Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

LMPD handcuffed a black teen for a wide turn, then told him to 'quit with the attitude'

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/investigations/2019/04/04/louisville-kentucky-police-stopped-frisked-handcuffed-black-teen-for-wide-turn/3210229002/

He was homecoming king at Central High School and had just graduated with several scholarships.

He had never been arrested or in trouble before and had a steady job selling new cars at a major dealership.

But 18-year-old Tae-Ahn Lea is black and lives in Park Duvalle, in Louisville’s West End. And when he borrowed his mom’s car to go get a slushie one day last August, he found himself being pulled over by the Louisville Metro Police Department's Ninth Mobile Division for the most minor of traffic violations — making a "wide turn" onto another street.

Before he was let go 25 minutes later, he was pulled from his car, frisked and handcuffed. His car was searched by a drug-sniffing dog, then by police officers who went through his wallet and even looked under the lid of his drink for contraband.

He was forced to stand on the street, embarrassed, as traffic drove by, with the cuffs chafing his wrists, as one officer asked him, "Why do you have this negative view towards the police?"

Nearly 1 million people have since viewed a video of the traffic stop on YouTube, and more than 17,000 have commented on it. Many said it shows exactly why minorities distrust law enforcement.

"Cops have a habit of making citizens enemies for life," one commentor said.

Police experts who viewed the video for the Courier Journal say that while the stop — except for the frisk — was legal, it was disturbingly disproportionate to the alleged offense and it showed the kind of bad policing that undermines the department's need to be effective.

LMPD Chief Steve Conrad has said that aggressive policing in high-crime areas reduces violent crime. He declined to comment on Lea's stop last Aug. 9, citing a pending investigation of the officers involved.

A police stop turns contentious
"Do you know why I stopped you?" Detective Kevin Crawford asked Lea after pulling him over.

Lea had no idea, he said.

"When you turned … you turned in to the far left lane," Crawford said. "You’re supposed to turn in the right lane."

Lea, expecting to get a citation, followed orders, even asking for permission to reach into his pocket to get his license. But the officer grabbed him by both wrists and pulled him from the car.

"Mama, they are taking me out of the vehicle," he cried out to his mother, who had called on his cellphone.

Three times Crawford asked Lea if he had any drugs or weapons. Three times Lea told him no.

Crawford frisked him, though Lea had done nothing to indicate he was "armed and presently dangerous," as the U.S. Supreme Court requires before such a search.

"Put your hands on the car and spread your feet," Crawford demanded.

"What are you checking me for?" Lea asked. "I told you I didn’t do anything. … Why'd you f------ took me out of the car?”

"We are allowed to," Crawford's partner, Detective Gabe Hellard, said.

"This is some bulls---," Lea said.

"Quit with the attitude," Hellard told him. "Stop the clenching-your-fist thing. We’re here for you. There's a shooting every day. Ain't nobody been nasty to you at all."

Police found nothing on Lea, so they asked permission to search the car. Lea declined, as is his right.

Then they brought in a police dog that they said "alerted" them to contraband inside Lea's mother's 2011 Dodge Charger, although it is not apparent on the body camera footage from the officers who came to the scene.

But it gave police probable cause to search the car.

And to place Lea into handcuffs.

"You're not under arrest, but you are not free to go," Hellard told him. "I'm not going to fight you and I’m not going to chase you. I had to chase some guy last night, and I haven’t recovered from it."

'They approach this young man as a threat'
Experts on policing, including some former officers, used words such as "deplorable" and "depressing" to describe the stop.

They said the officers were doing what they were told — trying to find guns in a high-crime area to cut down on violent crime.

But as former Tallahassee Police Department Officer Seth Stoughton, now a law professor at University of South Carolina, puts it, it is "an excellent example of the difference between lawful policing and good policing."

"They approach this young man as a threat — as a criminal,” said Stoughton. "And that is different than the way we want officers to interact with people."

The authorities also say traffic stops don't work as a crime-fighting tool. A study released in November of nearly 2 million traffic stops in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, found they failed to reduce crime in the short or long term.

'What did you pull him over for?'
Seven minutes had elapsed, but the stop was far from finished.

By now, Lea was handcuffed on a busy street, standing in front of a police cruiser and worried that somebody might see him.

He watched as the police dog jumped from seat to seat and as police tore through the vehicle.

One officer used a plastic crowbar to pry off the cover on the electric window buttons.

A second rifled every item in Lea's wallet after the dog allegedly showed an interest in it.

"Sir, have you had anything in your wallet like narcotics — anything that could have touched your wallet?" canine officer Jeff McCauley asked.

Lea shook his head no.

His mother, Tija Jackson, a juvenile probation officer and private investigator, arrived at the scene, where the three white officers were holding her son.

"What did you pull him over for?” she asked Crawford, who threatens to take her to jail if she doesn't stay back. "There is nothing in there. It's my car."

"I am the detective who pulled him over," Crawford said. "He committed a traffic violation. He conducted an improper turn on to 18th Street.

"Luckily for you, ma'am, everything was captured on body camera," he added.

"Luckily enough for you," Jackson said.

"Oh, really,” the officer replied.

As the search continued, Hellard tries to engage Lea in conversation.

"Have you been in trouble before?" the officer asked.

"None,” Lea shook his head, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

"Anything as a juvenile at all?" Hellard asked.

No, Lea said.

Hellard asked where Lea works. "You say you sell cars at Oxmoor Ford Lincoln?"

"That’s good money," Hellard said. "You actually like a car salesman?"

'If it's a wrong turn, give him a ticket'
Police found nothing in the car.

McCauley announced he was going to try to calm Lea's mother down, but they ended up in a confrontation.

"Are you Mom? Are you doing all right?" he asked.

"I'm pissed off, for real," she said.

"What you pissed off for?" McCauley asked.

"My son … is a working young man," she replied. "He doesn't cause no problems. And they took him out of the car. And he asked, 'Why you taking me out of the car?' And he said, ‘Cuz I can.’

"If it's a wrong turn, give him a ticket," she said.

"That’s not what we’re out here for," McCauley responded. "We are a violent crimes unit.

"We don’t pick and choose where we work. We are told by our commanders, by the chief’s office, where to patrol, and all that is based off criminal violence statistics. The 18th Street corridor, Victory Park, Park Hill, they are the areas we are told to patrol. That’s why we are here.

“We are just doing our jobs to try to make the city a little safer,” he said.

"I don’t want the history,” she interrupted. “I just want to know why my son …”

He cut her off. “I’m trying to explain, but you don’t want to hear it.”

"I'm not here that for that,” she said. “I don’t need the sass. I appreciate you being out here for violent crime. My son is not a violent nothing. He’s never been in JCYC (the Jefferson County Youth Center) — nothing. He got a job.”

“I’m not saying he is a violent criminal."

"So, why is he out of the car in handcuffs?"

"I came over here to try to explain it to you, but you don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to hear the truth."

"If it doesn't have nothing to do with my son, I don’t want to hear it,” she said before walking away. “I am dealing with my son right now."

'Why do you have this negative view towards the police?'
Meanwhile, Lea was still standing on the street in cuffs, which were pulling at his wrists. He’d been out of the car for nearly 20 minutes, as traffic passed by, with him in plain sight.

Hellard was still talking to him.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “why do you have this negative view towards the police? What has ever happened in your life personally where you can give me a good explanation?"

"Absolutely nothing," Lea said.

"So, why are we in this situation?" Hellard asked.

"You!" Lea responded, his voice rising. "F---ing you!"

"We don't know who you are," Hellard said. "I don’t know that you graduated and got several scholarships and have a good job. You can continue with your negative view towards me, I guess. I just figured I would try to understand."

"You will never understand," Lea said.

The stop was winding down.

Driving while black: Lawyer says he was racially profiled in luxury car

Out of the hearing of the mother and son, McCauley complained to other officers that Jackson would "make stuff up" and "spill that over the internet. She’ll get a thousand likes. It’s a disease.”

Then he got in his car to leave. “Good girl, Ripley,” he said to his dog.

Hellard asked Lea, “If I take you out of these handcuffs, are you going to fight me? I know you’re mad.”

The young man, who stands 5 foot 8 and weighs 140 pounds, answers no, and his arms are freed.

Twenty-four minutes after Lea was stopped, Crawford finished writing the citation and handed it to him.

“Have a wonderful day,” he said.

'Nothing about this kid suggested he was a gangbanger'
Two months later, a judge dismissed the traffic citation against Lea.

Neither Crawford nor Hellard, who issued the ticket, showed up in court to defend it.

Policing experts who viewed the video for the Courier Journal, including Margo Frasier, the former sheriff of Travis County, Texas, said it was a "chickens---" violation and obviously a pretext for making the stop.

That itself wasn’t illegal, said Frasier, who later monitored the Austin, Texas, police department and now serves as the federally appointed chief monitor for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana.

And she said police had the legal right to make Lea get out of the car. But she said there was no basis for searching him after he was removed from his car, which made the frisk illegal.

Both the Supreme Court and Louisville police say a pat down may be conducted only on reasonable grounds that the subject is armed and dangerous.

"Nothing about this kid suggested he was a gangbanger who had three AK-47s in the car," she said.

The officers also violated LMPD policy, as set out in its standard operating procedures, by failing to identify themselves and failing to ask if there was a legitimate reason for what the driver did.

Traffic stops have been controversial in Louisville.

The Courier Journal reported in January that black people are cited at six times the rate of white people for possession of marijuana, and that most are charged after being stopped for minor violations.

Lea's stop came about a month before the Rev. Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, was stopped at the corner of 22nd Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard for an alleged traffic violation.

Cosby, who is also president of the historically black Simmons College, later said he was treated like a criminal during the stop, although Conrad announced last month that an investigation found no evidence of racial profiling.

'If I were him, I would have had an attitude too'
In Lea's stop, Frasier and other experts said he showed remarkable patience and restraint.

"If I were him, I would have had an attitude too," she said.

Stoughton, the former Tallahassee officer, said the overarching problem with the stop was not that it was illegal, but that it was inappropriate and counterproductive.

“People obey and cooperate with police when they trust them,” he said. “That view is undermined when they are seen as abusing their authority.”

Even in high-crime areas, most people aren’t criminals, he said, "so it can really rub community members the wrong way when they are all viewed as targets for investigation."

Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina political science professor and author of “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race,” said hot-spot policing like that practiced by Louisville police is a "standard practice" but a "bad idea."

He said his study of 20,000 stops in North Carolina found that most came up dry — that police rarely found guns or other contraband.

"Go to a high-crime area and find a man of color in a nice car," is how Baumgartner described the strategy. "It’s a needle in the haystack approach that isn’t paying off, given it alienates tens of thousands of people a year."

In the Louisville stop, he said, "Obviously it alienated that young man and infuriated his mother, and it didn’t lead to anything. It is one little nick taken out of community relations and the trust the community of police."

In an email, Jessie Halladay, a Louisville Police spokeswoman, said "we see examples of cooperation between police and the community every day."

But, she said, "there is always room for improvement" and the department understands "tension exists between the police and community, particularly as it relates to traffic stops."

She said the agency is "developing a public engagement effort" to be announced in coming weeks “that will lean into our relationship with the community.”

But she said the department won’t reconsider its tactical use of traffic stops because it is "an effective strategy to help control crime."

Lea, who now attends Tri-City Barber College in Louisville and is selling cars again part time, told the Courier Journal the mayor and police chief need to put a stop to such stops.

"They could go wrong very easily, with somebody who had a little more of a temper than me," he said.

Jackson said such pretextual stops only create more friction between the community and police.

She and her son have retained a lawyer, Lonita Baker, and expect to file a lawsuit.

"We want to let people know what they are doing — and not just to my son," Jackson said.

[Andrea]

Shocking viral video appears to show deputy slamming teen's head into the ground

https://www.kcra.com/article/shocking-viral-video-appears-to-show-deputy-slamming-teen-s-head-into-the-ground/27222755?fbclid=IwAR227ZE3XA7oy_1Qg9YzrWNvQ4BrQq00 R2K18a_1WDcSAdL690S7xUjbb2o

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. (video from WPLG) —
A Broward County sheriff's deputy is on "restricted administrative assignment" after a video surfaced that appears to show him slamming a teenage boy's head into the ground and then punching the teen in the head.

The video of the Thursday incident appears to show one Florida deputy spraying pepper spray in the face of a teen boy. As the teen appears to walk away with his hands on his face, the deputy follows him, grabs him and slams him to the ground.

Another deputy then jumps onto the boy's back, slams his face into the pavement more than once and punches the teen in the head.

In the background, bystanders can be heard yelling "What are you doing?" and "He's bleeding."

The video, which has since gone viral on social media, has sparked outrage over the deputy's conduct.

Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony released a video statement Friday saying there would be a "thorough investigation" into the incident.

"We will look at this as a fact-finding measure to ensure that we hold folks accountable," said Tony, who was appointed to his position about three months ago. "I was appointed to this position exclusively about accountability and that accountability will be held not just for sake of when we are right, but in the cases where we may be wrong."

The Broward County Sheriff's office said on its website that the Division of Internal Affairs is investigating the incident.

Deputy says he 'had to act quickly'

An arrest report from the sheriff'spffice says detectives with the Tamarac Crime Suppression Team were on "proactive patrol" at the Tamarac Town Square Plaza because of recent student fights at the strip mall. The day before the deputies' encounter, the report says, there had been a large fight that resulted in damage to property and a bystander's vehicle.

The officer writing the report, Christopher Krickovich, said a fight Thursday stopped before he and other deputies walked up. As the crowd dispersed, the deputies saw a teen who had been involved in Wednesday's fight. Krickovich wrote he and another deputy -- identified as Sgt. LaCerra -- approached the teen and put him into custody because he was trespassing.

Krickovich said as he was detaining the teen, he noticed another boy wearing a "red tank top" reach down and try to grab the phone of the teen being detained, the report says. LaCerra told the boy to stay back because Krickovich was on the ground with his back turned, Krickovich wrote in the report.

"At this point, the male with the red tank top, took an aggressive stance towards Sgt. LaCerra," Krickovich wrote. "The male with the red tank top bladed his body and began clenching his fist."

That's when LaCerra sprayed the boy with pepper spray, the report says.

Krickovich wrote in the report that he saw the big crowd of 200-plus students "converging on the two of us," so he jumped on the boy with the red tank top.

"With the crowd closing in and the loud yelling and threats towards us, I pushed down the male to ensure my weight was full on his person so he could not attempt to take flight or fight against us," Krickovich wrote, adding that it felt as though the boy in the red tank was trying to push up while he was pushing down.

"I had to act quickly, fearing I would get struck or having a student potentially grab weapons off my belt or vest," Krickovich wrote.

Krickovich said he punched the boy in the head "as a distractionary technique to free his right hand" from under his face.

The 15-year-old boy, who has not been identified, was taken to Coral Springs Medical Center, cleared and then taken to Juvenile Assessment Center. He was charged with assault, resisting arrest and trespassing, according to CNN affiliate WFOR-TV. He appeared in court Friday morning and was released to his parents.

Mayor says deputy should be fired

Broward Mayor Mark Bogen released a statement Friday condemning the actions seen in the video.

"The behavior of these Broward Sheriff's Office deputies was outrageous and unacceptable," Bogen said. "The officer who jumped on the student, punched the student and banged his head to the ground should be fired immediately. There is no excuse for a law enforcement officer to harm a teenager who was on the ground and who gave no resistance."

Bogen said he also had a problem with the deputy who threw the boy on the ground after pepper spraying him.

"After being sprayed, the teen held his face and walked away," Bogen said. "If the deputy wanted to arrest the student, he could have easily done so without throwing him to the ground. I hope the appropriate authorities investigate this conduct and take the appropriate action."

Celebrities also reacted to the video on social media Saturday.

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers wrote on Twitter: "So wrong!! Hurts me to my soul!! To think that could be my sons. Scary times man."

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr wondered on Twitter "What the hell is wrong with our country? This is insane yet routine. So demoralizing."

[Andrea]

Moment cops open fire on unarmed black couple near Yale campus as they sat in car singing along to R&B singer Avant because police wrongly believed their vehicle had been involved in a robbery

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6946347/Police-officers-open-fire-unarmed-African-American-couple-Connecticut.html

Protest erupted along the streets of Connecticut after video surfaced of a police officer opening fire on a vehicle being driven by an unarmed black couple last Tuesday

Stephanie Washington, 22, and her boyfriend Paul Witherspoon III, 21, were shot at by Hamden police officer Devin Eaton and Yale police officer Terrance Pollack as they sat unarmed in their car near Yale university's campus in New Haven.

Authorities believed that the vehicle that the couple was driving had been involved in an armed robbery of a newspaper delivery person at a local Hamden gas station around 4am, CBS News reports.

The two departments then caught up with the vehicle - which was being driven by Witherspoon.

Surveillance footage shows the moment the responding officers jumped our of their SUV and fired multiple rounds at the couple last Tuesday.

During the shooting, Washington was shot in the face and has since been hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, according to university officials.

Witherspoon was left unharmed.

During the CCTV video, police officer Devin Eaton is seen leaping out of the police car and raising his gun towards the vehicle.

He then begins to fire multiple shots at the unarmed couple after Witherspoon abruptly gets out of the vehicle before running away from the car towards the end of the street.

Video from inside the couple's vehicle shows that prior to the shooting, they had been enjoying each other's company and were singing songs to each other.

Officer Eaton has been placed on administrative leave while an investigation into the shooting is ongoing. Pollock was also placed on leave, as standard protocol for any instance when a Yale officer discharges their weapon.

The shooting has led to an outpouring of peaceful demonstrations along the streets from groups such as the Black Lives Matter movement and Yale University students, with protesters claiming the black couple were unfairly targeted.

On Thursday, hundreds of protesters took the streets and blocked traffic near the university as community organizer Kerry Ellington addressed more than 200 students outside Yale University's Woodbridge Hall.

Witherspoon's uncle, Rodney Williams, told CBS News that the incident also sheds light on how police in the country are trained.

He said: 'You need to look at what's really going on with the police ... really look at how the police look at residents period.

'The police could be black, white, Puerto Rican ... it's just a police issue ... I think we need to be respected as human beings and I feel like they really don't.'

The two police officers have now been placed under administrative leave.

Connecticut State Police have said they will release further information on their investigations later this week.

The Mayors of Hamden and New Haven have teemed up with the various police department for a joint Wednesday conference where they worked on curbing such incidents from taking place again.

[Andrea]

'Sir, please': Police chief says he's disgusted by video of woman's rough arrest

https://www.kcra.com/article/sir-please-police-chief-says-he-s-disgusted-by-video-of-woman-s-rough-arrest/27266068?fbclid=IwAR2GOEFhPUvDZqAP5H9gTfjgH5ykmKJo DjMsItdIzcrhaIDWATi_QukeplY

Tuscaloosa police have released the bodycam footage of a woman's arrest that ended with her bleeding from her head and two officers on desk duty while they await disciplinary proceedings.

"He made me feel like I wasn't even human. Like I was a piece of garbage. Like I was an animal," said the woman, 22-year-old Jhasmynn Sheppard.

Sheppard was stopped by Tuscaloosa Police on Friday for leaving the scene of an accident, police said. She told CNN that while she was in a small accident, she and the other driver had ironed it out.

She was pulled over as she drove home. As Sheppard looked for her license and registration, the officer asked her to step out of the vehicle and began to handcuff her, according to the video.

At one point, Sheppard said, "Sir, please don't do me like this," and then turns toward the officer and attempts to pull her arm away as he is trying to handcuff her hands behind her back.

An altercation breaks out and another officer becomes involved. Video shows the woman on the ground with the officers on top of her and they can be heard cursing her, calling her "stupid" and threatening to kick her teeth in. One of the officers also appears to hit her with his baton.

"I was thinking this isn't right. This isn't right. All I know I was on the ground. When I looked up he was on the ground too. Next thing I know he tackled me," Sheppard said.

Sheppard said she was arrested for unarming a police officer, resisting arrest and assault. She spent two days in jail and was never given medical attention, though she was bleeding from her head.

Sheppard said no one with the police or the city have contacted her since the arrest, but that she has heard through local media reports that the charges against her may be dropped.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steve Anderson said he was "disgusted" by the actions of the two officers.

The chief said the officers violated department training throughout the incident, and that both are now on desk duty during disciplinary procedures, according WVTM.

Sheppard saw the footage for the first time Wednesday.

"It kind of hurts my feelings every time I see it," she told CNN.

[Andrea]

We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct. Now you can read their records.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/

At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade, an investigation by USA TODAY Network found.

Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women. They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses.

Despite their role as public servants, the men and women who swear an oath to keep communities safe can generally avoid public scrutiny for their misdeeds.

The records of their misconduct are filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments. Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed.

Reporters from USA TODAY, its 100-plus affiliated newsrooms and the nonprofit Invisible Institute in Chicago have spent more than a year creating the biggest collection of police misconduct records.

Obtained from thousands of state agencies, prosecutors, police departments and sheriffs, the records detail at least 200,000 incidents of alleged misconduct, much of it previously unreported. The records obtained include more than 110,000 internal affairs investigations by hundreds of individual departments and more than 30,000 officers who were decertified by 44 state oversight agencies.


Among the findings:

Most misconduct involves routine infractions, but the records reveal tens of thousands of cases of serious misconduct and abuse. They include 22,924 investigations of officers using excessive force, 3,145 allegations of rape, child molestation and other sexual misconduct and 2,307 cases of domestic violence by officers.

Dishonesty is a frequent problem. The records document at least 2,227 instances of perjury, tampering with evidence or witnesses or falsifying reports. There were 418 reports of officers obstructing investigations, most often when they or someone they knew were targets.

Less than 10% of officers in most police forces get investigated for misconduct. Yet some officers are consistently under investigation. Nearly 2,500 have been investigated on 10 or more charges. Twenty faced 100 or more allegations yet kept their badge for years.

The level of oversight varies widely from state to state. Georgia and Florida decertified thousands of police officers for everything from crimes to questions about their fitness to serve; other states banned almost none.

That includes Maryland, home to the Baltimore Police Department, which regularly has been in the news for criminal behavior by police. Over nearly a decade, Maryland revoked the certifications of just four officers.

We’re making those records public
The records USA TODAY and its partners gathered include tens of thousands of internal investigations, lawsuit settlements and secret separation deals.

They include names of at least 5,000 police officers whose credibility as witnesses has been called into question. These officers have been placed on Brady lists, created to track officers whose actions must be disclosed to defendants if their testimony is relied upon to prosecute someone.

USA TODAY plans to publish many of those records to give the public an opportunity to examine their police department and the broader issue of police misconduct, as well as to help identify decertified officers who continue to work in law enforcement.

Seth Stoughton, who worked as a police officer for 14 years and teaches law at the University of South Carolina, said expanding public access to those kinds of records is critical to keep good cops employed and bad cops unemployed.

“No one is in a position to assess whether an officer candidate can do the job well and the way that we expect the job to be done better than the officer’s former employer,” Stoughton said.

“Officers are public servants. They police in our name," he said. There is a "strong public interest in identifying how officers are using their public authority.”

Dan Hils, president of the Cincinnati Police Department’s branch of the Fraternal Order of Policemen union, said people should consider there are more than 750,000 law enforcement officers in the country when looking at individual misconduct data.

“The scrutiny is way tighter on police officers than most folks, and that’s why sometimes you see high numbers of misconduct cases,” Hils said. “But I believe that policemen tend to be more honest and more trustworthy than the average citizen.”

Hils said he has no issue with USA TODAY publishing public records of conduct, saying it is the news media’s “right and responsibility to investigate police and the authority of government. You’re supposed to be a watchdog.”

The first set of records USA TODAY is releasing is an exclusive nationwide database of about 30,000 people whom state governments banned from the profession by revoking their certification to be law enforcement officers.

For years, a private police organization has assembled such a list from more than 40 states and encourages police agencies to screen new hires. The list is kept secret from anyone outside law enforcement.

USA TODAY obtained the names of banned officers from 44 states by filing requests under state sunshine laws.

The information includes the officers’ names, the department they worked for when the state revoked their certification and – in most cases – the reasons why.

The list is incomplete because of the absence of records from states such as California, which has the largest number of law enforcement officers in the USA.

USA TODAY's collection of police misconduct records comes amid a nationwide debate over law enforcement tactics, including concern that some officers or agencies unfairly target minorities.

A series of killings of black people by police over the past five years in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Chicago, Sacramento, California, and elsewhere have sparked unrest and a reckoning that put pressure on cities and mayors to crack down on misconduct and abuses.

The Trump administration has backed away from more than a decade of Justice Department investigations and court actions against police departments it determined were deeply biased or corrupt.

In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department would leave policing the police to local authorities, saying federal investigations hurt crime fighting.

Laurie Robinson, co-chair of the 2014 White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, said transparency about police conduct is critical to trust between police and residents.

“It’s about the people who you have hired to protect you,” she said. “Traditionally, we would say for sure that policing has not been a transparent entity in the U.S. Transparency is just a very key step along the way to repairing our relationships."

Help us investigate
The number of police agencies and officers in the USA is so large that the blind spots are vast. We need your help.

Though the records USA TODAY Network gathered are probably the most expansive ever collected, there is much more to be added. The collection includes several types of statewide data, but most misconduct is documented by individual departments.

Journalists obtained records from more than 700 law enforcement agencies, but the records are not complete for all of those agencies, and there are more than 18,000 police forces across the USA. The records requests were focused largely on the biggest 100 police agencies as well as clusters of smaller departments in surrounding areas, partly to examine movement of officers between departments in regions.

USA TODAY aims to identify other media organizations willing to partner in gathering new records and sharing documents they've already gathered. The Invisible Institute, a journalism nonprofit in Chicago focused on police accountability, has done so for more than a year and contributed records from dozens of police departments.

Reporters need help getting documents – and other kinds of tips – from the public, watchdog groups, researchers and even officers and prosecutors themselves.

If you have access to citizen complaints about police, internal affairs investigation records, secret settlement deals between agencies and departing officers or anything that sheds light on how agencies police their officers, we want to hear from you.

[Andrea]

Woman With Mental Illness Gave Birth Alone In Florida Jail Cell, Lawyers Say

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tammy-jackson-jailed-woman-gives-birth-cell_n_5cced440e4b04e275d4bb1fe?ncid=tweetlnkushpm g00000067

Behind bars and alone in a Florida jail cell, a pregnant, mentally ill woman complained late at night of contractions and beseeched the prison guards for help. But instead of transporting her to a hospital, the officers chose to phone an on-call doctor who turned out to be uncontactable for hours and ultimately didn’t show up in time to assist in the birth, the woman’s lawyers claim.

In the doctor’s absence, Tammy Jackson, 34, allegedly gave birth to her baby alone in her prison cell — without medical assistance of any kind.

In a scalding letter addressed to Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony, public defender Howard Finkelstein said officers at the special needs detention facility where Jackson was held were fully aware of her pregnancy and mental illness — and yet failed to “protect either Ms. Jackson or her child.”

“It is unconscionable that any woman, particularly a mentally ill woman, would be abandoned in her cell to deliver her own baby,” Finkelstein wrote in the Friday letter, which was first obtained and reported by The Miami Herald.

According to the attorney, Jackson, who was at full term, was being held in an “isolation cell” on April 10 when she alerted officers at around 3 a.m. that she was having contractions. The guards, Finkelstein said, attempted to contact an on-call doctor but weren’t able to reach him for almost four hours. In the interim, Jackson was allegedly left alone in her cell, without medication or assistance.

At around 7.20 a.m., prison staff finally made contact with the doctor who said “he would check on [Jackson] when he arrived at the jail,” Finkelstein’s letter said. Yet, an hour and 38 minutes later, Jackson reported that she was “bleeding but still … isolated in her cell.”

Finally, at around 10 a.m., a prison employee found Jackson with her newborn infant in her arms, the letter said, noting that six hours and 54 minutes had elapsed since the mother first asked for help.

″[In] her time of extreme need and vulnerability, [the Broward Sheriff’s Office] neglected to provide Ms. Jackson with the assistance and medical care all mothers need and deserve,” Finkelstein wrote.

The sheriff’s office told the Herald in a statement that a medical team, including a physician and two nurses, later attended to the mother and child.

“Child Protective Investigations Section was notified, and the baby was placed with an appropriate caregiver,” a spokeswoman said.

Citing court records, The Hill said Jackson was arrested earlier this year on cocaine possession charges and later released, but was arrested again after she failed to report for pretrial services.

Chief Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes described Jackson’s mental illness as “significant.”

Finkelstein, who demanded an “immediate review of the medical and isolation practices in place in all detention facilities” in his letter, said it remains to be seen how the gross negligence” Jackson endured will affect her “already fragile mental health.”

“Not only was Ms. Jackson’s health callously ignored, the life of her child was also put at grave risk,” he wrote.

[Andrea]

Community furious after Oklahoma officers shot three children in their head and face while firing at suspect in pizza shop robbery

https://meaww.com/oklahoma-police-officers-identified-shoot-three-children-apprehend-man-armed-pizza-shop-robbery

The names of two police officers who had been involved in the shooting of three children in Hugo, Oklahoma, have now been released more than a week after the tragedy occurred. Hugo Police Department detectives Billy Jenkins and Chad Allen were identified as the officers who opened fire on a vehicle that was being driven by 21-year-old William Devaughn Smith, who was under suspicion of robbing a pizza shop. Choctaw County Jail records indicate that Smith was being held on an aggravated robbery complaint. He had been in custody in Lamar County, Texas, after being released from a hospital there.

The officers' bullets ended up hitting three of the four children who were sitting in the back seat. Olivia Hill, the mother of the four children, told KFOR: "My 4-year-old daughter was shot in the head, and she has a bullet in her brain, and my 5-year-old has a skull fracture. My 1-year-old baby has gunshot wounds on her face. My 2-year-old wasn’t touched with any bullets."

A post on the Hugo, Oklahoma, police Facebook page said a man entered the back entrance of the restaurant, pressed an object to an employee's back and demanded money. Police said the worker handed over money and the robber left.

The police officers later intercepted the suspect and claim that they started shooting because Smith had been trying to run them over with his truck, but many are claiming that this is false. Witnesses say that the officers could have just moved out of the way instead of opening fire, especially considering there were children inside the vehicle.

It is also worth noting that the officers were in plain clothes on that day meaning Smith may not have known the two men approaching his vehicle with guns were police officers. According to TFTP, family attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons said: "If you don’t know if someone is law enforcement or not, it changes things. I don’t know what happened, but that’s concerning to me."

The three children who were shot in the incident have all reportedly been released from the hospital but will continue to deal with "a lot of physical and emotional pain," according to Simmons.

He said: "They are terrified to go anywhere or hear anything. The two-year-old keeps asking about 'Am I going to get shot again'. It’s a bad deal. The child who had a bullet in the brain, there’s some question now that she may have a permanent injury. She might be looking at a lifetime injury."