You might want to sit down for this. Are you sitting down? Okay: an officer in the employ of the New York Police Department was convicted today of planting crack cocaine on two innocent people. Not only that—it's apparently only one episode in a "widespread culture of corruption endemic in [NYPD] drug units." I know. I know! My jaw dropped too!
Oh no: violent protesters! An NYPD police association is threatening lawsuits against protesters who assault police officers and is warning of "growing violence," even as Occupy Wall Street has proven its non-violence time and again.
"What's Ohio like?" you might ask, for some reason. Well, this is what it's like: "Authorities in Bainbridge say that a drunken woman, who was wearing nothing but fishnet stockings, a g-string and high heels [Actually, tennis shoes — Ed.], led them on a high speed chase along Route 422 prior to her arrest."
A tense scene unfolded in Oakland last night as protesters, attempting to reclaim the plaza from which they were evicted early Tuesday morning, faced off with police—who used tear gas and percussion grenades on the occupiers.
Looks like police officers on duty at a high school football game in Roosevelt, Utah pulled a Tony Bologna move the other night when they pepper-sprayed a group of about 15 Polynesian fellows who were performing the Haka, a traditional dance, in honor of a relative who was playing in the game. The police also reportedly baton-whacked some of the dancers, just for dancing. Surprisingly no one was Tased or arrested, just for dancing.
On October 20 of last year, two armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents broke into the two-bedroom Nashville apartment of Angel Enrique and Jesus Antonio, shattering a window and shouting racial slurs. Did they even have a warrant, Enrique and Antonio asked? "The warrant," one agent told them, "is coming out of my balls." So... no.
Dep. Insp. Anthony Bologna, the NYPD commander whose loose ways with pepper spray caused a stir last month at Occupy Wall Street (and cost him some vacation days), has told colleagues that he "acted with the best intentions" when he sprayed a group of ladies who weren't doing anything at all, and he's been "tortured" ever since.
A new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union says that police in New York are "consistently misusing and overusing Tasers." The study of hundreds of taserings found that the majority of them "did not meet expert-recommended criteria;" that 15% were "clearly inappropriate" cases, such as shocking someone who was already handcuffed; and that only 15% of Tasering victims were armed when the police zapped them.
Let's not jump to conclusions about this video, which (at about a minute in) shows a woman dressed in a business suit, carrying her Citibank checkbook, trying to leave her bank only to be dragged back inside and arrested by a plainclothes NYPD officer.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world marched on dozens of cities on Saturday, joining the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations against greed, inequality and everything else that's screwed up right now.
Today there is yet another in an astonishing series of revelations from the Associated Press on the extent of the NYPD's illegal surveillance of Muslims: The city is sending undercover cops into local colleges to spy on Muslim students. Why? Because they're Muslims!
A Redditor has dug up a comment thread on Officer.com—an online forum for the law enforcement community—in which several forum members crack jokes about all the pepper-spraying that went on during Saturday's Occupy Wall Street protest. One man's burning eyes is another man's source of laughter, as the old saying goes.
The New York Times has belatedly picked up the flag of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, with columnist Jim Dwyer arguing that the wanton pepper-spraying of a group of female demonstrators by an NYPD inspector was "like a punch in the face." It was! The only difference between the two, when you think about it, is that with the pepper-spray incident, no one got punched in the face.
Taser International, producer of the greatest non-lethal law enforcement tool known to man, is rapidly expanding its empire to include a new video surveillance system called Axon that records response calls by law enforcement. This should help with court cases when cops are unfairly accused of brutality. But you know what's totally unfair? All of these negative, sensational stories about tasers. This constant negativity is overshadowing the great contributions that tasers have made to society over the years. According to Taser International CEO Rick Smith, who spoke with Fortune about the company's rebranding efforts, stories about taser-related deaths and such are totally unfair:
Arizona, which we are still not convinced isn't a hoax, is the home of not one but two of our nation's finest lawmen: Squat fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio and sex slaver Steven Seagal, who is starring in a reality TV show where he... is a policeman, sort of. Well! Now they are both getting sued for killing a puppy.
Here's a local news report that features photos, obtained from a surveillance camera, of a uniformed New Mexico State Police officer using the hood of a car to give one woman a full cavity search, if you catch my drift. The officer in question hasn't been fired as of yet, but he's now the subject of an internal affairs investigation related to his own, uh, internal affair. [KOB]
