An Iowa police officer who was trying to determine whether a woman was a domestic abuse victim ended up tasing her repeatedly, even after she was handcuffed and hogtied.
Two weeks later, Chariton police officer Tyler Ruble was investigated himself for domestic abuse after his wife accused him of slamming her against a wall and twisting her wrist.
Lucas County sheriff’s deputies responded to that scene, but refused to arrest him, even though his wife had “visible injuries and redness,” according to a news report from WHO-TV of Des Moines.
The tasering incident took place two years ago and was caught on video, but police refused to release it after numerous requests from the news station.
Despite the two incidents against Ruble, he remains on the force.
The incident proves that even though many officers are equipped with body-worn cameras, which should protect both the officers and citizens, it does the public no good if they are not released to the public.
Perhaps lawmakers need to impliment a system where there is more transparency with these videos.
This incident came to light only because internal sources tipped off WHO-TV about the video, which in turn spent weeks trying to obtain it through a public records request.
When they were denied, the video was eventually leaked to them, showing that at least one person within the department has morals.
In a follow-up WHO-TV story (see video below), the woman who was tased, Amy Storm, said she was not even aware there had been a video.
She was charged with two counts of assault and it’s not clear from the news reports if she was convicted.
She never raised an issue about how she was abused because she knew it would be her word against the officers’ and that usually goes nowhere.
Now that she has a copy of the video, she intends to file a complaint.
But it appears that whole county is corrupt considering it was not only Lucas County sheriff’s deputies who refused to arrest Ruble on domestic abuse charges, it was Lucas County Sheriff Jim Baker who was holding Storm’s face down as Ruble tased her.
WHO-TV reporter Aaron Brillbeck should be commended for his diligence in this story because most TV reporters would not have made the effort.
CARLOS MILLER'S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
I am immersed in a legal case where I not only want to clear my criminal charges stemming from my arrest in January, but I want to sue the Miami-Dade Police Department for deleting my footage, which I was able to recover.
My goal is to set some type of precedent to ensure this does not happen as often as it does today where cops simply get away with it.
Showing posts with label Taser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taser. Show all posts
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Another Pregnant Woman Tasered
'The superintendent of the Chicago Police Department says that the reason one of his officers used a Taser stun gun on a woman days away from giving birth because “you can’t always tell whether somebody is pregnant.”
At eight-months pregnant, Tiffany Rent says she would think officers would have been aware of her condition before they assaulted and arrested her on Wednesday morning outside a South Side drug store.
“I was standing at the squad car close enough for him to see that I was pregnant,” Rent tells the Chicago Tribune.'
At eight-months pregnant, Tiffany Rent says she would think officers would have been aware of her condition before they assaulted and arrested her on Wednesday morning outside a South Side drug store.
“I was standing at the squad car close enough for him to see that I was pregnant,” Rent tells the Chicago Tribune.'
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.
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, March 16, 2012
US Police Drones To Be Equipped With?
'Law enforcement near Houston, Texas will soon have a $300,000 robotic surveillance drone in their arsenal, and if Montgomery County’s chief deputy has his say, it’s only a matter of time before that aircraft will be equipped to fire from above.
Discussing a new deal that will give the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office near Houston, Texas an unmanned, robotic spy drone, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel tells The Daily that he hasn’t rule out adding weaponry to the lightweight aircraft.
The deputy says that while the department doesn’t have any plans at the moment to acquire an army of drones equipped with weapons, he opines that it could be advantageous for some endeavors.'
Discussing a new deal that will give the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office near Houston, Texas an unmanned, robotic spy drone, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel tells The Daily that he hasn’t rule out adding weaponry to the lightweight aircraft.
The deputy says that while the department doesn’t have any plans at the moment to acquire an army of drones equipped with weapons, he opines that it could be advantageous for some endeavors.'
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)
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
LAPD Shot/Killed Man 10 Times In Carls Parking Lot
Police in Los Angeles County gunned down a man who was preparing to swing a metal pipe at them in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant.
The entire heart-stopping shooting - 10 shots in all - was captured on video by two teens with a cell phone camera, who watched as the man walked out of the Carl's Jr. about 9.30am Monday and apparently refused officers' commands to surrender.
The dead man's name is unknown and the names of the officers involved in the shooting have not been released
This murder was caught on video and can be seen at above link.
The entire heart-stopping shooting - 10 shots in all - was captured on video by two teens with a cell phone camera, who watched as the man walked out of the Carl's Jr. about 9.30am Monday and apparently refused officers' commands to surrender.
The dead man's name is unknown and the names of the officers involved in the shooting have not been released
This murder was caught on video and can be seen at above link.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
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?'
Monday, November 28, 2011
Cops Beat & Taser 17 Year Old Disabled Boy
A 17-year-old mentally handicapped boy was opening the front door of his Dayton, Ohio home last week when police officers fired their Tasers at him before allegedly punching the disabled child in the chest and spraying him with mace.
Family Sues Police For Killing Son With 19 Taser Blasts
On November 16, 2009, police were dispatched to an East Grand Rapids, Michigan residence following a 911 call in which the dialer said a man broke through a glass window.
Stephen Bolick called the police following a scuffle with his 30-year-old son. According to Bolick his son, Matthew Bolick, “just freaked out completely.”
East Grand Rapids Public Safety Sgt. Brian Davis was first on the scene. Stephen told the officer that his son was delusional and hearing voices. He feared, he said, for his son’s safety.
When the officer made contact with Matthew, the 30 year old assaulted the officer, which led to him responding with his Taser. According to the officers, the first Taser blast had no effect on Bolick and that’s when he made a run for his home.
Officers gained on the deranged Bolick and a second effort to subdue Bolick ensued.
In a span of 10 minutes, Bolick was tasered a total of 19 times by the second officer on the scene, Gary Parker. In the end, Stephen Bolick was dead.
Stephen Bolick called the police following a scuffle with his 30-year-old son. According to Bolick his son, Matthew Bolick, “just freaked out completely.”
East Grand Rapids Public Safety Sgt. Brian Davis was first on the scene. Stephen told the officer that his son was delusional and hearing voices. He feared, he said, for his son’s safety.
When the officer made contact with Matthew, the 30 year old assaulted the officer, which led to him responding with his Taser. According to the officers, the first Taser blast had no effect on Bolick and that’s when he made a run for his home.
Officers gained on the deranged Bolick and a second effort to subdue Bolick ensued.
In a span of 10 minutes, Bolick was tasered a total of 19 times by the second officer on the scene, Gary Parker. In the end, Stephen Bolick was dead.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Deaf Man On Bike Taserd By Trigger Happy Police
'A police officer killed an elderly, deaf and mentally disabled man riding his bicycle by shooting him with a Taser stun gun after he failed to obey instructions to stop.
Roger Anthony, 61, was killed as he made his way home in Scotland Neck, South Carolina, after officers responded to a 911 call about a man who had fallen off his bicycle in a car park. The caller told dispatchers that the man appeared drunk and that it looked like he had hurt himself.
Officers said they repeatedly told Mr Anthony to get off his bike, but when he didn't respond, they shocked him. The state Office of the Medical Examiner hasn't yet determined a cause of death.'
Roger Anthony, 61, was killed as he made his way home in Scotland Neck, South Carolina, after officers responded to a 911 call about a man who had fallen off his bicycle in a car park. The caller told dispatchers that the man appeared drunk and that it looked like he had hurt himself.
Officers said they repeatedly told Mr Anthony to get off his bike, but when he didn't respond, they shocked him. The state Office of the Medical Examiner hasn't yet determined a cause of death.'
Friday, November 4, 2011
Killer Cop Goes To Prison, Jury Got It Right!
It takes a lot to get to a guy like me.
Many journalists hide behind a shield of cynicism, and I’ve had 37 years of practice.
But I’ll admit it. I choked up Wednesday afternoon when my Mom called to relay the bombshell she’d just heard on TV.
The jurors I had watched so intently the other day during my visit to a Yakima federal courtroom had delivered a courageous verdict.
They convicted Karl Thompson, the Spokane thug cop who beat Otto Zehm like a dog five years ago in a North Division convenience store.
They found Thompson guilty for all those cruel, unwarranted baton strikes and Taser shocks that robbed the mentally ill man of his dignity and ultimately his life.
And guilty for all the lies Thompson told afterward to cover his sorry ass.
I don’t want to alarm any of my readers. But this verdict goes a long way in restoring my faith in the justice system.
Didn’t think it would happen. Didn’t think it could happen.
I got pretty jaded during the last go-round, when an inebriated, off-duty Spokane cop actually shot an unarmed citizen in the head and got away with it. As the “not guilty” was delivered in that case, police officers sitting in the courtroom pumped their fists as if they had been watching the Cougs win an upset.
Not this time, cowboys.
This verdict should send an off-the-charts shock wave through the department and the Spokane Police Guild, which seems to go out of its way to preserve and protect the very worst elements of its membership.
Message to SPD: Bad law enforcement can come with dire consequences.
I love this city. I was born here, and it sickens me to see what little faith average citizens have in their police.
What happened to Otto and the aftermath of deceit plays a large part in that equation.
This also brought out the very worst in some of our so-called leaders.
It began with acting police Chief Jim Nicks spouting a false representation by the department about what had happened.
Current Mayor Mary Verner and police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick tried to assure us the police did nothing wrong.
And let’s not leave out Steve Tucker, our county prosecutor. He considered the case for months and then did what he is so accomplished at – absolutely nothing.
Don’t even get me started about what low regard I have for Assistant City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi.
There’s more than enough shame to spread around.
Thank God the U.S. Attorney’s Office stepped in with an indictment against Thompson for excessive force and lying to investigators.
The feds wouldn’t let go despite U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle’s troubling decision to disallow any mention during the trial of Otto being innocent.
In the end that didn’t matter.
Those jurors saw what was done on March 18, 2006.
As I wrote on Sunday, this case was all about a cop who came into the Zip Trip on a half trot and with a seeming agenda of violence.
By the time he caught up with Otto, who had been wrongly reported as a thief, Thompson’s baton was flying. Otto was clubbed and pushed backward until he toppled over onto his back.
Thompson fired his Taser. Otto, clutching his bottle of soda, didn’t have a prayer.
I’ve given away thousands of Otto pins over the past five years. So whatever good I’m feeling about this verdict is tempered by what motivated me to have those small black buttons made.
A man died for no reason in my hometown, and people who should have cared let it slide.
Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.
Many journalists hide behind a shield of cynicism, and I’ve had 37 years of practice.
But I’ll admit it. I choked up Wednesday afternoon when my Mom called to relay the bombshell she’d just heard on TV.
The jurors I had watched so intently the other day during my visit to a Yakima federal courtroom had delivered a courageous verdict.
They convicted Karl Thompson, the Spokane thug cop who beat Otto Zehm like a dog five years ago in a North Division convenience store.
They found Thompson guilty for all those cruel, unwarranted baton strikes and Taser shocks that robbed the mentally ill man of his dignity and ultimately his life.
And guilty for all the lies Thompson told afterward to cover his sorry ass.
I don’t want to alarm any of my readers. But this verdict goes a long way in restoring my faith in the justice system.
Didn’t think it would happen. Didn’t think it could happen.
I got pretty jaded during the last go-round, when an inebriated, off-duty Spokane cop actually shot an unarmed citizen in the head and got away with it. As the “not guilty” was delivered in that case, police officers sitting in the courtroom pumped their fists as if they had been watching the Cougs win an upset.
Not this time, cowboys.
This verdict should send an off-the-charts shock wave through the department and the Spokane Police Guild, which seems to go out of its way to preserve and protect the very worst elements of its membership.
Message to SPD: Bad law enforcement can come with dire consequences.
I love this city. I was born here, and it sickens me to see what little faith average citizens have in their police.
What happened to Otto and the aftermath of deceit plays a large part in that equation.
This also brought out the very worst in some of our so-called leaders.
It began with acting police Chief Jim Nicks spouting a false representation by the department about what had happened.
Current Mayor Mary Verner and police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick tried to assure us the police did nothing wrong.
And let’s not leave out Steve Tucker, our county prosecutor. He considered the case for months and then did what he is so accomplished at – absolutely nothing.
Don’t even get me started about what low regard I have for Assistant City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi.
There’s more than enough shame to spread around.
Thank God the U.S. Attorney’s Office stepped in with an indictment against Thompson for excessive force and lying to investigators.
The feds wouldn’t let go despite U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle’s troubling decision to disallow any mention during the trial of Otto being innocent.
In the end that didn’t matter.
Those jurors saw what was done on March 18, 2006.
As I wrote on Sunday, this case was all about a cop who came into the Zip Trip on a half trot and with a seeming agenda of violence.
By the time he caught up with Otto, who had been wrongly reported as a thief, Thompson’s baton was flying. Otto was clubbed and pushed backward until he toppled over onto his back.
Thompson fired his Taser. Otto, clutching his bottle of soda, didn’t have a prayer.
I’ve given away thousands of Otto pins over the past five years. So whatever good I’m feeling about this verdict is tempered by what motivated me to have those small black buttons made.
A man died for no reason in my hometown, and people who should have cared let it slide.
Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Why Does DHS Need Taser Done?
'A Department of Homeland Security-funded surveillance drone deployed against insurgents in Afghanistan that can also be used to tase suspects from above has been unveiled by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s office and will be operational within a month.
At $500,000 a pop, Montgomery county spent $250,000 to get the UAV. The rest was covered by a Department of Homeland Security grant,” reports KBTX.com.
Although its initial role will be limited to surveillance, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, previously used against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and East Africa, has the ability to tase suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers.'
At $500,000 a pop, Montgomery county spent $250,000 to get the UAV. The rest was covered by a Department of Homeland Security grant,” reports KBTX.com.
Although its initial role will be limited to surveillance, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, previously used against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and East Africa, has the ability to tase suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers.'
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Who Controls Police?
NOTE: The speaker is correct, our governmental system is designed for the government to be our servants, not our masters. We are intended to be a nation of laws that are applicable to all, including our "representatives" who have seized control and believe themselves to be our masters.
Friday, September 23, 2011
#Murder Charges Against Cops Who Taserd And Beat Innocent Man To Death
NOTE: This is excellent, and as the video reports that there have been 52 US Dept Of Justice investigations into similar police brutality cases in the US this year.
Cops who kill have to punished the same as the rest of us. Taser International has lost a couple of high dollar law suits.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Oregon Town May Disband Police
The police department has been a subject of controversy for months. Complaints include aggressive ordinance enforcement, response times and officer availability. Several residents also had voiced concerns about an officer who seemed nervous or uncomfortable and always had a hand on his gun.
Those concerns were heightened with the shooting involving Shafer and that officer, Eric Kilpatrick.
Dickie Shafer had been married several times before, but he and his wife, Gloria, were together more than a dozen years. They have an 11-year-old son who was home when the couple got into an argument.
Gloria Shafer called 911.
She told The Observer newspaper of nearby La Grande that her husband met Kilpatrick at the door, unarmed, and spoke to him for several minutes. He then asked to take his gun to his pickup. Kilpatrick agreed, she said, and watched as her husband emptied the magazine of his AR-15, an assault-style rifle.
Gloria Shafer contends the officer then "snapped," ordering Shafer to drop the gun, tasering him and then shooting him in the chest.
Police Chief Kevin Lynch counters that the evidence indicates Shafer was pointing his weapon at the officer, and he's confident his office will be cleared of wrongdoing.
NOTE: Most small rural towns would do better without local police, many have huge, inflated budgets. The Sheriff's office is more than equipped to cover a few square blocks of low crime areas.
Those concerns were heightened with the shooting involving Shafer and that officer, Eric Kilpatrick.
Dickie Shafer had been married several times before, but he and his wife, Gloria, were together more than a dozen years. They have an 11-year-old son who was home when the couple got into an argument.
Gloria Shafer called 911.
She told The Observer newspaper of nearby La Grande that her husband met Kilpatrick at the door, unarmed, and spoke to him for several minutes. He then asked to take his gun to his pickup. Kilpatrick agreed, she said, and watched as her husband emptied the magazine of his AR-15, an assault-style rifle.
Gloria Shafer contends the officer then "snapped," ordering Shafer to drop the gun, tasering him and then shooting him in the chest.
Police Chief Kevin Lynch counters that the evidence indicates Shafer was pointing his weapon at the officer, and he's confident his office will be cleared of wrongdoing.
NOTE: Most small rural towns would do better without local police, many have huge, inflated budgets. The Sheriff's office is more than equipped to cover a few square blocks of low crime areas.
Tasers Kill Hundreds Of Innocent People
As police across the United States increasingly turn to Taser guns as a non-lethal weapon, the device's safety has come under scrutiny following several recent deaths involving Tasers; last week the Fayetteville police department in North Carolina recalled all of its Taser M26 units following the death of a fifty-six year old political activist who died after being stunned by police.
Police say he was behaving oddly and jumping on vehicles, and his cause of death is currently under investigation. The latest incident makes for the third Taser-related death in Cumberland County, North Carolina. In 2008 a thirty-six year old man died after Fayetteville police used a Taser to subdue him. An autopsy later revealed that a lethal amount of cocaine was in his system.
Meanwhile in 2005, a fifty-two year old man died after crashing his car while trying to escape from police. He was soaked in gasoline and when police hit him with a Taser, he burst into flames. More recently a twenty-four year old schizophrenic inmate at Harnett County Jail, died after being stunned multiple times earlier this year. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that his death was caused by “complications of conducted energy device application.”
NOTE: The story of being chased with a butcher knife and using bullets or taser isn't a valid argument for all of the UNARMED, INNOCENT PEOPLE.
Taser International has recently lost a couple of multi million dollar lawsuits, and it appears that this is the beginning.
Police say he was behaving oddly and jumping on vehicles, and his cause of death is currently under investigation. The latest incident makes for the third Taser-related death in Cumberland County, North Carolina. In 2008 a thirty-six year old man died after Fayetteville police used a Taser to subdue him. An autopsy later revealed that a lethal amount of cocaine was in his system.
Meanwhile in 2005, a fifty-two year old man died after crashing his car while trying to escape from police. He was soaked in gasoline and when police hit him with a Taser, he burst into flames. More recently a twenty-four year old schizophrenic inmate at Harnett County Jail, died after being stunned multiple times earlier this year. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded that his death was caused by “complications of conducted energy device application.”
NOTE: The story of being chased with a butcher knife and using bullets or taser isn't a valid argument for all of the UNARMED, INNOCENT PEOPLE.
Taser International has recently lost a couple of multi million dollar lawsuits, and it appears that this is the beginning.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Another Camera Confiscated From Cops Killing Innocent Man
Another citizen is claiming that Fullerton police confiscated her camera in the wake of the Kelly Thomas beating death.
This makes at least three cameras seized from citizens whose content has yet to see the light of day.
And that’s not counting the city-owned surveillance camera that prosecutors refuse to release on the basis that it could taint witness testimony – never mind the fact that they’re already interviewed all the witnesses.
However, Kelly Thomas’ dad, the retired Orange County Sheriff’s deputy, has filed a claim that he intends to file a lawsuit, which would give him legal access to the video considering it is “evidence.”
And he’s been one of the main proponents of seeing that video released.
Meanwhile, Friends of Fullerton continue to provide the newest info on this case, including the two videos included with this story.
The top video is an interview with a witness to the incident that claimed a police officer intimidated into handing over the film from her camera.
The second video is an interview with another witness who said that police had sat Thomas on a curb for about 20 minutes and when they moved in to arrest him, he jumped up and tried to run away.
NOTE: No matter how many names other than murder they'd like to use. The simple fact was this man was living, breathing and alive until 6 murderers beat & tased him to death.
This makes at least three cameras seized from citizens whose content has yet to see the light of day.
And that’s not counting the city-owned surveillance camera that prosecutors refuse to release on the basis that it could taint witness testimony – never mind the fact that they’re already interviewed all the witnesses.
However, Kelly Thomas’ dad, the retired Orange County Sheriff’s deputy, has filed a claim that he intends to file a lawsuit, which would give him legal access to the video considering it is “evidence.”
And he’s been one of the main proponents of seeing that video released.
Meanwhile, Friends of Fullerton continue to provide the newest info on this case, including the two videos included with this story.
The top video is an interview with a witness to the incident that claimed a police officer intimidated into handing over the film from her camera.
The second video is an interview with another witness who said that police had sat Thomas on a curb for about 20 minutes and when they moved in to arrest him, he jumped up and tried to run away.
NOTE: No matter how many names other than murder they'd like to use. The simple fact was this man was living, breathing and alive until 6 murderers beat & tased him to death.
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