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Police seen plotting to blame car accident on woman they hit
By TODD WRIGHT
Updated 2:05 PM EDT, Wed, Jul 29, 2009
Hollywood Police A cop's dashboard camera is supposed to catch criminals in the act. For four Hollywood cops, the dash cam may have foiled their plans to frame a motorist.
The four police officers -- three of them longtime veterans of the force -- were caught on one of the cop's dash cameras plotting to place the blame for a February traffic accident on a woman one of them had hit with their patrol car. The disturbing video shows the woman, Alexandra Torrensvilas, handcuffed in the back of the squad car as the officers get their stories straight on what they are going to say happened.
Officer Joel Francisco, 36, an 11-year veteran, crashed into the back of Torrensvilas' vehicle at a light on February 17 at midnight. The cop radioed to other officers who converged on the scene and hatched a way to bail Francisco out.
Officer Dewey Pressley, 42, arrives and questions Torrensvilas, who tells him that she has been drinking. The 21-year veteran officer seizes the opportunity and arrests her for DUI. But the plot thickens from there.
The cops begin to brainstorm believable excuses for the accident.
"As far as I'm concerned. I'm going to put words in his mouth. She went to accelerate and a cat jumped out of the window at which point he thought it could have been a pedestrian, which distracted him," Pressley tells Sgt. Andrew Diaz, another veteran of the force. "I mean what's the chances of hitting a f---in drunk when a cat jumps out of the window?"
Still, the cops run with the half-baked idea and rush to get Torrensvilas to do a Breathalyzer test so they can officially say she was drunk.
"I nailed her on the video. I already hung her on video. She said she has been doing a beer party," Pressley says. "She's gonna blow."
Then, another cop debates with Pressley on who is going to write up the fabricated report to clear their police comrade.
"I know how I'm going to word this with the cat so we can get him off the hook. I'll write the narrative," Pressley says. "We're going to bend this a little bit."
Civilian Community Service Officer Karim Thomas joins the three senior officers and the four cops go so far as to change the angle of pictures of the accident to make it look like Torrensvilas swerved in front of the cop car and caused the accident, not Francisco.
Throughout the tape, the cops acknowledged what they are doing is illegal, but when you are the law, there is nothing wrong with bending it for a fellow cop, one says.
"I don't lie and make things up ever because it's wrong, but if I need to bend it a little bit to protect a cop, I'll do it," Pressley tells Francisco after reassuring him no one will ever find out. "She's freaking hammered anyway."
The cops even do a final rehearsal before Villa is taken to the city lock up.
"We'll take care of it," one officer says. The others reply: "We're good."
The police officers are currently on administrative leave pending a state attorney's office investigation. Torrensvilas, who was charged with four counts of DUI and cited for improper lane change, is still fighting the charges in court.
Video:
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-Crash.html
Police intrusion for evidence allowed
Knock, announce not always needed, high court rules
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 16, 2006
Police who enter a home illegally without knocking and find incriminating evidence can use it in a trial, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Thursday, carving an important exception in the 45-year-old rule that keeps unlawfully seized evidence out of court.
In a 5-4 ruling, with new Justice Samuel Alito casting a crucial vote, the court said police intrusions on residential privacy are adequately restrained by several factors -- including "the increasing professionalism of police forces' -- without suppressing evidence that is obtained with a search warrant.
The reasons for requiring police to knock on the door, announce their presence and wait a reasonable period before entering "do not include the shielding of potential evidence from the government's eyes,' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion.
Those requirements -- part of English law since the 13th century, enacted as a U.S. statute in 1917 and declared a constitutional standard by the court in 1995 -- remain intact, Scalia said. But dissenters said the rule was now toothless.
"The court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement,' said Justice Stephen Breyer. "Officers will always know ... that they can ignore the knock-and-announce requirement without risking the suppression of evidence discovered after their unlawful entry.'
The case reflected the importance of President Bush's appointment of Alito to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in January. No ruling was issued before she left, and with the court evidently deadlocked 4-4, the case was reargued after Alito was seated.
The ruling upheld the conviction of Booker Hudson of Detroit for possessing cocaine and a loaded gun that police found in his home in 1998. Officers went to the home with a warrant, announced their presence and waited three to five seconds before entering.
Past rulings have required police to wait at least 15 to 20 seconds before entering, allowing immediate entry only when officers have reason to fear that announcing their presence or waiting would lead to violence or the destruction of evidence.
A number of states, not including California, authorize search warrants that excuse police from knocking before entering if they convince a judge that announcing their presence would be dangerous.
The court said police entered Hudson's home too quickly but could nonetheless use the drugs and gun as evidence, because the warrant authorized them to take those items. Scalia said the purposes of the knock-and-announce requirement -- to avoid the indignities or potential violence that might result from a sudden entrance -- were unrelated to the seizure of the evidence against Hudson and would not be promoted if the evidence was suppressed.
Wayne State University law Professor David Moran, who represented Hudson before the court, said the same rationale could allow evidence from searches that violate the terms of a warrant -- for example, nighttime searches with warrants that specify daytime entries, or searches after a warrant has expired.
He also said a portion of the ruling signed by Scalia and three other justices, one short of a majority, "calls into question the legitimacy of Mapp,' the historic 1961 ruling that barred evidence seized in searches that violate constitutional standards.
That ruling, which aimed to deter police lawbreaking, has been scaled back by more conservative majorities in subsequent cases, most notably a 1984 ruling that allowed evidence from illegal searches that were conducted in good faith.
Scalia said much has changed since 1961, including the availability of new types of civil damage suits and increasing evidence that "police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously,' reducing the need to suppress evidence.
But Moran said civil suits are meaningless -- most are dismissed because of government immunity, and no one has gotten more than $1 in token damages in the past 30 years, according to his research. And he said improvements in police training were a direct result of the 1961 ruling.
But Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, which filed arguments supporting the Michigan prosecutors, said those predictions are unfounded. He said the ruling indicates only that "the court is not inclined to expand rules suppressing evidence' and does not foreshadow a major rollback.
Dave LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association, predicted that police in California still will knock before they enter. "It is a good officer safety procedure,' he said.
The case is Hudson vs. Michigan, 04-1360. E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/16/MNGKKJFD5U1.DTL
Family questions police shooting of dog
By LARRY HARTSTEIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Kirkwood family wants to know why a police officer investigating a home alarm felt compelled to shoot and kill one of their 6-year-old black labs, Ciarra, Saturday morning.
Elizabeth Feichter and her family adopted Ciarra and her sister, Molly, from Georgia Lab Rescue when they were 10 weeks old. According to Feichter, Ciarra was a sweet and docile 65-pounder “who’s never even come close to harming anyone.”
Atlanta police spokeswoman Sgt. Lisa Keyes said the shooting is under investigation, adding, “We emphathize with the homeowner’s loss.” Keyes said she could provide no further information.
Feichter, her husband, and their two sons were visiting family in North Carolina when the shooting happened in the backyard of their Howard Street home. Feichter, 33, who runs a philanthropic consulting firm, said she can’t believe the officer had no choice but to shoot Ciarra.
“He could have said ‘Stop!’, he could have said ‘Wait!’, he could have pulled out Mace, he could have just stepped behind our garden fence, he could have fired into the ground,” she said. “Ciarra would have taken off and sat shivering in a corner. She’s very timid.”
It was about 9 a.m. Saturday when the family got a call from the alarm company saying the alarm was going off. They couldn’t immediately reach their house sitter, who had gone out for breakfast, so they called 911.
Soon they reached the sitter, Hilary Stewart, who returned to find the front and back doors locked. Apparently, it was a false alarm.
“The officer pulled up at that moment, so I said, ‘Let me talk to him,’” Feichter said. “We spent a few moments joking because he was the officer who had come out when our cars got broken into six months ago. He said, ‘No big deal, I don’t mind coming out.’
“Then he said he was just going to take a look around and make sure everything was safe.”
He gave the phone back to Stewart. Feichter heard her say the dogs had gotten out into the backyard.
“Then she said, ‘Oh my God! He just shot her,’” Feichter recalled.
Neighbors rushed over. Ashley Derrick and Alison Grounds picked up Ciarra and drove her to the vet, but it was too late.
In an email to members of the East Lake Neighbors Community Association, Derrick wrote that she arrived to find the officer beside the dog.
“I asked why he had to shoot her,” she wrote. “He could give me no answer.”
Stewart could not immediately be reached; she left Sunday on a scheduled mission trip. And Feichter did not recall the officer’s name.
Feichter said her two sons, 12 and 8, are traumatized. She said she chose to speak out for one main reason.
“We don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” she said.
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/family-questions-police-shooting-101050.html
Racist Web Posts Traced to Homeland Security
Article Tools Sponsored By
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: July 24, 2009
After federal border agents detained several Mexican immigrants in western New York in June, an article about the incident in a local newspaper drew an onslaught of vitriolic postings on its Web site. Some were racist. Others attacked farmers in the region, an apple-growing area east of Rochester, accusing them of harboring illegal workers. Still others made personal attacks about the reporter who wrote the article.
Most of the posts were made anonymously. But in reviewing the logs of its Internet server, the paper, The Wayne County Star in Wolcott, traced three of them to Internet protocol addresses at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border protection.
Homeland Security started an investigation into the posts this month, according to the reporter, Louise Hoffman-Broach, and Richard M. Healy, the Wayne County district attorney. A spokeswoman for the federal agency’s inspector general said she could neither confirm nor deny an investigation; department rules prohibit the use of office equipment for the personal transmission of material that could offend fellow employees or the public.
Coming on the eve of the apple harvest season, the Web posts and the investigation — first reported this week on The Star’s Web site — have ratcheted up longstanding tensions in Wayne County, where farmers and laborers have accused immigration officials of using heavy-handed tactics like racial profiling and arbitrary or unjustified detentions.
Such tactics, the farmers say, have scared Hispanic farmworkers from the region just as growers are preparing for the harvest.
Representative Dan Maffei, who represents the area in Congress, said the allegations of overaggressive immigration enforcement, coming from a wide range of constituents, were “of extreme concern.”
“I’m investigating these reports to make sure that people’s rights aren’t being harmed and that the economy of Wayne County is not being harmed,” said Mr. Maffei, a Democrat.
A. J. Price, a regional spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection, defended the work of the area’s officers. “We are constantly criticized for doing our job, and that’s just part of our job,” Mr. Price said.
Local officials and residents say that beginning about 2006, federal officials stepped up their enforcement of immigration laws in western New York.
Farmers and other residents said the push created a climate of fear in communities whose economies depend on migrant laborers, many of them illegal immigrants.
The Obama administration has moved to a less confrontational policy at work sites, focusing on employers. But Customs and Border Protection, which does not conduct work-site inspections, had not changed its strategy in New York, Mr. Price said.
The latest flare-up began with a boat trip on June 12. A local farmer, Robert Norris, decided to take a Mexican employee and relatives of another worker for a spin on Lake Ontario, Ms. Hoffman-Broach said.
Federal agents stopped the boat because it had too many people on board, Mr. Price said. When some of the passengers were unable to produce documentation proving they were citizens or legal immigrants, he said, they were detained. All but one was eventually released, The Star reported.
The article about the arrests, posted on June 16, led to a torrent of angry Web postings. One, sent from a fake e-mail address, said, “watcha doing to mi wifey, no checky her papeles. she no legal, but she havey benifit card.”
A response, which carried a Homeland Security Internet protocol address, read: “That sounds like my boyfriend. Leave him alones and get your own. My boyfriend works sometimes but he is really good at getting FREE benefits from the Federal and State government.”
Another post, apparently sent from a separate computer linked to Homeland Security, read in part: “These farmers have a problem because the gravy train that they were riding for soooooo long is being brought to light.”
The newspaper removed the posts. It also reported that it had discovered others, dating to last year, that appeared to have come from computers affiliated with Homeland Security.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/nyregion/25immig.html
AUDIO POST: Idaho man sodomized by police Taser plans to sue
Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Sunday, July 26, 2009
A Boise, Idaho, police officer who pushed a Taser inside a man’s buttocks and threatened to “Taser his balls” violated use-of-force policy, but didn’t break the law, an ombudsman has found.
The man in question, whose identity is being withheld, plans to sue the Boise police.
On February 14 of this year, the “complainant,” as he is called in police reports, physically blocked the door to his residence when police arrived to investigate a domestic disturbance. Believing the police officers, who he claims did not identify themselves, to be a person coming to “beat him up,” he refused to allow them entry.
When officers forced their way in, “three officers rushed in and within nine seconds, had the man face down on the floor and had deployed the Taser against the small of his back. Only after the first [tasing] did they order his hands behind his back,” reports the Boise Weekly.
In a report, Boise Community Ombudsman Pierce Murphy “said the officer who used the Taser — described as Officer #3 in the report — also coarsely threatened to use the Taser in the man’s anus and genitals. Murphy’s report says that use of Taser on a man’s buttock’s does not violate policy in and of itself,” reports the Idaho Statesman.
The Statesman printed a transcript of an audio recording of the altercation:
Officer #3: Do you feel this?
Complainant: Yes, sir.
Officer #3: Do you feel that? That’s my -
Complainant: Okay
Officer #3: -Taser up your ass.
Complainant: Okay
Officer #3: So don’t move.
Complainant: I’m trying not to. I can’t breathe.
…
Officer #3: Now do you feel this in your balls?
Complainant: I do, sir. I’m not going to move. I’m not gonna move.
Officer #3 Now I’m gonna tase your balls if you move again.
A minute later, this exchange occurred:
Officer #3: Okay, I’m gonna take this Taser out of your asshole now. Are you going to fight with me?
Complainant: No, not at all, sir.
The audio file can be found here (MP3).
The Statesman is now reporting that the complainant “plans to sue the Boise Police Department for excessive use of force.”
The Boise Weekly quotes Boise Police Chief Mike Masterson as saying the allegation against the officer is “one of the most serious charges that an officer can face … It is an offense that is very likely to lead to termination.”
But the complainant’s lawyer, Ron Coulter, said that the officer in question is still walking his beat.
“I don’t think he should be back on the street, but then I’m not the chief of police,” Coulter told the Boise Weekly. “When you do things like he did I’m not sure that person’s even fit to wear a uniform.”
[Suppressed Sound Link]
http://www.prisonplanet.com/idaho-man-sodomized-by-police-taser-plans-to-sue.html
Police Chief Caught by His Own Dash Cam, Making Out With Female Officer While Transporting Prisoner
Cop faces charges after he assaults driver
911 Tapes Released In Alleged Road Rage Incident With Sheriff's Deputy - Cops appear to be lying afterward to protect him.
We have more details into an alleged road rage incident involving a Buncombe County Sheriff's Deputy. A woman claimed a driver, who she didn't know was an off-duty deputy, tried to attack her at a red light after she honked at him.
The 911 calls were released and offer more insight into what happened. The incident occured on July 9th, shortly after 7 pm. It started at the intersection of Patton Avenue and Leicester Highway. Julie Brown alleges that a driver cut her off, she honked at him and he got out of his car. Brown says he pounded on her vehicle and the driver's side window, then closely followed her.
While all this was allegedly happening, Brown was on the phone with 911, as was the other driver, who is an undercover narcotics officer.
http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_630.shtml
Officer Arrested, Released On Bond
By Ryan Korsgard
POSTED: Friday, July 24, 2009
UPDATED: 5:26 pm CDT July 24, 2009
HOUSTON -- A Houston police officer arrested in uniform during a sting in Houston's eastside Denver Harbor area is out of jail on a $2,000 bond, KPRC Local 2 reported Friday.
WATCH IT: Officer Arrested During Sting
Officer Anthony Rochell Foster, 43, is charged with theft by a public servant. Court records showed he's accused of stealing between $500 and $1,500.
Sources who were briefed on this case told KPRC Local 2 the officer was arrested after a traffic stop shortly before noon Thursday, after he was accused of taking cash from the motorist he had pulled over. The motorist was actually an undercover officer from the HPD Proactive Internal Affairs unit.
Court documents showed that Foster got the money because he is a police officer.
One ranking source who works with Foster at the HPD Northeast Patrol station on Ley Road told KPRC Local 2 that Proactive IAD had been investigating reports that the officer was "shaking down" Hispanic male drivers he had pulled over.
It was unclear how long Proactive IAD had been staging the sting on Foster. Police confirmed the investigation was a result of complaints against Foster.
The officer called the Houston Police Officer's Union legal team, but those lawyers told KPRC Local 2 they were unfamiliar with the case and unable to comment. The lawyers were working to arrange bail for the officer on Thursday night.
A union attorney said Foster's case will be presented to the legal committee for consideration.
HPD protocol dictates that arrested officers are relieved of duty with pay until a final outcome in the case.
Foster is scheduled for his first court appearance in the Harris County 182nd District Court on Monday. He has been a Houston police officer for 15 years. HPD confirmed he is on paid leave.
If he is found guilty, it could mean a two-year prison sentence and a permanent loss of his Texas peace officer's license.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/20171222/detail.html
Officer kills man in Kasota
Authorities say little about shooting
By Robb Murray
Free Press Staff Writer
KASOTA —
In the parking lot of a Kasota apartment building Monday, Jolene Manderfield watched a cop fire four bullets into the chest of Tyler Heilman.
Moments later — after administering CPR for 15 minutes — she watched him die.
“He shot him right in the heart,” Manderfield said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to bring him back.”
Still, she tried. And as she compressed his heart and frantically spoke his name, sirens sounded and people gathered, and word quickly spread among Kasotans that Heilman, a 24-year-old stay-at-home dad, had been killed by a cop many in town seemed to know, but whom authorities declined to identify.
One person who heard those sirens was Abby Bauleke, Heilman’s girlfriend.
“I tried calling him and sending him messages ... Then I heard the helicopter and I came down,” she said, sobbing. “I got down here and said, ‘Tell me it’s not him!’ And they said, ‘It’s him.’”
She said she asked anyone who would listen to tell her what happened, but no one seemed to know the full story. Even Le Sueur County Sheriff Dave Gliszinski, addressing the media at about 9:15 p.m. Monday, declined to answer questions about the incident.
But a lot of bystanders seemed to know at least one side of the story, the one provided by witnesses.
Heilman and a friend, they say, were driving around Kasota at about 3:30 p.m. Monday when Heilman committed a traffic offense, perhaps running through a stop sign. At some point, an investigator with the Le Sueur County Sheriff’s Department followed Heilman and confronted him in the parking lot of the Valley View Apartments.
An argument ensued, and it was overheard by Manderfield, who was walking from the parking lot to the front door of the apartment building at the time.
The argument, which some said escalated to a physical altercation, prompted Manderfield to turn around and investigate. And as she turned the corner, she said she saw the officer reach for his gun, pull it out, point it at Heilman and fire what she believes was four shots into his chest (some in town say they heard just three shots.)
Heilman had been swimming at Lake Emily and was wearing nothing but his trunks.
“(The officer) pulled out his gun and just started shooting,” Manderfield said. “He didn’t yell ‘Freeze!’ or anything. I said, ‘What are you doing!’”
Manderfield administered CPR until paramedics arrived, but she says she knew immediately that it was hopeless.
“It was so senseless. (Heilman’s) arms were like this,” she said, raising her arms straight out from her sides. “I saw him. He knew (Heilman) didn’t have a weapon.”
http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_202002804.html
Lawsuit: Cops tasered 3 kids, threatened one with sodomy
By Daniel Tencer
Published: July 20, 2009
A shelter for adolescents in southern Illinois is suing the local sheriff’s office for what it describes as an unprovoked attack by two police officers on four children, three of whom were tasered, and one of whom was threatened with sodomy by a sheriff’s deputy.
The Southern Thirty Adolescent Center near Mount Vernon, IL, filed the lawsuit on behalf of three children in its custody, who the lawsuit says were tasered by Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies who had been called to help subdue two misbehaving children, aged 11 and 12. Neither of those children were among those who were tasered during what one news service described as a police “rampage.”
The incident took place on July 4, 2008. The federal lawsuit was filed in an East St. Louis court on Friday. In the suit the children are named only by their initials: B.B., R.E., and Z.P.
According to the legal filing, quoted in the Mount Vernon Register, one deputy “physically pushed R.E. towards his bunk and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. … R.E. was tased multiple times to multiple locations on his person, including, but not limited to, his neck. Deputy Bowers shouted to B.B. to lie down in his bunk and physically forced him to lie down.
“Without physical provocation and/or physical gestures from B.B., Deputy Bowers held B.B. down on his bed and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. While he was tasing B.B., Deputy David Bowers threatened to sodomize B.B. As a result of this repeated and excessive tasing, B.B. urinated and defecated himself. Deputy David Bowers was aware that B.B. urinated himself after the tasing.”
The filing goes on to say that a 17-year-old female visitor to the center, who had pleaded with police to stop the attack, was grabbed by an officer, choked, and locked in a closet.
From the Mount Vernon Register, quoting the legal filing:
“As Z.P. was being repeatedly tased, [17-year-old] Megan Geisler pleaded with Deputy David Bowers and Deputy Lonnie Lawler to stop. Deputy David Bowers ordered Deputy Lonnie Lawler to handcuff Megan Geisler. … Deputy David Bowers grabbed Megan Geisler by her arms, lifted her off her feet, and carried her through the male dormitory to a nearby closet. On the way to the closet, Deputy David Bowers lifted Megan Geisler off the ground, pressed her against a wall and choked her. While choking her, Deputy David Bowers said, ‘do you want to live or die bitch’ to Megan Geisler. Megan Geisler was then thrown into a closet. At this time she began vomiting and heaving.”
According to AP, no criminal charges have been filed in the case, and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office says the deputies “acted appropriately.”
The Illinois Department of Family and Child Services told southern Illinois’ WSIL-TV that “shocking children with Tasers can result in serious physical and mental injury. Use of these weapons is especially troubling in cases where the children involved have committed no crime and have not even been charged with wrong doing.”
This video is from WSILTV.com, broadcast July 20, 2009.
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=236867190172&h=LcQHI&u=kMQEX&ref=nf
Girl Arrested for Swearing on 9-11 call, and he didn't try to help her, hung up on her, etc..
Sheriff's Deputies accused of Taser rampage
BY ROBERT PATRICK
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Saturday, Jul. 18 2009
An Illinois agency has sued two sheriff's deputies in Southern Illinois,
alleging that they handcuffed, threatened and Tasered teenage foster children.
The suit, filed in federal court in East St. Louis by the Illinois Office of
State Guardian on behalf of the children, says the deputies used excessive
force and violated the children's rights. The suit also names Jefferson County,
Ill., Sheriff Roger Mulch, his department and the county.
According to the suit, Deputies David Bowers and Lonnie Lawler were sent to the
Southern Thirty Adolescent Center near Mount Vernon on July 4, 2008, because of
staff concerns about the behavior of three other children, ages 11 and 12. The
center is an emergency shelter for children ages 11-18. Boys live there. Girls
stay in foster homes but go to the center for day activities.
The suit says that without any physical provocation, Bowers used a Taser on one
boy multiple times, including at least once on his neck. Bowers pushed another
boy down on his bunk and threatened to sodomize him before shocking him
multiple times and causing him to urinate and defecate, the suit says.
Lawler then handcuffed another boy before Bowers shocked him multiple times
with the Taser. A 17-year-old girl who was pleading with the deputies to stop
was then handcuffed by Lawler, choked and threatened by Bowers and then tossed
into a closet, the suit says.
The suit accuses Mulch of either knowingly, or with deliberate indifference,
tolerating a "pattern and practice of unreasonable use of force by (his)
deputies."
Mulch, Bowers and Lawler did not respond to multiple phone messages left in
recent days seeking comment.
Gene Svebakken, president and CEO of Lutheran Child and Family Services of
Illinois, which runs the center, declined to comment. "I'm prohibited from
making any comment on the situation. Although I'm certainly aware of it," he
said.
Phil Fowler, one of the lawyers who filed the suit, referred a reporter's
question to the Department of Children and Family Services.
A spokesman, Kendall Marlowe, said Friday: "Our job is to protect children.
Experience across the country has shown that shocking children with Tasers can
result in serious physical and mental injury. Use of these weapons is
especially troubling in cases where the children involved have committed no
crime and have not even been charged with wrongdoing. We cannot comment on this
suit specifically; the complaints speak for itself."
An Illinois State Police spokesman said police investigated the allegations and
turned over their results to the Jefferson County state's attorney.
Jefferson County State's Attorney Jeff Bradley said Tuesday that the State
Police determined "that there was not any evidence of criminal activity."
Bradley, who was elected last year, said his predecessor decided not to
prosecute.
The FBI did not begin an investigation after learning that the State Police
were looking into the case, an FBI spokesman said.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/D8F2946CFAEB63A6862575F70007D1E5?OpenDocument
NYPD cop who went berserk after Giants Super Bowl win found guilty
By Alison Gendar
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF
Tuesday, April 21st 2009, 4:00 AM
An NYPD cop was convicted of kneeing a state trooper in the groin after being arrested for driving drunk the night the Giants won the Super Bowl, authorities said.
Officer Gilberto Vazquez, 46, went berserk in the state troopers' barracks Feb. 3, 2008, after getting busted for drunken driving on Nassau County's Northern State Parkway on Super Bowl Sunday.
A jury found Vazquez guilty Monday of felony assault, said Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Everett Witherell. Vazquez, who had been on modified duty since the arrest, loses his job with a felony conviction.
Vazquez was busted after weaving down the parkway. His blood-alcohol level registered 0.16, twice the legal limit, authorities said.
During the arrest, the 14-year NYPD veteran flashed his badge and told troopers he was a cop. But as the night wore on, Vazquez pretended to not understand English - screaming, "No hablo Inglés!" when read his Miranda rights.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/04/21/2009-04-21_nypd_cop_found_guilty_for_his_super_tantrum.html
NYPD silent as 15-yr. veteran police sgt. charged with mowing down pedestrian while driving drunk
By Simone Weichselbaum, Kenny Porpora and Bill Hutchinson
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Wednesday, July 8th 2009, 4:00 AM
An NYPD Sergeant has been quietly charged with driving drunk and mowing down an upper East Side man who had just picked up his morning coffee, the Daily News has learned.
Sgt. Joseph Spiekerman, 43, was arrested following the June29 crash in which he hit Barry Gintel, 68, after running a red light at York Ave. and E. 86th St., court records reveal.
Gintel - vice president of the Fire Bell Club of New York, a group of Fire Department buffs - was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell.
He underwent emergency surgery for two fractured legs, broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and head and neck injuries.
Contacted in his hospital room, Gintel, who was wearing a neck brace, declined to comment.
"He doesn't remember too much. His biggest concern is getting out of that bed, and he wants to walk," said Joseph Higgins, president of the Fire Bell Club.
Police officials declined to explain why they failed to release details of the crash and Spiekerman's arrest sooner.
The crash occurred at 6:40a.m. near The Mansion diner, right after Gintel had bought a large coffee and two buttered rolls.
"I give him his change, look out the window, and I see he got hit and goes flying 10, maybe 20 feet in the air," said Leticia Guerrero, 24, a cashier.
Guerrero said the impact shattered the windshield of Spiekerman's silver Volvo. The cop got out and tried to help Gintel, who lives about a block away.
Spiekerman was charged with felony vehicular assault and driving while intoxicated.
He was arrested after officers responding to the accident noticed his bloodshot eyes and smelled booze on his breath, according to records. A 15-year NYPD veteran, Spiekerman admitted drinking, records say.
A lawyer for his police union said an investigation into the crash still "needs to be completed."
Spiekerman, a union delegate for the Sergeants Benevolent Association, refused to take a breath test, forcing cops to get a court order to draw his blood.
The sergeant, assigned to the PSA 7 housing precinct in the Bronx, has been suspended without pay, officials said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/08/2009-07-08_cop_in_dwi_trouble_nypd_mum_as_15yr_veteran_charged_with_mowing_down_e_side_pede.html
Police Taser Pastor 'Helping' Driver in Traffic Stop
Thursday, July 02, 2009
WEBSTER, Texas — Police used a Taser on a pastor and pepper spray to disperse his congregants Wednesday after the pastor allegedly interfered with a traffic stop in the church parking lot.
Congregants say they were in the Iglesia Profetica Peniel church for an early morning prayer when pastor Jose Elias Moran went to assist the stopped driver, a church member, by asking the police what had happened.
An incident report on the Webster police department's Web site said Officer Raymond Berryman tried to calm Moran and arrest him. But police say he pushed the officer, went inside the church and returned with 40 other congregants.
The congregants say Moran fled into the church when the officer grew angry and began to yell, and Moran's family disputes that the pastor touched the officer.
Moran's son Miguel said 30 witnesses saw the officer turn aggressive and repeatedly kick the church door. Several members were hit with pepper spray and children were present, Miguel Moran said.
"They treated him as if he were a drug dealer or murderer, but he is a pastor that tries to help the community," Moran said. "The police always want to be right but they are not."
Moran's wife, Maria, said she tried to help her husband after he was hit with the Taser but police threatened to arrest her.
"My husband has a heart condition and with electrocution who knows what could've happened," Maria Moran said, referring to the Taser's electrical shock.
"A pastor has to tend to his flock," she said. "That is all he was doing."
Speaking from a hospital bed Wednesday night, Moran told The Associated Press he planned to hire an attorney to file charges against the officer. He was being held at the hospital overnight for additional tests.
Police did not immediately return calls seeking comment and more details of the incident. Police Sgt. James Lovel did not specify Moran's status, except to say he was in custody and negotiations for bail were taking place Wednesday night.
Webster is a suburb southeast of Houston.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529800,00.html
Police incite riot in order to "crack down" on civilians
ACLU wants probe into police-staged DNC protest
By Felisa Cardona
The Denver Post
Posted: 11/07/2008 12:30:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/07/2008 10:25:14 AM MST
DNC PROTEST
* Read the ACLU's letter to the Office of the Independent Monitor (PDF) .
* Watch video from the August, 2008 standoff between DNC protesters and police at 15th & Court in Downtown Denver.
* Watch video of protesters getting sprayed with pepper spray, from the August, 2008 standoff .
When a Jefferson County deputy unleashed pepper spray at unruly protesters on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, he did not know that his targets were undercover Denver police officers.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado is questioning whether that staged confrontation by police pretending to be violent inflamed other protesters or officers during the most intense night of the four-day event.
The protest occurred Aug. 25 at 15th Street and Court Place near Civic Center. Police ultimately arrested 106 people, the highest number of arrests in a single day during the convention.
According to a use-of-force police report obtained by the ACLU, undercover Denver detectives staged a struggle with a police commander to get pulled out of the crowd without blowing their cover. The commander knew they were working undercover, and the plan was to pull them out of the crowd and pretend they were under arrest so protesters would be none the wiser.
A Jefferson County deputy, unaware of the presence of undercover police, thought that the commander was being attacked and used pepper spray on the undercover officers.
The report says that the commander and an undercover detective were sprayed, but it does not indicate how many others were affected. The report also doesn't say whether the pepper spray used on the undercover police was the first deployment of chemicals that night or whether the riot was already underway.
Denver police have said they were trying to control the crowd moving from Civic Center. The officers testified in court that they had intelligence that anarchists planned to gather in the park, then move toward the 16th Street Mall to wreak havoc at delegate hotels and other businesses. The activists had posted that plan on a publicly available website.
Probe requested
On Thursday, the ACLU of Colorado sent a letter to Denver's Independent Monitor, Richard Rosenthal, asking for the Internal Affairs Bureau to conduct an investigation of the pepper-spraying incident.
"The actions of the undercover detectives on August 25, 2008, may have had the effect of exacerbating an already 'tense situation,' as their feigned struggle led nearby officers and the public to believe that a commanding officer was being attacked by protestors and that the situation necessitated the use of chemical agents," says the letter, written by ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass.
"Such actions may have escalated the overall situation by causing officers on the scene to fear that the protestors threatened their safety, when in fact the struggle was only between uniformed officers and undercover officers," he wrote.
Denver Police Chief Gerald Whitman did not return a call seeking comment about the pepper-spray incident and whether the officers followed protocol by staging a disturbance with the commander.
Rosenthal said he had received the ACLU's letter about the pepper-spray incident.
He also received a letter from the ACLU last week requesting a probe into possible conflicting or false statements by police about the riot and whether the department withheld evidence in some of the protesters' criminal trials.
The ACLU contends videos show that protesters, as well as otherwise uninvolved onlookers, were never ordered or given a chance to disperse before they were surrounded and detained by police.
"The letters have been received, and I am in the process of reviewing and evaluating them," Rosenthal said Thursday.
As many as 60 protest suspects declined to accept plea deals after their arrests. Some cases have been dismissed and some suspects acquitted after a judge cited a lack of evidence.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10920817
Cop Under Investigation After Punching Woman In Face
By ANDREW RAMOS wpix.com
1:37 PM EDT, July 1, 2009
STAMFORD, Conn. (WPIX) - The Stamford Police Department is investigating the conduct of a police officer who assaulted a woman during an arrest last week, a police spokesman confirmed to PIX News Wednesday.
According to Lt. Sean Cooney, Officer Gregory Zach punched Brenda Mazariegos, 40, while arresting her for driving without a license Friday in the parking lot behind The Palms nightclub - a nightclub Mazariegos owns.
A photograph of a Mazariegos, that has been splashed on local newspapers and TV stations, shows the victim with a large bump on her head - a result from her alleged assault by the officer.
Mazariegos has yet to file a formal complaint, but it's not preventing the department from investigating the incident.
Cooney told PIX News that officials are pursuing the investigation due in part by the serious allegations and the fact that the incident occurred at a public event. The release of the photograph has made the incident a high-profile case, prompting a probe in the assault, he added.
According to Cooney, the officer is not denying that he assaulted Mazariegos and in fact says the woman was the one who attacked him first, forcing him to protect himself by punching her back, he said.
A surveillance video from the parking lot where the assault occurred has surfaced, however investigators say the video is too grainy to make anything out.
"We hold our officers to very high standards and know that the public is entitled to expect nothing less," said Cooney.
PIX News made several attempts Wednesday to reach out to Mazariegos, but phone calls were not immediately returned.
http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-stamford-cop-investigation,0,2733354.story
CIA Crucified Captive In Abu Ghraib Prison
By Sherwood Ross
The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.
“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.
“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.
An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times, indicated other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hendren reported that one Manadel Jamadi died “of blunt-force injuries” complicated by “compromised respiration” at Abu Ghraib prison “while he was with Navy SEALs and other special operations troops.” Another victim, Abdul Jaleel, died while gagged and shackled to a cell door with his hands over his head.” Yet another prisoner, Maj. Gen. Abid Mowhosh, former commander of Iraq’s air defenses, “died of asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression” in Qaim, Iraq.
"There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal." At least scores of detainees in U.S. custody have died and homicide is suspected. As far back as May, 2004, the Pentagon conceded at least 37 deaths of prisoners in its custody in Iraq and Afghanistan had prompted investigations.
Nathaniel Raymond, of Physicians for Human Rights, told The New Yorker, “We still don’t know how many detainees were in the black sites, or who they were. We don’t fully know the White House’s role, or the C.I.A.’s role. We need a full accounting, especially as it relates to health professionals.”
Recently released Justice memos, he noted, contain numerous references to CIA medical personnel participating in coercive interrogation sessions. “They were the designers, the legitimizers, and the implementers,” Raymond said. “This is arguably the single greatest medical-ethics scandal in American history. We need answers.”
The ACLU obtained its information from the Pentagon through a Freedom of Information suit. Documents received included 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of people seized in Iraq and Afghanistan. An ACLU statement noted, "This covers just a fraction of the total number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have died while in U.S. custody." (Italics added).
Torture by the CIA has been facilitated by the Agency’s ability to hide prisoners in “black sites” kept secret from the Red Cross, to hold prisoners off the books, and to detain them for years without bringing charges or providing them with lawyers.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, denounced the Obama administration for considering “prevention detention,” The New Yorker’s Mayer wrote. Roth said this tactic “mimics the Bush Administration’s abusive approach.”
From all indications, CIA Director Panetta has no intention of bringing to justice CIA officials involved in the systematic torture of prisoners. Panetta told Mayer, “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt…If they do the job that they’re paid to do, I can’t ask for a hell of a lot more.”
Such sentiments differ markedly from those Panetta wrote in an article published last year in the January Washington Monthly: “We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.”
One way to discern who really runs a country is to look to see which individuals, if any, are above the law. In the Obama administration, like its predecessors, they include the employees of the CIA. Crucifixions they execute in the Middle East differ from those reported in the New Testament in at least one important respect: Jesus Christ had a trial.
28 June 2009
http://www.legitgov.org/ross_cia_crucified_suspect_280609.html
Comics creator stopped by TSA for carrying script about writer under suspicion by TSA
Posted by Cory Doctorow, June 27, 2009 10:47 PM | permalink
Comics writer Mark Sable was detained and intensively questioned by the TSA for carrying a script for an upcoming comic book about a writer who is detained and intensively questioned by the TSA for writing a comic about terrorism.
"Flying from Los Angeles to New York for a signing at Jim Hanley's Universe Wednesday (May 13th), I was flagged at the gate for 'extra screening'. I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then 'discovered' the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated.
"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics.
"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks.
"In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium."
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/27/comics-creator-stopp.html
FBI Joins Kicking-Cop Probe
Friday, Jun. 26 2009 @ 11:24AM
By Steven Mikulan in crime
According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining
Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for chase_kick_rodriguez.jpg
Richard Rodriguez
the actions of an El Monte police officer caught on video last month as he seemingly kicked a suspect who lay surrendered on a lawn. The suspect, Richard Rodriguez, is an alleged gang member and had been in a car with another man as the two were pursued by El Monte officers. TV-news helicopter cameras followed the high-speed chase as the suspects drove through stop signs and, at one point, onto a sidewalk.
Rodriguez eventually abandoned the car, fled to a back yard and lay prone as officers approached him. The officer seen kicking Rodriguez in the head has been identified as George Fierro and the FBI, which began requesting documents from the El Monte P.D. last week, is looking into the possibility that Fierro violated Rodriguez's civil rights.
The L.A. District Attorney's office and L.A. Sheriff's Department had earlier announced they were conducting their own probes into the incident. Fierro has drawn additional attention because he sells a line of gang-themed T-shirts and other casual attire. Called Torcido Clothing, Fierro's company boasts "some of the hardest authentic jailhouse threads for the streets. Straight from East L.A., Califas . . ." The veteran officer has been assigned to desk duty since the incident. The Trib article concludes by noting that an El Monte city council member has called on the FBI in the past to investigate that city's police department.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/crime/fbi-joins-kicking-cop-probe/
'To Punish and Enslave'
by William Norman Grigg
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
The Cult of Nationalism Punishes a Patriot: Mark Kuhn, the fellow on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back as his wife looks on in disbelief, offended the tender sensibilities of local jingoists by flying the American flag upside down. Note the arrogant, triumphalist posture of the enforcement officer – one of at least five dispatched to corral this non-violent thought criminal – who is straddling the helpless man.
Just as a person is defiled by what goes out of the mouth, rather than what goes into it (Matthew 15:11), the US flag is defiled by what is done in its name, rather than what is done to the physical symbol. This is splendidly illustrated in the photograph to the right, in which we see the arrest of a peaceful man who had committed no crime against persons or property, but whose patriotic display of the U.S. flag engendered a violent response from local adherents to the cult of nationalism.
Mark and Deborah Kuhn of Asheville, North Carolina are devoted activists who pursue political change using non-violent means. The message on their answering machine – which I've heard twice, in unsuccessful attempts to contact them directly – offers the greeting: "Peace and love."
Mortified over the violent, corrupt, and increasingly degenerate nature of the regime that rules us, the Kuhns displayed, on their own property, a U.S. flag – an item they had legally purchased – displayed upside-down. This is a universally recognized distress sign, and the Kuhns' intent was to underscore the plight of our country, which is being destroyed by the regime.
This was, in brief, a patriotic protest, which is why it attracted the malign attention of a servant of the regime.
On July 18, the Kuhns report, they received a visit from a police officer who asked them if everything was all right. He was reportedly polite and professional, and told them that there was no statute or ordinance forbidding them to display the flag upside-down. In the interests of clarifying their point, the Kuhns attached a small sign to the flag explaining the purpose of the display, and another handbill calling for the overdue removal of George W. Bush from the White House.
Shortly thereafter, an individual clad in fatigues and driving a car with US Government license plates – the latter being the unmistakable token of a parasite – paid a visit to harass the Kuhns about their display.
This vigilant fellow was Staff Sergeant Mark Radford of the 105th Military Police Battalion of the North Carolina National Guard. Acting as a dutiful spitzel, this self-appointed guardian of nationalist purity contacted a friend at the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department. Early on the morning of July 25, Deputy Brian Scarborough swaggered up to the door and demanded that the Kuhns take down the flag, which they did. Scarborough then demanded that the couple present ID and accept a citation for "flag desecration" – which is forbidden by a pointless and facially unconstitutional ordinance that had fallen into desuetude.
"We refused," recalled Deborah. "We said, `Why should we show you our ID – are you arresting us?' so we walked back into the house and closed the door."
Were Brian Scarborough a sentient being, rather than state enforcement agent, he would have let the matter drop. It's likely that even ten years ago, the typical Deputy Sheriff in this situation would have simply asked the couple to take down their flag, tipped his hat, and left it at that.
But this is the era of the "New Police Professionalism," and Scarborough is an agent of the Homeland Security State. He was clad in the majesty of the regime, and the Kuhns had refused to submit to his will. Accordingly, he kicked the door, punched out the glass (thereby cutting his hand, a consequence he was apparently too dim to foresee), and forced his way inside.
Scarborough would later insist that Kuhn inflicted that injury by slamming the door on his hand. He lied, of course: Several eyewitnesses confirm that the Deputy cut himself breaking in to the Kuhns' home.
Having committed an act of criminal trespass, Scarborough then compounded that crime with assault by making threats of violence against the Kuhns, as Deborah reported in a frantic phone call to 911. Her gesture evinced a touchingly misplaced faith in the possibility of casting out Beelzebub by the power of Beelzebub: Once the police learned that one of their own was in trouble, five additional squad cars converged on the scene.
This was done to deal with an unarmed, non-violent couple who had displayed their flag in a way incompatible with the tenets of aggrieved nationalism.
Scarborough seized Mark, thereby committing aggravated battery; Mark escaped and fled outside, where he was pursued by several police as astonished neighbors gathered.
One of the officers produced a taser and threatened to shoot Mark with it – an act that should be considered assault with a deadly weapon. The same hero made the same threat against Deborah.
Mark submitted and was handcuffed. As the arrest unfolded, Staff Sgt. Radford, a REMF with nothing better to do than harass local civilians, drove past the Kuhns' home and heckled them: "Go to jail, baby!"
Mark and Deborah were arrested on the flag "desecration" charge (which is not a crime against persons or property), two counts of "assaulting a government employee" (based on Scarborough's self-serving lies), and resisting arrest. They were bailed out of jail by their son, who posted $1,500 bond.
I cannot improve on Mark Kuhn's summary of his experience, which resonates with Alexander Solzhenitsyn's lament, as quoted above:
"If Americans don't wake up to the martial state we're in, the cops, the police, the sheriffs, the state police will all come to our door and take us away if we allow this to happen – it's time for America to wake up."
Kuhn is convinced his case is not an aberration. I wholeheartedly agree.
Witness the arrest of Alan McConnell of Silver Spring, Maryland, on ginned-up trespass charges after the 74-year-old activist continued to sell pro-impeachment buttons at a local farmer's market. Local town officials insisted that McConnell was "aggressive," that his buttons were divisive, and by selling them he was making people "uncomfortable." So they instructed the police to issue a no-trespass order which was in fact a bill of attainder intended to shut down McConnell's commerce.
How DARE he express his political opinions in public? Alan McConnell, a 74-year-old activist from Silver Spring, Maryland, is dragged off to jail by Jabba the Cop and two Stormtroopers for the supposed offense of selling political buttons at a farmer's market.
The results can be seen in the photo above, as well as the fact that this elderly patriot faces six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for refusing to permit the local Politburo to deny him his right to express his opinions in a free marketplace.
Colorado resident Steve Howards likewise learned that peacefully expressing his political views was a crime. His antagonist wasn't the local Politburo: It was the Chief Commissar himself, Dick Cheney and the U.S. Secret Service (or SS).
During a chance encounter with Comrade Cheney outside a mall in Beaver Creek, Colorado last June, Howards approached the Vice President and in a voice of polite disapproval said: “Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.” He then walked away.
Now, you just know this wasn't going to go unpunished.
After all, an SS spokesdrone told the Vail Daily News after the incident, Howards had drawn attention to himself by his "odd actions near Cheney"; he "wasn't acting like other folks in the area."
Indeed: Where others were awed into paralyzed deference by Cheney's malignant majesty, Howards remembered that he is a citizen, and acted like one. Such things just aren't permissible, of course.
A few minutes after his encounter with Cheney (and doubtless following the mental and spiritual equivalent of a cleansing shower), Howards was tracked down by a Secret Service agent, handcuffed in front of his 8-year-old son, and accused of “assaulting the Vice President.” Jailed for three hours and released on a $500 bond, Howards was charged with the lesser offense of harassment, a charge that was eventually dropped. After all, the point was made: Criticizing our rulers to their faces will be treated as a criminal offense.
“I was incredulous this could be happening in the United States of America,” recalls Howard. “This is what I read about happening in Tiananmen Square.”
Howards, to his considerable credit, has not let the matter drop. He has filed a lawsuit (.pdf) against Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle, Jr. (that's how the name is spelled in the complaint), the SS agent who assaulted and arrested him – and who actually threatened to have his eight-year-old son turned over to the oh-so-nice people at Child Protective Services. (Howards' son, incidentally, escaped that fate by running away in terror and finding his mother; it's amazing he wasn't arrested for resisting arrest or some other spurious charge.)
In all of the foregoing incidents we see the local police (and the SS, collaborating with the local police) acting as enforcers of political orthodoxy, rather than defenders of persons and property.
They were acting as the security "Organs" of the Regime, not as peace officers defending the rights of peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
It's not difficult to imagine how the incidents described above would be perceived had they occurred in Venezuela or Iran – and in those benighted countries, incidents of this sort (and others much worse than these) are common.
The point, of course, is that things of this sort are becoming common here, where they should never happen at all. We've not yet reached the dismal situation described by Solzhenitsyn, but if he were living here today he'd have little difficulty recognizing the familiar odor of incipient totalitarianism in our Homeland Security State.
A bonus illustration of the prevailing lunacy:
Monica Montoya, a 25-year-old mother from Roselle Park, New Jersey, cheerfully cooperated with the police when they asked her to interpret for an accident victim. For reasons nobody has explained, she ended up being handcuffed and dragged to a squad car, pleading with the officer to allow her to contact the babysitter tending her six-year-old daughter.
Montoya was charged with "obstructing justice" and "resisting arrest" – which makes no sense at all, given that – once again – she was assisting the police, which apparently is enough to get innocent people arrested in our embryonic Reich.
August 1, 2007
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] writes the Pro Libertate blog.
Copyright © 2007 William Norman Grigg
http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w28.html
UK: Arrested for asking a policeman for his badge number
The Guardian has obtained this police footage of Emily Apple and Val Swain being arrested by surveillance officers after asking for their badge numbers at the Kingsnorth climate camp last year. The two women speak to Paul Lewis about their arrest, imprisonment and official complaint
Video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/jun/21/fit-watch-kingsnorth-arrests
McMenacing? Cop Accused Of Pulling Gun At McD's
Written by Brian Maass
Jun 17, 2009 9:06 pm US/Mountain
A Denver police officer has been suspended after allegedly brandishing his gun at a McDonald's restaurant in Aurora after his order took too long to fill.
Aurora police confirmed the CBS4 investigation saying the incident occurred May 21 at the McDonald's at 18181 East Hampden Avenue.
A spokesperson for the Aurora Police Department said they plan to present the case -- now classified as a felony menacing incident -- to the Arapahoe County District Attorney's Office Thursday for possible filing of criminal charges.
Sources familiar with the case, and the fast food worker's account of what happened, say two off-duty Denver police officers placed an order from their car in the early morning hours of May 21. But once at the drive through window, the employee said the men became agitated and angry at how long their food was taking. The men thought they were being ignored, according to contacts familiar with the worker's account. The male clerk then said one of the officer's flashed his police badge and pointed a pistol through the drive through window in a threatening manner, before driving off without paying.
Both officers are assigned to Denver International Airport although only one has been placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of the case.
http://cbs4denver.com/investigates/denver.police.suspension.2.1049330.html
NJ Man beaten and arrested by COP for having an unzipped jacket
May 29, 2009
Video:
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
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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