Crime and Punishment

Bodycam video shows Ohio police fatally shooting pregnant black woman​

Police in Ohio have released bodycam footage showing an officer fatally shooting a pregnant black woman.
Ta'Kiya Young, 21, died on 24 August when she was shot while in her car outside a Kroger grocery store in Blendon Township, a suburb of Columbus.
Footage shows officers attempting to question her for alleged shoplifting.
One officer standing in front of her car is seen in the video released on Friday firing directly towards her as she appears to drive in his direction.
The video shows the two officers interacting with Ms Young for about one minute before the shot is fired.
One officer is seen standing at her door and repeatedly telling her to "get out of the car".

"For what?" she responds twice, adding: "I'm not going to do that."
One officer seen in front of the car has his left hand on the hood, his gun drawn in the other hand.
"Are you going to shoot me?" she says moments before a single shot is fired and the officer quickly moves out of the car's path.
Officers are then seen breaking her window after the car rolls into the brick wall near the entrance of the store.
Officers say they attempted to perform medical aid, but neither the mother of two nor her unborn child survived the shooting.
"This was a tragedy. Ms Young's family is understandably very upset and grieving," Blendon Police Chief John Belford said on Friday in a statement.

"While none of us can fully understand the depths of their pain, all of us can remember them in our prayers and give them the time and space to deal with this heartbreaking turn of events."
Both officers, who have not been identified, were in the parking lot for an unrelated call. They were both placed on administrative leave after the shooting.
The officer that stood at the car window has been returned to duty but the one that fired the shot remains on leave.
The video was viewed by Ms Young's family before it was released on Friday.
In a statement, the family said the shooting "is clearly a criminal act" and was "avoidable".
The Blendon Township police department have asked the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation to look into the shooting.


Ms Young was the mother of two boys, ages six and three. Her family say she was due to give birth in November.
The grocery store where the shooting occurred was temporary closed on Friday, according to The Columbus Dispatch newspaper.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66690408

There needs to be some kind of public service announcement about what police will shoot to kill over.

Slowly nudging a cop out of the way with a car is one.
Reaching towards the waist to pull up pants is another.
 

Ex-Colorado police officer who put handcuffed woman in car hit by train avoids jail​

An ex-police officer in the US state of Colorado - who locked a handcuffed woman in a police car that was then hit by a freight train - has avoided jail.
Jordan Steinke was sentenced to 30 months on supervised probation, after being found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault in July.
She was acquitted of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter.
The 29-year-old, who lost her job over the incident, has been ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.

The woman who was placed in the car, Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, suffered serious injuries in the crash, including a brain injury.
The incident happened in September 2022, when Steinke and another officer were investigating an alleged road rage incident involving a weapon in Weld County - about 72 miles (115km) from the state capital of Denver.

Ms Rios-Gonzalez was pulled over, taken into custody and moved into a police car that had been parked on train tracks.
The officers were searching her vehicle when a train struck the police car.
"What happened that night has haunted me for 364 days," Steinke said in an apology read out in the court during the sentencing.
"I remember your cries and your screams. I remember begging you to tell me your name. Praying that you would stay awake. I have never felt so helpless. We couldn't get you out of the car."
Steinke added that she hoped to give educational talks to police officers about the dangers of railway tracks.
According to the Denver Post, a lawyer for Ms Rios-Gonzalez told the court that while his client suffered from having her life so radically altered by the crash and felt angry, she also felt sorry Steinke had lost her career.

The judge, Timothy Kerns, said he had planned to send Steinke to prison as a lesson that police officers would be held responsible for misconduct.
However, he changed his mind when both the defence and prosecution asked for a probationary sentence.
The second now former officer involved in the incident, Pablo Vazquez, is due to go on trial later this year.
The following video was made before charges were filed against the officers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66839899
 
Steinke added that she hoped to give educational talks to police officers about the dangers of railway tracks.
i don't understand why in the world this would be needed

i mean i guess it is needed but come on

EDIT actually sidenote this confuses me - and i guess she got acquitted - but:
She was acquitted of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter.

... isn't the whole idea of manslaughter that it's involuntary or careless? how can you attempt something you can't intend to do?

and i want to stress that her getting real consequences for this is a good thing in case my tone is confusing, re: the whole educational talks on railway tracks; i am absolutely baffled at her choice to park her car on railtracks, and i'm glad there's repercussions
 
Ms Rios-Gonzalez was pulled over, taken into custody and moved into a police car that had been parked on train tracks.
This is the part I just... don't get. Why would they park their police car, whether or not it had someone in it, on the train tracks? This whole story hinges on that point, which makes no sense. Just... what?

EDIT: unrelated question to @Angst: how did you make the quote just be a quote, but not include @Broken_Erika in the quoted part, like I did? I can't figure out how to remove the person who posted the story from the actual quote? :confused: I just wind up deleting the whole quote when I try to delete the person who posted it.
 
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EDIT: unrelated question to @Angst: how did you make the quote just be a quote, but not include @Broken_Erika in the quoted part, like I did? I can't figure out how to remove the person who posted the story from the actual quote? :confused: I just wind up deleting the whole quote when I try to delete the person who posted it.
If you click the "Toggle BB code" button, then use the quote tags (or remove the user attribute from an existing one):

Code:
[QUOTE]content here[/QUOTE]
 
The thread about communism has gone far afield, so I'm snipping my post and putting it here.

It's maybe a digression from the conversation about communism, but I've been thinking about the question of what an alternative to policing might look like.

[...]get rid of bail.
I just heard on the radio that Illinois is the first U.S. state to get rid of cash bail completely, as of today. :thumbsup:


NBC Chicago said:
Illinois will become the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail on Monday, following debate among legislators and legal challenges that concluded with a ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court.
NBC Chicago said:
The elimination of cash bail was initially set to take effect Jan. 1, but was placed on hold as the Supreme Court heard an appeal filed by Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office following an earlier ruling from a Kankakee County judge, who deemed the pre-trial release provisions in the SAFE-T Act unconstitutional.

Under the original provisions of the bill, as passed by the General Assembly, the state would allow judges to determine whether individuals accused of a specific set of felonies and violent misdemeanors pose a risk to another individual, or to the community at large. Judges will also be asked to determine whether the defendant poses a flight risk if released.

If the judge makes any of those determinations, then the defendant may be held in jail prior to trial.
 
I'm going to guess that list of exceptions allowing detention keeps growing piecemeal until we're back on familiar ground. But such is the way of things.

It'll probably at least look more equitable once nobody is offered bail at all in those situations, at least.

Edit: actually, looks like the exceptions remain discretionary, I retract the faint praise.
 
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I'm going to guess that list of exceptions allowing detention keeps growing piecemeal until we're back on familiar ground. But such is the way of things.

It'll probably at least look more equitable once nobody is offered bail at all in those situations, at least.
Yeah, for me the problem with bail is simply that if you have money, you can go back to your life, and if you don't, you can't. On the radio program I was listening to, they were talking to a woman who'd lost her job and her house while sitting in jail awaiting trial. She noted that "it was tough on [her] kids", which I imagine is an understatement. Years ago, I read a study that found that people who'd posted bail and then returned for their trial tended to get lighter sentences than those who couldn't post bail, if they were convicted. I guess it subconsciously (or maybe not-so-subconsciously) made the judge think they were more upstanding citizens or something. Obviously, wealth creates more inequity in the criminal justice system than just that, but getting rid of the cash bail element is a step. I give Illinois a high-five for chipping away at the problem and hope other states are paying close attention.
 
I guess I just have no faith that this doesn't encourage moving shenanigans to charging with an impetus to increase those further. With the same biases in discretion at every step, now allowing harsher handling.

But hey, they're doing something.
 
If you click the "Toggle BB code" button, then use the quote tags (or remove the user attribute from an existing one):

Code:
[QUOTE]content here[/QUOTE]
and @RobAnybody my method is much more brute force, i copypaste stuff into notepad and then manually copy FROM notepad and back into whatever.

notepad clears whatever code is present in text when you copy into it afaik. at least it's worked for me
 
and @RobAnybody my method is much more brute force, i copypaste stuff into notepad and then manually copy FROM notepad and back into whatever.

notepad clears whatever code is present in text when you copy into it afaik. at least it's worked for me
In most tools these days Ctrl-Shift V is paste plain text, which accomplishes the same without the intermediate tool.
 

Police taser school band director at US football game​

A high school band director was stunned by police after refusing to end a show at a football stadium in Alabama.
Johnny Mims, 39, and his students were on their final number when police approached, telling Mr Mims to end the performance.
Bodycam footage released by police showed Mr Mims refusing to stop his musicians playing.
The video they released also contains text by Birmingham Police Department, which claimed an initial arrest attempt failed. Shortly after, Mr Mims was stunned in front of his students.
Mr Mims was treated at the stadium before being taken to a local hospital.
"Nothing we were doing at the time was being a danger to the community, fans or the school," Mims told broadcaster NPR on Monday.
"Everyone was enjoying themselves. That's the part I'm having a hard time grappling with," he added.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66869906
 

Police taser school band director at US football game​

A high school band director was stunned by police after refusing to end a show at a football stadium in Alabama.
Johnny Mims, 39, and his students were on their final number when police approached, telling Mr Mims to end the performance.
Bodycam footage released by police showed Mr Mims refusing to stop his musicians playing.
The video they released also contains text by Birmingham Police Department, which claimed an initial arrest attempt failed. Shortly after, Mr Mims was stunned in front of his students.
Mr Mims was treated at the stadium before being taken to a local hospital.
"Nothing we were doing at the time was being a danger to the community, fans or the school," Mims told broadcaster NPR on Monday.
"Everyone was enjoying themselves. That's the part I'm having a hard time grappling with," he added.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66869906
Oxford Languages said:
au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism

the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.

lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.
It's only recently that many US police have been taught de-escalation at all, either as a technique or as a policy, for interacting with the public. As soon as a 'situation' is evident to an officer, escalation up the ladder of levels of force - up to and including lethal force - to produce compliance is the standard from which some few police departments are now departing. What was done to George Floyd, for example, is probably de rigueur for most police in this country; what made that situation unusual is that he died unexpectedly and the crowd around them had cameras in their pockets. Sandra Bland died behind closed doors, but I believe the video of that officer escalating a routine traffic stop into a confrontation is available (or, at least, I think I've heard some of the audio).
 

Drive-through worker draws gun on 'missing curly fries' customer​

CCTV footage of a fast food restaurant drive-through shows the moment a worker pulled a gun on a customer after an argument over missing fries.
The incident took place in March 2021 in Houston, Texas.
The driver’s family has since filed a lawsuit against Jack-in-the-Box and its employee, Alonniea Ford-Theriot.
Ford-Theriot pled guilty to a charge of deadly conduct.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66933961
 

Cree man loses bid to privately prosecute Edmonton police officer who kicked him in head​

Pacey Dumas was 18 when he suffered life-altering injuries during an arrest

An Indigenous man's attempt to privately prosecute the Edmonton police officer who kicked him in the head — leaving him with life-altering injuries — has been shut down by the Crown.
On Friday, chief prosecutor Sarah Langley directed the court to issue a stay of proceedings in an assault charge faced by Edmonton Police Service Const. Ben Todd, bringing an end to proceedings launched by Pacey Dumas, the young man he injured.
Dumas, a member of the Little Red River Cree Nation, was 18 in December 2020 when he sustained a serious brain injury during an arrest in west Edmonton.
Todd's kick knocked Dumas unconscious and caused his brain to swell. The teen spent nine days in intensive care. Part of his skull was surgically removed and eventually replaced with a metal plate.
The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (ACPS) had previously decided against pursuing charges against Todd despite a report from Alberta's policing watchdog in April of this year that found the officer displayed a "shocking lack of judgment and disregard" for the teen's life.
Following its investigation, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) asked the prosecution service to consider laying excessive-force charges against Todd, but the Crown declined to prosecute.
In response, Dumas and his lawyer, Heather Steinke-Attia, attempted to prosecute Todd independent of the Crown, a rarely used legal tactic that aimed to put the matter before a judge with the Alberta Court of Justice.
On Sept. 11, Dumas filed what is called a private information, swearing that a crime had been committed and alleging Todd committed aggravated assault.
However, the Crown has ultimate decision-making power on all forms of prosecutions in the
province and whether they should proceed.
The case was set to go before a judge next week in a pre-enquete hearing that has now been cancelled.

'Very high burden'​

In a statement Monday, the ACPS maintained that the case is not viable because a conviction is unlikely.
"While the circumstances outlined by Mr. Dumas and his counsel in this matter are disturbing, the role of the ACPS is to provide an objective assessment of the triable evidence and provable facts in determining whether there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction.
"The initial decision to not recommend charges was not an endorsement of the officer's actions or their tragic consequences. Rather, the role of the ACPS is to consider the viability of potential charges based on all the relevant facts."
The prosecution service noted that in order to proceed with a charge, the Crown must be satisfied a case meets two fundamental tests: is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction and is there a public interest.
"The Criminal Code authorizes police officers to use as much force as is necessary so long as it is not excessive," the statement said.
"In order to secure a conviction against a police officer, the court must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the force was in fact excessive. This is necessarily a very high burden to meet."

The arrest​

According to the ASIRT report, Edmonton police officers were responding to a 911 call about a fight and a man armed with a knife.
Four officers who responded surrounded the Dumas family home and told everyone to come outside. Dumas got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl "on his belly" toward the officers, as directed, the ASIRT report said.
Todd told investigators that he repeatedly asked Dumas to show his hands but he didn't comply. Todd then kicked the teen in the head.
Dumas was not armed and was never charged.
He has also launched a civil case against Todd and the Edmonton Police Service.
"The Dumas family is disappointed to have their access to justice blocked again," Steinke-Attia said in a statement.
"It is beyond comprehension that a case of such extreme violence by police action will not be subject to any form of public accountability or transparency."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/pacey-dumas-edmonton-police-kick-investigation-1.6985122
 
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has resigned effective June 1st.



She has been under intense pressure since 2.5 months ago.

From Feb. 22nd:




It was kind of a perfect storm of screw ups.

Daniel Riley should never have been on the streets under any circumstances, but he was.
He blew through a yield while speeding and crashed into a car.
That car smashed into an out-of-town 17 year old teen girl named Janae Edmondson which ripped off one of her legs and mangled the other one.
The girl's father who was with her had to use belts from pedestrians to make a tourniquet for her leg :cry:, and that was the only thing that saved her life long enough for emergency medical services to arrive.




Girls volleyball is a cash cow for St. Louis, so the story roiled the local news for weeks.
The homeless guy who got executed in broad daylight with a handgun to the head in the middle of the street? That was news for like a day or two.

Anyway, the mayor of St. Louis called the teen losing her legs a "preventable tragedy".
Demands for resignation went around, and then the Missouri Attorney General demanded she resign.
She did not, so the next day he initiated quo warranto proceedings which were scheduled for September.
If successful, she would be removed from office.

Over the next 50 days, more than 1 judge contemplated contempt of court charges for her office for not showing up to trials.

Then about a week ago, a local judge got the ball rolling for contempt of court for Garner's office.
This followed weeks of back and forth.



Something like 1/3rd of her attorneys have quit since Feb. 22nd.

7 of the 10 charges from the Missouri Attorney General were approved 2 days ago to go to trial in September.

The special prosecutor for the contempt of court case was named 1 day ago.

Too much pressure.

**Edit**
Nope, not too much pressure, the state legislature was going to go nuclear. :eek:
Can Jefferson City really do that?

The fallout from the Gardner saga continues with eye popping drama.

Apparently a homicide detective named Murphy refused to testify in 9 (or 8?) murder cases after her office banned him from filing criminal charges which effectively ended his career. (in the homicide division anyway)

80 cops out of 900 St. Louis cops (estimate) ended up on the prosecutor's banned list.

Some murderers got off over it.

 
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Exonerated man shot and killed in traffic stop in Georgia​

A man who was exonerated after spending more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction was shot and killed by a Georgia sheriff's deputy on Monday.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Leonard Allen Cure was shot during a traffic stop.
Cure, 53, grew defiant during his arrest and assaulted the deputy, according to a press release.
Emergency medical personnel attempted to treat Cure, but he later died.

"I can only imagine what it's like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and ... then be told that once he's been freed, he's been shot dead," Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, which represented Cure in his exoneration case, told the BBC's media partner CBS.
Cure's family confirmed his death to Mr Miller.

A Camden County deputy stopped Cure as he drove along Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida line on Monday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
Cure got out of the car at the deputy's direction, but when he learned he was under arrest he stopped complying with the deputy's requests.
The deputy used his Taser on Cure, who in turn assaulted the deputy. The deputy again used his Taser, and then hit Cure with a baton before pulling out his gun and shooting, according to GBI.
Police have not provided details about the charges for which Cure was being arrested.
Cure was sentenced to life in prison in 2004, after being convicted of armed robbery with a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm in Dania Beach, Florida.
There were problems with Cure's case from the start, a conviction review team and an independent panel of local attorneys found, including a disregarded alibi that placed Cure roughly 3 miles (4.8km) away from the scene of the crime at the time of the robbery.

Cure became the first man to be exonerated by the Broward Conviction Review Unit.
He was released from prison in April 2020 and Broward Circuit Judge John J Murphy III signed an order exonerating him later that year.
Florida Gov Ron DeSantis approved a claims bill awarding Cure with $817,000 (£670,144) and educational benefits last June.
He received his check in early August, according to Mr Miller.
According to a statement from a Florida state attorney obtained by local news, Cure "was hoping to go to college and wanted to work in broadcast radio production".
The Camden County Sheriff's Office has asked GBI to conduct an independent investigation. Once complete, the agency said it will submit its findings to the district attorney for review.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67138827
 
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