IGX

protobuilder wrote:HuffPo had an interesting article today. The ACLU is sending FOIA requests to a ton of police departments to find out how many places have SWAT teams, how often they're used, how many arrests they result in, what kind of equipment they've purchased, and where they purchased it from.

Makes a point about the connection between federal funding and militarization of our police forces.

I'd link it but...

Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws.

"We've known for a while now that American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war," said Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU's Center for Justice, which is coordinating the investigation. "The aim of this investigation is to find out just how pervasive this is, and to what extent federal funding is incentivizing this trend."

The surveillance cameras at a Garland home captured something unexpected: Police officers rummaging through duffel bags, searching a pickup parked in the front driveway and turning a surveillance camera in the back yard.

In early February, the officers were looking for Jon Locke’s brother, Christopher, a convicted felon with an arrest warrant accusing him of fraud. Jon Locke says his brother doesn’t live with him and he and his wife are upset that police officers took it upon themselves to conduct searches on his property without permission.

“I just want an apology,” said Jon Locke, 32.

Joe Harn, a Garland police spokesman, declined to comment, citing the ongoing internal affairs investigation. But a Garland police internal affairs investigator who met with the family told the Locke’s that he did not have a problem with the actions the officers took and also acknowledged that he thought one of the officers had opened an unlocked back door to look into the house.

George Dix, a University of Texas at Austin law professor and authority on criminal procedure, said the actions of the Garland officers appears to run afoul of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s protections.

“I continue to think the officers unreasonably searched the vehicle[s] and duffel bags,” Dix said. “The manipulation of and damage to the camera was, in my view, an unreasonable seizure.”

Dix also said he believed that opening the door would likely also be a search and might be reasonable if there was reason to believe a dangerous person inside, “but nothing in the facts suggest this was the case.”

“Whatever Garland ‘policy’ may be, I think the Fourth Amendment was violated,” Dix said.

A Cicero police officer has been charged with criminally transmitting HIV after a man accused him of not informing him he had the virus before a sexual encounter.

it is not rare that we hear about police officers who coerce women into sex acts in exchange for forgoing certain criminal charges and/or prosecution. Recently a federal judge sentenced a former Alabama State Trooper to one year in prison for depriving a woman of her civil rights by coercing her to perform sex acts. (Yes, you read that right. That’s just one year. For pretty much being a rapist. See how the law works differently for the police?).

U.S. District Judge Virginia E. Hopkins sentenced Keith Wilson Kelley, 51, to the maximum prison term under the misdemeanor charge of depriving a person’s civil rights under the color of law/ while acting in the official capacity of a police officer. Kelley was a captain with the State Troopers. The incident occurred in Shelby County. He pleaded guilty to the charge in federal court in December.

According to the available evidence, Kelley was behind a young woman in line at a self-service check-out at a store. He noticed the woman did not scan and pay for all the items. Kelley thus followed her to her car, displayed his badge, and obtained her name and phone number. Kelley advised her that he would see how the store wanted to deal with the situation and that he would contact her later. He later called her and asked her to meet him at a gas station.

Kelley then told the woman she would be convicted of a felony, but that he could make the case go away. He then coerced her into performing sex acts. According to the government’s sentencing memorandum to the court, the incident was not an isolated act by Kelley, “who during a two-year period brazenly propositioned at least four other women after issuing them traffic tickets in his capacity as a public official.”

protobuilder wrote:The Sun Sentinel won a Pulitzer Prize for their investigation of police speeding in the State of Florida. Here's one of the graphics.

When Officer David Bailey grabbed a 10-year-old student by the back of his head and slammed it into the school cafeteria table, it is safe to say that student was not free to leave. On that afternoon, Bailey decided that his routine beat on the streets of Southeast D.C. extended into the hallways of Moten Elementary School.

Although Bailey was not a trained school resource officer contracted from the Metropolitan Police Department nor one of the three contract officers assigned to Moten at the time, his presence raised no red flags. Regular visits from the police in D.C. Public Schools had become ubiquitous.

On the day of the alleged assault, the student, "T.P." had been sent to the cafeteria for the infraction of failing to adequately participate in music class. The result of his childish behavior was a full-on police encounter.

One emergency room, two weeks and countless headaches later. T.P. seemed to be back to normal. Only his mother could see that something about him had changed: T.P. was now afraid to go to school.

....
There was no guidance counselor or teacher present when Bailey, a crime-fighting cop, decided to take school disciplinary matters into his own hands.

The American Civil Liberties Union says in a lawsuit filed Thursday that a 10-year-old boy suffered a concussion when a D.C. police officer slammed the boy’s head onto a cafeteria table while at the child’s elementary school.
The civil lawsuit, filed by the boy’s mother through the ACLU, accuses Metropolitan Police Department Officer David Bailey of assault, battery and excessive use of force during the April 2012 interaction at Wilkinson Elementary School in Southeast.

Although he was not a school resource officer assigned to the now-shuttered school, Officer Bailey was supervising and lecturing several students who were sent to the school’s cafeteria for discipline. The boy, identified as “T.P.,” was discussing a book he was reading with another classmate when Officer Bailey approached him and told him to “Stop playing with me,” according to the lawsuit. The boy responded that he was “not playing” and the officer “grabbed T.P. by the back of his head and slammed T.P.’s head forward into the table” at which he was seated. Officer Bailey then grabbed the boy by the shirt, lifted him out of his chair and threatened to take him to the 7th District police station.

The boy, who at the time was less than 5 feet tall and weighed 80 pounds, had been sent to the cafeteria for discipline because he wasn’t participating adequately in his music class, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ncussion-/

Shafpocalypse Now wrote: