The Great Police Work Thread
- Thread starter BipolarFuk
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jeebs
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This article was ridiculously long and not very funny, but i figured the first part had stats some of you needed (like last year had the fewest officer deaths since 1887 (a time when the population was a lot smaller).
4 Reasons the Police Are Starting to Look Like Supervillains
By: C. Coville | July 09, 2014
30,313 VIEWS 105
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Despite a continuing lack of rich vigilante superheroes, crime in America has been dropping for decades. Among other things, this means that police officers now have it easier: It's safer to be a cop today than it has been in over 50 years. In fact, the number of police officers killed by guns in 2012 was the lowest since 1887, and I'm pretty sure guns back then were steam powered and required 10 minutes of hand cranking.
And yet, as we've written about before, police departments all over America are going mad with power. SWAT teams are everywhere, doing stuff like storming art galleries for serving alcohol without the right permit and raiding Tibetan monks who overstayed their visas. In general, American cops are projecting less "friendly face of public order" and more "bad guys who just stumbled out of a young-adult dystopian movie."
Via Wall Street Journal
Add in an angsty love triangle between the drone and those two SWAT guys, and you've got 2015's big summer blockbuster.
Why has this happened? Why are so many of America's police, who I'd like to assume are mostly normal, decent human beings, acting like they're policing a futuristic war zone instead of crime-lite America? Well, for a start ...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-police-are-starting-to-look-like-supervillains/
4 Reasons the Police Are Starting to Look Like Supervillains
By: C. Coville | July 09, 2014
30,313 VIEWS 105
See More
Despite a continuing lack of rich vigilante superheroes, crime in America has been dropping for decades. Among other things, this means that police officers now have it easier: It's safer to be a cop today than it has been in over 50 years. In fact, the number of police officers killed by guns in 2012 was the lowest since 1887, and I'm pretty sure guns back then were steam powered and required 10 minutes of hand cranking.
And yet, as we've written about before, police departments all over America are going mad with power. SWAT teams are everywhere, doing stuff like storming art galleries for serving alcohol without the right permit and raiding Tibetan monks who overstayed their visas. In general, American cops are projecting less "friendly face of public order" and more "bad guys who just stumbled out of a young-adult dystopian movie."
Via Wall Street Journal
Add in an angsty love triangle between the drone and those two SWAT guys, and you've got 2015's big summer blockbuster.
Why has this happened? Why are so many of America's police, who I'd like to assume are mostly normal, decent human beings, acting like they're policing a futuristic war zone instead of crime-lite America? Well, for a start ...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-police-are-starting-to-look-like-supervillains/
Jon88
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Report: 4 DEA agents saw Chong in cell
Four different federal drug agents saw or heard Daniel Chong during the five days he was handcuffed in a holding cell without food or water after a 2012 narcotics sweep, a U.S. Department of Justice report released on Tuesday found.
The agents did nothing because they assumed someone else was responsible for the detainee, and because there was no training for agents on how to track and monitor wards at the Kearny Mesa detention center, the report found.
Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors also compromised any potential criminal prosecution of the agents at fault by responding improperly to the case, in which charges were never filed, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said.
Chong, a University of California San Diego student who later won $4.1 million in a legal claim against the DEA, was caught up in an April 2012 drug sweep but never charged with a crime.
The case made international news, as Chong came forward with his account of how he drank his own urine and tried to eat his broken eyeglasses during his unthinkable ordeal.
In an executive summary of its report, issued Tuesday, the Office of Inspector General said it intervened in response to a tip that the local DEA office was trying to contain the matter in San Diego, counter to protocols.
The three-page summary rebukes the San Diego office for beginning to investigate the matter on its own — using at least two agents who were involved in the neglect of Chong and therefore had a direct conflict of interest.
Managers in the DEA’s San Diego field division violated policies and “showed poor judgment” by initiating such an investigation without approval, the Inspector General found.
“The OIG investigation identified several systemic deficiencies in the operation of the detention area that caused Chong’s improper detention,” the summary states.
Chong was a 24-year-old engineering student when he was caught up in the drug sweep by a DEA task force two years ago.
On the morning of April 21, 2012, Chong was detained with six other suspects and transported to the DEA field office, where agents determined that he was not involved in the ecstasy ring that was under investigation.
A self-confessed pot smoker, Chong told investigators he had gone to the University City apartment that Friday night to celebrate April 20 — an important day for marijuana users — and spent the night.
After being interviewed at the DEA field office Saturday, agents told Chong he would be released without charges and driven home soon.
But agents forgot about him and Chong spent the next four and half days inside the five-by-10-foot cell without food, water or a toilet. He said his screams for help went unanswered.
Chong was discovered near death on Wednesday afternoon. Agents called 911 and he was rushed to a hospital. Chong spent four days in the hospital for multiple conditions but has since recovered.
Days after U-T Watchdog broke the story of Chong’s plight, the DEA field office took the near-unprecedented step of issuing a public apology to Chong. The student nonetheless filed a claim for $20 million in damages.
Four different federal drug agents saw or heard Daniel Chong during the five days he was handcuffed in a holding cell without food or water after a 2012 narcotics sweep, a U.S. Department of Justice report released on Tuesday found.
The agents did nothing because they assumed someone else was responsible for the detainee, and because there was no training for agents on how to track and monitor wards at the Kearny Mesa detention center, the report found.
Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors also compromised any potential criminal prosecution of the agents at fault by responding improperly to the case, in which charges were never filed, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said.
Chong, a University of California San Diego student who later won $4.1 million in a legal claim against the DEA, was caught up in an April 2012 drug sweep but never charged with a crime.
The case made international news, as Chong came forward with his account of how he drank his own urine and tried to eat his broken eyeglasses during his unthinkable ordeal.
In an executive summary of its report, issued Tuesday, the Office of Inspector General said it intervened in response to a tip that the local DEA office was trying to contain the matter in San Diego, counter to protocols.
The three-page summary rebukes the San Diego office for beginning to investigate the matter on its own — using at least two agents who were involved in the neglect of Chong and therefore had a direct conflict of interest.
Managers in the DEA’s San Diego field division violated policies and “showed poor judgment” by initiating such an investigation without approval, the Inspector General found.
“The OIG investigation identified several systemic deficiencies in the operation of the detention area that caused Chong’s improper detention,” the summary states.
Chong was a 24-year-old engineering student when he was caught up in the drug sweep by a DEA task force two years ago.
On the morning of April 21, 2012, Chong was detained with six other suspects and transported to the DEA field office, where agents determined that he was not involved in the ecstasy ring that was under investigation.
A self-confessed pot smoker, Chong told investigators he had gone to the University City apartment that Friday night to celebrate April 20 — an important day for marijuana users — and spent the night.
After being interviewed at the DEA field office Saturday, agents told Chong he would be released without charges and driven home soon.
But agents forgot about him and Chong spent the next four and half days inside the five-by-10-foot cell without food, water or a toilet. He said his screams for help went unanswered.
Chong was discovered near death on Wednesday afternoon. Agents called 911 and he was rushed to a hospital. Chong spent four days in the hospital for multiple conditions but has since recovered.
Days after U-T Watchdog broke the story of Chong’s plight, the DEA field office took the near-unprecedented step of issuing a public apology to Chong. The student nonetheless filed a claim for $20 million in damages.
BipolarFuk
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Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty
Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty
By Radley Balko
Add another body to the drug war pile. From the Tampa Bay Times, here is the story of the death of Jason Westcott.
A man who had partied at Westcott’s home was plotting to rob him. An itinerant motorcycle mechanic, Westcott didn’t have much — two televisions and a handgun that once belonged to his brother were perhaps the most valuable possessions in his 600-square-foot house in Seminole Heights — but he was terrified by his would-be intruder’s threats to kill him.
Police tracked down the suspect and warned him to stay away. Westcott, those close to him said, was left with a word of advice from the investigating officers: If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.
On the night of May 27, as armed men streamed through his front door, Westcott grabbed his gun. But the 29-year-old didn’t have a chance to shoot before he died in a volley of gunfire. And those who killed him weren’t robbers.
They were police officers from the same agency he had enlisted to protect his home.
In the span of a few months, Westcott had become the target of an intensive drug investigation. On that Tuesday in May — a night when he typically baby*sat his sister’s children at his house, according to his mother — he was fatally shot by a Tampa Police Department SWAT team executing a search warrant for marijuana.
Authorities told news reporters who swarmed to the scene that Westcott was dealing drugs and had sold pot multiple times, armed, to undercover Tampa police officers. During the raid, officials said, he “raised his gun and threatened the officers,” who killed him in self-defense.
A month later, newly disclosed information raises questions about the narcotics investigation that led police to Westcott’s door.
So the same police department who warned Westcott that a dangerous man wanted to kill him then sent an armed team of cops into his home in a nighttime raid. We’re told over and over again by police departments that cops do extensive investigations of suspects before conducting these raids. How, then, could Tampa police not have known that Westcott had reported the threats against him a few months earlier? I guess I’m assuming they didn’t know. If they did know, that’s a hell of a lot worse.
And then there’s this:
Police initially said that the investigation of Westcott’s alleged drug dealing began because of neighbors’ complaints. However, when the Times could find no neighbors who had called police and no records of the complaints, the department revised this assertion, saying the case began with a tip from the same informer who later bought the marijuana.
Revised is a generous word, here. A mistake would be if someone in the department misattributed a statement from one witness to another. Telling the press that a drug investigation that ended with a fatal SWAT raid began because of neighbor complaints when it really began because of a tip from a police informant (who are often paid, or given consideration in their own criminal cases) isn’t a mistake. It’s a lie. It makes the police look as if they were merely obliging a community in need of their protection, not initiating a commando raid based on a tip from a shady source and what looks to have been no corroborating investigation at all.
Ultimately, this violent, volatile raid came after the informant claimed to have bought $200 worth of pot. That’s why Westcott is dead: $200 worth of pot. Friends and neighbors say Westcott and his boyfriend were recreational pot smokers, but hardly major dealers. They were often broke. Their utilities were often disconnected. They just occasionally sold a joint or two to friends. The police found about $2.00 worth of pot the house. There’s no misplaced decimal there. Two dollars.
Tampa police told the paper that there’s nothing wrong with way the agency deals with informants. Chief Jane Castor then added that there was nothing wrong with the use of a tactical team, either.
“Mr. Westcott lost his life because he aimed a loaded firearm at police officers. You can take the entire marijuana issue out of the picture,” Castor said. “If there’s an indication that there is armed trafficking going on — someone selling narcotics while they are armed or have the ability to use a firearm — then the tactical response team will do the initial entry.”
Note the utter disregard for the threats against Westcott. So the police didn’t violate any department policies, and the policies themselves don’t need changing. The only possible conclusion we can draw from this is that the Tampa Bay Police Department believes death is an acceptable outcome for a guy who, at worst, sold $200 worth of pot to an informant.
Police militarization has been all over the news lately, thanks to a recent ACLU report on the topic, and another botched raid in Georgia that badly burned a young boy. Within that coverage, you’ll see plenty of assertions that critics like me are overstating the problem, that we’re just “anti-cop,” and that we exaggerate when we say militarization conditions the police to see citizens — especially low-level drug offenders — not as citizens with rights but as enemies and potential threats. It dehumanizes suspects in the eyes of police. That’s certainly what happened here. The Tampa police gave Westcott’s rights, life, and safety little consideration at all. They sent a SWAT team into his home over $200 worth of pot.
They did this despite the fact that the same agency knew that Westcott had recently been threatened, and would likely respond violently to men breaking into his home. The drug cops and SWAT team either didn’t care, or didn’t bother to take the time to find out — which is just another way of demonstrating that they didn’t care. Drug suspects simply aren’t worth the time it takes for that sort of due diligence.
I’m not being flip here. If the Tampa Police Department thought drug suspects’ lives were worth anything, they either would have actually performed their due diligence in this case, or they would now be disciplining the officers who didn’t. Instead, Chief Castor told the Times that “she has seen no signs that the officers who killed Westcott acted inappropriately.”
This is what happens when cops approach everyday policing with the same tactics, weapons, and mentality that soldiers take to war. They begin to see suspects as little more than potential threats, not as citizens with rights.
The awful reality here is not that Jason Westcott died due to a horrible mistake. That would at least be comprehendible. The awful reality is that his death was the predictable result of a series of deliberate policies. In the minds of the Tampa police, Jason Westcott was expendable. Now that he’s dead, he’s just another piece of drug war collateral damage. Just like Eurie Stamps. Or Kathryn Johnston. Or Jonathan Ayers. Or Gonzalo Guizan. Or Isaac Singletary, Tarika Williams, Alberto Sepulveda, Pedro Navarro, Jose Guerena, Trevon Cole, Humbert Henkel, or Ramarley Graham, among others. There’s no need to reexamine the policies that led to these people dying, because these people simply aren’t that important.
There have been dozens of Jason Westcotts before this one. And there will be more.
Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty
By Radley Balko
Add another body to the drug war pile. From the Tampa Bay Times, here is the story of the death of Jason Westcott.
A man who had partied at Westcott’s home was plotting to rob him. An itinerant motorcycle mechanic, Westcott didn’t have much — two televisions and a handgun that once belonged to his brother were perhaps the most valuable possessions in his 600-square-foot house in Seminole Heights — but he was terrified by his would-be intruder’s threats to kill him.
Police tracked down the suspect and warned him to stay away. Westcott, those close to him said, was left with a word of advice from the investigating officers: If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.
On the night of May 27, as armed men streamed through his front door, Westcott grabbed his gun. But the 29-year-old didn’t have a chance to shoot before he died in a volley of gunfire. And those who killed him weren’t robbers.
They were police officers from the same agency he had enlisted to protect his home.
In the span of a few months, Westcott had become the target of an intensive drug investigation. On that Tuesday in May — a night when he typically baby*sat his sister’s children at his house, according to his mother — he was fatally shot by a Tampa Police Department SWAT team executing a search warrant for marijuana.
Authorities told news reporters who swarmed to the scene that Westcott was dealing drugs and had sold pot multiple times, armed, to undercover Tampa police officers. During the raid, officials said, he “raised his gun and threatened the officers,” who killed him in self-defense.
A month later, newly disclosed information raises questions about the narcotics investigation that led police to Westcott’s door.
So the same police department who warned Westcott that a dangerous man wanted to kill him then sent an armed team of cops into his home in a nighttime raid. We’re told over and over again by police departments that cops do extensive investigations of suspects before conducting these raids. How, then, could Tampa police not have known that Westcott had reported the threats against him a few months earlier? I guess I’m assuming they didn’t know. If they did know, that’s a hell of a lot worse.
And then there’s this:
Police initially said that the investigation of Westcott’s alleged drug dealing began because of neighbors’ complaints. However, when the Times could find no neighbors who had called police and no records of the complaints, the department revised this assertion, saying the case began with a tip from the same informer who later bought the marijuana.
Revised is a generous word, here. A mistake would be if someone in the department misattributed a statement from one witness to another. Telling the press that a drug investigation that ended with a fatal SWAT raid began because of neighbor complaints when it really began because of a tip from a police informant (who are often paid, or given consideration in their own criminal cases) isn’t a mistake. It’s a lie. It makes the police look as if they were merely obliging a community in need of their protection, not initiating a commando raid based on a tip from a shady source and what looks to have been no corroborating investigation at all.
Ultimately, this violent, volatile raid came after the informant claimed to have bought $200 worth of pot. That’s why Westcott is dead: $200 worth of pot. Friends and neighbors say Westcott and his boyfriend were recreational pot smokers, but hardly major dealers. They were often broke. Their utilities were often disconnected. They just occasionally sold a joint or two to friends. The police found about $2.00 worth of pot the house. There’s no misplaced decimal there. Two dollars.
Tampa police told the paper that there’s nothing wrong with way the agency deals with informants. Chief Jane Castor then added that there was nothing wrong with the use of a tactical team, either.
“Mr. Westcott lost his life because he aimed a loaded firearm at police officers. You can take the entire marijuana issue out of the picture,” Castor said. “If there’s an indication that there is armed trafficking going on — someone selling narcotics while they are armed or have the ability to use a firearm — then the tactical response team will do the initial entry.”
Note the utter disregard for the threats against Westcott. So the police didn’t violate any department policies, and the policies themselves don’t need changing. The only possible conclusion we can draw from this is that the Tampa Bay Police Department believes death is an acceptable outcome for a guy who, at worst, sold $200 worth of pot to an informant.
Police militarization has been all over the news lately, thanks to a recent ACLU report on the topic, and another botched raid in Georgia that badly burned a young boy. Within that coverage, you’ll see plenty of assertions that critics like me are overstating the problem, that we’re just “anti-cop,” and that we exaggerate when we say militarization conditions the police to see citizens — especially low-level drug offenders — not as citizens with rights but as enemies and potential threats. It dehumanizes suspects in the eyes of police. That’s certainly what happened here. The Tampa police gave Westcott’s rights, life, and safety little consideration at all. They sent a SWAT team into his home over $200 worth of pot.
They did this despite the fact that the same agency knew that Westcott had recently been threatened, and would likely respond violently to men breaking into his home. The drug cops and SWAT team either didn’t care, or didn’t bother to take the time to find out — which is just another way of demonstrating that they didn’t care. Drug suspects simply aren’t worth the time it takes for that sort of due diligence.
I’m not being flip here. If the Tampa Police Department thought drug suspects’ lives were worth anything, they either would have actually performed their due diligence in this case, or they would now be disciplining the officers who didn’t. Instead, Chief Castor told the Times that “she has seen no signs that the officers who killed Westcott acted inappropriately.”
This is what happens when cops approach everyday policing with the same tactics, weapons, and mentality that soldiers take to war. They begin to see suspects as little more than potential threats, not as citizens with rights.
The awful reality here is not that Jason Westcott died due to a horrible mistake. That would at least be comprehendible. The awful reality is that his death was the predictable result of a series of deliberate policies. In the minds of the Tampa police, Jason Westcott was expendable. Now that he’s dead, he’s just another piece of drug war collateral damage. Just like Eurie Stamps. Or Kathryn Johnston. Or Jonathan Ayers. Or Gonzalo Guizan. Or Isaac Singletary, Tarika Williams, Alberto Sepulveda, Pedro Navarro, Jose Guerena, Trevon Cole, Humbert Henkel, or Ramarley Graham, among others. There’s no need to reexamine the policies that led to these people dying, because these people simply aren’t that important.
There have been dozens of Jason Westcotts before this one. And there will be more.
Jon88
Banned
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TAMPA, FL (WFLA) -
“You think if anyone is going to break into your vehicle in Ybor, the last person you think, it’s going to be the cops.”
Matthew Heller didn’t know what to think when he found his truck ransacked and torn apart after leaving a concert in Ybor in February. Then, he found a note.
“There’s a little note left on a 2x3 piece of paper,” said Heller.
(Looks like a 6 year old wrote it)
The note read “Sir, your car was checked by TPD K-9. The vehicle was searched for marijuana due to a strong odor coming from the passenger side of the vehicle. Any questions call Cpl Fanning.”
TPD found no drugs in Heller’s truck. He was never charged or even questioned.
“It was all sealed up, a parked vehicle in a private parking lot for a hip hop concert in Ybor. There were all kinds of smells, everywhere around here,” said Heller.
Heller says he wasn’t upset about the fact that police searched his truck, but that they broke in and damaged his vehicle.
“Disgusted, I’ve got my whole life savings in this truck. It’s like a marketing tool for my business to promote the air horns and everything. The horns weren’t working, all the electronics were ripped out,” said Heller.
News Channel 8 reached out to TPD to ask about the search and we were told by email, "While the search is legal, it is not typical. The Tampa Police Department is now reviewing the specifics of this investigation."
Heller said he and his attorney have asked TPD for documentation of the search but he has not heard back. While TPD claims the search was legal, News Channel 8 asked independent attorney Bryant Camareno and he doesn’t agree.
“It’s an illegal search,” Camareno said. “Usually if it’s some kind of unoccupied vehicle there has to be some level of exigent circumstance to justify searching a vehicle without a search warrant. Exigent could mean if there is a dead body inside, if there is a screaming child locked in the car, a dog but if the car is unoccupied there is no exigency to justify the search.”
“I am out for the damages and my time but mostly I’m scratching my head and kind of confused with everything. I had no clue this was something that could happen,”said Heller. Heller is represented by Dominic Fariello.
Copyright 2014 WFLA. All rights reserved.
Clay_Allison
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doesn't that contradict your youtube "evidence" that they are being shot all the goddamn time and they need to act aggressive and threatening to everyone they stop to compensate?
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No, it just means that them being overly cautious is working.
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Depends at what cost. If innocent people are being injured and killed as part of that "caution" I'd say it is a very bad thing.
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Obviously, I would never advocate a cop hurting an innocent person. But, if for their safety they feel like they should pull someone out of a car and put the in cuffs while they investigate, then I'm all for it.
Depends at what cost. If innocent people are being injured and killed as part of that "caution" I'd say it is a very bad thing.
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Actually by the legal definition that is assault. It's offensive contact (offensive to the camera man).That was assault?
GTFO of here.
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If another citizen had moved him out of the way, yeah. But, when a cop tells you to move and you don't. Or, if a cop tells you to back up, and you stand there and keep yelling "do nawt assawlt mez!" expect to be detained.
Of course now the social injustice freaks will come out with some moronic crap about cops should never ever get to touch anyone. Which is absurd.
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I don't think the officer has any cause to put his hands on the guy in the first place though. There was no crime being committed and the guy wasn't in any imminent danger. In the end it is really a WGAS situation because it is so minor but from the video the officer looks like he is overstepping his bounds.
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I would imagine the cops were on pretty high alert given the situation between Israel and Pakistan right now, and were given strict orders to eliminate anything that could possible cause the situation to get out of hand. The guy was asking some hot button issue type questions. I see nothing at all wrong with what the cops did. They separated the shit stirrer from the mob.