Tag: police shootings

Internal police docs: ‘No good reason for shooting’ Ashli Babbitt

After obtaining over 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police, Judicial Watch has found that they believe the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, who inside the Capitol during the riot on January 6, was unjustified.

In May, Judicial Watch filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain more than 500 pages of internal documents from the DC Metropolitan Police regarding the killing of Ashli Babbitt.

In the report, eyewitness testimony from a Capitol Police sergeant, whose name was redacted, suggests that while Babbitt did in fact climb through a broken window to enter the Capitol building, she was not carrying a weapon when she was shot by Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd.

“Sergeant [redacted] observed a white, female protester was climbing through an opened area where the glass pane had been knocked out,” a document from the Internal Affairs Division states.  

“He heard a gunshot and this female fell backwards through the opening. The crowd on the other side of the barricaded east doors, began to step back and some put their hands in the air. Sergeant [redacted] observed Lieutenant Byrd step back just after hearing the gunshot. He did not see anything in the female protester’s hands prior to the gunshot.”

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Shocking Study Finds Over Half of Those Killed by Police Have Never Been Counted

Tragically, in America, the domestic security force we are forced to pay for, also known as police, kill more people than any other police force on the planet. The numbers that are released publicly are staggering, however, according to a new study, they are actually far worse.

The study, conducted by the University of Washington and published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, found that police killings in America have been undercounted by more than half over the past four decades.

Researchers at UW compared the government’s numbers from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) with the open source work at nonprofit groups like Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted. What they found was shocking — the government is not counting police killings nearly as close as private citizens are.

The study found that the NVSS data undercounted police killings by 55.5 percent between 1980 and 2018. Overall, according to the researchers, “the misclassification of police violence in NVSS data is extensive.”

According to an analysis of the study by the NY Times, the “findings reflect both the contentious role of medical examiners and coroners in obscuring the real extent of police violence, and the lack of centralized national data on an issue that has caused enormous upheaval. Private nonprofits and journalists have filled the gap by mining news reports and social media.”

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Ashli Babbitt coverup sparks federal action

The Department of Justice has been hit with a lawsuit for failing to provide public access to its records about the “killing” of Ashli Babbitt.

She was the California woman, unarmed, a 14-year Air Force veteran, who was shot and killed by Capitol police last January when dozens of protesters got rowdy, broke windows and doors, and vandalized parts of the building.

Democrats over and over have claimed the events that day as worse than 9/11 and a true threat to the future of American government.

Babbitt was shot and killed as she climbed through a broken interior window.

Congress and federal and local authorities kept secret for months before finally revealing that her killer was U.S. Capitol Officer Michael Byrd, and then they quickly confirmed he would face no punishment for killing her.

Now government watchdog Judicial Watch has confirmed it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for its records relating to her death.

Earlier, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, the Civil Rights Division, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation all failed to provide the records responsive to Judicial Watch’s April 14, 2021 and May 20, 2021, FOIA requests.

Those were for records of the shooting, including video footage, and communications about the case and more.

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Cop Arrested After Shooting at a ‘Puppy’, Killing Innocent Sleeping Woman Instead

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.

A Texas grand jury indicted a police officer this week after he was seen on video trying to kill a dog and killing an innocent woman instead.

Arlington police officer Ravi Singh was charged on Wednesday with criminally negligent homicide for killing Maggie Brooks, 30, the daughter of an Arlington fire captain.

“It’s a puppy. This is a grown man afraid of a puppy. Who is the paid professional in this encounter? Every child, every mailman, every runner, jogger, bicyclist has dealt with a dog running at them and no one ends up dead. Why do you go to deadly force immediately?” Brooks’ father, Troy Brooks, said.

Brooks explained to FOX4 that he thought the charges should have been more severe given the ridiculous nature of his daughter’s death.

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State retaliates against private investigator for criticizing police shooting

A state has retaliated against a private investigator for criticizing a police shooting that left two people dead by denying him a license, and now he’s taking his protest to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Institute for Justice explained it is Joshua Gray, of Massachusetts, whose comments about a fatal police action drew the reaction from state officials in the Maine Department of Public Safety, who admitted the rejected his application for a license because of his criticism of the department’s employees.

“When the government retaliates against people because of their speech, it violates the First Amendment. That’s true whether the government is imposing a fine, withholding a parade permit, or denying an occupational license,” explained IJ Senior Attorney Paul Sherman.

The IJ explained, “Gray’s problems with the department began after he criticized the conduct of Maine police in the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Kadhar Bailey and 18-year-old Amber Fagre in February of 2017. Believing that the shooting could have been avoided had it not been for police recklessness, Gray expressed his criticisms on his Facebook page. But when Gray later applied for a license as a professional investigator in Maine, the Department denied Gray’s application on the ground that his online criticism contained factual errors, and therefore he lacked the ‘good moral character’ required for licensure.”

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Disturbing Video Shows Cop Walk Up to Family, Shoot Their Happy Puppy as it Wagged His Tail

An utterly disturbing and outright infuriating video was released this week as part of a family’s lawsuit against the now-infamous Loveland police department. In the video, we see the cowardice of officer Matthew Grashorn on display as he shoots a 14-month old puppy in the face and body as it happily walked up to greet him.

The family is now suing after their complaints to the department fell on deaf ears and they were essentially ignored for over two years. The shooting took place on June 29, 2019 and the family has been seeking justice for their mixed boxer puppy “Herkimer” ever since.

On that fateful day, Wendy Love and Jay Hamm were running their firewood delivery company when they pulled over in a vacant parking lot to repair a box they use for the firewood. The owner of the building saw them on security cameras and thought they may be trying to use his dumpster, so he called 911 to have cops investigate.

When police asked the building owner if the family was near or had been near the dumpster, the business owner said, “no,” according to the lawsuit. No crimes had been committed yet the officer responded as if he had arrived to a hostage situation.

“It was an ambush, and Grashorn knew it. He didn’t care,” the suit says. “He suspected that they were poor and wanted to surprise them, to see if they were up to anything he might be able to get an arrest for.”

As Grashorn walked up to the family, he never announced himself but Herkimer, who, according to the suit is a happy dog who had never bitten anyone, trotted up to greet the officer. Unfortunately, however, Grashorn is a coward and instead of petting the dog, Grashorn shot it.

As Wendy approaches the officer crying in horror, Grashorn refuses to let her near her dog to help him.

During this, Hamm yelled at Grashorn, asking him why he had shot a “clearly friendly dog,” according to the suit. Grashorn responded that he had “no way of knowing” whether Herkimer was friendly, that he “wasn’t in the business to get bit” and he had no interest in “waiting to find out” if the dog was friendly.

In other words, he’s a coward who shoots first and asks questions later.

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Siege at Ruby Ridge: The Forgotten History of the ATF Shootout That Started a Militia Movement

The Siege at Ruby Ridge is often considered a pivotal date in American history. The shootout between Randy Weaver and his family and federal agents on August 21, 1992, is one that kicked off the Constitutional Militia Movement and left America with a deep distrust of its leadership – in particular then-President George H.W. Bush and eventual President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno.

The short version is this: Randy Weaver and his wife Vicki moved with their four kids to the Idaho Panhandle, near the Canadian border, to escape what they thought was an increasingly corrupt world. The Weavers held racial separatist beliefs, but were not involved in any violent activity or rhetoric. They were peaceful Christians who simply wanted to be left alone.

Specifically for his beliefs, Randy Weaver was targeted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in an entrapping “sting” operation designed to gain his cooperation as a snitch. When he refused to become a federal informant, he was charged with illegally selling firearms. Due to a miscommunication about his court date, the Marshal Service was brought in, who laid siege to his house and shot and killed his wife and 14-year-old son.

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The shot that was NOT heard ‘round the World

More than seven months have passed since an unarmed protester named Ashli Babbitt was shot dead inside the US Capitol while attempting to climb through an opening in a glass door.

Seven months after her death, her killer – a police officer who apparently shot her without warning, and certainly without having made any effort to stop her short of putting a fatal bullet through her chest – has never been publicly identified, let alone charged or disciplined.

During those same seven months – during which every self-respecting liberal demanded a criminal penalty for the policeman who killed George Floyd – Ashli Babbitt, the victim of an equally questionable police killing, has been the target of an orgy of media character assassination.

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Cop Opens Door to Porta-Potty Immediately Kills Unarmed Man with His Hands Up

Harrowing video has been released this week showing the execution of an unarmed man, sitting down inside of a portable toilet. Daverion Deauntre Kinard was gunned down by Fontana officer Johnny Tutiavake on Feb 13 — the day before his 29th birthday.

Illustrating the serious nature of the shooting is the fact that before the family even filed a lawsuit, the city offered up a million dollar payment for Kinard’s death. But after seeing the body camera footage and knowing that Kinard spent his last moments alive putting his hands up and surrendering to the police before he was executed, $1 million doesn’t even come close to the damages his family should seek.

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