Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

“let’s whoop some ass,” Myers wrote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

https://www.wfla.com/1632904360

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the charges for all 11 people have been dropped.

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