another search, another death...and no effect on supply or demand

Radley Balko the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, tells yet another story like many others he has told. He quotes from a news story about the killing of Derek Cuice:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said. 

 Balko writes:

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

Those who have been through a home invasion by the cops will recognize the truth in this. When law enforcement shows up wearing Kevlar and with weapons drawn, they are not protecting anyone but themselves. The chaos, no matter how unnecessary, is intentional.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana. [My emphasis.]

Balko sounds frustrated, angry. But after hearing so many stories like this, who isn't? 

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

It is no more difficult to buy pot...than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down... 

Violent, chaotic searches, arrests and convictions, long prison sentences. None of those have slowed down the supply or demand for recreational drugs.

The story is the same with child pornography. As I said here, discussing an interview of a man who had a collection of a million child porn images:

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn. 

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

two stories of witnesses protecting the bad guy

Two interesting stories about witnesses to a crime.

In the first story, a young man was murdered and no witnesses are coming forward with information.

“Detectives are not receiving much, if any, cooperation or true and accurate information from neighbors and subjects they believe, through their investigation, to be witnesses,” Sgt. Chris Snyder wrote in a news release Thursday, Jan. 8.

Snyder urges anyone with information to come forward. 

It must be frustrating to know there are witnesses who could help to solve a murder but that none of them are willing to help find the killer.

The second story, from Radley Balko, tells of a cell phone video serving as a witness, saving a man from a conviction.

In order to help out his family and earn a quick $50, [Douglas] Dendinger agreed to act as a process server, giving a brutality lawsuit filed by his nephew to Chad Cassard as the former Bogalusa police officer exited the Washington Parish Courthouse. 

The handoff went smoothly, but Dendinger said the reaction from Cassard, and a group of officers and attorneys clustered around him, turned his life upside down.

That group of officers and attorneys did not react well to Dendinger serving the papers. Balko says:

He was not only arrested, he was also charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. A prior drug charge on his record meant he was potentially looking at decades in prison. Seven witnesses backed up the police account that Dendinger had assaulted Cassard.

Seven witnesses to the crime of false reporting. 

A cell phone video of Dendinger handing the papers to Cassard proved that all seven witnesses lied.

Balko:

But here’s my question: Why aren’t the seven witnesses to Dendinger’s nonexistent assault on Cassard already facing felony charges? Why are all but one of the cops who filed false reports still wearing badges and collecting paychecks? Why aren’t the attorneys who filed false reports facing disbarment? Dendinger’s prosecutors both filed false reports, then prosecuted Dendinger based on the reports they knew were false. They should be looking for new careers — after they get out of jail.

The connection between the two stories? In both, the bad guy is protected by his community.

When cops protect bad cops, and often with no consequences for doing so, why are we surprised when the broader community does the same?

flash-bang grenade...the cops just couldn't help themselves

When we complain about the chaos and dangers of SWAT-served search warrants or home invasion-style served warrants, we often hear that the person who broke the law is the one to blame for a family's pain, not the cops who invade homes. A Georgia family would love to hear those people make sense of what happened to their 19-month-old boy.

Jacob Sullum writes about a 3 a.m. drug raid when a flash-bang grenade was thrown into a child's playpen, critically injuring the toddler. The police said they had no idea there were children in the home or they would not have used the grenade.

"If there's children involved in a house, we do not use any kind of distraction devices in those houses," [Sheriff]Terrell told AccessNorthGa.com. "We just don't take the chance on it....According to the confidential informant, there were no children. When they made the buy, they didn't see any children or any evidence of children there, so we proceeded with our standard operation."

Standard operation? It is standard to throw flash-bangs where the landing place is not clearly seen?

The lawyer for the family said,

"This is a stay-at-home dad who was out in front of the home, playing with the children on a daily basis. Any surveillance that was done would have revealed there was a father with four children who played in that driveway."

Surveillance?

...the SWAT team was relying on the report of a confidential informant who briefly visited the home on Tuesday night, just a few hours before the raid...

Despite an avowed policy of not using flash-bang grenades when children are present, it seems that neither Terrell's office nor the Cornelia Police Department did anything to investigate that possibility aside from asking the informant, who according to Terrell did not even enter the home. 

So, no surveillance.

Beyond the lack of due diligence on that point, there is the question of whether tossing an exploding, potentially incendiary device into a home that may be full of innocent people in the middle of the night is A-OK as long as you are reasonably sure all those people are 18 or older.

Think about this. Laws are often described in terms of protecting the innocent and yet police take no precautions to protect the innocent or even to ascertain if there are innocents present. 

Remember those people who blame the law-breaker for the chaos? The sheriff is one of them.

Terrell continues to blame [drug]transactions for the horrible injuries police inflicted on a sleeping baby. "The information we had from our confidential informant was there was no children in the home," he told WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta. "We always ask; that determines how we enter the house and the things we do.... Did we go by our training, did we go by the intelligence? Given the same set of circumstances, with the same information dealing with a subject who has known gun charges on him, who is selling meth, they would go through the same procedures...Nothing would change....Had no way of knowing the child was in the house. The little baby [who] was in there didn't deserve this. These drug dealers don't care."

The little baby didn't deserve this? If the grenade had landed on the bed of the baby's mother instead, the mother would have deserved it?

signs on the lawn; signs of...hey!

Mostboringradical talks about the Florida sheriff who is putting red signs in the lawns of sexual predators--not all sex offenders, only the ones he considers to be predators.

This begs the question of why people who don’t fall into those categories are on the list in the first place, and shows how registries are rendered effectively useless when they are filled with non-violent and/or statutory offenders.

Well, yes. Yes, it does. Many of these sex offenders were snared in online stings in which they had no contact with actual children.

Perhaps we should be asking why law enforcement is bothering to run these stings when they themselves acknowledge that the men they are arresting–non-violent, statutory, and nearly all first-time offenders–are not predators? Why, when they arrest a man in one of these stings, or a college student for downloading child porn, do they pat themselves on the back in the press for catching a “predator” when, in fact, those offenses would not classify the offender as a sexual predator? These internet-based stings create sex offenders rather than catching predators.

So: signs of the uselessness of the registry! If the registry worked as advertised, the red signs wouldn't be necessary. If the registry worked as advertised, everyone on the registry would need red signs. 

And we should acknowledge that filling registries with first-time, non-violent, statutory offenders makes it harder, not easier, for parents to get the information the registry purports to provide them with. They aren’t all that worried about whether their 27yo neighbor might say yes if their teen daughter propositions him–most parents realize that a teen daughter who is seeking out sex with older men has problems that need to be addressed within the home, not by the government. They are worried about whether their neighbor is going to kidnap, molest, and maybe kill their 6 year old child. Those are the offenders they want identified, and when those violent and/or repeat offenders are hidden between entries for dozens and dozens of men who, when they were 24, made a stupid choice involving a teen girl looking for sex online, they have trouble finding that information.

The sex offender registry has so little to do with protecting anyone and so much to do with extra punishment for people who have merely offended the sensibilities of legislators. And you know what? I doubt that legislators are even all that offended; surely they remember being stupid themselves. Legislators are simply looking for someone they can use to demonstrate that they are tough on crime and sex offenders have very few defenders.

coming home safe at night

When I told our attorney that executing search warrants as a home invasion should not be legal, he told me that if I were the wife of a cop, all I would want is for him to come home safe each night. Since then, my response has been that if I were the wife of a cop, I would not want him to put his safety above those he has sworn to serve and protect.

Which brings us to this article by Radley Balko.

The "war on cops" talk heats up every time that one or more high-profile police killings hit the news. But there's just no evidence that it's true. 

I've pointed out a number of times that the job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a generation. Last year was the safest year for cops since the early 1960s. And it isn't just because the police are carrying bigger guns or have better armor. Assaults on police officers have been dropping over the same period. Which means that not only are fewer cops getting killed on the job, people in general are less inclined to try to hurt them. Yes, working as a police officer is still more dangerous than, say, working as a journalist.

The truth is that farmers, miners, and fishermen are more likely to die in the line of work than law enforcement officers.

Balko says the false belief that cops constantly risk their lives in their work leads to poor policy and poor budget decisions.

For example, one effect of false perceptions about the dangers of policing that I've noted before is that they can sway public debate on issues like police budgets, police use of force, police militarization and what sort of accountability cops should face when they're accused of violating someone's civil rights. Exaggerating the threat that cops face can make policymakers and public officials more reluctant to hold bad cops accountable or more willing to outfit police departments with weapons and equipment better suited for warfare.

Worse:

I interviewed lots of police officers, police administrators, criminologists and others connected to the field of law enforcement. There was a consensus among these people that constantly telling cops how dangerous their jobs are is affecting their mindset. It reinforces the soldier mentality already relentlessly drummed into cops' heads by politicians' habit of declaring "war" on things.

Read the whole thing. The next time law enforcement talks about how dangerous their job is, you'll know better.

good cops wouldn't?

Commenter Our Family is His makes an astonishing assumption, so astonishing that I wondered if I misread her attempt at humor.

Thankfully good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing, so while you were emotionally hurt so much that day and your husband decided to rip your family apart, you were safe that day.

Good cops would have investigated to see if any of us have a history of violence. 
Good cops would have questioned the need to come into my home with their weapons drawn.
Good cops would have waited until the children were out of the house.

Good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing? 

Sometimes the resulting damage, injuries, and deaths have less to do with whether the cops are good or bad than to do with the dangers inherent in drawing weapons in a chaotic situation. Too much chance for unexpected movements or sounds, too much chance for misunderstandings, too much chance for adrenalin to lead to mistakes.

Good cops understand that and avoid creating that chaos.

20 years in prison...what does that get this innocent woman?

This is how messed up the justice system is: Two people spend years in prison for a crime they absolutely didn't commit and the state doesn't want to compensate them for their lost years because they perjured themselves. The perjury? Confessing to the crime they didn't commit.

It isn't a minor consideration. One person served 20 years, the other served 5 1/2 years.

“The path to Mr. Dean's and Ms. Taylor's hell was led by a narrowly focused, almost obsessed, rush to judgment to solve a murder,” Bryan wrote in his orders.

Both are members of the “Beatrice Six,” who were exonerated in 2008 by DNA testing of nearly 25-year-old evidence. The tests proved the six could not have participated in the murder of Helen Wilson, 68, who was killed by a lone assailant never charged in the murder before his own death in 1992.

I know the state has a duty not to spend taxpayer money unless it has to but who in could argue in good conscience against compensation for these people? Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning can.

 “Mr. Dean and Ms. Taylor provided false testimony that led to the conviction of an innocent man,” Bruning said in a statement. “We continue to believe the Nebraska Legislature did not intend to provide recovery to those who commit perjury under the Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment Act.”

The judge agreed that their testimony was inaccurate. But he found overwhelming evidence to support the contention that Dean and Taylor grew to believe what they were saying during months of pretrial confinement and repeated law enforcement interrogations.

 I have to wonder how the investigators got two people to confess to the crime. Seems to me that it would be hard to convince someone they did murder when they didn't and yet, here it is. So what happened during the interrogations to force the confessions?

This is our justice system.

police officer fired for brutality is reinstated

A year ago, Omaha police beat a man in a hospital parking lot and the beating was recorded by security camera. The public was scandalized by the actions of the police and two of the officers were fired, as they should have been. Go to the link and see if you agree.


Last Friday, we learned that one of those two officers got her job back.

Former Police Chief Alex Hayes elected to fire Dolinsky and Officer Aaron Pennington for their roles in the videotaped scuffle. 

The police union contract, however, allows officers to appeal disciplinary actions publicly to the city's Personnel Board or, as Dolinsky did and Pennington will do, privately before an independent arbitrator. The arbitrator's decision cannot be appealed. 

Three days of private hearings were held at City Hall late last month. Documents or rulings related to arbitration proceedings are not released publicly. 

Dolinsky will be disciplined in an unspecified manner and will receive additional training, as part of a reinstatement agreement between the city and police union. In two years, Dolinsky can ask to have any record of her discipline removed from her personnel file.

Again, watch the video and see if you can agree. 

Omaha police Taser dangerous old man

How dangerous was he? He had a fistful of safety pins. That's how dangerous.

The officer asked a nurse whether Cole had a pacemaker. The nurse looked at his chart, as Cole continued threatening the officers

“It's too late,” the officer said, according to the nurse's report, and he shocked Cole with a Taser.

Cole fell onto the bed but continued to flail his arms, so the officer shocked him again in the chest, he said.

About those safety pins, Interim Omaha Police Chief David "Baker said safety pins can pose risks, especially if they aren't sterile."

Two good things I noticed in the story: 1) The elderly gentleman, Mr. Cole, is fine, and 2) Baker is only the interim police chief.

killing of kelly thomas

In Fullerton CA, the police beat a mentally ill homeless man into a coma. He died five days later. Why did they beat him? There is no answer except that the police had the freedom to do what they did. I couldn't watch the video; the description of it was quite enough. 


For those of you who think the brutal beating of Kelly Thomas an isolated incident, here is an Omaha man who is charged for assaulting a police officer. The police are caught on the hospital surveillance video kicking, punching, and using a Taser on him. Watch the video and you'll be shocked at the intensity of the police violence. (This video, I could watch; the Thomas video, I could not.) After watching that, you may wonder why the Omaha man is being charged with assaulting a police officer. Because the charges against him help justify what the cops did to him.

90-year-old woman wins $95,000 suit for police brutality

This story made me chuckle.

Green [said] the officer shoved her, pushed her over a chair, handcuffed her and insulted her. When the officer then went into her basement, she says she shut the door and locked him inside. She later brought a civil rights lawsuit, and in early April accepted the city's settlement offer. "[I'm a] law-abiding citizen," Green told WBAL. "I've never been arrested, I paid my taxes, owned my home, my husband died 34 years ago. [I] raised my son and I have been brutally abused. I feel like the police department needs to go back to school."

When I am ninety years old, I want to be that spunky.