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december 10, 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
*Texas cops made more than $50 million in 2017 from seizing people’s property — not everyone was guilty
(excerpt BELOW)
*‘If he had been white they wouldn’t have shot him’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Feds: Ex-Baltimore police officer admitted misconduct, expanding scope of Gun Trace Task Force corruption probe(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Border Patrol Agent Charged With Capital Murder In Texas
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Black good Samaritan helps his drunk neighbor back into his house — and then is arrested himself
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*After Inventing ‘Black Identity Extremists’, FBI Now Forced to Take White Domestic Terrorists Seriously with the Emergence of the Proud Boys(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Incredibly disturbing’: Former reserve deputy gets probation for child porn — after facing potential life term in prison(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Chicago State’s Attorney’s Actions Lead to Fresh Wave of Exonerations of Men Framed by Rogue Cops
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Welcome to the white man's world': police officer accused of shocking attack on Latino teen
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*New Massachusetts police union leader railed against ‘social justice warriors’ and restraints on violence
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CAN ICE LEGALLY FORCE IMMIGRANTS TO CHEER FOR DONALD TRUMP?
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*BORDER PATROL UNION ENDORSES EXTREMIST VIDEO FEATURING WHITE NATIONALISTS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*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)
*GESTAPO usa FUNNIES(below)
Texas cops made more than $50 million in 2017 from seizing people’s property — not everyone was guilty
Texas Tribune - raw story
10 DEC 2018 AT 05:52 ET
In February 2016, prosecutors in Houston filed a lawsuit against a truck: State of Texas vs. One 2003 Chevrolet Silverado.
Houston police had seized the vehicle after surveilling its driver, Macario Hernandez, and pulling him over after he left his house. They took the truck to court, hoping to keep it or sell it at auction to fund their operations, claiming the vehicle was known to be involved in the drug trade.
But the truck’s owner, Oralia Rodriguez, was never charged with a crime. She wasn’t at the scene when officers pulled over Hernandez, her son, and found 13.5 grams of marijuana in his pocket. In fact, Rodriguez said she had recently loaned him the car so he could drive his pregnant girlfriend to the doctor. The girlfriend was having difficulty with her pregnancy and was at risk of losing the baby, Rodriguez said. She was desperate not to lose her truck, which had recently had new tires installed among other repairs, which she was still working to pay off.
“My sole intention was to help out. … Now I am in this situation of losing what I have worked very hard for,” she wrote to local prosecutors. “I am begging you please allow me to have my truck back.”
Seven weeks after police pulled over the truck, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office resolved the suit and agreed to release the vehicle back to Rodriguez, on the condition that she never loan it to Hernandez. But Rodriguez still had to pay $1,600 to get her truck back, plus any towing and storage fees it had accumulated over the course of the lawsuit. (Hernandez pleaded guilty to delivering drugs and spent several months in jail.)
What happened to Rodriguez was perfectly legal. Under a process known as civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement can take cash and property they believe to be related to criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime. Prosecutors then file suit against the property, and if successful, police may keep much of it for their own purposes.
Civil asset forfeiture is a tool supported by law enforcement leaders, who say it is necessary for fighting crime, but panned by both liberals and conservatives who see it as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties and sometimes refer to it as “policing for profit.” It’s a longstanding, nationwide practice that has regained steam under the Trump administration but faces constitutional challenges in court.
When police seize a person’s property, the onus falls on the owner to prove the property was “innocent,” or not linked to a crime. If a person doesn’t fight the seizure in court — which is what happens in the majority of cases — they lose their property automatically. Many cases involve property worth no more than a few thousand dollars, and attorneys’ fees can end up being more costly than the value of the property itself.
Last year alone, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors throughout Texas grew their coffers more than $50 million by seizing cash, cars, jewelry, clothing, art and other property they claimed were linked to a crime. That includes property seized under both criminal forfeiture — which requires someone to first be found guilty of a crime — and civil forfeiture, which allows the state to sue the property itself and doesn’t require a criminal charge. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which tracks these figures, does not distinguish between the two.
ow much property and money was seized from people, like Rodriguez, who weren’t charged with any crime? That information isn’t collected in any meaningful way in Texas, and state lawmakers, at the urging of prosecutors and law enforcement, have resisted attempts to report more detailed information about asset forfeiture to the public.
“One wonders if our colonial ancestors, transported to 2014, would be astonished — watching government seize, then sell, the property of guiltless citizens who have not been charged with any crime, much less convicted of one,” former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, a Republican who has since been promoted to a federal appeals court by President Donald Trump, wrote in 2014. “A generation ago in America, asset forfeiture was limited to wresting ill-gotten gains from violent criminals. Today, it has a distinctive ‘Alice in Wonderland’ flavor, victimizing innocent citizens who’ve done nothing wrong.”
Extreme cases of abuse have occasionally grabbed the attention of the public and of lawmakers, who in 2011 made a rare move to rein in police seizures. That followed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union a few years before, which alleged that police in the tiny East Texas town of Tenaha were conducting “highway robbery” by shaking down drivers — primarily people of color — for cash under threat of jail time. The suit accused law enforcement in Tenaha of threatening to have children removed from their families if the drivers they’d stopped on U.S. Highway 59 didn’t sign waivers allowing officers to seize their property without a court proceeding.
From 2006 to 2008, officers in Tenaha seized approximately $3 million from at least 140 people, according to the lawsuit, which was ultimately settled with local law enforcement not admitting to wrongdoing. With the lawsuit in the news, Gov. Rick Perry in 2011 signed legislation prohibiting the use of such waivers, forcing all forfeitures to go through court.
The law also limited how law enforcement can spend the money they seize, banning officials from using it to pay for things like margarita machines, as former Montgomery County District Attorney Michael McDougal did in 2005 — or trips to Hawaii, as a former Hill Country district attorney, Ron Sutton, did from 2002 to 2007. The legislation passed just months after a former South Texas district attorney pleaded guilty to misappropriating more than $2 million in seized funds, paying $1.2 million in bonuses to three secretaries and another $81,000 to himself.
The 2011 law faced almost no opposition, but some Democrats and Republicans at the Texas Capitol have called for further reforms to an asset forfeiture system they believe is inherently abusive. Lawmakers on the left cite forfeiture’s disproportionate effects on low-income people of color who can’t go to court to fight back. Those on the right cry out against government overreach that infringes on private property rights and snubs due process.
In recent years, however, most efforts to change the system have fallen flat at the Capitol. Sheriffs, prosecutors and police have urged lawmakers not to further limit a power they say is crucial to their ability to fight crime and drug cartels — and which they say was already cleaned up by the 2011 law. Law enforcement officials say taking money and drugs linked to cartels is one of the most effective methods they have to fight them.
“We’re sitting here at the tip of the spear of cartel activity, and we need asset forfeiture as a tool,” Jackson County Sheriff A. J. “Andy” Louderback said. “It’s a viable tool that we’re not misusing. … There’s accountability in the system that’s been there for a very long time.”
The battle over reform will continue in January when the Texas Legislature convenes for its biennial session. At least two lawmakers have already filed bills that would limit asset forfeiture’s scope, and the Texas Republican Party asked lawmakers to abolish asset forfeiture without a criminal conviction in their 2018 platform. Still, reformers face long odds: Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have remained almost completely silent on the issue, and after last month’s elections, advocates lost one of their most vocal Republican allies in the Texas Senate.
“A great threat” to property rights. [...]
Houston police had seized the vehicle after surveilling its driver, Macario Hernandez, and pulling him over after he left his house. They took the truck to court, hoping to keep it or sell it at auction to fund their operations, claiming the vehicle was known to be involved in the drug trade.
But the truck’s owner, Oralia Rodriguez, was never charged with a crime. She wasn’t at the scene when officers pulled over Hernandez, her son, and found 13.5 grams of marijuana in his pocket. In fact, Rodriguez said she had recently loaned him the car so he could drive his pregnant girlfriend to the doctor. The girlfriend was having difficulty with her pregnancy and was at risk of losing the baby, Rodriguez said. She was desperate not to lose her truck, which had recently had new tires installed among other repairs, which she was still working to pay off.
“My sole intention was to help out. … Now I am in this situation of losing what I have worked very hard for,” she wrote to local prosecutors. “I am begging you please allow me to have my truck back.”
Seven weeks after police pulled over the truck, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office resolved the suit and agreed to release the vehicle back to Rodriguez, on the condition that she never loan it to Hernandez. But Rodriguez still had to pay $1,600 to get her truck back, plus any towing and storage fees it had accumulated over the course of the lawsuit. (Hernandez pleaded guilty to delivering drugs and spent several months in jail.)
What happened to Rodriguez was perfectly legal. Under a process known as civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement can take cash and property they believe to be related to criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime. Prosecutors then file suit against the property, and if successful, police may keep much of it for their own purposes.
Civil asset forfeiture is a tool supported by law enforcement leaders, who say it is necessary for fighting crime, but panned by both liberals and conservatives who see it as a violation of Americans’ civil liberties and sometimes refer to it as “policing for profit.” It’s a longstanding, nationwide practice that has regained steam under the Trump administration but faces constitutional challenges in court.
When police seize a person’s property, the onus falls on the owner to prove the property was “innocent,” or not linked to a crime. If a person doesn’t fight the seizure in court — which is what happens in the majority of cases — they lose their property automatically. Many cases involve property worth no more than a few thousand dollars, and attorneys’ fees can end up being more costly than the value of the property itself.
Last year alone, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors throughout Texas grew their coffers more than $50 million by seizing cash, cars, jewelry, clothing, art and other property they claimed were linked to a crime. That includes property seized under both criminal forfeiture — which requires someone to first be found guilty of a crime — and civil forfeiture, which allows the state to sue the property itself and doesn’t require a criminal charge. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which tracks these figures, does not distinguish between the two.
ow much property and money was seized from people, like Rodriguez, who weren’t charged with any crime? That information isn’t collected in any meaningful way in Texas, and state lawmakers, at the urging of prosecutors and law enforcement, have resisted attempts to report more detailed information about asset forfeiture to the public.
“One wonders if our colonial ancestors, transported to 2014, would be astonished — watching government seize, then sell, the property of guiltless citizens who have not been charged with any crime, much less convicted of one,” former Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, a Republican who has since been promoted to a federal appeals court by President Donald Trump, wrote in 2014. “A generation ago in America, asset forfeiture was limited to wresting ill-gotten gains from violent criminals. Today, it has a distinctive ‘Alice in Wonderland’ flavor, victimizing innocent citizens who’ve done nothing wrong.”
Extreme cases of abuse have occasionally grabbed the attention of the public and of lawmakers, who in 2011 made a rare move to rein in police seizures. That followed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union a few years before, which alleged that police in the tiny East Texas town of Tenaha were conducting “highway robbery” by shaking down drivers — primarily people of color — for cash under threat of jail time. The suit accused law enforcement in Tenaha of threatening to have children removed from their families if the drivers they’d stopped on U.S. Highway 59 didn’t sign waivers allowing officers to seize their property without a court proceeding.
From 2006 to 2008, officers in Tenaha seized approximately $3 million from at least 140 people, according to the lawsuit, which was ultimately settled with local law enforcement not admitting to wrongdoing. With the lawsuit in the news, Gov. Rick Perry in 2011 signed legislation prohibiting the use of such waivers, forcing all forfeitures to go through court.
The law also limited how law enforcement can spend the money they seize, banning officials from using it to pay for things like margarita machines, as former Montgomery County District Attorney Michael McDougal did in 2005 — or trips to Hawaii, as a former Hill Country district attorney, Ron Sutton, did from 2002 to 2007. The legislation passed just months after a former South Texas district attorney pleaded guilty to misappropriating more than $2 million in seized funds, paying $1.2 million in bonuses to three secretaries and another $81,000 to himself.
The 2011 law faced almost no opposition, but some Democrats and Republicans at the Texas Capitol have called for further reforms to an asset forfeiture system they believe is inherently abusive. Lawmakers on the left cite forfeiture’s disproportionate effects on low-income people of color who can’t go to court to fight back. Those on the right cry out against government overreach that infringes on private property rights and snubs due process.
In recent years, however, most efforts to change the system have fallen flat at the Capitol. Sheriffs, prosecutors and police have urged lawmakers not to further limit a power they say is crucial to their ability to fight crime and drug cartels — and which they say was already cleaned up by the 2011 law. Law enforcement officials say taking money and drugs linked to cartels is one of the most effective methods they have to fight them.
“We’re sitting here at the tip of the spear of cartel activity, and we need asset forfeiture as a tool,” Jackson County Sheriff A. J. “Andy” Louderback said. “It’s a viable tool that we’re not misusing. … There’s accountability in the system that’s been there for a very long time.”
The battle over reform will continue in January when the Texas Legislature convenes for its biennial session. At least two lawmakers have already filed bills that would limit asset forfeiture’s scope, and the Texas Republican Party asked lawmakers to abolish asset forfeiture without a criminal conviction in their 2018 platform. Still, reformers face long odds: Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have remained almost completely silent on the issue, and after last month’s elections, advocates lost one of their most vocal Republican allies in the Texas Senate.
“A great threat” to property rights. [...]
alabama: ‘If he had been white they wouldn’t have shot him’
Khushbu Shah
the guardian
Sun 9 Dec 2018 09.30 EST
Two weeks after Emantic Bradford Jr was killed in an officer-involved shooting at a mall, his family spoke of the ways race factors into how police engage with people.
On Thanksgiving, April Pipkins’ phone died. The mother of three didn’t bother to charge it. If her oldest son didn’t come home, he would probably be at his father’s house.
The next day, she woke up to missed calls.
Surprised to see her son’s best friend’s name before the sun was up, Pipkins figured he was looking for EJ – Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr – to hear about the shooting that happened at the mall. She called him back.
“Hey, baby, you called me,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “How you doing, ma?” He asked how she was feeling again, she says. That was when she knew something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“He said: ‘Ma, you don’t know? EJ’s dead.’ And that is the part that drives me crazy. Because it plays back over and over again. All I can hear is: ‘EJ’s dead.’”
Bradford Jr was 21. He died in an officer-involved shooting at an upscale suburban mall. Initially, Hoover police identified Bradford as the suspect in an incident which left two people with gunshot wounds. Then they took back that story. A week after the shooting, a suspect was arrested in Georgia. Police have not made clear if Bradford Jr was a bystander or was involved in the shooting.
In statements released early on the morning after Thanksgiving, Hoover police said Bradford Jr died just before 10pm. His mother found out hours later, and not from the police. She called everyone: police, the coroner, her friends.
“Even the coroner asked me: ‘No one called you?’ He was shocked.”
Bradford Jr’s father, Emantic Bradford Sr, found out at 3.43am. He remembers the time clearly. In multiple calls to the police he was transferred around the county before finally reaching a detective on the scene. He told the retired Birmingham jail employee his son was dead.
Bradford Sr hasn’t been able to sleep. When his eyes close, he hears his son calling. It shocks him awake.
“I’ve woken up so many days, hearing myself calling him, ‘EJ, EJ, EJ’, but he’s not here anymore,” the 53-year-old said.
Two weeks on from the shooting, as Bradford Sr’s wife, Cynthia Bradford, joins her husband to tell stories of his son, Pipkins cries, unable to join in. They speak of their son only in the present tense.
Ten minutes later, Pipkins manages to tell her favorite story. It happened when he was six months old. Her mother was watching the newborn. Pipkins had gone to work, but Bradford Jr wouldn’t stop crying, so her mother brought him to Pipkins’ workplace. As soon he was next to her, he stopped.
She grins as she tells the story, Bradford Sr laughs, and for a brief moment the tears are forgotten. Pipkins’ eyes flit to a picture she brought with her, an 8x10 portrait of Bradford Jr in his army uniform. Her smile drops. Staring at her phone, she scrolls through text messages exchanged with her son.
“I was having a bad day, 1 November, and he texted me: ‘Have a wonderful day at work, I love you. Don’t let anyone ruin your day or corrupt your spirit because you’re better than that.’”
She holds the phone up. Her son ended the message with a red heart.
“That’s the kind of person he was,” she says. “He would be on the phone all morning.”
He can’t do that anymore, Bradford Sr jumps in, raising his voice, putting his camel-colored fedora behind him on the chair. The smiles have disappeared.
“That body [camera] is going to show exactly who murdered my son,” he says.
Police body camera footage and mall CCTV footage is now in the hands of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. The family has yet to see such video.
“It was a homicide,” Bradford Sr insists. “The attention ain’t going to die down until [they] release the video.”
‘One person pulled that trigger’
The conversation turns into a debate about the ways police around the US engage white and black people.
“It’s a lack of respect for all people, this shooting,” Pipkins begins.
Bradford Sr interjects: “If he had been white they wouldn’t have shot him.”
Pipkins agrees.
“So that is not a lack of training,” Bradford Sr adds. “That is a lack of respect for every human life. You just want to shoot somebody.”
No, Pipkins says. “Not just anybody. They know exactly who they want to shoot because there have been many, I repeat, taken into custody who they were more patient with. They know the procedure.”
Nothing like this has happened in their community before, Bradford Sr says, adding of his other children: “I’m just going to tell them to be themselves. Because one person pulled that trigger. One. And it’s not right. He’s the bad apple in the barrel. And that apples needs to be removed. He needs to be charged.”
This week, through their attorney, the Bradford family released the results of an independent autopsy. It said Bradford Jr was shot in the back and died from a gunshot wound in the head.
His father says the police officer involved is a coward.
“I look at the autopsy and then I look at my son moving away, who was shot in the back. Not just once. Three times. He’s a coward.”
His mother adds: “If I have to protest and march by myself, they are going to release the tapes.”
Then a woman who has been standing behind her for a few minutes interrupts the conversation.
“I actually just prayed for y’all this morning,” she says. “I wanted to tell you the community is standing behind you. We love you. God bless you, we love you.”
She hugs Pipkins and both Bradfords, then walks away. This has been happening for two weeks since Bradford Jr’s death, his father says, wherever he goes. Pipkins says Home Depot, where she works the late shift, has given her time off.
“But he’s never going to walk through my door again. How would you feel if that were your child?” she says, as she looks through pictures of her son. He didn’t get to have Thanksgiving dinner, she says, as she looks at a selfie of the two of them at a football game.
Then she stops at a picture of him goofing off in front of the bathroom mirror.
“That was my baby. He was so silly.” She laughs, watching a video of him dressed in a blue sweatshirt and white basketball shorts, dancing in the hospital, trying to cheer up a friend. “He couldn’t dance a lick.”
Bradford Jr planned to spend Thanksgiving weekend with his father, hanging out in their man cave. He didn’t make it.
“I don’t really care about Thanksgiving no more,” Bradford Sr says. He won’t be celebrating it again.
“Each day won’t be the same,” his mother says, looking over at her son’s father. “No day will be the same.”
“No day,” he repeats.
On Thanksgiving, April Pipkins’ phone died. The mother of three didn’t bother to charge it. If her oldest son didn’t come home, he would probably be at his father’s house.
The next day, she woke up to missed calls.
Surprised to see her son’s best friend’s name before the sun was up, Pipkins figured he was looking for EJ – Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr – to hear about the shooting that happened at the mall. She called him back.
“Hey, baby, you called me,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “How you doing, ma?” He asked how she was feeling again, she says. That was when she knew something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“He said: ‘Ma, you don’t know? EJ’s dead.’ And that is the part that drives me crazy. Because it plays back over and over again. All I can hear is: ‘EJ’s dead.’”
Bradford Jr was 21. He died in an officer-involved shooting at an upscale suburban mall. Initially, Hoover police identified Bradford as the suspect in an incident which left two people with gunshot wounds. Then they took back that story. A week after the shooting, a suspect was arrested in Georgia. Police have not made clear if Bradford Jr was a bystander or was involved in the shooting.
In statements released early on the morning after Thanksgiving, Hoover police said Bradford Jr died just before 10pm. His mother found out hours later, and not from the police. She called everyone: police, the coroner, her friends.
“Even the coroner asked me: ‘No one called you?’ He was shocked.”
Bradford Jr’s father, Emantic Bradford Sr, found out at 3.43am. He remembers the time clearly. In multiple calls to the police he was transferred around the county before finally reaching a detective on the scene. He told the retired Birmingham jail employee his son was dead.
Bradford Sr hasn’t been able to sleep. When his eyes close, he hears his son calling. It shocks him awake.
“I’ve woken up so many days, hearing myself calling him, ‘EJ, EJ, EJ’, but he’s not here anymore,” the 53-year-old said.
Two weeks on from the shooting, as Bradford Sr’s wife, Cynthia Bradford, joins her husband to tell stories of his son, Pipkins cries, unable to join in. They speak of their son only in the present tense.
Ten minutes later, Pipkins manages to tell her favorite story. It happened when he was six months old. Her mother was watching the newborn. Pipkins had gone to work, but Bradford Jr wouldn’t stop crying, so her mother brought him to Pipkins’ workplace. As soon he was next to her, he stopped.
She grins as she tells the story, Bradford Sr laughs, and for a brief moment the tears are forgotten. Pipkins’ eyes flit to a picture she brought with her, an 8x10 portrait of Bradford Jr in his army uniform. Her smile drops. Staring at her phone, she scrolls through text messages exchanged with her son.
“I was having a bad day, 1 November, and he texted me: ‘Have a wonderful day at work, I love you. Don’t let anyone ruin your day or corrupt your spirit because you’re better than that.’”
She holds the phone up. Her son ended the message with a red heart.
“That’s the kind of person he was,” she says. “He would be on the phone all morning.”
He can’t do that anymore, Bradford Sr jumps in, raising his voice, putting his camel-colored fedora behind him on the chair. The smiles have disappeared.
“That body [camera] is going to show exactly who murdered my son,” he says.
Police body camera footage and mall CCTV footage is now in the hands of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. The family has yet to see such video.
“It was a homicide,” Bradford Sr insists. “The attention ain’t going to die down until [they] release the video.”
‘One person pulled that trigger’
The conversation turns into a debate about the ways police around the US engage white and black people.
“It’s a lack of respect for all people, this shooting,” Pipkins begins.
Bradford Sr interjects: “If he had been white they wouldn’t have shot him.”
Pipkins agrees.
“So that is not a lack of training,” Bradford Sr adds. “That is a lack of respect for every human life. You just want to shoot somebody.”
No, Pipkins says. “Not just anybody. They know exactly who they want to shoot because there have been many, I repeat, taken into custody who they were more patient with. They know the procedure.”
Nothing like this has happened in their community before, Bradford Sr says, adding of his other children: “I’m just going to tell them to be themselves. Because one person pulled that trigger. One. And it’s not right. He’s the bad apple in the barrel. And that apples needs to be removed. He needs to be charged.”
This week, through their attorney, the Bradford family released the results of an independent autopsy. It said Bradford Jr was shot in the back and died from a gunshot wound in the head.
His father says the police officer involved is a coward.
“I look at the autopsy and then I look at my son moving away, who was shot in the back. Not just once. Three times. He’s a coward.”
His mother adds: “If I have to protest and march by myself, they are going to release the tapes.”
Then a woman who has been standing behind her for a few minutes interrupts the conversation.
“I actually just prayed for y’all this morning,” she says. “I wanted to tell you the community is standing behind you. We love you. God bless you, we love you.”
She hugs Pipkins and both Bradfords, then walks away. This has been happening for two weeks since Bradford Jr’s death, his father says, wherever he goes. Pipkins says Home Depot, where she works the late shift, has given her time off.
“But he’s never going to walk through my door again. How would you feel if that were your child?” she says, as she looks through pictures of her son. He didn’t get to have Thanksgiving dinner, she says, as she looks at a selfie of the two of them at a football game.
Then she stops at a picture of him goofing off in front of the bathroom mirror.
“That was my baby. He was so silly.” She laughs, watching a video of him dressed in a blue sweatshirt and white basketball shorts, dancing in the hospital, trying to cheer up a friend. “He couldn’t dance a lick.”
Bradford Jr planned to spend Thanksgiving weekend with his father, hanging out in their man cave. He didn’t make it.
“I don’t really care about Thanksgiving no more,” Bradford Sr says. He won’t be celebrating it again.
“Each day won’t be the same,” his mother says, looking over at her son’s father. “No day will be the same.”
“No day,” he repeats.
Feds: Ex-Baltimore police officer admitted misconduct, expanding scope of Gun Trace Task Force corruption probe
Justin Fenton - Contact Reporter
The Baltimore Sun
12/6/18
A former Baltimore police officer has admitted to the FBI that he stole money, lied in police reports, and improperly used electronic surveillance devices, federal prosecutors in California said — widening the scope of police misconduct unearthed by the Gun Trace Task Force scandal.
Former Det. Matthew Ryckman resigned from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Sacramento this fall after admitting the misconduct in an interview with the FBI, according to a Nov. 16 letter sent by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California to local defense attorneys that was obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
Ryckman has not been charged with any crimes in California or Maryland, and declined to comment Wednesday.
“Matthew Ryckman is a subject of a serious public corruption investigation related to wrongdoing by members of a municipal police department on the East Coast, including the time between 2013 and 2015, while Mr. Ryckman was employed as a police officer with that department,” reads the letter signed by Timothy Delgado, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Sacramento.
Ryckman was not part of the city’s corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, but worked from 2013 to 2014 in a plainclothes squad with Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, the eventual leader of the gun unit. Jenkins has admitted to a staggering array of crimes, including robberies and drug dealing, and is serving 25 years in federal prison after pleading guilty last year.
In total, eight city officers were convicted of racketeering in the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, and authorities have said they are continuing to investigate. Several cooperating officers testified at trial earlier this year that they had stolen money for years before joining the unit.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office could not be reached for comment regarding what local authorities were doing with the information regarding Ryckman. The Baltimore Police Department declined to comment on whether it was aware of the allegations or investigating them.
A commission appointed by leaders of the state legislature and Gov. Larry Hogan is investigating the Gun Trace Task Force scandal in an attempt to understand the scope and circumstances that led up to it. Baltimore state Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said the new revelation underscores the commission’s charge.
“I’d say it confirms the worst nightmares of this entire situation, … that it was more widespread than anyone could dream possible,” Ferguson said.
The Maryland Public Defender’s Office in Baltimore said the revelation showed how much more remains to be done to get to the bottom of the Gun Trace Task Force scandal and misconduct in the police department.
“Any notion that the BPD has fully rid themselves of wrongdoers with the GTTF indictments is complete fiction,” said Deborah Katz Levi, of the Baltimore public defender’s office. “Matthew Ryckman was not involved in the GTTF and he has confessed to carrying out the same type of heinous crimes. … As advocates for justice, we demand systemic action by the other entities responsible for police oversight and accountability, most notably the state’s attorney, the judiciary and the legislature.”
Federal prosecutors have reopened two cases involving Ryckman that occurred in the 2013 to 2014 time period; before he left Baltimore in 2016, Ryckman was representing the city police on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force.
State court records show Ryckman was involved as an arresting officer in more than 300 cases that went to Circuit Court. In 2010, he was investigated and cleared of criminal wrongdoing for fatally shooting one of his confidential informants in the back in what was described as a shootout with someone the officers intended to arrest.
Derek Hines, an assistant U.S. attorney involved in the Gun Trace Task Force prosecution, recently re-activated two federal cases in Maryland in which Ryckman was one of the arresting officers. One of those cases has a hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon; records show the defendant in the case, Enzo Blanks, is no longer in custody.
The Sun reported last month that a major gun case brought by Ryckman in California had been abruptly dropped within days of being filed, and that Ryckman had left the ATF under unclear circumstances.
In the letter from California prosecutors, they say they are unaware of misconduct by Ryckman related to his work as an ATF agent in California. They disclose that he brought with him to California a paid informant he had used in Baltimore.
“Our office does not intend to rely on statements made or evidence collected by Mr. Ryckman,” the letter says.
Both cases of the re-opened cases in Maryland involve Ryckman and Jenkins.
Jenkins was the leader of a squad that was regularly stopping people without probable cause, conducting illegal searches, lying in court paperwork and affidavits and stealing money from people they detained. Under Jenkins direction, cooperating officers testified, the officers targeted people for robberies using off-the-books GPS trackers and stole in some cases tens of thousands of dollars at a time. A co-conspirator also testified that Jenkins took drugs off the street and provided them to him to sell, with the pair splitting the proceeds.
Jenkins has admitted to being involved in a 2010 incident in which drugs were planted on a man, and to a string of crimes from 2014 through 2016.
Former Det. Matthew Ryckman resigned from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Sacramento this fall after admitting the misconduct in an interview with the FBI, according to a Nov. 16 letter sent by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in California to local defense attorneys that was obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
Ryckman has not been charged with any crimes in California or Maryland, and declined to comment Wednesday.
“Matthew Ryckman is a subject of a serious public corruption investigation related to wrongdoing by members of a municipal police department on the East Coast, including the time between 2013 and 2015, while Mr. Ryckman was employed as a police officer with that department,” reads the letter signed by Timothy Delgado, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Sacramento.
Ryckman was not part of the city’s corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, but worked from 2013 to 2014 in a plainclothes squad with Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, the eventual leader of the gun unit. Jenkins has admitted to a staggering array of crimes, including robberies and drug dealing, and is serving 25 years in federal prison after pleading guilty last year.
In total, eight city officers were convicted of racketeering in the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, and authorities have said they are continuing to investigate. Several cooperating officers testified at trial earlier this year that they had stolen money for years before joining the unit.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office could not be reached for comment regarding what local authorities were doing with the information regarding Ryckman. The Baltimore Police Department declined to comment on whether it was aware of the allegations or investigating them.
A commission appointed by leaders of the state legislature and Gov. Larry Hogan is investigating the Gun Trace Task Force scandal in an attempt to understand the scope and circumstances that led up to it. Baltimore state Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said the new revelation underscores the commission’s charge.
“I’d say it confirms the worst nightmares of this entire situation, … that it was more widespread than anyone could dream possible,” Ferguson said.
The Maryland Public Defender’s Office in Baltimore said the revelation showed how much more remains to be done to get to the bottom of the Gun Trace Task Force scandal and misconduct in the police department.
“Any notion that the BPD has fully rid themselves of wrongdoers with the GTTF indictments is complete fiction,” said Deborah Katz Levi, of the Baltimore public defender’s office. “Matthew Ryckman was not involved in the GTTF and he has confessed to carrying out the same type of heinous crimes. … As advocates for justice, we demand systemic action by the other entities responsible for police oversight and accountability, most notably the state’s attorney, the judiciary and the legislature.”
Federal prosecutors have reopened two cases involving Ryckman that occurred in the 2013 to 2014 time period; before he left Baltimore in 2016, Ryckman was representing the city police on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force.
State court records show Ryckman was involved as an arresting officer in more than 300 cases that went to Circuit Court. In 2010, he was investigated and cleared of criminal wrongdoing for fatally shooting one of his confidential informants in the back in what was described as a shootout with someone the officers intended to arrest.
Derek Hines, an assistant U.S. attorney involved in the Gun Trace Task Force prosecution, recently re-activated two federal cases in Maryland in which Ryckman was one of the arresting officers. One of those cases has a hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon; records show the defendant in the case, Enzo Blanks, is no longer in custody.
The Sun reported last month that a major gun case brought by Ryckman in California had been abruptly dropped within days of being filed, and that Ryckman had left the ATF under unclear circumstances.
In the letter from California prosecutors, they say they are unaware of misconduct by Ryckman related to his work as an ATF agent in California. They disclose that he brought with him to California a paid informant he had used in Baltimore.
“Our office does not intend to rely on statements made or evidence collected by Mr. Ryckman,” the letter says.
Both cases of the re-opened cases in Maryland involve Ryckman and Jenkins.
Jenkins was the leader of a squad that was regularly stopping people without probable cause, conducting illegal searches, lying in court paperwork and affidavits and stealing money from people they detained. Under Jenkins direction, cooperating officers testified, the officers targeted people for robberies using off-the-books GPS trackers and stole in some cases tens of thousands of dollars at a time. A co-conspirator also testified that Jenkins took drugs off the street and provided them to him to sell, with the pair splitting the proceeds.
Jenkins has admitted to being involved in a 2010 incident in which drugs were planted on a man, and to a string of crimes from 2014 through 2016.
Border Patrol Agent Charged With Capital Murder In Texas
By Associated Press - tpm
December 5, 2018 5:00 pm
LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A U.S. Border Patrol agent who confessed to shooting four women in the head and leaving their bodies on rural Texas roadsides has been indicted on a capital murder charge, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
A grand jury decided to upgrade the charge against Juan David Ortiz , Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said at a news conference. Alaniz said prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
Ortiz, 35, was initially charged with four counts of murder, as well as aggravated assault and unlawful restraint. He has been held in Webb County jail on a $2.5 million bond since his Sept. 15 arrest in the border town of Laredo.
The Border Patrol intel supervisor and Navy veteran seemed to be living a typical suburban life with his wife and two children when the killings occurred. After the first slaying, he continued going to work as usual. He was eventually arrested after he pulled a gun on a woman who was able to escape and asked a state trooper for help.
Authorities have said the victims were sex workers whom Ortiz knew and targeted for their vulnerability. Melissa Ramirez, 29, was slain on Sept. 3, and 42-year-old Claudine Luera was killed on Sept. 13.
On Sept. 14, he picked up another woman, Erika Pena, who told investigators that Ortiz acted oddly when she brought up Ramirez’s slaying and later pointed a gun at her in a gas station, according to court documents. Pena said Ortiz grabbed her shirt as she tried to get out of his truck, but she pulled it off and ran, finding a state trooper who was refueling his vehicle.
Ortiz fled and, he later told investigators, he then picked up and killed his last two victims — 35-year-old Guiselda Alicia Cantu and 28-year-old Janelle Ortiz, a transgender woman whose birth name was Humberto Ortiz.
With Pena’s help, authorities were able to track Ortiz to a hotel parking garage where he was arrested.
According to court documents, Ortiz confessed to investigators that he had killed four people.
A grand jury decided to upgrade the charge against Juan David Ortiz , Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said at a news conference. Alaniz said prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
Ortiz, 35, was initially charged with four counts of murder, as well as aggravated assault and unlawful restraint. He has been held in Webb County jail on a $2.5 million bond since his Sept. 15 arrest in the border town of Laredo.
The Border Patrol intel supervisor and Navy veteran seemed to be living a typical suburban life with his wife and two children when the killings occurred. After the first slaying, he continued going to work as usual. He was eventually arrested after he pulled a gun on a woman who was able to escape and asked a state trooper for help.
Authorities have said the victims were sex workers whom Ortiz knew and targeted for their vulnerability. Melissa Ramirez, 29, was slain on Sept. 3, and 42-year-old Claudine Luera was killed on Sept. 13.
On Sept. 14, he picked up another woman, Erika Pena, who told investigators that Ortiz acted oddly when she brought up Ramirez’s slaying and later pointed a gun at her in a gas station, according to court documents. Pena said Ortiz grabbed her shirt as she tried to get out of his truck, but she pulled it off and ran, finding a state trooper who was refueling his vehicle.
Ortiz fled and, he later told investigators, he then picked up and killed his last two victims — 35-year-old Guiselda Alicia Cantu and 28-year-old Janelle Ortiz, a transgender woman whose birth name was Humberto Ortiz.
With Pena’s help, authorities were able to track Ortiz to a hotel parking garage where he was arrested.
According to court documents, Ortiz confessed to investigators that he had killed four people.
Black good Samaritan helps his drunk neighbor back into his house — and then is arrested himself
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
26 NOV 2018 AT 17:02 ET
A black Marylander was arrested after helping his drunk neighbor get inside his house — and police told the good Samaritan that they thought he was the one who was inebriated.
WUSA9 reported that 23-year-old Samir Ahmed found his drunk neighbor passed out in his lawn on the morning of Sunday, November 17 and decided to walk him home.
When he came back, police — who had been called by someone else who was concerned about the drunk neighbor — had arrived.
Police claimed they smelled cannabis on Ahmed and that gave them probable cause to search him. Ahmed, those same officers claimed, resisted their attempts to search him.
In a video recorded by a bystander, neighbors can be heard insisting that the man lives in the neighborhood and had just helped a drunk person get home — to which an officer replied, “I think you’re the intoxicated one.”
In the nearly 18-minute long video, officers are heard laughing at the situation and telling bystanders who challenged Ahmed’s arrest that “we don’t answer to you.”
WUSA9 reported that following the arrest, Ahmed was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and other unspecified offenses. He also was given a citation for a small amount of cannabis he had on him.
WUSA9 reported that 23-year-old Samir Ahmed found his drunk neighbor passed out in his lawn on the morning of Sunday, November 17 and decided to walk him home.
When he came back, police — who had been called by someone else who was concerned about the drunk neighbor — had arrived.
Police claimed they smelled cannabis on Ahmed and that gave them probable cause to search him. Ahmed, those same officers claimed, resisted their attempts to search him.
In a video recorded by a bystander, neighbors can be heard insisting that the man lives in the neighborhood and had just helped a drunk person get home — to which an officer replied, “I think you’re the intoxicated one.”
In the nearly 18-minute long video, officers are heard laughing at the situation and telling bystanders who challenged Ahmed’s arrest that “we don’t answer to you.”
WUSA9 reported that following the arrest, Ahmed was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and other unspecified offenses. He also was given a citation for a small amount of cannabis he had on him.
After Inventing ‘Black Identity Extremists’, FBI Now Forced to Take White Domestic Terrorists Seriously with the Emergence of the Proud Boys
By David Love - atlanta black star
November 24, 2018
The Proud Boys, a so-called “Western chauvinist” group founded by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, is in fact classified by the FBI as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism,” according to a report from a Washington state sheriff. This comes amid claims by the group that it is not a white nationalist organization with ties to the alt-right, and suggests the federal government may now take white domestic terrorism more seriously.
The report — a memo from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, which was published by the watchdog group Property of the People — focused on an investigation of Erin Willey, a probationary deputy sheriff who was terminated due to her affiliation with the Proud Boys. Specifically, Wiley manufactured and sold “Proud Boy Girls” apparel — representative of a group believed to be an affiliate of Proud Boys — which she wore in a selfie photo that led to her termination from the department.
The memo noted the FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys were actively recruiting members in the Pacific Northwest and involved in the precipitation of violence at political rallies in Seattle and Portland, as well as Charlottesville, Va. “The Proud Boy’s communicate their beliefs through YouTube videos, social media websites, closed online forums, personal blogs and at political type rallies,” said the memo. “Proud Boy’s members have been documented as having called for the closure of all prisons, the issuing of firearms to everyone, the legalization of all drugs, the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the shutdown of the government.”
The Proud Boys, a Republican Party-affiliated band of neo-Nazi street brawlers and Trump supporters, recently assaulted protesters in New York City. The attack took place after the Proud Boys’ leader and founder spoke at a Metropolitan Republican Club event in Manhattan. Initially, the NYPD made no arrests following the October incident before subsequently arresting five members of the group, with the intent to arrest nine and open a criminal investigation into the Proud Boys. The reluctance by police to arrest members of the group provided evidence that law enforcement does not take the threat of white right=wing extremists seriously.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group, one which seeks mainstream acceptance by denying its white nationalism while also espousing white nationalist philosophy, including Islamophobia, anti-Black sentiment, and an anti-Semitism that even their fellow neo-fascists characterize as “Hitler was right. Gas the Jews.” If the FBI now takes white nationalist extremism seriously, it is only after years of looking the other way and turning a blind eye to homegrown domestic terror. Further, the Trump administration defunded Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), an Obama-era program to fight against the radicalization of domestic residents, a program that conservatives wanted to focus on Muslims.
White supremacists have accounted for 83 percent of the extremist murders over the past decade, and these domestic terrorist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement and have killed the most police officers in past decades. Yet, the FBI has investigated Black political activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and others advocating against police violence, and labeled so-called “Black Identity Extremists (BIEs),” even falsely arresting and attempting to prosecute a Black man as a BIE. This after the bureau issued a report in which it invented the term and manufactured a fictitious Black movement from whole cloth. An overwhelmingly white bureau with a white male culture, the FBI has exhibited hostility towards Black and Muslim communities, which is reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO surveillance, infiltration, disruption and neutralization of civil rights leadership and organizations, and the Black Power movement.
Meanwhile, a new report confirms what many have already known concerning the threat of white domestic terrorism and the misplaced priorities of the federal government. With deadly acts of violence committed by right-wing extremists and white supremacists across the United States, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have de-prioritized attacking their source.
According to FBI veterans, the federal government under Trump is ignoring the growing national terrorist threat coming from white supremacists. As the Daily Beast reported, DHS held a conference call days after the Oct. 27 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre with more than two dozen former government agents. The topic of the call was not white supremacist murders, but rather migrants from Central America, leaving the call participants baffled.
“In the world of homeland security, the common practice is to focus on those threats that present the greatest risk,” John Cohen, a Rutgers professor and former DHS counterterrorism official, told the Daily Beast. “So it’s disconcerting that in a call with national law enforcement and homeland security experts, the focus would be on the caravan versus the increasing number of mass casualty attacks the country’s experiencing, including by white extremists.”
DHS — which has gutted an interagency task force designed to prevent radicalization, homegrown or otherwise — believes domestic right-wing extremism is part of the FBI’s purview. Since coming into her position as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen has rarely mentioned white supremacist terror, but has often mentioned al-Qaida, ISIS and similar Islamic terrorist groups. However, according to FBI experts, the bureau has mixed priorities, and white supremacists, who have become empowered in the age of Trump, may not be one of them. This as a DHS-led interagency office designed to prevent racial violence attacks has been understaffed.
Several former DHS officials cited a political firestorm in Congress after an intelligence analyst, Daryl Johnson, published a 2009 assessment warning of growing far-right violence. Those ex-officials considered Johnson’s assessment methodologically over-broad. But afterward, “DHS read the lesson more broadly than that,” said Margo Schlanger, who used to run DHS’s civil rights office. “They seemed to draw the conclusion that we had better not talk about right-wing extremism.” Further, while the Obama administration sounded the alarm on right-wing extremism, it caved in to political pressure from conservative Republicans, subsequently downplayed the threat of white supremacist terrorism and withdrew funding to tackle such domestic extremist groups.
For the past two decades, after ignoring far-right extremism and failing to take it seriously, chickens have come home to roost for law enforcement while a “virulent movement has grown and metastasized” through “willful indifference” — reflecting the Justice Department’s “blind spot” on domestic terrorism and hate crimes — as the New York Times Magazine reported. On the local, state and federal level, law enforcement have not maintained intelligence reports on white supremacist terrorists and right-wing extremist groups. The revelation that the FBI has awakened to groups such as the Proud Boys comes at a time when PayPal, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have decided to ban the group and its founder. The Proud Boys also encountered problems following their November 17 rally in Philadelphia, when taxi and Uber drivers, after being made aware by anti-racist protesters, refused to give rides to the white nationalists. The group may increase its ranks with a planned visit to Australia, even as it faces efforts to deny McInnes a visa to enter that nation.
Today, neo-Nazis are using social networking to secretly organize and train a paramilitary force, and prepare for a “race war” against Blacks and Jews. At a time when white nationalism is mainstreamed, and white supremacist violence is on the rise, if law enforcement forces fail to act, the problem of far-right domestic terrorism will remain as such for the foreseeable future.
“Fighting solves everything,” McInnes said. “We need more violence from the Trump people. Trump supporters: choke a motherf*cker. Choke a bitch. Choke a tranny. Get your fingers around the windpipe.”
The report — a memo from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, which was published by the watchdog group Property of the People — focused on an investigation of Erin Willey, a probationary deputy sheriff who was terminated due to her affiliation with the Proud Boys. Specifically, Wiley manufactured and sold “Proud Boy Girls” apparel — representative of a group believed to be an affiliate of Proud Boys — which she wore in a selfie photo that led to her termination from the department.
The memo noted the FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys were actively recruiting members in the Pacific Northwest and involved in the precipitation of violence at political rallies in Seattle and Portland, as well as Charlottesville, Va. “The Proud Boy’s communicate their beliefs through YouTube videos, social media websites, closed online forums, personal blogs and at political type rallies,” said the memo. “Proud Boy’s members have been documented as having called for the closure of all prisons, the issuing of firearms to everyone, the legalization of all drugs, the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the shutdown of the government.”
The Proud Boys, a Republican Party-affiliated band of neo-Nazi street brawlers and Trump supporters, recently assaulted protesters in New York City. The attack took place after the Proud Boys’ leader and founder spoke at a Metropolitan Republican Club event in Manhattan. Initially, the NYPD made no arrests following the October incident before subsequently arresting five members of the group, with the intent to arrest nine and open a criminal investigation into the Proud Boys. The reluctance by police to arrest members of the group provided evidence that law enforcement does not take the threat of white right=wing extremists seriously.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group, one which seeks mainstream acceptance by denying its white nationalism while also espousing white nationalist philosophy, including Islamophobia, anti-Black sentiment, and an anti-Semitism that even their fellow neo-fascists characterize as “Hitler was right. Gas the Jews.” If the FBI now takes white nationalist extremism seriously, it is only after years of looking the other way and turning a blind eye to homegrown domestic terror. Further, the Trump administration defunded Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), an Obama-era program to fight against the radicalization of domestic residents, a program that conservatives wanted to focus on Muslims.
White supremacists have accounted for 83 percent of the extremist murders over the past decade, and these domestic terrorist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement and have killed the most police officers in past decades. Yet, the FBI has investigated Black political activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and others advocating against police violence, and labeled so-called “Black Identity Extremists (BIEs),” even falsely arresting and attempting to prosecute a Black man as a BIE. This after the bureau issued a report in which it invented the term and manufactured a fictitious Black movement from whole cloth. An overwhelmingly white bureau with a white male culture, the FBI has exhibited hostility towards Black and Muslim communities, which is reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO surveillance, infiltration, disruption and neutralization of civil rights leadership and organizations, and the Black Power movement.
Meanwhile, a new report confirms what many have already known concerning the threat of white domestic terrorism and the misplaced priorities of the federal government. With deadly acts of violence committed by right-wing extremists and white supremacists across the United States, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have de-prioritized attacking their source.
According to FBI veterans, the federal government under Trump is ignoring the growing national terrorist threat coming from white supremacists. As the Daily Beast reported, DHS held a conference call days after the Oct. 27 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre with more than two dozen former government agents. The topic of the call was not white supremacist murders, but rather migrants from Central America, leaving the call participants baffled.
“In the world of homeland security, the common practice is to focus on those threats that present the greatest risk,” John Cohen, a Rutgers professor and former DHS counterterrorism official, told the Daily Beast. “So it’s disconcerting that in a call with national law enforcement and homeland security experts, the focus would be on the caravan versus the increasing number of mass casualty attacks the country’s experiencing, including by white extremists.”
DHS — which has gutted an interagency task force designed to prevent radicalization, homegrown or otherwise — believes domestic right-wing extremism is part of the FBI’s purview. Since coming into her position as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen has rarely mentioned white supremacist terror, but has often mentioned al-Qaida, ISIS and similar Islamic terrorist groups. However, according to FBI experts, the bureau has mixed priorities, and white supremacists, who have become empowered in the age of Trump, may not be one of them. This as a DHS-led interagency office designed to prevent racial violence attacks has been understaffed.
Several former DHS officials cited a political firestorm in Congress after an intelligence analyst, Daryl Johnson, published a 2009 assessment warning of growing far-right violence. Those ex-officials considered Johnson’s assessment methodologically over-broad. But afterward, “DHS read the lesson more broadly than that,” said Margo Schlanger, who used to run DHS’s civil rights office. “They seemed to draw the conclusion that we had better not talk about right-wing extremism.” Further, while the Obama administration sounded the alarm on right-wing extremism, it caved in to political pressure from conservative Republicans, subsequently downplayed the threat of white supremacist terrorism and withdrew funding to tackle such domestic extremist groups.
For the past two decades, after ignoring far-right extremism and failing to take it seriously, chickens have come home to roost for law enforcement while a “virulent movement has grown and metastasized” through “willful indifference” — reflecting the Justice Department’s “blind spot” on domestic terrorism and hate crimes — as the New York Times Magazine reported. On the local, state and federal level, law enforcement have not maintained intelligence reports on white supremacist terrorists and right-wing extremist groups. The revelation that the FBI has awakened to groups such as the Proud Boys comes at a time when PayPal, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have decided to ban the group and its founder. The Proud Boys also encountered problems following their November 17 rally in Philadelphia, when taxi and Uber drivers, after being made aware by anti-racist protesters, refused to give rides to the white nationalists. The group may increase its ranks with a planned visit to Australia, even as it faces efforts to deny McInnes a visa to enter that nation.
Today, neo-Nazis are using social networking to secretly organize and train a paramilitary force, and prepare for a “race war” against Blacks and Jews. At a time when white nationalism is mainstreamed, and white supremacist violence is on the rise, if law enforcement forces fail to act, the problem of far-right domestic terrorism will remain as such for the foreseeable future.
“Fighting solves everything,” McInnes said. “We need more violence from the Trump people. Trump supporters: choke a motherf*cker. Choke a bitch. Choke a tranny. Get your fingers around the windpipe.”
no surprise, it is oklahoma!!
‘Incredibly disturbing’: Former reserve deputy gets probation for child porn — after facing potential life term in prison
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 NOV 2018 AT 09:06 ET
A former reserve deputy in Oklahoma avoided prison after his conviction on a pair of child pornography charges.
Jonathan Hazer was sentenced Wednesday in Cleveland County court after pleading guilty last month to one count of aggravated possession of child pornography and possession of child pornography, but he won’t have to spend any time in prison, reported KFOR-TV.
The 32-year-old Hazer was facing a possible life sentence for aggravated possession of child pornography and up to 20 years for possession of child pornography, and prosecutors recommended two years in prison.
Instead, the judge imposed a 10-year suspended sentence for the aggravated count and five years suspended on the second count that will run concurrently.
Hazer must comply with the terms of his probation for 10 years or risk going to prison.
The state cannot appeal the sentence, and prosecutors and victim’s advocates are disappointed with the punishment.
“Incredibly disturbing,” said Stacy McNeiland, CEO of the Care Center in Oklahoma City. “Likely, those images will never go away, and they will circulate the dark webs or inter webs for years and years and years so every child, every image of that child continues to be re-victimized every single time it’s viewed.”
Norman police found several images of child pornography on Hazer’s iPad and laptop, which were seized in February.
Hazer served as an unpaid Cleveland County sheriff’s reserve deputy from 2014 to 2016.
Jonathan Hazer was sentenced Wednesday in Cleveland County court after pleading guilty last month to one count of aggravated possession of child pornography and possession of child pornography, but he won’t have to spend any time in prison, reported KFOR-TV.
The 32-year-old Hazer was facing a possible life sentence for aggravated possession of child pornography and up to 20 years for possession of child pornography, and prosecutors recommended two years in prison.
Instead, the judge imposed a 10-year suspended sentence for the aggravated count and five years suspended on the second count that will run concurrently.
Hazer must comply with the terms of his probation for 10 years or risk going to prison.
The state cannot appeal the sentence, and prosecutors and victim’s advocates are disappointed with the punishment.
“Incredibly disturbing,” said Stacy McNeiland, CEO of the Care Center in Oklahoma City. “Likely, those images will never go away, and they will circulate the dark webs or inter webs for years and years and years so every child, every image of that child continues to be re-victimized every single time it’s viewed.”
Norman police found several images of child pornography on Hazer’s iPad and laptop, which were seized in February.
Hazer served as an unpaid Cleveland County sheriff’s reserve deputy from 2014 to 2016.
Chicago State’s Attorney’s Actions Lead to Fresh Wave of Exonerations of Men Framed by Rogue Cops
By Tia Berger - atlanta black star
November 15, 2018
Illinois officials tossed out drug convictions of seven more men after scoundrel officers of the Chicago Police Department planted narcotics on them.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx was on a mission to bring justice to the defendants who were falsely convicted as a result of the actions of Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts. Foxx announced on Nov. 2 that her motions to exonerate victims who were wrongly arrested by Watts, were granted by Cook County Judge Leroy Martin Jr.
“We found a pattern of misconduct by Watts and other officers in these cases, which caused our office to lose confidence in the initial arrests and validity of these convictions,” Foxx said in a statement. “May the defendants, who we now believe were victims, find a path forward in healing and justice.”
The new overturned convictions marked 45 people exonerated in 57 Watts-related cases, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Deon Willis, who was jailed twice as a result of arrests made by Watts and his crew, told NBC Chicago that having his convictions vacated was like having a new start.
“We lived in the area where these police officers, they just they did what they wanted to do for a very long time,” said Willis. “It came down to we had to come out of our hallways, out of our apartments, peeking out the doors making sure they’re not riding up the street. It was hard. It was hard but now it’s over.”
In 2012, Watts and Officer Kallatt Mohammed were indicted on federal charges after one of the men whom they targeted turned out to be an FBI informant. In 2017, over 15 officers who worked under Watts were demoted to desk duty.
Last November, a wave of 15 men had their convictions vacated after Watts falsified reports, planned false witness testimonies and planted drugs on the victims.
Watts and Mohammed currently sit in prison for their tainted tactical unit.
Kenneth Hicks, who was one of the men who’s been recently exonerated, told the news outlet, “I never thought I’d be standing right here. Once they get you they got you.”
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx was on a mission to bring justice to the defendants who were falsely convicted as a result of the actions of Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts. Foxx announced on Nov. 2 that her motions to exonerate victims who were wrongly arrested by Watts, were granted by Cook County Judge Leroy Martin Jr.
“We found a pattern of misconduct by Watts and other officers in these cases, which caused our office to lose confidence in the initial arrests and validity of these convictions,” Foxx said in a statement. “May the defendants, who we now believe were victims, find a path forward in healing and justice.”
The new overturned convictions marked 45 people exonerated in 57 Watts-related cases, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Deon Willis, who was jailed twice as a result of arrests made by Watts and his crew, told NBC Chicago that having his convictions vacated was like having a new start.
“We lived in the area where these police officers, they just they did what they wanted to do for a very long time,” said Willis. “It came down to we had to come out of our hallways, out of our apartments, peeking out the doors making sure they’re not riding up the street. It was hard. It was hard but now it’s over.”
In 2012, Watts and Officer Kallatt Mohammed were indicted on federal charges after one of the men whom they targeted turned out to be an FBI informant. In 2017, over 15 officers who worked under Watts were demoted to desk duty.
Last November, a wave of 15 men had their convictions vacated after Watts falsified reports, planned false witness testimonies and planted drugs on the victims.
Watts and Mohammed currently sit in prison for their tainted tactical unit.
Kenneth Hicks, who was one of the men who’s been recently exonerated, told the news outlet, “I never thought I’d be standing right here. Once they get you they got you.”
'Welcome to the white man's world': police officer accused of shocking attack on Latino teen
Massachusetts officer charged with civil rights violations for 2016 arrest during which he was allegedly spitting on and kicking teen
Jamiles Lartey in New Orleans
the guardian
Wed 31 Oct 2018 15.51 EDT
A Massachusetts police officer accused of spitting on and kicking a Latino teen during an arrest in 2016, yelling “welcome to the white man’s world”, has been arrested and charged with three counts of federal civil rights violations.
According to the indictment, Springfield officer Gregg Bigda also threatened to “stick a fucking kilo of coke in [the juvenile’s] pocket and put [the juvenile] away for fucking 15 years”, and to “fucking kill [the juvenile] in the parking lot”.
Those comments, which came during an interrogation after the arrest, were captured on video and publicly released by the Republican newspaper in 2016. In the footage Bigda can be heard yelling: “I’m not hampered by the fucking truth ‘cause I don’t give a fuck! People like you belong in jail. I’ll charge you with whatever!”
In the indictment, prosecutors described the officer’s behavior as “so abusive that it shocks the conscience”.
Harold Shaw, the special agent in charge of the FBI investigation into the incident, added: “Badges and guns do not come with the authority to ignore the constitution or the rights of others, and those who violate it will be held accountable.”
In addition to three counts of violating the civil rights of those arrested, Bigda was charged with one count of obstructing justice for allegedly writing a false report.
The charges stem from arrests made in February 2016 after a group of juveniles, including the two referenced in the indictment, allegedly stole an unmarked police vehicle after Springfield detective Steven Vignault left it idling in a pizzeria parking lot.
After a brief chase that led into a neighboring town, the vehicle was stopped with “spike strips” and officers began to make arrests. Bigda then yelled the racist taunt about “the white man’s world” and kicked one of the suspects in the head, according to another officer’s testimony.
During the subsequent interrogation, Bigda made the other comments that were captured on tape, like threatening to “crush [the juvenile’s] skull and fucking get away with it”. It was also revealed that the teens were not read their Miranda rights and were questioned without their parents present.
Detective Vignault, who has since resigned, was also charged with a single count of using “unreasonable force” against a different juvenile in the incident.
Springfield police commissioner John Barbieri said in a statement Wednesday that Bigda would be suspended without pay due to the indictment and that the department would have “no further comment during the criminal proceedings”. Bigda had previously served a 60-day suspension for the incident, which occurred nearly three years ago.
Bigda faces a maximum of 32 years in prison on the charges, and Vignault faces a maximum of 10.
According to the indictment, Springfield officer Gregg Bigda also threatened to “stick a fucking kilo of coke in [the juvenile’s] pocket and put [the juvenile] away for fucking 15 years”, and to “fucking kill [the juvenile] in the parking lot”.
Those comments, which came during an interrogation after the arrest, were captured on video and publicly released by the Republican newspaper in 2016. In the footage Bigda can be heard yelling: “I’m not hampered by the fucking truth ‘cause I don’t give a fuck! People like you belong in jail. I’ll charge you with whatever!”
In the indictment, prosecutors described the officer’s behavior as “so abusive that it shocks the conscience”.
Harold Shaw, the special agent in charge of the FBI investigation into the incident, added: “Badges and guns do not come with the authority to ignore the constitution or the rights of others, and those who violate it will be held accountable.”
In addition to three counts of violating the civil rights of those arrested, Bigda was charged with one count of obstructing justice for allegedly writing a false report.
The charges stem from arrests made in February 2016 after a group of juveniles, including the two referenced in the indictment, allegedly stole an unmarked police vehicle after Springfield detective Steven Vignault left it idling in a pizzeria parking lot.
After a brief chase that led into a neighboring town, the vehicle was stopped with “spike strips” and officers began to make arrests. Bigda then yelled the racist taunt about “the white man’s world” and kicked one of the suspects in the head, according to another officer’s testimony.
During the subsequent interrogation, Bigda made the other comments that were captured on tape, like threatening to “crush [the juvenile’s] skull and fucking get away with it”. It was also revealed that the teens were not read their Miranda rights and were questioned without their parents present.
Detective Vignault, who has since resigned, was also charged with a single count of using “unreasonable force” against a different juvenile in the incident.
Springfield police commissioner John Barbieri said in a statement Wednesday that Bigda would be suspended without pay due to the indictment and that the department would have “no further comment during the criminal proceedings”. Bigda had previously served a 60-day suspension for the incident, which occurred nearly three years ago.
Bigda faces a maximum of 32 years in prison on the charges, and Vignault faces a maximum of 10.
New Massachusetts police union leader railed against ‘social justice warriors’ and restraints on violence
Brad Reed - RAW STORY
30 OCT 2018 AT 12:32 ET
Rick Pedrini, a Lieutenant at the Arlington Police Department who will soon become the executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association, wrote an editorial earlier this year in which he attacked community activists who have been trying to get police to use less force in dealing with suspects.
MassLive.com reports that Pedrini’s editorial, which appeared in the MPA’s official publication earlier this year, attacked a wide range of targets that ranged from migrants seeking asylum to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Pedrini reserved special scorn for activists who have been protesting against police brutality in their communities, however.
“I am sick and tired of the social justice warriors telling us how to do our jobs,” he wrote. “It’s time we forget about ‘restraint’, ‘measured responses’, ‘procedural justice’, ‘de-escalation’, ‘stigma-reduction’, and other feel-good BS that is getting our officers killed. Let’s stop lipsynching, please! Let’s meet violence with violence and get the job done.”
Throughout the editorial, Pedrini also referred to suspected criminals as “animals” and “maggots.”
In another editorial, Pedrini compared the migrant caravan in Mexico to Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor at the start of America’s involvement in World War II.
“Back on December 7th, 1941, a caravan of Japanese planes tried this in Hawaii,” he wrote. “We shot at them. Hell, we didn’t even suspend posse comitatus.”
Arlington Police Chief Frederick Ryan tells MassLive.com that Pedrini’s views do not represent his police department and he said that his editorial only reflects his views as a representative of the MPA.
MassLive.com reports that Pedrini’s editorial, which appeared in the MPA’s official publication earlier this year, attacked a wide range of targets that ranged from migrants seeking asylum to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Pedrini reserved special scorn for activists who have been protesting against police brutality in their communities, however.
“I am sick and tired of the social justice warriors telling us how to do our jobs,” he wrote. “It’s time we forget about ‘restraint’, ‘measured responses’, ‘procedural justice’, ‘de-escalation’, ‘stigma-reduction’, and other feel-good BS that is getting our officers killed. Let’s stop lipsynching, please! Let’s meet violence with violence and get the job done.”
Throughout the editorial, Pedrini also referred to suspected criminals as “animals” and “maggots.”
In another editorial, Pedrini compared the migrant caravan in Mexico to Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor at the start of America’s involvement in World War II.
“Back on December 7th, 1941, a caravan of Japanese planes tried this in Hawaii,” he wrote. “We shot at them. Hell, we didn’t even suspend posse comitatus.”
Arlington Police Chief Frederick Ryan tells MassLive.com that Pedrini’s views do not represent his police department and he said that his editorial only reflects his views as a representative of the MPA.
CAN ICE LEGALLY FORCE IMMIGRANTS TO CHEER FOR DONALD TRUMP?
Nick Pinto - the intercept
October 27 2018, 4:00 a.m.
DO THE FIRST Amendment’s protections prevent the government from targeting its most vocal critics for deportation? That’s the central question that three judges for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals will be considering Monday, when lawyers for Ravi Ragbir, a New York City immigration activist, will argue for a preliminary injunction to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from deporting him before he can press his First Amendment claim in court.
In the case, which comes before judges Christopher Droney, Pierre Leval, and John Walker Jr., the government contends that Ragbir’s situation is straightforward: He was issued a final order of removal in 2007 and a federal law passed to prevent protracted legal challenges to deportations all but shuts off any judicial review of immigration authorities’ deportation decisions. “An alien like Ragbir has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement to prevent his removal from the United States in accordance with a valid order,” the government argues in its brief. The authorities cited a 1999 Supreme Court ruling, which held that the First Amendment claims of people facing deportation for allegedly providing material aid to a foreign terrorist organization didn’t outweigh the government’s national security interests.
Ragbir’s lawyers note that he isn’t accused of contributing to foreign terrorist groups. His work over the past decade — most prominently as the director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York — has been limited to organizing immigrants and advocating against the increasing violence of ICE and the deportation policies it carries out. Ragbir may have a final order of removal, they argue, but so do an estimated 900,000 other people living in the United States. And in the 11 years Ragbir has been under a final order for removal, ICE didn’t try to deport him until this past year — after his organizing garnered headlines and attracted public attention critical of ICE.
The government’s argument that there is no constitutional bar to prevent ICE from selectively deporting people based on their speech has extreme and troubling implications, Ragbir’s lawyers argue in their briefs. “If this Court were to adopt that view, nothing would prevent ICE from telling noncitizens that it will deport them if they criticize any ICE official, deportation policy, or immigration law in any way,” says a brief filed by Ragbir’s attorneys. “ICE could even command noncitizens with final removal orders to publicly voice support for ICE, or for pending legislation, or for a particular political candidate. There would be no holds barred.”
The government dismisses these suggestions as “outlandish hypotheticals” and counters that if political speech is enough to argue unconstitutional political targeting, anyone facing deportation could criticize ICE and claim First Amendment protections to stay in the country. And just because ICE didn’t exercise its right to deport him for more than a decade doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have that right, whatever its reasoning, the government claims.
Yet Ragbir isn’t just asserting that ICE is retaliating against him without evidence. In March 2017, Ragbir was going for a check-in with ICE and was accompanied by a host of local politicians and activists; the event turned into a public spectacle. Scott Mechkowski, the deputy director of ICE’s New York Field Office and one of the defendants in the suit, told Ragbir’s lawyers in January that he felt “resentment” about the circus of the political protest. ICE “didn’t want the display of wailing kids and wailing clergy,” Mechkowski separately told a group of clergy that visited his office. “That can’t happen this time around.” Ragbir’s brief alleges that an ICE official warned his associates, “You don’t want to make matters worse by saying things.”
IN ADDITION TO the attempted deportation of Ragbir, the successful deportation of fellow New Sanctuary activist Jean Montrevil, and the surveillance of their organization, Ragbir’s lawyers point to an emerging pattern around the country, citing more than a dozen instances in which ICE targeted outspoken immigration activists for deportation, including cases in Colorado, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Last week, NWDC Resistance, an immigrant rights group in Washington state, filed its own lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in federal court in Seattle, alleging that ICE has a practice “to systematically surveil, detain, and deport immigrant activists who speak out about immigration policies and practices.”
A different panel of 2nd Circuit judges got a taste of these arguments in August, when Ragbir’s lawyers sought a stay to keep ICE from deporting him until the court could rule on the appeal now before the court. That panel was clearly troubled by government lawyers’ flat refusal to promise that they wouldn’t deport Ragbir before he could have his day in court, but the judges declined to issue a stay.
With the question of the First Amendment rights of people facing deportation now squarely before the court, human rights lawyers, unions, religious organizations, civil liberties groups, and elected officials are rallying to support Ragbir’s claim. Amicus briefs from more than 100 such groups and individuals have been filed in the case, all warning that an interpretation allowing the government to target any critic with a final order of removal will have dangerous consequences for free speech.
As Ragbir told an audience at a teach-in on Thursday, “Once we curtail free speech for me, we curtail the free speech of all.”
In the case, which comes before judges Christopher Droney, Pierre Leval, and John Walker Jr., the government contends that Ragbir’s situation is straightforward: He was issued a final order of removal in 2007 and a federal law passed to prevent protracted legal challenges to deportations all but shuts off any judicial review of immigration authorities’ deportation decisions. “An alien like Ragbir has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement to prevent his removal from the United States in accordance with a valid order,” the government argues in its brief. The authorities cited a 1999 Supreme Court ruling, which held that the First Amendment claims of people facing deportation for allegedly providing material aid to a foreign terrorist organization didn’t outweigh the government’s national security interests.
Ragbir’s lawyers note that he isn’t accused of contributing to foreign terrorist groups. His work over the past decade — most prominently as the director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York — has been limited to organizing immigrants and advocating against the increasing violence of ICE and the deportation policies it carries out. Ragbir may have a final order of removal, they argue, but so do an estimated 900,000 other people living in the United States. And in the 11 years Ragbir has been under a final order for removal, ICE didn’t try to deport him until this past year — after his organizing garnered headlines and attracted public attention critical of ICE.
The government’s argument that there is no constitutional bar to prevent ICE from selectively deporting people based on their speech has extreme and troubling implications, Ragbir’s lawyers argue in their briefs. “If this Court were to adopt that view, nothing would prevent ICE from telling noncitizens that it will deport them if they criticize any ICE official, deportation policy, or immigration law in any way,” says a brief filed by Ragbir’s attorneys. “ICE could even command noncitizens with final removal orders to publicly voice support for ICE, or for pending legislation, or for a particular political candidate. There would be no holds barred.”
The government dismisses these suggestions as “outlandish hypotheticals” and counters that if political speech is enough to argue unconstitutional political targeting, anyone facing deportation could criticize ICE and claim First Amendment protections to stay in the country. And just because ICE didn’t exercise its right to deport him for more than a decade doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have that right, whatever its reasoning, the government claims.
Yet Ragbir isn’t just asserting that ICE is retaliating against him without evidence. In March 2017, Ragbir was going for a check-in with ICE and was accompanied by a host of local politicians and activists; the event turned into a public spectacle. Scott Mechkowski, the deputy director of ICE’s New York Field Office and one of the defendants in the suit, told Ragbir’s lawyers in January that he felt “resentment” about the circus of the political protest. ICE “didn’t want the display of wailing kids and wailing clergy,” Mechkowski separately told a group of clergy that visited his office. “That can’t happen this time around.” Ragbir’s brief alleges that an ICE official warned his associates, “You don’t want to make matters worse by saying things.”
IN ADDITION TO the attempted deportation of Ragbir, the successful deportation of fellow New Sanctuary activist Jean Montrevil, and the surveillance of their organization, Ragbir’s lawyers point to an emerging pattern around the country, citing more than a dozen instances in which ICE targeted outspoken immigration activists for deportation, including cases in Colorado, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Last week, NWDC Resistance, an immigrant rights group in Washington state, filed its own lawsuit against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in federal court in Seattle, alleging that ICE has a practice “to systematically surveil, detain, and deport immigrant activists who speak out about immigration policies and practices.”
A different panel of 2nd Circuit judges got a taste of these arguments in August, when Ragbir’s lawyers sought a stay to keep ICE from deporting him until the court could rule on the appeal now before the court. That panel was clearly troubled by government lawyers’ flat refusal to promise that they wouldn’t deport Ragbir before he could have his day in court, but the judges declined to issue a stay.
With the question of the First Amendment rights of people facing deportation now squarely before the court, human rights lawyers, unions, religious organizations, civil liberties groups, and elected officials are rallying to support Ragbir’s claim. Amicus briefs from more than 100 such groups and individuals have been filed in the case, all warning that an interpretation allowing the government to target any critic with a final order of removal will have dangerous consequences for free speech.
As Ragbir told an audience at a teach-in on Thursday, “Once we curtail free speech for me, we curtail the free speech of all.”
BORDER PATROL UNION ENDORSES EXTREMIST VIDEO FEATURING WHITE NATIONALISTS
Melissa del Bosque - the intercept
October 23 2018, 10:44 a.m.
THE NATIONAL BORDER Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents across the country, is featured in a new video that includes white nationalists and anti-Muslim extremists. The video, titled “Killing Free Speech,” was endorsed by the union and recently shown by agents at a private screening in San Diego. The video is also expected to be shown in Texas, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., according to union representative Terence Shigg, president of the San Diego chapter of the NBPC.
The nearly hour-and-half-long video refers to Democrats as “dark and evil” and features a bevy of American and European far-right, anti-Muslim white nationalists who make a correlation between gang rapes, Islam, and immigration. The documentary also features members of the Proud Boys, a hate group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that often aligns with white nationalists and are known for being misogynists and anti-Muslim. The Proud Boys participated in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in mid-October several members of the Proud Boys were arrested in New York City after a violent street confrontation with anti-fascists.
In a press release, the NBPC describes “Killing Free Speech” as a “powerful spotlight on the terrifying assault on liberty in America today. A country heading down the road toward Orwellian control of information by a small but powerful cabal.” The release also invites viewers of the video to “dissect the daily propaganda used by the mainstream media who will stop at nothing to mislead the public and discredit and demonize those who risk their lives protecting America’s borders.”
The director of the video, Michael Hansen, who calls himself “the Dane” in the video’s credits and online, is a Danish immigrant who has made one other video, “Killing Europe,” which argues that immigration has contributed to an epidemic of rape in Europe. A third video, in what is apparently a franchise, will be titled “Killing Canada.”
At the beginning of “Killing Free Speech,” Hansen, wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and driving down the road with a child’s car seat in the back of his modest sedan, warns that the same forces destroying Europe — immigrants, Islam, the anti-fascist group antifa, the media, and political correctness — now threaten the United States. “Their first target is free speech,” he says to the camera on his dashboard. It’s clearly a low-budget project.
In an interview, Shigg said that Hansen approached the union about being in the video during the height of the family separation crisis at the border this past summer.
“The agents were tired of being called ‘Nazis’ or ‘jack-booted thugs’ or ‘immoral,’” Shigg said. And Hansen offered them a platform to reach viewers directly and not through the filter of the media, which he said is seldom sympathetic toward agents. “He was willing to let us speak freely,” said Shigg. “And that’s not something we generally get in the media.”
On the video’s Vimeo page, Hansen touts the Border Patrol’s involvement in the controversial video, in which “for the first time, Border Patrol agents agreed to be filmed to expose the media lies & smears about our agents and the crisis at the border.”
Shigg said that the Border Patrol union did not fund the video, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it would not comment on a “video that was not coordinated, sponsored, produced or approved by our agency. CBP does not endorse this video or the contents thereof.”
Currently, there are close to 20,000 Border Patrol agents in the field. The National Border Patrol Council represents at least 90 percent of them. Border Patrol agents have enormous power to conduct suspicionless searches at border and interior checkpoints within the “border zone,” which is up to 100 miles from any land or coastal border. Within 25 miles of any border, agents can also enter and search private property — though not homes — without permission from landowners.
In 2016, the Border Patrol union came out early in its support — giving its first-ever endorsement — to presidential candidate Donald Trump, who said he would embrace the ideas of “rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, rather than listening to the management yes men.” Since being elected, Trump has increased Border Patrol’s funding and called for 5,000 new agents to be hired. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “rapists” and “animals.”
The section of “Killing Free Speech” devoted to the Border Patrol begins 44 minutes into the video, after Hansen confronts antifa members at a rally, then rides on a bus with Proud Boy members in full riot regalia. Hansen interviews Chris Harris, former director of legislative and political affairs for the San Diego chapter of the NBPC, Shigg, and an agent identified only as “Josh.” The sequence lasts about 20 minutes.
In the video, Harris says that family separation is “not as humane as it could be because the U.S. government could do better … but let’s be brutally honest,” he says. “Nothing was inhumane.” Harris says that agents have to make sure that the children actually belong to the parents and aren’t instead being exploited by human traffickers. “We don’t always know that they are the real parents.” Harris claims that most people arriving at the border do not have a legitimate claim to asylum.
“More and more trying to take away the legal terms that describe people that are coming to the United States and that are breaking the law,” Shigg claims in the video. “They want to put all of them into one group, which is immigrant.”
Josh echoes Shigg in the video, saying that the media makes no distinction between “illegal” and legal immigrants, treating them as one and the same. He also claims that the media deliberately deceives the public.
Shigg told me he wanted to make the video because it dealt with the issue of free speech. I asked Shigg, who is African-American, what he thought of being featured alongside white nationalists and anti-Muslim propaganda — and how such a video furthered the Border Patrol’s agenda, as he had described it, of talking directly to the American people and helping them understand what agents face day to day at the border.
“Our intent was to have a dialogue. We didn’t fund it. We didn’t write it,” Shigg said. “Part of the whole thing is free speech. He has the right to make that and put that information out there.”
The nearly hour-and-half-long video refers to Democrats as “dark and evil” and features a bevy of American and European far-right, anti-Muslim white nationalists who make a correlation between gang rapes, Islam, and immigration. The documentary also features members of the Proud Boys, a hate group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that often aligns with white nationalists and are known for being misogynists and anti-Muslim. The Proud Boys participated in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in mid-October several members of the Proud Boys were arrested in New York City after a violent street confrontation with anti-fascists.
In a press release, the NBPC describes “Killing Free Speech” as a “powerful spotlight on the terrifying assault on liberty in America today. A country heading down the road toward Orwellian control of information by a small but powerful cabal.” The release also invites viewers of the video to “dissect the daily propaganda used by the mainstream media who will stop at nothing to mislead the public and discredit and demonize those who risk their lives protecting America’s borders.”
The director of the video, Michael Hansen, who calls himself “the Dane” in the video’s credits and online, is a Danish immigrant who has made one other video, “Killing Europe,” which argues that immigration has contributed to an epidemic of rape in Europe. A third video, in what is apparently a franchise, will be titled “Killing Canada.”
At the beginning of “Killing Free Speech,” Hansen, wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and driving down the road with a child’s car seat in the back of his modest sedan, warns that the same forces destroying Europe — immigrants, Islam, the anti-fascist group antifa, the media, and political correctness — now threaten the United States. “Their first target is free speech,” he says to the camera on his dashboard. It’s clearly a low-budget project.
In an interview, Shigg said that Hansen approached the union about being in the video during the height of the family separation crisis at the border this past summer.
“The agents were tired of being called ‘Nazis’ or ‘jack-booted thugs’ or ‘immoral,’” Shigg said. And Hansen offered them a platform to reach viewers directly and not through the filter of the media, which he said is seldom sympathetic toward agents. “He was willing to let us speak freely,” said Shigg. “And that’s not something we generally get in the media.”
On the video’s Vimeo page, Hansen touts the Border Patrol’s involvement in the controversial video, in which “for the first time, Border Patrol agents agreed to be filmed to expose the media lies & smears about our agents and the crisis at the border.”
Shigg said that the Border Patrol union did not fund the video, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it would not comment on a “video that was not coordinated, sponsored, produced or approved by our agency. CBP does not endorse this video or the contents thereof.”
Currently, there are close to 20,000 Border Patrol agents in the field. The National Border Patrol Council represents at least 90 percent of them. Border Patrol agents have enormous power to conduct suspicionless searches at border and interior checkpoints within the “border zone,” which is up to 100 miles from any land or coastal border. Within 25 miles of any border, agents can also enter and search private property — though not homes — without permission from landowners.
In 2016, the Border Patrol union came out early in its support — giving its first-ever endorsement — to presidential candidate Donald Trump, who said he would embrace the ideas of “rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, rather than listening to the management yes men.” Since being elected, Trump has increased Border Patrol’s funding and called for 5,000 new agents to be hired. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “rapists” and “animals.”
The section of “Killing Free Speech” devoted to the Border Patrol begins 44 minutes into the video, after Hansen confronts antifa members at a rally, then rides on a bus with Proud Boy members in full riot regalia. Hansen interviews Chris Harris, former director of legislative and political affairs for the San Diego chapter of the NBPC, Shigg, and an agent identified only as “Josh.” The sequence lasts about 20 minutes.
In the video, Harris says that family separation is “not as humane as it could be because the U.S. government could do better … but let’s be brutally honest,” he says. “Nothing was inhumane.” Harris says that agents have to make sure that the children actually belong to the parents and aren’t instead being exploited by human traffickers. “We don’t always know that they are the real parents.” Harris claims that most people arriving at the border do not have a legitimate claim to asylum.
“More and more trying to take away the legal terms that describe people that are coming to the United States and that are breaking the law,” Shigg claims in the video. “They want to put all of them into one group, which is immigrant.”
Josh echoes Shigg in the video, saying that the media makes no distinction between “illegal” and legal immigrants, treating them as one and the same. He also claims that the media deliberately deceives the public.
Shigg told me he wanted to make the video because it dealt with the issue of free speech. I asked Shigg, who is African-American, what he thought of being featured alongside white nationalists and anti-Muslim propaganda — and how such a video furthered the Border Patrol’s agenda, as he had described it, of talking directly to the American people and helping them understand what agents face day to day at the border.
“Our intent was to have a dialogue. We didn’t fund it. We didn’t write it,” Shigg said. “Part of the whole thing is free speech. He has the right to make that and put that information out there.”
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.
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