Tag: police brutality

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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Innocent Family’s Home Burned, 15yo Boy Dead After SWAT Set Their Home on Fire with Flash Bangs

An innocent family is homeless and a 15-year-old boy is dead after a SWAT team engaged in a standoff to arrest a suspect for a parole violation. Police are now conducting damage control to avoid taking the blame.

SWAT team raids house for a robbery suspect. Flashbangs ignite the house, which is then engulfed in flames. After the fire, police find the body of a 14-year-old boy. He was not the suspect. Nor was the family who live in the house.

(via @DrRJKavanagh)https://t.co/Sog4jszHzR

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) July 10, 2022

Last week, police said they were pursuing a suspect, Qiaunt Kelley, for a federal felony warrant for robbery. They later changed their story to say that Kelley was wanted for violation of parole. While on the run, Kelley ran into the home of an innocent family and barricaded himself inside the home, according to police.

A standoff ensued for hours as police demanded Kelley exit the home. As Kelley held up in the home, a 15-year-old boy, identified as Brett Rosenau, also entered the home and police knew he was inside. He was not a suspect and was not wanted but it is unclear as to why he did not exit the home.

The teenager somehow “followed Kelley into the home,” the Albuquerque department said.

At some point during the standoff, smoke began emerging from the windows as half the house became engulfed in flames. As fire-fighters arrived on the scene, Kelley escaped the fire and was taken into custody before being transported to a local hospital to be treated for burn injuries. He is currently in jail.

The boy who was holed up in the home with Kelley was not so lucky. After the fire-fighters extinguished the fire, they found the boy’s body. Officials have yet released the cause of the boy’s death.

After news of the boy’s death was reported, Albuquerque police quickly took to Twitter to dispel rumors that they shot him. However, they admitted that their actions could have ignited the fire.

“There is false information being spread on social media about the overnight SWAT incident. No officers fired their weapons. Arson investigators are trying to determine the cause of the fire. Both individuals were given opportunities to safely exit the house,” the department tweeted.

Adding that “We disclosed the devices used to get the occupants to exit the home. We have used them hundreds of times w/out incident. We acknowledge the possibility that one of these devices may have contributed to the fire. AFR’s arson investigation will determine the cause of the fire.”

We disclosed the devices used to get the occupants to exit the home. We have used them hundreds of times w/out incident. We acknowledge the possibility that one of these devices may have contributed to the fire. AFR’s arson investigation will determine the cause of the fire.

— APD Public Information Officer (@APD_PIO) July 10, 2022

Residents of the home told KOB4 that the flashbangs were the cause of the fire.

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Rogue Cops: The Supreme Court Is Turning America Into a Constitution-Free Zone

“No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible.”—Mary R. Ziegler, legal historian

The Supreme Court has spoken: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Although the Court’s 2021-22 rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating.

The doctrine of qualified immunity was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to ensure that government officials are not held accountable for official misconduct.

In Egbert v. Boule, the Court gave total immunity to Border Patrol agents who beat up a bed-and-breakfast owner, in the process carving out a massive exception to the Fourth Amendment for border police (and by extension, other federal police) who unconstitutionally use excessive force. As journalist Ian Millhiser concludes, “Egbert v. Boule is a severe blow to the proposition that law enforcement must obey the Constitution.”

In Cope v. Cogdill, the Court let stand a Fifth Circuit ruling that granted qualified immunity to jail officials who watched a suicidal inmate strangle himself without intervening or calling for help. Likewise, in Ramirez v. Guadarrama, the Court let stand a lower court ruling granting qualified immunity to police officers who fired their tasers at a suicidal man who had doused himself in gasoline, causing the man to burst into flames.

Both Cope and Ramirez move the goal posts for the kind of misconduct that merits qualified immunity, suggesting that even sheer incompetence is excusable when it involves a cop.

It’s a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

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