A Sunrise police offi­cer was arrest­ed Saturday by his depart­ment on charges of pos­sess­ing and view­ing child pornog­ra­phy. Online Broward County jail records say, Carl Haller, 39, faces charges of inten­tion­al­ly view­ing child sex­u­al con­duct, com­pil­ing child pornog­ra­phy on a com­put­er, and tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal evi­dence. Haller’s bond was set at $10,000.

The mayor of Oakland, California, has fired the city’s police chief for allegedly downplaying an officer’s misconduct.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao placed police chief LeRonne Armstrong on leave last month after find­ings from an inves­ti­ga­tion were released. The report alleged Armstrong failed to dis­ci­pline a sergeant involved in a hit-and-run ade­quate­ly. “This was not an easy deci­sion,” the may­or said. “But I believe reform and progress must con­tin­ue,” she said at a news conference.
Too bad more Mayors and Governors do not have the char­ac­ter and tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to act to pre­vent these maraud­ing gangs of uni­formed thug­gish killers now oper­at­ing as legit­i­mate police offi­cers from doing more harm…

Obviously, pleas­ing police unions by keep­ing dirty and dan­ger­ous cops in police depart­ments are far more impor­tant than pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens they swore to defend.
What’s worse in this Oakland case is that the depart­ment has been under Federal over­sight for two decades — the longest of any police depart­ment in the US — because of a police cor­rup­tion scan­dal in 2000 involv­ing an anti-gang unit called “The Riders”.
The Oakland police depart­ment has had sev­en (7) chiefs in sev­en (7) years. 

A police offi­cer fre­quent­ly pro­vid­ed Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio with inter­nal infor­ma­tion about law enforce­ment oper­a­tions in the weeks before oth­er mem­bers of his far-right extrem­ist group stormed the U.S. Capitol, accord­ing to mes­sages shown Wednesday at the tri­al of Tarrio and four associates. 
A fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor showed jurors a string of mes­sages that Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond and Tarrio pri­vate­ly exchanged in the run-up to a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lamond, an intel­li­gence offi­cer for the city’s police depart­ment, was respon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington for protests.
Less than three weeks before the Jan. 6 riot, Lamond warned Tarrio that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service were “all spun up” over talk on an Infowars inter­net show that the Proud Boys planned to dress up as sup­port­ers of President Joe Biden on the Democrat’s inau­gu­ra­tion day.

(1)In a mes­sage to Tarrio on Dec. 25, 2020, Lamond said Metropolitan Police Department inves­ti­ga­tors had asked him to iden­ti­fy Tarrio from a pho­to­graph. He warned Tarrio that police may be seek­ing a war­rant for his arrest.
(2)In a mes­sage to Tarrio on Dec. 18, 2020, Lamond said oth­er police inves­ti­ga­tors had asked him if the Proud Boys are racist. The offi­cer said he told them that the group had Black and Latino mem­bers, “so not a racist thing.” “It’s not being inves­ti­gat­ed by the FBI, though. Just us,” Lamond added. “Awesome,” Tarrio replied.
(3)In anoth­er exchange that day, Lamond asked Tarrio if he had called in an anony­mous tip claim­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the flag burn­ing. “I did more than that,” Tarrio respond­ed. “It’s on my social media.”

(4) In a mes­sage to Tarrio on Dec. 11, 2020, Lamond told him about the where­abouts of antifas­cist activists. The offi­cer asked Tarrio if he should share that infor­ma­tion with uni­formed police offi­cers or keep it to him­self. Two days lat­er, Tarrio asked Lamond what the police depart­men­t’s “gen­er­al con­sen­sus” was about the Proud Boys. “That’s too com­pli­cat­ed for a text answer,” Lamond replied. “That’s an in-per­son con­ver­sa­tion over a beer.”
(5) Lamond texted Tarrio and warned him that a war­rant was issued for his arrest. Lamond said his pri­ma­ry objec­tive was to get a heads up when Patriot Front vis­it­ed the District to “make sure no counter groups are inter­fer­ing with your right to demonstrate.”
(6)On Jan. 29, 2021 — about three weeks after sup­port­ers of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol — the Patriot Front came to the District and marched. D.C. police said at the time they were “aware pre­vi­ous­ly that demon­stra­tions were to take place.” But that infor­ma­tion appar­ent­ly didn’t come from Lamond.
To date, this cop is con­sid­ered inno­cent because he has not been charged with a crime.
This arti­cle is made pos­si­ble by the work of jour­nal­ists at the Washington Post &Yahoo.com.

A Georgia police offi­cer is accused of con­ceal­ing the death of a 16-year-old girl who went miss­ing on her way home last sum­mer, author­i­ties said. Miles Bryant, 22, an offi­cer with the Doraville Police Department, was arrest­ed days after the remains of Susana Morales were found in the woods near Highway 316, Gwinnett County police announced Monday, Feb. 13. He was charged with con­ceal­ing the death of anoth­er and false report of a crime in con­nec­tion with the teen’s death, accord­ing to a news release. Additional infor­ma­tion wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly avail­able, and it’s unclear how or if Bryant and Morales knew each other.

City of Doraville Police Department

on Monday

Doraville police learned of Bryant’s arrest on Feb. 13 and said the depart­ment is coop­er­at­ing with the Gwinnett County Police Department’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the “now for­mer police officer.”

“Our prayers rest with the fam­i­ly and friends of Susana Morales and every­one else affect­ed by this tragedy,” the depart­ment said in a state­ment post­ed to Facebook.

Missing teen was ‘dumped’ in woods, warrant says

Morales had been report­ed miss­ing since July 26. She texted her moth­er around 9:40 p.m. say­ing she was head­ed home but nev­er arrived. On Feb. 6, some­one spot­ted what appeared to be human remains in the woods near a creek and called 911. The coun­ty med­ical examiner’s office test­ed the remains and lat­er iden­ti­fied them as Morales’s. “The trag­ic dis­cov­ery of Susana’s remains this week was not the out­come any­one want­ed in this case,” police said in a state­ment last week. “Finding out what hap­pened is one of our top pri­or­i­ties.” Authorities said Bryant lived near the area where Morales was report­ed miss­ing and alleged that he “dumped her naked body in the woods,” WAGA and WXIA report­ed, cit­ing a war­rant appli­ca­tion. The war­rant also said the ex-offi­cer is sus­pect­ed of rape, mur­der and oth­er felonies, though he hasn’t been charged with those crimes, WXIA reported

Further, police said the Bryant filed a false report on July 27 claim­ing his gun was stolen in a car break-in at an apart­ment com­plex, accord­ing to WSB-TV.

Death investigation continues

Before she van­ished, author­i­ties said Morales’s cell­phone and a sur­veil­lance video showed her walk­ing in the direc­tion of her home in Norcross. Police believe she got into a vehi­cle at some point. “Morales’s cell phone con­tin­ued to show being in the area of Oak Loch Trace until the cell phone died or was turned off,” author­i­ties said. The cause and man­ner of Morales’s death remain under inves­ti­ga­tion, police said. Bryant remained in the Gwinnett County Jail with­out bond as of Feb. 14, online records show. Doraville is about 15 miles north­east of down­town Atlanta.

A for­mer African-American police chief was fired for try­ing to dis­man­tle what she char­ac­ter­ized as racial pater­nal­ism, misog­y­ny, and nepo­tism. RaShall Brackney lost her job when the city of Chorletsville decid­ed to allow racism and cor­rup­tion to con­tin­ue rather than address­ing the sys­temic issues eat­ing away at the com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to for­mer chief Brackney.
Yes, this is the same Chorletsville, Virginia, that became infa­mous for the unite the right tiki-torch ral­ly in which counter-pro­test­er Heather Heyer was mowed down by a white ter­ror­ist and killed.
“They would rather con­spire to oust me than dis­man­tle or con­front cor­rupt, vio­lent indi­vid­u­als in CPD and city government.”
(Rashall Brackney).
The for­mer chief told the media that her attempts to change the good old boy cul­ture got so dan­ger­ous that she felt the need to have her ser­vice weapon in her hand when she left the sta­tion­house out of fear that she would be killed by the offi­cers under her command.
Brackney says she was fired in part for dis­band­ing and rep­ri­mand­ing the SWAT team and its mem­bers after an inci­dent in which videos of the team sur­faced using pro­fan­i­ty. This fol­lowed an inde­pen­dent release that found group chat texts between offi­cers con­tain­ing “nude videos of females and them­selves” and texts in which they said they want­ed to “kill” City staff mem­bers.
The for­mer chief filed a $10 mil­lion law­suit against the city of Chorletsvilles and sev­er­al city-employed indi­vid­u­als because she was wrong­ful­ly ter­mi­nat­ed based on her race and gender.
A fed­er­al judge dis­missed her case on the motion to dis­miss filed by the city despite all of the evi­dence of cor­rup­tion and crimes sub­mit­ted by the chief’s attorneys!!!
The assault against chief Brackney did not come from the police alone; city offi­cials and cit­i­zens opposed to the changes she put for­ward band­ed to have her removed.
Here is one peti­tion start­ed by one gun-mon­ger who decid­ed the chief attempts to rein in the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns was an assault on his whiteness.
Audio Article: Listen.

Former chief Brackney’s state­ment speaks to the smoke being blown up the col­lec­tive rear end of this coun­try’s forty mil­lion black people.
It is just as dis­re­spect­ful to our com­mu­ni­ty as sug­gest­ing that hir­ing a few black cops will change the cul­ture of impuni­ty that has char­ac­ter­ized police response toward the African-American com­mu­ni­ty. The morons who mur­dered Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennesee, demol­ish that myth. In instance after instance, we see evi­dence that black cops are either (a) too scared to speak up when white cops abuse blacks or (b) they are more com­plic­it in the crim­i­nal con­duct than the white cops.
We see what hap­pens when peo­ple who nev­er had pow­er are giv­en pow­er. Black offi­cers who, in many cas­es them­selves, were vic­tims of police vio­lence as young­sters, feel­ing they are pow­er­ful because they have a gun and badge, become just as bad as white cops. Unfortunately, the rules of the game as to police account­abil­i­ty are dif­fer­ent. They are just too stu­pid t real­ize it.
The killers of Tyree Nichols are now com­ing to terms with that reality.
But it is not just about black cops. Most police offi­cers are not the most for­mal­ly or oth­er­wise edu­cat­ed indi­vid­u­als. And so vest­ed with the sud­den infu­sion of pow­er after a few weeks of train­ing can be dan­ger­ous to the defense­less public.

The idea that hir­ing a few black cops to lead depart­ments or hir­ing a few token blacks into a cul­ture of polic­ing steeped in racism, misog­y­ny, and lack of account­abil­i­ty is tan­ta­mount to stick­ing a band-aid on the entry wound of some­one shot in the gut. To begin with, the band-aid will most like­ly do noth­ing to stop the bleed­ing. Secondly, it will cer­tain­ly not help the like­ly organ dam­age inside the per­son­’s body, not to men­tion the need to repair and recon­struct vital organs and tis­sues and remove the bul­let from the body.
“Getting offi­cer buy-in can be a big chal­lenge … par­tic­u­lar­ly, white offi­cers are like­ly to get defen­sive,  Jacinta Gau, pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at the University of Central Florida. “We need diver­si­ty of all sorts, but we need it, par­tic­u­lar­ly in those high­er ranks,” Gau said. “It is not enough to have a Black chief.”
The caus­tic and dan­ger­ous cul­ture that per­me­ates police depart­ments has noth­ing to do with peo­ple of col­or who may hap­pen t lead them. It comes from an ill-con­ceived belief that white peo­ple are inher­ent­ly supe­ri­or to every­one else and are enti­tled to estab­lish the rules by which every­one else lives.
It is a cul­ture on which the very nation was built. It per­me­ates every branch and stra­tum of nation­al life. Policing is mere­ly the enforce­ment arm of it.
No one should be sur­prised that the courts, from the high­est to the low­est, side with the police over the cit­i­zens they are sup­posed to serve, even when they are wrong.

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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.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​n​d​r​e​w​-​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​i​s​-​a​-​l​i​g​h​t​w​e​i​g​h​t​-​a​n​d​-​a​n​-​a​b​y​s​m​a​l​-​f​a​i​l​u​r​e​-​o​n​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​l​i​k​e​-​t​h​e​-​p​n​p​-​l​e​a​d​e​r​s​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​h​im/

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​r​i​m​e​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​e​r​-​h​o​l​n​e​s​s​-​b​a​d​-​m​o​u​t​h​e​d​-​a​g​g​r​e​s​s​i​v​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​e​v​e​r​y​-​y​e​a​r​-​o​v​e​r​-​a​-​t​h​o​u​s​a​n​d​-​a​r​e​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​o​n​-​h​i​s​-​w​a​t​ch/

One’s world­view while in col­lege, cam­paign­ing for office, and being a mem­ber of par­lia­ment rep­re­sent­ing a gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ty in Jamaica is a far cry from gov­ern­ing as Prime Minister. And so, as my grand­dad would say, it is nev­er too late for a show­er of rain; it was not total­ly unex­pect­ed that Holness, a prod­uct of Spanish Town, schooled in the Intellectual ghet­to, and MP for a gar­ri­son could rise to the occa­sion, matured by the high office he holds. Not every­one can rise to the high office they hold; we saw what occurred in the United States dur­ing the four years after President Barack Obama left office. Much to his cred­it, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has matured, at least inso­far as rec­og­niz­ing that high vio­lent crime rates and a pros­per­ous Jamaica are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. Let me be clear: Holness is nowhere near where he needs to be regard­ing rein­ing in the coun­try’s ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty, but he is start­ing to get the pic­ture. In 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assas­si­nat­ed at his pri­vate home in the hills over­look­ing Port-au-Prince. After this heinous act, I noticed a marked yet wel­come change in the tone and text of the Jamaican Prime min­is­ter on the issue of crime. I wel­comed the change and con­grat­u­lat­ed the PM for com­ing to the par­ty, albeit late.

And so, speak­ing in Manchester on changes to the new road traf­fic act, the prime min­is­ter spoke to“decades of break­down in stan­dards, rules, and expectations.“The hard­ships we now expe­ri­ence are pre­cise because we do not have an even sys­tem of law and order that every­one can ben­e­fit from said Holness. This writer has writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles in which I have laid out the many ways a crime-rid­den soci­ety impov­er­ish­es every­one except those ben­e­fit­ting from crime. I am thrilled to see the PM now acknowl­edg­ing those real­i­ties. The Prime Minister spoke to what he char­ac­ter­ized as” an unfor­tu­nate pre­sen­ta­tion” in ref­er­ence to the non­sen­si­cal debate about child restraints in motor vehi­cles. (1) the brouha­ha is anoth­er exam­ple of rushed leg­is­la­tion that is poor­ly thought out and not prop­er­ly debat­ed using data and exper­tise. Much like the INDECOM Act, it was poor­ly thought through and writ­ten and had to be revised. We con­tin­ue to chal­lenge those bad­ly writ­ten laws as well. (2) The Prime Minister should nev­er apol­o­gize or be intim­i­dat­ed by those who would ques­tion his new­found com­mit­ment to the rule of law.

Jamaicans obey laws when they leave Jamaica; they act the way they do in Jamaica because they are allowed to. “I don’t want to be seen as the prime min­is­ter who is try­ing to stop peo­ple from eat­ing a food as there are those who will try to craft that nar­ra­tive — pit­ting law and order against sur­vival — that if we enforce the law, if we cre­ate order, then peo­ple won’t sur­vive, and that is in the minds of many Jamaicans,” said Holness. This is where I part­ed com­pa­ny with the PM; you do not lead by wor­ry­ing about the noise in the peanut gallery. You do not spit on your fin­ger but hold it up to the wind to see what direc­tion to take. He also spoke about the silent major­i­ty. He assert­ed that the silent major­i­ty agrees with set­ting the coun­try on a firm foot­ing based on the rule of law. It should not mat­ter who agrees or dis­agrees when you know in your gut that what you are doing is the right thing. Setting the coun­try on a foot­ing based on the rule of law is non-nego­tiable if Jamaica is to suc­ceed. .…

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

The 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a North Carolina town’s pol­i­cy that alleged­ly banned video live-stream­ing police dur­ing traf­fic stops was in vio­la­tion of the First Amendment. The rul­ing stat­ed that Dijon Sharpe was live-stream­ing his traf­fic stop on Facebook Live when police offi­cer Myers Helms attempt­ed to take his phone away because he said live-stream­ing threat­ened his safe­ty. Sharpe then sued the Winterville police offi­cers in their offi­cial capac­i­ty for hav­ing a pol­i­cy that vio­lates the First Amendment and also sued Helms indi­vid­u­al­ly. The dis­trict court did not find that the pol­i­cy vio­lat­ed the First Amendment and dis­missed the indi­vid­ual com­plaint against Helms under qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, accord­ing to the rul­ing. The appeals court vacat­ed the dis­trict court’s order, rul­ing that if such pol­i­cy exists that bans video live-stream­ing, it does vio­late the First Amendment. The rul­ing said that live-stream­ing police encoun­ters pro­vides infor­ma­tion the same way record­ing police offi­cers does.

“Recording police encoun­ters cre­ates infor­ma­tion that con­tributes to dis­cus­sion about gov­ern­men­tal affairs,” the rul­ing said. “So too does livestream­ing dis­sem­i­nate that infor­ma­tion, often cre­at­ing its own record. We thus hold that livestream­ing a police traf­fic stop is speech pro­tect­ed by the First Amendment.” The court ruled that Sharpe’s claim can pro­ceed, but that he must now prove that the alleged pol­i­cy ban­ning live-stream­ing exists in Winterville. If he can prove it, the town will then have a chance to prove it does not vio­late the First Amendment, the rul­ing reads. The appeals court did hold up the dis­trict court’s rul­ing that dis­missed the indi­vid­ual com­plaint against Helms, and said that Helms is pro­tect­ed under qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, which is a rule that pro­tects police offi­cers from being held indi­vid­u­al­ly liable unless the offi­cer clear­ly vio­lates a con­sti­tu­tion­al right. Sharpe argued that it was “clear­ly estab­lished” that Helms vio­lat­ed his First Amendment rights, but the court dis­agreed and said the offi­cer was “enti­tled” to qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. “On the oth­er hand, although Officer Helms was alleged­ly act­ing under the pol­i­cy that plau­si­bly vio­lates the First Amendment, Sharpe’s claim against him in his per­son­al capac­i­ty fails,” the rul­ing reads. “It was not clear­ly estab­lished that Officer Helms’s actions vio­lat­ed Sharpe’s First Amendment rights and so he is pro­tect­ed by qual­i­fied immunity.”

When police vio­late the rights of cit­i­zens in the United States, the cit­i­zen is forced to report the abuse at the sta­tion house to which the offend­ing offi­cers are attached, or not at all. In most cas­es, as report­ed by indi­vid­u­als and groups who have test­ed this process, the per­son report­ing abuse by police is treat­ed with dis­dain, threats, and intim­ida­to­ry tac­tics. In oth­er cas­es, peo­ple are lied to and even arrest­ed on trumped-up charges as they try to make a complaint.
In cas­es where there is a civil­ian com­plaint review board, it is almost point­less report­ing to them; as you will see with the review board in New York City, it is tooth­less and total­ly useless.
Officers get to decide whether or not they want to attend inter­views relat­ing to their mis­con­duct, regard­less of the seri­ous­ness of the alle­ga­tions against them. And even in cas­es where the alle­ga­tions are thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and are sub­stan­ti­at­ed, the Review Board can only pass on the find­ings to the depart­ment for action.
The Review Board has no way of know­ing whether the depart­ment act­ed on the findings.
This is what pass­es for police account­abil­i­ty in the United States. Police depart­ments and their rogue ele­ments are unac­count­able and above the law.(mb)

»»»»»»»>

A new­ly released report from the city agency that inves­ti­gates com­plaints of police mis­con­duct crit­i­cizes the NYPD for fail­ing to prop­er­ly track where offi­cers were deployed dur­ing the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. It also says the depart­ment did not request enough sup­port from emer­gency med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, and did not equip offi­cers with riot gear that made it easy for them to be identified.

The police watch­dog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, pub­lished the near­ly 600-page doc­u­ment Monday. It details its review of hun­dreds of com­plaints against offi­cers who respond­ed to the protests in 2020 after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd.

The agency received a bar­rage of offi­cer com­plaints fol­low­ing city-wide demon­stra­tions between May and November of that year. Investigators weren’t able to con­duct a full review of many of those com­plaints. Of the cas­es the agency did review ful­ly, it found that at least 146 mem­bers of ser­vice who respond­ed to the protests vio­lat­ed depart­ment rules. Officers broke NYPD pol­i­cy in about 40% of the cas­es it was able to ful­ly inves­ti­gate, the report says.

In more than a quar­ter of full inves­ti­ga­tions, the agency couldn’t iden­ti­fy the offi­cer at the cen­ter of the com­plaint, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to rec­om­mend dis­ci­pline. Overall, the police depart­ment, which has the final say on dis­ci­pline, has only imposed dis­ci­pline against 42 offi­cers so far. Dozens of cas­es are still pending.

Among the inci­dents detailed: On Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, two police cruis­ers drove through a crowd of pro­test­ers. In Lower Manhattan, offi­cers alleged­ly hit peo­ple with batons so hard that they caused bone frac­tures. Police spewed pep­per spray indis­crim­i­nate­ly into a crowd out­side the Barclays Center. They sur­round­ed demon­stra­tors in Mott Haven, arrest­ed them and alleged­ly zip tied some pro­test­ers’ hands so tight­ly that they went numb. One sergeant pushed a pho­to­jour­nal­ist to the ground, caus­ing scrapes to his arms, legs and cheeks and $800 in dam­age to his camera.

In a state­ment, a spokesper­son for the NYPD not­ed that the num­ber of offi­cers who faced a sub­stan­ti­at­ed com­plaint rep­re­sents less than 1% of the of 22,000 mem­bers of ser­vice who respond­ed to the protests. “This con­firms that the NYPD response to the protests dur­ing the sum­mer of 2020 was large­ly pro­fes­sion­al, com­mend­able, and respon­sive to the unique cir­cum­stances that were present at the time,” the state­ment said. In a let­ter to CCRB lead­er­ship, NYPD Acting Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Carrie Talanksy accused the CCRB of bas­ing its find­ings on “lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion” and failed to acknowl­edge that offi­cers were work­ing in “hos­tile and adver­sar­i­al con­di­tions.” She not­ed that more than 400 offi­cers were injured and about 250 were hos­pi­tal­ized. She said the over­sight agency “arti­fi­cial­ly inflates the data pre­sent­ed to the NYPD’s detri­ment,” and said the depart­ment has already tak­en action in some of the cas­es out­lined in the report and has imple­ment­ed rec­om­men­da­tions from the Department of Investigation.

The watch­dog agency had planned to share its find­ings in mid-2022, but the pub­li­ca­tion date was repeat­ed­ly delayed as the agency strug­gled to keep up with an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of com­plaints against offi­cers who were often unnamed.

A cas­cade of exter­nal road­blocks and inter­nal fail­ures stalled inves­ti­ga­tions into those com­plaints. Officers declined to par­tic­i­pate in vir­tu­al inter­views at the height of the pan­dem­ic, requests for body cam­era footage turned up irrel­e­vant videos and illeg­i­ble per­son­nel ros­ters made it near­ly impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy the swath of offi­cers who were deployed out­side of their nor­mal precincts dur­ing the days of protests across the city. Many offi­cers cov­ered their shield num­bers to hide their iden­ti­ties from pro­test­ers who might lat­er file a complaint.

A Gothamist inves­ti­ga­tion found that many CCRB employ­ees had been sound­ing the alarms for months, urg­ing the agency to speak up ear­li­er about the chal­lenges it was fac­ing. Staff told Gothamist that the agency also failed to team up inves­ti­ga­tors in a way that would have made it eas­i­er for them to share evi­dence and collaborate.

A staffing short­age in the CCRB unit that han­dles the most seri­ous cas­es has also cre­at­ed a back­log for admin­is­tra­tive tri­als against offi­cers who have been charged with pol­i­cy vio­la­tions. More than 60 of those cas­es are unresolved.

Other groups have already doc­u­ment­ed wide­spread issues with the NYPD’s response to the 2020 demon­stra­tions. A Department of Investigation report found police used “exces­sive tac­tics” and a Human Rights Watch report called the police response to a protest in Mott Haven “inten­tion­al, planned, and unjustified.”

The CCRB report zeroes in on indi­vid­ual alle­ga­tions against offi­cers, the out­comes of the agency’s inves­ti­ga­tions and the pun­ish­ments that offi­cers did — or didn’t — face.

“Protests against police bru­tal­i­ty bred more instances of police mis­con­duct,” CCRB Chair Arva Rice wrote in the report. “If this mis­con­duct goes unad­dressed, it will nev­er be reformed.”

The report high­lights some of the agency’s most com­mon find­ings against offi­cers, includ­ing that many offi­cers vio­lat­ed NYPD guide­lines when they struck civil­ians with batons, improp­er­ly used pep­per spray against peace­ful pro­test­ers and used exces­sive phys­i­cal force to push and shove peo­ple. Multiple offi­cers also failed to pro­vide med­ical care to peo­ple with injuries, didn’t turn on their body cam­eras dur­ing some inter­ac­tions that should have been record­ed, or placed bands on their shields to hide their num­bers and refused to tell peo­ple their names.

Here are some oth­er key takeaways:

Case out­comes:

• The CCRB received more than 750 com­plaints, 321 of which fell with­in the CCRB’s juris­dic­tion. (The CCRB is only allowed to inves­ti­gate a few types of mis­con­duct: force, abuse of author­i­ty, dis­cour­tesy and offen­sive lan­guage. The agency also launched a new unit to inves­ti­gate claims of racial pro­fil­ing and bias-based polic­ing last year.)
• The agency was able to ful­ly inves­ti­gate 226 of those complaints.
• The CCRB deter­mined that offi­cers had vio­lat­ed pol­i­cy in 88com­plaints.
• Investigators were unable to deter­mine the sus­pect­ed officer’s iden­ti­ty in 59 complaints.
• The agency was unable to deter­mine if mis­con­duct had occurred in 50 complaints.
• Officers were found to have fol­lowed NYPD guide­lines in just 18 of the 321 complaints.
• The agency found that the alleged mis­con­duct did not occur in 11 cases
• The CCRB sub­stan­ti­at­ed 269 alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against 146mem­bers of ser­vice (Sometimes com­plaints include mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent alle­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing. The agency also notes that it count­ed offi­cers more than once in this tal­ly if they had mul­ti­ple com­plaints with sub­stan­ti­at­ed misconduct.)
• The sub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions include: 140 claims of exces­sive force, 72 claims of abuse of author­i­ty, 24 claims of untruth­ful state­ments, 24 claims of dis­cour­tesy and 9 claims of offen­sive language.
• The NYPD has final­ized 78 cas­es and has imposed dis­ci­pline in 42of them.

Main obsta­cles dur­ing investigations:

Just when you think, ok, there is no way that police can do worse than what we have already seen.

Last year on Sept. 1, as Butte County was in the midst of 100-plus-degree heat wave, Dana Marie James found her­self arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing after tak­ing a dip in a Chico homeowner’s pool.

James was arrest­ed by a deputy from the Butte County Sheriff’s Office who “observed that Ms. James was inco­her­ent, had an altered men­tal sta­tus and was pos­si­bly under the influ­ence of a con­trolled sub­stance,” accord­ing to a law­suit against anoth­er agency, the Oroville Police Department, filed in fed­er­al court Monday.

She was tak­en to jail in Oroville, with her shoes left behind, booked and then cit­ed and released just before 3 p.m.

“Ms. James dis­played obvi­ous signs and symp­toms of men­tal and phys­i­cal impair­ment at the time of her release from the jail and this is record­ed on jail video,” the suit filed by Rocklin attor­ney Robert Chalfant says. “Ms. James was not giv­en a bus pass so that she could return to her home in Chico, California, or pro­vid­ed shoes.

“Ms. James was sim­ply thrown out onto the streets of the city of Oroville.”

Then, accord­ing to the civ­il rights law­suit, the 52-year-old woman’s real trou­bles began, cul­mi­nat­ing with her being aban­doned in the mid­dle of the night in a remote area where she end­ed up being struck by a hit-and-run dri­ver. Chalfant says James suf­fered life-alter­ing injuries from the collision.

Acting Oroville Police Chief Bill LaGrone, reached on his cell­phone Monday, declined to com­ment on the law­suit, cit­ing pend­ing litigation.

But the suit accus­es the police of a “state cre­at­ed dan­ger,” delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence, neg­li­gence and oth­er claims stem­ming from what James’ lawyer describes as Oroville’s fail­ure to prop­er­ly train its officers.

Woman wasn’t medically cleared to return to jail

Six hours after James was first released, around 9 p.m., she was arrest­ed again, this time at a Home Depot by Oroville police Officer Robert Sasek, the suit says.

“During her arrest at the Home Depot, Ms. James was inco­her­ent and unable to care for her­self,” the suit says. “Ms. James was act­ing irra­tional­ly, had sig­nif­i­cant men­tal impair­ment includ­ing illog­i­cal and dis­or­ga­nized thoughts, and Officer Sasek believed that she was under the influ­ence of a con­trolled substance.”

Sasek took her to jail, but the intake nurse there would not allow her to be booked until she received med­ical clear­ance, the suit said.

That’s when Sasek drove James to Oroville Hospital, where he had her wait in his patrol car while he went inside, the suit says. He returned and then released her in the park­ing before leav­ing. He was called back to the hos­pi­tal when a hos­pi­tal secu­ri­ty guard called Sasek on his per­son­al cell­phone, the suit says.

“The secu­ri­ty guard informed Officer Sasek that Ms. James had been walk­ing around the exte­ri­or of the hos­pi­tal try­ing to open locked doors,” the suit says. “The secu­ri­ty guard fur­ther informed Officer Sasek that Ms. James was ‘out of con­trol’ and had ‘bar­ri­cad­ed’ her­self in a hos­pi­tal bathroom.”

By the time Sasek arrived, the secu­ri­ty guard had James back out in the park­ing lot, and Sasek was joined by Oroville police Sgt. Ali Khan, the suit says. Sasek then drove to a gas sta­tion with James, where he met Khan and an unnamed offi­cer, and “the three offi­cers dis­cussed a plan of action,” the suit says.

“All three offi­cers knew and dis­cussed that Ms. James had been reject­ed by the jail at book­ing because she had an urgent med­ical con­di­tion requir­ing eval­u­a­tion and treat­ment and need­ed to be ‘med­ical­ly cleared’ pri­or to being accept­ed into cus­tody at the jail,” the suit says.

‘Abandon’ at the dump, cop sped off

The unnamed offi­cer then sug­gest­ed they “take her out to a remote area on Neal Road at the Waste Facility and aban­don Ms. James at the dump,” accord­ing to the suit.

“Sergeant Ali Khan agreed with the plan and did not object or instruct his sub­or­di­nates to cease their unlaw­ful and improp­er con­duct even though he knew that plaintiff’s rights were being vio­lat­ed and had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­vene,” the suit says, adding that Khan “had an affir­ma­tive duty to stop the unlaw­ful con­duct of his sub­or­di­nates but failed to do so.”

Sasek then drove 15½ miles north of town to the Neal Road Recycling and Waste Facility, the suit says.

“While being trans­port­ed towards Chico, Ms. James asked, ‘Where are we going?’ and Officer Sasek respond­ed, ‘Don’t wor­ry about it’ and told her to ‘just shut up,’” the suit says.

At mid­night, Sasek dropped James off in com­plete dark­ness, the suit says, and when she asked where they were he respond­ed, “You will fig­ure it out, it’s not my problem.”

“Ms. James plead­ed with Officer Sasek to ‘take me home,’ pri­or to Officer Sasek get­ting back into his patrol vehi­cle and floor­ing the gas ped­al, which threw dirt and grav­el direct­ly at Ms. James,” the suit says. “Ms. James was now all alone on Neal Road. It was dark out and there were no streetlights.

“Ms. James had no phone, no water, no shoes, no flash­light and no idea where she was. Officer Sasek just drove away dis­card­ing her on Neal Road out­side of the dump at approx­i­mate­ly midnight.”

The offi­cers “treat­ed Ms. James as though she was garbage,” the suit says. “Their heart­less deci­sion to aban­don her at the dump would war­rant crim­i­nal charges if they had aban­doned a dog or cat.”

Hospitalized for 35 days after ordeal

After being left, James tried walk­ing along the shoul­der of the road back toward Oroville, the suit says, where “she was struck on her right side by a pass­ing vehi­cle and was sent fly­ing down an embank­ment into sev­er­al large boul­ders where she remained in and out of con­scious­ness and severe­ly injured for approx­i­mate­ly 10 hours.”

The vehi­cle that hit her didn’t stop, the suit says.

“At approx­i­mate­ly 9:00 a.m. on September 2 (the next day), Ms. James sum­moned the strength to crawl up the embank­ment where she had remained in and out of con­scious­ness all night and was seen by work­ers employed at the Franklin Construction yard,” the suit says. “They imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the seri­ous­ness of her injuries, pro­vid­ed water and assis­tance and called 911.”

“Butte County Sheriff’s Department offi­cers arrived and insult­ed Ms. James by ask­ing if her boyfriend had beat­en her up,” the suit says. “The Butte County Sheriff’s Department failed to con­duct any inquiry into how Ms. James had arrived at that loca­tion or who was respon­si­ble for hit­ting her with their vehicle.”

This time, James was tak­en to anoth­er hos­pi­tal, Enloe Medical Center in Chico, where she spent sev­en days in inten­sive care and 35 total days in the hos­pi­tal, the suit says.

She endured mul­ti­ple surg­eries, devel­oped sep­sis and suf­fered an infec­tion on her right foot so deep she may lose those toes, the suit says.

“Based on the severe inter­nal injuries that Ms. James sus­tained, med­ical providers were forced to remove 30 to 40 per­cent of her colon, and approx­i­mate­ly two feet of her small intes­tine,” the suit says. “Ms. James has also been informed that due to the inter­nal injuries and removal of a por­tion of her small intes­tine and a por­tion of her colon, she will like­ly be required to wear a colosto­my bag for life.”

The suit also says that after Sasek left James at the dump, he “returned to his office the fol­low­ing day and com­plet­ed his arrest report for his arrest of Ms. James at the Oroville Home Depot and sub­mit­ted it to the Butte County District Attorney for prosecution.”(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @Yahoonews)

NJ charges Patterson cop who shot wounded fleeing man in the back…

The Memphis Police Department fired a sixth offi­cer Friday for his role in the events lead­ing to the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who was beat­en by police offi­cers and died three days lat­er. The offi­cer, Preston Hemphill, was placed on leave at the start of the depart­men­t’s inves­ti­ga­tion. MPD announced his ter­mi­na­tion Friday, near­ly a month after Nichols was beat­en. The depart­ment said Hemphill vio­lat­ed poli­cies includ­ing per­son­al con­duct, truth­ful­ness, com­pli­ance with Taser reg­u­la­tions, com­pli­ance with uni­form reg­u­la­tions, and a pol­i­cy gov­ern­ing inven­to­ry and recov­ered property.
Read more here: https://​www​.com​mer​cialap​peal​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​l​o​c​a​l​/​2​0​2​3​/​0​2​/​0​3​/​m​e​m​p​h​i​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​t​-​f​i​r​e​s​-​s​i​x​t​h​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​i​n​-​d​e​a​t​h​-​o​f​-​t​y​r​e​-​n​i​c​h​o​l​s​/​6​9​8​7​2​4​5​0​0​07/

I was a lit­tle sur­prised to see a rather long expose in the Jamaica Observer regard­ing the SSL Scandal that came to light recent­ly, which includ­ed a tremen­dous loss of mon­ey to for­mer track star Usain Bolt and others.
My sur­prise is two-fold, despite the tremen­dous inter­est of the pub­lic to know what is hap­pen­ing in this seri­ous mat­ter, the some­what lengthy raft of infor­ma­tion released by the board and man­age­ment of Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL), includ­ing spe­cif­ic date, time, and oth­er cru­cial infor­ma­tion is infor­ma­tion that should be kept secret as part of a com­pre­hen­sive crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into SSL.

Jamaica is steeped in many aspects of moder­ni­ty, yet the small nation does not have the leg­isla­tive or phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture to deal with the com­plex­i­ties of a func­tion­ing mod­ern soci­ety. It is com­pa­ra­ble to build­ing high­rise com­plex­es yet hav­ing no infra­struc­ture to fight fires that may break out in such complexes.
The leg­isla­tive frame­work need­ed to cor­ral and con­tain insti­tu­tions like SSL and oth­ers that con­trol peo­ple’s assets is sim­ply lack­ing. At the same time, the bureau­cra­cy around open­ing a sim­ple sav­ings account by the lit­tle guy is astounding.
To begin with, imme­di­ate­ly after a breach of the size that fleeced Usain Bolt and oth­ers were dis­cov­ered, the gov­ern­ment should have stepped in and frozen all of the com­pa­ny’s assets and lim­it­ed day-to-day oper­a­tion to only under the stead­fast gaze of gov­ern­ment auditors.
But this can­not occur in Jamaica because, as I have said repeat­ed­ly, Jamaica is not a nation of laws but a place where any­thing goes. It is a place where the so-called big man is king. People with mon­ey and con­nec­tions do as they please.
The fact that SSL has con­tin­ued oper­at­ing despite this scan­dal may prove that what­ev­er sham inves­ti­ga­tion may occur is already com­pro­mised and doomed to unearth noth­ing but half-truths touch­ing on low-hang­ing fruits.
For an inves­ti­ga­tion to mean any­thing, the com­put­ers ot SSL should have been seized by a com­pe­tent law enforce­ment agency imme­di­ate­ly the scan­dal came to light. At the same time, com­pa­ny lead­ers should have been iso­lat­ed from each oth­er and inter­ro­gat­ed individually.
Instead, SSL seems to be oper­at­ing as if noth­ing hap­pened while the nation’s polit­i­cal lead­ers are reduced to mak­ing state­ments, none of which will bring to light exact­ly who are the peo­ple responsible.
Even more shock­ing is the cal­lous lan­guage being used by the board as it seeks to speak to the seri­ous issue at hand but is obvi­ous­ly fum­ing that any­one dared to spec­u­late as to what occurred at SSL.
Here is the full response as report­ed by the Jamaica Observer.

“The Board and Management of Stocks and Securities Limited intend­ed to facil­i­tate law enforce­ment and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors as they probe the recent events at Stocks and Securities Limited, with­out mak­ing pub­lic com­ment. However, it has become nec­es­sary to set the record straight in respect of some dam­ag­ing and wide­ly repeat­ed inac­cu­ra­cies which sug­gest, inter alia, that the SSL direc­tors and man­age­ment sought to dis­pose of assets in order to frus­trate efforts by author­i­ties to take con­trol of same. This is sim­ply untrue. Here are the facts regard­ing that false alle­ga­tion as well as some oth­er canards.

Notification to the FSC

On Tuesday, January 10, 2023, Stocks and Securities Limited noti­fied the Financial Services Commission of the dis­cov­ery of appar­ent fraud and of the imme­di­ate steps being tak­en. The let­ter specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed: “This serves to advise the Financial Services Commission that Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of alleged fraud com­mit­ted by an employ­ee serv­ing in the role of Client Relationship Manager. The expo­sure is unknown, and SSL is cur­rent­ly under­tak­ing inves­ti­ga­tions with the sup­port of our attor­neys, Guardsman Élite, and exter­nal audi­tors. The employ­ee was inter­viewed by our attor­neys on January 6 and 7, 2023 in the pres­ence of her attor­ney and has admit­ted to wrong­do­ing. Other inter­views are sched­uled for the week of January 9, 2023, with known associates.

Nature of the sus­pect­ed fraud­u­lent activ­i­ty by employee

At this time, it appears that the employ­ee amend­ed and gen­er­at­ed fraud­u­lent client doc­u­ments includ­ing encash­ment requests and state­ments to cir­cum­vent the inter­nal protocols.

Steps tak­en and next steps

The mat­ter has been report­ed to the Board of Directors and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to clients has com­menced. The Company esti­mates that with­in sev­en (7) to four­teen (14) days there will be a rea­son­able esti­mate of the expo­sure, how­ev­er, this is unknown at this time. SSL has con­firmed that its insur­ance pol­i­cy includes cov­er­age for employ­ee dis­hon­esty and forgery with cov­er­age up to US$1 mil­lion. Efforts are also being made to have the employ­ee com­mit to resti­tu­tion. The very next day, January 11, 2023, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Dr the Hon Usain St Leo Bolt vis­it­ed the offices of Stocks and Securities Limited and indi­cat­ed that the said employ­ee had turned up at their offices to con­fess that she had fal­si­fied state­ments pro­vid­ed to them, had stolen mon­ey from them and oth­er SSL clients, and was request­ing help from Dr. the Hon Usain St Leo Bolt’s man­age­ment team to repay the clients whose funds she had stolen. It is believed that the rea­sons that she did not ini­tial­ly con­fess to defraud­ing this par­tic­u­lar client are (1) she was aware of the tremen­dous spot­light which the Bolt name would bring to bear on her activ­i­ties, and (2) amaz­ing­ly, she, for what­ev­er rea­son, and despite hav­ing admit­ted to the Bolt man­age­ment team that Dr, the Hon Usain Bolt was among her vic­tims, appar­ent­ly still believed that she could bor­row the mon­ey from the Bolt man­age­ment group to repay the oth­er SSL clients. The very first point at which the com­pa­ny became aware that the fraud affect­ed this client was when the mem­ber of the Bolt man­age­ment team vis­it­ed SSL’s office, the for­mer employ­ee hav­ing omit­ted any men­tion of this client in her ini­tial con­fes­sion. Work had start­ed to review all trans­ac­tions relat­ed to those clients whom she had ini­tial­ly list­ed and to car­ry out the noti­fi­ca­tions to the FSC, JSE, affect­ed clients, insur­ance, etc when the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Dr the Hon Usain St Leo Bolt vis­it­ed the offices of Stocks and Securities Limited. The shock expe­ri­enced by all was and remains pal­pa­ble. While the com­pa­ny believed that the impact on the first iden­ti­fied 39 clients could be addressed with the coöper­a­tion of reg­u­la­tors, it was imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent that the nation­al and indeed, glob­al stature of the last client impact­ed would like­ly make a mea­sured and sys­tem­at­ic approach to inves­ti­ga­tion very chal­leng­ing indeed.

Why has SSL not com­ment­ed pub­licly before today?

On Tuesday, January 10, 2023, SSL noti­fied the FSC and on January 11, 2023, SSL issued a press release noti­fy­ing the pub­lic that alleged fraud had been iden­ti­fied. At the time of the FSC notice, SSL was unaware of any alleged fraud relat­ed to Dr the Hon Usain St Leo Bolt’s hold­ing com­pa­ny. SSL appoint­ed a trustee on January 16, 2023, and the Financial Services Committee appoint­ed a Special Investigator and Temporary Manager on January 17, 2023. Practically, the FSC through their Temporary Manager has had con­trol over the enti­ty so SSL has not been in a posi­tion to respond pub­licly or clar­i­fy allegations.

Did the Directors and Shareholders of SSL attempt to wind up the enti­ty in con­tra­ven­tion of FSC

instruc­tions? Emphatically No. The appoint­ment of the Trustee was noti­fied to the FSC on January 12, 2023, and dis­cus­sions were ongo­ing. SSL appoint­ed Mr. Caydion Campbell of Phoenix Restructuring, Advisory and Insolvency Services Enterprise (PRAISE) as Trustee under the Companies Act of Jamaica effec­tive Monday, January 16, 2023. SSL’s direc­tors and share­hold­ers met that day to con­firm the appoint­ment, in keep­ing with the work plan sub­mit­ted to the FSC by man­age­ment. It was the inten­tion of the direc­tors that their pow­ers and author­i­ty be vest­ed in the Trustee and that the affairs of SSL would be under his con­trol. The fur­ther inten­tion was that the Trustee and his team would con­duct an Independent Business Review (“IBR”) and oth­er inves­ti­ga­tions into SSL’s oper­a­tions to deter­mine, among oth­er things, its finan­cial state of affairs as of the date 16 January 2023. The pur­pose of the appoint­ment was not, we repeat, not to wind up the com­pa­ny. Among Mr. Campbell’s key objec­tives were intend­ed to be to ensure that all nec­es­sary con­ser­va­to­ry mea­sures were in place over the assets of SSL, as well as to ensure com­pli­ance with the enhanced gov­er­nance pro­to­cols as direct­ed by the FSC. It was intend­ed that he would also use the results of the IBR to explore the restruc­tur­ing and reor­ga­ni­za­tion options that were avail­able to pre­serve and enhance the val­ue of the busi­ness, oper­a­tions, and under­tak­ings of SSL for the ben­e­fit of all its stake­hold­ers. Once agreed with the FSC, a res­o­lu­tion plan would have been devel­oped and imple­ment­ed. Mr. Campbell is a Trustee licensed under the Insolvency Act by the Supervisor of Insolvency. He has 30 years’ expe­ri­ence in Corporate Recoveries, Turnaround Management, Proposals, Receiverships and Bankruptcies. He also has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in pro­vid­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices in the areas of finan­cial analy­sis, due dili­gence, inde­pen­dent busi­ness review, busi­ness reor­ga­ni­za­tion and dis­pute analy­sis investigation.

End.….….….….….….….….….….….….….

The infor­ma­tion laid out by the SSL board though crit­i­cal to the pub­lic’s need to know must be weighed against the more impor­tant task of bring­ing to jus­tice the perpetrator/​s of this crime. Some, if not all, of the infor­ma­tion laid out by the board is almost assured­ly infor­ma­tion that will form part of any future crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and should not have been released by the board.
The tone of the let­ter appears to reflect annoy­ance, even anger, at what it seems to see as a mere nui­sance rather than the seri­ous issue it is. The assur­ance giv­en by the board that clients are pro­tect­ed up to the tune of US 1 mil­lion is cold com­fort to those who are report­ed to have lost upward of US $12 million.
The annoyance/​anger that the mem­bers of the SSL board appear to feel at this intru­sive spot­light on their com­fy space is of zero impor­tance as it argues the fol­low­ing contradictorily.»»»>
“SSL has an online sys­tem that all clients can use to track their port­fo­lio per­for­mance. In fact, this sys­tem is con­sid­ered one of the best in the world and accu­rate­ly shows clients’ port­fo­lio hold­ings. Unfortunately, it is com­mon to the affect­ed clients that they did not use the online sys­tem, but rather, relied on state­ments gen­er­at­ed by the for­mer employ­ee, which undoubt­ed­ly was the like­ly rea­son they were tar­get­ed. In her con­fes­sion, the employ­ee indi­cat­ed that she con­duct­ed trans­ac­tions for clients out­side of SSL’s sys­tems, she con­tin­ued to make pay­ments to those clients from the pool of funds which she her­self had per­son­al­ly accumulated.
How good can SSL sys­tem be if an employ­ee can con­duct busi­ness out­side of the com­pa­ny’s sys­tems, as stat­ed in the lengthy canard that the board ren­dered obvi­ous­ly to shift blame from itself?

.

.

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

I mean, they can­not help them­selves. It seems every aspect of their job is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to live out Rambo fan­tasies. Consequently, America’s streets and what used to be the sacred sanc­tums for Americans, their homes, are now open tar­gets for police to play bat­tle­field soldiers.
It will only get worse as politi­cians from both polit­i­cal par­ties who are lap­dogs to the wealthy stand in the way of restruc­tur­ing how police are allowed to operate.
As long as America ben­e­fits from lock­ing up mil­lions of its cit­i­zens through unjust drug laws and minor traf­fic infrac­tions, the sol­diers look­ing for war will con­tin­ue to wreak hav­oc across the country.
It has become clear­er by the day that, based on how they train these mon­sters, they are all ham­mers and the rest of us are nails.(mb)
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​y​-​t​h​e​y​-​r​u​n​-​f​r​o​m​-​p​o​l​i​ce/

Every day the atroc­i­ties get worse

A Texas police chief is on leave after a SWAT team wrecked a Galveston family’s home dur­ing a raid in search of a mur­der sus­pect who wasn’t there and turned out to be the wrong guy, offi­cials say. 
Erika Rios and her teenage chil­dren were awak­ened in their beds around 2 a.m. on Jan. 22 by a voice on a mega­phone boom­ing out­side, say­ing they were Galveston Police, she told The Daily News. Glass shat­tered as police fired less-than-lethal rounds through win­dows, kicked in doors and dam­aged wiring, Rios told the out­let. “We were all so con­fused,” she said, accord­ing to The Daily News. “When they dragged me out, I was left with a bruise and scrape on my right thigh.”
Police were look­ing for a 17-year-old named Cameron Vargas in con­nec­tion to the killing of Malik Dunn, a 25-year-old found shot to death two days ear­li­er on Jan. 20, KPRC report­ed. Vargas is a friend of Rios’ son and had been at the home but left hours ear­li­er, Rios told the station.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​u​r​t​-​s​a​n​c​t​i​o​n​e​d​-​p​r​e​-​t​e​x​t​u​a​l​-​t​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​s​t​o​p​s​-​a​-​t​o​o​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​u​s​e​-​t​o​-​e​s​c​a​l​a​t​e​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​ce/

“I was scared, scream­ing,” Rios’ daugh­ter Chelsea Peralez said, accord­ing to KPRC. ”I end­ed up going to my broth­er, ask­ing what they were doing, and they con­tin­u­ous­ly kept shoot­ing the wood­en pel­lets.” Vargas was tak­en into cus­tody on Jan. 23, but charges were dropped on Jan. 25, court doc­u­ments show. Investigators cleared Vargas as a sus­pect, out­lets reported.
City offi­cials put Police Chief Doug Balli on 10-day admin­is­tra­tive leave in the after­math of the raid.
The city man­ag­er “is con­duct­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the chief’s con­duct. Specifically, city admin­is­tra­tion is inves­ti­gat­ing a fail­ure of com­mu­ni­ca­tion sur­round­ing a search per­formed in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of January 22,” the City of Galveston said in an emailed news release to McClatchy News. Officials did not elab­o­rate on the exact nature of the “fail­ure of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” Assistant Police Chief Andre Mitchell has stepped in to fill the role in Balli’s absence, offi­cials said.
McClatchy News reached out to Galveston police regard­ing the raid and sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion into Balli, but did not receive an imme­di­ate response. “I’ve been left with trau­ma­tized kids, no heat in my home and bust­ed win­dows, all because they were look­ing for some­body who didn’t even live there, who was also inno­cent,” Rios told The Daily News. “I’m try­ing to repair what I can and heal my kids, but it’s hard as a sin­gle moth­er. It has been a whirl­wind and it was all so unnec­es­sary.” The Buzbee Law Firm, which is rep­re­sent­ing the Rios fam­i­ly, has sched­uled a press con­fer­ence for 11 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 

The Memphis Police Department has today sus­pend­ed anoth­er offi­cer in the beat­ing death of Tyre Nichols. His name is Preston Hemphill.

In addi­tion to the oth­er vio­lent ani­mals who mur­dered mis­ter Nichols Preston Hemphill was removed qui­et­ly. Hemphill deployed his Taser dur­ing the con­fronta­tion. In his own body cam­era video, Hemphill is seen chas­ing Nichols down the road but then turns back to the scene of the ini­tial traf­fic stop.

Many peo­ple are naive­ly shocked at the speed with which the five black cops were ter­mi­nat­ed and charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der. As I main­tained, there is no rea­son to be sur­prised. It would be sur­pris­ing if they weren’t thrown out and allowed to fend for them­selves based on their skin color.
Juxtapose that with the way Preston Hemphill’s involve­ment is being han­dled and. Hemphill was heard on his body cam­era video say­ing twice, “I hope they stomp his a – .” Hemphill, who is white, has not been fired or charged. Hemphill “was relieved when the oth­er offi­cers were relieved,” a Memphis police spokesper­son said on Monday.

Attorneys for Nichols’ fam­i­ly, Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, said they were extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that Hemphill was relieved of duty but not fired or charged. The lawyers are also ques­tion­ing why the Memphis police did not imme­di­ate­ly announce Hemphill’s name or that he was relieved of duty.

“Why is his iden­ti­ty and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now com­ing to light?” they said in a state­ment. “We have asked from the begin­ning that the Memphis Police Department be trans­par­ent with the fam­i­ly and the com­mu­ni­ty — this news seems to indi­cate that they haven’t risen to the occa­sion. It cer­tain­ly begs the ques­tion why the white offi­cer involved in this bru­tal attack was shield­ed and pro­tect­ed from the pub­lic eye, and to date, from suf­fi­cient dis­ci­pline and account­abil­i­ty. The Memphis Police Department owes us all answers.”(ABC NEWS REPORTED)

People con­tin­ue to, tongue in cheek, argue that ‘not all cops are racist igno­ra­mus­es.’ I guess we should take some solace from this new lie; after all, it’s an improve­ment over the tra­di­tion­al spiel, “there are only a few rot­ten apples,” but the evi­dence to the con­trary is so over­whelm­ing we are at the,’ not all are bad’ stage from the cop-apologists.
If we have to say ‘not all are bad,’ it is already evi­dent that we are in a seri­ous cri­sis. At this point, I would argue that one would be lucky to find a decent con­sti­tu­tion-respect­ing cop in an entire department.
The police cul­ture in the United States is so bro­ken that, at this point, it is impos­si­ble to fix with­out com­plete­ly revamp­ing how police are allowed to oper­ate across the board.
It is impor­tant to [note] for the record, as soci­ol­o­gists and oth­er experts grap­ple with find­ing rea­sons for the increase in vio­lent crimes, that dis­trust and dis­con­nect be seen as the main reason.
The dan­ger­ous police cul­ture that exists is so well-embed­ded that even when mil­lions of peo­ple through­out the coun­try of all races take to the streets to demand change, they are not smart enough to change their filthy ways.
Reporting on police vio­lence, Marshallproject​.org wrote; ‘More than two years after mil­lions of Americans took to the streets fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd, famil­iar sto­ries about police vio­lence per­sist. By the num­bers, 2021 was the dead­liest for police shoot­ings since The Washington Post began track­ing them in 2015. The data­base Mapping Police Violence found sim­i­lar results.
The year 2022 was even worse as police killed more than 1200 Americans, most unarmed and with men­tal issues.
American police do not have a train­ing issue; they have a blood­lust issue.
The sad irony is that for black motorists, there is a greater threat to their lives from police than from any oth­er source. In fact, black motorists los­ing their lives to oth­er crim­i­nals from mere­ly dri­ving down a street or high­way is not a thing.
Those of you who would argue this is hyper­bol­ic, do not come for me; look up Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Tyre Nichols, Daunte Wright, Patrick Lyoya, and on and on the killings go.
The Guardian, which has been map­ping police vio­lence in recent years, report­ed in 2022 that police in the US have killed near­ly 600 peo­ple dur­ing traf­fic stops since 2017, with the deaths con­tin­u­ing apace this year, a review of nation­al police vio­lence data shows.
For decades American law enforce­ment enjoyed an inter­na­tion­al­ly white­washed per­sona, most­ly bur­nished by Hollywood movies and tele­vi­sion shows that glo­ri­fied polic­ing in ways that no rea­son­able per­son would have a prob­lem with. Realistically, none of this was true. The real­i­ty for African-Americans who bore the brunt of police oppres­sion in the United States was far removed from the glitz and glam­or of Hollywood faux depictions.
Black Americans wrong­ly con­vict­ed by cor­rupt police and pros­e­cu­tors, in some cas­es, have spent decades of their lives incar­cer­at­ed. In con­trast, oth­ers, not so lucky, have been exe­cut­ed for crimes they did not com­mit. Thanks to con­sci­en­tious enti­ties like the Innocence Project and oth­ers that have been awak­ened to the atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted against inno­cent peo­ple of color.
The cul­ture of impuni­ty that has tak­en over American polic­ing can be traced to the so-called rise of the war­rior cop. As I have writ­ten in sev­er­al oth­er arti­cles, the impuni­ty you see police exhib­it is a direct result of the immu­ni­ty cre­at­ed for them by the Supreme Court.
Congress did not leg­is­late qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty; it was cre­at­ed and foist­ed on the American peo­ple by the unelect­ed robed bureau­crats on the high­est court. Qualified immu­ni­ty carved out unrea­son­able and uncon­scionable stan­dards for state actors that the aver­age American does not enjoy. It essen­tial­ly sets gov­ern­ment work­ers out­side the scope of the laws unless the aggriev­ed par­ty can show that a cop, for exam­ple, should have known that their action was out­side of the law based on pre­vi­ous cas­es. No American cit­i­zen act­ing out­side gov­ern­ment ser­vice has such grace under the laws. If you break the law, you go to jail, end of story.
Additionally, police depart­ments have been pur­pose­ful­ly hir­ing sol­diers return­ing from America’s for­eign wars. Many of these hires have seri­ous issues that need­ed to be sort­ed out; stick­ing a badge on their chest and giv­ing them a gun and the pow­er to kill does not help. From the begin­ning, this writer said it was a bad idea.…. unless, of course, the out­comes we are hav­ing are the ones they desired.
Every cop-apol­o­gist, every American, in fact, every per­son on this plan­et should watch this video before open­ing their mouth on the issue of American police killings.
This is David Allan Grossman, born in Frankfurt, West Germany on August 23, 1956. His career includes ser­vice in the U.S. Army. Grossman is an author who also lec­tures police on how to kill effec­tive­ly. Those inter­est­ed can research what this for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cer has been teach­ing America’s cops.
There is no reform­ing this; the whole thing must be dis­card­ed if the killings are to stop.