The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody Lie

Well if you do not allowed the teachers and their supports such as school police to control the schools then the worst elements of the student body will take over.

Hell of a note having a girl who should not be in a normal classroom to begin with now being untouchable by any of the school staff if they wish to keep their jobs.

But as bad as this is for the staff it far worst for the students who might have some desire to learn.

TonyRM, Thats the dumbest thing you've posted in a loooong time. My two honor student daughters (one of whom is a teacher now) thinks you are cracked. And she taught in an inner-city school where she confiscated cell phones regularly. Never needed a cop ever. And neither did the teacher in SC.

TonyRM - Correction: this is dumbest as well as the most mean spirited thing you've ever posted on a2k. You do believe in children being left behind. Even GW Bush disagrees with you.

What a load of racist codwallop.

Police Are the Greatest Threat Facing Black Kids in School

If the only resources police bring into schools are their handcuffs and physical prowess, they are not a resource.
By Sonali Kolhatkar / Truthdig
October 29, 2015


By now the video of a black female high school student being brutalized by a white officer has gone viral, prompting the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh social media hashtag to be used tens of thousands of times. Monday’s incident in Columbia, S.C., has underscored the ongoing police abuses of African-Americans, and, just as important, it has reminded us of the dangerous and overwhelmingly unnecessary presence of police on school campuses. The disproportionate disciplining of black children starts as early as preschool and continues through high school, relegating a good number of kids to a lifetime of association with the criminal justice system.

The Spring Valley High student in question apparently was caught by a teacher using her cellphone in the classroom and was asked to leave. Reports indicate that at no point did she become violent or belligerent, or even raise her voice. The teacher then called in the “school resource officer”—Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields—who proceeded to put the girl in a chokehold, slam her to the ground, despite the fact that she was seated, and drag her halfway across the room in one swift motion.
ADVERTISING


According to news reports, “the girl’s arm is in a cast, she has a rug burn on her forehead and has pain in her neck and back. She was hospitalized Monday night. ...”

The video showing the girl being brutalized is only 15 seconds long. But that is all that is needed to prove to any reasonable human being that what they viewed was a wholly unjustified assault by an armed, trained, well-muscled adult man against a small-statured girl who was quiet and seated. Indeed, to most social media users, that is precisely what the video shows, and the resulting public response is, rightfully, outrage.

But to Fields’ boss, Sheriff Leon Lott, a very different picture emerges from that 15-second video. According to Lott, “When the officer puts his hands on her initially, she reaches up and she pops the officer with her fist.”

After I read that outrageous claim, I watched the video once more, as carefully as I could. Officer Fields’ motions are so swift, so definitive and so violent that the girl barely has a second or two to respond. He begins by standing behind her and placing her in a chokehold (think Eric Garner), and her self-defense mechanism appears to have kicked in, as any human being’s would have: Her hands flew up to the source of her terror. But to law enforcement personnel, who seem to experience an entirely different version of reality, that instinctive human reaction to protect oneself from assault constitutes an assault itself.

Lott bizarrely exposed his tone deafness even more when he went on to say, “If she had not disrupted the school and disrupted that class, we would not be standing here today. So it started with her and it ended with my officer.”

Authorities continue to accept police officers’ distorted view of reality and coddle them, treating them delicately, as though society needs their permission to occasionally try to hold them accountable for barbaric violence. Despite the crisis of police violence, President Barack Obama, in a speech to a police officers’ union Tuesday, insisted that officers are victims. He said, “I reject any narrative that seeks to divide police and communities that they serve. I reject a storyline that says when it comes to public safety there’s an ‘us’ and a ‘them’—a narrative that too often gets served up to us by news stations seeking ratings, or tweets seeking retweets, or political candidates seeking some attention.” But are the media and Twitter pitting cops against people, or are officers like Ben Fields literally using their brute force against people?

In fact, media coverage all too often lets police officers off the hook. Just the headlines of two major outlets expose the bias. The New York Times’ main article about the incident Tuesday was titled, “Race and Discipline in Spotlight After South Carolina Officer Drags Student.” Why not something a bit clearer, such as, “Video Shows South Carolina Officer Assaulting Black Female Student”?

Reuters’ headline is even worse: “ ‘Disturbing’ arrest of black South Carolina student sparks federal, local probes.” Why the quotes around the word “disturbing”? Only a writer who wanted to leave open the possibility that there was justification for such treatment would use quotation marks.

CNN’s coverage was also problematic. Wolf Blitzer hosted a debate between the network’s controversial host, Don Lemon, and its legal analyst, Sunny Hostin, over the video of the Spring Valley High incident. While Lemon admitted that he found the video disturbing, he insisted that he needed more information about what happened before the assault before drawing conclusions. Hostin, aghast at his assertion, said, “I don’t need to know [what happened before],” while Lemon, who aggressively and patronizingly talked over her, had the last word: “You don’t know she wasn’t resisting, you weren’t there.” A petition asking CNN to remove Lemon garnered more than 10,000 signatures within hours of the exchange.

On Wednesday the sheriff’s department announced that Field had been fired. Prior to the incident the officer apparently was a named defendant in two federal cases, one of which is still active. According to Reuters, that case was over “claims he ‘unfairly and recklessly targets African-American students with allegations of gang membership and criminal gang activity,’ ” and “a jury trial is set for Jan. 27 in Columbia.”

The district that Spring Valley High is a part of—Richland Two—has come under fire from parents for racial discrimination. A group called the Richland Two Black Parents Association has called for a federal investigation into what they call the “discriminatory practices of the district.” Commenting on video of Fields assaulting the high school student, the parents’ group wrote, “The unfortunate actions of this police officer [have] revealed what many African American parents have experienced in this district for a very long time.”

Sadly, the criminal justice system has shown little interest in prosecuting and convicting police officers accused of brutality and violence. Despite the fact that the FBI has decided to investigate Fields over the incident, it has a long track record of inaction on such issues. The Department of Justice has routinely examined incidents of police brutality and issued lengthy reports while holding no one legally culpable.

When African-American youths and parents routinely complain of being targeted by police and authorities, they are expected to shoulder the burden of proof of racist behavior. When asked at a news conference if race factored into Fields’ actions, Sheriff Lott defended his deputy, saying, “He’s been dating an African American female for quite some time now,” as if that could make the officer immune to his biases. Charleston shooter Dylann Roof also had a black friend who claimed Roof “never said anything racist, never treated me any different.”

The most tragic aspect of the Spring Valley High incident is how common it is. Only a few weeks ago, a 14-year-old African-American boy named Gyasi Hughes was similarly brutalized by a police officer at his school in Round Rock, Texas. A video of the incident shows the officer aggressively moving into the boy’s personal space while he and his fellow officer have Hughes cornered. At one point, the officer put his hand on the boy’s upper arm and the boy instinctively brushed it off, as any of us might. That basic and very mild self-defensive motion was all the excuse the officer needed to slam the boy to the ground and push himself on top of the youth, remaining there for several minutes.

What’s remarkable about the Columbia, S.C., and the Round Rock, Texas, videos are the reactions of the people who are watching. In the Columbia video, the other students sit in stony silence, punctuated by a few soft gasps of fear. They have seen this all too often and know that their own reactions could result in arrests. After all, it was their teacher who requested the officer’s assistance. In the case of Round Rock, school staff members are seen casually walking around the boy as he lies on the ground, face down, with two large officers keeping their weight on him. They act as though police abuse of their students is perfectly ordinary and reasonable. One staff member even appears to berate the person videotaping the incident.

But the videos are the only reason such incidents are now being discussed on a national stage. Ironically, the South Carolina student was being disciplined for using her cellphone in class, but it is only because her fellow students whipped theirs out to record the incident that we know what happened. If the only thing that proves that young black students are subject to police brutality on their school grounds is videotaped evidence, then they should be encouraged to record every interaction with police.

There ought to be no reason for law enforcement to routinely police schools. To justify their presence, cops have been given titles like “school resource officer.” But if the only resources police bring into schools are their handcuffs and physical prowess, they are not a resource—they are a threat.

Sonali Kolhatkar is co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.

Deadly Force, in Black and White

A ProPublica analysis of killings by police shows outsize risk for young black males.

by Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Eric Sagara
ProPublica, Oct. 10, 2014, 11:07 a.m.
(Hannah Birch and David Sleight/ProPublica)

This story has been updated.

Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater i, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings.

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica's analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring – 185, more than one per week.

ProPublica's risk analysis on young males killed by police certainly seems to support what has been an article of faith in the African American community for decades: Blacks are being killed at disturbing rates when set against the rest of the American population.

Our examination involved detailed accounts of more than 12,000 police homicides stretching from 1980 to 2012 contained in the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Report. The data, annually self-reported by hundreds of police departments across the country, confirms some assumptions, runs counter to others, and adds nuance to a wide range of questions about the use of deadly police force.

Colin Loftin, University at Albany professor and co-director of the Violence Research Group, said the FBI data is a minimum count of homicides by police, and that it is impossible to precisely measure what puts people at risk of homicide by police without more and better records. Still, what the data shows about the race of victims and officers, and the circumstances of killings, are "certainly relevant," Loftin said.

"No question, there are all kinds of racial disparities across our criminal justice system," he said. "This is one example."

The FBI's data has appeared in news accounts over the years, and surfaced again with the August killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. To a great degree, observers and experts lamented the limited nature of the FBI's reports. Their shortcomings are inarguable.

The data, for instance, is terribly incomplete. Vast numbers of the country's 17,000 police departments don't file fatal police shooting reports at all, and many have filed reports for some years but not others. Florida departments haven't filed reports since 1997 and New York City last reported in 2007. Information contained in the individual reports can also be flawed. Still, lots of the reporting police departments are in larger cities, and at least 1000 police departments filed a report or reports over the 33 years.

There is, then, value in what the data can show while accepting, and accounting for, its limitations. Indeed, while the absolute numbers are problematic, a comparison between white and black victims shows important trends. Our analysis included dividing the number of people of each race killed by police by the number of people of that race living in the country at the time, to produce two different rates: the risk of getting killed by police if you are white and if you are black.

David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis professor and expert on police use of deadly force, said racial disparities in the data could result from "measurement error," meaning that the unreported killings could alter ProPublica's findings.

However, he said the disparity between black and white teenage boys is so wide, "I doubt the measurement error would account for that."

ProPublica spent weeks digging into the many rich categories of information the reports hold: the race of the officers involved; the circumstances cited for the use of deadly force; the age of those killed.




Who Gets Killed?

The finding that young black men are 21 times as likely as their white peers to be killed by police is drawn from reports filed for the years 2010 to 2012, the three most recent years for which FBI numbers are available.

(Jonathan Stray/ProPublica)



The black boys killed can be disturbingly young. There were 41 teens 14 years or younger reported killed by police from 1980 to 2012 ii. 27 of them were black iii; 8 were white iv; 4 were Hispanic v and 1 was Asian vi.

That's not to say officers weren't killing white people. Indeed, some 44 percent of all those killed by police across the 33 years were white.

White or black, though, those slain by police tended to be roughly the same age. The average age of blacks killed by police was 30. The average age of whites was 35.

Who is killing all those black men and boys?

Mostly white officers. But in hundreds of instances, black officers, too. Black officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings. Of those they kill, though, 78 percent were black.

White officers, given their great numbers in so many of the country's police departments, are well represented in all categories of police killings. White officers killed 91 percent of the whites who died at the hands of police. And they were responsible for 68 percent of the people of color killed. Those people of color represented 46 percent of all those killed by white officers.

What were the circumstances surrounding all these fatal encounters?

There were 151 instances in which police noted that teens they had shot dead had been fleeing or resisting arrest at the time of the encounter. 67 percent of those killed in such circumstances were black. That disparity was even starker in the last couple of years: of the 15 teens shot fleeing arrest from 2010 to 2012, 14 were black.

Did police always list the circumstances of the killings? No, actually, there were many deadly shooting where the circumstances were listed as "undetermined." 77 percent of those killed in such instances were black.

Certainly, there were instances where police truly feared for their lives.

Of course, although the data show that police reported that as the cause of their actions in far greater numbers after the 1985 Supreme Court decision that said police could only justify using deadly force if the suspects posed a threat to the officer or others. From 1980 to 1984, "officer under attack" was listed as the cause for 33 percent of the deadly shootings. Twenty years later, looking at data from 2005 to 2009, "officer under attack" was cited in 62 percent xxxvii of police killings.

Does the data include cases where police killed people with something other than a standard service handgun?

Yes, and the Los Angeles Police Department stood out in its use of shotguns. Most police killings involve officers firing handguns xl. But from 1980 to 2012, 714 involved the use of a shotgun xli. The Los Angeles Police Department has a special claim on that category. It accounted for 47 cases xlii in which an officer used a shotgun. The next highest total came from the Dallas Police Department: 14 xliii.

For more civil rights coverage, read Segregation Now, the resegregation of America's schools, and Living Apart, how the government beytrayed a landmark civil rights law.

Update (Dec. 23, 2014): ProPublica shared its findings and methodology with Prof. David Klinger before this story appeared. In two interviews with reporters, he noted that the FBI data has serious shortcomings . But he also said the disparity ProPublica had found between black and white victims was so large, it was unlikely to have resulted solely from omissions in the FBI statistics. After the story appeared, Klinger said flaws in the FBI data made it unusable. ProPublica contacted Klinger and asked him to elaborate, but he declined to comment further. We stand by the analysis. A full response to the arguments Klinger and another critic have raised is here.

i ProPublica calculated a statistical figure called a risk ratio by dividing the rate of black homicide victims by the rate of white victims. This ratio, commonly used in epidemiology, gives an estimate for how much more at risk black teenagers were to be killed by police officers.Risk ratios can have varying levels of precision, depending on a variety of mathematical factors. In this case, because such shootings are rare from a statistical perspective, a 95 percent confidence interval indicates that black teenagers are at between 10 and 40 times greater risk of being killed by a police officer. The calculation used 2010-2012 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

ii https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307015-victims-14under-byraceanddecade-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179431

iii https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307015-victims-14under-byraceanddecade-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179432

iv https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307015-victims-14under-byraceanddecade-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179433

v https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307015-victims-14under-byraceanddecade-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179434

vi https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307015-victims-14under-byraceanddecade-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179435

xxxvii https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307298-circumstances-yearcats-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179463

xl Calculated from the "Weapon Used by Offender" variable. Ranked based on frequency of reported shotgun homicides by police agencies.

xli https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307312-offweapon-bystate-spssoutput.html#document/p3/a179466

xlii https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307313-offweapon-lapd-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179467

xliii https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1307316-offweapon-dallas-spssoutput.html#document/p1/a179468

At one school I worked at I was told they normally had four streamed classes for the GCSE group (15-16yrs). This year however they would have five, the fifth being the nutcases and that was my class. I to call senior management a few times, but we never had to involve the police. More often than not the deputy head would tell me that one of my pupils, who was suspended from lessons for bad behaviour, had asked if they could come to my lesson because they always behaved for me. I used to let them in, if nothing else it was fun listening to how they'd got suspended in the first place.

Most "problem" kids usually have a real need to just be listened to.

Colorado laws allow rogue officers to stay in law enforcement

Colorado's rogue police officers continue to stay in law enforcement due to lenient state laws
By Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post
Posted: 07/12/2015 12:01:00 AM MDT | Updated: 19 days ago


From left: Michael Jimenez, Kirk Firko and Todd Vecellio.
From left: Michael Jimenez, Kirk Firko and Todd Vecellio. (Handout)




Michael Jimenez resigned from Denver police in 2008 after he allegedly had sex with a prostitute in his squad car. He then got and lost jobs at the Custer County Sheriff's Office and the Fowler Police Department. It was not until he pleaded guilty to vehicular assault while driving drunk that Jimenez's certification in law enforcement was revoked. (Handout)

Colorado's lenient police discipline system allows rogue officers to jump from department to department despite committing transgressions that would bar them from law enforcement jobs in many states.

Michael Jimenez resigned from the Denver police force in 2008 after he allegedly had sex with a prostitute he picked up in his squad car. But that did not stop the Custer County Sheriff's Office from hiring him in 2009. He lost that job, too, in less than a year.

Then the Fowler Police Department, whose chief knew Jimenez from Denver, hired him. Jimenez never showed up for work and was later fired after pleading guilty to driving while ability impaired.

Still, his certificate to work as a police officer remained active.

It was not until he pleaded guilty again, this time to vehicular assault while driving drunk, that the panel that decides who can and cannot work in law enforcement in Colorado finally revoked Jimenez's certification. Jimenez had plowed his van into a car driven by a 27-year-old man, leaving the man temporarily in a medically induced coma with a shattered pelvis and broken left leg.

Jimenez, who declined comment, got pass after pass because Colorado requires a felony conviction or a conviction of one of 44 misdemeanors specified in statute to bring an end to an officer's career in law enforcement.

RELATED: How Colorado laws give fired police officers from other states a second chance here

In Colorado, a police officer can be fired or resign for egregious violations of moral turpitude, such as destruction of evidence, lying under oath or excessive use of force. But so long as there is no conviction of a felony or one of the misdemeanors, the officer is free to seek employment at another agency. Small towns, eager to find officers willing to work for low pay, sometimes will hire them despite their past.


Kirk Firko works with the Mountain View force after being fired from the Colorado State Patrol after the 2010 shooting death of a suspect. Firko kicked in

Kirk Firko works with the Mountain View force after being fired from the Colorado State Patrol after the 2010 shooting death of a suspect. Firko kicked in the door, and his partner fatally shot the man. Both officers were charged, but Firko's were dropped after a jury acquitted his partner.

"You've got to remember with smaller jurisdictions, down south or out east (in the state), it's tough to get cops when you're paying less than 20 bucks an hour," said Tony Webb, the former Fowler police chief who hired Jimenez. "Everyone deserves one screw-up."

RELATED: Colorado Rep. to push bill against second-chance cops

The Denver Post reviewed a decade of state police personnel findings as well as discipline logs at the Denver Police Department and hiring records at select agencies and found officers still working in Colorado despite serious transgressions.

In some instances, these problem officers went on to commit crimes or cause harm.

The extent of the problem is unknown. The Colorado attorney general's office refused to release to The Post a state database that tracks the employment history of officers and would provide only limited information on hundreds of officers the newspaper submitted for review. The database contains information on about 9,000 law enforcement officers actively working at agencies and an additional 6,000 who are certified but are not employed in law enforcement.

Colorado is one of only a handful of states to have such a high threshold for bringing an end to a career in policing.


Todd Vecellio had been reprimanded three times as an officer in Calhan in 2002. Previously, he had been convicted of abusing a 4-year-old girl, which cost him a job at the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office. He also had been arrested twice for domestic violence; the cases were dismissed. Vecellio then worked as a campus officer for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. While working there, he was arrested in an Internet sex sting in 2007. It took four felony convictions on child-sex charges for the state review panel to revoke Vecellio's certificate. (Handout)

Most states will take that step for reasons short of a conviction, such as ethical violations, personnel issues or fitness for duty. Even training failures or alcohol abuse can bring an end to a law enforcement career elsewhere.

At least 39 states have rules that make it easier to ensure a rogue officer never polices again. At least 18 of those states also require agencies to inform state review panels when an officer is fired or resigns — something Colorado does not do.

Former Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates, now chief of the Miami Beach, Fla., Police Department, said Colorado needs to make it easier to get rid of bad officers and should do a better job tracking those with past issues. Many rural agencies in Colorado do not do thorough background checks on applicants, which takes up to 80 hours, Oates said.

In Florida, Oates must inform the state review panel when an officer leaves his department and give the reason, and that information is public. Colorado only requires police agencies to annually report their rosters to the state. Colorado will not even share the employment history it does have with chiefs wanting to know about an applicant's background.

"Your employment decisions are everything, and knowing everything you can about a candidate is crucial," Oates said. "All you have to do is look at the scrutiny on American policing in the past year to know that your people are everything."

Roger Goldman, a nationally recognized expert on officer misconduct who has helped write laws establishing state police review panels, said Colorado's lenient rules allow unfit officers to continue doing harm.

"A lot of people think, 'Well, we have a decertification system in place, and we've done what we need do,' and that's very misleading," Goldman said. "You have to have a vigorous statewide agency that can protect people because there are these small, underfunded police agencies that are willing to hire these cops who are not fit to be on the streets. If you can just decertify for criminal convictions, that's worthless. You need to broaden it."

Among The Post's findings:

• At least six Denver officers who were fired or resigned amid allegations of wrongdoing in the past decade found work at other smaller agencies.

• Rogue cops can negotiate to keep past transgressions secret. Nadia Gatchell was fired from the Denver police force in 2012 for lies she told superiors during an investigation into abuse of off-duty secondary employment. The officer, who previously had been disciplined in Denver for destroying marijuana evidence, was able to keep the decision to fire her out of her personnel file by agreeing to drop a Civil Service appeal. The city's safety manager at the time, Alex Martinez, agreed to remove her dismissal letter from her personnel file and have her file reflect that she had resigned.

Gatchell, who declined to comment, went on to work at the Elizabeth Police Department for about a year after her firing. Now she's working as a parole officer for the Department of Corrections, her fourth law enforcement job.

• Officers who have their certificate for police work revoked often are repeat offenders. Of the nearly 280 officers who have been decertified in the past decade in Colorado, at least 29 had past serious personnel issues or arrests. Many more likely are repeat offenders, but how many could not be determined because many agencies in the state won't release discipline or personnel files for public review.

• About a third of those 280 decertified for police work in Colorado had worked at more than one police agency. Seven of those officers had shuffled to four or more police agencies before they ended up with a conviction that brought a final end to their careers in law enforcement.

• The state's review panel, the Colorado Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training, does not always keep up with those who aren't employed by a police agency but remain certified for law enforcement work.

Patrick Strawmatt, who resigned from the Lafayette police force in 1987, was arrested at least 10 times, including one that led to a felony conviction for animal cruelty after he shot a dog to death. It wasn't until Strawmatt was convicted in 2007 of killing two teenagers while fleeing police in a drunken-driving homicide that the state review panel revoked his certificate for police work, records show.


"Second-chance cops"



Some police agencies have become havens for what officials call "second-chance cops." At the tiny Mountain View Police Department, west of Denver, The Post found six current and former officers, including the chief, who have had past personnel issues at other departments.

Chief Mark Toth was charged with assault, false reporting and official misconduct as a Westminster police sergeant but was acquitted. He said he retired from Westminster after the accusations but declined to say whether he was forced out.

"Because of my experience in Westminster, do I have empathy for officers? Yes," Toth said. "In my opinion, I have a better understanding of what they went through and what they're going through. But that's where I draw the line. I don't use that as an excuse to hire anyone."

Toth hired Randy Hurst, an officer fired from Denver, after he admitted to having sex with a woman in a Taco Bell restroom while on duty. Denver agreed to pay $5,000 to settle a federal lawsuit by the woman, who accused Hurst of rape. Hurst said the sex was consensual, and no criminal charges were brought. Hurst resigned from the Mountain View force in 2013.

Mountain View employs Kirk Firko, fired from the State Patrol after the 2010 shooting death of a Grand Junction man. Firko kicked in the door of the home of a drunken-driving suspect, and his partner fatally shot the man. Both officers were charged, but Firko's charges were dropped after a jury acquitted his partner. The state paid $1 million to settle a wrongful-death suit.

Toth also hired Luis Rivera, fired from the Denver police force in 2010 for his involvement in a stomping that left a 16-year-old Latino with a lacerated liver, broken ribs and an injured kidney. Officials in Denver concluded Rivera and two other officers used excessive force and failed to timely disclose that force to superiors. Denver agreed to pay $885,000 to settle a lawsuit filed for the teen. Rivera no longer works in Mountain View.

The state legislature tried to address the issue of police shuffling this year. A new law requires police departments to disclose to agencies seeking to hire their former officers in instances in which they had sustained violations for making "knowing misrepresentations" during their employment.

But the law has loopholes. It deals only with officers who lie during internal investigations in court or on arrest affidavits. Disclosure wouldn't be required for violations of excessive force or destruction of evidence or other violations, unless the agency found the officer lied about those acts.

It will not prevent smaller agencies from hiring officers when they know about a troubled past but choose to ignore it, said one of the sponsors, state Sen. John Cooke, a Republican and former Weld County sheriff.

"There are a lot of smaller agencies that will overlook a few things, unfortunately," he said. "Shame on them for doing it."

Cooke said giving the review panel more authority could be costly for the state and burdensome to local agencies.

"Arizona has 11 people who do state review investigations," he said. "It would be a huge fiscal note to do something like that here and add people here and do hearings."

This year's Colorado legislative efforts to add new misdemeanors to the list of offenses that could result in revocation of an officer's certificate went nowhere. Officials at the state review panel had hoped to broaden the list of disqualifying misdemeanors, but nobody took up the cause.

That means officers convicted of second-degree arson, invasion of privacy for sexual gratification, certain theft charges, some child abuse charges, patronizing a prostitute and abuse of a corpse, as well as dozens of other criminal offenses, still won't be in danger of losing their certificate for police work in Colorado.


List of rogue officers



Meanwhile, the list of rogue Colorado officers getting second and third chances grows.

Christopher Pinder was able to find work in law enforcement after his firing from Denver, where he had a long, troubled history.

As a recruit at the Denver police academy in 2007, Pinder got in an altercation outside a bar and fled the scene, personnel records show. In 2012, he was suspended twice — both for drinking-related problems. In one case, he got drunk and ridiculed and struggled with a homeless person.

Denver authorities placed Pinder on leave that year after a doctor found him unfit for duty because of depression, panic attacks and alcohol dependence.

The next year, a Jefferson County sheriff's deputy found a drunken Pinder slumped over his Jeep Wrangler's steering wheel around midnight, records show. "Bro, I'm a cop," Pinder told the deputy. On the way to booking, Pinder continued to plead for special treatment he said he would have given the deputy if their roles were reversed.

Denver fired Pinder in 2014, but the Park County Sheriff's Office still hired him as a deputy.

"We were aware of his history in Denver, and we decided to give him a shot," said Park County Undersheriff Monte Gore.

In one instance, a mayor pleaded with the state review panel to decertify an officer, to no avail. John Cullyford, then mayor of Calhan, wrote in a 2002 letter to the board that Todd Vecellio, then chief of police of Calhan, was "not fit to be on the street" and could leave "tragedy in his wake" if allowed to remain a cop.

The officer had been reprimanded three times and had once violated policy in Calhan. He had refused orders to return a $1,500 submachine gun he purchased, The Gazette in Colorado Springs reported.

He had been convicted of abusing a 4-year-old girl, a conviction that earlier had cost him a job at the Pueblo Sheriff's Office. He also had been arrested twice for domestic violence, cases that were dismissed.

But the review panel was powerless to act. He had done nothing sufficient to decertify him under Colorado law.

Vecellio went on to get hired as a campus police officer for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

During his employment there, he was arrested in an Internet sex sting in 2007. He had tried to set up sex with someone he believed to be a mother and her 13-year-old girl.

It took four felony convictions on child-sex charges for the state review panel to finally revoke Vecellio's certificate for police work.

The past warning from the mayor was prescient.

"We can terminate Vecellio and we will very soon," the mayor told the state's review panel in the letter. But other communities, the mayor said, should be kept from hiring wandering cops such as him and "becoming victimized by the Todd G. Vecellios of this world."

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747, [email protected] or twitter.com/chrisosher

Oh and when a girl as big or bigger then her tell her to go to hell other then to called in her superiors what the hell is your daughter going to do?

Note as far as the girl in question it is my understanding that the teacher did not call the cop, it was her superior that she did call in to deal with the situation.

Now once more when a girl that is as big and as your daughter tell her to go to hell and refused to turn over the phone or leave the classroom what is your daughter going to do?

Try telling that to the parents who have their kids beaten, knife or even killed in the schools by other students or ex-students.

An what is the ratio between black teenagers and white teenagers threatening deadly force against police officers?

TonyRM - She taught high school in tough school in Austin that was 60% Hispanic (lots of undocumented kids) 35% black and 5% white. Very high poverty rate, even with the white kids whose parents couldn't move and lets face it, the Hispanics and blacks did everything they could to get out of that school. The last year she worked there were six suicide/homicides that included students and staff. Before you start to gloat about the horrible number - none of them happened at the school.

There were two cops at the school in Austin (the district has their own cops separate from the APD), and they NEVER went into a classroom to reestablish order and my daughter said cell phone confiscations were daily.

Never an AISD, let alone the APD to grab a kid out of class. Let alone one with special needs.

I cannot believe how stupid you are about the police, the schools and our children.

Shame on you!

Los Angeles sheriff's deputy gets 8 years in jail beating
Source: AP


Video:
http://abc7.com/news/exclusive-lasd-deputies-interview-prison-visitor-after-beating/802334/

By AMANDA LEE MYERS



LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was sentenced Monday to eight years in federal prison for supervising the backroom beating of a jail visitor who fellow guards testified was handcuffed on the ground and covered in blood.

U.S. District Judge George King ordered former Sgt. Eric Gonzalez taken into custody immediately.

Gonzalez, a 15-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department, was found guilty in June of deprivation of civil rights, conspiracy to violate constitutional rights and falsification of records in the 2011 beating of Gabriel Carrillo. Four other deputies have been convicted in the case and await sentencing, while a fifth was indicted in the case last month.

The convictions in Carrillo's beating are part of a federal investigation of civil rights abuses and corruption at the nation's largest sheriff's department.

FULL story at link.


FILE - This undated evidence file photo provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office and taken by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department shows Gabriel Carrillo in Los Angeles. The former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy convicted in the beating of Carrillo, a jail visitor who was handcuffed and assaulted by several deputies, is set to be sentenced in federal court. Sgt. Eric Gonzalez faces up to 12 years in prison at his sentencing Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, though his attorney is requesting no more than a 2 1/2-year sentence. Gonzalez was found guilty in June of deprivation of civil rights, conspiracy to violate constitutional rights and falsification of records. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department via AP, File)

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7efc74c337d24bb4866d113d75d1e678/los-angeles-sheriffs-deputy-be-sentenced-jail-beating

Somehow I feel no shame for supporting the idea that the rest of the students in that classroom are entitle to an education that the young woman in question was interfering with that right.

She refused to turn over the phone and then refused to leaved the classroom, first to the teacher and then to the teacher superior and then to the school police officer.

I assume your and your daughter solution to the problem would be to allowed her to remain in the classroom texting away and if that would not be your solution I am still waiting to hear how you daughter would had either gotten the phone from her and or gotten her to leaved the classroom without the used of force given her flat refusal to obey anyone including the cop.

Did your daughter had some magic wand?

In any case. that girl should never had been in a mainstream classroom to begin with.

And that means the gangs.



Anyone who wants an education now will have to avoid public schools and go private.

Might be some money in it for people who can manage to run private schools at prices that the middle class can afford.

a. Your inability to feel shame is one of your major handicaps.
b. Its never been established or even suggested the girl was interfering with class, cell phone or no, but that criminal cop certainly did interfere with class.

My daughter is a Summa Cum Laude grad from St Edwards University, a certified bi-lingual teacher, all she did was do what she was supposed to do in pretty darn tough circumstances: teach.

You'd better lock the door to your mom's basement, I mean your "command center", the weatherman is calling for sunrise in the morning follwed by intermittent gang warfare with a light fog of ISIS.

Officer beats up teen for filming him, arrests him for battery on a law enforcement officer

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/video-raging-cop-claims-smell-weed-so-he-beat-and-arrested-innocent-teen

Officer Napolitano was allegedly responding to a call of some teens “smoking marijuana.” However, no marijuana would be found on any of those involved in Napolitano’s stop.

According to a lawsuit filed this week, when Napolitano arrived he became very aggressive which compelled Diaz’s friend, Mario Manzi, to begin film.

Napolitano became irate after seeing these teens practicing their 1st amendment right to film the police; so, he proceeded to violate their rights by stopping them.

When the teenagers refused to stop filming, he kneed one of them in the stomach multiple times, threw him to the ground, and proceeded to hit his head and legs.

He was either unaware or didn't care that they had the right to film him.

Then he searched the other two teenagers for the marijuana, but none was found.

The entirely unscathed Napolitano then accused Diaz of battery on a law enforcement officer and arrested him. Prosecutors dropped the battery charges but, unfortunately, they held a lesser charge of resisting arrest without violence in October.

...

Unsurprisingly, officer Napolitano faced no punishment and, in fact, received support from his superiors for his actions.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, police Cpl. Joseph Catanzaro reviewed video of what happened, talked to Diaz and his friends and concluded that Napolitano’s use of force was justified.

Let see using a cell phone in a middle of a class is interfering with the class on it face.

But now you are stating that your daughter would had just let her go on using the cell phone once she had refused to stop and turn over the phone to the teacher.

That is how the situation would had been handle by your daughter?