Bronx, New York:
Amadou Diallo was chased by four plainclothes police officers into his
apartment building. Apparently thinking they were robbers, he tried to
hand over his wallet, but the police opened fire at close range and hit
him with 19 bullets, killing him. The other 22 bullets missed him.
Diallo was unarmed.
New York, New York:
Abner Louima was sodomized with a plunger by two police officers in a
police department bathroom, to the point that his intestines were
ruptured and he suffered severe damage to his internal organs.
Austin, Texas: Rodney Wickware died after being assaulted by five police officers trying to arrest him for walking through traffic on foot.
Richmond, Texas: Robert "Jack" Williams was shot six times and killed during a traffic stop. Williams was unarmed.
Houston, Texas:
Derek Kaeserman was shot and killed by seven Houston police officers
who had surrounded his truck after a brief chase. Police fired 59
rounds into the truck. Mr. Kaeserman was unarmed.
Bellaire, Texas: Travis Allen was shot twice in the back and killed while laying on the floor under arrest. He was unarmed.
Nashville, Tennessee:
Leon Fisher was shot and killed by police after being stopped for
speeding. According to bystanders, Fisher was handcuffed when he was
shot, sparking a riot.
Greenville, South Carolina:
Jamel Radcliff died of asphyxiation after four guards choked him and
beat his head on the concrete floor. He was arrested for not paying a
fine.
Gaithersburg, Maryland:
Becky Garnet was shot in the back of the head and killed as she sat in
her car during a traffic stop. The police officer thought she had a
gun, but it was a bag of potato chips.
Michigan:
According to the Detroit Free Press, Michigan police officers have used
law enforcement databases to find the home addresses and other
information on people they wanted to harass, including sexual rivals,
love interests and others.
Newark, New Jersey:
Earl Faison died in police custody after police sprayed him in the face
with chemicals. He was mistaken for another man who had killed a police
officer the year before.
Louisville, Kentucky:
While participating in a strike at the GE plant, Kjeston "Michelle"
Rodgers, 40, was hit and killed by a police car. Police claim it was an
accident, but there is a long history of police killing strikers. If
YOU ever hit and kill someone, saying "it was an accident" gets you out
of trouble!
Lawrence, Kansas:
Gregg Sevier's parents called 911 because he was depressed and
suicidal. They asked for a mental health professional but instead got
two police officers who picked the lock to Gregg's bedroom door. Gregg
pointed a knife at them and they shot him six times. One bullet went
through Gregg and struck his sister Judy.
Donald Scott. Age 62
at the time of his death at his home in Malibu, CA. on October 2, 1992.
Scott and his wife, Frances Plante, were awakened by a pounding at the
door. As Plante attempted to open the door, a narcotics task force from
the LA County Sheriff's Dept. burst into the home, weapons in hand.
Plante was pushed forcefully from the door at gun point. She cried out,
"Don't shoot me, don't kill me!" With a gun aimed at her head, she
looked to her right and saw Donald charging into the room, waving a
revolver above his head. She heard a deputy shout, "Put the gun down!
Put the gun down! Put the gun down!" As Scott was doing so, she heard
three gun shots ring out, apparently from two sources. Her husband was
killed instantly. Scott was a millionaire, heir to the Scott Paper
fortune. Scott owned 250 acres of breathtakingly beautiful land that
was adjacent to federal park lands. Attempts had been made by the feds
to buy the property, but Scott was not interested in selling. Claims
that there might be pot growing on the land, made by agents who did
aerial surveillance, were used to get a search warrant. An official
inquiry suggested that agents were hoping this raid would lead to asset
forfeiture of the property Scott would not sell. No marijuana was
found. Scott did not even smoke it.
Annie Rae Dixon Age 84
- Bedridden when she was killed by police in a 1992 drug raid in East
Texas. A 28 year-old officer said his automatic pistol accidentally
discharged when he kicked open Mrs. Dixon's bedroom door. Earlier that
night, Police claim they recieved a tip that there were drugs in the
house.
So they got a search warrant, and returned to the house just after 2
am. They sprinted up the ramshackle porch and smashed the front door
with a battering ram. Accoding to police, they swept in, the officer
kicked in the door to Ms. Dixon's bedroom and fell, slamming his elbow
against the door and firing the gun, killing her instantly. No drugs
were found in the home.
Alberto Sepulveda, September 13, 2000 -
11 year old Alberto Sepulveda was a 7th grader at Prescott Senior
Elementary School in Modesto, California. The raid was supposedly part
of a drug trafficking investigation. A SWAT team violently assaulted
Alberto's home because his father was accused of posessing drugs.
Knowing that Moises Sepulveda was a family man, with a wife and 3
children, ages 8, 11 and 14, the decision was, naturally, made to raid
the home at 6:16 a.m. on a school day. SWAT teams called upon for the
early morning raid of the children's home were from the Sacramento and
San Francisco offices of the FBI, the DEA, the Stanislaus County
Sheriff's Department and the Lodi Police Department.
David Hawn, a 21
year police veteran with 18 1/2 years experience on SWAT teams,
unloaded his shotgun into the back of the 11 year old boy, ending his
life instantly. Of course, officials quickly labeled the shooting
"accidental." Just as the drunk driver feels it is just an accident
when his car happens to go up a curb and crush the life from a child,
teams of men armed with loaded weapons who break into children's homes
feel it is just an accident when a shotgun happens to go off and rip a
child's body to shreds.
Robert Adams On October 4, 2000, 61 year old John Adams of Lebanon,
Tennessee was gunned down by police raiding the wrong house, supposedly
looking for drugs.
He was watching TV when armed men burst through the door. His wife
Loraine Adams, who said that the armed invaders did not identify
themselves as police until after the shooting, was handcuffed and
thrown onto her knees in a different room while her husband bled to
death. Police Chief Billy Weeks said that the shooting was not the
fault of the two officers who shot Grandpa Adams, Officers Kyle Shedran
and Greg Day. The raid was blamed on false information from a police
informant.
Mario Paz A 69
year old grandfather died a brutal death at the hands of police looking
for marijuana on August 9, 1999. No drugs were found. It was an hour
before midnight when an El Monte police SWAT team, serving a search
warrant as part of a broad-ranging narcotics investigation, undertook
what it called the "high-risk entry" of a Compton home--shooting the
locks off the front and back doors. Their warrant, which named no one
in the Paz home, says police expected to find marijuana and cash
belonging to a suspected member of a drug ring who had allegedly used
the house as a mail drop. They found no drugs, but in the course of the
search they shot a retired grandfather twice in the back--killing him.
The widow was hustled out of the house in nothing but panties, a towel
and plastic handcuffs. She and six others were later taken away and
intensively interrogated, but no one was charged. Ten thousand dollars
in cash was seized as evidence, along with a .22- caliber rifle and
three pistols, according to investigators for the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department. The family said that the money was patriarch
Mario Paz's life savings and that he kept firearms for protection in
the high-crime neighborhood.
Pedro Oregon Navarro:
On July 12, 1998, Pedro Oregon Navarro, a 22 year-old father of two,
was shot to death in the bathroom of his home by at least six Houston
(TX) police officers. The officers had entered Navarro's home by
kicking in his door without a warrant on the word of a drug suspect who
told them that there were drugs being sold in the apartment. No drugs
were found in the home and, blood tests on Navarro's corpse came back
negative.
Officers claimed that they believed that Navarro had fired upon them,
but ballistics tests showed that all 30 shots were fired by the
officers. Twelve of those shots hit Navarro, nine from above and behind
him. In the days following the shooting, Harris County D.A. Johnny
Holmes inflamed passions, telling the press that the officers were
within their rights to kill Navarro as they believed he was resisting
arrest. This case is a very clear illustration of the insanity and
brutality that our government is using against defenseless citizens.
Does the constitution say anything about the state having the right to
kick in the doors of its innocent citizens?
Andre Burgess
(shot, not killed, for holding candy bar) A federal undercover agent
working on a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force" in
Queens, NY, shot a local high school student when he mistook a candy
bar in the youth's hand for a gun. 17 year-old Andre Burgess, captain
of the Hillcrest High School soccer team, was walking down 138th street
in Laurelton, Queens, when the carload of Federal agents rolled by and
one officer, identified by the New York Daily News as William Cannon,
jumped out. Cannon apparently identified himself, but, according to
Burgess, gave the teen no time to react. "I turned to see what was up,
and boom, I'm hit, and I fell to the ground." Burgess also described
the callousness with which the incident was handled even after it was
discovered that he had been unarmed and apparently wholly uninvolved in
any criminal activity. "I'm laying there, bleeding, waiting to go the
hospital, and he's shaking hands with the other cops, or agents, or
whatever they were," he said.
"He asked one of them, 'Don't I know you from some other case?' And I'm
still lying there." DRCNet Executive Director David Borden commented,
"The incident is reminiscent of the Esequiel Hernandez killing in
Redford, Texas, by U.S. Marines. In neither case did the aggressors
provide appropriate medical assistance to their victims. Fortunately,
Burgess was not fatally wounded. But then, this is only the one
incident out of many that happened to get some press."
David Aguilar, 44,
retired from the military after 20 years and decided to live on his
pension so he could be a "stay-at-home dad" to his five youngest
children, aged 3 to 15, according to Beth Cascaddan, his neighbor in
the Three Points area, 22 miles west of Tucson, Ariz. "He was extremely
devoted to his children," Ms Cascaddan told reporter Melissa Martinez
of the daily Tucson Citizen. Aguilar also coached youth football and
baseball. But on the early afternoon of Friday, Jan. 10, David Aguilar
sensed something wrong. A man was sitting in a car parked alongside the
road bordering Aguilar's property, just sitting and watching.Aguilar's
children, including his 15-year-old son, later recalled that their
father approached the man in the parked car, asking whether he was
lost.
Whatever the man said, it led to an argument. Seeing that the stranger
was not going to move along, Aguilar went back to the house and
returned with a gun. The children told neighbor Bonnie Moreno their
father was simply trying to scare the man away.
There is no indication David Aguilar ever fired. When the man in the
car saw Aguilar returning, he drew his own gun and, at 2:45 that Friday
afternoon, fired multiple times through his own windshield. David
Aguilar died that evening in a Tucson hospital, of a single gunshot
wound to the chest. It turns out the shooter is an undercover agent of
the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Although David Aguilar and his family were not the target of any drug
investigation, the unnamed agent was staking out their neighborhood.
"Investigators did not say whether the agent identified himself" to
Aguilar before opening fire, the Tucson newspapers report. Although a
funeral was held , burial did not take place until the family raised
$3,213 in funeral costs.
Esequiel Hernandez.
An 18 year-old high school student from the small Texas border town of
Redford, was just tending his family's goats, was shot by Marines given
the job of stopping the drug flow. Officials said Mr. Hernandez, to
their knowledge, was not engaged in any illegal activities, when he was
shot. His family said he had just returned home from high school and
had taken his flock of 30 goats out for grazing. Just a few minutes
after Junior ventured out with his flock, a squad of four camouflaged
U.S. Marines on a covert anti-drug mission, shot and killed the young
shepherd -- A U.S citizen slain by his own military on U.S. soil.
The Marines, who were helping the Border Patrol stake out a reputed
smuggling corridor near the Hernandez clan's ranchito, do not allege
that Junior was trafficking in narcotics. They claim that he fired his
gun twice, and that they returned fire with semiautomatic M-16's.
Marine Col. Thomas Kelly said that this was all in compliance with the
rules of engagement. But to the many people touched by Esequiel
Hernandez Jr. - an estimated 800 mourners trudged up a dirt road to
Redford's cemetery - his death was more than a tragic footnote.
They say it is inconceivable that the same boy who was still studying
for his driver's license exam, knowingly could have fired at another
human being. They believe his death was a murder, committed by troops
trained for combat, not for the subtleties of a rustic Mexican American
village. An autopsy on a high school sophomore shot to death by a
Marine anti-drug squad on the Texas-Mexico border shows the youth bled
to death after a bullet pierced his side, fragmented, then tore through
his aorta, stomach and other organs. The report also shows that the
bullet that struck 18-year-old Ezequiel Hernandez Jr. entered on the
right side of his chest, then traveled toward the left side of his body
on two divergent paths.
Prosecutors have said the wound indicates the right-handed teen- ager,
who fired two shots with a .22-caliber rifle before he was killed, was
not aiming at the Marines when he was hit. The autopsy failed to find
any substances in Hernandez's blood, except "a trace of coffee," said
Daniel Bodine, justice of the peace in Presidio. "Everything came out
clean." The town had no knowledge the Marines were patrolling in
camouflaged uniforms - ghillie suits which make them virtually
invisible to the unknowing eye. The Marines had been out there for days
within close range of homes and people were unaware of their presence.
Pat Eymer,
unarmed, shot while holding 5 year old daughter, however she was
fortunate, she survived. On October 23,1998, at approximately 7:30am,
in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the drug raid took place at the private
residence of Steve and Pat Eymer. Their house was swarmed by a team of
police to "serve" a drug related arrest warrant. Inside this residence
was a 13 year old teenage girl, a 5 year old little girl, a 4 month old
infant, their Mother, Dad and another couple that had stopped by for a
cup of coffee on their way to a fishing trip.
Armed agents poured in screaming and waving guns at people. The mother
reached for her 5 year old to keep her from running in terror and as
she held her frightened daughter her shoulder was blown off by one of
the trained terrorists!
NO FIREARMS, and NO DRUGS were in the house, and the mother was in the
kitchen several feet away from the goon squad. The 13 year old passed
out at the sight of seeing her mother shot down in her own home and the
5 year old went into total hysteria (remind you of Ruby Ridge?).
If these so called "men" are so scared of being hurt, they need to get
out of the business and let people with common sense and decency tend
to these matters.
If this was an isolated incident, a huge law suit and public apology
may serve for justice, but this is becoming a regular pattern in this
country for the past several years now. This was the act of a coward
which could not control his fear. The Sallisaw police department (THE
CRIMINALS) filed no charges on the innocent victims of their brutal
assault. How considerate of them. There were no firearms or drugs in
the house. What could justify shooting an unarmed citizen, with a 5 yr
old in their arms.
Bruce Lavoie On
August 3, 1989, Lavoie lay peacefully sleeping in the room he shared
with his young son in the village of Hudson, New Hampshire. At five in
the morning he was awakened by a loud noise as his whole home was
shaken violently. A battering ram had smashed his front door, and a
dark band of armed men rushed into his small apartment. Rising to
defend his son, Lavoie was shot to death as his little boy watched
helplessly.
Christian Missionaries Veronica and Charity Bowers.
On April 20, 2001, a Peruvian Air Force plane, acting in connection
with U.S. "anti-drug" efforts, shot down a private plane, killing 35
year old Veronica Bowers, a Christian missionary from Muskegon,
Michigan, and her 7 month old infant daughter Charity. A single bullet
passed through the woman's body and into the skull of her youngster.
Her husband, son, and the pilot of the plane survived, however, pilot
Kevin Donaldson suffered a crushed leg bone and severed arteries. A CIA
plane had alerted the Peruvian authorities to Bowers' plane, which
appeared "suspicious." Pilot Donaldson had filed a flight plan to land
in Iquitos, Peru, but evidently the information was not passed on to
the American authorities.
Since the CIA did not know about the flight in advance, the assumption
was that the plane was carrying drugs, so the people aboard naturally
had to be killed. There were no drugs found on the plane.
Rev. Accelyne Williams.
In a police raid on his Boston apartment in 1994, the 75-year-old
Methodist minister who collapsed and died of heart failure, at the
hands of Boston police. Acting on a tip by an informant, the police
conducted a no-knock raid. They burst into Williams's Dorchester
apartment, breaking down the front door. Police then chased Williams
into his bedroom, breaking down that door as well. They then flipped
him on his stomach and handcuffed him as one cop thrust his knee in
Williams's back. Williams death was yet another example of the
systematic and callous disregard that the government has for the
rights, safety, and welfare of the people of this nation. No criminal
charges were brought against any of the police involved in the death of
Williams. One officer received a 30-day suspension with pay while two
others were reprimanded. No guns or drugs were found, as it was soon
discovered they raided the wrong apartment.
UNARMED MAN SHOT BY POLICE. Houston police officer K.N. Patton shot and killed James Cameron Higgins with a single gunshot to the throat in March, 1990.
Higgins was unarmed and was driving a pickup that had one female
passenger. Patton's account states that he saw Higgins' truck pulling
away from a McDonald's restaurant where there had been a holdup and
reports of gunfire.
Patton chased the truck, lights and siren on, but Higgins did not stop
until he had pulled into a parking lot and hit a utility pole. With his
gun drawn, Patton approached the truck and ordered Higgins out. Higgins
refused and Patton tried to force him out and in the process the gun
went off, the bullet striking Higgins. Drugs were found in the truck,
and the woman passenger was suffering from a drug overdose, according
to a statement by investigators.
However, one eyewitness (not the passenger) claims she saw the driver
get out of the truck on his own and then two police officers approached
with guns drawn. Shortly thereafter a single shot was heard. The
suspect in the robbery that brought Patton to the scene had fled on
foot and was not apprehended, and police suspect he took part in a
convenience store robbery that occurred a short time later.
BLACK FLORIST SHOT BY WHITE POLICEMAN.
In Dallas on Dec. 4, 1990, a black florist who had rushed to his
business after he received a report about a robbery (the third in
slightly over a month), was shot and killed by Dallas police officer
Vincent Reetz. Reetz, just four months out of the police academy, shot
R.L. Rose once after ordering the florist to drop the gun he was
carrying. Rose had arrived on the scene before the police and was
hunting for the burglar while carrying his own gun. He identified
himself to Reetz' partner as the store's owner, but the rookie may not
have heard him. Reetz ordered Rose to drop his weapon, and when Rose
turned to face the young officer, thereby bringing his weapon around
toward the man, Reetz opened fire, striking the 53-year-old in the
chest. Reetz is the third Dallas police officer to kill a black person,
who had been armed in self-defense, within a three year period.
OFFICERS SHOOT 81-YEAR-OLD.
Andres Acosta, an 81-year-old man who was hard of hearing, was killed
after being shot 10 times by two police officers who broke into his
Luling, Texas house late at night on a drug raid. The officers, Deputy
Al Alvarez of Hays County, and Deputy Mike Thompson of Blanco County,
had a warrant for the raid, but the address on the warrant was for a
different house. Police claim the house was correct, but the warrant
had a clerical error.
The shooting took place on October 24, 1990, late at night when the
officers broke into the Acosta home searching for drugs and to arrest
Ruben Acosta, Sr., the son of the slain man. Andres Acosta did have a
gun and apparently fired at the officers, who were using flashlights to
see. Acosta had purchased the gun because he had been robbed at
gunpoint at his house two years earlier.
Relatives claimed that the man was partially deaf, sick and on
medication. Ruben Acosta, Sr., who may have been the target of the
raid, was arrested on two counts of aggravated assault from earlier
incidents. Points to ponder:
This simply looks like a case where an older man thought he was being
robbed again, fired in self-defense and was killed by police who had
broken into his house. Normally, this could just be chalked up to bad
luck or misfortune, but it really points to bad research on the part of
the police. It should be expected that a sudden, violent raid at night
would be planned better, say, finding out the possible inhabitants of
the house, possible results of a raid, past incidents at the house. In
a case where there might be innocent civilians present, different
tactics beside macho strong-arm assaults are called for. As for the man
being shot, yes, he did fire at the officers, perhaps in self-defense,
but the point that stands out is that he was hit 10 times by bullets
(maybe more were fired). This indicates somebody may have been edgy or
trigger-happy, in other words, perhaps the officers had a
predisposition to use their weapons, no matter what the incident that
might evolve. Perhaps any movement may have been enough to cause them
to believe they were being threatened. Source: Austin American
Statesman
TEENAGER SHOT IN BACK BY POLICE.
In Austin, Texas, a 17-year-old boy was shot and killed by a police
officer who had arrived in the area with other police to investigate
reports of gunfire. Arthur Martinez was killed by two bullets, one to
the head, one to the chest, fired by Senior Patrol Officer Tobias
Santiago.
The incident occurred on Oct. 30, 1990, when police went to investigate
a group of about five youths who were thought to be drinking alcohol
and firing a pistol in a drainage ditch near some train tracks.
Supposedly, police approached the group and several of the boys ran
away. When the police were within 20 feet of the remaining boys, they
moved quickly to stop their escape.
Santiago notice then that Martinez had a revolver and was pointing it
at him, and so fired his own weapon. Santiago claimed to have been
shouting to the youths that he was a police officer during the course
of the incident. The coroner's report stated that the bullets entered
the body from behind and from around 3 feet or more away. Points to
ponder: The most obvious point is, of course, the difference between
the officer saying the boy was facing him, and the coroner's report
that the youth was shot from behind. To most observers, this would seem
to indicate the boy was running away, albeit possibly with a gun in his
hands. Also, somehow the police were able to get very close to these
boys, yet none felt threatened until one officer was within extremely
close range. If one of the boys did have a gun (in the report it wasn't
in the slain youth's possession) wouldn't he have fired or pointed the
weapon earlier, and not waited until an officer was within reach?
Another strange point is: why did the police approach in this manner if
they knew the boys had been drinking and shooting a weapon? Was a
confrontation desired? Source: Austin American Statesman.
MAN SUFFOCATED IN POLICE HOLDING CELL.
Dane Kemp, 28, arrested on assault charges for allegedly pistol
whipping his ex-girlfriend, was suffocated by five police officers from
Brooklyn who were trying to subdue the man. A medical examiner stated
that he was asphyxiated due to compression of his chest and neck while
he was being restrained for violent, agitated behavior.
The statement also said Kemp had crack and alcohol in his blood but not enough to cause death.
Kemp was arrested early in the morning of Jan. 1, 1990, and the police
handcuffed one of his arms to a bar of the holding cell. He suddenly
became enraged when his former girlfriend walked by, and began yelling
that he was going to kill her and also began banging a chair with his
free hand. Five policemen entered the cell, strapped his legs with a
velcro strap, released his handcuffs, then bound his hands behind his
back with another velcro strip.
The police did not report sitting or kneeling on his neck or chest in
their report. The officers then carried Kemp out of the cell and
strapped him to a gurney that was brought from an ambulance parked at
the building. Two minutes later, the ambulance crew reported his heart
had stopped beating. Police maintain he stopped breathing outside the
precinct, his girlfriend stated that when he was wheeled past her on
the way to the ambulance, he appeared dead. The officers involved were:
Sgt. Thomas Urban, Officer Robert Schievenbeck, Timothy Wolf, Joseph
Zogbi, and Anthony Kianka.
UNARMED 17-YEAR-OLD KILLED BY POLICEWOMAN.
A 17-year-old, unarmed man was shot and killed in Bedford-Stuyvesant in
New York, by a police woman who was holding him at gunpoint. On January
27, 1990, Louis Liranso had been involved in an argument with a
neighbor when police were called to break up the fight that witnesses
claimed involved shouting and wrestling. Liranso had chased another
25-year-old man into a building where he was apprehended by two other
police officers, who in turn took him outside and handed him over to
Officer Hyda Hernandez. Two stories develop from here. Police state
that she guarded him as he stood beside the wall of a Chinese
restaurant, when he suddenly dropped his hands and turned toward
Hernandez, who shot him once in the back(?). Witnesses say Hernandez
was taking him into the Chinese restaurant when he tripped and then the
officer shot him. Witnesses also say that the teenager had been
drinking. In later testimony at the grand jury hearing, Hernandez
claimed that the boy had grabbed her arm and tried to take the gun away
from her. She made no statement prior to her Feb. 13 hearing.
UNARMED 14-YEAR-OLD KILLED BY POLICE.
An unarmed 14-year-old boy, allegedly fleeing from a $10 robbery, was
shot and killed January 31, 1990 by a Brooklyn police officer, in the
Bushwick section. According to police, Jose Luis Lebron was running
toward Officer Frank Albergo when the boy reached into his jacket and
pulled on a zipper. The officer thought he was reaching for a gun and
shot him in the head.
The police stated that the incident began when a man who was robbed of
$10 flagged down police. Together the men cruised the neighborhood
looking for the two youths who had committed the offense. The men
spotted the two teenagers (the other boy was 19) and Albergo jumped out
of the car and grabbed the older of the two. His partner chased the
other suspect, who stopped, turned and ran back toward Albergo, who was
still holding the first suspect. Albergo ordered the young boy to stop,
and when he didn't, Albergo shot him. Witnesses claimed the boy did
reach into his jacket, but pulled his hand out slowly, not suddenly,
and not threateningly. They also claim he was shot twice. The lawyer
who represented the family in the case claimed that the boy was running
away from the officer when he was shot, not toward him. The coroner's
report showed the the bullet entered the back of the head behind the
right ear, traveled diagonally, then lodged on the outside of the left
eye socket. Another oddity, was that police claim the boy was shot from
six to eight feet away, while the police photo showed that it was more
like 25 feet. Police did not have an answer about how the boy was shot
in the back of the head while running toward the officer.
POLICE KILL MAN THREATENING SUICIDE.
Brooklyn police shot and killed a 20-year-old man who was holding two
knives, threatening to kill himself. On March 1, 1990, David Cotto was
shot nine times by police who say they fired when Cotto charged at them
after he was maced by one of the officers.
Police were called to Cotto's family apartment by another family member
after Cotto became involved in an argument with an upstairs neighbor.
When the police arrived, they found Cotto holding two kitchen knives.
At this time, he held one to his throat and threatened to kill himself.
The police somehow calmed him down and convinced him to drop the
knives. Cotto did this, but then rushed to the kitchen and grabbed two
more knives. The officers ordered him to drop these also, and when he
didn't Sgt. Vincent Guzzo sprayed mace into his eyes. The police report
of the incident states that Cotto then lunged at the officers and
Officers Joseph Galli and Patrick Balsamo fired their weapons. A total
of 11 shots were fired. However, Cotto's sister and father, who were in
the apartment, claimed that the man never lunged at the police, but
instead dropped the knives and brought his hands up to rub his eyes. It
was at that time that the police opened fire. They also stated that at
one point Cotto yelled he'd kill himself before he'd let a cop kill him.
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Justice, Criminal Defendant, Criminal, Death Penalty, Defendant,
Discovery, DNA, Entrapment, Evidence, Felony, Forensic Evidence,
Forensics, Fraud, Free Innocent, Homicide, Illegal Searches is it
right, who gets Immunity, Imprisonment, Incarceration, Injustice,
Innocence.
If you were arrested and charged with some made-up crime simply because
you annoyed a police officer somehow during a traffic stop, how would
you feel if nobody believed you? And how could you win your case in
court if nobody believed you.
Police misconduct is not just about the obvious -- police beating
suspects because it's easy for them to get away with it. It's also
about things like making up false charges to justify bad arrests,
refusing to testify about other officers' crimes (code of silence),
refusing to accept complaint reports from citizens, threatening
suspects who would otherwise take their charges to court into pleading
guilty, and coercing women into performing sexual acts. And when police
do things such as beat their wives, they can count on the fact that few
other police officers will arrest them for it, and that the District
Attorney will be lenient in bringing charges -- if any are brought at
all.