The Warrior cops are out of control

[spurraider21]

i'd like to bring your attention to the bottom right corner of this graphic (will include source below). about 1.4% of all people who had police interactions had force used or threatened against them (couldn't find a figure of how many of those were merely threats, but i digress). 1.4% already fits my "slim to none" description i had given before. and if we assume that the use of force is more probable in cases where there is resistence/non-compliance, then we can also assume that for those who DO comply, the figure would be lower than 1.4%, nationwide



http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf

[FuzzyLumpkins]

i'd like to bring your attention to the bottom right corner of this graphic (will include source below). about 1.4% of all people who had police interactions had force used or threatened against them (couldn't find a figure of how many of those were merely threats, but i digress). 1.4% already fits my "slim to none" description i had given before. and if we assume that the use of force is more probable in cases where there is resistence/non-compliance, then we can also assume that for those who DO comply, the figure would be lower than 1.4%, nationwide



http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf

Between 2002 and 2008, about 5.3 million fewer residents
had face-to-face contact with police, down to an estimated
40.0 million from 45.3 million

When 40m is the denominator, 1.4% is pretty significant. 560k legal assaults annually.

[spurraider21]

When 40m is the denominator, 1.4% is pretty significant. 560k legal assaults annually.

it isn't stated:

a) how many of those were uses of force vs merely threats of force
b) how many of those were proper responses. if a guy hits a cop first and the cop hits back, that would also fall under the "use of force" variety, though it would be unfair to list those as "assaults."

[cd021]

was he resisting arrest or did he give himself up peacefully? and if he's in the middle of a confession, you'd bet your ass they'd feed him. a $4 burger that potentially saves them years and a lot more $ down the line in court related costs

According to the article. He barely spoke and then mentioned that he was hungry so they took him to Burger King.

[boutons_deux]

Native American given less than 2 gallons of water while jailed 13 days over bad check — and now he’s dead

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/nati...e+Raw+Story%29

[FuzzyLumpkins]

it isn't stated:

a) how many of those were uses of force vs merely threats of force
b) how many of those were proper responses. if a guy hits a cop first and the cop hits back, that would also fall under the "use of force" variety, though it would be unfair to list those as "assaults."

Seeing that the stats are voluntarily reported and really only overseen by the police unions because they have legislated out civilian oversight as part of LEOBOR, you can take a big nasty taco cabana and lone star on any stat they put out there. Those are all the reported encounters. We know there are unreported encounters as well.

I've read a lot of Serpico and I think he might be right. A culture that doesn't punish bad cops but does punish those that report bad cops is the heart of the problem. Thin blue line my ass. There are millions of them and they are militarizing in the wake of domestic attacks.

[spurraider21]

lol "there are millions of them and they are militarizing"

[FuzzyLumpkins]

lol "there are millions of them and they are militarizing"

I never said they paraded them around. There are all manner of modern pictures of the police deployed in their gear that illustrate the phenomenon. The pictures of cops in body armor and riding tanks and using mounted ordinance is cliche. They hire ex military in droves.




Part of the war on drugs has been funding drug task forces across the country. That was Nixon's policy in the 1970s which subsequent presidents have doubled down on that with annual dollars for equipment training and ordinance. Reagan started further integrating federal law enforcement with military and intelligence services. He would deploy the military strategically to work with domestic policy. All the gulf states were involved.

More recently, due to domestic attacks, police have been given that much more military equipment including tanks, helicopters, and heavy weapons as provided by the Patriot Act.

Let's not forget LEOBOR.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

There are more than 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers now serving in the United States, which is the highest figure ever. About 12 percent of those are female.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/enforcement/

Now that is just the people wearing the badge so to speak. There are a ton more administrators, jailers, prosecutors, lobbyists, labor organizations, vendors, laborers etc that all work towards 'the thin blue line.'

[TheSanityAnnex]

I never said they paraded them around. There are all manner of modern pictures of the police deployed in their gear that illustrate the phenomenon. The pictures of cops in body armor and riding tanks and using mounted ordinance is cliche. They hire ex military in droves.




Part of the war on drugs has been funding drug task forces across the country. That was Nixon's policy in the 1970s which subsequent presidents have doubled down on that with annual dollars for equipment training and ordinance. Reagan started further integrating federal law enforcement with military and intelligence services. He would deploy the military strategically to work with domestic policy. All the gulf states were involved.

More recently, due to domestic attacks, police have been given that much more military equipment including tanks, helicopters, and heavy weapons as provided by the Patriot Act.

Let's not forget LEOBOR.

1033 program.

http://www.stripes.com/how-and-why-l...pment-1.299570

[spurraider21]

militarizing also implies a degree of organization, as if all police departments around the country are radioing each other instructions on where to strike. they are arming up.

[TheSanityAnnex]

More recently, due to domestic attacks, police have been given that much more military equipment including tanks, helicopters, and heavy weapons as provided by the Patriot Act.

More than 8,000 law enforcement agencies around the country participate in 1033. Since the program’s inception, the Pentagon has transferred property worth $5.1 billion. Last year, half a billion dollars’ worth of gear was transferred, according to the Defense Logistics Agency, which manages the transfers.
Equipment is free, but law enforcement agencies must pay maintenance and transportation costs.
Some of the items — Humvees, mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles, aircraft (rotary and fixed wing), boats, sniper scopes and M-16s — raise eyebrows.
But only about 5 percent of the equipment is weapons, and fewer than 1 percent is tactical vehicles, according to the defense official.
Much of the gear is non-military items, such as office equipment, blankets and sleeping bags, computers, digital cameras and video recorders, binoculars, flashlights, extreme weather clothing, repair tools, first-aid supplies and TVs.
The official said all tactical vehicles are “stripped down” before they are given to law enforcement, and are without weapons.
Transferred aircraft is also unarmed and intended to give police greater observation capabilities, according to the official.
Just because the Pentagon doesn’t need a particular item doesn’t mean law enforcement agencies can use it. The logistics agency has to approve every type of item that can be transferred.
“No, you can’t have a damn tank

[FuzzyLumpkins]

militarizing also implies a degree of organization, as if all police departments around the country are radioing each other instructions on where to strike. they are arming up.

Ever heard of the fraternal order of police? The pervasive local to national lobbying efforts that earned them extra rights categorically?

Intentionally obtuse perhaps or have I just been giving you too much credit?

[spurraider21]

im too scared to continue talking about it. the KGB might be coming for me

[boutons_deux]

Report: Anti-immigrant groups collude with homeland security employees

Some Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees and union leaders have been colluding with white nationalist, anti-immigrant groups, lending credibility to hate groups and giving them an outsized influence on federal immigration policy, according to a report released Monday.

Many of the same DHS employees have testified at congressional hearings and made statements to the press as “credible” and “neutral” experts on the topic of immigration — making the collusion more troubling, said the report by Center for New Community, a group that tracks social and racial injustice.

“Do we really want law enforcement agents colluding with people who seek a European-American majority?” Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said in a conference call on
Monday. “Do we really want our law enforcement officers cooperating with people who are friends with (hate groups) who call all Latino people 'dumb' and circulate conspiracy theories about Jewish power?”

The report, led “Blurring Borders: Collusion between Anti-Immigrant Groups and Immigration Enforcement Agents," identified three anti-immigrant groups with close ties to DHS members.

Those organizations — Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA — can be traced to a white nationalist named John Tanton, the report said, who has "advocated drastically reducing, if not altogether halting, all avenues of immigration."

FAIR, a non-profit public interest group aimed at increasing border security, is defined as a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Center, and has hired people from white supremacist and other hate groups, Potok said.
Tanton has publicly stated the importance of maintaining a European-American majority in the U.S., and FAIR’s current leadership shares a similar mindset, Potok added.

The anti-immigrant groups do not seem to officially work with DHS, but they develop sources within the organization that leak information to them, the report said.

The report says that the anti-immigrant movement has worked with leaders of the unions representing a majority of employees at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement: the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) and the National ICE Council.

"Instead of fulfilling organized labor’s traditional role of advocating for respectable wages and working conditions, leaders of these particular unions appear more focused on coordinating with special interest groups in the Beltway to advance anti-immigrant policy goals," the report said.

CIS organizes annual tours of the U.S.-Mexico border for its members and in March 2014 NBPC Local 1613 based in Southern California thanked two of its current agents, Manny Bayon and Chris Bauder, on Twitter for "showing the truth on the southern border" during a "border tour for CIS," the report said.

The two are elected union representatives, while Bauder is currently executive vice president of the NBPC, according to the report.

As a result of this influence and that the groups themselves have testified to Congress "hundreds and hundreds of times," the anti-immigrant movement has been “very effective” in killing comprehensive immigration reform, Potok said.

Evidence of collusion, according to the report, includes the fact many union leaders within DHS have advocated for immigration policy identical to those advocated by the anti-immigration movement — specifically that of CIS, said Anush Joshi of Center for New Community.

In August 2012 after the deportation relief program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was announced by President Barack Obama, 10 ICE agents filed a lawsuit against then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, ICE directors and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Christopher Crane, president of the National ICE Council, was lead plaintiff.

Despite the lawsuit's dismissal, the case allowed anti-immigrant groups like NumbersUSA to "construct a platform from which Crane could act as a prominent spokesperson," the report said. The group announced it would cover all legal fees in the case and Kris Kobach — an attorney for the FAIR's legal project, Immigration Reform Law Ins ute — was recruited to represent Crane and his colleagues.

Kobach has worked with FAIR in the past to draft some of the country’s most anti-immigrant bills including Arizona's notorious SB 1070, which required police to determine the immigration status of anyone arrested or detained if there was "reasonable su ion" that they were in the U.S. illegally.

Another example of collusion, according to Monday’s report, surfaced last July at a protest organized by far-right activists with ties to white nationalists in Murietta, California. The protesters blocked buses of children and their parents who had fled Central American violence, chanting, “Go back home!” and “We don’t want you here!,” Joshi said.

“The real question is how did they know when and where the buses were going? The answer lies in the long-standing relationship between DHS and leaders of the anti-immigration movement,” Joshi said during the conference call.

Media outlets reported NBPC Local 1613 health and safety director Ron Zermeno as the source of leaked details regarding the migrants' transportation, the report said. Zermeno had also taken part in a conference call on July 23, 2014 with organizers of a nine-day border convoy aimed at stopping the "invasion," according to the report.

Zermeno told organizers, "I'm here to help you guys," the report said, adding that he offered to coordinate with border patrol agents the routes for the protest.

http://america.aljazeera.com/article...nt-groups.html

[boutons_deux]

Drug Money Laundered by Two Florida Police Agencies, And Stark Corruption at All Levels of Government

Nearly two weeks ago, the Miami Herald published a major investigative journalism series on two small Florida police agencies, which engaged in undercover money laundering operations with criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking so officers and the police departments themselves could claim millions of dollars as their own.

The series, “License to Launder: Cash, Cops & the Cartels,” has not received much media attention at all. Whether that is because the essence of the corruption was already known is unclear, however, the corruption detailed at all levels of government is staggering—from the money laundering itself to the coverup by federal investigators seemingly unwilling to investigate anyone in the task force who committed crimes.

It is a stark example of how the War on Drugs is more about how police departments and officers can profit than stopping the flow of drug money. Indeed, officers in this case needed money to keep flowing in order to continue living as high rollers.

Bal Harbour is a small community of around 2,500 people with “oceanfront condominiums” and “elegant boutiques.” It had one reported violent crime in 2012 – an aggravated assault. But, beginning in 2010, the department partnered with the police department in Glades County, one of the poorest counties in Florida.

The police agencies formed the Tri-County Task Force, a state task force, to conduct undercover operations. They took place all over the United States but it would be difficult to believe they were carried out by officers interested in bringing drug traffickers to justice.

The task force made no arrests and engaged in no effort to have the Florida State’s Attorney prosecute any cases. What the officers wanted was money, plain and simple, and they took advantage of the federal government’s Equitable Sharing program to claim drug cash as their own.

When it comes to the War on Drugs, agencies operate under the presumption that undercover units have to typically “seize far more money from criminal groups than what a task force launders and returns to the streets.” That is why one of the most shocking details is that the task force “passed tips that led to federal agents seizing nearly $30 million.” Yet, during the same period, the task force laundered $50 million

http://firedoglake.com/2015/07/01/dr...of-government/

[boutons_deux]

Cops Seize College Kid's Savings for No Reason: 5 Outrageous Cases of Asset Forfeiture

Asset forfeiture is a police procedure whereby local police departments can confiscate the property of Americans if they can make a case that this property is essential to criminal activity. You would think such power would be limited to seizing items such as firearms or other dangerous materials, but police departments often abuse this power to grab all sorts of things -- even from people who . Here’s five crazy cases:

1. Seizing The Life Savings Of A 24-Year-Old:

In 2014, a college student named Charles Clarke was traveling [3] through Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport when he was accused of having his bag smell like marijuana. Police then went on to seize the $11,000 found within it, accusing him of having done a drug deal to get the money. 13 different departments are now trying to gain control of the money seized from Clarke, although he was never convicted of a crime (there were no drugs in his bag).

2. Confiscating $75,000 From A Budding Restauranteur:

A 55-year old Chinese American from Georgia was traveling in Alabama when police seized $75,000 [4] he had raised from his relatives to open a new Chinese restaurant. After ten months of legal battles, he was able to get the money back, but he was set back by his own legal fees.

3. Taking Everything From A Cancer Patient:

Police in Michigan busted [5] into Thomas Williams’s home, accusing him of dealing marijuana -- he wasn’t, but as a cancer patient, he was legally allowed to cultivate his own. Police took $11,000, his car, his shotgun, and other belongings and a year later he was still fighting to get them back.

4. Snatch And Grab From Poker Players:

Two poker players driving in Iowa had $100,000 taken [6] from them by Iowa police. The encounter with police led to one indictment for possessing drug paraphernalia. There was no hard and fast evidence that the money seized was at all related to any drug crime.


5. Decimating A Nail Salon Owner’s Life Savings:

Vu Do, a man who owns two nail salons in New York City, had $44,000, his life savings, taken from him [7] by the Drug Enforcement Agency while he was at JFK Airport. He had planned to take the money to California to help his family. He didn’t receive even a citation before having his money taken from him, which makes the government’s case that he may have been drug dealing all the more bizarre.
Abuses have become common enough to where two states have banned [8] civil asset forfeiture altogether while the federal government has started to limit its own use of the procedure.

http://www.alternet.org/print/cops-s...set-forfeiture

[boutons_deux]

Corporate Capitalism Is the Foundation of Police Brutality and the Prison State

Our national conversation on race and crime is based on a fiction. It is the fiction that the organs of internal security, especially the judiciary and the police, can be adjusted, modernized or professionalized to make possible a post-racial America. We discuss issues of race while ignoring the economic, bureaucratic and political systems of exploitation—all of it legal and built into the ruling apparatus—that are the true engines of racism and white supremacy. No discussion of race is possible without a discussion of capitalism and class. And until that discussion takes place, despite all the proposed reforms to the criminal justice system, the state will continue to murder and imprison poor people of color with impunity.

Our capitalist system callously discards surplus labor, especially poor people of color, employing lethal force and the largest prison system in the world to keep them under control. This is by design. And until this predatory system of capitalism is destroyed, the poor, especially people of color, will continue to be gunned down by police in the streets, as they have for decades, and disproportionately locked in prison cages.

“The strength of ‘The New Jim Crow’ by Mic e Alexander is that, by equating mass incarceration with Jim Crow, it makes it rhetorically impossible to defend it,” said Naomi Murakawa, author of “The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America,” when we met recently in Princeton, N.J. “But, on the other hand, there is no ‘new’ Jim Crow, there is just capitalist white supremacy in a state of constant self-preservation.”

“We should talk about what we are empowering police to do, not how they are doing it, not whether they are being nice when they carry out arrests,” she said. “Reforms are oriented to making violence appear respectable and courteous. But being arrested once can devastate someone’s life. This is the violence we are not talking about. It does not matter if you are arrested politely. Combating racism is not about combating bad ideas in the head or hateful feelings. This idea is the perfect formula to preserve material distributions in their exact configuration.”

“Truman’s version of the civil rights agenda came through lynching,” Murakawa said. “It illuminates how the rule of law and white supremacy operate hand in hand. Lynching hurt U.S. credibility. It hurt its force projection abroad. The concern over lynching was not a concern for black lives. It was a concern that mob and state violence were too easily conflated. The objective became to make a sharp difference between white supremacist mob violence and white supremacist state violence. The difference is not that one is white supremacist and one is not. The difference is one [is] proceduralized, one is rights based, one is orderly, bound by rule of law with ever more elaborate procedures. That is the only thing that makes it different from the lynch mob.”

http://www.alternet.org/economy/corp...d-prison-state

[Slutter McGee]

Cops Seize College Kid's Savings for No Reason: 5 Outrageous Cases of Asset Forfeiture

Asset forfeiture is a police procedure whereby local police departments can confiscate the property of Americans if they can make a case that this property is essential to criminal activity. You would think such power would be limited to seizing items such as firearms or other dangerous materials, but police departments often abuse this power to grab all sorts of things -- even from people who . Here’s five crazy cases:

1. Seizing The Life Savings Of A 24-Year-Old:

In 2014, a college student named Charles Clarke was traveling [3] through Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport when he was accused of having his bag smell like marijuana. Police then went on to seize the $11,000 found within it, accusing him of having done a drug deal to get the money. 13 different departments are now trying to gain control of the money seized from Clarke, although he was never convicted of a crime (there were no drugs in his bag).

2. Confiscating $75,000 From A Budding Restauranteur:

A 55-year old Chinese American from Georgia was traveling in Alabama when police seized $75,000 [4] he had raised from his relatives to open a new Chinese restaurant. After ten months of legal battles, he was able to get the money back, but he was set back by his own legal fees.

3. Taking Everything From A Cancer Patient:

Police in Michigan busted [5] into Thomas Williams’s home, accusing him of dealing marijuana -- he wasn’t, but as a cancer patient, he was legally allowed to cultivate his own. Police took $11,000, his car, his shotgun, and other belongings and a year later he was still fighting to get them back.

4. Snatch And Grab From Poker Players:

Two poker players driving in Iowa had $100,000 taken [6] from them by Iowa police. The encounter with police led to one indictment for possessing drug paraphernalia. There was no hard and fast evidence that the money seized was at all related to any drug crime.


5. Decimating A Nail Salon Owner’s Life Savings:

Vu Do, a man who owns two nail salons in New York City, had $44,000, his life savings, taken from him [7] by the Drug Enforcement Agency while he was at JFK Airport. He had planned to take the money to California to help his family. He didn’t receive even a citation before having his money taken from him, which makes the government’s case that he may have been drug dealing all the more bizarre.
Abuses have become common enough to where two states have banned [8] civil asset forfeiture altogether while the federal government has started to limit its own use of the procedure.

http://www.alternet.org/print/cops-s...set-forfeiture

So are you going to support Rand Paul's bill to reform civil forfeiture, or are you gonna over those people because you hate evil Repugs?

ter McGee

[boutons_deux]

So are you going to support Rand Paul's bill to reform civil forfeiture, or are you gonna over those people because you hate evil Repugs?

ter McGee

I don't support the racist, neoConfederate, AynRand-fantasists Pauls and their bull positions. If ever elected (won't happen), Randian Paul wouldn't touch civil forfeiture, just like he has done in KY.

RPs fraudulent libertarian bull is nothing but suckering you rightwingnuts into thinking he'd be different in office.

[Slutter McGee]

I don't support the racist, neoConfederate, AynRand-fantasists Pauls and their bull positions. If ever elected (won't happen), Randian Paul wouldn't touch civil forfeiture, just like he has done in KY.

RPs fraudulent libertarian bull is nothing but suckering you rightwingnuts into thinking he'd be different in office.

So you refuse to support a bill for a cause you believe in because you don't like the sponsor. Sounds pretty similar to your desire to not help the poor because you don't like the rich. Typical Liberal.

ter McGee

[boutons_deux]

So you refuse to support a bill for a cause you believe in because you don't like the sponsor. Sounds pretty similar to your desire to not help the poor because you don't like the rich. Typical Liberal.

ter McGee

straw man: "refuse to support a bill for a cause you believe in"

[Slutter McGee]

straw man: "refuse to support a bill for a cause you believe in"

So you don't support civil forfeiture reform? My bad, the police should be allowed to keep ing people over because a Republican agrees with you.

ter McGee

[boutons_deux]

straw man: "So you don't support civil forfeiture reform"

[boutons_deux]

NJ cop suspended with pay for 8 years over sex assault charge — and now he wants unused vacation pay

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/nj-c...e+Raw+Story%29