Police abuses

[Vladimir]

That was quite the most barbaric thing I have read for a while.

Are there really no mechanisms for removing and charging someone like that sheriff - who is clearly racist, a brutal criminal and is depriving people of their constitutional protections?

Such behaviour would be embarrassing in Saudi Arabia, let alone the United States.

You should read more.

That's a rather baseless charge founded on an incomplete story. We don't even know what the mother was charged/convicted of.

Don't tell me that you see a brown woman and assume there is racism involved. That's pretty racist itself.

[Banquo's Ghost]

You should read more.

Perhaps. Or perhaps I am not yet indifferent to injustice.

That's a rather baseless charge founded on an incomplete story. We don't even know what the mother was charged/convicted of.

Don't tell me that you see a brown woman and assume there is racism involved. That's pretty racist itself.

The publication in the link clearly has a particular agenda. Nonetheless, the sheriff appears to have a penchant for arresting Latinos. If it walks like a duck...

There is no charge or conviction known to mankind that would justify such treatment of a woman (and endanger her child). At least in any civilisation worth the name. The United States is a great civilisation that would normally abhor such behaviour, and I would expect you to be of the same mind.

[Vladimir]

Perhaps. Or perhaps I am not yet indifferent to injustice.

The publication in the link clearly has a particular agenda. Nonetheless, the sheriff appears to have a penchant for arresting Latinos. If it walks like a duck...

There is no charge or conviction known to mankind that would justify such treatment of a woman (and endanger her child). At least in any civilisation worth the name. The United States is a great civilisation that would normally abhor such behaviour, and I would expect you to be of the same mind.

Banquo: Fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. I can do hyperbole too.

Stop it man; use your head. What are the demographics of the county? What are the issues it faces, etc? You see a white man arresting Latinos and presume racism. Tell me how that isn't racist itself.

We both know that there are circumstances in life which justify far harsher actions. Context is key which is why oversight is important.

[Ser Clegane]

We both know that there are circumstances in life which justify far harsher actions. Context is key which is why oversight is important.

Another article on the subject

Of course I cannot comment on the source, but this article also suggests that

a) the shackling was completely over the top (I do not see any charges that would justify this treatment

b) racism might indeed be an issue here (due to lack of time I did not dig deeper though

Editor's note: This is one of a group of individual accounts of racial profiling by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's forces.

Also:

Sheriff's Office policy states that jail inmates be restrained for "security reasons in an unsecured facility," said Jack MacIntyre, an MCSO deputy chief. McIntyre said a 12-foot chain link was attached to Chacón's leg.

"Let's assume someone is faking labor — that's a hypothetical — and she then chose to escape and hit or assault the hospital staff," McIntyre said. "She could do that easily because it's an unsecured area."

Yes - let's make up stuff to justify this treatment

[Crazed Rabbit]

You should read more.

That's a rather baseless charge founded on an incomplete story. We don't even know what the mother was charged/convicted of.

Don't tell me that you see a brown woman and assume there is racism involved. That's pretty racist itself.

From Ser Clegane's article (above):

Turns out Chacón owed more than $1,000 in fines for driving without a license and had a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. She said that because she isn't allowed to get a driver's license because of her undocumented status, she wasn't able to earn money to pay the fines. She had to drive, she said, to work and support her children. She said even the shoplifting charge came because, after her husband died, she was desperate and stole food to keep her children alive.

The Sheriff of that county is, likely, racist, and his deputies are involved in many violations of human and constitutional rights.

He's had newspaper founders arrested.

He's launched militaristic raids that burned down houses and crushed cars, where deputies prevented a dog from fleeing the burning house - trapping it inside as it burned to death - and the only person they caught was someone with a traffic violation (ie speeding).

His officers have grossly violated the constitution by taking documents from a lawyer defending someone in a court of law, and he's refused to punish them.

He's deputies have threatened to arrest a reporter for looking at public records. The mayor of Phoenix says:

At a luncheon in March to honor Cesar Chavez, [Phoenix Mayor Phil] Gordon said the Sheriff's Office was doing little more than locking up "brown people with broken tail lights." He reiterated the theme in a May 2008 Latino Perspectives Magazine article, writing that Arpaio has "created a 'Sanctuary County for Felons' with his reckless priorities–that target brown skin and cracked tail lights– instead of killers and drug dealers."

EDIT: Oh yeah, the jailers in the county jail also broke a paraplegic's neck by strapping him into a sort of medieval restraint chair (for six hours), after he demanded a catheter he needed. He needs surgery to remove a vertebra from his neck, and can't use his arms as he used to. They've killed another man in the same chair and severely injured numerous others.

CR

[Vladimir]

Sorry, don't buy the hype. If this guy is out of hand, that's why we have the FBI.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Um, it's not hype. It's recorded facts and actions.

CR

[Major Robert Dump]

I really liked that guy at first, what with the pink suits for the inmates and cracking down on illegals. Now I can truly say that I hope he catches a bullet.

That entire area is in cahoots with this man. He has judges, he has fire officials, he has relatives in the local media. If it weren't for the internet, which I'm sure he hates, we would know none of these hijinks.

I think it is entirely possible he is being investigated by the FBI. The Justice Department has already investigated him and he kept the results hidden until someone FOId him, and he is refusing to make the changes to the jail JD is telling him to.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Don't tell me that you see a brown woman and assume there is racism involved. That's pretty racist itself.

How so?

[InsaneApache]

His crime: possessing a gram of marijuana and calling someone an Englishman.

Now I was all ready to condemn this shire reeve and his antics but this goes beyond the pale. Calling someone an Englishman! I'm sorry he got all he deserved.

[Crazed Rabbit]

He is currently under investigation by the FBI.

He's a scumball; he uses deputies to harass, intimidate, and investigate anyone and everyone who criticizes him; judges, mayors, towns (numerous armed deputies raided one city hall after the Fire Chief complained of his racist 'crime sweeps), journalists, the Arizona Attorney General, the county manager, the county board of supervisors, lawyers, politicians, political opponents.

He's arrested and then rearrested people, after the original bogus charges were dropped, because they said they would cut his budget. This tarnishes people's reputations, requires they pay thousands in legal bills, and worse. He's using the power of the state as a personal weapon of retaliation.

CR

[Crazed Rabbit]

That sheriff is...well, going off the deep end:

# Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas filed a bizarre federal lawsuit alleging a wide-ranging conspiracy among the county’s judges and supervisors against Arpaio, Thomas, and Arpaio’s department.
# Thomas indicted two Maricopa County supervisors on corruption charges.
# Then it gets weird. Yesterday, Arpaio and Thomas criminally charged Judge Donahoe (the judge who held Arpaio’s document-swiping deputy in contempt) on bribery charges. Except there was apparently never any actual bribe. They didn’t like how Donahoe had ruled on some motions related to Arpaio’s investigation into the construction of a new tower for the county courthouse. Apparently, Donahoe’s “bribe” was merely his employment with the court system that benefits from the tower. Oh, and he’s also retiring soon.
# Bonus: The indictment documents Thomas released to the press apparently “mistakenly” included Donahoe’s home address.

And the 50 worst police brutality videos that surfaced in 2009. Some have been seen here, but most haven't.

Either way, it's a lot of scum in one blog post:
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=1489

Finally, a forum thread from a police officer forum, where cops discuss the benefits of beating the crap out of suspects they've caught.

Ya know, I believe that things have changed for the better and I do understand that some of the things we did so many years ago would get you fired, sued, and probably put in jail for but damned, it did work pretty well most of the time. Whenever my platoon went on third shift housebreaking dropped to almost nothing. It was just a given that if we caught you in a building, and we usually did, you would get an *****-whipping. Nothing really bad and never break anything, but you didn't want to get caught again!

CR

[Lemur]

Professional SF author Peter Watts gets beaten, pepper-sprayed, charged with assault and dumped in a t-shirt (no coat) on the wrong end of a snowy bridge. All in a day's work for Homeland Security! Now, naturally, the Border Patrol is pursuing criminal charges against him. Given that they haven't charged him with Assault, I'm betting he never so much as touched them.

And before you point it out, I'm fully aware that we haven't heard the officers' side of the story, and that will be important. Even better would be videotape. However, on the face of it, this looks like gross abuse.

[Fragony]

This upsets me a little, not really abuse but how can anyone be so incredibly unfair, why destroy a person just because you can? Police can't be blamed here. I hope some people will one day feel a rope around their necks and I am more than willing to pull the handle.

http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/n...l/article.html

[The Stranger]

You should read more.

That's a rather baseless charge founded on an incomplete story. We don't even know what the mother was charged/convicted of.

Don't tell me that you see a brown woman and assume there is racism involved. That's pretty racist itself.

does it matter? and if so why does it matter? lets assume she was arrested for being illegal? and the assume she was arrested for stealing, and in the last case murder. why would she have to be treated different in any of these circumstances?

[Crazed Rabbit]

There's so much stuff but updating this thread is majorly depressing.

First, a high schooler thrown in jail for seven months for recording an officer in an altercation with some other kid - he was in jail awaiting trial with $155,000 bail. He was offered a plea bargain for 32 months in jail in exchange for pleading guilty (lower than the first offer of seven years). He only gets out for Christmas because a nice Google engineer sprang for the bail bondsmen fee (10% of bail).

But the LAPD wasn't sated. On 1/26/11 they raided the kid's home with a full SWAT team to gather 'evidence' about the May 2010 recording - by taking all computers, cell phones, cameras, papers -including communications with attorneys police cannot look at.

In short, the LAPD is using gestapo tactics to put fear into those who legally defy them. They are a criminal organization.

In New Jersey some cops threaten to assault a man and throw him in jail for legally filming them in public.

The police commander from Chicago who tortured suspects and put innocent people into jail got 4.5 years - and his pension - after being convicted of perjury. The statue of limitations had expired for the torture charges because the mayor, other police, and all other authorities simply ignored that it was going on.

Cop arrests/sexually assaults a woman for talking back to him on the DC Metro:


Cops do a SWAT raid on a suspected drug user - at night, breaking into his house - (article) and end up killing him. They find him holding a golf club, and (video) shoot him down without mercy. WARNING: This video shows the man being killed.

CR

[Louis VI the Fat]

There's so much stuff but updating this thread is majorly depressing.

First, a high schooler thrown in jail for seven months for recording an officer in an altercation with some other kid - he was in jail awaiting trial with $155,000 bail. He was offered a plea bargain for 32 months in jail in exchange for pleading guilty (lower than the first offer of seven years). He only gets out for Christmas because a nice Google engineer sprang for the bail bondsmen fee (10% of bail).

But the LAPD wasn't sated. On 1/26/11 they raided the kid's home with a full SWAT team to gather 'evidence' about the May 2010 recording - by taking all computers, cell phones, cameras, papers -including communications with attorneys police cannot look at.

In short, the LAPD is using gestapo tactics to put fear into those who legally defy them. They are a criminal organization.

This is much worse than the mere sexual assaults and murders by cops, which apparantly are standard fare.

A police force that abuses it powers, its monopoly on violence, to protects its own - that's a state within a state. Authoritarianism replacing the rule of law. They are waging revolutions over exactly this sort of thing in Tunesia and Egypt right now.

[Greyblades]

Lethal force used for a raid on only one druggy? What?! This sounds like the sort of thing south park would make to make fun of smaller situations.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Greyblades: that's standard practice in the US. The war on drug users is very literal in the US. These raids occur thousands of times per state per year. Some counties use the SWAT team to serve every single warrant. They break down doors, throw flashbang grenades, come in full body armor and machine guns in the middle of the night, and generally shoot any dogs they see on sight. There are no public records available on how many raids occurred, or what warrants they were serving. People are dying so cops can play dress up and pretend they're soldiers. Except the US army doesn't act so trigger happy.

Here's a limited map of innocent people killed by such raids:


CR

[Greyblades]

But shouldn't they at least give them tazers or tear gas instead of freaking machine guns until there is confirmation of deadly weapons?

[ajaxfetish]

But shouldn't they at least give them tazers or tear gas instead of freaking machine guns until there is confirmation of deadly weapons?

I'm sure there are plenty of options for sanity. Some police departments just seem determined not to take them. Ultimately, greater police accountability (instead of policies or laws against filming police, etc.) and an end to the 'war on drugs' would probably provide the most improvement.

Ajax