Category: Police State

Your day in excessive force

~ susie

L.A. cops killed a homeless man yesterday who was recently released after ten years in a mental hospital. Hear the one cop yelling, “He’s got tape, he’s got tape”:

Link:

When Africa refused to comply with a police order to come out of the tent, officers used the Taser on him and dragged him out, Horne said. The officers tackled Africa to the ground, where he continued to fight, which led to the fatal shooting, according to Horne.

“It’s sad,” Horne said. “There’s no justification to take somebody’s life.”

Another witness, Lonnie Franklin, 53, said five to six officers pulled up in three to four cars as Africa was lying face down on the sidewalk. The officers approached with guns drawn yelling, ”down, down”, according to Franklin.

When Africa got up and started fighting, the officers “went straight to lethal force,” Franklin said.

But Jose Gil, 38 , said he saw the man swinging at the police and then heard one of the officers say, “Gun, gun, he’s got my gun!” before police fired multiple shots.

Another witness, who asked not to be identified, said the man punched and kicked the officers and reached for one of their service weapons before the officers fired at least seven times.
Continue reading “Your day in excessive force” →

Exploiting dead cops

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Patrick Lynch - Cartoon

Yes, that would be Pat Lynch, the NYPD’s PBA president who’s running for reelection:

The outspoken president of one of New York’s main police unions has come under fire for a campaign video critics say exploits the deaths of two NYPD officers who were killed in an attack in December.

Some officers from New York City’s 84th precinct, where officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos worked, are upset that the video includes an image of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) president Patrick Lynch attending a makeshift memorial for the officers, according to a report by the New York Daily News.

“It’s disgusting,” said an officer assigned to the 84th precinct, according to the newspaper. “I just don’t think a death of a cop should be used as an election tool.”

The video, which runs just over a minute, shows a series of images of Lynch dressed in blue, some taken at the Brooklyn street corner where the officers were shot by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a 28-year-old with a history of mental health problems, while sitting in their patrol car on 20 December. As the photos of Lynch appear, the video states: “He has brought back pride to the PBA” and “unmatched dedication to the members” and “re-elect team Lynch in 2015”.

FBI director encourages cops to avoid ‘lazy mental shortcuts’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Better than nothing, but I’d rather see extensive Congressional hearings on police brutality:

Washington (CNN)FBI Director James Comey took on the issue of police and race relations Thursday challenging police to avoid “lazy mental short-cuts” that can lead to bias in the way they treat blacks and other minorities.

While he asked minority communities dealing with issues of high crime to also recognize the inherent dangers officers face in trying to keep them safe, Comey was also critical of the history law enforcement in the country, which he described as “not pretty,” but also the racial tensions have plagued American society as a whole.

“I worry that this incredibly important and difficult conversation about race and policing has become focused entirely on the nature and character of law enforcement officers when it should also be about something much harder to discuss,” Comey said. “Debating the nature of policing is very important but I worry that it has become an excuse at times to avoid doing something harder.”

Comey also name checked the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown as well as slain police officers NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, a reference to what has been a bloody and tumultuous year between minority communities and law enforcement.

The speech before students at Georgetown University was unusual for Comey and the FBI, which usually only narrowly discusses race issues when dealing with civil rights investigations.

NYPD office who killed Brooklyn man indicted

~ susie ~ 2 Comments
Peter Liang, the New York rookie police officer who fatally shot 28-year-old Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a public housing building in Brooklyn in November last year, has been indicted, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. BREAKING: Lawyer: New York City police officer indicted in fatal shooting in stairway of housing project. — The Associated Press… Continue reading “NYPD office who killed Brooklyn man indicted” →

Land of the free

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

occupy
I wonder when people are going to fix this:

The NYPD wants to take away your right to vote if you don’t obey them. It sounds extreme, but the recent push from the New York City Police Department to reclassify “resisting arrest” as a felony amounts to just that.

On Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton had the audacity to urge state legislators to increasing the penalty for resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony.

He argued that this is necessary, because New Yorkers need to be reeducated so they can “get around this idea that you can resist arrest. You can’t.”

But police routinely slap the “resisting arrest” charge on anyone and everyone they don’t like. Some of our reporters have documented this at an array of protests we have covered. The Beavercreek, Ohio police even backed a police SUV cruiser into an elderly woman and then brutally twisted her arm, bent her over a second cruiser and continuously yelled “stop resisting” like a mantra, even though dozens were witnessing and filming the compliant woman who never once offered the least bit of resistance to the officers.

Law enforcement expert and retired University of Nebraska-Omaha criminal justice professor, Sam Walker, explained the situation to local WNYC as follows:

“There’s a widespread pattern in American policing where resisting arrest charges are used to sort of cover – and that phrase is used – the officer’s use of force,” said Walker, the accountability expert from the University of Nebraska. “Why did the officer use force? Well, the person was resisting arrest.”

Reclassifying resisting arrest as a felony would mean depriving those convicted of this charge of the right to vote.

The United States is one of the strictest nations in the world when it comes to denying voting rights to those who have felony convictions. Nearly 6 million people in the United States have been denied the right to vote in some of the most recent elections, due to felony disenfranchisement. That means if you have too much of a certain leaf in your possession, you can’t vote any longer. If you bounce a check for $501 then you can’t vote any longer. But bounce one for $499 and you’re good, you can still vote. Now, if you are slapped with the dubious “resisting arrest” charge – which is often about as vague and undefinable as the charge of “disorderly conduct,” then the NYPD would also see you stripped of your right to vote.

‘We are all outlaws in the eyes of America’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

http://youtu.be/m4vg2uOR3fk

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. — “We Can Be Together,” Jefferson Airplane

Think about this: they’re willing for anyone who opposed them to die. That’s America? Counterpunch:

New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011.

As early as August, while acknowledging that the incipient Occupy Movement was “peaceful” in nature, federal, state and local officials from the FBI, the DHS and the many Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Force centers around the country were meeting with local financial institutions and their private security organizations to plot out a strategy for countering the Occupy Movement’s campaign.

Interestingly, one document obtained by PCJ from the Houston FBI office refers to what appears to have been a plan by some group, the name of which is blacked out in the released document, to determine who the leaders were of the Occupy Movement in Houston, and then to assassinate them with “suppressed” sniper rifles, meaning sniper rifles equipped with silencers.

The chilling document in question reads as follows:

“One identified BLANK as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified BLANK had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. BLANK planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest group and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership by suppressed sniper rifles.”

The wording does not sound like it’s some crank Tea Party faction they’re talking about — especially the words “deemed necessary” and the reference to “gathering intelligence against the leaders of the protest group.” Fortunately, in any case, no such assassination campaign materialized in Houston or anywhere else during the wave of Occupy actions across the country, but at the same time, there were never any arrests of whatever organization or individuals that the FBI clearly knew to be planning such a terrorist action against the Occupy activists.