Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread

[Shodan]

Just making it clear that your opinion isn’t based on anything real.

Regards,
Shodan

[Rick_Kitchen]

Police in North Carolina pull over an Uber driver. When he begins to record their interactions, they tell him he’s violating a new law against recording police. The Uber driver, whose day job is as a defense attorney, disagrees. They pull him out of the car and search it and him without his consent.

Police told an Uber driver he couldn't film them. The Uber driver happened to...

[Happy_Fun_Ball]

@Shodan

What’s funny is watching the lefties squirm around and try to change the subject when they lose an argument.

Regards,
Shodan

I don’t remember engaging in any arguments with you lately, but you die hard Trump supporters never can seem to keep things straight.

[eschereal]

@Shodan

Just making it clear that your opinion isn’t based on anything real.

Regards,
Shodan

cite?

[Sinaptics]

@Rick_Kitchen

Police in North Carolina pull over an Uber driver. When he begins to record their interactions, they tell him he’s violating a new law against recording police. The Uber driver, whose day job is as a defense attorney, disagrees. They pull him out of the car and search it and him without his consent.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Police-falsely-told-a-man-he-couldn-t-film-them-10992745.php

According to this version: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-recording-debate_us_58c1b6cbe4b054a0ea691bfb?fdpldts7js22fn7b9&

They said a K9 alerted on the car which prompted the search. We’ve all know how accurate K9’s are, but it gives them the probable cause they need to search.

[Rick_Kitchen]

Right. One of those police K9s that alert on whatever car the cops want to search.

[eschereal]

Video released from an incident a few years back, showing Alabama police shooting a man with no provocation, then leaving him rolling on the ground without help for several minutes. Some of these incidents appear to be created by the officers themselves, and the more they make citizens fear them, the more they come to fear the citizens, in a dangerous spiral of fear escalation.

[Shodan]

@eschereal

Video released from an incident a few years back, showing Alabama police shooting a man with no provocation, then leaving him rolling on the ground without help for several minutes.

I missed the part where they shot him with no provocation. Your cite only mentions the affirmation of the federal appeals court ruling that a reasonable person in the cops’ position would have feared for his life.

Did you have a cite for what you claimed?

Regards,
Shodan

[Kinthalis]

So apparently, what amounts to boiling a man alive is not enough cause to charge correction officers with a crime.

Rundle Won't Charge Prison Guards Who Allegedly Boiled Schizophrenic Black...

As punishment, four corrections officers — John Fan Fan, Cornelius Thompson, Ronald Clarke and Edwina Williams — kept Rainey in that shower for two full hours. Rainey was heard screaming "Please take me out! I can’t take it anymore!” and kicking the shower door. Inmates said prison guards laughed at Rainey and shouted “Is it hot enough?”

Rainey died inside that shower. He was found crumpled on the floor. When his body was pulled out, nurses said there were burns on 90 percent of his body. A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer. And his skin fell off at the touch.

But in an unconscionable decision, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office announced Friday that the four guards who oversaw what amounted to a medieval-era boiling will not be charged with a crime.

Fuck that bitch, fuck those officers. Yet another example of this ass-hats getting away with murder and that the system just doesn’t work.

[raventhief]

@Kinthalis

So apparently, what amounts to boiling a man alive is not enough cause to charge correction officers with a crime.

Florida Won't Charge Prison Guards Who Allegedly Boiled Schizophrenic Black Man Darren Rainey to Death | Miami New Times

Fuck that bitch, fuck those officers. Yet another example of this ass-hats getting away with murder and that the system just doesn’t work.

Wow. This is horrific.

[Steophan]

@raventhief

Wow. This is horrific.

Except based on the article, it’s not true.

“In response to specific questions by Detective Sanchez regarding burns, Dr. [Emma] Lew advised that Rainey did not sustain any obvious external injuries, and, particularly, that there were no thermal injuries (burns) of any kind on his body,” the report says. It then adds that from 2012 to 2014, no cause of death was determined.

When the autopsy says that, it’s pretty obvious why no-one’s been charged.

[raventhief]

@Steophan

Except based on the article, it’s not true.

When the autopsy says that, it’s pretty obvious why no-one’s been charged.

The article also says:

Fernandez Rundle’s 72-page close-out memo leans heavily on an autopsy that has been roundly criticized by civil-rights advocates. The report claims Rainey was not found with burns when he died. Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida American Civil Liberties Association, has said in the past that the autopsy, which was leaked to the press during the investigation, showed that a federal investigation was needed.

Rundle’s office, however, noted that one Miami-Dade County cop reported that nurses said Rainey’s body had “red areas” on it, and that his skin was, indeed, “slipping off” after being removed from the shower. Rundle’s memo said, however, that this could have instead been due to “body decomposition,” rather than burns.

Rather rapid decomposition. It sounds like there are some issues with the autopsy report.

[Kinthalis]

@Steophan

Except based on the article, it’s not true.

When the autopsy says that, it’s pretty obvious why no-one’s been charged.

So what happened? Dude slipped and died while being tortured with hot water in the shower by these psychopaths? just a happy coincidence?

[Steophan]

@Kinthalis

So what happened? Dude slipped and died while being tortured with hot water in the shower by these psychopaths? just a happy coincidence?

I think that there’s significant doubt that there was any torture, given that the autopsy showed he was unharmed. So, no chance of a conviction, so no ethical prosecutor could charge them.

[mhendo]

It could be that this really was just an unfortunate set of circumstances, but the report and the delays in this case both stink of institutional ass-covering. From the Miami Herald:

Among the most controversial portions of the state inquiry is the temperature of the shower. The report gives no indication that crime scene investigators turned on the water to see how hot it ran. A prison captain, assigned as the environmental health and safety officer, tested it two days after Rainey’s death and found it to be 160 degrees, far greater than the 120-degree limit set by the state.

<snip>

The final report does not address why the case was put on hold, or why, nearly five years later, the autopsy has never been released.

Dr. Emma Lew, Miami-Dade’s medical examiner, was emphatic, however, that Rainey did not suffer burns of any kind, and there was no evidence of any trauma on his body, according to the state attorney’s report issued Friday.

However, a never-released preliminary report written the day of the autopsy refers to “visible trauma … throughout the decedent’s body.”

A nurse told the Herald early on that Rainey’s body temperature that night was so high it could not be measured on a thermometer.

You can read the whole report yourself, if you’re interested. Some interesting bits include:

Dr. Lew noted that people with schizophrenia have a “dysregulation of body temperature, including an impaired ability to compensate to heat stress.” Therefore, placing Rainey in the shower atmosphere for a prolonged period of time with his mental condition (schizophrenia) could have created an impaired ability to deal with heat stress.

<snip>

Dr. Lew noted that Rainey had an elevated body temperature (as taken by a nurse) after he was taken out of the shower and his temperature was still elevated hours later when it was taken as part of the autopsy protocol. Without knowing what inmate Rainey’ s temperature was before he was placed in the shower, it is hard for Dr. Lew to assess this fact. The only comment she could make was that, along with knowledge of the time of death, elevated temperature contributed to decomposition and most likely to his skin slippage.

pp. 53-55

So placing him a shower for a prolonged period could have impaired his ability to cope with the heat. Also, the coroner concedes that a nurse observed an elevated body temp “hours later,” but won’t attach any significance to that because she doesn’t have a reading from before he was placed in the shower.

The conclusion offered by the doctor was:

The cause of death is schizophrenia, atherosclerotic heart disease and confinement inside the shower room. There was no evidence of any intent to harm Rainey, only for him to wash off the feces he had smeared on his body. The appropriate manner of death is accident.

p. 55.

Firstly, even the coroner concludes that the confinement in the shower room was one of the causes of death. If that’s true, then surely the next question should be, “Was there any good reason to keep a prisoner confined in a running shower for a period of almost two hours?”

Secondly, the doctor concluded that there was “no evidence of any intent to harm Rainey.” I was unaware that the question of intent in cases like this was left up to the medical examiner, rather than police investigators. How did the doctor arrive at a conclusion about intent? Did she interview the guards? Did she talk to other prisoners? Could she somehow magically divine the question of intent from the physical state of the body? Is she a mind reader?

In the legal conclusion, the report exonerates the officers of any intent to harm Rainey, and regarding his placement in the shower, the report notes:

Placing an inmate who has defecated upon himself in a shower to decontaminate himself is not conduct that is criminally reckless. Moreover, the fact that there were no burns on Rainey’s body substantially and convincingly refutes any possible claim that he was either intentionally or unintentionally exposed to excessively hot water. The shower itself was neither dangerous nor
unsafe.

pp. 71-72.

All of this seems, at first glance, to be perfectly reasonable. If a prisoner defecates on himself, he needs cleaning, and placing him in a shower seems like a reasonable course of action.

But never does the report move beyond this to make any assessment of whether it is reasonable to leave a prisoner in a shower for a period of two hours, and nor does it infer anything regarding intent from this extended time period that the prisoner was left in the shower. I mean, if we’re talking about drawing reasonable inferences here, I’m having trouble thinking of any reason other than punishment. Whether or not an inmate has medical or psychological problems, I can’t think of a good reason to keep a prisoner confined in a shower for such a long period of time, especially when there are a number of witnesses who say that they heard him screaming to get out.

The report makes much of the fact that the witness testimony was inconsistent, but dismisses some of the inconsistencies among the prison staff. It also completely dismisses the claim of excessively hot water made by a few of the prisoners. As the Miami Herald notes, the report says at one stage that only a single prisoner complained about excessively hot water, but another section of the report has two other prisoners making similar allegations.

The report also spends a lot of time criticizing one of the most vocal prisoners and his testimony, focusing on his criminal convictions. This is, of course, a very convenient strategy in an institution where any prisoner who complains about anything has, by definition, a criminal conviction or he wouldn’t be there in the first place. Also, as the Herald notes, this same prisoner was, completely coincidentally, transferred out of state on the same day that the report was released.

[raventhief]

So the police officer who said his skin was slipping of when he was removed from the shower- lying, i guess? Or the nurses?

[Steophan]

@raventhief

So the police officer who said his skin was slipping of when he was removed from the shower- lying, i guess? Or the nurses?

That or the doctor who performed the autopsy. Unless there’s good reason to believe the doctor is the one who’s wrong, there’s no case.

I don’t know what happened. It’s probable that the prosecutor doesn’t either. So, there’s no justification for charging them.

[Typo_Negative]

A cop fires. A teen dies. Yet six police body cameras somehow miss what happens

Yup, Stinks to high heaven. 6 bodycams, none caught the action. Sure.

Federal investigators said in December that they were probing allegations that police tampered with video evidence in the case, underscoring broader questions about whether a nationwide rollout of body cameras is fulfilling promises of greater accountability.

The clearest look at Hawkes’s final moments could have come from the shooter himself, Officer Jeremy Dear. But his camera was not recording when he fired five shots at point-blank range, leaving Hawkes dying alongside a small handgun that Dear claimed she pointed at him just before he fired.

Bolding mine.

The mystery of how so many body cameras missed the incident deepened in November with the release of a sworn affidavit from a former Albuquerque police employee, Reynaldo Chavez, who was the custodian of public records, including video evidence, before being fired in 2015. He said it was routine for officials to delete, alter or refuse to release footage because of “political calculations.”

Chavez testified that three videos from the Hawkes case showed signs of alterations and a possible deletion.

[Ike_Witt]

@Steophan

It’s probable that the prosecutor doesn’t either. So, there’s no justification for charging them.

So you seem to be saying that the prosecutor needs to know the facts of a case before they are established in court, to press charges? :smack:

[Steophan]

@Ike_Witt

So you seem to be saying that the prosecutor needs to know the facts of a case before they are established in court, to press charges? :smack:

To a somewhat lesser standard of proof, yes. The standard for being legally able to prosecute is lower that the ethical one.