Tag: police accountability

Wisconsin’s Capital City Is Trying To Ban White People From Police Oversight Board

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he offered Americans, of all races, a compelling vision of a society no longer prejudiced by race. He envisioned a country where citizens are judged “by the content of their character” and not “the color of their skin.”

But to listen to today’s most prominent “antiracists,” King’s dream is what stands in the way of racial justice in 21st-century America. The result is the return of legal racial discrimination.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the famously leftist city government recently established a Police Civilian Oversight Board in response to activists concerned with police relations. The board’s mission is rather vague: “provide input,” “engage in community outreach,” and “make policy-level recommendations.” What the board is not vague about is who is allowed to participate.

Six of the board’s 11 members must be black. No Asians, American Indian, Hispanics or Latinos, or Whites can sit in those six seats: “Blacks Only,” to use the terminology of the City’s Alder Workgroup, which explicitly mandated “50 percent Black members.”

Furthermore, one board seat is reserved for an Asian; one board seat is reserved for an American Indian; one board seat is reserved for someone identifying as “Latinx.” Finally, one board seat is reserved for a “member of the LGBTQ community,” although the city presumably would allow someone to be both a minority and LGBTQ at the same time.

Heralded as a serious effort at “equity” and “inclusion,” Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board intentionally discriminates based on racial categories—a practice with an ugly and pernicious past. This is also the vision of America’s most prominent “antiracists.” For example, in his 2019 book, “How to be an Antiracist,” best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi is explicit that, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Unfortunately, Madison is not alone in this kind of legal racism. California now imposes racial quotas on private companies’ boards. NASDAQ is following suit. Many private companies, such as Delta Airlines and Wells Fargo, are promising to impose quotas.

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Police officer, 24, ‘went to lockdown party then crashed while drink-driving home’

A young police officer is facing the sack after breaking lockdown rules to visit a house party before crashing into a home while drink-driving.

PC Tasia Stephens was heading home from the family gathering during the first lockdown when she drove her car into a house.

The 24-year-old former youth athlete was found to be double the limit when breathalysed by officers and was convicted of drink-driving at a magistrates’ court.

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H/T Poppy Burner

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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