Tag: police state

Family of girl, 8, who died in her mother’s arms after being shot in the back by cops at Philadelphia high school game awarded $11M settlement

The family of an eight-year-old girl who was killed in a shooting incident involving police outside a Pennsylvania high school football game in August 2021 has reached an $11 million settlement. 

The resolution was agreed upon in federal court more than two years after the incident that lead to the death of Fanta Bility outside Academy Park High School in Sharon Hill, north of Philadelphia. Three others were also injured during the incident. 

The Delaware County District Attorney’s Office previously reported that the shooting incident resulted from teenagers engaging in gunfire during an argument.

The teens fired 25 shots toward a car and crowd of people leaving the football game in the small borough near Philadelphia International Airport. 

It prompted three police officers stationed nearby to discharge their firearms.

Tragically, Fanta lost her life because of a single gunshot wound to her torso.

Authorities later determined that it was police gunfire that led to her death.

Ballistics testing could not determine which officer fired the shot that killed her, but a grand jury recommended that all three face charges after they fired a total of 25 rounds.

‘There is no amount of money that will ever bring Fanta back or erase the horrible tragedy of what occurred on August 27, 2021, from our minds,’ Fanta’s mother Tenneh Kromah said in a statement on NBC News. 

‘We hope to move on and focus specifically on the Fanta Bility Foundation and keeping Fanta’s name and legacy alive.’

The law firm representing the family said they hoped the settlement would provide some ‘measure of justice and accountability to those whose lives were forever changed’ by the incident.

The three officers involved, Sean Dolan, 27, Devon Smith, 36, and Brian Devaney, 43, were fired from the police department and faced charges of voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless endangerment in connection with the incident that occurred on August 27, 2021. 

The officers told investigators they thought a car driving toward them was the likely source of the gunfire, prompting them to return fire.

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Their son’s prison death was under investigation — then the funeral home found evidence in his body bag

Patrick LeBranch Jr. had just viewed the body of his brother at the Richardson Funeral Home of Jefferson in River Ridge when the funeral director pulled him aside. Something strange had happened, LeBranch said the man told him. He handed LeBranch a bulky, clear plastic bag sealed with red tape. On the front, in all black capitalized letters, was the word “EVIDENCE.”

LeBranch’s brother, Markus Lanieux Jr., had been found dead in early September while in state custody at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport. Prison officials told the family Lanieux killed himself, but they wouldn’t say how, or provide any additional information.

Lanieux Jr. is the son of Markus Lanieux, who is serving a life sentence at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel and was the subject of a joint report on Sept. 8 by Verite News and ProPublica. Lanieux Jr. died the day before that story was published. The death is still under investigation, according to corrections officials.

LeBranch held the plastic bag, squeezing the contents gently as he continued to read. Next to a line marked, “Description and/or location,” someone had written, “Sheet modified into a rope.” Inside the plastic bag was the bedsheet his brother had allegedly used to hang himself the prior week. LeBranch said the funeral director told him it came with his brother inside the body bag.

From the moment Laborde’s warden, Marcus Myers, told the family of Lanieux Jr. that the 22-year-old died by apparent suicide, they’ve had questions about it. While they don’t have firm evidence to suggest anything other than suicide, they reported receiving phone calls from Laborde inmates urging them to challenge the prison’s version of events. Adding to their doubts, family members said, is a lack of communication from Laborde.

A few days after getting the news, the family said prison officials cut off all contact. When they tried to call Myers back, an assistant instructed them to direct any future questions to Jonathan Vining, general counsel for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Despite calling him repeatedly, the family said Vining hasn’t returned any of their messages.

Then came the evidence bag, further deepening the family’s concerns about how the investigation was being handled.

“It took me for a loop,” LeBranch said of that moment when the funeral director handed him the evidence bag, which is still in the family’s possession. “For y’all to say he took his life, and this is y’all’s evidence — why would it be down here with us?”

Katherine Mattes, director of the Criminal Justice Clinic at Tulane Law School, said she has never heard of an evidence bag related to an in-custody death being misplaced like this. She described it as “bizarre” and said it is “certainly understandable why this mistake would cause the family to not trust the integrity of an investigation.”

The Department of Corrections acknowledged that the evidence should not have been sent to the funeral home with Lanieux’s body. A DOC spokesman, however, indicated the blame lies outside of the department.

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Connecticut enacts its most sweeping gun control law since the Sandy Hook shooting

Connecticut’s most wide-ranging gun control measure since the 2013 law enacted after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting takes effect Sunday, with proponents vowing to pursue more gun legislation despite legal challenges happening across the country.

The new law, signed by Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont in June, bans the open carrying of firearms and prohibits the sale of more than three handguns within 30 days to any one person, with some exceptions for instructors and others.

“We will not take a break and we cannot stop now, and we will continue to pass life-saving laws until we end gun violence in Connecticut. Our lives depend on it,” said Jeremy Stein, executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence.

Immediately after it was passed, the law was challenged in court by gun rights supporters. Connecticut’s landmark 2013 gun law, passed in response to the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown that claimed 26 lives, is also being contested in court.

Besides Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, other politically liberal-leaning states including California, Washington, Colorado and Maryland also have passed gun laws this year that face legal challenges. They come in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court last year expanding gun rights.

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Kansas Police Chief Who Led Raid on Small Kansas Newspaper Owner’s Home and Caused Her Death Has Been Suspended

The Kansas Police Chief who led a raid on a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended from his post. Dave Mayfield, the mayor of Marion, suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He did not go into detail or discuss whether or not he is being paid.

The searches occurred on August 11th, and has brought Marion into the spotlight regarding freedom of the press and First Amendment rights.

ABC News:

The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended, the mayor confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday.

Marion Mayor Dave Mayfield in a text said he suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He declined to discuss his decision further and did not say whether Cody was still being paid.

Voice messages and emails from the AP seeking comment from Cody’s lawyers were not immediately returned Saturday.

The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record’s office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the press protections offered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The mayor was originally going to wait for the state police investigation to conclude but changed his mind and suspended him prior to the results.

Earlier in September The Gateway Pundit reported that a Federal lawsuit was filed by a reporter on the police chief who conducted the raid.

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WHY WOMEN’S WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS ARE SO DIFFICULT TO OVERCOME

When Cynthia Sommer’s husband, Todd, died in 2002, the medical examiner said a cardiac arrhythmia was responsible. But prosecutors charged Sommer with murder on the theory she had poisoned her husband, pointing at her trial to the fact that Sommer underwent a breast augmentation, once participated in a wet T-shirt contest, and pursued sexual partners after her husband’s death. The implication was Sommer was not a grieving widow but reveling in her newfound sexual freedom. She was convicted but subsequently won a new trial, after which the charges were dismissed.

Sommer is just one of many innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime. Experts believe only a small percentage will ever be exonerated. But women like Sommer are rarely the face of this issue. Because of this, the specific contours of women’s wrongful convictions can go unnoticed, obscuring the fact that, while exonerations are already difficult to achieve, exonerating women presents its unique challenges.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, only 285 women have managed to be exonerated since 1989, compared with more than 3,000 men. But experts say that isn’t indicative of the true number of wrongful convictions.

There is “no question” it’s harder for women to achieve exonerations compared with men, according to Marissa Boyers Bluestine, assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Regarding how many wrongfully convicted women have yet to achieve exonerations, “It’s not even a tip of an iceberg, it’s a tip of a tip of an iceberg,” Bluestone said.

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed Calls for Mandatory Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients

San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed a plan which would require welfare recipients to undergo  drug testing and engage in treatment programs.

The announcement comes as the city deals with an average of three overdose deaths a day, Breitbart News reported. 

The new initiative would require those receiving County Adult Assistance Programs (CAAP) to be tested for drug use and participate in treatment programs, Fox News Digital reported.  

“San Francisco is a city of compassion, but also a city that demands accountability,” Breed said in a statement. “We fund a wide range of services, and we want to help people get the care they need but under current state law, local governments lack tools to compel people into treatment. This initiative aims to create more accountability and help get people to accept the treatment and services they need.”  

To combat the open air drug dealings in the Tenderloin district, California Gov. Gavin Newsom began pulling officers from the California highway patrol to make arrests, Breitbart News reported.

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Banning Criminal Background Checks Will Lead To More Housing Discrimination, Not Less

America needs more housing. Pressure for reform is only growing as available homes get less and less affordable. Unfortunately, rather than addressing the root cause of high housing prices—an epidemic of local overregulation that prevents enough homes from being built—some legislators continue to flirt with social experiments that can harm both landlords and renters.

For example, some states and localities have implemented well-meaning “fair chance” laws banning criminal history on background checks for prospective tenants. Progressive Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) recently introduced the idea as federal legislation. In a statement, Pressley said, “It’s time we remove the systemic obstacles that have exacerbated the prison-to-homelessness pipeline.”

We do indeed have an overcriminalization and overincarceration problem in this country, so on its face, this seems like a good idea. According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,0000 ex-offenders are released from prison every year, not counting the nearly 6.9 million people on probation, on parole, or still in jail or prison at any one time. Far too many face undeserved challenges when trying to re-acclimate into society and not reoffend.

That’s partly because relatively few landlords want to rent to people with criminal records. Landlords minimize the risk of delinquent or destructive tenants by selecting the best applicants on a given margin. From this perspective, avoiding people with criminal records seems like an easy choice, even though it means some potentially great tenants are rejected. The best reforms would correct the real problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration. That’s politically difficult and may take a long time. Equally important would be removing all artificial barriers to building more homes.

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Tony Timpa Wrongful Death Trial Ends With 2 Out of 3 Cops Getting Qualified Immunity

At the heart of the civil trial concerning Tony Timpa—who died during a mental health crisis after calling 911 in August 2016—was an appeal made to the jury by the lead defense counsel, Senior Assistant City Attorney Lindsay Wilson Gowin. “Justice here is truth,” she said. Then, invoking allegations that the Timpa family had not been transparent about various dark corners of Timpa’s life, she added: “That’s not how you find the truth.”

She had a point. But that statement, made during closing arguments Tuesday, was a bit ironic, particularly when considering the lengths the government went to in order to obscure basic transparency and keep the events of that summer night a secret. Indeed, the trial, which almost didn’t come to fruition, has come to symbolize how difficult it is for alleged victims of government abuse from stating their case, and the importance of allowing those claims a fair and public hearing, no matter the outcome.

Today, a federal jury rendered their verdict. The panel of eight found that Officer Dustin Dillard, Senior Cpl. Raymond Dominguez, and Officer Danny Vasquez did in fact violate Timpa’s constitutional rights during a roughly 15-minute interaction on Dallas’ Mockingbird Lane. But they gave Dillard and Vasquez qualified immunity, concluding that, while their actions were unlawful, a reasonable officer couldn’t have been expected to know as much. A fourth defendant, Sgt. Kevin Mansell, the highest-ranking officer supervising the scene that evening, was vindicated entirely.

The city will have to pay Timpa’s son $1 million in damages.

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The US Military Is Laying the Groundwork to Reinstitute the Draft

The most recent edition of the US Army War College’s academic journal includes a highly disturbing essay on what lessons the US military should take away from the continuing war in Ukraine. By far the most concerning and most relevant section for the average American citizen is a subsection entitled “Casualties, Replacements, and Reconstitutions” which, to cut right to the chase, directly states, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”

An Industrial War of Attrition Would Require Vast Numbers of Troops

The context for this supposed need to reinstate conscription is the estimate that were the US to enter into a large-scale conflict, every day it would likely suffer thirty-six hundred casualties and require eight hundred replacements, again per day. The report notes that over the course of twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US suffered fifty thousand casualties, a number which would likely be reached in merely two weeks of large-scale intensive combat.

The military is already facing an enormous recruiting shortfall. Last year the army alone fell short of its goal by fifteen thousand soldiers and is on track to be short an additional twenty thousand this year. On top of that, the report notes that the Individual Ready Reserve, which is composed of former service personnel who do not actively train and drill but may be called back into active service in the event they are needed, has dropped from seven hundred thousand in 1973 to seventy-six thousand now.

Prior to the Ukraine war, the fad theory in military planning was the idea of “hybrid warfare,” where the idea of giant state armies clashing on the battlefield requiring and consuming vast amounts of men and material was viewed as out of date as mass cavalry charges. Instead, these theorists argued that even when states did fight, it would be via proxies and special operations and would look more like the past twenty years of battling nonstate actors in the hills of Afghanistan. In a recent essay in the Journal of Security Studies, realist scholar Patrick Porter documents the rise of this theory and the fact that it is obviously garbage given the return of industrial wars of attrition.

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Detroit Police Raid Psilocybin Church After Newspaper Feature

A church that purportedly uses entheogenic plants like psilocybin mushrooms as a holy sacrament was raided by officers with the Detroit Police Department Friday just two days after having a newspaper article about them published in the Detroit Metro Times.

According to a follow up article by the Detroit Metro Times, officers confiscated about $700,000 Friday in psilocybin mushroom products as well as ayahuasca and iboga from Soul Tribes International Ministries at 15000 Southfield Freeway in Detroit. Officers with the Detroit Police Department confirmed the raid took place to the Metro Times but would not comment on what was taken or any other details about what happened there.

Owner of Soul Tribes, ‘Shaman Shu’ (formerly named Robert Shumake) said 15 officers from DPD showed up armed and masked, seized the mushroom products and ordered a closure of the church. Shu told the outlet he believes the actions taken by police were in violation of Proposal E, a 2021 city initiative that decriminalized the use of psychedelic plants and fungi like psilocybin.

“They stole ancient sacrament. It was prayed over and meditated over. It’s a healing sacrament… They blocked my property down without due process. You can’t do that,” Shu said to the Metro Times. “They think we’re not a church. But that’s why the federal government was created, to separate church and state so that cities do not opine on what churches are [and] what ministries are. We’re a ministry and a religious organization.”

The original article said Soul Tribes was operating a “sacrament center” within the church where they sold dried psilocybin fruits, capsules and gummies to church members based on language in Proposal E that included using psilocybin therapeutically under the supervision of religious leaders, though they remain illegal under Michigan state law.

Regardless, Proposal E did not allow for the sale of entheogenic plants and fungi, which is likely where Soul Tribes ran into trouble with the police. The Metro Times asked for comment from the Mayor of Detroit’s office regarding the raid and whether or not DPD’s actions were sanctioned by the City, to which they received the following comment from Doug Baker, the city’s assistant corporation counsel:

“The Detroit Police Department worked in close coordination with the city’s law department and building safety, engineering and environmental department in preparing this enforcement action,” Baker said. “It is the law department’s position that this local ordinance, despite its intent, does not override state law, which considers psilocybin to be a controlled substance. Most importantly, the city ordinance itself does not allow for the sale or distribution of psilocybin.”

DPD Sgt. for media relations, Jordan Hall, told the outlet, “My understanding was that [the raid] was due to a lack of licensing and the amount of substances that were distributed.”

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