(cont)
These cases are unique only in that the officers faced consequences for their actions. Accountability is rare. One study found that in 41 percent of cases, officers charged with sexual violence had been previously accused of sexual misconduct — between two and 21 prior allegations — but had remained on the force. Even when officers are terminated or allowed to resign, many are able to simply move on to another department, in what researchers dub the “officer shuffle.”
Why aren’t departments doing more to stop sexual violence by officers? Despite materials such as “Addressing Sexual Offenses and Misconduct by Law Enforcement,” a guide published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in 2011, most police departments have no policies or training making it clear that on-duty sexual misconduct against civilians is prohibited. The Obama-era President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the Justice Department’s guidanceon gender bias in policing, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission and various researchers have all taken the position that departments need to, at a minimum, enact and enforce policies prohibiting sexual violence by officers. When asked why more departments haven’t taken up the charge, an IACP spokesman simply said, “We don’t see a groundswell from people who are protesting their police departments for this kind of activity.”
While that needs to change, departments shouldn’t have to be asked twice to explicitly tell officers that sexually harassing and assaulting members of the public is unacceptable and will result in termination.
We should also know by now that we can’t depend on the police to police themselves. Yet there is often nowhere that a woman who has been sexually assaulted by an officer can go to report it — except the police. If she goes to the district attorney or a civilian oversight agency, the case is usually referred to a police department for investigation. Intimidation is common. The Brooklyn teenager said at least nine police officers came to her hospital room, discouraging her from going through with a rape kit. In a Chicago case, Tiawanda Moore was prosecuted for recording investigating officers as they tried to discourage her from filing a sexual misconduct complaint. (She was acquitted after a year-long trial.) In Eugene, Ore., an officer who was later convicted of sexually abusing a dozen women put his service weapon to one victim’s genitals and threatened to blow her up “from the inside out” if she told anyone.
Municipalities could make it easier for victims to come forward by enabling civilian oversight agencies to investigate complaints of sexual violence by police. Indeed, the Justice Department investigation of the Chicago Police Department recommended that civilian investigators be empowered and trained to receive such complaints. City legislators and advocates tried to transfer jurisdiction over sexual misconduct complaints to the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability — only to be stymied by the police union.
But we shouldn’t just rely on victims of police sexual assault to come forward. A range of measures, from small steps to structural changes, can be taken to prevent and detect police sexual violence. Departments can monitor data from individual officers’ traffic or pedestrian stops to determine whether they are stopping a disproportionate number of women. They can use GPS to track patrol car movements, a strategy that corroborated the testimony of Holtzclaw’s victims. Supervisors can show up unexpectedly to check on officers on late-night patrol. Many departments already require officers to report mileage when they transport arrestees, in part to prevent detours to secluded areas to force or extort sex. Investigators can also conduct stings to catch officers in the act, something the New York and Los Angeles departments have done successfully on occasion but not nearly often enough.
Research and investigations conclude that police sexual assault is facilitated by the structure of policing itself. As Stinson put it: “Police routinely operate alone and largely free from any direct supervision, either from administrators or fellow officers. Police commonly encounter citizens who are vulnerable, usually because they are victims, criminal suspects, or perceived as ‘suspicious’ and subject to the power and coercive authority granted to police. Police-citizen interactions often occur in the late-night hours that provide low public visibility and ample opportunities to those officers who are able and willing to take advantage of citizens to commit acts of sexual deviance and to perpetrate sex crimes.” Police officers wield significant power and discretion, and are protected by a blue wall of silence when they abuse them.
In light of these realities, the goal should be to reduce the number of police encounters and the power officers use to extort or force sex. That would mean not flooding communities with officers, and not giving those officers the ability to hold mandatory-minimum drug sentences over women’s heads, contrary to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s current priorities. It would mean taking a public health approach to drug and prostitution offenses, and taking police officers — who use the serious consequences of such charges to extort sex and rape women — out of the equation, either by decriminalizing those offenses or eliminating arrests through pre-arrest diversion programs.
Survivors of sexual assault by police deserve solutions that strike at the root of the problem, instead of mere outrage at each crime that happens to make the news. No survivor of sexual violence should be ignored simply because her perpetrator was a police officer.
[email protected]
Andrea J. Ritchie is the author of “Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color,” a co-author of “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Violence Against Black Women,” and a researcher in residence on race, gender, sexuality and criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
Rashan Charles death: Met Police officer not facing charges (click for more)
"The CPS has considered the matter and decided the evidential test for a prosecution for common assault is not met".
Rashan Charles death: Met Police officer not facing charges (click for more)
"The CPS has considered the matter and decided the evidential test for a prosecution for common assault is not met".
Although Kern County had a population of 875,000 people in 2015, its law enforcement officers were responsible for more deaths than any other county in America that year, according to the Guardian. During that year, Kern County deputies and Bakersfield, Calif., police killed 1.5 people for every 100,000 residents, more than three times the rate of Los Angeles County and 10 times the rate of the New York Police Department in 2015.
“You know what happens when a guy makes a bad shooting and somebody kills them?” Youngblood explained. “Three million bucks and the family goes away after a long back and forth.”
“When a deputy shoots someone in the streets, which way do you think is better financially—to cripple them or kill them—for the county?” Youngblood asked. When someone replied, “Kill them,” Youngblood responded, “Absolutely. Because if they’re crippled we get to take care of them for life. And that cost goes way up.”
Lawyers for a journalist who was arrested in Tennessee and then placed in an immigration detention facility said Monday that the government was trying to suppress his reporting and violated his rights of freedom of speech and the press.
Duran, 42, was working for Spanish-language media outlet Memphis Noticias and has written stories raising questions about local police and their cooperation with federal immigration officials, one of his attorneys at the SPLC said.
How is Toronto attack suspect not dead?Video from the scene shows suspect Alek Minassian pointing an object at the officer and shouting: "Kill me!"
The officer tells the man to "get down" and when the suspect says he has a gun, the officer repeats: "I don't care. Get down."
Minassian is then seen lying down and the officer arrests him.
Many in North America are asking how the suspect did not end up dead in a hail of police gunfire. It contrasts with incidents in the US where police have shot and killed unarmed people.
One US-based academic told the BBC that the officer would have had a "duty" to kill the suspect, if the object he was pointing was a gun.
The clip, which circulated on social media yesterday, shows Chikesia sitting in a chair clutching her purse, while three white male police officers surround her, yelling and leaning over her before she’s wrestled to the ground with her breasts exposed. Throughout the incident, she repeatedly asks what she did wrong. “You’re not going to grab on me like that, no,” Chikesia says to one officer. “What are you doing?” Chikesia asks another. “I’ll break your arm, that’s what I’m about to do,” one responds. The other patrons of the Waffle House, mostly white, continue to quietly eat their food.
According to Chikesia’s mother, who spoke with Alabama Local, her daughter and her friend Canita Adams — who filmed the incident — had requested plastic flatware for their to-go meals. They were reportedly told it would cost them an additional 50 cents, and requested the number for their corporate offices to complain. Then, the police were called.
‘I thought I was going to die’: Ex-NFL player details brutal arrestVideo shows Marrow being slammed to the ground by officers who he says mistook his cellphone, which was in his back pocket, for a gun. Marrow is heard repeatedly saying, “I’m not even fighting back.”
“During the arrest, the police knocked my teeth out, slammed me on my head and choked me out until I was unconscious,” Marrow said in the post. Before he fainted, Marrow told officers he couldn’t breathe.
He said he suffered a shoulder strain and concussion. Marrow also alleges officers spit on him during the assault.
“I was fully cooperating with the officers with zero resistance,” Marrow wrote. “I thought I was going to die.”
Two West Milwaukee police officers who broke down a mentally ill man’s door and tased him in the shower 18 times before he died will not be criminally charged, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has decided.
More than 30 minutes elapsed between the first time the officers deployed their Tasers and the time Adam Trammell lost consciousness in the hallway of his apartment building, known to officers as a place that housed people with mental illnesses, according to police reports.
In between, Trammell suffered a black eye, a broken rib and more than two dozen cuts and bruises, according to the medical examiner's report.
On the officers’ body camera footage, Trammell can be heard screaming in agony.
He spent some of his last conscious moments vomiting profusely.
Chisholm concluded there was “no basis to conclusively link” the death of Trammell, which occurred in May, to the officers’ actions...
I don't think the video of the assault is in that article. It's absolutely brutal - knocked out his teeth when they slammed his face on the car. What's also shocking is the pigs knew they were being filmed at the time, and didn't give a fuck. They just kept torturing this man.It looks like if you are black, don't own a cell phone
‘I thought I was going to die’: Ex-NFL player details brutal arrest