Police Abuse

I seem to remember we had a revolution over this kind of bullshit.  I'd quote the disturbing bits, but the whole article is disturbing.  Thank god I don't live there.  Used to be, someone who taunted and abused someone else for no real reason until the abuse provoked a violent response was called a bully.  Now, it seems Seattle calls them ACT officers.

In Minsk, police stopped drivers on a major highway (video) and used them, with the drivers still in the cars, as a roadblock to stop a drunk driver.  In Washington, a man suspected of drunken driving was held down kicking and screaming to draw a blood sample, then forcibly catheterized to obtain a urine sample.  

Zendo Deb brings us another sad story of abuse.  This time there's video.  Surprised a cop would be stupid enough to abuse someone while being recorded?  Don't be -- the abuse itself wasn't recorded.  After the woman comments that she is glad the interaction is being videotaped, the officer turns off the videotape.  When it is turned back on, she's lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, having "tripped and fell".  Her "fall" resulted in two black eyes, facial lacerations, broken teeth, and a broken nose.

She suggests:

Everything police do all the time they are on duty or doing anything remotely official has to be video recorded. If for any reason, that video tape is NOT available when a citizen is injured, that is prima facie evidence that they are guilty of whatever the citizen accuses them of. I don't care if the recorder blew up, caught fire, or the K-9 unit ate their homework video recorder.

I've thought of that myself.  I'm all in favor.

Imagine walking out of your house and seeing a flock of police cars filling the street.  Suppose you're a photographer, and you snap a few photos - or maybe you just want a quick image to send to your friends - "look what happened on my street today!"  Then imagine you get arrested for it.

This is not some fantasy of life in a police state; it happened to Neftaly Cruz, a Philadelphia resident:

"They threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of a investigation. ? They said, 'You were impeding this investigation.' (I asked,) "By doing what?' (The officer said,) 'By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone,'" Cruz said.

The police later denied telling Cruz that he was breaking the law by using his cellphone.  If that's true, why was he arrested in the first place?  Cruz was later released without being charged - unsuprising as they had nothing with which to charge him.

Be wary, citizens, lest the police swat you like an annoying fly for having the gall to watch them while they do their job on a public street.

The use of SWAT teams on relatively normal police work has been growing dramatically in the US for at least two decades.  This is undeniably a bad thing.  Normal police officers work to control crime, focusing on obtaining evidence and working through the judicial branch -- with all appropriate presumption of innocence and legal recourse.  However, if the government sends a SWAT team after you, it's a good bet you will end up dead before you see the inside of a courtroom.  That renders your legal protections somewhat irrelevant.

"These elite units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it, they enjoy it," he says.

"The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join - even if policing as a profession can - and should - be boring for much of the time.

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

To put it bluntly, SWAT teams are the tool of a police state.

But you can judge for yourself.

SaysUncle has a story about Knoxville claiming the police accessories previously given to retiring officers.  He's concerned about the gun question -- ie, should those guns already given away be confiscated from the officers to whom they were given (apparantly without authority)?

But the story contains this quote:

To accommodate that decision, Owen ordered all retired officers to sign a form this year agreeing that the uniforms, police badge, police identification card and weapon they were given upon retirement belonged to the city.

Forget the weapon, which is clearly useful for self-defense.  What possible personal use is there for a uniform, police badge, and police identification card... aside from impersonating a police officer?  Not that "badge control" could ever possibly work, but I've got to wonder how many retired police officers get out of speeding tickets by flashing their expired credentials.

... but then, I'm not a minority.  Apparantly for those who are minorities and who have frequent contacts with the police, it's not such a nice place.  I can't say I'm surprised, since our local prosecutor is a Democrat apparantly more interested in proving that you really CAN indict a ham sandwich charging politicians with paperwork crimes than investigating police misconduct and obstruction of justice in a potential murder case.  The Austin-American Statesman has more.

Crystal Rivera had no idea she was on the front lines of New York City's battle to plug a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. But after the pregnant woman received a $50 fine recently for sitting on subway steps, she got the picture in a hurry. The police officer who cited her for briefly blocking a stairwell didn't seem to care that she was exhausted and reluctant to sit on a filthy subway bench, Rivera recalled. After a futile protest, the 18-year-old Brooklyn student joined the ranks of others here who have been fined for equally bizarre violations - and are angrily protesting them.

Saying ''there is a doozy of a problem here,'' Allentown Councilwoman Gail Hoover expressed outrage Sunday over the shooting of three dogs, two fatally, by constables serving a warrant on a man who had not paid parking ticket fines. ''These were parking violations,'' Hoover said Sunday. ''This was not Charles Manson who got out and we had to capture. This is a guy who didn't move his car so the street cleaner could get through.''

It began one afternoon early last year, when two Seattle police officers rushed into a West Seattle apartment, looking for young men who had just beaten up a man on the street. Instead the officers found Princess, an 18-month-old American Staffordshire terrier, which, they said, charged at them. They shot the animal dead. An internal departmental review later said they were justified.

Police videotape showed the suspect finally getting out of his car and pointing a shiny chrome object in what police took to be a shooter's stance. Shots were fired, and 25-year-old Marquise Hudspeth was killed; shot eight times in the back. The object in Hudspeth's hand turned out to be a cell phone. And after a local investigation, all officers involved with the shooting came out with clean slates.

Gee, carrying a cell phone is enough to get you shot, now?

As he tells it, Jesse Taveras, 19, stepped out for a breather from the hair-braiding salon where he works and sat down on a plastic milk crate that happened to be sitting on the sidewalk. A New York City police officer on the Grand Concourse, a main boulevard in the borough of the Bronx, walked up to Taveras and wrote him a ticket citing him for "unauthorized use of a milk crate."

Homeless advocates are outraged by an operation where undercover police officers dressed as vagrants, observed drivers running red lights or committing other traffic violations, then radioed ahead to other officers who stopped those cars and wrote tickets. "Operation Vagrant," a sting operation involving the Florida Highway Patrol, Kissimmee police and the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, nabbed 171 drivers ý most of whom ran red lights, a violation that carries an $83 fine.

There's a reason for the uniform -- it's so we know who is a legitimate police officer. Any police officer operating in disguise is questionable; doing so for a purpose as trivial as catching people who run red lights for an $83 fine is frankly a complete waste of time.

A scientist identified as "a person of interest" in the investigation of the deadly anthrax (search) attacks was slightly injured in a traffic incident involving a federal agent who was following him. Dr. Steven J. Hatfill (search) suffered a bruised foot and abrasions after the incident Saturday but wound up getting a ticket for "walking to create hazard" that carries a $5 fine, according to a copy of the citation provided Monday by Washington police.

The "accident" occurred when Hatfill tried to take a picture of the person trailing him. That person, presumably an FBI agent, drove away... hitting Hatfill in the process.

That's what normal people call a "hit and run", and they get arrested for it. Instead, Hatfill was ticketed for jaywalking.

Obviously, I don't know whether Hatfill is guilty on the anthrax matter. But this is a clearcut case of different rules for them then for us.

t's one of those cases where it clearly looks like a Whack & Stack on the surface, but doesn't quite fit the definition. Even though a 57-year-old woman with a heart condition died after police conducted a paramilitary assault on her apartment with a stun grenade, we clearly have a 'whack', but no 'stack'. Reason: The police admitted their error, something that is RARE during state-sponsored population reduction episodes. But let's chalk this one up for the record:

Fifty-seven-year-old Alberta Spruill was getting ready for work on May 16 when a police raiding party in search of a drug dealer broke down the door of her Harlem apartment, tossed in a "flash bang" stun grenade and handcuffed her to a chair. After realizing their mistake -- the man they wanted lived in the same building but had been arrested by a different police unit four days earlier -- the police uncuffed Ms. Spruill, checked her vital signs and sent her to the Emergency Room. Spruill, however, who suffered from a heart condition, died on the way to the hospital.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, concerned about the public's confidence in the bureau, has ordered a review of the FBI office that investigates employee wrongdoing and recommends disciplinary action. The inquiry, ordered yesterday, targets the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility and will focus on what Mr. Mueller called "an erosion of trust" over accusations of separate disciplinary systems for senior executives and rank-and-file agents and concerns of retaliation by the bureau against FBI whistleblowers.

In the days following the decision by Caddo District Attorney Paul Carmouche to not bring charges against the police officers involved, The Times obtained a copy of three videotapes of the incident through the Freedom of Information Act. At that time, we discussed placing the videos on our Web site at shreveporttimes.com and chose not to because of the sensitive nature of the scene and concern over how the videos might be viewed out of context.

FBI agents have confirmed that a search warrant was served Thursday night on the home of a self-described military watchdog in the tiny town of Rachel, near the mysterious Area 51 military base. We've learned this action was initiated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The search warrant remains sealed and the FBI won?t say what was seized from the home of Rachel resident Chuck Clark. We believe the action was taken because Chuck Clark escorted the I-Team on a tour of the roads surrounding the base. During the visit, he showed us the location of military sensors, hidden on public land.

LAPD disciplinary boards have overturned the city's Police Commission at least four times in recent years, allowing officers to escape punishment for shootings that the department's civilian bosses ruled improper, a Times investigation has found.

A record number of searches and wiretap orders granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2002 underscores a growing trend of reliance on the secret court in government investigations, privacy advocates say. The number of FISA orders jumped more than 30 percent to 1,228 last year, compared to 934 the year before. The FBI uses the warrants in investigations of suspected terrorists and spies to eavesdrop on communications and conduct physical searches.

On April 13, 1999 Dennis Maly's life changed, and not for the better. His view of the police changed. His view of our justice system changed. And he still shakes with anger when he thinks about that day. That was the day Dennis was arrested in front of his teenage daughter, treated like a common criminal, booked and prosecuted -- for carrying a concealed weapon, despite having a legal permit to do so.

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

Ten days before Timothy McVeigh was executed, lawyers for FBI lab employees sent an urgent letter to the attention of Attorney General John Ashcroft alleging that a key prosecution witness in the Oklahoma City bombing trial might have given false testimony about forensic evidence.The allegations involving Stephen Burmeister, now the FBI lab's chief of scientific analysis, were never turned over to McVeigh, though they surfaced as a judge was weighing whether to delay his execution because the government withheld evidence.

When the government is willing to fake evidence in a case of this magnitude, there is no way in hell that anyone in a lower-profile case can trust the evidence.