Archive for the 'Police' Category

Reason:

The City of Detroit will pay out $60,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit by a woman who says police wantonly shot and killed her three dogs during a marijuana raid three years ago.

The plaintiff, Nikita Smith, claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that officers from Detroit’s Major Violators Unit acted as a “dog death squad” when they executed a narcotics search warrant on her house for a suspected marijuana offense, shooting three of her pit bulls, including one that was behind a closed bathroom door. Extremely graphic photos entered into evidence in the case show bullet holes riddling the outside of the door and the dog dead inside the bathroom.

I covered this but the photos are so gruesome, offensive and disgusting that I don’t even want to link my piece.

Smith was arrested for marijuana possession, but the charges were later dropped when officers failed to appear in court.

The settlement is the latest in a string of costly payouts for Detroit due to dog shootings during drug raids. It also set new precedent in Fourth Amendment law. Detroit tried to argue that, since Smith’s dogs were unlicensed, in violation of Detroit’s municipal code, she had no legitimate property interest in them under the Fourth Amendment. The court rejected this argument.

Smith’s attorney, Chris Olson, calls the decision “a milestone in police-dog shooting cases that continue to plague the United States.

“The decision was significant because it denies police a ‘get out of jail free card’ if the deceased dog is later discovered to have been unlicensed,” he continues. “The decision is especially significant because the vast majority of dogs are unlicensed. The upshot is that the Fourth Amendment prohibits police officers from shooting dogs where the shooting is more intrusive than necessary, and citizens do not have to pay a dog license fee to enjoy their Fourth Amendment rights.”

A 2016 Reason investigation found that the department’s Major Violators Unit, which conducts drug raids across the city, has a nasty habit of leaving dead dogs in its wake and generating civil rights lawsuits. A follow-up investigation found that Detroit police shot 54 dogs in 2017, twice as many as Chicago.

Last year, Detroit paid $225,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Kenneth Savage and Ashley Franklin, who claimed Detroit police officers shot their three dogs while the animals were enclosed behind an 8-foot-tall fence—all so the officers could confiscate several potted marijuana plants in the backyard.

In 2015, the city approved a $100,000 settlement to a man after police shot his dog while it was securely chained to a fence.

One officer involved in the Smith raid has shot 80 dogs over the course of his career, according to “destruction of animal” reports filed by Detroit police officers in 2017 and obtained by Reason. Two other officers involved in the Smith raid testified in depositions that they had shot “fewer than 20” and “at least 19” dogs over the course of their careers.

Bah.  What’s a few thousand here and there when the tax-payers have to foot the bill?  Now if they were to have charged them with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to do harm, animal cruelty and trespassing, and thrown them in prison, we may be getting somewhere.

Here’s another note for you.  I don’t believe in your “war on drugs.”  Not even a little bit.  I consider your raids to be criminal home invasion, and I don’t consider you to be “heroes of the community” when you do things like that.

News from Florida:

An experienced deputy accidentally discharged his firearm in a middle school cafeteria, which — thankfully — resulted in zero injuries. However some parents and the Florida Education Association are calling out the Florida House of Representatives for voting to move bill SB-7030 forward, which would authorize districts to arm teachers.

According to Pasco County deputies, no one was injured when a school resource officer at Thomas E. Weightman Middle School in Wesley Chapel, Fla. “incidentally discharged” his gun in the school’s cafeteria during the students’ lunch period on Tuesday.

“We want to again make it clear that the weapon discharged directly into the wall and no students were in danger,” the Sheriff’s Office shared in a Facebook post to the public. According to the post, an investigation has been initiated.

WFLA reports that the unnamed officer was “leaning against the wall when his holstered, duty-issued firearm incidentally discharged into the wall behind him.” Lt. Troy Ferguson with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office said that the gun involved was a Sig Sauer 9mm.

ABC Action News reports that the school resource officer involved in the incident has been placed on paid administrative leave, and his name will not be released until the investigation is complete.

“There are a number of features on the threat level 3 holsters that we carry with our firearms, so there are a number of dynamic factors that are involved with fine motor skills functions that would cause that to happen. So we have to really kind of dissect that,” Ferguson said.

Gosh I hate it when that happens to me.  But I never thought to call it an “incidental discharge.”  That’s a new one on me, and maybe I’ll use that one in the future when my goes just decides to “go off” by itself.

Leaning up against the wall.  Maybe the wall made him do it.  As for that dissection of the incident, let me know what you come up with.

But arming teachers is a bad idea.  Because.

News from Charlotte:

“He always was able to put others before himself and never hesitated to help anyone who needed it.”

So when a gunman walked into his classroom at UNC Charlotte late Tuesday evening and opened fire, officials said Howell sacrificed himself to save his peers.

[ … ]

Chief Putney said Howell’s sacrifice saved lives. Blocked inside a classroom, Putney said he had no option to run or hide, so he fought.

“He took the fight to the assailant. Unfortunately, he had to give his life to do so, but he saved lives doing so,” Putney said about Howell. “He took the assailant off his feet, and the heroes that we have here were able to apprehend from there.”

“Mr. Howell saved lives.”

Um, Mr. Putney, you have it exactly backwards.  I don’t know how you could have screwed this up any more if you had actually tried.

The heroes aren’t the cops, who were all armed.  The UNC system is a “gun free zone,” meaning that only your officers got to confront the assailant being able to defend themselves.  Sorry, but that doesn’t count as heroic.

Leave it to a cop to elevate other cops as heroes when someone else gave his life.  The hero here is Mr. Howell.  You know it, I know it, and everybody who heard that speech knows it.  You embarrassed yourself in front of the world.  And you’re probably too stupid to know it.

Reason:

Chandler, Arizona, cops broke through the door of a family’s home in the middle of the night, stormed in, pointed their guns, handcuffed the father, and watched as the state’s Department of Child Safety (DCS) took custody of the parents’ three kids—all because mom had decided her toddler’s fever was not serious enough to merit a trip to the hospital.

It was dinnertime on February 25 when the pregnant mother took her 2-year-old to the doctor with a fever of over 100. The doctor told her to take him to the emergency room, fearing that because the boy was unvaccinated, perhaps he had meningitis—a life-threatening disease.

The doctor called the hospital to alert them. But by the time the mother and child left his office, the boy was “laughing and playing with his siblings,” according to this excellent piece by Dianna M. Nanez in The Arizona Republic. Mom took his temperature again, and it was almost normal. So instead of going to the emergency room, the family went home. The mom called the doctor to say her boy’s fever had broken and she wasn’t going to the emergency room. The doctor told her she should go anyway, so she agreed she would—but then she didn’t.

That’s when the madness began.

The hospital called the doctor to tell him the toddler hadn’t arrived. The doctor called DCS. And DCS requested the cops check on the family as a caseworker headed over.

And then, according to The Arizona Republic:

It was after 1 a.m. when officers kicked down the family’s door. One officer carried a shield, while another was described as having “lethal coverage.” Officers pointing guns yelled, “Chandler Police Department,” and entered the house.

The rest of the story is equally nuts. The kids were all placed in separate foster homes.

As I’ve said before:

I can discern where you stand by asking you two questions: [1] Who owns children, and [2] To whom have they been given for governance and training?

My answers are simple: [1] God, and [2] Parents.  If you believe that parents own children, you believe in slavery and you deny God’s ownership of all of His creatures.  You own your dog, not your children.  If you believe that anyone but the parents have been given responsibility for governance and oversight, teaching, training, love, discipline, correction and rebuke, you are a communist.

Thus, the state is run by communists. They think that rather the parents being granted sole responsibility for the moral and physical well-being of their children, the state owns them.

That’s wicked.  Busting into this home was wicked.  Pointing guns at people in a home is wicked.  Separating those children and putting them into a foster home was wicked.

There is no excuse.

Idiots and dolts, incapable of complex thought.

Seven-year-old Samari Boswell said she was terrified the night of her younger brother TJ Boswell’s birthday party last month. She was expecting a party with cake and singing, but instead she and her family suddenly found themselves surrounded by police with guns pointed at them.

With her mother Stephanie Bures by her side, the second grader recalled the scary Sunday night of Feb. 10, when a team of Chicago police officers raided her brother’s party carrying a battering ram and a sledge hammer, and with weapons drawn.

“They were saying F words and stuff,” Samari said. “It was horrible.”

Bures called what happened “horrible” and “unnecessary,” because the suspect who police officers were looking for hadn’t lived in the building for five years.

“As long as they continue to do that, there will never be trust between citizens and the Chicago Police Department,” said Al Hofeld Jr., the attorney who represents the family.

Hofeld Jr. said it is another case of a “bad” search warrant where police did not do their homework.

“My law firm took 30 seconds to do a person search and came up with [the suspect’s] most current address, which is on 83rd street nowhere near the property,” Hofeld Jr. said.

This is the fourth search warrant case Hofeld Jr. has handled involving allegations that police raided the wrong homes and pointed guns at innocent people, including children. He said he plans to file suit against the Chicago Police involving the Boswell children and other adults at the party, including an adult relative, Kiqiana Jackson.

I’ve said it before.  When you’re dealing with American SWAT teams, you have the worst, most dangerous, stupidest people on earth.  Stay as far away from them as possible.  Someone always gets hurt when they’re around.

Good job, boys.  Do you feel proud or stupid?  Do you at least have the minimal intelligence necessary to feel stupid?

Radley Balko:

Last fall, I published an investigation into the way the Little Rock Police Department has been serving its drug warrants. The piece explored three general allegations: First, the LRPD has been serving drugs warrants with extraordinarily powerful explosives that other SWAT veterans told me are wholly inappropriate.

Second, there’s irrefutable video evidence that one LRPD informant and his police handlers were misleading about their investigation into a man named Roderick Talley. There’s also persuasive evidence that they did the same in other cases as well.

Finally, when I reviewed nearly 100 drug warrants from the past several years, I noticed that nearly all of them were for no-knock raids. To get a no-knock warrant, the police must provide specific evidence that the suspect is dangerous, or a threat to destroy evidence if police were to observe the knock-and-announce rule. The LRPD officers were offering no such evidence. Instead, they were using boilerplate language about how all drug suspects are dangerous and/or a threat to destroy evidence. The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that such boilerplate language is not sufficient. Therefore, every one of these raids was illegal. Worse yet, Little Rock judges were signing off on these warrants, in spite of the law.

I’ll have a post soon laying out what has happened in Little Rock since we published that report. But over the weekend, I received a document that adds a bit more to the original story. It’s a page from a 2014 LRPD report about a drug raid. The raid in question was a no-knock raid that was served by the city’s SWAT team. In this particular case, the report says the suspect was known to have possessed firearms in the past, though it isn’t clear whether that information was conveyed in the search warrant. It also includes the broad statement that “many times guns and violence are associated with narcotics.”

But one line seems particularly significant: “It is a mandate from the Office of the Chief of Police that the SWAT team execute all search warrants.”

First of all, I don’t agree with the notion that the potential to destroy evidence is a reason for an armed raid.  Evidence isn’t that important.  Second, I don’t agree with the so-called war on drugs.  Third, I don’t agree with SWAT raids in general when good investigative and detective works will suffice.  Make the arrests when the folks come out to go grocery shopping, idiots.

‘Murica.  Land of liberty.  And a standing army violating the fourth amendment.  Just how those patriots envisioned it when they fought and bled for freedom.

News from NYC:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The NYPD posted a photo on social media of a rifle and bullets that were seized during a domestic incident in New Springville.

Domestic Violence and Field Intelligence officers found the gun and ammunition during a home visit, according to the 121st Precinct Twitter feed.

The officers were conducting a home visit in the vicinity of Windham Loop and Marsh Avenue on Monday when they were made aware of a gun that was not registered, according to a spokeswoman for the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

No arrests were made and the weapon was confiscated, the police spokeswoman said.

A verbal dispute between a husband and wife prompted the visit from the Domestic Violence officers, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

The husband had failed to re-register the hunting rifle, the source said.

It’s hard to tell what the rifle is, but it’s not a rimfire gun.  It’s a carbine of some sort, but some reader can help with this I’m sure.

This is what we’re reduced to – the NYPD posting pictures to Twitter with hashtag #OneLessGun.  Proudly, no less.

Despicable.  Nothing good ever comes from calling the police to your home.  Why did they do that over an argument?  Why?

Via reader Mike:

The leader of the state’s largest police department on Friday denounced the new “constitutional carry” law as a step in the wrong direction.

“Saying that it makes communities safer, that’s (a) pretty tired and old statement, as far as I’m concerned,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty. “That’s not the case. We should be going the other direction and be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country.”

You jackass.  Assume that everyone is carrying a gun and act appropriately and respectfully.

But I agree.  We should be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country.  Most LEOs, it appears to me, aren’t responsible.  Let me know when you’ve disarmed your cops and we can all feel a little safer.

Tales from Minnesota:

MOORHEAD, Minn. — Before 31-year-old Melody Gray was sentenced on Monday, Feb. 25, to serve 19 years in prison, the Minnesota state patrolman she attempted to shoot on Interstate 94 just east of Moorhead shared how that moment nearly a year ago changed his life.

“Without hesitation, Melody Gray tried to take everything away from me,” Mark Peterson said in a statement about the March 5, 2018, check of a stranded vehicle that quickly turned aggressive. “I do not think Melody Gray has any remorse for her actions.”

Peterson said through Clay County prosecutor Pamela Foss that his children later told him “how hard life would be without” him in their lives.

Peterson’s wife also addressed the Clay County courtroom in a statement, writing how she and her husband now have a “new and refreshed appreciation of life” following the incident.

A courtroom full of Minnesota State Patrol troopers, police officers, lawyers and other law enforcement officials listened patiently as Gray was sentenced Monday by Judge Tammy Merkins on one felony count of first-degree attempted murder and one felony count of possession of a firearm by a felon.

So don’t pretend that this doesn’t happen to folks who aren’t cops.  Folks get shot every day, and they are just as human as you, with all of the life to live as you and your family.

And don’t pretend that when cops shoot innocent people, the roles aren’t exactly reversed, with felons shooting people who have precious life to live.  Because that’s what a cop who shoots an innocent person is – a felon, even if the courts won’t call him that.

And when a cop points a firearm at an innocent person, it’s as much assault with a deadly weapon as when the girl did it to you.

Grok that, cop?

Greenville News:

A Mauldin police officer was arrested and placed on suspension after he was charged with pointing a firearm at a female victim early Sunday morning, according to authorities.

The officer was taken into custody Sunday after Greenville County sheriff’s deputies were called to investigate a disturbance involving a firearm, Lt. Jimmy Bolt of the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Bolt said deputies responded to Sprouts Grocery in Simpsonville early Sunday in reference to a disturbance involving a firearm. A female victim told deputies that she and a male acquaintance had gotten into a verbal argument at a residence, after which the man retrieved a gun, pointed it at the woman and told her to leave, the Sheriff’s Office report said.

After fleeing, the woman called the Sheriff’s Office, the report said.

Deputies took the man into custody without incident and he is currently being held in the detention center.

Mauldin Police confirmed the man was employed as a police officer with the department, but has been placed on suspension.

The firearm that was used during the incident was a personally owned firearm and not his duty firearm, Bolt said.

A wee bit violent, yes?  Assault with a deadly weapon, it is.

At least he didn’t use his service weapon.  That means he’ll be back on the force in no time from his paid vacation.