Tag: police brutality

Disgraced Police Union President Pleads Guilty to Raping Children for Decades as Dept. Covered for Him

 Last year, documents were released detailing the abuse and cover-up of said abuse carried out by Patrick M. Rose Sr., the former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and Boston PD detective. Rose was charged with molesting children, and the documents prove the department knew, and allowed him to continue to serve in their ranks and even engage with children.

Rose was originally charged with 33 counts in connection with the rape and abuse of at least six children in the 1990s. Some of the charges included statutory rape and indecent assault and battery on a child. This week, Rose pleaded guilty to rape charges involving the horrific and repeated rape of multiple young children.

“Some of these victims describe being sexually assaulted upwards of 200 times,” said Assistant District Attorney Audrey Mark.

Rose’s victims were sometimes 6, 7 or 8 years old, prosecutors said, and he raped the six victims in his West Roxbury home over the course of 30 years until 2020.

“By virtue of his position, he had their trust, and he violated it over and over. He violated their bodies. And these children, and these adult survivors will live with that trauma for the rest of their lives,” Mark said after the court listened to victim impact statements.

“I am so sorry to each and every one of you. Please try to accept that I am solely responsible, and not let your hatred destroy who you are or each other,” the disgraced police union boss said as he was shackled in the courtroom on Monday.

Unfortunately, despite the nature of his charges, Rose was only sentenced to 10-13 years in prison, followed by 10 years of probation.

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Jackboots Policing: No-Knock Raids Rip A Hole In The Fourth Amendment

It’s the middle of the night.

Your neighborhood is in darkness. Your household is asleep.

Suddenly, you’re awakened by a loud noise.

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.

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.

You die without ever raising a weapon or firing a gun in self-defense.

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 no-knock, no-announce SWAT team raid is what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us.

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.

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Cops Ruled Justified in Cracking Innocent Elderly Man’s Skull, Leaving Him Hospitalized for a Month

As TFTP reported at the time, a case out of Buffalo, New York received a lot of attention due to the unnecessary and disturbing nature of how it unfolded. A75-year-old man, Martin Gugino was shoved down so hard that his injuries landed him in the hospital for over a month. The two cops who shoved him were suspended and arrested as a result and following their discipline the entire Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team resigned in support of those two cops.

In total, 57 officers threw a collective temper tantrum, for their right to attack innocent elderly men with impunity.

And impunity is what they got. Over the weekend, an arbitrator ruled that officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski violated no policies when they shoved the frail 75-year-old man down so hard that he cracked his skull and began bleeding from his ears.

Arbitrator Jeffrey Selchick wrote, “Upon review, there is no evidence to sustain any claim that Respondents [police officers] had any other viable options other than to move Gugino out of the way of their forward movement.”

As TFTP reported, Gugino was on the sidewalk attempting to return one of the officer’s helmets he had found. The officers then walked up to him and shoved him to the ground. The impact of the elderly man’s head was so hard that he immediately began bleeding from the ears and was knocked unconscious.

After the cops shoved him, they looked down, noticed he was bleeding from the ears and kept walking — leaving the elderly man lying there on the pavement, bleeding.

After the assault, according to WBFO, two medics came forward and treated him. They helped put him in an ambulance and he was taken away. He spent the following month in the hospital as he was treated for a severe head injury.

After the incident made it to the news, Buffalo police put out a ridiculous statement claim the elderly man tripped.

A Buffalo Police spokesman issued a statement saying “a 5th person was arrested during a skirmish with other protestors and also charged with disorderly conduct. During that skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell.”

However, after the video was posted online, exactly 23 minutes later by WBFO, department officials changed their tone and said a full Internal Affairs investigation was underway and that Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood had ordered the immediate suspension of the two officers involved, without pay.

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Why the Feds Intentionally Poisoned Americans During Prohibition, Killing Thousands—and Why You’ve Never Heard about It

I was recently invited to speak to a student group about alcohol prohibition. During the course of my talk, I shared with them perhaps the most chilling historical account of America’s failed experiment to ban the sale of alcohol.

The Prohibition Era (1920 -1933), which began with the passage of the Volstead Act, had many problems. Virtually overnight, millions of Americans became criminals for the “crime” of having a drink. Instead of people trading money for a jug of beer or a bottle of gin, they had to make their own or turn to the black market. It resulted in a surge of organized crime and the rise of many of the most notorious gangsters in history, including Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

“In the absence of Prohibition, we wouldn’t have had the kind of syndicated criminality that occurred. Prohibition was the catalyst,” explains Howard Abadinsky, professor of criminal justice at St. John’s University and the author of the book Organized Crime.

One might think the surge of organized crime—which resulted in a corresponding surge of law enforcement to suppress it—would be the darkest consequence of Prohibition. It was not.

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Nothing Has Changed Since George Floyd Died, US Cops Still Kill Someone Every 8 Hours

It has been nearly two years since Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. At the time, Floyd’s death would set off massive protests across the country as politicians and political pundits played lip service to Black Lives Matter and others, as they offered up their hollow support. Illustrating the extremely hollow nature of their “support” is the fact that despite all the appeals to emotion, the toothless “reform” bills, and incessant gaslighting — absolutely nothing has changed.

As the fourth month of 2022 begins, American cops are keeping to their deadly numbers like clockwork. One quarter of the year is over and cops have killed more than 250 people — right on track with previous years. This number is set to increase by one, on average, every 8 hours, every single day, of every single week, of every single month, of every single year.

The Biden administration promised change but since he’s been in office, it’s been more of the same, and, in fact, has gotten worse. Last year’s budget (FY 2021) for the hiring program, approved under Trump, was set at $156.5 million. Biden more than doubled the funding for it in FY 2022.

The “defund the police” movement has since morphed into a “fund the police” more movement, spearheaded by the very people who promised to do the opposite. Biden just released a “fund the police” budget proposal in March for $30bn more in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put “more police officers on the beat.”

America spends more on policing than every other country in the world spends on their entire militaries, except for China. But if we remove China from the picture, US law enforcement would be the largest military in the world — and it’s deployed right here in the land of the free.

Despite all this spending, crime in many areas is on the rise, corruption in police is rampant, and police in America are still killing unarmed and even innocent people. And what do the politicians do to fix it? Increase spending.

Since 2018, cops in America have killed 4,761 citizens. And politicians want to give them more money, as if that is the solution.

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Horrific Video Shows Teen Start Convulsing as Cop Tasers Him for Vaping Outside

“He was only vaping,” was the sentiment from eye-witnesses over the weekend who watched in horror as an Atlanta police officer tasered a 17-year-old boy, causing him to fall to the ground and start convulsing. The incident is now the subject of an internal investigation.

On Thursday, dozens of teens took to Atlanta’s Historic Fourth Ward Skate Park and were peacefully skating and hanging out when a female officer spotted one of the teens using a vape pen. Apparently, vaping is illegal at the park, despite the fact that it is outside, so the officer claimed the right to extort the teen for doing so.

In the brief video we see the teen, 17-year-old Terion Fortson, standing up talking to the officer as she demands he “Get on the ground now. Get on the ground.” Fortson was not seen in the video physically assaulting the officer or otherwise resisting in any way that would require the following use of force.

According to witnesses, the taser came out after Fortson didn’t get out his ID fast enough.

“I was scared, because you know, past events, of police officers and Black people, you expect him to be shot, but she didn’t,” witness, Brendon Aldridge told WSB-TV.

“He was only vaping. She asked him for his ID. He was being calm, he wasn’t being like, ‘No, I’m not going to show you my ID.’ She tased him. It was crazy, because while he was on the ground, shaking, she was like, ‘Get down, get down,’ like he wasn’t already on the ground. It was even crazier, like six other police officers pulled up and they were all dapping each other up, saying, ‘What’s up?’, hugging. I’m like, what is this? That was just crazy. It made no sense.”

As the video shows, the officer tasers Fortson but it didn’t have much of an effect. The teen just stood there before the officer fired a second time. The second time, it definitely penetrated his skin, causing him to collapse to the ground.

Once he was on the ground, he was no longer a threat but the officer deployed the taser once more causing the teen to start convulsing uncontrollably on the ground. The video is hard to watch which is why local news refused to air it.

When reached for comment, the department claimed Fortson was resisting and said this was the reason the taser was used. However, according to the videos below and witnesses, Fortson was not physically resisting at all.

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Police Officer Kills Dog for Walking Toward Him With Tail Wagging

For Bradley Brock, his 3-year-old dog, a mastiff named Moose, was his family and his support after a serious motorcycle accident. In a span of seconds on a November night last year, a police officer in Inkster, Michigan, took all of that from Brock when the officer shot Moose multiple times as the dog approached him.

Brock says, and video appears to show, the dog wagging its tail as it trots toward the officer. Brock has now filed a federal civil rights lawsuit arguing that the shooting was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

The shooting is another alleged instance of an officer misreading dog behavior and slaying a pet—a sadly common occurrence that continues to devastate families, generate public outrage, lead to officers being fired, and cost police departments hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuit settlements.

Brock says he called 911 on November 15 of last year after a man at a gas station pulled a gun on him. Video of the incident shows an Inkster police officer talking to Brock while Moose sits on the sidewalk a short distance away, off leash. Moose then trots over to Brock, wagging his tail and stopping to sniff a passing pedestrian, before turning and moving toward the officer.

“He was very friendly, but if anybody was around me, he wanted to check ’em out and make sure they’re okay,” Brock says. “That’s all, like any dog.”

However, the officer begins quickly backpedaling, draws his gun, and within seconds shoots the dog multiple times.

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