I have no words to describe this.

It just gets more and more inhuman. From RAW STORY:  Michael Brown's Mom Laid Flowers Where He Was Shot—and Police Crushed Them

A Subject Whose Time Has Finally Come

After the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this past week, read Mike Harwood in Tom Dispatch on the militarization of the police.

Art imitates life in Tom Tomorrow's Strip: Officer Friendly

Did Police Attack a Man on a Hospital Stretcher?

FLANDERS NEWS:

Three police officers from Brussels are under investigation following a violent incident in the Sint-Pieters Hospital in the capital. The officers including a woman PC stand accused of maltreating a man who was manacled to a stretcher.

And no doubt they're being paid while on leave during the "investigation." I've seen first hand how police wrongdoing and abuse has lead to a breach of trust in other cities where I've lived. Will the "investigation" result in an exoneration, a white wash? Too often that is the case. If not, then the police officers should publicly apologise, pay restitution to the man (not from some police slush fund), and return the Euros they "earned" while on leave.

81-year old Episcopal Priest Tasered by AF Base Police

One of the unofficial USAF mottoes is "No one comes close." Well they've certainly lived up to it.

Fairbanks (AK) Daily News-Miner

An 81-year-old man was Tasered during a traffic stop last week.

It is the second time since 1998 that police have had to make a show of force during a traffic stop to arrest Glen M. Wilcox, a Fairbanks-based Episcopalian priest and real estate agent.

Court documents allege that officers with Eielson Air Force Base’s 354th Security Forces Squadron pulled Wilcox over just after 1 p.m. Wednesday for going 11 miles over the speed limit on the Richardson Highway.

An officer, identified as a senior airman in court documents, took Wilcox’s license, registration and proof of insurance and wrote him a traffic citation. When he returned to Wilcox’s car, Wilcox refused to accept the documents and sped down the highway, according to a criminal complaint filed in court.

Wilcox disputes that version of events.

Undernews has more taser torture updates here.

MURDER AT THE G20

I'm spreading the word about the murder of Ian Tomlinson - his tragic death was not accidental and not by natural causes - last week during the G20 summit in London. The police lied to cover this up.

Via Ten Percent,

Dramatic footage obtained by the Guardian shows that the man who died at last week’s G20 protests in London was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground by a baton–wielding police officer in riot gear.

Moments after the assault on Ian Tomlinson was captured on video, he suffered a heart attack and died.

Video & more @ The Guardian:

The film reveals that as he walks, with his hands in his pockets, he does not speak to the police or offer any resistance.

A phalanx of officers, some with dogs and some in riot gear, are close behind him and try to urge him forward.

A Metropolitan police officer appears to strike him with a baton, hitting him from behind on his upper thigh.

Moments later, the same policeman rushes forward and, using both hands, pushes Tomlinson in the back and sends him flying to the ground, where he remonstrates with police who stand back, leaving bystanders to help him to his feet.

The man who shot the footage, a fund manager from New York who was in London on business, said: "The primary reason for me coming forward is that it was clear the family were not getting any answers."

IN CALIFORNIA THEY DREAM OF TASERS: ANOTHER CITIZEN DIES

On Sunday, I wrote about the taser death in Lakewood, Calif which happened late Saturday night. Today RickB (Ten Percent) made an apt comment on my post:

Pepper spray and Taser! This is lazy violent police work, if someone honestly thinks deputies are doing everything right when a naked man dies during arrest then you have internalised the police state and are a submissive herd animal sleepwalking into slavery.

Here's an UPDATE on the Lakewood death from a local watchdog group.

It never ends. Also in California, on Friday there was another taser death, "the sixth to occur after the use of Tasers by San Jose police since 2004." Thanks to Chris Floyd, who comments

The Taser has simply added another deadly refinement to the fun and games. Whereas in the old days the San Jose police probably would have been content with just clubbing a prisoner with batons, now they can whip out a handy-dandy ray-gun and shoot him full of electricity as well. Sure, sometimes the suckers die -- but because the ray-gun is not, ostensibly, a lethal weapon, the deaths can always be written off as an unintended consequence caused by an unknown pre-existing condition or something.

Of course, you can sometimes get a "pre-existing condition" from, say, being clubbed into bloody goo by batons -- or, as in a recent case of my personal knowledge, being handcuffed from behind and having your face slammed repeatedly into a concrete floor by a five or six deputies for the heinous crime of "sass." But it's best not to delve too deeply into these matters. After all, the Taserers and clubbers are only trying to keep us safe from terrorists -- sorry, from criminals. And as our entire bipartisan political class has taught us -- and keeps teaching us every day -- brutality, torture and murder should never be prosecuted if they are committed by government officials in the name of "security."

CANADA ISSUES RESTRICTIONS ON TASER USE

From WaPo/AP (12 February 2009): TORONTO -- Canada's federal police will no longer use stun guns against suspects who are merely resisting arrest or refusing to cooperate _ saying the guns can cause death.

ANOTHER DEATH BY TASER

PRESS-TELEGRAM Long Beach, CA:-- A man running naked on a quiet Lakewood street died after sheriff's deputies shocked him with a Taser gun, authorities said Sunday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Art Spencer said Lakewood deputies responded to a disturbance call in the 5700 block of Silva Street at 10:15 p.m. Saturday.

Spencer said deputies found a "very large" man running naked in the street and acting irrationally.

Deputies tied to calm the man but he remained belligerent, Spencer said. When he advanced at them in a threatening manner, Spencer said deputies used pepper spray and at least one Taser stun gun to subdue him.

Shortly after the man was handcuffed, deputies realized he was not breathing and began to administer CPR, Spencer said. The man, whose identify has not been released, was pronounced dead at a hospital.

FREE PHILIP RIZK

An Egyptian-German journalist/activist, Philip Rizk, has been kidnapped by Egyptian secret police.

He previously worked on aid projects with Canon Andrew White, special envoy to the Middle East for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Eyewitnesses said he was bundled into a white van with no licence plates, which then sped off.

The German embassy has been informed of his detention and is trying to locate him.

Lenin's Tomb has more information and news update links. Helena Cobban knows Mr Rizk and has written

I don't know how much aid the German government gives the Egyptian government. But I imagine it's a lot. Egypt is the top recipient of US aid after Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Why should the governments of any democracies give aid to a government that treats nonviolent social activists like Philip or thousands of others also detained in Egypt without any hint of due process as harshly as this?

There is a Facebook group in support of Mr Rizk, which I've joined.

A TRAGEDY OF ANIMAL AND HUMAN PROPORTIONS

THIS is not an example of "community policing" (thanks to Lotus).

DUTCH POLICE TARGET ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

RNW NEWS

22-12-2008

Extreme animal rights activists will be targeted by a specialist team of policemen, intelligence agents and the ministery of Justice. Dutch Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst has decided this new approach against violence by activists is needed because "they are going too far", she told de Telegraaf daily on Sunday. The minister was referring to increasingly violent actions "against directors of companies that cannot find favour in the eyes of animal rights activists."

The announcement almost coincided with an attack on the property of a senior official of the NYSE Euronext stock exchange. Two cars on the drive of his home in Wassenaar went up in flames. Euronext trades in stocks of British animal testing labs, Huntingdon Life Sciences. Responsibility for the attack has not been claimed yet, but an earlier attack in Hilversum last month was claimed by British animal rights activists.

THE COPS ARE WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE...

Back in June, I wrote about Burlington:Surveillance City. GMD links to a disturbing story in the WaPo

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.

Under the Justice Department proposal for state and local police, published for public comment July 31, law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists. They also could share results with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases.

Criminal intelligence data starts with sources as basic as public records and the Internet, but also includes law enforcement databases, confidential and undercover sources, and active surveillance.

"If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information," Michael German (an FBI agent for 16 years )policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said "It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government."

And, in my June post, BDP "community policing" means citizens becoming spies for them.

the local Burlington Police officer assigned to our area gave a run down of the usual summer house and car break ins ("keep your doors and windows locked") and encouraged the law abiding citizenry to report to BPD any questionable activity on our streets and in our neighborhood parks. Even if it turns out harmless, he told the Assembly, the police would find out what's up.[...] If the person is not doing anything wrong, he continued (I'm paraphrasing), a good citizen won't mind being asked a few questions by the officer.

COURTESY, PROFESSIONALISM, RESPECT.

A New York Police Department officer [The Weekly Vice 29 July 2008]

has been re-assigned to desk duty, pending an investigation, after a You Tube video showed the officer body checking a Critical Mass bicyclist off of his bike.

Critical Mass, a bicycle ride normally held on the last Friday of each month as a form of protest against reliance on vehicles and bicyclist/motorist relations, has been a long standing irritation to the New York Police Department.

Although attempts by New York City to ban the event have failed in court, the tradition has created a somewhat adversarial relationship between the riders and NYPD officers who detest the event.

This past Friday, witnesses say a NYPD officer (now identified as 22 year old Officer Patrick Pogan) attacked rider Christopher Long at random, body checking the rider off his bike.

Reportedly, Long was arrested and charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. According to the arrest affidavit, Long "deliberately steered his bicycle into the officer, causing both of them to fall to the ground."

It turns out the cop was lying.

Very big deal in America!

Life is all right in America.
If you’re all white in America.*

Now, this is sick! -
Via American Leftist -
Don't drop a piece of birthday cake on the floor in junior high school if you're black. Otherwise, you might get injured as a result of an assault by a security guard, with both you and your mother getting arrested. Oh, and your mother's job with another school district? Don't worry, she's now fired.

Thanks also to Lenny.

*Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Student Tasered and Arrested at Kerry Speech

Thanks to Martin Wisse at Wis[s]e Words for alerting us about this story. Jeralyn Merritt also has a post about it at Talk Left.

OCALA.COM - Student Tasered at Kerry speech -

Toward the conclusion of Kerry's UF forum, Meyer approached an open microphone at the University Auditorium and demanded Kerry answer his questions. The student claimed that University Police Department officers had already threatened to arrest him, and then proceeded to question Kerry about why he didn't contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves to impeach President Bush.

A minute or so into what became a combative diatribe, Meyer's microphone was turned off and officers began trying to physically remove him from the auditorium. Meyer flailed his arms, yelling as police tried to restrain him.

He was then pushed to the ground by six officers, at which point Meyer yelled, "What have I done? What I have I done? Get away from me. Get off of me! What did I do? ... Help me! Help."

Police threatened to user a Taser on Meyer if he did not "comply," but he continued to resist being handcuffed. He was then Tased, which prompted him to scream and writhe in pain on the floor of the auditorium.

After the incident, Capt. Jeff Holcomb of the UPD said Meyer had been charged with disrupting a public event and placed in the Alachua County Jail. Holcomb said there would be an investigation into whether the officers used force appropriately, adding that employing a Taser gun would only be justified in a case where there was a threat of physical harm to officers.

As Meyer was escorted away, he was followed by several students, including Matthew Howland, 20. Howland, a UF senior who said he didn't know Meyer, said he was "appalled" by the way UPD officers handled the situation. Howland acknowledged that Meyer had acted inappropriately by "rushing" the microphone and forcing a question on Kerry.

Read and watch the video of the OCALA.COM news story in toto.

American Torture updated

From The Tomb -

You may remember this footage showing the torture of an American student by UCLA cops last year. The university undertook an investigation of its own to review the policy of allowing donut-munchers to walk around zapping students with 50,000 volts, and the final report is now available in a PDF file. Naturally, they recommend continuing to use these things, but have struck upon the astonishing pinko thought that they ought to limit "the use of Tasers to aggressive or violent subjects". Additionally, in a devastating assault on the American social fabric, they urge that students who are only passively resisting or are already handcuffed should not be electrocuted. Can you imagine what Al Qaeda will make of such weakness? And finally, and most shockingly of all, they intend to clarify "the circumstances under which a Taser should be brandished."

I don't know. Can America survive by merely electrocuting such a small sample of the student body? Will they now have to be more careful about torturing prisoners and frying defendants in court? Can such an enfeebled America still singe the body electric?

RickB at Ten Percent reports on the law suit of the the student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad.

Brattleboro Reformer Editorial - Cops over a barrel

AP news update 7/29/07 - Town may seek independent investigation of Taser use [Well, doh.]
------------------------
I missed this, otherwise I'd have posted it with yesterday's comment.
Editorial
Cops over a barrel
Reformer.com
Brattleboro Reformer

Thursday, July 26
Chaining yourself to a barrel planter in a vacant lot probably won't change the course of development in Brattleboro, but having police officers use a Taser on you just might.

We'll get it out of the way right now. The actions of the Brattleboro Police on Tuesday morning were excessive and totally out of line. There is no excuse to use that amount of force against nonviolent protesters.

By using Tasers against Jonathan Crowell and Samantha Kilmurray, the Brattleboro Police managed to take a small, innocuous protest against what Crowell and Kilmurray rather dramatically called "a savage and unimaginative culture of oil-dependent, industrial development," and turn it into something that threatens to harm Brattleboro's reputation even more than a few naked guys prancing down Main Street.

What's more of a threat to public order? Nudity or a police department that has no sense of what constitutes an appropriate use of force? If the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce thought nudity on Main Street was a threat to business, what about the fallout from having Amnesty International call what happened Tuesday "an outrageous use of force."

So much for the image of the quirky little town where protests and vigils are a routine occurrence. So much for live and let live and tolerance of dissent. So much for putting the trauma of the Woodward shooting behind us.

The protesters who occupied the former site of King's Bowling Center on Putney Road had a legitimate gripe. There are better uses for the last developable piece of property between the West River and the roundabout than a possible truck stop (or "travel center," in the preferred euphemism of the property's owner, Cheshire Oil Co.).

One may question why these people weren't at the Development Review Board or the Planning Commission when the first discussions about possible uses of the Putney Road were raised. But there are times when the regular pathways for change can turn into dead ends. That's where protest and civil disobedience comes in.

Protests are a way of attracting attention and rallying public opinion on important issues. They are not meant to be a substitute for working within the system to get things done, but as an adjunct.

There's not much left anymore on Putney Road to preserve. Three decades worth of development transformed farmland into a commercial strip.

Something will likely be built on the Cheshire Oil site, and it won't be a community garden or a ball field. This is still a capitalist society, and the commercial value of the property trumps whatever social value the land might have.

There still might be an opportunity for a compromise, but it just got more difficult. Through their ill-advised actions, the Brattleboro Police have conferred martyr status on Crowell and Kilmurray. And Jim Robinson, the owner of Cheshire Oil, is not likely to feel generous in the face of a threatened boycott of his gas stations and convenience stores.

One good thing may come out of this, though. The now-moribund Citizen Police Communication Committee might see a influx of volunteers to serve, and the CPCC might turn into a real watchdog for police misconduct instead of the toothless panel it is now.

We do know this: What happened Tuesday morning didn't have to happen. "All they had to do was take our water away from us and we would have been gone in 48 hours," Kilmurray told the Selectboard Tuesday night.

Instead, the Brattleboro Police turned a peaceful protest into an embarrassment for the town and a rallying point for the activists in this community. Again, it didn't need to happen and steps must be taken so it doesn't happen again.

The Power of the Vermont Pigs

It’s obv to me that Sam Hemingway is pro-taser. Check out his shoddy inaccurate reporting in today's Free Press. Why doesn’t that paper's copy editor do his job?

He reports on an incident this past week involving a tasering of two "pro-environment protesters" in Brattleboro. Labeling these individuals the way he does gives the article a political slant, and shows his bias. As opposed to anti-environment protesters? Why not just write two persons, or two environment protesters?

Agenda or not, the implication is that they deserved to be tasered. In a story that was supposed to be 'just the facts.

In it's coverage, the Brattleboro Reformer calls the individuals non-violent protesters.

The Boston Globe just identifies them as two protesters

The man and the woman were planting flowers to protest the development of a truck stop on the Putney Road.

Another inaccuracy -

CBS News reported in 2004 that 70 people have died as a result of being zapped by Taser guns.

Huh, CBS News?!? That’s an outdated stat. Again, Hemingway gives a lower number to minimize the seriousness of the deaths. No where does he indicate that the numbers have increased. Amnesty International has identified over 150 taser deaths since 2001.

Sixty-one people died in 2005 after being shocked by law enforcement agency TASERs, a 27 percent increase from 2004's tally of 48 deaths, finds an Amnesty International study released today. Including 10 TASER-related deaths through mid-February of this year, at least 152 people have died in the United States since June 2001 after being shocked with the weapons.

"Despite a lack of independent research on TASER safety, police officers are using these weapons as a routine force tool -- rather than as a weapon of last resort," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "These weapons have a record that's growing longer each week -- and it's not a good one. The increasingly frequent TASER-related deaths underscore the need for an independent, rigorous and impartial inquiry into their use."

Burlington Police are thrilled with 'em:

"It's the most effective new tool to come along in the police community in the last 25 years," Burlington Police Chief Tom Tremblay said. "We have significantly reduced injuries to officers and the number of confrontations with offenders by utilizing this tool."

First off, Chief Tremblay, it's not a tool. It kills, it's a weapon. So, because the po-lice are pro-taser, there’s no debate. Actually, there was never a debate in Burlington. BPD just started using them without public discussion. Tasers are dangerous, but the false sense of safety has caused the police to use them too freely. So much for the effects of NPA community PR: TASER use replaces the humanity and compassion that good officers develop, which make it unnecessary to endanger the public with.

I wrote last November, Last summer, Burlington Police obtained tasers to use on citizens here. Seven Days newspaper reported an incident last June where a taser gun was used on a dog. No protests were made by the Humane Society, of course.
The voice of the experts?

"The times where a Taser can cause harm are very, very, very rare," said Dr. Wendy James, an emergency room doctor at Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital who has helped Burlington develop its policies for using Tasers. "I'd much rather someone be Tased than have a bullet hole in them."

Taser International claims tasers are safe, "non-lethal" or "less lethal" They even sell a consumer version (keep your family safe), with the same effective zap as the po-lice kind. (I love these euphemisms!)

Is Dr James an expert on “non-lethal” weapons? How does Heminway know this fact? How much compensation did she receive from the BPD?

Hemingway’s story does not mention that the USDOJ is studying TASER use.

Nor does he mention Tasers new "tool". From New Scientist - Taser unveils long-range and 'scatter' weapons - there's the new XREP:

The new projectile, known as XREP can be fired from a standard shotgun. A barbed electrode sticks to the target on impact. The rest of the projectile then falls away on a short tether and another spiked electrode makes a second contact point on the target. This ensures that the two electrodes are sufficiently spaced out to affect the entire body.
---
But Neil Davison, head of non-lethal weapons research within the peace studies department at Bradford University, UK, points to potential hazards of XREP. "It combines the well-known dangers of impact projectiles – inaccuracy, potential for serious injury – with a Taser shock four times longer than usual, which also carries an increased risk to the health of the victim," Davison says.
---
Davison sees a risk that targets may be hit more than once. "My overall concern with all three developments is that they would further remove the process of human interaction, negotiation and reasoning from the decision by police to use force," he says.

See my related post from June.
AI's multimedia dossier on TASERS
AI's News dossier on TASERS

This Ain't Paintball

BURLINGTON FREE PRESS June 27, 2007 - Local police train for 'active shooter' scenario

Police prepare for the worst, in bucolic, suburban Milton, no less! BPD already use shocking force.