Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Video shows white cops performing roadside cavity search of black man

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/04/01/video-shows-white-cops-performing-roadside-cavity-search-of-black-man/

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on an investigative series about police abuse in South Carolina. I’ve found a dizzying number of cases, including illegal arrests, botched raids, fatal shootings and serious questions about how all those incidents are investigated. Many of these cases were previously unreported, or if they were reported, the initial reports were a far cry from what actually happened. The series will run at some point in the next week. But in the meantime, I want to share one particularly horrifying incident that I came across this week while researching the series.

According to a federal lawsuit filed by attorney Robert Phillips, what you see in the video below occurred in the town of Aiken, S.C., starting at about 12:20 p.m. on Oct. 2, 2014. The two occupants of the car are black. All the police officers are white.

This edited dashcam video shows white police officers in Aiken, S.C., stop and search a black couple. The police are accused of conducting illegal searches, including a rectal search on the male occupant. (Aiken Police Department)

Here’s what happened: Lakeya Hicks and Elijah Pontoon were in Hicks’s car just a couple of blocks from downtown Aiken when they were pulled over by Officer Chris Medlin of the Aiken Department of Public Safety. Hicks was driving. She had recently purchased the car, so it still had temporary tags.

In the video, Medlin asks Hicks to get out, then tells her that he stopped her because of the “paper tag” on her car. This already is a problem. There’s no law against temporary tags in South Carolina, so long as they haven’t expired.

Medlin then asks Pontoon for identification. Since he was in the passenger seat, Pontoon wouldn’t have been required to provide ID even if the stop had been legitimate. Still, he provides his driver’s license to Medlin. A couple of minutes later, Medlin tells Hicks that her license and tags check out. (You can see the time stamp in the lower left corner of the video.) This should be the end of the stop — which, again, should never have happened in the first place.

Instead, Medlin orders Pontoon out of the vehicle and handcuffs him. He also orders Hicks out of the car. Pontoon then asks Medlin what’s happening. Medlin ignores him. Pontoon asks again. Medlin responds that he’ll “explain it all in a minute.” Several minutes later, a female officers appears. Medlin then tells Pontoon, “Because of your history, I’ve got a dog coming in here. Gonna walk a dog around the car.” About 30 seconds later, he adds, “You gonna pay for this one, boy.”

Moments later, a K9 officer named Clark Smith arrives. He walks around the car with his dog. A fourth police officer then shows up. The four officers then spend the next 15 minutes conducting a thorough search of the car. Early into the search, Medlin exclaims, “Uh-huh!” as if he has found something incriminating. But nothing comes of it.

After the search of the car comes up empty, Medlin tells the female officer to “search her real good,” referring to Hicks. The personal search of Hicks is conducted off camera, but according to the complaint filed by Phillips, it allegedly involved exposing Hicks’s breasts on the side of the road in a populated area. The complaint also alleges that this was all done in direct view of the three male officers. That search, too, produced no contraband.

The officers then turn their attention to Pontoon. Medlin asks Pontoon to get out of the car. He cuffs him and begins to pat him down. Toward the end of the first video, at about the 12:46:30 mark, he tells Pontoon: “You’ve got something here right between your legs. There’s something hard right there between your legs.” Medlin says that he’s going to “put some gloves on.”

The anal probe happens out of direct view of the camera, but the audio leaves little doubt about what’s happening. Pontoon at one point says that one of the officers is grabbing his hemorrhoids. Medlin appears to reply, “I’ve had hemorrhoids, and they ain’t that hard.” At about 12:47:15 in the video, the audio actually suggests that two officers may have inserted fingers into Pontoon’s rectum, as one asks, “What are you talking about, right here?” The other replies, “Right straight up in there.”

Pontoon then again tells the officers that they’re pushing on a hemorrhoid. One officer responds, “If that’s a hemorrhoid, that’s a hemorrhoid, all right? But that don’t feel like no hemorrhoid to me.”

The officers apparently continue to search Pontoon’s rectum for another three minutes. They found no contraband. At 12:50:25, Medlin tells Pontoon to turn around and explains that he suspects him because he recognized him from when he worked narcotics. “Now I know you from before, from when I worked dope. I seen you. That’s why I put a dog on the car.”

That was Medlin’s “reasonable suspicion” to call for a drug dog — he thought he recognized Pontoon from a drug case. Medlin could well have been correct about recognizing Pontoon. He has a lengthy criminal history that includes drug charges, although his record appears to be clean since 2006, save for one arrest for “failure to comply.” Of course, even if Medlin did recognize Pontoon, that in itself isn’t cause to even stop him, much less search his car, or to subject him to a roadside cavity search.

With no contraband and no traffic violation to justify the stop in the first place, Medlin concluded the stop by giving Hicks a “courtesy warning,” although according to the complaint, there’s no indication of what the warning was actually for. Perhaps it was to warn to steer clear of police officers in Aiken.

Andrea: Click the link for more instances

[Kätzchen]

Thanks for posting that article Andrea.

By chance, have you read about the black judge, Justice Olu Stevens who filed an emergency lawsuit, earlier this past week?

Justice Stevens spoke out about racism from the bench and is taking lots of heat for doing so.

Here's an link to that news story, if you or others might be interested in reading about this situation:

http://m.nydailynews.com/king-black-...le-1.2585022?e

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[*Anya*]

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

Melissa Boarts’s family was frantic to find her.

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

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

Finally, she stopped.

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

The parents called 911 for help.

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

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

Now the family is pursuing legal action.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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