General Police Abuse Thread

[TheFeniX]

I wonder what the hospital has to say. I mean, HPD being quick to shoot and doing whatever they can to cover their asses isn't all that surprising. Probably get less bullshit from the people trying to save lives. The officers seem to have had their asses kicked. Multiple lacerations and one had a bad concussion. If I had to chose between shooting a guy and backing away and locking him in his room, I'd have to go with the later. Probably why I'm not a cop.

The family has hired the same guy who represented George Zimmerman.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Apparently I might be crazy, because the things I think are perfectly reasonable are often called crazy, even on this very site which is usually more reasonable than most.

But I'll say it anyway: People who are hospitalized or are attempting to be hospitalized for a mental illness shouldn't be charged with a crime for anything like assault, destruction of property, or the like.

Someone tell me: Is that crazy? Am I crazy for thinking that? Not to quote Will Smith, but does thinking you are the only sane person in the world make you crazy?

I think that's reasonable. We can't arrest our way out of this countries mental health issues.

[Dominus Atheos]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-bin.html

[Mr Bean]

Dominus Atheos that story is four years old and already covered in N&P.

[Dominus Atheos]

The incident and article are 4 years old, but the video on it is new. Where was it covered in N&P?

[Kamakazie Sith]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-bin.html

http://kval.com/news/local/samurai-swor ... te-capitol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c11t12gReA8

Really it depends on the persons actions, the equipment available to the officers on scene and how many officers there are. Look how many it took to subdue the guy in the UK video. During my shift that would require every single patrol officer on duty at the time. It's doable but it will take time and that time will be governed by the actions of the suspect. Though I have to say him walking towards a cop is justification under our laws for deadly force. My point is it is not cut and dry as to what would happen to this man in the US.

As for the UK video those cops are brave...no question. However, the guy in that video was not determined to kill anyone. Here's a video where someone is determined to kill. Graphic Video - Start at 7:10. Attack begins at 7:29. At 7:41 shots are fired. At 7:57 he stabs the shit out of another cop. At 8:10 he is finally put down.

Another UK story but with a different ending...
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-15803860

Note the significant difference in behavior.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Should clarify that I do think US law enforcement could learn a lot from these techniques. Like I said the guy in the UK video wasn't determined to kill, so law enforcement should behave the same way.

[Edi]

You're absolutely right there, KS. The UK cops could afford to play it nice, safe and slow because he is just pacing around making noise, vs the other video.

It does become a whole different situation with someone who really is intent on murder. In that second video, as soon as he started stabbing in earnest, they should have just riddled him with bullets immediately.

You're also right about the reactions. I suppose we see so many stories of US police brutality and unnecessary killings because the cops in those situations escalate to lethal force too quickly.

[Channel72]

It seems pretty obvious to me that there would be more incidents of police aggression and police brutality in the US than other first world nations like the UK. Totally apart from the issue of racism, which is also a problem, the US simply has way more poverty-stricken, desperate people. This creates a cycle where cops become more on-edge. It's basically as simple as that.

But this reality is also somewhat drowned out by the high-profile police abuse cases, such as in the case of Eric Garner, where it's clear the police acted with brutality for no justifiable reason. But again, this is also connected to a systemic problem: it's not really surprising that constantly being on-edge and dealing with high-crime, low-income areas would tend to bring out the more brutal tendencies in a human being, police officer or otherwise. Of course, certain people are also just authority-abusing assholes.

[Kamakazie Sith]

You're absolutely right there, KS. The UK cops could afford to play it nice, safe and slow because he is just pacing around making noise, vs the other video.

It does become a whole different situation with someone who really is intent on murder. In that second video, as soon as he started stabbing in earnest, they should have just riddled him with bullets immediately.

You're also right about the reactions. I suppose we see so many stories of US police brutality and unnecessary killings because the cops in those situations escalate to lethal force too quickly.

The reactions are valid. Really the answer to the question "what would happen to this guy in your country" for the US it should be without a doubt "he would get help". Right now, while it isn't guaranteed that he would be killed the odds aren't in his favor that he would survive.

[Dominus Atheos]

The NYPD Is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven’t Committed a Crime

The morning of May 4, 2011, Jameelah El-Shabazz watched out the window of her Bronx apartment as a team of police officers fanned across the rooftop of Banana Kelly High School. The 43-year-old mother of five said she didn’t think much of the scene – drug raids were common in her neighborhood.

As she did most mornings, El-Shabazz said she went to her bedroom to feed her newborn son and to worship before a shrine of candles and carvings arranged atop her wardrobe. Her most treasured object was a wooden tray her father had brought her from Nigeria. A deity of the Ifa religion, which she practices as a high priestess, was carved on its surface and covered in a residue of finely crushed eggshells. El-Shabazz used the substance, known in her faith as efun powder, to cleanse the shrine. She took fresh clumps of the powder from a cup and began to break it up in her hands.

That’s when the narcotics officers kicked in the door.

Her baby shrieked as the gun-wielding officers tore apart rooms looking for PCP, which an anonymous informant had claimed was being sold from the apartment. They ordered everyone to lie on the ground, then turned to her eldest son, Akin Shakoor, who along with another son was having frequent run-ins with police. El-Shabazz said the officers told Shakoor if he didn’t give up the drugs, “they would take all of my children away from me and make sure that I was put out of my apartment.”

As evidence, police seized 45 paper cups of the eggshell powder, the sacred wooden tray, and a small amount of marijuana. They arrested El-Shabazz, her teenaged sister Najah El-Shabazz, and Shakoor, then 21, and took them outside past the handcuffed residents of four other apartments that were raided that morning.

Najah was released, court filings say, but Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor sat in cells on Rikers Island for the next week awaiting the results of police lab tests. Finally, the results confirmed what she had told the officers all along: the wooden tray and the 45 paper cups of powder were drug-free. Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor were released from Rikers and fully exonerated.

But El-Shabazz’s battle with New York’s legal system was only beginning. That September, another of her sons called to say the police were back, this time with a lawyer and a court order to seal the Bronx apartment. Her entire family had to leave -- immediately.

El-Shabazz was facing a nuisance abatement action, a little-known type of lawsuit that gives the city the power to shut down places it claims are being used for illegal purposes. The case against her was based on the same drug allegations that had been dismissed in May. Incredibly, the filing, signed by a New York Police Department attorney, stated: “recovered during the execution of the search warrant were forty-five (45) paper cups of cocaine.”

The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970’s to combat the sex industry in Times Square. Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city’s crime rate has reached historic lows. The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences.

The vast majority of residential cases involve allegations of drug sales. Some target traffickers who are convicted of moving large amounts of narcotics through their apartments; others minor offenders caught with amounts more consistent with personal use. But many of these lawsuits ensnare people like El-Shabazz, whose criminal cases have been, or ultimately are, dismissed.

The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes. Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved. The police need a judge’s signoff, but residents aren’t notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they’ve already been locked out, sometimes for days. And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney.

Perhaps most fundamentally, residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime.

A man was prohibited from living in his family home and separated from his young daughter over gambling allegations that were dismissed in criminal court. A diabetic man said he was forced to sleep on subways and stoops for a month after being served with a nuisance abatement action over low-level drug charges that also never led to a conviction. Meanwhile, his elderly mother was left with no one to care for her.

In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan. 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014. Our analysis also reviewed the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases against hundreds of people who were banned from homes as a result of these actions.

http://interactive.nydailynews.com/2016 ... index.html

[Dominus Atheos]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016 ... .html?_r=0

Police Body Cameras: What Do You See?

Public frustration with policing has led to calls nationwide for more cameras worn by officers. But what do those cameras actually reveal?

Below, you’ll answer questions about three videos of simulated interactions involving police officers.

*snip videos I can't quote*

[Edi]

Excellent article, thanks for posting that!

[Raw Shark]

That was a good article, thanks. I agree that body cameras are just another fallible but potentially-useful tool for determining the truth. The first video was kind of off-topic on the part of the article, though, IMHO, because nobody would ever watch it if they were just dancing to techno music. Also, as someone who has been trapped in a car with a yellowjacket that had already stung me on the eyelid and was ready for nine more rounds, and in light of the fact that the third guy was shouting, "BEE! BEE!" in an obvious panic, I do think the third cop overreacted a little.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Excellent post. What's your take on this article and its videos, Dominus?

[Dominus Atheos]

One thought I had (but was really trying to avoid posting since I'm actually surprisingly tired of getting into debates about similar issues) was that if that last police officer had pulled out his gun and shot that guy as he ran out of his car and the officer fell, based on the dashcam and bodycam video it would easily have been ruled legally justified.

What's your take on that thought, KS?

[Kamakazie Sith]

One thought I had (but was really trying to avoid posting since I'm actually surprisingly tired of getting into debates about similar issues) was that if that last police officer had pulled out his gun and shot that guy as he ran out of his car and the officer fell, based on the dashcam and bodycam video it would easily have been ruled legally justified.

What's your take on that thought, KS?

Well, based on my knowledge and training I would disagree. However, based off of real life incidents I could easily be wrong and that is pretty sad.

Anyway, this article shows us that even video isn't totally reliable due to perspective and this is something police groups have been saying for a long time since the introduction of the dash cam but it seems as a people we don't discuss how unreliable human memory is either. I remember one incident where I had been sent to deal with trespassing and very mentally ill individual that eventually took a swing at me. I was speaking with a colleague afterwards and I was dismayed because I thought I hadn't reacted at all. He shows me his body cam footage and it shows this guy taking a swing at me but I did react by stepping off line and then deflecting his swing with my arm. I had no memory of this at all which I still find surprising because I have had my fair share of physical incidents but for some reason this one I had difficulty recalling. My body cam footage wasn't that great because you can see the guy move but it isn't clear what he's doing.

I can see this article being used to raise the question if an officer should be allowed to view his body cam footage prior to writing a report. Generally I'm against that idea because human memory isn't reliable but this article has certainly shown that the contact officer body cam footage doesn't tell the whole story either whether it be for or against the officer.

[Patroklos]

Freddie Gray verdict: Baltimore officer who drove van not guilty on all charges

Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson, who drove the van in which Freddie Gray was fatally injured, was found not guilty Thursday on all charges, including the most serious count of second-degree depraved-heart murder.
Wearing a dark suit and blue shirt, Goodson stood motionless as the verdict was read.

The officer's daughter wept as the judge enumerated the reasons for the acquittal, count by count, over 40 minutes. Then Goodson embraced members of his family and legal team.

Gray, who was 25, suffered a devastating spinal injury and died in April 2015, about a week after he was arrested and placed into a prisoner van.
Though Gray's death became a symbol of the black community's distrust of police and triggered days of violent protests, the state has failed to secure a single conviction following three high-profile trials.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/us/baltim ... index.html

At this point its pretty clear no wrong doing took place. You couldn't ask for a more zealous or biased prosecution and they are 0-3. When the deck is so stacked in the prosecutions favor, unjustly so, and you still can't get a conviction the argument that the system is somehow favoring these cops rings hollow.

Do they continue with the other prosecutions at this point?

[Terralthra]

I can't imagine why people might think a bench trial (bypassing a jury) might be favoring the police. ::eyeroll::

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I can't imagine why people might think a bench trial (bypassing a jury) might be favoring the police. ::eyeroll::

They want everyone believing the judges are in league with the cops and the evil, evil System.

[Purple]

The problem with that sort of thinking is that if you don't trust the courts and the justice system to uphold the law than nothing will satisfy you. The judge could have ordered these people literally crucified, nails and and all, and the people would just have shrugged and said "Ah but all those other cases!"

You people seriously need to find a way to get people to trust your government and justice system first and foremost.

[Kamakazie Sith]

The problem with that sort of thinking is that if you don't trust the courts and the justice system to uphold the law than nothing will satisfy you. The judge could have ordered these people literally crucified, nails and and all, and the people would just have shrugged and said "Ah but all those other cases!"

You people seriously need to find a way to get people to trust your government and justice system first and foremost.

It's possible in the sense that you'd have to be massively unfair to those that they are against. So basically throwing away the due process of others. This case is a good example because you have an aggressive and determined prosecution but because the verdict isn't what some people wanted they automatically search for a biased reason why it wasn't that way. In this case a black judge is obviously fearful of the police because I have no fucking clue perhaps someone with courtroom experience can explain that one to me because as far as my education goes a judges word is final and their careers aren't staked on how many convictions/innocent they get like the prosecution.

By the way, there is actually a reason why they have been found not guilty. I can add my own experiences to this. I have watched a number of prisoners slam their heads into my cage or the body of my car with enough force to cause significant damage to their face. One lady slammed her head into my car and knocked all of her teeth out. Another guy slammed his head into my cage so hard it split his head open and knocked him out. My point is people will intentionally try to harm themselves. Sometimes it is because they are suicidal and other times they are just trying to get you into trouble.

In the Freddie Gray case there are allegations, also confirmed by third party witnesses, that Gray was acting out in such a way that he was attempting to harm himself. Now, I absolutely agree that even if that is the case the transporting officer does own the responsibility for not buckling him in but depraved murder it is not and based off the above information reasonable doubt does exist.

[Elaro]

So Alton Sterling got killed for being pinned down on the ground, with his hands as far away from his gun as possible.

558th case of extrajudicial killing in the US, according tothis

[Kamakazie Sith]

So Alton Sterling got killed for being pinned down on the ground, with his hands as far away from his gun as possible.

558th case of extrajudicial killing in the US, according tothis

Yeah man. Don't point your gun at another person and become the subject of a police investigation and then fight with the police while being armed with a handgun. If you follow those rules then your chances of being shot by police drop significantly. You call it extrajudicial. That's fine. I call it self defense.

The video doesn't show us anything regarding where his hands are the quality is simply too poor.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So Alton Sterling got killed for being pinned down on the ground, with his hands as far away from his gun as possible.

558th case of extrajudicial killing in the US, according tothis

Yeah man. Don't point your gun at another person and become the subject of a police investigation and then fight with the police while being armed with a handgun. If you follow those rules then your chances of being shot by police drop significantly. You call it extrajudicial. That's fine. I call it self defense.

The video doesn't show us anything regarding where his hands are the quality is simply too poor.

I assume you watched both sets of video, from different angles? The gun was in his pocket (according to the video, and the witnesses). I cannot speak to whether or not he was the person they were called in to investigate. He was also not in a fight with the police. He seemed to be cooperating [retroactive edit: though I did have the first video that showed the tackle muted, so they could have yelled or something and he was not-compliant], they tackled him, he did not go limp and seemed to be trying to right himself, but he was not fighting them.

Now, I would be willing to stipulate that it was a miscommunication and the one officer reacted to that with lethal force, but that gun was in his pocket, not drawn. Which last I checked makes it a bad shoot on the basis of the facts of the case--if not necessarily the reasonable perception of the shooting officer.