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Jose, Maximo Colon Turn Tables On NYPD With Videotape
digg Huffpost - Jose, Maximo Colon Turn Tables On NYPD With Videotape
June 13, 2009 05:49 PM EST |
When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn't done anything wrong.
But proclaiming innocence wasn't going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.
"I sat in the jail and thought ... how could I prove this? What could I do?" Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.
As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club's cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers' arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.
The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.
But the drug corruption case isn't alone.
On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.
Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.
The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants' cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.
The misconduct "strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts," said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.
Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain _ the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.
Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city's unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don't think twice about framing suspects they're convinced are guilty anyway.
"Drugs are a dirty game," Moskos said. "Once you realize it's a game, then you start playing with the rules to win the game."
Just ask the Colon brothers.
The brothers' evening started much like any other.
Max's friend worked at a bodega down the street from Delicias de Mi Tierra, where they'd sometimes drink and play pool in the evenings. This night, the pool table was closed. They instead sat at the bar. Security cameras ended up filming their every move.
The brothers barely moved from the same spot for about 90 minutes as the undercovers entered the bar and mixed with the crowd. Moments after the officers left, a backup team barged in and grabbed six men, including the brothers.
Paperwork signed by "UC 13200" _ Officer Henry Tavarez _ claimed that he told a patron he wanted to buy cocaine. By his account, that man responded by approaching the 28-year-old Max, who then went over to the undercover and demanded to pat him down to make sure he wasn't wearing a wire.
Max collected $100 from Tavarez, the report said. The officer claimed to see two bags of cocaine pass through the hands of three men, including Jose, before they were given to him.
Jose was released after a court appearance. His brother was shipped off to Riker's Island until he could make bail.
"I was scared," Max said of his time at Rikers. "I don't get into trouble, and here I am with real criminals."
The moment Jose walked out of the holding cell, he made a beeline for Delicias and asked for a copy of the security tapes from the night they were arrested, Jan. 4, 2008.
"I knew it would be the only way to defend myself, because I knew the police would not believe me," he said.
The owner of Delicias queued up the tapes and the two waded through an entire day's worth of surveillance _ until they found the two hours the men spent in the club that night _ supposedly selling drugs.
Jose quickly got the tape to defense attorney Rochelle Berliner, a former narcotics prosecutor. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"I almost threw up," she said. "Because I must've prosecuted 1,500, 2,000 drug cases ... and all felonies. And I think back, Oh my God, I believed everything everyone told me. Maybe a handful of times did something not sound right to me. I don't mean to sound overly dramatic but I was like, sick."
What the tape doesn't show is striking: At no point did the officers interact with the undercovers, nor did the brothers appear to be involved in a drug deal with anyone else. Adding insult to injury, an outside camera taped the undercovers literally dancing down the street.
Berliner handed the tape over to the District Attorney's integrity unit. It reviewed the images more than 100 times to make sure it wasn't doctored by the defense before deciding to drop all charges against the brothers in June.
Six months later, Officer Tavarez and Detective Stephen Anderson pleaded not guilty to drug dealing and multiple other charges that their lawyers say were overblown.
Anderson's attorney has described him as a seasoned investigator who had no reason to make a false arrest. Tavarez, his attorney said, was a novice undercover merely along for the ride.
Life quickly deteriorated for Max and Jose after their arrest.
They owned a successful convenience store in Jackson Heights, but lost their license to sell tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets. The store closed a week before their case was dismissed.
"My life changed completely," Jose said. "I had a life before, and I have a different existence now. ... Now, I'm not able to afford to live in my own house or care for my children."
Jose has found construction work, while Max commutes two hours to Philadelphia to work at a relative's bodega. They stay away from the old neighborhood, where they say ugly rumors about them persist.
The brothers have filed a $10 million false arrest lawsuit against the police department, the officers involved and the city.
"I'm angry because, why'd it happen to me? I know a lot of people ... they don't go the right way and they can get away with it," Max said. "I'm young and I try to go the right way and boom, this happened to me. So I'm angry with life, too."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/jose-maximo-colon-turn-ta_n_215275.html
Follow-up: Judge Finds It Legal for Police to Taser Suspect to Get DNA Sample
By JONATHAN PERLOW
ShareThis
LOCKPORT, N.Y. (CN) - It's legal for police to zap a suspect with a Taser to get a DNA sample, as long as it's not done "maliciously, or to an excessive extent, or with resulting injury," a Niagara County judge has ruled in what appears to be the first case of its kind.
New York Supreme Court Judge Sara Sperrazza ruled it was not unconstitutional for Niagara Falls police to shock Ryan Smith with a 50,000-volt "drive stun" to get a DNA sample that allegedly links him to two crimes. She denied Smith's request to have the evidence thrown out.
One month before he was Tasered, Smith provided a DNA sample, taken with a swab of the cheek, without protest. It was sent to the wrong lab and opened, compromising the sample. When officers ordered him to give another one, he refused.
Prosecutors asked Sperrazza for another court order, which she signed.
Smith, 21, of Niagara Falls, was not represented by an attorney at the time, which meant he had to be personally made aware of the order, according to his lawyer Patrick Balkin. Balkin he said his client already had given police several samples.
Smith was grabbed on the street by two detectives and brought to police headquarters.
He refused to give another sample, objecting to the authority of the court order. He told the officers that they would have to "Tase" him to get another swab.
Police considered holding him down and forcing open his mouth. A Niagara Falls detective lieutenant called an assistant district attorney, who told him they could use the "minimum" force necessary to obtain the sample.
A video shows Smith handcuffed, seated on the floor with his shirt pulled up over his bare shoulders. Police can be heard telling him that the Taser would be "painful and unpleasant," but he persisted in his refusal, according to the judge.
The officer applied the Taser to Smith's shoulder area, which caused him to cry out and pull away. The data record for the device showed it was activated for 4 seconds.
"The video recording indicates that the defendant did yell out as if in pain and then agreed to comply with the order," Sperrazza wrote.
Smith allegedly was unconscious when the swab was taken, and was arrested for refusing to submit to a court order.
"It's terrifying," Balkin said. "You should never use force to collect evidence. We're headed down the wrong way if we're going to do that."
Balkin said the judge should have brought Smith to court and explained that he needed to comply. "He had already given two to four samples of DNA voluntarily; nobody had to Taser him. When met with passive residence to a court order, we can't use violence."
But Sperrazza allowed the uses of force based on the nature of the crimes and the evidence against Smith.
In July 2006, four suspects invaded a home, bound and gagged two small children and took the mother hostage. One man stayed behind with the kids while the other three took the mother to another home, where they shot a man during a robbery.
When police arrived at the first house they found one child still duct-taped and the other hiding on the roof. They also found DNA evidence on a can of soda.
Smith is also suspected of holding up a Sunoco convenience store while wielding a shotgun on Christmas Eve 2006, according to the indictment. Police found a glove left behind by the robber.
The DNA on the soda can and the glove was matched by the FBI's Combined DNA System, and the Erie County Forensic Lab found a connection between Smith's previous DNA test and evidence found on the can.
Judge Sperrazza recommended in similar situations that the court should order the suspect to appear and "explain the ramifications, including the authority to use reasonable force to effect compliance."
She said the court has not found any New York state cases regarding the use of force to collect DNA samples, but cited cases in Arizona, Idaho and Wyoming in which force was used by police to obtain hair and blood samples from non-compliant suspects. None involved Tasers.
Balkin said he plans to appeal if Smith is convicted in his August trial and will seek to have the DNA evidence declared inadmissible.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/06/11/Judge_Finds_It_Legal_for_Police_to_Taser_Suspect_to_Get_DNA_Sample.htm
Taser Used to Torture Alleged Criminal Into Giving DNA Sample -- and NY Supreme Court Approves
By Ray Stern
Jun. 11 2009
The New York Supreme Court approved the use of shocking a suspect with a Taser to force him to comply with a court order to give police a DNA sample.
An article by Courthouse News about the decision makes it clear the Taser -- made by a Scottsdale company -- was used like a torture instrument to force compliance. Police told the man, Ryan Smith, a suspect in a home invasion, shooting, and robbery, that he would be shocked if he didn't allow officers to swab his cheek for a sample.
When Smith refused, a cop shoved the business end of a Taser into the man's shoulder area and zapped him for four seconds. Smith then agreed to cooperate.
Makes us wonder what would happened if he hadn't cooperated. Would they have kept shocking him? Maybe tried water-boarding next?
From the article:
A video shows Smith handcuffed, seated on the floor with his shirt pulled up over his bare shoulders. Police can be heard telling him that the Taser would be "painful and unpleasant," but he persisted in his refusal, according to the judge.
The officer applied the Taser to Smith's shoulder area, which caused him to cry out and pull away. The data record for the device showed it was activated for 4 seconds.
"The video recording indicates that the defendant did yell out as if in pain and then agreed to comply with the order," Sperrazza wrote.
Smith allegedly was unconscious when the swab was taken, and was arrested for refusing to submit to a court order.
The article also says officers considered forcing Smith's mouth open. That option might not have been any better, and maybe using the Taser saved a few teeth. Either way, the cops come off looking thuggish.
A lawyer says there was another choice: Haul the guy before a judge to explain himself. We imagine that if Smith had continued to refuse, the judge could have ordered him locked up for contempt of court.
Arizona cops used to Taser suspects who resisted lawful orders passively, but they backed off that low standard. (Check out this shocking story about two Phoenix cops by our colleague Paul Rubin from a couple of years ago.) New York seems to be backsliding all the way to medieval days.
Good thing they didn't have Tasers back in the Civil Rights era.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2009/06/taser_used_to_torture_criminal_1.php
Officer gets 40 months after beating 60-year-old man in wheelchair
Published: June 12, 2009
A Chicago police officer has been sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for beating a 60 year old man who was handcuffed and shackled to a hospital emergency room wheelchair.
Randy Miles had been brought in drunk and with stab wounds when Officer William Cozzi was called to investigate. In an attack that was caught on videotape, Cozzi shackled Miles and hit him eleven times with a sap. Cozzi then claimed that Miles had attacked him and even had him charged with resisting arrest before the existence of the videotape became known.
The sentence comes amid growing tensions between Chicago Police Superintendent Judy Weis — a former FBI official who was brought in following a series of police scandals — and rank and file police officers, many of whom were outraged at the verdict. The attack took place in 2005, and Cozzi had already pleased guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge in county court and had served 18 months on probation when Weis referred the case to the FBI for civil rights violations. Cozzi is while and the victim is black.
Cozzi’s defense attorney, Terrence Gillespie, blamed Weis after the verdict for bringing a “misguided and vindictive” prosecution. “I’ve got a message for all those fine officers in blue out there,” Gillespie stated angrily. “Affter 15 years on the job, don’t snap. You’ll get thrown under the bus, and it’ll be a federal bus and it’ll be by your own superintendent.”
Cozzi will now lose not only his job but also his pension. Prior to the incident, he had served on the force for 15 years with no complaints of brutality. In his guilty plea, he claimed, “I let my frustrations get the best of me and made a terrible mistake in judgment.” However, the judge ruled that the beating was not spontaneous but deliberate.
US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told reporters, “We will back up police officers who do reasonable things under the circumstances, but at the same time, everyone needs to understand … that when people cross the line and assault someone and then lie about it, that has to be addressed too.”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/12/ill-cop-sentenced-for-beating-wheelchair-man/
Follow-up with full dashcam footage:
Parking tickets pile up on van with dead driver
Women says her dad apparently lay dead for weeks beneath N.Y. highway
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31122122/
Caught on tape: Elevator video clears Sunrise man of battery on police officer charge
By TONYA ALANEZ
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Friday, June 05, 2009
After a beat down in an elevator, Joshua Daniel Ortiz ended up with a broken nose and facing a charge of battering a Fort Lauderdale police officer.
The 22-year-old Sunrise man was surprised and delighted to learn Wednesday that Broward prosecutors were dropping the case against him after reviewing an elevator surveillance video showing three officers aggressively rush and beat Ortiz to the ground.
Once the Dec. 5 video surfaced, it altered the course of the case. It contradicted police reports that Ortiz provoked and attacked Officers Derek Lade, Stefan Silver and Steve Smith.
"They were just sitting there watching my life go down the drain with those charges," Ortiz said Wednesday. "I've been going crazy thinking my life is over. It's barely started and it's over."
The looming legal charges delayed Ortiz's enrollment in college classes, he said.
Police first charged Ortiz with felony battery on a law enforcement officer.
But after seeing the video obtained by Ortiz's defense attorney, Stephen Melnick, prosecutors downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor resisting charge. Upon further review, prosecutors dropped the case entirely.
"We thought based on the facts and the evidence, including the videotape, that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial," said Lee Cohen, assistant state attorney in charge of misdemeanor cases.
Fort Lauderdale police internal affairs investigators reviewed the incident more than a month ago and found no violations of policy or procedures, said Sgt. Frank Sousa, the department's spokesman.
"It was not a beating," Sousa said. "The video clearly shows that (Ortiz) made a movement toward the officer."
The 4:10 a.m. incident unfolded in a bank lobby at 200 S.W. First Ave. as Ortiz, his girlfriend and friends piled into an elevator, heading to a parking garage after a night out.
Acquaintances of Ortiz's started fighting in the lobby, he said, drawing police to the scene.
According to Lade's police report, Ortiz yelled at the officers from the elevator when they tried to break up the disturbance.
Ortiz "walked right up to me hitting his nose to my nose," Lade wrote, adding that he pushed Ortiz.
"As I approached Ortiz to take him into custody, Ortiz spun around to face me and assumed a fighting stance (both left and right hand clenched into fists and body bladed)," he wrote.
Ortiz said he exchanged agitated words with the officers, but the rest is fiction.
"They were on a power trip," Ortiz said. "I don't trust them anymore."
Melnick said the officers embellished their reports to justify their aggression without knowing the videotape existed.
"I think the video speaks for itself," he said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/state/epaper/2009/06/05/0605elevatorassault.html
Veteran detective's arrest in 1986 killing stuns the LAPD
By Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin
June 6, 2009
Kevin Scanlon LAPD Det. Stephanie Lazarus had earned commendation for her work tracking stolen artwork and forgeries.
Police allege Det. Stephanie Lazarus, 49, shot her ex-boyfriend's wife, then harbored the secret for more than two decades.
Shortly after she sat down at her desk on the third floor of LAPD headquarters Friday morning, Det. Stephanie Lazarus was told a suspect in the basement jail had information on one of her cases. The 25-year police veteran went quickly downstairs.
As Lazarus removed her firearm to pass through security, she unknowingly walked into a trap. There was no suspect -- only questions about a terrible secret police believe she has been harboring for more than two decades.
Now disarmed, Lazarus, 49, was confronted by homicide detectives and arrested on suspicion of the 1986 slaying of a woman who had married Lazarus' ex-boyfriend. The dramatic break in the decades-old case sent shock waves through the tight-knit LAPD community, marking one of the few times in the department's history that one of its own officers has been accused of murder.
"It's painful," LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said. "But murder is also very painful."
Calling it an apparent "crime of passion," Deputy Chief Charlie Beck said Lazarus allegedly beat and fatally shot Sherri Rae Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, two years after joining the department.
Three months after they were married, Rasmussen's husband returned to their Van Nuys condominium on the evening of Feb. 24, 1986, to discover his wife's badly beaten body on the floor in the living room. She had been shot several times, Beck said.
Days after the slaying, two men robbed another woman in the area at gunpoint. Homicide detectives suspected that the pair had also killed Rasmussen when she came upon them burglarizing her home, according to news reports from the time. Rasmussen's parents, newspapers reported, offered a $10,000 reward for the men's capture.
The search for the men led nowhere. Like thousands of other homicides from the period, the case remained open and collected dust on storage shelves as detectives struggled to keep pace with L.A.'s dramatic surge in violent crimes.
But with homicides in the city falling to historic lows, LAPD detectives have had unusual freedom in recent months to revisit cold cases. Detectives returned to the Rasmussen killing in February, testing blood or saliva samples from the crime scene and thought to have been from the killer. The DNA tests showed that the attacker was a woman, disproving the theory that Rasmussen had been killed by a man.
Detectives scoured the original case file for mention of any women who could have been overlooked during the investigation. Beck said they found a reference to Lazarus, who was known at the time to have had a romantic relationship with the victim's husband, John Ruetten. Ruetten allegedly broke off the relationship and soon after became involved with Rasmussen, said sources familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly.
With suspicion falling on an LAPD cop, the case took on sensitive and explosive tones inside the department. To minimize the chances that word of the reopened investigation would leak, only a small circle of detectives and high-ranking officials were made aware of it. Last week, an undercover officer surreptitiously trailed Lazarus as she did errands, waiting until she discarded a plastic utensil or other object with her saliva on it, police sources said.
The DNA in her saliva was compared with the DNA evidence collected from the murder scene. The genetic code in the samples matched conclusively, police said.
Lazarus was not pursued as a suspect at the time of Rasmussen's slaying, according to Beck. The two homicide detectives originally assigned to the case have retired and had not yet been contacted by police, he added. Beck declined to say why the detectives did not look more closely at Lazarus as a possible suspect.
Asked at an afternoon news conference whether Lazarus had been either deliberately or mistakenly overlooked because she was a cop, Beck said: "I don't know the answer to that at this point." Reached at his home in Arizona, Rasmussen's father, Nels E. Rasmussen Jr., indicated that he believes so. "We are not surprised that the arrest was made," he said.
One of the original detectives in the case, Lyle Mayer, said he never interviewed Lazarus in the course of his investigation and continued to believe the burglary theory until his retirement in 1991.
Police officials declined to comment on whether they believe anyone else was involved in the killing. Lazarus was being held without bail and could not be reached for comment.
Officers responded with shock as news of the arrest spread through the department.
"Never in my wildest imagination would I ever think she could do something like this," said one longtime officer, who socialized frequently with Lazarus. "We drank beers. She was always quick to give you a hug or tell a joke." The officer spoke on condition of anonymity. Lazarus' current partner, Det. Don Hrycyk, refused to comment.
Lazarus joined the department in 1983, a year after she graduated from UCLA with a degree in sociology, LAPD and university records show. After several years as a rank-and-file patrol officer, she was promoted to detective and, in 2006, landed a high-profile assignment with Hrycyk tracking stolen artwork and forgeries. There are references in department publications to Lazarus earning public commendation for her work.
She hardly shunned the spotlight. In a recent LA Weekly profile, Lazarus joked that all she knew about art was that it "hangs on the wall" and that "after working here and seeing all the phony art, I said, 'I can do that.' " Lazarus, who according to police has a young daughter and recently married another LAPD detective, told the newspaper that she had started taking oil-painting classes and had first become interested in art when she visited Europe as a teenager. Last year, she gave interviews after helping capture two men convicted of a string of art thefts in the Wilshire area and in Beverly Hills.
Until her death, Rasmussen was director of critical-care nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Her slaying stunned colleagues, who referred to her as a vital member of the staff, according to news reports. On the day she was killed, she had reportedly stayed home from work after straining her back in an aerobics class. In an article about the family's reward, her father said Rasmussen had entered college at 16 and had taught for a period at UCLA.
"It's safe to say we have some closure," said Ruetten, the victim's husband, when reached at his home in San Diego. "It's been a horrible thing to go through it all again
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-detective-arrested6-2009jun06,0,2400854.story
Mesa police investigating officers
by Sandra Haros/KTAR (June 4th, 2009 @ 6:03am)
MESA, Ariz. -- Criminal investigations are underway into Mesa police officers' actions in two separate cases.
Police Chief George Gascon announced the investigations Wednesday. He said one involves an officer shown on video using excessive force on a suspect.
In the second case, Gascon said officers called to a motel found a woman who had suffered a miscarriage and flushed the fetus down the toilet.
"What occurred here, I have never seen in my entire career," Gascon said.
He said when officers who encounter miscarriages or abortions performed in back rooms, "Generally, either the fetus is transported to the hospital or it becomes a case for the medical examiner."
The excessive force video, from May 16, shows Officer Nicholas Webster using excessive force on a suspect inside a holding cell. He also allegedly slammed the suspect into the patrol car and onto a chain link fence while making an arrest.
"The video shows the handcuffed prisoner being pushed forcefully by his leg onto the trunk lid of the police car," said Gascon. "The videotape then shows the officer shoving the prisoner into the chain link fence the surrounds the booking area."
The suspect Webster is accused of shoving is 21-year-old Sean Okoli.
In the second incident on June 1, officers responded to a Motel 6 where a woman had a miscarriage. The woman was taken to a hospital, but Gascon says officers flushed the fetus down the toilet.
Webster also was involved in that incident, along with Officers Kristen Johnson, Robert Buquo, Glenn Pearson and Lynn Young.
All officers have been reassigned while The Mesa Police Department investigates the two incidents.
Video: http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1176135
Texas cop uses Taser on 72-year-old great grandmother
June 2nd, 2009
Video of news segment (no dash-cam footage):
NY officer acquitted for body slam that broke woman's jaw
Another day, another [what would appear to the naked eye as vicious and brutal] videotaped police [overre-] action condoned or excused.
"A New York policeman who was caught on video apparently body slamming a woman to a tile floor has been acquitted of civil rights violations," the Associated Press reports. "Jurors in federal court in White Plains found 39-year-old Yonkers Police Officer Wayne Simoes (SIM'-oze) not guilty Wednesday afternoon."
The AP adds, "The video, from a restaurant surveillance camera, seemed to show the officer lifting 44-year-old Irma Marquez by her waist and throwing her face-first to the floor. She was knocked unconscious and her jaw was broken."
The forewoman of the jury, Jhonna Van Dunk, told an upstate New York newspaper, "We watched the video and we watched the frame-by-frame and we could not determine that he intended to hurt her."
In June of 2008, Simoes' lawyer told the press that the video doesn't tell the full story.
"What the video doesn't show is the operation of Wayne Simoes' mind at the time of the incident," Andrew Quinn said. "That's what's going to be a critical issue in this case is whether or not his intent when he was subduing Ms. Marquez was to violate her Constitutional rights or cause any type of injury."
LoHud.com reported last week,
A Yonkers police officer said yesterday that his colleague Wayne Simoes used excessive force when he threw Irma Marquez to the floor of La Fonda Restaurant on March 3, 2007, breaking her jaw and bruising her face.
Officer John Liberatore was the first witness called to the stand yesterday as Simoes' federal criminal trial began in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
Liberatore said he saw Simoes grab Marquez around the waist, lift her into the air and throw her to the ground. Afterward, Liberatore said he went to his partner Officer Todd Mendelson and asked him, "What the ... just happened?"
Since, as LoHud.com reported, "the jury of eight men and four women deliberated for a little more than five hours yesterday in U.S. District Court in White Plains," it's assumed that Ms. Van Dunk and her fellow jurors were able to beat the rush hour traffic home Wednesday night.
A PDF of Marquez's $11,300,000.00 lawsuit can be accessed at this link.
This video is from WKRG, broadcast June 30, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
posted by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 11:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Video: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/05/ny-officer-acquitted-after-body-slam-which-broke-womans-jaw/
Off-duty NYPD cop fatally shot by fellow officer
Plainclothes officer slain while chasing suspect near Harlem police station
NEW YORK - A plainclothes policeman who drew his gun while chasing someone he had found rummaging through his car was shot and killed by a fellow officer who was driving by and saw the pursuit, the police commissioner said.
Commissioner Raymond Kelly said 25-year-old Omar J. Edwards died after being shot late Thursday within blocks of the Harlem housing police station where he worked. The medical examiner said Friday that the fatal shot entered his back.
The shooter was white and Edwards was black, a fact that could raise questions about police use of deadly force in a minority community. And in recent years there have been several cases of off-duty policemen in the New York City area being shot and killed by other officers.
Edwards had just finished his shift around 10:30 p.m. when he headed to his car and saw that the driver's-side window had been smashed and a man was going through the vehicle, Kelly said.
Edwards struggled with the man, who got away from him by slipping out of his sweater, Kelly said. Edwards chased the man up two streets with his gun drawn, he said.
Officer fires six times
A sergeant and two plainclothes officers in an unmarked police car saw the pursuit and made a U-turn to follow the men, Kelly said. The officers were from the neighboring 25th Precinct anti-crime unit. One of the officers jumped out of the car and fired six times, he said.
It was unclear whether the officers identified themselves. The name of the officer who fired the shots has not been released, but Kelly said he had worked at the NYPD for four years.
Though the official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest, the bullet that caused the fatal injury entered the left side of Edward's back before hitting his heart and left lung, said medical examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove. It lodged in the front of his chest, and was recovered.
An autopsy also found that another bullet tunneled through the victim's left arm. He also was hit in the left hip by a third bullet.
Kelly said Edwards did not fire his weapon. He died at the Harlem Hospital Center about an hour after the shooting.
Witnesses said they heard several gun shots. Carmen Romero, on her way to work Friday morning, has lived in a nearby housing project for 26 years and said the shots sounded as if they were next to her window.
Debating the role of race
She said she and others in the area have been debating what role the race of the victim might have played in the shooting.
"I think they just saw a guy with a gun. How's that cop (who shot him) supposed to know" he was a police officer, she said. On the other hand, she said, it could have been because the cop was black.
"I'm not saying it was," she said. "All the white cop saw was a black man with a gun. Pow, pow, pow."
The Rev. Al Sharpton said he got calls shortly after the shooting "from black officers who were at the precinct and were alarmed by the shooting of Omar Edwards."
The civil rights activist said he and his National Action Network "are completely concerned of a growing pattern of black officers being killed with the assumption that they are the criminals."
Sharpton called for a federal investigation in the shooting.
"Can police investigate themselves fairly and impartially? It would seem very difficult at best and unlikely in fact," he said.
Reviewing security tapes
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his radio show Friday that investigators were reviewing security tapes and interviewing witnesses. Investigators were also questioning the man Edwards had been chasing.
"The only thing that can come out of this is to improve procedures so perhaps it doesn't happen again," Bloomberg said.
Kelly said Edwards had been on the force for two years and worked in the housing bureau. He was recently married and had two young children. His father-in-law has been a police officer for 19 years.
The shooting recalled other cases of off-duty policemen being shot and killed by fellow officers.
In 2008, a black, off-duty Mount Vernon police officer was killed by a Westchester County policeman while holding a gun on an assault suspect in suburban White Plains.
In 2006, a New York City police officer, Eric Hernandez, was shot and killed by an on-duty patrolman who was responding to an attack at a White Castle in the Bronx.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30996759/
text size: A | A | A EMT Could Face Charges After Incident With Trooperposted 05/27/09 3:30 pm
http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0509/626531.html
Paden - A paramedic could face charges after a scuffle with a state trooper that was caught on cell phone camera.
It happened Sunday near Paden in Okfuskee County. That's about 70 miles southwest of Tulsa.
Kenyada Davis' mother was being transported in the ambulance and recorded the incident on his cell phone camera.
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"This highway patrolman pulled over my mom's ambulance because he was mad we didn't pull over and he's trying to arrest the EMT from taking my mother to the hospital," Davis is seen saying on the recording.
Davis continues to record as first, one trooper can be seen talking to one of the paramedics. A couple of minutes later, another trooper is seen confronting another paramedic and attempting to arrest him. The paramedic can be seen shoving the trooper at which time the scuffle breaks out.
Maurice White, Jr. is the critical care paramedic seen in the video. In a statement, White says the trooper was upset because the ambulance driver didn't yield when the trooper approached from behind. White says the ambulance driver, Paul Franks, didn't see the trooper.
The trooper pulled Franks over and was going to write a citation for failure to yield, but White says he tried to tell them they were on an emergency call and needed to take the patient to the hospital and that's when the trooper attempted to arrest White for obstructing an officer.
A brief struggle followed, at which point the trooper grabbed White by the throat. Davis' cell phone captured this incident on video. White says the trooper later told him they could continue on to the hospital, but that he would be under arrest once they got there. White was never arrested, but says troopers told him he should be prepared to turn himself in if a warrant was issued.
The district attorney in Okfuskee County is expected to take a look at the video and may file charges as soon as this week.
http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0509/626531.html
Seattle Washington - Surveillance video showing a sheriff's deputy slamming a man head first into a wall, leaving him in a coma. The 29-year-old had been pursued by deputies after a witness wrongly identified him as a suspect in an assault. (May 22)
Perverts With Power, Revisited
Doug Melvin: Sexual deviant, former Homeland Security commissar -- or do I repeat myself?
For those frequently sentenced to commercial air travel, few things are less welcome than the following thought:
The taxpayer-fed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at the airport security checkpoint could be a petty thief or a sexual deviant. And the odds are pretty good that the typical batch of TSA chair-moisteners includes at least one or the other. This makes things quite uncomfortable as TSA screeners paw through one's luggage or conduct invasive personal security inspections.
About a year ago, a TSA airport screener in Ketchum, Idaho was arrested for kidnapping a young boy. Although identified as Robert Joe Harrison Jr., the screener was found to possess at least five separate identities. He was eventually acquitted of kidnapping, but found guilty of child enticement.
The Former TSA screener known as "Robert Joe Harrison, Jr."
After Mr. Harrison (as we'll refer to him for the sake of convenience) was arrested, his federal supervisor in Boise made the familiar and expected noises of outraged moral resolution.
“TSA is a large organization with a large workforce, [and] unfortunately we have an individual who does things that are truly inappropriate, things that are intolerable for TSA,” stated Doug Melvin, Federal Security Director for Idaho. Melvin insisted that the TSA had a “zero tolerance” policy for behavior of this type. He didn't explain how a suspected pederast with five aliases and sets of personal ID could pass a federal background check.
Less than a year after Harrison's arrest, Mr. Melvin has been forced to resign as a result of his own public sexual misconduct.
“The now former Director of the Transportation Security Administration in Boise was arrested last wee at an Idaho Falls hotel,” reported Boise's CBS affiliate KBCI last night (February 27). “Doug Melvin was busted after staff and hotel guests say they saw him walking around naked.”
The police report on the incident recorded that “Melvin entered the swimming area and removed his clothing before walking around, exposing himself.... Melvin was also reportedly masturbating while in front of the windows directly in view of the main elevator.”
Frankie "The Fig" Figueroa
This last bit of behavior resembles the conduct of Frank Figueroa, Melvin's former comrade in the Homeland Security Department. Figueroa, a former high-ranking official in the DHS's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, was head of “Operation Predator,” a nation-wide crackdown on child sex offenders. Thus there was some kind of bizarre symmetry at work when Figueroa was arrested by Tampa police in late 2005 after he exposed and, ah, manipulated himself in the presence of a 16-year-old girl.
As I've said before: Once is an anomaly, twice a coincidence, but three or more instances constitute a pattern.
To the cases of Harrison, Melvin, and Figueroa we can add that of J. Brian Doyle, the former fourth-ranking official in DHS's propaganda directorate, who was arrested for conducting sexually explicit cyber-conversations with what he thought was a cancer-stricken 14-year-old girl. And we shouldn't forget the case of Michael Burks, the Homeland Security official snared in NBC Dateline's “To Catch a Predator” sting roughly a year ago.
The problem, of course, is not that there's a small number of perverts scattered through the DHS's personnel pool like a handful of raisins in several gallons of rice pudding. The deeper cause for concern is the culture of impunity that characterizes that elephantine bureaucracy – a sense that those who work therein are made of holier, more refined stuff than the hoi polloi.
One perfectly suitable example of this attitude can be found in the fact that the highest commendation for ethics that TSA can bestow is the “John W. Magaw Values Award.”
“Who was John W. Magaw,” you ask, your brows embracing in puzzled non-recognition?
Magaw was the first director of the TSA, appointed to that gig in late 2001 after a less-than-laudable stint as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). The fact that TSA named an award after a living, recently retired head of the agency is a nauseating bit of Soviet-esque sycophancy. More troubling in this specific case is Magaw's own behavior, which apparently typifies the “values” the TSA is supposed to embrace.
Magaw was head of the Secret Service's presidential detail in 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed him to head the scandal-plagued ATF following the Waco massacre. For six years, until his lateral move to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1999, Magaw did his best to delay, divert, distract, misdirect, and otherwise obstruct efforts to expose the ATF's misbehavior in the events leading up to the atrocities at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Magaw also successfully dissipated public and congressional outrage over the 1995 revelations of the ATF's annual “Good Old Boys Roundup,” an event that “included racist signs and slogans and skits that included simulated sex acts and torture between white and black-faced participants,” as one account summarizes. Although sponsored by the ATF, this event – sort of an annual dress rehearsal for Abu Ghraib – reportedly included participants from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, US Marshals Service, and other federal agencies. Apart from one congressional hearing in July 1995, nothing of any consequence was done about the “Roundup” events.
During a 1995 Senate hearing into the slaughter at Ruby Ridge, Magaw adamantly defended the ATF informant who – according to a 1993 court verdict in Idaho – had entrapped Randy Weaver as part of a scheme to blackmail him into becoming a federal informant. Magaw insisted, once again despite vedicts to the contrary -- that the behavior of ATF officials in the Weaver case “was lawful and proper in every respect."
Asked by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) why he persisted in ignoring the jury's findings to the contrary, Magaw invoked the principle of statist solidarity: "Do you believe Randy Weaver--or do you believe the federal agents who have sworn to tell the truth and are carrying out a career in this government?"
Therein lies the true perversity at the heart of the regime Magaw served so dutifully: The conceit that those in the State's employ are innately superior to, and deserve dominion over, the “mundanes” who are not agents of the Leviathan. As one of Magaw's Soviet soul-mates put it, “To us, everything is permitted....”
This would apparently include public acts of sexual degeneracy and predation by agents of the Homeland Security apparatus, as long as those committing them aren't caught. Doug “Flash” Melvin and his erstwhile TSA comrades insist, his sudden resignation from the agency for “personal” reasons has nothing to do with his sexual exhibitionism.
TSA: thieves, spendthrifts, authoritarians: from tormenting Americans at airports to bilking taxpayers, the Transportation Security Administration has compiled a remarkable record of thuggishness and corruption.
The air was thick with self-congratulation at the Washington, D.C., Grand Hyatt as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA TSA
See tax-sheltered annuity (TSA). ) convened its first annual awards ceremony on November 19, 2003. More than a thousand attendees were on hand as the agency, which is in charge of airport and seaport security, bestowed plaques and medals on agency leaders and personnel, including a "lifetime service" award--a rather odd tribute, given that the TSA at the time was barely two years old.
According to a report issued last September by TSA Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, the November 2003 TSA awards banquet event rang up $461,745 in expenses, including $200,000 for a cutting-edge multi-media presentation. In addition to devouring nearly a half million dollars in tax money to celebrate itself, the TSA used the event to disburse another $1.4 million in cash bonuses for 88 senior managers.
Ervin's report noted that the management bonuses awarded by TSA were the largest of any federal agency. More than three quarters of the agency's senior management qualified for bonuses. Yet, according to Ervin, the agency failed to provide adequate justification for more than a third of the cash awards. The TSA's generosity didn't extend to employees below senior management level, however. Erwin commented: "A substantial inequity exists in TSA's performance recognition program between executives and non-executive employees."
Reacting to Ervin's findings, TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter promised that the agency would convene future awards ceremonies at less extravagant locations, such as individual airports. But she insisted that the lavish ceremony and indulgent cash awards were justified "given the hours and productivity of the workforce during this critical period."
In what sense could the TSA be credited with exceptional "productivity"? Aside from routinely subjecting American travelers to invasive body searches more suited to convicted felons, the agency has provided hundreds of criminals with well-compensated--and secure--employment. "The TSA has been criticized for its national problems in completing background checks of its 55,000 screeners," observed the June 25, 2003 Miami Herald. "1,200 screeners have been let go after background checks turned up criminal records or lies on their applications."
The TSA's personnel pool also includes thousands of people without criminal records who apparently develop criminal tendencies once they're hired by the agency. This was the case with 22-year-old Andrew Roy Washington and 23-year-old Edwin Reyes, who, reported the Herald, were arrested for "stealing from passenger luggage" as they conducted security screenings at Miami International Airport. The pair was also caught on camera neglecting their assigned duties. According to a Miami-Dade County Police statement, Washington and Reyes "purposely neglected to inspect passenger luggage but marked the items with clearance stickers anyway."
This combination of casual corruption and indifference to security is a prominent institutional trait of the TSA.
"There were warning signs aplenty for their candidates as well" Michael Gelb.
In January 2003, TSA issued a regulation forbidding airline passengers to secure their checked luggage with anything other than agency-approved locks. The same can't be said, unfortunately, of opportunistic pilfering carried out by TSA employees. Within six months of the TSA edict A decree or law of major import promulgated by a king, queen, or other sovereign of a government.
An edict can be distinguished from a public proclamation in that an edict puts a new statute into effect whereas a public proclamation is no more than a declaration of a law , nearly 7,000 travelers lodged theft complaints with the agency.
"We appear to have an airport security problem that has nothing directly to do with Osama bin Laden" noted New York Times commentator Joe Sharkey in an August 27 column. "I have received more than 100 credible reports from readers saying that things were stolen from their checked bags, evidently by ... [TSA] screeners who open millions of checked bags a day for inspection, or by airline baggage handlers who move the luggage on and off planes." (It's worth remembering that TSA officials, unlike baggage handlers, are given special keys to unlock checked baggage This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
"Just since June," continues Sharkey, "more than 20 baggage screeners at airports in New York, New Orleans and Fort Lauderdale have been arrested, charged with stealing valuables from checked bags." Laptop computers, digital cameras, jewelry, designer clothing, large amounts of cash--even prescription drugs such as Nexium and Viagra--have all disappeared at the hands of TSA personnel.
In September, the TSA began paying out more than $1.5 million to settle 26,000 claims filed by angry travelers. In an oped column assessing the damage to TSA's reputation, Jim Bracher of the Bracher Center for Integrity in Leadership advised fliers to "take common-sense actions to protect themselves from any dishonest screeners.... Keep careful watch of valuables." This is ironic advice indeed, given that TSA screeners are supposedly there to protect the public.
Molesting Travelers
In his advisory to travelers regarding corrupt TSA screeners, Jim Bracher admonished airline passengers to "maintain [their] own personal and travel integrity." Unfortunately, airline passengers who actually attempt to do so will be treated as criminals--as the case of San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. resident Ava Kingsford demonstrates.
In September, Miss Kingsford attempted to fly back to San Diego from Denver in the company of her three-month-old son. Because her driver's license Noun 1. driver's license - a license authorizing the bearer to drive a motor vehicle
driver's licence, driving licence, driving license
license, permit, licence - a legal document giving official permission to do something
was expired, she was flagged for a special pat-down search. "She took the procedure in stride Adv. 1. in stride - without losing equilibrium; "she took all his criticism in stride"
in good spirits until the female Transportation Security Administration screener announced, 'I'm going to feel your breasts now,'" recounted the October 10 San Diego Union-Tribune.
Understandably, Kingsford objected to this violation of her "personal integrity." Alarmed by the menace posed by the petite 36-year-old blonde, the TSA employee called in reinforcements and informed her that she wouldn't be allowed to board until she submitted. "I was crying; I was shaking," she recalled. Still refusing to be molested mo·lest
tr.v. mo·lest·ed, mo·lest·ing, mo·lests
1. To disturb, interfere with, or annoy.
2. To subject to unwanted or improper sexual activity. by a federal employee, Kingsford pulled down the top of her snug-fitting shirt to show that she wasn't concealing anything--but this wasn't sufficient. After being told she "wasn't going anywhere," Kingsford rented a car and spent the next two days driving home.
"There was absolutely no reason to grope that woman," former FAA Special Agent Steve Elson insisted to THE NEW AMERICAN. "If they were legitimately worried that she posed a threat, they could have given her the chemical swab used to detect chemical explosives, and had her screen herself in private in the presence of a female TSA screener."
Kingsford was by no means the first passenger to be subjected to an invasive, degrading search.
On October 26, 2002, Nicholas Monahan, a film industry accountant in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850.
..... Click the link for more information., was arrested and detained for an hour in a holding cell at Portland International Airport
For the airport of Portland, Maine, see Portland International Jetport
For the drug PDX, see 10-propargyl-10-deazaaminopterin
PDX is a nickname for the city of Portland, Oregon
for protesting the unnecessary molestation molestation n. the crime of sexual acts with children up to the age of 18, including touching of private parts, exposure of genitalia, taking of pornographic pictures, rape, inducement of sexual acts with the molester or with other children, and variations of these of his wife--at the time seven and a half months pregnant with the couple's first child--by a TSA screener.
After passing through the security checkpoint, Monahan related in an essay published at the LewRockwell.com Web site, "I found my wife sitting in a chair, crying.... When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears and sobbed, 'I'm sorry ... it's ... they touched my breasts." In addition to touching the expectant mother's breasts, the female TSA screener "had asked [Mary] that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side--no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing in line."
Of course, Monahan only learned the details of the incident several hours later because as soon as he demanded to know what the federal employee had done to make Mary cry, he was arrested. He recalled, "I was swarmed by Portland police officers. Instantly. Three of them, cinching my arms, locking me in handcuffs hand·cuff
n.
A restraining device consisting of a pair of strong, connected hoops that can be tightened and locked about the wrists and used on one or both arms of a prisoner in custody; a manacle. Often used in the plural.
tr.v. , and telling me I was under arrest." Monahan was dragged away from his wife--who was by then nearly hysterical--to a holding cell, where he was informed he was a "menace," asked if he was on drugs, and given a citation. The federal official, with an air of affected magnanimity mag·na·nim·i·ty
n. pl. mag·na·nim·i·ties
1. The quality of being magnanimous.
2. A magnanimous act.
Noun 1. , told Monahan that he was doing the would-be air traveler a "favor" by only charging him with a misdemeanor.
"Think about that for a second," reflected Monahan. "Rapes, car-jackings, murders, arsons--those are felonies. So is yelling in an airport now, apparently." In addition to missing his flight to Denver, and thus being unable to attend his best friend's wedding, Monahan was stuck with a $250 fine (plus an additional $59 in state-assessed court costs court costs n. fees for expenses that the courts pass on to attorneys, who then pass them on to their clients or, in some kinds of cases, to the losing party. ). Monahan's case--while extreme--is illustrative of a larger problem.
Profiting from Abuse of Power
When they're not groping grope
v. groped, grop·ing, gropes
v.intr.
1. To reach about uncertainly; feel one's way: groped for the telephone.
2. passengers, some TSA screeners are abusing passengers through the capricious use of fines. USA Today described the case of Mojdeh Rohani, a Boston resident who received a notice in the mail from TSA fining her $150 for having carried a silver-plated cake service in her carry-on bag on a flight she had taken. This fine was levied after TSA screeners at Baltimore-Washington International Airport discovered the service--a wedding gift--and after she had been allowed to check the bag and take a flight. She notes that on the day of her flight, she was briefly detained by TSA employees but that she "wasn't told [she] could get fined for this."
"'Attitude' is listed among the 'aggravating factors' that can result in a fine," noted the paper--a consideration that didn't apply in Miss Rohani's case, since she had complied meekly with TSA's demands. Passengers who somehow provoke the ire of TSA employees can find themselves liable to fines of up to $10,000.
Thus far 800 travelers have been hit with fines, all of which were imposed on the basis of extremely subjective assessments. Among them is Laurel, Maryland, resident Kathryn Harrington, who was arrested in Tampa for carrying a "concealed weapon concealed weapon n. a weapon, particularly a handgun, which is kept hidden on one's person, or under one's control (in a glove compartment or under a car seat).
..... Click the link for more information."--an eight and one-half inch long, leather bookmark A stored location for quick retrieval at a later date. Web browsers provide bookmarks that contain the addresses (URLs) of favorite sites. Most electronic references, large text databases and help systems provide bookmarks that mark a location users want to revisit in the future. .
"She'd carried the ... bookmark on several flights since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, even through Tampa International Airport Tampa International Airport (IATA: TPA, ICAO: KTPA, FAA LID: TPA) is a public airport located six miles (10 km) west of the central business district of Tampa, in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. , but screeners had never noticed it," observed the September 17 St. Petersburg Times
For the newspaper in Russia, please see St. Petersburg Times (Russia).
The St. Petersburg Times is a daily newspaper based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that serves the larger Tampa Bay area. . "This time, screeners thought the bookmark resembled a weighted police weapon, known as a sap or slungshot, used to knock suspects unconscious."
The 52-year-old special education instructor and Sunday School teacher was handcuffed and confined in the airport holding cell. "I pretty much cried throughout the whole thing," she told the paper. Harrington was released after being charged with carrying a concealed weapon, an offense carrying penalties of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. After living under this threat for a month, Harrington was informed that the TSA was dropping criminal charges. "I think at this point we've decided not to pursue a civil penalty," declared TSA spokeswoman Lauren Stover stover
stalks of maize plants from which mature corn cobs have been harvested as grain, or grain sorghum plants from which heads have also been removed. The stover is usually fed by turning the cattle into the field and is subject to fungal infection, sometimes causing mycotoxicosis. . "But it's not a decision that can be made on the spot. These are things that require an investigation."
Terrorist Support Agency
"I call the TSA the 'Terrorist Support Agency,'" former FAA Special Agent Steve Elson remarked to THE NEW AMERICAN. "While I have some respect for many of the screeners and frontline TSA personnel I've worked with--they're not all corrupt, after all--I have nothing but contempt for the people who run that agency." Elson, it should be understood, spent decades serving our nation--first in uniform as a Navy SEAL, then as a Red Team leader for the FAA. In that capacity, Elson organized mock terrorist assaults and other tests of aviation security measures. Months prior to 9/11, Elson and his colleague, Special Agent Bogdan Dzakovic, offered detailed, specific warnings about security lapses at Boston's Logan International Airport For the Logan airport in Billings, Montana, see .
Logan International Airport (IATA: BOS, ICAO: KBOS, FAA LID: BOS) in the East Boston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States (and partly in the Town of Winthrop, Massachusetts), is one .
In a prophetic May 7, 2001 letter to the office of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, retired FAA Risk Management Specialist Brian Sullivan described those findings and warned that Logan could serve as a launching pad for "a coordinated attack ... [taking] down several domestic flights on the same day. The problem is that with our current screening, this is more than possible ... it is almost likely." (See "Unfriendly Skies" in our October 18 issue.)
Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars through the TSA, aviation security "is worse today than it has ever been," Elson insisted to THE NEW AMERICAN. "It's so bad that a group of high school kids could take a plane down as a class project, if they really wanted to."
One telling illustration of Elson's point is offered by the case of Nathaniel Heatwole, a college student from Maryland who planted plastic bags filled with box cutters and other prohibited items in the lavatories of several commercial jets. In September 2003, Heatwole sent the TSA an e-mail describing how he had committed six separate security breaches at North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham Airport and Baltimore Washington International Airport. In his e-mail message Heatwole acknowledged that what he did was illegal and described his actions as "an act of civil disobedience civil disobedience, refusal to obey a law or follow a policy believed to be unjust. Practitioners of civil disobediance basing their actions on moral right and usually employ the nonviolent technique of passive resistance in order to bring wider attention to the with the aim of improving public safety for the air-traveling public." The ever-vigilant TSA initially responded to Heatwole's tip by ignoring it. When the TSA finally acted on Heatwole's e-mail, it issued public statements "trying to take credit for a significant investigative success--when all they did was act on that kid's e-mails," states Elson.
The TSA has responded to mounting public disgust, anger, and frustration in classic totalitarian style: The agency has demanded even greater power. Beginning in July, the TSA began an "express screening" pilot program for major airports in Minneapolis, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington. Flyers averaging two or more trips a month could enroll in the special program, which would include an extensive background check.
After being cleared, program members are issued--after paying a special fee, of course--a "registered traveler" card that includes a biometric identifier digital fingerprint or retinal scans. Registered travelers could bypass the Checkpoint Charlie-style security gauntlet--but only after surrendering detailed personal information into the hands of a federal agency that has become notorious for official corruption and criminality.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TSA:+thieves,+spendthrifts,+authoritarians:+from+tormenting+Americans...-a0125150411
Man tased 19 times and dies
Author : Duncan Riley Posted: May 19, 2009
A Tennessee jury has found that police did not use excessive force in the case of the man who died after being tased a staggering 19 times.
The victim, 21 year old Patrick Lee was tased by police for resisting arrest outside a nightclub. Reports said that he was “acting strangely” and was under the influence of LSD at the time.
According to local reports, Lee’s parents sued the officers, the local Government authority, and Taser International citing wrongful death. The case against the local Government and Taser International were dismissed in 2006.
A lawyer for the officers claimed that they “were doing their best with the tools they were given.”
Experts warn that even being tased once can pose a health risk, and even the manufacturer Taser International states that for a subject in a state known as excited delirium, repeated or prolonged stuns with the Taser can contribute to “significant and potentially fatal health risks.”
http://www.inquisitr.com/24307/man-tased-19-times-and-dies-jury-finds-force-not-excessive/
Five Birmingham police officers have been fired for a January 2008 beating of an already-unconscious suspect with fists, feet and a billy club, a battering caught on videotape until a police officer turned off the patrol car camera, city and police officials said today.
May 20, 2009 9:08 AM
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/05/five_birmingham_police_officer.html
Cops DO NOT have the right to be judge, jury, and executioner!
Former cop sets up fake Marijuana grow house to bust cops
CCTV(With Audio):December 04/08.Odessa,Texas.Barry Cooper, a former Texas police officer with eight years of specialty in drug interdiction, first made waves when he released the film "Never Get Busted Again," a how-to guide for evading police drug seizures.
Austin, Texas-based Cooper's latest project is not nearly so benign, and will likely generate for the former drug warrior an army of en More..emies in law enforcement.
'KopBusters' is a reality TV program that aims to sink crooked officers.
"KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana," claims a release from NeverGetBusted.com "When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house."
"The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster's attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster's secret mobile office nearby.
"The attorney was handcuffed and later released when eleven KopBuster detectives arrived with the media in tow to question the illegal raid. The police refused to give KopBusters the search warrant affidavit which is suspected to contain the lies regarding the probable cause.
"It is not illegal to grow plants under a light in your home but it is illegal to lie on an affidavit and plant drugs on a citizen. This operation was the first of its kind in the history of America. Police sometimes have other police investigating their crimes but the American court system has never dealt with a group of citizens stinging the police. Will the police file charges on the team who took down the corrupt cops? We will keep you posted."
Cooper's "Never Get Busted Again" was a runaway success, the sales of which serve as financial support for this most recent project.
"The drug war is a failed policy and the legal side effects on the families are worse than the drugs," Cooper said to the Dallas Observer in early 2007. "I was so wrong in the things I did back then. I ruined lives."
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dc9_1228632109
This is an FBI tape recording of five officers torturing suspected drug dealer Lester Siler in his home, attempting to coerce him to sign a consent to search his house for drugs, without warrant or probable cause. They beat him terribly, dunked his head in a toilet, held loaded guns to his head, and attached his testicles to a battery charger. They tried to cover up their crimes, but Lester Siler's wife had hidden a tape recorder in the kitchen, which captured a large portion of the torture, including the electrocution. The officers were later convicted in federal court, receiving an average of four years in prison. Lester Siler, on the other hand, received ten years in prison for dealing drugs. That's how justice is served in America. The national media ignored this story, a complete blackout on the truth. Broadcasters thought it was important to titilate and razzle dazzle Americans with Janet Jackson's "offensive" Superbowl nipple, and failed to keep the public abreast of civil servants torturing American citizens. PLEASE forward this out! Post it in your blogs and bulletins, place it on your profiles, do whatever it takes to get this out. Our drug war is a complete failure, and our media is ignoring civil rights abuses. It's up to us! A complete written transcript of the torture, and additional material is available at:
COP pushed woman down staircase on video for no apparent reason..
Then charges her with assult.
14-year old boy beaten for resisting arrest. What was he arrested for? Resisting arrest!
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/05/18/nr.teen.police.beating.tape.cnn?iref=videosearch
The Motor-Home Diaries crew was arrested, pepper sprayed, and lied to by COPS yesterday in Missouri for nothing apparently other than exercising their rights.
http://motorhomediaries.com/jones-county-sheriffs-department-falsely-arrests-mhd-crew/
Just a few days after interviewing congressman Ron Paul.
Sad - this rotting country.
Cop Scott Knoll lies on camera, says the guy "tried to ram me" when it's clear the guy was trying to get away and the COP was trying to ram him, then vows to "take him out." Then lies again on video "he tried to ram me three times." Then they start shooting at the guy because they said he tried to ram them. Innocent unknowing passenger almost killed.
http://www.trutv.com/video/most-daring/wild-ride.html
Update: Actual footage. American Pastor gets Tazed and breaten by DHS agents - for "failure to obey", said the officer. The man was exercising his rights. This was not on the border, it was a random checkpoint.
Police goof in raid, city stalls on damages
Man stymied in pursuit of door repair compensation
By a Baltimore Sun staff writer
May 7, 2009
Andrew Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife were frightened and humiliated by a mistaken no-knock raid at their Medfield home. Their dog, Figo, was not harmed during the incident. (Baltimore Sun photo)
Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about.
As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down.
Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened and humiliated by the incident. But for the past two months, he's wanted just one thing from the city: for someone to pay for the damage to his front door.
And he said trying to get the city to help in the aftermath has been even more frustrating than the police's initial mistake.
"My city is not working for us," said Leonard, who has lived in the Medfield neighborhood north of Hampden since October 2007. "We were victimized and now get zero cooperation from every office we deal with."
No-knock raids can be carried out through warrants signed by judges, or by police who determine at the scene that announcing themselves would present a safety threat or lead to the destruction of evidence.
Critics say the confrontational tactic, often involving masked and armed officers, is increasingly being used in situations that don't require such a volatile response.
A 2006 Cato Institute study found that hundreds of raids are conducted nationwide each year at wrong addresses, sometimes resulting in death.
In one highly publicized incident in Maryland last year, a SWAT team rushed the home of the Berwyn Heights mayor and shot and killed his family's two dogs. Police said the mayor and his wife were unsuspecting victims of a marijuana smuggling scheme, but defended the actions of the officers involved in the raid.
The General Assembly passed a law requiring greater accountability for SWAT team use. Leonard said the Berwyn Heights incident flashed in his mind as his dog, an 80-pound chocolate Labrador named Figo, raced upstairs from the basement after police began ramming the door on Feb. 25. After the initial confusion, Leonard said his attention turned toward securing his home.
He nailed his broken door shut and for a time entered and exited the home through the alley. Eventually, he and some relatives did a "fair but amateur" job installing a new door. But he wanted the city to pay for the remaining work.
"I don't think any reasonable person would argue otherwise," Leonard said.
The city denied his claim to be reimbursed for the damage to the door. Leonard said he was told that since the warrant listed Leonard's address, the officers hadn't technically stormed the wrong house.
City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway connected Leonard with the police commissioner's office, who he said promised to follow through as a "good-faith measure." But for the past two weeks his calls have not been returned, he said.
Meanwhile, the old front door sat in the backyard for two months. Leonard said he called the city's bulk trash pickup, but no one came.
The city inspectors who issue tickets for garbage in residents' backyards did, however, and gave him a $50 fine. The door finally was picked up last Thursday.
"There is nothing that is right with this situation," he said. "Nobody deserves this type of treatment from the city."
After inquiries from TheBaltimore Sun, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon said that Leonard's claims would be forwarded to the Office of Neighborhoods and dealt with "immediately."
"Mr. Leonard's situation is very unfortunate," spokesman Scott Peterson said in an e-mail. "Now that this had been brought to the attention of the Mayor's Office, we will ... respond with the care, attention, and respect that he, like all residents in Baltimore, deserves."
Anthony Guglielmi, a police spokesman, said officials were evaluating procedures followed in the raid. The approximate $1,200 door repair price was high enough to require Board of Estimates approval, a time-consuming process.
"As far as making Mr. Leonard whole, the commissioner is aware of it, and it is in the process," Guglielmi said.
Police eventually arrested the original target of the raid. David Pfister, 35, was arrested on a warrant on March 21 and charged with three counts of drug possession and distribution. In 2001, he pleaded guilty and received a 10-year sentence for drug possession with intent to distribute, though all but 30 days of that sentence was suspended.
Leonard said he isn't angry at the police. One of his best friends is a New York City detective, and Leonard said that he understands that officers put their lives on the line running into dangerous houses. His concern is with the failure of city agencies to follow up.
His view of Baltimore has "definitely" changed, he said, "not because of the break-in, but the lack of action on the back end and the city not owning up to their responsibility" Leonard said. "It's really given me a sour taste."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-te.md.ci.raid07may07,0,5425985.story
Texas police shake down drivers, lawsuit claims
TENAHA, Texas (CNN) -- Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery.
Police in the small East Texas town of Tenaha
are accused of unjustly taking valuables from motorists.
The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.
But Daniels couldn't go to the police to report the incident.
The men who stopped him were the police.
Daniels was stopped on U.S. Highway 59 outside Tenaha, near the Louisiana state line. Police said he was driving 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. They hauled him off to jail and threatened him with money-laundering charges -- but offered to release him if he signed papers forfeiting his property.
"I actually thought this was a joke," Daniels told CNN.
But he signed.
"To be honest, I was five, six hundred miles from home," he said. "I was petrified." Video Watch CNN's Gary Tuchman try to question officials »
Now Daniels and other motorists who have been stopped by Tenaha police are part of a lawsuit seeking to end what plaintiff's lawyer David Guillory calls a systematic fleecing of drivers passing through the town of about 1,000.
Highway Robbery?
The latest on the lawsuit claiming police are shaking down drivers in Texas on AC360.
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"I believe it is a shakedown. I believe it's a piracy operation," Guillory said.
George Bowers, Tenaha's longtime mayor, says his police follow the law. And through her lawyers, Shelby County District Attorney Lynda Russell denied any impropriety.
Texas law allows police to confiscate drug money and other personal property they believe are used in the commission of a crime. If no charges are filed or the person is acquitted, the property has to be returned. But Guillory's lawsuit states that Tenaha and surrounding Shelby County don't bother to return much of what they confiscate.
Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson said they agreed to forfeit their property after Russell threatened to have their children taken away.
Like Daniels, the couple says they were carrying a large amount of cash --- about $6,000 -- to buy a car. When they were stopped in Tenaha in 2007, Boatright said, Russell came to the Tenaha police station to berate her and threaten to separate the family.
"I said, 'If it's the money you want, you can take it, if that's what it takes to keep my children with me and not separate them from us. Take the money,' " she said.
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The document Henderson signed, which bears Russell's signature, states that in exchange for forfeiting the cash, "no criminal charges shall be filed ... and our children shall not be turned over" to the state's child protective services agency.
Maryland resident Amanee Busbee said she also was threatened with losing custody of her child after being stopped in Tenaha with her fiancé and his business partner. They were headed to Houston with $50,000 to complete the purchase of a restaurant, she said.
"The police officer would say things to me like, 'Your son is going to child protective services because you are not saying what we need to hear,' " Busbee said.
Guillory, who practices in nearby Nacogdoches, Texas, estimates authorities in Tenaha seized $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and in about 150 cases -- virtually all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists -- the seizures were improper.
"They are disproportionately going after racial minorities," he said. "My take on the matter is that the police in Tenaha, Texas, were picking on and preying on people that were least likely to fight back."
Daniels told CNN that one of the officers who stopped him tried on some of his jewelry in front of him.
"They asked me, 'What you are doing with this ring on?' I said I had bought that ring. I paid good money for that ring," Daniels said. "He took the ring off my finger and put it on his finger and told me how did it look. He put on my jewelry."
Texas law states that the proceeds of any seizures can be used only for "official purposes" of district attorney offices and "for law-enforcement purposes" by police departments. According to public records obtained by CNN using open-records laws, an account funded by property forfeitures in Russell's office included $524 for a popcorn machine, $195 for candy for a poultry festival, and $400 for catering.
In addition, Russell donated money to the local chamber of commerce and a youth baseball league. A local Baptist church received two checks totaling $6,000.
And one check for $10,000 went to Barry Washington, a Tenaha police officer whose name has come up in several complaints by stopped motorists. The money was paid for "investigative costs," the records state.
Washington would not comment for this report but has denied all allegations in his answer to Guillory's lawsuit.
"This is under litigation. This is a lawsuit," he told CNN.
Russell refused requests for interviews at her office and at a fundraiser for a volunteer fire department in a nearby town, where she also sang. But in a written statement, her lawyers said she "has denied and continues to deny all substantive allegations set forth."
Russell "has used and continues to use prosecutorial discretion ... and is in compliance with Texas law, the Texas constitution, and the United States Constitution," the statement said.
Bowers, who has been Tenaha's mayor for 54 years, is also named in the lawsuit. But he said his employees "will follow the law."
"We try to hire the very best, best-trained, and we keep them up to date on the training," he said.
The attention paid to Tenaha has led to an effort by Texas lawmakers to tighten the state's forfeiture laws. A bill sponsored by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, would bar authorities from using the kind of waivers Daniels, Henderson and Busbee were told to sign.
"To have law enforcement and the district attorney essentially be crooks, in my judgment, should infuriate and does infuriate everyone," Whitmire said. His bill has passed the Senate, where he is the longest-serving member, and is currently before the House of Representatives.
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Busbee, Boatright and Henderson were able to reclaim their property after hiring lawyers. But Daniels is still out his $8,500.
"To this day, I don't understand why they took my belongings off me," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/05/texas.police.seizures/index.html
ABC-7 reporter and photographer handcuffed, detained while covering I-10 wreck
by Sito Negron
http://www.newspapertree.com/news/3700-abc-7-reporter-and-photographer-handcuffed-detained-while-covering-i-10-wreck
Putnam deputy resigns under investigation
Internal affairs inquiry confirmed allegations of deceit
By Jim Schoettler Story updated at 1:53 AM on Saturday, Apr. 25,
A Putnam County Sheriff's Office detective has resigned during an internal investigation into allegations that he was untruthful while under oath during a drug trafficking trial, the Sheriff's Office said today in a news release
Richard Campbell resigned on April 14, five days after the circuit court trial. The internal investigation began when Campbell was accused of violating a Sheriff's Office general order about willful departure from the truth while giving testimony, the release said.
The investigation revealed that Campbell and another deputy were outside the courtroom after the other deputy testified. In violation of the judge's sequestration rule, Campbell discussed the other deputy's testimony with him, the Sheriff's Office said.
When Judge Ed Hedstrom learned of the violation, he called each deputy into the courtroom separately. The deputy who testified admitted to the violation, but Campbell denied the conversation took place, the release said.
Sheriff's Office Chief of Staff Rick Ryan suspended Campbell on April 9 after learning about the violation and the internal investigation began. The investigation was completed the day after Campbell resigned. It concluded that Campbell had committed the violation of Sheriff's Office policy.
Criminal charges against Campbell are pending a review of the case by the State Attorney's Office. The news release did not say how the incident impacted the trial.
Campbell had been a deputy with the Sheriff's Office since July 2003.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/crime/2009-04-24/story/putnam_deputy_resigns_under_investigation
Crowd attends funeral today for teen Tasered by police
Santiago Esparza / The Detroit News
Detroit -- A large crowd filled Second Ebenezer Church Saturday to bid farewell to a 16-year-old boy who died after police zapped him with a Taser.
Warren police used the Taser, an electronic stun gun, April 10 while chasing Robert Mitchell, who dashed from a car in a traffic stop. Officers said Robert resisted arrest. He died shortly after he was zapped.
Robert, of Detroit, was a Detroit Kettering High School sophomore, who took medication for attention deficit disorder, his family said.
Police said Mitchell bailed out of the Dodge Stratus he was riding in on Eight Mile near Schoenherr after the stop for an expired license plate. Officers say he led them on a foot chase that ended inside an abandoned home in Detroit.
Police and family said it is unclear why the teen ran.
Mitchell is the second Michigan teen to die after being hit with a Taser in less than a month; a 15-year-old Bay City resident died March 22.
Autopsy results are pending.
sesparza@detnews.com (313) 222-2320
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090418/METRO/904180395/Crowd+attends+funeral+today+for+teen+killed+by+Taser
Abusive Border Patrol Agents w/ Nun Chucks at NM Checkpoint
(but not on the border)
Baptist pastor beaten + tazed by Border patrol - 11 stitches
Chicago Transit Authority Officers Ignore Their Own Laws
they park where it's convenient so they can eat breakfast.
Cops Out Of Control: A Mother Is Tased After Learning Her Child Was Dead
By Allen Powell II, on 04-13-2009 02:58
Published in : Agenda, Policestate
Views : 16840
The frantic mother of a 6-year-old boy killed in this morning's triple murder in Terrytown was subdued with a Taser gun by Jefferson Parish deputies at the murder scene, a sheriff's spokesman said.
The mother of Four Overstreet grew irate with authorities when she arrived at the Monterey Court apartment where the rampage happened before 4 a.m., Saturday. When she got physical, deputies stunned her to bring the situation under control, Col. John Fortunato said.
The woman's name and condition were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff's Office released the names of two other people killed in the brazen shooting, a teenage mother and her toddler son. An 11-year-old girl who was critically wounded hasn't yet been identified.
The dead mother was 19-year-old Domonique Sterling, Fortunato said. Her 23-month-old son was named Robert Claiborne Jr.
Sterling is said to have been babysitting Four Overstreet and the girl who survived the attack.
The incident happened around 3:43 a.m. in the 900 block of East Monterey Court, Fortunato said.
Authorities believe two unidentified men entered an apartment in the area and "executed" Sterling and baby Robert, he said. Wielding handguns, the men also shot young Four and the 11-year old girl in the home.
Four died at the hospital from a gunshot wound to the head.
Robert was also shot in the head. Sterling was shot in the back, and the 11-year-old suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the body, Fortunato said.
Fortunato said witnesses told authorities that two men dressed in dark clothing kicked in the door and began firing. The teenager was found lying on the floor in the living room, while the two deceased children were found in a rear bedroom. Authorities also located crack cocaine and marijuana in the apartment.
One of the suspects, said to be in his 20s, wore a red bandana over his face, a black baseball cap and a dark hooded sweatshirt.
The neighborhood has been plagued by violence and narcotics activity for years, and recently a string of armed robberies has resulted in some homicides. Fortunato did not speculate on a motive early Saturday.
Neighbors and relatives expressed shock that someone could so casually murder innocent children, particularly a toddler. A woman who would only identify herself as the great aunt of the toddler said that anyone who could kill a baby lacks a soul.
"Whoever did it was lowdown," the woman said. "These children don't know about what's happening. ... They (the shooters) just don't have a soul."
Another woman, who identified herself as the toddler's grandmother, said she was supposed to watch the baby this weekend, but Sterling called Friday and said they planned to leave town for the Easter holiday. The women said Sterling was babysitting the children of a friend.
The toddler's grandmother, who is the mother of the child's father, said she was still struggling to comprehend the child's death.
"I just don't believe they killed my baby," she said. "This is just unreal."
Laurinika Sterling said that her cousin had only been living in the neighborhood for about three months and didn't have any disputes with anyone.
She said her cousin wasn't involved in any illegal activities, and she was such a nice person that nobody could want to kill her. Another neighbor said the couple who lived at the house typically worked at night.
"I know my cousin and she didn't have no problems with nobody," Sterling said. "She was a nice person, she had a nice personality. She didn't bother nobody."
The Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with information to contact the Homicide Division at 504.364.5300 or Crimestoppers at 504.822.1111 or toll free at 877.903.7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn up to $2,500 for tips that lead to an indictment.
http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/agenda/policestate/1015
DNA clears Conn. man imprisoned for 20 years
Judge dismisses charges in slaying of man's pregnant girlfriend
HARTFORD, Conn. - A Connecticut judge dropped murder charges Thursday against a New Britain man who served 20 years in prison after being convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend.
Miguel Roman's family and friends cheered Thursday as Judge David Gold dismissed the charges. Roman had been sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1988 murder of his girlfriend, 17-year-old Carmen Lopez, but recent DNA tests showed could not have been the killer.
"I'm glad to have everything finished," Roman said after the hearing. "I've got my freedom, and that's it."
Roman was convicted of killing Lopez based on circumstantial evidence and testimony from friends and family of the victim, and despite testimony from an FBI investigator about tests that eliminated him as a suspect.
More sophisticated DNA testing
New Haven attorney Rosemarie Paine brought Roman's case to the attention of the Connecticut Innocence Project, which also helped to free James Calvin Tillman in 2006 after he was imprisoned for a rape he did not commit.
The Innocence Project, which is looking at more than 100 convictions in Connecticut, has access to more sophisticated DNA testing than was available in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
"I am an optimist. I think this ultimately says something good (about the judicial system), said Karen Goodrow, an attorney and director of the project.
Tillman was awarded $5 million for his wrongful conviction. Roman's lawyers said he also will seek compensation.
Prosecutors said investigators were able to obtain DNA from cigarette butts found in Lopez's apartment and from the two ligatures around her neck. They also learned more from the DNA, extracted from sperm collected from the victim's body.
Paternity issue cited in trial
Authorities also determined that Roman was not the father of Lopez's unborn baby. That issue had been used as a motive in Roman's trial.
Vanessa Roman was 10 years old when her father was sent to prison.
"I always knew he was innocent," she said Thursday. "I never gave up hope, so in my eyes and my hope it was just a matter of when. And now he's here, so we just take it from here now."
The same DNA tests that exonerated Roman implicated led police in December to charge another man, Pedro Miranda of New Britain. He is accused in the killings of Lopez, 16-year-old Rosa Valentin in 1986 and 13-year-old Mayra Cruz in 1987. Miranda, 51, faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30015522/
Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By ADAM LIPTAK
SAFFORD, Ariz. — Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.
In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”
“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways “a close call,” given the “humiliation and degradation” involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, “I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students.”
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.
“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”
The Supreme Court’s last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion — as opposed to systematic drug testing programs — was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student’s purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding’s case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was “carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal.”
The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.
Sitting in her aunt’s house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. “There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types,” she said. “I was in between nerdy and preppy.”
One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. “She started acting weird and wearing black,” Ms. Redding said. “She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy.”
When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court papers.
Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered the two school employees to search both students. The searches turned up no more pills.
Mr. Wilson declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.
Lawyers for the school district said in a brief that it was “on the front lines of a decades-long struggle against drug abuse among students.” Abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications is on the rise among 12- and 13-year-olds, the brief said, citing data from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Given that, the school district said, the search was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”
Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Ms. Redding, said her experience was “the worst nightmare for any parent.”
“When you send your child off to school every day, you expect them to be in math class or in the choir,” Mr. Wolf said. “You never imagine their being forced to strip naked and expose their genitalia and breasts to their school officials.”
In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, No. 08-479, Mr. Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before, and members of the school staff thought they had smelled alcohol. A student also accused Ms. Redding of having served alcohol at a party before the dance, Mr. Wilson said.
Ms. Redding said she had served only soda at the party, adding that her accuser was not there. At the dance, she said, school administrators had confused adolescent rambunctiousness with inebriation. “We’re kids,” she said. “We’re goofy.”
The search was conducted by Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse, and Helen Romero, a secretary. Ms. Redding “never appeared apprehensive or embarrassed,” Ms. Schwallier said in a sworn statement. Ms. Redding said she had kept her head down so the women could not see that she was about to cry.
Ms. Redding said she was never asked if she had pills with her before she was searched. Mr. Wolf, her lawyer, said that was unsurprising.
“They strip-search first and ask questions later,” Mr. Wolf said of school officials here.
Ms. Redding did not return to school for months after the search, studying at home. “I never wanted to see the secretary or the nurse ever again,” she said.
In the end, she transferred to another school. The experience left her wary, nervous and distrustful, she said, and she developed stomach ulcers. She is now studying psychology at Eastern Arizona College and hopes to become a counselor.
Ms. Redding said school officials should have taken her background into account before searching her.
“They didn’t even look at my records,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was a good kid.”
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.
“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”
Ms. Redding grew emotional as she reflected on what she would have done if she had been told as an adult to strip-search a student. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said she would have refused.
“Why would I want to do that to a little girl and ruin her life like that?” Ms. Redding asked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html?_r=2
(from JFSAG)
In 2005 an 11-year-old Hernando County girl was arrested for allegedly bringing a plastic butter knife to school. She was handcuffed, taken to jail and charged with a third-degree felony. A 15-year-old boy at the same school that year received three weeks of house arrest for throwing a pencil that hit a custodian on the shoulder.
Police in 2007 arrested a 10-year-old Ocala girl who brought a small kitchen knife to school to cut meat packed in her lunch. Prosecutors, though, later dropped the felony weapons charge after the Department of Juvenile Justice ask them not to pursue the case.
In 2003, an 8-year-old Melbourne boy was arrested at his elementary school for carrying a pocketknife, and a 13-year-old Brandon student was suspended because his calculator had a knife-like gadget.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-bn0325-ease-zero-tolerance,0,4653370.story
Update: From Digg User - I First heard of this story on the Local News Radio station, where they reported that the police deleted the video of the incident after the shooting.
The Outrage is that every mainstream report of the incident omits this very vital piece of evidence!!!!
http://tinyurl.com/c96wlm
"The gun-happy young female officer then proceeds to shoot to kill, not shoot to disable, unloading 4 rounds killing the man. As senior officers arrive, the witness shows them the video, they confiscate his phone DELETE the video and return his phone."
Please contact the Vancouver Police Board at:
office@vancouverpoliceboard.ca
and
Vancouver Police Department
Professional Standards Section
2120 Cambie Street
Vancouver, B.C.
V5Z 4N6
Direct: 604-717-2670
Fax: 604-717-2664
and
The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP
https://www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca/srv/mac/forms/ocf-fpe-en ...
This gross miscarriage of justice should not go silently into the night!
Police kill knife-wielding man in Vancouver
Updated: Fri Mar. 20 2009 21:40:30
Darcy Wintonyk, ctvbc.ca
An investigation is underway after Vancouver Police shot and killed a man outside a downtown office building Friday morning.
The incident started at about 10:30 a.m. Friday, when police got a call about two men breaking into cars on Granville Street. A few blocks away, at Homer St. near Dunsmuir St., they caught up with two men who they believed were the suspects. Two officers approached, with guns drawn.
The man who was shot had an X-acto knife, which he waved at the officers.
Vancouver Police Const. Jana McGuinness said the man did not comply with orders to drop the knife.
More than 50 people witnessed the shooting. Some say there was no need for police to pull the trigger.
"This is not fair what the police do," said Luis Zamor, who witnessed the scene.
"Police are supposed to come out and arrest the guy, stop the guy, but he just come straight out and shoot the guy."
Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu is promising a fair investigation into his officer's conduct, by bringing in another police force to lead it.
Even though Abbotsford Police is headed by a former Vancouver police veteran, Chu says he doesn't believe it's a conflict.
"In this case, it was available to do it and they are one of the larger police agencies,'' Chu said.
The Vancouver Police will investigate the actual crime scene and a coroner will do its own probe.
The officer who fired the shot has five years experience. As for the victim, police say he appears to be in his 50s. They haven't been able to identify him yet.
With a report by CTV British Columbia's Renu Bakshi
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090320/BC_homer_shooting_090320
FOLLOW-UP: MI cops shot unarmed, 20-year-old marijuana activist
Stephen C. Webster
Published: Monday March 16, 2009
A 20-year-old university student in Michigan is hospitalized and in serious condition after police shot the man Wednesday while serving a drug warrant. He was unarmed, investigators said.
Coming through an apartment's back door, an Ottawa County deputy allegedly shined a flashlight into the student's face, causing him to raise his right hand in front of his eyes.
The officer, whose name was not released, fired a single bullet into Derek Copp's chest. The 20-year-old Grand Valley State University student, who survived the shooting, said he had no idea the man was an officer.
"He never even had a chance to even see who was coming at him, with a bright flashlight in his face," said Sheryl Copp, Derek's mother, in a 24 Hour News 8 report. "He had no clue. He heard someone knock on his door, and he had no clue."
Copp's parents insist their son is not a drug dealer. However, he appears to be a marijuana activist, stating on his facebook page he likes to "SMOKA DA BOLSKI" (smoke a 'bowl') and on his YouTube page in a video titled 'Hippie Lunchtime Hour,' he makes references to baking marijuana-infused brownies.
Copp's parents were not notified of the shooting by police, reported CelebStoner. They allegedly found out six hours later.
The officer is on paid administrative leave. Police have not said whether they found any drugs in Copp's apartment.
Monday, a group of about 25 protesters gathered outside the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department holding signs which read, "Don't shoot, I'm unarmed" and "Why did you shoot my friend?"
"I want to know what brought the Enforcement Team to Derek's apartment and why a firearm was discharged," wrote University President Thomas Haas in a Monday e-mail sent to police and student activists.
"The fact that this incident took place off-campus diminishes neither my interest nor my concern," he said in a report by MLive.com.
Jim DeVries with the Police Officers Association of Michigan "said the deputy is required by contract to give a statement in any internal sheriff's department investigation that could impact his job, but it cannot be used by prosecutors for any criminal charges," reported MLive.com. "So far, no internal statement has been requested."
"DeVries said it is not unusual for a union-represented officer to forgo speaking with investigators in a shooting incident and he does not think it gives an appearance of wrongdoing."
"Derek Copp's family, meantime, has hired Grand Rapids Attorney, Fred Dilley," reported ABC WZZM 13. "In a statement, he says, 'We have some very important questions about what appears to be some shocking police activity.' Dilley says his client is making a satisfactory, but guarded recovery. The bullet tore through his upper right lung and liver and damaged two ribs.
"As for the protesters, their voices were heard by the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department. After a brief meeting, they decided to sit down and discuss the issue as soon as the investigation is complete."
Organizers said the next major event planned is a march 1 p.m. Friday in Grand Rapids," reported Holland Sentinel.
National media has been absent on the case and local media has focused on 'irrelevancies,' noted Michigan Messenger's Ed Brayton.
"The Grand Rapids Press took a look at Copp’s Facebook page and found that it had 'drug references,' as though that had some bearing on whether he should have been shot or not. They found out that the student had expressed 'his advocacy and interest in reforming marijuana laws' and that he had declared himself to be a 'left wing hippie peace-keeping liberal.'
"But wait, there’s more. He had advocated the passage of last fall’s proposal to legalize medical marijuana in Michigan. And he liked the movie Drugstore Cowboy, as well as - gasp! - Martin Scorcese movies. Worst of all, he had quoted Grateful Dead lyrics.
"This strikes me as the drug war equivalent of asking what a rape victim was wearing."
Copp reportedly wants to be a filmmaker and said he may produce work based on the shooting.
This video is from WOOD-TV, broadcast Mar. 16, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
This video is from Mlive.com, broadcast Mar. 16, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/MI_cops_shoot_unarmed_20yearold_marijuana_0316.html
Former Police Chief on Cop Brutality: "Law Enforcement Doesn't Pick Bad Apples; It Makes Them"
By Norm Stamper, Huffington Post
Posted on March 11, 2009, Printed on March 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/131014/
Disclosure: During my rookie days back in the sixties as a San Diego police officer I used excessive force, more than once. I remember most of the incidents, though I'm sure I've conveniently forgotten some. I'm ashamed, wish to hell I hadn't done it. But I did, and visceral memories of these incidents help shape an answer to the question of why certain cops engage in brutal behavior, and others don't.
As police brutality cases go, it may not be one for the annals.
In late February, King County, WA sheriff's deputy Paul Schene deposited a slender 15-year-old girl into a holding cell and ordered her to remove her shoes. The teen used her right toe to loosen the heel of her left sneaker, which she then cast off, the rubber-soled shoe apparently striking Schene in the shin.
As she began the mirror process with the other shoe, Schene stormed the holding cell, kicked the girl in (what appears to be) the groin, chased her across the cell, grabbed her by her hair, flung her to the concrete floor, burrowed his knees into her back, slugged her twice in (what appears to be) the head, and handcuffed her, all of this on camera. He then yanked her by her hair to her feet and "escorted" her out door, and out of our view.
The girl, who had offered no resistance, reported trouble breathing. Paramedics were called. Schene's report declared that the teenager had suffered a "panic attack."
Pretty bad. But does it stand up to the LAPD Rodney King beating? Or the NYPD torture of Abner Louima? Or the countless other videotaped police attacks we've seen in recent years?
Yes.
The Schene attack didn't last nearly as long the King beating. It wasn't as sadistic as the broom-handled, sodomizing case of Louima in Brooklyn's 70th Pct. But it's just as painful to watch: a six-two, 195-pound man pummeling a frightened child.
Who cares whether the girl was "lippy," or that she may have referred to the officers as "fat pigs." Any excessive police force violates agency policy, not to mention state and/or federal laws. Not only does such "official" violence inflict pain, often causing lasting physical and emotional injury, it greatly undermines public confidence in the police (as evidenced by reader reactions to the original post).
Cops are allowed, in the language of Schene's own agency, to use physical or lethal force only as "necessary to effect an arrest, to defend themselves or others from violence, or to accomplish other police duties according to law."
Apart from the question of why in the world they'd do it with today's omnipresent cameras rolling, why do certain cops resort to excessive force?
Schene claims he was assaulted (the girl maintains that she was not aiming for the deputy when she flipped off the shoe). He claims the sneaker caused him "bruising, bleeding, and pain" as well as a "blood filled pocket," though it's hard to imagine that statement passing as truth. Schene's injury appears to have been caused by his self-propelled collision with the cell's shin-high stainless steel commode--caught clearly on the tape. The deputy will no doubt assert he used only that amount of force necessary to overcome the girl's physical aggression. It doesn't take a trained observer to see he's wrong.
So, how do we prevent this kind of behavior in the future?
Please don't say through (1) more thorough screening of law enforcement candidates, or (2) better training. They're both important, of course. Critical, in fact. But law enforcement, for the most part, doesn't pick bad apples. It makes them, and not through academy training.
Forty-three years ago I was an idealistic, vaguely liberal 21-year-old when the San Diego Police Department hired me. The last thing on my mind was taking to the streets to punish people. And lest there be any doubt about the department's policy, the police academy, even then, drove it home: excessive force was grounds for termination.
So, why did I abuse the very people I'd been hired to serve?
Not to get too psychological, I did it because the power of my position went straight to my head; because other cops I'd come to admire did it; and because I thought I could get away with it. Which I did -- until a principled prosecutor slapped me upside the head and demanded to know whether the U.S. Constitution meant anything to me.
It comes down to this: real cops, those with a conscience, those who honor the law, must step up and take control of the cop culture.
Norm Stamper is former chief of the Seattle Police Department, and an advisory board member of NORML and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He is the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (Nation Books, 2005).
http://www.alternet.org/rights/131014/former_police_chief_on_cop_brutality:_%22law_enforcement_doesn%27t_pick_bad_apples%3B_it_makes_them%22/
Louisiana Man's Death Highlights Police Bias Questions
Posted: Friday, March 13, 2009
Updated: March 13th, 2009 10:09 AM GMT-05:00
By Howard Witt, Tribune correspondent
Chicago Tribune
On the last afternoon of his life, Bernard Monroe was hosting a cookout for family and friends in front of his dilapidated home on Adams Street in this small northern Louisiana town.
Throat cancer had robbed the 73-year-old retired electric utility worker of his voice years ago, but family members said Monroe clearly was enjoying the commotion of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren cavorting around him in the dusty, grassless yard.
Then the Homer police showed up, two white officers whose arrival caused the black family gathering to quickly fall silent.
Within moments, Monroe lay dead, shot by one of the officers as his family looked on.
Now the Louisiana State Police, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department are swarming over this impoverished lumber town of 3,800, drawn by the allegations of numerous witnesses that police killed an unarmed, elderly black man without justification -- and then moved a gun to make it look as though the man had been holding it.
"We are closely monitoring the events in Homer," said Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. "I understand that a number of allegations are being made that, if true, would be serious enough for us to follow up on very quickly."
Yet the Feb. 20 Homer incident was not an isolated case. Across the nation, in four cases in recent months, white police officers have been accused of unprovoked shootings of African-Americans in what civil rights leaders say are illustrations of the potentially deadly consequences of racial profiling by police.
In the mostly white Houston suburb of Bellaire, a 23-year-old black man sitting in his SUV in the driveway of his parents' home was shot and wounded on New Year's Eve by police who mistakenly believed he had stolen the vehicle. The case is under investigation.
In Oakland, a transit police officer has been charged with murder in the shooting of an unarmed black man in the back while he was restrained and lying face down on a train platform on Jan. 1. .
In New Orleans, nine police officers are under investigation in the New Year's Day death of a 22-year-old black man who was struck by 14 bullets after an undercover team stopped his car. Police say the man raised a gun and fired at them, but the man's family disputes that.
"All the anecdotal information demonstrates that African-Americans are the most frequent victims of zealous, inappropriate police activity that often winds up in a shooting," said Reggie Shuford, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's a shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach to policing."
The evidence is not merely anecdotal. The most recent national analysis from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that blacks and Hispanics were nearly three times as likely as whites to be searched by police -- and blacks were almost four times as likely as whites to be subjected to the use of force.
Psychologists are stepping up research into the unconscious racial biases that may be driving such statistics and affecting police behavior.
"If in fact police have implicit biases -- if they automatically associate blacks with crime -- then that would be relevant to an officer in a split-second, shoot-or-don't-shoot situation," said Lorie Fridell, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida who is creating a new anti-bias police training program funded by the Justice Department. "Is the officer more inclined to believe he sees a gun in the hand of a black person, rather than a cell phone? I think that is possible."
In Monroe's case, friends and family members say they still don't understand why the beloved neighborhood patriarch ended up dead.
Four witnesses told the Tribune that Monroe was sitting outside his home, clutching a large sports-drink bottle, when two police officers pulled up and summoned Monroe's son, Shawn, for a conversation.
Shawn Monroe has a long police record, and even though he was not wanted on any current warrants, he took off running into the house. One of the officers, a new hire named Tim Cox who had been on Homer's police force for only a few weeks, chased after him, reappearing moments later in the doorway.
Meanwhile, the witnesses said, the elder Monroe had started walking toward the front door, carrying only his drink bottle, to try to intervene. When Monroe got to the first step on the front porch, the witnesses said, Cox opened fire, striking him several times as adults and children stood nearby.
"He just shot him through the screen door," said Denise Nicholson, a family friend who said she was standing a few feet from Monroe. "We kept asking the officer to call an ambulance, but all he did was get on his radio and say, 'Officer in distress.'"
As Monroe lay dying, the witnesses said, the second police officer, who has not been publicly identified, picked up a handgun that Monroe, an avid hunter, always kept in plain sight on the porch for protection. Using a police-issue blue latex glove, the officer grasped the gun by its handle, the witnesses said, and then ordered everyone to back away from the scene. The next thing they said they saw was the gun on the ground next to Monroe's body.
"I saw him pick up the gun off the porch," said Marcus Frazier, another witness. "I said, 'What are you doing?' The cop told me, 'Shut the hell up, you don't know what you're talking about.'"
The Homer police said Monroe was holding a gun when he was shot but would not comment further.
At least one fact surrounding the shooting is not in dispute: It took place amid deep tensions between Homer police and black residents.
"People here are afraid of the police," said Terry Willis, vice president of the Homer NAACP branch. "They harass black people, they stop people for no reason and rough them up without charging them with anything."
Russell Mills, Homer's police chief, defends his officers' aggressive tactics, noting the high rates of gun and drug arrests in the neighborhood.
"If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names," said Mills, who is white. "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested. We're not out there trying to abuse and harass people -- we're trying to protect the law-abiding citizens locked behind their doors in fear."
http://www.officer.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=45781
Derek Copp is name of Grand Valley student shot, injured by police during pot raid
by The Grand Rapids Press
Thursday March 12, 2009, 5:04 PM
UPDATE: Friends of Grand Valley student Derek Copp, shot by police in Campus View Apartments, accuse officers of overreacting
ALLENDALE -- Apartment neighbors of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp say they cannot fathom what prompted police to shoot him late Wednesday in a drug-related raid.
But they said they were aware of marijuana odors in the complex.
If you came down the hallway at the right time, you could smell the smoke," said Joe Putra, whose apartment door is in the same Campus View Apartments hallway as the shooting victim.
The 20-year-old student was in serious condition at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital.
Copp, a Spring Arbor native, has been at GVSU since 2007, the same year he graduated from Jackson Community College, according to his page on Facebook. He identifies himself as "a left-wing hippie peace-keeping liberal," who is seeking a film and video degree.
Copp plays the guitar and often volunteers at music festivals to see favorite bands for free, the social networking page states.
Putra described the wounded student as a "real nice guy" who was easy going. He said people would "come and go" to the apartment often, particularly last fall.
Still, he wondered why the student was shot.
"It must have been something more than just weed," he said.
Police said five officers with the West Michigan Enforcement Team, a regional drug unit, executed a search warrant on the apartment about 9 p.m. Wednesday.
An Ottawa County sheriff's detective assigned to WEMET fired one shot at the student, hitting him in the upper right chest. The student was unarmed, but police would not say whether they thought he posed a threat or what happened during the raid. The 12-year veteran deputy is on paid leave pending an investigation.
Michigan State police Lt. Cameron Henke also refused to disclose whether police found any drugs in the apartment.
Police discuss GVSU shooting
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/03/derek_copp_is_name_of_grand_va.html
Jacksonville officer in fatal crash didn't have emergency lights on, lawyer says - No charges filed.
Officer told investigators otherwise in wreck that killed elderly man
* By Jim Schoettler
* Story updated at 5:42 AM on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009
A Jacksonville lawyer for a woman hurt after her car was struck by a speeding police car that killed another driver said today witnesses saw the officer driving without his emergency equipment on, which a Sheriff's Office official said is required by law.
Officer Marcus Kilpatrick told investigators that he had his car's emergency lights on, but not his siren, when he plowed into a truck that killed 86-year-old Matthew Brice Ogden Jr., a police union attorney said. The Jan. 14 accident on Merrill Road occurred while Kilpatrick was driving nearly an estimated 98 mph trying to catch up with a traffic violator in the 40-mph zone, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Kilpatrick's patrol car struck Ogden's pickup truck as the man was turning from the center lane into a parking lot about 1 p.m. Both cars spun and the truck then struck the patrol car. The patrol car then drove into the driver's side of a stopped car about to leave the parking lot.
Ogden wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was thrown through the passenger window of his truck. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Kilpatrick suffered minor injuries, as did the driver of the third vehicle, Robyn McCormick, 33.
McCormick's lawyer, Henry Gare, said Ogden's insurance agents told him that witnesses said the police car had neither its lights nor siren on. Gare said McCormick did not see the police car coming. She suffered a shoulder injury that will require months of therapy, Gare said.
Gare's account reflects a report by the Highway Patrol that some witnesses contradicted initial indications that Kilpatrick's emergency lights were on. Highway Patrol Lt. Bill Leeper said the account is still being investigated.
Gare said Kilpatrick should have had his emergency equipment on. Under state law, police are allowed to operate in an emergency mode and exceed the speed limit to overtake a traffic violator as long as that action does not endanger the public, said Sheriff's Office Chief of Patrol David Stevens.
“It was still a violent collision with her [McCormick's] car, that’s just how incredibly fast he was going,” Gare said. “There are reasons why they need lights and sirens on so tragedies like this don't happen."
Gare said he has notified the city that he is representing McCormick and is investigating the accident. He has yet to file a letter of intent to sue.
Ogden's stepson, Douglas Berreth, said he is considering hiring a lawyer to investigate the case.
The Highway Patrol and Sheriff's Office have not complied with Times-Union requests to reveal the nature of the unidentified violator's offense and some other details regarding the accident. Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Lauri-Ellen Smith said this afternoon that her agency has been told by the State Attorney's Office not to release the information because it is part of the ongoing investigation. Assistant State Attorney Mark Borello confirmed Smith's account.
Kilpatrick, an officer since 2004, remains on duty in traffic enforcement. Police have not had an administrative hearing into the matter because the Highway Patrol has yet to finish its traffic homicide report. Borello said he was meeting with the investigator this afternoon.
Kilpatrick has declined to comment. Police union attorney Paul Daragjati said while Kilpatrick was driving faster than the speed limit, he was doing so properly to catch up with a traffic violator.
State and court records show that Kilpatrick was cited for speeding twice in 1998 and once in 2000, before he joined the Sheriff's Office.
Department records show Kilpatrick has had exemplary job reviews since being hired. He has had one accident, when he backed into a parked vehicle in 2006. Records also show he was cited for failing to observe a stop sign in 1999 and was operating a vehicle with defective equipment in 2005.
Read Jacksonville.com and Wednesday's Times-Union for updates.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/crime/2009-02-24/story/jacksonville_cop_in_fatal_crash_didnt_have_emergency_lights_on_law
FHP: Jacksonville officer playing with laptop before wreck - No charges filed
She suffers arm injuries on Zoo Parkway this morning
* By Jim Schoettler
* Story updated at 6:15 AM on Tuesday, Mar. 3, 2009
A Jacksonville police officer took her eyes off the road to read her laptop moments before her cruiser rear-ended an empty gasoline tanker truck this morning, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Officer Amanda Meyer, 29, was driving west in the 1500 block of Zoo Parkway about 8:30 a.m. when her car struck the truck, said Lt. Bill Leeper, a Highway Patrol spokesman.
Leeper said the truck had stopped at a railroad crossing, as required by state law, and was about to head across when the accident occurred.
Leeper said Meyer had briefly glanced at her in-car laptop, which is mounted to her right, before the accident. When she refocused on the road, she tried to swerve to miss the truck, he said. The right front of her vehicle struck the truck.
The patrol car was traveling about 40 mph in a 45-mph zone when the accident occurred, said Sgt. Joel Johnson of the Highway Patrol.
Meyer suffered injuries to her left arm. She was taken to Baptist Medical Center, where she was treated and released. The truck driver, Andrew Holmquist, 42, was not injured. The truck is owned by Florida Rock & Tank Lines.
Leeper said investigators have yet to complete the report or determine if charges will be filed against Meyer. This is her first accident as a police officer.
The Sheriff's Office has no written policy regarding the use of laptops by officers in transit, said J. Carson Tranquille, chief of patrol east. Tranquille said officers are told during training not to read or type on their laptops while driving. Of the lack of a written policy, Tranquille said, "We're going to look at it."
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/crime/2009-03-02/story/jacksonville_police_officer_injured_in_crash
CIA admits it destroyed 92 interrogation tapes
Published: Monday March 2, 2009
While it has been known for some time that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations with terrorism suspects, Monday's news that 92 videotapes had been destroyed by the agency was still shocking.
The CIA acknowledged the number of tape erasures in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York. The letter was filed in response to an ongoing lawsuit from the the American Civil Liberties Union that is seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.
The ACLU immediately called for the judge to issue a "prompt finding of contempt" against the CIA.
Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU and counsel on the case said to Raw Story, “The large number of video tapes destroyed confirms that this was a systemic attempt to evade court orders.”
Singh added, "It’s about time, now that the court knows 92 tapes have been destroyed, that it hold the CIA accountable for the destruction of the tapes."
The letter was submitted when the court's stay of consideration of the ACLU's contempt motion expired on Feb. 28. John Durham, the acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is conducting the criminal investigation into the destruction of any interrogation tapes, did not request an additional stay.
According to the letter, which can be viewed here, the CIA is now gathering information in response to the Court’s order to provide a list identifying and describing each of the destroyed records, as well as transcripts or summaries from any of the destroyed records and the names of any witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes before their destruction. The CIA requested that it be given until March 6 to provide the court with a timeline for its response to the requested information.
In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of videotapes in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all the requested records. That motion is still pending, according to a release from the ACLU.
The ACLU contends that the tapes should have been identified and processed in response to its FOIA request for information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody.
The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.
This latest news of CIA tape erasures dovetails into Senate plans to hold a review of the agency's detention and interrogation program. The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to investigate whether the steps taken by the CIA to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects were properly authorized.
With AP.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Breaking_CIA_destroyed_92_interrogation_tapes_0302.html
Deputy pleads not guilty to jail cell assault of 15-year-old girlDavid Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
February 28, 2009
A King County, Washington police officer has pleaded not guilty to fourth-degree assault after a judge agreed to the release of a video showing a 15-year-old girl being thrown against a wall, beaten and picked up by her hair.
A county prosecutor told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the violent behavior should be considered "criminal misconduct," concluding "he should be prosecuted."
Captured November 29, 2008 in a SeaTac City Hall holding cell, the clip was released over the objections of Deputy Paul Schene's attorney, who insists it does not "tell the whole story."
The girl and another 15-year-old female were arrested on suspicion of auto theft. The vehicle they were allegedly driving belonged to the victim's parents.
According to an analysis of court documents by Seattle's KIROTV, "Schene described the girl as 'overtly belligerent,' and said she made personal attacks toward him."
At the beginning of the video, the girl -- who has not been named because she is a minor -- walks into the cell without incident, then, with her arms folded, kicks the shoe off her left foot toward the officer.
Deputy Schene, 31 and an eight year veteran officer, responded by apparently kicking her in the stomach and slamming her face into the opposite wall.
Then, grasping the girl by her hair, he violently slams her to the ground, placing his knee in the center of her back as another deputy, who did not participate in the assault, helps cuff her.
As she's pinned, Deputy Schene rears his right hand back and strikes her twice. While it appears the deputy is punching the girl on the back of the head, the blows do not land directly in the camera's line of sight.
Once properly restrained, the girl is lifted to her feet by her hair.
Schene is currently free on personal recognizance.
"We take this very seriously and we're very concerned about this," sheriff's Sgt. Jim Laing told Seattle PI.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer requested the video be released and a judge agreed late Friday.
"Prosecutors said Schene did not explain why he struck the girl after he had her in a holding position on the floor," noted the Associated Press.
"Several years ago, Schene shot and killed an unarmed, mentally disturbed man following a traffic stop that degenerated into a 'knock-down, drag-out' fight," noted William Grigg at lewrockwell.com. "The shooting was ruled 'justifiable.' Shortly after that incident, he was stopped for driving under the influence (apparently of prescription medication). He was given a deferred sentence and placed on probation, so that he could continue to bless the people of King County with his singular professionalism."
Schene faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and reprimand or termination from the department pending the results of an internal investigation.
Video:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Raw_video_Deputy_shown_kicking_teen_0228.html
Even Cops Need Some Sleep (Update)
Posted by SHG at 2/19/2009 8:38 AM
Schenectady police officer Dwayne Johnson made good money. Really good money. From the Daily Gazette:
Dwayne Johnson, who was the city’s highest paid officer last year with earnings of $168,921, spends most Tuesday early mornings in an apartment at the corner of Queen Philomena Boulevard and Sir Benjamin Way, near Kings Road. Although Johnson is typically scheduled to patrol the city until 8 a.m., he parks his marked police car on Sir Benjamin Way just before 4 a.m. and remains indoors for several hours.
It's hard work making all that money. It can wear a man down, and no one wants a worn down cop, right?
The eight-year veteran of the department was observed by a Daily Gazette reporter and other witnesses as he entered and stayed in the apartment on five Tuesdays in a row this year. The Daily Gazette a week ago reported the matter to the Police Department, which confirmed Johnson’s absence from patrols through the city’s new GPS units. Chief Mark Chaires said Johnson’s Tuesday absences from duty have been recorded by the new units nearly every week since they were installed in November.
Chaires was disgusted to learn of yet another case of an officer not working during his shift.
“Here we go again,” Chaires said. “How dumb can you be? You know you have a GPS in your car. Why would anybody do that?”
It's always fun when the Chief asks a question like this, because it makes people think about it. Let's see; there are GPS units in patrol cars that cost $22,00 apiece. There's a cop making triple his salary, highest paid on the force. He's ditching patrol and going to some apartment every Tuesday (maybe he doesn't need a snooze on Thursdays?). And neither Chief Chaires nor anybody else on the force thinks that somebody ought to take the occasional gander at their top earner, the big money man, to make sure they are getting their money's worth?
How dumb indeed.
Had the Weekly Gazette reporter not investigated and followed Dwayne Johnson, he would still be happily in the apartment at the corner of Queen Philomena Boulevard and Sir Benjamin Way, near Kings Road, the GPS system notwithstanding. He would still be clocking 70 hours a week. He would still be pulling down the big overtime money.
How dumb? Not as dumb as you, Chief.
But don't fear that Johnson will go unpunished. My bet is that his wife will have a few questions about what he was doing in that apartment every Tuesday morning. If he wasn't sleepy going in, I bet he was coming out.
Update: Giacalone, who enjoys the occasional nap himself, provides some additional insight:
(Feb. 20, 2009): The Gazette tells us this morning that Officer Johnson was "suspended without pay Thursday while the department investigates the extent of his absences during his overnight patrols." He apparently will have to be paid if kept on suspension longer than 30 days. "Absent officer out for month: Bennett begins cop AWOL probe; union issues cited" (Feb. 20, 2009). I'm surprised that Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett believes "it will take well over a month to finish the investigation into Johnson’s absences. Also under review are the supervisors who did not notice them and the officers who may have tipped him off when internal affairs attempted to catch him in the act early last Tuesday." I'm not surprised that he expects the police union to argue napping has become a "past practice," approved regularly by lower-level supervisors, that cannot be changed without union approval.
The Gazette notes that "Some officers, who spoke anonymously, say everyone who works long shifts takes naps, beginning at lunchtime. They argued that an unspoken rule in the department allows napping to continue after lunch as long as police get up as soon as they get a call." Bennett says: “If someone had the absolute and unmitigated gall to call [napping] a past practice, well, supervisors do not have that kind of authority to authorize that.”
The new frontier for police contracts: Napping Clauses.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/02/19/even-cops-need-some-sleep.aspx?ref=rss
Tyranny is government denial of our Natural Rights. They are defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The world is changing. People must speak up. Please share your stories of police abuse.
Judicial malfeasance, and other governmental violations are of interest.
CPS cases, illegal roadside check points, brutality cases, all violations of Posse Commitatus, etc.
http://oathkeepers.org/oath Any officials who take offense here please visit Oath Keepers.
http://gunowners.org/ They are your rights, hold on to them.
http://www.copblock.org/ A decentralized project supported by a diverse group of individuals
united by their shared goal of police accountability..
BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA&NR=1
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