Placing near unmit­i­gat­ed and, in many cas­es, unsu­per­vised pow­er into the hands of the least edu­cat­ed in soci­ety is per­ilous. Nowhere is that prac­tice more self-evi­dent than in the United States.
One of the most evil yet bril­liant strokes of genius that the racist right man­aged to pull off has been to trans­form itself from the obscu­ri­ty of wear­ing sheets to com­mit crimes to out in the open wear­ing the law enforce­ment uni­form. Couple that with mil­i­tary train­ing, and you bet­ter under­stand what is hap­pen­ing on American streets with what pass­es for law enforcement.
Despise it as you are enti­tled, but there is no deny­ing the stroke of genius behind the move. How do you fight back the way you should against racist aggres­sion from peo­ple dressed in police uni­forms with the full back­ing of the states and the judi­cial system?

A judge recent­ly told a young black youth at sen­tenc­ing that he could think of no more egre­gious an act than some­one point­ing a gun at a police offi­cer. (police do it every day, hun­dreds of times to inno­cent cit­i­zens of color) .
He told the young man he was for­tu­nate to be alive before sen­tenc­ing him to a pro­tract­ed prison term. The prob­lem was that the young man was alive because he most like­ly did [not] point a gun at the cop, or he would indeed have been dead, rid­dled with bul­lets. The word of the cop was good enough for that judge to do what he did. The cop knew before­hand that all he had to do to destroy the young man’s life was lie that he point­ed a gun at him, not that he had a gun.
A knife in hand with no attempt to move toward a cop gets you shot fif­teen or more times. What do you think point­ing a loaded gun at a cop gets you?

The dou­ble-edged sword for America is that it is a coun­try that glo­ri­fies guns. It is also a coun­try that sup­pos­ed­ly prides itself on the rule of law. (sic) The right to own guns is guar­an­teed under the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
No rea­son­able per­son would deny the inher­ent dan­ger that may exist in polic­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in some neigh­bor­hoods. But the pal­pa­bil­i­ty of the fear the police dis­play can­not jus­ti­fy the bru­tal­i­ty they mete out to inno­cent cit­i­zens, or worse the num­ber of inno­cent lives they take as a result of those unfound­ed and irra­tional fears. 
The nation has a pop­u­la­tion of 331.9 mil­lion peo­ple. In 2020 the num­ber of reg­is­tered guns in the hands of cit­i­zens num­bered at approx­i­mate­ly 443.9 mil­lion.
Simply put, there are many more guns than peo­ple, but that is not all. According to the Guardian, only 22 to 31% of American adults say they per­son­al­ly own a gun. And then it goes down­hill from there. A group of 7.7m peo­ple, or 3% of American adults – own between eight and 140 guns each.
Recent sur­veys find that about 40% of adult Americans own a gun or live with some­one who does. Most gun own­ers cite pro­tec­tion as their pri­ma­ry rea­son for own­ing a gun, and most believe the gun or guns they own make their homes safer. However, research has con­sis­tent­ly shown that house­holds with guns are actu­al­ly less safe — with marked­ly high­er risks for acci­den­tal deaths, sui­cides, and domes­tic homi­cides. (wamu​.org). Who do you think the 40% of gun own­ers large­ly are?
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​a​n​y​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​c​a​n​-​b​e​-​a​v​o​i​d​e​d​-​b​u​t​-​d​o​-​t​h​e​y​-​w​a​n​t​-​to/

It is incon­ceiv­able that since guns are held in such high esteem in the coun­try, almost as a source of wealth and pow­er and the ulti­mate instru­ment of pro­tec­tion, the poor and dis­pos­sessed would also seek to have them. And since the laws are delib­er­ate­ly designed to ensure that cer­tain seg­ments of soci­ety do not pos­sess the means to acquire them, it was almost a giv­en that those seg­ments would do every­thing to get them. And since guns are viewed as a pow­er tool, it is con­ceiv­able as to why the dis­pos­sessed are not allowed to have them. It is also eas­i­er to under­stand why the laws would give state agents the pow­er to sum­mar­i­ly exe­cute any­one with an ille­gal gun.
It also explains the mind­set of the old white male sen­tenc­ing judge.….’ con­sid­er your­self lucky to be alive; I there­fore sen­tence you to obliv­ion for eternity.

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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.

One NYPD cop was part of a foot chase that left a 17-year-old boy par­a­lyzed and cost the city $12 mil­lion but remains on the job. A sec­ond, known as “Bullethead,” has been sued 48 times cost­ing tax­pay­ers more than $1 mil­lion but was pro­mot­ed any­way. The two cops are named in an analy­sis released Monday by the Legal Aid Society nam­ing the 10 NYPD cops with the most law­suits filed against them over the last decade and the 10 involved in the high­est legal set­tle­ments. Earlier this month, a Legal Aid analy­sis showed $50.5 mil­lion in set­tle­ments for alleged police wrong­do­ing so far this year through July 28. At that rate, the city will fork over more than $100 mil­lion in NYPD-relat­ed set­tle­ments by year’s end, more than in four of the past five years, the soci­ety esti­mat­ed. Jennvine Wong, a staff attor­ney with the society’s Cop Accountability Project, not­ed that despite dis­turb­ing alle­ga­tions in the law­suits the offi­cers in both lists remain on the job and have been pro­mot­ed to sergeant or higher.

“So long as NYPD lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to allow prob­lem­at­ic offi­cers to rise through the ranks … our clients will con­tin­ue to shoul­der the con­se­quences and the gen­er­al public’s trust of the NYPD will remain frac­tured,” she said in a statement.
But Patrick Hendry, pres­i­dent of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union, quick­ly point­ed out that law­suits aren’t reli­able indi­ca­tors of how well an offi­cer does their job. “Lawsuits are fre­quent­ly set­tled for rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with the actions of a spe­cif­ic police offi­cer named in the suit, includ­ing cas­es where city set­tles rather than fight­ing a friv­o­lous suit in court,” Hendry said in a state­ment. “The Legal Aid Society knows the truth, but they don’t care. Their goal is to smear police offi­cers with unproven alle­ga­tions to help their crim­i­nal clients escape jus­tice.” The cop known as “Bullethead,” David Grieco, is clos­ing in on 50 law­suits filed against him. He was pro­mot­ed to sergeant in 2017. The city has set­tled law­suits against him for a total of $1.1 mil­lion, The News pre­vi­ous­ly reported.

Grieco is now assigned off the street to a cov­et­ed spot in the office of the Chief of Crime Control Strategies, which tracks and com­piles crime sta­tis­tics, NYPD records show. Pedro Rodriguez remains a police offi­cer and is assigned to the 72^nd Precinct in Brooklyn despite his role in the May 2018 foot chase that left 17-year-old Jimmy Alvarado par­a­lyzed. According to the law­suit, Rodriguez and his part­ner Pavel Kuznetsov chased Alvarado and Kuznetsov tack­led him, break­ing the boy’s neck. Rodriguez then helped hand­cuff Jimmy and tried to make him stand up, the law­suit alleges. Kuznetsov resigned from the NYPD in 2018 and was hired by the St. Petersburg, Fla., police force. New York City set­tled Alvarado’s law­suit for $12.05 mil­lion. In his affi­davit filed as part of the law­suit, Rodriguez says he tried to chase Alvarado but could not keep up with him and returned to his car with­out even see­ing Kuznetsov tack­le the boy. He writes he helped Alvarado to a seat­ed posi­tion against a lamp post John Nuthall, a PBA spokesman, said Rodriguez was mere­ly present for the inci­dent and was not involved in tack­ling the boy yet Legal Aid keeps putting out the officer’s name with the huge set­tle­ment attached as if Rodriguez was sole­ly at fault.
The NYPD did not have imme­di­ate com­ment on the Legal Aid report.

It’s stun­ning when you think about the fact that our tax dol­lars are tak­en from us whether we like it or not. New and inge­nious ways are found to tax us into pover­ty, yet no mat­ter how much they take from us under the guise of tax­a­tion, they use the mon­ey they take from us to hire more of these pirates and extor­tion­ists to take more. 
They get away with it because of igno­rance and brain­wash­ing; far too many peo­ple believe the lie that they are hir­ing more police for their pro­tec­tion. Ironically, the more cops they hire, the more crime we have.(mb)

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When city gov­ern­ments spend more mon­ey than they take in, offi­cials often search for ways to gen­er­ate rev­enue. One increas­ing­ly com­mon source of mon­ey is traf­fic tick­ets. And research shows police offi­cers issue more traf­fic tick­ets when cities are finan­cial­ly in a deficit.
But police rep­re­sent only one aspect of this rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing sys­tem. Judges and their courts also use traf­fic cita­tions to gen­er­ate mon­ey for the cities that employ them. As schol­ars of pub­lic finance, we study how cities raise mon­ey to pay for their oper­a­tions. Our new research indi­cates that judges in cities fac­ing red ink often use their posi­tions to max­i­mize rev­enue from traf­fic tick­ets. They can do this by adding finan­cial penal­ties to unpaid tick­ets. Judges often use the extra penal­ties to encour­age peo­ple to pay. The process of gen­er­at­ing dol­lars through traf­fic tick­ets, though, begins with the police.

Revenue-motivated policing

Traffic vio­la­tions are com­mon. Whether dri­vers fail to sig­nal a turn or dri­ve a few miles per hour above the speed lim­it, it is not dif­fi­cult for police to find some­one who vio­lat­ed a traf­fic law. Officers have the dis­cre­tion to pick and choose when to tick­et and can adjust the num­ber of tick­ets they issue based on fac­tors that are not relat­ed to whether some­one broke the law. Those fac­tors include the race of the dri­ver or the racial make­up of the neigh­bor­hood the offi­cers are patrolling. Usually, this means African American dri­vers and dri­vers in neigh­bor­hoods with more African American res­i­dents are tick­et­ed at high­er rates than oth­er peo­ple. Another fac­tor affect­ing tick­et­ing, but unre­lat­ed to whether dri­vers are break­ing traf­fic laws, is the bud­getary sit­u­a­tion of the city. One high-pro­file exam­ple of how a city’s use of traf­fic tick­ets can be a prob­lem is Ferguson, Missouri. According to a 2015 Department of Justice report, “Ferguson’s law enforce­ment prac­tices are shaped by the city’s focus on rev­enue rather than by pub­lic safe­ty needs.” And those prac­tices affect­ed African Americans dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. According to that report, African Americans made up 67% of the city’s pop­u­la­tion at the time, but they were the sub­jects of 85% of traf­fic stops, 90% of the tick­ets, 92% of the war­rants police issued and 96% of the arrests. Ferguson was nei­ther the first nor the only local gov­ern­ment to replen­ish its cof­fers through traf­fic tick­ets. In the years since that fed­er­al report, numer­ous stud­ies have shown that police and oth­er city per­son­nel increase the vol­ume of traf­fic tick­ets they issue based on bud­getary need.

The prac­tice is actu­al­ly so com­mon that it has sev­er­al names: “polic­ing for prof­it” and “rev­enue-moti­vat­ed polic­ing” among them. After a police offi­cer tick­ets a dri­ver, the process moves to a court.

Ticketing incentives in court

In some cas­es, the court that will process traf­fic tick­ets is oper­at­ed by the state; in oth­ers, it is oper­at­ed by the munic­i­pal­i­ty. Regardless, the court is respon­si­ble for col­lect­ing mon­ey from traf­fic tick­ets. But which court hears the case mat­ters quite a bit. If a traf­fic tick­et is set­tled in a state court, the mon­ey from fees is divid­ed across the state and its var­i­ous local gov­ern­ments. But if that same tick­et is set­tled in a munic­i­pal court, then the vast major­i­ty of the mon­ey goes to the city. Our research exam­ined how this dif­fer­ence affect­ed traf­fic tick­ets in Indiana. Like pri­or research, we found that police from cities fac­ing rev­enue short­ages issued more tick­ets. But we showed that this only hap­pened when cities ran their own munic­i­pal courts. Put anoth­er way, the police are only more like­ly to tick­et when it is prof­itable for the cities they serve. We also exam­ined how judges use their pow­er to col­lect more mon­ey. Ferguson once again pro­vides an exam­ple of how author­i­ties can abuse this pow­er. As detailed in the Justice Department report, judges did not con­sid­er a person’s finan­cial sta­tus when levy­ing penal­ties or set­ting pay­ment dead­lines. They also aggres­sive­ly applied option­al fees for late pay­ments. Lastly, judges and police offi­cers pro­vid­ed incor­rect or incom­plete infor­ma­tion about when or whether defen­dants were required to appear in court. That meant defen­dants often racked up addi­tion­al fees – and some­times arrest war­rants – for fail­ure to appear. Our research explored whether the prob­lems in Ferguson hap­pened else­where. We stud­ied Indiana, where judges can sus­pend defen­dants’ driver’s licens­es if they have not paid their fines. This is a pow­er­ful, but poten­tial­ly harm­ful, way to coerce pay­ment. We count­ed the num­ber of days judges wait­ed before sus­pend­ing a driver’s license. Then, we looked at whether the city was expe­ri­enc­ing a rev­enue short­fall. We found that judges sus­pend licens­es faster when their cities need more mon­ey. The effect was pret­ty large: A 1% decrease in rev­enue caused licens­es to be sus­pend­ed three days faster. Indiana’s prop­er­ty tax sys­tem places lim­its on the amount of rev­enue cities can col­lect through prop­er­ty tax­es, and cities do not dis­cov­er how much of their prop­er­ty tax levy they will be able to col­lect until after the city bud­get process is com­plete. This sys­tem allowed us to com­pare cities fac­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of rev­enue short­falls due to state-imposed reduc­tions in prop­er­ty tax revenues.

The bottom line

In some cities and states, offi­cials oper­ate their courts – not just the police depart­ment – to gen­er­ate rev­enue. We believe this is inher­ent­ly a prob­lem. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should exist to max­i­mize pub­lic safe­ty, not rev­enue. But if states change the rules about who keeps the mon­ey gen­er­at­ed by traf­fic tick­ets and relat­ed fines, the incen­tives for rev­enue max­i­miza­tion go away. Our research bears this out. Judges will have no rea­son to sus­pend licens­es faster when their cities are fac­ing a bud­get crunch if the rev­enue goes to the state. This change won’t fix every­thing. Racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will still be per­va­sive. But it could help get rid of polic­ing — and judg­ing — for profit.

This arti­cle is repub­lished from The Conversation, an inde­pen­dent non­prof­it news site ded­i­cat­ed to shar­ing ideas from aca­d­e­m­ic experts. The Conversation has a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing free newslet­ters.

It was writ­ten by: Sian Mughan, Arizona State University and Akheil Singla, Arizona State University.

These are the kinds of cas­es Philidelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office has inves­ti­gat­ed and brought to tri­al. The types of cas­es that past District Attorneys would cov­er up because of their uneth­i­cal close rela­tion­ship with police and their unions, which pre­vents them from doing their job impartially.
These kinds of cas­es have caused cops, their unions, and Republicans to con­tin­ue to try to remove DA Krasner, a for­mer pub­lic defend­er, from office.
The mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties in Philadelphia do under­stand the impor­tance of hav­ing this District Attorney in office.(mb) 

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Former Philadelphia police offi­cer Patrick Heron was arrest­ed last year over what CBS News Philadelphia described as “a long list of charges relat­ed to unlaw­ful sex­u­al con­tact with a per­son less than 13 years of age, pho­tog­ra­phy depict­ing sex acts with young girls and retal­i­a­tion and harass­ment against vic­tims and wit­ness­es.” This week, the same out­let report­ed he was back in court, with pros­e­cu­tors alleg­ing that Heron had record­ed some 30 sex­u­al assaults in the back of his police cruiser.

The case itself is dis­turb­ing. It start­ed last September when the retired Philadelphia police offi­cer was arrest­ed after pros­e­cu­tors said an inves­ti­ga­tion turned up “dis­turb­ing images and threat­en­ing mes­sages against the alleged vic­tims.” Due to the nature of the alleged crimes, the dis­trict attor­ney didn’t release many details at the time but asked any­one with more infor­ma­tion to come for­ward as they believed there were more vic­tims than they already knew about

At the time Heron was arraigned, his bail was report­ed­ly set at $111 million.

As of this week, pros­e­cu­tors say they have iden­ti­fied a total of 48 vic­tims, 44 of which are still uniden­ti­fied. Thirty assaults were report­ed­ly record­ed in the back of his police car over a span of 13 months and some of the vic­tims were chil­dren he met through his own child. Prosecutors request­ed that all of the cas­es filed against Heron be con­sol­i­dat­ed going for­ward, which the judge report­ed­ly granted.

With so many uniden­ti­fied vic­tims, inves­ti­ga­tors ask any­one with more infor­ma­tion to come forward.

After Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin and his cohorts lynched George Floyd, calls to defund the police were loud and clear across the coun­try. Those calls were just then as they are just now, but con­trary to what many peo­ple tell them­selves, the United States is not a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation where the gov­ern­ment is respon­sive to the peo­ple’s demands.
So the cor­po­rate media, whol­ly owned and con­trolled by the pow­er­ful one per­cent, went into over­drive to sell the right-wing Republican talk­ing point that defund­ing the police state is tan­ta­mount to sup­port­ing crim­i­nals. Democrats, too, cleaved to the Republican per­spec­tive out of fear of being brand­ed anti-police.
But I hard­ly speak of the Democratic par­ty because of its weak­ness. Republicans set a far-right agen­da; Democrats cre­ate a lite version.
I have always harkened to the old Jamaican say­ings; as I got old­er, they became more and more mean­ing­ful. In this case, I will refer to two of them, ‘the dev­il finds work for idle hands, and’ too many cooks spoil the broth.’
There are far too many police offi­cers in the United States, large­ly because the wealthy one per­cent who own the cor­po­rate media want it that way. Consequently, the mid­dle class, which has been social­ized into believ­ing that more and more police are nec­es­sary for their safe­ty, is always will­ing to be taxed to pay for more and more cops to pro­tect the inter­est of the super-rich.

Disney owns ABC. Paramount Entertainment owns CBS. NBC is a divi­sion of COMCAST, and So is MSNBC. FOX is owned by the super-wealthy Rupert Murdoch. Warner Brothers owns CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and Bezos owns the mar­ket­ing behe­moth Amazon. We can go down the list of major opin­ion influ­encers, and the result is the same: they are all owned by the wealth­i­est and most pow­er­ful peo­ple, includ­ing social media sites.
In the greater scheme of things, your indi­vid­ual rights are of lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the courts are asked to adju­di­cate indi­vid­ual rights against those of the state or pow­er­ful inter­ests. In those sce­nar­ios, indi­vid­ual rights are lost most of the time.
The major­i­ty of Americans, includ­ing African Americans who have suf­fered under the yolk of police oppres­sion for hun­dreds of years, still believe the police are their protectors.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police have no spe­cif­ic oblig­a­tion to pro­tect. In its 1989 deci­sion in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the jus­tices ruled that a social ser­vices depart­ment had no duty to pro­tect a young boy from his abu­sive father. In 2005’sCastle Rock v. Gonzales, a woman sued the police for fail­ing to pro­tect her from her hus­band after he vio­lat­ed a restrain­ing order and abduct­ed and killed their three chil­dren. Justices said the police had no such duty.
Most recent­ly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit upheld a low­er court rul­ing that police could not be held liable for fail­ing to pro­tect stu­dents in the 2018 shoot­ing that claimed 17 lives at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Almost to a man, every last one of those par­ents most like­ly har­bored the belief in what they char­ac­ter­ize as their police depart­ment: that they are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed by the police.
That their police depart­ment that they fund will pro­tect their chil­dren in their classrooms.
It is a sure bet to imag­ine that every sin­gle one of those par­ents who are salaried receives their pay­check after the gov­ern­ment removes tax­es that pay for ser­vices such as fund­ing the police. Those who oper­ate busi­ness­es also must pay tax­es, and even those who do not work also pay some kind of tax, includ­ing sales tax that goes to fund­ing police and oth­er services.
Yet, accord­ing to the judi­cia­ry, even though cit­i­zens do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt out of fund­ing the bloat­ed police state, they have no right to pro­tec­tion from it.

So, if the police have no duty to pro­tect cit­i­zens, what is their role? As I inti­mat­ed ear­li­er, they are there to pro­tect prop­er­ty and to extract rev­enue from the mass­es. I read an arti­cle years ago in which the author opined that if Americans were smart enough to cal­cu­late just how much tax­es they pay as opposed to how lit­tle they receive from it, there would be anoth­er war of inde­pen­dence. The vast major­i­ty of the just under one mil­lion cops from the almost 18,000 depart­ments that police the 320 mil­lion of us are out pulling over and tick­et­ing motorists for what­ev­er they choose to lie about.
I always warned my boys to avoid hav­ing to pay what I called stu­pid tax: traf­fic offens­es. These days, it is impos­si­ble to avoid that tax; it isn’t a stu­pid tax any­more. Cops sim­ply make up a lie on the tick­et, and even if a judge sees through the lie and dis­miss­es the tick­et, you are still stuck with court costs.
The need to gen­er­ate rev­enue is so great that cops will do any­thing to gin up arrests to fill jail cells in fur­ther­ance of the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. Some munic­i­pal­i­ties depend on traf­fic tick­et rev­enue to fund large parts of their bud­get. So when the police see no traf­fic infrac­tion, they invent them. Usually, the poor­est peo­ple are forced to bear the brunt of this insid­i­ous corruption.

It is for those rea­sons that cops in Mississippi arrest­ed a 10-year-old Black boy who was arrest­ed and placed in a cell for reliev­ing him­self in a park­ing lot. Quantavious Eason was detained and tak­en to a police sta­tion in Senatobia after an offi­cer spot­ted him uri­nat­ing behind a car out­side a law office last month while his moth­er was get­ting advice on hous­ing issues. LaToya Eason ques­tioned if her son’s race influ­enced offi­cers’ deci­sion to take him away in a police car and place him in a cell for almost an hour. “Would you have put a white child in a cage? If it had been a white child, he prob­a­bly wouldn’t have even been stopped,” she told a news con­fer­ence this week. She said the boy had seen a sign say­ing there were no toi­lets for pub­lic use inside the law office, but he des­per­ate­ly need­ed to go.
Read the full sto­ry here. https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​f​a​m​i​l​y​-​d​e​m​a​n​d​-​m​i​s​s​i​s​s​i​p​p​i​-​c​o​p​s​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​1​5​0​0​1​1​2​7​2​.​h​tml

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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.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw will resign from her posi­tion lat­er this month. Outlaw, who became the first Black woman to helm the depart­ment, held the posi­tion for three years. Her tenure start­ed just before the pan­dem­ic which was fol­lowed by the Black Lives Matter protests. During the 2020 protests, the Philadelphia city coun­cil issued a state­ment say­ing that the police response to pro­tes­tors with rub­ber bul­lets and tear gas were “bru­tal” and “unac­cept­able.” The city issued a $9.25 mil­lion set­tle­ment to hun­dreds of par­tic­i­pants stem­ming from police con­duct, though at first Outlaw defend­ed the actions of authorities

Last year, two female for­mer offi­cers who filed a gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion and sex­u­al harass­ment law­suit against Outlaw and the city won a $1 mil­lion ver­dict. The women claimed that they suf­fered a hos­tile work envi­ron­ment that includ­ed being placed in cer­tain jobs as retal­i­a­tion after they made com­plaints sex­u­al harass­ment com­plaints. Kenney has con­firmed that First Deputy John M. Stanford Jr. as inter­im police commissioner.

A for­mer police/​community liai­son said he believes Sunday’s fatal shoot­ing by an Indianapolis offi­cer should have end­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, and he is call­ing for a response from the city’s leadership.

Gregory Meriweather, a for­mer may­oral can­di­date, was vis­it­ing friends near the 4500 block of Woodland Drive dur­ing the stand­off between Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department offi­cers and a man with a machete.

Meriweather, who has almost 7,000 fol­low­ers on Facebook, livestreamed the stand­off and sub­se­quent shooting.

“I want­ed to be in the posi­tion of pro­tect­ing that indi­vid­ual, but also to let law enforce­ment know there was some­one on the scene mon­i­tor­ing what they were doing,” said Meriweather, whose videos had been watched more than 10,000 times as of Monday afternoon.

The man killed was iden­ti­fied as Kendall Darnell Gilbert, 40, by the Marion County Coroner’s Office.

Officers were dis­patched to the home at about 6:45 p.m. Sunday to check the wel­fare of a woman. The woman pushed an emer­gency alert but­ton and said some­one was try­ing to kill her, said Lt. Shane Foley, a spokesper­son for the police department.

Officers were famil­iar with the peo­ple involved as police had been at the home mul­ti­ple times over the week­end for men­tal-health relat­ed calls, Foley said.

Videos show confrontation

Meriweather’s Facebook videos showed Gilbert stand­ing near a mail­box at the end of a dri­ve­way in the neigh­bor­hood on the city’s north­west side. Gilbert was hold­ing a machete, some­times point­ing it at and threat­en­ing offi­cers, while also hold­ing a large stick in por­tions of the videos, which are near­ly two hours long.

The videos show nego­tia­tors try­ing to speak with Gilbert and an armored vehi­cle arriv­ing. Toward the end of the video, sev­er­al loud bangs and what appears to be a taser deploy­ing are heard before gun­shots ring out. Gilbert then falls to the ground near a police vehi­cle. Paramedics began treat­ing Gilbert. He died at a hos­pi­tal, accord­ing to police.

Meriweather pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives strate­gist under for­mer IMPD Chief Bryan Roach.

“I did­n’t see a rea­son for this to end bad,” Meriweather said. “I did­n’t see a rea­son for him to end up with a bul­let in him.”

He believes offi­cers could have let Gilbert tire him­self out or used tear gas to sub­due him.

From ear­li­er this month: An ‘egre­gious pat­tern’: Group, fam­i­ly demand trans­paren­cy after offi­cer shoots, kills man

“There is no doubt the death of Mr. Gilbert is a tragedy,” IMPD said in a state­ment. “For 48 hours, IMPD Officers worked to peace­ful­ly resolve the sit­u­a­tion, deploy­ing less-lethal tac­tics and a psy­chol­o­gist with the Crisis Negotiation Unit was on-scene. Despite those mea­sures, Mr. Gilbert moved towards offi­cers with a machete in-hand. At that point, offi­cers dis­charged their weapons.”

No offi­cers or oth­er res­i­dents were hurt. The offi­cer who dis­charged his firearm is a 28-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment and has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave, Foley said, which is stan­dard pro­to­col dur­ing an offi­cer-involved shooting.

Mental health cost man his life, neighbor says

Donald Clark, who has lived a few doors down from where the shoot­ing hap­pened for the past 25 years, said it’s clear his neigh­bor was suf­fer­ing from seri­ous men­tal health problems.

“It goes back to the lack of insti­tu­tions and help for peo­ple with men­tal health con­di­tions,” Clark said. “It’s just so sad. Someone lost their life because of men­tal illness.”

Meriweather said he wants to hear from the city’s lead­er­ship. Sunday’s shoot­ing came just days after police released an edit­ed video show­ing anoth­er man, Gary Harrell, being shot in the back while run­ning from Officer Douglas Correll with a revolver in his hand. There is no indi­ca­tion Harrell point­ed the weapon at the offi­cer as he fled before the Aug. 3 shooting.

“Leaders lead when sit­u­a­tions like this hap­pen,” Meriweather said. “The may­or of this city and the chief of this city should not be qui­et with the amount of footage shown and the end result (in Sunday’s shoot­ing). When you are a leader of the gen­er­al pub­lic this is not the time to be qui­et. The peo­ple of this city deserve to hear from both of them.”

IndyStar sought com­ment from Mayor Joe Hogsett, who’s run­ning for reelec­tion, and Police Chief Randal Taylor but received only writ­ten state­ments from their respec­tive offices.

Crisis reponse team: City details new approach to men­tal health calls – with­out police

Mayor Hogsett’s office points to expanded resources

“Our thoughts go out to all involved in yesterday’s inci­dent,” reads a state­ment from the city. “Over the past sev­er­al years, the City of Indianapolis has great­ly expand­ed the num­ber of emer­gency men­tal health resources to those who need them.”

The city includ­ed infor­ma­tion about its Mobile Crisis Assistance Teams (MCAT), which oper­ate from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. dur­ing the week and include a clin­i­cian and a police officer.

Clinician-Led Community Response Teams, includ­ing a clin­i­cian and a peer spe­cial­ist, also are active in the down­town dis­trict from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., sev­en days per week. Hogsett’s pro­posed 2024 bud­get includes an expan­sion of the clin­i­cian-led teams to the city’s east dis­trict. As the teams reach bud­get­ed staffing, they will shift to 24-hour oper­a­tions, accord­ing to the city’s statement.

Residents, the state­ment said, also can get men­tal health and sub­stance abuse inter­ven­tion at the Assessment and Intervention Center, which is locat­ed on the Community Justice Campus

Police offi­cers in Ohio shot and killed a 21-year-old Black preg­nant woman, who was also the moth­er of 6‑year-old and 3‑year-old sons, out­side a Kroger store on Thursday. The police allege the woman stole liquor from the store and claim she tried to dri­ve over an offi­cer who got in front of her car. The woman, Ta’Kiya Young of Columbus, Ohio, was six months preg­nant and set to give birth in November. Young’s shoot­ing death is cur­rent­ly being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the offi­cers respon­si­ble for it are cur­rent­ly on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave, Blendon Township police Chief John Belford con­firmed. The police depart­ment is expect­ed to release body cam­era footage of the inci­dent this week.

Young’s death comes after sev­er­al dis­turb­ing videos col­lect­ed from body cam­era footage showed Los Angeles-based cops bru­tal­iz­ing Black women, includ­ing one who was hold­ing her baby when an offi­cer appeared to punch her in the face, ear­li­er this year. Earlier this month, a Black woman in Detroit sued the local police depart­ment for arrest­ing and jail­ing her while she was eight months preg­nant over a facial recog­ni­tion error. Research from last year linked the ongo­ing threat of police vio­lence to wors­ened mater­nal out­comes for preg­nant Black women. Friends of Young’s described her to a local news sta­tion as “the life of the par­ty” and “a ball of ener­gy.” “Her per­son­al­i­ty is like sec­ond to none. So, she will tru­ly be missed for her per­son­al­i­ty. I know her kids will miss her, that’s the sad­dest part of all of it,” one friend said. “I just wish some­thing else could’ve been done to inter­vene with the situation.”

They are com­mit­ting these killings ful­ly aware that cam­eras are every­where, often even on their chests. They are so supreme­ly con­fi­dent that they will be pro­tect­ed because of the illic­it doc­trine of ‘qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty’ imposed on the coun­try by the ille­git­i­mate Supreme Court that they are not a bit wor­ried about con­se­quences, even for murder.
The thing that should infu­ri­ate more cit­i­zens into action is not that the police depart­ments are pre­pared to put out total­ly false nar­ra­tives when their mem­bers mur­der inno­cent cit­i­zens but that pub­lic offi­cials like Mayor Jim Kenney refuse to call out the bla­tant act of mur­der they see in the video with their own eyes. No pub­lic offi­cial should be allowed to hide behind the false veil of ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions to avoid con­demn­ing these bla­tant acts against inno­cent cit­i­zens. Nothing in a record­ing changes because some­one speaks out against its content.
No one should pay any atten­tion to the police unions any­more; they are incon­se­quen­tial crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing entities.
(mb)

Officials announced Wednesday that a Philadelphia police offi­cer who fatal­ly shot a 27-year-old man last week will be fired for admin­is­tra­tive vio­la­tions. The announce­ment comes after police walked back their ini­tial nar­ra­tive about the fatal encounter, and the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly released a video con­tra­dict­ing that account. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said Wednesday she has decid­ed to sus­pend Officer Mark Dial for 30 days with the intent to dis­miss him. Dial is not being ter­mi­nat­ed for fatal­ly shoot­ing Eddie Irizarry on Aug. 14, but for vio­lat­ing depart­ment pol­i­cy relat­ed to the refusal to obey orders from a supe­ri­or offi­cer and fail­ure to coöper­ate in any depart­men­tal inves­ti­ga­tion, Outlaw said. Police ini­tial­ly said last Monday that Irizarry got out of his car after a brief car chase with a knife and lunged at offi­cers pri­or to the fatal shoot­ing. Two days lat­er, Outlaw told reporters that body cam­era footage “made it very clear what we ini­tial­ly report­ed was not actu­al­ly what hap­pened.” On Tuesday, Irizarry fam­i­ly attor­ney Shaka Johnson released sur­veil­lance video of the inci­dent, which showed an offi­cer shoot­ing into the dri­ver’s side of Irizarry’s vehi­cle sec­onds after get­ting out of his police vehi­cle. Johnson, who also rep­re­sent­ed the fam­i­ly of Philadelphia police shoot­ing vic­tim Walter Wallace Jr., said he and the Irizarry fam­i­ly believe “there was an inten­tion­al mis­lead­ing of the public.”

“What about what you just saw could ever be con­fused as he got out of the car and lunged at police offi­cers?” Johnson asked at a news con­fer­ence Tuesday. “Not a sin­gle thing. That was an out-and-out, flat-out lie.” When asked about Johnson’s com­ments, Outlaw said it’s “under­stand­able” that there’s a lot of emo­tion involved in the sit­u­a­tion, but she defend­ed the depart­ment. “Once it was brought to our atten­tion that that was mis­in­for­ma­tion that was put out there, we cor­rect­ed it and we did­n’t have to do that … We dis­cov­ered it our­selves and did what we could in a time­ly man­ner to make sure that that nar­ra­tive was quick­ly addressed,” she said.

What does the video show?

Johnson said he and the fam­i­ly were able to obtain sur­veil­lance video of the inci­dent, which shows an offi­cer shoot­ing into the dri­ver’s side of Irizarry’s vehi­cle sec­onds after get­ting out of his police vehi­cle. Surveillance video released by Johnson shows Irizarry dri­ving over orange traf­fic cones as he pulls into a park­ing spot. Seconds lat­er a police vehi­cle pulls up next to his car. Two offi­cers get out, draw their weapons and approach both sides of Irizarry’s car. The offi­cers tell Irizarry to show them his hands as Irizarry appears to roll his win­dow up. Then the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Mark Dial, appears to fire his gun into the car mul­ti­ple times. The offi­cer runs back toward the patrol car and reports that shots have been fired. The offi­cers then attempt to open the doors of Irizarry’s vehicle.
The thing that should infu­ri­ate most cit­i­zens is not just that police depart­ments put out total­ly false infor­ma­tion when they murder 

What did the police say about the shooting?

Outlaw said last week two offi­cers spot­ted a Toyota Corolla “dri­ving errat­i­cal­ly” and fol­lowed the vehi­cle until it drove the wrong way down a one-way street and parked. She said the offi­cer who approached on the pas­sen­ger side attempt­ed to open the door and alert­ed the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side that the man inside had a weapon. Outlaw said the man “turned towards” the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side who then fired his weapon mul­ti­ple times. The dri­ver was trans­port­ed to a local hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead, she said. Two knives were found inside the vehi­cle, a kitchen-style knife and a ser­rat­ed fold­ing knife, accord­ing to Peter Marrero, a detec­tive who is inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. Officials said the ini­tial nar­ra­tive that was report­ed was called into police radio and the body cam­era footage lat­er con­tra­dict­ed that account. Outlaw said Wednesday the source of the ini­tial infor­ma­tion is still under inves­ti­ga­tion and she’s “look­ing for­ward to find­ing out what the answer is.” Outlaw pre­vi­ous­ly said police gave the pub­lic “the best infor­ma­tion that we had avail­able,” at the time. “I under­stand and want to acknowl­edge the hurt and con­fu­sion that fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers can expe­ri­ence when details of inves­ti­ga­tions change, and espe­cial­ly when they change in a very pub­lic way,” Outlaw said last week.

‘We need answers,’ family member says

Irizarry’s fam­i­ly told the Philadelphia Inquirer he came to the city from Puerto Rico sev­en years ago and he did not speak or under­stand English. Outlaw told reporters last week she did not know if there was a lan­guage bar­ri­er between the offi­cers and the dri­ver. Johnson said Irizarry had no crim­i­nal record and strug­gled with schiz­o­phre­nia. He said Irizarry, a mechan­ic, car­ried a pock­et knife that he used for work. ”We need answers. Why?” Zoraida Garcia, Irizarry’s aunt, told the news­pa­per. “Why is this offi­cer still at home? He mur­dered my nephew.”

When will body camera footage be released?

Body cam­era footage has not yet been released pub­licly, and Johnson told reporters Tuesday the fam­i­ly has not been able to view it. The author­i­ty to release the footage to the fam­i­ly or the pub­lic lies with the Office of District Attorney Larry Krasner, accord­ing to Ava Schwemler, direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the city’s law depart­ment. Jane Roh, a spokesper­son for the dis­trict attor­ney’s office, told USA TODAY the office has been in con­tact repeat­ed­ly with the Irizarry fam­i­ly’s legal coun­sel and “intends to keep its sworn oblig­a­tion to seek jus­tice for all those involved in the fatal shoot­ing of Mr. Irizarry, as well as for all those Philadelphians who are not direct­ly involved but who care deeply about fair­ness, jus­tice, and inde­pen­dence.” “We will have more to say about this sit­u­a­tion when we can do so con­sis­tent with pre­serv­ing the qual­i­ty and integri­ty of our inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion,” she said in a statement.

Calls for officer to be fired, charged investigation ongoing

Outlaw said the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing itself and the inac­cu­ra­cy of the ini­tial account is ongo­ing. She said Dial may face addi­tion­al dis­ci­pli­nary charges if he vio­lat­ed addi­tion­al depart­ment poli­cies. Outlaw again acknowl­edged the dif­fi­cul­ty of regain­ing the pub­lic’s trust. She pre­vi­ous­ly said her depart­ment is con­duct­ing a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and work­ing in par­al­lel with the dis­trict attor­ney’s office. “Once we get a clear­er pic­ture. I will be able to say with cer­tain­ty and make a deter­mi­na­tion whether or not they oper­at­ed with­in pol­i­cy of the depart­ment,” Outlaw said last week. Irizarry’s fam­i­ly and friends gath­ered on the street where he was killed Tuesday again demand­ing that Dial be charged and they be allowed to view the body cam­era footage, the Inquirer report­ed. The city’s Citizens Police Oversight Commission, an inde­pen­dent agency, said its mem­bers have been mon­i­tor­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing and rec­om­mend­ed the depart­ment ter­mi­nate Dial. Anthony Erace, the com­mis­sion’s inter­im exec­u­tive direc­tor, told USA TODAY this marked the first time the com­mis­sion has rec­om­mend­ed the fir­ing of an offi­cer in its near­ly year­long exis­tence. He said the rec­om­men­da­tion was made before he viewed the video released by Johnson and agreed it was a “fair­ly big step.” Erace said while the com­mis­sion will be inves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances that led to the police depart­ment ini­tial­ly releas­ing incor­rect infor­ma­tion, he believes the depart­ment tried to be trans­par­ent quickly.

“There’s a dif­fer­ence between wrong and rot­ten, right?” he said. “If you’re ask­ing me if I think it was a con­spir­a­cy to con­ceal infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic, I don’t think that it was.” The over­sight com­mis­sion is host­ing a vir­tu­al pub­lic meet­ing Wednesday night for “con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.” At the city news con­fer­ence Wednesday, Mayor Jim Kenney acknowl­edged that Philadelphia has gone through “rocky times” of unrest after the killings of Wallace and George Floyd in Minneapolis, but said the city is able to recov­er and move for­ward. “This is cer­tain­ly a tragedy and my heart breaks for the fam­i­ly and for the loss of Mr. Irizarry,” he said. “Again, this is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and I’m not going to have any com­ment or what I think or feel about what I’ve seen or know until this inves­ti­ga­tion is concluded.”

This inci­dent of Cops inves­ti­gat­ing fel­low cops after a com­plaint by a cit­i­zen ought to make you laugh. However, please don’t because it is seri­ous. The title of this arti­cle ought to show you just how des­per­ate­ly cor­rupt and insane American Law enforce­ment is.(mb

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Internal Affairs is inves­ti­gat­ing a com­plaint against an offi­cer who alleged­ly racial­ly pro­filed a Black vet­er­an dur­ing a traf­fic stop.

Investigators found that the officer’s behav­ior was incon­sis­tent with the con­duct expect­ed of an offi­cer but that he did not stop the Navy vet because of his race.

A review of the officer’s his­to­ry revealed numer­ous com­mu­ni­ty com­plaints, indi­cat­ing a pat­tern of mis­con­duct over the years. Still, very lit­tle puni­tive action was tak­en against the offi­cer— and as a result, the vet­er­an has secured a lawyer and think­ing about suing the department.

JSO offi­cer Justin Peppers was under scruti­ny after pulling over Navy vet­er­an Braxton Smith on Nov. 24, 2022. Smith alleged that Peppers engaged in bias-based polic­ing, but his alle­ga­tions were nev­er sub­stan­ti­at­ed. However, over his career, Peppers has received 14 com­plaints and has a his­to­ry of infrac­tions with­in JSO, accord­ing to sources.

On the night of the inci­dent, Smith says Peppers used exces­sive force dur­ing their inter­ac­tion, which includ­ed throw­ing the sailor to the ground, hand­cuff­ing him, per­form­ing an ille­gal search, and detain­ing him for half an hour.

Body-cam­era cap­tured the incident.Smith was lat­er released with­out charges only after task force mem­bers came to the scene of the stop to sup­port Peppers.

During the 30 min­utes, the dis­abled Florida vet­er­an was asked about drugs and the legal firearm he had in the trunk of his car. He also threat­ened to charge Smith with felony fleeing.

“I was scared from begin­ning to end,” Smith said in an inter­view with News4JAX.

He also said he felt humil­i­at­ed by the stop and what he believed was an ille­gal search.

“I’m a vet­er­an, I went to col­lege, and I’ve done things to shield myself from this type of stig­ma, but it’s still man­aged to fol­low me,” Smith said.

The inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed that even though Peppers’ con­duct was not accept­able, Smith was pulled over for a rea­son. A report on the inci­dent said, “Officers estab­lished prob­a­ble cause to search Smith’s vehi­cle based off obser­va­tions of ‘shake’ inside of Smith’s vehi­cle and the odor of marijuana.”

Peppers and the task force were exon­er­at­ed for stop­ping and restrain­ing the Navyman.

“This was based on prob­a­ble cause” and “all done with­in JSO pol­i­cy and in good faith,” the report continued.

According to inter­nal affairs, Peppers did not ini­ti­ate the traf­fic stop because of Smith’s race. He stopped him because he believed his vehicle’s tint was too dark.

Where Peppers was wrong is in the ban­ter that he had with Smith dur­ing the stop. Internal affairs report­ed Peppers used “pro­fane lan­guage” while engag­ing with Smith.

After Smith said, “I’m a Black man in America, I’m ter­ri­fied of the police.”

Peppers start­ed call­ing the vet­er­an “Mr. Black Man,”

The inves­ti­ga­tion also founder Peppers has com­mit­ted “repeat­ed infrac­tions of unbe­com­ing con­duct,” stat­ing evi­dence showed he was unable to refrain from the use of coarse lan­guage while policing.

The report cit­ed the mul­ti­ple cit­i­zen com­plaints filed against him dat­ing back to the year 2017 as addi­tion­al proof of such con­duct. Between 2020 and 2022, he was the sub­ject of 10 inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tions, accord­ing to LEO Ratings.

The out­come of the inves­ti­ga­tion result­ed in Peppers being reas­signed with­in the JSO.

THESE ARE THE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR FOR WHAT PASSES FOR POLICE OFFICERS. STILL, THEY DEMAND RESPECT FROM THE PUBLIC. THESE ARE DAILY OCCURRENCES…

Destinee Thompson was sup­posed to be on her way to lunch with her step­moth­er in August 2021 when Colorado police, mis­tak­ing her for a rob­bery sus­pect, fatal­ly shot the preg­nant moth­er as she fled in her minivan. 
Frustrated by the dis­trict attor­ney’s deci­sion last year not to charge the offi­cers, Thompson’s fam­i­ly filed a wrong­ful death and exces­sive force law­suit on Tuesday against five offi­cers from the Denver sub­urb of Arvada who were present when she was killed.
“I want their badges,” said Francis Thompson, Destinee’s father. “She’s 5‑foot tall, sev­en months preg­nant. … You’re a grown man and you’re threat­ened by that? You don’t deserve to be able to wear a badge.”
They allege Destinee Thompson’s race — she’s part Hispanic and part Native American — played a role in her being tar­get­ed. Officers were look­ing for a sus­pect described as white or Hispanic.
“If this was an afflu­ent white per­son get­ting into her vehi­cle, they would nev­er have stopped her,” said Siddhartha Rathod, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing her family.

In a state­ment Wednesday, the Arvada Police Department said the fam­i­ly’s lawyer had mis­char­ac­ter­ized the events sur­round­ing Thompson’s death, and the agency plans to mount a vig­or­ous legal defense. Police spokesper­son Dave Snelling said the offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in using dead­ly force because they believed Thompson’s actions posed an immi­nent threat.
The episode took place on Aug. 17, 2021, when offi­cers respond­ed to a report of a woman who had stolen from a Target and bran­dished a knife at an employ­ee. A wit­ness fol­lowed the sus­pect to a near­by motel, where police arrived. Thompson was leav­ing that same motel to meet her step­moth­er, accord­ing to the law­suit, which was first report­ed by The Denver Post.
While the descrip­tion of the sus­pect includ­ed a white tank top — which Thompson was wear­ing — it also spec­i­fied a chest tat­too, which Thompson did not have.
Officers not­ed that she did­n’t exact­ly match the descrip­tion but decid­ed to stop her to rule her out, accord­ing to the law­suit. Thompson kept walk­ing when police asked her to stop, told them she wasn’t the per­son they were look­ing for, and said she didn’t have an ID to show them.
The police spokesper­son said the offi­cers had “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion” to believe Thompson may have been involved in the rob­bery and were there­fore jus­ti­fied in con­tact­ing her.

Thompson’s fam­i­ly strong­ly dis­agrees. “She’s done noth­ing wrong … and she is con­front­ed by these police­men and doesn’t want to talk to them,” Rathod said. “You have the right not to talk to police.” Thompson, sit­ting in her mini­van and sur­round­ed by five offi­cers, locked the doors and refused to get out, repeat­ing, “It was­n’t me,” the dis­trict attor­ney wrote in the 2022 let­ter explain­ing their deci­sion not to charge the officers.
One offi­cer smashed the pas­sen­ger win­dow with a baton, and Thompson backed the car up, hit­ting a police vehi­cle parked behind her. She then drove for­ward over the curb and onto the road.
One offi­cer began shoot­ing, accord­ing to the dis­trict attorney’s let­ter, because he believed anoth­er offi­cer was struck by the car or being dragged under it, and even­tu­al­ly shot and killed Thompson. Her unborn child also died.
Thompson’s fam­i­ly alleges the offi­cer who fired could see that the oth­er offi­cer had­n’t been hit or dragged by the car.
“Not a sin­gle one of the oth­er offi­cers thought it was nec­es­sary to shoot,” added Rathod in an inter­view. “This is a mur­der of a preg­nant woman.” Snelling, the police spokesper­son, said the depart­ment stands behind its offi­cers’ actions.
“Thompson unfor­tu­nate­ly chose to engage in con­duct that the offi­cer rea­son­ably believed posed an immi­nent threat to the life of anoth­er offi­cer,” Snelling wrote. “He chose to use dead­ly force to stop that threat.”

Snelling added that the agency lat­er dis­cov­ered Thompson had war­rants out for her arrest and the autop­sy found illic­it drugs in her sys­tem. Rathod and Francis Thompson dis­missed the police men­tion of those war­rants, say­ing it does­n’t jus­ti­fy the offi­cers’ actions and that police at the scene didn’t know about her back­ground dur­ing the inter­ac­tion. “All they knew was this woman didn’t fit the descrip­tion of the shoplift­ing sus­pect,” Rathod said. For Francis Thompson, who described his daugh­ter as eager to help oth­ers and quick with a laugh, it feels like the police depart­ment is using Destinee’s past to jus­ti­fy her death. The grief hasn’t abat­ed, he said. Every day there are moments when he cries, he said. “It’s hard for me to find a pur­pose in a lot of things anymore.”

‘You should be scared’: Ocala police officer fired after he allegedly stalked his ex-girlfriend…

A for­mer Ocala police offi­cer was arrest­ed Wednesday, accused of stalk­ing and threat­en­ing an ex-girl­friend. 27-year-old Natawi Chin has been charged by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office with aggra­vat­ed stalk­ing. According to an arrest report, the inves­ti­ga­tion began on July 31 with a com­plaint made to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office from an Ocala Police Department employ­ee about an ongo­ing inci­dent between the vic­tim and Chin. 
According to an arrest report, Chin left a voice­mail for the vic­tim, who also worked in law enforce­ment, threat­en­ing to “shoot up” her house. The report says Chin repeat­ed­ly con­tact­ed the vic­tim for months after they had bro­ken up. Investigators received images of text mes­sages between the vic­tim and Chin, mak­ing it clear that he had been mon­i­tor­ing the victim’s home and activ­i­ties. In one voice­mail turned over to inves­ti­ga­tors, Chin alleged­ly acknowl­edged that he was leav­ing an audio mes­sage because he knew a text mes­sage would get him arrested. 

According to the report, the vic­tim replied via text mes­sage, “IDK if I should be laugh­ing at what you said or be scared.” The report says Chin replied, “You should be scared.” According to the Ocala Police Department, Chin was hired as a recruit in October of 2020 and pro­mot­ed to police offi­cer in 2021. He was fired after his arrest Wednesday. In a state­ment announc­ing the arrest, the Ocala Police Department described the inci­dent as “deeply unfor­tu­nate and dis­ap­point­ing.” “We want to empha­size that such behav­ior goes against the prin­ci­ples and val­ues of our depart­ment,” the state­ment said. “We do not tol­er­ate any crim­i­nal mis­con­duct, espe­cial­ly from those who take an oath to pro­tect and serve.”
Not sure if I should laugh or cry about this absurd depart­ment response; they are ver­i­ta­ble crim­i­nal empires.

Mississippi ‘goon squad’ officers are part of larger law enforcement problem, experts say…

Six for­mer Mississippi police offi­cers, some of whom report­ed­ly calledthem­selves the “Goon Squad,” plead­ed guilty this month in a racist attack on Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, two Black men who endured hours of tor­ture from the offi­cers in January.

Authorities said the for­mer Rankin County and Richland Police Department offi­cers, all of whom are white, broke into the men’s home with­out a war­rant, after a neigh­bor com­plained about the men stay­ing at the home of a white woman, whom Parker knew and was tak­ing care of.

While using racial slurs, the offi­cers placed Jenkins and Parker under arrest and tased, shot at and sex­u­al­ly abused them for more than two hours, author­i­ties said.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey said at a news con­fer­ence on Aug. 3 that the police badge was “tar­nished by the crim­i­nal acts of these few individuals.”

But experts say rogue groups like the Goon Squad are not an anom­aly in the U.S.

“If you look hard, you’ll see oth­er instances of [the offi­cers] vio­lat­ing police depart­ment rules, the pro­ce­dures, [and] the fact that they named their group shows some degree of orga­ni­za­tion,” Vida Johnson, a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney and asso­ciate law pro­fes­sor at Georgetown University Law Center, told Yahoo News. “I think the real prob­lem is, just how many oth­er groups are there like this?”

The rise of rogue groups

Over the past decade, more than 80,000 law enforce­ment offi­cers across the coun­try have been dis­ci­plined or inves­ti­gat­ed for mis­con­duct, accord­ing to a 2019 inves­ti­ga­tion by USA Today. 

In addi­tion, “there’s a num­ber of instances of police offi­cers being mem­bers of white suprema­cist gangs or express­ing white suprema­cist views,” Johnson said.

In 2006, the FBI warned that white suprema­cist groups were infil­trat­ing police depart­ments. According to Michael Chairman, a for­mer spe­cial agent with the FBI and a fel­low at the Brennan Center for Justice, the for­ma­tion of groups like the Goon Squad is not a rare occurrence.

“This has been a part of the fab­ric of law enforce­ment in the United States for some time,” Chairman told Yahoo News, and in fact it goes back to the his­to­ry of polic­ing dur­ing the Jim Crow era.

While it’s unclear exact­ly how many rogue groups — mean­ing police offi­cers who act out­side the scope of their respon­si­bil­i­ties, typ­i­cal­ly by vio­lat­ing the law — exist, recent cas­es of such groups con­tin­ue to come to the forefront.

“A lot of these rogue groups are actu­al­ly offi­cial­ly cre­at­ed by the police depart­ment,” Chairman said. “So in Baltimore, you look at the gun crime task force that was involved in all kinds of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, includ­ing episodes of vio­lence and drug deal­ing and theft of drugs.”

Most recent­ly, in Memphis, the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, or SCORPION, unit was accused of bru­tal­ly beat­ing and killing Tyre Nichols in January fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop, result­ing in mur­der charges for five for­mer offi­cers who were involved.

Also, in Los Angeles, “the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is deal­ing with a long-stand­ing prob­lem of what they call deputy gangs,” Chairman said.

‘One of the biggest crises in American life’

Experts say rogue groups are becom­ing increas­ing­ly preva­lent and are a threat to democ­ra­cy. “I think it’s absolute­ly one of the biggest crises in American life,” Johnson said.

“The idea that we have police offi­cers who have this incred­i­bly impor­tant role in our soci­ety of main­tain­ing law and order, for them to be rogue and to hold beliefs that oth­er mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty are infe­ri­or to them, are infe­ri­or to oth­ers in our com­mu­ni­ty, is an enor­mous prob­lem in our soci­ety and our gov­ern­ment,” she said.

But groups like these can be hard to inves­ti­gate and shut down. “If you think about a tight-knit group of peo­ple, a tight-knit group of offi­cers, who have sworn to cov­er each other’s back no mat­ter what, then it’s almost [an] impos­si­ble nut to crack until some­body decides that they want to lis­ten to the com­mu­ni­ty that’s com­plain­ing,” David Thomas, a for­mer police offi­cer and pro­fes­sor of foren­sic stud­ies at Florida Gulf Coast University, told Yahoo News.

As author­i­ties com­bat the infil­tra­tion of rogue groups, some polls have shown a decline in Americans’ trust in law enforce­ment. In a 2020 Gallup poll 48% of Americans trust­ed the police, a 5‑point drop that occurred in the wake of the mur­der of George Floyd.

Earlier this year, a Washington Post-ABC News poll tak­en after Nichols’s death found that only 39% of Americans are “very” or “some­what” con­fi­dent that police are “ade­quate­ly trained to use exces­sive force.”

“The great­est fail­ure in law enforce­ment over his­to­ry has been to learn from its past mis­takes,” Thomas said. “Because if you look at our his­to­ry, it con­tin­ues to be cycli­cal and it just con­tin­ues to hap­pen over and over again.”

While Johnson acknowl­edges that these groups are hard to inves­ti­gate, she says more needs to be done to address the prob­lem at every stage of policing.

“In terms of how police offi­cers are recruit­ed, how police offi­cers are vet­ted before they’re hired, there should be peri­od­ic reviews of their emails, their body-worn cam­eras, their text mes­sages, their social media accounts, look­ing for racial and oth­er types of slurs,” Johnson said. “Because ulti­mate­ly, they are pub­lic ser­vants and they’re sup­posed to rep­re­sent all of us.”

Disabled veteran denied bathroom access laughed at by Dallas police after wetting himself…

Dallas police are look­ing into a com­plaint made by a man after he said he was denied restroom access by two off-duty offi­cers work­ing secu­ri­ty in Deep Ellum, Star-Telegram media part­ner WFAA reported.

The man said in the com­plaint that he was left with a dis­abil­i­ty that requires him to have emer­gency access to restrooms after he was injured and under­went surgery on his low­er body while serv­ing in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq as an Army sergeant, WFAA report­ed. After the off-duty offi­cers denied him access to the bath­room at Serious Pizza in Deep Ellum on June 10, the man called 911 for assis­tance but uri­nat­ed on him­self before more offi­cers arrived, accord­ing to the complaint.

When two on-duty offi­cers arrived after the man had already left, wear­ing their body cam­eras, they made jokes about him, accord­ing to WFAA. Video from the body-cam­era footage played for the Community Police Oversight Board on Aug. 8 showed the two on-duty police offi­cers arrive and start mak­ing fun of the man.

“Somebody called say­ing they just pissed them­selves because of you two guys,” one of the offi­cers said in the video, part of which was pub­lished by WFAA.

A sec­ond on-duty offi­cer offi­cer laugh­ing­ly replied, say­ing, “You just made a guy pee himself?”

The video then shows offi­cers laugh­ing, one of them slap­ping his knee and ask­ing, seem­ing­ly amused, if the man actu­al­ly called 911 about the incident.

The sec­ond on-duty offi­cer relayed some details from the call.

“He said you wouldn’t let him use the restroom, and then he called and said it’s OK, he doesn’t need to use the restroom any­more because he soiled him­self,” she told them.

Dynell Lane, the Army vet­er­an, told the Community Police Oversight Committee that he tried to use the bath­room at Serious Pizza in Deep Ellum at around 2 a.m. but was pro­hib­it­ed by the off-duty officers.

“The Dallas Police Department failed me,” Lane told the com­mit­tee, accord­ing to WFAA. “They declined to assist me by not giv­ing me the cour­tesy of check­ing my ID or med­ical doc­u­ments. … I had to endure urine and bow­el leak­age while inside the restau­rant. As a retired sergeant, I had high­er expec­ta­tions for the city. Please hear me when I ask for change so no one with a dis­abil­i­ty has to endure what I endured.”

The Ally Law in Texas requires that peo­ple with cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions be allowed access to restrooms, even if they aren’t pub­lic, if they can show they have a rel­e­vant med­ical dis­abil­i­ty. WFAA report­ed that Lane said he wasn’t giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion of his disability.

After hear­ing the com­plaint at the over­sight com­mit­tee meet­ing, board mem­ber Jonathan Maples said, “That absolute­ly turned my stom­ach,” the Dallas Morning News report­ed. “It’s absolute­ly appalling to treat one of our vet­er­ans that way.”

The board vot­ed to con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, the Morning News reported.

Serious Pizza closed at 3 a.m. the day of the inci­dent, accord­ing to its online hours of oper­a­tion, and Lane arrived about 2 a.m. The restau­rant told WFAA in a state­ment that it was “dis­ap­point­ed by the con­duct of the offi­cers involved in this inci­dent, the extent to which we were not aware of until the body­cam footage was released (Wednesday.)”

Serious Pizza has request­ed that the off-duty offi­cers who were con­tract­ed to work secu­ri­ty for the restau­rant that night not be assigned to its restau­rant again.

“Their actions were not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how we treat our guests and the gen­er­al pub­lic,” Serious Pizza said in the state­ment pro­vid­ed to WFAA. “Given that none of our employ­ees were pre­sent­ed with any doc­u­men­ta­tion indi­cat­ing that Mr. Lane was dis­abled, we are dis­heart­ened that we didn’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to resolve the sit­u­a­tion in real-time.”

Serious Pizza clos­es its bath­rooms to the pub­lic while employ­ees are in the process of clos­ing the restau­rant to pro­tect its employ­ees, it told WFAA. Restaurant man­age­ment is now look­ing into ways the restroom pol­i­cy can be revised to pre­vent a sim­i­lar incident.

Dallas police spokesper­son Kristin Lowman told WFAA that the depart­ment was look­ing into the com­plaint and that the inter­nal affairs divi­sion would be con­duct­ing an admin­is­tra­tive investigation.

‘This Is Totally Our Fault’: Missouri Police Department Apologizes for Hiring Cop Who Posted About Decapitating Black People Online…

A sub­ur­ban Kansas City police depart­ment is now down by one new employ­ee fol­low­ing the resur­fac­ing of old social media posts that exposed his racial­ly prej­u­diced beliefs. Officials in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, have apol­o­gized to the com­mu­ni­ty for hir­ing a police offi­cer with­out doing a thor­ough check of his social media.

Former offi­cer Jacob Smith relin­quished his badge after the PHPD launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into sev­er­al social media posts that did not reflect the city and those employed to rep­re­sent the inter­est of the small town. According to the PHPD, Smith and anoth­er cadet were sworn in as offi­cers dur­ing the City Council reg­u­lar meet­ing held on Aug. 14. The fol­low­ing day, images of the two new offi­cers were shared on the City of Pleasant Hill and Pleasant Hill Police Department’s social media pro­files. One per­son saw the pic­tures and rec­og­nized Smith and brought to everyone’s atten­tion old posts from Smith’s social media accounts. The posts, made only a month ago, were extreme­ly offen­sive. While Smith post­ed some polit­i­cal memes, many of the posts were homo­pho­bic memes. The most dis­turb­ing was a post that ref­er­enced decap­i­tat­ing Black peo­ple. Authorities were shocked to learn that social media posts con­tained con­tent that was racial­ly insen­si­tive, which con­tra­dict­ed the val­ues upheld by the city, the police depart­ment, elect­ed offi­cials, the law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion, and the entire com­mu­ni­ty, they said.

According to KansasCity​.com, Smith was placed on paid leave imme­di­ate­ly after the con­clu­sion of the city coun­cil meet­ing. Subsequently, fol­low­ing an exam­i­na­tion of the accu­sa­tions, he was ter­mi­nat­ed at approx­i­mate­ly 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 16. “There is no excuse for racism, insin­u­a­tion of vio­lence, or any form of hate in our com­mu­ni­ty. Our hir­ing process failed to iden­ti­fy the social media posts of this indi­vid­ual pri­or to being hired and it was dis­cov­ered after the fact, but still allow­ing the City the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take admin­is­tra­tive action before this indi­vid­ual was released to full-duty,” the depart­ment said in a joint state­ment with Mayor John E.P. King and the Office of the City Administrator. The depart­ment shared that typ­i­cal­ly the hir­ing process includes “a social media back­ground check eval­u­at­ing rhetoric or con­duct that is unbe­com­ing of law enforce­ment offi­cers,” but “unin­ten­tion­al­ly” over­looked that step with Smith’s process. “This is total­ly our fault. We tra­di­tion­al­ly do a very com­pre­hen­sive back­ground. This time we failed to do so,” Pleasant Hill Police Chief Tommy Wright said in an inter­view with FOX4.
Within hours of being exposed, Smith was fired.

“It is an unfor­tu­nate truth that in my 30-plus years as a fire­fight­er, I have seen how one employ­ee can derail the trust and integri­ty of the best orga­ni­za­tions. The police offi­cers, sergeants, and lead­er­ship of the Pleasant Hill Police Department work hard every day to pro­vide this com­mu­ni­ty with the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion at the high­est lev­el of ser­vice,” King said in a state­ment. “These offi­cers are part of this com­mu­ni­ty, and they want their police depart­ment to be the pride of this city,” the may­or con­tin­ued. “Please do not let one indi­vid­ual detract from the work they have accom­plished in the last few years to make the Pleasant Hill Police Department what it is today.”

No one should be tak­en in by the canned releas­es that are prewrit­ten await­ing expos­es like this. This fer­al hog will be hired by the next depart­ment down the road with a great salary.

An inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non has always occurred in Jamaica; around every four years, vio­lent crimes tend to dip in num­bers. The police high com­mand is usu­al­ly quick to take cred­it for the decreased mur­ders, rapes, and wound­ings dur­ing these lulls but is eeri­ly silent when the killings go up again.
There are more lulls these days as the entire world is engrossed in the Olympics, World Cup Soccer, World Cup Female Soccer, and a range of National and International Athletic meet in which Jamaica par­tic­i­pates and usu­al­ly does very well.
This year is no excep­tion, and true to form, a senior mem­ber of the so-call high com­mand of the police depart­ment sought to cap­i­tal­ize on the lull or slight decrease in vio­lence by throw­ing out the same tired old talk­ing points that blow up in their faces as soon as the gang­sters decide to get back to doing what they do.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Fitz Bailey told local media, crime rates have decreased, with mur­ders drop­ping from 891 to 786 over sim­i­lar peri­ods in con­sec­u­tive years. The Police should be guard­ed about speak­ing about crime sta­t­ics in the mid­dle of the year with four months to go. Bailey also made some curi­ous com­ments about the seri­ous prob­lem of attri­tion the force is expe­ri­enc­ing, claim­ing that while the JCF seeks to recruit over 1,000 mem­bers annu­al­ly, offi­cers’ depar­tures due to issues like remu­ner­a­tion, supe­ri­ors’ treat­ment, and unsat­is­fac­to­ry work con­di­tions have prompt­ed con­cerns about attri­tion. Still, he is not very con­cerned about the num­bers as he says the cur­rent force is yield­ing results. How could a senior man­ag­er make such a ludi­crous state­ment and still retain his position?
Lets us exam­ine the num­bers. The strength of the Jamaica Constabulary Force con­tin­ued to increase; as of December 31, it had increased by 4.0 per­cent to 12,498, still 11.3 per­cent below the estab­lish­ment size.”As the size of the force increased mar­gin­al­ly, so has the size of the broad­er pop­u­la­tion, which makes the mar­gin­al increase in force size a wash.

Last year, 564 per­sons (452 males and 112 females) joined the force. This was 28 per­sons few­er than in 2021. At the same time, 336 offi­cers left the force. So the force reg­is­tered a net gain of 228 peo­ple. It is impor­tant to extrap­o­late from the data how the Jamaican peo­ple are ben­e­fit­ting from this or not.
Of the 564 who signed up and were trained in 2021, 112 were women. I have seen dead­wood male cops, and I have seen dead­wood female cops. We can be polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, or we can take a real­ly hard look at the data and come to con­crete deci­sions on who we are sign­ing up and call­ing police officers.
Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding took flak for point­ing to the fact that he is less inclined to see a lot of females sign­ing up to be police offi­cers because he did not believe they were ful­ly capa­ble of doing the job.
The howls of sanc­ti­mo­nious out­rage against Golding were deaf­en­ing, as I am sure it will come at me, but who cares. The [real­i­ty] is that only a small per­cent­age of women can actu­al­ly per­form at the lev­el required to police Jamaica.
Period!!!

“Whilst I do appre­ci­ate that terms and con­di­tions of ser­vice, phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture, and work envi­ron­ment is also crit­i­cal. People don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly leave the job because of that alone. People will come into the orga­ni­za­tion and leave in a few years.” DCP Fitz Bailey said.“ I don’t think our rate of attri­tion is high­er than any­where else. Young peo­ple gen­er­al­ly don’t stay too long on one job, and I think we need to train and recruit peo­ple con­stant­ly. I would like to see the data that DCP Bailey is look­ing at to make the asser­tion that the attri­tion rate of the JCF is sim­i­lar to oth­er departments.
Nurses, Firemen, Doctors, Teachers, Police Officers, and pro­fes­sion­als of every oth­er dis­ci­pline must be trained to strength­en exist­ing num­bers as well as to replen­ish what already exists. It is easy for DCP Bailey to argue that he is not con­cerned because he is not pay­ing to train those offi­cers who are leav­ing in droves, as some more sane mem­bers of the force see it.
The now Interdicted head of the Police Federation, Corporal Rohan James, told the media, “Persons are sub­mit­ting res­ig­na­tions left, right, and center.
It is right across the JCF. Even the spe­cial­ized oper­a­tions are being jolt­ed,” he said. “There are a num­ber of rea­sons why they are quit­ting. Some are leav­ing for green­er pas­tures. Some are just tired of the crime, salary, lack of resources, the dis­re­spect, you name it.”
Another cop told a jour­nal­ist, “If you see your col­leagues go off on a long vaca­tion, you real­ly don’t expect to see them come back.”

The cost of train­ing a sin­gle police offi­cer is not as low as one might imag­ine. The tax­pay­ers have to foot the bill for their train­ing. I under­stand that there will be attri­tion, as DCP Bailey allud­ed. Nevertheless, mak­ing light of the astro­nom­i­cal­ly high flight from the force is a strat­e­gy that is bound to fail. It is like try­ing to col­lect water in a leak­ing bucket.
In a force of just over 12 000, to have 336 offi­cers leave in a sin­gle year is no small thing. It is a mas­sive prob­lem that the sup­posed high com­mand could attempt to reme­di­ate rather than try to paper over a rot­ting wall.
(1) On the issue of supe­ri­ors’ treat­ment, this can be reme­di­at­ed with pol­i­cy that instant­ly makes it clear that being in a com­mand posi­tion does not make you God, be dis­re­spect­ful to a sub­or­di­nate, and you are demot­ed. (2) unsat­is­fac­to­ry work con­di­tions, the so-called high com­mand can make it clear to the gov­ern­ment that mem­bers of the rank and file will no longer work in the deplorable con­di­tions that have obtained for decades. The High com­mand must be able to be more than polit­i­cal lack­eys and lap­dogs for the coun­try’s politi­cians. Grow a cou­ple and stop being apol­o­gists for the fail­ure of the two polit­i­cal par­ties. Having a halfway decent office and halfway decent salary for your­selves should not lull you into accept­ing the shit that the rank and file has been forced to accept. It is clas­sic divide and con­quer. But the high com­mand has nev­er been much more than peo­ple pro­mot­ed above their capabilities.

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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.

Just anoth­er day at the office.(mb

The Warwick Police Department released police offi­cer body cam­era video from an inci­dent last month that led to an assault charge against a police sergeant.
Sgt. Bretton Kelly, 55, was charged with one count of sim­ple assault for alleged­ly strik­ing a hand­cuffed man dur­ing the July 15 inci­dent, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and Warwick Police Col. Bradford E. Connor said in a press release last month.
The inci­dent alleged­ly hap­pened when the Warwick police respond­ed to a domes­tic dis­tur­bance on Amsterdam Avenue, the offi­cials said. Police offi­cers arrest­ed a woman, and her hus­band who tried pulling one of the offi­cers away from his wife, Neronha and Connor said.

Officers arrest­ed the man and put him in the back of a police vehi­cle, the offi­cials said. Investigators allege that Kelly lat­er went to the police vehi­cle, where the man was hand­cuffed and restrained by a seat­belt, and kicked him in the head and struck him in the face before forcibly remov­ing him from the vehi­cle. The video shows a hand­cuffed man sit­ting in the back of a police cruis­er, appar­ent­ly feel­ing ill. As a police offi­cer opens the door, the man’s body, restrained by a seat­belt, tilts out the door. “You gonna be all right?,” an offi­cer asks. “I don’t know,” the man answers.
After sit­ting back up, the man was breath­ing heav­i­ly and sweat­ing. Officers opened cruis­er win­dows and inquired about get­ting an ambu­lance. “I don’t feel good,” the man said and his body again tilt­ed out the door, and he appeared to retch or vomit.

After two oth­er offi­cers and a sergeant can be seen approach­ing the car, a thud could be heard and the man said, “What the [exple­tive] you hit me for?” “Get out of the car,” he’s told. “What did you just punch me in the head for?,” the man says. “Cause you hit my offi­cers,” a sergeant says then, pulls him from the car. “I got my hands cuffed. What the [exple­tive] are you doing?,” the man says. Kelly, a 17-year depart­ment vet­er­an, is sus­pend­ed with pay and will face depart­men­tal dis­ci­pline when the crim­i­nal case is con­clud­ed, accord­ing to Connor.

Amidst the decap­i­ta­tion of the Police Federation by the sol­dier turned police com­mis­sion­er, the dis­re­spect Andrew Holness and his National Security Minister has for the police, and the long­stand­ing crim­i­nal cod­dling by what pass­es for judges, the peo­ple are seri­ous­ly suf­fer­ing under the yolk of mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
Both polit­i­cal par­ties have paid lip ser­vice to law and order when in oppo­si­tion. It is impor­tant that they do so because they know wher­ev­er the police elec­toral­ly go, so does the country. 
Of course, once they get into office, they begin dis­re­spect­ing the police depart­ment. The Jamaica Constabulary Force has sub­se­quent­ly remained an unwant­ed stepchild, need­ed when need­ed but must not be seen when vis­i­tors come around.
One of the things said about the JCF in times past was that it was a big-foot­ed agency born out of the need for secu­ri­ty after the Morant Bay Rebellion. The nar­ra­tive is that it was pop­u­lat­ed with dunces who could not cut it in school- in oth­er words, fail­ures become cops.
Today there are more degrees in the JCF than there are on a Thermometer, but the dis­re­spect remains. In fact, the dis­re­spect is so pal­pa­ble that even a twice-con­vict­ed drug mule who did seri­ous prison time finds it in him­self to dis­re­spect our officers.
The cow­ard­ly crim­i­nal dressed up as a lawyer and lec­tur­er sought to pass his place by sug­gest­ing cops are dunces.
But the force is no longer pop­u­lat­ed with big-foot cops who are afraid or have no clue how to fight back. So one senior offi­cer remind­ed the clown that any cop could become a lawyer, but he could not become a cop with his record as a con­vict­ed drug mule.
One would have thought that he would have crawled into a cor­ner and known his place, well, maybe he did for a lit­tle bit, but once the smoke cleared, the drug mule was at it again, this time dis­parag­ing the Director Of Public Prosecution.
And now, he stepped down from his posi­tion with­in the PNP, but he is still allowed to prac­tice law in Jamaica. What a trav­es­ty when a twice-con­vict­ed drug mule can be an offi­cer of the court. My con­tempt for the exist­ing legal sys­tem stems from actions such as these. 
I am not sur­prised that despite his crim­i­nal con­vic­tions and faux paux, he is still retained by the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to to indoc­tri­nate young minds with uncouth, dis­taste­ful left­ist dog­ma and dis­re­spect for law enforcement.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​3​5​2​873 – 2/

Having said that, there are sev­er­al ways to cause your detrac­tors to shut their pie holes. One way to do that is to say what you mean and mean what you say. If you can­not deliv­er, do not make promis­es. Former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs and Secretary Of State, and Jamaican by way of his par­ents Colin Powell, famous­ly said, “if there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that you may lose, do not go to war, but if you must go use all of your weapons, win and go home.”
The JCF is far from being a ready police depart­ment; nev­er­the­less, it is far bet­ter resourced that when I served in the ear­ly nineties. The JCF has had the propen­si­ty of punch­ing below its weight class. This may be attrib­ut­able to the lack of gov­ern­ment sup­port and the left-wing judges who turn the mur­der­ers loose as soon as they are arrest­ed. Frighteningly there are peo­ple, includ­ing well-placed peo­ple in the Constabulary, who fun­da­men­tal­ly believe Jamaica has a great judi­cia­ry. On that note, I have a few bridges to sell.
As soon as these mur­der­ers are arrest­ed these dirt­bag judges give them bail and turn them loose to kill again.
Take, for exam­ple, the case of some hood­lums in the parish of Westmoreland, where the police there are being cau­tioned by their lead­er­ship to be care­ful because some punks are threat­en­ing their lives in retal­i­a­tion for the police-involved killing of one gang mem­ber Nicholas Ruben, who his cronies labeled “Evil”.
Now when I talk about these fuck­ing judges, peo­ple open their pie holes to crit­i­cize my lan­guage as if I give a fuck.
The police killed this scum­bag, and a loaded weapon was tak­en from him last Wednesday as he engaged them in a shootout.
But here is the ques­tion well-think­ing peo­ple [must] ask after this germ was put out of his mis­ery. Why was he out on the streets to threat­en the lives of police offi­cers and the pop­u­la­tion at large?
(1) Nicholas Ruben was fac­ing five mur­der charges when he was fatal­ly shot by a police team in St Elizabeth on Wednesday.
Whether he was charged for five mur­ders com­mit­ted all at once or five sep­a­rate mur­ders, there is absolute­ly no cir­cum­stances under which some­one that is such a seri­ous threat to the com­mu­ni­ty should be out on bail. But in Jamaica, the things that pass for judges have nev­er seen a mur­der­er they do not want to coddle. 
(2) Nicholas Reuben is regard­ed as a pro­lif­ic mur­der­er in the west­ern parish­es, but none of that mat­ter to the courts, which have become aiders and abet­tors in the nation’s mur­der statistics.
(3) The ‘delete squad’, to which Nicholas Reuben belongs and to which he is a top killer, is report­ed to have tar­get­ed police offi­cers for dar­ing to want to go after them. 
Again, none of this mat­ters to the mur­der­er-sup­port­ing dip­shits who over­see these cas­es; noth­ing stands in the way of grant­i­ng bail.
(4) This scum­bag Nicholas Reuben was named in a series of indi­vid­ual and dou­ble mur­ders, yet he was ulti­mate­ly giv­en bail to con­tin­ue to kill. Of course, he was quite pre­pared to off police offi­cers, and now that jus­tice was brought to him, his cronies want to avenge his death.

This is where I have a prob­lem with the police, to hell with INDECOM, to hell with the crim­i­nal cod­dling dip­shits on the bench; there was a time when a crim­i­nal who dared threat­en or kill a cop would have swift jus­tice brought to them.
There will be no jus­tice com­ing from the com­pro­mised judi­cia­ry; the police force must become more tar­get­ed, more stri­dent, and more effi­cient. Those who would threat­en the lives of offi­cers must know before­hand that as they issue their threats, they must simul­ta­ne­ous­ly plan their funerals.
The force is weak, inef­fec­tu­al, dis­joint­ed, and a laugh­ing stock. Its lead­er­ship is filled with yes peo­ple with mul­ti­ple degrees and a com­mis­sion­er who is only there as a result of polit­i­cal patronage. 

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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.

In this case, the word of a so-called police use of force expert, who him­self was a cop, became the guide for this recent­ly elect­ed pros­e­cu­tor to usurp the judg­ment of the pros­e­cu­tor she succeeded.
This is cor­rup­tion, plain and sim­ple. This was a deci­sion for a jury to make. But this female pros­e­cu­tor decid­ed to use the office she was elect­ed to act as judge and jury and ini­ti­ate sum­ma­ry judg­ment by absolv­ing the mur­der­ers of culpability.
How can any­one have faith in a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that is this cor­rupt? (mb)

HERE IS THE STORY

The direc­tor of the Miami-Dade Police Department offered to resign his posi­tion hours before shoot­ing him­self, the coun­ty’s may­or said Wednesday. Details of the con­ver­sa­tion were released as Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez was in a Tampa hos­pi­tal, con­tin­u­ing to recov­er from the shoot­ing. State offi­cials are inves­ti­gat­ing events lead­ing up to him shoot­ing him­self, includ­ing an argu­ment with his wife at a Tampa hotel dur­ing a law enforce­ment con­fer­ence, offi­cials said. Ramirez had called his boss, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, around 8:30 p.m. Sunday, after leav­ing the hotel with his wife, Jody Ramirez. “Freddy told me he had made a mis­take, he was pre­pared to resign, and I told him we would talk about it the next day,” the may­or recount­ed dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Wednesday morn­ing. She said Ramirez was “very remorse­ful” dur­ing their conversation.

She said she told Ramirez to get home safe­ly and they would dis­cuss it the next day. The shoot­ing hap­pened lat­er Sunday night along Interstate 75 south of Tampa. It was unclear whether Ramirez was inside or out­side the vehi­cle when the shoot­ing occurred. His wife was not injured, accord­ing to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Ramirez, 52, remained in sta­ble con­di­tion on Wednesday after under­go­ing surg­eries, the may­or said. One of his chil­dren is a sergeant with the Miami-Dade police force. “He con­tin­ues to receive out­stand­ing med­ical care in Tampa, sur­round­ed by his fam­i­ly, loved ones, and MDPD broth­ers and sis­ters,” Miami-Dade police said in a state­ment post­ed on social media late Tuesday. Police offi­cers were called to a down­town hotel after some­one report­ed a man point­ing a gun at him­self dur­ing an argu­ment with a woman, accord­ing to a Tampa Bay police report. Officers spoke with the cou­ple. He denied pulling out a gun, and Jody Ramirez told offi­cers she was not in fear of her safe­ty, the police report said.

Ramirez is a 27-year Miami-Dade police vet­er­an and was lead­ing the largest law enforce­ment agency in the south­east­ern U.S. In May, he announced his inten­tion to seek elec­tion for the new­ly-cre­at­ed role of sher­iff in 2024, sig­nal­ing his desire to remain the lead­ing law enforce­ment offi­cial. A link for con­tri­bu­tions to his cam­paign was not work­ing on Wednesday. The bio on his cam­paign web­site says that Ramirez joined the Miami-Dade police force in 1995 after mar­ry­ing his high school sweet­heart and grad­u­at­ing from the University of Miami. The may­or said they are opti­mistic that Ramirez will con­tin­ue to recov­er. She has made two appoint­ments to cov­er the posi­tions in which Ramirez served. Deputy Director Stephanie Daniels will serve as inter­im direc­tor of the agency. The may­or appoint­ed J.D. Patterson, the chief of cor­rec­tions and foren­sics for the coun­ty, as the inter­im chief of the Miami-Dade Police Department. Patterson served in the same role from 2013 to 2016 and first began his ser­vice with the agency in 1983. Credit the AP

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This inci­dent in the video below hap­pened in Seattle Washington a few ights ago at a bloc par­ty. I havent seen it on on the main stream media. I also do not see any black faces in the crowd of hooli­gan­is­tic thugs. Do you?

Circleville officer fired. Rally planned following additional footage of police dog attack

The Circleville offi­cer who unleashed his police dog on an unarmed truck dri­ver has been fired, fol­low­ing addi­tion­al details and video footage of the maul­ing inci­dent. A Circleville police news release stat­ed in part that “Officer (Ryan) Speakman did not meet the stan­dards and expec­ta­tions we hold for our police offi­cers. Officer Speakman has been ter­mi­nat­ed from the depart­ment, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly.” But the union that rep­re­sents Speakman has filed a griev­ance to rein­state him, claim­ing that police con­tract rules weren’t fol­lowed in his fir­ing, leav­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Speakman could even­tu­al­ly return to polic­ing. The July 4 inci­dent has received inter­na­tion­al atten­tion, includ­ing reac­tion from Gov. Mike DeWine and the White House.

Meanwhile, a ral­ly is planned Saturday in Circleville, accord­ing to a Facebook page Dismantle Circleville Police. The group, affil­i­at­ed with Black Lives Matter, is demand­ing the res­ig­na­tions of top Circleville police offi­cials, a reduc­tion of depart­men­tal staffing and retire­ment of the dog, ‘Serge,’ to a canine res­cue. The Belgian Malinois was trained in Pennsylvania. When released by his han­dler, Speakman, the dog ini­tial­ly bolt­ed for an offi­cer, not the intend­ed tar­get, Jadarrius Rose, 23, of Memphis, Tenn., who had failed to stop for a vehi­cle inspec­tion by a state troop­er in Jackson County, lead­ing author­i­ties on a chase north into Ross and Pickaway coun­ties and, even­tu­al­ly, Circleville, where “stop sticks” were deployed to deflate the rig’s tires Several offi­cers and Speakman called Serge back and point­ed at Rose, who by then was on his knees and hold­ing his hands up. The dog final­ly grasped Rose’s left arm and held on for at least 20 sec­onds before Speakman and anoth­er offi­cer pried the dog’s teeth from Rose who was scream­ing on his back. Prior to the attack, Rose stood with his hands raised, refus­ing orders to approach the offi­cers whose guns were point­ed at him from behind his rig. One of the orders tells him “Come to me. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Speakman was placed on leave sev­er­al days after the inci­dent. Circleville police have declined to com­ment on the mat­ter, cit­ing the ongo­ing probe. The may­or, coun­cil mem­bers and law direc­tor have been unavail­able for com­ment. In an after­noon email Thursday, the Florida-based civ­il rights attor­ney Ben Crump announced that he is rep­re­sent­ing Rose, stat­ing: “It is unac­cept­able for a police offi­cer, while being instruct­ed by oth­er offi­cers NOT to release the dog while Jadarrius was sur­ren­der­ing with his hands up, to do just that. Body cam video clear­ly shows Speakman lead the canine to attack unarmed Jadarrius who, at that point, was ful­ly com­ply­ing. Crump has defend­ed many offi­cer-involved inci­dents includ­ing: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tamir Rice and Breonna Taylor. He rep­re­sent­ed the fam­i­ly of Andre Hill, who was shot and killed by Columbus police Officer Adam Coy in December 2021. The city set­tled the case for $10 mil­lion. Circleville attor­ney Benjamin Partee had ear­li­er this week said that he was Rose’s attor­ney. The Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has said the city failed to pro­vide Speakman pro­gres­sive dis­ci­pline, includ­ing issu­ing a warn­ing, meet­ing with the chief and oth­er pro­to­cols before his fir­ing. According to Circleville offi­cials, a so-called Use of Force Review Board inves­ti­gat­ed and deter­mined that Speakman’s did­n’t vio­late spe­cif­ic depart­men­tal policy.

Other Circleville police incidents

On Wednesday, a for­mer Circleville police sergeant told The Dispatch that he and five oth­er offi­cers left the force with­in a three month span a year ago, cit­ing mis­con­duct, includ­ing ille­gal raids, racial pro­fil­ing and harass­ment and retal­i­a­tion against those who spoke out. The sergeant, who did not want to be named, cit­ing retal­i­a­tion, is now work­ing for anoth­er cen­tral Ohio depart­ment, said he was pushed into a uri­nal while using it by cur­rent police Chief Shawn Baer and anoth­er offi­cer after the sergeant and oth­ers had object­ed to police prac­tices. Those who filed griev­ances faced oth­er back­lash, they say. “It was met with “That does­n’t hap­pen. Don’t bring it up,” the for­mer sergeant said. “It was nev­er about the mon­ey. We left because of the retal­i­a­tion against us based on our com­plaints against the admin­is­tra­tion.” As for the uri­nal inci­dent, the for­mer U.S. Marine said “It was the most vul­ner­a­ble (inci­dent) in my life. It was­n’t done as a joke. And by two grown men with 40 years in law enforce­ment.” Calls to top police offi­cials, city coun­cil mem­bers and Circleville law direc­tor’s office were not returned. Separately, the fam­i­ly of anoth­er man named Ryan Speakman, who lives in Canal Winchester and is not a police offi­cer, has report­ed­ly been receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls. “People are call­ing my par­ents’ house, my broth­er and his wife’s cell­phone and mak­ing death threats to them,” said Ashley Springer, the man’s sis­ter. “They have three chil­dren who are ter­ri­fied and have no under­stand­ing of what’s going on. … It is hor­ri­ble that they are suf­fer­ing because of anoth­er person’s actions.”

To many, this may seem like jus­tice for the peo­ple bru­tal­ized and abused by the blue mili­tia oper­at­ing the New York City. But how is this jus­tice? The mis­cre­ants who com­mit­ted those crim­i­nal acts did so in full view of many peo­ple and know­ing full well that they were like­ly being video-record­ed. It did not stop them from com­mit­ting the acts for which the tax-pay­ing res­i­dents of the city are now on the hook.
Why do they com­mit crim­i­nal acts against their boss­es, the peo­ple who employ them to keep them safe?
They act with impuni­ty because they know they will not per­son­al­ly face crim­i­nal or civ­il liability.
Freedom is what the Government says it is. Freedom is nev­er free but is watered and nour­ished by every gen­er­a­tion. Therefore, each gen­er­a­tion must under­stand and com­mit to the fun­da­men­tals of main­tain­ing a just and equi­table soci­ety, not a police state.

‘In Search of Liberty’, a right-wing web­site, has the fol­low­ing on its page. (Had the American Revolution failed, each of them, (the founders) would have faced exe­cu­tion – and the loss of all their prop­er­ty, which would have con­demned their wives and chil­dren to a life of pover­ty. It was a remark­able gam­ble, because most of the Founding Fathers were already wealthy, suc­cess­ful men. They didn’t rebel against England for per­son­al enrich­ment; they rebelled because they tru­ly believed that the loss of free­dom was worse than death.
How iron­ic that even though these men sac­ri­ficed every­thing for their free­dom, as artic­u­lat­ed by this site, they all believed in the total enslave­ment and dis­en­fran­chise­ment of Black Americans.

“You will nev­er know how much it has cost my gen­er­a­tion to pre­serve your free­dom. I hope you will make a good use of it.”
-John Adams

“Remember democ­ra­cy nev­er lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and mur­ders itself. There nev­er was a democ­ra­cy yet, that did not com­mit suicide.”
-John Adams

“The lib­er­ties of our coun­try, the free­dom of our civ­il con­sti­tu­tion, are worth defend­ing against all haz­ards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”
-Samuel Adams

“A gen­er­al Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more sure­ly over­throw the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.”
-Samuel Adams

“They who would give up an essen­tial lib­er­ty for tem­po­rary secu­ri­ty, deserve nei­ther lib­er­ty or security.”
-Benjamin Franklin

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by oth­er men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
-Benjamin Franklin

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
-Nathan Hale

“There is a cer­tain enthu­si­asm in lib­er­ty that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of brav­ery and heroism.”
-Alexander Hamilton

“If the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple betray their con­stituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exer­tion of that orig­i­nal right of self-defense which is para­mount to all pos­i­tive forms of government.”
-Alexander Hamilton

“We have all one com­mon cause; let it, there­fore, be our only con­test, who shall most con­tribute to the secu­ri­ty of the lib­er­ties of America.”
-John Hancock

“I know not what course oth­ers may take; but as for me, give me lib­er­ty or give me death!”
-Patrick Henry

“The pol­i­cy of American gov­ern­ment is to leave its cit­i­zens free, nei­ther restrain­ing them nor aid­ing them in their pursuits.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“A sacred respect for the con­sti­tu­tion­al law is the vital prin­ci­ple, the sus­tain­ing ener­gy of a free government.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the peo­ple… They are the only sure reliance for the preser­va­tion of our liberty.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“To pre­serve lib­er­ty, it is essen­tial that the whole body of peo­ple always pos­sess arms, and be taught alike, espe­cial­ly when young, how to use them…”
-Richard Henry Lee

“It will be of lit­tle avail to the peo­ple that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so volu­mi­nous that they can­not be read, or so inco­her­ent that they can­not be under­stood; if they be repealed or revised before they are pro­mul­gat­ed, or under­go such inces­sant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
-James Madison

“Democracy is the most vile form of gov­ern­ment. … democ­ra­cies have ever been spec­ta­cles of tur­bu­lence and con­tention; have ever been found incom­pat­i­ble with per­son­al secu­ri­ty or the rights of prop­er­ty: and have in gen­er­al been as short in their lives as the have been vio­lent in their deaths.”
-James Madison

“Nothing so strong­ly impels a man to regard the inter­ests of his con­stituents, as the cer­tain­ty of return­ing to the gen­er­al mass of the peo­ple, from whence he was tak­en, where he must par­tic­i­pate in their burdens.”
-George Mason

“The end of the gov­ern­ment being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to pro­vide for the secu­ri­ty, the qui­et, the hap­py enjoy­ment of life, lib­er­ty, and property.”
-James Otis Jr.

“It is the duty of the patri­ot to pro­tect his coun­try from its government.”
-Thomas Paine

“Those peo­ple who will not be ruled by God will be ruled by tyrants.”
-William Penn

“If the free­dom of speech is tak­en away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
-George Washington

“The preser­va­tion of the sacred fire of lib­er­ty, and the des­tiny of the Republican mod­el of Government, are just­ly con­sid­ered as deeply, per­haps as final­ly staked, on the exper­i­ment entrust­ed to the hands of the American people.”
-George Washington

“The Constitution is the guide which I will nev­er abandon.”
-George Washington

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not clus­ter, and what has hap­pened once in 6,000 years, may not hap­pen again. Hold on to the Constitution, because if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anar­chy through­out the world.”
-Daniel Webster

“Before a stand­ing army can rule, the peo­ple must be dis­armed; as they are in almost every king­dom of Europe. The supreme pow­er in America can­not enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the peo­ple are armed, and con­sti­tute a force supe­ri­or to any band of reg­u­lar troops that can be, on any pre­tense, raised in the United States.”
-Noah Webster

I won­der how these men would have respond­ed to whats hap­pen­ing today.(mb)

NEW YORK CITY reached a his­toric set­tle­ment this week on behalf of more than 1,300 peo­ple who were attacked by police while protest­ing the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
The plain­tiffs claimed that the New York Police Department vio­lat­ed pro­test­ers’ civ­il and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by mak­ing mass arrests, using exces­sive force, mis­us­ing pep­per spray, and using a tac­tic called ket­tling to trap and arrest pro­test­ers ahead of an imposed curfew. 
The pro­posed set­tle­ment will pay out $13 mil­lion to 1,380 pro­test­ers — about $10,000 per per­son — the largest total pay­out to pro­test­ers in a class action suit in the United States, accord­ing to the plain­tiffs. The set­tle­ment did not impose any reforms on the NYPD.

Of course not. Taxpayers foot the bill, and the thugs con­tin­ue as if noth­ing happened.

What the suit means for polic­ing will depend on how New Yorkers and the city respond, said Gideon Oliver, an attor­ney for the plain­tiffs. “Judged by that yard­stick, this is a huge vic­to­ry,” Oliver said. “But whether or not it changes police prac­tices is anoth­er sto­ry, and depends on how New Yorkers — and the city gov­ern­ment — react. “We can’t let the police count this win for pro­test­ers as just anoth­er cost of doing busi­ness,” he said, “as they have so many times in the past.” 
The set­tle­ment comes four months after anoth­er major set­tle­ment between the city and Floyd pro­test­ers in March that paid a record $7 mil­lion to more than 300 peo­ple. In both cas­es, foren­sic recon­struc­tionof the events played a key role in win­ning the set­tle­ments. Several oth­er major cities have paid out large set­tle­ments to pro­test­ers in recent law­suits aid­ed by foren­sic recon­struc­tion. Between late May and ear­ly June 2020, at the height of the move­ment for racial jus­tice sparked by Floyd’s killing, pro­test­ers advo­cat­ing against police mis­con­duct were met with extreme forms of police abuse. “Thousands exer­cised their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to protest and were met with vio­lence and indis­crim­i­nate arrests by the NYPD,” the plain­tiffs said in a Thursday press release. 

“We can see repeat­ed­ly, city after city, sit­u­a­tion after sit­u­a­tion, that the police are strate­gi­cal­ly, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly vio­lat­ing our civ­il rights.”

“It’s great when we can use tech­nol­o­gy to our ben­e­fit because we know it’s been used against us so often,” Savitri Durkee, a plain­tiff in the suit, told The Intercept. “Unfortunately, we can’t just rely on sun­shine and the pub­lic inter­est to see what’s going on.” She added, “We can see repeat­ed­ly, city after city, sit­u­a­tion after sit­u­a­tion, that the police are strate­gi­cal­ly, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly vio­lat­ing our civ­il rights.” Plaintiffs in the case not­ed that police had respond­ed to oth­er protests, includ­ing “Blue Lives Matter” and pro-police demon­stra­tions, with­out using the force dis­played against racial jus­tice pro­test­ers. “In oth­er words, it is the mes­sage of the protest that deter­mines whether Defendants will respond with vio­lent tac­tics and indis­crim­i­nate mass arrests,” the plain­tiffs wrote in their suit. 

SHORTLY AFTER THE suit was filed in 2021, the city moved to dis­miss the case, argu­ing that the protests had passed and that the city had already made changes at the NYPD and imple­ment­ed oth­er reforms rec­om­mend­ed in the wake of the protests. In July 2021, a judge dis­missed parts of the com­plaint that sin­gled out city offi­cials but grant­ed oth­ers, allow­ing the case to move for­ward. The suit relied on thou­sands of videos from more than 80 loca­tions, includ­ing footage from police body cam­eras and heli­copter sur­veil­lance. The del­uge of video was sort­ed, ana­lyzed, and recon­struct­ed by SITU Research, a group that does visu­al inves­ti­ga­tions relat­ed to injus­tices and civ­il lib­er­ties. SITU Research has worked on a hand­ful of recent cas­es that relied on foren­sic recon­struc­tion and result­ed in major set­tle­ments for pro­test­ers. While set­tle­ments for class action plain­tiffs in cas­es of police bru­tal­i­ty have been com­mon through­out recent his­to­ry, more recent set­tle­ments paid to pro­test­ers have bro­ken state and nation­al records. The grow­ing size and fre­quen­cy of set­tle­ments has drawn atten­tion to the finan­cial bur­den that police mis­con­duct places on pub­lic coffers. 

The shift, how­ev­er, is unlike­ly to have a major impact on police con­duct with­out broad­er insti­tu­tion­al changes to polic­ing, said Brad Samuels, direc­tor at SITU Research. “While this set­tle­ment and the amounts paid to pro­test­ers does rep­re­sent an impor­tant form of redress, our larg­er goal remains endur­ing change in polic­ing — not just in New York City but across the United States,” Samuels said. “One thing I am cer­tain of is that sur­veil­lance alone, whether in the hands of the state or its cit­i­zen­ry, will not be the agent of mean­ing­ful change. While it was clear­ly impact­ful to have ample video doc­u­men­ta­tion in this case, we need to con­tin­u­al­ly and crit­i­cal­ly assess how we are using these tools and to what ends. I am con­vinced there is much more that can be done.” 

“While this set­tle­ment and the amounts paid to pro­test­ers does rep­re­sent an impor­tant form of redress, our larg­er goal remains endur­ing change in policing.” 
For the pro­test­ers behind the suit, the pay­out was a wel­come first step but left much work to be done to address police mis­con­duct and shore up the right to protest. “This doesn’t begin to address the injus­tice. It just gives us a lit­tle bit more lee­way to address the injus­tice,” said Durkee, the plain­tiff. “The prob­lem we are protest­ing stands. It is exact­ly how it was three years ago. All this set­tle­ment does is thaw a lit­tle bit the chill that has lain over the protest move­ment since.

(Credit the Intercept)