Category Archives: US policing

FBI investigating Ahmaud Arbery shooting as possible hate crime, lawyer says

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Attorney for family of black jogger shot by white men says federal authorities are looking into prosecutors and police in case

The FBI is investigating the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger, by two white men as a possible hate crime, the Arbery family’s attorney said Monday, claiming that federal authorities had launched a criminal inquiry into two district attorneys and the police department involved in the case.

Lee Martin, who represents the family of Arbery, 25, whose 23 February killing in Brunswick, Georgia, was captured on a graphic video recording that sparked national outrage, said he met with officials from the Department of Justice last Thursday.

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Police tried to tase Ahmaud Arbery in 2017 incident, video shows

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  • Officers questioned why Arbery was sitting alone in his car in a park one morning in November 2017
  • Family lawyers say video shows Ahmaud ‘harassed by police’

Police attempted to use a Taser on Ahmaud Arbery, the slain Georgia jogger, after questioning why he was sitting alone in his car in a park one morning in November 2017, according to records and a police video obtained by the Guardian.

Related: Ahmaud Arbery: new focus on district attorney’s flawed prosecutions of black women

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Missouri police officers indicted after video emerges of alleged assault on trans woman

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Two Kansas City officers face charges after footage that appears to show woman’s head being slammed into sidewalk during arrest last year

Two Kansas City police officers face assault charges for allegedly slamming a transgender woman’s face into a concrete sidewalk during an arrest that was captured on video.

A grand jury in Missouri indicted Matthew Brummett, 37, and Charles Prichard, 47, on one misdemeanor charge each of fourth-degree assault related to the encounter, the Jackson county prosecutor’s office announced on Friday.

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California police to investigate officer shown punching 14-year-old boy on video

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  • Rancho Cordova officer pinned teen to the ground
  • Sheriff’s office says boy was ‘physically resistive’

A northern California police officer is under investigation after a video went viral that captured him punching a 14-year-old black boy that he had pinned to the ground.

The video, which was posted to Twitter by the boy’s family and friends, shows an officer from Rancho Cordova, a city east of Sacramento, holding the boy in the dirt, at one point with his hand on his neck, and striking him several times in the chest.

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New York woman was shackled to bed during childbirth, lawsuit says

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  • African American woman, 22, sues New York City and police
  • Representative decries ‘dehumanizing and pointless practice’

A 22-year-old African American woman has filed a civil rights lawsuit in New York, claiming she was shackled to a hospital gurney during labor, after being arrested on a minor assault charge that was later dismissed.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of “Jane Doe” against the City of New York and several New York police department (NYPD) officers who arrested the woman in December 2018, when she was more than 40 weeks pregnant, claims the woman was also handcuffed and shackled after she gave birth to her son.

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Anniversary spotlights criminal justice reform ahead of South Carolina primary

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Five years after a white officer shot Walter Scott in the back, those associated with the case hope its memory will steer voters

Anthony Scott honours the memory of his brother Walter each time he casts a ballot.

“I’m not the sort of person to go and visit graves,” he said, sat at a bustling diner on the outskirts of Charleston. “I can memorialize better by making sure people never forget. Weighing up my vote, making sure the right person is put in the right place.”

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‘Help me!’: video shows Florida officer arresting six-year-old after tantrum

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Body camera footage shows first-grader Kaia Rolle placed in a police car with her wrists bound

Newly released body-camera footage shows the moment a police officer in Florida arrested a six-year-old girl as she cried and begged not to be taken from school.

Kaia Rolle was led to a police vehicle with her hands fastened behind her back in zip ties after having a tantrum at her school in Orlando that included kicking and punching school personnel.

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Black people in California are stopped far more often by police, major study proves

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Statistics, which come from largest-ever dataset compiled about US police stops, lend support to minority groups who have long complained about biased policing

Black people in California were stopped by police officers much more frequently than other racial groups in 2018, and police were more likely to use force against them, new statistics from eight large law enforcement agencies in the state reveal.

Twenty eight per cent of all persons stopped by Los Angeles police officers during the last six months of 2018 were black, while black people account for just 9% of the city’s population, the data shows. In San Francisco, the black population has shrunk over several decades to just 5% of the city’s total population, but 26% of all stops carried out by the SFPD from July through December of 2018 were of black people – marking the widest racial disparity in police stops of the eight reporting agencies.

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Houston police chief criticises politicians and NRA after officer death – video

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Houston's police chief Art Acevedo criticised politicians for not standing up to the National Rifle Association after the the fatal shooting of an officer. 'The NRA doesn't like the fact that we want to take firearms out of the hands of boyfriends that abuse their girlfriends. And who killed our sergeant? A boyfriend abusing his girlfriend,' Acevedo said


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Michael Bloomberg apologizes for stop-and-frisk as he mulls presidential run

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Prominent activists express skepticism after ex-New York mayor apologizes for program that disproportionately affected minorities

Potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has apologized for his longstanding support of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy, a practice that he embraced as New York’s mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color.

The apology, however, was received skeptically by many prominent activists who noted that it was made as he is taking steps to enter the presidential race ahead of the 2020 US election.

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San Francisco transit boss apologizes to rider detained over a sandwich

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Encounter between police officer and man eating on Bart platform prompts protests and allegations of racism

The head of a San Francisco Bay Area commuter train system apologized to a black rider who was detained and cited by police for eating a breakfast sandwich on a train platform. The official promised an investigation after an outcry from people who assailed enforcement of a no-food rule as racist.

More than two dozen people staged an “eat-in” at a Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) station over the weekend and others continue to protest the 4 November encounter, which ended with a 31-year-old man who was headed to work in handcuffs and unable to leave until he had told Bart police his name.

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Father of black woman killed by police in her Fort Worth home dies

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Marquis Jefferson, whose daughter Atatiana was shot dead by police during a welfare check, has died from a heart attack

The father of a black woman fatally shot by a white police officer inside her Fort Worth, Texas, home has died.

A spokesman for Marquis Jefferson, Bruce Carter, told the Dallas Morning News that the father of Atatiana Jefferson suffered a heart attack and died Saturday night at a Dallas hospital. Carter told KDFW that Jefferson “just couldn’t get back from what happened with his daughter”.

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US police sergeant told to ‘tone down the gayness’ wins $20m in damages

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Keith Wildhaber, who was allegedly passed over for promotion 23 times, wins discrimination lawsuit against St Louis county police

A gay Missouri police sergeant has been awarded nearly $20m in damages after he was told if he wanted to be promoted he should “tone down the gayness”.

Related: John Bolton's deputy fails to show up for impeachment testimony – live

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Video shows officer shooting fleeing Fresno teen in the back of the head

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Footage of Fresno, California, incident follows police claims that killing of unarmed Isiah Murrietta-Golding, 16, was justified

Newly released video shows a Fresno, California, police officer shooting a fleeing, unarmed 16-year-old in the back of the head and then handcuffing the boy as he lies motionless on the ground.

Surveillance footage of the 14 April 2017 killing of Isiah Murrietta-Golding, released this week by the family’s attorney, has spread across the US, with critics calling it another example of extreme police brutality and unjustified lethal force that would have received little attention if lawyers hadn’t published the video.

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‘A couple of drinks with dinner’: Chicago police chief found asleep in his car

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  • Eddie Johnson says incident related to medication
  • Mayor’s comments differ from first official explanation

The top police officer in Chicago told the mayor he had “a couple of drinks with dinner” before he fell asleep at a stop sign while driving home on Thursday, an incident the chief contends was related to a change in his blood pressure medication.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson did not mention having anything to drink when he spoke to reporters on Thursday night and a department spokesman said then officers who responded to a 911 call reporting a man asleep in a car at a stop sign did not observe any signs of impairment.

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Fort Worth woman was playing video games at home when officer killed her

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Family attorney says Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew when she was shot dead

Protesters gathered on Sunday in Fort Worth to call for the arrest of the white police officer who shot dead a black woman in her home after arriving to conduct a welfare check.

Related: 'That's murder': Fort Worth police officer shoots woman inside her home

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‘That’s murder’: Fort Worth police officer shoots woman inside her home

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  • Lawyer and family of Atatiana Jefferson, 28, demand answers
  • Police called after report front door standing open

After a white police officer responding to a report of a house door standing open killed a black woman inside her own home on Saturday, an attorney for the woman’s family said the officer had not had time to perceive a threat before shooting.

“You didn’t hear the officer shout, ‘Gun, gun, gun,’” attorney Lee Merritt said after viewing video taken from a Fort Worth officer’s bodycam during the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson, 28.

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Police order evacuations as fast-moving wildfire spreads near San Francisco

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Cal Fire said flames consumed about 60 acres in little more than two hours in the hills of a Bay Area community, Sanders Ranch

Police ordered evacuations early on Thursday as a fast-moving wildfire spread in the hills of a San Francisco Bay Area community.

The flames surged despite the area being part of a large parcel of northern California where more than 1.5 million people have had their power deliberately cut off to try to prevent the kind of blazes that have devastated parts of the state in recent years.

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‘They believe we’re criminals’: black Puerto Ricans say they’re a police target

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Activists say police racially profile black communities, despite Puerto Rico’s image as a melting pot without racial problems

When Nina Figueroa, 25, protested with fellow Puerto Ricans this summer to oust the then governor, Ricardo Rosselló, she believed she stood out to police. Figueroa, a college student studying comparative literature, had been arrested multiple times while in the streets and was starting to notice a pattern.

“I have been arrested in protests three times and all three times I was doing nothing,” says Figueroa. “I asked myself: ‘Why do the police arrest me so much?’ And obviously it wasn’t until I understood that I’m an easy target for the police because I’m a black woman.”

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‘This is gonna look so bad’: bodycam footage shows Texas police leading black man by rope – video

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A white police officer in Texas could be heard saying ‘this is gonna look so bad’ while leading a homeless black man by a rope down the street in newly released body camera footage.

Two Galveston police officers arrested 43-year-old Donald Neely on 3 August, accusing him of criminal trespass. Images shared online of the two white officers leading Neely using a rope tied to his handcuffs sparked public outrage, leading to a Texas Rangers investigation and a Galveston county sheriff’s office review

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