Category: Law Enforcement Misconduct

I Think That We May Have Identified Part of the Problem in the Baltimore Police Department

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The most senior of the officers indicted in the Freddie Gray murder, Brian Rice,  has had multiple incidences of threats of violence and erratic behavior:

The Baltimore police lieutenant charged with the manslaughter of Freddie Gray allegedly threatened to kill himself and the husband of his ex-girlfriend, during incidents that led to him being disciplined and twice having his guns confiscated.

Brian Rice, who pursued and arrested Gray after the 25-year-old “caught his eye” on 12 April, was reportedly given an administrative suspension after being hospitalised for a mental health evaluation when he warned he was preparing to shoot himself in April 2012.

 Rice, 41, also received an internal discipline when a judge granted a temporary restraining order against him after a request from Andrew McAleer, the husband of Karyn McAleer, who is the mother of Rice’s young son and a fellow Baltimore police officer. Rice has been married to and divorced from two further women, according to court records.

A sharply critical 10-page complaint against Rice, which Andrew McAleer filed to a court in Maryland in January 2013, is being published in full for the first time by the Guardian. It details what McAleer, a Baltimore firefighter, described as a “pattern of intimidation and violence” by the officer.

McAleer said in his court filing, which was first reported by the Guardian last month, that Rice forced one of Karyn McAleer’s young children to “shoot” a photograph of her and her husband that Rice had “taped to a piece of cardboard intended for target practice”. It was not clear from the filing whether any weapon was actually used.

McAleer said that two months before this, in April 2012, his wife called to tell him to protect himself and her five children from Rice because the lieutenant had called her threatening to kill himself.

Deputies from the Carroll County sheriff’s department responded to an emergency call and transported Rice to a hospital, before confiscating his police service weapon, his personal 9mm handgun, two rifles and two shotguns.

It is unclear how long Rice spent as a patient. The police response to an incident at Rice’s home was first reported earlier this month by the Associated Press, which said it resulted in an administrative suspension from Baltimore police.

………

Rice was allegedly given another administrative suspension and had his guns confiscated again eight months later, according to court filings, after McAleer obtained the week-long peace order against the police lieutenant.

………

Rice was ordered to stay away from McAleer, his home and his workplace after a series of alleged confrontations, including one armed standoff in June 2012 when officers from two police departments responded to a 911 call and spent 90 minutes defusing the situation.

McAleer alleged Rice was screaming and smelled of alcohol during the 2am confrontation in front of McAleer’s house. He said his wife later said Rice had told her he planned to kill McAleer during the June 2012 encounter.

Great googly moogly. 

What does a Baltimore cop have to do to get fired?

This guy was a f%$#ing lieutenant after all of this?

H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Throw a Case with a Dead Black Man, and Get Elected to Congress

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Something is seriously wrong with Staten Island:

The Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., whose office investigated [Covered Up] the chokehold death of Eric Garner in a struggle with the police last year, easily won a special election for the House of Representatives on Tuesday, according to unofficial results.

He threw it all at a grand jury with no direction, and then fought like hell to make sure that the grand jury testimony never saw the light of day.

He didn’t think that a black man’s death at police hands warranted a serious investigation.

With nearly all precincts reporting, Mr. Donovan, a Republican, was leading with nearly 60 percent of the vote, compared with about 39 percent for Councilman Vincent J. Gentile, the Democratic candidate, in the race to represent the 11th Congressional District. It covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

The victory makes Mr. Donovan the lone Republican from New York City in the House.

Mr. Donovan, in his victory speech, cast his election as a rebuke to Democrats in Washington and New York, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is widely disliked on Staten Island.

“You sent a message to President Obama, to Nancy Pelosi and, yes, even to Bill de Blasio, that their policies are wrong for our nation,” Mr. Donovan said. “They’re wrong for our city and they’re wrong for the community of the 11th Congressional District.”

Conceding defeat, Mr. Gentile declared his campaign a moral success for “starting a real conversation” about bringing political change in the district. “I want to say loudly that our work is not yet over,” he said.

The seat has been vacant since January, when the previous representative, Michael G. Grimm, a Republican, resigned after pleading guilty to tax fraud.

The election — held under unusual circumstances because of Mr. Grimm’s abrupt resignation and lingering tension around the Garner case — never developed into a heated contest. National Democrats, who were bitterly disappointed after spending millions of dollars in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Mr. Grimm in 2014, never got involved on Mr. Gentile’s behalf.

………

Neither candidate spoke often about the Garner case, which prompted demonstrations across New York and other cities late last year when a grand jury declined to indict a police officer who was captured on video placing Mr. Garner in a chokehold.

Mr. Donovan defended his office’s handling of the matter, expressing sympathy for the Garner family but saying that his team had managed the grand jury properly. He declined to answer detailed questions about the case, citing laws governing grand jury secrecy.

Mr. Gentile did not raise it because he believed that caring about a dead black man would not play well with the Staten Island voters.

 Mr. Donovan won because Mr. Gentile was right.

Charges for Murder and Manslaughter, but the Bigger Picture is Worse

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All 6 police officers have been charged in death of Freddie Gray:

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray – who died after being injured in police custody – have been charged criminally, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday.

 Mosby’s announcement on the steps of the War Memorial Building was greeted with cheers and applause. Mosby said she told Gray’s family that “no one is above the law and I would pursue justice upon their behalf.”

 The city was gearing up for another round of demonstrations after the announcement. Baltimore City and Maryland state offices granted workers in the city liberal leave early Friday afternoon.

 After the charges were announced, Desmond Taylor, 29, shouted in jubilee in front of the War Memorial Building.

 “I did not expect this, but I prayed for it,” he said. “This day means that your actions bring consequences in Baltimore City.”

 Reacting to news of the charges, President Barack Obama called it “absolutely vital that the truth come out.”

 “What I think the people of Baltimore want more than anything else is the truth,” the president said. “That’s what people around the country expect.”

 All six officers were in custody and being processed at Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center as of 2 p.m., said Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

 Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 45, who was the driver of a police van that carried Gray through the streets of Baltimore, was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, second-degree assault, two vehicular manslaughter charges and misconduct in office. A man who answered the phone at Goodson’s home declined to comment and hung up the phone.

The rest are charged with, involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and false imprisonment in various combinations.

I would have liked to seen obstruction of justice added, because, given the circumstances, that charge would be pretty clearly guaranteed conviction.

The big picture, of course,  is that sort of stuff happens every day, because random arrests of black people, and brutality against them, along with the inevitable revenue generation.  (Properties don’t seize themselves.)

It is incredibly rare for a police officer to be investigated, much less charged.

Interestingly enough, the charge of murder is based on the rather interestingly named “depraved heart murder”:

The term “depraved heart” means something more than conduct amounting to a high or unreasonable risk to human life. The perpetrator must realize the risk his behavior has created to the extent that his conduct may be termed willful. Moreover, the conduct must contain an element of viciousness or contemptuous disregard for the value of human life which conduct characterizes that behavior as wanton.

But, as I said before, for each of these 6 police officers, there are tens, if not hundreds, of other cops who have done the same thing, albeit it probably did not result in a death, or massive protests and riots.

The New New Republic is Much Better than the Old One.

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This was an Actual TNR Cover

If just because the old one was run by a racist who would have directed the magazine write something about white anxiety in Baltimore, while the post Marty Peretz version actually calls out the Washington Post‘s Baltimore PD source as a liar:

………

Ever since we first saw citizen video evidence of his arrest shortly after it happened and learned of the fatal injuries he suffered, we’ve all been wondering exactly what happened to Gray. Up until last night, we only know that Gray suffered some kind of “forceful trauma” that nearly severed his spine and crushed his voice box; we also learned he received no medical treatment from the officers on hand. But on Wednesday night, the Washington Post published a report that stemmed from that police leak, containing the alleged account of a prisoner who had been placed in the same police van as Gray after his arrest. The unnamed prisoner, who is still in jail, could not see Gray in the van—yet according to the Post, he told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself.” The Post story hadn’t been published for more than an hour before local journalists like WBAL’s Jayne Miller began debunking it, saying that it didn’t match her earlier reporting: Police commissioner Anthony Batts told media last Thursday that the second prisoner in the van said that Gray was “mostly quiet” and that there was no evidence that Gray was causing himself any harm. “We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” said Jason Downs, a Gray family attorney. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”

Let’s entertain this notion, for a moment, that Gray had decided to injure himself or end his life over an arrest that began with an errant look at an officer, or because he happened to be carrying a switchblade. Is it realistic to believe he would have succeeded to this tragic degree? Whoever at the Baltimore Police Department leaked this clearly relied upon us not understanding how much physical force is required to nearly sever one’s own spine and crush a voice box, all while handcuffed. One doctor told the Baltimore Sun that Gray’s injuries were more consistent with those seen from high-speed vehicle crashes. The van made several stops while he was in it, but did not crash even at a low speed.

Granted, this wasn’t the first time someone tried to explain away what common sense tells us was police brutality. Conservative outlets had circulated nonsense about Gray having a pre-existing spinal condition that required surgery days before his arrest. But now we have the Baltimore Police Department, using the Post as an uncritical conduit, trolling the public and the media. Yes, that seems unwise in light of the violent unrest we’ve seen this week. Far more disturbing than a question of their policing strategy, however, is what this leak indicates about this department and the answers it’s willing to offer.

No matter how many shouts are heard or windows smashed, the Baltimore police have asserted that they control the narrative, and that they alone determine what we get to know about why Gray died. They have no respect for Baltimore’s anger. That’s a lot more chilling to me than teenagers tossing bricks.

The language is a trifle florid, but this is also much better than what the “Old” New Republic would written, which would have at its focus comforting the comfortable.

And Maryland has Among the Worst “Police Protection” Laws in the Nation

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A package of police reform bills that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is scheduled to sign into law today, in part as a response to the death of 25-year-old Baltimore resident Freddie Gray, was weakened under political pressure from Maryland police unions, a major force in state politics.

The bills will allow police to wear body cameras, increase the liability cap for lawsuits against government employees, and encourage the state to collect more data on police behavior.

But more substantial reforms, including legislation to add a civilian review process and to have state prosecutors investigate all killings by police, were shot down during a legislative hearing in Annapolis earlier this year.

So, despite the new measures, procedures for prosecuting police misconduct in Maryland will remain the same.

A recent report from the ACLU of Maryland found that at least 109 people died in police encounters in Maryland from 2010 to 2014.

Freddie Gray’s death — which came after his spinal cord was severed when he was in police custody — has become the latest national symbol of brutal policing in African-American communities, and has called particular attention to the poor relations between police and residents in Baltimore. Gray’s funeral sparked riots in Baltimore last night.

………

Maryland’s Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, one of the strongest such statutes in the nation, is a considerable barrier to police reform. The LEOBR, enacted in 1974, shields officers from oversight by establishing a narrow standard for reviewing police misconduct and limiting the ability of victims to press charges. Current LEOBR law states that officers may not be questioned by their superiors for 10 days following an incident. And once an internal investigation is underway, disciplinary action can only happen after a recommendation by a hearing board comprised of the officer’s colleagues.

………

Though emotional witnesses testified about incidents of police violence and racism, legislators remained skeptical.

“I left Missouri 29 years ago. I live in Maryland now,” said Del. Deborah Rey, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Rey questioned the need for police reform bills because the sponsors cited abuses in “Ferguson, Missouri, not Maryland.”

When a witnesss interjected to say that the failure to prosecute Ferguson police officers was a perfect example of the problems surrounding police oversight, Rey cut him off. “We’re not going to adjudicate Ferguson,” she said.

Deligate Ray, perhaps we should adjudicate Baltimore?

Unfortunately, until some bit of police excess creates riots, there is simply no political will to make police accountable to the laws that they are charged with enforcing.

And You Wonder Why I Do Not Believe This………

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Someone in the Baltimore City state security apparatus has leaked a report that Freddie Gray intentionally injured himself to the Washington Post:

A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.

 The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.

 The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.

Yeah, it’s clear that Mr. Gray snapped his neck and crushed his larynx all by himself.

This reminds me a LOT of that cigar video that the Ferguson police released, or the videos of the victim that were recently released by the Tulsa police department in an attempt to justify the shooting by their septuagenarian “reserve deputy” sugar-daddy.

And in the Justice Department………

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Eric Holder’s DOJ has defended the police for every excessive use of force suit that has made it to the Supreme Court:

Teresa Sheehan was alone in her apartment at a mental health center, clutching what her lawyers said was a small bread knife and demanding to be left alone. San Francisco police officers, responding to a call from a social worker, forced open the door, blinded her with pepper spray and shot her.

It was the kind of violent police confrontation that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has frequently criticized in Cleveland; Albuquerque; Ferguson, Mo.; and beyond. But last month, when Ms. Sheehan’s civil rights lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, the Justice Department backed the police, saying that a lower court should have given more weight to the risks that the officers faced.

At the Supreme Court, where the limits of police power are established, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments. Even as it has opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices, the Justice Department has staked out positions that make it harder for people to sue the police and that give officers more discretion about when to fire their guns.

Police groups see Mr. Holder as an ally in that regard, and that pattern has rankled civil rights lawyers, who say the government can have a far greater effect on policing by interpreting law at the Supreme Court than through investigations of individual departments.

“There is an inherent conflict between people at the Justice Department trying to stop police abuses and other people at the Justice Department convincing the Supreme Court that police abuses should be excused,” said Ronald L. Kuby, a Manhattan civil rights lawyer.

The department should not be routinely defending cops against allegations of excessive force before the Supreme Court.  It should be evaluating each case on its own merits, and making the decision only then.

It’s current path is does not serve the citizenry.

What Part of “Peace Officer” Don’t You Get?

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Protests in Baltimore were relatively peaceful last night, and now we are getting reports police escalated last night’s events by penning up the teenagers who were at the Mondawmin Mall:

After Baltimore police and a crowd of teens clashed near the Mondawmin Mall in northwest Baltimore on Monday afternoon, news reports described the violence as a riot triggered by kids who had been itching for a fight all day. But in interviews with Mother Jones and other media outlets, teachers and parents maintain that police actions inflamed a tense-but-stable situation.

 ………

 When school let out that afternoon, police were in the area equipped with full riot gear. According to eyewitnesses in the Mondawmin neighborhood, the police were stopping busses and forcing riders, including many students who were trying to get home, to disembark. Cops shut down the local subway stop. They also blockaded roads near the Mondawmin Mall and Frederick Douglass High School, which is across the street from the mall, and essentially corralled young people in the area. That is, they did not allow the after-school crowd to disperse.

 Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:

Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of students…It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.

The kids were “standing around in groups of 3-4,” Harris said in a Facebook message to Mother Jones. “They weren’t doing anything. No rock throwing, nothing…The cops started marching toward groups of kids who were just milling about.”

A teacher at Douglass High School, who asked not to be identified, tells a similar story: “When school was winding down, many students were leaving early with their parents or of their own accord.” Those who didn’t depart early, she says, were stranded. Many of the students still at school at that point, she notes, wanted to get out of the area and avoid any Purge-like violence. Some were requesting rides home from teachers. But by now, it was difficult to leave the neighborhood. “I rode with another teacher home,” this teacher recalls, “and we had to route our travel around the police in riot gear blocking the road… The majority of my students thought what was going to happen was stupid or were frightened at the idea. Very few seemed to want to participate in ‘the purge.'”

A parent who picked up his children from a nearby elementary school, says via Twitter, “The kids stood across from the police and looked like they were asking them ‘why can’t we get on the buses’ but the police were just gazing…Majority of those kids aren’t from around that neighborhood. They NEED those buses and trains in order to get home.” He continued: “If they would’ve let them children go home, yesterday wouldn’t have even turned out like that.”

Meg Gibson, another Baltimore teacher, described a similar scene to Gawker: “The riot police were already at the bus stop on the other side of the mall, turning buses that transport the students away, not allowing students to board. They were waiting for the kids.…Those kids were set up, they were treated like criminals before the first brick was thrown.” With police unloading busses, and with the nearby metro station shut down, there were few ways for students to clear out.

………

Mondawmin Mall is where lots of students catch the bus, when you shut down MTA how the heck they gonna get home? @BaltimorePolice
— Jay (@Ms_lionesss) April 27, 2015

It is the job of police to maintain the peace. It is why they sometimes are called peace officers.

The police are the professionals in this situation, and they must act professionally.

The expectation of professionalism is why they are get to use a gun, a badge, and tools like tear gas and pepper spray.

It means, for example, that they need to use the appropriate tools to manage a situation, and not, for example, throw bricks back at the protesters:

We’re about to look now. Here’s a video of police throwing rocks back at protesters:

This is not in indicator of professionalism in a police force.

The rioting last night was foreseeable given the behavior of the police.

They presented themselves in an overly confrontational way to teenagers, they then made impossible for people to leave the area.

While the behavior of the protesters is reprehensible, the behavior of the police can only be described as extreme malpractice.

There are a number of senior cops on the Baltimore PD who needs to be fired over this.

The Technical Term is Lying Sack of Sh%$………

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In this case, the term can be applied to the President of the Maryland Police Union:

Protests escalated in Baltimore on Saturday over the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a serious spinal cord injury while in police custody. The mysterious injury raised suspicions that he was taken on a “rough ride,” in which officers deliberately drive erratically to injure unbuckled and handcuffed passengers. But the president of Maryland’s police union told ThinkProgress he is unaware of the unsanctioned police practice.

In a word, bullsh%$.

“Rough rides”, a procedure where a person is placed in a paddy wagon, handcuffed but not buckled in, and then subjected to a ride that consists of sudden starts, stops, and abrupt maneuvers, and so tossing them around the inside of the vehicle.

I understand that Mr. Canales has a responsibility to represent his union members, but this sort of bald faced lie, much like the boneheaded statement by Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore FOP that the earlier peaceful protests were akin to a lynching, are transparently false.

What’s more these statements are clearly inflammatory, and so both of these folks served to put their own members at risk.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that term before,” Maryland Fraternal Order of Police President Vince Canales said when asked about the event that may have caused Gray’s death.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts acknowledged on Friday that Gray’s injuries could have been caused by a “rough ride,” but said the investigation into the circumstances of his death will continue even after the police findings are given to prosecutors on Wednesday.

A Baltimore Sun investigation found that Gray is not the only person to emerge from a Baltimore police van with serious injuries — others have won multi-million judgments after suing the police department for their injuries. But despite the repeated brutal incidents, Canales and others closely entwined with the city police are still unaware of the practice.

Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar told the Baltimore Sun she has no personal knowledge of “rough rides,” but others in her office are aware of the practice. “It is common knowledge among public defenders that [the Baltimore Police Department] has paid out significant judgments in ‘rough ride’ and other cases,” James Johnston, a Baltimore public defender, told the Sun. “In my experience, it is not uncommon for clients to suffer injuries during an arrest.”

When asked about a series of cases of police brutality in Baltimore, Canales presented a very different view from advocates who say the recent incidents in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere were part of a larger systematic problem with police.

Instead of banning any particular police practices, Canales said each incident should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis because “everyone responds differently to different situations.” But reports from across the country have proved otherwise. In Baltimore, an investigation from 2014 found that the police department has paid around $5.7 million to more than 100 people since 2011 in lawsuits claiming officers beat up mostly African American suspects.

Maybe police officers should turf out Vince Canales and Gene Ryan at the next union election, because they sure as hell aren’t serving their members or the general public.

The Police Story on the Freddie Gray Killing Changes

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Gee, what a surprise. Once what happened to Freddie Gray became a matter for independent investigation, the police story changed:

Police chiefs in Baltimore retreated on Friday from earlier claims that Freddie Gray, whose death has caused an outcry, must have been injured inside the van carrying him after his arrest.

They said they were investigating what happened during one of the stops made by the vehicle.

Asked whether Gray was fatally hurt by a so-called “rough ride” without a seatbelt in the back of the vehicle, or could have been injured outside the van, police commissioner Anthony Batts said at a press conference there were “potentials for both of those”.

“If someone harmed Freddie Gray, we will have to prosecute him,” said Batts.

Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis said officials were looking into the second of three stops the van’s driver made after Gray was arrested on the morning of 12 April. “The facts of that interaction are under investigation,” said Davis.

Gray, 25, died last Sunday after suffering a broken neck and injured voice box. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said earlier this week “what happened happened inside the van,” echoing a police report that said Gray “suffered a medical emergency” in the vehicle.

………

Davis said Gray said he needed a medic during a third stop by the van, made to pick up a second prisoner, but an ambulance was not called until 25 minutes later, after the vehicle arrived at police headquarters. Batts told reporters that during the third stop, officers “picked him up off the floor and placed him on a seat”.

Batts said on Thursday that the second prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall, told investigators that Gray was “was still moving around, that he was kicking and making noises” until the van arrived at the station. Police are declining to identify the man due to his status as a witness in the criminal inquiry.

This thin blue line crap needs to stop.

We not only need to go after don’t cops, we need to go after cops who refuse to go after bad cops.

Zero tolerance.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens………

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A private bill collector and police conspired to use the threat of immediate arrest to extort cash from poor defendants:

Minutes after a court sentenced Adel Edwards to pay a $500 fine for burning leaves in his yard without a permit, the private probation company tasked with supervising his monthly payments told him he actually owed more than $1,000 and demanded $250 up front. Because Edwards couldn’t pay the full amount on the spot, the company had him thrown in jail for several days until a friend came up with the money, according to a new federal lawsuit.

The suit, filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights, charges that Red Hills Community Probation conspired with local police in two small Georgia towns to jail poor people without any court approval or legal authority, effectively holding them for ransom.

The plaintiffs, who live in Bainbridge and Pelham, GA, were ordered by the court to pay exorbitant fees for misdemeanor offenses. Edwards pleaded guilty to burning leaves, while others were told they needed to pay hundreds of dollars for speeding, failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and driving with a suspended registration.

At this point, these stories are reminiscent of reports coming out of Ferguson and the surrounding area, where municipalities exploit a murky labyrinth of court fees and traffic tickets to make money off poor defendants. But private probation companies like Red Hills, which are used by more than 1,000 court systems in ten states, further feed on these moneymaking schemes by tacking on their own share of fees. In Pelham and Bainbridge, the suit alleges, the probation firm went even further, committing false imprisonment and fraud, among other charges.

Like Edwards, the other plaintiffs met with Red Hills probation officers, who told each of them they could not leave the courthouse until they paid a certain amount of money that same day. Even though they weren’t legally required to pay the company the same day as their sentencing, the lawsuit states that police officers were stationed at the doors to keep them from leaving. One woman says she was detained in the courthouse while her fiance pawned her engagement ring to come up with the funds the company demanded.

Why am I not surprised that this is going on in what was once a part of the Confederacy?

Silly black folks, justice is for whites.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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In response to the spate of cops caught on video abusing and murdering people, Texas lawmakers are looking to ban recording police officers:

Oh, come on. We all know why they want to pass this bill — they want cops to get away with abusing and killing people! (As long as they’re the right people.) The right to record, in addition to being upheld by the appellate courts, is one of the best tools we have to deter police violence, and to see that those who break the law are held accountable — as we just saw last night:

A bill introduced in the Texas House of Representatives would make it illegal for private citizens to record police within 25 feet.

House Bill 2918, introduced by state Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) on Tuesday, would make the offense a misdemeanor. Citizens who are armed would not be permitted to record police activity within 100 feet of an officer, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Only representatives of radio or TV organizations that hold an FCC license, newspapers and magazines would have the right to record police. The legislator disagreed with people on Twitter who said he’s seeking to make all filming of cops illegal.

“My bill … just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement,” Villalba tweeted.

The bill would go against precedent set in 2011 by an appeals court, which found that citizens are allowed to record police, according to the ACLU.

Seriously.

I cannot see any justification for proposing such a law is because they want to ensure that minorities are in fear for their life.

The Scandal is that this is Normal for Prosecutors and Courts

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In one of the more prominent cyber crime trials of the year, it has been revealed that
some of the government agents who infiltrated the Silk Road underground site stole from the Site:

After a jury in February found Ross Ulbricht guilty of narcotics and money laundering conspiracies among other charges, in conjunction with his role as the mastermind behind the Silk Road online drug marketplace, even most long-time Ulbricht supporters looked at the preponderance of evidence against him and assumed the case was resoundingly closed. Yesterday, the door to that conviction may have cracked open a tiny bit.

 The US Department of Justice has charged US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV with money laundering and wire fraud in conjunction with their roles leading the Silk Road investigation. (Force was also charged with theft of government property). The pair of federal officers stand accused of diverting $800,000 in bitcoin from Silk Road to their own personal wallet accounts.

 [Aside: Is it just me or aren’t Bridges and Force the two most perfect Hollywood cop names you could ever think of?]

 Even crazier, the two are accused of posing as hitmen on the darknet website and subsequently ensnaring Ulbricht in a murder-for-hire plot against one of his Silk Road employees, whose death they later faked while collecting $80,000 for their services. Later Bridges and Force allegedly extorted 770 bitcoins – then worth approximately $100,000 – and had sought even more, by threatening to reveal his role in the employee’s disappearance.

 ………

 Judging by a tweet from Ublricht counsel Joshua Dratel yesterday, this is not the first time the defense had heard of these accusations:

Major Silk Road govt corruption scandal revelation today that we’ve had to sit on for four months and were not permitted to use at trial.
— Joshua Dratel (@JDratel) March 30, 2015


 The question is, why was this information inadmissible at trial and what, if any impact, did that have on Ulbricht’s conviction? If the defense can prove to an appellate judge that the defense was wrongly handicapped by this decision – a fact that may be more likely given the new information brought to light by the DOJ indictment – then it could be enough to merit a new trial. In such an event, it’s certainly conceivable that some of the evidence collected by Bridges and Force could be thrown out as a result. A report by Wired suggests that the most crucial evidence related to Ulbricht’s conviction was collected by the New York division of the FBI and the Chicago Department of Homeland Security, meaning it still may be enough to put him away.

It turns out that these revelations will figure prominently in an appeal of his conviction:

………

Late yesterday, Ulbricht’s attorney Joshua Dratel posted a statement to Tumblr answering many of these questions and clarifying that the defense is in fact seeking a new trial. Dratel also notes that the defense was aware of the ongoing investigation against US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV during the Ulbricht trial, but was denied the ability to enter this information into evidence.

According to Dratel, the defense has already filed a post-trial motion seeking a new trial, to which the government’s response is due by this Friday, April 3 – with a subsequent defense response scheduled to be filed April 15. Dratel adds that should these motions fail to obtain a new trial, Ulbricht will appeal the existing verdict, citing the Bridges-Force indictment among its arguments.

………

Below is the full statement posted to Dratel’s Tumblr. (Note: Dratel’s original post was entirely devoid of paragraphing. Pando has added the below paragraphing to aid in readability. The content remains otherwise unchanged.)

The government’s considerable efforts at keeping this monumental scandal from being aired at Ross Ulbricht’s trial is itself scandalous. In addition to keeping any information about the investigation from the defense for nearly nine months, then revealing it only five weeks prior to trial, and then moving to keep sealed and secret the general underlying information so that Mr. Ulbricht could not use it in his defense at trial, and then stymying the defense at every turn during trial when the defense tried to introduce favorable evidence, the government had also refused to agree to the defense’s request to adjourn the trial until after the indictment was returned and made public – a modest adjournment of a couple of months, since it was apparent that the investigation was nearing a conclusion.

Throughout Mr. Ulbricht’s trial the government repeatedly used the secret nature of the grand jury investigation as an excuse to preclude valuable defense evidence that was not only produced in discovery, independent of the investigation of Mr. Force, but also which was only at best tenuously related to that investigation. In that manner the government deprived the jury of essential facts, and Mr. Ulbricht of due process. In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt.

It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside. Also, it is clear that Mr. Force and others within the government obtained access to the administrative platforms of the Silk Road site, where they were able to commandeer accounts and had the capacity to change PIN numbers and other aspects of the site – all without the government’s knowledge of what precisely they did with that access.

In light of the information provided in the Complaint, it is now apparent to all just how relevant some of the issues raised by the defense at trial were, including the payment by Dread Pirate Roberts to a law enforcement agent for information about the investigation, the ramping up of the investigation of Mr. Ulbricht in mid-2013, soon after that paid information began flowing, and the creation of certain evidence at trial, such as the 2013 journal that conveniently begins – again – in Spring 2013, after the corruption alleged in this Complaint ripened. As the evidence at trial – particularly from the government’s law enforcement witnesses – demonstrated, the Baltimore investigation and agents were inextricably involved in the evolution of the case and the evidence, as well as with alerting Mark Karpeles that he was under investigation, and meeting with his lawyers and exchanging information.

At Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, knowing full well the corruption alleged in the Complaint made public today, the government still aggressively precluded much of that evidence, and kept it from the jury (and had other similar evidence stricken from the record). Consequently, the government improperly used the ongoing grand jury process in San Francisco as both a sword and a shield to deny Mr. Ulbricht access to and use of important evidence, and a fair trial. In addition, the government not only precluded use of the information at trial, even if it emanated from independent sources, such as discovery, but the government also prevented the defense from conducting any independent investigation, including subpoenaing Mr. Force to testify at trial. The defense also filed numerous discovery requests, to which the government refused to respond.

Regarding the government’s claim that the information was not relevant, the government notified the defense of the investigation of Mr. Force December 1, 2014. Two days later, the government provided its trial exhibits. Among those exhibits were several that referred to Mr. Force in his various internet personas, including “Nob” (his authorized undercover alias), as well as his rogue identities on Silk Road, including alpacino, french maid, and Death From Above (all of which were providing, or attempting to provide, Dread Pirate Roberts with confidential information about the government’s investigation of Silk Road). Thus, according to the government, even after it disclosed the fact of the investigation, it believed Mr. Force was indeed quite relevant. However, in the course of the ensuing litigation regarding whether the defense would be allowed to use the information about the investigation of Mr. Force at Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, by the time trial began the government either eliminated those exhibits or redacted them. During trial, the government successfully objected to the defense’s attempts to introduce the unredacted documents the government had initially designated as its exhibits.

While I will not claim that it is normal for investigators to be this larcenous, this sort of behavior by the prosecutors is normal.

It’s clear to my non-lawyer mind that the fact that a significant portion of the investigation of Ross Ulbricht (allegedly the Dread Pirate Roberts) was being conducted by corrupt agents is a material fact for the jury to evaluate, but the prosecutors managed to wave the secrecy magic wand, and to hide this information from the jury.

This is why you should never talk to a prosecutor of cop without a lawyer in the room.

Godwin’s Law* Notwithstanding, How can this Not Evoke Nazi Germany

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It turns out that for a number of years, the Nashville District Attorney’s office has been demanding sterilizations as a part of a plea bargain:

The district attorney in Nashville, Tennessee, recently ordered prosecutors to stop making sterilization part of a plea bargain. “The bottom line is the government can’t be ordering a forced sterilization,” Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk told the Associated Press in a story published Saturday.

Funk said a better alternative is to order people to stay away from children.

The most recent example of a court-ordered sterilization requirement in Tennessee came in the case of Jasmine Randers, 36, who suffers from depression and paranoia. The Nashville Tennessean reported Randers’ 4-day-old daughter died during a bus trip to Nashville from West Memphis, Arkansas, where she gave birth at Crittenden Regional Hospital. At the time, Randers was on the lam from a treatment center in Minnesota, one of 20 hospitalizations for her mental illness, the Tennessean reported earlier this month.

Though no cause of death was established, Randers was charged with aggravated child neglect. She had boarded the bus without any bottles of formula because they were too heavy to carry, the Tennessean said.

Assistant Public Defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe told the Tennessean that Assistant District Attorney Brian Holmgren would not even discuss a plea deal unless Randers agreed to have her tubes tied. Harcombe went over his head to Funk.

“I have let my office know that that is not an appropriate condition of a plea,” Funk said. “It is now policy that sterilization will never be a condition of deal-making in the district attorney’s office.”

Randers currently is committed to a mental health facility in western Tennessee.

David LaBahn, president of the national organization the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said his organization urges prosecutors to look for alternatives to prison, and in child abuse cases, birth control often is a condition for probation.

But the concept of forced sterilization evokes a time in U.S. history when the mentally ill often were subjected to the procedure.

“The history of sterilization in this country is that it is applied to the most despised people — criminals and the people we’re most afraid of, the mentally ill — and the one thing that these two groups usually share is that they are the most poor. That is what we’ve done in the past, and that’s a good reason not to do it now,” Georgia State University law Professor Paul Lombardo told the AP.

The AP cited cases in which sterilization was made a condition for eliminating or reducing prison time in West Virginia and Virginia. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown last year signed legislation preventing state prisons from forcing female inmates to undergo the procedure after an audit found some of the 150 sterilizations performed were done without inmate consent.

As is shown from the picture in this article, Ms. Randers is black.

Anyone want to guess what proportion of the other defendants so coerced were black?

This is so wrong on so many levels.

H/t Atrios.

*Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches One.”

Shoot Me! I Agree with Rand Paul………

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In a speech at HBCU Bowie State, Rand Paul has declared that the current criminal justice is structured to keep the poor and minorities down:

………

The content more than made up for that.* Paul has sharpened his pitch to black audiences over many visits and roundtables, some well-covered and some more private; he’s also re-introduced sentencing reform bills that give him more to talk about.

“Those of us who have jobs and have lived fairly privileged lives don’t know what it’s like to pay fines and penalties on top of other fines, and how someone’s life can spiral out of control,” said Paul, leaning on a podium and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. “As I’ve learned more about criminal justice system, I’ve come to believe it’s something that’s going to keep the two Americas separate.”

Paul ran through data and examples, from Ferguson to the novels of Tom Wolfe, to demonstrate the tragedy of over-criminalization. Some of his examples had clunked when he debuted them on TV or radio appearances. “What reason do we have for telling the police that they have to take someone down for selling cigarettes that aren’t taxed?,” asked Paul. “Couldn’t we give them a ticket?”

He was referring (though not by name) to the Eric Garner killing in New York, and while that analysis had been a brief outrage last year, it made no ripple in the Bowie State auditorium. That was likely because he put everything in the context of laws discriminating against non-whites and the poor. The effect of current de jure criminal codes, said Paul, was “somewhat like segregation.”

I guess that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but I really feel profoundly uncomfortable agreeing with him.

I would also note that I am far more sanguine regarding Paul’s putative Presidential campaign.

I cannot imagine another Republican out there who could make these sorts of statements.

I still think that Senator “Aqua-Buddha” is a nut case, but the ability to depart from Republican dogma when required, and this gives him the opportunity to make adjustments to his campaign message that his rivals cannot.

About F%$#ing Time………

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Swedish prosecutors have agreed to interrogate Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy:

In an abrupt reversal, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally agreed to question him inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange, who has been holed up in the building for nearly three years, has been accused of but not formally charged with committing sex crimes in Sweden.

In an English-language statement Friday, the Swedish Prosecution Authority wrote that Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny “has made a request to Julian Assange’s legal representatives whether Assange would consent to being interviewed in London and have his DNA taken via a swab.”

Why the sudden change of heart?


“The reason the prosecutor now decides to request permission to interview Julian Assange in London is chiefly that a number of the crimes Julian Assange is suspected of will be subject to statute of limitation in August 2015 i.e. in less than six months’ time,” the statement says.

Previously, the Swedish Prosecution Authority was on record as saying that “the prosecutor’s assessment is that a request for legal assistance involving the questioning of Julian Assange in London would not take the case forward in a significant manner.”

It’s clear that a part of this is the fact that the prosecutor is facing the statute of limitations, but I think that another part is that, with Edward Snowden’s revelations, it’s pretty clear that the various attempts by the Obama administration to intimidate potential whistle blowers has clearly failed, so the Swedes are no longer being pressured by the US.

My guess is that the charges will expire without the prosecutor filing anything.

Protect and Serve, My Ass

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It appears that the New York City police force is way over staffed, because someone has the time to sanitize Wikipedia accounts of New York police brutality victims and other police scandals while on the clock:

IP addresses linked to the New York Police Department’s computer network have been used to sanitize Wikipedia entries about cases of police brutality.

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen nefarious alterations to Wikipedia entries, and it won’t be the last. But the disclosure of NYPD’s entries by Capital New York come as the Justice Department announced a national initiative for “building community trust and justice” with the nation’s policing agencies.

As many as 85 IP addresses connected to 1 Police Plaza altered entries for some of the most high-profile police abuse cases, including those for victims Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo, Capital New York said. Edits have also been made to other entries covering NYPD scandals, its stop-and-frisk program, and the department leadership.

One of the most brazen alterations concerned Eric Garner, who was killed by police last year during an arrest that was captured on video by an onlooker. The mobile phone video went viral, prompting widespread protests and a grand jury investigation. On December 3, the Staten Island grand jury agreed not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in connection to Garner’s death, despite the medical examiner ruling it a homicide. The same day as the grand jury announcement, the “Death of Eric Garner” page on Wikipedia was altered from IP addresses traced to 1 Police Plaza. Those alterations can be seen here and here.

Seriously?

This is not taxpayer money well spent by any stretch of the imagination.

Not Just Ferguson

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In Wittier, California, police officers have sued over retaliation for reporting illegal quotas:

Six Whittier police officers are suing the city, saying they faced retaliation when they complained and refused to meet alleged ticket and arrest quotas.

Officers Jim Azpilicueta, Anthony Gonzalez, Mike Rosario, Nancy Ogle, Steve Johnson and Cpl. Joseph Rivera say they spoke out against the quotas, which they claim were imposed by the Whittier Police Department in 2008, according to a suit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The officers said their “careers have been materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed” by the city.

City Manager Jim Collier and Whittier police spokesman Officer John Scoggins declined to comment and said they had not seen the lawsuit.

“The lawsuit is unfortunate and the city will determine the best course of action once an analysis of the lawsuit is completed,” Collier said.

The officers say the alleged ticket and arrest quotas continue to this day.

The alleged retaliation started after the officers said they complained to their supervisors and the police department’s Internal Affairs Division, the suit claims.

After complaining about quotas, the officers faced a series of disciplinary actions including counseling sessions, unwarranted transfers, increased scrutiny and disparaging comments, the lawsuit said.

………

Imposing arrest and ticket quotas on police officers violates California Vehicle Codes section 41600. The codes makes it illegal for any state or local agency to force officers to meet a certain number of citations or arrests for promotion or disciplinary purposes.

Here’s a thought for initiative petition crazy California:  Someone start collecting signatures for a ballot measure that takes all the proceeds from these sort of offenses, and transfers it to a scholarship program for state schools.

Once municipalities no longer from pulling this sh%$, they will stop pulling this sh%$.

This is the Least Surprising News Since ……… Ever

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The US Department of Justice has determined that the entire justice system of Ferguson, Missouri discriminates against minorities:

Ferguson, Mo., is a third white, but the crime statistics compiled in the city over the past two years seemed to suggest that only black people were breaking the law. They accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.

The racial disparity in those statistics was so stark that the Justice Department has concluded in a report scheduled for release on Wednesday that there was only one explanation: The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.

The report, based on a six-month investigation, provides a glimpse into the roots of the racial tensions that boiled over in Ferguson last summer after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer, making it a worldwide flash point in the debate over race and policing in America. It describes a city where the police used force almost exclusively on blacks and regularly stopped people without probable cause. Racial bias is so ingrained, the report said, that Ferguson officials circulated racist jokes on their government email accounts.

I’m not sure what a final resolution to this should be, but as a start, I would suggest that all fines and court costs in the municipality be placed under the control of a special master and not allowed to accrue to the town treasury.

The town will continue to discriminate so long as it makes a profit from doing so.

People should not hate their own police, but it is the God given right of any free citizen to hate the tax collector, even though it is an essential function.

By turning the Ferguson courts and police into a revenue source it creates a toxic environment.

The people hate the cops. 

The cops hate them back, and come to believe that they are surrounded by the enemy, and not familiar citizens.

Then you get a kid shot and left to lie in the street for hours in plain view as a warning to the community.

I’d also like to see some criminal prosecutions, perhaps under RICO, against those who created, promulgated, and maintained such a system.