Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry declined to criminally charge the two white Baton Rouge police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, in July 2016 outside a convenience store, according to Sterling's family. Veda Washington-Abusaleh, Sterling's aunt, confirmed that Landry will announce Tuesday he will not charge the officers. The family met with Landry at his office ahead of a 10 a.m. news conference to announce his decision.

Landry's holding a press conference right now; the thrust of his excuses are as follows: because Sterling was resisting arrest, the cop experienced subjective fear, and someone said there might be a gun, it was ok to "incapacitate Mr. Sterling" by shooting him in the back while pinned on the ground. (Video later proved that Sterling didn't reach for the concealed gun he owned) Key facts:

• If they're afraid, they can kill you. • If you resist arrest, they can kill you. • If someone says there's a gun, they can kill you. • Guns are for whites. Read the rest

Leaked footage of a police officer repeatedly punching a pedestrian led to charges for Christopher Hickman, the Asheville, NC cop who also lost his job after the attack on August 24 last year. Hickman claimed that Johnnie Jermaine Rush was jaywalking and had assaulted him when challenged, but bodycam video showed a more sinister incident in which Hickman, who is white, told his black victim "you are going to get fucked up hard core", chokes him, repeatedly strikes his head with his fist, then tases him.

"I beat the shit out of his head," Hickman says on the recording. "Not gonna lie about that."

The police chief, Tammy Hooper, has also offered to resign.

Police said they plan to present an investigation into whether Hickman’s actions against Rush were criminal to the district attorney next week.

“This is a human rights issue, and Hickman should’ve been charged from day one,” local Black Lives Matter leader DeLores Venable said during Wednesday’s meeting, per the Citizen-Times report. “If no one would’ve leaked it or said something, we would be in the dark.”

Hooper issued a public apology March 1, saying, “The acts demonstrated in this video are unacceptable and contrary to the department’s vision and the progress we have made in the last several years in improving community trust.”

Jaywalking is a ridiculous crime to begin with, but "jaywalking" in the dead of night on an empty road in Asheville? No wonder people were curious about the circumstances of the arrest, and no wonder the footage had to be leaked before the public saw it. Read the rest

Remember the story about the two NYPD narcotics detectives -- Eddie Martins and Richard Hall -- who said a teen girl they handcuffed and put into an unmarked van "consented" to have sex with them? Her lawyer said that when she went to the hospital, nine NYPD officers went into her room and tried to intimidate her into not pressing rape charges against the officers.

From Huffington Post:

“Nine cops came initially from the 60th Precinct and then another four or five from another precinct,” [lawyer Micheal] David said. “They were basically trying to intimidate [victim Anna Chambers (a pseudonym)] and her mother ... to get them to say it wasn’t cops.”

David said he only learned of the alleged intimidation attempt earlier this month during a meeting with Chambers’ mother. She mentioned that cops had “bullied” them at the hospital on the night of the assault, he said.

According to David, the group of officers interrogated Chambers and her mother after the hospital had filed a report about the rape allegation with the police. One cop spoke to Chambers’ mother in Russian, her native language, and allegedly told her that Chambers often filed complaints against police. But David said his client had “never” filed a complaint ― until that day.

When the victim and her mother refused to back down, Detective Martins and Detective Hall decided to slut shame and victim blame the girl. From the Kansas City Star:

Martins and Hall allegedly tried to attack the woman’s credibility by pointing out her raunchy social media posts and a $50 million claim against the city.

Two NYPD plainclothes detectives and their supervisor have been placed on "modified duty" pending an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation into claims that they handcuffed and raped a teenager in a police department van.

In their defense, Brooklyn South Narcotics Detectives Edward Martins and Richard Hall are claiming the girl happily consented to having sex with them after she'd been handcuffed, kidnapped, thrown in a van, and taken to a deserted spot.

From The New York Times:

The detectives searched the occupants of the car for drugs, [the woman’s lawyer, Michael David] said, and demanded that the woman lift her shirt. “They said, ‘We want to make sure there is nothing under there, so show it,’” Mr. David said, recounting his client’s account. “She was petrified, so she showed it. She said, ‘See, I’m not hiding anything.’”

Immediately after, the woman was ordered out of the car, placed in handcuffs and put into the back seat of the detectives’ black Dodge van, Mr. David said. She was told she would be driven to the 60th Precinct, about a mile and a half from the park.

Instead, the lawyer said, the detectives drove to a parking lot of a nearby Chipotle restaurant, where she said they raped her.

The woman remained handcuffed during the entire ordeal, her lawyer said.

About 45 minutes after she was handcuffed, the woman said she was shoved out of the van not far from the 60th Precinct, Mr. David said. The woman contacted her mother, who took her to Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

The Catalonian referendum on independence from Spain went ahead today, using the backup ballot boxes the opposition had secretly procured in anticipation of the brutal crackdown on the independence movement by the central government in Madrid, which included snatching elected officials and seizing ballot boxes. Read the rest

Oklahoma City police shot dead a deaf man who refused to obey shouted orders to put down a "metal pipe". The tuesday night killing of Magdiel Sanchez, NPR reports, happened despite the officers being told he was deaf.

Officers were responding to a hit-and-run accident around 8:15 p.m., Capt. Bo Mathews, the police department's public information officer, told reporters Wednesday. A witness of the accident told police a vehicle involved went to a nearby address. Lt. Matthew Lindsey arrived at the address and encountered 35-year-old Magdiel Sanchez, who was on the porch holding a 2-foot metal pipe with a leather loop in his right hand. Lindsey called for backup and Sgt. Christopher Barnes arrived.

"The witnesses also were yelling that this person, Mr. Sanchez, was deaf and could not hear. The officers didn't know this at the time," Mathews said. Both officers fired their weapons at the same time when Sanchez was about 15 feet away from them; more than one shot was fired, the police captain said. Emergency Medical Services Authority personnel pronounced Sanchez dead at the scene.

"Threat" is an interesting word. A man with a pipe standing 15 feet from you on his goddamn porch is maybe a "threat" to men armed with guns, but he's not a danger to them. But it's not really about threat or danger, except insafar as those things excuse other things.

It's about being trained to see yourself as a warrior at war with the public. It's about being trained to escalate to lethal force at the first sign of armed noncompliance. Read the rest

Georgia Tech student Scout Shultz refused to put down a closed multitool and walked toward cops, daring them to shoot. So they did.

Preliminary information indicates that GTPD received a 911 call of a person with a knife and a gun at approximately 11:17 p.m. on Saturday, September 16, 2017. Officers arrived and made contact with Shultz who was armed with a knife. Officers provided multiple verbal commands and attempted to speak with Shultz who was not cooperative and would not comply with the officers’ commands. Shultz continued to advance on the officers with the knife. Subsequently, one officer fired striking Shultz. Shultz was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital where he died.

A video of the killing was made from a nearby building; another angle (embedded below) captures the officers' attempts to negotiate with Shultz. Both are disturbing and depict Shultz's death.

"Come on, man, drop the knife," one officer orders at the beginning of the first video that appears to show the shooting. "Come on, let's drop it," another officer echoes.

"Shoot me!" someone who appears to be Schultz responds. The officers continue to order the student to drop the knife. "Nobody wants to hurt you, man," an officer says. Near the end of the footage, an officer again demands: "Drop it!" apparently at the same time as a shot is fired at Schultz.

Shultz was the president of the college's Pride Alliance.

Shultz made a prior suicide attempt, years earlier, and suffered from depression; "Suicide by cop", people are saying, though the family's lawyer denies it. Read the rest

Cobb County Lt. Greg Abbot pulled over a car in July 2016, on suspicion of DUI. The white driver tells him she's afraid of being shot. He tells her:

“But you’re not black,” he interrupted. “Remember, we only kill black people. Yeah, we only kill black people, right? All the videos you’ve seen, have you seen black people get killed? You have.”

A cynic might be tempted to remark that he's not wrong, but U.S. police kill white people — they just kill black people in disproportionate numbers, because they are racist as well as violent. Read the rest

In dashcam video posted by the ACLU, police officer Joe Joswiak pulls over Anthony Promvongsa, driving a dark SUV. Joswiak immediately approaches the vehicle screaming "get out of the car motherfucker!", with his gun drawn and posed sideways. Then he starts pounding and kicking at Promvongsa through the open car door — before Promvongsa seems to have a chance to do anything.

Read the rest

Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted Friday after killing Philando Castile last July. Castile, unarmed, had disclosed to Yanez that he was a legal owner of a concealed-carry firearm as he reached for his driver's license, as Yanez had requested. Yanez shot him seven times in front of his wife and child, later claiming that the smell of marijuana, and his inability to see what Castile was reaching for, justified the killing. Viewers watched the aftermath on Facebook Live, broadcast by Castile's distraught wife. The Star-Tribune synchronized and superimposed the two videos — only the dashcam footage is embedded above.

Tyrone Terrill, president of the African-American Leadership Council, said the video could further widen the gap in community-police relations.

"No, no, no," Terrill said minutes after viewing the video. "You don't have to remain calm on this one. You have a right to be outraged. You have a right to be angry. And I would be disappointed if you weren't outraged, if you weren't angry. It raises the question — how will you ever get a guilty verdict?"

unbelievable. #PhilandoCastillehttps://t.co/UXmTOzEEie

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 20, 2017

He said he tried to point the gun away from the little girl in the back seat. He heard her screaming. "I acknowledged the little girl first because I wanted her to be safe."

Yanez attended a training course that teaches cops to think like "bulletproof warriors", to shoot without a second thought, and that the rush of killing people leads to "the best sex of their lives"

In the class recorded for “Do Not Resist,” Grossman at one point tells his students that the sex they have after they kill another human being will be the best sex of their lives.

A lawsuit is underway in Worth County, Georgia, where Sheriff Jeff Hobby is defending a mass-frisking of 900 high school students, performed in public without warrant or even the pretense of probable cause, during which cops reportedly manipulated student's breasts, inserted fingers inside bras, exposed bare breasts and reached into underwear and cupped and groped kids' genitals. This ostentatious display of power, by cops armed with guns and dogs, was supposedly a drug search. No drugs were found. Not a scrap.

[Interim Worth County Superintendent Lawrence] Walters said in March Sheriff Jeff Hobby told him his department was going to do a drug search at the school after spring break.

"We did not give permission but they didn't as for permission, he just said, the sheriff, that he was going to do it after spring break," said Walters. "Under no circumstances did we approve touching any students," explained Walters. ...

In the student handbook it says school officials may search a student if there is reasonable suspicion the student has an illegal item. Hobby says he was able to search every student, simply because he had an administrator with him.

The intimidatory purpose of this unconstitutional search is made disgustingly clear by the sexualized quality of the touching, as reported by the victims and their parents. From the lawsuit:

The purported justification for the mass search was to discover drugs. To that end, Sheriff Hobby had a list of thirteen students on a “target list” that he suspected of possessing drugs.

An off-duty cop got into a fight with a group of children who walked on his lawn, dragged a 13-year-old unarmed boy into his yard, pulled his firearm, then fired a shot. Thankfully, he missed. The incident in Anaheim, California, was captured on camera and has already led to protests.

Christian alleged in the video that the off-duty cop called a girl a "cunt" when telling her to get off his property, and then tackled him first when he stood up for her.

The verbal exchanges led to the off-duty cop dragging the kid towards some bushes. It's unclear from the tape if he ever identified himself as a police officer. "I'd understand if you were a cop, but you're not a cop," Christian told the off-duty officer at one point during the video. One teen came in to shove the man over the bushes after the impasse. Another took a swing but missed. That's when the off-duty cop reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun. The surrounding youth started backing off—and then a shot rang out.

The kid was charged with battery on an officer. KTLA has other footage.

The officer responds that the teen had said he was going to shoot him, and the teen denies that, saying, “I didn’t say that. Why you lying? I said, 'I’m going to sue you.'”

Then the pair tell each other to “get your hands off me.”

“I’m only like 13,” the teen says.

In this video a former sex worker describes what happened when an undercover officer had sex with her in an attempt to arrest her for prostitution. Shockingly, it's "not uncommon for police to have sexual contact with sex workers before arresting them for prostitution," says Tara Burns, who has started a petition to end this barbaric practice. "This is actually state-sponsored rape, and it's perfectly legal in Alaska."

Over 2,000 people have signed it so far. Read the rest

Fox News reports that kids watched as a Wynnewood, Oklahoma police officer used a high-powered rifle, retrieved from his vehicle, to kill a dog after it "lunged at him" when he entered their gated, fenced property searching for someone who had not lived there in a decade.

The police chief said the officer was serving a warrant, which gave him legal authority to be on the private property. However, the Malones said they were never shown any warrant. They were only told the officer was looking for someone who had listed that address as his ten years ago...

“I respect what the police do, but this was senseless, but he didn’t show any remorse and didn’t even act like he was sorry or anything,” Malone told FOX 25.

The Malones believe the death of their dog could have been avoided either by the use of less-lethal force or by fact checking on the warrant.

The Wynnewood cops have already been caught in a lie: the chief claims the dog was shot "coming around the house" to attack the officer, but video shows that the dog was killed behind a closed gate in an expansive, open yard. "The police chief said he hasn't seen the video," reports Fox. "He said 'His officers have every right to shoot dogs if they feel in danger.'"

The first rule of modern U.S. police training is that you are a soldier. The second rule is kill the dogs. Read the rest

Fresno cops pulled over Dylan Noble, an unarmed 19-year-old, and shot him because he failed to comply with orders to get on the ground. Then they approached him as he lay squirming on the asphalt, and executed him with a shotgun. The pretext: his continued failure to put his hands where they could see them.

California police were looking for a man in camouflage walking down the street carrying a rifle when they decided to pull over a man in a truck who was not wearing camouflage and not carrying a rifle.

An unarmed man named Dylan Noble whom Fresno police shot and killed anyway.

Today, after viewing body cam footage of the shooting, Noble’s family filed a claim to sue the Fresno Police Department, stating that they had no justifiable reason to shoot the 19-year-old man on June 25.

Fresno's police chief, Jerry Dyer, was unable to explain to CNN why his officers killed Noble.

"I do not have the answer for that today," Dyer told reporters in the central California city of 520,000 people. An internal affairs investigation will look into whether police procedures were followed and whether there were other options. A review by the district attorney will determine whether the two Fresno police officers should be criminally charged. "We're shocked and appalled that the city of Fresno would continue to defend the actions of its officers," said Stuart Chandler, an attorney for Veronica Noble, Dylan's mother. "Clearly the only appropriate response is to accept responsibility and commit to changing practices of the police department."

The National Rifle Association has been silent after Wednesday’s police killing of Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man who had a conceal carry gun license, and whose legal right to that weapon played a key role in his death.

Read the rest

In his police report, officer Robert Cooper claims he was "barely able to get out of the way" as a teen driver tried to run him over, forcing him to shoot into a moving vehicle. But his own dashcam footage made a liar of him.

A police video released Thursday by the State Law Enforcement Division of the May 19 shooting of a motorist by a Forest Acres police officer shows the officer firing seven shots into a slow-moving car as the motorist began to drive away.

“Stop! Stop! Do not make me shoot you!” yells the officer, who is on foot in front of the vehicle with his weapon drawn and pointed at the car’s windshield. The driver is inside a small sedan and is the car’s only occupant.

The officer fires seven shots, rapidly and from a close distance – perhaps less than 10 feet away – as the car moves slowly, turns toward the officer and then appears to try to go around the officer. The motorist then pulls away from the scene and moves out of range of the officer’s dash-cam, which recorded the event.

The "don't make me shoot" line (like "stop resisting") is key to understanding the problem with cops in America: a device to justify escalating confrontations as fast as possible to violence. Forest Acres is giving officer Cooper a paid vacation during its investigation. Read the rest