National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 03-03-15
March 4, 2015 @ 4:54 PM by Jonathan Blanks
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Here are the nine reports of police misconduct tracked for Tuesday, March 3, 2015:
Greenville County, South Carolina: A deputy was charged with selling police information to an illicit gambling operation.
http://ow.ly/JPZHF
Pickens County, South Carolina: A deputy was fired for inappropriate use of force. He twice Tasered a 65-year-old wheelchair-bound man and also threw him out of the wheelchair.
http://ow.ly/JQ1Yy
Lansing, Michigan: A federal judge threw out an excessive force civil claim against the city but allowed the case to proceed against the officer involved in the case. The plaintiff’s 17-year-old daughter broke into a bank and was apprehended by the officer and two others present. The suspect was shot in the stomach after producing a sharp object. However, the plaintiff alleges that her daughter had already surrendered and was on her knees when the officer fatally shot the suspect in the head. The prosecutor had previously ruled the shooting justified.
http://ow.ly/JQ7jM
Put-in-Bay, Ohio: The police chief was charged with aggravated menacing, dereliction of duty, and falsification.
http://ow.ly/JQw8D
Orient, Illinois: The police chief brandished his weapon at bars twice in one night. He has been charged with intimidation and official misconduct. ow.ly/JSHxD
Memphis, Tennessee: A police officer is accused of performing a lewd act and solicitation of a minor. He allegedly picked up a teen on the way to school and masturbated while she was in the car.
http://ow.ly/JT8af
Ottawa, Kansas: An officer was arrested for DUI after crashing his truck into a utility pole while off duty.
http://ow.ly/JSGgP
Hawaii Island, Hawaii: An officer was arrested for negligent homicide after fatally striking a bicyclist with his car on a narrow roadway.
http://ow.ly/JT9Eh
Grand Rapids, Michigan: An officer was charged with home invasion and sexual assault of his ex-girlfriend in Wyoming. He resigned upon his arrest.
http://ow.ly/JTbSh
Categories: In The News | Tags: Police Misconduct News Review | Permalink
3/04/2015
Random Thoughts Reading Through the DOJ's Ferguson Police Report
1. You should read it. It's compelling, and it's like a look into Birmingham in the 1960s, except it's now. It makes you understand that the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, were not simply the result of the shooting death of Michael Brown. It was an explosion that the city had earned after years of abusing its black residents.
2. It's blatantly obvious that the white police just enjoyed screwing with the black residents for the sake of writing tickets to make money for the city. Sometimes, the cops were like cartoons, like something you'd see in a terrible film that tried to have a social conscience. For instance, "In October 2012, police officers pulled over an African-American man who had lived in Ferguson for 16 years, claiming that his passenger-side brake light was broken. The driver happened to have replaced the light recently and knew it to be functioning properly. Nonetheless, according to the man’s written complaint, one officer stated, 'Let’s see how many tickets you’re going to get,' while a second officer tapped his Electronic Control Weapon ('ECW') on the roof of the man’s car. The officers wrote the man a citation for 'taillight/reflector/license plate light out.' They refused to let the man show them that his car’s equipment was in order, warning him, 'Don’t you get out of that car until you get to your house.'"
3. This is not to mention that there had to be a culture of silence and racism for cops to get away with things like this: "In another case, from March 2013, officers responded to the police station to take custody of a person wanted on a state warrant. When they arrived, they encountered a different man—not the subject of the warrant—who happened to be leaving the station. Having nothing to connect the man to the warrant subject, other than his presence at the station, the officers nonetheless stopped him and asked that he identify himself. The man asserted his rights, asking the officers, 'Why do you need to know?' and declining to be frisked. When the man then extended his identification toward the officers, at their request, the officers interpreted his hand motion as an attempted assault and took him to the ground. Without articulating reasonable suspicion or any other justification for the initial detention, the officers arrested the man on two counts of Failure to Comply and two counts of Resisting Arrest." That charge, "Failure to Comply," simply means, "We're always right and you're always wrong."
4. You can read the parade of horribles. There's a breathtaking number of cases, of harassment, of violence against young teens, of beatings, of outright attacks. This is not to mention the verbal abuse, the racist jokes, the use of "nigger" like the Ferguson PD was made up of Southern cop caricatures. Except they aren't. They're real people charged with enforcing the law. Except they aren't. They're enforcing their law. They wanted to arrest blacks, and they pushed situations to their breaking point to try to get to do it. The report contains incidents during protests where the cops were purely trying to provoke a reaction so they could bring down the hammer.
4a. Often, the overreactions of the cops are so ludicrous it'd be laughable if it weren't appalling: "n August 2010, a lieutenant used an ECW [a Taser] in drive-stun mode against an African-American woman in the Ferguson City Jail because she had refused to remove her bracelets."
4b. In other words, the cops are just abject dicks.
5. Let's focus in on one case - the unarmed, not violent 14 year-old after whom the cops sent a police dog to bite multiple times. Here's the story in full:
Appalling. Disgusting. Now let's say an adult was there, a man with a gun, and he saw the dog biting the kid and he saw the cops stomping his head. At what point do the cops become bad enough that they need to be stopped? At what point are they the bad guys? At what point would you say that the man with the gun needs to do something? Or that the community needs to do something against the cops? At what point would you not blame them if they did? (By the way, there's a whole section on the overuse of force against students by cops in schools.)
5a. Or, if it's you the Ferguson cops are attacking, at what point are you standing your ground? At what point does your self-defense count? Never, of course. You always have to let the cops do whatever they want and hope that someone gets a written reprimand for breaking your skull.
6. The final sickening feeling the Rude Pundit has reading this is caused by the knowledge that this is just one town and that in towns big and small, all over the nation, the same things go on, the same racism, the same violence against citizens, the same. It's a shame that it will probably take a Michael Brown in each town to shine a light on even a small part of it.
6a. Not that the cop who shot Michael Brown will face any charges.
Posted by Rude One at 4:46 PM
Older Post
Quote:Physical and forensic evidence in fact contradict claims by witnesses who have maintained that Brown had his hands up, above his waist when Wilson shot him, the Justice Department concluded.
The results of the federal probe support claims support the detailed accounting St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch presented in a press conference announcing a grand jury's decision to not indict Wilson.
"Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and 'charging' at Wilson," the report explains.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/politics/ferguson-report-hands-up-michael-brown-darren-wilson/index.html
So it was a good shoot, Officer Wilson acted as he was trained to do, and was a hero on the front lines of fighting crime.
@coldjoint,
Liberalism sabotages all attempts to optimize oneself to dong battle with the universe and winning.
@BillRM,
Are you saying the Nazi's had the right idea?
@RABEL222,
I am saying that the Republicans/right wing are not the first ones who have promised an underclass that just hard work alone will made them free.
Bill Maher
Watching the commemoration in Selma on the news - so much has changed in 50 years! Like, the cops didn't have tanks back then.
The most deviate way to look at the past and compare it with the present is to put Selma protest and Ferguson protest as having the same cause and effect.
Ferguson is a city with a 67% Black people population, with a 93% Black people criminality/arrests.
These statistics reveal that Black people in Ferguson are very inclined to commit crimes, it doesn't reveal at all that there is any discrimination against Blacks.
What it can bring to light a case of discrimination against Blacks is records of police intentions targeting Blacks as being arrested WITHOUT cause.
But, if Black people break the law in any form, then their arrests are justified and the statistics are well interpreted when are used to show that Ferguson city has a problem with Black criminals, not so discrimination against Blacks.
To end, We can state without doubts, that Selma protest was a petition for the right to vote for Black people... and Ferguson protest is a petition for the right to be criminals for Black people.
Selma is an inspirational protest... Ferguson is juts a no-no.
@carloslebaron,
You got to be kidding me as being stop for minor traffic violations and then receiving not one ticket but a few tickets per stop does not made you a criminal and somehow I question if blacks drivers are more prone to have a tail light out then white drivers.
Nor does placing people in jail for being slow to paid such fines make any sense to me or having such fines being a big part of the local government income for that matter.
Yes the shooting in question seem to be a "good" shooting but the police department seems to need to be taken apart and put back together again and not used as a cash cow to milk the poorest of the town citizens.
@BillRM,
You despicable piece of ****.
@BillRM,
You despicable piece of crap.
Now we know what force gooeychin works for.
Cops Make Parade Float Mocking a Woman for Being Raped By Her Father as a Child
The Baton Rouge police department has launched an internal investigation into the actions of officers who allegedly rode on and helped decorate a float that mocked a woman for being raped as a child; by her father.
The theme of the float was of the Baton Rouge reality show, “Sons of Guns.” It focused on the daughter of the former television star, Will Hayden. Hayden is currently facing sexual assault charges in East Baton Rouge and Livingston Parishes, after being accused of sexually assaulting his own daughter along with two other victims.
The float was “decorated” with a large photo of Stephanie Ford, the sexual assault victim, with the caption underneath her photo stating, “A face only a daddy could love.” Other sayings on the float consisted of things like, “Krewe of Sleazania,” “Red Jack It” and “Kiss Me Daddy.”
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-parade-float-mocking-woman-raped-father-child/
No words...
On edit I do have some words. Try to get your head around the mentality of the people who would even think of something like this. Then consider they not only thought of it, they decided it was a good idea, and then actually went out and did it. Then consider those are the same people who are sanctioned by the state to wield lethal force against the citizenry, and to do so who little oversight and even fewer consequences. We live in a very sick place.
@coldjoint,
No, but you're full of ****. And so's your crypto Nazi little friend. And you're both ******* cowards.
ISIS? Fear the police.
New Data: Americans 58 Times More Likely to Be Killed by Police Than Terror (Sputnik News)
US
23:30 08.03.2015(updated 23:41 08.03.2015)
25171
According to recent data, Americans are far more likely to be killed by police officers than previously thought, many times more likely than the risk of being killed by a terrorist.
Previously, it was accepted that citizens are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist but that might have been a radical underestimation, according to new official FBI data.
There is no national requirement for police departments to provide information about police-related shootings. Some stations do voluntarily provide the data to the FBI but that meant a national averages drastically underrepresented the number of people being killed at hands of police officers..
The FBI now released new information which reveals an average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in their prior crime statistics provided every year for almost a decade.
In this attempt by official record-keepers to assess the number of previously unknown “law enforcement homicides,” researchers found that an average of 928 people were killed by police annually over the same period, much more than the 383 number published by the FBI data before.
Read more:
http://sputniknews.com/us/20150308/1019233816.html#ixzz3TpzZ55lj