Tag: police brutality

14 current and former Minneapolis cops say Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell LIED during trial of Derek Chauvin

A group of 14 current and former Minneapolis Police Department Officers signed sworn declarations attesting to their belief that Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell committed perjury during the trial of Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Blackwell testified that the method of restraint used by Chauvin was not part of MPD officer training. Blackwell had said at the trial “that’s not what we train.”

However, others say that the “knee-on-neck restaint Chauvin employed was trained under the maximal-restraint technique (MRT), a restraint the MPD taught and allowed until 2023.” The officers who signed the declarations “swore that this training was well known—indeed, common knowledge—and omnipresent,” Alpha News said.

Reporting on the declarations, Alpha News said that these 14 statements “were among dozens of declarations submitted by lawyers representing Alpha News in a defamation lawsuit brought by Blackwell last October against Alpha News, Alpha News reporter Liz Collin, producer J.C. Chaix, and a publishing company.” Blackwell brought suit against Alpha News in response to their documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis,” which indicated that Blackwell had not been truthful in her testimony.

In a lengthy motion asking for the case to be dismissed with prejudice, attorney for Alpha News Chris Madel wrote “With this motion, 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell, and one who currently serves with her, have sworn that MPD trained this restraint as part of the ‘maximal-restraint technique’ (‘MRT’) and otherwise. Indeed, 14 of these officers have sworn—under oath—their belief that Blackwell perjured herself.”

“Blackwell remarkably claims that Collin and Chaix defamed her when they opined that it ‘seemed’ like Blackwell lied. In reality, this opinion was far more generous than necessary. It is a fact,” the motion further reads.

Floyd died in police custody after he was arrested in a parking lot on that fateful day in May 2020. Chauvin restrained him and Floyd later died. His death was deemed by the court of public opinion to be a racially motivated murder and within two days of his death, as cell phone footage of the arrest circulated online, riots began in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the country.

Floyd’s death was about 10 weeks into the Covid-19 pandemic which inspired local government leaders to insist on lockdowns, business, school and church closures. The riots began at the tail end of a spring as weather turned warm after the winter months. In many areas, lockdowns were still imposed except in the case of protests. Dozens of doctors signed a letter claiming that racism was a bigger health threat than Covid and that those who were out protesting were in the right. Anyone who wasn’t protesting for racial justice was told to stay home and churches, schools, and businesses remained closed.

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US System of Prison Injustice

I wrote in October that Joe Biden, in his four years as president, did literally nothing to improve the situation in prisons and jails across the country, either through the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), over which he has direct authority, or through enlightened policies that might filter down or set the standard in state prisons and in local jails.  

As we bump up against the end of the Biden administration, I wanted to take a look at this president’s final year in office and at what legacy he’s leaving in criminal justice.

— California, at the demand of the Justice Department in September, paid $4 million to five victims of a former guard at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and another $450,000 to a former prisoner at the California Institution for Women in Chino for rape and sexual assault at the hands of at least four guards. 

One of those guards, Greg Rodriguez, is facing 96 counts of rape, sodomy and sexual battery.  But because he resigned before being arrested, he has been allowed to keep his pension.

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Bodycam footage shows New York state correction officers beating prisoner to death

On Friday, the New York state attorney general’s office released video footage showing correction officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, beating to death a handcuffed inmate, 43-year-old Robert Brooks.

The bodycams of four of the killers recorded the horrific incident, which has been broadly viewed in the United States and internationally. He was pronounced dead the next day. Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that he died from asphyxiation due to neck compression.

Thirteen correction officers and a prison nurse have been terminated from their jobs for the killing. The FBI and the state attorney general’s office are investigating the incident, although as of this writing charges have not been brought against the guards.

In lying and insincere public statements, prominent state officials have expressed shock and horror at the killing. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said she was “outraged and horrified after seeing footage of the senseless killing.” New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) head Daniel Martuscello told the media, “This type of behavior cannot be normalized, and I will not allow it to be within DOCCS.”

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A SWAT Team Destroyed an Innocent Woman’s House. The Supreme Court Won’t Hear Her Case.

The Supreme Court last month declined to hear a case from an elderly woman whose house was destroyed by a SWAT team, leaving open the question of whether or not innocent people are constitutionally entitled to compensation when law enforcement lays waste to their property in pursuit of public safety.

In July 2020, while chasing a fugitive, police arrived at Vicki Baker’s home in McKinney, Texas. They threw dozens of tear gas grenades inside, used explosives to break the front and garage doors, and drove a tank through her backyard fence, although Baker’s daughter, Deanna Cook, had supplied them with a key to the home, a garage door opener, and the back gate code.

The suspect, Wesley Little, had previously worked for Baker as a handyman and barricaded himself inside her home while on the run from police. He had kidnapped a teenage girl, whom he released after the cops arrived. But Little himself refused to exit, prompting law enforcement to ravage the house. (He ultimately killed himself.)

Baker, who was in Montana when her house was destroyed, never contested that police acted in the best interest of the community when it sought to extract Little from her home. She took issue, however, with the subsequent response from the government, which refused to compensate her for the more than $50,000 in damages. Her homeowners insurance likewise declined to pay, as many policies explicitly do not cover damage caused by the government.

“I’ve lost everything,” she told me in 2021. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.” Baker, who was undergoing treatment for stage 3 breast cancer when we spoke, had been preparing to retire with her husband in Montana. After the house was ruined, a buyer predictably withdrew. The government said she did not qualify as a “victim.”

She is not the only person with such a story. At the core of the case and those like hers is whether or not the Constitution legally obligates the government to repay people who are not suspected of criminal wrongdoing but whose property is nevertheless destroyed by police in an attempt to protect the community. The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment promises that private property cannot be taken for public use “without just compensation,” though some lower courts have ruled that actions taken by police in stories like these operate under an exception to that rule.

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A Gift America Can’t Return: The Police State Is America’s New Crime Boss 

The American police state has become America’s new crime boss.

Thirty years after then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law, its legacy of mass incarceration, police militarization, and over-criminalization continues to haunt us.

It has become the gift that America can’t seem to return.

We are now suffering the blowback from the triple threats of the Crime Bill: police militarization, a warrior mindset that has police viewing the rest of the citizenry as enemy combatants, and law enforcement training that teaches cops to shoot first and ask questions later.

Too often, that “triple threat” also manifests itself in deadly traffic stops, the use of excessive force against unarmed individuals, and welfare checks turned fatal.

The Crime Bill fueled the rise of the police state by pouring funding into law enforcement agencies, particularly for military-grade weaponry and the expansion of police forces. It also laid the groundwork for mass incarceration by incentivizing the construction of more prisons and enacting harsh “three strikes” laws that mandated lengthy sentences for repeat offenders.

Most critically, the Crime Bill led to the explosive growth of SWAT teams across the country.

It’s estimated that more than 80,000 SWAT raids are carried out every year. That translates to over 200 every single day in the U.S.

Among the tens of thousands of raids that leave in their wake the wreckage of lives, homes and trust in the nation’s so-called peacekeepers, some are so egregious as to cut through the apathy and desensitization that has settled over the nation regarding police violence.

Such tragedies are not isolated incidents.

They are the direct result of a system built on policies like the 1994 Crime Bill.

The unfortunate reality we must come to terms with is that America is overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—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.”

It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

These warrior cops, who have been trained to act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the public and believe the lives (and rights) of police should be valued more than citizens, are increasingly outnumbering the good cops, who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace.

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Remember Peanut: a Treatise on Evil and Why the State Killing of a Squirrel Matters So Much

What is evil? For the average person it’s a difficult concept to explain but most of us know it when we see it. Every once in a while there’s an event which strikes the collective consciousness in such a way that it becomes deeply symbolic. Sometimes these events symbolize ultimate good, and sometimes they symbolize ultimate evil. The public is affected by these things in ways they didn’t expect and might not even comprehend, but they are archetypal and profound nonetheless.

In the wake of Donald Trumps election victory and the jubilant celebration some people might overlook one of these recent events; the state assassination of a man’s pet squirrel and the national anger that followed.  Why does the death of a squirrel matter? It’s not only about the squirrel, it’s about the context and what it means for our civilization at large.

In a progressive controlled state (New York), Mark Longo ran a legal animal sanctuary for abandoned and injured animals. He promoted the sanctuary on social media with videos featuring his long time pet, Peanut the Squirrel. Longo rescued Peanut after his mother was killed in an accident and he raised the animal for seven years.

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‘They’re all dead’: Man arrives home to find his 7 dogs shot dead — allegedly by a police deputy

A Tennessee man returned home to the tragic sight of seven of his dogs dead, one of them only alive because he hid from the shooter — allegedly a police deputy.

Conner Brackin, a 24-year-old police deputy with the McNairy County Sheriff’s Office, was arrested and charged with aggravated animal cruelty on Tuesday following an investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. On Nov. 4, Brackin responded to an “animal welfare concern” in Bethel Springs, a city located around 100 miles east of Memphis. According to the affidavit, Brackin spoke with the person who made the complaint about multiple dogs on the neighboring property, some in pens, some in two different trailers. Brackin released one of the dogs from a pen and then “loaded his service rifle and pistol and began firing into the campers at the dogs.”

He allegedly fired eight times, killing seven dogs.

The dogs’ owner, Kevin Dismuke, was not home at the time of the shooting. When he arrived home, the body of one of his dogs was by the front door. As he entered his home, Dismuke didn’t hear his other dogs and, one by one, found them dead.

“I found our old dog Gator laying between the beds,” he told Memphis CBS affiliate WREG. “I ain’t heard Jasmine. I ain’t heard Max. So, I stepped back inside the trailer and I found Jasmine laying back there by the bathroom door. They’re all dead — all but Max. He’d hid under the bed.”

The McNairy County Sheriff’s Office stated Brackin observed two dogs in “extremely poor health” and one was “already deceased.” After looking for the dogs’ owner, Brackin let a neighbor take one of the dogs and said that he had been “cleared to put down the remaining animals safely by my supervisor.”

Dismuke disputed the claim when he talked to WREG, saying, “They were told the property was abandoned and the dogs were malnourished. I got the veterinary paperwork in my truck from three weeks ago. They all had a clean bill of health on them.”

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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.”

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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.

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