The Los Angeles Police Department’s news release on an Oct. 12 officer-involved shooting seemed fairly routine.
Officers searching for several suspects who had fled after being stopped for questioning found one hiding under an SUV on Woodlawn Avenue in South L.A. The officers pulled the suspect out by his ankles, saw what looked like a metallic object in his hands and opened fire, critically wounding him.
But one crucial piece of information was left out of the release: The suspect’s hands were cuffed behind his back at the time and he was lying on his stomach.
A Texas state trooper who fired on a pickup truck from a helicopter and killed two illegal immigrants during a chase through the desert was trying to disable the vehicle and suspected it was being used to smuggle drugs, authorities said Friday.
It is astonishing when police officers disregard the most serious rule governing their conduct–the use of deadly force. Even if the police were 100 percent certain the vehicle had a trunk full of marijuana and cocaine and that the vehicle was highly likely to elude capture by the police on the ground, that would not justify the use of deadly force. Not even close. The story reminds me of one of the early scenes in the movie Black Hawk Down, where Delta snipers disable the engine of a vehicle from an Army helicopter in order to capture one of the occupants. This may be another example of military tactics spilling over to the civilian world of policing.
A drunk, off-duty cop, Anthony Abbate, beat up a petite lady bartender, Karolina Obrycka in 2007. The video below went viral at the time. The case is now back in the news because the civil lawsuit is now underway in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has the sordid details here. Apparently, the key issue in the civil trial is whether the department engaged in misconduct in response to Abbate’s criminal attack. In other words, did certain officers falsify reports, intimidate witnesses, and so forth.
One must consider what would have happened in the case if there was no videotape. Before the tape was released, Abbate was charged with a misdemeanor. After the tape surfaced, he was charged with a felony. Even with the taped beating as evidence, and even after his criminal conviction, a judge ordered 2 years probation. No jail time at all for Abbate.
The encounter between police officers and a University of Maryland student after a basketball game in 2010 lasted only 10 seconds, but how a jury interprets those moments, captured on video, will determine the fate of two veteran Prince George’s County police officers on trial this week.
The officers, Reginald Baker and James J. Harrison, are charged with first-degree assault and misconduct in office. Prosecutor Joseph Ruddy opened the government’s case against them Monday by slamming his palm against a wooden railing in a county circuit courtroom, eliciting a loud thwack.
“Did you hear that noise?” he asked jurors. “That was a baton striking John McKenna over and over and over again.”
Ruddy, an assistant state’s attorney, urged jurors to hold the officers accountable in what he called an unprovoked beating of a skipping, singing student during a postgame celebration on the streets of College Park.
Here’s the video:
According to the news article above,
Attorneys for the officers called the gathering an unruly riot that threatened to get out of control and characterized McKenna, then a 21-year-old student, as an aggressor who ran toward police with fists clenched, ignoring warnings to stand back.
The baton blows to McKenna were “lawful, justified and were not police brutality,” said William C. Brennan, an attorney for Baker.
A Philadelphia cop under investigation for punching a woman in the face has been taken off the streets and restricted to administrative duties during the investigation, police said.
A video posted on YouTube shows the unidentified cop punching a woman in the face and knocking her to the ground before she is led off bloodied and handcuffed.
It was decided today that the officer would be placed on “restricted status,” meaning that he is relegated to “administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation,” according to Lt. Ray Evers.
Advocates are calling for better training and more discipline after a Houston police officer fatally shot a mentally ill double-amputee in a wheelchair on Saturday, the third unarmed person police have shot in less than three months….
“How difficult is it, if nothing else, to get away from someone in a wheelchair who has no weapon, has only one arm and one good leg?” asked Arlene Kelly, co-founder of Civilians Down, a support group for victims of police violence that tracks misconduct. “It’s totally and completely needless. Those officers should have had that matter well in hand. The gun should have never been out of the holster.”
A Texas police department is defending an officer who is seen on a dashcam video pulling a 77-year-old woman out of her car during a traffic stop.
Sgt. Gene Geheb, an officer from the Keene Police Department, pulled Lynn Bedford over Aug. 19 for driving 66 mph in a 50 mph zone. But their stop grew heated when Bedford refused to hand over her driver’s license and insurance card, according to police reports and video from the officer’s dashcam. The officer was also wearing a microphone and camera.
Video at the link above. This officer should have been much more patient. He was polite at the start, but his fuse was much too short.
MESQUITE — A Garland police officer is on restricted duty after authorities say he fired as many as 41 shots at an apparently unarmed man last month, killing him.
Garland police also said Tuesday that dash-cam video revealed that Officer Patrick Tuter crashed his squad car into a truck driven by the suspect, Michael Vincent Allen, before the shooting started. Initial reports had said Allen had hit Tuter’s car, prompting the officer to open fire.
“It’s still under investigation,” said Garland police spokesman Officer Joe Harn. “We’re trying to find out exactly why he started shooting.”
Well, isn’t he cooperating? Perhaps a video would shed some light on this, but note:
Wallace took cellphone pictures and video after the shooting stopped, but he said Mesquite police confiscated the phone and deleted the video and pictures.
