Tag: police brutality

Former Houston Drug Cop Convicted of Murder After His Lies Resulted in Two Deaths

A jury on Wednesday convicted former Houston narcotics officer Gerald Goines of two murder charges for instigating a January 2019 drug raid that killed a middle-aged couple, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, he falsely accused of selling heroin. Goines admitted that he lied in the affidavit supporting the no-knock search warrant that authorized him and his colleagues to break into the couple’s home, describing a heroin purchase that never happened.

The prosecution argued that Goines’ lies made him criminally responsible for the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas, who were killed after Goines and several other officers broke down the front door and immediately shot the couple’s dog. Tuttle, who according to prosecutors was napping in a bedroom at the time, reacted to the tumult and gunfire by grabbing a revolver and shooting at the intruders, injuring four of them, including Goines. The cops responded with a hail of at least 40 bullets, killing Tuttle and Nicholas, who was unarmed but allegedly looked like she was about to grab a gun from an injured officer.

The two murder charges against Goines were based on a statute that applies when someone “commits or attempts to commit a felony” and “in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt…commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.” That charge was inappropriate in this case, the defense argued, because Goines’ underlying felony—producing the fraudulent search warrant affidavit—did not cause the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas, which they brought on themselves.

“This case is overcharged,” defense attorney Mac Secrest told the jury during closing arguments on Tuesday. “It should never have been charged [as] felony murder,” he said while pointing at the prosecutors. “It got amped up to it because of the politics in their office, because of the media outcry, the pressure.”

Goines’ lawyers argued that Tuttle and Nicholas would still be alive if they had surrendered instead of resisting. While the prosecution emphasized that the cops fired first, Secrest emphasized that Tuttle fired “the first shot at a human being” (as opposed to the dog). “These officers didn’t fire upon anyone until they were fired upon themselves,” he said. “Nobody shot at Dennis Tuttle until he started putting bullets into peoples’ faces and necks.”

Keep reading

A Year After The Police Killing Of Eddie Irizarry, Charges Dropped Against Killer Cop

On Sunday, August 11, members of the Philadelphia community rallied to demand that first-degree murder charges against former officer Mark Dial be reinstated for the police killing of Eddie Irizarry. On August 8 of this year, the first-degree murder charge specifically was dropped, and former officer Dial was released on bail.

This follows a long legal saga last year, in which Dial was charged with multiple crimes including first-degree murder on September 8, 2023. The judge overseeing the case, Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew, dismissed all charges against Dial on September 26, but charges were refiled mere hours later. Dial had all his charges reinstated on October 25 of last year by State Judge Lillian Ransom, and was again taken into custody without bail.

In the United States, it is incredibly rare for police officers to be charged for killing civilians. According to data from Philip Stinson, a criminal justice expert at Bowling Green State University, less than 2% of officers who kill in the line of duty are charged with a crime.

“Dropping the charge of first degree murder is a slap in the face to Eddie’s family and to all Philadelphia residents who do not want to live under police terror. Killer cops belong behind bars, not on our streets,” said Kensington community organizer Xiomara Torres, part of the grassroots Justice for Eddie campaign.

Local housing activist Timour Kamran believes it is important to “refuse to allow Philadelphia to be another city where police murder Black and Latino residents with impunity.” He added, “The community is united in calling for Dial to be charged to the fullest extent.”

27-year-old Irizarry was shot and killed on August 14, 2023. Immediately after he was shot, Philadelphia police began to tell the media a series of events that later turned out to be false. Police initially claimed that what prompted Irizarry’s shooting was him lunging out of his vehicle towards officers, wielding a knife. Police had to quickly change this narrative, however, after it became clear that body camera footage would prove otherwise. “The body-worn camera footage made it very clear what we initially reported was not actually what happened,” said then Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw at the time.

Body camera footage, released on September 8, 2023, revealed a truth that was even more damning than expected. Dial was shown running to Irizarry’s car, shouting “I will f-cking shoot you!” only a few seconds before firing six shots into the car. Dial then placed handcuffs on Irizarry’s dead body before dragging him to the police vehicle.

Irizarry reportedly had a knife by his right leg, however, this could not have been visible to Dial. Dial’s lawyer claimed that the officer fired shots because he believe that Irizarry had a gun, although no gun is seen in the body camera footage.

Keep reading

Pregnant woman who accused three cops of sexually abusing her as teen may have been killed — despite initial suicide finding: pathologist

A pregnant Massachusetts woman who accused three cops of grooming and sexually abusing her as a teenager did not commit suicide and may have been killed, a high-profile pathologist hired by her family has claimed.

Sandra Birchmore’s death had been ruled a suicide by a state medical examiner after the 23-year-old was found hanging in her Canton apartment back in February 2021.

The medical examiner and investigators had said at the time that the young woman’s autopsy — which also determined she was three months pregnant — had shown no evidence of foul play.

But former New York City chief medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who was hired by her family amid an ongoing civil legal battle against the three cops, has since rejected those findings, the Boston Globe reported.

“I must disagree,” Baden wrote in a June 18 letter to a lawyer for Birchmore’s estate.

“Ms. Birchmore did not die of suicidal hanging … The cause of Ms. Birchmore’s death is ‘Strangulation’ and the manner of death is ‘Homicide.’”

Baden said the extent of Birchmore’s injuries, as well as the placement of a ligature found on her body, were among the reasons for his determination.

Keep reading

No Charges in ATF Killing Over Paperwork Firearms Violation

Agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) suspected that Bryan Malinowski, executive director of the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, and an avid firearms collector, was reselling enough firearms at gun shows to make him more of a commercial dealer than a hobbyist. That meant he should, in the ATF’s view, get a Federal Firearms License. So on March 19, agents did what law enforcers do when they suspect people of paperwork violations: They raided his home before dawn, taped over the doorbell camera, and shot Malinowski dead less than a minute later when he opened fire on intruders who had just busted in his front door.

Unsurprisingly, the ATF agents are on their way to evading consequences for causing a man’s death over a paperwork violation.

Self-Defense, But for Who?

“A law enforcement officer is justified in using deadly physical force if the officer reasonably believes that the use of force is necessary to defend himself or a third person from the use of deadly force,” Sixth Judicial District Prosecutor Will Jones writes in his letter to ATF Special Agent Joshua Jackson absolving the agent who killed Malinowski of legal liability. “Given the totality of the circumstances, Agent 2 had a reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to defend himself and Agent 1. Therefore, the use of deadly force by Agent 2 was in accordance with Arkansas law and was justified.”

Of course, Malinowski himself might have felt justified in using deadly force given that the front door to his family’s home had been battered down just seconds after strangers began banging on the door.

“Had he survived he was almost certainly entitled to claim self-defense in the wounding of the agent based on the reckless manner in which the government planned and executed the search,” Bud Cummins, a former U.S. Attorney who represents the Malinowski family, told me.

Keep reading

‘Can you take the dogs?’ Apache County deputy shoots 7 dogs that were abandoned and the county had no place for them

The deputy knew it was going to be bad.

“This is going to suck,” the bodycam records him saying.

He had corralled seven dogs that had been abandoned into a fenced-off area on their owners property.

And then he shot them, loaded their bodies into a truck and left them near a set of railroad tracks.

The incident happened in September 2023 in Adamana, an unincorporated community in Apache County about 26 miles northeast of Holbrook. The county doesn’t have animal control services and residents often complain about a problem with wild and stray dogs; one candidate for sheriff even has campaigned on a platform of dealing with the county’s abandoned dog problem.

The absence of animal control services in Apache County means that when there are dog issues, they’re often referred to a sheriff’s department whose policy is to try and place them with adoptive agencies. And sometimes, they can’t.

According to the deputy’s report, the couple that owned the dogs was going through a divorce and left the property with no plans of returning. During one visit, the deputy counted 10 dogs on the property. They had no food or water.

Keep reading

Judges Investigate ‘Dreadful’ MDC Brooklyn Prison Abuse Where Inmates Die Begging For Help As J6 Political Hostage Pleads For Emergency Surgery: ‘They Sent Me To Here to Set Me Up’

J6 political prisoner Ryan Samsel is pleading for assistance from prison guards, his attorney, and the American public to get to an emergency room immediately after strange lumps surfaced on the back of his neck while the blood clots in his leg and foot that he developed months ago remain dangerously untreated.

The new lumps may be malignant tumors or blood clots, but getting to a doctor or the life-saving surgery he was prescribed over three years ago, before his arrest for protesting at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is an ongoing and uphill battle.

If Samsel suffers a medical emergency, it could take hours or days before anyone even notices while detained in perpetual lockdown in MDC Brooklyn, the jail system where Jeffrey Epstein allegedly killed himself, and inmates are known to die while begging for help from lazy, abusive prison staff.

And he suspects the notorious medical negligence within the understaffed correctional facility is exactly why the prosecutors and US District Judge Jia Cobb transferred him to the dangerous prison, “to set him up” to die or endure assaults while living on blood thinners.

“I’m on the eighth floor in a high-rise building in the back corner cell and literally in a corner and there is no call button. If I get sick, I might not see a CO for a full day. It’s dangerous here. It’s literally dangerous,” Samsel told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview Wednesday.“ This place is as harsh as where Jeffrey Epstein died.

“They should not put this many inmates in the prison because they are understaffed, and we are constantly locked down. Judge Cobb knew how bad the conditions were in this jail a year and a half ago when she first sent me here.”

Keep reading

Terrible: Police Officer Shoots Small Deaf, Blind Dog At Point-Blank Range

Bodycam video captured the moment a police officer in Sturgeon, Missouri, shot and killed a small blind and deaf dog for no apparent reason last week.

Responding to a call about a loose animal, the officer can be seen lazily trying to place a lasso around the canine’s neck before choosing to shoot it in the head instead of continuing to make attempts at leashing the animal.

Later in the video, the dog’s owner approaches the officer and confronts him over the unnecessary shooting.

When the sobbing owner tries getting answers, the cop is defensive and offers half-assed apologies.

Keep reading

Fontana pays nearly $900,000 for ‘psychological torture’ inflicted by police to get false confession

Within hours after Thomas Perez Jr. called police to report his father missing, he found himself in a tiny interrogation room confronted by Fontana detectives determined to extract a confession that he killed his dad.

Perez had told police that his father, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr., went out for a walk with the family dog at about 10 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2018. The dog returned within minutes without Perez’s father. Investigators didn’t believe his story, and over the next 17 hours they grilled him to try to get to the “truth.”

According to court records, detectives told Perez that his father was dead, that they had recovered his body and it now “wore a toe tag at the morgue.” They said they had evidence that Perez killed his father and that he should just admit it, records show.

Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.

At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.

Keep reading

A Brutal Suppression of Speech

Denial of civil liberties, accompanied by punishment for anybody who exposes those violations, has become commonplace in contemporary America.

Yet, nothing that the nation has experienced — and that the more discerning protest — prepared us for the grotesque spectacle on display in the brutal suppression of free speech on university campuses. 

What we witness is the iron fist of autocracy employed to intimidate, to hurt, to deter those who would question — however peaceably — the right of the powers-that-be to impose their confected version of the truth on the public. Moreover, it is grounded on an arbitrary assumption of power having no basis in law or customary practice.

Two singular features of this situation focus our attention. First, there is the stunning near unanimity of agreement by all segments of society’s elites on the rightness of the ruling narrative — and on the actions they take to enforce it. 

That is to say:

1) casting the issue as the dangerous radicalization of students by nefarious forces;

2) smearing demonstrators as “anti-Semites” — despite the large numbers of Jewish participants;

3) blanking out any reference to the cause and motivations of the protest: Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians; and

4) the need to crack down hard on these seditious students — physically by rioting police, and administratively by summary expulsions and suspensions without a semblance of due process.

These assertions emanate from the mouths of elected officials, police commissioners, media personalities, pundits and — most distressing — university presidents as well as boards of regents and trustees. 

Keep reading

Mayor defends NYPD response after officers seen punching pro-Palestinian protesters

New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended the police department’s response to a pro-Palestinian street demonstration in Brooklyn over the weekend, calling video of officers repeatedly punching men lying prone on the ground an “isolated incident.”

“Look at that entire incident,” Adams said on the “Mornings on 1” program on the local cable news channel NY1. He complained that protesters who marched through Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section on Saturday had blocked traffic, spit at officers and, in once instance, climbed on top of a moving city bus. “I take my hat off to the Police Department, how they handled an unruly group of people.”

“People want to take that one isolated incident that we’re investigating. They need to look at the totality of what happened in that bedroom community,” Adams added.

Footage shot by bystanders and independent journalists shows police officers intercepting a march in the street, shoving participants toward the sidewalk, and then grabbing some people in the crowd and dragging them down to the asphalt. Officers can be seen repeatedly punching at least three protesters, in separate incidents, as they lay pinned on the ground.

A video shot by videographer Peter Hambrecht and posted on X shows an officer in a white shirt punching a protester while holding his throat. Hambrecht said the arrests took place after police told the crowd to disperse.

“They were aware they might get arrested, but many times people use that to justify the beating which is obviously ridiculous,” Hambrecht told The Associated Press in a text message.

Independent journalist Katie Smith separately recorded video of an officer unleashing a volley of punches on a man pinned to the ground, hitting him at least five times with a closed fist.

Keep reading