damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's Journal3 Cops Caught On Tape Brutally Beating Unarmed Michigan Man With No Apparent Provocation
On January 28, Floyd Dent was arrested in Inkster, Michigan and charged with resisting arrest, assault and possession of cocaine. The charges seemed unusual considering Dent had worked at Ford for 37 years and had no criminal history.
A video of Dent’s arrest, released today, reveals a far more disturbing picture. It shows Dent being dragged from his car, placed in a chokehold and struck 16 times in the head. Dent was also Tasered three times.
In all, 10 cops arrived at the scene. They were all white, according to Dent’s attorney. "
*According to the police, when Dent exited the car he said, “I’ll kill you.” There is no audio recording of the incident. The officer who had Dent in a chokehold says that Dent bit him, but he did not seek medical attention or photograph his alleged injury.
Dent says the bag of crack cocaine the officers claim they found was planted and, according to his attorney, there is unreleased video which shows the officers planting the drugs. The officer who repeatedly punched Dent was “was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for planting evidence and falsifying reports” in 2003. He was ultimately found not guilty.
“I’m lucky to be living. I think they was trying to kill me, especially when they had choked me. I mean, I was on my last breath. I kept telling the officer, ‘Please, I can’t breathe,’” Dent said in a media availability today. "
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/25/3639158/3-cops-caught-tape-brutally-beating-unarmed-michigan-man-no-apparent-provocation/
4th OPD officer to face criminal charges of excessive force
"Orlando Police Officer Peter Delio is facing criminal charges for rupturing a man's spleen in a holding cell"
For the fourth time, an Orlando police officer is facing criminal charges after being accused of using excessive violence related to behavior while on duty in 2014.
Officer Peter Delio, 30, was booked into the Orange County Jail early Tuesday morning on felony battery charges and was quickly released on $2,500 bail.
Delio is accused of striking 41-year-old Robert Liese so hard in the abdomen with his knee that he ruptured the man's spleen and tore his stomach lining. The incident happened Aug. 12 inside a holding cell at an Orlando Police Department substation downtown."
*While inside the holding cell, Liese blacked out. By the time he woke up, he was at Orlando Regional Medical Center, and his spleen had already been removed.
"I woke up in the hospital to the nurse telling me they had to do emergency surgery and a doctor would be in to explain what happened," Liese said."
An internal-affairs investigation found that Delio had violated OPD policy when he struck Liese. As punishment for the administrative violation, Delio was suspended for 40 hours without pay, a consequence Liese said was too light to make up for his injures.
"He lost five days of pay," Liese said. "According to them, that's severe. I hate to see what they think minimal punishment is. I feel like I'm the only one paying for my injuries that he caused."
It took about two hours for Liese to get medical attention. Delio declined to be interviewed by FDLE investigators last month, the report said."
Video at link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-orlando-officer-peter-delio-charges-20150324-story.html
Trooper arrested after wedding brawl sues Pittsburgh cops
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A state trooper sued Pittsburgh police on Tuesday, saying they arrested him on false charges and used excessive force — including a kick to the groin — when he tried to calm a rowdy groomsman following a brawl after his brother's wedding."
*Trooper David Williams, 35, of Plum, contends city officers falsely claimed he attacked them when, instead, they pushed and punched him for no reason, escalating a situation he was trying to help defuse after the Sept. 1 melee.
Williams spent 17 hours in jail and was suspended by state police for 10 days without pay before Allegheny County prosecutors dropped charges including rioting and aggravated assault, both felonies.
"It's just not true, everything they filed against me," Williams told The Associated Press. "All these charges, they just don't exist."
*His lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, seeks unspecified monetary damages.
His attorney, Timothy O'Brien, said the lawsuit targets the "unnecessary escalation of otherwise manageable situations. It's a problem within the Pittsburgh Police Department and it's a problem across the country."
http://www.timesunion.com/news/crime/article/Trooper-sues-over-arrest-force-in-wedding-brawl-6155703.php
Federal review says Philadelphia police need new policies to govern shootings
The Philadelphia police force needs to revamp the way its officers use force in the wake of hundreds of police shootings in recent years, the Justice Department said in a new report that found “an undercurrent of significant strife between the community” and the police there.
This report looked at the number of times Philadelphia police officers shot someone between 2007 and 2013, finding nearly 400 such incidents over that seven-year span. Fifty-nine unarmed people were fatally shot over this period, and half of the unarmed people were shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat, the report states.
However, investigators say it is impossible to put this number into context, because there is no reliable national data on officer-involved shootings. “Therefore, we cannot say whether this number is high or low,” the report states."
*The Justice Department found problems with the way police shootings are investigated, and in the report it urges the department to create a unit charged with looking into every time an officer uses deadly force. A board including an officer who outranks the officer involved in the shooting, an officer on their level and a member of the public should be able to call witnesses and ask questions before voting on a decision, the report states."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/23/federal-review-says-philadelphia-police-need-new-policies-to-govern-shootings-by-officers/
Police shooting of mentally ill woman reaches US supreme court
In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, a mentally ill 56-year-old woman, was shot multiple times by San Francisco police officers. The police had been called to take her for an emergency psychiatric evaluation when she threatened a case worker, but the situation quickly escalated.
After Sheehan threatened the officers with a knife, they shot her five or six times, including in the hip and head. She survived but needed two hip replacement surgeries.
Sheehan sued the officers and the city for failing to take her mental health status into account during arrest. Her lawyers argue that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires officers to “reasonably” modify arrest procedures when confronting people who have mental illness; San Francisco says the ADA does not apply to arrests, especially with public safety at stake.
On Monday, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments in the Sheehan case, to decide whether and how disabilities regulations apply to police policies and procedures during arrests."
*Just last week, video footage went viral of Dallas police shooting dead a mentally ill man whose mother had called 911 for help; a month earlier, international attention focused on a 17-year-old shot dead on a visit to a Texas police station that her family described as a cry for help.
Though national data on police shootings is unreliable, a 2013 study estimated that at least half of all people shot and killed by US police have mental health problems. Despite multiple conclusions by the US Justice Department that police forces systematically use force against the mentally ill, there remains no national standard for crisis intervention."
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/23/police-shooting-mentally-ill-teresa-sheehan-supreme-court
Judging the Cops
On an autumn night last year a 16-year-old high school student, Thai Gurule, was crossing a street in Portland, Oregon, accompanied by his older brother and a few friends. No one was breaking the law, being disruptive, or acting suspiciously. Yet the black teenager would soon be stopped by police officers without probable cause, illegally detained, shoved off his feet onto the ground, punched multiple times in the torso, kneed in the stomach, grabbed by the hair, and Tased.
He would later be charged with assaulting a public safety officer, resisting arrest, and attempted strangulation, per the narrative of the cops who wrote the police report."
*But thanks in part to bystanders who captured video of this teen's encounter with police, Judge Diana Stuart acquitted him last week. After being illegally stopped, her ruling acknowledged, the youth did tense his arms, struggle to stay on his feet, and flail around with his limbs. But he did so to protect himself from "senseless and aggressive" violence that "a reasonable person would have felt was excessive force," she found, adding that police misrepresented parts of the encounter in their report, which she did not find credible after reviewing the video evidence."
*Portland police union president Daryl Turner on Monday decried a Multnomah County judge's findings last week that officers used excessive force in the arrest of a 16-year-old boy. Turner called the ruling "unfair'' and "discouraging,'' and questioned the judge's authority to second-guess the officers."
He doesn't just complain that the case was wrongly decided. As he sees it, judges never have any business evaluating police actions or assessing the credibility of their testimony. What does he think trials are for if not to understand what happened with the benefit of hindsight? Why does he imagine that police officers are cross-examined if there is no need to determine if they are credible? His are the words of a police representative whose civic knowledge has atrophied due to years of enjoying excessive deference. Basic safeguards strike him as "discouraging."
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/03/where-excessive-force-meets-resisting-arrest/388297/
Judicial, police reform needed
The recent appalling incident that left UVA honor student Martese Johnson bloodied and arrested is yet another example of the apparent increase of excessive force used by police across the country. Unfortunately, this incident is nothing new as police brutality, especially against minorities, has been a widespread problem in this country for a very long time. Technology has just allowed for this issue to come to light, allowing anyone to record high definition video at anytime and anywhere with their phones.
The news has been peppered with similar incidents over the last year, luckily this one did not end fatally unlike many of the others. "
Incidents like this, and the numerous police brutality videos found online, hurt public trust in the police. Law abiding citizens feel anxious and nervous around police officers, worrying if they are unknowingly doing something that would warrant the police officer to ticket or arrest them. Last year I was pulled over for speeding. I was doing 37 in a 35 that just turned into a 25 when the police officer coming the other way flashed his lights. The police officer approached my car with his hand on his gun and kept it there the whole time, barely showing his face by leaning forward. I had my hands on the steering wheel, showed no aggression or agitation. Why was I treated like a criminal? It has become the norm and it’s abhorrent. People of all social backgrounds, ethnicities, sex, and age get the same treatment. There seems to be more and more insolation between law enforcement and the communities; the mantra “to serve and protect”, has become “to fine and arrest”.
*It is said that the average citizen commits 3 felonies daily on average in the US. This statistic is appalling and just shows how ridiculous and numerous laws have become. About ½ of the prison population stems from victimless crimes."
Finally, police need to be trained and acclimated into their communities. The police officer who pulled me over seemed scared, as if he was waiting for me to attack. Police officers need to be trained to not assume everyone is a violent criminal and to not rush to use their firearms. Police need to be able to protect themselves, obviously, but not to the point where it makes everyone feel like a criminal or in danger from the officer."
http://augustafreepress.com/will-hammer-judicial-police-reform-needed/
American Drug War
#t=2310http://filmingcops.com/the-war-on-drugs-and-prison-industrial-complex-explained-in-pictures-7-infographics-you-need-to-see/
Lessons for U.S. police from an unexpected place – Northern Ireland
*The day the Ulster constabulary passed into history, it was replaced by a new agency called the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Its new commander, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, spoke of the opportunity to create “a culture where equality for all is offered and where respect for cultural diversity and for individual dignity is the order of the day.”
The new force still included former Royal Ulster Constabulary constables, but heavy recruitment of Catholics began immediately. With new training and a makeover that included changes in everything from attitude to uniforms, Flanagan created a new department that was far more representative of the general local population. The force is now roughly 30 percent Catholic and has won the respect of many of the old regime’s harshest critics.
If this kind of turnaround can happen in Northern Ireland, it can happen in Ferguson, Missouri."
*Just as troubling, the report found that Ferguson’s police force and court system viewed the mostly African-Americans community as a source of revenue. The more summons police handed out, the more the city was able to collect in fines. This picture of racism, brutality and corruption has made it all but inevitable that the federal government will intervene in Ferguson, perhaps disbanding the current department and creating a new one, following the Northern Ireland model.
Ferguson would thus become the latest American city to resolve its policing problems by starting over from scratch."
*Big-city police departments from Chicago to New York have endured scandals involving corruption, racism and brutality. But reform, not dissolution, has been the preferred method of change.
That was not true in Jennings, Missouri, several years ago, when city officials decided that institutional racism was so bad that they had no choice but to start over. Among the officers fired from that disbanded force was Darren Wilson, who found a new job in Ferguson. He was the officer who fired the shots that killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, last summer.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/03/20/one-sure-way-to-fix-the-ferguson-police-force-disband-it/
Why is the government spying on Black Lives Matter protests?
"America's disturbing surveillance apparatus reaches a chilling new low. Inside a perverse new form of patriotism "
A database managed by a secretive Pentagon intelligence agency called Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, was found last month to contain reports on at least four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, many of them on college campuses. Ten peace activists who handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches outside Halliburton’s headquarters in Houston in June 2004 were reported as a national security threat. So were people who assembled at a Quaker meeting house in Lake Worth, Fla., or protested military recruiters at sites such as New York University, the State University of New York and campuses of the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Cruz.
The protesters were written up under a Pentagon program called Talon, which is supposed to collect raw data on threats to defense facilities in the United States. "
The logic that peace activists must be in league with terrorists has never been adequately explained, but it follows along the same line of thought which leads conservatives to assume that decadent left-wing hippies are natural allies of Muslim fundamentalists. The great sage of late 20th Century conservative philosophy, Ann Coulter, said it best:
We need to execute people like John Walker [Lindh] in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.
She later clarified that statement by saying, “When I said we should ‘execute’ John Walker Lindh, I mis-spoke. What I meant to say was, ‘We should burn John Walker Lindh alive and televise it on prime-time network TV’. My apologies for any misunderstanding that might have occurred.” Yes, she said we should burn him alive on television."
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/19/a_racial_big_brother_debacle_why_is_the_government_spying_on_black_lives_matter_protests/
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