Alligator Horse posted:

Cleveland Police Accept Use of Force Limits in Justice Department Deal

Agrajag posted:

The fact that they approached an accident scene with guns drawn is retarded.

Samurai Sanders posted:

Wait...attacking people for running away, firing warning shots and pistol whipping are only NOW against the rules? Is this some kind of sick joke?

flakeloaf posted:

"There are police agencies without a coherent use of force continuum and escalation/de-escalation policy?", I asked myself before realizing I knew the answer.

Samurai Sanders posted:

Over the years I have seen so many cops post on the internet about the importance of force escalation rules so I am wondering, are they all from police departments where that is actually practiced, or are those just their own personal convictions that their coworkers don't necessarily have?

Samurai Sanders posted:

Wait...attacking people for running away, firing warning shots and pistol whipping are only NOW against the rules? Is this some kind of sick joke?

Samurai Sanders posted:

Over the years I have seen so many cops post on the internet about the importance of force escalation rules so I am wondering, are they all from police departments where that is actually practiced, or are those just their own personal convictions that their coworkers don't necessarily have?

quote:

Currently about 20 cities have entered into consent decrees or “memos of understanding” with the Department of Justice (DOJ), usually under threat of civil rights lawsuits filed by the DOJ if they refused.

The departments and police agencies vary widely: they have included Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Oakland, New Orleans, Portland, Oregon, Cleveland, New York City, Detroit, the New Jersey State Police, the Virgin Islands PD, and, most recently, departments in Seattle, Albuquerque, NM and Newark, NJ.

Samurai Sanders posted:

Over the years I have seen so many cops post on the internet about the importance of force escalation rules so I am wondering, are they all from police departments where that is actually practiced, or are those just their own personal convictions that their coworkers don't necessarily have?

Alligator Horse posted:

That being said, I am interested to know how many departments/agencies have established and effectively enforced their own escalation rules and other similar codes of conduct without the looming threat of a DoJ smackdown.

Doctor Butts posted:

Cleveland police to stop hitting people on heads with guns as part of Justice Department agreement

That article title!

Its so funny but sad at the same time.

quote:

Workers who fix elevators in the city’s housing projects have been ordered to wear bright-orange vests by supervisors calling NYPD cops “trigger-happy,’’ sources told The Post.
The edict came down from city Housing Authority brass after an officer fatally shot an unarmed man in the stairwell of a Brooklyn complex and other cops accidentally pulled a gun on a maintenance crew, sources said.
“[The elevator workers] were basically told the reason was because of recent incidents where cops had pulled a gun on a caretaker and a supervisor on the roof of a housing project,” a source said.
“No one got shot, but they also referred to the cop shooting and were told, ‘We’re doing this for your protection. Your lives are in jeopardy, and we don’t want you to get hurt,’ ” the source said

(http://nypost.com/2015/05/25/city-housing-puts-workers-in-bright-vests-in-fear-of-nypd-shootings/)

Zelder posted:

Good Lord I'm so afraid of cops.

nm posted:

The pre-existing condition was having too much skin pigment. It is known to be fatal when you come into contact with assholes.

flakeloaf posted:

reignofevil posted:

I guess every infographic has to choose some method of colorizing but man it made me laugh at the colors they chose for officer perception of"cooperative" and "grievous harm or death".

Bel Shazar posted:

Somehow this makes me better understand why officers have such a hard time telling the difference between cooperation and causing grievous bodily harm...

Bel Shazar posted:

Somehow this makes me better understand why officers have such a hard time telling the difference between cooperation and causing grievous bodily harm...

quote:

America cannot lock its poor in debtor's prisons to fund its police departments

...

Unable to pay an outstanding debt of $409 in court fines, Mr Staten was arrested and sentenced to 16 days in Mississippi’s Harrison County Jail. Shortly after being booked at the jail, Mr Staten fell seriously ill. Despite his obvious symptoms and his cellmates’ cries for help, the jail’s privately-contracted medical staff allowed his condition to worsen until – on the fifth day of his sentence – he collapsed in his cell and, upon being transported to a medical center, could not be revived. He had suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.

Whenever the government locks someone in jail, it has a constitutional duty to provide adequate medical care, a responsibility that can’t be evaded simply by contracting it out to a for-profit company. Unfortunately, Mr Staten’s is a familiar story: the ACLU is currently litigating a case in a Mississippi prison that challenges, in part, the dangerously inadequate health care provided by Health Assurance, a private corporation also responsible for Mr Staten’s medical treatment — or lack thereof.

Mr Staten’s experience is far from unusual. Every day, indigent Americans are ripped from their homes and their communities and forced into jails of varying degrees of dysfunction and decay. The US supreme court ruled three decades ago that it is unconstitutional to imprison people because they cannot afford to pay debts. The ruling, however, hasn’t ended the practice of jailing people for unpaid government fees and fines.

In 2010, the ACLU found that courts across the nation regularly deny Americans proper consideration of their financial position and throw them into jail over fines they could never hope to pay. As a result, local jails nationwide have transformed into modern-day “debtors’ prisons” overcrowded with indigent people whose only punishable offense is being poor. The effects are devastating.

...

Local courts and municipalities – reliant on fines and fees as a source of revenue – are adopting increasingly aggressive collection practices. This was the case in DeKalb County, where county policymakers enlisted a for-profit company for the specific purpose of targeting those too poor to pay fines on sentencing day.

Too many Americans are locked away over small debts. At best, they will leave with few resources and diminished job prospects, trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality. At worst, they will suffer and die due to the callous neglect of their jailers, like Mr Staten. Poverty should never be criminalized. Local courts and municipalities must find other sources of revenue that don’t make victims of their most vulnerable citizens.

FRINGE posted:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/26/america-cannot-lock-its-poor-in-debtors-prisons-to-fund-its-police-departments
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/its-sinister-were-locking-poor-people-debtors-prisons-fund-police-depts


Hey man can I bum a nickel? How about 5 years of free labor out of your lifespan?

Powercrazy posted:

I question the validity of the claim made in the title of the article, because many municipalities and indeed some states are doing just that, and have been for many years quite successfully.

flakeloaf posted:

Do traffic court judges in the states not ask their recently-minted convicts if they have time or the means to pay?

flakeloaf posted:

Do traffic court judges in the states not ask their recently-minted convicts if they have time or the means to pay?

quote:

But the district attorney told the Vail Daily that the decision to drop the felony charges against Hurlbert was also based on the possible effects on his income-earning ability and, therefore, his ability to pay restitution.

"Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession, and that entered into it," Hurlbert told the paper. "When you're talking about restitution, you don't want to take away his ability to pay."

...

Erzinger allegedly hit Milo from behind on the road in Eagle County, Colorado, with a 2010 Mercedes Benz sedan and fled the scene. Another driver stopped to help Milo and called 911.

Shooting Blanks posted:

Only if they're already very wealthy

flakeloaf posted:

Do traffic court judges in the states not ask their recently-minted convicts if they have time or the means to pay?

flakeloaf posted:

That's actually a very clever move by an astute judge: The guy hurt somebody, that somebody's going to need millions of dollars in health care and support, and that's the sort of thing that should have immediate, relevant consequences that will follow him forever. A felony charge against wealthy white man with a team of well-heeled lawyers isn't going to amount to dickall because the justice system for his class of people is a joke and the judge knows it, but two slam-dunk traffic offenses will put a permanent mark on the guy and establish the guilt needed to bootstrap the poor victim's civil suit. In one move the judge ensured that he'd face some kind of punishment and handed the victim an unbeatable hand that would literally guarantee an out of court settlement that will take care of him. If ever I have the good fortune to become a JP, I should hope to have that gift of insight.

e: It would of course be better if the guy did ten years for criminal negligence and fleeing the scene, but if a gaggle of white bankers can defraud an entire planet with a lending scheme and not even hear the click of handcuffs you can be pretty sure that running over some schmuck on a bicycle isn't going to amount to anything.

quote:

In his closing arguments at the police board hearing, Herbert emphasized the lack of information about where and when the photo was taken — and the mystery surrounding the African-American man’s identity.

“What’s to say this individual wasn’t performing at a Christmas pageant in the district and was dressed as a reindeer and had taken the reindeer suit off? Again, I don’t mean to make preposterous arguments, but the charges in this case, they warrant that,” he said.

Herbert also compared the photo to an episode of “Seinfeld” in which Jerry is wrongly accused of picking his nose.

quote:

Body cam video catches Barstow cops slamming black pregnant woman to ground, letting white woman go free

Officials with the city of Barstow, California insisted this week that officers had acted properly when they used force to arrest a pregnant woman who refused to show them her identification, even though the charges were later dismissed.

In police body camera video obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), an officer is responding to an apparent traffic dispute between Charlena Michelle Cooks, who is 8 months pregnant and black, and an unidentified white woman.

The officer first talks to the white woman, who accuses Cooks of acting “all crazy.”

“I don’t see a crime that has been committed,” the officer admits after examining the woman’s car. After promising the woman a police report, the officer heads over to talk to Cooks.

Cooks explains that the argument occurred because the woman disagreed with the way she was driving in the parking lot. Cooks also said that the woman frightened her daughter, who was in second grade.

“She called the police for whatever reason, I don’t know,” Cooks says. “Should I feel threatened by her because she’s white? Because she’s white and she’s making threats to me?”

At that point the officer asks for Cooks’ name, but she insists that she does not have to tell him.

“I actually do have the right to ask you for your name,” the officer replies.

“Let me make sure,” Cooks says as she makes a phone call to someone.

The officer says he will give Cooks two minutes to verify his right to ask for her identification. But less than 20 seconds later, the officer and a colleague are performing a painful wristlock takedown on Cooks. The pregnant woman screams as she is forced belly first into the ground.

“Why are you resisting?” the officer demands.

“Please! I’m pregnant!” Cooks exclaims. “Please, stop this!”

ACLU SoCal staff attorney Adrienna Wong pointed out that Cooks had a right to refuse to show her ID.

“It would be a wrongful arrest, but it would be an arrest,” she noted. “Even if an officer is conducting an investigation, in California, unlike some other states, he can’t just require a person to provide ID for no reason.”

“Officers in California should not be using the obstruction law, Penal Code 148, to arrest someone for failing to provide ID, when they can’t find any other reason to arrest them,” Wong added.

ACLU SoCal staff attorney Jessica Price observed that Cooks, who is black, was handled very differently than the white woman.

“Imagine getting wrestled to the ground and handcuffed in front of your child’s elementary school,” Price remarked. “Imagine interacting with other parents afterwards. Imagine what kids who saw the incident tell your child. And if you think the whole incident happened because of your race, how does that impact your view of police?”

...

To make matters worse, Cooks was banned from her daughter’s school until the charges were dismissed. She said that she has not decided whether or not she wants to sue the city. But ultimately, her goal is to move out of Barstow as soon as possible.

“I’m still trying to process everything and get in a good state of mind,” she told the Desert Dispatch. “I’m in a very fearful state of mind. Barstow is so small and I used to be comfortable living here. Not anymore. I really felt like after all that happened I had some of my everyday freedoms taken from me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that terrified in my life,” Cooks continued. “I never saw that coming. I told him I was pregnant so he could proceed with caution. That didn’t happen and the first thing I thought was I didn’t want to fall to the ground. I felt the pressure on my stomach from falling and I was calling for help. But those guys are supposed to help me. But who is supposed to help me when they are attacking me?”

...

quote:

Cops Beat Their Wives & Girlfriends At Double The National Rate, Still Receive Promotions

Statistics show that 1 in 4 women in the US is a victim of domestic violence, those numbers jump to 1 in 2 if they are married to a cop.

Law Enforcement officers beat their significant other at nearly double the national average. Several studies, according to Diane Wetendorf, author of Police Domestic Violence: Handbook for Victims, indicate that women suffer domestic abuse in at least 40 percent of police officer families. For American women overall, the figure is 25 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to The Advocates for Human Rights Organization, studies indicate that police families are 2-4 times more likely than the general population to experience domestic violence, making the potential for disparities in protective success particularly troubling.

...

The trouble with spousal abuse lies in the very nature of police work. The authority and control in the wrong hands, will be misused, according to domestic violence counselors.

What makes police domestic violence more difficult to deal with is the fact that women feel scared to report it. Even advocates for battered women are reluctant to dive into domestic violence cases involving police for fear of alienating the agencies they rely upon for help in other abuse cases, according to a report by SFGate.

...

quote:

An example of this tendency to cover up domestic police abuse can be seen in the case of Jeremy Yachik. This monster beat and tortured his daughter for years. His girlfriend even filmed the abuse with her cellphone and brought the footage to the police department that Yachik worked for.
After showing the video to Glen Johnson, the Police Chief, they failed to respond and she was forced to find another venue to expose this abuse.

...

Also a study conducted by the Domestic Violence Task Force called Domestic Violence in the Los Angeles Police Department: How Well Does the Los Angeles Police Department Police Its Own? revealed that performance evaluations of cops with history of domestic violence are largely unaffected.The study of the Los Angeles Police Department further examined the 91 cases in which an allegation of domestic violence was sustained against an officer.

Over three-fourths of the time, this sustained allegation was not mentioned in the officer’s performance evaluation.
Twenty-six of these officers (29%) were promoted, including six who were promoted within two years of the incident.

The report concluded that “employees with sustained allegations were neither barred from moving to desired positions nor transferred out of assignments that were inconsistent with the sustained allegation”

Wetendorf points out the most common fears when reporting police domestic abuse in her handbook:

If your abuser is an officer of the law, you may be afraid to:

Call the police — He is the police.
Go to a shelter — He knows where the shelters are located.
Have him arrested — Responding officers may invoke the code of silence.
Take him to court — It’s your word against that of an officer, and he knows the system.
Drop the charges — You could lose any future credibility and protection.
Seek a conviction — He will probably lose his job and retaliate against you.

These fears can make someone feel incredibly trapped and feel like there is no way out.

KomradeX posted:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/7/71/587596/judge-wont-seal-photo-cpd-cops-posing-african-american-man-antlers

Chicago police pose with black man wearing antlers as if he was a hunting trophy.

quote:

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska on Wednesday became the first conservative state in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a staunch supporter of capital punishment who had lobbied vigorously against banning it.

After more than two hours of emotional speeches at the Capitol here, the Legislature, by a 30-to-19 vote that cut across party lines, overrode the governor’s veto of a bill repealing the state’s death penalty law. After the repeal measure passed, by just enough votes to overcome the veto, dozens of spectators in the balcony burst into celebration.

The vote capped a monthslong battle that pitted most lawmakers in the unicameral Legislature against the governor, many law enforcement officials and some family members of murder victims whose killers are on death row. The Legislature approved the repeal bill three times this year, each time by a veto-proof majority, before sending it to Mr. Ricketts’s desk. Adding to the drama, two senators who had previously voted for repeal switched to support the governor at the last minute.

Opponents of the death penalty here were able to build a coalition that spanned the ideological spectrum by winning the support of Republican legislators who said they believed capital punishment was inefficient, expensive and out of place with their party’s values, as well as that of lawmakers who cited religious or moral reasons for supporting the repeal. Nebraska joins 18 other states and Washington, D.C., in banning the death penalty.

Though it is not clear that other Republican-dominated states will follow Nebraska’s example, Wednesday’s vote came at a time when liberals and conservatives have been finding common ground on a range of criminal justice issues in Washington and around the country.

In other states, Democrats and Republicans driven by different motivations have formed alliances to limit the revenue that towns can collect from traffic fines; to crack down on civil asset forfeiture, a practice that disproportionately affects the poor; and to ease mandatory prison sentences.

On the presidential trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have all called for easing mandatory minimum sentences, while other Republican candidates have embraced proposals to revamp bail and expand drug treatment that have also been championed by Democrats. Though it formally considers itself nonpartisan, the Nebraska Legislature is dominated by Republicans.

Mr. Ricketts, who fought against the repeal bill by appearing repeatedly in television interviews and urging Nebraskans to pressure their senators to oppose it, immediately denounced the vote.

“My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families,” he said in a statement. “While the Legislature has lost touch with the citizens of Nebraska, I will continue to stand with Nebraskans and law enforcement on this important issue.”

In a debate that was by turns somber, fiery and soul-searching, with sprinklings of quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and the Book of Genesis, senators stood to make last-minute pitches to try to persuade the undecided. Some said that capital punishment should be retained as a tool to punish the most heinous crimes. Others said that the death penalty, which has not been used in Nebraska since 1997, was irretrievably broken.

“Today we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this Legislature, that transcends this state,” said Senator Ernie Chambers, an independent from Omaha who sponsored the bill and has fought against the death penalty for decades. “We are talking about human dignity.”

A few senators argued that Nebraskans were still broadly in favor of capital punishment, even if many Republicans in the Legislature had turned away from it. Others said that they were deeply conflicted about their vote to retain the death penalty. “Today I will sustain the governor’s veto because I campaigned on it,” said Senator Tyson Larson, two hours into the debate. “This might be the last time I give the state the right to take a life, because I don’t think that they necessarily should.”

The bill replaces capital punishment with life imprisonment.

The vote on Wednesday came just a day after Mr. Ricketts signed a veto of the death penalty repeal bill in front of reporters assembled at the Capitol and talked about a gruesome bank robbery in the city of Norfolk in 2002 in which five people were shot to death as a compelling reason that Nebraska should hold on to capital punishment. Two family members of a woman who was shot during the robbery stood at the governor’s side.

Some Nebraskans said in interviews this week that they agreed with the governor.

“I’m sure small-town, rural Nebraska communities are furious about the repeal,” said Chris Spargen, a project specialist in his mid-20s, as he rode his bike down a main thoroughfare in Ashland, 30 miles outside Omaha. “I guess I’m technically falling under that as well.”

In downtown Ceresco, Neb., about 18 miles north of Lincoln, Wayne Ambrosias, owner of the Sweet Pea Market, said he did not want his tax dollars used to pay for murderers to stay in prison for their entire lives. And he echoed the governor’s statement that the lawmakers who supported the death penalty repeal bill were out of touch with a widely conservative public.

“I don’t think the politicians are in line with the everyday people,” Mr. Ambrosias said on Wednesday, just before the vote. “I think it’s more of a political move. I don’t think the people are telling them that’s what they want.”

But others said they saw the issue differently, rejecting the argument that the death penalty was necessary to deter crime.

“A lot of times, murder is a crime of passion,” said Don Johnson, a retired commercial fisherman from Alaska now living in Ceresco. “I don’t think they think about the death penalty when they kill somebody or somebody gets killed. I don’t think it’s a preventative measure at all.”

Mr. Johnson, who considers himself an evangelical Protestant, said he saw the issue less as a religious belief than a strictly personal one. Other members of his church are in favor of the death penalty, he said, though he admitted he could not quite reconcile the punishment with Christianity.

“If you really follow Jesus’s teachings,” he said, “thou shall not kill, you know.”

Catholic bishops in Nebraska issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing Mr. Ricketts’s veto. “We remain convinced that the death penalty does not deter crime, nor does it make Nebraska safer or promote the common good in our state,” they said.

Since 2007, six states have abolished the death penalty: Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group opposed to the death penalty, no conservative state has banned capital punishment since North Dakota in 1973. The center defines a conservative state as having voted Republican in the two most recent presidential elections.

Across the country, efforts to execute criminals on death row have stalled in the face of growing backlash against the death penalty and logistical difficulties with lethal injections. Many states have had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs, as European manufacturers, citing moral and ethical objections, have refused to sell them to prisons in the United States. Texas, which executes more inmates than any other state, has only enough drugs to carry out one more lethal injection.

Searching for alternatives in the face of drug shortages, some states have taken other measures. In March, the Utah governor signed a law allowing firing squads to be used for executions, and Arkansas, Wyoming and Idaho have considered replacing lethal injections with firing squads.

Mr. Ricketts tried to ward off concerns about the availability of drugs by announcing this month that he had made arrangements with a pharmaceutical company to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal injections. Some lawmakers said that the governor had not actually obtained the drugs, asserting that he was trying to sway legislators to uphold his veto. Those lawmakers have also raised questions about whether those drugs would be legal to use if the governor had obtained them.

Anora posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto
(Here's the embed, as, gently caress off youtube, let me copy the drat url)

This should answer your question.

Agrajag posted:

Holy poo poo, thank gently caress I don't live in America... god drat I can't get over how hosed up that system is.