Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Officer-Involved Shooting in Northeast Austin

http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-02-08/officer-involved-shooting-in-northeast-austin/

An 18-year-old black man was shot and killed by an Austin Police officer this morning in Northeast Austin, shortly after 10:30am.

The 18-year-old, who has not yet been identified by police, was shot by a 10-year veteran of APD who was immediately placed on administrative leave, as is customary with officer involved shootings. A spokesperson for the department declined to identify the officer.

According to APD Chief of Staff Brian Manley, who held a press conference shortly after the shooting, police were called to the 12000 block of Nature’s Bend in Northeast Austin – just south of Parmer Lane – at 9:57am after receiving a number of calls about a “suspicious man” acting “erratically” around the neighborhood.

Police reported that the 18-year-old was naked when they found him in the neighborhood. He was issued directives from responding officers but did not to follow them. Manley said the 18-year-old began charging at the officer, at which point the officer fired his gun. Austin-Travis County medics responded to the scene at 10:26am and took the body to St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center, where he died.

Department Public Information Officials have not commented on whether the 18-year-old was armed when he was shot, but his lack of clothing suggests that any potential weapon he possessed would have been held in one of his hands and in full sight. Police said dashboard camera footage from APD vehicles captured video of some of the incident but did not catch the shooting – although it did pick up audio, Manley said, of the officer ordering the 18-year-old to stay back. Police did not comment on whether or not the 18-year-old was captured on the dashboard camera footage at any point, and did not say whether APD found a gun that didn’t belong to the department anywhere in the vicinity.

Austin police: Teen shot by officer identified as David Joseph, 17

Austin police: Teen shot by officer identified as David Joseph, 17

***Unarmed naked child***

[Andrea]

Arrest Video (Blurred)

https://www.facebook.com/LocalMemphis/videos/1018848638177911/

[Andrea]

'Street files' raise question: Did Chicago police hide evidence?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-police-street-files-met-20160212-story.html

The homicide files sat untouched for years in the dingy basement at a South Side police station, thousands of aging manila folders locked away in cabinets cataloging seven decades of long-forgotten killings.

Stuffed with manually typed police reports, scribbled detectives' notes, faded lineup cards and other evidence, the so-called "street files" might never have seen the light of day.

But now about 500 of the files — located in 23 cabinets — have landed at the center of a court fight over whether the Chicago Police Department for years violated its own directives by hiding evidence from criminal defense lawyers.

[Andrea]

Pa. trooper charged in brutality case

http://abc27.com/2016/02/12/pa-trooper-charged-in-brutality-case/

A state police trooper has been charged in the beating of a Harrisburg man last year.

A criminal complaint filed Friday charges Trooper Ryan Luckenbaugh with two misdemeanor counts of official oppression, a misdemeanor count of simple assault, and a summary harassment count.
man-pressing-charges

Luckenbaugh, 36, of Mechanicsburg, is accused of kicking Chris Siennick in the face while Siennick was seated on the ground and handcuffed behind his back, according to the charging documents filed by the Internal Affairs Division of the Pennsylvania State Police.

He also subjected Siennick to arrest, detention, search, seizure, or mistreatment based on false allegations and facts, the criminal complaint states.

As ABC 27 first reported last year, Siennick was riding his skateboard near Second and Locust Streets on May 16 when he says Luckenbaugh and Trooper Michael Trotta called him a gay slur from their police vehicle.

Siennick admits making an obscene hand gesture to the officers. He says they circled the block, got out of their car and chased him. Siennick says they hit him with a baton and twice hit him with a Taser. After he fell to the ground, Siennick says they punched and kicked him.

Siennick was arrested on numerous charges and spent three weeks in jail with a high bail. After reviewing videotape of the incident, the Dauphin County district attorney’s office decided to drop all charges against Siennick and recommended Internal Affairs investigate the actions of Trotta and Luckenbaugh.

According to the arrest papers, the complaint filed by Luckenbaugh claimed that Siennick failed to obey verbal commands to move from the roadway, displayed an obscene gesture, and struck the police vehicle “with either his person or an unidentified object” when the troopers first encountered him.

The troopers did not stop, nor did they attempt to take Siennick into custody, but drove past him a second time. Luckenbaugh wrote that Siennick spit on the police car as they passed, but again the troopers did not stop.

The police car’s camera did not record the second encounter, nor did it capture the sound of anything striking the vehicle. The troopers are heard talking about Siennick being in the roadway and giving a middle finger, but they made no comments about anything hitting the car, the complaint against Luckenbaugh states.

After Siennick was Tasered, pepper sprayed, and handcuffed, the camera shows he was acting belligerent and yelling loud profanities. A spitting sound is heard, and Luckenbaugh delivered a kick and said, “spit on that.” Harrisburg city police officers who were on the scene said the kick struck Siennick in the face, and they did not believe it was reasonable or justified, according to the complaint.

Luckenbaugh also claimed in his paperwork that Siennick had a heavy odor of suspected alcohol, but one Harrisburg police officer told investigators he didn’t smell anything and another didn’t believe Siennick was intoxicated.

Luckenbaugh’s complaint further alleged that Siennick refused a breath test, but investigators said at no point in the police car video and audio did anyone offer Siennick a test, and city police officers didn’t recall anyone requesting one.

Luckenbaugh, a trooper since 2006, has been suspended without pay. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 22.

The case is being prosecuted by the Dauphin County district attorney’s office.

Siennick has filed a federal lawsuit naming both troopers.

Trotta was fired last year. A state police spokeswoman said his termination was due to an “internal matter.”

[Cin]

I don't know if this is technically police custody but it is disturbing.

Why Did a 16-Year-Old Black Girl Just Die in a Kentucky Cell?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ention-mystery

[Andrea]

Los Angeles police officers charged with sexual assault

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/us/la-police-officers-sexual-assault-charges/index.html

Two Los Angeles police officers who once worked as partners patrolling the streets of Hollywood have been charged with sexually assaulting four women they encountered while on duty, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Officers James Nichols, 44, and Luis Valenzuela, 43, are charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, including rape under color of authority, according to a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The alleged assaults in some cases took place while the officers were on duty, according to prosecutors, including in their police car. Valenzuela is accused of pointing a gun at one of the victims.

"These two officers have disgraced themselves. They've disgraced this badge. They've disgraced this office," Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference.

The officers, who were arrested early Wednesday, were not immediately available for comment. They were expected to be arraigned Thursday morning. Lawyers who represent them on pending administrative charges of sexual misconduct said they had not yet reviewed the criminal complaint, but said if the allegations were the same, the officers denied them.

Each of the women had at one point been arrested by the officers during "narcotics-related" investigations, according to prosecutors.

The alleged assaults occurred between December 2008, when the officers first became partners, and March 2011. The alleged victims were ages 19, 24, 25 and 34 at the time.

[*Anya*]

Police in six Southern California counties have shot more than 2,000 suspects since 2004. Only one officer was prosecuted and he was acquitted.

Complete story in LA Times dated February 19, 2016:

http://graphics.latimes.com/officer-involved/

[Cin]

‘Please Don’t Shoot Me,’ Unarmed Man Begs — Before Being Shot Dead by Arizona Police: Report

Distraught widow is now fighting to ensure that the officer responsible ends up behind bars.

A police report indicates that an unarmed young father of two begged for his life before being shot dead by a police officer in Mesa, Arizona. His distraught widow is now fighting to ensure that the officer responsible ends up behind bars.

According to KTAR radio in Phoenix, the newly-released police report indicates that Shaver told officers “please don’t shoot me,” shortly before he was indeed shot five times and killed.

Philip Brailsford, a former officer for in the Mesa Police Department, has been charged with second-degree murder, and he has pled not guilty. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said a plea deal is being considered, in place of going to trial.

On the night of Jan. 18, police were called to a hotel on reports of a suspect pointing a rifle out of the window. When police went to the room, they ordered Shaver and a woman to crawl out from the room. As Shaver was leaving, officers say he made a slight movement toward his waistline, at which point Brailsford shot him five times.

KTAR reports: “No weapons were recovered from Shaver’s body, but officers found two pellet rifles in the hotel room, which they later determined were related to his pest control job, police said.”

Shaver was 26 years old, and had wife and two daughters back home in Texas.

According to a Facebook post in January by Shaver’s widow, Laney Sweet, Shaver frequently traveled to Mesa as part of his job selling and servicing pest control equipment, which included the two pellet guns. She also said that he had been having dinner at the hotel with two people, “a man and a woman.”

“At some point, someone near the pool called the local police stating that they saw a man with a gun near the window of a 5th floor hotel room,” Sweet wrote. “Whether Daniel was the one holding it or he allowed the other man to view his equipment and look into the scope, we don’t know. The man left the room at some point, for what we think was a trip to the gas station.”

Sweet also wrote in that post that she had not been notified of her husband’s death, but had called every hospital and police station after she hadn’t heard back from him for two days — until she finally reached the coroner’s office.

This week, Sweet posted a new video on YouTube, opposing the plea deal has been offered to Brailsford, on the grounds that it would at most result in him serving three years and nine months in prison, and could potentially even result in probation.

She also plays back a recording of her conversation with the district attorney’s office, during which she felt silenced by the conditions that were being set if she were to be shown the video from Brailsford’s body cam. (Montgomery’s position was that it was necessary for Sweet to promise that she would not publicly describe the contents, or otherwise the defense team could potentially get an opportunity to say the case was being unfairly affected.)

Based, however, on the descriptions in this conversation itself made by Montgomery as well as by Sweet’s former attorney, who both saw the video, a person can get a decent idea of what is on it.

Brailsford was fired from the department on March 21, with records indicating another accusation of inappropriate force from months before the January incident.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...-police-report

[*Anya*]

There are so many police shootings, improper arrests, sex crimes committed by cops, injuries, etc., etc., sometimes I don't even want to find any more when I go online.

I don't post half of what I find because it is so disheartening and profoundly sad. There is a also a great sense of hopelessness.

What can be done at this point to change America from a police state back to some small essence of cops that knew their community and were there to help them. Didn't that exist? It is not just a Mayberry fantasy I carry in my head, is it?

It is scary times out in the world. Are the hiring ends of the police organizations not doing complete psychological exams/profiles/background checks, before they hire an officer? Are they cutting corners and not looking carefully at the men and women that they see hiring?

I am troubled that there are so many deaths, injuries, improper arrests; it gets overwhelming. I need to know because I should know.

The constant question that runs through my mind for me is:

What (if anything) can be done about it to bring some small sense of Mayberry-type policing back to our country? Is it too late?

[Cin]

This article was written in December so it's a few months old, but I think it hits on some points as to the whys of police aggression and I imagine countering those would begin to reverse the trend that has the US police killing more people in one month than the UK has in 25 years.

I think something that can be added to this article is the meme that the police are in a war with criminals and always in mortal danger. The reality is truck drivers, farmers and fishermen are more likely to die in the line of duty than police officers. But you wouldn't know that watching a TV cop show. The hysteria surrounding the war on police has to have an impact on cops. I know it would make me nervous thinking this way.

http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/a...many-european/

Historic rates of fatal police shootings in Europe suggest that American police in 2014 were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police, plus they killed significantly more frequently than police in France, Sweden and other European countries.

As a scholar of sociology and criminal justice, I recently set out to understand why rates of police lethality in the US are so much higher than rates in Europe.

More guns and aggression

Such massive disparities defy a simple explanation, but America’s gun culture is clearly an important factor. Unlike European nations, most states make it easy for adults to purchase handguns for self-defense and to keep them handy at nearly all times.

Acquiring guns illegally in the US is not much harder. About 57% of this year’s deadly force victims to date were allegedly armed with actual, toy or replica guns. American police are primed to expect guns. The specter of gun violence may make them prone to misidentifying or magnifying threats like cellphones and screwdrivers. It may make American policing more dangerous and combat-oriented. It also fosters police cultures that emphasize bravery and aggression.

Americans armed with less-lethal weapons like knives – and even those known to be unarmed – are also more likely to be killed by police.

Less-lethal weapon holders make up only about 20% of deadly force victims in the US. Yet the rates of these deaths alone exceed total known deadly force rates in any European county.

Knife violence is a big problem in England, yet British police have fatally shot only one person wielding a knife since 2008 – a hostage-taker. By comparison, my calculations based on data compiled by fatalencounters.org and the Washington Post show that US police have fatally shot more than 575 people allegedly wielding blades and other such weapons just in the years since 2013.

Racism helps explain why African Americans and Native Americans are particularly vulnerable to police violence. Racism, along with a prevailing American ideology of individualism and limited government, helps explain why white citizens and legislators give so much support to controversial police shooters and aggressive police tactics and so little to criminals and poor people.

Not racism alone

But racism alone can’t explain why non-Latino white Americans are 26 times more likely to die by police gunfire than Germans. And racism alone doesn’t explain why states like Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming – where both perpetrators and victims of deadly force are almost always white – exhibit relatively high rates of police lethality.

An explanation may be found in a key distinguishing characteristic of American policing – its localism.

Each of America’s 15,500 municipal and county departments is responsible for screening applicants, imposing discipline and training officers when a new weapon like Tasers are adopted. Some underresourced departments may perform some of these critical tasks poorly.

To make matters worse, cash-strapped local governments like Ferguson, Missouri’s may see tickets, fines, impounding fees and asset forfeitures as revenue sources and push for more involuntary police encounters.

Dangers in small places

More than a quarter of deadly force victims were killed in towns with fewer than 25,000 people despite the fact that only 17% of the US population lives in such towns.

By contrast, as a rule, towns and cities in Europe do not finance their own police forces. The municipal police that do exist are generally unarmed and lack arrest authority.

As a result, the only armed police forces that citizens routinely encounter in Europe are provincial (the counterpart to state police in the US), regional (Swiss cantons) or national.

What’s more, centralized policing makes it possible to train and judge all armed officers according to the same use-of-force guidelines. It also facilitates the rapid translation of insights about deadly force prevention into enforceable national mandates.

In the US, the only truly national deadly force behavioral mandates are set by the Supreme Court, which in 1989 deemed it constitutionally permissible for police to use deadly force when they “reasonably” perceive imminent and grave harm. State laws regulating deadly force – in the 38 states where they exist – are almost always as permissive as Supreme Court precedent allows, or more so.

A different standard

By contrast, national standards in most European countries conform to the European Convention on Human Rights, which impels its 47 signatories to permit only deadly force that is “absolutely necessary” to achieve a lawful purpose. Killings excused under America’s “reasonable belief” standards often violate Europe’s “absolute necessity” standards.

For example, the unfounded fear of Darren Wilson – the former Ferguson cop who fatally shot Michael Brown – that Brown was armed would not have likely absolved him in Europe. Nor would officers’ fears of the screwdriver that a mentally ill Dallas man Jason Harrison refused to drop.

In Europe, killing is considered unnecessary if alternatives exist. For example, national guidelines in Spain would have prescribed that Wilson incrementally pursue verbal warnings, warning shots, and shots at nonvital parts of the body before resorting to deadly force. Six shots would likely be deemed disproportionate to the threat that Brown, unarmed and wounded, allegedly posed.

In the US, only eight states require verbal warnings (when possible), while warning and leg shots are typically prohibited. In stark contrast, Finland and Norway require that police obtain permission from a superior officer, whenever possible, before shooting anyone.

Not only do centralized standards in Europe make it easier to restrict police behavior, but centralized training centers efficiently teach police officers how to avoid using deadly weapons.

The Netherlands, Norway and Finland, for example, require police to attend a national academy – a college for cops – for three years. In Norway, over 5,000 applicants recently competed for the 700 annual spots.

Three years affords police ample time to learn to better understand, communicate with and calm distraught individuals. By contrast, in 2006, US police academies provided an average of 19 weeks of classroom instruction.

Under such constraints, the average recruit in the US spends almost 20 times as many hoursof training in using force than in conflict de-escalation. Most states require fewer than eight hours of crisis intervention training.

Desperate and potentially dangerous people in Europe are, therefore, more likely than their American counterparts to encounter well-educated and restrained police officers.

However, explanations of elevated police lethality in the US should focus on more than police policy and behavior. The charged encounters that give rise to American deadly force also result from weak gun controls, social and economic deprivation and injustice, inadequate mental health care and an intense desire to avoid harsh imprisonment.

Future research should examine not only whether American police behave differently but also whether more generous, supportive and therapeutic policies in Europe ensure that fewer people become desperate enough to summon, provoke or resist their less dangerous police.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

There are so many police shootings, improper arrests, sex crimes committed by cops, injuries, etc., etc., sometimes I don't even want to find any more when I go online.

I don't post half of what I find because it is so disheartening and profoundly sad. There is a also a great sense of hopelessness.

What can be done at this point to change America from a police state back to some small essence of cops that knew their community and were there to help them. Didn't that exist? It is not just a Mayberry fantasy I carry in my head, is it?

It is scary times out in the world. Are the hiring ends of the police organizations not doing complete psychological exams/profiles/background checks, before they hire an officer? Are they cutting corners and not looking carefully at the men and women that they see hiring?

I am troubled that there are so many deaths, injuries, improper arrests; it gets overwhelming. I need to know because I should know.

The constant question that runs through my mind for me is:

What (if anything) can be done about it to bring some small sense of Mayberry-type policing back to our country? Is it too late?

Like you, I don't post half of what I read. Before posting, I read the article to make sure the situation occurred within the last two years and I eliminate any situations where the 'criminal' was found to be armed or attacked the police. Not because they deserved to be shot or harmed but because there are plenty of situations where use of any force was not necessary.

I don't believe we will ever achieve Mayberry but I do hope there will come a time that those with the power to harm others will be held accountable for using that power when it isn't necessary.