Gangsters in Blue

Huffington Post’s John Rudolf has more on that deadly police shooting in the Bronx.

A week after police shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old in his grandmother’s Bronx apartment, questions continue to swirl around the aggressive police tactics that led to the fatal confrontation.

Ramarley Graham died last Thursday after Richard Haste, 30, a New York police officer, kicked down the door of his grandmother’s apartment and shot Graham in the chest while he attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Graham was unarmed and police did not have a warrant to enter the home.

It looks as if this was a stop-and-frisk that went south. Graham first came to the cops’ attention while leaving a bodega under investigation for drug activity. He ran when they asked him to stop,likely because he had pot on him. That’s not a crime in New York (so long as its an amount small enough for personal use). But as we all now know, once they’ve stopped you, the cops will then trick you into “displaying” it, at which point it becomes a crime.

Footage from private surveillance cameras shows Graham walking into his grandmother’s apartment building, a three-story home on a residential street.

Police officers, guns drawn, quickly follow and attempt to kick down the front door after finding it locked. In the back of the building, other officers swarm in through a rear apartment. The cameras do not capture what transpired inside, but police officials confirmed that officers entered the grandmother’s apartment with force and without a warrant.

The large number of officers at the house indicated that Graham wasn’t likely to escape and that officers could have waited to obtain a warrant before storming the apartment, said Emdin, the Graham family’s attorney.

“They can’t take matters into their own hands like this and violate the Constitution,” Emdin said.

John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, Ark. who has argued cases involving police searches before the Supreme Court, said a police suspicion that Graham might be carrying an illegal handgun was insufficient justification for breaking down his door.

“If they thought he had a gun, they should have stopped him on the street and not waited for him to go inside,” Hall said. “Any reasonable officer would have known that they needed a warrant to get into the house.”

The most crucial question facing Haste, the shooting officer, will surround his actions inside the apartment.

Haste’s partner told investigators that Haste identified himself as a police officer, told Graham to “show his hands” and then yelled “gun, gun” before firing, Kelly said.

But Graham’s grandmother maintains that officers did not announce their presence before kicking down her door and that Haste did not say anything to Graham before shooting him, Emdin said.

“I asked her if they said ‘police’ when they entered,” Emdin said. “She says 100 percent no.”

The police also initially said Graham “struggled” with the cop who shot him, but then retracted that story the next day. I’m not sure it really even matters if the cops identified themselves, given that the kid was unarmed when they shot him. If we take the police story at face value, the cops twice saw a gun that they have yet to find, and doesn’t appear to have existed.

Add another body to the drug war pile.

• You will soon be fined $1000 for throwing a Frisbee or football on the beach in L.A. County.
• I’m quoted in this Nashville Scene piece on police militarization in Tennessee’s Rutherford County.
• HIV/AIDS activist faces six months in jail for violating prosecution agreement by smoking medical marijuana. And t’s far from clear that he violated the agreement.
• “The Media’s Shameful, Inexcusable Distortion Of The Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision.” Not written by someone you might expect.
• Brazilian government demands hosting service remove a URL it doesn’t like.
• Here’s another good Mark Hemingway deconstruction of bias in a “fact checking” piece.
• Gay man rates “the ten hottest homophobes on the Internet.”

I’ve noted before that the level of force the government chooses to use often is determined not by the nature of the threat so much as the message the government wants to send about the law it is enforcing. Hence, SWAT raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.

It looks like we’re also exporting that philosophy.

On January 20, dozens of New Zealand police’s elite special forces broke into Kim Dotcom’s mansionwith assault helicopters, M4A3 automatic weapons, Glock pistols, dogs, sledgehammers and even a circular chainsaw, as if they were expecting a vicious narco gang waiting inside, armed to the teeth.

What they found instead was two kids—three and four years old—a 15-month old baby, some Filipino nannies, two security guards, Dotcom’s bodyguard Wayne Tempero, Dotcom’s wife and meganerd Kim Dotcom himself, hiding in the security room you are seeing in this video.

Tempero told the story on how the Kiwi cops assaulted the Megaupload founder’s home and how they captured Kim himself to Kiwi news channel 3news. It sounds pretty scary and way out of proportion, given the nature of the alleged offense and the people involved.

The operation started at 6:45, when the thunder of the assault helicopters woke up the body guard and everyone in the house. He stepped outside to see the helicopters when a policeman in a bulletproof vest asked him to surrender. He didn’t have any weapons and he complied. He also said that he couldn’t even hear them identifying themselves as police officers because of the sound, but obviously these weren’t low-rent kidnappers.

As this was happening, the elite squads and police officers were going around the house, smashing doors and looking for Kim Dotcom with dogs. In the childhood area they found the kids and the Filipino nannies. According to Tempero, the police asked the Filipino nannies—who must be famous in New Zealand for their ferocity and skills in explosives manufacturing—if they had any bombs.

They also found the wife, who tried to give them the code to open the door to Kim Dotcom’s quarters before they attempted to slam the doors down. Dotcom had run to his secure Red Room, where he stayed for 30 minutes until he was apprehended. On the way to get him, the police smashed an old elevator door thinking it was the gate to a secret room.

Nobody in the house had a history of violence. Only two shotguns, with legal licenses, were stored in a gun locker. Neither Dotcom nor the security guards had any gun on them.

Remember, they’re enforcing copyright law, here. And as Gizmodo points out, the Kiwi heavy-handedness was almost certainly influenced and encouraged by federal law enforcement officials in the U.S. (Who in the past have had no qualms about enforcing copyright law with a SWAT team.)

(Thanks to Tim Lee for the tip.)

The Ogden, Utah, man who killed one police officer and wounded several others during a drug raid over marijuana plants has finally recovered from his injuries enough to speak.

Matthew David Stewart, 37, said he never heard officers identify themselves or announce they were at his home to serve a search warrant. Stewart, in an interview Friday at the Weber County Jail, said his alarm clock woke him, then he heard a crash that sounded like glass breaking.

“Some parts I remember vividly,” Stewart said of the Jan. 4 shootout. “Other parts it was like I was running on instinct.

“When you’re convinced that you are getting robbed and most likely killed by a group of armed men, your instincts kick in.”

Stewart has been charged with aggravated murder for the death of Ogden police Officer Jared Francom, who was a member of the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force. He also has been charged with eight other felony counts. Weber County Attorney Dee Smith has filed notice that he intends to seek the death penalty.

Stewart spoke with a Tribune reporter Friday during one of his two weekly 25-minute visits he’s allowed via a video teleconference system at the jail . . .

Stewart said he “had no idea” he was under investigation by the strike force. He worked a night shift at the Walmart in Riverdale and was asleep as the strike force arrived between 8 and 8:30 p.m . . .

Although Stewart said he didn’t hear officers announce themselves, he didn’t answer whether he had some indication police officers had entered his home.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “All I knew for sure is they were there to rob and kill me.”

Court documents claim Stewart was in a hiding spot as the strike force was searching the house to see if anyone was inside. Stewart then emerged from the hiding spot, court documents say, and began firing a 9 mm Beretta, first shooting Officer Shawn Grogan in the face . . .

As for Francom and the injured officers, Stewart said: “I’m totally devastated that anybody had to suffer over any of this. This never should have happened.”

Stewart thinks two bullets struck him during the shootout, but he isn’t sure. He said he can’t tell what are entrance and exit wounds and he had difficulty getting answers from his doctors and nurses at the hospital where he remained until Monday.

One bullet appears to have struck Stewart in his right hip then entered his abdomen, he said. Doctors had to remove portions of his intestines. He’s using a colostomy bag.

“I’m still having a lot of trouble dealing with the colostomy,” Stewart said. “It’s a big psychological blow, but it’s also real difficult in here.”

Another bullet struck Stewart in his left leg and damaged nerves there. Stewart said he can’t stand in one place long without “blinding pain” in the leg . . .

Near the end of his visit, Stewart implied more facts of what happened Jan. 4 will emerge.

“I’ve always been a big fan of the truth,” Stewart said. “It’s tough for me to stay silent on some issues.”

He’s also looking for an attorney.

This story is starting to look remarkably similar to the Ryan Frederick case.

Details here.

In Dallas:

According to the complaint, which made its way to Courthouse News yesterday, Cantu, a diesel mechanic, was making his lunch January 22, 2010, when he saw a few cops streaking across his yard. A deafening explosion shook the room as a flash bomb shot through the door. Nearly 20 officers crashed in.

“Get on the ground!” they allegedly ordered him. Cantu, according to the complaint, obliged and was zipcuffed. Inexplicably, the filing claims, the officers kicked and punched him until he was unconscious, lying in a pool of his own blood on the kitchen floor. Meanwhile, they searched his house and allegedly didn’t find what they were after. Cantu’s alleged butcher’s bill: a broken orbital bone, a broken nose, a concussion, traumatic brain injury, a loss of vision in his left eye and loss of hearing in his left ear. According to his complaint, the “injuries required surgical intervention and caused significant scarring and disfigurement.”

Cantu was arrested but never charged with a crime.

This one gets stranger, in that there seems to be no record of the incident anywhere. And Cantu’s lawyers didn’t respond to the Dallas Observer’s request for comment.

You now have your very own SWAT team.

“The purpose for creating the UNCC SWAT Team is to protect the community and prevent the loss of life,” said Lieutenant Josh Huffman of Campus Police. “We must be prepared to respond to high risk situations such as those tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and Columbine.” . . .

With all this training it would seem these men would be anxious to use it, but they’re not. Considering the conditions needed for the men to utilize their past training, many, including Baker, never hope to see that day.

“I would be the first to admit that I hope we are never placed into action,” Baker said. “However, it is critical to be prepared to respond to a variety of serious/high risk incidents that have occurred on campuses throughout the nation.”

Yes. Virginia Tech and Columbine. Now, let’s look at the numbers: Any given middle school, high school, or college in America can expect to have exactly one homicide on its campus every 12,000 years. So how long before the UNC-Charlotte SWAT team feels the need to justify its existence by expanding its mission? I predict they’re serving drug warrants and raiding frat houses within a year.

The FBI takes the isolated incident into horror-film territory.

It’s going to be a while before things get back to normal for Judy Sanchez and her three-year-old daughter.

Last Thursday, a team of FBI agents swarmed her apartment building as part of a massive citywide drug and weapons gang raid.

Trouble is, Sanchez lives in apartment 2R.

The suspect they were after is in 2F.

At 6:04 last Thursday morning, just before Sanchez’ alarm was set to go off, she heard a pounding outside her second floor apartment.

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Within moments, the chainsaw had cut through most of her door, and someone on the FBI’s arrest team kicked the rest of it in.

“That’s when I heard the clicking of a gun and I heard ‘FBI, get down!’, so I laid right on down.

If the purpose of these raids is to take dangerous people by surprise before they can shoot back at police, how exactly does taking the door down with a chainsaw fit that strategy?

Excerpts are from a recent news story. You make the call.

The problem is that they broke into the wrong house . . . Attorney Michael J. Balskus, pointed out.

“They put guns to their heads and threatened to kill them if they did not turn over marijuana,” Balskus said . . .

Judge Barbara Key cited . . the emotional trauma . . .caused [to] the occupants of the house . .

“These were innocent college students going about their business with guns held to their heads thinking they were going to die,” Hart said. “They will suffer the trauma all the rest of their lives.”

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• Sniffing oxytocin could turn you into an extrovert. (That’s tocin, not contin.)
• Judge seals all the search warrants in that fatal Ogden drug raid.
• It’s astounding that after all the DNA exonerations we’ve seen in recent years, politicians will still grandstand about limiting death penalty appeals.
• The latest example of how preventing the “abuse” of controlled drugs often comes at the expense of people who need them.
•  Moronic libertarian-bashing of the day.
• Skip Oliva tells me that a former architect of Plan Columbia now owns the company that runs this creepy service. Seems appropriate.
• Police officer who admitted to snorting hydrocodone on the job, including in his cruiser, won’t face criminal charges.