Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Glenn]

Truly sad for all involved. I was thrown around, for no reason, in an instant, by an officer of the peace myself, simply for parking in a no-parking zone in front of a drug store. He drew his gun in my face, shouting, then grabbed me, and slammed me on my car, while I was getting back in. I tried to defend myself of course, by instinct, like many have done, and could easily have gotten killed. I would like to hear, in the news, about those officers, who lose it, claiming job burn-out, or whatever, doing serious prison time, with therapy, in the same way, as most everyone else, imo, instead of covering each other's asses, and getting light reprimands, or suspensions, etc.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by Glenn

Truly sad for all involved. I was thrown around, for no reason, in an instant, by an officer of the peace myself, simply for parking in a no-parking zone in front of a drug store. He drew his gun in my face, shouting, then grabbed me, and slammed me on my car, while I was getting back in. I tried to defend myself of course, by instinct, like many have done, and could easily have gotten killed. I would like to hear, in the news, about those officers, who lose it, claiming job burn-out, or whatever, doing serious prison time, with therapy, in the same way, as most everyone else, imo, instead of covering each other's asses, and getting light reprimands, or suspensions, etc.

What happened after? Did he just let you go? Did you report him?

[Andrea]

I can in no way remember all the names I have read in the last few months but I want to list those I can:

Sandra Bland
Michael Brown
Tamir Rice
Freddie Gray
Mansur Ball-Bey
Rekia Boyd
Eric Gardner

953 human beings killed so far this year. Almost 200 were completely unarmed.

[Andrea]

http://wtvr.com/2015/10/19/patterson-brown-shooting/

Patterson Brown


Police released the name of the man shot and killed by an off-duty Richmond Police officer at a Chesterfield car wash Saturday morning. Paterson Brown Jr., 18, recently graduated from James River High School where he played football, according to friends.

[Jesse]

Sadly, I seriously doubt that we will ever know the truth of what took place the night the Corey Jones was shot and killed. It was 3 am and just the two of them there supposedly. So it's the officers word against a dead man's. How convenient.

The police are now saying that, "the officer was on duty in a plainclothes capacity, in an unmarked police vehicle, when he stopped to investigate what he believed to be an abandoned vehicle. As the officer exited the vehicle, police say, he was suddenly confronted by an armed subject. Police say the officer discharged his firearm resulting in the death of Corey Jones."

[Cin]

Here's a website that keeps track of the people killed by the police in the US this year.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/n...s-us-database#

Just for perspective, the US kills citizens at 70 times the rate of other first world nations.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/pol...world-nations/

In raw numbers and by percentage of the population, the United States has the most prisoners of any developed country in the world. It also has the largest total prison population of ANY nation period, developed or undeveloped, I guess Americans are by nature a rowdy bunch. Apparently the police have no choice but to kill us in such alarming numbers.

Seriously though, it's really scary that the police can kill citizens with impunity.
The police have to kill people sometimes, it's just the way it is. Police officers want to go home to their families in one piece at the end of the day. It's just that shooting people seems to be the go to way of keeping the peace. It's the first choice rather than the last.

[Andrea]

Anthony Hill - naked when shot and killed by police. His case goes before the grand jury today.

http://www.cbs46.com/story/28301956/naked-man-shot-by-police-officer-at-dekalb-county-apartments

[Glenn]

Originally Posted by Andrea

What happened after? Did he just let you go? Did you report him?

Thanks. His partner did apologized to me citing personal issues, and that he short circuits sometimes.This happened about thirty years ago, before a lot of folks started reporting the police for abuse, and trusted them more, or gave up and let it go on. I am glad police abuse is being reported more now.

[Jesse]

Here's a news video with some additional info on the shooting of Corey Jones. It also shows how Raja parked his van across the lanes when he stopped to "help" Jones. We need to stop killing one another.

http://www.wpbf.com/news/officer-sho...ances/35942092

[Andrea]

The story goes that Corey had his gun out and pointed at the officer. So how then does the officer manage to draw his gun and shoot Corey without out one bullet being shot from Corey's gun?

[diamondrose]

When I hear about deaths in police custody, it mostly references people who are in diabetic emergencies that present much like someone under the influence.

[Andrea]

Spring Valley High school

http://www.wistv.com/story/30353999/video-shows-spring-valley-school-resource-officer-slamming-dragging-student-out-of-desk

I have read three different things this child was supposedly doing that resulted in the officer tossing her around.

1) pulled out her cell phone
2) chewing gum
3) wouldn't participate in class

I actually can't think of anything other than physically attacking someone that justifies that type of force.

The Resource Officer has been placed on administrative leave pending review. My opinion: Both he and the teacher should be fired.

[Tuff Stuff]

I was pulled over this spring by a young CHP officer..this is how it went down.

I was driving home and I usually take the main highway,it's about 100 miles to and from work.There are about a dozen small communties/towns in between.I was coming home and stopped at one of these small towns to grab a bite to eat and right away I notice a cop car and inside it an officer who was watching me,very closely.I have stopped in this town many times before and I know most of the CHP around here by sight.My instinct told me trouble..it was by the way he kept looking at me.I'm part native american and this town is not known to treat POC kindly..but thank goodness I have seen big changes in all the 20 some years I have lived in this part of the state,slow changes,but changes..and I suspect mostly because of the younger people running off and going to college and then coming back here to work and raise their families and all those older people dying off right and left.It's these older white folks who hold on mostly to their racists ways yet.I had a strong feeling i might get pulled over by this young white male officer..my intuition is pretty 98% right on the dot about things.So,I pull out of town and its another 15 miles to the next one and in the back of my mind I knew me and this cop were going to meet up somewhere down the road.It happen about 10 miles before the next town and who should pull right up behind me..it's that cop.He follows me for another 5 miles before he decides to flash his lights..now,in my mind,i'm not breaking any laws..i'm going the speed limit,not driving dangerously,and my vehicle is up to code.When he flashed his lights I knew this is bulls**t.Thing is,I hear all this bad press about cops and how people are harrassed and killed by simple traffic pull overs.Most of the police officers I know are good cops but I still get leery when ever i'm around them. This was a whole new face to me and hell if I was going to pull over my van on the side of a somewhat busy highway and possibly get struck by a passing log truck because this new cop wanted to check me out..he could of pulled me over back at the last town..but see,things don't work out that way if the officer is up to no good.I felt angry,and sure,I could of pulled over and give him a piece of my mind..and in return,he could of shot me and claim self defense.No,I let him follow me to the next town(another 5 miles down the road) and it being daylight yet,follow me where there would be some witnesses..I also stayed calm and continued to do the speed limit.We finally reached this town and I pull over in front of this busy restaurant with a full window view of main street,hello people,here's some dramatic real life entertainment,more salsa for your chips?.By this time,he was bumper to bumper with me,all lights flashing wildly,siren on..*snort* and we both pulled in front of this business,he was pissed off at me no doubt.As I sat there,waiting for his next move,three more police cruisers pull up behind my van...yes,four cop cars and all these officers jumping out at once,guns drawn and pointed straight at me..I thought,sweet Jesus,i'm coming home..my one regret was that I would not be able to kiss my woman goodbye and hug my fur babies one last time before I ended up with 50 bullets inside me.As they did this my mind said stay calm and keep both my hands on the steering wheel..one officer shouted get out of my vehicle with hands in plain view..yeah right,motherf***er,and kill me as I reach for my door handle..f*** you!..so I waited and the next thing I knew i'm face to face with the cop who started all this crap.I smiled at him and I believe he said "why didn't you stop back there?"..I was thinking,because,I wanted to stay out of jail and most importantly,stay alive..but my answer was "I didn't see you,or hear you,my music was playing loudly"..he looked at me as if I was out of my mind.Of course they all had a good laugh and he checked me for warrants and let me stay there for about a half an hour before letting me go on my merry happy to be alive way,no ticket,no jail time.That was a good day.

Btw,his excuse for pulling me over was because I had one of those little tree air fresheners hanging from my rearview mirror...yeaah,right.

[Cin]

Well they discovered who was the cause of the incident at that school in SC. It wasn't the cop who assaulted that young girl, it wasn't the teacher who stood there and watched, it wasn't even the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen. Surprisingly all this was caused by the student who filmed it.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...urbing-schools

I guess we have the answer to that age old philosophical question "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it does it make a sound?"
It would seem the powers that be there in SC think the answer is NO.

However, I do see some holes in their logic.
There were people around to hear the sound of that girl being assaulted. If you muzzle them that doesn't erase the deed. Controlling the flow of information forever changes the integrity of the scenario. Not to mention what it says about the integrity of the people in power.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Well they discovered who was the cause of the incident at that school in SC. It wasn't the cop who assaulted that young girl, it wasn't the teacher who stood there and watched, it wasn't even the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen. Surprisingly all this was caused by the student who filmed it.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...urbing-schools

I guess we have the answer to that age old philosophical question "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it does it make a sound?"
It would seem the powers that be there in SC think the answer is NO.

However, I do see some holes in their logic.
There were people around to hear the sound of that girl being assaulted. If you muzzle them that doesn't erase the deed. Controlling the flow of information forever changes the integrity of the scenario. Not to mention what it says about the integrity of the people in power.

I do not read that article the way you appear to have read it.

No one made the officer throw the girl across the room. He is at fault. Not anyone else. Doesn't matter what she did to have the officer called (short of physical violence on another), nor what another student did, the response was excessive. The officer was abusive, and should be fired and charged.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Andrea

I do not read that article the way you appear to have read it.

No one made the officer throw the girl across the room. He is at fault. Not anyone else. Doesn't matter what she did to have the officer called (short of physical violence on another), nor what another student did, the response was excessive. The officer was abusive, and should be fired and charged.

Of course the officer should be fired and charged with assault. It certainly was not Officer Ben Fields first rodeo, he has a history of being abusive, so in my mind that makes a host of people, his superior officers, the entire police department and whoever else turned a blind eye to his violent behavior, accountable for what he does. I don't know what article you are referring to that you read that I took a different way, but this is the article I posted:

South Carolina Teen Who Filmed School Cop's Assault is Arrested for "Disturbing Schools"
This story keeps getting worse.

By Adam Johnson / AlterNet

October 27, 2015

UPDATE: This has gotten much worse. Niya Kenny, 18, who filmed the now infamous arrest has been arrested herself for "disturbing schools." She's out on $1000 bail.

WLTX reports that Kenny was trying to "stand up for her friend" when she filmed the assault, telling Loren Thomas of WLTX, "I was crying, screaming and crying like a baby. I was in disbelief." Both Kenny and her mother are understandably skeptical as to why she was arrested for "disturbing schools."

"But looking at the video, who was really disturbing schools?" Kenny's mother told WLTX. "Was it my daughter or the officer who came into the classroom and did that to the young girl?"
http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...urbing-schools

I was being sarcastic when I said "Well they discovered who was the cause of the incident at that school in SC. It wasn't the cop who assaulted that young girl, it wasn't the teacher who stood there and watched, it wasn't even the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen. Surprisingly all this was caused by the student who filmed it."

I was also trying to point out that it's insane to spend time trying to cover up incidents like this by intimidating the people who bring them to the attention of the public, as though if no one sees the abusive incident it did not happen. Thus the reference to if a tree falls in the woods.

Instead those with the power should be doing something about the individuals who perpetrate this type of violence. To me it is particularly despicable when those people whose job it is to protect and serve, instead harm.

Also just for clarity's sake when I said "the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen", I was once again trying to be funny (when will I learn that while I may be a lot of things, funny ain't one of them). I find it ludicrous to imagine that someone sitting as passively as that student was sitting when that police officer assaulted her could ever be seen deserving that kind of treatment. I don't doubt she was being difficult and that's why the officer was called. That's a problem in and of itself. Why when a student is not presenting as violent is it ever necessary to call for police back up? When are teenagers not being difficult? It's their job. (trying to be funny again). What I mean is that as long as a student is not being violent no one has a right to attack them the way that police officer did. There are plenty of ways to deal with someone who won't leave when you ask them to. I have worked with difficult populations through the years, including troubled adolescents, and I've found that it is way too acceptable to deal with teenagers aggressively, much more acceptable than with many other populations. I see that attitude at the route of the problem although at this point it has gone beyond that and needs to be dealt with as a crime. But it would also be a good idea to examine this inherent belief that aggression and violence is acceptable in dealing with non violent students. And we haven't touched on the reality of how black students are going to be treated more aggressively than white students in any given scenario. We need to take systemically sanctioned violence out of schools. In this incident it was ridiculous to drag that girl like that. She was asked to leave after refusing to hand over her phone and she refused according to what I read. That hardly merits that kind of violence. In my mind if you want to separate someone and they are being passively resistant, perhaps you could consider moving everyone else? But I think I digress here.

Anyway back to the issue, this is not the first time attempts have been made to punish people for filming crimes.

[Andrea]

I am sorry. I read your post to say the young woman that objected to how the girl was treated had started the incident. Thank you for clarifying.

[Cin]

Cop harasses two women for holding hands and acting affectionate in a grocery store while on vacation in Hawaii. He bumps and pushes one while she tries to call 911 and punches the other in the face when she tries to step between him and her girlfriend. She was denied medical treatment at the scene and after she was arrested. Pictures of her injuries weren't taken until two days after the assault.

The Hawaii News Now article says they don't know if the cop is still on duty, but the Chicago Tribune reports that he remains on full active duty. The women have a lawsuit pending.

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/3...ssing-in-store

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...028-story.html

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Cop harasses two women for holding hands and acting affectionate in a grocery store while on vacation in Hawaii. He bumps and pushes one while she tries to call 911 and punches the other in the face when she tries to step between him and her girlfriend. She was denied medical treatment at the scene and after she was arrested. Pictures of her injuries weren't taken until two days after the assault.

The Hawaii News Now article says they don't know if the cop is still on duty, but the Chicago Tribune reports that he remains on full active duty. The women have a lawsuit pending.

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/3...ssing-in-store

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...028-story.html

All of this is horrifying but this is just the final horror:

"As a condition of their release, they couldn't leave Oahu and wound up sleeping in a park.

After five months, prosecutors threw out the case, said their attorney, Eric Seitz."

I hope that they win tons of money and that cop is fired. It is unbelievable that he is still on full duty!

We now have a totally militarized police force in the USA.

To what end?


"Not Just Ferguson: 11 Eye-Opening Facts About America’s Militarized Police Forces
by Alex Kane


The “war on terror” has come home — and it’s wreaking havoc on innocent American lives. The culprit is the militarization of the police.

The weapons that destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq have made their way to local law enforcement. While police forces across the country began a process of militarization — complete with SWAT teams and flash-bang grenades — when President Reagan intensified the “war on drugs,” the post-9/11 “war on terror” has added fuel to the fire.

Through laws and regulations like a provision in defense budgets that authorizes the Pentagon to transfer surplus military gear to police forces, local law enforcement agencies are using weapons found on the battlefields of South Asia and the Middle East.

A recent New York Times article by Matt Apuzzo reported that in the Obama era, “police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” The result is that police agencies around the nation possess military-grade equipment, turning officers who are supposed to fight crime and protect communities into what looks like an invading army. And military-style police raids have increased in recent years, with one count putting the number at 80,000 such raids last year.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought more attention to police militarization when it issued a comprehensive, nearly 100-page report titled, War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. Based on public records requests to more than 260 law enforcement agencies in 26 states, the ACLU concluded that this police militarization “unfairly impacts people of color and undermines individual liberties, and it has been allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public discussion.”

The information contained in the ACLU report — and in other investigations into the phenomenon — is sobering. From the killing of innocent people to the almost complete lack of debate on these policies, police militarization has turned into a key issue for Americans. It is harming civil liberties, ramping up the “war on drugs,” impacting the most marginalized members of society and transforming neighborhoods into war zones."


NOTE: the article is long so I am not including them but it is very worth reading

Also NOTE: this article was written in 2014 but I do not see much has changed, if anything, since that time. VICE also did an episode on the militarization of the police which aired on HBO previously.

"...11 important — and horrifying — things you should know about"


http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/13/not...police-forces/

[Cin]

Thank you for that article Anya!

It is interesting to note that it has never been safer to be a cop. This article is from mid September, but it has noted that so far 2015 is one of the safest years for American policing in history, both in absolute terms and adjusted for population. The most dangerous time to be a police officer was during Prohibition, since then it's only gotten safer. As a matter of fact it is more dangerous to be a fisher, logger, pilot, roofer, miner, trucker or taxi driver. It’s actually safer to be a cop than it is to simply live in many U.S. cities.

http://www.newsweek.com/it-has-never...-be-cop-372025
Excerpt:
"There are real liabilities to inflating the threats to police. If you tell cops over and over that they’re in a war, they’re under siege, they’re under attack, and that citizens are the enemy—instead of the people they’re supposed to protect—you’re going to create an atmosphere of fear, tension, and hostility that can only end badly, as it has for so many people.

There is no war on cops. Not now, not last year, not any of the times that ideologues and media hacks have tried to invent one.

Cops need to know this. And so do we.

As I wrote in the Freeman last year, “Disproportionate fears about officer safety are leading inexorably to the disproportionate use of force”—as well as leading many people (especially those who have never witnessed police misconduct) to excuse obvious brutality in the name of officer safety."