We try to doc­u­ment some of the atroc­i­ties, but despite our best efforts, we can only doc­u­ment a minute por­tion of what is hap­pen­ing in the United States under the guise of policing.
It is crit­i­cal that mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, main­tain records and not trust main­stream media enti­ties to do so based on their inabil­i­ty to report police crimes before the advent of social media and cell­phone cameras.(mb)

Earlier this month, footage of a dis­turb­ing police-involved shoot­ing was pub­licly released. A home sur­veil­lance video showed a hus­band and his wife sleep­ing in their mobile home when they were awak­ened by cops on speak­ers demand­ing they come out­side. Tired and dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed, the North Carolina cou­ple oblig­ed. As the man opened the door with his hands up, with­in sec­onds, he was shot sev­er­al times and fell back­ward onto his floor.

The vic­tim was lat­er iden­ti­fied as 41-year-old Jason Harley Kloepfer. Authorities con­firmed the inci­dent hap­pened on Dec. 12 in Murphy, North Carolina. Law enforce­ment offi­cials were dis­patched to the scene for what was believed to be an armed, hostage sit­u­a­tion. On Dec. 13, Cherokee County Sheriff Dustin Smith addressed the shoot­ing in a Facebook post. Apparently, after “rec­og­niz­ing there was an armed sus­pect present and the poten­tial for a hostage sit­u­a­tion,” the Cherokee Indian Police Department SWAT Team showed up at the res­i­dence. From there, Kloepfer is accused of engag­ing “in a ver­bal alter­ca­tion with offi­cers” and “con­front­ed” them before being shot.

After the footage was made pub­lic, Smith refut­ed his ini­tial claims. “Neither myself nor Chief Deputy Justin Jacobs were on the scene at the time of the shoot­ing, so we relied on infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to us from the Cherokee Indian Police Department,” he said on Facebook last week. He added, “The first time I ever saw video footage from the shoot­ing was on Jan. 18, 2023.” Without a sin­gle apol­o­gy to the dis­abled res­i­dent, the sher­iff seem­ing­ly blamed the inci­dent on his depart­ment not hav­ing its “own tac­ti­cal team” to han­dle hostage sit­u­a­tions. “I will be ask­ing coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers for the funds to cre­ate such a unit when bud­get nego­ti­a­tions for the next fis­cal year begin,” he continued.

In the video footage, mem­bers of the North Carolina SWAT team are heard say­ing, “F**k, bro, f**k!” Another one alerts his peers that their unjust actions were filmed, adding, “Hey, cam­eras, cam­eras!” Kloepfer suf­fered from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds and was charged with com­mu­ni­cat­ing threats and resist, obstruct and delay. “I can’t talk [too] much about details right now as this is [a] major, major case [that’s] still evolv­ing,” Kloepfer shared on Facebook on Jan. 20. (From Yahoo).

See Kloepfer’s state­ment below.

It is cas­es like these that made me an activist against police vio­lence. As a for­mer police offi­cer, I want every­one to know just how noble law enforce­ment is when done right. Policing is not about ego, bru­tal­i­ty, or lack of account­abil­i­ty; it is about car­ing for and pro­tect­ing the peo­ple we swore to serve.
Anyway, you will notice a glar­ing dif­fer­ence in the swift arrest of these crim­i­nals in uni­form, as opposed to oth­er killings where the crim­i­nals in uni­form look dif­fer­ent. You decide what that dif­fer­ence is.(mb)

Cops arrest­ed in bru­tal beat­ing death of Tyre Nichols.

Five for­mer Memphis police offi­cers have been charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der and oth­er crimes in the arrest and death of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who died three days after a con­fronta­tion with the offi­cers dur­ing a traf­fic stop, records showed Thursday. S
Shelby County Sheriff’s Office online records show that Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith were in cus­tody. All five are charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der, aggra­vat­ed assault, aggra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping, offi­cial mis­con­duct and offi­cial oppres­sion. Defense attor­ney William Massey con­firmed to The Associated Press that his client, Emmitt Martin III, had been charged and had turned him­self in. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if Smith had a lawyer to speak on his behalf about the charges. Blake Ballin, the lawyer for Mills, said he planned to hold a news con­fer­ence lat­er Thursday. Second-degree mur­der is a class A felony pun­ish­able by 15 to 60 years in prison under Tennessee law. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said he would pro­vide an update on the state’s inves­ti­ga­tion Thursday after­noon. Video footage of the arrest has not been made pub­lic, but offi­cials have pledged to release it this week or next week.
Read the full sto­ry here. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/national-international/5‑memphis-cops-charged-with-murder-in-tyre-nichols-death/2959524/

Over the years, I have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the Government of Jamaica and the Island’s pri­ma­ry law enforce­ment agency, the Jamaican Constabulary Force. Having served for almost a decade in the (JCF) gave me a bird­s­eye view of the agen­cy’s lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. As a con­se­quence, I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly argu­ing that despite the obvi­ous efforts of suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions com­pris­ing both polit­i­cal par­ties to sti­fle the agency, there is much more the JCF could have done and can do to make itself a bet­ter agency. A bit of imag­i­na­tion, research, and inge­nu­ity would have gone a long way in trans­form­ing the agency from a Barney-Fyffe laugh­ing stock to a pre­mier law enforce­ment agency in the region.
Unfortunately, the polit­i­cal direc­torate and the force’s lead­er­ship have con­vinced them­selves that crime-fight­ing out­comes will improve if they cre­ate a top-heavy agency laden with peo­ple with mul­ti­ple degrees.
This has not hap­pened as vio­lent crimes con­tin­ue to reach aston­ish­ing pro­por­tions. Why? Well, to begin with, degrees can­not fight crime; sea­soned, moti­vat­ed law enforce­ment offi­cers with intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties do.

Today, as it was decades ear­li­er, the JCF, even at its very best, is a third-rate law enforce­ment agency whose offi­cers seem clue­less and pathet­i­cal­ly uncer­tain in their approach in even the most seri­ous cas­es they are tasked with investigating.
Like a bro­ken record, I have begged the coun­try’s lead­er­ship to bet­ter train, com­pen­sate, sup­port, and moti­vate law enforce­ment agents so that they can secure the coun­try. Alas, this has­n’t hap­pened, which has led peo­ple in some quar­ters to argue that maybe the pol­i­cy­mak­ers do not want crime reduced because it would affect what they have going on. One of the most bla­tant bits of BS per­pet­u­at­ed is the idea that there can be pros­per­i­ty for the Jamaican peo­ple simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the nation expe­ri­enc­ing a pan­dem­ic of vio­lent crimes. It can­not hap­pen. In short, crime impov­er­ish­es nations; no nation can grow to any degree when it is inun­dat­ed with vio­lence and fear. For a coun­try to be its best, there must be an envi­ron­ment of trust and secu­ri­ty with­in so that the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive.
There is no short­age of entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in Jamaica; what we have too much of are vio­lence and fear.

Everyone should hang their head in shame, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, that our gov­ern­ment is forced to ask for help from the American Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) to get to the bot­tom of the grow­ing finan­cial scan­dal involv­ing invest­ments of Usain Bolt and oth­ers. We can argue that it is okay to ask for help, but the sad real­i­ty is that our pre­mier law enforce­ment agency can­not fol­low a mon­ey trail to its con­clu­sion when the rub­ber meets the road. Law enforce­ment agen­cies across the globe col­lab­o­rate every day in the fight against transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works; this is not that. This is the Jamaican gov­ern­ment con­ced­ing that the JCF is out of its league in cas­es of this mag­ni­tude. That is what all Jamaicans should feel shame about. This results from suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions of the PNP & JLP, starv­ing the JCF of resources, train­ing, sup­port, ade­quate pay, and back­ing. In addi­tion, unwar­rant­ed polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the force’s day-to-day oper­a­tions ren­ders it almost use­less as a crime-fight­ing enti­ty. Whether it is vio­lent or white-col­lar crime, the writ­ing is on the wall; the JCF is not up to the task.
Thanks to the two crim­i­nal gangs that oper­ate as polit­i­cal par­ties in our coun­try. There is no short­age of smart peo­ple in Jamaica; our coun­try lacks lead­er­ship. Deliberate sab­o­tage of law enforce­ment by both polit­i­cal par­ties has forced them to go grov­el­ing on their knees to for­eign pow­ers to solve prob­lems Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of solv­ing, giv­en the train­ing and tools.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

The for­mer head of coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence for the FBI’s New York City office was arrest­ed over the week­end on charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing and vio­lat­ing sanc­tions on Russia, three senior law enforce­ment offi­cials told NBC News. An FBI spokesman con­firmed the arrest of Charles McGonigal, who was appre­hend­ed at JFK air­port in New York on Saturday after return­ing on a flight from the Middle East.
Prosecutors allege that McGonigal worked with Russian oli­garch Oleg Deripaska, Deripaska asso­ciate Sergey Shestakov, and a third per­son to inves­ti­gate a rival Russian oli­garch in return for pay­ments from Deripaska.
According to pros­e­cu­tors, McGonigal, Shestakov and the third per­son tried to con­ceal Deripaska’s involve­ment through shell com­pa­nies, forged sig­na­tures and oth­er means.

The activ­i­ty alleged­ly occurred three years after McGonigal’s 2018 retire­ment from the FBI. A senior law enforce­ment offi­cial told NBC News a sec­ond case against McGonigal filed in fed­er­al court in Washington, D.C., will allege he took hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from a for­mer for­eign intel offi­cial while still serv­ing in the FBI.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, “As alleged, Charles McGonigal, a for­mer high-lev­el FBI offi­cial, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court inter­preter, vio­lat­ed U.S. sanc­tions by agree­ing to pro­vide ser­vices to Oleg Deripaska, a sanc­tioned Russian oli­garch. They both pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanc­tions removed, and, as pub­lic ser­vants, they should have known bet­ter.” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll said, “The FBI is com­mit­ted to the enforce­ment of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions designed to pro­tect the United States and our allies, espe­cial­ly against hos­tile activ­i­ties of a for­eign gov­ern­ment and its actors. Russian oli­garchs like Oleg Deripaska per­form glob­al malign influ­ence on behalf of the Kremlin and are asso­ci­at­ed with acts of bribery, extor­tion, and violence.”
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​s​e​c​u​r​i​t​y​/​e​x​-​c​o​u​n​t​e​r​i​n​t​e​l​-​h​e​a​d​-​f​b​i​-​n​e​w​-​y​o​r​k​-​m​c​g​o​n​i​g​a​l​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​r​c​n​a​6​6​995

Every year this behav­ior gets worse than the pre­vi­ous year. Police con­tin­ue to mur­der the inno­cent, men­tal­ly dis­tressed, and unarmed at alarm­ing rates with­out any seri­ous attempt to rein in this mur­der­ous rampage.

As expect­ed, a police union has entered from stage right to defend the actions of their offi­cers this month. The Los Angeles Police Department became the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the viral arrest of BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ cousin Keenan Anderson, who died fol­low­ing the traf­fic stop. Now, they’re under scruti­ny from the pub­lic giv­en Anderson’s death was spec­u­lat­ed to be the third traf­fic stop by the LAPD that turned fatal this year (and we’re only in January). The LAPD Shootings and Critical Incidents web­site has not doc­u­ment­ed the inci­dents, includ­ing Anderson’s.

According to an ABC7 report, the Los Angeles Police Protective League made a state­ment on the two men who were shot and Anderson who was Tased. The report says all three men were suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and instead of the LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit being called, the cops respond­ed. Even Police Chief Michel Moore was con­cerned about it.

In a five-page waste of time, writ­ten to the may­or and city coun­cil, the LAPPL defend­ed the offi­cers and point­ed toward the MEU’s lack of resources as rea­son for the fatal out­come of each case.

More from ABC7 Los Angeles:

Well, the offi­cers involved in Anderson’s case will be eval­u­at­ed on just how well they fol­lowed pro­to­col on both state and fed­er­al lev­els.

Attorney Benjamin Crump and O.J. Simpson’s for­mer defense attor­ney Carl Douglas announced the fil­ing of a wrong­ful death claim, seek­ing $50 mil­lion in dam­ages, Friday. The claim was filed on behalf of Anderson’s 5‑year-old son, per the LA Times.

“Mr. Anderson did noth­ing to jus­ti­fy this use of seri­ous and unrea­son­able force against him.… The Claimants are informed and believe that because of implic­it bias, each of the unknown involved police offi­cers assumed Mr. Anderson pre­sent­ed a seri­ous threat to someone’s safe­ty, and then assault­ed, bat­tered and tased him at least six times in response.,” read the claim. “- the City of Los Angeles neg­li­gent­ly trained these police offi­cers as to the appro­pri­ate cir­cum­stances and tech­niques to deploy when using non­lethal force, includ­ing tasers, lead­ing to the actions and fail­ures to act as alleged here.”

FALL RIVER — The city has set­tled anoth­er civ­il rights law­suit against the Fall River Police Department, this time with an $80,000 award.

This lat­est set­tle­ment is one in a string of offi­cer-relat­ed civ­il law­suits that has cost the city hun­dreds of thou­sands of dollars.

Corey Ferreira, a Fall River native and a cor­rec­tions offi­cer with the Commonwealth, filed the law­suit in fed­er­al court against patrol offi­cers Derek Oagles, Frederick Mello and for­mer FRPD offi­cer Thomas Roberts in June 2020.

Ferreira suf­fered seri­ous injuries includ­ing bro­ken ribs, and a col­lapsed lung that required emer­gency room med­ical staff insert­ing a breath­ing tube in his chest, dur­ing an arrest out­side The Cove Restaurant on Aug. 17, 2017, as he and a friend were wait­ing for a cab. He said the injuries were sus­tained while he was in hand­cuffs and on the ground.

The city settled the case on Jan. 9

Ferreira’s attor­ney, Georgi J. Vogel-Rosen, indi­cat­ed in an email that she was pleased with the out­come of the civ­il case against the city.

“Corey Ferreira suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant injuries, includ­ing a col­lapsed lung, bro­ken ribs, and per­ma­nent nerve dam­age. He spent 20 months fight­ing base­less crim­i­nal charges, until they ulti­mate­ly were dis­missed by the District Attorney. This set­tle­ment fur­ther vin­di­cates him and allows him to put this ter­ri­ble trau­ma behind him,” wrote Vogel-Rosen. “Lawsuits such as this one send a mes­sage to police depart­ments that vio­la­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights expose cities and towns to sub­stan­tial liability.

Ferreira, who has worked in the state prison sys­tem for the past 15 years, said it cost him $10,000 in legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to fight the felony assault charges for alleged­ly fight­ing with the offi­cers. He said the Bristol County District Attorney’s office dropped the case on the first day of tri­al when some of the police offi­cer wit­ness­es failed to appear. He said the charges could have cost him his career as a cor­rec­tions officer.

“What I went through was a night­mare. It is ter­ri­fy­ing to know that there are police offi­cers in this city get­ting away with false accu­sa­tions and bru­tal­i­ty this severe with­out being held account­able,” said Ferreira.

According to the terms of the set­tle­ment agree­ment pro­vid­ed by City Solicitor Alan Rumsey, the city and the offi­cers involved do not admit to any wrong­do­ing or lia­bil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the 2017 inci­dent, and Ferreira can­not take any fur­ther action.

Taser death:Fall River set­tles civ­il rights law­suit relat­ed to 2016 stun gun death, but denies wrongdoing

Roberts was fired from the police depart­ment for stat­ing false­hoods in police reports after he tes­ti­fied in a grand jury against fel­low offi­cer at the time, Michael Pessoa who is set to go to tri­al start­ing in February for assault­ing three men in custody.

Awaiting tri­al:Former Fall River cop Michael Pessoa will face three tri­als for using exces­sive force

Settlements and still pending civil rights lawsuits

Just in the past sev­en months, the city has shelled out $460,000 in police-relat­ed civ­il set­tle­ments, includ­ing the Ferreira case.

Most recent­ly, the city paid out $65,000 this past sum­mer in a claim against city police offi­cer Nicholas Hoar for the assault on William Harvey, who was in cus­tody at the FRPD head­quar­ters in December 2020 after an arrest on a domes­tic complaint.

Hoar was indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury for the alleged assault in November for the alleged assault against Harvey after an FBI probe, and is free with­out bail while he awaits tri­al. He is cur­rent­ly on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave from the police department.

Details sought:As inves­ti­ga­tion in shoot­ing death of 19-year-old con­tin­ues, few details revealed

Hoar claimed he used a police baton to sub­due an unco­op­er­a­tive Harvey, but a police book­ing room video shows him shov­ing a hand­cuffed pris­on­er from behind into the cell.

Harvey has claimed that Hoar assault­ed him as he was being brought into the police sta­tion and was hos­pi­tal­ized dur­ing his arrest.

Taser death lawsuit

In May, the city set­tled a civ­il rights law­suit for $315,000 in the Taser-relat­ed death of 48-year-old Scott Macomber, which occurred in May 2016.

Fall River had already paid out an addi­tion­al $237,000 to set­tle two exces­sive-force law­suits involv­ing Pessoa, with anoth­er civ­il rights case pend­ing by of the for­mer officer’s alleged vic­tims in his crim­i­nal case.

Both Pessoa and Hoar are two of approx­i­mate­ly two dozen defen­dants in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit brought by the fam­i­ly of a 19-year-old New Bedford man shot by Hoar in the Fall River Industrial Park in 2017.

And the city is fac­ing a new law­suit filed at the end of December in fed­er­al court, this time with alle­ga­tions that a man was severe­ly injured by police in 2020, when police received a call about a per­son with a gun and respond­ed to the wrong apartment.

This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on The Herald News:

Reduced to beg­ging motorists not to speed, the Jamaican Prime Minister demon­strat­ed that his gov­ern­ment is an abysmal fail­ure on the sem­i­nal issue of law and order. Of course, there are blink­ered hyper-par­ti­sans who will see this com­ment as a par­ti­san attack on Mister Holness and his gov­ern­ment instead of a truth­ful and objec­tive analy­sis of the facts.
A record 488 peo­ple were killed in traf­fic crash­es in Jamaica in 2022, accord­ing to the Ministry of Transport’s Road Safety Unit. The 488 peo­ple killed in 2022 exceed­ed the 487 who died in motor vehi­cle crash­es in 2021.
The data from the Ministry of Transport should be from the police, whose job it should be to mon­i­tor and pro­tect the motor­ing pub­lic from the car­nage on the roads from the igno­rant morons who jeop­ar­dize the lives of oth­er road users.
Unfortunately, Jamaica is no longer a place where any­one can feel safe in any regard, not from the maraud­ing morons dri­ving on the roads, not from the brutish mon­sters that con­tin­ue to mur­der at will with­out consequence.
Though shock­ing for such a small island, the excep­tion­al­ly high num­ber of road fatal­i­ties is only a tiny part of the true hor­ror of the insan­i­ty of what obtains on Jamaica’s roads; the bro­ken bod­ies they leave to suf­fer far exceed the fatalities.
Overtaking around blind cor­ners, uphill, down­hill, on the side­walks, dri­ving onto major thor­ough­fares from side­streets with­out stop­ping, drink­ing and dri­ving, exces­sive speed­ing, reck­less and dan­ger­ous dri­ving, wel­come to Jamaica, where every­one does as they please.
Where are the police, you ask? That’s a good ques­tion; they long ced­ed the streets to the hoodlums.

The police force is nowhere near what it should be with staffing, equip­ment, train­ing, pay, and sup­port from the gov­ern­ment & peo­ple, but it damn sure isn’t where it used to be.
Decades ago, the force was much small­er and less equipped; the pay was even more shit­ty, polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence was ram­pant, and there was no sup­port from either polit­i­cal par­ty, but the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple were behind their police force.
The stan­dard of suc­cess was the data points, low­er mur­der sta­tis­tics, few­er rapes, few­er rob­beries, and break-ins, and on the nation’s streets, the traf­fic police made their pres­ence felt.
In all of this, many traf­fic cops were accused of cor­rup­tion, the force nev­er fig­ured out a way to fix that, but there was a police pres­ence, and errant behav­ior on the roads had consequences.
Despite a much larg­er force, new and sophis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment, and bet­ter pay, the force pro­duces far less for the Jamaican peo­ple than it did decades earlier.
The Commissioner of police is allowed to skate by even as Rome burns; his polit­i­cal boss­es make excus­es for him even though there is no rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his con­tin­ued employ­ment out­side politics.
But Commissioner Antony Anderson is not the only prob­lem with the Constabulary. God knows, only in Jamaica can a per­son be giv­en the most senior job for a dis­ci­pline in which he has absolute­ly no experience.
Most of the offi­cers below Anderson are a bunch of posers with mul­ti­ple degrees from the University of the West Indies who could not find jobs else­where, so they become police offi­cers. They are giv­en com­mand with­out any knowl­edge of polic­ing and, in most cas­es, nev­er slapped a pair of hand­cuffs on a criminal.
The Jamaican tax­pay­ers are left hold­ing the bag for those mis­fits who are very good at talk­ing but not much else.
In the mean­time, the roads are a drag-rac­ing hell, and your chance of get­ting mur­dered is 1 in over 47,000.
Those are not good odds!

The gov­ern­ment could alle­vi­ate many issues plagu­ing the coun­try by com­mit­ting to a tick­et­ing sys­tem that allows the police to arrest scofflaws and throw them in jail. A com­put­er­ized sys­tem that lets the police know right away that a dri­ver has a war­rant for unpaid tick­ets. Passing a road traf­fic act that actu­al­ly has teeth and is not a joke. These are not nov­el ideas, just ideas that oth­er nations have used for years, some­times decades.
Maintaining Jamaica as a par­adise for crim­i­nals and law­break­ers seems to be the intent of both polit­i­cal par­ties and their func­tionar­ies. Why else would they not adopt what oth­er nations have already done successfully?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

OUR SECOND ANTI-CRIME FORUM

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​m​i​k​e​.​b​e​c​k​l​e​s.9

In the 2006 bul­letin, the FBI detailed the threat of white nation­al­ists and skin­heads infil­trat­ing police to dis­rupt inves­ti­ga­tions against fel­low mem­bers and recruit oth­er suprema­cists. The bul­letin was released dur­ing a peri­od of scan­dal for many law enforce­ment agen­cies through­out the coun­try, includ­ing a neo-Nazi gang formed by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department mem­bers who harassed black and Latino com­mu­ni­ties. Similar inves­ti­ga­tions revealed offi­cers and entire agen­cies with hate group ties in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. Reported NPR​.ORG.
But the rise of white suprema­cist groups has been noth­ing new, even as far back as 2006 when the FBI final­ly decid­ed to warn the nation about their infil­tra­tion into law enforce­ment agencies.
At the time, the then FBI direc­tor James Comey’s agency was warn­ing about the threat describ­ing it as a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat; Comey him­self was telling a gath­er­ing of police chiefs that “because of insuf­fi­cient data on the use of force, Americans actu­al­ly have no idea” whether racial bias in polic­ing is real­ly an epi­dem­ic.”
Pointing to pub­lic out­rage over police killings of African-Americans, Comey said “the absence of good infor­ma­tion” and data has aid­ed the grow­ing belief that police offi­cers tar­get par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties.
With those utter­ances and oth­ers, includ­ing telling the same gath­er­ing that police offi­cers across the coun­try were afraid to do their jobs because of what he char­ac­ter­ized as the ‘Ferguson effect, in ref­er­ence to the polic­ing killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, James Comey iden­ti­fied him­self as part of the prob­lem with law enforce­ment in America.
By the time Donald Trump fired James Comey, he had already done even more dam­age, includ­ing cost­ing Hillary Clinton the pres­i­den­cy when he, in unprece­dent­ed fash­ion, took it upon him­self to announce crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions of sec­re­tary Clinton mere weeks before the elections.
Threats against President Obama rose to lev­els pre­vi­ous­ly unseen against pres­i­dents pre­ced­ing him. All pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents were white men.
But the threats posed by white suprema­cists infil­trat­ing law enforce­ment were not con­fined to police depart­ments. There are cred­i­ble reports after the January 6^th insur­rec­tion at the US capi­tol by right-wing sedi­tion­ists that the FBI itself is a hotbed of Trumpism and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic support.
Many of the sedi­tion­ists who attacked the capi­tol a full two years ago today were serv­ing mem­bers of law enforce­ment, the US mil­i­tary, and past mem­bers of both. Some have already been con­vict­ed for the crimes they com­mit­ted that day two years ago.
If the American peo­ple who believe in democ­ra­cy can­not trust and depend on the peo­ple, they pay to pro­tect the nation from coup d’e. tat attempts like what hap­pened on January 6^th, 2021, because they are part of the prob­lem, how much con­fi­dence should they have in the future?
Many experts now acknowl­edge that the grow­ing threat posed by white Christian nation­al­ism is America’s great­est nation­al secu­ri­ty threat. But they have all been a day late and a dol­lar short. Who did not see this was a fes­ter­ing sit­u­a­tion that was being ignored because of who the per­pe­tra­tors were?
In September 2020, the Department Of Homeland Security, in a draft Memo, acknowl­edged the gravest ter­ror threat to the United States was from white Supremacists.
According to Politico, Two lat­er draft ver­sions of the same doc­u­ment describe the threat from white suprema­cists in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent lan­guage. But all three drafts describe the threat from white suprema­cists as the dead­liest domes­tic ter­ror threat fac­ing the U.S., list­ed above the imme­di­ate dan­ger from for­eign ter­ror­ist groups.
The inci­dents of armed mili­tia mem­bers show­ing up at state capi­tols and dis­rupt­ing gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ings lead­ing up to the January 6^th attack may only be a pre­cur­sor to big­ger things. Yet there is no indi­ca­tion that the United States Government has done any­thing sub­stan­tive to stamp out the bur­geon­ing threat of white home­grown ter­ror­ism threat­en­ing the repub­lic’s very existence.
There is no evi­dence of any threat posed by peo­ple on the polit­i­cal left, con­trary to what Rupert Murdoch’s organs of dis­in­for­ma­tion would have you believe.
It was not ANTIFA that attacked the cap­i­tal; it was right-wing white suprema­cists who sup­port­ed Donald Trump. The acronym ANTIFA is short for anti-fas­cist; anti-fas­cists can­not be fas­cists simultaneously…
In recent times there have been attacks on pow­er sta­tions in sev­er­al states across the country.
USA Today reported:

Since September 2022, attacks or poten­tial attacks have been report­ed on at least 18 addi­tion­al sub­sta­tions and one pow­er plant in Florida, Oregon, Washington, and the Carolinas. Several involved firearms.

• In Florida: Six “intru­sion events” occurred at Duke Energy sub­sta­tions in September, result­ing in at least one brief pow­er out­age, accord­ing to the News Nation tele­vi­sion net­work, which cit­ed a report the util­i­ty sent to the Energy Department. Duke Energy spokesper­son Ana Gibbs con­firmed a relat­ed arrest, but the com­pa­ny declined to com­ment further.
• In Oregon and Washington state: Substations were attacked at least six times in November and December, with firearms used in some cas­es, local news out­lets report­ed. On Christmas Day, four addi­tion­al sub­sta­tions were van­dal­ized in Washington State, cut­ting pow­er to more than 14,000 customers.
• In North Carolina: A sub­sta­tion in Maysville was van­dal­ized on Nov. 11. On Dec. 3, shoot­ings that author­i­ties called a “tar­get­ed attack” dam­aged two pow­er sub­sta­tions in Moore County, leav­ing tens of thou­sands with­out pow­er amid freez­ing temperatures.
• In South Carolina: Days lat­er, gun­fire was report­ed near a hydropow­er plant, but police said the shoot­ing was a “ran­dom act.”

According to the same report, the Federal Bureau Of Investigations has not said a word about the inves­ti­ga­tions into these inci­dents or even if an inves­ti­ga­tion is happening.
But why would any­one be sur­prised by this when there are serv­ing mem­bers of the FBI, paid with tax­pay­er’s dol­lars, who refused to par­tic­i­pate in inves­ti­gat­ing the sedi­tion­ists who invad­ed the capi­tol two years ago?
The larg­er ques­tion, how­ev­er, is, what exact­ly are these attacks on the pow­er grids a pre­cur­sor to?
There is a litany of secu­ri­ty agen­cies in the United States, so many Americans do not even know some of them exist even though their tax dol­lars are pay­ing for them.
There is no short­age of secu­ri­ty agen­cies in the United States; the fol­low­ing is a list of some of those agencies

Intelligence Community Member Agencies

• Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• Central Intelligence Agency
• National Security Agency/​Central Security Service
• Defense Intelligence Agency
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
• National Reconnaissance Office
• Department of State
• Department of Defense
• Department of Justice
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Drug Enforcement Administration
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Treasury
• Department of Energy — Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
• Army Intelligence
• Air Force Intelligence
• U.S. Navy, Naval Intelligence
• U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity
• Coast Guard Intelligence

On and on it goes; in addi­tion to those agen­cies, there are 18,000 law enforce­ment agen­cies across the coun­try. According to sta​tista​.com, there are cur­rent­ly 660,288 full-time law enforce­ment offi­cers employed in the United States.
Yet, not a sin­gle agency fore­saw or did any­thing to pre­vent the MAGA horde that descend­ed on the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021. Not a sin­gle agency lift­ed a fin­ger to stop it.
Imagine the blood­bath if the horde attacked the capi­tol that day were black peo­ple. Imagine the bod­ies strewn across the steps and the lawn as far as the eyes can see.
There is prece­dent for that kind of blood­bath against blacks in Philadelphia by the Police, even when black cit­i­zens had not even com­mit­ted any act near­ly as egre­gious as what hap­pened two years ago in Washington, DC.
But it isn’t just about attacks on the Capitol and on pow­er grids or kid­nap­ping threats against a gov­er­nor they hate; they are now engaged in shoot­ing up the homes and offices of Democratic politi­cians, and the main­stream media is com­plic­i­ty silent as it happens.
Today HuffPost report­ed the homes or offices of five elect­ed Democratic offi­cials in New Mexico, includ­ing the new attor­ney gen­er­al, have been hit by gun­fire over the past month.
The attacks come amid a sharp rise in threats to mem­bers of Congress and two years after sup­port­ers of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and sent law­mak­ers run­ning for their lives. Local school board mem­bers and elec­tion work­ers across the coun­try have also endured harass­ment, intim­i­da­tion, and threats of violence.
Despite these seri­ous threats and more, the bulk of the nation’s 660,288 full-time law enforce­ment offi­cers seems to be more inter­est­ed in over-polic­ing black neigh­bor­hoods, writ­ing tick­ets and mur­der­ing black cit­i­zens over bro­ken tail­lights and for turn­ing with­out signaling.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

A video is cir­cu­lat­ing on social media of an NYPD cop beat­ing on a 14-year-old girl, accord­ing to the New York Daily News. The offi­cer was report­ed to have struck the girl nine times and also hit the oth­er teens who were try­ing to pull him off of her and shield her from the punch­es. The offi­cer was sus­pend­ed as a result.

On Tuesday, at the bus stop near Edwin Markham Middle School, Kyonna Robinson saw her 12-year-old sis­ter get into a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion with anoth­er girl. The report says Robinson jumped into the fight to defend her sis­ter when the police arrived. The cop, iden­ti­fied as Nicholas Scalzo, went to arrest Robinson’s sis­ter when Kyonna inter­ject­ed, lead­ing to anoth­er phys­i­cal altercation

A video is cir­cu­lat­ing on social media of an NYPD cop beat­ing on a 14-year-old girl, accord­ing to the New York Daily News. The offi­cer was report­ed to have struck the girl nine times and also hit the oth­er teens who were try­ing to pull him off of her and shield her from the punch­es. The offi­cer was sus­pend­ed as a result.

On Tuesday, at the bus stop near Edwin Markham Middle School, Kyonna Robinson saw her 12-year-old sis­ter get into a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion with anoth­er girl. The report says Robinson jumped into the fight to defend her sis­ter when the police arrived. The cop, iden­ti­fied as Nicholas Scalzo, went to arrest Robinson’s sis­ter when Kyonna inter­ject­ed, lead­ing to anoth­er phys­i­cal altercation.

“I asked the cop ‘What are you guys doing? And he pushed me and I hit him two times,” she told reporters. “It hap­pened so quick, I couldn’t even think straight. I just thought they were going to break up the fight and take us to the precinct.”

What fol­lowed is where the video picks up as Scalzo is record­ed repeat­ed­ly pound­ing on Robinson’s head with his fists. She punched back a few times before try­ing to flee.

Two high school cheer­lead­ers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have been killed in a car crash involv­ing a police offi­cer who was in a high-speed pur­suit of a sus­pect fol­low­ing a home inva­sion. Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 15, were killed in the crash on Saturday night. They were stu­dents and cheer­lead­ers at Brusly High School out­side Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Liam Dunn, Maggie’s broth­er, was also in the vehi­cle at the time of the crash. He’s in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, accord­ing to People. “He will need surg­eries. Has a bro­ken femur, tab­u­la [sic], left wrist, frac­tured skull, and a few oth­er issues. We are ask­ing for prayers,” Kenny Wayne post­ed on Facebook. “We don’t know why God took our daugh­ter, but I bet she is run­ning shop up there.”

Officer David Cauthron, 42, from Addis, south of the Lousiana cap­i­tal has been arrest­ed and now faces two counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide and one count of neg­li­gent injur­ing, accord­ing to WBRZ. It remains unclear if he has hired an attor­ney to speak on his behalf. According to District Attorney Tony Clayton, the offi­cer is on admin­is­tra­tive leave. Mr Clayton said Mr Cauthron “has a lot of ques­tions to answer per­tain­ing to his speed and sheer neg­li­gence”. “For these kids to not to have been able to start the New Year is inex­cus­able, but we’ll fol­low the facts first,” he told WBRZ. “I just can’t put my arms around why (the offi­cer) was dri­ving at that rate of speed in pur­suit of this vehi­cle. This offi­cer is fac­ing some seri­ous issues.”

“If it involves putting human life in dan­ger, stop the damn pur­suit. It’s just not worth the risk,” he added. According to the author­i­ties, the crash took place as the offi­cer was chas­ing Tyquel Zanders, The Advocate report­ed. Mr Zanders was detained after his vehi­cle stalled and now faces charges of home inva­sion, theft of a vehi­cle and aggra­vat­ed flight, accord­ing to The Advocate. Brusly High School Principal Walt Lemoine said in a state­ment that the extent of the loss­es “are far-reach­ing in our school com­mu­ni­ty as Maggie’s moth­er, Erin Martin, and sis­ter, Tori Hill, work at our school. Caroline’s old­er sis­ter is a senior at Brusly High and has younger sib­lings in our school sys­tem”. “Their loss­es are sure to raise many emo­tions, con­cerns, and ques­tions for our entire school, espe­cial­ly our stu­dents,” he added. He not­ed that the school has a group of staffers to han­dle crises “com­prised of pro­fes­sion­als trained to help with the needs of stu­dents, par­ents and school per­son­nel at dif­fi­cult times such as this”. 

The cheer­lead­ing team wrote on Facebook: “As we mourn the trag­ic deaths of Maggie Dunn and Caroline Gill please keep their fam­i­lies, friends, and the BHS com­mu­ni­ty in your thoughts and prayers.” “Their enthu­si­asm and bright smiles will be missed more than can be imag­ined,” the team said. According to WBRZ, the police offi­cer was trav­el­ling at 86 miles an hour (138kph) and didn’t brake before the crash. The out­let report­ed that wit­ness­es said he ran a red light, which had been red for about 20 sec­onds before he reached the inter­sec­tion. “I want the pub­lic to have con­fi­dence in its DA’s office that we will fol­low the facts, and we should let the facts lead us to what­ev­er the out­come should be,” Mr Clayton said. Yahoo news​.com

It is the start of a new year, and as always, we look back at what was accom­plished and where we can make some changes for bet­ter outcomes.
Of course, you all know that my top­ic has always been crime and will con­tin­ue to be so until we achieve a lev­el of crime that is not tol­er­a­ble but more manageable.
The Police report­ed that 1498 mur­ders were report­ed to them for 2022, rep­re­sent­ing an over­all 2% increase over the pre­vi­ous year.
In the same breath, Fitz Bailey, the Deputy Commissioner of police with respon­si­bil­i­ty for crime, claims that good polic­ing strate­gies are to be cred­it­ed with the decrease in major crimes in cer­tain areas while in the same breath allud­ing to the fact that crime went up in oth­er areas and over­all across the country.
“It’s just the polic­ing strat­e­gy that we have deployed, to put it blunt­ly, that cre­at­ed that lev­el of decrease. If you look at the begin­ning of the year, you saw where [crime fig­ures] were run­ning away, and we con­stant­ly, from an orga­ni­za­tion lev­el, at the strate­gic and oper­a­tional lev­el, sat down and looked at the strate­gies and imple­ment­ed vary­ing types of ini­tia­tives. There was addi­tion­al deploy­ment in terms of man­pow­er that assist­ed with that decline,” Bailey told local media.
So increased num­bers of man­pow­er in cer­tain areas is the equiv­a­lent of strate­gic and oper­a­tional machi­na­tions!
This made me laugh, and truth be told, I gen­er­al­ly give the police a lot of lat­i­tude, under­stand­ing that they need all the sup­port they can get fight­ing crime in an ungrate­ful crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing society.
However, I can­not in good con­science sup­port a bunch of malarky that makes no sense.
How can the crime chief claim any cred­it when over­all crime went up by two per­cent­age points?

It does not mat­ter that the vio­lence in par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal areas trends down when those areas are flood­ed with secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, à la ZOSOs, and SOEs if crime goes up expo­nen­tial­ly in oth­er areas.
This is exact­ly what occurred, as this writer has been warn­ing for years will con­tin­ue to be the out­come of this whack-a-mole strategy.
So let us sort through the facts and not spend a lot of time on this rather easy sub­ject. I have every respect for the work of the rank-and-file of the JCF.
They have always done the hard work with­out prop­er com­pen­sa­tion, lead­er­ship, train­ing, or sup­port and with inad­e­quate tools to do their jobs.
I also under­stand that some, not all, of the men and women of the rank and file con­tin­ue to work hard despite those defi­cien­cies; some, on the oth­er hand, are dead­wood as it has always been.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​a​c​k​-​a​-​m​o​l​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

So let us cut to the chase with all respect to the crime chief DCP Fitz Bailey that it was spe­cif­ic polic­ing strate­gies that brought down vio­lent homi­cides in cer­tain divi­sions; I beg to differ.
I have three words for mis­ter Bailey, WORLD CUP SOCCER.
That part!
The data clear­ly shows that crime trends down when­ev­er we have world cup soc­cer. I under­stand that the police would like to take cred­it for the low­er crime sta­tis­tics in parts of the coun­try due to ZOSOs and SOEs or a slow­ing over­all of killings com­pared to ear­li­er in the year. Still, pol­i­cy­mak­ers rely on data to for­mu­late poli­cies; if we con­tin­ue to mis­rep­re­sent the data in front of us, we wind up with bad policies.
So let us stop with the self-con­grat­u­la­tions because more Jamaicans were mur­dered in 2022 than in 2021, and more would have died if we did not have Jamaicans glued to their tele­vi­sions watch­ing football.
I hate to rain on any­one’s parade, but I can­not ignore the facts.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

It gets worse every year; and while it per­sists, courts push the bound­aries of creduli­ty to give them cov­er, where­upon they kill with greater impuni­ty and with greater bar­barism. (mb)

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1,176 people were killed in encounters with police last year, a third of them during a traffic stop, mental health and welfare check, or non-violent offense.

By Trone Dowd

American police killed more peo­ple last year than they have in near­ly a decade, accord­ing to a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that has tracked and pub­lished data on dead­ly state vio­lence since 2013.
Mapping Police Violence’s 2022 track­ing found that 1,176 peo­ple died dur­ing encoun­ters with police last year, the high­est num­ber the orga­ni­za­tion has ever record­ed. Samuel Sinyangwe, the cre­ator of the project, said the num­ber includes any­one who was killed by police, be it by shoot­ing or oth­er forms of force. According to Mapping Police Violence, police killed the equiv­a­lent of 3.2 peo­ple per day in 2022 — and there were only 12 days in the whole year when a dead­ly police encounter was not reported. 

More than a third of those killed by police encoun­tered the author­i­ties dur­ing a traf­fic stop, a men­tal health and wel­fare check, or a non-vio­lent offense. All three of these caus­es for a police stop have been tar­get­ed for reform in mul­ti­ple states because of how dead­ly they can be for civil­ians, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are not white. Elected lead­ers in Minnesota, California, and Pennsylvania for exam­ple, have passed leg­is­la­tion or enforced new poli­cies de-pri­or­i­tiz­ing non-pub­lic safe­ty traf­fic stops. Aurora, Colo. has seen a sig­nif­i­cant push to reform how police inter­act with the men­tal­ly ill, and to give them the tools to deesca­late these sit­u­a­tions at risk of becom­ing violent.

As has been true for the last nine years, Mapping Police Violence’s data shows that Black peo­ple made up a dis­pro­por­tion­ate chunk of those killed by cops in 2022, account­ing for 24 per­cent of those killed, despite mak­ing up just over 13 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. One in three peo­ple killed by the police was flee­ing the cops when they were killed, with Black, Hispanic, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders at least five to eight per­cent more like­ly to be killed while run­ning or dri­ving away com­pared to their white counterparts.

Perhaps the most alarm­ing is how lit­tle account­abil­i­ty there has been as the num­ber of police killings con­tin­ues to grow. Though some of the high­est pro­file instances of police vio­lence saw a con­vic­tion in recent years, includ­ing that of Derek Chauvin in 2021, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of offi­cers still face no legal con­se­quences when they take a life. According to the data, 98.1 per­cent of offi­cers involved in the death of a cit­i­zen between 2013 and 2022 faced no charges. Less than 0.3 per­cent of offi­cers were convicted.

The five depart­ments in the coun­try with the most dead­ly inci­dents were also locat­ed in some of the dens­est cities. The Los Angeles Police Department topped the list with 15 killings last year, fol­lowed by the Houston Police Department with 14 and the New York Police Department with 13. Members of the Albuquerque Police Department and the Phoenix Police Department killed 11 and 10 peo­ple respectively.

While 2022 was a record year, data shows that police vio­lence has been on the rise nation­al­ly since 2019. Last year 1,140 peo­ple were killed by police, just five deaths short of the pre­vi­ous record high set in 2018.

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By Jack Hardy

Big deal, this ani­mal will be hired by the next depart­ment down the road and giv­en a raise.

A Tampa police offi­cer has been fired after drag­ging a woman on the ground fol­low­ing an arrest, the depart­ment said in a state­ment. The Tampa police depart­ment fired offi­cer Gregory Damon fol­low­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that deter­mined he vio­lat­ed mul­ti­ple depart­men­tal poli­cies while book­ing a sus­pect into the Orient Road Jail on Nov. 17.
“Professionalism is not only expect­ed, it is demand­ed, in every encounter our offi­cers have with the pub­lic, regard­less of the arrestee being unco­op­er­a­tive or unpleas­ant in return. As law enforce­ment offi­cers, we are held to a high­er stan­dard,” said Interim Police Chief Lee Bercaw.

Body cam­era footage and sur­veil­lance footage cap­tured the incident.

According to offi­cials, Tampa police respond­ed to a call regard­ing an indi­vid­ual sleep­ing out­side the Tampa Family Health Center and refus­ing to leave despite requests made by employees.
Officers arrest­ed the woman, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been pro­vid­ed a warn­ing for tres­pass­ing on the same prop­er­ty the month pri­or. The woman refused to exit the patrol vehi­cle and told the offi­cer “I want you to drag me!”
“Damon took the indi­vid­ual by the arm, drag­ging her from the vehi­cle to the entrance of the jail where he then buzzed the door entrance, prompt­ing two deputies to come out­side and assist with rais­ing the indi­vid­ual from the ground and begin­ning the jail intake process,” the depart­ment said in a statement.
It con­tin­ued, “Rather than remain­ing pro­fes­sion­al, Damon him­self made rude and deroga­to­ry com­ments to the arrestee.”
The inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that Damon vio­lat­ed depart­men­tal poli­cies relat­ed to search­ing, trans­port­ing, response to resis­tance, treat­ment of peo­ple in cus­tody, stan­dard of con­duct, and more.

In 2013, Tampa revised its pol­i­cy on han­dling unco­op­er­a­tive peo­ple fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar inci­dent, accord­ing to the department.
It added spe­cif­ic lan­guage that advised offi­cers “that drag­ging an indi­vid­ual who is unco­op­er­a­tive is nev­er an appro­pri­ate prac­tice and instead, the cor­rect pro­ce­dure would be to request assis­tance from the book­ing staff.”
The depart­ment said that deten­tion deputies are required to help lift some­one from the trans­port vehi­cle and secure them in a restrain­ing chair to be rolled into the intake area.
“This for­mer officer’s actions were unac­cept­able and are not tol­er­at­ed at this depart­ment, which is why we act­ed swift­ly in ini­ti­at­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, reliev­ing him of his duties, and ulti­mate­ly ter­mi­nat­ing his employ­ment,” the depart­ment said in a state­ment. Damon was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able to respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Damon is not being rep­re­sent­ed by the Tampa Police Benevolent Association in this mat­ter, accord­ing to the organization.

Two Battle Creek police offi­cers shot and seri­ous­ly wound­ed a man Sunday and have been placed on paid leave. Shortly after 2 p.m. Christmas Day, police respond­ed to the 200 block of North Birdsall Drive in Bedford Township when a woman report­ed her boyfriend assault­ed her, accord­ing to a Monday police depart­ment press release. The 22-year-old Battle Creek man left the area before offi­cers arrived. Police deter­mined there was enough prob­a­ble cause to arrest the man and tried to find him, the release states. At about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, the same woman called 911 again and report­ed the man had returned, was mak­ing sui­ci­dal state­ments, and had a knife, accord­ing to the release.

Three Battle Creek offi­cers near­by on an unre­lat­ed call respond­ed to North Birdsall Drive and heard yelling com­ing from the back­yard of the home. Officers found the man and woman argu­ing. Two oth­er peo­ple also were present, police said As offi­cers approached, police said the man pulled what to them appeared to be a dark-col­ored hand­gun from his waist­band. Officers told the man to drop the weapon and then two offi­cers fired their weapons and struck the man twice in the tor­so, police said. Police said the man dropped his gun and fell to the ground. Officers took two knives from the man and pro­vid­ed first aid. A police super­vi­sor took the man to a local hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. One of the offi­cers who shot the man has two years of expe­ri­ence and the oth­er 10. They have been placed on paid leave pend­ing the out­come of a Michigan State Police inves­ti­ga­tion, the release states. The shoot­ing remains under inves­ti­ga­tion and more infor­ma­tion will be release as it becomes avail­able, accord­ing to the release.