Tag Archives: crime and justice

The Horrific Attack That Led This Reporter to the Bravest Woman in Seattle

by RubySDLOxzlznh Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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In July 2009, a horrific crime shook Seattle’s South Park neighborhood: A man with a knife climbed through an open window into the home of Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper early one morning and proceeded to torture, rape, and repeatedly stab them both. Hopper survived the attack; Butz did not. Soon after, police arrested Isaiah Kalebu, a 23-year-old with a history of mental illness and intellectual disability. Kalebu was convicted in the summer of 2011 and given a life sentence.

Journalist Eli Sanders has followed the story since the attack with a series of features for The Stranger, the Seattle alt-weekly where he’s an associate editor. In 2012, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his deeply empathetic narrative about Hopper’s testimony at trial, “The Bravest Woman in Seattle.” Now Sanders has compiled and expanded his reporting into a book, While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent Into Madness, released Tuesday by Viking. More than just a true crime story, While the City Slept is a compassionate tribute to the lives of the victims, and a rigorous accounting of the mental-health and criminal-justice systems that failed Kalebu and his victims in the years leading up to the crime.

We spoke to Sanders about his reporting process, the origins of the crime, and the need for mental-health-system reform:

Mother Jones: How did you begin your reporting?

Eli Sanders: The crime occurred early on a Sunday morning, and we heard about it at The Stranger not long after. I was sent out to South Park to see what was going on. It was clear that something really awful had happened, but it was not clear what exactly motivated it. In many senses, it remains not very clear.

I ended up doing a feature about the neighborhood processing this crime, and the trauma of being proximate to a crime like this. As I was writing that report, the manhunt for the person who did this was underway, and Isaiah Kalebu ended up being arrested and charged with a crime just as i was finishing that piece. So, after that, I began another feature. For this one, I wanted to see what I could learn about the man who had been arrested for the crime. Even then, I could see there were some cracks that he had slipped through in the criminal-justice and mental-health system in Washington state.

MJ: At what point did it become clear that this would become a different, deeper story than what you’d written before?

ES: I had gone to the courthouse to watch the trial when I could, not knowing if I would write anything about it at all. When I experienced Jennifer Hopper’s testimony, that was the moment. It was instantly clear that this was an incredible act of bravery, of bearing witness, of following through on a promise she had made to herself and to Teresa. And an incredible recounting of their love and what was lost. It compelled a response. At that point I felt that there was more could be told about this intersection of lives. And I didn’t really figure out what it was—what that larger story—for a bit longer.

MJ: The book follows Hopper, Butz, and Kalebu through most of their lives, starting with childhood. Why did you decide to go so far into the personal histories of your subjects?

ES: I had been writing as a journalist in Seattle since 1999, and I had written a lot about different crimes. But for me, it was never satisfying. I would write about a crime, and even when I went into some depth, I would feel that there was a lot more there. The crime does not begin at the moment that we hear about it, and it does not end at the moment of a guilty verdict. The causes, so to speak, are really not something you can comprehend quickly. So I thought, “What would happen if I stayed with a crime long enough to create as full a picture as possible?”

MJ: There’s a moment in the book, during jury selection, when one of the trial attorneys asks potential jurors whether they would need to know why the crime took place in order to convict Kalebu. Were you looking back at their lives for an answer to that question?

ES: There’s no culpability for the crime in the paths that Jennifer and Teresa traveled. Their paths have their own wide tributaries, and I thought they were interesting, inspiring, and also a reminder that victims of crimes are not one-dimensional. We often have a one-dimensional sympathy for them: “Oh that’s terrible.” It is terrible. But it’s actually more than just that. It is a disruption of a long path of an individual’s triumphs and failures and heartbreaks, loneliness, and overcoming that loneliness—and finally, for Jennifer and Teresa, finding each other despite a lot of odds. And then winding up, due to their own choices and forced beyond their control, in a house that they shared and loved, in a relationship that they loved, together, in South Park.

Yes, Isaiah’s path is traced with hope of understanding more deeply where his actions may have come from, but also with the hope of trying to understand him, to the extent that that can be done

MJ: Do you think you found those answers?

ES: It’s really for the reader to judge. I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m not a sociologist—I’m a journalist. I don’t think anyone has the answers as to where exactly your actions come from. And so I hope that this shows an interplay, a convergence, and at the same time, an absence of resistance or helpful intervention in Isaiah Kalebu’s life at moments when he really needed it. He’s someone who came out of difficult circumstances as a child. But as a young adult and as an adult, he was in and out of the criminal-justice and mental-health systems for years before this crime occurred. It’s easier to show with clarity what was not done at moments when something different being done could have made a big difference.

MJ: Does focusing on Kalebu’s psychiatric struggle run the risk of reinforcing people’s false belief that mental illness leads to violent crime?

ES: It’s something that I’ve thought about. The vast majority of people who could describe themselves as mentally ill are nonviolent. There is—as there is in any community—a small percentage with violent tendencies, and I think Isaiah Kalebu falls into that subset. But it would be a terrible mistake to say that because one individual who struggles with mental illness committed a crime, all mentally ill people are dangerous. That kind of stigma is exactly what people who are in mental-health advocacy have been trying to push the culture away from.

However, there’s an opportunity in a crime like this to see in very stark relief the terrible and extreme consequences of our failure to construct a public mental-health system that is sufficient for the needs of our citizens. That’s not to say that every person who needs something from that public mental-health system is like Isaiah Kalebu. But his case can show very starkly how fragile and how flawed the system is.

MJ: What did you see as root failures in the mental-health and criminal-justice systems?

ES: These systems fail for lack of public investment in a state that you might think would have a stronger social safety net. Actually, it’s not so much different than other states where you might expect the social safety net to be in tatters. It really is a microcosm of the whole country, especially in the period described—the financial crisis, the recession afterward, when programs that could help people like Isaiah Kalebu were cut and cut and cut.

MJ: Have you seen any progress?

ES: Some. But it’s not nearly sufficient to the scale of the need. It’s connected, I think, to the economic recovery, to a slightly increased awareness that we cannot simultaneously to expect taxes to be perpetually cut and to demand more of government. Sadly, in our politics, so much moves around cost. If we can get the sense that so often, it is so much more expensive not to invest in preventative measures, then it would be a huge change in mindset. The downstream effects of that change in mindset would be transformative for individuals and communities. But it’s a really hard sell for a politician. The average person will say, “Oh, you’re always asking for more money.” When it really works, you can’t see what it prevented from happening.

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The Horrific Attack That Led This Reporter to the Bravest Woman in Seattle

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The Texas Trooper Who Pulled Over Sandra Bland Was Just Indicted

by ConstanBarreras Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, nearly five months after Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, a grand jury has charged the state trooper who initially arrested the 28-year-old black woman with perjury.

Trooper Brian Encinia pulled over Bland in Prairie View on July 20, citing an improper lane change. Dash cam footage later released by county officials showed that the encounter quickly escalated after Encinia ordered Bland out of her car. In the video, Encinia can be heard saying, “I’m going to drag you out of here,” as he reached into Bland’s vehicle. He then pulled out what appeared to be a Taser, yelling, “I will light you up!” Encinia eventually forced Bland to the ground as she protested the arrest. Encinia arrested Bland for “assault on a public servant” and booked her into the Waller County jail, where she was found dead three days later.

The video raised questions about how a woman who was on her way to start a new job wound up dying in custody. An autopsy determined that Bland died of “suicide by hanging,” but Bland’s family countered that suicide seemed “unfathomable” and asked the US Department of Justice to investigate the incident. County officials said Bland had asked to use the phone about an hour before she was found hanging in her cell. Bland’s family said they had been trying to help her post bail.

Encinia’s class A misdemeanor perjury charge, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine, relates to a statement he made in the incident report following Bland’s arrest. It comes a few weeks after the Waller County grand jury concluded that no felony had been committed in Bland’s death by the county sheriff or jail staff.

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The Texas Trooper Who Pulled Over Sandra Bland Was Just Indicted

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Neighbors and Family Recount Chilling Details in Chicago Police Shooting

by ShastaTRQqlvqx Posted on December 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Eyewitness accounts from neighbors appear to confirm a Chicago police officer began shooting into the home of Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones from several feet away while standing on the sidewalk. That contradicts the police department’s early account, which suggests one of the officers opened fire in the entryway after Legrier confronted him.

Legrier, a 19-year-old engineering student, and Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five and workers’ rights activist, were shot on Saturday when officers responded to a domestic disturbance call at their home around 4:30 a.m. Jones opened the door when police responded to a call from Legrier’s father.

It was the first fatal Chicago police shooting since the city released video footage of another officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014. The police department’s handling of that case prompted a Department of Justice investigation into the department’s use of force.

The deaths of Jones and Legrier have put more pressure on local and federal officials. The families of both Legrier and Jones have called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign. Emanuel and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner have called the shooting “troubling.” Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has asked the FBI to assist her investigation of the case. And the Department of Justice plans to include the shooting in its probe of the Chicago Police Department. On Wednesday the mayor, who cut short a family vacation to Cuba after learning about the shooting, announced plans for a “major overhaul” of the police department rules on use of force. The changes include a mandate that all department patrol cars be equipped with a Taser and more be officers be trained to use them by June 1, 2016.

According to the Guardian, Legrier’s and Jones’s deaths bring the total number of fatal police shootings this year to more than 1,120.

Shots Fired

Quintonio Legrier’s father says the shooting raises questions about how officers handle suspects who are mentally ill, and he wonders why the officer involved in this case couldn’t have used other methods, such as a Taser, to handle the situation. Quintonio’s mother, Janet Cooksey, disputes that her son had a mental illness.

Quintonio was visiting his father, Antonio Legrier, for Christmas in a home where the first- and second-floor apartments share the same entrance. Bettie Jones lived in the downstairs apartment. Antonio, who says his son has recently struggled with “emotional” issues, called the police so they could help him get his son to the hospital. Police say Quintonio had threatened his father with a bat. But Antonio Legrier says Quintonio had merely banged on his bedroom door angrily, and the family’s lawyer says Antonio did not fear his son was going to hurt him.

Here’s what police say happened next: When officers arrived at the house, they were “confronted by a combative subject.” This resulted “in the discharging of the officer’s weapon,” the police department said.

One officer opened fire, killing both Jones and Quintonio.

The police department said Jones was shot “accidentally,” and it issued its “deepest condolences” to Jones’ family.

Although the early police statement about the incident does not specify where the officers were standing, it suggests that Quintonio may have confronted them in the entryway of the building, which prompted the officer to shoot.

However, family members and other witnesses have said the officer was standing on the sidewalk when he began shooting, which could indicate he was not in immediate danger, as the police account may imply.

New details help support the families’ version of what happened.

Janet Cooksey, Legrier’s mother, told me that the front door to Antonio Legrier’s home is old and squeaks when it opens. She said her son’s father told her that he heard gunshots almost as soon as he heard the door open. (Cooksey does not live in the home).

Bullet holes in the door

Quintonio Legrier’s and Bettie Jones’s residence on the 4700 block of West Erie Street in Chicago Brandon Ellington Patterson

She said Antonio told her that he ran downstairs because he assumed officers were shooting at his son, and that when he got there they started shooting again. She also said there were bullet holes in the door.

Cooksey also said Antonio wasn’t the only person who called police: Quintonio placed a call to them as well, she said.

Quintonio took seven bullet wounds total, Cooksey said, including two in his side and one in his buttocks.

Two neighbors who live next door to Legrier’s house say the officer shot from the sidewalk in front of the home.

Marcos Mercado lives in the house directly to the left of where the shooting occurred. From his living room window, he saw an officer standing on the sidewalk with his gun drawn and then heard gunfire, he told me during an interview at his kitchen table. Marcos did not see the officer pull the trigger, but after shots rang out he saw the officer standing in the same spot still pointing his gun at the house.

Mercado also said he saw another officer with a flashlight “check” in the passageway between Legrier’s home and the house to the right of it.

Mercado said he heard one officer yell for someone to come out of Legrier’s house. When asked how many minutes passed between when the officers arrived and when the shooting began, Mercado said officers began shooting “right away.” He heard shots in rapid succession, he said.

He said he spoke to detectives from the city’s Independent Police Review Authority for 10 minutes the day after the shooting.

I spoke to another neighbor, who lives in the house directly to the right of where the shooting occurred and would only give his first name, DeSean. From his window he saw an officer shoot into the doorway from the sidewalk, he told me.

One officer walked to the front of the house from the back, using a passageway that runs between DeSean’s house and Legrier’s house. Another officer got out of a squad car that was parked in the street, DeSean said. One of the officers walked up the stairs and knocked. Then he ran back to the sidewalk and drew his gun “like he was in position to shoot,” DeSean said.

The officer didn’t say anything when he knocked on the door, DeSean said. Jones opened the door a few minutes later, he recalled.

“When Jones opened that door she was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!'” DeSean said. “Like, ‘Slow down—wait, wait, wait!’ That’s what she meant.” He said there had been 15 or 20 seconds between when Jones opened the door and when the officer opened fire.

“You can see clearly”

DeSean and William, another neighborhood resident who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, told me the porch was brightly lit, so the officer should have been able to see a woman in the doorway. William said, “There’s nothing dark about it. You can see clearly.”

DeSean said he didn’t see Jones get hit but heard the shots and could see the officer pulling the trigger. He said there were two or three officers at the house when the shooting occurred.

“Right after” the shooting, DeSean says, the officer who shot Legrier and Jones looked into the passage between his and Legrier’s homes and yelled, “Put the gun down! Put the gun down!” But DeSean says he didn’t see anyone in the passageway.

After the shooting, several neighbors came outside. When DeSean looked into Legrier’s house, he says he saw Quintonio laying on top of Jones’ body in the hallway. Two ambulances arrived after five or six minutes, DeSean said and brought Quintonio and Jones out.

Antonio Legrier has filed a wrongful death suit against the city, alleging that authorities have a video of at least part of the incident, and that an officer shot Legrier from 20 to 30 feet away. The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the shooting.

The name of the officer who fired the gun has not been released.

According to local TV station CBS 2, which cited unnamed sources, the officer is in his 20s and is a former Marine. He entered the police academy in October 2012 and graduated six months later in March 2013, the report says. He was a probationary officer for 18 months after completing training. So at the time of the shooting he had been on patrol as a full-fledged officer for just over a year, according to the report.

The officer has been placed on 30-day administrative duty while the IPRA investigates, in accordance with a new department policy instituted by Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante. The new policy “will ensure separation from field duties while training and fitness for duty requirements can be conducted,” the department said in a statement.

Neither the Chicago Police Department nor lawyers for the Jones and Legrier families could be reached immediately for comment.

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Neighbors and Family Recount Chilling Details in Chicago Police Shooting

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A Grand Jury Just Decided Not to Indict the Cop Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

by JulieFalconer4 Posted on December 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update (3:08 p.m. ET, 12/28/2015): The family of Tamir Rice has issued the following statement:

On Monday, more than a year since 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police officer, a grand jury decided not to indict the cops involved, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said that despite “the perfect storm” of errors that day, those errors “did not constitute criminal conduct.”

On the afternoon of November 22, 2014, less than 10 minutes after a man called 911 to report a person in a park waving around what appeared to be a gun, Loehmann and his partner Garmback drove up directly in front of Rice, with Loehmann emerging from the patrol car and shooting the boy almost instantaneously. Surveillance footage showed the officers standing around for several minutes after the shooting without giving Rice, any kind of first aid or tending to his wounds. The boy died at a hospital the next day. The gun in Rice’s possession turned out to be a toy replica.

Monday’s decision emerges after more than a year of public controversy and investigations into the incident, first by the Cleveland police department and then by the Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office, which in July handed over its findings to McGinty. Beginning in October, McGinty released three independent reports assessing the legality of Loehmann’s and Garmback’s actions. The reports, written by experts tapped by the prosecutor, all appeared to absolve the officers of misconduct. Their release to the public long before the grand jury decision was unusual—grand jury proceedings are typically closed off to the public—and the move prompted Rice’s family and supporters to call for a special prosecutor to take over the case. Neither Loehmann nor Garmback ever spoke to investigators, as Mother Jones first reported in May, but in December the two officers released public statements for the first time since Rice’s death.

Here are the key events that led up to the grand jury decision:

November 22, 2014: A 911 caller tells a police dispatcher that a man who is “probably a juvenile” is waving around a gun that is “probably fake.” The call taker fails to relay those details in the dispatch computer system and codes the call a “priority 1.” A radio dispatcher requests officers to the scene. Tamir Rice is shot and killed within 10 minutes of the 911 call.

December 3, 2014: A report from the Cleveland Plain Dealer reveals that Loehmann’s personnel record showed the officer had a troubling history with handling guns in the past. According to reports by supervisors at the Independence Police Department—where Loehmann served a six-month stint in 2012 before joining the Cleveland police—he was “distracted” and “weepy” during firearms qualifications training. An Independence deputy police chief wrote that Loehmann “could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” and recommended that the department part ways with him.

December 5, 2014: Rice’s family files a federal wrongful death suit against Loehmann, Garmback, and the city of Cleveland.

January 2015: The Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office takes over the city’s investigation into the shooting.

June 11, 2015: A Cleveland judge finds there is sufficient evidence to charge both Loehmann and Garmback, but leaves that decision up to the county prosecutor.

June 13, 2015: After five months, the county sheriff’s office releases the results of its probe. Loehmann and Garmback, as Mother Jones was the first to report, refused to speak with investigators despite multiple requests by investigators to interview them.

October 11, 2015: Cuyahoga County Prosecutor McGinty releases two reports that conclude Loehmann’s actions were “objectively reasonable” and constitutional, suggesting the investigation may not lead to charges. The two reports note that possible tactical errors made by the officers—such as whether Loehmann issued a warning before firing shots—are not relevant to the findings. The release of the reports stirs a public outcry and prompts Rice’s family and supporters to call for McGinty’s recusal from the grand jury process and for a special prosecutor to take over the case.

November 12, 2015: McGinty releases a third report that focuses on the potential mishandling of the 911 call and whether Garmback’s decision to drive the squad car to within feet of Rice contributed to the shooting. The report concludes that the 911 dispatcher and both officers’ actions were reasonable.

November 28, 2015: Two outside law enforcement experts, retained by the Rice family’s attorneys, conclude in their reports that Loehmann’s and Garmback’s actions were “reckless” and unjustifiable under the law. They challenge the three earlier reports released by the county prosecutor.

December 1, 2015: After a yearlong silence, Loehmann and Garmback release their written accounts of what happened on the day of the shooting. Their statements are made public through the county prosecutor. “I had very little time as I exited the vehicle,” Loehmann wrote of the moments before he fired two shots at Rice. “We are trained to get out of the cruiser because ‘the cruiser is a coffin.'” He added, “I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active.”

December 15, 2015: Rice’s family formally requests a Department of Justice investigation into the boy’s death and the prosecutor’s handling of the grand jury proceedings.

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A Grand Jury Just Decided Not to Indict the Cop Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

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The Racially Charged San Francisco Police Shooting You Don’t Know About But Should

by ShariOlson Posted on December 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dozens of people gathered at a candlelit vigil on Thursday night in San Francisco, at the spot where 26-year-old Mario Woods was killed by police the day before. Woods, who is black, died in a hail of bullets fired by San Francisco Police Department officers on Wednesday afternoon in the city’s Bayview district. Police identified him as the suspect in an attack whose victim was apparently stabbed in the shoulder but is expected to survive. Police officials said Woods was wielding a kitchen knife that he refused to relinquish even as officers ordered him to drop it, fired bean bag pellets, and pepper-sprayed him.

The moments leading up to the shooting were captured on several widely circulated videos recorded on cellphones. In one, Woods can be seen standing with his back against a wall, surrounded by police whose guns are drawn. When Woods begins to walk away, an officer steps in his path, and within seconds a series of shots rings out. SFPD Chief Greg Suhr told reporters that a total of five officers opened fire. (Warning: graphic images)

A video posted by HotRod (@daniggahot) on Dec 2, 2015 at 4:59pm PST

Woods died at the scene. A resident who lives next to the site of the shooting told Mother Jones that he counted at least 36 shell casings on the sidewalk after the violence was over. Another angle also captured the shooting (graphic).

SF Weekly reported that Woods had been a gang member in 2009 and had previously served prison and jail time for possession of a firearm by a felon. Woods’ mother, Gwendolyn, told ABC7 News that her son had suffered from mental health issues but was getting through them. “He just needed some help,” she said. “He fought past them.” She told interviewers that her son had “gotten his uniform” for his new job with the United Parcel Service that he was slated to begin the day after he was murdered.

The San Francisco police department has had a troubled history of police aggression and racism toward minority communities. In February, four San Francisco police officers were cleared in the shooting death of Alex Nieto, a 28-year-old Hispanic man who was shot 10 to 15 times by police in March 2014. Police officers mistook a Taser for a gun. In March, a series of racist and homophobic text messages sent among a group of officers in 2011 and 2012 emerged as part of a federal case against a former San Francisco police sergeant convicted of corruption charges, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The department tried to fire eight officers and suspend several others involved, but the disciplinary process is ongoing. In August, a video of more than a dozen San Francisco police officers surrounding and tackling a disabled homeless man went viral, spurring outrage.

Neighborhood residents where Woods was shot questioned the level of force used to subdue him.

“They had six officers against this one little guy,” area resident Cedric Smith told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They could have used batons. They could have backed off. They didn’t need to shoot him.” And Chemika Hollis, another resident, wondered why police officers shot him so many times. “How can you feel a threat when you have 10 cops around you?” she said.

Thursday’s vigil was set up on the spot where Woods was gunned down, with pictures of him, candles, and a sign posted to the wall reading, “Black Lives Matter.” A few blocks away from the vigil, dozens more gathered at a community meeting in the St. Paul of the Shipwreck Catholic church, while others held a peaceful protest outside.

Jaeah Lee

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr has said the officers were justified in shooting Woods, and he promised a thorough investigation.

“It’s a tragic loss anytime somebody dies. We never want to do that,” he told reporters after the shooting. “But this is all they could do. I really don’t know how much more you can make it plain to a wanted felon that he should drop the knife.”

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The Racially Charged San Francisco Police Shooting You Don’t Know About But Should

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Here’s the Awful Way the New York Post Changed Its San Bernardino Shooting Cover

by AlmedaQkv2385888 Posted on December 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Early Thursday morning, police officials announced the identities of two suspects believed to be behind the deadly rampage in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people and injured 17 others. Authorities had been searching for Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, after the two alleged gunmen opened fire inside a center that helps individuals with developmental disabilities and then drove away in a black SUV. Farook and Malik were later killed in a gunfire exchange with the police.

With the official release of their names, the New York Post made the editorial decision to change its front-page headline with the following:

Blatant bigotry aside, it’s also important to call out the Post’s inconsistent focus on religion in the aftermath of mass shootings in America. After last Friday’s Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, the paper did not feature a story about the attack on its front page, nor did its editors label that shooter a “Christian Killer” in any accompanying stories. Instead, on Saturday, the New York tabloid demeaned the city’s homeless population with a cover story headlined “How The Bums Stole Christmas.”

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Here’s the Awful Way the New York Post Changed Its San Bernardino Shooting Cover

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Police Just Released Dashcam Footage of the Laquan McDonald Shooting

by WilbertJeppesen Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Chicago officials released the dashcam footage from the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The video’s release came hours after state prosecutors charged Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke with first-degree murder in McDonald’s shooting last October, reportedly becoming the first cop in the city to face such charges in nearly 35 years.

The video, posted below, is disturbing. (WARNING: Seriously, watch at your own discretion.)

In April, the city of Chicago paid McDonald’s family $5 million, before any lawsuit was formally filed.

The footage and a bond hearing early Tuesday revealed details that differed from the initial police narrative of events. Police previously said they had found McDonald in the street slashing a car’s tires, and that when ordered to drop his knife, he walked away. After a second police car arrived and police tried to block McDonald’s path, police said, McDonald punctured a police car’s tires. When officers got out of the car, police officials alleged McDonald lunged at them with the knife and Van Dyke, who feared for his life, shot him.

Instead, the footage shows McDonald, who was carrying a knife, ambling away from police as Van Dyke and his partner get out of their car. Van Dyke then unloads a barrage of bullets on the teen about six seconds after then. The Chicago Tribune reported that according to prosecutors, Van Dyke fired 16 rounds at McDonald in 14 or 15 seconds and was told to hold his fire when he began to reload his weapon. For about 13 of those seconds, McDonald is on the ground.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described the video as “deeply disturbing” and told reporters that Van Dyke’s actions “were not justified and were not a proper use of deadly force.”

A judge had ordered the video’s release by Wednesday, but Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced that the city would release the video a day early. “The officer in this case took a young man’s life and he’s going to have to account for his actions,” McCarthy told reporters. Van Dyke could face between 20 years and life in prison if convicted.

“With these charges, we are bringing a full measure of justice that this demands,” Alvarez said.

Van Dyke’s attorney Daniel Herbert questioned whether the case amounted to a murder case and believed the shooting was justified. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for calm after the video’s release. “Jason Van Dyke will be judged in the court of law,” Emanuel told reporters. “That’s exactly how it should be.” In a statement through attorneys, McDonald’s family reiterated a call for peace and said they would have preferred for the video not to be released.

“No one understands the anger more than us, but if you choose to speak out, we urge you to be peaceful,” the family said. “Don’t resort to violence in Laquan’s name. Let his legacy be better than that.”

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Police Just Released Dashcam Footage of the Laquan McDonald Shooting

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Here Is the Audio of the 911 Call Just Minutes Before the Colorado Gun Rampage

by JettGuay830729 Posted on November 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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More MoJo coverage of the Colorado Springs rampage


Did Colorado’s Open Carry Law Delay Police Response to a Mass Shooter?


Police Did Not Treat 911 Call About Colorado Gunman as “Highest Priority”


Open Carry Gun Laws Make It Harder to Protect the Public, Police Chiefs Say

The Colorado Springs Police Department on Wednesday released the audio from two 911 calls placed last Saturday morning just prior to and during a deadly gun rampage. The first call came just 10 minutes before a man shot three people to death and was subsequently killed in a shootout with police. The Colorado Springs PD released the audio and a detailed statement following several stories by Mother Jones and other news outlets focusing on whether Colorado’s open carry law may have played a role in how the police responded.

In the first call, placed at 8:45 a.m. on October 31, resident Naomi Bettis told a dispatcher that she saw a man, later identified as 33-year-old Noah Harpham, walking around a building with a broken window across the street from her house. She said that he was carrying a black rifle and gasoline cans, and she described him as suspicious and “scary” at several points during the six-minute-long call. At one point she told the dispatcher that the man was going in and out of an upstairs apartment in the building. “It may be the guy that lives upstairs because he ran right up there, but he still shouldn’t be holding a gun,” Bettis said.

“Well it is an open carry state, so he can have a weapon with him or walking around with it,” the dispatcher responded. “But of course having those gas cans, it does seem pretty suspicious so we’re going to keep the call going for that.” Bettis clearly sounded agitated during parts of the call: “I went out there to get in my Jeep,” she said, “and I’m scared to death.” When asked by the dispatcher whether anyone’s life was in imminent danger, however, she answered no. “I just hope that this is, you know, not as bad as it is,” Bettis said. Listen to the full call here:

Bettis later told the Washington Post that she was put off by the dispatcher’s comments regarding the state’s open carry law, as if the dispatcher “didn’t believe me.” On Tuesday, Lt. Catherine Buckley of the Colorado Springs PD told Mother Jones that Bettis’ first 911 call wasn’t treated as “the highest priority call for service.” In its statement released Wednesday, the department said the call was originally treated as a “priority 3” call, which “represents in-progress incidents involving property.” One minute into the call, the incident was upgraded to a “priority 2” call, and changed to a possible burglary in progress, according to the statement. The department’s priority scale has six levels, with “priority 1” being the most urgent.

At the time of the first call, all officers in the area were on other calls, according to the department’s statement. Then, one officer who became available during the call was instead dispatched to a disturbance in progress at a senior residential facility: “The call for service near Bettis was the same priority level as the disturbance; however, the disturbance at the senior center represented a threat to human life, while Bettis’ call (a possible burglary-in-progress) was at the time considered a threat to property.”

“He’s laying on the street dead”
After the initial six-minute exchange with the dispatcher, Bettis was told to call back if the situation changed. Ten minutes later, she did. “I just called a few minutes ago, and the guy came back out,” she said, now sounding frantic and her voice shaking. “He fired the gun at somebody and he’s laying on the street dead.” Listen to the full call here: Warning: Some may find the following audio disturbing.

At that point, according to the statement from the Colorado Springs PD, all available police units and an ambulance were dispatched. Less than 10 minutes after that Harpham’s three victims had been shot and he was killed by gunfire from police.

“Upon review of the 911 audio from the initial call for service the (dispatcher) responded in accordance with both the Colorado Springs Police Department policy and national protocols,” the department said in its statement.

The department also released a 2011 training document with respect to how it handles the open carry issue:

“The mere act of openly carrying a gun in a non-threatening manner is not automatically to be considered suspicious behavior. Therefore, if we get a call from a citizen about a person who has a firearm in plain sight and they are not acting in a suspicious manner, they have not brandished it, discharged it, or violated any of the previous conditions; CSPD will not respond.”

Link:

Here Is the Audio of the 911 Call Just Minutes Before the Colorado Gun Rampage

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Man Hears Obama’s Speech on Addiction, Turns in a Cooler Full of Drugs

by MichellFincham Posted on October 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, President Barack Obama traveled to West Virginia, a state that leads the nation in the number of fatal drug overdoses, to announce a new federal program aimed at tackling the country’s growing opiate epidemic.

That same day, a West Virginia man was so moved by the president’s speech, WSAZ reports, that he called 911 to seek help and turn in a “cooler full of drugs.” The cooler reportedly included marijuana, 19 grams of ecstasy, and more than 150 pain killers.

He told authorities he had been watching Obama’s announcement and hoped to become sober for his mother. No charges were filed.

“We applaud this person’s self-initiated efforts and wish him well in his recovery,” a police statement read.

The man, whose name has not been released, was taken to get medical treatment. He chose to enter a rehabilitation center.

For more on the opiate crisis in West Virginia and the president’s speech, head to our previous coverage here.

Continue reading – 

Man Hears Obama’s Speech on Addiction, Turns in a Cooler Full of Drugs

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What a New Poll About Mass Shootings in America Gets Dangerously Wrong

by MandyLienhop Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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A Washington Post-ABC News poll on gun violence published Monday included a stark finding: “By a more than 2-to-1 margin, more people say mass shootings reflect problems identifying and treating people with mental health problems rather than inadequate gun control laws.” Sixty-three percent of respondents blamed a deficient mental health care system as the prime reason for America’s incessant gun massacres, while 23 percent pointed to weak gun regulations.

What’s most troubling about these results and the question that prompted them is that they perpetuate a dangerous stigmatization. The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. I wrote about this in my recent Mother Jones cover story on threat assessment, a growing strategy for stopping mass shooters that relies on collaboration between mental health and law enforcement experts:

We know that many mass shooters are young white men with acute mental health issues. The problem is, such broad traits do little to help threat assessment teams identify who will actually attack. Legions of young men love violent movies or first-person shooter games, get angry about school, jobs, or relationships, and suffer from mental health afflictions. The number who seek to commit mass murder is tiny. Decades of research have shown that the link between mental disorders and violent behavior is small and not useful for predicting violent acts. (People with severe mental disorders are in fact far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.)

Then there is the role of guns. As a top forensic psychologist described it to me at a recent summit of more than 700 threat assessment professionals in Southern California, “One of the first things you focus on with this process is access to weapons.” Guns obviously are no more a sole cause of mass shootings than schizophrenia or suicidal depression are. But their role in such crimes is self-evident:

Can they be prevented from striking?

Possession of a firearm, of course, is not a meaningful predictor of targeted violence. But at the conference in Disneyland, virtually everyone I spoke with agreed that guns make these crimes a lot easier to commit—and a lot more lethal. “There are so many firearms out there, you just assume everybody has one,” Scalora says. “It’s safer to assume that than the opposite.” The presence of more than 300 million guns in the United States—and the lack of political will to regulate their sale or use more effectively—is a stark reality with which threat assessment experts must contend, and why many believe their approach may be the best hope for combating what has become a painfully normal American problem.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll furthered a misleading stereotype about a broad population of Americans by presenting a false choice between mental health and gun policy. The chart above shows that only 10 percent of respondents recognized that solving mass shootings is more complicated than checking one box or the other. Any solution deeply involves both, and a whole lot more.

Originally posted here: 

What a New Poll About Mass Shootings in America Gets Dangerously Wrong

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