Tag: Police
Colorado officers who shot and killed fleeing teen won’t be charged
The Colorado police officers who shot and killed a teen this summer while he was running away from them will not be charged with a crime, a report said Wednesday.
A grand jury in Colorado Springs unanimously concluded that cops were justified in killing 19-year-old De’Von Bailey, who was armed with a handgun, in August shooting, the Denver Post reported.
The decision was announced by the local district attorney, who told reporters the case “was a horrible tragedy for our community.”
The officers who shot Bailey responded to the scene on Aug. 3 after receiving a report of a suspect with a gun in the area.
The cops asked Bailey and another man to hold their hands above their waists so they could check them for weapons, body camera footage of the incident shows.
As one of the officers approached Bailey from behind to search him, he sprinted off, the video shows. The cops chased after him, repeatedly yelling for Bailey to get his hands up.
They then opened fire, hitting Bailey in the back. Bailey collapsed at the scene and the officers searched him, discovering the handgun tucked in his shorts, the video shows.
The killing touched off protests across the state over the summer as the video of the shooting drew national headlines.
A lawyer for the Bailey family said his relatives were “extremely disappointed” with the grand jury decision, the Denver Post reported.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/13/colorado-officers-who-shot-and-killed-fleeing-teen-wont-be-charged/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Florida man allegedly threatened to behead cops, eat their eyes
A Florida man allegedly threatened to behead police officers then “eat their eyes and tongues” while he was under arrest.
Ken Freeman, 50, remains held on bond Monday after he repeatedly threatened to decapitate six officers in a Brevard County parking lot, the Melbourne Police Department said.
Police were called to the scene Thursday after Freeman got into a fight with another driver who cut him off on the road.
Freeman and the other man “flipped each other off” before he followed the driver into a Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot, authorities said.
That’s when Freeman allegedly exited his vehicle carrying a large knife, punched the other driver in the shoulder and held up the weapon to the man’s ear.
“I’ll cut your f–king head off in front of your family!” Freeman said, according to the affidavit.
Police then arrived to the mall parking lot, where Freeman allegedly repeatedly threatened the six officers.
“He stated several times he would cut officers’ heads off and eat their eyes and tongues,” police records said.
Freeman was booked into Brevard County Jail on charges for assault, battery and threatening death or serious bodily harm to a law enforcement officer.
He is scheduled to be arraigned June 13.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/20/florida-man-allegedly-threatened-to-behead-cops-eat-their-eyes/
Photo Credit: Brevard County Sheriff’s Office
Woman sentenced for posing as sheriff’s deputy to free boyfriend from jail
An Arkansas woman who posed as a California sheriff’s deputy to break her boyfriend out of jail has been sentenced.
Maxine Feldstein, 30, pleaded guilty on Monday to several charges, including criminal impersonation, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but half her sentence was suspended by the judge, KFSM-TV reported.
In July, Feldstein posed as deputy “L. Kershaw,” with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, at the Washington County Jail, and presented forged documents to fool those at the jail into freeing her boyfriend.
Boyfriend Nicholas Lowe reportedly told Feinstein to pose as a deputy from the sheriff’s office, the station reported, citing court documents. Lowe told his girlfriend she should tell the jail staff that the sheriff’s office was “having issues with overcrowding and all low-priority extraditions have been suspended.”
Two days later, a real Ventura County sheriff’s deputy called the jail to let them know he was on his way to pick up Lowe, which is when jail officials realized what happened.
The couple was arrested in Fayetteville about a month after the incident.
In court earlier this week, Feldstein also pleaded guilty to second-degree criminal impersonation, forgery and third-degree escape. In February, Lowe pleaded guilty to third-degree escape and was given a year in prison, with credit for time served, and will be suspended for five years once he’s released.
Photo Credit: nypost.com/Washington County Detention Center
Woman beat boyfriend with his prosthetic leg after he tried to break up with her
A New Orleans-area woman, who beat up her ex-boyfriend with his own prosthetic leg earlier this year because he tried to break up with her, was arrested last Wednesday, police said.
On Feb. 11, Michelle Jackson, 58, was drinking with her now ex-boyfriend when he told her he wanted to see someone else, Capt. Jason Rivarde said. The man went to sleep without incident but awoke the next morning with an injured hand and a large cut on his head that was dripping blood, The Times-Picayune reported.
Jackson, who had left before authorities arrived, allegedly told a relative she had beat the man with his prosthetic leg and thought she had killed him. The woman allegedly told police that she had stabbed him, but Rivarde said there was no evidence.
U.S. Marshals arrested Jackson in her home Wednesday, New Orleans Fox 8 reported. She was booked into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center on an aggravated battery charge without bond, the report said.
Someone ‘donated’ 5 pounds of marijuana to a Florida thrift shop
Employees at the Pines Thrift Store in Sarasota, Florida, are scratching their heads after someone left nearly 5 pounds of marijuana outside the shop last week.
Four bags of vacuum-sealed marijuana turned up inside a tote bag near the clothing drop-off area outside the store, officials with the Sarasota Police Department told Fox 13.
Inside the tote was a brown paper bag, which contained the pot.
The cops were called after an employee opened the bag and saw what was inside.
The pot weighed about 4.7 pounds and is worth an estimated $5,400, ABC News reported.
So far, no arrests have been made, according to Fox 13. However, the Sarasota Police Department sent the bags off for DNA and other testing to find out the drugs’ source.
Officials are also checking to see if surveillance footage of the area could help them in their investigation, WFTS-News reported.
https://nypost.com/2018/09/04/someone-donated-5-pounds-of-marijuana-to-a-florida-thrift-shop/
Cop fired for allegedly filming office sex with police body camera
A former Arizona cop was fired earlier this year for allegedly using a department body camera to film himself having sex and storing pornography on an office computer, the Arizona Republic reported, citing court records.
Officer Anthony Doran became the subject of an administrative probe by the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in March, the report said. The contents of that investigation became public this month after a Superior, Arizona, resident filed a civil complaint alleging that Doran had been among several officers who beat and falsely arrested him during a 2016 search of his home.
According to the report, Doran had stored a video on a flash drive of him having sex with a woman in his office. The report said the woman was not a police employee.
The flash drive was discovered by an office secretary connected to Doran’s computer, which allegedly contained a folder titled “fun times.” A deputy subsequently discovered 36 gigabytes worth of photos on the folder, including pornography and a naked girl around the age of 5, the report said.
Doran told the Republic that he had stored both the video and the pornography on a flash drive that “had nothing to do with work,” and denied being on duty when he filmed himself. Doran said the naked girl was his daughter and was not photographed in a sexual manner, the paper said. Superior’s town manager fired Doran following the investigation.
Superior is a small mining town, with a population of about 3,000, located about 65 miles east of Phoenix. The civil complaint that was filed this month accused Superior of hiring officers with checkered histories in order to cut costs, naming Doran among several officers who allegedly beat and falsely arrested a resident on trumped-up charges.
“The town hires substandard officers with extensive misconduct records to save money,” the complaint alleged. “Once the town hires these substandard, ‘second-chance’ officers, it fails to appropriately train/retrain them.”
According to the Arizona Republic, most of Superior’s nine police officers were at one point fired or disciplined by other police departments. Doran was previously terminated in 2013 from the Pima County Sheriff’s Office for sexual misconduct, records showed.
Superior Mayor Mila Besich-Lira said the town is pursuing reforms “so we don’t continue this poor behavior.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/08/15/cop-fired-for-allegedly-filming-office-sex-with-police-body-camera/
Photo Credit: Pinal County Sheriff’s Office
#StopCallingTheCopsOnBlackPeople2018
A Black Student at Yale Was Napping in a Common Area, and a White Student Called the Police
A black graduate student at Yale who fell asleep in her dorm’s common room said she had a disturbing awakening this week when a white student flipped on the lights, told her she had no right to sleep there and called the campus police.
It was the latest in a string of recent episodes across the country in which the police have been summoned to respond to minor complaints involving people of color.
As in many of those encounters, including the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks and the questioning of black Airbnb guests in California, the Yale incident was captured in a widely shared video that set off anger online.
The graduate student, Lolade Siyonbola, posted a 17-minute recording of her encounter with police officers who responded to the call, and it touched a nerve, with more than 600,000 views as of Wednesday.
Ms. Siyonbola, 34, who is earning her master’s degree in African studies, said that she had camped out in the common room to work on a “marathon of papers.” On Monday night, she decided to take a nap.
Around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, she said, someone came in and turned on the lights, asking: “Is there someone in here? Is there someone sleeping in here? You’re not supposed to be here.”
Ms. Siyonbola said the woman told her she was going to call the police. In a shorter video that Ms. Siyonbola posted, the woman, who is not identified, says: “I have every right to call the police. You cannot sleep in that room.”
The woman, who also lives in the dorm, reported “an unauthorized person in the common room,” said Lynn Cooley, the dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences, who addressed the episode in an email to students on Tuesday.
Several officers responded to the call.
“We need to make sure that you belong here,” a female officer says in the longer video.
Ms. Siyonbola produced the key to her apartment and opened the door, and the officers told her they needed to see her ID.
After she asked why, one says, “I don’t know anybody from anybody, so I’m here just to make sure you’re supposed to be here, make sure she’s supposed to be here, and we’ll get out of your hair.”
Ms. Siyonbola relented and handed over her ID.
But the officers struggled to verify it, and Ms. Siyonbola appeared to grow more frustrated.
At one point, she says, “I am not going to justify my existence here.”
At another, an officer who identifies himself as a supervisor says, “We determine who is allowed to be here or who’s not allowed to be here, regardless of whether you feel you’re allowed to be here or not.”
“I hope that makes you feel powerful,” she responds.
The Yale Police Department referred inquiries to the university.
“We believe the Yale police who responded followed procedures,” Tom Conroy, a spokesman for the university, said on Wednesday. “As we do with every incident, we will be reviewing the call and the response of the police officers to ensure that the proper protocol was followed, and to determine if there was anything we could have done better.”
When asked if it was common practice to run IDs in such situations, he said it was.
Confirming her identity took longer than usual because the Ms. Siyonbola’s preferred name, which was printed on her ID, was different from what was in the university record, a school official said.
Late Wednesday, in an email to graduate students, Kimberly M. Goff-Crews, Yale’s vice president for student life, said that she was “deeply troubled” by the episode and that she and Dr. Cooley would hold listening sessions with students in the coming days.
“This incident and others recently reported to me underscore that we have work to do to make Yale not only excellent but also inclusive,” Ms. Goff-Crews said.
Earlier, Ms. Siyonbola called the police “ridiculous” for not leaving after seeing that she had a key and an ID. She said the larger issue was that “there are not consequences to you if you call the police on an innocent person, especially if they’re black.”
In her view, it was not an isolated incident at Yale. “I can tell you tons of other minor stories of microaggressions,” she said.
Ms. Siyonbola, who founded the Yoruba Cultural Institute in Brooklyn, is the author of a book about African history and diaspora migration. At Yale, her research focuses on migration and identity formation.
Dr. Cooley said in her email that more work needed to be done “to make Yale a truly inclusive place.”
“I am committed to redoubling our efforts to build a supportive community in which all graduate students are empowered in their intellectual pursuits and professional goals within a welcoming environment,” she wrote.
Ms. Siyonbola said she was disappointed in the dean’s response.
“It wasn’t compassionate,” she said. “It was very high-level — like we have to do better someday, somehow.”
She said she hoped this episode and others like it would prompt the administration to take action.
“This is what happens every day in America,” she added. “These things are unfortunate, they’re disappointing, they’re disheartening, but they’re not shocking anymore.”
Article via: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/nyregion/yale-black-student-nap.html
Dutch Cops targeting kids who ‘look’ too poor for their clothes
Stop, frisk and strip!
Dutch police have launched a controversial new program that targets youth who “look” too poor to own the expensive clothes and jewelry they’re wearing, according to reports.
For the pilot program — which critics say goes far beyond New York City’s highly criticized stop-and-frisk policing strategy — cops in Rotterdam will stop young people on the street and question them about how they afforded their designer duds and bling, a high-ranking police source told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
n some cases, police will “undress” the youth and force them to hand over the upscale gear, Rotterdam police chief Frank Paauw told the paper.
“They are often young guests who consider themselves untouchable. We’re going to undress them on the street,” Paauw said, according to a translation by the UK Independent.
“We regularly take a Rolex from a suspect. Clothes rarely. And that is especially a status symbol for young people. Some young people now walk with jackets of €1800 [$2,230]. They do not have any income, so the question is how they get there,” the police chief said.
The young men targeted by cops often have no income and are already in debt from fines stemming from previous convictions, he added.
That “undermines the rule of law” and sends “a completely false signal to local residents,” he said.
But critics say the policing strategy is a recipe for racial profiling.
“We realized that [they] do not want to create the appearance that there is ethnic profiling but the chances of this happening are very large,” city ombudsman Anne Mieke Zwaneveld told the paper.
It’s legally hard to prove that cops are justified in stripping people of their clothing on the street, she said.
“It is not forbidden to walk around in the street. In addition, it is often unclear how such a piece of clothing is paid and how old it is.”
Jair Schalkwijk,a spokesman for a national anti-profiling group Control Alt Delete, said the program flies in the face of a law enforcement promise not to target people who look like “typical criminals.”
The pilot program launched in the Rotterdam West section of the city.
Police say they will target one gang in particular, along with people linked to drug crimes and illegal gambling.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/cops-targeting-kids-who-look-too-poor-for-their-clothes/
Man kept bodies of mom, brother in home for a year. He couldn’t bring himself to bury them, so he kept them in the house.
Robert Kuefler of White Bear Lake, Minn., tried to discourage visitors, according to prosecutors.
It was likely because he kept the decaying bodies of his mother and twin brother inside his house for about a year, they said.
This week Kuefler was charged with interference with a dead body or scene of death because he neglected to tell authorities that his family members died of natural causes, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.
The Pioneer-Press gave Kuefler’s age as 60, while the Minneapolis Star-Tribune listed it as 59.
Before the bodies were found in September 2016, prosecutors said, Kuefler took several steps to prevent relatives and others from stopping by or making inquiries, the newspaper reported:
- He sent out a Christmas card saying his mother and brother were still alive but were having health problems.
- He wrote that his mother didn’t want people to visit the home.
- He told people that neither his mother nor his brother could hear the phone ring.
Police say Kuefler told them his mother, Evelyn Kuefler, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard Kuefler, died in July 2015.
But he couldn’t bring himself to bury them, so he kept them in the house.
At one point, he moved his brother’s body into the bathroom because it was “in the way,” the Pioneer-Press reported.
The complaint says his mother’s body was decayed and skeletal and his brother’s body was “mummified.”
Kuefler was previously arrested last year on suspicion of exploitation of a vulnerable adult, but apparently there wasn’t enough evidence to support the charge, the Star-
Tribune reported.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/07/man-kept-bodies-of-mom-brother-in-home-for-a-year-prosecutors/
Inmates broke out of jail to burglarize a Dollar General, then snuck back in to sell what they stole
A group of Mississippi inmates busted out of jail this week, burglarized a bargain store — and then broke back in and returned to their cells, according to a report.
The jailbirds, identified as Levontaye Ellington, Travis Baker, Maurice Robertson and Jacquiez Williams broke out of the Holmes-Humphreys County Correctional Facility in Lexington Tuesdayby hopping a fence, Mississippi News Now reported.
Once in the clear, the men walked less than a mile to a Dollar General chain store after closing and swiped anything they could grab.
“They stole cigarettes, cigarette lighters, phones and just items they felt they could sell in jail,” Lexington Police Chief Robert Kirklin said according to the report.
But rather than extend their newfound freedom, the foursome inexplicably snuck back into the jail, undetected, baffling police.
“You’re already in jail, but you want to break out and break back in?” the chief said. “That is just something. I heard it all.”
The inmates denied their involvement in the scheme, even though they were caught on store surveillance footage, according to the report.
“Just looking at the type of clothing they had on and just one of the bags they had put some of the merchandise in,” police were able to pin the inmates to the crime, Kirklin said.
The inmates were charged with commercial burglary.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/09/21/inmates-sneak-back-into-jail-after-breaking-out/