Butch Femme Planet  

Go Back   Butch Femme Planet > POLITICS, CULTURE, NEWS, MEDIA > In The News

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-16-2017, 10:12 PM   #381
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Minneapolis Police Officer Fatally Shoots Australian Woman Who Called 911 for Help

http://fusion.kinja.com/minneapolis-police-officer-fatally-shoots-australian-wo-1796964768?utm_source=fusion_facebook&utm_medium=s ocialflow&utm_campaign=socialflow_fusion_facebook& utm_content=link

A 40–year–old spiritual healer from Australia who was engaged to be married next month was shot and killed Saturday night by a Minneapolis police after calling 911 to report suspicious activity in an alley by her home.

Police have not released many details of the shooting, and family members of the woman’s fiancé, a 50–year–old Minnesota man, say they are frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the police department.

The name of the victim, who lived in the U.S. for about three years, has not been released pending notification of relatives in Australia.

A statement by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension released Sunday and reported by the Star Tribune said that two officers responded to the 911 call about a possible assault in an alley off W. 51st Street around 11:30 p.m.

“At one point one officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman,” the statement said.

The son of the victim’s fiancé said she would have walked about 100 yards in a well–lit alley to reach the scene of the shooting.

According to the Tribune, the responding officers’ body cameras were turned off during the incident, and patrol car cameras were unable to record what happened.

The shooting occurred just over a year after former police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile in a St. Paul suburb during a traffic stop. Castile, whose girlfriend and her 4–year–old daughter were in the car at the time, had complied with the officer’s orders when Yanez inexplicably began firing.

Last month, a mostly white jury found Yanez not guilty of manslaughter charges, sparking nationwide protests including in Minneapolis–St. Paul, where thousands took to the streets in anger after the verdict was announced.

A vigil and rally for the latest victim was planned for Sunday evening in the southern Minneapolis neighborhood where the shooting occurred.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2017, 08:47 PM   #382
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default Interesting info

How Fake Cops Got $1.2 Million in Real Weapons

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/07/21/how-fake-cops-got-1-2-million-in-real-weapons?ref=hp-1-112#.Cs5eHRmFT

When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t immediately jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over paperwork.

This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.

And in less than a week, they got it.

A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.

From left, examples of night-vision goggles, a simulated M-16A2 rifle and a pipe bomb trainer obtained from the Department of Defense by the Government Accountability Office through a fictitious law enforcement agency. GAO

“They never did any verification, like visit our ‘location,’ and most of it was by email,” said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO’s defense capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. “It was like getting stuff off of eBay.”

In its response to the sting, the Defense Department promised to tighten its verification procedures, including trying to visit the location of law enforcement agencies that apply and making sure agents picking up supplies have valid identification, the GAO report said. The department also promised to do an internal fraud assessment by April 2018.

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment further.

The sting operation has its roots in the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. At the time, many were surprised to see law enforcement respond to protests with armored trucks, sniper rifles, tear-gas bombs and other weapons of war.

Reporting by The Marshall Project and others found that much of the equipment came from the obscure 1033 program, which dates back to the Clinton era. Any equipment the U.S. military was not using — including Humvees, grenades, scuba-diving gear and even marching-band instruments — was available to local cops who could demonstrate a need.

The program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of supplies to more than 8,600 law enforcement agencies since 1991.

After Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the military from giving away some equipment and deeming other equipment “controlled,” establishing strict oversight and training requirements for law enforcement agencies that wanted it. The order also required a Defense Department and Justice Department working group to ensure oversight.

But since President Donald Trump took office, the group has not met, according to the Constitution Project, a bipartisan thinktank that had been participating in the meetings. Trump has said that he will revoke Obama’s executive order, although he has not yet.

Congress ordered the GAO to look into the program last year. A survey of local law enforcement did not turn up any instances of outright abuse at the state level but did find one illegitimate agency that had applied as a federal entity and was approved for equipment, Merritt said.

That’s when the agency launched the sting. Contrary to its public image, GAO has snagged other agencies with undercover work in the past, including an investigation of the Affordable Care Act in which the agency submitted fictitious applications and was approved for subsidized healthcare coverage.

In this case, the GAO created the fake law enforcement agency — whose name the agency would not reveal — and claimed it did high-level security and counterterrorism work. Once approved, the agency easily obtained the items from a Defense Department warehouse of unused military goods.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which lists rescinding Obama’s executive order one of its top priorities for the Trump administration, said the possibility of fraud does not indict the whole program.

“It suggests only that the U.S. military is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies and as such is going to have some lapses in material control,” Pasco said. “Law enforcement is going to get that equipment and we’re going to use it, to protect both officers and civilians. And if we don’t get it free from the military, we’re going to have to buy it with taxpayer dollars.”

But to Madhuri Grewal, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, and other opponents of police militarization, the problem is more fundamental.

“There just aren’t many everyday policing uses for military equipment like this,” Grewal said. “The question is why can real law enforcement agencies get some of this stuff, let alone fake ones?”

Andrea: Bolding mine
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-22-2017, 10:00 AM   #383
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Two Baltimore detectives plead guilty in racketeering case

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/21/us/baltimore-police-guilty-pleas/index.html

Two former Baltimore police officers pleaded guilty Friday to federal racketeering charges, admitting that they committed armed robberies, made fraudulent overtime claims and filed false affidavits.

Detectives Maurice Ward and Evodio Hendrix were among seven Baltimore officers indicted in March as part of an alleged conspiracy involving those and other crimes. The seven officers, members of Baltimore's Gun Trace Task Force, were accused of stopping people -- some of whom were not suspected of any crimes -- seizing their money, and pocketing it.

In one instance, Hendrix and Ward, allegedly with another officer, stole $17,000 in cash from a suspect's house following a SWAT raid.

In another instance, several officers stopped a nursing home maintenance supervisor and stole $1,500 that he was planning to use to pay his rent, according to the indictment.

The stolen amounts range from $200 to $200,000, authorities said.
"These are really robberies by people who are wearing police uniforms," said then-Maryland US Attorney Rod Rosenstein in March.

Attorneys for Ward and Hendrix did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said the men are no longer employed with the department.

The other five officers included in the indictment are awaiting trial, scheduled for January 2018.

The indictment said the seven officers schemed to steal money, property and narcotics by detaining people, entering residences, conducting traffic stops and swearing out false search warrant affidavits.

The investigation began a year ago and included electronic surveillance of the officers.

Hendrix and Ward committed "large-scale time and attendance fraud," according to prosecutors, a charged leveled at their five co-defendants as well.

In one instance, Ward, Hendrix and another officer were paid for two days of work while on vacation in the Dominican Republic, according to the indictment.

Two of the officers were heard on a phone call boasting about their colleagues, including Hendrix and Ward, committing overtime fraud for "a whole year" and making "at least $8,000 to $10,000 a month," the indictment states.

"These are 1930's style gangsters as far as I'm concerned," Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said in February. "This is a punch in the gut for the Baltimore Police Department."

The pleas come as the State's Attorney's office reviews about 100 cases in a separate investigation sparked by body camera footage allegedly showing a Baltimore police officer planting evidence at the scene of a January drug arrest.

It is also about seven months after the Justice Department, under former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and the city of Baltimore announced a consent decree mandating police reforms in Baltimore.

That followed a DOJ report which said unconstitutional practices by some of Baltimore's officers lead to a disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests of black residents, and excessive use of force against juveniles and those with mental health disabilities.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Old 07-22-2017, 12:07 PM   #384
homoe
Practically Lives Here

How Do You Identify?:
Butch
Relationship Status:
.....
 

Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle
Posts: 38,565
Thanks: 20,811
Thanked 33,587 Times in 14,918 Posts
Rep Power: 21474889
homoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputationhomoe Has the BEST Reputation
Default

I see Betsy Hodges has thrown her Police chef under the bus! By what I saw on the news, I thinking the voters will do the same to her!
homoe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-22-2017, 01:49 PM   #385
*Anya*
Infamous Member

How Do You Identify?:
Lesbian non-stone femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
She, her
Relationship Status:
Committed to being good to myself
 

Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: West Coast
Posts: 8,258
Thanks: 39,306
Thanked 40,815 Times in 7,290 Posts
Rep Power: 21474856
*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation
Default

They must have watched the Jonah Hill movie (War Dogs) or read the book first. These two guys exploited holes in bidding on government contracts and bought weapons to sell.

Watching it, I kept thinking, "This didn't really or couldn't really happen, could it?"

Our tax dollars at work:

"With the war in Iraq raging on, a young man (Jonah Hill) offers his childhood friend a chance to make big bucks by becoming an international arms dealer.

Together, they exploit a government initiative that allows businesses to bid on U.S. military contracts. Starting small allows the duo to rake in money and live the high life. They soon find themselves in over their heads after landing a $300 million deal to supply Afghan forces, a deal that puts them in business with some very shady people."

From IMDb.com

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrea View Post
How Fake Cops Got $1.2 Million in Real Weapons

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/07/21/how-fake-cops-got-1-2-million-in-real-weapons?ref=hp-1-112#.Cs5eHRmFT

When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t immediately jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over paperwork.

This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.

And in less than a week, they got it.

A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.

From left, examples of night-vision goggles, a simulated M-16A2 rifle and a pipe bomb trainer obtained from the Department of Defense by the Government Accountability Office through a fictitious law enforcement agency. GAO

“They never did any verification, like visit our ‘location,’ and most of it was by email,” said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO’s defense capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. “It was like getting stuff off of eBay.”

In its response to the sting, the Defense Department promised to tighten its verification procedures, including trying to visit the location of law enforcement agencies that apply and making sure agents picking up supplies have valid identification, the GAO report said. The department also promised to do an internal fraud assessment by April 2018.

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment further.

The sting operation has its roots in the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. At the time, many were surprised to see law enforcement respond to protests with armored trucks, sniper rifles, tear-gas bombs and other weapons of war.

Reporting by The Marshall Project and others found that much of the equipment came from the obscure 1033 program, which dates back to the Clinton era. Any equipment the U.S. military was not using — including Humvees, grenades, scuba-diving gear and even marching-band instruments — was available to local cops who could demonstrate a need.

The program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of supplies to more than 8,600 law enforcement agencies since 1991.

After Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the military from giving away some equipment and deeming other equipment “controlled,” establishing strict oversight and training requirements for law enforcement agencies that wanted it. The order also required a Defense Department and Justice Department working group to ensure oversight.

But since President Donald Trump took office, the group has not met, according to the Constitution Project, a bipartisan thinktank that had been participating in the meetings. Trump has said that he will revoke Obama’s executive order, although he has not yet.

Congress ordered the GAO to look into the program last year. A survey of local law enforcement did not turn up any instances of outright abuse at the state level but did find one illegitimate agency that had applied as a federal entity and was approved for equipment, Merritt said.

That’s when the agency launched the sting. Contrary to its public image, GAO has snagged other agencies with undercover work in the past, including an investigation of the Affordable Care Act in which the agency submitted fictitious applications and was approved for subsidized healthcare coverage.

In this case, the GAO created the fake law enforcement agency — whose name the agency would not reveal — and claimed it did high-level security and counterterrorism work. Once approved, the agency easily obtained the items from a Defense Department warehouse of unused military goods.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which lists rescinding Obama’s executive order one of its top priorities for the Trump administration, said the possibility of fraud does not indict the whole program.

“It suggests only that the U.S. military is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies and as such is going to have some lapses in material control,” Pasco said. “Law enforcement is going to get that equipment and we’re going to use it, to protect both officers and civilians. And if we don’t get it free from the military, we’re going to have to buy it with taxpayer dollars.”

But to Madhuri Grewal, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, and other opponents of police militarization, the problem is more fundamental.

“There just aren’t many everyday policing uses for military equipment like this,” Grewal said. “The question is why can real law enforcement agencies get some of this stuff, let alone fake ones?”

Andrea: Bolding mine
__________________
~Anya~




Democracy Dies in Darkness

~Washington Post


"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

UN Human Rights commissioner
*Anya* is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-26-2017, 06:52 AM   #386
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Officers kill man with no active warrants at wrong house

http://m.wmctv.com/wmctv/db_401748/contentdetail.htm?full=true&contentguid=AUdiWnEV&p n=&ps=#display

SOUTHAVEN, MS (WMC) - Documents show that Southaven officers went to the wrong house to serve a warrant on Monday, which resulted in the shooting death of a man who did not have any active warrants out for his arrest.

A warrant out of Tate County shows Samuel Pearman was wanted for domestic assault. But, when Southaven officers arrived on Surrey Lane to arrest Pearman, they did not show up to the correct house.

Instead, officers missed their target by 36 feet. Those 36 feet made all the difference to Ismael Lopez and his wife.

"Someone didn't take the time to analyze the address," attorney Murray Wells, who represents the family, said. "This is incredibly tragic and embarrassing to this police department that they can't read house numbers."

Wells pointed out that the house officers should have gone to, the one where Pearman was located, had a large 'P' on the door. While officials sort out what happened, the man they were looking for took to social media.

Pearson even posted on Facebook Live on Tuesday afternoon claiming he didn't do anything wrong.

"They made me out to be something I'm not," he said. "I haven't hurt her. She's the one who slapped me."

Ismael Lopez and his wife, Claudia Linares, were asleep inside their house across the street from Pearson when officers arrived.

Linares said her husband went to the door to see what was happening outside. That's when she heard gunshots and by the time she reached her husband, he was already dead.

"Bullet holes suggest they shot through the door," Wells said.

Officers said Lopez came to the door pointing a gun at them. Those officers claim to have asked Lopez multiple times to drop the gun before they started shooting.

But, neighbors said they didn't hear anything like that.

"I didn't hear yelling," neighbor Nicholas Tramel said.

Tramel's room is right next to the Lopez home. He said he never heard police tell Lopez to put his rifle down.

Wells implied that officers had reasons not to tell the truth in their account of what happened. Namely, because they could face consequences for shooting Lopez. He also said that Claudia, who was the only one on the property who could not be held responsible for shooting Lopez, did not hear any commands or instructions being given. In addition, Wells said Lopez never pointed a gun at the officers.

"There was a gun on the premises, but the man did not have the gun with him when police shot him," he said.

Wells said Claudia Lopez wants justice and for the world to know that her husband was a good man.

"When they came to my office, it wasn't money they sought. They wanted the story to come out," he said. "What they want everyone to know is who he was and what happened."

Wells described Lopez as a hardworking employee who, up until about four years ago, worked for City of Bartlett as a mechanic.

"They've been in that home for 13 years. The only time the police had ever been there was when they had been robbed," Wells said. "No criminal history whatsoever. A long-standing employee of the city of Bartlett, mechanic. Loved in the neighborhood."

He continued, "This could have happened to anyone. Her [Claudia's] sense of justice doesn't really come from a place of anger, but of confusion."
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Old 08-06-2017, 05:39 PM   #387
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Cellphone videos raise questions about Kentucky State Police cover-up in man’s arrest

http://www.wdrb.com/story/36066730/sunday-edition-cellphone-videos-raise-questions-about-kentucky-state-police-cover-up-in-mans-arrest

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The testimony in front of a Harlan County grand jury last summer left little doubt Lewis Lyttle did not follow orders, became combative and assaulted Kentucky State Police officers as they tried to arrest him outside a hospital.

“We was trying to get him handcuffed and I think Detective Miller was trying to hold his legs to keep him from kicking and he ended up getting kicked too in the chest,” Trooper Jimmy Halcomb testified on Aug. 1, 2016, according to a recording of the grand jury hearing.

“We finally had to force the handcuffs on him because he wasn’t complying with anything.”

But cellphone videos and more than a dozen sworn statements from eyewitnesses paint a different picture, and are the focus of a wrongful arrest and assault lawsuit against police.

State police said an internal investigation completed last month concluded that one of the officers used excessive force and was suspended four months and demoted.

Lyttle’s attorneys argue, however, the investigation didn’t go nearly far enough, and that evidence shows state troopers lied to prosecute Lyttle and tried to cover up their actions from the June 15, 2016 arrest.

“There were several glaring omissions in (Halcomb’s) testimony,” said defense attorney Douglas Asher, who represented Lyttle in his criminal case. “The sad part of it is, that if it weren’t for these witnesses, this old man would be in the penitentiary.”

Lyttle, 68, is a former construction worker who has been disabled since 1992 with a back injury.

On the day of the incident, Lyttle left his home in St. Charles, Virginia, to drive his neighbor to Harlan Appalachian Regional Hospital because she was having problems with chronic bronchitis.

Someone called the police to complain that Lyttle was exposing himself in the hospital parking lot.

When the first witness video begins, Lyttle can be seen sitting on the ground, his hands already handcuffed behind his back as Halcomb and KSP Sgt. Rob Farley hover over him.

In an instant, Farley reaches down and slaps Lyttle across the face, sending him to the pavement.

The woman who filmed the incident on her smartphone from an office overlooking the parking lot and those watching with her can be heard gasping after Lyttle is struck.

“He had no business smacking him in the face,” one woman can be heard saying on the video.

“I bet that’s part of the movie, reckon?” another said, talking about a crew filming in Harlan at the same time.

A second witness, also using a smartphone, captured what happened next.

The officers pick Lyttle up and uncuff him. Farley stands in front of Lyttle and Halcomb behind him. Then, two other KSP officers arrive.

Because the video was filmed inside an office building, it was unclear what was said between Lyttle and the officers, but Lyttle doesn't appear to make any aggressive movements toward them.

Unlike some local departments such as Louisville Metro, state police do not equip their officers with body cameras to record their interactions with the public.

After about 30 seconds, Farley reaches out and grabs Lyttle by his beard, knees him in the stomach and yanks him to the ground.

As Lyttle lies on the pavement, Farley punches him while another officer kicks him, the video shows.

“They are just punching him, beating the s--- out of him,” said the man recording the incident from the window of a nearby building. “Four cops for one man, and as old as he is.”

The officers then handcuffed Lyttle, again, and arrested him.

When he testified to the grand jury, Halcomb did not disclose that he had successfully handcuffed Farley before other officers arrived.

Instead, he tells grand jurors Lyttle resisted, kicking him, and the trooper “hollered for assistance.”

“So it took all of you all to try and get him handcuffed?” the prosecutor asked Halcomb.

“Yes,” Halcomb said.

Halcomb also did not tell jurors about how the officers slapped, punched and kicked Lyttle.

Based on Halcomb’s account, the grand jury indicted Lyttle on charges of assaulting Halcomb and Det. Kevin Miller, driving drunk, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and menacing, among other charges.

Both Lyttle’s criminal attorney and the lawyers representing him in the civil case claim Halcomb lied and intentionally omitted evidence.

“Trooper Halcomb said (Lyttle) was resisting arrest and that he kicked two of the troopers, but the video clearly shows it was the troopers who were kicking Mr. Lyttle as he was laying on the ground,” said David Ward, a Louisville attorney representing Lyttle in the lawsuit, which was filed two days after the incident on June 17, 2016.

The lawsuit remains pending.

“Mr. Lyttle did nothing, he complied with all of the officers’ requests and, during that period of time, he was submissive with them. And as a result of that, he was assaulted, brutally assaulted, for no reason,” Ward said.

Case dismissed

The criminal case against Lyttle unraveled and in January, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the felony charges.

Prosecutors based the decision on evidence that came to light after Lyttle was indicted. That evidence included the two cellphone videos of the incident and 16 sworn statements by witnesses who said Lyttle was the one assaulted.

Harlan County Commonwealth’s Attorney Parker Boggs, who handled the criminal case, did not return phone messages seeking comment.

In February, eight months after the arrest, state police launched an investigation “shortly after the events were brought to our attention,” Trooper Josh Brashears, a KSP spokesman, said in a statement emailed to WDRB News.

In a report completed last month, investigators found Farley used excessive force. He was suspended for 120 days and demoted from sergeant to trooper.

Brashears wrote that troopers were called to the hospital after Lyttle was accused of exposing himself to a juvenile and he then became combative, resisted arrest and spit on troopers.

“But even under these circumstances, KSP officers are trained and expected to uphold professional standards of conduct and must be held accountable for violations,” Brashears wrote in an email to WDRB.

The state police internal investigators questioned the other officers involved with Lyttle’s arrest and cleared them of wrongdoing. Lyttle still has a misdemeanor indecent exposure case pending in Harlan District Court.

And attorneys for the troopers said video of Lyttle’s arrest represents only an incomplete snapshot of what happened.

“You can’t form a conclusion based on just the video,” said attorney Scott Miller, who represents Trooper Kevin Miller, who is accused of kicking Lyttle.

Attorney Jason Nemes, who represents Halcomb, said “we believe our guy did what was appropriate.” Nemes is also a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, where he represents a Middletown-area district.

The attorneys declined to go into detail. Lawyers for the other troopers declined to comment.

In court records, Halcomb said in his investigative summary that after he “forcibly cuffed” Lyttle and sat him on the ground, the trooper noticed the cuffs were too tight and Lyttle’s wrists were bleeding.

When Farley arrived, Halcomb said he decided to uncuff Lyttle and reapply the handcuffs for the defendant’s comfort, according to Halcomb’s summary of the arrest.

After taking the left cuff off, Lyttle “clinched his fist and pulled it back,” prompting Farley to grab his beard and “put his hand up,” Farley wrote in his summary.

When Lyttle would not let Halcomb cuff him, Farley “applied a knee strike” and officers took him to the ground, Halcomb wrote.

Lyttle then “started kicking and being aggressive” and troopers forcibly cuffed him, according to Halcomb.

In a response to the lawsuit, troopers said they were reacting to Lyttle’s conduct and trying to get him to comply with being handcuffed and arrested, claiming he was “fiercely combative, spit at the officers, kicked the officers, tried to draw back his fist ... and refused to comply with repeated lawful commands from the officers to submit to the attempt to peacefully arrest him.”

"Had to fight him"

But the KSP findings, and Halcomb’s investigative summary, are just part of a larger cover-up by state police, Ward said.

He pointed out that several witnesses provided affidavits to investigators saying Lyttle was not aggressive with troopers, didn’t resist arrest and never spit at them.

The other officers should have been punished, and state police failed to hold Halcomb accountable for lying to the grand jury, Ward said.

The lawsuit argues that Halcomb uncuffed Lyttle and Farley began “verbally taunting him in order to provoke him to fight. When Lyttle refused to fight, Farley became infuriated, grabbed Lyttle's long, white beard, violently jerked his head downwards, and then kneed him in the groin area.”

Ward also argues that KSP knew about the alleged use of excessive force long before February, noting multiple witnesses called police during the arrests claiming Lyttle was being assaulted.

One witness identified Farley specifically and told a dispatcher in a 911 call during the incident that she wanted to talk to a supervisor about what she saw, according to a recording of the call in court records.

Lyttle’s attorneys also point to the murky circumstances surrounding the resignation of Lt. Jason Adams, the state police supervisor who immediately followed up on the incident. They claim Adams coached the officers on what to say to avoid culpability.

Adams called the hospital on the day of the arrest and asked for any video, saying his troopers “ended up arresting a guy over there and they had to fight him,” according to audio of a phone call in court records.

The lawsuit claims Adams helped the troopers draft “untruthful memorandums regarding the assault of Lyttle. These memorandums were crafted so that” the troopers “would not be disciplined or criminally charged for their conduct.”

On Jan. 13, 2017, the day the charges against Lyttle were dropped, Adams resigned. On his resignation letter, KSP officials wrote that he would not be considered for rehire as a trooper “or in any other capacity.”

Another note on the resignation letter said: “Based on the circumstances surrounding Lt. Adams’ retirement, I am unable to recommend him” for a program that allows retired troopers to work part-time. The notes do not go into further detail.

One of the hospital employees interviewed by Adams a few weeks after the incident said in an affidavit she believed Adams was trying to protect the troopers rather than find out what really happened.

Misty Mullins said Adams interviewed her about what she saw and “for someone who is supposed to be an un-biased fact finder, (he) went out of his way to inflame my emotions against the old man,” according to her affidavit. “In fact, I think he was nothing but biased.”

She claims Adams told her “that if that old man had exposed himself to my child and I had beaten the old man up that ‘we’ (KSP) … would not even arrest you for it.

“I told Lt. Adams that it didn’t matter what the old man had been accused of, the officers couldn’t just beat him like that,” she said in her sworn statement.

She said Lt. Adams theorized that while he didn’t know what Farley was thinking, he had a young daughter and “he was just upset over what the old man had done (allegedly).”

Mullins wrote that several of her coworkers who also witnessed the incident would not talk to Adams “because it will all be covered up like it normally is and nothing will be done about it anyway.”

The findings by state police also ignore conduct by the other troopers, Ward said.

“To only discipline Sgt. Farley for what occurred, and not the other troopers – who were on video kicking a helpless old man – is troubling,” he said.

The lawsuit is on hold as Lyttle’s attorneys last month asked a federal judge to order Kentucky State Police to turn over records from the internal investigation.

“The ultimate goal in filing the suit is to hold the troopers accountable for their actions,” Ward said. “What they did was reprehensible and … they should be subject to the same laws as everybody else.”
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2017, 06:43 AM   #388
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

A cop stopped a car for speeding - then pointed a gun at a passenger for more than 9 minutes

http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article165788587.html

A video taken during a traffic stop in California is drawing debate over the officer's decision to keep his gun pointed at the passenger for more than nine minutes.

The stop took place last Wednesday morning along U.S. Route 101, south of San Jose, after an officer noticed a car pass him going 85 mph, according to the Campbell Police Department.

After stopping the car for speeding, the officer requested the driver's license and additional paperwork. The driver and passenger spent several minutes looking for the paperwork before the officer walked back to his motorcycle to write a citation, police said.

It was at that point their stories diverged. According to police, the passenger began reaching "under his seat."

"It is not clear why the passenger chose to reach under the seat since the officer was not requesting any other paperwork," Campbell police said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the passenger's unexpected movement towards the bottom of the seat, caused the officer to perceive a threat and draw his handgun."

However, a man sitting in the vehicle's passenger seat - the target of the officer's gun - maintained throughout the incident that he had simply been reaching for some papers on the floor to try to find the vehicle's license and registration, as requested.

A video that apparently was recorded by a woman in the car begins as the male passenger is expressing incredulity that the officer has pulled a gun.

"Wow," the passenger says in the video, laughing. "We're looking for the f-ing paperwork, bro. Oh my God."

"I understand that," the officer replies. "Don't move, all right?"

The passenger sounds indignant as his hands remain on his lap. "Why are you still pointing that gun at me, bro?" he asks the officer. "Why are you still pointing the gun at me, though? Record this sh-t. Why are you still pointing the gun at me, bro? My hands are right here."

"I understand," the officer says.

"No, you don't understand," the passenger protests, as the officer tells him to relax. "No, I'm not going to relax. Get the f-king gun off me."

A woman in the car asks the officer: "Is that really necessary? His hands are both out."

The officer says that it is necessary as he waits for backup to arrive, eliciting another round of protests from the vehicle's passengers. For several more minutes, they remain at an impasse, with the passenger muttering periodic complaints as music plays in the background. The entire time, the officer's gun is trained on the man.

Toward the end, the officer relays something through the radio and the passenger begins protesting again. At one point in the video, the officer mentions that there had been a screwdriver on the floor of the car.

"Why are you trying to make this bigger than it is, bro?" the passenger says. "We complied with everything you asked for."

The video lasts a little more than nine minutes total, and the officer's gun is pointed at the male passenger the entire time. Police said in a statement the officer had to wait longer than usual for backup to arrive "and provide assistance in safely resolving the situation."

"We understand that it is never a comfortable position to have a gun pointed at you, regardless of whether it is a police officer," police said. "Unfortunately, the length of time that the officer's gun was drawn lasted much longer than normal based on his location."

Police said the traffic stop was resolved amicably.

"In the end, the officer had a conversation with the passenger of the vehicle explaining his actions and why the gun was pointed at him," police said. "The passenger indicated he understood why it happened and actually apologized to the officer. Both the driver and the passenger were issued citations and were allowed to leave."

However, the video was uploaded to Facebook last Saturday with a caption that suggested there may not have been as much understanding as police thought. (Note: The video contains profanity.)

"CAMPBELL COP IS A B--!!!!!!!!!!" wrote a Facebook user named "Feo Mas" who identified himself as the passenger in the video. "(He) pulled out a gun cuz I reached for paperwork he asked for."

A week later, the video had amassed nearly 2 million views on Facebook, as well as tens of thousands more on YouTube. Online, a debate raged: Several people defended the police officer and said they felt the passenger should have remained quiet, while others were outraged at how long the officer had trained his gun on the passenger despite the man's hands being visible at all times.

Police departments are under increased scrutiny for violent, often fatal interactions with suspects. So far this year, 594 people have been shot and killed by police, according to The Washington Post's Fatal Force database. Last year, police shot and killed 963 people.

The Facebook user who posted the video did not respond to an interview request sent by Facebook Sunday.

The Campbell Police Department said in a statement it was aware of the video circulating online, as well as the thousands of comments surrounding it. Police also cited an officer-involved shooting that had taken place in nearby Los Banos, California, as an example of the "unfortunate reality" that people sometimes attack police.

"As an agency, we can understand the response to the Facebook video, and that is why we have and will continue engaging our community," police said. "The comments on the Facebook video bring up a lot of different viewpoints about how the officer could have responded differently or used different tactics. Our officers receive a tremendous amount of training on a consistent basis and that training is what dictates our response. This is intended to protect our officers as well as those they come in contact with."

Police said they had reviewed footage from the officer's body cam, which included the beginning and end of the incident not shown in the Facebook video. The department did not release any footage from the officer's camera and did not immediately respond to an email Sunday.

"We are thankful that this incident resolved itself with no one getting injured and hope that this additional information provides clarification," police said.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Old 08-15-2017, 06:00 PM   #389
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Deputies Go Unpunished for Invasive Cavity Search on Houston Roadside

https://www.texasobserver.org/cops-go-free-warrantless-body-cavity-search-houston-roadside/amp/

The courts have long ruled that warrantless body cavity searches are, in most circumstances, unconstitutional. Impromptu roadside anal and vaginal probes are prohibited by both state law and policies adopted by many of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies, including the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean cops who engage in warrantless roadside cavity searches will always face consequences. This month, Harris County prosecutors dropped criminal charges against two Harris County sheriff’s deputies accused of helping vaginally probe Charnesia Corley after they smelled weed during a June 2015 traffic stop in north Houston. The sheriff’s office has already cleared both deputies of any wrongdoing, and both are expected to stay with the department. One of them could even soon return to patrol duty.

That’s what prompted the attorney handling Corley’s federal lawsuit against the county to release dash-cam footage on Monday that he says proves she was subjected to an illegal search. The video, first published by the Houston Chronicle, appears to show the deputies forcing Corley face-first on the pavement near her car before spreading her legs and shining a flashlight around her genitals.

Corley’s attorney, Sam Cammack, also called for officials to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue charges against the deputies. In a phone call with the Observer this past weekend, ahead of the video’s release, Cammack called the footage “undeniable proof this woman was violated.”

The deputies’ attorneys have claimed they “never penetrated” Corley during the stop, something that the dash-cam footage released Monday doesn’t seem to prove or disprove. In a response filed in the federal lawsuit, Harris County attorneys deny the deputies ever conducted a body cavity search, but rather forced Corley to the ground during a “visual strip search.” Natasha Sinclair, chief of the DA’s civil rights division, which investigates allegations against police officers, told the Observer that while grand jurors didn’t think the deputies committed any crime, “We don’t condone this type of search at all. This is by no means us saying this is an appropriate way to conduct a search.”

The courts have long ruled that the kind of warrantless search Corley says she endured is only justified when police can show that waiting for a judge’s approval would have resulted in “imminent loss or destruction of evidence,” which the county hasn’t even argued in Corley’s case.

However, roadside probes like Corley’s have surfaced in state and federal courts across Texas in recent years. In 2014, a North Texas state trooper pleaded guilty to two counts of official oppression after sticking her hand inside the pants of two women on the side of the George Bush Turnpike while searching for drugs. Even after DPS updated its policy to ban warrantless roadside cavity searches, drivers still complained of deputies probing them during traffic stops. In 2015, state lawmakers passed a new law requiring cops to obtain search warrants before conducting roadside body cavity searches.

That law, which went into effect three months after deputies strip-searched Corley in a Texaco parking lot, carries no criminal penalties for law enforcement officers who violate it.

Citing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, Sinclair wouldn’t explain why her office dropped charges against the deputies in Corley’s case earlier this month, other than to say her office had discovered new evidence they presented to another grand jury, which on August 4 cleared the deputies of any wrongdoing. “I’m prohibited from commenting on exactly what that content was,” she told the Observer.

Cammack meanwhile bristles that the deputies, who were both cleared of wrongdoing by an internal sheriff’s office investigation, will likely remain with the department. In a statement published by the Chronicle on Monday, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said, “I understand and respect the community’s concerns” regarding Corley’s treatment. Gonzalez said both deputies are expected to remain with the department. One of them, he said, “will be allowed to return to patrol duties.”

Cammack says that’s an unacceptable outcome. “This woman was half-naked, handcuffed and face-down on the ground when they penetrated her,” he said. “That deserves some kind of accountability.”
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2017, 09:06 PM   #390
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

California prison psychologist alleges guards locked her in with a convicted rapist

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article167322442.html

A California prison psychologist has filed a lawsuit against the state alleging she was threatened and demoted after she reported mistreatment of gay and transgender inmates at a correctional facility in Vacaville.

On two occasions, psychologist Lori Jespersen alleges, a correctional officer locked her in a confinement area with dangerous criminals after she filed complaints on behalf of transgender inmates at the California Medical Facility.

“The shocking nature of (the corrections department’s) retaliation against Dr. Jespersen – trapping her in units with notoriously dangerous prisoners, soliciting prisoners to harm her, and more” compelled her to take a one-month leave from her job in 2016, the lawsuit says.

Jespersen, 41, has worked for the corrections department since 2008 and at the Vacaville prison for the past eight years. She is a married lesbian who claims that the prison subjected her to a hostile work environment, illegally retaliated against her and violated state whistleblower protection laws by punishing her after she attempted to report misconduct.

Representatives for the corrections department and the federal program that oversees California prison health care declined to comment on the lawsuit because they had not seen it. The lawsuit was filed late Monday at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

Jespersen’s attorneys, Felicia Medina and Jennifer Orthwein, said the psychologist wants her lawsuit to compel the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to better protect gay and transgender inmates, who according to studies are more likely to experience unwanted sexual contact in prison than the general population.

Jespersen wants “to fight for members of her community that are being horribly treated and abused at the CMF. For her, this is about seeing people be held accountable,” Orthwein said.

The lawsuit describes a number of incidents in which Jespersen believed prison employees were complicit in the abuse of gay and transgender inmates. It says she attempted to report the incidents to prison officials and to outside state departments but believed her complaints did not receive appropriate attention.

Her allegations include:

▪ A correctional officer failed to lock a shower door in March 2016, which enabled a prisoner to rape a gay inmate.

▪ An officer in June 2016 prevented transgender inmates from attending a therapy group and insulted them. The correctional officer reportedly told the transgender women, “You’re no woman ... your breasts can’t give milk and you will never have a man” and “I don’t agree with your lifestyle and I never will, and this is a men’s prison, you are not ‘she.’ ”

▪ Correctional officers have compelled transgender inmates to strip in the open and denied them privacy screens. Correctional officers also have used derogatory language around transgender inmates.

▪ Three prison employees in July 2014 “outted” a transgender inmate by disclosing personal information about her on Facebook. The prison employees referred to the inmate as “he/she” and “that thing,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit describes two instances in which Jespersen said she feared physical harm after reporting alleged misconduct. In one, she was locked in a housing unit with a convicted rapist after she filed a report of a transgender inmate being mistreated by a correctional officer.

In the other, she was locked in a housing unit with two prisoners a day after she filed a complaint on behalf of a transgender inmate. In both cases, she was “unsupervised, alone and without access to a safety alarm.”

Jespersen also reported that a correctional officer insulted her in a manner that was intended to provoke violence against her by inmates. In one instance, the correctional officer allegedly told inmates, “She needs to be reminded where she’s at.”

Jespersen took a leave of absence in June 2016. When she returned, she was given a desk job where she does not work directly with inmates, the lawsuit says.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-28-2017, 01:22 PM   #391
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

SOUL SNATCHERS: Countering the State Sponsored Conspiracy to Destroy Pedro Hernandez (Part 3)

https://medium.com/@ShaunKing/soul-snatchers-countering-the-state-sponsored-conspiracy-to-destroy-pedro-hernandez-part-3-1b6307828eb6

Have you ever been arrested by the police and charged with a crime you didn’t commit? I don’t mean pulled over for a speeding ticket. I don’t mean harassed or ridiculed. I don’t mean treated like a suspect.

(Read Part 1 of Soul Snatchers HERE & Part 2 HERE.)

I’m asking, have you ever been arrested by the police, then charged by a prosecutor, then sent to jail to await trial, for a crime you absolutely did not commit? Do you know anyone personally who this has happened to? I don’t mean have you heard of a person who was falsely arrested and charged, then later exonerated, but do you know someone?

Before he even had a chance to graduate high school, standout student Pedro Hernandez, a good kid from The Bronx, had his entire life flash before his eyes with such false arrests and charges — not once, or twice, which would be absolutely outrageous, but seven different times.

This series is called “Soul Snatchers” for a reason. When another Bronx teenager, Kalief Browder, was arrested and charged for a crime he did not commit, and then left to rot in jail on Rikers Island for three years without ever being found guilty of a crime, he was routinely beaten and humiliated in the worst possible ways. When the charges were eventually dismissed, and he was simply let out without as much as an apology, his injured body was functioning, but his soul had been ripped out and damaged beyond repair. Kalief’s family surrounded him with love and support. Jay Z and Rosie O’Donnell did the same. The three years in Rikers, though, had damaged Kalief in ways that were mostly invisible to us, but painfully real to him.

Earlier this week I sat and had breakfast with Pedro Hernandez and his family. Fighting back tears, his mother Jessica told me that all of the false arrests, all of the fake charges, and all of the times in and out of jail — where he, too, was brutally beaten and abused — has left her son a hollow shell of his former self. He’s sometimes jumpy and nervous. He won’t leave the house — afraid that it may all happen again. She can hardly get him to leave his room. The smell of certain foods reminds of him of Rikers and he simply can’t eat.

Two straight years of hell on earth haven’t simply hardened him — they appear to have changed his very nature. He’s still Pedro. He still responds when you call his name. He still remembers wonderful memories and moments from his childhood, but he’s just not the same. And how could he be?

What I am about to tell you is the story of criminal conspiracy by the NYPD, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, and the City of New York to destroy Pedro Hernandez. After Kalief died, in photo op after photo op and press conference after press conference, elected officials and city leaders pledged that what happened to Kalief would never happen to another child in this city again. They lied. It’s happening to kids all over New York City — particularly in The Bronx — and it’s happening to Pedro Hernandez right now. He’s on life’s edge and his future continues to hang in the balance.

“I knew we were in trouble when Detective David Terrell of the 42nd Precinct got my cell phone number off of a report from my oldest son and started calling me at home,” said Jessica Perez, mother of Pedro Hernandez. “That was all the way back in 2011. He wouldn’t even pretend to talk about police matters. It started with him literally having the nerve to ask me if I would cook Spanish food for him then it got worse from there. That was in October. I changed my number a few months later because he just wouldn’t let up.”

This is a common refrain heard from families who were targeted by Terrell. At least five different women have now gone on the record to say that he sexually harassed them and offered to stop targeting their kids if they’d give in and have sex with him.

When I first heard Pedro’s story — that he was an innocent kid locked up at Rikers — being framed by police and prosecutors — I wanted to believe it, but I just couldn’t afford to take his friends and family at their word. The allegations were so outrageous, and so damning, that if true, only a criminal conspiracy of historic proportions could explain such a thing.

On December 15th, 2014, the NYPD, in concert with the Bronx DA’s office, began a full on assault against 15-year-old Pedro Hernandez. He was a sweet kid in a rough neighborhood, and had never been arrested before. He never should’ve been arrested.

Standing on a corner near 168th Street in the Bronx, Pedro was talking to his brother’s friends, who were sitting inside of a double-parked car. When police from the 42nd Precinct pulled up in an unmarked car, they got out and asked Pedro to do something he had never heard before. “Get in the car,” the officer demanded to Pedro, speaking of the car his brother’s friends were in. On TV, he had heard police officers yell for people to “get out of the car,” but he had never heard them demand that someone get into someone else’s car. Pedro then told the officer that he lived close by and didn’t need a ride. The officer repeated his order, “I need you to get in the car.” So Pedro complied. This simple moment was a turning point in Pedro’s life.

At almost the very instant the driver of the car shifted it into drive and moved it forward less than 30 inches, police turned their flashing lights on and ordered the car to stop. They had asked Pedro to get into the back seat for a reason — they could not arrest him, as they planned to do with everyone in the car on that evening, if he was just outside of it talking to them. They needed Pedro to be inside of it. Police in The Bronx are full of tricks like this.

Claiming that they thought they smelled the faint hint of marijuana, police now ordered Pedro and the other guys out of the vehicle and handcuffed them all, rounded them up, and took them to the 42nd Precinct, without informing any of them why they were being arrested.

Without an attorney or his mother present, Sgt. Barnett asked Pedro, “Why are all of the passengers saying the gun we found in the car was yours?” Pedro had no idea what he was stepping into at the time, but the question from Sgt. Barnett was NYPD 101. Of course, none of the passengers said any gun in the car belonged to Pedro, but perhaps Pedro would name someone else if he thought they had named him. “I was never even in the vehicle until the police told me I had to get in it. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Life would never be the same for Pedro Hernandez again. That next morning, from the 42nd Precinct, he was taken to Horizon Juvenile Center. A few hours later he was taken to Family Court. A few hours later he was taken to another temporary detention center. Yet a few more hours later he was taken to New Bridge Non-Secure Detention Center. It’s not what you think. It’s a house in a neighborhood in the middle of The Bronx except it has officers who guard it and the house has bars on the windows. The 16 days Pedro stayed at New Bridge were the beginning of the end of his childhood.

On January 5th, 2015, something horrible happened to Pedro at this facility. At 12:15AM, with no provocation, Officer Gregory Hyman forced Pedro out of bed, shoved him out of his room, and into an empty room in the house and began brutally beating him. One punch from Hyman to Pedro’s face was so forceful that it caused Pedro to hit his head on a scorching hot radiator, also injuring his hands and neck as well. Not once did Pedro return force, but Hyman continued the brutal beating. When another child in the facility saw and heard the beating, he attempted to barge in to save Pedro, but other officers blocked the door. The child continued to try to get in there to stop it, but couldn’t, as Pedro screamed for help. Hyman then proceeded to choke Pedro.

Here’s the video, released in full for the first time. It’s painful to watch.

The Director of New Bridge, who was not in the house at the time of the incident, but saw it on camera, immediately fired Gregory Hyman for the assault, notified police and Pedro’s mother, and immediately had Pedro transferred out of her facility. Over the next 24 hours, Pedro was then bounced back to Horizon Detention Center, then Family Court, then Bronx Hope School, then New View Detention Center — where he was denied proper medical care at each place, before finally being transferred to Lutheran Detention Center.

But here’s what’s wild. The Bronx DA’s Office had the video of Pedro being brutally assaulted for 20 months and did nothing about it until private investigator Manuel Gomez obtained the video and sent it to local reporter James Ford, of New York television station, Pix 11. A full 20 months after a grown man assaulted a child in the dark of the night, Gregory Hyman was finally arrested and charged with with assault, endangering the welfare of a child, criminal obstruction of breathing and blood circulation, and harassment.

From this point forward, having already trapped Pedro inside of the criminal justice system, the NYPD and the Bronx DA’s Office began a series of flagrant, illegal arrests of Pedro Hernandez — threatening and forcing false witnesses with prosecution and even violence if they did not identify Pedro in crimes he absolutely did not commit.

What follows is the detailed history of those false arrests and the evidence, including affidavits and videos from witnesses who openly state that Detective David Terrell, Detective Daniel Brady, and Assistant District Attorney David Slott wantonly and flagrantly demanded that they identify Pedro in crimes he didn’t commit — or suffer severe consequences. It’s a lot of information that took me over a month to sort through and understand. Here, I’ll try to do it as clearly and methodically as I can.

On July 12th, 2015, a 15 year old boy named Tyrese Revels was shot in the calf. Pedro didn’t shoot him. Pedro didn’t even know Tyrese Revels and Tyrese Revels did not know Pedro. Consequently, not a single shred of physical evidence existed showing that Pedro had anything at all to do with this shooting. Nothing. It didn’t matter. And you will soon see — evidence, truth, lies, guilt, innocence — none of it matters to the detectives in the 42nd Precinct or the prosecutors in the Bronx DA’s office. They are just out to get arrests and convictions and are fully willing to railroad anyone to get them. I’m sure that sounds harsh, but evidence will prove that is the case.

Remember, Tyrese Revels is not only a kid, but he’s a kid who has been shot. With no concern for his well-being, Detectives Terrell and Brady, alongside Assistant District Attorney David Slott, begin demanding that Tyrese identify Pedro as his shooter.

Here’s Tyrese, the shooting victim, in his own words, on being pressured to falsely identify Pedro:

In another interview, Tyrese Revels details how Detective David Terrell threatened him with physical violence if he didn’t lie and say he saw Pedro shoot him.

Even though police knew full well where 15-year-old Pedro Hernandez lived, they released his photo to every single news station in the city as their lead suspect in the shooting of Tyrese Revels. The photo came from Pedro’s Facebook page. Sure enough, the news media ran with it. On July 13th, 2015 New York’s News 12 showed Pedro’s photo as an important suspect in a shooting. From morning until night they showed his image with a message that the NYPD needed help locating him. He was literally sitting at home the whole time. That’s the web version of it above.

Pedro’s mother, Jessica, seeing this on the web and on the news, then called the 42nd Precinct to inform them that she would be bringing Pedro in for questioning the next day. When Jessica brought him in, instead of simply questioning him, the police arrested Pedro right there on the spot and charged him with the crimes of attempted murder in the second degree; assault in the first degree; criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree; assault in the second degree; reckless endangerment in the first degree; assault in the third degree; reckless endangerment in the second degree; criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; and harassment in the second degree. They didn’t bother taking it before a grand jury. It would’ve never held up — they had no evidence.

Now, I just need us to stop right there. Let’s not get too deep. I just need you to imagine what it would feel like if you got arrested and charged with 9 crimes, most of them serious felonies — including attempted murder — when you didn’t commit a single one of them. Imagine what that would do to you emotionally, physically, and financially. Imagine what it would do to your family. Now imagine it happening to you when you were 15. Now imagine it happening to you when you were 15 and you had already been brutally beaten by a guard while locked up previously. Because that’s exactly where Pedro and his family were emotionally. To them, this wasn’t a news story, or a headline, or a trending topic, their entire lives were turned upside down. They wondered if Pedro might end up getting sent to prison for decades for some foolishness that he didn’t even know anything about.

First the police sent Pedro to central booking. Next, they sent him over to Horizon Juvenile Center for six days, before he was finally released on his own recognizance, but the charges remained.

From his release in July until February of 2016, Pedro and his family attended five different court hearings on the attempted murder charge — wondering each time if police might lock him back up. Then, without even a small explanation or apology, all charges were simply dropped against Pedro on February 29th, 2016.

Andrea: Click the link for the videos and the rest of the article.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-31-2017, 01:06 PM   #392
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

King County deputy on leave after pulling gun during traffic stop

http://www.king5.com/news/local/deputy-on-leave-after-pulling-gun-during-traffic-stop/468786232

A King County Sheriff’s deputy will be placed on administrative leave Tuesday after a video surfaced that shows the deputy confronting a motorcyclist with a gun during a traffic stop.

King County Sheriff John Urquhart said he didn’t want the deputy on the streets until the incident was investigated.

Based on the footage he saw Monday afternoon, Urquhart said he found the video to be upsetting and the deputy’s use of force likely violates department policy.

Alex Randall recorded the video while riding his motorcycle on August 16.

“This video shows the boldness of the King County Sheriffs Deputies and lack of fear of repercussions in threatening and intimidating an unarmed citizen with excessive use of force,” Randall wrote on YouTube.

The footage shows Randall pulling up to a stop light. The deputy walks up to the left side of the motorcycle with a gun pulled close to his chest pointed at Randall. He does not show a badge or identify himself.

“What are you doing to me?” Randall said.

“What do you mean what am I doing?” the deputy said. “You’re f****** driving reckless. Give me your driver’s license or I’m going to knock you off this bike.”

“I will pull over. I am unarmed,” Randall said.

After a brief exchange, the deputy reached into Randall’s front pants pocket and took out Randall’s wallet to get his ID.

“I’m sorry. You have a gun drawn on me, so I’m a little panicked,” Randall said.

“You’re right, because I’m the police,” the deputy said. “That’s right. When you’re driving and you’re going to place people at risk at 100 miles an hour plus on the God dang roadway.”

After looking at Randall’s ID, the deputy put his gun away. He identified himself as with the King County Sheriff’s Office and told Randall he could be arrested for reckless driving.

In a post at the end of the YouTube video, Randall claimed he was not traveling 100 miles per hour, writing that the deputy’s comment was “a fabrication and an exaggeration.”

Sheriff Urquhart posted the following statement on Facebook Monday night:

Late Monday afternoon I was sent a video of a traffic stop of a motorcyclist by a King County Sheriff's detective. With the caveat that I have not yet heard the other side of the story, I was deeply disturbed with the conduct and tactics that were recorded.

I have ordered the detective be placed on administrative leave as of Tuesday morning pending a full investigation of the facts.

In every encounter I expect my deputies to treat others with respect. Our manual requires that firearms not be drawn and pointed unless the deputy believes their use may be required. Generally that means the deputy believes the safety of him or herself is in jeopardy, or a member of the public. Drawing your weapon on someone when investigating a misdemeanor traffic offense is not routine. All of these issues will be covered in a full investigation. In the meantime, the detective involved will not be working with the public.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-01-2017, 06:15 AM   #393
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Video shows Utah nurse screaming, being dragged into police car after refusing to let officer take blood from unconscious victim

http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse-arrested-after-complying-with-hospital-policy-that-bars-taking-blood-from-unconscious-victim/

A nurse alleges she was assaulted and illegally arrested by a Salt Lake City police detective for following a hospital policy that does not allow blood draws from unconscious patients.

Footage from University Hospital and officer body cameras shows Detective Jeff Payne insisting to nurse Alex Wubbels that he be allowed to get a blood sample from a patient in the burn unit who had been injured in a July 26 collision in northern Utah that left another driver dead.

Wubbels responded that blood cannot be taken from an unconscious patient unless the patient is under arrest, there is a warrant allowing the draw or the patient consents. The detective acknowledges that none of those requirements is in place but insists he has the authority to obtain the draw, according to the footage.

At one point, Payne says, “She’s going to jail,” if he doesn’t get the sample.

After Wubbels consults with several hospital officials and repeats the policy, Payne tells her she is under arrest and grabs her, pulling her arms behind her back and handcuffing her. The footage shows the detective dragging her out of the hospital and putting her inside a patrol car as she screams.

Parts of the footage were shown Thursday at a news conference at the office of Karra Porter, a Salt Lake City attorney representing Wubbels.

Salt Lake police Sgt. Brandon Shearer said the department started an internal investigation, which is ongoing, in response to the incident.

Payne was temporarily suspended from the department’s blood-draw program — where officers are trained as phlebotomists so they can get blood samples — but remains on duty, Shearer said. The department also has held training for the officers in the program, he said.

Andrea: Click link for video and rest of article
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2017, 06:47 AM   #394
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Ohio news photographer reportedly shot by deputy while setting up to take pictures of traffic stop

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/05/ohio-news-photographer-reportedly-shot-by-deputy-while-setting-up-to-take-pictures-traffic-stop.html

A small Ohio news organization said one of its photographers was shot by a sheriff's deputy Monday night while he set up to take pictures of a random traffic stop.

Andy Grimm "had his camera in his hand" when he was shot in his side by a Clark County sheriff's deputy in New Carlisle, which north of Dayton, The New Carlisle News said in a Facebook post.

He was rushed to Miami Valley Hospital for surgery and is expected to recover.

Grimm had left the newsroom around 10 p.m. on Monday to take pictures of a lightning storm, the paper said. While he was taking pictures, a traffic stop occurred on the same road, according to the article.

"I was going out to take pictures and I saw the traffic stop and I thought, 'Hey, cool. I'll get some pictures here.'" he told the newspaper. He said he pulled into a parking lot in full view of the deputy, got out of his Jeep and started setting up his tripod and camera. "I turned around toward the cars and then 'pop, pop."

The newspaper speculated that the deputy may have mistaken the camera for a weapon. Grimm said the deputy, identified in reports as Jake Shaw, gave him no warning.

"I was just doing my job," he said. "I know Jake. I like Jake. I don't want him to lose his job over this."

Sources told the newspaper that there was “some confusion” surrounding the shooting.

“I just talked to Andy and he said that he is very sore, but in good spirits,” Dale Grimm, the photographer's father and publisher of the New Carlisle News, told Fox News. “He said the hospital expects to be releasing him Tuesday. He also stressed that he does not want the deputy to lose his job over this.”

The Dayton Daily News reports the case has been turned over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

“This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. It was just a terrible misunderstanding,” his father said.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Old 09-05-2017, 09:00 AM   #395
Kätzchen
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
She
Relationship Status:
Attached & Monogamous
 

Join Date: May 2010
Location: Near my honey, right here at home.
Posts: 15,051
Thanks: 36,151
Thanked 31,927 Times in 9,907 Posts
Rep Power: 21474865
Kätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST ReputationKätzchen Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Thanks always, Andrea, for these timely updates. And thanks for posting about the coverage by Shaun King, concerning Soul Snatchers. It's horrifying, what the abuse of power can do to another human being, but I'm glad that King is willing to risk his life and career and the safety of his family by blowing the whistle.
__________________
Kätzchen

_____ ______
Kätzchen is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Kätzchen For This Useful Post:
Old 09-06-2017, 07:04 PM   #396
*Anya*
Infamous Member

How Do You Identify?:
Lesbian non-stone femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
She, her
Relationship Status:
Committed to being good to myself
 

Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: West Coast
Posts: 8,258
Thanks: 39,306
Thanked 40,815 Times in 7,290 Posts
Rep Power: 21474856
*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation*Anya* Has the BEST Reputation
Default The cops could not tell the difference between a bald, 5"10, 170lb male suspect and a female 5"2, 115 lb. ??

Teen girl files claim against police who mistook her for a male suspect and punched her

By Amy B Wang September 5 at 5:10 PM

Nearly three months later, Tatyana Hargrove still can’t talk about what happened to her on June 18 without tearing up.

It had been a sweltering Sunday when, on a bike ride back from shopping for a Father’s Day gift, Hargrove was suddenly stopped by police officers in Bakersfield, Calif.

The officers had been looking for a suspect — described as a 25- to 30-year-old, bald, black man standing 5 feet 10 and weighing about 170 pounds — who had threatened several people with a machete at a nearby grocery store, according to a police report.

Thinking she was that man — and despite her protests — the officers seized on the 5-foot-2, 115-pound Hargrove, in an altercation that escalated until police punched her in the mouth, unleashed a K-9 dog on her and arrested her. It wasn’t until officers placed her in their patrol car that they asked Hargrove’s name and realized she was female — and thus not the suspect they were looking for.

Though police later admitted it was a case of mistaken identity, Hargrove was charged with resisting or delaying an officer and aggravated assault on an officer. It wasn’t until August that those charges against her were dropped, her attorney said.

“It changed me. Very bad,” Hargrove, 19, said last week at a news conference. “My friends tell me I’m different.”

That’s about as far as she was able to get before breaking down crying.

“I hope and I pray this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” she said through tears.

Frustrated with what they say has been a lack of accountability for the officers’ actions, Hargrove is filing a claim against the city of Bakersfield. A precursor to a lawsuit, the claim will almost certainly lead to legal action against the city.

Neil K. Gehlawat, Hargrove’s attorney, said this option was the only way they felt they could bring justice in this case. Only the district attorney’s office or a U.S. attorney’s office has the ability to punish the officers, he added, but there was “virtually zero percent chance” they would.

“Our job is to hold the officers accountable for what happened and all the law allows us to do is to seek money,” Gehlawat said. “But our hope is that, by going through this process and by potentially having this case heard by a jury, that they will send a loud and clear message to the officers in the department that what happened is not appropriate and it should not happen again.”

Bakersfield police spokesman Ryan Kroeker said the department is aware a claim was filed and had been expecting it, but did not comment further. In July, a police spokesman told The Washington Post the department had determined the officers had exercised appropriate use of force on Hargrove.

Gehlawat said the Bakersfield police chief did call Hargrove and her parents to apologize for what happened, but also suggested Hargrove should have complied before complaining.

“Which I think is just victim-blaming,” Gehlawat said.

In a widely shared video of Hargrove’s account of the incident, filmed by the Bakersfield chapter of the NAACP in July, the teenager stands with a pair of crutches near the intersection where she was stopped by police and described how one of the officers demanded she give him her backpack, she said.

When she asked if they had a warrant, one of the officers gestured toward a police K-9 behind him, she said.

“I then got scared and then I was like, here, take the backpack, just take the backpack,” Hargrove added.

After that, she said in the video, the officer grabbed her by her wrist, then punched her and threw her onto the ground; shortly afterward, the police K-9 “came and started eating at my leg.”

The same officer then put his knee on her back and other knee against her head, despite her protests, she said.

“I told him ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ and then I started yelling out, ‘Somebody help me, somebody help me! They’re gonna kill me!’” she said. “And then finally, he let me up, he tied my hands behind my back and then he tied my feet together and he threw me in the back of the car.”

Hargrove was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of her injuries, including abrasions on her face and scrapes and punctures from the police K-9’s “engagement on her right thigh,” Christopher Moore, the arresting officer, wrote in his police report.

Moore wrote that “several nurses” at the hospital referred to Hargrove as a male and that “when I corrected them and advised she was a female they were surprised and apologized for the mistake.”

After she was treated for her injuries, Hargrove was booked into jail, the report said. She was detained for nearly 16 hours there before being bailed out by her parents, according to the NAACP.

In the police report, Moore wrote that Hargrove had “spun into” one of the officers with her left shoulder, causing him to fall backward, and then “quickly maneuvered her body to get back on top of him” after the officer punched her.

“At this time I was forced to quickly consider the following; [Hargrove] matched the description of the suspect that had brandished a machete, her backpack was within her arm’s reach and the main compartment was unzipped allowing her immediate access to the machete,” Moore wrote. After weighing whether he could use his Taser or baton on Hargrove, Moore wrote that he decided to unleash the police K-9, Hamer.

In the police report, Moore wrote that after officers placed Hargrove in a police car, she continued to scream out of the window at them for about five minutes.

“While Hargrove was in the back seat I asked what her name was and when she provided it as ‘Tatyana’ I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, that’s a girl’s name. What is your name?’ ” the police report stated. “Hargrove said, ‘I’m a girl, I just don’t dress like one.’ This was when I first discovered she was a female.”

A search of her backpack revealed no weapons, the report stated.

The claim against Bakersfield alleges police used “excessive and unreasonable force” against Hargrove, as well as civil rights violations under federal and state law.

“One of the questions in my mind is, even if this case is a case of mistaken identity, why didn’t they do more to ascertain her identity prior to using excessive force?” Gehlawat said.

He described the impossible situation Hargrove had been put in to reporters last week: “She tried to get the dog off of her. The officers described that as her not being compliant, but I bet that if any one of us had a canine biting onto some part of our body, our natural instinct might be to try to get the dog off of us so that the dog wouldn’t keep biting us.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.9181edad4058
__________________
~Anya~




Democracy Dies in Darkness

~Washington Post


"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

UN Human Rights commissioner
*Anya* is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to *Anya* For This Useful Post:
Old 09-14-2017, 11:01 AM   #397
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Man Claims Citrus Heights Police Used Excessive Force During His Arrest

http://fox40.com/2017/09/13/man-claims-citrus-heights-police-used-excessive-force-during-his-arrest/

CITRUS HEIGHTS -- The fence is still locked in front of the boarded up, three-story house where an electrical fire burned everything back in June.

"All's I can remember yelling is this is my mom's house, this is my mom's house," said Dryw Westerman.

Westerman's childhood home in Citrus Heights was burning.

"I'm just trying to figure out where my daughter is, where my mom is," he said.

But instead, the 34-year-old father, who has no criminal history, ended up going to jail.

Westerman says police used too much force that day.

"The subject refused, and again tried to drive forward, causing one of our officers to have to get out of the path of the vehicle he was driving," said Sgt. Richard Wheaten with the Citrus Heights Police Department said.

Police say Westerman was trying to drive through police tape at the scene, something they admit people attempt regularly when emotions are heightened because they are worried about their family members.

"It is rare for people to go this far to not follow directions when we're trying to help get them to their family and help keep them safe at the same time," Wheaten said.

Westerman was charged with resisting arrest and being an unauthorized person in an area closed for safety.

"Wasn't blocked off at all, I had plenty of room to go down there," he said.

Westerman says he was trying to turn down a side street that wasn't blocked off and that he explained that to officers. But he says they opened the door to his car and twisted his arm out of the window.

"Pressed me against the steering wheel," Westerman said.

And then he says they tackled him to the ground while he was wearing shorts, burning his knees on the hot asphalt.

It's something he's seen happen in Citrus Heights before with James Nelson about a mile and a half away and within days of his arrest in June.

"I'm grateful that didn't happen to me, but it could have been me," Westerman said.

Westerman says the burns on his knees are much less severe, but he also got abrasions on his wrists from the handcuffs.

"His injuries are not consistent with a burn or anything like that," Wheaten said.

The police department says he was brought up from the asphalt rather quickly and that Westerman's story is not entirely accurate.

"I wasn't raised like that," Westerman said.

Right now, he's raising his 4-year-old son, Michael.

"He teaches me everything," Michael said.

When Michael grows up, he wants to be a cop.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2017, 11:12 AM   #398
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

Man Holding Stick Shot Dead By Oklahoma City Cop

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-oklahoma-city_us_59c23f23e4b0f22c4a8dce68

An Oklahoma City police officer shot and killed a man holding a stick on Tuesday, according to authorities. The shooting is under investigation.

The slain man had been a suspect in a hit-and-run that occurred on Tuesday evening, Capt. Bo Mathews, a police spokesman, told reporters.

At least two officers confronted the man, who was holding a stick, in the front yard of a home. One officer fired a Taser stun gun at the man, Mathews said, and the other shot the man with a gun.

The dead man, whose identity wasn’t released, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The identities of the two officers have not been released.

During a press conference ― footage of which was shared online by KOCO 5 News ― a reporter noted the slain man had been identified by several locals as deaf. Mathews said that he had no such information, and stressed that the investigation was in a “preliminary” phase.

The officer who shot the man, Mathews added, had been placed on paid administrative leave.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-20-2017, 11:15 AM   #399
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default

As arrests are made, protesters question the tactics used by St. Louis police

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/as-arrests-are-made-protesters-question-the-tactics-used-by/article_e58481b7-f7c2-541e-91d2-31a6379f272c.amp.html

ST. LOUIS • Police used a technique called kettling on Sunday night to box in about 100 people at a busy downtown intersection and arrest them for failing to disperse.

It’s a tactic used to corral a group of people who fail to follow police orders. St. Louis police took the action after several windows were broken and concrete planters and trash cans overturned.

But some of those caught in the box made by rows of officers said police overstepped their bounds, using excessive force and chemical spray on people who were not protesting, including residents trying to get home and members of the media. As police closed in from all sides, they struck their batons in unison on the pavement, in a cadence march.

Tony Rice, an activist who goes by Search4Swag on Twitter, said he was shocked by the police behavior.

“It was the most brutal arrest I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Rice said. “I thought I was going to die.”

He said he could not lie prone on the ground, as ordered, because he had his bike with him.

Rice said his neck was being pressed against part of his bike, and he told the officers: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

Those bused to the jail seemed confused by what was happening, Rice said. Pedestrians were arrested along with legal observers, protesters, a freelance photographer and a doctor, he said.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk was caught in the kettle Sunday night. A line of bike cops formed across Washington Avenue, east of Tucker Boulevard and police in helmets carrying shields and batons blocked the other three sides of the intersection at Tucker and Washington. Faulk heard the repeated police command, “Move back. Move back.” He had nowhere to go.

The police lines moved forward, trapping dozens of people — protesters, journalists, area residents and observers alike. Multiple officers knocked Faulk down, he said, and pinned his limbs to the ground. A firm foot pushed his head into the pavement. Once he was subdued, he recalled, an officer squirted pepper spray in his face.

Police loaded Faulk into a van holding about eight others and took him to the city jail on Tucker, a few blocks to the south. He arrived about midnight and was released about 1:30 p.m. Monday after posting a $50 bond. Faulk was charged with failure to disperse, a municipal charge.

Nigel Jernigan, 27, a cook from Jennings, said he came downtown around 9 p.m. Sunday to join others protesting the not-guilty verdict in the case of former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley, accused of murdering Anthony Lamar Smith.

In doing so, he got caught up in the sweep by police. He said he saw officers hit and roughhouse people around him on the ground who wouldn’t put their hands behind their backs.

“Most of the people who didn’t have their hands behind their backs were making sure they weren’t pepper sprayed in the face,” he said.

Jernigan said he put his face to the concrete. He said he heard police chant and yell even though the majority of the protesters were already terrified from being cornered and not allowed to leave.

Dellicia Jones, 23, said she and her boyfriend were also caught up in the sweep. She said she hadn’t participated in any of the earlier protests but wanted to see what was happening Sunday night.

She and her boyfriend parked on Washington Avenue and joined other people who were mostly standing around and talking, Jones said. After about 30 minutes, police began advancing while banging their batons on the ground in unison.

She and her boyfriend were quickly boxed in. “When we tried to walk one way, they came at us with pepper spray and batons and told us to go the other way,” Jones said, but they had nowhere to turn.

Jones said she wasn’t treated roughly by the officers who arrested her but she saw others who were hit with pepper spray and some who were slammed to the ground.

She thinks police were too harsh in how they swept in on the protesters.

“It was nowhere near right, at all,” Jones said a few hours after she was released from the City Justice Center. She had spent about 15 hours there and was among the many charged with failure to disperse.

Controversial tactic

Kettling has been used across the country as well as in Europe to defuse violent situations, which is how police described their Sunday night actions. After several hours of peaceful protests, which started at police headquarters west of downtown, the group of about 1,000 people moved to the St. Louis University campus and then back to the police station. Then a group peeled off and headed downtown, where several windows of businesses were broken, and concrete planters and trash cans overturned. Police warned protesters several times to disperse, saying it was no longer a peaceful assembly.

People run up Olive Street in St. Louis as some windows are broken and bicycle police begin arriving in the area on Sunday, Sept. 17, 2017. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

Tony Rothert, legal director of the American Civil Liberties of Missouri, said his office has been busy fielding complaints and been in contact with Mayor Lyda Krewson’s office as well as Acting Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole regarding what Rothert called inappropriate police behavior.

“We’re exploring whether litigation will be necessary to bring police in line with the Constitution,” Rothert said.

He said examples of questionable behavior by police include use of chemical sprays and ordering people to stop recording officers and to delete images they had already taken.

“And then engaging in kettling, which caused people who were doing nothing wrong to be detained and arrested along with those who were breaking the law,” Rothert said. “It has been used infamously and does very often bring in journalists, legal observers and innocent bystanders. It was used at the presidential inauguration (in January) in D.C., and in New York during Occupy Wall Street. It’s really a military tactic for controlling crowds and controversial because it leads to constitutional violations.”

Rothert said he is unaware of it ever being used in St. Louis before Sunday night “and I don’t recall it ever happening during Ferguson or any of the other protests of police shootings.”

The St. Louis Police Department said the design of the area downtown St. Louis prompted their actions Sunday night.

“The geographical layout of the area, and not a technique, dictated how tactics were deployed,” a police spokesman said in a statement Monday.

Police said anyone who wants to make a complaint about officer misconduct can contact the Internal Affairs Division at slmpd.org, 314-444-5652 or in person at Police Headquarters, 1915 Olive Boulevard.
Used in Portland

In November 2014, when it was announced that a grand jury would not indict former Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, protests broke out across the country, including in Portland, Ore., where kettling was used to control a crowd of about 100 demonstrators. Ten people were arrested for disorderly conduct or interfering with police, but prosecutors dismissed the cases.

A citizen review board determined that orders by police brass to have officers corral and arrest the group of protesters was unlawful. The board investigated after about 40 complaints were made to the city’s Independent Police Review Division, a part of the city auditor’s office.

Constantin Severe, director of the Independent Police Review, said those who complained said there was a “lack of articulation” by officers as to what the demonstrators were doing wrong. And without that component, police were wrong in kettling the group, which makes it impossible for anyone boxed in by police officers to leave, he said.

Severe said that after the findings, the Portland Police Department vowed to use the kettling procedure rarely, and stopped for nearly two years. They resumed the practice after Donald Trump was elected president, which launched several protests in Portland including one in June where kettling was used again.

“Those on the protest side say (kettling) is killing our First Amendment rights,” Severe said.

Police say it’s an effective way to defuse a volatile situation without resorting to violence. Portland is reviewing police policy on crowd containment, he said.

David Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that kettling serves a lawful purpose when crowds disobey police orders to leave an area. Those who have done nothing wrong should not pick that particular time to try to wage a debate with officers.

“If you are in a crowd and next to a guy that is breaking the law and police say it’s an unlawful assembly, you are going to get scooped up if you don’t leave,” said Klinger, a former Los Angeles police officer.

He said many of those protesting have done so before and know that in a volatile situation, ignoring failures to disperse typically leads to arrest.

“This is no time to play the victim game,” Klinger said. “It’s time to leave.”
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Old 09-21-2017, 04:06 PM   #400
Andrea
Senior Member

How Do You Identify?:
Mature Femme
Preferred Pronoun?:
Her/She
Relationship Status:
I heart Rene
 
Andrea's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: California
Posts: 3,755
Thanks: 15,427
Thanked 15,248 Times in 3,064 Posts
Rep Power: 21474852
Andrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST ReputationAndrea Has the BEST Reputation
Default Update

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrea View Post
Man Holding Stick Shot Dead By Oklahoma City Cop

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-oklahoma-city_us_59c23f23e4b0f22c4a8dce68

An Oklahoma City police officer shot and killed a man holding a stick on Tuesday, according to authorities. The shooting is under investigation.

The slain man had been a suspect in a hit-and-run that occurred on Tuesday evening, Capt. Bo Mathews, a police spokesman, told reporters.

At least two officers confronted the man, who was holding a stick, in the front yard of a home. One officer fired a Taser stun gun at the man, Mathews said, and the other shot the man with a gun.

The dead man, whose identity wasn’t released, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The identities of the two officers have not been released.

During a press conference ― footage of which was shared online by KOCO 5 News ― a reporter noted the slain man had been identified by several locals as deaf. Mathews said that he had no such information, and stressed that the investigation was in a “preliminary” phase.

The officer who shot the man, Mathews added, had been placed on paid administrative leave.
The Latest: Neighbor says man shot by cop didn’t speak

https://apnews.com/fc652ca4660848c3a6c6b4733ff74ada



OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Latest on a man holding a stick who was shot and killed by an Oklahoma City police officer (all times local):

4:15 p.m.

A man who saw Oklahoma City police officers open fire on his deaf neighbor says the neighbor was developmentally disabled and also didn’t speak.

Julio Rayos tells The Oklahoman that 35-year-old Magdiel Sanchez mainly communicated through hand movements. He says he believes Sanchez became frustrated trying to tell the officers what was going on, and that he shouldn’t have been killed.

Two officers investigating a hit-and-run involving Sanchez’s father Tuesday night shot Sanchez with a gun and a Taser after he left his front porch and approached them holding a metal pipe.

Police Capt. Bo Mathews said Wednesday that Sanchez didn’t obey the officers’ commands and that they didn’t hear witnesses yelling at them that Sanchez was deaf.

Sanchez died at the scene. The officer who fired the gun has been placed on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated.

Oklahoma City police officers who opened fire on a man who was approaching them holding a metal pipe didn’t hear witnesses yelling that the man was deaf, a department official said Wednesday. (Sept. 20)

___

10:20 a.m.

Authorities say Oklahoma City officers who opened fire on a man who was approaching them with a metal pipe in his hands apparently didn’t hear witnesses yelling that the man was deaf.

Police Capt. Bo Mathews said Wednesday that 35-year-old Magdiel Sanchez wasn’t obeying the officers’ commands before one shot him with a gun and the other with a Taser on Tuesday night. He says the officers didn’t hear witnesses yelling “he can’t hear you” before they fired.

Sanchez died at the scene. The officer who fired the gun has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Mathews says the officers were investigating a reported hit-and-run. He says a witness told one of the officers the address the vehicle had gone to and that Sanchez was on the porch when the officer arrived. He says Sanchez was holding the metal pipe, which had a leather loop on one end.

A neighbor told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Sanchez carried a stick to ward off stray dogs when he walked at night.

___

10:10 a.m.

A neighbor of a man shot and killed by an Oklahoma City police officer say he was either deaf or hard of hearing and often carried a stick to protect himself from stray dogs.

Police Capt. Bo Mathews says officers were responding to a report of a hit-and-run Tuesday night and said they found a vehicle that matched the description of the one in the crash. He says two officers confronted a man holding a stick near the vehicle.

Mathews says one officer fired a Taser and the other shot with a gun. The man was died at the scene. He has not been named.

Jolie Guebara said Wednesday that she didn’t know her neighbor’s name, but that he used notes to communicate with her and her husband and often carried the stick when he walked at night.

12:50 a.m.

Oklahoma City police say a man holding a stick was shot and killed by an officer on the city’s southeast side.

Police Capt. Bo Mathews says officers were responding to a report of a hit-and-run around 8:15 p.m. Tuesday when they found a vehicle that matched the description of the one in the crash.

Mathews says two officers confronted a man holding a stick near the vehicle. One officer fired a Taser and the other shot the suspect with a firearm.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Names of the suspect and the two officers have not been released.

Mathews says the officer who shot the man with the firearm was placed on administrative leave.

An investigation is ongoing.
__________________
I am very spoiled!

What we think about and thank about, we bring about!

Today I will treat my body with love and respect.
Andrea is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following User Says Thank You to Andrea For This Useful Post:
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:57 PM.


ButchFemmePlanet.com
All information copyright of BFP 2018