Category: Law Enforcement Misconduct

What Does a Cop Have to Do to Get Fired?

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A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.

Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.

The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.

………

“This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.

………

Middlebrooks, 33, made the threatening comments to Bias’s brother-in-law during a May 2013 encounter at his home, which Bias was visiting. Police came to the home after they discovered an unleashed dog.

A lawsuit from Bias that the city paid to settle before it reached court stated that while Bias remained inside the house and out of earshot, the officer remarked to Bias’s brother-in-law, who is white, that he was tired of “that nigger” being released from jail.

………

The officer did say he had been cleared by a state inquiry into the incident and referred the Guardian to the state bureau of investigation (SBI) and Larkin Radney, the city attorney for Alexander City. A spokesman for the SBI, however, said: “We have no record of us investigating this case.” Radney said: “I really don’t know what he’s talking about.”


During the interview at his office, Robinson said Middlebrooks “was disciplined” when the recording came to light, but declined to elaborate. Asked if the officer was ever suspended from patrols, Robinson repeated: “He got disciplined.” When it was put to him that some agencies might have terminated the officer’s job, the police chief said: “I don’t know what other departments do, but I made that call, and I’m going to live with that.”

Robinson tried to stress that Middlebrooks was in fact proposing that the brother-in-law carry out the killing. “He wasn’t saying that he was going to do that,” said the police chief. “He was talking about the man doing it himself.”

So a criminal conspiracy to commit murder under the color of law is not a grounds to fire this thug?

Finally, a White Prosecutor Indicts a Cop for Murder under the Color of Law

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Warning: This is a video of a police officer shooting a man in the head without provocation

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been indicted for felony murder:

A white police officer who gunned down an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been indicted for murder by a grand jury, as the county prosecutor described the shooting as the “most asinine act” he had ever seen committed by a police officer.

Samuel DuBose, 43, was killed on 19 July by a single shot to the head fired by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a routine traffic stop, in which DuBose was pulled over for not having a front license plate.

Tensing had maintained he was “dragged” by Dubose’s vehicle after the two entered into a physical altercation and was forced to shoot, but Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said body-camera evidence completely contradicted this account.

In a frank assessment of the officer’s conduct, Deters said Tensing had “purposely killed” DuBose and that he “should never have been a police officer”.

………

Deters, who was visibly angered at points during the press conference, continued: “He [Tensing] wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, OK? He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop, all right? And – I could use harsher words.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he added. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.” Deters also said the death reflected poorly on the university police department and had advised Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell that the force be disbanded and replaced with a new city police precinct on campus.

If the university police department, it would be a good thing, because it’s not just this guy, two of his fellow officers obstructed justice to protect him:

Police officers in Cincinnati appear to have corroborated a false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a detailed analysis of body-camera video released on Wednesday shows.

………

A Guardian analysis of the nearly 28 minutes worth of Tensing’s body-camera footage released by the prosecutor’s office also shows the aftermath of the shooting and reveals that on three occasions, two other police officers repeat Tensing’s account that he was dragged by DuBose, and one of these officers claims to have witnessed it occurring.

Tensing repeats, multiple times throughout the footage, the claim that he was dragged by DuBose’s vehicle. But at five minutes and 44 seconds into the video, he states: “I think I’m OK. He was just dragging me.”

To which a second officer, who stands out of the frame, replies: “Yeah, I saw that.”

Tensing continues: “I thought I was going to get run over. I was trying to stop him.”

Then, at six minutes and 54 seconds into the footage, while Tensing is seemingly conversing with the same officer, he states: “He was dragging me, man.”

The officer replies, “Yeah.” To which Tensing continues: “I got my hand and my arm caught inside.” The officer then replies, “Yeah, I saw that.”

………

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office did not reply to a question from the Guardian after Deter’s press conference over whether any other officers were being investigated in relation the incident.

The officers engaged in felony conspiracy, indict them as well.

We need to go zero-tolerance/broken window on this sh%$.

Just When I Thought That My Outrage Meter Could Handle It………

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I discover that a former cop tried to conduct a Minstrel Show to fundraise for the cops indicted in the death of Freddie Gray:

A Glen Burnie venue on Wednesday abruptly canceled a planned fundraiser for the six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray after the scheduled entertainment — a former Baltimore officer singing in blackface — drew sharp criticism.

Bobby Berger, 67, who was fired from the city police force in the 1980s after his off-duty performances in blackface drew the ire of the NAACP, had said he wanted to revive the act to help the families of the officers.

He said he had sold 600 tickets at $45 each to the bull roast scheduled for Nov. 1 at Michael’s Eighth Avenue, where he and several singers planned to perform as guests dined.

In his performances, Berger impersonates Al Jolson, a white entertainer from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s best remembered for his blackface performance of “Mammy” in the film “The Jazz Singer.”

But after news of the event began spreading Wednesday, Michael’s posted a statement on its website saying the event would not be held there.

“No contract was signed with Mr. Berger,” the venue wrote. “Michael’s does not condone blackface performances of any kind. As an event venue, it has not been the practice of Michael’s Eighth Avenue to pre-approve entertainment that is planned as part of a contracted event. This policy will be carefully and thoughtfully reviewed.”

Berger’s plans drew criticism earlier in the day from the NAACP, the city police union and an attorney representing one of the officers charged in the Gray case.

………

Michael Davey, an attorney who works with the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said the union was unaware of the event.

“We don’t endorse it. We do not support it, and we will accept no funds from anything involving this event,” Davey said.

The police union issued a statement Wednesday saying it has “much respect” for Berger and another retired officer organizing the event but does not condone “any performance representing the iconic racist figure that is Al Jolson” or any fundraising for the officers that does not come directly through the union.

When you have the f%$#ing police union saying that they won’t have anything to do with a fundraiser for indicted cops, you clearly have a problem with race.

The human race never ceases to amaze me.

Google’s New Motto: “Be Evil”

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The search company is now hiring private goons to harass homeless on public streets near their new offices in Los Angeles: (link temporarily public)

How does Google, one of the most cash-rich and innovative companies in the world, propose to deal with the issue of homelessness in America? What’s its 21st century, New Economy solution to disrupt and solve this difficult socio-economic problem once and for all?

 In Los Angeles, the company’s fix is brilliantly simple: Hire private security to harass and push the homeless out of sight, and then make sure that the smelly bastards and their tents and carts never come back.

 I have seen this solution in action myself. I live just around the corner from Google’s new campus in Venice, LA — two big properties located right off the beach, smack in the middle of Venice’s tiny Skid Row. Los Angeles is in the grips of a homeless population explosion, with an increase of 12 percent just in the last year. And this small two-square-block area used to be one of the last places where homeless people were somewhat tolerated around these parts.

 But not any more — not after Google decided to claim sidewalks for itself and cranked up aggressive security patrols in order to drive away the local homeless population.

 “Me and my girlfriend got maced by doing nothing,” a man named “Cory” [not his real name] tells me. He has steely blue eyes and shaggy hair, and looks more like an aging surfer than someone who sleeps rough on the streets. He recounts a recent experience he claims to have had with a Google security guard while sitting on a public sidewalk near the company’s campus.

 “He wanted us to leave. I had water in both hands so I couldn’t attack. And we’re like, ‘what the f%$#, man?’ And he was just like, pshhhhh,” he continues, reenacting the hissing sound of the mace spray can and explaining that they were given no time to leave or react in any way. “My girlfriend didn’t want to be there. Actually she was terrified of them. Every time Google security came, she said ‘we gotta go, we gotta go.’ We’re not allowed to be on public sidewalks, even though we’re the public.”

 I’m talking to him on a sidewalk in the shade of a small tree on 3rd Avenue, which runs between a self-storage business and the backside of Google’s newest property, a giant warehouse that’s currently being remodeled into an expansive new Google office space.

 ………

 “We running a business here. Can’t have homeless people out here like that. We got geeks. They’re scaring folks.”

 That’s what I was told — firsthand, no hearsay — by a Google security guard who was patrolling the perimeter. It was a chilly Los Angeles evening in mid-February, and the security guard wore a fleece and baseball cap emblazoned with the cheery Google logo. A Google employee badge dangled at his belt.

 The reason he was speaking so freely is that I hadn’t mentioned I was a member of the press — largely because, that evening at least, I wasn’t. I was just another Venice area local, on my way home from the gym, who had stopped to chat to the guard. I certainly hadn’t expected him to so candidly explain how Google employees — and especially Google executives — were freaked out by the homeless people outside its walls. So freaked out that he was hired on as part of a beefed up security presence aimed at clearing the public street that bisects Google’s two properties of any homeless presence.

 ………

 Google’s no homeless on the sidewalk policy may make sense for the company. The catch is that the sidewalks don’t belong to Google: they’re public property, and a federal court had mandated that Los Angeles allow people to sleep there between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am, as long as they leave a little room for foot traffic and don’t block any doors or driveways. This restriction is part of a settlement that has been in place since 2007, and neither police nor a corporate giant like Google has the legal right to determine who can or cannot sleep on any given chunk of sidewalk in LA.

 ………

 “From the point of view of low-income, African-American, and Latino residents of Venice — what does Google mean to us? Pretty much all bad news,” said Bill Przylucki, who heads People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER), a community organization in West Los Angeles. “They are gonna displace other type of businesses that do pay taxes — they are gonna get tax breaks. That means less money for the local park, the library, the public services that we rely on. They are not gonna provide jobs to our folks. Our folks are not the people they are gonna be hiring. They are gonna drive up rents, put more pressure on our folks, and put more pressure on landlords to displace our members through evictions and demolitions.”

 Przylucki says POWER approached Google to see if the company would use its influence and sheer star power to push for low-income housing in Venice and Los Angeles, and to fight against the criminalization of poverty in their neighborhood. But their attempts at cooperation went nowhere.

 “They have a shitload of power,” says Przylucki. “But they didn’t show any interest whatsoever in working with that side of the community. And that silence is deafening in terms of their position.”

 Google was more than just silent: Community organizations discovered that Google was almost impossible to reach or talk to in any meaningful way on a local level. The company was so centralized and opaque — and so deaf to local requests — that activists say they’ve had more success in getting giant banks and subprime lenders like Countrywide Financial to address community concerns than they’ve had in talking to Google.

This last bit is not surprising, actually.

Google has, as a matter of policy, has made it impossible to reach an actual human being in all of its other endeavors, so being unresponsive to community groups is not a surprise.

The last two paragraphs say it all:

Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin like to talk about how they want to leverage their company’s resources and immense talent pool to change the world for the better. The company wants to bring Internet connections to the poorest communities around the world and funds efforts to combat human trafficking and gender inequality.

 But when confronted at its doorstep with a real societal challenge like homelessness — an issue that truly requires innovation, investment, public service, and political maneuvering — the company simply reverts to the cheapest and meanest solution on the books: hire thugs to push the problem out of sight and force other people deal with it.

This is Not a Surprise

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In rather unsurprising news, leaked autopsy results reveals that Freddie Gray’s death was caused by a “high energy blow” during his ride in a paddy wagon:

Freddie Gray suffered a single “high-energy injury” to his neck and spine — most likely caused when the police van in which he was riding suddenly decelerated, according to a copy of the autopsy report obtained by The Baltimore Sun.

 The state medical examiner’s office concluded that Gray’s death could not be ruled an accident, and was instead a homicide, because officers failed to follow safety procedures “through acts of omission.”

 Though Gray was loaded into the van on his belly, the medical examiner surmised that he may have gotten to his feet and was thrown into the wall during an abrupt change in direction. He was not belted in, but his wrists and ankles were shackled, putting him “at risk for an unsupported fall during acceleration or deceleration of the van.”

 The medical examiner compared Gray’s injury to those seen in shallow-water diving incidents.

In related news, the Prosecutors have moved to have the evidence sealed, or to have all the evidence posted online:

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby wants a judge to block defense attorneys from selectively releasing evidence in the Freddie Gray case — or facilitate an agreement between the two sides to post all of the evidence online in one fell swoop.

In an unusual Circuit Court filing this week, Mosby’s office requested a protective order barring defense attorneys for the six Baltimore police officers charged in Gray’s arrest and death from releasing any of the evidence due to them June 26 through court discovery, including Gray’s autopsy.

Absent that order, however, prosecutors said in the filing they would rather accept a deal to post all of the evidence online than “remain silent” — as is required of them by law — while defense attorneys leak evidence that suits their needs, which Mosby’s office said they are inclined to do.

“Indeed, if the Defendants were to consent and the court would so order, the State would have no objection to posting the entire autopsy report on the internet, along with all of the discovery in the case,” the prosecutors wrote. “Defendants, however, want to have it both ways. They want the freedom to publicize selected aspects of the discovery, while requiring the State to follow the law that prevents comments in order to ensure a fair trial.”

It was unclear whether the suggestion in the court filing was a rhetorical device or if the defense attorneys would consider the offer. Both the state’s attorney’s office and defense attorneys for the accused officers declined to comment on the motion Tuesday.

The motion to seal the evidence is not surprising, but the motion to release all the evidence is highly unusual:

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby wants a judge to block defense attorneys from selectively releasing evidence in the Freddie Gray case — or facilitate an agreement between the two sides to post all of the evidence online in one fell swoop.

In an unusual Circuit Court filing this week, Mosby’s office requested a protective order barring defense attorneys for the six Baltimore police officers charged in Gray’s arrest and death from releasing any of the evidence due to them June 26 through court discovery, including Gray’s autopsy.

Absent that order, however, prosecutors said in the filing they would rather accept a deal to post all of the evidence online than “remain silent” — as is required of them by law — while defense attorneys leak evidence that suits their needs, which Mosby’s office said they are inclined to do.

“Indeed, if the Defendants were to consent and the court would so order, the State would have no objection to posting the entire autopsy report on the internet, along with all of the discovery in the case,” the prosecutors wrote. “Defendants, however, want to have it both ways. They want the freedom to publicize selected aspects of the discovery, while requiring the State to follow the law that prevents comments in order to ensure a fair trial.”

It was unclear whether the suggestion in the court filing was a rhetorical device or if the defense attorneys would consider the offer. Both the state’s attorney’s office and defense attorneys for the accused officers declined to comment on the motion Tuesday.

My guess here is that they the 2nd proposal is about appearing to be reasonable, even if the alternate proposal is unreasonable on a lot of levels.

My guess is that the prosecutors are (rightly) concerned that the defense will taint the jury pool, and they want to prevent this, because if the trial gets moved to the Eastern Shore or Fredrick, or Hagerstown, she will be forced to deal with a jury that is hostile to the the residents of Baltimore City (i.e. black people), and deeply dubious of any accusations of law enforcement misconduct.

It would be a nightmare scenario for the prosecution.

Cleveland Prosecutors and Police Just Got Served

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On Monday, I noted that communities in Cleveland had used a peculiarity in Ohio law to ask a judge to file charges against the two police involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice.

Well, the judge has ruled that there is probable cause to file charges, but that he cannot actually file the charges:

A judge in Cleveland ruled Thursday that probable cause existed to charge two Cleveland police officers in the death of a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, but the judge also said he did not have the power to order arrests without a complaint being filed by a prosecutor.

In his ruling, Judge Ronald B. Adrine, presiding judge of the Municipal Court, found probable cause to charge Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shot, with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and dereliction of duty. He also found probable cause to charge Officer Loehmann’s partner, Officer Frank Garmback, with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty.

“This court determines that complaints should be filed by the prosecutor of the City of Cleveland and/or the Cuyahoga County prosecutor,” Judge Adrine wrote.

The shooting of Tamir last Nov. 22 was one of a series of killings of unarmed black males by police officers around the country that have prompted widespread protests and calls for reform in race relations and the use of force by officers. The county prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, has been handling the case, and although Judge Adrine’s ruling is not binding, it puts added pressure on Mr. McGinty in a closely scrutinized case.

Mr. McGinty released a terse statement indicating that he would not be rushed into filing a criminal complaint.

………

This week, a group of activists and community leaders asked the court to have the officers arrested under an Ohio law that allows “a private citizen having knowledge of the facts” to start the process by filing an affidavit with a court. They argued that the widely seen video of an officer killing Tamir had given nearly everyone “knowledge of the facts.”

The Ohio law, in effect in various forms since 1960, is unusual and rarely invoked, and lawyers have disagreed about what might be achieved by using it.

………

The Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office conducted a five-month investigation and handed its findings to Mr. McGinty’s office early this month, but they have not been made public, and Mr. McGinty said his office still had investigating of its own to do. Eventually, his office said, prosecutors will take the case to a grand jury, which will decide whether to issue indictments. But no one could say how long that would take.

That, the petitioners said, was the problem; they argued that if the people involved had not been wearing uniforms, they would have been arrested long ago. Yet nearly seven months after Tamir died, no decision has been made.

“The video in question in this case is notorious and hard to watch,” Judge Adrine wrote in his order. “After viewing it several times, this court is still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly,” he wrote, adding that Officer Loehmann fired his gun before the car he was riding in had even come to a stop.

It’s been 7 months.

Prosecutors have not even interrogated Loehmann.

When prosecutor McGinty says that he will, “Not be rushed into filing a criminal complaint,” it means that he has no intention at all of prosecuting these officers unless he is absolutely forced to.

Unlike, Baltimore States Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and like St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCullogh and Richmond County District Attorney Dan Donovan, McGinty is trying his level best make this case go away, or, if this proves unavoidable, he is trying to deliberately lose.

Hopefully, this judge’s ruling will put his back to a wall, but I do not see how you get an indictment, much less a conviction, with a prosecutor who is trying to lose.

Today’s Must Read on McKinney, and Bad Cops, and Good Cops

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Law Professor and former police officer Seth Stoughton makes the point that needs to be made about both the incident in McKinney, and in policing generally.

He observes that there are two cops on the film, and one gets people calmed down, and other one is Eric Casebolt:

An officer in McKinney, Texas, dashes down a sidewalk, losing his flashlight as he runs past a teenage videographer toward an emergency. Seconds later, the teen with the camera walks up to another officer, one who is standing with a group of kids. “I’m just saying,” the officer is saying in a calm, corrective tone that parents and school teachers everywhere will recognize. “Don’t take off running when the cops get here.”

He thanks the videographer for returning the flashlight, then listens for a few seconds as the kids around him try to explain who was and was not involved in a prior incident. “Okay, guys, I appreciate that,” the as-yet-unidentified officer says. He responds to their concerns—that the police had detained the wrong people—by saying, “Okay, that’s what I’m saying. They’re free to go.” While not casual, the officer is composed. His tone is friendly and professional as he engages with the kids.

Seconds later, another officer, Corporal Eric Casebolt, is shown interacting with some of the same kids. His angry tone and aggressive attitude stand in marked contrast to the first officer in the video. “Get on the ground,” he commands sharply while pulling on a young man’s wrist in a way that looks like he’s trying to force the man to the ground with a painful joint manipulation (technically a supinating wrist lock or, for martial arts enthusiasts, kote gaeshi).

When that proves ineffective, he grabs the back of the young man’s head and shoves him down. “I told you to stay,” he yells, pointing a large metal flashlight at someone off camera. “Get your asses down on the ground.” Like the first officer, he lectures some of the kids about running from the police, but he takes a very different approach. “Don’t make me fucking run around here with thirty pounds of god-damned gear on in the sun because you want to screw around out here.” He is anything but composed, calm or professional.

The two officers in this brief video represent two different policing styles, two different mindsets that officers use as they interact with civilians: the Guardian and the Warrior. As a former police officer and current policing scholar, I know that an officer’s mindset has tremendous impact on police/civilian encounters. I’ve described the Guardian and Warrior mindsets at some length here and here; for now, suffice to say that the right mindset can de-escalate tense situations, induce compliance, and increase community trust over the long-term. The kids interacting with the first officer were excited, but not upset; they remained cooperative. Had they gone home at that moment, they’d have a story for their friends and family, but it would be a story that happened to have the police in it rather than being a story about the police.

………

Officers should also look out for each other, protecting their colleagues not just from harm, but also from lashing out in anger or frustration. Policing can be intensely stressful, and officers should be trained and encouraged to help their peers deal with stressful situations. When an officer is losing his cool, another officer will often be able to intervene, giving the first a chance to collect himself. That type of peer support isn’t part of modern police culture—particularly not when the officer losing his temper is a supervisor and union official like Corporal Casebolt—but it should be.

A short video of officers in McKinney, Texas, shows us the avoidable results of an unnecessarily aggressive approach to policing. But in the same video, we can see a few seconds of policing the way the way it should be done.

Remember the old days, when people called members of the constabulary, “Peace Officer”?

A warrior cannot be a “Peace Officer”.  Their job is wage war against the enemy.

Peace Officers do not wage war against an enemy, the protect their fellow citizens.

In antiquity, when a “Warrior” took a town, he was supposed to take any male child that he found, and dash its brains out on the cobblestones.

This is not a proper model for policing.

After 6 Months, It’s Good That People in Cleveland Have Taken the Law into Their Own Hands

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Warning,graphic content

I am not suggesting that anyone has engaged in extrajudicial violence or vigilante acts. Rather I am referring to the fact that community leaders in Cleveland are using a peculiarity in Ohio law to file charges without the police or prosecutors:

Community leaders in Cleveland, distrustful of the criminal justice system, said Monday that they would not wait for prosecutors to decide whether to file charges against the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year. Instead, they will invoke a seldom-used Ohio law and go directly to a judge to request murder charges against the officers.

The highly unusual move is the latest sign that some African-Americans in Cleveland and around the country have lost confidence in a system that they see as too quick to side with police officers accused of using excessive force against blacks.

The investigation into Tamir’s shooting was handed to the county prosecutor last week, but local leaders are skeptical because of how similar cases have ended. In New York, a grand jury did not indict in the death of Eric Garner, who had been put in a chokehold by a police officer. State and federal authorities said there was no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Last month, prosecutors said a white police officer in Madison, Wis., would not be charged for killing an unarmed 19-year-old man.

………

Ohio is one of a handful of states that allow residents to request an arrest without approval from the police or prosecutors. It is difficult to know how the case will play out because there is little precedent for a citizen to request an arrest in such a contentious, high-profile case.

………

By going directly to a judge, community leaders are trying to circumvent that process. Ohio law allows anyone with “knowledge of the facts” to file a court affidavit and ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. If approved, the arrest would be followed by a public hearing, and community members said that was preferable to allowing prosecutors to make the decision in secret.

………

Tamir was fatally shot in November while he played in a park. A 911 caller had reported that the boy was waving a gun that was “probably fake.” When officers arrived, they pulled their car into the park, next to the boy. Within two seconds, an officer, Timothy Loehmann, shot Tamir in the abdomen. The boy’s gun, it turned out, was a toy replica of a Colt pistol and fired plastic pellets.

It’s been 6 months, and not only have we heard nothing from prosecutors, Officer Timothy Loehmann, who burst from the car with gun blazing at a 12 year old kid, has not even been questioned.

It’s about time someone to file charges against the cops.

Why I Did Not Want My Kids to Grow Up in Texas

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Baltimore might not be the best place in the world in terms of police professionalism (Freddie Gray), but I would not expect to see the sort of bullsh%$ that happened at the McKinney, Texas pool party:

No lives were lost. The incident played out at a suburban pool party, not an urban neighborhood struggling with crime and drugs.

 But perhaps it was that suburban setting that helped make the images so powerful and disturbing. Now a video of a police officer pointing a gun at teenagers in bathing suits and shoving a young black girl’s face into the ground has become the latest flash point in relations between the police and minorities.

 The cellphone video, taken at the community pool in Craig Ranch, a racially diverse subdivision north of Dallas, has set off another debate over race and police tactics, with activists calling for the officer to be fired and others arguing that the blame should fall at least in part on the teenagers.

 The video appears to show the officer, David Eric Casebolt, briefly waving his handgun at young partygoers who approached him as he tried to subdue the teenage girl on Friday. The officer ultimately immobilized the girl by putting her facedown on the ground and placing a knee on her back.

 Chief Greg Conley of the McKinney Police Department said that the video had prompted an internal affairs investigation and that Officer Casebolt, a patrol supervisor, had been placed on administrative leave.

 ………

 Earlier in day, activists outside Police Headquarters said the youths had been subjected to racial bias, and demanded that Officer Casebolt be fired. Dominique Alexander, the president of the Next Generation Action Network, a civil rights group, said it was an “illusion” that youths had been jumping the fence. “They had every right to be there,” he said.

 After the video spread quickly online, criticism poured in from around the country. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said that it while it did not have all the facts about the party, “what we do know is that the police response, as seen on the video, appears to be a textbook case of overuse of force.”

 In a video posted to YouTube on Sunday, a black teenager named Tatiana said her family was hosting a cookout for friends when a woman insulted them, prompting a 14-year-old family friend to respond. Tatiana said a white woman had then told her: “You need to go back to where you’re from” and to “go back to your Section 8 home.”

 Tatiana said that she had replied, “Excuse me,” and that then another white woman hit her in the face and “both women attacked” her.

 ………

 Brandon Brooks, 15, who shot the video, told a TV station that Officer Casebolt had not confronted him, one of the few white teenagers at the party.

 “I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening,” he told the station. “You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kind of like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down.”

(emphasis mine)

There are lots of good people in Texas, but the public culture, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of wealth, social justice, and the whole idea of public good, is incredibly toxic.

Even if you are raised to hate sh%$ like this, being raised in this toxic soup inures one to it, and I do not favor complacency to injustice as a tactic to raise children.

When a DA Wants to Indict a Ham Sandwich

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The ham sandwich gets indicted.

The DA in North Carolina has indicted former officer Michael Slager for the murder of Walter Scott:

Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, was unarmed, facing away from the police officer, and haphazardly attempting to flee — but that didn’t stop Michael Slager, a white North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer at the time, from firing his gun at least eight times at the fleeing man, killing him.

On June 8, prosecutors announced that a grand jury indicted Slager, who’s no longer with the police force, on murder charges, according to CNN‘s Shawn Nottingham. The case will now proceed to trial. If Slager is convicted, prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said he would serve 30 years to life in prison with no chance of parole.

The shooting was recorded on film by a bystander, who turned over the video footage to authorities. The video has been widely credited with leading to charges of murder against Slager, the officer’s firing from the police force, and now the indictment.

Notice how the DA gets an indictment when he isn’t trying to lose?

In New York City and Ferguson, the DAs tried to lose the case, and they succeeded.

In North Charleston, the DA chose not to give a cop a get out of jail free card for a killing.

Another Cop Actually Convicted by a Jury

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LAPD Officer Mary O’Callaghan was convicted of “assault under color of authority” for repeated kicking a woman that she had already handcuffed:

The camera captured the Los Angeles police officer hissing a cruel threat at the handcuffed woman, striking at her throat with an open hand and kicking her in the crotch.

The video of the arrest, recorded by a patrol-car camera, persuaded jurors to convict Officer Mary O’Callaghan on Friday of assault under color of authority.

During the two-week trial, in which the defense argued that O’Callaghan hadn’t used excessive force, the video gave jurors an unvarnished view of what happened, one said.

“It played a big role,” said Deedra Garcia, the jury forewoman. “It gave us a lot of evidence.”

………

The prosecution’s case centered on the video, which showed O’Callaghan jab at Thomas’ throat with an open hand and threaten to break her arms and kick her in the crotch. In the video, O’Callaghan then raises her boot and strikes Thomas, whose body shakes in response.

The recording captured Thomas — who asked officers for an ambulance more than 30 minutes before one was called — breathing heavily and repeatedly saying, “I can’t.”

A video from a dashboard camera in another patrol car, which was also played during the trial, recorded O’Callaghan laughing and smoking a cigarette as she peeked inside the car at Thomas, whose legs were tied with a nylon hobble restraint.

“That ain’t a good sign,” O’Callaghan says out loud in the video.

Assistant Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Shannon Presby told jurors that O’Callaghan was “immune from any empathy” and that the video clearly showed the officer kicking Thomas in the crotch and the stomach.

Even 5 years ago, it would have been unlikely that the Jury would have voted to convict, and if they had it would have taken much longer than their two days deliberating.

I expect her to get no jail time, though.

I doubt that the recent push-back against police impunity has permeated the judiciary.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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In yet another case of prosecutorial overreach, we have motions by the prosecutors in another of the FBI’s entrapment efforts forbid defense counsel from putting forward their case:

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has become such a powerful symbol of government overreach that federal prosecutors in a terror case in Chicago are asking the judge to forbid defense attorneys from even mentioning his name during trial, for fear that it would lead the jury to disregard their evidence.

The upcoming trial is of Adel Daoud, a slow-witted Chicagoland teenager caught in yet another FBI terror sting aimed at someone vulnerable to manipulation. An undercover federal agent provided Daoud with a fake car bomb parked outside a downtown Chicago bar, and then let him push the detonator.

Much of the evidence in the case — involving Daoud’s online explorations into Islam and jihad — was gathered through surveillance conducted using secret warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago asked Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Wednesday to prohibit the defense from mentioning Snowden’s name — along with a number of other things, such as the existence of the National Security Agency, or a speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein in which she cited “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” as an example of one that was thwarted thanks to FISA authorities.

Their concern: Those topics “are irrelevant and would tend to elicit jury nullification, so the defendant should be barred from inquiring of witnesses, presenting evidence, or arguing to the jury about them.”

A key issue in the case has already been extensively litigated. Judge Coleman in January 2014 ruled that Daoud’s security-cleared lawyers should be allowed to see all the classified materials the government submitted in order to get their FISA warrants.

………

For good measure, the prosecutors also don’t want the defense to claim entrapment, either:

[T]he defendant should be precluded from arguing or suggesting that the undercover technique the government used in the underlying investigation was improper. Any argument attacking the government’s investigative techniques would not only be improper, but it should also trigger an instruction that such investigative techniques are entirely proper.

This is crap.

It is corrosive to concept of a fair trial that has developed in the US, and England before it, over the past thousand years.

This is Nearly Unprecedented

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(Retitled on 7/1/2016 because some moron at Google™ Adsense™ flagged it as sexually explicit because of the title)

In response to prosecutorial misconduct, a California judge has dismissed the whole Orange County DA’s Office from a case:

Prosecutorial and police misconduct are often dismissed as just a few bad apples doing a few bad apple-ish things. But what happens when it’s entrenched and systemic and goes unchecked for years? That looks to be the case in Orange County, California, where the situation got so completely out of hand this spring that Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals issued an order disqualifying the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office (that’s all 250 prosecutors) from continuing to prosecute a major death penalty case.

 After literally years of alleged misconduct involving jailhouse informants, as well as prosecutors’ repeated failures to turn over exculpatory material, Judge Goethals determined in March that the office can simply no longer work on the case of mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty last year to killing his ex-wife and seven others at a beauty salon in 2011.

Revelations of misconduct in the Dekraai case have raised questions about patterns of obstruction and deception that have unraveled various other murder cases in the county, which has a population larger than that of 20 different states. Other cases involving informants who were eliciting illegal confessions have emerged, entire cases have collapsed, and more may follow. The story goes way back to the 1980s, as R. Scott Moxley explains at length in the OC Weekly, to a prosecutorial scandal that ended in the execution of one defendant and a lengthy sentence for his alleged co-conspirator. Their convictions were based on the testimony of various jailhouse informants even though they told conflicting stories. That scandal rocked the area then, and this new one shows eerie parallels.

………

 One issue in the Dekraai case is whether deputies deliberately placed him near a prized informant to elicit illegal confessions. While preparing for the penalty phase of the trial, Santa Ana assistant public defender Scott Sanders, who is defending Dekraai, discovered that a jailhouse informant who had produced damning evidence about his client had done the same thing in another case Sanders was handling. After further investigation, Sanders claimed that a branch of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department called “special handling” would deliberately place jailhouse snitches in cells next to high-value inmates awaiting trials, with instructions to collect confessions, a practice that is unconstitutional.

 Together with his law clerks, Sanders spent a year unearthing and then reconstructing a tranche of 60,000 pages of records indicating that the county sheriff’s office routinely used and coordinated with those informants to get around the constitutional prohibition on eliciting incriminating statements from defendants who had lawyered up and should not have been interrogated. The sheriff’s department has admitted that mistakes were made. The DA’s office claims there was nothing coordinated or systemic going on. But Judge Goethals disagreed, finding that the new revelations called into question the integrity of the entire Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Initially, Judge Goethals had ruled that the DA’s office was negligent in failing to turn exculpatory information over, finding that “the district attorney’s well-documented failures in this case, although disappointing, even disheartening to any interested member of this community, were negligent rather than malicious.” But that seems to have changed following further revelations of refusal to turn over evidence.

In an explosive moment following a hearing last year, Sanders revealed that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has maintained a massive, secret, 25-year-old computerized record-keeping system called TRED. These TRED documents were full of potentially exculpatory data, but the agency officials had systematically refused to turn any of them over, or even acknowledge their very existence, to defense counsel.

In his March order, Goethals wrote: “It is now apparent that the discovery situation in this case is far worse than the court previously realized. In fact, a wealth of potentially relevant discovery material—an entire computerized data base built and maintained by the Orange County Sheriff over the course of many years which is a repository for information related directly to the very issues that this court was examining as a result of the defendant’s motion—remained secret, despite numerous specific discovery orders issued by this court, until long after the initial evidentiary hearing in this case was concluded and rulings were made.”

………
 What’s wrong with using jailhouse informants? It depends on how they are used. Testimony from snitches is certainly legal—even if the informant gets rewarded with a reduced sentence or material benefits or even cold, hard cash. But evidently the Orange County informants were deliberately moved to be closer to high value targets, they taped their conversations, and the records of much of this conduct were then hidden. As Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains, the Constitution limits the use of jailhouse informants to situations in which statements are made voluntarily to cellmates, not orchestrated and recorded by jailhouse officials, all of which makes the interaction too much like an interrogation. The 1964 Supreme Court case Massiah v. United States bars the government from eliciting incriminating statements from a defendant after the right to counsel has kicked in. In Dekraai’s case the issue was how jailhouse informant Fernando Perez found his way into a cell next to Dekraai, befriended him, and then reported hearing him “bragging” about the Seal Beach murders.


The answer to that question is troubling. According to a 505-page motion filed by Sanders, Dekraai was somehow placed next to a guy known as “Inmate F,” (Perez) who then buddied up to Dekraai, heard all he had to say and then—to hear prosecutors tell it—came forward out of the goodness of his heart. As Sanders explained:

It appeared that the prosecution had been the recipient of extraordinarily good luck. The inmate housed closest to Dekraai was a good listener, a great note taker, and someone so selfless that he wanted to assist the OCDA [Orange County district attorney] and local law enforcement without wishing for anything in return. OCDA Investigator Erickson’s subsequently written report confirmed this picture of Inmate F. The prosecution promised nothing in return for his assistance, which was perfect for Inmate F. because he wanted nothing.

The problem for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office arose after Sanders started digging into details about Inmate F and happened upon, just for starters, a note in his file stating: “WAS TERMINATED AS A C.I. [confidential informant]—DO NOT USE AS A C.I.” as well as his colorful history of three-strikes convictions and conspiracies to murder fellow inmates.

Last August, Judge Goethals ruled that prosecutors couldn’t use the Perez statements during the penalty phase of the trial, but he also found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, just that mistakes were made. But after Sanders found the TRED records, it became clear that sheriff’s officials—not a nurse, as they had sworn, under oath—had put Perez next to Dekraai’s cell, and that the violations were likely deliberate and coordinated.
………

The problem with the system set up in Orange County, according to Sanders, was that jailhouse informants were asked to collect incriminating statements and then share them with prosecutors in exchange for reduced charges or other favors. Last November, the Orange County Register reported that two prolific informants with extensive criminal records had received more than $150,000 from law enforcement agencies for obtaining information from jailed suspects awaiting trials.

………

The Dekraai case became a turning point in Orange County when Judge Goethals got mad. He found that two deputies, Ben Garcia and Seth Tunstall, who belonged to the “special handling” unit dealing with informants, testified falsely to the court, denying the very existence of the TRED records at a crucial hearing last year. He also found that a prosecutor, Eric Petersen, had testified falsely.

………
 In the end it took a crusading public defender and a judge finally willing to believe him to smoke out the wrongdoing. In tossing the entire DA’s office off the Dekraai case, Judge Goethals wrote that “certain aspects of the district attorney’s performance in this case might be described as a comedy of errors but for the fact that it has been so sadly deficient. … There is nothing funny about that.” The disqualification of an entire prosecutor’s office rarely, if ever, occurs. But Judge Goethals finally concluded that in hiding exculpatory evidence, and then covering up the whole mess, the “District Attorney has a conflict of interest in this case, which has actually deprived this defendant of due process in the past.”

 ………

The constitutional protections built into our criminal justice system are not perfect. But the events of the past year in Orange County reveal that the alternative—a nihilistic sense that we can do whatever we must to nail the criminals—is far more dangerous. Especially if we let the most dangerous criminals walk in exchange for snitching in trivial cases. Yet more dangerous still is our tendency to turn a blind eye on the practices that are now coming to light in Orange County. They happen in secret because not enough people want to know about them. And they will continue to happen because so many people keep trying so hard not to care.

The law here is pretty clear:  Once a defendant has lawyered up, neither the police nor the prosecutors may talk to him without his counsel.

This applies to any person acting as an agent of the police or prosecutors, and it is clear that the police, prisons, and prosecutors deliberately used their jailhouse snitches as agents, and then concealed this though obstruction of justice and perjury.

I fear that these practices are far more common that we are led to believe.

Not the Onion

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The Cleveland Police have signed a consent decree with the Department of Justice which, among other things, has them to halt their practice of pistol whipping fellow citizens:

Cleveland police will stop hitting people on the head with their guns and document any time they unholster them, according to a consent decree between the U.S. Justice Department and Cleveland police released today.

The Justice Department found in a 21-month investigation that began in 2013 that Cleveland police routinely bash people on the head with their guns, sometimes accidentally firing them, according to a 58-page report released in December.

The consent decree released Tuesday between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Cleveland is the result of five months of negotiations, as well as dozens of meetings with community groups, church leaders and advocates. Once approved by a federal judge, the city is legally bound to enact the reforms included in the 105-page document, meant to protect citizens’ Constitutional rights.

Seriously?

Cleveland police pistol-whipped people as a matter of policy?

I think that this is WELL beyond the need for a consent decree.

They need to shut down the Cleveland PD, and bring in the State Police for the next few years.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

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6 months after 12 year old Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police, and neither the cop who gunned him down nor his partner have been questioned:

Mother Jones has learned that the two officers involved in the shooting—Timothy Loehmann, who fired the shots, and Frank Garmback, who drove the police car—still have not been interviewed by investigators from the sheriff’s department. According to an official familiar with the case, investigators have made more than one attempt to interview Loehmann and Garmback since the Cleveland Police Department handed over the case in January. (Read more about why the sheriff’s department took over the investigation here .)

A county official familiar with the case told Mother Jones that the criminal investigation is focused solely on Loehmann. Garmback, who pulled the police car to within a few feet of Rice right before Loehmann stepped out and shot Rice almost instantly, is currently not under criminal investigation by the sheriff’s department, the official said.

In the surveillance footage, both Loehmann and Garmback can be seen standing around after the shooting while Rice lies bleeding on the ground. About a minute and a half after the shooting, Garmback can be seen tackling Rice’s 14-year-old sister as she tries to run to her wounded brother. Four minutes go by during which Loehmann and Garmback make no attempt to give Rice first aid. An FBI agent in the area then comes to the scene and begins to tend to Rice before an ambulance arrives to take him to the hospital (where he died the next day).

The fact that neither Loehmann or Garmback have been interviewed is a disgrace.

No doubt they have lawyered up, and they won’t be saying anything, but to not even try to interview the officers is mind boggling.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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Of the more than 100 reforms proposed in the Missouri state legislature, only one passed:

The Missouri legislature ended its session Friday night having passed virtually none of the reforms activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown.

Activists had been tracking more than 100 bills related to criminal justice and policing, but just one of substance had made its way out of the legislature, they say.

“This was such an opportunity for the Missouri legislature to step up and do the right thing. The people of the state called on our lawmakers to fix this broken system,” said Denise Lieberman a senior attorney for the Advancement Project, a civil rights group, and co-chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition, a group formed to address policy reform after Brown’s shooting.

………
The scores of bills — introduced mostly by the legislature’s few Democrats — offered a menu of reforms. They would have developed standards for eyewitness identification, required body cameras, restricted police from racial profiling, required diversity and sensitivity training, and modified state rules governing the use of lethal force, something Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon threw his support behind in his State of the State address.

The legislature did pass one bill advocates had been calling for, which was aimed at limiting municipal reliance on fines for revenue, a practice highlighted in a scathing Justice Department report on Ferguson released earlier this year. The bill lowers the cap on how much revenue a municipality can generate from traffic tickets from 30 percent to 20 percent statewide and to 12.5 percent in St. Louis County, which is plagued by excessive traffic violations and is home to Ferguson. The bill also bans courts from throwing individuals in jail over minor traffic offenses.

Weak tea.

What a surprise.

I will note that without the protests, even this small bit of reform would never have happened.

Unless you make the Powers That Be profoundly uncomfortable, you will never see any reform.

And John Dillinger Feared the “Chilling Effect” of the FBI

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Today’s front page of the Baltimore Sun interviews a number of current and former members of the Baltimore Police Department, noting ominously that,  “The result could have a “chilling effect” on officers, preventing them from making “good faith judgments” when making arrests“.

If we eliminate the most significant issue in the whole Freddie Gray case, the fact that a 25 year old man was killed by the callous, brutal, and unprofessional behavior of members of the BPD, we still have the following:

I think that it’s well past time for police to follow the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

I am well aware that the job of being a policeman is a tough one, and I know that it involves tough calls, and I know that human beings make mistakes.

This goes well beyond mistakes.

That’s not the problem.  The problem is the fact that there is a culture of impunity that is nearly universal among law enforcement officers in the United States, and this ill serves both the citizenry and the constabulary.

The Baltimore PD is generating over a million dollars in brutality and misconduct settlements every year, and the very small minority of officers who are responsible for this suffer no consequences.

BTW, I think that one of the things that would help here is if cops got a mandatory 6 paid months off every 3 years, and officers were required to attend mandatory counseling on at least a monthly basis.

I have a friend in the psychological biz, and his assessment is that most police officers who have been on the job for more than a few years suffer from PTSD.

This does not make for a well functioning civil society.