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Police unlawful harassment and racial profiling Philly,Pa

Josh Moyo · September 27, 2013

RT

As debate over the merits of “stop and frisk” policing continues, a new YouTube video has added fuel to the fire by revealing the disturbing tactics of two Philadelphia officers.

Titled “Police unlawful harassment and racial profiling,” the video is dated Sept. 27 and shows two pedestrians being stopped by police officers after saying “hi” to a third, unseen individual on the street.

“You don’t say ‘Hi’ to strangers,”one officer, identified as Philip Nace by the Philadelphia Daily News, said as he confronts the two pedestrians and pushes one against the car. The other individual is recording the scene on his smartphone as it unfolds.

After Nace tells the man to put his phone away because he’s “under investigation,” the phone is set down but continues to record.

“Investigation of what? I was walking,” the man said, to which the officer replies, “That’s not what I saw … if you keep running your mouth I’ll split your wig open.”

The two go back and forth, with the man asking Nace why he’d been stopped, and Nace offering that he doesn’t know what information the police have on them.

“Are you accusing me of robbing somebody?” the pedestrian asks.

“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Nace said.“I said we could’ve got a call, that somebody wearing the clothes you’re wearing just robbed somebody. That’s why we stopped you. Is that wrong of us?”

When asked if he’s permitted to grab pedestrians in this manner, Nace replies,“I’ll grab you any way I got to… Why don’t you shut up? Everyone thinks they’re a [expletive] lawyer and they don’t know jack [expletive].”

At one point, the officers attempt to justify their actions by claiming the two pedestrians were jaywalking. Nace also accuses the two pedestrians of “weakening the country” by “freeloading.”

The race of the two pedestrians is not clear in the video, but “stop and frisk” tactics are increasingly coming under fire as demeaning, and for unfairly targeting minorities without sufficient cause.

“This is exactly what the city of Philadelphia says its cops don’t do,” Mary Catherine Roper, senior staff attorney for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News. “The only way we stop it from happening is if the police department acknowledges that it does happen and takes steps to root it out.”

In August, a federal judge ruled New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy unconstitutional on the grounds that it is a form of racial profiling.

Meanwhile, a new study released in September revealed that “stop and frisk” tactics are causing a large proportion of the public to mistrust the police. The lack of faith can become so severe that even those who are victimized become reluctant to report crimes.

October 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

LAWS TO PENALIZE DRUG LORDS BEING TURNED ON THE INNOCENT

By Sherwood Ross | August 6, 2013

State “civil-forfeiture”(CF) laws aimed at drug kingpins are being twisted to confiscate the property of people “never charged with a crime,” The New Yorker magazine (August 12) asserts.

Example: a Philadelphia couple fighting a home eviction after their son sold a small amount of marijuana to an informant.

What’s more, a high proportion of the victims appear to be African-Americans and Latinos, the magazine says.

Example: Tenaha, Texas, where victims of CF actions were motorists who had been pulled over for routine traffic stops, “and the targets were disproportionately black and Latino,” The New Yorker quotes one defense attorney as stating.

Under laws once enacted to penalize drug dealers and their ilk, the authorities using CF “are routinely targeting the workaday homes, cars, cash savings, and other belongings” of the innocent, writes magazine reporter Sarah Stillman.

“In general, you needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on par with ‘probable cause’ is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime or even be accused of one,” Stillman adds.

“Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture is a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence.”

Owners who wish to contest CF often find that the cost of hiring a lawyer far exceeds the value of their seized goods, the magazine reports. “There’s this myth that they’re cracking down on drug cartels and kingpins,” says Lee McGrath, of the Institute for Justice, of Arlington, Va. In fact, the victims “aren’t entitled to a public defender and can’t afford a lawyer and the only rational response is to walk away from your property, because of the infeasibility of getting your money back.”

Since in many states law enforcement authorities can use CF revenue as they like, the temptation of easy money collides with ethical values. Reporter Stillman writes, in some Texas counties, more than 40 percent of law-enforcement budgets come from forfeiture” so that a system “that proved successful at wringing profits from drug cartels and white-collar fraudsters has given rise to corruption and violations of civil liberties.”

“What stands out to me is the nature of how pervasive and dependent police really are on civil-asset forfeiture—its their bread and butter—and, therefore, how difficult it is to engage in systemic reform,” says Vanita Gupta, a deputy legal director of the ACLU.

Jennifer Boatwright, one of the 140 CF plaintiffs in a suit against Tenaha, Tex., said the county district attorney threatened to put her in jail and her son into child protective services, if she did not sign over $6,000 in her car. “Where are we?” Stillman quotes her as saying. “Is this some kind of foreign country where they’re selling people’s kids off?”

(No, Ms. Boatwright: it’s worse than that. This is some kind of country where the president is ordering illegal drone strikes in foreign countries that are killing children by the score.)

Sherwood Ross can be reached at sherwood.ross@gmail.com

August 6, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , | 1 Comment

Philadelphia adopting ‘doomsday’ school-slashing plan despite $400 million prison project

RT | June 6, 2013

Days after Philadelphia officials pushed the city one step closer to a so-called “doomsday” education plan that would see two dozen schools close, construction began on a $400-million prison said to be the second-most expensive state project ever.

Pennsylvania’s School Reform Commission voted on June 1 to approve a $2.4 billion budget, ignoring hours of pleas from students, parents, educators and community members who warned the budget would cripple city schools.

The plan would close 23 public schools, roughly 10 per cent of the city’s total. Commissioners rejected a proposal that would have only closed four of the 27 schools that were on the block for closure.

Without the means to cover a $304 million debt, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, students can expect to go back to school in September without new books, paper, counselors, clubs, librarians, assistant principals or secretaries. All athletics, art and music programs would be eliminated and as many as 3,000 people could lose their jobs.

Only one of five state commissioners voted against the proposal, warning that Republican Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s administration had not looked hard enough elsewhere for proper funds.

That $304 million windfall is unlikely to be filled because the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives recently passed a tax break for corporations that will cost Pennsylvania residents an estimated $600 million to $800 million annually.

Newly unemployed teachers might consider submitting their resumes to the Department of Corrections, though, with the news that the supposedly cash-strapped government is digging deep to spend $400 million for the construction of State Correctional Institutions Phoenix I and II.

The penitentiary, which is technically two facilities, will supplement at least two existing jails, the Western Penitentiary at Pittsburgh and Fayette County Jail. Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary was built in 2003 with the original intention of replacing Fayette County Jail, but the prison has struggled with lawsuits claiming widespread physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.

Scheduled to be completed in 2015, the new prison’s cell blocks and classroom will be capable of housing almost 5,000 inmates. Officials said there will be buildings for female inmates, the mentally ill and a death row population.

Journalist Rhania Khalek noted that the racial disparities in the education system and prison complex, where 60 per cent of all people are of color, have created a literal “school-to-prison-pipeline.”

“In Philadelphia, black students comprise 81 per cent of those who will be impacted by the closings despite accounting for just 58 per cent of the overall student population,” she wrote. “In stark contrast, just 4 per cent of those affected are white kids who make up 14 per cent of Philly students. And though they make up 81 per cent of Philadelphia students, 93 per cent of kids affected by the closings are low-income.”

June 6, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Student Photographer’s Arrest: Snapshot of Systemic Police Abuse

By Linn Washington Jr. | This Can’t Be Happening | March 29, 2012

I don’t know Temple University photojournalism major Ian Van Kuyk, despite his enrollment in Temple’s Journalism Department, where I teach.

I do know that dynamics embedded in the recent arrest of Van Kuyk by Philadelphia police–an arrest now generating news coverage nationwide–provide yet another snapshot of the systemic abuses I’ve reported and researched during three decades spent documenting the lawlessness endemic among law enforcers.

Philadelphia police roughed-up and arrested Van Kuyk for his photographing a police traffic stop taking place in front of his apartment. The arrest of Van Kuyk violated Philadelphia Police Department directives permitting such photographing as well as court rulings and constitutional rights.

Police harassing citizens lawfully documenting police activities taking place in public is a “widespread and continuing” problem according to the ACLU.

“The right of citizens to record the police is a critical check and balance,” an ACLU analyst noted during a September 2011 speech where he referenced six incidents in five cities of police arresting citizen photographers during just the spring of last year.

Yes, police attacking civilians for lawfully photographing public spaces, police routinely employing unlawful excessive force and prosecutors too frequently turning a blind eye to such police misconduct are all nationwide problems.

Systemic abuses by police and the prosecutors that condone such misconduct corrode public confidence in the justice system and cost taxpayers millions of dollars spent on settling lawsuits alleging illegalities by police.

Historically, abuses by police and particularly those by prosecutors receive short-shrift from most elected officials.

Just a few days before the alleged March 14, 2012 abuse of Van Kuyk, an artist filed a federal lawsuit against a Philadelphia policeman for roughing her up when arresting her less than two miles from the Van Kuyk incident. When arrested that artist was lawfully creating an outdoor artwork.

In January 2012, the City of Philadelphia settled another lawsuit filed against the same artist-arresting policeman, with the City agreeing to pay a woman $30,000. She alleged that the officer had “violently manhandled” her – breaking her nose and spraining her wrist during a sidewalk encounter.

Abundant evidence now implicates a police-prosecutor abuse angle in the Florida fatal shooting of teen Trayvon Martin by 28-year-old George Zimmerman.

The evidence is clear that Sanford, FL police officials acted in incomprehensible variance with established procedures in their handling of that fatal incident, seemingly proceeding in ways calculated to support Zimmerman’s self-defense claim.

And evidence indicates those police officials plus prosecutors rejected a Sanford Police detective’s request to arrest Zimmerman for manslaughter – a management decision that appears to demonstrate less concern for victim Martin than for shooter Zimmerman, whom the evidence shows ignored police orders to not confront Martin, only to have him then claim he shot Martin in self-defense.

The incident producing the arrest of Van Kuyk and outrage from the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) about gross violations of this young photojournalist’s First Amendment rights occurred in a section of South Philadelphia.

Of course there are two sides: in this case the account advanced by arresting officers and accounts from Van Kuyk, his girlfriend (also arrested that night) and a few of their neighbors who witnessed the events.

The only points of agreement between the two versions are that police were questioning one of Van Kuyk’s neighbors outside the South Philadelphia apartment where Van Kuyk lived, and that the budding photojournalist began photographing that encounter.

Philadelphia police are now re-investigating the incident in the wake of criticism and critical news coverage.

According to Van Kuyk, Philly police, after demanding that he stop photographing them, and after their dismissing his First Amendment protests, snatched Van Kuyk up, slammed him to the ground, swept him off to a police station for a nearly 24-hour detention, and eventually slapped him with a slew of charges, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.

How was Van Kuyk ‘obstructing justice’ if, as an NPPA letter to Philadelphia police contends, Van Kuyk “never came closer than ten feet” to the police? That letter notes that Van Kuyk “voluntarily backed up” when ordered by police before a policeman “approached [him] in an aggressive manner demanding that he stop taking pictures.”

Police also arrested Van Kuyk’s girlfriend, detaining her for 19-hours, also slamming her with trumped-up charges. Her arrest arose from her trying to retrieve Van Kuyk’s school-issued camera.

At the core of this incident we see some Philadelphia police failing to follow clearly stated department policy. A Philadelphia Police Department directive issued in September 2011 bars officers from arresting people for “photographing, videotaping or audibly recording police personnel [conducting] official business… in any public space.”

The “Purpose” listed on that policy, Memorandum (11-01), was to “remove any confusion as to duties and responsibilities” when police find themselves subjected to recording devices.

That National Press Photographers Association letter to Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, raising the First Amendment, stated “It is truly abhorrent that not only did your officers abrogate that right [they] chose to add insult to injury by overcharging Mr. Van Kuyk with offenses he did not commit.”

Given that red-line PPD policy directive, police supervisors and prosecutors should have immediately pulled the plug on the charges against Van Kuyk and his girlfriend, but they didn’t.

Prosecutors pressed the flawed-arrest-related charges against Van Kuyk’s girlfriend, extracting their pound of flesh by forcing her into a program requiring 12-hours of community service and paying a $200 fine in exchange for their dismissing those flawed charges.

Van Kuyk is awaiting his preliminary hearing and possible trial.

The prosecution of Van Kuyk’s girlfriend and his pending charges are a stain on both the ethical duty of prosecutors to seek justice and Professional Conduct rules for prosecutors restricting prosecutions “not supported by probable cause.”

Someone somewhere in Philly’s prosecutor’s office should have questioned the questionable if not totally bogus charges arising from arrests prompted by police violating their department policy.

Philadelphia police spokesmen proclaim that the arresting officers knew about that directive protecting First Amendment activity, but contend that “other things happened… that caused the officers to make an arrest,” according to widely reported media accounts.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s record of abusive misconduct, however, casts a dark shadow on the department’s contention that “other things happened,” as do eyewitness accounts.

This incident involving Van Kuyk is hauntingly similar to an August 1972 incident that occurred just ten blocks from Van Kuyk’s apartment. In that 1972 incident, a minister questioning police for pummeling a man outside his house triggered a home-invasion, with police ransacking the minister’s home and arresting him, his wife, his daughter and a house guest from Germany.

As with the Van Kuyk case, the assaulting police hit Rev. Joseph Kirkland, his family and house guest with a slew of charges, including disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer.

Philly prosecutors pressed those charges, which police had concocted to cover-up their criminal assault on Kirkland’s house, but a judge quickly dismissed them.

Philly’s then top prosecutor, Arlen Specter, later a US Senator and top Senate Judicial Committee member, rejected widespread demands to prosecute those offending police officers for their criminal conduct against Rev. Kirkland and his family.

Specter recently released a book criticizing the dysfunction in contemporary partisan politics – an ironic argument coming from someone who once shirked his ethical and professional duties by ignoring outrageous misconduct and abusive behavior by police and prosecutors.

Months after that August 1972 incident, a federal judge in Philadelphia issued a ruling in a class-action police brutality lawsuit in which he criticized arrests without probable cause.

That judge noted that those most likely to be targeted for police abuse are individuals who had the audacity (but legal right) to challenge their initial police contact.

I guess certain abusive practices are just embedded in Philadelphia Police Department culture.

So are a 1972 incident and 1973 court ruling ancient history?

Well, that ’72 incident and ’73 court ruling implicated issues animating the Van Kuyk incident.

Meanwhile, a Maryland man in 2010 avoided a possible 16-year prison term for posting a video on YouTube showing a plainclothes state trooper brandishing a pistol when he stops that man for an alleged speeding violation.

A Maryland judge dismissed the criminal charges filed against that motorcyclist wearing a helmet cam in a ruling reminding police and prosecutors that public officials are “ultimately accountable to the public” and public servants should not expect their action to be “shielded from public observation.”

Philadelphia prosecutors need to drop the charges against Van Kuyk and reverse the proceeding against his girlfriend.

Further, authorities nationwide need to crack down on misconduct by police and prosecutors.

See also:

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March 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 1 Comment