From [HERE] The family of a 20-year-old Vietnamese man shot dead by police in June is suing King County, the county Sheriff's Office and Sheriff John Urquhart alleging wrongful death and civil rights violations.
They're seeking $20 million in damages.
At a news conference Thursday, Tommy Le's family wept as one of their attorneys, Jeffery Campiche, said that the King County Medical Examiner's report shows Le died from two shots to the back. He was also shot in the back of one hand.
Campiche said that conflicts with police reports that Le was shot in self-defense after advancing on two deputies with a pen.
“If [Le] was charging the police officer who shot him, he would have been shot in the chest," Campiche said. "If he was charging other people, and the policeman discharged six bullets, three of which hit him, the other bullets would’ve hit the people he was charging. He wasn’t charging anybody."
Through a Vietnamese interpreter, Le’s mother, Dieu Ho, said learning her son was shot in the back makes her grief "even more painful."
The Sheriff’s Office said that before Le was shot, 911 calls reported that he was trying to stab strangers with a knife, yelling, "I am the killer," and "I am the creator."
Police found no knife at the scene but say they found a pen. There were no drugs in Le’s body at his autopsy, and his family says he had no history of mental illness.
His aunt, Xuyen Le, says the family, all Vietnamese refugees, suspects racial bias.
"The deputy who shot Tommy was not Asian. Tommy’s Asian. If Tommy was a different color, would that deputy have fired the shot?" Le asked.
King County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Cindi West issued a written statement in lieu of an interview, which said her office expects that there will be an inquest "to reveal all aspects of the case."
The 4th Amendment Does Not Protect Black People. From [HERE] A 23-year-old Black woman filed an excessive force lawsuit Monday against three Aurora officers.
OyZhana Williams alleges Aurora Police Sergeant Michal Hawkins, and officers Jordan Odneal and Jose Ortiz physically assaulted her and made up a false charge against her during a 2015 arrest.
The civil rights lawsuit, filed by Williams’ attorneys in federal court, alleges the Aurora officers choked her and slammed her against the pavement during a scuffle outside the emergency room at the University of Colorado Hospital. The suit also alleges that the plaintiff was wrongfully detained for several days following the arrest.
A hospital surveillance camera captured the arrest, and the video was released Tuesday by Williams’s attorney, Adam Frank. The Aurora Police Department said it was not aware of the excessive force complaint until the lawsuit was filed.
According to the lawsuit, the incident began after Williams’ boyfriend, Blake Newton, was shot in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2015. Williams took Newton in her car to the hospital’s ER, where she was met by the Aurora officers named in the suit.
The officers, tasked with investigating the shooting, told Williams that her car would be towed so it could be searched and examined, the lawsuit says. Williams was initially cooperative with the investigation until Sgt. Hawkins demanded Williams “give him the keys to the car,” which police had no legal claim to seize, the suit alleges. While the vehicle the shooting victim was transported in might be considered a secondary crime scene, which police had the right to seize, the keys were not considered evidence, the lawsuit contends. [wha? It was her car, not his. She was not charged with involvement in a crime with the boyfriend? This statement by "her advocate" here only would make legal sense if the boyfriend used the car to commit a crime. Driving someone, including a person suspected of a crime to a hospital does not provide cops a 4th Amendment basis to seize & search. She withdrew her consent to search and cops had no warrant.]
From [HERE] A Black woman who claims white Rochester cops unlawfully arrested her in a takedown captured on video is now suing the police department.
Lentorya Parker says she was violently thrown to the ground and falsely arrested while trying to pick her daughter up from daycare on Hollenbeck Street last September. Parker says she was caught in the cross hairs of a drug raid. She says she's ready to take her case to federal court and go to trial if need be, to prove a point.
Video, which outraged many, was captured on blue light cameras, on the body cameras of the officers arresting her and on a cell phone [above].
"I couldn't move," Parker told 13WHAM News. "When they tackled me to the ground, my whole body collapsed and my daughter was screaming for me."
Lentorya Parker and her lawyer, Charles Burkwit, are filing suit, claiming excessive force, battery and assault.
Last September, Rochester Police Officers arrested Parker, detained her and took her to jail overnight. A city court judge, however, just dismissed all criminal charges RPD filed against her.
Burkwit says what happened to Ms. Parker makes no sense.
"It's just a sad story: A mother picking her daughter up from daycare and getting assaulted by the police and arrested for no reason," Burkwit said.
Parker claims officers gave her six-year-old daughter a teddy bear during the arrest and said, "Sorry your mom is an animal."
The Rochester Police Department said Wednesday that they can't comment on pending litigation. However, last year, police union president Mike Mazzeo said the video didn't show the whole picture.
“When he [the officer] attempted to detain her, between what she was saying and her actions, that officer was struck,” said Mazzeo. “Nobody saw that. You can't see that from that video footage.”
Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said last September that an internal investigation would be conducted.
"Certain segments of the community have raised concern about this event, and they'll be tested in court," Chief Michael Ciminelli said.
Burkwit said a judge ruled in Ms. Parker's favor.
"Police lacked probable cause to charge Ms. Parker with any crimes noted," Burkwit continued.
At about 1:23 cop covers the lens. From [HERE] No charges will be filed against a D.C. police officer who fatally shot a man while responding to a domestic incident last Christmas morning.
Gerald Hall, 29, was shot and killed on the threshold of his girlfriend’s house on the 3200 block of Walnut Street in Northeast, shortly before noon Dec. 25.
A statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said that Hall and his girlfriend got into an argument, and that Hall turned on all the burners on the gas stove and lit a paper towel on fire. Police responded to a 911 call from a neighbor who said “my neighbor’s getting beat up over there.”
When officers got there, the woman, who they said wasn’t hurt, said no physical fight had happened, and that her sister was coming to take her away. The officers left.
The officers were called back a little later, after the sister told 911 that Hall had locked her out and his girlfriend in. Shortly after the police got there, the statement said, the officers looked through the front door and saw Hall with a knife. The officers told Hall to put the knife down; Hall pushed his girlfriend out the front door. The statement said she had a cut on her arm.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and Hall stood on the threshold, behind his girlfriend. The police cliam he had a knife in his right hand. However, when the cops approached a woman says "the knife is right here, I got the knife." A few seconds later she says "he doesn't have a knife." Within seconds later the cops shot him to death. On video it is not clear what Hall was doing or not doing.
As his dead body lays collapsed on the floor no knife is visible. At about 1:25 a cop purposefully & briefly covers the lens of his body camera. Thereafter the knife is apparently found. Why did the cop do this? The family should independently investigate the time stamps in the video and do a frame by frame analysis to make sure it has not been edited or remixed Baltimore cop style.
An officer shot Hall four times; he died at a hospital later.
From [HERE] City cops are caught on tape cavalierly joking about employing excessive force during arrests and making fun of a gunshot victim who was in the hospital clinging to life after being blasted in the head.
All of it was captured by a body camera worn by supervising Trenton Police Sgt. Charles Lamin, who at one point told him, “I’m on camera.” City police officer Tim Miller was undeterred, offering up advice to a less-experienced cop about how to successfully effectuate arrests. [MORE]
Dr. Blynd states that, 'Warning: your loco police are armed, costumed and extremely dangerous. They don't work for us and we can't fire them, becaue they neither have nor hold any "office" therefore don't take any oath of office. There is no office, and consequently, there are no officers. Police are paramilitary professionals at making citizens arrests. People who are awake see cops as mercenary security guards that remind us daily, through acts of force, that we are simultaneously both enemies and slaves of the Corporate state - colonized, surveilledand patrolled by the desensitized and lobotomized drones of the colonizers.' [MORE]
From [HERE] The tax payer price paid to settle a 2015 police stun-gun and beating death case that left an unarmed, restrained Black man dead: $750,000. [The white "public servants" won't have to pay a penny.]
Calvon “Andre” Reid died Feb. 24, 2015, two days after at least three white Coconut Creek police officers stunned him 10 times within 10 minutes with a 50,000-volt Tasers, according to the police Taser data. Two days later he died. The Police Department at first refused to acknowledge the incident ever happened. But within weeks Police Chief Michael Mann was forced to resign and three of the four officers under investigation were taken off road patrol. [MORE] All the cops and the chief are white.
Reid's family, which filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the police and the city, agreed to settle the case in May for $750,000. The previously undisclosed sum was revealed in city records Thursday after it was approved by the courts.
The case was scheduled for federal court in late December in Miami. Coconut Creek Police Chief Butch Arenal said at the time of settlement that the agency’s insurance company required the case be settled instead of going to trial. [Killer cops had no case and would be in prison for murder in an actual, real system of justice - the opposite of racism/white supremacy.]
The police's own probe or investigation of itself uncovered "absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing" according to the lawyer representing the officers. [MORE]
"Baby They're Gonna Kill Me." Reid’s encounter with police happened in the gated Wynmoor Village. Reid was under the influence of a combination of the street-drug flakka, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol, prosecutors said. [Why would journalists first mention facts from a prosecutor in a civil case? Because they are white. Racists believe that if Blacks or Latinos are high then anything that cops do to them is lawful. To racists, your rights don't exist when you're high because you're non-white. At any rate, cops could only guess about Reid's mental state when they encountered him in real time, on the street - tests were done after the fact in a lab. Reid's ability to recall what happened (b/c of impairment) might be relevant in a criminal assault case with no witnesses but he is dead now and this was a civil case with credible eyewitnesses.]
The Reid family’s attorney Jack Scarola says he suspects that because Reid was having a “severe drug reaction,” he scaled the fence at Wynmoor to seek help. When he climbed the fence, he injured himself, getting bloodied, Scarola said. “All the evidence suggests that’s what was going on,” he said. “It’s the best way to put the available pieces of the puzzle together.”
When paramedics arrived to the scene, they called police.[What racists really want to know is 'why was a Black man in this exclusive, gated white community in the first place?' Such persons are guilty by their mere existence. To the racist, there is no innocent Black male, just Black male criminals who have not yet been detected, apprehended or convicted. [MORE] Like the police chief says in the above video, "If you see any suspicious persons in your neighborhood please don't hesitate to call, we'll check it out." To racists, persons belonging to a different species [all non-whites] are inherently suspicious]
Because Reid had blood on him, the officers didn't know if he had committed a crime, and didn't want to leave based on his condition and appearance, officers told investigators.[Right, because if a Black person is bleeding then he must have committed a crime - right? Only if you believe in white supremacy/racism would this make sense to you! The white journalist [in photo] is oblivious to her own mental prison.]
The situation escalated quickly with stun guns being fired and Reid fighting back. [what was the 4th Amendment basis for cops to detain him? If he was under arrest then what was the crime?]Witnesses said they saw Reid being beaten. [regardless, like white jurors, white journalists believe almost anything white cops tell them - even though the witnesses were white. What's missing here are the following facts:
1) Wendy Ritter, a witness to the fatal encounter said she was home with her boyfriend, Marc Lamorte, that night. She was in the bathroom, he was in the kitchen. He ran out calling: "Somebody's being beaten," she recounted
"It was screaming, screaming like somebody was being beat," Lamorte said.
Ritter said they went outside and an officer asked if she knew Reid. Ritter said Reid was on his stomach on the ground, hands shackled behind his back. He looked at her and twice said, "They're gonna kill me!"
She and her boyfriend were ordered away. After they got upstairs, Lamorte again looked out on the walkway. "One of the cops says something to him and socks him," he said. "He hit him. Just bam. This guy was no threat to anybody, he was on the ground. He was tied. There's something wrong here."
2) Wynmoor resident Perry Weiss called 911 for an ambulance.
Weiss told the Sun Sentinel he was arriving home from a friend's house when Reid approached him in the parking lot with a torn shirt and torn pants. He was holding his right side.
"He came over to me and asked me, 'Will you take me to the hospital?'" Weiss recalled. Uneasy, Weiss declined. "He said, 'Okay, will you call 911 for me?' I said, 'Certainly, no problem.'"
Weiss called for help on his cell phone and assured Reid an ambulance was on its way. He didn't ask Reid how he got hurt or why he was in Wynmoor.
"He said to me, 'Will you stay with me?' I said, 'No, I can't, somebody's waiting for me,'" Weiss recalled.
Weiss said he left him in the parking lot, and didn't see the subsequent encounter with police. [how white folks do]
3) In another eyewitness account, Bonnie Eshleman said four officers surrounded Reid and one pinned him to the ground, threatening to break his arm. Another hit him with something, possibly a stick or baton.
She testified in a sworn affidavit that he was calling out, "Baby, baby, baby, help, they're gonna kill me!" She said an unidentified woman stood about 25 yards away, watching. She also heard him scream, "I can't breathe!"
Eshleman said two officers lifted Reid up on his feet. "He took a few steps forward in what appeared to be an attempt to get away from these officers," she said. Then, she said, two officers standing 10 feet away simultaneously shot him with stun guns. The other two officers threw him face down onto the grass and he again hollered, "I can't breathe!"
Eshleman said he stopped moving. One of the officers asked another, "Is he breathing?" They rolled him on his back. One officer called a paramedic who performed CPR. Reid did not respond, she said.
"After the paramedics stopped performing CPR on Mr. Reid they displayed no urgency transferring him to a gurney and they casually rolled him away to their ambulance," she said. "When they departed the scene, they slowly drove away and didn't turn on their flashing overhead lights."
She disputes police claims that Reid was "aggressive." She said he was not disrespectful, and it was police who were physically and verbally aggressive. "It appeared Mr. Reid just wanted to be left alone," she said.
Weiss supported that account. "He was calm, he was pleasant, he didn't argue," he said. "He wasn't looking to do any harm to me, he needed help. He didn't get wild or noisy.
"Maybe I should have stayed with him," Weiss said. "Hindsight is easier then foresight." Probably would have stayed for a white man? Racism is a virus in the mind.]
From [HERE] and [MORE] A white judge is set to soon decide the fate of a former St. Louis police officer accused of intentionally killing a 24-year-old black man, Anthony Lamar Smith and planting a gun as evidence to justify the fatal shooting.
The ex-officer, Jason Stockley, 36, is facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith in an on-duty shooting in December 2011. Stockley left the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in August 2013. The St. Louis police board settled a wrongful death suit with Smith’s survivors for $900,000 later that year.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department this week surrounded the courthouse and police headquarters with barricades in anticipation of protests, should Stockley be acquitted.
The defendant waived his right to a jury trial, so St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson is weighing the evidence. Wilson [in photo] is also white.
“This is not an easy case,” Wilson wrote in an order granting the defense request to waive the jury trial. “Whatever the ultimate outcome, it will likely be melancholy.”
Stockley, who testified on his own behalf, has pleaded not guilty. He has said he acted in self-defense when he fired at Smith, believing the man was reaching for a gun in his car after a high-speed police chase following a suspected drug deal.
“The issues in this case are factual in nature: (W)as the shooting of Anthony Smith premeditated murder or did Jason Stockley act in lawful self-defense?” Assistant Circuit Attorney Aaron Levinson said in a motion opposing the request for a bench trial.
Dramatic footage — captured on the police vehicle dashcam, an internal vehicle camera and cell phone video of the shooting’s aftermath — has played a key role in the trial that began August 1 and ended a week later, according to CNN affiliate KMOV.
In its opening statement, the prosecution said the officer fired “a kill shot” 6 inches from Smith’s body, KMOV reported. Prosecutors accused Stockley of planting a silver revolver after the shooting, according to the station.
Video from the police vehicle’s in-car camera reportedly shows Stockley taking off his gloves before rummaging through a bag in the police vehicle.
The cellphone video — on which both men’s voices can be heard — shows key movements of police at the scene, including Stockley as he walks from Smith’s car and returns to the police SUV, where he leans into the back door. Then he goes back to Smith’s car and, immediately after the body is pulled out, climbs into the driver’s seat and stays there about 30 seconds. The view does not show the inside of the car.
Some believe that provided an opportunity for Stockley to retrieve and plant the weapon.
Stockley has said he started to get a “clot pack” from the police vehicle to treat Smith’s wounds but then realized it was futile.
Prosecutors said that’s when Stockley retrieved the gun, KMOV reports, but it’s impossible to tell from video footage. Lab analysis of the gun showed only Stockley’s DNA on it, according to the criminal complaint.
His attorneys have said the officer handled the gun while recovering and unloading it.
Prior to trial, an unnamed witness said the officer tried to open Smith’s door at least twice, but couldn’t, and then backed up slightly and started firing into the vehicle. [MORE]
“He didn’t even give that man a chance,” he said. “There were no words, he just shot into the car.”
From [HERE] The Norfolk Police Department “recklessly failed” to control a white officer who had 11 excessive force reports in 14 months before he killed a mentally ill man armed with a knife, the dead man’s relatives said in their wrongful-death lawsuit.
Michael Edington Jr. had a “substantial history” of using excessive force on people in his nearly three years with the police department, including two in the week and a half before he shot dead 35-year-old David Latham, who had a history of mental illness, according to the suit.
Latham’s relatives are suing Edington and the city for $25 million. A jury last year found Edington not guilty of manslaughter in the case.
After the trial, Edington said he wanted to keep working as a Norfolk police officer. He’s still on administrative duty, assigned to the department’s central records division, police spokeswoman Cpl. Melinda Wray said.
Audrey Latham, David’s mother, called police to her home on June 6, 2014, after her son, who had a long history of mental illness, grabbed a knife during a fight with his brother.
Police repeatedly yelled at Latham to drop the weapon. Officer Dennis Conley testified he heard Latham say, “I’m not going to drop this, so do what you’ve got to do.”
Conley and Officer Matthew Reichert testified they never saw Latham take a step, raise the knife or otherwise threaten anyone.
Edington testified he saw Latham take a small “sidestep,” which the officer took as a cue that Latham was about to charge. Edington fired five times, then followed as Latham ran into the house. The officer fired once more inside, saying later he was concerned Latham could hurt someone if he got out of sight.
Police later found the knife on the front porch.
At trial last year, Norfolk prosecutors argued Edington made up the sidestep to justify his actions, pointing out that he didn’t mention it to detectives who interviewed him shortly after the shooting. In other words he is a liar.
The Latham family’s lawsuit accuses Edington of excessive force, negligence and battery. It also argues the city is responsible for violating Latham’s civil rights because Norfolk police didn’t adequately train officers on dealing with mentally ill people. The city didn’t form a crisis intervention team until the week after Latham died, the lawsuit says.
From [HERE] Latino Chicago police Officer Marco Proano claimed he was just doing his job when he fired 16 shots at a stolen car filled with teenagers on the South Side, wounding two.
But a federal jury on Monday decided that the shooting — captured on a police dashboard camera video — wasn't the action of a cop but a criminal.
In an unprecedented verdict, the jury deliberated about four hours before convicting Proano of two felony counts of using excessive force in violating the victims' civil rights. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on each count but probably will get far less because he has no prior criminal history.
The 11-year Chicago police veteran, dressed in a dark gray suit and glasses, kept his hands clasped in front of him on the defense table and showed no emotion as the verdict was announced in U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman's hushed courtroom.
Feinerman scheduled sentencing for Nov. 20. But federal prosecutors indicated that next week they will seek to detain Proano as a danger to the community.
Proano is the first Chicago police officer in memory to be convicted in federal court of criminal charges stemming from an on-duty shooting. He is Latino [that's why]. He also was the first officer to go to trial in any shooting case since the court-ordered release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in November 2015 sparked protests, political turmoil and promises of systemic change from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Prosecutors said the dash-cam video of the shooting — which unfolded in about nine seconds — showed Proano violated all of the training he received at the Police Academy, including to never fire into a crowd, fire only if you can clearly see your target and stop shooting once the threat has been eliminated.
The video — played several times for jurors, including in slow motion — showed Proano walking quickly toward the stolen Toyota within seconds of arriving at the scene while he held his gun pointed sideways in his left hand. Proano can be seen backing away briefly as the car went in reverse, away from the officer. He then raised his gun with both hands and opened fire as he walked toward the car, continuing to fire even after the car had rolled into a light pole and stopped.
"Marco Proano drew first, shot next and then he tried to justify it later," Assistant U.S. Atty. Erika Csicsila said in her closing argument Monday. "He came out of his car like a cowboy. He pulled his gun out, held it to one side and aimed it at those kids to send a message and to show who was in charge."
Last week, jurors heard testimony from two police training officers that cops are taught to shoot only as a last resort against a deadly threat and to reassess the danger every two or three shots before continuing to fire.
From [HERE] and [HERE] The Chicago City Council has agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a Latino man who was severely injured when a white police officer jolted him with a Taser and he fell and hit his head on the pavement, court records show.
Lopez's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, said he was not combative before he was shocked and crashed to the pavement. Officers alleged that he took a swing at them before Officer Stevan Vidljinovic tased him, according to court records.
Sandra Cardiel sued Chicago police officers on behalf of her husband, Jose Lopez, in Federal Court. Her husband was walking down a sidewalk on the South Side at around 3 a.m. on July 22, 2011 when he began feeling chest pains and his friend called 911 to ask for an ambulance.
Chicago police officers also went in response to the emergency dispatch. At least three or four squad cars of the Chicago Police Department arrived on the scene before or simultaneous with the arrival of the Chicago Fire Department ambulance. ...
When the Chicago police officers ordered plaintiff to stop and come to them, Lopez told them he did not want their help and said he was just fine.
As the Chicago police officers continued to order Lopez to come to them, he was unarmed and non-combative, but told the police that he did not want their assistance.
He disregarded their order, turned, continued to retreat in a direction away from them, and started walking toward his car. As is their want, custom, and practice to so do, when a citizen of the community refuses an order to stop and continues to walk away, the cops draw and use their Taser guns to force compliance.
Ms. Cardiel says there were "more than an ample number" of police officers and firefighters there to seize and restrain her husband, if need be, without Tasering him. In fact, she says, he was "surrounded" by cops and firemen.
But "Because (Lopez) had not heeded their order to stop and come to them, the Cops drew their Taser guns, and without any right or reason to so do, immediately Tased Lopez, sending an electric shock through Lopez's body strong enough to cause him to crash violently to the pavement, crack open his head, and cry out with horrible sounds of pain.
The Chicago police officers immediately rushed him, violently turned him facedown on the sidewalk, and, without any right to so do, handcuffed him behind his back, the complaint states.
Whereupon, Cardiel says, "the Chicago police officers denied that they had done anything wrong to anyone who would listen, including the ambulance paramedics and the bystanders who gathered at the scene."
Cardiel says: Since moments after Tasing Lopez was rendered unconscious and remained in a coma for at least a year.
Upon arrival at Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Room, Lopez was found to have suffered a traumatic brain injury with subdural hematoma as well as a left temporal lobe contusion.
After being evaluated by neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Hospital, plaintiff underwent a subdural hematoma evacuation and craniotomy and right temporal lobectomy."
Lopez's lawsuit went to trial in February and lasted more than two weeks. A jury found that Vidljinovic used excessive force and unlawfully seized Lopez. Jurors determined the evidence didn't show Lopez swung at police. Before jurors could determine damages, the parties reached a settlement, court records show.
Sunday, September 10, 2017 at 02:58AM 
The Sheriff’s Office said that before Le was shot, 911 calls reported that he was trying to stab strangers with a knife, yelling, "I am the killer," and "I am the creator."
