Page 75 of 79 FirstFirst ... 25 65 73 74 75 76 77 ... LastLast
Results 1,851 to 1,875 of 1960

Thread: Bad Cops. BAD! BAD!

  1. #1851
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    11,901
    Rep Power
    14114858
    Has anyone ever had drugs on them in the presence of a drug dog and the dog did nothing?

  2. #1852
    Senior Member Jumaki15's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Columbiana County, Ohio
    Posts
    4,691
    Rep Power
    21474852
    Quote Originally Posted by raisedbywolves View Post
    What fucking moron

  3. #1853
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...m-george-floyd

    How Police unions escalate racism and Brutality is coming into the forefront as the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and now David McAtee fallout are escalating.

    More than a year before a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned George Floyd to the ground in a knee chokehold, Mayor Jacob Frey banned “warrior” training for the city’s police force.

    Private trainers across the country host seminars, frequently at taxpayer expense, teaching “killology” and pushing the notion that if officers aren’t willing to “snuff out a life” then they should “consider another line of work.” Frey explained that this type of training — which has accompanied the increasing militarization of the police over the last few decades — undermined the community-based policing he wanted the city to adopt after a string of high-profile killings in the region.

    But then the police union stepped in.

    The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis worked out a deal with a company to offer warrior training. For free. For as long as Frey was mayor.

    Like in Minneapolis, police unions across the country have bucked reforms meant to promote transparency and racial equity in law enforcement. Many of these unions have pushed collective bargaining agreements that make it all but impossible for departments to punish, much less fire, officers. These agreements defang civilian review boards and police internal affairs departments, and they even prevent police chiefs from providing meaningful oversight, according to community activists and civil rights lawyers. Meanwhile, the unions have set up legal slush funds to defend officers sued for misconduct.

    In Albuquerque, where officers have been monitored by the federal government under what’s called a consent decree after a yearslong pattern of killing its own citizens, the police union had been paying $500 to officers who’d killed someone in the line of duty. The union called it a supportive service to the officer during a traumatic time. Critics called it a bounty, and only public outrage over the practice persuaded the union to stop. In the wake of Floyd’s death, violent protests have rocked the city.

    Last year in Phoenix, a report revealed police officers had posted racist memes on social media, including one officer thanking George Zimmerman, the man who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, “for cleaning up our community one thug at a time.” Their union officials sought a deal to offer its members a service to scrub their profile pages. Phoenix officers last Saturday arrested 114 Floyd demonstrators.

    And in St. Louis, the city’s first black woman to serve as lead prosecutor, Kimberly Gardner, sued the police union claiming it has tried to obstruct her efforts to reform the force. A separate union of black police officers sided with Gardner, saying the department and union has a culture “accepting of racism, discrimination, corruption.” Police in nearby Ferguson, site of Michael Brown’s killing by an officer in 2014, fired tear gas Sunday night at police violence protests — as they had done in the aftermath of Brown’s death.

    Police unions have made important strides like raising pay, improving working conditions and instituting due process procedures. Officers in unions make almost 40% more than their nonunionized colleagues. Some unions, particularly those representing black and brown officers, have backed reforms and spoken out against what they view as bad practices. Yet a University of Chicago study found that between 1996 and 2015, newly unionized law enforcement agencies saw a 27% uptick in misconduct complaints — a phenomenon the researchers tied largely to protections afforded by union contracts.

    The phone number for the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation wasn’t working when BuzzFeed News made several attempts on Sunday to call for comment. As of Sunday, the union’s website and Facebook account had been taken down, although it was unclear why. The National Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement condemning Chauvin’s actions.
    Part 1

  4. #1854
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...m-george-floyd

    Part 2

    This incident should not “be allowed to define our profession or the Minneapolis Police Department,” the statement reads, “but there is no doubt that this incident has diminished the trust and respect our communities have for the men and women of law enforcement. We will work hard to rebuild that trust and we will continue to protect our communities.”

    These police unions have grown larger in membership and farther to the right in their political ideologies in recent years. The Minneapolis chapter sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts on its website, and national police unions have publicly endorsed Trump. There’s an alphabet soup of organizations representing police, from the International Union of Police Associations in Florida to the Fraternal Order of the Police in Tennessee. The FOP, one of the nation’s largest police unions, swelled to 341,946 at the end of 2019, its highest total in a decade. Unions represented about 60% of officers scattered among more than 18,000 police departments across the country. The rise in their memberships, police observers say, was a backlash to the demands for police reforms by the Obama administration and by grassroots organizations like Black Lives Matter.

    Yet police observers, scholars, and civil rights lawyers and activists told BuzzFeed News that the strength of these unions and the deals they struck with local governments that offer rigorous job protections have helped create cultures in which the officers are left unaccountable and black and brown people are left dead.

    Jonathan M. Smith, who oversaw the investigation of 26 police departments as a Department of Justice attorney and is executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, said labor agreements that prioritize police job security over public safety aren’t in the officers’ best interests, either.

    “If you leave a bad officer on the street, that has a very damaging effect on every other officer,” Smith said. “No one on the street is going to say that’s a good officer and that’s a bad officer.”

    He pointed to Chauvin, who had racked up a number of complaints yet remained on the force, as an example.

    “Had those been addressed in an appropriate way, not only would Mr. Floyd be alive, we wouldn’t have the disruption in the community and you might have actually saved his career if you put him on the right path earlier on,” Smith said.

    Instead, Minneapolis’s contract governs everything from officer pay rates to patrol areas and discipline. Minneapolis’s contract, similar to others, states that “investigations into an employee’s conduct which do not result in the imposition of discipline shall not be entered into the employee’s official personnel file.” Translation: Since only around 1% of complaints adjudicated since 2012 have resulted in an officer being disciplined, city records show, most complaints will be erased. That helps to explain why the department’s Internal Affairs listed 17 complaints for Chauvin, while the city’s public database of officer complaints had 12, and a local advocacy group, Communities United Against Police Brutality, had 10, but several that didn’t match the other two sources. Minneapolis isn’t alone. Cleveland had a policy that required complaints to be removed from the city’s misconduct database after six months. At least 40 other municipalities allow for some form of erasure of disciplinary records, according to a database maintained by the police accountability organization Campaign Zero.

    Law professor Stephen Rushin of Loyola University Chicago found that those investigating misconduct have to wait at least 48 hours before they can interview the suspected officer, per provisions in union contracts in at least 50 cities. Investigators in at least 34 cities also have to provide accused officers of all the evidence against them ahead of their interrogations, according to Rushin’s study.

    Some advocates claim this waiting period is nothing more than an opportunity for officers to get their stories straight and escape scrutiny.

    And even if an officer is found in violation of department policies, police chiefs don’t always have the final word in firing them. Like most labor union contracts, members have a contractual right to a grievance process. That process, in most contracts, means that fired officers can plead their cases in front of an arbitrator, as outlined in state labor laws. A St. Paul Pioneer-Press investigation found that about 46% of the time arbitrators ruled in favor of fired officers, allowing them to rejoin the force.

    Dave Bicking is a community activist with the group Minneapolis for a Better Police Contract who describes himself as “an old union guy” and a supporter of officers’ grievance and arbitration rights. He said he’s read chilling accounts of officer behavior but has agreed with the arbitrator’s decision to reinstate the officer because the decision hewed to the rights laid out in the contract.

    “Because the city never disciplines anybody, any discipline is inconsistent with past practice,” he said, referring to the common practice of basing decisions on past precedent. “You can’t discipline now because you’ve never disciplined before. It’s a real Catch-22.”

    Ron DeLord, a former Texas state police union leader and an attorney who has negotiated scores of law enforcement contracts, said blame for robust officer protections shouldn’t rest with the unions.

    “Who hires the police?” DeLord asked. “Who trains the police? Who writes the policies? Who pays for the continuing training and who pays the salaries to get the type of people that you want to be there? Not the union.”

    That’s on the cities, DeLord said.

    Bicking, the activist, agrees. He said Minneapolis has shirked responsibility for reforming the department by hiding behind a contract they’ve done little to change.

    “Always in the past, you bring up anything to city council and they’re like, ‘Ahhh, we wish we could do that but our hands are tied by the police contract,’” he said. “And then every three years, they ratify the exact same language and days later they’re back to, ‘We can’t do anything.’”

    “This kind of inaction is why the city is burning,” Bicking said.

    Yet there’s a reason why so many elected officials relent when police contracts come up for renewal. The unions have political clout — offering politicians a big voting block of their members and those who support them. They also raise campaign contributions for elected officials who support their agenda.



    The FOP has its own political action committee complete with its own lobbyists to push legislation benefiting police. Local chapters have been political actors, too, pouring $700,000 into a Santa Ana City Council race to unseat a councilor who voted against a pay increase for officers.

    In San Francisco, the city’s police officers’ association also spent $700,000 to try to beat former public defender Chesa Boudin, who successfully ran for district attorney on a progressive agenda. That union money was almost as much as Boudin had raised for his own campaign.

    Police unions in cities across the country have a force with which few city officials want to reckon. In Los Angeles, for example, the city is looking to save $139 million by furloughing 16,000 employees who will see a 10% pay cut after the coronavirus cratered the economy. But the mayor won’t back away from a 4.8% LAPD raise that will cost the city $123 million in the next budget year, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

    New York, too, faces a budget shortfall estimated at $10 billion in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed chopping 3% from schools while only cutting the police budget by 0.3%.

    Yet the unions’ political power isn’t without its limits.

    Activists in Austin pressured city officials in 2017 to reject a proposed contract with the police department that didn’t provide enough police oversight. Through those efforts, the city council voted down the contract, becoming what’s thought to be the first governing body to do so. The Austin Justice Coalition pressed the union to cede more ground, including increasing the amount of time to investigate civilian complaints, an independent oversight board, and an online complaint system.

  5. #1855
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...m-george-floyd

    Part 3

    DeLord, the police union negotiator, was on the other side of the table from the Austin advocates.

    Some of the reforms wanted by advocates remind DeLord of 1969, when he joined the Beaumont, Texas police. The Supreme Court had recently decided that police had to read suspects their rights before questioning them. That line heard time after time in cop shows and movies? “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you” is the byproduct of that ruling.

    DeLord remembers a sergeant bemoaning that reading those rights signaled “the end of policing.”

    The resistance by some police officers to the changes activists want now remind DeLord of that Beaumont sergeant and his reaction to the Supreme Court ruling — that these changes, surely, will be the ones to end policing.

    “We’re entering a new world but it’s a new world that each generation entered,” he said. “Are we ever going to get to 100%? Gandhi and Mother Teresa aren’t available ... But it’s an evolution.”

    In Minneapolis, Floyd’s death has made the need for that evolution even more urgent.

    It comes at a time when the city is in the middle of negotiating a new police contract.

    But neither Bicking nor other activists pressing for more oversight can say much about those talks. That’s because, earlier this year, the union asked to move the talks behind closed doors.

    The city didn’t oppose it.

  6. #1856
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.ktnv.com/news/crime/las-...of-child-abuse

    LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said it had arrested two of its officers in connection with a child abuse incident.

    The situation involved a child's mother, Destini Woodruff, 26, and stepfather, John Woodruff, 29, who are both LVMPD police officers.

    The investigation determined that the Woodruffs hit a child multiple times to inflict pain on May 9 that left the child with numerous bruises.

    Investigators with the criminal investigation section received their information about the incident on May 14, and the two were then arrested on May 19 and transported to the Clark County Detention Center.

    Preventing child abuse and neglect in Las Vegas valley

    Destini and John Woodruff are facing the following charges, according to LVMPD:

    -Conspiracy to commit child abuse
    -Child Abuse (three counts)
    -Domestic battery by strangulation


    Destini and John Woodruff have been employed by the Las Vegas police department since 2016 and were assigned to the Southeast Area Command, Community Policing Division.

    However, on May 19, Destini Woodruff was relieved of duty and placed on administrative leave without pay. Also, as a result of a separate internal investigation, John Woodruff's employment with the department was terminated.

  7. #1857
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...m_content=news

    SARASOTA, Fla. — A video that surfaced Monday shows a Sarasota policeman kneeling on a man’s back and neck while he was arrested in May. It prompted Sarasota Police Chief Bernadette DiPino, who 48 hours earlier condemned the tactic, to put the officer on administrative leave.

    The Sarasota Police Department issued a statement Monday saying it was tagged in a social media post showing “a portion of a video” of an arrest of Patrick Carroll, a black 27-year-old Sarasota man who was later charged with felony possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.

    He was also charged with misdemeanor resisting arrest and domestic violence.

    DiPino put the male officer, who has not yet been identified, on leave after viewing the videos.

    “Chief DiPino was disturbed to see an officer kneeling on the head and neck of an individual in the video,” SPD said in an emailed statement. “While it appears the officer eventually moves his leg to the individual’s back, this tactic is not taught, used or advocated by our agency.”

    Warning: This video contains graphic content. Viewer discretion is advised.

    Carroll, who was allegedly involved in a fight on Dixie Avenue with a woman, did not require medical attention and did not complain about injuries during the incident, the statement said.

    An unidentified man who took cellphone video of the arrest, which shows Carroll lying handcuffed facedown on the ground, shouts at officers, “You got your knee on my man’s neck, man, on his neck, bro.”

    The officer appears to adjust his position and move his knee onto Carroll’s back, while two other male officers stood over them watching.

    While the incident apparently did not cause harm to Carroll, it strikes an eerie resemblance to video of George Floyd, who was killed after Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, leaving him unable to breathe, in a nearly 9-minute-long video.

    The incident has sparked nationwide protests that have resulted in demonstrations in major cities. Police have responded by firing tear gas and non-lethal munitions to disperse the activists.

    In response to the incident, law enforcement agencies around the country have denounced the action of Chauvin and other Minneapolis officers who witnessed Floyd’s death.

    DiPino wrote a message to the community and posted it on social media.

    An excerpt from her letter said, “The men and women of the Sarasota Police Department are not trained to use tactics I’ve seen in the videos in Minneapolis. The actions of the officers in Minneapolis were inexcusable.”

    DiPino promised transparency to keep the community safe.

    SPD submitted a redacted arrest report to the Herald-Tribune on Monday night.

    According to the report, which was also posted on the police department’s social media accounts, three officers responded to Dixie Avenue for a report of a battery.

    A suspect, identified as Patrick Carroll, got into a fight with a female victim, whose identity has been withheld because of Marsy’s Law. She had swelling on her arms, face, and chest area, officers reported.

    The victim told police that Carroll came to her home and said he would not leave because his children were there. She said Carroll told her to “shut up” or he was going to hit her in the mouth. A verbal argument ensued and she said Carroll grabbed her hair, the report stated.

    The victim said she grabbed Carroll’s hair to free herself and he began to swing her. She used her arms to block him. She said Carroll threw her to the ground and left. She called 911.

    Carroll was found in the 1800 block of 23rd Street in Sarasota. He was wearing a light blue backpack and, at first, was cooperative with the police.

    Carroll said he went to the victim’s house to pick up some clothes. He found some of his clothes strewn on the lawn. He said she began yelling and cursing at him and threatened to call the police, so he packed a few things and left.

    Carroll denied striking the woman, according to the report.

    Carroll allegedly told his cousin to grab his blue bag before the police got it.

    When an officer tried to put him into the patrol car he turned his body and yelled at them. He dropped his body weight to avoid being put into the car, police said. They took him to the ground with “minimal force,” the report said.

    The report did not mention how police restrained Carroll.

    A search of Carroll’s body found a baggie of marijuana; his backpack contained a box of change and four .22-caliber bullets, police said. A criminal search found that he had one felony conviction.

    The victim declined domestic violence services and the Florida Department of Children and Families was notified because the alleged act occurred in front of children.

    Carroll was placed in a patrol car and taken to the Sarasota County jail without incident. He paid $37,500 bail — $30,000 on a count of misdemeanor battery — and was released May 19.

    SPD said it did not receive any complaints from citizens regarding the video “but is taking this incident seriously.”

  8. #1858
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.9news.com/article/news/l...b-171c767583f1

    DENVER, Colorado — Police are investigating an incident captured on multiple videos that show police spraying a man with pepper ball rounds while he screams that there’s a pregnant woman inside his car.

    “Honestly I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to be the next black man shot by police,” Shaiitarrio Brown told 9NEWS. “I still feel that way.”

    The incident happened early Saturday morning in downtown Denver amid the protests and riots when crowds gathered to call for justice in the death of George Floyd.

    RELATED: Dumpster fires, vandalism in Denver during 3rd night of protests

    Brown said he and his pregnant fiancee, Brittany King, were doing mobile food orders that night.

    He said his car was hit by a pepper ball round, which prompted him to confront police just before he was sprayed.

    “We’re not protestors, we are not part of the riots," Brown said. "We were delivering food. We were working. For them to just go out of their way to shoot innocent people was unfair. And then I proceeded to tell them that there’s a pregnant woman in the car, and that’s when they unloaded 50 to 75-plus rounds into my car with my pregnant girlfriend in it,” Brown said.

    King said she is 18 weeks pregnant and that her unborn child had a high heart rate when she finally was able to get to the hospital. She said her hand was also fractured when she tried to block her face.

    The incident was captured on video by several different people and has been widely shared. One of them, originally captured by a YouTuber named “Ghost Writer,” spread to Twitter where it now has more than 4 million views.

    RELATED: Complaint filed against City of Denver alleges misuse of less-lethal weapons by police

    Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen requested an investigation when he saw the video, according to spokesperson Sonny Jackson.

    “Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen has ordered an investigation into this matter. That investigation is ongoing," Jackson said in a statement sent over email. "Chief Pazen is currently listed as the complainant, as the persons featured in the video have not come forward so no outside formal complaint has been filed.”

    Brown and King have retained an attorney who said DPD needs to change their behavior and their policies surrounding the use of pepper ball rounds.

    “There’s so many agencies and officers that do their job in an excellent manner, but this on the other hand, is bias policing," attorney Scott Melin said. "It’s militarized policing. It’s abusive policing and a violation of my client's constitutional rights.”

  9. #1859
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...82b_story.html

    Protests against the use of deadly force by police swept across the country in 2015.

    Demonstrators marched in Chicago, turned chaotic in Baltimore, and occupied the area outside a Minneapolis police station for weeks. Protesters repeatedly took to the streets of Ferguson, Mo., where a white police officer had killed a black teenager the previous year and fueled anew a national debate about the use of force and how police treat minorities.

    That year, The Washington Post began tallying how many people were shot and killed by police. By the end of 2015, officers had fatally shot nearly 1,000 people, twice as many as ever documented in one year by the federal government.

    A dozen high-profile fatal encounters that have galvanized protests nationwide

    With the issue flaring in city after city, some officials vowed to reform how police use force.

    The next year, however, police nationwide again shot and killed nearly 1,000 people. Then they fatally shot about the same number in 2017 ? and have done so for every year after that, according to The Post?s ongoing count. Since 2015, police have shot and killed 5,400 people.

    This toll has proved impervious to waves of protests, such as those now flooding American streets in the wake of George Floyd?s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis. The number killed has remained steady despite fluctuating crime rates, changeovers in big-city police leadership and a nationwide push for criminal justice reform.

    Even amid the coronavirus pandemic and orders that kept millions at home for weeks, police shot and killed 463 people through the first week of June ? 49 more than the same period in 2019. In May, police shot and killed 110 people, the most in any one month since The Post began tracking such incidents.

    The year-over-year consistency has confounded those who have spent decades studying the issue.

    ?It is difficult to explain why we haven?t seen significant fluctuations in the shooting from year to year,? former Charlotte police chief Darrel Stephens said. ?There?s been significant investments that have been made in de-escalation training. There?s been a lot of work.?

    The overwhelming majority of people killed are armed. Nearly half of all people fatally shot by police are white. Most of these shootings draw little or no attention beyond a news story.

    Some become flash points in the country?s ongoing reckoning about race and police. The ones prompting the loudest outcries often involve people who are black, unarmed, or both, shootings that have led to the harshest scrutiny of police.

    Since The Post began tracking the shootings, black people have been shot and killed by police at disproportionate rates ? both in terms of overall shootings and the shootings of unarmed Americans. The number of black and unarmed people fatally shot by police has declined since 2015, but whether armed or not, black people are still shot and killed at a disproportionately higher rate than white people.

    Some of the most incendiary moments in recent years involving police and race occurred without a gunshot.

    Eric Garner was videotaped pleading for air with a New York police officer?s arm around his neck before his death in 2014. Freddie Gray died of a severe spinal injury in Baltimore the following year, suffered when he was transported in a police van wearing shackles but not a seat belt.

    The outrage now rippling across America began when a video from Minneapolis showed Floyd, hands cuffed behind his back and prone on the ground, gasping ?I can?t breathe? as a white police officer drove his knee into the black man?s neck. The officer held it there for nearly nine minutes, prosecutors said. For almost three of those minutes, Floyd was not responsive, they said.

    It was the kind of use-of-force incident that might have gone otherwise unnoticed. Minneapolis police initially reported that Floyd ?physically resisted officers? and then ?appeared to be suffering medical distress.? No weapons of any kind were used, police added.

    Then the video footage emerged. It showed Floyd pinned on the street, begging for air, calling for his mother, for minute after minute. He was pronounced dead not long after. The officer and three others with him at the scene were fired, and all face criminal charges.
    Part1

  10. #1860
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...82b_story.html

    His death became a spark, setting off anger that spread quickly, extending into big cities and small towns, red states and blue. Protests and unrest — mostly peaceful, sometimes violent and destructive — expanded into dozens of cities, taking aim at not just policing tactics but also broader racial inequities embedded in American life.

    Floyd’s death was “one event in a continuous system of oppression,” said the Rev. Graylan Hagler of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in the District. “We know some names now, but there are thousands of those we do not know.”

    Hagler, who has been organizing protests and talking to activists, said the emergence of video footage showing controversial police encounters has been pivotal in transforming the national conversation.

    Recordings from across the country showing some of these moments have gone viral again and again since 2015, documenting deadly encounters on city streets and during traffic stops filmed by police cameras and bystanders alike.

    “White Americans generally thought police to [be] friendly protectors and . . . generally looked at stories of police misconduct cynically, and all of a sudden they have to come face-to-face with the myth that they have been living with,” Hagler said.

    'The past-due notice for unpaid debts'

    The nationwide frustration with police has exploded amid a pandemic that has taken a particularly brutal toll on black Americans. It also has emerged following a spate of incidents again highlighting issues involving race and justice in America — including the death of Breonna Taylor, an aspiring nurse in Louisville killed by police serving a no-knock warrant who shot her eight times in her home; the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger chased down and shot to death in Georgia; and the viral video of a white woman wielding the police as a threat against a black birdwatcher during a confrontation in Central Park.

    After Floyd’s death, these incidents and other tensions already enveloping America unleashed pent-up anger, fear and pain.

    “This is generational, what we’re seeing on the streets of America,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity and a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “This is the past-due notice for the unpaid debts this country owes black America. And as always, law enforcement is just the spark, right?”

    Fatal police shootings are relatively rare events in a country where nearly 40,000 people die from firearms each year. Hundreds of thousands of police officers work in America, most of whom will never fire their guns on duty.

    When fatal shootings occur, police officials often contend that officers, facing mortal threats, had to make split-second decisions to protect themselves and others. Police patrol a country with almost as many guns as people, and they never know if the next traffic stop, 911 call, or search warrant will be the one in which someone comes out shooting.

    Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said he would rather his officers never have to use deadly force.

    “But last year, I had officers in eight instances that were shot at,” he said. “So those are difficult circumstances in which to ask an officer to not defend himself. In fact, they’re not difficult. They’re impossible.”

    Since 2015, 70 percent of the 5,400 people fatally shot by police were armed with a knife or a gun, according to The Post’s database. More than 3,000 of them had guns.

    White people, who account for 60 percent of the American population, made up 45 percent of those shot and killed by police. Black people make up 13 percent of the population but account for 23 percent of those shot and killed by police. Hispanic people, who account for about 18 percent of the population, make up 16 percent of the people killed. For 9 percent of people, The Post was unable to determine their race.

    The Post started tracking fatal shootings by on-duty police officers after a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, during an altercation after a convenience store reported a robbery in August 2014. That shooting set off demonstrations and sparked calls for reform.

    Amid the turmoil, nobody could answer a simple question: How often do police shoot and kill someone? No one knew for sure, because no government agency kept a comprehensive count.

    When The Post began tracking these shootings, it became clear that police were shooting and killing people about twice as often as numbers reported by the FBI, which collected voluntary reports from police departments. The Post’s database, which is regularly updated, relies on a collection of news media accounts, social media posts and police reports.
    In 2015, the first year The Post tallied these numbers, officers killed 94 unarmed people, the largest group among them black men: 38.

    The following year saw a large drop in the number of unarmed shootings, declining to 51, with 22 of those killed being white and 19 black. The number has remained relatively steady each year since. In 2019, 55 unarmed people were shot and killed by police, with white people accounting for 25 of them, while 14 of them were black.

    Some numbers in the Post database have increased recently after additional research was conducted into shootings where categorization data had been unknown. For example, shootings of unarmed black people in 2019 increased from nine to 14.

  11. #1861
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...82b_story.html

    Part 3

    'This is without question a murder'

    The cycle kept repeating. A shooting or other deadly encounter with police would propel the issue back into the news. Graphic video of it would go viral. People would mobilize and march. Again and again, activists called for the justice system to punish those involved.

    Sometimes the flash points for demonstrations have not involved police officers — such as the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer who had followed him, an incident that helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.

    In most cases, the protests, marches, pleas and painful moments followed an incident involving a person with a badge captured on video.

    Five years after Eric Garner died, resolution remained elusive

    It happened in November 2014 in Cleveland, where a police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice. A 911 caller reported a boy playing with a gun that was presumed fake — information that never made it to the officers who responded. A grand jury declined to charge the officer.

    Two days before that shooting, a grand jury made the same decision about Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

    After Ferguson, some prosecutors moved quickly to charge officers, though those have been the exceptions.

    Michael Slager, a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was recorded in 2015 firing bullets into the back of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man fleeing after a traffic stop.

    The officer said he feared for his life. He was charged with murder. The jury deadlocked. Slager wound up pleading guilty later to a federal civil rights charge.

    Not long after Slager was arrested, another video came out. This one showed Ray Tensing, a white University of Cincinnati police officer, shooting Samuel DuBose, an unarmed man black man, during a traffic stop.

    Joe Deters, the Hamilton County prosecutor, said his office had reviewed more than 100 shootings by police and it was the first where staff members concluded, “This is without question a murder.”

    Juries deadlocked twice. Deters decided against seeking a third trial.

    Even when officers are prosecuted, convictions are difficult to obtain, according to Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who tracks such cases.

    Since 2005, 110 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter for shooting someone on duty, Stinson’s records show. From those ranks, 42 officers were convicted of a crime — often a lesser offense — while 50 were not, their cases usually ending with acquittals or dismissals. More than a dozen cases are pending, according to Stinson.

    One of the convictions happened in Chicago in 2018. Officer Jason Van Dyke had shot and killed Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old, four years earlier. When video footage eventually came out, it showed the teenager moving away when the officer started shooting. The day the video became public, Van Dyke was arrested and charged with murder. Demonstrators took to the streets.

    The Chicago police superintendent was forced out, the prosecutor who waited to charge the officer lost her reelection bid, and the Justice Department investigated and assailed the police department for its use of excessive force. Van Dyke was sentenced last year to more than six years behind bars.

    The more typical outcome is what happened in Minnesota and Louisiana after two police shootings on back-to-back days in 2016.

    On July 5, 2016, police in Baton Rouge shot and killed Alton Sterling, who had a loaded gun in his pocket. The next day, a police officer in the suburbs outside St. Paul and Minneapolis shot and killed Philando Castile, who was licensed to carry a gun and told the officer he had one in the car.

    Local and federal authorities later declined to charge the Baton Rouge officers. Prosecutors in Minnesota charged Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Castile. He was acquitted.

    Video footage from both cases quickly spread online and sent shock waves across the country. Marches and rallies spread from city to city, presaging the demonstrations that followed Floyd’s death.

    In Dallas, one of the peaceful protests was suddenly riven by bloodshed: A gunman, who police said was angry about the recent police shootings, opened fire on officers, killing five. Less than two weeks later, a man who had called for violence against police killed three more officers in Baton Rouge. Police killed both attackers.

    Policing has gotten safer in recent decades, with line-of-duty deaths dropping, records show. But police patrol a country with nearly one gun for every person, and recent studies from professors at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon universities have found that areas with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of police shootings.

    “The overwhelming majority of those shooting situations are . . . both lawful and within policy and are situations that we hope that we can minimize and avoid,” said Stephens, the former Charlotte police chief, who also used to lead the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

    'No national standards'

    The outcries and criticism have led to reforms.

    Some departments have issued new use-of-force policies, vowed to outfit officers with body cameras and added training to address implicit bias. After Stephon Clark was shot and killed by Sacramento officers in 2018, California adopted stricter rules for use of force.

    But the momentum stalled. Some departments decided to drop or postpone their body-camera programs, concluding it was too costly to store the data.

    The thousands of police departments nationwide each have their own policies covering everything from how officers use force to whether they can wear nose rings on duty.

    Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which works with law enforcement officials, said there are “no national standards” regarding training or use of force.

    “There is a need for some kind of national approach to retraining police,” Wexler said.

    In Minneapolis, the police had been making reforms long before Floyd’s killing in the custody of its officers.

    The city was one of the program sites for an initiative meant to tackle mistrust of police in minority communities. Officers underwent training and education aimed at addressing implicit bias.

    “Minneapolis put in a lot of work,” said Jesse Jannetta, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute, which evaluated the work. “They did the intervention. They did, and that was not sufficient to prevent George Floyd from losing his life.”

    Minneapolis police shot and killed Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old black man, in November 2015. An officer said Clark was grabbing his gun. His death prompted demonstrators to occupy the area near the department’s 4th Precinct for 18 days. Some witnesses had said Clark was handcuffed when shot, which authorities denied. Prosecutors cleared the officers involved.

    The extended demonstration near the police precinct was itself targeted by gunfire. Five protesters were shot by a white man authorities later said was fueled by racial animosity. He was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

    In 2017, the Minneapolis police were the subject of international criticism for another shooting. An Australian woman named Justine Damond, who was white, had called the Minneapolis police to report a possible sexual assault near her home. When police responded and she approached their car, one of the officers fired through the open car window, killing her.

    The officer, Mohamed Noor, was charged with murder. He was convicted last year and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. That case spurred additional unease among critics of the criminal justice system.

    “Many saw that as kind of a mixed bag in terms of what it implied about the potential of the legal system of Minneapolis to create justice of accountability,” said Michelle Phelps, an associate sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. “Here’s the first officer who gets a real conviction in recent memory and it’s a Somali officer and a white victim.”

    Fatal shootings by police drifted out of the public spotlight after President Trump’s election in 2016. What had dominated headlines day after day now took a back seat to other news.

    The Post’s database relies significantly on reporting from local media outlets on shootings in their own communities. The amount of reporting done on individual shootings has declined, probably a victim of the continued cuts by local media outlets.

    But fatal shootings by police have not slowed — even though the pandemic closed businesses, shuttered schools and effectively shut down much of American life for weeks on end. In May 2019, police shot and killed 74 people. In May of this year, police shot and killed 109 people.

    Another consistent statistic from The Post’s examination is the number of people killed by police while in mental distress. About 1 in 4 had some mental-health issues.

  12. #1862
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    One explanation for the overall consistency in the number of fatal shootings — and the inability of reforms in individual departments to make much of a dent — comes from probability theory, which suggests that the number of rare events in huge populations will achieve stability absent larger societal changes.

    Moore, the Los Angeles police chief, said police need to hear the public’s frustrations about shootings. His department has had more fatal shootings than any other in The Post’s database — 79 overall. Moore said significant time and money has been invested in training officers to de-escalate standoffs and emphasizing the sanctity of life in public interactions.

    The number of fatal shootings by his department has declined annually, from 21 in 2015 to 11 in 2019, according to The Post’s data.

    “It makes me frustrated because there will be a tendency to think nothing has changed, when I know so many instances of police chiefs that have told me that six months ago we would have shot that guy, and we didn’t because of the training that they’ve received,” Wexler said.

    Advocates of police reform said part of the problem is the lack of a full, nationwide accounting of police use of force.

    Government officials pledged years ago to start collecting more data on the use of force, but that effort has not produced any better awareness.

    After The Post demonstrated a dramatic undercount by the FBI of fatal police shootings, the bureau’s then-director, James B. Comey, called the lack of federal data “embarrassing and ridiculous.”

    An FBI policy board recommended that the agency track fatal and nonfatal shootings. The new effort was soon widened to catalogue all use-of-force incidents that result in serious bodily harm or death.

    That data collection only began in earnest in January 2019. The program also suffers from some of the same shortfalls as the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program — chiefly that participation is voluntary. So far, only 40 percent of the 18,000 police departments nationwide submit data on police use-of-force incidents, according to the FBI.

    No nationwide data on use of force

    Fatal shootings by police are a limited metric for answering larger questions about how police use their powers, experts said. Whether a shooting is fatal may depend entirely on a few centimeters in the trajectory of a bullet.

    No nationwide data exists on how often police shoot and wound someone, or how often they fire and miss. And no comprehensive national data exists on how other kinds of force — such as chokeholds or the use of batons or stun guns — are used.

    “The fatalities is a very good measure of some things, but doesn’t include the kinds of events and activities that we’re seeing all over the country that normally don’t lead to death,” said Alpert, the criminology professor. “Unless there’s an injury or unless there’s a complaint that gets traction, either we don’t know, or it doesn’t matter.”

    Floyd’s death is a prime example of that, Alpert said.

    “If this were to happen and he hadn’t died, you’d read the report: ‘He was resisting, we had to control him,’ ” Alpert said. “ ‘We use our trained tactic . . . and he was taken to jail.’ End of story, no one would know, no one would care.”

    Jane? Harteau, the ex-Minneapolis police chief ousted after Damond’s death, said watching the Floyd footage “makes me question what could we have missed” in other instances involving police that were not captured on video.

    During the current wave of protests, police have been filmed again and again using force against people.

    “We’re in the middle of an international pandemic,” said Goff, the professor. “People are risking their lives to have their voice heard.”

    Dominic Archibald, a retired Army colonel whose son was killed by a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy in Barstow, Calif., said she hopes the outcome of the current wave of demonstrations will be different.

    “What bothers a lot of families . . . unless something is sensationalized, perhaps in the media largely, we’re just fighting the battle alone,” Archibald said.

    Her son, 29-year-old Nathaniel Harris Pickett Jr., was shot and killed in 2015 after an altercation with the deputy. He was unarmed. In 2018, a jury in a federal civil rights trial awarded his family $33.5 million over the killing. Authorities concluded the shooting was justified. The deputy faced no charges. The sheriff’s department did not respond to a request for comment.

    “No action has been taken,” she said. “They haven’t even pretended as if they are considering action. Have I given that up? No. I have not given up pressing this. But I shouldn’t have to.”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...82b_story.html

  13. #1863
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/l...g-man/2377468/

    The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has filed a single felony charge against a Los Angeles Police Department officer accused of repeatedly punching a man.

    LAPD Officer Frank A. Hernandez was recorded on cellphone and body camera video repeatedly punching the 28-year-old man in an April incident.

    Hernandez is accused of one count of "assault by a public officer."

    Hernandez and his partner responded to a vacant lot April 27 after a report of a trespasser.

    While detaining the unarmed man, Hernandez was accused of repeatedly punching him in the head, neck and body, according to a statement from the LA County District Attorney's office.
    Local

    Local news from across Southern California

    He faces a maximum possible sentence of three years in county jail if convicted as charged. He is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday.

    "This is a disturbing case of the illegal use of force at the hands of a police officer," District Attorney Lacey said. "In this case, we believe the force was neither legally necessary nor reasonable."

    The man who was punched, Richard Castillo, has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging he was the victim of excessive force.

  14. #1864
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/pos...probably-ought

    Discussing nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, a white Tulsa Police Department major said Monday systemic racism in policing "just doesn't exist."

    Speaking to talk radio host Pat Campbell on his podcast, TPD Maj. Travis Yates also suggested that, according to his interpretation of crime data, police should actually be shooting black Americans more frequently.

    "You get this meme of, 'Blacks are shot two times, two and a half times more,' and everybody just goes, 'Oh, yeah,'" Yates said. "They're not making sense here. You have to come into contact with law enforcement for that to occur.

    "If a certain group is committing more crimes, more violent crimes, and law enforcement's having to come into more contact with them, that number is going to be higher. Who in the world in their right mind would think that our shootings should be right along the U.S. Census lines? That's insanity.

    "All of the research says we're shooting African-Americans about 24% less than we probably ought to be, based on the crimes being committed."

    Yates expressed displeasure with the largely peaceful protests that have been taking place in big cities and small towns all over the country since Floyd's killing on May 25.

    "The officer was arrested the next day. They were prosecuted, they were fired. What are you doing? What do you mean, 'justice?' Justice at this point has been done," Yates said. "Well, then it turned into systematic racism, systematic police brutality.

    "This is what they're trying to say that all these changes need to come from: this is why we're protesting, this is why we're rioting. Because of systematic abuse of power and racism. That just doesn't exist."

    Without evidence, Yates alleged that journalists and a group he declined to name have financial interests in lying about policing.

    "Because of this money, because of the marketing, because of the slick steps they've done, they've made regular Americans believe that cops are just hunting blacks down the street and killing them," he said. "It is so mind-boggling to me, that it is so over-the-top. It's not happening, but everyone believes that it is happening."

    Yates is no stranger to racial controversy. In 2016, he faced criticism for an essay in which he declared American police were "at war" and implied Black Lives Matter activists should not be allowed to visit the White House, a move that led TPD's then-chief, Chuck Jordan, to transfer Yates and express vocal disapproval and the group We The People Oklahoma to call for his resignation.

    In another 2016 essay, titled "Follow Commands or Die," he assigned blame for police violence onto its victims, writing, "Would we even know where Ferguson was if Michael Brown would have simply got out of the street like the officer had asked him to do?"

    In 2018, he suggested in an open letter to Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum that any disproportionate policing in Tulsa's black neighborhoods was a result of "fatherless homes" and allegations of racism in policing are "dangerous" and a "great scam."

    TPD Capt. Richard Meulenberg said Tuesday afternoon Chief Wendell Franklin was not yet aware of Yates' remarks on the show, and Franklin would determine whether TPD condones what Yates said.

    "Everybody's got a right to their opinion. Obviously, he being a major with the Tulsa Police Department, it carries some weight that he has his opinion, and we'll have to just kind of go through this. I mean, I can't speak upon the thing that he talked about here because I don't have the data. I can't refute or substantiate what it is that he said here," Meulenberg said.

    Meulenberg said under TPD policy, Yates, a division commander, had latitude to communicate with the public in various forms, including through a radio show or podcast.

    "Is he speaking for himself? Or is he speaking for the department? The way I interpret what he has said is that he is speaking for himself," Meulenberg said.

  15. #1865
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.wesh.com/article/caught-...ficer/32818167

    A mix-up on a call for help by police led to a business owner being punched in the face.

    The officers claim they believed the business owner was the suspect, WAFF-TV reported.

    It happened during a reported robbery March 15.

    The owner of the liquor store, Kevin Penn, said he was trying to get help from police.

    Newly released body cam video showed what happened when officers first arrived.

    One of the officers can be seen punching Penn, the TV station reported.

    "It was a mistaken identity they didn't know who the owner was versus the suspect," Police Chief Nate Allen said.

    Part of the issue stemmed from Penn having a gun and reloading a magazine, according to Allen.

    Penn needed surgery on his broken jaw and teeth.

  16. #1866
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://ktla.com/news/local-news/the...emand-justice/


    Compton city officials on Wednesday called for the removal of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies who beat a 24-year-old resident in a violent caught-on-video arrest.

    The man, Dalvin Price, was lying on the ground as two deputies held him down. One deputy used his knees to restrain the young man while appearing to punch him as another deputy joins and starts kicking him, the viral May 31 video showed.

    One person is heard yelling at Price to get on the ground. He’s heard yelling back that he is on the ground as they pummel him.

    “I was kicked, my head was banged on the floor, nonstop, repeatedly, after I told them that I wasn’t resisting,” Price said. “They treated me like I was type of animal, like I wasn’t a human being.”

    The arrest sparked calls from Compton Mayor Aja Brown for answers from the Sheriff’s Department, which the city contracts for $22 million.

    “Isn’t this America? Don’t black and brown people have the right to due process? This is someone’s loved one. A human being. What if this was your child?”

    The arrest took place amid massive police brutality protests throughout the county that at times were accompanied by looting and clashes with officers. Sheriff Alex Villanueva has said Price was believed to be part of a group looting at a CVS pharmacy, but that the incident remains under investigation.

    “I don’t know where Devon was going or coming from. The fact is, it doesn’t even matter,” Brown said at a news conference. “He has not been charged with a crime. He has not come before a judge, nor has been sentenced for a crime. No officer has the right to render the justice site-on-hand.”

    The mayor also called for equal treatment of Compton residents, nearly 30% of whom are black.

    “We demand the same treatment that deputies provide to the residents of Malibu, Palos Verdes and other communities,” Brown said. “And according to the size of our sheriff’s contract, they have 22 million reasons to do so.”

    The woman who caught Price’s arrest on video said she has been harassed because of it.

    “Since I pressed that record button, it’s like my life has been turned upside down,” Asia Hall said. “I’m getting harassed, my son has been pulled over, me and my family are afraid to leave our home.”

    Civil rights attorney Jamon Hicks demanded that the Sheriff’s Department drop any charges against Price and instead charge and fire the deputies seen beating him on video.

    “Sadly, we’re here again,” he said. “Sadly, we’re dealing with the same discussions that we’ve been dealing with for years about police brutality.”

    Compton City Attorney Damon Brown said the city sent a letter to the Sheriff’s Department, demanding that it removes the involved deputies from the Compton station and replace them with “officers who would treat our residents with self respect and dignity that they deserve.”

    “And to this letter, we have received no response,” he said.

    The Compton City Council is considering the creation of a law enforcement review board to allow residents to lodge complaints against the Sheriff’s Department.

  17. #1867
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.wkyt.com/2020/06/11/teen...ington-police/

    LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - A teenage couple is taking action against the Lexington police department saying they are victims of police brutality.

    18-year-old Gage Slone says he went to Chase Bank on Richmond Road to redeem savings bonds he received as a graduation gift from his grandmother.

    Lexington police say they were called to the bank because they were investigating another individual cashing fraudulent savings bonds at different branches around town.

    Slone says he was aggressively taken outside and was never given an explanation as to what was happening, despite asking.

    “Police discipline is shrouded in secrecy, you just don’t know what happens. We want to get them to agree to maintain transparency and then obviously, tell us the names of who these people are,” said Attorney Scott White.

    White and his clients are requesting the names of the officers involved and the body camera footage of the incident.

    Lexington police say the department is reviewing the actions of the officers. The department says it will release body camera footage and dispatch audio to the public.

    “Our Public Integrity Unit immediately opened an investigation into this case once the complaint was received. The process of interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence is well underway. Kentucky State Police have been contacted in reference to one of their Troopers being at the scene. There are some unanswered questions, and some issues to resolve. We expect professionalism from all of our police officers. We expect them to follow professional standards. We expect the investigative process to get to the truth.”
    Mayor Linda Gorton



    On Friday, Lexington police released audio of the 911 call from Chase Bank, dispatch audio, and body-worn camera video files have been placed in a folder on the Lexington Police Department’s Google Drive, accessible via this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...7K?usp=sharing

  18. #1868
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...m_content=news

    A police commander in Oklahoma is "under review" after he said that officers are shooting African Americans "less than we probably ought to be" during a local radio interview.

    The Tulsa Police Department denounced the comments made by Major Travis Yates, who is white, and Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum called Yates' comments "dumb" and demanded an apology in a Facebook statement.

    "Chief Wendell Franklin and the Tulsa Police Department want to make it very clear we do not endorse, condone or support Yates’ comments made on the show," the department said in a Facebook post on Wednesday, adding "This matter has been referred to our Internal Affairs Unit."

    We found 85,000 cops who've been investigated for misconduct: Now you can read their records.

    "He does not speak for my administration, for the Tulsa Police Department, or the City of Tulsa," Bynum said.

    Yates made his comments during a segment called "Behind the Blue Line" on The Pat Campbell Show, which airs on local AM radio station KFAQ. He also contended that systemic racism in policing “just doesn’t exist.”

    During the interview, Yates said advocates against police brutality have "made regular Americans believe that cops are just hunting blacks down in the street and killing them. And it’s completely the opposite of what the research says and what the data says.”

    “All the research said — including Roland Fryer, an African American Harvard professor, Heather MacDonald and the National Academy of Sciences — all of their research says we’re shooting African Americans about 24% less than we probably ought to be based on the crimes being committed," Yates said.

    Opinion: George Floyd laid to rest, but America must keep fighting to reform policing

    Yates also referenced The Washington Post's real-time database, which has tracked fatal shootings by police officers since 2015, and said the data showed that a lesser percentage of police shootings have involved unarmed black Americans than unarmed white Americans.

    While the data shows that white people make up half of the shootings by police, black Americans are killed by police at a disproportionate rate, The Washington Post reported. According to the latest census data, white Americans make up 76.5% of the U.S. population, while black Americans make up 13.4%.

    That means black people are 2.5 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white people, The Post reported.

    In an interview with Tulsa's ABC affiliate on Wednesday, Yates said he was referencing research and not sharing his opinion.

    When asked if he believed black Americans weren't being shot enough, Yates responded, “That is absolutely nuts. I’m amazed that anybody would even ponder that. That’s crazy. I was citing data, that said they’re underrepresented in that data. And so, I don’t want anybody to be shot. Nobody does, but the data that most people are believing, there is alternative data out there and that’s the data I was citing.”

    He told the TV station he wouldn't apologize "because what I said was accurate based on the data."

    Yates' comments come amid ongoing nationwide demonstrations against racial inequality and police brutality following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody on Memorial Day.

    From coast to coast: Tracking protests across the USA in the wake of George Floyd's death

    Lt. Marcus Harper, also president of Tulsa’s Black Officers Coalition, expressed concern with Yates' comments, especially given his position "of power" in the agency.

    "His attitude is going to go downhill to that young, brand-new officer or that officer in field training right now," Harper said at a Wednesday press conference.

    Tulsa police are also facing questions about another recent incident.

    The department this week released body-camera video footage of two officers arresting two black teens for jaywalking. The videos show the officers aggressively tackling one of the boys to the ground while the other boy asks: "Why are you putting your hands on him?"

    The nearly 20-minute videos show an officer remaining on top of the teenager who lied on his stomach even after being handcuffed.

    “Get off me! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” the teen shouted.

    “You can breathe just fine,” the officer replied. “You’re fine.”

  19. #1869
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/06...y-park-arrest/

    NYPD officer under investigation for an Illegal Chokehold

    NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — An arrest in Queens is causing outrage.

    The NYPD‘s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating after an officer is seen on video possibly using an illegal chokehold, CBS2’S Cory James reported Sunday.

    Protesters were out in Rockaway Beach not long after that video was released.

    Sources told CBS2 the NYPD got reports of a man allegedly acting disorderly on the boardwalk at 113th Street at around 9 a.m. on Sunday.

    When officers from the 100th Precinct arrived on the scene they say they approached the man and he became combative and then resisted being taken into custody.

    Video shows a chaotic scene unfolding on the boardwalk. Several officers are seen on top of the man and one appears to have his arm wrapped around the man’s neck.

    Richard Talcott watched it unfold after he says officers showed up over loud music.

    “Next thing you know they are over there tackling this kid Ricky that I had just met,” Talcott said. “It’s just crazy, bro. Like, I don’t have no other ways to describe and I wouldn’t want anybody else’s to go through that and you can’t do anything besides record it like when you clearly see that’s wrong.”

    The man, who sources said is 35, has been identified by his attorney, Lori Zeno, as Ricky Bellevue. Zeno said it is clear the officer was performing a chokehold, which has been banned in New York.

    “He’s an idiot. That’s my reaction. He’s an idiot. And he’s a bad cop and he needs to go. He needs to get fired. And not only fired, he needs to get prosecuted,” Zeno said.

    Sources said that officer is David Afanador. Back in 2014, he was charged with assault for allegedly beating a teenaged drug suspect he was trying to arrest. But he was found not guilty at a bench trial in a Brooklyn court in 2016.

    In a statement, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said, “Accountability in policing is essential. After a swift investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau, a police officer involved in a disturbing apparent chokehold incident in Queens has been suspended without pay.

    “While a full investigation is still underway, there is no question in my mind that this immediate action is necessary. We are committed to transparency as this process continues,” he added.

    Bellevue’s attorney said he was taken to St. John’s Hospital, where he was treated for a laceration on his head and released. She also said he is facing two misdemeanors, for resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental justice, and a violation for disorderly conduct.

  20. #1870
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/07/0...-woman-at-mia/

    MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The director of the Miami-Dade Police Department has announced his “intent to proceed with the termination” of the officer seen on video striking a woman at Miami International Airport.

    Officer Anthony Rodriguez was first relieved of duty while the department reviewed the footage made public by local filmmaker Billy Corben.

    Rodriguez was one of the responding officers called to the American Airlines desk on Tuesday, June 30th, due to a disturbance involving a passenger.

    The woman, identified as Paris S. Anderson, 21, was behind the rebooking counter and had been threatening employees, police said.

    Upon arrival, police said they observed Anderson yelling obscenities at American Airlines employees.

    The arrest report said an officer approached the rebooking counter and contacted Anderson. He then proceeded to walk the defendant away from the ticket counter in order to talk to Anderson.

    The service center supervisor, Jose Roman, advised police that Anderson arrived at the gate late for a flight to Chicago and was denied boarding.

    Anderson became upset when she was told that the next available flight would not be until the following day.

    Roman told police that Anderson went behind the rebooking counter to retrieve her boarding pass and when she was told that she wasn’t allowed to be there she began to threaten and curse the employees.

    Roman then told Anderson that she would not travel with American Airlines and that her fare would be reimbursed.

    The arrest report said Anderson became belligerent when she was told to gather her belongings and began to yell obscenities at which time she said, referring to Roman, “I should go over there and punch him in his face.”

    The report also said that Anderson was told again to gather her belongings so that she could be escorted. That was when Anderson aggressively approached the officer, identified as Rodriguez, “violating this officer’s personal space, bumped this officer with her body and struck this officer with her head on the chin while screaming, ‘What are you going to do.’ The officer immediately took a step back, struck Anderson on her left side of the face with an open hand.”

    Legal documents say Anderson was taken to the floor, where she was taken into custody.

    Police said Anderson was continuously yelling and turning back towards the officers as she was taken to the police car.

    Additionally, police said, that the arresting “officer felt spittle emanating from Ms. Anderson’s mouth. Ms. Anderson was not wearing a face covering as she continued to turn around and yell, additional spittle came into the direction of the officers.”

    The arrest report said the officer needed to forcibly grab her by the hair and keep her face pointing forward, in an effort to control her from continuing to spit in the area of the officers.

    The report goes on to say that Anderson began to spit all over the protective shield and the backseat of the patrol car.

    Miami-Dade Fire Rescue were called after Anderson complained of shortness of breath upon arrival at the police station, but Anderson refused treatment.

    Anderson was transported to the Turner Guilford Correctional Center.

    Now the focus has turned on Officer Rodriguez’s use of force, which Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez apologized for.

    “Look, when I first saw it, obviously it was uncalled for and I need apologize, we need to apologize to the lady that was struck by the officer. Miami-Dade County deeply apologizes for that,” said Mayor Gimenez. “The actions of the officer excessive use of force, cannot be condoned and swift action will be taken against this officer.”

    The president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association said Rodriguez blames Anderson for being “very aggressive.”

    “Obviously, she was very aggressive. The officer takes a couple of steps back, she walks into him and walks into this face and does a diversionary strike and he takes her into custody. It was an open-handed slap. If it was a punch, I don’t believe she would have been standing,” said Steadman Stahl, president of South Florida Police Benevolent Association.

    Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo Ramirez said he “shocked and angered by a body cam video.” As a result, he ordered an investigation into Officer Rodriguez, while relieving him of duty.

    It took less than a day for Ramirez to decide to terminate Rodriguez’s employment with the department. He released the following statement:

    “As a result of an administrative investigation into the officer’s conduct during this incident; it is my intent to proceed with the termination of the involved officer’s employment with the Miami-Dade Police Department. The administrative process to proceed with termination has been initiated.

    “The MDPD holds itself accountable for its actions, and this is just another example of our commitment to do just that.”

    The state attorney’s office public corruption unit is on the case.

    “I am angered when I see abusive or improper conduct by a police officer,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle.

  21. #1871
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.king5.com/article/news/h...a-7b5f6516d49a

    SEATTLE — A coronavirus outbreak on Greek row at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus continues to grow.

    As of Thursday, at least 62 fraternity residents tested positive for COVID-19, according to the university. Four other students who do not live in the houses but were in close contact with residents also tested positive.


    The Interfraternity Council, which is a student-led governing board for UW fraternities, told UW at least 105 residents in 15 fraternities self-reported that they tested positive for the virus. However, UW says it is still verifying the status of those cases.

    UW first reported the cluster Tuesday saying that at least 38 students in 10 houses were infected.

    "This is concerning and reminds us that outbreaks can quickly spiral," Dr. Geoffrey Gottlieb, chair of the UW Advisory Committee on Communicable Diseases, said Tuesday in a statement.

    Leaders from the fraternities told public health officials that students who tested positive were isolating in their rooms, and none were hospitalized.

    There are about 1,000 students living in 25 fraternities north of UW's Seattle campus, according to the university.


    According to Gottlieb, most of the university's Greek houses reduced resident capacity by up to 50% this summer in response to the pandemic, but Gottlieb said those actions weren't sufficient without other measures like wearing masks and social distancing.

    UW Medicine set up a testing facility on campus within walking distance of the Greek houses. Within the first day of the site being open, 430 students were tested, according to Lisa Bradenburg, president of UW Medicine Hospitals and Clinics.

  22. #1872
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/...tern-of-abuse/

    ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – The day after State Attorney’s announced they are pressing charges against a former St. Johns County deputy for beating an unarmed man last year during an arrest, the victim’s attorney and his mother are speaking out about what they are calling a pattern of police brutality in St. Johns County.

    Attorney John Phillips points to mug shots of white men in their 20s who he said were each badly beaten during their arrest by St. Johns County deputies.

    Cell phone video recorded by a bystander showed St. Johns County Deputy Anthony Deleo beating and tasing Christopher Butler last December during an arrest along County Road 210. The two videos were recorded by a witness and given to Butler’s family.
    Butler, who was pulled over for driving erratically, was hit with a police baton 19 times and tased 10 times, according to Phillips and mother Teri Morgenstern. According to authorities, Butler would not cooperate during a traffic stop.

    “He had a broken nose they broke his shoulder his elbows his wrists and he has nerve damage where he can’t feel his thumb or forefinger in his dominant arm,” Morgenstern said

    Not only is Butler’s mother and lawyer asking people to come forward with more information about this case, Phillips said the beating is part of a dangerous pattern.

    ″It’s not just a Black issue, it’s a significant black issue, but some Sheriff’s Offices have gotten away with this and they are doing this to everybody,” Phillips said. “There are a lot of tough questions that we need to ask about why they have so many mugshots on their website and so many people calling us that fit the description of being a white male in their 20s that have significant bruising to their face.”

    Butler’s mother wants the other officers at the scene of her son’s beating charged with a crime as well.

    “Beating a human being with a metal baton 19 times, tasing him 10, kicking him in his face twice and for as long as the beating went on, that wasn’t an officer search trying to arrest someone, that was a beat down,” Morgenstern said.

    St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Chuck Mulligan said once a lawsuit is filed, the agency will respond appropriately.

    He also said all of the officers involved in the handling of Chris Butler’s case had been disciplined.

    DeLeo was fired from the Sheriff’s Office. The charges were sent to the State Attorney’s Office for review, and DeLeo surrendered to authorities Wednesday.
    St. Johns County, Florida Police officers are under investigation for brutality allegations.

  23. #1873
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0
    https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/...not-dangerous/


    JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Relatives of a 20-year-old man accused of trying to steal a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office cruiser earlier this week told News4Jax on Friday that Nalory Paul is not a criminal but is mentally ill.

    Paul is in jail, charged with theft of a motor vehicle after investigators said he jumped into a police cruiser as a JSO officer assisted another officer with a traffic stop at Soutel Drive and Moncrief Road.

    That officer chased after Paul and fired a shot from his department-issued handgun, but didn’t hit anything. Paul was taken into custody after crashing the cruiser into some nearby trees.

    RELATED: JSO: Officer fires shot at man who stole his patrol car in Moncrief

    Paul’s aunt and father told News4Jax he was diagnosed last November with catatonia, which has been associated with schizophrenia. They said in the days leading up to this incident, he had been in the hospital due to his mental health condition.

    Photos taken of a younger Nalory Paul offer a glimpse into life before his diagnosis. His family said he graduated from Fletcher High School and described him as kind, reserved, hard-working, and loved by all. His aunt, Angie Paul, is still at a loss for words over his arrest.

    "We were all shocked," Angie Paul said. "For me, it was like a dream/nightmare because I knew he wouldn't do it if he was in his right mind."

    Angie Paul said due to her nephew’s condition, Nalory Paul lives with his parents and younger brothers. She said they make sure he completes simple daily tasks, like eating and taking a shower. But there are times when his condition causes him to act strangely.

    She shared one conversation she had with Paul’s father, who said his son, on at least one occasion, walked from his family’s home in Orange Park to another aunt’s house in San Pablo.

    "Does that sound normal to you? No," Angie Paul said. "Until his feet will just peel out, hurt."

    Angie Paul said the family has no idea what led Nalory Paul to travel to Northwest Jacksonville. They believe he was driving his sister’s black Honda Civic (pictured below). They said they still don’t know where it ended up.

    That officer chased after Paul and fired a shot from his department-issued handgun, but didn’t hit anything. Paul was taken into custody after crashing the cruiser into some nearby trees.

    RELATED: JSO: Officer fires shot at man who stole his patrol car in Moncrief

    Paul’s aunt and father told News4Jax he was diagnosed last November with catatonia, which has been associated with schizophrenia. They said in the days leading up to this incident, he had been in the hospital due to his mental health condition.

    Photos taken of a younger Nalory Paul offer a glimpse into life before his diagnosis. His family said he graduated from Fletcher High School and described him as kind, reserved, hard-working, and loved by all. His aunt, Angie Paul, is still at a loss for words over his arrest.

    "We were all shocked," Angie Paul said. "For me, it was like a dream/nightmare because I knew he wouldn't do it if he was in his right mind."

    Angie Paul said due to her nephew’s condition, Nalory Paul lives with his parents and younger brothers. She said they make sure he completes simple daily tasks, like eating and taking a shower. But there are times when his condition causes him to act strangely.

    She shared one conversation she had with Paul’s father, who said his son, on at least one occasion, walked from his family’s home in Orange Park to another aunt’s house in San Pablo.

    "Does that sound normal to you? No," Angie Paul said. "Until his feet will just peel out, hurt."

    Angie Paul said the family has no idea what led Nalory Paul to travel to Northwest Jacksonville. They believe he was driving his sister’s black Honda Civic (pictured below). They said they still don’t know where it ended up.

  24. #1874
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0



  25. #1875
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2020
    Posts
    4,558
    Rep Power
    0

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •