Justice Dept. says insufficient evidence for charges against ex-Milwaukee cop
The Justice Department said on Tuesday there is insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against a former Milwaukee police officer in the death of an unarmed black man.
Former Milwaukee Police Officer Christopher Manney was fired after fatally shooting Dontre Hamilton on April 30, 2014. Federal authorities reviewed evidence collected in the death of Hamilton, who struggled with Manney, the Justice Department said in a statement.
"The evidence was insufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Manney acted willfully with a bad purpose to violate the law," the Justice Department said.
Manney shot Hamilton, an unarmed 31-year-old mentally disabled black man, 14 times during a struggle in Red Arrow Park in downtown Milwaukee.
Manney opened fire after Hamilton took his baton and hit him, according to authorities.
"Mistake, misperception, negligence or poor judgment are not sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil rights violation,"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...e=domesticNews
After 43 Years in Solitary, This Man Faces “One of the Most Surreal Trials of All Time"
Imagine spending more than four decades in virtual solitary confinement for a crime you've always insisted you didn't commit—and then, when your freedom is finally at hand, having it snatched away.
That's the blow the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt on Monday to 68-year-old Albert Woodfox, the last member of the so-called Angola 3 still behind bars. Woodfox, who was twice tried and convicted for his alleged role in the 1972 killing of prison guard Brent Miller, has spent 23 hours a day in a six-by-nine-foot cell at the state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, ever since.
Woodfox "remains trapped in a nightmare—both by conditions of solitary confinement and by a deeply flawed legal process."
The courts eventually overturned both of Woodfox's convictions based on evidence of racial discrimination and prosecutorial misconduct. In June, after determining that Woodfox couldn't get a fair trial so long after the fact, a federal judge ordered his immediate release. But the appeals court blocked the move. On Monday, it announced that Louisiana would be free to try Woodfox yet again.
"Woodfox should have walked free," she added. "But Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell continues to relentlessly pursue vengeance over justice."
Indeed, the AG has announced his intention to pursue another trial—even though all of the purported witnesses are dead and the victim's widow is opposed to it.
"In what would surely be one of the most surreal trials of all time," notes David Cole, who covered the case for The New Yorker, "the state proposes to retry the case by having stand-ins read from the transcripts of these witnesses' prior testimony."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...nt-third-trial
slave states doing to blacks what slave states have always done.
The video that will rip Chicago apart — and why you need to see it
There is a video that could tear Chicago apart.
It will go viral if released, and the world will see something ugly and frightening on the Southwest Side.
It comes from a police dashboard camera. City Hall worries that political may be on the way. Activists are primed. The politics of race and police use of force are at hand.
And a court hearing is scheduled for next week on whether it should be released to the public.
All this is going on just below the surface. All the players know what's at stake, so I thought you should know about it, too.
The video, without sound, is said to show Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old African-American reportedly with PCP in his system, holding a small knife.
He was shot to death by a white Chicago police officer, Jason Van , on the night of Oct. 20, 2014, at 41st and Pulaski on the Southwest Side.
City officials said police, responding to a call of a man slashing tires, followed McDonald carefully and calmly as he wandered. They called for backup and Tasers. Then McDonald walked out onto Pulaski Road.
Only one cop opened fire, shooting 16 times in all, and the video is said to show the rounds hitting McDonald in the back, the legs, arms, neck and head, the bullets making the body jump again and again.
On Nov. 19, Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama is expected to rule whether the video should be released.
The FBI is investigating. Officer Van , who has not been charged with any crime, has been stripped of his police powers and has been reassigned to desk duty.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...10-column.html
Latest Texas exoneration: State hid evidence cop beat suspect while handcuffed, prosecuted victim; FBI says not a one-off
Check out the most recent Texas exoneration from the National Exoneration Registry: Carlos Flores, who allegedly was beaten by San Antonio Police Officer Matthew Belver while handcuffed, then charged with assaulting an officer.
Flores, a legal permanent resident from Mexico with no criminal record, was charged with assault on a public servant. Flores filed a complaint with the San Antonio Police Department accusing Belver of attacking him while he was handcuffed and asserting that he kicked at Belver in self-defense.
Flores said in his complaint that after Belver handcuffed him and placed him in the back of the police car, he told Belver, “I want to kick your ass.” Flores said Belver opened the back door of the police car, yanked him out onto the ground and began beating him while he was still handcuffed. During the tussle, Flores said he kicked Belver in the face.
Belver radioed for assistance, but had managed to put Flores back into the police car by the time other officers arrived.
In May 2011, Flores received a letter from the San Antonio Police Department informing him that after an Internal Affairs Unit investigation, “corrective action” was taken against Belver, but did not specify the nature of the action except to say it would be “noted in his personnel file” and would serve “as a reference in the event there a reoccurrence of this type of action by the officer.
On December 6, 2011, Flores pled no contest to assault on a public servant in Bexar County Criminal District Court and the judge deferred an adjudication of guilt for four years. He was ordered to complete 350 hours of community service and pay $2,300 in res ution to the police department.
In April 2013, the FBI reached out to Flores to interview him because Belver was the subject of a federal investigation into allegations that Flores was beating people while making arrests and conducting improper searches without warrants.
One month later, in May 2013, Flores’s deferred adjudication was revoked because he missed three meetings with his court supervision officer, had only paid $600 in res ution and had not completed his community service. He was sentenced to prison for three years.
In May 2014, Flores was scheduled to be released from prison on parole and discovered that because of his conviction, he was subject to deportation.
In October 2014, Flores filed a state-court pe ion for a writ of habeas corpus seeking to vacate his conviction on the basis of actual innocence. The pe ion said that although the FBI investigation had not resulted in any charges against Belver, he had been suspended for 30 days without pay for filing a false report of his arrest of Flores and for failing to take Flores for medical treatment on the day of the arrest.
A hearing was held on the pe ion and the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office agreed that the information should have been disclosed to Flores prior to his guilty plea. A judge recommended that the writ be granted.
In September 2015, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ and vacated the conviction. “This information was not disclosed to the defense before (Flores) entered his plea, and is consistent with (his) contention that he did not intentionally or knowingly assault the officer,” the appeals court said. “The trial court conducted a habeas hearing, and the parties agree that the information regarding the disciplinary action against the arresting officer should have been, but was not disclosed to the defense in this case.”
In October 2015, the Bexar County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit filed a motion to dismiss the charge. On October 21, 2015, the motion was granted and Flores was released.
The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in Flores' favor based on a Brady claim, not actual innocence, even though the evidence prosecutors concealed "is consistent with Applicant's contention that he did not intentionally or knowingly assault the officer."
But that's quite a fact-pattern for an innocence case! One wonders what information SAPD Internal Affairs and the feds had that made them believe the word of a suspect over Officer Belver?
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.co...state-hid.html
Long article on the militarization and murderous brutality of the police state
Police Torture and the Real Militarization of Society
There is a rhetorical expression that the police use to justify throwing a person to the ground and handcuffing them. “The subject became uncooperative.” When a person walks away from the cop and gets shot, the rhetorical expression is: “I felt threatened.” But there is a momentous assumption that the cop makes in either case. That is that he can play the role of a commanding officer, as if in a military ins ution, and the civilian on the street must respond with the obedience of a platoon member. Only in the military is the requirement for “cooperation” that absolute.
In the language of civil society, to throw a person to the ground is assault. To kneel on soneone’s back is torture. To handcuff a person in order to prohibit their autonomy and self-respect is a violation democratic ethics as well as of Cons utional due process. To shoot someone in the back is murder. Yet these criminal actions are now routine responses to a failure to obey. To question or disagree with a police officer amounts to disobedience, and can be punished in the moment.
A cop in McKinney, TX, actually explained this paradigm (again on candid video). He had broken up a teenage pool party, and in a berserk fashion chased down all the black partiers he could catch. He threw a young woman to the ground twice to handcuff her, and pulled his gun on others. Then, suddenly returning to rational demeanor, he lectured two teenage black men whom he had told to sit on the ground, as if he was their housemother. “I personally told you to get on the ground, and stay there. What did you do when I walked away? You did just what everybody else did, which was illegal [indicating the others had fled]. You did it, and you got caught.” And he arrested them. He is not only assuming the position of a commanding officer over these others who are his “subordinates,” but he consciously regards his own words as law.
Civil society is not a military organization. We have not been enlisted or inducted into one, and to so consider us is wholly inimical to any democratic ethics. Yet
in Nebraska, there is a law that allows each citizen only five second to obey a police command and not be subject to arrest.
In other words, legislatures and courts have ratified this regimentation of civilians, rendering us platoon members on pain of prison. The jail house may say “free society” on the door, but it is still a jail house.
Police motivations are most clearly expressed, however, in their requests for tasers. Tasers are not weapons of defense or war. They are instruments of torture. Police label them “less-lethal” subs utes for guns. But tasers would not be used against real weapons, which is the alleged role of guns.
Tasers are actually subs utes for billyclubs or pepper spray, that are weaker forms of torture, with lesser reach.
They are thus “more lethal” forms of exacting obedience. (When they label tasers “less-lethal” subs utes for guns, the police are admitting that the primary role of guns is also obedience and not defense.)
The use of tasers has resulted in over 900 deaths in the last few years.
What the taser better facilitates than other technologies is the expression of sadism by the cop using them – the many cases of people already handcuffed who were then tased repeatedly (often resulting in death). It more properly belongs to the category of instruments of restraint – such as hog-tying, body-wraps, spit masks, etc. – which also appeal to the sadistic mind.
The Machinery of Un-Civil-War
In these situations, where the cop initiates an approach for no extant or obvious legal reason (including arbitrary traffic stops), the cop is acting purely on the basis of su ion or desire (to harass).
His impunity in doing so not only gives su ion the power of law, it gives desire the power of command (a power nexus between regimentation and autocracy).
The legal mechanism underpinning this power is the victimless crime law. Victimless crime laws dispense with the need for a complainant. They give a cop the ability can act autonomously in deciding who to notice and what to use as “probable cause.” In other words, probable cause becomes arbitrary, a question of unilateral volution. The officer who stops someone on the street or in traffic needs only to say he was carrying on an “investigation.”
But now, because disobedience is illegal, “investigation” becomes a euphemism for a process of criminalization.
Having stopped an individual, the cop has only to find a command to which the person will object as too humiliating, and charge disobedience.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/...on-of-society/
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-12-2015 at 09:53 PM.
Texas cops respond to suicide attempt, shoot Hispanic man — and then find out he’s a deputy
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/texas-cops-respond-to-suicide-attempt-shoot-hispanic-man-and-then-find-out-hes-a-deputy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
cops are experts in cost-saving therapy for mental health problems
Virginia cops Tased handcuffed man 20 times in 30 minutes before he died
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/reve...e+Raw+Story%29
Oklahoma cop attacks woman in parked car, drags her by hair and punches her
Law enforcement officials in Oklahoma said this week that they were considering recommending charges against a Yukon police officer after witnesses said that he assaulted a woman.
An Oklahoma City police report obtained by KOKO said that the woman reported the attack early Saturday morning.
According to the report, witnesses observed 29-year-old Zachary Dean Bradford drag a woman from her car by her hair and then punch her. Bradford took off his shirt and tucked it in his pants before leaving the scene, witnesses said.
The victim told officers that she had not known Bradford before the attack. She said that she had been sitting in a vehicle talking to one of the witnesses when Bradford emerged from a nearby home and knocked on her window.
She said that she protected herself by curling into a ball on the ground after Bradford dragged her from the car. She suffered cuts on her left knee, right ankle and right elbow.
Oklahoma City officers arrested Bradford on su ion of assault and battery. The Yukon Police Department later confirmed that Bradford had been off duty that evening.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/okla...e+Raw+Story%29
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/12/us/flo...ath/index.html
cop fired for shooting man waiting for AAA. Charges better be next and the family is likely to be payed. PDs firing a cop over a shooting, implies that he was at fault.
Not legally it doesn't.
‘Reminiscent of Rodney King': San Francisco cops investigated after video release of savage beating of man
high quality beating video
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/remi...e+Raw+Story%29
Lol this topic is ridiculous. Put more cops in schools
Waller County Blames Sandra Bland’s Suicide on Her Family
In a motion, the county’s lawyers say Bland killed herself because her family failed to bail her out of jail.
The blame for Bland’s suicide, it asserts, lies with her friends and family for not helping her secure the $515 dollars she needed to make bail.
“Bland committed suicide by hanging herself in the jail cell, using a rolled/twisted plastic trash bag as a ligature, and tying it around the support of a privacy par ion in the cell,” the filing reads. “It is apparent now that Bland’s inability to secure her release from jail—and her family and friends’ refusal to bail her out of jail—led her to commit suicide.”
This assertion ignores what is arguably most important about this case:
Bland should not have been required to pay her jailers any money in order to buy her freedom.
As civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis told me back in July, “what made [Bland’s case] illegal was that
they arrested this woman and
kept her in a jail cell, and
there was never a finding that she was a danger to the community,
there was no adversarial hearing with a lawyer where that question was asked, let alone answered, and
there was no finding that she was a risk of flight.”
Karakatsanis added: “They put this amount of money on her head, and basically said,
‘You will be kept in this cage unless and until you pay this arbitrarily set amount of money,’ without any inquiry into her ability to pay it.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._s_family.html
If Bland had been white .... ??
Here's some more chum
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b045bf3df095ff
You wouldn't have ever heard of Jamar Clark if not for the activists. You should thank them for all of the forum material they're going to give you for the next week.
“The most heinous thing I have ever heard”: One Kansas woman’s ordeal over the use of medical marijuana
The Garden City mother faces five marijuana-related charges, including three felonies, and had her 11-year-old son taken away by the state after the boy piped up during an anti-drug class at school to say that his mom “smokes a lot.”
Shona Banda uses marijuana, and makes no bones about it. She has publicly said she uses cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease and even authored a book about it: “Live Free or Die: Reclaim Your Life…Reclaim Your Country!”
That doesn’t go over too well in conservative western Kansas. Once her son inadvertently challenged drug war orthodoxy, the school contacted the Department of Children and Families and the Garden City police, who raided Banda’s home and reported, “approximately 500 grams of suspected marijuana, multiple marijuana smoking pipes, three ‘vaporizers’ that were actively manufacturing cannabis oil and multiple other items related to packaging and ingestion of marijuana were seized from the residence.”
Banda was charged with endangering a child, distribution or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of school property, unlawful manufacture of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. She’s facing up to 28 years in state prison for trying to treat her illness.
The distribution charge is especially outrageous, since it is based solely on the amount of marijuana seized and with no evidence of actual distribution. Preparing cannabis oil requires large amounts of raw material.
To add insult to injury, the state has also taken her son, placing him first with his father, then in “protective custody,” then back with his father. Now Banda has only limited access to her child.
prosecutors made a surprise announcement that they planned to put her son on the stand to testify against her.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/18/woma...juana_partner/
Garden City, 25K population, western KS, ing redneck, grandstanding prosecutor.
Dallas police excessive-force complaints drop dramatically
Police Chief David Brown says this shift toward de-escalation is driving a sharp drop in excessive-force complaints against officers. In 2009, the year before Brown became chief, 147 such complaints were filed. So far this year, 13 have been filed — on pace to be the lowest number in at least two decades.
“This is the most dramatic development in policing anywhere in the country,” Brown said in an interview Friday with The Dallas Morning News. “We’ve had this kind of impact basically through training, community policing and holding officers accountable.”
Brown says his commanders have improved the quality of so-called reality-based training and increased required training hours for street cops over the past year. Trainers model the scenarios on real-life events recorded by officers’ body cams, dash-cams, and the media.
“We can learn from what Dallas is doing,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, D.C. “That’s what police departments need — they don’t need training in silos: one day about the law, one day about firearms, one day about crisis intervention.”
Brown believes the Dallas training has also led to a 30 percent decline in assaults on officers this year, and a 40 percent drop in shootings by police.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime...amatically.ece
Dad Tells Cops They Need a Warrant to Search Home, So They Kick in His Door and Kill Him
Spring Lake, NC — Three children lost their father Sunday after deputies with the Harnett County Sheriff’s Office, looking for a different man, shot and killed him.
John Livingston, 33, was shot and killed in the early morning hours of Sunday as police were conducting an assault investigation. Police were not looking for Livingston, and the entire situation could have been avoided had they come back with a warrant like Livingston requested.
Livingston’s roommate, Clayton Carroll told WNCN that he was shot multiple times during the altercation with officers who had no right to be there in the first place.
According to Carroll, deputies began knocking on the door around 3:30 am as they were looking for someone who no longer lived in the home. When Deputies asked Livingston if they could search his home, Livingston said “not without a search warrant,” according to Carroll.
Livingston then shut the door.
Having a man assert his fourth amendment right to be secure in his property was apparently too much for the deputy to handle.
“The cop kicked in the door, got on top of him, started slinging him around beat him…” Carroll said.
Witnesses explain how deputies began spraying pepper spray and deploying a taser during the assault. They say that Livingston was not fighting back and merely trying to prevent the deputies from inflicting more harm on him.
During the struggle, Livingston attempted to remove the taser from the deputy’s hand which caused the officers to fear for their lives.
“He (Livingston) barely had the Taser in his hand, but he had it where it was constantly going off and the officer I guess that spoke to him rolled over there, says he got the Taser and shot him in this position,” Carroll said.
Livingston died from the multiple gunshot wounds.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...r-and-kill-him
Cops love to empty their clips on unarmed victims, no less that 10 shots it seems to really kill a dead person.
Cops Claim LSD Killed This Dad, but Autopsy and Video Confirms They Hogtied Him to Death
Goode and his wife attended a concert in Southaven where they took LSD. Goode began acting funny in a parking lot, and someone thought it was necessary to call the police.
The cops’ answer was to hog-tie Goode and place him face-down, which is known to be a potentially deadly position.
Bystander footage shows Goode being hog-tied, thrashing around, and then being placed into an ambulance. Several onlookers state their disbelief that cops would place someone in this dangerous position, with one even saying it’s good they are getting video “in case he dies.” Goode was pronounced dead an hour after arriving at the hospital.
A friend of the family contacted the Free Thought Project and said that Goode was asthmatic and he was denied his inhaler. We were also told that cops threatened to arrest friends and family if they visited Goode at the hospital.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...er1046025&t=16
extra-judicial executions
More than 550 people in Texas have died so far this year while in custody either at the city, county or state level, according to data from the state attorney general's office.
While more than half of those people died while under supervision of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, other deaths occurred with local police departments or sheriff's offices. TDCJ oversees many medical facilities.
For example, of the 18 deaths in Dallas this year, 12 people died while in custody with Dallas Police Department, four died in Dallas County Sheriff's Department custody, and two died while booked with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Dallas is joined by cities such as Houston, Galveston, Richmond, San Antonio, inson and Lubbock in leading the state with most custodial deaths.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Texas-cities-with-most-deaths-in-custody-6620097.php
JUDGE RULES THE CITY OF CHICAGO MUST RELEASE FOOTAGE OF 17 YEAR OLD KID SHOT 16 TIMES BY OFFICER
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...it-hidden.html
the video is so bad the city tried paying the family off so it wouldn't be released. a witness of the vid said the child was shot 13 times while he was on the ground.
SoCal Counties Sued Over Excessive Phone Rates in Jails
A class action lawsuit filed Thursday challenges the rates that inmates in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside county jails are charged for telephone calls.
The lawsuit was filed primarily on behalf of the family members of people in custody, attorney Ron Kaye told KPCC.
The charges are excessive, Kaye said, and fall most heavily on women and people of color often on fixed income. He argued the rates violate both California and federal law.
In L.A. County, billing rates are $1.25 for domestic calls for the first minute and 15 cents for each additional minute, according to a do ent provided by Kaye. Phone rates vary by county.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/11/19/55762/lawsuit-filed-against-excessive-phone-rates-for-ja/
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/11/19/55762/lawsuit-filed-against-excessive-phone-rates-for-ja/
US wiretapping capital reportedly used hundreds of illegal wiretaps
Prosecutors in the Los Angeles suburb of Riverside County — home to the biggest wiretapping operation in the United States — likely broke the law when they approved as many as 738 wiretaps without proper approval, according to an investigation from USA Today and The Desert Sun, citing interviews and court records.
The wiretaps, according to an earlier report fromUSA Today, intercepted calls involving thousands of people, leading to more than 300 arrests, usually at the request of Drug Enforcement Administration agents. But the surveillance rested on shaky legal turf, and Justice Department officials reportedly declined to bring the evidence into federal court, for fear that it wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny.
As the investigation today found, federal law requires that the district attorney personally sign off on wiretap requests, but in this case, a former Riverside County attorney reportedly did not do so, instead handing the wiretaps to other lawyers. The investigation cites a court decision from a neighboring county that determined a sign-off from a deputy prosecutor did not meet the bar, but the Riverside County district attorney reportedly kept delegating the responsibility.
"I didn't have time to review all of those," the former district attorney reportedly said, according to the investigation published in USA Today. "No way."
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/20/9...legal-wiretaps
.
Hope its goes viral like the Walter Scott and Eric Garner. People need to know about this .
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