Tag: police state

Six former Mississippi cops known as ‘The Goon Squad’ plead guilty to torturing and abusing two black men during raid on their home

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges accusing them of torturing and abusing two black men during a raid.

Members of the self-called ‘Goon Squad’ each carried a coin with the name emblazoned on one side and the other with Rankin County Sheriff’s Office’s badge. 

Lieutenant Jeffrey Middleton appeared to be the ringleader of the group, with his coin embossed with ‘Lt Middleton’s Goon Squad’. 

Five other deputies for the Sheriff’s Office, and one from the Richland Police Department, have been charged with conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice.

Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Middleton and Daniel Opdyke, and ex-police officer Joshua Hartfield, were all charged in relation to the assault of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January. 

Elward was charged with home invasion and aggravated assault for shoving a gun in the mouth of Jenkins and pulling the trigger – in what prosecutors called a ‘mock execution’.

They are accused of assaulting them with sex toys, firearms, stun guns, milk, eggs, alcohol and chocolate syrup on January 24. 

The cops are potentially facing a maximum combined sentence of 641 years and two life sentences in prison for state and federal charges, as well as a combined $12.25 million in fines. 

Dedmon was charged with home invasion after kicking in a door, with McAlpin, Middleton, Opdyke and Hartfield each facing an additional charge of first-degree obstruction of justice.

Middleton admitted in court that he was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in 2007 for hitting/killing a man. 

The victims stared down their attackers after arriving together in court, sitting in the front row just feet away from their attackers’ families.  

Prosecutors say that some of the officers nicknamed themselves the ‘Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and cover it up.

They were targeted after a white neighbor complained that two black men were staying at the home with a white woman. 

Parker was a childhood friend of the homeowner, Kristi Walley, who has been paralyzed since she was 15 – and he was helping to care for her.  

All of the officers have pleaded guilty to the state charges on Monday, and previously pleaded in a connected federal civil rights case. 

In January, the officers entered a property in Mississippi without a warrant, and handcuffed Jenkins and Parker before assaulting them. 

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Dash cam footage shows Delaware cops conspiring to drum up bogus charge against motorist who flipped them off

A Delaware man is suing the state police, saying they destroyed a sign he made to warn people about their speed trap and they created a bogus reason to charge him with an infraction because he gave them the finger, Delaware Online reported.

Jonathan Guessford had launched a mini-protest by holding a hand-made sign that read, “Radar ahead.” Body cam footage shows Cpl. Stephen Douglas and Officer Nicholas Gallo approach Guessford and incorrectly tell him he could not stand on the side of the road with the sign. Gallo eventually pulled the sign from Guessford’s grasp and ripped it up.

As he was leaving, Guessford gave the officers the finger, prompting them to follow him. When they pulled him over, Master Cpl. Raiford Box arrived on the scene and told Guessford that he was going to be locked up for disorderly conduct and have his child taken away. The officers issued him a citation “under a law that governs hand signals for non-motorized vehicles like bicycles,” Delaware Online’s report stated.

New dash cam footage that was recently released shows officers conspiring to drum up a bogus charge against Guessford. Douglas was warned by Box that the hand-gesture charge was bogus, but that didn’t stop him of issuing it.

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‘Stressed beyond her limits’: co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid

The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication.

Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said.

Meyer was “in good health for her age”, the weekly newspaper asserted. And the headline of its report on her death said the police’s decision to raid the Marion Record’s offices along with the homes of its reporters and publishers was not only illegal – but had also contributed to bringing on the end of Meyer’s life.

Attempts to contact both Marion’s police chief – Gideon Cody – and the judge who authorized his agency to conduct the raids aimed at the Record, Laura Viar, for comment on Meyer’s sudden death were not immediately successful.

As the Record has told it, the weekly’s ordeal began when a confidential source leaked evidence that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk-driving but continued using her car without a license.

The newspaper never published anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband during their divorce. Nonetheless, after police notified Newell that the information was going around, she alleged at a local city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents.

According to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, Newell had admitted to the drunk-driving arrest as well as driving with a suspended license. Yet she insinuated that the leak was meant to jeopardize her license to serve alcohol and harm her business.

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Army vet Greg Gross, 65, wins $20M after Yuba City cop Joshua Jackson snapped his SPINE during traffic stop and paralyzed him

A 65 year-old Army vet has been awarded $20million after a cop snapped his spine during a traffic stop and left him paralyzed – with the appalling assault captured on camera. 

Greg Gross was left horrifically-disabled after the April 2020 ‘pain compliance’ restraint by Yuba City Police Officer Joshua Jackson, with video footage showing the bloodied brutality victim sobbing as he wailed: ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ 

The bed-bound former military man has been awarded the sum by a Sacramento jury after they were told he now requires 24 hour care from a team of nurses. 

Stomach-churning body camera footage captured the moment Gross was injured after being pulled over on suspicion of causing a slow-speed crash while drunk driving. 

Jackson made Gross sit on the ground, with his legs straight in front of him. He then repeatedly pushed the senior citizen’s torso forward, towards the ground, with a force that ultimately snapped Gross’s spinal column as fellow cops Scott Hansen and Nathan Livingston looked on.  

Officers did not believe the victim when he repeatedly said ‘I can’t feel my legs’ after his spine was crushed as he was pinned to the ground outside a hospital in Yuba City, California.

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Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.

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‘He Was Alive’: Tormented Chinese Doctor Recounts Harvesting Organs In Back Of Van

Stepping into the van guarded by armed soldiers with five surgeons and nurses, Zheng Zhi didn’t know he was entering into a world that would haunt him for the next quarter of a century.

Dr. Zheng, then a resident doctor at one of China’s largest military hospitals, knew little more than they were on a “secret military mission” near a military prison located around the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.

A light blue fabric covered the four sides of the vehicle, shielding it from any curious glances.

When the door opened, four burly soldiers carried in a man whose limbs were bound with thin ropes that had cut deeply into his flesh. The man was no more than 18 years old; his organs, the surgical crew had been told the day before, were “healthy, fresh.”

A doctor instructed Dr. Zheng to “step on” the man’s legs and “don’t let him move.” He pressed the man’s legs down with his hands and to his shock, they were warm to the touch. Blood was now flowing from the man’s throat.

He watched a doctor slice open the man’s stomach and two others reach in to remove a kidney each. The man’s legs twitched and his throat moved—although no sound came out.

“Cut his artery and veins, quick!” a doctor told Dr. Zheng. As he did so, so much blood gushed out that it splashed all over Dr. Zheng’s gown and gloves. That was when he got the order to extract the man’s eyes.

Dr. Zheng looked at the man’s face. Staring back at him was a pair of wide-open eyes.

“It was horrifying beyond words. He was looking right at me. His eyelids were moving. He was alive,” Dr. Zheng recounted to The Epoch Times in July, the first time he agreed to use his real name to recount his story.

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Family of Man Killed During FBI Raid Speaks Out for First Time

Family members of the man killed during an FBI operation this week are decrying what happened.

“We, the family of Craig Deeluew Robertson, are shocked and devastated by the senseless and tragic killing of our beloved father and brother, and we fervently mourn the loss of a good and decent man,” the family said in a statement after Mr. Robertson was fatally shot during the Aug. 9 operation in Provo, Utah.

FBI agents and other law enforcement officers were trying to serve arrest and search warrants at the home after reviewing social media posts in which Mr. Robertson, 74, threatened President Joe Biden and other politicians, according to court documents and officials.

Video footage from the scene showed heavily armed officers outside of Mr. Robertson’s home before dawn shouting at him to open the door.

Jon Michael Ossola, who recorded the video, told The Epoch Times that about 20 officers were present and that they told Mr. Robertson to exit the home.

Mr. Robertson, said, responded by saying “I haven’t broken any federal laws.”

After gunshots rang out, Mr. Robertson, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was taken outside and declared dead.

The video did not capture the shooting and Mr. Ossola said he could not see exactly what unfolded.

The FBI has described what happened as an “agent-involved shooting” that took place around 6:15 a.m. local time. The shooting is being reviewed by the bureau’s Inspection Division, according to a spokesperson, who declined to provide more details.

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Moment seven officers drag ‘autistic’ girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a ‘hate crime’ after she told female cop ‘you look like my lesbian nana’

Police have been accused of heavy handedness after an autistic teenage girl was arrested by seven officers after saying ‘a female officer looked like her lesbian nana’.

The 16-year-old, who also suffers from scoliosis, had been driven to her home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, by officers after midnight when she allegedly made the comment.

She was later dragged away screaming in the early hours of Monday morning having been served a ‘homophobic public order offence’.

The incident was recorded by the girl’s mother who uploaded the footage to TikTok. 

The mother posted: ‘This is what police do when dealing with autistic children. My daughter told me the police officer looked like her nana, who is a lesbian.

‘The officer took it the wrong way and said it was a homophobic comment [it wasn’t].

‘The officer then entered my home. My daughter was having panic attacks from being touched by them and they still continued to manhandle her.’

The footage prompted outrage online, with one social media user writing: ‘I cannot believe my own eyes. Someone in the police force needs to be sacked for this egregious, disgraceful situation.’

Another posted: ‘This is disgusting behaviour by [West] Yorkshire police. And how many officers needed to attend? No small wonder that girl was terrified.’

Andrew Piper added: ‘@West Yorks Police completely unacceptable from the officers in this video. When the officer was informed that the daughter had autism, the comment [from the officer] “I don’t care” is completely inappropriate.’ 

In the footage, two officers can be seen in the hallway of the home, while the girl hides in a corner next to a cupboard. 

The female officer in question, who has cropped blonde hair, can be heard insisting ‘she [the girl] is going to be arrested’.

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Qualified Immunity May Shield FBI Agents Who Abused the No-Fly List

Any inconvenience governments can impose will eventually be abused as a tool of arbitrary punishment. Take, for example, the no-fly list and related watchlists, which are supposed to contain the names of known and suspected terrorists so they can be monitored and their movements restricted. From day one, placement on the list has been misused to punish innocent people who won’t do what federal agents command. Now FBI agents caught abusing the system want qualified immunity to shield them from consequences as people they mistreated seek justice through the courts.

“Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, FBI agents unsuccessfully attempted to pressure a group of innocent Muslims, including Muhammad Tanvir, to become informants for the Bureau,” notes the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which filed an amicus brief in Tanvir v. Tanzin. “Tanvir and the others—who were all either American citizens or lawful permanent residents—declined to become informants, because doing so goes against their sincerely held religious beliefs. FBI agents then harassed the group and placed them all on the No-Fly List.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights acts as co-counsels for the plaintiffs alongside the CUNY School of Law’s CLEAR Clinic. They sued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ Muslim faith forbids them to inform on coreligionists. The defendants—FBI agents who put Tanvir and the other plaintiffs on the no-fly list—protested that the RFRA doesn’t provide for monetary damages against government officials who violate rights, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise in an important 2020 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

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