Rutherford Institute Asks Third Circuit Court of Appeals to Protect First Amendment Right of Citizens/Journalists to Record Police in Public

November 02, 2016


PHILADELPHIA, Pa. —The Rutherford Institute has asked a federal appeals court to safeguard the right of citizens and journalists to record police in public without fear of retaliation. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that the First Amendment protects the right of citizens to make audio or video recordings of public law enforcement activities.
The brief was filed in a consolidated appeal of two cases in which a federal district court ruled that police and the City of Philadelphia could not be sued by persons who were arrested or physically assaulted by officers allegedly because they had made video recordings of police engaged in quelling disturbances.
“Police body cameras will never serve as an effective check on police misconduct as long the cameras can be turned on and off at will and the footage remains inaccessible to the public. However, technology makes it possible for Americans to record their own interactions with police and they have every right to do so without fear of arrest or physical assault,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.  “The ability to record police interactions in public provides for greater accountability when it comes to police interactions with the citizenry and should be preserved as a necessary right of the people.”
In September 2012, Amanda Geraci, a legal observer who monitors police interactions with citizens at protests or demonstrations, attended a protest against fracking at the convention center in Philadelphia. When police arrested one of the protesters, Geraci moved to a spot where she could better observe and make a video recording of the incident. According to Geraci, a city police officer subsequently attacked her by physically restraining her against a pillar and preventing her from videotaping the arrest.
In a separate incident, Temple University student Richard Fields was walking on Broad Street in Philadelphia when he saw about 20 police officers standing outside a house that was hosting a party. Fields took a photograph of the scene with his cell phone. An officer then approached Fields, asked if Fields “likes taking pictures of grown men,” and ordered him to leave. When Fields refused, the officer handcuffed and arrested him, searched his belongings, and charged him with obstructing a public passage. That charge was eventually dropped. Both Geraci and Fields filed lawsuits asserting that the police retaliated against them for exercising their First Amendment right to record police activities in public.
In ruling on the lawsuits, a federal district court declared that there was no clearly established right under the First Amendment to record police activities and that a person only has the right to record police in public if they can assert there was some “expressive” purpose for the recording. In weighing in on the cases before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Rutherford Institute attorneys point out that the district court’s decision conflicts with numerous rulings from other courts that have affirmed a First Amendment right to collect information about government activities, and specifically to record police carrying out their duties in public.

In ruling on the lawsuits, a federal district court declared that there was no clearly established right under the First Amendment to record police activities and that a person only has the right to record police in public if they can assert there was some “expressive” purpose for the recording. In weighing in on the cases before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Rutherford Institute attorneys point out that the district court’s decision conflicts with numerous rulings from other courts that have affirmed a First Amendment right to collect information about government activities, and specifically to record police carrying out their duties in public.
Affiliate attorneys Jason P. Gosselin and Christopher F. Moriarty assisted The Rutherford Institute advancing the arguments in the Fields and Geraci brief.

 Via The Rutherford Institute here

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

Hero Security Guard Diffuses Hostage Situation Only to be Fatally Shot by Late Arriving Cops

 By William N. Grigg

Douglas County, GA — Bobby Daniels was a peace officer by trade – a private security guard employed at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. When he learned that his emotionally troubled 25-year-old son Bias had suffered a breakdown and was holding a fellow security guard at gunpoint in a mobile home part in Douglasville, Bobby raced to the scene. Using the skills of persuasion and patient de-escalation upon which a private peace officer must rely, Bobby persuaded his son to relinquish his handgun and place it on the hood of a car.
Just seconds later, Daniels was fatally shot – not by his mentally ill son, but by the sheriff’s deputies who had arrived on the scene.
In familiar fashion, law enforcement officials insist that the victim of this police shooting – at least the 960th to occur in 2015 – was to blame, and they have provided contradictory accounts as to how it happened.
“I think that he could have been trying to help the situation instead of hurting it, but when he pointed the gun at the officers, he was shot,” asserted Douglas County Sheriff Phil Miller in remarks to reports at the scene shortly after the December 21 incident.
A different official account provided by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation claims that as Bobby and Bias struggled over control of the gun, deputies attempted to incapacitate the younger man with a taser.
“As the fight continued between Bias and Bobby, the handgun was pointed at the deputies, at which point one of the deputy [sic] fired, striking and killing Bobby,” according to the GBI.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that my officer thought his life was in danger, and he did what he thought he had to do,” insists Sheriff Miller, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Read more  here

Three From the Free Thought Project

Conflict of Interest? The US Navy Has a Base in a Brutal Dictatorship with Ties to ISIS

Why Does the US Navy Have a Base in a Repressive Dictatorship Whose Govt Officials are ISIS Members?

Much has been said about the most notorious dictatorship in the Middle East and close ally of the United States. Saudi Arabia, the number 1 beheader, carries out tasks such as bombing Yemen targets, including hospitals, and helping to stamp out rebellions for neighboring US-allied dictators. In exchange for this thuggery (and the flow of oil), the Saudis receive access to some of the best weapons in the world and guarantees of the monarchy’s continued existence in the face of massive discontent.
This resentment against Western puppets that rule Gulf nations is a contributing factor in the support for terrorism. Saudi Arabia is turning out to be a hotbed of support for ISIS, which also has to do with the fact that the state-sanctioned religious clergy teaches a radical form of Islam known as Wahhabism.
The U.S. government ignores these things, along with atrocious human rights records, when it has a vested interest in the country. Indeed, the U.S. has a particular liking for brutal monarchies with rich oil reserves.
The small country of Bahrain plays an incredibly large role in American military hegemony, hosting the Navy’s Fifth Fleet and Central Command.

Read the rest @ The Free Thought Project  here

Prison Officials Spying on Inmates to Find Net Worth, Suing Anyone Worth Over $10K for Stay in Jail

With the ability to read their mail and record their phone conversations, state prisons have increasingly been filing lawsuits against inmates with over $10,000 in assets. In cases of blatant retaliation, prison officials have also been targeting inmates who won civil suits against the departments for prison beatings and denying medication.
In 1846, Michigan introduced the first correctional fee law authorizing counties to charge prisoners for the cost of medical care. According to a report released earlier this year from the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 35 states are currently authorized to charge inmates for medical treatment. And at least 43 states allow officials to charge prisoners for the cost of their own imprisonment.
While incarcerated on a drug conviction, Johnny Melton received a $31,690 settlement over the wrongful death of his mother. After learning of the settlement, the Illinois Department of Corrections sued Melton and won nearly $20,000 to cover the cost of his “care, custody, treatment or rehabilitation” during his 14 months served at the state’s Logan Correctional Center.
Paroled earlier this year, Melton entered a homeless shelter and went on food stamps before a cousin offered to help him. According to his family, Melton was destitute when he died in June.
“He didn’t have a dime,” one of Melton’s sisters, Denise Melton, told the Chicago Tribune. “We had to scuffle up money to cremate him.”

Read more @  The Free Thought Project here

Isolated Incident? Nine Officers Arrested After They Were Caught Running a Massive Drug Ring

A massive drug ring was recently raided in Florida, in which law enforcement officers were caught smuggling large amounts of opiate medication and meth.

Bradford County, FL – 50 people were arrested this week, in connection with a drug smuggling operation, where prescription opiates were transported into a Florida state prison, with the help of prison employees. In total, nine corrections officers were arrested in the operation, which lasted over 11 months and included multiple other arrests along the way.
The investigation was called “Operation Checkered Flag,” and it began late last year when local police were tipped off about drugs flowing into Bradford County prisons. Back in June, two conspirators that were thought to be at the head of the drug ring were arrested, both of them were corrections officers. Officer Dylan Oral Hilliard of Lawtey and Maj. Charles Gregory “Chicken Hawk” Combs were each arrested in June, but the smuggling operations still continued.
Deeper into the investigation, police discovered that it was a much larger scheme taking place, involving multiple other corrections officers.

Read more @ The Free Thought Project here 

Tyrant Sheriff Blames Fake “War on Cops” on “A Complete Lack of Accountability” of the Citizens

“There’s just no accountability today,” complains Sheriff Michael Lewis of Maryland’s Wicomico County. Sheriff Lewis was not expressing concerns over the institutionalized impunity of law enforcement officers, but rather disgust over public criticism of police by “defiant” people who “hate law enforcement,” and the fact that some school-age kids are allowed to watch TV and play video games late on school nights.
“I think there’s a complete lack of accountability with this generation that’s coming up today,” Sheriff Lewis groused to Fox News host Leland Vittert in a recent interview. “You can go into a home at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning, on a weeknight and there are kids awake and watching TV, playing video games, eating snacks out of bags on a sofa, knowing they have to be in school in a few hours,” the sheriff elaborated, his face contorted in disgust.

(Video courtesy of Radley Balko.)

Bad habits of that kind on the part of teenagers may be deplorable, but the kind of police behavior to which Lewis alludes is typical of totalitarian states and much more troublesome than school-age kids wasting their time in front of game consoles.
Despite the fortunate fact that there have been fewer on-duty violent deaths of police officers so far this year than there had been at this time in 2014, Lewis retailed the idea that law enforcement officers face unprecedented deadly dangers on the job – and off-duty, as well. He informed Vittert that he had sent an e-mail to all employees of the Wicomico Sheriff’s Office instructing them to avoid wearing badges or other identifiers while off duty “to protect themselves, to protect their families.”
“I’ve never seen it like this, Leland,” Lewis intoned. “It’s a scary, scary time for law enforcement in this country.”
In addition to teenage delinquents who play videogames at scandalous hours of the early morning, Lewis added the “violent” rhetoric of police critics such as the Black Lives Matter movement to the list.
While most of the public reflexively supports the police, Lewis observed, there is “a certain segment of society that are defiant – they hate law enforcement.”
If law enforcement were a service industry, rather than an enterprise in unaccountable state coercion, the situation Lewis describes would be treated as an indictment of those who provide the service, and significant institutional changes would result. Like others in what we could call the “Only Blue Lives Really Matter” movement, however, Lewis treats expressions of “customer” dissatisfaction as evidence of criminal intent and a threat to that most important of all things, “officer safety.”
Like sheriffs Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County and David Clarke of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, Sheriff Lewis (who is also a sergeant in the Maryland State Police) has become a national media celebrity by exploiting every opportunity to defend police against criticism and denounce critics of police abuse for supposedly endangering the lives of officers. While there is no evidence of a coordinated “war” on American law enforcement officers, Lewis – who never misses an opportunity to promote that dangerously misleading view – has been waging war against property rights and individual liberties for decades as part of an “imperial mission” to suppress narcotics commerce – or rather, to profit from the pretense that it can be suppressed.

Read the rest  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

The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

By John W. Whitehead
August 24, 2015

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.
Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.
Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.
Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.
In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.
Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.
In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.
Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.
Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car.
As the Houston Chronicle reported:

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then…Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley’s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity.
For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.
David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.
Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government’s pursuit of drugs and weapons.
Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men’s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police on city streets between 2002 and 2009.
It’s gotten so bad that you don’t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Florence v. Burlison, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.
Examples of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver’s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.
It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.
Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—don’t end with roadside strip searches. They’re just a foretaste of what is to come.

Read the whole thing Here

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

Police Chief Justifies Killing Teen Over Pot While His Criminal Cop Son is Arrested With No Violence

Seneca, SC — Although his son was arrested earlier this year for stealing drugs from a detention center, Seneca Police Chief John Covington holds a harsh double standard for the children of his own community. While failing the war on drugs at home, Chief Covington has recently accused a teenager of causing his own death during a routine marijuana sting. Instead of relying on empirical evidence, Covington is defending the officer who gunned down the 19-year-old and then lied in order to justify the shooting.
On January 5, Chief Covington’s son allegedly stole drugs from a woman being held at the Oconee County Detention Center in South Carolina. While on duty as a reserve officer with the Seneca Police Department, Officer Adam Covington stole 30 hydrocodone pills from an arrestee named Peggy Smith. The police chief’s son was arrested without incident and charged with theft of a controlled substance and misconduct in office. After receiving a suspension pending the outcome of the investigation, Officer Adam Covington resigned from the department in February.
In contrast, Chief Covington has recently defended the killing of a teen during a routine marijuana bust. On July 26, Zachary Hammond, 19, drove to a Hardee’s parking lot in Seneca with Tori Morton, 23. After an undercover cop had pulled up beside Hammond’s car to buy marijuana from Morton, a uniformed officer ran towards them with his gun drawn.

Read more Here

Warning: Federal Court Rules that 2nd Amendment Right is Now a Reason for Cops to Detain You

Grand Rapids, Mich. – In a stunning violation of 2nd Amendment rights, the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan ruled police have the legal authority to detain individuals that choose to exercise their constitutional right to open carry a firearm. Open Carry is also specifically allowed under Michigan law.
The ruling means that people in Michigan who choose to exercise this constitutional right are now subject to being stopped by law enforcement for engaging in a completely lawful activity.
Officers detained Johann Deffert in early 2013. He was walking down the sidewalk with a holstered FNP-45 pistol, after receiving a 9-1-1 call from a woman who spotted Deffert with the open carried, but holstered, handgun on his person.
The dispatcher initially informed the caller that Michigan is an open carry state. However, the woman subsequently explained that she found Deffert’s presence alarming, due in part to his wearing of camouflage, although she admitted that he wasn’t threatening anyone. Somehow the dispatcher made the decision that someone engaging in a completely legal activity, as earlier in the call noted by the dispatcher, should now be inspected by police, due to caller saying they found wearing camo disturbing.
The absurdity in logic; that someone wearing camo takes the situation from being a completely legal situation not to be interfered with, and raises it to a level of needing police assistance, shows the extreme arbitrary nature of the entire situation.

The incident was captured on responding officer Moe Williams’ dash cam, and lasted 14 minutes. Williams had indicated he believed that perhaps Deffert was suffering from some type of mental illness, as he seemed to be “talking to nobody” when the officer arrived on scene. Upon further investigation, Deffert was revealed to have been happily singing the song “Hakuna Matata” from the Disney movie “The Lion King” while strolling down the sidewalk.
The video shows the officer command Deffert to lay face down on the ground upon arrival on the scene. Deffert was treated as if he were a criminal that needed to prove he was not doing anything wrong, as the officer detained him while running a mental and criminal background check. Deffert was polite and respectful throughout the encounter, but strongly asserted his rights regarding open carry laws in the state of Michigan.
Remember, all of this transpired despite Deffert’s total compliance with Michigan law, in respect to open carry of a firearm. Eventually, Deffert was released, as he had violated no laws, done nothing wrong, and there was no legitimate reason to hold him. Shortly after the incident, in what seemed like a vindication for Deffert at the time, Grand Rapids Police Sgt. Steve LaBreque recommended to Moe’s commanding officer, that Moe “would benefit from some additional training in handling ‘open carry’ issues.”
Several months later Deffert filed a federal lawsuit alleging his constitutional rights were violated and that he was assaulted and falsely imprisoned. The legality of open carry in the Michigan was never in question, only if law enforcement had the authority to detain an individual simply because they were open carrying a firearm, according to court records.
In the most convoluted of logic, U.S. District Judge Janet Neff claimed that officers do have such authority. Neff wrote that the officers were “justified in following up on the 9-1-1 call and using swift action to determine whether [Deffert’s] behavior gave rise to a need to protect or preserve life … in the neighborhood.”
When a call to 9-1-1 is made in regard to a completely legal activity, the police should not even be dispatched. If in fact the police needed to “determine whether [Deffert’s] behavior gave rise to a need to protect or preserve life … in the neighborhood,” they need not impeded a citizen from going about their legitimate and legal business,” as Neff asserts, but rather could passively watch from a distance to determine if there is any reasonable suspicion of criminal activity afoot, and if so act accordingly.

The most glaring problem with Neff’s logic, is that there is no reason for police to ever assess someones behavior who is simply engaging in constitutionally protected and lawful activity, regardless if another citizens takes issue with the activity. If the activity fails to rise to the level of criminality, then police have no business getting investigating or getting involved. The police, as public servants, aren’t paid to investigate non-crimes.
The idea that someone needs to prove their innocence for engaging in a constitutionally protected activity is contrary to everything America teaches its children to believe about liberty and freedom.

The case will most likely be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The National Rifle Association and others have offered to assist in the appeal.
It will be interesting to see what open carry advocates across the nation, and specifically those in Texas, a hotbed of open carry activism, think about this ruling; and how they would respond if this were to become the standard of law in their state.
Sound off in the comments!
Be sure to share this critical information with all your liberty loving friends!
Read the decision below.

Johann Deffert court documents

Source   http://thefreethoughtproject.com/federal-court-rules-police-detain-individuals-open-carrying-firearms/

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.

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

The ongoing criminalization of poverty

A series of reports over the last few weeks have shed more light on the increasingly predatory enforcement of misdemeanors across the country, and how this trend disproportionately hurts the poor. The first report comes from an area familiar to readers of The Watch — St. Louis County, Missouri. It was published by the Police Executive Research Forum. Among the key findings:

• Policing is extremely fragmented: St. Louis County contains a patchwork of police departments, many of which have jurisdiction over very small areas. About one-third of the municipalities in the County that have a police department occupy less than one square mile. This has led to confusion and distrust among residents, who often feel targeted and harassed by police officers and the municipal court system.
• Many police departments have inappropriate goals: In many municipalities, policing priorities are driven not by the public safety needs of the community, but rather by the goal of generating large portions of the operating revenue for the local government. This is a grossly inappropriate mission for the police, often carried out at the direction of local elected officials.
• The “muni shuffle” is unprofessional: Police standards, training, pay, and professionalism vary dramatically throughout the region. Of particular concern is the so-called “muni shuffle,” in which police officers who are fired or allowed to resign because of disciplinary or performance issues in one department are quickly hired by another department, because it can be less expensive to hire an experienced (albeit compromised) officer than to recruit and train a new officer.

These criticisms have now been reiterated in several forums, by several different organizations. Perhaps most damning, all of this attention on petty offenses has distracted the area’s police departments from fighting crime. Despite the saturation of police departments, the report found elevated crime rates in the area, and that violent and property crime cost about $1,187 per resident. In other words, the people who live in St. Louis County aren’t being protected by the police, the police are preying on them. And they’re doing at the instruction of these local governments.
Up next, a well-reported three-part series on policing and the poor by the CBS affiliated in Miami. The report focuses on a city “crime suppression team” that’s supposed to improve the quality of life in poor areas. This excerpt is from part three.

During its five-month investigation into the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Crime Suppression Team, CBS4 News reviewed every arrest the officers from the South District Station made in 2014.
The results: CBS4 News found a unit whose actions resulted in the arrests of hundreds of individuals – mostly young black males – for petty offenses. Even more troubling, the arrests failed to result in a reduction in crime in the South District. In fact, crime went up in most of the major categories, according to records obtained by CBS4 News.
CBS4 News also found that most of the cases made by the Crime Suppression Team fell apart once they made it to court. Overall, the Crime Suppression Team had a conviction rate of just eleven percent.
And of the 245 individuals arrested for marijuana – only two ended up being convicted. In addition to those two convictions, 80 individuals – or one third of those arrested – accepted what is known as a “withhold of adjudication.”
“Withhold of adjudication is something that exists only in Florida and it’s kind of a legal fiction,” said Miami-Dade County Public Defender Carlos Martinez. “It’s a conviction, a judge has made a finding of guilt, but we are going to say you are not really a convicted person, but in fact you are.  Immigration does not look at the difference between a withhold or no withhold, they look at it as a conviction. And most employers that I’ve talked to about these issues, and they see withhold, to them it looks like a conviction. They don’t see the difference.”
Most of the people appearing in court don’t realize this because they are not represented by an attorney, Martinez said. “Seventy percent of the people in Dade County go to court without an attorney.”
In Florida, if prosecutors are not requesting jail time for a crime, the person charged doesn’t have the right to have a public defender appointed to represent them.

So once again we have police in predominantly poor, predominantly black communities making “broken windows” and “quality of life” arrests for petty offenses. This is saddling large percentages of these communities with burdensome fines and debilitating arrest records, it’s poisoning the relationship between the police agencies and the communities they’re supposed to be serving and it’s all doing little to nothing to make these communities any safer. This particular anecdote is just chilling:

Read the rest @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/14/the-ongoing-criminalization-of-poverty/

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!”

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/mentally-ill-homeless-man-beaten-police-beach-umbrella-big/?utm_source=The+Free+Thought+Project+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=571e5b9b2b-RSS_FEED_NEWSLETTER12_18_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ae40e945ed-571e5b9b2b-211636157

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