Police earning the hate

Shyster
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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:18 pm

More than half of police killings in the US are unreported in government data, study finds
https://news.yahoo.com/more-half-police ... 02158.html
More than half of police killings in the U.S. are not reported in official government data, and Black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence, according to a new study released Thursday.

An estimated 55% of deaths from police violence from 1980 to 2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports, according to the peer-reviewed study by a group of more than 90 collaborators in The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most renowned medical journals.

Previous studies have found similar rates of underreporting, but the new paper is one of the longest study periods to date.

Researchers compared data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System, an inter-governmental system that collates all death certificates, to three open-source databases on fatal police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted. The databases collect information from news reports and public record requests.

Government data did not report 17,100 deaths from police violence

Researchers estimated official government data did not report 17,100 deaths from police violence out of 30,800 total deaths during the nearly 40-year period, speculating the gap is a result of a mixture of clerical errors and more insidious motivations.

During that period, non-Hispanic Black Americans were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than non-Hispanic white Americans, with nearly 60% of these deaths misclassified – meaning they are not attributed to police violence – in official government data, researchers found.

Vital statistics reports are often used to inform health policy, and inaccurate data minimizes the problem of police violence and limits the reach of justice and accountability, Fablina Sharara, one of the lead authors and a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told USA TODAY.

"Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can’t be fully understood without reliable data," Sharara said in a press release. "Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many U.S. institutions, including law enforcement."

Government data also misclassified 50% of deaths of Hispanic people, 56% of deaths of non-Hispanic white people and 33% of deaths of non-Hispanic people of other races, researchers found.

Similar to previous studies, the researchers found that, behind non-Hispanic Black people, non-Hispanic Indigenous people were killed by police at a higher rate than other groups. Non-Hispanic Indigenous people were estimated to be 1.8 times more likely to die from police violence than non-Hispanic white people, the researchers found.

From the 1980s to the 2010s, rates of police violence increased by 38% for all races, researchers found.

Eve Wool, a lead author and a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said the rise is evidence that efforts to prevent police violence and address systemic racism, such as body-worn cameras and de-escalation and implicit bias training for officers, have "largely been ineffective."

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:26 pm

Police officers convicted of rape, murder and other serious crimes are collecting tens of millions of dollars during retirement
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/09 ... or%20using
Tens of millions of dollars are flowing into the bank accounts of retired police officers convicted of breaking the very laws they were sworn to uphold.

They have been found guilty of sexual and violent crimes, including murder and rape, or other serious job-related offenses, such as bribery and embezzlement. Some have admitted to molesting young children. Others have used their badges to enrich themselves or wield power over vulnerable members of their communities. Many are still sitting in prison cells. Yet the checks keep coming and will for the rest of their lives — all as taxpayers help foot the bill.

The promise of these unlimited monthly retirement checks is one of the biggest perks of going into the physically demanding and dangerous field of law enforcement. It is only in rare cases that governments strip disgraced officers of these benefits, using a harsh penalty known as pension forfeiture.

Now, in the face of growing calls for police reform, some lawmakers, academics and police reform advocates say forfeiture of these coveted police retirement packages could be used as a tool to discourage the worst behavior. Recent research backs this up, suggesting that states with strict pension forfeiture laws have experienced lower levels of police misconduct.

Nationally, however, there is no consensus on when and if pensions should be taken away. Laws, if they exist at all, vary widely from state to state and don’t always target the same crimes — meaning that whether convicted cops are able to keep their benefits largely depends on the state where they worked.

More than 350 officers convicted of felony crimes have already received pension payments or are eligible in the future, according to a CNN analysis. Reporters identified the officers using individual member pension data from more than 70 funds obtained through records requests, retirement vesting schedules, and data on convicted officers arrested between 2005 and 2015 from Bowling Green State University’s Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database. Officers convicted of sexual and violent felonies, as well as felony crimes committed within an officer’s “official capacity,” were included in the analysis. And this is just a snapshot of those eligible for taxpayer funded payments in part because pension data is kept confidential in more than 15 states and not all funds queried by CNN responded to requests.

Of the officers identified by CNN, more than 200 have already received benefits and collectively taken in roughly $70 million, the analysis of pension data shows. Current retirees will take in more than $8 million this year alone — not including payments from states where pension amounts are confidential. They stand to receive hundreds of millions of dollars during the course of their retirements.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:01 am


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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:08 am

And surprise, surprise, the other Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department cops covered up the face-stomping and left it out of their reports of this encounter:


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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:56 am

Boston police arrested a Black man having a stroke. After $1.3 million payout, it's unclear if anything's changed
https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/10/12/bo ... settlement
Al Copeland was driving on Mass. Ave in Boston one night when he started to feel nauseous and realized he needed to pull over right away.

He didn't know it in that moment, but the then-62-year-old was having a stroke.

"I was afraid," he recalls now. "I say, well, at least if anything happens to me, somebody will find me."

Boston police did find Copeland slumped in his car and barely conscious in front of the Berklee College of Music. But instead of calling an ambulance, they arrested him. They wrote in their report that they smelled alcohol, even though Al says he hasn’t had a drink since 1995.

His wife Valerie suspects she knows the reason Boston police mistakenly thought he was drunk. Al is Black.

"Why they didn’t assume he was sick?" Valerie asks. "I can only and strongly believe it's because he's a Black male."

It was one of a series of errors that night that ultimately led to a $1.3 million settlement with the city, one of the largest of its kind in recent years.

After Al was arrested and taken to the police station, he could barely stand. When officers left him to use the bathroom in a holding cell, he fell to the ground and banged his head on the wall, according to police records. Officers left him in the cell to “sleep it off," records show.

It was only after Al threw up ⁠— five hours after police first encountered him⁠ — that officers called an ambulance.

Valerie watched all five hours of the footage captured at the station.

"To see how uncaring they were," she says. "It is unfortunately ⁠— it should be shocking, but it's not."

It didn’t get better when Al got to Tufts Medical Center. Police records show that medical providers there also assumed Al was drunk and left him in the emergency room for seven more hours.

It was only when Valerie finally tracked down her husband that doctors confirmed he had no drugs or alcohol in his system. He wasn’t drunk. He’d had a stroke.

But by then, the damage was done. Al had to remain in the hospital for weeks and then move to rehab. He had to give up his job with the MBTA. And he is still having trouble walking or even enjoying a meal.

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Police earning the hate

Postby MR25 » Sat Oct 23, 2021 1:15 am




The ordeal took place on Aug. 27 when an argument between a group of young men led to a shooting on the 900 block of Coates Street in Sharon Hill, just one block away from where a high school football game was taking place at Academy Park High School.

The shooting occurred just as spectators were leaving the stadium.

As the gunfire erupted on Coates Street, three Sharon Hill police officers were positioned near the stadium exit. A car then turned onto Coates Street directly in front of the officers.

“We have concluded that the gunfire, combined with the movement of the vehicle, precipitated responsive gunfire from the Sharon Hill police officers,” Stollsteimer wrote.

Investigators said the officers fired back at the gunmen. They also concluded with “near certainty” that four of the five people who were struck by gunfire during the shooting, including 8-year-old Fanta Bility, were struck by shots fired by the Sharon Hill police officers. Stollsteimer said they are still awaiting final forensic reports, however.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:48 pm

NYPD cop who allegedly lied for years about teen’s shooting fired from force
https://nypost.com/2021/10/27/nypd-cop- ... from-force
The NYPD cop who shot a Bronx teen at “point-blank” range while kneeling on his back — then allegedly lied for years about the arrest to avoid being disciplined — has been fired, The Post has learned.

Officer Danny Acosta was quietly dismissed from the department sometime in September, an NYPD spokesman confirmed — six months after The Post exclusively reported on court documents that revealed the 41-year-old cop admitted to lying under oath about the shooting.

“The individual, ‘Officer Danny Acosta’, was dismissed from the Department in September of 2021,” Sgt. Edward Riley said.

The former anti-crime cop has been fighting a 16-count indictment for multiple instances of alleged false testimony since October 2018 and remained on paid suspension until last month.

Neither his arrest in 2018, his contested narrative nor a nearly $500,000 civil settlement stemming from the shooting were ever made public until March, when The Post unearthed court documents from multiple lawsuits and his criminal case.

In the moments following the shooting, Acosta had claimed to investigators that an armed teen, Peter Colon, 17, had a gun to his partner’s head when Acosta fired two rounds from 10 feet away inside a stairwell at the Gouverneur Morris Houses in Claremont.

That narrative from the Oct. 4, 2009, shooting was given to the press at the time and was part of the cop’s testimony to a grand jury and during the teen’s civil lawsuit.

It wasn’t until seven years later when an NYPD laboratory analysis report of the gunfire residue from the shooting surfaced in the civil suit that contradicted Acosta and his partner’s story from that night.

The report, obtained by The Post, determined Acosta shot Colon in the lower back at close range due to the gunshot residue patterns that were “consistent with contact/near contact shot.”

A Law Department lawyer, who was representing the city in a civil lawsuit Colon had filed against it in 2016, confronted Acosta about the report.

Acosta falsely believed he was protected under attorney-client privilege with the lawyer and admitted to lying about the shooting because it wouldn’t have been considered a “good shoot,” according to court documents.

Bronx Supreme Court Judge Ralph Fabrizio refused to toss the cop’s confession as part of his criminal case, writing, “More than a year after [Acosta’s] deposition, he revealed to his Law Department lawyer that he was actually straddling Mr. Colon’s back when he placed the muzzle of his weapon to Mr. Colon’s back and struck him at ‘point-blank’ range.'”

When contacted earlier this year, Acosta denied the admission to the attorney but angrily told The Post, “The f–king corporation counsel lawyer f–ked me.”

“This f–king guy calls me, says, ‘I’m not going to release what we talk about here,’ and the first thing he did was tell the job,” he added.

The NYPD and the Bronx district attorney never announced the cop’s indictment.

Laura Barbato, Acosta’s partner who also testified under oath to the allegedly bogus narrative, retired in 2020 and was never charged with any wrongdoing.

tl;dr: NYPD cop who shot a teen in the back at point-blank range and then lied about it for years and years, including on the stand in both a civil suit and before a grand jury, is finally (but silently) fired. Cops lie.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:27 pm

Cops Tase a Veteran's Service Dog During an Unconstitutional Arrest for Panhandling
The dog died after the man went to jail for exercising his First Amendment rights.

https://reason.com/2021/10/28/cops-tase ... anhandling
A homeless veteran routinely collected money at an intersection in Gastonia, North Carolina. On October 13, he paid for that with both his freedom and his service dog.

That day, a woman phoned 911 to complain that Joshua Rohrer was "using [his] dog to get money." That dog was Rohrer's service animal, which he acquired for the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he developed after completing a tour overseas in the U.S. Army.

The operator was clearly confused. "Do you think the [dog is] in danger?" he asked. "Like, how [is he] using the dog to get money?"

"They're using this dog to make people feel sorry for them," the woman responded. The dispatcher then noted that he's "not sure there's anything illegal about that."

Where there's a will, there's a way. An officer with the Gastonia Police Department arrived at the intersection, told Rohrer he was breaking the law, and asked to see his identification. Rohrer disputed that he'd done anything illegal. The officer then requested backup, apparently believing that calling all-hands-on-deck to stop a panhandler was a prudent use of law-enforcement resources. The cops insisted that Rohrer show them a state ID, which he didn't have; he carried only his Veterans' Affairs card. According to eyewitness accounts, he was arrested shortly thereafter.

"The officer asked him for his ID," Justyn Huffman told the local NBC affiliate. "He wasn't moving fast enough so he tried to reach into his pocket to get his ID. They slammed him up against the car. They put cuffs on him."

An officer also tased his service dog, Sunshine, who ran off. Rohrer asked if they could retrieve her and bring her with him. "They laughed at me," he told Army Times. The dog has since died, having been hit by a car.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:39 pm

Raleigh Detective Fired After Being Accused of Framing Black Men With Fake Heroin
https://www.theroot.com/raleigh-detecti ... 1847988427
There’s always been stories about officers planting things on Black citizens to create reasons for arrests. Well, it seems that former Raleigh Detective Omar Abdullah has made those fears a bit more real for the Black people living in Raleigh, N.C.

According to ABC 11, the Raleigh Police department confirmed on Monday that Abdullah—who was placed on leave last year after he was accused of framing numerous men for heroin trafficking, leading to their arrests—was fired on Oct. 28. He has not been criminally charged.

A civil rights lawsuit was filed back in April against the detective, seven other officers and the City of Raleigh on behalf of 15 Black men who were wrongfully arrested for selling fake heroin. In September, the city agreed to pay $2 million in a settlement.

“They did what they needed to do from a civil perspective. But now we’re talking about criminal,” said Robin Mills, whose son Marcus Van Irvin was one of those arrested in the scheme. “And there’s no way the kidnapping of over a dozen black men is not criminal.

Here’s what the former detective was involved in, from ABC 11:

Abdullah was paying a confidential informant who promised to tip-off officers to Raleigh heroin dealers. Instead, the district attorney said the informant returned with videos and audio recordings of drug buys with critical clips missing and a substance that lab tests revealed months later wasn’t drugs at all.

The civil rights lawsuit said fake heroin was also planted by detective Abdullah with the knowledge of other officers.

The attorneys said wrongful prosecutions caused those who were arrested to spend roughly a combined 2.5 years in jail before the charges were dismissed.

The News & Observer reports that one of the attorneys for the lawsuit, Abraham Rubert-Schewel, said that at least six more people have come forward as victims of the frame job.

Here’s more about the informant Abdullah used, from News & Observer:

In August 2018, Raleigh police officers including Abdullah arrested Dennis Leon Williams, according to court records. He was charged with selling a counterfeit controlled substance. The charge was dismissed at the end of February 2019, “in the interest of justice,” court records indicate.

From October 2018 to May 15, 2020, Williams claimed, at least 15 people had sold him drugs that turned out to be fake, the lawsuit states.

All of the charges were dismissed by July 30, 2020.

In September, Williams was charged with five counts of obstructing justice in the fake drugs scheme. The case is pending.

Surprise, surprise, no other officer was placed on leave or fired, News & Observer reports. And get this, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman’s office investigated the claims last year but decided not to prosecute Abdullah.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sat Nov 06, 2021 1:24 am

Three Cops in Three States Caught Planting Drugs on Innocent People have not been Charged
https://pinacnews.com/index.php/2021/11 ... en-charged
A North Carolina police officer is fighting to keep his job after he was fired for planting fake drugs on 11 innocent men over the course of two years who ended up spending a combined two-and-a-half years behind bars before charges were dismissed.

Raleigh Police Detective Omar Abdullah was terminated last week, one month after a lawsuit against him was settled for $2 million. The former “Employee of the Year” had spent more than a year on paid administrative leave where he continued to collect his $69,673 salary, according to the News & Observer.

At this time, there is no indication he will even be charged with a crime.

Then there is New York City police officer Kyle Erickson, another award-winning cop whose body camera caught him planting weed in a car he had pulled over for having a broken tail light in March 2018 after using force on the passenger who did not believe they had the right to search his jacket.

Erickson justified the use of force by claiming he had smelled weed.

Erickson, who comes from a family of cops, is also accused of planting drugs in another incident that took place a month earlier in which his body camera was inexplicably turned off for four minutes which just happened to be when he claimed to find a lit joint on the floorboard of a car his partner had just searched and found nothing, according to a lawsuit which you can read here.

At this time, Erickson has not been disciplined or charged for planting the weed.

And finally there’s Adam Schneider in Indiana who is already facing a litany of charges related to secretly recording women undressing in his home to having a sexual relationship with a confidential informant.

The women undressing were in his home trying out clothes that his wife would sell. Indiana State Police came across the videos on his phone while investigating him for having sex with the female confidential informant. His wife has filed for divorce.

But at this time, the 40-year-old New Albany police officer has not yet been charged for planting drugs on an innocent man that kept him behind bars for almost two weeks before charges against him were dismissed.

I think a good way to deal with this bullcrap would be to say that any police officer caught planting or falsifying evidence would receive a mandatory minimum of the max sentence that the victim would have faced. So any cop convicted of, say, planting herioin would get a mandatory minimum sentence equal to the max sentence for possession of heroin. Likewise, a cop who falsifies evidence in order to frame someone for bulglary would get the max sentence for bulgrary. They should get what they were trying to give.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Tue Nov 09, 2021 1:27 am

2 Ex-Officers Who Used Tasers on a Man Over 50 Times Are Convicted of Murder
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/us/o ... ction.html
Two former Oklahoma police officers were convicted on Friday of second-degree murder for using their Tasers a total of more than 50 times on an unarmed man who later died in 2019, according to court records.

Prosecutors said the repeated use of the Tasers, also known as stun guns, by the former officers, Brandon Dingman and Joshua Taylor, was “dangerous and unnecessary” during their encounter with Jared Lakey on July 4, 2019.

It was a “substantial factor” in the death of Mr. Lakey, 28, who stopped breathing and became unresponsive shortly after he was taken into custody by the officers, who were employed by the Wilson Police Department, court documents said. Mr. Lakey died two days later.

The case brought further scrutiny to the use of Tasers by law enforcement officers. Supporters say the devices are a practical alternative to often-lethal firearms, but critics point out they have contributed to many fatalities.

In addition to second-degree murder, which is punishable by 10 years to life in prison, Mr. Dingman, 35, and Mr. Taylor, 27, were found guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon by a jury in Carter County, Okla., according to court records. They are to be sentenced on Dec. 2.

Shannon McMurray, a lawyer for Mr. Dingman, said on Monday that the former officer planned to appeal his conviction.

Citing a medical examiner’s autopsy report, she said that Mr. Lakey had an enlarged heart and critical coronary artery disease before he died. The report listed the officers’ use of electrical weapons and restraint as contributing to Mr. Lakey’s death.

“It’s just a tragedy for everybody,” Ms. McMurray said. “In my opinion, they acted within policy.”

Ms. McMurray said that the officers had been trying to avoid using other types of force on Mr. Lakey. “They were truly, truly concerned for his safety and theirs if they had gone hands-on,” she said.

Warren Gotcher, a lawyer for Mr. Taylor, said on Monday that his client would also file an appeal.

“We’re very disappointed in the verdict,” said Mr. Gotcher, who also pointed to Mr. Lakey’s health as playing a significant role in his death. “No one could look at him and tell that he had that much of a diseased heart.”

The police department in Wilson, which is about 100 miles south of Oklahoma City, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A lawsuit filed by Mr. Lakey’s family said that his body was riddled with Taser probes and that medical providers had told the family that he died from multiple heart attacks.

Spencer Bryan, a lawyer for Mr. Lakey’s parents, Doug and Cynthia Lakey, said in a statement on Monday that they were “grateful to the jury and prosecution for taking these officers off the streets,” but admonished the police chief over his explanation during the trial about why the officers had kept using their Tasers.

The chief, Kevin Coley, testified that the officers had been attempting to cause neuromuscular incapacitation in Mr. Lakey but that he had kept moving around on the ground, the television station KXII reported. The chief could not be reached on Monday.

During the officers’ encounter with Mr. Lakey, they were responding to a call that involved his “acting in a disorderly way,” according to the State Bureau of Investigation.

When Mr. Lakey would not comply with the officers’ commands, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Dingman used their Tasers a combined total of more than 50 times, “which greatly exceeded what would have been necessary or warranted by the attendant circumstances,” court records said.

The records said that “such dangerous and unnecessary” use of the Tasers was a “substantial factor” in bringing about Mr. Lakey’s death.

Craig Ladd, the district attorney for the 20th Judicial District in Oklahoma, which includes Carter County, said on Monday that police officers were trained to limit Taser exposure to 15 seconds or less and to avoid simultaneously using their devices. But in the case of Mr. Lakey, he said, the electrical connection from the officers’ Tasers lasted 3 minutes and 14 seconds.

“They clearly failed to adhere to these safety guidelines,” Mr. Ladd said, adding that in Oklahoma, officers are only permitted to use the degree of force “reasonably necessary” under the circumstances.

“They Tased Jared because he was lying naked in a ditch and wouldn’t put his hands behind his back when they asked him to, even though it wasn’t clear whether Jared truly understood what was going on or what he was being requested to do,” he said. “He never made any aggressive moves towards the officers, swung at them, lunged at them, or kicked at them.”

The tl:dr version: Jared Lakey was having a mental-health crisis (all postmortem tox screens were clear for drugs). Because Lakey wouldn't (or was unable) put his hands behind his back as commanded, officers Dingman and Taylor repeatedly (and often simultaneously) tased Lakey 53 times over nine minutes while Laken lay naked on the ground. At no time did Lakey make any moves toward either officer, but they kept shocking him over and over and over even as Lakey screamed and begged for them to stop, shouting "Help me" and Oh God please help." When a third cop arrived, he applied a chokehold. And when Lakey stopped breathing, none of the cops started CPR or made any other effors to aid him. Jared Lakey was literally tortured to death.


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Police earning the hate

Postby tifosi77 » Wed Nov 10, 2021 6:41 pm

More than half of police killings in the US are unreported in government data, study finds
https://news.yahoo.com/more-half-police ... 02158.html
More than half of police killings in the U.S. are not reported in official government data, and Black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence, according to a new study released Thursday.

An estimated 55% of deaths from police violence from 1980 to 2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports, according to the peer-reviewed study by a group of more than 90 collaborators in The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most renowned medical journals.

Previous studies have found similar rates of underreporting, but the new paper is one of the longest study periods to date.

Researchers compared data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System, an inter-governmental system that collates all death certificates, to three open-source databases on fatal police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted. The databases collect information from news reports and public record requests.

Government data did not report 17,100 deaths from police violence

Researchers estimated official government data did not report 17,100 deaths from police violence out of 30,800 total deaths during the nearly 40-year period, speculating the gap is a result of a mixture of clerical errors and more insidious motivations.

During that period, non-Hispanic Black Americans were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than non-Hispanic white Americans, with nearly 60% of these deaths misclassified – meaning they are not attributed to police violence – in official government data, researchers found.

Vital statistics reports are often used to inform health policy, and inaccurate data minimizes the problem of police violence and limits the reach of justice and accountability, Fablina Sharara, one of the lead authors and a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told USA TODAY.

"Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can’t be fully understood without reliable data," Sharara said in a press release. "Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many U.S. institutions, including law enforcement."

Government data also misclassified 50% of deaths of Hispanic people, 56% of deaths of non-Hispanic white people and 33% of deaths of non-Hispanic people of other races, researchers found.

Similar to previous studies, the researchers found that, behind non-Hispanic Black people, non-Hispanic Indigenous people were killed by police at a higher rate than other groups. Non-Hispanic Indigenous people were estimated to be 1.8 times more likely to die from police violence than non-Hispanic white people, the researchers found.

From the 1980s to the 2010s, rates of police violence increased by 38% for all races, researchers found.

Eve Wool, a lead author and a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said the rise is evidence that efforts to prevent police violence and address systemic racism, such as body-worn cameras and de-escalation and implicit bias training for officers, have "largely been ineffective."
I keep forgetting to ask about this. How does this happen? I can understand miscounting by a few hundred total in that timespan, but this 400+ a year every year for decades. That's gross.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:34 am

Videos Are Making It Hard To Trust the Cops
https://reason.com/2021/11/10/videos-ar ... -the-cops/
There's a lot to dislike about the increasingly pervasive surveillance state, but a little of its danger is offset when the forces of officialdom are themselves captured by the all-seeing eye. All too often, official versions of events turn out to be completely at odds with video and audio records of what actually happened. Given stark discrepancies between some police reports about searches and arrests and video footage of the same events, it's difficult to avoid the suspicion that the powers-that-be habitually lie about their conduct.

In New York, David Yezek is suing police in a case that explains just why drug dealers would install video cameras that watch them going about their business: because they know cops all too well. Yezek's surveillance system caught more than him growing and selling cannabis (allegedly—the police never had the stuff tested); it also recorded police violating his rights and fabricating a story after the fact. According to WIVB, which obtained video-recorded depositions in the lawsuit:

The two officers, Sean Hotnich and Richard Cooper, got several key details wrong in the search warrant affidavit and the police report, according to their depositions.

For example, the police report states that once the two officers entered Yezek's kitchen, "patrol then observed two large bags of suspected marijuana in plain view on the dining room table."

But a security camera aimed directly at Yezek's kitchen table does not show two large bags of suspected marijuana on the table, and certainly none in plain view. Rather, the officers found two large bags of marijuana inside an opaque paper bag on a chair near the table after they got inside Yezek's home and walked to the dining room.

"Got several key details wrong" in this case should probably be interpreted as "manufactured out of whole cloth." It's an even bigger deal than it seems because allegedly seeing two large bags of marijuana in plain view was the excuse the officers used for entering and searching Yezek's home. Instead, they searched the place without legal authority and then invented a justification after the fact. But wait, there's more!

In addition, the police report states that Yezek granted permission for the officers to enter his house. But the security camera outside Yezek's home shows both officers entered an enclosed mudroom after one of them pushed open a gated door of the residence without permission.

In summary, the cops barged into a house without permission, tossed it without legal authority, and then lied about the search to conceal their misdeeds.

"If Yezek did not have the security cameras in and outside of his home, he very well could be sitting in prison," one of Yezek's attorneys told reporters. So, score one for turning the surveillance state's capabilities against the authorities.

Yezek's lawsuit against Gowanda, New York, police may result in rare vindication for somebody on the receiving end of official fibbing, but he's hardly alone in pointing to surveillance footage that tells a story at odds with the official account—sometimes with very high stakes.

With respect to J.D. Tuccille, I don't think his headline is nearly forceful enough. I would say, "Videos Demonstrate Why You Shouldn't Trust the Cops." While many departments still resist body cameras to this day, the increasing proliferation of body, doorbell, home-security, and other cameras in our country today mean that more police activity that ever before is being caught on video. And while plenty of that video does match police reports and assertions, a whole lot of that video contradicts—if not outright belies—the narratives that police put in their warrants, reports, and press releases. More and more evidence comes out every day that not only do cops lie, they lie a lot, and in many places this culture of lying is baked into the system.

It's not the videos that are eroding trust in the police. It's the police who keep getting caught lying. The videos simply confirm the lies.

Ad@m
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Police earning the hate

Postby Ad@m » Fri Nov 12, 2021 10:13 pm

State Police Corporal charged with stealing, using heroin from evidence room
A member of the Pennsylvania State Police is facing numerous charges Friday after he allegedly stole and used heroin from a Wayne County state police barracks.

Corporal Brian Rickard was placed on suspended leave without pay after he was found to be in possession of the controlled substance that he had taken from the Troop R, Honesdale evidence room, according to state police. He reportedly ingested the heroin while at work and at home and attempted to cover up the theft by using work computers and programs.

Rickard enlisted in the Pennsylvania State Police in November 2003 and graduated as a member of the 115th cadet class. He is assigned to the Honesdale Criminal Investigation Unit as a supervisor.

Charges were filed by the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Integrity and Professional Standards, Internal Affairs Division in conjunction with the Office of Attorney General.

Rickard faces felonies and misdemeanors including obstructing the administration of law or other governmental function, forgery, tampering with records or identification, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, theft by unlawful taking, criminal use of a communication facility, unlawful use of a computer, obtaining possession of controlled substance by misrepresentation or possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:17 am

Whistleblower featured in USA TODAY 'Behind the Blue Wall' series ousted from police union
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/inv ... 91&irgwc=1
An Illinois police union on Wednesday ousted from its membership an officer facing criminal charges for exposing a squad car video that showed his fellow officers slapping and cursing a man dying of a drug overdose.

The case of Sgt. Javier Esqueda, a 27-year veteran of the Joliet Police Department, was featured in September as the first installment of the USA TODAY series “Behind the Blue Wall,” an investigation involving more than 300 cases of police officers over the past decade who have spoken out against alleged misconduct in their departments.

A subsequent story published this week outlined patterns of retaliation against such officers in departments large and small across the country, highlighting how some within law enforcement use internal affairs investigations and other forms of retaliation and intimidation to punish those who break the code of silence.

Esqueda told USA TODAY that he’s become a pariah among his coworkers since July 2020, when he shared with a television reporter footage from January of that year showing how officers treated a handcuffed Black man in medical distress. Officers slapped Eric Lurry, restricted his airway and shoved a baton in his mouth hours before his death. Esqueda faces up to 20 years in prison after department officials opened a criminal investigation into his actions and prosecutors charged him with four counts of official misconduct.

Members of the Joliet Police Officer’s Association on Wednesday voted 35-1 to expel Esqueda, a move first reported by The Herald-Ledger newspaper in Joliet. In a letter informing him of the impending vote last month, union leaders described his conduct as “reprehensible.” The letter did not offer specifics on what actions from Esqueda prompted the vote.

But Esqueda on Thursday said he believes the move is yet another act of retaliation from Joliet's police leadership, who since the USA TODAY story have found themselves under an Illinois Attorney General’s office investigation and a department shakeup that led the city manager last month to fire Chief Dawn Malec.

“They all wanted me charged, they all want me gone, and by doing this, it’s self-gratification for them,” Esqueda said of the union’s vote. “And after everything that’s happened, do I really want to be associated with them?”

Joliet, Illinois cop Javier Esqueda in July 2020 blew the whistle and released video of his fellow officers abusing a suspect who later died. Not only has Esqueda been the subject of retaliatory charges related to his release of the video, but own police union just voted 35-1 to expel him. Does anyone still think bad cops are "just a few bad apples" when 97% of the members of a police union just voted to expel a nationally-recognized whistleblower? Esqueda committed the greatest crime of all when it comes to cops; he broke the Blue Wall of Silence.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:22 am

$800,000 paid to Garden Grove stroke victim mistakenly arrested for DUI
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/10/21/8 ... d-for-dui/
A woman arrested by Garden Grove [California] police for driving under the influence when she was actually having a stroke has received a total of $800,000 from the city and its private jailer to settle her wrongful arrest lawsuit.

The settlements end a 10-year legal battle over the arrest of Robin Winger, who was 43 years old when police picked her up on Oct. 31, 2011. Winger started speaking erratically while taking her 15-year-old daughter to Garden Grove High School. Her statements didn’t make sense, said her attorney, Jerry Steering.

Winger was unaware that the passenger side mirror of her Chevrolet truck had clipped the mirror of a parked city vehicle, catching the attention of a nearby police officer,

Officer Michael Elhami activated his lights to pull over Winger, but she didn’t notice them, Steering said. Elhami then turned on his siren, which caused a confused Winger to pull over in a jerking manner.

Elhami approached the vehicle and asked Winger why she didn’t immediately stop. Winger’s daughter told the officer that her mother didn’t feel good and there was something wrong with her. Winger told the officer that she had been to the hospital, but couldn’t remember why.

What neither Winger nor the officer knew was that the woman had suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, Steering said.

The officer called paramedics, saying Winger reported chest pains. The paramedics concluded Winger needed medical treatment, but she declined.

While still confused, Winger was given a field sobriety test and was examined by a Police Department drug recognition expert, who determined she was under the influence. She was then booked for DUI at the city jail, which was operated by private vendor The Geo Group. Winger was placed in a sobering cell, Steering said.

After several hours, Winger was released from jail and driven by her daughter’s father to UC Irvine Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with a stroke and kept for four days, Steering said. Meanwhile, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed misdemeanor DUI charges after learning that she had marijuana in her system, but no alcohol. The charges were dropped two years later in 2014.

In 2013, Winger sued the Police Department and the Geo Group in federal court. The Geo Group settled for $300,000 in 2015. Garden Grove settled recently for $500,000.

Steering said the case illustrates the need for better training so police can tell the difference between intoxication and a stroke, or other health issues.

“Police officers usually suspect intoxication when a person suffers a stroke. They need better training so less people suffer the nightmare of being arrested for intoxication when they need immediate medical help the most,” Steering said.

Troy Loney
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Police earning the hate

Postby Troy Loney » Mon Nov 15, 2021 3:40 pm

Absolute psychos


AuthorTony
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Police earning the hate

Postby AuthorTony » Thu Nov 18, 2021 7:32 pm

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ch ... o-rcna5626
Pennsylvania teen had his hands up when fatally shot by State Police, new videos show
Authorities obscured the last 4 seconds of Christian Hall’s life in publicly released videos. New footage shows he had his hands up when troopers killed him.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Nov 28, 2021 5:08 pm

The "official story" based off police reports:

Suspect accused of shooting 2 police officers in the Bronx charged
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/cr ... -the-bronx
NEW YORK - The suspect in the shooting of two NYPD officers in the Bronx on the night before Thanksgiving faces multiple charges, including attempted murder.

Charlie Vasquez was charged Saturday with attempted murder, assault, and criminal use of a firearm, among other charges.

One officer, Alejandra Jacobs, was released from St. Barnabas Hospital on Thanksgiving Day, while the other, Robert Holmes, remains hospitalized.

The shooting happened shortly after 8 p.m. in front of a building near East 187 Street and Beaumont Avenue in the Belmont section of the borough.

The officers encountered the suspect — whom the NYPD said matched the description of the man with the gun in the 911 call — on the front stoop of the building. He was taken into custody that night.

A male officer told him to take his hands out of his pocket and then a gunfight broke out, with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea saying body camera footage showed the suspect shot one officer in her right arm. She then returned fire an estimated five times. Her partner attempted to subdue the suspect.

The entire altercation lasted approximately two to three seconds, according to the police commissioner, with the suspect shot three times and the woman officer struck twice. The male officer, meanwhile, was shot in the back, Shea said, with the bullet entering his right armpit area and coming out of his chest. He did not shoot at the suspect.

The union spin:



The video:



No mention from the official sources that "hero P.O. Alejandra Jacobs" shot her own partner while firing wildly in a panicked mag dump.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Mon Nov 29, 2021 9:16 pm

Lying NYPD Officers Cost Prosecutors Sixty More Criminal Convictions
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211 ... ions.shtml
Fighting crimes is easier when it's not being done by criminals. A bunch of cases are being tossed in New York City because misbehaving NYPD officers left their dirty handprints all over them.

Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz is asking a state supreme court judge to vacate the cases of 60 people which their cases were based on the police work of three former NYPD detectives who were later convicted of various crimes.

This adds to the NYPD's list of self-inflicted wounds. Earlier this year, prosecutors tossed nearly 100 cases tainted by the presence of narcotics detective Joseph Franco. Franco was charged with 26 criminal counts — including perjury and official misconduct — in 2019. The dismissals followed another investigation which showed Franco had lied about drug buys to secure warrants and perform arrests. Some arrestees were able to get their cases dismissed by obtaining security camera footage showing alleged drug purchases had never occurred.

One lying cop and nearly 100 dismissals. Now this: three bad cops and 60 dismissals. And these cops have some pretty impressive rap sheets.

Former NYPD Detective Kevin Desormeau was convicted of perjury after lying about witnessing a drug sale that videotaped evidence showed did not take place. He also pleaded guilty after he fabricated the facts of a gun possession arrest. Desormeau was terminated by the NYPD and there are 34 cases the district attorney says should be dismissed based on his role as the essential witness.

Former NYPD Detective Sasha Cordoba pled guilty in Manhattan to perjury relating to her fabricating the facts of a gun possession arrest. Cordoba was terminated by the NYPD. 20 cases will be requested to be dismissed based on Cordoba’s role as the essential witness.


The third cop involved in these dismissals at least wasn't in the perjury business. No, he was into darker stuff.

As alleged in court filings by the government, in February 2008, Sandino arrested a woman identified in the Information as Jane Doe 1 (“the victim”) and her boyfriend on drug distribution charges following the execution of a search warrant at their apartment. During the arrest, Sandino forced the victim to undress in front of him in the bedroom of the apartment. Later, at the precinct, Sandino told the victim that she was going to jail and would lose her children unless she had sex with him. When the victim went to the restroom at the precinct, Sandino followed her inside and made her perform oral sex. Upon the victim’s release from custody, Sandino told her that he expected her to have sex with him at a later time. Thereafter, Sandino called the victim on numerous occasions. The victim subsequently reported Sandino’s misconduct to NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which began an investigation. In March 2008, Sandino was removed from active duty.

As further alleged in the government’s court filings, Sandino engaged in similar misconduct in the summer of 2006 in connection with the arrest of another drug dealer. On that occasion, Sandino coerced a female cousin of the drug dealer, identified in the Information as Jane Doe 2, to engage in sex acts with him based on threats he made concerning the lengthy prison sentence faced by the drug dealer.

More recently, in September 2009, Sandino allegedly engaged in lewd sexual behavior in front of a female arrestee and then forced her to raise her shirt to expose her upper body.


Sandino was fired by the NYPD in 2011, one year after he racked up this federal indictment. Somehow, he's still involved with six convictions now being tossed out because of his role as a witness. That means six people have spent a long time in jail due to this bad cop's testimony that was apparently given more than a decade ago.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Dec 01, 2021 1:05 am


Shyster
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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Dec 01, 2021 1:27 am

Sewall's Point, FL, police officer arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old boy.


Shyster
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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:47 am

How the theft of 44 firearms from an L.A. gun store exploded into an LAPD scandal
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... corruption
Before it all came crashing down, Archi Duenas’ gun-stealing scheme was relatively simple, county prosecutors wrote in a memo. He just couldn’t go on vacation.

Duenas, manager of the gun store at the Los Angeles Police Academy, had been reprimanded over the years for tardiness and sloppy record keeping, but he never took time off, according to the memo. As the store’s closing supervisor, he was there each night to lock up — and hand count the inventory.

If someone else had been assigned that count, they might have discovered that dozens of guns were missing and that Duenas was stealing them and selling them for cash, prosecutors wrote in the memo. But since he was always there, the Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club was apparently none the wiser.

This went on for years, prosecutors wrote, facilitated by a lack of oversight and safety protocols that are considered standard in other gun stores.

Then, in February 2020, Duenas’ bosses told him he had accrued the “maximum allowable leave hours” and had to take time off, prosecutors wrote in the memo. When he did, another manager finally made the startling discovery: Boxes meant to have guns in them were actually empty.

The resulting investigation quickly led to Duenas’ arrest. But it also uncovered a larger scandal inside the LAPD: The clientele for Duenas’ stolen weapons included cops.

LAPD and L.A. County District Attorney records and interviews by The Times show that what started out as a probe into Duenas has spiraled in the last year and a half, spurring a cascade of allegations of criminal activity, misconduct and corruption on the part of officers and commanders.

There are also dueling claims by some of the accused officers that they have been scapegoated by overzealous investigators despite doing nothing wrong and being victims themselves — not only of Duenas’ deception but also of years of negligence on the part of the LAPD to ensure proper management of the gun store, which it directed officers to use.

That alleged neglect, according to a pending claim against the city from one officer, came despite the fact that the LAPD was aware for years of “prior negligence and mismanagement issues related to the sale, tracking, and documentation of firearms and firearm transactions” by gun store personnel.

The case raises red flags about the LAPD’s oversight of the gun store and its ability to investigate its own officers. It also offers an eye-opening window into the gun culture within the LAPD and the degree to which LAPD officers are allegedly profiting off the sale of firearms — including “off roster” guns that police officers have special access to despite their being declared unsafe for commercial sale in the state.

Investigators alleged LAPD officers, including several who are still on the job, knowingly purchased stolen weapons from Duenas, bought and sold much larger numbers of firearms in questionable ways, and dangerously stored loaded guns in places accessible to children, according to internal police records.

Top commanders, meanwhile, have been accused by the captain who initially oversaw the investigation of purposefully impeding the work of her detectives and assisting those in their crosshairs, including by forcing investigators to interview a high-ranking captain whom they suspected of wrongdoing before they were prepared to do so, and by ushering that same captain into his home — armed and in uniform — while investigators with a warrant were searching it, internal LAPD records show.

“The facts speak for themselves,” wrote Capt. Lillian Carranza, who oversees the LAPD’s commercial crimes division, in an April email to other top officials. “There have been several attempts to shut down this investigation.”

LAPD officials have denied that claim and said the investigation has been handled with the utmost integrity, with detectives following every lead and their work undergoing multiple levels of review.

No officers have been criminally convicted in the case, but one faces a gun charge in Long Beach — which he denies — and several have had criminal cases presented against them to prosecutors. Some of the investigations are ongoing.

This account of the sprawling investigation that began with the gun store thefts is based on dozens of internal LAPD documents reviewed by The Times from sources, including emails between top officials, investigative notes and case summaries, and court records in the case against Duenas. Duenas, who initially faced 25 criminal counts and more than a dozen years in prison, instead received probation in August after pleading no contest to felony grand theft of a firearm and a single misdemeanor count of illegally transferring a firearm.

There's much more in the article, including evidence of a coverup.

I might actually have a little sympathy here given how stupid California's gun laws are. Here, we have numerous cops who were buying (and almost certainly reselling) "off roster" guns from the Los Angeles Police Academy's own in-house gun store. That's illegal. And plenty of other cops were and are actively covering it all up. That's also illegal. The hate is still deserved because I highly doubt that the cops involved stopped arresting regular folks who violated California's gun laws. They were knowingly and blatantly violating the same laws that they'll enforce on everyone who isn't a member of the "Thin Blue Line" (and therefore protected by the Blue Wall of Silence).

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:54 am

And speaking of the Blue Wall of Silence:

Dead rats, death threats, destroyed careers. How law enforcement punishes its whistleblowers
non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/OeEBA
To many in law enforcement, snitching against another cop is a betrayal that can’t go unpunished.

Those who enforce this code – the blue wall of silence – have stuffed dead rats and feces into fellow officers’ lockers. They’ve issued death threats, ignored requests for backup, threatened family members and planted drugs on the officers who reported wrong.

Department leaders often condone these reprisals or pile on by launching internal investigations to discredit those who expose misconduct. Whistleblowers have been fired, jailed and, in at least one case, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric ward.

The pattern of behavior is both destructive and widespread throughout policing, a USA TODAY investigation found. Departments across the country have adopted an unofficial system of retaliation that allows misconduct to persist and helps police leaders avoid accountability. And while communities of color and other marginalized groups bear the brunt of police brutality, the profession is blind to race, gender and seniority when it comes to punishing officers who try to expose these practices.

USA TODAY set out to establish, for the first time, the extent of law enforcement’s blue wall of silence and its impact on the individual officers who have defied it. In building a catalogue of more than 300 examples from the past decade, reporters found there is no wrongdoing so egregious or clear cut that a whistleblower can feel safe in bringing it to light.

In South Carolina, an officer leaked the fact that fellow deputies beat a prisoner who later died in custody. In Florida, a detective who specialized in child sex crimes reported a captain who had impregnated a 16-year-old girl and then paid for her to have an abortion. In Oregon, a sergeant complained that a co-worker bragged about killing an unarmed teenager.

After speaking out, all of them were forced out of their departments and branded traitors by fellow officers.

“Whistleblowing is a life sentence,” said Shannon Spalding, a former undercover narcotics officer in Chicago who faced death threats and resigned after she exposed a corruption scheme that has led to dozens of overturned convictions. “I’m an officer without a department. I lost my house. I lost my marriage. It affects you in ways you would never imagine.”

Meanwhile, USA TODAY found that many of the cops that whistleblowers accused of misconduct kept their jobs or faced only minor punishments. And officers who lied or stayed silent in support of an accused colleague later secured promotions, overtime and admiration from their peers.

USA TODAY spent a year examining thousands of documents from police and sheriff’s departments, prosecutors, oversight groups and regulators around the country, including previously confidential federal labor records. In addition, reporters reviewed a decade of media reports and court cases. Then they traveled to Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Louisiana, New York and Florida to interview officers and victims of police misconduct, among others.

The result is the most comprehensive public accounting of police retaliation ever compiled, including dozens of examples never before reported.

Among the findings:

▸ Cases of retaliation appeared in every type of department: majority Black forces and majority white forces, union and at-will agencies, rural two-man outposts and massive urban police departments, and, perhaps most notably, places that have adopted strict accountability measures. Reforms like body cameras and civilian oversight boards prove virtually worthless when law enforcement leaders and other local officials silence whistleblowers.

▸ Officers who report wrongdoing are often forced to navigate procedures that derail their efforts. Sometimes they must report up the chain of command to the very people they want investigated. Federal, state, and local agencies can take years to intervene or decline to investigate altogether. When agencies do take action, they often direct complaints back to the police department, compromising officers who expected anonymity.

▸ Police leaders weaponize internal affairs, pursuing minor rule infractions such as breaking the chain of command, in order to discredit whistleblowers and get rid of them. In Amite, Louisiana, a detective who admitted to helping the FBI investigate fellow cops was fired for accidentally mislabeling two evidence bags, including one that simply had an extra zero. In Hillview, Kentucky, an officer who testified against his chief was targeted for firing after he tried to add $2.50 to the accounts of two jail inmates who cooperated in an unrelated investigation.   

▸ Police unions play a critical role in enforcing the blue wall of silence. They often back cops accused of misconduct during court and disciplinary hearings but not those who turn them in. In East Haven, Connecticut, a sergeant who tried to intimidate a fellow officer by holding a gun to his chest was hired by the union to help officers involved in on-duty shootings. Unions have also lobbied for rules that make things harder for officers who want to come forward and easier for departments to hide misconduct, according to USA TODAY’s review of more than 80 union contracts.

▸ Police chiefs and sheriffs who retaliate against whistleblowers rarely face serious consequences. Top law enforcement officials kept their jobs or were allowed to retire or resign in nearly all instances documented by USA TODAY. In a rare exception, the director of a training academy in Albuquerque was fired after she was caught on tape threatening to expel students who had complained about her to human resources.

This is an in-depth, detailed, nationwide investigation on the lengths police everywhere go to to ensure that their rampant wrongdoing is covered up and never punished. The Blue Wall of Silence is real and ubiquitous, and it demonstrates that cops care far, far more about their own jobs and pensions than they do about stupid notions like "protect and serve."

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Police earning the hate

Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:38 am

Hideous.

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