Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[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.

[Andrea]

Video shows San Antonio school officer body-slamming girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valdez just hopes something good will come out of this

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, Pamela waits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, she waits.

[*Anya*]

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

By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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