Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Video shows fatal takedown of 75-year-old man in Orange County Jail

Video shows fatal takedown of 75-year-old man in Orange County Jail

New video shows Orange County corrections officers tackling a 75-year-old man inside his jail cell.

The Orange County Medical Examiner said the man's injuries killed him two days afterward.

According to his arrest report, William Howard was arrested on Nov. 16, 2016, after his wife said he "began to act strange."

She said he attacked her in the front yard of their Orlando home, beating her and stabbing her with a kitchen knife.

The man who had never been arrested before now faced an aggravated battery charge.

Two days later, the video shows corrections officers trying to coax Howard out of his solitary cell.

He appeared confused as one officer tried to show him where the jail door was located.

"I'm over here," he's heard saying in the video as he shook his keys. "Come over here. Come over here. Listen to the noise and follow this noise, so I can get you out of here."

The officers use similar techniques for more than 15 minutes when the decision is made to use force.

A team of corrections officers is seen barreling inside Howard's jail cell, tackling him and throwing him to the ground on his head.

The only sound Howard utters is a cough afterward.

The Orange County Medical Examiner noted Howard suffered cardiac arrest one day after the use of force incident.

The report indicated he died one day after that.

The autopsy report showed Howard broke two of his vertebrae in his neck, his spinal cord was crushed and his brain was swollen.

The medical examiner ruled Howard's death was a homicide.

Officials with the Orange County Jail say a nurse was fired and two other nurses faced disciplinary action when they discovered they did not perform a medical evaluation on Howard after the use of force incident.

The Office of the State Attorney declined to prosecute any of the workers involved, saying there was no evidence a crime took place.

News 6 found out the Orange County Jail is still conducting its own internal investigation.

Howard's daughter spoke to News 6 by phone Thursday. She said the family has hired an attorney, and she wouldn't say if they planned to file a lawsuit.

[Andrea]

Seattle police fatally shoot pregnant woman who they say confronted officers with a knife

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/19/seattle-police-fatally-shoot-black-mother-of-four-who-confronted-officers-with-a-knife/?utm_term=.9310012e7ca7

Seattle police officers shot and killed a woman at her apartment Sunday morning in front of “several children” when the woman, who relatives said was pregnant, “confronted” them with a knife, according to a statement from authorities.

The Seattle Times reported that the 30-year-old woman had called police to report a possible burglary.

At a vigil Sunday night, family identified the woman as Charleena Lyles, according to the Times, and relatives said she had a history of mental health struggles. She was several months pregnant, her family said, and too “tiny” for officers to have felt threatened by her — even if she had a knife.

“Why couldn’t they have Tased her?” Lyles’s sister, Monika Williams, said to the Seattle Times. “They could have taken her down. I could have taken her down.”

On Sunday morning just before 10 a.m., two patrol officers were dispatched to investigate a reported burglary at Brettler Family Place, an apartment complex for people transitioning out of homelessness, according to Detective Mark Jamieson.

Usually, only one officer would respond to a standard burglary call like this one, Jamieson told reporters. But police were familiar with Lyles and her apartment, he said, and her call flagged “hazard information” affiliated with her apartment that “presented an increased risk to officers,” the detective said.

Officers walked to the fourth floor and “at some point, the 30-year-old female was armed with a knife,” Jamieson told reporters. Both officers, who have not been identified, fired their weapons. They performed CPR, according to authorities, but Lyles was later declared dead by fire department officials at the scene.

Children inside at the time were not injured, according to police. Officials who did not say if they were Lyles’s children. Police were trying to determine Sunday whether the children had witnessed the shooting.

The department’s Force Investigative Team is investigating the officers’ decision to use deadly force. Both officers will be placed on administrative leave during the investigation, authorities said.

Florida Carroll, a relative of the victim, cries into her phone at the scene of the shooting. (Bettina Hansen/Seattle Times via AP)

Authorities offered few immediate details about what led police to fire their weapons. Early Monday, the police department released an audio recording capturing what they described as “some of the interaction with the caller prior to the rapid development of the use of force incident.”

On the recording, which officials said was captured by dashboard video cameras in the patrol cars, officers can be heard discussing a woman who had previously made “all these weird statements.” Neither officer is identified, and police say all names have been removed from the recording.

The recording captured officers speaking to a woman about an Xbox that she said was taken. Seconds after that interaction, however, the encounter suddenly escalates and the officers can be heard shouting at the woman to back away.

“Hey, get back! Get back!” an officer shouts, a call echoed by the other officer, before a volley of gunshots are heard.

In a short statement accompanying the recording, police said that both police officers involved “were equipped with less lethal force options, per departmental policy.”

Family members told the Seattle Times that they believe Lyles’s race — she is black — was a factor in her death. Seattle police told the newspaper that the officers who shot her are white.

Sean O’Donnell, captain of the department’s north precinct, where the shooting took place, said one of the officers is an 11-year veteran of the force and the other is “newer to the department,” reported the Times.

King County jail records show that Lyles was arrested June 5 on charges of harassment, obstruction of a public official and harassment of a law enforcement officer. She was released conditionally on June 14. Williams told the Seattle Times that one condition was that she receive mental health counseling, although the newspaper could not independently verify that information Sunday.

Williams told TV station KOMO News that her sister’s arrest earlier this month was connected to another incident at the apartment. Lyles was charged with obstruction because she refused to hand over one of the children to officers until Williams arrived at the scene. She had scissors in her hand, Williams said.

“She didn’t charge nobody or nothing,” Williams told KOMO News.

She said Lyles had “mental health issues” that were going untreated.

Around a hundred people gathered Sunday for a vigil honoring Lyles. The mourners taped a photos of the woman and her children to the back of black plastic chairs and spelled her name out on the sidewalk with small votive candles. Friends and family wondered aloud how police could shoot and kill a mother in front of her children.

Lhora Murray, 42, lives in the apartment directly below Lyles and told the Stranger she often heard yelling from the woman’s unit and called security multiple times. When she heard gunshots Sunday morning, Murray said she called people — unaware it was officers who had fired their weapons.

Murray told the Stranger that after the shooting, police handed her two of Lyles’s children, a 10-year-old and a toddler. “They shot my mom,” Murray said the 10-year-old told her as she took the kids outside.

The deadly shooting in Seattle came just two days after a jury in Minnesota acquitted an officer who was charged with fatally shooting Philando Castile, a local school employee, during a traffic stop last year. That acquittal sparked intense protests late Friday and early Saturday around St. Paul, where police estimate thousands of people were demonstrating, including a group that blocked the freeway.

The shooting in Seattle was “a tragedy for all involved,” Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement. He promised a full and thorough investigation, citing “historic police reforms” that are “in place to address such crises.”

The Seattle Police Department has been operating under a consent decree since 2012, following the conclusion of a federal investigation the previous year.

The Justice Department’s investigation concluded that the Seattle Police Department, one of the 40 largest local police forces nationwide, engaged in an unconstitutional pattern or practice of excessive force. While the 2011 investigation did not find that Seattle police officers have a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing, federal officials said their investigation raised “serious concerns on this issue,” concluding that some of the department’s “policies and practices, particularly those related to pedestrian encounters, could result in unlawful policing.”

After the investigation, the city of Seattle and the Justice Department negotiated a consent decree, which the federal government has used for nearly a quarter of a century to bring about court-enforceable reforms overseen by an independent monitor. These agreements were a key legacy of the Obama administration, but they are far less popular with the Trump administration. Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has criticized such decrees, ordered Justice Department officials to review all reform agreements nationwide.

In April, less than a week after Sessions ordered a sweeping review of consent decrees, the Seattle police monitor filed a report saying that use of force by officers had gone down. Notably, the monitor concluded that officers and people in Seattle were not imperiled by this shift.

“Overall, use of force has gone down even as officer injuries have not gone up and crime, by most measures, has not increased,” the monitor wrote. “At the same time, the force that SPD officers do use is, by and large, reasonable, necessary, proportional, and consistent with the Department’s use of force policy.”

The report studied more than 2,380 incidents involving a use of force over a period of 28 months, the monitor wrote. During that time, more than half of the incidents involved someone determined by police to be “exhibiting some sign of impairment,” described as a mental health or behavioral crisis or potential intoxication. During that 28-month period, the monitor said there were 15 shootings by police officers; in six of those cases, the person facing police “appeared to be experiencing a behavioral crisis.”

[Andrea]

White St. Louis cop shot black off-duty officer — then claimed it was a ‘friendly fire’ incident

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/white-st-louis-cop-shot-black-off-duty-officer-then-claimed-it-was-a-friendly-fire-incident/#.WUxD2v-l9y4.twitter

A St. Louis police officer shot a black off-duty officer from his own force after a car chase ended in a crash outside the off-duty officer’s home.

The African American officer, who has not yet been identified, came outside of his home while off-duty after hearing the commotion from a car chase that ended nearby. Despite identifying himself as a cop, the man was ordered to the ground by two officers. He complied, and soon after, they recognized him and told him to get up.

That was when a third officer entered the scene, and because he did not recognize the black off-duty cop and claimed to “fear for his safety,” shot the off-duty cop in the arm.

The Post-Dispatch reported that police are calling the incident an example of “friendly fire” due to the suspects from the car chase firing at police. The paper also reported that police initially claimed that the 38-year-old African American officer, who has been on the force for 11 years, was “caught in the crossfire.”

“This is the first time that we are aware, that a black professional, in law enforcement, himself being shot and treated as an ordinary black guy on the street. This is a real problem,” Rufus J. Tate Jr., the attorney for the injured off-duty officer, told the local Fox affiliate.

“In the police report, you have so far, there is no description of threat he received. So we have a real problem with that. But this has been a national discussion for the past two years. There is this perception that a black man is automatically feared,” the attorney concluded.

[Andrea]

Dashcam video shows cop's 'brutal attack' of Minnesota motorist, ACLU says

http://www.startribune.com/dashcam-video-shows-police-brutal-attack-of-minnesota-motorist-aclu-says/430187073/

State leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union released squad car video Thursday of what they say is a law enforcement officer's "disturbing and completely unnecessary … brutal attack" on a motorist in Worthington, Minn., who was suspected of initiating a dangerous road-rage encounter and resisting arrest.

The civil rights group is calling for local authorities in southwestern Minnesota to investigate what it alleges is the use of excessive force during the July 2016 arrest of Anthony Promvongsa, 22, of Worthington.

Worthington Police Chief Troy Appel and task force Cmdr. Nate Grimmius responded in a joint statement: "The video, viewed in a vacuum, shows only a short segment of the incident that is the basis of the criminal charges." The two declined to say more about the officer's actions.

The video shows Joe Joswiak, a member of the Buffalo Ridge Drug Task Force and a Worthington police officer, pulling over the suspect's sport-utility vehicle and kneeing the belted-in motorist three times, then throwing punches and an elbow before putting on handcuffs.

Recorded from the dashcam of a second squad car at the scene, the video does not show any resistance by Promvongsa, who went to a hospital for evaluation and was released that day.

"Agent Joswiak's use of force against Anthony Promvongsa is disturbing and completely unnecessary," Teresa Nelson, executive director in Minnesota for the ACLU, said in a statement. "We are calling for an investigation of Agent Joswiak's behavior and for him to be held accountable for his brutal attack … up to and including termination and prosecution.

Nelson said Joswiak has not been disciplined.

Promvongsa, in an explanation released by the ACLU, said, "I was literally blindsided with this unnecessary attack. I immediately pulled over for the Worthington squad car, and before I know what was happening, I was beat and ripped from my vehicle."

The criminal complaint charges Promvongsa with assault with a dangerous weapon, fleeing police in a vehicle, marijuana possession and driving after his license was revoked.

Kathleen Kusz, the Nobles County attorney, cautioned that the video merely "shows a portion of the evidence that would be presented at trial."

According to the criminal complaint, Promvongsa caused a road-rage incident that started about 9:30 a.m. on July 28. Promvongsa is accused of endangering an off-duty Worthington police officer, including tailgating, swerving, making hand gestures out the window and speeding up before stopping just short of the officer's car.

The off-duty officer then met up with a fellow off-duty officer. Promvongsa sped between their vehicles, saying he was "going to get his boys and come back to get them" before speeding off, the complaint said.

After Promvongsa's encounter with the off-duty officers, Joswiak drove in his unmarked car to where the suspect was last seen and found Promvongsa. The complaint alleges that Promvongsa swerved toward Joswiak and kept going.

Joswiak and another officer, Sgt. Tim Gaul, got Promvongsa to pull over.

The complaint's version of the arrest says that Joswiak, gun drawn, yelled at Promvongsa to exit the vehicle, which he never did. Joswiak then kneed Promvongsa several times, punched him and pulled him to the street before putting on the handcuffs.

Promvongsa, who is no longer in custody, awaits the scheduling of a trial date. His criminal history in Minnesota as an adult includes convictions for underage drinking, drunken driving and driving on a revoked license.

[Andrea]

Teen killed by bullet when LA County deputies fired at pit bull: Sheriff's office

http://abcnews.go.com/US/teen-killed-bullet-la-county-sheriffs-deputies-fired/story?id=48216488

As Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies were shooting at a pit bull that was charging at them, a 17-year-old boy was apparently struck in the chest by one of the bullets and died, the sheriff's office said.

The shooting happened at about 3:45 a.m. today in Palmdale, California, after deputies responded to a report of loud music, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. As the deputies walked up the driveway, a 60- to 65-pound pit bull "aggressively charged at the deputies and attacked one of them," biting the deputy on the knee, the sheriff's department said.

At that time, a young man came out from behind an apartment complex and restrained the dog and took it to the back of the building, the sheriff's office said.

Deputies were helping the injured officer and waiting for paramedics when "the pit bull came from the rear of the apartment and again charged at deputy personnel," the sheriff's office reported. "At that point, two deputies shot at the pit bull from a 5- to 7-feet distance, at which time, the pit bull retreated back to the rear of the apartment complex into the carport area."

The deputies went to the back of the complex "in an attempt to corral the dog to prevent additional victims," the sheriff's office said, and as they walked to the rear carport area, they found a teenager on the ground who appeared to have been shot in the chest, the sheriff's office said. The teen was hospitalized and later died.

The sheriff's office said "detectives believe when the juvenile came out from behind the building, which was approximately 40 feet away from where the shooting occurred with the dog, the juvenile may have been struck by one of the skip rounds." Capt. Christopher Bergner of the sheriff’s office said it appeared that the "skip round" that hit the teenager had ricocheted off the ground, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The deputy bitten by the pit bull was also hit in the leg by a bullet fragment, the sheriff's office said. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bergner said in a press conference the deputy's injury also appeared to have been from a skip round that had ricocheted off the ground. He was transported to a hospital and is listed in stable condition, the sheriff's office said.

The sheriff's department said the investigation is ongoing. Because this was a fatal deputy-involved shooting, separate investigations will be conducted by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner - Coroner, Sheriff's Homicide Bureau and Internal Affairs Bureau, the sheriff's office said. The Office of the Inspector General is expected to provide independent oversight during the investigation and the Los Angeles County District Attorney is also involved. "Once concluded, every aspect of the shooting is reviewed by the Sheriff's Executive Force Review Committee," the sheriff's office added.

The pit bull will be euthanized, the sheriff's office said.

Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's department, said the department's policy for using a firearm on an animal is, "Personnel may use firearms to employ deadly force when dealing with animals when they reasonably believe that death or serious physical injury is about to be inflicted upon themselves or others.

"The shooting of animals that are not a threat of serious bodily injury to a person has proved to be inherently dangerous to bystanders as well as Deputy personnel. Therefore, Department members shall not use firearms to shoot animals fighting with other animals (e.g., dogs)," Nishida said. "If it becomes necessary to destroy an injured (euthanasia) by use of a firearm and the conditions are such that there is an extended or inappropriate response time by the animal control agency, authorization to use a firearm on an animal must be obtained from an on-scene supervisor."

[homoe]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Seattle police fatally shoot pregnant woman who they say confronted officers with a knife

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/19/seattle-police-fatally-shoot-black-mother-of-four-who-confronted-officers-with-a-knife/?utm_term=.9310012e7ca7

Seattle police officers shot and killed a woman at her apartment Sunday morning in front of “several children” when the woman, who relatives said was pregnant, “confronted” them with a knife, according to a statement from authorities.

The Seattle Times reported that the 30-year-old woman had called police to report a possible burglary.

At a vigil Sunday night, family identified the woman as Charleena Lyles, according to the Times, and relatives said she had a history of mental health struggles. She was several months pregnant, her family said, and too “tiny” for officers to have felt threatened by her — even if she had a knife.

“Why couldn’t they have Tased her?” Lyles’s sister, Monika Williams, said to the Seattle Times. “They could have taken her down. I could have taken her down.”

On Sunday morning just before 10 a.m., two patrol officers were dispatched to investigate a reported burglary at Brettler Family Place, an apartment complex for people transitioning out of homelessness, according to Detective Mark Jamieson.

Usually, only one officer would respond to a standard burglary call like this one, Jamieson told reporters. But police were familiar with Lyles and her apartment, he said, and her call flagged “hazard information” affiliated with her apartment that “presented an increased risk to officers,” the detective said.

Officers walked to the fourth floor and “at some point, the 30-year-old female was armed with a knife,” Jamieson told reporters. Both officers, who have not been identified, fired their weapons. They performed CPR, according to authorities, but Lyles was later declared dead by fire department officials at the scene.

Children inside at the time were not injured, according to police. Officials who did not say if they were Lyles’s children. Police were trying to determine Sunday whether the children had witnessed the shooting.

The department’s Force Investigative Team is investigating the officers’ decision to use deadly force. Both officers will be placed on administrative leave during the investigation, authorities said.

Florida Carroll, a relative of the victim, cries into her phone at the scene of the shooting. (Bettina Hansen/Seattle Times via AP)

Authorities offered few immediate details about what led police to fire their weapons. Early Monday, the police department released an audio recording capturing what they described as “some of the interaction with the caller prior to the rapid development of the use of force incident.”

On the recording, which officials said was captured by dashboard video cameras in the patrol cars, officers can be heard discussing a woman who had previously made “all these weird statements.” Neither officer is identified, and police say all names have been removed from the recording.

The recording captured officers speaking to a woman about an Xbox that she said was taken. Seconds after that interaction, however, the encounter suddenly escalates and the officers can be heard shouting at the woman to back away.

“Hey, get back! Get back!” an officer shouts, a call echoed by the other officer, before a volley of gunshots are heard.

In a short statement accompanying the recording, police said that both police officers involved “were equipped with less lethal force options, per departmental policy.”

Family members told the Seattle Times that they believe Lyles’s race — she is black — was a factor in her death. Seattle police told the newspaper that the officers who shot her are white.

Sean O’Donnell, captain of the department’s north precinct, where the shooting took place, said one of the officers is an 11-year veteran of the force and the other is “newer to the department,” reported the Times.

King County jail records show that Lyles was arrested June 5 on charges of harassment, obstruction of a public official and harassment of a law enforcement officer. She was released conditionally on June 14. Williams told the Seattle Times that one condition was that she receive mental health counseling, although the newspaper could not independently verify that information Sunday.

Williams told TV station KOMO News that her sister’s arrest earlier this month was connected to another incident at the apartment. Lyles was charged with obstruction because she refused to hand over one of the children to officers until Williams arrived at the scene. She had scissors in her hand, Williams said.

“She didn’t charge nobody or nothing,” Williams told KOMO News.

She said Lyles had “mental health issues” that were going untreated.

Around a hundred people gathered Sunday for a vigil honoring Lyles. The mourners taped a photos of the woman and her children to the back of black plastic chairs and spelled her name out on the sidewalk with small votive candles. Friends and family wondered aloud how police could shoot and kill a mother in front of her children.

Lhora Murray, 42, lives in the apartment directly below Lyles and told the Stranger she often heard yelling from the woman’s unit and called security multiple times. When she heard gunshots Sunday morning, Murray said she called people — unaware it was officers who had fired their weapons.

Murray told the Stranger that after the shooting, police handed her two of Lyles’s children, a 10-year-old and a toddler. “They shot my mom,” Murray said the 10-year-old told her as she took the kids outside.

The deadly shooting in Seattle came just two days after a jury in Minnesota acquitted an officer who was charged with fatally shooting Philando Castile, a local school employee, during a traffic stop last year. That acquittal sparked intense protests late Friday and early Saturday around St. Paul, where police estimate thousands of people were demonstrating, including a group that blocked the freeway.

The shooting in Seattle was “a tragedy for all involved,” Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement. He promised a full and thorough investigation, citing “historic police reforms” that are “in place to address such crises.”

The Seattle Police Department has been operating under a consent decree since 2012, following the conclusion of a federal investigation the previous year.

The Justice Department’s investigation concluded that the Seattle Police Department, one of the 40 largest local police forces nationwide, engaged in an unconstitutional pattern or practice of excessive force. While the 2011 investigation did not find that Seattle police officers have a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing, federal officials said their investigation raised “serious concerns on this issue,” concluding that some of the department’s “policies and practices, particularly those related to pedestrian encounters, could result in unlawful policing.”

After the investigation, the city of Seattle and the Justice Department negotiated a consent decree, which the federal government has used for nearly a quarter of a century to bring about court-enforceable reforms overseen by an independent monitor. These agreements were a key legacy of the Obama administration, but they are far less popular with the Trump administration. Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has criticized such decrees, ordered Justice Department officials to review all reform agreements nationwide.

In April, less than a week after Sessions ordered a sweeping review of consent decrees, the Seattle police monitor filed a report saying that use of force by officers had gone down. Notably, the monitor concluded that officers and people in Seattle were not imperiled by this shift.

“Overall, use of force has gone down even as officer injuries have not gone up and crime, by most measures, has not increased,” the monitor wrote. “At the same time, the force that SPD officers do use is, by and large, reasonable, necessary, proportional, and consistent with the Department’s use of force policy.”

The report studied more than 2,380 incidents involving a use of force over a period of 28 months, the monitor wrote. During that time, more than half of the incidents involved someone determined by police to be “exhibiting some sign of impairment,” described as a mental health or behavioral crisis or potential intoxication. During that 28-month period, the monitor said there were 15 shootings by police officers; in six of those cases, the person facing police “appeared to be experiencing a behavioral crisis.”

Tonight there was a march and rally in Seattle to bring justice for this woman's death..........

[Andrea]

After Philando Castile's Death, Investigators Tried to Secretly Get Access to Diamond Reynolds' Facebook and Phone Records

After Philando Castile's Death, Investigators Tried to Secretly Get Access to Diamond Reynolds' Facebook and Phone Records

On July 7th, 2016, just one day after Diamond Reynolds streamed video of a police officer shooting and killing her boyfriend, Philando Castile, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension began working to obtain records from Reynolds’s phone. The BCA, which was in charge of investigating Castile’s death, submitted a preservation request to Facebook for Reynolds’ accounts, and obtained a search warrant one day later. The BCA also served a search warrant on Sprint for Reynold’s cell phone records.

BCA took things one step further—they ordered Facebook and Sprint not to tell Reynolds that investigators intended to rifle through her accounts.

Facebook opposed the gag order and, after weeks of discussion between the BCA and a lawyer at Facebook, the warrant was rescinded altogether. Sprint, however, complied with the warrant, and turned over Reynolds’ call records, voicemails, and cell tower information that revealed her location.

The newly released correspondence reveals how Facebook interacted with law enforcement in the high-profile case, and juxtaposes the social media company’s opposition with Sprint’s compliance. The warrant applications, as well as emails between BCA special agent in charge Scott Mueller and Facebook associate general counsel Gavin Corn, were recently released to journalist Tony Webster in response to a public records request. Webster shared the files with Gizmodo.

Companies like Facebook walk a delicate line with law enforcement agencies. They don’t want to appear welcoming to criminals, and providing information when they’re able to gives companies some cover when they can’t turn over encrypted data. But if companies are too quick to turn over information, they can face backlash from their users and criticism from civil liberties groups.

Facebook and Sprint regularly receive search warrants from law enforcement—so frequently, in fact, that the companies have automated portals for agencies to submit their requests. But it’s Facebook’s policy to notify users when their data is requested, a spokesperson told Gizmodo. (Sprint didn’t immediately return a request for comment, but we’ll update if we hear back.)

“Our policy is to notify people about law enforcement requests for their information before disclosure unless we’re legally barred from doing so. In this case, we decided to challenge gag orders on our ability to provide this important notice, and the authorities ultimately withdrew these warrants altogether,” the spokesperson said.

Between July and December 2016, the most recent period for which data is available, Facebook received 14,736 search warrants from US law enforcement agencies. It produced some data in response to over 85 percent of those warrants. Sprint received 10,194 search warrants between January and June 2016 (its most recent reporting period), but does not disclose how often it complies with warrants.

In Reynolds’ case, the BCA requested all data from her three Facebook accounts, including messages, wall posts, and photographs with metadata that would show when the picture was taken and what device was used. The request spanned from July 4th, two days before the shooting, until July 8th. BCA also requested data from Castile’s account for the same time period.

The bureau also requested a log of Reynolds’ calls and text messages from Sprint, as well as cell phone tower data that would reveal her location during the four-day period. Sprint complied, sending the voicemails in August and additional data in October.

In contrast, investigators subpoenaed the phone records of officer Jeronimo Yanez, who shot Castile, that covered just one day—from July 6th at 9pm through July 7th at midnight.

The BCA justified its request by saying it was looking for evidence of “criminal activity” conducted by the couple. Shortly after Castile’s death, Officer Yanez claimed that he smelled weed in the vehicle; Reynolds admitted this was true later, but said neither she nor Castile had been smoking at the time. Yanez also reportedly told the couple they had been pulled over for a broken taillight, though he also claimed he stopped the vehicle because he believed Castile fit the description of someone who was involved in a nearby robbery. That claim was never validated. (A spokesperson for BCA declined to comment for this story.)

“Individuals frequently call and/or text messages to each other regarding criminal activity during and/or after and [sic] event has occurred,” BCA special agent Bill O’Donnell wrote in the warrant application. “The Affiant is also of the belief that a review and analysis of text messages and chats regarding the individuals involved in this incident may in fact assist in corroborating or refuting statements made by the individual involved in this investigation.”

The warrants were accompanied by indefinite gag orders that, if enforced, would have prevented Facebook and Sprint from ever notifying Reynolds about the search of her messages.

Corn argued that Facebook should be allowed to notify Reynolds and Castile’s family about the warrants, the emails show. BCA’s investigation into the shooting was already public and had been discussed by Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, so there was no reason for secrecy. Facebook had also temporarily preserved data from Reynolds’ and Castile’s accounts, so even if Reynolds was informed of the warrant, she wouldn’t be able to erase data.

“We respectfully request that you seek to formally remove or strike the nondisclosure orders included with the warrants. Facebook then intends to provide notice to the users (including the deceased user’s next of kin and legal representative(s)) and to allow the users a minimum of 10 days to submit any objections they may have to the Court over the basis for, or scope of, these warrants,” Corn wrote.

Even though Corn asked to speak with a lawyer with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office or the Department of Justice, Mueller demurred, apparently preferring to handle the legal argument himself.

Mueller asked if Facebook would consider a delayed notification that would allow BCA to search Reynolds’ account before she was notified. After more than a week of back-and-forth, Corn warned Mueller that Facebook would file a legal challenge to the warrants.

“The sooner you can tell us whether you will be rescinding the warrants the better as we are preparing legal filings now,” he wrote.

On July 20, Mueller finally rescinded the warrants to Facebook.

Although it has taken nearly a year for her suspicions to be proven correct, Reynolds believed in the aftermath of the shooting that she was being treated like a suspect. “I was treated like a criminal,” she said on the day after the shooting. “I was treated like I was the one who did this.”

Reynolds said that police took her phone away after she live-streamed the shooting, and that she begged them to give it back, worrying they would take down the video from her Facebook page. The video did indeed disappear for about an hour, which Facebook attributed to a “technical glitch,” and was later reinstated.

“Diamond was not a suspect and was nothing but a victim in this case,” her attorney, Larry Rogers Jr., told Gizmodo. “I did think it was an invasion of her personal privacy to begin to dig into her personal communications when she was nothing other than a witness and a victim.”

Rogers said that Sprint apparently complied with the gag order—it never informed Rogers that it was turning over Reynolds’ phone records. He said that details about BCA’s investigation into Reynolds’ communications have only recently become known after Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who shot Castile, was acquitted last week.

“It’s an example of how far the authorities go in some instances,” Rogers said. “When it relates to investigation of witnesses, I think it’s entirely questionable conduct.”

[Andrea]

Man killed by King County deputy was carrying a pen, not a knife as initially reported

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-killed-by-king-county-deputy-was-carrying-a-pen-not-a-knife-as-initially-reported/

A 20-year-old man, fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy last week after he reportedly stabbed at a Burien homeowner’s door and charged deputies with what was believed to be a knife, was actually carrying a pen, the King County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.

The sheriff’s office originally reported that Tommy Le had a sharp object and advanced on two deputies around midnight on June 13. However, sheriff’s spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West said Le was holding a pen.

West said the department won’t release a photo of the pen. Deputies aren’t equipped with dashboard or body cameras, she said.

Le’s death was the second deadly police shooting in King County in the past two weeks. Two Seattle police officers shot and killed Charleena Lyles, 30, on Sunday after they say she threatened them with two knives in her apartment when they responded to an alleged burglary.

Lyles’ death has sparked community outrage while Le’s death has largely gone unnoticed.

Little is known about Le, except that he lived nearby and had no criminal history, said West.

Linh Thai, director of Seattle’s Vietnamese Community Leadership Institute, told the Seattle Weekly that the Vietnamese-American community is dealing with a range of emotions.

“I think the community is struggling with two narratives. On the one hand, it’s a fellow Vietnamese-American person, a member of the community, and that them being shot dead by anyone regardless of whether it is police is difficult for the community to grapple with,” Thai told the Seattle Weekly, which first reported that Le was carrying a pen when he was killed. “It’s impacting everyone in that sense.

“On the other hand, the community also has a tradition of respecting the law. … We trust the police. They’ll tell us what happened when they’re ready to tell us.”

The Burien incident started when a friend of a homeowner in the 13600 block of Third Avenue South reported someone was chasing him with a knife and yelling. The homeowner went outside and thought he saw a man holding a “knife or some sort of sharp object in his hand,” according to a sheriff’s news release issued after the shooting.

The homeowner fired his handgun into the ground, hoping to scare the man, the sheriff’s office said. But the man approached him and he fled back inside his house.

West said the man then pounded on the door and stabbed it, while screaming he was “the Creator.”

Deputies responded to several 911 calls reporting a gunshot. When two deputies arrived, several neighbors pointed him out at the corner of 128th Street and Third Avenue South.

“Citizens yelled ‘there he is’ as he was coming back,” West said Friday. “The officers went to talk with him and he started charging at them with what they thought was a knife. The deputies ordered him repeatedly to put it down.”

Both deputies fired their Tasers, with one deputy hitting Le. But that didn’t stop Le, who was refusing deputies’ commands, West said.

Deputy Cesar Molina shot Le three times, she said. One of the deputies performed first aid and called medics. Le was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he died.

Le carried no identification.

West said toxicology reports are pending from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

She said the sheriff’s office didn’t send out a second news release clarifying the initial account because she was on vacation and when she returned there had been no further inquiries.

Molina has been with the sheriff’s office for two-and-a-half years and had taken 40 hours of hour crisis-intervention training. Molina also worked as a deputy in California for two-and-a-half years, West added.

The city of Burien contracts with the sheriff’s office for police services.

Molina is on administrative leave while a criminal investigation and an administrative review continue, West said.

[Andrea]

Bad officers let go due to misconduct moving easily to new departments, sheriff says

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/defenders/bad-officers-let-go-due-to-misconduct-moving-easily-to-new-departments-sheriff-says

One of Michigan's top police officers said enough isn't being done to weed out bad cops. Instead, problem officers move from department to department when something goes wrong.

Many agencies don't share information when they fire an officer, which allows the officer to get hired again somewhere else. It's happened dozens of times in Metro Detroit and can put all of the state's citizens at risk.

When police get in trouble on the job for roughing up a citizen, drug and alcohol abuse or insensitive racial or sexist remarks, they are often given a choice: They can resign or be fired.

Many officers choose to walk away, and they end up right back on the beat at a new police department, where nobody is aware of their past bad behavior.

"They're unaffectionately called gypsy cops," Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. "Where they move around and sometimes the hiring agency doesn't have any knowledge of the background."

Bouchard said dozens of Metro Detroit cops have been forced out or fired only to end up across town patrolling streets and interacting with the public, potentially putting citizens at risk.

"Absolutely, it's common," Bouchard said. "It's especially common in certain kinds of communities that may be financially stressed. Where they don't maybe have the resources to do some of the backgrounds."

In 2015, Inkster police Officer William Melendez was arrested, charged and sent to prison for beating motorist Flody Dent after a traffic stop.

"I thought he was going to kill me," Dent said.

Before Melendez was an Inkster officer, he worked in Detroit. He left the Detroit Police Department after multiple lawsuits and a federal indictment were filed against him for roughing up citizens and tampering with evidence.

Melendez tried to get a job at the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, but a background check raised multiple red flags. A short time later, Melendez was hired in Highland Park and Inkster as a police officer.

"To pin a badge on that person's chest after what had transpired at a different agency was a recipe for disaster," Bouchard said. "Those are the kinds of high-profile cases, exactly what that speaks to. When those things happen once, they should not be allowed to happen again."

"Why should the police be immune from that?" attorney Greg Rholl said. "They should have some oversight mechanism."

Rholl is Dent's attorney, and he said his client settled the lawsuit for $1.3 million -- money the taxpayers in the financially troubled city of Inkster had to pay.

"We pushed three buttons on Google and found all the information we need to scare us, and to say, 'What was he doing on the police force?'" Rholl said.

Residents said they were shocked to hear that many small police departments can't afford to do background checks.

"They definitely should do a background check," said Gwendolyn Davis, of Westland. "You don't know what you're hiring."

The problem is even bigger. Michigan police agencies that force an officer to resign often refuse to tell other agencies why they parted ways with the cop out of fear they will be sued.

Bouchard supports a new Senate bill that would force police agencies to create and keep records of why each police officer left, and would make departments immune from civil lawsuits for sharing the information.

Some said they would like to see even more accountability. In Michigan, it's not permitted to have prospective employees take a polygraph test. Some officials believe before they are hired, applicants should be quizzed on past crimes, lawsuits and firings while hooked up to a lie detector.

"When I became a police officer I took a polygraph test," Bouchard said. "A lie detector. Why would you prohibit that?"

It's also prohibited to look at applicants' private social media accounts. Agencies could learn a lot about a prospective officer by what they post, but the law only allows employers to look at public accounts, not those with privacy settings.

"I would like to know that the people who are looking over the city, that I can trust them," said Jaclyn Rey, of Whitmore Lake.

Senate Bill 223 is in the House. If it passes, it will go to the governor for consideration. Law enforcement experts said the bill would be a good first step, but much more still needs to be done.

[Andrea]

Detective who didn't investigate dozens of cases was burned out, defense lawyer says

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2017/06/detective_who_didnt_investigat_1.html

Looking worn and defeated, a former Clackamas County sheriff's detective stepped to the front of a courtroom Thursday and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to investigate reports of child abuse.

But the charges against Jeffrey Allen Green covered only a small slice of the more than 50 cases that investigators believe Green ignored during his six years as a detective. Green was assigned to an array of crimes in Wilsonville, including rape, the sexual assault of children and theft.

In some cases, Green didn't track down and identify suspects, submit DNA evidence from a rape kit to the state crime lab for analysis or make contact with victims or their families, prosecutors said.

Green closed cases with little or no work done, meaning some victims never saw justice and their attackers may still be walking free, said Deputy District Attorney Bryan Brock.

Defense attorney William Bruce Shepley offered the first public explanation for his client's lapses. He said Green, now 59, experienced health problems in the later years of his career and had a hard time emotionally coping with the horrific cases of abuse he saw.

"He suffered from a terrible case of burnout by the end of this," Shepley told Clackamas County Circuit Judge Michael Wetzel.

Green pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree official misconduct.

The judge abided by the terms of a plea deal and sentenced Green to one year of probation, $1,100 in fines and fees and an order to relinquish his police certification so he can never work as an officer again.

Green won't serve a jail term. As outlined in the plea agreement, he turned himself into the Clackamas County Jail after his sentencing hearing. Staff took his fingerprints and his mugshot, then released him 33 minutes later.

It's the very jail that Green locked up the suspects he'd arrested during his 22-year career as a sheriff's detective. Now the tables have turned.

Wearing baggy blue jeans and an oversized black short-sleeve shirt, Green didn't make any statements before the judge in the courthouse where he'd testified for the prosecution so many times before. Green also declined to comment after the hearing.

Brock told the judge that he'd worked with Green on several cases and the DA's Office worked with him on a regular basis. He said Green was a "very experienced" detective and his mishandling of dozens cases wasn't due to a lack of intellect.

"I do know Detective Green, and I certainly know him to be a capable detective when he chose to be so," Brock said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owen told The Oregonian/OregonLive that his office didn't perceive any potential conflicts of interest with handling Green's case. And given his retirement two years ago, Green isn't someone the DA's Office will work with again.

Brock wrote in a memo to the judge that Green's malfeasance came to light after sheriff's Sgt. Matt Swanson doggedly pursued the case. Days after being assigned to the Wilsonville office in February 2015, Swanson noticed problems with Green's work and began pushing his supervisors to take action.

Green retired in April 2015, but Swanson still pressed the Sheriff's Office to investigate Green. It took more than a year after Swanson first raised red flags for the Sheriff's Office to call upon an outside agency -- the Milwaukie Police Department -- to independently investigate Green in March 2016.

On Thursday, Brock said Green "had neglected his duties to a level I had not seen before."

Those strong words drew an audible gasp from Green's wife, who was sitting in the courtroom gallery. She put her hand on her forehead and began shaking her head back and forth.

"Ma'am," the judge said, in an effort to quiet her down.

"Sorry," she said.

Brock continued, saying that prosecutors charged Green with the only crimes it could: failing to investigate reports of child abuse that were sent to him by child welfare workers. State law required Green to initiate an investigation, and when he didn't he became guilty of second-degree official misconduct, Brock said.

The type of cases Green neglected, he said, were generally tougher cases, and it's questionable whether any of them would have netted convictions.

"They were challenging cases from the start," Brock said. "They were the ones that required a lot of extra work."

Shepley, Green's defense attorney, said he hopes the public focuses on Green's many accomplishments over his more than three-decades long career as a police officer and detective, rather than the criminal case against him focusing on the "twilight" of his career.

"In some respects, the county owes him a big debt," Shepley said.

Green now lives in La Grande. At the time he retired, he was making nearly $89,000 a year. He now draws an annual pension of $51,863 under the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System.