acab

https://fxtwitter.com/1HoodPower/status/1831141799600984412

A former Massachusetts police detective is accused of murdering a pregnant woman to prevent her from revealing that he allegedly groomed her as a teenager and then staging her death as a suicide.

Former officer Matthew Farwell, 38, was charged Tuesday with fatally strangling Sandra Birchmore, 23, in her Canton, Mass., apartment in 2021. An initial autopsy wrongly ruled that Birchmore had killed herself after Farwell used his police knowledge to stage the scene of his alleged crime, prosecutors wrote in court documents.

It's a badly written Reason article but the only other top source I saw at Google News was Fox News. I moved things around and I did some very minor editing.

Albuquerque's Police Chief Says Cops Have a 5th Amendment Right To Leave Their Body Cameras Off

Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Chief Harold Medina operated his department-issued pickup truck "in an unsafe manner" on February 17, when he ran a red light and broadsided a car, severely injuring the driver. So concludes a recent report from internal investigators who looked into that shocking incident.

[...]

Medina said he "purposefully did not record because he was invoking his 5th Amendment right not to self-incriminate." Since "he was involved in a traffic collision," he reasoned, he was "subject to 5th Amendment protections."

[...]

Medina received two official reprimands for the camera violation and the reckless driving that injured Perchert, a casualty of the police chief's desperation to save his own skin. In similar situations, other Albuquerque police officers have been fired. But after the crash, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller hailed Medina as a hero who is "out on the front line…doing what he can to make our city safe."

[...]

Surveillance camera footage of the crash [shows] Medina crossing Central Avenue, a busy, four-lane street, against the light. He crosses the westbound lanes through a gap between two cars, forcing one of the drivers to brake abruptly, before barreling across the eastbound lanes, where he rams into the side of a gold 1966 Mustang driven by 55-year-old Todd Perchert.

Although Medina's recklessness seems obvious, the Albuquerque Police Department's Fleet Crash Review Board (CRB) earlier this year concluded that the crash was "non-preventable." How so? Medina, who was on his way to a Saturday press conference with his wife when he took a detour to have a look at a homeless encampment, said he ran the light to escape an altercation between two homeless men that had escalated into gunfire at the intersection of Central and Alvarado Drive.

While "the initial decision to enter the intersection is not in question," Lt. James Ortiz says in the Internal Affairs report, "the facts and circumstances do not relieve department personnel of driving safely to ensure no additional harm is done to personnel or to citizens." Medina, Ortiz says, clearly failed to do that: "By definition, driving into a crosswalk, darting between two vehicles driving on a busy street, and crossing through an intersection with vehicles traveling eastbound were unsafe driving practices." In this case, he notes, those unsafe practices "resulted in a vehicle collision with serious physical injuries to the victim, including a broken collarbone and shoulder blade, 8 broken ribs (reconstructed with titanium plates after surgery), collapsed lung, lacerations to left ear and head, multiple gashes to his face, a seven-hour surgery, and hospitalization requiring epidural painkiller and a chest tube for nearly a week."

Ortiz not only disagrees with the CRB's conclusion about Medina's crash; he says the board never should have reviewed the incident to begin with, since its mission is limited to accidents "not resulting in a fatality or serious injury." Ortiz says Commander Benito Martinez, who chairs the CRB, violated department policy when he decided the board should pass judgment on Medina's accident.

Martinez acknowledged that department policy "prohibited the CRB from hearing serious injury crashes" and that "allowing such a case to be heard would be a policy violation." Why did he allow it anyway? "He explained that his reasoning for permitting the Chief's crash to be reviewed by the CRB was based on his belief that someone wanted the crash to be heard," Ortiz writes. "Cmdr. Martinez clarified that he believed someone from Internal Affairs wanted the case to be heard by the CRB to ensure full transparency. However, he did not consult with anyone in Internal Affairs to verify the accuracy of this assumption."

Both the CRB's decision to review the crash and its implicit exoneration of Medina are hard to fathom. But Medina's explanations for the third policy violation identified by Ortiz—the chief's failure to activate his body camera after the crash—are even weirder.

"After the collision occurred, the shooting victim approached," Ortiz writes. "The victim informed the Chief that he was okay and had not been shot. Chief Medina asked the victim to remain at the scene, but the victim refused and fled southbound on Alvarado. Another citizen approached the Chief and reported having seen individuals leaving a black truck and fleeing away from the scene. Chief clarified with the witness that no one was outstanding. It is important to note that these interactions were not recorded and are contacts that require mandatory recording."

That mandate is not just a matter of police department policy. State law requires that on-duty police officers wear body cameras and that they activate them when "responding to a call for service or at the initiation of any other law enforcement or investigative encounter between a peace officer and a member of the public." The statute adds that "peace officers who fail to comply" with such requirements "may be presumed to have acted in bad faith and may be deemed liable for the independent tort of negligent spoliation of evidence or the independent tort of intentional spoliation of evidence."

Medina offered two puzzling excuses for leaving his camera off. He "cited intermittent conversations with his wife, who was a passenger in his unmarked patrol vehicle at the time of the collision," Ortiz says. "He claimed there was a right to privileged communication between spouses, which specifically exempted him from mandatory recording requirements." But the relevant policy "does not provide for nonrecording based on spousal privilege."

Think about the implications of that argument. Body cameras are supposed to help document (and perhaps deter) police misconduct. But Medina is suggesting that cops have a constitutional right to refrain from recording their interactions with the public whenever that evidence could be used against them. By turning on their cameras in those situations, he argues, police could be incriminating themselves. That is the whole point.

[This post has been updated with information about New Mexico's statutory requirements regarding body cameras.]

The teen was seeing King's court as part of a visit organized by The Greening of Detroit, a nonprofit environmental group. During the visit, King noticed the girl falling asleep, WXYZ reported.

The fuck is an environmental group doing court tours for?

I hope the family can sue either the court or the org. Just what the hell was the purpose of it?

https://www.greeningofdetroit.com/

YOU PLANT PLANTS! THAT'S WHAT YOU DO! What in the just...

Documents provided under freedom of information laws show the total cost of Operation Bourglinster, the AFP investigation into a boy known as Thomas Carrick, was $507,087

Victorian children’s court found that police encouraged Thomas in his fixation on Islamic State during an undercover operation after his parents sought help from the authorities.

17 April 2021, his parents went to a police station and asked for help because Thomas was watching Islamic State-related videos on his computer and had asked his mother to buy bomb-making ingredients such as sulphur and acetone.

Thomas, an NDIS recipient with an IQ of 71, was first reported to police by Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and then by his parents because of his fixation with Islamic State, which included him accessing extremist material online and making threats to other students.

Thomas was investigated and charged with two terror offences by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT), which comprises Australian federal police, Victoria police and Asio members. He was the youngest person ever charged with those offences

"They kill people who are under 22 every single day for no good reason and we don’t shut down the city for them.”

“Like this is fucking ridiculous. This is fucking ridiculous. What if somebody is having a heart attack in this area. Nobody can get to them because it’s all blocked off for one fucking cop,”

—Jacqueline Guzman

Actress fired from drama company for complaining about Manhattan shutdown for NYPD funeral

The sister of Willie McCoy, who Vallejo police fatally shot in 2019, was killed in a crash last week and police are investigating the death as a homicide, according to police and the family’s attorney.

Sharmell Mitchell, 48, was taken off life support on Friday after being ejected from a vehicle and suffering head injuries, according to Vallejo police and attorney Melissa Nold.

. . .

One of the detectives assigned to the investigation into Mitchell’s death is Jarrett Tonn, the Vallejo police officer who fatally shot 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa, a San Francisco resident, in 2020 during a night of protests against the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.

After a third-party investigation found he violated department policies led to his termination, he was reinstated to the department in August 2023. Like the shooting of McCoy, Monterrosa’s killing prompted protests against Vallejo police and calls for justice.

I wanted to see what the comments would be. ACAB* : ACAB

Two days later, crime analyst Kimberly Dunn of the Records and Identification Bureau emailed a team of crime analysts working within the Sheriff’s Information Bureau with instructions to “keep an eye” on me.

“Freelance journalist Cerise Castle is currently working on a series of articles that started being released yesterday. The project is called “A Tradition of Violence: The History of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department,” she wrote. “Just something to keep an eye on – to monitor what else she posts as part of this project, and for potential doxing purposes, as well.”

Caption of the entire photo: "Police deployed to clear the pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson."

Emerson College protests tents removed by police, over 100 arrested

https://bsky.app/profile/nappydolemite.bsky.social/post/3koucecwxfh2w

My first title worked flawlessly in my head but not at all when I wrote it out...

AQAB? All Questioners Are Bastards?

Excerpt:

But he and a sergeant who shot at unarmed suspect Marquis Jackson were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, according to Sheriff Eric Aden.

Jackson, who sat handcuffed in the back of the patrol car as deputies opened fire, was not injured. Hernandez resigned while being investigated.

🌰

dystopian shit, that somehow is not even the worst thing on here

https://truthout.org/articles/teen-charged-with-murder-after-officer-had-heart-attack-while-assaulting-him/

On May 19, 2023, Virgilio Aguilar Méndez, an 18-year-old Indigenous-Maya farmworker, was eating and talking to his mother on the phone outside of his Super 8 motel room in St. Augustine, Florida, where he was staying with three other farmworkers. He was working to send money to his family in Guatemala. St. Johns County police Sergeant Michael Kunovich approached Aguilar Méndez and described him to the dispatcher as a “suspicious Hispanic male” according to an ABC News reporter who reviewed the body camera and audio of the incident.

Suspiciously Hispanic.

As Kunovich began to question Aguilar Méndez, who speaks the Mayan language Mam, the young man couldn’t understand the questions and started apologizing. He expressed multiple times that he did not speak English and that he was residing in the motel.

Kunovich started searching the teenager for weapons, according to the Florida Times-Union. Startled, the confused 5-foot-4, 115-pound teen resisted.

When cops become startled and confused they're legally allowed to execute you.

During the eight minute struggle, Kunovich called two other deputies to assist him. They pushed and pinned Aguilar Méndez to the ground, held him in a chokehold, and stunned him with his taser six times in two minutes.

Five minutes after they handcuffed the teenager and put him in a patrol car, Kunovich collapsed and was transported to a hospital where he died. Medical examiners found this to be cardiac arrest and ruled Kunovich’s death to be by natural causes. The ABC reporter, who obtained a copy of Kunovich’s autopsy report, wrote that it said, “These cardiac changes, while recent, predate the struggle with the subject. The circumstances do not fully meet the criteria for a homicide manner of death.”

Still, the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the State Attorney for the 7th Judicial Circuit of Florida charged Aguilar Méndez with aggravated murder, which is punishable by life in prison.

In the time after Kunovich’s death, St. John County Sheriff Robert Hardwick held a press conference in which he said that Aguilar Méndez was stopped because he was trespassing and that he had pulled a knife on Kunovich. After the press conference, body camera footage was released showing that a small pocket knife was found in his pants pocket after he was handcuffed was never pulled on Kunovich. Aguilar Méndez said the knife was “para sandía,” or “for watermelon,” alluding to his job.

The cops lied about the knife?

The teen has been held without bail for eight months, even after circuit judge R. Lee Smith in December found him incompetent to stand trial because he does not understand English or Spanish and is unable to understand the criminal justice system, the Times-Union reported. The prosecution disagreed and the judge said he needed “more time to mull the complicated issues.” Since then, the public defender’s office filed an amended motion to set bond, which would ask for him to be released, and is expected to file a motion to dismiss the charges soon, said Phillip Arroyo, Aguilar Méndez’s lawyer.

“This is a great injustice. It is a violation of his constitutional and civil rights, which, contrary to popular belief, also protect undocumented immigrants,” Arroyo told ScheerPost. “Although this case has nothing to do with immigration, our client’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated that day, in addition to being a victim of excessive force.”

Arroyo also has stated to the ABC reporter that the state would have to prove that Aguilar Méndez knew the officer had a heart condition and did something negligent that caused his death.

According to a report from the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, “Immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, are likely to be victimized far more often than native-born U.S. citizens,” even though they are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born citizens.

In addition, the U.S. has a diverse population in which more than 67 million people, or one in five, speak a language other than English. An estimated 25 million people in the United States have limited English proficiency. Scholars and advocates of criminal justice reform have questioned if law enforcement is doing enough to provide proper resources to ensure language services for those who need it.

Arroyo urges people to sign the Change.org petition to free Aguilar Méndez, created on Jan. 3 by Mariana Blanco of the nonprofit The Guatemalan-Maya Center. The petition calls for Aguilar Méndez’s immediate release and charges to be dropped, and is to Governor Ron DeSantis and 7th circuit state attorney, RJ Larizza. It has generated over 549,000 signatures since it was started.

“If Virgilio is convicted and sentenced to prison for this incident, it will create an extremely dangerous precedent in this country; because if a police officer dies from a heart attack during a police-citizen encounter, anyone in this country can be charged, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that officer’s death,” reads the petition.

Thursday, January 18, 2024, marks one year since Manuel “Tortuguita” Esteban Paez Terán was killed by police in the South River Forest outside Atlanta. A 26-year-old queer anarchist, Tortuguita had been an active participant in the movement against “Cop City” for months before Georgia State Patrol took their life during an early morning raid to clear protesters from the woods.

Chris Avell, pastor of Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio, was arraigned in court last Thursday because he kept his church open 24/7 to provide warmth to the unhoused.

Ohio law prohibits residential use in first-floor buildings in a business district. Since the church is zoned as a Central Business, the building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property.

According to the city, Avell was sent a letter on Nov. 3 informing him the homeless were prohibited from sleeping at the church overnight. Avell ignored the letter, and during a New Year’s Eve service, police arrived and issued violations.

“Many of these people have been rejected by their families and cast aside by their communities. So, if the church isn’t willing to lay down its life for them, then who will? This is what we’re called to do,” Avell said in a Fox News interview.

linky

https://nitter.net/ChrisA3030911/status/1735629245697626490

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/18fdsly/toronto_police_surround_and_knee_a_protestors/

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/protester-at-pro-palestine-rally-in-toronto-arrested-for-allegedly-assaulting-police-officer/article_1cf578be-9798-11ee-ab4f-678894a9968f.html

altercation broke out between a protester and police at a pro-Palestinian rally Sunday afternoon outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, leading to an arrest. Afterwards, thousands of protesters from two separate rallies converged on 52 Division at University Ave. and Dundas St. to demand his immediate release.

The Star observed a police officer on foot appearing to use his bicycle to ram the bicycle of a woman standing in front of him. It was not clear what instigated the action. The woman, who was holding her bicycle, fell over as the bike toppled.

A man ran up after and shoved an officer to the ground in retaliation. Police then tackled, beat and arrested him

Archive

Sending death squad trigger happy nutjobs to a mental health call.

The autopsy report shows Lyon was shot 21 times, including 17 shots to the back and one to the back of the neck. Sixteen of the shots to the back were within a 12-by-6-inch space on the upper left side, hitting major organs, including his heart and lungs. The other shots hit him in the chest, face and an arm.