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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rise of rogue groups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘One of the biggest crises in American life’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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