By Jayla Withfield-

The com­plaint comes months after the Justice Department announced an inves­ti­ga­tion into the police depart­men­t’s employ­ment practices.

A 21-year vet­er­an of the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department filed a law­suit last month against the agency, alleg­ing that he was forced to meet ille­gal tick­et quo­tas and tar­get minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. The com­plaint came months after the Department of Justice announced an inves­ti­ga­tion into the police department’s employ­ment prac­tices and alleged dis­crim­i­na­tion against Black offi­cers. Edward Williams, a white man, alleges that over the last sev­en years, the depart­ment has threat­ened to demote offi­cers to the overnight shift if they didn’t ful­fill tick­et quo­tas. “When I first was con­tact­ed in regards to this mat­ter, I had to look into it, because I didn’t know that tick­et quo­tas were not legal,” Gerald Gray, Williams’s attor­ney, told Yahoo News. Ticket quo­tas have been ille­gal in Missouri since August 2016. The law states: “No polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion or law enforce­ment agency shall have a pol­i­cy requir­ing or encour­ag­ing an employ­ee to issue a cer­tain num­ber of cita­tions for traf­fic vio­la­tions on a dai­ly, week­ly, month­ly, quar­ter­ly, year­ly, or anoth­er quo­ta basis.” “But even with these laws in place, there’s either sub­tle or overt tick­et quo­tas that are occur­ring all the time,” Jay Beeber, direc­tor of pol­i­cy and research at the National Motorists Association, told Yahoo News.

According to Williams’s law­suit, KCPD sergeants ranked offi­cers by their tick­et counts and rep­ri­mand­ed offi­cers with low tick­et num­bers by tak­ing away their duties and ben­e­fits and giv­ing them unsat­is­fac­to­ry marks on eval­u­a­tions. While tick­et quo­tas are ille­gal in sev­er­al states, Beeber says, they still exist behind closed doors because of the rev­enue they bring in. “There are lots of exam­ples around the coun­try where a lot of [cities’] bud­get comes from tick­ets, and so for their offi­cers, that’s their main job,” Beeber said. In 2016, Kansas City police wrote approx­i­mate­ly 18,000 traf­fic tick­ets each month. From 2021 to 2022, Kansas City’s bud­get includ­ed $6.6 mil­lion from traf­fic vio­la­tions. The Kansas City Star report­ed that “a drop of 25% would cost the city more than $1.6 mil­lion in rev­enue.” Other cities also use tick­et­ing to fund their bud­gets. For instance, in Chicago, tick­et­ing brought in near­ly $264 mil­lion in 2016, adding up to about 7% of the city’s oper­at­ing bud­get. And experts say tick­et quo­tas hit mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties the hard­est. “They are cre­at­ing a huge finan­cial bur­den in these com­mu­ni­ties,” Beeber said.

In Missouri, Black peo­ple make up only 11% of the pop­u­la­tion, but they “are sub­ject­ed to more than 42% of traf­fic stops. In con­trast, white peo­ple in Missouri make up 80% of the state’s pop­u­la­tion and account for less than 25% of all traf­fic stops,” Tom Bastian, deputy direc­tor for com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the ACLU of Missouri, told Yahoo News. According to legal experts, Missourians have been con­cerned with bias in traf­fic enforce­ment for decades. In 2000, the state passed a law that cre­at­ed the annu­al Vehicle Stops Report to track dis­par­i­ties in who is pulled over by police. In 2021, a report found that Black dri­vers were pulled over at a high­er rate than white dri­vers. “Part of that is a socioe­co­nom­ic thing; those neigh­bor­hoods tend to be poor,” Benjamin Easter, a Kansas City crim­i­nal defense lawyer, told Yahoo News. “And so peo­ple are going to have cars with more things wrong with them. They’re going to have more reg­is­tra­tion issues with their car, etc.”

But Easter says the root of the prob­lem is that police in Kansas City aren’t account­able to the local res­i­dents. While most cities con­trol their police depart­ments, the KCPD is run by a five-mem­ber board of police com­mis­sion­ers, four of whom are appoint­ed by the Missouri gov­er­nor and one of whom is the may­or. “This is just anoth­er strong case [for] why we need local con­trol of the police here in Kansas City. The police chief and the local police are appoint­ed by the state com­mit­tee rather than a local enti­ty,” Easter said. Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves denied Williams’s alle­ga­tions in a state­ment released on March 22. “Our depart­ment is ded­i­cat­ed to polic­ing that is both equi­table and fair in all aspects of our duties. We do not direct enforce­ment activ­i­ties based on demo­graph­ics. We do direct traf­fic enforce­ment in high crash loca­tions as well as cit­i­zen traf­fic com­plaint loca­tions,” Graves said. “I find these alle­ga­tions very con­cern­ing and will imme­di­ate­ly ensure the Traffic Division is remind­ed to oper­ate and enforce laws appro­pri­ate­ly.” But legal experts say tick­et quo­tas are not uncom­mon in the U.S., and they doubt things will change any­time soon. “I per­son­al­ly have a hard time believ­ing that [ille­gal tick­et quo­tas are] going to stop with­out some dras­tic change in lead­er­ship at the Kansas City Police Department,” Spencer Webster, a local attor­ney, told Yahoo News. Williams is request­ing a tri­al by jury and seek­ing mul­ti­ple damages.

The fed­er­al law­suit over the con­tro­ver­sial 2019 police killing of Danquirs Franklin out­side a Burger King in west Charlotte may be heard by a jury after all. In a pow­er­ful and unan­i­mous rever­sal Tuesday, three judges from the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals over­turned a low­er court deci­sion in Charlotte last year that grant­ed immu­ni­ty to Wende Kerl, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg offi­cer who fatal­ly shot Franklin. In his November 2022 deci­sion to dis­miss the com­plaint filed by Franklin’s moth­er, Deborah, Senior U.S. District Judge Graham Mullen said Kerl like­ly made a mis­take when she fatal­ly shot Franklin on March 25, 2019. “But because a court must not judge (police actions) with the ‘20÷20 vision of hind­sight,’ the ques­tion is whether Officer Kerl’s mis­take in shoot­ing Franklin was rea­son­able. The answer is yes,” Mullen wrote.

Likewise, the appeals court cit­ed Kerl for errors in how she and a fel­low offi­cer respond­ed to the call at the Burger King four years ago. Unlike Mullen, how­ev­er, the three judges from the country’s sec­ond-high­est court said those errors were so seri­ous that they dis­qual­i­fied Kerl from receiv­ing the qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty that Mullen had grant­ed.“It is not lost on us that we issue this deci­sion from the calm of a cour­t­house,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote. “In mak­ing our deci­sion, we have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to replay the unfor­tu­nate events of that March 2019 morn­ing. Unlike us, Officer Kerl could not press pause or rewind before deter­min­ing whether Franklin posed an immi­nent threat. “Still, we remain res­olute that qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty is not appro­pri­ate for the dis­po­si­tion of this case. The offi­cers rushed head­long onto a scene that had sub­sided, estab­lished no dia­logue, and shout­ed at Franklin loud­ly enough that they did not hear him try to com­mu­ni­cate back.

“In their zeal to dis­arm Franklin, it hard­ly occurred to the offi­cers that their com­mands defied real­i­ty. As a result, Franklin faced a catch-22: obey and risk death or dis­obey and risk death. “These facts enti­tle a jury of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to decide whether Officer Kerl shot Franklin unlaw­ful­ly.” Deborah Franklin’s attor­ney, Luke Largess of Charlotte, wel­comed the rul­ing. “We are very grate­ful for the deci­sion and hope we can get the mat­ter resolved or have a tri­al if we can­not,” he said in an email to The Charlotte Observer. Lori Keeton, who rep­re­sents Kerl, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond Tuesday to an email seek­ing com­ment. While the opin­ion upheld Mullen’s deci­sion to throw out one of Deborah Franklin’s claims against the City of Charlotte, it restored the claims against the city for neg­li­gence and wrong­ful death. Lawrence Coley, a spokesman for the City of Charlotte, told the Observer in an email that the city does not pub­licly com­ment on pend­ing legal mat­ters. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the appel­late pan­el found that “a rea­son­able jury could con­clude that Franklin did not pose an immi­nent threat to the offi­cers or any­one else. “Under those cir­cum­stances, we con­clude that Officer Kerl vio­lat­ed the Fourth Amendment.”

Qualified immunity

The appeals court deci­sion reopens one of Charlotte’s most con­tro­ver­sial police shoot­ings. It also returns the city to a nation­wide debate over the broad court pro­tec­tions afford­ed police use of dead­ly force. By law — and based large­ly on a Supreme Court rul­ing in a Charlotte case — police can use their firearms when they face a “rea­son­able” threat of death or seri­ous injury, a high­ly sub­jec­tive stan­dard at times. In August, for one exam­ple, the Cabarrus County District Attorney’s Office declined to pros­e­cute a for­mer Concord police offi­cer, find­ing that Timothy Larson act­ed rea­son­ably and with­in the law when he shot an unarmed man behind the wheel of Larson’s patrol vehi­cle four times in February 2022. Larson called his depart­ment to report the inci­dent, then opened fire again. Nonetheless, the appeals court’s deci­sion Tuesday placed lim­its on the use of “qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty,” a legal prin­ci­ple that grants police and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials immu­ni­ty from civ­il suits unless the com­plaints can show that the offi­cials vio­lat­ed “clear­ly estab­lished statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of which a rea­son­able per­son would have known.”

Supporters say the prin­ci­ple rec­og­nizes the volatile, life-or-death nature of police work. Critics con­tend that some courts have used qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty as an over­ly broad shield against police law­suits. While he joined the deci­sion to revive the Franklin law­suit, Fourth Circuit Judge Harvey Wilkinson, a con­ser­v­a­tive legal icon, also vouched for qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, describ­ing it as a “ten­able com­pro­mise” between the “reac­tive” dynam­ics of police work vs. the delib­er­a­tions of the courts. “The chance to delib­er­ate, though essen­tial, brings with it the temp­ta­tion to sec­ond-guess,” Wilkinson wrote in his con­cur­ring opin­ion. “Qualified Immunity places a brake upon the judg­ment that days and hours may impose upon min­utes and sec­onds, thus assur­ing that the dif­fer­ent rhythms of the cham­bers and the street may be fruit­ful­ly rec­on­ciled.” The Franklin case was one of three law­suits aris­ing from con­tro­ver­sial police shoot­ings that were dis­missed by Charlotte fed­er­al judges in the past year before they could be heard by a jury. In the oth­er two law­suits, the judges ruled that police offi­cers act­ed rea­son­ably in fatal­ly shoot­ing Ruben Galindo of Charlotte and wound­ing Timothy Caraway of Pineville. Both cas­es have been appealed to the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.

‘In a blink’

The Franklin shoot­ing divid­ed the city. District Attorney Spencer Merriweather declined to pros­e­cute Kerl, say­ing in August 2019 that he couldn’t prove that the offi­cer had been unrea­son­able in view­ing Franklin as a poten­tial dead­ly threat. However, the city’s Citizen Review Board, for only the sec­ond time in its 23-year his­to­ry, went against the police department’s deci­sion not to dis­ci­pline Kerl. “CMPD clear­ly erred in find­ing the Franklin shoot­ing jus­ti­fied,” board chair Tonya Jameson said at the time. The dead­ly con­fronta­tion on March 25, 2019, arose after an enraged and errat­ic Franklin stormed into the Burger King that morn­ing search­ing for the new boyfriend of the moth­er of Franklin’s chil­dren. Franklin, bran­dish­ing his pis­tol, chased the boyfriend out a kitchen door. Later, he pushed his for­mer girl­friend to the ground and punched the glass of the front door, cry­ing out in anger. Kerl and Officer Larry Deal answered the 911 call in sep­a­rate cars. By the time they arrived, accord­ing to the law­suit, Franklin had calmed down, cry­ing and pray­ing in the park­ing lot with the restau­rant gen­er­al man­ag­er, who was sit­ting in his car as Franklin squat­ted near­by. Deal arrived at the scene, angled his car, hid behind the driver’s door and yelled at Franklin to show his hands.

Kerl walked in front of Deal’s car, leav­ing her­self ful­ly exposed, and point­ed her gun at Franklin. Both offi­cers yelled repeat­ed­ly for Franklin to drop his weapon, which was not exposed at the time. Kerl’s body cam­era video showed Franklin slow­ly pulling the gun from his jack­et, point­ing the bar­rel away from the offi­cers while he low­ered the weapon to the ground. Kerl fired twice. Franklin, mor­tal­ly wound­ed, looked at Kerl in appar­ent dis­be­lief. “You told me to …” he said. In its rul­ing, the appel­late judges ruled that Kerl and Deal reignit­ed what had been a de-esca­lat­ing inci­dent. “Watching the events unfold, one can­not help notic­ing that the inten­si­ty of the sit­u­a­tion emanat­ed not from Franklin, but from the vol­ume and vig­or of the officer’s com­mands,” Gregory wrote. “Officer Kerl expect­ed to con­front a gun-wield­ing man threat­en­ing the pub­lic. Instead, she encoun­tered Danquirs Franklin, crouch­ing qui­et­ly and dis­turb­ing no one … Even so, for forty-three sec­onds the offi­cers shout­ed unremit­tent com­mands to drop a weapon no one could see. “As Franklin retrieved a firearm from inside his jack­et and it fell to the ground, Officer Kerl shot Franklin twice. “In a blink, Franklin was dead.”(from yahoo)

This sto­ry appeared @Yahoonews today. This case exem­pli­fies why the Fascist Republican par­ty con­tin­ues to push for states’ rights as they try to demo­nize the fed­er­al Government.
The idea is to con­tin­ue the sys­tem of oppres­sion and abuse that the United States has engaged in since the start of the Republic. More impor­tant­ly, the sto­ry speaks to the unchecked pow­er placed in the hands of police to make deci­sions they are not qual­i­fied to make but deci­sions that are extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to peo­ple they want to use the col­or of the law to oppress.

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A Georgia cou­ple say they are grap­pling with “inde­scrib­able pain” of los­ing cus­tody of their five chil­dren — ages 7, 6, 3, 2 and 4 months — after a traf­fic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol that civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions have called “tar­get­ed.”

“I’m used to wak­ing up every two to three hours to breast­feed or when it’s time to go to school, wak­ing the kids up, going to school, going to the bus stop. We alter­nate,” Bianca Clayborne, the moth­er of the chil­dren, told Yahoo News. “When it’s time to come from school, we see the bus. It’s painful because our kids are not com­ing off the bus.”

More than a month ago, on Feb. 17, a Tennessee state troop­er pulled over Deonte Williams, the chil­dren’s father, for an alleged traf­fic vio­la­tion. The fam­i­ly had been trav­el­ing from their home near Atlanta to Chicago for a relative’s funer­al. Police say that he was stopped because he had dark-tint­ed win­dows and was dri­ving in a left lane with­out active­ly pass­ing. The state troop­er searched the car after say­ing they smelled mar­i­jua­na and claimed to have found five grams of it. The troop­er arrest­ed Williams, while Clayborne was cit­ed and released.

According to court records, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services approached Clayborne’s car in the park­ing lot of the Coffee County Justice Center where she fol­lowed Williams after he was arrest­ed. They tried, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to get the moth­er to sub­mit a urine test while she wait­ed with her chil­dren in the park­ing lot.

“The moth­er became very defi­ant and locked her­self and the chil­dren in the vehi­cle,” court records stat­ed. “Officer Crabtree then placed spike strips around the vehi­cle so the moth­er would not leave the premises.”

Hours lat­er, as Clayborne was sit­ting down at the jus­tice cen­ter wait­ing for Williams’s release, DCS per­son­nel approached her and removed her chil­dren. The agency says that the chil­dren were “depen­dent and neglect­ed” and there was “no less dras­tic alter­na­tive to removal available.”

Court records from Coffee County show that the cou­ple was charged with sim­ple pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, a mis­de­meanor in Tennessee, on Feb. 21.

According to the Tennessee Lookout, the par­ents were asked to sub­mit urine drug tests when they appeared before a Coffee County juve­nile judge. Williams test­ed pos­i­tive for THC, the active ingre­di­ent in mar­i­jua­na, on a urine drug screen admin­is­tered Feb. 23. Clayborne test­ed neg­a­tive for THC.

The agency then amend­ed their claim on Feb. 24, claim­ing the chil­dren should be deemed “severe­ly abused” after results of a rapid hair fol­li­cle test came back pos­i­tive from both par­ents for metham­phet­a­mines, oxy­codone and fen­tanyl. Clayborne and Williams have denied the use of those drugs. A Coffee County court admin­is­tra­tor told the Lookout that rapid hair fol­li­cle tests are inad­mis­si­ble in court. One expert said that the tests can be unre­li­able, and the fact that court staff are not trained lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cians can lead to “too many false positives.”Read the full sto­ry here.https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​p​a​r​e​n​t​s​-​p​l​e​a​d​-​f​o​r​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​k​i​d​s​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​c​h​i​l​d​r​e​n​-​t​a​k​e​n​-​i​n​t​o​-​c​u​s​t​o​d​y​-​d​u​r​i​n​g​-​t​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​s​t​o​p​-​0​9​0​0​0​5​9​9​2​.​h​tml

By Trevor Aaronson

April Rogers, left, a police offi­cer who went under­cov­er for the FBI in the Colorado Springs activist com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a hous­ing-rights march dur­ing which sev­er­al activists were arrest­ed. Photo cour­tesy of Chinook Center.

Rogers began vol­un­teer­ing reg­u­lar­ly to help with admin­is­tra­tive tasks. Several orga­ni­za­tions used the Chinook Center as an office, includ­ing a local ten­ants’ union and a group that orga­nized racial jus­tice demon­stra­tions, and Rogers had access to their mem­ber­ship records and email accounts. Christiansen didn’t know that Rogers, rifling through var­i­ous files, was feed­ing infor­ma­tion to the FBI.

For a year, Rogers went unno­ticed as she spied on activists from the inside.

On July 31, 2021, the Chinook Center activists orga­nized a hous­ing rights ral­ly to coin­cide with the city’s 150^th-anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. Rogers and oth­er demon­stra­tors marched down the city’s streets, many car­ry­ing “Rent Is Theft” signs and wear­ing red shirts that read “Housing Is a Human Right.”

The activists did not know that Colorado Springs police, work­ing with the FBI, planned to arrest sev­er­al of them that day.

In body-cam­era footage, Colorado Springs police Officer Scott Alamo revealed an intel­li­gence report filled with pic­tures of local activists tak­en from social media. Credit: Colorado Springs Police Department.

“Boot to the Face”

Sitting in a police cruis­er, Officer Scott Alamo wait­ed for the pro­test­ers. His body cam­era record­ed him talk­ing to oth­er offi­cers in the car.

“Well, boys,” Alamo said. “We sit, we wait, we get paid.”

Alamo pulled out a report with pic­tures of the activists they intend­ed to arrest. The report, which Alamo acci­den­tal­ly revealed on his body cam­era, appeared to be a prod­uct of an FBI pro­gram known as Social Media Exploitation, or SOMEX, which allows the FBI and local police to mine social media for infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual Americans with­out war­rants. The pho­tos in the report weren’t mugshots; they were images from social media, includ­ing Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Internal records obtained by The Intercept last year revealed that the FBI and the Chicago Police Department used SOMEX to col­lect infor­ma­tion about racial jus­tice demon­stra­tors in that city. Additional doc­u­ments obtained by the nation­al secu­ri­ty-ori­ent­ed trans­paren­cy non­prof­it Property of the People show that the FBI mon­i­tored social media activ­i­ty, includ­ing Twitter posts and Facebook event pages, of racial jus­tice activists in Washington, D.C., and Seattle. These inter­nal doc­u­ments also revealed that the FBI want­ed to keep its social media activ­i­ty secret. One doc­u­ment described the FBI’s need for new soft­ware solu­tions that could pro­vide more inva­sive data min­ing of social media while main­tain­ing “the low­est dig­i­tal footprint.”

As Alamo looked at the SOMEX report, he focused on a pho­to of Jon Christiansen tak­en from one of his social media profiles.

“Professor?” Alamo asked his col­leagues in the car, refer­ring to Christiansen’s posi­tion as a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at a local col­lege. He con­tin­ued flip­ping through the report. “Boot to the face,” Alamo announced glee­ful­ly. “It’s going to happen.”

And it did. More than a dozen cops stormed into the hous­ing march look­ing for activists whose pho­tos they’d seen, includ­ing Christiansen and Johnson, the man who’d got­ten into the alter­ca­tion at the demon­stra­tion a year earlier.

Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, an activist and Colorado-based staffer for Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet at the time, was walk­ing her bike just beyond the mêlée. “And I see what I thought was a bunch of cops dog-piled on the entire crowd,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Holy shit, they’re com­ing for every­body, then? What the fuck?’ Just shell-shocked.”

As she turned around, Armendariz Unzueta saw a police offi­cer dressed in riot gear charg­ing toward her. Her fight-or-flight response kicked in. Another officer’s body cam­era cap­tured the encounter.

“I just threw my bike down and was like, ‘Bitch, you’re com­ing for me?’” Armendariz Unzueta said. “That’s the hon­est truth.”

The bike’s bell gave off a short ring as it hit the con­crete, land­ing between Armendariz Unzueta and the charg­ing offi­cer. The bike did not touch the offi­cer, who side­stepped it and con­tin­ued toward the crowd of demonstrators.

“I just react­ed,” Armendariz Unzueta told me.

Armendariz Unzueta was wear­ing a bike hel­met, over­sized sun­glass­es, and a face mask, mak­ing her dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy from the video. But police, work­ing with the FBI, knew where to look — no war­rant need­ed — for their most-want­ed cyclist: social media.

“Sometimes You’ve Got to Laugh to Keep From Crying”

A Colorado Springs detec­tive assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force start­ed look­ing for the mys­te­ri­ous masked woman with the bicy­cle. Daniel Summey pulled up the social media accounts of known Chinook Center activists and then searched their friends lists. From there, Summey found Armendariz Unzueta’s accounts, includ­ing pho­tos in which she wore the same shoes and hel­met that could be seen in the police body-cam­era footage.

“I Never Saw Any Grenades”

Rogers, mean­while, began to invite young male activists to her apart­ment. In a record­ing I obtained, an FBI agent in Colorado Springs con­firmed that meet­ings between Rogers and at least two activists occurred. Although the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sex­u­al encounter appeared to be implic­it in the invi­ta­tions, the meet­ings took unex­pect­ed turns.

One of the activists lured to a meet­ing with Rogers described walk­ing into the apart­ment. “And there’s two guys sit­ting there with her,” he said. The activist asked not to be iden­ti­fied because he feared that being pub­licly asso­ci­at­ed with an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion could cost him his job.

Rogers asked if he could find her an ille­gal gun to buy, the activist recalled. “I’m not going to sell one to you ille­gal­ly,” the activist, a firearms enthu­si­ast, told Rogers and her two com­pan­ions. He then left.

Rogers invit­ed over a sec­ond man, Gabriel Palcic, who was active in the ten­ants’ union that kept its paper­work at the Chinook Center. Like the first activist, Palcic entered the apart­ment to find two men with Rogers. They said their names were Mike and Omar. “Mike was miss­ing his left leg from the knee down. Omar was kind of a Middle Eastern-look­ing guy with a big beard,” Palcic told me. “Both had tat­toos. Both were very buff.”

Palcic said Mike and Omar claimed to be truck­ers who traf­ficked in ille­gal weapons. They told him they could get grenades, TNT, and AK-47s, and they asked if he want­ed to buy anything.

Intrigued, Palcic met Mike and Omar sev­er­al more times; dur­ing one encounter, they showed Palcic what they claimed was a ful­ly auto­mat­ic AK-47. “I nev­er saw any grenades or TNT or any of that oth­er shit they were talk­ing about,” Palcic told me.

Palcic con­tin­ued to hang around with Mike and Omar because they were gen­er­ous, buy­ing him meals, drinks, and cig­ars when they met. “There were a few times where they were obvi­ous­ly pump­ing drinks into me,” Palcic remem­bered. “‘Yeah, do you want anoth­er dou­ble shot of that 16-year Scotch?’”

But Palcic even­tu­al­ly told the two men he didn’t want any weapons and stopped return­ing their calls and text mes­sages. Palcic has not been charged with a crime, accord­ing to pub­licly avail­able court records.

Not long after, Armendariz Unzueta, the woman accused of assault­ing a police offi­cer with her bike, was grant­ed access to the evi­dence in her case, which includ­ed police body-cam­era video from the day of the inci­dent. Among the footage was the record­ing from Alamo’s body cam­era, which cap­tured the offi­cer flip­ping through the report filled with social media pho­tos of activists.

Alamo’s body cam­era cap­tured some­thing else that day. In the record­ing, he men­tioned that there were police offi­cers secret­ly among the pro­test­ers at the hous­ing march. He said there were two under­cov­er cops and four plain­clothes offi­cers. He then looked at a pho­to on his phone.

“A pic­ture of April, with her giant boobs,” Alamo said and laughed, appar­ent­ly refer­ring to one of the under­cov­er offi­cers in the crowd.

The activists at the Chinook Center watched the video. At the time, they didn’t know who April Rogers was. “There was a process of elim­i­na­tion,” Jon Christiansen said. “And then even­tu­al­ly we were able to tri­an­gu­late that April Rogers was Chelsie.”

That’s when Rogers dis­ap­peared from the activist scene in Colorado Springs.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​thein​ter​cept​.com/​2​0​2​3​/​0​3​/​2​1​/​f​b​i​-​c​o​l​o​r​a​d​o​-​s​p​r​i​n​g​s​-​s​u​r​v​e​i​l​l​a​n​ce/

Here is a typical example of the Racism we talk about, when the highest court is so immoral and corrupt that it leaves in place the shooting death of a naked, unarmed human being by state agents.
How does a country move forward or even speak to injustice in others when it is so rotten at its own core? (mb)

Supreme Court rejects case of Oklahoma teen killed by police

The Supreme Court won’t hear a civ­il rights case brought by the par­ents of a teenag­er who was naked and unarmed when he was fatal­ly shot by an Oklahoma police offi­cer in 2019.
The high court on Monday reject­ed with­out com­ment the law­suit bought by the par­ents of Isaiah Lewis. Police have said that the 17-year-old was shot after he broke into a home in Edmond and attacked two offi­cers. They have said that a stun gun had no effect on him.
Lewis’ lawyers wrote that on the day he was shot he had inad­ver­tent­ly smoked mar­i­jua­na laced with PCP. His par­ents argued that he was expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal health cri­sis and that police used exces­sive force. An autop­sy report found Lewis suf­fered a total of four gun­shot wounds to his face, thighs and groin. A fed­er­al tri­al court judge had allowed the law­suit against the offi­cer who shot Lewis to go for­ward, but a three-judge pan­el of the 10^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed that rul­ing. The Supreme Court’s deci­sion not to take the case leaves the appeals court rul­ing in place.

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Police chief fires officer, releases video of shooting death.

A north­ern Virginia police offi­cer was fired Thursday after fatal­ly shoot­ing a man last month who had alleged­ly stolen two pairs of sun­glass­es from a busy shop­ping mall. Police also released video of the dead­ly encounter.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis announced the dis­missal at a press con­fer­ence where he also played body cam­era footage show­ing the shoot­ing of Timothy McCree Johnson out­side Tysons Corner Center on Feb. 22.
Two offi­cers who chased Johnson that night fired their weapons, Davis said. The one who fired the fatal round into his chest has been dis­missed from the depart­ment, and the oth­er offi­cer remains on restrict­ed duty as the inves­ti­ga­tion continues.
The offi­cer who was fired, Sgt. Wesley Shifflett, exhib­it­ed “a fail­ure to live up to the expec­ta­tions of our agency, in par­tic­u­lar use of force poli­cies,” Davis said.

Caleb Kershner, an attor­ney for Shifflett, said his client will appeal his dis­missal and expects to be exon­er­at­ed. He said Shifflett act­ed as he was trained to do, using lethal force if he has a rea­son­able belief his life is in dan­ger. Kershner said Shifflett saw Johnson reach­ing for his waist­band as though reach­ing for a weapon. “You have to make a split-sec­ond deci­sion, and it’s a life-or-death split-sec­ond deci­sion,” Kershner said. The video itself shows a night­time chase that last­ed less than two min­utes, with the offi­cers run­ning after him out of the mall, through a park­ing garage, across a street and into a wood­ed area. In a slow-motion ver­sion of the video that police played at Thursday’s press con­fer­ence, it sounds as though two shots were fired after an offi­cer yelled “get on the ground” but just before shout­ing “stop reach­ing.” A third shot is also heard. The video is dim­ly lit and it is dif­fi­cult to see Johnson in any detail once they are out of the mall.

Print shop own­er Carlos Pena is deal­ing with the dam­age caused by a SWAT raid after a fugi­tive holed up in his North Hollywood store. (Brian van der Brug /​Los Angeles Times)For 13 years, Carlos Pena has run NoHo Printing & Graphics in North Hollywood. He has stayed here even as this stretch of Lankershim Boulevard became sketch­i­er, even as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced him to lay off all his employ­ees. “It’s a very cre­ative field of work, but not very prof­itable,” the Salvadoran immi­grant told me half-jok­ing­ly as we walked inside his shop. “But it’s mine.” What was once the show­room was now stripped down to nails, ply­wood and beams. Industrial-sized air con­di­tion­er units and fans sat where dis­play cas­es and T‑shirt racks once were, a reminder of the day last sum­mer when Pena’s life changed forever

On Aug. 3 just after lunch, the 55-year-old was work­ing on an order when he heard what sound­ed like a heli­copter and some­one on a mega­phone. Pena opened the back door, looked toward the street and saw U.S. Marshals Service agents yelling and ges­tur­ing his way. Before he could shut the door, a man hit him on the shoul­der with a met­al object, kicked him out, then holed up inside.

YouTube footage shows mar­shals with heavy artillery and bul­let­proof vests tak­ing posi­tions around NoHo Printing and on near­by rooftops. They then stand down when Los Angeles Police Department SWAT vehi­cles roll into the park­ing lot behind the shop. Popping sounds soon give way to plumes of tear gas.

For 13 hours, Pena wait­ed in a near­by restau­rant as the stand­off con­tin­ued with some­one the cops said was a fugi­tive. He wait­ed so long that the restau­rant even­tu­al­ly asked him to leave because it need­ed to close.

“It was like a movie,” said Pena, shak­ing his head, his voice world-weary. “Out of 10 mil­lion busi­ness­es, that stu­pid dude chose mine.”

Two days lat­er, mar­shals let Pena return to NoHo Printing. Client projects were strewn across the floor. Holes were smashed into doors, walls and even the ceil­ing, which the fugi­tive climbed into by plac­ing a lad­der on a copi­er. He had some­how escaped.

“Look, look,” Pena kept repeat­ing while swip­ing through pho­tos on his smart­phone. “This is a $9,000 print­er that the fugi­tive stood on and broke.”

The worst part, he said, was the stench of tear gas. “You couldn’t be next to it for even a minute with­out gagging.”

No neigh­bor­ing busi­ness­es suf­fered dam­age. Pena had to toss out all his mate­ri­als — ink ton­ers, vinyl rolls, pack­ing mate­ri­als. His land­lord had to strip out all the dry­wall and insu­la­tion. The claim Pena filed with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that although the fugi­tive did destroy equip­ment, it was SWAT’s tear gas that left NoHo Printing “[un]inhabitable.”

A few years ear­li­er, Pena had switched to a cheap­er insur­er, who said events like this weren’t cov­ered under his pol­i­cy. The L.A. city attorney’s office denied his claim in August with no expla­na­tion. The U.S. Marshals Service ini­tial­ly reject­ed his claim, say­ing he hadn’t asked for a spe­cif­ic amount. When he replied with a detailed invoice for about $60,000, the agency denied him again.

Though mar­shals had pur­sued the fugi­tive to NoHo Printing, they argued that LAPD SWAT had engaged in the stand­off, not them. The cer­ti­fied let­ter end­ed by pro­vid­ing Pena with the LAPD’s address and the sug­ges­tion to “pur­sue your claim direct­ly with” the department.

In response to my query, the U.S. Marshals Service said, “Our office can­not offer sub­stan­tive com­ments regard­ing adju­di­ca­tion” of Pena’s claim. When I called up the LAPD’s media depart­ment to con­firm details of the Aug. 3 raid, Officer Drake Madison sug­gest­ed I file a pub­lic records request.

When I sent a list of ques­tions about Pena’s case and also asked what the LAPD pol­i­cy was when offi­cers dam­age a busi­ness in the search for a sus­pect, LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz replied that while Pena’s claims “are under con­sid­er­a­tion, we are unable to com­ment further.”

Pena’s tra­vails make Job seem as lucky as that guy who recent­ly won a $2‑billion Powerball jackpot

Since the U.S. Marshals Service and the LAPD would­n’t give me any answers, I called up two peo­ple who would.

Attorney Arnoldo Casillas, who spe­cial­izes in police mis­con­duct, does­n’t see too many cas­es like Pena’s but con­sid­ers them “my pro bono respon­si­bil­i­ty” because they are so hard to pursue.

He brought up the LAPD’s botched det­o­na­tion of a cache of fire­works in a South L.A. neigh­bor­hood in 2021 that left cars over­turned, homes wrecked and some res­i­dents still unable to return.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore quick­ly apol­o­gized, but “they’re fight­ing tooth and nail to not pay any­thing,” Casillas said. “I’m not sug­gest­ing [Pena’s case] is at the same lev­el, but $60,000 in dam­ages is not a small amount.”

State and fed­er­al statutes “give police a cer­tain amount of dis­cre­tion” when pur­su­ing sus­pects. “Some dish­es are going to break,” he said, so the dam­age “has to be egre­gious to the point that it’s malicious.”

Pena’s claim with the U.S. Marshals Service stat­ed that SWAT fired 31 tear gas can­is­ters inside his shop, which sure sounds egre­gious to me.

It’s hard to get com­pen­sa­tion with­out know­ing the intri­ca­cies of the sys­tem — vic­tims need to file a spe­cif­ic claim with­in six months of the inci­dent and file it the right way, Casillas said.

“I’ve seen cas­es where a law­suit is filed, and the police say they only received a com­plaint, not a claim, and the law­suit can’t go any­where. It’s a pet­ty bulls— way get­ting around to not pay­ing any­thing. They tru­ly don’t care.”

Tanishia G. Wright, direc­tor of the L.A. County dis­trict attorney’s office’s Bureau of Victim Services, called Pena’s case “a very tricky one. … [LAPD] real­ly put him at an extreme injus­tice for that.”

She said her office “luck­i­ly” doesn’t see many sim­i­lar cas­es. It refers peo­ple to the California Victims Resource Center, which offers reim­burse­ment for qual­i­fy­ing dam­ages. Wright’s office has an unclaimed vic­tim resti­tu­tion fund, and “we can tap into that” to try to make up any dif­fer­ence, she said.

When I asked about the LAPD’s pol­i­cy when offi­cers dam­age the prop­er­ty of inno­cent peo­ple, Wright stayed silent.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. “Honestly, I should know. I’m curi­ous to know. We may have vic­tims that might have these questions.”

Both Casillas and Wright offered to speak to Pena about his case.

Pena is enough of a neigh­bor­hood fix­ture that cus­tomers such as Eric Walter have tried to help him nav­i­gate the ordeal.

“In an ide­al world, he should get com­pen­sa­tion for lost rev­enue,” said Walter, a retired ath­let­ic direc­tor for the near­by Oakwood School who has been a cus­tomer for near­ly a decade. “But at this point, he’d be hap­py just to get back to business.”

“My claim is going to be denied,” Pena said. His pierc­ing blue eyes had a thou­sand-yard stare. “If that hap­pens, I’m going to have to sell my house. My busi­ness is final­ly going to be dead.”

We walked to the back room, clut­tered with messy cab­i­nets, a desk and a tub of T‑shirts with an air-tight seal that saved it from the raid.

Pena now works from home, going to his shop only to use the two machines that sur­vived the raid — a cut­ter, along with a copi­er that needs a $1,200 part he can’t afford.

His land­lord is pur­su­ing claims with the LAPD and an insur­er and isn’t charg­ing any rent in the meantime.

“Everyone else gets help,” Pena replied, refer­ring to the recent bribery scan­dals that have plagued City Hall. “Look at all the mon­ey going around the city, and they can’t do any­thing to help?”

We now stood out­side his store­front. A sten­ciled ad on his win­dow offered a spe­cial: Anything print­ed on a T‑shirt for $6.50.

Pena let out a bit­ter laugh. It has been a rough cou­ple of years. His father was suf­fer­ing health issues. He lost his moth­er to COVID-19 in 2020, while he was bat­tling the dis­ease him­self. Even though they were in the same hos­pi­tal, doc­tors did­n’t allow him to say goodbye.

“When doors are closed, they all shut down for you,” he said. “I’ve been going through hell and back. Everything is pour­ing down on me.”

This sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Deputies accused of shoving guns in mouths of 2 Black men

Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s depart­ment being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Justice Department for pos­si­ble civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been involved in at least four vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and anoth­er with last­ing injuries, an Associated Press inves­ti­ga­tion found.

Two of the men allege that Rankin County sher­if­f’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths dur­ing sep­a­rate encoun­ters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trig­ger, leav­ing the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back togeth­er. In one of the two fatal con­fronta­tions, the man’s moth­er said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he could­n’t breathe.

Police and court records obtained by the AP show that sev­er­al deputies who were accept­ed to the sher­if­f’s office’s Special Response Team — a tac­ti­cal unit whose mem­bers receive advanced train­ing — were involved in each of the four encoun­ters. In three of them, the heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ments don’t indi­cate if they were serv­ing in their nor­mal capac­i­ty as deputies or as mem­bers of the unit.

Such units have drawn scruti­ny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severe­ly beat­en by Black mem­bers of a spe­cial police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols’ death led to a Justice Department probe of sim­i­lar squads around the coun­try that comes amid the broad­er pub­lic reck­on­ing over race and polic­ing sparked by the 2020 police mur­der of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In Mississippi, the police shoot­ing of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was vis­it­ing a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hos­pi­tal records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lac­er­at­ed tongue and bro­ken jaw.

Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he point­ed a gun at them; depart­ment offi­cials have not answered mul­ti­ple inquiries from the AP ask­ing whether a weapon was found at the scene. Jenkins’ attor­ney, Malik Shabazz, said his client didn’t have a gun.

“They had com­plete con­trol of him the entire time. Six offi­cers had full and com­plete con­trol of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”

Rankin County, which has about 120 sher­if­f’s deputies serv­ing its rough­ly 160,000 peo­ple, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly white and just east of the state cap­i­tal, Jackson, home to one of the high­est per­cent­ages of Black res­i­dents of any major U.S. city. In the coun­ty seat of Brandon, a tow­er­ing gran­ite-and-mar­ble mon­u­ment topped by a stat­ue of a Confederate sol­dier stands across the street from the sher­if­f’s office.

In a notice of an upcom­ing law­suit, attor­neys for Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said on the night of Jan. 24 the deputies sud­den­ly came into the home and pro­ceed­ed to hand­cuff and beat them. They said the deputies stunned them with Tasers repeat­ed­ly over rough­ly 90 min­utes and, at one point, forced them to lie on their backs as the deputies poured milk over their faces. The men restat­ed the alle­ga­tions in sep­a­rate inter­views with the AP.

When a Taser is used, it’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged into the device’s mem­o­ry. The AP obtained the auto­mat­ed Taser records from the evening of Jan. 24. They show that deputies first fired one of the stun guns at 10:04 p.m. and fired one at least three more times over the next 65 min­utes. However, those unredact­ed records might not paint a com­plete pic­ture, as redact­ed records show that Tasers were turned on, turned off or used dozens more times dur­ing that period.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was brought in to inves­ti­gate the encounter. Its sum­ma­ry says a deputy shot Jenkins at approx­i­mate­ly 11:45 p.m., or about 90 min­utes after a Taser was first used, which match­es the time­frame giv­en by Parker and Jenkins. The deputy’s name was not dis­closed by the bureau.

Police say the raid was prompt­ed by a report of drug activ­i­ty at the home. Jenkins was charged with pos­sess­ing between 2 and 10 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and aggra­vat­ed assault on a police offi­cer. Parker was charged with two mis­de­meanors — pos­ses­sion of para­pher­na­lia and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. Jenkins and Parker say the raid came to a head when the deputy shot Jenkins through the mouth. He still has dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing and eating.

Another Black man, Carvis Johnson, alleged in a fed­er­al law­suit filed in 2020 that a Rankin County deputy placed a gun into his mouth dur­ing a 2019 drug bust. Johnson was not shot.

There is no rea­son for an offi­cer to place a gun in a suspect’s mouth, and to have alle­ga­tions of two such inci­dents is telling, said Samuel Walker, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at the University of Nebraska.

“If there are inci­dents with the same kind of pat­tern of behav­ior, they have their own set of rules,” he said. “So these are not just chance expe­ri­ences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”

Jenkins does­n’t know the name of the deputy who shot him. In the heav­i­ly redact­ed inci­dent report, an uniden­ti­fied deputy wrote, “I noticed a gun.” The unredact­ed sec­tions don’t say who shot Jenkins, only that he was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. Deputy Hunter Elward swore in a sep­a­rate court doc­u­ment that Jenkins point­ed the gun at him.

Elward’s name also appears in police reports and court records from the two inci­dents in which sus­pects were killed.

The sher­if­f’s depart­ment refused repeat­ed inter­view requests and denied access to any of the deputies who were involved in the vio­lent con­fronta­tions. The depart­ment has not said whether deputies pre­sent­ed a search war­rant, and it’s unclear if any have been dis­ci­plined or are still mem­bers of the spe­cial unit.

The news out­let Insider has been inves­ti­gat­ing the sheriff’s depart­ment and per­suad­ed a coun­ty judge to order the sher­iff to turn over doc­u­ments relat­ed to the deaths of four men in 2021. Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom expressed bewil­der­ment that the depart­ment had refused to make the doc­u­ments public.

“(The) day that our law enforce­ment offi­cers start shield­ing this infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic, all the while repeat­ing, ‘Trust us. We’re from the gov­ern­ment,’ is the day that should star­tle all Americans,” Odom wrote.

The AP request­ed body cam­era or dash­cam footage from the night of the Jenkins raid. Jason Dare, an attor­ney for the sheriff’s depart­ment, said there was no record of either.

Mississippi doesn’t require police offi­cers to wear body cam­eras. Incident reports and court records tie deputies from the raid to three oth­er vio­lent encoun­ters with Black men.

During a 2019 stand­off, Elward said Pierre Woods point­ed a gun at him while run­ning at deputies. Deputies then shot and killed him. In a state­ment to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained by the AP, Elward said he fired at Woods eight times. Police say they recov­ered a hand­gun at the scene of the Woods shooting.

Court records place Christian Dedmon, anoth­er deputy who shot at Woods, at the Jenkins raid.

Dedmon was also among deputies involved in a 2019 arrest of Johnson, accord­ing to the law­suit Johnson filed alleg­ing that one of the deputies put a gun in his mouth as they searched him for drugs. Johnson is cur­rent­ly impris­oned for sell­ing methamphetamine.

Other doc­u­ments obtained by the AP detail anoth­er vio­lent con­fronta­tion between Elward and Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. He died in July 2021 after being arrest­ed by Elward and Deputy Luke Stickman, who also opened fire on Woods dur­ing the 2019 stand­off. A grand jury declined to bring charges in the case last October.

In an inci­dent report, Elward wrote that while respond­ing to a van­dal­ism call, he repeat­ed­ly shocked Cameron with a Taser, punched and grap­pled with Cameron at the home of his moth­er, Monica Lee. He said after get­ting Cameron to his squad car, he again stunned him to get him to pull his legs into the vehicle.

After going back inside to retrieve his Taser, deputies returned to find Cameron unre­spon­sive. Elward wrote that he pulled Cameron from the car and per­formed CPR, but Cameron was lat­er declared dead at a hospital.

Lee, who wit­nessed the con­fronta­tion, told the AP that after sub­du­ing her son, Elward kneeled on his back for sev­er­al min­utes. She said when Stickman arrived, he kneeled on her son’s neck while hand­cuff­ing him, and that her son com­plained he could­n’t breathe.

Lee said she lat­er went out­side, hop­ing to talk to her son before the deputies drove him away.

“I walked out­side to tell him good­bye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground scream­ing and hollering.”

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