ACLU Accuses VA State Police of Destroying Homeless Encampment

RICHMOND, Va. -- The ACLU of Virginia has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the Virginia Department of Transportation seeking information about the destruction of an encampment of homeless men along an interstate highway.

Virginia State Police say the homeless men were given proper notice that they were trespassing on state-owned property and their belongings would be seized if they did not move.

According to the ACLU, a company under contract with VDOT destroyed a homeless encampment along Interstate 81 at Exit 315 near Winchester.  At least four homeless men had been using the property for months when road maintenance crews demolished the encampment.

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Video Shows Houston Police Beating Black Teen: Unarmed, Not Resisting Arrest

[see video HERE] Houston police officers beat, kick and stomp on a teen burglary suspect last year in a surveillance video that was released publicly Wednesday night.

The footage, which aired on KTRK-TV (Channel 13), shows Chad Holley, then 15, running away from police before he is clipped by a Houston Police Department cruiser as it hits a chain-link fence. The boy then falls to the ground, rolls on the grass, flips onto his stomach and clamps his hands behind his head. Within seconds, a half- dozen officers appear to attack him forcefully with their fists and feet. After another series of blows, a handcuffed Holley appears to lift himself up as he is led to lean over the back of a police car. The teen, then a sophomore at Elsik High School, was ultimately booked on a burglary charge.

The video was recorded by a surveillance camera around 4 p.m. on March 24, 2010, at Uncle Bob's Self-Storage at 8450 Cook near Beechnut. The footage offers more than one viewing angle and was forwarded to HPD and the district attorney by the business within a week of the incident.

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Family seeks $20M for Latino Man Shot in the Back of the Head by Santa Ana Police

In the lawsuit, attorneys for Ramirez's family say he was cooperating with police and was standing with his hands up when an officer approached him from behind and shot him in the back of his head.

The officers then "created a blatantly false story" that Ramirez had a knife, the suit says.

Dana Douglas, an attorney representing the family, said investigators hired by her law firm had spoken to a witness to the shooting, someone who lives in an apartment nearby, who said Ramirez had his hands up.

However, people in the neighborhood are afraid to speak up, and "we're not confident" that the witness will testify in court, said James Rumm, another attorney representing the family.

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Parents sue Winslow Police (PA) - Officers Beat Black Man to Death in front of Convenience Store

Winslow Officer Sean Richards, a 12-year veteran, was on his way into the Wawa for hot chocolate when he passed Briscoe, 36, and told him he could not remain in front of the business smoking a cigarette and drinking his soda.

Richards told authorities he heard Briscoe ask a passerby for money, but Briscoe's family has insisted that he was always given the money he needed and had no reason to panhandle.

On his way out of the Wawa, Richards confronted Briscoe a second time and attempted to arrest him when Briscoe refused to leave, be handcuffed, or get into Richards' cruiser.

According to the lawsuit, the situation quickly escalated as the Wawa manager ran to assist the officer and held Briscoe's legs while two customers also jumped in to help. All are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

"As Briscoe was lying facedown in the rain, Richards was pressing one knee into the back of Briscoe's head and the other knee into Briscoe's shoulder," the lawsuit said. Other officers responded as well, some coming from nearby Pine Hill and Berlin.

The lawsuit alleges that several officers held Briscoe down, collectively using excessive force as he lay in the prone position.

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Closing Arguments Begin In Oddie Tribble Trial: SC Deputy Left Handcuffed Prisoner with Broken Leg

Former Kershaw County Sheriff's deputy Oddie Tribble spent nearly two hours on the witness stand in federal court Tuesday morning as he explained why he needed to use his metal police baton on a handcuffed detainee.

Charles Shelley, the inmate whose Aug. 5 beating was captured on security cameras installed at the Kershaw County Detention Center, was using foul language as he threatened Tribble and his family, Tribble said. Shelley made the threats during the nearly 10-minute ride to the detention center, he said.

And, Shelley refused to obey commands given to him by Tribble once they arrived at the jail, Tribble said.

"I had directed Mr. Shelley to come down off the van," Tribble said. "Once he jumped off the van he jumped in my face and said, 'What?' At which time, he jerked away and said get the (expletive omitted) up off of me."

That is when Tribble said he felt the need to use his baton.

"He was non-compliant," Tribble said.

However, Tribble became tripped up on his story during an intense cross examination by Tara McGregor, a special assistant U.S. attorney from the National Advocacy Center in Columbia. McGregor introduced three previous statements given by Tribble during last summer's investigation of the beating.

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Jesse Jackson Looks To Block Pension Of Cop Who Tortured Black Men

From [HERE]

Chicago — Last week, Chicago’s Police Board voted to allow convicted police lieutenant Jon Burge to keep his $3,000-a-month pension. But one civil rights leader plans to fight that ruling tooth and nail.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the elder statesmen of the civil rights movement and a major political force in the city and nation-wide, has announced his plans to file a lawsuit to keep Burge from receiving his pension, according to CBS.

As Jackson points out, state law says that pensions are not to be paid to any official “convicted of any felony relating to or arising out of or in connection with service.”

Burge is believed to have tortured and overseen the torture of dozens, if not hundreds, of suspects during his time as the commander at Area 2, in an attempt to extract confessions. He has become a notorious figure in the city’s battle with police brutality, as many of his former victims have been exonerated by DNA evidence and have told stories of his and his subordinates’ abuse. 

Denver Police Beat Handcuffed Black College Student

An African American college student accuses three Denver police officers of beating him bloody and using racial slurs during a January 2009 traffic stop, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

 The lawsuit accuses the officers of stopping 19-year-old Alexander Landau after midnight on Jan. 15, 2009, for making an illegal turn, then calling him the N-word and beating his face and head with their fists, a radio and a flashlight until he was unconscious, according to the lawsuit first reported Wednesday on Westword.com.

 The lawsuit contains photographs of Landau just after the incident with a blood-covered face and a swollen eye, wearing a neck brace.

Landau, a student at Community College of Denver, was treated at the hospital for a broken nose, brain bleeding, a concussion, a hemorrhage in his right eye and head lacerations that required several dozen stitches, the lawsuit said.

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Family of Black College Football Star Shot by Mount Pleasant (NY) Police File Lawsuit

Three months after a college football player in New York was shot and killed by police during an altercation outside a bar, his family said today they intend to take the first steps towards filing a wrongful death suit against police. "All we're looking for is the absolute truth," Danroy Henry Jr.'s mother, Angella Henry, said on "Good Morning America."

Henry, a 20-year-old student at Pace University, was killed in October as he sat in his car with his friends after a night out celebrating a homecoming game in suburban Thornwood, N.Y.

There are differing accounts of what happened. Police say they were responding to an unruly crowd outside a bar, and when officers approached Henry's car parked in a fire lane, and knocked on the window, the college student tried to speed away and struck an officer. Police say a second officer, Aaron Hess of the Mount Pleasant police department which responded to the disturbance, was thrown onto the hood of Henry's car. Police say Hess then fired in self-defense.

Several eyewitnesses say the police overreacted and that Henry was trying to move his car out of the fire lane when the police opened fire.

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Jury Awards $1.7 million in fatal LAPD Shooting of Autistic Arabic Man

A federal jury Wednesday awarded $1.7 million to the parents of an autistic man killed by a Los Angeles police officer.

Joseph Cruz, who was later fired from the LAPD for dishonesty in an unrelated case, killed Mohammad Usman Chaudhry early on a March morning in 2008. Cruz and his partner had encountered the 21-year-old man laying in the bushes alongside a Hollywood apartment building. Cruz has insisted that Chaudhry tried to attack him with a knife and that he fired his gun in self-defense.

Chaudhry's parents filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court. Lawyers for the family presented evidence that called into question Cruz's account of the shooting. DNA testing on the knife Cruz claimed that Chaudhry used, for example, showed no evidence he had handled the weapon. On Monday, the jury found unanimously that the ex-officer had used excessive force and acted in "a reckless, oppressive or malicious manner."

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Justice Department investigates ACLU's call for federal oversight of Newark police

The U.S. Department of Justice is actively investigating the American Civil Liberties Union’s call for federal oversight of the Newark Police Department, talking with law enforcement and civic leaders and seeking details of police abuse allegations.

A city councilman, three civil rights leaders, the presidents of Newark’s police unions and a defense attorney who often represents officers accused of misconduct all said they have been approached by federal officials since October.

The probe has focused largely on excessive force complaints and the department’s internal affairs bureau, according to those involved. They said investigators also asked to speak with victims of alleged abuse and requested union documents.

Last month, investigators told Newark’s Fraternal Order of Police they might begin interviewing officers, said Derrick Hatcher, the union president. A federal attorney described the agency’s actions as a "preliminary investigation," Hatcher said.

The Department of Justice has not made any announcements and declined to comment on the probe. But the string of interviews and meetings suggest federal officials are considering the ACLU’s push for oversight of the 1,098-member police department, the state’s largest.

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