Puttin Ferguson PD's business in the streets :pacspit: / What Black cops say about Brown incident?

[KyokushinKarateMan]

Officer Darren Brown isn't the only rotten apple on the Department's police force.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...5f7142-2c96-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html


"In four federal lawsuits, including one that is on appeal, and more than a half-dozen investigations over the past decade, colleagues of Darren Wilson’s have separately contested a variety of allegations, including killing a mentally ill man with a Taser, pistol-whipping a child, choking and hog-tying a child and beating a man who was later charged with destroying city property because his blood spilled on officers’ clothes.
One officer has faced three internal affairs probes and two lawsuits over claims he violated civil rights and used excessive force while working at a previous police department in the mid-2000s. That department demoted him after finding credible evidence to support one of the complaints, and he subsequently was hired by the Ferguson force."


"Counting Wilson, whose shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 9 set off a firestorm of protests and a national debate on race and policing, about 13 percent of Ferguson’s officers have faced excessive-force investigations."


"The Ferguson Police Department and city officials declined to comment on the cases.
In all but one of the cases, the victims were black. Among the officers involved in the cases, one is African American."
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"The five officers and one former officer have faced complaints of excessive force in five civil rights lawsuits; one of the suits was resolved with the officer not being held liable and the department paying a settlement, and four are pending, one on appeal. Two of the officers faced these complaints during their time at other police departments. One officer allegedly used excessive force in two incidents, both while at the Ferguson Police Department."

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"The most recent civil rights lawsuit naming Ferguson police officers was filed days after Brown was shot and involves a September 2011 incident. According to the lawsuit, officers encountered a dazed-looking man walking from behind a building in a residential area. Officer Brian Kaminski ordered 31-year-old Jason Moore to put his hands up and walk toward him, according to the suit, which then alleges that Kaminski fired his Taser prongs into Moore’s chest and legs.

A second officer, Michael White, arrived and physically held Moore while Kaminski repeatedly Tasered him with electric currents, the lawsuit said.
Both officers are white. Moore was black.
Moore, who had a mental disorder, suffered a heart attack on the scene and died. His wife, Tina Moore, filed the lawsuit, saying her husband’s death was another example of Ferguson police using excessive force.


"Peter Dunne, an attorney recently assigned to represent the officers, also declined to comment, saying he has yet to review the case since it was just filed.
Dunne is also representing White in a case that involves one other current Ferguson officer and a former officer who has since been elected to the Ferguson City Council. A 54-year-old welder, Henry Davis, was injured in an altercation with the three officers. Officers say it happened because Davis became combative, which Davis denies. The officers charged Davis with destruction of property when his blood stained their uniforms. Davis is black. The officers are white."

...."The other two officers — John Beaird and Kim Tihen, who is now on the city council — testified that Davis initiated the fight. Davis testified that he asked for a mat to sleep on in the jail cell, a request he said was denied. When he protested, he said, the officers started to hit him, then handcuffed him. White, Davis said, kicked him in the head. Medical records show he suffered a concussion.
The judge said that Davis, who was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence and other violations, suffered injuries but that they were “de minimis” — too minor to warrant a finding of excessive force, records show. The case is being appealed."


"Dunne also represents the Ferguson officer who faced at least five complaints of excessive force when he worked at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
Eddie Boyd III arrived in Ferguson four years ago after three internal affairs investigations into complaints — in 2004, 2005 and 2006 — that he assaulted and injured children without cause.
Boyd and the children are African American. In at least two cases, the children said Boyd pistol-whipped them. In the 2006 case, the department “sustained” the allegations, concluding that Boyd had used unnecessary force when he struck 12-year-old Jerica Thornton with his pistol, records show.

Boyd was suspended and demoted to the rank of a probationary police officer. But the next year, Christopher Dixon, a high school freshman, said Boyd tackled him as he fled an after-school fight and hit him in the face with the butt of his pistol. Boyd said he accidentally hit Dixon’s face with his handcuffs when Dixon resisted arrest, records show.
Boyd resigned from the St. Louis force shortly after this incident, saying in a deposition he wanted to avoid the “red tape” of what would have been his fourth internal affairs probe. Boyd was not held liable in the Dixon suit. His police department settled out of court, paying the teenager $35,000, according to Dixon’s attorney, Matthew Devoti."

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

"Another Ferguson officer faced a complaint on a previous job.
Justin Cosma was one of two Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies who in June 2010 came upon a shirtless 12-year-old boy who was checking the family mailbox. The deputies asked him what he was doing, knocked him down, and hogtied him, and the boy was choked and beaten, the lawsuit claims. The officers and the boy are white.
When asked about the accusations, Cosma’s attorney, Jason Retter, said he does not comment on pending cases.
Cosma was one of the officers who arrested reporters, including a Washington Post journalist, covering the protests in Ferguson over the killing of Michael Brown.
In the Jefferson County incident, Cosma filed a report that the 12-year-old assaulted him and his partner and was “resisting/
interfering with arrest, detention or stop.” The local prosecutor refused to bring charges against the juvenile.
“They were talking to him and the next thing that happens is they are restraining him,” said the attorney for the boy’s family, Richard Lozano. “Because he was shirtless, he was grabbed around the neck. He had choke marks. They tied his hands and feet behind his back, and hogtied him — all on his property, all while his mother was inside the house.”

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

National Black Police Association President Malik Aziz and Darren Wilson touch on Ferguson incident and possible solution.












What do white officers say about Ferguson?

Here's a police forum http://officerresource.com/forums/forum.php

I tried to search threads but you have to be a registered member

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

Black Female Police Officer's interview on her feelings about Ferguson and more.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28890068

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool spoke with a black female police officer who works in the St Louis area.
She discussed her take on the controversy in Ferguson and the realities of race on the force. Out of consideration for her job, she asked not to be identified.


Before you joined the police force, what experiences did you have with the police in this area?
Experiences that made me feel disrespected, less of a human being. I have been stopped in my car and accused of doing some things I don't think I'd done.
The tone was different. In some senses, it is almost as if the officers I had the interactions with could not care less about who I was, that I was beneath him so he didn't have to extend a level of respect. I felt personally attacked. I wanted to join the police to make a difference. I thought I could explain things from a citizen's perspective, and explain things to the community from the law enforcement perspective.


Now do you feel like an outsider among your colleagues in the police force?
I do, very much so. I don't relate with a lot of them, I haven't lived similar lives to them.
It may be a combination of being African American and a woman, but there are certain events I am not included in, or even informed of.
Maybe in their growing up they didn't have a lot of interactions with African-American females from the inner city - they're uncomfortable with it, but instead of trying to address it, they avoid it, even fear it.


So when black people in Ferguson say the issue is not just about Michael Brown, but the way they have been treated as a community, do you agree?
I can completely agree with that. It [the killing of Michael Brown] should be a learning experience.
Quite possibly the officer was in fear, as was the young man. It is sad no one is addressing that. Why was he [the police officer] so afraid of him that he had to use such intense force, and why was [Michael Brown] in such fear that it happened [that] way?
I don't know who is to blame for these perceptions, but it's almost like a fear-based society. You're told this certain type of people behaves in a certain type of way, and it sticks with you throughout your life. They never take the time to find out if it's true.


Do you think that is governing how some officers behave when they take to the streets?
I certainly do. And because nothing is being done to force those interactions, it's just grows. It's why communities are divided.


Do you think it makes it easier for some of your co-workers to shoot dead a black man?
I don't feel they would have that same connection or compassion with that individual, so it may make it easier for them.


Do you think what's happened in Ferguson over the last couple of weeks might make some of your white colleagues listen more to the kind of things you and other African-American officers have been saying about their negative dealings with black people?
No, absolutely not. It's actually created that divide and made it larger. It's made it harder for me to want to talk to them about it any more.
They are so disconnected from it. Their rationale, perception and interpretation of the issues are so far-fetched.
The comments they make are very one-sided and show such a lack of compassion and understanding, or even the desire to understand. It's heart-wrenching. It's been very difficult.


What do you mean about your white colleagues perception of what has happened in Ferguson as being "far-fetched"?
[In Ferguson] I see a hurt group of individuals, and they see a bunch of unruly ignorant people.
They are treating it as if this community is full of an angry mob that wants to just tear up everything and they should be satisfied with what they had.
But the point is you shouldn't make such an assumption that they should be happy with what they had. They shouldn't. You wouldn't be.
I know Ferguson is not a group of ignorant uneducated people that are unruly. They are just a bunch of frustrated people who have tried and tried, but have been met with negative results.
You have a few apartment complexes in Ferguson, but there's a lot of neighbourhoods, well kept lawns. Where people work together as a community - they have jobs, work hard every day. They are probably exhausted, they're just trying to build [a] better life for families.


What do you think will make your colleagues realise they need to work harder in their relations with the community?
It's really hard to say. They're not the minority, they're not the ones that need to be forced to understand it. So, as the minority, you've just got to handle it, you deal with it and you move along and accept it.

 

[The_Truth]

Well, isn't this a shocker.

 

[Kenny West]

Somebody get Josie's opinion on this

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

The Prosecutor's dirt


http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-prosecutor-robert-p-mccullochs-long-history-siding-police-267357

Ferguson Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch's Long History of Siding With the Police
By Pema Levy
Filed: 8/29/14 at 6:33 AM | Updated: 8/29/14 at 6:59 AM


On the afternoon of June 12, 2000, two unarmed black men pulled into the parking lot of a Jack in the Box in the northern suburbs of St. Louis, just a few miles from where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, earlier this month.

In the car were Earl Murray, a small-time drug dealer, and his friend Ronald Beasley. Waiting for them were a dozen detectives. By the time Murray realized it was a sting, he was surrounded. Panicked, he put his car into reverse but slammed into a police SUV behind him. Two officers approaching the car from the front opened fire. Twenty-one shots rained down on Murray and Beasley.

In an ensuing investigation, the local prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, put the case to a grand jury, citizens who receive evidence under the instruction, questioning and watchful eye of the prosecutor to decide whether to press charges. The story presented to the grand jury was that Murray’s car moved toward the two officers, who then fired out of self-defense. The grand jury declined to indict the officers, and McCulloch said he agreed with the decision.

The Jack in the Box shooting looms large for the black community in North County, the largely black municipalities of St. Louis County that lie north of St. Louis. Black residents there feel they are routinely abused by largely white police forces. The shooting of Murray and Beasley eroded any confidence they had in McCulloch, the county prosecutor some in Ferguson call a cop’s best friend.

This week, McCulloch’s office began to present evidence to a grand jury in the case of Brown, the black, unarmed 18-year-old whose shooting death by white police officer Darren Wilson on August 9 sparked nearly two weeks of riots.

The black community in Ferguson is bracing for McCulloch to let the officer who shot Brown go free, just as it believes he did with the two officers 14 years ago . “I don’t believe that Bob McCulloch’s office is going to issue any charges,” said Jerryl Christmas, a local criminal defense lawyer. “It’s not going to happen.”

McCulloch, 63, has served as St. Louis County’s prosecuting attorney since 1991. A Democrat, he is running for reelection this November unopposed.

His sympathies for the cops run deep. His father was a St. Louis policeman killed in the line of duty by a black man when McCulloch was 12. His brother, nephew and cousin all served with the St. Louis police. His mother worked as a clerk for the force for 20 years. McCulloch would have joined the force too, but he lost a leg in high school due to cancer. “I couldn’t become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing,” he once said.

All prosecutors are cozy with their police departments—it’s part of their job. Because they rely on police to bring them evidence, a prosecutor who has a bad relationship with them has a hard time making his or her cases stick. But McCulloch’s critics say his loyalty to the police is exceptional.

McCulloch decried Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s decision to pull the St. Louis County Police out of Ferguson and put the State Highway Patrol in charge, even after the local force’s response to the protests turned Ferguson into a war zone. “To denigrate the men and women of the county police department is shameful,” he said.

“I’m not sure there was another person in the hemisphere who thought they were doing fine,” said Jeff Smith, a former Missouri state senator who represented inner-city St. Louis.
Edward Magee, a spokesman for McCulloch, said the prosecutor does not shy away from charging police officers. “In the 18 years I’ve been in the office, we’ve charged numerous officers,” he said.

It’s one thing for a prosecutor to defend cops he relies on to do his job. But the dynamics in St. Louis County are more complicated: a racially divided area in which white police forces stand accused of abusing the black communities they are supposed to protect. McCulloch didn’t create this dynamic, but he has become a symbol of it.

St. Louis County, which includes 90 small municipalities that encircle the city of St. Louis, is highly segregated, with black people concentrated in the north and the white middle and working class in the south.

To bring in revenue, many of these municipalities rely on traffic violations—and the fines that result. Both county and municipal forces disproportionately stop black drivers. Ferguson’s police force has 50 white officers and three black ones. One young black man told Slate he is stopped about 10 times a month.

A recent report by the legal defense nonprofit ArchCity Defenders found that 86 percent of vehicle stops in Ferguson involved a black driver, although just 67 percent of the city’s 21,203 residents are black. These traffic violations, which sometimes lead to weeks in jail, are an enormous burden on the black community. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court disposed of 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases—“about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household,” the report said. Fines and court fees are Ferguson’s second largest revenue source.

“We’re just used to raise revenue,” said Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for Ferguson Township. “On traffic day in these little municipalities, you usually find a white judge in the courtroom, white prosecutor, and you find lines of black people lined up around the corner that have been charged with these tickets.”

This constant low-level harassment of the black community has become the main point of contact between most black residents and the criminal justice system. And it always comes with the threat of violence. As multiple news reports since the Brown shooting have revealed, police in North County too often use excessive force against the black community.

Though the facts remain unclear, it appears Brown’s deadly confrontation with Officer Wilson began as a jaywalking stop. McCulloch isn’t involved in traffic stops, but the people of North County see the Brown shooting and the excessive traffic tickets as part of the same oppressive system. “To me, this is all police brutality, this is all excessive force, this is all racial profiling,” said Bynes.

Bynes pointed to McCulloch’s role in the Jack in the Box shooting case, which has roared back to life now that the Brown case is in McCulloch’s hands. Because of cases like that one, she said, “nobody [in the African-American community] trusts [McCulloch], but it makes the police think that they can do anything and that they can get away with it.”

Not everyone believes McCulloch will deliver a repeat of the Jack in the Box case. Bynes said she will be surprised if there’s no indictment, particularly since federal investigators are running a parallel investigation. “His reputation is that he’s fair,” said Barry A. Short, a former U.S. attorney in Missouri. “Given the circumstances, I think he’ll bend over backwards to be fair.”

Based on his dealings with McCulloch’s office as a defense attorney, Christmas agrees that the prosecutors are fair, but thinks cases involving police are a different story. The investigating grand jury, Christmas said, is the perfect tool for allowing McCulloch to bail out the officer without getting blamed for dumping the case.

In Missouri, the grand jury consists of 12 citizens, assigned to a prosecutor, who meet to decide whether to bring criminal charges. The jurors need only decide whether there is probable cause to believe someone committed a crime. It takes nine jurors to vote to indict —what is referred to as a “true bill” or, in the case of no indictment, “no true bill.”

The grand jury deciding whether to charge Wilson has three black members. The deliberations are secret. A prosecutor assigned to the grand jury has enormous sway over the outcome, by deciding what charges to consider, what evidence to present and who will testify.

“Bob McCulloch is a very experienced prosecutor, and he’s knows how to manipulate the system so that when it’s done, it will appear the grand jury did the no true bill and that it was their decision,” Christmas said.

Christmas knows this because he used to do it himself when he was a prosecutor. “They knew my cues, whether or not I liked a case or didn’t like a case. I trained them on how to evaluate these cases,” he said. “If I didn’t like a case and felt like there should have been no true bill, I knew how to present the witnesses and give the cues to the grand jury, and they would vote to no true bill it.”

McCulloch will not be working with the grand jury himself in this case; two longtime prosecutors in his office will work directly with the grand jury. But Magee said McCulloch will be “kept abreast of what goes on and then offer his guidance and experience.”

Even without being in the room, Christmas believes McCulloch will be running the show. “When it’s all said and done, not only can he say that he didn’t have anything to do with it, it was the grand jury’s decision, he can also say, ‘I wasn’t even in there,’” Christmas said.

McCulloch has promised to seek permission to release all the evidence presented to the grand jury if it chooses not to indict and to invite Wilson to testify. (It’s rare for a defendant to testify before a grand jury, because a lawyer cannot be present, making an appearance a risk few defendants are prepared to take.)

To Barry Short, having Wilson testify inspires confidence. “I think it’s a sign that he wants the grand jury to hear it all,” he said. But Christmas isn’t appeased. “If I was representing this officer, I’d send him right in to the grand jury, because I know they’re going to take care of him,” Christmas said. “When that prosecutor finishes with that police officer in that grand jury, they’re going to love him.

“Remember,” he added, “you can’t bring Mike Brown in, ’cause he dead.”

Fourteen years ago, the two officers who shot Murray and Beasley were also invited to testify before the grand jury. Both men told jurors that Murray’s car was coming at them and that they feared being run over. McCulloch said that “every witness who was out there testified that it made some forward motion.” But a later federal investigation showed that the car had never come at the two officers: Murray never took his car out of reverse.

An exhaustive St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation found that only three of the 13 detectives who testified had said the car moved forward: the two who unloaded their guns and a third whose testimony was, as McCulloch admitted, “obviously…completely wrong.” McCulloch never introduced independent evidence to help clarify for the grand jury whether Murray’s car moved forward.

On the last day of testimony, an investigator in McCulloch’s office read out a list of every interaction Murray and Beasley had had with law enforcement, even arrests that never resulted in charges.

A few hours later, the grand jury voted not to press charges.

 

[Smoking With Cigarettes]

Soon

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

Soon

 

[Cabbage Patch]

Soon

When shyt really went down, though...

Our heroes try to warn us, and are crucified.

 

[*Angel*]

AmeriKKKa, where White people use illogical fear as an excuse to defend murdering and hurting innocent people, then lie about their true intentions as if everyone else is as dumb and ignorant as they are and will believe their lies.

They are a disgustingly pathetic bunch.

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

When shyt really went down, though...

Our heroes try to warn us, and are crucified.

And sadly, some of us "help" crucify them

 

[KyokushinKarateMan]

AmeriKKKa, where White people use illogical fear as an excuse to defend murdering and hurting innocent people, then lie about their true intentions as if everyone else is as dumb and ignorant as they are and will believe their lies.