I’m sure you’ve all seen the video of a 75 year-old man being pushed down by Buffalo Police in riot gear Thursday night. By the way, that man, Martin Gugino, is a peace activist undergoing chemotherapy. He’s awake, alert and oriented as of the last report I saw. The officers who did it were suspended after the video surfaced, but not before the Buffalo Police issued a statement that he had tripped and fallen. This video is a two-fer, because it not only shows that cops will push down old people, but that they’ll walk right by them even when they’re bleeding, instead of rendering aid. I think it was that latter action that really made this a damning video. If they had immediately stopped and tried to help the guy, maybe the rest of this story would have turned out somewhat differently.
Yesterday, reacting to the head of the police union’s goading, 57 Buffalo cops resigned from the special unit. That union head is a real piece of work:
“Our position is these officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square,” said Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans. “It doesn’t specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40. They were simply doing their job. I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards.”
That made it a three-fer, because those cops demonstrated that they will stick to a lie no matter what, that they will try to hold a city hostage by quitting their special assignments when they might be needed the most instead of letting the process play out, and that giving cops an order to do something justifies, in the mind of their union leaders, any tactics whatsoever.
Here’s the thing: New York State has plenty of resources to fill in for those 57. Those cops can now hand out parking tickets and ride the desk filing paperwork until hell won’t have it anymore, and we’ll be fine. The union heads, locked in a MAGA bubble that doesn’t understand that people are sick of being scared for their lives every time they encounter a cop, and the cops who follow them, are playing this entirely wrong.
Mary G
I am so tired of the cops. This needs to stop now.
Nellie
They don’t need a “special unit” to do police work, it just enhances the cops’ delusions of grandeur. Everyone will be better off if they disband the unit, and put cops back in uniform, not military gear.
Just Chuck
Not even a “we strive for safety and regret that any accident blah blah blah”. No, a snarky response about age. Accept their resignations as well as that of the union chief.
And as pro-labor as I am? Outlaw all police unions.
MattF
In fact, the resignations in the ‘special squad’ struck me as a step forward. The justification that the cops had their orders and had to carry them out with whatever force was necessary is, um, flawed.
charluckles
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the police totally out of control and making a bad situation worse. Football game at a large stadium. College kids were trying to rush the field and tear down the goalposts. The police started pepper-spraying them to prevent them from reaching the field. Which OK, debatable, but perhaps reasonable. And then, they just started shooting tear gas canisters up into the stands indiscriminately. Up into the 2nd tiers where the families were, where the old school football fans were. Pandemonium ensued. It was just so unnecessary and dangerous.
That was over two decades ago. They haven’t gotten any better.
Roger Moore
The whole thing about having special units like this that are filled by volunteers is that they’re going to attract the worst people in the force. There may be a few people who join the riot control task force or the SWAT team or whatever because they think it’s an important function, but most of the people who join do it because they want to be in on the action when it’s time to bust some heads. Those are exactly the people who shouldn’t be police officers. I’m sure the country as a whole would be in much better shape if we fired all the police who are members of these special teams within the police and replaced them with a bunch of social workers.
WereBear
The key is a “qualified immunity” exception every cop gets. Which applies to everything, as far as I can tell.
Nora
That is such a tone-deaf response to the situation, not only to be snarky about their orders, but to do that AND AT THE SAME TIME not say one word of sympathy or regret for this elderly man’s injuries. They haven’t even learned the no-apology apology, where they would say “I’m sorry you’re upset.”
And what, exactly, does this special squad do that they need 57 cops to do it?
Citizen_X
Yes, indeed, you treat everyone the same. Whether they’re kids or old ladies, no matter how peaceful they may be acting, you treat them like they’re all armed, hardened cons, rioting in a cell block.
Why all the police union heads are out and out fascists, I’ll never know. I guess that’s what they vote for?
otmar
Is it time to go RICO on some of the police departments?
Sure sounds like a mafialike protection racket to me.
A
The proliferation of all these special response teams in law enforcement has absolutely contributed to the bloating or budgets throughout the US. As well as feeding the paramilitary toy buying spree among the very large ammosexual set embedded in the popo.
artem1s
one of the things that a lot of people don’t know about the Tamir Rice murder is that the cops didn’t administer basic aid after he was shoot. they did however have time to rough up and handcuff his sister and throw her in the back of a cop car. then they stood around a waited for the EMTs to arrive. Tamir didn’t die immediately. He died the next day. Those cops may have had a chance to save a life. If they were truly capable of remorse and intended to serve and protect. But instead decided on depraved indifference.
Bruce K
Not quite Buffalo-related but on a similar note, a Federal judge slapped the Denver PD with an injunction against using projectiles and chemical agents against protesters.
The full story can be seen by clicking on this elegant and finely-crafted link.
Also, it looks like the order mandates that any cop dealing with a protest must have an active body camera running.
Sounds an awful lot like this judge is pissed off, and one thing I learned in law school is that you do not want to be on the wrong side of a pissed-off judge.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Nellie: Yes, that’s what I am thinking; special unit with special toys just feeds into the Judge Dreed mentality.
ThresherK
I understand part of the firing has to do with liability encumbered by the Response Team’s actions.
Good. If it’s the only way to create a modicum of responsibility, so be it.
It seems allegorical to “if guns won’t be regulated, make the gun nuts carry insurance”.
(As far as risky behavior goes, I’m old enough to remember when, in my state, you didn’t need insurance to put a motorcycle on the road. Geez, I’m glad that era’s over with.)
scav
Arrogant, entitled to the very core and loyal only to each other. Over and over and over they demonstrate it, and then there’s the legal infrastructure reinforcing it.
ThresherK
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s a different Stallone role, but, wow, there are huge echoes of Rambo’s facile and false “Will we be allowed to win this time?” coming from cops and their apologists.
Aleta
“simply following orders …. “It doesn’t specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40. They were simply doing their job.”
Pushing someone down and letting them lie there unable to move and bleeding on the square doesn’t “clear the square.” So no, they didn’t do their job.
Van Buren
Too many cops have the Col. Jessup mentality, that they are the only thing standing between civilization and anarchy, and that we should appreciate them for manning the front lines so that we don’t have to.
kindness
I was a little disappointed those 57 cops didn’t full on resign from the Police Department but self idealized assholes like our brownshirt police aren’t going to take THAT one for team MAGA.
Just Chuck
@kindness: Their new permanent assignment should be a desk then.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Like the virus made me rethink why we have a car culture and suburbs, this institutionalized police brutality from these city police forces makes me rethink white fight in the 60s and 70s. As this video shows, these thugs cops will think nothing of cub stomp any white person who happens to be in the way of them a black to harass. If anything this was worse during the riots in the 60’s, so ya, I can see why anyone who had money abandoned these cities for suburbs.
Mike J
I wonder if they were getting extra pay? If so, I’ll bet you 90% of them apply, and are back on, the squad next week.
Edmund Dantes
“ I don’t know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards.”
If you don’t know how much contact was made, how are you making your estimation he slipped?
Yes sir, the nail slipped into the wall. Was I holding a hammer? Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?
ssdd
@ThresherK: yup. The union told the cops that they won’t fund legal defense for anything protest related because they’d go broke, then made up the solidarity thing to paper it over.
https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/exclusive-two-buffalo-police-ert-members-say-resignation-was-not-in-solidarity-with-suspended-officers
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ThresherK: Here is the former Police Chief of San Jose Joseph D. McNamara and why the cops sound like Rambo, the unwinnable War on Drugs.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pictures/drugwarevent/mcnamara.html?fbclid=IwAR3yJF2HILhP09l-1OfvmQs4r7sCrKvvNXsaO1O1G2HrHQCfZsxAdWGquSo
Since it’s the Cato Institute that means this article is something to pass on to those conservatives.
Gravenstone
It won’t solve everything, but there needs to be a metric shit ton of “ex-cops” when all is said and done. I’m sure they can find gainful employment filling out the roster of some third world despot’s security forces afterwards. Rather than befouling ours in the here and now.
jonas
This is about where I am as well. The unions are the rot at the center of all of this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ssdd: Shades of that post that was speculating the real objective of BLM in these sustained protests is to force these Cities to spend money trying to “dominate the battle space” until it bankrupts the city and the City has no choice but to adopt less confrontational policies.
jonas
@Van Buren: I know *I* for one wouldn’t have had the courage to flatten an old guy on the sidewalk and crack his head open because he was standing too close to me.
MattF
@jonas: The unions would just re-brand as ‘fraternal organizations’ that municipalities have to negotiate with. It’s a cultural problem and there’s no ‘that’ll fix it’ solution.
Gin & Tonic
In Ukraine in 2014, after the “Maidan” revolution and the collapse of the Yanukovych government, the new government disbanded the corrupt and widely-reviled national police force. With the assistance and active encouragement of the US, they completely rebuilt and re-staffed a new police organization. After about a year, those who had been dismissed from the prior force were allowed to undergo re-training and apply for a position with the new force.
RSA
Wow! I had no idea. I hope, especially for the case described in the article and this current one, that the police officers could be taken to civil court. It’s not the best route, but it’s maybe better than nothing.
Citizen_X
@Gravenstone:
Hey, plenty of people looking for work right now, right? Let ’em replace the present cops.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My life time union father just loathes the police unions and the way he talks apparently the heads of the unions too. It’s certainly curious considering how many cops are conservatives they all in with their union.
Villago Delenda Est
The police unions are a major part of the problem. They need to be dissolved.
Eolirin
@WereBear: And if McConnell hadn’t stolen a supreme court seat, maybe this wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
jonas
I can’t find the article now, but I was reading the other day that there are a couple of cities (Portland? Oakland? I forget…) right now experimenting with this very thing — particularly with 911 emergencies that involve a mentally ill person, or domestic violence. Instead of armed cops, they send social workers who can diffuse the situation non-violently and offer referrals to services.
Just Chuck
@MattF: If they re-brand as an entity that claims any negotiating authority, then that authority can be disbanded too. They can have their clubs and fundraisers. They just don’t get to dictate public policy anymore.
Dave
Just to rub some salt in the wound, the Mayor of Buffalo (who just happens to be black) was on Rachel’s show last night, spewing bullshit justifying the cops’ actions, saying that the unit’s training was to keep advancing, and that medics embedded in the unit rendered aid “within seconds” even as Rachel played the video showing no such thing occurred. I couldn’t believe Maddow didn’t lose her shit right then and there.
Silver lining: at least they know which cops to start firing now. They self-identified.
Eolirin
@Just Chuck: They don’t have to “claim” negotiating authority to have it, which is rather the problem.
Victor Matheson
@Just Chuck: I was thinking unarmed parking enforcement for these 56 who don’t want to do their job properly . Unpleasant work, non-heroic, uniformly hated by the public, and no chance to carry a gun.
jonas
@WereBear: Yep. This is why the cops who killed Breonna Taylor have nothing to worry about. Yes, they fucked up, raided the wrong house, and killed an innocent person. But they didn’t necessarily *mean* to, so it’s cool. The DA knows they’ll walk on QI, so he won’t even bother charging them.
rikyrah
@jonas:
Yep?
jonas
Suing municipalities for wrongful death is usually the only relief victims of police violence have in the current legal system. They are often successful and it costs cities like NYC and LA millions every year.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Just Chuck:
I’ve been thinking that the solution to “no accountability” provisions in state law and the CBAs with the various FOPs is to assign shitty cops to guard the interiors spaces of portable toilets on construction sites.
Year round.
They’d get full pay and benefits of course, and every so often, police academy cadets, younger officers and officers undergoing annual skills training can be brought by to be given a presentation by the cop in the box on the importance of ethical and community-minded policing practices.
jonas
There are a few of these types out there. Remember that batshit crazy Trumpist sheriff David Clarke from Milwaukee?
Ella in New Mexico
@Dave: I saw that and was extremely disappointed. The dude clearly is in over his head on this issue.
Buffalo has had serious racially-motivated abuse of power problems in it’s police force for a long time now. Governor Cuomo needs to step in and appoint someone to clean the place up, starting with sending any officer who “pretend resigned” packing if they won’t participate in the reforms
@jonas: I don’t think he’s a David Clark guy at all, just a black man running a city in an incredibly racist part of NYS. Part of me wonders if he’s just a tiny bit afraid of what could happen to him and other black people if he unilaterally takes strong action here. He needs help.
RSA
@jonas: Thanks for the context; I wasn’t making the connection.
RepubAnon
@Nora: Yes, the “I was only following orders” defense did not work in the Nuremberg war crime trials – funny how the police union thinks it should work for civil policing in the US.
Ella in New Mexico
@Villago Delenda Est:
Amazing how except for a very small minority, the unions supporting law enforcement at both the local and Federal level are so incredibly Right Wing Conservative in their stances. Some in complete opposition to the actual PD’s they’re representing.
Be an interesting story to see how their leadership came to be…and I’m guessing “Follow the Money” is a good place to start…
Yutsano
@Gravenstone: Erik Prince’s outfit is always hiring.
jonas
Until the SCOTUS overturns its earlier decisions on qualified immunity, this is probably the most we can do to deal with problem cops. If you can’t convict them on criminal charges, basically force them to quit and blackball them so they never get near a LEA again.
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
Absolutely. FOP reps are as thuggish as they come.
Also, there has to be mandatory drug testing of cops. No one throws a 75-year-old man with that kind of force without being all amped up.
Watching that video, I saw one cop begin to lean over to help the man, only to be pulled back into line by another cop. What kind of monsters are these police?
jonas
@Yutsano: Isn’t whatever he’s calling his Gestapo-for-hire company these days based in China now or something?
Immanentize
@Edmund Dantes: During the pass blitz, the quarterback was caught on the run by two rushers. The quarterback then
was tackledslipped.jonas
@Ella in New Mexico: Yeah, comparing him to David Clark was probably a tad harsh. Western New York is basically an extension of Pennsyltucky, which is north Alabama.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Citizen_X:
“Just following orders” has a nasty historical ring to it.
Yutsano
@jonas: I’m not sure if it’s based in China, but I know the Chinese government is funding him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s also helping to train the People’s Liberation Army, which is probably against several US laws although I haven’t heard if he’s being investigated. With the Barr Harkonnen leading the DoJ I doubt anything will come of it.
germy
@debbie:
Was he leaning over to help the man? He held his baton horizontally over the man before being pulled away by his comrades. It looked more like menacing to me.
Dave (not the same one)
@Ella in New Mexico: I suspect that’s exactly it. Mayors are terrified of going against or being seen going against the departments. And they aren’t necessarily wrong to be. Even more so that the departments that most deserve to be brought to heel are exactly the ones that will have zero compunction in going after critics. Including extralegally. It’s needs to change but I’m trying to imagine, for instance the violence that would result if for instance you disbanded and reconstituted the NYPD. It might actually create that violent insurgency.
Immanentize
@germy: The one officer was clearly going to help the man. But his co-cop pulled him back and put him back in the line. That was the inhumanity of the scene to me.
germy
@Immanentize: At first viewing I thought he was trying to help the man. But I watched again and saw the way he held the baton.
Maybe you’re right and he was trying to help. But after seeing it again and again on the nightly news shows, it doesn’t look that way to me.
Maybe he was the “good” apple among the 57 who are more suitable for making cider.
debbie
@germy:
I just rewatched it a few times. That cop was already holding the baton in both hands, so I’m not sure he intended to hit him. But it’s certainly possible I could be wrong.
evodevo
@ThresherK: Yes. I hear this crap from my career Army BIL all the time…”We coulda won if the dirty hippies/leftist rioters hadn’t screwed this country up!” And he still believes that trope about hippies spitting on soldiers too, even though I have corrected him a couple times on it. NOTE: he volunteered in 1968, but NEVER WENT TO NAM – and has NO idea what actually went on over there.
debbie
@Immanentize:
Yes. I also saw that three cops participated in the pushing.
Betty
@jonas: the latest news is that they did not raid the wrong house. Her name was on the search warrant. I understand she was suspected of some drug-related charge.
germy
So I see they caught the bicycle guy who grabbed signs from some children.
germy
@Betty:
She was really a suspect? Would you have a link to that story? I haven’t heard anything like that. She was listed as a resident of the apartment, but that’s all I’ve seen.
debbie
@germy:
I missed hearing about this, but just found the video. Who is this Biff to think what he was doing was okay? Who doesn’t know grabbing another person’s arm and tearing what that person’s holding in their hand is assault? I hope a mental evaluation will be completed at some point.
terry chay
Hard disagree. They should take their resignation from the post as a dereliction of duty and accessory after the fact, and arrest, fire, or suspend without pay the 57 cops (or at least the ones that retained their union membership after resigning). Our police forces looks bloated anyway and their union is probably guilty of a conspiracy to commit crimes, a little thinning and an example may cause them to consider if they want to test their very existence legally.
I have no doubt they will find they have drastically misread the temperature of the (court)room.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@terry chay: Turns out the 57 didn’t resign in solidarity. The union told them they couldn’t afford to pay for legal representation if anything else went pearshaped, and the remaining cops decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
The claim that they resigned in solidarity came from the union. The union lied.
West of the Cascades
@jonas: Congress could also limit or eliminate qualified immunity – Ayanna Pressley and, of all people, Justin Amash last week introduced a bill to do just that: https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-death/left-libertarian-alliance-introduces-house-bill-to-end-qualified-immunity-for-police-officers/
Tazj
Two officers in the BPD who were suspended, were arraigned in court this morning. I don’t know the charges as I don’t believe the district attorney has given a press conference yet.
Yesterday night there were protests in the city of Buffalo past the curfew, and there were no incidents. There was no emergency response team, and the police mainly watched from their cars.
It’s terrible that this couldn’t have been the actions of the police on Thursday, there were a lot less people downtown that evening and they should have just observed them too. However, there was property damage in the city the first night of the protests and that incident where the police were run over. I don’t know how much pressure the mayor got from business owners and the police union and others to use that response team. Of course I think the ultimate responsibility for the action is with the individual officers.
The mayor, Byron Brown, did criticize the police union on the Rachel Maddow show. He said that they have stood in the way of police reform. In recent years, there was an white officer charged with police brutality in the beating of a black man and a black female officer was fired after she tried to stop a white officer from choking a black man.
A good follow on Twitter is Madison Carter from WKBW in Buffalo if you’re more interested in the situation.
germy
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Isn’t it only a risk if they misbehave? If they have no intention of attacking a peaceful, even elderly protester, why are they worried?
Sloane Ranger
@debbie: He may have thought about helping, or maybe he just wanted to jam his baton against that injured 75 year old man’s windpipe.
Does it make me a bad person that I wondered that?
davecb
@WereBear:
Have a look to see if that limitation applies in NY: I can’t speak to the individual States, but in Canada, police are required to act “in good faith”. For example, a police officer breaking up an unpopular religion’s service clearly was not protected by immunity.
“Although the police had been granted immunity by a provincial statute for acts carried out in good faith in the performance of their duties, Taschereau J. concluded that the police officers could not have acted in good faith, as there was no other explanation for their negligence” (from Chaput v. Romain, 1955 CanLII 74 (SCC))
Tazj
@Tazj: They were charged with second degree assault.
J R in WV
@Sloane Ranger:
No. No, it doesn’t, no, you’re not a bad person for wondering that.
I’m an old, gray, balding white guy, and I have had numerous encounters with cops, all of whom have been polite, and in many cases very helpful. But I’m an old gray bearded white guy… just like that guy who was pushed down and left concussed… hmmm.
Cameron
@jonas: Clarke is the guy who decorated his uniform with all kinds of shit from Cracker Jack boxes, isn’t he?
sdhays
@Gravenstone: Indeed. I hear that this is a good time for hiring…
Villago Delenda Est
@Cameron: That’s the dude. Had no idea how clownish that made him look.
jonas
That’s the guy. More recently, he got suspended by Twitter for a bunch of ragetweets claiming coronavirus was a huge hoax and basically encouraging people to go out in undistanced groups and lick doorknobs to pwn the libs.
E.
Just do an air traffic controller firing on the whole lot of them.
Feathers
@otmar: It almost happened. There was a huge ticket fixing scandal back in the Bronx in 2011. Hundreds of officers involved. Although the focus was on the cops, how the scheme actually worked was that someone looking to get a ticket “taken care of” asked an officer, that officer called the union, who decided if it was worth fixing. If it was, they then tracked down where the ticket was physically located and had another officer destroy it. In the end, 16 officers were criminally charged. However, the DA (AG?) decided not to bring RICO charges against the union. Part of the issue is that there were hundreds of officers involved and all of their cases since forever would have to be reviewed. Defense attorneys for the accused officers (and it was a dream team, included one guy who had played himself in Goodfellas) demanded that the names of all the officers involved be made public. That seems to have sort of ended the whole thing.
To bring up an old friend, when he worked for Boston Mayor Kevin White in the 70s, Barney Frank tangled with the Boston police union. He came to the opinion that police should either have a union or civil service protections, but not both.
oopzwtf
@Tazj: 2nd degree assault in NYS will require proving an intent to injure. So yeah, they sound like they’re serious about convicting.
Maybe they can run for congress in the NY 27th, now that they’ve checked the box for ‘currently facing criminal charges’.
JaneE
There was another video, from Salt Lake City I think, that also showed police pushing an old man who fell down as a result. In that one the police came forward to help him up, see if he was OK, and he may even have gotten an apology. More than one officer was talking to him and supporting him as he sat on the curb. Quite a difference in outcomes.
DRN3030
@Bruce K: nice work by the Harvard trained, Big Law alum, appointed by BHO. Judges matter. Presidents matter. Vote.
low-tech cyclist
Yeah, that’s the part that was really awful. Gugino was lying on the pavement with blood pooling next to his head, mere seconds after he hit the ground. And all the cops just kept walking past him.
Reassign those fuckers to Gitmo.