Observer
2013-02-25 19:08:56 UTC
"Spurred by the 'drug war,' law enforcement in the United States,
particularly federal law enforcement, has become increasingly
militarized. No-knock raids with battering rams, agents dressed like
ninjas and spray-firing machine guns, the fabrication of information
in warrant application, forfeiture and confiscation of property
without a trial and a steadily blurring distinction between the
standards appropriate for law enforcement in a free society and the
practices typical of occupation of a conquered nation have been the
most important trend of the last decade.
"A pattern of unwarranted paramilitary assaults on Americans by
various federal agencies is well established."
--David Kappel, Paul Blackman, American Society of Criminology. In
Police Brutality: Current Controversies, Tamera Roleff, editor,
Greenhaven Press
"One young man, Douglas Snyder, a New York University student, was
kicked in the face until he lost consciousness after videotaping a
police confrontation with squatters; the camera was smashed and
urinated on. Another, a high school student in the Bronx, was a
passenger in a speeding car; an officer kicked him so hard in the
groin that he lost a testicle.
--"Police Often Overreact to challenges to Their Authority," Deborah
Sontag, Dan Barry, staff reporters for the New York Times.
A police unit of 20 officers kicked in their front door [of the
Holland house]. The officers were acting on an erroneous tip from an
informant who had given the police three wrong addresses at the same
neighborhood for a drug bust.
The family said the police kicked in the front door and acted
like cops "out of control." They threw furniture across the room,
wrecked the whole house, and threw all of the food out of the
refrigerator onto the floor. They threw the man of the house against
the wall when he tried to tell them they had the wrong people.
The children in the family, who are honor roll students, are now
under psychiatric care. All the police said was 'We went in the wrong
house.'
--Police Brutality results in a loss of respect for the police. From
Police Brutality: Current Controversies, Tamera Roleff, editor,
Greenhaven Press.
During a typical 3-month period (April 2009 to June 2010)
5986 reports of misconduct by police were made
382 fatalities were linked with misconduct
$347,455,000 was paid in related settlements and judgments
http://www.termlifeinsurance.org/police-brutality/
http://www.wnem.com/story/19503465/family-wants-answers-after-officer-guns-down-family-pet
ST. LOUIS, MI (WNEM) - A local family is still shocked after what
happened to their beloved pet. They say their dog was shot and killed
at the hands of a police officer.
The shooting happened Saturday in St. Louis, Mich., in Gratiot County.
Lori Walmsley, a neighbor of the family who lost their pet, says she
saw the incident.
Walmsley says she was outside playing with her own dog when her
neighbor's golden retriever, Scout, ran over into her yard. She says
she called the dog over to play, which Scout did, and then Scout ran
back over back into his own yard. That's when Walmsley says a police
officer showed up.
Walmsley said the officer asked if the was dog hers. She said "no,"
but told the officer Scout wasn't dangerous. She says the officer
tried to catch the dog, who apparently didn't want to be caught. The
dog tried to run away and when cornered by the officer, let out a
little growl. Walmsley says she couldn't believe what happened next.
"I heard 'pop pop pop pop pop,' and I thought, 'what is going on,' and
I [saw] the St. Louis Police Department standing over my dog," said
Scout's owner.
"He just started shooting him, he just kept shooting him in the head,"
said Walmsley. "I said, 'What are you doing? He's just a puppy!'"
The dog was taken to the vet were it later died.
The witness says the officer wasn't provoked and she doesn't feel his
reaction was warranted. Scout's owners were inside their house during
the incident.
http://www.policemisconduct.net/
■Salt Lake City, Utah: The son of a man who died in police custody has
filed a lawsuit. He says the police caused his father’s death. Salt
Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank for the second time denied police used
a Taser on Nelson. Burbank said investigators collected the officers’
Tasers at the scene and checked their digital history. When a Taser is
deployed, it creates a digital record and produces a tiny slip of
paper with identifying marks that match the cartridge that was fired,
Burbank said. http://bit.ly/RjAKCp
■Gallatin County, Montana: A felony charge against a deputy accused of
assaulting a teenage inmate has resurfaced. The officer put his hands
around a girl’s neck and pushed her against a wall while she was
wearing a restraint belt and handcuffs. The officer admitted to
investigators that his intent was to scare her so she would comply
with him. He said that his acts were forceful and not the type he had
been trained to use. http://bit.ly/Uy2bHr
■London, Kentucky: A trooper tried to trade drugs in exchange for sex.
He was sentenced to 74 months in prison for drug trafficking and
carrying a firearm while trafficking prescription narcotics. bit.ly/
RTalpZ
■Anchorage, Alaska: The city will pay more than $5.5 million to 11
women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by a police officer now
serving 87 years in prison for rape. Paul Stockler, an attorney for
one of the women, said his client was raped while she was in handcuffs
in 2009. The woman, who was detained in a DUI case but not cited,
reached a settlement of more than $947,000, plus she will receive an
annuity of $1,000 a month for life, Stockler said. “There isn’t anyone
that would go through or put their daughter through what any of these
girls went through for any sums of money that any of them collected,”
he said.
■Prince George County, Maryland: A video shows an officer striking a
boy with his gun, and it appears that it fires when it hits him in the
head. The officer lied about the incident and said the boy attacked
him. wj.la/PZbuji
■St. Paul, Minnesota: An officer was caught on video kicking a man in
the chest who was lying on the ground and coughing after he had been
sprayed with a chemical irritant. The officer then handcuffs the man,
drags him to his feet and, with the assistance of another officer,
slams the man onto the hood of a squad car. The man plans to file a
lawsuit. bit.ly/TeMwyy
■Ogden, Utah: Four highway patrol troopers brought R. Todd May to the
ground and punched him eight times and shocked him at least twice with
a taser. He is now suing, saying they used excessive force and asking
for $250,000 in damages. When he was complaining of stomach pains
after he was in placed in a squad car, an officer can be heard on the
police camera saying to him, “you’re fine, there’s not even any
blood.” bit.ly/NHn3ac
■Spartenburg, South Carolina: An officer shot, and killed, a tethered
dog after approaching the wrong house to serve papers to a man who did
not live there. exm.nr/NFALdN
Although the poor and minorities are at special risk, murder by police
happens to many middle-class and some wealthy people:
Patrick Dorismond--a security guard killed after saying no to an
attempted drug entrapment by an undercover cop looking to fill a
nightly arrest quota.
William J. Whitfield, shot dead in a New York supermarket by police
who said they mistook the keys he was carrying for a gun
Amadou Diallo--killed in a hail of 41 bullets for acting "suspicious"
on his own doorstep
Alberto Sepulveda--an 11-year-old shot in the back
Anibal Carrasquillo (shot for turning to face the police officer in "a
gun stance.")
Dwain Lee--an actor shot 4 times in the back at a costume party
Mario Paz, a 63-year-old grandfather shot twice in the back in a
typical botched drug raid of a wrong address
Frank Lobato, 63, an invalid who needed crutches to move around, who
was unarmed and in bed watching TV when cops climbed through the
second-story window and opened his closed bedroom door. Police said
they thought a can of soda he was holding was a weapon.
Pedro Oregon Navarro, shot 12 times, hit 9 times in the back and
killed, during a warrantless drug raid on his apartment.
Reason April 2006
Government Goons Murder Puppies!
The drug war goes to the dogs.
by Radley Balko
<excerpts>
http://www.reason.com/0604/co.rb.rant.shtml
In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some
pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped
on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was
one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range [In the
back--TQ]. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and
held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they
thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus,
ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all
five.)
Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked
up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and kill the family
dog.
One of the most appalling cases occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona,
the home of Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America."
In 2004 one of Arpaio's SWAT teams conducted a bumbling raid in a
Phoenix suburb. Among other weapons, it used tear gas and an armored
personnel carrier that later rolled down the street and smashed into a
car. The operation ended with the targeted home in flames and exactly
one suspect in custody -- for outstanding traffic violations.
But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by
John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of
a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back
into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog
burned to death.
In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a
family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it
again.
When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical
marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times.
Filgo himself was never charged.
Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana
possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the
kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana,
equal in weight to a ketchup packet.
In January a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a
short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor's two
pooches on his way. And last May, an officer in Syracuse, New York,
squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of
which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was
handcuffed at gunpoint at the time.
http://www.reason.com/0604/co.rb.rant.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/12/earlyshow/living/petplanet/main540285.shtml
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-09/us/police.kill.dog_1_medium-size-brown-dog-officers-patrol-car?_s=PM:US
'Felony stop' leaves family traumatized
Mary Jo Denton Herald-Citizen Staff January 02, 2003 11:54 AM CST
Before their ordeal was over, three members of the family had been
yanked out of their car and handcuffed on the side of Interstate 40 in
downtown Cookeville, and their beloved dog, Patton, had been shot to
death by a police officer as they watched.
What was their crime?
There was no crime.
But a passerby with a cell phone apparently assumed a crime had
occurred when a wallet flew from a car on Interstate 40 near
Nashville.
That citizen called police and inadvertently set in motion what would
make it the most horrible vacation the James Smoak family of Saluda,
North Carolina, has ever had.
Today, the Smoak children and their parents were still weeping over
what happened to them in Cookeville.
But the Smoak family willingly told their story to anyone who would
listen; they hope by doing so that something might be done to prevent
it from happening to another family.
James Smoak, 38, who was traveling in the family station wagon with
his wife, Pamela, their 17-year-old son, Brandon, and the family's two
pet bulldogs, Patton and Cassie, had lost his wallet after stopping
for gas as they left Davidson County on Wednesday afternoon.
But he didn't know he lost it. Apparently, he had placed it on top of
the car while pumping gas, and it flew off somewhere on the highway a
short time later.
Not knowing his wallet was lost, he and his family traveled on,
heading east on their way home to North Carolina.
A few cars behind James and Pamela's station wagon, his parents and
the two younger Smoak children were traveling in the elder Smoak's
car.
Just a few miles east of Cookeville, James Smoak began to notice that
a THP squad car was following him, though the officer was not pulling
him over, just staying behind him, changing lanes any time Smoak did,
moving in and out of traffic each time Smoak did.
"It was obvious he was looking at me, not at other vehicles, and I'm
thinking I must have done something (in my driving), but I don't know
what," Smoak said today.
When Smoak reached the 287 exit area in Cookeville, three other police
cars suddenly appeared, and the trooper then turned on blue lights and
pulled the Smoak car over.
"I immediately pulled to the side, and expecting him to come to the
window, I started reaching for my wallet to get my license and it was
not there," Smoak said.
About that time, he heard the officer broadcast orders over a
bullhorn, telling him to toss the keys out the car window and get out
with his hands up and walk backwards to the rear of the car.
Still not knowing what he was being stopped for, Smoak obeyed, and
when he reached the back of the car, with a gun pointed at Smoak, the
trooper ordered him to get on his knees, face the back of the car and
put his head down.
When he did that, the officer handcuffed him and placed him in the
patrol car. Then the same orders were blared over the bullhorn to
"passenger" and Pamela Smoak got out with her hands up, was ordered to
the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed. Next, Brandon was
ordered out and handcuffed in the same way.
Terrified at what was happening to them for no reason they knew, the
family was also immediately concerned about their two pet dogs being
left in the car there on the highway with the car doors open.
"We kept asking the officers -- there were several officers by now --
to close the car doors because of our dogs, but they didn't do it,"
said Pamela Smoak.
And as the officers worked in the late evening darkness, their weapons
drawn as the Smoaks were being handcuffed, the dog Patton came out of
the car and headed toward one of the Cookeville Police officers who
was assisting the THP.
"That officer had a flashlight on his shotgun, and the dog was going
toward that light and the officer shot him, just blew his head off,"
said Pamela Smoak.
"We had begged them to shut the car doors so our dogs wouldn't get
out, and they didn't do that."
As the dog was heading out of the car toward the officer, "we had
yelled, begging them to let us get him, but the officer shot him," she
said.
Grieving for their dog and in shock over their apparent arrest for
some unknown crime, the family could only wait. At one point, one
state trooper did tell them they "matched the description" in a
robbery that had occurred in Davidson County, Pamela Smoak said.
The ordeal went on for a time after that, the family terrified and in
grief over the dog.
When the officers did discover the mistake, "they said, 'Okay, we're
releasing you and we're sorry,'" Smoak said.
As soon as Brandon was released from the handcuffs, he rushed over to
the dead dog and began to cry, Smoak said.
And that's when one of the most infuriating parts of the ordeal
happened, according to James Smoak.
"I saw one of the THP officers walk over to the city officer who had
shot the dog and grin," he said.
"He told me the officer was not laughing, but I know he was," said
Smoak.
Smoak's parents had come along behind the other car and had seen all
the commotion and stopped too, and now all three children were crying
over their pet dog, as they were still doing today.
The Smoaks gathered the body of their pet and went to a motel here to
spend the night. But they didn't get much rest, and at one point,
James Smoak became so upset he had to go to the hospital for medical
treatment.
"Poor Patton," said 13-year-old Jeb Smoak. "When he was killed out
there, it was the first time I ever saw my brother, Brandon, cry.
Brandon is the toughest person I've ever met, and he cried."
The other dog, a puppy named Cassie, was "trembling all over" after
the ordeal, Jeb Smoak said.
But it could all have been prevented, didn't have to happen, he is
convinced.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/12/earlyshow/living/petplanet/main540285.shtml
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-09/us/police.kill.dog_1_medium-size-brown-dog-officers-patrol-car?_s=PM:US
One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that
they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification
whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the
University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against
innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their
criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by
arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify
the unprovoked police violence against citizens.
Another disturbing aspect is that no one tells the police to stop the
brutality. "Free" Americans are so intimidated by police that on
February 19 of this year male customers in a Chicago bar stood aside
while a drunk cop weighing 251 pounds beat a 115 pound barmaid,
knocking her to the floor with his fists and repeatedly kicking her,
for obeying the bar rules and not serving him more drinks. The
brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in chapters on
each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge in headlines
and in survivors' complaints. It is important to note, however, that
because it is difficult to obtain case information except where there
is public scandal and/or prosecution, this report relies heavily on
cases that have reached public attention; disciplinary action and
criminal prosecution are even less common than the cases set out below
would suggest.
There is no way to hold police accountable when the president and vice
president of the United States, the attorney general, and the
Republican Party maintain that the civil liberties and the separation
of powers mandated by the US Constitution must be abandoned in order
that the executive branch can keep Americans safe from terrorists.
Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the
mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an 86-
year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West Point.
Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and nearly had
his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security regarded the pin on
the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old Marine general and former
governor of South Dakota could use to hijack an airliner and commit a
terrorist deed.
In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes
of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of
every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our
emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of
our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional
rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false
arrests.
The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves from
police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a felony
with a long prison sentence to "assault a police officer." Assaulting
a police officer means that if a police thug intends to beat your
brains out with his nightstick and you disarm your assailant, you have
"assaulted a police officer." If you are not shot on the spot by his
backup, you will be convicted by a "law and order" jury and sent to
prison.
No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a "free"
American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if not of his
life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must wish that he had
such power over Americans.
The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away with it
Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative
personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake
in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing
blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial
minorities to be victims of police brutality.
The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed now
with military weapons and trained to view the general public as the
enemy, against whom "pain compliance" must be used, has placed every
American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our "public
protectors."
In "free and democratic America," citizens are in such great danger
from police that there are websites devoted to police brutality with
online forms to report the brutality.
Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled,
"Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the
United States." The report stated:
"Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human
rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by
police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings,
fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming
barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit
human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat
their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of
brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration,
while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these
abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee
them impunity.
"In mid-January [2000] Giuliani and his police
commissioner...authorized virtually unlimited overtime for the police
department. Its mission: attack drug dealing, anywhere, anytime. The
new program...sent a flood of street wretches sloshing down the chutes
of precinct houses, holding cells, and criminal courts. 'In order to
continue working the overtime, you are expected to produce,' says Tom
Scotto, president of the Detective's Endowment Association.
The official quota, say the undercovers, was five collars per tour for
each team. No one sweated over the quality of the arrests. A man
selling tamales on the street was busted for not having a permit.
Another was grabbed for spitting on the sidewalk. Nearly 80% of
all...cases were misdemeanors or low-level violations....
--"Casualty in the War on Drugs," Jim Dwyer, In: _Busted_, Mike Gray,
editor; Avalon/Nation, New York, 2002.
THE DRUG WAR'S HIDDEN ECONOMIC AGENDA, The Nation, March 9, 1998:
""The L.A. County Sheriff's raid that killed reclusive
millionaire Don Scott was particularly revealing. The 200 acres of
sagebrush and chaparral that Scott owned...ran along the spine of the
coastal mountains above Malibu, and were coveted by a number of
parties, including the National Park Service. Scott repeatedly
refused to sell...Deputy Sheriff Gary Spencer...organized a
surveillance effort that included everybody from the LAPD to the U.S.
Forest Service. But despite overflights by the California Air
National Guard and extensive sweeps by a special Border Patrol
mountain unit, nobody spotted anything. Undeterred, Spencer...got a
search warrant. The Scots had been partying all night and were still
groggy when the hammering and shouting at the door woke them up.
Frances got her jeans on first, and just as she reached the living
room, the door collapsed and a sea of armed men crashed in. She
screamed. Her husband stepped into the hallway with a gun in his
hand. Spencer...fired two rounds. Scott recoiled, pitched forward,
and his face smashed into the floor....For days they scoured the
rolling hills, and they did not find a single marijuana seed. A
painstaking search of the house failed to turn up the expected coke or
heroin stash. All they had to show for their trouble was this body on
the living-room floor." (Mike Gray, Drug Crazy New York: Random
House, 1998)
Whatever they say, the legal system works to protect its own--and that
includes cops, judges, and prosecutors. Not long ago, the cops killed
a man (Santiago Villanueva) having an epileptic seizure at work after
his coworkers called 911 for medical help.
Villanueva, a Dominican-American, died in police custody on April 16th
from what the New Jersey state medical examiner termed "mechanical
asphyxia" brought about by pressure applied to his neck and chest.
Villaneuva, who suffered from a seizure disorder, would occasionally
be plagued by short seizures, according to his factory co-workers.
They said that a seizure he suffered on April 16th was unusually long,
leading them to call 911 and ask for paramedics. The Bloomfield
Police Department arrived instead and, according to witnesses at the
scene, declared that Villanueva had consumed narcotics and attempted
to restrain him. They handcuffed him, then sat on or held down his
neck, upper- and lower-back, repeatedly screaming at him to "speak
English." Villanueva lost consciousness and was declared dead later
in the day. The Bloomfield Police Department refused to respond to
repeated requests for comment. The cops got off without any
punishment or discipline.
http://commie.droryikra.com/v66i12/features/villanueva.shtml
http://www.ndsn.org/julaug98/lawenf2.html
Houston Police Shoot Man in Back 9 Times in Botched Drug Raid, Killing
Him; No Drugs Found
July-August 1998
On July 12, members of a Houston police anti-gang task force shot
Pedro Oregon Navarro 12 times, killing him, during a warrantless drug
raid on his apartment. Police said they opened fire after Oregon
pointed a pistol at them. They recovered a weapon from Oregon's
bedroom, which tests show was never fired. Police fired a total of 30
shots at Oregon. Members of the task force have been relieved of duty
with pay while the incident is being investigated (Lisa Teachey, "HPD
officers relieved of duty during raid probe," Houston Chronicle, July
15, 1998, p. 26A).
The family said police continued to fire at their father even after he
had collapsed to the floor. An autopsy revealed that 9 of the 12 shots
were fired at a downward trajectory. It also showed that Oregon had
received a gunshot wound to the head, left shoulder and left hand, and
nine wounds to the back. "All the wounds are disturbing," said
attorney Paul Nugent, who is representing the Oregon family. Oregon,
23, is survived by a widow and two daughters (S.K. Bardwell, "Police
shot man 12 times in raid," Houston Chronicle, July 21, 1998, p. 1A).
On July 12, members of a Houston police anti-gang task force shot
Pedro Oregon Navarro 12 times, killing him, during a warrantless drug
raid on his apartment. Police said they opened fire after Oregon
pointed a pistol at them. They recovered a weapon from Oregon's
bedroom, which tests show was never fired. Police fired a total of 30
shots at Oregon. Members of the task force have been relieved of duty
with pay while the incident is being investigated (Lisa Teachey, "HPD
officers relieved of duty during raid probe," Houston Chronicle, July
15, 1998, p. 26A).
Police did not find any drugs in the apartment, and no drugs or
alcohol were found in Oregon's body (Stefanie Asin, "No drugs or
alcohol found in man slain by officers," Houston Chronicle, July 31,
1998, p. 33A).
http://www.hrw.org/
Many of the Knapp Commission's issues of concern resurfaced again in
the early 1990s, as a new corruption scandal emerged. Officers
primarily from the 30th, 9th, 46th, 75th and 73rd precincts were
caught selling drugs and beating suspects.14 To look into the
allegations, Mayor David Dinkins appointed a commission, headed by
Judge Milton Mollen. During hearings in 1993-94, officers came forward
to acknowledge that they had become something of a vigilante squad
with financial motives. Officer Bernie Cawley was asked if the people
he acknowledged beating were suspects and he replied, "No. We'd just
beat people in general."15 Cawley reportedly said he had used his sap
gloves (lead-loaded gloves), flashlight, and nightstick as many as 400
times just "to show who was in charge."16 If victims expressed
interest in complaining, he would tell them that it would take three
hours to type their complaint. Another officer testified that some
officers kept guns seized during raids and used them as "throwaway"
guns to plant on a suspect in the event of a questionable arrest or
police shooting to make it appear the suspect was armed.17 Concluded
Cawley, "They [residents] hate the police. You'd hate the police too
if you lived there."18
The Mollen Commission report, published in July 1994, described an
internal accountability system that was flawed in most respects. It
also described the nexus between corruption and brutality, and urged a
plan to combat both problems.
What emerged was a picture of how everyday brutality corrupted
relations among police officers and city residents. The Mollen
Commission heard from officers who admitted pouring ammonia on the
face of a detainee in a holding cell and from another who threw
garbage and boiling water on someone hiding in a dumbwaiter shaft.
Another officer allegedly doctored an "escape rope" used by drug
dealers so they would plunge to the ground if they used it, and the
same group also raided a brothel while in uniform, ordered the
customers to leave, and terrorized and raped the women there.22 Mollen
found: "...[B]rutality, regardless of the motive, sometimes serves as
a rite of passage to other forms of corruption and misconduct. Some
officers told us that brutality was how they first crossed the line
toward abandoning their integrity."23 Officer Michael Dowd testified,
"[Brutality] is a form of acceptance. It's not just simply giving a
beating. It's [sic] the other officers begin to accept you more."24
Officers Cawley and Dowd described hundreds of acts of brutality they
had engaged in; yet apparently no fellow officer had filed a complaint
about either one of them.25
"As important as the possible extent of brutality," noted the
commission's report, "is the extent of brutality tolerance we found
throughout the Department....[T]his tolerance, or willful blindness,
extends to supervisors as well. This is because many supervisors share
the perception that nothing is really wrong with a bit of unnecessary
force and because they believe that this is the only way to fight
crime today."26 Internal review was equally corrupted. The Internal
Affairs Division was not helpful in identifying problems, and removed
especially sensitive cases and placed them in a "tickler file," making
each problem appear an aberration. Despite many officers' criminal
behavior, their personnel files repeatedly showed that they had "met
standards," and they thus avoided scrutiny altogether. Officers who
were caught lying were not disciplined and were taught by supervisors
how to present false testimony in court.
"One officer, Michael T. Kalanz, kept $1 million dollars cash in his
police locker as part of, what federal investigators said was, a Cali
drug cartel money laundering operation. Most of the other indicted
officers were charged with "booming doors," i.e., raiding apartments
and robbing the occupants and beating innocent residents with their
radios, clubs, and flash lights."
Most who suffer abuse from the police don’t bother to complain. They
know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of
troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments
tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public
tends to side with the police.
Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater
danger to the public than are criminals.
Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault
by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them.
Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is
greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly
wandered into the wrong part of town.
In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to
have civilian police review boards was beat back by “law and order”
conservatives.
In part because the police have been militarized by the federal
government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the
public as the enemy.
In part because the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have made every American
a suspect. The only civil liberty that has any force in the U.S.
today is the law against racial discrimination. This law requires that
every American citizen be treated as if he were a Muslim terrorist.
The Transportation Security Administration rigorously enforces the
refusal to discriminate between terrorist and citizen at airports and
is now taking its gestapo violations of privacy into every form of
travel and congregation: trucking, bus and train travel, sports
events, and, without doubt, shopping centers and automobile traffic.
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2011/02/01/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints/
This despite the fact that there have been no terrorist incidents that
could be used to justify such an expansive intrusion into privacy and
freedom of movement.
The police often arrest people to make arbitrary quotas
The Truth About Arrest Quotas in the Miami-Dade Police Department
By Gus Garcia-Roberts Fri., Sep. 3 2010 at 8:31 AM <excerpt>
Quotas to police chiefs are like mistresses to politicians: Nobody
wants to get caught with one. No cop brass wants to admit that they've
boiled the delicate art of policing-- where discretion and fairness is
key-- to a crude numbers chase. The Sunrise Police chief recently
denied a quota system even after an officer received a reprimand for
not handing out enough tickets. And Miami-Dade brass are toeing the
same line. Says Captain Jorge A. Guerra: "My policy, and as a rule, is
that we do not use quotas."
If you've been reading our coverage of Miami-Dade Ofc. Frank Adams --
the renegade cop who claims to have witnessed a pattern of abuse,
dishonesty, and cover-ups in Florida's largest department -- this
won't shock you: He says his bosses are lying about quotas, and he has
documentation to show it.
The unwritten quota, Adams says, is for officers to collect two of
each stat category -- arrests, traffic stops, and "field
interviews" (checking the identification of a suspect) -- each day
that they're on the streets.
At the end of every month, the cops receive an evaluation that looks a
lot like a school report card, with a heavy emphasis on accumulated
stats. Then lieutenants and captains circle the sums and write their
critiques: "Low!" reads a scrawl on a month when Adams only made 15
field interviews. "Good job," writes the lieutenant in a month when
Adams made 88 of the interviews. "Can do better, room for
improvement," reads another missive next to his arrests stats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/nyregion/10quotas.html
The police get generous pay and benefits and manipulate the system to
get overtime pay or illegal money
The police receive generous pay and benefits packages, and inflate the
amount they earn by many means, legal and illegal. For example, the
NJ state police in 2009 had a current starting salary of $58,748.29
with uniform allowance. The second-year total compensation jumps to
$65,662.39. Top pay for a Trooper I is $97,188.48. Troopers receive
yearly increments. All recruits receive $777.78 every two weeks, plus
overtime pay. Room and board are also provided while training.
•Service Retirement: After 20 years of service as a New Jersey State
Trooper, you are eligible to receive a pension, regardless of age,
consisting of 50% of your final compensation.
•Special Retirement: After 25 years of service as a New Jersey State
Trooper, you are eligible to receive a pension, regardless of age,
consisting of 65% of your final compensation plus 1% for each year
above 25 years. They can receive up to 70% of their final
compensation.
They also receive vision, dental, prescription drug, and life
insurance coverage at little or no cost
http://www.state.nj.us/njsp/recruit/salary.html
NY city cops typically get $45,000 while still in training, $48,200
after a year, $52,000 to $65,000 base salary and rapidly move up. But
overtime increases that significantly. For example.
http://nypdrecruit.com/benefits-salary/overview
Newark Star Ledger 4/27/08
"Overall, the roughly 1600-member force [of Port Authority Police]
worked nearly 838,000 hours of overtime--more than 500 hours per
officer on average.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/topstories/index.ssf/2008/04/port_authority_officials_fail.html
110 regular days off
24 vacation days
10 holidays
10 personal days
8 sick days
5 days compensatory time
2 days other (donating blood, death in family)
1 day for union business
Top 10 overtime workers
total earnings
Officer M Cofield $263,468
Officer P Monahan $225,362
Officer R Jersey $217,842
Sgt T Hoey $284,174
Officer B Zillmer $226,309
Officer M Lombardo $220,100
Officer J McDevitt $220,166
Officer J Alvarez $228,805
Sgt N Kowana $268,885
Sgt P Ryan $263,203
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/topstories/index.ssf/2008/04/port_authority_officials_fail.html
Port Authority officials fail to curb overtime pay
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008, 11:30 PM
Let's not forget that it was Democrats like Clinton as well as
Republicans who enacted a federal program to give municipalities extra
money to hire more police.
particularly federal law enforcement, has become increasingly
militarized. No-knock raids with battering rams, agents dressed like
ninjas and spray-firing machine guns, the fabrication of information
in warrant application, forfeiture and confiscation of property
without a trial and a steadily blurring distinction between the
standards appropriate for law enforcement in a free society and the
practices typical of occupation of a conquered nation have been the
most important trend of the last decade.
"A pattern of unwarranted paramilitary assaults on Americans by
various federal agencies is well established."
--David Kappel, Paul Blackman, American Society of Criminology. In
Police Brutality: Current Controversies, Tamera Roleff, editor,
Greenhaven Press
"One young man, Douglas Snyder, a New York University student, was
kicked in the face until he lost consciousness after videotaping a
police confrontation with squatters; the camera was smashed and
urinated on. Another, a high school student in the Bronx, was a
passenger in a speeding car; an officer kicked him so hard in the
groin that he lost a testicle.
--"Police Often Overreact to challenges to Their Authority," Deborah
Sontag, Dan Barry, staff reporters for the New York Times.
A police unit of 20 officers kicked in their front door [of the
Holland house]. The officers were acting on an erroneous tip from an
informant who had given the police three wrong addresses at the same
neighborhood for a drug bust.
The family said the police kicked in the front door and acted
like cops "out of control." They threw furniture across the room,
wrecked the whole house, and threw all of the food out of the
refrigerator onto the floor. They threw the man of the house against
the wall when he tried to tell them they had the wrong people.
The children in the family, who are honor roll students, are now
under psychiatric care. All the police said was 'We went in the wrong
house.'
--Police Brutality results in a loss of respect for the police. From
Police Brutality: Current Controversies, Tamera Roleff, editor,
Greenhaven Press.
During a typical 3-month period (April 2009 to June 2010)
5986 reports of misconduct by police were made
382 fatalities were linked with misconduct
$347,455,000 was paid in related settlements and judgments
http://www.termlifeinsurance.org/police-brutality/
http://www.wnem.com/story/19503465/family-wants-answers-after-officer-guns-down-family-pet
ST. LOUIS, MI (WNEM) - A local family is still shocked after what
happened to their beloved pet. They say their dog was shot and killed
at the hands of a police officer.
The shooting happened Saturday in St. Louis, Mich., in Gratiot County.
Lori Walmsley, a neighbor of the family who lost their pet, says she
saw the incident.
Walmsley says she was outside playing with her own dog when her
neighbor's golden retriever, Scout, ran over into her yard. She says
she called the dog over to play, which Scout did, and then Scout ran
back over back into his own yard. That's when Walmsley says a police
officer showed up.
Walmsley said the officer asked if the was dog hers. She said "no,"
but told the officer Scout wasn't dangerous. She says the officer
tried to catch the dog, who apparently didn't want to be caught. The
dog tried to run away and when cornered by the officer, let out a
little growl. Walmsley says she couldn't believe what happened next.
"I heard 'pop pop pop pop pop,' and I thought, 'what is going on,' and
I [saw] the St. Louis Police Department standing over my dog," said
Scout's owner.
"He just started shooting him, he just kept shooting him in the head,"
said Walmsley. "I said, 'What are you doing? He's just a puppy!'"
The dog was taken to the vet were it later died.
The witness says the officer wasn't provoked and she doesn't feel his
reaction was warranted. Scout's owners were inside their house during
the incident.
http://www.policemisconduct.net/
■Salt Lake City, Utah: The son of a man who died in police custody has
filed a lawsuit. He says the police caused his father’s death. Salt
Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank for the second time denied police used
a Taser on Nelson. Burbank said investigators collected the officers’
Tasers at the scene and checked their digital history. When a Taser is
deployed, it creates a digital record and produces a tiny slip of
paper with identifying marks that match the cartridge that was fired,
Burbank said. http://bit.ly/RjAKCp
■Gallatin County, Montana: A felony charge against a deputy accused of
assaulting a teenage inmate has resurfaced. The officer put his hands
around a girl’s neck and pushed her against a wall while she was
wearing a restraint belt and handcuffs. The officer admitted to
investigators that his intent was to scare her so she would comply
with him. He said that his acts were forceful and not the type he had
been trained to use. http://bit.ly/Uy2bHr
■London, Kentucky: A trooper tried to trade drugs in exchange for sex.
He was sentenced to 74 months in prison for drug trafficking and
carrying a firearm while trafficking prescription narcotics. bit.ly/
RTalpZ
■Anchorage, Alaska: The city will pay more than $5.5 million to 11
women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by a police officer now
serving 87 years in prison for rape. Paul Stockler, an attorney for
one of the women, said his client was raped while she was in handcuffs
in 2009. The woman, who was detained in a DUI case but not cited,
reached a settlement of more than $947,000, plus she will receive an
annuity of $1,000 a month for life, Stockler said. “There isn’t anyone
that would go through or put their daughter through what any of these
girls went through for any sums of money that any of them collected,”
he said.
■Prince George County, Maryland: A video shows an officer striking a
boy with his gun, and it appears that it fires when it hits him in the
head. The officer lied about the incident and said the boy attacked
him. wj.la/PZbuji
■St. Paul, Minnesota: An officer was caught on video kicking a man in
the chest who was lying on the ground and coughing after he had been
sprayed with a chemical irritant. The officer then handcuffs the man,
drags him to his feet and, with the assistance of another officer,
slams the man onto the hood of a squad car. The man plans to file a
lawsuit. bit.ly/TeMwyy
■Ogden, Utah: Four highway patrol troopers brought R. Todd May to the
ground and punched him eight times and shocked him at least twice with
a taser. He is now suing, saying they used excessive force and asking
for $250,000 in damages. When he was complaining of stomach pains
after he was in placed in a squad car, an officer can be heard on the
police camera saying to him, “you’re fine, there’s not even any
blood.” bit.ly/NHn3ac
■Spartenburg, South Carolina: An officer shot, and killed, a tethered
dog after approaching the wrong house to serve papers to a man who did
not live there. exm.nr/NFALdN
Although the poor and minorities are at special risk, murder by police
happens to many middle-class and some wealthy people:
Patrick Dorismond--a security guard killed after saying no to an
attempted drug entrapment by an undercover cop looking to fill a
nightly arrest quota.
William J. Whitfield, shot dead in a New York supermarket by police
who said they mistook the keys he was carrying for a gun
Amadou Diallo--killed in a hail of 41 bullets for acting "suspicious"
on his own doorstep
Alberto Sepulveda--an 11-year-old shot in the back
Anibal Carrasquillo (shot for turning to face the police officer in "a
gun stance.")
Dwain Lee--an actor shot 4 times in the back at a costume party
Mario Paz, a 63-year-old grandfather shot twice in the back in a
typical botched drug raid of a wrong address
Frank Lobato, 63, an invalid who needed crutches to move around, who
was unarmed and in bed watching TV when cops climbed through the
second-story window and opened his closed bedroom door. Police said
they thought a can of soda he was holding was a weapon.
Pedro Oregon Navarro, shot 12 times, hit 9 times in the back and
killed, during a warrantless drug raid on his apartment.
Reason April 2006
Government Goons Murder Puppies!
The drug war goes to the dogs.
by Radley Balko
<excerpts>
http://www.reason.com/0604/co.rb.rant.shtml
In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some
pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped
on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was
one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range [In the
back--TQ]. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and
held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they
thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus,
ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all
five.)
Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked
up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and kill the family
dog.
One of the most appalling cases occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona,
the home of Joe Arpaio, self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America."
In 2004 one of Arpaio's SWAT teams conducted a bumbling raid in a
Phoenix suburb. Among other weapons, it used tear gas and an armored
personnel carrier that later rolled down the street and smashed into a
car. The operation ended with the targeted home in flames and exactly
one suspect in custody -- for outstanding traffic violations.
But for all that, the image that sticks in your head, as described by
John Dougherty in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, is that of
a puppy trying to escape the fire and a SWAT officer chasing him back
into the burning building with puffs from a fire extinguisher. The dog
burned to death.
In a massive 1998 raid at a San Francisco housing co-op, cops shot a
family dog in front of its family, then dragged it outside and shot it
again.
When police in Fremont, California, raided the home of medical
marijuana patient Robert Filgo, they shot his pet Akita nine times.
Filgo himself was never charged.
Last October police in Alabama raided a home on suspicion of marijuana
possession, shot and killed both family dogs, then joked about the
kill in front of the family. They seized eight grams of marijuana,
equal in weight to a ketchup packet.
In January a cop en route to a drug raid in Tampa, Florida, took a
short cut across a neighboring lawn and shot the neighbor's two
pooches on his way. And last May, an officer in Syracuse, New York,
squeezed off several shots at a family dog during a drug raid, one of
which ricocheted and struck a 13-year-old boy in the leg. The boy was
handcuffed at gunpoint at the time.
http://www.reason.com/0604/co.rb.rant.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/12/earlyshow/living/petplanet/main540285.shtml
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-09/us/police.kill.dog_1_medium-size-brown-dog-officers-patrol-car?_s=PM:US
'Felony stop' leaves family traumatized
Mary Jo Denton Herald-Citizen Staff January 02, 2003 11:54 AM CST
Before their ordeal was over, three members of the family had been
yanked out of their car and handcuffed on the side of Interstate 40 in
downtown Cookeville, and their beloved dog, Patton, had been shot to
death by a police officer as they watched.
What was their crime?
There was no crime.
But a passerby with a cell phone apparently assumed a crime had
occurred when a wallet flew from a car on Interstate 40 near
Nashville.
That citizen called police and inadvertently set in motion what would
make it the most horrible vacation the James Smoak family of Saluda,
North Carolina, has ever had.
Today, the Smoak children and their parents were still weeping over
what happened to them in Cookeville.
But the Smoak family willingly told their story to anyone who would
listen; they hope by doing so that something might be done to prevent
it from happening to another family.
James Smoak, 38, who was traveling in the family station wagon with
his wife, Pamela, their 17-year-old son, Brandon, and the family's two
pet bulldogs, Patton and Cassie, had lost his wallet after stopping
for gas as they left Davidson County on Wednesday afternoon.
But he didn't know he lost it. Apparently, he had placed it on top of
the car while pumping gas, and it flew off somewhere on the highway a
short time later.
Not knowing his wallet was lost, he and his family traveled on,
heading east on their way home to North Carolina.
A few cars behind James and Pamela's station wagon, his parents and
the two younger Smoak children were traveling in the elder Smoak's
car.
Just a few miles east of Cookeville, James Smoak began to notice that
a THP squad car was following him, though the officer was not pulling
him over, just staying behind him, changing lanes any time Smoak did,
moving in and out of traffic each time Smoak did.
"It was obvious he was looking at me, not at other vehicles, and I'm
thinking I must have done something (in my driving), but I don't know
what," Smoak said today.
When Smoak reached the 287 exit area in Cookeville, three other police
cars suddenly appeared, and the trooper then turned on blue lights and
pulled the Smoak car over.
"I immediately pulled to the side, and expecting him to come to the
window, I started reaching for my wallet to get my license and it was
not there," Smoak said.
About that time, he heard the officer broadcast orders over a
bullhorn, telling him to toss the keys out the car window and get out
with his hands up and walk backwards to the rear of the car.
Still not knowing what he was being stopped for, Smoak obeyed, and
when he reached the back of the car, with a gun pointed at Smoak, the
trooper ordered him to get on his knees, face the back of the car and
put his head down.
When he did that, the officer handcuffed him and placed him in the
patrol car. Then the same orders were blared over the bullhorn to
"passenger" and Pamela Smoak got out with her hands up, was ordered to
the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed. Next, Brandon was
ordered out and handcuffed in the same way.
Terrified at what was happening to them for no reason they knew, the
family was also immediately concerned about their two pet dogs being
left in the car there on the highway with the car doors open.
"We kept asking the officers -- there were several officers by now --
to close the car doors because of our dogs, but they didn't do it,"
said Pamela Smoak.
And as the officers worked in the late evening darkness, their weapons
drawn as the Smoaks were being handcuffed, the dog Patton came out of
the car and headed toward one of the Cookeville Police officers who
was assisting the THP.
"That officer had a flashlight on his shotgun, and the dog was going
toward that light and the officer shot him, just blew his head off,"
said Pamela Smoak.
"We had begged them to shut the car doors so our dogs wouldn't get
out, and they didn't do that."
As the dog was heading out of the car toward the officer, "we had
yelled, begging them to let us get him, but the officer shot him," she
said.
Grieving for their dog and in shock over their apparent arrest for
some unknown crime, the family could only wait. At one point, one
state trooper did tell them they "matched the description" in a
robbery that had occurred in Davidson County, Pamela Smoak said.
The ordeal went on for a time after that, the family terrified and in
grief over the dog.
When the officers did discover the mistake, "they said, 'Okay, we're
releasing you and we're sorry,'" Smoak said.
As soon as Brandon was released from the handcuffs, he rushed over to
the dead dog and began to cry, Smoak said.
And that's when one of the most infuriating parts of the ordeal
happened, according to James Smoak.
"I saw one of the THP officers walk over to the city officer who had
shot the dog and grin," he said.
"He told me the officer was not laughing, but I know he was," said
Smoak.
Smoak's parents had come along behind the other car and had seen all
the commotion and stopped too, and now all three children were crying
over their pet dog, as they were still doing today.
The Smoaks gathered the body of their pet and went to a motel here to
spend the night. But they didn't get much rest, and at one point,
James Smoak became so upset he had to go to the hospital for medical
treatment.
"Poor Patton," said 13-year-old Jeb Smoak. "When he was killed out
there, it was the first time I ever saw my brother, Brandon, cry.
Brandon is the toughest person I've ever met, and he cried."
The other dog, a puppy named Cassie, was "trembling all over" after
the ordeal, Jeb Smoak said.
But it could all have been prevented, didn't have to happen, he is
convinced.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/12/earlyshow/living/petplanet/main540285.shtml
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-01-09/us/police.kill.dog_1_medium-size-brown-dog-officers-patrol-car?_s=PM:US
One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that
they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification
whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the
University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against
innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their
criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by
arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify
the unprovoked police violence against citizens.
Another disturbing aspect is that no one tells the police to stop the
brutality. "Free" Americans are so intimidated by police that on
February 19 of this year male customers in a Chicago bar stood aside
while a drunk cop weighing 251 pounds beat a 115 pound barmaid,
knocking her to the floor with his fists and repeatedly kicking her,
for obeying the bar rules and not serving him more drinks. The
brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in chapters on
each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge in headlines
and in survivors' complaints. It is important to note, however, that
because it is difficult to obtain case information except where there
is public scandal and/or prosecution, this report relies heavily on
cases that have reached public attention; disciplinary action and
criminal prosecution are even less common than the cases set out below
would suggest.
There is no way to hold police accountable when the president and vice
president of the United States, the attorney general, and the
Republican Party maintain that the civil liberties and the separation
of powers mandated by the US Constitution must be abandoned in order
that the executive branch can keep Americans safe from terrorists.
Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the
mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an 86-
year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West Point.
Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and nearly had
his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security regarded the pin on
the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old Marine general and former
governor of South Dakota could use to hijack an airliner and commit a
terrorist deed.
In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes
of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of
every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our
emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of
our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional
rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false
arrests.
The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves from
police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a felony
with a long prison sentence to "assault a police officer." Assaulting
a police officer means that if a police thug intends to beat your
brains out with his nightstick and you disarm your assailant, you have
"assaulted a police officer." If you are not shot on the spot by his
backup, you will be convicted by a "law and order" jury and sent to
prison.
No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a "free"
American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if not of his
life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must wish that he had
such power over Americans.
The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away with it
Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative
personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake
in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing
blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial
minorities to be victims of police brutality.
The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed now
with military weapons and trained to view the general public as the
enemy, against whom "pain compliance" must be used, has placed every
American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our "public
protectors."
In "free and democratic America," citizens are in such great danger
from police that there are websites devoted to police brutality with
online forms to report the brutality.
Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled,
"Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the
United States." The report stated:
"Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human
rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by
police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings,
fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming
barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit
human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat
their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of
brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration,
while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these
abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee
them impunity.
"In mid-January [2000] Giuliani and his police
commissioner...authorized virtually unlimited overtime for the police
department. Its mission: attack drug dealing, anywhere, anytime. The
new program...sent a flood of street wretches sloshing down the chutes
of precinct houses, holding cells, and criminal courts. 'In order to
continue working the overtime, you are expected to produce,' says Tom
Scotto, president of the Detective's Endowment Association.
The official quota, say the undercovers, was five collars per tour for
each team. No one sweated over the quality of the arrests. A man
selling tamales on the street was busted for not having a permit.
Another was grabbed for spitting on the sidewalk. Nearly 80% of
all...cases were misdemeanors or low-level violations....
--"Casualty in the War on Drugs," Jim Dwyer, In: _Busted_, Mike Gray,
editor; Avalon/Nation, New York, 2002.
THE DRUG WAR'S HIDDEN ECONOMIC AGENDA, The Nation, March 9, 1998:
""The L.A. County Sheriff's raid that killed reclusive
millionaire Don Scott was particularly revealing. The 200 acres of
sagebrush and chaparral that Scott owned...ran along the spine of the
coastal mountains above Malibu, and were coveted by a number of
parties, including the National Park Service. Scott repeatedly
refused to sell...Deputy Sheriff Gary Spencer...organized a
surveillance effort that included everybody from the LAPD to the U.S.
Forest Service. But despite overflights by the California Air
National Guard and extensive sweeps by a special Border Patrol
mountain unit, nobody spotted anything. Undeterred, Spencer...got a
search warrant. The Scots had been partying all night and were still
groggy when the hammering and shouting at the door woke them up.
Frances got her jeans on first, and just as she reached the living
room, the door collapsed and a sea of armed men crashed in. She
screamed. Her husband stepped into the hallway with a gun in his
hand. Spencer...fired two rounds. Scott recoiled, pitched forward,
and his face smashed into the floor....For days they scoured the
rolling hills, and they did not find a single marijuana seed. A
painstaking search of the house failed to turn up the expected coke or
heroin stash. All they had to show for their trouble was this body on
the living-room floor." (Mike Gray, Drug Crazy New York: Random
House, 1998)
Whatever they say, the legal system works to protect its own--and that
includes cops, judges, and prosecutors. Not long ago, the cops killed
a man (Santiago Villanueva) having an epileptic seizure at work after
his coworkers called 911 for medical help.
Villanueva, a Dominican-American, died in police custody on April 16th
from what the New Jersey state medical examiner termed "mechanical
asphyxia" brought about by pressure applied to his neck and chest.
Villaneuva, who suffered from a seizure disorder, would occasionally
be plagued by short seizures, according to his factory co-workers.
They said that a seizure he suffered on April 16th was unusually long,
leading them to call 911 and ask for paramedics. The Bloomfield
Police Department arrived instead and, according to witnesses at the
scene, declared that Villanueva had consumed narcotics and attempted
to restrain him. They handcuffed him, then sat on or held down his
neck, upper- and lower-back, repeatedly screaming at him to "speak
English." Villanueva lost consciousness and was declared dead later
in the day. The Bloomfield Police Department refused to respond to
repeated requests for comment. The cops got off without any
punishment or discipline.
http://commie.droryikra.com/v66i12/features/villanueva.shtml
http://www.ndsn.org/julaug98/lawenf2.html
Houston Police Shoot Man in Back 9 Times in Botched Drug Raid, Killing
Him; No Drugs Found
July-August 1998
On July 12, members of a Houston police anti-gang task force shot
Pedro Oregon Navarro 12 times, killing him, during a warrantless drug
raid on his apartment. Police said they opened fire after Oregon
pointed a pistol at them. They recovered a weapon from Oregon's
bedroom, which tests show was never fired. Police fired a total of 30
shots at Oregon. Members of the task force have been relieved of duty
with pay while the incident is being investigated (Lisa Teachey, "HPD
officers relieved of duty during raid probe," Houston Chronicle, July
15, 1998, p. 26A).
The family said police continued to fire at their father even after he
had collapsed to the floor. An autopsy revealed that 9 of the 12 shots
were fired at a downward trajectory. It also showed that Oregon had
received a gunshot wound to the head, left shoulder and left hand, and
nine wounds to the back. "All the wounds are disturbing," said
attorney Paul Nugent, who is representing the Oregon family. Oregon,
23, is survived by a widow and two daughters (S.K. Bardwell, "Police
shot man 12 times in raid," Houston Chronicle, July 21, 1998, p. 1A).
On July 12, members of a Houston police anti-gang task force shot
Pedro Oregon Navarro 12 times, killing him, during a warrantless drug
raid on his apartment. Police said they opened fire after Oregon
pointed a pistol at them. They recovered a weapon from Oregon's
bedroom, which tests show was never fired. Police fired a total of 30
shots at Oregon. Members of the task force have been relieved of duty
with pay while the incident is being investigated (Lisa Teachey, "HPD
officers relieved of duty during raid probe," Houston Chronicle, July
15, 1998, p. 26A).
Police did not find any drugs in the apartment, and no drugs or
alcohol were found in Oregon's body (Stefanie Asin, "No drugs or
alcohol found in man slain by officers," Houston Chronicle, July 31,
1998, p. 33A).
http://www.hrw.org/
Many of the Knapp Commission's issues of concern resurfaced again in
the early 1990s, as a new corruption scandal emerged. Officers
primarily from the 30th, 9th, 46th, 75th and 73rd precincts were
caught selling drugs and beating suspects.14 To look into the
allegations, Mayor David Dinkins appointed a commission, headed by
Judge Milton Mollen. During hearings in 1993-94, officers came forward
to acknowledge that they had become something of a vigilante squad
with financial motives. Officer Bernie Cawley was asked if the people
he acknowledged beating were suspects and he replied, "No. We'd just
beat people in general."15 Cawley reportedly said he had used his sap
gloves (lead-loaded gloves), flashlight, and nightstick as many as 400
times just "to show who was in charge."16 If victims expressed
interest in complaining, he would tell them that it would take three
hours to type their complaint. Another officer testified that some
officers kept guns seized during raids and used them as "throwaway"
guns to plant on a suspect in the event of a questionable arrest or
police shooting to make it appear the suspect was armed.17 Concluded
Cawley, "They [residents] hate the police. You'd hate the police too
if you lived there."18
The Mollen Commission report, published in July 1994, described an
internal accountability system that was flawed in most respects. It
also described the nexus between corruption and brutality, and urged a
plan to combat both problems.
What emerged was a picture of how everyday brutality corrupted
relations among police officers and city residents. The Mollen
Commission heard from officers who admitted pouring ammonia on the
face of a detainee in a holding cell and from another who threw
garbage and boiling water on someone hiding in a dumbwaiter shaft.
Another officer allegedly doctored an "escape rope" used by drug
dealers so they would plunge to the ground if they used it, and the
same group also raided a brothel while in uniform, ordered the
customers to leave, and terrorized and raped the women there.22 Mollen
found: "...[B]rutality, regardless of the motive, sometimes serves as
a rite of passage to other forms of corruption and misconduct. Some
officers told us that brutality was how they first crossed the line
toward abandoning their integrity."23 Officer Michael Dowd testified,
"[Brutality] is a form of acceptance. It's not just simply giving a
beating. It's [sic] the other officers begin to accept you more."24
Officers Cawley and Dowd described hundreds of acts of brutality they
had engaged in; yet apparently no fellow officer had filed a complaint
about either one of them.25
"As important as the possible extent of brutality," noted the
commission's report, "is the extent of brutality tolerance we found
throughout the Department....[T]his tolerance, or willful blindness,
extends to supervisors as well. This is because many supervisors share
the perception that nothing is really wrong with a bit of unnecessary
force and because they believe that this is the only way to fight
crime today."26 Internal review was equally corrupted. The Internal
Affairs Division was not helpful in identifying problems, and removed
especially sensitive cases and placed them in a "tickler file," making
each problem appear an aberration. Despite many officers' criminal
behavior, their personnel files repeatedly showed that they had "met
standards," and they thus avoided scrutiny altogether. Officers who
were caught lying were not disciplined and were taught by supervisors
how to present false testimony in court.
"One officer, Michael T. Kalanz, kept $1 million dollars cash in his
police locker as part of, what federal investigators said was, a Cali
drug cartel money laundering operation. Most of the other indicted
officers were charged with "booming doors," i.e., raiding apartments
and robbing the occupants and beating innocent residents with their
radios, clubs, and flash lights."
Most who suffer abuse from the police don’t bother to complain. They
know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of
troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments
tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public
tends to side with the police.
Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater
danger to the public than are criminals.
Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault
by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them.
Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is
greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly
wandered into the wrong part of town.
In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to
have civilian police review boards was beat back by “law and order”
conservatives.
In part because the police have been militarized by the federal
government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the
public as the enemy.
In part because the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have made every American
a suspect. The only civil liberty that has any force in the U.S.
today is the law against racial discrimination. This law requires that
every American citizen be treated as if he were a Muslim terrorist.
The Transportation Security Administration rigorously enforces the
refusal to discriminate between terrorist and citizen at airports and
is now taking its gestapo violations of privacy into every form of
travel and congregation: trucking, bus and train travel, sports
events, and, without doubt, shopping centers and automobile traffic.
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2011/02/01/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints/
This despite the fact that there have been no terrorist incidents that
could be used to justify such an expansive intrusion into privacy and
freedom of movement.
The police often arrest people to make arbitrary quotas
The Truth About Arrest Quotas in the Miami-Dade Police Department
By Gus Garcia-Roberts Fri., Sep. 3 2010 at 8:31 AM <excerpt>
Quotas to police chiefs are like mistresses to politicians: Nobody
wants to get caught with one. No cop brass wants to admit that they've
boiled the delicate art of policing-- where discretion and fairness is
key-- to a crude numbers chase. The Sunrise Police chief recently
denied a quota system even after an officer received a reprimand for
not handing out enough tickets. And Miami-Dade brass are toeing the
same line. Says Captain Jorge A. Guerra: "My policy, and as a rule, is
that we do not use quotas."
If you've been reading our coverage of Miami-Dade Ofc. Frank Adams --
the renegade cop who claims to have witnessed a pattern of abuse,
dishonesty, and cover-ups in Florida's largest department -- this
won't shock you: He says his bosses are lying about quotas, and he has
documentation to show it.
The unwritten quota, Adams says, is for officers to collect two of
each stat category -- arrests, traffic stops, and "field
interviews" (checking the identification of a suspect) -- each day
that they're on the streets.
At the end of every month, the cops receive an evaluation that looks a
lot like a school report card, with a heavy emphasis on accumulated
stats. Then lieutenants and captains circle the sums and write their
critiques: "Low!" reads a scrawl on a month when Adams only made 15
field interviews. "Good job," writes the lieutenant in a month when
Adams made 88 of the interviews. "Can do better, room for
improvement," reads another missive next to his arrests stats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/nyregion/10quotas.html
The police get generous pay and benefits and manipulate the system to
get overtime pay or illegal money
The police receive generous pay and benefits packages, and inflate the
amount they earn by many means, legal and illegal. For example, the
NJ state police in 2009 had a current starting salary of $58,748.29
with uniform allowance. The second-year total compensation jumps to
$65,662.39. Top pay for a Trooper I is $97,188.48. Troopers receive
yearly increments. All recruits receive $777.78 every two weeks, plus
overtime pay. Room and board are also provided while training.
•Service Retirement: After 20 years of service as a New Jersey State
Trooper, you are eligible to receive a pension, regardless of age,
consisting of 50% of your final compensation.
•Special Retirement: After 25 years of service as a New Jersey State
Trooper, you are eligible to receive a pension, regardless of age,
consisting of 65% of your final compensation plus 1% for each year
above 25 years. They can receive up to 70% of their final
compensation.
They also receive vision, dental, prescription drug, and life
insurance coverage at little or no cost
http://www.state.nj.us/njsp/recruit/salary.html
NY city cops typically get $45,000 while still in training, $48,200
after a year, $52,000 to $65,000 base salary and rapidly move up. But
overtime increases that significantly. For example.
http://nypdrecruit.com/benefits-salary/overview
Newark Star Ledger 4/27/08
"Overall, the roughly 1600-member force [of Port Authority Police]
worked nearly 838,000 hours of overtime--more than 500 hours per
officer on average.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/topstories/index.ssf/2008/04/port_authority_officials_fail.html
110 regular days off
24 vacation days
10 holidays
10 personal days
8 sick days
5 days compensatory time
2 days other (donating blood, death in family)
1 day for union business
Top 10 overtime workers
total earnings
Officer M Cofield $263,468
Officer P Monahan $225,362
Officer R Jersey $217,842
Sgt T Hoey $284,174
Officer B Zillmer $226,309
Officer M Lombardo $220,100
Officer J McDevitt $220,166
Officer J Alvarez $228,805
Sgt N Kowana $268,885
Sgt P Ryan $263,203
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/topstories/index.ssf/2008/04/port_authority_officials_fail.html
Port Authority officials fail to curb overtime pay
Published: Saturday, April 26, 2008, 11:30 PM
Let's not forget that it was Democrats like Clinton as well as
Republicans who enacted a federal program to give municipalities extra
money to hire more police.