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)

Emmett Brock thought he was dying, and his mind raced. This isn’t sup­posed to hap­pen to me. This doesn’t hap­pen this way. I can’t die like this. He tast­ed the blood inside his mouth. He felt the fists land on his head. And he heard the shouts of the sheriff’s deputy on top of him, press­ing him into the pave­ment of the 7‑Eleven park­ing lot. Three min­utes lat­er, the 23-year-old teacher sat in the back of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department cruis­er not even know­ing, he said, why the deputy had stopped him. Brock was sent to the Norwalk sta­tion lock­up and booked for three felonies. When he told the staff he is a trans­gen­der man, he said, they asked to see his gen­i­tals before decid­ing which hold­ing cell to send him to. That was in February. Brock is now job­less and still fac­ing crim­i­nal charges, all stem­ming from a traf­fic stop the deputy said was based on an air fresh­en­er he’d spot­ted hang­ing from Brock’s rearview mir­ror. The Sheriff’s Department has been under intense scruti­ny in recent weeks for two oth­er use-of-force inci­dents caught on cam­era, includ­ing one in which a deputy punched a woman in the face while try­ing to take her child. In that case, Sheriff Robert Luna con­demned the inci­dent as “com­plete­ly unac­cept­able” and relieved the deputy of duty. The FBI is now inves­ti­gat­ing.

Luna ran on promis­es of reform and has imple­ment­ed sev­er­al changes in the depart­ment since tak­ing office in December. He restored the abil­i­ty of over­sight offi­cials to access sher­if­f’s data­bas­es, turned over con­tro­ver­sial inves­ti­ga­tions to out­side agen­cies, ordered his deputies to coöper­ate with inves­ti­ga­tions and cre­at­ed an office to “erad­i­cate” deputy gangs. Citing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lit­i­ga­tion, the depart­ment declined to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on the Feb. 10 inci­dent involv­ing Brock, issu­ing a state­ment that said: “We take every use of force seri­ous­ly, and we do inves­ti­gate.” To Brock’s lawyer, Thomas Beck, that under­scores how far the Sheriff’s Department has to go when it comes to mean­ing­ful­ly hold­ing deputies accountable.
“They have not changed — in fact, they’ve become more stiff­ened against crit­i­cism,” he said. “The sys­tem that they have in place that they tell the pub­lic guar­an­tees account­abil­i­ty is a farce.” Before his run-in with the deputy, Brock already was hav­ing a mis­er­able day. He said he’d left his high school teach­ing job ear­ly after a co-work­er had harassed him for being trans­gen­der. It was­n’t the first time, and he was get­ting fed up. A few blocks from the school, Brock spot­ted a deputy who appeared to be hav­ing a heat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a woman on the side of the road. As he drove by, Brock threw up his mid­dle fin­ger. He didn’t even think the deputy would see it, he said.

A few sec­onds lat­er, he spot­ted a patrol cruis­er fol­low­ing close behind him. It made Brock uneasy. He turned down one side street and then anoth­er, try­ing to fig­ure out whether the cruis­er was fol­low­ing him or just going in the same direc­tion. The deputy didn’t turn on his lights or siren, but made every turn Brock did. Growing unnerved, he called 911. “Hi, um, I’m being fol­lowed by a police car,” he said in a record­ing shared with The Times. He told the dis­patch­er that the car was copy­ing his turns, but not pulling him over. He said he want­ed to make sure it was a “real police car” and that he was­n’t being stalked. The two kept talk­ing, and even­tu­al­ly the dis­patch­er asked: “What is it that you want us to do? If he hasn’t pulled you over, he hasn’t pulled you over.” Two min­utes into the call, Brock cursed and hung up. He kept dri­ving, pulling up out­side the 7‑Eleven on Mills Avenue in Whittier, plan­ning to buy a Coke before head­ing to a ther­a­py appoint­ment. The cruis­er pulled in behind him, and the store’s sur­veil­lance cam­era cap­tured what fol­lowed. The deputy’s body-worn cam­era cap­tured the sound. As Brock stepped out of his car, Deputy Joseph Benza approached and told him: “I just stopped you,” offer­ing no expla­na­tion as to why. Confused, Brock replied, “No, you didn’t.” “Yeah, I did,” the deputy said. Then he grabbed Brock’s arm and forced him to the ground.

Still unsure what he’d done, Brock said, he began to scream. “What — what are you doing? Oh, my god. What the f— is hap­pen­ing?” For the next three min­utes, Brock strug­gled and screamed as the deputy held him down and punched him in the head. “You’re going to kill me,” Brock told him. “You’re going to f – -ing kill me. Help! Help! Help! I’m not resist­ing!” His mind raced, turn­ing over thoughts of all the things he’d nev­er get to do in life: Finish grad school. Be a father. Become a pro­fes­sor. “Help! Help! Help! I’m not resist­ing!” At one point, the deputy ordered him to put his arms behind his back — but Brock’s arms were already pinned under his chest. “Even when I did get them out the way he want­ed, he con­tin­ued to punch me,” Brock told The Times. “He just kept say­ing, ‘Stop resist­ing, stop resist­ing.’ I didn’t under­stand why he was shout­ing that because I wasn’t resist­ing.” According to the Sheriff’s Department, two wit­ness­es saw Brock exit his car and strug­gle with the deputy. One of those wit­ness­es claimed that Brock punched the deputy, which cam­era footage does not show and the deputy did not allege. After Brock was in hand­cuffs, the deputy put him into the back seat of his cruis­er. At that point, Brock said, he was try­ing to make sense of what had hap­pened and why he was on the deputy’s radar in the first place.

It was only lat­er that he learned from the paper­work he was giv­en: The deputy said he’d spot­ted an air fresh­en­er hang­ing from the rearview mir­ror, sup­pos­ed­ly obstruct­ing the view of the road from Brock’s black Honda Civic. If Benza saw Brock flip him off, he made no men­tion of it in his report. According to the deputy’s ver­sion of events, the force was jus­ti­fied. “It appeared he was about to walk away from the car and myself,” Benza wrote as part of an 11-page inci­dent report. “His rejec­tion of my traf­fic deten­tion and his appar­ent intent to dis­tance him­self from his vehi­cle fur­ther raise safe­ty con­cerns. I know from my train­ing and expe­ri­ence that those who pos­sess con­tra­band items inside vehi­cles com­mon­ly attempt to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves from their vehi­cles when law enforce­ment is present.” Though he admit­ted grab­bing Brock’s arm, he said that Brock pulled away and “cocked his right hand back into a fist, indica­tive of some­one about to throw a punch.” Deciding Brock was “at the onset of assault­ing me,” Benza said he tack­led him to the ground, adding that Brock had “con­tin­u­ous­ly tried to bite” him. Benza then punched him “approx­i­mate­ly eight times in rapid suc­ces­sion.” “My punch­es had their intend­ed effect,” he added. He made no men­tion of Brock’s cries for help, or that he repeat­ed­ly told the deputy that he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t resist­ing. Instead, Benza’s report not­ed that Brock “attempt­ed to rip my skin from my hand,” which he said “could result in per­ma­nent disfigurement.”

A paramedic’s report from the scene did not men­tion any bite marks. And when Benza went to the hos­pi­tal lat­er, the emer­gency room report not­ed that he’d told them the bite hadn’t bro­ken the skin and there was no bleed­ing. A physician’s assis­tant wrote that there were “no bite marks at this time.” Medical records do show that Benza frac­tured his right hand in a “punch­ing injury.” In inter­views with The Times, Brock denied bit­ing the deputy, and his lawyer said it would have been near­ly impos­si­ble. “There is no moment that Emmett is not shout­ing or scream­ing,” Beck said. “And you can’t talk when your teeth are clamped onto some­one’s hand.” Benza did not respond to a request for com­ment. To Ed Obayashi, a for­mer Northern California sheriff’s deputy who is a nation­al use-of-force expert, the inci­dent rais­es red flags. “I just don’t see why this esca­lat­ed as quick­ly as it did,” he told The Times after review­ing the 7‑Eleven footage. “It just goes from zero to 100 imme­di­ate­ly, and there’s no expla­na­tion.” And after the vio­lence began, Obayashi said, the appar­ent lack of attempt to de-esca­late the sit­u­a­tion — espe­cial­ly once Brock start­ed to show signs of seri­ous dis­tress — was anoth­er point of con­cern. “There’s always a prob­lem when you have an indi­vid­ual telling an offi­cer he can’t breathe,” Obayashi said, adding that he didn’t see or hear any indi­ca­tion that Brock threat­ened the deputy. “This is a minor traf­fic offense at the most,” he said, “and we’re talk­ing about air freshener.”

Given Brock’s asser­tion that he flipped off the deputy, Obayashi sug­gest­ed that the minor traf­fic infrac­tion might have been a pre­text to pull Brock over. “This could very well be con­tempt of cop,” he added, ref­er­enc­ing a term some in law enforce­ment use to describe sit­u­a­tions in which offi­cers respond with vio­lence when they per­ceive someone’s behav­ior as dis­re­spect­ful. In California, he added, it can be grounds for deputies and police offi­cers to lose their state peace offi­cer cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. In Los Angeles, such behav­ior could also vio­late the depart­ment pol­i­cy ban­ning retal­ia­to­ry force. Deputies took Brock to Coast Plaza Hospital, where he was treat­ed for scrapes, bruis­es and a con­cus­sion. Once he was med­ical­ly cleared, deputies took him to the sta­tion for book­ing. There, staff took his mug shot and fin­ger­prints. They took his shoes and direct­ed him to take off any jew­el­ry. He strug­gled to pull his rings off over his swollen knuck­les. By that point, he said, the pain was begin­ning to set in. “My head was just explod­ing. I felt like I got hit by a truck.” It was­n’t long before author­i­ties asked Brock for a state­ment, dur­ing which he explained that he is trans­gen­der. “So you’re a girl?” he said one jail­er asked. Brock said he wasn’t. Then the man asked whether he had a penis — and Brock said he did. He explained what surg­eries exist­ed, and said that he’d been on hor­mones for years. After one jail­er asked for proof, Brock said, he spent a few awk­ward min­utes in a bath­room show­ing her his gen­i­talia and explain­ing the effects of testos­terone. He was placed in a women’s hold­ing cell. It was a Friday after­noon and, with the courts closed, he wor­ried he’d be stuck behind bars all week­end. It was after dark when one of the jail­ers told him his fam­i­ly and his girl­friend had pulled togeth­er enough mon­ey for bail.

He was fac­ing three felonies — may­hem, resist­ing arrest and obstruc­tion — plus mis­de­meanor fail­ure to obey a police offi­cer. Four days lat­er, he lost his job after state author­i­ties noti­fied the school of his pend­ing charges. “I lost so much of myself that day in the park­ing lot,” he said. “But I love what I do, and it is kind of how I define myself — and for that to be tak­en away? It felt like I had just lost every­thing.” When the inci­dent went through the department’s nor­mal force review process, offi­cials cleared Benza of wrong­do­ing. One sergeant wrote that Brock was assaultive “with threat of seri­ous bod­i­ly injury.” Another sergeant, list­ed as the watch com­man­der, con­curred, say­ing the inci­dent was with­in pol­i­cy and the force used was “objec­tive­ly rea­son­able.” The sergeant also checked “no” on the paper­work next to the ques­tion: “Could offi­cer safe­ty, tac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or de-esca­la­tion tech­niques have been improved?” The sta­tion cap­tain agreed with the two sergeants below him. Only once the mat­ter went up to the divi­sion com­man­der did the report note room for improve­ment. “This sit­u­a­tion was very dynam­ic and evolv­ing, which required a split-sec­ond deci­sion to be made by Deputy Benza, since it appeared sus­pect Brock was try­ing to avoid being con­tact­ed. Officer safe­ty is para­mount,” Cmdr. Allen Castellano wrote. But since Benza’s vehi­cle had Brock’s blocked in, Castellano said, he could have tak­en the time to call for back­up while keep­ing tabs on the sit­u­a­tion before con­fronting Brock. Overall, he wrote, “based on Deputy Benza’s artic­u­la­tion that sus­pect Brock was bit­ing his right hand,” the punch­es “appeared to be justified.”

In March, Brock’s lawyer asked depart­ment offi­cials to crim­i­nal­ly inves­ti­gate Benza. In April — after send­ing a sec­ond let­ter — he received a reply assur­ing him the depart­ment would inves­ti­gate “in a time­ly man­ner.” That month, Brock had his first court appear­ance. Though he’d been booked on three felonies and a mis­de­meanor, pros­e­cu­tors ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to move for­ward with two mis­de­meanor charges: resist­ing arrest and bat­tery on an offi­cer. A judge reduced his bail from $100,000 to noth­ing. The case is still mov­ing for­ward. In a May email to the depart­ment, Brock’s attor­ney accused the deputy of false impris­on­ment and kid­nap­ping. “There is now proof Benza man­u­fac­tured the bit­ing claim upon learn­ing that the 7‑Eleven video caught him vio­lent­ly assault­ing and punch­ing Mr. Brock,” Beck wrote. “I would love to see the depart­ment turn a new leaf with this evi­dence,” he wrote. “My chief crit­i­cism of LASD over the decades has been the will­ful­ly blind eyes that apply to cit­i­zen com­plaints, no mat­ter what the proof. Let this case not be one of them.”

Big Whoppie. Police in the United States are not account­able to any­one but them­selves. Qualified immu­ni­ty, a pol­i­cy craft­ed by the Supreme Court, not an act of Congress or direc­tive of the Executive Branch of the Government, has giv­en police blan­ket immu­ni­ty. As a result of that immu­ni­ty, they act with total impuni­ty. They are the law.
America’s police Departments con­tin­ue to seek out new ways to vio­late the US Constitution and the rights of ordi­nary Americans dai­ly. Unfortunately, the love affair that America has with the con­cept of polic­ing that keeps eth­nic minori­ties sub­ju­gat­ed under white suprema­cy, the nation’s lead­ers will con­tin­ue to twist them­selves into pret­zels to cir­cum­vent the US Constitution and cit­i­zens’ rights in order not just to main­tain con­trol but keep the mass­es subjugated.
Perhaps the great­est threat to the civ­il order in the coun­try is the lack of jus­tice per­pet­u­at­ed by Prosecutors and Judges who are in the pock­ets of Police Unions and there­fore con­strained from cit­ing in the inter­est of jus­tice for all citizens.
Police depart­ments have no rea­son to change their behav­ior. There are enough racist Republican politi­cians and some Democrats who will con­tin­ue to pour resources into these morass swamps of racism on ginned-up fears of esca­lat­ing crime sta­tis­tics. Instituted into some depart­ments are so-called Office of Professional Standards, which are oxy­morons, in sim­ple terms, bull­shit (mb)

The Kansas Highway Patrol “has waged war on motorists,” a fed­er­al judge wrote in a scathing rul­ing against the agency’s prac­tice of extend­ing car stops in hopes of dis­cov­er­ing drugs. In the order filed Friday, U.S. District Judge Kathryn H. Vratil wrote that the patrol’s tac­tics in traf­fic stops vio­lat­ed the Constitution.
The prac­tice called the “Kansas two-step” is a maneu­ver in which troop­ers at the end of a traf­fic stop take a cou­ple of steps toward their patrol car before turn­ing around to ini­ti­ate a vol­un­tary inter­ac­tion with the driver.
The strat­e­gy would buy the patrol extra time to probe for incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion or get a drug-sniff­ing dog to a location.
“As wars go, this one is rel­a­tive­ly easy,” Vratil wrote. “It’s sim­ple and cheap, and for motorists, it’s not a fair fight. The war is basi­cal­ly a ques­tion of num­bers: stop enough cars, and you’re bound to dis­cov­er drugs. And what’s the harm if a few con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are tram­pled along the way?”

The Kansas Highway Patrol did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to The Star’s request for com­ment. In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the patrol on behalf of sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als who were sub­ject­ed to the “two-step” strategy.
Sharon Brett, legal direc­tor for the ACLU of Kansas, called the rul­ing a “huge win” for those dri­ving on Kansas’ highways.
“Today’s deci­sion val­i­dates that motorists’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights can­not be cast aside under the guise of a ‘war on drugs’. It also demon­strates that courts will not tol­er­ate the cow­boy men­tal­i­ty of polic­ing that sub­jects our cit­i­zens to con­di­tions of humil­i­a­tion, degra­da­tion, and, in some trag­ic cas­es, vio­lence,” Brett said in a statement.
The ACLU had argued the “two-step” vio­lat­ed dri­vers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights pro­tect­ing them from unrea­son­able search and seizure and alleged. They argued the tac­tic was used to tar­get dri­vers com­ing from or head­ing to states where mar­i­jua­na is legal, despite pre­vi­ous court rul­ings lim­it­ing how police can use infor­ma­tion about a vehicle’s ori­gin and destination.

Kansas is one of just three states with no form of legal mar­i­jua­na or THC. Possession of the drug remains a Class B mis­de­meanor even as the state is sur­round­ed on three sides by states that either allow recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na or have an exten­sive med­i­c­i­nal pro­gram. “As a result, all dri­vers on I‑70 have mov­ing tar­gets on their backs,” Vratil said, adding that troop­ers tar­get­ed out-of-state dri­vers and sub­ject­ed them to a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of search­es based on where they were trav­el­ing to or from. She also con­clud­ed that a few sec­onds of dis­en­gage­ment was insuf­fi­cient “for rea­son­able dri­vers to feel free to leave.” Earlier this year, two juries found that indi­vid­ual troop­ers employ­ing the strat­e­gy had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. This is the first rul­ing to hold the agency itself, specif­i­cal­ly for­mer Superintendent Herman Jones, cul­pa­ble for the prac­tice. Testifying in this case in May, Jones said the two troop­ers who were found to have vio­lat­ed rates had not yet faced dis­ci­pline. He could not recall whether the trooper’s super­vi­sors had been dis­ci­plined. He said at the time that troop­ers had no incen­tive to search vehi­cles illegally.

Jones retired from the patrol last month after a tenure marked by alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment and gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. This week, a fed­er­al judge ruled in favor of Jones in a sex­u­al harass­ment law­suit brought by sev­er­al cur­rent and for­mer female employ­ees. While the judge did not rule on the alle­ga­tions them­selves, she said Jones had qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty and that the alle­ga­tions against him were not severe enough to mer­it legal action. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly appoint­ed Erik Smith, a for­mer top offi­cial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, to take over for Jones lead­ing the agency. The Kansas State Senate will vote on his con­fir­ma­tion next year. The lawsuit’s par­ties have until Aug. 14 to respond to the terms of a pos­si­ble injunc­tion. The injunc­tion would require troop­ers to doc­u­ment all stops, deten­tions, and search­es. That report would require troop­ers to include infor­ma­tion about the dura­tion of the stop and how it concluded. 
Troopers would also have to noti­fy and get approval from a super­vi­sor for con­sen­su­al search­es and let the dri­ver know they can revoke con­sent at any time. Troopers would have to under­go 24 hours of annu­al train­ing on inves­ti­ga­to­ry stops. The injunc­tion would remain in effect for four years unless KHP met the require­ments sooner.

Teen left in ‘excruciating pain’ by officer during traffic stop, California suit says.

 

“Her father is a cop with the same depart­ment, and I didn’t expect this kind of behav­ior from his col­leagues,” she said. “I felt help­less. To watch my daugh­ter suf­fer this unpro­voked bru­tal­i­ty, beg­ging for help, and just be told to just sit and watch, was absolute­ly hor­ri­fy­ing.” The family’s lawyer, Stanley Goff, said the teen was charged after the inci­dent but declined to name the charge. He said they are fight­ing the charge in juve­nile court and antic­i­pate that it will be dis­missed. The law­suit accus­es offi­cers of using exces­sive force and seeks dam­ages of an unspec­i­fied amount. The teen’s moth­er said in a state­ment that she hopes the law­suit will help bring more account­abil­i­ty to the police force and allow peo­ple to rebuild their con­fi­dence in law enforce­ment. “It breaks my heart when the peo­ple we rely on to pro­tect us are the ones harm­ing us,” she wrote. “This has got to change.”

Antioch officers referred to the police chief as ‘gorilla’ in texts: DA

So even when they have the doc­u­men­tary evi­dence and know deci­sive­ly who the scum­bags are, they are still not free and decertified.

“I’m only stop­ping them cuz they are black. F**k them.” This offi­cer’s text was uncov­ered in the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Antioch Police Department. The report revealed more racist texts and exchanges that demon­strat­ed how offi­cers used racial pro­fil­ing while on patrol.

Lubbock Police Department offi­cials placed an offi­cer on admin­is­tra­tive leave Thursday as they inves­ti­gate a video cir­cu­lat­ing on social media that appears to show the offi­cer drag­ging a woman across the ground dur­ing an arrest Wednesday morning.
A video was post­ed on the Facebook page Lubbock County Mugshots Wednesday after­noon that shows an LPD patrol offi­cer drag­ging a woman by her arms to his patrol car while she screams. LPD said in a news release Thursday the depart­ment became aware of the video Wednesday evening and placed the offi­cer — who was not iden­ti­fied — on leave Thursday morn­ing while the Office of Professional Standards inves­ti­gates. The arrest stems from a 7:33 a.m. check sub­ject call report­ed to Lubbock police for a per­son act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly in the 1600 block of 24^th Street, accord­ing to the news release. A police report obtained by the Avalanche-Journal states the offi­cer was not dis­patched to the call until more than an hour lat­er, and he found 48-year-old Mary Ramirez report­ed­ly rolling in the grass at Hood Park, near 24^th Street and Avenue Q. The report states the offi­cer believed Ramirez was the sus­pi­cious sub­ject ref­er­enced in the check sub­ject call.

According to the report, the offi­cer attempt­ed to ask Ramirez about her behav­ior but she report­ed­ly ignored him and tried to crawl away from him. The offi­cer wrote in his report that he sus­pect­ed Ramirez “was intox­i­cat­ed on some type of stim­u­lant” and “undoubt­ed­ly under the influ­ence of some drug dur­ing this event.” The offi­cer wrote, “I believed her to be a dan­ger to (her­self), unable to defend her­self, and with no option before me, I placed her under arrest.” The report states the offi­cer hand­cuffed Ramirez, who report­ed­ly tried to fight and kick the offi­cer and refused to walk to the police car. The offi­cer said he “pulled her in the soft grass” to the patrol car, but Ramirez report­ed­ly “bar­rel-rolled” down a hill and the offi­cer “had to drag her back to the vehi­cle again.”

“Finally, as I was drag­ging her, her pants came off so she was embar­rassed enough to get into my patrol vehi­cle, where she put her clothes back on,” the offi­cer wrote. “The Lubbock Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the video and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the arrest to deter­mine if there were any pol­i­cy vio­la­tions,” the department’s news release states. Ramirez was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center on charges of pub­lic intox­i­ca­tion and resist­ing arrest, both mis­de­meanors. No injuries were report­ed in the inci­dent, LPD said. The A‑J request­ed footage from the officer’s body-worn cam­era, but offi­cials denied the request, cit­ing an ongo­ing investigation.

The gun­man who ambushed three Fargo, North Dakota, police offi­cers in an unpro­voked attack Friday had an arse­nal that includ­ed 1,800 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and a home­made hand grenade, the state attor­ney gen­er­al said Wednesday.

Mohamad Barakat, 37, “absolute­ly ambushed” the offi­cers, firing a .223-cal­iber rifle from inside his vehi­cle Friday as police were respond­ing to a car acci­dent, Attorney General Drew Wrigley said.

One offi­cer, Jake Wallin, 23, was killed and two oth­ers were shot and wound­ed. Barakat was shot and killed by Police Officer Zach Robinson, offi­cials said.

Barakat also shot a woman who was stand­ing on the street after the unre­lat­ed car acci­dent. She was struck twice as she ran from the gun­fire, Wrigley said.

“In the wake of Mohamad Barakat’s mur­der­ous, unpro­voked attack, Officer Zach Robinson’s use of dead­ly force was rea­son­able, it was nec­es­sary, it was jus­ti­fied, and in all ways it was law­ful,” he said.

Robinson, who was in the road around 75 feet away, radioed for help and returned fire, and one of the bul­lets he fired dis­abled Barakat’s .223-cal­iber rifle, Wrigley said.

Barakat, who was wound­ed and now out­side his vehi­cle, got a 9 mm hand­gun and was “wav­ing it around” before Robinson even­tu­al­ly shot and killed him, Wrigley said.

The shoot­ing is under inves­ti­ga­tion, and offi­cials have said a motive is unknown.

Wrigley said the offi­cers, who were there for a traf­fic acci­dent, were shot with­out warn­ing or reason.

“He absolute­ly ambushed them from inside that vehi­cle. They had no way to know,” he said.

Inside the vehi­cle, inves­ti­ga­tors found the 1,800 rounds of .223-cal­iber ammu­ni­tion, explo­sives, gas can­is­ters and a home­made grenade with a fuse out of the top that was oper­a­tional, Wrigley said.

There were three long guns in all, one of which had a scope, as well as four hand­guns and a vest car­ry­ing mag­a­zines, he said.

The rifle used in the attack had two mag­a­zines that were attached side by side, car­ry­ing 60 rounds total, Wrigley said. Barakat fired 40 or 41 rounds before the rifle was struck and dis­abled, he said.

Mayor Tim Mahoney said that had police not killed Barakat, “we would have had many more casualties.”

Police Chief David Zibolski said it was remark­able that Robinson, armed with a hand­gun, was able to shoot Barakat and dis­able his rifle from 75 feet away while being shot at.

The inci­dent and the gun­fight last­ed around two min­utes, he said.

Wrigley said Robinson gave Barakat 16 direc­tives to raise his hands or put the gun down before he shot Barakat.

Officials are expect­ed to release more infor­ma­tion Friday.

The shoot­ing was cap­tured on police body-worn cam­eras, which Wrigley said were reviewed along with oth­er evidence.

He said that the gun­fire by Barakat was so rapid that it sound­ed like ful­ly auto­mat­ic fire and that Robinson believed it was ful­ly automatic.

“It will fool any­body who lis­tens to it,” Wrigley said.

Officials believe that Barakat legal­ly acquired all the weapons and that he was not pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing firearms, but the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, Wrigley said.

In addi­tion to the guns in the car, addi­tion­al firearms were found in a search of his res­i­dence, he said. Barakat car­ried the guns to his car in a rolling suit­case, he said.

Gov. Doug Burgum ordered Tuesday that flags be flown at half-staff through Saturday in hon­or of Wallin, the offi­cer who was killed.

The two offi­cers who were wound­ed were still hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal but sta­ble con­di­tion Wednesday and are improv­ing, said Zibolski, the police chief.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on NBCNews​.com

Time and again, I write that the cri­sis of police vio­lence in the United States is not just an issue of vio­lent, poor­ly-trained, big­ot­ed igno­ra­mus­es in uni­form; but a com­plete struc­ture of racism that we see man­i­fest­ed large­ly in police action.
The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is far­ci­cal. It will not deal appro­pri­ate­ly and in a just way with its own foot­sol­diers, the police.
The Black com­mu­ni­ty should not expect to get jus­tice from this flawed sys­tem that was not cre­at­ed t be just and fair but designed to be exact­ly what it is.(mb)

A fed­er­al judge has dis­missed a law­suit filed by a Mississippi woman who says she was hit by a stray police bul­let while lying in bed. Latasha Smith, 49, was in bed on Dec. 11 when an offi­cer from the state-run Capitol Police fired sev­er­al bul­lets at a sus­pect run­ning through her Jackson apart­ment com­plex, accord­ing to her fed­er­al com­plaint. A stray bul­let entered Smith’s apart­ment and struck her arm. Smith, who said her teenage daugh­ter was home dur­ing the episode, was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. In April, Smith sued Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell and Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey, argu­ing that police offi­cers under their watch vio­lat­ed her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by act­ing with “delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence” for her life. She also claimed that Tindell and Luckey failed to prop­er­ly train officers.
In a Wednesday rul­ing, U.S. District Judge Tom Lee grant­ed Tindell and Luckey’s request to dis­miss the law­suit, writ­ing that they can­not be liable because they are not alleged to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the shoot­ing inci­dent and because state offi­cials can­not be sued for vio­la­tions of state law in fed­er­al court.

This web­site, and oth­ers, has been laser-like focused on bring­ing you the many ways American police oper­ate with total impuni­ty. This impuni­ty comes from rul­ings by the high­est court that, at best, is ille­git­i­mate and, worse, corrupt.
American police are not only gangs that oper­ate out­side the law at heart. They are, for the most part, unac­count­able and deeply corrupt.
There is real­ly no good police depart­ment in the United States that is not taint­ed by racism and prej­u­dice. As I have said before, this prob­lem can­not be reme­di­at­ed. The entire con­struct of polic­ing obtained from slave patrols must be reimag­ined to have any sem­blance of authen­tic­i­ty to con­scious peo­ple who are not Caucasians.

An inves­ti­ga­tion is report­ed­ly being launched in Connecticut after an audit found a “high like­li­hood” that hun­dreds of Connecticut State Police troop­ers have been fal­si­fy­ing tens of thou­sands of traf­fic tick­et records over the past decade to hide ram­pant racism, accord­ing to CT Insider.
The report found that there was a “high like­li­hood” that at least 25,996 tick­ets were com­plete­ly made up between 2014 and 2021. A fur­ther 32,587 records dur­ing that same peri­od show “sig­nif­i­cant inac­cu­ra­cies,” and audi­tors feel those may also be false. Remember that the audi­tors empha­sized that their analy­sis was extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and “the num­ber of fal­si­fied records is like­ly larg­er than we con­fi­dent­ly iden­ti­fied.” The false reports were sub­mit­ted by about one-quar­ter of the 1,301 troop­ers who wrote tick­ets in the time period.

The out­let also reports that the find­ings alleged a sys­tem­at­ic vio­la­tion of state laws and that the mis­re­port­ing skewed racial pro­fil­ing data to make it appear as though troop­ers were tick­et­ing more white dri­vers and few­er non-white dri­vers than they real­ly were.
“This report sug­gests a his­tor­i­cal pat­tern and prac­tice among some troop­ers and con­sta­bles of sub­mit­ting infrac­tion records that were like­ly false or inac­cu­rate,” CT Insider reports the audit read.
Now, Governor Ned Lamont’s admin­is­tra­tion is said to be con­duct­ing an “inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion.” However, he also urged the pub­lic not to rush to judg­ment and took issue with the tick­ets being labeled as “false.” He report­ed­ly empha­sized that the issues had been declin­ing over the years.

From CT Insider:

The out­let says that the part of the audit that focused on traf­fic stops that took place in 2018 war­rants “con­cern that the Connecticut State Police have appeared each year as hav­ing sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dis­par­i­ty in either or both of minor­i­ty traf­fic stops and vehic­u­lar search­es.” At this point, I sug­gest head­ing over to CT Insider for the full sto­ry. You’ll get a great break­down of who exact­ly was fal­si­fy­ing the reports and how the audit came to be back in the late 2010s.

A California man who was left par­a­lyzed after he was slammed to the ground dur­ing a traf­fic stop won a $20 mil­lion set­tle­ment, one of the largest in the state’s his­to­ry, offi­cials announced Tuesday. Gregory Gross, an Army vet­er­an who lives in Yuba City, sued the police depart­ment in 2022 after police offi­cers used “pain com­pli­ance” tech­niques and expressed dis­be­lief when he repeat­ed­ly cried out, “I can’t feel my legs.” Police offi­cers also dis­missed Gross when he said, “I can’t breathe,” while being held face­down on the lawn out­side a hos­pi­tal, video released by Gross’s lawyers shows.
Gross was accused of dri­ving drunk and caus­ing a slow-speed col­li­sion in April 2020. Gross was left with a bro­ken neck and under­went two surg­eries to fuse his spine. He said the offi­cers’ use of force left him unable to walk or care for him­self, and he now needs round-the-clock nurs­ing care for the rest of his life.

“We are not against the police,” said Attorney Moseley Collins, who rep­re­sents Gross. “We are for the police, but we are against police bru­tal­i­ty when it occurs.”
The set­tle­ment is among one of the largest police mis­con­duct set­tle­ments in California his­to­ry. In May, the state agreed to pay $24 mil­lion to the fam­i­ly of a man who died in police cus­tody after scream­ing, “I can’t breathe,” as mul­ti­ple offi­cers restrained him while try­ing to take a blood sample.
The set­tle­ment will also result in some reforms in the Yuba City police depart­ment. Yuba City Police Chief Brian Baker will be at a news con­fer­ence Tuesday to pro­vide details.

In the police body cam­era video sup­plied by Gross’ lawyers, an offi­cer is seen twist­ing Gross’ already hand­cuffed arms and forcibly seat­ing him on a lawn. At one point, offi­cers slammed him on the ground and held him face­down as Gross repeat­ed­ly cried out that he could­n’t feel his legs and he could­n’t breathe.
“Mr. Gross, we are done with your sil­ly lit­tle games,” an offi­cer tells him.
In September 2021, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law bar­ring police from using cer­tain face­down holds that have led to mul­ti­ple unin­tend­ed deaths. The bill was aimed at expand­ing on the state’s ban on choke­holds in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

The ques­tion is not that a police offi­cer can and most cer­tain­ly will make mis­takes on the job. As a for­mer cop, I will tell you it is not only pos­si­ble but assured. Like every oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers, police offi­cers make mistakes. 
So it is not that we expect police offi­cers to be per­fect; it is that as cit­i­zens, we should expect that police depart­ments mon­i­tor offi­cers for pat­terns of abuse and take dras­tic reme­di­al action to retrain or remove prob­lem officers.
But, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief and the spiel that police depart­ments put out in their canned respons­es when out­rage erupts, American cops are allowed to oper­ate on their own and in groups and do what­ev­er they want.
The trag­ic irony is that cit­i­zens are usu­al­ly forced to lodge com­plaints to the very police depart­ment that has abused them, which is usu­al­ly met with opti­mum hos­til­i­ty and intimidation.
In the final analy­sis, it is designed this way to ensure state and local con­trol of the peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those they wish to dom­i­nate and control.
In the case below, a for­mer New York City Cop, who served 20 years left for Florida, one of the many vio­lent crim­i­nals with badges whom Ron Desantis encour­aged to come to Florida to police that state. In oth­er words, Desantis called mur­der­ers and oth­er abusers to come to that state to abuse and kill cit­i­zens there, and they re-elect­ed him with a large plu­ral­i­ty of the vote.

The NYPD is the world’s largest police force, with an esti­mat­ed 36.000 cops on their pay­roll. I sus­pect there are many more, but the cit­i­zens are forced to pay for this mon­strous force large­ly of indis­ci­pline thugs whether they like it or not.
Imagine a sin­gle cop with­in that large army amass­ing 50 com­plaints over a peri­od of two decades. How vio­lent and abu­sive was this cop? He aver­aged 2.5 com­plaints each year and was still allowed to remain on the force to abuse cit­i­zens of the city.
Do you know why he was allowed to remain in the NYPD and was wel­comed to Boca Raton with open arms? He was not allowed to remain in New York and wel­comed to Florida despite being a vio­lent thug, but because of it.
His supe­ri­ors knew he was vio­lent, but they also knew that the sub­ject of this crim­i­nal’s vio­lent ten­den­cies were black peo­ple in New York City, so he was retained for twen­ty years.
To add insult to injury, the cit­i­zens of New York City will be forced to pay a pen­sion and oth­er ben­e­fits to this ani­mal and his fam­i­ly for the remain­der of their mis­er­able lives.
That has always been the game plan for the NYPD and NYFD. To the mem­bers of these two depart­ments, these pub­lic jobs belong to them s a sort of fam­i­ly busi­ness. So fir­ing this low-life thug was not going to happen

Public out­rage over police con­duct and the amount of force used dur­ing the arrest of a preg­nant Black woman has shed light on a new rev­e­la­tion about the offi­cer involved. Viral clips of the May 22 inci­dent have cir­cu­lat­ed online in recent days, draw­ing atten­tion to the ongo­ing police inves­ti­ga­tion and the now-retired mem­ber of the force.
Former Boca Raton police offi­cer Matthew McNichol and his part­ner respond­ed to a call about a pos­si­ble domes­tic dis­pute at a Mobil gas sta­tion two months ago. When they arrived on the scene, they encoun­tered Nerillia Laurent and her boyfriend, Harry Hardy. Laurent, who was around five months preg­nant at the time, con­firmed to ABC 25 that she and Hardy were involved in a heat­ed dis­agree­ment after the car stalled.
“My boyfriend was stand­ing in front of the car try­ing to get me to open the hood, but I don’t know any­thing about cars,” said the expec­tant moth­er. Calls to 911 alleged that Hardy had been observed bang­ing his fists on the car’s hood, but claims of a full-out domes­tic sit­u­a­tion were misconstrued.

Bodycam footage showed McNichol, who is white, request­ing that Laurent hand over her license and reg­is­tra­tion, but she refused. Instead, she insist­ed that they wait until her moth­er arrived. “How aggres­sive he was — he was scar­ing me. I didn’t want to piss him off any­more. I didn’t want to reach for some­thing, and then he thinks I’m reach­ing for some­thing else,” she explained. The moth­er of four was pulled from the vehi­cle after she failed to comply.
After being thrown to the ground, she screamed, “I’m preg­nant! Get off my stom­ach.” McNichol con­tin­ued to place her under arrest as he respond­ed, “I don’t care. You don’t have a right not to give me a license and reg­is­tra­tion.” Days after the inci­dent, Police Chief Michele Miuccio issued a state­ment: “While the respond­ing offi­cers had a duty to iden­ti­fy the peo­ple involved and inves­ti­gate if a crime took place or any­one was at risk, one of our officer’s actions did not help to de-esca­late the sit­u­a­tion. I take our com­mit­ment to pro­fes­sion­al police ser­vice seri­ous­ly and hold that expec­ta­tion for all of our per­son­nel in all inter­ac­tions with the com­mu­ni­ty we serve.

In a report pub­lished by the Sun Sentinel on Friday (July 7), it was revealed that McNichol was retired and that his notice was sub­mit­ted on June 1, only a week after the inci­dent occurred. Prior to work­ing in Florida, he had been with the New York Police Department for 20 years, amassed 50 civil­ian com­plaints, and been for­mal­ly dis­ci­plined five times.

I am hes­i­tant to speak on the argu­ments being used around this, anoth­er police killing of anoth­er Black man. As a peo­ple, we must rec­og­nize the soci­ety in which we live-that it is vio­lent­ly anti-Black. As such, there can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for steal­ing any­thing, regard­less of the val­ue or how jus­ti­fied we may feel about tak­ing some­thing to sat­is­fy hunger or thirst.
We must rec­og­nize that ask­ing for some­thing to eat is always a bet­ter approach if the prop­er­ty own­er says no; that answer must be the end of the con­ver­sa­tion. The own­er of the prop­er­ty has every right to say no.
On the issue of police and their reac­tion, speak­ing about American police vio­lence is like shout­ing in the wind. Either the Black com­mu­ni­ty is going to rise up and put an end to police vio­lence, all forty-one mil­lion of us, or we are going to keep pump­ing our fists and yelling at this monster.
Neither will bring change. As the great Jamaica Barrister and Politician Norman Manley once said. “There can be no vic­to­ry with­out a few bro­ken skulls.”
No bul­ly will stop bul­ly­ing sim­ply because you yell and complain.……There is only one way to deal with bullies.

New Rochelle police shot man over fruit, fam­i­ly alleges.

The fam­i­ly of the 37-year-old man New Rochelle police shot this week called Friday for wit­ness­es to come for­ward to piece togeth­er the events that left him on life sup­port. A police detec­tive shot Jarrell Garris, a New Rochelle native, on Monday while attempt­ing to arrest Garris after accus­ing him of steal­ing food, said New York State Police, who are inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. Some footage pre­ced­ing the shoot­ing has been released by the New Rochelle Police Department. On a swel­ter­ing sum­mer after­noon, Rev. Kevin McCall, Garris’ fam­i­ly spokesper­son, told reporters the shoot­ing was over a banana and grapes Garris ate.

The fam­i­ly held an emo­tion­al press con­fer­ence in the shade, sur­round­ed by dozens of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, many of whom knew Garris and his fam­i­ly for years. Garris went by ”Jarrel” on his Facebook page, while some fam­i­ly mem­bers used the spelling ”Jarrell” and law enforce­ment used ”Jerrel.” “If you had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet my son, you would love him,” said Garris’ father, Raymond Fowler, 58, out­side St. Catherine A.M.E. Zion Church, just feet from where police shot Garris in the street on Lincoln Avenue. “To know my son is to love him.” Earlier on Friday, some fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers said Garris had died, but lat­er Fowler, a long­time New Rochelle native, clar­i­fied that Garris is on life support. 
Garris was in the area to pick up his son and take him back to Greensboro, North Carolina, where Garris had been liv­ing for less than a year. They planned to head home Monday evening. But at around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, police respond­ed to reports of a per­son steal­ing food at New Rochelle Farms, a gro­cery store on Lincoln and North avenues. Bodycam footage released by the New Rochelle Police Department shows police offi­cers Kari Bird and Gabrielle Chavarry, along with Det. Steven Conn, con­fronting Garris on Lincoln Avenue and ask­ing about stolen food.

State Police released the offi­cers’ names Wednesday, and all three offi­cers have been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the results of the State Police inves­ti­ga­tion. Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah’s Office is also inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. In the body­cam footage, Garris doesn’t appear to respond to the offi­cers. Bird and Chavarry fol­low him across the street while a third offi­cer, Conn, approach­es. The video then shows Garris in a scuf­fle with the offi­cers as they attempt to place him under arrest. In the phys­i­cal strug­gle, Garris reach­es in the direc­tion of one of the officer’s hol­stered firearms, the video shows, though it’s unclear which offi­cer he reached toward. He then top­ples over a female offi­cer, and one offi­cer shouts, “He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,” the video shows. In a press release Monday night, the police depart­ment said Garris reached at the officer’s gun “in an attempt to remove it from the hol­ster.” The video pro­vid­ed by the police depart­ment ends before Conn shoots his weapon. It is unclear why the video ends, and the USA Today Network has filed a Freedom of Information request for the full body cam­era footage from all three offi­cers. While Conn attempt­ed to arrest Garris, he fired one round from his depart­ment-issued firearm and hit Garris, said State Police. Bodycam video shows a hand­cuff on Garris’ right hand dur­ing the strug­gle. No addi­tion­al rounds were fired, State Police said. Officers used life­sav­ing tech­niques, State Police said. Garris was ulti­mate­ly trans­port­ed to Westchester Medical Center. He was in a coma in the days fol­low­ing the shooting.

Jarrel Garris’ family calls for full video, witnesses

Garris’ fam­i­ly, through their spokesper­son McCall, dis­put­ed the events police recount­ed. They called for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion with Attorney General Letitia James and for a full video to be released of the encounter.“You want to be trans­par­ent, release the whole video to show the pic­tures of the truth,” McCall told reporters. “The video does not lie. This young man should be here today. His death sen­tence should not be his eat­ing fruit, grapes, and a banana.” In the mean­time, the fam­i­ly also request­ed help from wit­ness­es of the shooting.

“If you’re a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and you saw what hap­pened,” fam­i­ly attor­ney Sanford Rubenstein said, “come for­ward and share that with the Attorney General’s office. This fam­i­ly wants jus­tice, and this fam­i­ly pleads for the com­mu­ni­ty to come for­ward.” They called for all three police offi­cers to be fired, and they also called on New Rochelle Farms, the store where police accused Garris of tak­ing food, to be closed down. Ahead of the press con­fer­ence, City of New Rochelle offi­cials issued a state­ment on the shoot­ing. “We are ful­ly com­mit­ted to a trans­par­ent, thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion and will con­tin­ue to work dili­gent­ly with out­side agen­cies in their inde­pen­dent review while also address­ing the legit­i­mate con­cerns and ques­tions that arise when­ev­er a police offi­cer is involved in a shoot­ing,” said the state­ment by Mayor Noam Bramson, City Manager Kathleen Gill, Police Commissioner Robert Gazzola, and Councilmember Yadira Ramos-Herbert, the pre­sump­tive next may­or after June’s Democratic primary.

Mental illness known in community, father says

Fowler said his son strug­gled with men­tal health, includ­ing schiz­o­phre­nia, and had been con­tact­ed by New Rochelle police before for well­ness checks. “My thing is they knew who he was, and then they know me as well,” Fowler pre­vi­ous­ly told USA TODAY Network New York. “There’s no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.” Garris grew up just min­utes walk­ing from the scene of the shoot­ing, Fowler said. The area where police shot Garris was in the Lincoln Avenue cor­ri­dor, a his­toric African American com­mu­ni­ty in New Rochelle.

“As a com­mu­ni­ty, we are deter­mined to see a change, not just talk about it,” said the Rev. Wallace Noble, the lead min­is­ter at St. Catherine, the church just feet from where police shot Garris. “But even if we have to orga­nize and do some­thing our­selves, we want to see a change in the com­mu­ni­ty. There has to be a bet­ter rela­tion­ship between police and the com­mu­ni­ty.” In North Carolina, Garris had been work­ing as a care­giv­er for a res­i­dent home, his girl­friend, Hadiyyah Harrell, 32, said in a text mes­sage. “He was doing good,” his sis­ter, Tiana Fowler, who lived with him in Greensboro, said as she fought through tears. “He worked sev­en days a week, sev­en days a week and came home.” Garris — known in the neigh­bor­hood as CeeTwo, the same nick­name his dad uses — has extend­ed fam­i­ly and friends still liv­ing in New Rochelle.

‘He was one of the good guys’

After the press con­fer­ence, peo­ple marched to New Rochelle Farms and held a ral­ly in the street out­side. They were both protest­ing the store, which called police, and police’s action. At one point, sev­er­al peo­ple went inside the store and knocked over pro­duce dis­plays. No arrests were made, New Rochelle Police said.

On Saturday, two days before the shoot­ing, Garris knocked on the win­dow of Ivin Harper’s new black Cadillac Escalade to com­pli­ment him on his truck. Harper, 44, grew up with Garris’ fam­i­ly and went to school with Garris. Before their five-minute con­ver­sa­tion, he hadn’t seen Garris since his move to North Carolina. “He was one of the good guys,” he said. On Monday, Robin Cowart, 59, saw Garris about an hour before the police shoot­ing on Horton Avenue, just blocks away from the scene. He was alright, she said, laugh­ing with old friends, before he left down toward Lincoln Avenue. Cowart has known his moth­er and father from the Heritage Homes, pub­lic hous­ing for­mer­ly known as Hartley Homes that is locat­ed just around the cor­ner from where police shot Garris. Cowart lat­er saw him on Lincoln Avenue, on the ground, not respon­sive, as emer­gency med­ical per­son­nel tried to resus­ci­tate him. “He was a good dude, had a good heart,” said Cowart, who stood on the cor­ner of Lincoln and North avenues, ral­ly­ing with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. “I don’t know why they would do this.”

In front of New Rochelle Farms, Henderson Clarke, 46, led chants oppo­site police offi­cers. New Rochelle police killed Clarke’s broth­er, Kamal Flowers, 24, on June 5, 2020, about a mile from where police shot Garris. A New Rochelle police offi­cer fatal­ly shot Flowers after Flowers ran from police dur­ing a traf­fic stop. Police said Flowers point­ed a gun at the offi­cer before he was shot. The attor­ney gen­er­al did not inves­ti­gate the shoot­ing, her office said then, because it did not fall under her juris­dic­tion. The attor­ney gen­er­al’s office can inves­ti­gate cas­es in which an unarmed civil­ian is killed by police. Later that year, a grand jury vot­ed not to indict Officer Alec McKenna. Clarke dis­put­ed this account. He also ques­tioned the account by police that Garris reached for a gun, cit­ing the video. “This hap­pens, it’s the same thing,” he said. “The broth­er was eat­ing fruit. He was hun­gry.” During the protest, peo­ple dis­trib­uted ice-cold water in the July heat.

Driving down a stretch of the Taconic Parkway in Dutchess County some­time after sev­en one morn­ing recent­ly, we came upon a state police traf­fic stop on a nar­row strip of the two-lane road with no guardrail on either side.
It is a time of the morn­ing when work­ing peo­ple rush to get to work so they can take care of their fam­i­lies. The salaries they earn are hijacked even before they receive them, and tax­es are removed, and there­after, almost every pen­ny they spend is taxed to pay for goods and ser­vices they often­times do not receive.
The traf­fic stop cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for the dri­ving pub­lic based on its loca­tion as motorists head­ing south hap­pened upon it and had to brake sud­den­ly after round­ing the corner.
My wife and I simul­ta­ne­ous­ly won­dered why it was so impor­tant to effec­tu­ate a traf­fic stop at that time of the morn­ing, let alone at that loca­tion, jeop­ar­diz­ing lives to col­lect rev­enue. What traf­fic offense could have neces­si­tat­ed that lev­el of igno­rance and abuse of state power?
To top it off, New York has a “move over’ law that forces motorists to move over and away from emer­gency vehi­cles when they are stopped on the roadways.
Motorists had nowhere to go except over the embank­ment or careen into each oth­er just so some lousy cop could exer­cise authority.
But the New York State Legislature isn’t done. When the morons behold­en to the police unions you elect have noth­ing to do, they find ways to give more pow­er to the police state and take away more of your rights.
They are already plan­ning to broad­en the ‘move-over’ law to include oth­er vehi­cles, not just fire, ambu­lance, and police.
They argue that there are road fatal­i­ties year­ly from motorists crash­ing into emer­gency vehi­cles. They do not include in their nar­ra­tive that the actions of [Police], in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ue to jeop­ar­dize the lives of the trav­el­ing pub­lic con­trary to the lying nar­ra­tive they spout.
The rapa­cious desire to fleece the American cit­i­zen of their hard-earned resources have seen state and local leg­is­la­tures ramp­ing up non­sen­si­cal laws aimed at fill­ing rev­enue cof­fers, all while lying to a gullible and igno­rant pop­u­la­tion that it is about their safety.
The fact of the mat­ter is that on any bright and sun­ny sum­mer day, dri­ving down Taconic Parkway into the Bronx, you will encounter State and County Police hid­den in des­ig­nat­ed spots and patrolling the park­way. Driving on the Taconic Parkway and Routes 84 and 684, I usu­al­ly count the num­ber of them I see.
However, if there is a lit­tle rain show­er, they all dis­ap­pear. They are not there to help the pub­lic. A fend­er ben­der will result in a long wait. You will be told there is only one troop­er on duty, and he is at anoth­er acci­dent scene. Where did all the rest of them go?
Fewer peo­ple are dri­ving above the speed lim­it; they pre­sume few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to extract stu­pid tax­es from motorists who speed or fail to wear a seatbelt.
It is all about rev­enue col­lec­tion and has noth­ing to do with your safe­ty or mine. So they will con­tin­ue jeop­ar­diz­ing your safe­ty and mine to pro­tect the rev­enue collectors.

A cou­ple of days ago, two French motor­cy­cle cops stopped a 17-year motorist Nahel M in a yel­low BMW motor­car; two oth­er occu­pants were in the car with the young dri­ver. What tran­spired still remains murky, but things esca­lat­ed quick­ly, with one cop threat­en­ing to shoot the young man dead.
He did just that!!!
Since then, vio­lent clash­es have occurred in the sub­urbs around the French Capital, Paris. Thousands of demon­stra­tors have clashed night­ly with French police, and cars and busi­ness­es have been torched, result­ing in many arrest­ed and many cops injured. The traf­fic stop is rumored to have been over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion. Across the Western world, we see the mass mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police and the heap­ing up of pow­er, includ­ing the right to use dead­ly force on civilians.

Police ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed Nahel drove his car towards them to injure them, but footage lat­er showed he was shot at point-blank range by an offi­cer point­ing his weapon at him through the dri­ver’s win­dow.
Those of you who recall the mur­der of George Floyd will remem­ber Minneapolis police lied that mis­ter Floyd suf­fered a med­ical emer­gency until a video tak­en by a teenage girl sur­faced show­ing Derek Chauvin and the oth­er mur­der­ers assist­ing him end­ed George Floyd’s life.
As it is in the United States, where police are giv­en wide lat­i­tude to act as judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, French police are allowed to shoot when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to risk oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safety.
Of course, allow­ing police to shoot in those sit­u­a­tions opens the door for the types of killings that hap­pened to Nahel M.
If that cop did not feel he could get away with mur­der­ing anoth­er human being over a minor traf­fic infrac­tion, he would not have threat­ened death to the young­ster, and he cer­tain­ly would not have pulled the trigger.

When career politi­cians seek­ing to cur­ry favor with police unions do not have any­thing pro­duc­tive to do, they default to cre­at­ing laws like the one in France that result­ed in the death of a 17-year-old teenag­er. Driving away from a traf­fic stop is com­plete­ly wrong, but the penal­ty [can­not] be to mur­der the offend­er. What kind of soci­eties are we fos­ter­ing if the gov­ern­ment can end the life of cit­i­zens for such frivolities?
[In 2016, at a Paris hous­ing estate, a male cop suf­fered seri­ous burns and was put in an induced coma after a group of youths pelt­ed petrol bombs at his patrol car. Police unions protest­ed and demand­ed a strong response from the gov­ern­ment. Following that inci­dent, the law on the use of firearms by police was amend­ed. Officers were allowed to shoot when faced with one of five sit­u­a­tions — one being when a dri­ver ignores an order to stop and is like­ly to pose a risk to oth­er peo­ple’s life or phys­i­cal safe­ty]. Knee-jerk appease­ment to police union cost lives.
Mathilde Panot, pres­i­dent of the left-wing polit­i­cal par­ty La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment for send­ing anti-ter­ror police into work­ing-class areas and says President Emmanuel Macron “knows only repression”.
Writing on Twitter, she adds the gov­ern­ment must repeal the law’s “license to kill” and rebuild the police from the ground up.

This writer con­tin­ues to make the case that hir­ing more police, mil­i­ta­riz­ing them, and empow­er­ing them by pass­ing more bru­tal laws do noth­ing to elim­i­nate crime. Governments have a sacred duty to elim­i­nate injus­tice, pover­ty, and oth­er social mal­adies, which are all ampli­fied by over-polic­ing and white cops who vio­lent­ly inter­act with those under­served com­mu­ni­ties with racial animus.
Hatred for the poor and pow­er­less is not a strat­e­gy. Ultimately the tears and frus­tra­tion of those who are down­trod­den will boil over, cul­mi­nat­ing in a dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment for everyone.
Jobs, some­thing to live for, and equal oppor­tu­ni­ties go much fur­ther in cre­at­ing soci­etal har­mo­ny than anti-ter­ror cops and weapons of war…

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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.