An undercover cop in Houston shot a man who he claims approached his car, made terroristic threats, then reached for a gun. The man, Keith Martin, 45, says he was simply offering to clean his car. Martin survived his injuries, but is stuck in jail.
Martin, 45, survived the shooting and has since been charged with misdemeanor terroristic threat. His backpack did not contain a gun, but rather his car detailing equipment and cellphone, said his lawyer Andre Evans. Martin runs his own mobile car detailing service, Evans said.
In the statement, Evans said the shooting was “unjustified” and that the officer’s actions displayed racial bias. Martin, who is black, remains in Harris County Jail in lieu of a $2,000 bond.
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KHQ6 reports that John Rabago, a Hawaii cop accused of forcing a homeless man to lick a public urinal, plans to plead guilty on a civil rights charge. Another officer, Reginald Ramones, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge: "Ramones says Rabago convinced him not to report it."
More from the AP:
The homeless man feared he would be arrested and reluctantly obeyed Rabago’s orders, according to Ramones’ plea agreement. Rabago had previously threatened another man he was questioning by saying he wouldn’t be arrested if he stuck his head in a toilet, the document said.
Alt headline: Blue water blues for the boys in blue Read the rest
New Yorkers paid nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in 2018 to settle lawsuits filed against the New York Police Department. And that's the good news! It's down from the $335m paid out in 2017. The Daily News reports on the staggering price tag attached to New York City's notoriously violent and uncontrollable cops. The NYPD sees it a normal operating cost to be managed.
Police spokeswoman Sgt. Jessica McRorie said the reduction in claims shows the department’s ability to fight frivolous cases and provide top-of-the-line training to its officers.
“These gains represent another example of how the NYPD is building greater trust and respect with the community to collaboratively solve problems, drive down crime, and enhance public safety,” McRorie said.
Critics say the numbers in the report are not indicative of a reformed police department.
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An Orlando county Sheriff's deputy was fired on the spot after video showed him grabbing a teen girl by her hair and yanking her head backwards.
The video shows the deputy, who the agency has not publicly identified, taking a girl into custody Thursday afternoon in the parking lot of the Summerset apartments off Oak Ridge Road in south Orange, about a block from the middle school. The girl screams as the deputy pulls her head backward.
Later in the video, which has been viewed more than 45,000 times on Facebook, the deputy brandishes his baton at a crowd that gathered. Near the end of the encounter, he yells at the crowd that they are all “stupid little children."
The Sheriff's office is, however, refusing to release the deputy's name.
Asked under what exemption to Florida’s Sunshine Law the deputy’s name was being withheld, the agency acknowledged the question but did not provide an exemption or further explanation Friday.
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“This man murdered someone,” the victim's brother, Adarius Carr, said at a news conference. “He should be arrested.” Read the rest
A black woman was shot dead by a white police officer early Saturday in her own home. The officer, responding to a call from a neighbor concerned about an open door, opened fire only four seconds after seeing Atatiana Jefferson, 28 through a window. He approached the house, spotted her in the dwelling she shared with an 8-year-old nephew, shrieked instructions at her, then shot and killed her.
The clip shows police searching the perimeter of the residential property, before noticing a figure at the window. After demanding the person put their hands up, an officer then fired a shot through the glass.
The Fort Worth Police Department said in a statement that the officer, who is a white man, had "perceived a threat" when he drew his weapon.
He has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, officials added.
The undeniable fact that this is a problem of training will mask another undeniable fact: that this is another blatantly lawless execution of an innocent person in their own home by cops. Fort Worth police are already circulating crudely-edited screengrabs that appear to show there was a gun in the house--an unwielded gun posed as a rationale for killing an unarmed woman on the spot after the officer's bizarre and bungled attempt to stealthily enter her house exploded into hysterically-screamed instructions and gunfire.
To call the cops on a dark-skinned person (or anyone else they can claim to be scared by as an prelude to eager and murderous escalation, such as mentally ill people) is a death sentence. Read the rest
There will be no charges for Terrance Mercadal and Jared Robinet, the two Sacramento police officers who shot and killed an unarmed man in his own back yard.
The Sacramento Police Department also cleared the officers of any wrongdoing and is returning them to active duty.
"After a careful and thorough review into the facts surrounding the shooting, federal investigators and prosecutors determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a violation of the federal statute," the US Attorney's Office said in a statement. "Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed."
In the video above, The New York Times meticulously breaks down every moment of the fatal shooting. Clark was observed jumping over a neighbor's fence into his own yard, then killed there after this implied trespass by the two officers, who guessed he was a vandal they were looking for and didn't stop shooting until the body stopped moving.
Mercadal and Robinet failed to identify themselves as police and muted their bodycams after they killed Clark.
At 9:26 on a Sunday evening, Stephon Clark encountered two police officers. Twenty-three seconds later, they shot and killed him. We analyzed the extensive body camera and helicopter footage frame-by-frame and reviewed the autopsy report to explain what happened.
"Gun!' is what cops yell into their bodycams so they'll get away with it. But look on the bright side: without the bodycams, they'd be saving their breaths. Read the rest
Purportedly searching for a missing girl, a cop barged into a house in Carpentersville, Illinois, without a warrant and choked a teenage boy who was home alone. The attack was captured on video and the family is suing.
In video of the raid, the 16-year-old boy, who wishes to remain anonymous, was knocked off his feet by the officer, who charges through the doorway. ... As the officer's partner searches upstairs, there's more grabbing and pushing. Twice the officer grabs the boy's neck, and then he throws him on the couch again. The missing girl is not at the home, but the officers handcuff and arrest the boy, whose mother is at work.
"It was an illegal search of this home," said Keenan Saulter, attorney for the family. "It was an illegal seizure of that minor, and ultimately it was a false arrest."
The Washington Post reports that the cops arrested the boy only after he told them they were being recorded on video. Read the rest
A judge says that NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo should be fired for his “reckless” use of a banned chokehold—and for lying about it after his victim Eric Garner, an unarmed black man selling cigarettes on the street, died.
The judge, Rosemarie Maldonado, who has recommended that Officer Pantaleo be fired, concluded that he had been “untruthful” during the interview, according to the opinion that grew out of a departmental trial that ended in June.
A final decision about Officer Pantaleo’s fate rests with the police commissioner, and will come five years after the death of Mr. Garner — who uttered “I can’t breathe” 11 times — first galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement
Pictured here is Eric with his family. Read the rest
U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday said they will not charge an N.Y.P.D. officer in the death of Eric Garner, whose final words, "I can't breathe," inspired national protests against the unpunished police killings of Black people in America. Read the rest
Two officers at Cuyahoga Country Jail were filmed beating up a man strapped into to a restraint chair, and the video was released to the media. Nicholas Evans and Timothy Dugan are each charged with felonious assault, unlawful restraint, and interfering with civil rights. Evans also tampered with the evidence, prosecutors say, when he turned off his bodycam to prevent it recording the beating.
wall camera footage was released to News 5 – it clearly shows both officers punching the inmate repeatedly in the head as he sits in a restraint chair with both his arms bound with his mouth covered. The video shows the officers speaking to the inmate, but audio was not recorded.
The indictments allege that Evans and Dugan left the inmate in the restraint chair for over two hours after beating him, instead of immediately transporting him to medical.
Be warned: the video depicts a brutal attack on a man who cannot even raise his hands to shield his face. The machine-vision quality mades it particularly disturbing. Read the rest
Three cops in New Jersey were filmed repeatedly punching a teen in the face. They demand he rolls over onto his stomach while clearly pinning him on his back, as they beat him for "resisting".
Early Sunday morning, police attempted to restrain Cyprian Luke, 19, outside a convenience store. Video recorded by someone with Luke at the time shows the police pinning him down and punching him, with one officer putting his hand around Luke's throat.
The officers are seen on camera demanding Luke, who was on his back, roll onto his stomach, while one officer had his knee on Luke's stomach.
One of the cops involved, Sgt. Michael Pier, has a reputation for similar violence, with the city paying off an earlier victim after a 2015 incident.
Punishing prisoners for following orders, or for being unable to due to their restraints, is undeniably malicious. But consider too how bad at their jobs the officers must be to get themselves into the situation here, punching a teenager over and over in the face until he is blooded and semi-conscious. Surely even the authoritarians would prefer their agents of order be less chaotically incompetent?
The trend toward bare-knuckle violence is a reminder that you can't fix cops with cameras or use-of-weapons policies. They'll just find the least accountable method to do what they want, and then do it all the same. Read the rest
After a raid in Miami, police Sgt. Manuel Regueiro approached and punched an 18-year-old cuffed suspect in the face. The victim warned the officers they were being filmed by the home security system. So officer Alex Gonzalez stole the evidence. But he had in fact taken the system's battery, and now both officers are being charged with crimes.
Regueiro for misdemeanor battery ... Gonzalez with tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, and misdemeanor petty theft.
“Shameful we have to take these actions,” the department’s director, Juan Perez, said in a Tuesday tweet. “However, any officer violating the law will face the consequences, including arrest and prosecution.”
Consider in silence how ignorant of modern technology you'd have to be to think that a modern surveillance camera's battery was a tape. Read the rest
“Overkill is an understatement,” the family’s lawyer said.
Zandrea Askew (28), a Marine Corps veteran, was detained by an Illinois sheriff's department on charges of driving under the influence and resisting arrest. She is now suing the department for forcibly stripping her naked, violently pulling her hair, and leaving her naked on the floor for 12 hours. (The charges against her were dismissed.)
From ABC News:
The lawsuit claims several officers then slammed Askew to the ground and physically restrained her, causing bodily harm. They "forcibly and maliciously stripped" all of her clothes and undergarments from her body and "violently pulled" her hair, causing further pain and injury, according to the complaint.
"There was no legitimate or necessary law enforcement, safety or penological objective to forcibly stripping [Askew] of her clothing. The only objective of the officers was to punish, harass, humiliate, degrade, and inflict physical and psychological pain," the lawsuit states. "The officers’ conduct in stripping [Askew] of her clothing was intentionally demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, embarrassing and degrading."
The department had previously settled lawsuits filed by women who say they were forcibly strip-searched.
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"Horrific" CCTV footage shows a group of Aussie cops savagely beating a teen with autism, and the resulting outrage is drawing attention to the country's worsening reputation for police brutality.
In another case, Victoria police beat up a teenager who had ridden his scooter in front a police car, claiming that the baby-faced kid was the middle-aged, bearded car thief they were unable to find.
Tommy Lovett was riding by a police car on his scooter when he was wrongly arrested. ... Documents obtained by The Age reportedly support Mr Lovett’s claim that he was hurled into a fence, assaulted while handcuffed and capsicum sprayed — leaving his body bruised, grazed and bleeding. Victoria Police vehemently denied the claims and an internal investigation found nothing wrong with Mr Lovett’s arrest. However, a human rights lawyer who spoke to 7.30 said the cases — including one where a Melbourne doctor claims police threw her to the ground and punched her in the head — outlined in the investigation are alarming.
“These cases keep going on,” he said. “There’s clearly cultural systemic issues at work."
More footage shows another Aussie cop attacking a disabled senior.
A Victorian policeman retained his job and rank despite being caught on CCTV assaulting a drunk disability pensioner at Geelong Police Station.
Read the rest
Tyler Barriss, a serial hoaxer whose SWATting calls to 911 we've covered before, is off to jail. He'll serve at least 20 years, according to his plea deal, but won't be sentenced until January.
A California man has admitted making a hoax call that ultimately led police to fatally shoot a Kansas man following a dispute between online gamers over $1.50 bet in a Call of Duty WWII video game.
Twenty-six-year-old Tyler R. Barriss pleaded guilty to making a false report resulting in a death, cyberstalking and conspiracy related to the deadly swatting case in the Kansas. The deal with prosecutors will send him to prison for at least 20 years, if the judge accepts it. He had previously pleaded not guilty in Kansas.
28-year-old Wichita, Kansas father of two, Andrew Finch, was killed by local police in 2017 after Barriss apparently took a $1.50 in-game bet to call them on him.
Vile as he is, Barriss is just a trigger: the bomb is police enthusiasm for deadly violence on the slightest pretext. Prosecutors refused to charge Justin Rapp, the cop who actually killed Finch, though his department faces a lawsuit from his family. Read the rest
