan. 4, just after he had gone into “medical distress” after being restrained by officers at a west Phoenix community center.

The footage is raw; laced with profanity, shaky, and emotionally jarring to watch. But the video and other body-camera recordings are increasingly offering the public a window into critical police encounters only witnessed by bystanders in previous generations.

Phoenix police body-camera footage from Jan. 4, 2017, of the situation involving Muhammad Muhaymin at the Maryvale Community Center. azcentral.com

Police initially were called to Maryvale Community Center on a report that Muhaymin had been acting erratically. A caller to police said that Muhaymin had pushed an employee at the center, but later information revealed that the employee had blocked Muhaymin's way into the restroom and the two bumped into each other.

Officers are heard telling Muhaymin there was a warrant for his arrest, and ordering him to put down his small dog, which was in his arms. This appears to upset Muhaymin, and visuals become more difficult to follow as officers appear to wrestle him to the ground.

“Now you’re going to be going for a felony now, dumb---,” one officer remarks.

Muhaymin can be heard wailing and appears to be struggling as the officers attempt to restrain him.

“I cannot believe this,” Muhaymin says after he appears to have been carried out to a police car. It is at this point that more police arrive for backup.

On the day of Muhaymin's death, a police spokesman said officers were forced to use two sets of handcuffs to bind his arms behind his back. Still, he managed to bring his hands over his head so his arms were in front.

In the video, police continue to struggle with Muhaymin outside of the car until it becomes apparent that he is unresponsive. The officers then attempt to resuscitate him and call for an ambulance.

Video released as police investigation continues

In a written statement, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams explained the decision to release the video.

“In keeping with the spirit of transparency and positive communication with our community and our employees, we are releasing the body worn camera footage obtained during our contact with Mr. Muhammad Muhaymin from January 4th.

“This investigation remains active. We have a duty to protect the integrity of the investigation, however, in this particular case, we do not believe the release of the body worn camera video will jeopardize our ability to complete a thorough and accurate investigation.

"As with any critical incident, we will always review and learn from what has transpired.”

As with other law-enforcement documents, the release of body-cam footage is often a tightrope walk between police transparency and protecting privacy and ongoing investigations.

Police spokesman Sgt. Jonathan Howard said Phoenix police largely follow the guidance of written public-records policies, like redacting personal information such as an individual’s phone or Social Security number.

In the video, several of the witnesses’ faces are blurred, and personal information is muted.

Policy also allows a more subjective public-records exception for “information that by its very nature is so gross, demeaning, biased, or sensitive that it would do irreparable harm to innocent persons or their character if released.”

Police appear to have tapped into this portion of policy and redacted certain portions of footage when Muhaymin had vomited, shortly before his death.

'He was a good person, and this should never have happened'

Mussallina Muhaymin, Muhaymin’s sister and legal guardian, spoke to reporters about her brother Thursday morning outside of police headquarters in downtown Phoenix.

Mussallina Muhaymin, flanked by her attorney and civil-rights activists from Black Lives Matter Phoenix, called for justice for her brother.

“He was a person,” she said, stressing the word “person.” “A person that was well loved, and well established in the community of Maryvale. He was a good person, and this should never have happened.”

Mussallina Muhaymin’s attorney, David Chami, said the family is still seeking answers in the case and still considering legal options.

A Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office representative said the official cause and manner of death in Muhaymin’s case is still pending.

Chami said Muhaymin’s arrest warrant was for failure to appear in a Mesa case involving possession of drug paraphernalia.

10 officers involved in the confrontation

Phoenix police on Thursday released the names of the officers involved in the incident, in order of their moment of contact: Oswald Grenier, 17 years experience; Jason Hobel, 17 years experience; Ronaldo Canilao, 15 years experience; David Head, 21 years experience; Susan Heimbigner, 20 years experience; Kevin McGowan, 19 years experience; James Clark, 23 years experience; Dennis Leroux, 14 years experience; Ryan Nielsen, 12 years experience; Steven Wong, 16 years experience.

Criminal and internal investigations for all of the involved officers are ongoing, Howard said. All were placed on administrative leave and now are back on duty.

At least one of the officers has been accused of excessive force before.

McGowan was fired by then-Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner after an incident in which surveillance footage showed him stomping on a teenage suspect who had already surrendered. The incident knocked out three of the suspect’s teeth.

But in August 2015, four months after he was fired, McGowan was reinstated by the city’s Civil Service Board. He was reassigned to the patrol division the next day.

FAMILY OF JARON THOMAS SEEKS ANSWERS IN HIS DEATH

http://goblackcentral.com/2017/01/family-of-jaron-thomas-seeks-answers-in-his-death/

On January 14, 2017, 36-year-old Jaron Thomas called for help, as he had done several times before by the advice of mental health professionals. Jaron had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and struggled with hallucinations. He was a gifted hip-hop lyricist, having at one point worked with well-known artist Bizzy-Bone. He knew that he needed help and had calmly asked for a medic on the 911 call obtained by the family. He expected to be admitted for treatment, in his home town of Columbus, Ohio, but the response he received instead was from officers with the Columbus Police Department. It is unclear what transpired, but the result was inexplicable injuries and brain damage.

Surrounded by his close-knit family and a host of loved ones and friends, this loving father of 3 fought for his life. He lost the battle on January 23rd, roughly one week after his brutal and tragic encounter with police. Click here for official press release from the family’s legal team Walton + Brown, LLP, who is also representing others looking for answers from CPD (including the families of Henry Green and Tyre King).

The family has set up a campaign to raise funds for an independent autopsy and to help support their private investigation into this matter. Local media and the police department have been absolutely silent, while the family has pushed hard on social media to get the word out.

According to experts and an article in The Washington Post, “Distraught People, Deadly Results,” officers often lack the training to approach the mentally unstable. “This a national crisis,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, an independent research organization devoted to improving policing. “We have to get American police to rethink how they handle encounters with the mentally ill. Training has to change.”

In addition to the lack of training, policies around how police report these incidents are loose and don’t paint an adequate picture of the widespread nature of this issue.

Reality TV Show: Rampant Racial Profiling
 

Mayor Cancels Reality Police TV Show As Footage Shows Rampant Racial Profiling

Matt Agorist February 13, 2017

Tulsa, OK — A new reality TV show following around cops has been canceled and kicked out of Tulsa after residents said they were too scared to leave their homes for fear of being caught on this show.

The new A&E show, with its unimaginative title and copycat premise, LIVE PD, claims that it “offer viewers unfettered and unfiltered live access inside the country’s busiest police forces and the communities they patrol in the new documentary series.”

According to the show’s own description, they planned to target poor communities using urban and rural police forces around the country. The police, obviously ecstatic about being able to harass people on TV, have made some busts but they’ve also been caught in ridiculous and infuriating moments of racial profiling.

Pandering to producers, the Tulsa police department reportedly took to the same neighborhood for every episode and harassed entirely innocent people. After being unnecessarily harassed to bolster ratings and promote the police state, residents finally had enough.

On Sunday, after a clip of the show epitomizing the rampant profiling went viral, the mayor responded by terminating the contract with A&E.

“Gt Bynum look at the comments here, please. Every week people post about how they can’t leave their homes for fear of being caught on this show. Please get A&E out of Tulsa,” one Facebook user wrote. To which the mayor responded, “I spoke with Chief Jordan about this last week and he confirmed our agreement with them has been terminated. I am not a fan.”

Just as the reality show COPS, which started in 1989, was used to bolster the police state and promote the immoral war on drugs, LIVE PD appears to have set out to do the same.

No one here is denying that police arrest criminals. However, using substances arbitrarily deemed illegal by the state, like cannabis, police officers lay waste to the rights of the citizens in their proactive shakedowns waging the drug war.
Below is a clip from the show that was posted to Facebook which epitomizes the center of this controversy. In the clip, a clean-cut middle-aged black man is openly harassed for wearing “gang clothing” because his polo shirt is blue.

While being harassed, the man explodes at the officer, who is apparently so used backlash from profiling and harassment that he doesn’t even bat an eye. The man was getting something out of his trunk and this officer decided it was grounds to question him.

While some may feel that the show being canceled is a good thing, unfortunately, it does nothing to stop the problem. The mayor’s move to cancel this show was likely done out of embarrassment as it seems has no plans to stop the harassment — off camera.

This harassment, although it is not on TV, takes place in poor communities across the country day in and day out. At least LIVE PD was showing Americans what it looked like.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/may...WTxuwDALGrp.99

Lawsuit: Woman died after being left unattended for hours in jail

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/lawsuit-woman-died-after-being-left-unattended-for-hours-in-jail/493832683

ATLANTA - A family said their loved one died in the Atlanta City Jail, where she was being held for a minor crime, and it took hours for anyone to find her.

Records show Wickie Bryant was booked into the Atlanta City Detention Center in Sept. 2015 after police arrested her for disorderly conduct. Bryant suffered from schizophrenia and diabetes, among other health issues.

Mildred Sims, Bryant’s sister, said Bryant was then moved into a jail cell in an area of the jail where lights had not been on for years.

“It's really, really painful,” Sims told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne. “If it wasn't for our faith, we wouldn’t be able to get through this.”

“She was only in there for a misdemeanor,” attorney Stephen Fowler said.

Bryan left the jail almost exactly one month later on a covered stretcher. Now, that misdemeanor case has morphed into a federal suit alleging wrongful death.

“We want justice for her. I am speaking on behalf of her. I am her voice,” Sims told Winne.

The suit says, “Ms. Bryant died alone in an unlit cell, where her body remained for several hours before anyone even noticed that she died.”

“They found Ms. Bryant dead in a dark, unlit cell,” said attorney M.J. Blakely.

“Ultimately Ms. Bryant suffered from diabetic ketoacidosis, which essentially happens when a diabetic patient or individual does not receive the medications they need to survive,” Fowler said.

The suit alleges Bryant, “consistently declined treatment, but no mental health professional evaluated her decision-making capacity, and no one ever referred her to a physician.”

“Not once did she see a doctor,” Blakely said.

Bryant’s attorneys said written jail policy requires a doctor referral for an inmate who refuses medication twice.

“Does it say how that referral will happen?” Winne asked Fowler.

“It does not,” Fowler said.

The attorneys said the policy lacks clarity and checks and balances, and didn’t help Bryant, though she refused medication several times.

The suit alleges at one point, Bryant became agitated and an officer moved her to another cell “in an area where the lights had not functioned for years, making it extremely difficult to see detainees.”

“This is not the place you house anyone, especially somebody who's suffering from mental illness and whose health care condition is declining,” Blakely said.

An email from a city spokesperson said the city cannot comment on a case that is in litigation.

The city did, however, provide a copy of its investigation, including video, after our open records request.

The file shows disciplinary action against a number of people who were in jail for rules violations.

Another type of injury
 

Federal Judge: Cops Have Power to Make You Crap In Your Pants

http://www.ocweekly.com/news/federal-judge-cops-have-power-to-make-you-crap-in-your-pants-7900187

Did a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer violate a female motorist's constitutional rights by repeatedly blocking her access to an Orange County bathroom while she fought a losing battle against a rapid onslaught of diarrhea?

For Toni Antonellis, a well-respected San Diego food entrepreneur, and Aaron Rothberg, a CHP officer who once worked on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's protection detail, that question isn't hypothetical.

Fate placed Antonellis and Rothberg together before noon on the southbound 5 freeway near El Toro Road on June 18, 2014. Earlier that day, Antonellis attended a food vendors' event in Ventura County, then while driving through Costa Mesa, she began to feel severe gastric pain.

"I started having stomach cramps and thought something was off," she recalled in court proceedings. "I had eaten some food that I don't typically eat, as a courtesy to my fellow vendors, and I started breaking out in a sweat. I knew that I needed to use the bathroom."

However, traffic not only was moving below the speed limit, but also had formed a wall across lanes, blocking her from speeding ahead. Desperate to bypass the obstruction, she illegally entered the HOV lane, accomplished her plan, crossed over double yellow lines and re-entered normal traffic so she could exit at Alicia Parkway.

That's when Rothberg, who'd left an event teaching grade-school kids to respect law-enforcement officers, stopped her on the off-ramp after activating his vehicle's lights and siren. Antonellis said she was in an emergency situation and needed to immediately visit a nearby Wendy's restroom. According to a video recording of the encounter, she told the officer, "I'm going to shit my pants if you don't let me get into a bathroom right now."

Rothberg refused to believe her, though, in a later deposition, he conceded Antonellis had appeared frantic. CHP officers routinely hear half-baked stories designed to avoid citations and none tops a bathroom excuse for violating California's vehicle code, he testified. So, he treated her as a liar.

"I'm really sick," she reiterated. "I just need to go to the bathroom."

Though it obviously doesn't take paramedic assistance to empty one's bowels, the cop sarcastically asked Antonellis if he should summon an ambulance, a delay that would put her in additional misery. He then demanded to inspect her driver's license, registration and insurance paperwork. After she complied, the officer returned to his vehicle.

"Antonellis waited and waited and waited, silently suffering with an increase of cramping and intestinal distress," Keith H. Rutman, her attorney, told U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna. "Relief in the form of a nearby, clearly visible bathroom made matters worse. After she overheard dispatch verify that her license was valid and she was not subject to any warrants, she leaned her head out the window and told Rothberg, who still had all her documents, that she could not wait any longer without losing her bowels on the spot, that she was going to drive her car to the restroom and he could meet her there, where she would sign the citation and retrieve her documents."

On the verge of disaster, Antonellis drove toward Wendy's. The officer gave chase, ordered her out of her Lexus and, again, ignored her pleas. He claims he had to consider potential possibilities: Was this wealthy, attractive, middle-aged woman with a valid ID a dangerous killer fleeing a bloody crime scene? Or was she a Mexican-drug-cartel mule hauling weapons and cocaine? Allegedly fearing for his life, he placed her in handcuffs.

Now restrained and weeping, Antonellis' willpower gave way to a messy reality. She soiled herself. Rothberg then locked her in the back of his patrol car, where she experienced a second round of diarrhea. Her cries for help were ignored, she claims. She also says the officer mocked her distress. After nine minutes, Rothberg removed the handcuffs, handed her two $500 citations and told her to "have a nice day."

The feces-stained back seat of his cruiser cost taxpayers $150 to clean.

Driving back to San Diego wearing a towel, Antonellis—the co-owner of Green Bellies, a nutrition company specializing in providing healthy food for children, as well as a café at a San Diego museum—called a CHP supervisor to threaten legal action. Rothberg appeared at the Harbor Courthouse in Newport Beach 16 days later to dismiss both citations, but not as an act of kindness. He elevated the case to criminal, seeking charges that she'd resisted arrest and obstructed him from performing his duties. A judge issued an arrest warrant after a CHP internal investigation asserted that the agency was "unable to substantiate" the allegation that the officer "exhibited poor judgment."

According to Rutman, the tardy charge was brought "for the sole purpose of dissuading Antonellis from filing a civil lawsuit against officer Rothberg and retaliating against her for indicating an intent to do so, as CHP was on notice that was her intended course of action. . . . Rothberg fabricated a version of events to support his plan. The allegations in the reports he prepared and presented are false and untrue."

Tony Rackauckas' scandal-scarred Orange County district attorney's office (OCDA) sided with the officer and took the case to trial, hoping to put the defendant in jail over the bathroom fiasco. The jury was not impressed by the government's arguments. Eight of the 12 jurors voted for acquittal. Antonellis then filed a civil-rights lawsuit inside Santa Ana's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in early 2015. She claimed she'd been humiliated, subjected to unreasonable seizure, denied due process and was a victim of excessive force.

In response, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris—now a U.S. Senator—defended Rothberg's conduct and claimed he deserved immunity for his conduct because he is a cop. "There is no body of clearly established law that would inform a law-enforcement official that he was violating a driver's constitutional rights if he did not release a driver who had committed a traffic violation simply because she said she needed to go to a bathroom," Harris' agency argued in November 2016 to support its contention the case should end before a jury could consider its merits.

Late last month, Selna—a 2003 President George W. Bush lifetime appointee to the federal bench—agreed with the AG's office, granting summary judgment in favor of the cop. "A jury could not find that officer Rothberg's actions, viewed in the light most favorable to Ms. Antonellis [my emphasis], were objectively unreasonable," Selna opined.

Rothberg told the Weekly his client hasn't decided whether or not to appeal the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Meanwhile, Selna isn't alone in his outlook. In 2011, North Carolina police officer William Wright refused bathroom access to a detainee and encouraged her to "pee on herself," which she was forced to do twice. U.S. District Court Judge Graham C. Mullen, who won his judicial appointment thanks to the backing of Senator Jesse Helms, declined to see the incident as "egregious, arbitrary government conduct" because the nation's Founding Fathers didn't proclaim a specific constitutional right to use a bathroom while in police custody.

"While officer Wright certainly may be guilty of breaching the unwritten standards of human compassion and common decency," Mullen asserted, "he cannot be said to have breached a recognizable duty of care."

Ponder the implications of public servants not bound by even the lowest thresholds of honorable conduct.

After officer charged, Amtrak shooting detailed: Cop 'assumed a crouched firing stance'

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-amtrak-shooting-charges-20170217-story.html

An Amtrak police officer just 18 months on the job was charged with first-degree murder for fatally shooting an unarmed man fleeing after being stopped over his suspected possession of marijuana, Cook County prosecutors said Friday.

The officer, LaRoyce Tankson, unholstered his service weapon, "assumed a crouched firing stance" and fired once as the victim was about 75 to 100 feet away and running at full speed, prosecutors said.

The victim, Chad Robertson, 25, was shot in the back of his shoulder, according to the medical examiner's office. He had been in Chicago for only about a half-hour Feb. 8 while on a stopover at Union Station waiting on a bus to Minneapolis.

Late Friday afternoon, Tankson, 31, was released from Cook County Jail on $250,000 bail and was shielded from reporters by uniformed officers as he ducked into an unmarked police vehicle and was driven away. Prosecutors had sought to hold him without bail.

The officer's lawyer, William Fahy, said Tankson opened fire "in defense of himself and others" after seeing Robertson reach his left hand toward his pocket while turning toward the officer as he ran away.

Tankson "really believed he was about to be shot," Fahy said. "That's not first-degree murder, judge."

Fahy said a small amount of marijuana was found on Robertson, a father of two who lived in Minneapolis.

Prosecutors said none of six witnesses to the shooting in the 300 block of South Canal Street saw Robertson gesture or turn toward the officer. In addition, Tankson's partner did not see a weapon or anything else in Robertson's hand and never opened fire himself, according to prosecutors. No weapon was found on Robertson, they said.

Chad Robertson, 25, shown with his family, was shot by an Amtrak police officer in Chicago on Feb. 8, 2017, near Union Station. Robertson died Feb. 15, 2017, according to a Chicago police spokesman. (Family photo)

After the bond hearing, Robertson's family, who have filed a federal lawsuit over his death, blasted the bond as far too low and said police too often falsely claim they feared for their lives in fatal shootings.

"How many times are they going to keep saying that that was why they're killing us?" Robertson's sister Nina told reporters at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. "It's unfair, it's unfair, and it's an injustice."

"They shouldn't be able to shoot people for running away," said Robertson's father, Leroy Martin. "They shouldn't be able to shoot people like that."

Another sister, Laniesha Taylor, questioned why Tankson didn't give chase instead of opening fire so soon.

"You didn't think to go after maybe your Taser or even chase him like cops used to do?" she said. "You didn't take a step to try to run, and that's what breaks my heart the most, that you didn't even try and without a thought in your mind killed my brother."

Fahy said Tankson is married to a Chicago firefighter and has three children. His mother, he said, is a "career law enforcement" officer. Before becoming an Amtrak cop 18 months ago, Tankson worked as a locomotive engineer for eight years, according to Fahy.

Following the shooting, Amtrak said the officers had been placed on administrative assignment, standard practice following a shooting. On Friday, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said that status remained unchanged after the filing of murder charges against Tankson. He could not say if Tankson continues to be paid by Amtrak.

The charges came little more than a week after the shooting, and the charges marked the second time in State's Attorney Kim Foxx's three months in office that a police officer has been charged with murder.

Veteran Chicago police Officer Lowell Houser was charged last month with first-degree murder in the shooting of an unarmed man with whom he had an ongoing feud during an off-duty incident Jan. 2. Fahy, who also represents Houser, said the officer acted in self-defense after the victim, Jose Nieves, threatened to shoot him and reached toward his waistband. In a decision criticized by many veteran lawyers, Judge Donald Panarese Jr. ordered Houser freed on bond on electronic monitoring without posting any money.

Prosecutors said Robertson arrived in Chicago on Feb. 8 on a bus from Memphis. The driver dropped him and two other passengers at Union Station at 8 p.m. so they could stay warm as they waited to catch another bus to Minneapolis.

About 8:30 p.m., Tankson and his partner were on patrol outside the station when they caught the three smoking marijuana, according to Assistant State's Attorney Ahmed Kosoko. The group stopped smoking at Tankson's request and Robertson apologized, Kosoko said.

The three were allowed to leave and walked to a nearby restaurant to wait for their 9:45 p.m. bus.

But moments later, the officers again approached and ordered the three to stand against the glass wall of an elevator shaft attached to a parking garage on Canal Street, Kosoko said. Prosecutors said Tankson had no reason to think the three had done anything wrong other than possess marijuana.

As Tankson began patting down Robertson, he took off running, prosecutors said.

Fahy told the judge that Tankson's partner had felt a "hard metallic object," possibly a gun, while patting down one of Robertson's companions. When the partner asked, "What's this?" Robertson ran, Fahy said.

Fahy said that "thousands of dollars" in cash were recovered in baggage that belonged to the group and that Robertson had been acting "suspiciously" and was resisting being patted down.

But the Robertson family lawsuit, filed in Chicago on Tuesday, alleged that Tankson and his partner illegally detained Robertson and his companions and began to conduct illegal searches of them.

Tankson was "very aggressive, disrespectful and again used a great deal of profanity during the illegal search," the suit said.

The suit alleged Robertson "feared for his life" and took off running.

According to the suit, Tankson "calmly dropped to one knee, removed his gloves, unsecured his weapon" and opened fire.

Tankson announced no commands, saying only, "It's a gun out. It's a gun out," according to the suit.

The officer handcuffed the collapsed Robertson as "he lay in the street clinging to life," the suit alleged.

The shooting left Robertson paralyzed, and he died a week later, at 11:20 p.m. Wednesday, according to the medical examiner's office.

At the courthouse, Robertson's family said Tankson opened fire without justification.

"He had dreams and aspirations," Nina Robertson said. "I'm devastated. I'm devastated that his life was taken."

Cop filmed telling motorist he wanted to beat him, sic dog on him

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/cop-filmed-telling-motorist-he-wanted-to-beat-him-sic-dog-on-him/



A days-old viral Facebook video shows an angry New Jersey cop yelling at a young motorist. The police officer says he wants to knock the motorist "the fuck out" and sic his 90-pound police dog on him—in what appears to be retribution for the man filming the officer. Because of the video, taken by one of the two motorists pulled over in Atlantic City, the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Following the publication of the 80-second video, which has more than 400,000 views, Atlantic City Police Chief Henry White called for an internal affairs investigation. The men involved in the traffic stop have been neither identified nor arrested. The incident is being investigated solely because it was recorded. This is another example of how the YouTube society—in which people are constantly filming each other and their surroundings with mobile phones—is altering the criminal justice system.

"Take that phone and stick it out of my face. I'm not gonna tell you again," the officer tells one of the motorists who is filming him. The officer then becomes enraged.

"Calm the fuck down," the officer yells at the two men, one of whom calmly replies "yes, sir."

"I guarantee you, that 90-pound dog is going to come out and rip the fuck out of you," the officer shouts. In response to one of the men filming the officer, the cop says: "Put your hand in my face and I'm going to knock you the fuck out."

The cop also says:

"We'll step out and bang. I got no fucking problem. You're under unlawful detention. You're not allowed to have your cell phone. You understand? You're not allowed to use it. You can turn yours off right now... "

The video ends.

The authorities declined to say why the men were pulled over. In a statement, the police agency said:

The Atlantic City Police Department is aware of a citizen-filmed video that is circulating on social media. Chief Henry White has ordered the Internal Affairs Section to begin an immediate investigation into the incident. The language and tone used by our officer in the video is concerning and is not condoned by this department. The officer involved was wearing a body-worn camera which will be reviewed by detectives.

The Atlantic City Police Department values our interactions with our residents and visitors. We have worked hard to gain the trust and confidence of the community by becoming part of the community with many of our programs such as Pizza with the Police and Coffee with the Cop. Our officers are involved in neighborhood walks and events that educate the community on the role of police officers with our Civilian Police Academy and Juvenile Police Academy.

Days before the video surfaced, meanwhile, another Atlantic City police officer was arrested on aggravated assault charges in connection to his girlfriend's beating.

Doesn't really fit thread but important too
 

Tell the DA: Indict the LAPD cop who shot at a 13-yr-old boy

https://act.colorofchange.org/sign/indict-lapd-cop/

Orange County is proving to the world once again that police are above the law.

An off-duty LAPD officer is shown on video forcefully grabbing and dragging 13-year-old Christian Dorscht, after he stood up for a girl the officer called a "cunt" and yelled to get off of his lawn. And when other children try to help him, the officer pulls out his gun and fires a shot into the crowd. If that isn't upsetting enough, what happens next is even worse: when police show up, they let the officer--who still hasn't been identified--walk free, but arrest Christian and another 15-year-old boy with charges of "battery and terrorist threats." It's a combination of white vigilante and police violence terror--and it's horrifying.

Hundreds of people poured into the streets in protest to demand the officer be charged. The Anaheim Police Department posted a statement that they are working on an investigation--but the power rests with the District Attorney's office. And technically, after an investigation, the DA's office could still charge the children that were terrorized on that day. That's why we're demanding that Orange County DA, Tony Rackauckas, immediately indict the officer--and refuse to prosecute any of the children involved. Will you sign the petition?

Below is the letter we'll send on your behalf:
Dear Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas:

The video of a grown man physically assaulting a 13-year-old boy after calling a little girl a "cunt" is beyond upsetting. But what makes it even worse is the fact that he is a police officer, sworn to protect the community. Any person who fires a gun, while forcefully grabbing a child, should be held accountable under the full extent of the law. And the people deserve to know who that person is. Police are not exempt.

I join Orange County residents in demanding that you indict this unnamed officer, release his name, and refuse to prosecute any of the children involved. It is unacceptable that two children were arrested and charged, while this officer has walked free. We are counting on you to set things right and stand up for justice.

Thank you,

[Your name here]

A new lawsuit alleges the city's police stopped thousands of black and Latino residents for no reason

https://news.vice.com/story/milwaukee-cops-sued-over-allegedly-racist-stop-and-frisk-program

The American Civil Liberties Union slapped the City of Milwaukee with a class action lawsuit on Wednesday, alleging that its police officers conduct a “high-volume, suspicionless stop-and-frisk program” that disproportionately targets black and Latino residents. The practice also fuels deep racial inequality in the city’s criminal justice system, which has incarcerated half of the black men in the city, lawyers also argue.

Filed on behalf of six black plaintiffs, the lawsuit contends that in 41 percent of the 33,343 stops that took place between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, Milwaukee police did not record a reasonable suspicion for conducting the stop, required by 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio. As a result, the practice violates residents’ civil rights under the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution.

Police first stopped and searched one of the plaintiffs, a minor who wasn’t named, on his way to a playdate at a friend’s house in 2010, when he was just 11, and he has been stopped two other times since, the suit alleges. In one instance, he said, Milwaukee officers warned him to avoid walking through alleyways because it made him “look suspicious.”

Another plaintiff, Alicia Silvestre, a 60-year-old school secretary, was stopped and searched for running a red light, according to the suit. Police then allegedly followed her home, with her 4-year-old granddaughter in the car, came into her house, and searched her handbag, claiming they had evidence she was using heroin. They ultimately left without charging or arresting her. In fact, most people who are stopped are never charged or arrested, according to Nusrat Choudhury, one of the lead attorneys on the case.

“Those who are [charged] often face charges for low-level offenses, like loitering. Low-level arrests and citations can come with fines and fees,” she said. “When people can’t pay, they find themselves trapped in a justice system in which there are too many ways in, and not enough ways out.”

Milwaukee’s Police Department adopted stop-and-frisk in 2008 as part of a “broken windows” policing strategy, wherein officers crack down on minor offenses in hopes of reducing more serious crime. In New York City, stop and frisk was in effect for more than a decade but was phased out in 2013 after a federal judge ruled the way the city was carrying out the program to be unconstitutional.

Attorneys in the case against Milwaukee are challenging stop and frisk on the same constitutional grounds as attorneys challenging New York’s stop and frisk program. Both cases also cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1968 ruling in Terry v Ohio, which determined pedestrian stops are only constitutional if an officer can claim there was a suspicion that a person was armed and dangerous, based on “specific and articulable facts.”

Six years ago, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn — named as a defendant in the suit — acknowledged to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the city’s policing practices did target people who were not committing crimes. “Yes, of course, we are going to stop lots of innocent people,” he said. “The point is, do folks understand what their role is as a cooperative citizen in having a safe environment?”

As for the current suit, Flynn disputed the ACLU’s characterization of stop and frisk.

“The Milwaukee Police Department has never used the practice of ‘stop and frisk,’” he said in an emailed statement. “No discussion of our crime tactics is complete without reference to the hyper-victimization of disadvantaged communities of color by high rates of crime. But [Milwaukee Police Department] considers it our moral duty to confront violence where it occurs.” Flynn also cited recent police department data from 2016 indicating that nearly 80 percent of homicide victims were black, as were nearly 80 percent of homicide suspects.

Racial inequality in Milwaukee is stark. Half of all black men in their 20s and 30s in Milwaukee Country have spent some time in a correctional facility — 40 percent of them for low-level drug offenses, according to a 2013 study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Moreover, two-thirds of all incarcerated black men from Milwaukee County came from the six poorest ZIP codes. Wisconsin, as a whole, incarcerates black men at a higher rate than any other state in the country.

There’s no question that crime is a problem in Milwaukee; it was one of the handful of cities that drove up the nationwide murder rate in 2015, according to the most recent available FBI data. But the lawsuit charges that rather than deploy officers to targeted crime “hot spots,” Milwaukee police department instead saturates police districts located in largely black neighborhoods. Residents in one of these districts are therefore more likely to be come into contact with police, which also makes them more likely to be arrested or ticketed for low-level offenses.

“Stop-and-frisk can be part of an effective crime control program, one that focuses on high-crime hot-spots over a period of time, but it can also be a counterproductive tactic,” said Seth Stoughton, a criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina and former Florida police officer. “The constitutional authority to stop someone and, if appropriate, frisk them is a valuable investigative and officer safety tool in individual interactions, but when it is improperly implemented it can increase community hostility in a way that undermines effective policing.”

Milwaukee police conducted nearly 200,000 stops in 2015, almost three times as many stops conducted in 2007 and affecting about a third of the city’s overall population, according to the lawsuit. In spite of this uptick in traffic and pedestrian stops, crime did not go down. In fact, it increased over the last decade, which calls into question the overall effectiveness of stop and frisk practices. Supporters of stop and frisk in New York City voiced concerns that ending the program would cause crime to skyrocket. Violent crime, however, declined in the years after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to end stop and frisk, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice.

The ACLU’s lawsuit comes as Milwaukee’s police department waits for the Department of Justice to come back to them with a proposed list of non-binding reforms, the outcome of a program their chief opted into.

The ACLU lawsuit seeks improved supervision of Milwaukee police officers, to ensure that they are conducting evidence-based stops. It also seeks the collection of a semi-annual release of stop data, which includes demographic information as well as the basis for the stop. “We are seeking accountability and transparency,” Choudhury said. “It’s a no brainer. This practice must end.”

Video shows Tucson police shoving 86-year-old woman to pavement

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/02/27/video-shows-tucson-police-shoving-86-year-old-woman-to-pavement/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.b6b15760c4ad

The body camera footage of a recent protest against President Trump’s immigration policies in Tucson shows an 86-year-old woman, weighing less than 100 pounds and standing about 4 feet, 5 inches tall, approaching police officers and pointing at them as she shouted indiscernible words.

Then, a police officer appears to push her arm, causing her to fall backward and hit her head on the pavement. As a 65-year-old woman beside her reaches down to help the woman up, an officer pepper-sprays her in the face, temporarily blinding her and causing her to turn away in pain.

The video footage, released Friday by the Tucson Police Department to a local television station, illustrates the tense clashes from the Feb. 16 protest there that began peacefully but soon escalated as protesters reportedly began disrupting rush-hour traffic. Three police officers sustained minor injuries and four protesters were arrested.

Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said the department is investigating but told reporters that he thinks his officers handled the crowd appropriately. Local immigrant rights advocates have spoken out against police conduct at the protest, saying that the arrests were unwarranted and that officers used unnecessary force — particularly against elderly women at the rally. The body camera footage, the rally’s organizers say, “confirms police brutality and repression” of peaceful protesters.

The event, organized to protest recent nationwide deportation raids and in solidarity with the National Day Without Immigrants, began at 4:30 p.m. that day in front of Tucson’s downtown Federal Building. By 6 p.m., at least 80 people had joined the protest — organizers said it grew to 200 people at one point. It “suddenly became a safety and logistical challenge” as crowds began veering off the sidewalks and into the path of traffic, Magnus wrote.

An officer issued an emergency call for assistance, and those on the scene urged protesters to leave the street and return to the sidewalks. “Most of the crowd complied, but a very specific subgroup elected to remain in the road and challenge the directions they were given by the officers,” Magnus said, compromising their safety.

“One of the officers working to get a protester back to the sidewalk was assaulted by that protester,” Magnus said. “When the officer went to arrest this subject and place him in a patrol car for transport, he and the other officers who were assisting him were quickly surrounded by members of the crowd.”

Police arrested David Leon, 24, Joan Cichon, 68, and Tanya Alvarez-Blancarte, 42, in connection with aggravated assault on a peace officer. Najima Rainey, 39, was arrested in connection with obstructing and failure to identify.

Rolande Baker, a retired schoolteacher, was the woman pepper-sprayed. When she saw police arresting Leon, she crossed the street, she said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“I saw the police being way more aggressive than I’ve ever seen them be,” she said. She has been participating in peaceful rallies and protests in Tucson since she moved there in 1987, she said, and has never had any problems with local law enforcement.

She described some of the moments captured by the recently released body-camera footage, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by Tucson News Now.

The 86-year-old woman had joined with three other women in locking their arms in front of the police van, blocking it from leaving. After officers unlinked the women’s arms, one pushed her to the ground. Officers then pepper-sprayed Baker in the face.

“Here’s this woman on the ground, and they’re so busy pepper-spraying those who were helping her, they never help her up,” Baker said. “Do we look violent to you?”

The 86-year-old woman, whom authorities have not identified, was not injured, and got back up on her own. Baker, however, was still recovering from the pain in her eyes three days later.

“It’s just terrible,” she said. “Would you do that to your mother? Would you do that to your grandmother? Because I’m about the age of your grandmother.”

Steffanny Cott, a protest organizer with immigrant rights group Lucha Unida de Padres y Estudiantes (LUPE), told the Arizona Daily Star that police overreacted to the demonstration. She said that marchers were going around the police vehicle, and that the officer was revving the engine and the sport-utility vehicle nudged Leon, the demonstrator who was later arrested.

LUPE wrote on a GoFundMe page that at least a dozen people, including two children, a retired teacher, a nurse, and two legal observers were “inhumanely pepper sprayed.” The group wrote that cries of “help me” could be heard as one of the leaders of Tucson Black Lives Matter was pepper-sprayed, pushed to the ground, pulled by her hair, and then dragged to the sidewalk and later into the patrol van where she was arrested.

Baker, along with other protesters present that day, attended a City Council meeting last Wednesday to describe the treatment they received from local law enforcement. City Council members called for an investigation and a meeting between some of the protesters and the police officers, Baker said.

Baker worried about both the “aggressive” behavior of police and a bill that passed the Arizona Senate last week that would subject protesters to anti-racketeering legislation, allowing police to seize the assets of anyone involved in a protest that at some point becomes violent.

“They’re trying to shut us up is what they’re trying to do, in my opinion,” Baker said. “It’s scary that this is all happening at the same time.”

Cop Filmed Beating Unarmed Man, Pulling Gun And Ordering Crowd ‘The F**k Back’

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vallejo-police-beating-video_us_58c6a7d8e4b0ed71826dfcfa?

A Vallejo, California, police officer was caught on video repeatedly punching a man with his fists and flashlight before threatening a group of bystanders with his service weapon on Friday.

The officer was responding to a report of a man behaving erratically at a Valero gas station, according to San Francisco’s KRON-TV.

The footage, filmed by a bystander and posted to Facebook, begins with the officer pursuing an unidentified man on foot. Moments later, the man appears to give up and sits on a median strip. The officer then rushes over and forcibly shoves the man, who appears to be unarmed, to the ground.

A brief struggle ensues, during which the man can be heard screaming, “I am God, I am God,” as the officer repeatedly strikes him with his fist and a flashlight. In the video clips below, the officer and others can be heard yelling profanities as a crowd gathers to witness the scene.

“The kid surrendered,” one witness told San Francisco’s KPIX 5 News. “The cop, on the other hand, came right up behind him. He immediately dove on the kid and started whaling on him.”

At one point in the video, someone can be heard yelling “Police brutality!” The officer continues beating the man as a second officer arrives on the scene.

When tensions in the crowd seem to rise, the first officer removes his handgun from its holster and tells everyone to “get the fuck back.” Arriving officers then push the crowd back.

The video appears to show at least one bystander’s arrest. The man the first officer beat was charged with being under the influence and resisting arrest, according to KPIX 5. It remains unclear what, if any, charges have been filed against other people at the scene.

Don Cameron, a police trainer interviewed by KPIX 5 on Saturday, defended the actions of the officer involved in the beating.

“That’s what they’re trained to do,” Cameron said. “When we’re down on the ground, we want to get the person in custody as quickly as we can and we use personal weapons.”

Former Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said that while he agreed with the officer’s initial response, he did not feel a continuous use of force was necessary.

“It does look bad [and] it does appear inappropriate,” Jordan told KPIX 5.

Vallejo police are asking the public to refrain from making judgments until police complete an internal investigation.

“Just like anyone else officers are innocent until proven guilty,” the department said in a statement. “Violence is always ugly but police officers are exposed to violent situations every day and they are required to overcome that violence not just match it. We will investigate this matter and will take the appropriate action if any policy or law has been broken.”

Man streams video on Facebook as officers shoot him

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/17/police-shooting-mentally-ill-black-man/99321362/

ALAMO, Tenn. — At least one Crockett County sheriff's deputy killed a bipolar black man parked sideways on a ramp to a U.S. highway as the man recorded the shooting on live streaming video.

Rodney James Hess, 36, a New Orleans native who had been living in Texas City, Texas, with his fiancée, was shot at around 2:15 p.m. CT Thursday and was transported to Regional One Health medical center in Memphis where he died.

When deputies responded to the area about 75 miles northeast of Memphis because traffic was being blocked, Hess became "erratic," said spokesman Josh DeVine of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The agency did not say whether investigators found any firearms in Hess' vehicle.

"A Crockett County deputy arrived after drivers were obviously not able to get where they wanted to go," DeVine said. "He then determined that he needed backup. Preliminary information indicates Hess attempted to use his vehicle, his SUV, to strike the officers at least twice."

Hess' videos do not show him attempting to hit the officers who responded though part of the interaction with police does not appear to have been recorded.

Hess recorded two videos on his Facebook page. The first was nearly 20 minutes long and leads up to the confrontation with law enforcement. Hess drives his white SUV around the intersection of Tennessee 88 and U.S. 412 on the overpass, periodically blocking traffic with his car.

“He was not on a suicide mission. He was not trying to harm anybody. He was asking them for help and they shot him down.”
Johnisha Provost, Texas City, Texas

It ends as the first Crockett County deputy arrives and parks near Hess' vehicle.

The second video last about 4 minutes, Hess asks to speak with a commander and drops his phone just before several shots are fired into the SUV.

"He was not on a suicide mission," Johnisha Provost said Friday from their Texas home. "He was not trying to harm anybody. He was asking them for help and they shot him down."

She found out Hess was in trouble when her aunt called her at work to tell her about the Facebook Live post, she said.

"He was on Facebook, and I logged on and I watched it," Provost said.

Hess suffered from bipolar disorder, she said. And she could tell from looking at the videos that he was disoriented and lost.

"He couldn't get his mind together. That's why he asked for a higher command," she said. "I always told him, 'Babe, if you are ever in a situation where you need help, ask the person in charge for the higher command to help you,' and that's what he kept saying."

Hess was in Tennessee visiting his mother, who lives in the Memphis area, Provost said. He had moved to Memphis when he was a teenager and graduated from high school there.

Investigators did not know why Hess was in Alamo, DeVine said.
New Orleans native Rodney James Hess, 36, died March

New Orleans native Rodney James Hess, 36, died March 16, 2017, after a Crockett County, Tenn., deputy shot him on a U.S. 412-Tennessee 88 exit ramp in Alamo, Tenn. (Photo: Courtesy of Johnisha Provost)

"He had been in Memphis for two days after leaving New Orleans," she said. "He was on his way back home to me and his daughter when they killed him."

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is aware of the recording but cannot confirm its authenticity, DeVine said.

"I want people to know he was not a threat," Provost said through tears. "He was a great person, a great dad, a great provider."

They had been together for the past three years.

"He just suffered from mental illness and people need to be aware of how to deal with mental illness," she said. "They could have just shot his tires out or they could have handled it differently. They didn't have to kill him."

From the You Have Got to Be Kidding Me files
 

Appeals Court: Officer Who Shot and Killed Innocent Man in His Own Home Cannot Be Sued

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/17/appeals_court_rules_officer_who_killed_man_in_his_ own_home_cannot_be_sued.html

Andrew Scott and his girlfriend were playing video games in their Florida apartment late at night when they heard a loud banging at the front door. Scott, who was understandably disturbed, retrieved the handgun that he lawfully owned, then opened the door with the gun pointed safely down. Outside, he saw a shadowy figure holding a pistol. He began to retreat inside and close the door when the figure fired six shots without warning, three of which hit Scott, killing him. Scott hadn’t fired a single bullet or even lifted his firearm.

The figure outside was Deputy Richard Sylvester. He failed to identify himself as a law enforcement officer at any point. He had no warrant and no reason to suspect that Scott or his girlfriend had committed a crime. He did not attempt to engage with Scott at all after he opened the door; he simply shot him dead. And on Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that Scott’s parents and girlfriend cannot sue Sylvester because the officer’s conduct was not “clearly” illegal.

The court’s reasoning? Qualified immunity, a constitutionally dubious doctrine that bars individuals from suing the government for violating their rights unless those rights were “clearly established.” And what, exactly, constitutes a “clearly established” right? It’s almost always possible to argue the point either way. Consider the events that led up to Scott’s killing. Sylvester had been pursuing a speeding motorcyclist who, he suspected, might be the same motorcyclist who’d recently committed armed assault and battery. (He had no legitimate reason to suspect this particular motorcyclist was the suspect in question.) Sylvester found a motorcycle at Scott’s apartment complex and decided it was the one he was looking for, even though a license plate search revealed no incriminating information. He and three other officers drew their guns and pounded on Scott’s door. When Scott opened it, Sylvester shot and killed him.

A district court granted Sylvester qualified immunity, holding that no “clearly established law” prohibited his actions. A panel of judges for the 11th Circuit affirmed. And on Thursday, the 11th Circuit, sitting en banc, declined to revisit the panel’s decision. In support of this refusal to rehear the case, Judge Frank M. Hull wrote that Sylvester’s behavior was a variation on “the knock and talk rule.” This rule allows officers to enter private property and knock on an individual’s door for “legitimate police purposes.” Hull reasoned that Sylvester had merely engaged in a form of “knock and talk” and that Scott could have simply declined to open his door. Shooting Scott once he did open the door, Hull wrote, did not violate any “clearly established … constitutional rights.”

In dissent, Judge Beverly Martin shattered this sophistry with painful precision. “Under no standard,” she wrote, “was it reasonable for the police to kill Mr. Scott when he answered the knock at the door to his home. He was not suspected of any crime (much less a violent crime) and he was standing inside his own house without threatening them.” The police, she explained “were not engaged in a permissible ‘knock and talk’ when they killed Mr. Scott.” In fact, “there was no talk here. This was a knock and shoot.” Sylvester had no warrant and no reasonable suspicion that Scott had committed a crime. Martin thus concluded that he clearly violated Scott’s Fourth Amendment rights by conducting a warrantless raid and using excessive force.

The most fascinating part of Martin’s analysis centered around Sylvester’s insistence that the shooting was justified because Scott opened the door while holding a firearm. This “conclusion that deadly force was reasonable here,” Martin noted, “plainly infringes on the Second Amendment right to ‘keep and bear arms.’ ” Citing the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller, which affirmed an individual right to handgun ownership under the Second Amendment, Martin wrote:

If Mr. Scott was subject to being shot and killed, simply because (as the District Court put it) he made the “fateful decision” to answer a late-night disturbance at the door to his house, and did so while holding his firearm pointed safely at the ground, then the Second Amendment (and Heller) had little effect.

That seems exactly right to me—and it raises an important point: The 11th Circuit has now effectively found an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights are diminished whenever he chooses to exercise his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm. Unfortunately, the 4th Circuit reached the same conclusion in a dreadful ruling handed down in January. The Supreme Court should step in soon to remedy the contradiction by clarifying that the exercise of one constitutional right cannot diminish the protection of another. This is an area where liberals and conservatives should be in agreement.

Qualified immunity has clearly become a significant problem in the lower courts. Just last week, another federal appeals court ruled that a homeless man had no right to sue the police officer who allowed his dog to maul him despite knowing the mauling victim was innocent. Its rationale? Qualified immunity. The lower courts are stretching the doctrine past its breaking point. Soon, victims of police violence will almost never be able to sue the officers who violate their constitutional rights. If that’s where we’re headed, why even pretend that we hold those rights in the first place?

Lawsuit: South Carolina officers shot unarmed man 19 times

Lawsuit: South Carolina officers shot unarmed man 19 times


BY JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press

http://www.thestate.com/news/local/c...7322538_ver1.0

An unarmed man who was chased and tackled by police in South Carolina was shot 17 times in the back by officers as he lay on the ground, according to a lawsuit filed by the man's family.

The officers were trying to arrest Waltki Williams last Dec. 10 after his estranged girlfriend called 911 saying he had pointed a gun at her car at the Sumter Mall, police said at the time.

Williams drove off, but wrecked a short way down the road. He threw an unknown object out a window and started to run, according to the wrongful death lawsuit filed Friday by Williams' sister, Tomekia Kind, against the city of Sumter and its police force.

Several officers tackled Williams and stepped back before at least three of them fired two dozen shots. Williams was struck by 19 bullets, said attorney Carter Elliott.

"I don't know if it gets any more horrible than officers standing over an unarmed man shooting him," Elliott said Monday. He had investigators take pictures of Williams' bullet-ridden body before it was cremated.

Elliott said Kind has seen police video of her brother's shooting and was shocked. The video has not been released publicly as the State Law Enforcement Division is still investigating the killing.

Sumter Police spokeswoman Tonyia McGirt said later Monday that the police agency hasn't been served with the lawsuit. She also said releasing any specific information about the shooting would be inappropriate given the state's ongoing investigation. Nonetheless, she said the police department denies the allegations made in the suit.

In a news release issued shortly after the shooting in December, McGirt wrote that "there was a brief struggle and then an exchange of gunfire."

Little information has been released about the shooting. Carter said Williams was black. The race and names of the officers haven't been made public.

State police have been reluctant to release police shooting videos in South Carolina until cases are closed, even though First Amendment lawyers said there is no exemption to their release under the state's open records law.

They have made exceptions when the videos don't show the shooting itself, such as releasing dashboard camera footage of the traffic stop of Walter Scott, who was shot and killed after running away from a traffic stop in April 2015 by an officer in North Charleston. The former officer is awaiting a second trial on a murder charge.

The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday for any video footage of Williams' shooting. State police did not immediately respond to that request.

Elliott has not seen the video, but plans to subpoena the city of Sumter and state investigators. The lawsuit does not ask for specific damages.

Solicitor Chip Finney will decide if the officers face charges. He said Monday he has not received the case file from state investigators and had no comment about the shooting or the lawsuit.

About 50 people marched in Sumter asking for justice about two weeks after the shooting.

ICE Agent Shot Unarmed Man As He Opened Door

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/03/28/ice-agent-shot-unarmed-man-as-he-opened-door/

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal immigration agent shot an unarmed man for no apparent reason as the man answered the door at his Chicago home, a lawyer for the wounded man said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the special agent was attempting to arrest someone Monday morning when a second person pointed a weapon at agents. ICE officials said the special agent fired his weapon, wounding the second person.

But attorney Thomas Hallock told reporters Monday that he heard a different version of events when he visited the wounded 53-year-old man at a hospital. Hallock said he was told the man heard a pounding at his door, answered it and was shot “without cause.” Hallock says the man was not armed.

“I don’t know if there was some sort of mistake,” Hallock said.

ICE officials said Monday its Office of Professional Responsibility will review the shooting and details of what happened weren’t being immediately released. The Associated Press sent an email seeking an update Tuesday from ICE.

Hallock said the man and his wife arrived from Mexico more than two decades ago and are legal residents of the United States. Seven or eight people were in the home at the time of the shooting, he said.

The agency has not publicly named the target of the arrest warrant and it wasn’t clear if that person was detained. Hallock said he is also representing the wounded man’s 23-year-old son, who was briefly detained.

Chicago police officials said their officers responded to the call of shots fired. They said they are investigating any underlying criminal offenses and working with prosecutors and the Department of Homeland Security.

VIDEO: Cop who yelled 'I'm going to shoot you in your head!' now under investigation

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/04/video_cop_who_yelled_im_going.html

The Portland Police Bureau has opened an internal investigation into the actions of an officer who threatened to shoot a man in the head -- when the man refused to come out of his motor home.

Officer Matt Bigoni also threatened to shoot the man's dog if the dog came out, made a reference to a funeral bell ringing for the man and warned that "bad things are going to happen" if police had to retrieve him from the motor home. Three police officers ended the approximately 25-minute encounter by bursting into the camper, holding the man down, repeatedly punching the man in the face and fracturing the man's eye socket and nose.

Police said 27-year-old Christopher Lee Fish was resisting their efforts to handcuff him and take him into custody on a warrant for violating the terms of his probation for a prior misdemeanor conviction.

Fish caught about 10 minutes of the officer's threats on cell phone video. The evidence turned out to be a key piece of evidence at trial in February.

"Thank God Mr. Fish turned on his phone," said April Yates, a certified law student who represented Fish, in her closing arguments to the jury.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Marshall dismissed a charge of interfering with police, and jurors acquitted Fish of the only remaining charge against him: Resisting arrest.

On March 17, a civil attorney for Fish sent the city a notice of his intent to sue the city for alleged excessive force and lasting psychological damage.

Juror Cheryl Barham told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she's glad to hear that Fish has moved forward with plans to sue. She said the actions of the police officers was disheartening; their testimony during trial was "suspicious" and inconsistent; and it didn't take the six-person jury long to determine that Fish wasn't guilty of the crime charged against him.

"It was shocking to hear and see what they did," Barham said of the officers.

Juror Rachel Siegel said she knows Fish had a criminal record and police had a reason for showing up to take him into custody, but beating him was unnecessary and excessive. Siegel thought Bigoni was escalating the situation of a man holed up in his camper, not de-escalating it.

"The state had a very weak case, and I don't know why they even wasted taxpayer money prosecuting this," Siegel said.

Barham said she is not confident that the police bureau's internal investigation will reach a just conclusion.

"I don't have a lot of faith in those," Barham said. "...I don't want that method of policing to be condoned."

*****

The video

Because the lights aren't on, there's little to be seen on the video that Fish recorded from inside his motor home. But there's much to be heard.

It's about 8 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2016. His motor home is parked near Southeast 122nd and Foster Road. Police had a warrant for Fish's arrest, for failing to meet with his probation officer for an oxycodone conviction and failing to complete domestic-violence counseling for a prior misdemeanor assault conviction.

Fish's recording captures Bigoni threatening to shoot Fish in three separate instances, and threatening to shoot Fish's dog in three separate instances.

The recording begins with Bigoni, the officer, saying "Get your ass out here, Chris. You've got a warrant. You're under arrest. You understand me?"

Bigoni warns: "Put your dog in or we're going to shoot the dog if it comes after me."

The dog is not barking, growling or making any audible noise during any point in the video.

Fish alerts the officers: "You guys are being recorded right now."

Bigoni responds: "That's great."

A few minutes later, Fish still hasn't come out of the trailer and says he wants time to put on his shoes and smoke a cigarette.

"Stop moving your hands around, or I'm going to shoot you!" Bigoni says.

Fish responds: "I'm not doing nothing to hurt you guys."

"Stop moving your (expletive) hands or I'm going to shoot you in your head!" Bigoni says to Fish, before addressing the other officers. "All right. That's it. Pepper. Pepper! Break that window."

A few minutes after that, Bigoni appears to be making a literary reference to a funeral bell, by stating: "Listen to the bell, Chris. It tolls for thee."

The police bureau opened its internal investigation on March 15, more than a month after the trial ended -- and on the same day The Oregonian/OregonLive asked the police bureau about the appropriateness of Officer Bigoni's words.

The news organization also asked about the veracity of the testimony of another officer -- Grigoriy Budey, who said he was holding onto Fish's arm in the darkened motor home but didn't see his colleagues punch Fish.

The next day, Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson responded to the news organization's questions by saying he couldn't talk about specifics because of the internal investigation. When asked, Simpson said the bureau didn't initiate the investigation because of the news organization's questions, and he couldn't elaborate on what sparked the internal review.

"This is a case about officers who went too far -- officers who escalated a peaceful situation and made it violent," said Yates, the certified law student representing Fish. Yates attends law school at New York University and is interning for the Portland-area public defense firm Metropolitan Public Defender Services.

Deputy district attorney Victor Mercado told jurors that Fish took far too long to get dressed, lied to the police by saying they had found the wrong man and could have ended the entire incident before it got started if he just would have stepped out of the motor home in the beginning.

"His tone in the video is not the tone of someone who is scared," Mercado said. "It is the tone of someone who is flippant, cavalier, defiant."

Mercado offered no defense of Bigoni.

"Let's be clear, Officer Bigoni was unpleasant," Mercado said. "I don't think he comes off well in the video."

*****

Fish's testimony

Fish testified that nearly from the start, Bigoni took a "super aggressive" approach. Fish said he didn't want to step out of the motor home and told the officers they had the wrong man because he feared for his life.

"He (Bigoni) instantly said he was going to pepper spray me. And started making threats. Said he was going to tase me or pepper spray me," Fish said. "I was nervous. I had anxiety and shock."

Asked Yates, the certified law student:

"When the officer threatened to shoot you, did you take his threat seriously?"

Answered Fish: "100 percent. ...I could hear it in his voice. You know when someone's sincere. ...If they mean it, you can feel it."

Fish said when police burst in, he dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his back. Police testified, to the contrary, that Fish flailed about and resisted their attempts to handcuff him -- forcing officers Bigoni and Royce Curtiss to have to punch him in the face seven to nine times.

"Hands down, it's the worst pain I've ever gone through," Fish said.

Once in a patrol car, officers wouldn't bring him to the hospital, Fish said, so he lied by saying he swallowed a baggie of heroin -- knowing they would have to bring him to a doctor. Medical staff scanned Fish and found no heroin baggie, but they did treat him for his broken facial bones.

Fish said physically, he still aches. But he hurts psychologically, too.

"I still take PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) medicine," Fish said. "I still get nightmares. And I don't trust cops."

*****

Police testimony

Jurors who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive said the inconsistencies between the officers' testimony was obvious.

Curtiss, the first officer to testify, said he didn't recall Bigoni threatening to shoot Fish or his dog. Curtiss said he only remembers that Bigoni made some sort of threats.

Bigoni -- who was the second officer to testify and was caught on the video recording making the threats -- admitted he'd threatened to shoot Fish and his dog. But upon questioning by the defense, Bigoni said he didn't mention those threats in his police report or tell his supervising officer because he didn't think he had to.

"Purely verbal actions on my part do not constitute a use of force," Bigoni said.

Budey, the third officer to testify, didn't mention anything about Fish being punched by his colleagues during direct examination by the prosecutor. On cross-examination by the defense, Budey said he hadn't seen any punches thrown by the officers while he maintained his grip on Fish's arm -- Budey's head no more than a foot or two away from Fish's face.

Budey said it was too dark to see, but he was able to describe in detail other actions of the officers -- including that Fish was "body slamming" the other officers; that one of his fellow officers lost hold of Fish's left arm and that Budey helped by grabbing it; and that another officer was able to wrench back Fish's right arm so it could be handcuffed.

Photos police took of Fish shortly after they pulled him from his camper show his badly bruised and swollen face -- a stream of blood running from a gash on the bridge of his nose.

Simpson, the police spokesman, said that while the internal investigation is ongoing, the three officers -- Bigoni, Budey and Curtiss -- remain on patrol duty.

The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office also is investigating the case in light of questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive. Jenna Plank, the deputy district attorney who oversees the misdemeanor trial unit, said she couldn't answer specific questions because of the bureau's internal investigation.

New Recording Paints Damning Picture of Cops Who Shot Charles Kinsey

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/charles-kinsey-was-shot-after-a-north-miami-cop-called-halt-it-is-a-toy-9254204

Moments before North Miami police officer Jonathan Aledda shot unarmed behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey this past July 18, another cop on the scene warned there was no gun, only a toy.

After the shooting, an assistant chief repeatedly lied to the chief, and the city manager Larry Spring ignored vital evidence.

Moreover, the crime scene was mismanaged, and the police department and city government were in disarray and plagued by infighting

Those are among the stunning revelations in an hour-long audio recording of North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene's interview with Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators, which was obtained by New Times Tuesday.

The shooting in the leg of Kinsey, who was caring for an autistic man, became a national flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter movement thanks to cell phone footage that showed him with his arms in the air, lying on the ground and begging police not to shoot just before he was hit.

The revelations in Eugene's interview raise a burning question: Eight months after the shooting and four months after state investigators closed their probe, why has Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle still not charged anyone involved?

"We are very close to coming to a decision," says Ed Griffith, a spokesperson for Rundle's office.

"It's pretty damning, what’s in that tape," says Michael Joseph, an attorney representing Emile Hollant, a North Miami Police commander suspended after the shooting who is suing the city over his discipline. "The police chief outlines rogue officers in that department and other rogue officials. Something has to be done about this. The city has to do the right thing here and clean house."

After the shooting, union officials justified Aledda's actions by saying he thought the autistic man with Kinsey had a gun — not a toy truck. But Eugene's interview with FDLE directly contradicts that claim. (On Tuesday, North Miami police public information officer declined comment on behalf of the city manager, Spring.)

"I heard the shooter, Officer Aledda, make a statement to the nature of, 'Be advised, I have clear shot [at] subject,'" Eugene says, describing the audio of the police radio just before the shooting. "Later on, a sergeant ... got on the air and said, 'I have a visual, it is a toy. Is it a toy? QRX.' That means, 'Stand by, don't do anything.' Then there is a conversation back and forth. The next transmission was by [another officer saying] 'Shot fired!'"

Eugene's description comes in an hour-long interview that centers on the bizarre aftermath of the case. He doesn't pull punches about the state of the department. Eugene, a veteran City of Miami cop who had been sworn in as chief only six days before the Kinsey shooting, says training was lax and infighting rampant.

"The scene was a mess, to be honest with you," he tells investigators of the Kinsey shooting. "People were walking all over the place. Thank God [Kinsey] did not die. I realized I have a problem with the training of my staff. We're talking about some 15 or 16-year veterans, but in North Miami, a 15 or 16-year veteran may have less experience than a two-year cop in Miami."

Fights in the department were so bad, Eugene said, that he worried his own cops wouldn't even be willing to protect each other, much less the community.

"I'm afraid one of them will get shot for God's sake, and someone will call for backup and they'll say, 'I'm not going,' just to tell you how much the animosity is," he said.

Much of Eugene's interview centers around the suspension of Hollant, a commander who was present at the shooting. The chief paints a dark picture of department infighting, collusion, and incompetence on the part of city officials.

Three days after Kinsey's shooting, North Miami city officials held a press conference announcing that, in addition to Aledda, they had suspended Hollant. In fact, they were suspending Hollant without pay, while Aledda would be on paid leave. Why? According to City Manager Larry Spring, Hollant had lied to Eugene at the scene by telling him he hadn't witnessed the shooting; in fact, Spring claimed, audio showed the Hollant was there.

But Eugene tells a very different story in his interview. He says that Hollant was actually suspended as part of a plot by Assistant Chief Larry Juriga, who had an ongoing feud with Hollant.

Eugene says the trouble started on July 21, three days after the shooting. That's when Juriga came to his office to tell him that Hollant had lied. Juriga said that "we found out he had a radio transmission that (Hollant) actually gave the order, that he made a statement that caused the shooter to open fire," Eugene said. "I was fuming when I heard that ... I made a comment, 'Fuck ... I'm going to suspend him.'"

Eugene says he immediately went to Spring and City Attorney Jeff Cazeau and filled them in. They all agreed to suspend Hollant. But on the drive home, Eugene had second thoughts. He recalled that Juriga and Hollant didn't get along, and decided to listen to the audio from the shooting himself. That's when he says he realized Juriga had lied.

The audio tape, indeed, showed Hollant had warned that the autistic man was loading a gun. But that warning didn't spark Aledda to shoot. In fact, several moments pass until another sergeant on the scene warns that the man is only holding a toy. Only after that warning did the shooting take place, contends Eugene, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

"I heard the sergeant, who advised earlier that it was a toy, say, 'Hold fire! Hold fire! It was a toy,' trying to stop whoever was doing the shooting," Eugene says. "I said, 'Oh lord.'"

The next morning, Eugene says, he went to Spring's office with the tape to ask the city manager not to suspend Hollant after all. But he says the city manager refused to listen to the audio or to the chief's warnings.

"I said, 'City manager, I'm telling you, listen to this CD and make a decision based on this CD,'" Eugene says. "[Spring] slapped his hand on the desk and said, 'You don't understand what I'm telling you. Get control of your people!'"

Eugene says he nearly quit on the spot. "To be honest, I came close, I nearly let him know that I was about to resign," Eugene says.

Instead, he reviewed department rules and realized that Spring could suspend Hollant on his own. So, the chief says, he backed off and let the city manager do as he pleased. But Eugene says he was so disturbed by Jiruga's conduct that he moved him from his post leading investigations to another position heading up city code enforcement.

That wasn't the only disturbing thing he learned. Eugene says he soon found out that before Hollant had been suspended, the commander in charge of the scene during the shooting had tried to intimate him into changing his story. That commander urged Hollant to say he had seen the shooting and that the autistic man did seem to be loading a gun. "He talked to Emile prior to the suspension and told him ... '[By] not saying you saw the guy loading the gun, do you realize that information could have helped my officer?' They were more concerned about clearing the officer of any wrongdoing than actually getting any impartial investigation."

Eugene says the whole incident was a wake-up call to him about bad training in the department. He reiterated that the Kinsey crime scene was one of the worst-managed he'd ever seen. "The scene wasn't well prepared. There was no inner perimeter, no outer perimeter, no media staging area, nothing," he says. When he got to the scene, no one briefed him about what had occurred.

Joseph says the police recording shows his client, Hollant, was wronged by the city manager. Hollant was cleared by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office, which found that he didn't mislead anyone at the scene. But he remains on paid suspension as the department finishes its own investigation of the case.

"I would say this brings a lot of light on how the city manager and city attorney dealt with the situation. This was political, about PR, rather than finding out what happened," Joseph says. "The chief is in a very precarious spot. There’s some bad apples there. And he knows my client was done wrong. He's caught in the middle."

Texas cop fatally shoots teen outside house party

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/02/us/texas-cop-kills-teen-trnd/index.html

A police officer in a Dallas, Texas, suburb fatally shot a 15-year-old boy outside a high school house party Saturday night. The police department admitted on Monday that it initially released incorrect information about the shooting.

Officers broke up the house party in response to reports of under-aged drinking. One officer then fired a rifle into a vehicle as it was driving away from the party, fatally injuring the front-seat passenger, according to the Balch Springs Police Department.

Jordan Edwards died from a fatal rifle wound to the head, according to the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office. The freshman Mesquite High School student-athlete's death was ruled a homicide.

Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber told reporters Monday he "misspoke" earlier when he said the car was driving "aggressively" toward the two officers.

Haber said body camera footage of the incident showed the car was driving forward, away from the officers, not reversing toward them as he originally reported.

"I take responsibility for that," Haber said.

The officer's behavior "did not meet our core values," Haber said.

Police were looking for the owners of the house when shots were allegedly heard in the area, creating chaos right before Jordan was shot, according to Balch Springs Police Public Information Officer Oscar Gonzalez.

Haber declined to confirm whether any shots were confirmed to have been fired or whether the boys in the car were armed, citing the ongoing investigation.

The officer fired three shots into the car, Edwards family lawyer Lee Merritt told CNN based on eyewitness accounts from the other boys in the car.

Jordan's 16-year-old brother and their three friends were detained at the scene and taken away from Jordan's wounded body to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, where they were eventually interviewed as witnesses. The boys were not arrested or charged, according to Merritt.

Jordan was transported to Baylor University hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries, according to a BSPD press release.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the shooting in tandem with the Public Integrity Unit from the Dallas County District Attorney's Office. Officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the investigation.

The 6-year veteran of the Balch Springs police force who fired the fatal shot was placed on administrative leave, but has not been charged or arrested. His identity is not being released at this time, Haber said.

The officer had no similar prior incidents, Haber said, and BSPD is conducting a separate internal administrative review of the incident.

"The Balch Springs Police Department, regardless of how this whole thing turns out, we are here to serve this community," Haber said.

Haber met with Jordan's parents twice since his death, expressing condolences on behalf of the department and the city.

The Edwards family's lawyer will meet with the investigating parties this week on their behalf.

"We are declaring war on bad policing," Merritt said in a press conference held on behalf of the family Monday. "America throughout the country must figure out a way to police its citizens without killing them."

Jordan's family has not spoken publicly, wishing to grieve privately until after the funeral, Merritt told CNN. They saw Jordan's body for the first time late Monday night, he said.

Jordan will be remembered for his smile, those that knew him told reporters. Grief counselors were made available at Mesquite High School, because Edwards was such a well-known, well-liked member of the community, Merritt said.

"The entire district -- especially the staff and students of Mesquite High School -- are mourning this terrible loss," a Mesquite High School press release said.

A prayer vigil was held Monday night at the high school for the community. A funeral has not yet been scheduled, according to Merritt.

Sheriff, 4 staff charged after inmates abused with stun guns

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article148886119.html

Utah's attorney general filed charges Friday against a former sheriff and four deputies in a rural county after prosecutors say inmates were stunned with a Taser in exchange for soda or as hazing when assigned to a work crew.

Former Daggett County Sheriff Jerry R. Jorgensen has been charged with three misdemeanor counts of misconduct, obstructing justice and failing to keep inmates safe. He resigned last month as state officials investigated allegations of inmate abuse.

According to the charges, former deputy Joshua J. Cox threatened inmates with his personal Taser in 2015 and 2016.

On one occasion in August 2016, Cox promised five inmates a case of soda if they could endure the stun gun for five minutes.

Two months later, Cox used the Taser as an "initiation" to an inmate work crew and required one inmate to withstand the Taser in exchange for keeping his work privileges, prosecutors said.

Court records allege that between December 2016 and February 2017, Cox brought uncertified police dogs into the jail and ordered two inmates to participate in training the dogs. Cox was not a certified K9 officer and both inmates were bitten by the unleashed animals, prosecutors said.

Cox faces 11 counts, including felony aggravated assault, weapons charges and theft.

Prosecutors said the theft charge was filed because Cox's Taser was stolen from the police department where he used to work.

No telephone number or defense attorney was publicly listed for Cox. He was fired in April, according to sheriff's office spokeswoman Susie Potter.

Former Deputy Benjamin C. Lail was charged with aggravated assault for pointing a Taser at a woman's feet in a control room at the jail and saying, "OK, you're done, now get back to class."

The woman was not identified. Utah Department of Corrections spokeswoman Maria Peterson said the woman was a volunteer at the jail.

Jorgensen is accused of failing to properly supervise his jail staff and putting inmates in danger. The obstruction of justice charge stems from the former sheriff allegedly denying that he received an email from an unnamed woman detailing how Lail intimidated her by pointed a stun gun at her feet.

Deputies Logan Walker, 26, and Rodrigo Toledo, 41, are accused of being witnesses to Cox's use of the stun gun on inmates. They are charged with misdemeanor official misconduct for not stopping Cox and failing to report it after it happened.

Lail, Toledo, Walker and Jorgensen could not be reached for comment and did not have listed attorneys to speak on their behalf Friday.

Court records show the former sheriff and his four former deputies are scheduled to make their first court appearances on June 9. All five are required to turn themselves in at the Uintah County Sheriff's Office by the end of May to be fingerprinted and have their mugshots taken.

Attorney General Sean Reyes in a statement called Cox's alleged actions "unbelievably inhumane" and "a reprehensible miscarriage of justice." The attorney general said the actions of the other men were inexcusable.

Daggett County and the sheriff's office had no comment on the charges or those named in the case, according to an emailed statement from Potter late Friday.

State officials began investigating the rural eastern Utah jail earlier this year after Jorgensen reported possible mistreatment of inmates.

The jail, near Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in the small town of Manila on the Wyoming border, has been empty since February, when Utah's Corrections Department learned of the allegations and removed 80 inmates, all male, to other jails or prisons.

About 15 of those inmates have now been paroled or discharged, according to Peterson.

Utah Corrections Executive Director Rollin Cook said in a statement Friday that inmates would not be returned to Daggett County until state officials have confidence in new leaders and security at the jail.

Betty Shelby Found Not Guilty in Shooting Death of Unarmed Black Motorist Terence Crutcher

http://www.theroot.com/betty-shelby-found-not-guilty-in-shooting-death-of-unar-1795320493

The jury in the trial of Tulsa, Okla., Police Officer Betty Shelby deliberated for nine hours Wednesday before finding her not guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of unarmed black motorist Terence Crutcher.

KTUL reports that the Crutcher family is expected to address the media with the district attorney after a brief meeting.

Crutcher’s twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, announced that the verdict had been reached just after 9 p.m. Central.

Just hours into the deliberations, defense attorney Shannon McMurray requested a mistrial, alleging prosecutorial misconduct, but the judge denied the request.

The jurors sent the judge a note asking if they could make a statement when they delivered the verdict, but the judge said no and advised them that they were free to discuss the case after the trial.

The case was handed to the jury around noon Wednesday after both the defense and prosecution made closing statements.

As previously reported on The Root, Shelby, 43, was charged with first-degree felony manslaughter in the September 2016 fatal shooting of Crutcher on a Tulsa highway after his car broke down.

Video of the shooting showed Crutcher raising his hands as he walked to his vehicle, and in the audio, you can hear the pilot of a helicopter overhead stating that Crutcher looked like a “bad dude.” Earlier this week, Shelby stated that it was the scariest moment of her life and that she was filled with fear. Tulsa police said that Crutcher was not complying with their demands when he was shot, but the video seemed to show a totally different story.

Shelby took the stand in her own defense in the weeklong trial, testifying that her training led her to shoot Crutcher because she believed that he was reaching for a weapon through a partially open window in his vehicle.

Shelby has routinely denied that race was a factor in her response to the encounter, blaming Crutcher’s actions and saying that he seemed to be high on drugs and did not respond to police commands as he walked toward his vehicle.

Prosecutors countered that drug use and ignoring commands were no reason for an officer to use deadly force against a civilian.

We all saw that shooting on video, and we all saw that man walking with his hands up, his back to Shelby.

We all saw her shoot and kill him on camera.

He was not a threat to her.

This is more injustice.

This. Must. Stop.

Dallas school police officer slammed a 6th-grader to the ground, fractured her clavicle

https://mic.com/articles/177526/dallas-school-police-officer-slammed-a-6th-grader-to-the-ground-fractured-her-clavicle#.YM7WEWAOw

A police officer from Dallas Independent School District has been put on administrative leave after allegedly slamming a 12-year-old girl to the ground and fracturing her clavicle.

In the video, sixth-grader Mariana Benton is seen fighting with another female student on Piedmont Global Academy School's campus. The two girls are surrounded by other students until an unnamed Dallas ISD officer break up the fight, pick up Benton and then slam her to the ground. Students can be heard shouting in horror.

Benton also said the officer pepper sprayed her.

"The officer came and grabbed me and body slammed me, then put the pepper spray," Benton told local television station KXAS. "He pepper sprayed me in the eyes and I couldn't open my eyes because it was burning me, the eyes, so then they took us to the nurse to put water."

The school district looked into Benton's conduct after the incident and suspended her for three days, according to the Dallas Morning News. Benton was also hospitalized for a fractured clavicle.

As for the officer, Piedmont Global Academy put him on administrative leave and refused to release their name. According to the Root, the school district said the officer's action do not "represent the type of response we want our officers to display."

But Alma Valdez, Benton's mother, told KXAS the officer should not be working with children based on how he treated her daughter.

"I don't want him being suspended, I want him get fired," Valdez said. "Why is he still working with kids? He's not capable of working like that."

"It makes me mad, angry," Valdez told local station KTVT. "She's 12 years old. She weighs 100 pounds. He should be fired."

According to KXAS, Valdez is looking to hire an attorney and file a lawsuit against the school. She also said a school official forced students who filmed the violent incident to delete their videos.

Police speak less respectfully to black drivers, study suggests

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/05/health/police-language-race-oakland-study/index.html?sr=twCNN060617police-language-race-oakland-study0546AMVODtopPhoto&linkId=38390158

A succession of high-profile police shootings and racial tensions swept the United States last summer. One year later, researchers are still trying to better understand the delicate relationship between police and the communities they patrol.

Now instead of focusing on police use of force, some researchers are turning their attention to use of language.

A new study suggests that police officers in Oakland, California, are more likely to speak to white community members with a higher level of respect than black community members. The study, which published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, used police body camera footage as data.

More research is needed to determine whether this racial disparity in language occurs in other communities across the US but Rob Voigt, lead author of the study, said that it's worth investigating.

"At the very least this provides evidence for something that communities of color have reported, that this is a real phenomenon," said Rob Voigt, a doctoral student in the linguistics department at Stanford University.
Voigt added that he and his colleagues were grateful to the Oakland Police Department for allowing them to study the department's body camera footage.

"We're also hoping it inspires police departments to consider cooperating with researchers more. And facilitating this kind of analysis of body camera footage will help police departments improve their relationship with the community and it will give them techniques for better communication," he said. "When people feel they're respected by the police they are more likely to trust the police, they are more likely to cooperate with the police, and so on and so forth. So we have reason to expect that these differences that we find have real-world effects."

A racial disparity, hidden in language

The study involved 183 hours of body camera footage taken during 981 routine traffic stops by 245 different Oakland Police Department officers in April 2014. The footage of the officers' interactions with community members was transcribed.

The researchers then randomly selected 312 utterances spoken to black community members and 102 spoken to white community members for volunteers to analyze.

The researchers asked the volunteers to read the transcript of one community member's utterance and then the utterance by the police officer that followed in response. The volunteers rated on a four-point scale how respectful, polite, friendly, formal, and impartial the officer was.

Each interaction was rated by at least 10 volunteers, who did not know the names or races of the officers, community members, or any other contextual or identifying information.

Next, the researchers developed a computer model to rate how respectful each interaction was based on pre-existing scientific literature about respectfulness and politeness.

For instance, the computer measured how often police officers introduced themselves, used formal titles such as ma'am or sir, used words like please and thank you, apologized, such as saying "sorry to stop you," and reassured safety, such as saying "drive safe, please" -- all of which are utterances that show signs of respect, according to the study.

For example, the transcripts in the study included these sentences: "Sorry to stop you. My name's Officer [name] with the Police Department." "There you go, ma'am. Drive safe, please."

Less respectful utterances included using informal titles like "man" or first names, or asking for agency, such as saying "do me a favor."

The transcripts in the study included these sentences: "All right, my man. Do me a favor. Just keep your hands on the steering wheel real quick." "[First name], can I see that driver's license again?"

The researchers used the computer model to automatically estimate the level of respect for every utterance, and to estimate how respectful a human might have rated each utterance.

After analyzing all of their data, the researchers found that white community members were 57% more likely to hear an officer say one of the most respectful utterances in the dataset, such as apologizing. Whereas, black community members were 61% more likely to hear an officer say one of the least respectful utterances, such as informal titles.

The racial disparity occurred despite the police officers' race and among most officers, not outliers, the researchers found. The disparity emerged at the early onset of interactions and was still present after controlling for whether a community member was arrested, given a citation, or searched, Voigt said.
CNN reached out to the Oakland Police Department for comment on Monday. A public information officer responded that department officials and researchers plan to provide comment soon.

The study "is self-limiting in the sense that they focused only on transcriptions of verbal utterances in traffic stops, but I think this is a wise first step," said Jack Glaser, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

"I am aware of community surveys that have been conducted, and they certainly indicate that black people feel treated more poorly by police, but this is the first analysis of body-worn camera data that I'm aware of," he said. "It contributes a lot to our understanding of racial disparities in police-civilian encounters."

Glaser added that interactions in which a community member might feel disrespected not only can be stressful but can lead to behavioral and health effects and even acute trauma for that community member.

John Dovidio, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, agreed.

'How can you change the training?'

"If any of us feel that we've been disrespected in the situation, it's psychologically wounding to us," Dovidio said.

He added, however, that respect appears to be a particularly deep-rooted need for communities that historically have been disadvantaged.

"If you bring a majority and a minority group member together, a white and a black person, in those interactions the basic needs and goals of the white and black person are very different," Dovidio said.

"The white person in these intergroup interactions tends to want to be liked. They want to be sort of affirmed as being a good person," he said. "But people of color, and this occurs for other historically disadvantaged groups, their major goal is to be respected. ... Everybody wants respect, but minority group members in interracial interactions with authority figures have a particularly heightened need to feel respected in those interactions and that's why respect is such a key variable."

The first step to improving everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve is awareness, which the new study provides, Dovidio said.

"What this does is, makes it real, makes it tangible, makes it objective," he said. "It can then be used not to blame people ... but what it can be used for is a tool for teaching people how to not do something that they may be doing unintentionally."

In other words, police and other people of authority tend to unconsciously or implicitly display this disrespect through language, Dovidio said.

"The outcome of this disrespect is actually, it's a lose-lose situation, because law-abiding people in a community don't want crime. Police don't want crime. But the actions of the police officers undermine the trust and connection of them with the community," Dovidio said.

"Rather than blame police officers, I think the question is, how can you change the training and the experiences that police officers have?" he said. "I would hope that this article is not interpreted as a way of saying police officers are bad, but rather, here's some ideas of how police training can be improved and police practice can be improved to get the trust of the community, to create a relationship that's healthy and cooperative."

When I see that there is a new post in this thread, I have to prepare myself for another large bite of prejudice, death, injury, slur or bias.

It is hard to read but I know that I must.

Re: Andrea's post below; it is no shocker to find that police speak less respectfully to black drivers.

They certainly don't hesitate to shoot them when unarmed or undefended, either.

I listened to LeBron James speak at his press conference May 31st. It was very painful to listen and to see the sadness in his face. He said:

“I think back to Emmett Till’s mom, actually,” James said. “That’s one of the first things I thought of. The reason she had an open casket was that she wanted to show the world what her son went through as far as a hate crime, and being black in America. No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough. We’ve got a long way to go, for us as a society and for us as African Americans, until we feel equal in America.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.a3bdda8353fe

Man dead after being shot by LAPD officers and run over by their cruiser; toy gun found near body, police say

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-wilmington-police-shooting-20170607-story.html

Los Angeles police officials are investigating how officers killed a man in Wilmington, first shooting him before their cruiser ran over and pinned him, authorities said Wednesday.

The officers had responded about 9 p.m. Tuesday to a report of a man with a handgun in the 1100 block of North Wilmington Boulevard, according to a statement released by the LAPD.

A toy gun was found at the scene by investigators, police said in the statement.

When officers arrived, they saw a lone man in his mid-20s and the deadly encounter unfolded — but authorities provided a vague account of what transpired.

“Believing this may be the suspect from the radio call, they directed their attention toward him; at that time there was an officer-involved shooting,” the department said in the statement.

LAPD officials did not say whether officers saw the toy gun before opening fire or whether the man aimed it at police.

Police said several shots were fired and the man fell to the ground. Then the officers’ cruiser “traveled forward” and struck the man, pinning him underneath it, police said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The exact cause of his death — gunshot wounds or the weight of the cruiser — has not been determined.

Ed Winter, a deputy chief of investigations for the L.A. County coroner’s office, said the man has not yet been identified.

During the deadly encounter, one of the officers suffered an injury to his arm and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Police have not explained how the officer was injured but said he was released Wednesday after treatment.

The incident may have been caught on video as police cruisers in the LAPD’s South Bureau are equipped with dash cameras.

The initial police radio call of an "officer down" overstated the extent of the officer’s injury, and a dispatcher described the officer as having been shot in the arm.

"Shots fired; can you help," an out-of-breath officer is heard saying into his radio. The officer then advised where to approach the scene from on Wilmington Boulevard.

"Suspect down by vehicle; possible gunfire," the officer said shortly after to a dispatcher. Another officer's voice interjected, "We've got an officer down."

A dispatcher then tells officers over the radio that one of the officers at the scene was shot in the arm, and directs all units to Denni Street and Wilmington Boulevard.

Once the LAPD’s specialized shooting investigators arrived, they determined that the officers were not fired at and that the item recovered at the scene was a toy gun.

Initially, a police spokesman had said another suspect was in custody. But as the investigation evolved, LAPD Communications Director Josh Rubenstein said only one suspect — the man who was fatally shot — was involved in the incident.

A multi-agency investigation is underway, which is standard procedure for all LAPD officer-involved shootings. It will be reviewed by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, the Police Commission and its inspector general.

A white shade tent covered the police car's front end on the sidewalk into early Wednesday morning when coroner's investigators entered the area to remove the man's body.

Tuesday night's shooting is two blocks away from where 17-year-old Fabian Nunez was gunned down earlier that same day.

Missouri parole board played word games during hearings with inmates

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/missouri-parole-board-played-word-games-during-hearings-with-inmates/article_ce6cba9b-5932-52a4-899a-f7644ec4d7d8.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tw itter

The Missouri Board of Probation and Parole allegedly toyed with prisoners during hearings by trying to get them to say a chosen word or song title of the day, such as “platypus” and “Hound Dog.”

Don Ruzicka, a member of the seven-member board, along with an unnamed government employee were accused of keeping score during the hearings, according to a Department of Corrections inspector general report completed on Nov. 1, 2016.

Each time one of them used a predetermined keyword while interviewing an offender they earned a point. Two points were granted if the offender repeated the word. Occasionally, the duo spiced the game up by wearing matching clothing, like the time they dressed in black shirts, ties, pants and shoes.

The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at St. Louis recently obtained the state report and released it Thursday after a news conference, asserting that public servants “played games with people’s lives and liberty.”

“These activities, so far as we are aware, have never come to light in the public’s eye,” said Mae Quinn, director of the nonprofit human rights law firm. “They simply were not taking their duties seriously and their role as appointed officials and public servants seriously.”

The group, and other supporters, called on Gov. Eric Greitens to reform the board, including immediate removal of Ruzicka.

The seven-member parole board is responsible for determining whether a person confined in the Department of Corrections will be paroled or conditionally released, and for supervising thousands of people on probation and parole. They run parole hearings at prisons and by video.

Critics, including people who held leadership positions for the corrections department, have said in recent years that they want the parole board to be reformed. They believe it operates almost entirely in secret and has become a plum place for former lawmakers to land since term limits have been in place.

Board members are appointed by the governor for six-year terms. Ruzicka, a former conservation agent and Republican state representative from Mount Vernon, began his term Dec. 21, 2012. Former Gov. Jay Nixon appointed him. He was paid $85,204 in 2016, not counting retirement benefits.

Inspector General Amy Roderick concluded in her report that Ruzicka and an unnamed corrections employee who attended parole hearings violated a governor’s executive order and other procedures by failing to conduct state government in a manner that “inspires confidence and trust.”

Referencing recordings of some hearings, Roderick wrote: “It seemed they were trying so hard to embed the words or song titles into their questions or statements that they were not focused on the proper questions to ask nor were they actively listening to the responses from the offenders … and, most times, it seemed the offender was being made fun of by the use of such words and song titles during the process.”

According to Roderick’s report, the report was to be delivered seven months ago to then-Parole Board Chairman Ellis McSwain Jr. and the chief state supervisor for the Department of Corrections. In March, Greitens elevated Republican board member Kenneth C. Jones to the role of chairman, replacing McSwain, a Democrat. McSwain remains a member of the parole board.

A corrections department spokesman said on Thursday that department officials had no comment.

“Hootenanny,” was the word of the day on June 21, 2016.

According to the inspector general report, the unnamed department employee used the word four times during one hearing. Each time Ruzicka laughed out loud.

During the hearing, the employee whispered to Ruzicka: “I got four (points).”

In another hearing that day, Ruzicka referenced the song “Peggy Sue.” He asked the offender if she was named after the song. The department employee laughed and said he was just trying to lighten the mood.

“Or you could just have a hootenanny,” Ruzicka countered.

“Yes, we could have a hootenanny,” the employee said, whispering that points would be counted.

Asked when she first used heroin, the offender said it was at a rave.

“I thought they might have called it a hootenanny,” said the employee.

“A what?” the offender responded.

“A hootenanny,” the department employee said. “A party.”

Ruzicka and the employee laughed again.

“Platypus” and “armadillo” were the words on June 22, 2016, followed by “biomass” and “manatee” the next day. At hearings in July, song titles included “Soul Man,” “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight,” “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” “Hound Dog,” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

For instance, in a parole hearing for a sex offender, the department employee said: “Your grandma would probably be like he ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, you know it.” The employee added that if the offender kept up the behavior, the offender might be placed in a sexually violent predator unit, which is run by the Department of Mental Health and holds patients indefinitely. In that case, the employee said the offender might as well learn the song “Folsom Prison Blues.”

More laughing.

Asked by the inspector general how incorporating words and song titles in the hearing helped determine risk and potential release, Ruzicka said: “Through the complete and thorough hearing process we were able to determine the release date.”

Why “platypus”?

Ruzicka said: “I guess if they were rare items he’d taken and a platypus is a rare and unusual thing.”

Why dress the same?

Ruzicka laughed, according to the report, and said: “Just another one of those things.”

Ruzicka told the inspector general they played the game a few days and stopped.

Asked by the inspector general if “all of this sounded ridiculous,” Ruzicka said: “Yeah. Like I said, it happened and it was over … maybe that little check in here (he was pointing to his chest) was to move on. We didn’t discuss ending it. It just kinda ended.”

The investigative report says “several employees” were aware of the game being played by the duo and did not report it.

Amy Breihan, a lawyer with the MacArthur Justice Center, said such behavior potentially taints thousands of cases.

“Who knows how many hearings were affected by this conduct?” she said. “Even in hearings where literal games were not played, one has to question how seriously parole staff are taking their duties.”

At least one family is outraged. Two weeks ago, Ruzicka was part of a parole hearing for Norman Brown, who was involved in a fatal robbery when he was 15. He’s been in prison 28 years, though he wasn’t the shooter, said his attorney. His parole was recently denied.

“This does not sound fair having hearings conducted by a man who sees people like my brother as a means of entertainment,” Shatiega Brown, 36, Brown’s sister, said at the news conference. “Imagine if this was your family, your father, your brother. Would you think this is right, appropriate or just?”

She and others at the news conference urged the governor to take action.

“I am pleading with you so that my brother can have a second chance, a fair chance,” she said.