Police Reform in America

[Unagi]

Perhaps you are thinking of Inauthenti City, in that great state of Confusion ?

[Punisher]

Perhaps you are thinking of Inauthenti City, in that great state of Confusion ?

Possible since I now live in that state.

[Isgrimnur]

Elijah McClain death: Officer Randy Roedema guilty, former officer Jason Rosenblatt not guilty

The jury found Randy Roedema guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, Jason Rosenblatt was found not guilty of manslaughter and assault. Sentencing for Roedema is scheduled for Jan. 5 at 1:30 p.m. in Adams County Court.
...
Rosenblatt no longer works for the Aurora Police Department. Roedema and the third responding officer, Nathan Woodyard, have been suspended from the police force without pay.
...
Woodyard also faces a separate trial, and paramedics who injected McClain with the drug ketamine moments after the interaction with the officers are also facing a separate trial. After he was given the drug, McClain went into cardiac arrest and was declared brain dead. He died several days later.
...
The trials for the other first responders are scheduled to take place starting at the end of the week (for Woodyard) and next month (for paramedics Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper).
...
Since McClain's death, APD has been through several police chiefs and the city has entered a consent decree in which police reforms surrounding use of force and racial bias are mandated.

The City of Aurora reached a settlement with McClain's family two years after his death. That $15 million agreement resolved the federal civil rights lawsuit they had filed.

[Isgrimnur]

Aurora police officer Nathan Woodyard was found not guilty Monday of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain

Jury questionnaires will be handed out on Nov. 17 for the two former paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec charged in McClain's death. Jury selection in the courtroom is expected on Nov. 27. That trial is expected to last several weeks.

[Pyperkub]

Solid reporting is expensive, and change takes time, as well as accountability, but it can help...

When I began working at ProPublica in the fall of 2017, the Valley Courier was 30 years behind me. But I still loved local news. And, as luck would have it, ProPublica was just then launching an initiative called the Local Reporting Network.

The mission of the Local Reporting Network, or the LRN as we call it, is both simple and righteous. Mindful of the many local news organizations that are shrinking or disappearing, ProPublica partners with local newsrooms strapped for resources, to help them execute bold investigative projects. The first group of LRN partners published stories in 2018. And one of that first group’s members was Christian Sheckler, then a reporter at the South Bend Tribune in Indiana...

...When Sheckler applied to the LRN, he was 29. He’d been a reporter for six years, four in South Bend and two in Fort Wayne. He wanted to dig into the criminal justice system in nearby Elkhart, where, according to his application letter, there was a “decades-old pattern of misconduct.” He believed reporting could produce answers about why some people had been wrongfully convicted and “an accounting” from public officials.

To do what he wanted, he needed time. In words that will resonate with every reporter who’s ever churned out five, 10 or 15 stories a week at a small or midsize daily, Sheckler wrote that he needed “a sabbatical from the press conferences and school board meetings that, in today's understaffed newsroom, can stand in the way of the most ambitious investigative journalism.”...

...Sheckler and I wrote a dozen stories in 2018 and then more in years after. We investigated how poor policing led to wrongful and questionable convictions. We exposed dubious investigative practices and a lack of police accountability. We found that of the Elkhart Police Department’s 34 supervisors, 28 had disciplinary records and seven had opened fire in at least one fatal shooting. One officer was promoted to sergeant after receiving 11 suspensions, 15 reprimands and one verbal warning. (“He was promoted in the wake of all this?” one criminal justice expert said to us. “That’s very strange. ... I have no explanation for this. ... This is bizarre.”)

In the wake of our joint investigation, the city’s police chief was suspended for 30 days. Then he resigned. The city’s mayor abandoned his reelection campaign. The city commissioned an outside study of its police force, which found that officers were viewed in the community as “cowboys” who engage in “rough treatment of civilians.” The 97-page study criticized the department’s lack of accountability and its “vague and non-descriptive” use-of-force reports. In 2022, Keith Cooper, a man whose wrongful conviction we’d written about in 2018, received $7.5 million in a record settlement with the city, which apologized for its handling of his case.

This year, the fallout has continued. In 2018, Sheckler obtained a video showing two Elkhart police officers repeatedly punching a handcuffed man inside the police station’s detention area.

And, while part of it is just the defense, this seems like it could also be an honest reaction:

Joshua Titus, the second officer, appeared for sentencing just this month — and received a year in prison.

At the sentencing hearing, in federal court in Hammond, Indiana, Titus expressed gratitude for the video being made public by the Tribune and ProPublica. He’d been dealing with severe post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in the Air Force, Titus said. “I was in denial of my psychological issues,” he said, adding that the video’s release “opened my eyes and gave me a renewing of my soul.” Publication of the videotaped beating also “helped change the culture at the Elkhart Police Department,” he said.

[Isgrimnur]

Supreme Court declines appeal from Derek Chauvin in murder of George Floyd

Lawyers for Chauvin had asked the Supreme Court in October to take up his legal battle, which centered around a Minnesota trial court's denial of his requests for a change of venue and to sequester the jury. Chauvin argued that the decision to keep the proceedings in Minneapolis deprived him of his right to a fair trial because of pretrial publicity and the threat of violence and riots in the event he was acquitted.
...
Chauvin was sentenced to 22 ½ years in prison in June 2021. He also pleaded guilty in December 2021 to a federal charge of violating Floyd's civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison, which he is serving concurrently with his state sentence.

Chauvin is now seeking to overturn his conviction on the federal charge, arguing in a filing last week that he wouldn't have pleaded guilty had he been aware of the theories of a Kansas-based pathologist who does not believe Floyd died as a result of Chauvin's actions.

[Smoove_B]

Chauvin stabbed in prison:

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, was stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured Friday at a federal prison in Arizona, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

The attack happened at the Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incarcerated person was assaulted at FCI Tucson at around 12:30 p.m. local time Friday. In a statement, the agency said responding employees contained the incident and performed “life-saving measures” before the inmate, who it did not name, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.

[Isgrimnur]

And on Black Friday...

[Unagi]

And on Black Friday...

[Blackhawk]

What? A former cop in prison for one of the most infamous hate crimes in decades was the victim of violence?

I wasn't expecti... who am I kidding? I had that in every space on my bingo card.

[Isgrimnur]

And on Black Friday...

[Isgrimnur]

Paramedics were convicted in Elijah McClain’s death.

Two Denver-area paramedics were convicted Friday for giving a fatal overdose of the sedative ketamine to Elijah McClain in 2019 — a jury verdict that experts said could have a chilling effect on first responders around the country.
...
The jury also found Cichuniec guilty on one of two second-degree assault charges, which brings the possibility of an enhanced prison sentence and required that he be taken into immediate custody. Cooper was found not guilty on the assault charges and was not taken into custody.

[Isgrimnur]

Grand jury indicts man accused of stabbing Derek Chauvin in Tucson prison

Documents show 52-year-old John Turscak was charged with attempted murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, intentional assault with an attempt to murder and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.

Documents state Turscak had intentionally and knowingly assaulted Chauvin with an improvised knife with intent to do bodily harm.

The Associated Press reported Turscak had told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin if they had not intervened quickly.

The Associated Press also reported Turscak told FBI agents after the assault that he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday as a symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and the “Black Hand,” which is a symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia, prosecutors said.

Turscak is serving a 30-year sentence for crimes committed while a member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang.

[Victoria Raverna]

This is crazy:

[malchior]

The NY Times and Washington Post each had a piece a few days on it that largely mirrored the details in the video. In the video it sure looks like he is speeding, he drifts towards the parked car, and over steers to avoid it causing the accident. The subsequent police overreacting and escalating when they messed up and then covering it up? That's just American policing for you.

Edit: I just read that the attorney's representing the pair both criminally and the inevitable civil suit found another video showing the same officer blowing a red light at high speed just prior to the accident.

So here's a recap of police statement. Same officer who beat my client decide that driver had no impairment and didn't need breathalyzer. No dash cam on car. Won't release body cam. No investigation of crash. No crash scene photos.

If I crashed into a building, while speeding, after midnight, after running a stop light, there is no way that I could have a co-worker decide that I should not get a breathalyzer.

...

The police statement also now claims that the officer was changing his radio and that caused him to crash. this is now the third different explanation from swerving to miss a dog to not seeing the only parked car to now the radio. None explain running the red light.

...

Finally, I'm not an "Internationally Accredited" police department but I was able to get this video in less than 24 hours. Interested in the "investigation" police are doing of their own

[Isgrimnur]

Aurora police officer Nathan Woodyard was found not guilty Monday of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain

Jury questionnaires will be handed out on Nov. 17 for the two former paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec charged in McClain's death. Jury selection in the courtroom is expected on Nov. 27. That trial is expected to last several weeks.

Paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with ketamine before his death avoids prison

A former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a powerful sedative avoided prison Friday and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with work release and probation in the killing of the Black man that helped fuel the 2020 racial injustice protests.

Jeremy Cooper had faced up to three years in prison after being found guilty in a jury trial last year of criminally negligent homicide. He administered a dose of ketamine to McClain, 23, who had been forcibly restrained after police stopped him as the massage therapist was walking home in a Denver suburb in 2019.
...
Cooper, who was fired after his conviction, was sentenced to four years of probation including 14 months in jail under a program that will allow him to leave for work and return to jail at night and on weekends, said Lawrence Pacheco with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

The other paramedic involved in McClain’s death received a more severe punishment after being convicted on an additional charge of felony assault.
...
Judge Warner previously sentenced ex-paramedic Peter Cichuniec in March to five years in prison. He faced the most serious of the charges in the case. It was the shortest sentence allowed under the law.