A thread about police brutality continued

‘You like that?’: St. Louis cops savagely beat handcuffed filmmaker while wife watched, suit says

Police leaders had initially boasted about owning the streets.

By Alan Pyke, ThinkProgress

Quote:

On St. Louis’ most restless night of protests for some time, interim police chief Lawrence O’Toole seemed to embrace a tribal us-and-them attitude toward demonstrators in his city. Hours after reporters watched black-clad riot cops chant “Whose streets? Our streets!” at dispersing protesters, O’Toole boasted to press cameras that “police owned the night,” comments which Mayor Lyda Krewson (D) would criticize days later.

It all may have seemed hollow posturing and harmless banter. But a new lawsuit illustrates the very real abuses that such a domineering mentality from law enforcement can foreshadow. O’Toole’s cops allegedly beat, taunted, and repeatedly maced a handcuffed filmmaker that Sunday night, singling the Kansas City man out from a herd of arrestees to punish him physically for recording them. Drew and Jennifer Burbridge sued the city on Tuesday, alleging the kind of unprofessional, illegal mistreatment at police hands that’s routinely drawn protesters into American streets in recent years.

The Burbridges were present late Sunday night, September 17, when officers suddenly encircled a mix of protesters and reporters in a “kettle.” The tactic involves riot police cutting off all exit routes for a group of people and then arresting everyone. The Burbridges say they were not warned at any point to leave, or to avoid going to the intersection where they were filming protesters and police, before the sudden kettling. With the perimeter established, the suit says, officers began indiscriminately spraying pepper spray into the trapped group.

The couple sat down and held onto one another. Police moved inside the kettle. “One of the two officers…stated ‘that’s him’ and grabbed Drew Burbridge by each arm and roughly drug him away from his wife,” the suit says. Despite being told Burbridge was a member of the media and not a protester, the officers “then purposely deployed chemical spray into his mouth and eyes and ripped his camera from his neck,” according to the suit. Officers beat the man repeatedly, first with hands and feet as they got plastic zip-tie cuffs onto him and then going back for seconds with their batons after his hands were bound.

“Do you want to take my picture now motherfucker? Do you want me to pose for you?” one officer allegedly said to Drew during the beating. When the assault caused him to lose consciousness, Drew “awoke to an officer pulling his head up by his hair and spraying him with chemical agents in the face.”

The officers running the kettle and alleged beating were not wearing name badges on their uniforms and declined to identify themselves to either Burbridge throughout the encounter. Multiple officers seemed to taunt Jennifer as she watched her husband beaten, the complaint says. “Did you like that? Come back tomorrow and we can do this again,” one allegedly told her. Another, the complaint says, asked her, “What did you think was going to happen?”

An hour or so later, O’Toole and Krewson would appear on local television to praise their officers for effectively balancing the First Amendment rights of peaceful protesters against the criminality of a small minority of those still present on the streets after dark.

The basis for the police crackdown that night was a handful of smashed windows downtown. But the vandals had been arrested hours earlier by the time the Burbridges arrived and got caught up in the kettle, according to local news reports from the night.

The allegations of collective punishment, targeted brutality against non-resistant arrestees, and a seemingly intentional singling out of media members all echo a separate lawsuit in Washington, D.C., over the city police’s handling of protesters during President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The protests the Burbridges attempted to cover in St. Louis didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump personally. The city is on edge because another white police officer has been vindicated in the suspicious slaying of a young black man, not because of any acute action from the White House. But the tone and momentum established for police forces around the country by the new administration in Washington has an influence on how both individual officers and whole department cultures view dissent, protest, and civil unrest.

Immediately upon Trump’s taking office, the administration made clear to law enforcement observers that any protest they deemed to be violent should be met with force. In the months since, the president himself has given aid and comfort to the enemies of civil rights, encouraging cops to knock people around after they are arrested but before they have been proven guilty of any crime or even formally charged with one. In his informal political alliances with men like David Clarke and his own speeches, Trump has repeatedly betrayed an affection for roughing up his critics — something a few optimists in political journalism had hoped he might leave behind on the campaign trail.

Source: https://thinkprogress.org/st-louis-filmmaker-beating-556a6d98b229/

Cop Explains How It Feels To Live Every Day In Fear Someone Might Record You Brutalizing A Civilian



https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOnion/videos

This Officer Shot an Unarmed Black Man. Now She Can Legally Say She Didn’t. | Mother Jones

A court ruling last week “essentially makes it as if it never happened.”

Quote:

Former Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officer Betty Shelby scored a second legal win last week, when a judge agreed to remove from the public record all documents related to her trial in the shooting death of 43-year-old Terrance Crutcher. Shelby was acquitted in May of manslaughter charges stemming from an encounter with Crutcher in September 2016.

Video footage showed her shoot Crutcher, whose car was stalled in the middle of the highway, as he backed away from her and other officers who were trying to engage him. Attorneys for Shelby argued in court that she shot Crutcher after he attempted to reach into an open car window. (A toxicology test found traces of PCP in Crutcher’s system.)

Under Oklahoma law, the judge’s decision to expunge her record means Shelby can legally deny the shooting ever occurred, and all records related to the incident will remain under court seal. I talked to Tulsa civil rights attorney J. Spencer Bryan to further discuss the law and its implications in such cases.

Continued at http://www.motherjones.com/crime-ju...ty-shelby-shot-unarmed-black-man-expungement/

This cop killed an unarmed black man, so they assigned her to community relations | Salon

Just over a year ago, Betty Shelby killed Terence Crutcher. Today, she’s back on the force with a new goal in mind.

https://www.salon.com/2017/10/28/betty-shelby-terence-crutcher/

Colin Kaepernick Is GQ's 2017 Citizen of the Year | GQ

https://www.gq.com/story/colin-kaepernick-cover-men-of-the-year

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/1...other-in-undercover-operation-gone-wrong.html
"Detroit police officers fight each other in undercover operation gone wrong"

"FOX 2 is told the rest of the special ops team from the 12th Precinct showed up, and officers began raiding the drug house in the 19300 block of Andover. But instead of fighting crime, officers from both precincts began fighting with each other.

Sources say guns were drawn and punches were thrown while the homeowner stood and watched. The department's top cops were notified along with Internal Affairs. One officer was taken to the hospital."

Philando Castile's Girlfriend Diamond Reynolds To Receive $800,000 Settlement | HuffPost

Quote:

Diamond Reynolds, who livestreamed the minutes after a cop fatally shot her boyfriend, Philando Castile, has reached a $800,000 settlement with St. Anthony, Minnesota.

The four-member City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to pay Reynolds $675,000, with the remaining $125,000 to be paid from Roseville Police and the insurance trust, local station WCCO reported.

“The settlement symbolizes that what happened to my daughter and I on July 6, 2016, was wrong,” Reynolds said in a statement. “While no amount of money can change what happened, bring Philando back, or erase the pain that my daughter and I continue to suffer, I do hope that closing this chapter will allow us to get our lives back and move forward.”

The settlement comes months after Jeronimo Yanez, the cop who killed 32-year-old Castile, was acquitted of all charges in the shooting. Reynolds, who filed a complaint seeking monetary damages, was in the car with Castile and her 4-year-old daughter when Yanez pulled them over in July 2016. Yanez said he stopped Castile, who was driving, for a broken taillight, but later said he thought Castile looked like a robbery suspect.

Castile, a nutrition services supervisor at an elementary school, informed Yanez that he had a gun in his car, which he had a permit to carry. Dashcam footage shows Yanez telling Castile not to pull out the gun. Castile appears to say he’s not reaching for it, and then Yanez fires several shots into the car.

Reynolds broadcast the aftermath of the shooting to millions on Facebook Live. Both she and her daughter were later held by police.

Yanez, who said he feared for his life and that of Reynold’s daughter, was found not guilty of manslaughter and two counts of endangering Reynolds and her child.

Part of the settlement, which still has to be approved by a court, will go to a trust fund for Reynolds’ daughter and “her future educational needs,” according to The Washington Post. In June, Castile’s family reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city.

Continued at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...ynolds-settlement_us_5a2019bce4b0a8581e688a1c

Rice County official tweets racist reaction to Diamond Reynolds' settlement | City Pages

Quote:

Diamond Reynolds was sitting in the car with Philando Castile when the St. Paul Schools lunch supervisor was killed in a traffic stop last year.

As former St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez pumped her boyfriend full of bullets, one narrowly missed her four-year-old daughter, who was in the back seat.

Afterward, police led Reynolds away in handcuffs.

On Tuesday night, the St. Anthony City Council voted to pay Reynolds $675,000 for her emotional distress and wrongful arrest. The League of Minnesota Cities and the city of Roseville pitched in $125,000.

That’s an $800,000 settlement, which Elysian city councilman Tom McBroom predicted would be spent within six months on crack cocaine. When challenged on why he’d think a woman with no crack-related criminal history would squander her boyfriend’s blood money that way, McBroom answered, “History.”

In addition to being an elected official in the tiny southwestern Minnesota town of about 600, McBroom is also a sergeant of the Rice County Sheriff’s Office. That had Twitter users who stumbled upon his racist invective worried about his ability to objectively enforce the law.

Rice County Chief Deputy Jesse Thomas said Wednesday that he will be reviewing the incident.

City Pages also reached out to McBroom on Facebook, asking him to address the tweets.

McBroom responded, “Who said I was Law Enforcement or council member. I’m a general contractor. Wrong person. Sorry.”

Nevertheless, several photos in McBroom’s Facebook profile showed him wearing the Rice County Sheriff’s Office uniform, and another is identical to his official portrait on the Elysian City Council website. City Pages asked Chief Deputy Thomas to verify the Facebook profile.

Later, McBroom called and admitted to denying his identity, "Just to screw with you. Because I can."

Continued at http://www.citypages.com/news/rice-...tion-to-diamond-reynolds-settlement/460849213

Ex-South Carolina cop could soon learn fate for motorist's shooting | Reuters

Quote:

A white former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man fleeing a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina could learn as soon as Thursday whether he will spend the rest of his life in prison for violating the motorist’s civil rights.

Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty in May to the federal charge spurred by the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott.

At Slager’s sentencing hearing in Charleston this week, prosecutors said the shooting was calculated, while the defense said the patrolman had felt threatened after Scott tried to take his stun gun during a struggle.

“The defendant shot Walter Scott in the back eight times as he was running away,” prosecutor Jared Fishman said during his closing argument late Wednesday. “It is time to call the shooting of Walter Scott what it was: It was a murder.”

The case drew national attention after a bystander’s video of the shooting became public, fueling fresh concerns about how minorities are treated by police in the United States.

A state murder trial ended last December with a hung jury, and state prosecutors dropped the murder case in exchange for the plea in federal court.

Continued at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...arn-fate-for-motorists-shooting-idUSKBN1E02XW

Former North Charleston officer Michael Slager sentenced to 20 years in Walter Scott shooting death

https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com...ed-to-20-years-in-walter-scott-shooting-death

Woman claims NYPD detectives discussed ‘taking turns’ raping her | New York Post

Quote:

The 19-year-old woman who has accused two NYPD cops of raping her broke down in tears Friday while describing in a deposition how the officers took turns attacking her, her attorney said.

Anna Chambers recalled that at one point, one cop told the other, “Now it’s your turn,” while she was being assaulted in the back of a police van.

“It was disgusting,” Chambers’ lawyer, Michael David, told The Post of the graphic description recounted by his client. “They were actually discussing that between them, ‘Now it’s your turn.’ I didn’t realize that [accused NYPD cop Richard Hall] did it with such brutal force.”

Chambers said in the deposition that her hands were cuffed “tightly” behind her as the assault took place in September. “She couldn’t breathe,” David said.

Chambers became teary-eyed while recounting the experience, her lawyer said. “She broke down. I thought she was going to collapse,” David said.

Chambers was speaking to an outside law firm hired by the city in advance of her planned lawsuit.

Hall and partner Eddie Martins in October pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn Criminal Court to rape charges.

Source: https://nypost.com/2017/12/08/woman-claims-nypd-detectives-discussed-taking-turns-raping-her/

Message to Police | Josie Outlaw



Something you need to consider if you work in law enforcement -- a question of life or death that you need to answer, and answer now.

https://www.youtube.com/user/JosieTheOutlaw1/videos

Alan Mills‏ @alan_uplc Dec 15
First police kill a neighbor of an unarmed child who is having a mental health crisis, then they kill the child. Now they are suing the child’s estate, blaming HIM for “making” the cops shoot the innocent neighbor! Wow!

City of Chicago lawyers seek to sue estate of teen fatally shot by police | Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...-quintonio-legrier-family-20171214-story.html

Fired but fit for duty | The Oregonian

Police officers in Oregon can stay eligible to carry a gun and a badge even after being fired for chronically inept police work. Or worse.

Quote:

Shaymond Michelson knew a night of drinking had gone badly when he woke up in a jail cell with a face so swollen he had a hard time talking. A police officer wrote in a report he hadn't followed orders. A Navy vet, Michelson trusted that he deserved what he got.

But weeks later, a police sergeant came to his home carrying a laptop. He opened it on the kitchen table. Michelson and his fiancee huddled around to watch a silent video recorded at the jail's entrance. The sergeant pressed play.

The video shows Michelson walking toward the door, handcuffed and swaying. He stops. The officer behind him is talking, nodding sharply. Then the officer shoves him. He lurches forward and plants his feet. The officer grabs his neck and throws him to his back on the concrete floor. The officer pins him there, a shin over his chest and throat. A jail deputy arrives, and Michelson kicks toward the deputy's head. The deputy catches his foot and starts to roll him over. The officer punches him in the face. Then again and again and again and again and again.

Michelson said watching the video was surreal. He replayed it over and over. His fiancee had to walk away.

He asked Scott McKee, the sergeant who brought the video, whether the arresting officer was allowed to do things like that. The sergeant said no.

"It looked like a pro wrestling move," said McKee, who criminally investigated the officer's actions. "And the guy's handcuffed. There's no regard for how he lands. There's none."

Michelson wanted Officer Charles Caruso to be held accountable. He told the city of Eugene he planned to sue. He didn't have to. Eugene paid out $100,000 and fired the officer.

But Caruso escaped without criminal charges. And the people who held the power to take his badge for good chose to do nothing.

Case closed.

But an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found that state regulators took no action to sideline dozens of officers fired for chronically inept police work. Or worse.

The department let fired officers remain eligible to work even after they accumulated records of brutality, recklessness, shoddy investigations and anger management problems.

Regulators quietly closed one case after an officer was fired for using excessive force on two handcuffed suspects and for driving 120 mph, at night, through a construction zone. They closed the case of another fired officer whose disciplinary records show he botched investigations, refused to finish police reports, failed to show up at court proceedings, abused sick time and earned a reputation for being volatile and rude.

Regulators have chosen to shy away from some of the public's greatest concerns about policing, interviews with agency officials show.

They don't think it's their job to punish officers for brutality.

They don't think it's their job to punish officers for incompetence.

They don't think it's their job to even contemplate punishing officers who haven't been convicted of a crime or who haven't lost their jobs.

They hardly ever perform their own investigations. The department employs only two investigators for the more than 10,000 police officers, corrections officers, dispatchers and parole and probation officers in the state. The investigators rely on documents that employers send them and almost never follow up once those documents arrive. Some police departments do a better job of investigating their own than others. As a result, officers are not held to the same standard across the state.

Like doctors, lawyers and teachers, police officers must receive the state's blessing to work in Oregon. The department certifies officers who have completed minimum training, and it has the authority to take away their certifications for any misconduct afterward. An officer decertified in Oregon could get certified elsewhere, but police departments in other states can see the red flag if they look for it.

State certifying agencies could be the vanguard of police accountability in an era when many police departments, prosecutors and the U.S. Justice Department show little appetite for second-guessing cops.

The Oregonian/OregonLive wanted to know how the state's reputation as a national leader compared to reality.

Reporters analyzed three databases and more than 10,000 pages of documents from the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. The department didn't turn the records over easily. Reporters successfully appealed to the state Attorney General's Office 10 times to force access to documents and data.

Among the findings:

• The department considers incompetence something for chiefs and sheriffs to deal with, not state regulators. The department's staff closed cases when officers were fired after sleeping on duty, repeatedly failing to seize or log evidence, or showing up to work drunk. They closed the books on a Portland crime scene investigator, even though the city's Police Bureau found he refused to go to a homicide scene to process evidence with other investigators and, separately, attended a birthday party outside the city while on the clock.

• The department won't decertify officers for brutality unless they are criminally convicted. People filed hundreds of complaints alleging excessive force by Oregon officers from 2013 through 2016. But of the officers who came before regulators during the period, only one was convicted for it. Even a conviction won't bar an officer from service permanently. Regulators recently allowed a decertified Clackamas County sheriff's deputy to re-apply for police work eight years after he was convicted for choking a teenager while on duty.

• Patterns of bad behavior can go unknown or unpunished, even when an officer's record is exceptionally lengthy. A Clatsop County deputy was allowed to keep his certification despite a history thousands of pages long that featured write-ups for extremely fast driving, unsettling comments and sloppy evidence practices. The deputy's troubles, according to the county's attorney, included at least seven on-duty crashes, nine formal reprimands and 62 memos criticizing his attitude and performance.

Oregon does well in national comparisons for stripping problem officers of their powers. In 2015, Oregon ranked 11th in the rate of officers who were decertified, a survey by Seattle University professor Matthew Hickman showed.

The bar is low. Oregon routinely decertifies officers when they've committed a crime and punishes many even without a criminal conviction. Some states act only on felonies. A few have no mechanism at all for ousting bad officers.

The national rankings say nothing about the cases that states choose to drop.

Continued at https://projects.oregonlive.com/police/state-oversight/

'No defending the indefensible,' says top Oregon police official | The Oregonian

Quote:

The superintendent of Oregon State Police said this week some of the officers featured in The Oregonian/OregonLive's investigation "Fired, But Fit for Duty" had done things that should have barred them from police work permanently.

"There's no defending the indefensible," said Travis Hampton, who is a member of the board that oversees public safety officers in the state.

Hampton is one police leader who has reacted strongly to "Fired, But Fit for Duty."

The newsroom's investigation examined the work of the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, which certifies police officers in Oregon and has the authority to take away their certifications for misconduct.

The newsroom looked at all cases state regulators closed from 2013 through 2016 and found they failed to sideline dozens of fired officers who had accumulated a record of inept police work, or worse.

Examples included officers fired after punching a handcuffed suspect, driving 150 miles per hour during a pursuit over a two-lane bridge, showing up to work drunk, sleeping on duty and leaving a patrol district unattended to visit a love interest near the county jail 17 miles away.

Regulators won't open a decertification case unless an officer has been arrested or has left a job in connection with an investigation or a settlement agreement. They hardly ever perform their own investigations, relying instead on documents from local agencies.

Daryl Turner, the president of Portland's police union, said the officers he represents are under enough layers of oversight.

"The system in place is a solid system," Turner said. "I believe it works well."

Within hours of the investigation publishing online, Turner sent out a press release saying the article was "sensationalism" with the "overarching premise that DPSST is meant to act as some sort of super-employer."

He sent the statement on behalf of the Oregon Coalition of Police & Sheriffs, an organization that does lobbying and public relations for line officers at some of the state's largest agencies.

Continued at http://www.oregonlive.com/police-fire/index.ssf/2017/12/fired_but_fit_for_duty_reactio.html

officialERICA GARNER‏ @es_snipes 13 hours ago
This is one of Erica's workers. Pray for her.

officialERICA GARNER‏ @es_snipes 13 hours ago
She is in a coma.

officialERICA GARNER @es_snipes 12 hours ago
I'll tweet updates as I have them. Please pray for Erica right now.

officialERICA GARNER‏ @es_snipes 1 hour ago
The Garner/Snipes family wants to thank you all for your prayers and support. At this moment there are no updates on Erica's condition. They ask that you take this holiday to enjoy your loved ones and for self care. More updates will come as they are available.

Daughter of Eric Garner, Man Who Died After Police Chokehold, Hospitalized | NBC New York

Excerpts:

The oldest daughter of a New York City man killed by a police chokehold has been hospitalized in critical condition after suffering a heart attack.

Her mother, Esaw Snipes-Garner, says her daughter's cardiac arrest was triggered by an asthma attack.

More at https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loc...-Police-Chokehold-Hospitalized-466426553.html

Activist Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner, is dead at 27

Quote:

Activist Erica Garner, the eldest daughter of Eric Garner who died at the hands police in New York City, died Saturday after a major heart attack. Garner was 27.

A representative of the family announced via Garner’s Twitter account that the heart attack over Christmas weekend left her with major brain damage, and later confirmed the activist’s death.

The mother of two was a prominent, fiery voice of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as in national and local politics, largely for her tireless pursuit of accountability and justice for police violence victims.

Following the death of her father, Eric Garner, who was held in a fatal chokehold by a plainclothes NYPD officer on July 17, 2014, a grand jury declined to indict any of the officers involved in the encounter. Video footage captured on a bystander’s smartphone showed Garner’s father saying “I can’t breathe” several times as officers attempted to arrest him for allegedly selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island.

His final words went on to become a rallying cry of the BLM movement.

As of late December, it had been roughly 1,261 days since Eric Garner’s death — and no disciplinary action had been taken against Daniel Pantaleo, who remains employed with the New York Police Department. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the officer’s conduct — but has yet to announce whether it will file criminal charges against Pantaleo.

Continued at https://mic.com/articles/187103/activist-erica-garner-daughter-of-eric-garner-is-dead-at-27

Erica Garner Died Before a Single NYPD Officer Received the Training That Could Have Saved Her Father’s Life

http://www.newsweek.com/erica-garner-nypd-eric-garner-dead-heart-attack-766426

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html

(Include bodycam video of the shooting.)

Granted that the arsehole who did the swatting checked off all the boxes to get someone killed, police should never have taken an unconfirmed anonymous call as confirmed just because there was caller ID. Caller ID has been broken for many years and the phone companies need to be held accountable for that.

Killing a bewildered innocent person, blinded by police lights and being shouted at, should never have happened for "failure to comply" without a visible deadly threat present.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/

Colorado shooting: Four police officers injured, one dead


A police officer has been killed and four others have been injured while responding to an early morning domestic dispute in the US state of Colorado.

Authorities confirmed two civilians were also shot by a suspect, who they say is now believed to be dead.

The shooting happened at an apartment complex at Highlands Ranch, south of Denver.

Residents in the area were put on "code red" alert and told to stay inside, away from windows during the incident.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42529424

Police Killed 1,129 People in 2017. 12 Were Charged with a Crime.

http://www.papermag.com/police-kill...-12-were-charged-with-a-crime-2520838132.html

Mapping Police Violence

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Police Use of Force Project

http://useofforceproject.org/

The Use of Force project goals


"Failing to make life preservation the primary principle shaping police decisions about using force

Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force

Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians

Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor

Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance.

Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force.

Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian.

Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians

POLICE USE OF FORCE POLICIES currently LACK BASIC PROTECTIONS AGAINST Police violence

These policies often fail to include common-sense limits on police use of force, including:

1. Failing to make life preservation the primary principle shaping police decisions about using force
2. Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
3. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
4. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor
5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance.
6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force.
7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian.
8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians

Source: http://useofforceproject.org/

On New Year’s Eve, Deputy Larry Falce was violently attacked after a minor traffic collision in his personal vehicle. Larry was hospitalized and succumbed to his injuries this evening. At 10:00 PM, a procession will accompany his body from Loma Linda Hospital to the Coroner’s Office. Rest easy, Larry and thank you for your service.

Image copyright

An El Paso County Sheriff's deputy has been shot dead, becoming the state's third officer to be killed in the line of duty this year.

Micah Flick, 34, was investigating a report of a stolen car when he was fatally shot. Three other officers and a civilian were also injured.

Mr Flick died on his 11th anniversary on the job, the sheriff's office said.

Two police officers from Westerville, Ohio, were fatally shot Saturday in the line of duty while responding to a potential domestic violence call, officials said.

Shortly after noon Saturday, police dispatched officers to an apartment complex after receiving a 911 call from someone who hung up, authorities said.

“As they went into the apartment, they were immediately met with gunfire and both officers were shot,” an emotional Westerville Police Chief Joe Morbitzer said at a news conference.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...fter-911-hang-up-call/?utm_term=.da14d1889b6a

One Pomona police officer killed, another wounded; standoff with gunman continues

The suspect remained holed up inside an apartment Saturday. Around 7 a.m., a loud bang was heard, and an officer called for the suspect to come out with his hands up. Officials said SWAT officers have made contact with the man, who has so far not surrendered. Police said they didn't know how many weapons he has with him.

At a news conference Saturday morning, authorities said the incident began as a police pursuit that ended near the apartment complex when the suspect's car crashed. The suspect ran from his vehicle and was followed by officers on foot.

He went into the apartment complex and barricaded himself inside one of the units. When officers arrived, authorities said, he fired through a door, hitting the two officers.

A law enforcement source said about 75 officers from several agencies converged on the scene but were unable to move the wounded officers to safety at first because of gunfire.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-pomona-officer-shot-20180309-story.html

Justine Damond shooting: US policeman charged with murder




US prosecutors have laid a murder charge against a policeman who shot and killed an unarmed Australian woman.

Officer Mohamed Noor, 32, turned himself in over the death of Justine Damond in Minneapolis, prosecutors said. He is accused of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Ms Damond died in July last year after calling police to report a possible sexual assault outside her home.

A lawyer for Mr Noor said his client had acted in line with police training.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43480859

Sgt. Noel Ramirez (l.), 29, and deputy Taylor Lindsey (r.), 25, were killed by a gunman in a Chinese restaurant on April 19, 2018.

Gunman entered Chinese restaurant to fatally shoot Florida deputies before killing self

Highnote had no prior history with the Gilchrist Sheriff's Office, authorities said.

"It appears he just walked up and shot them, then went to his car and shot himself. It's inexplicable," said State Attorney Bill Cervon, according to News 4 Jax. "People will want to know why, and we may never have an answer for them," he added.

Gilchrist County Sheriff Bobby Schultz blamed the killings on hatred toward law enforcement.

http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/cr...urant-kill-florida-deputies-article-1.3945997

A Dallas police officer has died and another remains in critical condition after a shooting at a Home Depot on Tuesday. A civilian guard was also critically injured, according to authorities.
Officer Rogelio Santander, 27, died Wednesday morning, the Dallas Police Department told multiple media outlets. The other officer, 26-year-old Crystal Almeida, remains in critical condition. The wounded civilian, a Home Depot loss prevention officer, has not been identified.

The Mounting Legal Fight Over How Portland Cops Manage Protests

As more protesters push back, will PPB change its ways?

By Alex Zielinski, The Portland Mercury

Quote:

Jeremy Ibarra wasn’t planning on suing the Portland Police Bureau. But after the 35-year-old man was arrested during a chaotic June 2017 protest—shortly after officers corralled him and at least 200 others in a group and announced they were all being detained—he and his lawyers are prepared to hold the bureau accountable. In doing so, they could accelerate a growing legal fight to ban this type of mass detention at protests.

Ibarra went to downtown Portland’s Chapman Square on June 4 as a counter-protester, hoping to speak out against the pro-Trump rally taking place across the street at Terry Schrunk Plaza. In what’s increasingly becoming the standard for Portland protests, police showed up in head-to-toe tactical gear. According to PPB, counter-protesters threw a bottle of soda and a brick at the officers. In response, PPB formed a human lasso around some 200 protesters and announced via loudspeaker that everyone inside the circle was being detained. Officers shot paintball-style bullets filled with pepper and flash bangs at the crowd while others directed protesters to disperse, according to protester testimony. When Ibarra tried to leave the crowd, he was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Instead of taking a plea deal from the Multnomah County District Attorney, Ibarra opted for a trial by jury—an unusual path for a misdemeanor charge. The decision worked in his favor: By the end of the week-long trial, the jury sided with Ibarra and issued a not guilty verdict. But Ibarra wasn’t going to leave it at that.

Days after the ruling, Ibarra’s attorneys filed a tort claim against PPB, arguing that the entire premise of Ibarra’s arrest—being held along with hundreds of people for the actions of a select few—was unconstitutional.

“The City clearly based their mass detention not on probable cause,” the tort reads. “The overbreadth of the detention caused the illegal arrest of Mr. Ibarra.”

The police tactic in question, often called “kettling,” isn’t new. New York officers kettled protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention, DC Metropolitan Police kettled hundreds who participated in the January 2016 Inauguration Day protests, and St. Louis police were recently accused of kettling protesters following the acquittal of an officer who fatally shot a civilian. In 2014, 70 or so people were kettled by Portland police during a protest over the non-indictment of Ferguson, Missouri, Police Officer Darren Wilson. (Included in that kettle was then-Mercury News Editor Denis C. Theriault, who was reporting on the protest.) A new wave of protests spurred by the election of Donald Trump, however, has renewed the public’s pushback on kettling tactics.

“They’re not doing anything new, there’s just new people participating in protests,” says Juan C. Chavez, Ibarra’s attorney. “We’re seeing scrutiny where there should have been for a while.”

That scrutiny is also coming from the ACLU of Oregon, who filed a class action lawsuit against PPB after the June 4 protest, specifically for the kettle-style mass detention.

“Kettling protesters without probable cause and/or individualized suspicion violates the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution,” reads the ACLU’s complaint, filed last November, that names five people who were caught in the kettle as plaintiffs.

Chavez says these mounting lawsuits against the city and its police force will hopefully encourage the PPB to reconsider how it handles large crowds. Another thing that could help: Having more protesters like Ibarra taking their misdemeanor protest charges to court—and winning. The cost of sending county prosecutors to fight petty charges in court adds up, as does pulling officers off the clock to testify against protesters.

“So often, district attorneys file these cases because they know they won’t get sued,” says Chavez. “But they have to answer to us now. Mr. Ibarra wants to show others that they also have rights, that they can fight back.”

They can, that is, if those cases even make it as far as the district attorney’s office. In April 2017, the Mercury found that the majority of protest-related arrests in Portland since Trump’s election had been rejected by the office of Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill—a signal that these arrests were more symbolic than they were lawful.

Between unnecessary arrests, the PPB’s tactical armor, and kettling, some civil rights lawyers say Portland police are increasingly using scare tactics to keep people from attending protests.

Lisa Pardini, a Portland defense attorney who’s represented protesters, calls PPB’s militarized gear “bizarrely unnecessary” and believes the look provokes some of the violent action that takes place at protests. “When you’re dressed in that battle gear, it’s hard not to [be provoked],” Pardini says.

That only adds to the slippery slope of unconstitutional allegations. If kettling qualifies as protest deterrence, then the PPB could also be accused of violating Portlanders’ First Amendment rights.

Chavez says it shouldn’t be that difficult for the PPB to follow rules upheld by Oregon and the US Constitution.

“We want this practice to stop. We want people to be able to go to a protest without getting tear-gassed and without being arrested because one person allegedly threw something,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”

Source: https://www.portlandmercury.com/new...-fight-over-how-portland-cops-manage-protests

JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

A mourner is comforted by a Weymouth police officer during a procession held outside of the Boston Medical Examiner's office after a Weymouth police officer was killed in the line of duty.
By Jeremy C. Fox, John Hilliard and Lucas Phillips GLOBE CORRESPONDENTS JULY 15, 2018

WEYMOUTH POLICE

Officer Michael Chesna.
WEYMOUTH — A police officer and a local woman were shot and killed in a quiet residential neighborhood Sunday morning after a 20-year-old man allegedly crashed a car, attacked the officer, stole his gun, and used it to shoot both victims, according to the Norfolk district attorney’s office.
Weymouth Officer Michael Chesna, 42, died in the line of duty, and a nearby resident was shot and killed in her home, allegedly by Emanuel “Manny” Lopes, 20, officials said.
“This is an awful day for Weymouth and for Massachusetts,” District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey said in a statement. “Our hearts are very much with the surviving families of these victims.”

Copsucker | Urban Dictionary

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Copsucker

3 police officers shot in Kansas City, rifle-wielding suspect killed: Officials


A man wanted for questioning in the murder of a college student shot three police officers in Kansas City, Missouri, on Sunday during a series of firefights that began at a motel and ended with his death when he bolted from a house with his rifle blazing, authorities said.

Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith said detectives had been conducting surveillance on Mack as a person of interest in the July 6 murder and had followed him to the Sky-Vue Motel on Highway 40 on the east side of the city.

"Our officers then engaged with the person that they were trying to surveil and there was gunfire," Smith told reporters. "At that point two of our officers were shot."

The suspected gunman, armed with a high-powered semiautomatic rifle, fled the scene in a vehicle with a second individual, police said. Officers chased the vehicle to a residential neighborhood near the intersection of 30th Street and Topping Avenue and arrested one of the men who had sped from the motel, police said.

Mack allegedly ran from the vehicle, barricaded himself in a home in the area and fired on officers as they approached the residence, Smith said. A third detective was wounded in the firefight, hit in the forearm by a bullet, Smith said.

FALMOUTH -- Barnstable police Officer Anson Moore got the call Friday evening that every parent dreads.
His son, Officer Ryan Moore, called from a house on Ashley Drive in Falmouth, where he’d been shot in a confrontation with a 21-year-old man. Gunfire also struck his fellow Falmouth officer, Donald DeMiranda, who was likely saved by his vest after being hit in the chest and clavicle.
Friday, said Anson Moore, “could have been the worst night of my life.”

stop

2 police officers among 4 killed in Canada shooting; a suspect is in custody

By Carma Hassan and Joe Sterling, CNN

Updated 12:55 PM ET, Fri August 10, 2018

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/americas/canada-shooting/index.html

A Texas Cop Who Shot And Killed A 15-Year-Old Boy Has Been Found Guilty Of Murder

Roy Oliver told jurors he was afraid a car filled with teens would hit his partner, but video showed it was driving away from the two officers when he began to fire.

Quote:

A former Texas police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy as he was leaving a house party was found guilty of murder Tuesday.

Roy Oliver, 38, was fired from the Balch Springs Police Department shortly after the April 29, 2017, incident, when he fired five times into a car filled with teenagers leaving a house party, killing Jordan Edwards, who was a passenger.

Police originally said the car had been backing toward officers in “an aggressive manner,” but later reversed their account, citing dashcam footage showing the car driving away from officers when Oliver began to fire with a rifle.

Prosecutors said they supported police, but that officers like Oliver had to be held accountable. Jurors deliberated for about 12 hours over two days before reaching the verdict.

“They have to follow the law just like everybody else,” prosecutor George Lewis told the Dallas Morning News.

Oliver, who now faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced, was also found not guilty of two counts of aggravated assault connected to the shooting.

Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/texas-cop-guilty-murder

“Police officer who fatally shot man in wrong apartment should be fired, family lawyer says“
Wait. She still has a job?!

Dallas Police Department fires Amber Guyger after manslaughter charges | NBC News

Quote:

The Dallas Police Department on Monday fired an officer who barged into the wrong apartment in her building and killed a man who was inside.

The dismissal of Amber Guyger was announced by Dallas Police Chief Reneé Hall on Twitter.

Guyger, who was hired in November 2013, was fired after an Internal Affairs investigation concluded that the officer "engaged in adverse conduct when she was arrested for Manslaughter," the chief's Tweet read.

Hall's tweet shed no new light on the death of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. But it came on the same day that family and friends gathered at a church in his homeland for his funeral.

<snipped>

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said firing Guyger was the "right decision."

"The swift termination of any officer who engages in misconduct that leads to the loss of innocent life is essential is the Dallas Police Department is to gain and maintain the public trust," Rawlngs said in a statement.

More at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...mber-guyger-over-manslaughter-charges-n912546