Tag: police shootings

Woman Posts Video Feeding a Baby Moose, So Cops Show Up, Kill Moose, Arrest Woman

If a docile baby moose walked up to your door and allowed you to pet and feed it without causing any disturbance, this would be an amazing moment. In the social media age, many people would film it and then upload that video online. This is exactly what 43-year-old Angel Bunch did over the weekend. But her amazing moment with nature would end in her arrest and a dead moose — killed by the police.

Bunch posted the video on Saturday and, apparently, one of her “see something, say something” neighbors was alarmed over the video of Bunch giving a carrot to a baby moose while petting it. So, they reported her to the police, who quickly showed up.

A spokesperson for the Alaskan State Troopers, Austin McDaniel explained that feeding a moose, even a baby one, creates a public health risk.

“When Alaska Wildlife Troopers responded to Bunch’s residence the moose showed no apparent fear of humans and walked up to the Wildlife Trooper when he arrived,” McDaniel said over email to the Anchorage Daily News. “This moose appeared thin and showed signs that it had been fed by humans for some time.”

Because it relied on humans for food, the moose was deemed a threat and targeted for extermination.

“When humans feed wildlife it causes them to stop searching and feeding on their own in nature and rely solely on humans for food,” McDaniel wrote. “When their human food source stops the animal can become aggressive towards other humans as it looks for food from them.”

While this is certainly possible, bears, which pose a threat as well, are often times simply tranquilized and moved to other areas of the state when they become too dependent on humans. This could have been done with the moose.

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Death of Maryland man shows continued out-of-control nature of SWAT, no-knock raids

One of the most positive developments from last year’s political strife was a stronger focus on police abuses and no-knock raids. Some states and cities have imposed new restrictions, others are working toward greater transparency when it comes to police shootings. Unfortunately, Maryland, a state that has wrestled with some of the most egregious SWAT and no-knock cases in the country, remains mired in controversy.

The state has a long record of SWAT debacles. After police wrongfully raided a mayor’s house and killed his dogs in 2008, Maryland required police to report every SWAT raid. Between 2010 and 2014, police in Maryland conducted more than 8,000 raids, killing nine people and injuring almost a hundred civilians.

Despite controversies, statistics were no longer collected after 2014. Strong police unions have blocked numerous efforts at legislative reform. As a result, Marylanders continue to be vexed by the same kind of deadly no-knock debacles that killed Breonna Taylor last March in Louisville, Kentucky.

Duncan Lemp is one of Maryland’s latest victims.

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Mom Cries Foul As Cops Say Teen Shot Herself in Mouth While Cuffed Behind Her Back

It’s been nine months since police claim 19-year-old Sarah Wilson allegedly got a hold of a gun and killed herself in police custody while her hands were cuffed behind her back. Since then, her mother has been grieving and also crying foul after police are sticking by the story and refuse to release any information.

As TFTP reported at the time, Wilson allegedly committed suicide on July 25, 2018, during a traffic stop near the intersection of Berkley Avenue and Wilson Road, according to the Chesapeake Police Department. According to police, while handcuffed with her hands behind her back, Wilson was able to acquire a Taurus Judge handgun, place it in her mouth, and pull the trigger.

Dawn Wilson, Sarah’s mother has since come forward to speak out about the inconsistencies in the case.

“There’s just so many unanswered questions, and that’s the second hardest part of losing a child – of losing my child,” Dawn told WAVY, earlier this month.

“In all of her life I have never known of her to shoot a gun, own a gun, or even hold a gun,” said Wilson. “I’m not pointing fingers, I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there, but I need to know, and I think that’s fair I’m her mom.”

Wilson explained to ABC 13 that her daughter was the passenger in a car that was pulled over during a traffic stop. Police told Wilson that during the stop, Sarah produced a gun and used it to take her own life.

The driver of the car was 27-year-old Holden Medlin who allegedly resisted arrest during the stop and took off running. While police attempted to restrain Medlin, they claim that Wilson was handcuffed with her arms behind her back when she got the gun out of the car, “contorted” her body and shot herself in the head.

How exactly police missed a Taurus Judge handgun while handcuffing Wilson is a massive question as the gun is 5.5″ tall, and 10.5″ long. The gun is so large it can shoot both 45 Colt rounds and 410 shotgun shells.

“Things are not matching up, somewhere somehow, there is a discrepancy,” said Wilson who said that police have told her one thing while telling the media something completely different.

“She was handcuffed, and she managed to put a revolver in her mouth while handcuffed. That’s what the investigator told me last night,” said Wilson at the time. “If that is the case its very unfortunate and tragic but there is a level of negligence there.”

Even more terrifying than a handcuffed teen somehow managing to get a gun and put it in her mouth to kill herself is the fact that witnesses are saying something entirely different.

“There is a few different stories, but they all end the same, that the police shot her,” said Wilson last year.

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4 Cops Charged, Facing Life in Prison After Innocent Family and Dog Executed In Their Home

The murder of an innocent Houston couple made national headlines in 2019 as police took to smearing their names and threatening those who didn’t believe their official narrative. As the months passed, we learned that the Houston police department’s raid on the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas was based on lies and they were murdered for no reason.

The following May, the case had reached a turning point after the family hired a forensics expert to examine the home and found that there is no evidence the officers encountered gunfire. Then, in a major move in August of 2019, the cop who lied to obtain the warrant for the raid—was charged with murder in the first degree, with several others charged shortly after. Now, a half dozen more officers have been charged, with four of them facing life in prison.

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Prosecutor’s Office Clears Maryland SWAT Officers in Fatal Shooting of Duncan Lemp

A nine-month investigation by the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office released last Thursday concluded that the March 12, 2020 police killing of Maryland resident Duncan Lemp during an early morning SWAT raid was justified.

According to the report, which differs significantly from the original police narrative of the killing, a SWAT officer standing outside of Lemp’s bedroom window shot the 21-year-old Lemp five times after he grabbed a rifle and ignored commands to drop it. The report says police recovered three rifles, two “ghost” guns, numerous magazines and boxes of ammunition, an illegal silencer, a bulletproof vest, and a shotgun shell rigged as a booby trap on Lemp’s bedroom door.

The Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) obtained a no-knock search warrant to raid Lemp’s house on suspicion that he owned several guns despite being “red-flagged” and prohibited from possessing any due to a juvenile offense, the details of which have not been made public. Lemp’s family, through their attorney, dispute both the justification for the raid and the police narrative surrounding the shooting. Lemp’s family said the search warrant was based on flimsy evidence and that Lemp was shot while asleep in bed. The case has been clouded by the conflicting accounts and the lack of video evidence.

Since Lemp’s death, his name has been frequently invoked by “boogaloo boys,” a loose, heavily armed, and very online anti-government movement. (“Boogaloo” refers to a second civil war or armed conflict between citizens and the government.) The report also cites Lemp’s ideology and connections to the militia movement as the impetus for the violent nighttime raid.

“The reasons for the ‘no-knock’ provision was due to Lemp being ‘anti-government,’ ‘anti-police,’ currently in possession of body armor, and an active member of the Three Percenters,” the report says. “Additionally, police had viewed several videos showing Lemp handling and shooting firearms. The police felt that knocking and announcing their presence would put the officers in serious danger if Lemp decided to resist his arrest.”

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Cop on Leave After Deliberately Shooting His Own K-9 Partner 3 Times, Killing Him

As TFTP has reported far too many times to count, police officers in America are unafraid of shooting and killing man’s best friend. We’ve reported on cops “fearing for their lives” and shooting dogs on leashes as well as sadistic cops killing tiny pets out of pure spite. Police officer violence against dogs is so extremely common that we’ve even reported on cops beating and choking their own dogs. However — outside of cops leaving their dogs in hot cars until they die — we have never reported on a cop deliberately killing his own K-9 partner, until now.

This week, a Plymouth Police K-9 handler shot and killed his own dog — on purpose. The incident happened when police were preparing the dog to track a suspect when the officer alleged that his K-9 bit him.

Officer Keith Larson said that his K-9 Nico, attacked him and he had no other option but to kill him. Police said Larson attempted to get the dog under control but was unsuccessful so he pulled out his gun and shot the dog “for safety reasons.”

After he killed his own dog, the department asked the public to keep officer Larson in your prayers.

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Cops Who Kill Americans Have Less Than a 1 in a 1000 Chance of Being Convicted of Murder

After the death of George Floyd in May of this year, 2020 marked a historical movement in the fight for police accountability and equal justice under the law. Despite facing a global pandemic, millions of Americans left their homes and took to the streets to have their voices be heard. The momentum toward radical change was inspiring.

However, the winds quickly fell from the sails of that change as mainstream media and establishment partisans essentially coopted the movement. Instead of talking about actual solutions like ending the drug war or ending qualified immunity, the establishment pushed the vaguely uninspiring movement to defund the police and continued to push divide based on race.

Even Black Lives Matter is now admitting that despite raising billions of dollars over the course of 2020, the establishment is leaving them in the wake. Despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris paying lip service to police brutality and riding the waves of the Black Lives Matter movement, the president-elect and his vice president now refuse to even meet with the group. This is also in spite of the fact that BLM formed a PAC, which helped fund its ad campaigns to mobilize Black voters to go out and vote for Biden.

What so many police accountability activists are learning now is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. As fissures in their leadership begins to crack apart Black Lives Matter inside its upper echelons, talk about police reform is waning, fast.

Getting bad orange man out of the White House has effectively placated the masses and the huge movements and protests we witnessed prior to November 3, have fizzled out.

Despite horrifying police killings, many of which were captured on video and rocked the nation, the arrest rate for cops who kill people on-duty remains as low as ever. According to reports, since 2005, just 126 police officers have been arrested for murder or manslaughter in relation to an on-duty killing.

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