And the abuses by police are nothing to what it comes in the future.
With Google, the government is making a robot of the size of a big fat pig -always resembling something connected to the police department- that "perceives" when people are not showing "cooperation", and these robots will possible be armed to shoot.
So far, I have been studying this robot, to which you can't make fall on its side by kicking it with force, but I have searched for its construction, and you won't need weapons to disable it.
You might need one of those water guns.
You add car battery with water, use goggles, rubber gloves, hide behind a car, and shot at the robot. The junctions of this robot and its exposed electronic parts will fail in minutes.
We don't have to worry about a "Terminator" era yet.
(Oops... I already helped to the sick dominators of our society to prepare the robots with a shield with the purpose to avoid my strategy of disabling their killing machines... damn!)
(Update: pour used oil to the floor and this killing machine will go nowhere)
Chicago Cops Who Exposed Department Corruption, Threatened with “Going Home in a Casket”
“It’s no secret that if you go against the code of silence, and you report corruption, it will ruin your career.”
After the first two cops had been initially arrested in their investigation, the department pulled the plug before any more officers could suffer the consequences of their actions.
“At one point, we were actually told the investigation was too big,” Spalding said. “There were allegations of other supervisors as well, that we were never allowed to investigate.”
“I think that the public should be very angry that corruption is allowed to continue, and that officers who want to report it are retaliated against,” said Spalding. “The code of silence is so strong, the fear of what will happen to you is so strong, that nobody wants to come forward.”
Echeverria and Spalding were subsequently blackballed and labelled as “IAD Rats.”
The events following their investigation is what led to these two officers filing a federal lawsuit.
St. Louis Cops Turn Dash Cam Off in Middle of Arrest, Brutally Beat Suspect
An officer yells, "Hold up. We're red right now, so if you guys are worried about cameras, just wait."
By Terrell Jermaine Starr / AlterNet
February 16, 2015
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A dash cam video capturing the arrest and subsequent tasing of a St. Louis man reveals how easily law enforcement can manipulate camera footage to defend its actions.
According to the police report cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cortez Bufford engaged in “aggressive” behavior and resisted arrest when cops pulled him over on the night of April 10, 2014. Video of the traffic stop reveals a more nuanced version of what really happened.
Officers Nathaniel Burkemper and Michael Binz pulled Bufford’s silver Ford Taurus over because of an illegal U-turn and in connection with a 911 call over shots fired near the Lafayette Square area of St. Louis. It’s hard to hear exactly what the officers say to Bufford in the dash cam video, but Burkemper can be heard saying, “I’m telling you right now” and “Let’s go.”
According to the police report, Bufford refused to get out of the car as requested. A passenger in the car was handcuffed without incident.
Burkemper eventually pulls Bufford out of the car, and at least seven other officers get involved in the scene. One officer in the video is shown kicking Bufford when he is on the ground. Bufford was also tased twice while on the ground. It appears there is no clear justification for using such force. Officer Kelli Swinton approaches Burkemper’s patrol car at 10:16pm and yells, “Hold up. Hold up, y’all. Hold up. Hold up, everybody, hold up. We’re red right now, so if you guys are worried about cameras, just wait.” The video ends eight second later.
The charges of resisting arrest and unlawful use of a weapon were dropped in August because the tape contradicted the police report, a lawyer for Bufford said. But a circuit attorney’s spokeswoman, Susan Ryan, disagreed, saying the case was dismissed because “the action of turning off the dash cam video diminished the evidentiary merits of the case,” according to the Post-Dispatch.
The video’s release, which St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay’s office asked be delayed last summer, has resulted in Bufford filing an excessive force claim against the St. Louis Police Department. According to his lawyers, Bufford “suffered abrasions to his fingers, face, back, head, ears and neck, and incurred medical bills of $6,439.32.”
The claim seeks unspecified damages from Burkemper, Jenkins and two unnamed police officers.
A lawyer from the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association claims that the video proves why the officers had to escalate their use of force against the suspect. Brian Millikan, a union lawyer for four of the officers who were involved in the arrest claim, also claims the video proves officers were justified in their actions.
But the central problem in all of this is that an officer asked if the dash cam should be running during the arrest, even though department rules clearly state it must be on during the entirety of any stop. The officer who made the request is reportedly being recommended for disciplinary action.
Some state officials want to limit public access to dash cams, citing privacy issues for the people engaged in encounters with police. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is calling for restrictions on public access because it will lead to “a new era of voyeurism and entertainment television at the expense of Missourians’ privacy.” His proposal would make dash cam videos closed records.
Though this video clearly shows police abuse, it seems like law enforcement and state government officials are trying to protect the cops from being prosecuted for their abusive behavior. Koster’s concern for privacy seems to have little to do with protecting civilians and more to do with upholding a blue wall of silence that will make cops unaccountable to the public.
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Tue 17 Feb, 2015 06:55 am
For Decades, Chicago Police Used City Jails as Torture Chambers
Victims who were tortured into giving false confessions are now asking the city for reparations.
By Terrell Jermaine Starr / AlterNet
February 13, 2015
Meet American torture victim Darrell Cannon. On the morning of Nov. 2, 1983, Cannon, then 32 years old, was tortured while in the custody of the Chicago Police Department. Officers escorted him from his Southside home at 7:30am and took him to a local precinct where they shocked him in the testicles and the mouth with an electric cattle prod and struck his knees with a baton, trying to force him to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. Cannon gave a false confession around 2pm that afternoon.
He spent the next 24 years in prison until he was exonerated and released in 2007. While serving his sentence, Cannon sued for damages in connection with the torture; he was awarded the paltry sum of $3,000 and left with $1,247 after costs and legal fees were deducted.
He has been diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the physical abuse he endured, and he still carries memories of what the cops did to him that day.
“I think about it continuously, even though it’s been over 20 years,” Cannon told AlterNet. “I still remember it as if it happened yesterday.”
According to the Chicago-based People’s Law Office, members of the Chicago Police Department carried out hideous acts of torture against more than 120 Chicagoans, mostly African-American men. The abuse, which took place inside of police stations, lasted from 1972 until the early 1990s, and was instigated by police commander Jon Burge. Burge and his detectives subjected suspects to cattle-prodding of the mouth and genital areas, hours-long beatings, suffocation, and other forms of abuse to force them to confess to crimes of which they were often innocent. Most of the torture was carried out against residents of the city’s predominantly African-American Southside neighborhood.
Burge was fired from the force in 1993 for “mistreating a suspect” but it took until 2010 for him to be convicted on perjury charges for lying about using Chicago’s jails as torture chambers; as of 2015, he has not been convicted for torturing any of his victims. Burge was released from prison into a halfway house in Florida in October. Though the statute of limitations has expired for most of his victims to sue for damages, Burge still collects a $4,000-per-month pension and has cost the city and Cook County more than $100 million in legal fees and settlements. Approximately 20 of his victims have received $67 million in settlement money in connection with the torture they endured.
Because many of the victims aren’t able to sue for damages, local activists are pursuing reparations. They argue that the damage Burge caused can’t be fixed with money alone. Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office, drafted a reparations ordinance that is under review by the city council’s financial committee. The ordinance seeks, among other things, $20 million in damages for the victims of Burge’s torture; a mental health clinic to be built on the Southside that will help the city’s underserved people; the introduction of courses into the city’s public school curriculum to teach students about the police department’s history of torture; free tuition for torture victims and their families at city colleges; and public evidentiary hearings for victims who suffered at the hands of Chicago police officers—including those who are locked up.
Mogul, who has defended dozens of police brutality victims over the years, said she and her firm are seeking reparations specifically because of the profound damages caused by members of the Chicago Police Department.
“We are using that term because we see it as a term that goes well beyond just financial compensation,” she told AlterNet. “It looks at a whole panoply of redress that the survivors and those affected by this need. It's because the American judicial system is so limited and all we think about is money. We really had to find a term that would really encompass the holistic type of redress we wanted to provide in this case.”
Standish Willis, a Chicago lawyer who has been credited with pursuing reparations for torture victims as a legal defense, was a partner at the People’s Law Office in the late 1980s when it defended a man who claimed Burge had tortured him into confessing to the murder of two police officers. The People’s Law Office took the case. It didn’t take long before his office got more calls from people, mostly black men, claiming to have been tortured by Burge and his detectives.
“It was a kind of torture that we had never heard of,” Willis told AlterNet. “We'd known about police brutality, police beating the suspects and not giving them food or water for days, and they end up confessing. [But] they were using electrical shock devices. They were using suffocation techniques. They had cattle probes that they would use on the victim's body. All kinds of stuff that was really very unique.”
Willis founded Black People Against Police Torture as a means of galvanizing the support of the African-American community. He says it was essential that the movement to seek legal recourse for torture reflect the faces of the police’s victims.
As for the ordinance, it has been held up in the finance committee run by Alderman Edward Burke. Mayor Rahm Emanuel went on record during a 2013 city council meeting to apologize for Jon Burge’s deeds, calling them “a stain on the city’s reputation” that Chicago has to move past.
Mariame Kaba, an activist in Chicago and founder of Project NIA, told AlterNet that Emanuel has been giving the same lip service to the issue for a while. She said it’s time for the mayor to make the city accountable to the people its police officers abused.
“I think it's fine to talk about the fact that terrible things have happened to people, but you also have a responsibility to address the thing that was left at your doorstep,” Kaba said. “Rahm Emanuel was not mayor when these torture cases were taking place. But when he came into power he inherited the issues that came before him too.”
There’s no telling when or if the city council will approve the ordinance, though Darrell Cannon, now 64, is hopeful he and other victims will be awarded reparations for the torture they endured.
“I’m optimistic that it most certainly can happen,” he said. “Whether it will happen is another matter. That’s why we’re pushing as hard as we are now for the mayor to take care of this. It may not have happened during his reign but he is the caretaker today. Therefore, he has to clean up the problem that he inherited.”
Documentation of the torture of Darrell Cannon and more than 100 other black men and women can be viewed on the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial page organized by the People’s Law Office.
Terrell Jermaine Starr is a senior editor at AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter @Russian_Starr.
