Category Archives: Police Watch

The Latest Police Outrage

Police Watch

This time in Kansas City, Missouri. A pregnant woman was pulled over by police for a traffic violation. She tells them she’s pregnant and bleeding and they ignore her and take her to jail instead. The result was quite tragic:

Salva, a Sudanese native, was pulled over Feb. 5, 2006, by officers Melody Spencer and Kevin Schnell, who had seen her affix a fake temporary tag on her car’s back windshield.

“She told the officers repeatedly over the course of 45 minutes that she was bleeding, she was pregnant, she needed medical attention,” Protzman said. “And they ignored her request and refused to listen to her and refused to take care of her.”

Salva was taken to jail and kept overnight on traffic violations and outstanding city warrants. The next morning, Salva claims, she was released and delivered a premature baby boy who died a minute after birth.

“If Sofia could have her baby back, she would love to have that,” Protzman said. “But the police took that opportunity away from her. She’s pursuing the only recourse that’s available to her under the law.”

The suit, filed Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court, seeks actual damages exceeding $25,000 and punitive damages to punish and deter such conduct in the future.

The videotape seems pretty damning:

Seems pretty outrageous to me. And yet further evidence that the whole idea of “to protect and serve” doesn’t mean much anymore.

H/T: The Agitator

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

An Out Of Control Prosecutor

Legal, Police Watch

Many of my fellow contributors have written about the abuses of police departments in various parts of the country, but the Duke University Lacrosse case highlights another problem in our legal system, the out of control prosecutor:

RALEIGH, N.C. — The state bar has added ethics charges to a complaint filed against the prosecutor who brought sexual assault charges against three Duke lacrosse players, accusing him of withholding DNA evidence and misleading the court.

The new charges by the North Carolina State Bar against Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong were announced Wednesday and could lead to his removal from the state bar, according to a copy of the updated complaint.

Nifong’s office arranged for a private lab to conduct DNA testing as part of the investigation into allegations three men raped a 28-year-old woman hired to perform as a stripper at a party thrown by the lacrosse team last March.

Those tests uncovered genetic material from several men on the woman’s underwear and body, but none from any lacrosse player. The bar complaint alleges those results weren’t released to defense lawyers in a timely fashion and that Nifong repeatedly said in court he had turned over all evidence that would potentially benefit the defense.

In other words, Nifong had in his hands evidence that pretty much excluded then men he was prosecuting for rape from even having had sexual intercourse with the accuser. And he choose to not only not release them to the defense as required by law, but to lie about it to a Judge.

And it’s even worse than that, because Nifong apparently had exculpatory evidence in hand before he even filed charges:

[A]ccording to the bar complaint, testing conducted at DNA Security Inc. had concluded by April 10 that none of the samples provided to police by 46 lacrosse players matched any material recovered from the accuser’s “rape kit.” A week later, Nifong charged Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann with rape.

If these allegations are true, then Nifong should most certainly be disbarred. Whether there remain grounds after that for criminal prosecution or civil liability is uncertain. In either case, though, it’s clear that an out of control prosecutor can be as much a danger to civil liberties as a cop with an itchy trigger finger.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

A Crime That Can’t Be Defined

Individual Rights, Police Watch

It seems that police in Atlanta, Georgia have been arresting a lot of people for violating a law that gives them an extraordinary degree of discretion:

Adrienne Carmichael didn’t understand how little it could take for her 17-year-old son to land in jail on a disorderly conduct charge.

“I thought [disorderly conduct] was if you got out of control with an officer,” she says.

But a broadly worded category of the crime – known as “DC-6” – has emerged as a heated controversy in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, because it appears to allow police to arrest people simply for hanging out. Residents claim the charge amounts to an excuse for harassment.

DC-6 is the most frequent non-traffic offense cited by Atlanta police. As of Dec. 18, 7,551 DC-6 arrests — about 22 a day — were made in 2006, outpacing criminal trespass at 5,407 and drinking in public at 4,621.

What, you might logically ask, is DC-6 and how can the citizens of Atlanta be sure they aren’t violating it ?

Well, that’s an interesting question:

According to the DC-6 ordinance: “It shall be unlawful for any person [to] … be in or about any place where gaming or the illegal sale or possession of alcoholic beverages or narcotics or dangerous drugs is practiced, allowed or tolerated[.]”

What that means, essentially, is that a person can be arrested simply for being in what police designate as a “known drug area” — even if he or she just walks down the street or chats with a neighbor. That’s problematic, says American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Gerry Weber, because the law is so ambiguous that it invites discriminatory enforcement and therefore may be unconstitutional.

“It’s one of those catch-all laws that police use when they can’t think of any other charge,” Weber says. “It’s a street-clearing device.”

(…)

A police employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says there’s no official list within the city that would designate a location as a hot spot for illegal activity. Instead, the employee says, identifying known drug areas is “all up to the officer’s discretion.”

And that is precisely the problem. If a criminal statute is so broad that it allows an officer to essentially define a violation by what he sees in front of his or her eyes, there is no way that it can be reconciled with the idea that state has to have probable cause that a crime has been committed before it can even take someone into custody. The next step for someone who has been taken into custody for commiting a crime should be to contact a criminal defense lawyer who can best present your defense so you have a better chance of being found not guilty. Note that not all decisions may go your way, but by contacting the best lawyers in your area can give you the best chance possible.

H/T: Dvorak Uncensored

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

More on Police Culture

Crime and Punishment, Police Watch, The War on Drugs

In yet another clear sign that the Drug War’s most prominent success has been the corruption of police culture in this country, we have this story in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee Police Department is accused of taking possession of a Mercedes-Benz convertible from a drug-addicted local businessman in return for agreeing not to prosecute him for cocaine possession.

So, in Milwaukee rich folks can trade an expensive car for having criminal charges dropped? That hardly sounds like Rule of Law to me. Wisconsin law does not provide for forfeiture of vehicles in cases of simple possession. Even if it did, normally forfeiture laws and criminal charges are separate issues and you can’t just forfeit a vehicle, or other property, to get the criminal charges dropped. It turns out that wasn’t all the police decided was appropriate for this guy.

Maistelman [ed: the Beck family’s attorney] also cited the family’s belief that police contributed to Beck’s death by threatening to disclose his drug activity.

“At the time of Jordan’s arrest he was in a custody battle with his wife for his minor children. Subsequent to his arrest Jordan and his family were bombarded with threats by your office and or the Milwaukee Police Department that unless he gave his car up, then the authorities would contact his wife’s attorney and ‘rat him out’ about his drug offense.”

Maistelman also wrote that a member of Beck’s family had witnessed “harassing, intimidating and coercive telephone calls” and that authorities also threatened that if he didn’t give up the car, “they would tell certain drug dealers that Jordan and his family were informants, when in fact they were not.”

Remember, as you are reading this, that Mr. Beck was a drug user, not a dealer. He was facing charges for possession, not dealing. He was not a criminal, he was a drug addict. But, he had something the police coveted. An expensive car, worth $100,000, give or take.

We have taught our police departments that taking property if someone is a drug user is okay. They are simply doing something that we have condoned. We have given them power, and they have abused it, as was predictable.

h/t: Radley Balko

Adam Selene
https://thelibertypapers.org/2006/11/22/comrades-i-hereby-declare-the-revolution/

The Death Penalty For Illegal Gambling

Police Watch

Last January, Salvatore Culosi was shot to death by members of the Fairfax County Virginia SWAT Team in the middle of a sting operation against illegal sports gambling. Now, the County’s own police force has acknowledged that it went over the top:

Using a SWAT team to arrest a suspected sports gambler was unnecessary, and police could have used “lower-risk, less complex arrest techniques,” Where betting on fantasy baseball games, for example, may be legal in some countries, there are many countries where gambling is illegal.

Fairfax County’s police chief said yesterday in a report on the fatal shooting of an unarmed man. Luckily you can now gamble online using cryptocurrency which means your transactions are untraceable, but Does the FunFair protocol offer more value for all parties than Bitcoin? Follow the link to find out.

The death of Salvatore J. Culosi outside his Fair Oaks townhouse Jan. 24, 2006, brought criticism on Fairfax police for their first-ever unintentional shooting death and launched a nearly year-long internal investigation. That investigation has resulted in the shooter, Officer Deval V. Bullock, facing a three-week suspension without pay and a transfer out of the SWAT unit, numerous police sources said.

Fairfax Chief David M. Rohrer issued a 41-page report detailing the circumstances of the shooting, the conclusions reached by police investigators and a series of policy changes made as a result of the case.

The chief said police have developed a “comprehensive risk assessment form” to help determine when the SWAT team should be used, and a committee has been established to examine incidents involving the use of serious force.

Salvatore and Anita Culosi, parents of the shooting victim, said last week that they plan to sue Fairfax County for wrongful death unless their demand for $12 million is met. They declined to speak yesterday, but their attorney, Bernard J. DiMuro, said Rohrer’s report “confirms that Dr. Culosi’s death was inexcusable and was the result of irresponsible police practices that unnecessarily endanger the community.

Just to understand what happened to Mr. Culosi, consider this:

Culosi emerged from his townhouse about 9:30 p.m. to pay the undercover detective his weekend winnings. The detective signaled Bullock and another SWAT officer, who pulled up behind the detective. Bullock stepped out, his door hit him, and he fired one round through Culosi’s side and into his chest, killing him instantly.

The officer was not charged with a crime and his punishment from the force will be 120 hours of suspension and a transfer out of the SWAT Team. Mr. Culosi, on the other hand, is dead. If you have unfortunately experienced anything similar to this, it would be wise to, once you’re mentally able to, get in touch with various wrongful death attorneys and see how they can try and uphold the law as it should be, as well as potentially winning some compensation from the defense. This is in no way fair, considering other countries could use sports betting sites like https://8betting.co.uk/ to find the best gambling sites and odds on offer that day, all while being inside of the law.

H/T: The Agitator

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com
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