Tag: police brutality

SWAT Team Wakes Up Couple, Shoots Unarmed Disabled Husband, Attempts to Cover It Up

If you read the original headlines in December 2022 after police filled Jason Harley Kloepfer, 41, with bullet holes, you would have thought that police acted heroically and saved the day. Headlines, however, especially when they involve “official” statements from police, are often very wrong.

“Kloepfer confronted officers, forcing them to shoot the suspect,” the police initially told reporters, who unquestioningly printed it. The official statement from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office read as follows:

On Monday December 12th, 2022 at approximately 11pm Cherokee County E911 Communications received a 911 call indicating a disturbance with several gun shots fired at 1790 Upper Bear Paw Road. Cherokee County Deputies were immediately dispatched and arrived on the scene at approximately 11:17pm. Deputies attempted to make contact with the alleged shooter but was unsuccessful. Recognizing there was an armed suspect present and the potential for a hostage situation, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant and requested assistance from the Cherokee Indian Police Department SWAT Team. The suspected shooter engaged in a verbal altercation with officers and emerged from a camper trailer and confronted officers. Members of the Cherokee Indian Police SWAT Team fired upon the suspect and wounded him. The suspect was transported to Erlanger in Chattanooga Tennessee where he was last reported in stable condition.

However, video footage was released over the weekend, showing this description was a lie. Kloepfer never “confronted” anyone, complied with officers’ orders, was unarmed and had his hands up when officers filled him with bullet holes, sending him to the hospital fighting for his life.

According to police, they arrived at the scene that night over reports of shots fired. They wrongly accused Kloepfer of holding a hostage inside his home and deployed a robot camera inside his home.

As the video below shows, the robot camera wakes the sleeping couple who then get up to see what was going on. As Kloepfer and his wife walk out the front door, both unarmed, they put their hands in the air before officers open fire.

Kloepfer collapses. “What the hell!” his wife screamed at the officers while helping Kloepfer. “He’s shot – what the hell did you do!”

Despite shooting an unarmed man and knowing that he is bleeding out inside, officers yell for Kloepfer to come outside. He could not.

As cops finally enter the trailer, Kloepfer is faintly heard telling them, “I don’t have a gun. I didn’t have a gun.”

After the SWAT officer drags Koepfer’s body from the trailer, they realize they are on camera and quickly acknowledge it.

“F**k, cameras,” an officer says after seeing the video recording device. Police then turn the lights back on as they appear to put on night vision in a futile attempt to cover their actions — apparently unaware that the camera had night vision as well.

Kloepfer, who was disabled before the shooting, has been in recovery ever since, having undergone multiple surgeries. He has been sharing his recovery on Facebook and says he and his wife are staying out of state, claiming they fear for their lives with the Cherokee county SWAT team giving them ample reason to do so.

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Cop Shoots Homeless Man Until He Collapses, Shoots Him Again on the Ground to Finish Him Off

Chilling video was released this week showing several officers surrounding a homeless man before one officer dumps seven rounds into him, continuing to shoot him even after he fell to the ground — ensuring his execution.

The incident unfolded on Jan. 3 as police responded to a 911 call from a resident claiming the man was on top of his fence. When officers arrived, they found the unnamed homeless man sitting on the ground, leaning back against the fence. Moments later, the man would be filled with bullet holes.

According to a press release from the Phoenix police department, the man was simply accused of looking over a resident’s fence.

This incident occurred in the area of 35th Avenue and Broadway Road when Phoenix Police received a call about a man trying to enter a residential back yard. The caller described a man on top of his backyard fence who became angry when the caller confronted him.

Multiple officers were dispatched to the area. After talking with the caller, the officers were directed to the alleyway behind the house. Three officers found a man in the alley matching the description given. The man had a pair of scissors in his right hand.

As the video shows, the officers interviewed the caller who informed them that the man merely looked over his fence and never entered his yard. No crime had been committed as ‘becoming angry’ is not illegal. Nevertheless, officers surrounded the man like he was wanted for murder.

When the first officer saw the scissors, he immediately brandished his pistol and began ordering the man to drop the scissors. The man, who was clearly in need of mental health care, did not respond to the commands.

The man then stood up as two officers deployed their tasers. Unfortunately, the tasers had little to no effect on the man who then took a step toward the officers only to be filled with bullet holes. The police statement described the incident as follows:

The officers order the man, in both English and Spanish, to drop the scissors. When the man did not respond to their commands, two officers deployed their tasers. The taser deployments had little effect. The man then advanced towards the officers with the scissors still in his hand. That is when the officer-involved shooting occurred.

It is important to note the difference in the level of the description given to the entire scenario versus the part where the officer killed the man. Nowhere in their statement did they mention that the officer shot the man six times as he collapsed to the ground. Nowhere in the police statement does it mention that another shot was fired into the man’s body a full 3 seconds after he had been lying on the ground.

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Cliven Bundy-FBI Debacle: Another Example of Why the Feds Need to be Leashed

The Justice Department was caught in another high-profile travesty last month that continues to reverberate through the western states. On Dec. 20, federal judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and others after prosecutors were caught withholding massive amounts of evidence undermining federal charges. This is the latest in a long series of federal law enforcement debacles that have spurred vast distrust of Washington.

Bundy, a 71-year old Nevadan rancher, and his sons and supporters were involved in an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) beginning in 2014 stemming from decades of unpaid cattle grazing fees and restrictions. The Bundys have long claimed the feds were on a vendetta against them, and 3,300 pages of documents the Justice Department wrongfully concealed from their lawyers provides smoking guns that buttress their case.

A whistleblowing memo by BLM chief investigator Larry Wooten charges that BLM chose “the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale and militaristic trespass cattle (seizure) possible” against Bundy. He also cited a “widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical and legal violations” by BLM officials in the case. BLM agents even “bragged about roughing up Dave Bundy, grinding his face into the ground and Dave Bundy having little bits of gravel stuck in his face” while he was videotaping federal agents. Wooten also stated that anti-Mormon prejudice pervaded BLM’s crackdown.

The feds charged the Bundys with conspiracy in large part because the ranchers summoned militia to defend them after they claimed that FBI snipers had surrounded their ranch. Justice Department lawyers scoffed at this claim in prior trials involving the standoff but newly-released documents confirm that snipers were in place prior to the Bundy’s call for help.

The feds also belatedly turned over multiple threat assessments which revealed that the Bundys were not violent or dangerous, including an FBI analysis that concluded that BLM was “trying to provoke a conflict” with the Bundys. As an analysis in the left-leaning Intercept observed, federal missteps in this case “fueled longstanding perceptions among the right-wing groups and militias that the federal government is an underhanded institution that will stop at nothing to crush the little guy and cover up its own misdeeds.”

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Police in America: An Awkward Truth

It’s very difficult to talk about this in polite company, or in any company really in most of the nation, but there’s an awkward truth about cops that most people kinda sorta know, but still won’t take to its obvious conclusion.

Generally speaking, the police are a right-wing force in this country. They support right-wing causes individually, they act on behalf of right-wing elements of the society, and frequently stand down when right-wing forces are engaged against left-wing (or merely populist) forces in street battles.

Yes, they solve crimes. Even relatively nonpropagandistic, cop-focused shows like The Wire (which was produced by a police reporter and a veteran detective) show that aspect of their work. (Merely propagandistic shows, on the other hand, like Law & Order, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five-0 and myriad others, exist to only glorify that aspect of the job.)

But police departments were formed not to solve crimes, but to “maintain order” in the immigrant-unrest and labor-resistance world of the 19th and early 20th centuries — a role they inherited from the infamous Pinkertons, thugs-for-hire from an earlier day. 

And they have remained a force of social repression — repression of unrest — ever since. (If you click the Pinkertons link above, skip the History Channel’s glorification and read point 8: Pinkertons as “the paramilitary wing of big business”).

Most people fall somewhere on this spectrum in their thinking about cops — that they’re either our crime-solving friends from CSI or they’re somewhat problematic, but still a force for order in a troubled and violent world (The Wire, Hill Street Blues, True Detective).

But what if they’re a force for disorder? What if they’re too closely allied with the right-wing-terror problem the nation is trying, though not hard enough, to fix? What if our police are creating the problem we also want them to solve?

I don’t have an answer to those questions because I don’t have an answer about degrees — the degree to which cops solve problems vs. the degree to which they are problems. But there’s a lot of data to mull.

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Cops Killed More People in 2022 than Any Year on Record — Here’s How to Stop It from Happening Again

As 2023 begins, American police polish off another deadly year, ending 1,176 lives in 2022. This number is a new record for police killings in America and yet still, it is set to increase by one, on average, every 8 hours.

Since 2018, cops in America have killed 5,668 citizens. And most people are not saying anything about it.

While it may be easy for some to write off police killings as a problem of American gun culture, this is not major factor. According to a report by the Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform (ICJTR), Finland has one the highest gun-ownership rates in Europe, with around 32 civilian firearms per 100 people – but incidents of police shooting civilians are extremely rare. We could only find 9 examples of police killings in Finland in the last two decades, one of which was an accidental shooting of a prison guard.

What’s more, as TFTP reported in 2021, the majority of police killings involve calls in which there was no crime or the suspect is only suspected of a non-violent offense.

“Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported,” according to a report from PoliceViolenceReport.org

It gets worse.

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5 Cops Charged for Torturing Handcuffed Man to Death then Claiming He Died in Car Crash

The family of Ronald Greene as well as the public at large were all told a tragic but utterly false story about this 49-year-old Louisiana man’s last moments alive. According to officials, Greene died after his car crashed into a “tree/shrub” just outside Monroe on May 10, 2019. However, we have since learned everything they were told was a lie after body camera video surfaced and painted an entirely different picture. Greene’s death was not a result of the crash and the department engaged in a coverup.

Now, more than three years after his death, five cops were charged in connection to the horrifying torture they doled out on the side of a dark Louisiana highway.

“They need to be held accountable,” Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother, told reporters on Thursday after the charges were announced. “Because if not, you’re condoning the killing of Ronald Greene. You’re OK with my son being murdered if you just give a slap on the wrist.”

Up until now, all the officers have remained on the job and, even now, they are still collecting their paychecks. As the NY Times reports:

The state police said on Thursday that two troopers had been placed on administrative leave because of the indictment. One of them, Master Trooper Kory York, was charged with the most serious offenses, including negligent homicide and 10 counts of malfeasance in office. (Trooper York had previously received a 50-hour suspension and returned to active duty.) The other, Lt. John Clary, who was charged with malfeasance in office and obstruction of justice, was the highest-ranking trooper at the scene.

Two others with the state police, Trooper Dakota DeMoss and Capt. John Peters, were both charged with obstruction of justice. Christopher Harpin, a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy, was also named in the indictment, charged with three counts of malfeasance in office.

“Today’s indictments followed a thorough and extensive investigation by state and federal agencies,” Col. Lamar A. Davis, the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said in a statement on Thursday. “Any instance of excessive force jeopardizes public safety and is a danger to our communities. These actions are inexcusable and have no place in professional public safety services.”

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Cop Fired But Never Charged for Feeding Homeless Man a Literal ‘Sh*t Sandwich’ — Is a Cop Again

In November of 2016, the Free Thought Project brought you the disgusting story of a San Antonio cop putting feces on a piece of bread and giving it to a homeless man as food. For making a literal sh*t sandwich, San Antonio police officer Matthew Luckhurst was fired. Months later, the Free Thought Project learned that Luckhurst was involved in yet another feces-related ‘prank’ — after the sh*t sandwich.

After both of these incidents, Luckhurst was quietly rehired in 2019, only to be fired again in 2020. As the SA Express points out, Luckhurst appealed again when he was re-canned for the second feces-related incident. In June 2020 an arbitrator agreed the police department was justified in the dismissal. “This individual clearly has no business wearing an SAPD uniform,” City Manager Erik Walsh said.

But that did not mean this shitty cop was barred from all police uniforms.

Because the system is terrible at holding bad cops accountable, however, Luckhurst became a gypsy cop and was rehired at the Floresville Police Department, 30 miles outside of San Antonio.

This rehiring of Luckhurst shows just how broken the system is. When we can’t keep out repeat offenders because of silly loopholes, something is seriously wrong.

“It was a disgusting, vile act — that, there is no excuse; there is no explaining it; there is no justification,” San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told KOMO News after the termination of an officer for, quite literally, giving a homeless man a sh*t sandwich.

“It’s a disgrace to the department, it’s a disgrace to the badge,” McManus continued.

As we reported at the time, Luckhurst inexplicably thought it would be humorous to place feces in between two slices of bread and offer it to a likely-starving homeless person in a styrofoam takeout box, and then boast of this ‘prank’ to his partner.

His partner, however, didn’t share the sentiment — and the pair of cops returned to the scene, where Luckhurst ostensibly disposed of the sickening, cruel offering.

Only a month after being caught in this sick and twisted ‘prank’ on an innocent homeless man — before he was fired — Lockhurst pulled another sh*t prank. This time, his sh*tty shenanigans would be on his fellow cops.

Luckhurst and a second officer, Steve Albart, carried out the incident together in June 2015 after a female officer asked that the women’s restroom at a bike-patrol office remain clean, KSAT-TV reports.

To get back at the officer for asking that the women’s bathroom remain clean, Albart and Lockhurst then defecated in the toilet and then Lockhurst smeared a feces-like substance all over the seat.

For not flushing the toilet, Albart was suspended for 30 days, which he’s already served.

You cannot make this up.

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Cop Charged with Murder After Jumping on Car, Executing Innocent Man Who Called 911 for Help

On the night he called 911 for help, 22-year-old Christian Glass had never been arrested, committed a crime, harmed anyone, and was a threat to no one. Despite these facts, and despite the fact that he was entirely innocent, police would show up to his call for help that night, and execute him.

Now, months after his death, former deputy Andrew Buen and his supervisor Sgt. Kyle Gould have been charged with felonies for their roles in executing Glass. The officers are in court today after being indicted by a grand jury.

Buen, who jumped on the hood of Glass’s car and killed him is charged with second-degree murder, official misconduct, and reckless endangerment.

Gould, who gave orders for Buen to forcibly remove Glass from the front seat of his car, where he remained during the entire standoff with several law enforcement officers, faces criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment.

Both of these reckless and deadly officers have been fired. The two disgraced cops are expected to ask for special bond privilege in court today so they can travel out of state for Christmas — a kick in the teeth to the family of Glass.

“It is tragically ironic that Officer Buen would have the audacity to ask the court to modify his bond to allow out-of-state travel so that he can be with his family when his actions have deprived Christian’s family of being with their loved one this holiday season,” the family’s attorney, Siddhartha Rathod said.

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