Cop Tyranny Thread

Valley State University student was charged with a felony because he waited for a brightly lit area to stop instead of immediately pulling over when police signaled.

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Amen brother. Cop calls out another cop.

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Newly Released Video Shows California Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed Man

This is really bad




Despite efforts by the city of Gardena, California to suppress the footage, a video showing officers killing an unarmed, seemingly confused man was made public on Tuesday, the L.A. Times reports.

Earlier that day, a federal judge ruled that there was a strong public interest in releasing the footage, rejecting the city’s argument that it had settled a lawsuit over the shooting for $4.7 million with the belief the video would be kept secret.

“The fact that they spent the city’s money, presumably derived from taxes, only strengthens the public’s interest in seeing the videos,” wrote Judge Stephen V. Wilson in his decision. “Moreover, defendants cannot assert a valid compelling interest in sealing the videos to cover up any wrongdoing on their part or to shield themselves from embarrassment.”

The video shows the final moments of Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino, who was killed by Gardena police two years ago. From City News Service:

Diaz-Zeferino was gunned down on June, 2, 2013, after police responded to a call that a bicycle had been stolen from a nearby pharmacy and noticed two men riding bikes.

The victim approached the officers and attempted to explain that his brother had reported the bicycle stolen and that the two men were not thieves but his friends, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that police shot Diaz-Zeferino eight times and that he laid on the street, crying out in Spanish “Hasta aqui llegue” or “This is the end of me.”

Gardena police maintained the shooting was justified because the victim was acting erratically and reached into his waistband despite a command to raise his hands.

Attorney Samuel Paz, who represented Diaz-Zeferino in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press he may ask for a federal civil rights investigation of the shooting.

“I think it is really helpful for the public to understand why they would be willing to pay $4.7 million to settle the case when we were on the eve of trial,” Paz said. “When the public sees the video and other law enforcement agencies see the video, this is very much a criminal act.”
 
Look at this brutal fucking asshole.

A newly released video shows a Colorado Springs police officer brutally throwing a handcuffed 18-year-old woman to the hospital floor, smashing her face against the Memorial Hospital floor in 2013.

So hard that it knocked her teeth out.

The video will be part of a lawsuit that is being prepared on behalf of the woman against the department. In the video, Officer Tyler Walker, 29 at the time, is seen shoving the handcuffed woman, 18-year-old Alexis Acker, into a chair by hitting her in the stomach. Acker then kicks at the officer, likely because he just assaulted her and had no other means to defend herself. The officer is then seen immediately slamming the teen face first onto a hospital floor while she was handcuffed- knocking out two of her teeth. Aside from having two teeth knocked out, Acker suffered trauma to the face, head, teeth and jaw; migraine headaches, concussion, closed head injuries, memory and cognitive function problems, as well as post traumatic stress disorder.
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Rambo said:
Apparently this woman hung herself with a plastic bag. Because plastic bags are stronger in Texas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/u...-death-in-texas-jail.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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Rambo said:
Here's the dashboard video from the cop's car. Unbelievable
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I was reading about this today and the whole situation is simply, outrageously, absurd.

Even if this lady did, for some reason, hang herself with a plastic bag, she should not have been in gaol. The whole situation occurred because of a gross over-reaction by the police officer. Who gives a cr@p if she was smoking in her car? She's free to do so and it's none of his business. All he had to do was give her a ticket and go on his way, but he was confrontational and needlessly aggravated the situation.

Looking through a few of these articles/videos posted in this thread, it seems that if you don't obey a request from a police officer nowadays, you can be arrested for "resisting arrest". What the?
 
Rambo said:
Here's the dashboard video from the cop's car. Unbelievable

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I just saw this posted on Facebook and came here to share it with you guys. Holy shit my blood is boiling. The cops indicted themselves with the response "good" when she claimed she has epilepsy. Slamming an epileptic patient's head to the ground can be partially to directly responsible for her course of action towards suicide if deemed so by a medical professional. FUCK these guys! What threat did she pose?

I'm also particularly angsty because I got pulled over yesterday in the middle of Boston for literally NO reason. The driver in front of me proceeded through a crosswalk where people were not waiting, and a cop, standing outside of his car, in the middle of the road pulled him and the three cars behind him over. I was the second car in the sequence. I got off with a warning but when asked what I did the cop really couldn't answer. I almost want to fight my warning citation in court.
 
More brutality.

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The video shows Officer Steven Westfall hitting James Rutherford with his elbow as Rutherford is bent over a police car and restrained by other officers.

As Westfall steps in while other officers have Rutherford restrained, Westfall starts by securing Rutherford’s head, but then brings his tricep down on Rutherford’s head and presses down on his head with his elbow.

During this time, Rutherford repeatedly asks officers to get off of him.

Westfall’s Attorney, James Ruchti, says Westfall’s actions were prompted because he thought the suspect head butted another officer.
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Darkside said:
I just saw this posted on Facebook and came here to share it with you guys. Holy shit my blood is boiling. The cops indicted themselves with the response "good" when she claimed she has epilepsy. Slamming an epileptic patient's head to the ground can be partially to directly responsible for her course of action towards suicide if deemed so by a medical professional. FUCK these guys! What threat did she pose?

I'm also particularly angsty because I got pulled over yesterday in the middle of Boston for literally NO reason. The driver in front of me proceeded through a crosswalk where people were not waiting, and a cop, standing outside of his car, in the middle of the road pulled him and the three cars behind him over. I was the second car in the sequence. I got off with a warning but when asked what I did the cop really couldn't answer. I almost want to fight my warning citation in court.
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Does the warning citation not state what the traffic violation was?

Surprised anyone would fall for the cop tailgating lane change without turn signal trap.
 
Cops in Chicago tow car with 2 dead bodys in it. Pretty incredible.

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Rambo said:
This is crazy
N.J. state trooper shot at teens who knocked on his door - NY Daily News
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1. What kind of first name is Kissinger???
2. Sparta NJ is a notorious speedtrap town. Like seriously, there's a cruiser idling behind the "Welcome to Sparta" sign. That's local and not Statie, but whatever.
3. How are cops really thinking they can fire on unarmed people posing no threat to anyone? Are they really that dumb to not have figured this out yet?
4.
None of the teens were hit or injured, but all three were found by police about two miles away and kept in custody for more than nine hours before being released without charges.
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a. Why were the cops called for an errant door-knocking?
b. How are the police suddenly so capable and fast? I have never heard of such rapid apprehension of anyone ever. Are they just slacking all those other times when people are bleeding out?
c. Kept in custody for more than nine hours without charges? WTF?​
 
If this doesn't make your blood boil I don't know what will. The quote from the sheriff's association guy is particularly telling

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/u...first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html

Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later
By MATT APUZZO AUG. 1, 2015

02POLICE-JP5-master675.jpg


William J. Lewinski, a psychologist who has studied police shootings, held a training session at the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs in Monterey Park, Calif., last month. Credit Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

The driver was unarmed.

Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

“In simple terms,” the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, “if I see the gun, I’m dead?”

“In simple terms, that’s it,” Dr. Lewinski replied.

When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.


He has appeared as an expert witness in criminal trials, civil cases and disciplinary hearings, and before grand juries, where such testimony is given in secret and goes unchallenged. In addition, his company, the Force Science Institute, has trained tens of thousands of police officers on how to think differently about police shootings that might appear excessive.

A string of deadly police encounters in Ferguson, Mo.; North Charleston, S.C.; and most recently in Cincinnati, have prompted a national reconsideration of how officers use force and provoked calls for them to slow down and defuse conflicts. But the debate has also left many police officers feeling unfairly maligned and suspicious of new policies that they say could put them at risk. Dr. Lewinski says his research clearly shows that officers often cannot wait to act.

“We’re telling officers, ‘Look for cover and then read the threat,’ ” he told a class of Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs recently. “Sorry, too damn late.”

A former Minnesota State professor, he says his testimony and training are based on hard science, but his research has been roundly criticized by experts. An editor for The American Journal of Psychology called his work “pseudoscience.” The Justice Department denounced his findings as “lacking in both foundation and reliability.” Civil rights lawyers say he is selling dangerous ideas.

“People die because of this stuff,” said John Burton, a California lawyer who specializes in police misconduct cases. “When they give these cops a pass, it just ripples through the system.”

Many policing experts are for hire, but Dr. Lewinski is unique in that he conducts his own research, trains officers and internal investigators, and testifies at trial. In the protests that have followed police shootings, demonstrators have often asked why officers are so rarely punished for shootings that seem unwarranted. Dr. Lewinski is part of the answer.

An Expert on the Stand

While his testimony at times has proved insufficient to persuade a jury, his record includes many high-profile wins.

“He won’t give an inch on cross-examination,” said Elden Rosenthal, a lawyer who represented the family of James Jahar Perez, the man killed in the 2004 Portland shooting. In that case, Dr. Lewinski also testified before the grand jury, which brought no charges. Defense lawyers like Dr. Lewinski, Mr. Rosenthal said. “They know that he’s battle-hardened in the courtroom, so you know exactly what you’re getting.”

Dr. Lewinski, 70, is affable and confident in his research, but not so polished as to sound like a salesman. In testimony on the stand, for which he charges nearly $1,000 an hour, he offers winding answers to questions and seldom appears flustered. He sprinkles scientific explanations with sports analogies.

“A batter can’t wait for a ball to cross home plate before deciding whether that’s something to swing at,” he told the Los Angeles deputy sheriffs. “Make sense? Officers have to make a prediction based on cues.”

Of course, it follows that batters will sometimes swing at bad pitches, and that officers will sometimes shoot unarmed people.

Much of the criticism of his work, Dr. Lewinski said, amounts to politics. In 2012, for example, just seven months after the Justice Department excoriated him and his methods, department officials paid him $55,000 to help defend a federal drug agent who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old in California. Then last year, as part of a settlement over excessive force in the Seattle Police Department, the Justice Department endorsed sending officers to Mr. Lewinski for training. And in January, he was paid $15,000 to train federal marshals.

If the science is there, Dr. Lewinski said, he does not shy away from offering opinions in controversial cases. He said he was working on behalf of one of two Albuquerque officers who face murder charges in last year’s shooting death of a mentally ill homeless man. He has testified in many racially charged cases involving white officers who shot black suspects, such as the 2009 case in which a Bay Area transit officer shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, at close range.

Dr. Lewinski said he was not trying to explain away every shooting. But when he testifies, it is almost always in defense of police shootings. Officers are his target audience — he publishes a newsletter on police use of force that he says has nearly one million subscribers — and his research was devised for them. “The science is based on trying to keep officers safe,” he said.

Dr. Lewinski, who grew up in Canada, got his doctorate in 1988 from the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, an accredited but alternative Cincinnati school offering accelerated programs and flexible schedules. He designed his curriculum and named his program police psychology, a specialty not available elsewhere.

‘Invalid and Unreliable’

In 1990, a police shooting in Minneapolis changed the course of his career. Dan May, a white police officer, shot and killed Tycel Nelson, a black 17-year-old. Officer May said he fired after the teenager turned toward him and raised a handgun. But an autopsy showed he was shot in the back.

Dr. Lewinski was intrigued by the apparent contradiction. “We really need to get into the dynamics of how this unfolds,” he remembers thinking. “We need a lot better research.”

Continue reading the main story
Raising a Gun and Running Away
A video, taken as part of one of William J. Lewinski’s studies, shows how quickly suspects can raise a gun and turn to run. Dr. Lewinski uses videos like this to explain why police officers shoot suspects in the back.

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Courtesy of the Force Science Institute
He began by videotaping students as they raised handguns and then quickly turned their backs. On average, that move took about half a second. By the time an officer returned fire, Dr. Lewinski concluded, a suspect could have turned his back.

He summarized his findings in 1999 in The Police Marksman, a popular magazine for officers. The next year, it published an expanded study, in which Dr. Lewinski timed students as they fired while turning, running or sitting with a gun at their side, as if stashed in a car’s console.

Suspects, he concluded, could reach, fire and move remarkably fast. But faster than an officer could react? In 2002, a third study concluded that it takes the average officer about a second and a half to draw from a holster, aim and fire.

Together, the studies appeared to support the idea that officers were at a serious disadvantage. The studies are the foundation for much of his work over the past decade.

Continue reading the main story
A Gun in the Car
This video simulates a driver with a gun stashed in the center console. It is used to help demonstrate how officers cannot always wait to see a gun before reacting.

gunconsole2.gif



Courtesy of the Force Science Institute
Because he published in a police magazine and not a scientific journal, Dr. Lewinski was not subjected to the peer-review process. But in separate cases in 2011 and 2012, the Justice Department and a private lawyer asked Lisa Fournier, a Washington State University professor and an American Journal of Psychology editor, to review Dr. Lewinski’s studies. She said they lacked basic elements of legitimate research, such as control groups, and drew conclusions that were unsupported by the data.

“In summary, this study is invalid and unreliable,” she wrote in court documents in 2012. “In my opinion, this study questions the ability of Mr. Lewinski to apply relevant and reliable data to answer a question or support an argument.”

Dr. Lewinski said he chose to publish his findings in the magazine because it reached so many officers who would never read a scientific journal. If he were doing it over, he said in an interview, he would have published his early studies in academic journals and summarized them elsewhere for officers. But he said it was unfair for Dr. Fournier to criticize his research based on summaries written for a general audience.While opposing lawyers and experts found his research controversial, they were particularly frustrated by Dr. Lewinski’s tendency to get inside people’s heads. Time and again, his reports to defense lawyers seem to make conclusive statements about what officers saw, what they did not, and what they cannot remember.

Often, these details are hotly disputed. For example, in a 2009 case that revolved around whether a Texas sheriff’s deputy felt threatened by a car coming at him, Dr. Lewinski said that the officer was so focused on firing to stop the threat, he did not immediately recognize that the car had passed him.

Inattentional Blindness

Such gaps in observation and memory, he says, can be explained by a phenomenon called inattentional blindness, in which the brain is so focused on one task that it blocks out everything else. When an officer’s version of events is disproved by video or forensic evidence, Dr. Lewinski says, inattentional blindness may be to blame. It is human nature, he says, to try to fill in the blanks.

“Whenever the cop says something that’s helpful, it’s as good as gold,” said Mr. Burton, the California lawyer. “But when a cop says something that’s inconvenient, it’s a result of this memory loss.”

Experts say Dr. Lewinski is too sure of himself on the subject. “I hate the fact that it’s being used in this way,” said Arien Mack, one of two psychologists who coined the term inattentional blindness. “When we work in a lab, we ask them if they saw something. They have no motivation to lie. A police officer involved in a shooting certainly has a reason to lie.”

Dr. Lewinski acknowledged that there was no clear way to distinguish inattentional blindness from lying. He said he had tried to present it as a possibility, not a conclusion.

Almost as soon as his research was published, lawyers took notice and asked him to explain his work to juries.

In Los Angeles, he helped authorities explain the still-controversial fatal shooting of Anthony Dwain Lee, a Hollywood actor who was shot through a window by a police officer at a Halloween party in 2000. The actor carried a fake gun as part of his costume. Mr. Lee was shot several times in the back. The officer was not charged.

The city settled a lawsuit over the shooting for $225,000, but Mr. Lewinski still teaches the case as an example of a justified shooting that unfairly tarnished a good officer who “was shooting to save his own life.”

In September 2001, a Cincinnati judge acquitted a police officer, Stephen Roach, in the shooting death of an unarmed black man after a chase. The officer said he believed the man, Timothy Thomas, 19, was reaching for a gun. Dr. Lewinski testified, and the judge said he found his analysis credible. The prosecutor, Stephen McIntosh, however, told The Columbus Dispatch that Dr. Lewinski’s “radical” views could be used to justify nearly any police shooting.

“If that’s the sort of direction we, as a society, are going,” the prosecutor said, “I have a lot of disappointment.”Since then, Dr. Lewinski has testified in many dozens of cases in state and federal court, becoming a hero to many officers who feel that politics, not science or safety, drives police policy. For example, departments often require officers to consider less-lethal options such as pepper spray, stun guns and beanbag guns before drawing their firearms.

“These have come about because of political pressure,” said Les Robbins, the executive director of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. In an interview, Mr. Robbins recalled how he used to keep his gun drawn and hidden behind his leg during most traffic stops. “We used to be able to use the baton and hit people where we felt necessary to get them to comply. Those days are gone.”

Positions of Authority

Dr. Lewinski and his company have provided training for dozens of departments, including in Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Seattle. His messages often conflict, in both substance and tone, with the training now recommended by the Justice Department and police organizations.

The Police Executive Research Forum, a group that counts most major city police chiefs as members, has called for greater restraint from officers and slower, better decision making. Chuck Wexler, its director, said he is troubled by Dr. Lewinski’s teachings. He added that even as chiefs changed their use-of-force policies, many did not know what their officers were taught in academies and private sessions.

“It’s not that chiefs don’t care,” he said. “It’s rare that a chief has time to sit at the academy and see what’s being taught.”

Regardless of what, if any, policy changes emerge from the current national debate, civil right lawyers say one thing will not change: Jurors want to believe police officers, and Dr. Lewinski’s research tells them that they can.

On a cold night in early 2003, for instance, Robert Murtha, an officer in Hartford, Conn., shot three times at the driver of a car. He said the vehicle had sped directly at him, knocking him to the ground as he fired. Video from a nearby police cruiser told another story. The officer had not been struck. He had fired through the driver’s-side window as the car passed him.

Officer Murtha’s story was so obviously incorrect that he was arrested on charges of assault and fabricating evidence. If officers can get away with shooting people and lying about it, the prosecutor declared, “the system is doomed.”

“There was no way around it — Murtha was dead wrong,” his lawyer, Hugh F. Keefe, recalled recently. But the officer was “bright, articulate and truthful,” Mr. Keefe said. Jurors needed an explanation for how the officer could be so wrong and still be innocent.

Dr. Lewinski testified at trial. The jury deliberated less than one full day. The officer was acquitted of all charges.
 
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