WILL THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION BE THROUGH THE HEAD OF SOME KILLER COP?
HOW MANY AMERICANS WILL BE MURDERED BY THUG COPS THIS WEEK?
"Sotomayor stated that the ruling “sends an
alarming signal to law enforcement and the public.”
“It tells officers that they can shoot first and think
later, and it tells the public that palpably
unreasonable conduct will go unpunished."
Outrage over protection of killer cops expressed at Sacramento City Council meeting
By David Moore and Evan Blake
5 April 2018
Over 100 people attended a special meeting of the Sacramento City Council Wednesday to make public comments on the police killing of Stephon Clark and voice their outrage over official indifference and corruption. Some traveled from as far away as Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
More than two weeks since Sacramento police chased the unarmed Stephon Clark into his grandparents’ backyard and shot him multiple times in the back, no charges have been filed against the police. The officers’ initial story that they shot in self-defense because Clark was advancing towards them and they thought he was holding a gun, fell apart rapidly.
Body camera footage showed the officers firing twenty times without identifying themselves as Clark fled, and an independent autopsy commissioned by the family confirmed that Clark was shot eight times, six in the back, one on the side, and one in the leg.
In an apparent effort to get their stories straight the officers muted their body cameras after the shooting to talk off the record. The officers are currently on paid administrative leave, and the police department is currently carrying out “use-of-force” investigation. Criminal charges against the officers are, incredibly, unlikely. Although police kill over 1,000 people a year, only 80 officers were charged for murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings between 2005 and 2017.
Since Clark was first killed, there have been persistent protests demanding that charges be brought against his killers. Saturday night a protester was struck by a sheriff’s SUV, which rapidly fled the scene. No charges have been filed in that case either.
During the public comments, protesters repeatedly denounced the lack of transparency and the incestuous ties between the police union, the district attorney (DA) and the City Council. Anne Marie Schubert, the district attorney, is currently up for election and endorsed by the entire City Council of Sacramento, including Democratic Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
In a recent interview with Capital Public Radio, Schubert stated that her office depends upon the Sacramento Police Department’s internal investigation. According to Schubert, the DA’s office will not officially have the case until after the police turn it over to them.
Two days after Clark was killed, Schubert’s campaign received a $10,000 donation from the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association. Three days after that, the Sacramento County Alliance of Law Enforcement gave her $3,000.
In the same radio interview, Schubert claimed those donations do not influence her because “When I ran the first time I received contributions from law enforcement as well,” in 2014. Her office estimated based on comparable cases that there will be a decision on whether to file charges against the cops that killed Stephon Clark in six to twelve months.
The theme that protesters at the city council meeting kept coming back to was that if any ordinary citizen acted as the officers did, they would be behind bars immediately. It would not take a year to gather evidence for a videotaped shooting or videotaped hit and run with known suspects before bringing charges. What emerged most clearly from the public comments was a conviction that the police and the government did not serve the working class.
A young woman named Lindsay told the council, “You have people in here complaining about the cost of housing, people in here talking about the quality of their river, about the quality of life, about people getting killed in the streets. Every point in history has showed you what happens next. And you all, including your officers, have showed us and expressed fully how terrified you are of us. And just know that you’re not ready, and all we’re asking for is a little bit of justice. I’m tired of looking into hollow eyes, seeing it on TV, watching you… And so, I’m not even asking for justice. I’m telling you, you better give us justice, because you’re damn sure not ready for what comes next.”
Anthony, who traveled from Los Angeles with the activist group Youth Justice Coalition, told the crowd, “The whole state is watching, the whole country is watching, and the world is watching. Everyone is following your lead, so keep shutting it down and keep putting pressure on them, because as the veteran said earlier, ‘You’re not ready.’ If we don’t get nothing out of this, you’re not ready for what comes next. We’re from Los Angeles, and LAPD is the most murderous police force in the country, and so we’re used to this. California police kill the most people in the country.”
Daniel, a local resident, told the City Council members, “Y’all ain’t getting no thanks from me, because y’all ain’t did shit yet. Since 2015, 22 people have been killed by the police officers in this area, and no charges have been brought against anybody.”
David Moore, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Senate in the California elections, attended the meeting, passed out election campaign statements and spoke with protesters about the class issues involved in police violence.
Moore spoke with Fanny Barnes, 73, a resident of Citrus Heights in Sacramento County and a retired transportation worker.
“Police officers should be held accountable, just like any other human being, and they’re not, and they never have been,” Barnes declared. “Will it ever happen? I doubt it. Under the system that we’re under, no, I don’t think so.”
Barnes fondly recalled marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and listening to his speeches as a youth. When Moore noted that King was assassinated as he began to speak out against the Vietnam War, Barnes commented, “The Vietnamese people never did anything to Black people, or even the whites. So why should you pick up your gear, go way over there, and fight these people that never did anything to you? It’s common sense. We need to wake up as a people and stop doing some of the things that this country wants us to do.”
Barnes described the charade of the City Council meetings, which are simply a means of letting off steam, and said, “The system has to be torn down, and we need to rebuild another. It’s not equal, and as long as things aren’t equal, there ain’t no justice, no peace!”
When Moore described the campaign platform that he’ll be running on, Barnes emphatically declared, “I’ll be voting for you. I’m so sick of this Democratic Party and Republican Party, they’re all the same! You know, sure, you put a Black man in there like Obama, he didn’t do that much. It’s all about getting rid of this system. Unite the working class! I agree with you.”
US Supreme Court grants police wide immunity when using excessive force
By Trévon Austin
5 April 2018
The US Supreme Court established an interpretation of qualified immunity this week that effectively grants police legal impunity to use lethal force at will. The court ruled 7 to 2 on Monday that an Arizona police officer who shot a woman outside her own home from the other side of a fence could not be sued on claims that he used excessive force.
The case, Kisela v. Hughes, goes beyond previous cases of its kind. The court’s decision was unsigned and issued without a full briefing or oral argument, indicating the majority found the decision easy to come to.
In a strongly worded dissent, Associate Justice Sotomayor, joined only by Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that the court “routinely displays an unflinching willingness to summarily reverse courts for denying officers qualified immunity,” but rarely intervenes where courts wrongly grant officers immunity in such cases.
“Such a one-sided approach to qualified immunity transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers, gutting the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment,” she said.
In its opinion, the court’s majority found that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that states officers are immune from lawsuits over violations of constitutional rights as long as they don’t “violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
In May 2010, Tucson, Arizona, police received a “welfare check” call indicating a woman was “acting erratically” and hacking at a tree with a large kitchen knife. When officers arrived at the scene, Hughes, who officers did not know had a history of mental illness, was not moving, appeared calm and was holding the knife at her side, away from her roommate Sharon Chadwick.
According to Kisela’s testimony, the three officers at the scene did not know Chadwick was Hughes’s roommate and felt that Hughes was an immediate threat to Chadwick. The three officers on the scene, including Kisela, drew their weapons immediately. In quick succession, Hughes was given two commands to drop the knife, but it is not clear that she heard them.
Chadwick said “Take it easy” to the officers and Hughes before Kisela dropped to the ground and shot Hughes four times through a chain link fence. Hughes fell to the ground, screaming, “Why did you shoot me?” The officers then jumped the fence, handcuffed Hughes, and called paramedics, who transported her to a hospital. The incident unfolded in less than a minute.
Chadwick later said she never felt endangered or threatened by Hughes. Despite this, the court said Kisela acted reasonably, on the grounds that Hughes was carrying a kitchen knife and standing six feet away from another woman and that she failed to drop the knife when ordered.
Hughes survived the shooting and sued Kisela for violating her Fourth Amendment rights, which in this context protects against excessive force. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit previously overturned a ruling of a lower District court, allowing the lawsuit to continue, but the Supreme Court overturned the ruling of the appeals court, ending Hughes’s suit.
The majority did not decide whether or not Kisela’s actions were unconstitutional but stated that “[f]or even assuming a Fourth Amendment violation occurred—a proposition that is not at all evident—on these facts Kisela was at least entitled to qualified immunity.”
In contrast to the majority, Sotomayor wrote: “Because Kisela plainly lacked any legitimate interest justifying the use of deadly force against a woman who posed no objective threat of harm to officers or others, had committed no crime, and appeared calm and collected during the police encounter, he was not entitled to qualified immunity.”
Citing precedent, the majority stated the question of whether an officer used excessive force depends on “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” whether the suspect is an immediate threat to officers or others. The ruling added, “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”
The majority’s language is only shy of an open defense of police officers using excessive force for any reason. By stating the perspective of an officer is more consequential than objective facts, or the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the highest court in the country is all but endorsing officers’ use of excessive and deadly force.
The decision comes amid protests over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by Sacramento police, with demonstrators demanding accountability for the officers who killed 22-year-old Stephon Clark outside his grandmother’s house last month.
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of officers in a multitude of excessive force cases in recent years, often reversing lower court decisions that deny officers immunity. In 2014, the Supreme Court, with the support of the Obama administration, unanimously granted immunity to Arkansas police officers who killed an unarmed driver and his innocent passenger in a hail of bullets. In 2015, the court also granted immunity to a Texas state trooper who fired into a suspect’s car during a high-speed chase, despite being order not to do so.
In her concerned dissent, Sotomayor stated that the ruling “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement and the public.” “It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished,” she concluded.
Democrats seek to use Stephon Clark’s funeral to divert anger over police killings
By Kayla Costa
The murder of Stephon Clark and the fight against police violence
29 March 2018
Notes on Police Violence
Unarmed man with pants down fatally shot by deputy in Houston, Texas
By Anthony Bertolt
'Why are you punching me?' Texas cops are caught on video beating a black suspect pinned to the ground who pleads with them to stop
- Fort Worth police officers were filmed punching a man on Saturday
- Police say they were called to deal with a 'combative' Forrest Curry, 35
- Curry allegedly fled when police approached him, authorities say
- Chief Joel Fitzgerald said the video doesn't show all of the incident
Shocking video shows two Fort Worth cops punching Forrest Curry, 35, as he's pinned to the ground
A Texas police department is facing backlash after a video showed two of their officers beating a black man as they pinned him to the ground.
In the footage, taken by a witness on Saturday, Forrest Curry, 35, is heard repeatedly pleading for the officers to stop punching him outside the Chaparral Apartment Homes complex in east Fort Worth.
He screams: 'Why are you punching me? Stop punching me!'
Officers with the Fort Worth police department came to the scene after firefighters responding to a different incident reported an 'intoxicated and combative' man who had allegedly tried to assault them.
They say Curry fled when they arrived and that what the video shows is the officers struggling with him as they try to handcuff him.
Curry is heard repeatedly asking the police officers why they are punching him and asking them to stop
What the video doesn't show, according to Chief Joel Fitzgerald, is that it took three officers and one supervisor to place Curry under arrest - a struggle they say lasted nearly five minutes, way longer than the 45 seconds captured on video.
The names of the officers involved have not been released.
Police have said they are not ready to release all the details and are asking for the public's patience and calm as they investigate the incident.
Minister KL Johnson visited Curry during Easter Sunday and told WFAA he's contacted Mayor Betsy Price over the what he saw in the video, which he called 'inhumane' and 'disgusting'.
'When we see these videos and we see these young African American people go through this, we wonder, what's going on?' Johnson said.
Officers came to the scene after firefighters responding to a different incident reported an 'intoxicated and combative' man who had allegedly tried to assault them
Chief Joel Fitzgerald said the 45-second video doesn't show that it took more than three officers to put handcuffs on Curry, which took nearly five minutes
Curry's lawyers Jasmine Crockett and L. Chris Stewart said in a statement:'We are focusing on getting the victim of this police violence out of custody and ensuring that he receives the necessary medical attention for injuries suffered during the heavy-handed arrest by officers with the Fort Worth Police Department.
'Unfortunately, it seems the Forth Worth
Police Department has a culture of
violating the rights of people of color.'
Curry is being held on $2,250 bail at the Tarrant County jail on charges of resisting and evading arrest.
"Since the beginning of this year, more than 300 people have been killed by police nationwide, well on track to surpass the yearly average of 1,175 killings over the last four years."
BLOG: FOR 8 YEARS BARACK OBAMA DID NOTHING FOR BLACK AMERICA.... BUT HE SURE AS HELL SERVED LA RAZA AND THE MEX INVADERS!
“The mayor and the city of Sacramento has failed all of you… The gangbanging has to stop. The poverty is uncontrollable.”
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
According to Killedbypolice.net, at least 808 people have been killed by police so far this year, outpacing last year’s deaths by 20 victims.... and they ALL GET AWAY WITH IT!
"Police in the United States are trained to see the working class and poor as a hostile
enemy. Anything less than complete submissiveness is grounds for officers to unleash
deadly force on their victims. In some instances, even the most casual encounters with
police have proven to be deadly."
COP MURDERS IN AMERICA -
THOUSANDS SHOT IN THE HEAD.
JUDGES GIVE THE THUG COPS A PASS TO
DO IT AGAIN!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/cop-crimes-in-america-fourth-year-of.html
Autopsy Shows Police Shot Unarmed Man Stephon Clark 8 Times
Democrats seek to use Stephon Clark’s funeral to divert anger over police killings
By Kayla Costa
30 March 2018
On Thursday, the family of Stephon Clark held a funeral for the 22-year-old unarmed African American man who was shot twenty times by the police nearly two weeks ago in the backyard of his grandmother’s home in Sacramento, California. The Bayside of South Sacramento Church was packed with hundreds of relatives, friends and community members confronting terrible grief of losing a loved one to police murder.
A number of local clergy figures from Christian and Muslim backgrounds introduced the funeral, followed by performances, speeches and prayers. All of the speakers described Clark as an intelligent, warm and loving man who “would do anything for his [wife] Selena and his sons.”
In addition to their reflections upon the Clark’s life, his family expressed their anger at his brutal and unfounded execution by two police officers, who claim to have mistaken a cell phone for a gun. One of his cousins read a poem about the murder, asking, “Enough isn’t enough? What, a gun and badge make you tough? Rather shoot someone down and then put them in cuffs… Are they trained and programmed to just kill our family, our kids?”
Since the shocking video of Clark’s killing was released, hundreds of people have participated in demonstrations against police violence. Protesters have participated in an occupation of City Hall, vigils and memorials, and marches through downtown and along major streets that have prevented fans from attending NBA basketball games played by the Sacramento Kings.
Responding to the militant social opposition that has emerged in Sacramento, as well as popular outrage across the country, the Democratic Party and their supporters in Black Lives Matter and other activist organizations are seeking to contain, water down and divert the deep frustrations of the mostly young people and workers.
Reverend Al Sharpton flew in to deliver a two-part eulogy at the funeral as part of an effort to redirect anger back into the dead end of reformism, identity politics and the electoral efforts of the Democratic Party.
Reflecting the ruling class fear of the eruption of popular protests outside of their control, Sharpton declared, “It’s time for preachers to come out the pulpit, it’s time for politicians to come out the office, it’s time for us to go down and stop this madness.”
He went on to criticize the Trump administration, which issued a dismissive statement that police violence is an issue for local officials, “This is not a Sacramento fight anymore, this is a national fight… We gonna make Donald Trump and the entire world deal with this issue of police misconduct.”
While Sharpton postured as an opponent police violence and denounced Trump, he did not mention the role of the Democratic Party in the militarization of the police apparatus. Nor did he list the thousands of people who were shot by police during Barack Obama’s administration, whose Justice Department whitewashed police killings and oversaw the transfer of military weaponry to local police forces.
Just four years ago, Sharpton told protesters to “respect the police” and stop throwing “ghetto pity parties” at the funeral for 18-year-old Michael Brown. Now he claims to be on the same side as the youth and workers who are fighting against police murder, poverty and inequality.
Sharpton and other leaders are also relying heavily on identity politics to distort the fundamental issues of Stephon’s murder. At the funeral, one prominent imam insisted, “Black people in this country are not brutalized because they are Methodist, Baptist, Muslim or Catholic, they are brutalized because they are Black people in America.”
The ideology of these religious leaders and Democratic Party representatives remains far outside of the sentiments shared by many of Clark’s family members and others who have participated in the demonstrations over the past two weeks.
Stevante, Clark’s older brother, has been highly critical of the verbal sympathy by media and political figures. “They’re all in here for money, really,” he said while speaking on stage. Earlier this week Stevante addressed an audience during the occupation of a City Hall meeting after breaking up a meeting of the city council, “The mayor and the city of Sacramento has failed all of you… The gangbanging has to stop. The poverty is uncontrollable.”
Stephon’s aunt, Kimmy Simone, told ABC News on Wednesday, “You just keep looking at these kids over and over—it’s not black. It’s white. It’s all colors,” She continued, “Look at [the] 17 children they killed at that school [Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida]. Look at it. Guns, violence, all that is hate. We don’t need it.”
The protests continued Thursday afternoon as a diverse crowd of mostly young people marched through downtown Sacramento for the third day in a row. Demonstrators held signs reading “Police the police” and “Convict killer cops” at the federal courthouse and District Attorney’s Office, as they demanded arrests and convictions for both police officers, one of whom is an African-American.
Over the weekend, millions of students, youth and workers in the United States and internationally participated in the protests against gun violence and school shootings. Despite the efforts of the Democratic Party and its operatives to divert the protests toward various dead ends, wide layers of the working class are mobilizing against mass violence, police killings and the broader attack on democratic rights.
The murder of Stephon Clark and the fight against police violence
29 March 2018
Over the last week, hundreds of people in Sacramento, California have participated in demonstrations protesting the police murder of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African American man who was unarmed when he was shot 20 times in his grandparent’s backyard. Many more are expected to pay their respects today at Clark’s funeral.
The eruption of renewed protests against police violence is part of the reemergence of social opposition in the US, including a wave of strikes and demonstrations by teachers and the March for Our Lives protests that involved more than one million students and youth last weekend.
Clark’s murder was caught on video by the police officer’s body cams and a police helicopter that was hovering overhead. The footage shows that the officers unleashed the barrage of bullets as soon as they rounded the corner of the house.
After gunning Clark down, the officers made no effort to administer any aid until backup arrived several minutes later, at which point they handcuffed his corpse and made a feeble attempt at CPR. Police video also shows that officers muted their microphones, presumably to get their story straight while off the record.
The release of the footage and the initial claims by the police that they mistook Clark’s cellphone for a gun have sparked a week of demonstrations. Clark’s family and protesters are demanding the arrest and prosecution of the two officers who murdered the unarmed man.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s announcement on Tuesday that his office would provide oversight of the District Attorney’s investigation into the killing and conduct its own investigation of the Sacramento Police Department’s policies was met with justifiable skepticism by Clark’s family.
There should be no illusions in promises of oversight or intervention from the Democrats and their supporters in Black Lives Matter. Longtime Democratic operative Al Sharpton, representing the political establishment, is delivering the eulogy at Clark’s funeral today as part of an effort to demobilize the protests and redirect popular anger back into the electoral politics of the Democratic Party. At the funeral for 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, Sharpton chided protesters to “respect the police” and stop throwing “ghetto pity parties.”
Meanwhile, members of BLM and other proponents of identity politics in Sacramento have worked to direct anger away from the city’s first African American police chief, promoting the idea that investigations by the state and federal government will hold Clark’s killers to account.
Such official investigations, whether at the state or federal level, are meant to tamp down popular anger while providing cover for the police. They rarely, if ever, result in charges against killer cops. Even rarer are criminal convictions, which are little more than statistical anomalies.
Dozens of investigations by the Department of Justice during the Obama administration into the actions of police departments across the country served to whitewash the crimes of countless police officers.
Even as protests continued in Sacramento, Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that there would be no murder charges against the two police officers who shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge as he sold CDs outside a convenience store. That egregious killing, in which two officers pumped bullets into Sterling as he was held down on the ground, was also caught on video.
Clark’s murder is just one of a relentless string of police killings in the US, which have continued unabated after popular protests over police violence erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 following the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Since the beginning of this year, more than 300 people have been killed by police nationwide, well on track to surpass the yearly average of 1,175 killings over the last four years.
The Trump administration has repeatedly denounced demonstrations against police violence, including last year’s protests by players in the National Football League, in effect giving police a green light to beat and kill with impunity. But Trump is only intensifying policies pursued under the Obama administration, which presided over the imposition of militarized police crackdowns on demonstrators in Ferguson and Baltimore, and repeatedly sided with the police in cases brought before the Supreme Court.
Contrary to the narrative promoted by Black Lives Matter and the political establishment that police violence is an issue of “race relations,” the largest share of those killed by the police are white. Whatever role racism plays in the disproportionate number of African American men killed each year, working-class people of every skin color, gender and age are the victims of police brutality.
Police violence is only the most visible expression of the brutal character of class relations within the United States under capitalism. The police, constituting one of the “bodies of armed men” that make up the state, are tasked with defending the existing social order in a country in which three people control as much wealth as the bottom half of society.
The ongoing reign of police terror is just one expression of the escalating crackdown on democratic rights within the United States. The Trump administration has let loose Immigration and Customs Enforcement to carry out raids at workplaces, schools and hospitals throughout the country, terrorizing whole communities and deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile the technology giants, working at the behest of the major US intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party, are moving rapidly to censor the internet.
It is no surprise that renewed demonstrations against police violence have erupted amid the growth of working-class opposition in the United States, with a wave of strikes and protests by education workers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and other states, as well as nationwide demonstrations against school shootings.
The emergence of these struggles makes clear that social opposition is building up within the working class. But at every turn, workers confront the efforts of the Democratic Party and trade unions to shut down and demobilize popular opposition by channeling it back into the political establishment.
Every social problem, whether it is underfunded schools, low wages, unending police violence or school shootings, has systemic roots. The struggle against police violence can only succeed to the extent that workers and young people break with the Democratic Party and link their struggles to the broader movement of the working class against capitalism and for socialism.
Niles Niemuth
Notes on Police Violence
Unarmed man with pants down fatally shot by deputy in Houston, Texas
By Anthony Bertolt
30 March 2018
Brutal police violence is a feature of daily life in America. This year has seen a rise in protests against police violence as part of the resurgence of class struggle, particularly in the wake of the murder of Stephon Clark in Sacramento earlier this month and the announcement that the officers involved in the murder of Alton Sterling will not face charges. So far this year, the police have killed more than 308 people of every race, ethnicity, gender and age. What follows is just a sampling of those killed in the last two weeks.
Unarmed man with pants down fatally shot by deputy in Houston , Texas
Last Thursday, Danny Ray Thomas, a 34-year-old man, was shot and killed by a Harris County deputy in Houston, Texas.
According to the Houston Chronicle, witnesses said Thomas was “walking in the middle of the intersection of Imperial Valley and Greens Road with his pants around his ankles, talking to himself and hitting vehicles as they passed by.”
One of the drivers of the vehicles then exited their vehicle and confronted Thomas, starting a verbal and physical altercation. A Harris County deputy witnessed the incident and stopped his car to get out and intervene.
Thomas reportedly did not respond to the officer’s commands and approached the officer, who then shot him once. Thomas died later that day at the hospital.
The Harris County deputy who shot Thomas said he did so “fearing for his safety” despite the fact that Thomas had his pants around his ankles. The deputy also claimed Thomas had “some object” in his hands, despite no weapon or objects having been found on the scene.
Thomas’s family members confirmed that he was the father of two children who had died in 2016 when their mother allegedly drowned them in a bathtub. Marketa Thomas, Danny Ray Thomas’s sister, said that she had relied on her brother for support as they both suffered from depression. So far this year, there have been two people killed by police in Harris County.
Columbus , Ohio police fatally shoot woman during SWAT standoff
Police say they responded to a report of gunshots early Saturday morning before 4:30 a.m. in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.
Officers arrived at the residence to find 25-year-old Kaitlin Marie Demeo, who had barricaded herself inside the house with a rifle alone.
The police then called the SWAT and Negotiation Team, who arrived on the scene and attempted to negotiate with Demeo, but were unsuccessful. Nearly four hours later, Demeo reportedly fired at the officers from inside and was killed by two SWAT officers who returned fire. Police identified the two officers as Glenn Thivener and Keith Kise, both veterans of the police for over 20 years.
Demeo’s killing was the fourth police shooting in Columbus so far this year.
Phoenix, Arizona police shoot and kill man af ter tas ing him 3 times
Police in west Phoenix received a report of a vehicle break-in last Friday around 11 a.m. When they arrived on the scene, they found 23-year-old Kevin Robles, holding a knife and “acting agitated.” They initially deployed a Taser, shocking Robles three times. However, police say it had no noticeable effect, which is when police say that Robles attacked them with the knife.
Police then shot Robles, who was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Polk County, Florida deputies shoot and kill man with a history of mental health issues
On Tuesday, March 20, 20-year-old Chance Haegele was killed after he was shot 17 times by police in Winter Haven, Florida.
Police arrived at his home after his mother, Christina Haegele, made an emergency call to prevent her son from committing suicide.
When they arrived he allegedly pointed an unloaded shotgun at the officers, who then opened fire, shooting Haegele 17 times. Prior to the barrage of bullets, Haegele’s mother had told the officers that the shotgun was not loaded and that he was not a threat.
Haegele had been admitted to the hospital seven times under the Baker Act in Florida, which allows for certain individuals to be examined or admitted to hospitals involuntarily if deemed necessary by judges, doctors, lawyers or other professionals.
He had attended Florida State University pursuing a degree in business finance, earning a 3.7 grade point average. Haegele suffered from depression, which had reportedly intensified after his father discontinued financial support for Chance while he attended college.
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