Let’s not be too quick to dismiss the “ranting” of renegade LAPD officer Chris Dorner.
Dorner, a three-year police veteran and former Lieutenant in the US Navy who went rogue after being fired by the LAPD, has accused Los Angeles Police of systematically using excessive force, of corruption, of being racist, and of firing him for raising those issues through official channels.
By all media accounts, Dorner “snapped” after his firing, and has vowed to kill police in retaliation. He allegedly has already done so, with several people, including police officers and family members of police already shot dead or wounded.
Now there’s a record huge “manhunt” involving police departments across California, focussing on the mountains around Big Bear, featuring cops dressed in full military gear and armed with semi-automatic weapons. (Some 40-50 senior LAPD officers specifically threatened by Dorner are also being heavily guarded by LAPD cops.) Dorner has so far skilfully eluded his pursuers, despite a $1-million bounty on his head and thousands of people in the posse hunting for him. He has meanwhile developed a large and growing following of people who are actually rooting for him, with some comparing him to the Batman of “Dark Knight,” striking terror into, and wreaking vengeance on a corrupt police culture.
Few would argue that randomly killing police officers and their family members or friends is justified, but I think that there is good reason to suspect that the things that Dorner claims set him off, such as being fired for reporting police brutality, and then going through a rigged hearing, deserve serious consideration and investigation.
The LAPD has a long history of abuse of minorities (actually the majority in Los Angeles, where whites are now a minority). It has long been a kind of paramilitary force -- one which pioneered the military-style Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) approach to “policing.”
If you wanted a good example to prove that nothing has changed over the years, just look at the outrageous incident involving LAPD cops tasked with capturing Dorner, who instead shot up two innocent women who were delivering newspapers in a residential area of Los Angeles. The women, Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71 (now in serious condition in the hospital), were not issued any warning. Police just opened fire from behind them, destroying their truck with heavy semi-automatic fire to the point that it will have to be scrapped and replaced.
The two women are lucky to be alive (check out the pattern of bullet holes in the rear window behind the driver’s position in the accompanying photo). What they experienced was the tactics used by US troops on patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan, not the tactics that one expects of police. Their truck wasn’t even the right make or color, but LAPD’s “finest” decided it was better to be safe than sorry, so instead of acting like cops, they followed Pentagon “rules of engagement”: They attempted to waste the target.
Local residents say that after that shooting, which involved seven LAPD officers and over 70 bullets expended -- with nobody returning fire -- the street and surrounding houses were pockmarked with bullet holes. The Los Angeles Times reports that in the area, there are “bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs.”
In roofs?
What we had here was an example of a controversial tactic that the military employed in the Iraq War, and still employs in Afghanistan, called “spray and pray” -- a tactic that led directly to the massive civilian casualties during that US war.
We shouldn’t be surprised that two brown-skinned women were almost mowed down by the LAPD--only that they somehow survived all that deadly firing directed at them with clear intent to kill.
The approach taken by those cop-hunting-cops of shooting first and asking questions later suggests that the LAPD in this “manhunt” for one of their own has no intention of capturing Dorner alive and letting him talk about what he knows about the evils rampant in the 10,000-member department. They want him dead. Locals understand this, and a cottage industry has sprung up of people wearing signs saying "Don't shoot! I'm not Dorner!"
When I lived in Los Angeles back in the 1970s, it was common for LAPD cops to bust into homes, gestapo-like, at 5 in the morning, guns out, to arrest people for minor things like outstanding court warrants for unpaid parking tickets, bald tires, or jaywalking.
Police helicopters also used to tail me -- then an editor of an alternative news weekly -- and my wife, a music graduate student, as we drove home at night. Sometimes, they would follow us from our car to front door with a brilliant spotlight, when we’d come home at night to our house in Echo Park. It was an act of deliberate intimidation.
(They also infiltrated our newspaper with an undercover cop posing as a wannabe journalist. Her job, we later learned, was to learn who our sources were inside the LAPD -- sources who had disclosed such things as that the LAPD had, and probably still has, a “shoot-to-kill” policy for police who fire their weapons.) The LAPD brass were really angry at us for being first to expose their rampant shooting and killing of unarmed residents--a story that later got picked up by the LA Times and some of the local electronic news media.
Friends in Los Angeles tell me nothing has changed about the LAPD, though of course the police weaponry has gotten heavier and their surveillance capabilities have gotten more sophisticated and invasive.
It is clear from the LAPD’s paramilitary response to the Occupy movement in Los Angeles, which included planting undercover cops among the occupiers, some of whom reportedly were agents provocateur who tried to encourage protesters to commit acts of violence, and which ended with police violence and gratuitous arrests, as in New York, that nothing has changed.
In other words, Dorner may be irrational, but he ain’t crazy. And his “army-of-one” campaign against the LAPD has already scored one success, as the department’s chief announced that he is going to re-examine the hearing that led to Dorner’s dismissal from the department to see if it had been fairly and properly handled.
A black military veteran, Dorner joined the police because he reportedly believed in service. Unable to go along with the militarist policing he saw on the job, and the racism all around him, he protested through channels and was apparently rewarded by being fired.
Now, in his own violent way, he is trying to warn us all that something is rotten in the LAPD, and by extension, in the whole police system in the US. Police departments almost everywhere in the US, have morphed, particularly since 9/11/2001, from a role of providing public safety and law enforcement into agencies of brutal fascist control, often using the LAPD's paramilitary model to work from.
As Dorner says in his lengthy manifesto (actually quite explicit and literate, but described as “ranting” in corporate media accounts), in which he explains his actions and indicts the LAPD, “The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it’s the police officers.”
That could be said of many US police departments, I’m afraid.
Example: Last fall, I had the experience of trying to hitchhike in my little suburban town. A young cop drove up and informed me (incorrectly, it turns out) that it was illegal to hitchhike in Pennsylvania. When I expressed surprise at this and told him I was a journalist working on an article on hitchhiking, he then threatened me directly, saying that if I continued to try and thumb a ride, he would “take you in and lock you up.”
When I called a lawyer friend and said I was inclined to take the officer up on that threat, since I was within my rights under the law hitchhiking as long as I was standing off the road, he warned me against it, saying, “You don’t know what could happen to you if you got arrested.”
And of course he’s right. An arrest, even a wrongful arrest, in the US these days can lead to an added charge -- much more serious -- of resisting arrest, with a court basing its judgement on the word of the officer in the absence of any other witnesses. It can also lead to physical injury or worse, if the officer wants to lie and claim that the arrested person threatened him or her.
If I had been in Los Angeles, I would most likely have been locked up for an incident like that. Forget about any warning. You aren’t supposed to talk back to cops in L.A. And if you are black or Latino, the results of such an arrest could be much worse.
I remember once witnessing LAPD cops stopping a few Latino youths who had been joyriding in what might have been a stolen car. There was a helicopter overhead, and perhaps a dozen patrol cars that had converged on the scene, outside a shopping mall in Silverlake. I ran over to see what was happening and watched as the cops grabbed the kids, none of whom was armed, out of the vehicle and slammed them against the car brutally.
It was looking pretty ugly, but by then neighbors from the surrounding homes, most of them Latino, who had poured out onto their lawns because of the commotion, began yelling at the cops. One man shouted, “We see what you’re doing. These boys are all healthy. If anything happens to any of them after you arrest them we will report you!”
The cops grudgingly backed off in their attack on the boys, and took them away in a squad car. I don’t know what happened to them after that, but they were most certainly saved, by quick community response, from an on-the-spot Rodney King-style beating that could have seriously injured them, or worse.
As things stand right now, with the LAPD clearly gunning for Dorner, and wanting him dead and silenced, not captured, the public has to worry that it has more to fear from the LAPD than it has to fear from Dorner himself. At least Dorner, in his own twisted way, has specific targets in mind. The LAPD is in “spray and pray” mode.
Hopefully, Dorner will realize he can do more by figuring out a safe way to “come in from the cold” so he can try to testify about LAPD crimes, than by killing more cops. If he does manage to surrender, he’d better have a lot of support lined up to keep him safe while in custody.
Showing posts with label Killer Cops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Killer Cops. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Thursday, October 25, 2012
3 San Antonio Police Beat Pregnant Woman
NOTE: Not to worry, the police are investigating themselves thoroughly!
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Cop Claims Teen Hit Him, Video Shows Truth
Prince George's County, Maryland police officer Corporal Donald Taylor, a 13-year-veteran, claimed that after catching up to an aggressive youth who swung at him and began to flee, the youth reached for his gun, at which point he fired his gun at the youth in self defense. Despite this tale, newly released surveillance footage obtained by Fox 5 News shows the officer running up behind the youth, then smashing him in the head with his gun in a surprise attack, which triggered his gun to fire in the process.
The youth, 19-year-old Ryan Dorm, "spent about four months in jail before prosecutors dropped the charges against him," NBC Washington reports. Note, Dorm's lawyer says the police got this video two days after Dorm's arrest, yet they made him rot in jail for four months nonetheless.
"Well, the video contradicts what the officer originally wrote in his charging documents,” said Dorm’s lawyer, Jimmy Bell. “What it shows is that my client didn't lie. They print my client is a criminal. They put his face on television saying he committed these crimes, and he didn't."
Taylor was charged with second-degree assault last month.
Dorm and his lawyer filed a $10 million lawsuit against the police department and Taylor.
Unfortunately, as is the norm in these cases, police will simply rob taxpayers to pay a settlement. As to the cop's punishment, last we heard back in August of this year, he was on "administrative leave" with pay for the past six months. The old saying, "crime doesn't pay," doesn't apply if you're a police officer.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
75 Year Old Grandmother Held At Gunpoint While Slaughtering Her Dog
On August 15, 2012 Wayne County Sheriff's deputies, along with Macedon, NY Police broke into 75 year old Phyllis Loquasto's Plank Road home in the town of Walworth, NY, forced her at gunpoint to lay on her bathroom floor, screamed at her to close her eyes and stay down, then executed her dog "Duke."
Minutes earlier, Loquasto, who has had three strokes and a knee replacement, was on her computer when she heard loud smashing sounds, then saw what she described as several men dressed in black with masks on.
As she was laying on her bathroom floor Loquasto could hear the men talking in loud voices.
"The dog hadn't even barked, yet I heard one of them say, he's aggressive, shoot him! I'll never forget the sound of that gunshot and the blood flying everywhere. They did all this while forcing me to lay on the bathroom floor, screaming at me to stay down, and holding me at gunpoint. I couldn't get up if I wanted to. I'm 75 years old, had three strokes and knee replacement, and can hardly walk. There was nothing I could do to help my pet."
Unfortunately, Duke died a slow death.
"They shot him with a shotgun in such a manner that he ran around in pain and bled all over the house and suffered a slow, cruel death. There was no reason for this kind of treatment, they killed my dog for no reason. This was the sweetest and most gentle animal anyone could want, I would trust him with a baby."
Trail of blood on Phyllis Loquasto's stairs after her beloved dog "Duke" was shot by WayneNET Task Force officers.
As you can see in the photo, Duke did indeed suffer, bleeding out throughout the house, leaving a trail of blood in the hallways, stairs, walls and bedrooms, including on the bed where he used to sleep in.
Afterwards, Phyllis Loquasto was taken outside and placed inside a police car for over an hour in the heat.
It was then when officers showed her a search warrant, and it was then that Loquasto realized who these masked men who had just broke into her home, held her at gunpoint, screamed at her and executed her dog were -- police officers.
The 75 year old Loquasto was so afraid, she urinated on herself.
As a filmmaker, writer and activist exposing police misconduct and corruption, hearing stories of police officers abusing and violating innocent citizens' rights is nothing new.
In fact I receive an average of 20-25 calls weekly from people who either themselves, or a loved one, has been abused, harassed, or assaulted by law enforcement.
But I must admit, to hear of a 75 year old lady having been terrorized in her own home by a bunch of rogue, thugs in uniforms and masks, in a "home invasion-like" style, before executing her dog, left me speechless.
I Called Macedon, NY police and asked to speak to a public information officer. The woman who answered the phone asked me "What's that?" I explained to her it's usually a department official who is in charge of communicating with the press.
She replied "We don't have that."
I then proceeded to tell her about the incident with Duke, and before I could finish, she angrily cut me off and said "I'm sure if a grandmother would have been held down at gunpoint, I would have heard about that."
She then abruptly transferred me to the Chief, with whom I left a message on his voicemail.
About an hour later, I received a call from Macedon, NY Police Chief John P. Colella.
After I thanked him for getting back to me, Chief Colella laughed and said "The media campaign continues."
I asked Chief Colella what he meant by that comment, but he completely ignored my question.
I then asked the Chief exactly what law enforcement agencies were present at the Plank Road residence.
Chief Colella said that a search warrant was executed by the Wayne County Narcotics Enforcement Team (WayneNET) on the residence.
He also said that he is the Task Force Commander.
Chief Colella told me that his task force seized several marijuana plants from the location, which he said belonged to Phyllis Loquasto's grandson.
He explained that the WayneNET team consists of the Wayne County, NY Sheriff's office, Macedon, NY Police, Clyde, NY Police, Lyons, NY Police, Newark, NY, Palmyra, NY Police, Sodus Point, NY Police, Wolcott, NY Police and the Wayne County, NY District Attorney's office.
Chief Colella confirmed that the only person inside the location was 75 year old Phyllis Loquasto.
Having sensed an obvious sense of sarcasm on the Chief's part, with his earlier comment, about the "media campaign continues", as well as what I would describe as the non-chalant, hesitant, and "careful" tone of his voice, not giving many details, I decided to get down to brass tax with the Chief.
I asked him about police officers holding down a 75 year old grandmother at gunpoint on her bathroom floor, and it was clear that Chief Colella wasn't comfortable answering my question.
But perhaps more interesting, he never denied officers doing this to Loquasto.
Instead, Chief Colella made sure to choose his words very carefully, stating that all he would say is that she (the grandmother) was "held in place" by officers.
Again, when I asked Chief Colella if in fact officers with his WayneNET task force held a 75 year old grandmother at gunpoint on her bathroom floor, Chief Colella replied "I don't care if she is 2 years old or 75 years old."
I think Chief Colella must have realized that his statement would not look good, so he decided to do some 'damage control' by quickly adding "We needed to secure the location and since there was a dangerous animal, we were holding her down for her own safety."
Are you kidding me?
"Dangerous animal?"
"Holding her down for her own safety?"
Duke was her pet!
After a few more minutes of talking with Chief Colella, it became more and more clear that as is common with law enforcement officials, especially in cases of misconduct and abuse, the "cover-up" had already begun, and Chief Colella, along with his WayneNET task force, clearly have their story which they have every intention of sticking to.
Contact Macedon, NY Police Chief John P. Colella and let him know how you feel.
Macedon, NY Police Chief
and WayneNET Commander
John P. Colella
315-986-7103, -7262, -5932
E-mail: jpcolella@rochester.rr.com
WayneNET Sgt.
Roger LaClair
(315) 947-9711
WayneNET
Chief Deputy
Bob Hetzke
(315) 946-9711
__
Davy V. is a Cuban-American Filmmaker, Video Producer, Photographer and Freelance Writer, best known for using the power of video and film to expose Police Brutality, Corruption and Misconduct. Davy V.'s work has been featured in publications such as THE SOURCE Hip Hop Magazine, URBAN AMERICA Magazine, The Ave. Magazine, Insider Magazine, La Voz Newspaper, Minority Reporter Newspaper, CNY LATINO Newspaper, DOWN Magazine, as well as on television news stations, and programs such as CNN and Inside Edition. In addition to his freelance writing, Davy V. also writes a monthly Op/Ed Column for LA VOZ Magazine and Minority Reporter Newspaper.
Minutes earlier, Loquasto, who has had three strokes and a knee replacement, was on her computer when she heard loud smashing sounds, then saw what she described as several men dressed in black with masks on.
As she was laying on her bathroom floor Loquasto could hear the men talking in loud voices.
"The dog hadn't even barked, yet I heard one of them say, he's aggressive, shoot him! I'll never forget the sound of that gunshot and the blood flying everywhere. They did all this while forcing me to lay on the bathroom floor, screaming at me to stay down, and holding me at gunpoint. I couldn't get up if I wanted to. I'm 75 years old, had three strokes and knee replacement, and can hardly walk. There was nothing I could do to help my pet."
Unfortunately, Duke died a slow death.
"They shot him with a shotgun in such a manner that he ran around in pain and bled all over the house and suffered a slow, cruel death. There was no reason for this kind of treatment, they killed my dog for no reason. This was the sweetest and most gentle animal anyone could want, I would trust him with a baby."
Trail of blood on Phyllis Loquasto's stairs after her beloved dog "Duke" was shot by WayneNET Task Force officers.
As you can see in the photo, Duke did indeed suffer, bleeding out throughout the house, leaving a trail of blood in the hallways, stairs, walls and bedrooms, including on the bed where he used to sleep in.
Afterwards, Phyllis Loquasto was taken outside and placed inside a police car for over an hour in the heat.
It was then when officers showed her a search warrant, and it was then that Loquasto realized who these masked men who had just broke into her home, held her at gunpoint, screamed at her and executed her dog were -- police officers.
The 75 year old Loquasto was so afraid, she urinated on herself.
As a filmmaker, writer and activist exposing police misconduct and corruption, hearing stories of police officers abusing and violating innocent citizens' rights is nothing new.
In fact I receive an average of 20-25 calls weekly from people who either themselves, or a loved one, has been abused, harassed, or assaulted by law enforcement.
But I must admit, to hear of a 75 year old lady having been terrorized in her own home by a bunch of rogue, thugs in uniforms and masks, in a "home invasion-like" style, before executing her dog, left me speechless.
I Called Macedon, NY police and asked to speak to a public information officer. The woman who answered the phone asked me "What's that?" I explained to her it's usually a department official who is in charge of communicating with the press.
She replied "We don't have that."
I then proceeded to tell her about the incident with Duke, and before I could finish, she angrily cut me off and said "I'm sure if a grandmother would have been held down at gunpoint, I would have heard about that."
She then abruptly transferred me to the Chief, with whom I left a message on his voicemail.
About an hour later, I received a call from Macedon, NY Police Chief John P. Colella.
After I thanked him for getting back to me, Chief Colella laughed and said "The media campaign continues."
I asked Chief Colella what he meant by that comment, but he completely ignored my question.
I then asked the Chief exactly what law enforcement agencies were present at the Plank Road residence.
Chief Colella said that a search warrant was executed by the Wayne County Narcotics Enforcement Team (WayneNET) on the residence.
He also said that he is the Task Force Commander.
Chief Colella told me that his task force seized several marijuana plants from the location, which he said belonged to Phyllis Loquasto's grandson.
He explained that the WayneNET team consists of the Wayne County, NY Sheriff's office, Macedon, NY Police, Clyde, NY Police, Lyons, NY Police, Newark, NY, Palmyra, NY Police, Sodus Point, NY Police, Wolcott, NY Police and the Wayne County, NY District Attorney's office.
Chief Colella confirmed that the only person inside the location was 75 year old Phyllis Loquasto.
Having sensed an obvious sense of sarcasm on the Chief's part, with his earlier comment, about the "media campaign continues", as well as what I would describe as the non-chalant, hesitant, and "careful" tone of his voice, not giving many details, I decided to get down to brass tax with the Chief.
I asked him about police officers holding down a 75 year old grandmother at gunpoint on her bathroom floor, and it was clear that Chief Colella wasn't comfortable answering my question.
But perhaps more interesting, he never denied officers doing this to Loquasto.
Instead, Chief Colella made sure to choose his words very carefully, stating that all he would say is that she (the grandmother) was "held in place" by officers.
Again, when I asked Chief Colella if in fact officers with his WayneNET task force held a 75 year old grandmother at gunpoint on her bathroom floor, Chief Colella replied "I don't care if she is 2 years old or 75 years old."
I think Chief Colella must have realized that his statement would not look good, so he decided to do some 'damage control' by quickly adding "We needed to secure the location and since there was a dangerous animal, we were holding her down for her own safety."
Are you kidding me?
"Dangerous animal?"
"Holding her down for her own safety?"
Duke was her pet!
After a few more minutes of talking with Chief Colella, it became more and more clear that as is common with law enforcement officials, especially in cases of misconduct and abuse, the "cover-up" had already begun, and Chief Colella, along with his WayneNET task force, clearly have their story which they have every intention of sticking to.
Contact Macedon, NY Police Chief John P. Colella and let him know how you feel.
Macedon, NY Police Chief
and WayneNET Commander
John P. Colella
315-986-7103, -7262, -5932
E-mail: jpcolella@rochester.rr.com
WayneNET Sgt.
Roger LaClair
(315) 947-9711
WayneNET
Chief Deputy
Bob Hetzke
(315) 946-9711
__
Davy V. is a Cuban-American Filmmaker, Video Producer, Photographer and Freelance Writer, best known for using the power of video and film to expose Police Brutality, Corruption and Misconduct. Davy V.'s work has been featured in publications such as THE SOURCE Hip Hop Magazine, URBAN AMERICA Magazine, The Ave. Magazine, Insider Magazine, La Voz Newspaper, Minority Reporter Newspaper, CNY LATINO Newspaper, DOWN Magazine, as well as on television news stations, and programs such as CNN and Inside Edition. In addition to his freelance writing, Davy V. also writes a monthly Op/Ed Column for LA VOZ Magazine and Minority Reporter Newspaper.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Police Murder Wrong Man In His Own Home
We don’t know all of the details, because unfortunately Mr. Scott is dead, but what kind of backwards logic allows law enforcement personnel to knock on your door and shoot you at 1:30 am? If someone knocks on my door at 1:30 am, I would probably have my pistol on me as well.
Police need to stop thinking they have special rights. We all have just as much right to carry a gun (unless you’re in Illinois!), and pull it in self-defense as the police do. Police get paid to respond to calls for help and to conduct investigations, not to be given dictatorial powers to shoot first and ask questions later.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Cops Killed With Impunity
Stanley Gibson, a disabled Gulf War veteran, was murdered in a Las Vegas parking lot last December 12. He was shot seven times in the back of the head, without provocation, by a stranger wielding an AR-15 rifle. The killer, 34-year-old Jesus Arevalo, remains at large and is easy to find: He’s an officer with the Las Vegas Metro Police.
Gibson was unarmed. He was not a criminal suspect and posed no threat to anybody. His killing was a clear and unmistakable case of criminal homicide. Yet Arevalo has not been charged with a crime. He is on an extended vacation called "administrative leave," during which he continues to collect his taxpayer-funded salary and benefits.
Meanwhile, Gibson’s widow, Rhonda, has been left all but penniless. Her husband was a fully disabled combat veteran of the first Gulf War who suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and cancer – the latter affliction most likely a result of prolonged exposure to depleted uranium. Over the past several years, Gibson’s disability benefits were consistently reduced and cut off entirely shortly before he was murdered by Arevalo.
The day before he was shot, Gibson – whose anti-anxiety medication had been cut off two weeks earlier by the Veterans Administration – suffered a breakdown. According to Rhonda, "He didn’t know where he was and didn’t know what he was doing."
The police were called after Stanley wound up in the front yard screaming at cars and "causing a scene." Claiming that Stanley had taken a "fighting stance," the officers arrested him for "resisting arrest" and booked him at the Las Vegas Detention Center. Although they informed Rhonda that Stanley would be placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, he was released within eight hours.
The following morning, Gibson called 911 twice to ask for medical help. He eventually drove to a nearby hospital, but left without receiving treatment. At about 9:30 that evening he called Rhonda to tell her he was parked outside their apartment complex – but he was nowhere to be seen.
Stanley had actually pulled into the parking lot of a condominium next door. She wouldn't learn about what happened to her husband until seeing a news report of the shooting – and recognizing his white Cadillac.
Eyewitnesses recalled that Gibson drove slowly through the lot as if he was lost and confused. At the time, Arevalo and three other officers were at the condo responding to a call from a resident regarding a suspected break-in. Although they had no reason to consider Gibson as a suspect, they surrounded the vehicle and penned it in between several squad cars. Disoriented and frightened, Gibson gunned his engine and spun his wheels—but there was nowhere he could go.
For about a half hour, the officers tried to get Gibson to leave the car. During that period they should have been able to run his license plate and identify the driver. They should have recognized that they were dealing with a sick and confused man, and contacted a crisis intervention team. They should have gotten in touch with his wife, who lived less than a block away. They should have simply waited for Gibson to calm down.
The officers did none of those things. Instead, they chose to escalate the encounter by devising a plan to force him from his car: One officer would shoot out a window with a beanbag round, and another would incapacitate him with pepper spray. After the window was shattered, Officer Jesus Arevalo modified the plan by shooting Gibson seven times in the back of head with his AR-15 rifle.
Arevalo, who has a lengthy history of citizen complaints and official reprimands, was given the customary 72 hours to work out his story with the help of a police union attorney. He was then placed on paid vacation. Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, who supervises the Metro Police, initially claimed that the shooting was justified because Gibson supposedly threatened the officers by using his car as a "battering ram" – a claim that disintegrated after the emergence of a private video documenting that Gibson’s car was stationary when Arevalo murdered him.
There is some unbearably sinister symmetry in the way Stanley Gibson was murdered by agents of the Government. As a U.S. Army cook in Kuwait, Gibson was assigned to clear away what remained of the tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered in the "Highway of Death."
During the First Gulf War, shortly after Saddam Hussein announced the complete withdrawal of his forces from Kuwait, U.S. and allied forces attacked a convoy headed back into Iraq.
Following airstrikes that disabled vehicles at the front and rear of the column, a prolonged assault with incendiary weapons and depleted uranium rounds was undertaken. A sixty-mile stretch of highway was left littered with the hulls of about 2,000 vehicles and the charred remnants of tens of thousands of human beings – helpless, retreating soldiers, as well as civilians who had been caught in the traffic jam.
Gibson spent several days picking through the reeking rubble and disposing of the dead. In one of the ruined vehicles he found the mortal residue of a mother and child who had been melted together when their car was struck by an incendiary bomb.
The exposure to depleted uranium rounds quite likely was responsible for the cancer that forced Gibson to undergo a half-dozen operations and left his face partially paralyzed. Immersion in the horrific aftermath of that atrocity irreparably wounded Gibson’s mind and soul. He had no way of knowing that a little more than twenty years later, armed agents of the same Government that had penned in and slaughtered the helpless Iraqis would do exactly the same thing to him in a Las Vegas parking lot.
Rhonda Gibson blames the VA for the death of her husband. Originally classified as 100 percent disabled, Gibson had seen the VA arbitrarily re-classify him, alter his diagnosis, and change his treatment regimen. Last October 24, during an appointment at the local VA office, Gibson "aggressively confronted" an agency doctor about the capricious cutbacks in his cancer treatment. He was arrested by security officers and eventually pleaded guilty to "assaulting a federal employee" – by raising his voice in frustration over the fact that the government he had served was killing him through malicious neglect.
The couple’s financial situation worsened with each of the agency’s reductions in benefits. In November 2011, the couple lost their home and moved into an apartment next to the condominium where Gibson was killed. Now that Stanley is gone, Rhonda is both emotionally devastated and financially destitute.
Righteously furious over this state of affairs, Steven Sanson, retired Marine and president of Veterans in Politics International, seeks to organize a charity fundraiser: He has challenged Arevalo – who is a former competitive amateur fighter – to a refereed mixed martial arts match, with most of the proceeds going to Gibson’s widow. Sanson hopes to hold the event on 12-12-12 – the anniversary of Stanley Gibson’s murder.
Arevalo, who was as bold as Hector when drawing a bead on the back of an unarmed man’s head, has no appetite for throwing down with someone who can actually fight back. There is no such thing as "qualified immunity" in the Octagon; Arevalo wouldn’t be able to call for backup, nor would he be able to press charges for "obstruction," "disorderly conduct," or "resisting arrest." The referee wouldn't give Arevalo special advantages, and impose restrictions on his opponent, in the name of "officer safety." If the bout went the distance, the police union wouldn't be able to influence the decision rendered by the judges.
Not surprisingly, Arevalo has made himself scarce.
"There are many reasons why I’m trying to organize this event," Sanson told Pro Libertate. "First of all, there’s a grieving wife who has been left without income of any kind and who is literally wasting away. Rhonda approves of the idea – in fact, she’d love to get in the ring with Arevalo herself, even though she’s down to less than one hundred pounds."
"Secondly, I think this would help promote awareness of the desperate need for policy and personnel changes at the Metro Police Department," Sanson continues. "It would also help focus attention on the problems suffered by many returning veterans, some of whom may appear physically healthy but who have psychological problems and deserve much better treatment than they’re getting. I also want to build public support for revamping the current policies regarding officer-involved shootings. Las Vegas has seen far too many shootings of this kind in recent years, yet the official inquiries always exonerate the shooter, no matter how absurd his story or obvious it is that it was a bad shoot."
Until two years ago, officer-involved shootings were investigated through a County Coroner Inquest, a non-adversarial procedure described by former Nevada District Court Judge Don Chairez as "a search for justification of an officer’s actions." Attorney Adam Lagomarsino refers to the County Coroner Inquest procedure as "a kangaroo court and a dog and pony show."
Lagomarsino filed a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metro Police on behalf of the family of Lavon Cole – an unarmed man who was gunned down in his bathroom by a uniformed serial killer named Detective Bryan Yant. Cole, who had been targeted for a narcotics sting by the Metro Police, was trying to dispose of roughly an ounce of marijuana – a quantity insufficient to sustain a misdemeanor possession charge in Nevada.
The raid on Cole’s home was staged for a film crew employed by Langley Productions – the loathsome outfit responsible for the police-porn series "COPS." Playing to the camera, Yant had brought along his AR-15 rifle, which was unnecessary for an operation targeting a mild-mannered non-violent offender. After bursting into the bathroom, Yant shot Cole in the back while his pregnant girlfriend was pinned to the floor in the next room with a gun to her head.
In addition to a previous shooting under very similar circumstances, Yant had compiled a record of corruption, dishonesty, and criminal misconduct. His version of the Cole shooting – in which the victim supposedly made a "furtive" movement that left the heroic detective in "fear for my life" – was impossible to reconcile with the forensic evidence. Naturally, he was exonerated by the Coroner’s Inquest.
The inquest procedure was introduced in 1969. Between 1976 and 2010, more than two hundred lethal force incidents were examined by a seven-member jury. Only one of them was ruled "negligent" – and that decision was overturned on appeal. This isn't a surprising result, given that the inquest procedure was a collegial exercise: The D.A.'s office literally choreographed the questioning with the police department prior to the hearing.
Attorney Lagomarsino points out that no cross-examination of police officers was permitted during the inquest. "We were allowed to submit written questions, one at a time, to the prosecutor, but we couldn't cross-examine Yant" or even ask follow-up questions, he told Pro Libertate in an August 2010 interview. The prosecutors didn’t even bother to present a summation for the jury. At the conclusion of the inquest into the Trevon Cole shooting, notes former District Judge Chairez, it appeared that the judge "was almost asking for a directed verdict."
Five days before Stanley Gibson was murdered, the Clark County Commission passed an ordinance to reform the Coroner’s Inquest process by including a representative of the victim’s family and making key evidence available to the public. This prompted a protest by the city’s largest criminal lobby – the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which instructed its members to stop cooperating with the inquests altogether. On June 21, the police union filed a petition for a writ of prohibition against the revised inquest – the most recent of several legal challenges it has filed to prevent the system from being implemented.
"This process is no longer fair to our officers," sniveled union spokesperson Chris Collins, whining that the revamped arrangement wasn’t a "fair and level playing field." Bear in mind that police officers were still immune to cross-examination, and the inquest jury was still prohibited from handing down an indictment.
The DA’s Office remains disinclined to pursue grand jury investigations of police homicides. Accordingly, the only "accountability" for Metro officers who kill while on the clock is that provided by the department’s "Force Investigation Team."
Although he is on congenial terms with Sheriff Gillespie and other key officials, Steve Sannon isn’t willing to countenance their self-serving corruption – and he says that he knows more than a few police officers who share his opinions.
"There are law enforcement officers who have expressed concerns to me about bad leadership at Metro," Sannon told Pro Libertate. "I’ve even had a few of them call me and tell me they’d love to see me in the ring with Arevalo, who’s considered a cocky jerk."
Sannon says that sponsors are lining up to promote the event. There is no institutional or legal impediment to the proposed fight. In fact, an active-duty police officer participated in the June 11 Rogue Warrior Cage Fighting Championships at the Cannery Casino, which raised money for the Stars and Stripes Foundation.
"There’s no reason why Arevalo, who was a fighter before becoming a cop, couldn’t take part in this event," Sannon observes. That is to say, there’s no reason apart from cowardice and (what’s much the same thing) a bad conscience. In any case, Sannon isn’t going to relent in his efforts to impose hands-on accountability for the murder of Stanley Gibson by calling out a police officer who is protected by a system permitting him to kill without consequences.
Gibson was unarmed. He was not a criminal suspect and posed no threat to anybody. His killing was a clear and unmistakable case of criminal homicide. Yet Arevalo has not been charged with a crime. He is on an extended vacation called "administrative leave," during which he continues to collect his taxpayer-funded salary and benefits.
Meanwhile, Gibson’s widow, Rhonda, has been left all but penniless. Her husband was a fully disabled combat veteran of the first Gulf War who suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and cancer – the latter affliction most likely a result of prolonged exposure to depleted uranium. Over the past several years, Gibson’s disability benefits were consistently reduced and cut off entirely shortly before he was murdered by Arevalo.
The day before he was shot, Gibson – whose anti-anxiety medication had been cut off two weeks earlier by the Veterans Administration – suffered a breakdown. According to Rhonda, "He didn’t know where he was and didn’t know what he was doing."
The police were called after Stanley wound up in the front yard screaming at cars and "causing a scene." Claiming that Stanley had taken a "fighting stance," the officers arrested him for "resisting arrest" and booked him at the Las Vegas Detention Center. Although they informed Rhonda that Stanley would be placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, he was released within eight hours.
The following morning, Gibson called 911 twice to ask for medical help. He eventually drove to a nearby hospital, but left without receiving treatment. At about 9:30 that evening he called Rhonda to tell her he was parked outside their apartment complex – but he was nowhere to be seen.
Stanley had actually pulled into the parking lot of a condominium next door. She wouldn't learn about what happened to her husband until seeing a news report of the shooting – and recognizing his white Cadillac.
Eyewitnesses recalled that Gibson drove slowly through the lot as if he was lost and confused. At the time, Arevalo and three other officers were at the condo responding to a call from a resident regarding a suspected break-in. Although they had no reason to consider Gibson as a suspect, they surrounded the vehicle and penned it in between several squad cars. Disoriented and frightened, Gibson gunned his engine and spun his wheels—but there was nowhere he could go.
For about a half hour, the officers tried to get Gibson to leave the car. During that period they should have been able to run his license plate and identify the driver. They should have recognized that they were dealing with a sick and confused man, and contacted a crisis intervention team. They should have gotten in touch with his wife, who lived less than a block away. They should have simply waited for Gibson to calm down.
The officers did none of those things. Instead, they chose to escalate the encounter by devising a plan to force him from his car: One officer would shoot out a window with a beanbag round, and another would incapacitate him with pepper spray. After the window was shattered, Officer Jesus Arevalo modified the plan by shooting Gibson seven times in the back of head with his AR-15 rifle.
Arevalo, who has a lengthy history of citizen complaints and official reprimands, was given the customary 72 hours to work out his story with the help of a police union attorney. He was then placed on paid vacation. Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, who supervises the Metro Police, initially claimed that the shooting was justified because Gibson supposedly threatened the officers by using his car as a "battering ram" – a claim that disintegrated after the emergence of a private video documenting that Gibson’s car was stationary when Arevalo murdered him.
There is some unbearably sinister symmetry in the way Stanley Gibson was murdered by agents of the Government. As a U.S. Army cook in Kuwait, Gibson was assigned to clear away what remained of the tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered in the "Highway of Death."
During the First Gulf War, shortly after Saddam Hussein announced the complete withdrawal of his forces from Kuwait, U.S. and allied forces attacked a convoy headed back into Iraq.
Following airstrikes that disabled vehicles at the front and rear of the column, a prolonged assault with incendiary weapons and depleted uranium rounds was undertaken. A sixty-mile stretch of highway was left littered with the hulls of about 2,000 vehicles and the charred remnants of tens of thousands of human beings – helpless, retreating soldiers, as well as civilians who had been caught in the traffic jam.
Gibson spent several days picking through the reeking rubble and disposing of the dead. In one of the ruined vehicles he found the mortal residue of a mother and child who had been melted together when their car was struck by an incendiary bomb.
The exposure to depleted uranium rounds quite likely was responsible for the cancer that forced Gibson to undergo a half-dozen operations and left his face partially paralyzed. Immersion in the horrific aftermath of that atrocity irreparably wounded Gibson’s mind and soul. He had no way of knowing that a little more than twenty years later, armed agents of the same Government that had penned in and slaughtered the helpless Iraqis would do exactly the same thing to him in a Las Vegas parking lot.
Rhonda Gibson blames the VA for the death of her husband. Originally classified as 100 percent disabled, Gibson had seen the VA arbitrarily re-classify him, alter his diagnosis, and change his treatment regimen. Last October 24, during an appointment at the local VA office, Gibson "aggressively confronted" an agency doctor about the capricious cutbacks in his cancer treatment. He was arrested by security officers and eventually pleaded guilty to "assaulting a federal employee" – by raising his voice in frustration over the fact that the government he had served was killing him through malicious neglect.
The couple’s financial situation worsened with each of the agency’s reductions in benefits. In November 2011, the couple lost their home and moved into an apartment next to the condominium where Gibson was killed. Now that Stanley is gone, Rhonda is both emotionally devastated and financially destitute.
Righteously furious over this state of affairs, Steven Sanson, retired Marine and president of Veterans in Politics International, seeks to organize a charity fundraiser: He has challenged Arevalo – who is a former competitive amateur fighter – to a refereed mixed martial arts match, with most of the proceeds going to Gibson’s widow. Sanson hopes to hold the event on 12-12-12 – the anniversary of Stanley Gibson’s murder.
Arevalo, who was as bold as Hector when drawing a bead on the back of an unarmed man’s head, has no appetite for throwing down with someone who can actually fight back. There is no such thing as "qualified immunity" in the Octagon; Arevalo wouldn’t be able to call for backup, nor would he be able to press charges for "obstruction," "disorderly conduct," or "resisting arrest." The referee wouldn't give Arevalo special advantages, and impose restrictions on his opponent, in the name of "officer safety." If the bout went the distance, the police union wouldn't be able to influence the decision rendered by the judges.
Not surprisingly, Arevalo has made himself scarce.
"There are many reasons why I’m trying to organize this event," Sanson told Pro Libertate. "First of all, there’s a grieving wife who has been left without income of any kind and who is literally wasting away. Rhonda approves of the idea – in fact, she’d love to get in the ring with Arevalo herself, even though she’s down to less than one hundred pounds."
"Secondly, I think this would help promote awareness of the desperate need for policy and personnel changes at the Metro Police Department," Sanson continues. "It would also help focus attention on the problems suffered by many returning veterans, some of whom may appear physically healthy but who have psychological problems and deserve much better treatment than they’re getting. I also want to build public support for revamping the current policies regarding officer-involved shootings. Las Vegas has seen far too many shootings of this kind in recent years, yet the official inquiries always exonerate the shooter, no matter how absurd his story or obvious it is that it was a bad shoot."
Until two years ago, officer-involved shootings were investigated through a County Coroner Inquest, a non-adversarial procedure described by former Nevada District Court Judge Don Chairez as "a search for justification of an officer’s actions." Attorney Adam Lagomarsino refers to the County Coroner Inquest procedure as "a kangaroo court and a dog and pony show."
Lagomarsino filed a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metro Police on behalf of the family of Lavon Cole – an unarmed man who was gunned down in his bathroom by a uniformed serial killer named Detective Bryan Yant. Cole, who had been targeted for a narcotics sting by the Metro Police, was trying to dispose of roughly an ounce of marijuana – a quantity insufficient to sustain a misdemeanor possession charge in Nevada.
The raid on Cole’s home was staged for a film crew employed by Langley Productions – the loathsome outfit responsible for the police-porn series "COPS." Playing to the camera, Yant had brought along his AR-15 rifle, which was unnecessary for an operation targeting a mild-mannered non-violent offender. After bursting into the bathroom, Yant shot Cole in the back while his pregnant girlfriend was pinned to the floor in the next room with a gun to her head.
In addition to a previous shooting under very similar circumstances, Yant had compiled a record of corruption, dishonesty, and criminal misconduct. His version of the Cole shooting – in which the victim supposedly made a "furtive" movement that left the heroic detective in "fear for my life" – was impossible to reconcile with the forensic evidence. Naturally, he was exonerated by the Coroner’s Inquest.
The inquest procedure was introduced in 1969. Between 1976 and 2010, more than two hundred lethal force incidents were examined by a seven-member jury. Only one of them was ruled "negligent" – and that decision was overturned on appeal. This isn't a surprising result, given that the inquest procedure was a collegial exercise: The D.A.'s office literally choreographed the questioning with the police department prior to the hearing.
Attorney Lagomarsino points out that no cross-examination of police officers was permitted during the inquest. "We were allowed to submit written questions, one at a time, to the prosecutor, but we couldn't cross-examine Yant" or even ask follow-up questions, he told Pro Libertate in an August 2010 interview. The prosecutors didn’t even bother to present a summation for the jury. At the conclusion of the inquest into the Trevon Cole shooting, notes former District Judge Chairez, it appeared that the judge "was almost asking for a directed verdict."
Five days before Stanley Gibson was murdered, the Clark County Commission passed an ordinance to reform the Coroner’s Inquest process by including a representative of the victim’s family and making key evidence available to the public. This prompted a protest by the city’s largest criminal lobby – the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which instructed its members to stop cooperating with the inquests altogether. On June 21, the police union filed a petition for a writ of prohibition against the revised inquest – the most recent of several legal challenges it has filed to prevent the system from being implemented.
"This process is no longer fair to our officers," sniveled union spokesperson Chris Collins, whining that the revamped arrangement wasn’t a "fair and level playing field." Bear in mind that police officers were still immune to cross-examination, and the inquest jury was still prohibited from handing down an indictment.
The DA’s Office remains disinclined to pursue grand jury investigations of police homicides. Accordingly, the only "accountability" for Metro officers who kill while on the clock is that provided by the department’s "Force Investigation Team."
Although he is on congenial terms with Sheriff Gillespie and other key officials, Steve Sannon isn’t willing to countenance their self-serving corruption – and he says that he knows more than a few police officers who share his opinions.
"There are law enforcement officers who have expressed concerns to me about bad leadership at Metro," Sannon told Pro Libertate. "I’ve even had a few of them call me and tell me they’d love to see me in the ring with Arevalo, who’s considered a cocky jerk."
Sannon says that sponsors are lining up to promote the event. There is no institutional or legal impediment to the proposed fight. In fact, an active-duty police officer participated in the June 11 Rogue Warrior Cage Fighting Championships at the Cannery Casino, which raised money for the Stars and Stripes Foundation.
"There’s no reason why Arevalo, who was a fighter before becoming a cop, couldn’t take part in this event," Sannon observes. That is to say, there’s no reason apart from cowardice and (what’s much the same thing) a bad conscience. In any case, Sannon isn’t going to relent in his efforts to impose hands-on accountability for the murder of Stanley Gibson by calling out a police officer who is protected by a system permitting him to kill without consequences.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Cops Want To Keep Tasering Pregnant Women
Thanks to a misbegotten ruling from a divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, police in nine states have been left at an insurmountable disadvantage when dealing with criminal suspects. At least, that’s what we’re told in a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court by a coalition of police unions.
"It won’t be long before the word spreads through society’s criminal underworld that the Ninth Circuit hasn’t simply given them a ‘get out of jail free’ card, but a ‘never have to go to jail in the first place’ card," warns the amicus brief. Rather than subduing criminals, "police officers will now be forced to walk away from people they have arrested."
The ruling that is fraught with such awful implications, Brooks v. City of Seattle, involved a patently unnecessary Taser attack upon a woman who was seven months pregnant. The unarmed woman, who was not suspected of a violent crime, posed no threat to the three – yes, three – valiant officers who assaulted her. She was uncooperative, but did not offer any violent resistance.
Her sole "offense" was to refuse a demand that she sign a traffic ticket that was eventually dismissed.
In March 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court found that Seattle Police Officers Steven Daman, Juan Ornelas, and Donald Jones used excessive force when they committed their attack on Brooks and her unborn child – but that they were entitled to "qualified immunity" because the legal precedents dealing with the use of electro-shock torture on a pregnant woman were ambiguous in 2004.
The assailants were thus left in the clear – but unsatisfied with their victory. With the support of organizations representing tens of thousands of police officers (including some 30,000 SWAT operators), the officers are appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, claiming that any limitation on the discretionary use of tasers against non-violent "suspects" constitutes an unacceptable restraint on police discretion and a dire threat to that holiest of social considerations, "officer safety."
In its brief on behalf of the officers, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association (LACPCA) and the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) insist that refusing to allow police to use electro-shock torture against a pregnant woman would fatally undermine the principle of "pain compliance" on which social order – as they pretend to understand it – depends.
On November 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was taking her son to school when she was stopped by Officer Ornelas, who claimed – wrongly, as it turned out – that she had been speeding. When he presented Brooks with a traffic ticket, she refused to sign it out of the concern that doing so would constitute an admission of guilt. She had done the same during a 1996 traffic stop in which the officer, who possessed some residual decency, simply handed her the little extortion note and walked away.
Ornelas, unfortunately, chose to escalate the encounter by calling for "backup." A few minutes later, Officer Jones and Sgt. Daman arrived on the scene and began to threaten and berate Brooks. None of this was necessary: The officers were engaging in a tribal display of primate dominance, rather than carrying out a function related in any way to protection of person and property. When they threatened to kidnap – or, as they called it, "arrest" – Brooks, the woman informed them that she was "less than 60 days from having my baby."
After huddling briefly, the three officers attacked Brooks. Ornelas seized her right arm and – in the course of less than a minute – inflicted three "drive stun" charges to Brooks’s neck, shoulder, and thigh, an assault that left her with permanent scars. The three officers then dragged Brooks – who had been desperately clinging to the steering wheel, honking the horn, and screaming for help – from the car, threw her face-down and pinned her to the ground. She was handcuffed and then booked on charges of "Refusing to sign" a traffic citation – a misdemeanor – and resisting arrest.
A jury eventually found Brooks guilty of the first "offense," and acquitted her of the second. The speeding citation was thrown out before Brooks went to court. Brooks filed suit against the officers for assault and violating her civil rights. The officers responded by invoking the well-established – and utterly specious – doctrine of "qualified immunity," seeking a summary dismissal. The District Court dismissed the assault charge but found that the officers had committed a civil rights violation that nullified their claim to qualified immunity.
The Ninth Circuit reversed that holding as it applied to the defendants, ruling that the officers were protected by qualified immunity and could not be sued by Brooks. However, the Court offered notice that in the future similar taser attacks on non-cooperative but non-violent subjects would constitute excessive force.
In his dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski maintained that Brooks "had shown herself deaf to reason, and moderate physical force had only led to further entrenchment…. Brooks was tying up two line officers, a sergeant and three police vehicles – resources diverted from other community functions – to deal with one lousy traffic ticket."
Who was responsible for this "diversion" – Mrs. Brooks, who was merely being uncooperative, or Officer Ornelas and his comrades, who needlessly escalated a disagreement over "one lousy traffic ticket" to the point where potentially deadly force was used against someone accused of a trivial traffic offense, rather than an actual crime?
"The officers couldn’t just walk away," complains Kozinski. "Brooks was under arrest."
There was no substantive reason why the police couldn’t walk away – if they had been acting as peace officers, that is, rather than as armed enforcers of the revenue-consuming class.
If a police officer has the option of deploying a reliably deadly weapon in a situation of this kind, he also has the option of backing down and letting the court deal with the merits of the citation. But the position claimed by the officers – and accepted, in a qualified sense, by the Ninth Circuit Court – is that anything other than immediate and unqualified submission by a Mundane justifies the infliction of summary punishment by a police officer.
The amicus brief by the LACPCA and NTOA lament that the Ninth Circuit Court, while upholding the unqualified "authority" of police to arrest people at their discretion, "has deprived officers of any lawful way of enforcing that authority, at least when the suspect is not engaged in violence directed towards the officers" and has "unnecessarily limited the amount of force that can be used against a suspect who refrains from using violence against the police" (emphasis added).
What the police unions who filed that brief are demanding is an open-ended grant of unlimited "authority" to use "pain compliance" against people who passively resist abduction by police. The question of using violent means to subdue a violent criminal suspect is not implicated in any way by this case.
In their petition for certiorari, the officers – whose actions, remember, were upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court – complain that the ruling could "prohibit the use of any low-level physical force against an actually resisting suspect who does not present an imminent threat of harm to the officers, a result that could strip law enforcement of any reasonable and practical means of enforcing the law."
To which a person whose mind is not hostage to totalitarian assumptions would reply: "And the problem with this is…?"
In a reasonably free society, police (actually, peace officers) would not presume to "enforce" the law; they would track down and arrest people plausibly suspected of committing crimes against person and property. They would not be permitted to violate the unconditional law of non-aggression by initiating force, or issue what they assume to be "lawful orders" to people who are not suspected of actual crimes. They certainly would not be permitted to employ "pain compliance" in any situation that didn’t involve legitimate defense against an actual aggressor.
Remarkably, in their amicus brief the officers who committed what should be prosecuted as a felonious assault on Brooks asserted that "it is well established that police officers need not use the least amount of force in effecting an arrest."
Once again, we’re invited to believe that there would be apocalyptic consequences if police were inhibited in the use of disproportionate force to compel non-violent "suspects" to submit to their supposed authority.
Under the standard prescribed in the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the officers who assaulted Brooks, it’s difficult to find fault with the actions of Beaumont, California Police Officer Enoch Clark.
On February 21, Clark stopped a woman named Monique Hernandez on suspicion of DUI. When Clark tried to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. Clark’s preferred method of "pain compliance" was a JPX device – a weapon that employs a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.
The JPX weapon is designed for use against armed assailants at a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Its payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over that distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it (in the words of the company’s promotional literature) "too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist."
Clark – a veteran officer and chairman of the local police officers union – fired his JPX gun into Hernandez’s right temple at a distance of roughly ten inches. The impact shattered the woman’s right eye and inflicted irreparable damage to her left eye as well.
The officer has been indicted on four felony charges. His attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order "to gain compliance and in defense of his person." If the claims made by and on behalf of the officers who assaulted Mailaka Brooks are sound – if police officers are not legally required to use minimal force when dealing with non-violent "suspects" – it’s difficult to see how Clark’s actions were improper, even though they resulted in Monique Rodriguez being permanently blinded.
"It was Brooks’s recalcitrance and resistance that prompted her treatment," sniffs the officers’ petition for certiorari. "Under both state and federal law she did not have a right to resist her arrest," which purportedly means that the officers were permitted – nay, required – to employ "pain compliance" techniques against her until she submitted.
Wouldn’t the same principle apply to the actions of Enoch Clark in dealing with the equally recalcitrant Monique Hernandez? His police union attorney certainly thinks so. And let us not forget that any effort to inhibit the police in their sacred mission to impose order would constitute an existential threat to our society.
Deny an intrepid hero in body armor the option of tasing a pregnant woman – or kicking her in the stomach hard enough to cause the near-term infant to defecate in the womb – a reign of terror will ensue, with the "criminal underworld" arising to devour us all.
"It won’t be long before the word spreads through society’s criminal underworld that the Ninth Circuit hasn’t simply given them a ‘get out of jail free’ card, but a ‘never have to go to jail in the first place’ card," warns the amicus brief. Rather than subduing criminals, "police officers will now be forced to walk away from people they have arrested."
The ruling that is fraught with such awful implications, Brooks v. City of Seattle, involved a patently unnecessary Taser attack upon a woman who was seven months pregnant. The unarmed woman, who was not suspected of a violent crime, posed no threat to the three – yes, three – valiant officers who assaulted her. She was uncooperative, but did not offer any violent resistance.
Her sole "offense" was to refuse a demand that she sign a traffic ticket that was eventually dismissed.
In March 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court found that Seattle Police Officers Steven Daman, Juan Ornelas, and Donald Jones used excessive force when they committed their attack on Brooks and her unborn child – but that they were entitled to "qualified immunity" because the legal precedents dealing with the use of electro-shock torture on a pregnant woman were ambiguous in 2004.
The assailants were thus left in the clear – but unsatisfied with their victory. With the support of organizations representing tens of thousands of police officers (including some 30,000 SWAT operators), the officers are appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, claiming that any limitation on the discretionary use of tasers against non-violent "suspects" constitutes an unacceptable restraint on police discretion and a dire threat to that holiest of social considerations, "officer safety."
In its brief on behalf of the officers, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association (LACPCA) and the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) insist that refusing to allow police to use electro-shock torture against a pregnant woman would fatally undermine the principle of "pain compliance" on which social order – as they pretend to understand it – depends.
On November 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was taking her son to school when she was stopped by Officer Ornelas, who claimed – wrongly, as it turned out – that she had been speeding. When he presented Brooks with a traffic ticket, she refused to sign it out of the concern that doing so would constitute an admission of guilt. She had done the same during a 1996 traffic stop in which the officer, who possessed some residual decency, simply handed her the little extortion note and walked away.
Ornelas, unfortunately, chose to escalate the encounter by calling for "backup." A few minutes later, Officer Jones and Sgt. Daman arrived on the scene and began to threaten and berate Brooks. None of this was necessary: The officers were engaging in a tribal display of primate dominance, rather than carrying out a function related in any way to protection of person and property. When they threatened to kidnap – or, as they called it, "arrest" – Brooks, the woman informed them that she was "less than 60 days from having my baby."
After huddling briefly, the three officers attacked Brooks. Ornelas seized her right arm and – in the course of less than a minute – inflicted three "drive stun" charges to Brooks’s neck, shoulder, and thigh, an assault that left her with permanent scars. The three officers then dragged Brooks – who had been desperately clinging to the steering wheel, honking the horn, and screaming for help – from the car, threw her face-down and pinned her to the ground. She was handcuffed and then booked on charges of "Refusing to sign" a traffic citation – a misdemeanor – and resisting arrest.
A jury eventually found Brooks guilty of the first "offense," and acquitted her of the second. The speeding citation was thrown out before Brooks went to court. Brooks filed suit against the officers for assault and violating her civil rights. The officers responded by invoking the well-established – and utterly specious – doctrine of "qualified immunity," seeking a summary dismissal. The District Court dismissed the assault charge but found that the officers had committed a civil rights violation that nullified their claim to qualified immunity.
The Ninth Circuit reversed that holding as it applied to the defendants, ruling that the officers were protected by qualified immunity and could not be sued by Brooks. However, the Court offered notice that in the future similar taser attacks on non-cooperative but non-violent subjects would constitute excessive force.
In his dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski maintained that Brooks "had shown herself deaf to reason, and moderate physical force had only led to further entrenchment…. Brooks was tying up two line officers, a sergeant and three police vehicles – resources diverted from other community functions – to deal with one lousy traffic ticket."
Who was responsible for this "diversion" – Mrs. Brooks, who was merely being uncooperative, or Officer Ornelas and his comrades, who needlessly escalated a disagreement over "one lousy traffic ticket" to the point where potentially deadly force was used against someone accused of a trivial traffic offense, rather than an actual crime?
"The officers couldn’t just walk away," complains Kozinski. "Brooks was under arrest."
There was no substantive reason why the police couldn’t walk away – if they had been acting as peace officers, that is, rather than as armed enforcers of the revenue-consuming class.
If a police officer has the option of deploying a reliably deadly weapon in a situation of this kind, he also has the option of backing down and letting the court deal with the merits of the citation. But the position claimed by the officers – and accepted, in a qualified sense, by the Ninth Circuit Court – is that anything other than immediate and unqualified submission by a Mundane justifies the infliction of summary punishment by a police officer.
The amicus brief by the LACPCA and NTOA lament that the Ninth Circuit Court, while upholding the unqualified "authority" of police to arrest people at their discretion, "has deprived officers of any lawful way of enforcing that authority, at least when the suspect is not engaged in violence directed towards the officers" and has "unnecessarily limited the amount of force that can be used against a suspect who refrains from using violence against the police" (emphasis added).
What the police unions who filed that brief are demanding is an open-ended grant of unlimited "authority" to use "pain compliance" against people who passively resist abduction by police. The question of using violent means to subdue a violent criminal suspect is not implicated in any way by this case.
In their petition for certiorari, the officers – whose actions, remember, were upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court – complain that the ruling could "prohibit the use of any low-level physical force against an actually resisting suspect who does not present an imminent threat of harm to the officers, a result that could strip law enforcement of any reasonable and practical means of enforcing the law."
To which a person whose mind is not hostage to totalitarian assumptions would reply: "And the problem with this is…?"
In a reasonably free society, police (actually, peace officers) would not presume to "enforce" the law; they would track down and arrest people plausibly suspected of committing crimes against person and property. They would not be permitted to violate the unconditional law of non-aggression by initiating force, or issue what they assume to be "lawful orders" to people who are not suspected of actual crimes. They certainly would not be permitted to employ "pain compliance" in any situation that didn’t involve legitimate defense against an actual aggressor.
Remarkably, in their amicus brief the officers who committed what should be prosecuted as a felonious assault on Brooks asserted that "it is well established that police officers need not use the least amount of force in effecting an arrest."
Once again, we’re invited to believe that there would be apocalyptic consequences if police were inhibited in the use of disproportionate force to compel non-violent "suspects" to submit to their supposed authority.
Under the standard prescribed in the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the officers who assaulted Brooks, it’s difficult to find fault with the actions of Beaumont, California Police Officer Enoch Clark.
On February 21, Clark stopped a woman named Monique Hernandez on suspicion of DUI. When Clark tried to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. Clark’s preferred method of "pain compliance" was a JPX device – a weapon that employs a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.
The JPX weapon is designed for use against armed assailants at a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Its payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over that distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it (in the words of the company’s promotional literature) "too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist."
Clark – a veteran officer and chairman of the local police officers union – fired his JPX gun into Hernandez’s right temple at a distance of roughly ten inches. The impact shattered the woman’s right eye and inflicted irreparable damage to her left eye as well.
The officer has been indicted on four felony charges. His attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order "to gain compliance and in defense of his person." If the claims made by and on behalf of the officers who assaulted Mailaka Brooks are sound – if police officers are not legally required to use minimal force when dealing with non-violent "suspects" – it’s difficult to see how Clark’s actions were improper, even though they resulted in Monique Rodriguez being permanently blinded.
"It was Brooks’s recalcitrance and resistance that prompted her treatment," sniffs the officers’ petition for certiorari. "Under both state and federal law she did not have a right to resist her arrest," which purportedly means that the officers were permitted – nay, required – to employ "pain compliance" techniques against her until she submitted.
Wouldn’t the same principle apply to the actions of Enoch Clark in dealing with the equally recalcitrant Monique Hernandez? His police union attorney certainly thinks so. And let us not forget that any effort to inhibit the police in their sacred mission to impose order would constitute an existential threat to our society.
Deny an intrepid hero in body armor the option of tasing a pregnant woman – or kicking her in the stomach hard enough to cause the near-term infant to defecate in the womb – a reign of terror will ensue, with the "criminal underworld" arising to devour us all.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Video Proff Positive Fullerton Cops Killed Helpless, Homeless Man
Wed May 9, 2012 8:50AM GMT
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A newly-released surveillance video footage showing the beating of a homeless individual by California policemen has once again exposed the extreme brutality exercised by US police officers against potential suspects.
The footage was recorded last July by a closed-circuit camera at a bus terminal in California’s City of Fullerton in Orange County but was released on Tuesday at a pre-trial hearing of the police officers allegedly involved in the beating of the homeless man, which later resulted in his death.
The footage displays how the homeless man, Kelly Thomas, is being struck repeatedly with fists, batons and finally by the butt of a stun gun by police officers.
Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos and Corporal Jay Cicinelli have reportedly been charged in the case with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.
Testifying at the hearing, a trauma surgeon stated that the continuous compression of Thomas’s chest during his confrontation with California police officers led to breathing complications that eventually caused his death.
The surgeon, Dr. Michael Lekawa, pointed to audio and video recordings of the incident by a surveillance camera that clearly shows that Thomas’s voice changes from initial shouts of “I can’t breathe” to long, drawn-out moans before he completely stops talking.
State prosecutors insist that Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos punched Thomas in the ribs, tackled him and pinned him down. They further contend that officer Jay Cicinelli used a Taser gun four times on Thomas as he screamed in pain and also struck him in the face eight times with the butt of the Taser gun.
Thomas lost consciousness following the incident and was taken to a hospital, where he passed away after five days.
Share256
A newly-released surveillance video footage showing the beating of a homeless individual by California policemen has once again exposed the extreme brutality exercised by US police officers against potential suspects.
The footage was recorded last July by a closed-circuit camera at a bus terminal in California’s City of Fullerton in Orange County but was released on Tuesday at a pre-trial hearing of the police officers allegedly involved in the beating of the homeless man, which later resulted in his death.
The footage displays how the homeless man, Kelly Thomas, is being struck repeatedly with fists, batons and finally by the butt of a stun gun by police officers.
Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos and Corporal Jay Cicinelli have reportedly been charged in the case with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.
Testifying at the hearing, a trauma surgeon stated that the continuous compression of Thomas’s chest during his confrontation with California police officers led to breathing complications that eventually caused his death.
The surgeon, Dr. Michael Lekawa, pointed to audio and video recordings of the incident by a surveillance camera that clearly shows that Thomas’s voice changes from initial shouts of “I can’t breathe” to long, drawn-out moans before he completely stops talking.
State prosecutors insist that Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos punched Thomas in the ribs, tackled him and pinned him down. They further contend that officer Jay Cicinelli used a Taser gun four times on Thomas as he screamed in pain and also struck him in the face eight times with the butt of the Taser gun.
Thomas lost consciousness following the incident and was taken to a hospital, where he passed away after five days.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
A Dozen + US Immigration Officers Taser & Murder Unarmed Man
A new video shows Anastacio Hernadez-Rojas lying on the ground in the fetal position, circled by at least a dozen federal agents as one repeatedly shocks him with an electric stun gun.
A new video shows Anastacio Hernadez-Rojas lying on the ground in the fetal position, circled by at least a dozen federal agents as one repeatedly shocks him with an electric stun gun.
The video was shot by a passer-by and was obtained by the lawyer for the Hernandez-Rojas family as they push on with their wrongful death suit against the US government.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired the video and an interview with the woman who shot it as part of a new documentary. In May 2010, Seattle resident Ashley Young was crossing a bridge from Mexico to the United States. In the “Need to Know” report, Young said that she saw the man lying on the ground was handcuffed. She said she did not witness any evidence of Hernandez-Rojas lashing out at the agents, but they are clearly heard yelling in the video for him to stop resisting. He was then tasered five times while calling for help in Spanish.
She also said that a small crowd had gathered on the bridge and some yelled for the agents to stop. But the officers came along to tell the onlookers to keep walking. One officer demanded that witnesses hand over their cell phones or delete the video they had taken, she said, but she kept walking. Young told PBS she “felt like she watched someone be murdered.”
Anastacio Hernadez-Rojas’ death was ruled a ‘homicide’ by the San Diego medical examiner and was investigated by police, yet no border control agents were charged for their part in the incident.
This will undoubtedly create even more tension, as public outcry about the case has been gaining momentum for two years. It raised serious questions about border agents and what they can potentially do without facing the repercussions of their actions.
The PBS documentary was attempting to draw attention to whether border control has been using excessive force on illegal immigrants after eight people were killed along the border in the past two years.
A new video shows Anastacio Hernadez-Rojas lying on the ground in the fetal position, circled by at least a dozen federal agents as one repeatedly shocks him with an electric stun gun.
The video was shot by a passer-by and was obtained by the lawyer for the Hernandez-Rojas family as they push on with their wrongful death suit against the US government.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired the video and an interview with the woman who shot it as part of a new documentary. In May 2010, Seattle resident Ashley Young was crossing a bridge from Mexico to the United States. In the “Need to Know” report, Young said that she saw the man lying on the ground was handcuffed. She said she did not witness any evidence of Hernandez-Rojas lashing out at the agents, but they are clearly heard yelling in the video for him to stop resisting. He was then tasered five times while calling for help in Spanish.
She also said that a small crowd had gathered on the bridge and some yelled for the agents to stop. But the officers came along to tell the onlookers to keep walking. One officer demanded that witnesses hand over their cell phones or delete the video they had taken, she said, but she kept walking. Young told PBS she “felt like she watched someone be murdered.”
Anastacio Hernadez-Rojas’ death was ruled a ‘homicide’ by the San Diego medical examiner and was investigated by police, yet no border control agents were charged for their part in the incident.
This will undoubtedly create even more tension, as public outcry about the case has been gaining momentum for two years. It raised serious questions about border agents and what they can potentially do without facing the repercussions of their actions.
The PBS documentary was attempting to draw attention to whether border control has been using excessive force on illegal immigrants after eight people were killed along the border in the past two years.
Friday, April 13, 2012
8 LAPD Murder Unarmed Teen - Caught On Live TV
A police chase of an unarmed runaway motorist in LA who failed to stop for driving recklessly ended with the teenager being shot dead live on television.
Officers fired more than 90 rounds at 19-year-old Abdul Arian after a pursuit on the freeway.
The dramatic video shows an LAPD police patrol car smashing into Arian's car as he does a failed U-turn in the road before he flees simulating pointing a weapon at chasing police.
News helicopter footage from CBS Sky 2 shows Arian jumping out of his car, turning and fleeing the scene running backwards.
He then repeatedly spins around in a combat stance just before he was shot on the US 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills, LA.
It has emerged that Arian made a frantic 911 call to police during the pursuit, saying he had a gun, but one wasn't recovered from the scene.
Arian was shot dead by an officer as he fled his vehicle just before 10pm last night.
The images of last night's police chase show the aftermath of the scene on the freeway wreathed with smashed remnants of the suspect’s car and bullet casings.
It comes at a very sensitive time in America following the huge public outcry over Trayvon Martin's shooting.
In a case which has gripped America and generated international headlines, Martin's killer George Zimmerman, who claimed he was acting in self defence, was charged with second degree murder this week after police hunted him for 45 days.
He faces the prospect of life in prison.
Lieutenant Andy Neiman said: 'The investigation will determine what happened, what the officer saw, what the witnesses saw.
'Sometimes what you see from a live shot from the air unit may or may not be exactly what people think so until we determine exactly what the witnesses saw, we can't make any comment on that.
Asked if the suspect was carrying a gun, Lt. Neiman said: 'That has not been determined at this point.'
The suspect's uncle Hamed Arian told the station: 'He was a nice kid. He was working. He was such a sweet kid, respectful to others.
'He wanted to be a cop and like I said before, during the chase last night, he was calling 911.
'He was afraid of cops. You know, he told me he wants to be a good cop, not a crooked cop.'
His family revealed he was working as a party-planning company as he pursued his dream of becoming a police officer.
Family members told how he graduated Taft High School but officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District said he left Taft in October 2011. It was unclear if he received his General Education Development (GED) test.
CBS reported that no weapon had been recovered from the scene as they reported the story last night.
Arian's uncle Hamed said he was a young man who neither took drugs or drank alcohol and was 'afraid of guns'.
But a different picture is emerging of the man who was killed after the high-speed car chase.
His Facebook page suggests a different story with Arian posting comments and pictures which shed light on his interests and lifestyle.
In one on April 5, he posted a status update, saying: 'Just came back from the shooting range.'
There is also an enlarged photo of his car posted on the page.
Abdul was shot dead by police after they fired off more than 90 rounds after a high-speed chase
Abdul was shot dead by police after they fired off more than 90 rounds after a high-speed chase
The youth's uncle said he last saw his nephew at 6pm on Wednesday night when he left for the gym, where he typically lifted weights and had a personal trainer.
Just four hours later, police say they saw Arian driving erratically on the Northridge Fashion Center and tried to pull him over.
But he refused and police pursued him on a frenetic, high-speed chase through the city's streets before he pulled onto the Ventura Freeway, ending on the eastbound 101 freeway.
The suspect's car was a Crown Victoria, which his uncle revealed was a one-time police cruiser that had been bought at an auction.
According to a partial transcript of the call made by Arian to a police dispatcher, he said: 'I have been arrested before for possession of destructive devices, I'm not afraid of the cops.
'If they pull their guns, I'm going to have to pull my gun out on them.'
The dispatcher desperately tried to stop Arian, pleading with him: 'I don't want you to hurt yourself.'
Arian responded with a string of expletives before and a threat: 'These police, they're going to get hurt.'
'As soon as he came out from (the) gym, he ran a red light,' Hamed told Channel 2. 'He panicked. OK? He panicked and he ran."
He suggested that when his nephew got out of the car, he was trying to tell police that he was on the phone with 911.
Lt. Neiman added: 'It's certainly bizarre behavior, and it ended in a tragic situation for all involved.'
Despairing family members gathered together this morning as news of Arian's death spread.
Consoling each other outside his uncle Hamed's home, they desperately tried to make sense of his death.
The young man was an aspiring policeman yet he also declared a dislike for police, they said.
It is believed that this stemmed from the fact he was stopped several times by officers who told him he needed to repaint his car - a retried police cruiser - because it was black and white.
'That's why he didn't like police,' Karimee added, saying that Abdul eventually painted the vehicle solid black.
Officers fired more than 90 rounds at 19-year-old Abdul Arian after a pursuit on the freeway.
The dramatic video shows an LAPD police patrol car smashing into Arian's car as he does a failed U-turn in the road before he flees simulating pointing a weapon at chasing police.
News helicopter footage from CBS Sky 2 shows Arian jumping out of his car, turning and fleeing the scene running backwards.
He then repeatedly spins around in a combat stance just before he was shot on the US 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills, LA.
It has emerged that Arian made a frantic 911 call to police during the pursuit, saying he had a gun, but one wasn't recovered from the scene.
Arian was shot dead by an officer as he fled his vehicle just before 10pm last night.
The images of last night's police chase show the aftermath of the scene on the freeway wreathed with smashed remnants of the suspect’s car and bullet casings.
It comes at a very sensitive time in America following the huge public outcry over Trayvon Martin's shooting.
In a case which has gripped America and generated international headlines, Martin's killer George Zimmerman, who claimed he was acting in self defence, was charged with second degree murder this week after police hunted him for 45 days.
He faces the prospect of life in prison.
Lieutenant Andy Neiman said: 'The investigation will determine what happened, what the officer saw, what the witnesses saw.
'Sometimes what you see from a live shot from the air unit may or may not be exactly what people think so until we determine exactly what the witnesses saw, we can't make any comment on that.
Asked if the suspect was carrying a gun, Lt. Neiman said: 'That has not been determined at this point.'
The suspect's uncle Hamed Arian told the station: 'He was a nice kid. He was working. He was such a sweet kid, respectful to others.
'He wanted to be a cop and like I said before, during the chase last night, he was calling 911.
'He was afraid of cops. You know, he told me he wants to be a good cop, not a crooked cop.'
His family revealed he was working as a party-planning company as he pursued his dream of becoming a police officer.
Family members told how he graduated Taft High School but officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District said he left Taft in October 2011. It was unclear if he received his General Education Development (GED) test.
CBS reported that no weapon had been recovered from the scene as they reported the story last night.
Arian's uncle Hamed said he was a young man who neither took drugs or drank alcohol and was 'afraid of guns'.
But a different picture is emerging of the man who was killed after the high-speed car chase.
His Facebook page suggests a different story with Arian posting comments and pictures which shed light on his interests and lifestyle.
In one on April 5, he posted a status update, saying: 'Just came back from the shooting range.'
There is also an enlarged photo of his car posted on the page.
Abdul was shot dead by police after they fired off more than 90 rounds after a high-speed chase
Abdul was shot dead by police after they fired off more than 90 rounds after a high-speed chase
The youth's uncle said he last saw his nephew at 6pm on Wednesday night when he left for the gym, where he typically lifted weights and had a personal trainer.
Just four hours later, police say they saw Arian driving erratically on the Northridge Fashion Center and tried to pull him over.
But he refused and police pursued him on a frenetic, high-speed chase through the city's streets before he pulled onto the Ventura Freeway, ending on the eastbound 101 freeway.
The suspect's car was a Crown Victoria, which his uncle revealed was a one-time police cruiser that had been bought at an auction.
According to a partial transcript of the call made by Arian to a police dispatcher, he said: 'I have been arrested before for possession of destructive devices, I'm not afraid of the cops.
'If they pull their guns, I'm going to have to pull my gun out on them.'
The dispatcher desperately tried to stop Arian, pleading with him: 'I don't want you to hurt yourself.'
Arian responded with a string of expletives before and a threat: 'These police, they're going to get hurt.'
'As soon as he came out from (the) gym, he ran a red light,' Hamed told Channel 2. 'He panicked. OK? He panicked and he ran."
He suggested that when his nephew got out of the car, he was trying to tell police that he was on the phone with 911.
Lt. Neiman added: 'It's certainly bizarre behavior, and it ended in a tragic situation for all involved.'
Despairing family members gathered together this morning as news of Arian's death spread.
Consoling each other outside his uncle Hamed's home, they desperately tried to make sense of his death.
The young man was an aspiring policeman yet he also declared a dislike for police, they said.
It is believed that this stemmed from the fact he was stopped several times by officers who told him he needed to repaint his car - a retried police cruiser - because it was black and white.
'That's why he didn't like police,' Karimee added, saying that Abdul eventually painted the vehicle solid black.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Non Lethal Tasers Have Slaughtered 500-600+ Americans
The Taser, the non-lethal law enforcement weapon that is meant to incapacitate criminals without causing great harm, has killed at least 500 people last decade. The real number of casualties might be even higher.
In the period between 2001 and early 2012, the stun-gun Taser devices used by law enforcement across America have claimed the lives of 500 people.
Amnesty International, the worldwide advocacy group that condemns torture and human rights violations, delivered the news this week with a report released Wednesday. In it, they reveal that the recent death of a Georgia man who died as a result of a Taser blast puts the body count brought on by the device at 500 in barely a decades’ time.
Despite being branded as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, hundreds of Americans have died from Taser blasts.
On Monday this week, law enforcement responded to a call of a drunk and disorderly person in Houston County, Georgia. When they arrived at a bar, the man in question, 43 year old Johnnie Kamahi Warren, was already on the ground. According to the local Dothan Eagle, a sheriff’s deputy still deployed blasts from a Taser gun on the man. Twice. He died moments later and now the officer who fired those shots is being investigated, all while on paid administrative leave.
Warren is number 500 on the list of Taser-related casualties, and Amnesty International says that number is too high to warrant a wake-up call this late in the game.
"Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used," Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International, writes in a press release. "This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative."
Over the last decade, hundreds of others like Warren have died either directly or as a result of Taser blasts. Law enforcement continues to use the tools, however, and many feel that often that’s a decision that could be avoided.
In a 2008 report titled USA: Stun weapons in law enforcement, it was revealed that 90 percent of the Taser casualty cases studied involved a victim that was unarmed. Droves of Americans are left dead by Taser blasts every year and in many cases it is revealed that they posed little threat to the officers responsible.
One victim that was executed in 2009 by Taser was only 15 years old. Another person twice that age was victimized that same year by Tasers, but it took 19 blasts from trigger-happy cops to kill that man.
Another recent victim, Billy Walters III, was shot by Tasers in a separate Georgia incident. He was intoxicated when cops arrived, and although he repeatedly told them “I give up,” they acted by firing several blasts into the man.
Walters was hanging from a ledge during the assault. He fell and was later rendered paralyzed.
"Even if deaths directly from Taser shocks are relatively rare, adverse effects can happen very quickly, without warning, and be impossible to reverse," Amnesty International’s Lee adds. "Given this risk, such weapons should always be used with great caution, in situations where lesser alternatives are unavailable."
Even with this warning and countless others, however, Tasers continue to be a routine weapon used by law enforcement. After a 2008 incident that left a 17-year-old boy dead after a Taser attack, a federal court ruled that Taser International, the maker of the guns, did not provide adequate warning or instruction to the Charlotte Police Department responsible for the death, and that proper knowledge could have prevented the casualty from occurring.
A federal jury said that Taser International should compensate the family of the slain boy to the tune of $10 million. The manufacturer is planning on appealing that decision.
"I'm glad the verdict was in our favor, but we're definitely not celebrating," the mother of slain Darryl Wayne Turner told the Associated Press last year. "It cannot bring back my son's life. Hopefully, it will help others in the future dealing with Tasers."
A year later, however, the body count continues to rise.
Amnesty says that between the states of California, Florida and Texas, around 200 people have been killed by Tasers in the last decade in just those three states.The website Truth…Not Tasers put a figure of North American Taser-related deaths at 682 last year.
+17 (21 votes)
In the period between 2001 and early 2012, the stun-gun Taser devices used by law enforcement across America have claimed the lives of 500 people.
Amnesty International, the worldwide advocacy group that condemns torture and human rights violations, delivered the news this week with a report released Wednesday. In it, they reveal that the recent death of a Georgia man who died as a result of a Taser blast puts the body count brought on by the device at 500 in barely a decades’ time.
Despite being branded as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, hundreds of Americans have died from Taser blasts.
On Monday this week, law enforcement responded to a call of a drunk and disorderly person in Houston County, Georgia. When they arrived at a bar, the man in question, 43 year old Johnnie Kamahi Warren, was already on the ground. According to the local Dothan Eagle, a sheriff’s deputy still deployed blasts from a Taser gun on the man. Twice. He died moments later and now the officer who fired those shots is being investigated, all while on paid administrative leave.
Warren is number 500 on the list of Taser-related casualties, and Amnesty International says that number is too high to warrant a wake-up call this late in the game.
"Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used," Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International, writes in a press release. "This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative."
Over the last decade, hundreds of others like Warren have died either directly or as a result of Taser blasts. Law enforcement continues to use the tools, however, and many feel that often that’s a decision that could be avoided.
In a 2008 report titled USA: Stun weapons in law enforcement, it was revealed that 90 percent of the Taser casualty cases studied involved a victim that was unarmed. Droves of Americans are left dead by Taser blasts every year and in many cases it is revealed that they posed little threat to the officers responsible.
One victim that was executed in 2009 by Taser was only 15 years old. Another person twice that age was victimized that same year by Tasers, but it took 19 blasts from trigger-happy cops to kill that man.
Another recent victim, Billy Walters III, was shot by Tasers in a separate Georgia incident. He was intoxicated when cops arrived, and although he repeatedly told them “I give up,” they acted by firing several blasts into the man.
Walters was hanging from a ledge during the assault. He fell and was later rendered paralyzed.
"Even if deaths directly from Taser shocks are relatively rare, adverse effects can happen very quickly, without warning, and be impossible to reverse," Amnesty International’s Lee adds. "Given this risk, such weapons should always be used with great caution, in situations where lesser alternatives are unavailable."
Even with this warning and countless others, however, Tasers continue to be a routine weapon used by law enforcement. After a 2008 incident that left a 17-year-old boy dead after a Taser attack, a federal court ruled that Taser International, the maker of the guns, did not provide adequate warning or instruction to the Charlotte Police Department responsible for the death, and that proper knowledge could have prevented the casualty from occurring.
A federal jury said that Taser International should compensate the family of the slain boy to the tune of $10 million. The manufacturer is planning on appealing that decision.
"I'm glad the verdict was in our favor, but we're definitely not celebrating," the mother of slain Darryl Wayne Turner told the Associated Press last year. "It cannot bring back my son's life. Hopefully, it will help others in the future dealing with Tasers."
A year later, however, the body count continues to rise.
Amnesty says that between the states of California, Florida and Texas, around 200 people have been killed by Tasers in the last decade in just those three states.The website Truth…Not Tasers put a figure of North American Taser-related deaths at 682 last year.
+17 (21 votes)
Saturday, January 14, 2012
From Right To Resist To Submit & Obey
Anne Dekins was a loud-mouthed party girl – or at least, that's what the arrest warrant suggested. Whatever she may have done in the past, Miss Dekins was quietly minding her own business when Officer Samuel Bray found her on the street and began to haul her away.
Dekins wasn’t inclined to go quietly, and she put up a struggle. Her cries for help attracted the interest of several armed men led by an individual named Tooley, who confronted Bray and demanded to know what he was doing to the frantic woman. The officer produced his official credentials and insisted that he was making a lawful arrest for "disorderly conduct." When witnesses disputed that description, Bray called for backup.
Tooley and his associates ordered Bray to release the woman, and then took action to enforce that lawful order. After Bray’s partner was killed in the ensuing struggle, Tooley and his associates were arrested for murder. The trial court threw out the murder charge, ruling that the warrant was defective. Since the arrest was illegal, the court pointed out, Dekins had a right to resist – and bystanders likewise had a right, if not a positive duty, to assist her. The defendants were eventually found guilty of manslaughter, but quickly pardoned and set free.
By trying to enforce an invalid warrant, Bray "did not act as a constable, but a common oppressor," observed the trial court. Tooley and the other bystanders were properly "provoked" by the act of aggressive violence against Anne Dekins, and their forceful but measured response – first demanding that the abductor release the hostage, then exercising defensive force to free her – was entirely appropriate.
Lawless violence against the helpless "is a sufficient provocation to all people out of compassion" in any circumstance, observed the court, "much more where it is done under a colour of justice, and where the liberty of the subject is invaded…." In fact, an act of that kind carried out by a law enforcement official is nothing less than "a provocation to all the subjects of England."
Every Englishman "ought to be concerned for Magna Charta and the laws," concluded the Queen’s Bench in the 1710 case Queen v. Tooley. "And if any one against the law imprison a man, he is an offender against Magna Charta."
Roughly forty years earlier, the same court had issued a similar opinion in Hopkin Huggett’s Case. Huggett and his friends had come to the aid of a man who had been arrested by a constable named Berry. Huggett demanded to see the arrest warrant. When Berry produced a clearly spurious document, Huggett drew his sword and demanded the prisoner’s release. Berry refused, and finished second in the ensuing swordfight.
The wrongfully arrested man in that case (who was threatened with impressment into the military) did nothing to resist his abduction. It wasn’t clear that Huggett knew the man, or had even met him prior to the incident. Yet the Queen’s Bench ruled that Huggett’s actions were justified, since a situation in which a "man [is] unduly arrested or restrained of his liberty … is a provocation to all other men of England, not only his friends but strangers also[,] for common humanity’s sake."
In addition to codifying the Common Law right to resist arrest, Hopkin Huggett’s Case and Queen v. Tooley recognized that this right inheres not only in the victim, but in citizens who interpose on the victim’s behalf.
Simply put: When a police officer commits the crime of unlawful arrest, the citizens who intervene are acting as peace officers entitled to employ any necessary means – including lethal force – to liberate the victim.
In early 18th Century England, this was seen as a non-negotiable bulwark against what the heroic Algernon Sidney called "the violence of a wicked magistrate who, hav[ing] armed a crew of lewd villains," would otherwise inflict his will on innocent and helpless people with impunity. Sidney’s martyrdom at the hands of precisely that kind of degenerate, tyrannical magistrate underscored the vitality of the principle he expressed.
"The right to resist unlawful arrest memorializes one of the principal elements in the heritage of the English revolution: the belief that the will to resist arbitrary authority in a reasonable way is valuable and ought not to be suppressed by the criminal law," observed Paul Chevigny in a 1969 Yale Law Journal essay. Actually, Chevigny – like many others – elides a critical distinction between "power" and "authority": While a police officer may have the power to abduct or abuse an innocent person, citizens have the authority to prevent that crime.
Until the late 1960s, most states recognized – albeit grudgingly – the Common Law right to resist arrest. By 1969, that right had been transmuted, through judicial activism, into a revocable "privilege" – one that had to be dispensed with to serve the interests of the State's punitive caste.
"The weight of authoritative precedent supports a right to repel an unlawful arrest with force…. This was the rule at common law," admitted the Alaska State Supreme Court in a seminal work of sophistry called Terry Glenn Miller v. State of Alaska. "It was based on the proposition that everyone should be privileged to use reasonable force to prevent an unlawful invasion of his physical integrity and personal liberty."
That admission clearly anticipated the familiar use of the magical conjunction "but" as a rhetorical reset button, and the Court didn’t disappoint:
"But certain imperfections in the functioning of the rule have brought about changes in some jurisdictions. A new principle of right conduct has been espoused" – by whom, the Court didn’t specify. "It is argued" – once again, the parties to that argument were not identified – "that if a peace officer is making an illegal arrest but is not using force" – something that could not occur, given that an arrest, by strict definition, an act of armed coercion – "the remedy of the citizen should be that of suing the officer for false arrest, not resistance with force."
"The control of man’s destructive and aggressive impulses is one of the great unsolved problems of our society," pontificated the Court as it destroyed one of the few effective checks on the deadliest manifestation of those impulses. "Our rules of law should discourage the unnecessary use of physical force between man and man. Any rule which promotes rather than inhibits violence should be re-examined." That objective is not legitimately served by granting State functionaries an unqualified license to commit criminal violence against the innocent.
Four years after the Miller decision, a decision entitled Richardson v. Idaho emerged from the Idaho State Supreme Court’s emunctory aperture. John Richardson had been convicted of resisting arrest through violence and sentenced to five years in prison. The incident in which the supposed crime occurred took place at a restaurant in Idaho Falls. Richardson and his ex-wife, who were having dinner, got into an argument, and were asked to leave when the latter became loud and profane.
Two off-duty police officers escorted them outside, and then tried to arrest Richardson for "disorderly conduct" after he became annoyed by their unwarranted intrusion. Richardson kicked one of the uniformed buttinskis in the mouth, and managed to grab one of their pistols, which he fired into the air, rather than at his assailants (as he was entitled to, both morally and – under the Supreme Court’s still-valid 1900 Bad Elk precedent – legally).
Prominently citing the Miller decision in Alaska, the Idaho Court observed that "More than one state has, without legislative action, modified the traditional common law rule and has adopted the rule that a private citizen may not use force to resist a peaceful arrest," blithely ignoring, once again, the fact that a "peaceful arrest" is a creature more fanciful than a left-handed unicorn that speaks Norwegian. "We are of the opinion that the trend is, and should be, away from the traditional common law rule, and therefore we hold that if a person has reasonable ground to believe he is being arrested by a peace officer, it is his duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest."
The key holding in the Richardson ruling has been enshrined in the Idaho Code Judicial Instructions (ICJI 1262), which asserts that "it is the person’s duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest." The obverse of this spurious "Duty to Submit to Arrest" is a police officer’s privilege to commit criminal acts for the purpose of nullifying the Exclusionary Rule – something the Idaho Supreme Court acknowledged in a 2008 ruling captioned State v. Lusby.
Police paid a visit to Lusby’s apartment to investigate a disturbance. She quickly grew tired of the uninvited company – what decent person wouldn’t? – and went into her apartment, closing the door behind her. One of the officers committed an act of criminal trespass and announced that Lusby was under arrest for "obstruction" and "resistance." At one point the bully caught an elbow in the face from the victim, a small down-payment on what he deserved – but enough to earn Lusby a charge of felonious assault on an officer. She was also charged with drug possession on the basis of evidence found in the officer’s illegal search.
Because that search was patently illegal, the trial court granted a motion to dismiss all charges against Lusby. The State Supreme Court admitted that this was the case – but insisted that Lusby’s resistance to the illegal invasion of her home retroactively legalized the unconstitutional search.
"It appears to be a nearly universal rule in American jurisdictions that when a suspect responds to an unconstitutional search or seizure by a physical attack on the officer, evidence of this new crime is admissible notwithstanding the prior illegality," decreed the court, extracting that "rule" from precisely the same orifice from which the Richardson ruling originated. "The rationale … [is that] a subsequent attack on the officer is a new crime unrelated to any prior illegality…. Accordingly, we hold that evidence of Lusby’s alleged batter on an officer or other forceful resistance is not suppressible … [and] evidence of paraphernalia found in the search incident to Lusby’s arrest [is] admissible."
On this construction, a police officer can nullify the Fourth Amendment anytime he pleases, simply by claiming that the victim committed the supposed crime of resisting. This can take the form of assuming an "aggressive posture," such as "blading" the body or even putting one foot in front of the other in what can be construed as an "attack stance." Or, as the recent assault on Austin, Texas resident Antonio Buehler demonstrates, the "assault" can be nothing more than breathing in the face of a police officer.
Buehler, 34, is a combat veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, West Point graduate, and middle school teacher. He was serving as a designated driver on the morning of New Year’s Day when he saw a woman being abused by police outside a 7-11. The costumed assailants, officers Pat Oborski and Robert Snider, were conducting what they called a DWI arrest of a woman later identified as Norma Pizana.
To Buehler and his friends, the spectacle looked more like a gang assault.
"We hear a loud scream, and we look over, and we see the cop violently yanking the female out of the car onto the ground," Buehler told local ABC affiliate KVUE. "She is screaming. The other cop ran up and they both sort of grabbed her arms. Her hands were behind her back straight out and they lifted her up by her arms. It looked extremely painful."
With the help of a friend, Buehler began to document this act of "street justice" with his cell phone. That prompted Oborski to confront Buehler, who was not interfering in any way.
According to Buehler, Oborski barked, "What the hell are you taking pictures for?"
"My response was, `I am allowed to. Public official in a public place.'"
As he was trained to, Oborski started to lie in an effort to devise a cover charge against Buehler. First he claimed that Buehler was somehow "interfering with the investigation," which was patently untrue. Then the cop assaulted Buhler by pushing the unresisting man – who would have been more than a match for the donut-grazer, had he chosen to fight back – up against a truck.
"Once he had me pinned up against the back of the truck he kept leaning in," Buehler continued. "He kept pushing me."
Dekins wasn’t inclined to go quietly, and she put up a struggle. Her cries for help attracted the interest of several armed men led by an individual named Tooley, who confronted Bray and demanded to know what he was doing to the frantic woman. The officer produced his official credentials and insisted that he was making a lawful arrest for "disorderly conduct." When witnesses disputed that description, Bray called for backup.
Tooley and his associates ordered Bray to release the woman, and then took action to enforce that lawful order. After Bray’s partner was killed in the ensuing struggle, Tooley and his associates were arrested for murder. The trial court threw out the murder charge, ruling that the warrant was defective. Since the arrest was illegal, the court pointed out, Dekins had a right to resist – and bystanders likewise had a right, if not a positive duty, to assist her. The defendants were eventually found guilty of manslaughter, but quickly pardoned and set free.
By trying to enforce an invalid warrant, Bray "did not act as a constable, but a common oppressor," observed the trial court. Tooley and the other bystanders were properly "provoked" by the act of aggressive violence against Anne Dekins, and their forceful but measured response – first demanding that the abductor release the hostage, then exercising defensive force to free her – was entirely appropriate.
Lawless violence against the helpless "is a sufficient provocation to all people out of compassion" in any circumstance, observed the court, "much more where it is done under a colour of justice, and where the liberty of the subject is invaded…." In fact, an act of that kind carried out by a law enforcement official is nothing less than "a provocation to all the subjects of England."
Every Englishman "ought to be concerned for Magna Charta and the laws," concluded the Queen’s Bench in the 1710 case Queen v. Tooley. "And if any one against the law imprison a man, he is an offender against Magna Charta."
Roughly forty years earlier, the same court had issued a similar opinion in Hopkin Huggett’s Case. Huggett and his friends had come to the aid of a man who had been arrested by a constable named Berry. Huggett demanded to see the arrest warrant. When Berry produced a clearly spurious document, Huggett drew his sword and demanded the prisoner’s release. Berry refused, and finished second in the ensuing swordfight.
The wrongfully arrested man in that case (who was threatened with impressment into the military) did nothing to resist his abduction. It wasn’t clear that Huggett knew the man, or had even met him prior to the incident. Yet the Queen’s Bench ruled that Huggett’s actions were justified, since a situation in which a "man [is] unduly arrested or restrained of his liberty … is a provocation to all other men of England, not only his friends but strangers also[,] for common humanity’s sake."
In addition to codifying the Common Law right to resist arrest, Hopkin Huggett’s Case and Queen v. Tooley recognized that this right inheres not only in the victim, but in citizens who interpose on the victim’s behalf.
Simply put: When a police officer commits the crime of unlawful arrest, the citizens who intervene are acting as peace officers entitled to employ any necessary means – including lethal force – to liberate the victim.
In early 18th Century England, this was seen as a non-negotiable bulwark against what the heroic Algernon Sidney called "the violence of a wicked magistrate who, hav[ing] armed a crew of lewd villains," would otherwise inflict his will on innocent and helpless people with impunity. Sidney’s martyrdom at the hands of precisely that kind of degenerate, tyrannical magistrate underscored the vitality of the principle he expressed.
"The right to resist unlawful arrest memorializes one of the principal elements in the heritage of the English revolution: the belief that the will to resist arbitrary authority in a reasonable way is valuable and ought not to be suppressed by the criminal law," observed Paul Chevigny in a 1969 Yale Law Journal essay. Actually, Chevigny – like many others – elides a critical distinction between "power" and "authority": While a police officer may have the power to abduct or abuse an innocent person, citizens have the authority to prevent that crime.
Until the late 1960s, most states recognized – albeit grudgingly – the Common Law right to resist arrest. By 1969, that right had been transmuted, through judicial activism, into a revocable "privilege" – one that had to be dispensed with to serve the interests of the State's punitive caste.
"The weight of authoritative precedent supports a right to repel an unlawful arrest with force…. This was the rule at common law," admitted the Alaska State Supreme Court in a seminal work of sophistry called Terry Glenn Miller v. State of Alaska. "It was based on the proposition that everyone should be privileged to use reasonable force to prevent an unlawful invasion of his physical integrity and personal liberty."
That admission clearly anticipated the familiar use of the magical conjunction "but" as a rhetorical reset button, and the Court didn’t disappoint:
"But certain imperfections in the functioning of the rule have brought about changes in some jurisdictions. A new principle of right conduct has been espoused" – by whom, the Court didn’t specify. "It is argued" – once again, the parties to that argument were not identified – "that if a peace officer is making an illegal arrest but is not using force" – something that could not occur, given that an arrest, by strict definition, an act of armed coercion – "the remedy of the citizen should be that of suing the officer for false arrest, not resistance with force."
"The control of man’s destructive and aggressive impulses is one of the great unsolved problems of our society," pontificated the Court as it destroyed one of the few effective checks on the deadliest manifestation of those impulses. "Our rules of law should discourage the unnecessary use of physical force between man and man. Any rule which promotes rather than inhibits violence should be re-examined." That objective is not legitimately served by granting State functionaries an unqualified license to commit criminal violence against the innocent.
Four years after the Miller decision, a decision entitled Richardson v. Idaho emerged from the Idaho State Supreme Court’s emunctory aperture. John Richardson had been convicted of resisting arrest through violence and sentenced to five years in prison. The incident in which the supposed crime occurred took place at a restaurant in Idaho Falls. Richardson and his ex-wife, who were having dinner, got into an argument, and were asked to leave when the latter became loud and profane.
Two off-duty police officers escorted them outside, and then tried to arrest Richardson for "disorderly conduct" after he became annoyed by their unwarranted intrusion. Richardson kicked one of the uniformed buttinskis in the mouth, and managed to grab one of their pistols, which he fired into the air, rather than at his assailants (as he was entitled to, both morally and – under the Supreme Court’s still-valid 1900 Bad Elk precedent – legally).
Prominently citing the Miller decision in Alaska, the Idaho Court observed that "More than one state has, without legislative action, modified the traditional common law rule and has adopted the rule that a private citizen may not use force to resist a peaceful arrest," blithely ignoring, once again, the fact that a "peaceful arrest" is a creature more fanciful than a left-handed unicorn that speaks Norwegian. "We are of the opinion that the trend is, and should be, away from the traditional common law rule, and therefore we hold that if a person has reasonable ground to believe he is being arrested by a peace officer, it is his duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest."
The key holding in the Richardson ruling has been enshrined in the Idaho Code Judicial Instructions (ICJI 1262), which asserts that "it is the person’s duty to refrain from using force or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is a legal basis for the arrest." The obverse of this spurious "Duty to Submit to Arrest" is a police officer’s privilege to commit criminal acts for the purpose of nullifying the Exclusionary Rule – something the Idaho Supreme Court acknowledged in a 2008 ruling captioned State v. Lusby.
Police paid a visit to Lusby’s apartment to investigate a disturbance. She quickly grew tired of the uninvited company – what decent person wouldn’t? – and went into her apartment, closing the door behind her. One of the officers committed an act of criminal trespass and announced that Lusby was under arrest for "obstruction" and "resistance." At one point the bully caught an elbow in the face from the victim, a small down-payment on what he deserved – but enough to earn Lusby a charge of felonious assault on an officer. She was also charged with drug possession on the basis of evidence found in the officer’s illegal search.
Because that search was patently illegal, the trial court granted a motion to dismiss all charges against Lusby. The State Supreme Court admitted that this was the case – but insisted that Lusby’s resistance to the illegal invasion of her home retroactively legalized the unconstitutional search.
"It appears to be a nearly universal rule in American jurisdictions that when a suspect responds to an unconstitutional search or seizure by a physical attack on the officer, evidence of this new crime is admissible notwithstanding the prior illegality," decreed the court, extracting that "rule" from precisely the same orifice from which the Richardson ruling originated. "The rationale … [is that] a subsequent attack on the officer is a new crime unrelated to any prior illegality…. Accordingly, we hold that evidence of Lusby’s alleged batter on an officer or other forceful resistance is not suppressible … [and] evidence of paraphernalia found in the search incident to Lusby’s arrest [is] admissible."
On this construction, a police officer can nullify the Fourth Amendment anytime he pleases, simply by claiming that the victim committed the supposed crime of resisting. This can take the form of assuming an "aggressive posture," such as "blading" the body or even putting one foot in front of the other in what can be construed as an "attack stance." Or, as the recent assault on Austin, Texas resident Antonio Buehler demonstrates, the "assault" can be nothing more than breathing in the face of a police officer.
Buehler, 34, is a combat veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, West Point graduate, and middle school teacher. He was serving as a designated driver on the morning of New Year’s Day when he saw a woman being abused by police outside a 7-11. The costumed assailants, officers Pat Oborski and Robert Snider, were conducting what they called a DWI arrest of a woman later identified as Norma Pizana.
To Buehler and his friends, the spectacle looked more like a gang assault.
"We hear a loud scream, and we look over, and we see the cop violently yanking the female out of the car onto the ground," Buehler told local ABC affiliate KVUE. "She is screaming. The other cop ran up and they both sort of grabbed her arms. Her hands were behind her back straight out and they lifted her up by her arms. It looked extremely painful."
With the help of a friend, Buehler began to document this act of "street justice" with his cell phone. That prompted Oborski to confront Buehler, who was not interfering in any way.
According to Buehler, Oborski barked, "What the hell are you taking pictures for?"
"My response was, `I am allowed to. Public official in a public place.'"
As he was trained to, Oborski started to lie in an effort to devise a cover charge against Buehler. First he claimed that Buehler was somehow "interfering with the investigation," which was patently untrue. Then the cop assaulted Buhler by pushing the unresisting man – who would have been more than a match for the donut-grazer, had he chosen to fight back – up against a truck.
"Once he had me pinned up against the back of the truck he kept leaning in," Buehler continued. "He kept pushing me."
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Is Killing American?
'According to news reports, 15-year-old eighth-grader Jaime Gonzalez, who was shot and killed yesterday by police in his middle school in Brownsville, TX, was hit at least two times: in the chest and once "from the back of the head."
Police say they were called by school authorities because Gonzalez was carrying a gun, which turned out, at least according to the police, to be a "realistic-looking" pellet gun, a weapon that uses compressed air to fire a metal pellet which, while perhaps a threat to the eye at close range, does not pose a serious threat to life.
There is now a national discussion going on in the media about whether police used excessive force in the incident, and there is, in Brownsville and at Gonzalez’s school, and of course in the Gonzalez family, both anger and mourning. The boy had reportedly been a victim of bullying.'
Police say they were called by school authorities because Gonzalez was carrying a gun, which turned out, at least according to the police, to be a "realistic-looking" pellet gun, a weapon that uses compressed air to fire a metal pellet which, while perhaps a threat to the eye at close range, does not pose a serious threat to life.
There is now a national discussion going on in the media about whether police used excessive force in the incident, and there is, in Brownsville and at Gonzalez’s school, and of course in the Gonzalez family, both anger and mourning. The boy had reportedly been a victim of bullying.'
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Cop Types
Today, it is law enforcement that threatens harmless, morally (if not legally) innocent people with violence. The guy who, for example, grows a small batch of pot plants in his backyard (as opposed to the lawful citizen who brews his own beer). Or the seatbelt scofflaw – whose actions threaten harm to none except, perhaps, himself (and even then, only potentially). Or the farmer who sells “unapproved” milk to his neighbors. And the students who dare to exercise their right to peaceable assembly. The driver who declines to be a witness against himself and refuses to submit, sans warrant – and very often, sans probable cause – to a random stop and search of his vehicle and person.
The list of victimless crimes – and latter-day victims of law enforcement – is long. Citizens are aware of the creepy fact that being a peaceful, harmless person who respects the rights of others is no longer sufficient to avoid becoming the target of a law enforcer. That the law increasingly targets people who have violated no other person’s rights – but who have violated “the law.” That is, who have committed some affront against the state.
Which is why citizens today increasingly dislike – and fear – these law enforcers. It is also why today we have essentially three kinds people who suit up for this sort of work:
Type one: The robotic “just doing my job” type. He is either not smart enough or introspective/thoughtful enough to consider the nature of the system; whether the laws are just or even reasonable. This is the cop type that can’t be reasoned with and more, the type who will enforce any law and any order simply because it’s an order or because it’s the law. Nothing more is required. He just follows orders. And it’s our job to Obey.
The upshot is this type of cop is only bad to the extent that the laws he enforces are bad. There is a limit. He usually won’t exceed the law or go beyond what he is ordered to do (because then he’d be exercising initiative and this type of cop is almost constitutionally incapable of that because it conflicts with his inner prime directive of obedience to the hierarchy.) He is fundamentally a bureaucrat. Bad perhaps, but not usually deliberately vicious.
Type two: The power-luster. This one enjoys wielding power over others. It makes him feel big and strong. He is often narcissistic and may even be sadistic. He absolutely lacks empathy. He sees us as ” civilians” – or worse. And it’s our job to Submit.
This type of enforcer is frightening because given the opportunity he will assault and possibly even kill you. And he’s actively looking for that opportunity. A recent example being the group of such enforcers in Fullerton, CA who beat a helpless homeless man to death (see here). And they will feel no remorse afterward. Indeed, they will get pleasure out of it. This is the sort of person who would have – and may yet again – line people up in front of a ditch.
Or man an oven.
Type three: The old school cop. He is usually old, literally. A relic of the days when cops didn’t expect immediate submission, when cops were expected to treat citizens civilly. He has mellowed – or become aware (and thus, cynical) about the nature of The Job. He tries to be decent, within the boundaries of what’s possible given “the law” and current law enforcement culture. He’s close to retirement, though, and doesn’t want to make too many waves. He’s also rare. You might get him one out of ten times these days.
Expect to see much less of him in the future, too.
His type is being screened out, actively and otherwise. Actively, because our increasingly militarized “law enforcement” agencies seek order-followers as new recruits. And who better-prepared (better conditioned) to follow orders than ex-military? A decade’s worth of combat (well, occupation) hardened veterans has streamed back to the Homeland in search of work – and what work are they better-prepared for than law enforcement?
Note well that these law enforcers typically have a military rank structure. The head enforcer is often festooned with general’s stars or a colonel’s silver eagles. They wear menacing black BDUs, complete with flak jackets or body armor. Even in the country, were the major crimes are hunting out of season or getting a bit too boozed up on a Friday night. I live in an extremely rural part of southwest Virginia in a county that has literally one traffic light. Yet even here, courtesy of the Heimatsicherheitsdeinst apparat that sprouted after 911, there is now a bulletproofed “command post” and all the accoutrements of a fully militarized “law enforcement” department.
They, too, are just “following orders.” And local people have noticed that the new crop of cop is crew cut and unforgiving. Andy Griffith need not apply. His kind’s not wanted anymore. Of course, Andy wouldn’t want any part of this mess anyhow.
The list of victimless crimes – and latter-day victims of law enforcement – is long. Citizens are aware of the creepy fact that being a peaceful, harmless person who respects the rights of others is no longer sufficient to avoid becoming the target of a law enforcer. That the law increasingly targets people who have violated no other person’s rights – but who have violated “the law.” That is, who have committed some affront against the state.
Which is why citizens today increasingly dislike – and fear – these law enforcers. It is also why today we have essentially three kinds people who suit up for this sort of work:
Type one: The robotic “just doing my job” type. He is either not smart enough or introspective/thoughtful enough to consider the nature of the system; whether the laws are just or even reasonable. This is the cop type that can’t be reasoned with and more, the type who will enforce any law and any order simply because it’s an order or because it’s the law. Nothing more is required. He just follows orders. And it’s our job to Obey.
The upshot is this type of cop is only bad to the extent that the laws he enforces are bad. There is a limit. He usually won’t exceed the law or go beyond what he is ordered to do (because then he’d be exercising initiative and this type of cop is almost constitutionally incapable of that because it conflicts with his inner prime directive of obedience to the hierarchy.) He is fundamentally a bureaucrat. Bad perhaps, but not usually deliberately vicious.
Type two: The power-luster. This one enjoys wielding power over others. It makes him feel big and strong. He is often narcissistic and may even be sadistic. He absolutely lacks empathy. He sees us as ” civilians” – or worse. And it’s our job to Submit.
This type of enforcer is frightening because given the opportunity he will assault and possibly even kill you. And he’s actively looking for that opportunity. A recent example being the group of such enforcers in Fullerton, CA who beat a helpless homeless man to death (see here). And they will feel no remorse afterward. Indeed, they will get pleasure out of it. This is the sort of person who would have – and may yet again – line people up in front of a ditch.
Or man an oven.
Type three: The old school cop. He is usually old, literally. A relic of the days when cops didn’t expect immediate submission, when cops were expected to treat citizens civilly. He has mellowed – or become aware (and thus, cynical) about the nature of The Job. He tries to be decent, within the boundaries of what’s possible given “the law” and current law enforcement culture. He’s close to retirement, though, and doesn’t want to make too many waves. He’s also rare. You might get him one out of ten times these days.
Expect to see much less of him in the future, too.
His type is being screened out, actively and otherwise. Actively, because our increasingly militarized “law enforcement” agencies seek order-followers as new recruits. And who better-prepared (better conditioned) to follow orders than ex-military? A decade’s worth of combat (well, occupation) hardened veterans has streamed back to the Homeland in search of work – and what work are they better-prepared for than law enforcement?
Note well that these law enforcers typically have a military rank structure. The head enforcer is often festooned with general’s stars or a colonel’s silver eagles. They wear menacing black BDUs, complete with flak jackets or body armor. Even in the country, were the major crimes are hunting out of season or getting a bit too boozed up on a Friday night. I live in an extremely rural part of southwest Virginia in a county that has literally one traffic light. Yet even here, courtesy of the Heimatsicherheitsdeinst apparat that sprouted after 911, there is now a bulletproofed “command post” and all the accoutrements of a fully militarized “law enforcement” department.
They, too, are just “following orders.” And local people have noticed that the new crop of cop is crew cut and unforgiving. Andy Griffith need not apply. His kind’s not wanted anymore. Of course, Andy wouldn’t want any part of this mess anyhow.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Lethal Non Lethal Weapons Used Against Peaceful Citizens
'Non-lethal weapons are being distributed by the West into protest zones throughout the world, as well as being utilized in crowd suppression within the borders of the Land of the Free.
The producers of weapons such as rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray are quick to point out that it is not the weapons themselves that are the cause of fatalities, but rather it is their misuse through faulty training. The Orwellian nature of such a statement is staggering, as the admission of lethality is actually buried in the justification. In fact, one of the main manufacturers, NonLethal Technologies Inc., states in their own search description that they are a "Manufacturer of Less-Lethal riot and crowd control products." Less-lethal is not non-lethal. Moreover, it seems disingenuous that major players in the military-industrial complex, which has been quite lethal to a large number of nations and peoples, should themselves be developers of supposedly non-lethal technology.
There is also emerging evidence from the front lines of Egyptian protesters, and the medics treating them, that these non-lethal weapons have increased in strength and lethality as Egypt enters its second revolution and the protester death toll rises. So, if these weapons are promoted as non-lethal, why are so many people dying?'
The producers of weapons such as rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray are quick to point out that it is not the weapons themselves that are the cause of fatalities, but rather it is their misuse through faulty training. The Orwellian nature of such a statement is staggering, as the admission of lethality is actually buried in the justification. In fact, one of the main manufacturers, NonLethal Technologies Inc., states in their own search description that they are a "Manufacturer of Less-Lethal riot and crowd control products." Less-lethal is not non-lethal. Moreover, it seems disingenuous that major players in the military-industrial complex, which has been quite lethal to a large number of nations and peoples, should themselves be developers of supposedly non-lethal technology.
There is also emerging evidence from the front lines of Egyptian protesters, and the medics treating them, that these non-lethal weapons have increased in strength and lethality as Egypt enters its second revolution and the protester death toll rises. So, if these weapons are promoted as non-lethal, why are so many people dying?'
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