Riot As Political Participation by the Powerless Class. From [HERE] and [HERE] Paris teenagers blockaded 16 secondary schools and clashed with riot officers in protests against police violence prompted by the alleged rape of a young black man with a truncheon.
Police fired tear gas on small groups of protesters and detained 21 people after a crowd of about 1,000 youths marched on the Place de la Nation, a square in eastern Paris linked to the French Revolution.
A helicopter flew overhead and tear gas clouds rose into the air above that square towards the end of the rally.
Flares were lit by protesters, some masked to hide their identity and protect themselves from the tear gas.
The youths were angry over the alleged rape of a 22-year-old man during a February 2 arrest in an area north of Paris - home to large numbers of immigrants. The man, identified only as Theo L, remains in hospital with injuries to his anus and head.
One police officer has been charged with raping Théo L in Aulnay-sous-Bois on 2 February, and three others have been charged with assault.
Four officers arrived at a housing estate in the northern Paris suburb and began stopping youths and asking to see identity papers. Théo, 22, was allegedly forced to the ground, beaten, and subsequently raped with a police baton, suffering such serious injuries that he needed emergency surgery.
French President François Hollande [above] visited Theo in hospital, and has promised that justice will be served. The four officers involved have been suspended; one has been charged with rape, the other three with assault.
French police are regularly accused of using excessive force, particularly against black and minority ethnic suspects.
The death in police custody last summer of Adama Traoré, a young black man, in Beaumont-sur-Oise outside Paris, and the slow reaction of authorities, sparked accusations of police violence and a state cover-up. An investigation is ongoing.
From [HERE] and [HERE] Hinting that it will rule against the family of a Mexican child gunned down on his side of the border by a U.S. border patrol agent, the Supreme Court voiced concern Tuesday that a reversal will flood the courts with claims related to foreign drone strikes.
“Our problem, but we have to have your help in solving it, is you have a very sympathetic case,” Justice Stephen Breyer said during oral arguments on Tuesday. “We write some words, and those words you’re delighted with because you win. That isn’t the problem. The problem is other people will read those words, and there are all kinds of things that happen, maybe military, maybe not.”
The case comes from the death in Mexico of Sergio Hernandez, a 15-year-old boy who was playing in Mexico when he was fatally shot by U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa, who had been standing in Texas across the Rio Grande.
The cellphone video is vivid. A Border Patrol agent aims his gun at an unarmed 15-year-old some 60 feet away, across the border with Mexico, and shoots him dead.
The shooting took place on the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico.
The area is about 180 feet across. Eighty feet one way leads to a steep incline and an 18-foot fence on the U.S. side — part of the so-called border wall that has already been built. An almost equal distance the other way is another steep incline leading to a wall topped by a guardrail on the Mexican side.
In between is a the dry bed of the Rio Grande with an invisible line in the middle that separates the U.S. and Mexico. Overhead is a railroad bridge with huge columns supporting it, connecting the two countries.
In June 2010, Sergio Hernández and his friends were playing chicken, daring each other to run up the incline on the U.S. side and touch the fence, according to briefs filed by lawyers for the Hernández family.
At some point U.S. border agent Jesus Mesa, patrolling the culvert, arrived on a bicycle, grabbed one of the kids at the fence on the U.S. side, and the others scampered away. Fifteen-year-old Sergio ran past Mesa and hid behind a pillar beneath the bridge on the Mexican side.
As the boy peeked out, Agent Mesa, 60 feet or so away on the U.S. side, drew his gun, aimed it at the boy, and fired three times, the last shot hitting the boy in the head.
Although agents quickly swarmed the scene, they are forbidden to cross the border. They did not offer medical aid, and soon left on their bikes, according to lawyers for the family.
A day after the shooting, the FBI's El Paso office issued a press release asserting that agent Mesa fired his gun after being "surrounded" by suspected illegal aliens who "continued to throw rocks at him."
Two days later, cellphone videos surfaced contradicting that account. In one video the boy's small figure can be seen edging out from behind the column; Mesa fires, and the boy falls to the ground.
"The statement literally says he was surrounded by these boys, which is just objectively false," says Bob Hilliard, who represents the family. Pointing to the cellphone video, he says it is "clear that nobody was near " agent Mesa.
In one video, a woman's voice is heard saying that some of the boys had been throwing rocks, but the video does not show that, and by the time the shooting takes place, nobody is surrounding agent Mesa.
In other words, this race soldier cop murdered a teenager for no reason and then lied about it.
The U.S. Department of Justice decided not to prosecute Mesa. Among other things, the department concluded that it did not have jurisdiction because the boy was not on U.S. soil when he was killed.
Mexico charged the agent with murder, but when the U.S. refused to extradite him, no prosecution could go forward.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not discipline agent Mesa — a fact that critics, including high-ranking former agency officials, say reflects a pattern inside the agency.
The parents of the slain boy, however, have sued Mesa for damages, contending that the killing violated the U.S. Constitution by depriving Sergio Hernández of his life.
The jail’s nurses, doctors, mental health professionals & detention officers did nothing to assist Dying Black Man. From [HERE] and [ReadFrontier] After more than five days on the concrete floor of his jail cell, Elliott Williams died naked, cold and alone, unable to move.
Hungry and thirsty, Williams screamed for help but couldn’t convince anyone at Tulsa’s David L. Moss Detention Center to help him.
Detention officers at the Tulsa Jail tossed three styrofoam trays of jail food at his feet, but Williams could not retrieve them. Though Williams begged for something to drink, he couldn’t pick up the styrofoam cups of water they placed near him.
One day turned to two, three and four days. On the fifth day, none of the jail’s staff bothered to enter Williams’ cell, Medical Cell #1.
The jail’s medical staff began to wonder if Williams might actually be paralyzed from a broken neck, as he claimed. But those in charge did nothing to find out whether his claims were true.
Instead, they watched him slowly dying on a video camera.
On the morning of the sixth day, the 37-year-old veteran who faced no formal charge died on the floor of his cell. The jail’s medical staff performed CPR on his lifeless body but it was too late to save Williams, pronounced dead Oct. 27, 2011.
A federal judge won't recuse himself from a wrongful death lawsuit that alleges an injured inmate died after languishing in the Tulsa Jail for nearly a week.
U.S. District Judge John Dowdell denied a motion Wednesday (2/15/17) filed by defense attorneys who asked Dowdell to remove himself from the case. They cited Dowdell's partnership with a private law firm involved in another lawsuit against former Tulsa County Sheriff Glanz, a defendant in the wrongful death suit.
The judge said the motion didn't meet standards to disqualify him from presiding over a trial in the case, the Tulsa World (http://bit.ly/2kCjN6Q ) reported.
"Moreover, the Court does not harbor any bias or ill will toward any party and has no financial or other personal interest in any party or the outcome of this matter," Dowdell wrote.
In July, the judge found that the federal civil rights lawsuit could go forward.
“A reasonable jury could find that Mr. Williams’ needs were obvious to any layperson,” states the ruling by U.S. District Judge John Dowdell.
“They could also find that the medical unit-wide attitude of inhumanity and indifference shown to him, which resulted in the delay and denial of medical care in the face of his symptoms that were obviously indicative of a serious medical condition or medical emergency, amounted to deliberate indifference.”
Dowdell’s order denied motions by the defendants — Sheriff Vic Regalado and former Sheriff Stanley Glanz [racist suspect in photo below] — to dismiss the suit. The judge also ruled that jail videos depicting Williams are admissible in the case, as are prior reviews or audits that found problems in the jail.
Dowdell’s 55 page ruling includes a blunt condemnation of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office jail staff for failing to help Williams. (An autopsy found he died from complications of a broken neck and noted he was seriously dehydrated.)
“A significant number of jail staff were aware that Mr. Williams did not walk, stand, sit up, eat, or drink on his own for days,” Dowdell’s ruling states.
Williams' attorney, Dan Smolen noted that no one has been held accountable for Williams’ death, despite an OSBI investigation and some interest by the U.S. Department of Justice. He hopes Wednesday’s ruling prompts a federal investigation of Williams’ death.
The Williams case is one of at least a dozen civil rights lawsuits against the county for deaths and serious injuries in the jail. Verdicts against the county in the Williams case, or any of the other suits, could cost county taxpayers millions.
Last year, a jury found against the county, ruling that the Sheriff’s Office deliberately indifferent, in the first of these cases to reach trial stage.
Smolen noted Wednesday that Tulsa County commissioners and Regalado are ultimately responsible for the outcome in Williams’ case and the other jail lawsuits. The commissioners have said little publicly about their role in overseeing the quality of medical care at the jail. [MORE]
Glanz and the county have denied liability in Williams’ case, saying if failures existed, they did not rise to the level of “deliberate indifference” that the plaintiffs are required to prove.
Though Glanz is no longer sheriff, Dowdell’s ruling leaves him as an individual defendant in the lawsuit. Regalado, and by extension the county, is the “official capacity” defendant.
The plaintiffs have already settled with the jail’s former medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Companies Inc., based in Nashville, for an undisclosed amount.
CHC was sold to Correct Care Solutions Inc., of Nashville, in 2014. Correct Care Solutions is one of several companies bidding on a new jail medical contract, worth about $5 million per year.
Mental breakdown, then arrest
Dowdell’s ruling recounts the history of Williams’ case and many points along the way his death might have been prevented.
On Oct. 21, 2011, Williams’ relatives took him to an Owasso hotel “because Elliott had not slept in days and was having psychological issues,” the ruling states. A breakup with his wife had left Williams despondent and he caused a disturbance in the hotel lobby.
Owasso police responded and the situation escalated. Williams, who relatives said had been diagnosed as bipolar in the military, said he wanted to die and did not comply with officers’ commands to sit down.
Rather than wait for a mobile mental health unit to arrive, Owasso police pepper sprayed Williams and took him to the city jail. Once there, Williams descended further into psychosis, hiding under a bench, taking off his clothes and barking like a dog.
Though inpatient beds are often scarce, Owasso police did not attempt to find a mental health facility that would take Williams. Instead, they decided they couldn’t handle Williams and took him to the Tulsa Jail, booking him in at 1:50 a.m. Oct. 22, 2011.
When Williams failed to cooperate at the jail, Owasso officers threw him to the floor, with one officer landing on top of him. After that takedown, Williams had difficulty walking, though wasn’t yet saying he was paralyzed.
Despite his threats of suicide, Williams was not placed on suicide watch. Instead, he was placed in a holding cell, where 45 minutes later, he allegedly rammed his head into the steel door of his cell and fell to the ground, not moving.
“He’s acting like he’s paralyzed, but we know he’s not,” a mental health worker told Williams’s dad, court papers allege. [MORE]
He told detention officers and jail medical staff he had broken his neck. However, for more than 10 hours, Williams was left in the holding cell without attention.
During that time, detention supervisors knew about Williams’ claims his neck was broken, including “Watch Commander Captain Wood, booking supervisors Corporal (Arthur) Jackson and Sergeant (Carla) Housley, and the Housing Supervisor, Sergeant (Jack) Reusser,” Dowdell’s order states.
Early the next morning, when Williams was still unable to move, the jail staff declared a “medical emergency.” However, the “head nurse” for the jail “cussed at and berated Williams, telling him that he should be ‘ashamed’ of himself, to get his ‘nasty ass’ in the shower, and to ‘quit fucking faking.’”
Capt. Tommy Fike and Sgt. Doug Hinshaw placed Williams on a gurney and “dumped Mr. Williams off the gurney into the shower,” Dowdell’s ruling states, “where Wiliams hit his head with a ‘smack.’”
Williams was left in the shower for up to three hours, unable to move.
“Throughout the first day at the jail, Mr. Williams continued to tell his captors that he was paralyzed and unable to move or walk,” Dowdell’s ruling notes.
A detention officer had to “pour water into his mouth” and feed him a bologna sandwich by holding his head up. However an LPN, Raymond Stiles, appeared to doubt Williams’ claims of paralysis.
'You Like Doing This Shit to Niggers Don't You?' Interaction begins about 2:23. From [HERE] Footage from the Montgomery County Jail in Dayton, Ohio, shows police officers pepper-spraying a black man in a restraint chair during the booking process. The man has filed a lawsuit over alleged excessive use of force.
The footage, published by local community activist David Esrati, was captured on several CCTV cameras in the jail and on a hand-held camera used by one of the officers to film the booking process. Taken in October, it reportedly shows Charles Wade being processed after his arrest for alleged DUI by a state trooper.
In the footage officers are shown searching him and taking off his shoes and socks, before placing him in a seven-point restraint chair. Sometime during the restraining procedure an altercation ensues, and one of the officers shoots a paper-spray jet at the 37-year-old’s face at point blank range. Wade is then heard repeatedly crying, “I can’t breathe. Please, help me,” while some of the jailers are heard coughing, apparently affected by the spray.
The Montgomery County Jail had been criticized for similar treatment of a white woman named Amber Swink the year before [And Ms. Swink will get justice b/c she is white]. Attorney Douglas Brannon, representing both Wade and Swink in their separate lawsuits, says their cases are not isolated incidents.
“I think this type of treatment is becoming something that happens with impunity within the Montgomery County Jail,” he told the Washington Post.
The phrase Wade was shouting during his ordeal – “I can't breathe” – was a slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement following the July 2014 death of unarmed black man Eric Garner, who died in a policeman’s chokehold. Those were Garner’s last words.
From [HERE] A Chicago Amtrak police officer now faces first-degree murder charges after a fatal shooting of a Minneapolis man.
Officer LaRoyce Tankson turned himself over late Thursday after 25-year-old Chad Robertson died on Wednesday, one week after he was shot.
Tankson and his partner had stopped Robertson and two other individuals who were smoking marijuana and asked them to put out the marijuana cigarettes. Robertson complied, and the group was informed that they were not allowed to smoke cannabis outside before they were allowed to leave. However, shortly after that, Tankson and his partner approached the group again and ordered them up against the glass wall of an elevator shaft.
Robertson then fled as officers began to pat the three of them down, and Tankson drew his firearm and shot one round toward Robertson. The bullet entered his his left posterior shoulder and lodged in his neck.
“I’m very pleased that he’s been charged with first-degree murder,” Robertson’s aunt, Theresa Love Williams, said Friday. “Now that he’s been charged, we need to get a conviction. So we still have a fight ahead of us.”
Tankson was scheduled to appear in court at noon on Friday.
From [HERE] A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that police illegally stopped a 22-year-old unarmed black man in Philadelphia before a dozen mostly white officers surrounded him and beat him in an encounter captured on video .
Common Pleas Judge Kai Scott on Wednesday ruled that drugs police seized from Tyree Carroll cannot be admitted as evidence because the arresting officer wasn’t legally permitted to stop and search Carroll, Newsworks.org reported (http://bit.ly/2lVBT4W).
A spokesman for the Philadelphia district attorney said prosecutors haven’t decided whether to appeal to Superior Court.
Carroll was supposedly riding his bike the wrong way down a one-way street in Germantown when he was stopped by a plainclothes police officer April 3, 2015, shortly before midnight on East Locust Avenue.
Apparently cops stopped him and then threw him off the bike, and put him in a chokehold. [MORE]
Police, though, said Carroll was stopped over a suspected narcotics violation. Carroll was on probation at the time from a marijuana-possession conviction - something police knew nothing about as they approached him in the street.
In order for the police to stop you the Supreme Court has ruled that police must have reasonable articulable suspicion that there is criminal activity afoot and that you are involved in the activity. Police may not act on on the basis of an inchoate or unclear and unparticularized suspicion or a hunch - there must be some specific articulable facts along with reasonable inferences from those facts to justify the intrusion. The court found that his right to be free from unreasonable detention by law enforcement was violated, and because the search was conducted through exploitation of that illegal detention, all evidence seized must be suppressed as a fruit of the illegal stop.
After calling for backup, more than a dozen white officers arrived on the scene, several flocking around him to kick, punch and shout obscenities at Carroll.
As one officer approached a restrained Carroll, the officer said, "Here comes the Taser," but police maintain that it was never used on Carroll.
Scott rejected the argument made by Assistant District Attorney Whitney Golden that since Carroll bit an officer, it didn’t matter whether the initial stop was legal. The bite, Golden argued, gave police the right to arrest Carroll for assault.
Carroll’s defense attorney, Michael Wiseman, called that logic “mind-boggling.”
Wiseman said without the evidence, the district attorney’s office will be forced to dismiss the case.
At a hearing on Tuesday, Carroll covered his ears as the judge watched a video of the beating that has been viewed nearly 200,000 times on YouTube. [MORE]
Last July, when the cellphone video of the violent police response was released, the department announced it was launching an Internal Affairs investigation into the April 2015 incident. No officers were found to have committed any wrongdoing, according to a source who read a report on the completed probe.
Nancy Carroll says her grandson Tyree "was treated like a dog" when he was arrested in April. [MORE]
From [HERE] For the second and third times, Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has given cash settlements to guards who it determined had used excessive force on juvenile inmates, state records show.
The payoffs — including one totaling $9,000 — were reached as the FBI continues a criminal investigation of Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year reported officials at the prison complex trained staff improperly, failed to preserve video evidence, didn't document serious incidents and often shirked their duty to report matters to parents, police and social service agencies.
State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) said he wants the Walker administration to explain why it is cutting deals after disciplining employees.
"Either they had a weak case going in or they had a strong case but they suddenly lost their backbone," he said. "Neither one is good."
The two most recent payments follow a $6,000 settlement reached in October with former guard Scott McKenna, who was fired after other guards said they saw him push a 15-year-old girl against a wall with his hand on her neck.
Newly released video from a hallway surveillance camera shows McKenna storming into the girl’s room and hurling blankets and a mattress into the hall as his co-workers look on. The video does not show McKenna’s interactions with the inmate or what happens in the cell.
At the time of the incident, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department recommended that prosecutors charge McKenna with child abuse and strangulation. More than two years later, they have not decided whether to do that.
The most recent settlement, for $9,000, went to Travis Taves, a former guard with the nickname Iceman who was fired in January 2016 for using unjustified force on two juvenile inmates.
Taves said he had planned to work at Lincoln Hills for another 20 years but agreed to the settlement so he could move on with his life after being put on paid leave for a year and then fired.
In Racist System YOU Can be Legally Executed by White Cops Anytime, Anyplace in Front of Cameras & Witnesses. From [HERE] A federal civil rights investigation into the police chokehold death of Eric Garner has been moving forward in New York, but its future is uncertain as a U.S. attorney general with a law-and-order bent takes over the Justice Department.
Two people with inside knowledge of the probe say a federal grand jury in Brooklyn met as late as last week to hear testimony about Garner's deadly confrontation with New York Police Department officers on Staten Island in 2014.
Garner's dying words, "I can't breathe," became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement.
In recent weeks, officers who were present when Officer Daniel Pantaleo wrapped his arm around Garner's neck have testified before the grand jury, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the secret proceedings and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Whether such testimony continues may depend on internal Justice Department politics.
The federal inquiry, which began after an all white state grand jury declined to charge Pantaleo in 2014, already stalled once last year when prosecutors based at the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn expressed doubt that there was enough evidence to make a criminal case against the officer. [MORE] and [MORE]
Their hesitation resulted in the Justice Department, in the waning months of President Barack Obama's term, dispatching Washington-based prosecutors to New York to forge ahead, according to a third person with knowledge of the case, who also was not authorized to discuss the inquiry and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
It is unclear whether new Attorney General Jeff Sessions will take an interest in the case. Both the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn declined to discuss it Friday. Pantaleo's attorney, Stuart London, also had no comment.
But Sessions has the power to freeze the investigation and order a review by Civil Rights Division under new leadership for the unit "that reflects his ideology," said former federal prosecutor David Weinstein.
Sessions had been a vocal critic of the Obama administration's aggressive response to allegations of police misconduct.
From [HERE] and [HERE] A college-bound Latino teen is suing the city, saying cops threw him 15 feet onto a concrete landing, fracturing his skull, in a false arrest over an alleged marijuana sale.
Bobby Lopez, 19, who had been admitted to La Guardia Community College, claims undercover officers tackled him to the ground in front of his West 17th Street apartment on Aug. 16, 2016, the Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.
Cops claimed they’d witnessed Lopez hand his older brother three baggies of marijuana and try to flee when they moved in to arrest him, according to court papers.
But criminal charges against the two were tossed, and Lopez’s attorney Ugochukwu Uzoh says surveillance footage of the incident clears his client. Apparently, marijuana was never found.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis, a professional liar, issued a statement Wednesday after Eyewitness News contacted the NYPD:
"The officers, who were assigned to the Narcotics Division, were attempting to take the subject into custody in connection with a drug charge when the suspect attempted to flee. One of the officers grabbed the suspect's shirt as he tried to get away and the suspect fell down a stairway pulling the officer along with him. The officers' actions were reviewed by the office of the Manhattan District Attorney and they determined that there was no criminal conduct. The NYPD is conducting an internal review of the incident, as is the case whenever a prisoner is injured while in custody."
However, surveillance camera video shows an undercover NYPD officer tackle Lopez down steps and slam him into the sidewalk at the entrance to his apartment building. He did not fall down steps and he does not appear to be attempting to flee in the video. The suddenness and force behind the officer's takedown knocked him out cold.
The suit, for unspecified damages, says cops didn’t immediately call for medical attention even though Lopez was unconscious. He later underwent emergency life-saving surgery to remove part of his skull, according to court papers.
Lopez claims he suffered permanent head injuries in the August 16, 2016, incident in Chelsea and spent days in the hospital -- near death. He said police used excessive force in his arrest.
"I remember waking up in the hospital," Lopez said.
He suffered brain damage and now struggles to perform basic functions like bending over and looking at bright lights, Uzoh said.
Reporter: "You held the door for them?"
Lopez: "Yes, and after that, lights out."
Lopez was 18 years old at the time, and said he doesn't remember anything about the arrest. He was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency brain surgery, which required the removal of part of his skull.
"I prayed basically 12, almost 24 hours. I did not leave my son's sight," said Lopez's mother, Enid Mora.
For a time, he was handcuffed to his hospital bed and arraigned there, charged with selling marijuana and resisting arrest.
"They had nothing on me," Lopez said. "When they injured me all I had was my wallet and my cellphone."
Weeks later, the surveillance video -- which showed no resistance -- surfaced and suddenly the charges were dropped.
"We provided the video to the DA's office and that's when the DA, after reviewing the video, eventually agreed that Mr. Lopez did not do anything wrong and dismissed the charges," said Ugo Uzoh, Lopez's attorney.
Lopez spent weeks recovering. His plans to enter college as a freshman have been put off. He is no longer able to play basketball. An indentation in his head is a permanent reminder of his encounter with the NYPD.
Reporter: "Has this changed your life, do you think?"
Lopez: "Physically, yes. I love playing basketball and I couldn't play now, I can't play, a risk, a basketball to the head could kill me. And I love drawing -- me keeping my head down too long to draw starts to give me a headache."
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 02:55AM 
