COPS behaving badly

[Foggy]

... former Jackson city councilman and current candidate for sheriff ...

So was this dude ever a real cop? Did he get to be "interim" sheriff because of political connections, or was he really at or near the top of the cops in the Sheriff's Dept.?

[pipistrelle]

Yinz probably remember this case from the 90s. I didn't hear of it until I was looking up something unrelated yesterday. This person was released early.

https://www.silive.com/crime-safety/202 ... rison.html

Ex-cop from Staten Island, Justin Volpe, released early from prison for brutal assault of Abner Louima

The episode that disgraced the NYPD began on Aug. 9, 1997, when Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub and was taken to the 70th Precinct stationhouse in Brooklyn.

There, Volpe beat and sodomized Louima with a broomstick, according to authorities. The victim’s injuries included a ruptured bladder and colon, authorities alleged. Louima was hospitalized for two months while recovering from the injuries.

[RTH10260]

Crooked Cop Sent Innocent Girl To Prison For 2 Years | Was NOT Fired!

The Civil Rights Lawyer

[neonzx]

Crooked Cop Sent Innocent Girl To Prison For 2 Years | Was NOT Fired!

The Civil Rights Lawyer

Looks interesting, but I don't have 35 minutes of wake life to spare on this. Is there a short version/cliff notes?

[RTH10260]

basis for above clip.

at issue: Federal rules apply when the feds deputize a local police officer.

If the Police Lie, Should They Be Held Liable? Often the Answer Is No.
Federal agents and police officers who work with them are often immune from lawsuits, even for serious rights violations. The Supreme Court is being asked to re-evaluate that.

By Shaila Dewan
Published Sept. 12, 2021 Updated Oct. 18, 2021

In 2010, Officer Heather Weyker of the St. Paul Police Department in Minnesota had the biggest case of her career: a child sex-trafficking ring said to have spanned four states and involved girls as young as 12. Thirty people, almost all of them Somali refugees, were charged and sent to jail, many of them for years.

Then the case fell apart. It turned out, the trial judge found, that Officer Weyker had fabricated or misstated facts, lied to a grand jury and lied during a detention hearing. When three young women unwittingly got in the way of her investigation, according to their court filings, she had them locked up on false charges.

“She took my life away,” said one of the women, Hamdi Mohamud, who was a senior in high school at the time.

But there is little Ms. Mohamud can do. For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have declined to close the many legal loopholes, like qualified immunity, that protect the police from accountability. Now legal advocates say that an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has emboldened lower courts to close off the few avenues that plaintiffs once had to seek redress.



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/f ... unity.html

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[RTH10260]

Lansing police chief, mayor apologize after officers detain wrong boy

KRYSTAL NURSE Lansing State Journal
10 hours ago

LANSING — Lansing police said a video circulating online that shows officers detaining a 12-year-old boy in handcuffs was an "unfortunate misunderstanding" that stemmed from the foot chase of a suspect wanted in a suspected vehicle theft.

The video led to three statements by police and Mayor Andy Schor's office by late Friday afternoon.

The video appears to show a young, Black male wearing neon yellow shorts and a white T-shirt being detained by a police officer outside an apartment complex. A man tells officers they are traumatizing his son and the male was put into a police vehicle before later being released to the man who said he was the individual's father.

A video posted to TikTok account careyann372 has generated millions of views and posts throughout social media with users saying the boy was detained as he was throwing away garbage.


https://eu.lansingstatejournal.com/stor ... 575164007/

[poplove]

This story is crazy!

Cops raided the Marion County Record, a small-town newspaper, and took every bit of their electronic equipment, leaving them without a way to publish their newspaper.

Looks like the police and some connected people in the tiny area of Marion County Kansas didn't appreciate the paper holding them accountable for their actions.

The fact that a local judge would okay a warrant of this type makes me think the entire area wreaks of corruption.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -reporters

[RTH10260]

Sounds to me as if a very large federal civil rights law suit is brewing in the next couple of years and the city and county may have to shell out $$$ as compensation.

[Greatgrey]

[RTH10260]

Steve Letho comments on this and mentions a similar incident in the early 1900s, he authored a book on that event

[pipistrelle]

Streisand effect?

[RTH10260]

[pipistrelle]

Caught on camera: Texas cops block disabled veteran from using bathroom and laugh at him when he soils himself

https://boingboing.net/2023/08/17/caugh ... mself.html

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public- ... n-himself/

[RTH10260]

Antioch, Pittsburg cops charged in vast conspiracy to violate civil rights
The current and former officers were arrested in early morning FBI raids Thursday

By NATE GARTRELL | ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com, JUDITH PRIEVE | jprieve@bayareanewsgroup.com, JULIA PRODIS SULEK | jsulek@bayareanewsgroup.com, JAKOB RODGERS | jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com and JOHN WOOLFOLK | jwoolfolk@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 17, 2023 at 8:54 a.m. | UPDATED: August 18, 2023 at 8:18 a.m.

Federal authorities Thursday charged 10 current and former Antioch and Pittsburg police officers in a set of sweeping indictments alleging offenses ranging from cheating on training classes to savage violations of civil rights in one of California’s biggest criminal cases of police corruption.

The most serious and disturbing charges — civil rights violations to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate citizens of Antioch” — were filed against two current and one former officer from that city’s police department, where residents have long complained of excessive force and where dozens of officers have been placed on leave amid a scandal over their racist text messages.

“Any breach of the public’s trust is absolutely unacceptable,” said FBI Special Agent In Charge Robert Tripp. “The actions today make clear that nobody’s above the law.”

Antioch officers Morteza Amiri, Devon Wenger and Eric Rombough are accused of plotting violence against specific people, collecting “trophies” of their crimes, and reveling in the aftermath of certain alleged crimes. They’re also accused of falsifying official reports to justify the violence and cover their tracks.

The indictment, for example, alleged that in February 2019, Amiri and Rombough talked about coming to work on a day they planned to take off to retaliate against a person who they believed had crossed a fellow officer.

“I’m gonna f—- someone up and hopefully get you a bite,” Rombough allegedly told Amiri, an officer with a police dog, who replied: “Exactly! Blood for blood.”

Prosecutors say between March 2019 and November 2021, Amiri’s dog bit 28 people, and Rombough deployed a 40mm “less lethal” launcher at 11 subjects from November 2020 through August 2021. Records show that of the 28 bite victims, 19 were Black residents, or 68 percent.

Via text, the indictment says, the trio egged each other on to use violence and swapped photos of people they had injured. In one text, Wenger wrote that “we need to get into something tonight bro!! Lets go 3 nights in a row dog bite.” Later that night in August 2020, Amiri and Wenger pulled somebody out of a car and took them to the ground. Amiri later texted Wenger pictures of that injured person.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco handed down the four separate indictments, each charging different schemes. None of the officers was charged with all the alleged offenses.



https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/08/17/ ... ndictment/

[Foggy]

... absolutely unacceptable,” said FBI Special Agent In Charge Robert Tripp. “The actions today make clear that nobody [except Donald Trump] is above the law.”

Jeez, you'd think an FBI agent would know better.

[RTH10260]

Police Arrested A 10-Year-Old For Peeing Behind His Mom's Car
He was only arrested after multiple officers showed up to the scene.

Lawrence Hodge
Published August 18, 2023

Public urination is never a good idea, but arresting an innocent child for doing something like that is maybe taking the law a little too seriously. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to a 10 year old in Mississippi, Fox Memphis reports.

On August 10th, Latonya Eason stopped by an attorney’s office in Senatobia, MS for some legal advice. Her two children, a daughter and her 10 year old son Quantavious, waited in the car while she was in the office. At some point, Quantavious needed to use the restroom, so he got out of the car and went to pee behind it. At the same time, a Senatobia Police officer just happened to be passing by and caught the kid peeing behind the car.

But it was no biggie; Latonya said the officer was just going to give them a warning: “I was like son, why did you do that? He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they don’t have a bathroom there.’ I was like you knew better, you should have come and asked me if they had a restroom. [The officer] was like you handled it like a mom. He can get back in the car,” she said to Fox Memphis. It wasn’t a big deal — until other officers became involved.

Eason said several other officers showed up, including a lieutenant who said that Quantavious had to be arrested and taken to jail for peeing. Eason admits her son shouldn’t have peed, but she says arresting him over it was doing too much.



https://jalopnik.com/police-arrested-10 ... 1850752223

[Frater I*I]

Police Arrested A 10-Year-Old For Peeing Behind His Mom's Car

Public urination while black...they'll give the kid 5 years on the chain gang....

[pipistrelle]

That's insane.

[RTH10260]

[neeneko]

I think this whole 'one officer is there, situation is being handled in a deescalated and mindful way -> other officer shows up, situation escalates to arrests or death' is a fascinating example of the consequences of honor culture.

When it is just one person, they have a lot of leeway. But once others from the same culture show up there is all sorts of pressure to behave in a way that does not result in loss of face with the others.

[RTH10260]

[raison de arizona]

Police Tore Up His Protest Sign. Now They Owe Him $50,000
Police also wrongly cited him for "improper hand signal" after the man flipped them off.
EMMA CAMP | 9.5.2023 4:08 PM

Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for "improper hand signal" after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.

Following several run-ins with the police, Guessford decided to "stage protests whenever he saw police officers stopping unsuspected vehicles using a radar gun," according to legal documents. On March 11, 2022, his protest consisted of standing by the side of the road, holding a homemade sign reading, "Radar Ahead!" Guessford was soon confronted by several Delaware State Police officers, who took his sign and tore it up.

As Guessford drove away after the encounter, he flipped off the officers, leading them to eventually cite him for "improper hand signal" under a statute governing hand signals for nonmotorized vehicles like bicycles. However, body camera footage showed that officers knew that the citation was incongruous and would likely be dropped.

"Yeah, you can't do that. That'll get dropped," Officer Christopher Popp said during a phone call to another officer, who replied, referring to a third officer, "I told him that's going to get thrown out….Eventually, [Guessford is] going to do something really stupid, and then we are going to be able to really lock him up."

Guessford filed a lawsuit against the officers in February, alleging that they violated his First Amendment rights by destroying his sign and issuing an improper citation. Last week, the officers settled the lawsuit, agreeing to give Guessford a $50,000 payout.

The officer's "initiation of the traffic stop, and issuance of a bogus traffic ticket to Plaintiff Guessford, was an adverse action taken in retaliation for his exercise of constitutionally protected symbolic speech and expression," reads the lawsuit. "As a direct and proximate result of Defendants' violations of the First Amendment, Plaintiff Guessford has suffered irreparable harm, including the loss of his clearly established fundamental constitutional right to free speech and expression."

https://reason.com/2023/09/05/police-to ... him-50000/

[John Thomas8]

50 officers. Mostly castoff criminals from other forces. Oh, there's only 249 people in Coffee City.

[RTH10260]

I don't want to go looking for the video, but the operation of that special section has put on hold. Police chief is suspended and will lose his job (he himself was not entirely truthful in his bio when applying for the job). The state agencies are conducting investigations.

[Volkonski]

Coffee City suspends police chief under investigation

https://www.kltv.com/2023/09/06/coffee- ... stigation/

The 30-day suspension comes as an investigation is conducted into allegations that Coffee City Police Chief JohnJay Portillo allowed multiple officers to live in Houston while working remotely for the department. KHOU 11 originally reported that at least six of the department’s 50 officers were allowed to work remotely as part of a special warrant division.

“During this time, we will be investigating this matter internally as well as seeking counsel from an independent investigation firm to validate our findings. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this issue,” Mayor Jeff Blackstone said in a released statement.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/inves ... xit-recirc

The city council voted to suspend Chief JohnJay Portillo for 30 days with pay pending an independent investigation, according to Coffee City attorney Ronald Stutes.

In a series of stories, KHOU 11 Investigates revealed how the tiny town of barely 250 people has 50 sworn police officers on the force. Records show Portillo quadrupled the size of the department under his tenure and routinely hired cops who had been suspended, demoted, terminated, or dishonorably discharged from previous law enforcement jobs. Their prior disciplinary actions were for a wide range of misconduct that in some cases, included criminal charges.

The mayor and all current city council members took office after JohnJay Portillo had been hired as police chief, so they never reviewed his job application. KHOU 11 Investigates discovered Portillo failed to disclose an unresolved DWI charge out of Florida.

“I was not pleased whenever I heard the allegations because if they are true, then that looks really bad,” Blackstone said. “So we just have to make sure that we get to the bottom of all of this.”

The Coffee City Council placed Chief Portillo on a 30-day paid suspension and the mayor said the city will investigate the issues internally as well as seek guidance from an outside, independent investigation firm. The scope of that probe will include the department’s warrant division, which KHOU 11 Investigates reported didn’t even work in Coffee City. Instead, warrant officers were allowed to work from home in Houston while they spent time on the phone trying to collect outstanding traffic fines.

“We weren't really fully aware of how (the warrant division) was operating, and that was all kind of brought to light as well through this story,” Blackstone said.

Going forward, the Mayor said all police applications will be reviewed by the entire city council before any officer is hired. Blackstone said his goal is to rebuild the reputation of the town’s police force and the public trust.

“These are allegations that we just can’t turn a blind eye to,” Blackstone said. “This is a problem that we’re taking very seriously.”

The mayor also said Coffee City is asking the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, or TCOLE, for assistance with information. That agency already has an open investigation in the department.