Tag: police brutality

Innocent Unarmed Man Shakes Cop’s Hand and Seconds Later The Cop Murders Him

The tragic case of Jonathan Price shocked the country in October 2020 after the local hero was gunned down for reportedly helping a woman in need and breaking up a fight. Adding to the tragic nature of his death, before he was shot four times, body camera footage showed that he attempted to shake Officer Shaun Lucas’ hand multiple times.

Days after he killed Price, Lucas was charged with murder and his use of force was deemed “not reasonable” by the Texas Rangers. Despite the case against him, last week Lucas was acquitted on the charges. Now, a week after his acquittal, the footage from that fateful night has been released and it shows a travesty of justice.

“Unfortunately, the result that we saw from that jury simply doesn’t match what we see in the video,” attorney Lee Merritt said. “This video was literally a smoking gun piece of evidence in this case.”Merritt has now asked for the U.S. Department of Justice to review the cases for potential federal charges against Lucas.

According to the affidavit, Lucas was responding to a call of a “possible fight in progress” at a ‘Kwik Chek’ convenience store around 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 3, 2020. Texas Ranger Laura Simmons, who prepared Lucas’ arrest affidavit, noted that what happened next gave the department justification for charging the cop with murder.

The affidavit notes that when officer Lucas exited his patrol car, Price did not attempt to flee nor did he pose any threat whatsoever to the officer. Instead, Price greeted the officer. According to the video, Price “came very close to Officer Lucas asking ‘you doing good’ multiple times while extending his hand in a handshake gesture.”

“Stay right there, you understand me?” Lucas replied.

“You do this?” he asked pointing to broken glass on the ground.

Price apologized for the broken glass on the ground and said someone had tried to “wrap me up,” during the altercation in which Price reportedly tried to break up a dispute.

Very quickly, the situation took a turn for the worse.

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While Trying to Kill an Elderly Toothless Dog, Officer Misses and Shoots His Fellow Cop Instead

Earlier this month, a police officer was hospitalized after he was shot by his partner while responding to a non-criminal call about a suicidal person. The suicidal person was not a threat and the officer was not defending himself from a human when he fired his gun. Instead, when the officers walked up to the man’s home, the neighbor’s bulldog came toward one of them, who opened fire to kill the dog.

But he missed the dog.

“The dog charged at the officers,” Detroit Police Commander Brian Harris told WXYZ. “The officers fearing for their safety, one officer fired one round at the dog. The round didn’t strike the dog, it struck his partner in the lower right calf.”

The point about the dog “charging” the officers is contested, however. In the police report from the incident, a witness told investigators that the dog never once charged and was merely barking at the officers.

“We let the dog out to use the bathroom from the side door,” Tiara, the niece of the dog owner told WXYZ. “The police were walking towards this door, the dog comes up, she’s protecting her area. So she just came out and she barked, she didn’t jump on them, she didn’t lunge and he was just going crazy with the gun. I thought he was gonna shoot me because he was swinging the gun all over the place. I almost had a heart attack because she’s not aggressive, she doesn’t even have teeth, she’s old.”

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Innocent Man Calls 911 for Help, Cops Show Up, Jump on His Car Hood, Execute Him

On the night he called 911 for help, 22-year-old Christian Glass had never been arrested, never committed a crime, never 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.

On the night of June 11, 2022, Glass somehow got his car stuck on a rural dirt road after running into a small shrub. Thinking they would help him, Glass called 911 and though he was in an obvious state of mental distress when he called, he was still rational, honest, and completely open about the situation, going so far as to answer the dispatchers question as to whether he had any weapons.

“I have two knives, a hammer and a rubber mallet … But I am not dangerous, I will keep my hands completely visible,” he told the dispatcher, offering to throw them out once officers arrived. But officers wouldn’t let him throw them out, telling him to keep the weapons inside the car as they escalated the situation to deadly violence.

“I’m in a 2007 Honda Pilot. I will not be fine on my own,” he told an operator, according to CPR. “You’re sending someone right? You tracked my location? My car is stuck under a bush … I love you. You’re my light right now. I’m really scared. I’m sorry.”

When police arrived, Glass once again offered to toss the knives and hammers out of the window. But officers made the incredibly ignorant decision to disallow this in spite of the fact that Glass had committed no crime.

“Please push me out, drag me out, I’ll follow you to a police station,” Glass told the officers. “I’m so scared.”

“You need to step out of the car now. Step out of the car,” an officer said. “That is a lawful order. Step out of the car now or you’ll be removed from the vehicle.”

Glass responded, “I’m so scared … You’re not communicating clearly with me. I don’t understand why I have to come out.”

A few minutes later and cops decided it would be a good idea to threaten to break the window of the innocent man’s vehicle.

This obviously didn’t help the situation at all. Eventually, officers from Clear Creek, Idaho Springs, Georgetown Police, Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Division of Gaming arrived on the scene — for an innocent man, stuck on the roadside. It must have been a slow night in Clear Creek.

For a brief second, the responding officers had a moment of clarity and decided to call over a female officer with a much calmer demeanor. As she walked over to the car, Glass put his hands into a heart sign and blew kisses at her — illustrating just how big of a “threat” he was.

“Same back at you, but come out and talk to us,” she said.

But he did not come out.

The officers’ superiors knew that Glass had committed no crime and eventually radioed in to the responding deputies to leave since there was no threat to anyone.

“Can you ask Clear Creek what their plan is? If there is no crime and he’s not suicidal or homicidal or a great danger, then there’s no reason to contact him,” a CSP sergeant says over the radio. “Is there a medical issue we’re not aware of?”

“No,” a patrol trooper responded back.

Unfortunately, all logic and reason would become non-existent at this point and instead of leaving the innocent man alone, officers decided to move in. One officer jumped on the hood of Glass’s car with a pistol and flashlight in his face as others drew weapons and pointed them at him.

Seconds later, as an officer breaks the window, multiple shots were fired and Glass would be murdered in his vehicle. His killers… public servants.

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NO CHARGES Despite Video Showing Cop Dump 13 Rounds Into Unarmed Child—He Got a Bonus Instead

January of this year was the 4th anniversary of Sheila and Steve Albers’ son’s death. Their 17-year-old son was gunned down by police while unarmed. As is normally the case when police kill unarmed and often innocent people, no charges were filed against Overland Park Officer Clayton Jenison who shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old boy on January 20, 2018. On top of refusing to charge the officer, police have also repeatedly refused to release records concerning the case, despite claiming they would do so three years ago.

On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that it will not pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against Jenison, claiming they could not prove all elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

Officials met privately with members of the Albers family to notify them of the decision.

The DoJ’s decision is in spite of the fact that during a civil lawsuit based on this incident, the DOJ noted that a federal district court in Kansas ruled that a reasonable jury could find that the officer involved in the shooting had indeed used unreasonable force when he fired the first two shots at Albers. As WIBW reports, the federal criminal investigation found no substantial evidence inconsistent with this conclusion.

Unfortunately, as WIBW points out, unlike in the many state jurisdictions that have statutes criminalizing killings committed with lesser mental states, like criminal negligence or recklessness, the DOJ said the federal government has no statute to criminalize a police officer’s use of unreasonable force, if willfulness cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

As we reported at the time, police were called to the home of teenager John Albers after his girlfriend said she was afraid he was going to kill himself. Police arrived and Jenison opened fire on Albers as the teen backed out of his driveway.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened their investigation into the case in September of 2020. But now we see that it went nowhere.

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New Video Shows Cops Casually Walk Into Unarmed Man’s Home, Wake Him Up, Execute Him

Last week, TFTP reported on disturbing body camera footage out of Columbus, Ohio, released as part of a push for transparency in the city. The footage showed police enter the apartment of 20-year-old Donovan Lewis who was undressed, in bed, and was attempting to raise his hands when he received a fatal, taxpayer-funded 9mm round to the chest.

The video went underreported in the media for several days and now, new video has been released showing the complete and callous disregard for life by officer Ricky Anderson as he casually executed Lewis in his own bed.

Despite the warrant for his arrest, Lewis was innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, he was denied that right.

For some reason, Columbus police thought it was a good idea to serve an arrest warrant at 2:30 a.m. at Lewis’ apartment. Footage shows multiple officers outside Lewis’ door knocking for several minutes before one of the man’s roommates opens the door. Moments later, officers would open the door to Lewis’ bedroom and execute him.

“We need to get rid of middle of the night arrest warrants unless there’s a dangerous emergent circumstance,” said the family’s attorney, Rex Elliot. “We need to have police officers who are trained to come into these communities that understand these communities.”

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Cop Found Not Guilty Despite Video of Him Killing Innocent Woman While Trying to Kill Her Dog

As readers of the Free Thought Project know, police killing or attempting to kill dogs is an all too common occurrence — happening so often that it is caught on video much of the time. Also, as the following tragic case our of Arlington, TX illustrates, all too often, police will attempt to kill a dog — miss the dog — and shoot and kill an innocent person instead.

In 2020, a Texas grand jury indicted a police officer after he was seen on video trying to kill a dog and killing an innocent woman instead.

Arlington police officer Ravi Singh was charged with criminally negligent homicide for killing Maggie Brooks, 30, the daughter of an Arlington fire captain. On Monday, however, he was found not guilty — despite overwhelming evidence against him. Naturally, this news upset Brooks’ family.

“You see the video for yourself,” Brooks’ father, Troy Brooks said. “There’s nobody that owns a gun that would ever take that shot. Ever. But if you’re a police officer, you’re covered in absolute immunity. You can do whatever you want, and there are no repercussions for you.”

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Cops Mistook Innocent Dad’s Diabetic Shock for Intoxication, Threw Him in a Cage and Watched Him Die

When he was arrested in February of this year, Gilbert Gil, 67, had committed no crime and had harmed no one. Sadly, however, his innocence offered no protection from the pernicious abuse of the California police state.

The nightmare for the Gil family began when a combination of his dementia and his diabetes created the perfect storm. Jennifer Schmidt, Gil’s daughter says she became worried on February 12 when her dad didn’t show up at her home after he got off of work.

Because he has dementia, Schmidt had placed a tracking device on his keys and when she found him, he was miles away in another county where he wrecked his car. Gil had lost consciousness and drove off the road.

When Schmidt talked to her dad, he was incoherent and not making any sense.

“I’d never seen him like that,” Schmidt told CBS 8. “I had never seen him that way. He was shaking and moving his head and he couldn’t really talk. But he was like, just confused, really confused”

Schmidt said she checked to see if her dad had taken his insulin shots and she found that he hadn’t. She tried to tell police that his strange behavior was likely a combination of his dementia and diabetes but they arrested him and took him to jail instead of a hospital.

“I told him to just listen to what the deputy says. And I’ll see him in a little bit.”

The next morning, Schmidt went to the jail and picked up her dad. Deputies told her that he “never sobered up” and he was worse off than the night before. Schmidt told them that he was not drunk or high and that he suffered from dementia and diabetes and Gil was released shortly after.

“He was ten times worse than when they arrested him. He couldn’t hold a conversation. He couldn’t answer any questions. I finally got him into the car and brought him to my house. My daughter had to give him her sippy cup because he couldn’t even hold a bottle of water,” said Schmidt.

Later that night, Gil’s condition continued to worsen and they called 911 for an ambulance. Instead of an ambulance, police showed up and arrested Gil. And, instead of medical help, Gil received a jail cell.

When Schmidt finally found out that her dad was in jail, she went there the following morning to get him out. Tragically, however, she could not pick him up. He died the night before and officers left his dead body in the cell for 15 hours after he died — so long that rigor mortis had set in.

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