Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[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.

[Andrea]

Hundreds of civilians prevented from filming NYPD cops as officers knock cellphones away, threaten arrests: report

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-cops-knock-phones-threaten-arrests-civilians-film-article-1.3283987?utm_content=bufferb84f7&utm_medium=socia l&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

NYPD officers have been accused of trying to prevent hundreds of civilians from videotaping them over the past three years by knocking cell phones from their hands, blocking them or threatening to arrest them, according to a report by the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

The CCRB received 257 complaints from 2014 to 2016, making 346 allegations that officers tried to interfere with civilian recordings of police activity, according to the report, released early Wednesday.

The watchdog agency substantiated 96 of those 346 allegations, or 28%.

The CCRB is recommending that the NYPD add a new Patrol Guide entry with guidelines on what to do if a civilian pulls out a camera phone and starts taping — including a section describing the public’s right to record police activity.

More than half of the complaints were made by people recording their own interactions with cops, and in 65 cases, the officers were accused of damaging the recording device or deleting the recording.

[Andrea]

Civilians shouldn’t have to de-escalate police

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article159117354.html

Thank you to my friends and people throughout the country who have reached out to show support in the wake of my potentially tragic encounter with Knoxville Officer Matthew Janish. I also thank Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch for coming to Charlotte to explain the decision not to discipline Officer Janish and answer my questions. I am disappointed, but not surprised. The system is broken.

On May 3, I was confronted at gunpoint by Officer Janish while I was putting a license plate on an SUV that I purchased from his mother-in-law the previous week. The incident occurred in her driveway, which is across the street from Officer Janish’s home. Janish, who was off-duty, thought I was stealing the truck. After investigating, Knoxville Police determined that Officer Janish’s actions were “lawful and proper.”

My case is another example of how the system is broken. Although my encounter didn’t end tragically, it could have, as all too many have (Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Michael Brown and others), and his actions likely would have still been deemed “lawful and proper.”

The system is designed to exonerate police officers, not provide justice for their victims. My incident, however, gives me new insight into just how much the law values police lives over the citizens they are supposed to protect.

Chief Rausch said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

Knoxville Police are looking into an officer’s actions after a Charlotte woman said the off-duty officer pulled a gun on her as she changed a license plate on her newly purchased SUV. Tonya Jameson, 45, is a former Charlotte Observer reporter and columnist.

Here are the facts that Janish appeared to focus on – the unmarked cab, a black person, the duffel bag and the license plate.

Then here are other facts that he ignored – he knew his mother-in-law was selling the car, it was broad daylight, and I knew her first name, but not her last name. I offered to show him the keys, registration and bill of sale signed by his mother-in-law.

Those are the actual facts. Officer Janish’s mindset was the scenario he created in his head. His fears weren’t facts.

The moment I arrived at Officer Janish’s mother-in-law’s house I became a suspect, and under the law, it seems that Officer Janish became a victim. He could have stayed at his house, called 911 and waited for the sheriff’s department to arrive. Instead he grabbed his weapon and came outside to confront me.

Had I not reacted calmly, Officer Janish likely would have been within his legal rights to shoot me although I wasn’t doing anything illegal. My mere presence with a duffel bag was deemed a threat.

In her statement, Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero talked about the extensive training officers receive in appropriate use of force and de-escalation. Asking common-sense questions, before unholstering a weapon, should also be included in police training.

I’m sure the situation looked questionable from Officer Janish’s house, but it warranted the question “what are you doing?” That’s exercising common sense. That’s de-escalation.

During his visit, Chief Rausch talked about lessons learned. I didn’t overreact. I didn’t get angry. So, I survived. He said my behavior is how everyone should act in those situations – comply, survive and complain later. But, it’s not natural to be accused of doing something wrong and not prove your innocence.

I wanted to show him the keys or reach into my bag for the registration and bill of sale. I fought every impulse to do anything that would make him feel threatened. I don’t have de-escalation training. I’m the one being held at gunpoint. I’m the one thinking my life could end if he panics. Yet, I’m the one expected to remain calm.

It seems that the legal system is really asking civilians to de-escalate adrenaline-fueled cops. We must remain calm while facing a loaded gun while the trained officers can panic and overreact.

What about our lives? Who protects us from the people who are supposed to protect us?

[Andrea]

Update: Audio Interview Confirms Dejuan Guillory Was Unarmed, Lying on The Ground When a Cop Shot Him In The Back

http://www.theroot.com/dejuan-guillory-was-unarmed-lying-on-the-ground-when-a-1796731246

Update: Saturday, July 8, 2017, 11:49 p.m. EST- A new interview sheds light on the Mamou, La., death of Dejuan Guillory. The interview is with Joe Long, the attorney for DeQuince Brown, who witnessed an Evangeline Parish Sherriff Deputy shoot Guillory in the back on July 6, killing him.

Pen Point News investigative reporter Daniel Banguell’s interview with Long confirms many of the details reported earlier. Brown has been unable to tell her side of the story, as she has been in jail with charges of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer since the incident.

In the recording, Long affirms that Guillory was on the ground with his hands behind his back, begging for his life, pleading, “please don’t shoot me, I have three kids,” when Paul Lafleur first shot Guillory. Long states:

“They were both on the ground. Guillory was on the ground, on his belly, his hands behind his back, and the officer had a gun trained at Guillory’s back, maybe a foot or two from Guillory’s body. They were still arguing back and forth but Guillory was on the ground as directed. His hands were behind his back. He was not resisting. All of a sudden, a shot rang out.”

According to Long, DeQuince Brown then jumped on the officer’s back to prevent him from killing her boyfriend and bit LaFleur (hence the reported injuries to the officer). LaFluer then fired three more shots at Guillory.

Long also states that two ambulances came to the scene, but “One ambulance loaded the deputy in and took him to the hospital. The other one left empty. When she left in a police car, Guillory’s body was still on the gravel road.” When asked if anyone treated Guillory, the attorney added, “As far as she knows, she never witnessed anybody attempt CPR for Guillory. It may have happened, but she didn’t see it.”

Earlier: Dejuan Guillory was 27-years-old. Everyone who knows him calls him sweet, hard-working and charming. Everyone who ever laid eyes on him objectively says he was good looking. He loved his children. He had a troubled past that he put behind him, but he had a promising future as a concrete contractor.

So, when a sheriff’s deputy stood over Guillory in an isolated road in the backwoods of Louisiana, fired multiple shots into his back and left him there to die, he didn’t kill DeJuan, he transformed him. Before Guillory took his last breath on a dusty, Southern road just outside of the tiny town of Mamou, La., he was a man with a future moving away from his past. He was a loving father, a smile and promise.

Now, Dejuan Guillory is just dead.

As soon as he was served death through the barrel of an infallible police officer’s gun, Guillory was changed. First he became a “suspect.” Then they made him into a thug. Soon he will be a villain. Then a martyr. Then a hashtag. Then attorneys and a judge in a courtroom somewhere will refer to him as “the deceased” before he eventually disappears into the ether like the bullet-riddled dark-skinned bodies before him—just another dead, black thing.
Dejuan Guillory and DeQuince Brown

But on the morning of July 6, DeJuan Guillory was alive. According to his family members, Guillory had just been paid for two concrete jobs and wanted to do something with his new girlfriend—DeQuince Erin Brown. Guillory decided they would hop on his all-terrain vehicle and go recreational frog hunting, called “frogging” in Southwest Louisiana.

Brown says through the Guillory family’s attorney Pride Doran in an exclusive interview with The Root, that the couple was on the ATV on Chad Lane when they happened upon a parked vehicle. The car flashed its lights, stopping the couple, and out stepped Paul Holden LaFleur, a deputy with the Evangeline Parish Sherrif’s Department.

There are several questions as to why LaFleur was parked in the middle of nowhere at 4 a.m. in the morning. The police department says he was answering a burglary call. It is unclear whether LaFleur was on duty, in police uniform or even in a marked car, but both Guillory and his girlfriend recognized LaFleur as an officer. The officer allegedly asked both parties for identification and when they objected, LaFleur ordered them off the four-wheeler. Doran says that Guillory and the officer got into a heated argument and after a brief altercation, LaFleur told Brown and Guillory to get on the ground.

According to Doran, who represents Guillory’s family, both Brown and Guillory complied, but when Guillory was prostrate on the ground, LaFluer reportedly fired his weapon multiple times at Guillory, shooting Guillory three or four times.

In.

His.

Back.

But of course, LaFleur did as he was trained and immediately called for backup and medical care, right?

Nope.

Doran told The Root that the deputy went back to his car and stayed there for an extended period of time. However, during their altercation, LaFleur happened to drop his police radio, and it was Brown who called for help, using LaFleur’s radio.

Then, like so many unarmed black men before him did during police encounters, Dejuan Guillory lay down and died.

Thus began the transformation of Dejuan Guillory.

It started immediately. LaFleur said he was attacked, so DeQuince Brown was arrested on attempted first-degree attempted murder of a police officer. Then the police announced that LaFleur (who was parked on a dirt road at 4:10 a.m. with his lights off) was in the area answering a burglary call (even though no one in the area knew of such a burglary).

You could see it happening. The Acadiana Advocate kicked it off by calling it an “officer-involved shooting.” Dequince Brown was no longer a girlifrend out frogging with her boyfriend, she was now an attempted murderer. But that wasn’t enough, so The Daily Advertiser dug into Guillory’s past and reported it this way:

It’s unclear why Guillory wasn’t in jail since he was sentenced in December by 13th Judicial District Court Judge Gary Ortego to 10 years in jail, with all but five years suspended, according to documents with the Evangeline Parish Clerk of Court Office.

Guillory was arrested in August 2015 after he allegedly stole an ATM from Citizen’s Bank using a backhoe, according to news reports at the time.

See how it works? Guillory was supposed to be in jail, according to them. But even now that they had successfully turned the corpse into a criminal, they were not yet done. They then made him into a suspect. Here is a sample of the headlines:
Burglary suspect killed, deputy wounded in Mamou shooting

An Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s deputy was wounded and a burglary was suspected was killed in a…

Suspect killed in deputy-involved shooting identified

To be clear, Dejuan Guillory was never questioned about a burglary. DeQuince Brown’s charges do not include burglary charges. She has been in jail for 48 hours and no law enforcement official has asked her about a burglary.

Apparently they believe Brown hopped on an ATV before dawn and drove down a country road with the “specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon a fireman, peace officer, or civilian employee of the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory or any other forensic laboratory engaged in the performance of his lawful duties, or when the specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm is directly related to the victim’s status as a fireman, peace officer, or civilian employee.”

Brown and Guillory have now been mysteriously transformed before our eyes. This is the prestidigitation that magically metamorphosizes black boys into thugs, black women into miscreants and black bodies into cadavers.

That is what Dejuan Guillory has become—a lifeless afterthought in a small-town newspaper. A mythical, scoundrel supercriminal who can overpower armed cops while lying on the ground.

Or, as Paul LaFluer intended—just a dead, black thing.

[Andrea]

Caught On Camera: Police Officer Push Woman Out Of Her Wheelchair!

http://www.thegrandreport.com/caught-camera-police-officer-push-woman-wheelchair/

Andrea: Click link to see video