Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[*Anya*]

Judge clears cop of sex assault of colleague's 9-year-old, orders counseling

By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune

A Cook County judge who had cleared a longtime Chicago police sergeant of the sexual assault of a colleague's young daughter, convicting him instead of misdemeanor battery, ordered the cop Wednesday to undergo up to two years of sex offender counseling.

In explaining the unusual move, Judge Charles Burns said prosecutors had failed at trial to prove, as required by law, that Dennis Barnes fondled the girl for his own sexual arousal, yet the judge said he believed "something was going on, and that's something that I find disturbing."

The alleged victim's mother, herself a Chicago police officer who had invited Barnes to her home for the first time for a family barbecue, blasted the judge's decision, saying she felt Barnes had been given preferential treatment because he was a Chicago cop.

"I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it because of all the evidence," she said, wiping away tears after court Wednesday as she recalled the judge's decision to find Barnes guilty of a lesser, nonsexual offense after a short bench trial in January. "The judge even admitted that it disgusted him, so why would you say it's only a misdemeanor battery?"

The Tribune is not naming the mother or her daughter because of the sexual nature of the allegations. The girl was 9 at the time of the alleged assault in August 2014.

Barnes was charged with felony attempted predatory criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The 27-year department veteran resigned from the force three months after he was charged, a police spokesman said.

Barnes apologized Wednesday to the judge but said his actions that day were accidental. His attorney, Michael Clancy, told the judge his client had been drinking for hours that day.

"I'm deeply, deeply regretful," said Barnes, 63. "Whatever it was, was an accident, but I feel sorry for her."

The judge rejected that claim in sentencing Barnes to 60 days in Cook County Jail in addition to placing him on intensive probation intended for sex offenders for two years. In addition to counseling, Barnes will undergo a psychological evaluation to determine if he has pedophile tendencies or other issues.

"I don't believe this was incidental contact," Burns said. "I don't believe it was an accident."

Barnes two weeks before reporting to jail but ordered that he immediately be placed on electronic monitoring.

Prosecutors alleged that Barnes was "grooming" the girl for the alleged assault after arriving at the family's home, reading a book with her for an hour and letting her play with his cellphone before sitting next to her on the couch as she watched a movie with her brother, then 15.

He massaged her feet, rubbed her legs and then reached into her shorts and attempted to sexually assault her, prosecutors alleged. When her mother entered the room, the girl began crying and told her what had happened.

"(Barnes) told the victim that he was her mother's boss," Assistant State's Attorney Tracy Senica told the judge. "And she testified that she didn't scream because she didn't want to get her mom into trouble."

The mother was outraged that Barnes escaped a sex-related felony conviction, saying she felt any "normal citizen" wouldn't have caught such a break. She also was disappointed with the 60-day sentence.

"I mean I've never heard of anybody being charged with two felony sexual charges and then getting a misdemeanor battery," she said. "I've never heard of that, and I've been doing this job a long time."


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...406-story.html

[Andrea]

San Francisco police shoot, kill homeless man with knife

http://www.kcra.com/news/san-francisco-police-shoot-kill-homeless-man-with-knife/38929690?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_c ampaign=KCRA%203&Content%20Type=Story

San Francisco Police officers shot and killed a homeless man carrying a knife, the third fatal shooting of a minority suspect without a gun over the last two years.

The shooting Thursday morning in the city's Mission District neighborhood comes amid the department's attempt to reform its "use-of-force" policies and repair an image battered by two separate incidents of officers exchanging racist and homophobic text messages.

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr says two officers shot the unidentified Latino man after he refused demands to drop a knife and after the suspect was shot four times with nonlethal beanbags.

The incident was the second fatal shooting of a knife-wielding suspect since December. The previous shooting of knife-wielding black man along with the fatal shooting of a Latino man carrying a stun gun In March 2014 and the recent texting scandals has led to several protests, calls for the chief's firing and wrongful death lawsuits.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently agreed to requests from Suhr and Mayor Ed Lee to review the department's procedures and policies. Suhr has called in outside law enforcement experts to help the department develop less lethal responses to suspects not carrying guns.

The latest incident began Thursday morning when city homeless outreach officials checking on residents living in tents called police to report a man carrying a knife, Suhr said. Suhr didn't identify the man, who officers reported charging at them before firing.

Seven bullets casings were found and the kitchen knife recovered, Suhr said. The blade was 10 inches to 12 inches long, and witnesses described it as a chef's knife, he said.

Two witnesses say a language barrier may have contributed to the shooting. John Visor and Stephanie Grant said they lived in a tent in the same encampment as the suspect and say he spoke only Spanish and that the officers barked their commands to drop the knife in English.

Visor, 33, and Grant, 31, say the man was confused and walking in a circle when the officers hit him with the beanbags and then opened fire with guns. They say the man had stuffed the knife into his waistband before he was shot.

"Everybody carries something for protection here," Visor said. "He didn't have the knife in his hand when he was shot."

Visor and Grant knew the man only as Jose. They said Jose liked to collect bottles and cans for recycling and enjoyed kicking a soccer ball, sometimes late into the night and to the occasional annoyance of pedestrians.

"He never hurt anybody," Visor said. "He just liked to pick up cans."

The mayor said in a statement that "we are all striving to make sure officer involved shootings are rare and only occur as a last resort." Lee said he has requested an independent investigation from the Office of Citizen complaints in addition to the customary investigations by the Police Department and district attorney.

The last previous fatal shooting that involved San Francisco police occurred on Dec. 2, when five officers fatally shot Mario Woods 20 times, including six times in the back, in an incident caught on video.

Woods' family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

On Wednesday, the city's police commission agreed to reconsider its ban on arming San Francisco police officers with stun guns because of the Woods incident and the 2014 police shooting death of Alex Nieto, a college student carrying a stun gun that officers mistook for a handgun. Nieto carried a stun gun for his job as a security guard.

A federal grand jury earlier this year ruled the officers acted appropriately and refused to award Nieto's family any damages after a trial in San Francisco.

San Francisco is one of only two of the nation's largest cities in the country that do not equip officers with stun guns.

[Andrea]

Man with knives killed by Sacramento police; 3 officers on leave

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article70710997.html

A use of force investigation is underway after Sacramento police shot and killed a man armed with knives whom officers say came toward them in an aggressive manner Friday morning in South Sacramento.

Three police officers who fired shots during the incident are on administrative leave, according to the police department.

The incident started with reports of a man acting suspiciously. He was detained, but escaped custody and was later shot on a nearby street. The man was killed. The officers were uninjured, said Sacramento police spokesman Sgt. Bryce Heinlein.

As soon as they opened the door he took off running

Resident Jeffery Jones, describing how a man escaped from the rear of a police car. The man was soon after shot and killed by police

Police said the incident began on the 7600 block of Prescott Way, which is in the Parkway neighborhood near Mack Road and Center Parkway.

At around 6:30 a.m. Friday , longtime area resident Jeffery Jones said he saw a man wandering the neighborhood looking drugged and confused.

“I said ‘What can I do for you,’ ” Jones said. “He said ‘I’m lost.”

The man walked away, but continued looking into homes, Jones said.

At around 8 a.m., officers arrived, questioned the man and then placed him in the back of a patrol car. As they were still trying to determine whether a crime had been committed, the man was not handcuffed, said department spokeswoman Traci Trapani. Jones said as they were taking his statement, the man started violently kicking at the windows.

“As soon as they opened the door he took off running,” Jones said.

The officers followed in their patrol cars, but the man eluded them by climbing into backyards, police said.

Police said the man jumped from one backyard to another and broke into at least one home. A woman, who was in her backyard when the man came over the fence with a meat cleaver and a butcher knife, screamed before running inside and locking the sliding glass door, Trapani said.

The man followed, breaking the glass, sending the fleeing woman out the front door where she called for help, Trapani said.

Later the man appeared from behind a parked car and confronted officers.

“ At that point he verbally challenged the officers and at that point officers fired their weapons,” Heinlein said. “He was struck and he is deceased.”

Heinlein said he the man took an “aggressive stance” towards the officers, but couldn’t say how close the suspect was to the officers or whether the man was charging at the officers.

It’s not yet known how many shots were fired. Representatives from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office will review the circumstances of the shooting.

The sprawling crime scene set the neighborhood abuzz as people nearby speculated on whether the use of lethal force was justified.

“Terrible” was the conclusion reached by area resident Wendell Smith, who said officers should have disarmed the man.

“If it were a gun its a different story,” Smith said.

Sandy Keller, who was in the area to drop off her kids at choir and drama rehearsal, leaned more toward trusting the cops’ instinct and training.

“I’m not going to make a judgment against a police officer,” Keller said, noting that a California Highway Patrol officer was badly injured in Sacramento Thursday by a motorist who allegedly ran over him on purpose.

“We don’t know the whole story,” Keller said. “Obviously the officers felt justified.”

[Andrea]

Former South Carolina police officer pleads guilty in fatal shooting of black man, gets probation

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20160411/PC16/160419852/former-south-carolina-police-officer-pleads-guilty-in-fatal-shooting-of-black-man

A white former North Augusta police officer pleaded guilty Monday to misconduct in office after fatally shooting an elderly black motorist two years ago, a case that raised questions about deadly force tactics and the public’s right to see dashcam videos of police shootings.

A judge sentenced Justin Craven, 27, to three years of probation and 80 hours of community service after he entered the plea in the death of Ernest Satterwhite, 68, the Aiken Standard reported.

In video released by the State Law Enforcement Division, Justin Craven can be seen rushing toward the driver’s side of the car, lunging in for a split second and then pulling back to fire.

In announcing a penalty that included no imprisonment, the judge said the shooting wasn’t like other officer-involved killings that have garnered notoriety in recent years, alluding to Walter Scott’s death last year in North Charleston.

Yet family members and their lawyer who had seen the video have said it was just as disturbing. Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, saw the video months ago and said it shows Craven had no business getting probation.

“The reality is that he murdered that man, in my opinion, and got away with it,” said Neal, a black Democrat who has spent decades speaking out against racism in law enforcement and demanding accountability through data and police cameras.

A video released by the State Law Enforcement Division to The Post and Courier showed Craven following a Chrysler Sebring weaving through traffic and then onto a dirt road. Satterwhite then parked next to his house, and Craven can be seen rushing toward the driver’s side of the car, lunging in for a split-second and then pulling back to fire.

After the guilty plea, Craven’s attorney told The Associated Press his client shouldn’t have run up to Satterwhite’s car at the end of the 13-minute chase.

“His mistake in judgment was approaching the car and getting too close. He had to make a split-second decision instead of like now, when everyone gets all the time they want to analyze it.” Jack Swerling said his client thought about going to trial to clear his name but feared that would be difficult with several other police shootings in the news.

The Satterwhite shooting highlighted a nationwide problem uncovered by The Post and Courier last year: officers who fire into cars to stop suspects.

The newspaper’s “Shots Fired” analysis found that officers routinely said they fired because they feared for their lives. But a closer inspection of many of these cases showed that officers were in little or no danger.

Criminal justice experts say departments should prohibit officers from firing at vehicles and instead train them to get out of the way.

Like many other police shootings, Satterwhite’s death also raised questions about whether videos should be released quickly to the public. Authorities had kept dashboard camera footage under wraps for more than two years, a delay that some argued violates the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Neal said the failure to release the footage “smacks of a cover-up.”

Craven’s guilty plea came as the General Assembly is considering a bill requiring dashcam footage to be released immediately when it “involves an officer involved incident resulting in death, injury, property damage, or the use of deadly force.” The Senate passed the bill last week, and the House is expected to take it up this week.

The shooting stems from the night of Feb. 9, 2014, when Craven spotted a Chrysler Sebring that veered in and out of a lane. Craven turned on his blue lights, and Satterwhite turned in to a Wal-Mart parking lot. Craven followed Satterwhite as he drove back onto a road and struck a mailbox and another car. Satterwhite then drove toward Edgefield in what an attorney for Satterwhite’s family would call a “low-speed chase.”

Satterwhite eventually pulled into the driveway of his home. An incident report said that “a struggle ensued between Officer Craven and the suspect over Officer Craven’s duty weapon. At that point, officer Craven discharged his duty weapon at the suspect an undetermined amount of times.”

After the Satterwhite shooting, an incident report by the Edgefield County Sheriff’s Office said that Craven approached the driver’s side door and “fired three or four shots into the vehicle and stated, ‘the suspect grabbed my gun.’ ” According to Carter Elliott Jr., the Satterwhites’ attorney, the video shows Craven lunging into the car with his gun drawn and then firing his weapon. “Why would you do that?” he told the newspaper last year. “The guy had stopped and was parked in his own driveway.”

Elliot viewed the video as part of his lawsuit against North Augusta and Edgefield. It showed Craven moving toward the driver’s side of Satterwhite’s car and lunging toward him, Elliott said. It appears that Satterwhite then raised his hands in surprise, not as if he was grabbing a weapon, the attorney said. Craven then pulls back and starts shooting, he said.

No weapon was found in Satterwhite’s car.

“There was no question about that,” Elliott told the newspaper.

The shooting was captured on Craven’s dashboard camera. But SLED, which investigated the shooting, and the North Augusta Department of Public Safety denied The Post and Courier’s request to release it.

Satterwhite’s family settled the lawsuit last year for $1.2 million. All told, South Carolina towns and cities halve paid more than $25 million to settle lawsuits from officer-involved shootings, according to the newspaper’s “Shots Fired” database.

A prosecutor wanted the North Augusta police officer charged with voluntary manslaughter, which carries up to 30 years in prison, but a grand jury refused to indict Craven. He later was charged with a felony — discharging a gun into an occupied vehicle. But Craven eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser misdemeanor misconduct in office charge, which carries up to a year behind bars.

Neal, the representative, said the Satterwhite case was inconsistent with what happened in the Scott shooting. “In one case, an officer is charged appropriately with murder. In another, a misdemeanor. I feel for the family.”

[Andrea]

EXCLUSIVE: NYPD kicks wrong family out of their home in nuisance case, seeking drug dealers who left 7 months earlier

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-kicks-wrong-family-home-nuisance-case-article-1.2597105?utm_content=buffer4c4af&utm_medium=socia l&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsT w

The NYPD got an order kicking a family of four out of their Queens apartment by telling a judge it was a drug den — but the dealers had moved out seven months earlier.

A lawsuit to be filed in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday details an egregious case of the NYPD’s use of the nuisance abatement law — a controversial tool in which cops are able to get a temporary order barring people from their homes without first giving them the opportunity to appear before a judge.

The bungled operation left Austria Bueno, 32, a housekeeper, crashing at a hotel and on a relative’s floor, beside her two sons and husband, for four nights, as they waited for their first court date.

“Everybody cried. Me, I was crying like a baby,” Bueno told the Daily News. “I don’t deserve that. My kids don’t deserve that either.”

Her lawsuit, which cites The News and ProPublica’s ongoing investigation into the NYPD’s misuse of the nuisance abatement law, seeks to have the legislation and its provision for secret lockout orders declared unconstitutional.

A News analysis found the number of cases filed by the NYPD has dropped substantially since the first investigation was published in February.

Bueno’s ordeal began before she even got to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City. Police say a confidential informant purchased crack at her future apartment twice in January 2015. A subsequent search turned up crack, weapons and $21,500.

Austria Bueno returned to her apartment only to find two neon-colored stickers taped to the door saying anyone who entered would be arrested.

Bueno and her family moved into the apartment in August.

On Dec. 11, a Friday, Bueno returned home after picking up her sons — ages 6 and 15 — from school to find a stack of legal papers and two neon-colored stickers taped to her door saying anyone who entered would be arrested.

She was told to come to court the following Tuesday.

That night, the Bueno family slept at a hotel for $208. The following three nights, the family slept on the living room floor of her mother-in-law.

Bueno said she missed three days of work, resulting in a reduced paycheck. Her husband also missed work, and her youngest son was unable to attend school one day because he couldn’t retrieve a clean school uniform.

The NYPD did not even bother to contact the New York City Housing Authority to determine if their targets still lived in the home they were asking a judge to close — despite filing the request 10 months after the search, claiming it “is currently being operated, occupied and used illegally,” Bueno’s suit says.

Bueno said she called 911 the night she was locked out, then went to the NYPD’s housing precinct stationhouse the following day, but was told both times she had to wait until her court date on Tuesday. She said she went to court a day early, but was told the same thing.

After her lawyer explained the situation at her first court date, Bueno was allowed back into her home. Rather than apologizing for the terrible mistake and dropping the case, the NYPD’s attorney dragged it on for three months in an effort to get Bueno to sign a settlement waiving her right to sue, the lawsuit says. She refused.

“When they have to do something like that, they’re supposed to know 100% that the person they’re still looking for is still living in the apartment,” Bueno said.

Her suit will also seek unspecified damages.

“We believe that this is an unlawful process,” Bueno’s attorney Robert Sanderman said. “Literally, people are being evicted and their life is being destroyed based on mere allegations that are hardly ever verified. It just flies in the face of the Constitution.”

City Public Advocate Letitia James — who wrote a letter to city Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter slamming nuisance abatements following The News’ coverage — was outraged by Bueno’s ordeal. “It is disgraceful that the city is displacing people from their homes without due process,” James said.

A police spokesman and the Law Department declined to comment.

In response to The News and ProPublica’s investigation, Carter said last month that his office would review its nuisance abatement procedures to ensure that secret lockout orders “would only be used in cases of appropriate urgency,” and would not apply to household members who haven't been accused of a crime.

Meanwhile, the number of nuisance abatement actions filed by the NYPD has dropped significantly since The News and ProPublica’s investigation.

The NYPD filed 28 nuisance abatement actions in state supreme courts between Feb. 4, when the investigation was first published, and April 11. The NYPD filed 161 cases during the same time period in 2013, and 101 during the same time period in 2014.

The department has filed just two nuisance abatement actions since March 25, when The News published a followup that quoted two former attorneys in the NYPD’s civil enforcement unit, which handles such cases, as saying the unit had no requirement or procedure to independently verify the claims it files in nuisance abatement actions, or to even check if anyone is still living in the house it is seeking to close.

However, judges have continued to grant temporary closing orders on businesses and homes, even in cases where the evidence is months old, despite state Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Fern Fisher’s advisory notice recommending that they limit the practice.

[*Anya*]

[Andrea]

13 prison officers fired for negligence, violating policies

http://www.12news.com/news/local/valley/13-prison-workers-fired-for-negligence-violating-policies/135307090

Thirteen correctional officers were fired and six others were disciplined in a move we’ve never seen before from the Arizona Department of Corrections.

It’s in response to an investigation into the suicide deaths of two inmates and violations of policies and ethics.

Video released by the DOC shows the moments a correctional officer at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Perryville found an inmate, Cynthia Apkaw, 25, hanging from her cell.

She had a rope around the air vent, attached to a bed sheet around her neck.

Could the correctional officers have saved her August of 2015? They tried with chest compressions and other life-saving measures, but she was pronounced dead after midnight.

According to an investigation released by the DOC, entries in a Correctional Service Journal were not accurate.

It shows checks were made every half-hour, but security footage contradicts that, showing a pill call at 4:41 p.m. that day. The officer is not seen coming back to the inmate's cell until 7:03 p.m. -- two hours and 22 minutes later.

Another incident occurred when officers attempted life-saving measures on Scott Saba, 45, back in February.

Officers found him with an electrical cord around his neck. The weight of his body blocked the cell door from opening. It took officers more than five minutes to pry it open.

The DOC’s investigators revealed two days prior, Saba tried to make 56 phone calls, and during one of them he's heard explaining part of the Bible.

A correctional officer observed Saba acting “paranoid,” and the inmate also asked to get out of his cell because he "wasn't feeling good."

That complaint went ignored; the correctional officer failed to notify the medical department about Saba’s comment.

The reports from this incident also show that correctional officers lied about the time they performed one of their security sweeps, and one turned in keys and a radio before clocking out.

Saba was in prison for a drug-related crime. He has small children and comes from a prominent family who owns Saba's Western Wear in Scottsdale.

Evaluation of his mental health score is mentioned twice in the report.

The Department of Corrections has not revealed what his scores were leading up to his death.