General Police Abuse Thread

[Darmalus]

It's not perfect, but I'd take it over the usualy round of he-said-she-said we typically get subjected too. I imagine it will get better as lighter, cheaper and more durable cameras make it possible to have several (maybe even one mounted on the gun) per officer without it being excessively expensive or a physical burden.

[Agent Fisher]

There's no real place to mount the camera on the gun. Taser's have hte option of a tasercam, but that is good for as long as taser is pointed or the safety is disengaged. Where the camera might mount, on the rails that some pistols have, usually has a flashlight. Taser Axon's can be mounted on Oakley FlakJacket frames, allowing for more point of view from the officer, but they can get knocked off easily.

As to the video, the officer heard shots, was investigating and as he's getting out of the car, you hear two shots, definitely not from his sidearm. So, I believe he interrupted a shooting in progress and either took fire (those two shots) or the subject may have pointed the firearm at him as the subject was running. So, yeah, not seeing anything wrong with it at the moment.

[Rogue 9]

I didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but I thought it might be instructive to show footage from a body cam in the thread since it seems a hot topic.

And there were two subjects; one was wounded and captured (it was unclear at the time I read about it whether he was hit by the other subject, the officer, or both) and the other escaped on foot.

[Thanas]

Meanwhile in Germany, this case got the public in arms: Link

Summary: Guy spits at police, police hit guy three or four times. Police get off with 2 years probation and an official warning.

[Terralthra]

And there's also this case:

Darrien Hunt and police just before the shooting. Photograph: Jocelyn Hansen via ABC4

Authorities in Utah have altered their account of how a 22-year-old black man was killed by police, after an attorney for the man’s family alleged that he was shot repeatedly from behind by officers while running away.

The authorities also said that the two police officers involved in the shooting of Darrien Hunt last Wednesday had not yet been interviewed about the incident. The attorney for Hunt’s family described this delay as “almost incomprehensible”.

Hunt died outside a Panda Express restaurant at a strip mall in Saratoga Springs on Wednesday morning following an encounter with two police officers who were responding to a 911 call reporting a man with a samurai-style sword acting suspiciously.

After several days of silence Tim Taylor, the chief deputy attorney for Utah county, said in a statement on Saturday: “When the officers made contact with Mr Hunt, he brandished the sword and lunged toward the officers with the sword, at which time Mr Hunt was shot.”

However, Taylor confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that Hunt was in fact alleged to have lunged at the officers outside a bank several dozen yards away from where he ultimately died. While it was outside the bank that Hunt was first “shot at” by police, Taylor said, it was not clear whether he was struck on that occasion.

Hunt then headed north and was shot several more times before eventually collapsing outside the Panda Express, according to Taylor. He said it was not clear if there were any further threatening moves. “Whether or not the individual lunged again at point two, the other location, I don’t know about that,” Taylor said.

Randall Edwards, an attorney for Hunt’s family, said in an email late on Monday: “This appears to be a major change in the official story”.

Edwards said over the weekend that the family’s private autopsy had found Hunt was shot six times from behind. He was hit once in a shoulder, once in the back, once in an elbow, twice in a leg and once in a hand, according to the attorney.

“The shot that killed Darrien, which was straight in the back, did not have an exit wound,” Edwards told the Guardian. “It raises the question as to how you can lunge at someone and be shot in the back at the same time.” Edwards declined to identify the pathologist who had carried out the autopsy, citing a desire to protect him from media attention.

Hunt’s death follows the high-profile fatal shootings by police in August of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, and John Crawford III, a 22-year-old black father of two who was carrying a BB rifle through a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio.

Hunt’s mother, Susan, who is white, accused the police of killing the 22-year-old due to his race. The population of Saratoga Springs is about 93% white and 0.5% black, according to the 2010 census.

“They killed my son because he’s black. No white boy with a little sword would they shoot while he’s running away,” Mrs Hunt told the Deseret News. Taylor said there was “no indication that race played any role”. Hunt’s family have not been able to explain why he was carrying the sword, which they called a souvenir from a gift shop.

The new account confirmed by Taylor on Monday appears to potentially match with remarks made by a witness to local media shortly after the shooting.

Jocelyn Hansen, who was filling her car at a gas station opposite the bank, has said that seconds beforehand she saw Hunt and the officers in conversation. She said that after taking a photograph of the scene, which showed Hunt smiling and with his hands at his sides, she got into her car in order to leave and then heard gunfire.

“I looked up. There were shots and there was a chase,” she told ABC 4 Utah. “He turned and was running away from the police officers,” Hansen added. She could not be reached on Monday.

The altered official account also follows an angry response by the Saratoga Springs police department to media reports of claims that Hunt may have been shot while running away.

“Everyone should remember that the news outlets have ratings they need to gain. They don’t report facts. They use innuendo, opinion and rumor and then report it as fact,” said the unsigned statement, which was published on the department’s Facebook page but has since been removed.

“The real facts are being determined by an independent investigation, and not in a rushed or haphazard manner,” it went on. “When those facts are gathered and analyzed they will be reviewed by independent legal authorities.”

The two officers involved in the incident have not been identified by Saratoga Springs police department. They have been placed on paid administrative leave. An investigation is being carried out by the county’s “officer-involved shooting protocol team”, which includes officers from several different forces and agencies, according to Taylor, who said the county attorney’s office would “review these findings and issue a statement”.

“We haven’t even interviewed the officers yet,” said Taylor. “We’ve talked briefly with them just to kind of get an idea of what the scene was at the time.” He said officers were typically interviewed within 48-72 hours of a shooting. One is now scheduled to be interviewed on Tuesday and the other on Thursday, more than a week after the shooting, he said.

“I’m stunned. I find that almost incomprehensible,” Edwards, the attorney for Hunt’s family, said after being informed of this by the Guardian. “You want to speak with the officers almost immediately afterwards, when their memories are fresh and before they have had a chance to corroborate their stories.”

Taylor said the county attorney’s report would not be complete until his office received the findings of an autopsy that had completed by a state medical examiner’s office in Salt Lake county. He said that he expected this to take between six and seven weeks.

Edwards, the attorney for the family, said it was not clear whether the inquiry would be satisfactory. “Do we trust the police to do a thorough investigation to find any kind of wrongdoing, and to ultimately punish the wrongdoer? I think the jury is still out on this one.”

The attorney said he and the Hunt family would wait until the report before deciding their next move. “If it appears that there was some sort of criminal activity on the part of the officer, obviously we would like to have that followed through with,” he said.

It's important to know that this took place in the week after SLC's ComicCon, and Darrien Hunt was dressed like this:


And the main character of Samurai Champloo looks like this:


So...young black cosplayer shot in the back for having a prop sword?

[Kuja]

CBC Warns Canadians: US Cops Will Pull You Over and Steal Your Money

62,000 US drivers have been pulled over and had their cash seized by small-town American cops in the past 13 years, under civil forfeiture laws that let them declare anyone to be a probable terrorist and/or drug dealer and take their money without charge or evidence; the only way to get it back is to hire a lawyer and return, over and over again, to the tiny town you were passing through when you were robbed at badgepoint.

The CBC's advice to Canadians: "Avoid long chats if you're pulled over; don't leave litter on the floor of your car, especially energy drink cans; don't use breath/air freshener, they're evidence of drug use; don't be quiet; don't be talkative; don't wear expensive clothes; don't have tinted windows; don't consent to a search."

Because: "on an American roadway with a full wallet, in the eyes of thousands of cash-hungry cops you're a rolling ATM."

News outlets here have reported many such abuses over the years. But the Washington Post’s latest investigation exposes money-grabbing as big business.

It involves a nationwide network of enforcement agencies (except in the few states that have banned it) that operates with the help of a vast private intelligence service called “Black Asphalt” (police forces pay an enrolment fee of $19.95). The network uses consultants and trainers who either charge fees or operate on contingency, keeping a percentage of cash seized by their police pupils.

Police forces use the money to finance their departmental budgets, sometimes spending it on luxury vehicles, first-class tickets to conferences, and lavish quarters. They regard the money as rightfully theirs. One prosecutor used seized cash to defend herself against a lawsuit brought by people whose cash she seized.

American shakedown: Police won't charge you, but they'll grab your money

On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.

That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different reason than the one Ottawa cites.

There’s a shakedown going on in the U.S., and the perps are in uniform.

Across America, law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public’s cash as they can; “hand over fist,” to use the words of one police trainer.


Roadside seizure

It usually starts on the road somewhere. An officer pulls you over for some minor infraction — changing lanes without proper signalling, following the car ahead too closely, straddling lanes. The offence is irrelevant.

Then the police officer wants to chat, asking questions about where you’re going, or where you came from, and why. He’ll peer into your car, then perhaps ask permission to search it, citing the need for vigilance against terrorist weaponry or drugs.

What he’s really looking for, though, is money.

And if you were foolish (or intimidated) enough to have consented to the search, and you’re carrying any significant amount of cash, you are now likely to lose it.

The officer will probably produce a waiver, saying that if you just sign over the money then the whole matter will just disappear, and you’ll be able to go on your way.

Refuse to sign it, and he may take the cash anyway, proclaiming it the probable proceeds of drugs or some other crime.

Either way, you almost certainly won’t be charged with anything; the objective is to take your money, not burden the system.

You’ll have the right to seek its return in court, but of course that will mean big lawyer’s fees, and legally documenting exactly where the money came from. You will need to prove you are not a drug dealer or a terrorist.

It might take a year or two. And several trips back to the jurisdiction where you were pulled over. Sorry.

In places like Tijuana, police don’t make any pretense about this sort of thing. Here in the U.S., though, it’s dressed up in terms like “interdiction and forfeiture,” or “the equitable sharing program.”

Authorities claim it’s legal, but some prosecutors and judges have called it what it is: abuse.

In any case, it’s a nasty American reality.


Powers and justifications

Seizing suspected drug money has been legal here for decades, but after 9/11 police acquired a whole new set of powers and justifications. And they set about using them for profit.

The Washington Post this week reported that in the past 13 years, there have been 61,998 cash seizures on roadways and elsewhere without use of search warrants.

The total haul: $2.5 billion, divided pretty much equally between the U.S. government and state and local authorities (hence the Kafkaesque “equitable sharing” euphemism).

Half of the seizures, according to the Post, were below $8,800. Only a sixth of those who had money taken from them pursued its return.

Some, no doubt, were indeed drug dealers or money launderers and just walked away from the money. Others just couldn’t spare the expense and time of going to court.

Of those who did, though, nearly half got their money back, a statistic that fairly screams about the legitimacy of the seizures.

So does another fact: In many cases, authorities offer half the money back – money they’d claimed was proceeds of crime. And when they do issue a cheque, they almost always insist their victim sign a legal release promising never to sue.

It would also appear police like to target minorities, who tend to be cooperative and less likely to hire a lawyer.

Civil rights advocates have documented all sorts of outright legal theft:

The (minority) businessman from Georgia who was relieved of $75,000 he’d raised from relatives to buy a restaurant in Louisiana.
The (minority) church leaders who were carrying nearly $30,000 from their Baltimore parishioners to carry out church activities in North Carolina and El Salvador.
The young college grad with no criminal record on his way to a job interview out West who was relieved of $2,500 lent to him by his dad for the trip.

News outlets here have reported many such abuses over the years. But the Washington Post’s latest investigation exposes money-grabbing as big business.

It involves a nationwide network of enforcement agencies (except in the few states that have banned it) that operates with the help of a vast private intelligence service called “Black Asphalt” (police forces pay an enrolment fee of $19.95). The network uses consultants and trainers who either charge fees or operate on contingency, keeping a percentage of cash seized by their police pupils.

Police forces use the money to finance their departmental budgets, sometimes spending it on luxury vehicles, first-class tickets to conferences, and lavish quarters. They regard the money as rightfully theirs. One prosecutor used seized cash to defend herself against a lawsuit brought by people whose cash she seized.

It’s just human nature, really.

Give police the legal ability to take someone’s money, and to claim it’s in the national interest, and then tell them they can keep a nice chunk of it, and what other result could there be?


Travel advice

So, for any law-abiding Canadian thinking about an American road trip, here’s some non-official advice:

Avoid long chats if you’re pulled over. Answer questions politely and concisely, then persistently ask if you are free to go.

Don’t leave litter on the vehicle floor, especially energy drink cans.

Don’t use air or breath fresheners; they could be interpreted as an attempt to mask the smell of drugs.

Don’t be too talkative. Don’t be too quiet. Try not to wear expensive designer clothes. Don’t have tinted windows.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.

As the Canadian government notes, there is no law against carrying it here or any legal limit on how much you can carry. But if you’re on an American roadway with a full wallet, in the eyes of thousands of cash-hungry cops you’re a rolling ATM.

[Dominus Atheos]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/0 ... thing-else

Out-of-control police: It's not just the tasing, it's the ... everything else

We learned earlier about the 62-year-old woman in Tallahassee, Florida, tased by police as she calmly walked away from them. But the whole entire incident, from before the tasing, is downright appalling. Let's start, using the police's own narrative:

In Tuesday's incident, officers were patrolling the 500 block of Dunn Street off Old Bainbridge Road shortly after 5 p.m., DeLeo said in the news conference.
Several people were walking in the street but moved out of the way when another officer drove past them. They walked back into the street behind behind the officer, who then pulled over and approached them. Police reports say the people were blocking traffic.

First of all, look at the street they were walking on:


Where were they supposed to walk? As the person taking the video noted, "Look at this street! It's a mother-fucking pedestrian-ass street." And indeed, mailboxes go straight to the edge of the street, as do lawn hedges, trees, and telephone poles. There is literally no place for people to walk unless they want to hurdle hedges in people's lawns.
And then they'd be guilty of trespassing.

There's more below the fold.

The officer, according to court documents, got out of his car and approached Quontarrious Jones, 23, and ordered him to stop walking multiple times. Jones was arrested on a charge of resisting without violence.

Note that the pedestrians got out of the way of one cop car, so they were happy to let traffic pass, they just apparently didn't get out of the way of the second cop car in time. How about a honk of the horn? A quick, "heads up, passing through!" Nope, it was time to make arrests, Jones arrested not for doing anything wrong, but for "resisting (what?) without violence." In other words, arrested for not showing proper fealty to the cop.

Shortly after the arrests, Viola Young approached officers and started yelling at them as they commanded a crowd to stay back from the area. Mahan told her to stay back.
"I just want to know what is going on," she shouted at officers.

Mahan told her she was under arrest, but Young moved away from him. As she was walking away, Mahan pulled out his taser and fired it into her back.

Young was arrested for asking, "I just want to know what is going on." That's all it takes. Wanting to know what is going on.
Also check this:
That's FOUR cop cars in that picture. There is another to the left, out of this frame. So FIVE cop cars because a few people were walking in the street where there was no sidewalk, and an elderly woman wanted to know what was going on.
Apparently, Tallahassee is a crime-free burg where half the police force needs to show up and create a crime where none existed.

[Dominus Atheos]

Is it a coverup? House of Cards level corruption in Ferguson and beyond


On August 10, 2014, St. Louis County Police Chief John Belmar held his first press conference on the murder of Mike Brown by Officer Darren Wilson of the nearby Missouri Ferguson Police Department. His force had been called in to take over the investigation for the much smaller local department. The shooting had occurred less than 24 hours earlier, and the tensions on the ground in Ferguson were already red hot and boiling over.


Six different witnesses on the scene claimed that Mike Brown was shot at repeatedly from behind before he turned around, faced Darren Wilson, verbally surrendered, and put his hands in the air. Wilson, having already shot at Mike Brown at least six times while he fled, then fired off a barrage of four quick shots at the surrendered Brown he was looking at face to face, killing him on the spot. With his lifeless body face down on the road, Mike Brown’s blood literally flowed down Canfield Drive for more than four hours. The shooting and the aftermath that evening, which included police dogs, infuriated residents as never before, and the anger was spreading rapidly across St. Louis and into the nation.

When Chief Belmar sat down the next day to brief the press on his summary of the facts, he stated at 1:13 (and then even more emphatically at 6:01) in the video below, "The entire scene, from approximately the car door (of Officer Wilson) to the shooting, is, uh, about 35 feet."

View the video, and much more analysis, below the fold.



At that time, when the chief said the "entire scene" was just 35 feet in distance from the "car door to the shooting," every observer accepted it as a negligible fact and thought little about it, instead zeroing in on why Darren Wilson stopped Mike Brown in the first place and why a police officer would shoot a young man who was surrendering with his hands up.

It turns, out, though, that the distance Mike Brown fled was not 35 feet, as was stated in the press conference and cited in hundreds of articles since. Nor was it 45 feet, or 75 feet, or even 95 feet, but approximately 108 feet away from Darren Wilson’s SUV. Below, you will find photos from the day of the murder, maps, infographics, and more to confirm for you that the distance was nearly 300 percent farther away than originally claimed by Chief Belmar and subsequently quoted as fact in almost every narrative of the case.

While the initial reporting of this distance from the chief could have been an error, albeit an egregious one, it seems clear now, after weeks of requests to clarify this discrepancy have only produced silence, that it wasn’t an oversight, but a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.

What reason would the chief have for so seriously understating the distance by more than 70 feet? Well, how far Mike Brown fled matters greatly, and the St. Louis County Police Department could have many reasons for purposely understating it. One doubts, though, that they expected to be caught telling this lie.

In 2001, two plainclothes undercover police officers in the St. Louis suburb of Delwood shot and killed two unarmed black men. Claiming that the men, Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley, tried to run them over in their car, a federal investigation found that the parked car they were in actually never moved. St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, when the black community expressed outrage over the murders, publicly called the dead men "bums."

On February 20, 2012, St. Louis police officer Rory Bruce was caught on camera throwing a brutal forearm to the face of a handcuffed teenager who did nothing to provoke the assault. After delivering the blow, Bruce and his partner are heard on tape insulting the young man over and over again and wrongly blaming him for the assault. If the roles had been reversed and the teenager had thrown the forearm to the face of the officer, he would've committed a felonious crime and served a harsh mandatory minimum sentence. The officer who committed this crime, though, had the backing of Democratic State Senator Jeff Roorda. In this video, you will not only witness a brutal and senseless assault, but you will see Roorda claim the young man deserved it. Furthermore, Roorda, a member of the State Public Safety Board, successfully argued that this video could not and should not be used against the officer because, in his opinion, the cameras exist not to incriminate officers, but to film the behavior of those who've been arrested. As outrageous as that logic may sound, it worked and Officer Rory Bruce had his name cleared.



What’s particularly egregious about Jeff Roorda helping to thwart justice in this case is that Roorda was once a police officer in the St. Louis area until he was fired for repeated incidents of misconduct, including the falsification of multiple reports.
As a sign of just how twisted the justice system is in St. Louis, Roorda, who lost the appeal of his termination, was then hired as a police chief the next town over and, instead of being set back for his misconduct, began to shoot up through the political ranks as a man who would stand up for police officers by any means necessary. Soon he became head of the St. Louis Police Union and a leader in the charity, Shield of Hope, which is behind the $500,000 in funds that have been raised for Darren Wilson.

To connect just a few more dots, you must understand that Roorda is one of the closest and most faithful political allies Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has in the entire state of Missouri. Not only has Nixon personally campaigned and fundraised for Roorda, he has openly done so in the past month since the murder of Mike Brown in spite of Roorda’s connection to the Darren Wilson fundraiser and now public knowledge of Roorda’s past termination for police misconduct.



The strange loop fully closes when you see that Roorda was the primary author and sponsor of legislation this year in Missouri, which aimed to completely conceal the identity of police officers being charged in shootings.

All of that is to say that the state of Missouri, from the top to the bottom, has absolutely no problem concealing (or even outright concocting) the truth in a case when the career of a police officer is at risk.

Were it not for a camera that was completely forgotten, Marcus Jeter, who was being charged with assaulting an officer and was also accused of "going for the gun" of the officer, would be serving a long jail sentence today. However, the police camera, which officers forgot was on, caught officers who weren’t even near Jeter yelling, "Get your hand off of my gun," which has turned out to be a near unbeatable defense for officers and is going to apparently be used by Darren Wilson. As you will see in this video, while the officer performs for the audio of one camera and forgets he can be seen by the other, Jeter is flat on the ground after being brutally assaulted himself and wasn’t doing anything like going for a gun.



Police misconduct is not imaginary. It’s terrifyingly real, and nearly indefensible and often lethal for anyone experiencing it.

Innocent and unarmed, all-state Pasadena, California, athlete Kendrec McDade, was shot and killed by police who said that when they were just a few feet away from him that they heard him shoot at them multiple times and even saw the bright flashes from the muzzle of his gun. McDade, a freshman in college, had never touched a gun in his life and was only found with his wallet and cell phone.

John Crawford III, an upstanding citizen and father of two in Ohio, was recently killed by police officers in a Beavercreek Walmart after a fellow shopper, Ronald Ritchie, falsely claimed on 911 that he saw Crawford loading his weapon and pointing at children. Neither happened. Crawford, talking on the phone with the mother of his children, was standing peacefully in an aisle when police—who, it should be noted, were not in traditional uniforms but in shorts and polo shirts—shot and killed him within 1.6 seconds of making contact with him. In their initial report, the police claimed several facts that they've since backed off of. Before anyone saw the video, the officers claimed Crawford lunged at them in a "violent manner." Ten days later, the police, having seen the video, dropped the idea that Crawford did any such thing. Before anyone saw the video, both officers claimed that they told Crawford multiple times to put down his weapon but he refused to do so. One officer now admits he didn't say anything at all and both officers now admit they didn't even identify themselves at all before shooting him.



30 seconds after this still was taken from the Ohio Wal-Mart, John Crawford had been shot and killed.

Without even using this space to dive into the actual murder of Mike Brown, it appears that some base level misconduct has happened when the St. Louis County Police Department has repeatedly lied about the distance Mike Brown fled from the SUV of Darren Wilson.
Do you remember Kajieme Powell? He was a young man in St. Louis who was shot and killed by police just days after the Mike Brown murder. In that case, later that evening and early the next morning, the police regularly referred to a zone, a physical distance of 20 to 30 feet, in which an officer is expected and trained to use lethal force if someone has a knife or can be expected to cause physical harm to the officer. Anyone who saw the fast murder of Kajieme Powell was horrified by it, but the police insisted that the officers, filmed by the cell phone of an onlooker, were within that imaginary zone in which lethal force was expected to be used.

When the police came out the morning after Mike Brown was killed and deliberately included the distance between the SUV and the shooting, it successfully created a very particular narrative. The arc of their initial story, magnified in importance by the absence of even one official report, is that Darren Wilson shot and killed a young man who, in a short distance from the SUV, posed him grave harm.

What follows is indisputable evidence to the contrary. Mike Brown fled at least 108 feet away from Darren Wilson's SUV. If the police will lie about this fact, what else have they openly lied about? Did they present this false distance to the grand jury? Here are the facts.



This is Darren Wilson's SUV. Where you see it here is exactly where he parked it to confront Mike Brown and Dorian Johnson for jaywalking. Out of sight in this image, to the left of the driver's side door, is Mike Brown's hat (shown in a later image below). Approximately 16 feet behind the SUV is Mike Brown's black sandal which came off while he was running. Please notice the fire hydrant to the right of the SUV.



On the center left is Darren Wilson's SUV from the opposite angle. Notice the two orange cones next to the driver's side door. That's Mike Brown's red St. Louis Cardinals hat next to it.



Using this image, let's create starting line A. As effective landmarks, please notice the fire hydrant on the right and the sloping entrance into the apartments.

From the back of Darren Wilson's SUV, Brown fled over 100 feet down Canfield Drive. The exact location where Brown died is today marked by a memorial in the middle of the street.



This is ending line B. Mike Brown is the blurred figure on the ground. That is Darren Wilson, visibly uninjured in every image of him from that day, standing to the right. Having turned around and surrendered, with his hands up, Mike Brown is now facing the back of the SUV.



Here is an overhead view of Canfield Drive. Notice the location of Darren Wilson's SUV on the left and Mike Brown's body on the right. This distance measurement, which was double checked in person multiple times, is 108 feet.



Using Google Maps, the approximate distance from the front of Darren Wilson's SUV to where Mike Brown was shot before falling down is actually 148 feet.

In his 23 years as a St. Louis prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, in spite of strong evidence in many cases, has never indicted a police officer. His office now states any police reports from Darren Wilson's murder of Mike Brown aren't delayed—in fact, they aren't going to release any reports at all. As we are now likely to just be a few weeks away from a grand jury decision in this case, citizens and journalists have been left to do what police and prosecutors seem to have very little interest in—pushing for the real facts to find justice for a young man who was killed with his hands in the air.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/0 ... and-beyond

[Spekio]

Do you remember the movie City of God, and the drug-lords that ran it? Do you remember the publicized occupations for the world cup and olympics that set pacification police units?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.


Police forcing a man to bang his own head against a wall saying he needs to respect them.

[Dominus Atheos]

Kid tapes cop smashing car window, dragging man away after tasering him

Lawsuit: Shards of glass hit two children in backseat, the passenger, and driver.



A 14-year-old boy's videotape of an Indiana cop smashing an ax though a vehicle window, shooting the passenger with a stun gun, and ripping him from the vehicle has become the subject of an excessive force lawsuit.

Monday's lawsuit [PDF] is among the most recent in a wave of police encounters gone awry that have been captured on video and resulted in legal action. The incident was filmed two weeks ago in Hammond, Indiana, and it started with a motorist being stopped and pulled over for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt.

As two brothers sat in the back seat, one seven and the other 14, an officer is seen on tape demanding that the passenger show some identification. He has none and disputes that he needs to produce it. One of two officers then demands that he get out of the car. All the while, his girlfriend is overheard on her mobile phone talking to a 911 operator, fearing for their safety. The teen is filming the incident.

"How can you say they are not going to hurt you? People are getting shot by the police!" the woman, Lisa Mahone, is overheard saying on the phone.

In the background, the officer asks front-seat passenger Jamal Jones, "Are you going to open the door?"

The next thing the three-minute tape shows is a cop smashing the passenger window with an ax, stunning Jones, and ripping him from the vehicle. The woman, mother of the two children in the backseat, starts screaming, as does the younger child.

According to the federal court lawsuit, pieces of glass hit all four people in the car, including the two kids.

"The officer used the tool to smash the front passenger window of the vehicle, striking Jamal in the right shoulder and causing shards of glass to strike Jamal, Lisa, Joseph (14), and JaNiya (7)," the Indiana federal court suit alleges.

Hammond Police spokesman Lt. Richard Hoyda spoke with CNN about the incident. "The first officer saw the passenger inside the vehicle drop his left hand behind the center console inside of the vehicle," he said. "Fearing for officer safety, the first officer ordered the passenger to show his hands and then repeatedly asked him to exit the vehicle."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014 ... ering-him/

[Dominus Atheos]

Caught on hidden camera, NYPD officers beat surrendered, unarmed teenager with gun and fists

In the video below you are witnessing 16-year-old Kahreem Tribble of Brooklyn, New York, fully non-violent and surrendered, being brutally beaten with the fists of New York City Police Department Officer Tyrane Isaac, then smashed in the face with the loaded gun of NYPD Officer David Afanador.



While NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton has taken the rather rare step of suspending David Afandor WITHOUT pay, Tyrane Isaac, who started the brutality and clearly demonstrated excessive and unnecessary force with the repeated punches to the face and body of Tribble, is just on modified duty WITH pay as is the other officer who did nothing to intervene or support this young victim of police violence.

Read more about this breaking story here and write Commissioner Bratton a tweet here to let him know how you feel and that you want him to keep his recent promise of firing the officers who are "poisoning the well—the brutal, the corrupt, the racist, the incompetent."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/0 ... -and-fists

[Dominus Atheos]

Federal Appeals Court Rules Evidence from Warrantless GPS Tracking Does Not Have to Be Suppressed

A federal appeals court ruled that law enforcement does not need to get a warrant in order to legally use evidence obtained from surveillance in a criminal case. The court also effectively endorsed consultation among officials in the executive branch instead of going to a judge for a warrant as “good faith” conduct.

In 2010, FBI agents attached a GPS tracking device to the car of Harry Katzin in order to track his movements because they suspected he was involved in the robberies of multiple Rite-Aid pharmacies. The agents did not seek a warrant from a judge. They used the tracking device to follow Katzin as his car drove to another Rite-Aid, and Katzin was arrested.

The Supreme Court decided unanimously in US v. Jones in 2012 that when law enforcement attaches a GPS device to a vehicle and uses it to track a person a “search” under the Fourth Amendment is taking place.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals did not dispute the fact that Katzin’s arrest was the result of warrantless surveillance, according to the Supreme Court decision. However, what the court did have a problem with was using the “exclusionary rule” to suppress the evidence from the surveillance, which violated Katzin’s Fourth Amendment rights.

The court ruled 8-5 that the evidence should not be suppressed. Judge Franklin Van Antwerpen, appointed to the appeals court by President George W. Bush, wrote the majority opinion [PDF].

“Despite its connection to the Fourth Amendment, there is no constitutional right to have the evidentiary fruits of an illegal search or seizure suppressed at trial,” Van Antwerpen argued in the court’s opinion. A Fourth Amendment violation does not automatically require exclusion of evidence. “The exclusionary rule is instead ‘a judicially created means of effectuating the rights secured by the Fourth Amendment.’”

Van Antwerpen further explained, “Where the particular facts of a case indicate that law enforcement officers “act[ed] with an objectively ‘reasonable good-faith belief’ that their conduct [was] lawful, or when their conduct involve[d] only simple, ‘isolated’ negligence,” there is no illicit conduct to deter.” The agents believed their actions were lawful.

Since the violation of rights occurred before the Supreme Court decision, Van Antwerpen suggested, “The agents’ inadvertent Fourth Amendment violation was neither ‘calculated’ nor the result of a ‘deliberately cavalier or casual’ attitude toward appellees’ Fourth Amendment rights, and that the agents were likely ‘surprise[d]” by Jones.’” And added, “Application of the good faith exception turns on whether the agents, at the time they acted, would have or should have known their installation of the GPS and their subsequent monitoring of Harry Katzin’s vehicle were unconstitutional.”

One key aspect of the majority’s decision was dependent upon the fact that agents had consulted and received approval from the Assistant US Attorney before engaging in the warrantless surveillance.

“It was [Justice Department] policy at the time that a warrant was not required to install a battery-powered GPS on a vehicle parked on a public street and to surveil it on public roads. We have previously considered reliance on government attorneys in our good faith calculus and concluded that, based upon it in combination with other factors, “[a] reasonable officer would…have confidence in [a search’s] validity.”

Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr., who was appointed to the appeals court by President Barack Obama, wrote the dissenting opinion and specifically called attention to this consultation being part of the justification for not suppressing evidence.

“I do not believe that this intra-executive consultation absolves police personnel’s behavior,” Greenaway wrote. “Now, the assumption by law enforcement that their own self-derived rule sanctioned their conduct becomes true, thanks to the majority’s analysis. Such decision-making is wrongful conduct that can and should be deterred—for that is the primary purpose of the exclusionary rule! The police practice at issue here effectively disregarded the possibility that we could find a GPS search constitutes a Fourth Amendment violation requiring a warrant.”

“Now, law enforcement shall be further emboldened knowing that the good faith exception will extricate officers from nearly any evidentiary conundrum.”

Specifically,” he added, “Law enforcement contends that they acted reasonably by consulting with their co-investigators at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. However, what is missing here is neutral authorization of any sort for the conduct undertaken by the police. Consultation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office is not a panacea for the constitutional issues raised here.”

…[T]he agents in this case acted with restraint. Yet the inescapable fact is that this restraint was imposed by the agents themselves, not by a judicial officer. They were not required, before commencing the search, to present their estimate of probable cause for detached scrutiny by a neutral magistrate. They were not compelled, during the conduct of the search itself, to observe precise limits established in advance by a specific court order. Nor were they directed, after the search had been completed, to notify the authorizing magistrate in detail of all that had been seized…

Greenaway also argued, “Courts have given power to the words of the critics by using the good faith exception to chip away at the breadth of the rule. The majority, in its alternative holding, expands the good faith exception to the point of eviscerating the exclusionary rule altogether by failing to provide any cognizable limiting principle.”

He stated, “Law enforcement personnel made a deliberate decision to forego securing a warrant before attaching a GPS device directly to a target vehicle in the absence of binding Fourth Amendment precedent authorizing such a practice. Indeed, the police embarked on a long-term surveillance project using technology that allowed them to monitor a target vehicle’s movements using only a laptop, all before either this Circuit or the Supreme Court had spoken on the constitutional propriety of such an endeavor.”

And Greenaway contended, “Neutral authorization for law enforcement’s actions has been the hallmark of the good faith exception’s application. Without this control, what is the fail-safe to preclude further erosion? I fear there is none. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.”

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/1 ... uppressed/

Not the police abusing people, but just an idea of how badly the US criminal justice system is tilted against the average person.

[Highlord Laan]

Obviously, since officers react with fear and terror driven violence at anything that might somehow slightly resemble something that might be confused for a threatening action if one were retarded, I see no reason to keep spending tax dollars on all their expensive and expansive training, weapons and armor. By their own actions it's all obviously useless.

[Dominus Atheos]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10 ... n-in-jail/

Last week a man was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, FL when his two credit cards were declined after he spent $600 on bottle service at a nightclub.

The story wouldn't be all that interesting were it not for the fact that the man, Don Marcani, had not reached his credit limit that night. In fact, he was able to pay his $1,000 bail the next morning using one of the credit cards that was declined earlier.

As Marcani told NBC 6 South Florida, he and his friend used a Wells Fargo credit card to buy $80-worth of drinks at the bar of Cyn Nightclub. Then they decided to move into the VIP section, costing them $600. The waitress took Marcani's credit card, but when she tried to run the credit card later that night, it was declined. Marcani then provided a Capital One credit card, which was also declined.

As Marcani told NBC, “The club manager called my bank and gave me the phone to talk to the bank and that’s when the cop interfered and I think he said, ‘I’m tired of this shit. We even told them, 'walk us, escort us to the ATM machine.'” According to Marcani, the officer arrived at the scene at 3:49am. A few minutes later, at 3:57am, Marcani reportedly received an e-mail from Capital One asking him to verify the charge, but he wasn't able to check the e-mail because he was already handcuffed and the police confiscated his phone.

The next morning Broward County Jail successfully charged $1,000 to Marcani's credit card for bail.

With heightened and more visible instances of credit card hacking, banks have tried to prevent fraud on increasingly fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards, but those measures can make using credit cards unreliable and inconvenient. Europe faced a similarly fraud-fraught market a decade ago, but since its move to embedded chip cards, instances of foul play have dropped. (Although chip-and-pin cards are by no means immune to hacking, they are still considered more secure than the many-decades-old magnetic stripe cards common in the US.) Marcani's experience was just an extreme example, but regular credit card users have also been hit with more mundane inconveniences at the hands of credit card issuers. JP Morgan, Chase, and Capital One have begun reissuing credit cards that were caught in the latest Home Depot attack, and banks like Air Academy Federal Credit Union have “caught roughly $20,000 worth of attempted fraudulent transactions tied to cards that were exposed from the Home Depot breach,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Ars contacted Capital One about Marcani's case and the bank told us, “Capital One strives to balance protecting customer accounts and avoiding disruptions in service. We offer two-way e-mail and text alerts that enable customers to immediately clear a fraud concern by responding to the alert.” Ars also contacted Wells Fargo, Cyn Nightclub, and Marcani's lawyer, but we have not yet received a response.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10 ... n-in-jail/

[Dominus Atheos]

Mandatory minimum sentencing: Injustice served?

Prison time is HARD TIME any way you look at it. But it's hardest of all when the prisoner is serving a sentence that allows no flexibility at all, no matter what the circumstances. Our Cover Story is reported by Erin Moriarty of "48 Hours":

"We had tried calling the cops," said Lee Wollard. "We had tried doing everything. Nothing worked. Nothing."

After hearing 59-year-old Wollard's story, you may think he did what any family man would do.

Or, you may agree with a Florida jury and think he went too far. But either way, you're likely to wonder: Does Wollard's punishment really fit the crime?

"Never, never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be here," he said in prison. "I still have a hard time believing it. It's unbelievable!"

Lee Wollard's troubles began six years ago. He was a professional with a master's degree in Davenport, Fla., living with his wife and their two daughters and working at Sea World. When his youngest daughter Sarah began dating a troubled 17-year-old teenager with no place to live, Wollard and his wife, Sandy, took him in.

"You know, if someone needs help, we'll help 'em," he said.

Moriarty asked, "Did it go OK, initially?"

"For about a week," Wollard laughed.

Sandy Wollard said, "It started out his behavior was fine. I'd ask him if he would take the garbage out or clear off the table, and it was, 'Yes, ma'am,' 'Yes, ma'am.'"

But Sandy says the relationship with the boy, whom we agreed not to identify, soon soured.

"This young man was taking my daughter out at night, after we had put her to bed and we had gone to bed," she said. "And he was disappearing with her. And he would disappear for days at a time with her. And she was 16 years old."

The Wollards asked him to leave, but nothing kept him out of the house -- until May 14, 2008. As Lee was taking a nap, his daughter and her boyfriend began to fight.

He heard a loud noise: "Like you were throwing stuff against the wall," said Lee.

Then came cries for help. "It's not like my family to ask for help. So I grabbed my .357 and loaded it with shells," said Wollard.

"That's a large gun," said Moriarty.

"It's a heck of a gun, yes," said Wollard. "You even wing someone with a .357, they're in deep trouble."

According to Wollard, the young man lunged at him and punched a hole in a wall; the teenager disputes that. But no one disagrees about what happened next.

"So I fire a warning shot into the wall, [and] I said, 'The next one's between your eyes,'" said Lee.

Sandy continued, "And the kid turned around and just hurried out the door. And that was the end of that."

Not quite.

Wollard was charged with shooting into a building with a firearm, aggravated assault, and child endangerment. And when he went on trial a year later, a jury convicted him of all charges -- and then Judge Donald Jacobsen sentenced him to 20 years in Florida state prison, the mandatory minimum.

That means Wollard will serve every day of 20 years in state prison.

"And I was just like, 'What?'" recalled Wollard. "You know, the blood just drained out of my head. I almost passed out."

It didn't matter that Lee Wollard was a first offender, or that no one was physically injured. In Florida, a conviction for aggravated assault involving a firearm means an automatic 20 years. That's the mandatory minimum sentence.

"I looked at him and told him, 'I would not be sentencing you to this term of incarceration, 20 years Florida state prison, if it were not for the fact that I was obligated under my oath as a judge to do so,'" said Judge Jacobson.

"But that had to be difficult," said Moriarty.

"Being a judge is difficult," he replied.

Wollard's case is just one of thousands in this country, most involving drug offenses, in which the punishment is determined by mandatory sentencing laws, laws created by legislators who strip away power from judges they believe to be too lenient and give it instead to prosecutors.

"It's an invaluable tool for prosecutors and law enforcement to use, because it gives us leverage," said Steven Jansen, who runs the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys in Washington, D.C. He says that defendants, when faced with harsh mandatory sentences, are more likely to negotiate a plea bargain, avoiding lengthy, costly trials. And the sentencing is more fair, he says.

But is it really?

Moriarty asked, "When you have these mandatory minimum sentences, aren't you treating the violent career criminals the same way as you are treating the first offenders, the non-violent? They get the same sentence."

"But justice is blind," said Jansen. "And so it doesn't matter what status you are in our society. If you commit these crimes and fulfill the elements for a crime, blind justice will charge you with that. And you should receive equal sentence just as anybody else that committed that same crime."

That was the thinking in the late 1980s, when mandatory sentencing became a popular "tough on crime" tool as part of the government's war on drugs -- locking away not just drug dealers, but often their customers, many young first offenders.

"It seemed so contrary to everything I thought I had learned in Civics 101, that judges can't judge now when the crimes carry mandatory minimum sentences," said Julie Stewart, who started the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

She says Lee Wollard's 20-year sentence is not as unusual as you might think.

Take the case of Weldon An'gelos, a music producer with no previous record, who in 2004 was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling $350 worth of marijuana to undercover cops who found a firearm in his possession.

And then there's 19-year-old Jacob Lavoro in Texas, who is now facing up to 20 years in prison after getting caught with a tray of hash brownies.

"No one is saying these people shouldn't go to prison for committing a crime," said Stewart. "I think that whether you like the law or not, it exists. If you violate it, there's a consequence to it.

"What we say is that the judge should be able to determine what the punishment is -- not a legislator, not a prosecutor."

Stewart blames mandatory sentencing for prison overcrowding. Since 1980, the average sentence for drug trafficking has more than doubled, from four years to nine-and-a-half.

And even Steven Jansen, of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, admits sometimes the wrong people are incarcerated.

"Unfortunately, you have these situations where people who think they are innocent decide to go to trial instead of accepting a plea offer, and they end up receiving a more severe sentence than what maybe a gang member or a drug dealer would have taken," said Jensen.

Which is what happened to Lee Wollard.

"The prosecutor offered you probation, no jail sentence," said Moriarty. "

"Right," he said. "It never dawned on me that I would lose, because I hadn't done anything wrong. I'd protected my family, and I didn't even hurt anybody."

And Wollard's sentence seems particularly harsh, says his wife, when you consider that in Florida, if you happen to kill someone while "standing your ground" in self-defense, you may face no charges at all.

"But if you shoot a warning shot just to scare them away, you'll get twenty years in prison," said Sandy.

The Polk County State's Attorney, whose office prosecuted Wollard, refused to discuss his case. But nationally, there is a move to return some discretion to judges.

Earlier this year, federal sentencing guidelines were amended to reduce prison time. And in Florida, the legislature passed a law that exempts firing warning shots from the current harsh penalties.

But it comes too late for Wollard.

"Everything, everything is gone," he said.

Wollard has asked the Florida Governor for clemency -- which, incidentally, his daughter's former boyfriend supports. If he doesn't get it, Lee Wollard will leave prison in July 2028, when he is 73 years old.

"As bizarre as it sounds, if this is what the State of Florida requires of you to make sure your family is safe, I'm willing to do it," he said. "It's a bargain. I've got three family members, my two daughters and my wife, and they're alive. They're alive because of this. It's a bargain. Twenty years is a bargain."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mandatory-m ... ce-served/

While firing a warning shot is a bad idea, 20 years in jail is absurd.

Despite how it may sound on this site, I really don't have a problem with the average police officer. They are way too quick to close ranks around the 5-10% of really bad apples, and there is a serious problem with the "culture" of most police forces in this country, but I'm willing to believe that the vast majority are decent people who wouldn't go out of their way to kick a baby if given the opportunity.

Prosecutors, on the other hand are by definition fundamentally bad people. I don't want to compare them to Nazi's, (I believe that whenever someone proves Godwin's Law, they automatically lose the debate) but being a state prosecutor is one of those positions that it is impossible to do without being guilty of crimes against humanity, so the only comparison I can make is to Nazi prison guards. Even if they insist they were the least terrible Nazi prison guard, they are still horrible human beings.

[Dominus Atheos]

Yes, they are killing young black males

Yes, your intuition is correct:

Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater i, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings.

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica's analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring – 185, more than one per week.

ProPublica's risk analysis on young males killed by police certainly seems to support what has been an article of faith in the African American community for decades: Blacks are being killed at disturbing rates when set against the rest of the American population.

This analysis was based upon the very incomplete and FBI database, but according to experts it's highly doubtful that a more complete record could alter the basic trendlines.

This pretty much says it all:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/ ... males.html

[Channel72]

This disparity is the result of a huge number of factors creating a self-perpetuating systemic problem.

It's not just that police are generally racist or something - it's that they perceive young black males as more dangerous because (1) latent racism, and (2) statistically, young black males actually are more dangerous in the sense that they are more likely to commit violent crimes. Of course, (1) is reinforced by (2), and (2) is somewhat circular because young black males are also more likely to be falsely accused and sentenced.

All of this comes down to economics. If blacks reach economic parity with whites, which will eventually happen, most of these problems will disappear.

Median income by race: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-me ... ace-2013-9

The median income of whites is 57K, whereas for blacks it's 33K, meaning that on average whites make almost twice as much as blacks. So obviously this means that on average blacks are going to be more stressed out, get more alienated from society and upset, commit more crimes, get arrested more, thus perpetuating these stereotypes.

Really, it's all about economics. Once blacks reach economic parity with whites, and a generation grows up under that condition, it's likely racism will be substantially less of an issue.

[Darth Yan]

Out of pure curiosity I was wondering if anyone could say what happened with John Burge in Chicago (I mean I know he was convicted for perjury and was involved in a buttload of torture cases against convicts) but there seems to be a lot of people trying to whitewash him and claim he was innocent or trying to attack the innocence project in general.

http://crimevictimsmediareport.com/?p=6786
https://martin-preib-b7is.squarespace.c ... -radical-u (the blog as a whole rants about wrongful conviction "scams)
http://newcity.com/2014/02/20/crossing- ... -movement/
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2009/ ... ttack.html

How much is reliable and how much is shit?

[Simon_Jester]

While firing a warning shot is a bad idea, 20 years in jail is absurd.

In a horrible show of perversity, in a state where self-defense is a relatively stronger defense (i.e. 'stand your ground' and 'castle doctrine')... that kind of sentencing creates an incentive to kill attackers. For one, the odds are that you won't get any more time in prison for shooting the guy dead than you would for shooting and missing. For another, you may have an easier time pleading self-defense when dead men tell no tales.

Prosecutors, on the other hand are by definition fundamentally bad people. I don't want to compare them to Nazi's, (I believe that whenever someone proves Godwin's Law, they automatically lose the debate) but being a state prosecutor is one of those positions that it is impossible to do without being guilty of crimes against humanity, so the only comparison I can make is to Nazi prison guards. Even if they insist they were the least terrible Nazi prison guard, they are still horrible human beings.

Would you mind expanding on that? Is it because of the plea bargaining system?

[Dominus Atheos]

Let me put it to you this way, how many simple possession cases does the average prosecutor prosecute in his lifetime? Or at the other end of the spectrum, how many death penalties does he ask for and receive? How many people does he knowingly put into the shockingly inhumane US prison system?

[Borgholio]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10 ... n-in-jail/

Last week a man was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, FL when his two credit cards were declined after he spent $600 on bottle service at a nightclub.

The story wouldn't be all that interesting were it not for the fact that the man, Don Marcani, had not reached his credit limit that night. In fact, he was able to pay his $1,000 bail the next morning using one of the credit cards that was declined earlier.

As Marcani told NBC 6 South Florida, he and his friend used a Wells Fargo credit card to buy $80-worth of drinks at the bar of Cyn Nightclub. Then they decided to move into the VIP section, costing them $600. The waitress took Marcani's credit card, but when she tried to run the credit card later that night, it was declined. Marcani then provided a Capital One credit card, which was also declined.

As Marcani told NBC, “The club manager called my bank and gave me the phone to talk to the bank and that’s when the cop interfered and I think he said, ‘I’m tired of this shit. We even told them, 'walk us, escort us to the ATM machine.'” According to Marcani, the officer arrived at the scene at 3:49am. A few minutes later, at 3:57am, Marcani reportedly received an e-mail from Capital One asking him to verify the charge, but he wasn't able to check the e-mail because he was already handcuffed and the police confiscated his phone.

The next morning Broward County Jail successfully charged $1,000 to Marcani's credit card for bail.

With heightened and more visible instances of credit card hacking, banks have tried to prevent fraud on increasingly fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards, but those measures can make using credit cards unreliable and inconvenient. Europe faced a similarly fraud-fraught market a decade ago, but since its move to embedded chip cards, instances of foul play have dropped. (Although chip-and-pin cards are by no means immune to hacking, they are still considered more secure than the many-decades-old magnetic stripe cards common in the US.) Marcani's experience was just an extreme example, but regular credit card users have also been hit with more mundane inconveniences at the hands of credit card issuers. JP Morgan, Chase, and Capital One have begun reissuing credit cards that were caught in the latest Home Depot attack, and banks like Air Academy Federal Credit Union have “caught roughly $20,000 worth of attempted fraudulent transactions tied to cards that were exposed from the Home Depot breach,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Ars contacted Capital One about Marcani's case and the bank told us, “Capital One strives to balance protecting customer accounts and avoiding disruptions in service. We offer two-way e-mail and text alerts that enable customers to immediately clear a fraud concern by responding to the alert.” Ars also contacted Wells Fargo, Cyn Nightclub, and Marcani's lawyer, but we have not yet received a response.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10 ... n-in-jail/

Wait, why was he arrested...because his card was declined?

[Elheru Aran]

snip

Wait, why was he arrested...because his card was declined?

Manager called a cop, dude was like 'hey can you come with me to the ATM', cop is all 'nah' and that's all she wrote. It comes off like basically the cop felt like his time was being wasted and decided he wanted something to show for the call. Never mind that the CC worked just fine when he paid his own fucking bail with it in the morning...

[Borgholio]

Uh huh...so the crime that was committed was...what exactly?

[Elheru Aran]

Uh huh...so the crime that was committed was...what exactly?

That's the whole point. There's probably more to the story than we're seeing here-- maybe he was drunk and took a shot at the cop, maybe he made a scene because of the club's CC machines not working, whatever. So far though the story tends somewhat to support his side though rather than the cop's.

[RogueIce]

Wait, why was he arrested...because his card was declined?

Theft, because he allegedly took the services (drinks + VIP lounge) without being able to pay for them. Now granted, it was apparently a glitch somewhere in the process, as opposed to say somebody ordering all that stuff and then just trying to walk out and getting caught. Which should work for him as a potential defense. But that's where the charge came from.