Police abuses

[Husar]

Meh, define "innocent". Every cop I know of has stolen somebodys marijuana before.

Semantics are fun.

So if that justifies hanging the cops, then I guess possessing marijuana and doing filesharing justify the cops in beating and tasing people? How many people do you know who bought all their music?
I meant innocent more in the sense that they did not harm someone's body for fun and do not deserve to be hanged/beaten up by any reasonable standard.

[Ser Clegane]

I would highly appreciate if this thread would not be used to fantasize about the killing of policemen.

Thanks

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

So if a black man attacks a cop, that is ok, but if he fights back and defends himself, he is a racist! How funny!

[Ser Clegane]

So if a black man attacks a cop, that is ok, but if he fights back and defends himself, he is a racist! How funny!

I think I am not quite sure what this conclusion is based on...

[Mooks]

So if that justifies hanging the cops, then I guess possessing marijuana and doing filesharing justify the cops in beating and tasing people? How many people do you know who bought all their music?
I meant innocent more in the sense that they did not harm someone's body for fun and do not deserve to be hanged/beaten up by any reasonable standard.

I never said it justified. Im just displaying my point of view, cops steal stuff from people all the time.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

I think I am not quite sure what this conclusion is based on...

Some local cases that transpired in the Pittsburgh area.

[Vladimir]

A man calls 911 to ask for medical help for his 86 year old, bedridden mother.

Naturally, a bunch of police barge through the door. The woman, a grandmother, tells them to leave her house.

Naturally, the police taze her;



At least the sadists of America have a steady job supply and legal authority to torture people.

It seems some cops view the taser as a tool that lets them have almost as much fun as shooting people without all the bothersome paperwork and inquiries involving murdered people.

CR

I killed four Japs in World War II,

Don't trust the rabbit. There's always more to the story.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I killed four Japs in World War II,

Don't trust the rabbit. There's always more to the story.

An officer used the Taser when she pulled a kitchen knife out from under her pillow and threatened cops with it, police said.

Well golly gee, if the police said it then it must be true. It's not like they've ever systematically lied to cover up crimes up to and including murder whenever they have to.

I'm just glad we can put this story to rest, and not worry about niggling little holes like why even a knife wielding granny who couldn't get out of bed had to be tasered even assuming the police aren't lying, just because the police said their violent acts were justified.

After all, if we don't blindly trust violent men when they say they had to be violent, we might have to face uncomfortable facts.

CR

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The ultimate "point" of this thread still escapes me.

Are there police abuses? Yes. Are efforts to curb such abuses less effective than we would like? Yes. Taking these as givens, what should be done about it?

Do we abolish police in favor of personal self-defense only?

Do we retire police after just a few years service to prevent them from acquiring too much power/too much interest in securing themselves?

Do we pick people who don't want to be police and force them to serve as police?


Consider the following...

No matter how thoroughly we screen for things at the outset, some people will discover while doing police work that they LIKE using the baton and cracking a few heads to achieve their objective. Moreover, it is hardly surprising that people who do like that approach to problem-solving self-select into a career path that allows for (encourages?) it. This is human nature. A goodly percentage of us, given power by situation or by assignment, ENJOY exercising that power.

So what is to be done?

[Beskar]

Police here are like angels of Justice, mostly.

[Crazed Rabbit]

A schoolteacher calls cops to her house because of a prowler.

Naturally it all ends in the cops repeatedly tasering her as she is curled on the ground in pain, because she had the gall to not be completely submissive in response to his questions.

Story and video here. Video at CNN here.

One of the cops has been given a paid vacation until it blows over, while the other quit before an investigation and has already been hired by a different police force.

CR

[Louis VI the Fat]

Take the arms and start hanging cops on trees

God bless

Ho hum...



A man, trice convicted of armed robbery, robbed a casino. Taking €40000 / $50000 he and his accomplices fled by car. The police followed suit in a chase. After being shot at three times, the police returned fire, killing the man.

Naturally, civil war ensued. The intifada broke out immediately after the memorial service for this brutally violent serial armed robber. The once quiet university city of Grenoble is on fire as we speak, a full intifada in retaliation for 'taking one of them',



60 cars burned, shops looted and burned, and police repeatedly fired at with automatic weapons by the insurgents. A horde of thirthy insurgents armed with clubs and iron bars attacked a tram full of people.

Five arrests were made.







http://www.france24.com/en/20100717-...robbing-casino

[InsaneApache]

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/831163-p...-traffic-fines

Nice guy.

As Peel rightly said; "The police are the public and the public are the police".*

As such bastards and bullys get in. As in all walks of life.

* tested to destruction these last 25 years.

[Meneldil]

Ho hum...



A man, trice convicted of armed robbery, robbed a casino. Taking €40000 / $50000 he and his accomplices fled by car. The police followed suit in a chase. After being shot at three times, the police returned fire, killing the man.

Naturally, civil war ensued. The intifada broke out immediately after the memorial service for this brutally violent serial armed robber. The once quiet university city of Grenoble is on fire as we speak, a full intifada in retaliation for 'taking one of them',



60 cars burned, shops looted and burned, and police repeatedly fired at with automatic weapons by the insurgents. A horde of thirthy insurgents armed with clubs and iron bars attacked a tram full of people.

Five arrests were made.

We're clearly in another case entirely. It's ridiculous that thieves and criminals who died after being pursued by the cops are seen as victims by the scums that plague France.

Remember the riots of 2005? I clearly stated back then that the army should have been sent to deal - violently - with the scumbags who thought it was fun to burn their neighbour's car and school. I still think it.

[Skullheadhq]

Ho hum...



A man, trice convicted of armed robbery, robbed a casino. Taking €40000 / $50000 he and his accomplices fled by car. The police followed suit in a chase. After being shot at three times, the police returned fire, killing the man.

Naturally, civil war ensued. The intifada broke out immediately after the memorial service for this brutally violent serial armed robber. The once quiet university city of Grenoble is on fire as we speak, a full intifada in retaliation for 'taking one of them',



60 cars burned, shops looted and burned, and police repeatedly fired at with automatic weapons by the insurgents. A horde of thirthy insurgents armed with clubs and iron bars attacked a tram full of people.

Five arrests were made.







http://www.france24.com/en/20100717-...robbing-casino

Oh, I love those french riots on TV, only wouldn't like it if I lived there and it was my car they torched and danced upon with scimitars. Or my shop that was being destroyed Kristallnacht style, but is is good television.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Well I'm happy the misfortune of people at least provides entertainment for this world's psychopaths.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I feel ill after reading this article, and the opinions of prosecutors and police on citizens recording police:

The debate over whether citizens should be permitted to record on-duty police officers intensified this summer. High profile incidents in Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere spurred coverage of the issue from national media outlets ranging from the Associated Press to Time to NPR.
...
But so far, there’s been little activity in state legislatures to prevent these arrests. That’s likely because any policy that makes recording cops an explicitly legal endeavor is likely to encounter strong opposition from law enforcement organizations.
...
Joseph Cassilly is the Harford County, Maryland state’s attorney. He’s currently pursuing felony charges against Anthony Graber, who was arrested last April for recording a police officer during a traffic stop. Maryland is one of 12 states that require all parties to a conversation to give consent before the conversation can legally be recorded. But like nine of those 12 states, Maryland also requires that for the recording to be illegal, the offended party must have had an expectation that the conversation would be private. To bring charges against Graber, Cassilly would not only need to believe that on-duty police officers have privacy rights, but in the Graber case in particular, that a cop who had drawn his gun and was yelling at a motorist on the side of a busy highway would, also, have good reason to believe the entire encounter was private. This seems all the more absurd given that motorists in such a situation clearly don’t have any reasonable privacy expectation. Anything they say during such a traffic stop is admissible in court.

"The officer having his gun drawn or being on a public roadway has nothing to do with it," Cassilly says. "Neither does the fact that what Mr. Graber said during the stop could be used in court. That’s not the test. The test is whether police officers can expect some of the conversations they have while on the job to remain private and not be recorded and replayed for the world to hear."
...
Crawford County State’s Attorney Tom Wiseman is currently bringing five felony charges against Michael Allison, a 41-year-old construction worker who recorded police officers and other public officials he thought were harassing him.
...
[S]o he began recording his conversations with local law enforcement. He faces up to 75 years in prison for the recordings.

...

"The only person doing any harassing here is Mr. Allison, who was harassing our public officials with his tape recorder," Wiseman says. "They may have problems with some bad police officers in some of your urban areas. But we don’t have those problems around here. All of our cops around here are good cops. This is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. If we had a bad police officer here, we’d know about it, I’d know about it, and he’d be out. There’s just no reason for anyone to feel they need to record police officers in Crawford County."

...

Finally, I spoke with Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.
...
Pasco says. "Letting people record police officers is an extreme and intrusive response to a problem that’s so rare it might as well not exist. It would be like saying we should do away with DNA evidence because there’s a one in a billion chance that it could be wrong. At some point, we have to put some faith and trust in our authority figures."
...
I mention Michael Allison’s case to Pasco, and ask if he supports the Illinois law.

"I don’t know anything about that case, but generally it sounds like a sensible law and a sensible punishment," Pasco says. "Police officers don’t check their civil rights at the station house door."

Scum.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Denver, this time. A cop is arresting someone at night. Several people stand nearby. A different cop goes up to one of them, a man talking on his cell phone, and punches him in the face, before throwing him to the ground and repeatedly hitting him with his baton.

The standard lying on the report happens, once again exposed by video, this time from a government, police operated camera. Video and article at the link. Note how the camera pans away as the officer starts attacking the bystander. The camera operator is trying to protect his fellow cop by not recording evidence.

Denver officials are deeply divided over the proper level of punishment for a police officer who was seen on video tackling and beating a 23-year-old man who was doing nothing but talking on a telephone outside a LoDo nightclub.

The video of Officer Devin Sparks repeatedly hitting Michael DeHerrera of Denver with a department-issued piece of metal wrapped in leather, picking him up roughly and slamming a car door on his ankle has prompted Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal to push for the firing of Sparks and Corporal Randy Murr.

Rosenthal, who monitors police internal investigations, maintains Sparks and Murr are unfit for the force because they didn't tell the truth about the April 4, 2009 incident. Rosenthal also believes the use of force by Sparks was excessive. The Denver City Council earlier this year agreed to pay $17,500 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by DeHerrera alleging excessive force.

DeHerrera, in interviews, has described police as beating him unconscious. He said he woke up in a hospital bed, with stitches in his head, and a swollen head. He said he later was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome.

"The video was so important because it showed everything that happened, regardless of reports or what's filled out," DeHerrera said in an interview. "The video speaks more than any of those words can."

He added: "I don't swing. I don't blade. I'm on the phone. The only thing I hold onto is my phone. When I go down, I'm out, and that's when he continues to 'get my compliance.'"

The incident was filmed by the police department's own High Activity Location Observation video surveillance system. Video released to the news media by the department shows DeHerrera doing nothing but talking on his phone with his father, a sheriff's deputy in Pueblo.

Rosenthal, in a report to be released on Monday, labels as "pure fiction" the police report from Sparks that describes his force as justified because DeHerrera "spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist."

Safety Manager Ron Perea, who oversees the police department and has final say on discipline, has rejected Rosenthal's argument that the officers should be fired. He suspended Murr without pay for three days for submitting an "inaccurate report." Sparks also lost three days pay.

Gee, what other job could lead to only losing three days pay for assaulting someone and then filing a false police report?

CR

[Major Robert Dump]

Well, as stated in the previous post, the problem is "so rare" it might as well not exist and you might as well not worry about it.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The ultimate "point" of this thread still escapes me.

Are there police abuses? Yes. Are efforts to curb such abuses less effective than we would like? Yes. Taking these as givens, what should be done about it?

Do we abolish police in favor of personal self-defense only?

Do we retire police after just a few years service to prevent them from acquiring too much power/too much interest in securing themselves?

Do we pick people who don't want to be police and force them to serve as police?

I guess we work out the law regarding recording police officers better, and such things.


I have seen plenty of fake scandals caused by people who are anti-police though. Definitely a two sided problem. I think it was CR who posted one of those in the BR video thread.

[Beskar]

I have seen plenty of fake scandals caused by people who are anti-police though. Definitely a two sided problem. I think it was CR who posted one of those in the BR video thread.

Yeah, there are plently of fakes.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I don't think there's two sides to the recording police issue at all. So far, videos of the police have revealed brutality and protected the innocent victims of police. I've heard of no video that was doctored and ended up doing harm to police.

And even if such people might think of doing that; that's why we have trials, so the people can determine if something is real or fake.

In news from Indianapolis, David Bisard gets away with murder after killing a stopped motorcyclist at an intersection with a BAC of .19 (tested two hours after the crash), ie at least ten drinks. But since the wrong hospital employee drew his blood, that evidence is inadmissible.

And the murderer supporters, ie fellow cops at the scene, didn't notice that he was drunk at all at the crash scene. So he faces charges that are much lower than if there was some admissible evidence he was really drunk.

In North Carolina, police arrest a woman for resisting arrest because she watched, and recorded, a traffic stop from her front porch.

CR

[InsaneApache]

A 57 year old woman has a row with her boyfriend and walks out in a huff. She decides against driving to her daughters in London, instead sleeping overnight in her car. In the morning two plastic pigs investigate the car and call for (the real) police to attend.

She's arrested for apparently refusing a breath test. Now in the UK the police need a reason to breathalyse you. They can't just decide to.

Understandably she's upset and wants to know why they arrested her.

What happened next?



At least the sergeant was prosecuted, unlike those numpties who chased a disabled man and smashed his windscreen in for taking them on a 30 MPH chase.

I was stopped by plod t'other week. My those young whippersnappers are aggressive.

[Crazed Rabbit]

In Spokane, WA, police shoot an unarmed, pregnant woman because she was 'noncompliant' and 'trying to escape'.

A pregnant, unarmed woman was shot during a drug raid in Spokane on Friday morning and she remained hospitalized late last night as investigators pieced together what happened in the county's third officer-involved shooting in four weeks.

A Washington State Patrol detective sergeant shot the woman, who according to the sheriff's spokesman is 39 weeks pregnant, while serving a search warrant at the Victoria Apartments, 1405 N. Lincoln St., according to the Spokane County Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff's Office is investigating the shooting along with members of the Spokane Police Department and the WSP.

Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan confirmed that officers found no weapons in the home but did find quantities of drugs during the execution of the search warrant.

"During the entry, a female suspect inside the apartment became non-compliant with officers' instructions," Reagan wrote in a news release. "When she attempted to flee out a bedroom window, officers attempted to restrain her. During efforts to prevent her escape, a shot was fired and the woman suffered a minor wound to her upper torso. She fell out the window and received first aid from containment officers stationed at the back of the apartments."

He offered no further details about why the detective used deadly force.

CR

[drone]

I feel ill after reading this article, and the opinions of prosecutors and police on citizens recording police:

...
Joseph Cassilly is the Harford County, Maryland state’s attorney. He’s currently pursuing felony charges against Anthony Graber, who was arrested last April for recording a police officer during a traffic stop. Maryland is one of 12 states that require all parties to a conversation to give consent before the conversation can legally be recorded. But like nine of those 12 states, Maryland also requires that for the recording to be illegal, the offended party must have had an expectation that the conversation would be private. To bring charges against Graber, Cassilly would not only need to believe that on-duty police officers have privacy rights, but in the Graber case in particular, that a cop who had drawn his gun and was yelling at a motorist on the side of a busy highway would, also, have good reason to believe the entire encounter was private. This seems all the more absurd given that motorists in such a situation clearly don’t have any reasonable privacy expectation. Anything they say during such a traffic stop is admissible in court.

"The officer having his gun drawn or being on a public roadway has nothing to do with it," Cassilly says. "Neither does the fact that what Mr. Graber said during the stop could be used in court. That’s not the test. The test is whether police officers can expect some of the conversations they have while on the job to remain private and not be recorded and replayed for the world to hear."
...

The county Circuit Court judge dismissed the charges yesterday.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/loc...hpid=sec-metro

One of the key legal questions facing Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr., was whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy. Pitt ruled that police have no expectation of privacy in their public, on-the-job communications.

Pitt wrote: "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes' ("Who watches the watchmen?”)."

Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications" -- referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state's argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices."

No word yet on whether the state's attorney will try to appeal the decision. Graber still faces traffic charges.

Pitt's decision is the first ruling in Maryland to address the legality of citizens taping police in the course of their duties. Because it is a circuit court ruling, it is not binding on other judges. However, unless it is appealed, Graber's attorney David Rocah of the ACLU of Maryland, said "it is likely to be the last word" on the matter and regarded as precedent by police.

Nice to see there is still a little common sense in Maryland.

[caravel]

This is how you get the police to attend:

[Crazed Rabbit]

The county Circuit Court judge dismissed the charges yesterday.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/loc...hpid=sec-metro

Nice to see there is still a little common sense in Maryland.

A little justice, but not enough. The police invaded his home, seized his belongings, and charged him with a crime because they misunderstood the law. But they will face no discipline whatsoever.

In other news, the victim of a federal agent's road rage seven years ago recently got a huge payout. A DEA agent, Timothy McCue, in an unmarked car collided with someone. Once both cars were stopped, the agent got out, gun in hand, and beat the other driver, Barron Bowling, to unconsciousness.

The police arrived and immediately began covering up the beating; by not recording witness statements, taking pictures of the injured man, etc. They then charged the victim with a couple crimes.

Seven years later, only one man in the police department was punished - the one officer who exposed the coverup, Max Seifert:

Seifert’s troubles began seven years ago after Drug Enforcement Administration agent Timothy McCue tried to pass Bowling on the right in a wide lane. Bowling sped up and the cars collided.

Bowling drove forward before he pulled over so he wouldn’t block traffic, the judge wrote. That’s when McCue, gun out, rushed him. Bowling was beaten unconscious by McCue and then taken to jail.

The case ended with the recent order for the U.S. government to pay Bowling for McCue’s actions, but a previous ruling outlined allegations against the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department.

The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., settled its part of the case last year for $425,000 but admitted no liability on conspiracy, malicious prosecution or abuse of process.

Before that settlement, the judge issued the pretrial ruling that described how Seifert was pressured to play along with a cover-up that started soon after the crash. Officers at the crash scene failed to report or photograph Bowling’s injuries or report what witnesses said, the judge wrote.

Instead, Police Officer Robert Lane told Bowling he was going to jail because DEA agents “do pretty much whatever they want,” the judge wrote.

Bowling was accused of assaulting DEA agents by intentionally causing the crash, and Lane ordered a reporting officer to omit the evidence of the beating and witnesses’ statements, Robinson wrote.

After Seifert spoke to Bowling in jail, though, the detective told a boss that internal affairs should take the case instead. Seifert got it anyway and called Lane to ask why there were no witness reports.

“It would look bad for DEA agents,” Lane replied, according to the judge’s report, adding that police “should cover for them.”

Seifert still proceeded to record interviews with three witnesses who confirmed the beating, but the judge later noted that the tape mysteriously disappeared after Seifert turned it over to superiors.

Deputy Chief Steven Culp told Seifert he should investigate only the alleged car assault on McCue, the judge wrote, not the accusation of beating.

Seifert finished his investigation and submitted it to prosecutors. They declined to charge Bowling.

But Culp — who discussed the case over golf with a special agent in charge at the DEA — later gave the prosecutor more statements from the DEA agents and urged charges, the judge stated.

The prosecutor ended up charging Bowling with felony criminal damage to property and the misdemeanors of leaving the scene of an accident and possessing drug paraphernalia, a marijuana pipe.

Throughout the case, Culp and Maj. Dennis Ware managed it for police, the judge wrote. Police Chief Ronald Miller got updates from them but was not directly involved.

In a sworn statement for Bowling’s civil case, Seifert said his bosses managed a cover-up.

“I’ve never seen Col. Culp walk into my office and take such an interest in a case. … I’ve never been paid visits by Maj. Ware like they were.”

In the end, the judge said, the criminal case was based on McCue’s false statement that Bowling intentionally hit the DEA car, when McCue was the one who had tried to force his way into traffic.

Seifert testified for the defense at Bowling’s criminal trial, where jurors found the man not guilty of the felony, but convicted him on the misdemeanors.

But to police, the judge said, the detective was guilty.

Seifert said in the sworn statement, taken shortly before his retirement, that police started an internal affairs investigation of him and Miller made it clear he was unhappy with him.

Miller told him that he alone would determine whether Seifert got a reserve commission to do police work after he retired, Seifert said, which is something that officers typically rely on. He didn’t get it.

Seifert, 60, and his wife still live in Kansas City, Kan. His wife said he was forced to retire less than a year before he would have been fully vested. That meant the detective who helped solve the 1997 torture and killing of Scruffy the dog — whose case led to “Scruffy’s Law” — lost health insurance and 2.5 percent off his pension, she said.

Jody Boeding, chief counsel for the Unified Government, said the government “respectfully disagrees with Judge Robinson’s conclusions about the actions of the police commanders” and believes they acted appropriately.

Miller has left the force and is now the police chief in Topeka. He did not return phone calls.

As for Lane, he became an Edwardsville councilman. He left the Police Department in 2007 after he pleaded no contest to four misdemeanors associated with a drunken-driving ticket-fixing scheme. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail and probation and is no longer on the council. He could not be reached for comment.

Culp is now the executive director of the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training. He declined to comment on details of the judicial rulings, which he said he had not read.

Ware has retired from the force and now works for the police in a civilian capacity. He did not reply to an e-mail request for comment.

Kansas City, Kan., Police Chief Rick Armstrong said the judge’s depiction of the case does not reflect past or current attitudes in the Police Department.

“This Police Department vigorously investigates allegations of misconduct,” he said.

Wyandotte County prosecutors declined to comment.

McCue is still a DEA agent, a spokesperson said. The DEA and federal attorneys representing the agency declined comment. They said they are still studying the ruling.

You know, some mafia thug may viciously attack you in a road rage incident, and get away unpunished. But even organized crime couldn't get you charged with a crime. I guess it just shows who's part of the really organized crime.

CR

[Vladimir]

Good. I hate it when people speed up when I'm trying to pass them.

That's illegal, you know.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Good. I hate it when people speed up when I'm trying to pass them.

That's illegal, you know.

And road rage attacks aren't?

EDIT: And attempted passing on right is also illegal. Perhaps you could explain why its good that innocent people are brutally beaten for not actually doing anything illegal - since the attempted pass was on the right - while psychotic federal agents and corrupt police go unpunished.

CR

[Beskar]

This is why civilized 'socialist' countries have Independent Police Complaint Commissions and don't have millions of different agencies.