By Carlos Miller
George Donnelly, the Pennsylvania videographer who was arrested last week for videotaping federal officers in front of an Allentown courthouse, is facing eight years in prison for his deed.
He is specifically being accused of striking one of the officers.
Anybody who has seen the two previous videos where Donnelly was confronted by federal officers in front of a courthouse will find these charges hard to believe.
After all, Donnelly has a tendency to remain courteous even when getting threatened with violence.
Nevertheless, the federal government is charging him with assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain United States Government officers or employees, which carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.
The evidence, of course, lies in the videotape they confiscated from him. We’ll be lucky if that ever makes the light of day.
When contacted by Photography is Not a Crime today, Donnelly said he was not commenting about his case.
But Libertadedia, described as the libertarian encyclopedia, offers detailed information obtained from court records.
The site states he has been subjected to the following conditions under house arrest, even though he has not been convicted:
Donnelly was arrested on May 11th when he was accompanying activist Julian Heicklens who was passing out literature on jury nullification.
This is how Heicklens describes the incident:
At 12:10 pm, six federal marshals approached us in a confrontational manner and said we could not pass out literature nor take pictures. They stood right in front of each of us, no more than 6 inches away, so that we could not communicate with passersby. These were 6 of the most obnoxious people I have ever met.
We asked the marshals to identify themselves, but they refused. We would not identify ourselves.George attempted to take a picture, but they seized George’s camera. He attempted to retrieve it, but they they threw George to the ground. Then they decided to arrest him for assault. They were joined by a 7th marshal.
Heicklens states that Donnelly was released after spending two days in jail, forced to wear an electronic bracelet because he was unable to meet the $50,000 bail.
Last month, Donnelly was harassed twice for videotaping outside a federal courthouse, including one time when a federal officer got into his face and stated the following:
“If you get too close to me with that camera, I’ll take it out of your hand and ram it down your throat”
Although this was clearly a physical threat and there is no doubt who it came from, the officer was never disciplined because he was still working his beat since then, according to an interview with Donnelly a couple of weeks back.
The second time he was harassed, a different set of officers threatened to confiscate his camera.
Both times, he responded politely yet firmly, insisting that he was not breaking any laws, which he wasn’t.
So I’m looking forward to see how he responded in the video we have yet to see.
On his blog, Donnelly says he does not have an attorney and is asking for legal assistance, so hopefully people come through because this is an important matter. Here is the link to donate.
Related posts:
(Via Fr33 Agents and Drunkenatheist 2010-05-14.)
Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, it’s fallen to the Western nations to take up the banner of the War on Photography, formerly a stereotypically East German sort of preoccupation for the Securitate…
A few days ago, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the United States government’s Marshals attacked, arrested, and imprisoned my friend George Donnelly, an Anarchist based out of Philadelphia. They attacked him because he was filming the Marshals attacking somebody else, Julian Heicklen, who was peacefully distributing pamphlets about jury nullification in front of a federal courthouse. When Marshals got up in Heicklen’s face, he started arguing with them; like most government cops, the Marshals are happy to gang up on old men, and like most government cops, they believe they have the right and duty to use physical violence in order to put an end to purely verbal arguments. When the Marshals started attacking Heicklen, some of them went after George for filming what they were doing. Since he wouldn’t stop filming or hand over his camera on command, the Marshals tackled him, planted a knee on his face and pried the camera out of his hands. Then they arrested him for resisting arrest, and forced into a Federal jail for about 2 days before he was finally released, after a concerted effort by George’s friends at Fr33 Agents to make calls demanding his release.
He is safe at home for now with his wife and child. But the bullshit charges are still pending. Here’s George:
Thank you so much to everyone who noted my disappearing by federal agents and took steps to aid me. I am blessed and grateful to have such dear friends and comrades. Thank you. I will post more when I can. I’m currently recuperating from the relatively mild torture tactics deployed against me (and many other peaceful individuals I had the pleasure of meeting) in the local federal prison.
I’m currently seeking a criminal defense attorney who can assist in defending me against the federal onslaught. I am infinitely grateful for any assistance you can render. Thank you.
Here’s Vicki Moore’s call for solidarity with George. I couldn’t agree more.
As you can imagine, the next few months (or years, however the hell long it is for him) are going to be rough for George and his family. It’s hard enough being in a
he said-she saidcase against a regular person; imagine being in ahe said-she saidagainst the government with only two libertarians backing you up! He is going to be under a crazy amount of stress until these charges are (hopefully!) dismissed.This is where your help is needed.
George needs a good criminal defense attorney who is well versed in first amendment cases and doesn’t mind taking on the federal government. He will also need a legal defense fund; he’s got a wife and a young son at home, let’s try to help ease the financial pressure on them. As of right now (Friday, May 14th, 2:46 am EST), George is taking donations through his paypal account (link located here). I will update if I find out anything else regarding a legal defense fund for him.
I know that the internet regularly sucks my will to live, but incidences like these are one of the few times I feel like I can have faith in the ‘tubes. This whole situation kills me. Admittedly, it’s in part because even though we haven’t met (yet), George and I run in some of the same circles and have several shared acquaintances/irl friends. Please help him in whatever way you can; even if you can’t donate money right now, just spread the info around and maybe you know someone who can.
She also has a good round-up of links to the reporting on the police riot at the courthouse. I don’t have much to add, except my best wishes and solidarity for George and his family, and my hope that y’all will spread the word about this police assault and what we can do to help George get through this.
Solidarity with George Donnelly! Free all political prisoners!
Here are followup articles to this one, from newest to oldest:
- Warwick Police Pass My Case Up to Bucks County District Attorney, No Charges Filed Against Me Yet 13 Jan 2010
- Filed Complaint with Warwick Police (video) 12 Jan 2010
So I was out at lunch with classmates from a pistol instructor course this afternoon. As usual, I open carried my Glock 23. I ordered a sausage parm sandwich and was filling up my 20 oz soda from the fountain when the guy in the next booth turned and asked if I was from around here. Yes, I answered. Did he know me from somewhere? No. This was getting creepy. I didn’t answer him.
Then: “Who ARE you?” Has a complete stranger ever asked you such an open-ended and personal question? It was a first for me. I had no idea what information he wanted and wasn’t about to give him my name or biography. “I don’t understand the question,” I told him. He didn’t like this answer.
It was around this time that he claimed to be a cop. He showed no badge and wore no uniform. My instructor, who is a former cop, intervened to try and appease the man, a detective Jon Ogborn of Warwick township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania state. I kept quiet until Ogborn announced that he had to know who was carrying a gun around him, even if he had to handcuff and detain me. I replied that he would be exceeding his authority if he did that; that open carry of a firearm is legal under Pennsylvania law. Even his own department’s training memos will have confirmed in the last year that open carry is not sufficient justification for detention.
He got up, got in my face and became rather aggressive. I was just waiting for my sandwich to come up. I let him know I had no ill intentions. The gentleman who took my order told me he’d bring it to me so I sat down. To my amazement, my instructor gabbed with the cops (his lunch companion was a cop, too) all about me and my firearm-related activities.
As my adrenaline rush petered out and I ate my lunch, I realized I had just been treated inappropriately by a person claiming to be a cop who had demonstrated no evidence of it. I had no idea what his name was. This was not right. At a minimum, the cops’ own laws state they have to identify themselves to the public. I might want to file a complaint. I at least needed to keep my options open. So as I was leaving I stopped at his table. “Pardon me for interrupting but may I have your business card,” I asked.
He refused! He offered to give it only if I provided my ID as well. I noticed that his lunch companion had a last name of McGurney on her sweater and a patch saying Warwick township. I noted this and began to leave but he got up and blocked my exit. He demanded my ID and when I asked if it was legally required, he claimed yes! That is an outrageous lie. I demanded to know what his reasonable articulable suspicion (RAS) was. His confidence level fell when I mentioned RAS. I guess he’s used to picking on less-informed folks. I asked if I was free to go. He said no! I asked on what basis he was detaining me. A charge of disorderly conduct! Unbelievable.
For several tense minutes he pushed me further and further into the back of the strip mall restaurant as he demanded my ID. I told him he was assaulting me but he denied it. I refused to give the ID. He told me he hadn’t planned to arrest me but he would. He claimed I had escalated the situation and left him with no choice, ignoring his aggressive actions toward me entirely! All I had to do to be free to go was to give me ID. My instructor begged me to give it so we could continue our class. I told him, I couldn’t give it to him even if I wanted to because my hands were cuffed behind my back!
Ogborn demanded to know if I was a lawyer. I just stopped talking to him. He didn’t expect me to resist him this much or with such pointed questions as about the RAS. I could tell he was nervous. He expected me to cave. I did not. He confessed that all he wanted was my ID so he could write up the earlier encounter with me. This really took me aback. Does law enforcement keep tabs on people who open carry?
He took me out back where we waited in the cold for several minutes, I without a jacket – that had been confiscated. He emptied my pockets. I told him I didn’t consent to any searches and he said he didn’t care. He inspected my wallet and found my driver’s license. But of course that was never the only thing he wanted. My possessions were placed in a ziplock bag. I was loaded into a police SUV, forced to lay across the back seat with no back support. There was literally no leg room. Ogborn’s lunch companion, Kathleen (Kathy) McGurney, drove me to jail.
At the Warwick police department, I was ordered to remove belt and shoes and left in a 4′x6′ or 6′x8′ cement cell. I have to say, this was not fun. There was a camera watching me. It had one of those metal toilets. No privacy. A dirty white towel was the only potential source of cover. The only place to sit or lay down was painted concrete. The cement floor was freezing my feet. That’s the first time I’ve been locked in a cage and it is not pleasant. How can a human being be so monstrous as to lock his fellow man in a cage simply for failing to give the required level of deference?
After 10 minutes, Ogborn showed up and gave me the good cop routine while McGurney in the background asked if I had to be taken down to the Montgomery county scanseek (??), whatever that is. I had to confirm my current address in order to get out. He implied that if I didn’t cooperate my charge could become a misdemeanor and that could become a problem for my planned move. [WTF! He got this tidbit of information from my instructor.] He justified himself again. He let me put my shoes on. He lectured me for several minutes with his version of the encounter. He complimented me. He led me to the building lobby where I waited another 20 minutes while they processed my property and reportedly a charge of disorderly conduct which I’m to hear of in the mail.
All of this transpired during roughly 2 hours but I still managed to complete the pistol course on time! Ironically, at least one of my four lunch companions was carrying a concealed firearm. But Ogborn didn’t see fit to search the whole restaurant for concealed pistols.
I have a bad attitude. It simply an incontrovertible fact. I will not bow down to authority figures. This is the root of my problem. I simply can not expect to speak with cops as my equals without being detained, harassed, attacked, man-handled, imprisoned, talked down to and/or robbed. This is the world I live in. I accept the consequences of my actions. So be it. But I will never bow down.
What did I do wrong? I securely and legally carried a pistol openly. I failed to answer the questions of a person who didn’t even identify himself as a cop. I told a cop that open carry was legal and that he did not have the authority by his own rules to detain me simply for open carrying. I asked a cop to identify himself. I refused to identify myself in a situation where even the cop’s own laws don’t require it. These are my offenses. For this I was harassed, assaulted, kidnapped and imprisoned – just for starters.
That’s the world we live in folks.
I have to learn how to ignore people I don’t know. I should have ignored Ogborn’s initial, and all subsequent, questions. I should have pretended he hadn’t even spoken. This is very counter to my nature though. I’m rather loquacious, sometimes gregarious and always receptive to communication with most any kind of person – even smelly bums!
I was running with the wrong crowd. My instructor is an ex-cop. Of course he’s going to sell me out at first chance. He’s a nice guy and he doesn’t see it that way, but in objective fact he did sell me out by giving Ogborn so much info about me. I have to be very careful about who I associate with. Any but the most committed is a liability.
I failed to exercise the discipline and care necessary to audio record my daily life. Argh.
I’m glad I defended myself by stating that open carry is legal under Pennsylvania law and that he has no legal authority to detain me simply for open carrying. I think being too meek with a cop simply encourages him. I’m also glad I asked for his business card because I would have felt poorly without getting the information.
I was radically more terse in my communications this time. I didn’t lecture or challenge the cop hardly at all. I remained silent most of the time. I asked if I was free to go. Then I asked if I was being detained and what for. This was good.
I’m glad I stood my ground on the ID issue. He had no basis to demand it even under his own rules.
I’m going to put in a Pennsylvania Right to Know (FOIA-like) request on Monday. I will attempt to get the police report. I will consider filing a complaint and I may have to file a counter-claim if they pursue this unfounded disorderly conduct charge.
Don’t tell me to take this down because it’s damaging my legal case. My goal is not to rake the cops over the coal for a multi-million dollar settlement. That’s a pipe dream. My goal in telling this story is to inform people like me. The fact is that the constitutions, bills of rights, laws, legal safeguards, police training memos and assorted government public relations paperwork are for entertainment and decorative purposes only.
The fact is that cops don’t serve you. They serve themselves. They have no limits. They have legal immunity for their acts. They have no legal obligation to protect you from harm! They can do whatever the hell they like, and lie about it afterwards. They can arrest you for nothing, drop the original charges and prosecute you for resisting their false arrest. It’s a scam.
Most people can’t, or won’t, see this. That’s fine. I just hope to reach the small number who can.
Photo credit: banspy. Photo license.
Jury: Police Had Right To Beat Suspects
Grand Jury: Officers ‘Used Reasonable Force’
PHILADELPHIA - MyFoxPhilly has learned that a grand jury says Philadelphia police officers who beat three suspects “used reasonable force” in accord with “training guidelines.”
No officers will face criminal charges in the case from May 2008.
An advance release says the three suspects, because they eluded police, fell under the guidelines that justified the actions of the 20 officers who beat the three men on camera in a 14-minute video shot by Fox 29.
After a careful thorough and exhaustive year long invest we the jurors have independently concluded that criminal action is not warranted against any of the officers. We found that the police on the scene used only the amount of force — and no more than that amount — that they reasonably believed was necessary to bring under control and into custody three suspects in a shooting who had tried to elude capture, who were resisting arrest and who were creating a potentially significant danger to police.
We found that the design of the force applied by the police was helpful rather than hurtful; the kicks and blows in other words were aimed not to inflict injury but to facilitate quick and safe arrests. We found that the kind of force administered was completely consistent with police training and guidelines and the laws of the commonwealth.The three men beaten by Philadelphia police after a triple shooting were acquitted in June of all charges in the shootings that led to the beating incident.
I’m really upset because justice still wasn’t served so the cops can just go out and do the same thing to anybody randomly, like they want to,says former suspect Brian Hall.
Government prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But they can’t get them to indict out-of-control cops that were caught on tape dealing out horrendous extended gang beatdowns. You might almost think it’s as if they weren’t even trying….
(Via John Petrie @ Blagnet.net 2009-09-17.)
Officer Justin Barrett. Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Police Commissioner recently suspended and moved to fire Boston patrol cop Officer Justin Barrett, after being forwarded a racist-ass e-mail that Barret wrote in response to Yvonne Abraham’s Boston Globe column criticizing Sergeant James Crowley for his stupid arrest of Henry Louis Gates. All the news stories have mentioned how Barrett stated I am not a racist, but I am [prejudiced] towards people who are stupid
and repeatedly described Gates as a banana-eating jungle monkey.
Some also mentioned active patrol cop Barret’s statement that, had he been in Crowley’s place, he not only would have arrested Gates but would have pepper-sprayed him in the face.
None of the mainstream media articles I’ve read so far have mentioned that active patrol cop Officer Justin Barrett also complains that Your defense [4th paragraph] of Gates while he is on the phone while being confronted [INDEED] with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and will always be a suspect.
(Brackets in original; emphasis mine.) Or that, alongside the violent racism and explicit totalitarianism, he adds some crude misogyny, writing to the immediate target of his letter, Yvonne Abraham, that You are a hot little bird with minimal experiences in a harsh field. … You have no business writing for a US newspaper nevermind detailing and analyzing half truths. You should serve me coffee and donuts on Sunday morning.
He later repeats the joke about coffee and says that you just need to get slapped.
Officer Justin Barrett, when not a racist, sexist, police-statist patrol cop, is also a veteran of the United States government’s Army; he felt comfortable forwarding his racist, sexist, police-statist e-mail to a few of his buddies in the Boston police force and several of his buddies in the Army National Guard. Since the story hit, Barrett has complained to the media that in the uproar over his repeated use of the phrase banana-eating jungle monkey,
People are making it about race. It is not about race,
and that, although he made a poor choice of words,
I didn’t mean it in a racist way. I treat everyone with dignity and respect.
His lawyer says that he plans to fight to hold onto his cop job at the upcoming hearing.
Disorderly conduct. Patrolman Robert Lang, Patrolman Jared Bock, and Patrolman Shawn Panchick. Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. Three white patrol cops in Pennsylvania are being investigated by another local government’s cops in response to allegations that they beat and robbed a three black teenagers who they arbitrarily commanded (why?) to clear off of a friend’s front porch where they were hanging out late at night. I don’t know whether or not the allegations of robbery are true — one of the victims, Kyle Dudley, claims that he was beat down and robbed of his watch and money by a group of cops possibly different from the three who originally responded to the call, which makes it hard to compare stories — but I do know that, whether or not those allegations are true, the story that the cops all agreed on for their report is more than enough reason to call their conduct belligerent, violent and stupid. Cops have exactly no business singling out black teenagers to be hassled, or for forcing them down and arresting them on a disorderly conduct
beef simply for refusing to obey arbitrary bellowed commands that they leave a private residence where they have been invited to hang out with their friends, or a neighborhood where they are hanging out on public property. And once again, it is clear that disorderly conduct
charges are the sheepdogs’
favorite threat for making that the sheep
stay just where they’ve been herded, regardless of whether or not anyone is actually doing anything that would threaten anyone’s rights even in the slightest.
Cops are here to keep us safe. (Cont’d.) By sideswiping our cars while they tear down the road at 20 mph over the posted speed limit with no lights and no sirens on. Then by concealing information or flat-out lying in the accident report and to the media about how fast they were going, until they finally reveal, a couple days later, that the accident was, after all, clearly the fault of the cop’s speeding. Where have I seen that before…? I guess his victim is lucky that he wasn’t doing 100; if he had gotten himself hurt or killed in the crash he caused, she probably would have been arrested for reckless driving
and smeared as a cop-killer all over the local papers.
Fun for ages 7 to 70. Unnamed patrol officer, Knoxville, Tennessee, and
Deputy Chris Beize. Austin, Texas. In Knoxville, a government cop, who had important business to do Investigating reports of some neighbor kids getting into a fight, has been accused of trying to coerce a 7 year old boy into talking more candidly by handcuffing the child and cussing him out, while the boy was crying and asking for his mother. The 7-year-old was not involved in the fighting and was never suspected of, or charged with, any crime. Officials
refuse to so much as disclose this dedicated public servant’s name, but they promise that the matter is being Internally Investigated.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Deputy Chris Beize tasered Kathryn Winkfein, a 72-year-old great-grandmother, twice during a routine traffic stop, after she refused to sign a ticket and he decided to escalate the situation by ordering her out of her car, instead of just mailing the damn thing to her home address. Beize claims that she swore at him (which is not a crime) and that she pushed him into oncoming traffic
(no she didn’t; the dashcam video clearly shows that he lunged over and grabbed her and shoved her back several feet, when she tried to de-escalate the situation by sidestepping him to get back to her truck). Then he blasted her with a 50,000-volt electric shock from the taser, and then tasered her again while she was lying on the ground. Then he arrested her for resisting arrest. His superior officers in the paramilitary chain of command have defended Beize’s hollering belligerence, physical assault, and torture by repeated electrical shocks, against an unarmed, 4′11″, 72-year-old great-grandmother who never threatened any physical harm and was guilty of nothing more than a moving violation and contempt of cop,
as an appropriate reaction to a dangerous situation.
By the by, when Beize is not busy shocking the hell out of elderly women, he is a taser instructor for the local police.
Officer Morris Taylor. Springfield, Missouri. Officer Morris Taylor, a cop formerly on the Springfield, Missouri city government’s police force, is facing misdemeanor assault charges for beating John Sedersten, a prisoner under his authority, after Sedersten had been restrained and booked in the Greene County Jail. The story’s in the news because Sedersten, the victim of the beating, recently decided not to testify against Taylor in the criminal case, on advice from his attorneys, because of the danger that his testimony will open him up to lines of questioning that the government can use against him in his pending criminal cases. Sedersten is pursuing a separate civil lawsuit against Officer Morris Taylor for the beating; apparently he’s just not particularly interested in working closely with the same government office that is trying to lock him up in other cases, particularly not for so minor a vindication as a misdemeanor assault conviction. Even without his testimony, apparently portions
of the assault are recorded on video.
Besides having spent 11 years in local government police forces,
Officer Morris Taylor also has experience in dealing with prisoners from working as a government soldier in the U.S. government’s war and occupation in Iraq.
Deputy Marcus Smith. San Joaquin County, California. San Joaquin County Sheriff’s deputies stopped a car on a routine traffic stop near Manteca; Charles Inderbitzen was riding in the car. Inderbitzen was ex-con out on parole, and believed that he had a warrant out on him, so he got nervous around the cops. He tried to leave the scene without the cops’ permission; even though the police had no reason whatever, at this point, to suspect that he had committed any crime, or even (since he was not the one driving the car) of even the most minor civil infraction. But government cops in America aren’t actually interested in dealing with crimes; they are interested in targeting suspects, and are more than willing to summarily declare you a suspect
sort of guy based solely on your failure to follow their arbitrary bellowed commands, or your decision to try to leave the scene when they are present. So a gang of police chased Inderbitzen down, cornered him in a back yard, drew their guns on him, and ordered him to get on his knees and put his hands on his head. After Inderbitzen complied with their orders, with several cops pointing guns at him and while physically at their mercy, Deputy Marcus Smith hopped the fence, kicked Charles Inderbitzen in the gut, punched him in the back of the head, kicked him two more times in the stomach, and then punched him about 5 or 10 more times until Inderbitzen was beaten unconscious. I guess he’s lucky they didn’t taser him to death instead.
Oops. Our bad.
Deputy Matthew Paul. Seattle, Washington. Christopher Harris was trying to get away from a group of King’s County police (or rather, a gang of beefy, heavily armed strangers, dressed all in black, who didn’t bother to identify themselves before they started hollering and chasing after him late at night). Turns out he didn’t actually do anything wrong (they were chasing him because a witness fingered him as having been involved in a bar fight; the witness was wrong). But rather than risking the possibility that someone possibly might get away from the cops (even when he had no way of knowing they were cops, who had every right to leave the scene, who posed no physical threat to anybody, and who, at the very worst, was suspected
of some minor-league drunken fighting), Deputy Matthew Paul, who outweighed his victim by about 100 pounds, decided to put an end to things by waiting until Christopher Harris slowed down to a walk, and then body-tackling him so hard that he knocked him eight feet into a wall, slamming Harris’s head into the concrete so hard it put him into a coma. The story’s in the news because Deputy Matthew Paul’s coworkers in the King County government’s prosecutor’s office have announced that, as far as they’re concerned, Deputy Matthew Paul did not violate Christopher Harris’s rights and the only personal consequence that Deputy Matthew Paul will face, for putting his falsely accused, completely unarmed and physically harmless victim on life-support, is having been given a paid vacation from his job for a while during the investigation. According to the county government, It’s a tragic incident.
Well, oops. I guess he’s lucky they didn’t just shoot him in the back instead.
Non-Lethal Force (Cont’d.) Unnamed officer, Officer Debra Lynn Indovina-Akerly and Officer Charles Watson. Swissvale, Pennsylvania. Last summer, a 37 year old unarmed black man named Andre DeMon Thomas was extrajudicially electrocuted by a gang of three Swissvale cops, who tortured him with three 50,000-volt electric shocks, handcuffed him, and, after he was handcuffed, kicked him, punched him, and crushed him until he vomited, passed out, and died. They were electrocuting him, incidentally, For His Own Good, after he begged neighbors to call the cops to help him out. He was unarmed; he wasn’t acting aggressively; none of the neighbors felt threatened by him; he was never at any point charged with any crime at all by anyone; he seemed disoriented and terrified, and he wanted the cops there to keep him safe. But in cop-think, being terrified and disoriented means acting erratic,
and acting erratic
in the judgment of a cop, even if you pose no threat to anyone and even if you have not been so much as accused of committing a crime and even if you are yourself seeking help, is reason enough for you to get Served and Protected good and hard until you are physically subdued.
Or dead, whichever comes first. [And]((http://radgeek.com/gt/2009/06/22/the-police-beat-3/) yet again, it became necessary to kill Dre Thomas in order to save him. The case is in the news again because the family has filed a lawsuit and the coroner’s autopsy report, which revealed deep and widespread bruising all over Thomas’s body, contradicts the Medical Examiner’s initial report absolving the cops and claiming that Thomas died from a mythical made-up condition called agitated delirium
.
Gang cops (Cont’d.). Gang Strike Force,
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Seven victims of racist shakedowns by a multi-agency paramilitary Gang Strike Force
in the Twin Cities have filed suit against the members of the Strike Force,
the city governments that put it together, and the boss cops who commanded it. The Strike Force
was permanently shut down earlier this month after repeated complaints about the cops on it making improper seizures,
which is to say armed robberies under color of law, of money and property from innocent people with no connection to gang activity, but who happened to be immigrants (hence easy targets). If only we had some warning, had some way of knowing, that an elite
gang police unit with an unlimited mandate, overwhelming force, and extremely broad legal powers to roust people and take their property with minimal legal accountability, might end up just acting like the baddest gangsters on the block. But who could possibly have foreseen that? It’s not like anything like this has ever happened before.
Detective Keith Alfaro. San Antonio, Texas. A couple years ago Detective Keith Alfaro of the San Antonio police department got himself involved in what the media at the time dignified as a poolside scuffle with a teenager
. By which they meant that he punched an 18 year old girl in the face, then, after he knocked her down, got on top of her, put her in a chokehold, and, according to an unrelated witness, pummeled
her black and blue while she was on the ground. After Alfaro ran away from the Sheriff’s Deputies who responded to a call, Vaughn had to be taken to the hospital; she still couldn’t open her jaw for weeks after the attack. The reason he did this was that she told him to put out a cigar he was smoking; the community pool had a no-smoking rule. Tamara Vaughn claims she asked him politely; Alfaro claims she copped an attitude
, got up in his face, dared to say some vulgar words in his hearing, and tried to swipe the cigar out of his mouth. Apparently, even if we grant his story to be true, Detective Keith Alfaro believes that that’s good enough reason for a grown-ass man to throw the first punch, then beat the living hell out of an 18 year old girl while she’s lying on the ground, and that doing so was totally defensive … It was her own actions that forced me to take those measures.
Perhaps that’s also what forced him to answer her request that he not smoke a cigar at a non-smoking pool by telling her to take that East Side attitude back over there;
maybe that’s also what forced him to call her a nigger
and a half-breed
while he was beating the hell out of her, or to tell Vaughn, who is a lesbian, that You wanna look like a man, I’m gonna treat you like a man.
. Detective Keith Alfaro testified that his problem was not with her race but with her attitude
(you know, the East Side kind), and that She though she was talking to a child, … She thought she was talking to someone she could bully — not an adult family man.
Apparently Detective Keith Alfaro believes that an adult family man
deals with tense social situations by punching 18 year old girls in the face and dislocating their jaws. In any case, this adult family man
bragged in an online profile for an Ultimate Fighting website about his countless street KO’s
.
The story is in the news again because Keith Alfaro finally ended up going to trial this year on a misdemeanor assault rap, along with some resisting and evading arrest for having run away from the Bexar County Sheriff’s deputies. And just today, after the judge refused to allow Bexar County prosecutors to tell the jury about the online bragging about street fights, or about the numerous existing complaints against Alfaro in his internal affairs file (complaints which, of course, never endangered his position with the San Antonio Police Department, until he got into a fight on another police agency’s turf), the jury voted to acquit Alfaro on the assault beef. They convicted him on the misdemeanor evading and resisting arrest charges, because apparently busting up an 18 year old girl’s jaw is OK, but they’ll be damned if they’ll let anyone get away from the po-po.
Rapists on patrol. Officer Feliciano Sanchez, Los Angeles, California. (Possible trigger warning.)
Officer Feliciano Sanchez, formerly hired muscle for Los Angeles County’s Bell Police Department, recently plead guilty to using his police powers to abduct a woman he had detained on a traffic stop, drive her to an isolated location, and then flashed his gun and coerced sex from her before he would let her free. Bell Police Department Captain Anthony Miranda says he is shocked
to hear that a male cop might use his government-granted legal powers and his arsenal of deadly weapons to intimidate and violently coerce sex from women who come under his power. He says that he’s in disbelief
because he’s never heard of such a thing before. Well, I’m not. I have.
18 shots for running a stop-sign. Officer James Arnold. Fort Wayne, Indiana. The city government in Fort Wayne, Indiana just spent $335,000 of other people’s money in order to cover Office James Arnold’s ass after he shot an unarmed immigrant named José Baudilio Lemus-Rodriguez 18 times, after Lemus-Rodriguez refused to pull over for a routine traffic stop for running a stop sign.
Fort Wayne Police Officer James Arnold, by the way, was just four months on the force
when he lit up Lemus-Rodriguez’s car; before that, he had years of combat experience as a United States government Marine fighting for the U.S. government’s occupation and counter-insurgency operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards refused to file any criminal charges; the city hired on a PR flack to declare Arnold’s actions objectively reasonable.
The city’s main concern in settling the family’s lawsuit, besides using taxpayer money to cover Officer James Arnold from any personal legal liability for his lethal actions, is apparently as a bribe to ensure that the objective video record of the objectively reasonable
shooting remains permanently concealed from the public.