When the victim of a criminal assault dials 911 for help, what happens if police are the assailants?
Chicago residents Matthew Clark (a Ph.D. lecturer at the University of Chicago) and Gregory Malandrucco (who is finishing his Ph.D.) can answer that question: The cops who respond to the call will eagerly join the fray on the side of the attackers.'
Known to many people in his neighborhood as a gentle and talented man – a successful musician and artist before the onset of his mental illness – Chasse was beaten so severely by the bold and valiant guardians of the public that nearly all of his ribs were fractured. Several of them had been pulverized. He was also treated to a dose from law enforcement's favorite "non-lethal" toy, the portable electro-shock torture device (more commonly called a Taser).'
My campus was invaded by armored police officers. They threw actual tear gas into crowds of students. They SHOT students with rubber bullets. They beat slower-moving students with a baton. I saw a group of cyclists being herded down the sidewalk. A cop reached out and pushed a woman on a bike. She turned around and pushed her bike at the cop. Next thing we knew, he grabbed her by the face and slammed her down on the concrete.
According to a news account, “a hostile crowd gathered as the officers tried to perform their duties” — “duties” in this case referring to the exercise of their supposed authority to commit lawless violence against helpless people. It’s a pity nobody in that crowd saw fit to intervene on behalf of the victim.
Last Friday, the Encintas station of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department wrote another chapter in the annals of law enforcement overkill by dispatching an eight-man force, augmented by a helicopter, to deal with a spurious noise complaint prompted by a congressional fund-raising party in nearby Cardiff.
According to guests, the reception for candidate Francine Busby — which attracted about thirty people, most of them comfortably into middle age and none of them particularly boisterous by nature — was interrupted by “a vulgar person shouting obscenities from behind the bushes.”
Someone, most likely the heckler in question, called in a noise complaint. The Sheriff’s Office dispatched the large force under the command of Deputy Marshall Abbott, who has been with the force for about two years and, as we’ll see, displays the perverse eagerness to escalate a confrontation that is a persistent trait among younger law enforcement personnel.
Video footage of a man being shot twice with a Taser gun has been passed to the police complaints body.
The man was filmed struggling during the incident on Sunday night in Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham, as four officers attempted to arrest him.
A large group appeared and some people remonstrated with officers.
Nottinghamshire Police said no complaint had been made but they have ref More..erred the footage to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The footage shows two officers trying to arrest the man who is lying in the road outside Nottingham's Theatre Royal.
But when they encounter difficulty, the officer with the Taser orders his colleague to let go of the man.
He then fires the Taser, which consists of two darts on the end of wires containing a 50,000 volt shock.
The two male officers were joined by two other officers who ordered the man to put his hands out.
When he failed to do so, the officer with the Taser fires it again, shouting: "Taser, Taser, Taser."
A crowd of 30 to 40 people quickly gathered and questioned the police's tactics.
The video was given to local radio station Trent FM and has also been posted on YouTube.
The mother of a man with psychiatric problems who was pinned face down to the pavement by three police officers shortly before he died told an inquest today that when she viewed her son's body his face was covered with injuries.
The inquest into the death of Faisal Al-Ani, 43, from Southend in Essex, was shown a montage of CCTV footage including the moment he was wrestled to the ground by police officers.
The Metropolitan Police has been ordered to review the crowd-control tactic known as the “kettle”, which was used to pen in 5,000 people protesting over the G20 summit in London last week. The Times has learnt that senior Scotland Yard officers who led Operation Glencoe, the plan to protect the summit and prevent disorder, have been summoned to explain their tactics to members of the force’s watchdog body.
The newspaper seller was manhandled by an officer 15 minutes before a colleague was videoed striking him with his baton before shoving him to the ground, it was alleged.
Photographer Anna Branthwaite claimed Mr Tomlinson was pushed to the ground and struck twice with a baton by another officer.
He was then dragged to his feet by the policeman who continued to push him along the street, she claimed.
Minutes later, a passer-by captured footage of Mr Tomlinson being felled by a police officer's baton. It is not clear if the same officer was involved in both incidents.
A girl's family has filed a lawsuit against Galveston police for their assault on their 12-year-old daughter after mistaking her for a prostitute.
As the girl, Dymond Milburn, walked in her front yard, three men jumped out of a van and beat her about the face and throat, one of them telling her, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."Police attacked Milburn despite the fact that she didn't fit the racial description of their suspects: three white prostitutes and a black drug dealer.
Three weeks after Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries, police went to her school and arrested her for assaulting an officer during the incident.
