Tag: police state

Unqualified Impunity: When Government Officials Break the Law, They Often Get Away With It

The horrifying video of George Floyd’s death, and the protests that followed, led to a rare occurrence: The police officers responsible are being prosecuted. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with murder and remains in jail, and three other officers are facing lesser charges.

Kentucky’s recent decision not to bring homicide charges against the officers who killed Breonna Taylor is much more typical. Most instances of law enforcement brutality do not result in criminal charges, even when they are captured on video. They often result in no consequences at all. This includes many cases of excessive force in response to the protests after Floyd’s death, but the problem is long standing, and not restricted to local police.

Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa Jr. was not prosecuted or disciplined for shooting and killing a 15-year-old boy, and the Supreme Court ruled last year that the boy’s parents could not sue.

Most of the individuals responsible for the CIA torture program faced no consequences—in fact, one of the CIA employees who oversaw torture and evidence destruction now leads the agency.

And the list goes on.

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Censoring the Biden story: How social media becomes state media

Chinese citizens watched President Xi Jinping deliver an important speech this week not far from Hong Kong. Well, not the whole speech: Xi apparently is ill, and every time he went into coughing spasms, China’s state media cut away so that he would be shown only in perfect health.

Xi’s coughs came to mind as Twitter and Facebook prevented Americans from being able to read the New York Post’s explosive allegations of influence-peddling by Hunter Biden. The articles cited material reportedly recovered from a laptop; it purportedly showed requests for Hunter Biden to use his influence on his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, as well as embarrassing photos of Hunter Biden.

Many of us have questioned the sketchy details of how the laptop reportedly was left by Hunter Biden with a nearly blind computer repairman and then revealed just weeks before the presidential election. There are ample reasons to question whether this material was the product of a foreign intelligence operation, which the FBI apparently is investigating.

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Cop Rips Woman’s Hair from Her Scalp Over Broken ‘Third Brake Light’ That Was WORKING

Shynita Phillips Abu was “jamming to music” in her car after a trip to a post office earlier this month when a San Diego County Sheriff’s deputy targeted her for extortion. His reason for pulling her over and eventually assaulting her? He claimed her “third brake light” was out.

In the land of the free, petty traffic violations like third brake light bulbs can and will lead to innocent people being assaulted and kidnapped. While it is technically an infraction if your third brake light bulb is out, according to Abu, when she picked her car up from the impound lot after the deputy took it, the light was actually working.

Abu has since filed a complaint against the department alleging excessive force. The department is now investigating.

According to Abu, who filmed the interaction, the officer became belligerent during the stop when she disputed the reason for the stop. Abu says the officer apparently didn’t like the fact that she was filming the arrest which made him angry.

“He started to yell ‘put the phone down now,’” she said. “And at that point, I became afraid”

For a simple traffic ticket, the officer proceeded to escalate force and is seen on video dragging the woman from her car. He allegedly pulled on her with so much force that her hair was ripped from her scalp.

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Innocent Woman Didn’t Let Cops See Her Ring Video, So They Raided Her Home, Mocked Her

In January of this year, Monecia Smith was awakened in the middle of the night as a shirtless man pounded on her door seeking help. Moments later the man ran to her neighbor’s house before gunshots ran out. Monecia has a Ring camera system which did not capture the shooting but did capture part of the deadly encounter.

“I could see the muzzle (flash) of gunfire,” Smith, a mother of four, said to the Kansas City Star.

Smith said she showed the video to a family member of the victim, later identified as Derrick Smith, 31 (not related to Monecia), but when police showed up to her home and asked for it, she refused to hand it over — which is her constitutional right. Smith wasn’t committing a crime and explained that her decision to keep the video from police stems from her lack of trust in the department.

As the Star explains, Smith pointed to the questionable shooting deaths of Ryan Stokes, Terrance Bridges, Donnie Sanders and others at the hands of Kansas City police officers, as the reason she does not trust them.

For all Smith knew, it was police who killed Derrick Smith and they could’ve been trying to seek out and destroy any evidence which showed it.

“There have been too many cases where nothing was done,” Monecia Smith said. “My trust for police has gone down the drain.”

Smith is not alone in her lack of trust for police. The Star interviewed 75 residents who share similar distrust.

“If people don’t trust the police, it is because a very severe injustice has occurred,” said Thomas C. O’Brien, a psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

And, in Kansas City, severe injustice is seemingly routine.

Last week, TFTP reported on 25-year-old Deja Stallings — a nine-month pregnant woman who was body slammed and then knelt down on by cops for allegedly “hindering and interfering” while filming an arrest.

Before that, Karle Robinson, 61, was held at gunpoint and handcuffed at his home near Kansas City. His “crime”? Moving a TV into his new house — while black.

The list goes on and provides an impetus for today’s distrust that goes back decades. Proving Smith’s reason for distrust is the fact that she was raided by these cops the very next day after refusing to show them the video.

According to the report, Smith showed the video to a member of Derrick Smith’s family and when detectives found out about it, they requested a meeting inside her home. Smith politely declined.

“I didn’t feel safe with him in my house,” she said.

Smith had no idea how profoundly predictive that statement would be. The very next day, a militarized unit of cops in tactical gear kicked in Smith’s door and ransacked her apartment — making sure to denigrate her along the way.

Smith, who was at work during the raid on her home, was alerted by a neighbor and came over immediately. When she showed up, cops were still in her home and she was told she couldn’t enter. But her cameras inside were rolling.

“Go out and make sure these detectives are OK, ‘cause this bitch, (inaudible) she’s getting crazy,” one of the shock troops can be heard saying on the video.

“They did all of that for a DVR?” Smith said. “Why did I deserve that?”

The fact of the matter is that she didn’t deserve that at all. Smith later filed a grievance over the incident which was sustained by the Office of Community Complaints, a civilian agency tasked with holding the police accountable. Unfortunately, however, the agency is largely impotent and have very few tools to actually hold cops accountable.

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