Lynwood, Los Angeles, CA - It was about 1:45 a.m. on October 10, 2010 when LA County Sheriff's Deputy Julio Jove spotted a group of young men jaywalking across Long Beach Boulevard.The young men were on their way to a party, and had just left a liquor store with beer and snacks. The Deputy spun into action and attempted to cite the group for their pedestrian infraction.
What happened next, is disputed.
According to the incident report on file, 20-year old Jonathan Cuevas pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at the deputy, who then opened fire on the suspect, killing him. The family of the young man who was killed began immediately to suspect that something was very wrong, when the story they were given by homicide detectives was "totally opposite" of what they were being told by residents and shopkeepers in the area.
The shooting was ruled to be justified by internal investigators with oversight from the Office of Independent Review, the Homicide Bureau, and the District Attorney. That might have been the end of the story, if it had not been for this surveillance video made public just this past Friday. The recording is now the centerpiece of a wrongful-death lawsuit by the family of the man who was killed. Alarmingly, the video appears to depict a cold-blooded execution, rather than supporting the official version of events.
A spokespman for the LA County Sheriff's Department states, "This video that was shown today is a partial, small part of this story. It is by no means telling the whole story."
Indeed, what the video doesn't tell us is that key details of the internal investigation are missing. Namely, the weapon that Cuevas allegedly pointed at the deputy. It has not been made available to the family's attorney, who states that it is "nowhere to be found." Even the official investigation concluded that there were no fingerprints on the weapon, which could be used to implicate the suspect and corroborate the account of the deputy. Furthermore, the deputy described a silver handgun, but a photo of the weapon allegedly pulled out shows a black revolver with a wooden handle. There is also no explanation as to why the suspect did not fire the weapon, alleged to be in his hand, at the Deputy.
(Use of a drop-gun is not an unreasonable speculation. The practice of planting an untraceable weapon in order to justify a shooting is not new, has been reported among soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in hearings regarding the notoriously corrupt Rampart Division of the LAPD.)
What you will see here in this video, cannot be disputed. The police cruiser comes to a sudden stop at the curb, just ahead of the group of suspects. As the deputy emerges from the vehicle, one man runs away, with his back to the deputy. The deputy then draws his weapon and opens fire, striking the man several times in the back. The suspect topples and skids head-first on the sidewalk. The officer runs up and delivers one final "execution" or "coup-de-grac" style shot into the suspect. There is no suspect-weapon apparent in the video, particularly at the moment of the "kill shot."
This Canton, Ohio police officer was caught on videotape three times threatening to murder motorists. In one incident, the motorist was legally carrying a firearm. In another incident, the officer threatned to kill every person in the car. In another yet incident, the motorist was stopped for no reason whatsoever. The officer has been investigated by internal affairs a whopping 18 times during his 14 years on the force, yet his Chief claims there was no reason to believe that the officer in question might have been a problem.
The hot-tempered highwayman was eventually fired, but no criminal charges were ever brought against him. And now the cop wants his job back!
Now, to those of us with some common sense and basic concept of justice, it might seem absurd that this officer would even dare to try to get his job back. In reality though, there is a very good chance that he will be reinstated. After all, this officer was reinstated after he was fired in the wake of this incident:
This is actually a pretty common theme when there are crimes perpetrated by police. They are virtually above the law and any sense of common decency. In this case, the DA chose not to even prosecute criminal charges against on officer who beat up a judge!
Update: Queens, New York: The judge who said an officer struck him is
blasting the District Attorney for not prosecuting the officer. The
judge said the officer hit him when he mistook the judge for a heckler.
“It was absolutely criminal,” said the judge, “and I think a jury would
have very little difficulty, if they heard the testimony, determining
who was telling the truth and who was lying.” bit.ly/OaGTP5
So what chance do you have, as a civilian do you have to see justice be done if you are victimized by the police?
Usually, police officers are never charged criminally, but rather given a departmental censure, or maybe fired, except perhaps in the most grievous of situations for which there is extreme public outcry. Even if they are fired, and cannot go back to their original department, they will more than likely be picked up by another department. Without a felony conviction against them, they are free to still be a police officer in any department that will have them.
When police officers are prosecuted, they are convicted at less than half the rate of the general public. Then, even if a conviction against them is secured, they are less likely to be incarcerated. Even if they do wind up behind bars, a disgraced cop will only do about a third of the time that civilians serve.
Yet again we see the unbridled hypocrisy in this nation, and awake to find that we now live in an Orwellian police state the likes of which only the most clever fiction authors ever imagined.
We have another real fuckin hero here folks. This eight-year veteran police officer decides to smash a young woman's face in the side of her car repeatedly, and then declares, "There. Maybe now you can understand simple instructions," as he snaps on the cuffs.
Her big offense? Standing next to her car talking on her cellphone, rather than staying seated, when she was stopped for suspected DUI and traffic infractions.
Now don't get me wrong here folks, drunks can be belligerent, and police get nervous when a motorist gets out of the car during a traffic stop. In this case however, the young woman who is half his size did nothing that could be construed as aggressive or violent. standing next to your car and talking on the phone is not illegal either. Even if she was drunk, that had yet to be determined. So in the eyes of the law, at that point, this was a perfectly innocent woman who was brutally assaulted by an officer without cause.
Watching the video, it seems abundantly clear that the only reason for flinging this girl around and smashing her face into the side of the car, was to "teach her a lesson" so to speak. Now imagine for a second, what this cop would have done to this girl's father or boyfriend, if they had done the same thing to her. In this day and age, even yelling at a woman can get a man locked up on domestic violence charges, and beat up by police who feel it is their duty to dispense a little "old-fashioned" justice on woman-beaters. Yet here is this guy, beating a young woman he does not even know, because she did not sit down like she was told.
At least the officer was fired, but he was only charged with a misdemeanor count of simple battery and will likely never see the inside of a jail cell. What you will see in the video below, is much worse than a shove or even a smack int the face.
It's also more than likely that he will either try to appeal his firing, or that he will wind up on another police department. This is common practice for police officers who run into trouble of this sort. They are fired as a public relations matter, and then re-hired after the media attention dies down. Or, without a felony conviction, they simply move on to another department.
I will go ahead and include a second video below, of a woman who was arrested, and exonerated on a DUI charge. The officer in that case was also fired, but was later reinstated to the department.
As promised, here is the video of the other case I mentioned. As I was digging up a copy, I came across this one, the first split-shot of the event. You will see why that it is important in a moment.
Not only was the officer reinstated, but he was also given all of his back pay.
Board reinstates Willis, says city violated his rights
Panel says Shreveport violated Wiley Willis’ rights
By Loresha Wilson • ljwilson@gannett.com • August 13, 2009
The Shreveport Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board’s seven
members made the ruling Wednesday in the case known nationally for
video footage of the handcuffed woman lying in a pool of her blood in a
police interrogation room.
The ruling means Wiley Willis can return to duty once his in-service and firearm requirements are met.
“He’ll get a year and a half of back pay, benefits, retirement,
everything,” said Michael Carter, president of the Shreveport police
officers union. And as far as he knows, Carter added, Willis intends to
continue working for the Shreveport Police Department.
The Civil Service Board ruled that Willis’ rights, under the Police
Officer Bill of Rights, were violated because an expert failed to
record a polygraph examination Willis took as part of the Police
Department’s investigation into Garbarino’s injuries, including a
broken nose.
Shreveport Police Chief Henry Whitehorn called the panel’s finding a
technicality and said he is “disappointed with the board’s ruling.”
The police chief said he is moving forward with the city’s legal
department to pursue an appeal.
“This is not a technicality, this is the law — the Police Bill of
Rights,” Michael Carter, president of the Shreveport police officers
union, said after a news conference Wednesday evening.
Carter also said Willis was fired for failing to administer first
aid — a detail the Police Department never has released and would not
confirm. Carter pointed out that police officers haven’t been trained
in first aid since 1996 and are not equipped with any type of medical
supplies.
Wayne Nissen, who administered the polygraph, testified before the
board that he was aware the Police Department was investigating Willis’
actions. He said he wasn’t given a line of questions to ask during the
exam but was told to ask questions about the night of Garbarino’s
arrest.
However, Nissen said, he was unaware of the Police Officer Bill of
Rights, which provides a certain level of protection for officers
during investigations and personnel matters.
So from these two cases alone (and many many more which I could have referenced) we see a pattern of not only police brutality, but extreme violence towards women. Meanwhile, the rest of society is held to a much different standard when it comes to inter-gender violence. In this video, we will even see a cop interviewed, basically saying that it's okay for women to hit men, but not the other way around. And yet police themselves are not held to this gender-biased standard, much less any civil standard of conduct at all in brutality cases.
Where is the outrage? Where it the justice?
So we see that gender-bias is a powerful dynamic in our society today when we see violence. A "women are always right" mentality, or "woman are always the victim." Time and time again this is played out in homes and courtrooms across the nation. Criminal courts, family courts, divorce courts. And despite all of this, there is a more powerful dynamic. That the police are above the law, and beyond reproach. While the average woman beater is loathed on almost the same level as a child molester, the police are excused from any such scrutiny or judgement.
Do you think that a man who would smash his wife's face into the side of her car would get away with a simple battery charge? Even if he had a genuine reason, like perhaps trying to stop a drunk and belligerent wife from going and and crashing her car. Or even if it was she who attacked him and was clearly the aggressor, as in the last video above, would a man be excused for defending himself? Or do you think that if police showed up at a home where a woman was laying in a pool of blood on the floor, and the man said "she fell," do you think he would get away with no punishment of any kind? Of course not, and yet police are given a pass for such violence.
Double-standards wrapped in more double-standards. This is not the land of the free, this is the land of hypocrisy.
EDIT to add:
Also check out this story, where male deputies strip a woman naked, after calling for help because she was beat up by her cousin. They wound up knocking her teeth out on the edge of the metal bunk.
Absolutely sickening. Watch this, and then tell me that you still believe that you live in a free country. Tell me that you believe the Department of Homeland Security is keeping you safe.
The following article is about a teenager who was shot five times by police for underage drinking. You can read the details of the story in the link below. However, what I really wanted to share here was the introduction that author made, before going into details of the particular case.
This is a country whose people self-righteously criticize China
for its human rights abuses. This is a country where the public has
been aghast at Singaporean laws against chewing gum, and its “harsh”
penalties for violations of the law. This is a country whose people have
propagated rabid fear-mongering against Muslims, on the grounds Islam
supports poor treatment of women and arbitrary and severe punishments
(and I have argued in the past that American statism is not so unlike
radical Islam).
Despite the outward pretense of civility and denunciation of human
rights abuses, this is a country whose police murder disabled old
people, the mentally ill, and children – and get away with it. It is a
country whose government actually defends the police when they yank
little girls out of beds and put guns to their heads during mistaken
drug raids. This is a country whose police arrest people for feeding the
homeless. This is the country with the highest number of prisoners in
the entire world, both in sheer numbers and on a per capita basis, even
as it constantly claims to be the “freest” place on the planet.
The list goes on and on – you’d think the United States would be hiding its face in shame,
rather than claiming to be a beacon of freedom while pointing the
“human rights” finger at every other country but itself. While police
apologists repeatedly drone the tire bit about it being “a few bad
apples” or “isolated incidents” (never mind the fact that the law
actually encourages and permits this type of behavior by police), the
truth is, it would take more than a whole team of writers to detail and
cover the daily atrocities committed by police.
This is what happens when you call the police for help. This woman had been assaulted by a family member, and called the police for help. This is the sort of help you might expect to get, the next time you call police.
This woman was violently strip-searched by male deputies (with a female present). Although it was against departmental regulation for a male deputy to strip search a female suspect, it was their contention that they were not bound by that regulation in this case. The deputies claimed that this was not a strip-search, but rather a suicide prevention measure, after the arrestee made "suicidal statements."
Hope Steffey admits that she was questioned about suicidal thoughts, as part of normal screening procedures. When asked if she had suicidal thoughts, her reply, "What now, or ever?" is allegedly what incited this response...
