August 20, 2010
ACLU suit challenges ban on video recording cops
The 20,000-member ACLU of Illinois intends to launch a program of monitoring police activity in public places using audio and video recording devices
By Frank Main
The Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — A lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Chicago seeks to stop Cook County prosecutors from charging citizens for making recordings of on-duty police officers without their permission.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois sued Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent prosecutors from charging ACLU officials and volunteers with violating a law that makes recording cops a felony under the state's eavesdropping statute.
The 20,000-member ACLU of Illinois intends to launch a program of monitoring police activity in public places using audio and video recording devices, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit notes that Christopher Drew, 59, of the 1500 block of West Jonquil Terrace in Rogers Park, is already facing felony eavesdropping charges.
On Dec. 2, Drew was arrested at 103 N. State for allegedly peddling goods illegally. When he was processed in the police station, officers found a digital recorder and discovered he recorded his conversation with the officers, police said. The charges against Drew are pending.
Similar charges have been brought against civilians in Champaign, Crawford and DeKalb counties, according to the ACLU.
A spokesman for Alvarez declined comment on the lawsuit.
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August 11, 2010
Drugs killed Calif. inmate, not TASER
Coroner's report lists 'acute methamphetamine toxicity' as the primary cause of death
By Sarah Burge
The Press Enterprise
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CAlif. — Methamphetamine was the primary cause of the July 2009 death of a 27-year-old man who was repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by deputies, according to a report from the Riverside County sheriff-coroner's office.
Jonathan Michael Nelson, of Rancho Cucamonga, died July 30, 2009, after a struggle with deputies at the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley.
The coroner's report lists "acute methamphetamine toxicity" as the primary cause of death but also cites a "prolonged confrontation with law enforcement," heart disease and obesity as significant conditions.
Nelson was 6-foot-5-inches and weighed 400 pounds. He had a history of substance abuse, although his family believed he had quit using drugs, relatives said after his death.
Nelson's family could not be reached for comment last week.
Sheriff's Department use of Tasers was criticized in a June grand jury report that cited a case in which a deputy shocked the same person eight times in less than a minute. The report did not identify the person, nor did it give the date of the incident or say whether that person was injured.
Sheriff's officials have declined to release that information until the department submits its formal response to the grand jury.
The grand jury report urged sheriff's officials to evaluate their policies and training to ensure that Tasers are not being overused. After the report was released, sheriff's officials said the department already has the kinds of policies and training procedures the grand jury recommended.
When and how Tasers are deployed has long been a point of controversy for law enforcement in general, particularly when the stun guns are used on people who are on drugs and disoriented.
TASER International says the weapons it makes are less than lethal and a valuable tool for police and that the vast majority of Taser deployments do not result in injury.
However, critics of Tasers such as the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that the effect of Tasers, especially on people under the influence of drugs, are not fully understood and that police should use them with greater caution.
Although Tasers have been named by Inland coroner's offices as a contributing factor in deaths, they are not believed to ever have been cited as the primary factor, authorities have said.
The cause of death for another man who died last year following Taser shocks by Riverside County sheriff's deputies has not been disclosed.
Terrace Clifton Smith, 52, of Moreno Valley, died in August 2009, but the sheriff-coroner's office reports on his death have not been released.
Several shocks
Deputies first encountered Nelson with his dog at Paradise Valley Ranch on Cactus Valley Road in a rural area outside Hemet the evening of July 29. At the time, sheriff's officials said Nelson was behaving as if he had a mental problem or was under the influence of drugs.
Sheriff's officials said Nelson tried to run but deputies tackled and shocked him twice with a Taser.
It took them about 15 minutes to get him into a patrol car, according to the coroner's report.
Deputies took Nelson to Hemet Valley Medical Center for treatment of a small cut on his face and a medical evaluation to clear him for booking, the report said.
He was released from the hospital and booked into jail about 10 p.m. on suspicion of resisting an officer. There, he told a nurse that he had been "beat in the head with a billy club," the report stated.
While a deputy was putting him in a holding room, he did not follow orders and tried to kick at the deputy, the report said. After a deputy shocked him with a Taser, Nelson complied.
About 3½ hours later, Nelson began to remove his clothing and bang his head on the window of the holding room door, the report said. Deputies moved him into a safety cell designed to deter inmates from harming themselves. As deputies were leaving the cell, Nelson, on all fours, grabbed at their legs, the report said.
According to the coroner's report, deputies put Nelson in a "control hold" and stunned him about two times with the Taser in a mode that shoots out barbs attached to long wires and delivers a shock that momentarily incapacitates the target. Nelson was also shocked about four times with a Taser in "drive stun" mode - in which the Taser is held against the target's skin. Drive stun shocks, while painful, do not incapacitate.
While handcuffing him, deputies noticed blood coming from Nelson' face and put a "spit shield" over his head. Soon, they saw that Nelson was not breathing and called for medical aid. He went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead shortly before 4 a.m. at a nearby hospital.
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June 22, 2010
Seattle teen apologizes for shoving cop who punched her
The 17-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile with third-degree assault
Canadian Press
SEATTLE — A Seattle teen shown on video shoving a police officer who then punched her in the face has apologized to the officer in a private meeting.
Seattle police say Officer Ian Walsh accepted the apology yesterday.
Separately, the King County prosecutor charged the 17-year-old girl as a juvenile with third-degree assault, which is punishable by a maximum 30 days in detention.
The incident happened Monday as the teen was intervening in a friend's arrest for jaywalking.
James Kelley of the Urban League of Seattle says he requested yesterday's meeting between the teen and the officer at a community center to help calm the situation.
Police meantime, say the department's civilian-led Office of Professional Accountability is investigating the 39-year-old officer's actions.
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May 28, 2010
West Memphis Chief: Officers are outgunned
Cops need the AR-15 — they need the protection
By Kevin McKenzie
The Commercial Appeal
The West Memphis police chief who said his officers are outgunned would find a strong ally in a great-grandmother in Maine named Paulette Beaudoin.
Beaudoin, 76, is a state representative from Biddeford who sponsored legislation that is providing Maine State Police troopers with more firepower in the form of AR-15 assault rifles, replacing their 9mm Ruger rifles.
"It's like we're sending them out and saying 'go get killed,' in a sense, with the 9 millimeter," Beaudoin said Wednesday. "They need the AR-15; they need the protection."
The rapidly fired bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle wielded by a teenager last week pierced a West Memphis police car and its engine as two officers were killed.
Similar scenes have been repeated since Los Angeles police met armor-piercing fire in 1997 from two bank robbers armed with military-style assault weapons.
Scott Knight, the Chaska, Minn., chief of police and chairman of the firearms committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police , said many departments nationwide have evolved from arming officers with shotguns and 9mm carbine rifles to issuing military-style AR-15 and AK-47 assault weapons.
"I assure you this is not a trendy thing," said Knight, chief of a department that has AR-15 rifles in patrol cars. "This is a necessity-driven change."
However, he also said law enforcers have seen an "uptick" in being outgunned since Congress allowed a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons to expire in 2004.
The association has lobbied to revive the ban, but that idea "is not even being entertained" in Washington, Knight said.
West Memphis Police Chief Bob Paudert said his officers are outgunned after two of them - his son, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, and officer Bill Evans - were killed May 20 during a traffic stop on Interstate 40 by suspects armed with an AK-47.
The father and son from Ohio fueled by anti-government beliefs, Jerry R. Kane, 45, and 16-year-old Joe Kane, also wounded Crittenden County Sheriff Dick Busby and his deputy chief, W.A. Wren, before the suspects were killed in a West Memphis Walmart parking lot.
West Memphis Asst. Police Chief Mike Allen said the department is exploring ways to equip every officer with a rifle, possibly like the Ruger Mini-14 rifles that patrol supervisors now carry.
The department's Special Response Team or SWAT has AR-15 assault rifles.
"In fact, we had SWAT team members that were actually on the scene at Walmart when we came in contact with the suspects," Allen said.
According to FBI statistics , of the 530 law enforcement officers who were killed nationwide from 1999 to 2008, 131 of them, about 25 percent, were shot with rifles or shotguns.
Of the 18 cases where bullets penetrated the officers' body armor, all but one involved rifles.
Knight said that one of the benefits that the federal ban on assault weapons provided for police was limiting to 10 the number of bullets that gun magazines for the public could hold.
Now, magazines hold 30 or more rounds, "which means the criminals our officers face have less need to reload," Knight said.
In Maine, Beaudoin recalled one member of a legislative committee who opposed her successful push to ramp up the arms race with criminals and supply troopers with assault rifles.
"Funny, it was a man who used to be in the police force, and that blew me away," she said.
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May 03, 2010
Casting a Critical Eye on Weapons Technology and Training
with Tom Marx
Why do bad guys seem to do so well in gunfights?
In my first article for PoliceOne, I touched on a number of things relating to my belief that we need to shift our focus in law enforcement firearms training from the traditional bullseye/combat/practical shooting drills to actual applications of fighting techniques once mechanical and basic marksmanship skills have been developed. I had originally planned to move immediately into a series of articles examining techniques we’ve adopted in the past 20 years that were supposed to have replaced outdated and even dangerous ones (but which might be problematic in their own right). A handful of those article are already near completion, but even though they are already almost complete, something in the morning papers recently led me to decide that those items can wait.
I decided that maybe we should take a look at shooting performance from another perspective: this time from the side of the criminal.
My real job these days (I do consulting) keeps me from jumping into things as fully as I used to, so let me open this discussion by saying the thing to do here is to look (in a very serious, analytical way) at a wide range of civilian-involved shootings across the country. I have not done that and you need to realize that fact going in. For what I am proposing here, while sounding logical, needs to be supported by data and hard facts before it can be embraced seriously and used as a learning tool.
In that first PoliceOne article, I offered up a number of reasons as to why I think police officers, as a group, are shooting more often on the range but are not doing that much better on the street.
After it was published, an old friend, who now lives at the opposite end of the country (that says something for the long arm of PoliceOne), contacted me. In addition to agreeing with me, he also said that he had concerns that when an officer must employ his or her firearm, their “thought process goes to paper work, landing in court, winging the innocent, and not making a mistake, all of which interferes with their focus... whereas the opposition is out to kill without thought.”
I wrote him back and told him that there obviously are issues regarding outside influences affecting one’s “focus.” I told him that at some point, after catching up on my reading and making sure that somebody else hadn’t talked the subject to death, I planned on writing something about this kind of thing and how the bad guys might generally shoot better than the cops as a result.
I told him that I had seen a number of references from certain groups and organizations lately that seem to believe (and state openly) that this is due to the bad guys practicing more these days. Again, I have not researched this myself but I find it hard to believe that even if certain factions of the criminal community (violent criminal community) come from a shooting, hunting or military background, that the bulk of the “successful” offender events I have either witnessed or (these days) read about, are due to the fact that the perpetrators have honed their skills by hours and hours of diligent practice at the range.
Look realistically at the people you (not me these days) are dealing with. An element that runs the gamut from hardened criminals and repeat offenders to frantic spouses, kids not old enough to understand the seriousness of their actions, kids who couldn’t concentrate well enough to get through school, individuals who didn’t plan out their actions but merely reacted to the situation they found themselves in, and others who don’t do drugs for recreation but for a living. Not what I would call long-term planners or people who devote much of their free time developing their gun handling skills.
I am sure that you can find some people who shoot but in the overall scheme of things, I think there are not many and not many who practice in the way(s) that develop proficiency, let alone proficiency under stress. I told my friend that I think these people’s possibly better performance (again, research is needed to see if they are better or if my beliefs are just skewed by reporting focused only on successful engagements) is due to their mindset instead.
I think that most rational people are reluctant to kill someone else. And while obviously the gun makes it easier to do so than say a knife or a ball bat, most responsible people do think (regardless of how fleetingly) of all the consequences of such an action.
I do disagree a bit with my friend’s thinking that it’s all paperwork and lawsuits, for while I’m sure that such thoughts are lurking somewhere in the backs of the minds of some officers, I think it might also be due to some of what S.L.A. Marshall discussed well over 50 years ago and that is (his now somewhat controversial beliefs regarding) civilized man’s reluctance to kill his fellow man. And it might also be due to the focus of my previous article and that’s the lack of practical experience in such matters.
I also think that the “bad guy” — somebody who is generally acting with no sense of responsibility for his or her actions and who is living at the time of such actions only in the moment and not the long term — probably doesn’t care much about consequences and can more freely employ the weapon.
I have thought this for a long time, especially after seeing some of the shots such people made when I was on the job or in reading about rounds being fired accurately under stress by a felon in his attempt to deal with an unexpected situation. Yes, I fully admit that luck has something to do with it at least some of the time, but I don’t think it does so all of the time.
I think that a truly scientific study should be made — it would be way too easy to be selective and refer only to the “successful” engagements we see in the press or those after-the-fact calls that you respond to where there is always a victim. Someone needs to look in detail at person-to-person shootings in general, including those were no one was hit. That study must not skew the results by including random discharges, drivebys fired for effect, or full auto engagements with round totals that will offset any meaningful data.
Until then, we can’t say anything for sure. But until then, I will continue to look at this as just one of the possible reasons why some people who are trained to reach an objective fail to do so under stress, and why these untrained and often unprepared people make good hits. For I believe that among other things, such “hitting” could have been all they were thinking about at the time.
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March 25, 2010
PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie
Plainclothes cop shoots gunmen, ends robbery spree
Nashville Police Officer Justin Fox was at the right place at the right time to shoot three masked gunmen in a hotel lobby
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. — An overnight robbery spree in the Nashville metro area was halted by a plainclothes police officer who encountered the three masked men early Thursday morning at a hotel in the suburbs just south of the Music City.
Three suspects reportedly burst into the lobby of the Hyatt Place Hotel in the small hours of the morning on March 25th, after allegedly already robbing three people at another location in town. Unfortunately for them, 35-year-old Officer Justin Fox was already there — purely by chance — as part of an unrelated, ongoing investigation at the hotel.
The gunmen had forced the hotel clerk to give them cash when Officer Fox and an unnamed undercover cop from another agency entered the lobby at about 0230 hours.
The suspects then ordered the officers to the floor at gunpoint, striking and kicking both men while threatening to kill them, according to a Department press release made available to PoliceOne late Thursday afternoon.
Nashville NBC TV affiliate WSMV had reported during its early morning broadcast today that the Nashville cop, “in defense of his own life and the lives of others in the lobby, shot all three suspects.”
Later in the day, Nashville PD provided some much-needed detail.
“Before Officer Fox went completely to the ground,” said the Nashville PD press release, “he pulled out his department issued handgun, turned around, and fired on all three suspects in defense of himself and the other officer who did not fire a weapon. The suspects did not return fire. A handgun, dropped by one of the suspects, was recovered from the lobby floor.”
Even as new details slowly emerged throughout the day, Jim Glennon, Lead Instructor for the Street Survival Seminar told PoliceOne, “Here’s the thing: life changes fast. You can go from a bike theft, an animal complaint, a domestic issue, or a traffic accident — to taking a life — within seconds. This officer did a great job physically but maybe more importantly he was mentally and psychologically prepared, which is a different animal altogether. There are a lot of officers who can earn a sharpshooter, marksman, or master shooting badge. Adapting to the dynamic reality of real deadly force situations and acting outside of the static training environment is what separates this officer from many others.”
“Being unexpectedly pulled into the middle of an armed robbery is pretty damn frightening,” adds Street Survival Seminar Instructor Betsy Brantner Smith. “In that moment, Officer Fox needed to assess the situation and make some very critical decisions, quickly, and correctly. To be able to draw and deliver multiple rounds to multiple offenders is the epitome of When/Then thinking, and this officer’s response is a lesson to all of us.”
Glennon spoke also of his friend and colleague Bob Nicholas, a Sergeant from Elmhurst Police Department and trainer at the Suburban Law Enforcement Academy in Glen Ellyn, Ill. “Bob tells his academy classes: ‘This is the only job where you can save a life, take a life, and or lose a life in an eight-hour period. You never know when one of those moments will present itself. You have to be prepared whenever a door opens’.”
Brantner-Smith concludes, “In the Seminar we teach: ‘On duty, you go to calls. Off duty, some calls come to you.’ This is often the case when we’re in plainclothes as well. We have to decide how critical this situation is and should we take action or just be a good witness until the uniforms arrived. If we decide to take action, can we do it safely, tactically, legally? Are we going to make the situation better or worse by getting involved? Will more innocent people get hurt as a result of my actions? There is so much to consider in that one-quarter of a second that all cops get to make those life and death, million dollar decisions, which is why we recommend that you think about and visualize various scenarios, like being the victim of a robbery while in plainclothes, and decide in advance how you’re going to respond.”
The masked gunmen, two of whom were critically injured, fled in a maroon van, but Officer Fox followed them in his unmarked car and called in to dispatch their direction of flight. The suspects were soon apprehended as they drove north on Interstate 65 into Nashville. When police searched the van, purses and wallets from the night’s earlier robberies were discovered.
The suspects, identified as Deaunte Carter, 23, Rory Gilmer, 22, and Antonio Leggs, 20, were taken to nearby Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where Carter and Gilmer are reportedly in critical condition. Leggs is in stable condition.
In 2008, Carter was convicted of facilitation of aggravated robbery and sentenced to eight years. Leggs has two previous theft convictions, and Gilmer has been arrested 11 times for driving offenses and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The website for the local newspaper, Tennessean.com, indicated that Officer Fox — a 12-year veteran who reportedly has never before been in a shooting incident — is on routine administrative assignment following the shooting.
We’re standing right there beside you Officer Fox. Job well done!
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April 16, 2010
BART cops lose TASER privileges
Annoucement comes after officer shocked 13-year-old
By Demian Bulwa
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — The BART Police Department stripped its officers of TASERs on Thursday, days after a sergeant fired the electric darts of his stun gun at a 13-year-old boy fleeing from police in Richmond on his bicycle, sources told The Chronicle.
BART officials, who said officers would be retrained to use the devices, attributed the decision to the Richmond incident as well as a recent federal court ruling that narrowed the circumstances under which police can use TASERs.
The officials said they could not comment on the Richmond case, citing privacy laws that apply to internal investigations. Interim Police Chief Dash Butler said only that the incident accelerated plans that were already in progress to retrain officers and update policies on the proper use of TASERs, which BART police began using in December 2008.
Sources familiar with the matter, however, told The Chronicle that a veteran sergeant in a moving patrol car fired his TASER several days ago at the 13-year-old boy, who was fleeing from an altercation at BART's Richmond Station on a bicycle.
The darts missed the boy, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said the sergeant, who has taught defensive tactics at BART, remained at work but had been removed from street duty.
Butler said the suspension of the TASER program would allow the department to do training that integrates rulings by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that have already prompted changes at agencies around the Bay Area.
The most pivotal ruling came in December, when the court said a man could sue a Coronado San Diego County police officer who had stunned him with a TASER to gain compliance after pulling him over for failing to wear a seat belt. The man was "yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs," the court said, but did not pose an immediate threat to the officer.
"We were planning on doing this a few weeks down the road," Butler said of pulling TASERs off the streets, "and the Richmond incident accelerated it."
New rules
Butler said BART's TASER policy has always barred officers from using the devices to stop fleeing suspects, and will continue to do so. He said the new policy forbids using a TASER on a minor "unless there's some exigent circumstances."
"Let's say," he said, "you had a 17-year-old who was 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds and was pounding on an officer and the officer couldn't escape. The officer could use a TASER."
Butler said BART's new policy will also forbid officers from pulling and firing TASERs with their strong hand - their gun hand. When officers resume carrying TASERs, he said, right-handed officers will have to keep the devices on their left hip and deploy them with their left hand.
"The real common sense of it," Butler said, "is you don't want to put that device anywhere near the handgun. Potentially, you could have confusion. We don't want that possibility. Just put them on the weak side."
TASERs in Grant case
BART's TASER program has been under scrutiny since a former officer, Johannes Mehserle, shot and killed unarmed train rider Oscar Grant on Jan. 1, 2009, at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland.
Attorneys for Mehserle, who faces a murder trial this summer, say he meant to stun Grant with a TASER and accidentally fired his service pistol.
The Chronicle reported earlier this year that Mehserle had borrowed a TASER and a special holster for the device from a colleague a few hours before the shooting. At the time, in a cost-saving move, BART forced officers to share both TASERs and holsters.
Mehserle, though, did not adjust his colleague's holster, a task that would have demanded up to 15 minutes of work with an Allen wrench and a Phillips-head screwdriver. Instead, Mehserle wore the holster in a way that required him to draw the TASER with his right hand - his gun hand.
But there are indications Mehserle was accustomed to a left-handed draw for a TASER. A source familiar with his training said that's the way he preferred to wear it.
John Burris, an attorney representing Grant's family, said Thursday that if an officer fired at a fleeing teenager on a bike, "that's outrageous. I can't imagine there's a justification for that use of force. You create undue danger that the person may fall off the bicycle, and either hit someone else or be killed."
Burris called the temporary suspension of the TASER program "a very positive step" for BART.
Burris said, "It's important that this retraining take place before someone else is seriously injured or killed."
