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You are here: Home / Archives for Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops

Shitty Cops

Late-Night Dystopia Open Thread: Floriduh Cops

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In a world with less terrible / outrageous news every day, I have the feeling this incident might’ve gotten more attention.

… Most of those officers — 13 — were from Miami-Dade Police Department, having followed the truck into Broward County during a long chase, said Rod Skirvin, president of the Broward County Police Benevolent Association.

Four people were killed in the shootout Thursday evening at an intersection in Miramar: two robbery suspects who’d hijacked the truck; a UPS driver they had taken hostage; and a bystander, police said.

The shootout happened as a police chase ended after the hijacked UPS truck got stuck in traffic. Gunfire erupted from inside and outside the truck, though it’s not clear who fired first.

Police officers left their vehicles and crouched behind cars — their own and others at the intersection — as shields as they approached, video from the scene showed.

Suspects Lamar Alexander, 41, and Ronnie Jerome Hill, 41, both of Miami-Dade County, were killed, the FBI said.

Also killed were the hijacked UPS driver, Frank Ordonez — who relatives said had been substituting for a colleague who’d called out from work — and bystander Richard Steven Cutshaw, officials said.

Whether Ordonez and Cutshaw were shot by police is under investigation, the FBI has said.

At least 13 police officers were shot at, but none was injured, according to Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association.

The chase began after Alexander and Hill robbed a jewelry store Thursday afternoon in Coral Gables, near Miami, and hijacked the UPS truck, police said.

Police radioed that gunfire occasionally erupted from the truck even as police chased it, CNN affiliate WSVN reported…

Ooooh, hot pursuit! Stealing jewelry is wrong, and pistol-whipping a store employee is worse, but I can’t see how making sure the perpetrators didn’t escape was worth shooting two people whose only crime was going to work that day.

… “Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” said David Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. The incident “was really, really bad.”

But as chaotic and calamitous as the episode was, it was also “a perfect example” of why police are allowed to use deadly force against dangerous criminals, Klinger said. Authorities said Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill had left a trail of violence behind them that evening. Stopping them by any means — even with bullets — was “absolutely the right thing to do,” Klinger said.

“In a situation like this, the police are reactive,” Klinger added. “This is not a situation they want to be in. Their hand was forced.”

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Breaking: Amber Guyger Verdict: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

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The jury in the trial of (former) Dallas police officer Amber Guyger took just a few hours to find her guilty of murdering her unarmed upstairs neighbor, Botham Jean.

*

The smell of fuckery was high in this one after the judge allowed the jury to consider the castle doctrine for a shooting in the victim’s home, but the jury seems to have been completely unbefuddled by that move. ETA: as commentor Momentary points out below, there’s some speculation that the instruction was given with an eye to appeal-proofing the verdict.  IANAL, and have nothing useful to add to that thought.)

From the first story I found on the result:

Cheers erupted in the courthouse as the verdict was announced, and someone yelled “Thank you, Jesus!” In the hallway outside the courtroom where Guyger was tried, a crowd celebrated in raised voices. When the prosecutors walked into the hall, they broke into cheers.

Guyger faces between 5 and 99 years in prison. Court will resume at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Not often a cop faces the full weight of his or her actions.  Congratulations to the 12 women and men of that jury for seeing this one through.

Image:  F. Luis Mora, The National Academy Jury of 1907.

*It’s possible I may not have caught the concept of “jury” perfectly here.

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Predictable Sad Coda: The Twin Peaks Shoot-Out in Waco

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What else could the DA do? It was a bureaucratic nightmare!

…[McLennan County District Attorney Barry] Johnson inherited the Twin Peaks cases when he took office in January, and said he has spent 75 percent of his time since then with a team of prosecutors and investigators trying to determine how to resolve the remaining cases.

Johnson’s decision Tuesday means that no one will be held accountable for the multiple deaths or injuries or for the chaotic battle between heavily armed, rival motorcycle clubs waged in a crowded shopping center parking lot while families were on their way to lunch after Sunday church.

In announcing his decision, Johnson said it is time to “end this nightmare that we have been dealing with in this county since May 17, 2015.” …

About 200 bikers were arrested after the shootout on identical charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and held on $1 million bonds each. Former McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna sought indictments against 155 bikers on those identical charges and chose to try Jacob Carrizal, the Bandidos Dallas county chapter president, first.

Carrizal’s case ended in mistrial in November 2017, with most of the jurors in his case favoring acquittal, and no other defendant has been tried since.

The way Reyna handled the Twin Peaks cases was the centerpiece of Johnson’s campaign, and he defeated Reyna in the March 2018 Republican primary by 20 percentage points. After the primary, Reyna dismissed all but 24 of the remaining Twin Peaks cases. The special prosecutors appointed to handle four of the cases after Reyna recused his office also were critical of the manner in which the cases were handled and dismissed them, also…

Carrizal is among those whose cases are to be dismissed. Johnson noted that his trial cost $1 million in preparation and trial costs, plus an additional $500,000 in security and overtime pay after county officials ratcheted up security for his trial.

“To open that Pandora’s Box back up and start down that road again when we don’t feel that, after looking at the facts and the evidence, that we would be able to meet our burden of beyond a reasonable doubt would be irresponsible, in my opinion. Therefore, I am making the decision now to end this nightmare that we have been dealing with in this county since May 17, 2015,” Johnson said…

Further reinforcing the outlander perception that nothing good comes out of Waco. I remember posting about this back in 2015, but my weak search skills fail me…

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Some Mildly Good News

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There’s one less predator on the streets in Chicago:

A jury in Cook County, Illinois, has found white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot and killed black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, guilty of second-degree murder.

The jurors also convicted Van Dyke on 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. He was found not guilty of a charge of misconduct in office.

There is no mandatory sentence for second-degree murder in Illinois, but each count of aggravated battery with a firearm can bring a sentence of 6 to 30 years—which means Van Dyke could potentially face 480 years behind bars. After the verdict was announced, the judge revoked the officer’s bail, and Van Dyke was taken into custody.

Good. Hopefully he will serve a couple of years before the new reich wing Supreme Court overturns his conviction.

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Our Sterling Folks In Blue

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This has been much discussed, but not here:

a Dallas police officer will be facing manslaughter charges after shot and killed a 26-year-old man in his own apartment. The officer, who has not been identified, thought she had gone into her own apartment when she had actually gone into her neighbor’s home and apparently thought he was an intruder.

The strange series of events unfolded Thursday night, when the white patrol officer went into her apartment building after working a full shift. The officer, who was still wearing her police uniform, for some reason tried to go into her neighbor’s apartment rather than her own. That’s when she saw her neighbor, 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean, and shot him.

The cop, still unnamed, because the blue line is a thing, called in the shooting, but was not immediately questioned, because, as I may have said recently, the blue line is a thing.

The man she killed, who was black, cannot, of course, speak for himself.  This is the inadequate-because-words-are-always-inadequate gloss on who his family lost:

Jean, a native of Saint Lucia, was a graduate of Harding University in Arkansas and was an employee at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dallas. He was known as a worship leader at the university, where officials mourned his death at chapel services Friday. “The entire Harding family grieves today for the loss of Botham Jean, who has meant so very much to us. Please join us in praying for Botham’s friends and family,” the university said in a statement.

At this moment, it’s impossible to say how the unnamed officer made her mistake, or even if it was a mistake.  If this cop really did not know where she was, that leads to the next question: what kind of training makes the first response to a surprise a leap to irrevocable deadly violence?

What does the Dallas police department teach its people, and if this wasn’t that — what was this cop doing on the job?

That is: the person directly responsible for what looks like the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed citizen in his own home is the one who pulled the trigger. But behind that catastrophic act lies a whole mental infrastructure built around the holy gun.  The impulse to solve a problem with a bullet isn’t innate: it’s learned and cultivated.

By a death cult.

Image: Giusseppe Arcimboldo, Fire, 1566

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Fighting Fascists Open Thread: The Weekend Portland Protest

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I couldn’t figure out why the “Proud Flesh Bois” and their “Patriot Prey-er” buddies picked last weekend for their cosplay riot, until I found this Daily Beast article by Corey Pein:

Hundreds of armed supporters of President Donald Trump, led by a fringe Republican congressional candidate, marched on Saturday, leaving blood from scattered street fights in their wake.

Ostensibly a campaign event for long-shot U.S. Senate hopeful Joey Gibson, members of his group Patriot Prayer urged the president to lock up his political opponents, including Hillary Clinton, and promised violent retribution for anyone who threatened their right to “free speech” or armed self-defense. Groups of Trump supporters swarmed through the streets, singling out people of color to fight, some of whom appeared to belong to small vigilante squads of local anti-fascists, as well as others who appeared to be mere passersby. Police announced four arrests, but gave no estimate of injuries.

Extremist group watchdogs such as the Southern Poverty Law Center warned ahead of the event that it could turn into “another Charlottesville.” It did not, but only in the sense that no one was killed. Such warnings, prompted by Gibson’s provocations, put all eyes on the rally…

His supporters flocked from around the West Coast and the country, a contingent of Proud Boys, “Three Percenter” militia members, Trump-supporting bikers, fundamentalist Christians, and college Republicans. Gibson had insinuated that his supporters would bring guns into the city and many apparently did, although to comply with local ordinances, the weapons stayed stowed in backpacks…

Per the local Oregonian, today:

A traumatic brain injury. Third-degree chemical burns. Open wounds.

At least three people who gathered to protest a rally by right-wing group Patriot Prayer were hospitalized Saturday because of injuries sustained from crowd-control munitions fired by Portland police, according to activists, counter-protest organizers and a media report.

The city’s police chief, Danielle Outlaw, on Monday offered her most passionate defense yet of officer tactics used to keep the rival poetical factions apart.

Police succeeded in preventing violent clashes between armed demonstrators that many had feared, she said…

“It was going to be a very rowdy, physically violent ruckus and it was not that because of the actions that the officers took,” Outlaw said…

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Shitty Cops Abuse Power on Behalf of Garbage President

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Remember earlier this month when Stormy Daniels got busted on misdemeanor vice charges in Columbus, Ohio? (Yeah, it seems like a year ago to me too.) The charges against Daniels were soon dropped, and she donated her tips from the night to the two local strippers who were arrested along with her, which makes Stormy Daniels a classier act than every adult Trump and all their supporters, combined and multiplied by infinity.

Soon thereafter, the city attorney announced that the office had dismissed the charges against the other two dancers and would no longer waste the district’s time with stupid charges like those on which Daniels was arrested. As many of us noted here at the time, the incident reeked of a politically motivated hit.

The vice squad initially claimed Daniels had been arrested during a human trafficking and prostitution undercover operation — she wasn’t targeted, they said, but rather just happened to be in a club that was under investigation. Columbus Police Department emails from a whistle-blower that were published yesterday seem to expose that story as a big fat lie.

The emails seem to show that lead arresting officer, Detective Shana Keckley, planned the bust well in advance of Daniels’ arrival. Days before Daniels came to town, the cop sent photos of Daniels and Trump from her home email account to her work email as well as a map of the club where Daniels would be performing. After the bust, she crowed about the national attention and exchanged email high-fives with other cops, asking one to not mention her (Keckley’s) name on Facebook.

Via the Fayette Advocate, which has posted copies of the emails:

“I got the elements….we arrested Stormy this morning, she is in jail.” (“Elements” are the burden police officers must meet in order to make an arrest.)

In another email dated on July 12 at 3:50 a.m., Keckley writes to another police officer bragging about Daniel’s arrest — without mentioning her by name — saying, “You’re Welcome!!!!!….Thank me in person later.”

Keckley went on to send additional emails, including one to Shane Keckley — purportedly her husband — writing, “It is all over CNN. I wanted you to know before everyone contacts you.”

Most cops are Republicans, and in the age of Trump, most Republicans are willing to disbelieve their own eyes and ears in their cult-like devotion to Trump. It wouldn’t be surprising if such devotion is even stronger among cops since Trump has gone out of his way to valorize the police and reinforce their biases.

A central ritual of Trump’s ongoing campaign rallies is a chant to jail a retired public servant who has been thoroughly investigated and cleared of criminal wrongdoing. Trump routinely abuses his office to demand that the Department of Justice disregard due process and pursue political vendettas on his behalf. So it’s also not surprising that his staunchest followers would heed that call to abuse power when a Trump nemesis happens to enter their jurisdiction.

After the charges against Daniels were dropped, the CPD tweeted a statement from the chief:

These emails should serve as Exhibit A in the investigations into the officers’ motives, and if it’s the political hit job it appears to be, the officers involved should be fired.

This story isn’t getting much attention. The charges were dropped. Daniels is in the adult film business. Everyone already knows Trump is a degenerate, so even stories with a salacious element that are linked directly to Trump have a “dog bites man” quality. But this story is especially chilling because of the flagrant abuse of power in the service of partisan politics.

We’ve heard a lot about stochastic terrorism over the past few years — the incitement of random violence via public demonization. What the Columbus cops did seems to be a species of stochastic fascism. We’ll find out soon enough if that sort of freelance oppression is allowed to stand.

PS: The lead cop in this politically motivated arrest is named Shana Michelle Keckley. Her husband, also a CPD cop, is named Shane Michael Keckley. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it? Has anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time?

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Floriduh! Woman and Man: All That Glitter is not Gold Edition

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Miami Herald take it away (emphasis mine)!

Miami-Dade police is on the hook for legal bills after cops illegally seized a cache of guns — and nearly $20,000 in stripper cash.

The department has agreed to pay more than $3,000 to defense lawyers hired by Ras Cates, 33, and his wife, Lizmixell Batista, a 20-year-old stripper at Cheetah Gentleman’s Club in Hallandale Beach.

Presumably, the legal bills won’t be paid in singles.

Back on May 15, an officer pulled over Cates and Batista, his passenger, when their car cut off a patrol car in Miami’s West Little River neighborhood. From the car, patrol officers seized six guns, three of them assault-style rifles, plus the cash, suspected marijuana oil and several bottles of powerful codeine cough syrup without a valid prescription.

Miami-Dade police touted the arrest to a local TV station, showing off photos of the guns. “It’s amazing how something as simple as a traffic stop can lead us to crack a lot of cases,” a police spokesman told WFOR-CBS4. “A lot of serial killers are behind bars because of traffic stops.”

The couple was charged with armed drug dealing, among other felony charges. But defense lawyers immediately challenged the arrest.

“What is most disturbing is that immediately following the arrest, the department went on TV and engaged in incendiary speculation without knowing the facts or even acknowledging the rampant violations of my clients’ constitutional rights,” said defense attorney Jude Faccidomo.

Faced with defense evidence, prosecutors moved quickly to dismiss the case.

Cates told cops he legally owned the weapons, and also had a valid concealed-weapons permit. His story checked out. And body-camera footage showed that an officer, while friendly with Cates, never got permission to search the trunk but instead “commanded defendant to pop the trunk,” prosecutors wrote.

“Search of the trunk was illegal,” prosecutor Johnathan Nobile said in a memo explaining why the state declined to press charges.

Who possessed the drugs or possibly illegal codeine syrup was never clear either, prosecutors said. Neither Cates nor Batista admitted who owned the marijuana. And whether the syrup was actually codeine was also unclear — Miami-Dade police never took the liquid to the forensics lab for testing.

Lawyers for Cates are still trying to get the guns back.

As for the money, the bills were discovered in Batista’s purse. Body-camera footage obtained by the Miami Herald showed she immediately told cops about her cash-only job. “I was supposed to go the bank to deposit the money. We got bills to pay, sweetie,” she told police.

The Miami-Dade police department’s legal bureau, suspecting it was dope money, asked a civil-court judge to allow the department to keep the $19,934 seized in the car. The department said a Miami-Dade police dog, Roxie, alerted that the cash had been “in close proximity” to large amounts of narcotics.

But at the hearing, a fellow stripper named Haley Heath testified that her friend, Batista, earned “significant cash tips” at the Cheetah club.

“I felt that the glitter on the seized cash was compelling evidence, but apparently the police department disagreed,” said defense lawyer Faccidomo.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Rodney Smith agreed there was no probable cause for the seizure and ordered the money returning to the couple.

This is my favorite part:

“I felt that the glitter on the seized cash was compelling evidence, but apparently the police department disagreed,” said defense lawyer Faccidomo.

Ya think?

Stay supple!

Open thread.

 

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Suddenly, The Picadors Despise Bullfights

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I don’t know if Andrew McCabe was a shining beacon of apolitical law enforcement in the FBI, and it sure looks like a dick move to fire him a day before he could collect a full pension, but this part of his statement made me roll my eyes:

[…] The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.

The FBI has always been at least a somewhat politicized institution, and their role in the 2016 election from the top down was to damage Hillary Clinton. My guess is that Comey’s memo and the New York field office’s leaks were probably more calculated to weaken the inevitable Clinton presidency than they were to elect Trump, but who knows. All I know is that these guys wanted to play a high-stakes game and now they’re getting fucked. I can’t muster a hell of a lot of sympathy for them, since their actions had some really shitty consequences for all of us.

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I Bet Eric Garner Wishes He Got Just One of These

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Thug life:

The city’s police-officers union is cracking down on the number of “get out of jail free” courtesy cards distributed to cops to give to family and friends.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association boss Pat Lynch slashed the maximum number of cards that could be issued to current cops from 30 to 20, and to retirees from 20 to 10, sources told The Post.

The cards are often used to wiggle out of minor trouble such as speeding tickets, the theory being that presenting one suggests you know someone in the NYPD.

Damn it’s good to be a gangster.

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Here’s a Possibility- Maybe We Have a Policing Problem

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Fer fuck’s sake:

The call to the police sounded dire: a violent dispute at a house in Wichita, Kan., a person shot to death, an armed man holding hostages and threatening to burn the place down.

Officers raced to the scene and surrounded the house. A man emerged and the police commanded him to put his hands up. Moments later, an officer fired a deadly shot.

The whole encounter on Thursday night had been based on a hoax: There had been no shooting before the police arrived, no hostages, no threat of arson. Instead, it was a fatal incarnation of “swatting,” in which people report fake crimes in hopes of getting a SWAT team to raid a rival’s house.

“If the false police call had not been made, we would not have been there,” Deputy Chief Troy Livingston of the Wichita Police Department said at a news conference on Friday. The police did not say whether they knew who had placed the prank call, but said that it was a key part of their inquiry.

Obviously, this does not excuse the evil behavior of those who called in the hoax, but jesus fucking christ, maybe we have a policing problem when they show up and start shooting before they even know what the hell is going on? What if that had been a hostage coming to the door (as it was, it was already a completely innocent person)? Why bother calling the cops in a hostage crisis if they are just going to open fire, kill ’em all, and let god sort it out.

Just thinking outside the fucking box, here, but maybe decades of pretending the police are infallible and deserve our complete unflinching support and that we bow down at their feet for people who have a job less dangerous than a lumberjack combined with shitty pay, long hours, no chance of punishment for fuckups, and arming them to the teeth with weapons they do not need is also a problem here?

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It Ain’t Murder If You Got a Badge

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Another day, another cop gets away with murder:

Police in Mesa, Arizona released disturbing body camera video on Thursday hours after a former officer was acquitted of a murder charge in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man.

The verdict cleared Philip Brailsford, 27, of criminal liability in the 2016 death of Daniel Shaver, of Granbury, Texas. He was also found not guilty of reckless manslaughter, reports CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV.

The shooting occurred at a hotel in the Phoenix suburb where officers responded to a report of someone pointing a gun out of a window. The video, obtained by KPHO, shows Brailsford pointing a gun at Shaver as Shaver lies on the ground, holds his hands in the air, cries and begs the officer not to shoot.

I don’t know how jurors could watch that and not convict of at least reckless manslaughter.

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File This Under Rape Culture

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A NY teenager was arrested and handcuffed by NYPD cops, allegedly raped, the cops claim it was consensual (which is impossible when you are under arrest), and the NY Daily News then writes it up and adds a picture of the raped teen but not a picture of the two NAMED cops.

Awesome work, media. Obligatory “Why don’t women come forward more often…”

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Heartbreaking Read(s): The Participant Who’ll Never Tell Us His Story

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A news story about a police officer (in Salt Lake City!) manhandling an ER nurse for RESISTING HIS AUTHORITAY!!! seemed almost too on-the-nose as an analogy for life during the Trump Occupancy. But there are real people at the heart of this metaphor, and the Washington Post followed up:

… William Gray, a commercial truck driver and reserve police officer, died late Monday of the injuries he suffered when a fiery July 26 crash left him with burns over nearly half his body, University of Utah Health spokeswoman Suzanne Winchester said.

Gray was unconscious at the Salt Lake City hospital when police detective Jeff Payne asked to draw his blood hours after the crash.

Nurse Alex Wubbels refused because hospital policy required a warrant or patient consent. Payne handcuffed her and dragged her outside.

Gray was hauling a load of sand in northern Utah when a pickup truck speeding away from police crossed the center line and hit his truck head-on, causing an explosion. State police had been trying to pull over the pickup driver after several people called 911 to report he was driving recklessly.

Gray was not suspected of wrongdoing.

The pickup driver, Marcos Torres, 26, died in the crash, and Utah police routinely collect such evidence from everyone involved in fatal crashes.

Dramatic video of Wubbels’ arrest caught widespread attention online amid national scrutiny of police use of force. Payne and the supervisor who backed him, Lt. James Tracy, were placed on leave amid internal and criminal investigations…

Gray, 43, served with police in the southeastern Idaho city of Rigby. Chief Sam Tower said he was dedicated to the community of about 4,000 people and plowed snow from a sidewalk last winter so neighborhood kids wouldn’t have to walk in the street.

“Bill was truly the best of mankind,” Rigby police said in a Facebook post. “Always willing to help, always willing to go the extra mile. Bill was a big man, with a bigger heart. Everything about him was generous and kind.”…

Amy Davidson Sorkin, in the New Yorker, explains “What the Utah Good-Nurse, Bad-Cop Video Says About Medical Privacy”:

… The story began on July 26th. That day, the police had engaged in a high-speed chase on a highway that ended with a deadly multi-vehicle crash. But this was not a cinematic case of, say, fugitive armed robbers. It began around 2 P.M., when the police received reports of a Chevrolet Silverado driving erratically. As the officers began their pursuit, the Silverado, now on US-89/91, swerved into a semi truck that happened to be on the road, causing an explosion. The driver of the Silverado, Marco Torres, who was twenty-six, was killed instantly. The truck driver, William Gray—who, in one of this story’s many byways, was a reserve police officer in Rigby, Idaho—staggered out of his semi, his clothes and body on fire. He was airlifted to the burn unit. One might wonder why the police wanted his blood, when he was, essentially, a bystander. The Utah police have said that it was meant for Gray’s protection, but Payne, in his report on the incident, obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune, said that the officers who were dealing with the crash wanted to know whether Gray had any “chemical substances” in his system. Another, troubling possibility could be that they were looking for something that might place some of the responsibility for the crash on Gray, in case he complained that the police had been reckless in their pursuit.

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