Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Here's the full statement. https://t.co/j5H2GjV5eW pic.twitter.com/gjBp796OBu
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) January 28, 2023
The Memphis Police Department is shutting down the SCORPION unit tied to the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols. https://t.co/IKhWI2FXW1
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 28, 2023
Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in MemphisPost + Comments (119)
A collection of families of victims and survivors of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary are filing a class-action lawsuit seeking $27 billion in damages that will target multiple law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels. https://t.co/HUTcNBQBgz
— Chron (@chron) August 23, 2022
Per the Houston Chronicle:
A collection of families of victims and survivors of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas are filing a class-action lawsuit seeking $27 billion in damages that will target multiple law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels, reports KSAT in San Antonio. The suit alleges the agencies violated the victims’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“What we intend to do (is) to help serve this community, and that is to file a $27 billion civil rights lawsuit under our United States Constitution, one-of-a-kind in the whole world,” said Charles Bonner, a Bay Area civil rights attorney representing the families, told KSAT. Bonner and his associate have been meeting with families at Pastor Daniel Myers’ church, Tabernacle of Worship, in Uvalde during the weeks leading up to this week’s announcement…
Bonner intends to file the lawsuit next month, he said, after the Department of Justice wraps its investigation into the shooting. Bonner also announced that his firm is working with the gun safety organization Everytown For Gun Safety and several other firms to represent the Uvalde families in the case, according to KSAT.
Mistermix mentioned this yesterday, but I think it is worth closer inspection:
Four current and former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers were charged Thursday with federal crimes connected to the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor.
The 26-year-old emergency medical technician was shot and killed by police who had carried out a nighttime “no-knock” warrant to storm her home while she was sleeping with her boyfriend. Believing they were intruders, her boyfriend fired one shot at the officers using a handgun he legally owned. The officers responded by firing 22 bullets, killing Taylor with a shot to the chest.
The fatal shooting of Taylor, a Black woman, galvanized racial justice protests in the spring and summer of 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The charges against defendants Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, Brett Hankison and Kelly Goodlett, include civil rights violations, conspiracy, use of excessive force offenses and obstruction.
Charging documents state that three of the officers, Jaynes, Meany and Goodlett, lied in order to obtain a warrant they used to search Taylor’s apartment in an act that violated federal civil rights laws and led to Taylor’s death, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a news conference.
“We allege that the defendants knew their actions in falsifying the affidavit could create a dangerous situation, and we allege these unlawful acts resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said.
The question is why? For arrest numbers? To justify the existence of that unit? For asset forfeiture money? Or maybe we should revisit the amended lawsuit by Breonna’s family:
The police raid of Breonna Taylor’s home that ended with police killing her was connected to a political plan to clear a Louisville, Kentucky, street for a real estate development, according to an amended lawsuit filed by Taylor’s mother.
Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was shot eight times after police broke down the door to her apartment while executing a nighttime, no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation on March 13. Her mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April against the officers involved: Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly.
The Louisville Metro Police Department has since fired Hankison, one of the officers who fired into the apartment.
***Mayor Greg Fischer is mentioned in the lawsuit but is not a defendant. The lawsuit claims that Fischer wanted to incorporate large-scale development in west Louisville to leave a visible legacy for his time in office, which is currently set to expire in January 2023. A recent development initiative, called Vision Russell, intends to redevelop the Beecher Terrace public housing complex. The lawsuit says the effort has stagnated for six years.
Vision Russell’s website refers to itself as a Choice Neighborhood Initiative project designed to “implement a dynamic and transformative plan for the Russell neighborhood, including the Beecher Terrace public housing development.”
Representatives with the Vision Russell initiative did not return CNN’s request for comment.
And then there is this:
The attorneys representing Breonna Taylor’s family now claim a development project was the reason police focused on her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Part of the project includes Elliott Avenue, where Glover rented a house, the lawsuit states, and where the City of Louisville has recently acquired several properties.
A warranty deed obtained by WAVE 3 News Troubleshooters, dated June 5th, 2020, shows the city purchased Glover’s rented home from Law-Mar Inc. for $1. The estimated home value was more than $17,000.
A map, which shows the City of Louisville logo and the title of the Elliott Avenue Project, shows several of the properties surrounding Glover’s home were labeled as “city controlled” and have already been purchased or demolished. The map is dated November 2019.
This is some truly evil shit and if proven, more than just a few cops need hard time.
Panic attacks, as anyone who’s had them can attest, are very real and deserving of medical attention. Encouraging panic attacks, however, is… not the best use of our limited time on this planet:
Cop husband gave her a panic attack, case closed https://t.co/eTD1OBHlo4
— Goku Missile Crisis (@BabadookNukem) July 12, 2022
Seriously, if you need to refute this new panic, here’s a great story:
I wrote about fentanyl-touch panic among police officers, and a toxicologist who spilled a bunch of fentanyl on his hand. https://t.co/GqBudEnZRK
— Dan McQuade (@dhm) July 5, 2022
Late Night Silly Season Open Thread: Fentanyl PanicPost + Comments (54)
Watching the video of the cops just standing there while kids are being murdered made everyone’s blood boil, and the whole Punisher screen on the iphone was just fucking *chefkiss* and really nothing will sum up the state of modern policing more than that. But here’s the deal- it’s not surprising.
You don’t even have to go into the whole history of policing and how it stems from the slave patrol model, you just have to look at the rhetoric and training that’s been happening in my lifetime. For the past forty years, or at least since I was paying attention, the number one thing police have been telling themselves and we have been reinforcing is that the MOST IMPORTANT job they have is coming home to their family. We’ve created this fantasy world where policing is the most dangerous job in the world, when it’s not. It’s not even close. It doesn’t even crack the top ten and barely, by a hair, cracks the top fifteen.
Two quick graphs:
So it’s not even that dangerous relative to many other jobs, it’s gotten safer every year except for an increase in 2021 and 2022 (which we will talk about later), and fully half the cause of officer deaths involve something other than being involved in a shooting. Having a heart attack because you aren’t in shape and chasing someone or giving a ticket on the side of a road are as likely the cause of death if you are a cop than the off chance you are shot. That big spike in 2021 and 2022, where police deaths doubled? You know what caused that?
Fucking covid. And who was among the loudest group of people protesting mandatory vaccination of public employees? If you guessed police officers and police unions, congratulations on figuring out the obvious.
So put it all together and then let’s continue on. You have a group of heavily armed people who have spent the last couple decades being told they have the RISKIEST JOB IN THE WORLD OMEGALOL and with the majority of the American public mindlessly agreeing, and because of this fiction that we have all bought into, police are not trained in de-escalation, they are sent to bullshit academies that basically teach them a couple “important” things. The first is when in doubt shoot first, if you shoot then shoot to kill, and how to cover your bases to make sure it was a justified shoot. And you don’t even have to work too hard on the third part, because they’ll get massive assists from slavish DA’s, a compliant press heavily armed with the passive voice, and the structural and institutional racism of the United States.
Adam can tell you all about the types of academies these guys go to to learn this shit, and it’s horrifying what they are taught.
So, um, yeah. If the school shooter had been a black guy driving home from work on a backroad with a broken taillight, these guys would have been in their wheelhouse and would have easily dispatched him with 100 rounds to the body. But a school shooter? They don’t have the training, capabilities, or courage to do anything, because again, their most important mission, that has been drilled into them forever, is to come home to their family.
And that’s why we have videos of them standing, armed to the teeth, cowering in a hallway using hand sanitizer. That’s adrenaline and nervous energy and lack of training. Their bodies were telling them to do something, but they don’t know what to do, so they did anything, which in this case was wash their hands.
The entire US police force needs to be ripped apart, given a new mission, rebuilt, and retrained. And with strict tests to see which current police have the mental capacity to return to the job.
If a police officer fails to give a suspect his Miranda warnings, and the gov't uses the suspect's un-Mirandized statements against him in court, can the suspect sue the officer for violating his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS says no.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022
This is as good a time as any to remind each and everyone of you to NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE EVER. You literally have nothing to gain and everything to lose. It’s right there in the fucking Miranda warning- “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
It doesn’t say “Anything you say can be used to prove your innocence.”
It doesn’t say “Innocent people never go to jail when they talk to cops”
It doesn’t say “You can prove to these guys you are innocent if you just keep talking and telling the truth.”
DO NOT TALK TO THE COPS EVER.
Little blurry because of the steam:
And in some good news, another cop was convicted for killing a man for no reason:
Kim Potter, the white former Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright in April, has been convicted after appearing to mistake her handgun for a Taser during a deadly traffic stop.
Potter, 49, was found guilty on Thursday of first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter in relation to the April 11 traffic stop that ended with the 20-year-old Black man’s death. The former officer, who resigned from the force after 26 years on the job, now faces 35 years behind bars when she is sentenced on Feb. 18.
Potter briefly lowered her head and closed her eyes as the verdict was read out. As Judge Regina Chu thanked the jury for their sacrifice, calling them “heroes in this case,” Potter silently performed the sign of the cross. One female juror appeared to be crying as the verdict was read, a WCCO reporter in the courtroom said.
Maybe if this keeps up, police across the country will re-evaluate their “kill ’em all and let God sort them out” approach to policing.
