Tag: police accountability

The South Dakota Attorney General Killed a Man. Everything Else Is a Mystery.

On a remote section of highway in a sparsely populated part of South Dakota, the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement official struck and killed a man while returning from a Republican Party dinner one night in late summer.

In the months since, Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg hasn’t missed a day of work—and has not faced any charge in connection with the death of Joe Boever.

Many South Dakotans are growing restless, including Boever’s family. Markers indicating a death went up at the crash site on Highway 14 in Hyde County last week, a grim reminder of the tragedy that had cousin Nick Nemec in tears.

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Records ‘Disappeared’ of Cop’s Arrest Over Torturing Woman to Silence Her Claims of Child Rape

The term blue privilege came about in this country after people began paying attention to the crimes committed by police officers and the subsequent lack of accountability they face when committing them. Over the years, TFTP has reported on countless cases of murdering, raping, child molesting, and rights violating cops escaping accountability for their actions with little to no jail time. In some instances, they aren’t even fired for murdering unarmed innocent fathers, crawling on their knees, begging for their lives.

Continuing in the trend, in a case out of Vermont, a St. Albans police officer has received repeated hefty doses of blue privilege over his alleged crimes. In April of last year, he was arrested for allegedly breaking into a woman’s home, beating her up, throwing her down a flight of stairs, and burning her repeatedly with a cigar. For good measure, he took his father along with him — who was also arrested for his role in the incident.

Despite these grim allegations, after Officer Zachary Pigeon, 29, and his father Allen Pigeon, 56, each pleaded not guilty to five charges: simple assault, kidnapping, obstructing justice, burglary, and unlawful restraint and they were released without bail and walked out of the courtroom. In December, despite the evidence in the case against them, the charges were thrown out.

The cop’s privilege was even extended by his own department who issued nothing but praise for him after the arrest.

“There is nothing, nothing whatsoever in his file that would show up as a red flag or an indicator of any of the things that I have now heard that he is alleged to have done,” St. Albans Police Chief Gary Taylor said. “We went all through it. He polygraphed twice– and there is nothing.”

Now, the privilege goes a step further and any mention of the incident is effectively being scrubbed out of official existence.

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12yo Girl Finds Hidden Camera Recording Her in Shower—It Belonged to a Cop

Imagine for a moment that you are a 12-year-old girl about to get in the shower only to look up and find a camera spying on you in the bathroom. Your first thought would likely be fear, followed by anger, followed by the desire to hold the person accountable by going to the police. For one young girl in Utah, that is exactly what happened. However, it was not as easy to go to the police afterward as the person who allegedly put the camera in her bathroom — was a cop.

A top cop with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office was arrested last Wednesday and charged with utterly disturbing crimes for spying on the little girl. Marc Swain, 47, is a crime scene investigator with the sheriff’s office who has found himself on the other side of the law after his arrest last week on multiple counts of voyeurism and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Swain is accused of hiding a recording device in a bathroom used by a 12-year-old girl. The girl told her parents about the camera after she noticed a camera lens in various places moving around the bathroom every time she showered.

Before he was arrested, when Swain was questioned by someone who knows the girl, he reportedly told them that he accidentally left a “flash drive” in the bathroom that including a camera. Apparently, he “accidentally” left it in the bathroom — repeatedly and in different locations.

Because the alleged crimes took place in the county in which Swain is a cop, the Layton City Police Department was called in to conduct the investigation to prevent the conflict of interest.

Once the investigation was launched, Swain quickly caved to the pressure and admitted what he had been doing.

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Mom Cries Foul As Cops Say Teen Shot Herself in Mouth While Cuffed Behind Her Back

It’s been nine months since police claim 19-year-old Sarah Wilson allegedly got a hold of a gun and killed herself in police custody while her hands were cuffed behind her back. Since then, her mother has been grieving and also crying foul after police are sticking by the story and refuse to release any information.

As TFTP reported at the time, Wilson allegedly committed suicide on July 25, 2018, during a traffic stop near the intersection of Berkley Avenue and Wilson Road, according to the Chesapeake Police Department. According to police, while handcuffed with her hands behind her back, Wilson was able to acquire a Taurus Judge handgun, place it in her mouth, and pull the trigger.

Dawn Wilson, Sarah’s mother has since come forward to speak out about the inconsistencies in the case.

“There’s just so many unanswered questions, and that’s the second hardest part of losing a child – of losing my child,” Dawn told WAVY, earlier this month.

“In all of her life I have never known of her to shoot a gun, own a gun, or even hold a gun,” said Wilson. “I’m not pointing fingers, I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there, but I need to know, and I think that’s fair I’m her mom.”

Wilson explained to ABC 13 that her daughter was the passenger in a car that was pulled over during a traffic stop. Police told Wilson that during the stop, Sarah produced a gun and used it to take her own life.

The driver of the car was 27-year-old Holden Medlin who allegedly resisted arrest during the stop and took off running. While police attempted to restrain Medlin, they claim that Wilson was handcuffed with her arms behind her back when she got the gun out of the car, “contorted” her body and shot herself in the head.

How exactly police missed a Taurus Judge handgun while handcuffing Wilson is a massive question as the gun is 5.5″ tall, and 10.5″ long. The gun is so large it can shoot both 45 Colt rounds and 410 shotgun shells.

“Things are not matching up, somewhere somehow, there is a discrepancy,” said Wilson who said that police have told her one thing while telling the media something completely different.

“She was handcuffed, and she managed to put a revolver in her mouth while handcuffed. That’s what the investigator told me last night,” said Wilson at the time. “If that is the case its very unfortunate and tragic but there is a level of negligence there.”

Even more terrifying than a handcuffed teen somehow managing to get a gun and put it in her mouth to kill herself is the fact that witnesses are saying something entirely different.

“There is a few different stories, but they all end the same, that the police shot her,” said Wilson last year.

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Cop Arrested for Sexually Abusing 46 Children, Forcing Them to Cut Themselves, Threatening to Kill Them

The Free Thought Project has reported on countless cases of child predator cops going after their victims through various means online, at school, in the home, on the job, and elsewhere. We have reported on abuse and utterly horrifying incidents over the years that shock the conscience. However, we have never reported on a case like the one below in which an NYPD cop allegedly preyed on dozens of children online — sometimes encouraging them to potentially harm themselves in a serious manner — while sexually abusing them in the process.

Officer Carmine Simpson was arrested on Thursday morning for an absolutely sickening and sadistic habit of targeting dozens of children online, have them send him sexually explicit videos and photos, and encouraging them to seriously harm themselves.

“Instead of protecting the community as a sworn police officer, the defendant has preyed upon and sexually exploited the most vulnerable members,” stated Acting United States Attorney Seth D. DuCharme.  “The protection of innocent children is a priority for the Department of Justice and this Office will continue to make every effort to ensure that those who contribute to the victimization of children will be brought to justice.”

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4 Cops Charged, Facing Life in Prison After Innocent Family and Dog Executed In Their Home

The murder of an innocent Houston couple made national headlines in 2019 as police took to smearing their names and threatening those who didn’t believe their official narrative. As the months passed, we learned that the Houston police department’s raid on the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas was based on lies and they were murdered for no reason.

The following May, the case had reached a turning point after the family hired a forensics expert to examine the home and found that there is no evidence the officers encountered gunfire. Then, in a major move in August of 2019, the cop who lied to obtain the warrant for the raid—was charged with murder in the first degree, with several others charged shortly after. Now, a half dozen more officers have been charged, with four of them facing life in prison.

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Chief Says Cop Wrote ‘F**king Pig’ on His Own Coffee, Sparking Nat’l Outrage — ‘As a Joke’

Another story of another cop getting insulted by a store employee created yet another internet outrage. This time, however, it is a little different, as it appears the police manufactured the entire ordeal — and were caught. A police department’s Facebook post went viral last year with Herington Police Chief Brian Hornaday’s rant about one of his officers receiving a coffee with “f**king pig” inscribed on it. That expletive is now the subject of embarrassment and controversy for the department who is attempting to write it off as a joke.

Before continuing with the rest of the story it is important to point out that had anyone else besides a member of the protected class like police officers gotten a “f**k you” written on their cup, we would not have heard about it at all. Only when it allegedly happens to cops does the nation collectively lose its mind.

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State Supreme Court Bars Victims of Police Crimes from Seeking Punitive Damages in Lawsuits

Over the years, the Free Thought Project has run many headlines with the phrase “taxpayers held liable” included in it after cops were caught maiming, raping, kidnapping and killing people. Many of these excessive force, murder, and wrongful arrest lawsuits were brought against police departments because the departments and prosecutors refused to hold the offending officers accountable and lawsuits were the only form of justice the victims could seek.

While no amount of money can ever undo the damage caused by some of these officers, it was at least some form of seeking justice. In Iowa, however, all that is changing after the Iowa Supreme Court just severely limited the amount of financial damages a victim of police crimes can be awarded.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat and the longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history, with four decades in the role, is a friend of bad cops. According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press, Millers office has failed — quite possibly deliberately — to convict and cop in the state since 2004. And, in the last 16 years, he’s brought charges against just two cops.

Clearly, Miller has a bias toward police and for decades, abusive cops have enjoyed a sort of immunity under his tenure. Citizens who were abused by police or family members of those killed by police have been forced to seek justice through civil lawsuits, seeking punitive damages. Now, however, thanks to an initiative brought forward by Miller, the Iowa Supreme Court just severely limited the financial damages that can be awarded for injuries and deaths caused by state police officers who are found to have used excessive force.

In a 6-1 decision, the court ruled that punitive damages, which are intended to punish and deter future criminal behavior by police, are not available in cases in which officers use excessive force in violation of constitutional rights.

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Cops Who Kill Americans Have Less Than a 1 in a 1000 Chance of Being Convicted of Murder

After the death of George Floyd in May of this year, 2020 marked a historical movement in the fight for police accountability and equal justice under the law. Despite facing a global pandemic, millions of Americans left their homes and took to the streets to have their voices be heard. The momentum toward radical change was inspiring.

However, the winds quickly fell from the sails of that change as mainstream media and establishment partisans essentially coopted the movement. Instead of talking about actual solutions like ending the drug war or ending qualified immunity, the establishment pushed the vaguely uninspiring movement to defund the police and continued to push divide based on race.

Even Black Lives Matter is now admitting that despite raising billions of dollars over the course of 2020, the establishment is leaving them in the wake. Despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris paying lip service to police brutality and riding the waves of the Black Lives Matter movement, the president-elect and his vice president now refuse to even meet with the group. This is also in spite of the fact that BLM formed a PAC, which helped fund its ad campaigns to mobilize Black voters to go out and vote for Biden.

What so many police accountability activists are learning now is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. As fissures in their leadership begins to crack apart Black Lives Matter inside its upper echelons, talk about police reform is waning, fast.

Getting bad orange man out of the White House has effectively placated the masses and the huge movements and protests we witnessed prior to November 3, have fizzled out.

Despite horrifying police killings, many of which were captured on video and rocked the nation, the arrest rate for cops who kill people on-duty remains as low as ever. According to reports, since 2005, just 126 police officers have been arrested for murder or manslaughter in relation to an on-duty killing.

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The Official Whitewash Of The Killing Of Duncan Lemp

Why did a Montgomery County, Maryland SWAT team kill  21-year-old Duncan Lemp, in a no-knock predawn raid on March 12?  The county released an official report yesterday stating that a violent no-knock raid was justified “due to Lemp being ‘anti-government,’ ‘anti-police,’ currently in possession of body armor, and an active member of the Three Percenters.”  The report also noted that “police had viewed several videos showing Lemp handling and shooting firearms.”

Distrusting the government and police and appearing in photos or videos with firearms is a catch-all that could apply to millions of Americans. But that was enough to justify a deadly assault in one of America’s most liberal jurisdictions. (I wrote about this case for TAC previously here, here, here and here).

Montgomery County released the report on New Year’s Eve, probably hoping that it would receive scant attention. But the county’s own admissions should propel new demands for disclosures on the most under-reported police killing of 2020.   

The report details how police attacked the Lemp home from two sides. Two members of the raid team did a “‘break and rake’ on Duncan Lemp’s first-floor bedroom window while the rest of the team entered the house by using a battering ram on the main front door … Another officer used a fireman’s pike tool to break the bedroom window closest to the bed where Lemp and [his pregnant girlfriend Kasey] Robinson were sleeping. The tool also has a hook that is used to grab a hold of and pull away the blinds so that officers would have an unobstructed view inside the bedroom. Once the window was broken and the shades pulled out of the way, one officer ducked below the window line as he was unarmed. A second officer (the shooting officer) who was armed with a rifle, then stepped up to the window and looked inside to locate Lemp as soon as possible and prevent him from having time to access any weapons that could be used against the SWAT officers.” Another team of SWAT cops used a battering ram to smash in the front door of the Lemp home. 

The official report serves a completely different version of Lemp’s killing than the county police department provided on March 17. In its initial explanation of the Lemp killing in March, the Montgomery County Police Department stated: 

The officers entering the residence announced themselves as police and that they were serving a search warrant. Officers gave commands for individuals inside the residence to show their hands and to get on the ground. Upon making contact with Lemp, officers identified themselves as the police and gave him multiple orders to show his hands and comply with the officer’s commands to get on the ground. Lemp refused to comply with the officer’s commands and proceeded towards the interior bedroom door where other officers were located. Upon entrance by officers into Lemp’s bedroom, Lemp was found to be in possession of a rifle and was located directly in front of the interior bedroom entrance door. 

In the new version of the report, Lemp was shot five times by a policeman standing outside his smashed-in bedroom window. Montgomery County still refuses to name the policeman who killed him. That policeman says that he shouted a warning to Lemp before opening fire, asserting that Lemp stood up holding a rifle and turned the muzzle toward the policeman. (The family always maintained that the shots that killed Duncan came in from that window.) Were the police lying in March, or are they lying now, or are they still lying?

“Let’s go to the videotape”—except that there isn’t any. And there were no other police witnesses to the killing of Duncan Lemp. Police body cams have been one of the most significant reforms in curbing police misconduct in this century. But, as Lemp family lawyer Rene Sandler disclosed, Montgomery County signed a labor agreement with the police union which allowed the SWAT team to “opt out of the truth and transparency by not being required to wear body camera or videotaping a no knock raid.” This is par for the course for police unions across the nation utterly sabotaging police accountability. 

Police targeted and eventually killed in part Lemp because they believed he possessed an illegal Israeli assault weapon. Late in the report, as if reciting a minor technicality, the county prosecutor states, “It should be noted that upon further review and investigation into the IWI Tavor X95 rifle, it was determined that it was not an assault rifle … It appears that Lemp’s rifle was a legal ‘copycat’ made to look exactly like the illegal version of the IWI Tavor X95.” But the non-banned weapon was close enough for government work to justify violently attacking Lemp’s home. The false predicate for the violent raid barely rates a footnote in the 17-page report. 

Police stated that Lemp was prohibited from possessing any firearms due to a previous criminal conviction—a point that the family vigorously contests. According to Sandler, the affidavit used to secure the no-knock raid contained information that was “demonstrably false.” (Shades of Waco and Ruby Ridge!) A police raid occurred at the Lemp family home when Lemp was a juvenile in 2016 but no details were disclosed in the report on that raid or by anyone else.

Montgomery County announced that the killing would be investigated by neighboring Howard County, to assure an independent credible review. But that was a sham from the start. The Howard County prosecutor requested that a Montgomery County detective “conduct interviews” with key police personnel, including the officer who signed the search warrant and the SWAT supervisor “to find out more details regarding why the decision was made to do a no-knock warrant.” Howard County made no effort to determine some of the most potentially controversial aspects of the case.

A grand jury examined the shooting earlier this year but all of the testimony and evidence presented remains confidential—except for selections that the county attorney’s office received permission from a judge to disclose in the report. Sandler and Cary Hansel, a lawyer for Kasey Robinson, Lemp’s girlfriend, are outraged at what they consider “cherry picking” by the prosecutor. They are calling for full disclosure of all materials and evidence from the grand jury proceedings.  Was the grand jury investigation into the killing of Duncan Lemp as big a charade as the Louisville grand jury that examined the police killing of Breonna Taylor earlier this year? Sandler notes, “The family is particularly upset at the lack of any consideration of the other eye witnesses in the home at the time [of the raid].  The report simply makes it clear that none of that was seriously considered.” Instead, the new storyline on the killing was sacrosanct. 

Nothing in the report indicates that Lemp posed a threat of imminent threat of violence to anyone, not even to stray dogs in the neighborhood. The report indicates that police were surveilling Duncan Lemp and the Lemp residence well before they launched the SWAT raid.  Sandler said police “would have seen him taking Kasey to a doctor’s appointment or going to a store. They could have detained him during a traffic stop while [other police] secured the home. That would be a much safer tactic than to accost an entire family and to raid blindly at 4:30 in the morning in the dark.”  

Why did the SWAT team rely on massive violence instead of the type of routine police work that prevailed in most of the nation in the last century? The “break and rake” routine seems custom-made to spur residents to grab any firearm or broomstick handy. And then there were the bombs the police detonated that morning. Flash-bang grenades epitomize the current relation between police and private citizens. A 2019 federal appeals court decision noted that the grenades are “four times louder than a 12-gauge shotgun blast” with “a powerful enough concussive effect to break windows and put holes in walls.” As TechDirt noted in 2019, “As anyone other than cops seems to comprehend, startling people in their own homes with explosives and kicked-in doors tends to make everything more dangerous for everyone.” 

The official report makes clear that Lemp was targeted in part because of his political beliefs. Lemp is identified as a supporter of the “the Three Percenters … a far-right militia movement and paramilitary group” which advocates “gun ownership rights and resistance to the federal government’s involvement in local affairs.” ( Three-percenter refers to “the belief that only 3% of colonists fought against the British in the Revolutionary War,” as the report notes.) This is close enough to heresy in antigun Maryland, though it is considered on par with motherhood and apple pie in most of America.  Lemp was outspoken politically, and his last tweet, a couple months before he was killed, declared, “The constitution is dead.” The report also gravely notes, “Lemp has a number of postings on his Instagram page showing him in possession of and shooting different types of guns.” The police targeting of Duncan Lemp was spurred by a “confidential source” whose name has not yet been disclosed. The report states that that source directed police to Lemp’s  “mymilitia.com” and “Instagram” profile pages. Was the “confidential source” trying to bring down gun activists, or was he working off a plea bargain (bringing in scalps for a reduced sentence), or was it simply someone who Lemp had told about his firearms?  

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