More police brutality anyone? This time, in New Jersey. The incident happened on December 30th but the dashboard-cam video was just released. It shows a motorist trying to peacefully exit his vehicle with his hands raised, then killed by what appears to be a couple of trigger happy officers who apparently thought the raised hands of the motorist were threatening.
Police in Bridgeton pulled over the car in which Jerame Reid was a passenger on December 30th. Prosecutors said that “during the course of the stop a handgun was revealed and later recovered,” but witnesses said that Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley opened fire and killed Reid as he was peacefully exiting the vehicle.
Tahli Dawkins told the Press of Atlantic City that he watched the officers approaching the car yelling, “Don’t effing move!” and that they opened fire without provocation.
Denzel Mosley told KYW-TV that Reid’s hands were “in plain sight,” and that the officers “were telling him, ‘Get out [of] the car,’” then yelling “‘Stop!’ and they started shooting.”
Ben Mosley — a retired sheriff’s deputy — said that Reid may have attempted to get back into the car when the officers yelled the contradictory order to “Stop!” but that he did not believe that justified firing upon him.
“I saw a disarmed man go down to the ground and get shot,” Mosley said. “That’s exactly what I saw.”
The video — obtained by the Press of Atlantic City but not released to the public — confirmed these eye-witness accounts.
Andrew Flinchbaugh found out the hard way that there are cops out there who think they can confiscate your personal property without just cause or even a warrant.
Andrew came upon a single car accident in Ocean County New Jersey and began filming.
Flinchbaugh, who has contributed in the past to a local news Web site, claims he was given permission to film by those first on the scene. However, one police officer seems to have taken exception to Flinchbaugh’s presence.
Flinchbaugh posted a 10-minute video of the events to YouTube and the footage appears to show him cooperating, while refusing the police’s principal request: to give them his camera as “evidence.”
As NBC 10 reports, the police officer in question was a detective from the Ocean County prosecutor’s office. Though Flinchbaugh offered to give him a copy of the video, for reasons that are still unclear, the detective wanted the camera.
He believed it was his legal right to take the camera. When Flinchbaugh refused to give hand it over, the detective arrested him for allegedly obstructing administration of law.
“I refused because I believe that that’s our First Amendment right,” Flinchbaugh told NBC 10.
When the officer threatened him with arrest, the video shows that Flinchbaugh calmly said: “Then you’re going to have to place me under arrest.”
To this, the detective replied: “Don’t push me like that.”
Flinchbaugh and his camera were released. Moreover, Ocean County prosecutor Joseph Coronato told NBC 10: “It would be my opinion that we’ll probably be dismissing the charge.”
He added: “We never would have looked at the video without getting a search warrant and, based on our information, we didn’t have the legal right to get the search warrant at that point.”
A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows.
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeatedly screamed after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he balked at being handcuffed.
Within moments Garner, a married father of six children with two grandchildren, stopped struggling and appeared to be unconscious as police called paramedics to the scene. An angry crowd gathered, some recording with smartphones.
“When I kissed my husband this morning, I never thought it would be for the last time,” Garner’s wife, Esaw, told the Daily News.
She got no details from police until after she had gone to the hospital to identify his body, she said.
Officials confirmed that NYPD Internal Affairs officers launched an investigation Thursday night.
Records show Garner was due in court in October on three Staten Island cases, including charges of pot possession and possession or selling untaxed cigarettes.
Esaw Garner said her husband was unable to work because he suffered from a host of ailments, including chronic asthma, diabetes and sleep apnea.
The Staten Island resident was sitting in front of Bay Beauty on Bay St. and Victory Blvd. just before 5 p.m. when two plainclothes cops began questioning him about selling untaxed cigarettes, a video obtained by the Daily News shows.
“I didn’t do s—!” the 6-foot-4 Garner, wearing a sweaty T-shirt and khaki shorts, told the officers from the 120th Precinct when they approached him. “I was just minding my own business.
“Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today!” he yelled.
Ramsey Orta, 22, who shot the video, tried to intervene, telling the cops his friend had just broken up a fight between three men and had not been selling cigarettes.
But when backup uniformed officers arrived, the cops moved in to cuff Garner, the video shows.
“Don’t touch me, please,” he said.
When Garner refused orders to put his hands behind his back, one of the plainclothes cops, wearing a green T-shirt with a yellow No. 99 on the back, got behind him and put him in a chokehold, the footage shows.
A struggle ensued as three uniformed officers joined in on the arrest, knocking the man to the ground.
He screamed, “I can’t breathe!” six times before he went silent and paramedics were called.
“They jumped him and they were choking him. He was foaming at the mouth,” Orta told The News. “And that’s it, he was done. The cops were saying, ‘No, he’s OK, he’s OK.” He wasn’t OK.”
“They were choking him. He kept saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe! Get off of me, get off of me!’ and I didn’t hear any more talking after that,” said witness Valencia Griffin, 50, of Staten Island. “He died right there.”
A powerful video of a United States Navyman, standing in the middle of a tear gas-filled street in Oakland, holding a flag and a copy of the United States constitution. As he stands still, hands raised holding the Constitution facing the Oakland police, distant shots and explosions could be heard in the background.
Police in Oakland and nationwide are calling these Occupiers “violent” and are trying to justify the unnecessary brutal measures they’re using against American citizens exercising their rights, but when you see videos like the one below, you can’t help but wonder what is the real reason for the police actions, and exactly how much in “donations” went to their police department?
As far as the New York Police Department goes, we know that big banks have donated up to $4 million this year!
The protesters at Occupy Wall Street get their First Amendment rights violated on a regular basis. They’re rounded-up, thrown to the ground, punched and pepper sprayed like animals by the police. Yet today, the New York Police Department is planning to sue any protester who “causes injury” to a police officer.
Reporting from the New York Post today quoted the president of NYPD’s Sergeant’s Benevolent Association as saying;
“In light of the growing violence attendant to the ‘Occupy’ movements across the country, particularly as evidenced by the recent events in Oakland, I am compelled to place these so-called ‘occupiers’ on notice that physical assaults on police officers will not be tolerated.”
Of course no one is advocating violence at any of the Occupy movement protests, and all the police departments across the country know this. Of all the thousands of protesters nationwide, it is almost impossible to find Occupiers demonstrating violence against the police. There may be a handful of incidents, but in the grand scheme of things, given the many thousands of protesters on the streets, two or three incidents nationwide is nothing to sue over.
So is this a plausible argument by the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association? Of course not.
The unnecessary amount of arrests police departments nationwide have taken part in, have nothing to do with unruly protesters, but everything to do with police trying to suppress the people’s rights to protest. If the police will just do their jobs, instead of intentionally perpetrating violence against peaceful protesters, then for the most part, calmness will prevail.
Maybe the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association should look at the instigators instead, and realize that the violence begins, for the most part, inside their own ranks.
About 75 Occupiers were arrested earlier today as they were kicked out of Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, California because, according to the police, the protesters were causing “sanitary and public safety concerns.” However, as word of the Oakland’s Police action got around, over 1000 more Oakland occupiers gathered and began marching back to their camps at Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Oakland police, intent on keeping the occupiers from returning to the Plaza, promised to arrest anyone who insisted on returning. As the group continued their march, police took unnecessarily harsh measures. They suffocated the area with tear gas causing the peaceful marchers to abandon their 1st amendment rights and retreat.
You thought the New York Police Department was the only one attacking peaceful protesters for… protesting? Think again.
The San Francisco Police Department has successfully added their interpretation of “excessive police action” to the historic movement that is Occupy Wall Street, with their actions earlier tonight in California.
To chants of “The whole world is watching!”, police, apparently irritated with the peaceful crowd and their video cameras, took a page from the NYPD. They began destroying the Occupiers food supply, then later, tossed the protesters around as they made their arrests.
To serve and protect has taken on a whole new meaning, and it doesn’t seem to include the people at Occupy Wall Street.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
