Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Half of People Killed by Police Have a Disability: Report

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/half-people-killed-police-suffer-mental-disability-report-n538371

[Andrea]

Taser death probed

http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/taser-death-probed/article_008a2a1f-c9a6-518b-a9a1-02db49e711b5.html

A Bowling Green man who died after being thrown from his vehicle and then having a Taser used on him by law enforcement had previous health issues.

A preliminary autopsy showed that Michael Roll, 52, of Bowling Green, had blunt-force trauma of the head, torso and upper extremities as a result of being thrown from a vehicle Saturday, Warren County Coroner Kevin Kirby said.

Kirby said the autopsy also showed Roll had minor coronary artery disease and some lung problems.

Kentucky State Police responded to a single-vehicle crash at 10:52 p.m. Saturday near the 4-mile marker on the Natcher Parkway. "It was reported that a vehicle had overturned and the driver appeared to be under the influence and was being combative," according to a news release issued Sunday by KSP Post 3 in Bowling Green.

State police troopers and a Warren County sheriff's deputy found the overturned SUV and Roll, who "became extremely combative and it appeared to officers that he was highly under the influence," the release said. "At this point a (Taser) was used in an attempt to effect an arrest of Roll, where he still resisted for a short period before going unconscious."

Roll was taken to The Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Kirby said that while the use of the Taser could have exacerbated Roll's preexisting health conditions, it is too soon to know for sure.

"The biggest thing is going to be finding out what type of drug he was on or what he was drinking," Kirby said. "That can elevate or slow down a lot of things."

Kirby said because Roll was in "full arrest" when he arrived at the hospital, he doesn't know if a blood sample was drawn then. A toxicology screen will be run on the blood sample taken at autopsy. Results should be available in a couple of weeks.

Kirby said it's possible that the head trauma night have contributed to Roll's combative actions toward police.

"But he was intoxicated on something," he said. "We just don't know what yet."

[Andrea]

Cleveland police officer arrested, accused of slamming woman's head into car bumper

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/03/cleveland_police_officer_arres_3.html

A Cleveland police officer was suspended Friday after he was accused of assaulting a woman and slamming her head into a car bumper, according to a Cleveland Municipal Court charging document.

David Manns, 33, was arrested on a felonious assault charge Friday afternoon. He is suspended without pay until the criminal case is resolved, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said.

A Cleveland police officer was arrested after he was accused of assaulting a woman.

Officers responded about 4:50 a.m. Friday to the area of West 45th Street and Detroit Avenue, the charging document states. The female victim told police Manns grabbed her and "smashed her head on the bumper" of a car, the document says.

The woman received five stitches above her eye, and her shoulder was separated, according to the document.

The victim was treated at the hospital, where investigators saw her injuries and took her statement, the document states.

The warrant does not indicate whether the woman knows Manns.

[Andrea]

Shocking force: Police in Maryland didn't follow Taser safety recommendations in hundreds of incidents

Shocking force: Police in Maryland didn't follow Taser safety recommendations in hundreds of incidents

As two Montgomery County police officers slowly closed in with Tasers pointed, Anthony Howard retreated up a small step and backed himself against the front door of a townhome on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Washington suburb of Gaithersburg.

Minutes earlier, the 51-year-old man had asked an officer: "Are you gonna kill me?"

High on cocaine, Howard started the standoff by dancing barefoot on an SUV roof, barking and muttering gibberish on the late afternoon of April 19, 2013. Two dozen neighbors gawking at the bizarre spectacle laughed when Howard jumped off the Ford SUV to avoid an officer's stream of pepper spray, and they taunted police, urging them to use their stun guns.

Police said in a report on the incident that Howard had thrown "boulders" and charged at officers. But a 17-minute video taken by a resident and obtained by The Baltimore Sun shows that when officers approached Howard for the last time, he was standing still, holding a child's scooter. Officers fired two Tasers, shooting electrified darts connected by long wires into Howard's body.

Andrea: Click the link for the rest of the article

[Andrea]

Austin Police Officer Caught On Video Allegedly Pepper-Spraying Handcuffed Man

Austin Police Officer Caught On Video Allegedly Pepper-Spraying Handcuffed Man

The Austin Police Department has launched an investigation following the release of a video that shows an officer apparently pepper-spraying a handcuffed suspect.

The video, posted on YouTube by local police watchdog group Peaceful Streets Project, shows an officer opening the door to the back of a police van last week during the South by Southwest Festival.

“What’d I tell you about kicking the door?” the officer says to the subject inside.

“I didn’t do nothing,” the man replies.

The officer then sprays him in the face from a few feet away:

“What’d I tell you about kicking the door?” the officer repeats as the man falls backward and puts his hands to his face. “I told you.”

Peaceful Streets identified the officer as Cameron Caldwell.

“Wow, you asshole!” the person recording the footage yells. “I saw that, I got that on film, you abusive asshole!”

Police told the Austin American-Statesman that the incident is under investigation and asked that anyone with information call the Office of the Police Monitor at 512-974-9090.

After the incident, the witness recording the scene urges police to let the man out so he’s not locked inside a closed space after being sprayed.

“He’s under arrest, ma’am,” an officer tells her.

“Yeah I know — can you, like, keep him under arrest out where he can breathe?” she responds.

“He’s been fighting us for like 20 minutes,” an officer says.

“Oh you poor baby,” the woman answers.

The police department’s code lists a number of cases in which “chemical agents” such as pepper spray shouldn’t be used, including “when a subject is under physical restraint unless the subject is still aggressively resisting and lesser means of controlling the subject have failed.”

Peaceful Streets also said the code requires that officers ensure that someone who has been sprayed remain “upright with a clear airway... to avoid possible positional asphyxiation.”

However, in the clip, the officer shuts the door after the man falls backward, although he appears to moving back to an upright position as the door closes.

“Listen we see these cops violating policy and committing crimes all the time, but usually there is some gray area that they like to dance [in],” Antonio Beuhler, the activist who founded Peaceful Streets Project, told the Free Thought Project. “This was just crystal clear, there is no way by law or policy that what this guy did was acceptable. There is zero gray area.”

[Andrea]

A Mailman Handcuffed in Brooklyn, Caught on Video

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/nyregion/glen-grays-the-mailman-cuffed-in-brooklyn.html?_r=1

Late in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Grays, a 27-year-old African-American mail carrier, was making his rounds in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, about to leave a package at 999 President Street. Mr. Grays prides himself on getting to know the community he serves, he told me on Wednesday. He figures out who is sick, or old, or enfeebled, and makes sure that their parcels, especially if they contain medication — “I can shake a box and usually figure that out,” he said — land directly at the doors of the people waiting for them, even if they live in fourth- or fifth-floor apartments, in walk-up buildings.

On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.

This video of Glen Grays's arrest on March 17 contains graphic language. Video, via DNAinfo.com, is courtesy of the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.

By the time Mr. Grays arrived at the front door of 999 President Street, the police were approaching him. A video of the incident, taken by an observer on the street, begins at this point and shows Mr. Grays, in his postal uniform, as he is handcuffed, frisked and taken to the unmarked car. The officers tell him to stop resisting, even though there is no evidence in the video of resistance. What the video does not show, Mr. Grays said, is what happened next, after he was placed in the back seat of the unmarked car, with his hands cuffed and without a seatbelt, compelling him to leave the mail truck unattended. The driver, who had turned around to taunt him, hit the vehicle in front of them, Mr. Grays said, causing him to bang his shoulder against the front seat. Mr. Grays was then taken to the 71st Precinct station, where he was issued a summons for disorderly conduct that will require him to appear in court. He was then released.

On Tuesday, the Brooklyn borough president, Eric L. Adams, himself a former police officer, released the video at a news conference, expressing what he said was his outrage over the ostensible violations of the civil rights of yet another young black man, this one an employee of the federal government.

Mr. Grays is the oldest of six boys. His mother, Sonya Sapp, who lives in middle-income housing in Fort Greene, spoke briefly, only to say, “I worry about them every day, every minute, every second of every day,” before fading off with, “I’m short on words; I’m just hurt.”

A still from a bystander’s video of Mr. Grays in the custody of police officers. He was later issued a disorderly-conduct summons. Credit via The Office of the Brooklyn Borough President

Mr. Grays’s fiancée is also shaken. She is a New York City police officer he met while delivering the mail.

The day after the news conference, the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, announced that his office would not seek a prison sentence for Peter Liang, the former police officer convicted of manslaughter in the death of Akai Gurley two years ago in an unlit stairwell at an East New York housing project. In response, Mr. Gurley’s family issued a statement demanding accountability and a real message from prosecutors that “police officers are not above the law.”

About Mr. Grays’s encounter, the Police Department said only that the matter was “under internal review,” in an email response to queries. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, Monica Klein, added that the mayor would be “in close touch with Commissioner Bratton over this incident’s investigations and findings.” (William J. Bratton is the police commissioner.)

Mr. Grays, who speaks with an intense focus, has an elaborate tattoo on his right arm, a tribute to his paternal grandmother that says, “Willa May Grays 1928-2004.” Twenty-two years ago, when he was 5, she covered his eyes on a sidewalk in Brownsville, shielding him from the sight of a stabbing that unfolded right in front of them. “I have been to more funerals than graduations,” Mr. Grays said, explaining that the horrors he had witnessed kept him from whatever nefarious temptations might present themselves to a boy growing up in a rough place.

Before joining the Postal Service, Mr. Grays worked at a branch of Key Food in Park Slope, where he took home $117 a week, he said: not nearly enough. He dropped out of college at City Tech, he said, because he couldn’t afford to stay in school. Later he worked stocking inventory at Fresh Direct in Long Island City, in Queens, but the stocking room was very cold, so he took a job in Floral Park, near the border with Nassau County, for a uniform company, which required him to leave his apartment in the Bronx at 3 a.m. to take the D train to the F to a bus that brought him to Carnation Avenue by 5:30.

Mr. Grays recounted these aspects of his biography to me at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, in Brooklyn. He brought along his mother; three of his brothers, among them a set of 4-year-old twins; and his aunt, who, he pointed out, had accomplished the feat of sending one of her children to Brooklyn Tech, the highly competitive high school. He quoted something his grandmother used to say: “The best way for a black man to become successful is to stay away from the cops, to keep a clean record.” Mr. Grays said he felt that he needed to live his life as an example for his siblings. He pointed to his fiancée, who sat silently in the corner. “I don’t hate cops,” he told me. “I’m marrying one.”

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Andrea

A Mailman Handcuffed in Brooklyn, Caught on Video

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/nyregion/glen-grays-the-mailman-cuffed-in-brooklyn.html?_r=1

Late in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Grays, a 27-year-old African-American mail carrier, was making his rounds in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, about to leave a package at 999 President Street. Mr. Grays prides himself on getting to know the community he serves, he told me on Wednesday. He figures out who is sick, or old, or enfeebled, and makes sure that their parcels, especially if they contain medication — “I can shake a box and usually figure that out,” he said — land directly at the doors of the people waiting for them, even if they live in fourth- or fifth-floor apartments, in walk-up buildings.

On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.

This video of Glen Grays's arrest on March 17 contains graphic language. Video, via DNAinfo.com, is courtesy of the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President.

By the time Mr. Grays arrived at the front door of 999 President Street, the police were approaching him. A video of the incident, taken by an observer on the street, begins at this point and shows Mr. Grays, in his postal uniform, as he is handcuffed, frisked and taken to the unmarked car. The officers tell him to stop resisting, even though there is no evidence in the video of resistance. What the video does not show, Mr. Grays said, is what happened next, after he was placed in the back seat of the unmarked car, with his hands cuffed and without a seatbelt, compelling him to leave the mail truck unattended. The driver, who had turned around to taunt him, hit the vehicle in front of them, Mr. Grays said, causing him to bang his shoulder against the front seat. Mr. Grays was then taken to the 71st Precinct station, where he was issued a summons for disorderly conduct that will require him to appear in court. He was then released.

On Tuesday, the Brooklyn borough president, Eric L. Adams, himself a former police officer, released the video at a news conference, expressing what he said was his outrage over the ostensible violations of the civil rights of yet another young black man, this one an employee of the federal government.

Mr. Grays is the oldest of six boys. His mother, Sonya Sapp, who lives in middle-income housing in Fort Greene, spoke briefly, only to say, “I worry about them every day, every minute, every second of every day,” before fading off with, “I’m short on words; I’m just hurt.”

A still from a bystander’s video of Mr. Grays in the custody of police officers. He was later issued a disorderly-conduct summons. Credit via The Office of the Brooklyn Borough President

Mr. Grays’s fiancée is also shaken. She is a New York City police officer he met while delivering the mail.

The day after the news conference, the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, announced that his office would not seek a prison sentence for Peter Liang, the former police officer convicted of manslaughter in the death of Akai Gurley two years ago in an unlit stairwell at an East New York housing project. In response, Mr. Gurley’s family issued a statement demanding accountability and a real message from prosecutors that “police officers are not above the law.”

About Mr. Grays’s encounter, the Police Department said only that the matter was “under internal review,” in an email response to queries. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, Monica Klein, added that the mayor would be “in close touch with Commissioner Bratton over this incident’s investigations and findings.” (William J. Bratton is the police commissioner.)

Mr. Grays, who speaks with an intense focus, has an elaborate tattoo on his right arm, a tribute to his paternal grandmother that says, “Willa May Grays 1928-2004.” Twenty-two years ago, when he was 5, she covered his eyes on a sidewalk in Brownsville, shielding him from the sight of a stabbing that unfolded right in front of them. “I have been to more funerals than graduations,” Mr. Grays said, explaining that the horrors he had witnessed kept him from whatever nefarious temptations might present themselves to a boy growing up in a rough place.

Before joining the Postal Service, Mr. Grays worked at a branch of Key Food in Park Slope, where he took home $117 a week, he said: not nearly enough. He dropped out of college at City Tech, he said, because he couldn’t afford to stay in school. Later he worked stocking inventory at Fresh Direct in Long Island City, in Queens, but the stocking room was very cold, so he took a job in Floral Park, near the border with Nassau County, for a uniform company, which required him to leave his apartment in the Bronx at 3 a.m. to take the D train to the F to a bus that brought him to Carnation Avenue by 5:30.

Mr. Grays recounted these aspects of his biography to me at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill, in Brooklyn. He brought along his mother; three of his brothers, among them a set of 4-year-old twins; and his aunt, who, he pointed out, had accomplished the feat of sending one of her children to Brooklyn Tech, the highly competitive high school. He quoted something his grandmother used to say: “The best way for a black man to become successful is to stay away from the cops, to keep a clean record.” Mr. Grays said he felt that he needed to live his life as an example for his siblings. He pointed to his fiancée, who sat silently in the corner. “I don’t hate cops,” he told me. “I’m marrying one.”

I'm really glad you posted about this story because thanks to an bystander who captured an majority of this incident on video, it adds to an body of evidence already in progress on the narrative of police brutality and the abuse of perceived power.

[*Anya*]

Young Woman Aspired to be a Cop Until Her Mentor Officer Took Her Away and Raped Her

By Matt Agorist March 28, 2016

Las Cruces, NM — In 2011, Diana Guerrero, 17 at the time, was an aspiring young woman with hopes of becoming a police officer. Guerrero became a member of the Las Cruces police department’s high school intern program to pursue her dreams of law enforcement — when that dream turned into a nightmare.

Guerrero, who bravely came public after the incident, just settled a federal lawsuit for $3 million this week after her mentor officer in the high school intern program raped her. "It had never occurred to me that a person who had earned a badge would do this,” she said.

During a ride along with Las Cruces police detective Michael Garcia, who was ironically “assigned to a unit that focused on child abuse and sex crimes investigations” at the time, the pair headed out to a crime scene. However, instead of going to the crime scene, Garcia took the young girl to a secluded location and forced himself on her.

“The defendant abused his authority as a sex crimes detective in the most horrific way, exploiting the victim’s trust in him to commit his egregious acts,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta for the Civil Rights Division, during Garcia’s trial.

In 2014, Garcia pleaded guilty to the assault and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.

For nearly two years after the assault, Guerrero kept quiet out of fear. However, after feeling “like a piece of trash” in 2013, Guerrero says she bumped into a female detective who asked her why she had ended the internship program. “I just blurted it out,” Guerrero told KVIA, describing how she finally built up the courage to expose her attacker.

After Guerrero’s run in with the detective, without Garcia knowing it, his fellow detectives began investigating him and then confronted him with the allegations. Garcia confessed to the assault on an audio recording. Its contents are stomach turning.

KOB News also found out that Garcia’s department knew that he had problems, and yet they still allowed the teen to go out on a call with him.

A few years prior, records show that Detective Garcia had been reprimanded for having sex in his patrol car with a fellow officer’s girlfriend while drinking a bottle of wine. A used condom and empty wine bottle confirmed his supervisors’ suspicions.

In the confession of the sexual assault on the intern, Garcia is heard saying, “The badge gets you the pussy and the pussy gets you the badge. I don’t think we even kissed. I mean it was straight touching, touching! It was like three f****** minutes. Three minutes for the rest of my life. I’m gonna f****** go away.

Once word in Las Cruces spread of this monster’s actions, an underage family member also came forward and alleged that Garcia had been raping her for years.

“I am most happy and satisfied that this lawsuit brought to light a cesspool of sexual violence and harassment that exists in police departments across this country,” Guerrero tells the AP and she’s correct.

In only a six-year period, the AP exposed more than 1,000 officers who were fired for a range of sex crimes; it calls that number “unquestionably an undercount.”

According to KVIA, Guerrero now intends to pursue a career in nutrition.


**Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/gir...SPzIA1C6gGx.99

[Andrea]

Attorney: Deputies Offered Onlookers Cash After Beating Man

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/03/29/attorney-deputies-offered-onlookers-cash-after-beating-man/

An attorney says two Northern California sheriff’s deputies seen beating a suspect on video offered the man’s belongings to homeless onlookers in exchange for their silence.

The Oakland Tribune reports that attorney Michael Haddad represents beating victim Stanislav Petrov. He says the Alameda County deputies approached a homeless man in a San Francisco alley after the beating and gave him a large gold chain with a medallion, cash and a pack of cigarettes.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon says he hasn’t decided whether he will criminally charge the deputies in the incident.

The video released by the San Francisco public defender’s office shows both deputies repeatedly hitting a man with their batons as he screamed.

Deputies say they believed Petrov was armed and possibly on drugs.

[Andrea]

Sheriff: Video shows deputy striking handcuffed suspect in face

http://www.wesh.com/news/seminole-county-sheriff-to-discuss-deputy-misconduct/38763446

During a news conference held Wednesday, Seminole County Sheriff Donald F. Eslinger discussed an incident involving misconduct by former Deputy Sheriff Michael O'Connor.

According to Eslinger, on Jan. 12, O'Connor was disrespectful to a person who was arrested for domestic violence, then struck him once on the face while he was handcuffed and in the back of a patrol car. The sheriff's office learned of the incident on March 18 and immediately began investigating, officials said.

O'Connor was charged Wednesday with one count of battery, a first-degree misdemeanor.

"We have a strong and long-standing relationship with the community we serve, and my commitment is to always be transparent with, and accountable to, our residents," Eslinger said.
"O'Connor's actions were not just a violation of policy and law, they were also contrary to our agency's core values. His behavior was completely inappropriate and totally inconsistent with what is expected of a deputy sheriff at our agency."

O'Connor was placed on suspension at the onset of the investigation and then submitted his resignation on March 24, WESH 2 News has learned. O'Connor had been employed with the sheriff's office as a deputy assigned to Seminole Neighborhood Policing (patrol division) since October 2013.

The case will be prosecuted by the Office of the State Attorney, 18th Judicial Circuit. The sheriff's office criminal and administrative investigations will be forwarded to the state's Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, which reviews officer misconduct and determines if action should be taken against a law enforcement officer's certification.

[*Anya*]

Cop Who Shot Teen Boy 16 Times On Video Hired By Police Union

March 31, 2016

Former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who is accused of murdering Laquan McDonald, was rehired by the police union three weeks ago as a janitor. Despite the fact that the Chicago PD already tried to cover up this incident and got caught, they apparently decided to bring the accused back into the fold while he awaits trial.

OTHERS HAVE LOST JOBS WITH POLICE DEPARTMENT OVER SAME INCIDENT

The truly bizarre aspect of this hiring is that this incident was so dirty and bungled the police chief was fired. You can’t help but ask, why were other people fired but the accused murderer is given another job?

The union stated it would do the same for any of its members and Van Dyke has not been able to hold a job due to the charges. They stated he is in a “very difficult situation, financially” and have decided to protect their member.

Protecting Van Dyke seems ridiculous, considering his record. The McDonald killing was not the first (or second, or even third) heinous incident Van Dyke was involved in. In fact, his record is quite long:

The veteran officer has had at least 15 complaints filed against him while working in high-crime neighborhoods, for accusations including using racial epithets and pointing a gun at an arrestee without justification.

In 2007, the officer was involved in a traffic stop in which he and his partner were found to have used excessive force on a man with no prior convictions, leading to a $350,000 award for damages in the case.

Chicago PD’s attempt to cover up this case is disgraceful. Van Dyke claimed McDonald came at the officers with a knife and swung aggressively at them . Van Dyke’s partner corroborated his story despite the fact Van Dyke was the only officer out of eight on the scene to discharge his weapon. The video, which the department fought to keep from the public, proved these accounts to be blatant lies.

While it is true that most police officers do their jobs correctly, there needs to be accountability for when an officer breaks the law.

America has a police violence problem that the numbers show doesn’t happen in many other advanced countries. The answers to this problem will vary, but they certainly do not include rehiring an accused murderer when others have paid for his actions with their careers.

http://reverbpress.com/justice/cop-w...-police-union/

[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.

[Andrea]

200 imprisoned based on illegal cellphone tracking, review finds

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/03/31/200-imprisoned-based-illegal-cellphone-tracking-review-finds/82489300/

Lawyers in Baltimore have identified as many as 200 people who were sent to prison based on evidence police gathered with the help of a powerful cellphone tracking tool that a state court has now ruled was used illegally.

The ruling, issued Wednesday by Maryland’s second-highest court, said Baltimore police violated the Constitution when they used one of the tracking devices to catch a shooting suspect without first obtaining a search warrant. It was the first time an appeals court had weighed in directly on the legality of phone-trackers that have been widely — and mostly secretly — used by police agencies for nearly a decade.

“Cellphone users have an objectively reasonable expectation that their cellphones will not be used as real-time tracking devices, through the direct and active interference of law enforcement,” a panel of three judges on Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals wrote. The judges also accused Baltimore authorities of misleading the lower-court judge who had approved their use of the device, commonly known as a stingray.

That decision could imperil hundreds of criminal convictions in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland, where police have used stingrays prolifically. An investigation last year by USA TODAY identified nearly 2,000 cases in Baltimore alone in which the police had secretly used stingrays to make arrests for everything from murder to petty thefts, typically without obtaining a search warrant.

“We have a grave concern that our clients are incarcerated because of the use of a stingray that was illegal,” said Natalie Finegar, who is coordinating a review of stingray cases for the city’s public defender.

Finegar said defense lawyers are focused most urgently on about 200 cases in which people appear to have been sent to prison based on evidence the police found after they used a stingray. “Those are the emergencies,” she said. “By itself, it’s just a huge number of cases."

Stingrays are suitcase-sized devices that allow the police to pinpoint a cellphone’s location to within a few yards by posing as a cell tower. They have drawn alarm from privacy advocates, in part because they also can intercept information from the phones of nearly everyone else who happens to be nearby.

Dozens of police departments from Miami to Los Angeles own stingrays, but few have revealed when or how they use them, in large part because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the FBI. As a result, few courts have weighed in on the circumstances in which the police are permitted to use them.

The U.S. Justice Department last year ordered federal agents to obtain search warrants before using stingrays.

Maryland prosecutors can ask the state’s highest court to overturn Wednesday’s decision. Christine Tobar, a spokeswoman for the state’s attorney general, said it was “reviewing and evaluating next steps.”

Even if it stands, the legal road for people imprisoned on the basis of what the judges declared to be an illegal search is far from straightforward. State law puts strict limits on when and how people serving prison sentences can challenge their convictions.

“This isn’t some kind of get out of jail free card. It might be different case by case,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Nathan Wessler said. “What’s clear from this opinion is that this secrecy cannot stand.”

A Baltimore detective testified last year that police had used their tracking device about 4,300 times since 2007.

Wednesday’s court opinion came in the case of Kerron Andrews, who was charged in a 2014 shooting. A city judge gave the police a “pen register” order — a court order that does not require the same level of proof as a search warrant — authorizing them to use a stingray to find him. Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals ruled that because police had not obtained a search warrant, prosecutors could not make use of the evidence they found when Andrews was arrested.

The judges announced their decision nearly a month ago, but did not lay out their reasoning or the legal problems with Baltimore’s surveillance until they delivered a 74-page opinion on Wednesday.

A Baltimore court ordered Andrews freed on bond while the state decides whether to appeal. His lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Deborah Levi, said he could be freed as soon as Friday.

[Andrea]

Video shows white cops performing roadside cavity search of black man

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/04/01/video-shows-white-cops-performing-roadside-cavity-search-of-black-man/

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on an investigative series about police abuse in South Carolina. I’ve found a dizzying number of cases, including illegal arrests, botched raids, fatal shootings and serious questions about how all those incidents are investigated. Many of these cases were previously unreported, or if they were reported, the initial reports were a far cry from what actually happened. The series will run at some point in the next week. But in the meantime, I want to share one particularly horrifying incident that I came across this week while researching the series.

According to a federal lawsuit filed by attorney Robert Phillips, what you see in the video below occurred in the town of Aiken, S.C., starting at about 12:20 p.m. on Oct. 2, 2014. The two occupants of the car are black. All the police officers are white.

This edited dashcam video shows white police officers in Aiken, S.C., stop and search a black couple. The police are accused of conducting illegal searches, including a rectal search on the male occupant. (Aiken Police Department)

Here’s what happened: Lakeya Hicks and Elijah Pontoon were in Hicks’s car just a couple of blocks from downtown Aiken when they were pulled over by Officer Chris Medlin of the Aiken Department of Public Safety. Hicks was driving. She had recently purchased the car, so it still had temporary tags.

In the video, Medlin asks Hicks to get out, then tells her that he stopped her because of the “paper tag” on her car. This already is a problem. There’s no law against temporary tags in South Carolina, so long as they haven’t expired.

Medlin then asks Pontoon for identification. Since he was in the passenger seat, Pontoon wouldn’t have been required to provide ID even if the stop had been legitimate. Still, he provides his driver’s license to Medlin. A couple of minutes later, Medlin tells Hicks that her license and tags check out. (You can see the time stamp in the lower left corner of the video.) This should be the end of the stop — which, again, should never have happened in the first place.

Instead, Medlin orders Pontoon out of the vehicle and handcuffs him. He also orders Hicks out of the car. Pontoon then asks Medlin what’s happening. Medlin ignores him. Pontoon asks again. Medlin responds that he’ll “explain it all in a minute.” Several minutes later, a female officers appears. Medlin then tells Pontoon, “Because of your history, I’ve got a dog coming in here. Gonna walk a dog around the car.” About 30 seconds later, he adds, “You gonna pay for this one, boy.”

Moments later, a K9 officer named Clark Smith arrives. He walks around the car with his dog. A fourth police officer then shows up. The four officers then spend the next 15 minutes conducting a thorough search of the car. Early into the search, Medlin exclaims, “Uh-huh!” as if he has found something incriminating. But nothing comes of it.

After the search of the car comes up empty, Medlin tells the female officer to “search her real good,” referring to Hicks. The personal search of Hicks is conducted off camera, but according to the complaint filed by Phillips, it allegedly involved exposing Hicks’s breasts on the side of the road in a populated area. The complaint also alleges that this was all done in direct view of the three male officers. That search, too, produced no contraband.

The officers then turn their attention to Pontoon. Medlin asks Pontoon to get out of the car. He cuffs him and begins to pat him down. Toward the end of the first video, at about the 12:46:30 mark, he tells Pontoon: “You’ve got something here right between your legs. There’s something hard right there between your legs.” Medlin says that he’s going to “put some gloves on.”

The anal probe happens out of direct view of the camera, but the audio leaves little doubt about what’s happening. Pontoon at one point says that one of the officers is grabbing his hemorrhoids. Medlin appears to reply, “I’ve had hemorrhoids, and they ain’t that hard.” At about 12:47:15 in the video, the audio actually suggests that two officers may have inserted fingers into Pontoon’s rectum, as one asks, “What are you talking about, right here?” The other replies, “Right straight up in there.”

Pontoon then again tells the officers that they’re pushing on a hemorrhoid. One officer responds, “If that’s a hemorrhoid, that’s a hemorrhoid, all right? But that don’t feel like no hemorrhoid to me.”

The officers apparently continue to search Pontoon’s rectum for another three minutes. They found no contraband. At 12:50:25, Medlin tells Pontoon to turn around and explains that he suspects him because he recognized him from when he worked narcotics. “Now I know you from before, from when I worked dope. I seen you. That’s why I put a dog on the car.”

That was Medlin’s “reasonable suspicion” to call for a drug dog — he thought he recognized Pontoon from a drug case. Medlin could well have been correct about recognizing Pontoon. He has a lengthy criminal history that includes drug charges, although his record appears to be clean since 2006, save for one arrest for “failure to comply.” Of course, even if Medlin did recognize Pontoon, that in itself isn’t cause to even stop him, much less search his car, or to subject him to a roadside cavity search.

With no contraband and no traffic violation to justify the stop in the first place, Medlin concluded the stop by giving Hicks a “courtesy warning,” although according to the complaint, there’s no indication of what the warning was actually for. Perhaps it was to warn to steer clear of police officers in Aiken.

Andrea: Click the link for more instances

[Kätzchen]

Thanks for posting that article Andrea.

By chance, have you read about the black judge, Justice Olu Stevens who filed an emergency lawsuit, earlier this past week?

Justice Stevens spoke out about racism from the bench and is taking lots of heat for doing so.

Here's an link to that news story, if you or others might be interested in reading about this situation:

http://m.nydailynews.com/king-black-...le-1.2585022?e

[Andrea]

Video: APD officer repeatedly punched suspect in back of head during arrest

http://keyetv.com/news/local/video-apd-officer-repeatedly-punched-suspect-in-back-of-head-during-arrest

A Facebook videoshows an Austin Police officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the back of the head during an arrest.

APD says the man in the video is Sisto Quiroz, 31. He was arrested for a forgery warrant and resisting arrest.

Court documents say last December Quiroz broke into a woman's mailbox and stole a check made out to her for more than $1,000. He tried to cash it at a check cashing business in Southeast Austin but was denied after the clerk called the company that wrote the check to verify it was indeed made out to him.

Further details on the arrest were not immediately available. But APD did release the following statement:

This case is still being reviewed by the Chain of Command. The individual arrested has been identified as Sisto Quiroz, arrested for warrant and resisting arrest.

[Andrea]

Video Reportedly Shows Navajo Woman did not Raise Scissors Towards Winslow Police Officers

http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/video-reportedly-shows-navajo-woman-not-raise-scissors-towards-winslow-police-officers/

WINSLOW, ARIZONA— David Villaescusa, a former corrections officer with the Arizona Department of Corrections, stayed up all Sunday night awaiting confirmation of the death of his cousin, Loreal Tsingine, 27, who he helped raise since she was 10.

“I took her in after her father died. Her mother was an alcoholic and died when Loreal was 19. She lived with me off and on since she was ten. Even now, she would come to my house to do laundry. She called me, dad,” said Villaescusa.

Mingling in the crowd with other members of the public, he did not immediately identify himself as being a relative of the young mother, who was reportedly shot five times by Winslow Police Officer Austin Shipley on Easter Sunday afternoon.

Shipley was one of two officers who responded to a reported shoplifting of beer from the Circle K in Winslow. The shoplifter was described as a Native American female wearing gray sweatpants and a white top.

Two blocks from Villaescusa’s house, the two officers attempted to apprehend Tsingine.

According to the police press release, while attempting to take the subject into custody, a struggle ensued. The subject displayed a weapon which the responding officer perceived as a substantial threat. The officer discharged his weapon resulting in the death of 27-year-old Loreal Tsingine.

“She had a pair of scissors that she used to cut her hair split-ends,” states Villaescusa. “She stood only five feet tall and weighed less than 100 lbs. Shipley, on the other hand, is over six feet tall and weighs over 200 pounds. I don’t think he had to shoot her.”

Villaescusa maintains he overheard the other officer tell backup officers that Shipley got “trigger happy.”

“I had to wait until 4:00 a.m. before the police told me the person killed was Loreal,” Villaescusa told Native News Online.

Tsingine’s death is being investigated by Arizona Department of Public Safety, which is standard operating procedure for a police department the size of Winlow’s.

According to Villaescusa, a private citizen videotaped the deadly shooting with his smartphone.

“I watched the video. She never raised those scissors towards the officer. It has been reported she stole a case of beer from the Circle K. I did not see any beer in the video,” says Villaescusa.

Villaescusa says the video has been sent to law enforcement. The private citizen does not want publicity.

Raul Garcia, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety told Native News Online, he could not comment on whether or not there is a videotape of the deadly incident.

On Wednesday, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called for an independent investigation into the shooting death of Tsingine by Winslow police officer Shipley, who has been placed on leave.