No, this blog is not a recipe to roast pigs. It is about speaking out against the injustices of our police force. This blog is for you. If you have ever been treated unfairly, had your rights violated or seen anybody else's rights violated, please post a comment here and I will add it to my blog. If you know the officers name, badge number, city or anything else, exercise your right to free speech.
Peyton Strickland, 18, was killed Friday at a house he shared with three roommates, New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey said.
"If this boy would've come to the door, opened the door, we probably wouldn't be talking," the sheriff said Sunday.
Strickland was unarmed when he was shot through the door by sheriff's Cpl. Christopher M. Long.
Causey said Monday he couldn't yet discuss the circumstances of the shooting, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported on its Web site.
"I am anxious to tell what happened," Causey said after he was sworn in for a new term as sheriff. "In a few days, we'll be able to. For now, it just wouldn't be right."
Asked if the deputies felt their lives were threatened, Causey said, "Anytime you have a high-risk entry like this, you feel that your life is at risk." He declined to say what made the arrest high risk.
Arrest warrants alleged that Strickland, a student at Cape Fear Community College, and a University of North Carolina at Wilmington student stole two PlayStation units from another UNC Wilmington student that day.
The sheriff said Strickland was shot by members of a a special police unit who went to help university officers serve warrants.
Strickland's dog, a German shepherd, also was shot to death.
The State Bureau of Investigation is examining the case and three deputies on the team were placed on paid leave, Causey said.
Cpl. Christopher Long
UPDATE:
In March 2008, New Hanover County, N.C., agreed to pay $4.25 million to the parents of college student Peyton Stickland, who was killed when deputy Christopher Long, claims to have mistook the sound of a SWAT battering ram for a gunshot and fired through the door as Strickland came to answer it.
Sammy Galvan, 22, was shot eight times before he had a chance to comply with the officers' commands, posing no threat as he leaped out of bed and grabbed a knife to protect himself from intruders. The Galvan family's attorney is seeking $3 million for Galvan's parents and points out that Galvan's wounds show that he could not have been taking aim.
Twelve jurors will decide after they hear from all involved when the wrongful death case comes to trial today in U.S. District Court in Fresno. An attorney representing the Galvans said a trial is the only way to get justice for a young man who died at police hands but committed no crime.
"These cases are hard," said Oakland-based attorney Walter Riley, who declined to discuss the case in detail. "But they have to be tried sometimes."
Senior Deputy City Attorney James Wilson, who represents the officers, could not be reached for comment.
Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.
For those of you who've been on vacation on a Greek Island, or are just logging onto your computer from a remote location in China, the incident sparking the worldwide uproar is the Monday arrest and tasering of Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student.
Meyer barged in line to harangue Massachusetts senator John Kerry during a campus talk that day. The student refused to pipe down after being asked to by the forum's organizers, and after he carried on pressing Kerry for answers, police hauled him off. They forced him to the ground, and tasered him.
Several versions of the incident are up on YouTube, and there's a debate about whether Meyer, known as a prankster, staged the incident in Sacha Baron Cohen-style or not.
Whatever its true nature, the altercation whipped up a tornado of rhetoric that is whirling across forums on the Web, including here at Threat Level.
Policemen, Intensive Care Unit trauma unit nurses ... even concerned individuals on the other side of the planet in Australia -- everyone is weighing in on whether Meyer was acting like an ass, and whether he had it coming to him. The incident has opened up the floodgates of an eye-opening debate over First Amendment rights here in the United States, police brutality and the limits and boundaries of how we as a society should deal with the unruly among us.
Donttase
"This was really sickening to watch. In the video the kid offers to leave and walk out on his own, but instead more and more of those officers try to force him on the ground and into handcuffs.
What a horrible way to handle such a simple situation," writes "Aaron," one of Threat Level's readers.
"The University and its police department should be ashamed of themselves and embarrassed of the way they looked in front of a US Senator. Totally unacceptable," he adds.
Meanwhile, "Nightwatch," who says that he's with a university police department, weighed in and says that he and his colleagues agree that the Florida police handled the situation badly.
Taserprotest_7 And "Jon in Austin" writes that as an intensive care unit trauma nurse, he's concerned about the safety of the devices.
"I am an ICU Trauma Nurse, and I know there have been numerous deaths resulting from the use of the Taser device -- and no one knows who that next victim is going to be! It could be any one of us.
"If we don't stand up against the use of the Taser, who will be next?"
(Taser International says its technology is a "safer use-of-force option" on its web site.)
"I don't believe that asking a question at a town hall meeting, EVEN IF it is long-winded and perhaps even a little combative, should lead to this," writes Jon.
"I think it's foolish to run and flail from the police like that, but I can tell you that this could have been avoided had the police taken him out of the auditorium and explained when and where (or IF?) he broke the law, THEN talk about arrest (but that seems stupid when they could have just kicked him out).
Seems to me, that the real people who caused the disturbance, were the POLICE themselves, who carried it to an entirely absurd and potentially deadly level of risk to this student."
Those wanting to somehow cash in on the notoriety of the phrase, or who perhaps were like cultural tourists wanting to hold onto a keepsake of the moment, went ahead and registered domain names.
Someone by the name of Johannes Feldberg registered donttasemebro.com yesterday, and Alexander Shkirenko, who apparently was chairman of the college Republicans at Georgia Tech a decade ago, registered donttazemebro.com. The list goes on.
Michael Sarfatti in San Francisco grabbed Dontasemebro.com at 1 am this morning as he was listening to a radio show discussing the now infamous incident.
When asked why he bothered, and what he intended to do with it, Sarfatti, the founder of a baby boomer technology-related consulting firm in San Francisco, laughed heartily.
"I'm not sure why I did it -- other than it's going to be an expression in our society for a long time," he says. "I went to [domain name registrar] GoDaddy, and there was a whole bunch of people who had already registered various versions of it -- I was actually surprised to get it."
"I think it's a hilarious expression -- it's a classic phrase," he adds. "It's such a brilliant line -- to be honest, I think it was a set-up, but it was a brilliant ploy. I'd hire that guy in a heartbeat if indeed it was."
Asked how anybody could want, or plan to be tasered, Sarfatti implied that it's not an uncommon occurrence. He says that he's heard that there are games that people play that involve tasering each other.
"As an engineer I'm curious [about how that works] but as a human, I think I'll take a pass," he laughed.
Addendum: My question for readers: There's been a lot of debate [see comments section below] about whether Meyer "deserved" to be tasered, or not. But the question in my mind is not whether he would have otherwise received a bullet in his chest (as some of you have suggested he would have.)
The question is whether the use of this new technology is justified. In a world without tasers, he would have just been subdued by the police officers until he surrendered his wrists to be cuffed. The worrying aspect of this incident is the trigger-happiness of the law-enforcement authorities.
Several police officers already had him on the ground -- why did they need to taser him? It's an important question: I think we need to define the limits of what we find acceptable, and what we don't with the uses of relatively new technology, since that is how we formulate policy: On consensus. To our police officer readers: I've never been tasered (I pray that I never will,) so I can't appreciate how extreme of an act it is. It certainly looks extreme. But what if an individual has a heart condition, or any other condition that the taser would have interfered with?
The trigger-happy aspect of this disturbs me since there's been a lot of disquieting news on the subject, recently.
In 1996 Javier Ovando was shot in the head and paralyzed after he fired upon three Los Angeles police officers. He went to prison, sentenced to 23 years for his crime.
After officer Rafael Perez, who was present at the shooting, was allegedly caught stealing about 600,000 pounds of seized cocaine from a police locker, a new story of the Ovando shooting was revealed.
Perez has traded testimony against his fellow officers for a lighter sentence, and now claims that Ovando was unarmed and shot in the head while he was lying on the floor in handcuffs.
This incident and other corroborated stories have touched off the largest corruption scandal and subsequent investigation in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Investigators are probing at least seven other 'unjustified' shootings. At least 13 officers have been relieved of duty, with more incidents likely to surface as the internal scrutiny continues. Another 50 officers are known to be under suspicion, and almost 200 criminal prosecutions could be overturned.
The officers involved in the Ovando case may have been given orders to plant the weapon. A sergeant with the department's anti-gang unit allegedly instructed officers under his command to plant guns on unarmed suspects to back up a shooting or questionable arrest.
Brazen officers from the elite anti-gang unit known as CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) consistently imitated the street gangs they were supposed to be eliminating. Sporting gang tattoos, it has been alleged that 'death parties' were held to celebrate fatal shootings of suspects. They are accused of dealing drugs, robbing banks, framing innocent citizens, shooting unarmed civilians and lying under oath.
Other corruption cases under public scrutiny include: police officers supposedly rented an apartment for on-duty sexual liaisons with prostitutes also enlisted to sell drugs officers had stolen from dealers; a 35-year veteran Los Angeles police officer was arrested for possession of heroin he stole during a sting operation; another officer was allegedly caught stealing $600,000 worth of seized cocaine from a police locker; two Pasadena deputy city marshals, one reserve deputy, one police officer and two former police officers are charged with theft, burglary and manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance.
Amnesty International has sent representatives to Los Angeles to investigate these incidents, similar to others covered in its new report, "United States of America: Race, Rights and Police Brutality."
Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and LA Police Chief Bernard C. Parks have publicly expressed their disgust at their officers' flagrant disregard for the law.
Even though Javier Ovando has been released from prison and is free now, he will be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. A day of reckoning is due this victim. Ending the Drug War would restrain the police violence and corruption of which Javier Ovando and countless other victims have greatly suffered.
But that's what happened Oct. 29 when Chicago Police officers went to a West Side home to make a "well-being" check. The officers were responding to a request from the city's Department of Aging.
Apparently, the department had received an anonymous tip that Lillian Fletcher, who has a history of mental illness, was home alone and in need of assistance.
When Fletcher refused to open her door, police were called. Although Fletcher cracked the door, she still refused to let her visitors into the house.
But police officers wouldn't take no for an answer and pushed their way in. Fletcher ran and got the hammer she keeps beside her bed.
"My grandmother is easily confused," her granddaughter, Traci Taylor, said Monday. "She probably didn't know what was going on."
Taylor is one of her grandmother's caregivers. She said her grandmother has schizophrenia and dementia.
Normally Fletcher is looked after by a homemaker or by her own daughter and Taylor. Only recently did these women find themselves between homemakers.
"She can be belligerent," Taylor said. But she's 82 years old, 5 feet 1 inch and weighs no more than 160 pounds, she added.
"I just don't think they should be Tasing 82-year-old women. That's ridiculous."
Chilhowie Town Manager Bill Boswell spent Friday morning preparing for his employees’ Memorial Day picnic. But beneath the bounty of burgers, hot dogs, fun and games ran the undercurrent of a shake-up at the town police department that would rattle anyone. Earlier this week, the town’s former police chief and a recently fired sergeant were both arrested on charges involving the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl at a Halloween haunted house last fall. In addition, a third officer was arrested on a charge of selling the painkiller hydrocodone. All three officers were indicted this week and had either resigned or been fired by the town. The arrests cut the town’s police force of six in half.
Friday afternoon, Smyth County Circuit Court Judge Charles B. Flannagan II set $20,000 secured bonds for both former Chilhowie police chief Dwayne Sheffield and Sgt. Brian Doss. The two had previously been held at Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon. The judge also placed multiple conditions on the two defendants, including placing them under house arrest using electronic monitoring devices and ordering them to certify that there are no firearms or alcohol in their homes. They were also ordered not to have any contact with the victim or her family. Former officer James E. Runyon, 29, of Chilhowie, who was indicted on Tuesday for distribution of a Schedule III controlled substance, had already been released on a $1,500 bond.
The charges against Sheffield and Doss stemmed from an incident with a 17-year-old girl at a haunted house fundraising event in October, Virginia State Police investigators said. Sheffield is charged with rape, object sexual penetration, felony child endangerment, sexual battery and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Doss is charged with forcible sodomy, felony child endangerment, sexual battery and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. According to the indictments, Sheffield and Doss had sex with the girl "by force, threat or intimidation" and "against her will ... while having the custody of a child."
An indictment does not address guilt or innocence but reflects only the grand jury’s belief the charge merits prosecution. Reaction in the Smyth County town runs the gamut. "I was shocked," said Chilhowie Barber Shop owner Larry McClure, who has given the former officers a cut or two.
Lee Harrell, appointed as special prosecutor in the case in March, wouldn’t say much on the case. "These are serious allegations," he said. "The grand jury found probable cause for the indictments, and the case now proceeds to trial. Because the victim is a minor, I will not comment further on the case to protect the victim and the integrity of the investigation." Virginia State Police Sgt. Michael Conroy also had little to say.
In early May, the Chilhowie Town Council voted 5-0 in a special called meeting to terminate Sheffield and Doss. The council met in closed session and the meeting took place before the indictments came out. The officers were terminated" Boswell said. The town has advertised for two police officer positions, and in the meantime, it is working with the county sheriff’s office and state police to patrol the streets. "When something like this happens, what you do is reschedule and work with the other available law enforcement agencies to make sure you’re covered," Boswell said Friday. "Everyone’s working overtime now, but we’re having no morale problems. We’re doing fine."
Unprovoked attacks by Los Angeles police. From the counter-protest called by ANSWERLA.org to protest a Minutemen march in Hollywood on July 8, 2006.
A mentally retarded man in a white shirt walks towards police and is clubbed. Others are clubbed as well as a person in wheelchair knocked over. A girl screams "he's mentally retarded." The cop on bike deliberately smashes into two people standing there videoing. Other cops club them, even after they're on the ground. After several seconds of them not moving, the cop clubs them again and is pushed back by another cop.
An unmarried mother, Amber had been through some unhappy relationships, and she longed for a true and loving partner. In November 2002, she went on a blind date with Scott Peterson. Before long, he began to speak of the future the three of them were destined to share. On December 9, he broke down in tears and told her that he had been married, but had "lost" his wife. S he contacted the Modesto Police Department, in northern California, and offered to help. She began secretly taping her conversations. Those conversations became the basis for the prosecution's case against Scott Peterson for the murder of his wife and unborn child.
