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NYPD officer dodges jail for stomping on man’s head, adds to ‘not uncommon’ cop crime stats

RT | June 24, 2016

A New York Police Department officer has avoided hard time at notorious Rikers Island prison for stomping on a head of a handcuffed man despite cries for help. Aside from two years’ probation, the cop is required to resign within 24 hours.

“This police officer intentionally and needlessly stomped on the head of a suspect who had already been restrained by fellow officers,” Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said at the sentencing Thursday. “And he did so in broad daylight and in front of a crowd of people.”

In April, Joel Edouard, 38, was found guilty after an amateur video showed him and other police officers arresting Jahmiel Cuffee in the summer of 2014. It was Edouard who, during the attempted arrest, pointed a gun at Cuffee and then kicked him in the head, despite bystanders yelling that he was being recorded.

Cuffee suffered scrapes and bumps, a contusion, dizziness, headaches and nausea.

At first he was charged with attempting to tamper with evidence, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest. As charges were dropped for Cuffee, Edouard found himself under investigation.

“He deserved to spend time in jail for committing such a blatant act of police brutality, but we accept the sentence imposed by the court,” Thompson said.

The DA initially recommended sentencing Edouard to 60 days in Rikers Island prison and an additional two years’ probation.

However, Judge Alan Marrus imposed only a part of the recommendation, explaining that he saw no “need to incarcerate” Edouard because “the victim recovered and was compensated through civil judgement,” according to the New York Daily News.

Marrus agreed with two years’ probation and also ordered Edouard, who has been on modified assignment, to resign by his own choice.

“If the [Police] Commissioner doesn’t terminate the defendant in 24 hours, the defendant must turn in a letter of resignation,” said Marrus, calling the case “a setback for police community relations.”

‘Police crimes not uncommon’

Since the 2014 police killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, law enforcement agencies across the US have seen community relations significantly sour.

Michael Brown’s death at the hands of white officer Darren Wilson touched off mass demonstrations in Ferguson and across the US against racial profiling, police brutality, police impunity and the judicial system in America.

A recent study by Bowling Green State University titled ‘Police integrity lost: a study of law enforcement officers arrested’ has not enhanced that reputation of police officers nationwide.

It revealed that US police officers get arrested about 1,100 times a year, meaning that roughly three cops are charged every day. The data covers 2,529 state and local law enforcement agencies from 1,205 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“The first general observation is that police crimes are not uncommon,” the study said. “Police officers get arrested for crimes with some regularity in jurisdictions around the nation.”

Between 2005 and 2011, the period the study covered, the number of arrest cases jumped from 444 to 1,238. In seven years, there were 6,724 criminal cases launched, leading to the arrest of 5,545 individual police officers.

“These cases threaten to undermine public trust in both the authority and legitimacy of state and local law enforcement organizations, and the work of law-abiding sworn officers who go about their job selflessly, efficiently, and professionally every day,” the study read.

The government-funded study reflects a broad range of offenses committed by police, which are commonly related to sex, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence and extortion.

Nearly 60 percent of those crimes “occurred when the officer was technically off-duty,” lead researcher Philip M. Stinson wrote.

At the same time, he explained, “a significant portion of these so-called off-duty crimes also lies within the context of police work and the perpetrator’s role as a police officer, including instances where off-duty officers flash a badge, an official weapon, or otherwise use their power, authority, and the respect afforded to them as a means to commit crime.”

Read more:

Police body cams fail to curb officers’ use of force; linked to surge in assaults on cops – study

June 23, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Activist and Author Arrested by NYPD Following Book Launch Event

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | Solitary Watch | March 16, 2016

Five Mualimm-ak, an activist, survivor of solitary, and contributor to our book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, was arrested Tuesday night moments after leaving a book launch event where he was a speaker, held at the Open Society Foundations in Midtown Manhattan.

Mualimm-ak had read from his essay in Hell Is a Very Small Place to a packed house at OSF, and spoken about his five years in solitary confinement in New York State prisons. Released from prison in 2012, he has gone on to become an activist against solitary and mass incarceration and founder of the Incarcerated Nation Corporation, which aids and organizes formerly incarcerated individuals.

Eyewitnesses say that Mualimm-ak and veteran activist Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, who had attended the event, were leaving the OSF building on West 57th Street when they saw police officers confronting a homeless man. Hayden began filming the encounter and was arrested. Mualimm-ak protested Hayden’s arrest, and was arrested as well.

The two men were taken to the nearby Midtown North Precinct and placed in the cells. Five individuals who had attended the launch event walked to the precinct to inquire after their welfare. Shortly after arriving, they were arrested as well, handcuffed, detained, and finally released after being charged with “refusal to disperse.”

In the early hours of the morning, Mualimm-ak and Hayden were sent from the precinct to Central Booking in Lower Manhattan. They have been charged with Obstruction of Government Administration and are expected to be arraigned today at approximately 2 pm, in New York County Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street. They have legal representation.

More details will be provided as they emerge, here and on Solitary Watch’s social media feeds.

March 16, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 1 Comment

NYPD wants to make “resisting arrest” into a felony

By Cory Doctorow | boingboing | February 14, 2016

It’s no secret that “resisting arrest” is the go-to excuse for violence committed against suspects by corrupt cops — it’s practically a running gag.

But if NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton gets his way, resisting arrest will offer near-perfect impunity to his force’s most violent and sleazy officers, who will be able to threaten anyone who complains about gratuitous violence during arrests with long prison sentences and felony records.

The Commission has suggested that he will be able to curb abuses of the new powers by having the police investigate fellow officers who lay higher-than-average resisting arrest charges in the course of their duties.

In theory, a resisting arrest charge allows the state to further punish suspects who endanger the safety of police officers as they’re being apprehended; in practice, it gives tautological justification to cops who enjoy roughing people up. Why did you use force against that suspect, officer? Because she was resisting arrest. How do I know you’re telling the truth? Because I charged her with it, sir.

Consider a few recent would-be felons:

* Chaumtoli Huq, former general counsel to NYC Public Advocate Letitia James, who was charged with resisting arrest for waiting for her family outside the Times Square Ruby Tuesday’s.

*Jahmil-El Cuffee, who was charged with resisting arrest after he found himself on the receiving end of a head-stomp from a barbarous cop because he was allegedly rolling a joint. (“Stop resisting!” cops screamed at him as he lay helpless, pinned under a pile of officers.)

*Denise Stewart, who was charged with resisting arrest after a gang of New York’s Finest threw her half-naked from her own apartment into the lobby of her building. (They had the wrong apartment, it turned out.)

*Santiago Hernandez, who was charged with resisting arrest after a group of cops beat the shit out of him following a stop-and-frisk. “One kicks me, he steps back. Another one comes to punch me and he steps back…They were taking turns on me like a gang,” Hernandez told reporters.

*Eric Garner, who no doubt would have been charged with resisting had the chokehold from Daniel Pantaleo not ended his life first.

NYPD Has a Plan to Magically Turn Anyone It Wants Into a Felon [Andy Cush/Gawker]

February 15, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Documents Uncover NYPD’s Vast License Plate Reader Database

By Mariko Hirose | NYCLU | January 25, 2016

Supporters of license plate readers are fond of saying that unless you’re a criminal, you needn’t fear the invasive technology. But those who adhere to that argument should consider just a few examples from around the country:

  • A police officer in Washington D.C. pleaded guilty to extortion after looking up the plates of cars near a gay bar and blackmailing the car’s owners.
  • The DEA contemplated using license plate readers to monitor people who were at a gun show. Since the devices can’t distinguish between those who are selling illegal guns and those who aren’t, a person’s presence at the gun show would have landed them in a DEA database.
  • A SWAT team in Kansas raided a man’s house where his wife, 7-year-old daughter, and 13-year-old son lived based in part on the mass monitoring of cars parked at a gardening store. The man was held at gunpoint for two hours while cops combed through his home. The police were looking for a marijuana growing operation. They did not find that or any other evidence of criminal activity in the man’s house.

With these stories firmly in mind, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s latest license plate reader discovery is all the more chilling.

Last year, we learned that the NYPD was hoping to enter into a multi-year contract that would give it access to the nationwide database of license plate reader data owned by the company Vigilant Solutions. Now, through a Freedom of Information Law request, the NYCLU has obtained the final version of the $442,500 contract and the scope-of-work proposal that gives a peek into the ever-widening world of surveillance made possible by Vigilant.

Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts and, by extension, our affiliations, interests, activities and beliefs.

The scope-of-work proposal explains how Vigilant vastly expands the NYPD’s surveillance capability beyond what was possible with its own license plate database. Known as the Domain Awareness System, it collects the license plate data scanned by the approximately 500 license plate readers operated by the NYPD and combines it with footage from cameras and other surveillance devices around the city. The NYPD holds on to the license plate data for at least five years regardless of whether a car triggers any suspicion.

The Vigilant database raises similar privacy concerns as the Domain Awareness System, but those concerns are greatly magnified because the Vigilant database is massive: It contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day. The database also isn’t limited to New York City, which means the NYPD can now monitor your car whether you live in New York or Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles. (See Vigilant’s Nationwide Scan Density Map on page 64.) Even more worrisome, the data comes from private license plate readers that scan locations that the police are less likely to scan: residential areas, apartment complexes, retail areas, and business office complexes with large employee parking areas. And, as far as we can tell, there is no limit on how long Vigilant keeps all of this private location data. There is no incentive for Vigilant to delete any data because its business model is to profit off of selling people’s data.

The Vigilant database also boasts “full suite data analytics tools.” These tools allow police officers to track cars historically or in real time, conduct a virtual “stakeout,” figure out which cars are commonly seen in close proximity to each other, and predict likely locations to find a car.

With this volume of private data and these types of tools, Vigilant enables the NYPD to learn intimate details about people’s lives with a click of a mouse. Through the “stakeout” feature, the NYPD may learn who was at a political rally, at an abortion clinic, or at a gay bar. Through the predictive analysis, the NYPD may learn that a person is likely to be near a mosque at prayer time or at home during certain hours of the day.  Through the “associate analysis,” the NYPD may come to suspect someone of being a “possible associate” of a criminal when the person is simply a family member, a friend, or a lover.

Until now, law enforcement agencies under contract with Vigilant, including the NYPD, have said very little in public about how they use the database and what privacy protections they implement. That needs to change. Fifty police officers at the NYPD’s Real Crime Center have access to the Vigilant database and tools every day. The public has the right to know what rules regulate their access and what oversight mechanisms, if any, are in place. They have the right to know when and how the police are using the database and what the consequences are.

Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts and, by extension, our affiliations, interests, activities and beliefs. By demanding answers to critical questions about NYPD’s use of Vigilant and other surveillance tools, New Yorkers can begin to take back the power imbalance created by the new era of mass digital surveillance.

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

Transparency is Expensive — NYPD Charges News Network $36,000 For Body Camera Footage

By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | January 18, 2016

New York, NY – In the wake of growing controversy surrounding police violence, more police departments are equipping their officers with body cameras. However, while police-worn body cameras can bring extra evidence into cases on both sides, they are far from a fix for police brutality. The main obstacle with these cameras is the fact that the footage is still entirely controlled by police departments.

The officer in the field has an opportunity to turn the camera on and off at their discretion. The cops in the office then have a second opportunity to edit the footage or redact parts that might make the officer look bad or incriminate them. Additionally, police departments are often guilty of withholding body camera footage from victim’s families and news organizations.

In one recent case, the NYPD charged a TV news network $36,000 for body camera footage, stating that it would cost them that much to prepare the footage for the network. The network is now suing the police department, stating that the high price undermines the transparency that body cameras have been promised to bring. Charging obnoxious prices for the release of body camera footage is just another trick that the police use to keep their activities from going public.

According to the lawsuit, filed by Time Warner Cable News NY1:

“[NYPD] denied NY1’s request for unedited footage without specifying what material it plans to redact, how much material will be excluded from disclosure, or how the redaction will be performed. Instead, Respondents suggested that they may provide NY1 with edited footage, but only on the condition that NY1 remit $36,000.00, the alleged cost to the NYPD of performing its unidentified redactions.”

The lawsuit also stated that the NYPD’s policy was “counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL (Freedom of Information Law), as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.”

The police department claims that their fee is “reasonable” considering the time and effort required to edit the footage.

In a response to NY1, the NYPD sent a letter explaining their costs.

The letter stated that:

“The RAO’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the BWC footage was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the BWC footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the BWC footage, for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the costs of compensating a police officer is $120 per hour. Multiplying $120 by 304 hours equals $34,480 which closely approximates the amount estimated by the RAO. This approximate cost does not include the time required to locate and collate the recordings, for which no charge is made, as that time is a part of the search for responsive records, and not a part of the time required for copying. In sum, the copying cost, as estimated by the RAO, is reasonable and commensurate with the breadth of the FOIL request.”

Even if their claims are true, which they most likely are not, having the police handle body camera footage “in house” is obviously not the best option for transparency or cost, considering the inflated budgets that police officers enjoy.

Many advocates for police accountability suggest that body camera footage should be open source, and in the hands of the people and not the police. This could likely be handled by teams of volunteers and donors who could keep the project running without a large budget.

When there is a project that has enough support, it will usually receive sufficient donations from individuals, businesses and charity organizations to keep the program operating. We saw this in the U.S. a few years back, when the government pulled the plug on funding for the SETI space program. This was a program that many people still wanted despite the government’s decision to cut funding. In fact, they wanted it around so badly that over 2,400 different donations were received in a single week, easily surpassing their goal of $200,000.

If put in the hands of the public, police body camera footage could work in the same way, but this option has been unanimously rejected by police departments across the country.

January 18, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Slaying of Chicago Teen Casts Doubt on Body Cams Holding Police Accountable

Sputnik – 12.12.2015

Although President Barack Obama has pledged $263 million in federal grants to fund body cameras for police departments throughout the country, some still feel the effort will do little to hold officers accountable if they engage in suspicious or unlawful activity.

Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, points to the recent case of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was fatally shot last year by a police officer after he responded to a call about a man with a knife.

An officer’s dashboard camera captured footage of that incident. However, Chicago’s mayor and police commissioner struggled to keep those recordings away from the eyes of the public arguing the footage could interfere with the court case.

Following the efforts of journalists and lawyers, however, a judge finally forced city officials to release the video in November leading to the prosecution of Officer Jason Van Dyke for murder more than a year after the shooting.

“Many have suggested that the prosecution would never have come if the City had succeeded in keeping the video under wraps — an allegation that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alverez denies, but nevertheless casts doubt on the ability or willingness of the police, prosecutors or even the City administration to hold individual officers accountable unless forced to do so,” Schreibersdorf explained to the Huffington Post.

In many instances, city officials can fight to keep police body-camera footage from being seen by the public and defense attorneys.

In New York City, for example, body-camera recordings legally are categorized as an officer’s file making it difficult for defense attorneys to access it. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has said that body camera footage would not be released to the public under any circumstances.

“That leaves us in the potential situation of receiving body camera footage only when it serves the NYPD and the prosecution, not when it exonerates our clients or incriminates an officer,” said Schreibersdorf. “Such a scheme favors neither justice nor accountability and is one that we, as public defenders, often the last line of defense against executive power, could never support.”

December 12, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYPD under fire over cop who ‘converted’ to Islam to spy on college students

RT | November 4, 2015

Civil rights activists are speaking out about revelations that an undercover detective with the New York Police Department “converted” to Islam in order to spy on Muslim students at Brooklyn College over a four-year period.

That work led to the recent arrest of two Queens women allegedly involved in a terrorist bomb plot.

The NYPD has already been under fire for running a demographics unit which conducted blanket surveillance of the Muslim community after 9/11 in New York and New Jersey, despite such activity being in violation of the Constitution.

“The problem has been that the courts who are tasked with determining what is and what is not unconstitutional, illegal – and what is and is not entrapment – have been complicit, and have expanded the prosecutorial and police powers to engage in predatory practices against Muslim communities in particular,” human rights attorney Lamis Deek told RT.

“While under law and logic this would be considered entrapment. If you look at the complaint, it is clear this case is entrapment. Unfortunately we are not going to find a court or a judge to do that,” Deek added.

The revelations about the NYPD’s undercover operation came from a Justice Department release announcing the arrest of two Queens women, Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, on conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction in April 2015. It revealed that a detective from the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau was heavily involved in bringing the girls to justice and foiling the bomb plot, according to the Gothamist.

“The work of the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau, its undercover Detective, and its seamless collaboration with the Special Agents and the Detectives of the Joint Terrorism Task Force… should serve as a model for early detection and prevention of terrorist plotting,” said NYPD Commissioner William Bratton in the release.

Deek said that in a case like Velentzas and Siddiqui’s, where the plot is manufactured and orchestrated by a confidential informant – in this case, the officer went by “Mel” – and those working with the informant, law enforcement will make sure that the defendants’ lives are so “infiltrated” and controlled that they behave in a way that ensures they can have no defense.

“The law says that if defendants speak about political issues that relate to the case then [they] are predisposed to engaging in these acts, and that predisposition overcomes [their] defense of entrapment,” said Deek.

The Justice Department alleged the girls had researched how to construct bombs to use as a weapon of mass destruction on American soil. They obtained bomb-making instructions and materials, and used instructions provided by Al-Qaeda’s online magazine.

Deeks said that what is telling about the complaint is that the NYPD informant, Mel, had been working around young people at the college for four years. Yet there was no issue or suspicious activity until she met the two Queens women who were ultimately arrested in July 2014.

“The complaint only lists actions that these two girls took from August onwards, from the time they met this undercover informant and she built a relationship with them,” Deek said. “What we see instead is the Joint Terrorism Task Force informant was in the very least inciting them to engage in these actions that would later lead to their arrest.”

Mother Jones reported that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and its use of informants takes a majority share of the Bureau’s budget, requiring $3.3 billion to support a national network of 15,000 informants who are paid $100,000 per case, or who work off criminal or immigration violations.

“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square subway station, told Mother Jones. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

On this point, Deek concurs, but she added that while this operation is not effective, it is creating fear.

“What they have done effectively is terrorize the Arab-Muslim-Pakistani communities of New York and the US. People are afraid to talk to each other. They don’t know who is who, and what is what. They are being disciplined and their First Amendment rights are being actively curtailed, so this is a very violative program that mimics tactics … of occupying governments,” Deek said.

November 4, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , , , | 1 Comment

NYPD Cop Convicted of Falsifying Arrest Report on New York Times Photographer

By Carlos Miller | PINAC | October 15, 2015

An NYPD cop who arrested a New York Times photographer, accusing him of interfering with an investigation by blinding him with his flash, was convicted today on a felony count of falsifying records.

It turned out, Robert Stolarik’s camera did not even have a built-in flash. Nor did he have an external flash on him when arrested.

Not that it would have been illegal.

Nevertheless, New York City police officer Michael Ackermann swore in his arrest report that Stolarik’s repeated use of his flash ended up “blinding him and preventing him from performing his duties.”

He also claimed that Stolarik “violently resisted being handcuffed,” even cutting another officer in the hand during the struggle.

The NYPD also released a statement claiming that Stolarik used his camera to “inadvertently” strike an officer in the face.

The way they described it, Stolarik was an out-of-control madman, using his flash to blind officers before striking them with his camera – just the type of behavior you would expect from a veteran photojournalist with more than two decades of experience.

The truth is, it was the officers who were violent with Stolarik as reported by the New York Times on August 5, 2012, the day after his arrest.

The photographer, Robert Stolarik, 43, who has worked regularly for The Times for more than a decade, was charged with obstructing government administration and with resisting arrest. He was taking photographs of a brewing street fight at McClellan Street and Sheridan Avenue in the Concourse neighborhood.

Mr. Stolarik was taking photographs of the arrest of a teenage girl about 10:30 p.m., when a police officer instructed him to stop doing so. Mr. Stolarik said he identified himself as a journalist for The Times and continued taking pictures. A second officer appeared, grabbed his camera and “slammed” it into his face, he said.

Mr. Stolarik said he asked for the officers’ badge numbers, and the officers then took his cameras and dragged him to the ground; he said that he was kicked in the back and that he received scrapes and bruises to his arms, legs and face.

The Police Department said in a statement that officers had been trying to disperse the crowd and had given “numerous lawful orders” for both the crowd and Mr. Stolarik to move back, but that he tried to push forward, “inadvertently” striking an officer in the face with his camera.

The police said that Mr. Stolarik then “violently resisted being handcuffed” and that, in the process, a second officer was cut on the hand. A video of the episode taken by one of the reporters who was with Mr. Stolarik shows Mr. Stolarik face down on the sidewalk, beneath a huddle of about six officers.

Stolarik ended up spending a night in jail on charges of obstructing government administration and resisting arrest, the usual contempt-of-cop charges issued by NYPD.

Now it’s Ackermann who is facing four years in prison after today’s conviction in a bench trial. He will be sentenced on December 2.

During the trial, Ackermann claimed he made an honest mistake when he lied about Stolarik’s use of the flash.

“I keep going over it and trying to figure out how I could have made that big of a mistake,” he testified, according to the New York Daily News.

What he really meant to say is that he was unable to figure out why the Bronx District Attorney would file charges on him when filing false reports is an everyday occurrence for the NYPD and is usually ignored by prosecutors.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom today, Stolarik pointed out the irony in the outcome.

According to Gothamist :

“I’m overwhelmed, and I’m emotional,” and added that the “DA took this case very seriously. Justice has been served. He was comfortable sending me to prison to ruin my career and I think that turned around on him, he was charged with a felony and it ruined his career.”

Ackermann’s career is definitely over. At least with the NYPD, even though he is still officially a cop. He might as well go into fiction writing considering he has a knack for it.

But it would still be surprising if he spends a day in jail. Cops rarely serve time for the crimes they commit, even the ones who commit sexual abuse.

The incident took place on August 4, 2012 as Stolarik was covering the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk routine and came across a group of officers attempting to arrest a 15-year-old girl.

One cop placed her hand in front of his lens to prevent him from shooting. When he showed her his credentials – not that it should matter in public – another cop walked up and shoved the camera into his face.

When he demanded names and badge numbers, several cops pounced on him and began beating and kicking him.

The video recorded by another New York Times reporter that shows him laying underneath a pile of cops apparently has not been released to the public, but we will post it if it is ever released.

After spending the night in jail, it took another three weeks for them to return his camera gear, which included a Nikon D4, as well as his NYPD-issued press credentials, making it impossible for him to continue working during that time.

The National Press Photographers Association, specifically General Counsel Mickey Osterreicher, was instrumental in getting the NYPD to return his items as well as having Ackermann investigated by both the district attorney and internal affairs.

This is what Osterreicher had to say in a statement emailed to Photography is Not a Crime :

I am very pleased to see that justice has been served by the verdict in this case. Robert Stolarik should have never been arrested for exercising his constitutional rights as a journalist cover a story of great public concern. Credit goes to Robert for standing up for his rights and the rights of all of us. I also commend the Bronx District Attorney and ADA Jacoub Pishoy for prosecuting this case. I also think we should acknowledge that the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) took this case very seriously from the start and helped provide some of the evidence needed to obtain this conviction. I hope it will send a clear message to police officers to stop interfering, harassing and arresting citizens and journalists for doing nothing more than photographing or recording on public streets.

We also hope this sends a clear message to the NYPD and the rest of the cops in this country who have long become accustomed to falsifying charges, not only against photographers, but against anybody who dares question their authority – including the ones we wrote about earlier today.

October 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

No Eric Garner or Tamir Rice: FBI fails to adequately count civilian deaths by police

RT | October 16, 2015

An the old saying goes: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” It may not quite apply to a new FBI report on officer-involved shootings, but the phrase expresses some of the frustrations felt by activists on behalf of the victims who went uncounted.

Released Thursday, the FBI’s figures for police-on-civilian deadly shootings lacked adequate substance and included errors, according to a report by the Guardian. The data was collected on a voluntary basis from local police departments, but 99 percent of them did not volunteer any information.

The FBI counted 439 police killings for the year 2014 based on reports from 224 local law enforcement agencies, of which there are 18,000 in the country. That’s up from 392 homicides reported in 2009, but the number of reporting agencies also increased from 196 in the same year. No trend can be surmised from the data.

Notorious cases, including Eric Garner from New York City, and Ohio’s Tamir Rice and John Crawford, were not included. Information regarding whether or not the victim was armed was also not included. Other methods and mistakes also complicate any goal of arriving at an accurate estimate.

The reason for not including Garner, the man choked to death by an New York Police Department (NYPD) officer, was simply because the NYPD has not participated in such FBI data gathering since 2006. The NYPD, the nation’s largest police force, promises to release details on officers’ deadly use of force next year.

Garner’s daughter, Erica, told the Guardian she was “outraged but not shocked” at this missing tally from the FBI.

“It’s just another part of the cover-up and erasing of his murder from the record,” she said. “It says to the NYPD and the city and state of New York that my father’s life doesn’t matter.”

Rice, the 12-year-old holding an airsoft gun who was shot in under two seconds by Cleveland police, was not included, and neither was Crawford, the man shot by Beavercreek police in a Walmart while holding a BB gun carried by the store. Both police departments did not participate in the FBI report.

Meanwhile, some cases were recorded incorrectly. Darrien Hunt, a 22-year-old killed by Sarasota Springs police in Utah while running away with a replica sword, was listed as the killer even though he was the one who died. A knife or blade was jotted down as the deadly weapon, even though it was a police officer who shot him. Furthermore, the officer and Hunt were described as acquaintances.

The victim’s mother, Susan, told the Guardian, “There has been so much wrong with the entire incident.”

Several outlets are attempting to keep track of police shootings or non-shootings that end in civilian deaths. The Guardian’s “The Counted” aggregates all deaths at the hands of police and has counted 908 so far in 2015. The Washington Post counts 776 shot dead by police this year.

Last week, FBI Director James Comey told a group of politicians and law enforcement officials that in the same way movie tickets are counted or cases of the flu are counted, so should police killings. “It’s ridiculous – embarrassing and ridiculous – that we can’t talk about crime in the same way, especially in the high-stakes incidents when your officers have to use force,” Comey said.

In a separate 2014 FBI report, 1.16 million incidents of violent crime were reported in 2013. Violent crime hadn’t been that low in 35 years. The population has grown nearly one and a half times in that period, but police-on-civilian killings could be a type of violent crime on the rise. Until there are reliable statistics, no one knows.

October 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | Leave a comment

Minority police officers sue NYPD over illegal arrest quotas

RT | September 2, 2015

A dozen black and Latino police officers are suing the New York Police Department and the city claiming that their bosses forced them to carry out illegal arrest quotas “against their own minority community.” The NYPD has denied ever using quotas.

The class action lawsuit, filed in the Manhattan federal court on Monday, argued that by forcing police officers to comply with the “illegal quota system,” New York City and the NYPD subjected black and Latino cops to unfair evaluations and discipline, according to the New York Post.

The suit also said performance evaluation was not evenly applied to all precincts. Police officers in precincts with lots of minorities had to make more arrests and issue more tickets than officers in “a precinct located in a predominantly white residential area,” the suit states.

The lawsuit cites testimony and news articles dating to 2010 that provide evidence of a quota system under former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. The suit said quotas have remained under Commissioner Bill Bratton.

“The reality is that one year later, quotas remain alive and well and the NYPD is aggressively pursuing a numbers driven agenda with regard to arrests, tickets and summonses,” the suit reads.

The 12 named plaintiffs in the suit are all black and Latino NYPD officers who claim to have been penalized for reporting and complaining about “the illegal quotas and its racially discriminatory application against the minority community,” the suit states.

The suit alleges that police officers were being forced to make at least one arrest and issue 20 summonses a month.

The top NYPD spokesman told the Post that the department doesn’t use quotas.

“There are no numerical enforcement quotas established by the NYPD,” spokesman Stephen Davis said in a statement, according to the New York Post. “Performance evaluations are conducted for all department employees based on an assessment of their duties, responsibilities and specific conditions of their assignments.”

An NYC Law Department spokesman said the city would evaluate the merits of each of these claims and respond accordingly once they are served.

One of the lead plaintiff’s in the suit is Adhyl Polanco, a Latino police officer who first complained to the media in 2009 about how arrest and summons quotas affected communities of color. He testified in the high-profile federal stop-and-frisk case.

Polanco also filed a separate lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court on Monday against the NYPD and the city, according to the New York Daily News, claiming his whistleblowing about quotas and discrimination has resulted in a sustained campaign of retaliation by fellow police officers and management, including repeated suspensions, promotion denials and suggestions that he was mentally ill.

September 2, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Video Shows NYPD Cop Brutalize 11-year-old Girl, Proves that he Lied Under Oath

By Justin Gardner | The Free Thought Project | July 23, 2015

New York, NY — Video has surfaced of a New York City police lieutenant assaulting an 11-year-old girl on a Bronx street corner. The incident happened six months after Eric Garner’s death but is now being brought to light after a battle with the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York.

In the video, the large male cop forced the girl against the wall, then grabs her around the neck and throws her to the pavement, where he back cuffs her before leading her away.

In a sworn statement, the police lieutenant lied about what happened, saying she “and I both slipped and fell to the ground. On the ground [she] continued to flail her arms and thrash her body, preventing me from placing handcuffs on her. We continued to struggle until I was eventually able to place handcuffs on [her].”

As we can see, no one slipped to the ground, and the girl was not flailing and thrashing.  It is pure brutality.  The assault appears to be another example of NYPD harassment in minority communities, perhaps motivated by racism, all too similar to the circumstances leading to Eric Garner’s death.

According to civil rights lawyer Bob Herbst, who is representing the family, the girl was simply an innocent bystander to a situation that could have been resolved peacefully.

“This past February, after school was out for the day, some boys from the school were throwing snowballs at a passing car. When the driver got out to yell at them — and put one of the boys in a headlock — his smartphone fell out of his pocket and another boy picked it up. Upon realizing his phone was gone, the driver chased down one of the boys and threatened to call the police if the phone was not returned, and when it was not forthcoming, he did, apparently using someone else’s phone.

This 6th grader — let’s call her Angie — and a classmate were walking from school to the bus stop when they saw some of this. They were bystanders who had nothing to do with either the snowballs or the phone. But as the police arrived, the girls exchanged words as to whether they should stay to watch, or go, and then took off running for a block before stopping.

The driver — the man in the white jacket with the knapsack in the video — seeing Angie running, suspected — wrongly — that she was part of the group and had his phone. He approached Angie and asked for his phone. She told him she didn’t have his phone.

Shortly thereafter, as the video starts, this police lieutenant crossed the street, motioning for Angie to come toward him, which she did.”

It seems that running away was enough for the enraged cop to brutalize the girl instead of peacefully ascertaining that she did not have the phone.

If this wasn’t enough for the girl’s psyche, the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York (which prosecutes Family Court proceedings) began a juvenile delinquency proceeding against her. This happened one month after the girl’s parents decided to file claims of police assault and battery and the use of excessive force. Since no action was taken against the girl for four months after the arrest, the proceeding raises the suspicion that the Counsel is retaliating after the family said they intended to sue.

Fortunately, the video was preserved by the noble shopkeeper who allowed it to be copied onto the mother’s phone, and this is what proved the cop to be a liar. The obvious unprovoked brutality will force the Counsel to dismiss the case in six months, according to Herbst.

The police lieutenant’s gross abuse of power and the city’s shameful attempt at prosecuting the 6th grade victim has put the girl in a state of psychic distress.

“Her parents report that she now talks and cries in her sleep, and sometimes sleep walks. She is scared of and avoids the police. She does not want to think about or talk about what happened to her. She stays home more, does not like to go outside, and her relationships with friends have changed as she has become more withdrawn.”

July 24, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

NYPD officers slammed autistic teen’s head against concrete – lawsuit

RT | July 10, 2015

A 17-year-old autistic boy was thrown onto the sidewalk by New York City police officers, punched in the face, arrested, hauled to the precinct for questioning and released without charges, according to a lawsuit.

Troy Canales was standing in front of his Bronx home on the night of November 12, 2014, when two officers drove up in a police car demanding to know what he was doing, according to the Manhattan federal court lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims the officers clearly had no training in how to deal with people with special needs when they began questioning Canales, who is able to talk but has a hard time making eye contact with strangers.

“[Canales] was extremely scared, but told the officers that he was just ‘chilling’ and was not doing anything,” the suit stated.

“[The officers] each grabbed the plaintiff’s arms and forcefully threw him down on the sidewalk, smashing his head against the concrete. [The officers] kneed plaintiff in the back and punched him in the face as he screamed to his family for help.”

Canales’ mother and brother came out of the house and saw him cuffed on the ground. They told the police he was autistic but the cops ignored them and took the teenager to the precinct, said the complaint.

Canales was held for an hour until his mother, Alyson Valentine, spoke to the commanding officer, who apologized and said, ‘things like this happen” before releasing the teen.

Police officers had no explanation for the assault or the arrest except to say that one officer “feared for his life” when he spoke to Canales on the sidewalk, according to the lawsuit.

In the wake of the beating, Valentine said her son became reclusive and it took professional therapy to help him go out of the house again.

“Every other house on the block, there’s a child with disability,” Valentine told DNAinfo. “A lot of them don’t come outside that much. If you’re policing the neighborhood, you should know the people.”

A lawyer for Troy Canales, now 18, said the NYPD violated the teen’s civil rights during the November 2014 incident. The federal lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and better training for police officers to deal with people with special needs.

A New York City Law Department spokesman said the suit is under review, reported the New York Post.

July 10, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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