Police Brutality Discussion & Solutions...

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[AL Andretti]

 

[ineedacape]

not really brutality but stupidity, christopher jordan dorner, cop turned serial killer, actually stole my Dodge Ram from my apartment complex when he drove up to the mountains, I got a check in the mail for $6000 like a year later. When the story first broke and I heard what he did in the parking structure I thought he might've shot at one of my exes. That shxt had my hustle in windows safe mode for like a year, was my workhorse, my girl used to drive it erraticly though, so I'm guessing that's how it got scoped out. When I finally got back on my feet when the new camaros came out, I learned how to drive like a transformer and bought a scanner, nowadays im sitting on some many horses a cop can forget about it, at least in cali, but I'll let you lock me in another state if I'm clearly in violation. aint happen yet tho, lotsa weirdos, but most randomest incident was when I went to what was it Paris or Nice, in between both those with my newlywed wife, this was the night of that concert getting shot up. me and the wife were inside of that coffeeshop, so I'm finishing eating and I'm peeping outside and some cats just pull up park on a corner and hop out with big fat choppers. I had just got out of afghanistan so I had a piece on me [hand joint], and it looked like a terrorist situation, so I tell the wife run downstairs and I try to bang out with them. Immediately after I got her back home I go into active duty mode and stay out in France, I'm certain I laid down dude that took that grocery store hostage after that magazine slaying, I'm like a vampire for the war on terror, started out from playing SoCom on PS2, then joining up with the seals at camp pendleton after watching 9/11 from my college dorm room like wtf,I was like the nerve of these fools sending us videos of them holding guns like we ain't got shooters when we touch down behind enemy lines. Or ya'll never watched dude in that helicopter in Full Metal Jacket, movies that keep me on point as a soldier though, 1st Behind Enemy Lines, thats what I would watch when I would have to try to be a seal, they used to make us stay underwater in the ocean for like 45 minutes, then run the beaches. put me in incredible shape, the first time I got hit when I was in Iraq, mosul to be exact on a recovery and supression mission I thought the slug got blocked by my helmet, got a copter ride back home like 3 months later and it fell out my shoulderblade when I got into my old bed. I was wondering why my back was always lightweight bleeding, I thought it was from my shirt being to tight. Just today I had 5 pairs of sneakers on me walked all the way from Inglewood up to Round 2 on Melrose just to find everything closed early for the holiday(Chris you missed out on some DS Oregon 5'z). 2nd movie Zero Dark Thirty, film was so crucial at 1 point I made em cast one of my older daughters. Other than that some comedy joints gotta stay light-hearted when the world starts getting crazy. Oh yeah also Nightcrawler with the boy Jake Gyllenhal 10/10, son was up on all that action with no strap just camera equipment, sorta like I felt when they jumped out on us in France, anyway time to go watch the seeds open up gifts, everybody enjoy your X-Mas

 

[IATT]

 

[lightweight champion]

Wth?! They clearly lied on the report about what happened!

 

[freakydestroyer]

 

[iamdef]

I'm glad they said something but even more glad that cop was willing to let his ego take the shot instead of escalating it all

 

[IATT]

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[IATT]

 

[atlsfinest]

 

[hand2handking]

ICE Set Up a Fake University Enrolling Hundreds of Foreign Students as Part of a Sting Operation


A screenshot of the website for the fake university. The site has been taken down.

universityoffarmington.edu via Wayback Machine

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents set up a fake university in Michigan that enrolled hundreds of foreign nationals participating in a "pay to stay" scheme in which they could remain in the US, The Detroit News reported, citing a federal grand-jury indictment.
• The University of Farmington was not a college but an office pretending to function as one. Hundreds of foreigners paid thousands of dollars to live and work in the US with student visas despite not being students at all, the indictment said.
• The indictment said students knew their enrollment in the university was illegal but did not know the school was run by ICE.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ice...cofk1u7OiHZ7qRJRhsOlpGO7pc99pJdcKugQ6Lc2NjZOE

The University of Farmington had no staff, no professors, no curriculum, and no classes.

But it did have hundreds of foreign "students," who may now face deportation because of their willingness to participate in what authorities described as a "pay to stay" scheme in which they could live and work in the US under false pretenses.

It was part of a sting by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents who were secretly running the fake university in Farmington, Michigan, in an attempt to crack down on immigration fraud.

Citing a federal grand-jury indictment, The Detroit News, the first to report on the sting, said ICE's fake university led to the arrest of eight student recruiters on charges that they participated in a conspiracy to help at least 600 foreign nationals stay in the US illegally by committing visa fraud.

The indictment said that "the University was being used by foreign citizens as a 'pay to stay' scheme which allowed these individuals to stay in the United States as a result of foreign citizens falsely asserting that they were enrolled as full-time students in an approved educational program and that they were making normal progress toward completion of the course of study."

On Wednesday, The News reported, federal agents detained dozens of University of Farmington students on immigration-violation charges. They could face deportation, an ICE spokesman told the newspaper.

Most of the eight recruiters who were arrested are from India, but they all live in the US, The News reported, adding that they didn't know the university was run by ICE.

"These suspects aided hundreds of foreign nationals to remain in the United States illegally by helping to portray them as students, which they most certainly were not," Steve Francis, a special agent in charge of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations office in Detroit, told The News.

The university began in 2015 as part of an operation called "Paper Chase," which intensified early into Donald Trump's presidency as the administration urged a stronger crackdown on illegal immigration, The News reported.

At first sight, the University of Farmington looked legit. Its .edu website featured the school's logo, a red-and-blue coat of arms with a Latin slogan meaning "knowledge and work," The News reported.

The website is no longer up — a notice on it says the school has been shut down by immigration agents — but a cached version saved by Wayback Machine has a photo of smiling students in class, as well as details about undergraduate and graduate programs.


A screenshot of the University of Farmington's now defunct website.
Wayback Machine

In its "factoids" section, the school's website offers a few details: Undergraduate tuition is $8,500 a year, no courses are taught by teaching assistants, and the school's president speaks four languages. But nowhere on the website is there a profile — or even the name — of the president.

The university also had active social-media profiles, including a Facebook page that The News found had events scheduled into early February. It also had a physical office, albeit not a campus, in the basement of a complex in Farmington, across the hall from a café, The News reported.

"It's creative, and it's not entrapment," Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor who's now a law professor at Wayne State University, told The News. "The government can put out the bait, but it's up to the defendants to fall for it."

The eight recruiters are accused of helping foreign nationals fraudulently obtain documents from the university like student records and transcripts that would make it easier for them to get student visas, The News reported. It said they also "collectively received $250,000 in cash and kickbacks to find students to attend the university."

The students enrolled in Farmington were also aware that the program was illegal, according to The News. Many appear to be Indian nationals belonging to the Telugu ethnic group, The Washington Post reported.

"We are all aware that international students can be a valuable asset to our country, but as this case shows, the well-intended international student visa program can also be exploited and abused," US Attorney Matthew Schneider said in a statement Wednesday.

According to The Post, "the university claimed to be accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges but did not appear in an online directory of accredited institutions on the organization's website." The newspaper added that the DHS's "list of certified schools where international students can enroll includes the University of Farmington."

"The Farmington case isn't the first time federal agents have used a phony university," The News reported. In 2016, DHS agents "used the fake University of Northern New Jersey to charge 21 people with student and work visa fraud."

 

[hand2handking]

 

[Mark Antony]

Man what did we do to this country to deserve this **** from day one?

 

[hand2handking]

TAKEN: How Police Departments Make Millions By Seizing Property

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/in...res-taken-exclusive-investigation/2457838002/

In South Carolina, civil forfeiture targets black people’s money most of all, exclusive investigative data shows
When a man barged into Isiah Kinloch’s apartment and broke a bottle over his head, the North Charleston resident called 911. After cops arrived on that day in 2015, they searched the injured man’s home and found an ounce of marijuana.

So they took $1,800 in cash from his apartment and kept it.

______

When Eamon Cools-Lartigue was driving on Interstate 85 in Spartanburg County, deputies stopped him for speeding. The Atlanta businessman wasn’t criminally charged in the April 2016 incident. Deputies discovered $29,000 in his car, though, and decided to take it.

______

When Brandy Cooke dropped her friend off at a Myrtle Beach sports bar as a favor, drug enforcement agents swarmed her in the parking lot and found $4,670 in the car.

Her friend was wanted in a drug distribution case, but Cooke wasn’t involved. She had no drugs and was never charged in the 2014 bust. Agents seized her money anyway.

She worked as a waitress and carried cash because she didn’t have a checking account. She spent more than a year trying to get her money back.

______

The Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail examined these cases and every other court case involving civil asset forfeiture in South Carolina from 2014-2016.

Our examination was aimed at understanding this little-discussed, potentially life-changing power that state law holds over citizens — the ability of officers to seize property from people, even if they aren't charged with a crime.

The resulting investigation became TAKEN, a statewide journalism project with an exclusive database and in-depth reporting. It’s the first time a comprehensive forfeiture investigation like this has been done for an entire U.S. state, according to experts.

The TAKEN team scoured more than 3,200 forfeiture cases and spoke to dozens of targeted citizens plus more than 50 experts and officials. Additionally, the team contacted every law enforcement agency in the state.

Isiah Kinloch repairs the back heel strap of a pair of shoes for a friend. During an incident that has changed his life, Kinloch fought off a robber who barged into his apartment and attacked him. The defining moment: police found and seized his money while he was at the hospital being treated for his injuries.
JOSH MORGAN/STAFF

This yielded a clear picture of what is happening: Police are systematically seizing cash and property — many times from people who aren’t guilty of a crime — netting millions of dollars each year. South Carolina law enforcement profits from this policing tactic: the bulk of the money ends up in its possession.

The intent is to give law enforcement a tool to use against nefarious organizations by grabbing the fruits of their illegal deeds and using the proceeds to fight more crime.

Officers gather in places like Spartanburg County for contests with trophies to see who can make the largest or most seizures during highway blitzes. They earn hats, mementos and free dinners, and agencies that participate take home a cut of the forfeiture proceeds.

That money adds up. Over three years, law enforcement agencies seized more than $17 million, our investigation shows.

“We’ve heard so many awful stories,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. “Having cash makes you vulnerable to an illicit practice by a police organization.

“It’s a dirty little secret. It’s so consistent with the issue of how law enforcement functions. They say, ‘Oh yeah, we want to make sure that resources used for the trafficking of drugs are stopped’ … but many of the people they are taking money from are not drug traffickers or even users.”

These seizures leave thousands of citizens without their cash and belongings or reliable means to get them back. They target black men most, our investigation found — with crushing consequences when life savings or a small business payroll is taken.

Many people never get their money back. Or they have to fight to have their property returned and incur high attorney fees.

Police officials respond by saying forfeiture allows them to hamstring crime rings and take money from drug dealers, a move they say hurts trafficking more than taking their drugs.

In 2016, when a Myrtle Beach police unit broke up a sophisticated drug ring called the 24/7 Boyz that offered a dispatch system to order drugs and have them delivered on demand, the police used seizure powers. They took cars, firearms, a four-bedroom house and $80,000. They also arrested 12 people.

Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson initially prosecuted the case before turning it over to the federal government. In January, 10 of the 12 defendants pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges.

Richardson said taking a drug ring’s operating cash strikes a critical blow against traffickers in a way that criminal charges don’t. “A drug enterprise is an onion, it’s a multitude of layers,” he said. “Some tools hurt the traffickers, some hurt the enterprise itself. I feel this hurts the enterprise.”

Bobby Gore in his automotive shop in Nichols in 2018. He was putting his business and life back together after police seized cash from him when they discovered marijuana in his car.
LAUREN PETRACCA/GREENVILLE NEWS

Agencies also said funding for their work would be imperiled without the profit from this tool. Clemson Police Chief Jimmy Dixon said losing those profits could shut down his agency’s K-9 unit entirely. Undercover narcotics operations overall would suffer, Dixon said, citing limits on the department’s operating budget.

The TAKEN investigation key findings:

• Black men pay the price for this program. They represent 13 percent of the state's population. Yet 65 percent of all citizens targeted for civil forfeiture in the state are black males.

“These types of civil asset forfeiture practices are going to put a heavier burden on lower-income people,” said Ngozi Ndulue, recently a national NAACP senior director, now working at the Death Penalty Information Center. “And when you add in racial disparities around policing and traffic stops and arrest and prosecution, we know this is going to have a disproportionate effect on black communities.”

• If you are white, you are twice as likely to get your money back than if you are black.

• Nearly one-fifth of people who had their assets seized weren't charged with a related crime. Out of more than 4,000 people hit with civil forfeiture over three years, 19 percent were never arrested. They may have left a police encounter without so much as a traffic ticket. But they also left without their cash.

Roughly the same number — nearly 800 people — were charged with a crime but not convicted.

Greenville attorney Jake Erwin said the overarching idea is that the money being seized is earnings from past drug sales, so it's fair game. “In theory, that makes a little bit of sense," he said. "The problem is that they don’t really have to prove that.”

In some states, the suspicions behind a civil forfeiture must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court, but there is no requirement of proof in South Carolina. When a forfeiture is contested, prosecutors only have to show a preponderance of evidence to keep seized goods.

Police don’t just seize cash.

Practically anything can be confiscated and sold at auction: jewelry, electronics, firearms, boats, RVs. In South Carolina, 95 percent of forfeiture revenue goes back to law enforcement. The rest is deposited into the state’s general fund.

Law enforcement officers search a vehicle on Interstate 85. On average, officers search every fifth stopped car during Rolling Thunder 2018 — hundreds of vehicles in all. They bring in a drug-sniffing dog 128 times They make 40 arrests, 25 of them for felony offenses.
JOSH MORGAN/STAFF

• Most of the money isn’t coming from kingpins or money laundering operations. It’s coming from hundreds of encounters where police take smaller amounts of cash, often when they find regular people with drugs for personal use. Customers, not dealers. More than 55 percent of the time when police seized cash, they took less than $1,000.

• Your cash or property can disappear in minutes but take years to get back. The average time between when property is seized and when a prosecutor files for forfeiture is 304 days, with the items in custody the whole time. Often, it’s far longer, well beyond the two-year period state law allows for a civil case to be filed. But only rarely are prosecutors called out for missing the filing window and forced to return property to owners.

• The entire burden of recovering property is on the citizens, who must prove the goods belong to them and were obtained legally. Since it’s not a criminal case, an attorney isn’t provided. Citizens are left to figure out a complex court process on their own. Once cases are filed, they have 30 days to respond. Most of the time, they give up.

• The bulk of forfeited money finances law enforcement, but there’s little oversight of what is seized or how it’s spent. Police use it to pay for new guns and gear, for training and meals and for food for their police dogs. In one case, the Spartanburg County sheriff kept a top-of-the-line pick-up truck as his official vehicle and sold countless other items at auctions.

In many other places, changes are being made: 29 states have taken steps to reform their forfeiture process. Fifteen states now require a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited, according to the Institute for Justice, a non-profit libertarian law firm.

South Carolina lawmakers have crafted reform bills in recent General Assembly sessions, but none of the efforts made it out of committee.

To critics, South Carolina is the poster child for the injustice inherent in the for-profit civil forfeiture system, said Louis Rulli, a law expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Forfeiture doesn’t square with the rest of the justice system, Rulli said. “How could it be possible that my property could be taken when I am not even charged with any criminal offense? It seems un-American," he said.

Those who pay the biggest price are black men. Men like Kinloch. While he was hospitalized for a head injury from a home intruder, North Charleston police removed money from the tattoo artist’s apartment.

That department earns 12 percent of their annual operating budget from cash and property seized under civil law, our investigation shows.

“The robber didn’t get anything, but the police got everything,” said the 28-year-old Kinloch.

Police charged him with possession with intent to distribute after finding the marijuana in his apartment, but the charge was dismissed.

Kinloch never got his cash back.

Rent was due.

Without his $1,800, he couldn’t pay the landlord and was forced out of his home.
---

Kinloch isn't alone as a black man facing forfeiture over small, or nonexistent, criminal charges in South Carolina. Our investigation found that black men make up the largest share by far of people targeted for civil forfeiture, much higher than even the drug arrest or incarceration rate for black men. Read about our exclusive findings here:

Johnnie Grant plays with daughter Alayna in 2018. He is putting his life back together after a lot of personal challenges recently, including seizure of thousands of dollars by police. “I wasn’t going to allow them to take my money,” Grant said. “I was going to fight for what was right.”
JOSH MORGAN/STAFF

Black men pay the price for SC civil forfeiture program
Atlanta musician Johnnie Grant jerked awake in the back seat as blue lights flashed and a Greenville sheriff's deputy leaned in to question his driver.

Grant, his photographer and a videographer were on their way to a show in Charlotte in March 2017.

The deputy picked out his target among hundreds of cars that pass through the stretch of Interstate 85 near White Horse Road every hour. He said he pulled over the rented Chevrolet Malibu and its three black occupants for following too closely.

He and other deputies soon asked the men to step out of the car, searched it and found 1.5 ounces of marijuana inside a jar in the videographer’s backpack.

When deputies opened Grant’s bag, they found $8,000 wrapped in rubber bands. All three were charged with marijuana possession, even though the videographer explained it was his personal stash. The deputies took Grant’s cash and told him it was drug money.

“If I’d have been white, I guarantee you they wouldn’t have taken my money,” the 30-year-old Grant said. “They probably wouldn’t have even searched my car. They probably wouldn’t have even pulled me over.”

It fits the pattern. Black men carry the burden of South Carolina's civil forfeiture program. Almost two-thirds of people targeted by forfeiture are black males, according to TAKEN investigation data analysis. Yet they represent just 13 percent of the general population.

Hilary Shelton, the NAACP Washington bureau director, said the organization worries the racial targeting in South Carolina is even worse than has been reported.

“Civil asset forfeiture, combined with the historic and consistent problems of racial profiling on our highways and byways, becomes very much part of a troubling equation,” he said. “It’s been used in a racially discriminatory manner. The law must be fully reviewed.”

South Carolina’s legal legacy
The state has a long history of racial discrimination related to property.

Civil forfeiture is a vestige of that history, some critics say. It links to an established trend of targeted law enforcement that puts more police in contact with non-whites, an exposure that can lead to civil forfeiture, experts say.

Some departments have built a money-making machine on the backs of this type of targeting.

It starts with where police use forfeiture. It's happening in every urban environment in South Carolina. There are only six cities in the state with a population over 50,000. All of them frequently use forfeiture.

In smaller towns, only about half the police forces use the tool at all, and most agencies don’t pursue many cases.

The system is designed to be applied at scale. The more forfeiture is used, the more money police have at their disposal for equipment, training and for undercover drug purchases.

Though the racial disparities in the data exist broadly across the state, the decisions that lead to civil forfeiture are situational. It’s a traffic stop, or a drug investigation that leads to a residence, or increased patrols in low-income or historically black neighborhoods.

The TAKEN team used census data to analyze the widest disparities between the number of forfeiture cases with black subjects compared with the number of black residents in an agency’s jurisdiction.

The largest racial gaps? The highest disproportionate targeting of black people came from the Myrtle Beach Police Department, followed by the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office and the Charleston Police Department.

During 2014-2016, there was one black person targeted for forfeiture by Myrtle Beach police for every 50 black residents who live there. If you roughly extrapolated that rate over a generation, one in five black people would have money or goods taken by police in Myrtle Beach at some point over three decades, despite the fact that the city is mostly white.

The city is 69 percent white and just 14 percent black, according to 2014 U.S. Census data.

In Greenville County, black people were targeted for forfeiture at a rate of one per every 587 black residents during our three-year study period.

In comparison, forfeiture affected one white person per every 4,139 white residents in the county. Greenville County is 69 percent white and 19 percent black, according to U.S. Census data.

“It just sort of reinforces an understanding we already knew — that black residents disproportionately come in contact with law enforcement given the way criminal justice policy is oriented in this country,” said Nicole Porter, spokeswoman at The Sentencing Project, a reform advocacy group.

One reason: Traffic stops
Johnnie Grant and others were on their way to NC when a Greenville sheriff’s deputy pulled over their rented Chevrolet Malibu on Interstate 85.

In one case, a Wellford officer pulled over a black man on Interstate 85 for what he said was failure to maintain a lane. When he discovered cash in the car that day in 2012, the officer called in the top Homeland Security agent in Greenville to help seize it. They’d found what police said were “marijuana particles.”

The North Carolina driver, Lee Harris Jr., said it was tobacco. The officers took $7,008 from the glove box.

“I call them pirates,” said Lee Harris Sr., the driver's father. The elder Harris is a minister and a military veteran who said the money comes from his bank and from documented Social Security and benefits.

Harris said he had left $7,000 in the car when his son went on a trip to Atlanta. He filed a lawsuit, and after a year-and-a-half, he settled. The government kept $2,008 even though Harris' son was never charged with a crime.

Sometimes police seize cash when the driver is merely ticketed for a minor violation not related to drugs, according to court records.

Ramando Moore was cited for having an open container in Richland County in 2015; he lost $604.

Plexton Denard Hunter was pulled over for a seatbelt violation in 2015 in Richland County and had $541 seized. Tesla Carter, another seatbelt violation, this time in Anderson in 2015. She lost $1,361.

South Carolina agencies with the highest rate of seizure of property from black people

If you’re black and driving in South Carolina, you are more likely to be stopped by police. In 24 states with available race data by traffic stop, the state had the second highest rate of black motorists stopped by state troopers, according to a 2017 study by the Stanford Open Policing Project.

In Greenville County, there were 24 state patrol stops for every 100 black residents of driving age. There were only 15 stops for every 100 white residents in the nine-year study period, according to the project.

Officers have a lower threshold to search black drivers than white drivers, the Stanford research shows, evidenced by data that revealed when officers searched drivers, they found contraband more often on white drivers than black ones.

Yet the scope of action taken by law enforcement and the justice system against black Americans throughout U.S. history makes it easier for an officer to take from a black person than a white person, said Heather Ann Thompson, a criminal justice and African-American history professor at the University of Michigan and author of “Blood in the Water."

It’s the same reason black people are prosecuted more harshly, are incarcerated more often and for longer sentences and face civil fines and penalties more often than whites. They’re just not as likely to be able to marshal resources to fight back against the justice system, she said.

“It has everything to do with who has access to good defense lawyers and who’s getting pulled over to begin with,” said Thompson, who’s a leading voice in criminal justice reform.

The racial disparity may begin with traffic stops, but it extends well beyond them in South Carolina.

A policing system built to target minorities

Ella Bromell sits in her home in Conway on Feb. 21, 2018. These days, she rarely leaves her yard — she said she lives in fear of losing her 1,000-square-foot home. She’s endured years of efforts by the city of Conway to seize her house, an attempt to shut down drug dealers by going after Bromell.
LAUREN PETRACCA/GREENVILLE NEWS

How often are black people in this state the victim of civil forfeiture when the police encounter doesn’t involve being pulled over in a car?

Excluding known traffic stops, police seized money from black people in two-thirds of all cases compared with one-third for whites, our TAKEN data analysis shows. It’s an even more startling fact when considering South Carolina is 69 percent white.

Ella Bromell, a 72-year-old widow from Conway, twice nearly lost her home, though she’s never been convicted of a crime in her life.

Yet the city of Conway nearly succeeded in seizing her house because they said she didn’t do enough to stop crime happening on the sidewalk and in her yard. Young men were using her lawn as a location to sell drugs at night, according to court records.

The fight between Conway officials and Bromell, who is black, began in 2007 and lasted a decade — culminating in court in 2017 when two judges sided with her and wrote that the city “failed to produce any evidence that the residence was an integral or otherwise fundamental part of illegal drug activity.”

Still, Bromell fears the city will try again, despite the police admission in court that they couldn’t say if she was even aware of a single drug sale around her house.

Conway City Manager Adam Emrick said the city has contemplated future seizures in the case of Bromell or similar property owners.

Losing her home would be the end of her, Bromell said. “I don’t want to go nowhere else.”

Thurmond Brooker, Bromell’s attorney, said the law is being warped without the public even noticing. “It's being used in a way in which innocent people can have their property taken,” he said. “Little old ladies whose property is being trespassed upon can be victimized for a second time."

Why are black citizens like Bromell facing forfeiture more often than their white neighbors?

One police official said it’s because there’s more drug crime in the black community.

“We go where we’re called,” Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller said. “We police where people are telling us there are problems. We’re not an agency — and I don’t know a police agency — that tries to balance racially its interdiction of drugs off the street.”

The bulk of the drugs and weapons calls the city receives are in minority communities, Miller said. He said he won't apologize if police tactics disproportionately engage black men and lead to more seizures.

In Greenville County, the Sheriff’s Office initiated 256 forfeiture cases from 2014-2016, of which 150 involved blacks and 85 involved whites.

Greenville city police had 89 cases. Of those, 53 involved blacks and 22 involved whites.

Miller said the city has spent time and money on racial bias training and is working to better track data on traffic stops.

David Smith, one of the architects of the expanded forfeiture laws enacted in the 1980s to fight the War on Drugs, said it’s a great tool for going after significant criminals. Drug lords. White collar masterminds. But increasingly forfeiture has been co-opted by local police forces to take petty cash on the side of the road, he said.

Grant, the Atlanta musician, said he understands how police work and knew right away he would fight to get his money back, even if it cost him legal fees.

"They knew we were young, and we were black,” Grant said. “They pulled us over, gave us a bogus reason. We didn’t consent to search; they searched anyway.”

Grant's drug charge was dismissed, and though he had proof that he earned his money legally — show schedules, payment receipts, contracts — it could have taken another two years before he could challenge the forfeiture in court. So Grant chose to settle rather than wait.

The state got $500. He got $7,500 back but had to pay his attorney $2,500.

His case was considered a good outcome.

“We’re the ones being railroaded,” Grant said. “It just speaks volumes to where we are as a people.”

 

[IATT]

 

[deuce king]

Hopefully he gets a daily supply of this on the regular. You reap what you sow in life.

LOL. Got his wife shedding tears on camera.....I love it. When she says....”my husband can’t stand and fight for himself anymore” hopefully that’s her way of saying that the inmates broke his legs. At least he’s still alive even though he’s in jail.....the person he killed isn’t.

 

[blastercombo]

Hope sexual things too. Tell us when they do that

 

[sfc415]

Zero sympathy. If you were a decent human being, you would've left your husband the second you found out what he did

 

[blastercombo]

She’s ugly as sin too. Yikes and yuck. She’s more than welcome to fight them back

 

[IATT]

A former Chicago police officer convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of an African-American teenager he shot 16 times

"My husband is a police officer. He is a stand-up man," Tiffany Van **** said. "He has always been a stand-up human being."

"Everybody got what they wanted. They had my husband put away. All he wanted to do was melt to the background, do his time and come home to his family."

While the prison is described as a minimum-security facility, Wendt said Van **** is housed in a unit with "gangbangers and violent criminals" on the last leg of their sentences.

"To put a police officer who has spent his entire career locking up bad guys in with these bad guys, it doesn't take a genius to know that's obviously going to get him in trouble," Wendt said. "It's unconscionable that this happened to him."

 

[hand2handking]

Six California Officers Fire Shots at Rapper Who Had Been Asleep in Car, Killing Him
Willie McCoy was startled awake and fatally shot by Vallejo police at Taco Bell, prompting family to allege racial profiling

Willie McCoy had been sleeping in his car outside a Taco Bell, authorities said. Photograph: Courtesy David Harrison

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...police-shooting-willie-mccoy?CMP=share_btn_fb

California police officers fatally shot a 20-year-old rapper who was sleeping in his car outside a Taco Bell, authorities said.

Six Vallejo officers fired “multiple rounds” at the man, identified by family as Willie McCoy, police said. McCoy had a handgun on him when the officers fired out of “fear for their own safety” on Saturday night, according to the department. The family of McCoy, whose rapper name was Willie Bo, said Tuesday that police had racially profiled the young black man and that there was no justification for using deadly force against someone who was sleeping and not a threat.

“There was no attempt to try to work out a peaceful solution,” Marc McCoy, Willie’s older brother, told the Guardian. “The police’s job is to arrest people who are breaking the law – not take the law into your own hands. You’re not judge, jury and executioner … We’re never going to get over this.”

Police said officers were checking up on McCoy after a Taco Bell employee called 911 and said a man was “slumped over” behind the wheel of his car at the fast-food restaurant drive through on Saturday at around 10.30pm. McCoy was unresponsive and had a handgun on his lap, police said, adding that the doors were locked and the car was on. After they called for backup, McCoy “suddenly” moved, officials said in a statement.

Police further alleged that officers told him to “keep his hands visible” but that he “quickly moved his hands downward for the firearm”. Police said six officers all fired shots within roughly four seconds, but they did not disclose the number of bullets that struck McCoy. The officers continued shouting commands before removing him from the vehicle and “rendering medical assistance”. He died on the scene. Police have not yet confirmed his identity and said an autopsy was pending.

The killing of McCoy follows numerous scandals involving alleged police brutality against black residents in Vallejo, a diverse city 30 miles north-east of San Francisco. A 2017 video captured a Vallejo officer straddling a man on the ground and repeatedly striking him in the face. Another violent arrestwent viral last year, with a video showing an officer striking a man on the ground with a flashlight or baton. Last month, a Marine veteran accused a Vallejo officer of assaulting him while he was filming the arrest of his cousin.

“No one trusts the police in Vallejo,” said David Harrison, McCoy’s cousin. “We are being targeted … Police have a campaign of executing young black men who fit a certain profile. Willie dressed the part. He represents hip-hop music. They are profiled.”

Marc, Willie’s 50-year-old brother, said he suspected police had startled Willie awake, and that they should have ordered him out of the car with a bullhorn instead of approaching him and quickly firing fatal shots after he woke up.

McCoy, right, with his cousin David Harrison. Photograph: Courtesy David Harrison

“Police are trained to shoot first and hurt you first,” he said. “They do not respect black people. Even when they have a person subdued and their life is not in danger, they continue to be blatantly physically disrespectful. That is just accepted in America.”

Willie had a difficult childhood, losing both his parents at a young age, said Marc, adding: “He was very ambitious about music. He was passionate.” Willie rapped in a group called FBG. Vallejo is the hometown of many successful rappers and musicians.

Willie loved spending time with his nieces and nephews and making music with his relatives, and he treated his friends like family, said Harrison: “If you needed a few dollars, he was there. If you needed a ride, he was there.”

Some of Willie’s relatives were so distraught, “they can’t even really talk about it”, Marc added. “They are just locked up in the house, crying themselves to sleep.”

There have been two high-profile cases in the broader Bay Area of police fatally shooting people after waking them up, prompting civil rights litigation. Last year, four officers in Oakland shot a homeless man who was armed and sleeping between two houses when they arrived, prompting an excessive force lawsuit that the family filed last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

In 2015, Oakland police killed a man who was passed out in his car, with officials claiming that he abruptly woke up and reached toward a gun on the passenger seat. His family was awarded a $1.2m settlement.

Willie’s family said the involved officers should face criminal prosecution.

“We cannot fathom why they would have to shoot him. This was senseless … shooting a man sleeping in his car,” said Harrison. “We want to make sure this never happens again to another person.”

• The headline of this article was amended on 13 February 2019 to clarify that police said Willie McCoy was awake when he was fatally shot

 

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Houston Officer Apparently Lied in Seeking Warrant Before Raid That Left 2 Dead, Chief Says
"It appears that there are some material untruths or lies in that affidavit" for a warrant for a drug raid that ended with two residents dead and four officers shot, the chief said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...lied-seeking-warrant-raid-left-2-dead-n972191

Houston's police chief said Friday that there appear to be "some material untruths or lies" in an affidavit used to get a warrant for a drug raid that left four officers shot and two people in the home dead.

Police Chief Art Acevedo emphasized that police "had reason to investigate that location" on Harding Street, a raid that ended in a shootout that killed the two occupants, Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58.

"Thus far it appears that there are some material untruths or lies in that affidavit — and that's a problem," Acevedo said. "That's totally unacceptable."

"More than likely, the investigating officer will be charged with a serious crime at some point," the chief said.

He added that there will be a review of past investigations, as well as a broader look at the department’s narcotics unit street level units.

Earlier Friday, NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston obtained police documents that say narcotics Officer Gerald Goines justified the warrant request by claiming that he sent a confidential informant to make a narcotics buy at the home, and that the informant returned with what the informant said was heroin and said there was a weapon at the residence.

But in the police documents, an investigator said they were unable to find that informant, and that all the informants listed as working with Goines denied making a drug buy for him at that home or ever buying from Tuttle or Nicholas. Acevedo acknowledged those documents Friday, but did not name the officer.

The police department has said that when officers were serving the felony warrant at the home at around 5 p.m. on Jan. 28, they were met with gunfire and several officers returned fire, killing Tuttle and Nicholas.

Police have said that a small amount of marijuana and white powder believed to be cocaine or fentanyl as well as three shotguns and two rifles were recovered after the raid on the home. Goines was one of the four officers wounded in the shooting, according to police documents.

"We're going to get to the truth," Acevedo said. He said the police department is conducting “an impartial investigation into everything that occurred leading up to and during that raid."

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo talks to the media during a press conference at the police station in Houston on Feb. 15, 2019. Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle via AP

Acevedo did not name what he called the "target officer" in the investigation into the shooting, but past cases will be investigated as well.

Acevedo said that one officer has previously been relieved of duty, and the person he referred to as the investigating officer is still hospitalized and will also be relieved. A message with the police union about whether Goines has legal representation was not immediately returned Friday night.

Acevedo said there was also a 911 call from a woman who said her daughter was doing heroin in the home that was raided. "This was not just an investigator deciding to go target a house, as far as we've determined so far, for no reason," he said.

If information was determined to have been falsified for the warrant it would be a crime, Acevedo said. But the details of exactly what occurred are still under investigation, he said. He said that search warrants have been obtained for cellphones.

"No matter what we end up with here, right, we know we have a criminal violation already — and a serious criminal violation by the individual that prepared that affidavit on the initial search warrant at the Harding Street location," Acevedo said.

The Houston Police Officers’ Union said in a statement to KPRC that the facts detailed by Acevedo on Friday were "extremely concerning."

"Such actions, if true, would be extremely disturbing and would not be a reflection of the many men and women of HPD who do an incredible job every day, including those who have worked tirelessly since the shooting ensuring that no stone goes unturned," the union said.

Acevedo pledged a thorough and impartial investigation.

"I"m telling you, there's a lot of pissed off cops right now," the police chief said. "There are a lot of angry cops. Because when you violate that oath of office, you make it hard for 98, 99 percent of these cops that go out there every day."