America’s Gestapo: The FBI’s Reign of Terror

 Via John Whitehead @ The Rutherford Institute

“We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.”—President Harry S. Truman

“Don’t Be a Puppet” is the message the FBI is sending young Americans.
As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force is now recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist.”
Using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that could distinguish an individual as a potential domestic terrorist.
For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:

• express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
• read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
• show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• fear an economic collapse
• buy gold and barter items
• subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
• voice fears about Big Brother or big government
• expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
• believe in a New World Order conspiracy

Despite its well-publicized efforts to train students, teachers, police officers, hairdressers, store clerks, etc., into government eyes and ears, the FBI isn’t relying on a nation of snitches to carry out its domestic spying.
There’s no need.
The nation’s largest law enforcement agency rivals the NSA in resources, technology, intelligence, and power. Yet while the NSA has repeatedly come under fire for its domestic spying programs, the FBI has continued to operate its subversive and clearly unconstitutional programs with little significant oversight or push-back from the public, Congress or the courts. Just recently, for example, a secret court gave the agency the green light to quietly change its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans’ international communications.
Indeed, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the FBI has become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be easily corrupted and abused.
When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America.
Owing largely to the influence and power of the FBI, the United States—once a nation that abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions—has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.
The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property.
And that’s just based on what we know.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
The FBI was established in 1908 as a small task force assigned to deal with specific domestic crimes. Initially quite limited in its abilities to investigate so-called domestic crimes, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency. Unfortunately, whatever minimal restrictions kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law all but disappeared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The USA Patriot Act gave the FBI and other intelligence agencies carte blanche authority in investigating Americans suspected of being anti-government.
As the FBI’s powers have grown, its abuses have mounted.
The FBI continues to monitor Americans engaged in lawful First Amendment activities.
COINTELPRO, the FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, was aimed not so much at the criminal element but at those who challenged the status quo—namely, those expressing anti-government sentiments such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon. It continues to this day, albeit in other guises.
The FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured them into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”
FBI agents are among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.
In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day. Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.
The FBI’s powers, expanded after 9/11, have given its agents carte blanche access to Americans’ most personal information.
The agency’s National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread violations.
The FBI’s spying capabilities are on a par with the NSA.
The FBI’s surveillance technology boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.  In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”
The FBI’s hacking powers have gotten downright devious.
FBI agents not only have the ability to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world, but they can also control that computer and all its stored information, download its digital contents, switch its camera or microphone on or off and even control other computers in its network. Given the breadth of the agency’s powers, the showdown between Apple and the FBI over customer privacy appears to be more spectacle than substance.
James Comey, current director of the FBI, knows enough to say all the right things about the need to abide by the Constitution, all the while his agency routinely discards it. Comey argues that the government’s powers shouldn’t be limited, especially when it comes to carrying out surveillance on American citizens. Comey continues to lobby Congress and the White House to force technology companies such as Apple and Google to keep providing the government with backdoor access to Americans’ cell phones.
The FBI’s reach is more invasive than ever.
This is largely due to the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government's vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.
Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI is also, according to The Washington Post, “building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.”
If there’s one word to describe the FBI’s covert tactics, it’s creepy.
The agency’s biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime.
This is what’s known as pre-crime.
If it were just about fighting the “bad guys,” that would be one thing. But as countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate dissidents of all stripes.
It’s an old tactic, used effectively by former authoritarian regimes.
In fact, as historian Robert Gellately documents, the Nazi police state was repeatedly touted as a model for other nations to follow, so much so that Hoover actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police. As Gellately noted, “[A]fter five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.”
Indeed, so impressed was the FBI with the Nazi order that, as the New York Times revealed, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen, brought them to America, hired them on as spies and informants, and then carried out a massive cover-up campaign to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. Moreover, anyone who dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
So not only have American taxpayers been paying to keep ex-Nazis on the government payroll for decades but we’ve been subjected to the very same tactics used by the Third Reich: surveillance, militarized police, overcriminalization, and a government mindset that views itself as operating outside the bounds of the law.
This is how freedom falls, and tyrants come to power.
The similarities between the American police state and past totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany grow more pronounced with each passing day.
Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. These are the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime from the Roman Empire to modern-day America.
Yet it’s the secret police—tasked with silencing dissidents, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a climate of fear—who sound the death knell for freedom in every age.

source

There is Now an App that Sends a Push Notification to Your Phone Every Time Police Kill Someone

In 2014, Only 224 of 18,000 U.S law enforcement agencies reported a fatal shooting by their officers. The overwhelming majority of police departments are not required, nor seem to even care about reporting on the number of people they kill.

“It is unacceptable that The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper from the U.K. are becoming the lead source of information about violent encounters between police and civilians. That is not good for anybody,” FBI Director James Comey lamented, last year, noting that the media is doing a better job than they are.

There is no real system in place to count the number of people killed by police, beyond the good work of independent media and advocacy groups. The FBI relies on a voluntary system where local police departments report data on deadly use of force — if they so choose.

Naturally, most departments refuse to submit data.

Thanks to the vigilance of concerned media and advocacy groups, however, cops are finding it quite hard to hide their violence.

In January 2016, police killed 113 people — at least one person was fatally gunned down by a cop every day that month. One particularly deadly day, January 27, saw ten people meet their fate, thanks to the police. On average, that is almost 4 people a day.

And there is no indication this tragic epidemic will end soon.

We know that American cops killed 113 people in January, not because the police told us about them, but because there are hard working people out there who care about this vital information.

Sites like  Fatal Encounters, or Cop Crisis, with its beautifully coded graphical interface, count police killings as a public service. Killed By Police also ran one of the most comprehensive databases on police killings as they listed 1,205 total killings by law enforcement for 2015, but hasn’t yet listed any statistics for 2016.

Last year, police killings reached such a level of media coverage, that even the Guardian got in on the tally with their project The Counted.

Until recently, Americans relied solely on the state to report their own killings — a truly futile cause.

Read more here

A year of reckoning: Police fatally shoot nearly 1,000

Nearly a thousand times this year, an American police officer has shot and killed a civilian.

When the people hired to protect their communities end up killing someone, they can be called heroes or criminals — a judgment that has never come more quickly or searingly than in this era of viral video, body cameras and dash cams. A single bullet fired at the adrenaline-charged apex of a chase can end a life, wreck a career, spark a riot, spike racial tensions and alter the politics of the nation.

In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities — most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men — represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings. Meanwhile, The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.
The Post sought to compile a record of every fatal police shooting in the nation in 2015, something no government agency had done. The project began after a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, provoking several nights of fiery riots, weeks of protests and a national reckoning with the nexus of race, crime and police use of force.
Race remains the most volatile flash point in any accounting of police shootings. Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police this year, The Post’s database shows. In the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. But a hugely disproportionate number — 3 in 5 — of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic.

Regardless of race, in more than a quarter of cases, the fatal encounter involved officers pursuing someone on foot or by car — making chases one of the most common scenarios in the data. Some police chiefs and training experts say more restrictive rules on when to give chase could prevent unnecessary shootings.

Like a growing number of police shootings, the death of David Kassick on a snow-covered field near his sister’s house in Hummelstown, Pa., was captured on video — a technological shift that has dramatically altered how Americans perceive officers’ use of deadly force.
In two minutes and 10 seconds of harrowing footage, the Kassick video serves as an almost perfect Rorschach test in the national debate over when it is justifiable for an officer to take a life.
Lots more @ WaPo here

Merry Christmas from the Police State – Cops Have Now Killed Someone In All 50 States

On Tuesday, December 22nd, 56-year-old Kenneth Stephens was gunned down by law enforcement officers executing a no-knock raid at his Burlington, Vermont apartment.
Federal, State, and local authorities executed the warrant, reportedly looking for evidence of drug trafficking. “Officers executing the search warrant confronted a male subject inside the residence,” according to a statement from State Police official Major Glenn Hall. He continued, “Officers discharged multiple rounds at the subject, resulting in his death. None of the officers involved were injured.” According to the initial DEA complaint written by Agent Robert Estes, Stephens was suspected of having a gun in his home. Due to this information, police no doubt conducted this raid with the pretext of encountering an armed suspect.
Although police initially refused to say if Stephens was armed or had fired at officers, officials stated the following day that he had pointed a muzzle loading rifle at the band of armed gang members, but did not fire at them when they invaded his home. In response, DEA Special Agent Tim Hoffmann and Trooper Matthew Cannon fired 13 shots at the man, at least one of which missed the suspect and hit a neighbor’s home, nearly striking a resident.
This prompted Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger to request a federal investigation into the shooting. Weinberger, who was elected to a second term earlier this year, said in a statement, “I am very concerned that bullets from the law enforcement operation left Mr. Stephens’ apartment and strayed into another home.”
According to Weinberger, the DEA announced that they will vigorously investigate themselves, telling Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo,

“The DEA’s Office of Inspector General will perform a serious after-action review of this incident so that all agencies involved in protecting the public in this City can benefit from its lessons.”

Kenneth Stephens was the 1174th person killed by police in 2015. His tragic death marks the first killing of a citizen, by police, in the state of Vermont this year. One day after Kenneth’s murder, a candlelight vigil was held to commemorate his life and protest the tactics used by police.

Read more  here

VIDEO: Entire Family Arrested, Child Taken by CPS, for Refusing Unlawful Search at Checkpoint

“So you’re a Constitutionalist? We’ve had problems with this before!”

Long Valley, CA — Last month, the Feinman family was driving through a constitutionally questionable interstate checkpoint. This checkpoint is not on the US/Mexican border; it is along Highway 395N between California and Nevada.
When driving through these in-country checkpoints, you are not required to answer the agent’s questions (usually starting with “Are you a United States citizen?”). Nor are you required to consent to any searches.
As the Feinman’s drove through, they refused to be unlawfully searched, citing their 4th Amendment right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The agents, however, could have cared less about the Feinman’s rights, stating at one point that “this is my job.”
When the family refuses to back down, government force is escalated, and police officers are called in to violate the Feinmans even further.
As Mr. Feinman asserts his rights, he is threatened with being pulled out of the vehicle and having his children taken from him by CPS.
Mr. Feinman says he’d like to go, but these officers are determined to extort money from him (issue a citation) for flexing his rights. When he asks the cops if they swore an oath to defend the constitution, the cop asks, “So you’re a Constitutionalist?”
When Feinman confirms that he is a constitutionalist, the officer responds, “We’ve had problems with this before.”
At around the 13-minute mark, Feinman is issued an ultimatum, submit or have your window broken and we kidnap your entire family. During the process, these officers acted as if it were Feinman’s fault when all he was doing was refusing an illegal search.
Police acted as if some magical force compelled them to have to break the window and drag a family out of their vehicle. However, the fact of the matter is, they could have just let them travel freely.
Eventually, the window is smashed out, and all occupants were arrested, and the child was taken by CPS. According to the Feinman’s, they were then given an excessive bail amount to get out of jail.
This entire incident was over Mr. Feinman not wanting to be searched at the checkpoint. Referring to an illegal search as an “inspection” does not change the reality of the act.
What this video below highlights is the only tool the state has to force you to comply with their revenue generating and rights-violating police state measures — violent escalation. Comply or we kidnap, cage, or kill you.

Source

FOIA Request Shows Thousands Have Been Held Inside Secret US Prison, Homan Square

After filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department (CPD), The Guardian has discovered over 3,600 people have been detained at a secure facility known as Homan Square. Notorious for allegedly denying access to defense attorneys and committing human rights abuses, the officers at this CIA-style black site have been accused of coercing confessions, committing torture, and shackling detainees for prolonged periods. Although the CPD has denied these accusations, the department has been marred with a history of abuse and corruption.
On February 24, The Guardian exposed a police detention facility in Chicago where arrestees were kept out of official booking databases, denied legal representation, and endured hours of physical and psychological abuse. After the CPD ignored several FOIA requests regarding their facility at Homan Square, The Guardian filed a lawsuit against the department in April requesting further information, including the number of people detained at Homan Square and video evidence of interrogations at the site.
The CPD has recently revealed that at least 3,621 people have been detained at Homan Square for crimes ranging from drinking in public to murder. Although Chicago’s population is 33% black and 32% white according to the 2010 U.S. census, over 82% of the disclosed Homan Square arrests consist of black residents. Only 8.5% of the detainees were white, while 6.7% were Hispanic.
“When I was a detective, occasionally I would arrest a white person,” recalled Lorenzo Davis, a former police detective who commanded a unit at Homan Square, “and the white detectives would be overly interested in why I was arresting someone white.”
According to the CPD, only three arrestees received visits from their lawyers between September 2004 and July 2015. In its investigation, The Guardian documented an additional eight times that attorneys were present at Homan Square. In four instances, lawyers accompanied their clients to Homan to turn themselves in to authorities. Two lawyers were allowed interviews with their clients, while in at least two other cases, attorneys assert that they were refused access to their clients.
In January 2013, Eliza Solowiej of Chicago’s First Defense Legal Aid attempted to contact a client who had been detained at Homan Square. According to the attorney, officers changed her client’s name in the booking database before transferring him to the site at Homan Square. She finally located him after her client had been transported to a hospital with a head injury.
“He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation room at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,” Solowiej recalled. “He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan Square without any.”
In September 2013, Chicago attorney Julia Bartmes was denied access to a 15-year-old boy detained within the Homan Square facility. After interrogating the teenager for at least 12 hours, the CPD released her client without charges.
On May 16, 2012, the CPD arrested Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “NATO 3,” and detained him at Homan Square. Instead of entering Church’s arrest into an official booking database, officers reportedly left his wrist cuffed to a bench with his legs shackled together for approximately 17 hours. Denying him access to his attorney, the police repeatedly interrogated Church without informing him of his Miranda rights to remain silent. In April 2014, Church and his two co-defendants were convicted of possessing an incendiary device and misdemeanor mob action, but they were acquitted of the terrorism-related charges.
On October 20, 2012, CPD officers detained Angel Perez at Homan Square to convince him to turn into a police informant. According to a lawsuit filed by Perez, officers Jorge Lopez and Edmund Zablocki anally raped him with a gun to coerce his cooperation.
In September 2011, Jose Martinez was allegedly cuffed to a bench for nine hours at Homan Square without food, water, or the use of a restroom before being booked at an actual police station. In August 2006, Estephanie Martinez had to relieve herself in a Homan Square interrogation room when a guard repeatedly refused to take her to the bathroom. On February 6, Calvin Coffey defecated on the floor of an interrogation room after guards refused his requests to go to the bathroom for over two hours. According to his lawsuit, Coffey was ordered to clean it up with his skull cap.
Although the CPD denies any wrongdoing, the department has a history of torturing suspects in order to obtain false confessions. Between 1972 and 1991, Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his men tortured hundreds of people to extract forced confessions from them. Convicted of perjury in 2010, Burge only spent four years in prison due to the fact that the statute of limitations prevents prosecutors from charging him and his fellow officers with multiple counts of torture. After costing Chicago and Cook County nearly $100 million in legal fees and settlements, Burge still receives a $4,000 monthly pension from the city.
Former Chicago homicide detective and Guantanamo Bay interrogator, Richard Zuley, was slapped with multiple lawsuits alleging he coerced confessions, threatened suspects’ family members, planted evidence, and committed torture. After retiring from the department, Zuley was assigned to interrogate Guantanamo detainee, Mohammedou Ould Slahi. According to Slahi’s testimony, Zuley tortured him, subjected him to mock executions, and threatened to bring Slahi’s mother to Guantanamo to rape her.
Since Rahm Emanuel assumed the office of mayor on May 16, 2011, at least 2,522 people have been detained at Homan Square. According to current police data, roughly 70% of the Homan Square detentions have taken place under Emanuel’s term. Additional FOIA requests have been filed requesting communications between the CPD and the mayor’s office regarding Homan Square.

Read more Here

First They Came For The Blacks: Police Brutality – Not Just for Blacks Anymore

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
– Martin Niemöller

It is natural, maybe even unavoidable, that one’s view of the world is based mostly on his own personal experiences. If you are white and living in an upscale suburban neighborhood, you may very well view police as friendly, professional and courteous. On the other hand, if you are black and live in a poor inner-city neighborhood, you are likely to view the police as just another dangerous street gang to fear and avoid.
The problem is not that either perception is “wrong.” The problem is that some people assume that their own experiences must match the experiences of everyone else. In middle-class white suburbia, it may usually be true that if you don’t cause trouble, the police won’t harass you (although that is becoming less and less true). So it is easy for such people to assume that if someone is being detained, arrested, or even physically assaulted by police, the person MUST have done something to deserve it. And predictably, this is the same viewpoint expressed by the well-paid, well-connected, and VERY well-controlled mainstream media.
But other people in other circumstances know and report a very different story, as many decades of rap illustrate (e.g., “Sound Of Da Police” by KRS-ONE).
However, recently there have been many stories of people who once believed in “law and order,” and who had faith in the “justice system” but have since learned the brutal reality of things. There have even been stories of black police officers being illegally harassed and detained when not in uniform.
The number of cases of police getting caught lying under oath, abusing suspects, planting evidence and falsifying reports may still surprise many, but they don’t surprise those for whom such injustice is a routine part of life. “They planted evidence!” “They got the wrong guy!” “The cop is lying!” or “I didn’t do anything!”
It’s easy for a spectator— especially one who has never been victimized by thugs in uniform—to assume that such claims are the desperate lies of criminals. But one day you may hear those words coming out of your own mouth knowing they are true, but also knowing that few people are going to believe your word over the word of those “brave men and women in blue.”

Despite the “protect and serve” rhetoric, the primary job of those who wear badges is to supply the politicians with money and power. Money by issuing citations for whatever technical infractions they can detect or fabricate, and power by punishing any who disobey the arbitrary commands of those in power.
Unfortunately, many of those who haven’t yet been victimized still imagine police to be the good guys. But how many “exceptions” make a rule? How many “bad apples” must be exposed before people recognize that the whole barrel is rotten? How many “isolated incidents” does it take for people to see the pattern?
When will people see that law enforcement is not just occasionally blemished by incidents of injustice, corruption and misconduct. Law enforcement IS injustice, corruption, and misconduct, sometimes legalized and sometimes not, but always excused and sanctioned by those who benefit from the racket. Those who have been on the receiving end of “the system” know this all too well, and the number of people in that category continues to grow.
On the bright side, this means that more and more people—even those well-off in upscale suburbia—are starting to learn the true, violent nature of government. It is not your friend. It is not your servant. It serves itself, and it does so at the expense of everyone else.
It may sound cliche, but the only way to have liberty and justice for anyone is to have liberty and justice for all. When whites stand up for blacks, blacks stand up for whites, rich stand up for poor and vice versa.
When decent people of all races, religions, cultures and backgrounds stand with each other against those who would oppress them—that is when violent oppression will end, and peace and justice will begin.
Denial is a powerful drug. It’s high time we get over the addiction.

Source- http://thefreethoughtproject.com/blacks-police-brutality-blacks-anymore/

Community leaders ask judge for arrests in Cleveland boy's death

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Community leaders asked a judge on Tuesday to issue arrest warrants for two Cleveland policemen in the 2014 fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy carrying a replica handgun even as prosecutors mull charges against the officers.

* it was NOT a "replica handgun"-it was an Airsoft handgun with the orange safety tip removed

The move, a signal of distrust in the community toward the authorities handling the case, represents an attempt to bypass the local prosecutor's office by using an obscure Ohio state law that allows citizens to request an arrest.

The two officers involved in the shooting are white and the boy, Tamir Rice, was black. This is one of a number of cases bringing fresh scrutiny to the issue of police use of force in the United States, particularly against minorities.

"Today, citizens are taking matters into their own hands utilizing the tools of democracy as an instrument of justice," Olivet Institutional Baptist Church pastor Jawanza Colvin said in a statement.

Cleveland's police department agreed last month on a plan to minimize racial bias and the use of excessive force after the U.S. Justice Department found a pattern of abuses against civilians by the local police.

View gallery

A mourner reads the obituary from the program during the funeral service for Tamir Rice in Cleveland …

Rice was shot outside a city recreation center last Nov. 22 while he played with a Airsoft-type replica handgun used in play combat.

Rookie police officer Timothy Loehmann fired at Rice twice within two seconds of arriving at the scene with his partner Frank Garmback in response to a 911 emergency call about a man with a gun outside the recreation center, according to authorities. The sixth-grader died the next day.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty has said the evidence in the shooting will be presented to a grand jury to decide on whether to bring charges against Loehmann and Garmback after a county sheriff's department completed its investigation last week.
Rice family lawyer Walter Madison said his clients were worried about the transfer of the case to the prosecutor in light of the acquittal of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo in May in another case.
Brelo, who is white, was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of a black man and a woman.

Those who will present citizens' affidavits to a judge asserting "probable cause" in Rice's death include a Case Western Reserve University professor and local clergy.

It was not clear whether the tactic will work. Joe Frolik, the local prosecutor's spokesman, said Ohio's constitution requires all felony charges be brought by a grand jury.

Baltimore Man Shot In The Face for Attempting to Run Away and Hide From Police

Baltimore, MD — A man was shot in the face after running away from Baltimore police Sunday morning. It was not indicated that the man hurt or threatened anyone in any way, but police officers were tipped off that he was in possession of a gun. The victim reportedly ran from police when they approached him, and he attempted to hide in a nearby garage.
The police have not given any details about what happened when officers entered the garage, aside from the fact that the victim was shot in the face, and that none of the officers were injured.
The victim, who still has yet to be identified. was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and listed in critical, but stable condition.
As the residents of Baltimore are still waiting for justice to be served in the murder of Freddie Gray, the police are still using excessive force on people engaging in non-violent actions. The war on drugs and the war on guns, have provided government agents with an excuse to criminalize vast portions of society, simply for carrying protection, or for making their own choices with their own bodies.
Meanwhile, violent crime in Baltimore has grown out of control as police divert all of their time and resources towards persecuting drug offenders since that provides an easier and more plentiful revenue stream. The blowback from the war on drugs creates a slew of problems from a violent black market, to gang violence, to contempt for law enforcement.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/baltimore-man-shot-face-running-police/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=edb7b18f83-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-edb7b18f83-211636157

Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide

In an alley in Denver, police gunned down a 17-year-old girl joyriding in a stolen car. In the backwoods of North Carolina, police opened fire on a gun-wielding moonshiner. And in a high-rise apartment in Birmingham, Ala., police shot an elderly man after his son asked them to make sure he was okay. Douglas Harris, 77, answered the door with a gun.
The three are among at least 385 people shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade, a count that officials concede is incomplete.
“These shootings are grossly under­reported,” said Jim Bueermann, a former police chief and president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving law enforcement. “We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don’t begin to accurately track this information.”

A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty. The Post looked exclusively at shootings, not killings by other means, such as stun guns and deaths in police custody.

Using interviews, police reports, local news accounts and other sources, The Post tracked more than a dozen details about each killing through Friday, including the victim’s race, whether the person was armed and the circumstances that led to the fatal encounter. The result is an unprecedented examination of these shootings, many of which began as minor incidents and suddenly escalated into violence.
Among The Post’s findings:
●About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.

●The vast majority of victims — more than 80 percent — were armed with potentially lethal objects, primarily guns, but also knives, machetes, revving vehicles and, in one case, a nail gun.
●Forty-nine people had no weapon, while the guns wielded by 13 others turned out to be toys. In all, 16 percent were either carrying a toy or were unarmed.

●The dead ranged in age from 16 to 83. Eight were children younger than 18, including Jessie Hernandez, 17, who was shot three times by Denver police officers as she and a carload of friends allegedly tried to run them down.
The Post analysis also sheds light on the situations that most commonly gave rise to fatal shootings. About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations: A homeless person behaving erratically. A boyfriend threatening violence. A son trying to kill himself.
Ninety-two victims — nearly a quarter of those killed — were identified by police or family members as mentally ill.
In Miami Gardens, Fla., Catherine Daniels called 911 when she couldn’t persuade her son, Lavall Hall, a 25-year-old black man, to come in out of the cold early one morning in February. A diagnosed schizophrenic who stood 5-foot-4 and weighed barely 120 pounds, Hall was wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt and waving a broomstick when police arrived. They tried to stun him with a Taser gun and then shot him.

The other half of shootings involved non-domestic crimes, such as robberies, or the routine duties that occupy patrol officers, such as serving warrants.
Nicholas T. Thomas, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in March when police in Smyrna, Ga., tried to serve him with a warrant for failing to pay $170 in felony probation fees. Thomas fled the Goodyear tire shop where he worked as a mechanic, and police shot into his car.

Although race was a dividing line, those who died by police gunfire often had much in common. Most were poor and had a history of run-ins with law enforcement over mostly small-time crimes, sometimes because they were emotionally troubled.

Both things were true of Daniel Elrod, a 39-year-old white man. Elrod had been arrested at least 16 times over the past 15 years; he was taken into protective custody twice last year because Omaha police feared he might hurt himself.
On the day he died in February, Elrod robbed a Family Dollar store. Police said he ran when officers arrived, jumping on top of a BMW in the parking lot and yelling, “Shoot me, shoot me.” Elrod, who was unarmed, was shot three times as he made a “mid-air leap” to clear a barbed-wire fence, according to police records.

Read the rest @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html

Freddie Gray’s Death Reveals A Dark History Of “Nickel Rides” And Police Van Torture

Baltimore, MD — This week, protests and riots erupted in Baltimore, in response to the police murder of an innocent 27-year-old man named Freddie Gray.
According to police, Gray was first stopped and arrested by officers at 8:39am on April 12 and was thrown in the back of a police van 15 minutes later. An entire hour later an ambulance was called to give him medical care, but he sadly fell into a coma died soon after. He suffered broken vertebra and an injured voice box, which required emergency spinal surgery that he never recovered from.
Many suspect that Gray was the victim of a “Nickel Ride”, a horrific police torture tactic where a suspect is handcuffed and placed in the back of a police van without restraints, and driven recklessly around town by police officers. This practice has also been called a “Rough Ride” or a “Cowboy Ride.”
“We know he was not buckled in the transportation wagon, as he should have been. No excuses for that, period,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Friday. “We know our police employees failed to get him medical attention in a timely manner multiple times.”
According to NBC News,

Davis said the police van stopped three times before arriving at the station. It stopped first so police could place “leg irons” on Gray, and stopped a second time “to deal with Mr. Gray, and the facts of that interaction are under investigation,” Davis said.

The van stopped a third time to pick up a second prisoner and went on to the Western District police station, where an ambulance was called, Davis said. “At no point was he wearing a seat belt,” while in the police van, Davis said. Police policy requires all prisoners to wear seat belts during transport.

Last year, Nickel Rides became notorious in Philadelphia, after a court case revealed that police were using this tactic as a witness-free way to punish unruly, uncooperative, or arrogant suspects – without ever laying a hand on them. For rogue police, it was a literal way to deliver “street justice.”
The practice was exposed through the lawsuit of a man named James McKenna, who was awarded $490,000 after he was able to prove in court that he was intentionally injured during his ride in a police van.
Baltimore itself also has a dark history of police van torture. In fact, Baltimore Police have paid out millions of dollars in settlements to victims who were critically injured during rides in police vans. In 2012, a woman from Baltimore named Christine Abbott sued police after she was badly injured during a bumpy ride in the back of a police van.
That same year, the death of Anthony Anderson was ruled a homicide, he too died of injuries sustained while riding in a police van.

---

Freddie Gray Arrest Record, Criminal History & Rap Sheet

Gray had a lengthy arrest record with convictions dating back until at least 2007, according to the Maryland Department of Justice. Not all of the arrests led to convictions, in many of the cases he pleaded guilty to one charge while the others were dropped. Details of when he spent time in prison were not immediately available. His arrest record includes at least 18 arrests:

• March 20, 2015: Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance
• March 13, 2015: Malicious destruction of property, second-degree assault
• January 20, 2015: Fourth-degree burglary, trespassing
• January 14, 2015: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute
• December 31, 2014: Possession of narcotics with intent to distribute
• December 14, 2014: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance
• August 31, 2014: Illegal gambling, trespassing
• January 25, 2014: Possession of marijuana
• September 28, 2013: Distribution of narcotics, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, second-degree assault, second-degree escape
• April 13, 2012: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, violation of probation
• July 16, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute
• March 28, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance
• March 14, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to manufacture and distribute
• February 11, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance
• August 29, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, violation of probation
• August 28, 2007: Possession of marijuana
• August 23, 2007: False statement to a peace officer, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance
• July 16, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance (2 counts) 

  http://heavy.com/news/2015/04/freddie-gray-arrest-record-criminal-history-rap-sheet-why-was-freddie-gray-arrested/

Mentally Ill Homeless Man Severely Beaten By Police Because His Beach Umbrella was Too Big

Venice Beach, CA– A video released on Wednesday captured eight Los Angeles police officers beating, tasing, and hogtying a mentally ill homeless man as he tried to enjoy the simple pleasure of a day at the beach.
The man and his lawyer say that this abuse at the hands of the LAPD has been a pattern over the past year, and his hospital records show it.  They are now calling for a federal investigation of the violations of his civil rights.

 

In Police State USA, cops behave like a pack of wolves as they prey on a homeless man trying to enjoy a day at the beach.

In the video taken on August 7, 2014, eight officers are seen brutalizing Samuel Calhoun Arrington, 52, who suffers from bipolar disorder.  The incident began when he reportedly refused to sign a citation for “items placed on (the) city beach” and “property outside of designated space.”
What horrible items could have had on the beach, you ask? A chair and umbrella, which everyone else brings to the beach all summer long without being targeted for assault.

“To me, what they did in full view of every person on Venice Beach was to strip a homeless man, someone mentally ill, of their last shred of humanity,” Cleo Battle, Arrington’s sister told local news outlet KTLA.

According to the police report, Arrington had lunged at officers and attempted to grab one of their belts.  Nazareth Haysbert, the attorney representing Arrington, told KTLA that the report stated his client “immediately broke the officer’s hold by aggressively moving his arms forward and then pulling his arms toward his body.” 
In the video, we see the unarmed Arrington lounging in his chair, entirely non-aggressive, and doing nothing like what is described from the report as the gang of officers begin to assault him.  The officers also wrote in the report that there was no video taken of the incident. This is in spite of the witness video that was released which clearly shows LAPD’s Sgt. Skinner recording the assault on what appears to be her cell phone in a red case.
The woman filming the video can be heard saying, “they know that he’s not going to sign it because he didn’t do anything, but that’s what they’re hoping so that they can take him.”   She begins to explain to other witnesses that the man was being cited for the umbrella and asserts it was just because they wanted to get rid of him.  As the officers begin to tase the defenseless man, she screams at the officers repeatedly that they do not need to tase him.

“NO, YOU NEED TO STOP! I’M ALREADY HERE, DON’T YOU DARE PUSH ON ME!” she screams at an officer who attempts to push her away from filming their abuse.

Another woman in the background can be heard screaming that the officers are evil. The woman filming berates the officers for being in the wrong by putting their hands on her as well as on the man that they are assaulting in front of her.
A large crowd gathers to watch the assault and shame the officers for their disgusting behavior.

“The man is bleeding from head to toe, this is what our police do, in the United States.  Instead of getting the criminals, they’re harassing-” she begins, “now they’ve got him like a slave back in the 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and they’ve got him- they’re carrying him like an animal!”

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Today's Trifecta of Police Misconduct

Cell Phone Video Captures Police Officer Killing a Man as He Tried to Hide in a Stack of Lumber

Lakewood, WA — Daniel Corarrubias, 37, was killed by Lakewood police as he tried to hide in the Pinnacle Lumber Plywood yard.
A 7-second cell phone video captures the final moments of Corarrubias’ life as the Lakewood officer drew his weapon and fired 10 shots, hitting him in the head and torso.
Officers were responding to calls of a suspicious man walking through the parking lot of the lumber yard. When they came upon the man attempting to hide, they killed him.
According to police, Corarrubias tried to reach into his pocket, which is why they fired ten rounds into him. However, police have refused to divulge whether or not the man was armed at all.
“I know he didn’t have a weapon,” his sister said. “I want to ask police why? Why? Why they just didn’t shoot him in the arm, shoot him in the leg, maim him or something. Not murder my brother.”
According to KOMO News,

A man who says he watched security camera and cell phone video of the shooting told KOMO News 10 shots can be heard during the encounter. The source, who asked not to be identified, says the man sustained gunshot wounds to the head and torso.

Read the rest @ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cell-phone-video-captures-police-officer-killing-man-hid-stack-lumber/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=39932a1b99-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-39932a1b99-211636157

 

 

GRAPHIC VIDEO: Cop Knocks Woman Unconscious as 6-Year-Old Daughter Watches in Horror

Read the rest @ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-knocks-woman-unconcsious-front-6-year-old-daughter/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=39932a1b99-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-39932a1b99-211636157

 

 Police So Out of Control, this Judge Explains How and Why You should Always Flex Your Rights

 

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/d-c-judge-advices-citizens-engage-police/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=39932a1b99-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-39932a1b99-211636157 

 

 

Cops Runs Stop Sign without Lights or Sirens, Hits Pedestrian, Cutting Off Both Legs, 5 Hospitalized

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-runs-stop-sign-lights-sirens-hits-pedestrian-cutting-legs-5-hospitalized/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=39932a1b99-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-39932a1b99-211636157 

 

 

An Ex-Cop Keeps The Country’s Best Data Set On Police Misconduct

By Carl Bialik

When Talking Points Memo, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post needed data on how often police officers are charged with on-duty killings, they all turned to the same guy: Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip M. Stinson.

Phil Stinson.

BGSU Marketing & Communications

Stinson, 50, has become an indispensable source for researchers and reporters looking into alleged crimes and acts of violence by police officers because he has built a database tracking thousands of incidents in which officers were arrested since 2005. His data has shown that even the few police officers who are arrested for drunken driving are rarely convicted and that arrests spike for cops who have been on the force 18 years or longer, contrary to prior research showing it was mostly new officers who were acting out.
The whole data-collecting operation is powered by 48 Google Alerts that Stinson set up in 2005, along with individual Google Alerts for each of nearly 6,000 arrests of officers. He has set up 10 Gmail addresses to collect all the alert emails, which feed articles into a database that also contains court records and videos.
It all adds up to a data set of alleged police misconduct unmatched by anything created inside or outside of government, which itself often uses Google Alerts to catch these cases.¹ Yet Stinson’s database inevitably has holes because it relies on the media to cover every officer arrest, and because it takes immense effort to code each entry. The data set keeps falling behind.
Stinson’s path to police-misconduct expertise was a winding one. A high-school dropout, he worked for police departments in Arlington, Virginia, and Dover, New Hampshire, before getting his law degree, then turning in his license after mishandling client funds. He switched to criminology, getting his Ph.D. in 2009. He chose his research subject in part because of his experiences as a cop, seeing police officers get away with crimes others wouldn’t, and in part because he wanted to win a bet he’d made in his Master’s program. Now he’s the recipient of a National Institute of Justice grant to study police misconduct, host of an occasional podcast on the topic, and a go-to source for the media.
Stinson says he has no bias against his former profession. “This isn’t anti-police,” he said. “I hope to write papers and get things published that are helpful to law enforcement, not that bash law enforcement.”
The following is an edited transcript of my telephone interview with Stinson, with some followup questions by email.
Carl Bialik: You’ve worked with the media on stories about arrests for killings by police, and recently you’ve also been a source on arrests of police for DUIs. You’ve also studied sex crimes and corruption. How did you become the expert on police arrests?
Philip Stinson: The idea came up in the fall of 2004, when I was finishing my master’s at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. I was taking an ethics class. Somebody in the class — it was a bunch of cops in class, mid-career — somebody made a comment that cops don’t get in trouble much. I said, “That’s just absurd.” I started looking into it and realized there are no government statistics, and no government agency tracking it well.
I set up 48 Google Alerts, let it rip, and started printing pages out. Originally it was to win a bet in the master’s class.
CB: What did you bet?
PS: I don’t know. It was a beer or something. I wasn’t a betting man. It wasn’t anything big.
I had two and a half years, three years of data in my dissertation, covering 2005 to 2007, with 109 quantitative variables.
And then over time at Bowling Green, we now track 270 or so quantitative variables. Everything is automated now. Because data collection is real-time — you can’t use Lexis Nexis, NewsBank, all these other archival news databases, because lots of stuff has disappeared from the Internet — so because of that it’s very slow and time-consuming. It takes forever to do.
Some reporters wanted everything I had — everything. I was like, go fuck yourself. You get everything. I just spent 10 years on this.
Now we’re up to almost 11,000 cases involving almost 9,000 officers. We log these cases, then make Google Alerts on individual names so we can track cases through courts and the media.²
CB: How sure are you that The Washington Post’s count of 54 police officers charged with fatal shootings while on duty is a complete count?
PS: I want to make it very clear I’ve never claimed I have every case. It’s possible that’s not an exhaustive list. If anything, I think we’re missing just a handful of cases of killings, because those kinds of cases get news coverage. I’d have to hazard a guess that we do a better job of collecting data in smaller metropolitan areas and rural areas, because arrests there are so newsworthy.
CB: How much do you think you miss by relying on media reports?
PS: If I had 1,100 arrest cases, I can’t believe there are another 1,100 out there. I doubt we’re missing half, but there aren’t none.
CB: You were a lawyer before going to graduate school for criminology. What happened?
PS: I fucked up in my law practice [Stinson Law Associates, PC, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania]. I was charged with several crimes and the commingling of funds in 2002. It was the kiss of death. I paid a heavy price and took a heavy hit.
CB: Did you do what you were charged with doing?
PS: I did it. [“Chronic sleep deprivation exacerbated mental health issues that I was not aware that I had and led to impaired judgment in many instances, and for that I’m very remorseful and in treatment,” Stinson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2002.] Everybody was made whole eventually.
I don’t like to leave that out [that I did this]. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I don’t like seeing it in print. It really has nothing to do with why I am doing this research.
I certainly think I’ve done everything I can to rehabilitate myself.
If I were teaching theology, it would never come up, but in criminology, it does come up sometimes with students, so I usually walk into the classroom and lay it out there.

A photo of Stinson from summer 1986 when he was a police officer in Dover, New Hampshire.

Courtesy of Philip M. Stinson

CB: What was your experience as a cop and did it influence your work?
PS: When I went to New Hampshire, I saw some crazy shit. It really changed my outlook on things. When people were arrested, they would take them into the booking room, and sometimes the sergeant would come in and just beat the shit out of the guy while he was handcuffed — shit like that.
I was floored with my experience up there. In the two years I was up there, I saw all kinds of shit I did not know happened.
They faked reports, and there was creative report writing, to fit the arrest they wanted to have. There was evidence that was tampered with and overly suggestive court identifications to nail people with shit. It was quite an eye-opener. [When asked for comment, Anthony Colarusso, chief of Dover’s police department, said, “I feel strongly that the Dover Police Department has a high level of integrity and has had that since I joined the police department in May of 1985. In fact, our longstanding policy is that officers be terminated for any level of untruthfulness.” He added, “No police department is perfect, but we are very aggressive in holding ourselves accountable for our actions.”]
So I sort of had that kind of stuff in the back of my head for many years.

Read the rest @ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/an-ex-cop-keeps-the-countrys-best-data-set-on-police-misconduct/

Cops Mistake Family for Burglars, Break Into their Home, Shoot and Kill their Dog

Gwinnett County, GA — A family has been devastated after returning to their home to find that their beloved 7-month-old dog had been killed by police.
The Rios family was moving into a home that had been vacant for quite some time. The “see-something, say-something” neighbors quickly called the police to report the suspicious activity of a family moving things into a home.
Police, with apparently very little research, decided to enter the home to look for the supposed burglars. Instead of burglars, however, they found the family pets.
According to WSB-TV, the officer said the dog rushed toward him. He said he backed up and then began circling around. The officer said that’s when the pit bull dove at him and bit at his pants and leg. The officer says he fired two shots and his partner fired a shotgun.

The Rios family did nothing wrong, they had committed no crime, yet their dog was killed by police and they have no recourse. Police said that the shooting was entirely justified because the dog tried to bite the officer. They also stated that there will be no internal investigation.
“I don’t know why they did this to me. Now I’m afraid to go back to the house,” said Karen Rios.
In the Land of the Free, police can go into your home, shoot your dog and call it “protecting and serving.”

Read the rest @  http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-mistake-family-burglars-break-home-shoot-kill-dog/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ac2c07cd78-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-ac2c07cd78-211636157

Newly Released Dashcam Footage Shows San Antonio Cops Suffocate Man to Death on Roadside

San Antonio, TX–The family of Jesse Aguirre, 37, who was killed by San Antonio police just over two years ago have filed a lawsuit against the city and eight police officers involved in his killing. Recently released dashcam footage captured the final moments of the tragic event that left a boy without his father.
Named in the suit are officers Cristina Gonzales, Roberto Mendez, Jennifer Morgan, Bettina Arredondo, Ronald Haley, Benito Juarez, Robert Encina, and SAPD spokesperson Douglas Greene.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Aguirre’s son and widow states that Aguirre’s civil rights were violated when the officers ended his life.
Aguirre had been in a car accident. He was intoxicated and high on cocaine when he attempted to leave the scene of the crash in an “excited delirium” after his girlfriend decided to break up with him. The police allege that he was driving a stolen vehicle and arguing with his girlfriend when he crashed into a fence.
The department alleges Aguirre resisted arrest when officers caught up with him and cuffed him. They claim four officers were needed to subdue him. The department told his wife that he died from cardiac arrest, and it wasn’t until she received the autopsy report that she found out that wasn’t exactly the case. The lawsuit alleges that the police suffocated him to death.

“While Mr. Aguirre was on the ground he made numerous cries for help and pleaded he could not breath,” the lawsuit states. “The officers were deliberately indifferent to the fact that Mr. Aguirre was suffocating under the weight of the officers and in serious physical danger of asphyxiation based upon the positional restraints and body weight and force applied to him.”

In the video, Aguirre is seen walking, not running, away from officers who have their weapons pointed at him. When he stops to speak to the officers, he is handcuffed and then violently flipped head first over a concrete road barrier.

“Come here, come here, I’m going to shoot you motherf*cker!” a female officer yells as she approaches him.

Eventually, he is slammed face down on the ground as the officers pile on top of him.

“After several minutes without any action taken by the officers to relieve Mr. Aguirre of physical distress and danger, Mr. Aguirre stopped communicating and moving,” the complaint stated. “After several more minutes of Mr. Aguirre lying motionless face down on the highway with the officers’ body weight on top of him the officers finally realized he was not breathing.”

More + video @ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/dashcam-footage-released-san-antonio-man-suffocated-police/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=3c8c1e17bc-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-3c8c1e17bc-211636157

BREAKING: Cops Shoot and Kill Man on LIVE TV, Say He Was Reaching for Something

Houston, TX — A high-speed pursuit through the northeast side of Houston, Texas ended tragically Wednesday morning. Police officers shot and killed the man who tried to flee. The entire scene unfolded on Live TV.
The chase began after officers attempted to pull the vehicle over and the driver refused to stop.
According to Click2Houston,

The vehicle exited on Wallisville Road, then the driver eventually crashed into multiple vehicles and stopped near the intersection of Castlegory Road.
Several officers then jumped out with weapons drawn. The driver got out of the vehicle and it appeared he reached back into the vehicle.
At least one officer opened fire and the driver then appeared to fall to the ground. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the suspect is dead.

It is unclear at the moment if what the driver was “reaching for” was a gun.
The man’s identity has yet to be officially released, but family members arriving at the scene say the man is 41 years old and is the father of three, with another child on the way, according to ABC 13.

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New Study: For Every 1000 People Killed by Police, Only 1 Cop is Convicted of a Crime

A new study released by the Washington Post reveals that for every 1000 people killed at the hands of police, only one officer is convicted of a crime. Since 2005, although there have been thousands of fatal shootings by police officers, only 54 have been charged. Of those charged, most were cleared or acquitted.
This analysis is, to date, the most comprehensive of its kind. According to the Post:

“The 54 criminal prosecutions were identified by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip M. Stinson and The Washington Post. Cases were culled from news reports, grand jury announcements and news releases from prosecutors. For individual cases, reporters obtained and reviewed thousands of pages of court records, police reports, grand jury indictments, witness testimony and video recordings. Dozens of prosecutors and defense attorneys in the cases were interviewed, along with legal experts, officers who were prosecuted and surviving relatives of the shooting victims.”

It stands to reason that if there are thousands of fatalities due to police shootings, the number of police charged would be much higher than it is. According to the analysis, in order for prosecutors to press charges, there had to be exceptional factors at play. These include “a video recording of the incident, a victim shot in the back, incriminating testimony from other officers or allegations of a coverup.”

According to Bowling Green criminologist Philip M. Stinson, “To charge an officer in a fatal shooting, it takes something so egregious, so over the top that it cannot be explained in any rational way. It also has to be a case that prosecutors are willing to hang their reputation on.”
On the rare occasion an officer is charged with a crime, the punishment on average is much lower than would be expected, some spending only weeks behind bars. The prosecutors and defense lawyers interviewed in the study attribute this to the fact that “Jurors are very reluctant to punish police officers, tending to view them as guardians of order.” 
The most alarming part about this study is that the number of people fatally shot by police could potentially be much higher because police departments are not required to keep the database of police shootings updated. This is terrifying, as it’s arguably one of the most important records a police department could keep.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/study-reveals-police-officers-murder-alarming-rate/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dbc016103b-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-dbc016103b-211636157

Coroner: Teen killed by police in Illinois shot in back

ZION, Ill. (AP) — An autopsy has revealed that a teenager killed by a police officer in Illinois over the weekend was shot twice in the back, authorities said Monday.

Justus Howell was shot by Zion police on Saturday afternoon. Police say officers responding to a call about an altercation began chasing a male when he ran from the scene. They say that after the teen was shot, officers recovered a handgun.

The Lake County Coroner's Office said in a statement Monday that one bullet struck the 17-year-old in the left back and penetrated his heart, spleen and liver. Another bullet struck him on the right side of his back. Tests to determine whether drugs were in the victim's system are pending.

The Zion police chief didn't return calls Monday seeking comment about the autopsy results. Zion is a community of about 24,000 people along Lake Michigan about 45 miles north of Chicago, near Illinois' border with Wisconsin.

Howell was black and his relatives contacted the NAACP asking its officials to speak on their behalf, according to Lake County NAACP president Jennifer Witherspoon. She says Howell's relatives are hoping to find out exactly what happened as quickly as possible.

"Whether it was a mistake on his part or a mistake on the police's part, they want answers to make sure something like this never happens again," she said.

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A Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Investigator holds an evidence bag on Saturday, April 2, 2015  …

The teen's death comes months after an unarmed black 18-year-old was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, an incident that sparked protests and heightened concerns about how minorities are treated by police around country. Police in Zion haven't provided any details on the officer involved in Howell's shooting, including the officer's race.
"Here in America we are seeing this with too many brown and black boys," said Witherspoon, who added she was encouraged that Zion police quickly handed the investigation over to the Lake County Major Crime Task Force.
Family members gathered Sunday near the site of the shooting to pay tribute to Howell.
Howell, was a high school junior who transferred from a school in Wisconsin to Waukegan Public School District 60, spokesman Nick Alajakis told the Chicago Tribune.

Alajakis said the teenager attended the Lakeshore Academy, a privately-operated school that takes students from the district and, according to the district's website, serves academically struggling students.