Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Andrea]

Cops pay up and quit over a $100G lie about Brooklyn man's alleged gun possession

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/cops-pay-quit-100g-lie-alleged-gun-possession-article-1.3661408

A Brooklyn man who filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD for framing him on a gun charge has settled his case for $100,000 — with the two cops who arrested him on the hook for some of the dough.

Raul Glasgow, now 45, was pulled over in November 2012 in East Flatbush for driving with a forged license — and cops also claimed they found a .45-caliber pistol in the trunk of his car during a search at the 67th Precinct.

But Glasgow insisted the cops set him up. They promised not to impound his car if he had any information about guns or drugs, he said at the time.

Glasgow offered to give them the .45 that he had in his apartment — a gun left with him by a friend.

Brooklyn cop probed for allegedly planting gun in man's trunk

He called his wife and told her to give cops the weapon when they got to his home.

But then the cops charged him with gun possession, he said.

Arresting Officer John Bonanno in a sworn criminal complaint said the gun was found in the trunk of Glasgow’s car during a search at the 67th Precinct.

But that wasn’t true.

The charges against Glasgow were dropped the following summer, with Assistant District Attorney Vincent Bocchetti saying in the court that the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau “has revealed information that calls into question the veracity of [Bonanno’s] sworn statements as they related to this case.”

Raul Glasgow offered to give police the .45 caliber Kahr pistol that he had in his apartment — a gun left with him by a friend. He called his wife and told her to give cops the weapon when they got to his home. But then the cops charged him with gun possession, he said.

Glasgow, who runs a computer repair company, and his wife, Patrina Carter, filed a federal lawsuit naming Bonanno and several other cops, including Sgt. Gary Rich, the supervisor who signed off on the arrest.

IAB later slapped Bonanno and Rich with departmental charges, but the NYPD said that it never got a chance to bring them to trial.

Rich, an 11-year veteran, quit the force on Sept. 28. Bonanno, a cop since January 2009, did the same last Wednesday,

Glasgow, now 45, was behind bars for 20 days before he made bail.

Under terms of the settlement, Glasgow will get $100,000 -- $95,000 from city coffers, $3,500 from Rich and $1,500 from Bonanno.

Bonanno couldn’t be reached for comment, and a man who answered the door at Rich’s Long Island home saw a reporter’s press pass, shook his head and quickly shut the door.

The city foots the entire bill in settlements and judgments in virtually every case, making the occasional exception when it feels the behavior of the accused officer is egregious and in clear violation of department policy.

[Andrea]

Another Police Brutality Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against the Euclid Police Department: VIDEO

https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2017/11/30/another-police-brutality-lawsuit-has-been-filed-against-the-euclid-police-department-video

Lamar Wright is accusing two Euclid police officers of forcibly arresting him last year and "maliciously" filing false charges against him. He filed a lawsuit against the officers and the department today.

Read the lawsuit and watch video of the arrest below.

According to the civil complaint, Wright pulled into a driveway on East 212th Street "to safely use his cell phone" on Nov. 4, 2016. Two armed men approached his vehicle, and, realizing they were police officers, Wright placed his car in park and held his hands up.

Officer Kyle Flagg's gun "was raised and pointed toward Wright," as he stood next to the driver's door. Office Vashon Williams stood behind Flagg, his gun raised as well.

Flagg ordered Wright out of the car. Before the man could exit the vehicle, Flagg grabbed Wright's left arm.

According to the lawsuit: "Flagg yanked on Wright’s left arm. Wright was still seated in the car at this time, and had staples in his stomach and a new colostomy bag. This, in combination with Flagg yanking on his left arm, prevented Wright from extending his right arm toward Flagg. ... Flagg’s conduct caused Wright extreme pain. Wright cried out to Flagg several times that he was hurting his arm, but Flagg ignored him."

The officers then tased and pepper-sprayed Wright, before he had a chance to explain the colostomy bag and pain.

Wright argues that each officer "had the duty and opportunity to intervene to protect Wright, and to prevent the unconstitutional use of force against Wright. Neither Flagg nor Williams did anything to prevent this unlawful attack."

Despite the sudden abdominal pain, the officers forced Wright onto the ground and handcuffed him. "I got a shit bag!" he says to the officers between sputtering coughs on the ground.

As he was arrested, the officers talked between themselves. The interaction is captured on body cam footage, embedded below.

"Dude, I thought he had a gun," Flagg says.

"He started reaching," Williams says.

"Why the fuck are you reaching like that?" Flagg asks Wright.

"I told you I got a bag!"

"No, dude, you were reaching with your right hand."

"I got a bag!"

"What's a bag?" Williams asks.

"A shit bag, man!"

"OK, but what are you doing reaching for it?" Williams asks.

"I don't know if you're getting ready to shoot me or what, man," Flagg says.

Wright was charged with obstructing official business, resisting arrest,
and criminal trespass. He was taken to a hospital, where, he says, the officers "mocked" him for his pain. Later, Wright was jailed. He paid "nearly $900" in bond, according to the suit.

"However, after posting bond, Wright was not released from custody. Instead, his detention was extended without lawful justification. He was transported to the Cuyahoga County Jail, where he was subjected to a search via a full-body x-ray scanner. ... Only after this scanning was complete, approximately four to five hours after bond had been posted, was Wright finally permitted to walk free," he states in his lawsuit.

Wright mentions that he also had to pay a $1,000 fee for the pepper spray stains on his rental car, which was impounded. "The rental company placed Wright on a 'Do Not Rent' list, and refuses to do future business with him," the lawsuit states.

Charges against Wright were dismissed in June 2017.

“I filed this case to stand up against police brutality, and to stand with other victims of senseless attacks by officers from the Euclid Police Department. These officers’ illegal treatment of people in the city must stop,” Wright said in a public statement. “We need justice for all the victims of the EPD."

Since Wright's arrest last year, two high profile incidents have focused the spotlight on Euclid Police Department's personnel. The shooting death of Luke Stewart was swept under the civic rug for months before the state announced that no charge would be filed against officer Matthew Rhodes. Stewart's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

The violent arrest during the traffic stop of Richard Hubbard III resulted in the firing of officer Michael Amiott.

Not for nothing, on Nov. 20, chief Scott Meyer announced that the Euclid Police Department had been awarded the AAA Platinum Award for community traffic safety.

[Andrea]

Graphic video shows Daniel Shaver sobbing and begging officer for his life before 2016 shooting

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/08/graphic-video-shows-daniel-shaver-sobbing-and-begging-officer-for-his-life-before-2016-shooting/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.9ef608c19d35

After the officer involved was acquitted of second-degree murder charges, officials in Arizona publicly released graphic video showing Daniel Shaver crawling on his hands and knees and begging for his life in the moments before he was shot and killed by police in January 2016.

Shaver died in one of at least 963 fatal police shootings in 2016, according to a Washington Post database. And his death was one of an increasing number of such shootings to prompt criminal charges in the years since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., following the death of Michael Brown. Yet charges remain rare, and convictions even more so.

The shooting, by Philip “Mitch” Brailsford, then an officer with the Mesa Police Department, occurred after officers responded to a call about a man allegedly pointing a rifle out of a fifth-floor window at a La Quinta Inn. Inside the room, Shaver, 26, had been doing rum shots with a woman he had met earlier that day and showing off a pellet gun he used in his job in pest control.

The graphic video, recorded by Brailsford’s body camera, shows Shaver and the woman exiting the hotel room and immediately complying with commands from multiple officers. The video was shown in court during the trial, but it was released to the public after jurors acquitted Brailsford on Thursday.

After entering the hallway, Shaver immediately puts his hands in the air and lies down on the ground while informing the officer that no one else was in the hotel room.

“If you make a mistake, another mistake, there is a very severe possibility that you’re both going to get shot. Do you understand?” Sgt. Charles Langley yells before telling Shaver to “shut up.”

“I’m not here to be tactical and diplomatic with you. You listen. You obey,” the officer says.

For the next five minutes, officers give Shaver instructions. First, an officer tells Shaver to put both of his hands on top of his head, then he instructs him to cross his left foot over his right foot.

“If you move, we’re going to consider that a threat and we are going to deal with it and you may not survive it,” Langley said.

The officer then has the woman crawl down the hallway, where she is taken into custody. Shaver remains on the ground in the hallway, his hands on his head.

Langley tells Shaver to keep his legs crossed and push himself up into a kneeling position. As Shaver pushes himself up, his legs come uncrossed, prompting the officer to scream at him.

“I’m sorry,” Shaver says, placing his hands near his waist, prompting another round of screaming.

“You do that again, we’re shooting you, do you understand?” Langley yells.

“Please do not shoot me,” Shaver begs, his hands up straight in the air.

At the officer’s command, Shaver then crawls down the hallway, sobbing. At one point, he reaches back — possibly to pull up his shorts — and Brailsford opens fire, striking Shaver five times.

According to the police report, Brailsford was carrying an AR-15 rifle with the phrase “You’re F—ed” etched into the weapon. The police report also said the “shots were fired so rapidly that in watching the video at regular speed, one cannot count them.”

Brailsford testified in court that he believed Shaver was reaching for a gun.

“If this situation happened exactly as it did that time, I would have done the same thing,” Brailsford said during the trial. “I believed 100 percent that he was reaching for a gun.”

No gun was found on Shaver’s body. Two pellet rifles used in Shaver’s pest-control job were later found in the hotel room.

After two days of deliberation, jurors found Brailsford not guilty of second-degree murder as well as of a lesser charge of reckless manslaughter.

“The justice system miserably failed Daniel (Shaver) and his family,” said Mark Geragos, an attorney for Shaver’s widow, according to the Arizona Republic.

Attorneys for the officer had petitioned to keep the video from being released, and a judge agreed to block its release to the public until after the trial had concluded.

Brailsford’s attorney, Mike Piccarreta, told The Post in a previous interview that he thinks the body camera footage clears his client.

“It demonstrates that the officer had to make a split-second decision when [Shaver] moved his hands toward the small of his back after being advised that if he did, he’d be shot,” Piccarreta told The Post in 2016.

Piccarreta also said he wasn’t sure his client would be interested in trying to get his police job back.

Shaver’s widow and parents have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the city of Mesa.

[Andrea]

New York Police Rejecting More of Watchdog’s Findings, Report Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/nyregion/nypd-ccrb-rejection-report.html

In New York City, the relationship between the Police Department and the Civilian Complaint Review Board is inherently contentious, a panel of outsiders serving as a watchdog over a formidable law enforcement agency that is fiercely protective of its image.

A new report by the board suggests that its relations with the department have become particularly strained, even as the board has sought in recent years to find a measure of common ground on disciplining officers for misconduct.

Last year, the Police Department contested more of the board’s recommendations in cases where board investigators found evidence to support allegations of abuse or misconduct, which in turn significantly lengthened the time before a final decision by the police commissioner.

In response, the board began more strictly enforcing a time limit on the challenges received more than 90 days after the initial decision. But the board’s recommendations are not binding on the commissioner, James P. O’Neill, and in more than than half of the board’s cases that he took final action on between January and June, he set aside or modified the conclusions, reversing a trend over the previous two years when the board and the police commissioner were increasingly in accord.

The report, to be released on Wednesday, is the first to look at how Commissioner O’Neill, who succeeded William J. Bratton in September 2016, has treated the review board’s findings and recommendations. Overall, Commissioner O’Neill imposed discipline on about three-quarters of the 251 officers for whom the review board had recommended punishment in the first six months of this year, a decline from 2016.

In a significant uptick, he rejected 27 percent of the review board’s findings in the first six months of 2017, compared to 17 percent in the same period last year, and he modified the board’s recommendations in 25 percent, up from 21 percent.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the numbers showed the Police Department was “marginalizing” the review board. “When the N.Y.P.D. rejects over half of C.C.R.B. recommendations, that sends an emphatic message to the public and to police officers that the C.C.R.B. just doesn’t matter,” he said.

The report highlights another source of tension between the board and the department — body cameras, which the department began using this year as part of a court-ordered pilot program.

Even with only about 1,200 of the department’s 36,000 officers using body cameras, the review board has struggled to promptly secure footage for its inquiries. It requested video from the Police Department in three cases earlier this year, and the department took nearly three weeks to provide it, according to the report

The mayor has promoted body cameras as a way to curb excessive force complaints and increase police accountability and transparency. But in a statement, Jonathan Darche, the executive director of the review board, echoed concerns in the report that the delays in obtaining footage would grow longer as the program expanded, hampering investigations.

“The City of New York is moving toward a future in which video evidence will offer our investigators more definitive accounts of incidents,” Mr. Darche said. “It is critical for the timely completion of investigations that the C.C.R.B. gains access to body-worn camera footage in a fast and efficient manner as we anticipate an increase in the volume of video evidence.”

Unlike police oversight agencies in cities such as Washington, D.C., the review board does not have direct access to police body camera video. Instead it must go through what has turned out to be an often lengthy process to obtain video from the department.

[*Anya*]

I can usually cut and paste VICE NEWS articles but it is not letting me today.

It is entitled "Shot by Cops and Forgotten: Police shoot far more people than anyone realized"

They reviewed stats from 2010 to 2016




https://news.vice.com/story/shot-by-cops

[Andrea]

New Mexico Sheriff’s Office Pulls Over the Same Black Federal Agent — Three Times in a Month

https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/new-mexico-sheriffs-office-pulls-over-same-black

By the third time Sherese Crawford got pulled over, she knew it was no matter of coincidence.

Crawford is a 38-year-old African-American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent recently on temporary assignment in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As part of her work, she was regularly required to rent a car and drive a lonely stretch of I-40 to travel between the ICE field office in Albuquerque and Milan, New Mexico. Over the course of less than a month, she was pulled over three times by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office — twice by the same deputy.

In none of these stops was she given a warning or citation. Her only crime: driving while black.

The first of the three incidents occurred on April 5, when Deputy Leonard Armijo pulled Crawford over, claiming that he had searched a database for her license plate number and the license plate came back as not on file, indicating that the vehicle might be stolen. This is a highly unlikely claim given that Crawford was driving a rental car provided by ICE.

When Crawford asked him in utter confusion, “What did I do?” Deputy Armijo forced her to exit the vehicle and walk with him to his patrol unit, where he scolded her for “giving him an attitude.” After this incident, Ms. Crawford contacted an ICE supervisor in Albuquerque to complain about the pretextual traffic stop, and the ICE supervisor advised her that the sheriff’s deputy had likely stopped her because she fit a profile: an African-American in a rental car.

That profile got her stopped two more times on April 15 and May 3 by Bernalillo County Deputy Patrick Rael. In the April 15 stop, Deputy Rael pulled her over for allegedly tailgating. When he examined Crawford’s license, he recognized her name and asked her if they had pulled her over the week before. He said he remembered Crawford’s name because an ICE officer and sheriff’s deputy present at the first stop had said that she had an “attitude.” Two weeks later, Deputy Rael pulled over Crawford for a third time alleging she was driving “too slow.”

These three incidents taken together clearly show that the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office has an unconstitutional policy of racially profiling African-Americans. For context, white and Hispanic ACLU of New Mexico staff have been driving the same stretch of road in rental cars for years without incident. It is impossible to imagine that these three stops in close succession with no warning or citation were motivated by anything other than Crawford’s race, especially given that Bernalillo County is overwhelmingly white and Hispanic with only three percent of the population reporting as Black or African-American.

Last week, the ACLU of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office alleging that they unlawfully and repeatedly stopped Crawford, a veteran federal law enforcement agent, because of her race. Targeting people because of the color of their skin isn’t just unconstitutional and wrong, it’s bad policing. This kind of biased-based policing destroys public trust in law enforcement and divides communities, making it harder for officers to do their jobs.

As one of the most diverse and multicultural states in the country, racial discrimination has no place in New Mexico, especially not in one of our state’s largest law enforcement agencies. We’re fighting to ensure that anytime you see flashing lights behind you in our state, you can feel confident that it was your lead foot — not the color of your skin — that’s getting you pulled over.

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

I can usually cut and paste VICE NEWS articles but it is not letting me today.

It is entitled "Shot by Cops and Forgotten: Police shoot far more people than anyone realized"

They reviewed stats from 2010 to 2016




https://news.vice.com/story/shot-by-cops

[Andrea]

Texas boy, 6, killed in deputy-involved shooting days before Christmas

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-boy-age-6-killed-deputy-involved-shooting-days-christmas-n832166

A 6-year-old Texas boy was killed just days before Christmas when sheriff’s deputies opened fire on a woman they had been chasing — and one of the bullets pierced the wall of a mobile home and struck the child in the abdomen.

The woman, a suspected car thief who had been trying to break into the home, was also killed in the shooting on Thursday in the Schertz, a small town some 20 miles northeast of San Antonio, NBC affiliate WOAI reported.

"Right now, what I’m dealing with is, is a tragic accident," Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a news conference Friday, although he added the shooting is still under investigation and other authorities like the district attorney’s office would make a final determination.

"In my opinion, it's a tragic accident that led to the death of this young man," he said.

The boy, Kameron Prescott, was fatally shot as deputies chased the approximately 30-year-old suspect in a "prolonged pursuit" that was reported as a call of a stolen vehicle which involved a known suspect who had outstanding felony warrants, Salazar said.

During the first encounter a deputy “identified what he believed was a weapon in the hands of that suspect” and the woman at that time and later threatened deputies with a weapon “and verbalized to him that she intended to shoot him with that weapon” — although no gun has yet been found, Salazar said.

The suspect was not identified by police Friday. Salazar said investigators had found what appeared to be a pipe that had the suspect's blood on it underneath the deck where the shooting took place.

Salazar said the woman got "cornered" at the home in the Pecan Grove mobile home park and threatened Kameron's family as well as officers when they caught up with her. The slain boy and his family do not know the suspect, he said.

"Kameron was the kindest-hearted little boy that I have ever had the pleasure of teaching," the boy’s first-grade teacher, Shanda Ince, said in a statement released by the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District.

Four deputies fired at the woman, Salazar said. He did not identify the officers, but said they ranged in experience from two years to 27 years on the job and were all shaken by the experience. The deputies involved have been placed on five days of administrative leave, the sheriff's office said Friday.

Salazar said that civilian witnesses as well as the deputies said that the suspect had threatened to shoot them and indicated that she had a gun.

"At the time, we don't believe she was armed. She was presenting to be armed at various times throughout this prolonged pursuit," Salazar said earlier.

Salazar said that his office was still searching the area for a gun and was using a helicopter and dive team in the search. "That deputy is still adamant that what he saw was a handgun," Salazar said.

Salazar said there was good audio of the incident, but said his office did not have clear video of the shooting. A helicopter overhead caught the scene moments after, and the deputy who was had a body camera unintentionally obstructed its view when he raised and fired his rifle.

Salazar said internal affairs is investigating the matter, but said "preliminarily ... it appears as if policies were complied with." As of Friday evening, it was unclear when the sheriff's office would release the video, which Salazar said included video of officers administering first aid to the six-year-old boy.

The deadly drama began around 11 a.m., Salazar said, when a deputy responding to reports of a stolen car found the suspect hiding in a closet and she allegedly told them, "I have a weapon, I’m gonna shoot you."

Somehow, the woman was able to flee the residence into some nearby woods where the deputy lost her and called for backup, Salazar said. She was later spotted fording a river and the deputies chased after her in "water that was up to their chin."

Salazar said the deputies believed she was armed because she appeared to point a weapon at them during the foot chase.

Two relatives were in the mobile home with little Kameron when the fatal shots were fired, Salazar said. Neither was hurt.

"The grandfather of this young man, Kameron’s grandfather, is a friend of mine for the past 20 years," Salazar said. "He's a peace officer. I've actually spoken to him and conveyed messages to the family through him."

[Andrea]

Chicago police raid targets wrong home: 'This is Christmastime. You kicked down my door.'

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-chicago-warrant-wrong-home-raid-20171222-story.html

Jennell Cross had just settled into a leather couch to watch a movie in her daughter’s South Chicago home when she heard one bang, then another against the front door.

Frightened — it was about midnight Thursday — Cross said she ran to the back of the home to warn her daughter. “Somebody’s trying to break in the house,” she yelled.

Shanae Cross said was trying to pull her mother into a restroom for safety when a swarm of cops barged into the house, guns drawn and shouting questions.

The officers moved through the bungalow and tried to handcuff Cross’ 17-year-old brother. The family demanded to see a warrant.

Finally, an officer called out the address on the no-knock search warrant.

It was for a different home on the block.

“Get ya’ll (expletive) and get out my house,” Cross said she told the cops.

An officer yelled, “Everyone out! Wrong house! Let’s go!” and the officers left, she said.

On Friday, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi acknowledged that officers “inadvertently breached the door of the incorrect residence.”

The department “deeply regrets the error,” he said.

Guglielmi said the claims process and repairs to the family’s damaged front door would be expedited.

While the Cross family was talking to a Tribune reporter, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called to personally apologize. His call went to voicemail, and Cross just shook her head as she listened to it.

She was still angry Friday as she talked about the misguided raid.

“This is Christmastime,” she said. “You kicked down my door.”

Cross, 34, can’t figure out how the police made the mistake: “The number is there in front of the home,” she said.

She said she couldn’t sleep after things settled down early Friday morning. On Facebook, she posted, “Thank U Chicago PD For Kicking Down My Door... Now Im Up All Night Doing Security.” The message included a flashlight emoji.

The damaged front door in her South Chicago neighborhood, where “people are killed every day for nothing,” left her and her family feeling unsafe, she said. Her brother Michael, who the family said officers tried to handcuff, said he was “hurt” by the encounter.

“They drew the guns on us like we were criminals,” Michael Cross said.

“I was scared out my mind,” said Jennell Cross, 53. “This is crazy as hell.”

[Andrea]

When Police Shoot a Man Who Was Stabbing Himself

https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police-practices/when-police-shoot-man-who-was-stabbing-himself

A suspect in an armed robbery is sitting alone in a police department’s interview room. He takes out a knife and begins cutting himself with it, including his neck.

You would think that the police would recognize this as a mental health crisis, a potential suicide, a situation that demands careful, nonviolent de-escalation techniques to keep everyone safe.

But on Dec. 18 in Minneapolis, officers took another approach, with disastrous results. They tried to use a Taser on 18-year-old Marcus Fischer and then they shot at him. At least one bullet hit and wounded him, leaving Marcus in critical condition.

That response to a suicide attempt is terrifying. By using force, the police made the situation so much more dangerous.

And it wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Of the 14 Minnesotans shot and killed by police officers last year, nearly half were reportedly experiencing a mental health crisis. That matches up with police data from around the country. Going through a mental health crisis puts you at higher risk for police violence.

Just this past summer, Khaleel Thompson was shot multiple times by an officer in Crystal, Minnesota. Khaleel had a history of mental illness that police in Crystal were aware of. Like Marcus, he was left in critical condition.

Marcus and Khaleel are both people of color, making them even more likely to be targets of police violence. Being Black or brown multiplies the risk for people with mental illness or disability.

Both the Minneapolis and Crystal police departments have policies that encourage de-escalation strategies designed to avoid physical confrontation unless immediately necessary. But the policies don’t cover the special considerations necessary when someone is engaging in self-harm.

It is a natural impulse to want to stop someone from hurting themselves. However, when police intervene, they too often rely on their weapons instead of empathy and negotiation. The Police Executive Research Forum recommends that departments prohibit the “use of deadly force against individuals who pose a danger only to themselves.”

In such scenarios, the forum advises police “to exercise considerable discretion to wait as long as necessary so that the situation can be resolved peacefully.” Minneapolis police officers spent less than 10 minutes trying to de-escalate the situation with Marcus.

The Minneapolis police department is certainly not the only one failing to respond safely to mental health crises — this is a problem across the country. In the past year, police have killed people experiencing mental health crises in California, New York, Oklahoma, and Washington, among other states.

Our police departments must overhaul their training and protocols. A one-day course in de-escalation — like the one prepared for the Minneapolis Police Department — isn’t enough to prepare officers for dealing with mental health crises.

Training officers on crisis intervention should not be left to individual departments. It must be a core part of the curriculum at all police academies. Right now, police academies spend, on average, 15 times more training time on firearms and defensive tactics than on conflict management and mediation. That needs to change. The curricula must be revamped in keeping with approaches like Crisis Intervention Training and Critical Decision Model-Making, which have helped police departments that implemented them properly.

We also have to accept the limits of de-escalation and mental health training for police officers. While these strategies can improve interactions, officers aren’t the most qualified people to respond to a mental health crisis. Along with improving officer training, we must also fund alternatives to using the police to respond to mental health emergencies, like mobile crisis units and other community-based crisis services. Increased access to mental health and crisis response resources would help reduce the number of people experiencing mental health crises in the first place. There is no reason to wait for another person in crisis to be shot.

[*Anya*]

Part II

Forced out over sex, drugs and other infractions, fired officers find work in other departments

By Kimbriell Kelly, Wesley Lowery and Steven Rich December 22, 2017

Another officer Doucette hired was his nephew Eric P. Doucette Sr., who was fired by New Orleans police in 2005 for neglect of duty, records show. The chief said he followed ethics guidelines and did not directly supervise his nephew. Eric Doucette, 59, did not respond to requests for comment.

When Chief Doucette resigned from Delgado in 2014, college officials replaced him with another former New Orleans police officer: Julie Lea, a former lieutenant in internal affairs.

Julie Lea at an event in New Orleans on Aug. 17, 2014. (Josh Brasted)
Lea had resigned from New Orleans while under investigation for “neglect of duty” for failing to “properly supervise subordinates,” according to police records.

In preparation of a federal audit that was part of the ongoing Justice Department investigation, Lea was told to complete pending internal affairs cases, records show. Investigators said Lea, however, allowed one of her employees to retire with 18 cases pending. The department later sustained the administrative violations against Lea.

Lea, 44, told The Post that she was “never notified of an investigation.” By the time New Orleans internal affairs upheld the charges against her, she had been sworn in as chief at Delgado. Delgado officials said they were unaware that she was under investigation when she was hired.

One of Lea’s hires at Delgado was fired New Orleans officer Mario Cole, who lost his job in 2013 after 11 years with the department when he tested positive for opiates during a random drug test. Through Delgado police, Cole, 38, declined to comment.

“I’m sure I looked into it and found out what it was,” Lea said when asked whether she knew of Cole’s prior misconduct when she hired him in 2016. “But I don’t remember.”

In January 2017, after a little more than a year as Delgado’s chief, Lea was fired.

An internal investigation by the college concluded that she had misused state funds and compromised student safety by ordering two of her officers to guard the homes of relatives of a deceased police chief during his funeral.

“Most chiefs would never get fired for something like that,” Lea said.

She said that after she was fired, she applied for another job as a police chief but was not hired. She now runs a nonprofit entity that she founded to organize Mardi Gras parades and events.

In August, Delgado replaced Lea with yet another former New Orleans officer: Eddie Compass III.

Compass spent 26 years with New Orleans Police Department, ascending to superintendent. He resigned in 2005 amid widespread criticism of the department’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

In an interview, Compass, 59, said that all of Delgado’s hiring of New Orleans officers with troubled records predated his arrival. He said he has not had any problems with the officers but criticized the department’s prior hiring practices. He said Delgado will no longer hire officers who have been forced out of other departments.

“They never should have been hired,” he said. “But that’s something I can’t do anything about.”

Delgado’s police department has three openings.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...rainbow&wpmm=1

[*Anya*]

Forced out over sex, drugs and other infractions, fired officers find work in other departments

By Kimbriell Kelly, Wesley Lowery and Steven Rich December 22, 2017

NEW ORLEANS — By the time the New Orleans Police Department fired Carey Dykes, the officer had been sued for alleged brutality, accused of having sex with a prostitute while on duty and caught sleeping in his patrol car instead of responding to a shooting.

The 13-year veteran fought to get his job back but lost.

Even so, he returned to patrol months later — working for a nearby police department.

Dykes is one of dozens of officers forced out of the New Orleans department over the past decade for misconduct who were given badges and guns by other departments, according to a Washington Post analysis of state and city employment records, police personnel files and court documents. At a time of increased scrutiny of police nationwide, the ease with which fired or forced out New Orleans officers found work at new departments underscores the broader challenge that law enforcement faces to rid itself of “bad apples.”

The New Orleans department has long been attempting to reform its ranks and shed a troubled past. In the past decade, the department has fired or otherwise pushed out at least 248 officers. Of those forced out, 53 have been hired by other police departments, according to information obtained through public records requests.

Many of those officers landed at smaller police departments in nearby parishes and colleges — some hired weeks or months after leaving New Orleans. While records show that some have had no complaints of misconduct since joining new departments, others have been fired again.

Records show that many of the 53 officers hired by other departments disclosed their troubled departures from New Orleans. About half of the 53 had been fired, and the rest resigned in lieu of being fired or quit while under investigation

Some of the 248 officers were fired or forced out in New Orleans after abandoning their posts in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the city. Others were fired or pushed out in the aftermath of a 2011 Department of Justice civil rights investigation. The federal review concluded that officers “routinely” used unnecessary force and conducted unlawful arrests, and that neither the public nor officers had faith in the department’s disciplinary process. City leaders instituted reforms demanded by Justice, adding to an exodus of officers.

Former New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said that sheriffs and other chiefs often justify rehiring officers by dismissing their problems as “political.” As a result, troubled officers remain in policing, he said.

“By the time you reach the point of terminating someone, that’s usually something that speaks to [the officer’s] ethics or ability to perform their job,” said Serpas, who led the New Orleans department from 2010 to 2014.

Louisiana is one of 44 states that require that officers be certified, or licensed. In some states, police chiefs pursue the decertification of officers they fire — to prevent them from being hired at other police departments.

But Louisiana has not decertified a single officer for misconduct in the past decade, records show. State officials said that local departments have failed to request decertifications. Local police officials said, however, that the process of decertifying an officer they no longer employ can be laborious and may not be worth the time.

Serpas said steps should be taken to make sure that officers are stripped of their state law enforcement certifications and that a national database of these officers should be created to help prevent them from returning to law enforcement.

“If you get terminated for untruthfulness or bribery or brutality, you really should not be allowed to be a police officer anywhere in the country,” Serpas said.

Sleeping, buying sex on duty
Police officer Carey Dykes arrived near the French Quarter just before dawn as fists were flying and fires were burning in the street. Soon, bottles were flung in his direction.

It was Feb. 16, 1999, and Dykes was quickly joined by a dozen other officers as the Mardi Gras party descended into chaos.

By the time it was over, police had jailed nearly 60 people. In the aftermath, Dykes, other officers and the city faced two federal lawsuits from people who alleged that they had been falsely arrested and were beaten by police. In the suits, witnesses said they saw Dykes and another officer “brutally beat” a man with nightsticks.

The city settled the two cases for a combined $60,850. In 2001, Dykes and the city were sued again: A pregnant woman said she was assaulted by Dykes as he tried to arrest her and her then-husband outside a French Quarter strip club.

“That cop, Dykes, came up to me before I could get all the way up off the ground and slammed me back down on the ground with my face in the ground and kept saying, ‘Keep still. Don’t move. Don’t move,’ ” the woman, Chantal Jarrell, now 45, said in an interview.

The city and the officers generally denied the allegations, but settled her suit for $400.

Records show that during the next decade, Dykes was suspended three times for violating department policies, including failing to follow instructions and filing incomplete reports.

Then, in July 2010, a woman told police officials that an officer was paying women for sex. She told internal affairs investigators that the officer — whom she identified as Dykes from a photo lineup — spent some of his nightly shifts cruising the streets “picking up working girls.” She complained that she had sex with him but was never paid.

The woman, who was not identified in the investigative reports, said Dykes picked her up in his squad car on July 4 and took her to the London Lodge, a nearby motel.

She said that she took a shower and emerged to see Dykes naked. The two then had vaginal and oral sex without a condom, she said.

Motel records showed that Dykes rented a $45 room, checking in with his driver’s license at 2:50 a.m. — in the middle of his patrol shift.

Investigators set up a sting.

Over several days, police recorded the woman speaking with Dykes on the phone while he was on duty. In one recording, the woman said she had a bacterial infection when they allegedly had unprotected sex and told him that he might pass it on to his wife.

Dykes said he was not worried about a bacterial infection. “Only STD will affect me,” he told her.

On the sting’s fifth night, investigators watched Dykes park his squad car at the London Lodge at 3:35 a.m. Almost an hour later, a 911 call came in from nearby: Two men had wrecked a Chevy Tahoe and fled on foot armed with assault rifles.

A dispatcher radioed Dykes to respond to the call but got no answer from him.

Ten minutes after the initial 911 call, the neighborhood erupted in gunfire, prompting five additional calls to 911.

Dykes’s white marked patrol car did not move, records show. Concerned, one of the officers watching Dykes approached his police cruiser: Dykes was inside asleep. The surveillance officer snapped a photo.

At 5:15 a.m. Dykes drove off and later wrote in his activity report that he had responded to the shooting.

The internal affairs investigation found that Dykes had violated department rules 17 times, including not devoting his entire shift to his police duty, transporting a civilian in his work vehicle, dishonesty and failing to respond to a dispatcher.

Dykes initially denied many of the allegations and said he did not have intercourse with the woman. When confronted with the findings of the surveillance, he admitted to having oral sex with the woman at the motel and failing to respond to the shooting.

Three months later, in February 2011, Dykes was fired. He appealed, but an arbitrator upheld his dismissal.

When reached by phone, Dykes, 44, said of his firing: “It happened over seven years ago. I’m not worried about it.” He declined to answer questions or comment further.

Months after he was fired, Dykes applied for a police job at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, records show.

[Andrea]

Unarmed man killed by police after ‘swatting’ prank in Kansas

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/12/29/unarmed-man-killed-police-after-swatting-prank-kansas/991665001/

An innocent man was shot and killed by police Thursday after a "swatting" prank led authorities to a home in Kansas, officials say.

A feud between two Call of Duty game players sparked the hoax call. However, the address given to police led them to the doorstep of 28-year-old Andrew Finch, who was not part of the online gaming community, police say.

"Due to the actions of a prankster, we have an innocent victim," Wichita police Deputy Chief Troy Livingston said during a press conference Friday.

Officers responded to a report of a gunman holding his mother, brother and sister hostage after shooting his father in the head Thursday night, Livingston said.

"That was the information we were working off of," he told the Wichita Eagle.

Livingston added that authorities "got into position" when they arrived at the home, ready for a hostage situation.

The 28-year-old, identified by his family as Andrew Finch, went to the door to see what was going on, the Eagle reported.

"As he came to the door, one of our officers discharged his weapon," Livingston said.

Officers had instructed Finch to put his hands up, but he lowered them several times, Livingston said. One officer then took a shot because he "feared for officer's safety," Livingston said.

The father of two was taken to a hospital. He later died.

Police said he was unarmed.

A frame grab from the Wichita Police Department's release Friday, Dec. 29, 2017, of some body cam footage of the fatal shooting of Andrew Finch, 29, by a Wichita police officer Thursday night. Online gamers have said in multiple Twitter posts that the shooting of a man Thursday night by Wichita police was the result of a "swatting" hoax involving two gamers. (Photo: Fernando Salazar, AP)

Officers soon learned that no one in the house had a gunshot wound and that there wasn’t a hostage situation.

"What gives the cops the right to open fire?" Finch's mother asked the Wichita Eagle. “Why didn’t they give him the same warning they gave us? That cop murdered my son over a false report.”

More than a dozen gamers told the Eagle that a feud between two Call of Duty players sparked the swatting call.

The gamers were arguing when one threatened to target the other. The intended target gave the other gamer a "fake" address, according to Twitter posts.

"We believe this case is an act of swatting," Livingston confirmed Friday.

Several social media users placed blame on one gamer, who tweeted about the incident.

"I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION," the gamer tweeted. The account was suspended overnight.

Finch's family believes whoever made the call should be held accountable.

"The person who made the phone call took my nephew, her son, two kids’ father," the victim’s aunt, Lorrie Hernandez-Caballero told the Wichita Eagle. "How does it feel to be a murderer? I can’t believe people do this on purpose."

Swatting is a prank where someone calls authorities to report a fake emergency — often a hostage situation or active shooter — with the intent of drawing a "SWAT team" response to a location.

The dangerous prank has become popular nationwide among gamers, who use caller ID spoofing or other techniques to disguise their phone numbers, according to 911.gov.

"Without that false phone call we wouldn't have been there," Livingston said.

The officer who shot and killed Finch was identified as a veteran of more than 7 years with the police department. He was be placed on administrative paid leave pending investigation.

No arrests have been made so far.

[Andrea]

Dead, beaten and abused: Millions paid in secret settlements to keep bad cops on the street and the public in danger

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/watchdog/shield/2018/01/22/nj-police-brutality-cases-secret-settlements/109479668/

Piercing the shield

New Jersey governments across the state, from the smallest towns to some of the largest cities, have spent more than $42 million this decade to cover-up deaths, physical abuses and sexual misconduct at the hands of bad cops.

The abuse of police power has left a staggering toll: at least 19 dead; 131 injured; 7 sexual misconducts, plus dozens of other offenses ranging from false arrest to harassment, a two-year investigation by the Asbury Park Press found.

The damage is concealed by government officials who use a veil of secret settlements and nondisclosure agreements to silence victims. Investigations of rogue cops are routinely hidden from the public by police, elected officials and even the courts.

The secretive payouts that keep abuses quiet are a vital part of a system that enables bad cops to do their worst. The secrecy starts at the police department and rises through the highest levels of government. Some of the state's largest cities and insurance carriers refused to release government documents that are at the core of the rogue cop problem.

But the tens of millions of dollars paid to settle hundreds of legal claims are not the worst part.

Many of the bad cops remain on the street.

The Press investigation found that several towns knew of their bad cops' propensity towards violence yet ignored multiple warning signs until the cops crossed the line by injuring or killing innocent people.

In February 2016, Khan was arrested on charges of punching his brother-in-law in the face, causing “serious facial injuries and a possible fractured” eye socket and jaw, and threatening to shoot him, a police report stated.

Khan brushed off the criminal charges as a grand jury dismissed the claims. His only punishment: a 40-day police department suspension. After that, the officer returned to the streets, armed with a weapon and the full force of the law.

Khan’s suspension didn't prevent more violence. During a car chase that could have been a scene from an action movie, Khan shot at a suspect fleeing in a vehicle and then pursued the car through the streets of Jersey City, according to criminal charges filed against him.

The June 4, 2017, chase ended tragically for Miguel Feliz, 28, an innocent victim caught in the mayhem.

The father of a 6-year-old was driving home from his Peapod grocery delivery job when the suspect ran Feliz's aging Toyota off the road. The car burst into flames after slamming into a utility pole.

With his clothing on fire and choking on the acrid smoke, Feliz needed help from the police.

He got Khan.

Khan and another officer kicked Feliz as he laid burning on the ground. Feliz was struck in the face, a cellphone video shot by a passerby showed. Months later, both officers were indicted on aggravated assault charges. The officers have pleaded not guilty.

“I thought they were there to help,” Feliz said weeks after the incident, healing from four broken ribs – inflicted by police, he says – and multiple burns.

"But obviously not."

Miguel Feliz struggled to extinguish his burning flesh after a car crash in Jersey City June 4, 2017. He needed help from the police. Instead he was kicked. Andrew Ford

In another state, Khan's first arrest would likely have been his last day as a police officer. In Florida, conduct involving an assault can cost a police officer’s license to enforce the law, even if they're not criminally prosecuted.

But not in New Jersey.

From internal affairs to the courthouse, a weave of secret investigations, quiet payouts, nondisclosure agreements and court-enforced silence ends up keeping horrendous conduct and multi-million-dollar payouts away from public scrutiny.

Rogue cops are a fraction of the 33,000 officers who protect the public each day. But bad cops remain on the street because of one number: 466. That is the number of municipal police departments in the state, most with 23 or fewer officers, and some employing multiple family members.

Each of the 466 departments has a unique political culture and an internal affairs system that is rarely overseen by outsiders – unless the police chief believes an officer might have committed a crime.

New Jersey is one of six states that doesn’t officially license police officers or have a method to ban bad cops, much the way the government can disbar wayward lawyers or pull the licenses of intoxicated truck drivers. The other states without a police licensing revocation law are New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California and Hawaii.

Of at least 64,353 internal affairs complaints filed since 2011, less than one half of 1 percent – 226 – resulted in an officer being charged with a crime, the Press found. Of those defendants, 90 were convicted.

"There's just people out there that don't belong on the job. Fortunately, the numbers are few," said former Burlington Township police director Walter J. Corter, who also served as head of investigations for the Burlington County prosecutor's office.

To expose the problems with New Jersey's system for police accountability, the Press reviewed more than 30,000 pages of court, police and legal documents, settlements and once-secret separation agreements obtained by the Press, and interviewed dozens of victims, experts, lawyers and police officers.

The team found holes, conflicts and inconsistencies in police oversight that empowered problem cops in some departments to escalate their behavior until it became criminal, even deadly.

Consider:

A cop with domestic dispute history kills his ex-wife — Neptune Police Sgt. Philip Seidle has an internal affairs record that tops 600 pages and spans two decades, with several complaints known to involve domestic disputes between him and his wife. He was considered enough of a risk to the public that his service weapon was taken from him, but he was later rearmed. He used that gun to fatally shoot his ex-wife in 2015 in the middle of an Asbury Park street, in front of their 7-year-old daughter. He's serving a 30-year prison sentence.

A well-known violent cop beats a suspect on camera — Bloomfield police officer Orlando Trinidad was known in the department for using force to subdue suspects, accounting for nearly a third of the so-called “use-of-force” police reports in the 120-member department. After nearly ripping the ear off a handcuffed suspect inside the police station in 2013, a lawsuit claims, Trinidad then looked directly into the surveillance camera to seemingly mock the ensuing internal affairs review by saying, “IA.” The suit settled for $364,000 without any admission of fault. He was sentenced to five years in prison for lying on a police report in a separate incident.

A lack of oversight — Now-retired Bordentown Township Police Chief Frank Nucera Jr. was charged by federal agents in November 2017 with assaulting a black man and repeatedly making violent and racist remarks. The need for outside intervention by the FBI underscores the limited oversight of New Jersey's hundreds of police chiefs. His lawyer didn't return a message seeking comment. Nucera retired in January 2017, after the alleged assault but before the indictment. He is awaiting trial. Upon leaving, Nucera was paid $54,002, including compensation for unused sick and vacation days.

Repeated beatings claims, department inaction — Alleged beatings by Atlantic City police officer Andrew Jaques prompted at least two lawsuits. The city refused to provide the Press with the settlement amounts. But the case raised the ire of a federal judge in one decision who called Jaques "short-fused" and "volatile." He retired on disability in August, at an annual salary of $101,620, the Press found. Another city officer, Sterling Wheaten, has been the subject of at least 15 internal affairs complaints and the city paying $4.5 million to settle five lawsuits, according to media reports. No admission of wrongdoing was made in the settlements and Wheaten remains on the force at a salary of $108,548.

The $1.8 million cop — Battling a problem cop can be extraordinarily expensive. Taxpayers spent at least $1.8 million in a 9-year effort to fire Manuel Avila, a Paterson patrolman with a history of mental health trouble accused of sexual assault but acquitted at trial. Although not convicted of being a violent cop, the city put Avila on paid suspension that ultimately cost at least $940,000. The city also agreed to a $710,000 settlement with the woman, plus at least $92,000 in legal fees. In a settlement with the officer, the city agreed to dismiss disciplinary charges against Avila if he decided to resign. The agreement allowed him to collect $85,134 for unused sick and vacation time. He is now trying to get a $72,000 annual pension, which would include credit for six years while he was suspended.

In the Atlantic City case involving the “short-fused” Jaques, the Press found in court documents that Jaques was investigated by his uncle. Jaques remained on the force for another 10 years, leading to more lawsuits from civilians.

The quality of internal affairs reviews meant to root out rogue cops “comes down to one person — whoever is doing the investigation,” said Rich Rivera, a former West New York police officer.

For the last 20 years, Rivera has reviewed internal affairs investigations, police use-of-force reports in lawsuits and consulted with police departments. “Because the entire process is secret, we typically don’t know what the contents of the investigation were, and whether they were properly done or not,” he said.

While on the police force in the mid-1990s, Rivera worked undercover with the FBI to help put corrupt cops from his department in jail.

Internal affairs reports frequently show inadequate investigations and conclusions, Rivera said of the more than 900 IA files he has reviewed. Common problems included police investigators: failing to interview eyewitnesses; ruling a complaint “unfounded” if the investigator was unable to reach the victim; and failing to interview more than one officer, even if there were several at the scene.

“We don’t see too many consequences for bad police officers,” Rivera said. “The consequences are (for) those in the community – people being harmed, people being falsely accused of crimes, people being sent to prison who might not have been sent to prison if IA was working properly.”

Claims of abuses affected departments regardless of size, the Press’ investigation found. For example, the tiny borough of Absecon in Atlantic County, population 8,300, paid $2 million to settle a 2012 wrongful death case while Newark, population 280,000, settled a bodily injury case for $2 million.

Patrick Colligan, president of the state Police Benevolent Association that represents nearly all 33,000 police officers in the state, said he doesn’t dispute there were problem officers in the past, but today, with many cops being watched with cameras mounted on patrol cars or worn by officers, there is a constant oversight.

However, not all departments – until recently including Jersey City – use such monitoring devices.

Sub-standard police officers leave the force “close to every day in this state,” Colligan said. “Many you don't hear about, and it shows the departments are doing what they should be doing. … In 2017, there's nobody tolerating illicit or illegal activity.”

Andrea: Please click link for rest of article and graphics

[Andrea]

Dashcam Video Shows ‘Senseless’ Killing Of Iranian-American By Federal Cops, Lawyers Say

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dashcam-video-killing-iranian-american-federal-cops-lawyers_us_5a68b04be4b0e5630075969d?ncid=inblnkush pmg00000009

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Park Police shot and killed an unarmed American man of Iranian descent in Fairfax County, Virginia, last November. In the months since the incident, the federal government hasn’t offered any explanation as to what led unnamed federal law enforcement officers to shoot and kill 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar. But local authorities on Wednesday released a disturbing dashcam video that sheds new light on the shooting and could put pressure on the federal government to bring charges against the agents involved.

The dashcam video shows the fatal encounter that was a culmination of a police chase of Ghaisar’s Jeep. An unidentified federal officer hops out of the passenger seat of his police vehicle and points his gun at Ghaisar’s stopped vehicle. As the officer stands near the driver’s side of the Jeep pointing his weapon, the car slowly moves forward. The officer fires once. He fires four more times. His partner comes up behind him. More shots are fired, and the vehicle abruptly stops.

Officers with the U.S. Park Police shot Ghaisar in the head four times on Nov. 17. Ghaisar, who by all accounts was unarmed and alone on George Washington Memorial Parkway, died 10 days later due to brain damage. Since then, the Ghaisar family has been seeking answers from the federal government about what happened to the football-loving young man from suburban Virginia who worked at his dad’s accounting firm and was looking forward to becoming an uncle.

“Not only did we lose Bijan, on top of it [all] but ... we have no information,” Ghaisar’s mother, Kelly, told HuffPost. “The total silence of this case makes us, our whole family, feel even worse, because we have to deal with Bijan’s loss and the way that he was taken.”

In shootings involving federal officers, like the U.S. Park Police which are under the U.S. Interior Department’s National Park Service, there’s often little information available upfront, while shootings involving local officers typically provide more.

The FBI is now investigating the case, but they initially opposed releasing the video. Federal authorities still haven’t named the two officers who killed Ghaisar, though the Interior Department has said they’re both on administrative leave. The lack of public information on the investigation has garnered criticism. The Washington Post’s editorial board criticized the dearth of information about the shooting last December, calling it “a mockery of the open society that distinguishes the United States from autocracies and dictatorships.”

But the veil of secrecy surrounding Ghaisar’s death was lifted a bit on Wednesday, when Fairfax County Chief of Police Edwin Roessler issued a press release for the dashcam video. While Fairfax officers weren’t involved in Ghaisar’s shooting, they did assist the U.S. Park Police in chasing Ghaisar’s vehicle. Roessler said he was releasing the video as a “matter of transparency to all in our community, especially the Ghaisar family.” He added he was confident in the FBI’s investigation.

U.S Park Police say they pursued Ghaisar’s vehicle after his SUV was involved in a collision on southbound George Washington Memorial Parkway at Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia. Ghaisar reportedly was hit by an Uber driver in a Toyota Corolla before driving off. The Uber driver told FOX 5 that he and his passenger got Ghaisar’s license plate tag and called police. The Uber driver and his passenger did not report any injuries. The Uber driver was ticketed for failing to maintain proper control, according to the police report HuffPost obtained.

Fairfax Police later joined U.S. Park Police in their pursuit of Ghaisar, which initially began around 7:30 p.m. EST. Ghaisar is seen in the video being stopped twice by U.S. Park Police before coming to a full stop the third time at Fort Hunt and Alexandria. During the previous stops, police are seen pulling up alongside Ghaisar’s car, and drawing their weapons. Ghaisar’s family has speculated that the officer’s weapons frightened Ghaisar and caused him to drive off again.

The video “shows the senseless killing of a young man at the hands of those charged” with protecting the public, said Roy Austin Jr., an attorney for the family who previously served in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division before joining former President Barack Obama’s White House.

“Bijan Ghaisar was repeatedly threatened by over-aggressive and out-of-control law enforcement officers, after he drove away from a minor traffic incident in which he was the victim and in which there was little property damage and no known injuries,” Austin said in a Wednesday statement. “No one was even close to being in harm’s way until a pair of U.S. Park Police officers repeatedly shot Bijan at close range as he sat, unarmed, in his Jeep on a residential street. We don’t know why the U.S. Park Police officers shot Bijan multiple times, or whether those officers are still patrolling the area’s parkways. What we do know is that justice demands that those responsible for taking Bijan’s life answer for this illegal and unconstitutional killing.”

Ghaisar’s family and friends want to know how a minor fender bender escalated into a police chase that ultimately ended in the young man’s death. Ghaisar graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 and worked for his father’s firm Caesar & Associates in McLean, Virginia. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

Friends and family who knew Ghaisar described him as being very upbeat and positive and as an avid New England Patriots fan. A first-generation Iranian-American, Ghaisar and sister were born in Virginia. His parents immigrated to the United States decades ago.

“I believe that the people who shot and killed Bijan should be held accountable. Doesn’t matter if they are police officers or civilians. Once you kill someone in this heinous way, you should be held accountable and that’s what I want to see,” said Kelly Ghaisar. “This whole thing, it’s such an out of body experience ... but we are trying to cope because we want to get justice for Bijan. It’s what drives us to get out of bed and do something.”

[Andrea]

Bodycam video appears to show Chicago cop shooting at man who’s running away

Bodycam video appears to show Chicago cop shooting at man who’s running away

Police bodycam footage recently released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability appears to show an officer opening fire at a man who was running away and down a flight of stairs.

The footage was made public late last week, 60 days after a Chicago Police officer fatally shot Aquoness Cathery, 24, in the 6100 block of South King Drive.

Police said at the time that Cathery, who lived in the Park Manor neighborhood, was armed when he was shot. After the shooting, a police spokesman tweeted a photo from the scene that showed a black handgun resting on stairs. Bodycam footage appears to show that same handgun on the stairs where Cathery was shot.

Plain-clothes officers from the Grand Crossing District responded about 2:15 p.m. on Nov. 29, 2017, to a report of shots fired the 6100 block of South King Drive, where they confronted an armed man, Chicago Police said at the time.

The released footage begins with an office hustling up a set of wooden stairs and bursting into an apartment with at least three people inside. As the officer runs into the kitchen, he sees Cathery running through the back door and out onto a shared porch area.

The video shows Cathery holding a gun in his right hand as he turns right to run down a set of stairs. As he is turning, Cathery’s right arm is pressed against the handrail to the stairs and the gun appears to be pointed in the officer’s direction. As Cathery rounds the stairs, the officer opens fire.

The officer partly blocks his bodycam as he walks down the stairs. Cathery can be seen lying on the ground, with his feet on the bottom two stairs as the officer tells him to “relax” before calling for an ambulance as someone screams in the background. As he’s on the ground, Cathery raises his hands, one of them covered in blood, and looks at the officer, who tells him “It’s OK.”

“I got one person shot,” the officer tells the dispatcher. “Shots fired by police. Shots fired by police.”

Seconds later, another officer walks down the stairs, and the officer who shot Cathery tells him, “Secure that weapon” that is on the stairs.

Cathery was pronounced dead less than 12 hours after he was shot, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Court records show that in the six years before his death, Cathery was arrested several times, mostly on charges related to guns and drugs. In 2014, he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison after he was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

COPA has not yet ruled if the shooting was justified or not and a spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment further. The officer who shot Cathery was placed on desk duty for 30 days.

[Andrea]

Deputy Caught on Camera Kicking Suspect’s Head During Arrest

http://fox40.com/2018/02/01/deputy-caught-on-camera-kicking-suspects-head-during-arrest/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_con tent=5a738f1304d3011002d0b5a1&utm_medium=trueAnthe m&utm_source=twitter

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - After reviewing video circulating on social media that shows a brutal arrest conducted by two sheriff's deputies in San Bernardino, officials have asked members of the public who witnessed the incident to come forward.

Authorities are concerned with the actions of one of the deputies in particular who is seen in the cellphone video repeatedly kicking the suspect in the head after the man was handcuffed and his body limp, according to KTLA.

The arrest occurred last Friday around 1 a.m., and investigators are hoping to interview motorists who were in the area at that time, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

The one-minute clip opens as one deputy has 21-year-old Gerardo Bernabe Vasquez pinned to the ground, with Vasquez's legs squirming.

Moments later, a second deputy arrives on the scene. As the second deputy begins to arrange Vasquez's hands to cuff them, the first deputy punches Vasquez twice in the head.

After Vasquez is handcuffed, the deputies each pick up one of his arms as they attempt to load him into a patrol vehicle. But Vasquez's body has gone limp, his torso and legs flopping toward the ground as his arms are raised behind his back.

The deputies drop him, and it is then that the first deputy begins to kick his face. It appears he strikes him three times, stepping on his head in the final blow.

Vasquez was eventually booked on suspicion of resisting or obstruction an officer, was cited and later released, the Sheriff's Department said. It was unclear why or how the two parties initiated contact.

The deputy seen striking Vasquez was placed on paid administrative leave, pending the results of the probe. Authorities said they would not identify the deputy while the investigation is ongoing.

Sheriff's officials said they were already investigating the incident when the video gained attention on social media, and Sheriff John McMahon said he found the "level of force" seen in the video concerning.

“I expect our employees always to remain professional when contacting the public, who we serve," McMahon said in a statement. "I can assure you that we take these matters very seriously and we will conduct a thorough and complete investigation.”

[Andrea]

Darby cops' arrest of 11-year-old girl was excessive

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/jenice_armstrong/darby-cops-arrest-of-11-year-old-girl-was-excessive-jenice-armstrong-20180215.html

After a call came in about a disturbance on a bus Tuesday afternoon, Darby Borough police went into action. An officer arrived on the scene in Delaware County, did some interviews, and determined that he had probable cause to make an arrest. So he handcuffed an 11-year-old girl.

Yes, you read that correctly.

A fifth grader at Chester Community Charter School, Zakiyah is small for her age. She stands about 4-feet-5 and weighs just 55 pounds. A cellphone video taken before she was taken into custody shows her sitting on a school bus. She appears calm. Still, she was cuffed with her little wrists behind her back and placed in the back of a police van.

Zakiyah (I’m not giving out her last name) was understandably terrified and told NBC10 that she thought she would never be able to see her family again.

Her mother told me Thursday she was still trying to wrap her head around the situation.

“I never thought that I had to give my 11-year-old ‘the police talk,’ ” said Jawania Browne, referring to warnings that African American parents have been giving their children for years about staying safe around police officers. “I was thinking more so my son, and he’s only 1. But as he grows up, I was thinking that I’ve got to really drill it into my son – but not my daughter. But I guess none of us are exempt.”

Authorities took Zakiyah to the Darby police station and placed her in a juvenile holding area. Zakiyah was presented with a non-traffic citation that alleges “defendant did, with the intent to cause public inconvenience or alarm, create a physically hazardous or offensive condition by actions which served no legitimate purpose to the actor.”

Mind you, this drama started because she and a schoolmate had gotten into a fight on a school bus. I don’t know what happened, and frankly I’m not all that interested. To me, what started the dispute doesn’t matter. Children fight. They’re kids.

I’m concerned about that little girl. She’s traumatized. Her attorney, Joe Montgomery, says it was “the worst day of her life.”

Zakiyah’s mother says that since being taken into custody, her daughter — who already had been in counseling for emotional issues — hasn’t been sleeping well and has had nightmares. This isn’t how elementary-age kids are supposed to be treated.

Max Tribble, a charter school spokesman, declined to release details of the incident, citing privacy concerns. He said the school, in Delaware County’s Chester Upland School District, hadn’t yet been contacted by Darby police.

I also reached out to Chief Robert Smythe at home, where he was recuperating from a bad case of the flu. He said the arresting officer had merely been following established protocol.

“I understand that it sounds harsh,” Smythe told me between coughs. “She was in custody for an assault of which we were processing her. There were wounds to the other child. I understand how it sounds, but that’s the policy.

“She was being processed because she committed an aggressive assault against another person,” Smythe continued. “We had her in custody for 57 minutes. It’s not like we put her in a cell and held her for hours. … There are police policies that we try to follow. If you are in custody, you are in handcuffs. That’s the policy.”

As for her being detained in a juvenile holding area, he said, “She just can’t walk the hallways.”

Well, what about her being put in the back of a police van?

“The officer that responded, that was his vehicle for the day,” Smythe said.

Yeah, tell that to her mom. Browne is understandably upset. She’s keeping Zakiyah home from school for now, taking her to counseling, and also considering private school options.

“I would never have thought that they would have locked up an 11-year-old child and treated her like that,” she said.

Nor would I.

[Andrea]

San Diego police points-for-arrests program under investigation

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-sdpd-program-20180316-story.html

San Diego police Chief David Nisleit has launched an internal investigation into a program intended to reward officers for drug-related arrests and citations in communities near the border with Mexico.

According to a memo sent to about 90 officers within the department’s Southern Division last week, patrol officers were to receive a half a point to 2 points for the arrests or citations, with the top point-earners given the opportunity to work in specialized units for up to a month.

On Friday, Nisleit denounced the concept of the program, which he said was not authorized by the department’s top brass. He said the program was shut down before it was implemented.

“Programs like this are not in line with the values of the San Diego Police Department and something that I would ever allow,” Nisleit said during a news conference called in response to outcry in the community.

The uproar marks Nisleit’s first encounter with a Police Department controversy since he became chief earlier this month.

During a separate news conference held outside the Police Department’s downtown headquarters, about a dozen community leaders said the matter represents an opportunity for the new chief to build a strong relationship with the community.

“This is really a test of Chief Nisleit's new administration," said Andrea Renee St. Julian, vice president of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association. "He really needs to step up to the plate and he needs to show he is serious about attacking the attitudes that gave rise to this email, not just through words but through action."

St. Julian and other leaders demanded transparency from the Police Department and called for a separate, independent investigation into the program by the Attorney General’s Office.

They said even if the program wasn’t enacted, the idea behind it enforces the notion that there is a culture of racial bias within the department.

"We're calling on the chief to talk about how he is going to solve the problem where there is a culture in SDPD where someone felt comfortable enough to send an email to 90 officers about an unethical and unjust incentivized program … that would target people of color and minorities," said Genevieve Jones-Wright, a deputy public defender running for district attorney.

Darwin Fishman, a criminology professor at San Diego Mesa College, said the concept behind incentive programs opens the door for officers to make "unethical decisions" to meet a quota.

During his news conference, Nisleit said the idea of the program came from a “front-line supervisor with the intent of motivating our officers and focusing their efforts on drug enforcement within our community … in direct response to numerous community complaints regarding this drug activity. ”

He added: “The program was never intended to target anyone from a specific group, race or socioeconomic class.”

According to the memo sent to Southern Division officers — which was obtained by the Union-Tribune — patrol officers who received the most points for arrests or citations between March 1 and April 14 were to be given the opportunity to work in a specialized unit for two to four weeks, regardless of their tenure. The memo says the voluntary program was meant to motivate officers, increase proactive policing and help build knowledge and skills.

The memo was emailed by a sergeant to Southern Division officers — who patrol neighborhoods including San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Egger Highlands, Palm City and Nestor — on March 9.

Nisleit said his office was made aware of the program the following day and halted it. The chief said he reviewed arrest statistics and that there was not a spike in that time period.

“All of the arrests were based on probable cause,” he added.

News of the program came to light after a police officer came forward with details in an interview with 10 News — a move community leaders said shows there is not an open-door policy within the Police Department.

Nisleit disagreed, urging officers who feel their concerns are being ignored by supervisors to reach out to him and his assistant chiefs.

“I want to hear about it,” he said.

Nisleit said his department’s internal investigation would get to the bottom of how the details of the program were shared with officers without approval. The chief said any “appropriate corrective measures” would be taken based on the results of the investigation.

[Andrea]

Week of Hell: Dozens of African Detainees Allege Serial Abuse and Hate Crimes at Notorious Private Immigration Jail

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/24/week-of-hell-dozens-of-african-detainees-allege-serial-abuse-and-hate-crimes-at-notorious-private-immigration-jail/

Late last month, roughly 80 immigrant men from Somalia, Kenya, and Sudan arrived at a remote, for-profit detention center in West Texas to await deportation. In the week that followed, the men were pepper-sprayed, beaten, threatened, taunted with racial slurs, and subjected to sexual abuse. The treatment they endured amounted to multiple violations of federal law and grave human rights abuses — and it all happened over the course of a single week. These are the findings of chilling new report by a collection of Texas-based legal advocacy groups.

The alleged abuse was so grave that advocates for the men have now filed a series of complaints with the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and local authorities calling for investigations into what happened behind the locked doors of the detention facility. According to the advocates, the U.S. attorney’s office has forwarded those complaints, which included alleged hate crimes perpetrated by detention center guards, to the FBI.

The alleged abuse was so grave that advocates for the men have now filed a series of complaints with the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and local authorities.

The detention center in question, known as the West Texas Detention Facility, is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a for-profit outfit that, according to its website, “manages 18 facilities with a total inmate capacity of over 13,000 and leases one facility to a law enforcement agency.” The report, published Thursday, provides a jarring glimpse inside the world of privatized immigrant detention, which the Trump administration is seeking to expand. The allegations bear disturbing similarities to other abuse claims made by detainees of African descent in recent weeks.

Compiled by the Texas A&M University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic, and RAICES, a Texas-based legal organization, the report is based on interviews with 30 Somali men who described their experiences at the West Texas Detention Facility from February 23 to March 2 of this year. The report points to consistent accounts of detention center personnel, including the warden of the facility, all of whom are contractors under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, engaging in deeply abusive practices.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) takes very seriously any allegations of misconduct or unsafe conditions,” ICE spokesperson Leticia Zamarippa said in a statement to The Intercept. “ICE maintains a strict zero tolerance policy for any kind of abusive behavior and requires all staff working with the agency to adhere to this policy. All allegations are independently reviewed by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility. ICE has not been made aware of any allegations prior to this initial reporting from RAICES.”

The backgrounds of the men, who ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s, varied. “Some came to the U.S. as refugees when they were children. Others entered recently with visas or without status,” the report says. Some of the detainees are married to U.S. citizens and have U.S. citizen children. One of the interviewees in the report who fits that description, a man whose name was given only as Taifa, came to the U.S. at age 12. He was convicted of marijuana possession in 2002. Twelve years later, ICE came to his home and arrested him. He has been moving through immigration court and the detention system ever since.

What all of the men have in common, the report notes, is that they “were in ICE custody for the sole purpose of effectuating deportation after receiving final orders of removal.” All of the men interviewed reported having been pepper-sprayed at least once during their week in detention, while 14 others — nearly half of the interviewees — reported other types of physical abuse.

All of the men interviewed reported having been pepper-sprayed at least once during their week in detention.

Diana Tafur, a supervising attorney with RAICES who took part in the investigation, told The Intercept that for reasons of confidentiality, the full complaints detailing what the men experienced have not been made public. Tafur said the network of groups that investigated the alleged abuse were initially tipped off by family members and attorneys for the men locked inside the West Texas facility. The interviews, which were conducted last week, culminated in complaints filed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and its inspector general’s office, as well as local authorities.

“The assistant United States attorney for the Western District of Texas responded right away and they did say that they had forwarded the information to the El Paso division of the FBI,” Tafur said, adding that the “horrific abuse rose to violate various federal crimes, as well as civil violations.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

One detainee, a man called Dalmar, told the legal advocates that the warden of the West Texas Detention Facility hit him in the face four times while he was in the nurse’s office. “Are you going to let this happen?” Dalmar recalled telling the medical staff, to which a staff member allegedly responded, “We didn’t see anything.” Dalmar claims he was then “placed in solitary confinement, where I was forced to lie face down on the floor with my hands handcuffed behind my back while I was kicked repeatedly in the ribs by the warden.”

“When I told him, ‘I‘ll get a lawyer to sue you,’ the warden responded, ‘We’ve got enough money,’” Dalmar claimed.

According to the LaSalle Corrections website, Mike Sheppard, a veteran corrections officer, has overseen the West Texas Detention Facility as warden since 2015.

The Intercept reached out to the West Texas Detention Facility looking to speak to an official who could comment on the report. A receptionist at the facility said, “Technically we’re not supposed to give out that information or we can’t give out that information.” When asked what specific categories of information the facility couldn’t give out, the receptionist replied, “Any information.” The receptionist then provided a number for LaSalle’s corporate office. The number connected to a voicemail box that had not been set up. The Intercept also called LaSalle’s Austin office. A receptionist there said an official with the company would or would not respond with comment later in the day. The company ultimately did not respond.

Under ICE’s 2000 National Detention Standards, as Thursday’s report notes, contractors working with the immigration enforcement agency are permitted to use force “only after all reasonable efforts to resolve a situation have failed. Staff must attempt to gain a detainee’s willing cooperation before using force, and under no circumstances should force be used to punish a detainee. Yet numerous detainees reported excessive use of force as punishment, without cause, and as the initial action taken in a situation.”

The complaints in the report shed light on the lack of enforcement options available under the standards and ICE’s unwillingness to ask private contractors “for strict adherence” to them, said Elissa Steglich, a professor at the University of Texas Law School’s immigration clinic. “These are contractual arrangements with private corporations, and we’ve seen ICE defer to their private interests,” she said.

The men interviewed for the report independently describe witnessing or being subjected to physical force that included multiple accounts of officers throwing detainees to the floor and, in one case, slamming a man’s head against the concrete “even though he did not resist.” The report adds: “One of the detainees, Sharmaarke, alleged that LaSalle corrections officers sexually assaulted him by fondling his penis and groin area over his clothes while he was pushed against the wall.”

“This happened to him multiple times,” the report claims.

In addition to the physical abuse, the detainees who had been through the West Texas facility described use of solitary confinement — what the government euphemistically refers to as “administrative segregation” — that appears inconsistent with the guidelines ICE contractors are required to abide by.

Under those rules, a committee at the facility is required to hold a hearing and issue a formal order before a detainee is removed from the general population. “None of the detainees we talked to who were placed in solitary confinement were provided copies of their segregation orders, found guilty of committing a prohibited act at a hearing, or posed a threat,” the report notes.

Instead, the report suggests a pattern of detainees being thrown into solitary for arbitrary or vindictive reasons, including asking for socks and underwear, talking too loudly to the warden, and asking to be sent back to Somalia.
MESA, AZ - OCTOBER 15: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), charter jet is pushed back for departure on October 15, 2015 in Mesa, Ariz. The plane, carrying undocumented immigrants, flew to other states for follow-on ICE deportation flights to the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. ICE builds deportation cases against thousands of undocumented immigrants. The number of ICE detentions and deportations has dropped in the last two years since some states adopted laws limiting how state law enforcement agencies cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Thursday’s report comes just weeks after an Intercept story on strikingly similar complaints made by a group of Somali detainees at an immigration detention center 1,800 miles away from western Texas — the Glades County Detention Center in Florida. Since December, dozens of Somalis who were on a botched deportation flight that was returned to Miami have been in detention, several of them accusing guards at the detention facility of violent assaults and racism. (ICE has denied the allegations.)

Detainees in Texas reported being pepper-sprayed on multiple occasions, leading, in some cases, to difficulty breathing and coughing up blood; being placed in solitary confinement as a form of punishment, including after being pepper-sprayed; and being the subject of racial epithets from guards at the detention facility. Similarly, some detainees at Glades reported that guards used pepper spray against them as a form of punishment, including by spraying into a crowded cell, making it difficult to breathe. The Glades detainees also said that they were sent to segregation units after making complaints and that they had experienced racism at the jail. “They called them ‘niggers.’ They called them ‘boy.’ They’ve said things like, ‘We’re sending you boys back to the jungle,’” Lisa Lehner, one of the attorneys representing the Glades detainees, told The Intercept last month.

At the West Texas facility, detainees similarly reported guards using racist language when addressing them. “Shut your black ass up. You don’t deserve nothing. You belong at the back of that cage,” one detainee recalled an officer saying. “Boy, I’m going to show you. You’re my bitch,” recalled another. “You are a terrorist,” said a third.

“The pattern and practice of abuses LaSalle corrections officers engaged against the group of African detainees over the course of a week amounts to hate crimes, conspiracy against rights, and a deprivation of rights under color of law,” says the report. “The officers used epithets (‘terrorist’ and ‘boy’ and ‘n*’) in combination with beatings, broad and indiscriminate use of pepper spray, and routine and arbitrary use of segregation and other violations to demean and injure the men.”

By congressional mandate, ICE is required to meet a quota of 34,000 beds filled each day. The Trump administration has sought to increase that number to 51,000. Housing that many people requires significant resources devoted to medical care. In that area, too, the West Texas Detention Facility appears to have fallen woefully short.

In 2015, Taifa, the man who came to the U.S. at age 12 and now has a U.S. citizen family, was involved in a car accident where he shattered his pelvis and suffered brain trauma. According to the report, his injuries require multiple medications and psychiatric care. However, since he was detained, Taifa said he had not received medications or had access to a psychiatrist. A detainee named Mohamed, who claims to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the torture and murder of family members in his home country, added that he was denied medication to treat his PTSD at the facility. He also claimed that he had not received any medical care in response to him coughing up blood after being pepper-sprayed several times.

Many of the men interviewed for the report have spent months or years in detention after receiving a final order of deportation because ICE was not able to deport them to Somalia. Steglich, the University of Texas Law School professor, said two deportation flights were canceled in the last month, without explanation from ICE. Many of the men did not have travel documents and could not reach their embassy, which might have been a reason for the delay, she noted.

“Overall, this raises a real question of the credibility of ICE engaging in pre-detention of folks who have been ordered deported without any assurance that flights can actually happen,” Steglich said. “I think it’s significant that we saw weeks, if not months, of detention that we know of, and two flights not going forward. And that begs the question of the necessity of [ICE] detaining folks when they did and keeping folks detained.”

The West Texas Detention Facility has a history of scrutiny for its conditions. In 2016, the ICE Office of Detention Oversight reported the detention facility had multiple deficiencies with discipline and health services. “A review of facility training records showed facility staff did not consistently receive required training on the use of non-lethal equipment, e.g. oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray,” ICE investigators found, using the name for the active ingredient in pepper spray.

A 2016 article from Fronteras Desk, a collaboration of public radio stations across the southwestern U.S., mentions detainees complaining of inhumane treatment at the facility, including some who said they were forced to use plastic bags as toilets. In May 2017, Mexican journalist Martín Méndez Pineda, who was seeking asylum in the U.S., wrote a Washington Post column on his experiences at the West Texas Detention Facility, where he was held. It was there, he said, that he “experienced the worst days of my life.”

“I’ve had family members tell me their loved one will not tell them about what’s going on because they’re too afraid to do so.”

Alan Dicker from the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee, a collective that works with detained migrants, said the report’s findings were not surprising. But many detainees will not speak out about conditions inside the facility, he added, out of fear of retaliation.

“They’re terrified,” Dicker told The Intercept. “I’ve had family members tell me their loved one will not tell them about what’s going on because they’re too afraid to do so.”

According to the LaSalle website, the detention center was owned by Emerald Corrections until April 2017, when LaSalle acquired it. Sheppard, the current warden of the facility, was previously working for the facility under Emerald, according to LaSalle’s website.

Though complaints of abuse have dogged the West Texas Detention Facility for years, Steglich said the guards are no doubt emboldened by the anti-immigrant rhetoric emanating from the highest levels of government. In January, for example, President Donald Trump reportedly used the word “shithole” to describe African countries.

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