Police earning the hate

[MR25]

[tifosi77]

What are the odds the groomer man is known to police in a friendly capacity. Like, he's buddies with the Chief or something.

[Shyster]

A high-school band director named Johnny Mims was tased 3 times during a Minor High School band performance in Birmingham, Alabama. The band was taking part in what they call “The Fifth Quarter,” a segment after the game which many high schools and historical Black Colleges play music.

Around the 3:30 mark, "Officer 2" lets slip the likely reason for the arrest and tasing, saying to another cop that, "That was disrespectful to me." In other words, "Officer 2" was butthurt that the band director didn't immediately follow the order for the band to stop playing, and he decided to retaliate for the lack of "respect" by arresting and tasing the band leader. Respect mah authoritah!

[Shyster]

It is absolutely pathetic just how ignorant the police are of the constitutional rights they have sworn to uphold. Police training spends far more time on training cops on how to shoot people than it does on basic constitutional rights.

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Also on the NYPD:

Last year, a series of headlines in New York City buzzed with excitement about a cop with the street nickname of “Bullethead.”

New York Police Department Sgt. David Grieco — his actual name — had reached a milestone: Police misconduct lawsuits naming him as a defendant had exceeded $1 million in settlement payouts. Since the raft of news stories, Grieco has been named in at least two additional suits, according to publicly available information as of July, and payouts in complaints naming him have now reached $1,099,825.

In the 13 years it took for Grieco to be named in 48 suits alleging police misconduct, he’s been promoted twice. In 2016, he was elevated from officer to detective and, a year later, to sergeant.

The New York Police Department’s officer profile database, meanwhile, lists no applicable entries for disciplinary history in Grieco’s profile.

The NYPD launched the portal in 2021 after a federal appeals court issued a ruling allowing city officials to release police discipline records. The department has since touted the new page as a move toward transparency, said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, a public defense organization in New York City. Wong said the department’s limitations on what counts as misconduct — reflected in an analysis of lawsuit settlement data provided to The Intercept by the Legal Aid Society — undermines any of those stated transparency goals.

“If you look up a lot of these officers, especially the ones who are most sued, you’re not going to see that they necessarily have a lengthy misconduct history or disciplinary history,” Wong said. “That’s because the NYPD defines misconduct very narrowly. And in that sense, I think what we’re looking at is really problematic because it allows these kinds of officers to continue to act with impunity.”

Meanwhile, the city is consistently paying out millions in misconduct settlements designed to avoid findings of guilt, which, therefore, never appear on the NYPD profiles database.

Of the 10 NYPD officers named in the most lawsuits — facing a collective 245 suits in the last decade, with total payouts of more than $7 million — only one is listed for misconduct in the police profile database.

. . .

The 10 officers most named in civil suits going back to 2013 — the 245 suits that paid out a total of $7.2 million — include Grieco; Detectives Daniel Rivera, Abdiel Anderson, Jodi Brown, Waliur Rahman, Ricardo Bocachica, and Wilfredo Benitez; Lt. Henry Daverin; police officer William Schumacher; and former Assistant Chief of Detectives Christopher McCormack, who retired last month.

Of the 10, Daverin is the only person whose department profile lists any disciplinary history. He has a total of 16 allegations and zero charges.

At least seven of the officers have each been named in more than 20 suits, and another three have each been named in 19 cases.

Other cops have been named in fewer suits that netted higher total payouts. Since 2013, officer Pedro Rodriguez has been named in at least three suits that have paid out a total of $12 million. Four other officers have each been named in multiple suits that have paid out upward of $8 million, and five more officers have each been named in suits that paid more than $4 million.

In the first half of 2023, New York City paid more than $50 million in lawsuits alleging police misconduct by members of the NYPD.
Payouts from suits that won the biggest sums since 2013 exceed $68 million. That number is dwarfed by payouts this year alone. In the first half of 2023, New York City paid more than $50 million in lawsuits alleging police misconduct by members of the NYPD. The figure is on track to exceed $100 million by the end of the year and does not include matters settled with the city comptroller prior to formal legal proceedings.

Would you hire a lawyer who has been sued more than 20 times for legal malpractice? Would you have medical procedure done by a surgeon who has been subject to 43 med-mal suits in 13 years? Of course not. But cops can be sued dozens of times for millions of dollars, and they're still on the force.

[Ad@m]

[Shyster]

[Ad@m]

Johnstown Police Capt. Michael Plunkard was charged Friday with two third-degree felony theft-related offenses.

According to a probable-cause affidavit, in May, Plunkard reportedly posted to Facebook that he was interested in selling his 2007 Jeep for $12,000.

Investigators say the woman had reportedly messaged Plunkard, stating that she was interested in buying the vehicle for her 17-year-old son.

Plunkard had allegedly told the woman that he still had a “small” loan on the vehicle, and that it would take a few days to get the title released.

The woman thought the loan was about $1,000, according to officials.

In June, the woman and her son had met Plunkard at his home and gave him a check for $11,000, according to the affidavit.

The woman allegedly gave the check to Plunkard with the understanding that the final purchase will occur when the Jeep’s title is transferred.

The check was cashed the following day, according to the affidavit.

A police search later revealed that Plunkard still owed $29,461.48 on the Jeep, as of Aug. 4.

Police note that Plunkard’s original statement that he had a “small” loan on the vehicle was “false and deceptive,” according to the affidavit.

Plunkard was arraigned Friday before District Judge Susan Gindlesperger and is free on a $25,000 unsecured bond.

Johnstown City Manager Ethan Imhoff said that Plunkard has been placed on administrative leave.

[AuthorTony]

1. $11K for a 2007 Wrangler would be a screaming deal if it was in good shape and didn't have 200K miles.
2. How the heck did he still owe almost $30K on a 2007 Wrangler? I paid $31K for my 2013 brand new.

[Shyster]

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Since Reason's story was published in 2019, the large settlements have continued apace, and things have only gotten more chaotic within the department. In 2020, the city agreed to a $5.7 million settlement with the family of Ronell Foster, who was fatally shot by a Vallejo officer in 2018.

That same year, a police whistleblower, John Whitney, told the outlet Open Vallejo that there was a tradition among some Vallejo officers of bending the tips of their badges to mark fatal shootings. Whitney also filed a lawsuit alleging he was fired from the Vallejo Police Department in retaliation for reporting misconduct, including badge bending. The then-police chief admitted the tradition was real, and several officers testified in court about it. The city settled with Whitney this September for close to $1 million.

Last year, Vallejo paid out $300,000 to a Marine veteran who was tackled on his own porch for filming a police officer. In 2021, the city paid $270,000 to settle another excessive force lawsuit against the same officer, who, while off-duty, held a man at gunpoint outside of a pizzeria for mouthing off to him and then savagely beat him while two other officers held the man down.

The head of the Vallejo police union was fired from the department for sending a threatening email to a reporter but later won his job back, with backpay, through arbitration. Earlier this year, a court ruled that Vallejo illegally destroyed public records regarding several fatal police shootings. Open Vallejo also reported that the department attempted to conceal records on four in-custody deaths that all involved Tasers, claiming the deaths were accidental and unrelated to being tased. In one of those cases, a man was tased for nearly three minutes. He was dead by the time paramedics arrived. (The Appeal previously reported that one VPD lieutenant with a long history of excessive force allegations was so trigger-happy that he was known as "Captain Taser" among local prosecutors.)

There is also an ongoing lawsuit against the city by the family of Willie McCoy, who was shot 55 times by Vallejo police officers after falling asleep in a Taco Bell drive-thru with a gun in his lap.

[shoeshine boy]

people claiming this is a "trauma response", I have a question: is the officer supposed to allow Cure to possibly grab his own gun and kill him?
I abhor trigger happy cops but I'm not seeing that in this case.

[count2infinity]

I'd like to see what happens before the officer starts yelling at him at the beginning of the video. If that's how the traffic stop started, no wonder that's where it lead. Just sucks all around.

I agree that it took until the guy was choking the cop before he pulled out his gun and shot. He wasn't trigger happy at all, but the full blown escalation of the situation is what bothers me most.

[dodint]

So...the Brinks truck. Just there for comedic effect?

[shoeshine boy]

I'd like to see what happens before the officer starts yelling at him at the beginning of the video. If that's how the traffic stop started, no wonder that's where it lead. Just sucks all around.

I agree that it took until the guy was choking the cop before he pulled out his gun and shot. He wasn't trigger happy at all, but the full blown escalation of the situation is what bothers me most.

cop claims Cure was driving 100mph, no idea if that is true. Cure was in a FL prison for years for a crime he was exonerated of. could be why he goes nuts when cop says he's arresting him.

[count2infinity]

Yeah, you hear the dude saying something along the lines of "give me the ticket..." A lot of these incidents wouldn't be incidents if the cops would have some level of relaxed behavior rather than escalating everything.

[Shyster]

My take is that it was not a bad shoot, once the encounter escalated to that point. Cure choking the officer while muttering "yeah dodint" is absolutely grounds for the cop shooting him. It would be the same for anyone.

That said, I also agree with count2infinity that the cop went into this encounter "hot" and only escalated from there. I checked Georgia's traffic statutes. Even if Cure were doing 100 mph, that by itself would not be enough for an instant license suspension. Thirty over on an interstate would be a $700 "super speeder" fine and 6 points, but it takes 15 points for a suspension. Reckless driving is a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to 12 months in jail, but I guarantee that the vast majority of people don't get jail time. Under Georgia Code § 17-10-3, for misdemeanor traffic offenses, the judge can order traffic school, probation, periodic reporting, and even serving jail time on weekends or "during the nonworking hours of the defendant." I don't see any reason for the cop to have acted like he was dealing with someone who had just robbed a bank.

Both the cop and Mr. Cure get failing grades for this encounter. But only one of them is dead.

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