Police Shootings / Possible Abuse Threads [merged] (3 Viewers)

[Eeyore]

Ex-Camden County deputy facing aggravated assault charge after throwing woman to ground, hitting her face

The deputy pulled over a driver for running a stop sign, then handcuffed, slapped and head-slammed the driver.

www.11alive.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

On 15 May 2022, Gregory Rodriguez, a guard at the Central California Women’s Facility, ordered a 30-year-old woman in his custody to come to a hearing room at the prison.

He told her there were no cameras in the room, prison investigators allege, and gave her a choice: she could have sex with him or get a write-up for a rules violation, risking a lengthened prison term, revoked privileges and solitary confinement.

He proceeded to rape her, the investigators say, and would go on to assault her on at least five more occasions.

Jane Doe is one of more than 22 women Rodriguez is suspected of sexually harassing, assaulting and raping at CCWF over the span of nearly a decade, prison officials say. The former officer, who has pleaded not guilty to 96 sexual abuse charges, is now in jail awaiting trial.

The case has raised an urgent question: how could one officer be accused of abusing so many women, over so many years, without getting caught?

An analysis of court records, misconduct data, as well as interviews with five women who spoke to the Guardian about Rodriguez’s abuse paint a picture of a system in which the most vulnerable women in the California department of corrections (CDCR) are routinely preyed upon – often lured with promises of basic supplies and small privileges and then threatened into silence.

When women have reported abuse, they have at times faced severe consequences, in some cases leading to longer prison terms and further exposure to their assailants. Some officers have protected their colleagues and facilitated their attacks.

CCWF investigated a report of Rodriguez’s abuse as early as 2014, testimony from a prison investigator and a victim reveals, but instead of terminating him, it punished the victim. Court records suggest he would go on to commit dozens of additional alleged sexual assaults.…..

One prison guard, 96 abuse charges: women say ‘serial rapist’ targeted them over a decade

Exclusive: Records and interviews suggest the California prison system let Gregory Rodriguez get away with rampant sexual abuse, while his victims were punished

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

A predatory paedophile who incited more than 200 girls as young as 10 to send him explicit images and videos of themselves while he was a serving police officer has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 12 years.

As Lewis Edwards, 24, was sentenced, detectives revealed that they were continuing to search for hundreds more victims across England and Wales and confirmed he had carried out some of the abuse while on duty with South Wales police.

The force accepted his crimes would knock public confidence but said they had acted quickly to arrest and suspend Edwards as soon as they realised the abuser was one of their own.

As well as continuing to search for more victims, police are hunting a distributor of child abuse images on the darknet called “Snap God”, a name Edwards forced some of his victims to write on their bodies.…..

Ex-police officer who abused 200 girls via Snapchat jailed for life

Lewis Edwards was on duty with South Wales police when he coerced some of the children into sending explicit images

www.theguardian.com

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

The case has raised an urgent question: how could one officer be accused of abusing so many women, over so many years, without getting caught?

that this is still a shocking question for some is a big part of the problem
Just assume that those with great power over others can abuse that power and make sure checks and balances are in place and reviewed continually

 

[bigdaddysaints]

Mom Who Spent 7 Months Searching for Missing Son Learns Police Killed and Buried Him Without Telling Her​

On March 14, Bettersten contacted the Jackson Police Department, to report that her son was missing. This call was particularly challenging for Bettersten because her 62-year-old brother was killed after a member of the same police department slammed him into the ground. The police officer was convicted of manslaughter and Bettersten’s family was in the midst of a legal battle with the Jackson Police Department.

She later learned that Dexter was struck and killed by the off-duty corporal only an hour after he left home. The corporal contacted the police but was not given a field sobriety test or cited for any traffic violations, according to NBC News. The death was ruled an accident.
Elliot subsequently was able to confirm Dexter’s identity, through fingerprints, and forwarded the case to the Jackson Police Department – giving them an address and a phone number. He forwarded the case on March 9 – days before Bettersten contacted the police about her missing son.

Dexter was buried on July 14, in a pauper's field, and the investigator assigned to his missing persons case retired at the end of July. A new investigator was assigned to the case on August 13. Within two weeks, she was able to inform Bettersten about what had happened to Dexter.

Now she is left wondering if the police response was related to her brother’s death.

“Maybe it was a vendetta. Maybe they buried my son to get back at me.”

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

From 1977
============

In the early hours of a cloudy morning in May, a 23-year-old Mexican American man found himself surrounded by six Anglo Houston police officers. By then, the man, José Campos Torres, had been badly beaten. He stood on the edge of a drop of about twenty feet overlooking the murky waters of Buffalo Bayou, near downtown Houston.

“Let’s see if this wetback can swim,” one of the cops said, in what were likely the last words Torres heard before he was pushed into the bayou. His body was found two days later, on May 8, 1977, drifting near the water’s edge. Such a story had been and would remain a familiar one in American life: law enforcement officers holding the power of life and death over a young man of color.

In 1970s Houston, however, there were many citizens who didn’t assign much meaning to Torres’s death, even as the story made the front pages of the newspapers. Most of the city’s inhabitants were focused on Houston’s sunny future, just rising on the horizon.

Oil prices were exploding, and the most sophisticated civic and business leaders were intent on transforming a small but ambitious city into a world-class metropolis, with fancy restaurants, international boutiques, teeming freeways and business deals 24/7.

That much of the Houston Police Department was out of sync with Houston’s more forward-looking dreams was something that many were willing to overlook. Or, maybe, some of HPD’s officers got a different message, the one transmitted by those deeply invested in the established power structure of what was, in many ways, still an overgrown East Texas town.

Latinos, even those born in Houston, as Torres was, were often dismissed as “Mexicans” in those days. They made up 15 percent of the city’s population but only 6 percent of its police officers. Black residents, who comprised 26 percent of the population, accounted for just 5 percent of the force. The tone set by the department brass meant that the worst cops had a free hand to treat Houston’s minorities any way they pleased, under the aegis of maintaining law and order.…..

Torres was in that latter state at an East End cantina when police were notified about his behavior sometime near midnight. An HPD officer arrived, and then radioed for backup. Two more cops showed up, and the first one left. There has never been any record of what Torres said, but soon enough he was handcuffed and, cursing the officers, wrestled into the back seat of a patrol car.

Instead of taking Torres to jail, the officers drove him to a secluded spot on Buffalo Bayou east of downtown nicknamed “the Hole.” It was a well-known locale for law enforcement officers; many cops went there regularly to decompress—or do things they didn’t want to be seen doing, like abusing a suspect, taking a nap, or, it was widely believed, meeting a prostitute. In this case, four more officers had arrived, and all but one of them, a rookie named Carless Elliott, proceeded to beat Torres bloody.

He was battered so badly that when two officers loaded him back into their car and tried to book him into the city jail, the sergeant on duty refused to take custody of him. Torres needed to go to a hospital, he said. But the officers didn’t want to spend the rest of the night waiting for Torres to be seen by overworked county doctors; instead, they took him back to the Hole, where the same six cops who had been present for the first assault reassembled.

That was when Torres was freed of his handcuffs—and tossed in the water. It was later posited in news accounts—as a curious excuse—that the officers assumed he would swim to safety. Instead, Torres drowned.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been that. As reporter Tom Curtis wrote in Texas Monthly later that year, the Houston cops who used excessive force had been operating unchecked for a long time. In the three years before Torres’s killing, members of the HPD had wounded or killed 25 civilians, without any charges returned from a grand jury. “There is something loose in this city that is an illness,” the young, progressive mayor, Fred Hofheinz, declared in a press conference ten days after Torres’s death.

But this time, the rookie cop, Elliott, who had been present at both scenes, had an attack of conscience. He had been on the force only two months and had not yet been inculcated with the code of silence many other officers shared. He told his father, who was also a police officer, what had happened, and the father, in turn, took the story to the assistant chief of police, B. K. Johnson.

Within a few weeks, a grand jury indicted two officers on charges of murder, and a third on a charge of misdemeanor assault. Two more were given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against the others. All five were fired, while Elliott went back to work among his fellow officers, likely fearing for his life.

The case then went to a jury devoid of a single member of color. It found the two ringleaders, Terry Denson and Stephen Orlando, guilty not of murder but of negligent homicide—and sentenced them to just one year’s probation and a fine of one dollar each. The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t do much better, bringing civil rights charges that resulted in three officers being sentenced to a year and a day in prison. (Thus, the term “misdemeanor murder” came into use in Houston.)……

The Killing of José Campos Torres

Decades before the recent police violence in Memphis, a brutally beaten Latino man was tossed by officers into a Houston bayou and drowned. The protests that followed continue to echo in the city to this day.

www.texasmonthly.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Officer charged with killing Eddie Irizarry released on bail; victim’s aunt says cop ‘murdered my nephew’

Mark Dial shot and killed 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry last month during an encounter in North Philadelphia where initial police reports were inaccurate.

www.inquirer.com

A judge reinstated charges against former Philadelphia police officer Mark Dial — who was accused of fatally shooting motorist Eddie Irizarry — after previous charges against him were dropped last month.

The charges include murder, manslaughter, official oppression and four other counts, Fox 29 reported.

“We’re going to continue to fight, we’re going to appeal the case and continue to fight,” Zoraida Garcia, Irizarry’s aunt, told the outlet. “He committed a crime and he needs to pay for the crime he committed.”


In September, Philadelphia Municipal Judge Wendy Pew watched footage of the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Irizarry before ruling to dismiss all charges against Mr Dial. He had previously been facing charges that included voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and simple assault.

Later that same day of the judge’s ruling, the District Attorney’s Office filed a motion to reinstate the charges against Mr Dial.

The decision to reinstate charges also comes after protesters marched in the city center and Irizarry’s family filed a complaint o in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas against Mr Dial and another officer.……

Philadelphia police officer has charges reinstated over Eddie Irizarry death

‘He committed a crime and he needs to pay for the crime he committed,’ Irizarry’s aunt claimed

www.the-independent.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

A Florida sheriff’s deputy has been accused of soliciting a minor he met while responding to a domestic violence call placed by her parents.

Broward sheriff’s deputy Jeremiah Thomas, 35, has been placed under administrative leave without pay following his arrest Tuesday on felony charges. Sheriff Gregory Tony announced the charges against Mr Thomas at a press conference where he discussed details about the case he deemed “egregious.”

Mr Thomas reportedly met the 17-year-old female victim while responding to a domestic disturbance call at her home in Pompano Beach in September. Authorities said that he gave the girl his personal phone number and began texting her, at one point allegedly telling her he could be his “personal sheriff that handcuff you from time to time.”


“This is one of the more grotesque and deliberate attempts to abuse a minor in our community,” Sheriff Tony said. “When you arrive to a domestic violence call, whether it be a minor or an adult, that is not a time to try to date someone or solicit contact or to maintain communication that is inappropriate, in this case .. all type of vulgar comments of the sex that he want[ed] to impose on this young lady.”

The father of the minor contacted the BSO, prompting an internal investigation and a separate probe with the assistance of BSO’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. An investigator posing as the teen victim engaged in text conversations with the deputy for nine days.……

Florida sheriff’s deputy arrested for allegedly soliciting teenager for sex

Thirty-five-year-old Jeremiah Thomas, who has been with the Broward Sheriff’s Office since 2017, is facing several felonies

www.the-independent.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Guess this can go here
================
A New York state animal control officer was arrested after selling a stolen pet and telling the owner that the animal had died, authorities have said.

Scott Casterline, 51, was arrested on Thursday and charged in connection with stealing the dog, a nine-year-old Yorkshire terrier called Hope, and later selling it while working as an animal control officer, according to a press release from the Steuben county sheriff’s office.

Casterline first discovered Hope after she was found wandering outside in the city of Corning, which is around 45 miles west of Ithaca in upstate New York, and taken to a local animal shelter.

But instead of attempting to reunite Hope with her rightful owners, Casterline immediately sold the dog and informed the dog’s owners that she had passed away, the police said.

“It is alleged that Mr Casterline, acting as a public servant, took another’s property, a dog, sold that property and falsely reported the death of that dog,” the Steuben county sheriff’s office said in a press release.

Police later began investigating the dog’s alleged death after receiving a tip, the Corning Leader reported. Through phone investigations, police determined that Hope was actually not dead, but with a new family in Ohio, WENY reported.

Casterline sold Hope to an entirely new family, who did not realize the dog was actually stolen, according to the authorities.

Hope’s new family treated the dog very well, Steuben county police told WENY. The dog had even been on vacation to the Adirondacks, back in upstate New York, with her temporary owners.……

New York animal control officer arrested in yorkie dognap plot

Hope the purloined pooch was returned to Jeannine Staller after she was told by Scott Casterline that her dog was dead

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

An Iranian teenager who fell into a coma this month after an alleged encounter with officers over violating the country’s hijab law is said to be brain dead, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.

“Follow-ups on the latest health condition of Armita Geravand indicate that her health condition as brain dead seems certain despite the efforts of the medical staff,” the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network said.

Iranian authorities have denied claims by rights groups that the 16-year-old was hurt in a confrontation on 1 October with officers enforcing the mandatory Islamic dress code on the Tehran metro.……

Iranian teenager ‘brain dead’ after alleged metro encounter with police

Update on condition of Armita Geravand, 16, could revive protests that followed death last year of Mahsa Amini

www.theguardian.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian teenage girl injured weeks ago in a mysterious incident on Tehran’s Metro while not wearing a headscarf has died, state media reported Saturday.

The death of Armita Geravand comes after her being in a coma for weeks in Tehran and after the one-year anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Aminiwhich sparked nationwide protests at the time.

Geravand’s Oct. 1 injury and now her death threaten to reignite that popular anger, particularly as women in Tehran and elsewhere still defy Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, law as a sign of their discontent with Iran’s theocracy.

“Armita’s voice has been forever silenced, preventing us from hearing her story,” wrote the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “Yet we do know that in a climate where Iranian authorities severely penalize women and girls for not adhering to the state’s forced-hijab law, Armita courageously appeared in public without one.”……..

An Iranian teenager injured on Tehran Metro while not wearing a headscarf has died, state media say

An Iranian teenage girl injured weeks ago in a mysterious incident on Tehran’s Metro while not wearing a headscarf has died. Armita Geravand had been in a coma for weeks in Tehran before her death.

apnews.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Women incarcerated in California state prisons have filed hundreds of complaints of sexual abuse by staff since 2014. But in that time frame, only four officers have been terminated for sexual misconduct, according to data obtained by the Guardian. And only four guards have been confirmed to have faced criminal charges for their behavior.

One of the guards who was prosecuted, Gregory Rodriguez, has been accused of assaulting and harassing at least 22 women at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). He retired while under investigation and is awaiting trial on nearly 100 charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Of the others who were prosecuted, one case was dismissed, one guard pleaded no contest but had the conviction wiped from his record after the case was sealed, and a third pleaded no contest and was sentenced to two days in jail.

The low rate of prosecutions can be explained in part by the low number of cases found substantiated by the prisons and the department, which conduct the initial investigation into reports of abuse.

In rare instances where the institutions do acknowledge that abuse occurred, prison officials and prosecutors may decide that the behavior does not constitute a criminal violation.

And even when there is clear evidence of sexual assault, district attorneys, who regularly work with law enforcement and sometimes have ties to officers’ unions, may decline to file charges.

The California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) says it has moved to terminate 17 guards in its women’s prisons for sexual misconduct since 2014. Four of them were terminated, according to a spokesperson, Terri Hardy. Thirteen resigned or retired.

Survivors and their advocates say the system consistently fails victims. It feels as if “the investigative process doesn’t serve any purpose”, said Keiana Aldrich, who sued the state alleging sexual abuse by four prison staffers while she was incarcerated. When women do speak up, the system protects predators, she argued: “They just pass your case along, and it gets dismissed, and they don’t care … All officers stand together.”…..

A prison guard confessed to sexual misconduct. He got a year of paid time off and no charges

Records obtained by the Guardian show women in California prisons routinely report abuse, but few officers face consequences

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A former Memphis police officer changed his plea to guilty Thursday in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, becoming the first of five officers charged to reverse course.

Desmond Mills Jr. entered his plea during a hearing at the Memphis federal courthouse as part of a larger agreement to settle charges in state court as well. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the four other officers would follow suit. Their attorneys declined to comment on Mills’ guilty plea.

Mills pleaded guilty to federal charges of excessive force and obstruction of justice and agreed to plead guilty to related state charges. Mills also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, who are recommending a 15-year sentence. The final sentencing decision rests with the judge. Sentencing is scheduled for May 22.……

A former Memphis officer pleads guilty to state and federal charges in Tyre Nichols’ death

A former Memphis police officer has changed his plea to guilty in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, becoming the first of five officers charged to reverse course.

apnews.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

2 Colorado deputies have been fired and indicted for the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old armed with a knife who called 911 for help | CNN

Two Colorado deputies have been indicted and fired following investigations into the June fatal police shooting of Christian Glass, a 22-year-old man who was armed with a knife and had called 911 for roadside assistance, officials and family attorneys say.

www.cnn.com

Deputy in shooting of Colorado motorist Christian Glass to accept plea deal

Former Clear Creek County deputies Andy Buen and Kyle Gould were charged after the June 2022 shooting death of Christian Glass. Sheila Flynn reports from the Colorado courthouse

www.the-independent.com

 

[Eeyore]

Deputy Shot Missouri Family’s Dog and Threw It in a Ditch

Stoddard County made no efforts to find 9-year-old Parker’s family before executing him, the family’s lawsuit says

www.riverfronttimes.com

 

[Eeyore]

Deputy who resigned rather than speak to investigators is sentenced for abusing boys

“I can see where this is going, so I’m just going to go ahead and resign,” he said when a captain finally got him on the phone, according to documents.

lawandcrime.com