damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's JournalAlabama Teen Arrested, Dies From Excessive Force By Police
A teen in Hunstville, Alabama, who died last year while being arrested in a drug sting, has been found to have “suffered broken ribs, had a flashlight shoved in his mouth and suffered cardiac arrest while officers sat on him,” according to AL.com.
Reportedly, the 17-year-old had choked and was vomiting while being handcuffed by police and subsequently lost consciousness. Authorities said that they were under the impression that the teen had overdosed, but a lawsuit brought on by Nancy Smith, the mother of the young man, claims that “no signs of an overdose had been found.”
Police arrested the teen after they sent an informant to buy drugs from him. Upon arrival to the scene, officers “held the teen down and inserted two pens and the butt of a flashlight into his mouth searching for contraband,” AL.com reports. Once paramedics arrived, the teen, who was 6 feet tall and weighed 130 pounds, had turned blue and was barely able to breathe. Five days later, on June 18th, 2013, the young man died at a local hospital.
According to AL.com, no drugs were found at any point. "
Smith filed a wrongful death suit in March of this year, but the suit was initially dismissed last month on “technical grounds.” City Attorney Peter Joffrion responded to the initial complaint, saying that while the death was unfortunate, he believed that responding officers "handled this matter appropriately."
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/alabama-teen-arrested-dies-excessive-force-police
Ferguson police officer resigned on safety concerns, lawyer says
(Reuters) - The white police officer who shot an unarmed black teenager to death this summer in a St. Louis suburb decided to resign from the force because of threats against fellow officers after a grand jury decided not to indict him, his lawyer said on Sunday."
*Wilson, who said he was acting in self-defense and that his conscience is clear, had been on administrative leave and in seclusion."
*Some critics now want Tom Jackson, Ferguson's police chief, to resign as well, to promote reconciliation in the St. Louis suburb, where most residents are black and the police force are mostly white.
"I think it’s impossible for this community to move forward with him still in that role," said St. Louis Alderman Antonio French on ABC's "This Week."
Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump said they would pursue all legal avenues, including a potential wrongful death lawsuit and pushing for a "Michael Brown law" requiring police to wear body cameras to record incidents such as the Ferguson shooting.
"We want police officers who do have a conscience in our community, and not police officers who are cold as ice and see our children as demons and criminals," Crump said on "Face the Nation" on CBS."
Picture of Wilson at link seems to show he healed well from his vicious attack at the hands of Michael Brown..
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/30/us-usa-missouri-shooting-resignation-idUSKCN0JE00520141130
Ferguson really about police militarization
"Grand juries will indict a ham sandwich, but not a police officer"
SACRAMENTO — The grand-jury system dates back to King Henry II of England in the 12th century. But the most widely known fact about it comes from former New York Judge Sol Wachtler, quoted by author Tom Wolfe in 1987 saying “a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.” His point: grand juries are tools of prosecutors."
*It’s rare for officers to be charged in an on-duty killing. And even when charges are filed, officers are given protections other Americans are not granted. In California, the Peace Officers Bill Of Rights and union representation make it difficult for agencies to punish questionable on-duty behavior. The investigating agencies tend to be defensive of police who come under the microscope. It’s far different than when an average citizen is accused of a crime."
*After Fullerton officers beat and tasered an unarmed homeless man in 2011, the police department claimed the officers suffered broken bones, even though evidence later showed that to be false. The officers were even allowed to watch a video of the incident before filing their police reports. One writer, William Grigg, says it’s not about “white privilege” but “blue privilege.”
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/28/ferguson-police-militarization-grand-juries-indict/?#article-copy
UN: US police brutality violates anti-torture treaty
GENEVA (AP) — Police brutality, military interrogations and prisons were among the top concerns of a U.N. panel’s report Friday that found the United States to be falling short of full compliance with an international anti-torture treaty.
The report by the U.N. Committee Against Torture, its first such review of the U.S. record since 2006, expressed concerns about allegations of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, particularly the Chicago Police Department’s treatment of blacks and Latinos."
“There are numerous areas in which certain things should be changed for the United States to comply fully with the convention,” Alessio Bruni of Italy, one of the panel’s chief investigators, said at a news conference Friday in Geneva. He was referring to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which took effect in 1987 and the United States ratified in 1994.
The U.N. committee’s 10 independent experts are responsible for reviewing the records of all 156 U.N. member countries that have ratified the treaty against torture and all “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
http://thegrio.com/2014/11/29/un-police-brutality-torture/
Pregnant woman loses eye after police shoot bean bag at her
A pregnant St. Louis woman lost her left eye after a violent run-in with law enforcement earlier this week.
Dornnella Conners says an officer fired a non-lethal bean-bag round at the car she was in – shattering the passenger side window.
Shards of glass bloodied her face and robbed her of sight in her left eye, according to reports.
“I will have justice for what they did to me but I’m happy I’m alive,” she wrote on Facebook on Thanksgiving.
Conners was injured early Tuesday morning shortly after the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Crowds of demonstrators had taken to the streets to protest what they consider a travesty of justice.
Conners, who was angry about the grand jury’s decision, and her boyfriend, De’Angelas Lee, were parked at a BP gas station on New Halls Ferry Road in St. Louis, just north of Ferguson, KMOV reported.
As her boyfriend started to drive away, she says, several police officers arrived.
“They pulled up while we were coming towards the street, De’Anglas was trying to get away, they blocked us from the side, front and back,” Conners told the CBS affiliate.
That’s when an officer fired the bean bag round because he feared for his safety, police said.
http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-st--louis-woman-left-eye-blind-ferguson-174119853.html
Prosecutor Used Grand Jury to Let Darren Wilson Walk
Robert McCulloch could’ve indicted Michael Brown’s killer himself. Instead, he barely pushed the jurors to charge the cop and allowed the unprecedented step of letting the officer testify. "
St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s announcement of his failure to secure the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown has openly and shamelessly mocked our criminal justice system and laid bare the inequality that is emblematic of criminal jurisprudence in the United States. Monday night’s farcical performance during McCulloch’s press conference, at which he announced the grand jury’s “no true bill” decision, was a failed and poor attempt to convince the residents of Ferguson, St. Louis County, and the nation of the legitimacy and fairness of the grand jury process.
Let’s be candid and clear about grand juries in the United States: They are at all times completely and unalterably under the control and direction of the prosecutor. If the prosecutor wishes to secure an indictment, a “true bill” is inevitably returned. It is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to override the prosecutor’s intention to obtain an indictment. In my 27 years as a police officer in Boston, I have never heard of a situation in which a prosecutor failed to secure an indictment when seeking such—plainly put: It doesn’t happen. "
*Further, that this case went to a grand jury at all in the first place was largely in deference to Wilson’s status as a police officer. The prosecutor has the option to bring charges against a defendant directly before a judge without invoking the grand jury process at all. This happens all the time; in fact if the outcome in this case had been the death of Wilson and not Brown, Brown would have no doubt been charged before a court the very next day, without the benefit of a months’ long grand jury investigation. Had Brown killed Wilson and not the other way around, Brown would have spent these past months languishing in jail awaiting trial, not collecting a paycheck and planning his wedding"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/28/prosecutor-used-grand-jury-to-let-darren-wilson-walk.html
Thanksgiving In Ferguson
Thanksgiving.
I would precede that word with “happy,” but happy doesn’t seem to be the mood around the nation this year. And, while we are grateful for the time off of work, “happy” isn’t the overall mood of my house right now. We are sad, sombre, that not only is Michael Brown not alive to spend Thanksgiving with his family and friends, but the man who killed him is not facing the public for his crime."
*That is a mockery of the indictment process, as should be obvious to anyone looking at this trial. There is certainly probable cause to believe that Wilson violated the law, and the public and Mike Brown’s family deserved a public airing of the evidence to determine whether there was reasonable doubt that he was justified. That’s how the process is intended to work, but police/prosecutor collusion and racism kept it from working. It is wrong."
*You don’t have to be a radical, anti-police anarchist to understand that what happened here is a collusion of state power of epic proportions. You don’t have to be a “social justice warrior” to know that police officers target black people for the same “offenses” that white people commit in the same numbers, and that black people are jailed more frequently and are more frequently a target of unwarranted police violence."
http://thoughtsonliberty.com/thanksgiving-in-ferguson
Lesley McSpadden: “My Son Was Running for His Life” (Nov. 26, 2014) | Charlie Rose
Coming soon: An app to report police brutality
Washington (CNN) -- Reporting police brutality could just be a swipe away.
That's the motivation behind SWAT, a new app designed by college students Joe Gruenbaum and Brandon Anderson to counter excessive uses of force by police officers.
The app, which its creators would like to release by spring, will give witnesses of a police incident the ability to live-stream video from their smartphones to SWAT's secure servers. Once a video is on the servers, the team at SWAT can forward a copy to authorities, protecting witness recordings from possible destruction or seizure during the incident."
*The live-streaming function is step one of the SWAT process. In addition to recording secure video, a SWAT user will be able to file a police report in seconds. The app will generate a form, send the report to a nearby department with proper jurisdiction, and provide users with a summary of their local rights. "We want to make sure that people understand completely their protections, constitutionally and legally, when they're interacting with the police," Gruenbaum said.
The inspiration for the app comes from what happened in Ferguson, Missouri this year, as well as from Anderson's personal experience. A former U.S. Army satellite engineer, Anderson told CNN his partner died from injuries sustained during a confrontation with police.
"I lost my partner to police brutality, and the cops got away with it because of a lack of evidence," Anderson said."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/politics/swat-app-seeks-to-reduce-police-violence/index.html
Michael Brown's parents react to Darren Wilson interview: 'It sounds crazy'
The grief-stricken mother of Michael Brown says police officer Darren Wilson's first interview following a grand jury's decision not to indict him in her teenage son's shooting death "added insult to injury."
Lesley McSpadden, Brown's mother, called the Wilson's interview "disrespectful" on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, a day after the officer's interview with ABC News aired.
"I don't believe a word of it," McSpadden said on "CBS This Morning."
Wilson's account of the events that led to Brown's killing on Aug. 9 "sounds crazy," Michael Brown Sr. said on "Today."
*"For one, my son, he respected law enforcement," Brown Sr. said. "Two, who in their right mind would rush or charge at a police officer that has his gun drawn? It sounds crazy."
"I know my son far too well to know he wouldn't ever do anything like that," McSpadden said on CBS. "He wouldn't do anything to provoke anyone to do anything to him, and he wouldn't do anything to anybody."
She said she believes Wilson was intent on violence.
"He didn't do what he had to do, he did what he wanted to do," McSpadden said."I don't think he wanted to kill my son, but he wanted to kill someone."
http://news.yahoo.com/michael-brown-parents-react-to-darren-wilson-interview-135728733.html
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