The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie

Trigger-Happy Cop Shot One of His Own and Kept Blasting Away

A detective who worked narcotics with an undercover officer walked up to a car, shot his fellow officer twice, and then seven more times against the victim’s pleas.

The number of signs that Albuquerque Police Lieutenant Greg Brachle ignored or didn’t see before putting nine .45-caliber bullets into his fellow officer’s body are simply staggering.

There was the fact that Brachle knew Detective Jacob Grant was involved in a drug buy last January, a sting the superior officer walked up on while Grant sat in an undercover police car. There were Grant’s clothes, an outfit specially worn according to a safety protocol to prevent friendly fire incidents. Even Grant’s position in the car—behind another undercover narcotics agent in the driver’s seat—was to signal to other officers that the two men were cops.

But most damning—and the most confusing part of it all—is that Brachle and Grant were well-known to each other. For nearly two years, they worked in the narcotics division of the department.

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The lieutenant and the detective had “substantial, frequent, and almost daily interactions with each other,” said the civil lawsuit filed last week against the city of Albuquerque and the police department.

According to Bernalillo County court documents filed by Grant’s lawyer, Grant was taking part in a drug buy with another undercover officer while the sting was being monitored by Brachle and others. A briefing was held before the bust and officers in attendance learned not only of Grant and his fellow undercover cop’s presence in the car, but also of descriptions of their clothing and seating positions. Brachle didn’t attend the briefing, Grant’s lawyer says, but nonetheless took an “active and aggressive role in the operation.”

“Please stop shooting,” the detective pleaded as the lieutenant kept firing.

Brachle went against protocol by approaching the driver’s side of the car Grant was sitting in. The lieutenant again broke the rules when he ripped open the door and started firing into Grant, alleging without offering a single “hands up,” or “freeze,” according to the complaint.

Brachle’s actions were called “overzealous and aggressive,” in Grant’s lawsuit. Another way of saying it might be that Brachle went John Wayne, swooping into a situation he apparently knew little about, guns blazing. Even if Grant wasn’t a cop, Brachle’s alleged zealousness to fire on a suspect presenting no apparent threat would be disturbing.

Brachle first put two bullets into Grant’s torso at point-blank range. The detective’s body slumped over in the back seat. Brachle then fired seven more times as Grant tried to crawl away.

“Please stop shooting,” the detective pleaded as the lieutenant kept firing.

The damage was substantial: Almost all of Grant’s vital organs were struck and he lost 80 percent of his blood that day, nearly dying. After several surgeries, Grant can expect a lifetime of more medical work and costs to recover.

The lawsuit filed by Grant’s lawyer says not only did Brachle ignore training, protocol, and all manner of common sense while firing on his fellow officer, but he also violated Grant’s constitutional rights by using an excessive amount of lethal force.

The same charge can be found in just about every lawsuit filed by people shot by police.

“A reasonable officer should have known” that shooting someone at point-blank range with the largest caliber handgun police are allowed to carry was overkill, the complaint states. Furthermore, when the person is “trying to crawl away while leaving a heavy trail of blood and while requesting for the shooting to please stop,” Brachle should have let up.

In addition to this charge, Grant’s lawyer notes that Brachle didn’t even live by his own words. As a firearm-safety instructor for the police department, Brachle knew a shooter should be aware of objects and persons behind his target. Brachle apparently ignored this maxim, firing indiscriminately into Grant as he crawled away. A bullet or bullet fragment traveled through the detective’s torso and struck the other undercover officer in the car.

“Moreover, Lt. Brachle use lethal force in a McDonald’s restaurant parking lot during the start of the lunch hour at a location frequented by children, families and other non-suspecting individuals,” the complaint states.

Perhaps worst of all, as Brachle shot his fellow cop, the two suspects in the drug bust were busy surrendering peacefully to officers on the other side of the car.

Brachle’s trigger finger has long been itchy. The detective’s lawyer found a previous incident in which Brachle was accused of using excessive force, thus implicating the Albuquerque Police Department for allowing the lieutenant to continue working in the “highly dangerous APD narcotic unit.”

There was a glaring similarity between Brachle’s apparent past use of lethal force and his encounter with Grant. Both times, Grant’s lawsuit contends, Brachle “simply fired until he ran out of ammunition.”

Whether Grant’s lawyer was referring to a 2000 lawsuit that names Brachle as a defendant is unclear, and the lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment. A judge eventually decided in favor of Brachle, who admitted to shooting a man he said was holding a gun and who had previously been seen pouring gasoline near a home and threatening to set it on fire.

Grant’s lawsuit also makes mention of the 2012 Department of Justice report that found Albuquerque police were overly aggressive and regularly used lethal force. That judgment came after an especially violent few years beginning in 2010; from January of that year through February 2015, Albuquerque police shot 42 people, one of the highest rates of shootings by law enforcement officers in the country.

“The City’s failure to stop these deficiencies was a moving force behind Lt. Brachle’s actions,” Grant’s lawyer wrote of his client’s shooting.

He doesn't get irony, (or laid that much.)

There's no explaining dingbattery.

And bobsal and Izzy are thumbing each other again

I agree with him, TonyRM, I don't agree with you or your sock.

An ‘unarmed’ white teen was shot dead by police. His family asks: Where is the outrage?

By Abby Phillip August 7 Follow @abbydphillip
(Courtesy: Eric Bland) Zachary Hammond. (Courtesy of Eric Bland)

UPDATE: Seneca Police on Friday released the name of the officer involved in the shooting of Zachary Hammond. Read the updated story here.

Zachary Hammond was on a first date when he was fatally shot by a police officer in his car during a drug bust in South Carolina, his family says.

At the time the 19-year-old was shot and killed, his date, Tori Morton, was eating an ice cream cone, according to the family’s attorney, Eric Bland.

Morton, 23, was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana — all 10 grams of it — which, according to police, was the reason undercover agents set up the drug buy.

The official police report never mentioned the two gunshots that killed Hammond on July 26 in a Hardees parking lot. Seneca police say a second report — which has not been released to the public — details the officer’s account of the shooting.

Amid heightened scrutiny of fatal police shootings across the country, Hammond’s death has prompted numerous questions, few answers — and almost no national outrage.

More than a week after Hammond’s death, his family’s attorney says race is almost certainly playing a role in the disconcerting silence. Unlike the victims in the highest-profile police shootings over the past year — in cities from Ferguson and Cleveland to North Charleston and Cincinnati — Hammond was white.

[DATABASE: People shot dead by police this year]

“It’s sad, but I think the reason is, unfortunately, the media and our government officials have treated the death of an unarmed white teenager differently than they would have if this were a death of an unarmed black teen,” Bland told The Washington Post this week. “The hypocrisy that has been shown toward this is really disconcerting.”

He added: “The issue should never be what is the color of the victim. The issue should be: Why was an unarmed teen gunned down in a situation where deadly force was not even justified?”

So far this year, 25 percent of the people shot dead by police have been black, according to data collected by the Washington Post. But black people make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population.

[Police shot and killed more people in July than any other month so far this year]

Police say the officer was a victim of “attempted murder” by Hammond, who was driving the vehicle. According to Seneca Police Chief John Covington, Hammond was driving the car “toward the officer” who was trying to make the stop.

The officer fired twice, striking Hammond in the shoulder and torso.

His death was classified as a homicide; an autopsy conducted by the Oconee County Coroner’s Office did not specify from which direction the bullets hit Hammond’s body.

On Wednesday, Hammond’s family released the results of a private autopsy, which concluded that both bullets entered Hammond’s body from the back. According to the autopsy, the second bullet proved to be fatal, entering from the back of Hammond’s left side and passing through his chest, piercing his lungs and heart.

In a statement Wednesday, Coroner Karl E. Addis said he does not know how Hammond’s body was positioned at the time he was shot.

[Lonnae O’Neal: Police kill a white teen, and the silence raises questions]

The facts of the fatal shooting are not unlike other cases that have prompted national outcry — most recently the shooting death of Sam DuBose, an unarmed black man who was shot dead during a traffic stop by a University of Cincinnati police officer. Officials released police dashboard camera footage of the incident which appeared to contradict the officer’s report that he was being dragged by DuBose’s vehicle. The video showed that the car was not moving when the weapon was fired and the officer was named and charged with murder.

The officer, who has been placed on administrative leave while the investigation is pending, used a similar rationale as the one in Cincinnati — that the vehicle was being used as a weapon.

“The driver accelerated and came toward the officer,” Covington, the police chief, said a day after the shooting, according to Fox Carolina. The officer “fired two shots in self-defense, which unfortunately were fatal for the suspect.”

Initially, Covington said his department would not release the officer’s name because of fear that it would “possibly subject the officer and family to harassment, intimidation or abuse.” But on Thursday, he told the Washington Post that the officer’s name and the report of the shooting would be released in “the next few days.”

The response to Hammond’s death has been disappointingly muted in Seneca, in South Carolina and nationally, said Bland, the family lawyer. He insists there would be more focus on the case if Hammond had been black.

“They’re called the civil rights organizations, they’re not called the black rights organizations,” Bland said. “The color of his skin should not matter. White-on-white crime does not get the same impact as white-on-black crime.”

Black activists are similarly asking why more people who countered the Black Lives Matter movement by saying “All Lives Matter” have been so silent on Hammond’s death.

#ZacharyHammond isn't going to get the outrage he deserves because it would force folks to admit their consistent defense of police is wrong

— jamilah (@JamilahLemieux) August 3, 2015

A cop killed a white kid and the #AllLivesMatter people are silent.. #ZacharyHammond

— LAINE RICKETTS (@little_crickets) August 5, 2015

Where are all the #AllLivesMatter people when it comes to #ZacharyHammond? All y'all looking funny in the light. pic.twitter.com/VeCbLAliG2

— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) August 4, 2015

#ZacharyHammond was gunned down (what seems much) like Sam DuBose was. Where are the violent cop defenders screaming #AllLivesMatter ????

— . (@MamaCrimz) August 5, 2015

There are a number of unanswered questions that remain in the case, which is being investigated by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

A spokesman for SLED, Thom Berry, confirmed that dashboard video of the incident does exist and is part of the ongoing investigation. Berry said it has not yet been determined whether that video will be released.

“The whole issue of race is getting distorted and what’s getting lost is the real issue which is excessive force,” said Bland, the attorney. “All people need to be outraged by this. All people need to be asking the hard questions.”

[This story was originally published on Aug. 6 and has been updated multiple times.]

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the amount of marijuana found in the vehicle. It was 10 grams, not 10 ounces. The post has been updated.

Police shot and killed more people in July than any other month so far this year

Comments 30
By Wesley Lowery August 3 Follow @WesleyLowery

A frame grab from a body camera video released July 29 by the Office of the Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney shows University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing with his gun drawn as he approaches the vehicle containing the body of Samuel DuBose after shooting him during a traffic stop in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 19. (Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney’s office via EPA)

More people were shot and killed by on-duty police officers in July than in any other month so far in 2015.

At least 103 people were shot and killed by police officers last month, according to a Washington Post database tracking all fatal on-duty police shootings this year. That is 13 more fatal police shootings than March, the second most deadly month, during which 90 people were shot and killed by police.



As of today, The Post has tracked 570 fatal police shootings. (Read more about the methodology here.)

July joins April as the only two months so far this year with at least one fatal police shooting every day, and there were 14 days in July with four or more shootings — including July 7, which had eight.

Of those killed in July, 87 of the 103 were armed, and in 17 shootings mental illness was a factor.

Of the 103 victims of fatal police shootings, only one was a woman — 44-year-old Tamala Satre, a white woman who was shot and killed July 23, 2015, in a house in Meadow Vista, Calif., after officers received a call about a suicidal person. After they arrived, police say, Satre pulled out a .38-caliber handgun and ignored orders to drop her weapon.

The number of fatal shootings by police so far this year tracked by The Post far exceeds the figures reported by the FBI for any single year since 1976. The federal data, which officials acknowledge is incomplete, has never recorded more than 460 fatal police shootings in an entire year, The Post identified 463 such shootings in just the first six months of 2015.
Related:



The Post’s database on police shootings

How The Post is tracking these shootings

Since 1976, the FBI hasn’t counted more than 460 fatal police shootings in a year. We’ve counted 463 already in 2015.

Current and former police officers describe tension in current environment

Police officers shot and killed more people so far in July than during any other week this year
Wesley Lowery is a national reporter covering law enforcement and justice for the Washington Post. He previously covered Congress and national politics.

Sheriff's officer tipped off dealers in drug ring bust, authorities allege
Sheriff's Officer Robert Andrews charged



Sheriff's officer Robert Andrews being led in handcuffs into the Leroy F. Smith Jr. Public Safety Building in Newark Thursday afternoon. Andrews will face charges of obstruction in connection to a law enforcement investigation into a heroin distribution ring, sources say. (Nj.com| Vernal Coleman)

on July 16, 2015 at 2:36 PM, updated July 17, 2015 at 8:30 AM

NEWARK — County prosecutor's office officials have added another name to the list of 48 suspects arrested earlier this month in connection to what they've said was a sprawling heroin distribution ring — this one belonging to an Essex County Sheriff's Officer.

Sheriff's Officer Robert Andrews, 28, of Union, was seen entering the Leroy F. Smith Jr. Public Safety Building in Newark Thursday afternoon, to receive charges that he interfered with an investigation into that narcotics ring.

Andrews has been charged with hindering the investigation and fourth degree obstructing administration of law, the office of Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray confirmed Thursday afternoon.

Asked about the allegations as he was led in handcuffs into the courthouse by county officials Thursday afternoon, Andrews remained silent.

Dubbed Operation TIDE, the seven-month investigation by members of the Essex County Narcotics Task Force resulted in dozens of arrests for charges including drug distribution, possession of illegal firearms and homicide, authorities said.

The drug trafficking ring, which officials said dealt mostly in heroin, was run by members of the 793 Bloods, a street gang operating throughout Essex County, said Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray earlier this month.

According to authorities, Andrews, while employed as a Sheriff's Officer, allegedly disclosed information to the subject of an investigation and assisted in identifying law enforcement officers to alleged members of the narcotics distribution ring.
MORE: Have you seen these men? 7 at-large after gang-fueled drug ring bust

Reached Thursday afternoon, Essex County Sheriff Armando B. Fontoura confirmed that Andrews was suspended from duty without pay on July 2.

Department officials took action after being informed that Andrews was the target of a Essex County Narcotics Task Force investigation stemming from his alleged connections to the narcotics ring targeted during Operation TIDE.

"To say that we're disappointed by this situation is an understatement," Fontoura said when asked about the allegations against Andrews.

A former city policeman, Andrews joined the Essex County Sheriff's Office in 2012 along with more than 40 other officers laid off by the Newark Police Department, Fontoura said.

Andrews will remain suspended until the investigation is resolved, at which point he will face an administrative hearing and possible dismissal, Fontoura added.

Andrews is set to become the forty-ninth person charged by the prosecutor's office in connection to the drug ring. A majority of the 48 other suspects were arrested after Prosecutor's Office officers carried out several search warrants on July 1. A large group of those arrested pleaded not guilty at an initial court appearance earlier this month.

Two of the men arrested on charges related to a fatal shooting allegedly tied to the ring also pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Several of the 48 suspects initially charged by county authorities remain at-large. Investigators have in the weeks since the announcement of the arrests asked for the public's help in locating them.

Check back for more on this developing story.

Vernal Coleman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Strange as 90 percents of your postings are cut and paste you very well could be a sock yourself.

Judge wants D.A. to explain why he didn't charge deputy for police brutality

by
Josie Duffy

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/11/1420513/-Judge-wants-D-A-to-explain-why-he-didn-t-charge-deputy-for-police-brutality

Rarely does a judge ask a prosecutor to explain their charging decisions. Even more rarely do they request an explanation years later. But, in a rare and important move by Denver judge Michael Martinez, District Attorney Mitch Morrissey will have to account for his questionable discretion.

The case in question involves a Sherriff's deputy whom Morrissey chose not to prosecute after he slammed an inmate, Anthony Waller, into a glass window. According to the Denver Post:

On Sept. 11, 2012, Deputy Brady Lovingier grabbed Waller by chains around his waist and slammed him into a window frame inside a courtroom. Lovingier, who is white, called Waller, who is black, "boy" as he ordered him to get up.

In a courtroom security video, Waller appeared to be calm as he posed a question to Judge Doris Burd. Lovingier then touched Waller on the back, leading the inmate to turn around.

That's when Lovingier grabbed him by the waist chains. Waller suffered broken teeth, a fractured bone around his eye, a gash on his head and a closed head injury, according to the petition. Waller's back, neck, legs and ankles also were injured.

You can see the video here.


The judge's decision to force Morrissey to explain himself indicates possibility for further action against the prosecutor. "This is our shot at getting justice," said Ken Padilla, Waller's attorney.

The Post reports that "Morrissey has been criticized by various community groups, including the NAACP and Colorado Latino Forum, because he rarely prosecutes police or sheriff's deputies accused of excessive force."

It is unusual and admirable for a judge to hold a prosecutor accountable, especially when the alleged perpetrator is an agent of the state. Hopefully more judges will begin asking questions when law enforcement gets off scot free for abusing and assaulting citizens.

If their hands were up before they were in the scope they probably wouldn't have been shot

Thats just your way of admitting you don't read much, TonyRM, and it shows. It really, really shows.

Either that, TonyRM, or they should have touched base and yelled "All-ee, all-ee in free!"

Cops should never shoot unarmed suspects, dummy.

Ferguson Commission recommends drastic overhaul of city policing system
Source: The Guardian

A drastic overhaul of policing and the criminal justice system in Ferguson, Missouri, and the surrounding region is needed to address the unfair treatment of black residents, according to a panel established by the state’s governor after last year’s civil unrest.

The Ferguson Commission on Monday blamed sharp racial disparities, which it said also extended through “housing, health, education, and income”, for turning the St Louis region into a tinder box that was ignited by the fatal shooting by police of an unarmed 18-year-old.

“We know that talking about race makes a lot of people uncomfortable,” the panel said, in a report based on an inquiry conducted over more than nine months. “But make no mistake: this is about race.” The 16-person commission said it had found repeatedly that “our institutions and existing systems are not equal, and that this has racial repercussions”.

-snip-

Among dozens of other recommendations, the panel called for the consolidation of St Louis County’s fragmented police and courts system, under which 60 separate police departments and 81 different courts oversee a little more than 1 million people.

-snip-


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/14/ferguson-commission-drastic-policing-overhaul

Why the hell not as in a hoodlum trying to seized the police officer gun, or get the police officer in a position where he was beating him or her to the point of serious harm or death or after being order to freeze made a move that look to any reasonable person that the hoodlum was trying to bring a deadly weapon into play.

Lot of good solid reasons for cops to shoot at an unarmed person at least if the cop wish to go home to his family.

The entire point of "Black Lives Matter" is that they want to be able to beat police officers to death with no repercussions.

It sadly seems that way or at least they wish to take away a great deal of a police officer right to self defense.

In any case, when you attacked a police officer with or without a gun or other weapons you are and should be placing your life in the hands of the officer judgement of how serous your threat to his life is at that moment.

footnote in any physical conflict between an officer and a citizen there is always at least one firearm involved IE the police officer weapon that can be seized an used against the officer.

That's the whole point of putting your hands up. To show you are not armed. We don't give cops x ray glasses or mind reading devices. The dummies were the ones who didn't know how to put their hands up before they got themselves killed. They also could just refrain from thugging other "unarmed citizens" and saved EVERYONE some trouble.