This will not be a column about Sandra Bland, although it could be. Certainly there is cause for outrage over the way a Texas state trooper escalated the routine traffic stop of an indignant African-American woman into a violent arrest; she died of an apparent jail cell suicide three days later. But Chuck would say that… Continue reading “Leonard Pitts Jr.: Police brutality is a problem for everyone”
Sam Dubose got his face blown of by UC Officer Ray Tensing during a traffic stop, and the community is waiting for the video to be released:
UPDATE: Attorney for UC police officer says he expects indictment. Click here to read.
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CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell said he’s seen the unreleased footage from a University of Cincinnati officer’s body camera during last week’s fatal shooting and “it’s not good.”
“The video is not good,” Blackwell said. “I think the city manager has said that also publicly. I’ll leave it there.”
After meeting with faith leaders Monday morning, Blackwell spoke to WCPO about the shooting death of 43-year-old Sam Dubose by UC Officer Ray Tensing during a traffic stop.
“I don’t want to put my personal feelings out prematurely,” Blackwell said. “I just hope that the right thing continues to be done in this investigation and that we’re able to move forward from this and allow this to be a moment of learning and teaching for our city.”
RELATED: UC police get same training as other officers
WashPO: Campus police are ‘shadowy, militarized’City Manager Harry Black also spoke about the unreleased body camera video of the shooting.
“It’s not a good situation,” Black said. “It’s a tragic situation, someone has died that did not necessarily need to die.”
Continue reading “Cincinnati preparing for riots”
New: Texas District Attorney says 1st #SandraBland autopsy was defective. Orders body back on day of her FUNERAL. @deray @BreeNewsome
— Dylan Goldberg (@DylanGoldberg) July 23, 2015
Correction: I thought this was from the state AG’s office (he’s the one under investigation) and it isn’t. It’s from the local county. Sorry.
The Texas DA is a piece of crap who is under investigation by a grand jury. No way in hell are they going to do a fair and accurate autopsy.
In Prairie View, tx #sandrabland pic.twitter.com/wvjUa5D2Rg
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) July 21, 2015
First of all, people do kill themselves in jail. I want to be clear on that. It’s also possible she died from her head injury. But this case sure stinks to high heaven:
An ABC Chicago affiliate reported late Wednesday that a Naperville, Illinois woman named Sandra Bland died in police custody in Texas on July 13 after having been arrested three days earlier following a routine traffic stop. The sheriff’s department in Waller County, Texas says Bland apparently killed herself, and sheriff Glenn Smith appeared on ABC’s report to say she’d been arrested after a stop for improperly changing lanes because she was “combative.”
However: Video shows Bland complaining that she’d been abused by the officers arresting her, those who know her don’t believe she committed suicide, and now activist-journalist Shaun King of Daily Kos has found that sheriff Smith was fired from a previous job as police chief in 2008 after several allegations that he and members of his department had engaged in racially biased behavior and police brutality.
Details are relatively sparse, but pieces by the Houston Chronicle and an area TV reporter indicate that Smith was fired by the Hempstead City Council after several allegations of police misconduct, not all of which involved racial issues. The council did not name a formal reason why Smith was terminated, but the Chronicle reportedthe year before the firing on an incident in which council members suspended Smith “for two weeks without pay after viewing videotapes and hearing allegations of racism from local residents against him” and other officers. That incident involved the arrest of a black man named Cory Labba; the Chronicle says Smith “acknowledged he used profanity and was unprofessional” during Labba’s arrest but denied race was a motivating factor in his behavior.
A new video out of Philadelphia shows a young Black man being severely beaten and tased by Philadelphia officers in what can only remind you of Rodney King who was beaten by the LAPD and Marlene Pinnock who was beaten by the CHP.
On April 3 at approximately 7:30 p.m. Tyree Carroll, 22, was riding his bike on Locust Avenue in Germantown–near his home where he lives with his grandmother Nancy Carroll. According to family members, Tyree was stopped by a police officer for going the wrong way on a one-way street.
When he was stopped by the police officer, Tyree obeyed and got off of his bike and spoke with the officer. The officer then proceeded to put Tyree’s hands behind his back before four policemen were suddenly on top of him. One police officer put Tyree in a chokehold and wrestled him to the ground.
Officers repeatedly struck him with their fists. They kicked him and hit him with a nightstick.
The cops can be heard yelling “tase the motherfucker” and called Tyree a “piece of shit.”
Before long the video shows that there were more cops participating in the beating, tasing, kicking and punching of a screaming Tyree. Tyree was screaming and yelling for his grandmother Nancy to come to the door and can be heard saying that he was sorry.
Witnesses counted 24 white and 2 Black police officers and 11 police cars at the scene. They say Tyree was tased 4 to 5 times before being placed in a police car and taken to Einstein Medical Center. Tyree’s medical records have not been obtained by his family yet.
Two neighbors videotaped the vicious beating on their cell phones. One video was too dark to be useful, but the other captured the incident quite graphically and included a narration by the witness.
Tyree was initially charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, resisting arrest and several drug charges stemming from a small amount of crack cocaine allegedly found on him.
Jesus. They really do have an entirely different set of rules for their own, don’t they?
A Neptune Township, New Jersey police officer named Phillip Seidle allegedly shot and killed his estranged wife in the presence of their seven-year-old daughter on Wednesday—and reports say that other law enforcement agents on the scene took no action to stop Seidle from firing shots at the victim in their presence, with some officers even hugging and comforting him when he surrendered. From a NJ.com account that quotes prosecutor Marc LeMieux:
At around 11:30 a.m., Asbury Park police officers … saw a 2012 black Volkswagen Jetta being driven by Tamara Seidle turn onto Sewall Avenue. Behind it, LeMieux said, was Phillip Seidle in a 2005 Honda Pilot.
The couple’s 7-year-old daughter was in Phillip Seidle’s passenger seat, he said.
Tamara Seidle crashed her Jetta into an unoccupied green Ford Focus, LeMieux said. At that time, LeMieux said, Phillip Seidle got out of his car, took out his .40- caliber Glock service handgun and fired “several” shots into Tamara’s Seidle’s car.
LeMieux said that Seidle fired again at his wife after his daughter was taken away by fellow officers, and confirmed the accounts of witnesses who told the Asbury Park Press that no attempt was made to use force against Seidle as he fired this second round of shots:
Officers on the scene recognized Seidle, LeMieux said. When asked by the Asbury Park Press why no police force was used to stop Seidle from firing his weapon a second time, LeMieux responded by saying “that is under investigation.”
Tamara Seidle suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died.
Citing a witness, NJ.com reports that other officers “hugged [Phillip Seidle] and patted him comfortingly on the back” when he was eventually taken into custody at the scene.
Also, Catch-22. Hey, here’s an idea: Stop filing bullshit charges against everyone you stop?
Hiring more non-white officers is difficult because so many would-be recruits have criminal records, the New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said.
“We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them,” Bratton said in an interview with the Guardian.
Police departments, responding to widespread protests against several high-profile police killings of black men, are boosting efforts to recruit more non-white officers. But budget restrictions, strained relations between police and minority communities and, according to Bratton, a history of indiscriminate policing tactics that disproportionately target black and Latino men complicate the department’s goal of racial parity.
Continue reading “Irony alert”
And that means he gets to keep his pension and benefits, at least for a while. Not good:
Eric Casebolt, the McKinney, Texas, police officer who was caught on video pinning a teenage girl to the ground and pulling his gun on others at a pool party, has resigned from the McKinney Police Department, Chief Of Police Greg Conley announced Tuesday evening.
Casebolt’s lawyer told KDFW earlier on Tuesday that the officer had decided to leave the force. Conley said that Casebolt’s decision to leave was voluntary and that he would continue to collect a pension and benefits.
Conley strongly condemned Casebolt’s actions during the incident and said that the officer, who had been with the department since 2005, was “out of control.”
“As the chief of police, I want to say to our community that the actions of Casebolt, as seen on the video, of the disturbance at the pool, are indefensible. Our policies, our training, our practice do not support his actions,” he said. “He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”
Conley also said on Tuesday that charges against 18-year-old Adrian Martin, the only person arrested at the pool party incident, had been dropped.
Continue reading “Cop from swim club incident resigns”