San Bernardino County Deputy that Killed Unarmed Latino Soldier Quits Job

 
The San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy who was videotaped shooting an unarmed airman after a brief chase is no longer with the department. Ivory J. Webb Jr.'s employment ended April 13, said Cindy Beavers, a department spokeswoman. Beavers said state law prohibits her from saying whether Webb was fired or left voluntarily. Webb, a 10-year veteran, was charged with attempted voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of Senior Airman Elio Carrion on Jan. 29. Webb shot Carrion after a short high-speed chase through Chino. Carrion, who survived, was a passenger. On the video, it appeared that Webb instructed Carrion to stand up after ordering him to the ground. Webb then shot Carrion three times.  Webb was placed on paid administrative leave after the shooting. It was the first time a peace officer in San Bernardino County was criminally charged for an on-duty shooting. The FBI is also investigating. Webb told a sheriff's sergeant and a Chino police officer at the scene of the shooting that he opened fire because Carrion tried to charge at him, according to an internal report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Detectives questioned Webb four days later, and he said he shot Carrion because he believed Carrion was reaching for a gun, the report says. [MORE]

Franklin County Deputy Cleared in Shooting Death Of Somali Man: Witnesses Claim Abdi was Unarmed

Franklin County grand jury announced Friday that a sheriff's deputy would not face criminal charges for killing a mentally ill man.Nasir Abdi was shot and killed by Deputy Jason Evans in December 2005 at an apartment complex after deputies had a court order to take Abdi to Netcare. Law enforcement said Abdi had a knife and attempted to use it."He did not have a knife in his hand," said Abdi family attorney Fred Gittes. "Neither witness saw him make any move in any way to attack an officer."Two civilian witnesses told the grand jury that Abdi had no weapon and that Evans shot him after deputies Maced Abdi and Abdi moved to cover his eyes."If you are Deputy Evans and a subject was attempting to stab a fellow officer, what do they expect us to do -- throw jelly beans at the person?" asked Ohio Fraternal of Police vice president Keith Fangman. Attorneys for Abdi's family said that they would consider filing a federal civil rights case."What can you do? This is the system, and we will work with the system and we feel, ultimately, we will prevail," said Somali community elder Abdi Karim Omar. [MORE] and [MORE]

Spartanburg Deputy Shoots Black Man Multiple Times: Officer Claims Self Defense

 
Jennings Challenges the Police to Show the Video tape
The Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office initially told usPaul Jennings tried to run over a deputy-- and that's when the deputy opened fire. But the driver says it didn't happen that way and is banking on dash-cam video to prove his case. Shot up--with bullet holes in his arms and a bullet lodged in his chest, Paul Jennings waited nearly 24 hours before checking himself in at a hospital. Partly, he says, because we didn't hear his side of the story. He said, "that’s right, I'm bleeding, I was upset. I'm not going to say I was perfect in the situation but to be shot at like a dog, now that was wrong." On Thursday night, Sheriff's Deputies tell us Jennings continued driving through a safety checkpoint-- triggering a small chase that ended in gunfire and could have ended in death. Sheriff Chuch Wright/Spartanburg County: "State law says when a deputy motions for you to stop, you stop, whether you're at a checkpoint or not. And that was happening and he didn't stop." Jennings admits he should have stopped sooner, once the blue lights were on, but he says the Sheriff's Office should admit that he also didn't shift his car out of park until the deputy started shooting at him. Jennings: "And then he went to the windshield with the gun. I said ok.....then 'bang', 'bang', 'bang'. I backed up. That’s when I left and when I put my hand on at the switch. Then he shot at me 3 times...the only reason I backed up and got away was when I got shot. They will not show that tape; the tape in the patrol car." So far, no charges have been filed against Jennings. [MORE]

Mexican Immigrant Fleeing Hillsborough County Deputy Shot Dead

The wife of the man shot to death last Friday by a Hillsborough County deputy refuses to believe he tried to attack the officer. At their Ruskin home Saturday, April Lopez said her husband, whom she called Herman, was an illegal Mexican immigrant who became terrified of being deported after a deputy caught him speeding through a Wimauma neighborhood. The 31-year-old driver led deputies on a two-mile pursuit before crashing his pickup into two patrol cars. Saturday morning, sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway released the driver's name as Sergio Lopez-Flores. Callaway said Lopez-Flores had a small amount of marijuana with him when he sped past a Hillsborough County deputy trying to wave him down and later pulled a knife on Deputy Daryl Bowden before the officer shot him at least twice. After the crash, Callaway said, Lopez-Flores climbed out of his overturned truck in the median of U.S. 301 north of Highway 674 and continued to approach Bowden with the knife before he was shot. Lopez-Flores was pronounced dead at Tampa General Hospital. An autopsy was scheduled for Saturday. It could take weeks for results to be released. April Lopez, 33, married her husband just two days before the shooting. They have a 19-month-old daughter. [MORE]

N.J. Indian tribe decries deadly police shooting

The gathering started, as it does each spring, with members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian tribe meeting for a cookout and a day in the woods, celebrating the warm weather and the beauty of the Earth. It ended with one of the tribe members mortally wounded, shot three times by a state park police officer who had told the Indians they were not allowed to ride their all-terrain vehicles in the area. The death 10 days later of Emil Mann, 45, of Monroe, N.Y., has tensions running high, with the tribe decrying years of bias, state officials pleading for calm and a grand jury investigating whether the shooting of the unarmed man was justified. “It's murder,” said Rodney Van Dunk, a cousin of the tribal chief. “Even a bear doesn't get shot three times.” The facts of the April 1 shooting on Stag Hill, 27 miles northwest of Manhattan, are in dispute. Authorities contend that four park police officers were patrolling an area near the Ramapo Mountain State Forest when one of them saw Otis Mann, a cousin of the dead man, riding an ATV and asked him to stop because the vehicles were not permitted on state parkland. Otis Mann rode away from the officer. About 20 minutes later, officials say, Lt. Kelly Gottheiner saw Otis Mann and said she planned to arrest him, but he resisted and tried to grab her baton. A second officer handcuffed him. The Ramapoughs give a starkly different version, saying that police slapped and used chemical spray on Otis Mann's 14-year-old daughter during the dispute about the ATV. They also say that Emil Mann approached the officers as a peacemaker, with his hands in the air, when he was shot. Emil Mann “was just trying to calm things down.” While tribal leaders said they were satisfied with the state's willingness to investigate, they said the killing was the culmination of decades of anti-tribe bias from the government and neighbors alike. [MORE]

New Jersey Governor to Meet with Indian Tribe tp Discuss Police Killing
Gov. Jon S. Corzine, state Attorney General Zulima Farber and other officials were to meet this evening with leaders of a north Jersey Indian tribe to try to ease tensions caused by the fatal shooting of a tribe member by a park police officer. The officials will meet privately with leaders of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation to discuss the April 1 shooting. No charges have been filed against Walder, who is claiming self-defense. A grand jury will review the shooting. Mann, 45, died April 10. Anthony Coley, a Corzine spokesman, called the meeting "an important dialogue with leaders of an important community.'' [MORE]

Stockton Officer Cleared in Fatal Shooting of Latino Man with a Skateboard in his Hand

A Stockton police officer was justified when he shot and killed a man who threatened him with a wooden stake on the Cesar Chavez High School campus late last year, the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office said Thursday. Prosecutors found that Gustavo Peña Izaguirre's methamphetamine use - not the 26-year-old Mexican immigrant's inability to understand commands officers shouted in English - led to the shooting. "He was acting bizarre. He wasn't rational," said Deputy District Attorney Seth Hoyt, who reviewed the case. "At some point, he raises a stake and a broken skateboard and comes at the officers." Sgt. Kenneth Brown was left with no choice but to fire two rounds at Peña, Hoyt said.  An attorney for Peña's family is still considering filing a lawsuit seeking at least $25,000 for what he called Peña's "unlawful" killing. The confrontation began on the morning of Nov. 12 when a Stockton Unified School District officer found Peña on campus with a broken-down car. Officers tried to communicate with Peña through the afternoon, urging him to leave campus. Those officers who didn'tspeak Spanish used hand signals with Peña. At one point, an officer put Peña on the phone with a Spanish-speaking officer. Peña continued to resist officers and grew combative, the report said. A school police officer then sprayed Peña with a chemical agent when he wielded a broken skateboard and the stake at officers. Brown arrived and tried to stop Peña with a stun gun. That too didn't deter Peña, who threatened Brown with the stake. From a distance of about 12 feet, Brown fired at Peña, the report said. At 7:25 p.m., doctors pronounced him dead. Gessell said witnesses told him a different version of the shooting.[more]

Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Dismissing Case of Black Man Killed by Knoxville Police

•  Mother says son holding cell phone, not gun, when KPD officer shot him [MORE]
  

A state appellate court has upheld a ruling clearing two Knoxville Police Department officers of claims of negligence in the controversial shooting death of a teenager. The state Court of Appeals ruled in an opinion released this week that KPD officers Jason Keck and David Ogle were not at fault in the May 2003 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Sean Gillispie. Keck shot Gillispie once in the chest after he saw what the officer testified was a gun in the teenager's hand. Gillispie was in the back of a car parked at the Weigel's convenience store on Summit Hill Drive, where the officers had been sent to handle a complaint by store employees of a loud crowd in the parking lot. Gillispie's mother, Tanya Gillispie, filed a lawsuit in Knox County Circuit Court alleging that what Keck believed was a gun was actually a cell phone. She blamed Ogle for failing to properly communicate with Keck in the moments before the shooting. Testimony at a hearing in the lawsuit last year showed that Ogle saw a gun on the back seat where Gillispie was seated. Ogle testified that Gillispie's hand was on top of the weapon. Keck testified that Gillispie lowered his hands and then pointed the gun at the officer. When the teenager refused Keck's demand to disarm, Keck testified that he fired one shot, which struck Gillispie in the chest. Ogle pulled Gillispie from the car and onto the pavement, where he died. The gun was found on the back seat. There was no blood on it. A bloody cell phone was later discovered inside a bag of clothing removed from the teenager's body at the morgue. Judge Dale Workman ruled Keck's testimony was unequivocal and undisputed - it was a gun and not a cell phone in Gillispie's hand. The officer's use of deadly force was, therefore, justified, the judge opined. The court also turned aside Tanya Gillispie's contention that Workman, whose son is a deputy with the Knox County Sheriff's Office, should have bowed out of the case. [MORE]

Jail Guard Shoots Escaping Hawaiian Man in the Back

A jail guard who shot and killed an escaping prisoner April 11 in downtown Hilo told a 911 operator that the prisoner "used bodily harm" against him before the shooting, according to tapes from Hawaii County Police and Fire departments. The guard, whose name has not been released, shot Thane K. Leialoha, 28, after Leialoha got out of handcuffs and ran across busy Haili Street in midafternoon. The tapes were released yesterday at the request of news media. "Why did you shoot him?" a fire dispatcher asked the guard moments after the shooting. "He escaped from my van," the guard answered. "He used bodily harm to push me away." His language indicated he was angry. "The f-- wen' push me down, so I f--" His voice halted, then he resumed. "I don't know what he had in his hand," he said. But he later told the dispatcher that he knew Leialoha was unarmed. "OK, did he have a weapon?" she asked him. "No, he didn't have a weapon," the guard replied. "But he broke out of the van, he got out of his restraints and then he crawled under the van, and when I tried to grab him, he (inaudible), he hit me and I fell to the ground, and he was running away and I shot him." Police and the state Department of Public Safety, which employs the guard, are continuing investigations to determine whether the shooting was justified. [MORE]

LAPD Commission Refuses to Release Name of Police Officers who Killed Devin Brown

The Police Commission unanimously rejected a Public Records Act request Tuesday to release a pair of reports that name the officer who fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown last year. However, in an attempt at a compromise, the commission also voted 5-0 to direct the Los Angeles Police Department to issue news releases naming officers involved in all categorical use-of-force incidents, which includes shootings, head strikes or any other confrontations that could lead to death or injury."This clearly is a very difficult, challenging matter because we have two major competing interests," Commission President John Mack said. "On the one hand we have the public's right to know -- and on the other hand, we also want to protect the rights of the officers involved in these types of incidents. It's a collision course."Los Angeles Times reporters Scott Glover and Matt Lait submitted a records request to the commission Feb. 15, asking for two documents that would name the officer who fatally shot Devin Brown after a short pursuit in south Los Angeles. One document was a report written by Police Chief William Bratton, while the other was the LAPD's officer-involved-shooting evaluation of the incident.The commission adopted a policy two months ago to withhold the names of officers involved in shootings and other uses of force. The move was made so the commission could post details of use-of-force incidents without compromising the officer's identity. Commissioners Andrea Ordin and Anthony Pacheco said they studied the matter with city lawyers and others familiar with California Public Records laws and said they considered the documents requested by The Times as personnel records, because they comment on the officer's actions. Times attorney Susan Seager argued that neither document requested by the newspaper should be considered part of a personnel file, since medical information, the officer's home address or other personal items are not included in the paperwork. Ordin and Pacheco noted that officers are usually named in press releases issued immediately following officer-involved shootings and "other newsworthy categorical use of force incidents.""If you do the research, the names are already out there," Ordin said. [MORE]

Rampart Case Not Closed Yet for LAPD

In the five years since the Rampart Division corruption scandal stunned the city and voided more than 100 criminal convictions, the Los Angeles Police Department has struggled to reform itself under a controversial court decree. Officers today face more rigorous training and supervision, confidential informants are monitored more closely, and use-of-force incidents are more thoroughly investigated. Yet, by its own admission, the department has fallen short in important areas. As a result, U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess is expected as early as May 15 to extend the five-year federal consent decree for at least two more years, a move that would not only embarrass city officials and LAPD brass but serve as a costly and continuing distraction. LAPD officials say the city has substantially complied with 149 of the 191 consent decree mandates agreed to under threat of a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice. In the Rampart scandal, members of the LAPD's Rampart Division anti-gang unit were accused of shooting and beating suspects, planting evidence and using confidential informants without registering them with the department, leaving their reliability unchecked. One officer, Rafael Perez, admitted that he and a partner obtained an assault rifle from an informant and shaved off the serial number before planting the weapon on a wounded man. In another case, officers were accused of providing crack cocaine to an informant in exchange for information. A review of cases handled by the rogue officers caused more than 100 criminal convictions to be overturned, and about a dozen LAPD officers resigned or were fired. The city also paid $70 million to settle lawsuits by more than 200 people, many of them suspected drug dealers and gang members who alleged that they were shot, beaten or framed. [MORE]