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october 19, 2018
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
*Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Video shows off-duty Chicago police officer shooting unarmed, autistic man
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Wisconsin cops smash into black woman’s car with guns drawn after she arrives early to job interview: lawsuit
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Lawsuit: Man convicted after mother rejected 'dirty cop'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*LOS ANGELES SHERIFF'S DEPUTIES ALLEGEDLY RACIALLY PROFILED THOUSANDS OF LATINO DRIVERS ON INTERSTATE 5
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*San Francisco Police Sued for ‘Racial Selective Enforcement’ After Drug Arrests
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FBI is investigating ‘shady’ Ohio vice squad that arrested Stormy Daniels during performance: report
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Former Florida police chief guilty of framing 3 Black men
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Private Prison Officials Allowed to Force-Feed Immigrant Hunger Strikers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Black St. Louis Cop Injured by White Officer’s ‘Friendly Fire’ Left with No Career, Struggles to Make Ends Meet
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Black pastors left stranded by flat tire were grilled by cop about guns and drugs instead of getting help(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'It's definitely intimidation': police accused over raids on activist's family
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US immigration officers accused of refusing parole for asylum seekers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*INTERNAL ICE EMAILS SHOW HOW THE GOVERNMENT SET A TRAP FOR UNDOCUMENTED SPOUSES OF US CITIZENS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ICE agents set ‘trap’ for immigrants seeking legal residency
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Drunken NYC cop unleashes racist terror on black family after mistakenly barging into their home(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Police confronted over alleged 'bait truck' of Nike shoes left in black Chicago community(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MICHAEL BROWN DEATH ANNIVERSARY: 12 UNARMED BLACK MEN HAVE BEEN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE IN 2018(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GESTAPO usa FUNNIES(below)
Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period
By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
10/19/18
A police officer in Prince George County, Maryland, was charged this week with raping a woman during a traffic stop. He's pleaded not guilty, but it's a disturbing headline -- even more disturbing when you consider there are hundreds more like him.
Yes, hundreds. According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the US were charged with forcible rape 405 times between 2005 and 2013. That's an average of 45 a year. Forcible fondling was more common, with 636 instances.
Yet experts say those statistics are, by no means, comprehensive. Data on sexual assaults by police are almost nonexistent, they say.
"It's just not available at all," said Jonathan Blanks, a research associate with the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice. "You can only crowdsource this info."
The BGSU researchers compiled their list by documenting cases of sworn nonfederal law enforcement officers who have been arrested. But the 2016 federally funded paper, "Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested," says the problem isn't limited to sexual assault.
"There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity," the report says, and no government entity collects data on police who are arrested.
It adds, "Police sexual misconduct and cases of police sexual violence are often referred to as hidden offenses, and studies on police sexual misconduct are usually based on small samples or derived from officer surveys that are threatened by a reluctance to reveal these cases."
The nation's foremost researchers on the subject, thus, must often rely on published media reports. The BGSU numbers, for instance, are the result of Google alerts on 48 search terms entered by researchers. The scholars then follow each case through adjudication.
While those numbers represent a fair portion of cases, arrests rely on a victim making a report and a law enforcement agency making that report public, after an arrest or otherwise. With sexual assaults by police officers, neither is guaranteed.
Why the numbers are lacking
One of the greatest impediments to understanding the scope of police sexual assault is the victims' reluctance to report the crime.
"Who do you call when your rapist or offender is a police officer? What a scary situation that must be," said Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice who served as principal investigator for the police integrity paper and whose research assistants maintain the BGSU database.
No one interviewed for this story could give an estimate, even ballpark, on how underreported these types of crimes might be.
"I have to think it's a much worse problem than my data suggests," said Stinson, himself a former police officer.
There are several reasons behind the muddy data. The federal government cannot compel states to make the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies report the numbers. Even if they could, the Justice Department wouldn't have the resources to oversee and maintain such a database, Blanks said.
Unions also work hard to protect police officers and their reputations, he said.
"They don't want their officers and membership shamed if something goes wrong," Blanks said.
There also can be legal hurdles to obtaining basic information in such cases, he said, "and that's on purpose." Some states' laws shield the identities of police officers who commit crimes, he said, while some jurisdictions include nondisclosure agreements in victim settlements.
"The system is rigged to protect police officers from outside accountability," Blanks said. "The worst cops are going to get the most protection."
Victims include suspects and those police are supposed to protect
What data is available paints a jarring picture. One statistic from Stinson indicates that for every sexual assault that makes the news, there are almost always more victims -- on average, five more.
About half of the victims are children, researchers say. Stinson has gotten accustomed to hearing his research assistants proclaim during their work, "Oh my God, it's another 14-year-old."
Victims can include both the people police are supposed to be chasing and those they're charged with protecting, according to the police integrity paper.
"Opportunities for sex-related police crime abound because officers operate in a low visibility environment with very little supervision," it says. "The potential victims of sex-related police crime include criminal suspects but also unaccompanied victims of crime."
Experts say officers who prey on people they encounter while on duty take advantage of the trust the public places in police as an institution.
"Police have a reputational advantage over anyone, especially someone accused of a crime," Blanks said, explaining that a regular Gallup poll shows again and again that police are third only to the military and small business owners in terms of trust. "People want to believe the police."
Offenders who seek to victimize people know this, experts say, and they strategically select victims, bolstering their chances of not getting caught.
Researchers find that a predominance of the victims fall into at least one of several categories: They have criminal records, are homeless, are sex workers or have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Essentially, predatory cops are "picking on people who juries won't believe or who don't trust police," Stinson said.
The ripple effect
To be clear: The majority of police officers are good people, not sexual predators. Every expert interviewed for this story concurs on this point. But the problem is much larger than individual officers, said author and former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper.
"I think it's a huge problem," he said. "In reality, there's probably no law enforcement agency that has not had this problem."
The ripple effect can be devastating to a community. Stamper, who was a policeman in San Diego for 28 years before taking the helm in Seattle in 1994, recalled when California Highway Patrol officer Craig Peyer was convicted of the on-duty killing of student Cara Knott after a traffic stop.
No San Diego officer was tangentially involved, yet the department experienced enormous trust issues with the community, he said. Residents were fearful and some motorists were anxious about being pulled over, said Stamper, whose books address the "dark side" of policing and how to fix it.
"It cheats good cops," he said. "If a police officer is arrested for having fondled a DUI suspect in a jurisdiction, that affects all officers."
The trust issue is only exacerbated by the "blue wall" of silence that's erected when an officer is accused of a crime, he said. That's to be expected, Stamper said, because officers rely heavily on each other, especially in dangerous situations, and ratting out a colleague could mean trouble for an officer the next time she or he needs backup.
"If I'm a snitch, then the chance that my fellow officers will not have my back is significant," the former police chief said.
Some possible solutions
Stamper and others believe the solution lies in revamping police culture.
"The paramilitary, bureaucratic structure produces a dysfunctional culture," Stamper said, adding that for one of the "most delicate and demanding" jobs in America, officers largely go unsupervised.
Specific to sexual assault, experts would like to see departments enact:
"It's critical supervisors trust officers, but trust is earned," Stamper said, adding that the job is too important to trust officers blindly.
Police chiefs and sheriffs defending bad cops also erodes trust, Stamper said. He finds himself frustrated, he said, every time he sees a police executive step to a podium to decry the "bad apples" responsible for a crime that has tainted a department.
"If they repeatedly go back to that bank of microphones to bemoan the bad apples, it's time to look at the barrel. ... Look at the orchard," he said.
Are national standards in order?
Accountability is critical to changing police culture, experts say.
Stamper believes uniformity -- via the licensing of individual officers and the certification of police departments -- is key.
All 18,000 departments operate under their own rules, based on their traditions, policies, procedures and recruitment methods, he said.
He believes creating national standards -- not for small things, but for larger constitutional issues -- could improve the quality of policing.
If a licensed officer were to violate someone's rights -- by illegally searching or arresting them, manipulating evidence, using unnecessary force or, of course, engaging in sexually predatory behavior -- that officer's license would be yanked.
Likewise, a city police department with a pattern of violations could lose its certification and be taken over the by the county. An offending sheriff's department could be taken over by the state, he said.
It's pie in the sky, Stamper acknowledges, but until America changes the nature of the conversation around policing, things are destined to remain the same when it comes to crooked cops.
"The forces of resistance are powerful," he said. "If you push the system, it's going to push back with equal or greater force."
Yes, hundreds. According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the US were charged with forcible rape 405 times between 2005 and 2013. That's an average of 45 a year. Forcible fondling was more common, with 636 instances.
Yet experts say those statistics are, by no means, comprehensive. Data on sexual assaults by police are almost nonexistent, they say.
"It's just not available at all," said Jonathan Blanks, a research associate with the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice. "You can only crowdsource this info."
The BGSU researchers compiled their list by documenting cases of sworn nonfederal law enforcement officers who have been arrested. But the 2016 federally funded paper, "Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested," says the problem isn't limited to sexual assault.
"There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity," the report says, and no government entity collects data on police who are arrested.
It adds, "Police sexual misconduct and cases of police sexual violence are often referred to as hidden offenses, and studies on police sexual misconduct are usually based on small samples or derived from officer surveys that are threatened by a reluctance to reveal these cases."
The nation's foremost researchers on the subject, thus, must often rely on published media reports. The BGSU numbers, for instance, are the result of Google alerts on 48 search terms entered by researchers. The scholars then follow each case through adjudication.
While those numbers represent a fair portion of cases, arrests rely on a victim making a report and a law enforcement agency making that report public, after an arrest or otherwise. With sexual assaults by police officers, neither is guaranteed.
Why the numbers are lacking
One of the greatest impediments to understanding the scope of police sexual assault is the victims' reluctance to report the crime.
"Who do you call when your rapist or offender is a police officer? What a scary situation that must be," said Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice who served as principal investigator for the police integrity paper and whose research assistants maintain the BGSU database.
No one interviewed for this story could give an estimate, even ballpark, on how underreported these types of crimes might be.
"I have to think it's a much worse problem than my data suggests," said Stinson, himself a former police officer.
There are several reasons behind the muddy data. The federal government cannot compel states to make the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies report the numbers. Even if they could, the Justice Department wouldn't have the resources to oversee and maintain such a database, Blanks said.
Unions also work hard to protect police officers and their reputations, he said.
"They don't want their officers and membership shamed if something goes wrong," Blanks said.
There also can be legal hurdles to obtaining basic information in such cases, he said, "and that's on purpose." Some states' laws shield the identities of police officers who commit crimes, he said, while some jurisdictions include nondisclosure agreements in victim settlements.
"The system is rigged to protect police officers from outside accountability," Blanks said. "The worst cops are going to get the most protection."
Victims include suspects and those police are supposed to protect
What data is available paints a jarring picture. One statistic from Stinson indicates that for every sexual assault that makes the news, there are almost always more victims -- on average, five more.
About half of the victims are children, researchers say. Stinson has gotten accustomed to hearing his research assistants proclaim during their work, "Oh my God, it's another 14-year-old."
Victims can include both the people police are supposed to be chasing and those they're charged with protecting, according to the police integrity paper.
"Opportunities for sex-related police crime abound because officers operate in a low visibility environment with very little supervision," it says. "The potential victims of sex-related police crime include criminal suspects but also unaccompanied victims of crime."
Experts say officers who prey on people they encounter while on duty take advantage of the trust the public places in police as an institution.
"Police have a reputational advantage over anyone, especially someone accused of a crime," Blanks said, explaining that a regular Gallup poll shows again and again that police are third only to the military and small business owners in terms of trust. "People want to believe the police."
Offenders who seek to victimize people know this, experts say, and they strategically select victims, bolstering their chances of not getting caught.
Researchers find that a predominance of the victims fall into at least one of several categories: They have criminal records, are homeless, are sex workers or have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Essentially, predatory cops are "picking on people who juries won't believe or who don't trust police," Stinson said.
The ripple effect
To be clear: The majority of police officers are good people, not sexual predators. Every expert interviewed for this story concurs on this point. But the problem is much larger than individual officers, said author and former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper.
"I think it's a huge problem," he said. "In reality, there's probably no law enforcement agency that has not had this problem."
The ripple effect can be devastating to a community. Stamper, who was a policeman in San Diego for 28 years before taking the helm in Seattle in 1994, recalled when California Highway Patrol officer Craig Peyer was convicted of the on-duty killing of student Cara Knott after a traffic stop.
No San Diego officer was tangentially involved, yet the department experienced enormous trust issues with the community, he said. Residents were fearful and some motorists were anxious about being pulled over, said Stamper, whose books address the "dark side" of policing and how to fix it.
"It cheats good cops," he said. "If a police officer is arrested for having fondled a DUI suspect in a jurisdiction, that affects all officers."
The trust issue is only exacerbated by the "blue wall" of silence that's erected when an officer is accused of a crime, he said. That's to be expected, Stamper said, because officers rely heavily on each other, especially in dangerous situations, and ratting out a colleague could mean trouble for an officer the next time she or he needs backup.
"If I'm a snitch, then the chance that my fellow officers will not have my back is significant," the former police chief said.
Some possible solutions
Stamper and others believe the solution lies in revamping police culture.
"The paramilitary, bureaucratic structure produces a dysfunctional culture," Stamper said, adding that for one of the "most delicate and demanding" jobs in America, officers largely go unsupervised.
Specific to sexual assault, experts would like to see departments enact:
- Policies "to make victims feel safe," Stinson said, which could include online or anonymous reporting and special officers trained in dealing with sexual assault victims
- GPS tracking of officers, especially those with take-home vehicles, and monitoring of officers. If a supervisor notices a patrolman predominantly stops women between the ages of 18 and 30 at the same time of night in the same part of town, it would raise red flags
- Rules forbidding departments from hiring officers who were fired from other agencies, which happens too frequently, Stamper said
- Mandates that officers must activate their bodycams and dash cams and be punished if they don't. (This will actually vindicate officers more often than not, experts say)
- Occasional sting operations, involving internal affairs, aimed at ensuring police officers are appropriately interacting with the public
"It's critical supervisors trust officers, but trust is earned," Stamper said, adding that the job is too important to trust officers blindly.
Police chiefs and sheriffs defending bad cops also erodes trust, Stamper said. He finds himself frustrated, he said, every time he sees a police executive step to a podium to decry the "bad apples" responsible for a crime that has tainted a department.
"If they repeatedly go back to that bank of microphones to bemoan the bad apples, it's time to look at the barrel. ... Look at the orchard," he said.
Are national standards in order?
Accountability is critical to changing police culture, experts say.
Stamper believes uniformity -- via the licensing of individual officers and the certification of police departments -- is key.
All 18,000 departments operate under their own rules, based on their traditions, policies, procedures and recruitment methods, he said.
He believes creating national standards -- not for small things, but for larger constitutional issues -- could improve the quality of policing.
If a licensed officer were to violate someone's rights -- by illegally searching or arresting them, manipulating evidence, using unnecessary force or, of course, engaging in sexually predatory behavior -- that officer's license would be yanked.
Likewise, a city police department with a pattern of violations could lose its certification and be taken over the by the county. An offending sheriff's department could be taken over by the state, he said.
It's pie in the sky, Stamper acknowledges, but until America changes the nature of the conversation around policing, things are destined to remain the same when it comes to crooked cops.
"The forces of resistance are powerful," he said. "If you push the system, it's going to push back with equal or greater force."
Video shows off-duty Chicago police officer shooting unarmed, autistic man
Sgt Khalil Muhammad shot then-18-year-old Ricardo Hayes in 2017 incident initially described as an armed confrontation
Associated Press - the guardian
Wed 17 Oct 2018 07.23 EDT
Video footage released on Tuesday by a civil rights group shows an off-duty Chicago police officer shooting an unarmed, autistic man during an incident initially described as an armed confrontation.
Sgt Khalil Muhammad shot then-18-year-old Ricardo Hayes as he walked on the city’s South Side. Hayes had wandered away from his home around 5am on 13 August 2017, according to a lawsuit over the shooting filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). His caretaker called police, informing them he was autistic.
The grainy home security video released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) shows Hayes running along a sidewalk before stopping. Muhammad then stops the SUV he’s driving and gets out. Hayes takes a few steps toward the vehicle before Muhammad shoots him in the arm and chest.
The video shows Hayes running off despite his wounds. Now 19, he has recovered from his injuries.
“As a black teenager with disabilities, Ricky was at a heightened risk for police violence,” said Karen Sheley of the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement. “Thankfully, he survived – but he should never have been shot.”
At the time, police officials described the incident as an armed confrontation.
“The video shows both that there was no justification for the officer to shoot him and that initial stories told by CPD officials about the shooting – that the ‘encounter escalated’ – were false,” Sheley said.
The sergeant’s call to 911 was among the audio files released.
“The guy, like, he was about to pull a gun. Walked up to the car, and I had to shoot,” Muhammad told a Chicago Fire Department dispatcher. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson later said Hayes had no weapon.
The initial assertion of a confrontation mirrors statements by police after the 2014 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Jason Van Dyke was convicted earlier this month of second-degree murder and aggravated battery in the slaying. Despite video to the contrary, Van Dyke and other officers on the scene claimed McDonald was acting aggressively before the shooting.
In a statement, COPA said its delay in releasing the Hayes video and related material was due to concerns about the legality of releasing of information related to wards of the state.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Tuesday that Muhammad is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the COPA investigation.
Sgt Khalil Muhammad shot then-18-year-old Ricardo Hayes as he walked on the city’s South Side. Hayes had wandered away from his home around 5am on 13 August 2017, according to a lawsuit over the shooting filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). His caretaker called police, informing them he was autistic.
The grainy home security video released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) shows Hayes running along a sidewalk before stopping. Muhammad then stops the SUV he’s driving and gets out. Hayes takes a few steps toward the vehicle before Muhammad shoots him in the arm and chest.
The video shows Hayes running off despite his wounds. Now 19, he has recovered from his injuries.
“As a black teenager with disabilities, Ricky was at a heightened risk for police violence,” said Karen Sheley of the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement. “Thankfully, he survived – but he should never have been shot.”
At the time, police officials described the incident as an armed confrontation.
“The video shows both that there was no justification for the officer to shoot him and that initial stories told by CPD officials about the shooting – that the ‘encounter escalated’ – were false,” Sheley said.
The sergeant’s call to 911 was among the audio files released.
“The guy, like, he was about to pull a gun. Walked up to the car, and I had to shoot,” Muhammad told a Chicago Fire Department dispatcher. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson later said Hayes had no weapon.
The initial assertion of a confrontation mirrors statements by police after the 2014 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Jason Van Dyke was convicted earlier this month of second-degree murder and aggravated battery in the slaying. Despite video to the contrary, Van Dyke and other officers on the scene claimed McDonald was acting aggressively before the shooting.
In a statement, COPA said its delay in releasing the Hayes video and related material was due to concerns about the legality of releasing of information related to wards of the state.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Tuesday that Muhammad is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the COPA investigation.
Wisconsin cops smash into black woman’s car with guns drawn after she arrives early to job interview: lawsuit
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 OCT 2018 AT 10:43 ET
Robin Anderson
A Wisconsin woman showed up early one morning for a job interview when a police cruiser smashed into her vehicle and officers jumped out with guns drawn.
Robin Anderson said she feared for her life as officers ordered her to crawl over broken glass and out of her car, and then handcuffed her, reported the Journal Sentinel.
“Don’t move or they’ll shoot you,” Anderson told herself.
Glendale police later blamed the incident on a case of mistaken identity, and the department apologized to Anderson’s father and paid to replace her broken window, but not the dents in her car.
The 20-year-old Anderson was parallel-parked Dec. 20, 2017, in her Hyundai, with cars on either side of hers, outside a cell phone store near an Applebee’s restaurant at Bayshore Town Center.
Anderson had arrived early for her job interview, and the restaurant’s doors were still locked.
Police were looking for four black men suspected in a string of robberies at cell phone stores in the area, and they were allegedly driving a Hyundai Elantra — a different model than Anderson’s car.
Officers also had a specific license plate number, which did not match Anderson’s, and no women were believed to be with the suspects.
“The only thing Anderson had in common with the thieves is that she is also African-American,” said attorney Mark Thomsen, who filed the lawsuit. “Had Anderson been white this would not have happened.”
The suit names the city of Glendale, officer William Schieffer and detective Adam Wall as defendants.
“This is something that I see all the time, everywhere, that African-Americans are being stopped for no reason and police officers aren’t being held accountable for the situations when they are wrong,” said Anderson, who says she suffers panic attacks every time she sees a police car after the incident.
“I just want it to stop,” she said. “I just want them to know this is not okay.”
Robin Anderson said she feared for her life as officers ordered her to crawl over broken glass and out of her car, and then handcuffed her, reported the Journal Sentinel.
“Don’t move or they’ll shoot you,” Anderson told herself.
Glendale police later blamed the incident on a case of mistaken identity, and the department apologized to Anderson’s father and paid to replace her broken window, but not the dents in her car.
The 20-year-old Anderson was parallel-parked Dec. 20, 2017, in her Hyundai, with cars on either side of hers, outside a cell phone store near an Applebee’s restaurant at Bayshore Town Center.
Anderson had arrived early for her job interview, and the restaurant’s doors were still locked.
Police were looking for four black men suspected in a string of robberies at cell phone stores in the area, and they were allegedly driving a Hyundai Elantra — a different model than Anderson’s car.
Officers also had a specific license plate number, which did not match Anderson’s, and no women were believed to be with the suspects.
“The only thing Anderson had in common with the thieves is that she is also African-American,” said attorney Mark Thomsen, who filed the lawsuit. “Had Anderson been white this would not have happened.”
The suit names the city of Glendale, officer William Schieffer and detective Adam Wall as defendants.
“This is something that I see all the time, everywhere, that African-Americans are being stopped for no reason and police officers aren’t being held accountable for the situations when they are wrong,” said Anderson, who says she suffers panic attacks every time she sees a police car after the incident.
“I just want it to stop,” she said. “I just want them to know this is not okay.”
Lawsuit: Man convicted after mother rejected 'dirty cop'
Heather Hollingsworth, Associated Press
Friday, October 12, 2018
FILE - In this Oct. 13, 2017, file photo, Lamonte McIntyre, who was imprisoned for 23 years for a 1994 double murder in Kansas that he always said he didn't commit, walks out of a courthouse in Kansas City, Kan., with his mother, Rosie McIntyre, after Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark A. Dupree, Sr. dropped the charges. McIntyre and his mother, filed a lawsuit Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018 in federal court alleging Lamonte McIntyre was targeted after his mother rebuffed a homicide detective's sexual advances.(Tammy Ljungblad /The Kansas City Star via AP, File)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas man who spent 23 years in prison for a double murder he didn't commit was targeted because his mother rebuffed a homicide detective's sexual advances and was convicted after a bogus police investigation, according to a lawsuit .
Lamonte McIntyre, 42, and his 64-year-old mother Rose Lee McIntyre filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court.
McIntyre was 17 in 1994 when he was arrested in Kansas City in the deaths of 21-year-old Doniel Quinn and 34-year-old Donald Ewing. They were shot in broad daylight in a drug-infested neighborhood. McIntyre was sentenced to two life sentences in their deaths, but he was freed last year after the district attorney found he had been subject to a "manifest injustice" in the case.
No physical evidence linked McIntyre to the crime and he didn't know the victims. The suit blames his arrest on a "dirty cop " identified as Roger Golubski, who "used the power of his badge to exploit vulnerable black women."
Golubski, who rose through the ranks to detective and captain before retiring, coerced Rose Lee McIntyre into oral sex in a police station after a traffic stop in the late 1980s and harassed her so much when she rebuffed additional advances that she moved and changed her phone number.
The double homicide investigation quickly focused on her son, even though he was taller and had shorter hair than the initial witness descriptions. The suit said the investigation involved "no bona fide police work." Golubski helped one witness find a new apartment in exchange for falsely identifying the teen and threatened to have her children taken away if she didn't testify, the suit says.
The lawsuit says the real killer was a drug enforcer known as "Monster," who is currently serving a 33-year sentence for murder and drug offenses. The suit said Golubski also worked closely with drug kingpins to protect their interests in exchange for money or drugs, which he would use to buy sex.
"Whether to retaliate against Rose McIntyre for spurning his advances, to protect Monster's drug bosses from prosecution, to quickly close a double homicide, or all three, Golubski, his-co-investigators, and his supervisors framed Lamonte McIntyre for the crimes," the suit said, adding that the victims' families believed Lamonte McIntyre was innocent throughout.
Kansas City, Kansas, police Chief Terry Zeigler, who is not a party in the lawsuit, said in a statement posted on Facebook Friday that the department never received complaints from outside or inside the department regarding the allegations in the lawsuit, so a police investigation never occurred. He said the FBI has investigated but provided no further information.
Golubski's attorney, Paul Morrison, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Lamonte McIntyre, 42, and his 64-year-old mother Rose Lee McIntyre filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court.
McIntyre was 17 in 1994 when he was arrested in Kansas City in the deaths of 21-year-old Doniel Quinn and 34-year-old Donald Ewing. They were shot in broad daylight in a drug-infested neighborhood. McIntyre was sentenced to two life sentences in their deaths, but he was freed last year after the district attorney found he had been subject to a "manifest injustice" in the case.
No physical evidence linked McIntyre to the crime and he didn't know the victims. The suit blames his arrest on a "dirty cop " identified as Roger Golubski, who "used the power of his badge to exploit vulnerable black women."
Golubski, who rose through the ranks to detective and captain before retiring, coerced Rose Lee McIntyre into oral sex in a police station after a traffic stop in the late 1980s and harassed her so much when she rebuffed additional advances that she moved and changed her phone number.
The double homicide investigation quickly focused on her son, even though he was taller and had shorter hair than the initial witness descriptions. The suit said the investigation involved "no bona fide police work." Golubski helped one witness find a new apartment in exchange for falsely identifying the teen and threatened to have her children taken away if she didn't testify, the suit says.
The lawsuit says the real killer was a drug enforcer known as "Monster," who is currently serving a 33-year sentence for murder and drug offenses. The suit said Golubski also worked closely with drug kingpins to protect their interests in exchange for money or drugs, which he would use to buy sex.
"Whether to retaliate against Rose McIntyre for spurning his advances, to protect Monster's drug bosses from prosecution, to quickly close a double homicide, or all three, Golubski, his-co-investigators, and his supervisors framed Lamonte McIntyre for the crimes," the suit said, adding that the victims' families believed Lamonte McIntyre was innocent throughout.
Kansas City, Kansas, police Chief Terry Zeigler, who is not a party in the lawsuit, said in a statement posted on Facebook Friday that the department never received complaints from outside or inside the department regarding the allegations in the lawsuit, so a police investigation never occurred. He said the FBI has investigated but provided no further information.
Golubski's attorney, Paul Morrison, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.
LOS ANGELES SHERIFF'S DEPUTIES ALLEGEDLY RACIALLY PROFILED THOUSANDS OF LATINO DRIVERS ON INTERSTATE 5
BY DANIEL MORITZ-RABSON - newsweek
ON 10/8/18 AT 5:38 PM
The Los Angeles County Inspector General is probing allegations that Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies racially profiled thousands of Latino drivers over more than half a decade.
Last week, The Los Angeles Times documented a pattern of racial profiling among sheriff's deputies seeking to land drug busts on the 5 Freeway. County Supervisor Hilda Solis has now requested the inspector general and Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission undertake a review of the sheriff's Domestic Highway Enforcement team.
The Times reported that 69 percent of more than 9,000 traffic stops made by the highway enforcement team between 2012 and 2017 involved Latino drivers. Sheriff's deputies searched the vehicles of more than 3,500 drivers—the vast majority of whom were Latino—who did not have any illegal items. The team members conducted searches of Latinos' vehicles during two-thirds of the stops, while other drivers had their cars searched during less than half of stops.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department denied that employees were conducting racial profiling and lauded the large amount of drugs seized by officers during their patrols. The team has confiscated "more than a ton of methamphetamine, 2 tons of marijuana, 600 pounds of cocaine, millions of dollars in suspected drug money," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a statement that he stood by the team's work in confiscating mass quantities of drugs and rescuing victims of human trafficking. McDonnell also said he would cooperate to solve the concerns.
"As someone who has dedicated my career to protecting the civil rights of all people, I am personally concerned about any allegation of racial and ethnic profiling and take very seriously questions about race and police procedures," he said.
The Times reported that some of the team's drug seizures have been thrown out of court after judges ruled the deputies administered unconstitutional searches.
Last year, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said police departments in the state would have to collect demographic details on each person pulled over in their car or detained, the Los Angeles Times reported. The policy is an attempt to better spot racial profiling among police forces.
Studies conducted across the U.S. have shown minorities are more likely to be stopped while driving or asked to consent to a car search during a traffic stop. The ACLU found in 2014 that in Illinois, "African American and Latino drivers are nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be asked during a routine traffic stop for 'consent' to have their car searched. Yet white motorists are 49% more likely than African American motorists to have contraband discovered during a consent search by law enforcement, and 56% more likely when compared to Latinos."
The New York Times reported in 2015 that "in the seven states with the most sweeping reporting requirements — Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina and Rhode Island — the data show police officers are more likely to pull over black drivers than white ones, given their share of the local driving-age population." The 2015 article also noted that officers are more likely to conduct consent searches after pulling over minority drivers.
Last week, The Los Angeles Times documented a pattern of racial profiling among sheriff's deputies seeking to land drug busts on the 5 Freeway. County Supervisor Hilda Solis has now requested the inspector general and Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission undertake a review of the sheriff's Domestic Highway Enforcement team.
The Times reported that 69 percent of more than 9,000 traffic stops made by the highway enforcement team between 2012 and 2017 involved Latino drivers. Sheriff's deputies searched the vehicles of more than 3,500 drivers—the vast majority of whom were Latino—who did not have any illegal items. The team members conducted searches of Latinos' vehicles during two-thirds of the stops, while other drivers had their cars searched during less than half of stops.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department denied that employees were conducting racial profiling and lauded the large amount of drugs seized by officers during their patrols. The team has confiscated "more than a ton of methamphetamine, 2 tons of marijuana, 600 pounds of cocaine, millions of dollars in suspected drug money," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a statement that he stood by the team's work in confiscating mass quantities of drugs and rescuing victims of human trafficking. McDonnell also said he would cooperate to solve the concerns.
"As someone who has dedicated my career to protecting the civil rights of all people, I am personally concerned about any allegation of racial and ethnic profiling and take very seriously questions about race and police procedures," he said.
The Times reported that some of the team's drug seizures have been thrown out of court after judges ruled the deputies administered unconstitutional searches.
Last year, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said police departments in the state would have to collect demographic details on each person pulled over in their car or detained, the Los Angeles Times reported. The policy is an attempt to better spot racial profiling among police forces.
Studies conducted across the U.S. have shown minorities are more likely to be stopped while driving or asked to consent to a car search during a traffic stop. The ACLU found in 2014 that in Illinois, "African American and Latino drivers are nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be asked during a routine traffic stop for 'consent' to have their car searched. Yet white motorists are 49% more likely than African American motorists to have contraband discovered during a consent search by law enforcement, and 56% more likely when compared to Latinos."
The New York Times reported in 2015 that "in the seven states with the most sweeping reporting requirements — Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina and Rhode Island — the data show police officers are more likely to pull over black drivers than white ones, given their share of the local driving-age population." The 2015 article also noted that officers are more likely to conduct consent searches after pulling over minority drivers.
San Francisco Police Sued for ‘Racial Selective Enforcement’ After Drug Arrests
By Associated Press - atlanta black star
October 6, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Six black suspects arrested in a San Francisco drug sweep of low-level dealers sued the police department Thursday, claiming a department plagued with racist behavior targeted them because of their race.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on their behalf in federal court in San Francisco.
The six were arrested as part of two-year joint federal-local sting dubbed Operation Safe Schools that aimed to clean up the city’s low-income Tenderloin neighborhood rife with openly conducted drug sales.
The lawsuit alleges that all 37 suspects arrested in two sweeps between 2013 and 2015 were black. They were indicted in federal court on drug charges and 25 of them quickly agreed to plea deals.
The remaining 12 suspects successfully fought the charges by arguing they were targeted because of their race. Prosecutors dropped the charges in 2016 after U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said he found “substantial evidence of racially selective enforcement.”
Six of those people are the named plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit filed Thursday, which alleges their arrests were a result of a police department plagued with racist policies and officers.
Greg Suhr resigned as police chief in 2016 amid rising racial tensions over police fatally shooting four minority suspects over a six-month period. None of the suspects were armed with guns.
Suhr’s resignation culminated a tumultuous five-year term that included two separate scandals involving officers exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, including some comparing blacks to monkeys and others disparaging black suspects. Nine officers were fired for sending inappropriate texts.
The city last year hired its first black police chief, Bill Scott. He has vowed to reform a department that a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report found disproportionately arrested, searched and used deadly force against black suspects.
The police department referred questions to the city attorney’s office. City attorney spokesman John Cote declined to comment, saying he hasn’t seen the lawsuit.
But Cote defended the drugs sweeps, saying they were carried out under federal supervision and that “the San Francisco Police Department did not engage in selective enforcement during Operation Safe Schools.”
He also defended the police department.
“The San Francisco Police Department prides itself on being one of the most diverse, forward-thinking and transparent law enforcement agencies in the country,” Cote said.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on their behalf in federal court in San Francisco.
The six were arrested as part of two-year joint federal-local sting dubbed Operation Safe Schools that aimed to clean up the city’s low-income Tenderloin neighborhood rife with openly conducted drug sales.
The lawsuit alleges that all 37 suspects arrested in two sweeps between 2013 and 2015 were black. They were indicted in federal court on drug charges and 25 of them quickly agreed to plea deals.
The remaining 12 suspects successfully fought the charges by arguing they were targeted because of their race. Prosecutors dropped the charges in 2016 after U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said he found “substantial evidence of racially selective enforcement.”
Six of those people are the named plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit filed Thursday, which alleges their arrests were a result of a police department plagued with racist policies and officers.
Greg Suhr resigned as police chief in 2016 amid rising racial tensions over police fatally shooting four minority suspects over a six-month period. None of the suspects were armed with guns.
Suhr’s resignation culminated a tumultuous five-year term that included two separate scandals involving officers exchanging racist and homophobic text messages, including some comparing blacks to monkeys and others disparaging black suspects. Nine officers were fired for sending inappropriate texts.
The city last year hired its first black police chief, Bill Scott. He has vowed to reform a department that a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report found disproportionately arrested, searched and used deadly force against black suspects.
The police department referred questions to the city attorney’s office. City attorney spokesman John Cote declined to comment, saying he hasn’t seen the lawsuit.
But Cote defended the drugs sweeps, saying they were carried out under federal supervision and that “the San Francisco Police Department did not engage in selective enforcement during Operation Safe Schools.”
He also defended the police department.
“The San Francisco Police Department prides itself on being one of the most diverse, forward-thinking and transparent law enforcement agencies in the country,” Cote said.
FBI is investigating ‘shady’ Ohio vice squad that arrested Stormy Daniels during performance: report
Dominique Jackson - raw story
28 SEP 2018 AT 19:36 ET
The Ohio Vice Squad that arrested adult film star, Stormy Daniels, is under investigation by the FBI for “criminal activity,” reported the Daily Beast.
“Recent high-profile incidents have brought forward a variety of allegations against the Vice section via social media postings and other sources,” a press release from the Columbus Division of Police read. “Persons who have knowledge of criminal activity by members of the Columbus Police Vice personnel are asked to call a tip line set up by the FBI to investigate these claims.”
Daniels was arrested in July during an appearance on her tour on allegations that she broke an Ohio law that says semi-nude performers cannot touch people. The charges were dropped against her the next day.
However, her attorney Michael Avenatti noted that there was foul play at hand and that Daniels was specifically targeted. “Were these just some rogue officers or were others involved? I think this is going to be very interesting,” Avenatti said while interviewing with “The View.”
The Vice Unit has been described as “shady” and The Daily Beast reported that Daniels arrest was “politically motivated.” In Septemeber, Chief Jacobs suspended the Vice Unit and said in a statement: “We do not tolerate bad cops here and if we’ve got the evidence to prove that they are, I think our record shows that we will address that bad behavior.”
“Recent high-profile incidents have brought forward a variety of allegations against the Vice section via social media postings and other sources,” a press release from the Columbus Division of Police read. “Persons who have knowledge of criminal activity by members of the Columbus Police Vice personnel are asked to call a tip line set up by the FBI to investigate these claims.”
Daniels was arrested in July during an appearance on her tour on allegations that she broke an Ohio law that says semi-nude performers cannot touch people. The charges were dropped against her the next day.
However, her attorney Michael Avenatti noted that there was foul play at hand and that Daniels was specifically targeted. “Were these just some rogue officers or were others involved? I think this is going to be very interesting,” Avenatti said while interviewing with “The View.”
The Vice Unit has been described as “shady” and The Daily Beast reported that Daniels arrest was “politically motivated.” In Septemeber, Chief Jacobs suspended the Vice Unit and said in a statement: “We do not tolerate bad cops here and if we’ve got the evidence to prove that they are, I think our record shows that we will address that bad behavior.”
Former Florida police chief guilty of framing 3 Black men
Lauren Victoria Burke - philly tribune
9/24/18
In 2013, then Biscayne Park Police Chief Raimundo Atesiano informed community leaders of the Biscayne Park Police Department’s perfect clearance record for solving crimes: It was 100 percent. According to Atesiano, his police department near Miami was perfect at solving burglaries.
On September 21st, it was revealed in a plea agreement that the former chief directed his officers to frame unsolved cases on three Black men. A federal court hearing confirmed that former Chief Atesiano directed three police officers on his department to accuse a series of crimes on three innocent men, all of them Black.
In August, Biscayne Park Police Officers Charlie Dayoub, 38, and Raul Fernandez, 62, pleaded guilty to falsifying the arrest affidavits for a 16-year-old black suspect in four break-ins from June 2013. A second false arrest was made on a man named Clarence Desrouleaux. Desrouleaux, 35, was deported to Haiti as the result of being framed and sentenced to five years.A third man, Erasmus Banmah, 31, was falsely accused for burglary.
Former Chief Atesiano, 52, pled guilty to conspiracy for the framings. The conspiracy convictions carry up to 10 years in prison. Atesiano resigned from the Biscayne Park Police Department in 2014.The details of the Atesiano framings of three Black men were detailed in a statement released on September 14 by the Department of Justice.
“According to documents filed in connection with the plea entered today, Atesiano was acting under color of law as chief of police when on three separate occasions he ordered officers under his command to falsely arrest and charge individuals with unsolved burglaries. In court filings related to the plea, Atesiano admitted that on one occasion he instructed an officer to falsely arrest and charge an individual for several vehicle burglaries based upon what Atesiano knew were false confessions. According to the documents, Atesiano intentionally encouraged officers to arrest individuals without a legal basis in order to have arrests effectuated for all reported burglaries, which created a fictitious 100% clearance rate for that category of crime,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Greenberg said in a written statement on the Atesiano prosecution.
“The right to be free from false arrests is fundamental to our Constitution and system of justice,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore.
“Law enforcement officers who abuse their authority and deny any individual this right will be held accountable. As the Chief of Police, Defendant Atesiano was trusted by his community to lead their police officers by example; he has failed his community and the officers of Biscayne Park,” Gore added.
“It is a deliberate injustice to intentionally charge and arrest an innocent man. Police Chief Raimundo Atesiano’s actions were intended to give his community a false sense of security and were a betrayal of his oath to protect the residents of Biscayne Park and all the people of Miami-Dade County,” commented State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “I applaud the combined efforts of our law enforcement partnership to end this calculated abuse of power.” -- (NNPA)
On September 21st, it was revealed in a plea agreement that the former chief directed his officers to frame unsolved cases on three Black men. A federal court hearing confirmed that former Chief Atesiano directed three police officers on his department to accuse a series of crimes on three innocent men, all of them Black.
In August, Biscayne Park Police Officers Charlie Dayoub, 38, and Raul Fernandez, 62, pleaded guilty to falsifying the arrest affidavits for a 16-year-old black suspect in four break-ins from June 2013. A second false arrest was made on a man named Clarence Desrouleaux. Desrouleaux, 35, was deported to Haiti as the result of being framed and sentenced to five years.A third man, Erasmus Banmah, 31, was falsely accused for burglary.
Former Chief Atesiano, 52, pled guilty to conspiracy for the framings. The conspiracy convictions carry up to 10 years in prison. Atesiano resigned from the Biscayne Park Police Department in 2014.The details of the Atesiano framings of three Black men were detailed in a statement released on September 14 by the Department of Justice.
“According to documents filed in connection with the plea entered today, Atesiano was acting under color of law as chief of police when on three separate occasions he ordered officers under his command to falsely arrest and charge individuals with unsolved burglaries. In court filings related to the plea, Atesiano admitted that on one occasion he instructed an officer to falsely arrest and charge an individual for several vehicle burglaries based upon what Atesiano knew were false confessions. According to the documents, Atesiano intentionally encouraged officers to arrest individuals without a legal basis in order to have arrests effectuated for all reported burglaries, which created a fictitious 100% clearance rate for that category of crime,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Greenberg said in a written statement on the Atesiano prosecution.
“The right to be free from false arrests is fundamental to our Constitution and system of justice,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore.
“Law enforcement officers who abuse their authority and deny any individual this right will be held accountable. As the Chief of Police, Defendant Atesiano was trusted by his community to lead their police officers by example; he has failed his community and the officers of Biscayne Park,” Gore added.
“It is a deliberate injustice to intentionally charge and arrest an innocent man. Police Chief Raimundo Atesiano’s actions were intended to give his community a false sense of security and were a betrayal of his oath to protect the residents of Biscayne Park and all the people of Miami-Dade County,” commented State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “I applaud the combined efforts of our law enforcement partnership to end this calculated abuse of power.” -- (NNPA)
Private Prison Officials Allowed to Force-Feed Immigrant Hunger Strikers
BY
Mike Ludwig Truthout
PUBLISHED
September 20, 2018
Officials at a privately run immigration jail in Tacoma, Washington, have apparently obtained permission from a federal court to force-feed prisoners staging sustained hunger strikes, according to documents filed in federal court.
Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit last week asking a federal district court in Tacoma to issue a temporary restraining order preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from threatening hunger strikers at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) with force-feeding, solitary confinement and segregation. A federal judge canceled a hearing on the case this week and referred the lawsuit to a lower court.
Despite the legal setback, civil rights lawyers obtained a legal documentfiled by ICE stating that the federal district court in Tacoma and others have granted six orders allowing “involuntary” medical monitoring, hydration and feeding of hunger strikers at NWDC, according to NWDC Resistance, an activist group supporting hunger strikers at the immigration jail.
“Is NWDC the new Guantánamo?” asked Maru Mora Villalpando, an organizer with the group and a longtime US resident who believes ICE unsuccessfully targeted her for deportation due to her activism around immigration.
NWDC has seen waves of hunger strikes this year, beginning in February, when 120 prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest conditions at the facility. Within weeks, civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit accusing an NWDC guard of severely beating a Mexican immigrant that jail officials incorrectly identified as a leader of the strike.
Over the summer, at least 60 prisoners went on strike to protest family separations at the border and conditions in immigration jails. Hunger strikes continued in solidarity with the national prison strike that ended earlier this month. However, supporters and civil rights lawyers say the number of strikers has dwindled to four because people detained at NWDC fear retaliation for protesting.
In the past, immigrants held at NWDC and other facilities have staged hunger strikes to call attention to GEO Group, a private prison company that runs the immigration jail and others like it across the country. The company has faced lawsuits in Washington and beyond for paying immigrant detainees as little as $1 an hour for performing labor that keeps private immigration jails running.
In some cases, prisoners jailed on immigration charges or awaiting deportation hearings worked through the night painting walls and buffing floors, only to be paid in bags of chips and candy, according to a lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson last year. Earlier this year, a federal judge rejected GEO Group’s motion to throw out the lawsuit, handing a hard-fought victory to the hunger strikers.
Now, hunger strikers are demanding adequate medical care and to be reunited with their families, according to Villalpando and other supporters in contact with people held in the jail.
“ICE could end all this by meeting the strikers’ demands of getting basic medical care,” Villalpando said. “But they have chosen not to. No one is safe under ICE custody; no one is safe at NWDC.”
The lawsuit challenging retaliation against hunger strikers was filed on behalf of two immigrants currently held at NWDC, Viacheslav Poliakov and Raquel Martinez Diaz. The lawsuit claims ICE violated the First Amendment rights of hunger strikers with threats of force-feeding, solitary confinement and other disciplinary actions.
These threats — along with the history of violent retaliation to protests at the facility — caused Poliakov, Martinez Diaz and other hunger strikers to end protests calling attention to conditions at the jail and protests against the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies, according to the complaint.
Poliakov is a Russian citizen and Martinez Diaz is a citizen of Mexico, and both are awaiting deportation proceedings. Civil rights attorneys have long argued that everyone living in the United States is entitled to rights under the Constitution, regardless of their immigration status.
After facing a number of protests, NWDC officials have a protocol for responding to hunger strikers, which can involve medical supervision and, if medically necessary, obtain a court order to force-feed and hydrate a prisoner who refuses to eat for long periods of time, according to statements ICE filed with the court in its defense.
ICE said Poliakov had accepted medical attention, and GEO Group never reported that Martinez Diaz was staging a hunger strike. ICE argued that employees at the detention centers work for GEO Group, not ICE, and federal agencies cannot be held liable for the actions of its contractors. The judge has indicated in court orders that he agrees and is expected to issue a decision in ICE’s favor.
Civil rights attorneys filed another request for the court to intervene on Wednesday, claiming Martinez Diaz ended a hunger strike on September 17 after an “encounter with a guard.” The judge denied the request.
Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit last week asking a federal district court in Tacoma to issue a temporary restraining order preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from threatening hunger strikers at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) with force-feeding, solitary confinement and segregation. A federal judge canceled a hearing on the case this week and referred the lawsuit to a lower court.
Despite the legal setback, civil rights lawyers obtained a legal documentfiled by ICE stating that the federal district court in Tacoma and others have granted six orders allowing “involuntary” medical monitoring, hydration and feeding of hunger strikers at NWDC, according to NWDC Resistance, an activist group supporting hunger strikers at the immigration jail.
“Is NWDC the new Guantánamo?” asked Maru Mora Villalpando, an organizer with the group and a longtime US resident who believes ICE unsuccessfully targeted her for deportation due to her activism around immigration.
NWDC has seen waves of hunger strikes this year, beginning in February, when 120 prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest conditions at the facility. Within weeks, civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit accusing an NWDC guard of severely beating a Mexican immigrant that jail officials incorrectly identified as a leader of the strike.
Over the summer, at least 60 prisoners went on strike to protest family separations at the border and conditions in immigration jails. Hunger strikes continued in solidarity with the national prison strike that ended earlier this month. However, supporters and civil rights lawyers say the number of strikers has dwindled to four because people detained at NWDC fear retaliation for protesting.
In the past, immigrants held at NWDC and other facilities have staged hunger strikes to call attention to GEO Group, a private prison company that runs the immigration jail and others like it across the country. The company has faced lawsuits in Washington and beyond for paying immigrant detainees as little as $1 an hour for performing labor that keeps private immigration jails running.
In some cases, prisoners jailed on immigration charges or awaiting deportation hearings worked through the night painting walls and buffing floors, only to be paid in bags of chips and candy, according to a lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson last year. Earlier this year, a federal judge rejected GEO Group’s motion to throw out the lawsuit, handing a hard-fought victory to the hunger strikers.
Now, hunger strikers are demanding adequate medical care and to be reunited with their families, according to Villalpando and other supporters in contact with people held in the jail.
“ICE could end all this by meeting the strikers’ demands of getting basic medical care,” Villalpando said. “But they have chosen not to. No one is safe under ICE custody; no one is safe at NWDC.”
The lawsuit challenging retaliation against hunger strikers was filed on behalf of two immigrants currently held at NWDC, Viacheslav Poliakov and Raquel Martinez Diaz. The lawsuit claims ICE violated the First Amendment rights of hunger strikers with threats of force-feeding, solitary confinement and other disciplinary actions.
These threats — along with the history of violent retaliation to protests at the facility — caused Poliakov, Martinez Diaz and other hunger strikers to end protests calling attention to conditions at the jail and protests against the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies, according to the complaint.
Poliakov is a Russian citizen and Martinez Diaz is a citizen of Mexico, and both are awaiting deportation proceedings. Civil rights attorneys have long argued that everyone living in the United States is entitled to rights under the Constitution, regardless of their immigration status.
After facing a number of protests, NWDC officials have a protocol for responding to hunger strikers, which can involve medical supervision and, if medically necessary, obtain a court order to force-feed and hydrate a prisoner who refuses to eat for long periods of time, according to statements ICE filed with the court in its defense.
ICE said Poliakov had accepted medical attention, and GEO Group never reported that Martinez Diaz was staging a hunger strike. ICE argued that employees at the detention centers work for GEO Group, not ICE, and federal agencies cannot be held liable for the actions of its contractors. The judge has indicated in court orders that he agrees and is expected to issue a decision in ICE’s favor.
Civil rights attorneys filed another request for the court to intervene on Wednesday, claiming Martinez Diaz ended a hunger strike on September 17 after an “encounter with a guard.” The judge denied the request.
Black St. Louis Cop Injured by White Officer’s ‘Friendly Fire’ Left with No Career, Struggles to Make Ends Meet
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
September 15, 2018
A St. Louis police group is doing all it can to help a veteran officer whose career came to a screeching halt after he was injured in an incident of “friendly fire” last year.
According to the Riverfront Times, the city’s Ethical Society of Police a hosting a fundraiser on behalf of Officer Milton Green, who was shot by a fellow officer in June 2017 while trying to help arrest a group of car thieves. Green survived, but his injuries ultimately kept him from continuing his job on the force.
“Prior to his career ending injury, Officer Green was his family’s primary breadwinner,” the organization said in a press release. “He is now forced to apply for disability, struggling to support his family and is having a hard time meeting his children’s needs.”
Details surrounding the shooting always came into question, especially after the department couldn’t seem to get its story straight.
The drama unfolded as St. Louis officers pursued a trio of thieves in a high-speed chase across town that ended in a crash just outside Green’s home in the city’s North Pointe neighborhood. The chase began shortly after 10 p.m. when a police license plate reader flagged the vehicle as stolen.
Police spike strips eventually brought the speeding thieves to a crashing stop, after which the suspects fled, all while still exchanging gunfire with police. That’s when Green, who was off-duty at the time, heard the commotion and left his home, service weapon in tow, to help his fellow officers.
Things quickly went left, however, as Green was ordered to the ground by two officers already on the scene. He complied. The officers eventually recognized him, and the 11-year veteran was told he could get up.
A third officer arrived on the scene, however, who didn’t recognize Greene and wound up shooting him in the arm. The off-duty cop was taken to a hospital where he was treated for his injuries.
Meanwhile, the 36-year-old white officer, who still has yet to be identified, told investigators he “feared for his safety.”
Then-police chief Lt. Col. Lawrence O’Toole initially described the incident as a case of “friendly fire,” claiming the 38-year-old Black officer had gotten “caught in the crossfire” between police and the armed suspects. However, a summary of the incident released by the department revealed Green had actually been shot by a fellow officer.
That officer was later placed on administrative leave.
Since the shooting, Green has had trouble making ends meet and providing for his kids, according to aGoFundMe page. The family is hoping to raise 10,000 to help the veteran cop with his bills and other expenses. The page has raised over $4,000 so far.
“Your donation is needed to help Officer Green support his family and fulfill the promises he made to his children to properly educate them and allow them to continue to participate in school activities and sports,” the campaign reads.
As for the ESOP fundraiser, that’s set to take place Sept. 23 at Montrey’s Cigar Lounge in Ferguson, the press release stated, and will feature “cigar specials, 50/50 raffle, auction and live painting by artist Micah Shelton.” All proceeds will go toward helping Green and his family get back on their feet.
According to the Riverfront Times, the city’s Ethical Society of Police a hosting a fundraiser on behalf of Officer Milton Green, who was shot by a fellow officer in June 2017 while trying to help arrest a group of car thieves. Green survived, but his injuries ultimately kept him from continuing his job on the force.
“Prior to his career ending injury, Officer Green was his family’s primary breadwinner,” the organization said in a press release. “He is now forced to apply for disability, struggling to support his family and is having a hard time meeting his children’s needs.”
Details surrounding the shooting always came into question, especially after the department couldn’t seem to get its story straight.
The drama unfolded as St. Louis officers pursued a trio of thieves in a high-speed chase across town that ended in a crash just outside Green’s home in the city’s North Pointe neighborhood. The chase began shortly after 10 p.m. when a police license plate reader flagged the vehicle as stolen.
Police spike strips eventually brought the speeding thieves to a crashing stop, after which the suspects fled, all while still exchanging gunfire with police. That’s when Green, who was off-duty at the time, heard the commotion and left his home, service weapon in tow, to help his fellow officers.
Things quickly went left, however, as Green was ordered to the ground by two officers already on the scene. He complied. The officers eventually recognized him, and the 11-year veteran was told he could get up.
A third officer arrived on the scene, however, who didn’t recognize Greene and wound up shooting him in the arm. The off-duty cop was taken to a hospital where he was treated for his injuries.
Meanwhile, the 36-year-old white officer, who still has yet to be identified, told investigators he “feared for his safety.”
Then-police chief Lt. Col. Lawrence O’Toole initially described the incident as a case of “friendly fire,” claiming the 38-year-old Black officer had gotten “caught in the crossfire” between police and the armed suspects. However, a summary of the incident released by the department revealed Green had actually been shot by a fellow officer.
That officer was later placed on administrative leave.
Since the shooting, Green has had trouble making ends meet and providing for his kids, according to aGoFundMe page. The family is hoping to raise 10,000 to help the veteran cop with his bills and other expenses. The page has raised over $4,000 so far.
“Your donation is needed to help Officer Green support his family and fulfill the promises he made to his children to properly educate them and allow them to continue to participate in school activities and sports,” the campaign reads.
As for the ESOP fundraiser, that’s set to take place Sept. 23 at Montrey’s Cigar Lounge in Ferguson, the press release stated, and will feature “cigar specials, 50/50 raffle, auction and live painting by artist Micah Shelton.” All proceeds will go toward helping Green and his family get back on their feet.
Black pastors left stranded by flat tire were grilled by cop about guns and drugs instead of getting help
Travis Gettys - raw story
28 AUG 2018 AT 08:23 ET
John Patterson and Demetrius Williams (Facebook)
Two black Milwaukee pastors were on their way home from fishing when they blew a flat tire on their boat trailer, and they were relieved when a sheriff’s deputy pulled over.
John Patterson had called his insurance company for help that morning in May, and he said a tow truck was on its way with a spare tire when the Waukesha County patrol car pulled up behind his stranded Chevy Silverado, reported the Journal-Sentinel.
“We thought maybe he was going to put out some cones or something,” Patterson said.
Deputy Erik Michalsen asked Patterson and Demetrius Williams if they had called for a squad car, but they told him the insurance company was sending help.
That’s when Michaelsen asked the two men whether they had any drugs or weapons in the truck, and they insisted they did not and explained they were Baptist ministers.
The deputy then asked for both of their driver’s license, which he explained was standard procedure, and returned them 10 minutes later.
Michalsen placed an orange sticker on the boat indicating when he had encountered the stranded vehicle, and then drove off.
“We’re pastors, driving home from fishing, and yet we’re treated with suspicion when we should have been offered assistance,” Williams said.
The pastors believe they were profiled because of their race.
“We were just stranded,” Patterson said. “(We) got background checked and treated like criminals because we’re African-American men. We drove home feeling violated.”
The faith-based community activist group Common Ground announced its own investigation of possible racial profiling by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department, and they have asked other drivers to share their experiences.
Sheriff Eric Severson has not yet agreed to meet with the group, which asked to for a meeting in early May, but earlier this month a department captain responded to written questions about the incident.
The captain said Michalsen asks all drivers he approaches about guns, and the sheriff issued a statement saying the pastors’ complaints were investigated.
Severson said the department found no evidence of racial bias in the deputy’s actions.
John Patterson had called his insurance company for help that morning in May, and he said a tow truck was on its way with a spare tire when the Waukesha County patrol car pulled up behind his stranded Chevy Silverado, reported the Journal-Sentinel.
“We thought maybe he was going to put out some cones or something,” Patterson said.
Deputy Erik Michalsen asked Patterson and Demetrius Williams if they had called for a squad car, but they told him the insurance company was sending help.
That’s when Michaelsen asked the two men whether they had any drugs or weapons in the truck, and they insisted they did not and explained they were Baptist ministers.
The deputy then asked for both of their driver’s license, which he explained was standard procedure, and returned them 10 minutes later.
Michalsen placed an orange sticker on the boat indicating when he had encountered the stranded vehicle, and then drove off.
“We’re pastors, driving home from fishing, and yet we’re treated with suspicion when we should have been offered assistance,” Williams said.
The pastors believe they were profiled because of their race.
“We were just stranded,” Patterson said. “(We) got background checked and treated like criminals because we’re African-American men. We drove home feeling violated.”
The faith-based community activist group Common Ground announced its own investigation of possible racial profiling by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department, and they have asked other drivers to share their experiences.
Sheriff Eric Severson has not yet agreed to meet with the group, which asked to for a meeting in early May, but earlier this month a department captain responded to written questions about the incident.
The captain said Michalsen asks all drivers he approaches about guns, and the sheriff issued a statement saying the pastors’ complaints were investigated.
Severson said the department found no evidence of racial bias in the deputy’s actions.
'It's definitely intimidation': police accused over raids on activist's family
Was it coincidence that a mass raid on two Memphis homes occurred on the first day of a trial in which police face claims of illegal surveillance of Black Lives Matter campaigners?
Jamiles Lartey in Atlanta
the guardian
Sun 26 Aug 2018 06.00 EDT
The peace and quiet of a south Memphis neighborhood gave way to chaos on Monday, as more than two dozen police cars, most unmarked, blocked off the street before officers raided two homes.
Witnesses described more than 50 heavily armed officers: local police, sheriff’s deputies, some from other agencies. Many shielded their identity with black ski masks.
The score from this elaborate, multi-agency gang taskforce effort? A single “roach” from an ashtray, containing a quantity of marijuana too small to trigger an arrest. The homeowner was given a written citation.
Minutes away, at a downtown courthouse, the police department was entering its first day on trial. The case, brought by activists and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges the Memphis police department (MPD) engaged in illegal surveillance of activists involved with Black Lives Matterand Fight for 15, including “catfishing” them with fake social media accounts.
In a statement to the Guardian, the MPD said the timing of the raid was “not related to the ACLU lawsuit in any way”.
Activists feel differently – the homes raided belonged to the uncle and grandmother of Antonio Cathey, one of the city’s more well-known activists and one of the targets of the alleged police spying.
Following the raids, activists reported police searching a community garden, tailing activists in unmarked cars, and in one case pulling over a vehicle in which one passenger was an ACLU lawyer representing the activists. The lawyer was briefly detained, in handcuffs.
“It’s most definitely intimidation and it’s to show us that even the courts can’t stop them doing what they want to do,” said Keedran Franklin, a prolific activist who has described being watched and targeted by Memphis police over the last two years.
According to Cathey, in the raid on his uncle’s home police tossed drawers, left clothing strewn about the house and broke family pictures. When officers entered the second house, he said, they pointed weapons at his 71-year-old grandmother.
“It was a retaliation to what was going on in court and it was an intimidation tactic but it didn’t scare me,” he said.
Cathey, Franklin and the ACLU lawyer Scott Kramer were at the courthouse for the first day of the trial when Cathey got word of the raid. When Kramer arrived at the scene, he said, he saw a number of officers using masks and bandannas.
“One guy used what looked like a white sheet on his head and then sunglasses over top of it,” Kramer said.
He also noted that several of the vehicles used appeared to display civilian license plates.
In its statement to the Guardian, the MPD did not address questions about masks or vehicles. It said the gang unit was dispatched on a warrant on suspicion of cocaine trafficking, then moved to Cathey’s grandmother’s house and arrested his cousin on an unrelated outstanding assault charge.
When authorities left the scene, Kramer was in a car with several activists who decided to follow one of the unmarked cars. They did so briefly before the county sheriff sent four vehicles to pull them over, for “following too closely”.
In a video posted to Facebook Live by the driver, Spencer Kaaz, another local activist, Kramer can be heard asking “why are you putting me in handcuffs” as an officer pats him down. The other passengers decline to get out. After some time, officers uncuff Kramer. He returned to court for the rest of the day’s proceedings.
Kramer said: “The bullet point is: on the same day that the ACLU is bringing a suit against the Memphis police, [they are saying] ‘We can pull you over and put you in handcuffs whenever we want to.’”
Cathey reported being followed by one of the undercover cars later in the week. On Thursday, Franklin discovered that MPD officers had paid a late-night visit to a community garden maintained by activists in Memphis’s Concerned Citizen Coalition, the group police are principally accused of spying on.
MPD would only tell the Guardian there was no call for service made at the garden. It declined to provide a reason why officers might have been there.
The surveillance project was operated by the MPD’s office of homeland security, which officials said was “originally designed to deal with threats to the MPD or Memphis in general”.
In a deposition for the ACLU lawsuit, officials said the office had been “retooled” around 2016, due to an increase in policing-related protests and to focus on “local individuals or groups that were staging protests”.
This included the publication of daily joint information briefings on potential protests and known protesters. According to the suit, the briefings regularly included information about meetings on private property, panel discussions, town halls and even innocuous events like “Black Owned Food Truck Sunday”.
A good deal of that information appears to have been obtained by a fake MPD Facebook profile for “Bob Smith”, which the ACLU said was used “to view private posts, join private groups, and otherwise pose as a member of the activist community”.
In one case, the Bob Smith pseudonym chatted with a protester on Facebook, describing himself as “just a fellow protester” and later saying “block me if you want, but i’m not a cop”.
A federal judge is currently considering his verdict on the ACLU lawsuit. He has already ruled that the city violated a federal consent decree barring the city from engaging in political surveillance. The judge will issue rulings later on several issues, including if the ACLU has standing in the case, if the consent agreement should be modified and if police violated the activists' first amendment rights by gathering political intelligence.
Late on Friday night, Franklin and Cathey were riding in a car when they were pulled over once again, allegedly for a busted turn signal light. Franklin streamed the incident to Facebook Live.
“I guess this is shit we’re going to go through, until they get it together,” he said.
Cathey told the Guardian: “The cops intimidate and follow us and do those things because they think they can just get away with it.
“But I’m going to be that voice for the people and let them know that this is not right. You guys are not going to continue to do this shit and get away with it, point blank. Period.”
Witnesses described more than 50 heavily armed officers: local police, sheriff’s deputies, some from other agencies. Many shielded their identity with black ski masks.
The score from this elaborate, multi-agency gang taskforce effort? A single “roach” from an ashtray, containing a quantity of marijuana too small to trigger an arrest. The homeowner was given a written citation.
Minutes away, at a downtown courthouse, the police department was entering its first day on trial. The case, brought by activists and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges the Memphis police department (MPD) engaged in illegal surveillance of activists involved with Black Lives Matterand Fight for 15, including “catfishing” them with fake social media accounts.
In a statement to the Guardian, the MPD said the timing of the raid was “not related to the ACLU lawsuit in any way”.
Activists feel differently – the homes raided belonged to the uncle and grandmother of Antonio Cathey, one of the city’s more well-known activists and one of the targets of the alleged police spying.
Following the raids, activists reported police searching a community garden, tailing activists in unmarked cars, and in one case pulling over a vehicle in which one passenger was an ACLU lawyer representing the activists. The lawyer was briefly detained, in handcuffs.
“It’s most definitely intimidation and it’s to show us that even the courts can’t stop them doing what they want to do,” said Keedran Franklin, a prolific activist who has described being watched and targeted by Memphis police over the last two years.
According to Cathey, in the raid on his uncle’s home police tossed drawers, left clothing strewn about the house and broke family pictures. When officers entered the second house, he said, they pointed weapons at his 71-year-old grandmother.
“It was a retaliation to what was going on in court and it was an intimidation tactic but it didn’t scare me,” he said.
Cathey, Franklin and the ACLU lawyer Scott Kramer were at the courthouse for the first day of the trial when Cathey got word of the raid. When Kramer arrived at the scene, he said, he saw a number of officers using masks and bandannas.
“One guy used what looked like a white sheet on his head and then sunglasses over top of it,” Kramer said.
He also noted that several of the vehicles used appeared to display civilian license plates.
In its statement to the Guardian, the MPD did not address questions about masks or vehicles. It said the gang unit was dispatched on a warrant on suspicion of cocaine trafficking, then moved to Cathey’s grandmother’s house and arrested his cousin on an unrelated outstanding assault charge.
When authorities left the scene, Kramer was in a car with several activists who decided to follow one of the unmarked cars. They did so briefly before the county sheriff sent four vehicles to pull them over, for “following too closely”.
In a video posted to Facebook Live by the driver, Spencer Kaaz, another local activist, Kramer can be heard asking “why are you putting me in handcuffs” as an officer pats him down. The other passengers decline to get out. After some time, officers uncuff Kramer. He returned to court for the rest of the day’s proceedings.
Kramer said: “The bullet point is: on the same day that the ACLU is bringing a suit against the Memphis police, [they are saying] ‘We can pull you over and put you in handcuffs whenever we want to.’”
Cathey reported being followed by one of the undercover cars later in the week. On Thursday, Franklin discovered that MPD officers had paid a late-night visit to a community garden maintained by activists in Memphis’s Concerned Citizen Coalition, the group police are principally accused of spying on.
MPD would only tell the Guardian there was no call for service made at the garden. It declined to provide a reason why officers might have been there.
The surveillance project was operated by the MPD’s office of homeland security, which officials said was “originally designed to deal with threats to the MPD or Memphis in general”.
In a deposition for the ACLU lawsuit, officials said the office had been “retooled” around 2016, due to an increase in policing-related protests and to focus on “local individuals or groups that were staging protests”.
This included the publication of daily joint information briefings on potential protests and known protesters. According to the suit, the briefings regularly included information about meetings on private property, panel discussions, town halls and even innocuous events like “Black Owned Food Truck Sunday”.
A good deal of that information appears to have been obtained by a fake MPD Facebook profile for “Bob Smith”, which the ACLU said was used “to view private posts, join private groups, and otherwise pose as a member of the activist community”.
In one case, the Bob Smith pseudonym chatted with a protester on Facebook, describing himself as “just a fellow protester” and later saying “block me if you want, but i’m not a cop”.
A federal judge is currently considering his verdict on the ACLU lawsuit. He has already ruled that the city violated a federal consent decree barring the city from engaging in political surveillance. The judge will issue rulings later on several issues, including if the ACLU has standing in the case, if the consent agreement should be modified and if police violated the activists' first amendment rights by gathering political intelligence.
Late on Friday night, Franklin and Cathey were riding in a car when they were pulled over once again, allegedly for a busted turn signal light. Franklin streamed the incident to Facebook Live.
“I guess this is shit we’re going to go through, until they get it together,” he said.
Cathey told the Guardian: “The cops intimidate and follow us and do those things because they think they can just get away with it.
“But I’m going to be that voice for the people and let them know that this is not right. You guys are not going to continue to do this shit and get away with it, point blank. Period.”
US immigration officers accused of refusing parole for asylum seekers
Detainees and their lawyers say five field offices are issuing blanket denials for humanitarian parole, violating a court order
Robert Moore in El Paso
the guardian
Wed 22 Aug 2018 05.00 EDT
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers are ignoring a court order that says they must end a practice of blanket refusal to allow asylum seekers to go free while courts decide their fate, several detainees and their lawyers say.
US district judge James E Boasberg of Washington DC, issued an injunction in July that said Ice must decide whether to grant “humanitarian parole” to asylum seekers by examining each individual case, in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year.
Before the Trump administration, more than 90% of people who applied for asylum at US ports of entry were granted parole, which allowed them to live and work in the United States while their request was considered.
But at five Ice field offices covered by the ACLU lawsuit, virtually no paroles were granted after Trump took office, even though administration officials said there had been no change in parole policy, lawyers said.
Linda Corchado, an immigration attorney in El Paso, said all 349 parole requests made to that city’s Ice field office between February and September 2017 were denied. Despite the court order, she said her clients continue to be denied parole, without any individual explanation.
“For my clients, humanitarian parole was dead a year ago and it continues to be dead,” she said.
Ice officials did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit and the parole process.
The Ice field offices covered by Boasberg’s injunction are El Paso, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey. Those offices handle about a quarter of all the asylum requests made by people presenting at ports of entry, which is a legal means of entry into the United States. For many people around the world, it is the only means available to them for legal entry into the US.
The ACLU has not yet calculated the number of parole reconsideration requests, or the denial rates, at the five ICE field offices since the court order, partly because many people do not have legal representation.
But in continuing to use standardized forms to deny parole, ICE is violating the court order and making it difficult for detainees and their lawyers to know what evidence the agency needs to set people free, said Kristin Love, an ACLU attorney based in New Mexico.
“It’s concerning to see that some of these problems persist even after the judge’s order, which clearly stated that ICE needed to do a case-by-case review of people’s parole applications,” Love said.
Nathalie, a political activist who said she fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo because she faced certain death, has been detained in El Paso area Ice facilities for almost a year and a half. She has a brother who is a US citizen in Ohio who offered to sponsor her and ensure she made her court dates, which in the past would have led to parole. But her request was rejected shortly after Trump became president.
“In 2017 I asked why I didn’t get parole. The officer said all parole was suspended in El Paso,” Nathalie said. Like other detainees interviewed in El Paso, she asked that only her first name be used because of fear of retribution in her home country.
Officially, parole was never suspended in El Paso or elsewhere, according to Ice. Shortly after Trump took office, the then homeland security, secretary John Kelly, issued a memo reiterating that the 2009 Ice directive that gave a presumption of parole for asylum seekers remained in effect. But numerous detainees have said they were told that parole ended when Trump took office.
“Several of my colleagues told me that their deportation officers have said there is no more parole,” said Musa, who fled the Gambia after leading judicial reform initiatives. Even with the warnings, Musa remained hopeful. “With the evidence I provided, it came as a surprise” when his parole request was denied, Musa said. He filed a request for reconsideration of parole in February, but never heard back.
Immigration lawyers say parole became increasingly difficult to obtain at the El Paso Ice detention center at the end of the Obama administration, before stopping completely when Trump became president. Bissoko, who fled the west African country of Mali and sought asylum at an El Paso port of entry in December 2016, said an Austin agency that helps immigrants offered to house him and teach him English if he received parole.
His request was denied on 6 January 2017, two weeks before Trump took the oath of office. “I was very, very sad. I didn’t come to this country to be imprisoned,” he said.
On 13 May, six days after the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said the Trump administration was beginning its “zero-tolerance” policy that included separating parents and children who crossed the border illegally, a man from El Salvador named Ricardo came to an El Paso port of entry with his 15-year-old daughter and requested asylum. US officials repeatedly stressed that people applying for asylum at ports of entry would not be separated from their children.
But Ricardo said US Customs and Border Protection officers took his daughter from him without explanation. “I asked, where did you take her? And one of them said: ‘We are the law now,’” Ricardo said tearfully in an interview. He was taken to the El Paso Ice detention center and she was taken to a children’s shelter in Houston.
Ricardo has a sister in Texas who took in his daughter in early June. But when a federal judge ruled a couple of weeks later that the government had to reunite all parents and children separated at the border, the Trump administration said Ricardo and an unknown number of other parents weren’t covered by the order because their children had been placed with family members.
While Ricardo watched other fathers in the El Paso detention center go free to be with their children, he remained behind bars, even though he had passed the government’s credible fear interview and had not been charged with any crime.
His only hope for being reunited with his daughter was for Ice to grant him parole, but his request was denied. “I sent a request asking why my parole was denied. They sent a letter back that just said parole denied,” Ricardo said.
On 27 July, Ice officials posted notices in El Paso and the four other detention centers covered by the injunction telling detainees that they had the right to reconsideration of their parole requests. Some detainees were told they had two days to gather evidence to support their parole application.
Several of Corchado’s clients went through the parole reconsideration process and were quickly denied, via a form that that relied on checked boxes without any further explanation of what criteria Ice used in its parole determination.
Detainees interviewed at the El Paso detention facility said only a small number of people from Cuba and Venezuela – countries with hostile relationships with the United States – have received parole since the injunction. African detainees say no one from that continent has received parole in El Paso in almost two years. About 80 or so Africans are being held at the main El Paso detention facility, they said.
Many blame racism. “Africans are treated horribly here. And if you’re African and Muslim, it’s worse,” said Bissoko, the man from Mali, who is Muslim.
Love said the ACLU is considering “a non-compliance motion that the government’s not really evaluating the cases on a case-by-case basis”. The next court hearing in the case is scheduled for 28 August.
US district judge James E Boasberg of Washington DC, issued an injunction in July that said Ice must decide whether to grant “humanitarian parole” to asylum seekers by examining each individual case, in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year.
Before the Trump administration, more than 90% of people who applied for asylum at US ports of entry were granted parole, which allowed them to live and work in the United States while their request was considered.
But at five Ice field offices covered by the ACLU lawsuit, virtually no paroles were granted after Trump took office, even though administration officials said there had been no change in parole policy, lawyers said.
Linda Corchado, an immigration attorney in El Paso, said all 349 parole requests made to that city’s Ice field office between February and September 2017 were denied. Despite the court order, she said her clients continue to be denied parole, without any individual explanation.
“For my clients, humanitarian parole was dead a year ago and it continues to be dead,” she said.
Ice officials did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit and the parole process.
The Ice field offices covered by Boasberg’s injunction are El Paso, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey. Those offices handle about a quarter of all the asylum requests made by people presenting at ports of entry, which is a legal means of entry into the United States. For many people around the world, it is the only means available to them for legal entry into the US.
The ACLU has not yet calculated the number of parole reconsideration requests, or the denial rates, at the five ICE field offices since the court order, partly because many people do not have legal representation.
But in continuing to use standardized forms to deny parole, ICE is violating the court order and making it difficult for detainees and their lawyers to know what evidence the agency needs to set people free, said Kristin Love, an ACLU attorney based in New Mexico.
“It’s concerning to see that some of these problems persist even after the judge’s order, which clearly stated that ICE needed to do a case-by-case review of people’s parole applications,” Love said.
Nathalie, a political activist who said she fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo because she faced certain death, has been detained in El Paso area Ice facilities for almost a year and a half. She has a brother who is a US citizen in Ohio who offered to sponsor her and ensure she made her court dates, which in the past would have led to parole. But her request was rejected shortly after Trump became president.
“In 2017 I asked why I didn’t get parole. The officer said all parole was suspended in El Paso,” Nathalie said. Like other detainees interviewed in El Paso, she asked that only her first name be used because of fear of retribution in her home country.
Officially, parole was never suspended in El Paso or elsewhere, according to Ice. Shortly after Trump took office, the then homeland security, secretary John Kelly, issued a memo reiterating that the 2009 Ice directive that gave a presumption of parole for asylum seekers remained in effect. But numerous detainees have said they were told that parole ended when Trump took office.
“Several of my colleagues told me that their deportation officers have said there is no more parole,” said Musa, who fled the Gambia after leading judicial reform initiatives. Even with the warnings, Musa remained hopeful. “With the evidence I provided, it came as a surprise” when his parole request was denied, Musa said. He filed a request for reconsideration of parole in February, but never heard back.
Immigration lawyers say parole became increasingly difficult to obtain at the El Paso Ice detention center at the end of the Obama administration, before stopping completely when Trump became president. Bissoko, who fled the west African country of Mali and sought asylum at an El Paso port of entry in December 2016, said an Austin agency that helps immigrants offered to house him and teach him English if he received parole.
His request was denied on 6 January 2017, two weeks before Trump took the oath of office. “I was very, very sad. I didn’t come to this country to be imprisoned,” he said.
On 13 May, six days after the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said the Trump administration was beginning its “zero-tolerance” policy that included separating parents and children who crossed the border illegally, a man from El Salvador named Ricardo came to an El Paso port of entry with his 15-year-old daughter and requested asylum. US officials repeatedly stressed that people applying for asylum at ports of entry would not be separated from their children.
But Ricardo said US Customs and Border Protection officers took his daughter from him without explanation. “I asked, where did you take her? And one of them said: ‘We are the law now,’” Ricardo said tearfully in an interview. He was taken to the El Paso Ice detention center and she was taken to a children’s shelter in Houston.
Ricardo has a sister in Texas who took in his daughter in early June. But when a federal judge ruled a couple of weeks later that the government had to reunite all parents and children separated at the border, the Trump administration said Ricardo and an unknown number of other parents weren’t covered by the order because their children had been placed with family members.
While Ricardo watched other fathers in the El Paso detention center go free to be with their children, he remained behind bars, even though he had passed the government’s credible fear interview and had not been charged with any crime.
His only hope for being reunited with his daughter was for Ice to grant him parole, but his request was denied. “I sent a request asking why my parole was denied. They sent a letter back that just said parole denied,” Ricardo said.
On 27 July, Ice officials posted notices in El Paso and the four other detention centers covered by the injunction telling detainees that they had the right to reconsideration of their parole requests. Some detainees were told they had two days to gather evidence to support their parole application.
Several of Corchado’s clients went through the parole reconsideration process and were quickly denied, via a form that that relied on checked boxes without any further explanation of what criteria Ice used in its parole determination.
Detainees interviewed at the El Paso detention facility said only a small number of people from Cuba and Venezuela – countries with hostile relationships with the United States – have received parole since the injunction. African detainees say no one from that continent has received parole in El Paso in almost two years. About 80 or so Africans are being held at the main El Paso detention facility, they said.
Many blame racism. “Africans are treated horribly here. And if you’re African and Muslim, it’s worse,” said Bissoko, the man from Mali, who is Muslim.
Love said the ACLU is considering “a non-compliance motion that the government’s not really evaluating the cases on a case-by-case basis”. The next court hearing in the case is scheduled for 28 August.
Internal ICE Emails Show How the Government Set a Trap for Undocumented Spouses of US Citizens
Two federal agencies collaborated to arrest people with a clear path to obtaining green cards.
NOAH LANARD - mother jones
AUG. 17, 2018 6:00 AM
On January 30, Lucimar de Souza, an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, went into a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office to prove her marriage to an American citizen was legitimate. It was a standard part of the process for undocumented immigrants married to US legal residents to obtain green cards, one they had long been able to take without fear of detention or deportation. But as she exited her interview, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her, causing her to be separated from her 10-year-old son. She spent the next three months in jail.
De Souza was not the only immigrant to be arrested while verifying her marriage with USCIS, nor was the arrest an accident. Internal government emails and depositions of ICE officials unsealed this week show the two agencies worked together in New England to effectively ambush undocumented immigrants like de Souza who had clear paths to obtaining green cards. The arrests were deliberately spread out over time to prevent the media from finding out about them, the documents show.
The new materials also reveal a startling lack of awareness among some ICE officials of a process that was supposed to allow undocumented immigrants married to legal residents to obtain legal status without being deported.
The documents were released as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts that seeks to block the Trump administration from detaining and deporting people in New England who may be able to obtain green cards through spouses who are US citizens. The ACLU stated in a court filing that the unsealed documents show “the stunning extent” to which a program designed to keep together the families of immigrants with deportation orders was turned into “a trap calculated to cause that separation.” The ACLU will be in a federal court in Boston on Monday to try to convince Judge Mark Wolf that people on the path to legal residency deserve protection—over the objections of the Trump administration.
It is unclear how many immigrants were arrested at USCIS interviews in New England. Adriana Lafaille, an ACLU attorney working on the case, says she is aware of 17 cases between January and mid-February, when Thomas Brophy, ICE’s acting Boston director at the time, told his officers to stop arresting people at USCIS offices. Lafaille said about four people have been deported because of the arrests. Rebecca Adducci took over as interim director in June and said in her deposition on July 26 that Brophy was wrong to stop ICE officers from arresting immigrants at USCIS offices. But she said was not aware of any arrests at USCIS offices since taking over ICE’s Boston field office, which covers all of New England.
John Mohan, an ICE spokesman in New England, declined to answer specific questions due to the pending litigation. He provided a statement that calls allegations of “inappropriate coordination” with USCIS “unfounded.” It also states, “This routine coordination within the Department of Homeland Security…is lawful and legitimate in the work we do to uphold our nation’s immigration laws.” (In January, according to one of the depositions released this week, Mohan advised against saying that ICE received a referral from USCIS, writing in an email that “media likely already know how it came about and will spin it in a twisted way anyway, so defending it is a moot point.”)
USCIS spokesman Michael Bars also said in a statement that he could not comment on the pending litigation. After receiving referrals from USCIS, he said, law enforcement agencies have the “discretion to decide whether they intend to apprehend the individual or not. USCIS is committed to adjudicating all petitions, applications and requests fairly, efficiently, and effectively.”
The interagency coordination dates back to at least October, when Mirella Tiberi, a Massachusetts section chief with USCIS, sent Andrew Graham, a deportation officer in ICE’s Boston field office, a list of undocumented immigrants with deportation orders who had submitted applications to verify their relationships to Americans with legal status. Tiberi wrote that her boss wanted to know whether ICE was interested in coordinating the interviews “so they are not all scheduled at once.” Graham responded:
As far as scheduling goes, I would prefer not to do them all at one time as it is only a strain on our ability to transport and process several arrests at once, but it also has the potential to be a trigger for negative media interest, as we have seen in the past. If you have the ability to schedule one or two at a time and spread them apart, that would work best for us.
In December, an ICE supervisor received an email stating that someone “of interest” was coming in to USCIS that morning. (The sender’s email was redacted in the released documents.) “Thanks for the reminder,” the ICE official said in a response addressed to Tiberi. “We are hoping to have two officers at your office but are getting a late start. Would it be possible to delay the interview by about fifteen minutes?”
ICE’s efforts to hide the arrests from public view worked until around late January. On January 30, ICE officials considered a media inquiry about Fabiano de Oliveira, a Brazilian man whose arrest at a USCIS office Mother Jones reported on in April. Graham sent Todd Lyons, one of ICE’s deputies in the Boston office, de Oliveira’s case file. Among other things, it stated that de Oliveira had one US citizen child and no criminal record and was arrested at a USCIS office after establishing a bona fide relationship with an American. Lyons responded that de Oliveira’s “attorney should have never advised him” to go to USCIS. “He has no path unless he leaves the country,” Lyons concluded.
Graham agreed. He wrote that it made sense to remove people with deportation orders since their cases were at “the end of the line.” He added, “They are typically the easiest to remove, they have the shortest average length of stay, and at the end of the day we are in the removal business.”
In reality, it was ICE officials like Graham and Lyons, not attorneys advising their clients to attend USCIS interviews, who appeared to be confused about immigration policy. Prior to 2016, US law generally required people with deportation orders to leave the country and apply for a waiver from abroad that allows them to obtain legal status in the United States. The process can take months, and there are no guarantees that someone will receive a waiver, so many people are reluctant to pursue them. USCIS addressed that issue in 2013 by creating a “provisional waiver” program that allows people to start the process from within the United States. In 2016, it expanded the program to include people with deportation orders.
The policy is still in effect. USCIS’s website states it was “developed to shorten the time that U.S. citizens and lawful permanent resident family members are separated from their relatives.” Detaining people at USCIS interviews, the first step in obtaining the waiver, would render the 2016 regulation meaningless. As the ACLU argued in an April court filing, “In effect, the government’s one hand beckons [people] forward, and its other hand grabs them.”
In July, seven weeks after taking over ICE’s Boston office, Adducci did not know about that policy change. During her deposition, Adducci defended the decision to detain Lilian Calderon, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who was married to a US citizen and had two young children. “I don’t think it’s fair that she takes cuts in front of somebody who is waiting outside to do it legally,” she said.
“Did you know that the regulations in 2016 specifically made non-citizens with final orders of removal who are married to US citizens eligible for the provisional waiver process?” a cross-examiner asked.
“No,” Adducci replied.
Lyons, who is set to replace Adducci after Friday as acting director, was familiar with the waiver program during his July deposition, but he agreed with Adducci that everyone with a removal order is subject to possible deportation. Lyons and Brophy had told Judge Wolf in May that arresting people at USCIS offices was a poor use of resources. Their testimonies pitted them against Christopher Cronen, the Boston field office director who initiated the arrests before being promoted in January to oversee all of ICE’s field offices in the eastern United States.
On May 22, Brophy testified that he had told his staff to stop arresting people at USCIS offices because they didn’t pose a threat to public safety or national security. He was more concerned by what he called Massachusetts’ narcotics “epidemic” than people trying to get green cards. At the time, Lyons was set to take Brophy’s spot the following week, and he said in court the next day that he would continue the policy of not arresting people at USCIS offices. ICE’s resources were, in his view, “extremely” limited, and prioritization was important.
Wolf, who was weighing whether a court order was needed to protect people trying to obtain legal status, wanted to know how long Lyons could serve as ICE’s acting director in Boston. “Legally, sir, it’s eight months,” Lyons replied, “unless they decide to promote me.”
One week after the hearing, David Jennings, Cronen’s boss, asked Adducci if she would temporarily leave her role as the head of ICE’s Detroit office to run things in Boston for two months. By early June, Lyons was back to being deputy after only four days at the top.
Later that month, Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing that Adducci would not abide by any previous statements from Boston ICE leaders that contradict a January 2017 executive order from President Donald Trump that blocks ICE from exempting “classes or categories of removable aliens.” She said in her deposition that Brophy contradicted the order by deciding not to detain people at USCIS interviews if they didn’t pose a safety risk.
Adducci said she doesn’t “anticipate” deportations of people arrested at USCIS offices, but she wouldn’t prohibit it either. She also hasn’t told her officers to consider whether people were arrested at a USCIS office when deciding whether to remove them from the United States. (The ACLU’s lawsuit would protect undocumented immigrants who may be eligible for waivers through their spouses from being arrested anywhere, not just at USCIS offices.)
The number of people arrested at USCIS offices in New England is a tiny fraction of the 143,470 people arrested by ICE in the last fiscal year. But the arrests send an outsize message to undocumented immigrants that they’re not safe from deportation even in spaces where the government is encouraging them to show up. Lafaille believes the arrests make no sense. “All they want is to just live at peace with their families, to continue contributing to their communities,” she says. “Why would we ever spend a penny to make that more difficult?”
At Adducci’s deposition, a cross-examiner brought up the case of de Souza, the Brazilian woman who was arrested at a USCIS office on January 30. “Did you know that she was separated from her son for over three months while she was detained?” Adducci was asked.
She seemed unsure how to answer. “I mean, I would—” she began. “Hopefully she got to see him.”
De Souza was not the only immigrant to be arrested while verifying her marriage with USCIS, nor was the arrest an accident. Internal government emails and depositions of ICE officials unsealed this week show the two agencies worked together in New England to effectively ambush undocumented immigrants like de Souza who had clear paths to obtaining green cards. The arrests were deliberately spread out over time to prevent the media from finding out about them, the documents show.
The new materials also reveal a startling lack of awareness among some ICE officials of a process that was supposed to allow undocumented immigrants married to legal residents to obtain legal status without being deported.
The documents were released as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts that seeks to block the Trump administration from detaining and deporting people in New England who may be able to obtain green cards through spouses who are US citizens. The ACLU stated in a court filing that the unsealed documents show “the stunning extent” to which a program designed to keep together the families of immigrants with deportation orders was turned into “a trap calculated to cause that separation.” The ACLU will be in a federal court in Boston on Monday to try to convince Judge Mark Wolf that people on the path to legal residency deserve protection—over the objections of the Trump administration.
It is unclear how many immigrants were arrested at USCIS interviews in New England. Adriana Lafaille, an ACLU attorney working on the case, says she is aware of 17 cases between January and mid-February, when Thomas Brophy, ICE’s acting Boston director at the time, told his officers to stop arresting people at USCIS offices. Lafaille said about four people have been deported because of the arrests. Rebecca Adducci took over as interim director in June and said in her deposition on July 26 that Brophy was wrong to stop ICE officers from arresting immigrants at USCIS offices. But she said was not aware of any arrests at USCIS offices since taking over ICE’s Boston field office, which covers all of New England.
John Mohan, an ICE spokesman in New England, declined to answer specific questions due to the pending litigation. He provided a statement that calls allegations of “inappropriate coordination” with USCIS “unfounded.” It also states, “This routine coordination within the Department of Homeland Security…is lawful and legitimate in the work we do to uphold our nation’s immigration laws.” (In January, according to one of the depositions released this week, Mohan advised against saying that ICE received a referral from USCIS, writing in an email that “media likely already know how it came about and will spin it in a twisted way anyway, so defending it is a moot point.”)
USCIS spokesman Michael Bars also said in a statement that he could not comment on the pending litigation. After receiving referrals from USCIS, he said, law enforcement agencies have the “discretion to decide whether they intend to apprehend the individual or not. USCIS is committed to adjudicating all petitions, applications and requests fairly, efficiently, and effectively.”
The interagency coordination dates back to at least October, when Mirella Tiberi, a Massachusetts section chief with USCIS, sent Andrew Graham, a deportation officer in ICE’s Boston field office, a list of undocumented immigrants with deportation orders who had submitted applications to verify their relationships to Americans with legal status. Tiberi wrote that her boss wanted to know whether ICE was interested in coordinating the interviews “so they are not all scheduled at once.” Graham responded:
As far as scheduling goes, I would prefer not to do them all at one time as it is only a strain on our ability to transport and process several arrests at once, but it also has the potential to be a trigger for negative media interest, as we have seen in the past. If you have the ability to schedule one or two at a time and spread them apart, that would work best for us.
In December, an ICE supervisor received an email stating that someone “of interest” was coming in to USCIS that morning. (The sender’s email was redacted in the released documents.) “Thanks for the reminder,” the ICE official said in a response addressed to Tiberi. “We are hoping to have two officers at your office but are getting a late start. Would it be possible to delay the interview by about fifteen minutes?”
ICE’s efforts to hide the arrests from public view worked until around late January. On January 30, ICE officials considered a media inquiry about Fabiano de Oliveira, a Brazilian man whose arrest at a USCIS office Mother Jones reported on in April. Graham sent Todd Lyons, one of ICE’s deputies in the Boston office, de Oliveira’s case file. Among other things, it stated that de Oliveira had one US citizen child and no criminal record and was arrested at a USCIS office after establishing a bona fide relationship with an American. Lyons responded that de Oliveira’s “attorney should have never advised him” to go to USCIS. “He has no path unless he leaves the country,” Lyons concluded.
Graham agreed. He wrote that it made sense to remove people with deportation orders since their cases were at “the end of the line.” He added, “They are typically the easiest to remove, they have the shortest average length of stay, and at the end of the day we are in the removal business.”
In reality, it was ICE officials like Graham and Lyons, not attorneys advising their clients to attend USCIS interviews, who appeared to be confused about immigration policy. Prior to 2016, US law generally required people with deportation orders to leave the country and apply for a waiver from abroad that allows them to obtain legal status in the United States. The process can take months, and there are no guarantees that someone will receive a waiver, so many people are reluctant to pursue them. USCIS addressed that issue in 2013 by creating a “provisional waiver” program that allows people to start the process from within the United States. In 2016, it expanded the program to include people with deportation orders.
The policy is still in effect. USCIS’s website states it was “developed to shorten the time that U.S. citizens and lawful permanent resident family members are separated from their relatives.” Detaining people at USCIS interviews, the first step in obtaining the waiver, would render the 2016 regulation meaningless. As the ACLU argued in an April court filing, “In effect, the government’s one hand beckons [people] forward, and its other hand grabs them.”
In July, seven weeks after taking over ICE’s Boston office, Adducci did not know about that policy change. During her deposition, Adducci defended the decision to detain Lilian Calderon, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who was married to a US citizen and had two young children. “I don’t think it’s fair that she takes cuts in front of somebody who is waiting outside to do it legally,” she said.
“Did you know that the regulations in 2016 specifically made non-citizens with final orders of removal who are married to US citizens eligible for the provisional waiver process?” a cross-examiner asked.
“No,” Adducci replied.
Lyons, who is set to replace Adducci after Friday as acting director, was familiar with the waiver program during his July deposition, but he agreed with Adducci that everyone with a removal order is subject to possible deportation. Lyons and Brophy had told Judge Wolf in May that arresting people at USCIS offices was a poor use of resources. Their testimonies pitted them against Christopher Cronen, the Boston field office director who initiated the arrests before being promoted in January to oversee all of ICE’s field offices in the eastern United States.
On May 22, Brophy testified that he had told his staff to stop arresting people at USCIS offices because they didn’t pose a threat to public safety or national security. He was more concerned by what he called Massachusetts’ narcotics “epidemic” than people trying to get green cards. At the time, Lyons was set to take Brophy’s spot the following week, and he said in court the next day that he would continue the policy of not arresting people at USCIS offices. ICE’s resources were, in his view, “extremely” limited, and prioritization was important.
Wolf, who was weighing whether a court order was needed to protect people trying to obtain legal status, wanted to know how long Lyons could serve as ICE’s acting director in Boston. “Legally, sir, it’s eight months,” Lyons replied, “unless they decide to promote me.”
One week after the hearing, David Jennings, Cronen’s boss, asked Adducci if she would temporarily leave her role as the head of ICE’s Detroit office to run things in Boston for two months. By early June, Lyons was back to being deputy after only four days at the top.
Later that month, Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing that Adducci would not abide by any previous statements from Boston ICE leaders that contradict a January 2017 executive order from President Donald Trump that blocks ICE from exempting “classes or categories of removable aliens.” She said in her deposition that Brophy contradicted the order by deciding not to detain people at USCIS interviews if they didn’t pose a safety risk.
Adducci said she doesn’t “anticipate” deportations of people arrested at USCIS offices, but she wouldn’t prohibit it either. She also hasn’t told her officers to consider whether people were arrested at a USCIS office when deciding whether to remove them from the United States. (The ACLU’s lawsuit would protect undocumented immigrants who may be eligible for waivers through their spouses from being arrested anywhere, not just at USCIS offices.)
The number of people arrested at USCIS offices in New England is a tiny fraction of the 143,470 people arrested by ICE in the last fiscal year. But the arrests send an outsize message to undocumented immigrants that they’re not safe from deportation even in spaces where the government is encouraging them to show up. Lafaille believes the arrests make no sense. “All they want is to just live at peace with their families, to continue contributing to their communities,” she says. “Why would we ever spend a penny to make that more difficult?”
At Adducci’s deposition, a cross-examiner brought up the case of de Souza, the Brazilian woman who was arrested at a USCIS office on January 30. “Did you know that she was separated from her son for over three months while she was detained?” Adducci was asked.
She seemed unsure how to answer. “I mean, I would—” she began. “Hopefully she got to see him.”
ICE agents set ‘trap’ for immigrants seeking legal residency
"...It’s our job to locate and arrest them."
REBEKAH ENTRALGO - thinkprogress
AUG 14, 2018, 12:04 PM
Two federal immigration agencies worked together in a coordinated effort to set deportation traps for unsuspecting immigrants seeking legal status, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleged in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen this week.
According to the Boston Globe, the two agencies arranged meetings for the undocumented immigrants at government offices, where they were subsequently arrested, and in some cases deported.
According to e-mails obtained by the Globe between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), ICE asked government officials to space out the meetings so that the public wouldn’t catch on and draw “negative media interests.”
“As far as scheduling goes, I would prefer not to do them all at one time as it is [not] only a strain on our ability to transport and process several arrests at once, but it also has the potential to be a trigger for negative media interests, as we have seen in the past,” Andrew Graham, an ICE officer, wrote to a USCIS employee in one email from October.
“In my opinion, it makes sense for us to arrest aliens with final removal orders as they represent the end of the line in the removal process,” Graham said in a separate email from January. “They are typically the easiest to remove…and at the end of the day we are in the removal business and it’s our job to locate and arrest them.”
ACLU lawyers described the meetings as “traps.”
According to the Globe, the e-mails are part of the lawsuit against DHS Secretary Nielsen challenging the Trump administration’s practice of separating married couples as one spouse seeks legal status.
The plaintiff in the case, Lilian Calderon, is a 30-year-old Guatemalan-born mother of two who was brought to the United States when she was just two years old. According to the ACLU, she and her husband visited the UCSIS office in Rhode Island in January this year to start the process of becoming a legal permanent resident.
The ACLU of Massachusetts, which filed the lawsuit on her behalf, claims Calderon had already completed a “successful interview” when she was arrested by ICE agents and transported to a detention facility in Boston.
“Ever since that day, [our daughter] asks me why her mom has left… I’ve lost my best friend. I’m asking for her release because she needs to be with her family, and her children miss her,” Luis Calderon, Lilian’s husband, told the ACLU. “I don’t understand why this is happening when we thought we were doing everything right to keep our family together.”
A month after her arrest, and following a lengthy length legal back-and-forth, Federal Judge Mark Wolf issued an order barring ICE officials from deporting Calderon while the lawsuit was pending. On February 13, ICE finally released her from detention.
Calderon’s case, is far too familiar to many immigrant families across the country.
Lucimar De Souza, a Brazilian immigrant, lives with her American husband of more than 10 years and the couple’s child. De Souza was arrested in January at a UCSIS interview while attempting to prove her marriage was legitimate. She remained in ICE custody for more than four months.
“They put you in there and you have no idea when you are going to leave,” De Souza said at a press conference in May, days after her release. “Each day it’s one more day, one more day, but you never know. You hope it’s soon…but when?”
The federal government’s tactic of trapping immigrants seeking legal status squares with a Monday report by NBC News that found federal arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants have tripled under the Trump administration. In the first 14 months of the Trump administration alone, 58,010 undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions were arrested, many of them without warrants.
In one example previously highlighted by ThinkProgress, an undocumented mother who had been awarded a temporary work visa was detained by ICE during a routine check-in. According to her daughter, she was deported to Colombia, after living in the United States for 13 years.
According to the Boston Globe, the two agencies arranged meetings for the undocumented immigrants at government offices, where they were subsequently arrested, and in some cases deported.
According to e-mails obtained by the Globe between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), ICE asked government officials to space out the meetings so that the public wouldn’t catch on and draw “negative media interests.”
“As far as scheduling goes, I would prefer not to do them all at one time as it is [not] only a strain on our ability to transport and process several arrests at once, but it also has the potential to be a trigger for negative media interests, as we have seen in the past,” Andrew Graham, an ICE officer, wrote to a USCIS employee in one email from October.
“In my opinion, it makes sense for us to arrest aliens with final removal orders as they represent the end of the line in the removal process,” Graham said in a separate email from January. “They are typically the easiest to remove…and at the end of the day we are in the removal business and it’s our job to locate and arrest them.”
ACLU lawyers described the meetings as “traps.”
According to the Globe, the e-mails are part of the lawsuit against DHS Secretary Nielsen challenging the Trump administration’s practice of separating married couples as one spouse seeks legal status.
The plaintiff in the case, Lilian Calderon, is a 30-year-old Guatemalan-born mother of two who was brought to the United States when she was just two years old. According to the ACLU, she and her husband visited the UCSIS office in Rhode Island in January this year to start the process of becoming a legal permanent resident.
The ACLU of Massachusetts, which filed the lawsuit on her behalf, claims Calderon had already completed a “successful interview” when she was arrested by ICE agents and transported to a detention facility in Boston.
“Ever since that day, [our daughter] asks me why her mom has left… I’ve lost my best friend. I’m asking for her release because she needs to be with her family, and her children miss her,” Luis Calderon, Lilian’s husband, told the ACLU. “I don’t understand why this is happening when we thought we were doing everything right to keep our family together.”
A month after her arrest, and following a lengthy length legal back-and-forth, Federal Judge Mark Wolf issued an order barring ICE officials from deporting Calderon while the lawsuit was pending. On February 13, ICE finally released her from detention.
Calderon’s case, is far too familiar to many immigrant families across the country.
Lucimar De Souza, a Brazilian immigrant, lives with her American husband of more than 10 years and the couple’s child. De Souza was arrested in January at a UCSIS interview while attempting to prove her marriage was legitimate. She remained in ICE custody for more than four months.
“They put you in there and you have no idea when you are going to leave,” De Souza said at a press conference in May, days after her release. “Each day it’s one more day, one more day, but you never know. You hope it’s soon…but when?”
The federal government’s tactic of trapping immigrants seeking legal status squares with a Monday report by NBC News that found federal arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants have tripled under the Trump administration. In the first 14 months of the Trump administration alone, 58,010 undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions were arrested, many of them without warrants.
In one example previously highlighted by ThinkProgress, an undocumented mother who had been awarded a temporary work visa was detained by ICE during a routine check-in. According to her daughter, she was deported to Colombia, after living in the United States for 13 years.
Drunken NYC cop unleashes racist terror on black family after mistakenly barging into their home
Travis Gettys - raw story
14 AUG 2018 AT 10:05 ET
An apparently intoxicated New York City police officer is accused of kicking down a black family’s door and making racist threats while vacationing in Tennessee.
The officer, whose name has not been released, allegedly broke into the family’s Nashville home after mistaking it for the Airbnb he had rented while visiting Music City, reported the Tennessean.
Nashville police are investigating the July 9 incident in the 12 South neighborhood, where residents are fed up with rowdy tourists staying in rental properties for weekend vacations.
The officer allegedly kicked in the door at 2:30 a.m. after Conese Halliburton’s teenage son heard him shouting outside from the front lawn.
“This is my motherf*cking house!” the man repeatedly screamed after barging into the family’s home.
The 40-year-old Halliburton called police and begged for help as her two oldest sons, ages 17 and 11, held the intruder in a back hallway.
The man left the house after 911 dispatchers told her police were nearby, and a neighbor’s surveillance camera caught the off-duty officer making racist threats on his way outside.
“Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every f*cking bone in your f*cking neck,” the officer said, before calling the family “f*cking n*ggers.”
Officers were unable to find the suspect after they arrived, but Halliburton and a neighbor confronted him the following morning at the Airbnb — and surveillance video captured his apology for breaking into the house.
Halliburton called police again afterward, and they arrived two hours later to investigate.
“It’s traumatizing,” said Halliburton, who also has an 8-year-old child. “I’m working on no sleep at all. I’m out here having nightmares, my kids are having nightmares. They’re staying up all night because he’s still out there.”
Nashville police confirmed the New York City Police Department officer returned for questioning earlier this month, but no charges have been filed in the investigation, which remains ongoing.
The officer, whose name has not been released, allegedly broke into the family’s Nashville home after mistaking it for the Airbnb he had rented while visiting Music City, reported the Tennessean.
Nashville police are investigating the July 9 incident in the 12 South neighborhood, where residents are fed up with rowdy tourists staying in rental properties for weekend vacations.
The officer allegedly kicked in the door at 2:30 a.m. after Conese Halliburton’s teenage son heard him shouting outside from the front lawn.
“This is my motherf*cking house!” the man repeatedly screamed after barging into the family’s home.
The 40-year-old Halliburton called police and begged for help as her two oldest sons, ages 17 and 11, held the intruder in a back hallway.
The man left the house after 911 dispatchers told her police were nearby, and a neighbor’s surveillance camera caught the off-duty officer making racist threats on his way outside.
“Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every f*cking bone in your f*cking neck,” the officer said, before calling the family “f*cking n*ggers.”
Officers were unable to find the suspect after they arrived, but Halliburton and a neighbor confronted him the following morning at the Airbnb — and surveillance video captured his apology for breaking into the house.
Halliburton called police again afterward, and they arrived two hours later to investigate.
“It’s traumatizing,” said Halliburton, who also has an 8-year-old child. “I’m working on no sleep at all. I’m out here having nightmares, my kids are having nightmares. They’re staying up all night because he’s still out there.”
Nashville police confirmed the New York City Police Department officer returned for questioning earlier this month, but no charges have been filed in the investigation, which remains ongoing.
Police confronted over alleged 'bait truck' of Nike shoes left in black Chicago community
Josh Hafner, USA TODAY
Published 4:48 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2018
Community members confronted a circle of police in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood over a "bait truck" allegedly filled with Nike shoes and left open by police aiming to lure potential thieves and make arrests.
"Y'all dirty, man," a man tells officers in an online video of the incident published Thursday. "Y'all see kids playing ball and you pull a f----- Nike truck into the ghetto."
Charles McKenzie, an anti-crime activist who put the video on Facebook, told Vox that the truck appeared next to a basketball court frequented by young people in the largely black neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago.
And while both local and federal agencies conduct such "bait" operations, the site reported, neither Chicago police nor the FBI offered comment on the truck.
Authorities use everything from fake drugs and modified cars to GPS-affixed packages and bikes to weed out thieves nationwide. Theft of in-transit property, known as cargo theft, caused nearly $27 million in losses in 2016, according to FBI data.
But some community members perceived an alleged bait truck, left in an impoverished neighborhood near a basketball court, as an obvious attempt to target black youth as racially lopsided arrests unfold nationwide.
"The police parked a truck with boxes of Nike shoes in front of kids, lifted up," McKenzie, the activist, said on Facebook, "and when people hop in the truck, the police hopping out on them."
McKenzie founded God's Gorrilas, a group promoting job assistance and alternatives to violence in Chicago. His video, which has 630,000 views on Facebook, later picked up another 290,000 views on WorldStar.
In another video, YouTuber Martin G. Johnson allegedly depicts the bait truck traveling between locations with "plainsclothes, FBI-looking type guys." Once parked, he films community members telling authorities to remove the vehicle from their neighborhood.
"Kids shouldn't be breaking back into trucks," a police officer responds.
After the confrontation, however, the white truck is driven away.
"That's what advocacy looks like," one man says. "Good job, people." (video)
"Y'all dirty, man," a man tells officers in an online video of the incident published Thursday. "Y'all see kids playing ball and you pull a f----- Nike truck into the ghetto."
Charles McKenzie, an anti-crime activist who put the video on Facebook, told Vox that the truck appeared next to a basketball court frequented by young people in the largely black neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago.
And while both local and federal agencies conduct such "bait" operations, the site reported, neither Chicago police nor the FBI offered comment on the truck.
Authorities use everything from fake drugs and modified cars to GPS-affixed packages and bikes to weed out thieves nationwide. Theft of in-transit property, known as cargo theft, caused nearly $27 million in losses in 2016, according to FBI data.
But some community members perceived an alleged bait truck, left in an impoverished neighborhood near a basketball court, as an obvious attempt to target black youth as racially lopsided arrests unfold nationwide.
"The police parked a truck with boxes of Nike shoes in front of kids, lifted up," McKenzie, the activist, said on Facebook, "and when people hop in the truck, the police hopping out on them."
McKenzie founded God's Gorrilas, a group promoting job assistance and alternatives to violence in Chicago. His video, which has 630,000 views on Facebook, later picked up another 290,000 views on WorldStar.
In another video, YouTuber Martin G. Johnson allegedly depicts the bait truck traveling between locations with "plainsclothes, FBI-looking type guys." Once parked, he films community members telling authorities to remove the vehicle from their neighborhood.
"Kids shouldn't be breaking back into trucks," a police officer responds.
After the confrontation, however, the white truck is driven away.
"That's what advocacy looks like," one man says. "Good job, people." (video)
MICHAEL BROWN DEATH ANNIVERSARY: 12 UNARMED BLACK MEN HAVE BEEN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE IN 2018
BY MARIA PEREZ - newsweek
ON 8/7/18 AT 5:00 AM
It’s been four years since Michael Brown was killed. The unarmed black teenager was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.
On that day, Wilson received a report of a theft at a convenience store when he spotted Brown, who matched the suspect's description. There was an altercation between the two, leading to a police chase. Wilson fired his gun 12 times at Brown, hitting him about six times, according to The New York Times. Some witnesses, including Wilson, said Brown charged at him. Other witnesses said he had his hands up in the air when Wilson shot at him, while others said he only raised his hands briefly and put them back down, according to The New York Times.
Since the 18-year-old’s death, thousands more have been the victims of police violence. According to The Washington Post's Fatal Force database, 559 people have been shot and killed by police in 2018, inluding 12 unarmed black men, according to the database. Here are the 12 unarmed black men who have been shot and killed by police this year:
1. Antwon Rose: The unarmed 17-year-old was shot and killed by police in June in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rose, a high school student, was shot on June 19, after police responded to reports of a vehicle leaving the scene where a 22-year-old was shot. Police detained the driver when Rose and another person left the car and began running. Officer Michael Rosfeld shot and killed Rose, and was charged with criminal homicide in June, The New York Times reported.
2. Stephon Clark: Clark, 22, was shot and killed in his backyard in March after police officers mistook his cellphone for a weapon. The Sacramento Police Department responded to a 911 call of a man breaking into parked cars in the neighborhood and followed the instructions of the department’s helicopter team, which said it saw a suspect pick up a toolbar and break a window of a home before he ran into his own backyard. Video released by the SPD showed the police asking the black father of two to “show me your hands” before someone else yelled “gun” and began firing.
3. Rashaun Washington: The 36-year-old black man from Vineland, New Jersey, was shot and killed by a Vineland police officer on July 14, KYW-TV reported. The officer, who was placed on administrative leave after the shooting, allegedly shot the unarmed man three times. Some witnesses told the news station that the officers sicced a K-9 dog on Washington who bit him several times, causing him to bleed to death, according to the news station.
“Please do not push this case to the side, being as though it was an officer, and let it go. We need justification for Rashaun,” Dawn Fisher, Washington’s cousin, told the news station.
4. Anthony Marcell Green: Anthony “Tony” Green, 33, was shot and killed by a police officer in Kingsland, Georgia, on June 20. A Kingsland police officer was following a vehicle at the intersection of Lily Street and North East Street in Kingsland when two people fled from the vehicle, WTLV reported. The officer chased after them and when he reached Green, an altercation ensued, which eventually led to the officer firing his gun at Green, killing him, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
5. Robert Lawrence White: The 41-year-old man from Silver Spring, Maryland, was shot and killed on June 11 by a Maryland County police officer, WTOP reported. The officer was in the area responding to another 911 call when White allegedly approached him because he seemed suspicious and “became combative,” causing an altercation, The Washington Post reported. The unarmed black man was shot and killed. There were no weapons found at the scene. The officer, Anand Badgujar, was cleared of the killing by Maryland prosecutors in June, according to The Washington Post.
6. Marcus-David L. Peters: The unarmed 24-year-old black man was shocked with a stun gun before he was shot on May 14, in Richmond, Virginia, WWBT reported. Peters was having a mental episode when he was shot and killed by Richmond Police officer Michael Nyantakyi, according to the news station.
"There are protocols, policies and procedures that well-trained departments follow when somebody exhibits signs of what appears to me to be excited delirium,” said Jonathan Halperin, Peters’s family attorney, told the news station.
7. Juan Markee Jones: Jones, 25, was shot and killed in Danville, Virginia, on April 8, by Danville police officers. Authorities said they were responding to a disturbance call when officers approached Jones, whom they suspected of attacking a woman, according to The Seattle Times. Police said Jones ignored their commands, drove to a wooded area and refused to show his hands when he was confronted by officers again. Officers deployed a stun gun at Jones, but it did not work, the publication reported. Jones then became “threatening” to the officers, which caused them to fire their guns, according to The Seattle Times.
8. Danny Thomas: The 35-year-old was shot and killed in Greenspoint, Texas, on March 22, by a deputy police officer. Cameron Brewer, a deputy at the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston, shot the unarmed black man after he stopped him at an intersection of Greens Road and Imperial Valley Drive in Greenspoint, because he was acting erratically, KHOU11 reported. Brewer, who is also black, was placed on administrative leave after the shooting and then fired, CNN reported.
9. Cameron Hall: Hall, 27, was shot and killed in a house in Casa Grande, Arizona, on March 15. Casa Grande Police told KNXV-TV that police were dispatched to a home in Casa Grande where they were confronted by Hall, who assaulted a police officer. Officers said they tried to use their stun gun on Hall to bring him down, but it did not work, which eventually led to the officers shooting and killing the unarmed black man.
10. Shermichael Ezeff: Ezeff, 31, was shot and killed in an apartment complex in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on March 14, WAFB reported. Ezeff, who experienced a psychotic breakdown two days before he was killed, came into contact with a police deputy from the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department who was serving court papers at an apartment complex in Baton Rouge, KATC reported. The 31-year-old was covered in blood and had a cut on his arm when an altercation took place and caused the deputy to shoot Ezeff once, KATC reported.
11. Ronell Foster: Foster, 32, was shot and killed on February 13, while he was riding his bike in Vallejo, California, KTVU reported. A Vallejo police department officer stopped Foster while he was riding his bike around 7:40 p.m. after a domestic dispute between him and his girlfriend, according to the news station. A “violent physical struggle” broke out between the two, but the officer fired his gun, killing Foster, KTVU reported. Police said the officer attempted to use a taser, but it did not work.
12. Arthur McAfee Jr.: The 61-year-old black Vietnam veteran was shot and killed by a police officer on January 20, in Longview, Texas. Harrison County Sheriff Department Sergeant Jeff McAndrews responded to a 911 call to do a welfare check on McAfee when the 61-year-old attacked his sister and McAndrews, KLTV reported. McAndrews shot the unarmed black veteran during the scuffle.
RELATED: Black Lives Matter activists crash wedding of officer involved in Stephon Clark shooting
A group of Black Lives Matter activists crashed the wedding of a Sacramento police officer who was involved in the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old black man earlier this year, according to video obtained by CBS 13 Sacramento. The news network repor ... (The Hill)
On that day, Wilson received a report of a theft at a convenience store when he spotted Brown, who matched the suspect's description. There was an altercation between the two, leading to a police chase. Wilson fired his gun 12 times at Brown, hitting him about six times, according to The New York Times. Some witnesses, including Wilson, said Brown charged at him. Other witnesses said he had his hands up in the air when Wilson shot at him, while others said he only raised his hands briefly and put them back down, according to The New York Times.
Since the 18-year-old’s death, thousands more have been the victims of police violence. According to The Washington Post's Fatal Force database, 559 people have been shot and killed by police in 2018, inluding 12 unarmed black men, according to the database. Here are the 12 unarmed black men who have been shot and killed by police this year:
1. Antwon Rose: The unarmed 17-year-old was shot and killed by police in June in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rose, a high school student, was shot on June 19, after police responded to reports of a vehicle leaving the scene where a 22-year-old was shot. Police detained the driver when Rose and another person left the car and began running. Officer Michael Rosfeld shot and killed Rose, and was charged with criminal homicide in June, The New York Times reported.
2. Stephon Clark: Clark, 22, was shot and killed in his backyard in March after police officers mistook his cellphone for a weapon. The Sacramento Police Department responded to a 911 call of a man breaking into parked cars in the neighborhood and followed the instructions of the department’s helicopter team, which said it saw a suspect pick up a toolbar and break a window of a home before he ran into his own backyard. Video released by the SPD showed the police asking the black father of two to “show me your hands” before someone else yelled “gun” and began firing.
3. Rashaun Washington: The 36-year-old black man from Vineland, New Jersey, was shot and killed by a Vineland police officer on July 14, KYW-TV reported. The officer, who was placed on administrative leave after the shooting, allegedly shot the unarmed man three times. Some witnesses told the news station that the officers sicced a K-9 dog on Washington who bit him several times, causing him to bleed to death, according to the news station.
“Please do not push this case to the side, being as though it was an officer, and let it go. We need justification for Rashaun,” Dawn Fisher, Washington’s cousin, told the news station.
4. Anthony Marcell Green: Anthony “Tony” Green, 33, was shot and killed by a police officer in Kingsland, Georgia, on June 20. A Kingsland police officer was following a vehicle at the intersection of Lily Street and North East Street in Kingsland when two people fled from the vehicle, WTLV reported. The officer chased after them and when he reached Green, an altercation ensued, which eventually led to the officer firing his gun at Green, killing him, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
5. Robert Lawrence White: The 41-year-old man from Silver Spring, Maryland, was shot and killed on June 11 by a Maryland County police officer, WTOP reported. The officer was in the area responding to another 911 call when White allegedly approached him because he seemed suspicious and “became combative,” causing an altercation, The Washington Post reported. The unarmed black man was shot and killed. There were no weapons found at the scene. The officer, Anand Badgujar, was cleared of the killing by Maryland prosecutors in June, according to The Washington Post.
6. Marcus-David L. Peters: The unarmed 24-year-old black man was shocked with a stun gun before he was shot on May 14, in Richmond, Virginia, WWBT reported. Peters was having a mental episode when he was shot and killed by Richmond Police officer Michael Nyantakyi, according to the news station.
"There are protocols, policies and procedures that well-trained departments follow when somebody exhibits signs of what appears to me to be excited delirium,” said Jonathan Halperin, Peters’s family attorney, told the news station.
7. Juan Markee Jones: Jones, 25, was shot and killed in Danville, Virginia, on April 8, by Danville police officers. Authorities said they were responding to a disturbance call when officers approached Jones, whom they suspected of attacking a woman, according to The Seattle Times. Police said Jones ignored their commands, drove to a wooded area and refused to show his hands when he was confronted by officers again. Officers deployed a stun gun at Jones, but it did not work, the publication reported. Jones then became “threatening” to the officers, which caused them to fire their guns, according to The Seattle Times.
8. Danny Thomas: The 35-year-old was shot and killed in Greenspoint, Texas, on March 22, by a deputy police officer. Cameron Brewer, a deputy at the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston, shot the unarmed black man after he stopped him at an intersection of Greens Road and Imperial Valley Drive in Greenspoint, because he was acting erratically, KHOU11 reported. Brewer, who is also black, was placed on administrative leave after the shooting and then fired, CNN reported.
9. Cameron Hall: Hall, 27, was shot and killed in a house in Casa Grande, Arizona, on March 15. Casa Grande Police told KNXV-TV that police were dispatched to a home in Casa Grande where they were confronted by Hall, who assaulted a police officer. Officers said they tried to use their stun gun on Hall to bring him down, but it did not work, which eventually led to the officers shooting and killing the unarmed black man.
10. Shermichael Ezeff: Ezeff, 31, was shot and killed in an apartment complex in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on March 14, WAFB reported. Ezeff, who experienced a psychotic breakdown two days before he was killed, came into contact with a police deputy from the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department who was serving court papers at an apartment complex in Baton Rouge, KATC reported. The 31-year-old was covered in blood and had a cut on his arm when an altercation took place and caused the deputy to shoot Ezeff once, KATC reported.
11. Ronell Foster: Foster, 32, was shot and killed on February 13, while he was riding his bike in Vallejo, California, KTVU reported. A Vallejo police department officer stopped Foster while he was riding his bike around 7:40 p.m. after a domestic dispute between him and his girlfriend, according to the news station. A “violent physical struggle” broke out between the two, but the officer fired his gun, killing Foster, KTVU reported. Police said the officer attempted to use a taser, but it did not work.
12. Arthur McAfee Jr.: The 61-year-old black Vietnam veteran was shot and killed by a police officer on January 20, in Longview, Texas. Harrison County Sheriff Department Sergeant Jeff McAndrews responded to a 911 call to do a welfare check on McAfee when the 61-year-old attacked his sister and McAndrews, KLTV reported. McAndrews shot the unarmed black veteran during the scuffle.
RELATED: Black Lives Matter activists crash wedding of officer involved in Stephon Clark shooting
A group of Black Lives Matter activists crashed the wedding of a Sacramento police officer who was involved in the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old black man earlier this year, according to video obtained by CBS 13 Sacramento. The news network repor ... (The Hill)
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