Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

supposedly that guy had just attacked his child's mother and taken the kid. who knows what happened precisely, but it sounds more complicated than the initial reports let on...

from the escaped prisoner story

The shooting occurred about 3:20 p.m. after Sgt. Jay Cook saw a suspicious man walking down a roadway in the Town of Constable, according to the state police. The sergeant ordered Mr. Sweat to stop, but he broke into a run and the sergeant, a firearms instructor, opened fire

definitely great police tactics in general

baltimore police commissioner canned

Kevin Davis did a pretty good job when he was chief of my county, as far as I know. Increased community outreach. Wonder if he'll be able to do good in bmore.

i am not optimistic anything good will happen in baltimore re: the police department, for all eternity. batts needed to go but our mayor is so useless. she can't do anything without coating it in uselessness.

ffs

http://nypost.com/2015/07/14/nypd-union-head-on-the-citys-obscene-eric-garner-settlement

I couldn't even properly read that

ugh

Nope

holy *shit* that's awful.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-federal-judge-orders-release-of-videos-20150714-story.html?14369191098620#page=1

wtf?!! these guys were tying to help their friend who made the call about the missing bike. this is too much anymore. i have no reason to believe that cops aren't just scared thugs with guns and a badges.

what the fuck are they so damn scared of that all of them have their guns drawn? this is fucked . oh i forgot in their minds we are all criminals they just haven't caught yet.

Not nearly as bad as most the other things on here, but enraging nonetheless:
former officer mocks police with email thanking the service for paying him while he was suspended

https://www.facebook.com/sandra.bland.5070/videos/10100617026077324
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/nytnow/online-campaign-questions-official-account-of-sandra-bland-death.html
this shit is straight terrifying

This is following a pattern similar to my great-grandfather's lynching in 1948.

died by "self-inflicted asphyxiation," according to sheriff's deputies, who have turned the investigation over to Texas Rangers.

oh im sure they will do a great job "investigating" their buddies

Hey guys guess what
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/16/video_shows_that_african_american_woman_who_died_in_custody_did_not_assault_an_officer_as_police_claimed/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

http://www.wbez.org/news/city-fires-investigator-who-found-cops-fault-shootings-112423

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/20/us/sandra-bland-arrest-death-videos-maps.html

^assume this is going to be updated as the case progresses.

http://investigations.myajc.com/caroline-small-shooting/

Warning: in addition to this being another story of unnecessary lethal police force followed by the expected corruption, coverup, stonewalling, etc, this article itself has really weird and unreliable formatting, at least on the two devices I've used to access it, and the landing page may very well be an autoplaying video of the shooting.

https://twitter.com/deray/status/623661175323033601

~8 min. dash cam footage of sandra bland stop

Nothing about this Bland case makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense that somebody would just hang themself out of the blue. And with a plastic bag -- who would even know how? But I also don't understand what the competing theory is if there's really video showing nobody coming in and out between her last communication and her death.

A lot can happen in 90 minutes

the video was supposedly motion-activated, so there are gaps in it even when it's not been tampered with, if nothing in frame moves.

the dash footage makes it clear that the officer wasn't following procedures (like the authorities say), and it also depicts bland as supremely confident that she didn't do anything meriting her treatment, and berating the officer for being a pussy once he removes her from the car and starts jerking her around, trying to cuff her.

some people are saying the dash footage shows clear signs of (bad) editing

http://bennorton.com/dashcam-video-of-violent-arrest-of-sandra-bland-was-edited/

on the texas DPS youtube channel's copy of the footage, the audio appears to be continuous e.g. while the officer is back in his car recounting the arrest on a phone call, but there are loops in the video

the video was supposedly motion-activated, so there are gaps in it even when it's not been tampered with, if nothing in frame moves.

I guess I'm confused about whether there's supposed to be, like, continuous footage of a hallway which is the only entrance to her cell, or whether there's something way less than that.

i think it's supposed to be in principle continuous for every stretch with motion? but nothing continuous over the entire real period of time, including motionless stretches? or did you mean something else?

man that is a spectacularly painful thing to listen to

that looping in the video does look p suspicious

(the arrest video)

Watched that this morning on the news. Is there any law that would compel her to put out her cigarette, other than just the cop ordering her to?

So, I've just been researching this, and the fucked up thing is that I can't find anything legally improper about the cop's arrest, at least the first segment of it. Basically our Supreme Court has upheld the ability of cops to be complete shitheads in many ways during a traffic stop. In specific response to Dan's question about the cigarette, IDK, but can the officer pull her over for not signaling a lane change? Yes. Can he order her out of the vehicle? Yes. Can he arrest her just for not signaling? Yes. Can he search her as part of that arrest? Yes.

This is an important point because it shows how this is not just about "bad apples" but about a system that enables this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/22/a-trooper-arrested-sandra-bland-after-she-refused-to-put-out-a-cigarette-was-it-legal/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/22/what-cops-are-saying-about-the-sandra-bland-video/

i know it's just a blog but the washington post relying on commentary from fucking reddit in this matter is gross

what do you expect them to actually have objective police officer/sources of their own or something

new media everybody

Depressing. But PLEASE, if anyone in that video was "agitated", it was the officer. His voice was quavering when he asked her to put out her cigarette. The tone in that alone was far too aggressive. She is amazing for responding as CALMLY as she did. I was impressed. Dude was intimidating from the start.

How is Bland supposed to know what the law is when the stop is a minor traffic violation?

Quite frankly, Bland sounds aggravated and verbally aggressive in that clip. But so what? Responding to verbal aggression with physical action is the behavior of a bully. I would expect (and honestly demand) that a police officer not actively escalate a potential problem just because either they or anyone they pull over was having a bad day. The instant he allows it to escalate, he starts getting out of control. If he had just let Bland be angry, they both would've driven away.

She's not threatening him. She's not suggesting she's not following his orders. She's suggesting that she's aware she has rights and intends to patrol them. The cop took that personally and not a minute after he takes the bait, he's threatening to "light her up". He's not the aggrieved party.

i've seen some speculation about reasons for ordering someone to put their cigarette out, but it's hard not to take it as a power move - give a needless order you expect them to refuse so you can escalate within spitting distance of the rules

^^^

these issues are all kind of incidental to how she ended up dead tbh, I doubt the traffic cop went into her cell and murdered her but something shifty def appears to have happened

haha right i guess i feel like it must all be right there (wish it could be) because you know the rest of the shit they come up with for the period from then to the hallway video is going to be all handled and muddled to hell

it seems to me that there's a reasonable argument that the method of arrest provides a good motive for why she would've been killed in custody: so that she couldn't testify or implicate this police officer when this case came to trial

that would only be 'reasonable' if it depended on officer's-state-of-mind somehow to cover the insane disproportion in killing a citizen over a shitty arrest, and it didn't matter that any such state of mind seems hella unreasonable

this is really scary footage too. the cop racing after his prey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86SR84lRMAc

Black! *immediate u-turn*

How come no sound on that til the end?

Or does the sound only come on once they switch on their lights or something