Category Archives: US policing

FBI launches inquiry into alleged abuse by police at Baton Rouge warehouse

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An obscure warehouse known as the ‘Brave Cave’ was used by officers to detain and torture suspects, recent lawsuits claim

The FBI said Friday it has opened a civil rights investigation into allegations in recent lawsuits that police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, assaulted drug suspects they detained in an obscure warehouse known as the “Brave Cave.”

In one case, a man says he was taken to the warehouse and beaten so severely he needed hospital care before being booked into jail. In another, a woman claims she was strip-searched, with an officer using a flashlight to scan her body.

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Ex-officer who left woman in car to be hit by train in Colorado given probation

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Jordan Steinke to serve 30 months’ probation for 2022 incident in which she handcuffed and placed woman in car parked on train tracks

A former Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train, inflicting serious injuries to the woman, has avoided a jail sentence and must serve 30 months on supervised probation.

Jordan Steinke, 29, was sentenced on Friday by Weld county district court judge Timothy Kerns, who found her guilty of reckless endangerment and assault for the 16 September 2022 crash near Platteville. Kerns acquitted the former Fort Lupton police officer of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter after her bench trial in July.

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Family demand Mississippi cops fired for arresting Black boy, 10, who peed in car park

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Lawyer for family threaten federal civil rights lawsuit against Senatobia if demand not met after boy detained and placed in cell

The family of a 10-year-old Black boy who was arrested and placed in a cell for relieving himself in a parking lot say they will file a federal civil rights lawsuit against a Mississippi city unless police officers involved in the detention are fired.

Quantavious Eason was detained and taken to a police station in Senatobia after an officer spotted him urinating behind a car outside a law office last month while his mother was inside getting advice on a housing issue.

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By hook or by bike, car, boat and kayak: elusive Vermont robbery suspect caught

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Eric Edson, 52, gave police the slip in multiple ways and was finally caught after he jumped into a river to evade capture

A Vermont armed robbery suspect who police say eluded capture in the past week in a vehicle, on a stolen bike, on foot and in a stolen sailboat was arrested on Thursday after he was spotted in a kayak on a river, authorities said.

Eric Edson, 52, was wanted on accusations of a robbery of a store in Burlington on 24 August, impeding and assaulting two police officers and the theft of a sailboat and vehicles, police said.

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Cop City protesters charged with racketeering as Georgia takes hard line

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Some of 61 defendants charged also face money laundering and domestic terrorism charges for environmental protests

Dozens of activists who oppose a controversial police and fire training facility in Georgia known as Cop City have been charged with racketeering, appearing to confirm fears from civil rights groups that prosecutors are stepping up an aggressive pursuit of environmental protesters.

A total of 61 people – most not from Georgia – were indicted for violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act last week, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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New York plan to monitor Labor Day parties with drones prompts outcry

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Police accused of playing ‘fast and loose’ with New Yorkers’ rights to due process and to freely hold peaceful gatherings

New York City police plan to monitor large gatherings and noise complaints over Labor Day weekend with surveillance drones, officials have announced, prompting outcry from privacy advocates.

Police said Thursday that the remote-controlled aircrafts would be deployed to keep tabs on large gatherings, including private events, as New Yorkers prepared to celebrate the weekend heading into Monday’s holiday.

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Ohio: video released of pregnant Black woman shot dead by police

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Ta’Kiya Young, 21, pronounced dead shortly after Blendon township shooting, in which unborn daughter did not survive

Authorities in Ohio on Friday released police body-camera video showing the fatal police shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a young Black woman who was pregnant. Young’s family had seen the video, the family’s lawyer said.

The footage showed Young slowly accelerating toward an officer in her path as he yelled for her to stop before firing the single bullet that ended her life.

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Ex-Alabama deputy sheriff sentenced to prison for sexual assault on woman in his custody

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Joshua Davidson given sentence of 12 and a half years for attack while on duty as a Dallas county deputy sheriff

A former Alabama deputy sheriff has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody.

On 30 January 2020, while on duty as a Dallas county deputy sheriff, 33-year-old Joshua Davidson placed a woman in custody following a traffic stop. He drove her down a dark road to a desolate location where he forced her to perform oral sex on him against her will, the justice department said in a statement.

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Death of New York motorcyclist in ‘buy-and-bust’ police operation deemed homicide

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Eric Duprey died after a police officer threw a picnic cooler at him, knocking him off his motorbike

The death of a new New York scooter rider who died during a “buy-and-bust” police operation in the Bronx has been upgraded to a homicide, the city medical examiner has said.

The examiner ruled Eric Duprey’s death a homicide, caused by blunt force trauma to his head.

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Philadelphia police change narrative in killing of Eddie Irizarry by officers

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Authorities had earlier claimed the 27-year-old had lunged at officers with a knife, but now say he never stepped out of his car

Philadelphia’s police commissioner said on Wednesday that a police officer who shot and killed a driver who was sitting in his car last week in north Philadelphia is being suspended and will be fired.

Danielle Outlaw said that officer Mark Dial will be suspended with intent to dismiss him in 30 days for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the 14 August shooting death of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry.

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FBI arrest California police officers involved in racist text messages scandal

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A grand jury had indicted officers from Antioch and Pittsburg for a wide range of offenses, including criminal conspiracy

The FBI arrested nine current and former California police officers on Thursday as part of a major criminal investigation into racist text messages of dozens of law enforcement officials, prosecutors said.

Early-morning federal raids, first reported by the Bay Area News Group, rounded up officers from Antioch and Pittsburg, two cities east of San Francisco, after they were charged in four grand jury indictments.

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Kansas newspaper raided by police to have seized items returned

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Police raid on office of Marion County Record drew widespread condemnation by press freedom advocates

Authorities have announced the controversial search warrant of a local Kansas newspaper office has been withdrawn.

The Marion county attorney Joel Ensey announced that following a review of the search warrants made last Friday at multiple locations in Marion county, he has “come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized”.

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Denver officer fatally shot man thought to be holding knife – but it was a marker pen

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Brandon Cole, 36, died after an officer fired at him twice after receiving a domestic violence complaint from a neighbor

A Denver police officer fatally shot a man who was holding a marker pen, which the officer mistakenly believed was a knife, officials said on Monday.

Newly released body-camera footage of the killing of Brandon Cole, 36, on 5 August shows an officer firing two shots at the man who was on the sidewalk. A young child and a woman were standing close behind the man as the officer fired at him and he fell to the ground.

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‘Are you kidding, carjacking?’: The problem with facial recognition in policing

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When a pregnant Black woman was falsely arrested, she fought back. Here’s what happened next. Plus, the week in AI

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Porcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant when police in Detroit, Michigan came to arrest her on charges of carjacking and robbery. She was getting her two children ready for school when six police officers knocked on her door and presented her with an arrest warrant. She thought it was a prank.

“Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?” the lawsuit Woodruff filed against Detroit police reads. She sent her children upstairs to tell her fiance that “Mommy’s going to jail”.

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Former Mississippi officers plead guilty to state charges for torturing Black men

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Group of six white Mississippi police officers had tortured two Black men for an hour and a half during a house raid

In late January, a group of six white Mississippi police officers raided a house in Rankin county, a suburb outside of Jackson, and tortured two Black men for an hour and a half. The following month, the justice department opened a civil rights investigation into the Rankin county sheriff’s department, and since then, the officers have either resigned or been fired. Activists have also called for the resignation of Rankin county sheriff Bryan Bailey.

On Monday, the former officers pleaded guilty to state charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy from the assault of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. The former sheriff’s deputies Brett McAlpin, Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke, along with Joshua Hartfield, a former police officer in nearby Richland, had already pleaded guilty to federal charges on 3 August.

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Police raid local Kansas newspaper office and homes of reporters

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City’s entire five-officer police force seize computers, cellphones and reporting materials from Marion County Record

Local police in Marion, Kansas, conducted a raid on the offices of a local newspaper on Friday as well as the homes of the publication’s publishers and reporters.

Eric Meyer, the owner and publisher of the Marion County Record, told the Kansas Reflector that the city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies conducted the raid, which included the seizure of computers, cellphones and reporting materials.

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‘Cop City’: civil rights groups urge US to investigate surveillance of protesters

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ACLU and NAACP among organizations condemning homeland security department over ‘domestic violent extremist’ label

Prominent civil rights and civil liberties organizations have called on the US homeland security department to investigate the agency’s intelligence-gathering on protesters against ‘Cop City’, the police and fire department training center planned for a forest south-east of Atlanta.

The organizations draw attention to the dozens of environmental protesters arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in a letter to the department director, Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges have caused outrage among many observers who accuse Georgia law enforcement of a heavy-handed crackdown on the protest movement.

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US officer who put handcuffed woman in car hit by freight train found guilty

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Jordan Steinke convicted on misdemeanour charges but found not guilty of more serious charges over 2022 crash in Colorado

A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train was found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault but was acquitted of a third charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter during a trial Friday.

Jordan Steinke was the first of two officers to go to trial over the 16 September 2022 crash that left Yareni Rios-Gonzalez seriously injured.

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Rudy Giuliani ally, pardoned by Trump, gives trove of papers to special counsel

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NYPD’s ex-commissioner Bernie Kerik gave about 600MB of pdfs to Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump for the Capitol attack

The former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik, a leading Trump ally who worked with Rudy Giuliani on attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has given the special counsel Jack Smith thousands of documents, Kerik’s lawyer said on Monday.

“I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the special counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about two weeks to discuss,” Timothy Parlatore told CNN.

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LA sheriff’s office under scrutiny after deputy punches mother holding baby

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Officer is seen hitting woman twice in face as she holds her baby in video released by LA county sheriff Robert Luna

For the second time in a week, the Los Angeles sheriff’s department is facing scrutiny over a brutal force incident, this time after a deputy was caught on camera punching a mother twice in the face as she held her newborn baby.

The LA county sheriff, Robert Luna, on Wednesday released footage of the July 2022 incident in Palmdale, north-east of the city of Los Angeles.

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