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GESTAPO USA
TO SERVE AND PROTECT SOME OF US
february 15, 2019
MICHAEL WOOD: We have a culture that from the beginning has been disproportionate and been oppressive to persons of color, and women, and other minorities. We have a system in which criminal justice is an oxymoron. We have a society that trumps up the second amendment as this big right that we have and that right is to have this weaponry so cops can be killed. That’s literally the purpose of the second amendment. And we have state sanctioned murder all over the country with a blue wall of silence and justice not being done. So I’m completely baffled by why anyone is surprised by all of this.
Why Cops Kill Black People: Research Suggests a Troubling Pattern of 'Retaliatory Violence'
Chauncey DeVega / Salon
The story of race in America is a story of change, and a story of things remaining the same. To measure our progress, or lack thereof, all we need to do is to look at how America's police treat the public, and look in turn at who fills the prison cells -- and all too often the cemeteries.
headlines
*Texts between Portland police, far-right group draw scrutiny
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Six California police officers fire shots at rapper asleep in car, killing him
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Portland Sergeant Fired for Encouraging Officers to ‘Shoot Black People’ to Receive $100K In Back Pay Under Approved Settlement (ARTICLE BELOW)
*ICE officials call massive raids in North Carolina ‘the new normal’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In Elkhart, Indiana, Another Conviction Gets Tossed. The Star Witness Was Hypnotized, a Fact the Prosecutor Concealed.(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Justice Department Steps In After NYC Inmates Left Without Power and Heat For At Least a Week
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*OFFICERS ACCUSED OF ABUSES ARE LEADING CHICAGO POLICE’S “IMPLICIT BIAS” TRAINING PROGRAM
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Revealed: FBI investigated civil rights group as 'terrorism' threat and viewed KKK as victims
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*POLICE MAKE MORE THAN 10 MILLION ARRESTS A YEAR, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE SOLVING CRIMES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Report: Elite LAPD Unit Stopped Black Drivers at an ‘Alarmingly’ Disproportionate Rate
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*OUTSOURCING POLICE INVESTIGATIONS TO GOOGLE RISKS PRIVACY AND JUSTICE
(excerpt below)
*Undercover officer: Colleagues beat him 'like Rodney King'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Austin Police Department Orders Deeper Investigation After Audit Finds It Misclassified Cleared Rape Cases
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Laquan McDonald's family laments light sentence given to white Chicago officer
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GESTAPO usa FUNNIES(below)
Texts between Portland police, far-right group draw scrutiny
chron
11:55 am CST, Friday, February 15, 2019
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has asked the police chief to investigate "disturbing" texts between the commander of the department's rapid response team and the leader of a far-right group involved in violent protests in the city.
The text messages show Lt. Jeff Niiya communicating with Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson during protests, detailing the movement of a rival anti-fascist protest group and warning Gibson a Patriot Prayer member with a possible warrant for his arrest needed to be careful. The messages were first reported Thursday by the Willamette Week newspaper.
Mayor Ted Wheeler said the messages appeared to encourage Patriot Prayer and contributed to distrust of the police.
The police were accused last August of being heavy-handed and injuring some people who were protesting a rally organized by Gibson. Portland has been roiled by a series of protests over the past several years involving Gibson's group and a left-wing movement known as antifa, whose members often wear black masks.
Patriot Prayer is a right-wing group whose members say they advocate free speech by opposing political correctness. They have staged many right-wing protest in liberal cites, mostly on the West Coast, some of which have drawn violent reactions.
In a statement, Wheeler said police must remain objective and that the texts appear to "cross several boundaries."
"They also raise questions about whether warrants are being enforced consistently and what information is being shared with individuals who may be subject to arrest," the mayor said.
In one text Niiya tells Gibson he doesn't see a need to arrest his assistant, Tusitala Toese, who often brawls with anti-fascist protesters, even if he has a warrant, unless Toese commits a new crime.
"Just make sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention," Niiya texted Gibson on Dec. 9, 2017. "If he still has the warrant in the system (I don't run you guys so I don't personally know) the officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason."
Efforts to reach Niiya for comment were not immediately successful.
A police spokeswoman said it is not unusual for officers to suggest people turn themselves in to avoid being arrested on a warrant.
"In crowd management situations, it may not be safe or prudent to arrest a person right at that time, so the arrest may be delayed or followed up on later It is not uncommon for officers to provide guidance for someone to turn themselves in on a warrant if the subject is not present," Lt. Tina Jones said told Willamette Week.
Chief Danielle Outlaw said in a statement that an internal review would be conducted to see if policies were violated. "If anything is identified that is deemed outside of our values and directives, it will be addressed," the police chief said.
A member of Portland's City Council, Jo Ann Hardesty, said the "broken policing system in Portland" must be addressed.
"This story, like many that have come before it, simply confirms what many in the community have already known — there are members of the Portland police force who work in collusion with right-wing extremists," she said.
The text messages show Lt. Jeff Niiya communicating with Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson during protests, detailing the movement of a rival anti-fascist protest group and warning Gibson a Patriot Prayer member with a possible warrant for his arrest needed to be careful. The messages were first reported Thursday by the Willamette Week newspaper.
Mayor Ted Wheeler said the messages appeared to encourage Patriot Prayer and contributed to distrust of the police.
The police were accused last August of being heavy-handed and injuring some people who were protesting a rally organized by Gibson. Portland has been roiled by a series of protests over the past several years involving Gibson's group and a left-wing movement known as antifa, whose members often wear black masks.
Patriot Prayer is a right-wing group whose members say they advocate free speech by opposing political correctness. They have staged many right-wing protest in liberal cites, mostly on the West Coast, some of which have drawn violent reactions.
In a statement, Wheeler said police must remain objective and that the texts appear to "cross several boundaries."
"They also raise questions about whether warrants are being enforced consistently and what information is being shared with individuals who may be subject to arrest," the mayor said.
In one text Niiya tells Gibson he doesn't see a need to arrest his assistant, Tusitala Toese, who often brawls with anti-fascist protesters, even if he has a warrant, unless Toese commits a new crime.
"Just make sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention," Niiya texted Gibson on Dec. 9, 2017. "If he still has the warrant in the system (I don't run you guys so I don't personally know) the officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason."
Efforts to reach Niiya for comment were not immediately successful.
A police spokeswoman said it is not unusual for officers to suggest people turn themselves in to avoid being arrested on a warrant.
"In crowd management situations, it may not be safe or prudent to arrest a person right at that time, so the arrest may be delayed or followed up on later It is not uncommon for officers to provide guidance for someone to turn themselves in on a warrant if the subject is not present," Lt. Tina Jones said told Willamette Week.
Chief Danielle Outlaw said in a statement that an internal review would be conducted to see if policies were violated. "If anything is identified that is deemed outside of our values and directives, it will be addressed," the police chief said.
A member of Portland's City Council, Jo Ann Hardesty, said the "broken policing system in Portland" must be addressed.
"This story, like many that have come before it, simply confirms what many in the community have already known — there are members of the Portland police force who work in collusion with right-wing extremists," she said.
Six California police officers fire shots at rapper asleep in car, killing him
Family of Willie McCoy allege racial profiling after Vallejo police fire ‘multiple rounds’ at man
Sam Levin in Oakland
the guardian
Tue 12 Feb 2019 18.15 EST
Willie McCoy had been sleeping in his car outside a Taco Bell, authorities said. Photograph: Courtesy David Harrison
California police officers fatally shot a 20-year-old rapper who was sleeping in his car outside a Taco Bell, authorities said.
Six Vallejo officers fired “multiple rounds” at the man, identified by family as Willie McCoy, police said. McCoy had a handgun on him when the officers fired out of “fear for their own safety” on Saturday night, according to the department. The family of McCoy, whose rapper name was Willie Bo, said Tuesday that police had racially profiled the young black man and that there was no justification for using deadly force against someone who was sleeping and not a threat.
“There was no attempt to try to work out a peaceful solution,” Marc McCoy, Willie’s older brother, told the Guardian. “The police’s job is to arrest people who are breaking the law – not take the law into your own hands. You’re not judge, jury and executioner … We’re never going to get over this.”
Police said officers were checking up on McCoy after a Taco Bell employee called 911 and said a man was “slumped over” behind the wheel of his car at the fast-food restaurant drive through on Saturday at around 10.30pm. McCoy was unresponsive and had a handgun on his lap, police said, adding that the doors were locked and the car was on. After they called for backup, McCoy “suddenly” moved, officials said in a statement.
Police further alleged that officers told him to “keep his hands visible” but that he “quickly moved his hands downward for the firearm”. Police said six officers all fired shots within roughly four seconds, but they did not disclose the number of bullets that struck McCoy. The officers continued shouting commands before removing him from the vehicle and “rendering medical assistance”. He died on the scene. Police have not yet confirmed his identity and said an autopsy was pending.
The killing of McCoy follows numerous scandals involving alleged police brutality against black residents in Vallejo, a diverse city 30 miles north-east of San Francisco. A 2017 video captured a Vallejo officer straddling a man on the ground and repeatedly striking him in the face. Another violent arrest went viral last year, with a video showing an officer striking a man on the ground with a flashlight or baton. Last month, a Marine veteran accused a Vallejo officer of assaulting him while he was filming the arrest of his cousin.
“No one trusts the police in Vallejo,” said David Harrison, McCoy’s cousin. “We are being targeted … Police have a campaign of executing young black men who fit a certain profile. Willie dressed the part. He represents hip-hop music. They are profiled.”
Marc, Willie’s 50-year-old brother, said he suspected police had startled Willie awake, and that they should have ordered him out of the car with a bullhorn instead of approaching him and quickly firing fatal shots after he woke up.
“Police are trained to shoot first and hurt you first,” he said. “They do not respect black people. Even when they have a person subdued and their life is not in danger, they continue to be blatantly physically disrespectful. That is just accepted in America.”
Willie had a difficult childhood, losing both his parents at a young age, said Marc, adding: “He was very ambitious about music. He was passionate.” Willie rapped in a group called FBG. Vallejo is the hometown of many successful rappers and musicians.
Willie loved spending time with his nieces and nephews and making music with his relatives, and he treated his friends like family, said Harrison: “If you needed a few dollars, he was there. If you needed a ride, he was there.”
Some of Willie’s relatives were so distraught, “they can’t even really talk about it”, Marc added. “They are just locked up in the house, crying themselves to sleep.”
There have been two high-profile cases in the broader Bay Area of police fatally shooting people after waking them up, prompting civil rights litigation. Last year, four officers in Oakland shot a homeless man who was armed and sleeping between two houses when they arrived, prompting an excessive force lawsuit that the family filed last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
In 2015, Oakland police killed a man who was passed out in his car, with officials claiming that he abruptly woke up and reached toward a gun on the passenger seat. His family was awarded a $1.2m settlement.
Willie’s family said the involved officers should face criminal prosecution.
“We cannot fathom why they would have to shoot him. This was senseless … shooting a man sleeping in his car,” said Harrison. “We want to make sure this never happens again to another person.”
Six Vallejo officers fired “multiple rounds” at the man, identified by family as Willie McCoy, police said. McCoy had a handgun on him when the officers fired out of “fear for their own safety” on Saturday night, according to the department. The family of McCoy, whose rapper name was Willie Bo, said Tuesday that police had racially profiled the young black man and that there was no justification for using deadly force against someone who was sleeping and not a threat.
“There was no attempt to try to work out a peaceful solution,” Marc McCoy, Willie’s older brother, told the Guardian. “The police’s job is to arrest people who are breaking the law – not take the law into your own hands. You’re not judge, jury and executioner … We’re never going to get over this.”
Police said officers were checking up on McCoy after a Taco Bell employee called 911 and said a man was “slumped over” behind the wheel of his car at the fast-food restaurant drive through on Saturday at around 10.30pm. McCoy was unresponsive and had a handgun on his lap, police said, adding that the doors were locked and the car was on. After they called for backup, McCoy “suddenly” moved, officials said in a statement.
Police further alleged that officers told him to “keep his hands visible” but that he “quickly moved his hands downward for the firearm”. Police said six officers all fired shots within roughly four seconds, but they did not disclose the number of bullets that struck McCoy. The officers continued shouting commands before removing him from the vehicle and “rendering medical assistance”. He died on the scene. Police have not yet confirmed his identity and said an autopsy was pending.
The killing of McCoy follows numerous scandals involving alleged police brutality against black residents in Vallejo, a diverse city 30 miles north-east of San Francisco. A 2017 video captured a Vallejo officer straddling a man on the ground and repeatedly striking him in the face. Another violent arrest went viral last year, with a video showing an officer striking a man on the ground with a flashlight or baton. Last month, a Marine veteran accused a Vallejo officer of assaulting him while he was filming the arrest of his cousin.
“No one trusts the police in Vallejo,” said David Harrison, McCoy’s cousin. “We are being targeted … Police have a campaign of executing young black men who fit a certain profile. Willie dressed the part. He represents hip-hop music. They are profiled.”
Marc, Willie’s 50-year-old brother, said he suspected police had startled Willie awake, and that they should have ordered him out of the car with a bullhorn instead of approaching him and quickly firing fatal shots after he woke up.
“Police are trained to shoot first and hurt you first,” he said. “They do not respect black people. Even when they have a person subdued and their life is not in danger, they continue to be blatantly physically disrespectful. That is just accepted in America.”
Willie had a difficult childhood, losing both his parents at a young age, said Marc, adding: “He was very ambitious about music. He was passionate.” Willie rapped in a group called FBG. Vallejo is the hometown of many successful rappers and musicians.
Willie loved spending time with his nieces and nephews and making music with his relatives, and he treated his friends like family, said Harrison: “If you needed a few dollars, he was there. If you needed a ride, he was there.”
Some of Willie’s relatives were so distraught, “they can’t even really talk about it”, Marc added. “They are just locked up in the house, crying themselves to sleep.”
There have been two high-profile cases in the broader Bay Area of police fatally shooting people after waking them up, prompting civil rights litigation. Last year, four officers in Oakland shot a homeless man who was armed and sleeping between two houses when they arrived, prompting an excessive force lawsuit that the family filed last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
In 2015, Oakland police killed a man who was passed out in his car, with officials claiming that he abruptly woke up and reached toward a gun on the passenger seat. His family was awarded a $1.2m settlement.
Willie’s family said the involved officers should face criminal prosecution.
“We cannot fathom why they would have to shoot him. This was senseless … shooting a man sleeping in his car,” said Harrison. “We want to make sure this never happens again to another person.”
Portland Sergeant Fired for Encouraging Officers to ‘Shoot Black People’ to Receive $100K In Back Pay Under Approved Settlement
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
February 12, 2019
The Portland City Council voted Feb. 6 to approve a settlement that would reinstate and give $100,020 in back pay to a police sergeant fired last year for making racist and inflammatory remarks during roll call.
The settlement, passed by a 4-1 vote, allows Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Gregg Lewis to retire under the condition that he’ll never wear a city police uniform, or work for any city bureau moving forward, OregonLive reported. Additionally, the city will remove the firing from Lewis’ personnel record, replacing it with a suspension instead.
Mayor Ted Wheeler and three other commissioners reluctantly accepted the settlement out of fear that an arbitrator would look at the sergeant’s relatively spotless record as a 25-year veteran of the bureau and overturn his firing. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the first African-American to sit on the Council, was the lone dissenter, arguing the city “should fight” efforts to dismiss an officer’s justified termination.
“I’m not willing to give up,’’ Hardesty said.
Lewis was fired in February 2018 over remarks he made Feb. 12, 2017, relating to the police shooting death of Black teen Quanice Hayes, 17. According to his termination letter, about 16 officers and three other sergeants were present for roll call in the city’s Central Precinct when Lewis said something to the effect of, “If you come across a Black person, just shoot them.”
Lewis was instructing officers on how to place civil holds on people to transport them to a detoxification center when they’re inebriated to sober up when another officer brought up an online news article about Hayes’ shooting death by a Portland Officer Andrew Hearst three days prior. This officer was “dismayed” by the comments posted in reaction to the piece, specifically one that stated, “PPB kills Black people, but only injures white people.”
“Officers began talking about this statement, and then I heard Sergeant Lewis state, ‘Well, let’s just go out and kill all the Black people,'” the letter states. “The officers appeared shocked and astonished. There was some uncomfortable laughter throughout the room, but most officers were quiet. This brought roll call to an end.”
According to records, fellow officers remembered Lewis’ words slightly differently, saying he told officers to “go out and shoot Black people,” while another claimed he said, “Well, let’s just go out and kill all the Black people.” When one of the officers objected, Lewis allegedly “laughed, threw his hands in the air and said, ‘Fuck it. What do I care?’”
When questioned by an Internal Affairs investigator about his remarks, Lewis admitted to making them but said it was only an “off the cuff joke.”
“I thought it was kind of humorous,” he told investigators, according to bureau records. “The conversation about if it was a Black guy, we would just shoot them, is inappropriate and, as a supervisor, I should have been aware of that and thought a little more plainly about what it is I was saying and the message I was delivering and how it was received.”
Lewis continued: “Having had time to look at this, I understand that somebody could take offense to this, but I was just trying to highlight this ridiculous stuff that was in the media.”
Donna Hayes, grandmother of Quanice Hayes, said she walked out of Wednesday’s Council meeting frustrated and with tears in her eyes once the settlement for the fired officer was approved. She told OregonLive she would’ve preferred to see the case go to arbitration and win. Instead, this settlement pays him off and “sends a message out that it’s all right to kill Black people,” she said.
Commissioner Nick Fish said he supported the settlement, “even though it offends me to the core to give money to this person,” but argued the arbitration would’ve cost taxpayers more money because Lewis’ termination likely would’ve been tossed out. He then placed blame on the police bureau’s own discipline guide, which sets the maximum punishment for inflammatory, derogatory language at an unpaid three-week suspension.
Fellow Commissioner Chloe Eudaly added, “there’s no good fight to fight when the game is rigged.”
Under the settlement, Lewis will be considered retired, effective Dec. 3, “with the city of Portland ensuring he receives pension credits for his adjusted service time through his retirement date,” OregonLive reported.
The settlement, passed by a 4-1 vote, allows Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Gregg Lewis to retire under the condition that he’ll never wear a city police uniform, or work for any city bureau moving forward, OregonLive reported. Additionally, the city will remove the firing from Lewis’ personnel record, replacing it with a suspension instead.
Mayor Ted Wheeler and three other commissioners reluctantly accepted the settlement out of fear that an arbitrator would look at the sergeant’s relatively spotless record as a 25-year veteran of the bureau and overturn his firing. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the first African-American to sit on the Council, was the lone dissenter, arguing the city “should fight” efforts to dismiss an officer’s justified termination.
“I’m not willing to give up,’’ Hardesty said.
Lewis was fired in February 2018 over remarks he made Feb. 12, 2017, relating to the police shooting death of Black teen Quanice Hayes, 17. According to his termination letter, about 16 officers and three other sergeants were present for roll call in the city’s Central Precinct when Lewis said something to the effect of, “If you come across a Black person, just shoot them.”
Lewis was instructing officers on how to place civil holds on people to transport them to a detoxification center when they’re inebriated to sober up when another officer brought up an online news article about Hayes’ shooting death by a Portland Officer Andrew Hearst three days prior. This officer was “dismayed” by the comments posted in reaction to the piece, specifically one that stated, “PPB kills Black people, but only injures white people.”
“Officers began talking about this statement, and then I heard Sergeant Lewis state, ‘Well, let’s just go out and kill all the Black people,'” the letter states. “The officers appeared shocked and astonished. There was some uncomfortable laughter throughout the room, but most officers were quiet. This brought roll call to an end.”
According to records, fellow officers remembered Lewis’ words slightly differently, saying he told officers to “go out and shoot Black people,” while another claimed he said, “Well, let’s just go out and kill all the Black people.” When one of the officers objected, Lewis allegedly “laughed, threw his hands in the air and said, ‘Fuck it. What do I care?’”
When questioned by an Internal Affairs investigator about his remarks, Lewis admitted to making them but said it was only an “off the cuff joke.”
“I thought it was kind of humorous,” he told investigators, according to bureau records. “The conversation about if it was a Black guy, we would just shoot them, is inappropriate and, as a supervisor, I should have been aware of that and thought a little more plainly about what it is I was saying and the message I was delivering and how it was received.”
Lewis continued: “Having had time to look at this, I understand that somebody could take offense to this, but I was just trying to highlight this ridiculous stuff that was in the media.”
Donna Hayes, grandmother of Quanice Hayes, said she walked out of Wednesday’s Council meeting frustrated and with tears in her eyes once the settlement for the fired officer was approved. She told OregonLive she would’ve preferred to see the case go to arbitration and win. Instead, this settlement pays him off and “sends a message out that it’s all right to kill Black people,” she said.
Commissioner Nick Fish said he supported the settlement, “even though it offends me to the core to give money to this person,” but argued the arbitration would’ve cost taxpayers more money because Lewis’ termination likely would’ve been tossed out. He then placed blame on the police bureau’s own discipline guide, which sets the maximum punishment for inflammatory, derogatory language at an unpaid three-week suspension.
Fellow Commissioner Chloe Eudaly added, “there’s no good fight to fight when the game is rigged.”
Under the settlement, Lewis will be considered retired, effective Dec. 3, “with the city of Portland ensuring he receives pension credits for his adjusted service time through his retirement date,” OregonLive reported.
ICE officials call massive raids in North Carolina ‘the new normal’
The agency blames mass raids on local police officers for not cooperating with ICE.
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - thinkprogress
FEB 11, 2019, 12:20 PM
Immigrant communities in North Carolina were rattled this weekend after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an estimated 200 undocumented immigrants last week.
The rural town of Sanford was “like a ghost town” after nearly 30 employees at a manufacturing plant were taken into custody Tuesday morning as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation.”
“My godmother was here,” an 18-year-old man told local station ABC11.
“He was like, ‘yeah they took her and what they were doing is taking people to the breakroom, and if you didn’t have valid ID, they were taking them out.'”
The raid was filmed by 27-year-old local musician Christian Enrique Canales and showed ICE agents checking the identification of anyone trying to leave the property. Lee County officers took Canales into custody for “communicating threats” to law enforcement. Canales and immigration activist groups believe he was arrested in retaliation for documenting the raid.
“I’m telling you to be careful out there, they are arresting everybody,” Canales said in Spanish on the Facebook Live stream. “Do you know how many families I know right now that are going to be split up?”
In east Charlotte, an area that prides itself on its diversity, at least a dozen undocumented immigrants were arrested. Many were pulled over randomly by ICE, told to show proper identification, and subsequently handcuffed, according to local immigrant outreach organization Comunidad Collectivo.
The arrests come as workplace raids have skyrocketed under the Trump administration.
ICE officials argued during a press conference that these sweeping raids are what happens when local sheriffs offices don’t cooperate with the agency, as a result of sanctuary city policies, which bar such cooperation. However, there are no official sanctuary cities in North Carolina.
“This is the direct conclusion of dangerous policies of not cooperating with ICE,” said Sean Gallagher, who oversees the agency’s operation in the Carolinas and Georgia. “This forces my officers to go out onto the street to conduct more enforcement.”
In December, two of the state’s most populous counties, Mecklenburg and Wake, ended the 287(g) program, which allowed local deputies to check a federal database to see if any inmates are undocumented. If they are, police hold them until ICE is able to start deportation proceedings.
Contrary to what ICE and most Republicans in Congress believe, these agreements between police officers do not make communities safer. In fact, they further embolden ICE to ruthlessly conduct mass raids or set up identification checkpoints to detain any undocumented immigrant who happens to cross an agent’s path.
Police collaboration with ICE also deters undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes and from participating in court proceedings because of deportation fears. High-profile reports of arrests at a courthouse in Denver caused four immigrant women to drop their domestic abuse cases. In El Paso, ICE arrested an undocumented transgender woman as she attempted to seek a protective order against an abusive boyfriend.
Three gang members in Florida recently kidnapped, robbed, and tortured an undocumented man in South Florida because they believed he would be too afraid to report to the authorities.
“It is believed that this group is targeting undocumented immigrants and robbing them for their cash,” Davie Police Sgt. Mark Leone told the Sun Sentinel. “We believe that they target these undocumented immigrants because they are less likely to report being a victim of a crime to the police.”
New Jersey recently unveiled a new set of laws aimed at addressing this problem. The state’s new “Immigrant Trust Directive,” which was promoted by local immigrant activist organizations, protects immigrants in their interactions with state law enforcement while also building trust between police and migrant communities.
The North Carolina raids come as the federal government is barreling towards another potential shutdown, not over money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but over the number of beds at ICE detention facilities. Congressional Democrats want to impose a cap of about 16,500, forcing the Trump administration to prioritize deportation only for immigrants who pose real security threats. ICE, however, has historically disregarded caps imposed by Congress. While Congress set a limit of 40,500 detention beds, ICE has consistently increased the number of detained immigrants above that number.
The rural town of Sanford was “like a ghost town” after nearly 30 employees at a manufacturing plant were taken into custody Tuesday morning as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation.”
“My godmother was here,” an 18-year-old man told local station ABC11.
“He was like, ‘yeah they took her and what they were doing is taking people to the breakroom, and if you didn’t have valid ID, they were taking them out.'”
The raid was filmed by 27-year-old local musician Christian Enrique Canales and showed ICE agents checking the identification of anyone trying to leave the property. Lee County officers took Canales into custody for “communicating threats” to law enforcement. Canales and immigration activist groups believe he was arrested in retaliation for documenting the raid.
“I’m telling you to be careful out there, they are arresting everybody,” Canales said in Spanish on the Facebook Live stream. “Do you know how many families I know right now that are going to be split up?”
In east Charlotte, an area that prides itself on its diversity, at least a dozen undocumented immigrants were arrested. Many were pulled over randomly by ICE, told to show proper identification, and subsequently handcuffed, according to local immigrant outreach organization Comunidad Collectivo.
The arrests come as workplace raids have skyrocketed under the Trump administration.
ICE officials argued during a press conference that these sweeping raids are what happens when local sheriffs offices don’t cooperate with the agency, as a result of sanctuary city policies, which bar such cooperation. However, there are no official sanctuary cities in North Carolina.
“This is the direct conclusion of dangerous policies of not cooperating with ICE,” said Sean Gallagher, who oversees the agency’s operation in the Carolinas and Georgia. “This forces my officers to go out onto the street to conduct more enforcement.”
In December, two of the state’s most populous counties, Mecklenburg and Wake, ended the 287(g) program, which allowed local deputies to check a federal database to see if any inmates are undocumented. If they are, police hold them until ICE is able to start deportation proceedings.
Contrary to what ICE and most Republicans in Congress believe, these agreements between police officers do not make communities safer. In fact, they further embolden ICE to ruthlessly conduct mass raids or set up identification checkpoints to detain any undocumented immigrant who happens to cross an agent’s path.
Police collaboration with ICE also deters undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes and from participating in court proceedings because of deportation fears. High-profile reports of arrests at a courthouse in Denver caused four immigrant women to drop their domestic abuse cases. In El Paso, ICE arrested an undocumented transgender woman as she attempted to seek a protective order against an abusive boyfriend.
Three gang members in Florida recently kidnapped, robbed, and tortured an undocumented man in South Florida because they believed he would be too afraid to report to the authorities.
“It is believed that this group is targeting undocumented immigrants and robbing them for their cash,” Davie Police Sgt. Mark Leone told the Sun Sentinel. “We believe that they target these undocumented immigrants because they are less likely to report being a victim of a crime to the police.”
New Jersey recently unveiled a new set of laws aimed at addressing this problem. The state’s new “Immigrant Trust Directive,” which was promoted by local immigrant activist organizations, protects immigrants in their interactions with state law enforcement while also building trust between police and migrant communities.
The North Carolina raids come as the federal government is barreling towards another potential shutdown, not over money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but over the number of beds at ICE detention facilities. Congressional Democrats want to impose a cap of about 16,500, forcing the Trump administration to prioritize deportation only for immigrants who pose real security threats. ICE, however, has historically disregarded caps imposed by Congress. While Congress set a limit of 40,500 detention beds, ICE has consistently increased the number of detained immigrants above that number.
In Elkhart, Indiana, Another Conviction Gets Tossed. The Star Witness Was Hypnotized, a Fact the Prosecutor Concealed.
The prosecutor who failed to disclose the use of hypnosis is now a judge. He knew the hypnotist from the Kiwanis Club.
by Christian Sheckler, South Bend Tribune and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica Feb. 5, 4:30 p.m. EST
A federal appeals court has overturned an attempted murder conviction in Elkhart, Indiana, saying a prosecutor concealed “explosive” evidence that the state’s sole eyewitness had been placed under hypnosis prior to trial, throwing into doubt the witness’s reliability.
The court’s opinion, issued 25 years after the defendant, Mack Sims, was convicted, is the latest rebuke of Elkhart’s criminal justice system, which has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the South Bend Tribune and ProPublica.
The prosecutor who failed to disclose the hypnosis, Charles C. Wicks, is now an Elkhart Superior Court judge, presiding over felony and misdemeanor cases.
Sims was arrested in November 1993 on suspicion of shooting Shane Carey, a security guard sitting in his car. Police said they found Sims about a half-hour after the shooting, crouching behind a nearby trash bin. In 1994, Sims was convicted in a jury trial of attempted murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He’s currently at Westville Correctional Facility, in the state’s northwest corner. No physical evidence linked Sims to the shooting. The state’s case hinged on Carey’s identification of Sims as the shooter.
Under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must disclose evidence that could be viewed as favorable to the defense. When Sims stood trial, Wicks, the case’s prosecutor, did not inform the defense that he had referred the victim to a hypnotist. The hypnotist was a physician’s assistant Wicks knew from the Kiwanis Club.
Courts generally frown on testimony from witnesses who have undergone hypnosis, because the practice often leads to an increase in false memories, alongside any legitimate improvements in a person’s recall. The Supreme Court has warned that a person under hypnosis is vulnerable to “confabulation,” filling gaps in the memory with fantasy, and to memory “hardening,” which increases a person’s confidence in both accurate and inaccurate recollections.
“Given the well-known problems that hypnosis poses for witnesses’ memories, we can be confident that Carey’s identification testimony would have been subjected to withering cross-examination,” the federal appeals court wrote in a 2-1 opinion. “The prosecution’s case against Sims depended completely on Carey’s credibility, which the suppressed hypnosis evidence would have severely undermined.”
Wicks declined to comment through an assistant Monday, saying that in his current position as a judge, he could not discuss how Sims’ prosecution had been handled.
In Sims’ case, the victim’s hypnosis was not publicly revealed until 2012, while Sims was seeking a new trial. During a hearing in Elkhart Superior Court, then-prosecutor Graham Polando disclosed a conversation he had with Wicks — by then a judge — prior to the hearing.
Wicks told Polando that “the victim in this case identified the … defendant, Mr. Sims, only after hypnotism,” Polando said in court. What’s more, according to the federal appeals court opinion, Polando said Wicks “asked me not to disclose what he told me” about Carey’s hypnosis.
When called to testify during the hearing, Wicks said he did not remember telling Polando the victim could identify Sims only after being hypnotized. Wicks said he did not disclose Carey’s hypnosis to the defense because Carey had “never wavered” in his identification of Sims as the shooter, even before he was hypnotized.
But at trial and on appeal, Sims’ lawyers challenged the reliability of Carey’s identification even without taking into account the hypnotism. Carey testified that he had glass in his eye after the shooting, and that when shown photos after surgery, he was “real groggy.” Some details in Carey’s initial description of the suspect did not match Sims’ appearance when he was arrested.
The investigation of Sims has parallels to the prosecutions of Keith Cooper and Christopher Parish, two men wrongly convicted in Elkhart of a 1996 robbery in which a man was shot and seriously wounded. Parish had his conviction overturned on appeal and the charges against him dropped. Cooper received Indiana’s first gubernatorial pardon based on innocence.
In the Cooper and Parish cases, key investigative records went missing, including a photo lineup that was shown to the victim. In the Sims case, likewise, at least one photo lineup shown to the victim was not documented or preserved, according to court records. In overturning Sims’ conviction, the federal appeals court noted the investigation’s patchy documentation, writing that “gleaning from the record precisely when photographic lineups were conducted and their result is difficult.”
Attorneys for Cooper and Parish alleged that police engaged in suggestive lineup procedures while asking eyewitnesses to identify the robbers. Sims’ attorneys alleged the same; in the 1994 trial, the victim testified that the night he was shot, police came to the emergency room and showed him a single photo of a suspect, a move the defense argued was so suggestive as to taint any subsequent identification. A detective testified that Carey was shown multiple photos that night, not just one.
In the Cooper and Parish case’s aftermath, the city failed for more than a decade to disclose records that detailed why the case’s lead detective was later forced to resign. (He engaged in sexual misconduct with an informant, according to those records.) In the Sims case, the use of hypnosis on the star witness remained hidden for more than a decade.
The key detective in the Cooper and Parish case had a lengthy disciplinary record, according to his personnel file. The detective in the Sims case, John Faigh, had a disciplinary record that was even longer.
In October 1993, one month before Sims was arrested on suspicion of shooting the security guard, Faigh was suspended for a day: He had arrested a man for child molestation when, by statute, the purported victim was too old to qualify as a child. “The simple fact that a juvenile detective does not know the age limits which constitute child molest is just totally embarrassing,” a captain wrote in a disciplinary letter.
By the time Faigh retired from the Police Department in 2010, he had been disciplined at least 20 times, according to his personnel file. One time he fired his shotgun at a fleeing vehicle, hoping “he would hit either the radiator or tire,” a disciplinary report said. For endangering the driver and a passenger, Faigh was suspended for five days and removed from the SWAT team. Faigh’s personnel file also documented repeated errors while preserving or submitting evidence; once, he failed to properly seal and catalogue evidence collected at a hospital from a rape victim, according to personnel records.
Faigh did not return messages left Monday requesting an interview. In 2009, when questioned by the city’s civilian oversight board about his disciplinary record, Faigh said, “In no manner have I ever disgraced the Elkhart Police Department, myself, or my credibility.”
Wicks, the prosecutor in Sims’ trial, also figured in Parish’s appeal, opposing a request for a new trial. After an evidentiary hearing in 2004, Wicks filed written arguments that contained one misstatement of fact after another. A state appeals court later granted Parish’s request.
In the Sims case, an Indiana deputy attorney general, while opposing a new trial, conceded in oral arguments that Wicks should have disclosed the use of hypnosis. During those arguments, in November, two of the federal appeals court judges quizzed the deputy.
One judge asked her if she had ever “come across a more calculated or deliberate violation of Brady than this.”
Another judge asked why Wicks would have suggested hypnosis unless he had concerns about the witness’s ability to identify the defendant.
After a five-second pause, the deputy attorney general said, “I don’t, I don’t have an answer to that, your honor.”
“I bet you don’t,” the judge said.
The court’s opinion, issued 25 years after the defendant, Mack Sims, was convicted, is the latest rebuke of Elkhart’s criminal justice system, which has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the South Bend Tribune and ProPublica.
The prosecutor who failed to disclose the hypnosis, Charles C. Wicks, is now an Elkhart Superior Court judge, presiding over felony and misdemeanor cases.
Sims was arrested in November 1993 on suspicion of shooting Shane Carey, a security guard sitting in his car. Police said they found Sims about a half-hour after the shooting, crouching behind a nearby trash bin. In 1994, Sims was convicted in a jury trial of attempted murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He’s currently at Westville Correctional Facility, in the state’s northwest corner. No physical evidence linked Sims to the shooting. The state’s case hinged on Carey’s identification of Sims as the shooter.
Under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must disclose evidence that could be viewed as favorable to the defense. When Sims stood trial, Wicks, the case’s prosecutor, did not inform the defense that he had referred the victim to a hypnotist. The hypnotist was a physician’s assistant Wicks knew from the Kiwanis Club.
Courts generally frown on testimony from witnesses who have undergone hypnosis, because the practice often leads to an increase in false memories, alongside any legitimate improvements in a person’s recall. The Supreme Court has warned that a person under hypnosis is vulnerable to “confabulation,” filling gaps in the memory with fantasy, and to memory “hardening,” which increases a person’s confidence in both accurate and inaccurate recollections.
“Given the well-known problems that hypnosis poses for witnesses’ memories, we can be confident that Carey’s identification testimony would have been subjected to withering cross-examination,” the federal appeals court wrote in a 2-1 opinion. “The prosecution’s case against Sims depended completely on Carey’s credibility, which the suppressed hypnosis evidence would have severely undermined.”
Wicks declined to comment through an assistant Monday, saying that in his current position as a judge, he could not discuss how Sims’ prosecution had been handled.
In Sims’ case, the victim’s hypnosis was not publicly revealed until 2012, while Sims was seeking a new trial. During a hearing in Elkhart Superior Court, then-prosecutor Graham Polando disclosed a conversation he had with Wicks — by then a judge — prior to the hearing.
Wicks told Polando that “the victim in this case identified the … defendant, Mr. Sims, only after hypnotism,” Polando said in court. What’s more, according to the federal appeals court opinion, Polando said Wicks “asked me not to disclose what he told me” about Carey’s hypnosis.
When called to testify during the hearing, Wicks said he did not remember telling Polando the victim could identify Sims only after being hypnotized. Wicks said he did not disclose Carey’s hypnosis to the defense because Carey had “never wavered” in his identification of Sims as the shooter, even before he was hypnotized.
But at trial and on appeal, Sims’ lawyers challenged the reliability of Carey’s identification even without taking into account the hypnotism. Carey testified that he had glass in his eye after the shooting, and that when shown photos after surgery, he was “real groggy.” Some details in Carey’s initial description of the suspect did not match Sims’ appearance when he was arrested.
The investigation of Sims has parallels to the prosecutions of Keith Cooper and Christopher Parish, two men wrongly convicted in Elkhart of a 1996 robbery in which a man was shot and seriously wounded. Parish had his conviction overturned on appeal and the charges against him dropped. Cooper received Indiana’s first gubernatorial pardon based on innocence.
In the Cooper and Parish cases, key investigative records went missing, including a photo lineup that was shown to the victim. In the Sims case, likewise, at least one photo lineup shown to the victim was not documented or preserved, according to court records. In overturning Sims’ conviction, the federal appeals court noted the investigation’s patchy documentation, writing that “gleaning from the record precisely when photographic lineups were conducted and their result is difficult.”
Attorneys for Cooper and Parish alleged that police engaged in suggestive lineup procedures while asking eyewitnesses to identify the robbers. Sims’ attorneys alleged the same; in the 1994 trial, the victim testified that the night he was shot, police came to the emergency room and showed him a single photo of a suspect, a move the defense argued was so suggestive as to taint any subsequent identification. A detective testified that Carey was shown multiple photos that night, not just one.
In the Cooper and Parish case’s aftermath, the city failed for more than a decade to disclose records that detailed why the case’s lead detective was later forced to resign. (He engaged in sexual misconduct with an informant, according to those records.) In the Sims case, the use of hypnosis on the star witness remained hidden for more than a decade.
The key detective in the Cooper and Parish case had a lengthy disciplinary record, according to his personnel file. The detective in the Sims case, John Faigh, had a disciplinary record that was even longer.
In October 1993, one month before Sims was arrested on suspicion of shooting the security guard, Faigh was suspended for a day: He had arrested a man for child molestation when, by statute, the purported victim was too old to qualify as a child. “The simple fact that a juvenile detective does not know the age limits which constitute child molest is just totally embarrassing,” a captain wrote in a disciplinary letter.
By the time Faigh retired from the Police Department in 2010, he had been disciplined at least 20 times, according to his personnel file. One time he fired his shotgun at a fleeing vehicle, hoping “he would hit either the radiator or tire,” a disciplinary report said. For endangering the driver and a passenger, Faigh was suspended for five days and removed from the SWAT team. Faigh’s personnel file also documented repeated errors while preserving or submitting evidence; once, he failed to properly seal and catalogue evidence collected at a hospital from a rape victim, according to personnel records.
Faigh did not return messages left Monday requesting an interview. In 2009, when questioned by the city’s civilian oversight board about his disciplinary record, Faigh said, “In no manner have I ever disgraced the Elkhart Police Department, myself, or my credibility.”
Wicks, the prosecutor in Sims’ trial, also figured in Parish’s appeal, opposing a request for a new trial. After an evidentiary hearing in 2004, Wicks filed written arguments that contained one misstatement of fact after another. A state appeals court later granted Parish’s request.
In the Sims case, an Indiana deputy attorney general, while opposing a new trial, conceded in oral arguments that Wicks should have disclosed the use of hypnosis. During those arguments, in November, two of the federal appeals court judges quizzed the deputy.
One judge asked her if she had ever “come across a more calculated or deliberate violation of Brady than this.”
Another judge asked why Wicks would have suggested hypnosis unless he had concerns about the witness’s ability to identify the defendant.
After a five-second pause, the deputy attorney general said, “I don’t, I don’t have an answer to that, your honor.”
“I bet you don’t,” the judge said.
Justice Department Steps In After NYC Inmates Left Without Power and Heat For At Least a Week
By Associated Press - atlanta black star
February 4, 2019
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it will work with the Bureau of Prisons to examine what happened at a federal detention center in Brooklyn that had lost heat and electricity last week and to ensure that it has a backup system in place.
“In the coming days, the Department will work with the Bureau of Prisons to examine what happened and ensure the facility has the power, heat and backup systems in place to prevent the problem from re-occurring,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, deputy director of public affairs for the Justice Department.
Electrical power was finally restored at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Hornbuckle said.
Protesters have gathered outside the facility in recent days following news reports that those housed there have largely been without heat or power for the past week and also haven’t been able to communicate with lawyers or loved ones. Outdoor temperatures have been well below freezing on some recent days, though Sunday was warmer.
“With the heat and hot water operational, and the restoration of electrical power, the facility can now begin to return to regular operations,” Hornbuckle said.
Earlier Sunday, some demonstrators attempted to enter the facility, and guards drove them back with pushes and shoves. Witnesses said they also used pepper spray. A reporter and photographer for The Associated Press were at the facility when a woman, whose son is being detained, tried to get into the jail.
On Sunday, an inmate was able to call through the window of his cell, which faces out to the street, to his mother below. The woman, Yvonne Murchison, was crying and upset and tried to get into the facility, where visits have been stopped.
“I’d trade places with him any day, that’s my child,” she said.
She was followed by activists and media into the lobby, where visitors have to pass through metal detectors.
Witnesses said officers used significant force to push the people out, with some of those attempting to come in being pushed to the ground. The AP photographer felt some type of spray, and began to have trouble breathing. Those affected were seen washing out their eyes with water or milk.
The Bureau of Prisons has acknowledged that the jail “experienced a partial power outage due to a fire in the switch gear room.” The bureau had said a new electrical panel was being installed by an outside contractor. The agency insisted that inmates had hot water for showers and sinks, and were getting medications as needed.
The jail administration did not return an email seeking comment on the clash Sunday.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for an investigation of the circumstances of the loss of heat and electricity by the federal Department of Justice, saying the situation was “a violation of human decency and dignity” and also raises “questions of potential violations of law.”
The Democrat said he wanted answers, and those responsible held accountable.
“Prisoners in New York are human beings,” Cuomo said. “Let’s treat them that way.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union released a statement Sunday calling on the Bureau of Prisons to “ensure that no detainee be subjected to retaliation for peacefully protesting.”
“Today’s confrontation between the Bureau of Prisons and family members of people jailed at MDC highlights the desperate need to address the dangerous, inhumane and unlawful conditions inside the facility,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said.
“In the coming days, the Department will work with the Bureau of Prisons to examine what happened and ensure the facility has the power, heat and backup systems in place to prevent the problem from re-occurring,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, deputy director of public affairs for the Justice Department.
Electrical power was finally restored at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Hornbuckle said.
Protesters have gathered outside the facility in recent days following news reports that those housed there have largely been without heat or power for the past week and also haven’t been able to communicate with lawyers or loved ones. Outdoor temperatures have been well below freezing on some recent days, though Sunday was warmer.
“With the heat and hot water operational, and the restoration of electrical power, the facility can now begin to return to regular operations,” Hornbuckle said.
Earlier Sunday, some demonstrators attempted to enter the facility, and guards drove them back with pushes and shoves. Witnesses said they also used pepper spray. A reporter and photographer for The Associated Press were at the facility when a woman, whose son is being detained, tried to get into the jail.
On Sunday, an inmate was able to call through the window of his cell, which faces out to the street, to his mother below. The woman, Yvonne Murchison, was crying and upset and tried to get into the facility, where visits have been stopped.
“I’d trade places with him any day, that’s my child,” she said.
She was followed by activists and media into the lobby, where visitors have to pass through metal detectors.
Witnesses said officers used significant force to push the people out, with some of those attempting to come in being pushed to the ground. The AP photographer felt some type of spray, and began to have trouble breathing. Those affected were seen washing out their eyes with water or milk.
The Bureau of Prisons has acknowledged that the jail “experienced a partial power outage due to a fire in the switch gear room.” The bureau had said a new electrical panel was being installed by an outside contractor. The agency insisted that inmates had hot water for showers and sinks, and were getting medications as needed.
The jail administration did not return an email seeking comment on the clash Sunday.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for an investigation of the circumstances of the loss of heat and electricity by the federal Department of Justice, saying the situation was “a violation of human decency and dignity” and also raises “questions of potential violations of law.”
The Democrat said he wanted answers, and those responsible held accountable.
“Prisoners in New York are human beings,” Cuomo said. “Let’s treat them that way.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union released a statement Sunday calling on the Bureau of Prisons to “ensure that no detainee be subjected to retaliation for peacefully protesting.”
“Today’s confrontation between the Bureau of Prisons and family members of people jailed at MDC highlights the desperate need to address the dangerous, inhumane and unlawful conditions inside the facility,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said.
OFFICERS ACCUSED OF ABUSES ARE LEADING CHICAGO POLICE’S “IMPLICIT BIAS” TRAINING PROGRAM
Debbie Southorn, Sarah Lazare - the intercept
February 3 2019, 6:00 a.m.
SERGIO HERRERA, A Chicago police officer, was accused in a 2010 lawsuit of teaming up with another officer to mace and beat a black man for no reason. The man was sitting in his parked car when Herrera’s colleague approached the vehicle. As the man went to retrieve his identification, the officer told him to “cuff up,” at which point Herrera entered the fray, spraying the man with mace according to the lawsuit. Both officers then allegedly proceeded to throw the man to the ground, strike him in the head with handcuffs, and dig their knees into his back. When the man asked for medical assistance, his pleas were ignored. Instead, the police took him to the station.
The lawsuit charges that the man’s ribs were fractured, and that he was left with permanent injuries as a result of the incident. The city of Chicago ended up paying the victim a settlement of $75,000, without admitting wrongdoing. Out-of-court settlements for civil rights violations are a common outcome for the department, which is plagued by lawsuits.
Now, Herrera has a new assignment: to be one of several officers who oversee the Chicago Police Department’s “implicit bias” trainings, a program intended to curb incidents of racist police violence.
Herrera’s role is part of a troubling pattern: The trainings are a key part of the city’s efforts to reform its notoriously abusive police force, but revamped trainings that debuted in 2017 have in many cases been overseen by some of the alleged abusers themselves.
Sixteen of the 17 police officers — excluding only Officer Angela McLaurin — who have provided instruction for the procedural justice training program since the start of 2017 have together garnered a total of 111 misconduct complaints, according to police documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The misconduct complaints range from false arrests to illegal searches and include use of excessive force, often against people of color in Chicago. One officer who provided training has faced seven accusations of mistreating black people since 2011. Six other officers have together been accused of abuses in at least ten civil rights lawsuits, with at least half of those cases resulting in settlements or payments to the plaintiffs.
“Over the past two years, the Chicago Police Department has aggressively marched forward on expanding the quantity and quality of in-service training available to officers,” said Sergeant Cindy Guerra of the Chicago police’s Office of the Superintendent, in a statement to The Intercept. “By incorporating national best practices, CPD’s revised training supports officers’ abilities to be successful in the performance of their duties, and ensures sustainable reform.” Guerra, who declined to speak to the outcomes of legal cases, added, “All allegations made against a Chicago Police Officer are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.”
For activists working on policing issues in Chicago, the track records of police officers who have or are giving trainings underscore the problems with pushing for “improved training” as the solution for police violence. “The urgency around policing is valid and real, but the insistence that what we need is better training is leading to massive amounts of money to an already over-inflated arsenal and budget of CPD,” Page May, co-founder of Assata’s Daughters, a collective of black women in Chicago who identify their work as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, told The Intercept.
The trainings were instituted in the wake of a massive public relations crisis for the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and subsequent cover-up by city officials pushed policing issues to the fore in the city, leading to protests and, eventually, a damning 2017 Department of Justice investigation. In response, the police department pledged to reform itself, in part by providing better internal trainings with an emphasis on addressing implicit bias.
The Chicago Police Department followed up with a report last April outlining its “Next Steps for Reform.” The department — which has a pattern of racist harassment, civil rights violations, and “unreasonable killings,” according to the Department of Justice — trumpeted its plan as a solution to public concerns. “The 2018 Next Steps for Reform framework is our continued promise to the communities we serve that CPD is serious about addressing the historical challenges we face,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at the time.
The police plan emphasized its “procedural justice” training program as a key component of its reform strategy. One of the courses in the training program will focus on implicit bias, or the pervasive and deep-seated prejudices that shape behavior, the police report says.
While the department has shared little public information about the content of these trainings, a sympathetic article in the Chicago Sun-Times billed it as a “sensitivity-training course,” noting that the term “procedural justice” is a popular buzzword among police departments under scrutiny for patterns of racist violence. According to the Chicago Police Department report, all officers are mandated to complete the entire training series by the end of 2020.
“Stomping” a Black Man
Many of the instructors who have taught their fellow police officers how to deal with biases, however, are trailed by a litany of civilian complaints. Eleven of the 17 officers who have provided procedural justice trainings since the start of 2017 have been accused of violating the rights of black people, and nine have been accused two times or more of mistreating black people, according to public information collected by the Citizens Police Data Project, a project of the journalism nonprofit Invisible Institute and the University of Chicago Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. The number may be low: Many of the civilian complaints against these officers did not note the race of the complainants.
Only three of the 111 complaints of misconduct were sustained in the processes that adjudicate these complaints, but that comes amid a system that infrequently holds cops to account. Fewer than 2 percent of misconduct accusations against Chicago police officers are sustained — a “low” rate, according to the Department of Justice. Responding to a question from The Intercept about the complaints against four of the officers who have provided trainings, Guerra, the police spokesperson, said, “In reference to the four officers you mentioned, none of these officers have any sustained allegations against them.” (The Intercept requested comment on and interviews with the five officers named in this story for having participated in trainings while also having records of civilian complains or civil rights lawsuits.)
Some of these alleged acts were violent. According to one civilian complaint obtained through a FOIA request, one of the officers who has provided trainings, Officer Daniel Goetz, allegedly “stomped” a black man while he was prostrate on the ground outside a Shell gas station in October 2015. The man had attracted the police’s attention simply for urinating outdoors after he was turned away from the gas station bathroom; when the police asked the man to approach their car, he fled.
The officers who were with Goetz threatened bystanders for attempting to document the alleged injustice, according to the complaint. Witnesses approached to film the police’s actions but were allegedly “warned by the accused officer that if they video recorded anything,” the man would be punished more severely. (In Illinois, it is legal to record most police interactions with the public.) A medical report “noted bruising to [the victim’s] left side,” and that he sought medical care on two separate occasions as a result. The Independent Police Review Authority investigator noted the witnesses declined to testify and, after fellow police officers denied the accusations against Goetz, the complaint process halted, with the evidence deemed insufficient to prove or disprove the allegations. (In its statement, the Chicago police indicated that Goetz is not currently giving procedural justice trainings, though he was listed in a FOIA document as one of the individuals who had done so since the start of 2017.)
In another civilian complaint, also obtained through a FOIA request, Goetz was accused of grabbing a black man by the arm before another officer allegedly said, “I will lock your black fucking ass up.” That complaint also was not sustained after the officers who were present denied the allegations.
The civil rights lawsuits against six of the officers who have provided training are even more harrowing, particularly those involving Wasim Said, a Chicago police officer since 2002 who has been employed in the department’s education and training division. (Like Goetz, the police indicated in their statement to The Intercept that Said was not currently giving procedural justice trainings.) In one suit from 2008, Said was accused of participating in a police raid on a home in which officers pointed their guns at the heads of an adult with a heart condition, a 6-year-old child, and a 4-month-old infant. The 6-year-old “began to vomit as a result of defendants’ actions,” the lawsuit alleges, noting that no criminal charges were ultimately filed. The case settled with $35,000 awarded to the plaintiffs.
According to a separate lawsuit filed the same year, Said and another officer responded violently to an alleged physical assault of a young girl by an adult woman. The suit charges that the officers slammed the girl’s head “extremely hard” onto the hood of a car and held her there despite pleas from her mother that she was only 10 years old. The following morning, the child received treatment at a hospital for “neck strain and head trauma,” alleges the lawsuit, which resulted in a dismissal.
Said is not alone. In 2007, Officer Reginald Weatherly was sued for his alleged participation in a group beating. “One or more of Defendant Officers repeatedly struck Plaintiff in the leg with a blackjack club, breaking his ankle and causing Plaintiff severe pain and suffering,” according to the suit. The suit, which resulted in settlement and dismissal, states that the other officers named in the suit “had the opportunity to intervene to prevent it, but failed to do so.” (In its statement to The Intercept, the Chicago Police Department indicated that Weatherly was not currently giving procedural justice trainings.)
Beyond formal charges, the social media conduct of at least one of the police trainers raises further cause for concern. An officer named Phil Visor, who also serves as an instructor of the procedural justice training, published Facebook posts that include images and rhetoric associated with Blue Lives Matter, a reactionary movement that arose in opposition to Black Lives Matter. One of his profile photos, uploaded on December 23, 2015 — when Chicago was in the grips of protests responding to the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video — shows an image of a group of officers in riot gear that reads, “Sometimes There’s Justice. Sometimes There’s Just Us.” This image, along with other profile photos depicting the “thin blue line” — the mantra that police are the only thing separating society from chaos — demonstrates an affinity with precisely the “us versus them” mentality Visor has been tasked with eradicating.
Guerra, the Chicago police spokesperson, told The Intercept: “[A]s part of our commitment to improved and expanded in-service training under the consent decree, impartial policing concepts, to include proper use of social media, will be provided for all officers, including supervisors and command staff.”
Yet the promise of improved trainings given by police — despite the fact that most of the officers who have given trainings faced formal accusations of troubling misconduct — is being used to justify the funneling of public funds into the police department. In his budget for 2018, Emanuel cited the need for “best practice training for officers and supervisors.” He called for “$103.5 million worth of new investments in police and first responders.”
Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office who represents victims of police torture, told The Intercept that the troubling track records of these police officers show that the department cannot train its way out of a crisis of public legitimacy. “The issues we have with the CPD and several municipal police departments are not only willful and egregious violations of the law, but officers coming together to cover those things up,” Mogul said.
Mogul cited the case of Jason Van Dyke, the officer who was convicted last October of second-degree murder for killing McDonald. Notably, Van Dyke was trained at the police academy and had been awarded 22 Honorable Mentions over his career — in addition to having a long list of misconduct complaints.
“In the case of Van Dyke, what additional training did that officer need in order to not go out and shoot and kill someone like Laquan McDonald the way he did?” Mogul said. “Look at the officers who went out of their way and made false statements. They could tell from looking at the video that they were false statements. What training did those officers need to tell them you can’t lie?”
The lawsuit charges that the man’s ribs were fractured, and that he was left with permanent injuries as a result of the incident. The city of Chicago ended up paying the victim a settlement of $75,000, without admitting wrongdoing. Out-of-court settlements for civil rights violations are a common outcome for the department, which is plagued by lawsuits.
Now, Herrera has a new assignment: to be one of several officers who oversee the Chicago Police Department’s “implicit bias” trainings, a program intended to curb incidents of racist police violence.
Herrera’s role is part of a troubling pattern: The trainings are a key part of the city’s efforts to reform its notoriously abusive police force, but revamped trainings that debuted in 2017 have in many cases been overseen by some of the alleged abusers themselves.
Sixteen of the 17 police officers — excluding only Officer Angela McLaurin — who have provided instruction for the procedural justice training program since the start of 2017 have together garnered a total of 111 misconduct complaints, according to police documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The misconduct complaints range from false arrests to illegal searches and include use of excessive force, often against people of color in Chicago. One officer who provided training has faced seven accusations of mistreating black people since 2011. Six other officers have together been accused of abuses in at least ten civil rights lawsuits, with at least half of those cases resulting in settlements or payments to the plaintiffs.
“Over the past two years, the Chicago Police Department has aggressively marched forward on expanding the quantity and quality of in-service training available to officers,” said Sergeant Cindy Guerra of the Chicago police’s Office of the Superintendent, in a statement to The Intercept. “By incorporating national best practices, CPD’s revised training supports officers’ abilities to be successful in the performance of their duties, and ensures sustainable reform.” Guerra, who declined to speak to the outcomes of legal cases, added, “All allegations made against a Chicago Police Officer are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.”
For activists working on policing issues in Chicago, the track records of police officers who have or are giving trainings underscore the problems with pushing for “improved training” as the solution for police violence. “The urgency around policing is valid and real, but the insistence that what we need is better training is leading to massive amounts of money to an already over-inflated arsenal and budget of CPD,” Page May, co-founder of Assata’s Daughters, a collective of black women in Chicago who identify their work as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, told The Intercept.
The trainings were instituted in the wake of a massive public relations crisis for the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and subsequent cover-up by city officials pushed policing issues to the fore in the city, leading to protests and, eventually, a damning 2017 Department of Justice investigation. In response, the police department pledged to reform itself, in part by providing better internal trainings with an emphasis on addressing implicit bias.
The Chicago Police Department followed up with a report last April outlining its “Next Steps for Reform.” The department — which has a pattern of racist harassment, civil rights violations, and “unreasonable killings,” according to the Department of Justice — trumpeted its plan as a solution to public concerns. “The 2018 Next Steps for Reform framework is our continued promise to the communities we serve that CPD is serious about addressing the historical challenges we face,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at the time.
The police plan emphasized its “procedural justice” training program as a key component of its reform strategy. One of the courses in the training program will focus on implicit bias, or the pervasive and deep-seated prejudices that shape behavior, the police report says.
While the department has shared little public information about the content of these trainings, a sympathetic article in the Chicago Sun-Times billed it as a “sensitivity-training course,” noting that the term “procedural justice” is a popular buzzword among police departments under scrutiny for patterns of racist violence. According to the Chicago Police Department report, all officers are mandated to complete the entire training series by the end of 2020.
“Stomping” a Black Man
Many of the instructors who have taught their fellow police officers how to deal with biases, however, are trailed by a litany of civilian complaints. Eleven of the 17 officers who have provided procedural justice trainings since the start of 2017 have been accused of violating the rights of black people, and nine have been accused two times or more of mistreating black people, according to public information collected by the Citizens Police Data Project, a project of the journalism nonprofit Invisible Institute and the University of Chicago Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. The number may be low: Many of the civilian complaints against these officers did not note the race of the complainants.
Only three of the 111 complaints of misconduct were sustained in the processes that adjudicate these complaints, but that comes amid a system that infrequently holds cops to account. Fewer than 2 percent of misconduct accusations against Chicago police officers are sustained — a “low” rate, according to the Department of Justice. Responding to a question from The Intercept about the complaints against four of the officers who have provided trainings, Guerra, the police spokesperson, said, “In reference to the four officers you mentioned, none of these officers have any sustained allegations against them.” (The Intercept requested comment on and interviews with the five officers named in this story for having participated in trainings while also having records of civilian complains or civil rights lawsuits.)
Some of these alleged acts were violent. According to one civilian complaint obtained through a FOIA request, one of the officers who has provided trainings, Officer Daniel Goetz, allegedly “stomped” a black man while he was prostrate on the ground outside a Shell gas station in October 2015. The man had attracted the police’s attention simply for urinating outdoors after he was turned away from the gas station bathroom; when the police asked the man to approach their car, he fled.
The officers who were with Goetz threatened bystanders for attempting to document the alleged injustice, according to the complaint. Witnesses approached to film the police’s actions but were allegedly “warned by the accused officer that if they video recorded anything,” the man would be punished more severely. (In Illinois, it is legal to record most police interactions with the public.) A medical report “noted bruising to [the victim’s] left side,” and that he sought medical care on two separate occasions as a result. The Independent Police Review Authority investigator noted the witnesses declined to testify and, after fellow police officers denied the accusations against Goetz, the complaint process halted, with the evidence deemed insufficient to prove or disprove the allegations. (In its statement, the Chicago police indicated that Goetz is not currently giving procedural justice trainings, though he was listed in a FOIA document as one of the individuals who had done so since the start of 2017.)
In another civilian complaint, also obtained through a FOIA request, Goetz was accused of grabbing a black man by the arm before another officer allegedly said, “I will lock your black fucking ass up.” That complaint also was not sustained after the officers who were present denied the allegations.
The civil rights lawsuits against six of the officers who have provided training are even more harrowing, particularly those involving Wasim Said, a Chicago police officer since 2002 who has been employed in the department’s education and training division. (Like Goetz, the police indicated in their statement to The Intercept that Said was not currently giving procedural justice trainings.) In one suit from 2008, Said was accused of participating in a police raid on a home in which officers pointed their guns at the heads of an adult with a heart condition, a 6-year-old child, and a 4-month-old infant. The 6-year-old “began to vomit as a result of defendants’ actions,” the lawsuit alleges, noting that no criminal charges were ultimately filed. The case settled with $35,000 awarded to the plaintiffs.
According to a separate lawsuit filed the same year, Said and another officer responded violently to an alleged physical assault of a young girl by an adult woman. The suit charges that the officers slammed the girl’s head “extremely hard” onto the hood of a car and held her there despite pleas from her mother that she was only 10 years old. The following morning, the child received treatment at a hospital for “neck strain and head trauma,” alleges the lawsuit, which resulted in a dismissal.
Said is not alone. In 2007, Officer Reginald Weatherly was sued for his alleged participation in a group beating. “One or more of Defendant Officers repeatedly struck Plaintiff in the leg with a blackjack club, breaking his ankle and causing Plaintiff severe pain and suffering,” according to the suit. The suit, which resulted in settlement and dismissal, states that the other officers named in the suit “had the opportunity to intervene to prevent it, but failed to do so.” (In its statement to The Intercept, the Chicago Police Department indicated that Weatherly was not currently giving procedural justice trainings.)
Beyond formal charges, the social media conduct of at least one of the police trainers raises further cause for concern. An officer named Phil Visor, who also serves as an instructor of the procedural justice training, published Facebook posts that include images and rhetoric associated with Blue Lives Matter, a reactionary movement that arose in opposition to Black Lives Matter. One of his profile photos, uploaded on December 23, 2015 — when Chicago was in the grips of protests responding to the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video — shows an image of a group of officers in riot gear that reads, “Sometimes There’s Justice. Sometimes There’s Just Us.” This image, along with other profile photos depicting the “thin blue line” — the mantra that police are the only thing separating society from chaos — demonstrates an affinity with precisely the “us versus them” mentality Visor has been tasked with eradicating.
Guerra, the Chicago police spokesperson, told The Intercept: “[A]s part of our commitment to improved and expanded in-service training under the consent decree, impartial policing concepts, to include proper use of social media, will be provided for all officers, including supervisors and command staff.”
Yet the promise of improved trainings given by police — despite the fact that most of the officers who have given trainings faced formal accusations of troubling misconduct — is being used to justify the funneling of public funds into the police department. In his budget for 2018, Emanuel cited the need for “best practice training for officers and supervisors.” He called for “$103.5 million worth of new investments in police and first responders.”
Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office who represents victims of police torture, told The Intercept that the troubling track records of these police officers show that the department cannot train its way out of a crisis of public legitimacy. “The issues we have with the CPD and several municipal police departments are not only willful and egregious violations of the law, but officers coming together to cover those things up,” Mogul said.
Mogul cited the case of Jason Van Dyke, the officer who was convicted last October of second-degree murder for killing McDonald. Notably, Van Dyke was trained at the police academy and had been awarded 22 Honorable Mentions over his career — in addition to having a long list of misconduct complaints.
“In the case of Van Dyke, what additional training did that officer need in order to not go out and shoot and kill someone like Laquan McDonald the way he did?” Mogul said. “Look at the officers who went out of their way and made false statements. They could tell from looking at the video that they were false statements. What training did those officers need to tell them you can’t lie?”
hitler would be proud of the fbi!!!
Revealed: FBI investigated civil rights group as 'terrorism' threat and viewed KKK as victims
Bureau spied on California activists, citing potential ‘conspiracy’ against the ‘rights’ of neo-Nazis
Sam Levin in Oakland
the guardian
Fri 1 Feb 2019 03.01 EST
The FBI opened a “domestic terrorism” investigation into a civil rights group in California, labeling the activists “extremists” after they protested against neo-Nazis in 2016, new documents reveal.
Federal authorities ran a surveillance operation on By Any Means Necessary (Bamn), spying on the leftist group’s movements in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s members was stabbed at the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal:
The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People through a records request, presented an “astonishing” description of the KKK, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the documents for the Guardian.
The report ignored “100 years of Klan terrorism that has killed thousands of Americans and continues using violence right up to the present day”, German said. “This description of the KKK should be an embarrassment to FBI leadership.”
Shanta Driver, Bamn’s national chair, criticized the investigation in a statement to the Guardian, saying, “The FBI’s interest in BAMN is part of a long-standing policy … Starting with their campaign to persecute and slander Dr. Martin Luther King, they have a racist history of targeting peaceful civil rights and anti-racist organizations, while doing nothing to prosecute the racists and fascists who attacked Dr. King and the movement he built.”
The FBI launched its terrorism investigation and surveillance of Bamn after white supremacists armed with knives faced off with hundreds of counter-protesters, including Bamn activists, at a June 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. Although numerous neo-Nazis were suspected of stabbing at least seven anti-fascists in the melee, leaving some with life-threatening injuries, the FBI chose to launch a inquiry into the activities of the leftwing protesters.
The documents, though heavily redacted, did not include any conclusions from the FBI that Bamn violated laws or posed a continuing threat. Its members have not faced federal prosecution. The FBI declined to comment on Bamn.
“It’s clear the FBI dropped the investigation having no evidence of wrongdoing. It never should have been opened in the first place,” Driver said.
The 2016 rally was organized by two white supremacist groups: the Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) and an affiliated California entity, the Golden State Skinheads. California law enforcement subsequently worked with the neo-Nazis to identify counter-protesters, pursued charges against stabbing victims and other anti-fascists, and decided not to prosecute any men on the far-right for the stabbings.
The FBI appeared to have adopted a similar approach. In a redacted October 2016 document, the FBI labeled its Bamn investigation a “DT [domestic terrorism] – ANARCHIST EXTREMISM” case. The FBI’s San Francisco office wrote that it was investigating allegations that “members of Bamn attended a Ku Klux Klan rally and assaulted a Nazi supporter”. It summarized the Sacramento incident this way:
In 2016, law enforcement learned that the Ku Klux Klan would be holding a rally at the State Capitol Building … The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda. In response, a number of groups mobilized to protest the rally. Flyers were posted asking people to attend in order to shut down the rally.
The KKK and Traditionalist Worker party have similar ideologies but are distinct groups. It’s unclear why the FBI labeled the rally a KKK event.
The FBI’s report also appeared to obfuscate details about the political affiliations of stabbing perpetrators and victims, saying: “Several people were stabbed and hospitalized.” That’s despite the fact that California police investigators reported that neo-Nazis were seen on camera holding knives and fighting with counter-protesters (who suffered severe stab wounds).
The FBI file said its research into Bamn found that the group “lawfully exercised their First Amendment rights by engaging in peaceful protests”, but added that its “members engaged in other activity by refusing to disperse, trespassing in closed buildings, obstructing law enforcement, and shouting during and interrupting public meetings so that the meetings could not continue”.
Bamn has long advocated for racial justice and immigrants’ rights, frequently protesting at public events and organizing rallies.
The FBI report said it was “possible the actions of certain BAMN members may exceed the boundaries of protected activity and could constitute a violation of federal law”.
The “potential violations of federal law”, the FBI said, included “conspiracy against rights” and “riots”. The FBI cited Bamn’s website, which encouraged supporters to protest against the KKK, featured slogans like “SMASH FASCISM!” and “NO ‘FREE SPEECH’ FOR FASCISTS!”, and celebrated the “mass, militant demonstration” that “shut down” the neo-Nazi rally. The FBI also included screenshots of Bamn pages that referenced a number of the group’s other advocacy issues, including campaigns against “rape and sexual assault” and “police brutality”.
The FBI files further included mentions of Yvette Felarca, a Bamn member who was stabbed at the rally, but is now facing state charges of assault and rioting. (Her lawyers have argued in court that the police investigators and prosecutors were biased against anti-fascists and worked to protect neo-Nazis).
Driver, who is also Felarca’s attorney, said the FBI should have mentioned that Felarca was “stabbed and bludgeoned by a fascist in Sacramento”. She added: “Instead of finding the person who assaulted anti-racist protesters, the FBI chose to target BAMN, which by their own admission holds demonstrations that are protected by the First Amendment.”
The bureau’s justifications of the investigation and surveillance were disturbing, said Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “The FBI discovered that these protesters once shouted at a meeting and somehow that evidence was mobilized to support a full-fledged terrorism investigation,” he noted.
In November 2016, the FBI engaged in surveillance of a protest outside the Berkeley school district, according to the Bamn files. Due to the redactions, it’s unclear whom the FBI was watching, though the report noted that the FBI observed “several children … sitting outside … with signs next to them”.
The FBI report said its investigation and surveillance were not “intended to associate the protected activity with criminality or a threat to national security, or to infer that such protected activity itself violates federal law”. The report continued:
However, based on known intelligence and/or specific, historical observations, it is possible the protected activity could invite a violent reaction towards the subject individuals or groups, or the activity could be used as a means to target law enforcement. In the event no violent reaction occurs, FBI policy and federal law dictates that no further record be made of the protected activity.
Property of the People’s records requests broadly sought FBI documents on anti-fascists. The FBI did not release additional Bamn records beyond 2016.
The FBI’s insinuation that Bamn’s actions could provoke violence was odd, said German, the former FBI agent, who is now a Brennan Center fellow. He noted that it was white supremacists “who have used this tactic for decades” and said the violent provocations of rightwing groups were well known when he worked on domestic terrorism for the FBI in the 1990s. The Bamn report, he said, gave the “appearance of favoritism toward one of the oldest and most active terrorist groups in history”.
He added that the report should have made clear that the “KKK consists of members who have a bloody history of racial and antisemitic violence and intimidation and is known for staging public spectacles for the specific purpose of inciting imminent violence”.
Asked whether the Bamn investigation was ongoing and whether the FBI had opened any equivalent inquiry into the neo-Nazis in California, an FBI spokesperson said the bureau does not confirm or deny the existence of specific investigations. “We cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, natural origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights,” the FBI said in a statement. “The FBI does not and will not police ideology.”
The bureau “investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security”, the statement added.
The Bamn case follows numerous recent controversies surrounding the FBI’s targeting of leftist groups, including a terrorism investigation into Standing Rock activists, surveillance of black activists, and spying on peaceful climate change protesters.
The justice department inspector general previously criticized the FBI for using non-violent civil disobedience and speculation of future crimes to justify terrorism investigations against domestic advocacy groups, German noted, adding that the Bamn files suggest the FBI “seems to have learned nothing from these previous overreaches”.
Even knowing the FBI’s legacy of going after activists, the report was still shocking, said Shapiro.
“A bunch of anti-fascists showed up at a Nazi rally and were attacked by Nazis, and the response form the bureau was to launch a domestic terrorism investigation into the anti-fascists,” he said. “At its core, the FBI is, as it has always been, a political police force that primarily targets the left.”
Federal authorities ran a surveillance operation on By Any Means Necessary (Bamn), spying on the leftist group’s movements in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s members was stabbed at the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal:
- The FBI investigated Bamn for potential “conspiracy” against the “rights” of the “Ku Klux Klan” and white supremacists.
- The FBI considered the KKK as victims and the leftist protesters as potential terror threats, and downplayed the threats of the Klan, writing: “The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda.”
- The FBI’s monitoring included in-person surveillance, and the agency cited Bamn’s advocacy against “rape and sexual assault” and “police brutality” as evidence in the terrorism inquiry.
The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People through a records request, presented an “astonishing” description of the KKK, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the documents for the Guardian.
The report ignored “100 years of Klan terrorism that has killed thousands of Americans and continues using violence right up to the present day”, German said. “This description of the KKK should be an embarrassment to FBI leadership.”
Shanta Driver, Bamn’s national chair, criticized the investigation in a statement to the Guardian, saying, “The FBI’s interest in BAMN is part of a long-standing policy … Starting with their campaign to persecute and slander Dr. Martin Luther King, they have a racist history of targeting peaceful civil rights and anti-racist organizations, while doing nothing to prosecute the racists and fascists who attacked Dr. King and the movement he built.”
The FBI launched its terrorism investigation and surveillance of Bamn after white supremacists armed with knives faced off with hundreds of counter-protesters, including Bamn activists, at a June 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. Although numerous neo-Nazis were suspected of stabbing at least seven anti-fascists in the melee, leaving some with life-threatening injuries, the FBI chose to launch a inquiry into the activities of the leftwing protesters.
The documents, though heavily redacted, did not include any conclusions from the FBI that Bamn violated laws or posed a continuing threat. Its members have not faced federal prosecution. The FBI declined to comment on Bamn.
“It’s clear the FBI dropped the investigation having no evidence of wrongdoing. It never should have been opened in the first place,” Driver said.
The 2016 rally was organized by two white supremacist groups: the Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) and an affiliated California entity, the Golden State Skinheads. California law enforcement subsequently worked with the neo-Nazis to identify counter-protesters, pursued charges against stabbing victims and other anti-fascists, and decided not to prosecute any men on the far-right for the stabbings.
The FBI appeared to have adopted a similar approach. In a redacted October 2016 document, the FBI labeled its Bamn investigation a “DT [domestic terrorism] – ANARCHIST EXTREMISM” case. The FBI’s San Francisco office wrote that it was investigating allegations that “members of Bamn attended a Ku Klux Klan rally and assaulted a Nazi supporter”. It summarized the Sacramento incident this way:
In 2016, law enforcement learned that the Ku Klux Klan would be holding a rally at the State Capitol Building … The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda. In response, a number of groups mobilized to protest the rally. Flyers were posted asking people to attend in order to shut down the rally.
The KKK and Traditionalist Worker party have similar ideologies but are distinct groups. It’s unclear why the FBI labeled the rally a KKK event.
The FBI’s report also appeared to obfuscate details about the political affiliations of stabbing perpetrators and victims, saying: “Several people were stabbed and hospitalized.” That’s despite the fact that California police investigators reported that neo-Nazis were seen on camera holding knives and fighting with counter-protesters (who suffered severe stab wounds).
The FBI file said its research into Bamn found that the group “lawfully exercised their First Amendment rights by engaging in peaceful protests”, but added that its “members engaged in other activity by refusing to disperse, trespassing in closed buildings, obstructing law enforcement, and shouting during and interrupting public meetings so that the meetings could not continue”.
Bamn has long advocated for racial justice and immigrants’ rights, frequently protesting at public events and organizing rallies.
The FBI report said it was “possible the actions of certain BAMN members may exceed the boundaries of protected activity and could constitute a violation of federal law”.
The “potential violations of federal law”, the FBI said, included “conspiracy against rights” and “riots”. The FBI cited Bamn’s website, which encouraged supporters to protest against the KKK, featured slogans like “SMASH FASCISM!” and “NO ‘FREE SPEECH’ FOR FASCISTS!”, and celebrated the “mass, militant demonstration” that “shut down” the neo-Nazi rally. The FBI also included screenshots of Bamn pages that referenced a number of the group’s other advocacy issues, including campaigns against “rape and sexual assault” and “police brutality”.
The FBI files further included mentions of Yvette Felarca, a Bamn member who was stabbed at the rally, but is now facing state charges of assault and rioting. (Her lawyers have argued in court that the police investigators and prosecutors were biased against anti-fascists and worked to protect neo-Nazis).
Driver, who is also Felarca’s attorney, said the FBI should have mentioned that Felarca was “stabbed and bludgeoned by a fascist in Sacramento”. She added: “Instead of finding the person who assaulted anti-racist protesters, the FBI chose to target BAMN, which by their own admission holds demonstrations that are protected by the First Amendment.”
The bureau’s justifications of the investigation and surveillance were disturbing, said Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “The FBI discovered that these protesters once shouted at a meeting and somehow that evidence was mobilized to support a full-fledged terrorism investigation,” he noted.
In November 2016, the FBI engaged in surveillance of a protest outside the Berkeley school district, according to the Bamn files. Due to the redactions, it’s unclear whom the FBI was watching, though the report noted that the FBI observed “several children … sitting outside … with signs next to them”.
The FBI report said its investigation and surveillance were not “intended to associate the protected activity with criminality or a threat to national security, or to infer that such protected activity itself violates federal law”. The report continued:
However, based on known intelligence and/or specific, historical observations, it is possible the protected activity could invite a violent reaction towards the subject individuals or groups, or the activity could be used as a means to target law enforcement. In the event no violent reaction occurs, FBI policy and federal law dictates that no further record be made of the protected activity.
Property of the People’s records requests broadly sought FBI documents on anti-fascists. The FBI did not release additional Bamn records beyond 2016.
The FBI’s insinuation that Bamn’s actions could provoke violence was odd, said German, the former FBI agent, who is now a Brennan Center fellow. He noted that it was white supremacists “who have used this tactic for decades” and said the violent provocations of rightwing groups were well known when he worked on domestic terrorism for the FBI in the 1990s. The Bamn report, he said, gave the “appearance of favoritism toward one of the oldest and most active terrorist groups in history”.
He added that the report should have made clear that the “KKK consists of members who have a bloody history of racial and antisemitic violence and intimidation and is known for staging public spectacles for the specific purpose of inciting imminent violence”.
Asked whether the Bamn investigation was ongoing and whether the FBI had opened any equivalent inquiry into the neo-Nazis in California, an FBI spokesperson said the bureau does not confirm or deny the existence of specific investigations. “We cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, natural origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights,” the FBI said in a statement. “The FBI does not and will not police ideology.”
The bureau “investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security”, the statement added.
The Bamn case follows numerous recent controversies surrounding the FBI’s targeting of leftist groups, including a terrorism investigation into Standing Rock activists, surveillance of black activists, and spying on peaceful climate change protesters.
The justice department inspector general previously criticized the FBI for using non-violent civil disobedience and speculation of future crimes to justify terrorism investigations against domestic advocacy groups, German noted, adding that the Bamn files suggest the FBI “seems to have learned nothing from these previous overreaches”.
Even knowing the FBI’s legacy of going after activists, the report was still shocking, said Shapiro.
“A bunch of anti-fascists showed up at a Nazi rally and were attacked by Nazis, and the response form the bureau was to launch a domestic terrorism investigation into the anti-fascists,” he said. “At its core, the FBI is, as it has always been, a political police force that primarily targets the left.”
POLICE MAKE MORE THAN 10 MILLION ARRESTS A YEAR, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE SOLVING CRIMES
Alice Speri - the intercept
January 31 2019, 9:32 a.m.
SOMEONE IS ARRESTED in the United States every three seconds. While arrests are the first entryway into a criminal justice system most acknowledge is in dire need of reform, we know remarkably little about who is arrested, where, and why. Advocates and legislators have pushed in recent years for policy changes at various points of the justice process, from pretrial to sentencing, but arrests remain one of the largest and least scrutinized contributors to the country’s mass incarceration and policing crises.
The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics collect arrest data from the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies — but those agencies self-report on a voluntary basis, and there are significant disparities in the information they share. The data, for the most part, remains inaccessible to the broader public, and statistics on crime are isolated from data about the effectiveness of enforcement.
In an effort to better inform conversations about criminal justice, a team of researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization, took more than two years to combine eight different federal databases into a tool that allows users to analyze arrest trends at the national, state, and county levels against a series of variables, including offense types, demographic factors, and solved crimes.
The project was born “out of this moment of frustration over the past number of years that there isn’t very much information on policing, people feeling like it’s a black box,” said Rebecca Neusteter, co-author of a report Vera released Thursday alongside the new data tool. “We wanted to be able to demonstrate that there is some information. There are gaps in knowledge, for sure, but there are lots of pieces of information that the government is spending a lot of money to collect. It just hasn’t been released for people to look at previously.”
That data shows that of more than 10.5 million arrests made every year, the bulk are for noncriminal behavior, drug violations, and low-level offenses. Since 1980, arrests for drug violations have increased by 170 percent, and racial disparities in enforcement have grown even more stark. Still, a majority of victims don’t report their experiences to police, and police solve only a fraction of the crimes that are reported.
In recent years, after a series of police killings sparked nationwide protests, a growing movement for police accountability also exposed systemic problems with everyday policing practices. Most arrests are ultimately dismissed, but aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, especially in communities of color, causes long-term damage to those communities and their relationship with police.
“There’s a growing understanding that the problems of policing are not limited to a few high-profile deaths but are the result of a broader problem of over-policing,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of a book that argues for alternatives to policing rather than police reform. “The solution to this is not making police arrests friendlier or more professional: It’s to quit relying on arrests to solve any problem under the sun.”
The Persistent Harms of “Broken Windows”
The Vera tool analyzes arrest trends between 1980 and 2016. The data shows that overall arrests have declined by nearly 25 percent over the last decade. But it also shows that, while arrests for serious crimes have dropped consistent with declining crime rates nationwide, they are increasingly being substituted with arrests for minor misconduct.
Among the most common causes for arrest are low-level offenses like “disorderly conduct” and a broad, largely unexplained category the FBI refers to as “all other offenses,” which can include a variety of non-traffic offenses, violations of local ordinances, and civil violations like failure to pay fines or child support. Together with drug violations, these offenses account for more than 80 percent of arrests, while serious, violent offenses make up less than 5 percent of arrests.
“We really want to see a national conversation about whether or not this is a good use of resources,” said Neusteter. “Are we potentially creating more harm than good by arresting people for what are essentially really low-level, trivial offenses?”
While there is little integration between court data and police data, and it’s hard to track a case from arrest through prosecution, a majority of arrests are dismissed. Still, police continue to use them as an enforcement tool of their own, rather than a way to funnel criminal behavior into the justice system.
“That’s the broken windows theory,” said Vitale, referring to the largely discredited but still widely applied criminological view that low-level misconduct fuels more serious crime. “The arrest itself is the tool we are using to try to fix the problem.”
“There’s still profound political imperatives to use policing to solve every social problem, especially in poor communities and communities of color,” he added. “They’re getting complaints about kids on a street corner, so they are looking for any excuse to arrest these kids, and they don’t care if it’s prosecuted.”
What the FBI refers to as “drug abuse violations” lead to 1.5 million arrests annually, the Vera report found. And while the FBI doesn’t differentiate in how it categorizes drug violations, federal statistics have consistently shown that a vast majority of them are over simple possession, most often of marijuana.
The report also highlights the vast racial disparities in arrest rates, particularly when it comes to drug enforcement — and even in places where drug enforcement policies have been loosened. “In just about every state that’s made changes to how laws around marijuana are enforced, we see major racial disparities in enforcement,” Neusteter said.
Black people nationwide are an estimated 2.39 times more likely to be arrested for “drug abuse violations” than white people — even though drug use rates are similar across the two groups. The estimated number of arrests of black people across the country has risen by 23 percent in the last four decades. African-Americans now make up 12 percent of the U.S. population and an estimated 28 percent of all arrests.
Amid a push for more progressive polices in prosecutors’ offices, a growing number of district attorneys have announced that they will no longer prosecute marijuana possession. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into a drop in arrests yet.
“There’s some type of disconnect between what’s going on in the prosecutors’ offices and what’s going on with the police,” said Vitale, noting that police maintain significant discretion to make arrests over pretextual reasons. “Failure to prosecute doesn’t mean that the police can’t still arrest you, put you through the system, bring you to arraignment.”
“There’s this discourse out there that with the opioid crisis, there’s more openness to talking about treatment and how this is a medical problem, but this is not what we see in the arrests numbers,” he added. “There’s been some change in the discourse, but not in the actual underlying police practices.”
Arresting Everyone Doesn’t Make Anyone Safer
Perhaps the report’s most revealing finding, however, is that such aggressive enforcement doesn’t seem to do much to improve public safety or solve crime. Only 40 percent of crime victims report their experiences to police, Vera found, and fewer than 25 percent of reported crimes are cleared by arrests.
“This television-inspired myth-making that police are out there all day solving serious crimes is just completely erroneous,” said Vitale. “We have this myth that if we didn’t have the police, crime would be out of control, when the reality is very little crime is reported to the police, and even less is solved by the police. There’s just no reason to equate police with public safety in this way.”
Arrests have an enormous impact on individuals: They can exacerbate economic disparities, harm an individual’s capacity to retain housing and jobs, and lead to devastating consequences like the loss of child custody or deportation. The mental health cost, too, is significant. But the huge number of arrests also comes at a cost to the safety of the community at large: both at the moment of the arrest itself, which can put those arrested, bystanders, and officers at risk of harm, and in the long run, as relationships between over-policed communities and law enforcement deteriorate, sometimes irreparably.
While that seems far too high a price, police continue to focus their attention on the enforcement of low-level offenses and noncriminal behavior, reinforcing a cycle of mistrust. That’s in part in response to arrest quotas and other incentives police get for productivity, as well as financial gains for agencies and municipalities that rely on punitive enforcement for funding. Vitale pointed to the controversial “collars for dollars” practice, by which officers will sometimes make arrests toward the end of their shifts in order to earn overtime pay, as they are required to remain with the person they arrested through the booking process. “A marijuana possession arrest at the end of the shift can be worth several hundred dollars for the officer,” he noted.
But part of the problem is also that police are the go-to solution for all kinds of complaints in communities with no meaningful alternatives. “The vast majority of police work is in response to 911 calls for service,” said Neusteter. “I think that the major component of the large number of arrests for low-level offenses has to do with the fact that police are being called as the default responders for these quality-of-life issues.”
There are some bright sides to the Vera report, which the authors hope will inspire further analysis and reform. Arrests of minors, for instance, decreased by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2014, as juvenile-specific offenses like running away or curfew violations were decriminalized, and non-punitive programs were instituted in lieu of arrest. The solution, the report makes clear, is to find alternatives to enforcement for much of the behavior police currently address with arrest.
“People do not go to jail, they do not go to prison, without being arrested first,” said Neusteter. “But we haven’t seen enforcement and arrests tied very clearly to those conversations and ultimately to the strategies that are attached to improving them. That’s our ultimate goal here.”
The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics collect arrest data from the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies — but those agencies self-report on a voluntary basis, and there are significant disparities in the information they share. The data, for the most part, remains inaccessible to the broader public, and statistics on crime are isolated from data about the effectiveness of enforcement.
In an effort to better inform conversations about criminal justice, a team of researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization, took more than two years to combine eight different federal databases into a tool that allows users to analyze arrest trends at the national, state, and county levels against a series of variables, including offense types, demographic factors, and solved crimes.
The project was born “out of this moment of frustration over the past number of years that there isn’t very much information on policing, people feeling like it’s a black box,” said Rebecca Neusteter, co-author of a report Vera released Thursday alongside the new data tool. “We wanted to be able to demonstrate that there is some information. There are gaps in knowledge, for sure, but there are lots of pieces of information that the government is spending a lot of money to collect. It just hasn’t been released for people to look at previously.”
That data shows that of more than 10.5 million arrests made every year, the bulk are for noncriminal behavior, drug violations, and low-level offenses. Since 1980, arrests for drug violations have increased by 170 percent, and racial disparities in enforcement have grown even more stark. Still, a majority of victims don’t report their experiences to police, and police solve only a fraction of the crimes that are reported.
In recent years, after a series of police killings sparked nationwide protests, a growing movement for police accountability also exposed systemic problems with everyday policing practices. Most arrests are ultimately dismissed, but aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, especially in communities of color, causes long-term damage to those communities and their relationship with police.
“There’s a growing understanding that the problems of policing are not limited to a few high-profile deaths but are the result of a broader problem of over-policing,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of a book that argues for alternatives to policing rather than police reform. “The solution to this is not making police arrests friendlier or more professional: It’s to quit relying on arrests to solve any problem under the sun.”
The Persistent Harms of “Broken Windows”
The Vera tool analyzes arrest trends between 1980 and 2016. The data shows that overall arrests have declined by nearly 25 percent over the last decade. But it also shows that, while arrests for serious crimes have dropped consistent with declining crime rates nationwide, they are increasingly being substituted with arrests for minor misconduct.
Among the most common causes for arrest are low-level offenses like “disorderly conduct” and a broad, largely unexplained category the FBI refers to as “all other offenses,” which can include a variety of non-traffic offenses, violations of local ordinances, and civil violations like failure to pay fines or child support. Together with drug violations, these offenses account for more than 80 percent of arrests, while serious, violent offenses make up less than 5 percent of arrests.
“We really want to see a national conversation about whether or not this is a good use of resources,” said Neusteter. “Are we potentially creating more harm than good by arresting people for what are essentially really low-level, trivial offenses?”
While there is little integration between court data and police data, and it’s hard to track a case from arrest through prosecution, a majority of arrests are dismissed. Still, police continue to use them as an enforcement tool of their own, rather than a way to funnel criminal behavior into the justice system.
“That’s the broken windows theory,” said Vitale, referring to the largely discredited but still widely applied criminological view that low-level misconduct fuels more serious crime. “The arrest itself is the tool we are using to try to fix the problem.”
“There’s still profound political imperatives to use policing to solve every social problem, especially in poor communities and communities of color,” he added. “They’re getting complaints about kids on a street corner, so they are looking for any excuse to arrest these kids, and they don’t care if it’s prosecuted.”
What the FBI refers to as “drug abuse violations” lead to 1.5 million arrests annually, the Vera report found. And while the FBI doesn’t differentiate in how it categorizes drug violations, federal statistics have consistently shown that a vast majority of them are over simple possession, most often of marijuana.
The report also highlights the vast racial disparities in arrest rates, particularly when it comes to drug enforcement — and even in places where drug enforcement policies have been loosened. “In just about every state that’s made changes to how laws around marijuana are enforced, we see major racial disparities in enforcement,” Neusteter said.
Black people nationwide are an estimated 2.39 times more likely to be arrested for “drug abuse violations” than white people — even though drug use rates are similar across the two groups. The estimated number of arrests of black people across the country has risen by 23 percent in the last four decades. African-Americans now make up 12 percent of the U.S. population and an estimated 28 percent of all arrests.
Amid a push for more progressive polices in prosecutors’ offices, a growing number of district attorneys have announced that they will no longer prosecute marijuana possession. But that hasn’t necessarily translated into a drop in arrests yet.
“There’s some type of disconnect between what’s going on in the prosecutors’ offices and what’s going on with the police,” said Vitale, noting that police maintain significant discretion to make arrests over pretextual reasons. “Failure to prosecute doesn’t mean that the police can’t still arrest you, put you through the system, bring you to arraignment.”
“There’s this discourse out there that with the opioid crisis, there’s more openness to talking about treatment and how this is a medical problem, but this is not what we see in the arrests numbers,” he added. “There’s been some change in the discourse, but not in the actual underlying police practices.”
Arresting Everyone Doesn’t Make Anyone Safer
Perhaps the report’s most revealing finding, however, is that such aggressive enforcement doesn’t seem to do much to improve public safety or solve crime. Only 40 percent of crime victims report their experiences to police, Vera found, and fewer than 25 percent of reported crimes are cleared by arrests.
“This television-inspired myth-making that police are out there all day solving serious crimes is just completely erroneous,” said Vitale. “We have this myth that if we didn’t have the police, crime would be out of control, when the reality is very little crime is reported to the police, and even less is solved by the police. There’s just no reason to equate police with public safety in this way.”
Arrests have an enormous impact on individuals: They can exacerbate economic disparities, harm an individual’s capacity to retain housing and jobs, and lead to devastating consequences like the loss of child custody or deportation. The mental health cost, too, is significant. But the huge number of arrests also comes at a cost to the safety of the community at large: both at the moment of the arrest itself, which can put those arrested, bystanders, and officers at risk of harm, and in the long run, as relationships between over-policed communities and law enforcement deteriorate, sometimes irreparably.
While that seems far too high a price, police continue to focus their attention on the enforcement of low-level offenses and noncriminal behavior, reinforcing a cycle of mistrust. That’s in part in response to arrest quotas and other incentives police get for productivity, as well as financial gains for agencies and municipalities that rely on punitive enforcement for funding. Vitale pointed to the controversial “collars for dollars” practice, by which officers will sometimes make arrests toward the end of their shifts in order to earn overtime pay, as they are required to remain with the person they arrested through the booking process. “A marijuana possession arrest at the end of the shift can be worth several hundred dollars for the officer,” he noted.
But part of the problem is also that police are the go-to solution for all kinds of complaints in communities with no meaningful alternatives. “The vast majority of police work is in response to 911 calls for service,” said Neusteter. “I think that the major component of the large number of arrests for low-level offenses has to do with the fact that police are being called as the default responders for these quality-of-life issues.”
There are some bright sides to the Vera report, which the authors hope will inspire further analysis and reform. Arrests of minors, for instance, decreased by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2014, as juvenile-specific offenses like running away or curfew violations were decriminalized, and non-punitive programs were instituted in lieu of arrest. The solution, the report makes clear, is to find alternatives to enforcement for much of the behavior police currently address with arrest.
“People do not go to jail, they do not go to prison, without being arrested first,” said Neusteter. “But we haven’t seen enforcement and arrests tied very clearly to those conversations and ultimately to the strategies that are attached to improving them. That’s our ultimate goal here.”
more injustice!!!
Report: Elite LAPD Unit Stopped Black Drivers at an ‘Alarmingly’ Disproportionate Rate
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
January 26, 2019
After doubling the size of its elite Metropolitan Division in 2015, the Los Angeles Police Department saw an alarming jump in the number of stops conducted by Metro officers — a 14-fold increase to be exact.
What was more alarming, however, is that nearly half of the stopped motorists were African-American.
A recent analysis by The Los Angeles Times found that Metro officers stopped Black drivers at a rate nearly five times their share of the city’s population — which sits at just 9 percent. This has caused an uptick in the share of Black Americans stopped by the LAPD as a whole, driving up the numbers from 21 to 28 percent since the expansion, which was launched in hopes of curbing violent crime plaguing the city.
“The data analyzed by The Times does not show why an individual officer pulled over a driver,” the report states. “It does not contain information about whether a driver was searched, ticketed or arrested after the stop. Nor can the data prove Metro officers are engaged in racial profiling.”
However, civil rights advocates argue there could be no other reason for the racially skewed data. Police metrics reviewed by the Times revealed that Metro officers made most of their stops in South L.A., where Black people account for a third of the population. The excessive traffic stops were also reflected here, as the percentage of Black drivers stopped by Metro was almost twice their share of the population.
Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who’s worked with the LAPD in the past, called the racial breakdown of the stops “really off the chain” and likened them to the New York Police Department’s controversial practice of stopping and frisking minority pedestrians.
“This is stop-and-frisk in a car,” Rice told the L.A. Times. “Do you want the trust of the poorest communities, that are the root of the [1992] riots, or do you continue … massive stop-policing that creates mistrust?”
As part of their crackdown on crime, Metro officers would ride around the city in unmarked, dark-gray SUVs, pulling over drivers to search for guns and drugs, according to the newspaper. One man, a 39-year-old youth counselor and gang member who requested anonymity, recalled being stopped by the LAPD three times in one month while on his way home from Martin Luther King Jr. park. Twice, he said, officers were in unmarked cars.
“It seems like they got license to kill and harass Black people …,” the youth counselor said, adding he felt he was targeted because of his race and his ties to a local gang. “I don’t got nothing, so I don’t get too upset, but there’s an aspect of getting harassed, [messed] with all the time.”
Another local man told the newspaper that Metro once stopped him, accused him of nearly crashing into them and then searched his car. The man, who’s also unnamed, said the first thing officers ask you is, “‘Are you on probation or parole?’ ”
Chief Michel Moore, who took over the department in 2015, defended his officers and said Metro’s command staff ” “is very aware of the potential of people viewing them as over-policing or being overly harsh.”
Still, Moore argued intense policing is sometimes necessary, especially in communities plagued by high crime. The newspaper noted that unlike regular patrol officers, Metro officers spend much of their shifts doing vehicle stops and other “proactive” police tactics intended to weed out dangerous criminals.
“A person who’s living in these … communities is experiencing a disproportionate level of violence than other Angelenos and is suffering from that,” Moore told the L.A. Times. “And the symptom, that means there are more police officers there. It’s been my experience that that’s where the community wants us. The people who are experiencing the violence are asking for us to be there to help them.”
The police chief added that officers are trained to be aware of their own implicit bias and that the department conducts random reviews to ensure traffic stops are constitutional.
What was more alarming, however, is that nearly half of the stopped motorists were African-American.
A recent analysis by The Los Angeles Times found that Metro officers stopped Black drivers at a rate nearly five times their share of the city’s population — which sits at just 9 percent. This has caused an uptick in the share of Black Americans stopped by the LAPD as a whole, driving up the numbers from 21 to 28 percent since the expansion, which was launched in hopes of curbing violent crime plaguing the city.
“The data analyzed by The Times does not show why an individual officer pulled over a driver,” the report states. “It does not contain information about whether a driver was searched, ticketed or arrested after the stop. Nor can the data prove Metro officers are engaged in racial profiling.”
However, civil rights advocates argue there could be no other reason for the racially skewed data. Police metrics reviewed by the Times revealed that Metro officers made most of their stops in South L.A., where Black people account for a third of the population. The excessive traffic stops were also reflected here, as the percentage of Black drivers stopped by Metro was almost twice their share of the population.
Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who’s worked with the LAPD in the past, called the racial breakdown of the stops “really off the chain” and likened them to the New York Police Department’s controversial practice of stopping and frisking minority pedestrians.
“This is stop-and-frisk in a car,” Rice told the L.A. Times. “Do you want the trust of the poorest communities, that are the root of the [1992] riots, or do you continue … massive stop-policing that creates mistrust?”
As part of their crackdown on crime, Metro officers would ride around the city in unmarked, dark-gray SUVs, pulling over drivers to search for guns and drugs, according to the newspaper. One man, a 39-year-old youth counselor and gang member who requested anonymity, recalled being stopped by the LAPD three times in one month while on his way home from Martin Luther King Jr. park. Twice, he said, officers were in unmarked cars.
“It seems like they got license to kill and harass Black people …,” the youth counselor said, adding he felt he was targeted because of his race and his ties to a local gang. “I don’t got nothing, so I don’t get too upset, but there’s an aspect of getting harassed, [messed] with all the time.”
Another local man told the newspaper that Metro once stopped him, accused him of nearly crashing into them and then searched his car. The man, who’s also unnamed, said the first thing officers ask you is, “‘Are you on probation or parole?’ ”
Chief Michel Moore, who took over the department in 2015, defended his officers and said Metro’s command staff ” “is very aware of the potential of people viewing them as over-policing or being overly harsh.”
Still, Moore argued intense policing is sometimes necessary, especially in communities plagued by high crime. The newspaper noted that unlike regular patrol officers, Metro officers spend much of their shifts doing vehicle stops and other “proactive” police tactics intended to weed out dangerous criminals.
“A person who’s living in these … communities is experiencing a disproportionate level of violence than other Angelenos and is suffering from that,” Moore told the L.A. Times. “And the symptom, that means there are more police officers there. It’s been my experience that that’s where the community wants us. The people who are experiencing the violence are asking for us to be there to help them.”
The police chief added that officers are trained to be aware of their own implicit bias and that the department conducts random reviews to ensure traffic stops are constitutional.
Outsourcing Police Investigations to Google Risks Privacy and Justice
BY
Simon Chandler, Truthout
PUBLISHED
January 22, 2019
In December, Jorge Molina was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Joseph Knight, an airport worker who was shot dead as he cycled home in the early hours of March 14, 2018, in Avondale, Arizona. The United States witnesses around 17,000 murders a year, but what made Knight’s case different was that police were led to their suspect only after asking Google to send Global Positioning System (GPS) data on all the mobile phones passing through Knight’s cycling route.
The data revealed that a suspect vehicle, captured on surveillance footage, had taken the route. In receiving data from Google on all the devices that passed through it, the Avondale Police Department not only provided another example of what’s becoming an increasingly common practice in law enforcement, it also set a new precedent for other police departments elsewhere in the US. Even though it’s now a common and familiar practice for police to exhaustively trace the digital footprints of already identified suspects, it’s a relatively new development for them to actually gather the digital footprints of numerous people in order to home in on a suspect in the first place.
That the Avondale Police Department was able to identify Molina using aggregated, area-based Google data is certainly an impressive feat. However, it required the filing of a “reverse search warrant,” which involves applying for information on a group of people in order to narrow down the search to specific persons of interest. And because this entailed the handing over of data belonging to individuals with no connection to Knight’s death, it raises some alarming questions about privacy. It also raises questions about the reliability of the arrests and convictions police secure, given that there is at least one case on record of an individual being wrongly imprisoned as a result of phone-sourced location data.
Data Isn’t Infallible
This case of wrongful imprisonment relates to the arrest and conviction of Lisa Marie Roberts, who in 2014 was released from prison after having pleaded guilty in 2004 to manslaughter charges in the death of her girlfriend, Jerri Lee Williams. Roberts had submitted a guilty plea solely on the basis of evidence provided by cell tower records, which had put her in the vicinity of the crime. However, despite her confession, a judge ultimately overturned the conviction, arguing that cell tower records alone weren’t convincing enough as evidence, and that a jury most likely wouldn’t have found her guilty if she’d stood trial.
Such an outcome reveals the folly of relying on location data alone when seeking to explain a crime, and while cell tower records aren’t exactly the same as GPS data collected from smartphones by Google, it offers a stark warning, especially because US police forces have been increasingly prodding Google for such data in recent months and years.
For example, the North Carolina-based WRAL news agency reported that, on at least four occasions in 2017, the Raleigh Police Department had obtained warrants to receive Google data on any device that had been within the area of certain crimes at specific times. In one case of homicide, the department asked for information associated with the Google accounts located within the geographical region defined as being within 150 meters of the GPS coordinates 35.785556 and -78.617145 between 6 pm and 7 pm Eastern time, on November 7, 2016, and between 5:25 pm and 6:25 pm Eastern time on November 8, 2016.
More specifically, such “information” comprises anything that could be attached to a Google account, such as internet protocol addresses, email addresses, payment info and names. It’s usually more than enough to identify someone, which is why the authorities haven’t been asking for it only in North Carolina, but also in other states.
In Minnesota in early 2017, a judge signed a reverse search warrant so that police could receive the Google account info of anyone who searched for the name of a fraud victim. In Maine last March, the FBI asked Google for the data of anyone who had been near the location of at least two of nine robberies, covering a total area of around 45 hectares (although it would seem that Google didn’t provide the data in this case). In October, Virginia saw the FBI pester Google again, this time for the account data and location histories of anyone within three separate areas (linked to repeated robberies of the same Dollar Tree), all of which had at least a 300-meter radius.
While the examples cited only six states, the emergence of reverse search warrants in these areas in recent years signals an alarming trend, especially given the general nature of the data requests involved and the potential for false convictions.
Most police departments aren’t forthcoming about whether they’ve begun seeking such warrants (although the New York Police Department told Truthout that it has never submitted such a request), yet data from Google indicate that search warrants of all kinds have been increasing significantly in recent years. In the second half of 2012, Google received 1,896 search warrants from US police forces, while in the first half of 2018, the company received 6,900. This is a 264 percent increase, and despite Google not offering a breakdown of warrants into those that focus on already identified suspects and those that simply cast a geographical net, it at least shows that police forces are becoming more reliant on Google data.
While the evidence suggests that reverse search warrants are becoming more common, legal experts say it’s not clear whether their use will affect the reliability of arrests and convictions, and there’s certainly a chance such warrants could have negative ramifications.
“I believe that the use of Google location data will lead to investigations and arrests that would not have happened but for this data,” said Marina Medvin, a legal expert and founding attorney at Medvin Law. “Simultaneously, law enforcement will cease pursuing certain leads that are not corroborated by the location data, and hence, will not arrest suspects based on lack of corroborative information or in lieu of new leads. The new information will simultaneously endanger and protect.”
Medvin is cautious as to whether the use of aggregated data could lead the authorities astray more than it would lead them along the right path, if only because arrest and prosecution standards have always relied on “probable cause,” meaning that at least a minimal degree of uncertainty has almost always been present in criminal cases. That said, she acknowledges that Google data are inherently different from other, more traditional kinds of evidence, such as that provided by fingerprints.
“While a fingerprint is entirely unique to the individual, Google location data is unique only to a phone: a handheld device that does not reliably corroborate the identity of the user of said device at the specific moment,” she says. “So, while your phone was at a particular place, [that] does not mean that you were there too. This personally unidentifiable data will always lead to big questions of reasonable doubt at trial.”
The possibility of doubt or error might be disconcerting for any future defendants, but Medvin notes that the use of reverse Google data could eventually be taken up by defense as well as prosecution teams, something which could effectively balance out the play of forces.
“Looking on the opposite side of the spectrum in cases where there is no Google location data, or where the location data puts the accused in a different location, defense attorneys will be able to argue that a lack of Google location data exonerates their client,” she says. “This is no different than when we argue that our clients’ prints were not found on certain pieces of evidence, and hence, there is reasonable doubt that our client is not the culprit.”
(READ MORE)
The data revealed that a suspect vehicle, captured on surveillance footage, had taken the route. In receiving data from Google on all the devices that passed through it, the Avondale Police Department not only provided another example of what’s becoming an increasingly common practice in law enforcement, it also set a new precedent for other police departments elsewhere in the US. Even though it’s now a common and familiar practice for police to exhaustively trace the digital footprints of already identified suspects, it’s a relatively new development for them to actually gather the digital footprints of numerous people in order to home in on a suspect in the first place.
That the Avondale Police Department was able to identify Molina using aggregated, area-based Google data is certainly an impressive feat. However, it required the filing of a “reverse search warrant,” which involves applying for information on a group of people in order to narrow down the search to specific persons of interest. And because this entailed the handing over of data belonging to individuals with no connection to Knight’s death, it raises some alarming questions about privacy. It also raises questions about the reliability of the arrests and convictions police secure, given that there is at least one case on record of an individual being wrongly imprisoned as a result of phone-sourced location data.
Data Isn’t Infallible
This case of wrongful imprisonment relates to the arrest and conviction of Lisa Marie Roberts, who in 2014 was released from prison after having pleaded guilty in 2004 to manslaughter charges in the death of her girlfriend, Jerri Lee Williams. Roberts had submitted a guilty plea solely on the basis of evidence provided by cell tower records, which had put her in the vicinity of the crime. However, despite her confession, a judge ultimately overturned the conviction, arguing that cell tower records alone weren’t convincing enough as evidence, and that a jury most likely wouldn’t have found her guilty if she’d stood trial.
Such an outcome reveals the folly of relying on location data alone when seeking to explain a crime, and while cell tower records aren’t exactly the same as GPS data collected from smartphones by Google, it offers a stark warning, especially because US police forces have been increasingly prodding Google for such data in recent months and years.
For example, the North Carolina-based WRAL news agency reported that, on at least four occasions in 2017, the Raleigh Police Department had obtained warrants to receive Google data on any device that had been within the area of certain crimes at specific times. In one case of homicide, the department asked for information associated with the Google accounts located within the geographical region defined as being within 150 meters of the GPS coordinates 35.785556 and -78.617145 between 6 pm and 7 pm Eastern time, on November 7, 2016, and between 5:25 pm and 6:25 pm Eastern time on November 8, 2016.
More specifically, such “information” comprises anything that could be attached to a Google account, such as internet protocol addresses, email addresses, payment info and names. It’s usually more than enough to identify someone, which is why the authorities haven’t been asking for it only in North Carolina, but also in other states.
In Minnesota in early 2017, a judge signed a reverse search warrant so that police could receive the Google account info of anyone who searched for the name of a fraud victim. In Maine last March, the FBI asked Google for the data of anyone who had been near the location of at least two of nine robberies, covering a total area of around 45 hectares (although it would seem that Google didn’t provide the data in this case). In October, Virginia saw the FBI pester Google again, this time for the account data and location histories of anyone within three separate areas (linked to repeated robberies of the same Dollar Tree), all of which had at least a 300-meter radius.
While the examples cited only six states, the emergence of reverse search warrants in these areas in recent years signals an alarming trend, especially given the general nature of the data requests involved and the potential for false convictions.
Most police departments aren’t forthcoming about whether they’ve begun seeking such warrants (although the New York Police Department told Truthout that it has never submitted such a request), yet data from Google indicate that search warrants of all kinds have been increasing significantly in recent years. In the second half of 2012, Google received 1,896 search warrants from US police forces, while in the first half of 2018, the company received 6,900. This is a 264 percent increase, and despite Google not offering a breakdown of warrants into those that focus on already identified suspects and those that simply cast a geographical net, it at least shows that police forces are becoming more reliant on Google data.
While the evidence suggests that reverse search warrants are becoming more common, legal experts say it’s not clear whether their use will affect the reliability of arrests and convictions, and there’s certainly a chance such warrants could have negative ramifications.
“I believe that the use of Google location data will lead to investigations and arrests that would not have happened but for this data,” said Marina Medvin, a legal expert and founding attorney at Medvin Law. “Simultaneously, law enforcement will cease pursuing certain leads that are not corroborated by the location data, and hence, will not arrest suspects based on lack of corroborative information or in lieu of new leads. The new information will simultaneously endanger and protect.”
Medvin is cautious as to whether the use of aggregated data could lead the authorities astray more than it would lead them along the right path, if only because arrest and prosecution standards have always relied on “probable cause,” meaning that at least a minimal degree of uncertainty has almost always been present in criminal cases. That said, she acknowledges that Google data are inherently different from other, more traditional kinds of evidence, such as that provided by fingerprints.
“While a fingerprint is entirely unique to the individual, Google location data is unique only to a phone: a handheld device that does not reliably corroborate the identity of the user of said device at the specific moment,” she says. “So, while your phone was at a particular place, [that] does not mean that you were there too. This personally unidentifiable data will always lead to big questions of reasonable doubt at trial.”
The possibility of doubt or error might be disconcerting for any future defendants, but Medvin notes that the use of reverse Google data could eventually be taken up by defense as well as prosecution teams, something which could effectively balance out the play of forces.
“Looking on the opposite side of the spectrum in cases where there is no Google location data, or where the location data puts the accused in a different location, defense attorneys will be able to argue that a lack of Google location data exonerates their client,” she says. “This is no different than when we argue that our clients’ prints were not found on certain pieces of evidence, and hence, there is reasonable doubt that our client is not the culprit.”
(READ MORE)
Undercover officer: Colleagues beat him 'like Rodney King'
chron
Updated 3:12 pm CST, Tuesday, January 22, 2019
ST. LOUIS (AP) — An undercover St. Louis police officer reported that his colleagues beat him "like Rodney King" when they mistook him for a protester following the acquittal of a white former officer in the fatal shooting of a black man, according to newly released court documents.
Det. Luther Hall, who is black, also described the attack as a "free for all" in an affidavit that the FBI used to justify searching four officers' cellphones. Four officers were charged in November after the FBI investigated Hall's attack and the detention of other protesters at the rally in 2017.
Hall and his partner were undercover "documenting protest activity and property destruction," FBI Special Agent Darren Boehlje wrote in affidavits supporting the application for the warrants, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Hall, who was carrying a Nikon camera and a cellphone, became separated from his partner while fleeing officers who were firing pepper-spray pellets and bean bag rounds into the crowd, according to the affidavit. The affidavit notes that Hall didn't hear an order to disperse prior to the police use of chemical agents and bean bag rounds.
Hall said that after a police SUV pulled up, he was slammed to the ground. Hall was told to put his hands behind his back but couldn't because officers were standing on his arms, Boehlje wrote in the FBI affidavit. Boehlje wrote that Hall's cellphone screen was shattered in the melee, and he watched as an officer took out the battery out of his camera and threw the camera to the ground, breaking it.
Hall later received medical treatment in an armored vehicle before telling someone at headquarters that officers "beat the (expletive) out of him like Rodney King," referring to the black construction worker who was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers in 1991.
The affidavit states that it took three layers of stitches to close the hole in Hall's lip, and that he suffered multiple herniated discs. A jaw injury has made it hard to eat, and Hall has lost about 15 pounds, Boehlje wrote.
The officers charged were Dustin Boone, Randy Hays, Christopher Myers and Bailey Colletta. Boone, Hays and Myers were accused of the physical assault and charged with depriving Hall of his constitutional rights and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Myers is also accused of destroying Hall's cellphone, while Colletta is charged for allegedly lying to the federal grand jury investigating the attack.
Hays' lawyer, Brian Millikan, declined to comment. Lawyers for the officers did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Det. Luther Hall, who is black, also described the attack as a "free for all" in an affidavit that the FBI used to justify searching four officers' cellphones. Four officers were charged in November after the FBI investigated Hall's attack and the detention of other protesters at the rally in 2017.
Hall and his partner were undercover "documenting protest activity and property destruction," FBI Special Agent Darren Boehlje wrote in affidavits supporting the application for the warrants, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Hall, who was carrying a Nikon camera and a cellphone, became separated from his partner while fleeing officers who were firing pepper-spray pellets and bean bag rounds into the crowd, according to the affidavit. The affidavit notes that Hall didn't hear an order to disperse prior to the police use of chemical agents and bean bag rounds.
Hall said that after a police SUV pulled up, he was slammed to the ground. Hall was told to put his hands behind his back but couldn't because officers were standing on his arms, Boehlje wrote in the FBI affidavit. Boehlje wrote that Hall's cellphone screen was shattered in the melee, and he watched as an officer took out the battery out of his camera and threw the camera to the ground, breaking it.
Hall later received medical treatment in an armored vehicle before telling someone at headquarters that officers "beat the (expletive) out of him like Rodney King," referring to the black construction worker who was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers in 1991.
The affidavit states that it took three layers of stitches to close the hole in Hall's lip, and that he suffered multiple herniated discs. A jaw injury has made it hard to eat, and Hall has lost about 15 pounds, Boehlje wrote.
The officers charged were Dustin Boone, Randy Hays, Christopher Myers and Bailey Colletta. Boone, Hays and Myers were accused of the physical assault and charged with depriving Hall of his constitutional rights and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Myers is also accused of destroying Hall's cellphone, while Colletta is charged for allegedly lying to the federal grand jury investigating the attack.
Hays' lawyer, Brian Millikan, declined to comment. Lawyers for the officers did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Austin Police Department Orders Deeper Investigation After Audit Finds It Misclassified Cleared Rape Cases
The APD will ask a third party to examine how it handles rape investigations. The police chief also announced he had ordered other changes, including the addition of another supervisor to the sex crimes unit and new policies for clearing crimes.
by Mark Greenblatt and Mark Fahey, Newsy, Bernice Yeung, ProPublica, and Emily Harris, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting Jan. 18, 12 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON — The Austin Police Department will ask a third party to examine how it handles rape investigations from start to finish, following a state audit that found some cases were misclassified in a way that made it appear the department had solved more cases than it had.
The announcement comes as the APD released the full findings of a review by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which audited the department following an investigation by Newsy, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica. The news report showed how Austin and dozens of other police departments across the country frequently use “exceptional” clearances to close rape cases, increasing clearance rates while leaving suspects on the streets.
The initial findings from the DPS audit, which looked at three months of Austin rape reports from 2017, concluded that nearly one-third of the cases the APD had exceptionally cleared were misclassified.
The full report reveals Austin police often failed on multiple fronts. To clear a case exceptionally, the FBI requires police to have enough evidence to make an arrest, to know who and where the suspect is, and for there to be a reason outside their control that prevents an arrest. Cases that fail to meet all four requirements cannot be cleared exceptionally. The DPS report shows that out of 95 exceptionally cleared rapes auditors reviewed, Austin police had failed to meet the FBI requirements 30 times. In 17 of those cases, police failed to meet at least two of the FBI’s tests. In five cases, police did not meet any of the four criteria.
“While we’re glad this audit has been completed, it confirms that we have serious issues and we need to take quick action that corrects the patterns that allowed these cases to be handled improperly,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in a joint statement with Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza.
At a press conference Wednesday, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said the department does not yet know who the third-party investigator will be, but he intends for the entity to look into how his department investigates rape from the earliest stages when a 911 call is received until a case is closed by investigators.
“We will welcome this outside review,” he said. “If there are things we can be doing differently or better to implement best practices, we will do so and we will look forward to doing so.”
Manley also announced he had ordered other changes, including the addition of another supervisor to the sex crimes unit and new policies for clearing crimes.
He said the APD has already completed the retraining of its detectives, a task the department said this month it would do after receiving preliminary findings from the state’s audit. Manley said one of the most significant reforms will be the introduction of a new computer system that requires detectives to answer four questions to show a case meets the FBI requirements before they can clear a case exceptionally.
The announcement of a new, more comprehensive review of the entire rape investigation process comes in the wake of pressure from rape survivors, advocates and City Council members following the investigation by Newsy, Reveal and ProPublica.
Some advocates were skeptical about Austin police choosing who investigates the department’s handling of rape cases.
“APD should not get to decide who grades them,” said Kristen Lenau, co-founder of the Survivor Justice Project. “In order for this to be a truly independent evaluation that builds much needed trust in this community, survivors and advocates need to be a part of the selection process.”
The department’s decision pre-empts an anticipated resolution from City Council member Alison Alter, who has said she is working with advocates to determine the most effective, credible way to dig into why so many rape investigations end with no arrest in Austin. The police department reported a 2016 rape clearance rate of 51 percent, well over the national average of 37 percent. But only 17 percent of rape investigations led to an arrest, according to internal records reviewed by Newsy.
A spokeswoman for Alter said she expects her resolution to be posted for public review by late Friday and to be voted on at the council’s next meeting on Jan. 31.
The spokeswoman said the resolution will direct the city manager to conduct a retrospective, comprehensive evaluation of the last seven years of documented sexual assault cases in Austin, to be carried out by a nongovernmental entity, one that doesn’t have a relationship with the APD.
Alter’s spokeswoman says the resolution “will not solely gather data, but also will direct the city manager to evaluate the health of our public safety system” and report back to the council with recommendations for how to better align with national best practices.
Many communities facing similar problems with rape investigations have adopted the “Philadelphia Model,” a process initiated by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, who approached the Women’s Law Project and other community advocates to ask for help in reviewing cases and restoring community faith in the police.
When Newsy, Reveal and ProPublica showed Manley the results of our data analysis last fall, he maintained that APD was correctly using exceptional clearance, pointing to an internal review.
However, the review — obtained by KXAN-TV in Austin — shows that police found about one-quarter of cases were improperly classified. Still, police maintained to us that they had discovered no problems until this week. Manley pointed to confusion among those on his staff who did the audit.
“I don’t believe they recognized the significance of the findings,” Manley said. “Most of us are police officers and not a lot have a background in statistics.”
The announcement comes as the APD released the full findings of a review by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which audited the department following an investigation by Newsy, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica. The news report showed how Austin and dozens of other police departments across the country frequently use “exceptional” clearances to close rape cases, increasing clearance rates while leaving suspects on the streets.
The initial findings from the DPS audit, which looked at three months of Austin rape reports from 2017, concluded that nearly one-third of the cases the APD had exceptionally cleared were misclassified.
The full report reveals Austin police often failed on multiple fronts. To clear a case exceptionally, the FBI requires police to have enough evidence to make an arrest, to know who and where the suspect is, and for there to be a reason outside their control that prevents an arrest. Cases that fail to meet all four requirements cannot be cleared exceptionally. The DPS report shows that out of 95 exceptionally cleared rapes auditors reviewed, Austin police had failed to meet the FBI requirements 30 times. In 17 of those cases, police failed to meet at least two of the FBI’s tests. In five cases, police did not meet any of the four criteria.
“While we’re glad this audit has been completed, it confirms that we have serious issues and we need to take quick action that corrects the patterns that allowed these cases to be handled improperly,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in a joint statement with Mayor Pro Tem Delia Garza.
At a press conference Wednesday, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said the department does not yet know who the third-party investigator will be, but he intends for the entity to look into how his department investigates rape from the earliest stages when a 911 call is received until a case is closed by investigators.
“We will welcome this outside review,” he said. “If there are things we can be doing differently or better to implement best practices, we will do so and we will look forward to doing so.”
Manley also announced he had ordered other changes, including the addition of another supervisor to the sex crimes unit and new policies for clearing crimes.
He said the APD has already completed the retraining of its detectives, a task the department said this month it would do after receiving preliminary findings from the state’s audit. Manley said one of the most significant reforms will be the introduction of a new computer system that requires detectives to answer four questions to show a case meets the FBI requirements before they can clear a case exceptionally.
The announcement of a new, more comprehensive review of the entire rape investigation process comes in the wake of pressure from rape survivors, advocates and City Council members following the investigation by Newsy, Reveal and ProPublica.
Some advocates were skeptical about Austin police choosing who investigates the department’s handling of rape cases.
“APD should not get to decide who grades them,” said Kristen Lenau, co-founder of the Survivor Justice Project. “In order for this to be a truly independent evaluation that builds much needed trust in this community, survivors and advocates need to be a part of the selection process.”
The department’s decision pre-empts an anticipated resolution from City Council member Alison Alter, who has said she is working with advocates to determine the most effective, credible way to dig into why so many rape investigations end with no arrest in Austin. The police department reported a 2016 rape clearance rate of 51 percent, well over the national average of 37 percent. But only 17 percent of rape investigations led to an arrest, according to internal records reviewed by Newsy.
A spokeswoman for Alter said she expects her resolution to be posted for public review by late Friday and to be voted on at the council’s next meeting on Jan. 31.
The spokeswoman said the resolution will direct the city manager to conduct a retrospective, comprehensive evaluation of the last seven years of documented sexual assault cases in Austin, to be carried out by a nongovernmental entity, one that doesn’t have a relationship with the APD.
Alter’s spokeswoman says the resolution “will not solely gather data, but also will direct the city manager to evaluate the health of our public safety system” and report back to the council with recommendations for how to better align with national best practices.
Many communities facing similar problems with rape investigations have adopted the “Philadelphia Model,” a process initiated by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, who approached the Women’s Law Project and other community advocates to ask for help in reviewing cases and restoring community faith in the police.
When Newsy, Reveal and ProPublica showed Manley the results of our data analysis last fall, he maintained that APD was correctly using exceptional clearance, pointing to an internal review.
However, the review — obtained by KXAN-TV in Austin — shows that police found about one-quarter of cases were improperly classified. Still, police maintained to us that they had discovered no problems until this week. Manley pointed to confusion among those on his staff who did the audit.
“I don’t believe they recognized the significance of the findings,” Manley said. “Most of us are police officers and not a lot have a background in statistics.”
no justice, again!!!
Laquan McDonald's family laments light sentence given to white Chicago officer
Murdered black teen was shot 16 times by Jason Van Dyke
Van Dyke sentenced to less than seven years in prison
Associated Press
the guardian
Sat 19 Jan 2019 09.34 EST
Video of a white Chicago officer shooting a black teenager 16 times shocked consciences around the world. Laquan McDonald was killed as he walked away from police.
The graphic images of McDonald crumpling to the street while bullets kept striking him stirred expectations that the officer might pay a heavy price in prison time. The verdict came in October: a rare murder conviction for an officer in an on-duty shooting.
But on Friday a sentence of less than seven years for Jason Van Dyke – and the possibility that he may serve only half of that – led McDonald’s family and at least one activist to question whether justice had been done and the right message sent to other officers.
William Calloway, who was instrumental in the legal battle that led to the release of the dashcam video in 2015, described the penalty as “a slap in the face to us and a slap on the wrist” for Van Dyke.
The sentencing came a day after a different judge acquitted three officers accused of lying about the shooting to protect Van Dyke, who was probably the first Chicago officer ever found guilty in the shooting of an African American. That verdict also disappointed many Chicagoans who hoped convictions would help eradicate a code-of-silence culture that dates back decades among officers in the nation’s third-largest city.
Van Dyke, 40, was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery, one for each bullet fired at the 17-year-old McDonald. McDonald’s family lamented that the penalty was too light. His great-uncle said the sentence reduced McDonald’s life to that of “a second-class citizen” and “suggests to us that there are no laws on the books for a black man that a white man is bound to honor”.
In a brief statement, Van Dyke acknowledged the teen’s death, telling the judge that “as a God-fearing man and father, I will have to live with this the rest of my life”.
Prosecutors asked for 18 to 20 years. Defense attorneys argued that Van Dyke could be released on probation. The prison term was a fraction of what Van Dyke could have faced had he been convicted of first-degree murder, which carried a mandatory minimum of 45 years in prison.
Judges typically rebuke defendants during sentencings, even for much lesser crimes, and they often explain why they imposed the sentence they did. But Judge Vincent Gaughan did neither in his brief comments from the bench.
The lead defense attorney, Dan Herbert, said Van Dyke “truly felt great” after learning his sentence. “He was happy about the prospect of life ahead of him” and someday being reunited with his wife and two daughters. The prosecutor who oversaw the case said he can live with the sentence.
“Our goal was to find the truth, present the truth and ask for justice … It was not revenge,” special prosecutor Joseph McMahon said.
Had Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke on the 16 counts of aggravated battery, as prosecutors asked him to do, he could have faced decades in prison. Each aggravated battery count carried a mandatory minimum of six years, and the judge could have ordered those sentences to be served one after the other.
The issue of race loomed over the case, although it was rarely raised at trial. One of the only instances was during opening statements, when the special prosecutor told jurors that Van Dyke saw “a black boy walking down the street” who had “the audacity to ignore the police”.
On Friday, several black motorists testified that the officer used a racial slur and excessive force during traffic stops in the years before the shooting. One of those witnesses, Vidale Joy, said Van Dyke used the slur after pulling him over in 2005 and at one point put a gun to Joy’s head. He said Van Dyke “looked infuriated” and seemed “out of his mind”.
Under cross examination, Joy acknowledged that he did not allege Van Dyke used a slur in his first accounts of the stop. Van Dyke’s relatives tried to defend and humanize him, saying he was a good father and not racist.
His wife, Tiffany, said her biggest fear was that somebody would kill her husband in prison “for something he did as a police officer, something he was trained to do”. She looked up over her shoulder and addressed the judge directly: “His life is over. Please, please. He has paid the price already ... I beg for the least amount of time.”
The video of the shooting triggered a federal investigation of the police department that found Chicago officers routinely used excessive force and violated people’s rights, particularly minorities.
The case cost Van Dyke and the Chicago police superintendent their jobs and was widely seen as the reason the county’s top prosecutor was voted out of office. It was also thought to be a major factor in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to seek a third term.
The graphic images of McDonald crumpling to the street while bullets kept striking him stirred expectations that the officer might pay a heavy price in prison time. The verdict came in October: a rare murder conviction for an officer in an on-duty shooting.
But on Friday a sentence of less than seven years for Jason Van Dyke – and the possibility that he may serve only half of that – led McDonald’s family and at least one activist to question whether justice had been done and the right message sent to other officers.
William Calloway, who was instrumental in the legal battle that led to the release of the dashcam video in 2015, described the penalty as “a slap in the face to us and a slap on the wrist” for Van Dyke.
The sentencing came a day after a different judge acquitted three officers accused of lying about the shooting to protect Van Dyke, who was probably the first Chicago officer ever found guilty in the shooting of an African American. That verdict also disappointed many Chicagoans who hoped convictions would help eradicate a code-of-silence culture that dates back decades among officers in the nation’s third-largest city.
Van Dyke, 40, was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery, one for each bullet fired at the 17-year-old McDonald. McDonald’s family lamented that the penalty was too light. His great-uncle said the sentence reduced McDonald’s life to that of “a second-class citizen” and “suggests to us that there are no laws on the books for a black man that a white man is bound to honor”.
In a brief statement, Van Dyke acknowledged the teen’s death, telling the judge that “as a God-fearing man and father, I will have to live with this the rest of my life”.
Prosecutors asked for 18 to 20 years. Defense attorneys argued that Van Dyke could be released on probation. The prison term was a fraction of what Van Dyke could have faced had he been convicted of first-degree murder, which carried a mandatory minimum of 45 years in prison.
Judges typically rebuke defendants during sentencings, even for much lesser crimes, and they often explain why they imposed the sentence they did. But Judge Vincent Gaughan did neither in his brief comments from the bench.
The lead defense attorney, Dan Herbert, said Van Dyke “truly felt great” after learning his sentence. “He was happy about the prospect of life ahead of him” and someday being reunited with his wife and two daughters. The prosecutor who oversaw the case said he can live with the sentence.
“Our goal was to find the truth, present the truth and ask for justice … It was not revenge,” special prosecutor Joseph McMahon said.
Had Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke on the 16 counts of aggravated battery, as prosecutors asked him to do, he could have faced decades in prison. Each aggravated battery count carried a mandatory minimum of six years, and the judge could have ordered those sentences to be served one after the other.
The issue of race loomed over the case, although it was rarely raised at trial. One of the only instances was during opening statements, when the special prosecutor told jurors that Van Dyke saw “a black boy walking down the street” who had “the audacity to ignore the police”.
On Friday, several black motorists testified that the officer used a racial slur and excessive force during traffic stops in the years before the shooting. One of those witnesses, Vidale Joy, said Van Dyke used the slur after pulling him over in 2005 and at one point put a gun to Joy’s head. He said Van Dyke “looked infuriated” and seemed “out of his mind”.
Under cross examination, Joy acknowledged that he did not allege Van Dyke used a slur in his first accounts of the stop. Van Dyke’s relatives tried to defend and humanize him, saying he was a good father and not racist.
His wife, Tiffany, said her biggest fear was that somebody would kill her husband in prison “for something he did as a police officer, something he was trained to do”. She looked up over her shoulder and addressed the judge directly: “His life is over. Please, please. He has paid the price already ... I beg for the least amount of time.”
The video of the shooting triggered a federal investigation of the police department that found Chicago officers routinely used excessive force and violated people’s rights, particularly minorities.
The case cost Van Dyke and the Chicago police superintendent their jobs and was widely seen as the reason the county’s top prosecutor was voted out of office. It was also thought to be a major factor in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to seek a third term.
gestapo usa funnies
Reasonable Force
The everyday assault on Blue Lives.
By Khalil Bendib ~ Other Words.com
