The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[garbon]

[Eddie Teach]

We also appear to have very few cases of murders by cops brought to light due to the testimony of their collegues rather than due to videos that surface.

Murderers generally try not to be witnessed by cops in the act, even if they are cops themselves.

[Syt]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/a-prosecutor-on-the-killer-cop-he-indicted-this-should-not-happen-ever/400007/?utm_source=SFFB

A Prosecutor on the Killer Cop He Indicted: 'This Should Not Happen, Ever'

On Wednesday, as officials in Hamilton County, Ohio, released video footage of University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing shooting unarmed motorist Samuel DuBose in the head during a traffic stop, prosecutor Joe Deters conducted himself as professionally and appropriately as any prosecutor I've ever seen in a similar situation.

The 30-year veteran, who announced that Officer Tensing was being indicted for murder, took immediate care to affirmatively state that the victim in the case was not responsible for his fate. "This is the most asinine act I've ever seen a police officer make," he told reporters. "People want to believe that Mr. DuBose had done something violent toward the officer; he did not. He did not at all. And I feel so sorry for his family and what they lost. And I feel sorry for the community, too."

The balance of the press conference shows an official forthrightly disseminating difficult facts, explaining to the press exactly why he temporarily suppressed video evidence, fielding questions, expressing upset at a crime perpetrated by an agent of the state, offering words of comfort to the family, and urging calm in the community. And it suggests a prosecutor who gave no special treatment to the policeman.

"What's the message to the community or to other police officers?" one reporter asked.

"Look," the prosecutor answered, "we're gonna follow the law in this office and we are going, if the facts fit the law, we're gonna pursue that no matter if you're a police officer or you're Pope Francis, I don't care who you are, we're gonna go after you."

More strikingly, he spoke about the case just as he would about a non-cop indicted for murder. "Purposeful killing of another, that's what makes it murder," he said. "He purposefully killed him." Here's a longer illustrative exchange with a reporter:

Deters: If we think something is awry, we go after it. A warrant for his arrest has gone out and hopefully they'll pick him up soon.

Q: ... Have you discussed is he going to turn himself in at a scheduled time? Have you talked to his attorney about it?

Deters: I'm treating him like a murderer.

Q: Is he in custody right now?

Deters: They're out to get him. We asked his lawyer to turn him in if he wants, but we're going to arrest him.

Q: As we speak?

Deters: Yes.

And here's another important exchange about the moment when the motorist, asked to produce his license, took his foot off the brake and the car lurched slowly forward:

Q: What should the officer have done in this case? You said he reacted moments before the car slowly rolled away and the officer fired. What should he have done?

Deters: He wasn't dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, he was dealing with someone who didn't have a front license plate. I mean, this is—in the vernacular—a pretty chicken-crap stop, alright? And I could use harsher words. But, nonetheless, if he's starting to roll away, just—seriously—let him go, you don't have to shoot him in the head. And that's what happened.

Later in the press conference, the prosecutor volunteered that future tragedies might be averted, in his view, if Cincinnati police officers rather than University of Cincinnati cops policed areas near campus, and that he'd already advised local leaders to make the change. I have no idea whether his assessment is correct, but it is heartening to see any member of the criminal-justice system going above and beyond his immediate duties to suggest reforms that might prevent future injustices.

A final notable moment of forthrightness came when a reporter asked about the utility of video footage in the case, and Deters acknowledged that if he were dealing with the officer's verbal account of what happened rather than video evidence, there probably wouldn't have been any murder indictment or arrest in the first place. That brings us to the one aspect of a stellar performance that warrants criticism.

"The policemen I know and the investigators I work with everyday, this situation would have never have escalated like this ... I feel so sorry for his family and what they lost. And I feel sorry for the community, too," Deters said. "Because we've worked so hard to develop great police relationships with the community and to have this type of a senseless act take place in Cincinnati. This doesn't happen in the United States. This might happen in Afghanistan or somewhere ... This just does not happen in the United States. People don't just get shot for a traffic stop unless they are violent toward the police officer. And he wasn't. You're gonna see it."

I cannot speak to the overall quality of policing in Cincinnati. But it just isn't true that "this doesn't happen in the United States." We know it happens because we've seen it before.

The prosecutor is surely familiar with the North Charleston police officer who shot and killed Walter Scott during a traffic stop just a few months ago, making national headlines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKQqgVlk0NQ

He may not have seen, but should review, footage of a 70-year-old man shot during a traffic stop when a highway patrolman mistook his cane for a firearm of some sort:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk1z-YoeAng

As well, he should watch police officers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, firing at a minivan full of kids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBL6AEkvLbk

And the man at a Columbia, South Carolina, gas station shot by a police officer as he attempted to produce his driver's license:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFYTtgZAlE

These incidents happen more frequently than is captured on video. And they raise the question of how many videos of this sort must emerge before conscientious prosecutors begin to accept what many Americans only started believing in the YouTube era: that while this sort of thing mostly doesn't happen in England or Denmark or Spain, it happens with alarming frequency in the United States. The present case almost certainly would've turned out differently but for the existence of video. And that should make Deters more cautious in the future about presuming that the version of events given by police officers is the truth.

[DGuller]

We also appear to have very few cases of murders by cops brought to light due to the testimony of their collegues rather than due to videos that surface.

Murderers generally try not to be witnessed by cops in the act, even if they are cops themselves.

Doesn't mean they always succeed.  And you don't have to be witnessing the crime yourself.  If you see a guy planting a taser next to the guy he just shot, and go along with the program, you're a still a witness who chose to cover for your colleague.

[jimmy olsen]

Good on that prosecutor.^^^

Looks like they got more evidence.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/30/sam_dubose_murder_phillip_kidd_and_david_lindenschmidt_suspended_after_backing.html

New Body Cam Videos Show Cops Coalescing Around False Narrative of Sam DuBose Killing

By Jeremy Stahl
screen_shot_20150730_at_8.10.57_pm
David Lindenschmidt's body camera shows how a false narrative of Sam DuBose's killing was constructed.

Screen capture fromUniversity of Cincinnati police.

Two police officers who supported the apparently false narrative given by officer Ray Tensing to justify his fatal shooting of unarmed black motorist Sam DuBose have been placed on paid administrative leave, as two new videos that seem to further damage all three officers' original accounts were made public on Thursday.

Tensing was charged with murdering DuBose on Wednesday and city officials released video footage from his body camera that seemed to contradict the officer's account that he shot DuBose in self-defense after being dragged by the driver's car.
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On Thursday, Tensing pled not guilty to murdering DuBose and his lawyer said the charges were unwarranted. Stewart Mathews also gave a possible preview of his client's defense, saying that the officer was knocked to the ground, dragged, and "feared for his life."

This account—which appeared to be contradicted by the video from Tensing's body camera that showed him firing his gun and then falling down—was very similar to the stories initially given by two of Tensing's fellow University of Cincinnati officers on the scene, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, who have both now been placed on leave.

Furthermore, the body cameras of Kidd and Lindenschmidt—made public on Thursday—show just how quickly Tensing and his colleagues coalesced around a false narrative of how the incident occurred. The footage should serve as a powerful lesson to anyone who automatically believes the accounts of police officers in these types of shooting incidents, for which cops are rarely prosecuted.

In Kidd's video, he can be seen chasing after DuBose's car alongside Tensing after the fatal shot was fired and the vehicle went out of control. After the car crashes and the chase ends, you can hear Tensing say "I thought he was going to run me over."

As Tensing appears to formulate his story, you can hear Kidd confirm it aloud. Tensing says "he was dragging me" and Kidd replies "yeah, I saw that."

At the three minute and 30 second mark in the above video, Tensing repeats "he was dragging me, man" and then says "I just got my hand and my arm caught." Again, Kidd replies "I saw that." Kidd then curses and asks Tensing "what was he reaching for?" Tensing replies "He kept reaching around. I told him to step out of the car. He couldn't produce a license."

Tensing then says "I almost got ran over" and Kidd responds "don't—don't say anything," before cursing again.

Later in the video, another officer asks Kidd if he saw Tensing being dragged and he says "yes."

Kidd backed up Tensing's account in the official police report of the incident. Lindenschmidt, however, was portrayed as more circumspect in that document, which says "It is unclear how much of this incident [officer in training] Lindenschmidt witnessed."

But Lindenschmidt's body cam video, which also starts off with him chasing DuBose's out-of-control car, shows him supporting what appears to be a false narrative of the shooting as well.

Lindenschmidt initially asks Tensing "what'd he pull on you?" After Tensing doesn't answer, he asks again "he pulled?" This time, Tensing responds "he didn't reach for anything."

At about the four-minute mark in the above video Lindenschmidt tells another officer the exact opposite, though. "He had a traffic stop, the guy took off from him. The officer got caught in his car, because the guy reached for something—he thought—and so he grabbed onto the car," Lindenschmidt says, contradicting what Tensing had just told him. "Our officer went down, he got tangled in the car, drew his gun and fired."

At just after the seven-minute mark, Lindenschmidt actually describes the shooting accurately, though, saying that Tensing fired before the car went dangerously out of control. (In the video, the car appears to go out of control only after DuBose had been shot when he had apparently attempted to start to pull the car away from Tensing.) "I was right behind him. He fired from right here and the guy took off," Lindenschmidt says to another officer, getting the order of events correct.

Lindenschmidt then appears to go back to the other order: "I just arrived to back him up when the guy took off. The officer was stuck in the vehicle. Fired one round."

At the end of the video, Lindenschmidt says "I'm going to turn my camera off" before being instructed to "keep it on for now." That's when the footage ends.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Thursday that he told DuBose's family his office would examine what Tensing's colleagues "said and how they said it, but I did urge them to remember that our focus is on the shooting."

In an emotional press conference on Wednesday, DuBose's sister Terina Allen said that Tensing would not have been indicted without the video footage "because the second officer was ready to corroborate every lie that the first officer said in the report."

The Enquirer also reported that Kidd and Eric Weibel, the officer who wrote the initial report on the incident, had been named as defendants in a 2010 wrongful death lawsuit by the family of an unarmed mentally ill man who died a few days after being restrained and tasered by police.

Weibel included what can at the very least be described as his own embellished description of how Tensing looked like his clothes "had been dragged over a rough surface" after the incident. He has not yet been reported to have been placed on administrative leave.

The Enquirer also reported that Kidd could be charged for giving a false statement.

"It was a false statement. The video evidence doesn't support it," Philip Stinson, a Bowling Green State University criminologist who gathers data on officer arrests, said of Kidd's description of the incident. "There seems to be the elements of a crime there."

The Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio chairman Bruce Szilagyi seemed to support the officers in question when he said that video footage didn't always tell the whole story. "People who watch an encounter on video using the slow motion setting to determine what happened have a luxury that police on the street don't," Szilagyi said."We make split second decisions. Some are right, some are wrong. but all of our decisions are made with an eye toward protecting the public and ourselves."

Jeremy Stahl is a Slate senior editor. You can follow him on Twitter.

[derspiess]

Glad things have settled down in Ferguson.  Never mind that the "hands up" thing never actually happened

http://news.yahoo.com/ferguson-marks-anniversary-notorious-us-police-shooting-102429039.html

Tensions flare in Ferguson on police shooting anniversary

AFP By Loic Hofstedt

Ferguson (United States) (AFP) - Tensions flared in the US city of Ferguson late Sunday as looters targeted at least one store following a day of somber remembrance to mark the anniversary of the police shooting of an unarmed black teen.

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A crowd of about 50 people looted a beauty store in the St. Louis suburb and protesters grew confrontational late in the evening. There was no immediate word of any arrests.

Demonstrators had taken to the streets of Ferguson to mark the anniversary of 18-year-old Michael Brown's death in a fateful encounter on August 9, 2014 with officer Darren Wilson.

The shooting -- and a subsequent decision not to indict Wilson -- led to violent unrest and set off nationwide protests and intense scrutiny of heavy-handed police tactics in a series of cases that ended in the deaths of unarmed blacks.

Sunday's day of remembrance had been peaceful until a handful of protesters grew rowdy later in the evening. A crowd of about 300 people had gathered earlier to mark the anniversary, during which they observed four and a half minutes of silence and released two white doves.

The time represented the four and a half hours that Brown's body lay face down in the street before being taken away.

Many in the crowd in Ferguson wore T-shirts emblazoned with Brown's portrait and the words "Choose Change." Others carried signs, including one that read: "STOP killing black children."

They then set off in a silent march through Ferguson to the Greater St. Mark's Church, which served as a sanctuary during the protests following Brown's death.

Brown's father, also called Michael, said he was grateful so many people had turned out for the march.

"If it wasn't for y'all this would be swept under the carpet. So I just want to give my love out to y'all," he said to the crowd.

In New York, dozens of people gathered at Union Square to hold a vigil for Brown in solidarity with Ferguson and to call for ongoing demonstrations against police killings of minorities.

About 100 people gathered in Brooklyn earlier, staging a symbolic "die-in" to protest Brown's shooting. Police arrested several people.

- 'Glacial' progress -

One year on, black leaders say they have witnessed a dramatic change in American attitudes toward race, but see little action by lawmakers to enact policing reforms.

Yet another high-profile shooting occurred Friday, when a Texas police officer fatally shot 19-year-old unarmed college football player Christian Taylor after he drove his vehicle through the front of a car dealership.

The head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the country's oldest civil rights group, called the pace of legislative change "glacial."

"In terms of legislative action, 40 legislators have taken up some measure of holding police departments accountable but only a tiny fraction of which actually moved towards holding police departments accountable," said NAACP president Cornell William Brooks in an interview with CBS's Face the Nation.

He urged passage of laws against racial profiling by police and support for reforms requiring body cameras, independent prosecutors and retraining of US police departments.

Erica Snipes, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died after being held in a chokehold by police in New York, also appealed for reform.
"This year has just been so hard. No accountability, no justice. Police are still killing us -- it's a crisis that's going on," she said at the rally in Ferguson.

President Barack Obama meanwhile dismissed criticism that he had been too reluctant to tackle issues of race early in his tenure as America's first African-American president.

"I feel a great urgency to get as much done as possible," he said in an interview with NPR, parts of which were released Sunday.

"And, there's no doubt that after over six and a half years on this job, I probably have an easier time juggling a lot of different issues. And, it may be that my passions show a little bit more. Just because I have been around this track for now for a while."

Outrage over the police killings of Brown and other black Americans in the past year has been channeled into a sustained nationwide movement with the social media hashtag #Blacklivesmatter becoming its rallying cry.

On Saturday, protesters in Ferguson had marched along one of the avenues hit by fierce rioting last November when a court decided not to indict Wilson.

The peaceful march, led by Brown's father, saw participants shout slogans such as "Hands up, don't shoot" and "We do this for who? We do this for Mike Brown."

[Berkut]

I won't speak for everyone authoritatively, but if I had to guess, I would say that you're not fooling anyone with your "Jaron treatment". 

+1

If nothing else, you made an excellent point previously - one that should be emphasied.

Cops have killed thousands of people. In most cases, those shootings are likely justified.

However, just statitstics tells us that our of those thousands, some tens? Hundreds? are not.

If cops are mostly upstanding, law abiding people, how many cases do we know of where a police officer has been charged and convicted based solely on the testimony of a fellow police officer who witnessed the event?

I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero.

I don't think most cops are willing to kill indiscriminately. But it does seem most are willing to tolerate and protect those who have...

[Valmy]

Glad things have settled down in Ferguson.  Never mind that the "hands up" thing never actually happened

It is the principle Spicey.

[Razgovory]

It's a clusterfuck up in Ferguson.  The crowds have acted disgracefully.

[derspiess]

Glad things have settled down in Ferguson.  Never mind that the "hands up" thing never actually happened

It is the principle Spicey.

Principle of false narratives?

[Razgovory]

Police brutality is a problem.  It simply wasn't the problem here.

[derspiess]

Police brutality is a problem.  It simply wasn't the problem here.

Agree. 

[Valmy]

Glad things have settled down in Ferguson.  Never mind that the "hands up" thing never actually happened

It is the principle Spicey.

Principle of false narratives?

The cause is bigger than the truth or something.

And somebody decided Ferguson is the most racist place in America or something.

[garbon]

[derspiess]

Uh oh, garbon's not pleased.