October 31, 2014

I am shocked, and sorry for my misconceptions:

For various reasons I've been exposed to a lot of misogyny on DU the last couple of days. What I thought was over reaction by feminists on this site was well founded and if anything under reacted to. I am ashamed of a lot of men who post here. I am sickened by their "humor" over rape particularly. I do know this: if I come across it (and I will because I am looking out for it now) I will fight it and report it and vote to hide if I get called for any jury about it. I have had zero tolerance for racism and now it is zero tolerance for any sort of sexism. No more rolling my eyes, I am fighting against it.

October 28, 2014

Murder trial for ex-Phoenix officer begins

Murder trial for ex-Phoenix officer begins
By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Aug. 5, 2013 3:11 PM EDT



An undated Phoenix Police Dept. booking mug shot shows former Phoenix Police Officer Richard Chrisman

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/murder-trial-ex-phoenix-officer-set-begin

PHOENIX (AP) — Jury selection began Monday for a former Phoenix police officer charged with murder and animal cruelty in the fatal shootings of an unarmed man and his dog during a domestic dispute call.

Authorities say then-Officer Richard Chrisman broke the law in his response to the 2010 call that ended with the death of 29-year-old Daniel Rodriguez at the south Phoenix trailer that Rodriguez shared with his mother. Chrisman disputes that he acted improperly, saying the shooting was justified because Rodriguez had reached for the officer's gun during a tussle that preceded the shooting.

Attorneys are expected to make opening arguments Wednesday.

Rodriguez's mother had called police from a neighbor's trailer because she said her son had damaged property inside their trailer after the two had gotten into an argument on Oct. 5, 2010.

Investigators say that when Rodriguez questioned the officers' right to be inside the trailer, Chrisman drew his pistol, put its muzzle on Rodriguez's temple and said he didn't need a warrant to be there. Chrisman's partner told investigators that there was no threat being made against either officer. Chrisman denies that he put his gun to Rodriguez's temple.

Authorities say Chrisman put his gun back in its holster and tried to grab Rodriguez, leading to a struggle in which both officers tried unsuccessfully to restrain Rodriguez and used their stun guns on Rodriguez, who at one point removed the Taser probes that were on his chest.

Investigators also say Chrisman shot pepper spray into Rodriguez's eyes and drew his pistol a second time and shot Rodriguez's barking dog. Chrisman's partner told investigators that the dog wasn't attacking either officer.

Another scuffle between Chrisman and Rodriguez began when Rodriguez said he wanted to leave on his bicycle. At some point, Chrisman drew his pistol again and shot Rodriguez in the chest from about two to three feet away. Rodriguez fell to the ground and was later pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

The case, to a large degree, boils down to conflicting accounts from Chrisman and his partner, Officer Sergio Virgillo — the only two people, besides Rodriguez, inside the trailer to witness the escalating confrontation.

Virgillo told investigators that he never saw a weapon in Rodriguez's hands and that there was no threat that required deadly force. Chrisman's attorney has said Virgillo had exhausted all options for controlling Rodriguez before he fired the shots and that Virgillo abandoned Chrisman and walked out of the trailer.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office is prosecuting the case, declined to say whether there was other evidence beyond the two officers' accounts to back up their contention that Chrisman committed a crime.

Chrisman had pleaded not guilty to second degree murder, aggravated assault and animal cruelty charges. The nine-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department was fired about five months after Rodriguez's death.

Defense attorneys had complained earlier in the case that an account of the shooting that was filed into court records didn't contain any information to their client.

"We look forward to having the trial start and having a chance to tell our side of the story," said Chrisman's attorney, Craig Mehrens.

___

Associated Press writer Brian Skoloff contributed to this report.

October 17, 2014

Cop bust cop

‘Do You Know Who the F*ck I Am?’ FL Cop Pulls over the Wrong Guy…
by Josh Feldman | 7:38 pm, July 15th, 2014 video


A Miami cop pulled someone over last month on a routine traffic stop, but the ensuing mess resulted in an internal investigation because it turns out the man this police officer pulled over was actually a higher-ranking officer in the same police department. Officer Marcel Jackson pulled over Lieutenant David Ramras and things got intense really quickly.
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In a video captured on Jackson’s GoPro camera, you can see them fighting and Jackson forcing Ramras to the ground. Other officers nearby run up to break the two of them up. Ramras angrily shouts, “Do you know who the fuck I am?” He then tells Jackson who he is.

Needless to say, things haven’t turned out well for either of them. Jackson was relieved with pay, and Ramras has been reassigned. There is currently an investigation underway into the matter.

Watch the video of the incident here:

October 4, 2014

More Americans Killed By Police Than By Terrorists: With Crime Down, Why Is Police Aggression Up?

More Americans Killed By Police Than By Terrorists: With Crime Down, Why Is Police Aggression Up?
We're safer than ever. So why are we seeing an ever increasing militarization of policing?

http://www.alternet.org/more-americans-killed-police-terrorists-crime-down-why-police-aggression?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
March 20, 2014 |


This article first appeared at WhoWhatWhy.

You might not know it from watching TV news, but FBI statistics show that crime in the U.S.—including violent crime—has been trending steadily downward for years, falling 19% between 1987 and 2011. The job of being a police officer has become safer too, as the number of police killed by gunfire plunged to 33 last year, down 50% from 2012, to its lowest level since, wait for it, 1887, a time when the population was 75% lower than it is today.

<snip>

Given the good news on crime, what are we to make of a report by the Justice Policy Institute, a not-for-profit justice reform group, showing that state and local spending on police has soared from $40 billion in 1982 to more than $100 billion in 2012. Adding in federal spending on law enforcement, including the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Drug Enforcement Agency and much of the Homeland Security Department budget, as well as federal grants to state and local law enforcement more than doubles that total. A lot of that money is simply pay and benefits. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the ranks of state and local law enforcement personnel alone swelled from 603,000 to 794,000 between 1992 and 2010. That’s about two-thirds as many men and women as the entire active-duty US military.

What these statistics make clear is that policing in America is ramping up even as the crime rate is falling.

To the advocates of militarized policing, this just proves that more and better-armed cops are the answer to keeping the peace. But former corrections officer Ted Kirkpatrick, like many experts in the field, warns against jumping to this conclusion: “Police will of course say crime is down because of them,” he tells WhoWhatWhy, “but they have a vested interest in saying that.”

Kirkpatrick has the credentials and training to look beyond statistics and simplistic answers to the underlying social forces at work here. In addition to his years of law enforcement experience, he is a homicide expert in the Department of Clinical Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and Co-Director of the university’s Justiceworks program, a think-tank specializing in law enforcement and justice issues.

“When something goes sour, like an increase in crime,” Kirkpatrick says, “everyone looks for a way to explain why. Yet when things go well, like this long-term fall in the crime rate, nobody bothers to look at why.”
<snip>

Surprising Reasons for Drop in Crime Rate

Militarized “pro-active” policing may have had some effect on the drop in crimes in the US. But Kirkpatrick says, “I don’t think it’s the big thing.” Crime is down even in many cities where police forces have been cut for budget reasons, and experts agree that the decline in crime began before the militarization of policing really started to take off.

Other factors likely play a bigger role. One is increased immigration since, contrary to common belief, communities with greater numbers of immigrant families show the biggest drops in crime thanks to those families’ “stronger social fabric.” Another factor is an aging population—older people commit fewer violent crimes.

<snip>

One might assume that the militarization of American law enforcement began after the national trauma of 9/11. But, in fact, its roots go back decades earlier, when media stories in the 1970s created the impression that the nation was awash in illegal drugs.

<snip>

A big part of the problem, she says, is that these days “officer safety” is given primacy over “protect and serve.” A case in point: a South Carolina sheriff’s deputy in February shot and seriously injured a 70-year-old man at a traffic stop when the man tried to retrieve his cane from the back of his pick-up truck. The Sheriff’s Department said the deputy acted “appropriately,” as he had “a legitimate fear” that the cane might have been a long rifle.

In another recent example, New York City police shot and injured an unarmed man who was acting “erratically” in Times Square. The officers were exonerated, while the man they shot was charged with causing injury to several bystanders—who were hit by the police officers’ stray bullets.

<snip>

In fact, while being a police officer has been getting less dangerous, killings committed by police have been rising despite the drop in police who are killed.

The numbers are eye opening. The Justice Department, which keeps all kinds of statistics on violent crime, does not tally up individuals killed annually by police. But by combing public news reports and other sources, the Justice Policy Institute has estimated that police officers in the U.S. killed 587 people in 2012 alone. Over the course of a decade, they’ve tallied more than 5,000 people in the U.S. during that period—far more than the number of people who lost their lives in acts officially classified as terrorism in roughly the same span.

The many instances of deadly police violence captured on video give a visceral reality to these statistics. They show police beating and sometimes needlessly shooting citizens—even those with their hands up or armed only with a knife or stick while standing too far from responding officers to pose a threat.

In some jurisdictions, police have responded to these damaging videos by routinely confiscating bystanders’ cell phones and threatening witnesses with arrest, even though federal courts have consistently held that citizens have a right to photograph and videotape officers engaged in police actions.

<snip>

“I’m not sure that spending money on more police, on Kevlar suits and on things like armored vehicles is the most efficient thing to do,” says UNH’s Kirkpatrick. “It might be better to spend it on Big Brother/Big Sister-type programs and other kinds of services for kids. The trouble is, we generally implement public policy based on sentiment, not logic or statistics, and thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and its really quite dramatic reports on crimes, the average Joe or Jane thinks that things have gone nuts.”


Dave Lindorff is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the blog, This Can't Be Happening. A regular columnist for CounterPunch, he also writes frequently for Extra! and Salon, as well as for Businessweek, The Nation and Treasury & Risk Magazine.

October 1, 2014

Florida officer Tasers 62-year-old black woman in the back as she walks away

It starts at 2:15



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/watch-florida-officer-tasers-62-year-old-black-woman-in-the-back-as-she-walks-away/

Florida police officer has place been on paid administrative leave after cell phone video showed him using a Taser to stun a 62-year-old African-American woman in the back as she was walking away.

<snip>

Viola Young, 62, approaches Officer Mahan to ask about one of the men who was being detained. Mahan advises her to stay back, and tries to grab her arm. After she turns and walks away, the officer pulls out his Taser and fires it into her back.

Young falls face down onto the pavement.

She was taken into custody on charges of resisting an officer without violence. Young was released on Wednesday.

<snip>

October 1, 2014

Runaway Plaintiff: One of Kansas GOP’s last hopes for holding Senate seat goes AWOL

Runaway Plaintiff: One of Kansas GOP’s last hopes for holding Senate seat goes AWOL

David Ferguson
30 Sep 2014


A lawyer who is suing the Kansas Democratic Party had an extremely awkward moment on Monday when he showed up before the Kansas Supreme Court in Topeka missing something crucial to his case: his client.

<snip>


Haney sued the Democratic Party on behalf of Kansan David Orel, who claimed that Democrats disenfranchised him and other Democratic voters in the state when Taylor dropped out of the race. However, Orel’s claims have been undermined by the fact that he is the father of one of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s senior staffers.

In court, the Democratic Party’s attorneys hoped to question Orel about his true allegiances, but Orel declined to attend Monday’s hearing rather than face close questioning. Attorney Randall Rathbun said that the case should be dismissed out of hand.

<snip>

Haney has spent much of that past few months in Kansas courts attempting to use the law to sabotage Orman’s chances against Roberts. State Democrats are largely falling in line behind the independent candidate in hopes that he will vote with Democrats in the Senate more often than Republicans.

Video at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/runaway-plaintiff-one-of-kansas-gops-last-hopes-for-holding-senate-seat-goes-awol/