Orlando, Florida police officer fired after arresting two six-year-old school children
Last Thursday, two 6-year-old students at Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy, a charter school in Orlando, Florida, were arrested in unrelated incidents by Dennis Turner, a retired Orlando Police Department officer who now works as a School Resource Officer. Both children were arrested for and charged with “misdemeanor battery.”
Although the idea of arresting young children and dragging them out of school to book and detain them shocks the conscience, the increasingly violent and openly reactionary character of the ruling elite has created social conditions that produce such barbaric realities for countless students across the United States on a daily basis.
Kaia Rolle, one of the victims of Turner’s maliciousness, was arrested and processed at the Orange Regional Juvenile Assessment Center for the heinous crime of having a temper tantrum. Rolle was sent out of class to see a school administrator because of her tantrum and allegedly kicked a school employee who had grabbed the child by her wrist. Rolle’s family reports that the first grader suffers from sleep apnea, which has led to her having behavioral problems in the past.
The other student Turner detained has been identified only as a 6-year-old boy, and no information has been made available about the circumstances leading to his arrest. Turner handcuffed both of the children and transported them from the school in the back of a police car.
Rolle was released to the school after her grandmother intervened upon learning about the arrest from a supervisor’s phone call. The other child had his fingerprints and mug shot taken at the juvenile center before being released to a relative. In response to public outrage, the State Attorney’s Office for Orange and Osceola Counties announced that it will not go forward with the prosecution of either child.
Turner worked at the elementary school as part of the Orlando Police Department’s School Resource Officer Program. According to the City of Orlando’s website, this program “provides full-time, on-site police services to all of the Orange County public middle and high schools.”
These officers can now be found in elementary schools as part of the “safety measures” being implemented in schools throughout the US in response to the growing rate of devastating school shootings. The events of last Thursday make it clear that officers are not being placed in schools to protect students, but to terrorize them.
On Monday, Turner was fired from his position in the face of widespread outrage, not for brutalizing the two children, but for making the arrests “without the approval of a commanding officer.” The Orlando police chief explained that Turner violated the police department’s internal policy, which requires reserve officers to have approval from a supervisor before arresting a minor under the age of 12. Turner did not have this authorization before arresting either of the elementary school children last week.
In 2015, Turner was the only officer from the Orlando Police Department to be reprimanded for excessive use of force, despite more than 500 reported incidents in the department. Turner received this written reprimand for using his Taser on a man five times, with two of these jolts coming after the man had fallen to the ground from the previous jolts.
Turner was also reportedly investigated in
2003 for threatening to “hurt” a man and then
stating that authorities “couldn’t do anything”
to him, insinuating no one would punish the
officer for his threats. It has also been
reported that Turner was arrested for
aggravated child abuse in 1998 while
working as an officer for the Orlando Police
Department.
It is unfathomable that an individual who has been investigated multiple times for violent behavior, including toward children, would be allowed to work in an environment with elementary school students. It was foreseeable that an authoritarian thug like Turner would behave as he did last Thursday, regardless of the age of the “suspects” receiving his brutality.
Turner’s placement at an elementary school illustrates the growing contempt toward the most vulnerable layers of society shared by the ruling elite and their lackeys throughout the state apparatus.
What Rolle and her fellow classmate experienced last Thursday is merely a matter-of-course for a system that allows the callous detainment of thousands of immigrant children in horrendous conditions. The Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, located less than four hours drive south of Rolle’s school, is currently “closed” for the hurricane season, but will soon reopen to hold thousands of children, many younger than 6 years old, for the crime of having crossed the US-Mexico border without proper documentation.
Much like Rolle could not control her sleep apnea or temper tantrum, these children had no power over the unfortunate circumstances that tore them from their homes and forced them to endure a dangerous and desperate journey to seek safety in the US. These realities find no sympathy from the ruling class and their armed enforcers in the government at the federal, state, and local level.
Youth, students, the working class, and all others that fail to comply with the unreasonable restrictions imposed by the ruling elite will be subject to greater extremes of violence as social inequality deepens and the class struggle erupts into the open.
Editorial: Records expose
revolving door for bad California cops
South
and East Bay cases highlight questionable police department hires of officers
canned elsewhere
Detective who raped victim while
investigating her case gets 3 years in prison
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Detective-who-raped-victim-while-investigating-14300498.php
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s
Office hit with corruption probe over concealed weapons permits
Santa Clara County agency again scrutinized over alleged
political favoritism in issuing of scarce gun permits
Related
Articles
Editorial: Records expose revolving
door for bad California cops
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/23/editorial-records-expose-revolving-door-for-bad-california-cops/
South and East Bay cases highlight questionable police
department hires of officers canned elsewhere
Social media investigations unearth hundreds of police officers in the
US involved in fascist or racist groups
Philadelphia
Police Headquarters April 2019 [Credit: Wikimedia Commons User “Beyond My Ken”]
"In the overwhelming majority of police killings, of which there are more than one thousand every year, no officer is ever charged. In the few cases where charges are brought, most are found not guilty. The Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to convict a police officer for murder stating that an officer is permitted to use deadly force as long as he or she believes that either they or others are in danger."
A somewhat desperate
suggestion to fix corruption in our law enforcement agencies
Police:
80 California High School Students Attack Officers, Cause Lockdown
Bear Creek High School in Stockton, California, was placed on
lockdown last week after an estimated 80 students attacked police officers who
arrived on campus to detain one student for fighting with school staff.
Horrifying
moment Phoenix police point guns at a black family and tell the father they're
'gonna put a f**king cap in your head' after 'his daughter, four, walked out of
a store with a $1 Barbie doll'
Police murder in Memphis
The brutal
murder on Wednesday of 20-year-old Brandon Webber by US federal marshals is the
latest eruption of police violence in a country where youth and workers are
gunned down on the streets by uniformed killers with numbing regularity.
Behind the epidemic of police killings in America:
Class, poverty and race
Part two
Income and poverty
The police killing zone: USA−
Urban and rural differences
The most dangerous area: rural America
2018 begins with US police
reign of terror
Police kill over a thousand
for fourth year in a row
Court quashes subpoena of
reporter who uncovered Chicago police murder coverup
By George
Marlowe
Texas
Border Cop Accused of Sexually Assaulting Illegal Immigrant
John Moore/Getty Images
EDINBURG,
Texas – A police officer from the border town of Progreso is accused of arresting
a migrant and sexually abusing him inside the municipal jail.
Editorial: Records expose
revolving door for bad California cops
South
and East Bay cases highlight questionable police department hires of officers
canned elsewhere
PUBLISHED: July
23, 2019 at 5:10 am | UPDATED: August 6, 2019 at 9:25 pm
A San Jose State cop fired in 2017 for beating a man in the
library then reinstated over the university’s objections went to work in
September for the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department. On Friday, after
this news organization revealed his troubled past, he abruptly resigned.
An Alameda County deputy sheriff fired in 2015 for soliciting prostitution and
dishonestyafter he filed a false police report related to his divorce was
later hired by the Pinole Police Department.
The two cases, recently
disclosed under a new state law, raise serious questions about the revolving
door for troubled cops and the hiring practices of California police
departments that employ officers who have been canned elsewhere.
Not only might members of
the communities have concerns about the police patrolling their streets,
there’s another large question about whether the cops can be effective in their
jobs — especially when called to testify in criminal cases.
Before this year, these
cases probably would never have seen the light of day. But a new state law,
created by last year’s approval of Senate Bill 1421, requires police agencies
to release documents pertaining to cops’ discharge of firearms, use of major
force, sexual assault and dishonesty.
As we noted earlier this month, the information in the records has
been disturbing: Stolen drugs and bullets. A potentially deadly chokehold. Falsified reports. A person’s face smashed into the floor. Sexual assault in jail. Cavorting
with sex workers. Domestic violence complaints against
an officer ignored.
Equally disturbing is the police foot-dragging on release of the
records. When it comes to transparency, a majority of the agencies
across California responsible for enforcing the law are defying it.
Now come these two new
cases that raise another key issue: The revolving door means that police
departments are hiring cops who, because of their past behavior, cannot fully
perform their jobs.
That’s because, under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must disclose to
defense attorneys any evidence that could help them defend their clients. That
includes information about past dishonesty or other bad behavior of the cops
involved in the case.
It’s only fair. After
all, if an officer has been fired for lying or misconduct, it goes to the heart
of his or her credibility. The jury should know about it. And, from a practical
perspective, a cop who can’t testify can’t carry out a critical part of the
job.
District attorney offices
across the state keep “Brady lists” of officers who have been identified as
potentially problematic witnesses. But they’re not always complete. And they
can miss cops who were hired after past jobs in other counties.
The new state law should help, making available some of the same
records to not only police agencies, prosecutors and defense attorneys, but
also to the public. Not surprisingly, in Los Gatos and Monte Sereno, residents
who saw the disturbing video of the San Jose
State library beating were not happy that the cop was
working in their city.
In that case, Officer
Johnathon Silva was first cleared by the university’s police chief at the time,
Peter Decena, who decided the use of force was not excessive. But after the
beating victim, who suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, filed a claim
against the university, it launched an independent investigation that found
differently.
San Jose State fired
Silva and settled the case for $950,000. But Silva appealed to the state
personnel board, which ordered him reinstated. He nevertheless resigned and was
subsequently hired by Los Gatos-Monte Sereno, where Decena had taken a job as
chief. No reason was given for why Silva quit his latest job on Friday.
In the East Bay case,
records released under the new state law and contained in the divorce
proceedings of Officer Josh Shavies show that he was fired for soliciting
prostitution and dishonesty after filing a false police report related to his
divorce.
He also was accused in
the divorce proceedings of abusing his wife and whipping his children with
belts. His ex-wife says now that she exaggerated the abuse allegations, but her
attorney says they were completely truthful.
These cases raise
questions not only about the temperament and effectiveness of the cops but also
about the potential liability for taxpayers. These sorts of cases are yet
another reason why the transparency law was so desperately needed — and why
more departments need to start complying with it.
Detective who raped victim while
investigating her case gets 3 years in prison
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Detective-who-raped-victim-while-investigating-14300498.php
·
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective has been sentenced to
prison for raping a 15-year-old girl he met while investigating her report of
being sexually assaulted.
Neil Kimball, 46, of Agoura was given three years on Thursday.
He pleaded guilty last month to unlawful sexual intercourse and committing a
lewd act with a child. The crimes occurred in Ventura County.
Prosecutors say Kimball befriended the girl in 2017 after she
reported being sexually assaulted in neighboring Los Angeles County.
According to The New York Times, Kimball
was originally charged with raping the victim while she was tied or bound.
Kimball was also accused of “witness intimidation by threat of force.”
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s
Office hit with corruption probe over concealed weapons permits
Santa Clara County agency again scrutinized over alleged
political favoritism in issuing of scarce gun permits
PUBLISHED: August 7, 2019 at 5:35 pm |
UPDATED: August 8, 2019 at 9:15 am
The Santa Clara County District
Attorney’s Office served a search warrant at the Sheriff’s Office as part of an
apparent corruption probe into alleged political favoritism in the agency’s
issuing of concealed weapons permits, according to sources familiar with the
investigation.
“The DA’s Office retrieved certain
items from the Sheriff’s Office pursuant to a search warrant signed by a Santa
Clara County Superior Court judge,” reads an official statement from
prosecutors. “The retrieved items are part of an ongoing investigation, and
therefore, nothing more can be said at this time.”
The investigation is being conducted by the DA’s Public Integrity
Unit, which on its websitestates that
it “supervises the investigation of cases involving corruption of public officials
and employees in their official capacities or in the performance of their
duties and initiates criminal charges when appropriate.”
Little else has been formally revealed about the investigation,
first reported by San Jose Inside, other
than agencies including the Sheriff’s Office itself, acknowledging it.
“The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s
Office is aware of the District Attorney’s investigation and we are fully
cooperating,” reads an agency statement. “Due to the fact this is an ongoing
investigation, we are not going to disclose any additional information at this
time. The Sheriff’s Office has made extensive efforts to increase transparency
and trust with the communities we serve and will continue these efforts going
forward.”
The County Counsel’s Office, which
functions as the attorney for the Sheriff’s Office, declined comment and
referred an inquiry to the DA’s office.
Related
Articles
Sources confirmed that the
investigation involves an alleged “quid pro quo” between political supporters
and donations for six-term Sheriff Laurie Smith and those who have been able to
obtain concealed-weapons permits from her office, which has been historically
stingy about issuing the privilege. The sources also said the probe, while
public surfacing over the past few days, had been in the works for far longer
and is focused on some of Smith’s trusted advisers in the agency.
The issue has long been a source of criticism for the Sheriff’s
Office, and dogged Smith each time she ran for re-election in the past
decade. An investigation by this news
organization in 2011, spurred by a federal lawsuit against the
Sheriff’s Office, found that out-of-county residents and other questionably
qualified applicants received the permits. Some political donors of Smith also
got them, but the county at the time denied any connection between that support
and the permits.
Check back later for updates to this story.
Editorial: Records expose revolving
door for bad California cops
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/23/editorial-records-expose-revolving-door-for-bad-california-cops/
South and East Bay cases highlight questionable police
department hires of officers canned elsewhere
Screen shot from a
police video camera after a San Jose State officer beat a man in a university
library. (Video screen shot)
PUBLISHED: July 23, 2019 at 5:10 am | UPDATED: July
23, 2019 at 5:16 am
A San Jose State cop fired in 2017 for beating a man in the
library then reinstated over the university’s objections went to work in
September for the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department. On Friday, after
this news organization revealed his troubled past, he
abruptly resigned.
An Alameda County deputy sheriff fired in 2015 for soliciting prostitution and
dishonestyafter he filed a false police report related to his divorce was
later hired by the Pinole Police Department.
The two cases, recently disclosed
under a new state law, raise serious questions about the revolving door for
troubled cops and the hiring practices of California police departments that
employ officers who have been canned elsewhere.
Not only might members of the
communities have concerns about the police patrolling their streets, there’s
another large question about whether the cops can be effective in their jobs —
especially when called to testify in criminal cases.
Before this year, these cases
probably would never have seen the light of day. But a new state law, created
by last year’s approval of Senate Bill 1421, requires police agencies to
release documents pertaining to cops’ discharge of firearms, use of major
force, sexual assault and dishonesty.
As we noted earlier this month, the information in the records has
been disturbing: Stolen drugs and bullets. A
potentially deadly chokehold. Falsified reports. A
person’s face smashed into the floor. Sexual assault in
jail. Cavorting with sex workers. Domestic violence complaints
against an officer ignored.
Equally disturbing is the police foot-dragging on release of the
records. When it comes to transparency, a majority of
the agencies across California responsible for enforcing the law are defying
it.
Now come these two new cases that
raise another key issue: The revolving door means that police departments are
hiring cops who, because of their past behavior, cannot fully perform their
jobs.
That’s because, under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must disclose to
defense attorneys any evidence that could help them defend their clients. That
includes information about past dishonesty or other bad behavior of the cops
involved in the case.
It’s only fair. After all, if an
officer has been fired for lying or misconduct, it goes to the heart of his or
her credibility. The jury should know about it. And, from a practical
perspective, a cop who can’t testify can’t carry out a critical part of the
job.
District attorney offices across
the state keep “Brady lists” of officers who have been identified as
potentially problematic witnesses. But they’re not always complete. And they
can miss cops who were hired after past jobs in other counties.
The new state law should help, making available some of the same
records to not only police agencies, prosecutors and defense attorneys, but
also to the public. Not surprisingly, in Los Gatos and Monte Sereno, residents
who saw the disturbing video of
the San Jose State library beating were not happy that
the cop was working in their city.
In that case, Officer Johnathon
Silva was first cleared by the university’s police chief at the time, Peter
Decena, who decided the use of force was not excessive. But after the beating
victim, who suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, filed a claim against
the university, it launched an independent investigation that found
differently.
San Jose State fired Silva and
settled the case for $950,000. But Silva appealed to the state personnel board,
which ordered him reinstated. He nevertheless resigned and was subsequently
hired by Los Gatos-Monte Sereno, where Decena had taken a job as chief. No
reason was given for why Silva quit his latest job on Friday.
In the East Bay case, records
released under the new state law and contained in the divorce proceedings of
Officer Josh Shavies show that he was fired for soliciting prostitution and
dishonesty after filing a false police report related to his divorce.
He also was accused in the divorce
proceedings of abusing his wife and whipping his children with belts. His
ex-wife says now that she exaggerated the abuse allegations, but her attorney
says they were completely truthful.
These cases raise questions not
only about the temperament and effectiveness of the cops but also about the
potential liability for taxpayers. These sorts of cases are yet another reason
why the transparency law was so desperately needed — and why more departments
need to start complying with it.
///
The shitbag cop was Zachary
Wester
A Florida cop planted meth
on random drivers, police say. One lost custody of his daughter.
Meagan Flynn
The meth seemed to appear
out of thin air.
Benjamin Bowling couldn’t
figure it out. He had been clean ever since his release from prison on a DUI
conviction, but now a Jackson County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy was accusing him
of possessing a minuscule amount of methamphetamine.
It was October 2017 and
Bowling was on his way to the store to pick up diapers with his friend Shelly
Smith when they saw the flashing lights swirl in the rearview mirror. He had
been out of prison for less than a year, doing everything he could to get his
life back on track. He passed all his drug tests. He had recently been awarded
custody of his daughter. But deputy Zachary Wester was escalating a traffic stop
for swerving over a white line into a search for illicit drugs.
Bowling and Smith, confident
they had nothing to hide, told Wester to go ahead and search the car after he
claimed to smell marijuana, assuring him he wouldn’t find any.
He emerged with meth.
Now, nearly two years after
Bowling lost custody of the daughter he had just gotten back, after he was
convicted of felony meth possession, he knows exactly how it got there. Wester,
state investigators now say, planted it himself — and Bowling was far from the
only victim.
Wester, who was fired last
September, was arrested Wednesday and charged with 52 counts of racketeering,
false imprisonment, official misconduct, fabricating evidence and possession of
controlled substances, among other charges. He’s accused of indiscriminately
targeting innocent drivers and hauling them off to jail after planting meth or
marijuana in their vehicles while feigning a “search."
“There is no question that
Wester’s crimes were deliberate and that his actions put innocent people in
jail,” Chris Williams, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s assistant
special agent in charge, said in a news release.
Bowling, who has since been
cleared, is just one of 11 known victims named in the affidavit, although the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Wednesday that there may be more
victims who have not yet been identified, and the case remains under
investigation. At least 119 cases involving Wester have been dropped, the
Tallahassee Democrat reported. In addition to the dropped charges, Circuit
Judge Christopher Patterson ordered at least eight inmates released from
correctional facilities last fall, as 263 cases remained under review.
Investigators said at a news
conference Wednesday that there did not appear to be any rhyme or reason to the
drivers Wester, 26, singled out for false arrests on drug possession. Some were
parents with a diaper bag in the back seat. Others were young men and women,
some crying as they insisted they had never touched drugs, let alone meth, in their
lives.
Asked by reporters why
Wester would do this, State Attorney William “Bill” Eddins of Florida’s 1st
Judicial Circuit said that was a good question. Investigators were still trying
to figure it out themselves, he said.
“You’re never certain of what
lies in the heart of man,” he said.
Eddins said he does not plan
to offer a plea bargain, and that Wester faces up to 30 years in prison.
Wester’s defense attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
Wester, who joined the
Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in 2016, fell under suspicion last year after a
prosecutor noticed inconsistencies in what Wester wrote in his reports and what
was captured on his body camera — if he turned it on. The problem was he seemed
to leave the device off most of the time, conveniently only recording after
drugs were already “found” in a vehicle. In most cases, as in Bowling’s, he
typically pulled someone over for a minor traffic infraction before asking if
he smelled marijuana.
Yet, even after reporting on
affidavits that he smelled or even thought he saw marijuana, he typically
emerged finding meth. According to the affidavit, meth, marijuana and 42 pieces
of drug paraphernalia were found in Wester’s trunk.
One case, that of Teresa
Odom, was illuminating — appearing to capture Wester holding an unknown object
in his left hand shortly before “discovering” meth in her truck, in the rare
case his body camera was left on.
“Hi, how are you?” Wester
asked her in a friendly voice as he rolled up to her window, according to footage
released to the news media. “The reason for is, um, your brake lights: They
work one minute, and then the next minute they don’t work.”
He took her license, left
momentarily, and returned to ask if he could search her vehicle. She said it
was no problem with a shrug, as long as she could take her phone with her.
“Hang tight, Ms. Odom,” He grabbed a pair of gloves from his cruiser — then
appears to be holding a tiny plastic baggie inside his left hand, according to
the video and affidavit.
The affidavit describes it
like a magician’s sleight of hand: “Without putting on the glove, Deputy
Wester’s left hand dropped out of view, down toward the front of the driver’s
seat, and after a brief pause, reappeared empty.”
Shortly thereafter, Wester
pulls a tiny plastic bag out of Odom’s purse: “Oh, Ms. Odom, how about this?”
Wester asked, confronting Odom with the drugs.
“That is not mine,” she
said. “No, sir. No, sir. What is it?” As another deputy who arrived for backup
teased her that she was about to go to jail, she responded tersely: “It damn
sure ain’t mine.”
It wasn’t. The Democrat
reported that Odom wept at the news conference Wednesday announcing, saying she
felt “overwhelmed."
In a few cases, some drivers
were already suspected of other crimes, such as driving with a suspended
license or having an outstanding warrant, or even admitting to having marijuana
in the car — and yet Wester still planted meth on them, according to the
affidavit.
But mostly the drivers were
guilty of nothing. Erika Helms — whose brother, Lance Sellers, has sued the
sheriff’s department alleging false arrest — told the Democrat that Wester
“ruined lives.” Sellers, she said, had to spend a year in residential rehab
after his arrest for possession of meth. The charges were later dropped. In
addition to Sellers, more than a dozen people have filed notices of intent to
sue, the Democrat reported.
“People are losing their
lives, their freedom, their children, their marriages — all because of this one
man,” Helms told the Democrat. “It’s not just innocent men. It’s innocent
children. It goes a lot deeper than everyone realizes.”
It’s unclear if Bowling
regained custody of his daughter since his arrest, or whether other parents
faced the same fate.
At least one innocent mother
feared she would, according to the affidavit.
Kimberly Hazelwood and her
husband, Jeremy, were pulled over in June 2018 with their small children in the
back seat, as Wester alleged that the Hazelwoods’ car insurance had lapsed.
Wester zeroed in on a bottle of Excedrin he saw in her possession. He told the
couple that he was calling in the K-9 unit to search the vehicle.
Soon enough, Wester claimed
the Excedrin pill bottle contained methamphetamine, pulling Jeremy aside to
tell him that he was going to arrest his wife for possession. “Jeremy appeared
shocked and said Kimberly had never done drugs a day in her life,” the
affidavit says.
Wester told the distraught
father that he could tell Kimberly used meth “by the way her face was sunk and
her teeth . . . Jeremy stated his wife has always been like that."
On the way to jail, Kimberly
cried in the back of Wester’s cruiser, asking whether she was going to lose
custody of her children.
It’s unclear whether she
did. According to the affidavit, months later, Wester pulled over Jeremy again,
asking where Kimberly was this time. “This upset Jeremy,” the affidavit says,
“and he told Deputy Wester that it was none of his business."
Wester let him go.
Social media investigations unearth hundreds of police officers in the
US involved in fascist or racist groups
Two separate social
media investigations completed within the last month have identified hundreds
of police and correctional officers that were or are currently members of
right-wing extremist groups on Facebook or who have posted violent, racist or
fascistic content on the platform. Screenshots compiled in both investigations
show officers posting original racist and fascist content on their personal
Facebook walls, in private groups such as the Oath Keepers, Confederate
Brotherhood or the “NORTH AMERICAN DEFENCE LEAGUE AGAINST ISLAM,” and also on
public news posts.
Each research project
positively identified active-duty officers in departments throughout the
country, leading to over 50 separate investigations. In St. Louis, Missouri,
and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, over 100 officers have been either put on paid
leave, suspended, or relegated to desk duty, pending internal investigations.
However, many more departments have chosen to simply ignore the findings.
The Plain View
Project (PVP) was the culmination of a nearly two year investigation
beginning in the fall of 2017, and conducted by Philadelphia based attorneys.
During the summer of 2016 the group of attorneys, led by lawyer Emily
Baker-White, became aware of dozens of Facebook posts of current Philadelphia
police officers that had endorsed violence, racism and bigotry. The PVP
obtained the published rosters of police officers employed by eight departments
in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Dallas and Denison, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; York,
Pennsylvania; and finally, Twin Falls, Idaho.
Using the lists, the
PVP team searched Facebook for the officers’ names and when they could
positively link an active account to a police officer the name was added to the
PVP database. In many cases officers posted pictures of themselves in uniform,
discussing arrests or performing other police related duties. Through this
process the PVP verified over 3,500 Facebook accounts and compiled more than
5,000 screenshots with images, posts or comments made by officers that “could
undermine public trust and confidence in the police.” Through the PVP website, users are able to
search by name, rank, jurisdiction, pay-grade, badge number or specific
keywords.
A second research
project, conducted by Reveal journalists Will Careless and
Michael Corey, sought to discover how many police officers nationwide were
members of right-wing “extremist” Facebook groups. Using a list of more than
1,200 extremist groups compiled by Megan Squire, a computer science professor
at Elon University, the journalists downloaded the private membership lists of
the groups before Facebook disabled this feature in 2018. They then proceeded
to download the membership lists of self-identified police groups and loaded
the approximately one million names into a database which cross-examined the
lists to see which profiles appeared in at least one extremist group and one
police group.
This resulted in over
14,000 matches or “hits.” The journalists did not comb through every single
match, instead just focusing on “a fraction of the list to vet.” Similar to the
PVP, law enforcement officers’ identity and employment was verified by
reviewing their biographies, photos or matching names to public police records.
The journalists identified nearly 400 users they confirmed are either currently
employed as police officers, sheriffs or correctional officers or had
previously worked in law enforcement.
The totality of each
investigation confirms the vast promotion and acceptance of fascistic ideology
within police departments throughout the country.
The officers identified
have worked at all levels of law enforcement, from patrolmen to detectives and
even several captains. It is not a localized phenomenon, the cops identified
work in rural jurisdictions from West Virginia to Washington and in urban
cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago. Officers in the Reveal investigation
were part of several right-wing anti-government militia groups, including over
150 officers who were or are currently members of the Oath Keepers and the
Three Percenters. Earlier this week members of the Oath Keepers, in conjunction
with the Oregon Republican party, forced the state legislature to shut down
following violent threats.
These two groups have
been seen at several rallies organized by white supremacist groups, including
the 2017 Unite the Right fascist rampage in which 32-year-old Heather Heyer was
murdered by neo-Nazi James Fields. Fields, who also injured 35 others when he
rammed his vehicle into the crowd of counter-protesters, was sentenced to life
in prison on federal hate crime charges on Friday. Fields had pleaded guilty
earlier this year to 29 federal hate crime charges to avoid the death penalty.
In December 2018, Fields was also convicted on state charges, including
first-degree murder, for which a jury recommended that he spend life plus 419
years in state prison.
In addition to
anti-government right-wing militias, hundreds of officers belonged to openly
Islamophobic groups or frequently posted content denigrating Muslims in
general. Several officers were former veterans, who brought their experiences,
tactics and state-sanctioned racism to their departments. Others, such as Sgt.
Michael Vincent of the Philadelphia Police Dept., badge number 8706, shared
memes comparing the refugee crisis caused by imperialist wars and interventions
to a fox raiding a chicken coop, extolling his friends and followers to “Stop
the invasion of Islam to the free world!”
While both
investigations focused primarily on police officers, prison guards and
corrections officers were also identified. Geoffrey Crosby, a prison guard at
the barbaric Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, belongs to 56
different extremist groups, 45 of which are Confederate in nature, such as
“Confederate Resistance,” or “REBELS RULES, the south will rise again .!!”
Crosby also claimed membership in anti-Muslim groups such as “Stop Radical
Islam in America.” Crosby, who was reached by phone by Reveal,
declined to be interviewed but instead advised reporters not to “call me at
work again.” The Louisiana Department of Corrections emailed the independent
investigative news outlet to state an investigation into Crosby is open and
ongoing.
Sheldon Best, a
Wisconsin corrections officer at Jackson Correctional Institution in Black
River Falls, Wisconsin, is still a member of a group named “Crusades Against
Degeneracy,” which frequently posts racist, Islamophobic, homophobic and
anti-Semitic content. In an interview with Reveal, Best
admitted that “some people” could view his membership in the hate group as
problematic however he stated that he did not hold any prejudiced views. On a
2017 National Public Radio article posted in the group regarding demographic
changes within US census results, Best opined that whites will remain the
majority of adults in the United States due to “minority on minority homicide.”
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has not responded to Reveal’sinquiries
regarding any pending investigation into Best.
Another group which
claimed membership from police officers around the country, including officer
John Valdez of the Los Angeles Police Department, is the anti-communist
“Anti-SJW Pinochet’s Helicopter Pilot Academy.” Members of the group shared
helicopter memes depicting the extrajudicial murder of 75 people during the
1973 US backed coup in a positive light and frequently posted violent threats
against Democrats, socialists and communists.
The whipping up and
promotion of these attitudes within the state police is a stark warning to the
working class. The far-right militia movements have been actively infiltrating
police departments and prison guard units, and have been allowed to fester and
recruit whether the local leadership is white, black, gay or straight, in the
Democratic coastal states and the Republican interior. Both parties in the
ruling class have overseen the mammoth expansion of repressive federal agencies
such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border
Protection (CPB) while also allowing the transfer of military equipment to
departments around the country, which have been used against all members of the
working class regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.
Baker-White has said
she began PVP with the aim of spurring nationwide reforms in policing. “I hope
that police departments make changes to increase accountability, but also to
try to shift culture,” she told the Washington Post .
Her call for reforms is
misguided at best. The reactionary role of the police stems not from the
personal political opinions or racism of individual cops, but the other way
around. Their backwardness is the product of their function as defenders of the
capitalist status quo of exploitation and record social inequality.
The police are
recruited and trained for this purpose. In many cases their experience in the
military, and in the Middle East in particular, has encouraged the views they
post on Facebook. The adult lives of the current generation of police have been
spent while the US has been engaged in a continuous war from the first Persian
Gulf War, through to the current preparations for war against Iran, Russia and
China.
Undoubtedly the
incessant tweets of the fascistic President Donald Trump have also produced a
climate in which many of the cops see no particular reason why they should not
express themselves in language not that different from that used by the White
House.
Far more than Trump is
behind this, however. The Democrats’ alternative is calls for the censorship of
the internet, targeting left-wing and socialist websites under the guise of
combating “Russian meddling.” In response to the unmistakable signs of growing
class struggle—strikes involving teachers, auto workers, flight attendants and
many others—the ruling class is turning more and more to authoritarian forms of
rule, including the unleashing of the police, armed with the weapons of war,
against the working class.
This is an
international process, as shown by Germany, where the ruling coalition has
adopted much of the agenda of the ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD); in
France, where President Macron has praised the World War II-era Nazi
collaborator Philippe Pétain while unleashing the police against “yellow vest”
protesters; and in the emergence of neo-fascist and dictatorial regimes on
every continent.
The Philadelphia Police Department placed 72 officers on desk duty as it
investigates offensive social media posts by current and former officers. An advocacy group released thousands of Facebook posts and comments by
the officers with racist, violent or Islamophobic themes, among
other offensive material.
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."
"In the overwhelming majority of police killings, of which there are more than one thousand every year, no officer is ever charged. In the few cases where charges are brought, most are found not guilty. The Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to convict a police officer for murder stating that an officer is permitted to use deadly force as long as he or she believes that either they or others are in danger."
COP MURDERS IN
AMERICA - THOUSANDS SHOT IN THE HEAD.
JUDGES GIVE THE THUG COPS A PASS TO DO IT AGAIN!
A somewhat desperate
suggestion to fix corruption in our law enforcement agencies
No
matter the outcome of the investigations authorized by the new attorney
general, William Barr, and the supposedly ongoing investigation by the DOJ
inspector general, the basic facts cannot be denied. Law enforcement
at the highest levels in this country has proven to be corrupt. The
faith that the American people once placed in the federal justice system has
been lost and may never be regained. The consequence of this
universal distrust is permanent damage to the underlying belief and faith in
the entire system and our country.
The
Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and other domestic intelligence
agencies have once again been shown as political weapons to be used against
political enemies. This is not new. J. Edgar Hoover used
the FBI as his personal investigative tool to keep various members of Congress
in check and prosecute various enemies of his and the presidents he served
during his reign of terror. Robert (Bobby) Kennedy was John F.
Kennedy (the president)'s brother. Could there have been any undue
family influence on how Robert Kennedy carried out his
duties? Strangely, no one at the time in the press seemed to have
had a problem with this relationship. The attorney general and the
DOJ are primarily political tools of the president, who appoints the attorney
general. Why would the president appoint an enemy? But
suddenly this has become page one since it involves Trump and his appointees.
Congressional
oversight of the activities of the DOJ and its subsidiaries is 100%
political. Facts, truth, and the law have nothing to do with how
members of Congress, especially Democrats, carry out their supposed "oversight"
functions. The uproar regarding the Mueller investigation would
never have occurred if Hilary Clinton had been elected president. No
investigation of anything would have been initiated. The attorney
general would have been a friend and supporter of Clinton, just as Holder and
Lynch were friends and supporters of Obama. Why is Trump
different? Because the Democrats hate him for
"stealing" their rightful power and control.
True
oversight of the Department of Justice can be accomplished only by a separate
and distinct investigative unit not under the direct political control of the
Congress.
Much
of the Judicial Branch of the government is highly politicized. One
need only look at the Ninth Circuit in California or the naked overreach of
district judges issuing rulings against this president that have national
implications and effect.
Given
the political history of the judicial system, I still suggest that the
oversight function of the DOJ and its subsidiaries be vested in the Supreme
Court as the least of all evils. I recognize the dangers inherent in
giving nine unelected judges such power. But history has shown that
the present procedures are seriously flawed. Trusting elected
political animals, whose existence depends on the whims of the mobs to which
they cater, to behave in a rational, logical, and lawful manner is like asking
elephants to walk a tightrope.
A
separate Supreme Court–monitoring unit whose function would be akin to the
existing inspector general's office of the various agencies with an independent
I.G. in each organization reporting to the Court might make more
sense. Another option would be a monitoring unit funded and
populated by the states.
Both
of these suggestions would be akin to the Civilian Review Boards that exist in
many cities to monitor the actions of local police
departments. Members of such commissions or boards could be drawn
from the wide spectrum of civic-minded civilian occupations, not just judges or
law enforcement people. The tasks would be so great as to negate the
possibility of volunteer members. This would call for full-time
dedicated, honest citizens. Where are Diogenes and his lamp when so
desperately needed?
Certainly,
a lot of thought and honest evaluation would have to be given to the exact
development, function, makeup, and legality of any such board, but I submit
that something must be done to rectify the dangerous situation that now
exists. Neither Congress nor the president will ever agree to this
type of monitoring, which would mean giving up some of their political
grandstanding activities in front of the TV cameras. But what is to
stop the Court from instituting a parallel monitoring ability on its
own? Inadequate or no funding from Congress? Where there
is a will, there is a way.
Is
this another item of change to be considered by the so-called Convention of
States?
Can
any republic such as the United States continue to exist when its philosophy of
equal justice for all is built on a foundation of shifting political
sands? From fixing speeding tickets to manufacturing evidence to
spying on citizens, the trust the people have had in law enforcement at all
levels has always been looked upon by the populace with a wink and a
nod. We cannot continue down the path to an equivalent KGB or
Gestapo type of justice system.
The
existence of corrupt law enforcement agencies and individuals is certainly not
unique in history. One needs only to remember the famous quote of
the Roman poet Juvenal: "Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?" ("Who guards from the guards themselves?")
Police:
80 California High School Students Attack Officers, Cause Lockdown
ALANA MASTRANGELO
28 May 20194,403
2:08
Bear Creek High School in Stockton, California, was placed on
lockdown last week after an estimated 80 students attacked police officers who
arrived on campus to detain one student for fighting with school staff.
Stockton
police estimated that about 80 Bear Creek High School students were involved in
a physical altercation with police officers on Friday morning as
the officers were detaining one student for fighting with school staff,
according to Stockton
Record.
Video footage captured the chaotic brawl, which shows
scores of students surrounding the officers in what appears to be an attempt to
stop them from detaining the student. Moments later, one student in the crowd
can be seen throwing a garbage can at the officers while the others jeer and
shout.
Watch below:
Stockton police arrived at the high school on Friday morning to
detain one student who had been reported for fighting with school staff, but
when the student resisted arrest, it spurred around 80 other students to engage
in a physical struggle with officers and school staff members, according to
police.
“During this detention, officers were struck by several students
and a garbage can was thrown at officers and school staff,” said the Stockton
Police Department.
The incident resulted in the Lodi Unified School District
placing the school on lockdown.
“I don’t know what’s going on with
these kids,” said a concerned parent to FOX 40 News, “I don’t know, even with the authority there and they’re still
being too much. It’s scary, it’s dangerous.”
“When you go to school, you’re supposed to respect the authority
that’s trying to keep you safe while you’re here on campus,” added former Bear
Creek High student Kira Elkins.
Stockton police did note, however, that no officers, students or
staff members were injured during the physical altercation, adding that the
student who had been initially detained was cited for resisting arrest.
It remains unclear whether the other students involved will be
charged.
Horrifying
moment Phoenix police point guns at a black family and tell the father they're
'gonna put a f**king cap in your head' after 'his daughter, four, walked out of
a store with a $1 Barbie doll'
·
Chilling
footage from May 29 shows cops surround Dravon Ames and his family
·
They
tell the 22-year-old: 'I'm gonna put a f***ing cap in your f***ing head'
·
His
pregnant fiancée, Iesha Harper, 24, stands by in tears, pleading with officers
and desperately holding onto her two young children as the horror unfolds
·
The
incident is understood to have been sparked by accusations of a $1 theft
·
Two
videos taken by onlookers show the full extent of the shocking encounter
·
In one
clip officers can repeatedly be heard swearing in front of the youngsters
·
One
says: 'You're gonna f***ing get shot' and 'put your f***ing hands
up'
·
The
family is now said to be seeking $10 million in damages from the police
·
Phoenix
police say they are now investigating the incident in which neither Ames or
Harper are thought to have been arrested
This is the horrifying moment Phoenix police
hold a black family - including a pregnant woman and her two little girls - at
gunpoint after their four-year-old daughter is said to have walked out of a
store with a $1 doll.
Chilling footage from May 29 shows cops, some
with guns drawn, telling 22-year-old Dravon Ames: 'I'm gonna put a f***ing cap
in your f***ing head' as they surround him and his loved ones.
His pregnant fiancée, Iesha Harper, 24,
stands by in tears, pleading with officers and desperately holding onto her two
young children as the horror unfolds.
She cries: 'I can't put my hands up, I have a
baby. I'm pregnant.'
The incident is understood to have been
sparked by accusations one of their young girls walked out of a dollar store
with a $1 doll.
Two videos taken by onlookers show the full
extent of the encounter between the young family and cops.
In one clip officers can repeatedly be heard
swearing in front of the youngsters, telling their parents to 'put your f***ing
hands up' . One can be heard saying: 'You're gonna f***ing get shot.'
Ames frantically tells them: 'My hands are
up. My hands are up.'
In a lawsuit they claim police 'grabbed the
mother and the baby around both of their necks, and tried to take the baby out
of the mother's hand'. It adds: 'Island [the couple's 1-year-old child] has
been having nightmares and wetting her bed, which she has not done before this
incident.'
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As Ames is held against a police car his
partner desperately tells police she is unable to lift her arms as she is
carrying her one-year-old baby. At least one child can be heard crying as they
are taken to safety by witnesses.
The officer screams: 'If I tell you to do
something you f***ing do it.'
Ames replies: 'Yes, sir.'
In the second clip onlookers call out to ask
to take the children away to avoid them from seeing their parents being detained.
The family is now said to be seeking $10
million in damages from the police with former Arizona Attorney General Tom
Horne representing them.
Ames
told The Phoenix New Times: 'We're thinking we're gonna get shot cause
he kept threatening, "I'm gonna shoot you in the face". We were so
scared.'
It is understood the parents had just pulled
into the parking lot to leave their children with a babysitter when their car
was surrounded.
Ames said: 'A police officer, we don't know
who he is, a guy, random guy came up to the door banging on the window with a
gun, says he's going to shoot us in our face, telling us to get out of the car.
He hasn't alerted us that we're being pulled over anything.
'If you look at the video pretty good I'm
snatched out the car and I fly back and that's when he grabs me out the car. My
hands were up the whole time.'
Neither Ames or Harper are thought
to have been arrested.
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·
Their claim states: 'The police officers
committed battery, unlawful imprisonment, false arrest, infliction of emotional
distress, and violation of civil rights under the fifth and 14th amendments of
the United States Constitution.
'The first officer grabbed the mother and the
baby around both of their necks, and tried to take the baby out of the mother's
hand. He told her to put the baby on the ground, which she was unwilling to do
because the baby could not walk, and the ground consisted of hot pavement.
'The first officer pulled the baby by the arm
to get her away from the mother, which injured the arm, in a condition known as
'dead arm.' Island [the couple's 1-year-old child] has been having nightmares
and wetting her bed, which she has not done before this incident.'
Arizona senator MartÃn Quezada has condemned
the footage on Twitter, writing: 'This is everything that's wrong with
#LawEnforcement today. My #LD29 #Maryvale community deserves better than this
type of inexcusable and unjustifiable rage and abuse of power from the
@phoenixpolice.'
Phoenix police say they are now investigating
the incident.
They told KNXV-TV the officer who
swore is on a 'non-enforcement assignment.' The other officer who drew his
gun is understood to still be on patrol.
Police murder in Memphis
The brutal
murder on Wednesday of 20-year-old Brandon Webber by US federal marshals is the
latest eruption of police violence in a country where youth and workers are
gunned down on the streets by uniformed killers with numbing regularity.
Webber, the father of three and a student at the University of
Memphis, was, according to eyewitnesses, shot up to 20 times after he had been
handcuffed and subdued by marshals who had come to his home to serve felony
arrest warrants. Webber, an African American, was the third victim of homicidal
police violence in Memphis so far this year.
Just two days before, in the far northeastern corner of Tennessee,
a young white man was killed by police in a strikingly similar manner. Police
went to the home of Terry Frost, 32, in rural Sullivan County to serve him with
an arrest warrant. As with Webber, police claim that Frost used his vehicle as
a weapon as he attempted to escape. Sheriff’s deputies opened fire and killed
him.
Between the killing of Frost on Monday and that of Webber on
Wednesday, it was announced Tuesday that the Memphis police officer videotaped
last year killing unarmed Terrance Carlton, 25, as he lay on the ground in a
fetal position, will face no criminal charges.
On Wednesday evening, heavily armed Memphis riot police attacked
several hundred angry residents of the Frayser neighborhood where Webber was
killed, firing tear gas into the faces of unarmed youth and workers. Three
people were arrested, including one who was charged with inciting a riot.
The media emphasized the claims of the authorities that 25
police officers were injured, none seriously, by rocks and bottles thrown by
protesters. Mayor Jim Strickland, a Democrat, told a local television station
that a “violent response” to any police shooting was “absolutely unacceptable
and will not be tolerated.”
Every year in America, some 1,000 people, overwhelmingly working
class, are killed by police. According to a database compiled by the Washington Post, Webber’s
death is the 406th police killing so far in 2019.
It is just short of five years since the police chokehold
killing of Eric Garner in New York and the shooting death of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri sparked a wave of protests across the country. But in the
subsequent years, the toll of police killings has only risen.
The conditions in Memphis, a city of 650,000 people, and
particularly in the Frayser neighborhood, exemplify the underlying economic and
social conditions behind the reign of police violence in working class
communities throughout the United States. In 2011, the Census Bureau declared
Memphis “the poorest big city in America.” Median household income in the city is
$38,826, and the poverty rate is 26.9 percent.
In Frayser, the poorest neighborhood in Memphis, the
corresponding figures are $31,065 and 44.8 percent.
Like scores of US cities, Memphis was hit by factory closures in
the 1970s and 1980s, leaving communities such as Frayser economically
devastated, with nothing but the toxic waste left behind by shuttered plants to
serve as a reminder of vanished jobs.
Police violence is an expression of the acute class
contradictions that permeate a society dominated, behind the increasingly
tattered trappings of democracy, by a wealthy and criminal corporate-financial
oligarchy. The police serve as a front line of state repression in a country
where the richest three billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 175 million
Americans combined, and where the entire political establishment and both of
its major parties are focused on propping up the stock market by pumping
trillions more into Wall Street, paid for by slashing jobs, wages, pensions,
health care and education.
A quarter-century of endless war abroad, waged to protect the
global interests of the oligarchs, has its domestic counterpart in the
militarization of the police. Billions of dollars’ worth of military
hardware—tanks, helicopters, armored vehicles, drones—has been handed over to
state and local police departments in recent decades. Like the redistribution
of wealth from the bottom to the top of society, the process has been presided
over by Democrats no less than Republicans.
The Trump administration has formally adopted a policy of
preparing for war against America’s “great power” competitors, beginning with
China and Russia. The strategists of this policy speak of “total war,”
involving centrally the militarization of the home front and suppression of social
and political opposition. Hence Trump’s open encouragement of the police to
“get tough” and his setting up of concentration camps for immigrants. The
Democrats remain virtually silent on the persecution of immigrants, while
overwhelmingly voting for massive increases in Pentagon spending.
With the police killing in Memphis and the eruption of protests,
the purveyors of racial politics are once again seeking to obscure the
fundamental class questions underlying police brutality and present the issue
as purely a racial matter. Pamela Moses, founder of Memphis Black Lives Matter
and a candidate for mayor, told Time magazine
that police “are supposed to be trained to apprehend without deadly force, but
when it comes to us, we always have to die.”
As a matter of fact, more whites are killed by police than
blacks, although the latter, along with Hispanics, are killed at a
disproportionate rate. According to the Washington
Post list, of the 181 police killings so far this year in
which the race of the deceased is known, 82 were white, 52 were black and 44
Hispanic. Astonishingly, police killings have taken place in 46 of the 50
states, including in such largely rural, sparsely populated and overwhelmingly
white states such as Vermont and Wyoming. What the vast majority of victims of
police violence have in common is not their race, but that they are working
class.
While racism no doubt plays a role in police attacks on
minorities, the basic reason that blacks and Hispanics are so frequently
victimized is that they make up a disproportionate percentage of the most
impoverished and oppressed sections of the working class. With few exceptions,
it is not wealthy blacks and Hispanics who are subjected to police terror.
The role of racial and other forms of identity politics is to
divert attention from the real source of police violence and repression, as
well as poverty, inequality and war, i.e., the capitalist system. Politically,
it serves to divide the working class and channel social opposition behind the
Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street, the military-intelligence complex and
privileged sections of the upper-middle class.
It was the African American, Democratic President Barack Obama
who expanded the program of military arms to the police and repeatedly intervened
on the side of the police when challenged in court for illegal and
unconstitutional violations of civil liberties. Under Obama’s watch, with only
the rarest exceptions, killer cops got away with murder without even being
charged. Trump bases his naked support for police violence on the foundations
laid down by his predecessor.
The police are part of what Engels called the “special bodies of
armed men” that comprise the capitalist state. They cannot be reformed by
adding more minorities or more civilian oversight. The state is not a neutral
body. It is the repressive arm of the ruling class.
Under conditions of mounting economic, social and political
crisis of the capitalist system in the US and internationally, and a growing
movement of the American and world working class against social inequality, the
ruling elite in the US and every other country is turning more and more openly
to dictatorial forms of rule.
Youth and workers who want to fight against the plague of police
violence and murder must turn to the growing movement of workers of all races
and nationalities—to the teachers, health care workers, industrial workers who
are striking in the greatest numbers in decades—and fight to unite them on the
basis of a struggle for genuine equality and democracy under socialism.
+7
·
+7
·
In a statement on their Facebook page police
wrote: 'On June 11, 2019, we were provided video of an officer taking two
individuals into custody while investigating a shoplifting incident in the area
of 3200 East Roosevelt Street.
'This occurred after the suspect vehicle was
stopped a short distance from the scene of the theft. It involved a man and a
woman with two small children. Please be advised, there is some language which
might be considered offensive. The video is intentionally blurred for redaction
purposes.
'The Phoenix Police Department takes all
allegations of misconduct seriously and for this reason, this incident is
currently being investigated by the Professional Standards Bureau.'
DailyMail.com has contacted Phoenix police
for comment.
Behind the epidemic of police killings in America:
Class, poverty and race
Part two
Income and poverty
According to the US Census Bureau, 328 million people reside in
the United States. Non-Hispanic whites make up 60.7 percent, black or African
American 13.4 percent, and Hispanics or Latino 18.1 percent of the population.
The annual median household income (MHI) in 2016 dollars amounts to $55,322 and
the percentage of the population living in poverty stands at 12.3 percent.
There is wide variation in these figures from state to state. Table 2 below
highlights these facts. The table also demonstrates a broadly uniform
phenomenon: the areas in which police killings occurred—either the cities and
towns, or in the case of rural districts, the counties—almost always have lower
median household incomes and more people living in poverty than the statewide
average.
In 2017, according to the Washington Post, 987 people were shot and
killed by the police. Overwhelmingly, men constituted 95.2 percent of those
killed. Racial demographics included 475 white non-Hispanic victims (48.2
percent), 231 black victims (23.4 percent) and 209 Hispanic victims (21.2
percent). Twenty-five Native Americans made up 2.5 percent of those killed
though they constitute only 1.3 percent of the population. On the other hand, 19
Asians represented 1.9 percent of those killed though they constitute 5.8
percent of the US population.
Twenty-six people (after the data was cross-referenced with
KilledbyPolice.net and news sources) had an unknown race assigned. They made up
2.6 percent of those killed by police.
When this data is standardized to the number killed per 100,000,
whites were killed at 0.237 per 100k, blacks at 0.530 per 100k and Hispanics at
0.358 per 100k. The ratio of black death rate to white death rate stands at
2.24 and the ratio of Hispanic death rate to whites death rate at 1.51. This
data is consistent with the published literature and often quoted to support
the racialist perspective.
The police killing zone: USA−
However, when we calculated the demographics only for the
regions in which a police killing occurred, there was a significant shift in
both the demographics and socioeconomic status of this new population. We used
the suffix minus (−) to denote the narrower region where a killing occurred.
Illinois− would mean only those cities and rural counties in Illinois where
police killed civilians. USA− includes only the cities and rural counties
throughout the country in which a police killing occurred.
The region designated USA− accounts for 91,526,100 people. In other
words, slightly more than one-quarter of the US population lives in a city or
county where a police killing took place, and conversely, just under
three-quarters live in cities or counties that were free of such killings.
The population of USA− has significantly different demographics
from the USA as a whole. Non-Hispanic whites made up 44.5 percent, blacks 18.6
percent and Hispanics 26.7 percent of this region. The median household income
is slightly lower at $52,218 per annum, and the percentage in poverty (PP) is
much higher, at 19.5 percent.
If one compares the poverty rate of USA− to the poverty rate of
the remaining nearly three-quarters of the country, where no police killings
took place, the disparity is even more stark. The poverty rate is 19.5 percent
in what might be called the police killing zone. It is only 9.5 percent, less
than half that rate, in the rest of the country.
While poverty becomes a much more salient factor when
considering just USA−, the opposite is true for race. In USA−, non-Hispanic
whites experienced 1.169 deaths per 100,000, blacks 1.357 per 100,000 and
Hispanics 0.856 per 100,000. The ratio of the black death rate to the white
death rate was cut nearly in half, to 1.16, and the Hispanic to white ratio
declined by more than half, to 0.73. Though blacks continued to be killed at a
higher rate than whites, the differences between them became less profound.
Comparing observed to expected, based upon the population living in USA−, 38
more whites (8.6 percent) were killed than expected, 47 more blacks (25.6
percent) were killed than expected but 67 fewer Hispanics (25.5 percent) were
killed than expected.
When looking at economic data by race, in USA−, regions where
white non-Hispanics were killed, the mean household income was $46,720 and 17.6
percent of the population was living in poverty, for blacks the figures were
$47,010 and 20.3 percent, and for Hispanics, $50,070 and 19.1 percent.
Urban and rural differences
Only eighty-two black individuals (35.5 percent of all blacks killed
by police) died in rural areas with populations of less than 100,000, excluding
suburbs. These represented 8.3 percent of all people killed by police in 2017.
The median household income in these regions is $41,661, and the proportion
living in poverty stands at 20.9 percent.
Forty-five percent of all blacks killed by police were killed in
large urban areas with populations of more than 300,000 (including the suburbs)
while 20 percent were killed in smaller urban centers between 100,000 and
300,000, for a combined total of 65 percent of all blacks being killed in urban
centers. The median household income and proportion in poverty in the urban
centers where blacks were killed were $48,088 and 20.8 percent, respectively.
Only seventeen black people were killed in suburbs (7.4 percent of all blacks
and 1.7 percent of all people killed by police) where the median household
income and proportion in poverty stand at $67,178 and 10.5 percent,
respectively.
In contrast, out of 478 whites killed by police, 292 (61.7
percent of all whites killed and 29.6 percent of the people killed by police)
were killed in rural areas with less than 100,000 population. The median
household income and proportion living in poverty were $42,213 and 18.0
percent, respectively.
This figure is worth pondering. The number of whites killed by
police in rural areas, 292, is just about exactly twice the number of blacks
killed by police in urban areas, 149. But these white victims of police
violence are almost invisible when it comes to reporting in the
corporate-controlled media, speeches by Democratic Party politicians, or
commentary by the pseudo-left groups. Moreover, the income and poverty rates in
the two areas are comparable: both white and black victims of police violence
live in lower-income working-class areas characterized by much higher than
average poverty rates.
There were 124 (25.9 percent of whites killed) in population
centers (excluding suburbs) with more than 100,000. Of these, 66 whites (13.8
percent of whites killed by police and 6.7 percent of all victims) died in
large urban centers with more than 300,000 population. The median household
income and proportion in poverty were $48,675 and 18.5 percent, respectively.
Sixty white people were killed in suburbs, accounting for 12.5 percent of
whites killed. These regions have a median household income and proportion in
poverty of $69,082 and 8.0 percent, respectively.
The demographics of Hispanics killed by police were closer to
those of blacks than whites, in that more were killed in larger urban centers.
Rural areas accounted for 40.9 percent of Hispanics killed by police (8.6
percent of all victims) while 59.1 percent of Hispanics (12.5 percent of all
victims) were killed in urban centers, including the suburbs and metro areas.
The most dangerous area: rural America
Metropolitan centers denote urban centers with more than one
million people. There were ten such centers in which 76 people were killed.
This region contributed 28.4 percent of USA− but accounted for only 7.7 percent
of those killed. Blacks and Hispanics accounted for 35.5 percent each to those
killed while whites were only 27.2 percent. Blacks were over-represented in
metropolitan centers, at almost twice their proportion in the population.
Large cities included urban centers between 300,000 to one
million people. There were 152 people killed in 46 cities and large suburbs.
This region accounted for 27.4 percent of USA− but contributed to 15.4 percent
of those killed. Blacks again were over-represented in these regions at nearly
twice the expected rate, comprising 40.1 percent of those killed.
Population centers with more than 100,000 people but less than
300,000 included many small cities and exurbs. In these regions, 171 people
were killed. Combined, they contributed 22.7 percent of USA- and contributed to
17.3 percent of those killed. The rate of whites killed rose while that for
blacks declined to a level more consistent with their population in these
regions though blacks continued to be over-represented.
Together these urban centers accounted for 399 killed, making up
40.4 percent of those killed by police in 2017. These areas, however,
represented 78.5 percent of the population in USA−, the combined regions where
police killings occurred. By contrast, the rural regions, which encompassed 463
small and medium towns, including counties with less than 100,000 people,
accounted for only 16.8 percent of USA−. However, they accounted for 50.2
percent of the people killed by police, a remarkable 496 victims.
By comparison to urban centers where death rates are on the
order of magnitude less than one killed per 100,000 people, medium-sized cities
had a rate for whites of 1.946, blacks 3.564 and Hispanics of 2.259. In small
towns and rural areas, these rates climbed to a staggering 12.016 per 100,000
for whites, 15.703 for blacks and 11.755 for Hispanics.
2018 begins with US police
reign of terror
While largely ignored by the mass media, the reign of terror by
police officers continues to rage across the United States. The entire state
apparatus, from local cops to immigration agents, has been unleashed by the
Trump administration to beat, maim and kill with impunity.
During a speech to hundreds of uniformed officers last July, Trump
urged the police to not be “too nice” and to treat detainees “rough.” The
Justice Department has at the same time ended the toothless pretense of federal
oversight over a handful of police departments put in place by the Obama
administration.
In the year since Trump was sworn in as president, at least 1,223
people have been killed by police. Since the beginning of 2018, according to
killedbypolice.net, 3.5 people have been killed on average every day.
A Washington Post database
reports 78 fatal police shootings so far this year. As in previous years, the
figures show that police killings impact every race and ethnicity, with whites
comprising the largest share of victims, while African Americans are killed at
a rate higher than their overall percentage of the population. In those cases where
race or ethnicity has been identified by the Post, 54 percent of
victims were white, 25 percent African American, 15 percent Hispanic, 3 percent
Asian and 2 percent Native American.
Among the most recent victims is Donte Shannon, a 26-year-old
African American man who was killed by police in Racine, Wisconsin on January
17 after fleeing a traffic stop. According to the police account, Shannon’s
initial crime was not having a front license plate on his vehicle. Officials
claim the police were forced to unleash a hail of bullets after Shannon pointed
a gun at them, though investigators have not reported finding a weapon at the
scene.
On the same day, a deputy in Columbus, Ohio shot and killed
16-year-old Joseph Haynes, a white youth, during an altercation after a court
hearing. Haynes, who was unarmed, was thrown to the ground and shot once in the
abdomen after he confronted a deputy for pushing his mother up against a wall.
In addition to those killed, workers and youth are subjected to
police harassment and brutality on a daily basis.
Earlier this month, Louisiana teacher Deyshia Hargrave was removed
from a school board meeting and handcuffed by a deputy marshal after she raised
questions about school officials awarding themselves raises while denying them
to teachers and staff. Former coal miner Gary Michael Hunt was choked by a
police officer and removed from a public meeting after demanding clean water
for the residents of Martin County, Kentucky.
Not even children are spared, as shown by a report Sunday that a
7-year-old child in Miami, Florida was led away from his school in handcuffs
after an altercation with a teacher last week.
The issue of police killings and brutality erupted into national
and international prominence with the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014
and the militarized police response to protests. Popular anger over police
violence has not gone away. However, over the past three and a half years there
has been a systematic effort to smother opposition and channel it behind the Democratic
Party.
A critical role has been played by Black Lives Matter (BLM), which
was developed and promoted to push the false claim that police violence is a
racial rather than a class issue. Along with the various other organizations
that promote and support the Democratic Party, BLM sought to cover up the
relationship between police violence and the nature of the capitalist state as
an instrument of class repression. BLM pushed for various reforms, including
body cameras, oversight boards and more minority police officers, as the
supposed solution to police violence.
In 2016, the main leaders of BLM threw their support behind
Hillary Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and the
military-intelligence apparatus. During the election season, the Ford Foundation
announced that it would funnel $100 million to a panoply of organizations
associated with the BLM movement. This was followed by the announcement of an
initiative by BLM to promote “black capitalism,” including the introduction of
a Black Lives Matter debit card.
The Democratic Party is fully complicit in the epidemic of police
violence. The Obama administration presided over the continued militarization
of police forces while ensuring that nothing was done to prosecute officers who
perpetrated violence.
Since the election of Trump, the Democrats have entirely ignored
the ongoing wave of police killings. They have worked to suppress and divert
all manifestations of social opposition to the Trump administration behind a
reactionary and militarist agenda of aggression against Russia, a further
redistribution of wealth to the rich, and the destruction of democratic rights.
A significant factor in the efforts to censor the Internet,
spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is concern that police killings and abuse
videotaped on smartphones have become national and international issues through
distribution on social media platforms. Facebook is now changing its newsfeed
to limit the reach of content from news sources outside the so-called
“mainstream,” with the aim of preventing the expression and propagation of
opposition to police violence and social inequality.
Opposition to police violence within the United States cannot be
separated from opposition to war, social inequality and the capitalist system.
With wealth concentration rising to levels without historic precedent, the
ruling elite relies on the police to enforce inequality.
And as the Pentagon prepares to wage war abroad on an
unprecedented scale, the ruling class is preparing for war at home. The concept
of “Total Army” has been coined to embrace the innumerable and growing
connections between the police, border patrol, immigration agents and the
military—a single apparatus of war and repression.
The ruling class is well aware that it faces its greatest danger
within the United States, in the form of the growth of working-class struggle
and the development of a mass movement against capitalism. It is only through
the building of such a political movement that the reign of police violence can
be ended.
Niles Niemuth
COP MURDERS IN
AMERICA - THOUSANDS SHOT IN THE HEAD.
JUDGES GIVE THE THUG COPS A PASS TO DO IT AGAIN!
Police kill over a thousand
for fourth year in a row
For the fourth year
in a row, police killed over a thousand people in the United States in one
year. The four-year bloodbath is a stern warning to the working class in
America and across the world. Social inequality is reaching unprecedented
levels. Three billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom half of the
population of the United States. The killings of thousands by police in the span
of few years is an indication of the ruling elite’s fear and hatred of the vast
working class majority.
As of this writing,
killedbypolice.net reports police killed 1,164 people in 2017. With a few days
left in the year, the death count will likely increase, marking 2017 as second
deadliest year since 2013, when the web site began tabulating the figures. Last
year’s count stands at 1,165.
Other police killing aggregators show similar totals. Mapping
Police Violence places the count at 1,049. The Washington Post, which only tracks police
shootings as opposed to other forms of police killings, by means of tasering,
beatings and the like, places the count at 952 as of December 25.
Murder by police is
effectively legal. Police officers can kill anyone, as long as they claim some
kind of perceived threat, whether real or not. Hundreds, many of whom are
unarmed, are murdered by officers who will never face a trial. According to
Mapping Police Violence, in 2015, under the Obama presidency, 99 percent of all
police killings did not result in any police officer being convicted of a crime
by the so-called justice system. The capitalist state shoots and kills with one
hand and washes the blood off with the other.
In November, released
video footage showed an unarmed Daniel Shaver murdered by an Arizona police
officer after begging for his life on his knees. The officer was acquitted of
all charges after claiming he feared for his life. In September, St. Louis
police officer Jason Stockley was acquitted of murder for the 2011 killing of
Anthony Lamar Smith. After shooting Smith six times from close range, Stockley
planted a gun on Smith’s dead body. Stockley’s fingerprints were later found on
the gun.
Following the
verdict, protests erupted in St. Louis. St. Louis police responded, dressed in
riot gear, illegally “kettling” protesters and arresting many all the while
shouting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
The protests were
largely organized by Black Lives Matters (BLM) and pseudo-left groups such as
the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist Alternative, who
sought to portray the killing by Stockley as an act solely due to racism.
Slogans such as “white silence is violence” were heard during the protests.
Three years earlier, in the aftermath of the killing of Michael
Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, pseudo-left groups
put forth the same narrative: the fundamental cause of police violence is
racism. Often cited to bolster this argument is the fact that blacks are killed
in disproportionately higher numbers compared to whites. According to the Washington Post,
African-Americans comprised a quarter of all police killings in 2017. This
clearly suggests that racism is an element in police killings, but these
statistics only reveal part of the picture. The victims of police killings
include all races and ethnicities. As any good doctor will point out, one must
not confuse a symptom for the disease, and the disease is class oppression,
claiming the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class.
The police, along
with the state machine as a whole, exist as an instrument in the irreconcilable
conflict between the ruling class and the working class. The police are not
neutral actors who can be pressured to act in a certain way. They serve the
interests of the capitalist class, and carry out its orders. The thousands that
lay dead at the hands of the police, regardless of skin color and gender, come
almost entirely from the ranks of the working class. Police roam working class
and poor neighborhoods hunting perpetrators of petty crimes. If you are stopped
by the police, you are de facto guilty. If you fidget or do not follow a
command directly, you may very well be shot and die. Whatever part racism plays
in these murders, it is ultimately secondary to that of class.
American society is
divided by massive inequality, intensified by decades of social
counterrevolution. Social tension is palpable, with most working people
increasingly angry and moving to the left. There is deep concern within the
ruling class that social explosions of revolutionary dimensions are on the
horizon. Preparing for such events, police more and more act as an occupying
force, carrying the same weapons used overseas in occupied countries by the
United States. In 1989, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act.
It has made possible the transfer of $5.4 billion worth of military gear to
police departments across the United States. A report published by the US
Department of Justice in 2015 states that local police departments swelled to
477,000 full-time personnel in 2013, a 35 percent increase since 1987. This
three-decade period coincides with a drastic decline in crime, while the forces
of “law and order” have been swelled and armed to the teeth.
History demonstrates
the real role of the police. In 1937, for example, Chicago police shot and
killed 10 striking workers during the Little Steel Strike. During the Detroit
Rebellion of 1967, police were given order to ‘shoot to kill,’ claiming 16
victims. In some of the other social explosions of the mid- and late 1960s, the
death toll at the hands of the police was even greater.
Under the Trump
presidency, the police will operate more openly and ruthlessly. Police violence
will grow, accompanied by increased attacks on democratic rights. Social and
political opposition will be met with brutal violence, directed not only
against individuals but also mass struggles.
The efforts of the
proponents of identity politics to place the blame of police violence on racism
effectively denies the role of the state and its class character. This serves
to create divisions within the working class along ethnic and racial lines. It
leads to the counterproductive and reactionary conclusion that the police can
be reformed by increasing the number of minority officers, or through such
techniques as community policing, racial-sensitivity training and similar
nostrums.
Court quashes subpoena of
reporter who uncovered Chicago police murder coverup
By George
Marlowe
On December 13, a Cook County judge quashed an anti-press subpoena
against independent journalist Jamie Kalven that would have forced him to
disclose his confidential sources in court. Kalven was the first to bring to
light the coverup of the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014
by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who faces charges of first-degree
murder.
Were it not for Kalven, who works with the independent news
organization Invisible Institute, there would have been no exposure of the police
murder of McDonald and the subsequent coverup by the Chicago Police Department
(CPD), the Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel and the entire political
establishment.
Kalven wrote an explosive article
in Slate in
2015 entitled “Sixteen Shots” that shattered the official fake news
and coverup—promoted by the CPD, the Emanuel administration and the media. In
the article, Kalven revealed that McDonald had been shot sixteen times across
his entire body, according to the autopsy report he had obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act request.
He also cited an unnamed witness who contradicted the entire official
police narrative, which claimed that the teenager was lunging at a police
officer with a knife while under the influence drugs. The witness stated
instead that McDonald was “shying away” from the police officer when he was
shot multiple times. Finally, Kalven revealed that there was a police
dashboard-camera video documenting the entire incident, which he learned from
an unnamed source.
The subpoena—issued by Van Dyke’s lawyers in an attempt to delay
his trial—threatened to undermine basic democratic rights afforded to reporters
under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Such rights include a
reporter’s constitutional privilege to be protected from being compelled to
testify about confidential information or sources, critical to reporting freely
on matters of public interest. At the same time, attacks on the press have
steadily increased over the last few decades by multiple administrations,
Democratic and Republican.
Van Dyke’s lead attorney, Daniel Herbert, himself a former police
officer, issued the subpoena against Kalven claiming that his reporting
influenced witnesses—thereby tainting the investigation. Kalven’s lawyers
countered that the witnesses in question had already spoken to law enforcement
prior to Kalven’s discussions with them. In reality, the spurious subpoena
issued by Herbert is part of a counter-offensive to intimidate and threaten
reporters who uncover crimes committed by police officers or other agents of
the state.
In demanding the subpoena, Herbert also accused Kalven of being an
activist, rather than a neutral reporter of the facts. He argued therefore that
Kalven could not make use of his reporter’s privilege to maintain the
confidentiality of his sources. While Kalven certainly has taken a point of
view in his reporting on police brutality for many years, and has been a
partisan for the voices of the poor in Chicago’s south side, he is also a
conscientious and objective reporter.
Kalven’s lawyer highlighted the spuriousness of the assault on his
rights. Compelling Kalven to testify about his sources, they noted, violated
the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act—which forbids courts from forcing
reporters to disclose the source of information they have obtained
(confidential or not), except where no other law can prevent its disclosure,
and all other sources of information have been exhausted.
An amicus curiae brief
filed by the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and
eighteen other media organizations noted, “When a subpoena demands information
about confidential sources, the specter of enforcing that subpoena has a
chilling effect on all future sources who may have valuable information about
matters of public concern, but need an assurance of confidentiality before
sharing it.”
In light of the spuriousness of the charges made by Herbert, Judge
Vincent Gaughan was forced to quash the subpoena. Gaughan, however, maintained
he did so not because of Kalven’s protected status as a reporter, but because
of the inadequacy of the subpoena itself. While the dismissal of the subpoena
was a victory for Kalven’s rights as a reporter, the courts have only
maintained a qualified and limited assertion of a reporter’s privilege.
After months of legal and court battles, the Emanuel
administration released the video of the shooting on a late night in 2014. The
video confirmed what the witnesses and autopsy reports showed. Laquan McDonald,
an impoverished ward of the state, unknown to the public until his untimely
death, was shot sixteen times by Van Dyke as he walked away from the officer.
The first few shots took the teenager down. Van Dyke subsequently shot him
multiple times as smoke emerged from his shaking, dying body.
The video of McDonald finally released in November 2015 engulfed
the Emanuel administration in a full-blown political crisis. Protests ensued
nightly and there were widespread calls for Emanuel to resign for his role in
the cover-up. Instead, the Democratic Party and the political establishment
thereafter began a process of damage control.
Emanuel, who bears chief responsibility for the murder, remains in
office and no high-level political figure has been charged. In December of
2015, Emanuel called for the resignation of Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the
head of the CPD at the time of McDonald’s death. Van Dyke was then indicted on
six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct.
Multiple officers on the scene were involved in a conspiracy to cover up what
happened. The official organs of police oversight, such as the Independent
Police Review Authority, sanctioned the false statements of the officers.
The mainstream press, for their part, uncritically reported what
CPD officials told them, which was that McDonald had lunged at the officer with
a knife. Kalven’s reporting, however, was instrumental in bringing to light the
real circumstances of the murder of McDonald and added to the growing public
outrage against police brutality.
In the wake of the release of the
video, Emanuel also vowed to create a task force for police accountability, in
order to cover up his own tracks. Emails released by the Chicago Tribune later
revealed the entire administration in City Hall was aware of the video and
chose to suppress it. The Justice Department also opened an investigation,
which released its report earlier this year. The report revealed a damning pattern of constitutional
abuses by the CPD. It
detailed a history of police brutality and violence in Chicago, but it only
offered mere palliatives and half-measures.
Despite the reporting by Kalven and widespread outrage against
police brutality in Chicago, there has been no fundamental change in the course
of the CPD and its policies. Far from ushering in an era of “police reform”, as
promised by Emanuel in the wake of release of the video footage of the police
murder of McDonald, police violence and brutality continue unabated, in Chicago
and across the country.
THUG RAPIST COPS SELDOM PROSECUTED…. CORRUPT
JUDGES WANT TO MAINTAIN THE STATUSQUO OF JUDGES, THUG COPS AND LAWYERS ARE ALL
ABOVE THE LAW!
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!
Texas
Border Cop Accused of Sexually Assaulting Illegal Immigrant
10 Jul 2019168
2:24
EDINBURG,
Texas – A police officer from the border town of Progreso is accused of arresting
a migrant and sexually abusing him inside the municipal jail.
On Wednesday afternoon, Hidalgo
County Sheriff’s deputies took 24-year-old Mathew Sepulveda, a police officer
in Progreso, before a local justice of the peace who formally charged him with
one count of sexual assault and one count of violating the civil rights of a
person in custody, jail booking information revealed. The judge set bond at
$225,000. Progreso is immediately north of the border from Nuevo Progreso,
Tamaulipas.
Sepulveda’s
arrest follows a joint investigation between the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s
Office and the FBI. The case was first reported by Dave Hendricks with The Progress Times.
According to the arrest affidavit,
Sepulveda pulled over a vehicle on June 28 and arrested the driver, an adult
male living in the country illegally. At the jail, Sepulveda allegedly told the
man that he had “to do something” or he could not be released. The victim,
fearing deportation, went with the officer to an adjacent room where Sepulveda
allegedly performed oral sex on him. When the victim’s relatives arrived at the
police station to pay any citation needed for his release, the officer told the
man that he was free to go. The victim and his family called the sheriff’s
office to report the sexual assault.
According to information provided to
Breitbart News by the sheriff’s office, investigators began an “official
oppression” investigation at the Progreso Police station and asked the FBI for
assistance.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart
Border/Cartel Chronicles. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon
Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and
on Facebook. He can be
contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of
Breitbart Border/Cartel Chronicles. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project
with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be
contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
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