The United Police States of America

[Econoline]

A Death In South Carolina:

No video, no crime.

That's the simple truth of it. That's all you know and all ye needs to know about the cold-blooded slaying of Walter Scott by Officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina. No video, and Slager drops his Taser by Scott's body and probably gets away with what he did. No video, and Scott goes down as just another of the many semi-hoodlums that are occupational hazards to our brave men in blue. No video, and Slager's doing three nights a week on Hannity's show by next Monday. No video, and Slager's half-a-hero, while Scott remains dead.

But there is a video and Slager is shown both killing Scott, and appearing to try to cover it up in that most ancient of cop ways -- with a drop piece. He is seen handcuffing a dying man. So let us not have any explanation containing the phrase "isolated incident." Let us have no talk of "split-second decisions" or the "heat of the moment." What we see in the video is Slager's almost instantaneous response to what he's done. Drop a weapon. Concoct a story. Rely on your brother officers and ginned-up public opinion to mount your defense. Rely on the fact that you're a white man with a badge and the person you killed was clearly neither one. In everything we see on the video, Michael Slager was following...procedure.

There is a video, so Michael Slager will face murder charges in this case, and that is as it should be, but the systemic problem goes merrily on.

North Charleston is South Carolina's third-largest city, with a population of about 100,000. African-Americans make up about 47 percent of residents, and whites account for about 37 percent. The Police Department is about 80 percent white, according to data collected by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent period available.

The country has to decide what the function of its police forces actually is. Is it their function to protect and to serve all citizens, or is it to respond with overwhelming deadly force to placate the fears that one sector of the population nurses toward The Other? Are our police custodians of ordered liberty or some sort of Praetorian Guard of established privilege? I'm sympathetic enough to the average officer to believe that many of them want to be the former, but are trained too thoroughly in the techniques of the latter. I hope the villain of this piece doesn't turn out to be the guy who took the video, but I'm not sure that won't be the case. There shouldn't have to be video, is what I'm saying.

[Econoline]

Another Cop Wins Another Epic Battle:

So we had an ever elusive incident of a cop being charged with murder, for murdering a person who was unarmed. I literally can’t remember the last time this happened so I was stunned by disbelief for a couple of days. You know the story by now. The murdering cop, Michael Slager killed Walter Scott during an incident that started with a traffic stop for a broken tail light.

The incident happened on Saturday, and unfolded in the usual way. The cop claims that he was in an epic battle for his life and had no choice but to shoot to kill. It’s fascinating how many epic battles cops get into. They seem to emerge victorious the in the vast majority of these incidents. Weird.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a total of 127 cops were killed in the line of duty last year. I don’t have numbers from any other source from last year, but I can tell you that they had the highest number of cops killed for 2013. In other words, no other source had a higher number than they did. So 127 is the maximum number of cops who were killed in the line of duty last year. Of those, 50 were death by gun. So let’s assume that all 50 were of the epic battle nature. I don’t have the 2014 numbers on how many justifiable homicides by cop from the FBI, but I have the 2013 figures. The FBI recorded 461 justifiable homicides committed by cops. These must nearly all have been of the epic battle variety since they were justified, right?

That 50 to 461 ratio is unfathomably imbalanced. It simply defies explanation. We don’t know how many of those 461 were unarmed, and that’s by design. No one is counting. Speaking of counting, that 461 number seems to be off by at least a factor of 2. Some think that the number of people killed by cops is closer to 1,100 per year. You know how anal I am about data, and presenting credible data but I can’t in this case. I don’t know how many of the estimated 1,100 cop killings were of unarmed victims. But I know that it would have to be no more than 5% in order to create parity with the number of cops killed in the line of duty.

If you go back to that FBI link, you’ll see that the police are justifiably murdering more people every year, while the murders of police officers are trending downward every year. There’s something seriously wrong here.

I’m not prone to believe the account of the lone survivor in a struggle, particularly when the one who died wasn’t armed. I’m not prone to believe a cop who won an epic battle for his or her life against someone who wasn’t armed. I’m not inclined to believe any cop whose story includes the word "waistband". I’m sorry, but I have no benefit of the doubt left for them anymore. Especially when they all seem to be telling virtually the same story.

Unfortunately, forensics in the real world is nothing like CSI. It never tells us exactly what happened. Darren Wilson’s story was very similar to Slager’s story. The victim reached for the cop’s weapon…..epic struggle….shoot to kill. In the Michael Brown case, forensics told us that Brown did have contact with Wilson’s gun, but it can’t tell us the circumstances. Was the gun being pulled out when he instinctively grabbed at it before it was aimed at him? We don’t know. We know that all of the bullets except one entered Michael Brown’s body from the front. What about the one we’re not sure of? That was one that went through his raised arm, which could have come in from either the back or the front. We know that Wilson missed half of the shots he took. Were these the shots he fired when they were both running? That would seem to be the most likely circumstances under which to miss, but we don’t know.

But Wilson gets a pass because we don’t know, and he’s the only one left alive to tell a story. The Michael Slager situation was on course to play out the same way as Wilson’s. He told basically the same story, and his department was standing behind it. This autopsy is going to have the benefit of a video tape showing it what happened, but there’s no telling how murky the results would have been without the tape. Based on that horribly imbalanced ratio of shootings, I think it’s safe to assume that the results were going to be too unclear to put a murderer in prison.

The only good thing that happened here, is that the video didn’t come to light until after the murderer told his lies. He’s going to have an impossible time explaining the disparity between his version and the video.

I am not prone to believe any cop’s story that isn’t accompanied by video evidence. You think I’m biased? We’re doing exactly the opposite now. We believe everything the surviving cop says unless there’s a video to prove otherwise. That benefit of the doubt given to the cops is unfounded. My bias comes from the data. Where does the reverse bias come from?

http://bitchypundit.com/2015/04/09/anot ... ic-battle/

[Lord Jim]

No video, no crime.

That's the simple truth of it.

Sorry, but that narrative is complete 100% USDA Prime bullshit, for all the reasons I have already explained in detail.

[Econoline]

Only if you assume that in the absence of the video there still would have been a thorough and impartial investigation with no (additional) evidence manipulation/invention on the part of any other law enforcement personnel. (The point of the second piece I quoted is that, in any case of the police killing an unarmed civilian, that is not an assumption that anyone ought to automatically make: "That benefit of the doubt given to the cops is unfounded.")

[Lord Jim]

Only if you assume that in the absence of the video there still would have been a thorough and impartial investigation with no (additional) evidence manipulation/invention on the part of any other law enforcement personnel.

Actually, given the vast and numerous disparities between Slager's account of what happened and the physical, forensic and ballistic evidence, you have to assume a wholesale conspiracy to falsify evidence involving the police investigators, the Medical Examiners, and all the ballistic and forensic investigative personnel involved for this cop not to face charges.

In other words, you need to have something going on akin to what Cochran and Co. fantasized happened in the OJ Simpson case, for this cop not to have been ultimately criminally charged.

And even if you wanted to believe that it was theoretically possible that there would be that many people in so many different areas all willing to risk their careers and possible criminal charges themselves in order to save the skin of a cop who shot a guy four times in the back from 30 feet away, in this case it was already a an impossibility.

As has been previously pointed out, this case had already been turned over to an independent investigation before the video surfaced. (the difference between Slager claiming he fired in self defense during a struggle for his taser with the victim, and four shots in the back, was enough to convince the police chief and the mayor this was necessary.) And also as was pointed out earlier, in this case there was already significant media and community focus before the video surfaced.

(And by the way, as we can see on the video, Slager abandoned his effort to plant the taser next to Scott's body because of the arrival of another officer, so he would not have proceeded with that effort absent the video.)

There are certainly situations one can imagine, where absent video evidence a dirty cop could get away with criminal behavior; from planting evidence to cold blooded murder. Situations where the available evidence could be interpreted to support his story, or was at least ambiguous enough that it didn't rise to probable cause for the commission of a crime. (Even though he did in fact commit one)

But that is absolutely NOT the situation in this case. All of the available evidence clearly and unambiguously shows Slager to have lied about his account of what happened and instead shows the clear criminal conduct of shooting a fleeing unarmed man in the back four times from 30 feet away.

And also the facts show that an independent investigation had already been launched and strong media and community pressure was already in place before the video surfaced.

In light of all these facts, anyone (like the author of the first article you posted) who tries to claim that there would have been no criminal charges without the video is either ignorant of the facts, or is an agenda driven person who doesn't care about the facts; only advancing their narrative. (Just as there were many agenda driven folks who didn't care about the facts in the Michael Brown case.)

Look, as I said before I'm very glad there was a video. The video allowed the authorities to act more quickly then they would have otherwise. (Because developing all the physical, forensic and ballistic evidence probably would have taken at least a couple of weeks) The ability to move quickly against the dirty cop probably spared the residents of North Charleston the sort of violence and destruction that was visited on Ferguson.

I wish there had been a video of the Michael Brown shooting as well. The one and only thing these two cases have in common, is that they both illustrate quite convincingly the enormous potential value of police body cams.

In the Ferguson case, a video would have likely prevented the whole "hands up don't shoot" myth from ever getting off the ground, and spared the community the extensive violence it suffered, with all the loss of businesses and jobs that involved.

In this case, if Slager had been wearing a body cam that he knew would be examined, there's a pretty good chance he wouldn't have carried out the execution at all and Mr. Scott would still be alive.

[Lord Jim]

One thing that cops are far more likely to get away than an execution absent video evidence is an unacceptable beat down...

I certainly believe that there would have been no charges brought in the Rodney King beating without a video, and there would probably have been no investigation into this (it happened yesterday) without a video:

Sheriff Orders Immediate Internal Investigation Into Arrest Seen on "Disturbing" Video




The San Bernardino County Sheriff ordered an internal investigation Thursday into an arrest caught on NBC Los Angeles' NewsChopper4 video that showed deputies beating a suspect when they caught up with him following a desert chase on horseback.

Aerial footage showed the man falling off the horse he was suspected of stealing during the pursuit in San Bernardino County Thursday afternoon.


He then appeared to be stunned with a Taser by a sheriff's deputy and fall to the ground with his arms outstretched. Two deputies immediately descended on him and appeared to punch him in the head and knee him in the groin, according to the footage, reviewed several times by NBC4.

The group surrounding the man grew to 11 sheriff's deputies.

In the two minutes after the man was stunned with a Taser, it appeared deputies kicked him 17 times, punched him 37 times and struck him with batons four times. Thirteen blows appeared to be to the head. The horse stood idly nearby.

The man did not appear to move from his position lying on the ground for more than 45 minutes. He did not appear to receive medical attention while deputies stood around him during that time.

The man, identified as Francis Jared Pusok, 30, of Apple Valley, was hospitalized with unknown injuries, authorities said.

Pusok's mother Anne Clemenson blasted the conduct of the deputies, and said she still does not know where her son is, or what condition he is in following the arrest.

"To me, it was like a joy ride for the cops to do this to him. (It was) brutality. He didn't deserve something like that," Clemenson said. "To Tase him, the beatings that I see them doing to him — it's uncalled for. You see him laying down, and they continue to kick him, hitting him and punching him. Why?"

His girlfriend, Jolene Bindner, said she hasn't been able to get answers from the Sheriff's Department about Pusok's condition, let alone what hospital he's at.

"They have not told me a thing," she said. "How can you be tased and still feel it's necessary to beat him like that? I don't understand."

Three deputies were injured during the search. Two suffered dehydration and a third was injured when kicked by the horse. All three were taken to a hospital for treatment.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told NBC4 he was launching an internal investigation into the actions of the deputies.

"I'm not sure if there was a struggle with the suspect," McMahon said. "It appears there was in the early parts of the video. What happens afterwards, I'm not sure of, but we will investigate it thoroughly."

The series of events started when deputies from the Victor Valley station went to a home on Zuni Road to serve a search warrant in an identity theft investigation, authorities said in a news release.

The suspect took off in a vehicle and deputies initiated a pursuit through unincorporated Apple Valley, the town of Apple Valley and unincorporated Hesperia. The area is more than 80 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Pusok allegedly abandoned the vehicle 40 miles away from Hesperia in a place called Bowen Ranch where he took off running.

During a search on foot, with off-road vehicles and by helicopter, deputies learned the suspect had stolen a horse and rode it on dirt trails through rugged, steep terrain, causing numerous injuries to the horse.

A sheriff's helicopter inserted a team of deputies to take the suspect into custody. As deputies made contact with Pusok, the horse threw him off.

Deputies said the Taser was ineffective due to his loose clothing and a use of force occurred.

"I can certainly understand the concerns in the community based on what they saw on the video," McMahon said. "I'm disturbed by what I see in the video. But I don't need to jump to conclusions at this point, until we do a complete and thorough investigation. If our deputy sheriff's did something wrong, they'll be put off work and they'll be dealt with appropriately, all in accordance with the law as well as our department policy."

San Bernardino Superior Court records show Pusok has convictions for resisting arrest, animal cruelty, disturbing the peace, attempted robbery and failure to provide evidence of financial responsibility.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that while they understand police officers are authorized to use force, they "are deeply troubled by the video images that appear to show San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies beating a man after he surrendered."

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local ... 50951.html

There are times that video evidence can be misleading; sometimes it doesn't show everything that precipitated the actions you see, or because of the angle, it doesn't give a complete picture of what's taking place...

This isn't one of those times...

You see that before the the first blow is administered, the guy is lying spread eagle on his stomach on the ground; he couldn't possibly be in a more supine posture of surrender...

If you read the article, it becomes pretty obvious why the deputies reacted the way they did. This guy had led them on a lengthy and exhausting chase, by car, on foot, and on horseback...

The conditions of the chase were so taxing that two of the deputies succumbed to dehydration; hell, one was even kicked by the damn horse....

So by the time these guys caught up with this clown, they were MEGA PISSED...

From a human standpoint I think this is certainly understandable; if I were in their shoes, I'm sure I would be mega pissed too..

But that is still NO excuse for what these deputies did. When a perp surrenders, he has surrendered; period. Nothing he did prior to that time matters. If he is offering no resistance, professional standards require that you simply effect the arrest and take him into custody.

You don't get to beat the shit out of him just because prior to surrendering he behaved like an asshole, or because his skill at eluding you was embarrassing, or because friends and co-workers of yours were hurt in the effort to capture him. (All three would seem to apply here)

It just doesn't work that way.

[Lord Jim]

Give a 73 year old retired insurance executive a gun and a badge, and put him on a team to take down a suspect in a police sting operation...

What could possibly go wrong?

Tulsa Deputy Charged With Manslaughter in Shooting

April 13, 2015

A volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Oklahoma was charged with manslaughter Monday for killing a black man earlier this month after he apparently mistook his revolver for his stun gun.

The April 2 incident was caught on video, adding to growing scrutiny of law-enforcement practices nationwide and raising questions about whether reserve deputies should be involved in potentially dangerous police work.

The video, released by the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office on Friday, shows the white reserve deputy, 73-year-old Robert Bates, shooting Eric Harris while other law-enforcement agents try to detain him. The incident came amid a sting operation in which Mr. Harris, who was in his 40s, had agreed to sell drugs and a gun to an undercover agent.

The second-degree manslaughter charge involves culpable negligence, defined by Oklahoma law as the “omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do,” said Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler. If convicted, Mr. Bates could face up to four years in state prison.

A lawyer for Mr. Bates characterized the shooting as an accident. “The evidence that this was a mistake is overwhelming,” said the lawyer, Scott Wood. “Mr. Bates feels very badly for the incident.”

The deputy got confused and thought he was firing a stun gun instead of a gun, said Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark, who was hired as an independent investigator by the sheriff’s office to review the shooting. Speaking at a news conference Friday, Mr. Clark added that at the time of the shooting, Mr. Harris was considered to be armed and dangerous, and was struggling while deputies sought to handcuff him.

Mr. Bates’s gun, a Smith & Wesson Air Lite, weighs 11.4 ounces, while his stun gun weighs 12.6 ounces, according to the sheriff’s department. Both had a grip-activated laser sight.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-vide ... 1428913303

[BoSoxGal]

'Fuck your breath!'

Nice thing to hear in the final moments of life.


Protect and serve - ha!

[BoSoxGal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn ... onal_pop_b


Fully ambulatory young healthy male arrested (for having as switchblade in his pocket) after running from police, enters police transport van and somehow ends up with an 80% severed spine which ultimately causes his death.

Don't worry; police are looking into it.

[BoSoxGal]

Here's another gem from our criminal injustice system. I do credit this attorney for being honest about the lack of care for rights of the accused that he brought to his job as a young prosecutor.

‘It was fundamentally unfair.’ A prosecutor apologizes
for his role in putting an innocent man on death row
By Mark Berman March 21

Marty Stroud was 33 years old when he fought to have Glenn Ford sentenced to death. Stroud was relatively new in his role as assistant district attorney in Caddo Parish, La., when Ford was indicted on a charge of first­degree murder for the 1983 killing of a watchmaker who ran a jewelry store in Shreveport. “The case took about a week and a half,” Stroud recalls now. Ford, a black man before an all ­white jury, was convicted and sentenced in 1984. He remained on death row for three decades. It was the first and only death sentence Stroud won as a prosecutor.

Last year, Ford was declared a free man and released from prison. His attorneys said upon his release he was
sentenced due to questionable testimony as well as inexperienced defense. The lawyers he had during his initial trial had not tried a case before a jury before, Stroud said.

Other men had also initially been charged in the shooting of Isadore Rozeman, the watchmaker, but those
charges were later dismissed. In 2013, Ford’s attorneys say they were told that a confidential informant for the
Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office pointed to one of those other men as the person who killed Rozeman, though precise details remain unclear.

In March 2014, after prosecutors and Ford’s attorneys filed motions to vacate his conviction, the state district court ordered his release. However, more than a year later, Ford is still fighting the state for compensation. He’s also facing an advanced cancer diagnosis.

Stroud knows all of this. He says he knows now that Ford was innocent and he knows Ford’s trial “was fundamentally unfair.” He knows Ford is dying, and he knows the state is not paying Ford for the decades he lost. “When he was exonerated last year, I was thrilled,” Stroud, 63, said in a telephone interview Friday. “I thought that justice had been done.”

A.M. “Marty” Stroud III, who grew up in Shreveport and is an attorney there, read about Ford’s problems getting the state to pay him in the Shreveport Times. Stroud could not believe it, so he began working on a letter to the editor of the newspaper to try and put his thoughts together. All of the things that had bothered him about the case and all of the things about the case that had built over the sleepless nights, poured out into the letter.
“I’m not one to write letters or get on soapboxes or anything like that,” Stroud said. “But I felt that in this particular case, I had a unique view of what had happened since I actually was there and had watched the progress through the system all these years.”

The result, which totals more than 1,500 words, was published online Friday by the Shreveport Times and widely
circulated on social media. In the bracing letter, Stroud apologized for his role in taking away 30 years of Ford’s life.

He says he was “arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself.” Stroud explained why he had turned
against the death penalty he so eagerly sought in 1984, and he expressed both his remorse for what he did and his apology to Ford for what cannot be undone.

“I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning,” he wrote. Stroud recalled that late in the trial, while arguing for the death sentence, he mocked Ford for wanting to stay alive to try and prove his innocence, adding: “I continued by saying this should be an affront to each of you jurors, for he showed no remorse, only contempt for your verdict.”

Stroud continued:

How totally wrong was I.
I speak only for me and no one else.
I apologize to Glenn Ford for all the misery I have caused him and his family.
I apologize to the family of Mr. Rozeman for giving them the false hope of some closure.
I apologize to the members of the jury for not having all of the story that should have been
disclosed to them.
I apologize to the court in not having been more diligent in my duty to ensure that proper
disclosures of any exculpatory evidence had been provided to the defense.

Stroud went on to work for a private firm after leaving the district attorney’s office in 1989. He has worked on a mix of civil and criminal cases, including mounting defenses in death ­penalty cases. Stroud said that he was told not long before Ford was freed that investigators working on a cold case talked to someone about the Rozeman killing, and that person said that Ford did not shoot the man. Stroud said he was told: “If the prosecution had known this at the time, there wasn’t enough to have Mr. Ford arrested, much less give him the death penalty.” Ford was subsequently released.

“I have a stain because I participated in the proceeding that, looking back on, it was fundamentally unfair,” Stroud said in the interview. He said he knew that Ford’s attorneys had not practiced criminal law and that he knew “it was a mismatch from the beginning.”

Stroud also began seeing problems with a larger issue in the proceedings: The fact that Ford was not just found
guilty, but found guilty and sentenced to death, which means he could have been executed before his innocence came to light.

The letter from Stroud seems rather remarkable, coming from a prosecutor who won a death sentence and wished later he could take it back. It also comes as prosecutors around the country are putting increasing resources into trying to overturn false convictions. The country had a record number of exonerations last year, a tally boosted by the efforts of prosecutors, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Mistaken convictions are a particular concern when they involve death sentences. Six of the people exonerated last year had been sentenced to death, the registry said. Wrongly executing someone is “the ultimate nightmare,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said recently. But Holder, who opposes the death penalty, called this an “inevitable” feature of the current capital punishment system, which relies on the judgment of people who can make mistakes.

Ford was the 144th death row inmate cleared since 1973, and he had spent more time on death row than any of these other inmates, the Death Penalty Information Center reported. (An Ohio man who spent four decades in prison, the longest­ serving inmate later exonerated in the country’s history, was awarded $1 million in compensation this week by a state court; he had been sentenced to death, but it was commuted to a life sentence.)

Stroud’s unease with the death penalty has grown and deepened over the years, and he says Ford’s case illustrates why he now opposes capital punishment. “This case shows why the death penalty is just an abomination,” he said. “The system failed Mr. Ford, and I was part of the system. That is why Ifeel it was my duty to come forward and say: At the time, I was gung ho, got the right guy, no doubt whatsoever, on a crusade, I’m a good guy, I’m on a crusade for law enforcement. I never considered that the evidence, that there was something else out there we should’ve looked at.”

Stroud was confident in his case then, but he wishes now he had done more to look into the rumors that other people were involved in the crime. In hindsight, he realizes he was an eager prosecutor less than a decade out of law school, one who wanted to make a name for himself. Stroud saw other people who were touting their careers, boasting how they were going to become judges, bragging about the number of capital cases prosecuted and death sentences won.

He recalls how after Ford was sentenced, he went out for drinks to celebrate, something he now looks back on with disgust. “Looking back 30 years ago, I was just blinded by the prospect of prosecuting a first­ degree murder case and obtaining a sentence of death,” he said. “I thought that would show that I was a tough prosecutor. What it showed is how easy it is to be caught up in the system and not to step back and see that a fair process is being used.” Stroud said after being on both sides of the issue, he has determined that it does not work. “All it is is state­ assisted revenge,” he said, adding: “We can’t do it. It’s arbitrary, it’s capricious. And I believe that it’s barbaric.”

In Louisiana, the wrongfully imprisoned can receive up to $250,000 in compensation. Ford is trying to get the state to pay him for the years spent in prison, but court documents show that the state says he should not be given money because he went to a pawn shop to sell items that had been stolen from Rozeman’s store. Attorneys for Ford said last year that one of the other men initially charged in the killing had given him jewelry to pawn.

Ford has also filed lawsuits claiming he was wrongfully imprisoned and that he was denied necessary medical care after signs emerged he may have cancer. Within months of his release from the notorious Angola Prison last year, Ford was diagnosed with stage­ three lung cancer; he currently has stage ­four lung cancer, according to legal filings submitted in federal court this month.

While Stroud has not talked to Ford, whom he calls “Mr. Ford,” he said he has talked with an attorney for Ford, who suggested the former prosecutor write a letter to the exonerated man. “When I started writing the letter, it was part of a cleansing process for me, stuff that had bothered me for years that I couldn’t put my finger on,” Stroud said. “It came out in this letter. The only regret that I have is that I didn’t come to this position much earlier in life.”

Even though he hoped the letter would prompt some discussion about the death penalty, he said he is still surprised by the reaction it has received beyond Shreveport. “I knew it would probably stir some people up around here, but I never realized it would gain so much attention with other folks in other parts of the country,” Stroud said. He has been called by CNN and other outlets who want to hear more about the story. “I’m a little bit stunned by that.”

Stroud said he is not sure if he will write again to Ford. In his letter, Stroud calls for Ford to be given “every penny” called for by Louisiana’s law governing compensation for the wrongfully convicted. He also says he hopes for compassion he does not believe he has earned. “I end with the hope that providence will have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford,” he wrote. “But, I am also sobered by the realization that I certainly am not deserving of it.”

You can read Stroud’s full letter here.

Mark Berman is a reporter on the National staff. He runs Post Nation, a destination for
breaking news and developing stories from around the country.

eta: Stroud has since met with Ford in person to apologize; they shook hands, but Ford told him he can't forgive him. Of course not - his entire adult life was stolen by a prosecutor's lack of care.

[Scooter]

I have lived in Toronto most of my adult life, and like any other big city it has had its share of stories about excessive use of force and corruption, although probably relatively infrequently by U.S. standards. I came of age as a gay man in the wake of the bathhouse raids of the late 70s/early 80s, and was arrested a couple of times in demos during the height of the AIDS crisis (by cops who always wore heavy rubber gloves on such occasions), but neither of those caused me to view the police as the enemy, even if I clearly did not, as an HIV+ gay man, see them as an ally. By the time I was severely beaten in a gay bashing in the early 90s, police culture had evolved past the point where such attacks were responded to with indifference, if not outright scorn, and the police who investigated my case demonstrated nothing but the height of professionalism and compassion in pursuing my attackers. Seeing police walking the beat around the neighbourhood or doing duty at events like the Pride parade felt somewhat reassuring.

The turning point for me was watching the behaviour of police during the G20 summit a few years ago, beating people senseless when they were doing absolutely nothing wrong, arresting over a thousand people for nothing but as a naked demonstration of their power (the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, dwarfing the excesses of the October Crisis in 1970), and the attempts (mostly successful) to avoid facing any consequences for the actions in the aftermath, watching the police chief tell baldfaced lies about some particularly outrageous incidents with his face contorted in that knowing smirk because he was sure he would get away with it.

In spite of being less likely to have encounters with police than at any time in my life, despite being white, middle aged, not connected to any element of society that might draw the attention of law enforcement, I find myself afraid of police. Nowadays, when I see police around the neighbourhood, my entire body tenses up. If I have to cross paths with a cop, I avert my gaze and otherwise try to avoid drawing attention to myself. I remember during the 2003 blackout, a few times over the course of the day I brought down bottles of water to the cops who were directing traffic at a nearby intersection while the lights were out; I would never think of doing the same today, not because I have any less appreciation for what they are doing, but because my first thought would be the fear that they would mistake the bottle for a weapon and shoot me.

I fully recognize that my fears are irrational, but they are what they are, and they are not going to go away until the police give me a reason to restore my trust in them. Thus far I have seen nothing that would, and sporadic events since the G20 have only reinforced those fears. I never used to use disparaging names to refer to police, nor to associate them with certain despicable regimes of the past, but such associations enter my thoughts with regularity now, even if they don't pass my lips.

[BoSoxGal]

A beautifully articulated post, Scooter.

[MajGenl.Meade]

http://www.alternet.org/police-cadet-qu ... 4.facebook

District Attorney Kari Brandenburg has provided new details in the case of two Albuquerque police officers who are under investigation for brutality after allegedly beating a homeless man on March 20. According to Brandenburg, the person who reported the assault was a police cadet who has since resigned

Since 2009, the troubled department has been involved in 47 shootings, 32 of which were fatal. Chief Eden has stated that these numbers reflect a “systemic failure in our ability to track employee misconduct.”

In April of last year, the department was accused of using excessive force by the Justice Department after the frightening murder of the homeless James Boyd when he was approached for “illegally camping.” Boyd was shot by an officer who had discussed his plans to shoot him in the penis, hours prior to his death. Their own police chief openly admitted that he is stuck with officers who should not be on the force.

[wesw]

we have a culture of brutality that permeates many, but not all, of our police forces. I did not realize how bad things had gotten.

we need to bring this out into the light and not let false narratives, like the Michael brown case presented, sway our views. our police have become brutal and dangerous.

lawbreaking by citizens does not justify neck breaking by police.

[BoSoxGal]

we have a culture of brutality that permeates many, but not all, of our police forces. I did not realize how bad things had gotten.

we need to bring this out into the light and not let false narratives, like the Michael brown case presented, sway our views. our police have become brutal and dangerous.

lawbreaking by citizens does not justify neck breaking by police.

Not quite as eloquent as Scooter's post, but that last line is very catchy and would fit on a bumper sticker to boot!

This is what it's all about; it's easy for some people to disregard what happens in the criminal injustice system because they are law abiding and consider themselves distanced from what happens among the 'criminal' element. But the cops have started killing innocent citizens on a frighteningly regular basis, and when regular people no longer trust the police, the system will break down more and more until eventually police testimony won't mean much if anything at trial and truly guilty people will go free.

[Gob]

Since 2009, the troubled department has been involved in 47 shootings, 32 of which were fatal. Chief Eden has stated that these numbers reflect a “systemic failure in our ability to track employee misconduct.”

Shooting and beating people to death is classed as "employee misconduct"? I think I see your problem.

[Long Run]

Is there evidence to suggest that things are worse, or is there just more easily found evidence of police misconduct (everyone has video and photo capability) and have we become less lenient toward misconduct? There have always been power-trip officers among the good ones and average ones. A good cop doing his or her job is not news, we rarely see the results or anything about such work. There is little balance to the reporting -- all the focus is on the few bad ones and not the large body of officers doing their jobs as expected. Instead, the instances posted in this thread and elsewhere are well-reported, or misreported (e.g., Michael Brown, Duke lacrosse), making the problem seem bigger than before and perhaps make the problem seem larger than it is -- is that reality or just an explosion of media coverage?

[Big RR]

That's probably part of it, but I have noticed a bigger number of cases where someone was seriously injured or killed while in custody. I'm sure cops in the past would take their frustrations out on their prisoners, but a lot of times it was restricted to a few punches or a kick in the ass (not that that is OK); now we see far more cases where someone is shot or choked/beaten to death. sure the media covers it, but it the past it would have as well if such serious injuries or big clusters of such violence were seen (like in the 1968 democratic convention).

Sadly. what hasn't changed is the willingness of many of not most of the good cops to cover for their fellow police when they do these things.

[oldr_n_wsr]

A Good Cop

Police Officer Pulls Over Toddler — And Makes His Day
For most parents, watching their child get pulled over is a nightmare. But when Ashley Crawford saw the flashing lights of a police car behind her son’s vehicle, she happily whipped out her camera.

Jaxon Arbuckle, Crawford’s son, is a 2-year-old who loves his toy car. So when Crawford saw that a local Louisville, Ky., police officer was tending to a small car wreck on her street on Tuesday, she had an idea. “I thought, ‘How cute would it be if I got a picture of Jaxon pulled over?’” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “I waited for him to finish up with his incident report and asked him if he wouldn’t mind turning the lights on and pulling Jaxon over.”

Two-year-old Jaxon Arbuckle was excited to be pulled over in his favorite toy car, mom Ashley Crawford says. (Photo: Ashley Crawford/Facebook)

The police officer, Bill Mayo, was happy to play along. “I saw this little boy who looked to be not much older than my son, and he was running up and down the street like my son does and he just made me smile,” Mayo tells Yahoo Parenting. “He had this Little Tikes car, and his mom asked if she could snap some pictures. I would never say no to a boy like that. He kept looking up at me like I was some kind of Transformer. He kept smiling.”

Crawford says Jaxon was in heaven. “I placed Jaxon’s car on the street, and he was so excited,” the 21-year-old mom says. “When we first moved to Louisville a few months ago, he was scared of sirens, but now he loves them and he loves firetrucks. When he saw the sirens on our street he just kept yelling, ‘Look, Mommy, look!’”

Jaxon and Mayo spent about 20 minutes together, playing hide-and-go-seek and exchanging high-fives and hugs, Crawford says. “He went above and beyond just so my son would smile,” she says. “I think it’s important to see that police officers aren’t people you should be scared of. They are the people you should turn to for help.”

Mayo says he was the lucky one. “I probably got just as much out of the interaction as Jaxon did. It made my day complete,” he says. “I’m just a big kid as it is. In a child’s world, make believe and pretend is what it’s all about. I would do it a thousand times over.”

While Mayo doesn’t get to pull over a toddler that often, he says his actions that day weren’t unusual. “I can assure you that I have witnessed countless of the exact same acts of kindness from my fellow police officers on a daily and weekly basis,” he says. “It wasn’t unusual. But it felt good to get in touch with the community and show police officers’ true character and what we’re about.”

Ashley Crawford says her son, Jaxon Arbuckle, loved hanging out with Officer Bill Mayo. (Photo: Ashley Crawford/Facebook)

That’s exactly why Crawford decided to share her photos on Facebook, and sent them to local news station WHAS-11. “You hear so much negativity about police officers. Whenever they’re on the news, it’s for something bad,” she says. “But Officer Mayo was the nicest guy I have ever met. It was such an amazing experience.”

Crawford is hoping this will be the first and last time her son gets pulled over. “My uncle, when he saw the pictures, said that Jaxon was pulled over for an OWP,” she says. “Operating with a pacifier.”

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/police- ... 92982.html

[oldr_n_wsr]

More good cops

Cops' Generous Gift for Teen After Her Home Is Robbed

Leonela Osuna’s quinceañera savings may have vanished but the California teen received a lot more than money when her local police stepped up to fix things.

When officers from the Stanislaus County sheriff’s department reported to 14-year-old Leonela Osuna’s Modesto, Calif. home on Tuesday they didn’t just answer the call to try and solve a burglary. They answered the call to help.

Her home had been robbed of laptops, jewelry and money. “This family lost a lot,” Deputy Barry Ballance tells Yahoo Parenting. The burglar, or burglars, still at large — who had kicked in the door of her house while the family was at school and work — even took all of the $2,000 that the teen had been saving for her quinceañera. Every penny of the funds that Osuna had been painstakingly saving to pay for a dress and hall rental for her August 8 ceremony, vanished.

And quinceañeras aren’t cheap. The milestone event for many Latin American families is part 15th birthday bash, part religious rite, and part debutante ball — complete with formal gowns, dazzling tiaras, dinner, dancing, a cake, and a court of 14 attendants in coordinating outfits who help the honoree make her social debut.

By one estimate, the Washington Post reports that 25 percent of the approximately 400,000 girls of Latin American heritage, participate in Quinceañeras.

So when the authorities discovered that money for Osuna’s festivities had been snatched from her dresser drawer, they stepped up.

Ballance withdrew $500 from his K-9 unit’s funds and promptly presented it to the teen. “When I handed her the money, both mother and daughter started crying,” he tells The Modesto Bee. Other officers and departments donated as well.

“They’ve been pitching in with money to help,” Osuna tells local news station KTXL. “It makes a big difference.” Osuna tells KTXL the generous donations have changed her perspective about police officers: “I appreciate [them] now that I know they would do that for someone.”

The family is so grateful, they’ve extended an invitation to Ballance to attend Osuna’s Quinceañera, which he is respectfully declining.

“I really do appreciate the invitation,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “But I don’t know how well a deputy would fit in at teenager’s party.”

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/cops-ge ... 74987.html