Police confiscating cash and property
without due process, stopping-and frisking suspiciously 'different'
citizens for any damned reason. Police SWAT teams invading private
homes, terrorizing law abiding civilians,
screaming obscenities for hours and waving automatic weapons; police
harassing people trying to open their own doors; shooting a man over a
dozen times for getting a pack of cigarettes out of his own car
in his own driveway -- I could go on, and of course I have ranted
endlessly and probably all too often -- and more than probably to no
effect.
We're a nation of scared-shitless cowards and
kept that way by endless fear mongering, endless promotion of anger by a
24 hour propaganda machine interested only in boosting ratings and
profits by hiding the fact that violent crime is lower than in a hundred
years and getting lower. Most people you ask will tell you that things
are getting more dangerous every day. A few of them may have a valid case for that.
One
can't go for an hour without hearing some dimwitted diatribe about
Obama's tyrannical government trying in Communist fashion to promote
industrial safety or safe food and water and air -- and to reform our
unfair and inadequate health system -- just like a fascist, but
egregious infractions of Constitutional protections? Hey, that's
different, unless of course it's the second amendment so vital to that
apocalyptic war against authority we dream about.
I read this morning about three Bronx kids, two girls and their brother, all siblings, who were verbally abused,
handcuffed, beaten, choked, pepper sprayed and thrown to the ground by a
swarm of police apparently for no better reason than for playing
handball in a park while wearing Muslim hedjabs. The girls had their
scarves pulled off for the crime of not producing identification quickly
enough while being black and/or Muslim, or so the police say. Within
moments dozens of police swarmed the area intimidating and tackling
bystanders and arresting one who tried to record a video of this
obscenity.
"Come here, you little motherfucker, you
like recording?" said one cop, mashing the 18 year old bystander's face
into the pavement; punching and pepper spraying him.
"Where's the phone? I'll break your arm." He screamed at the college student.
Of
course the police have a cover story. Pulling one's 12 year old sister
from a raging policeman who was "escorting" the children out of the park
is criminal assault of course and the police were injured and had to be
hospitalized -- of course and although Internal Affairs is
"investigating" my bet, based on experience is that not a damned thing
will happen to them. My guess is that this, like so many of the
disgusting offenses that happen constantly all over the nation; like so
many of the abuses of civil rights and constitutional protection,
whether it be the right to assembly, protection from searches, seizures
without warrant, probable cause or any pretense of due process it will
just fade away leaving only the stench of hate, racism, injustice, fear
and smug hypocrisy. And all the while we will be concerned about what
the leaders tell us to be concerned about; get angry on cue, ignore this
fact and believe that fiction. All the while we'll belabor the same
talking points pursue the same bogeymen and we'll cringe in fear of our
neighbor's shotgun while Policemen carry machine guns, batter down our
doors, blind us with gas, beat us with clubs, sodomize us with
broomsticks and shoot down unarmed citizens and get way with it.
Imagine if you will, a boot stamping on a human face forever. Imagine a voice screaming "Freeze Motherfucker!" forever. Imagine.
Captain,
ReplyDeleteGood post. Hopefully, more posts like this will help raise public consciousness regarding the scope of these outrageous abuses. To facilitate matters, here are a few more examples:
Kathryn Johnston
In November 2006, a narcotics team from the Atlanta Police Department apprehended a man with a known drug history. They planted marijuana on him, then threatened to arrest him unless he gave them information about where they could find a supply of illegal drugs. He gave them the address of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. Instead of finding an informant to make a controlled buy from the address, the officer instead lied on the search warrant, inventing an informant and describing a drug buy that never happened.
When the police broke into Johnston's home on the evening of November 21, 2006, she met them with an old, non-functioning revolver she used to scare off trespassers. They opened fire. Two officers were wounded from friendly fire. The other officers called for ambulances for their colleagues. Meanwhile, they handcuffed Johnston and left her to bleed to death in her own home while one office planted marijuana in her basement.
A subsequent federal investigation revealed that lying on drug warrants was common in the APD, the product of a quota system the department imposed on narcotics cops. That system was the result of the pool of federal funding for drug policing, funding for which the department competed with other police departments across the country. The federal investigation and media reports also found numerous other victims of wrong-door police raids in the years leading up to Johnston's death. The entire narcotics department was later fired or transferred. While Johnston's death led to calls for changes in the way the city enforces the drug laws, there was little in the way of real reform. The city instituted a civilian review board to oversee the police department, but its powers were severely weakened after complaints from the police union, and its first director eventually resigned in frustration.
Isaac Singletary
ReplyDeleteKnown around the neighborhood as "Pops," 80-year-old Isaac Singletary moved into his high-crime Jacksonville, Fla., neighborhood in 1987 to care for and protect his sister and mother, both of whom were sick at the time. The retired repairman was known to sit in front of his house in a lawn chair to shoo trespassers and drug dealers away from his property.
But in January 2007, two undercover narcotics cops, posed as drug dealers, set up shop on Singletary's lawn. Singletary first came out of his house and yelled at them to leave. They didn't. He went back inside. Minutes later, he came out again and told them to leave, this time while waving a handgun. One of the cops then opened fire. Wounded, Singletary tried to escape into his backyard. The cops chased him down and shot him again, this time in the back. Singletary died at the scene. They never told Singletary they were police officers.
The police initially claimed Singletary tried to rob them, then they claimed Singletary fired first. Five witnesses said that wasn't true. Three months later, investigating state attorney Harry Shorstein initially expressed some frustration with the operation. "If we're just selling drugs to addicts, I don't know what we're accomplishing," he told the Florida Times-Union.
But three months later, Shorstein cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing. His report included a couple of inconsistencies. First, while attorneys for Singletary's family found four witnesses who said the police fired first, Shorstein could find only one -- a convicted drug dealer Shorstein deemed untrustworthy. Second, while Shorstein criticized the police officers for not identifying themselves before they started shooting at Singletary, he still put the bulk of the blame on Singletary himself. He concluded Singletary "was an armed civilian who refused orders to drop his gun," even though Singletary thought the orders came from two drug dealers.
Ironically, Singletary's death came a little less than two years after Florida passed a highly publicized law expanding the right to self-defense. The "Stand Your Ground" law removed the traditional legal requirement that when faced with a threat, you must first attempt to escape before using lethal force.
An internal report from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office also cleared the two undercover officers, Darrin Green and James Narcisse, of violating any department policies. The report, written by five members of the sheriff's department, concluded that they had followed department procedures, and that "no further action" was necessary. Narcisse, the first officer to fire at Singletary, was later fired for disciplinary reasons that the sheriff's department said were unrelated to the Singletary case.
Sheriff John Rutherford eventually conceded that Singletary was "a good citizen" and that his death was "a tragic incident." But he also rebuffed calls to end undercover drug stings like the one police were conducting on Singletary's property. Then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist called it one of the "challenges" of keeping a community safe. In 2010, the city of Jacksonville agreed to pay Singletary's family a $200,000 settlement, though the city admitted no wrongdoing.
Johnathan Ayers
ReplyDeleteIn September 2009, Johnathan Ayers, a 28-year-old Baptist pastor from Lavonia, Ga., was gunned down by a North Georgia narcotics task force in the parking lot of a gas station. Police would later acknowledge he was not using or trafficking in illicit drugs. Instead, Ayers had been ministering to Johanna Barrett, the actual target of the investigation.
According to an interview Barrett gave to a North Georgia newspaper shortly after Ayers' death, on the day he died the pastor had seen her walking near a gas station on her way back to an extended-stay motel where she lived with her boyfriend. Ayers had known Barrett for a number of years, and offered her a ride back to the motel. He also gave her the money in his pocket, $23, to help pay her rent.
The police were trailing Barrett at the time. But instead of apprehending her at the motel, they instead followed Ayers, who they saw hand Ayers cash.
They followed Ayers to a nearby gas station where he withdrew some money from an ATM. Shortly after he got back into his car, a black Escalade pulled up behind him. Three officers, all undercover, rushed Ayers' vehicle and pointed their guns at him. The pastor panicked and attempted to escape. As he backed out, Ayers' car grazed one police officer. Officer Billy Shane Harrison then opened fire, shooting Ayers in the stomach. Ayers drove for another thousand yards before crashing his car. He died at the hospital. His last words to his family and medical staff were that he thought he was being robbed. The police found no illicit drugs in his car.
A grand jury later declined to indict Harrison for any crime. District Attorney Brian Rickman praised the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for going to "very extraordinary lengths" to conduct a fair investigation. But a civil suit suggested otherwise. The complaint alleged that Harrison wasn't authorized to arrest him. On the day Ayers was killed, Harrison had yet to take the firearms training classes required for his certification as a police officer. In fact, Harrison had no training at all in the use of lethal force.
Donald Scott
ReplyDeleteIn October 1992, a team of police from state and federal agencies raided the ranch of 61-year-old Malibu millionaire Donald Scott. The raid was led by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, even though Scott actually lived in Ventura County. The police in that county weren't notified of the raid. Scott's new wife first encountered the police in the kitchen. Hearing her scream, Scott armed himself, and went to meet the intruders. He was shot dead in his home.
Scott was suspected of growing marijuana. Friends and relatives would later say that while Scott was a hard drinker, he wasn't a drug user, and in fact deplored the use of illicit drugs. The raid turned up no marijuana plants, nor any evidence of marijuana growth.
A subsequent investigation by Ventura County District Attorney Michael Bradbury was highly critical of the investigation, raid, and motives of the police agencies involved. Bradbury found ample evidence that the police agencies -- particularly the L.A. County sheriff's office -- were eyeing Scott's $5 million ranch for asset forfeiture, and had been told by the DEA that it could initiate forfeiture proceedings if authorities found as few as 14 marijuana plants. The report found that the warrant affidavits included false information, misleading information, and omitted information that would have indicated to a judge that Scott wasn't engaged in any illegal activity.
In 2000, Francis Plante -- Scott's widow -- settled with the various agencies involved in her husband's death for $5 million. No police officers were ever disciplined for Scott's death.
Esequiel Hernández, Jr
ReplyDeleteEsequiel Hernandez, 18, was herding goats near his home in Redford, Texas, when he was killed by a team of U.S. Marines in 1997. Dressed in camouflage, the Marines were deployed near the border town as part of a federal program aimed at stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States from Mexico.
Hernandez carried a rifle to scare off predatory animals. When he heard noises from the hiding Marines, he fired in their direction. One Marine fired back, striking Hernandez in the chest. The U.S. government later paid the Hernandez family a $1.9 million settlement. None of the Marines was criminally charged.
Rev. Accleyne Williams
The Rev. Accleyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister, died of a heart attack on March 25, 1994, after struggling with 13 members of a masked, heavily armed Boston SWAT team that stormed his apartment. The police later revealed that an informant had given them incorrect information.
According to the Boston Herald, "a warrant authorizing the raid was approved by Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Mary Lou Moran, even though the application supporting the warrant did not specify which apartment on the building's second floor was to be targeted. It also failed to provide corroboration of the confidential informant's tip that a Jamaican drug posse operated out of the building."
Another police source told the Herald: "You'd be surprised at how easily this can happen. An informant can tell you it is the apartment on the left at the top of the stairs and there could be two apartments on the left at the top of the stairs . . . You are supposed to verify it, and I'm not making excuses, but mistakes can be made."
Another Boston Herald investigation later discovered that three of the officers involved in the Williams raid had been accused in a 1989 civil rights suit of using nonexistent informants to secure drug warrants. The city had in fact just settled a suit stemming from a mistaken raid five years earlier. According to witnesses, one of the officers in that raid apologized as he left, telling the home's terrified occupants, "This happens all the time."
Alberto Sepulveda
ReplyDeleteOn September 13, 2000, agents from the DEA, the FBI, and a Stanislaus County, California narcotics task force conducted a series of raids on 14 homes in the area of Modesto, Calif.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the DEA and FBI asked that the local SWAT teams enter each home unannounced in order to secure the area ahead of federal agents, who then came in to search for evidence. Federal agents warned the SWAT teams that the targets of the warrants, one of whom was Moises Sepulveda should be considered armed and dangerous. When local police asked if there were any children in the Sepulveda home, federal agents answered, "Not aware of any."
But Sepulveda had three children, a daughter and two sons. After the police broke into the Sepulveda home, Moises, his wife and children were ordered to lie face down on the floor as officers pointed guns at their heads. Moments later, Officer David Hawn fired his gun, killing 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda from point-blank range.
There were no drugs or guns in the Sepulveda home. A subsequent internal investigation by the Modesto Police Department found that the DEA's evidence against Moises Sepulveda, who had no previous criminal record, was "minimal." The city of Modesto and the federal government settled a lawsuit brought by the Sepulvedas for $3 million.
I don't mean to damn all cops and I'm convinced that most of them are good people. I have and have had friends who have been policemen and detectives, some extraordinarily smart and honest and dedicated. And after all, who you gonna call?
ReplyDeleteBut.
Even your long sad story does not cover the extent of the problem which includes politicians and prosecutors and crusading celebrities. I have been arguing for a long time that one of the reasons we don't hear much about these horrors is that our ire and anger and attention are directed and conducted as though we were an orchestra or a mob of marks being led through the side show to the egress - and not to our benefit or the pursuit of justice.
For every high profile case, many and more egregious cases go silently down into oblivion like blood soaking into the ground. Instead of the investigative reporting a free press was supposed to insure, we have corporations who hire impresarios to lead us into one blind alley of anger after another while we ignore all other voices.
Perhaps the rule of law is merely another artificial construct subject to the whims and caprices of those empowered to enforce the law. Instead of order and due process, we have SWAT teams conducting themselves as paramilitary gangs which mirror the anger and mob tendencies of the general public. The examples above are akin to lynchings, not law enforcement operations.
ReplyDeleteYes. The law is a human creation and like all things we do, all our worst features get into the construction. We can't help it and most of us won't even try. The police couldn't get away with it without our tacit approval or willingness to excuse it.
ReplyDeleteHow many laws have nothing to do with protecting people from other people and how many are about justifying doing bad things to people because we hate them or fear them? How much angry propaganda about being "soft on crime" "soft on drugs" have we had? How much rhetoric about how we tie the hands of the police and coddle criminals? How much of the falsely given impression of rampantly increasing crime and violence is intended to make us tolerate these violent actions because of the danger?
But there's just no excuse for these horror stories and no excuse for tolerating it, for covering it up. There's no excuse for making people so afraid as to think of persecuting the innocent as a necessary price for safety. There is no excuse for most of our drug laws, any more than there was an excuse for misogyny laws, segregation laws or any of the others designed to institutionalize the worst of human nature.
Even if there were, haven't we grown up believing we had a right to freedom from fear? If we have to worry about being brutalized, insulted, robbed and shot like dogs in our own homes by marauding swat teams, this is not a free country.
Good cops far outweigh bad cops. A good cop follows orders. All cops protect each other, yes, good cops protect bad cops.
ReplyDeleteTraining tactics (in my opinion) go beyond reasonable force and invite abuse. How many times have we seen videos of "over" force being used when the situation did not call for it. That's not necessarily over zealous cops (that's a different problem) but overly protective training tactics. Seems shoot first, ask questions later, is becoming an accepted training policy. Treat everyone as a possible killer, until you can prove otherwise.
"Probable cause" is one of those terms that invites abuse. It's a judgement call, and that includes individual biases and bad judgment.
A cops attitude is another problem. These people work for us and we are considered innocent until proven guilty. I've known many cops. It is true some have superiority complex problems, and thrive on having the ability to use their authority over citizens. This attitude comes from the top. We all know the stories of how some cities cops are notoriously good, or bad.
In court, a cops word is given great weight, especially in cases when the main evidence, is what the cop saw and how the cop describes the behavior (verbal and physical) of a suspect. A cop is usually believed without corroborating evidence. Another situation that can lead to abuse.
Zimmerman wants to be a cop, yet, he refused to follow the directions of the 911 dispatcher, and leave Martin alone. Refusing to follow directions, is not a quality of a good cop.
Technology is power, and most cops have all the latest technology at their fingertips. I don't mind being questioned by police when they are seeking wrong doers, but technology has led to more abuses. We seem to think computerized information is infallible, but, as we have seen, a wrong address could cause a needless death. "Big Brother" tactics do make errors, yet, the cops don't seem to question enough, all the information they get from technology.
There is plenty that can go wrong, without the help of a bad cop.
Anon,
DeletePlease accept my thanks for your comment. This perspective deserves to be a part of this discussion.
So many good observations, so little time. Thank you. There are many parallels between being a cop and being a soldier in one of those wars where anyone on the street is a potential enemy and you never know which smiling face conceals a suicide bomber. Plenty that can go wrong indeed.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest concern at the moment is the question of why we seem to be so tolerant of such incidents and so unwilling to pay attention to them. I wonder why we aren't more outraged by the ways the innocent are punished in America. Perhaps I'm at least partially correct by thinking we're deliberately distracted by relatively trivial events and also kept in a state of fear by false and apocalyptic rhetoric about every worsening danger. Perhaps not, but as you suggest it's complex.