The LEO thread

[Vrede too]

I don't think his fifth amendment invocation was in front of the jury ...

Ah, that makes more sense.

... Before the jury was brought in Thursday morning, Chauvin, his COVID-19 mask removed in a rare courtroom moment, ended weeks of speculation by informing the judge he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to testify....

The jury is free to read into his failure to testify whatever it wishes.

[GoCubsGo]

Hope these guys become famous.

[neoplacebo]

Yeah, obviously a SWAT (Super Wingnut Advocacy Team) mission.

[Vrede too]

viewtopic.php?p=136517#p136517

Minnesota News Cold Open - SNL

... I agree with the Blacks’ premise on the Chauvin trial - I’ve got a bad feeling about the outcome....

Chauvin trial: Defense rests without calling him to the stand

... I haven't been following the trial closely, but my impression is that the prosecutor's case was devastating and the defense's response was not at all persuasive. Of course, that means . . . hung jury. Maaaybe the jury will convict on the least severe of the 3 (?) charges as a "compromise". Without reading the laws or hearing the judge's instructions I have no opinion on this.

Short deliberation.

Derek Chauvin found guilty of murder in death of George Floyd

Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty Tuesday in the killing of George Floyd. After less than 12 hours of deliberations, the jury returned its verdict against Chauvin, convicting him on all three counts: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The charges carry maximum sentences of 40 years, 25 years and 10 years in prison, respectively.

Under Minnesota law, Chauvin can appeal his conviction after the court enters the judgment and Chauvin receives his sentence. Sentencing will be in eight weeks, Judge Peter Cahill said.

Bail was revoked. Chauvin was handcuffed in court and remanded into custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff....

Second-degree unintentional murder

Prosecutors must have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin caused Floyd's death while assaulting him. This is the most serious charge. It carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to state sentencing guidelines. But for people with no criminal history, like Chauvin, the presumptive sentence is 12.5 years....



...

Idk why they bother voting after convicting on the more serious charge - maybe it's cover in case one charge is successfully appealed. Per TV news the sentence may be enhanced because a 9 year old was present.

[Vrede too]

TV news: Since ____ (I missed the year) there have been 15K killings by cops and only 7 convictions.

Biden called the family immediately. They were still in the courthouse hallway.

... “Today, a jury in Minneapolis did the right thing,” Obama said in a joint statement with former first lady Michelle Obama.

... But a more basic question has always remained: would justice be done?” they said. “In this case, at least, we have our answer. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know that true justice is about much more than a single verdict in a single trial.”

The Obamas later added: “And as we continue the fight, we can draw strength from the millions of people — especially young people — who have marched and protested and spoken up over the last year, shining a light on inequity and calling for change. Justice is closer today not simply because of this verdict, but because of their work.” ...

Full statement at the link.

'Did I strike a nerve?': House police reform hearing erupts into Demings, Jordan shouting match

A shouting match erupted at Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on a hate crimes bill between Reps. Val Demings, D-Fla., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Demings was criticizing an amendment introduced by Republicans that would prevent defunding of police departments. The bill it was seeking to amend, however, does not have a provision to take funds away from law enforcement.

Called the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, the legislation seeks to give incentives for hate crime reporting, boost funding to state-run hate crime hotlines and increase penalties for individuals convicted under current hate crime statutes.

Demings called the amendment "completely irrelevant."

"I served as a law enforcement officer for 27 years," Demings, a former police officer, said. "It is a tough job and good police officers deserve your support. You know, it's interesting to see my colleagues on the other side of the aisle support the police when it is politically convenient to do so."

That's when Jordan cut into her speech, prompting Demings to raise her voice and slam her hand on the table.

"I have the floor, Mr. Jordan," she yelled. "What? Did I strike a nerve?"

She added, "Law enforcement officers deserve better than to be utilized as pawns, and you and your colleagues should be ashamed of yourselves."

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., swiftly intervened and banged his gavel to tell Demings and Jordan not to interrupt each other, but they continued to shout over Nadler.

Jordan attempted to ask for a point of order to properly respond to Demings, but Nadler overruled and allowed Demings to finish her portion of the debate on the amendment....

Jim Jordan has zero law enforcement experience and while an assistant wrestling coach with Ohio State University's wrestling program he helped cover up sexual misconduct by the wrestling team physician.

[neoplacebo]

I have to figure the statute of limitations has run on any potential charges Jim could face over his wrestling career. Otherwise, Jim would not be such an ignorant blowhard asshole. No, wait, I guess he would be an ignorant blowhard asshole no matter what. Never mind.

[Vrede too]

I have to figure the statute of limitations has run on any potential charges Jim could face over his wrestling career. Otherwise, Jim would not be such an ignorant blowhard asshole. No, wait, I guess he would be an ignorant blowhard asshole no matter what. Never mind.

It's been a long time since the sexual abuse occurred, not so long since Jordan was still covering it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jorda ... se_scandal

lawsuits remain outstanding.

[Vrede too]

Manhattan to Stop Prosecuting Prostitution, Part of Nationwide Shift

[neoplacebo]

Manhattan to Stop Prosecuting Prostitution, Part of Nationwide Shift

I advise everyone to continue sinning with abandon until this alleged nationwide shift occurs. You buy the ticket, you take the ride. Shift at will.

[Vrede too]

viewtopic.php?p=136517#p136517

Chauvin trial: Defense rests without calling him to the stand

As for the idiotic, unsupported carbon monoxide claim:
1. "Carbon monoxide ... is slightly less dense than air." So, it would have affected Chauvin worse than Floyd.
2. Chauvin is the one that kept Floyd in proximity to the tailpipe and never asked for the car to be turned off - still guilty....

In-custody death reports under former Maryland medical examiner to be reviewed after he testified Chauvin did not kill George Floyd

The Maryland’s Attorney General’s Office said Friday it believes there should be a review of “in custody” death reports produced by the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during the tenure of Dr. David Fowler, nine days after Fowler testified that an ex-Minneapolis police officer was not responsible for the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after the attorney general’s office received a letter from the former medical examiner of Washington, D.C., Roger A. Mitchell, signed by 431 doctors from around the country, saying Fowler’s testimony and conclusions were so far outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice that all his previous work could come into question.

“Dr. Fowler’s stated opinion that George Floyd’s death during active police restraint should be certified with an ‘undetermined’ manner is outside the standard practice and conventions for investigating and certification of in-custody deaths. This stated opinion raises significant concerns for his previous practice and management,” the letter said....

Bruce Goldfarb, a spokesman for the chief medical examiner’s office, said the agency is “committed to transparency and will cooperate fully with an inquiry.”

Coombs said the review of death determinations will not involve any state officials or staff connected to a lawsuit filed by the family of Anton Black, a 19-year-old who died in police custody in the the Eastern Shore town of Greensboro.

Black’s 2018 death was captured on video, with Greensboro police holding the unarmed teenager down for more than six minutes. Fowler ruled that Black died because of a sudden cardiac event while struggling with police, and not because they pinned him in a prone position....

The office will review all cases from 2003-2020, which falls under Fowler’s tenure. He retired in 2019 after 17 years as chief medical examiner to go into private consulting practice. He was considered one of the foremost medical examiners in the country and served on national boards.

Included in that time period is the death of Tyrone West, who died after struggling with Baltimore Police following a traffic stop in 2013. Witnesses and the officers themselves said there was a violent struggle between the officers and West, but the state medical examiner’s office ruled that he died from natural causes exacerbated by the struggle and the summer heat. That ruling played a significant factor in the officers being cleared by the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office.

West’s sister Tawanda Jones has been fighting to get her brother’s case re-opened for eight years. She said word of the review was “the best news I’ve gotten all day.”

“That is what my family has been asking for literally since my brother was murdered, when they first lied and played games,” Jones said Friday....

"hundreds of doctors" and at least one ER RN that didn't have the opportunity to sign on.


I wondered about this very thing:

Other ex-officers charged in George Floyd's killing are 'almost 100 percent' going to plead guilty after Derek Chauvin's conviction, experts say

I also wondered whether a Chauvin acquittal would have meant dropped charges for the others.

[O Really]

So a guy with a real (ghost) gun walks down a street in SD starting confrontations with random people and shooting them. Real gun, guy shooting people in the open, walks down the street waving the real obvious gun. But 2-3 unarmed civilians managed to chase him down and hold him down until cops arrived, who promptly shot him with a taser. Real gun, real shooting, unarmed civilians, shooter captured. Meanwhile, cops can't seem to capture black guys holding cellphones without shooting them.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ne ... n-detained

[Vrede too]

So a guy with a real (ghost) gun walks down a street in SD starting confrontations with random people and shooting them. Real gun, guy shooting people in the open, walks down the street waving the real obvious gun. But 2-3 unarmed civilians managed to chase him down and hold him down until cops arrived, who promptly shot him with a taser. Real gun, real shooting, unarmed civilians, shooter captured. Meanwhile, cops can't seem to capture black guys holding cellphones without shooting them.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ne ... n-detained

Deputy who shot Black man appears to mistake phone for gun
Sat, April 24, 2021

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Va. (AP) — Body camera footage and 911 audio released late Friday appeared to show that a Virginia deputy mistook a cordless house phone held by a Black man for a gun before the deputy shot him repeatedly.

Family members said Isaiah Brown, 32, was in intensive care with 10 bullet wounds following the shooting outside a home in Spotsylvania County early Wednesday, WRC-TV reported.

“It is evident that the tragic shooting of Isaiah Brown was completely avoidable,” Brown’s attorney David Haynes said in a statement Friday.

The body camera video shows the deputy arriving at the scene and yelling at Brown to show his hands. The deputy then yells, “drop the gun,” multiple times and appears to say over his radio, “he’s got a gun to his head.” ...

The 911 audio shows Brown was on the phone with a dispatcher at the time the deputy arrived....

The release of the recordings come after family members and the ACLU of Virginia demanded they be made public....

San Diego shooter:



Ah, that explains the difference.

[neoplacebo]

I have no doubt Tucker Carlson can explain this. To the cult.

[Vrede too]

I have no doubt Tucker Carlson can explain this. To the cult.

Yup, he'll say that phoning 911 while Black should be a crime.

In a more rationale locale:

Newark Police didn’t fire shots in 2020 due to reform

“Police reform is possible. Newark is a great example,” a Twitter user said

Police officers in Newark didn’t fire a single shot in 2020, which means the city did not have to pay to settle police brutality cases, according to NJ.com.

Crime has reportedly dropped in the city with police recovering nearly 500 illegal firearms from the street last year. Aqeela Sherills, head of the Newark Community Street Team, a group consisting of former offenders working to actively defuse violence in the city’s most violent areas, said “This is significant.”

... The police reforms are a result of a federal consent decree which came after a July 2014 investigation which concluded that there was a “pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing by the Newark Police Department.” Once the decree came, there was “an agreement in principle with the City of Newark to undertake wide-ranging reforms within the Police Department,” according to the Department of Justice.

In 2011 when then U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman began the investigation, he found a broken culture amongst the Newark Police Department including racial bias during traffic stops and enforcement, violence, and a corrupted internal affairs bureau, according to NJ.com.

He acknowledged , “The use of force was too high, and the reporting of it was too low.”

When discussing the need for police reform, Peter Harvey, the former state attorney general who’s currently overseeing the implementation of the consent decree said: “You had a law enforcement agency with no training about how to enforce the law.” ...

Thank you, Harvey/Fishman/Holder/Obama.

...

[GoCubsGo]

Why?

[Vrede too]

Why?

Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2

Full story:
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?stor ... 0485398208

The whole orchard is rotten.

ALL children are learning to fear cops. I wish it weren't actually necessary for them to learn it, I used to teach my oldest to look for police if she were ever lost or in danger, now I tell them all 'look for a mom with kids'.

That's a sad statement there.

What would happen to any of us if we punch a 17 year old?

Why is it, as a teacher, I can handle all of my teen students antics without ever having to resort violence? I've broken up fights, disarmed students, dealt with kids on drugs, angry, depressed, medical emergencies, been assaulted, and not once have I had to manhandled a kid.

Until America realizes that law enforcement is filled with violent thugs, vulnerable citizens will continue to be harassed, tormented, shot and beaten, sometimes to death.

JFC! The whole police system needs to be torn down and re-imagined!

So is this protecting or is it serving? I get those confused sometimes.

[neoplacebo]

Tucker will soon apply some pretzel logic to this matter.

[Ulysses]

Why?

There is more to this story than may meet the eye.

The police were called because another boy of the same age alleged that the teen in the video had assaulted him with a knife.

It is alleged that the other teen actually started the altercation, and that the autistic teen was attempting to defend himself with a piece of metal he picked up off the ground. Not a knife, per se.

So the police were called to respond to a call for help in an assault with a deadly weapon scenario.

The autistic teen was frightened by the cop, who hit him, and tried to get away when the cop tried to put handcuffs on him.

None of this excuses the cop's brutality, of course.

So the matter is under review but it seems to me the cop doesn''t come off quite as brutal as might first appear.

The other teen's parents have declined to press charges against the autistic boy.

The autistic boy's father wants the police held accountable for his son's abuse at their hands.

[Vrede too]

Tucker will soon apply some pretzel logic to this matter.

Like this?

Nearly half of surveyed Republicans say Chauvin verdict was wrong outcome

A whopping 46 percent of Republicans polled after Derek Chauvin was found guilty have a problem with the jury’s verdict.

In unrelated news, 46 percent of Republicans are fascist idiots.

... According to the poll, 90% of Democrats believe that Chauvin’s conviction on all three counts — for second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — was the “right” verdict.

Seventy-five percent of those who declare themselves independents also proclaimed it was the right verdict....

Another poll, conducted by Morning Consult, noted that 66% of Republican voters believe that “violence against the police” is a more serious issue than violence against Black Americans....

Writer and podcast host Amy Siskind wrote on Twitter: “46% of Republicans think the Chauvin guilty verdict is wrong, and 45% of Republicans don’t plan to get vaccinated. Who wants to draw the Venn diagram with Tucker Carlson’s audience?”

Great minds, neoplacebo.

Carlson himself said on Fox News that “everyone understood perfectly well the consequences of an acquittal in this case. After nearly a year of burning and looting and murder by [the Black Lives Matter movement], that was never in doubt.”

He has continuously perpetuated the myth that Black Lives Matter is an anarchist group that has been burning American cities, while in fact, most racial justice protests are peaceful....

[neoplacebo]

nutjobs will be nutjobs. And victims. At any opportunity.