THE POLICE PROBLEM

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18621322

“I’m not proud of the fact the officer did what he did, but I’m also not going to hide it,” the Jonesboro police chief said in explaining his decision to release the bodycam video.

An Arkansas police officer who was caught on video beating a handcuffed inmate in the back of a patrol car has been fired and his case has been referred to prosecutors, the police chief said.

Jonesboro Police Chief Rick Elliott fired Joseph Harris on Friday, a day after he was caught on his patrol car video elbowing and punching the handcuffed man and then slamming the car door on his head after the man choked himself with a seatbelt. 

Elliott said the inmate, Billy Lee Coram, who is white, had been in the custody of the sheriff’s office and was being treated at a hospital for allegedly having ingested fentanyl when he escaped. He was apprehended by Harris and was being returned to the county jail when the assault occurred, Elliott said. He said that, to his knowledge, Coram had not sustained any lasting injuries.

An Arkansas officer was fired after video footage was released showing a man being punched and elbowed while handcuffed in the back of a police car.

The Jonesboro Police Department said in a Facebook post on Friday - the day after the incident occurred - that Joseph Harris' termination was "effective immediately".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18608380

A former Kansas police chief who led a raid last year on a weekly newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice and is accused of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. 

The single charge against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody alleges that he knowingly or intentionally influenced the witness to withhold information on the day of the raid of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher or sometime within the following six days. The charge was filed Monday in state district court in Marion County and is not more specific about Cody’s alleged conduct.

The raid sparked a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, newspaper Publisher Eric Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died the next day of a heart attack, and he blames the stress of the raid.

Each time the name of a new victim of police violence enters the public lexicon—Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and now Sonya Massey—there are questions about the officer’s response. How could that officer have mistaken a cellphone for a weapon? Why did that officer shoot someone who was running away? Did that officer really have to shoot so many times? One answer to all these questions is that officers are trained to see the world as threatening and to respond accordingly.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18412897

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240808114434/https://www.citybureau.org/newswire/2024/8/6/migrant-day-laborers-home-depot-off-duty-chicago-police-security-lawsuit

Crosspost

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/15357475

Phoenix police had to apologize earlier this month after Talan’s parents Becky and Travis Renner received special valet parking services from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office cops.

A deputy was seen pulling the millionaire gym owners’ white Tesla Model X into a private car park so they could avoid running a gauntlet of journalists.

Authorities took months to name the suspects, with enraged locals who demanded justice and claimed the young boys’ powerful families were preventing justice from being served.

Cross post

At around 6 a.m. on July 4, John Sexton was walking with his 6-year-old son, who has autism. He was stopped by two officers for suspicious activity before being thrown to the ground and briefly detained.

"We've had over 200 phone calls this weekend," Daugherty said.

While it isn't his department, the sheriff called for both officers involved to be taken off of the streets while OSBI works the case.

"I can understand why they feel the way that they do, because of hearing that child scream is one of the hardest things," Daugherty said.

That officer has a history of other complaints, including from his former colleagues, according to the sheriff.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18127079

DENVER (AP) — A police recruit who had to have both of his legs amputated after losing consciousness and repeatedly collapsing during fight training at Denver’s police academy is suing those who allegedly forced him to continue the “barbaric hazing ritual” after paramedics ignored warning signs.

Victor Moses, 29, alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that aggressive officers knocked him down multiple times in the second round of “fight day” last year, with one of them shoving him off the mat and causing him to hit his head on the floor. He said he was pressured to continue, with officers picking him up and setting him back on his feet, before paramedics standing by were asked to check him out, the lawsuit said.

Moses told them he had the sickle cell trait, which puts him at an increased risk of medical complications from high-intensity exercise. He also said he had very low blood pressure and complained that his legs were cramping, according to the lawsuit. The symptoms are danger signs for people with his condition.

Nevertheless, paramedics cleared Moses to return to training, which the suit alleges was a decision made to support the police.

"This is a gruesome case, brought in 2005 by a Colorado woman named Jessica Gonzales. Gonzales had a restraining order against her ex-husband. But when he kidnapped her three children, the police ignored her requests for help. All three children were murdered. The Supreme Court ruled that the police had no obligation to enforce the restraining order."

tl;dr, we need more time examples and research to say anything authoritative, but anecdotally things look very positive. One excerpt,

There have been no known major injuries of any community responder on the job so far, according to experts. And data suggests unarmed responders rarely need to call in police. In Eugene, Oregon, which has operated the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (known locally as CAHOOTS) response team since 1989, roughly 1% of their calls end up requiring police backup, according to the organization. Albuquerque responders have asked for police in 1% of calls, as of January. In Denver, the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) team had never called for police backup due to a safety issue as of July 2022, the most recent data available. In Durham, members of the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) reported feeling safe on 99% of calls.

Many communities are still sending alternative responders to a narrow subset of calls, and debating whether it’s safe to expand their scope. For example, many cities will only send community responders to situations that are outdoors or in public spaces. Programs are also divided on whether disputes between neighbors or within families are a proper place for crisis responders, or calls involving suicidal threats.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240725114047/https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/25/police-mental-health-alternative-911

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240725114640/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/the-quiet-epidemic-child-predators-police.html

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/25673016

A police officer has been filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the ground at Manchester Airport.

The uniformed male officer is seen holding a Taser over the man, who is lying face down, before striking him twice while other officers shout at onlookers to stay back in a video shared widely online.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said firearms officers had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone following a fight in the airport's Terminal 2 on Tuesday. It said it had referred itself to the police watchdog.

Anger has grown over the video and a crowd of what appeared to be several hundred people protested outside the police station in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on Wednesday evening.

Headline is ridiculously generous to the cop.

The video from body cameras shows a tense moment in which former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson yelled at 36-year-old Sonya Massey to set down a pot from the stove just seconds after she started pouring the water into the sink and the two giggled over her “hot steaming water.” He then threatens to shoot her, Massey ducks then briefly rises and Grayson fires his pistol at her three times.

Grayson tells her to give him her ID. Then he points to the kitchen for the other deputy to check on the stove. “We don’t need a fire while we’re here.”

Massey goes to the kitchen and after she and Grayson share a laugh, she says, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” and asks him a question.

“You better (expletive) not or I swear to God I’ll (expletive) shoot you in your (expletive) face.” He then pulls his 9mm pistol and says “Drop the (expletive) pot.”

Massey says, “OK, I’m sorry.” In Grayson’s bodycam footage, he pulls the gun and when she ducks, she raises her hands and it looks like she has the red pan in her hands. But Grayson is still in the living room, facing Massey, behind a counter dividing the living room and kitchen, 10 or 15 feet away.

The other deputy, who is not named, said “I’m gonna go get my kit.”

Grayson said, “No, it’s a headshot. She done. You can go get it, but that’s a headshot ... there’s nothing you can do, man.”

He added: “What else do we do? I’m not taking hot (expletive) boiling water to the (expletive) face”

Noting that Massey was still breathing despite losing a lot of blood, he relented and said he would get his kit too. The other deputy responded, “We can at least try to stop the bleeding.”

Speaking to responding police, Grayson told them “she had boiling water and came at me, with boiling water. ... She said she was going to rebuke me in the name of Jesus and came at with boiling water.”