Discussions on the Police

[easye]

3 California police officers charged in the death of a man they restrained while in custody, prosecutor says

www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/us/mario-gonzalez-death-california-officers-charged/index.html

Three California police officers have been charged in the death of a man in their custody in 2021, prosecutors announced Thursday – two years after the district attorney’s office said it would not bring criminal charges against the officers.

Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy were each charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter in the April 19, 2021, death of Mario Gonzalez Arenales, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced Thursday.

The case is one of several previously cleared investigations involving police shootings and in-custody deaths that were reopened by a new Public Accountability Unit announced by Price in January 2023, shortly after she took office.

An investigation by the district attorney’s office under different leadership did not charge the officers, citing the initial autopsy determining the leading cause of death was “the toxic effects of methamphetamine,” prosecutors said in a 2022 report.

A second autopsy “attributed Mr. Gonzalez’s death to ‘a result of Restraint Asphyxiation,’” the district attorney’s office said in a statement Thursday.

[bobtheinquisitor]

The big surprise here is someone is now attempting to bring some accountability.

[easye]

Police shooting black people in the news again.....

www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/us/roger-forston-florida-airman-shot/index.html

Airman fatally shot by Florida deputy who was in wrong apartment, family attorney says

An attorney for the family of a Black airman fatally shot by a Florida deputy in his home last week is calling for the release of law enforcement bodycam footage, saying a witness believes the deputy was at the wrong apartment.

The 23-year-old victim has been identified by his family as Roger Fortson – an ​active-duty senior airman, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

“The circumstances surrounding Roger’s death raise serious questions that demand immediate answers from authorities, especially considering the alarming witness statement that the police entered the wrong apartment,” Crump said, citing the account of an unidentified person who was on FaceTime with Fortson at the time of the shooting.

[easye]

Police shooting a person with Mental Illness in NYC.

www.cnn.com/2024/05/12/us/win-rozario-nypd-killing/index.html

A 19-year-old called 911 in a crisis and ended up dead. For advocates, it’s a call for a better way of policing

The officers “killed my son in minutes,” Costa said through an interpreter at a Wednesday news conference. “Before they came, everything was calm. Then they came and created chaos and murdered him in front of me.”

In the weeks since Rozario’s death, the shooting has attracted scrutiny from social justice and mental health advocates, particularly after the state attorney general’s office released footage from body cameras worn by the two responding officers and announced it is investigating the case.

Critics say the police’s use of lethal force was unnecessary and reflects a pattern of violence against people with mental illness. In a news release, the NYPD said it is “fully cooperating” with the investigation as well as conducting its own probe, adding, “We continually seek to improve how we respond to requests for assistance, and we acknowledge that there is much work to be done. New Yorkers expect and deserve nothing less.”

The two officers are on “modified assignment,” meaning they’re still working but not carrying firearms or shields. Rozario’s family, as well as local organizations like the Justice Committee and Desis Rising Up and Moving, have called for the officers to be fired and prosecuted.

[easye]

Black people being killed by the police....again.....

www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/us/sean-grayson-illinois-police-officer-shooting-sonya-massey/index.html

What we know about the deputy charged with killing Sonya Massey in her home after she called 911 for help

The family of Sonya Massey is calling for a probe into the hiring of a sheriff’s deputy charged with fatally shooting the 36-year-old Black woman in her Illinois home this month, citing their concerns over records showing he’d worked at six law enforcement agencies in four years and was charged with driving under the influence twice.

Sean Grayson, the 30-year-old Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy who has since been fired from the agency, was indicted by a grand jury last week on three counts of first-degree murder and one count each of aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in connection with the July 6 shooting at Massey’s home near Springfield.

[Peregrine]

Jul 24, 2024 9:31:21 GMT -5 easye said:

Black people being killed by the police....again.....

At least this time the cop was charged instead of given a paid vacation, which is probably the most shocking element of the story.

[nfe]

A Manchester armed officer ia also suspended after being filmed kicking and stamping on the head of one prone, compliant, already-tazed suspect, then going over to kick another compliant one. He'll get the sack, though.

[easye]

www.npr.org/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5053165/ferguson-michael-brown-10-years-police

10 years after Michael Brown's death, police killings are not going down

In the years after Ferguson, Minneapolis became a poster child for police reform, Vitale says, until George Floyd was murdered in 2020 by police officer Derek Chauvin.

Officers in the city, for instance, had undergone implicit bias training, wore body cameras and were operating under a more restrictive use-of-force policy.

Michelle Phelps, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, says that led to a key shift among some organizers.

“That really was a blow to liberal police reformers,” she says. “There was the sense, ‘If it has failed in Minneapolis, it will fail everywhere. And so what can we do instead?’ And that is really why you saw so much attention and energy around police defunding and police abolition and people trying to shift towards these more radical approaches because of the perceived failures of reform across the country.”

Data backs up the ways reform efforts have failed over the past decade. Nationally, police officers killed the most people last year than any other year since 2014, and Black and Hispanic people are still killed at a disproportionate rate compared to white people, according to data from the Mapping Police Violence project, which tracks police killings.

[Disciple of Fate]

Feels like a lot of those reforms are preemptive instead of preventive. As long as recruitment and hiring practices aren't radically different, what is a sensitivity course going to do.

[herzlos]

I'd seen mention of a case recently where a woman was having a manic episode, her family called for an ambulance to get her taken to a hospital and begged to not have the police turn up or enter the house. The police turned up (as per protocol) and shot her immediately on entering the house.

abcnews.go.com/US/new-jersey-woman-fatally-shot-police-mental-health/story?id=112368587

The knife in question was a pen knife which the mother warned the 911 operator about, and she'd put down before the police forced entry into the apartment.


It's shocking that (a) people are now begging the police not to get involved and (b) it took me a while to find an article about it because so many other incidents have occurred. It's amazing how often the police attend a mental health crisis and shoot immediately, or the police attend a crime and shoot the (black) victim.

[Peregrine]

Aug 12, 2024 11:48:46 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

As long as recruitment and hiring practices aren't radically different, what is a sensitivity course going to do.

It allows the gang to say "see, we trained our thugs, it's not our fault this happened" next time there's a lawsuit.

Aug 13, 2024 3:19:38 GMT -5 herzlos said:

It's amazing how often the police attend a mental health crisis and shoot immediately, or the police attend a crime and shoot the (black) victim.

It's only amazing if you assume cops exist to protect and help the average citizen rather than to defend the interests of the ruling class and put down any threats to the status quo. Understand the role of the police and it's very clear why the ruling class is perfectly content to hire gangs of violent sadists and why those thugs kill anyone they can justify as a "threat". A mental health crisis is not a person who needs help, it's an opportunity to score another kill.

[herzlos]

Aug 13, 2024 4:15:16 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Aug 13, 2024 3:19:38 GMT -5 herzlos said:

It's amazing how often the police attend a mental health crisis and shoot immediately, or the police attend a crime and shoot the (black) victim.

It's only amazing if you assume cops exist to protect and help the average citizen rather than to defend the interests of the ruling class and put down any threats to the status quo. Understand the role of the police and it's very clear why the ruling class is perfectly content to hire gangs of violent sadists and why those thugs kill anyone they can justify as a "threat". A mental health crisis is not a person who needs help, it's an opportunity to score another kill.

I was going to ask why the ruling class would be happy with minions so incompetent it cost them a fortune in legal fees, and then I realized the public pays the legal fees.

I guess there's no down side to them at all.

[Peregrine]

Aug 13, 2024 5:20:56 GMT -5 herzlos said:

I was going to ask why the ruling class would be happy with minions so incompetent it cost them a fortune in legal fees, and then I realized the public pays the legal fees.

I guess there's no down side to them at all.

Yep, it's the dark side that isn't really talked about much when lawsuits succeed against the police. The cops aren't actually paying anything, they just take tax money from the town and pay off the lawsuit instead of spending it on road maintenance, schools, etc. None of which really effects the ruling class because they don't pay meaningful taxes and they have their own private services.