Horror British police again

Rugby coach hands son's drug dealer to police...and is charged with kidnapping

Furious that his 14-year-old son had been buying cannabis, Cenydd Nickels vowed to bring the dealer to justice. His anger was made worse by the fact his mother had recently been violently mugged for the sake of just £6 to buy drugs.

But when the 53-year-old tracked down the culprit and carted him to a police station, officers were not interested. They let the suspect walk free...and put Mr Nickels in the dock instead.

Their decision triggered a five-month, £100,000 legal battle that ended only when the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the charges without explanation.

Mr Nickels had confronted the drug dealer in a ‘sting’ operation at a park, having been promised by police they would be there to make an arrest. No officers arrived and – following a fight – Mr Nickels, who is a dog warden and junior rugby coach, put the younger man in the boot of his car and drove to a police station.

The station was closed so he telephoned officers who arrived 20 minutes later.

To Mr Nickels’s horror, they arrested him for assault – even though the dealer told them he did not wish to press charges. The next day he was charged with kidnap and causing actual bodily harm.

That led to ten court appearances until, at Swansea Crown Court last month, prosecutors decided to offer no evidence and he was formally acquitted of both charges.

One of his neighbours in Ystradgynlais, near Swansea, said: ‘Cenydd is a pillar of our community. ‘He’s there for young people week in week out at the rugby club and is well known in the area for being a lovely guy.

'No one here will have a bad word to say about him. It’s a joke that he was arrested in the first place. What a waste of everyone’s time and money.’

Mr Nickels posted an emotional message on Facebook about his arrest in January. In it he said his mother had been left black and blue by her mugging ordeal and needed hospital treatment, including stitches, for her injuries.

He added: ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, county councillors, community councillors, scout leaders and the people who have supported me over the past few weeks.

‘We have won the battle, but not the war over drugs in our community. We must stick together and keep on top of the drug dealers and report them to the police, so that they will always be looking over their shoulder in future.

‘We as a community have to help the police to get rid of this scum and hope they will respond to our concerns.

'There will always be someone out there who will try to make money on the backs of our children by selling drugs to them. ‘They will cause misery and heartache to our families. Our community is worth protecting. Our children are worth protecting. Our children are worth fighting for.’

No one from Dyfed-Powys Police was available for comment yesterday.

Original report here




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British mother wrongly arrested for murder when three-year-old son died of natural causes receives undisclosed damages from police

Police have paid an undisclosed out-of-court settlement to a mother who was arrested on suspicion of murder after her three-year-old son died of natural causes.

Abby Podmore, from Quinton, Birmingham, was held in police custody overnight in February 2011 by officers investigating the death of Alfie Podmore.

Ms Podmore, a dental nurse, has already received a five-figure out-of-court settlement from Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust after it admitted failings in medical care prior to her son's death.

An inquest held in September 2011 heard the toddler died of a chest infection after being misdiagnosed by hospital staff.

In a statement issued today by law firm Irwin Mitchell, which represented Ms Podmore, she expressed relief that legal proceedings against the hospital and police had been concluded.

She said: 'Alfie was adored by his family and everyone whose lives he touched during his short time with us and he will never be forgotten.

'I'm just relieved the legal battles with both the NHS Trust and police are now over as we can finally look to begin rebuilding our lives.'

Tom Riis-Bristow, a medical law expert at Irwin Mitchell's Birmingham office, who led the legal action, said: 'The consequences of losing Alfie so suddenly and in such tragic circumstances have had a long lasting psychological effect on Abby.

'The out-of-court settlements will be used to help fund the ongoing psychiatric care she needs and will also provide the couple with funds to help them move house, as their present home has so many painful memories which they have understandably found extremely hard to deal with.

'Following our investigations, the hospital has assured Abby that the internal investigation carried out after Alfie's death has led to important lessons being learnt and a number of changes to procedures have since been made which will hopefully mean that no other family has to suffer the same heartbreak.'

In a statement to Alfie's inquest, Ms Podmore described her arrest as a 'horrifying' event which had robbed her of the chance to grieve.

The inquest heard that antibiotics may have saved Alfie, but he was instead given antacid medication and died at his home on February 6, 2011.

West Midlands Police made the payment to Ms Podmore without admitting any wrongdoing on behalf of the force.

Chief Inspector Garry Billing, from Birmingham Police's Child Protection Unit, said: 'A payment has been made to Abby Podmore; she's accepted it is a full and final settlement and without any admission from West Midlands Police.

'Ms Podmore was arrested following her son's death as it was deemed in the best interest of the investigation at that stage; she's since recognised that police were acting on information available to them at the time and needed to fully investigate matters.

'It became apparent, however, the case should not be treated as a murder inquiry and she was quickly dismissed as a suspect.

'This is a truly tragic case and no amount of money can ever compensate for the death of a child.'

Original report here




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Cops Choke Black Boy Holding Puppy for Giving Them ‘Dehumanizing Stares’

Police brutality against blacks, especially black males, is a nationwide crisis. Newspapers from Philadelphia to New Orleans to New York have decried out-of-control cops routinely arresting, beating and even killing innocent blacks for weak, implausible or trumped-up reasons. In 2012 police, security guards, and vigilantes killed a black man every 28 hours in the U.S., according to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

Remember Abner Louima, raped by policemen who arrested him based on charges that were later dropped? Amadou Diallo, shot to death for pulling out his wallet? Sean Bell, killed on his way out of his own bachelor party?

Miami cops have given us a brand-new example of police violence against black males: 14-year-old Tremaine McMillan. (This is why I write “black males” and not “black men” — youth are in no way exempt from police beatings.)

Police threw McMillan to the ground and choked him with, at best, very little reason. Even the six-week-old puppy in the boy’s arms got hurt, despite being white.

The police officers said they took McMillan down for giving them “dehumanizing stares” and “clenching his fists.” (Pause a moment to consider the irony of two white adults complaining because a black boy gave them a dehumanizing stare.)

They say they first noticed him because he was roughhousing. They told him that behavior was unacceptable and asked where his mother was. He walked away.

After that, the cops say, they chased him in ATVs. When they caught him he tried “to pull his arm away, stating, ‘Man, don’t touch me like I did something,’” Alternet reports.

“Of course we have to neutralize the threat in front of us,” a Miami police detective said. But McMillan and witnesses say there was no threat to neutralize.

According to them, the youth was playing on the beach with friends. He says he walked away from the cops to take them to his mother and that he was feeding his puppy from a baby bottle, which occupied both his hands, precluding any clenching of fists.

It was when the officers slammed McMillan to the ground that his puppy, Polo, “got hurt and bruised his front paw… It makes me feel sad,” he said.

The video above shows that once McMillan was down, one officer choked him while the other took his time handcuffing him. McMillan says that he couldn’t breathe for so long that he urinated on himself.

McMillan’s mother, who made the video above with her cell phone, said “I ran over there and said, ‘That’s my son, that’s my son. Can you get off of him? He can’t breathe.’”

On July 16th McMillan will have to stand trial on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. He pleaded not guilty.

It’s hard to disagree with that he was not guilty. Even if everything the police officers said is true — he was roughhousing with another youth, walked away after they spoke to him, clenched his fists, and looked at them funny — he didn’t do anything that merited a violent arrest. If a white 14-year-old were thrown around, choked, and cuffed, I suspect the officers would find themselves on “administrative leave” and any charges against the boy would be dropped.

Original report here




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Britain's social work Gestapo again

Secret court jails father for sending son 21st birthday greeting on Facebook after he was gagged from naming him

A father has been jailed at a secret court hearing for sending a Facebook message to his grown-up son on his 21st birthday. Garry Johnson, 46, breached a draconian gagging order which stops him publicly naming his son, Sam, whom he has brought up and who still lives with him.

In a case which is certain to fuel concerns about Britain’s shadowy network of secret courts, a judge sent the former music executive to prison for contempt at a closed-doors family court hearing in Essex at the beginning of last month.

He was not arrested by police or even represented by a lawyer.

The order silencing Mr Johnson – which follows an acrimonious divorce eight years ago – means he cannot mention either of his boys, 21-year-old Sam and Adam, 18, in public, even by congratulating them in a local newspaper announcement when they get engaged, married or have children in the future.

The extraordinary gag is set to last until the end of his life, although his boys are now adults. Last night they condemned their father’s jailing as ‘cruel and ludicrous’.

After their parents’ divorce, the two boys chose to live with their father, following a series of rows with their mother over her new boyfriend.

But within a year of the divorce, Mr Johnson’s ex-wife made allegations to Essex social workers that he was neglecting the children and not feeding them properly at his smart family home.

An investigation by social workers cleared him of any wrongdoing and said the boys were fine.

A year later, in 2006, she made further allegations to social workers that he was mentally unfit to care for the boys.

Medical documents shown to the Mail by Sam and Adam reveal that Mr Johnson was examined three times by a local psychiatrist hired by social workers. The doctor wrote to social workers saying:

‘There is no evidence of mental illness. I cannot understand why there are concerns about Mr Johnson’s mental health.’

Social services refused, as a result, to get involved.

In 2007, the ex-wife started private care proceedings to remove the boys from their father. A judge put the boys under a ‘living at home with parent’ care order.

It meant they would continue to live with their father, but under supervision by social services.

This care order was accompanied by the gagging order to stop an increasingly anguished Mr Johnson talking about the case publicly. Even naming his sons in the most innocuous circumstances – such as on Facebook – became a contempt of court.

The care order on Sam expired on his 18th birthday three years ago. The one on Adam in October last year when he reached 18. Normally, a gagging order imposed by a family court judge on a parent expires at the same time as a care order on the child. This one did not.

Mr Johnson was imprisoned at the height of the Mail’s campaign against jailings by this country’s network of secret courts.

The secretive family court system, which jailed Mr Johnson, deals with custody wrangles, children’s care orders and adoption.

Mr Johnson received a letter in late April from Chelmsford County Court officials ordering him to go to Basildon Magistrates’ Court building on May 2 for a hearing regarding his children.

He was not warned he might face imprisonment or that the hearing was about his Facebook message, posted on Sam’s birthday a few days earlier on April 23.

On arrival, he was escorted by court security guards to a private room in the building for a half hour hearing under family court rules before His Honour Judge Damien Lochrane. He was not warned that he might need a lawyer.

At the private hearing, Mr Johnson learned he had breached a gagging order, imposed by the family courts in 2007, by sending the Facebook message.

He informed the judge that he had had four heart attacks and was awaiting a triple by-pass operation. But he was sentenced to 28 days’ jail and sent down to a court cell to await transport to Chelmsford prison.

In the court cell, he had a heart attack caused by the shock. Rushed to a local hospital by ambulance, he was then shackled and handcuffed to a bed while on oxygen and receiving morphine.

A team of prison officers were put on 24-hour shifts beside his bed to make sure he did not escape.

He recovered and was sent to prison two days later, serving two weeks of the sentence before being released. Details of the horrifying case were made public to the Mail by his sons, who are not subject to any gagging order according to their Essex-based lawyer, Alan Foskett.

The jailing provoked a horrified response from MPs last night. John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP who has campaigned against the secret courts, said: ‘This is yet another example of how the secret courts are stopping freedom of speech. I have never heard of a gagging order of this kind going on into adulthood. This is a surreal case.’

Mr Johnson’s local MP, John Baron, said: ‘I have helped Mr Johnson and his sons – who always wanted to live with him – over several years. To find he has been imprisoned for sending a birthday message to one of them is troubling.

‘Whilst I appreciate the need to protect children, the family court system often ignores the legitimate wishes of families. This needs to change, and quickly.’

Sam, a telesales manager and former professional footballer, said last night: ‘My dad is a good father and has never been in trouble with the police. He was treated like a criminal. This ludicrous gagging order should not exist and must now be lifted.

Both Adam and myself are adults. This cruel ruling is now hanging over my father to silence him about the sons he loves for the rest of his life. That is a terrible thing in what is meant to be a free country.’

Mr Johnson was imprisoned a day before senior judges, on May 3, reacted to the Mail campaign by saying they planned to stop courts jailing defendants in secret for contempt.

The Ministry of Justice this week said that it does not count up people jailed by the family courts because the numbers are ‘so small’.

A spokesman said of the courts: ‘It is very rare for anyone to be imprisoned for contempt of court and it only ever happens in extreme circumstances when a person has continually disregarded legally binding requirements made by the court and clearly communicated to them.

‘A person accused of contempt of court will always be given their full legal right to defend himself or herself at a hearing will always be heard in an open court.’

However, it is estimated by campaigners and MPs that up to 200 parents a year are imprisoned for contempt by the family courts. Because of the controversial secrecy rules, some have been sent to jail for discussing their case with MPs or charity workers advising them.

Original report here. (Via POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)




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Nurse cleared of poisoning patients is suing police for £100,000 after British cops 'changed her Facebook password and made her profile public'

A nurse cleared of poisoning patients is attempting to sue the police for £100,000 after officers allegedly leaked her name to the Press and made her private Facebook account available to the public.

Rebecca Leighton spent six weeks in custody as police investigated the deaths of several patients from suspected saline drip contamination.

After being charged with contaminating saline fluids with insulin, Ms Leighton was refused bail for her own protection. But the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges because of a lack of sufficient evidence against her.

The Times has now reported that in a High Court writ the nurse has alleged officers asked for her Facebook password following her arrest so it could be closed down 'to minimise the potentially damaging intrusion into her private life and avoid prejudicing public opinion towards her'.

But it is alleged an officer reset the password and deactivated then reactivated the account, which meant her previously private page was made available to all internet users. Ms Leighton's family and solicitor were also allegedly unable to shut the page down because the password had been changed.

The nurse has claimed officers gave her name to the media, who obtained messages and pictures from her Facebook account, while 'highly abusive and distressing' messages were also posted by members of the public.

It is also alleged officers obtained confidential information from her Hotmail account after she gave her password so it could be shut down.

She is now seeking compensation of up to £100,000 for aggravated damages for breach of confidence, misuse of private information, negligence and breach of a statutory duty and her legal costs.

The 29-year-old says the publicity resulted in her being remanded in custody and has left her unable to find work. She alleges she has also had to abandon a business venture which has lost her £22,157.

In February she was suspended for three months by a Nursing and Midwifery Council panel after she admitted stealing drugs.

The panel found her fitness to practice impaired following a disciplinary hearing in which she suggested staff habitually took medication from the premises.

Ms Leighton sobbed gently as the panel, sitting in London, said the 'relatively short' suspension would be the best course of action as she had shown remorse, had done the best to atone for actions and was unlikely to repeat her misconduct. Colleagues also had confidence in her as a nurse, it noted.

Panel chairman Susan Hurds said: 'We are satisfied that Ms Leighton has learned a tremendous amount from the experience and we are satisfied she would not repeat her actions.'

The disciplinary panel found that she was 'not fundamentally dishonest' and had worked hard to mediate her conduct since the incident. Ms Hurds said she had sought no intentional financial benefit and had a 'previously unblemished nursing career'.

In September 2011, following her release from jail, Ms Leighton told ITV's This Morning how she was too frightened to walk down the street alone. She said she had been portrayed as an 'Angel of Death' following her arrest. She said the ‘normal life’ she enjoyed before she was arrested had been destroyed.

Original report here




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The Indian woman jailed for 19 years because nobody had $92

FROM India comes a story of injustice, desperation and a son's deep devotion to his mother.

A woman has languished in jail for 19 years because no one could afford to pay her bail. Her bail was 5,000 rupees. That's about $90.

No-one could raise the money, so the woman had to stay in jail for two decades. There is also a report this morning that the Indian justice system is so muddled and inefficient, she wasn't even aware she had been granted bail.

The woman's name is Vijay Kumari. In 1990 she was imprisoned on a murder charge. In 1994, a court granted her bail, but she couldn't afford it. She gave birth to a son in jail. The son was taken away to a children's home just before he turned five. And still the woman languished behind bars.

The child, whose name was Kanhaiya, grew up. Kanhaiya worked night and day in a garment factory on a miniscule wage until finally he earned enough money to cover his mother's bail.

Then just this week, Kanhaiya paid the bail and his mother was released.

The fact that nobody from the woman's extended family could pay the bail 19 years ago has triggered much debate in this nation of 1.24 billion people and more than 1,300 prisons.

The High Court in the northern Indian province of Uttar Pradesh, where the woman languished in jail, has decided to take action over thousands of other people in local jails, many of whom have been incarcerated as long as Ms Kumari.

Authorities have directed that prisoners who have been granted bail should be handed over to the court at once.

That means many more men and women like Ms Kumari could be be reunited with their families - especially those without a son as devoted as Kanhaiya.

Original report here




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Another crooked Muslim cop in Britain

A senior police officer who spearheaded a ‘zero tolerance’ crime clampdown is facing jail after being convicted of a £46,000 insurance and mortgage scam.

Mohammed Razaq was in charge of a neighbourhood police team in Bolton, Greater Manchester, until he was arrested and his office was raided by police.

Disgraced Inspector Razaq, 53, has been found guilty of a fraud involving four rental properties he owned.

Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard that Razaq created a false damage report document, purporting to be from a genuine company, and used it as evidence for a bogus insurance claim. He then made a series of claims for damage on properties that he owned and a false mortgage application.

Insp Razaq, who owned four homes and was trying to buy a fifth property in Bolton, used several different identities in a bid to cover his tracks.

Robert Hall, prosecuting, said that his ambition was part of his downfall.

He said: ‘He was undoubtedly ambitious in his approach to life and his rise to inspector. ‘The Crown says that his ambition for status and wealth is what fuelled this dishonesty.’

The court heard that in 2008 he ‘could not have wanted for anything else’.

He had a wife and three children in their teens or early 20s and Mr Hall said Razaq was ‘not short of a bob or two’.

Razaq was found guilty of six counts of fraud and three counts of converting criminal property and will be sentenced next month.

His dishonesty started in 2008 when he had a water leak at his home and a surveyor said the cost of the damage was about £1,200. Razaq disputed this and submitted two documents from companies showing that the damage cost more than £7,000. The insurance company paid out £7,685.

The court heard that there was water damage at another house he owned, which prompted a fire service call-out. Insp Razaq submitted an insurance claim for £20,000 but it was rejected.

He changed his insurance company on his home in Bradford Road and, in 2010, he claimed again for water damage, having not declared a previous claim to the company. The prosecution says this damage was the same damage that he had claimed for previously, but had not been repaired. He was paid £6,300.

The court heard he also applied for a £12,000 mortgage for home improvements on an address in Bradford Street, on the basis that he lived there, but in reality it was rented out. The money was transferred to him in June, 2010.

In March 2011, the court heard, Razaq lied about which house he lived in when applying for a mortgage for another property claiming he was going to move there.

But within two weeks of the mortgage being granted he called an insurance company for a quote to insure the building as a rental property.

Razaq had more than 33 years policing experience, including spells in CID, Tactical Aid, a firearms unit and various community cohesion projects.

Speaking after the court case yesterday Elisa Hopley, Senior Crown Prosecutor from the CPS North West Complex Casework Unit said: ‘Mohammed Razaq embarked upon a prolonged period of dishonesty, breaching the trust that was placed in him as a serving Inspector for Greater Manchester Police.

‘The public are entitled to expect the highest standards from police officers and whilst cases where police officers are charged with criminal offences are rare, today's conviction shows that they are not above the laws they are expected to uphold.’

Original report here




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New Zealand police discredited again

Was another "orchestrated litany of lies" needed for the attack on this guy

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has won access to evidence seized during raids on the file storage service. The decision to grant access was made by the New Zealand high court which said warrants used to grab the material were illegal.

The ruling is a victory for Mr Dotcom who said his defence was harmed because police could see evidence he could not.

Computers, hard drives and documents were grabbed in January 2012 during raids co-ordinated by US authorities.

They accused Megaupload of making massive profits from digital piracy by helping people share movies and music illegally. The raids, led by the FBI, forced Megaupload to close.

Mr Dotcom has denied the charges saying Megaupload was just a storage service that should not be held responsible for what its users did with it. He has fought a long-running legal battle over the case in New Zealand where he lives and has scored several victories. In September 2012 he won an apology from New Zealand's prime minister over the handling of the case.

The latest decision requires New Zealand police to comb through the evidence scooped up in the raid and return any data files considered "irrelevant" to the case. Clones of this information created by investigators must be destroyed.

In addition, copies of any information considered "relevant" to the ongoing case must also be handed over to Mr Dotcom's legal team.

Lawyers working for Mr Dotcom have long requested access to the information as they prepare for an extradition hearing scheduled for August. US authorities want Mr Dotcom to face charges in the US over alleged copyright theft.

This hearing may be delayed because of questions over whether the evidence being given by the US as justification for extradition was acquired illegally.

A year after the Megaupload shut down, Mr Dotcom, formerly Kim Schmidt, started a separate online file-storage service called Mega.

Original report here




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Officials: Man gunned down by FBI agent was unarmed

A Chechen man who was fatally shot by an FBI agent last week during an interview about one of the Boston bombing suspects was unarmed, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

An air of mystery has surrounded the FBI shooting of Ibragim Todashev, 27, since it occurred in Todashev’s apartment early on the morning of May 22. The FBI said in a news release that day that Todashev, a former Boston resident who knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during an interview with several law enforcement officers.

The FBI has provided few other details, saying that the matter is being investigated by an FBI review team that may not finish its probe for several months.

“The FBI takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said in a statement Wednesday. “The review process is thorough and objective and conducted as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances.”

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Wednesday called for an independent investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Officials said the division and local prosecutors are already reviewing the case.

At the time of the shooting, Todashev was being interviewed about his possible connection to a triple murder in Waltham, Mass., on Sept. 11, 2011. Law enforcement officials said he had acknowledged involvement in the murders and had implicated Tsarnaev. Officials said Todashev was not suspected of involvement in the April 15 Boston bombing.

Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police four days after the bombing. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured later that day and remains in custody.

In the statement about Todashev’s shooting issued on the day of the incident, the FBI said that an agent, along with two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement personnel, were interviewing “an individual” in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a “violent confrontation was initiated by the individual.”

An agent sustained non-life-threatening injuries, later described by one law enforcement official as “some cuts and abrasions.”

Initial reports citing anonymous law-enforcement individuals provided conflicting accounts of what happened. Some law enforcement officials said Todashev wielded a knife and others suggested that he attempted to grab the FBI agent’s gun.

One law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Wednesday that Todashev lunged at the agent and overturned a table. But the official said Todashev did not have a gun or a knife. A second official also said Todashev was unarmed.

An official said that according to one account of the shooting, the other law enforcement officials had just stepped out of the room, leaving the FBI agent alone with Todashev, when the confrontation occurred.

The shooting followed hours of questioning by the law enforcement officials that had begun the night before.

Todashev’s father said after the shooting that he didn’t believe the FBI’s account of why they killed his son.

“My son could never commit a crime, I know my son too well,” Abdul-Baki Todashev, who lives in Chechnya, told the Daily Beast Web site. “He worked helping disabled people in America and did sports, coached other sportsmen. The FBI made up their accusations.”

Todashev, a martial arts fighter, met Tamerlan Tsarnaev in fighting circles in Boston before Todashev moved to Orlando.

Todashev’s family said he had a ticket to fly to Russia this month and planned to spend the summer in his native Chechnya.

Original report here




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Australia: Police may be charged over the death of Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti

A NUMBER of police officers who chased, restrained or tasered Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti could be prosecuted for their role in the fatal confrontation.

The Police Integrity Commission (PIC) yesterday announced it had given a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions recommending that the DPP give "consideration" to prosecuting possibly as many as five police officers.

The PIC did not reveal the nature of the charges that could be laid or the identity of the officers who had been singled out for possible charges.

The brief of evidence was believed to contain witness statements including those from medical specialists, some of whom gave evidence at last year's two-week inquest into the death.

Mr Curti, 21, nicknamed Beto, died early on March 18 last year after he was chased by up to 11 police officers through Sydney's CBD for stealing, while high on LSD, two packets of biscuits from a convenience store. Once he was captured he was tasered nine times and up to three cans of capsicum spray were used.

The struggle ended when Mr Curti was found to be not breathing and with no pulse. Police then began CPR.

Mr Curti's family said last night they hoped the DPP would give it "proper consideration" as they were still dealing with the "awful images of Beto being repeatedly tasered and capsicum sprayed on the ground".

The family said they were disturbed by the fact the officers were still patrolling the streets "despite the Coroner's findings of recklessness and the Ombudsman's criticism of the critical incident investigation".

In November, State Coroner Mary Jerram delivered a series of scathing findings but stopped short of recommending charges be laid, instead recommending five officers face disciplinary charges. The inquest raised questions about the dangers of use of Tasers and Mr Curti's family blamed the police for taking his life.

The PIC said it would announce whether charges would be laid when the DPP has responded to the brief.Curti died while he was in Sydney to learn English. He was staying with his sister who is married to an Australian man.

It was the morning after a night out with friends celebrating St Patrick's Day.

Original report here




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London Police Took 20 Min to Respond to Muslim Beheading, But Quickly Arrest 85-Year-Old British Woman for Islamophobia

Priorities, priorities. Witnesses claim it took London police 20 minutes to show up and stop the two Muslim killers. The official police narrative is something like 9 minutes for the unarmed police and 14 minutes for the armed police (those crazy Americans with their guns everywhere, really.)

But when it comes to something truly serious, like protecting Muslims from elderly British women, then the coppers were on the case.

“An 85-year-old woman has this afternoon been arrested after abuse was hurled at Muslims outside Gillingham Mosque. The pensioner was handcuffed and taken away in a van by officers attending the Canterbury Street mosque for Friday prayers. As worshippers gathered outside the venue, a woman at a nearby bus stop shouted: “go back to your own country”.

The arrested woman, from the Maidstone Road area of Chatham, was taken away by officers at about 1.45pm and is now in police custody. A Kent Police spokesman said: “An 85 year old woman from Chatham was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence.”

This woman survived WW2 and presumably learned all the wrong lessons about resisting fascism. But if she had been a Muslim beheading a British soldier, she could have just strolled away while the police took 20 minutes to come around.

And the same police that could not be bothered, when it came to protecting Muslims from angry Britons shouting things, then no expense was spared and no time wasted.

An extra 1,200 police officers were deployed on the streets of London after an impromptu English Defence League protest descended into violence in Woolwich, south-east London, following Wednesday’s terrorist attack.

EDL leader Tommy Robinson, was among a group of around 250 men, who gathered in Woolwich near the scene of the terror attack, chanting anti-Islamic slogans.

Mr Robinson told supporters: “They’re chopping our soldiers’ heads off. This is Islam. That’s what we’ve seen today.”

He added: “They’ve cut one of our Army’s heads off on the streets of London. Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam.

Well that’s a crisis. People are speaking the truth. Can’t have that.

If two Muslims butcher a soldier in broad daylight, the police will one day show up. But if 250 men chant that this sort of butchery represents Islam, then 1,200 officers have to be sent in to keep the peace. And by peace, we mean Islam.

In Bristol two men were detained following allegedly racist messages that appeared on Twitter following the terrorist murder. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said two men aged 22 and 23 were being questioned over the incident.

He said: “The men were arrested under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. They are currently in custody. Our enquiries into these comments continue.”

If the authorities had been similarly motivated to take in Muslims who incite racial and religious hated in the name of Islam, the attack in London would never have happened.

But why bother learning any lessons? Just shoot the messenger.

The spokesman added: “These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol. “People should stop and think about what they say on social media before making statements as the consequences could be serious.”

Yes, do stop and think. You wouldn’t want to end up in jail for asking why the authorities are ignoring Muslim terrorism.

Original report here. (Via POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)





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Mother who spent 22 YEARS on death row for brutally killing son, four, to go free in days after judge finds she was set up by a crooked cop

An Arizona mother who had spent 22 years on death row after being found guilty of murdering her four-year-old son is set to be released.

Debra Jean Milke's guilty verdict was overturned earlier this year - but now prosecutors have failed to file an expected appeal meaning she will be released in just weeks.

Known as Death Row Debbie, 48-year-old Debra Jean Milke's was found guilty in 1989 for the gruesome slaying of her toddler son Christopher who was shot three times in the back of the head and dumped in the desert.

But a US Circuit Court of Appeals judge has agreed with her lawyers that ruled that the conviction had been due in part because of a crooked cop who had a history of lying under oath.

Milke's conviction was overturned on March 14th allowing prosecutors to launch an appeal to hold a retrial within 30 days. No application for a retrial has been filed which means she could soon be a free woman.

The move marked a surprising turn in a case that made national headlines due to the brazen and disturbing nature of the crime.

Prosecutors said in December 1989, Milke dressed up her son Christopher in his favorite outfit and told him he was going to see Santa Claus at a Phoenix mall during the holidays.

Instead, he was taken into a ravine in the desert by her boyfriend, Roger Scott and another man called Styers and shot three times in the back of the head as part of what prosecutors said was a plot by Milke and the two other defendants to collect a $50,000 life insurance policy.

Milke, who was not present at the crime, was convicted in 1990 of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse and kidnapping on the strength of testimony by Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate, who said she confessed to the crimes.

The detective testified that Milke told him she had contemplated having an abortion while pregnant with Christopher and had complained to Styers about her son.

Styers was hardly an ideal babysitter. He had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming in large part from an incident during the war when he shot and killed a young Vietnamese boy who had climbed onto a truck transporting Styers and other Marines in Vietnam, according to court documents.

In his 1985 personal journal, now part of court records, Styers wrote: 'Losing sleep because of dreams in Viet-Nam [sic] Seeing kids including my own and wondering if I'm going to do something to hurt them, and remembering the ones I had to kill.'

With Christopher in the car, Styers picked up his good friend Roger Scott.

The two men did not take Christopher to see Santa. Instead, they drove Christopher into the desert, where Styers emptied three bullets into the boy's head.

The Phoenix police department's star interrogator, Det. Armando Saldate Jr., was called in on his day off to separately question the three.

In a matter of hours, Saldate had secured a speedy resolution to the horrific high-profile holiday crime. The detective said she confessed to conspiring to the murder, although she protested her innocence and denied the claim.

The three suspects were tried separately, convicted, and sentenced to die.

Milke would have been the first woman executed in Arizona since the 1930s had her appeals run out.

The Arizona Supreme Court had gone so far to issue a death warrant for Milke in 1997, but the execution was delayed because she had yet to exhaust federal appeals.

During her original trial, the prosecution failed to disclose information about a history of misconduct by Detective Saldate.

That record included multiple court rulings in four other cases that Saldate either lied under oath or violated suspects’ Miranda rights during interrogations.

Prosecutors are required to provide a defendant’s lawyers with material that might support a not-guilty verdict, including material that could undermine the credibility of a prosecution witness.

There was no other witness or recording of the purported confession by Milke, who has proclaimed her innocence.

In court proceedings and press interviews, Milke professed her innocence, claiming Saldate had a history of lying under oath and had fabricated her confession.

The trial amounted to ‘a swearing contest’ in which the judge and jury ultimately believed the detective over Milke, but they didn’t know of his record of dishonesty and misconduct.

The ruling reversed a US District Court judge’s ruling and ordered the lower court to require Arizona authorities to turn over all relevant personnel records for the detective.

In 2009, defense attorney Michael Kimerer said his client maintains her innocence and was a loving mother who still grieves her son’s death.

‘Our main concern is the fact that I have a client that never confessed and a police detective who said she gave a confession,’ Kimerer said then. ‘There was no tape recorder, no witnesses, nothing. Just his word.’

In March the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Milke's conviction in what Chief Judge Alex Kozinski dubbed a 'troubling case.'

He called into question what he said was Saldate's possible 'misogynistic' attitude towards vulnerable civilian women over whom he had power and noted Saldate had a documented history of lying under oath.

Kozinski's blistering 60-page opinion and other court records shed light on the alleged police corruption, prosecutorial overreach and judicial carelessness that fused into a miscarriage of justice that might have sentenced an innocent woman to death.

Milke testified she didn't know Christopher had died until Saldate informed her of his death in an interrogation room.

She said she was 'in shock' and 'reeling' but the detective moved close to her and put his hands on her knees.

She told the jury she hadn't understood her Miranda rights and had asked for a lawyer, but instead Saldate continued interrogating her and twisted her words into a fake confession.

'She was one of the worst witnesses I've ever seen,; recalls Phoenix journalist Paul Rubin, who covered the trial.

Although he destroyed his notes of the interview and failed to tape record it, Saldate testified that Milke confessed she worried that Christopher would grow up to be just like his father, a substance-abusing ex-con.

That's why she 'wanted God to take care of Christopher,' Saldate testified.

After Milke was convicted, her defense investigators spent 7,000 hours poring over court records.

They discovered eight separate cases in which judges determined that Saldate either had lied under oath or violated the constitutional rights of people he interrogated.

But Hendrix, the judge, still decided that Saldate was more credible than Milke

Court records indicate that neither Styers nor Scott would testify against Milke.

In overturning Milke’s conviction, the appellate court didn’t find her innocent. 'Milke may well be guilty, even if Saldate made up her confession out of whole cloth,' Kozinski wrote.

'After all, it's hard to understand what reason Styers and Scott would have had for killing a four-year-old boy.

Then again, what reason would they have to protect her if they knew she was guilty?'

Milke, now 49, was jailed the day after Christopher's death. She is one of three women on death row in Arizona and has been behind bars for 25 years and on death row for 22 years.

The two men convicted in the Milke’s case, Roger Scott and former Milke roommate James Styers, are also both on death row.

Scott confessed during a police interrogation and led detectives to the boy’s body, but neither Scott or Styers would testify against Milke.

Original report here




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A Prosecutor, a Wrongful Conviction and a Question of Justice

Edwin Oliva, a 29-year-old petty thief and drug addict, says he was a wreck as he sat in a chair in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office in winter 1995. A year earlier, he'd told police a lie that helped implicate a possibly innocent man in a murder. Now, prosecutors wanted him to repeat his story in court; he wanted to take it back.

Oliva says he had been on a crack and heroin binge at the time he'd made his initial claim, and that he told prosecutors he implicated the man only because of relentless pressure from police. A statement he had signed — asserting that he had heard a young man named Jabbar Collins discussing a murder plot days before a man wound up shot to death in a Brooklyn apartment building — was a fiction that detectives had fed him.

But the prosecutors, Oliva says, weren't having it. Collins, the man Oliva had fingered, had already been arraigned based in part on Oliva's word. Collins, then 21, was sitting in a Rikers Island jail cell awaiting trial, and the Brooklyn District Attorney's office was intent that he stay behind bars for a very long time. Oliva was going to be a critical witness, whether he liked it or not.

When Oliva refused to testify, the prosecutors, led by senior Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Michael Vecchione, threatened to charge him with conspiracy to commit murder, Oliva says. Prosecutors then held Oliva for several days at Lincoln Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison in Harlem. But Oliva held firm.

"I refused to testify to a lie," he said in a sworn statement submitted years later in federal court.

Vecchione's team, Oliva says, finally found a way to leverage him: Oliva was out of prison on a work release program, so prosecutors got the privilege revoked, and on March 1, 1995, Oliva was transferred to Ulster Correctional Facility, a maximum security state prison two hours north of New York City.

Oliva was brought back to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office for a meeting with Vecchione's partner, Assistant District Attorney Charles Posner. According to Oliva, Posner told him that he could have his work release privileges restored if he'd testify against Collins. "I felt trapped and desperate," Oliva said. "And so I agreed."

Oliva took the stand against Collins, insisting that his testimony was not a result of any agreement with prosecutors. And Vecchione, in a powerful closing argument, vouched for Oliva's credibility.

"He saw something. He heard something," Vecchione told the jury. "Someone asked him about it. And he is telling what he saw and he is telling what he heard. Nothing else."

Jabbar Collins was convicted of murdering Abraham Pollack, a rabbi from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and spent the next 15 years in prison. But he eventually gained his freedom through a rare federal petition in 2010, one asserting that prosecutors and police had invented, distorted and withheld evidence in his case. And now Collins is suing for $150 million, naming the individual prosecutors and detectives as defendants along with the city.

Based on an assortment of prosecution and government documents, as well as a number of sworn statements, Collins and his lawyer have asserted a staggering array of misconduct on Vecchione's part:

Vecchione, they charge, coerced an illiterate drug addict named Angel Santos to testify against Collins by physically threatening him and sending him to jail for a full week. Vecchione, they claim, persuaded a minor drug dealer named Adrian Diaz to testify by chasing him down in Puerto Rico and helping him avoid violating the terms of his probation. In court, they maintain, Vecchione suborned perjury; he concocted cover stories about how Collins' family threatened one or more witnesses. And while Collins spent a decade and a half in a state prison, Vecchione oversaw an effort to deny Collins access to the information that might have freed him.

In a series of filings in state and federal court, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office has refuted Collins' claims of misconduct. Officials say Oliva was promised no deal for his testimony; Santos took the stand voluntarily; Vecchione took no special steps to protect Diaz in exchange for his testimony; and the office handled Collins' requests for records in good faith.

Today, Vecchione, 63, remains a senior figure in the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. Hynes has stood by him, heralding Vecchione as a principled lawyer and an effective prosecutor. Both Vecchione and Hynes refused to be interviewed for this article.

Benjamin Brafman and Alan Dershowitz, two prominent defense lawyers who say they have known Vecchione for years, cautioned against concluding Vecchione was guilty of what has been alleged.

"These allegations are based largely on unproved claims made in an adversarial complaint," the lawyers said in a letter. "They have not yet been subjected to the full truth testing mechanisms of a judicial proceding."

"In our view," they asserted, "Mr. Vecchione has not been found to have committed any judicial misconduct."

A review of Vecchione's career shows that he has been a lightning rod for criticism for years. In a 1993 murder case, Vecchione was accused of withholding a cooperation agreement between himself and a key witness. State judges have chastised him for over-the-top behavior in court. Some defense lawyers, judges and former colleagues have said Vecchione is an all-too-willing lieutenant to Hynes, a loyalist interested in making headline-producing cases and then winning them at all costs.

Vecchione's aggressive pursuit of Clarence Norman, the onetime Brooklyn political kingpin, failed to produce what the district attorney's office most hoped it would — evidence that judgeships were for sale in Brooklyn.

Vecchione tried to prosecute a former FBI agent for helping arrange the murders of gangsters, only to have the case fall apart in embarrassment when it was revealed that Vecchione's chief witness was disastrously unreliable.

And just last year, a prosecutor leading a sex trafficking unit overseen by Vecchione resigned amid accusations that she had withheld a victim's recantation in a high-profile rape case.

For many legal experts, defense lawyers and advocates for the wrongly convicted, Vecchione is a prominent example of a troubling aspect of the American criminal justice system: Prosecutors who are implicated in misconduct often seem immune from meaningful punishment.

A recent investigation by ProPublica looking at more than a decade's worth of court records found that New York judges don't routinely refer prosecutorial misconduct to state panels that handle attorney discipline, even when they overturn convictions and upbraid prosecutors for constitutional violations. State disciplinary panels, when they do get referrals, rarely impose meaningful sanctions. The city's district attorneys lack the will to punish their subordinates, perhaps out of fear of embarrassment. All told, ProPublica found 30 cases in which judges reversed convictions based on misconduct by New York City prosecutors. Just one of these prosecutors was publicly disciplined.

The pattern is much the same across the country. The Northern California Innocence Project reviewed 12 years of court opinions and found that California prosecutors were hardly ever disciplined after convictions were overturned because of their misconduct.

Frederic Block, the federal judge presiding over Collins' civil lawsuit, has expressed something like amazement at Hynes' unwillingness to sanction Vecchione.

"I'm just puzzled why the district attorney did not take any action against Vecchione," Block said in court last fall. "To the contrary, he seems to ignore everything that happened. And an innocent man has been in jail for 16 years."

Hynes appears more willing to investigate detectives who might have helped make bad cases. Earlier this month, his office said it would review 50 murder cases handled by a single retired Brooklyn homicide detective. The action came after Hynes supported the release of a man who had been wrongly convicted based on the work of the detective, Louis Scarcella. So far, there's been no indication that Hynes' review of that case, or the larger case review, will extend to the prosecutors who investigated side by side with Scarcella for years, attending the same possibly suspect lineups, accepting the now supposedly dubious confessions, vouching for the witnesses Scarcella helped identify.

Collins' lawyer, Joel Rudin, is not at all surprised. Rudin has a long record of holding the city's prosecutors accountable. He's won millions of dollars in settlements from the city for wrongfully convicting people, and maintains a long list of cases in which prosecutors have broken ethics rules to win convictions, all without disciplinary sanctions. Often those prosecutors have been promoted after state and federal judges have excoriated their conduct.

Rudin's allegations against Vecchione and the office he works for are built on a formidable assortment of depositions, prison records, sworn affidavits and a review of state appellate court records. Rudin is scheduled to depose Vecchione on June 14.

Jabbar Collins — guilty or not — never got a fair trial. Two federal judges have declared it so. Both have been unsparing in condemning the conduct of Vecchione. Block, who is handling the civil lawsuit, has said in open court that he's eager to dig deeper.

"This was horrific behavior on the part of Vecchione," Block said. "We are going to have a civil proceeding, and all of this is going to be uncovered. I kid you not."

Hynes, meanwhile, does not seem outwardly concerned about Vecchione's record, or any damage it might have done to his office.

More here



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The continuing forfeiture scourge

A federal crime wave is sweeping the nation, and prosecutors and G-men could not be happier about it. The Wall Street Journal reported that government “forfeiture programs confiscated homes, cars, boats, and cash in more than 15,000 cases [in 2010]. The total take topped $2.5 billion, more than doubling in five years, Justice Department statistics show.”

Beginning in 1970, Congress enacted legislation to permit the seizure of property of Mafia organizations and major drug smugglers. In succeeding decades, more laws were passed, expanding their scope far beyond organized crime. Federal agents can now seize private property under almost 400 different federal statutes.

In the old days, possession was nine-tenths of the law. Nowadays, gossip has become nine-tenths of possession. Under asset-forfeiture laws and regulations, thousands of American citizens are being stripped of their property solely on the basis of rumors and unsubstantiated assertions made by government confidential informants. Due process for property rights nowadays amounts to a policeman’s giving a citizen a receipt for the cash the policeman seized for no reason from the person — and allowing the citizen to sue the police department to get some of his money returned.

In the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of King Arthur’s knights stumbles upon a mob of peasants wrangling over whether a suspect is actually a witch. The leader of the mob proposes using the most scientifically advanced test available — checking to see if the accused witch weighs more than a duck. After the suspect fails the duck test, the joyful peasants drag her off to be burnt.

Justice has made great progress in the subsequent 1,000+ years. Nowadays, law enforcement is not allowed to seize a person’s life savings unless a dog wags his tail — or barks — or paws the ground — or otherwise shows a positive alert.

The Wall Street Journal last year reported the results of a Delaware drug sniff:

"Jorge Jaramillo, a construction worker, says he couldn’t afford a lawyer after more than $16,000 was seized from him last year in a traffic stop. “I had all of $20 left,” he says. In a Delaware federal-court filing, the Justice Department argued the money was related to drug dealing. It pointed to air fresheners in the car, which could mask the smell of drugs, and a fast-food bag containing cigar tobacco, which the filing said was often a sign that the cigar wrapper had been used to smoke marijuana. The filing also said a police dog had signaled that the cash carried residue of illegal drugs. Such “dog sniffs” are a common but controversial feature in forfeitures."

Jaramillo eventually got his money back — but only because one of the nation’s top forfeiture defense attorneys, David Smith, took his case on a pro bono basis. In most cases, defendants cannot afford the price of an attorney to fight the government to reclaim their property.

Federal judges have denounced dog sniffs as an unreliable test for drug trafficking at least since the 1980s. But federal prosecutors still invoke such tests to create a pretext to stuff the government coffers with private property. (The Supreme Court is currently deliberating on a case involving canine alerts.)

Original report here




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Farmer accuses police of acting illegally after they refuse to hand back shotgun he fired at thief

More bastardry from the British police. They HATE self-defence

A farmer, who shot at a metal thief as he attempted to get away in a van, has hit out at police after they refuse to hand back his guns. Bill Edwards, 21, says he has struggled to find work six months despite being cleared of attempted murder because his guns are the tools of his trade.

The man from Scalby, Scarborough claims the police have acted illegally by keeping his property.

He was arrested last summer on suspicion of attempting to murder scrap metal thief David Taylor after he shot at Taylor’s van, loaded with stolen metal from remote farmland at Whin Covert, Riggs Head near Scarborough in North Yorkshire.

Mr Edwards’ four shotguns and two rifles - worth at least £3,000 - were all confiscated when he was arrested last August.

When he was finally released from police bail on December 20, he was given a letter from North Yorkshire Police stating they were going to review his suitability to hold a firearms certificate.

He always maintained he only turned his shotgun on the van because he feared for the life of his mother Louisa Smith, 50, as Taylor sped towards her while he fled the scene.

Taylor claimed that he was simply trying to getaway because Mr Edwards was shooting at him. He was later caught by police in a nearby village after a high speed chase.

Mr Edwards and his mother caught Taylor and an accomplice loading stolen metal cables into the back of his Ford Transit after spotting that outbuildings had been tampered with. The thieves jumped into the van and drove it towards the pair as they desperately dialled 999 for help.

Mr Edwards fired his shotgun, which was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot, several times, hitting the van’s windscreen and bodywork. No one was hurt. Police eventually caught Taylor when Mr Edwards gave chase and gave a running commentary on his mobile phone. But the crook was only charged with metal theft.

The 39-year-old from Scarborough escaped with just a £100 fine for theft after claiming he had been ‘traumatised’ by Mr Edwards shooting at him.

His father Gary, 67, said: ‘It's ironic because when this first happened he was a local hero. The farmers who employ him were queuing up to offer him work.

‘But the police have his guns and his firearms certificate and it seems legally they can take as long as they like to reach a decision.

‘They are still treating him like a criminal for defending his own property and his mother.

‘Bill does not have any work and feels very badly let down by the police.’

Mr Edwards added: ‘They have also got my air rifle which doesn't even require a certificate to possess.

‘They are the tools I need and not having them is costing thousands as my crop is being eaten by pests and I could not have lambs this year without controlling vermin.

‘When I work for other farmers they also require me to control pests. Not being able to do so prevents me getting work and if I do it is low pay.

‘Clay shooting is, was also my main hobby and social activity.’

He argues that once his firearms were taken off him, the police no longer had any legal right to retain them. Legally, Mr Edwards could buy guns and ammunition because his certificate has not yet been revoked.

However, he would need to present his firearms certificate - which the police have also retained.

Mr Edwards added: ‘They are breaking the law. I am left very disappointed with the police as they have illegally held my property since August.

‘Since no further action was taken in December and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] made a very positive statement regarding my case, the police still have not communicated their decision on whether I am still fit to hold the firearms I need.’

The national representative body for shooting sports, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation, supports Mr Edwards’ cause.

Senior Firearms Officer Matt Perring said: ‘A gun is absolutely essential to a farmer. ‘There is nothing like having your own gun to control the land. ‘Otherwise the land owner can ask anyone else with a shotgun certificate to do the job.’

He said employers needed farm workers who were trusted to carry guns to stop pests and vermin attacking crops. Mr Perring said: ‘Otherwise it's like asking someone to put up a fence with a broken arm.’

Mr Edwards said his family has lost thousands of pounds through theft and damage caused in a number of raids on their land.

North Yorkshire Police Professional Standards are still looking into a complaint from the family into how the whole case was handled.

A police spokesman said: ‘The investigation into Mr Edwards' complaint is still ongoing and so we are not yet in a position to comment.’

Original report here, (Via POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)




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Australia: Guilty until proven innocent?

NSW Police repeatedly swear, scream and punch two men in a dramatic video allegedly filmed in a western Sydney park.

The arrests now form part of an internal investigation.

Reportedly filmed on May 4 at 12.44am in Bigge Park, in Liverpool in Sydney's west, the two-minute video shows a police car pull up in the park where a group of young men is loitering.

Officers jump out of a car and one of them grabs one of the men in a neckhold and wrestles him to the ground. The police officers yells: "D***head get on the ground."

A second officer suddenly runs across the park to where a second young man sinks to his knees. The officer grabs the man and yells: "Get on the ground. Get on the f**king ground." "Do as you are f**king told."

As the officer handcuffs the man's hands behind his back, he keeps yelling at him: "Don't f**king move."

Posted on YouTube on May 20 by a user named SydneyCamera, the video has comments that purport that the two men were later released without charge.

NSW Police issued a statement: "Police were called to Bigge Park at Liverpool on May 4 this year, following numerous reports of a violent brawl. The arrests now form part of an internal investigation and further comment is inappropriate."

Original report here




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Australia: Killer did the right thing: NSW judge concedes at last

When he saw a man holding a knife to a woman's throat, 72-year-old Keith Harold Allen made a judgment call and shot him. It was almost certainly the right thing to do, a NSW Supreme Court judge says.

The actions of Allen, who spent two and a half years in custody and is now terminally ill with lung cancer, were vindicated in court on Wednesday, when Justice Michael Adams handed down his reasons for acquitting the elderly man of murder last week.

Allen shot 35-year-old Todd Sutton in the head after Mr Sutton threatened to kill Allen's landlady and boss on a farm near Mudgee in NSW's central west on December 4, 2010.

The seven-day trial heard Mr Sutton chased the woman, who was his partner, around the yard with a blocksplitter - a type of axe - before cornering her in the kitchen and leading her outside, holding a knife to her throat.

Allen, who worked as a greyhound keeper on the property, fired two shots in quick succession, hitting Mr Sutton first in the shoulder and then in the head.

He then told the woman to call police, walked back to his caravan, sat down and had a beer before making his own triple zero call.

"There's no problem with me darling," Allen said in the phone call played during the judge-alone trial. "I'm sitting here calmly."

He told police he was distraught that he had taken a man's life, but that he opened fire to stop Mr Sutton cutting the woman's throat.

The crown case was that while Allen's first shot was fired in defence of the woman, the second was done with intent to kill, after Mr Sutton had let her go and was no longer posing a threat.

But Justice Adams did not accept Mr Sutton had let go of the woman after the first shot and said the evidence of a child who was on the property at the time was not reliable on that point.

He said Mr Sutton was "drunk and enraged" and Allen "made a judgment call ... that was so far from being wrong, let alone criminal, that it was almost certainly right".

"He acted from beginning to end to protect (her) from sustaining very serious injury and possible death and he did so reasonably, considering the means he had at his disposal," Justice Adams said.

Allen was convicted of three firearm offences but released from custody last week.

He was not in court for the judgment on Wednesday.

Original report here




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A Different Sort of Bullying

David Friedman

There has been a good deal of talk in recent years about the evils of bullying and what to do about it. Almost all of what is discussed seems to be bullying of low status people by low status people, largely schoolchildren bullying schoolchildren. There is another sort of bullying that is unfortunately common in our society, arguably a more serious problem, and the subject of less, or at least less uniform, condemnation. Some examples are illustrated by two of my recent posts and one older one.

The first is anti-smoking rules carried beyond the point at which they can plausibly be defended as protecting non-smokers. My example is a proposed rule to ban all smoking from my campus. Smoking is already forbidden in buildings and, I'm pretty sure, near the entrance to buildings, so the proposal would have only a tiny effect on exposure to second hand smoke. I am a non-smoker, find cigarette smoke mildly unpleasant, and cannot remember having ever been significantly bothered by it on campus. The document circulated on the ban asserted a number for total excess mortality due to second hand smoke that I argued in my post on the subject was doubly bogus—it misrepresented the claim it was based on, and that claim was almost certainly based on cherry picked data. And, even if the number were correct, it would say little about the effect of the small additional reduction due to the proposed rule.

One motive for such a rule—whether it has passed or will pass I do not know—is probably paternalism, the theory that if you make smoking sufficiently inconvenient smokers may give it up. But I suspect that another motive is bullying. People, unfortunately, enjoy pushing other people around. Such a rule lets people who disapprove of smoking make life more unpleasant for those who smoke, demonstrating the power of the former over the latter.

My second example is the behavior of police officers. There are obvious reasons why police officers would wish other people to be deferential towards them, since the more extreme forms of non-deference can, in that context, be lethal. If the only people who talk back to them are criminals, mostly criminals about to attack them, that provides a useful signal of when to be on their guard. Making things unpleasant for people who demand a badge number (I once got arrested for assisting someone else to do so), point a cell phone camera at them, or in other ways fail to acknowledge their status and authority, is one way of getting that deference.

There are also obvious reasons why people in general want other people to be deferential towards them, making a profession which legitimizes the demand for deference and makes it possible to enforce it with the threat of death, injury, or prison, attractive to those with that taste. Which I think helps to explain the increasingly common pattern of unnecessary SWAT style raids, kicking in doors, pointing guns at innocent people and ordering them to lie on the floor, shooting dogs.

I do not think it would be hard to come up with other examples in both categories. People like pushing other people around. Doing so is generally safer and more effective when you have the power of the law on your side. One way to do so is to make rules or pass laws that make life harder for people you disapprove of, whether smokers, gays, or college students who get drunk and have sex. Another is to get a position one of whose perks is the right to order other people around—and, in some contexts, threaten, assault, beat, even kill anyone who objects, with minimal risk of suffering any criminal penalties for doing so. That includes TSA agents whose opportunities are limited to vandalizing checked luggage and ordering people to stand still while being patted down, and police officers with a wider range.

Original report here




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Australia: Man bashed by police to sue

A MAN allegedly bashed by police under the Surfers Paradise police station has launched legal action against the state of Queensland.

Noa Begic was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise in January last year and taken to the basement of the local police station, where CCTV footage appeared to show him being punched and thrown to the ground by officers.

The Courier-Mail posted exclusive footage of the incident on its website and all charges against Mr Begic were later dropped.

However, he has now taken legal action, engaging high-profile law firm Maurice Blackburn to sue the state of Queensland in a civil suit. He is believed to be seeking a six-figure settlement.

A close friend of Mr Begic said it was taking a long time for the mental scars to heal after the ordeal. "He was very anxious about police for a long while as you can imagine," said the friend. "He is trying to get on with his life and sees this as a chance to close the door on that chapter."

Two of the four officers allegedly involved in the incident remain suspended from duty while the Queensland Police Service's Ethical Standards Command runs its own investigation.

Mr Begic had been drinking with friends after finishing his shift at a Surfers Paradise restaurant when he was approached by police officers. He was arrested and taken to the basement of the nearby police station.

CCTV then appears to show a handcuffed Mr Begic being flung to the ground before being punched several times in the head by one of the officers as he is pushed into the back of a police wagon.

One of the officers is then shown pouring a bucket of water over what looks to be a puddle of blood on the basement floor.

Mr Begic was charged with being a public nuisance and obstructing police after he allegedly directed numerous loud and abusive comments towards officers patrolling the Surfers nightclub strip.

The charges against Mr Begic were thrown out last June. Mr Begic has also asked the Queensland Police Service to pay his legal costs from that court action.

The ethical standards investigation into the affair continues, while an investigation is also under way into an officer accused of leaking the CCTV footage to the newspaper.

Original report here.  (Via Australian police news)




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Freed from prison after wrongful conviction, man now “just enjoying life”

Nathaniel A. Johnson spent nearly four years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Recently exonerated, he struggles with questions of why police didn’t follow up on clues that would have proven his innocence.

In the days after Nathaniel A. Johnson’s exoneration for an armed robbery he didn’t commit, he shopped for new clothes, slept in his own bed and, on a whim, took a walk outside. “Just enjoying life,” Johnson said. After nearly four years behind prison bars and a razor-wire fence, Johnson is a free man and his name has been cleared. A judge recently set aside the guilty verdict that put him in prison. “I still can’t believe it happened to me, and I can’t believe it’s finally over,” Johnson told The Buffalo News. “There were plenty of times I wanted to stop fighting because it seemed like nobody was listening.” Johnson all along denied any involvement in the 2009 armed robbery at a North Buffalo convenience store. Thanks to some lawyers who did not give up and a family friend starting a new career as a private investigator, the case against the 44-year-old roofer and construction worker unraveled. But he still lost those four years.

Nearly two weeks have passed since his release. Amid his relief, though, are the nightmares about waking up back in prison.

And he wonders why God put him through the ordeal. “They say God does things for reasons,” Johnson said. “I still don’t understand why He let this happen to me though.”

Johnson, who friends know as “Tony,” was arrested four years ago today, May 12, 2009, and charged with using a gun to steal $3,000 from the Wilson Farms store at Delaware and Tacoma avenues around 4:30 a.m. April 23.

Early in the investigation, detectives had a key piece of information: a license plate number for the getaway car. An off-duty police officer happened to pull into the store parking lot as the robber sped away.

But when police ran the plate number, it came back to a car that did not match the description of the getaway car. Figuring it was the wrong plate number, Buffalo detectives focused on another lead. They discovered that Johnson, who resembled the description of the robber, frequented another nearby Wilson Farms, where his then-girlfriend worked the night shift. Johnson sometimes entered areas of the store considered off limits to anyone but employees.

Police showed a photo array that included Johnson’s picture to the manager of the robbed store. The manager identified Johnson as the robber.

During the trial, prosecutor Paul Michalek Jr. used Johnson’s regular presence at the other store to bolster the prosecution’s theory the robbery was committed by someone with inside knowledge of how Wilson Farms stores operate.

The girlfriend agreed to testify for the prosecution, and she told jurors that Johnson had commented to her during one of his visits that the Wilson Farms would be easy to rob.

The prosecutor did not disclose to Johnson’s defense attorney during the trial that the girlfriend had a drug charge pending against her. She was granted an adjournment in her case.

“She had her own charges, so she threw me under the bus,” Johnson said. “Whatever they wanted her to say, she said. She was manipulated by the district attorney.”

Trial testimony from the Wilson Farms manager proved pivotal. He identified Johnson as the robber.

“Once you have a positive identification, where a victim says, ‘That’s him,’ You’re in trouble,” said defense lawyer John R. Nuchereno, who did not represent Johnson at trial but later worked to set aside the verdict.

Jurors found him guilty. And that might have been how it ended, had it not been for Kathie Kuwik. A private investigator, Kuwik is a friend of Johnson who did not believe he was the robber.

“They had a suspect, and that’s all they were interested in,” she said. “They weren’t worried about getting to the bottom of it. They weren’t worried about getting to the truth of it.”

Kuwik sat through trial testimony and came away wondering why police had not looked more closely at the getaway car.

She also had received her private investigator’s license around the time of Johnson’s trial.

So she did some investigating herself. Testimony revealed the license plate number came back to a car used by a woman whose boyfriend also had access to the vehicle.

The boyfriend was Jabari H. Spencer. Kuwik learned he was being held in the Erie County Holding Center on charges related to two Kenmore Avenue armed robberies in 2009, one on June 10 and the other on July 3, just a few months after the Wilson Farms robbery Johnson was accused of committing.

During the trial, Kuwik went to the woman’s home, where she saw two cars in the driveway, including a green Mercury with the plate number that police had early in their investigation. The other unregistered car did not have plates on it. But it matched the description of the getaway car. “All he did was switch the plates, so it wouldn’t come back to him,” Kuwik said.

Too late for evidence: She rushed back to the courthouse to alert Johnson’s lawyer, Giovanni Genovese. But he had already wrapped up his closing argument. It was too late to introduce new evidence. “It was evidence that we unfortunately did not have at the time of the trial,” Genovese said. “At the time, we did the best we could with what we had.”

And Johnson was convicted and sentenced to prison. Vincent F. Gugino, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo, appealed the conviction.

The appellate court denied Johnson a new trial, but Gugino’s work helped pave the way for Nuchereno’s work. Gugino and law intern Patrick Sheldon dug into the Spencer connection.

Sheldon found photos of Johnson and Spencer and placed them side by side. Although Johnson is 15 years older, the two look remarkably alike.

“I’ve done this for 25 years, and I’ve never found somebody so innocent. It jumps out at you,” Gugino said.

Gugino was so convinced of Johnson’s innocence that he pushed the county’s assigned counsel program to find a lawyer to take the case a step further. That is how Nuchereno entered the case. Nuchereno cited in his motion the new evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Michael J. Hillery handled the appeal work in the Johnson case. When Hillery saw Nuchereno’s motion, he alerted District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III, who decided to take another look at the case.

Sedita assigned Joseph Riga, his chief investigator, to conduct what he called an exoneration investigation. Riga, the former head of the Buffalo Police homicide unit, completed his work convinced that Johnson was the wrong guy for the crime, Sedita said.

“I asked him, what are the chances Mr. Johnson is innocent? And he said 100 percent,” Sedita said. Sedita’s office joined Nuchereno in seeking dismissal of the indictment.

“It was clear as clear can be: This man was 100 percent innocent, and he maintained it all along,” Nuchereno said. “This is everybody agreeing this man is innocent. This is not a technicality. This is a finding of innocence.”

Judge criticizes prosecutors:

Nuchereno credited Sedita for not obstructing Johnson’s exoneration, but State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns expressed concern about how the District Attorney’s Office handled the case.

Before Burns granted the motion, he said he found the case “troubling.” And the judge noted that if Johnson had not brought the new evidence to light, the District Attorney’s Office probably would not have uncovered the injustice on its own.

“The investigation by the police and the DA was sloppy, and you’ve got flimsy identification, and they didn’t look at the car,” said Gugino, the Legal Aid lawyer. “They didn’t put two and two together. We named Jabari Spencer in our brief. We said, ‘This is the guy.’ ”

But Sedita said his office worked as quickly as possible to investigate.

A screening process implemented in 2009 to weed out prosecutions of innocent defendants before trial has resulted in “dozens and dozens” of exonerations, Sedita said. “Unfortunately, none of the screening methods worked in this case,” he said.

Sedita would not comment on whether his office would now charge Spencer with the Wilson Farms robbery. Spencer, 29, is serving time in Collins Correctional Facility for one of the store holdups. He was sentenced to 10 years on a first-degree robbery conviction and will not be eligible for release until 2018.

After the hearing, Johnson returned to Orleans Correctional Facility to retrieve his personal items and was supposed to be freed that day. But the prison did not receive a certified copy of the judge’s order, so his release was delayed until the next morning – yet another indignity in a cycle of them for Johnson.

Johnson said he does not harbor resentment toward those who helped convict him. He has not talked of seeking compensation from the state for the wrongful conviction.

“This has all been about clearing his name,” Nuchereno said. “He’s got his credibility back, and that was important to him. He will look into that, but that’s not his goal now. Right now, he just wants people to know.”

“I think we were more angry about it than him,” said Virginia Ackley, a woman who is like a mother to Johnson. “He knew we believed in him, and he knew he didn’t do it.”

Johnson lived for about a decade with Ackley and her husband, George, in a Riverside duplex, and since his release he has moved in with them again in their Cheektowaga home.

Johnson does not believe any amount of money can compensate him. “No matter what they give you,” he said, “it’s not going to bring back the time you lost.”

Original report here




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