CAUTION: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED: Some may find this video disturbing.
South Carolina officials have released stunning dash camera video that they say shows a state trooper shooting an unarmed driver for an alleged violation at a Columbia gas station.
The trooper, who has been fired, was arrested Wednesday and charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, officials said.
The victim survived.
Warning: Graphic Video
Right around the time when Mike Brown was gunned down by a police officer in Ferguson MO for committing the unspeakable crime of walking down the street, there was another shooting that did not receive as much publicity. The players are the same – a young black man and trigger happy police officers. And the outcome is the same, the young black man is shot to death by police.
The unfortunate end of John Crawford’s life came in a Wal-Mart at the hands of police on August 5th. In the video, the 22-year-old is seen on his cellphone – it was later determined that he was talking to the mother of his children. Crawford is seen walking over to an aisle and picking up a gun off the shelves in the ammunition section of Wal-Mart. He walks around the store for a few minutes, still talking on his cellphone.
Now, this is a Wal-Mart store and at Wal-Mart, guns are sold. Crawford, like any other customer in the store, had all right to pick up the merchandise – even a gun the store was selling – and continue shopping. But as a black man having a gun, even if he was legally allowed to have one for the purpose of making a purchase, is apparently a crime in itself.
Calls were placed to the police and, like the video shows, the officers entered the store and shot the unsuspecting man almost immediately.
Then on Wednesday, to add insult to injury, a grand jury hearing the case determined that the officers were justified in the shooting of John Crawford III and cleared them of all wrong doings. And another black man is dead for no reason.
Video
He was a passenger in a car that apparently had trouble staying it its lane. But that was the driver’s fault. The driver was the one who drank too much and couldn’t control the vehicle. That does not mean the passenger had to suffer the consequences of the driver’s bad decision or poor driving skills. That does not mean that the passenger had to be slammed to the ground, get his head and face busted opened by police and then get shot with a stun gun multiple times.
That is what happened to Candido Medina-Resendiz the night his friend had too much to drink and decided to drive home. When police noticed the car veering back and forth in the lane, the car was pulled over and the police officer conducted an uneventful a field sobriety test.
After the driver failed, he was arrested. The passenger, hardly able to speak English, sat in the passenger seat until another officer opened the door to get him out.
The first time we see Candido was when his head hit the pavement as he was thrown to the ground by police. The officers began barking instructions to the man although he was unable to understand their commands. One officer threatened to “f*cking kick (his) ass,” because the man was not responding they way he should have. We hear Candido scream as the stun gun is used. Laying on his stomach, police was eventually able to handcuff him, but not before punching the injured man multiple times in the face.
Another police officer is then seen kneeling on Candido’s back while the man cried, still unable to communicate to the officers or follow their instructions due to the language barrier. After what seemed like an eternity, the officer removed his knees from Candido’s back and with the help of the other officers, Candido was lifted and carried to the police car, still screaming in pain.
“It’s very apparent from viewing the video that Mr. Medina-Resendiz was extremely confused about what on Earth was happening to him,” said attorney Kyle Mothershead. “The reason why he was being taken down was not explained to him in either English or Spanish, and he’s confused about what’s happening and why he’s being thrown to the ground.”
Candido Medina-Resendiz eventually went through surgery and had multiple stitches for his troubles, with a metal plate was inserted in head.
All the officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.
It is becoming clear that the best way for a police officer to get a paid vacation is to kill or seriously injure someone – preferably someone from the minority community.
It’s my theory, but it’s based on facts. Look at just about all the police shootings nationwide where the incident received some media attention. The officer is usually at home, chilling, and collecting a paycheck. In the more recent shooting Ferguson MO. where Mike Brown was murdered, his killer, Darren Wilson, is on a paid vacation. And in other case in Baltimore where the victim wasn’t killed, but jumped and beaten mercilessly by a police officer in June of this year, that officer has been on vacation since then, collecting a paycheck all the time, while the investigation is conducted.
Here is another police shooting, another black dead victim and the shooting officer is home or at Disney World, receiving a check.
Kill someone, go on vacation while getting paid. How cool is that?
Charles Smith, a 29 year old man with outstanding warrants in Savannah Georgia, was apprehended, handcuffed with his hands behind his back by police and placed in the back of a police car. According to the officer, Smith was safely locked away in the back seat, but he somehow managed to bring his hands to the front – still handcuffed mind you – and kicked out the backseat window.
Seeing his opportunity to go get paid while on vacation, officer David Jannot – a 10 year veteran of the Savannah police force, said he saw a gun on the prisoner and opened fire, killing Smith on the spot. Police say a gun was found, tucked away under Smith’s dead body.
The angry crowds gathered. Savannah mayor Edna Jackson, who undoubtedly saw the catastrophic mayoral response in Ferguson Missouri when Mike Brown received his untimely death sentence from officer Darren Wilson, jumped on the incident and assured the gathering crowds that all will be done to get to the bottom of the situation.
“This will be cleared up, this will be cleared up,” she said at the scene, according to WTOC. “We don’t need anything to happen and we are going to keep the family and the community informed about everything that is going on.”
I wonder if officer David Jannot already had his Disney pass before pulling the trigger?
Not only did the officer attacked the man for no reason, he then falsified a report blaming the victim for the incident.
Officer Vincent Cosom, a six-year Baltimore police officer apparently had words with the man, 32-year old Kollin Truss. According to the attorney of the Kollin Truss, words were exchanged between the officer and his client inside a store. The officer claims that he told Truss to stop loitering and Truss told him, “F*ck you. I will see you when I get outside.”
On one surveillance video, the two men are seen in front the liquor store arguing. A woman then steps between them and she is eventually pushed away by the officer. Truss and the woman leaves the area but were followed by the officer to another location where a second video shows the officer running up on the unsuspecting Truss and punching him, repeatedly in the face. The officer then arrested Truss, charging him with assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and alcohol intoxication.
Now that the surveillance videos show the truth, everyone is understandably outraged, some even demanding body cameras for all the officers. Baltimore police Commissioner, Anthony Batts, said that he is “shocked, I’m outraged, I’m disgusted by what I saw by an employee of the Baltimore City Police Department.” Even the mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake expressed frustration with the incident.
“I am deeply disgusted by the images I saw in this video. [Cosom’s] conduct was shameful and not worthy of the sworn obligation every officer takes to serve and protect city residents.”
Cosom is on paid administrative leave and the incident – which happened in June – is being investigated. Kollin Truss has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Cosom and the Baltimore Police Department.
The video shows NYPD officers getting into a physical confrontation with an onlooker, and then body slamming him on a street in Brooklyn New York.
According to reporting by ANIMAL, police in Brooklyn NY started telling street vendors in Sunset Park — known for its large Latino population — that it’s 6PM and they need to close up shop, and it ends with violence and multiple people being arrested and assaulted by police while cops also are attacked.
The report states that on Sunday at the 5th Avenue festival a group of at least six officers approaches a vendor and tells him to shut down his table. It appears they give him no time and quickly it escalates. A black female police officer says “6′oclock it’s 6 o’clock. You guys know the rules. Simple.”
It then sounds like she says, “If you guys are gonna fuck with us, we’re gonna fuck with you,” and a male officer then starts asking an older woman on the street who she is and how old she is. A younger man in a Cincinatti Reds hat tells the group of women they don’t have to answer that, and the male cop then approaches the young man and soon a confrontation begins.
Cops can be seen punching and kicking the man in the Reds hat and it spirals downward, with people at times trying to fight back against police. Multiple people were shooting with their phones
Photograph: Jocelyn Hansen
Another story to add to our ever-growing folder on excessive force and police brutality.
A Preliminary autopsy states that the young man was shot in the back corroborating eyewitness’ account that the man was running away from police. You wanna know what was the Police account of the shooting? They said the young man was coming towards them with a sword, so they shot him in the back?
Huh? How… wa… I don’t… *sigh*
ThinkProgress reports that last Wednesday, 22-year-old Darrien Hunt was shot dead by police in Saratoga Springs, Utah, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City.
For three days, police said nothing about the cause of the shooting while witnesses reported that he was running away as officers shot outside a Panda Express. On Saturday, police issued a brief statement saying he lunged at them with a sword. But Hunt’s lawyer says an independent autopsy shows Hunt was shot in the back and not in the front, and his mother Susan Hunt says the “sword” was a blunt-edged vanity version of a Japanese “Katana” sword he bought at an Asian gift shop.
“Those stupid cops thought they had to murder over a toy,” Susan Hunt told the Associated Press. The family’s lawyer, Randall K. Edwards, declined requests from the Los Angeles Times to provide the name of pathologist who performed the alleged autopsy, or to provide a copy of the autopsy.
Hunt told the Associated Press that she returned to Utah recently after separating from her husband and fleeing an abusive relationship, to start a new life with her children. She said Darrien was coping with the separation and looking for jobs in Saratoga Springs
Here’s another one for the Republican led Supreme Court that recently issued a ruling saying racism was dead in America. An actress who appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, wrote of her recent experience with police officers from the Studio City Police Department. Daniele Watts wrote that after showing affection to her boyfriend, she was approached, handcuffed and put in the back of a police cruiser.
According to her boyfriend’s Facebook posting about the incident, the officers apparently assumed this black girl kissing a white man meant she was nothing more than a prostitute.
From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a HO (prostitute) & a TRICK (client).>
Daniele Watts wrote;
Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place. When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree. I was talking to my father on my cell phone. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn’t harming anyone, so I walked away.
A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs.
As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong. I felt his shame, his anger, and my own feelings of frustration for existing in a world where I have allowed myself to believe that “authority figures” could control my BEING… my ability to BE!!!!!!!
I was sitting in that back of this cop car, filled with adrenaline, my wrist bleeding in pain, and it occurred to me, that even there, I STILL HAD POWER OVER MY OWN SPIRIT.
Those cops could not stop me from expressing myself. They could not stop the cathartic tears and rage from flowing out of me. They could not force me to feel bad about myself. Yes, they had control over my physical body, but not my emotions. My feelings. My spirit was, and still is FREE.
I will continue to look any “authority figure” in the eye without fear. NO POLICE OFFICER OR GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ME. WE ARE EQUALS. I KNOW THAT I WILL ALWAYS BE FREE BECAUSE THAT IS THE NATURE OF MY SPIRIT.
And moreover, I deeply enjoyed connecting with the cops who detained me. I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes. The tears I cry for a country that calls itself “the land of the free and the home of the brave” and yet detains people for claiming that very right.
Today I exist with courage, knowing that I am blessed to have experienced what I did today. All of those feelings, no matter how uncomfortable. These feelings are what builds my internal strength, my ability to grow through WHATEVER may happen to me.
That internal knowing is what guides me in this world. Not the law, not fear, not mistrust of government or cops or anything else.
In this moment there is a still small voice whispering to me. It says: You are love. You are free. You are pure.
In a new video released by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, two contractors are seen watching the police shooting of Michael Brown.
“He had his fucking hands in the air!” one of the men is heard shouting in the moments after the Aug. 9 shooting of the black teen by a white police officer.
CNN aired the footage during “Anderson Cooper 360” and said it was filmed by an unidentified man near the scene of the shooting. CNN also talked to the two men who were shown on the video.
The men, who didn’t wish to be identified, told CNN they witnessed the shooting from about 50 yards away. The man shown in the video in a pink shirt told CNN that they heard one gun shot followed by another about 30 seconds later. He said he saw Brown staggering and putting his hands up saying “Okay, okay, okay” but that “the cop didn’t say get on the ground, he just kept shooting.”
The man in the green shirt told CNN he saw Brown running away from the police car with his hands up as the officer chased him. He also said the police officer shot Brown again when his back was turned, according to CNN.
Welcome to the world of ‘stop and frisk,’ where you have absolutely no rights if you look a certain way… more specifically, if you are a certain color.
A New York man found this stop and frisk world extremely painful as he was stopped by police, frisked. And when he had the audacity to ask why he was being searched – the nerve if this man to think he had protection under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution from unnecessary search and seizure – he was handcuffed, arrested and beaten.
Two videos actually exist of the beating of Santiago Hernandez: One from a security camera, and the other from a mobile phone. Taken together, the two corroborate Hernandez’s claim that he was kicked, beaten with night sticks, and pepper sprayed. But Hernandez says even before that, he was confused by why he was stopped for a search, and why exactly that search led to his arrest.
“She just was telling me to put my hands behind my back, but ‘I’m like trying to understand what are you are arresting me for. Can you please tell me?’” he recounted to ABC7.
“I’m a person to ask questions. If I didn’t do nothing wrong, I’m trying to understand the reason, what they are thinking of me, or what was the reason at all to arrest me,” he added.
The charges against Hernandez were eventually dropped and an investigation is being conducted… by the NYPD. #Eyeroll
Video
You know, I’m really getting sick and tired of all these posts about police brutality. And I would love for the day when there will be no more posts to publish about police brutality. But until that day comes, I am left with no choice.
There is an element of police brutality in this nation that is sometimes, borderline racism. I am NOT saying that all cops are guilty of this. I know there are some who are honestly trying to protect and serve their communities.
But when a man leaves his job, and goes to pick up his kids from daycare and gets tased and arrested because he sat on a public bench while waiting to get his kids, I think something is inherently wrong with that… here, in America… the home of the “FREE!”
The incident began when the man in the video – who is black – sat on a bench outside his kids’ daycare center. Security guards ask him to leave. The man said he looked around and saw no evidence that the bench was a private bench and he kept sitting.
The police were called and began asking the man for his ID and in Minnesota where this incident, he was not required to show his ID if there were no suspicion that he had done anything wrong.
The man is heard on the video telling the police officer that he was not doing anything wrong, just waiting for his kids to come out from daycare. But of course this incident had to escalate to the point where he was tazed and arrested for sitting on a public bench.
Video
The popular Governor of Massachusetts, presently the only black governor in the nation, Gov Duval Patrick, weighed in on the recent killings with police being the culprit, telling a Fox station in Boston that he is “sick of unarmed black men being shot by police.”
I’m sick of unarmed black men being shot by police. I’m sick of the lawlessness on the streets. I think everybody’s tired. When are we gonna get through with this kind of thing? I’m hopeful, with the Attorney General of the United States going out, that federal law enforcement will be fully engaged, and I hope bring to a decision quickly. But that’s a really tough mission that he’s set out on, and I know that from some experience.
Video
Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston
