Police Brutality, Insensitivity and Militarism/Robotism is all the Rage Now!

[Peter Lemkin]

A lot [not all] of these situations could be averted if citizens didn't still have the idea that Police should be called to 'settle or solve' any situation - other than, maybe, a last resort if someone is as risk of death. This notion is drilled into most Americans - that the police are your friend and will help out....more likely they will kill - especially the non-white and poor. I know my own parents taught me to never be trustful of the police - but they were not the ordinary American parents....

[Tracy Riddle]

A lot [not all] of these situations could be averted if citizens didn't still have the idea that Police should be called to 'settle or solve' any situation - other than, maybe, a last resort if someone is as risk of death. This notion is drilled into most Americans - that the police are your friend and will help out....more likely they will kill - especially the non-white and poor. I know my own parents taught me to never be trustful of the police - but they were not the ordinary American parents....

The same country that's full of people who think they should call 911 because their pizza delivery is late.

[David Guyatt]

Love that clip! ::laughingdog::

[Peter Lemkin]

Grand jury doesn't indict NYPD officer accused in chokehold death

Published time: December 03, 2014 19:19
Edited time: December 04, 2014 00:21



AFP Photo / Timothy A. Clary

The US Department of Justice will conduct an investigation of the killing, Reuters reported, citing an official.A New York City grand jury has decided not to indict the New York Police Department officer accused of killing a Staten Island man by putting him in an illegal chokehold. The NYPD is now preparing for more protests stemming from the decision.



Early Wednesday afternoon, CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post all reported that a grand jury declined to indict the officer.
Although the special grand jury declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the white officer accused of strangling Garner, who was black, the police department can still reprimand Pantaleo under a basic rule that loosely states if an officer does anything to embarrass the department, then they can be disciplined.
"It's sad if they take that position," Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, told Staten Island Live. "I'd be surprised and a bit disappointed if he was used as a political pawn to appease the community."
The incident occurred on July 17, when at least five New York Police Department officers took 43-year-old Eric Garner, a Staten Island father of six, to the ground in an attempted arrest on Staten Island. One put Garner in a chokehold that caused Garner who suffered from asthma to lose consciousness and reportedly go into cardiac arrest. He was declared dead at a nearby hospital.
In response to the decision, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called on those upset with the decision to protest peacefully and said the city continues to work on improving police-community relations.
"This is a deeply emotional day for the Garner Family, and all New Yorkers," he said in a statement. "His death was a terrible tragedy that no family should have to endure. This is a subject that is never far from my family's minds or our hearts. And Eric Garner's death put a spotlight on police-community relations and civil rights some of most critical issues our nation faces today."
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama commented on the strained relationships between law enforcement and some minority communities, calling it "an American problem" and saying the administration will not let up until trust is strengthened.
"When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that's a problem," he said. "This is an issue that we've been dealing with too long and it's time to make more progress than we've made."
Officer Pantaleo also released a statement.
"I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can't protect themselves," Pantaleo said. "It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss."
The Staten Island District Attorney's Office convened the grand jury in September, but did not announced the list of potential charges against Pantaleo. But prosecutors outside the district told ABC News that the range could have included second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, felony assault or reckless endangerment. Legal experts and former prosecutors had said that, despite the medical examiner's ruling the death a homicide, murder charges were unlikely, the New York Times reported.
The grand jury, made up of 23 people and led by a foreperson, voted on the various charges presented to them. A majority of the total ‒ meaning at least 12 jurors ‒ needed to agree on each charge in order to indict.
At the center of the deliberations was a witness video that captured much of the interaction between the police and the 350-lbs. man. The incident began when NYPD officers questioned Garner about selling untaxed cigarettes. According to Ramsey Orta, the 22-year-old who recorded the footage, Garner had just broken up a fight that took place in the area when police walked up and said they saw him selling cigarettes.
In the video, officers can be seen moving in to arrest Garner while he tells them not to touch him. At this point, Pantaleo ‒ a plainclothesman wearing cargo shorts and a baseball cap ‒ can be seen placing Garner in a chokehold from behind and multiple other officers moving in and helping to take him to the ground. Once down, an officer can be seen pressing Garner's head against the pavement, with Garner yelling multiple times, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"
Shortly afterwards, the man stops moving and stops responding.

The city's medical examiner ruled Garner died as a result of the chokehold a move which is banned by the NYPD and declared his death a homicide. New Yorkers protested the violence employed by the officers in Garner's death, as well as throughout the city after the autopsy was made public in August. When unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri by a police officer Darren Wilson three weeks after the New York City incident, the protests expanded to include Brown and the lives of others who have been killed by law enforcement.
Police in New York City began preparing for potential protests before the grand jury decision was announced.
"We, as you might expect, are planning accordingly," New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Bratton did not reveal how many officers were placed out on the streets ahead of the announcement, but he said that officers have been told to walk a fine line between allowing the protesters to express their anger while keeping public order.
"If they engage in criminal activity, such as vandalism ‒ actual crime ‒ they will be arrested, quite simply," he said. "But we have the ability to have a level of tolerance ‒ breathing room, if you will."
There are at least two different demonstrations planned in lower Manhattan Wednesday, including appearances of Parents Against Police Brutality and protesters who say they are taking a stand against "the criminalization of our communities and militarization of the local enforcement agencies," ABC News reported.
Garner's son Eric Snipes doesn't think any protests in the city in the wake of the grand jury decision will rise to the level of those that occurred in Ferguson when the grand jury there declined to indict Wilson.
"It's not going to be a Ferguson-like protest because I think everybody knows my father wasn't a violent man and they're going to respect his memory by remaining peaceful," Eric Snipes told the New York Daily News. "It's not going to be like it was there."
Pantaleo has been sued twice over the past two years for harassing people during arrests, costing the city $30,000 in a 2012 lawsuit, where he and other officers were accused of strip-searching two men, the Staten Island Advance reported.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which looks into police abuse accusations, received 233 complaints regarding chokeholds in 2013 ‒ more than four percent of all excessive force complaints in New York, according to the Times.
The board has received charges of about 1,022 instances since 2009 in which New York Police Department (NYPD) officers were accused of using chokeholds. Use of such holds are prohibited by the NYPD's patrol guidelines, which outline a chokehold as a "any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air."

[David Guyatt]

Can't expect cops t be charged for doing their duty.

Honestly, Pete, didn't you know that? ::

[Peter Lemkin]

Can't expect cops t be charged for doing their duty.

Honestly, Pete, didn't you know that? ::

The man was selling single cigarettes...while real big crime in those tall buildings all around go unpunished. He was choked, and the coroner ruled it was a homicide! [for the 'crime' of selling cigarettes on the street to support six children and his wife!] As he lay motionless on the sidewalk, NO first aide nor CPR was offered him by either police or ambulance crew! I know when I'm [rarely] back in the USA I fear all police and police-like entities and persons. The police state is nearly complete now. Where I live, the police are very hesitant to do anything against anyone. In the USA, especially to the poor and non-white, the police are over-active and aggressive/deadly....and get away with it. Sick society and getting worse by the hour.

[David Guyatt]

To be perfectly honest, I just can't fathom the decision to to indict the cop. A choke hold is against police regulations. That alone means manslaughter at the very least. The doctor at the hospital who was involved wrote it up as homicide.

The police system in the US is utterly broken and the cops protected - no matter what they do, including murder. The testament to that conclusion is this thread - and there are a number of cases out there we haven't even discussed.

[Peter Lemkin]

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America's Children: The Trials of Growing Up in a Police State

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After a year dominated with news of police shootings ofunarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry, photo ops ofmilitarized police shouldering assault rifles while perched on top of armoredvehicles, and reports on how the police are using asset forfeiture laws to padtheir pockets with luxury cars, cash and other expensive toys, I find myself wrestlingwith the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American policestate, especially when it comes to interactions with police?
Do you parrot the government line, as the schoolsdo, that police officers are community helpers who are to be trusted andobeyed at all times? Do you caution them to steer clear of a police officer,warning them that any interactions could have disastrous consequences? Or isthere some happy medium between the two that, while being neither fairy talenor horror story, can serve as a cautionary tale for young people who will encounterpolice at virtually every turn?
Children are taught from an early age that there areconsequences for their actions. Hurt somebody, lie, steal, cheat, etc., and youwill get punished. But how do you explain to a child that a police officer canshoot someone who was doing nothing wrong and get away with it? That a cop canlie, steal, cheat, or kill and still not be punished?
Kids understand accidents. But police shootings of unarmedpeople--of children and old people and disabled people--can't just be shruggedoff as accidents.
AiyanaJones was no accident. The 7-year-old was killed after a Detroit SWAT team launcheda flash-bang grenade into her family's apartment, broke through the door andopened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch.The cops weren't even in the right apartment.
Ironically, on the same day that PresidentObama refused to stop equipping police with the very same kinds of militaryweapons and gear used to raid Aiyana's home, it was reported that thepolice officer who shot and killed the little girl would notface involuntary manslaughter charges.

Obama insists that $263million to purchase body cameras for police will prevent any furthererosions of trust, but a body camera would not have prevented Aiyana from beingshot in the head. Indeed, the entiresorry affair was captured on camera:a TV crew was filming the raid for an episode of The First 48, a true-crime reality show in which homicidedetectives have 48 hours to crack a case.
While that $263 million will make TaserInternational, the manufacturer of the body cameras, a whole lot richer,it's doubtful it would have prevented a SWAT team from shooting14-month-old Sincere in the shoulder and hand and killing his mother.
No body camera could have stopped a Georgia SWAT team fromlaunching a flash-bang grenade into the house in which Baby Bou Bou, his threesisters and his parents were staying. The grenadelanded in the 2-year-old's crib, burning a hole in his chest and leavinghim with scarring that a lifetime of surgeries will not be able to easily undo.
No body camera could have prevented 10-year-old DakotaCorbitt from being shot by a Georgia police officer who triedto shoot an inquisitive dog, missed, and hit the young boy, instead. AlbertoSepulveda, 11, diedfrom one "accidental" shotgun round to the back, after a SWAT team raidedhis parents' home.
Cleveland police shotand killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was seen playing on a playgroundwith a toy gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy aftergetting out of a moving patrol car. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot7 times in 10 seconds by a California police officer who mistook the boy'stoy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shotand killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer,mistaking the Wii remote control in Roupe's hand for a gun, shot him in thechest.
These children are more than grim statistics on a policeblotter. They are the heartbreaking casualties of the government's endless,deadly wars on terror, on drugs, and on the American people themselves. Noteven the children who survive their encounters with police escape unscathed. Increasingly,their lives are daily lessons in compliance and terror, meted out with everySWAT team raid, roadside strip search, and school drill.
Who is calculating the damage being done to the young peopleforced to watch as their homes are trashed and their dogs are shot during SWATteam raids? A Minnesota SWAT team actually burst into one family's house, shotthe family's dog, handcuffed the children and forced them to "sitnext to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour."They later claimed it was the wrong house.
Then there are the hands-on lessons being taughtin the schools about the role of police in our lives, ranging from activeshooter drills to incidents in which children are suspended,handcuffed,arrested andeven tasered for what used to be considered childlike behavior. For example, policeofficers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill inan effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actualshooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst intoclassrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.
It's getting harder by the day to tell young people that welive in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of lawwithout feeling like a teller of tall tales. Yet as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The EmergingAmerican Police State, unless something changes and soon for the youngpeople growing up, there will be nothing left of freedom as we have known itbut a fairy tale without a happy ending.

[Lauren Johnson]

To be perfectly honest, I just can't fathom the decision to to indict the cop. A choke hold is against police regulations. That alone means manslaughter at the very least. The doctor at the hospital who was involved wrote it up as homicide.

The police system in the US is utterly broken and the cops protected - no matter what they do, including murder. The testament to that conclusion is this thread - and there are a number of cases out there we haven't even discussed.

I'm not sure it's illegal here.

I do know it takes skill and training to apply it properly. I talked to someone who used to do full contact fighting as a hobby, not as a sport. His favorite take down was the choke hold. I asked him to do it on me. Within two seconds the room started going dark. Done improperly, it is a method of killing. The choke hold in the video is one done very improperly, given the demo and explanation on myself. Possibilities: the cop is poorly trained or he is actually trying to hurt or kill the guy. Seems to me the city should get sued for some big bucks.

[Albert Doyle]

Anyone else see the disconnect between the great free nation and Statue Of Liberty sanctuary and legal sidewalk murders for selling loosies? :: ::