Texas Cop Loses Job for Chokehold on Woman, 2nd Cop Disciplined for Ordering Footage Deleted

The video that went viral after it was posted on PINAC Monday, showing a woman being placed in a chokehold after she refused to provide identification, led to the resignation of one officer and disciplinary action against another after a dash cam video obtained through a PINAC public records request ended up contradicting an earlier statement from the police chief."

The day the initial video was posted, Corpus Christi Police Chief Floyd D. Simpson issued a press release in which he said Lanessa Espinosa was involved in a fight with a large group of people, which is why the officers had probable cause to demand her identification.
But then the dash cam footage requested by PINAC’s growing research team revealed that Corpus Christi Police Sergeant Jerry Lockhart ordered her to delete the footage she had recorded of him placing her in handcuffs after a Nueces County district attorney officer placed her in a chokehold.

It also shows she was not part of the fight because they had that group lined up against a van away from Espinosa."

Nueces County district attorney officer Gary Witherspoon ended up resigning to avoid termination because of that chokehold.

And Lockhart was “formally disciplined” for ordering her to delete the footage, although Simpson did not specify exactly how he would be disciplined."

http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/texas-cop-loses-job-chokehold-woman/

Couple mocked Eric Garner's death miming chokehold behind WPIX reporter

What the St Louis Rams know about Ferguson is a righteous glimpse of the way forward

Protesting the death of Michael Brown is not a political act, no matter what the pundits say. These are five men who don’t want to die for being black. This is personal"


Before their Sunday NFL game against the Oakland Raiders, five players from the St Louis Rams walked onto the field, their hands raised in a now-familiar gesture of support – “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” – for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old who was killed by by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and whose grieving family was denied justice last week when a grand jury declined to prosecute Wilson.

Later that same evening, the St Louis Police Officers Association issued a statement denouncing the nonviolent act of protest as “tasteless” and “inflammatory”. The cops called for the players involved to be disciplined, they demanded an apology, and they seemingly took particular offense to the players’ unwillingness to accept that the grand jury’s decision not to indict Brown means that justice was somehow served.

The next day, conservative pundits framed the players’ act as political – and the very word, political, was an accusation. "

But protesting the death of Michael Brown was not a political act – at least, not in the way it is being framed by political pundits. It was the act of black men who are or may someday parent black children. They are men with significant others and parents and siblings who also know the challenges of living and breathing while black. They are men who don’t want to die for being black. They don’t want their children to die for being black. I cannot think of a more personal act. "

*But those five football players may have offered us a glimpse of the way forward. They committed a personal act. They made a clear and concise statement that they would not stand, silently, in the face of injustice. They forced us all to look at the things from which we all too often choose to look away. They reminded us of the precarious nature of black life in America, and how that nature needs to change. "

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/03/st-louis-rams-ferguson-protesting-death-michael-brown

Body cameras for cops could be the biggest change to come out of the Ferguson protests

"Within the next five years or so, body-worn cameras will be as ubiquitous in the world of policing as handcuffs, the police radio, the gun," said Jim Buerrmann, president of the Police Foundation in Washington and a former chief of police in Redlands, Calif.

Buerrmann argues when police wear cameras, they're less likely to use force, and that members of the community place greater trust in police."

*Available evidence suggests that cameras do change interactions between police and the public. When the police department in Rialto, Calif. conducted a trial, assigning cameras to half its 54 officers at random, the use of force declined by 60 percent"

*Buerrmann sees the administration's proposal as a start, but that cameras won't immediately solve the problems of police departments that have lost the trust of their communities.

"The problems go much deeper than technology, but this is the first thing that needs to be done to move forward," he said.

Whether Obama's proposal has a chance on the Hill remains to be seen, but there is some support among lawmakers for encouraging police to wear body cameras. After Brown's death, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) proposed making cameras mandatory for any police agency receiving federal funds."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/02/body-cameras-for-cops-could-be-the-biggest-change-to-come-out-of-the-ferguson-protests/

Alabama Teen Arrested, Dies From Excessive Force By Police

A teen in Hunstville, Alabama, who died last year while being arrested in a drug sting, has been found to have “suffered broken ribs, had a flashlight shoved in his mouth and suffered cardiac arrest while officers sat on him,” according to AL.com.

Reportedly, the 17-year-old had choked and was vomiting while being handcuffed by police and subsequently lost consciousness. Authorities said that they were under the impression that the teen had overdosed, but a lawsuit brought on by Nancy Smith, the mother of the young man, claims that “no signs of an overdose had been found.”

Police arrested the teen after they sent an informant to buy drugs from him. Upon arrival to the scene, officers “held the teen down and inserted two pens and the butt of a flashlight into his mouth searching for contraband,” AL.com reports. Once paramedics arrived, the teen, who was 6 feet tall and weighed 130 pounds, had turned blue and was barely able to breathe. Five days later, on June 18th, 2013, the young man died at a local hospital.

According to AL.com, no drugs were found at any point. "

Smith filed a wrongful death suit in March of this year, but the suit was initially dismissed last month on “technical grounds.” City Attorney Peter Joffrion responded to the initial complaint, saying that while the death was unfortunate, he believed that responding officers "handled this matter appropriately."

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/alabama-teen-arrested-dies-excessive-force-police

Ferguson police officer resigned on safety concerns, lawyer says

(Reuters) - The white police officer who shot an unarmed black teenager to death this summer in a St. Louis suburb decided to resign from the force because of threats against fellow officers after a grand jury decided not to indict him, his lawyer said on Sunday."

*Wilson, who said he was acting in self-defense and that his conscience is clear, had been on administrative leave and in seclusion."

*Some critics now want Tom Jackson, Ferguson's police chief, to resign as well, to promote reconciliation in the St. Louis suburb, where most residents are black and the police force are mostly white.

"I think it’s impossible for this community to move forward with him still in that role," said St. Louis Alderman Antonio French on ABC's "This Week."

Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump said they would pursue all legal avenues, including a potential wrongful death lawsuit and pushing for a "Michael Brown law" requiring police to wear body cameras to record incidents such as the Ferguson shooting.

"We want police officers who do have a conscience in our community, and not police officers who are cold as ice and see our children as demons and criminals," Crump said on "Face the Nation" on CBS."

Picture of Wilson at link seems to show he healed well from his vicious attack at the hands of Michael Brown..

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/30/us-usa-missouri-shooting-resignation-idUSKCN0JE00520141130

Ferguson really about police militarization

"Grand juries will indict a ham sandwich, but not a police officer"

SACRAMENTO — The grand-jury system dates back to King Henry II of England in the 12th century. But the most widely known fact about it comes from former New York Judge Sol Wachtler, quoted by author Tom Wolfe in 1987 saying “a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.” His point: grand juries are tools of prosecutors."

*It’s rare for officers to be charged in an on-duty killing. And even when charges are filed, officers are given protections other Americans are not granted. In California, the Peace Officers Bill Of Rights and union representation make it difficult for agencies to punish questionable on-duty behavior. The investigating agencies tend to be defensive of police who come under the microscope. It’s far different than when an average citizen is accused of a crime."

*After Fullerton officers beat and tasered an unarmed homeless man in 2011, the police department claimed the officers suffered broken bones, even though evidence later showed that to be false. The officers were even allowed to watch a video of the incident before filing their police reports. One writer, William Grigg, says it’s not about “white privilege” but “blue privilege.”

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/28/ferguson-police-militarization-grand-juries-indict/?#article-copy

UN: US police brutality violates anti-torture treaty

GENEVA (AP) — Police brutality, military interrogations and prisons were among the top concerns of a U.N. panel’s report Friday that found the United States to be falling short of full compliance with an international anti-torture treaty.

The report by the U.N. Committee Against Torture, its first such review of the U.S. record since 2006, expressed concerns about allegations of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, particularly the Chicago Police Department’s treatment of blacks and Latinos."

“There are numerous areas in which certain things should be changed for the United States to comply fully with the convention,” Alessio Bruni of Italy, one of the panel’s chief investigators, said at a news conference Friday in Geneva. He was referring to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which took effect in 1987 and the United States ratified in 1994.

The U.N. committee’s 10 independent experts are responsible for reviewing the records of all 156 U.N. member countries that have ratified the treaty against torture and all “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

http://thegrio.com/2014/11/29/un-police-brutality-torture/

Pregnant woman loses eye after police shoot bean bag at her

A pregnant St. Louis woman lost her left eye after a violent run-in with law enforcement earlier this week.

Dornnella Conners says an officer fired a non-lethal bean-bag round at the car she was in – shattering the passenger side window.

Shards of glass bloodied her face and robbed her of sight in her left eye, according to reports.

“I will have justice for what they did to me but I’m happy I’m alive,” she wrote on Facebook on Thanksgiving.

Conners was injured early Tuesday morning shortly after the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Crowds of demonstrators had taken to the streets to protest what they consider a travesty of justice.

Conners, who was angry about the grand jury’s decision, and her boyfriend, De’Angelas Lee, were parked at a BP gas station on New Halls Ferry Road in St. Louis, just north of Ferguson, KMOV reported.

As her boyfriend started to drive away, she says, several police officers arrived.

“They pulled up while we were coming towards the street, De’Anglas was trying to get away, they blocked us from the side, front and back,” Conners told the CBS affiliate.

That’s when an officer fired the bean bag round because he feared for his safety, police said.

http://news.yahoo.com/pregnant-st--louis-woman-left-eye-blind-ferguson-174119853.html

Prosecutor Used Grand Jury to Let Darren Wilson Walk

Robert McCulloch could’ve indicted Michael Brown’s killer himself. Instead, he barely pushed the jurors to charge the cop and allowed the unprecedented step of letting the officer testify. "

St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s announcement of his failure to secure the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown has openly and shamelessly mocked our criminal justice system and laid bare the inequality that is emblematic of criminal jurisprudence in the United States. Monday night’s farcical performance during McCulloch’s press conference, at which he announced the grand jury’s “no true bill” decision, was a failed and poor attempt to convince the residents of Ferguson, St. Louis County, and the nation of the legitimacy and fairness of the grand jury process.

Let’s be candid and clear about grand juries in the United States: They are at all times completely and unalterably under the control and direction of the prosecutor. If the prosecutor wishes to secure an indictment, a “true bill” is inevitably returned. It is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to override the prosecutor’s intention to obtain an indictment. In my 27 years as a police officer in Boston, I have never heard of a situation in which a prosecutor failed to secure an indictment when seeking such—plainly put: It doesn’t happen. "


*Further, that this case went to a grand jury at all in the first place was largely in deference to Wilson’s status as a police officer. The prosecutor has the option to bring charges against a defendant directly before a judge without invoking the grand jury process at all. This happens all the time; in fact if the outcome in this case had been the death of Wilson and not Brown, Brown would have no doubt been charged before a court the very next day, without the benefit of a months’ long grand jury investigation. Had Brown killed Wilson and not the other way around, Brown would have spent these past months languishing in jail awaiting trial, not collecting a paycheck and planning his wedding"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/28/prosecutor-used-grand-jury-to-let-darren-wilson-walk.html