Baltimore Sun investigates: Undue Force

[Winehole23]

The beating Lyles received from Baltimore police officers — along with the resulting payout from city funds — is part of a disturbing pattern, a six-month investigation by The Baltimore Sun has found.


Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.


Those cases detail a frightful human toll. Officers have battered dozens of residents who suffered broken bones — jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles — head trauma, organ failure, and even death, coming during questionable arrests. Some residents were beaten while handcuffed; others were thrown to the pavement.


And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims — if charges were filed at all.http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/

[Winehole23]

Such beatings, in which the victims are most often African-Americans, carry a hefty cost. They can poison relationships between police and the community, limiting cooperation in the fight against crime, the mayor and police officials say. They also divert money in the city budget — the $5.7 million in taxpayer funds paid out since January 2011 would cover the price of a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds. And that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims brought against police.

[Winehole23]

I know police violence is popular and all that, but maybe it's getting overused to everyone's detriment.

[boutons_deux]

"the $5.7 million in taxpayer funds paid out since January 2011 would cover the price of a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds. And that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees"

deduct that $11.2M from the police retirement fund and from the police budget, not from playgrounds Maybe the police could sell some MRAPs and military gear to make up the budget hole.

[Winehole23]

Police "bake" sales?

[boutons_deux]

WATCH: Swedish Cops on Vacation School NYPD Cops on How to Subdue People Without Hurting Them

This week, four vacationing Swedish police officers, Samuel Kvarzell, Markus Asberg, Eric Jansberger and Erik Naslund, happened to be on a New York City subway train when a fight broke out among two apparently homeless men.

Despite the fact that the four officers were obviously not on duty and far out of their own jurisdiction, they intervened and nonviolently subdued both men, taking extreme care to not harm either of them. The officers repeatedly asked the men if they were injured, and told them everything would be okay and they needed to calm down.

http://www.alternet.org/video/watch-swedish-cops-vacation-school-nypd-cops-how-subdue-people-without-hurting-them

[cd021]

Seems the only way to get PDs to change for the better is lawsuits. That guy in AZ that got beat by 10 cops after he surrendered got payed $600,000 with the catch that cops don't admit to any wrong doing

[Winehole23]

https://instagram.com/p/17Pav4Ig8-/?taken-by=jmgiordanophoto

[boutons_deux]

Historian on Freddie Gray: Baltimore policing grew from ‘slave patrols’ used to enforce social order

Historian Dr. Gerald Horne asserted recently that the police tactics that led to the deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and other black men (http://www.rawstory.com/2014/12/historian-links-slavery-and-ferguson-us-has-always-criminalized-living-while-black/) around the country are the legacy of “slave patrols” that were used to impose economic, political and social order.During an interview with The Real News (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13720) last week, Horne, who is Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, argued that the United States could not escape the fact that it had been founded as a “slave holder’s republic.”


“The Africans did not take kindly to being enslaved, and so they rebelled against the slave holding republic,” he explained. “And that helped to create a culture that has yet to be interrogated or even questioned, even by historians, that basically set forth that people of color, Africans in the first place, African men not least, were the enemies of the republic.”

“That’s one of the reasons why oftentimes in cafeterias in school rooms you’ll see unease by school administrators if black youth are sitting together in the same place, as if they’re planning to overthrow the school system. So until we begin to investigate and interrogate that particular conundrum that I’ve just laid out, we’re always going to have more Freddie Grays.”

According to Horne, “the origins of urban police department lies precisely in the era of slavery.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/historian-on-freddie-gray-baltimore-policing-grew-from-slave-patrols-used-to-enforce-social-order/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

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The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1