Jacksonville Officer gets No Additional jail time for Beating a Detained, Handcuffed Black Man with Radio

From [HERE] Disgraced Jacksonville police Sgt. Marc Garza has pleaded no contest to a felony charge that hebeat a handcuffed drug suspect with a police radio.

Monday's negotiated plea bargain called for a nine-month jail sentence, but it will align concurrently with thenine months Garza already is serving after being convicted of coaching a subordinate officer to write a bogus burglary report in August 2009. The initial setence started about two weeks ago on March 22.

Although that means no additional jail time for Garza, Monday's plea deal adds a two-year probation term and 100 hours of community service after Garza is released.

Garza was charged with beating drug suspect Somario Atkins, 25, in the head with a heavy, metal portable police radio after Atkins got into a scuffle with other officers in August 2009. Atkins already had been detained when Garza attacked him inside a squad car. 

Atkins was sitting handcuffed in the back of a police car when he was beaten in the head, causing a 2-inch laceration, Garza's arrest report said.

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New Orleans Police Officers Sentenced for "Barbaric Conduct" in Murder of Black Man after Katrina

From [HERE] NEW ORLEANS – A former New Orleans police officer was sentenced to more than 25 years in prison Thursday for shooting a man to death without justification after Hurricane Katrina, and his ex-colleague was given just over 17 years for burning the body.

The judge said he didn't believe former officer David Warren's testimony that Henry Glover, 31, posed a threat when he came to a strip mall less than a week after the August 2005 storm. Warren shot Glover to death and ex-officer Gregory McRae later burned his body in a car near a police station.

"Your conduct was barbaric," U.S. District Judge Lance Africk told McRae. "The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was made uglier by your disturbing actions. At a time when more was expected of you, you failed miserably." McRae could have received 50 years and Warren faced up to life in prison.

"You killed a man. Despite your tendentious arguments to the contrary, it was no mistake," Africk said.

The jury found that McRae, 49, drove Glover's body from the police compound to a nearby Mississippi River levee and set it on fire. The car belonged to one of the men who had driven Glover to the compound. McRae said he burned the vehicle because he was weary of seeing rotting corpses after the storm. Another officer, however, testified he saw McRae laughing after he set the fire

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