Tag: police brutality

Terror by Night: Who Pays the Price for Botched SWAT Team Raids? We Do

Sometimes ten seconds is all the warning you get.

Sometimes you don’t get a warning before all hell breaks loose.

Imagine it, if you will: It’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is in darkness. Your household is asleep. Suddenly, you’re awakened by a loud noise.

Barely ten seconds later, 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, launching flash bang grenades.

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.

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 SWAT team raid is what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us or our loved ones.

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.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day.

SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of so-called criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed. In some instances, SWAT teams are even employed, in full armament, to perform routine patrols.

These raids, which might be more aptly referred to as “knock-and-shoot” policing, have become a thinly veiled, court-sanctioned means of giving heavily armed police the green light to crash through doors in the middle of the night.

No-knock raids, a subset of the violent, terror-inducing raids carried out by police SWAT teams on unsuspecting households, differ in one significant respect: they are carried out without police even having to announce themselves.

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Long Beach, California, Police ‘Brutally’ Arrested a Cancer Patient. Now, the City Is Paying $300,000.

Long Beach, California, is stuck with a $300,000 bill after three of its police officers arrested a cancer patient with “brutal force” for driving with an expired vehicle registration. 

On September 3, 2022, Johnny Jackson, who had undergone surgery for his prostate cancer the day prior, was driving home from an errand to make a copy of his doctor’s note following surgery when he noticed he was being followed by an unmarked Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) vehicle. 

According to a lawsuit filed last October, when Jackson pulled into his driveway, the LBPD vehicle parked outside his house. Jackson exited his car, holding his doctor’s note, and told the officers that he knew he had an issue with his vehicle registration. In response, the officers, who were not named in the complaint, ordered Jackson to put his hands up and approach them. As he was doing so, Jackson was additionally ordered to put his hands on his head and turn so his back was facing one officer, while a second officer approached Jackson’s front porch.

Body camera footage shows Jackson again telling the officers that he knew his vehicle registration may have been expired and that he had gotten surgery for his prostate cancer the day before. The lawsuit states that, while Jackson was speaking, “a gust of wind began blowing the Doctor’s Note off the top of his vehicle.” Jackson then told the officers that “this is actually my paperwork for my surgery yesterday,” and put one of his hands on the note to prevent it from blowing away.

In response, one of the officers rushed to grab Jackson’s arm, pinning it behind his back and telling him that he was “about to get fucked up.” 

“Listen to me, put your hands behind your back. If you resist you will get hurt,” one officer told Jackson. “If you hurt me I will sue you. I just had surgery,” Jackson replied.

Body camera footage shows the ensuing struggle, in which Jackson was pulled in multiple directions by the officers, as Jackson again told them he was recovering from surgery. The lawsuit states that one officer struck Jackson in the head in an attempted “takedown maneuver,” which he followed by kneeing Jackson in his groin three times. 

“Why are you forcing us to use force on you?” one officer asked

Eventually, Jackson was handcuffed and cited for having an expired vehicle registration and resisting arrest. Jackson sued the city and police department in October 2023, arguing that the officers engaged in excessive force and caused him multiple injuries by arresting him so violently, despite being aware of his recent surgery. 

A settlement in the case was reached in December 2023, and the staggering $300,000 value was announced last week.

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BLM protesters who participated in 2020 riots will receive $10 million from Seattle

The city of Seattle, Washington, agreed Wednesday to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit from a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who participated in the violent and destructive 2020 riots following the death of George Floyd.

A Wednesday press release from the city revealed that Seattle is settling a complaint filed by a group of 50 protesters in September 2020 who claimed they were injured by police while participating in the demonstrations. Seattle admitted to no wrongdoing.

According to the city, the complaint involved hundreds of interactions between the protesters and local law enforcement officials, over a million pages of records, over 10,000 videos, hundreds of witness interviews, and extensive court filings.

“This decision was the best financial decision for the City considering risk, cost, and insurance,” Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison said. “The case has been a significant drain on the time and resources of the City and would have continued to be so through an estimated three-month trial that was scheduled to begin in May.”

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Ohio SWAT Team Raids Wrong House, Seriously Injures Baby With Flashbang Grenade, Denies Responsibility

Courtney Price was at home on Wednesday taking care of her one-year-old son, Waylon, when they experienced a terrifying and traumatic altercation with local law enforcement. What should have been an ordinary day took a turn for the worse when SWAT officers broke into the home, searching for a suspect.

In the aftermath of the raid, it was revealed that law enforcement had targeted the wrong home, and tragically, their actions resulted in the baby sustaining injuries. The events that unfolded left the family shaken and seeking justice for Waylon’s suffering.

Price told RedState that she had been staying with her aunt Redia and her husband for one week before the incident occurred. She recounted her experience, describing how she stood petrified as the police burst into her aunt Redia’s home, throwing a flashbang grenade into the residence and breaking windows. She was feeding her son, who has a condition requiring the use of a G-tube because he cannot eat by mouth. A little after 2 pm, she “started hearing very loud pings on the door,” and went to see what was happening.

I got up and started walking towards the door, and all I could see was a bunch of police because we were in a split-level house, so I was at the top of the steps there. All I could see was a bunch of police, and they were already hitting the door. I was trying to get to the door to open it, but I didn’t want to get hit, so I just froze on the steps. They busted it down and busted the windows out all at the same time. I was standing there, I froze. I really wanted to run to my baby and just help him because I see all that smoke getting on him. There were handguns pointed at me [with the officers] saying, ‘Get down, put your hands up, come down here.’ So I went down. They grabbed me and took me outside, put me in handcuffs.

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Dexter Wade, buried without his family’s knowledge, had ID on him with his home address, lawyer says

An independent pathologist examining the newly exhumed body of Dexter Wade — the Mississippi man killed by police and buried in a pauper’s grave without his mother’s knowledge — found a wallet with a state identification card that included the address of a home he shared with his mother, the family’s lawyer said Thursday.

The pathologist, Frank Peretti, reported that he found the wallet in the front pocket of Wade’s jeans and that it contained his state identification card with his home address, along with a credit card and a health insurance card, attorney Ben Crump said in a statement.

Crump, who arranged for the independent autopsy, said he was sharing Peretti’s initial findings. NBC News has not seen the full autopsy report.

A representative of Crump’s confirmed that the home address was the same as his mother’s, Bettersten Wade. She reported her 37-year-old son missing on March 14, nine days after he was struck by a police cruiser as he was crossing a highway.

She got no information from police about what happened to him until Aug. 27, when she learned that he’d been killed less than an hour after he had left his house and buried in a pauper’s field owned by Hinds County.

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Atty. Ben Crump Demands Probe Into Finding of 215 Bodies Buried Behind Mississippi Jail

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump is calling for a federal investigation after the discovery of 215 bodies that were buried in a cemetery behind a Mississippi jail.

The Chicago Crusader reports that the remains were discovered in pauper’s cemetery behind the Hinds County Penal Farm in the “The Magnolia State” and Crump is searching for answers from the authorities.

Crump along with Reverend Hosea Hines, senior pastor of the Christ Tabernacle Church and the national leader of A New Day Coalition for Equity and Black America, want to know why officials failed to investigate the deaths of the victims and why the authorities never contacted the families. 

“People all across America are scratching their heads in disbelief about what’s happening in Jackson, Mississippi, with this pauper’s graveyard,” Crump said at news conferences in December. “It went from talking about the water” that was non-existent or contaminated, “to now we’re talking about the graveyard. What is going on in Jackson, Mississippi?”

“It’s unfortunate that we are living in a world that is college-educated and super sophisticated as it relates to telecommunications and IT,” Hines said in a recent interview.. “The amount of mistakes that were made, as to individual families not being notified about the deaths, is really unbelievable.”

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Former TPD officer fails to appear in court on new sexual assault charge after initial rape charge from 2022

Tulsa Police announced Deangelo Reyes, a former Tulsa Police officer, has been charged with forcible sodomy.

This is an additional charge along with the first degree rape charge he goes to court for in March 2024. 

Reyes was first charged with rape in June of 2022 after he was accused of sexually assaulting someone while on duty. 

Police said they found an additional victim in the past few months bringing forth the new charge from an alleged incident back in July 2020.

Court records say the new victim was found by searching through phone records that revealed the alleged victim was disabled.

The victim suffered from major neuro cognitive disorder, secondary to severe traumatic brain injury, from a car accident that left her in a coma for three weeks.

Records indicate she was significantly disabled, functioning at a 5th to 6th grade level.

Court Records saying that she met Reyes while jogging where he asked for her phone number.

All while in police uniform, records allege that she would not want to have sex with Reyes and that the only way to get him to go away would be to give him sexual favors.

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Retired NYPD captain shoots man in leg during New Year’s Eve road rage feud: sources

A recently retired NYPD captain shot another man in the leg during a road rage feud in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve, police sources said. 

The retiree, who was driving a Toyota Corolla, clashed with a 22-year-old man behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz on Coney Island Avenue near Brighton Beach Avenue around 2:15 p.m., the sources said. 

Both drivers got out of their vehicles and started to argue, according to the sources. 

The confrontation took a violent turn when the former cop fired off a gun, hitting the other motorist in the left leg, the sources said. 

The wounded man was taken to NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn, where he was listed in stable condition, police said. 

The retired captain was taken to the same hospital, and it remained unclear Monday whether he would face charges. 

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Prediction: 2024 Will See Deadly Political Violence in the Streets

Several hundred pro-Palestinian street demonstrators in midtown Manhattan Sunday afternoon attempted to “cancel Christmas” by massing in front of Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Fox News, hoisting a Nativity Scene marred with fake blood, and carrying signs with messages such as, “From NY to Gaza, Globalize the Intifada.”

In videos shared widely online, ceasefire advocates scuffled physically with police, reportedly injuring at least one NYPD officer, and sustaining some injuries themselves.

The New York Post reports “at least six” arrests have been made, and none of the injuries appear life-threatening. So far.

The United States, as it stumbles into another cursed presidential election year, is lurching toward deadly political violence in the streets without appearing to give the matter much in the way of organized thought. Protesters in big Democratic cities routinely block bridges, freeways, and transit hubs, with cops often standing idly by while normie commuters reach the boiling point. Angry crowds are targeting government officials’ homes, including those of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Christmas morning. There has been violence outside of Democratic Party headquarters, violence outside the Museum of Tolerance, and at least one death resulting from a street clash, for which an allegedly counter-protesting assailant has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious injury.

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