Tag: police accountability

PROSECUTORS BURIED EVIDENCE AND MISLED THE COURT. TEN YEARS LATER, THEY GOT A SLAP ON THE WRIST.

AFTER RULING THAT federal prosecutors withheld key evidence resulting in a defendant’s wrongful imprisonment, D.C.’s top court took nearly a decade to decide on an appropriate sanction. In December, after extensive hearings, the D.C. Court of Appeals gaveOpens in a new tab two prosecutors a year of probation plus a stern warning not to commit any further misconduct, or they would be suspended from practicing law for six months.

Both prosecutors, Mary Chris Dobbie and Reagan Taylor, still work for the Justice Department, according to media reportsOpens in a new tab and other records. One of their former supervisors, Jeffrey Ragsdale, currently leads the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees investigations into alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

Under the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys. At the trial for two defendants accused of assaulting an officer during a jailhouse brawl, Dobbie and Taylor withheld unequivocal evidence that their lead witness, a corrections officer, had a history of filing false reports. Based on the officer’s testimony, one defendant was imprisoned for more than four years before his conviction was reversed.

In 2021, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, a disciplinary panel appointed by the appeals court, unanimously recommendedOpens in a new tab a six-month suspension for Dobbie and Taylor. But in a divided opinion, the court ratcheted down the sanction to probation based on “one overriding mitigating circumstance”: the “deficient conduct” of Ragsdale and another supervisor, John Roth, who later served as inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. There were no ethics charges or misconduct findings for either supervisor.

Reached by phone, Roth declined to comment, saying that he was not aware of the decision. Attorneys for Dobbie and Taylor did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did Ragsdale. The Justice Department also failed to respond.

The dissenting judge, Joshua Deahl, argued that Dobbie and Taylor “should face real consequences for their actions.”

“The board comes to us — despite innumerable favorable inferences drawn in respondents’ favor — with the rare recommendation of an actual suspension that at least comes close to reflecting the gravity of this serious prosecutorial misconduct,” Deahl wrote. “Yet this court balks.”

Deahl noted a dissonance between how courts treat prosecutors’ ethical violations versus misconduct by private attorneys, who are routinely disbarred or suspended for actions like dipping into client funds.

“That is too harsh a result, the majority concludes, when prosecutors intentionally suppress evidence in violation of the Constitution and thereby secure felony convictions resulting in years of unjust imprisonment,” wrote Deahl, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019 and served as a public defender before joining the bench.

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Terror by Night: Who Pays the Price for Botched SWAT Team Raids? We Do

Sometimes ten seconds is all the warning you get.

Sometimes you don’t get a warning before all hell breaks loose.

Imagine it, if you will: It’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is in darkness. Your household is asleep. Suddenly, you’re awakened by a loud noise.

Barely ten seconds later, someone or an army of someones has crashed through your front door.

The intruders are in your home.

Your heart begins racing. Your stomach is tied in knots. The adrenaline is pumping through you.

You’re not just afraid. You’re terrified.

Desperate to protect yourself and your loved ones from whatever threat has invaded your home, you scramble to lay hold of something—anything—that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, a baseball bat, or that licensed and registered gun you thought you’d never need.

You brace for the confrontation.

Shadowy figures appear at the doorway, screaming orders, threatening violence, launching flash bang grenades.

Chaos reigns.

You stand frozen, your hands gripping whatever means of self-defense you could find.

Just that simple act—of standing frozen in fear and self-defense—is enough to spell your doom.

The assailants open fire, sending a hail of bullets in your direction.

In your final moments, you get a good look at your assassins: it’s the police.

Brace yourself, because this hair-raising, heart-pounding, jarring account of a SWAT team raid is what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us or our loved ones.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day.

SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of so-called criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed. In some instances, SWAT teams are even employed, in full armament, to perform routine patrols.

These raids, which might be more aptly referred to as “knock-and-shoot” policing, have become a thinly veiled, court-sanctioned means of giving heavily armed police the green light to crash through doors in the middle of the night.

No-knock raids, a subset of the violent, terror-inducing raids carried out by police SWAT teams on unsuspecting households, differ in one significant respect: they are carried out without police even having to announce themselves.

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Texas Cops Held a Terrified Couple at Gunpoint After Raiding the Wrong House

Tyler Harrington and his wife were asleep in their beds when four Harris County, Texas, Constable Officers burst into their home and held the terrified couple at gunpoint. While the cops eventually realized they were in the wrong house, they didn’t leave without admonishing the couple for keeping their door unlocked.

Harrington has now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the officers’ invasion of his home was an unconstitutional breach of his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

On September 24, 2022, Officer James Lancaster responded to a call from a woman, named “Mrs. H” in the complaint, who said that she heard a knock at her back door. Lancaster spoke to Mrs. H and examined the outside of her property, finding nothing suspicious. 

Mrs. H also told Lancaster that her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend would arrive to check out the house themselves. Mrs. H then decided to “get in her car and drive around until others came home.” When Mrs. H’s daughter and her boyfriend arrived, another neighbor, named “Mr. S,” called the police to report their truck as suspicious. When talking to dispatchers, Mr. S accidentally gave the wrong address for Mrs. H’s house, reporting Harrington’s address instead.

Soon, two more officers arrived. According to the complaint, Lancaster clearly should have known that dispatch had been given the wrong address. While pointing to Mrs. H’s house, he told the other officers, “That’s the house with the person knocking on the back door, that was the house earlier….I checked the one across the street.” In reference to Harrington’s address, he said he had “never been to this house.”

But the officers decided to enter the Harrington’s home anyway, testing both the front and back doors and finding them unlocked. A fourth officer arrived, and according to the suit, Lancaster told him that they were “waiting on the owner,” despite knowing that it was a different house than the one owned by Mrs. H, where the owner had left and was to return shortly.

Around midnight, two of the officers burst into the Harrington’s home with their guns drawn, shouting “Constable’s Office, come up with your hands out!” Harrington’s wife, whose full name wasn’t identified in the suit, was woken up by the officer’s shouting. She confirmed that she lived at the house, and one of the officers, Jared Lindsay ordered her to get her ID and come to the door.

Around the same time, Lancaster entered the home with his gun drawn, shouting the Spanish phrase for “hands up,” and began searching the home. As the officers held his wife at gunpoint, Tyler Harrington woke up and walked out of the bedroom, at which point the officers began pointing their guns at him as well, shouting questions at the couple. 

Eventually, the officers realized they were at the wrong house but still led the couple back into their own home at gunpoint. After releasing the couple, Lindsay told them that “someone had reported people searching the front and back doors of this house,” adding that the caller had told them the owner was gone. 

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Long Beach, California, Police ‘Brutally’ Arrested a Cancer Patient. Now, the City Is Paying $300,000.

Long Beach, California, is stuck with a $300,000 bill after three of its police officers arrested a cancer patient with “brutal force” for driving with an expired vehicle registration. 

On September 3, 2022, Johnny Jackson, who had undergone surgery for his prostate cancer the day prior, was driving home from an errand to make a copy of his doctor’s note following surgery when he noticed he was being followed by an unmarked Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) vehicle. 

According to a lawsuit filed last October, when Jackson pulled into his driveway, the LBPD vehicle parked outside his house. Jackson exited his car, holding his doctor’s note, and told the officers that he knew he had an issue with his vehicle registration. In response, the officers, who were not named in the complaint, ordered Jackson to put his hands up and approach them. As he was doing so, Jackson was additionally ordered to put his hands on his head and turn so his back was facing one officer, while a second officer approached Jackson’s front porch.

Body camera footage shows Jackson again telling the officers that he knew his vehicle registration may have been expired and that he had gotten surgery for his prostate cancer the day before. The lawsuit states that, while Jackson was speaking, “a gust of wind began blowing the Doctor’s Note off the top of his vehicle.” Jackson then told the officers that “this is actually my paperwork for my surgery yesterday,” and put one of his hands on the note to prevent it from blowing away.

In response, one of the officers rushed to grab Jackson’s arm, pinning it behind his back and telling him that he was “about to get fucked up.” 

“Listen to me, put your hands behind your back. If you resist you will get hurt,” one officer told Jackson. “If you hurt me I will sue you. I just had surgery,” Jackson replied.

Body camera footage shows the ensuing struggle, in which Jackson was pulled in multiple directions by the officers, as Jackson again told them he was recovering from surgery. The lawsuit states that one officer struck Jackson in the head in an attempted “takedown maneuver,” which he followed by kneeing Jackson in his groin three times. 

“Why are you forcing us to use force on you?” one officer asked

Eventually, Jackson was handcuffed and cited for having an expired vehicle registration and resisting arrest. Jackson sued the city and police department in October 2023, arguing that the officers engaged in excessive force and caused him multiple injuries by arresting him so violently, despite being aware of his recent surgery. 

A settlement in the case was reached in December 2023, and the staggering $300,000 value was announced last week.

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Florida Bills Would Hide the Names of Police Officers Who Kill People 

Bills filed in Florida would allow law enforcement agencies to hide the names of police and correctional officers who kill people.

Such legislation was widely expected after the Florida Supreme Court ruled in December that police departments could not invoke Marsy’s Law, a crime victims’ rights law adopted by Florida voters in 2018, to hide the names of officers involved in deadly shootings. The ruling was much broader than expected, though, and stripped privacy protections from civilian crime victims as well.

The legislation is one of several efforts in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to further insulate police in the Sunshine State—once lauded for its expansive public record laws—from scrutiny. As Reason reported yesterday, two other bills advancing through the Legislature would ban cities and counties from forming civilian police oversight boards.

State Rep. Chuck Brannan (R–Macclenny) filed House Bill 1605 and House Bill 1607 earlier this month. The former would expand the definition of “crime victims” to include “law enforcement officers, correctional officers, or correctional probation officers who use deadly force in the course and scope of their employment or official duties.” 

The latter would exempt records that could be used to identify and harass crime victims from the state’s public records law unless the victim opts to have it disclosed. “The Legislature finds that the release of any such information or records that could be used to locate or harass a crime victim or the victim’s family could subject such victims or their families to further trauma,” the bill says.

The bills have the backing of powerful police unions in the state as well. “For people to exclude police officers just because we wear the badge and we protect and serve, that’s not fair to us,” John Kazanjian, president of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, told the Tampa Bay Times. 

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Florida Legislation Would Ban Civilian Police Oversight Boards

Two bills advancing through the Florida Legislature would ban cities and counties from forming civilian police oversight boards and dissolve already-existing boards.

The legislation, House Bill 601 and its companion Senate Bill 576, would make it unlawful for a county or municipal government to pass ordinances related to civilian oversight of police misconduct investigations or the handling of misconduct complaints against law enforcement officers.

Currently, the bills have passed several committees, and the Tallahassee Democrat reports they have the support of Republican majorities in both chambers, as well as influential Florida law enforcement groups.

The bill’s text says its purpose is to create a uniform process for how police departments handle misconduct complaints against officers, but it would also leave police departments to hold themselves accountable and eliminate 21 civilian police oversight boards operating throughout Florida.

Speaking on Tuesday shortly before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted to advance the legislation, state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R–Spring Hill), the bill’s sponsor, called the boards “divisive.”

“Officers have a very tough job,” Ingoglia said. “It doesn’t make sense to me that we have people second-guessing those decisions.”

There are over 100 civilian police oversight boards around the country. They vary in their scope and power, but, in general, they’re independent boards that investigate, monitor, or audit police department operations. 

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As Milwaukee police chase cars more, crashes are up and arrest rates are down, study says

Milwaukee police are engaging in almost three times as many vehicle pursuits in recent years, and even though crashes have almost quadrupled and the apprehension rate is down, officials believe the chases are worth it.

According to a recent study, the increase is fueled mostly by a rise in reckless driving, which in 2017 drove Milwaukee’s police oversight board, the Fire and Police Commission, to force an expansion of a policy governing when chases are acceptable.

Vehicle pursuits are among the most dangerous activities law enforcement perform and the challenge of striking the right balance with them has vexed officials across the country. And nationally, there is some debate about how appropriate it is to chase reckless drivers, given the risk that it will only increase danger for everyone nearby.

“This is a risk that (Milwaukee) wants to assume and I think with it comes certain responsibilities and consequences,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, who has written extensively on vehicle pursuits.

But in a city that has been frustrated with reckless driving for about a decade, Police Chief Jeffrey Norman argued his officers have balanced the risks appropriately while the feedback from the community has been, “Don’t let up. Keep the pressure on.”

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FAMILIES OF PEOPLE KILLED BY NYPD BRACE FOR ERIC ADAMS TO VETO CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM BILLS

A SMALL GROUP OF organizers rallied outside of New York City Hall on Wednesday to call on Mayor Eric Adams not to veto a series of bills that would ban the use of solitary confinement in city jails and increase oversight over police stops and searches. 

The push by grassroots reform groups to ban solitary confinement comes in response to a surge in recent years of deaths in city jails, including several cases of people who had been detained in solitary confinement. Families of people killed as a result of stops by New York Police Department officers have also urgedOpens in a new tab the mayor to sign the policing measures into law. 

Advocates and officials working on the reforms expect Adams, who has publicly opposedOpens in a new tab the bills, to vetoOpens in a new tab at least two of the measures this week. He has until Friday to do so, or the measures will pass into law. 

The battle pits a pro-police mayor, an NYPD veteran himself, against a progressive City Council, which approvedOpens in a new tab the three billsOpens in a new tab last month by large marginsOpens in a new tab during its last meetingOpens in a new tab of 2023. The fight is the latest in a well-trod pattern of centrist Democrats or Republicans fighting back against popular and democratically enacted welfare reforms. In New York, City Council leaders and members said they have the votes to override the mayor’s veto.

“We are prepared to override the mayor’s veto,” council member Crystal Hudson, who sponsored a bill to strengthen laws around consenting to a search, told The Intercept. “The City Council is the city’s legislative body. The body has spoken.” The council would have 30 days from a mayoral veto to issue an override. 

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Philly police oversight group hasn’t investigated any complaints since it started

The Citizens Police Oversight Commission hasn’t investigated a single citizen complaint of police misconduct since it was created in 2021, the watchdog agency’s leadership has acknowledged to Axios.

Why it matters: For now, all citizen complaints of police misconduct are still turned over to police internal affairs.

  • The agency’s director of investigations, Jamison Rogers, tells Axios he’s in the process of putting together an investigative unit. He acknowledged that redirecting complaints back to the police isn’t ideal because some residents who turn to the CPOC don’t have faith in internal affairs.
  • The commission’s mission is to improve police officer conduct and accountability and restore community trust in the department.

By the numbers: CPOC received 137 citizen complaints in 2023, including one involving officers who responded to a call about a distressed woman who was later killed in a hit-and-run.

  • About a quarter of the complaints included allegations that police officers had committed physical abuse, civil rights violations, falsification, sexual misconduct, drug use, or some other crime, per city data.
  • The agency has sole discretion over which misconduct complaints it investigates, per city law.

Driving the news: Some commissioners and residents told Axios they’re concerned that CPOC isn’t further along, but commission leaders say they’re confident in the process and hope to hire more than a dozen investigators over the next eight months.

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Ohio SWAT Team Raids Wrong House, Seriously Injures Baby With Flashbang Grenade, Denies Responsibility

Courtney Price was at home on Wednesday taking care of her one-year-old son, Waylon, when they experienced a terrifying and traumatic altercation with local law enforcement. What should have been an ordinary day took a turn for the worse when SWAT officers broke into the home, searching for a suspect.

In the aftermath of the raid, it was revealed that law enforcement had targeted the wrong home, and tragically, their actions resulted in the baby sustaining injuries. The events that unfolded left the family shaken and seeking justice for Waylon’s suffering.

Price told RedState that she had been staying with her aunt Redia and her husband for one week before the incident occurred. She recounted her experience, describing how she stood petrified as the police burst into her aunt Redia’s home, throwing a flashbang grenade into the residence and breaking windows. She was feeding her son, who has a condition requiring the use of a G-tube because he cannot eat by mouth. A little after 2 pm, she “started hearing very loud pings on the door,” and went to see what was happening.

I got up and started walking towards the door, and all I could see was a bunch of police because we were in a split-level house, so I was at the top of the steps there. All I could see was a bunch of police, and they were already hitting the door. I was trying to get to the door to open it, but I didn’t want to get hit, so I just froze on the steps. They busted it down and busted the windows out all at the same time. I was standing there, I froze. I really wanted to run to my baby and just help him because I see all that smoke getting on him. There were handguns pointed at me [with the officers] saying, ‘Get down, put your hands up, come down here.’ So I went down. They grabbed me and took me outside, put me in handcuffs.

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