Meanwhile, there is no mention in the DoJ document that both Officers Loehmann and Garmback left the youth on the ground and refused to provide first aid to him for at least four minutes after the shooting, as he bled to death. Additionally, the DoJ statement says nothing of the surveillance video that shows the officers proceeded to handcuff Tamir’s 14-year-old sister and throw her into the backseat of the squad car when she attempted to come to her brother’s aid.
Four Louisiana State Police officers arrested after multiple incidents of excessive force
Four Louisiana State Police (LSP) troopers were arrested this week for multiple instances of excessive force following a lengthy internal investigation.
On Monday the officers arrested were Jacob Brown, 30; Randall Dickerson, 34; Dakota DeMoss, 28; and George Harper, 26, who served with Troop F in the area of Monroe, Louisiana in the northern region of the state.
All four have been charged with simple battery and malfeasance in office with Brown carrying an additional obstruction of justice charge. The charges stem from a beating during a July 2019 traffic stop and a violent vehicle pursuit in May 2020.
The earlier incident involved a traffic stop in Ouachita Parish in which narcotics were found on the driver, who was then arrested and handcuffed. After the arrest, troopers Brown and Dickerson then allegedly used “excessive and unjustifiable force” on the subdued suspect. They as well each shut off their body cams during the incident. According to state police investigators, the troopers recorded untruthful reports of the event, alleging that the suspect was resisting arrest.
The later incident in May of last year occurred following a vehicle pursuit in Franklin Parish where a tire deflation device, commonly referred to as a spike strip, was used to stop a fleeing vehicle. Once the vehicle was forced to stop, the suspect reportedly got out and laid on the ground in a “compliant position.”
Troopers DeMoss, Harper and Brown are alleged to have again used “excessive and unjustifiable force” in the handcuffing process on the suspect. The state police also say during this instance the troopers deactivated their body cams and turned in false reports of the incident to their superiors.
Officer Brown, who had previously been arrested in December for another excessive force incident involving a man named Aaron Bowman. Bowman claimed that Brown and other officers followed him into his house and dragged him out face first in the concrete beating and kicked him violently, causing several injuries. Officer Brown now faces an additional charge of obstruction of justice for falsifying use of force reports and withholding video evidence.
The new LSP Superintendent Colonel Lamar Davis released a statement to reporters about the arrests, declaring, “The unjustifiable use of force by our personnel is inexcusable and tarnishes the exemplary work of our dedicated men and women of the Department of Public Safety.
“I commend our investigative team for their diligence and professionalism during this investigation,” Davis continued. “Our agency remains committed to upholding the public trust and providing professional, fair and compassionate public safety services.”
According to reporters with WAFB in Baton Rouge, Davis also sent an internal email to the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, stating, “Today I have made the heart wrenching decision to arrest four Troop F troopers following a criminal investigation into use of force encounters.”
The Monroe-based unit, Troop F, has faced several allegations of misconduct in the past with an ongoing legal battle being waged by the family of Ronald Greene, who died after a vehicle chase in May 2019.
Greene’s family alleged that Troop F officers, including the recently arrested Officer DeMoss, beat Greene to death after he drove into a wooded area fleeing police, who made a traffic stop for an unidentified traffic violation.
The LSP claims that Greene was killed upon crashing his vehicle during the police chase. According to the lawsuit, officers at the scene tased Greene multiple times and used severely excessive force, leaving him “beaten, bloodied, and in cardiac arrest.”
Greene reportedly pleaded with the officers to stop beating him, repeating several times, “I’m sorry,” as the police continued their assault. The LSP has refused to release body cam footage of the incident, as part of what a Department of Justice civil rights lawsuit alleges is a coverup by the LSP.
The attorneys for the Greene and Bowman families claim these attacks are part of a greater cultural problem with the Troop F unit. Each of the arrested troopers is white, and the victims in each case have been black men.
One of the officers fired following the incident with Greene, Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, was later caught on audio tape admitting to beating and choking Greene during the arrest, saying that he “beat the ever-living f---” out of Greene, who then suddenly “went limp.” Hollingsworth later died in a single car accident last fall.
Soon after, Troop F Officer Kaleb Reeves was responding to a call when he crashed his vehicle into the back of another car, killing two young passengers in the back seat. Reeves, the son of veteran state trooper and former State Police Superintendent Kevin Reeves, is still employed by the agency and has not yet been officially reprimanded for the fatal crash.
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a nonprofit anti-police corruption organization, told WAFB reporters that there are deep-going issues confronting the Troop F unit. “Trooper Brown was arrested a couple of months ago for another excessive force incident. So that’s now three excessive force incidents that he’s been arrested for. What hasn’t been disclosed is that Trooper Brown’s father was the chief of staff under the prior administration,” said Goyeneche. “If it wasn’t initiated during the Reeves’ administration, why not, and I think the public is owed an explanation.”
Goyeneche expressed concern over the fact that for many of these incidents, disciplinary action is not taken until after a lengthy audit to release bodycam footage. “Do they (LSP) have plans to audit some of the bodycam tapes in other troops to determine if this type of conduct is occurring in other troops in Louisiana?”
As the relatively new head of LSP, Davis, the fourth black man in the agency’s history to hold the position, has stated his intentions to reform the troubled agency and bring in a new era of
accountability and transparency.
However, repeated experiences across the United States with the hiring of black or other minority police chiefs and promises of fundamental reform have shown that this will do nothing to slow the reign of terror meted out by the police against the working class. The police operate with nearly complete impunity, enforcing and protecting the interests of the capitalist ruling elite with deadly force. The arrests like those of the officers in LSP Troop F are the rare exception which proves the rule.
No charges filed against officer who shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha, Wisconsin District Attorney Michael Graveley announced Tuesday that no charges would be filed against Officer Rustin Shesky, who was caught on camera shooting 29-year-old father of six Jacob Blake seven times in the back, in front of three of his children, paralyzing him from the waist down. The decision sends a clear message that police are free to maim and summarily execute people with impunity.
Graveley stated in a press conference on Tuesday that “it is my decision now, that I announce today before you, that no Kenosha law enforcement officer in this case will be charged with any criminal offense based on the facts and the laws, as I will describe them to you now. So it is our decision that no charge will be filed.” The DA also cynically stated that “no charges” would be filed against Blake.
Shesky had previously been the subject of five internal police investigations, including pulling a gun on and handcuffing a misidentified suspect, as well as thousands of dollars in damage to police property.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, announced Monday the mobilization of 500 National Guard soldiers ahead of the decision to aid the police in the suppression of expected protests. Humvees and military transport trucks could be seen driving into the city and soldiers could be seen outside the Dinosaur Discovery Museum and the Kenosha County Administrative Building on Tuesday in photos posted by the Kenosha News.
Following the decision, Evers made a statement complaining vaguely about the ruling, stating “and yet, when presented the opportunity to rise to this moment and this movement and take action to provide meaningful, commonsense reform to enhance accountability and promote transparency in policing in our state, elected officials took no action.”
The “elected officials” include himself, and the Mayor of Kenosha, John Antaramian, also a Democrat. Killings by police actually increased from 2018 to 2019 in Wisconsin following Evers’ election, with the Associated Press reporting that killings increased by at least three. Antaramian has been in office since 2016 and presides over a city where nearly one in five residents live in poverty.
The only difference between the Kenosha District Attorney’s approach and Evers is how open it is about its intentions to continue state violence. Evers immediately called on the National Guard in response to protests over the shooting of Blake in August and before protests even developed Tuesday. signaling that any opposition to state violence will be met with greater and greater state violence, whether a Democrat or Republican is in charge.
During his speech Tuesday, Evers called on those who would “exercise their right to assemble tonight and in the days ahead to please do so peacefully and safely.”
Before any protests even developed Tuesday night, buildings could be seen with their windows boarded up, with journalist Martenzie Johnson reporting on Twitter that “There are more police and national guardsmen than citizens near the Kenosha Co. courthouse.” At 8:20 pm a small crowd of protesters numbering about 30 could be seen filing down a road in a picture chanting “Wake up Kenosha.” At 8:44 p.m. protesters could be seen near a line of National Guard soldiers in front of a Humvee and a military truck near the Dinosaur Discovery Museum. At the end, Johnson commented that the protest was “maybe 50 protesters marching across the city, a dozen or so cars trailing behind them” as opposed to “hundreds of police and national guard.”
On the same day that the decision was announced not to charge Shesky, Kyle Rittenhouse, the fascistic Kenosha shooter who killed two protesters and injured a third during protests against the shooting of Blake in August 2020, entered a not guilty plea. Rittenhouse has been charged with the first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, 26, first-degree reckless homicide for the death of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and attempted first-degree homicide for the shooting of Gauge Grosskreutz, 26.
Rittenhouse’s defense attorney, Lin Wood, an open supporter of the fascistic QAnon conspiracy theory and lawyer leading President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional attempts to overturn the election, argued that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. The killings Rittenhouse carried out have been endorsed by Trump, who claimed the armed militia member was acting in “self-defense.” Rittenhouse has expressed that he viewed protesters as “rioters” and “monsters.”
Rittenhouse, who was in Kenosha as part of a group of a right-wing militia group called the Kenosha Militia, was released on $2 million bail in November after receiving donations from Republican and far-right groups. Unlike anti-police violence activist Michael Reinohl, who was hunted down and summarily executed by gunfire in his car, Rittenhouse was allowed to pass through police lines un-harassed, given water and thanks, and allowed to leave the scene after killing two people and injuring another while illegally carrying an AR-15 rifle.
No federal charges in Cleveland police shooting of Tamir Rice
In a politically motivated decision, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Tuesday that no charges would be brought against the Cleveland police officers who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice six years ago and that the federal investigation was being shut down.
In a press release, the DoJ justified the decision on the grounds that prosecutors reviewing the five-year investigation, “found insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges against Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.”
Loehmann, a rookie officer, shot Tamir Rice on November 22, 2014, within two seconds of arriving at Cudell Park Recreation Center, following a 911 call from a neighbor who said that someone who was “probably a juvenile” was pointing a gun that was “probably fake” at people in the neighborhood. The weapon turned out to be a toy black Airsoft pistol with a removable magazine.
Although the DoJ claimed they had notified lawyers representing the Rice family of their decision to close the investigation, Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, said in a statement, “It was blatantly disrespectful that I had to learn from the media that the Department of Justice had shut down the investigation, after career prosecutors recommended a grand jury be convened.”
The DoJ announcement concludes the cover-up by the federal government of the brutal police shooting of Tamir Rice, who would have turned 18 years old on June 25 of this year. In 2019, after stalling the investigation for nearly three years under both the Obama and Trump administrations, the DoJ blocked prosecutors from the department’s civil rights division from convening a grand jury to subpoena documents and witnesses in the case.
As the New York Times reported on October 29 of this year, the DoJ had decided “more than a year ago to effectively shut down its civil-rights investigation into the high-profile killing of Tamir Rice,” according to people familiar with the matter. The Times also reported that the Obama administration essentially made a deal to drop criminal charges against the CPD officers in exchange for a consent decree to “overhaul the Cleveland Police Department on matters like training...”
The DoJ statement goes to great lengths to explain that the applicable federal criminal statute—Title 18, US Code, Section 242, Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law—requires prosecutors “to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that a law enforcement officer acted willfully to deprive an individual of a federally protected right.”
The statute also stipulates that the government must prove, “beyond a reasonable doubt that the use of force was objectively unreasonable based on all of the surrounding circumstances.” The DoJ then proceeds to give a “Factual Overview” that entirely justify the reckless and blatantly violent behavior of the CDP officers before, during and after Loehmann fatally shot the youth.
Among the facts in the DoJ press release are that Tamir Rice’s toy gun was “visually virtually indistinguishable from a real .45 Colt semi-automatic pistol” and that the 12-year-old “stood 5’7” and 195 lbs.,” in order to bolster the claim that the officers “believed that they were responding to a playground where a grown man was brandishing a real gun at individuals, presumably including children.”
Along with its press release, the DoJ also published two photographs, one of the toy pistol and the other of the gun clip that were recovered by investigators at the scene of the shooting.
Most of the balance of the DoJ release is devoted to a review of surveillance video captured of the incident. The statement argues “this video is a time lapse video, has no audio, is grainy, shot from a significant distance, does not show detail or perspective, and portions of the incident are not visible because the incident occurred on the passenger side of the patrol car, and the camera is shooting from the driver’s side of the patrol car; thus, the patrol car blocks the camera’s view of parts of the activity during the relevant time. Tamir’s hands are not visible in the video during the relevant time.”
However, as anyone who has seen the video knows, Officer Garmback pulled the squad car onto the grass of Cudell Park Recreation Center in an entirely reckless manner and a few feet from where the youth was standing. Officer Loehmann then leaped from the passenger side of the squad car, while the vehicle was still moving, and fired his weapon at Tamir Rice immediately, hitting the youth in the abdomen.
Meanwhile, there is no mention in the DoJ document that both Officers Loehmann and Garmback left the youth on the ground and refused to provide first aid to him for at least four minutes after the shooting, as he bled to death. Additionally, the DoJ statement says nothing of the surveillance video that shows the officers proceeded to handcuff Tamir’s 14-year-old sister and throw her into the backseat of the squad car when she attempted to come to her brother’s aid.
The refusal of the DoJ to bring the charge of obstruction of justice is based on the assertion that the officers “repeatedly and consistently stated that Tamir was reaching for his gun before Officer Loehmann shot” and that they “repeatedly and consistently stated that Officer Loehmann gave Tamir multiple commands to show his hands before shooting and both officers repeatedly and consistently said that they saw Tamir reaching for his gun.”
However, the DoJ press release contains two sentences about the eyewitnesses who were reported to be 315 feet away from the shooting with an emphasis on the fact that “neither of them stated that they saw Tamir’s movements immediately preceding the shooting.”
The decision of the DoJ is an extension of the previous determination by a Cuyahoga County grand jury which cleared the CDP officers of wrongdoing five years ago. Loehmann was fired by the police department for lying on his employment application and Garmback was suspended. The Cleveland city government agreed in January 2019 to pay the family of Tamir Rice $6 million in a civil settlement.
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