The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[derspiess]

I bet her ears are still ringing.

[Syt]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article23753281.html

Cop shoots homeless man wielding pipe at Overtown park

A veteran Miami police officer training a rookie shot and killed a homeless man who was threatening him with a pipe at an Overtown park filled with kids on Thursday, police said.

The shooting sent children attending summer camp at Gibson Park scrambling to get inside buildings. Police said as many as 60 people may have witnessed the morning confrontation at one of Overtown's more popular summer spots for kids.

The officer who fired the fatal shot was identified as Antonio Torres, a 20-year police veteran who was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in 2007. Struck while driving his police motorcycle on State Rd. 836, Torres suffered a fractured skull and heart damage.

It took him more than a year to fully recover and return to the force. The 41-year-old officer is a member of the department's Honor Guard and has worked in training and traffic enforcement. He will be placed on administrative leave while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates the incident.

The man shot dead is 46-year-old Fritz Severe, a vagrant who some familiar with the investigation said spent time at a nearby post office. Severe has a lengthy criminal past with convictions for violent and non-violent offenses in different jurisdictions.

Even as the children attending summer camp at Gibson Park Thursday were quickly ushered inside a building, parents who had been notified that their kids were safe waited nervously outside. Police brass, sensitive to the national concern over recent videotaped police actions, showed up at the park in large numbers.

Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes took the unusual step of personally addressing the public. He said his officers responded after police received a call about a "violent disturbance."

"The officer confronted the subject and discharged his weapon," Llanes said. "There was more than one shot."

Llanes said police have to interview 40 to 60 witnesses. The chief said an officer would only fire his weapon if he felt threatened, and added that he's well aware of the "anxiety that's been created across the country."

"I would ask that everybody wait for the facts," Llanes said. "We will determine the truth based on the number of witnesses."

An officer familiar with the investigation said the man died after being taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Witnesses gave differing accounts, but all seemed to agree that Severe was homeless and frequented the park.

Police were called to the scene Thursday morning by a park worker concerned that Severe was a threat to the children playing there. Though his body was removed quickly, a three-foot long metal pipe remained at the scene, police said.

Police said none of the officers at the shooting scene were wearing body cameras. They were checking late Thursday to see if there was video surveillance at the park or if anyone may have recorded the confrontation.

The shooting death of Severe was one of two on Thursday by law enforcement in South Florida.

Four Broward sheriff's deputies were involved in the death of a bank robbery suspect in Pompano Beach. In that incident, Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said the deputies had the man in custody, but a struggle followed and he broke free. When he reached for a weapon in his car, Israel said, he was shot dead by one of the deputies.

Several people claimed to have witnessed Thursday's shooting in Gibson Park. Most said they recognized the man who had been killed but didn't know him personally.

Nichelle Miller said she saw the confrontation, which took place around 10 a.m., inside the park at Northwest 13th Street and Third Avenue. It happened in front of the entrance to the Culmer/Overtown branch library. Miller said the officer fired five times.

"The man had a stick in his hand. They could have Tasered him. He was a homeless guy who's there every morning," Miller said. She said the man didn't swing the pipe at the officer, but pointed it at him.

Another witness, Stephanie Severance, told Miami Herald news partner CBS4 that the officer stopped Severe, and when he began pointing the metal stick at the officer, the officer opened fire.

"The next thing you know, the man shot him," she said. "I didn't know whether to run, duck or hide."

In January, Miami handed over investigations of police-involved shootings to the FDLE. This is the second police-involved shooting since April — when Miami rookie cop Rosny Obas got into a shootout with a man driving a taxi.

The FDLE, which doesn't comment on investigations, said its sole mission is to look for criminal wrongdoing.

Javier Ortiz, president of the Fraternal Order of Police union that represents Miami officers, said it's imperative that the public has confidence in officers — especially when deadly force is used. He cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

"The FOP is confident that when the independent investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is complete, it will find that our officer involved acted within the law," Ortiz said.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show Severe has a lengthy criminal history littered with trespassing arrests in Miami-Dade and Orlando. The records also show he was arrested in 2005 in North Miami for aggravated battery, but the case was dropped. In 2009, he was found guilty of aggravated battery in Broward County. The same charge was dropped a year later in Miami-Dade.

Last year, the records show, Severe was arrested by Miami-Dade police for burglary and resisting arrest with violence. Those charges were dropped. Finally, he was found guilty of criminal mischief after being arrested by Miami police in January.

By Thursday afternoon, most of the kids at the YMCA summer camp had been released to their parents. Some stayed, even as investigators continued to swarm the park. The crime scene was on the small walkway outside the library wall covered with colorful hand-painted pictures.

The city spent millions of dollars three years ago renovating Gibson Park, refurbishing the once-popular but decaying swimming pool and allowing the YMCA to open a center on Northwest Third Avenue, to the south of the popular Overtown Youth Center. Today, it offers swimming lessons and other outdoor activities like football.

The park is on the northern end of rehabilitated Northwest Third Avenue, which now has shops, covered walkways and other street improvements for several blocks south of 14th Street. The shooting took place at the north end of the park, across the street from a building under construction and next to a vacant building.

Veronica Sands was waiting for her 11-year-old son and 7-year-old grandson to be released from the YMCA. Standing in the hot sun outside the park and under a poinciana tree with two hens roosting in its branches, she said she received a call from a park employee soon after the shooting. He said her family members were safe.

"I'm feeling a little better knowing they're OK," Sands said. "I can't even begin to describe what goes through your mind, though, when you get a call saying something like this happened. I'm just upset it had to happen in front of the kids."

[Syt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/after-freddie-gray-death-west-baltimores-police-presence-drops-and-murders-soar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=fb-nytimes&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&smtyp=aut&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id

West Baltimore's Police Presence Drops, and Murders Soar

BALTIMORE — From the steps of her New Bethlehem Baptist Church, the Rev. Lisa Weah looked down the block to the open-air drug market outside the bodega on the corner a few hundred feet away.

The traffic there had been slowing until the chaos that followed the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, after he was injured in police custody. Now it is back full-bore, and the police are often nowhere to be seen.

A month and a half after six officers were charged in Mr. Gray's death, policing has dwindled in some of Baltimore's most dangerous neighborhoods, and murders have risen to levels not seen in four decades. The totals include a 29-year-old man fatally shot on this drug corner last month. Police union officials say that officers are still coming to work, but that some feel a newfound reluctance and are stepping back, questioning whether they will be prosecuted for actions they take on the job.

Around the nation, communities and police departments are struggling to adapt to an era of heightened scrutiny, when every stop can be recorded on a cellphone. But residents, clergy members and neighborhood leaders say the past six weeks have made another reality clear: that as much as some officers regularly humiliated and infuriated many who live here, angering gang members and solid citizens alike, the solution has to be better policing, not a diminished police presence.

"Without law enforcement, there is no order," Pastor Weah said. "In truth, residents want a strong police force, but they also want accountability." She said that she sympathized with many officers who did their jobs well but were now just as hated as the abusive officers, and that she prayed the spate of killings would be the shock that finally caused change.

"This crisis was bound to happen because of the broken relationship between law enforcement and the people," she said. "When something gets this infected, you have to break it down and start from new."

At least 55 people, the highest pace since the early 1970s, have been murdered in Baltimore since May 1, when the state's attorney for the city, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced the criminal charges against the officers. Victims of shootings have included people involved in criminal activity and young children who were simply in the wrong place.

A 9-year-old boy was shot in the leg over the Memorial Day weekend. Another boy, Kester Browne, 7, a Chinese-language student at an international school in Baltimore, was fatally shot along with his mother, Jennifer Jeffrey-Browne, 31. They were two of the city's 42 murder victims in May.

At the time of her announcement, Ms. Mosby's charges were seen as calming the city. But they enraged the police rank and file, who pulled back. The number of arrests plunged, and the murder rate doubled in a month. The reduced police presence gave criminals space to operate, according to community leaders and some law enforcement officials.

The soaring violence has made Baltimore a battleground for political arguments about whether a backlash against police tactics has led to more killings in big cities like New York, St. Louis and Chicago, and whether "de-policing," as academics call it, can cause crime to rise.

Still, the speed and severity of the police pullback here appear unlike anything that has happened in other major cities. And rather than a clear test case, Baltimore is a reminder of how complicated policing issues are and how hard it can be to draw solid conclusions from a month or two of crime and police response.

For example, police commanders here attribute the spike in violence in large part to a unique factor: a flood of black-market opiates stolen from 27 pharmacies during looting in April, enough for 175,000 doses now illegally available for sale.

They say drug gangs are now oversupplied with inventory from the looting, resulting in a violent battle for market share from a finite base of potential customers. Gangs sell a single OxyContin dose for $30, twice what they get for a dose of heroin, said Gary Tuggle, a former Baltimore police officer who was the head of the city's Drug Enforcement Administration office until this month.

Police leaders acknowledge, though, that they do not yet know how many of the recent murders were drug-related. Mr. Tuggle also said he took issue with "this idea that the only reason for the rise in violence" is drugs.

"It's hard to police effectively if you are only concerned about self-preservation," he said. "If you are not challenging them because of the need for self-preservation, then these folks are likely going to go out and commit these crimes."

Whether hostility from residents or police slowdowns lead to increases in crime is hotly debated among academics. David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies police accountability, said increases were usually attributable to local circumstances, including the drug trade and gang rivalries.

Baltimore commanders say that their officers are engaged — making major arrests, conducting raids and taking weapons off the streets — but that basic police work is now more labor intensive. For instance, an officer interviewing witnesses may be surrounded by scores of onlookers with cellphone cameras.

Officials from the western Baltimore neighborhoods hardest hit by the spate of murders — including City Councilman Nick J. Mosby, who is married to Ms. Mosby, the state's attorney — say commanders have also doubled the number of officers per cruiser for safety reasons.

"The visibility has significantly decreased," Mr. Mosby said. While many people in his district want a larger police presence, he added, "you talk to others and they don't even want to see a police officer."

The crisis has also set the police commissioner — Anthony W. Batts, who took command three years ago after serving as police chief in Oakland and Long Beach, Calif. — between a city angry at the department's posture toward many residents, and police union officials who suggest he does not fully support rank-and-file officers.

Tensions with the police union broke out into the open late last month, when Mr. Batts apologized emotionally to members for not preparing for unrest on the scale of April's riot, which wounded more than 100 officers.

"I got my guys hurt, and I got to own that, and I stand tall behind that," he told the union members. "That won't happen again in this organization."

Healing the chasm between the police and western Baltimore is the job of a new commander, Capt. Sheree Briscoe, now acting major in charge of the three-square-mile district that sees much of the worst violence. After her appointment late last month, she moved quickly to bring community leaders into the fold, a new approach that has encouraged Pastor Weah and others.

Captain Briscoe promised that this was only the beginning of changes. "You cannot just attack the drug trade" alone, she said, citing deep-rooted social and economic challenges, and problems with things like trash, lighting and vacant homes, that needed to be "holistically" addressed.

Just as many community leaders say they need the police back, Captain Briscoe says residents need to be more involved with police planning. She said she intended to share more information and to include residents of the district in deciding police priorities.

"The direction that we're going in now, the community is more a part of it," she said. "They are going to be more a part of the process, as opposed to affected by the process."

For now, the clergy members who fill much of the leadership vacuum in the city's toughest neighborhoods have been the police's main avenue to try to reconnect with angry and alienated residents.

But the problems in western Baltimore existed long before Mr. Gray's death, and many of them go well beyond policing.

In Sandtown-Winchester, the nearly all-black district where Mr. Gray took his last steps a few blocks from Pastor Weah's church, one in four children age 10 to 17 were arrested from 2005 to 2009, according to a report by the city's Health Department. The neighborhood had twice as much poverty and unemployment as the rest of Baltimore, which is itself one of the nation's poorest major cities.

Longtime residents say the recreation centers they remember going to after class have closed, creating more risk that young people will come under the sway of drug dealers.

"We emulated the guys who were best in pool, best in Ping-Pong, best in basketball," said George Butler, 40, sitting in his barbershop near the scene of the worst rioting and looting in April. "And that counteracted the other guys we looked up to" — drug dealers.

Mr. Butler went to prison a decade ago for distributing heroin with a feared drug organization. But he wants the police back on the job.

With the force diminished, he said, criminals think, "I don't have to worry about the police coming, so why not?"

Police assertiveness "is a gift and a curse," Mr. Butler added. "To some extent, it keeps the violence down. But when they become overaggressive or abusive or combative to the citizens, then it causes them to be in an uproar."

Just how much the Police Department changes may depend on the outcome of a Justice Department investigation into whether the force has used abusive patterns and practices against residents.

That inquiry may take a year or more, two Justice Department officials told about 20 residents who gathered last week at Sharon Baptist Church in Sandtown. At the meeting, residents described frustrations that ranged from the difficulty of finding affordable housing to humiliating police practices like strip- and cavity-searching men in full view of bystanders.

The police say there were 13 homicides in the first 11 days of June. One teenager outside the booming open-air drug market down the block from Pastor Weah's church was not optimistic that the pace would slow.

"Summertime," he said. "That's when they do all the killing."

[Valmy]

Imagine that? This is why it is so incredibly important to have good relations between communities and police officers.

[Syt]

As my sister puts it on Facebook:

[derspiess]

That Mosby chick ain't helping things.  But hey, as she says she comes from "five generations of cops"

[derspiess]

This is why it is so incredibly important to have good relations between communities and police officers.

Almost seems like a fool's errand at this point.

[jimmy olsen]

State government should make the cops patrol their beat, and if they have to fire folks until it happens, then do it.

That Mosby chick ain't helping things.  But hey, as she says she comes from "five generations of cops"

Oh, and what is she doing that she shouldn't? 
And what is so funny about her ancestry?

[Valmy]

As my sister puts it on Facebook:

Yeah I am sure the overlap between the people rioting in Baltimore and spoiled children is huge.

[derspiess]

Oh, and what is she doing that she shouldn't? 

For starters, see this: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-freddie-gray-mosby-20150505-story.html

Also, she filed a gag order motion in the wrong court.  And it turns out that she had asked Baltimore police to focus drug enforcement in the area where Fred Gray was arrested.  So she could be called as a witness in the trial.  I'm no lawyer but I would think she'd be disqualified as a prosecutor at that point.

She just appears to be in over her head.  She rushed in with charges for the six cops and seems to have done so for her own publicity. 

That's not to say that charges shouldn't be brought against some of the six cops in question.  It's just the way she went about it smacks of incompetence.

And what is so funny about her ancestry?

First of all, having family members who were cops does not automatically grant you a good relationship with the police force.  Also does not mean you're on their side and wouldn't sell them out for personal benefit.  Anytime she's challenged on that she throws down the "five generations" card.

But moving on to the claim itself, her grandfather was a cop, her parents were cops, so the way I see it she comes from two generations of cops.  She's counting every single family member as a generation.  But maybe I misunderstand the term "generation", dunno.

[Valmy]

five generations? Were there even police back in 1810 or whenever that many generations back would be alive

[Ideologue]

When the surveillance state finally arises, crime and police brutality alike will become a thing of the past. It's already happening, I'm just about 10 years ahead. As usual.

[Berkut]

This says more about their integrity than killing black people in custody.

Basically, they are saying that if they are not allowed to police with impunity, they are not going to police at all.

[Ideologue]

Maybe they shouldn't get paid at all.  Don't we not like strikers and work-to-rule shenanigans in this country?

[jimmy olsen]

Investigators find no evidence that Tamar Rice was told to raise his hands.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigators-cleveland-officer-did-not-tell-boy-to-raise-his-hands-before-firing/2015/06/13/cfb83290-1207-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html