When the cops are the criminals

[Pointedstick]

Let's start a thread to collect recent episodes of police misconduct. Bonus points if there are no consequences for the perpetrators.

Let me start:

http://www.popehat.com/2014/01/16/updat ... 6-million/

By now you've probably heard the story of David Eckert. He's the New Mexico man who was stopped by police, detained based on a suspicion he was hiding drugs in his rectum, and subjected to increasingly intrusive anal probing and eventually sedation and a colonoscopy. You might have read about him at Simple Justice or Defending People or BoingBoing or Techdirt or Reason or any of the other places that reported on the ghastly episode.

I waited to write about it until I could get a copy of the search warrant affidavit — helpfully provided by my friend Kevin Underhill of the absolutely essential legal blog Lowering the Bar — so that I could address this question: what quantum of proof is required in New Mexico for the police and compliant doctors to rape and torture a man?

Oh what the heck, here's another one:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/06/29/37770.htm

DAYTON, Ohio (CN) - Dayton police "mistook" a mentally handicapped teenager's speech impediment for "disrespect," so they Tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat him and called for backup from "upward of 20 police officers" after the boy rode his bicycle home to ask his mother for help, the boy's mom says.

[Mountaineer]

I hope David Eckert was not on medicare.  If so, his next regular colonoscopy will be delayed because he already had one, courtesy of the police examinating doctors. 

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

Man Arrested While Picking Up His Kids: "The Problem Is I'm Black"

Read the article.

Watch the video.

Read the comments.

(Also, it looks like there have been no consequences for the officers, so bonus points are in order).

Do cops have to inform you why you are being placed under arrest?  Or why they want your personal information?  As much as I'd probably advise this guy to be a bit more cooperative, the cops in this video made a mountain out of a molehill. No wonder so few people recognize their moral authority.

[Ad Orientem]

Man Arrested While Picking Up His Kids: "The Problem Is I'm Black"

Read the article.

Watch the video.

Read the comments.

(Also, it looks like there have been no consequences for the officers, so bonus points are in order).

Do cops have to inform you why you are being placed under arrest?  Or why they want your personal information?  As much as I'd probably advise this guy to be a bit more cooperative, the cops in this video made a mountain out of a molehill. No wonder so few people recognize their moral authority.

Yes and no. They are obligated to inform you if you are under arrest and the charge(s), and they are supposed to advise you of your legal rights. They are not however required to answer your questions and in fact they are allowed to lie to you in certain situations. My best advice is to decline to speak with the police about anything more innocuous than the weather or last night's ball game. And if anyone with a badge reads you your rights, THE ONLY WORDS that should pass your lips are "I respectfully invoke my Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer any questions or make any statements. If I am under arrest, I want a lawyer." I don't care if they only want to know where you were on the night Abraham Lincoln was shot.

See http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc... one of the best videos on this topic.

[Ad Orientem]

Brothers convicted of murder and rape are freed after thirty years...

LUMBERTON, N.C. — Thirty years after their convictions in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina, based on confessions that they quickly repudiated and said were coerced, two mentally disabled half-brothers were declared innocent and released Tuesday by a Robeson County court.

The case against the men, always weak, fell apart after DNA evidence implicated another man with a history of rape and murder.

The startling shift in fortunes for the men, Henry Lee McCollum, now 50, who has spent three decades on death row, and Leon Brown, 46, who was serving a life sentence, provided one of the most dramatic examples yet of the potential for false, coerced confessions and also of the power of DNA tests to exonerate the innocent.

As friends and relatives of the two men wept, a superior court judge, Douglas B. Sasser, said he was vacating their convictions and ordering their release.

From here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/us/2- ... .html?_r=0

[Libertarian666]

Worrying about criminal cops is so far down on my list. With the massive threat from Islamic jihadist terrorist madmen such as ISIS it pales by comparison.

Just today I've been reading about their plans to weaponize the bubonic plague, use undetectable explosives sewn into their bodies in simultaneous worldwide attacks, and their possible seizure of 11 jetliners in Tripoli. Forgive me for not worrying about a couple of rogue cops or even my right to private emails.

Oh yes! And another beheading of an American.

That's odd; I have much more concern with criminal cops.
I can easily avoid being beheaded in Iraq or Syria, simply by not going there.
I can't very easily avoid criminal cops.

[Pointedstick]

http://gothamist.com/2014/09/03/nypd_si ... arrest.php

A human rights lawyer who was formerly the top attorney for Public Advocate Tish James was arrested for blocking the sidewalk following a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square while waiting for her children to use the bathroom.

Chaumtoli Huq, 42, was standing outside of Ruby Tuesday on July 19th when her husband and children went into the restaurant to use the restroom. Police officers told her to keep moving down the sidewalk.

"I'm not in anybody's way. Why do I have to move? What's the problem?" Huq told police, according to the criminal complaint obtained by DNAinfo.

Police officer Ryan Lathrop and his partner then pinned her against a wall and arrested her.

“At that point I didn’t know what was happening. I was just thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ and all of a sudden the officer flips me [around]…he [turns] my body and presses me against the wall of the restaurant,”? Huq told DNAinfo. “He shoved my left arm all the way and kept pushing it and handcuffed me. At that point I just like instinctively yelled, ‘Help!’ because I was alone. I screamed, ‘Help!’"

I think I would also yell "Help!" if I was kidnapped while standing on the sidewalk waiting for my family to return from using the bathroom.

[Pointedstick]

You sadly delude yourself. Islamic terrorism is real and is a direct threat to you and to your loved ones.  It is just a matter of time before they again kill thousands of us, or at least attempt to.

Let's not hijack this thread. Islamic terrorism can be discussed in a different thread.

[Ad Orientem]

Stop and seize (part 1 of a WAPO investigative report)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/invest ... and-seize/

In America your property is guilty until proven innocent.

[Reub]

Worrying about criminal cops is so far down on my list. With the massive threat from Islamic jihadist terrorist madmen such as ISIS it pales by comparison.

Just today I've been reading about their plans to weaponize the bubonic plague, use undetectable explosives sewn into their bodies in simultaneous worldwide attacks, and their possible seizure of 11 jetliners in Tripoli. Forgive me for not worrying about a couple of rogue cops or even my right to private emails.

Oh yes! And another beheading of an American.

That's odd; I have much more concern with criminal cops.
I can easily avoid being beheaded in Iraq or Syria, simply by not going there.
I can't very easily avoid criminal cops.

"Brendan Tevlin, American Martyr, Murdered On U.S. Soil By Jihadist Killer"

"Brendan Tevlin, 19, was murdered by Ali Muhammad Brown, a Muslim terrorist, in an act of domestic terrorism.

Brown told authorities that murdering Brendan was a “just kill.”? He was seeking vengeance for Muslim deaths in “Iraq, Syria, (and) Afghanistan.”?


You can read the complete court documents here: Washington State vs Brown.

On June 25, at a red light in West Orange, NJ, Brown selected Brendan at random and shot him eight times in his Jeep.


Brown murdered three other men earlier this year. Police have issued bulletins to determine if there are more victims of his terrorist plot. Mainstream media have buried this story. Apparently, they don’t think that jihadists travelling across the U.S. and murdering random Americans (simply because they are Americans) is newsworthy."

http://www.rightlywired.com/brendan-tev ... st-killer/

Can you avoid this by not going to Syria or Iraq?

[Libertarian666]

Worrying about criminal cops is so far down on my list. With the massive threat from Islamic jihadist terrorist madmen such as ISIS it pales by comparison.

Just today I've been reading about their plans to weaponize the bubonic plague, use undetectable explosives sewn into their bodies in simultaneous worldwide attacks, and their possible seizure of 11 jetliners in Tripoli. Forgive me for not worrying about a couple of rogue cops or even my right to private emails.

Oh yes! And another beheading of an American.

That's odd; I have much more concern with criminal cops.
I can easily avoid being beheaded in Iraq or Syria, simply by not going there.
I can't very easily avoid criminal cops.

"Brendan Tevlin, American Martyr, Murdered On U.S. Soil By Jihadist Killer"

"Brendan Tevlin, 19, was murdered by Ali Muhammad Brown, a Muslim terrorist, in an act of domestic terrorism.

Brown told authorities that murdering Brendan was a “just kill.”? He was seeking vengeance for Muslim deaths in “Iraq, Syria, (and) Afghanistan.”?


You can read the complete court documents here: Washington State vs Brown.

On June 25, at a red light in West Orange, NJ, Brown selected Brendan at random and shot him eight times in his Jeep.


Brown murdered three other men earlier this year. Police have issued bulletins to determine if there are more victims of his terrorist plot. Mainstream media have buried this story. Apparently, they don’t think that jihadists travelling across the U.S. and murdering random Americans (simply because they are Americans) is newsworthy."

http://www.rightlywired.com/brendan-tev ... st-killer/

Can you avoid this by not going to Syria or Iraq?

I'm almost as worried about that as I am about these deaths, which more common (in toto, anyway):
http://unusualdeaths.com/category/2013/

Everybody panic! We're all going to die!

Well, the last of those is actually true, although the timeframe is a bit uncertain...

[Mountaineer]

This sounds similar to "Police Action" run wild.

It has come out how the government forced Yahoo to turn over online data to the NSA surveillance program known as PRISM.  A “civil contempt”? ruling would have fined the company $250,000 a day.  Every week Yahoo refused to comply the fine would double.  Doing the math, that would come to $25 million after a month, $400 million the second month, $7.2 billion the third month, $9.5 trillion the fifth month, $117 trillion the sixth month, more than the total value of everything on earth the eighth or ninth month, and $7.9 sextillion by the end of the year; that’s equal to a stack of $100 bills (if that many actually existed) so high that it would go back and forth to the sun 28,769 times.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/ ... more-19856

... Mountaineer

[Reub]

Guys the police are not our enemies.  They protect us from common criminals and murderous Islamic terrorists every day.

[Pointedstick]

I can't say much for murderous Islamic terrorists, but I don't think the police have a great track record of protecting people against criminals. Cleaning up the mess, taking witness statements, and catching the guys who did it, maybe. Stopping them? I don't see how. Cops aren't clairvoyant. They can't predict where criminals will strike. They can't arrive in time to prevent the crime from being committed. And they can't be legally held accountable for failing to protect you when when they actually could stop the crime in progress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v. ... f_Columbia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales

The person most capable of protecting you from criminals is yourself!


[img width=300]https://i.imgur.com/vuzK5Ee.jpg[/img]

[moda0306]

I am not a cop hater, i have a ton of respect for the tough job they do and tend to think they get it right for the most part.... but not always..... and some times when they get it wrong they get it criminally wrong... and some times the problems are caused by the system and cop culture, the no knock raid is one of those..

this poor guy is facing a possible death penalty for having what seems like a natural response to me http://lastresistance.com/7299/man-faces-death-penalty-defending-cops-knock-raid/

For once, I pretty closely agree with Simon.

When cops get it wrong, they can get it horribly, horribly wrong.

[Pointedstick]

For once, I pretty closely agree with Simon.

When cops get it wrong, they can get it horribly, horribly wrong.

Unfortunately, they didn't even really get it wrong. What they did there is just "standard operating procedure" nowadays. It's not like this was a rogue group of yahoos or something.

exactly...that is what i meant by "caused by the system and cop culture"
the system and culture have made the no knock raid "standard operating procedure" and its criminally wrong*..
i understand that the danger of creating an armed standoff with well armed lunatics, makes the no knock tempting, but it should be an exceptionally rare event and require multiple layers of oversight, perhaps the police commissioner should be required to be present and in charge every time they do one, it would put heavy political pressure on doing these raids exactly right and only under the most provably necessary circumstances, if the top cop was on scene and had to take the fall for any mistakes i bet they would be rare.

*criminally wrong may be bad semantics, it should be a crime to use "no knock" the way they are using it..

[Pointedstick]

http://triggerfinger.org/weblog/entry/10780

On August 19, 2010, two inspectors from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) visited the Strictly Skillz Barbershop in Orlando and found everything in order: All of the barbers working there were properly licensed, and all of the work stations complied with state regulations. Two days later, even though no violations had been discovered and even though the DBPR is authorized to conduct such inspections only once every two years, the inspectors called again, this time accompanied by "between eight and ten officers, including narcotics agents," who "rushed into" the barbershop "like [a] SWAT team." Some of them wore masks and bulletproof vests and had their guns drawn. Meanwhile, police cars blocked off the parking lot.

This is a terror and intimidation tactic disguised as an illegal search disguised as a regulatory inspection.

[Pointedstick]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/justice/s ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Police said Groubert, 31, stopped Jones in the parking lot of a Circle K station in daylight, for what police say was an alleged seat belt violation, around 5 p.m.

Video that authorities say was recorded from Groubert's police car shows the trooper driving up to a vehicle just as its driver -- who authorities say is Jones -- steps out of the vehicle.

When Groubert asks for Jones' license, Jones pivots toward the vehicle he just exited -- the driver's door is still open -- and leans inside as if to retrieve something, the video shows.

About two seconds later, the trooper that police identify as Groubert comes into view with a gun drawn and yells "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" The gun is fired -- at least four shots are heard -- and Jones steps away from the vehicle, raising his hands in the air and eventually moving off camera.

"I just got my license! You said get my license!" says someone off camera, apparently Jones.

After being told to put his hands behind his back, Jones asks: "What did I do, sir?"

"Are you hit?" asks another off-camera voice, apparently Groubert's.

"I think so," comes the response. "I can't feel my leg. I don't know what happened."

The conversation continues:

"Why did you shoot me?"

"Well, you dove head-first back into your car. Then you (unintelligible), I'm telling you get out of your car."

There is a video. He did not "dive head-first into his car." And the officer immediately started shooting while the man's back was turned.

It's telling to me that the reaction of this former officer of the year to someone complying with his order in a way he didn't expect was to assume that the man was about to retrieve a weapon and murder him, and to immediately start shooting. And they say that we're paranoid…

No bonus points here because the cop has been fired and charged with a felony, thank goodness!

[moda0306]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/justice/s ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Police said Groubert, 31, stopped Jones in the parking lot of a Circle K station in daylight, for what police say was an alleged seat belt violation, around 5 p.m.

Video that authorities say was recorded from Groubert's police car shows the trooper driving up to a vehicle just as its driver -- who authorities say is Jones -- steps out of the vehicle.

When Groubert asks for Jones' license, Jones pivots toward the vehicle he just exited -- the driver's door is still open -- and leans inside as if to retrieve something, the video shows.

About two seconds later, the trooper that police identify as Groubert comes into view with a gun drawn and yells "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" The gun is fired -- at least four shots are heard -- and Jones steps away from the vehicle, raising his hands in the air and eventually moving off camera.

"I just got my license! You said get my license!" says someone off camera, apparently Jones.

After being told to put his hands behind his back, Jones asks: "What did I do, sir?"

"Are you hit?" asks another off-camera voice, apparently Groubert's.

"I think so," comes the response. "I can't feel my leg. I don't know what happened."

The conversation continues:

"Why did you shoot me?"

"Well, you dove head-first back into your car. Then you (unintelligible), I'm telling you get out of your car."

There is a video. He did not "dive head-first into his car." And the officer immediately started shooting while the man's back was turned.

It's telling to me that the reaction of this former officer of the year to someone complying with his order in a way he didn't expect was to assume that the man was about to retrieve a weapon and murder him, and to immediately start shooting. And they say that we're paranoid…

I'm almost getting to the point with these incidents where I blame the law more than the police.  As completely over the line as that cop went, the law FORCES both citizens and police into very contentious situations every day by having things as stupid as "seat belt violations."  There should be very, very few instances where a cop is interacting with an individual where he actually has authority over your actions, but because of all these victimless crime laws, we see $hit like this and the Ferguson story develop because of seat belts and jay-walking.

[Pointedstick]

Totally agree, moda. And of course these victimless crime laws are the perfect excuse for selective enforcement against the kinds of people who the police and current crop of politicians don't like.

You know, this sounds like something that libertarians have been saying for years... We'll convert you yet!

[moda0306]

PS,

There is an anarchist (screw libertarianism... too fucking soft!) bubbling below the surface of my psyche every time I see/read stuff like that.

[Pointedstick]

Though I know I can come off as a "fuck da police" punk, I really do feel for them. The police have to deal with the very worst of society, and as we've seen, the worst can be pretty bad. I think the problem is that this kind of contact with the most awful part of society can cause police officers to develop an attitude that everyone they meet is a potential psychopathic murderer who at best is not to be trusted and at worst is probably itching to attack them for no reason, so they feel like they'd better be ready to unleash hell at a moment's notice. By assuming the worst, they can tend to see exactly what they're looking for and treat people like shit, sometimes criminally, and especially when they think they can get away with it.

I think it's a real tragedy that we have these criminal underclasses in our society that we largely leave to the police. It trains them to become a sort of semi-extrajudicial militia force that must necessarily receive exemptions to many of the laws and norms of civil society in order to survive in the horrendous environments they have to operate in, and sometimes they can forget that not everybody is a drug-dealing wife-beating home-invading scumbag. Sometimes, all people are guilty of is assuming the police are normal people like them who have chosen to protect the public, instead of the truth that they're largely trauma-scarred domestic paramilitary soldiers charged with doing the dirty work we all don't want to admit exists or that may actually be encouraged by our favored policies (e.g. immigration, welfare, drug prohibition, etc).

[Mountaineer]

Nice!

From Slashdot:  http://classic.slashdot.org/story/14/10/01/0242224

... it is often the case that one can be led astray by relying on the generic or commonly understood definition of a particular word." That quote apparently applies to words offering constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. TechDirt looks at the redefinition of the term "collection" as redefined by Executive Order 12333 to allow basically every information dragnet, provided no-one looks at it. "Collection" is now defined as "collection plus action." According to this document, it still isn't collected, even if it has been gathered, packaged and sent to a "supervisory authority." No collection happens until examination. It's Schrodinger's data, neither collected nor uncollected until the "box" has been opened. This leads to the question of aging off collected data/communications: if certain (non) collections haven't been examined at the end of the 5-year storage limit, are they allowed to be retained simply because they haven't officially been collected yet? Does the timer start when the "box" is opened or when the "box" is filled?

... Mountaineer

[Ad Orientem]

Fred on real-life policing:

I sometimes wish that people knew more about cops, who they are, and the world they live in. There are pretty good cops (most) and very bad ones (few) but accounts in the press usually bear little relation to the truth.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/RealCops.shtml

That was interesting, and simultaneously amusing and depressing.

[Pointedstick]

No, I don't got a better idea.