KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesman on National Security Derrick Smith says that the tem­po­rary injunc­tion the Government has secured from the Supreme Court bar­ring the police from tak­ing indus­tri­al action not only serves to inten­si­fy the esca­lat­ing wage nego­ti­a­tion cri­sis, but brings the “arro­gance and bul­ly­ing tac­tics being employed by the Government into sharp focus”.

Smith said: “The Government’s move to com­pel the police back to work by way of an injunc­tion will not improve the deep­en­ing indus­tri­al rela­tions row and bring us no clos­er to restor­ing normality.”

“In fact, the injunc­tion only serves to fur­ther pro­voke the police and inten­si­fy the antag­o­nism that char­ac­teris­es the rela­tion­ship between the police and the Government at this time. Instead of resort­ing to bul­ly tac­tics and fur­ther oppress­ing the hard-work­ing men and women of the con­stab­u­lary, the Government needs to move quick­ly in mak­ing a bet­ter offer and ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at a set­tle­ment,” Smith’s state­ment said.

He added: “What I find most dis­turb­ing is that the Government sat seem­ing­ly unper­turbed and allowed the sit­u­a­tion to esca­late to the point where the Police Federation felt it had no option but to mobi­lize its mem­bers in stag­ing a sick-out. What is even more dis­turb­ing is that the nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, who, if no one else in the Government does, should have the inter­ests of the police at heart, has expend­ed no dis­cernible effort in advanc­ing their wel­fare, but saw it fit to resort to bul­ly­ing tac­tics on Tuesday by call­ing on them to return to work.”

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Two Democratic sen­a­tors intro­duced a bill this week aimed at chang­ing what for­mer Attorney General Eric Holder once called the “unac­cept­able” lack of data on the sub­ject of police shootings.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.) and Cory Booker (D‑N.J.) on Tuesday intro­duced the Police Reporting of Information, Data and Evidence Act (PRIDE), which would require states to report to the Justice Department any time a law enforce­ment offi­cer is involved in a shoot­ing and any instance where an offi­cer or a civil­ian is seri­ous­ly hurt or killed as a result of the use of force. States would also have to report details like the age, race and loca­tion of any vic­tims; whether or not the civil­ians present were armed; and how many civil­ians and offi­cers were involved.

“Too many mem­bers of the pub­lic and police offi­cers are being killed, and we don’t have reli­able sta­tis­tics to track these trag­ic inci­dents,” Boxer said in a state­ment Tuesday. “This bill will ensure that we know the full extent of the prob­lem so we can save lives on all sides.”

There is cur­rent­ly no com­pre­hen­sive fed­er­al pro­gram that col­lects data on law enforce­ment-involved shoot­ings and use of force, mak­ing that infor­ma­tion essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble to find. The FBI’s uni­form crime report only includes police-involved killings that are con­sid­ered “jus­ti­fi­able homi­cides” — that is, killings that law enforce­ment offi­cials con­sid­er excus­able, like a civil­ian who is killed while com­mit­ting a felony. These inci­dents are report­ed by police on a vol­un­tary basis, mean­ing there are like­ly many more that hap­pen than we have an offi­cial record of.

In her state­ment Tuesday, Boxer not­ed that there’s also no com­pre­hen­sive report­ing on how many offi­cers are killed in the line of duty. This year, 54 offi­cers have been killed in the line of duty, 14 of them shot and killed by sus­pects, accord­ing to num­bers from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Meanwhile, thus far in 2015, U.S. police have shot and killed at least 385 peo­ple, or about 2.5 peo­ple a day, accord­ing to a recent Washington Post esti­mate. And The Guardian — which is mak­ing its own sus­tained effort to track police-killing sta­tis­tics — puts the year-to-date total even high­er, at 408.

On Monday, The Guardian unveiled a project called “The Counted,” a crowd­sourced data­base that aims to tal­ly police- and oth­er law enforce­ment-involved deaths and record vital details of the incidents.

The data­base culls news from local reports, sub­mit­ted tips (ver­i­fied by The Guardian) and oth­er pub­lic data. Guardian reporter Jon Swaine told The Huffington Post that the info arrives “in drips and drops,” mean­ing that entries may be added, removed or revised as new infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Swaine said the April shoot­ing of South Carolina man Walter Scott offers one exam­ple of how an entry can morph as new details come to light: Initial reports based on police infor­ma­tion paint­ed a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture than the real­i­ty the pub­lic saw a day lat­er when video of the inci­dent was released.

Though law enforce­ment-involved shoot­ings have cap­tured the most media atten­tion, Swaine said “The Counted” will also include cas­es like that of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, who died from a spinal cord injury sus­tained dur­ing a vio­lent ride in a police van.

Swaine said The Guardian hopes “The Counted” will bol­ster efforts by local media, res­i­dents and oth­ers look­ing to bet­ter under­stand fatal police and civil­ian encoun­ters. Already, he said, out­lets in Los Angeles and New Orleans have used the tool to explore their own local num­bers. He not­ed that the map­ping tool can also help users see when inci­dents are clus­tered in par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic areas of a city.

Swaine said The Guardian plans to keep “The Counted” going at least through the rest of the year.

“[Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner and I] were both sur­prised that there was no com­pre­hen­sive report of police fatal­i­ties,” said Swaine. “It was a gap we could fill and it fit with The Guardian’s, what you might call, ethos. It’s part of The Guardian’s tra­di­tion: skep­ti­cism of author­i­ty, skep­ti­cism of the police force.“New Bill Says It’s Time To Track The Data On Police Shootings

The Jamaica Police Federation says it has accept­ed the Government’s offer to resume wage negotiations.

Horace Dalley, the Minister with­out Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance, who is lead­ing the nego­ti­a­tions for the gov­ern­ment, wrote to the Federation yes­ter­day invit­ing it to attend a meet­ing sched­uled at the Ministry for Friday after­noon. Meanwhile, chair­man of the police fed­er­a­tion Sergeant Raymond Wilson has tak­en issue with the asser­tion by nation­al secu­ri­ty min­is­ter Peter Bunting that police per­son­nel have been offered a 6.5 per cent increase in year one and 5.5 per cent in year two.

Bunting explained the increas­es for both years include a 3.5 per cent annu­al incre­ment which every JCF mem­ber receives. But Sergeant Wilson says this annu­al incre­ment is not a new ben­e­fit and was already cal­cu­lat­ed into the lev­el of ero­sion expe­ri­enced by cops since their last increase. He says not every mem­ber of the force will be enti­tled to the incre­men­tal increase as an indi­vid­ual can only have six such increas­es at each rank. He says this means that a police­man who has already spent six years at a par­tic­u­lar rank will not have this increase to look for­ward to unless he is pro­mot­ed or is approved for senior­i­ty allowance. Police Federation Accepts Dalley’s Invitation

FULL STATEMENT FROM THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:

The Attorney General of Jamaica wish­es to advise that an injunc­tion was tonight obtained from the Supreme Court against the Executive Members of the Jamaica Police Federation and all mem­bers of the Federation.

Pursuant to the Order of the Court per­mit­ting the order to be broad­cast over a com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing sys­tem oper­at­ing in Jamaica, or by pub­li­ca­tion in at least one dai­ly news­pa­per cir­cu­lat­ing in Jamaica, the Attorney General now pub­lish­es the terms of the order as follows:
1. The Respondents be appoint­ed to rep­re­sent the mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation.

2. The Respondents be restrained from con­tin­u­ing any indus­tri­al action in the form of with­hold­ing their ser­vices or otherwise.

3. The Respondents and all the mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation be restrained for a peri­od of twen­ty eight (28) days from caus­ing and/​or attempt­ing to cause and/​or car­ry­ing out acts to cause dis­af­fec­tion amongst the mem­bers of the Constabulary Force and/​or induc­ing and/​or attempt­ing to induce and/​or car­ry­ing out acts to induce mem­bers of the Constabulary Force to with­hold their services.

4. A manda­to­ry injunc­tion instruct­ing the mem­bers of the Force who are with­hold­ing their ser­vices by way of “sick out” and/​or oth­er indus­tri­al action to report for their shifts/​for work as and when sched­uled or due to do so until fur­ther order of the court or for a peri­od of twen­ty eight (28) days whichev­er is earlier.

5. The Order here­in be pub­lished, either by broad­cast­ing same on at least two sep­a­rate occa­sions over a com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing sys­tem oper­at­ing in Jamaica, or by pub­li­ca­tion in at least one dai­ly news­pa­per cir­cu­lat­ing in Jamaica and that this be deemed ser­vice of Notice of the said Order on the Respondents and all the said mem­bers of the Jamaica Police Federation.

6. The appli­ca­tion will be fur­ther con­sid­ered by the Court on the 18^th day of June 2015 at 10:00 a.m. or so soon there­after as coun­sel may be heard.

The Attorney General reminds the Executive and Membership of the Jamaica Police Federation that fail­ure to com­ply with the terms of the Supreme Court Order will result in them being in con­tempt of court and liable to hav­ing their assets being confiscated.

The gov­ern­ment has obtained an injunc­tion from the Supreme Court against the Executive of the Police Federation and all its mem­bers. The injunc­tion bars them from con­tin­u­ing any indus­tri­al action in the form of with­hold­ing their ser­vices. In a state­ment issued short­ly after mid­night, the Attorney General said all mem­bers of the Federation are restrained for a peri­od of 28 days from with­hold­ing their services.

All police offi­cers who are with­hold­ing their ser­vices by way of “sick out” and/​or oth­er indus­tri­al action have to report for work until a fur­ther order of the court, or for a peri­od of 28 days, whichev­er is ear­li­er. The Attorney General has warned the Executive and mem­ber­ship of the Police Federation that fail­ure to com­ply with the terms of the Supreme Court Order will result in them being in con­tempt of court and liable to hav­ing their assets being con­fis­cat­ed. Gov’t obtains injunc­tion against the Police Federation

The federal agency said the aircrafts are used for specific, ongoing investigations

(WASHINGTON) — The FBI is oper­at­ing a small air force with scores of low-fly­ing planes across the coun­try car­ry­ing video and, at times, cell­phone sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy — all hid­den behind fic­ti­tious com­pa­nies that are fronts for the gov­ern­ment, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ sur­veil­lance equip­ment is gen­er­al­ly used with­out a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for spe­cif­ic, ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. In a recent 30-day peri­od, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the coun­try, an AP review found.

Aerial sur­veil­lance rep­re­sents a chang­ing fron­tier for law enforce­ment, pro­vid­ing what the gov­ern­ment main­tains is an impor­tant tool in crim­i­nal, ter­ror­ism or intel­li­gence probes. But the pro­gram rais­es ques­tions about whether there should be updat­ed poli­cies pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties as new tech­nolo­gies pose intru­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties for gov­ern­ment spying.

U.S. law enforce­ment offi­cials con­firmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the air­craft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake com­pa­nies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the pro­gram are with­held from the pub­lic in cen­sored ver­sions of offi­cial reports from the Justice Department’s inspec­tor general.

“The FBI’s avi­a­tion pro­gram is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a state­ment. “Specific air­craft and their capa­bil­i­ties are pro­tect­ed for oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.” Allen added that the FBI’s planes “are not equipped, designed or used for bulk col­lec­tion activ­i­ties or mass surveillance.”

But the planes can cap­ture video of unre­lat­ed crim­i­nal activ­i­ty on the ground that could be hand­ed over for prosecutions.

Some of the air­craft can also be equipped with tech­nol­o­gy that can iden­ti­fy thou­sands of peo­ple below through the cell­phones they car­ry, even if they’re not mak­ing a call or in pub­lic. Officials said that prac­tice, which mim­ics cell tow­ers and gets phones to reveal basic sub­scriber infor­ma­tion, is rare.

Details con­firmed by the FBI track close­ly with pub­lished reports since at least 2003 that a gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­gram might be behind sus­pi­cious-look­ing planes slow­ly cir­cling neigh­bor­hoods. The AP traced at least 50 air­craft back to the FBI, and iden­ti­fied more than 100 flights since late April orbit­ing both major cities and rur­al areas.

One of the planes, pho­tographed in flight last week by the AP in north­ern Virginia, bris­tled with unusu­al anten­nas under its fuse­lage and a cam­era on its left side. A fed­er­al bud­get doc­u­ment from 2010 men­tioned at least 115 planes, includ­ing 90 Cessna air­craft, in the FBI’s sur­veil­lance fleet.

The FBI also occa­sion­al­ly helps local police with aer­i­al sup­port, such as dur­ing the recent dis­tur­bance in Baltimore that fol­lowed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sus­tained griev­ous injuries while in police cus­tody. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.

The sur­veil­lance flights com­ply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said. Those rules, which are heav­i­ly redact­ed in pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments, lim­it the types of equip­ment the agency can use, as well as the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions and dura­tion of the surveillance.

Details about the flights come as the Justice Department seeks to nav­i­gate pri­va­cy con­cerns aris­ing from aer­i­al sur­veil­lance by unmanned air­crafts, or drones. President Barack Obama has said he wel­comes a debate on gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance, and has called for more trans­paren­cy about spy­ing in the wake of dis­clo­sures about clas­si­fied programs.

“These are not your grand­par­ents’ sur­veil­lance air­craft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, call­ing the flights sig­nif­i­cant “if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is main­tain­ing a fleet of air­craft whose pur­pose is to cir­cle over American cities, espe­cial­ly with the tech­nol­o­gy we know can be attached to those aircraft.”

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane air­craft. These includ­ed parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

Evolving tech­nol­o­gy can record high­er-qual­i­ty video from long dis­tances, even at night, and can cap­ture cer­tain iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion from cell­phones using a device known as a “cell-site sim­u­la­tor” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pin­point­ed cell­phones into reveal­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers of sub­scribers, includ­ing those not sus­pect­ed of a crime.

Officials say cell­phone sur­veil­lance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights orbit­ing large, enclosed build­ings for extend­ed peri­ods where aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy would be less effec­tive than elec­tron­ic sig­nals col­lec­tion. Those includ­ed above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes cir­cling over Baltimore in ear­ly May, the AP began ana­lyz­ing detailed flight data and air­craft-own­er­ship reg­is­tra­tions that shared sim­i­lar address­es and flight pat­terns. That review found some FBI mis­sions cir­cled above at least 40,000 res­i­dents dur­ing a sin­gle flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, accord­ing to Census data and records pro­vid­ed by the web­site FlightRadar24​.com.

Most flight pat­terns occurred in counter-clock­wise orbits up to sev­er­al miles wide and rough­ly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newslet­ter from the com­pa­ny FLIR Systems Inc., which makes cam­era tech­nol­o­gy such as seen on the planes, described fly­ing slow­ly in left-hand­ed patterns.

“Aircraft sur­veil­lance has become an indis­pens­able intel­li­gence col­lec­tion and inves­tiga­tive tech­nique which serves as a force mul­ti­pli­er to the ground teams,” the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1 mil­lion for the program.

Recently, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and web­sites have cit­ed com­pa­nies traced to post office box­es in Virginia, includ­ing one shared with the Justice Department. The AP ana­lyzed sim­i­lar data since ear­ly May, while also draw­ing upon air­craft reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments, busi­ness records and inter­views with U.S. offi­cials to under­stand the scope of the operations.

The FBI asked the AP not to dis­close the names of the fake com­pa­nies it uncov­ered, say­ing that would sad­dle tax­pay­ers with the expense of cre­at­ing new cov­er com­pa­nies to shield the government’s involve­ment, and could endan­ger the planes and integri­ty of the sur­veil­lance mis­sions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the com­pa­nies’ names — as well as com­mon address­es linked to the Justice Department — are list­ed on pub­lic doc­u­ments and in gov­ern­ment databases.

At least 13 front com­pa­nies that AP iden­ti­fied being active­ly used by the FBI are reg­is­tered to post office box­es in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a region­al air­port used for pri­vate and char­ter flights. Only one of them appears in state busi­ness records.

Included on most air­craft reg­is­tra­tions is a mys­te­ri­ous name, Robert Lindley. He is list­ed as chief exec­u­tive and has at least three dis­tinct sig­na­tures among the com­pa­nies. Two doc­u­ments include a sig­na­ture for Robert Taylor, which is strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to one of Lindley’s three hand­writ­ing patterns.

The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. gov­ern­ment employ­ee. The AP unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to reach Lindley at phone num­bers reg­is­tered to peo­ple of the same name in the Washington area since Monday.

Law enforce­ment offi­cials said Justice Department lawyers approved the deci­sion to cre­ate fic­ti­tious com­pa­nies to pro­tect the flights’ oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the prac­tice. One of the Lindley-head­ed com­pa­nies shares a post office box open­ly used by the Justice Department.

Such elu­sive prac­tices have endured for decades. A 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office not­ed that, in July 1988, the FBI had moved its “head­quar­ters-oper­at­ed” air­craft into a com­pa­ny that wasn’t pub­licly linked to the bureau.

The FBI does not gen­er­al­ly obtain war­rants to record video from its planes of peo­ple mov­ing out­side in the open, but it also said that under a new pol­i­cy it has recent­ly begun obtain­ing court orders to use cell-site sim­u­la­tors. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion had until recent­ly been direct­ing local author­i­ties through secret agree­ments not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encour­ag­ing pros­e­cu­tors to drop cas­es rather than dis­close the technology’s use in open court.

A Justice Department memo last month also express­ly barred its com­po­nent law enforce­ment agen­cies from using unmanned drones “sole­ly for the pur­pose of mon­i­tor­ing activ­i­ties pro­tect­ed by the First Amendment” and said they are to be used only in con­nec­tion with autho­rized inves­ti­ga­tions and activ­i­ties. A depart­ment spokes­woman said the pol­i­cy applied only to unmanned air­craft sys­tems rather than pilot­ed airplanes.

_​_​_​

Associated Press writ­ers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Joan Lowy and Ted Bridis in Washington; Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; and news researchers Monika Mathur in Washington and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed 

W YORK, N.Y. — Speaking pub­licly for the first time since com­plet­ing gen­der tran­si­tion, Caitlyn Jenner com­pares her emo­tion­al two-day pho­to shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the July cov­er of Vanity Fair to win­ning the gold medal for the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics. She tells Pulitzer Prize – win­ning V.F. con­tribut­ing edi­tor and author ofFriday Night Lights Buzz Bissinger, “That was a good day, but the last cou­ple of days were bet­ter.… This shoot was about my life and who I am as a per­son. It’s not about the fan­fare, it’s not about peo­ple cheer­ing in the sta­di­um, it’s not about going down the street and every­body giv­ing you ‘that a boy, Bruce,’ pat on the back, O.K. This is about your life.”

Jenner tells Bissinger about how she suf­fered a pan­ic attack the day after under­go­ing 10-hour facial-fem­i­niza­tion surgery on March 15 — a pro­ce­dure she believed would take 5 hours. (Bissinger reveals that Jenner has not had gen­i­tal surgery.) She recalls think­ing, “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” A coun­selor from the Los Angeles Gender Center came to the house so Jenner could talk to a pro­fes­sion­al, and assured her that such reac­tions were often induced by pain med­ica­tion, and that sec­ond-guess­ing was human and temporary.

Jenner tells Bissinger the thought has since passed and not come back: “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and nev­er ever did any­thing about it, I would be lying there say­ing, ‘You just blew your entire life. You nev­er dealt with your­self,’ and I don’t want that to happen.”

Bissinger spent hun­dreds of hours with the man the world knew as Bruce Jenner over a peri­od of three months, and then count­less hours with Caitlyn, also attend­ing the pho­to shoot with Leibovitz at Jenner’s Malibu home.

Bissinger apol­o­gizes to Jenner for repeat­ed pro­noun con­fu­sion and asks whether she is sen­si­tive about it. “I don’t real­ly get hung up,” she tells him. “A guy came in the oth­er day and I was ful­ly dressed — it’s just habit, I said, ‘Hi, Bruce here,’ and I went, Oh fuck, it ain’t Bruce, I was screw­ing up doing it.”

Bissinger speaks exten­sive­ly with Jenner’s four chil­dren from his first two mar­riages — Burt, 36, and Cassandra, 34, with first wife Chrystie, and Brandon, 33, and Brody, 31, with sec­ond wife Linda — and describes an insen­si­tive father who had been absent for years at a time. Jenner open­ly acknowl­edges mis­takes made with them as Bruce, and express­es gen­uine regret. Says Burt, “I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a bet­ter per­son than Bruce. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to that.”

Watch a behind-the-scenes video of Annie Leibovitz’s pho­to shoot, as Caitlyn dis­cuss­es how much liv­ing ful­ly as a woman means to her.

For the Jenner chil­dren, the issue of the tran­si­tion has become a non-issue. They were already aware of their father’s iden­ti­ty as a woman when he told them indi­vid­u­al­ly about the tran­si­tion — Burt and Cassandra had learned from their moth­er rough­ly 20 years ear­li­er, when they were 13 and 11; Brandon had assumed it because of the obvi­ous phys­i­cal changes he had observed; and Brody was told by his moth­er when he was 29. They tell Bissinger they feel both hap­pi­ness for their father and inspi­ra­tion at his brav­ery, and they all still see their dad as their dad regard­less of any gen­der label. Brandon said he was a lit­tle tak­en aback when he saw Caitlyn for the first time after surgery and she pulled her top up to reveal her new breasts. “Whoa, I’m still your son,” he remind­ed her.

As part of the tran­si­tion, Jenner start­ed host­ing small gath­er­ings called “girls’ nights” with wine and food where Jenner could dress as desired and feel nat­ur­al in the pres­ence of women, and it was there that her daugh­ter Cassandra met Caitlyn for the first time. “I was just ner­vous that I wouldn’t make her feel com­fort­able,” Cassandra tells Bissinger. “I was wor­ried I wouldn’t say the right things or act the right way or seem relaxed.” But almost all of it melt­ed away when she got there. “We talked more than we ever have. We could just be girls together.”

Despite the renewed rela­tion­ship with their father, the Jenner chil­dren have refused to par­tic­i­pate in Caitlyn’s docu-series for the E! net­work, set to debut this sum­mer, for­go­ing finan­cial gain in favor of pre­serv­ing their father’s lega­cy. Initially, Caitlyn was “ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed and ter­ri­bly hurt,” but has come to accept their deci­sion. For her part, Caitlyn is pre­pared for the crit­i­cism that it’s a pub­lic­i­ty stunt: “‘Oh, she’s doing a stu­pid real­i­ty show. She’s doing it for the mon­ey. She’s doing this, she’s doing that.’ I’m not doing it for mon­ey. I’m doing it to help my soul and help oth­er peo­ple. If I can make a dol­lar, I cer­tain­ly am not stu­pid. [I have] house pay­ments and all that kind of stuff. I will nev­er make an excuse for some­thing like that. Yeah, this is a busi­ness. You don’t go out and change your gen­der for a tele­vi­sion show. O.K., it ain’t hap­pen­ing. I don’t care who you are.”

Shocking body cam­era video shows two Southern California cops slam an eight-months preg­nant woman to the ground after a park­ing lot dis­pute start­ed as the woman dropped her child off at school. The city of Barstow, an Inland Empire city in San Bernardino County, defend­ed the offi­cers’ actions, writ­ing in a state­ment that Charlena Michelle Cooks was active­ly resist­ing arrest dur­ing the January inci­dent. “The Barstow Police Department con­tin­ues to be proac­tive in train­ing its offi­cers to assess and han­dle inter­ac­tions with emo­tion­al­ly charged indi­vid­u­als while con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion, for the pro­tec­tion of every­one involved,” the state­ment, obtained by the Desert Dispatch, reads. The bizarre con­fronta­tion began when Cooks and anoth­er woman, a school employ­ee, got into a “road rage” con­fronta­tion in the park­ing lot at Crestline Elementary School, where Cooks was drop­ping off her sec­ond-grade daughter.

The offi­cer, speak­ing to the oth­er woman, says no crime has been com­mit­ted and he’ll go speak to Cooks about what hap­pened and “doc­u­ment her name.” As Cooks explains her side, the offi­cer sud­den­ly cuts her off and asks for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, some­thing he hadn’t done with the oth­er woman. “I don’t even think that that dis­agree­ment in the park­ing lot was enough to war­rant a call to the police,” Cooks told the Dispatch. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which took up Cooks’ case and released the video, says California law does not require some­one to iden­ti­fy them­selves “for no rea­son.” Cooks, in the video, tells the offi­cer that she’d like to call her boyfriend and ver­i­fy the law about iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. But the offi­cer, after first promis­ing to give her “two min­utes” to find out whether she must give up her name, walks up to Cooks after 20 sec­onds and grabs her arm as she wrig­gles and starts to yell.

“Do not touch me, do not touch me, I’m preg­nant!” Cooks begs as she’s pushed against a chain link fence. “What the f – k is going on!” A sec­ond offi­cer comes over and the offi­cer with the cam­era on asks, “Why are you resist­ing, ma’am?” He and the oth­er offi­cer then took her to the ground, stom­ach down, and hand­cuffed her behind her back. “This is ridicu­lous, what are you doing?” the incred­u­lous Cooks asks. “I didn’t even do any­thing wrong.” “I don’t think I’ve ever been that ter­ri­fied in my life,” Cooks recent­ly told the Dispatch. “I nev­er saw that com­ing. I told him I was preg­nant so he could pro­ceed with cau­tion. That did­n’t hap­pen and the first thing I thought was I did­n’t want to fall to the ground. I felt the pres­sure on my stom­ach from falling and I was call­ing for help. But those guys are sup­posed to help me. But who is sup­posed to help me when they are attack­ing me?”

Cooks was put in the back of a police cruis­er and lat­er booked on a charge of resist­ing or obstruct­ing a police offi­cer, a charge lat­er tossed by a judge. The offi­cer involved in the inci­dent is shown on video recount­ing for anoth­er offi­cer what hap­pened. “I gave her a minute to give up her name and I went to put her under arrest and she resist­ed arrest,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.” Cooks lat­er gave birth to a heatl­hy baby girl, but she’s been banned from the school prop­er­ty and is con­sid­er­ing leav­ing Barstow after the inci­dent. “I’m still try­ing to process every­thing and get in a good state of mind,” she told the Dispatch. “I’m in a very fear­ful state of mind. Barstow is so small and I used to be com­fort­able liv­ing here. Not any­more. I real­ly felt like after all that hap­pened I had some of my every­day free­doms tak­en from me.”
Body cam video cap­tures California cops tus­sle 8‑months preg­nant woman to ground, cuff her for ‘resist­ing arrest