Tag: Law Enforcement Misconduct

Official Misconduct in the Breonna Taylor Affair Gets Even More Sordid

No Comments

First, it appears that the grand jurors completely freaked out when they realized that they wouldn’t be presented any possibility of indicting the cops who killed Brionna Taylor.

Even with the power that the Attorney General had over the proceedings, they knew that this was an egregiously corrupt turn of events:

Two grand jurors who heard the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office presentation of the Breonna Taylor case say prosecutors were dismissive of their questions and that there was an “uproar” when jurors realized Louisville police officers wouldn’t be charged with Taylor’s death.

The grand jurors — who are choosing to remain anonymous, citing security concerns — spoke to journalists by phone Wednesday evening along with their attorney, Kevin Glogower, and community activist Christopher 2X. They spoke about how their service on the Taylor case was unlike dozens of other cases they heard throughout their month of service.

………

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Annie O’Connell earlier this month allowed grand jurors to speak about their service after Grand Juror 1 filed court documents suggesting public comments by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron about the proceedings were misleading.

Six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law weren’t considered against the Louisville Metro Police Department officers who fired their weapons in Taylor’s apartment because “they were justified in the return of deadly fire” after being shot at once by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, Cameron said in a news conference last month. The “grand jury agreed” with that decision, he said in his first public comments about the grand jury proceedings.

Grand Juror 1 described Cameron’s comments as “inaccurate” and said the first time he heard there were six possible homicide charges that the jurists could have reviewed was in Cameron’s news conference.
“Even though we asked for other charges to be brought, we were never told of any additional charges. We were just told that they didn’t feel that they can make any charges stick” and that LMPD officers were justified in returning fire,” the juror said.
“They didn’t go into the details of the self-defense statutes, they didn’t go into the details of any of the six possible murder statutes,” he said, explaining Cameron’s news conference was the catalyst for filing the petition with the court.
………

A third anonymous grand juror who also has come forward “firmly supports the fact that no additional charges were allowed at the conclusion of their service,” according a statement released late Friday afternoon by Glogower, who now represents all three grand jurors.

………

“When they finally did present the charges to us … almost of all of the people at once said, ‘Isn’t there anything else?'” The reply from the attorney general’s office was there were no other charges that they could make stick, Grand Juror 1 recalled.

“There were a lot of questions,” he said. “We didn’t go right into deliberation on charges because we wanted to know what else was missing. … There was an uproar at the end, and it suggested to me that there were several other people who wanted to know more information.”

According to Kentucky law, prosecutors “shall attend the grand jurors when requested by them” and “when requested by them, draft indictments.”

And in addition to all of that, we have one of the killer cops is suing Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend for causing him, “severe trauma, mental anguish and emotional distress.”

These cops break down the door with no notice in response to a bogus warrant, fire indiscriminately, refuse to provide any aid to Taylor after she is shot, and now one of these murderous bastards is suing for “mental anguish and emotional distress”.

The entire institution of law enforcement in the United States needs to be dismantled brick by brick.

Have I Mention That Cops Lie?

No Comments

BREAKING VIDEO: Here Philly PD appear to smash the windows of a passing vehicle that was trying to turn around, then dragged the parents out and beat them on the ground in front of their terrified children. [@MrCheckpoint] pic.twitter.com/e6mmXWqzkr

— ☭ New York Socialist ☭ (@TheNYSocialist) October 28, 2020

Philadelphia’s Finest

A Philadelphia toddler was ripped from his mom’s SUV after police smashed in her windows.

The Fraternal Order of Police claimed in a Facebook post that the “lost” child was found “walking around barefoot” after police shot Walter Wallace Jr. https://t.co/CX9rpD8bSg

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 30, 2020

There are lies, damn lies, and every single word that you might ever hear from the Policemen’s Benovelent Association

During the protests over the police shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr., police broke the windows of a SUV that had strayed into the area, beat its occupants, dragged them out, and then took the baby in the back and used it for a photo-op.

The victim has still not been told where her car is, which means that it, and the baby’s hearing aid that was left in it, are “gone with the wind”.

Somewhere in hell, Frank Rizzo is smiling:

Philadelphia police pulled a woman from an SUV during unrest in West Philadelphia Tuesday morning, beat and bloodied her, separated her from her toddler for hours, and kept her in handcuffs in the hospital, her attorneys said Friday.

She has not been charged with a crime, and police won’t say what prompted the show of force.

Philadelphia civil rights attorneys Kevin Mincey and Riley H. Ross III are representing the woman and the toddler, who they said were both injured as police pulled them from an SUV shown in a now-viral video from the 5200 block of Chestnut Street at about 2 a.m. Tuesday. The video depicts at least 15 police officers swarming a vehicle, bashing in the windows, pulling out the driver and another passenger, beating them, then appearing to remove a child from the backseat.

………

Mincey said Young was struggling to get her child to fall asleep, and, hoping a car ride would help, she took the toddler with her to West Philadelphia to pick up her 16-year-old nephew from a friend’s house as unrest roiled the neighborhood. Mincey said Young encountered police barricades and attempted to make a three-point turn when police surrounded the vehicle.

Then, he said, police pulled Young and the 16-year-old from the car and threw them to the ground; police beat both with batons, handcuffed them, and detained them, he said. Mincey said Young relayed that police at the scene refused to tell her where her child would be taken, saying only “he’s gonna go to a better place, we’re gonna report it to DHS,” presumably referring to the Department of Human Services, the city’s child-welfare agency.

………

Police then took her back to headquarters and processed her. Mincey said she was kept in a holding cell, wasn’t informed of charges against her, and was issued a wristband that read: “assault on police.” She was released without being charged. Mincey said she’s unsure what time she was released, but she said “the sun was up.”

Young and her son were separated for hours. Mincey said Young was in the police van with another woman who had a cell phone. Young called her mother, Mincey said, and the boy’s grandmother went to the scene to retrieve the child. There, according to Mincey, police directed her to go to 15th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, four miles away in Center City. The grandmother, Mincey said, found the child sitting in his car seat in a police cruiser with two officers. The child had a lump on his head and glass from the SUV’s broken windows was still in his car seat, Mincey said.

Video shows Philadelphia Police breaking into an SUV in West Philly early Tuesday morning, and then beating the driver while a child was inside.

Mincey said police have not told the family where their vehicle is, and he said the child’s hearing aid and Young’s purse and wallet are still inside it.

………

Ross also slammed the National Fraternal Order of Police for on Thursday posting images of an officer holding the child and falsely writing in a caption: “This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness. The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child.”

The child was the same one pulled from the SUV, according to images shot at the scene by an Inquirer photographer and a freelance photographer in the area. The Inquirer is not publishing images of the toddler out of concern for the privacy of the family and the child.

The FOP deleted the posts about 30 minutes after the Inquirer asked for comment. On Friday, an FOP spokesperson said after posting the photo, the organization “subsequently learned of conflicting accounts of the circumstances under which the child came to be assisted by the officer and immediately took the photo and caption down.”

………

The video of the incident was shot less than 12 hours after two Philadelphia police officers shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man who family and neighbors said was experiencing a mental health crisis. Video of his killing showed him holding a knife and walking toward police when they opened fire, each firing seven shots.

Seriously, the cops are completely out of control.

So Not a Surprise

No Comments

It turns out that the bloke who fired shots into a police station during the George Floyd protests was a white supremacist trying to gin up conflict for a race war.

He was a part of the “Boogaloo” crowd.

I’m not sure if I would call this a false flag operation, but if it isn’t it’s false flag, it certainly is false flag’s next door neighbor.

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday.

A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

It does seem that a disproportionate number of these interstate terrorist types come from Texas, huh?

Unrest flared throughout Minneapolis following Floyd’s death, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video, causing Gov. Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. As police clashed with protesters, Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois discussed in private Facebook messages their plans to travel to Minneapolis and rally at the Cub Foods near the Third Precinct building, according to federal court documents. One of the people Hunter coordinated with posted publicly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off,” the complaint states.

Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with another Boogaloo member in California, a man named Steven Carrillo.

“Go for police buildings,” Hunter told Carrillo, according to charging documents.

And Carrillo has a bit of a story as well:

Five days later, Carrillo shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz when authorities tried to arrest him, according to charges filed in California. Authorities say he then stole a car and wrote “Boog” on the hood “in what appeared to be his own blood.”

A couple of days later, during police protests in Austin, Texas, police pulled over a truck after seeing three men in tactical gear and carrying guns drive away in it. Hunter, in the front passenger seat, wore six loaded banana magazines for an AK-47-style assault rifle on his tactical vest, according federal authorities. The two other men had AR-15 magazines affixed to their vests. The officers found an AK-47-style rifle and two AR-15 rifles on the rear seat of the vehicle, a pistol next to the driver’s seat and another pistol in the center console.

Hunter denied he owned any of the weapons found in the vehicle. He did, according to the complaint, volunteer that he was the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in South Texas and that he was present in Minneapolis when the Third Precinct was set on fire. Police seized the guns and let Hunter and the others go.

Once again, we see the cops sghowing favoritism to white supremacist terrorists, even though these same terrorists are the ones who are disproportionately likely to kill cops.

Thin blue line, my ass.

Hunter is the third member of the Boogaloo Bois, a loose-knit group intent on igniting a second American civil war, to be charged in Minneapolis as a result of the unrest that followed Floyd’s death.

Michael Robert Solomon and Benjamin Ryan Teeter were indicted in September with conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Police are the Same Everywhere

No Comments

And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist.

He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc.

Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an accident of history, specifically the 872 day Siege of Leningrad.

I rather imagine that even in the former Leningrad, the police are still reactionary:

October 7 was a good day for democrats. The Greek Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the leaders of Golden Dawn, the only openly Nazi party to have won seats in any parliament since the 1940s, on charges of murder, grievous bodily harm, and directing a criminal organization. A crowd of 20,000 Athenians celebrated outside the court.

Our celebration lasted precisely 40 seconds, before the police dispersed us with teargas. Gasping for air, my wife and I tried to join hundreds of others struggling to escape via a narrow street leading to the safety of nearby Mount Lycabettus. A dozen riot police were there, firing gas canisters into the fleeing crowd. I pleaded with their commanding officer to stop. “There is no purpose in gassing people trying to go home,” I told him calmly. He swore at me. When I produced my parliamentary ID card, his response startled me: “Yet another reason to fuck you.”

The conviction of Greece’s Nazi leaders is a decisive victory against the revival of far-right extremism in Europe. But while they were being sent to prison, their ideas, manners, and hatred of parliamentary democracy were in police uniform, terrorizing the streets.

A week later, a police internal affairs officer interviewed me as part of an investigation triggered by my testimony. I could not recognize the riot policeman’s face, because I was unable to breathe or see properly at the time of the incident. But I did recognize one thing: the look of calm loathing in his eyes – a look that reminded me of Kapnias, once a trained Gestapo interrogator.

………

When I met him in 1991, I had assumed that figures like Kapnias were relics that would disappear one funeral at a time. I was wrong. A sense of permanent defeat, hopelessness, and widespread humiliation create an environment in which Nazism’s dormant DNA reawakens. Once Greek society was immersed in wholesale indignity, following our state’s bankruptcy in 2010, a new generation of Nazis, with Kapnias’s look in their eyes, took their seats in Parliament. Now, most of them are in prison for heinous crimes. But that look remains in the eyes of too many, not all of them in uniform.

At this I’m inclined to believe that law enforcement is INHERENTLY pro-Fascist, and pro-Nazi.  It just comes with the job.

Sounds More and More Like a Hit

No Comments

We now have more witness reports of the shooting of Michael Reinoehl by a federal task force, and it reinforces the perception that they just rolled up and started shooting.

The reports now are that there were no lights or sirens, and no attempt by officers to get Reinoehl to surrender.

Considering the proclivities of law enforcement, the support for white supremacists is obvious, and the case of Fred Hampton comes to mind:

Michael Reinoehl was on the run.

A few days after a shooting left a far-right Trump supporter dead on the streets of Portland, Ore., Mr. Reinoehl, an antifa activist who had been named in the news media as a focus of the investigation, feared that vigilantes were after him, not to mention the police. Even some of his close friends did not know where he was.

But the authorities knew.

On Sept. 3, about 120 miles north of Portland, Mr. Reinoehl was getting into his Volkswagen station wagon when a pair of unmarked sport utility vehicles roared through the quiet streets, screeching to a halt just in front of his bumper. Members of a U.S. Marshals task force jumped out and unleashed a hail of bullets that shattered windows, whizzed past bystanders and left Mr. Reinoehl dead in the street.

Attorney General William P. Barr trumpeted the operation as a “significant accomplishment” that removed a “violent agitator.” The officers had opened fire, he said, when Mr. Reinoehl “attempted to escape arrest” and “produced a firearm” during the encounter. But a reconstruction of what happened that night, based on the accounts of people who witnessed the confrontation and the preliminary findings of investigators, produces a much different picture — one that raises questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him.

In interviews with 22 people who were near the scene, all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. In their official statements, not yet made public, the officers offered differing accounts of whether they saw Mr. Reinoehl with a weapon. One told investigators he thought he saw Mr. Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle before the firing began, but two others said they did not.

………

Five eyewitnesses said in interviews that the gunfire began the instant the vehicles arrived. None of them saw Mr. Reinoehl holding a weapon. A single shell casing of the same caliber as the handgun he was carrying was found inside his car.

Garrett Louis, who watched the shooting begin while trying to get his 8-year-old son out of the line of fire, said the officers arrived with such speed and violence that he initially assumed they were drug dealers gunning down a foe — until he saw their law enforcement vests.

It increasingly looks like a preordained execution.

 

Clearly, We Are in a Post-Racial Society

No Comments

While walking down the street in Beverly Hills, a Black senior Versace executive was stopped and searched by police:

This is the rule, not an exception.

A black Versace executive says he was racially profiled close to the Beverly Hills branch of the Italian luxury fashion brand.

Salehe Bembury, the vice-president of sneakers and men’s footwear at Versace, was stopped and searched for jaywalking in Rodeo Drive, near Camden Drive and Wilshire Boulevard.

“What’s unfortunate is I literally designed the shoes that are in the bag and I’m f%$#ing being searched for them,” Bembury appears telling police officers in a video of the incident.

(%$# mine)

First, “VP of sneakers?”  That’s just kind of weird. 

Second, if you think that there is no more racism in the United States, you are either an egregious racist, or you are brain dead.

These Are Not the Actions of an Innocent Man

No Comments

Following a grand juror complaint about his handling of the Breonna Taylor case, Kentuck AG Daniel Cameron was forced to release highly redacted tape and transcript of grand jury testimony, has now moved to silence those grand jurors to prevent any further embarrassment to him. 

He knows that further grand juror revelations will show that he deliberately the case before the grand jury, and refused to inform the jury of its rights to information.

I don’t know if this is illegal, but it’s certainly sketchy legal ethics, and it’s political poison, so now he is covering it up.

This is not a surprise.  After all this is a man who has about as much experience as a real lawyer as Raymond Burr, and his qualification for office is that he is a protege of Mitch McConnell:

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron claimed weeks ago, when announcing the grand jury’s decision in Breonna Taylor’s shooting death, that justice only answered “to the facts and to the law.” Cameron’s recent motion to keep jurors who ruled on the case from speaking publicly about the proceedings, however, has many wondering whether the “facts” he presented had the intention of seeking justice for Taylor or instead pre-determined innocence for the officers involved.

On Oct. 2, Cameron’s office released 15 hours of audio from the grand jury proceedings on Taylor’s death. Since then, Taylor’s family has called on Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to appoint a new special prosecutor to reopen the case. The family claims that the recent recordings show that Cameron “did not serve as an unbiased prosecutor” and “intentionally did not present charges to the grand jury that would have pursued justice for Ms. Taylor.”

………

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron claimed weeks ago, when announcing the grand jury’s decision in Breonna Taylor’s shooting death, that justice only answered “to the facts and to the law.” Cameron’s recent motion to keep jurors who ruled on the case from speaking publicly about the proceedings, however, has many wondering whether the “facts” he presented had the intention of seeking justice for Taylor or instead pre-determined innocence for the officers involved.

On Oct. 2, Cameron’s office released 15 hours of audio from the grand jury proceedings on Taylor’s death. Since then, Taylor’s family has called on Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to appoint a new special prosecutor to reopen the case. The family claims that the recent recordings show that Cameron “did not serve as an unbiased prosecutor” and “intentionally did not present charges to the grand jury that would have pursued justice for Ms. Taylor.”

The filing went on to accuse Cameron of using jurors “as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for those decisions.”

………

Cameron wants the judge to dismiss the grand juror’s request. He claimed in a statement that the proceedings are kept confidential to protect the safety of all involved. Taylor’s family believes that the A.G. is continuing to stand in the way of justice.

This rat-f%$# is every bit as corrupt as his former boss, and I hope that this ends his career.

Support Your Local Police

No Comments

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is a real cesspool.

Case in point, for the second time in the past few months, the first time in Compton, and now, we have another criminal gang of cops in East LA: 

Los Angeles County’s top watchdog says in a report released Monday that substantial evidence exists that a secretive group of tattooed deputies at the East L.A. sheriff’s station are “gang-like and their influence has resulted in favoritism, sexism, racism and violence.”

In the 32-page report probing activities of the Banditos clique, Inspector General Max Huntsman says Sheriff Alex Villanueva “continues to promote a code of silence regarding these sub-groups” which have plagued the agency for decades.

………

“Minimal questions were asked about the Banditos and in the interviews during which the witnesses brought up the Banditos by name, very few follow-up questions were asked,” the report says, adding that 23 witnesses declined to give interviews. The report also criticized the failure of prosecutors to scrutinize the Banditos in their review of the case.

………

Some of the employees who received disciplinary letters were the alleged assault victims, who faced punishment for actions that included failing to report the Kennedy Hall incident to their superiors, their attorney Vincent Miller said. He said they reported the incident right away to a lieutenant they trusted. The Times has reported that only three deputies of the 26 employees were facing termination.

“This announcement of an exaggerated number of 26 Banditos being disciplined is consistent with past false statements that have been made by you and your office about your handling of the deputy gang problem,” Miller wrote to Villanueva last month in a letter obtained by The Times.

The administrative investigation conducted by the Sheriff’s Department found that some employees at the station were acting as so-called shot callers, controlling scheduling and events at the station, Cmdr. April Tardy has said, using a term often used to describe top leaders in prisons and gangs.

These cops are gang bangers.

This is why people talk about abolishing the police.

Meanwhile, in Texas………

No Comments
These are his hand-picked senior staff, not professional staff.
It should be noted that Paxton was indicted in 2016 for corruption, but has this far managed to prevent those charges from going to trial:

Seven members of the staff of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, including some of his top aides, wrote a letter that surfaced over the weekend saying he should be investigated in connection with offenses including improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal acts.

The scenario was extraordinary, particularly because Mr. Paxton has managed to become a consequential figure in Republican legal circles in Texas and nationally despite glaring accusations in his past. In his first year as attorney general, Mr. Paxton was indicted on felony charges related to securities fraud and was booked in a county jail outside Dallas.

………

Now his tenure is threatened by a new cloud of scandal in the letter, which surfaced late Saturday in a report by The Austin American-Statesman and the Austin television station KVUE. “We have a good faith belief that the attorney general is violating federal and/or state law,” the letter said.

The substance of the allegations remains unclear, as Mr. Paxton’s aides have not elaborated in the letter or elsewhere about how they contend he violated the law and abused his office. But the complaint has drawn new scrutiny to the questions of impropriety that Mr. Paxton has so far been able to withstand.

“These allegations raise serious concerns,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican and Mr. Paxton’s predecessor as attorney general, said on Sunday. “I will withhold further comment until the results of any investigation are complete.”

………

Mr. Paxton has denied the accusations, issuing a statement arguing that they were meant to distract from malfeasance by others.

“The complaint filed against Attorney General Paxton was done to impede an ongoing investigation into criminal wrongdoing by public officials including employees of this office,” the statement said. “Making false claims is a very serious matter and we plan to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law.”

So, now he’s threatening retaliation against the whistle-blowers.

………

The accusations against Mr. Paxton were leveled in the letter that was sent last week to state human resources officials in which the aides said they had “knowledge of facts relevant to these potential offenses” and reported them to the authorities. Federal law enforcement officials have declined to confirm that an investigation is underway.

The letter was signed by seven of the highest-ranking officials in the Attorney General’s Office, including the first assistant attorney general, Jeffrey C. Mateer, who resigned last week to join the First Liberty Institute, a religious freedom advocacy organization, to focus on elevating conservatives onto the federal bench. (Mr. Mateer’s own nomination to become a federal judge was withdrawn in 2017 after news organizations, including The Dallas Morning News, reported he had made disparaging comments about gay people and referred to transgender children as evidence of “Satan’s plan.”)

So much for it being a “Vast left-wing conspiracy.”

………

It is unclear if the allegations are related to those at the heart of Mr. Paxton’s indictment in 2015, in which he was charged with two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register with the state securities board.

………

The case has stretched out over more than five years, with change of venue requests and disputes over payments to the special prosecutors handling it. No trial date is set.

This guy is unbelievably dirty.

Breonna Taylor Tape is Out

No Comments

Two very different accounts emerged on Friday from either side of an apartment door in Louisville, the one that police officers knocked off its hinges in March as they delivered a search warrant at the home of Breonna Taylor.

In newly released audio from closed-door grand jury proceedings, there was conflicting testimony over what happened in the seconds before the police shot and killed Ms. Taylor, a Black emergency room technician whose death pulled people to the streets in protests across the country.

………

The grand jury concluded its work by bringing an indictment against one former officer for endangering Ms. Taylor’s neighbors; it brought no charges against the two officers who shot her.

Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, released the recordings on Friday after a judge ordered him to do so, but the recordings did not include the instructions that prosecutors gave to the 12 jurors. One juror said Mr. Cameron was deflecting blame by saying it was jurors who had opted not to indict the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor.

………

The grand jurors met in person over three days and reviewed police interviews of officers and witnesses at the scene, 911 calls and body camera videos from after Ms. Taylor was shot. They also met directly with detectives who had investigated the killing.

At times the jurors sound inquisitive or skeptical on the recordings, peppering the detectives with questions and pointing out inconsistencies in some of the officers’ accounts. Below are highlights of the evidence presented in the new recordings.
The audio does not include prosecutors’ instructions, which came into question after a grand juror spoke out.

The audio files do not include statements or recommendations from prosecutors about which charges they think should be brought against the officers who took part in the raid. Mr. Cameron has said that jurors were told that the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor — Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove, both of whom are white — were justified in their actions.

Mr. Cameron said prosecutors’ statements and jurors’ deliberations “were not recorded, as they are not evidence.” He has insisted that the jurors were given “all of the evidence” and were free to pursue additional charges.

This is complete crap.

The redacted tapes are clearly a coverup.


His release of the audiotapes came after a grand juror asked for the proceedings to be made public and accused Mr. Cameron of using the jurors to deflect blame over the decision. Grand jurors are given broad powers, but prosecutors often closely guide the jurors and inform them about their role. The process almost always remains secret.

………

After grand jurors heard a recording of the interview that Detective Cosgrove gave to investigators, one juror asked, “Does he have a history of panic attacks?” An investigator with the attorney general’s office said he did not know.

The grand jurors knew that the fix was in, but they were not told that they had sweeping powers to request information and issue subpoenas, even if the prosecutors did not want to.

………

Ms. Taylor’s next-door neighbors said they were awakened by banging but did not hear anyone announce that they were the police, according to interviews they gave to investigators. Once the shooting subsided, the neighbors said, they heard Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend sobbing and screaming for help.

………

In previous interviews with The New York Times, 11 of 12 witnesses on the scene that night said they never heard the police identify themselves. One of them said he heard the group say “police” just once.

Cops lie with impunity in court.  The current state Attorney General is fine with that.

………

The dozen grand jurors appeared inquisitive throughout the proceedings, asking witnesses about the evidence and sometimes sounding skeptical about what was provided to them.

………

The grand jurors asked a detective from the attorney general’s office several questions on the third and final day that they met, just hours before indicting Mr. Hankison.

They asked if the police had recovered drugs or money from the apartment; the detective said no, and that the police had not searched the apartment for drugs or paraphernalia after shooting Ms. Taylor. They asked whether he had diagrams of the scene (no) and why the officers’ body cameras were not activated (the detective said he did not know).

So, when the grand jurors asked for what they considered to be critical information, the response of the authorities was, “¯_(ツ)_/¯,” and they refused to tell those jurors that they have real and significant authority to investigate.

This is deeply corrupt.

It’s clear that the AG decided that they value the support of the cop unions over the over fair administration of justice.

And the Award for Most Ludicrous Reason Not to Prosecute a Cop Goes To………

No Comments
A special prosecutor investing the cesspool of corruption that is the Orange County Sheriff’s office has declined to prosecute deputies who filed false official reports, because, and as As Anna Russel would say, “I’m not making this up, you know,” they did not know that it was illegal to falsify official documents.

This is the most reprehensible excuse a prosecutor has ever given for letting corrupt cops walk:

Orange County (CA) sheriff’s deputies are the worst at law stuff. If the goal was to hire the stupidest, most plausibly-deniable candidates, the OCSD has hit the mark.

Deputies for this department have managed to achieve the impossible: turn local prosecutors against them by continuously mishandling evidence. Evidence must be managed carefully since it’s the thing prosecutors use to secure convictions. In the hands of deputies, evidence is just something that must be handled, however haphazardly, at whatever point they get around to it.

Since they can’t handle the job of correctly booking evidence, deputies have been faking reports, claiming evidence is booked in when it actually isn’t to avoid getting reprimanded for taking too long to process seized property. One deputy, Bryce Simpson, never did the job correctly. In 74 cases audited, 56 had no evidence booked at all and the other 18 only had some of the evidence booked.

Now, Deputy Bryce Simpson — along with Deputy Joseph Atkinson Jr. — are being given a pass by the special prosecutor presiding over the grand jury convened to decide whether these two slackers/liars should face criminal charges. According to the prosecutor, the deputies did nothing wrong because — wait for it — they didn’t know falsifying official documents was wrong.

………

You have got to be f%$#ing kidding me. Even if we believe the deputies — and there’s no reason we should — there has never been a case ever in any situation where falsifying official documents has been considered the right thing to do. That the deputies may have been unaware these actions could result in criminal charges is beside the point. The mens rea is the knowing falsification of documents, which has never been considered OK under any circumstances. And that’s even when the threat of criminal prosecution isn’t readily apparent.

And their testimony contradicts the Sheriff’s Department spokesperson, who says both deputies received training on the filing of evidence — training that presumably included the warning that faking these documents could result in criminal charges. If they didn’t pay attention to the criminal charge part of the training, that’s hardly an excuse. Ignorance of the law doesn’t help civilians. It shouldn’t aid and abet criminal actions committed by law enforcement officers.

This entire rotten edifice needs to be torn down root and branch.

Well, This Explains the Taylor Non-Indictments

No Comments

A grand juror in the Breonna Taylor case has asked for, and and been granted, the release of the transcripts and the right to comment publicly on the proceedings.

They are alleging that the attorney general refused to present any evidence against the two officers who were not charged and lied about the proceedings.

Given that Attorney General Daniel Cameron is a long-time protege of Mitch McConnell, his rat-f%$#ing of the prosecution should come as no surprise:

A juror in the Breonna Taylor case contends that the Kentucky attorney general misrepresented the grand jury’s deliberations and failed to offer the panel the option of indicting the two officers who fatally shot the young woman, according to the juror’s lawyer.

The unnamed juror filed a court motion on Monday seeking the release of last week’s transcripts and permission from a judge to speak publicly to set the record straight. Hours later, the office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron granted both requests, saying that the juror is free to speak and that recordings of the session will be made public.

………

The lawyer said the juror came to him last week feeling anxious after Mr. Cameron repeatedly said at a news conference that the law did not permit him to charge Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor on March 13 — and that the jury had agreed with him.

Why there needs to be an office that deals only with law enforcement misconduct in any state prosecutors’ office.  Also, they should  probably be in the chain of reporting from police Internal Affairs (IA) departments.

Prosecutors who have to work with cops day after day will bend, if not break, the law to preserve their relationships with police departments.

Support Your Local Police

No Comments

Over at Mother Jones, they tell the story of  a police officer who resigned rather than act as a mercenary for real estate developers who wanted to expel minorities from a neighborhood:

Three years in, I had basically arrived—I had been transferred to the day shift. It was the premier shift. You wanted to get the day shift because those are the best hours, good days off.

On my beat, they started telling me: “We really want you to start policing this section of Boulevard and Ponce de Leon Avenue, basically the Bedford Pines Apartments. We think there are dope boys in there. We think there’s a lot of illegal activity happening and we want to really focus there. So we’re gonna put up signs that say you can’t park on the street. I want you to go and write tickets on every single car that’s on the street and I want you to get those cars out of there; if they don’t move, tow ’em. I want you to start running checks on everybody standing on the street; if they have got warrants, I want you to lock ’em up.”

It became this very aggressive policing strategy in the Bedford Pines. Which was strange. Because it was extremely rare for them to tell you to do anything. It’s unusual for them to give you very specific directions, and then for them to be very serious about it and follow up—I’d have supervisors show up and say, “Hey I drove by, there were some cars parked out there, did you ticket them?”

It made me very curious. So on my own time—I live in Atlanta, I live in the zone I policed, which is super rare—I drove over there and had a conversation with some people. I was like: “Hey, this is what I’m being asked to do. Why do you think that is? What’s going on?”

A homeowner in the area was very frank with me. He said the guys who own Bedford Pines got their tax bill last year, and their taxes were assessed based on all the gentrification that’s happening in the area. And so they wanted to move everybody out of these apartments and knock ’em down and rebuild these nice expensive apartments and the government said no. And so then they said, “Well, that’s ok, we’ll just increase the rent.” They tried to increase the rent and the Section 8 guys came back out and said, “No, you can’t do that either.”

The only way you can evict or do anything like that is if the person who owns the apartment is convicted of a felony. So the Bedford Pines guys just went to the police department and said: “We want you to police in here, and we’re going to give you a section of Bedford Pines to actually have office space. And I want you to lock up as many people as possible so we can make these apartments vacant and we can knock ’em down.”

I go to my supervisors: Is this what the case is? And they looked at me like, what are you, stupid? Of course, why else would we be doing this?

………

There was something about that that made me think now, when I clock into work, I’m not doing any good. I’m actually doing harm.

………

It dawned on me that the entire system, the entire thing, was just a sh%$ty mafia system. If you tried to do a good job and say, “I’m going to be a good cop, and I’m going to obey commands,” they would abandon you, charge you, leave you behind, and not even think twice. If you didn’t obey the rules, then they were gonna charge you for that. And if you tried to remain quiet and do your job, you are going to be a piece of modern-day redlining that way, too. There was no way that I could exist and feel good about it. And because I didn’t have to—and that’s the privilege part—I just decided not to.

When I told the department I was quitting, they said, “Good for you. If I could quit, I would quit.” My supervisor literally said: “Can we get together after work and you tell me what else I can do? I don’t know what else to do and I cannot stomach being here.”

The rest of the story is that when he quit, someone in the department swore out false allegations of child and pet abuse to harass him.

It is all, “Just a sh%$ty mafia system.”

Yes, By All Means, Trust the FBI

No Comments

Once agaim, it now appears that the FBI has soft pedaled evidence that a mass shooting event was tied to right wing militant movements. 

 This time, it’s Stephen Paddock, who murdered 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, who had strong ties to right wing militia movements, specifically, he was big into the Boogaloo movement, or at least its immediate antecedent:

Three years after the worst mass shooting in recent American history, the FBI has yet to identify a motive explaining what could have driven Stephen Paddock to open fire on a crowded music festival from a Las Vegas hotel window, killing 58 people and injuring many hundreds more. But the FBI, which has been notoriously slow to recognize right-wing threats in recent years, may have ignored a politically inconvenient explanation: Paddock, in our view, fit the profile of a far-right political extremist bent on sowing violence in society.

Paddock appeared fixated on three pillars of right-wing extremism: anti-government conspiracy theories, threats to Second Amendment rights, and overly burdensome taxes. For instance, one witness told Las Vegas police that Paddock was “kind of fanatical” about his anti-government conspiracies and that he believed someone had to “wake up the American public” and get them to arm themselves in response to looming threats. Family members and associates of Paddock painted a picture of a man who loathed restrictions on gun ownership and believed that the Second Amendment was under siege, according to our review of their statements to investigators after the shooting and other documents compiled by the authorities.

………

The FBI and Las Vegas police each spent many months searching for a motive in the Las Vegas attack, and both agencies claimed to come up empty in the end. There was “no single or clear motivating factor behind Paddock’s attack,” an FBI panel concluded in a report released in January 2019, and it found “no evidence that Paddock’s attack was motivated by any ideological or political beliefs.” The FBI said that “throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder,” much like many violent lone actors before him.

………

To be sure, factors like Paddock’s declining mental health or an apparent downturn in his high-stakes gambling could also have played a part in his twisted thinking that night. We may never know for certain what would drive a man to barricade himself inside the Mandalay Bay resort with nearly two-dozen high-powered weapons and commit an act of such horrendous violence. But consider what is known about Paddock’s deep-set political beliefs and grievances on issues like guns and taxes.

Paddock “had an obsession with guns” and would become angry when challenged on the Second Amendment, according to Adam LeFevre, who dated the sister of Paddock’s partner. Paddock “made it very clear he would have no part of gun ownership restrictions,” said LeFevre, who got a glimpse of Paddock’s well-stocked gun room during a tour of his home, in another interview. Indeed, by the time of the attack, Paddock had amassed an arsenal of some 80 firearms, mostly assault-style rifles, in addition to stockpiling ammunition and some survivalist equipment — another glaring attribute of the far right.

“He was animated about the government and the tax system,” LeFevre told us in an email. “He was outspoken about the inadequacies and waste of the government.”

Paddock’s ardent opposition to gun restrictions bled into his embrace of a number of the debunked conspiracy theories that have helped to fuel a rise in right-wing extremism in recent years, according to the statements collected by the Las Vegas police, as well as interviews with journalists.

The month before the shooting, one unnamed associate recounted to Las Vegas police detectives that Paddock tried to bribe him into selling a gun part used to convert a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic machine gun, demonstrating a total disregard for federal firearms laws. When the associate refused because he said it would be illegal, Paddock reportedly became enraged and made references to a litany of anti-government conspiracy theories, including supposed plans by the Federal Emergency Management Administration to set up “detention camps” of Americans and plans for widespread confiscation of firearms. Paddock believed that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 “was just a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and confiscating guns,” the associate said.

“He was kind of fanatical about this stuff,” the associate added, quoting Paddock as saying that “somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves.”

………
 
While the FBI has been reluctant to label many attacks by far-right figures as terrorism, outside academics and researchers who track terrorism have filled that void in recent years, compiling data on the growing amount of far-right violence. The managers of two exhaustive databases on terrorism incidents — the START program at the University of Maryland, which works with the Department of Homeland Security, and the Center for Investigative Reporting — decided to include Paddock’s Las Vegas massacre as an act of domestic terrorism, even though the FBI does not classify it that way.

………

President Donald Trump, with little evidence, has tried repeatedly to blame antifa and “left-wing” protesters for organized violence surrounding the protests. But in most cases of violence, evidence on the ground so far points instead to far-right, anti-government protesters — particularly members of the so-called boogaloo boys, who believe in conspiracies about the government’s confiscation of guns and predict a coming civil war in America.

………

Both of us have examined from a close vantage point the rise of right-wing extremism — and resistance from the federal government in recognizing it. Daryl Johnson was the author of a 2009 report at DHS on the rising threat, which was retracted under political pressure by Republicans, and he has written two books on the subject. Eric Lichtblau has written about the subject extensively over the years, including an article in The Intercept in June about an intelligence report acknowledging the government’s failings in confronting the threat of domestic extremists.

People may disagree, based on the evidence, about whether Paddock should be considered part of the rogue’s gallery of ideologically inspired, right-wing killers — alongside people like Roof in Charleston and Crusius in El Paso. But the clues to his political motives certainly merit further review from law enforcement officials to help solve the mystery of what drove him to massacre those dozens of concertgoers on that October night three years ago. The families of the victims deserve it, and the government’s efforts to head off the next massacre demand it.

The vast bulk of law enforcement in the United States is aggressively supportive or the right wing, and right wing violence.

This is the case with the vile spawn of J. Edgar Hoover as well.

I’m sure that they will mention right wing violence when there is absolutely no other alternative.

They are far more measured when it’s not a black or a brown perp.

About F%$#ing Time, Massachusetts Edition

No Comments

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that prosecutors must tell prosecutors how often specific police officers lie on the stand. 

I’m not surprised the prosecutors refuse to tell defense attorneys about cops who lie, but I am surprised that the courts have let it slide so long.

Cops lie. Cops lie enough there’s a term for it: testilying. Honest prosecutors don’t want lying cops on the stand dirtying up their case with their impeachable testimony. Unfortunately, police unions are powerful enough to thwart this small bit of accountability. “Brady lists” are compiled by prosecutors. They contain the names of officers whose track record for telling the truth is so terrible prosecutors don’t want to have to rely on their… shall we say… misstatements in court.

Unfortunately, these lists are often closely-guarded secrets. Judges aren’t made aware of officers’ penchant for lying. Neither are defendants in many cases. But they’re called “Brady” lists because they’re supposed to be disclosed to defendants. The “Brady” refers to Brady v. Maryland, where it was decided prosecutors are obligated to turn over possibly exculpatory information to defendants to ensure their right to a fair trial. This includes anything that might indicate the cop offering testimony might not be telling the truth.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled [PDF] prosecutors have an obligation to inform defendants of officers who have made their “Brady” lists. Two cops who made false statements in a use-of-force report were granted immunity for their testimony in front of a grand jury. The district attorney prosecuting a different criminal case handed this information over to the defendant. The cops challenged this move, claiming their grand jury immunity should have prevented this exculpatory information from being given to the defendant and discussed in open court. (h/t Matthew Segal)

The cops argued there’s no constitutional duty to disclose this information (under the US Constitution or the Commonwealth’s) unless failing to do so would alter the outcome of the trial by creating reasonable doubt where none previously existed. The Supreme Judicial Court says that argument is wrong under both Constitutions.

First, prosecutors have more than a constitutional duty to disclose exculpatory information; they also have a broad duty under Mass. R. Crim. P. 14 (a)(1)(iii) to disclose “[a]ny facts of an exculpatory nature.” This duty is not limited to information so important that its disclosure would create a reasonable doubt that otherwise would not exist; it includes all information that would “tend to” indicate that the defendant might not be guilty or “tend to” show that a lesser conviction or sentence would be appropriate.

[…]

Second, even if prosecutors had only their constitutional obligation to disclose, and not the broad duty under our rules, we would not want prosecutors to withhold exculpatory information if they thought they could do so without crossing the line into a violation of the defendant’s right to a fair trial.

This is a SIGNIFICANT expansion to the Brady rule.  The SJC is saying that the information does not have to show innocence, but something that might lead to some reasonable doubt with some jurors, or even that it might result in a more lenient sentence.

This is a big change.

………

The cops also argued their immunity from prosecution during their grand jury testimony should shield them from any adverse consequences. Wrong again, says the court. The immunity only covers prosecution for the admitted crimes. It is not a shield against reputational damage that may result from this information being made public or handed over to defendants.

………

The Court wraps this up by laying down the law: this is Brady info and it needs to be disclosed to defendants. The SJC is not f%$#ing around.

[W]e conclude, as did the district attorney, that the prosecutors here have a Brady obligation to disclose the exculpatory information at issue to unrelated criminal defendants in cases where a petitioner is a potential witness or prepared a report in the criminal investigation. That obligation remains even though that information was obtained in grand jury testimony compelled by an immunity order. And the district attorney may fulfill that obligation without prior judicial approval; a judge’s order is needed only for issuance of a protective order limiting the dissemination of grand jury information.

More broadly, we conclude that where a prosecutor determines from information in his or her possession that a police officer lied to conceal the unlawful use of excessive force, whether by him or herself or another officer, or lied about a defendant’s conduct and thereby allowed a false or inflated criminal charge to be prosecuted, the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose exculpatory information requires that the information be disclosed to defense counsel in any criminal case where the officer is a potential witness or prepared a report in the criminal investigation.

That’s the standard in Massachusetts. And bad cops are on notice there’s pretty much nothing they can do to escape the consequences of their own actions. This is as it should be. Now, if the courts could just make sure prosecutors and police departments are actually compiling Brady lists, we’d be set. At least in this Commonwealth.

Having cops revealed to be liars in open court is a good thing, because those cops are going to get torn up on the stands by defense attorneys, and so will be an embarrassment to the force, and not get promoted. 

It’s more long-overdue accountability.

Rule 1 of Cops, Police Brutality and Police Protests: They Lie

No Comments

Rule 2 is, “See rule 1.”

Case in point?  When the Rochester mayor and chief of police claimed that a woman from Alaska was an, “Outside Agitator,” he a woman from Alaska who was a student at the University of Richester: 

After the upheaval of the protest on Sept. 5 in downtown Rochester, police announced nine demonstrators were detained and charged.

During a press conference the following day, both Mayor Lovely Warren and former Chief La’Ron Singletary said people from as far away as Massachusetts and Alaska were arrested.

Singletary said there was evidence and intelligence pointing to “outside agitators” in our community. During a listening session with City Council Wednesday, it was revealed that the Alaska resident charged with unlawful assembly after the protest is actually a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Rochester.

Sonia McGaffigan addressed City Council and chastised Warren, Singletary and the media for perpetuating this narrative on outside agitators during the rallies and protests after the death of Daniel Prude became public in early September.

McGaffigan said during her three-minute response to City Council that it was her first-ever protest and she described the scene after police knocked her off her bicycle while she was attempting to ride back to campus.

And if that weren’t enough, we now have details about how aggressively the Rochester police attempted to cover up their crime:

It was early June, days after the death of George Floyd, and cities around the country were erupting in protests against police brutality.

In Rochester, the streets were relatively calm, but behind closed doors, police and city officials were growing anxious. A Black man, Daniel Prude, had died of suffocation in March after police officers had placed his head in a hood and pinned him to the ground. The public had never been told about the death, but that would change if police body camera footage of the encounter got out.

“We certainly do not want people to misinterpret the officers’ actions and conflate this incident with any recent killings of unarmed Black men by law enforcement nationally,” a deputy Rochester police chief wrote in an email to his boss. “That would simply be a false narrative, and could create animosity and potentially violent blowback in this community as a result.”

His advice was clear: Don’t release the body camera footage to the Prude family’s lawyer. The police chief replied minutes later: “I totally agree.”

The June 4 exchange was contained in a mass of city documents released on Monday that show how the police chief, La’Ron Singletary, and other prominent Rochester officials did everything in their power to keep the troubling videos of the incident out of public view, and to prevent damaging fallout from Mr. Prude’s death.

………

In a police report on the confrontation, marking a box for “victim type,” an officer on the scene listed Mr. Prude — who the police believed had broken a store window that night — simply as an “individual.” But another officer circled the word in red and scribbled a note.

“Make him a suspect,” it read.

If the people who enforce your laws routinely lie to protect themselves from the law, you do not have law enforcement, you have a criminal gang.

Support Your Local Police

No Comments

This is f%$#ed Up and Sh%$

Remember when I wrote about a Clackamas County, Oregon Deputy spreading lies about Antifa starting fires?

It gets, worse.  A LOT worse.

The Deputy, who we now know is one Mark Nikolai, did more than spread lies about the fires.

He gave specific instructions on how white supremacist militia could kill people and get away with it.

Please also note, as had been demonstrated time, and time, and time, and time again, this guy is the rule not the exception. 

Most of the cops out there are clearly pro-white supremacist.

It’s why the entire institution of law enforcement in America needs to be torn down brick by brick and replaced with something that is not this corrupt and dysfunctional:

For many of us, September 11 has become a day of remembrance and a time to band together and take care of other people in any small way we can.

But for one sheriff’s deputy in Oregon, it was apparently an opportunity to share some dark advice amidst the wildfires that have spread in the Pacific Northwest.

A video was circulated online after an individual presumably wearing a body camera caught the deputy giving a group of armed White nationalist militia members tips on how to use force and kill civilians without getting caught or being charged.

The sheriff’s deputy has been identified as Deputy Mark Nikolai, who was placed on administrative leave.

………

Nikolai can be heard saying in the video:

“Don’t get yourself in a situation where you lose your rights because you pushed the limit.”

“You all mean to do good, your heart’s in the right place, but the courts nowadays don’t give a s**t where your heart is.”

………

“Now, if you throw a f**king knife in their hand after you shoot them, that’s on you.”

Officials from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department have denied any affiliation with Nikolai’s statements or point of view.

They can deny it all they want, but we know what this guy was, and we know that he flourished for years in the department, and good cops don’t tell civilians, or other cops, to carry weapons to plant on their victims.

Any cop who has worked with this guy had to know what he was, and they let it slide, which meant that they were bad cops too.

First Reform the Police Need: End Impunity for Lying

No Comments

Warning: Violence

Josie Huang, an NPR reporter was brutalized and arrested by LA Sheriffs, who then claimed that she was interfering with their actions and did not declare that she was a member of the press.

Unfortunately for them, she caught it all on tape, as her Twitter thread shows:

As Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies tackled Josie Huang to the street on Saturday night, the reporter for NPR affiliate KPCC screamed repeatedly she was a journalist. Deputies arrested her anyway, leaving her with scrapes, bruises, a five-hour stay in custody — and an obstruction charge that carries up to a year in jail.

Police claimed Huang, who also reports for LAist, didn’t have credentials and ignored demands to leave the area.

But those claims are contradicted by video Huang shared on Sunday showing her quickly backing away from police when ordered to do so and repeatedly identifying herself as a journalist. Huang said she also had a press badge around her neck.

NPR executives and reporters groups condemned Huang’s arrest, demanding her charges be dropped and the sheriff’s department explain why officers forcefully tackled her.

“We hold the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department accountable to provide answers for the excessive use of force in the detainment of our colleague,” the Asian American Journalists Association said in a statement. “The Los Angeles chapter of AAJA demands an investigation and apology for her arrest.”

An independent monitor who oversees investigations into the sheriff’s department also launched a probe into her arrest. “What surprises me the most is that once she was identified as a reporter that they transported her, that they cited her,” L.A. County Inspector Gen. Max Huntsman told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.

……

Huang said that is precisely what happened to her on Saturday.

Like dozens of other reporters, she had gone to a news conference outside St. Francis Medical Center, where doctors were treating two officers who had been shot in the head in an ambush earlier that night. Afterward, she was typing notes in her car in a parking garage when she heard a commotion in the street, Huang recounted in a Twitter thread on Sunday.

She ventured outside, with her press ID hanging around her neck, and found a few men waving flags and taunting deputies. As the police chased one man and then tackled him, she followed at a distance, filming the incident with her camera’s zoom function.

Suddenly, as seen in a video she shot, one deputy yelled, “Back up.” In her next video, Huang backed quickly away as a number of officers marched toward her, and then knocked the phone from her hand and took her to the ground.

“I’m a reporter,” she yelled. “I’m with KPCC!”

Her phone continued recording during her arrest, capturing her telling officers that they were hurting her and yelling yet again that she is a journalist. Another bystander’s video shows Huang being roughly pulled to the ground while a number of officers piled on top of her.

………

Early on Sunday morning, the sheriff’s office told a different story in recounting her arrest. The department said that as officers were struggling to arrest a protester, “a female adult ran towards the deputies, ignored repeated commands to stay back as they struggled with the male and interfered with the arrest.”

Huang “did not identify herself as press,” the department claimed, “and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person.”

………

“Her arrest is the latest in a series of troubling interactions between our reporters and some local law enforcement officers,” Herb Scannell, chief executive of Southern California Public Radio, said in a statement to the Times. “Journalists provide an essential service, providing fair, accurate and timely journalism and without them, our democracy is at risk.”

The first step of fixing the police is to make sure that when they lie in the course of their official duties, they need to be fired, charged with a felony, and have their guns taken away forever.

The Reinoehl Death Looks Increasingly Like a Hit

No Comments
It now appears that Michael Reinoehl’s death at hands of police appears to have been a deliberate execution, with the police opening fire without warning:

Officers who first confronted Michael Forest Reinoehl outside an apartment complex in Washington last week yelled no warnings or commands before firing and killing the Oregon man wanted on a murder warrant in the death of a right-wing demonstrator in Portland, according to a witness now represented by a lawyer.

Nathaniel Dingess, 39, lives in the apartment complex near Lacey, Washington, where Reinoehl apparently was hiding.

Dingess said he saw Reinoehl walk toward his car holding a cellphone in his hand when two unmarked law enforcement vehicles converged outside the complex in the 7600 block of Third Way Southeast last Thursday night. Officers began firing at Reinoehl, according to a statement issued by Dingess’ lawyer, Luke Laughlin, on his behalf.

Reinoehl ducked for cover near his car, but it was blocked by police cars and he never got into it, according to Dingess.

“Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘stop’ command, quickly followed by more rapid-fire shooting by additional officers,” according to the statement.

Dingess said he never saw a handgun on Reinoehl or saw him reach for anything.

………

Dingess, an ordained minister of 19 years, fears for his and his family’s safety for speaking out in what has become a flashpoint in the political swirl around Portland’s ongoing protests, according to his lawyers.

Laughlin and other lawyers are calling for an independent authority to investigate the shooting of Reinoehl, arguing that the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is not an uninvolved party.

………

The night of the shooting, the U.S. Marshals Service issued a statement that said, “Initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers. Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Normally, I would be inclined to wait for an investigation, and perhaps some more information before coming to that conclusion, but given that both Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr gave their official imprimatur to this as an extrajudicial killing, I have to believe that orders were given that Reinoehl was not to be taken alive:

President Donald Trump seemed to endorse the extrajudicial killing of suspects while discussing the fatal shooting of the antifascist activist Michael Reinoehl by U.S. Marshals in early September.

………

“The U.S. Marshals went in to get [Reinoehl], and, in a short period of time, they ended up in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments seemed to line-up with Attorney General William Barr’s official statement following the killing of Reinoehl, calling the officers’ actions “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order.”

Given the eyewitness account, I’m not inclined to believe that Trump and Barr both gave tacit, if not explicit, approval to a shoot on sight order.

Certainly, given the pro-fascist proclivities of both the US and local state security apparatus, I don’t think that you would need a smoking gun type order to do this, just vague language about how no risks being taken.

If you are not worried, note that, if the allegations are true, this is only one step away drone strikes against US citizens on US soil.