Baltimore is now going into a state of emergency....
- Thread starter Sal
- Start date
In 1968 there was not 1 chance in hell that an African descendant could become president of the U.S. of A
In 2015 we have Barack Obama .
Your slogans mean nothing .
No they did it arbitrarily .
The straw that broke the camel's back - police government tyranny:
Undue force - Sun Investigates - The Baltimore Sun
UNDUE FORCE
The city has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.
On a cold January afternoon, Jerriel Lyles parked his car in front of the P&J Carry Out on East Monument Street and darted inside to buy some food. After paying for a box of chicken, he noticed a big guy in jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap.
“What’s up?” the man said to Lyles. Others, also dressed in jeans and hoodies, blocked the door to the street — making Lyles fear that he would be robbed. Instead, the man identified himself a police officer, frisked Lyles and demanded he sit on the greasy floor. Lyles objected.
“The officer hit me so hard it felt like his radio was in his hand,” Lyles testified about the 2009 incident, after suing Detective David Greene. “The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”
The Baltimore detective offered a different version of events in court, saying that Lyles’ injuries might have resulted from poking himself in the face. He also couldn’t say why officers stopped Lyles, who was not charged with any crime.
But jurors didn’t buy the officer’s explanation. They ruled in Lyles’ favor, and the court ultimately ordered the city to pay him $200,000, the statutory limit in Maryland for most lawsuits against a municipality.
The beating Lyles received from Baltimore police officers — along with the resulting payout from city funds — is part of a disturbing pattern, a six-month investigation by The Baltimore Sun has found.
BALTIMORE POLICE
Jerriel Lyles said an officer assaulted him on Jan. 8, 2009.
Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.
Those cases detail a frightful human toll. Officers have battered dozens of residents who suffered broken bones — jaws, noses, arms, legs, ankles — head trauma, organ failure, and even death, coming during questionable arrests. Some residents were beaten while handcuffed; others were thrown to the pavement.
And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims — if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him — a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”
Such beatings, in which the victims are most often African-Americans, carry a hefty cost. They can poison relationships between police and the community, limiting cooperation in the fight against crime, the mayor and police officials say. They also divert money in the city budget — the $5.7 million in taxpayer funds paid out since January 2011 would cover the price of a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds. And that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims brought against police.
Largest payouts
Baltimore has paid $5.7 million since January 2011 for settlements and court judgments in lawsuits accusing city police officers of false arrests, false imprisonment and excessive force. Virtually all of the people who won large awards were cleared from criminal charges.
EXPLORE THE LARGEST PAYOUTS
$500,000
Aubrey Knox, Lena Knox
Beaten, failed kidney
$375,000
Edward Lamont Hunt
Shot three times, killed
$272,790
Jamal Butler
Wrongfully arrested
$250,000
Chris Sharp
Erased evidence on phone
$236,393
Arthur Phillips
Wrongfully arrested
$224,000
Jerriel Lyles
Fractured nose, bruised eye
$219,057
Dondi Johnson
Injuries leading to death
$200,000
Tyrone Brown
Shot 12 times, killed
$200,000
Jacqueline Allen
Shot, lost kidney
$175,000
Daudi Collier
Faced smashed with radios
$170,000
Salahudeen Abdul-Aziz
Facial fractures
$155,000
Williams, Pendelton
Beaten outside home
$150,000
Darren Brown
Wrongfully imprisoned
$125,000
Starr Brown
Slammed while pregnant
$110,000
Calvert, Jones
Fractured elbow
$105,000
Causey, Causey
Forcibly strip searched
$100,000
Lillian Parker
Wrongfully arrested, jailed
$100,000
Lornell Felder
Church deacon beaten
$95,370
Venus Green
Broken shoulder, thrown
$95,000
Donte Harris
Sexually harassed, tased
$90,000
Ira Todd
Broken arm, stomped
$75,000
John Bonkowski
Broken leg, jaw
$75,000
David Harris
Wrongfully arrested, jailed
$75,000
Antwan Bryant
Hit by cruiser, fractured leg
$70,000
McLean, Gibbs
Stomped, kicked
$67,500
Terrell Perkins
Store clerk beaten
$63,000
James Clay
Broken arm at traffic stop
$63,000
Overbey, Kelly
Beaten in face
$60,000
Jonathan Hunt
Broken leg, collarbone, ribs
$62,000
Obe, Adesanya
Beaten while handcuffed
$50,000
Alberto Mojica
Beaten, surgery required
$50,000
Anthony Keyes
Beaten
$49,500
Ury, Washington
Fractured nose
$49,000
Charles Faulkner
Broken jaw
$47,500
Snell, Holmes
Beaten, kicked in testicles
$45,000
Rodney Hueston
Broken arm
$42,500
Deon Johnson
Hit by unmarked police car
$40,000
Alvin Cuffee
Choked and beaten
$40,000
Alex Dickson
Broken teeth, nose, ribs
$35,000
Joseph Forrest
Shot and killed
$30,000
Michael Wright
Broken wrist, stomped
$30,000
Christensen Threatt
Stomped and kicked
$30,000
Barbara Floyd
Face ground into pavement
Sources: Charging documents, court records, interviews and Sun archives.
“These officers taint the whole department when they create these kinds of issues for the city,” said City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “I’m tired of the lawsuits that cost the city millions of dollars by some of these police officers.”
City policies help to shield the scope and impact of beatings from the public, even though Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake acknowledges that police brutality was one of the main issues broached by residents in nine recent forums across Baltimore.
The city’s settlement agreements contain a clause that prohibits injured residents from making any public statement — or talking to the news media — about the incidents. And when settlements are placed on the agenda at public meetings involving the mayor and other top officials, the cases are described using excerpts from police reports, with allegations of brutality routinely omitted. State law also helps to shield the details, by barring city officials from discussing internal disciplinary actions against the officers — even when a court has found them at fault.
The Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, a local pastor who has railed against police brutality, was surprised to hear that the city has spent millions to settle police misconduct allegations.
“I am absolutely stunned,” said Bryant, who leads a Northwest Baltimore mega-church. “I had no idea it was this bad. I had no idea we had this volume in this city.”
Among the findings of The Sun’s investigation, which included a review of thousands of court records and interviews with victims, along with audio and video recordings of trials:
Since 2011, the city has been involved in 102 court judgments and settlements related to allegations of civil rights and constitutional violations such as assault, false arrest and false imprisonment, making payouts that ranged up to $500,000. (The statutory cap can be exceeded when there are multiple claims in a lawsuit, and if there is malice the cap may not apply.) In 43 of the lawsuits, taxpayers paid $30,000 or more. In such settlements, the city and the officers involved do not acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Many of the lawsuits stemmed from the now-disbanded Violent Crimes Impact Section, which used plainclothes officers to target high-crime areas. Officers frequently wrote in charging documents that they feared for their safety and that residents received the injuries when resisting arrest.
Department officials said some officers were exonerated in internal force investigations, even though jurors and the city awarded thousands of dollars to battered residents in those incidents.
For years, leaders in Baltimore’s Police Department, the nation’s eighth-largest, didn’t track or monitor the number of lawsuits filed against each officer. As a result, city officials were unaware that some officers were the target of as many as five lawsuits.
They were just kicking. I was kicked about three times in the side, kicked in my forehead. After a while, I couldn’t really tell where I was being assaulted. I just knew my body was hurting.
JONATHAN HUNT
Deposition from Jan. 5, 2012
Hunt settled for $60,000 after alleging an officer broke his leg, collarbone and cracked three ribs.
more ....
This award winning article exposed the criminal government police for their crimes against innocents in Baltimore. All true conservatives (that is, if they are as principled as they claim to be) should be outraged over these brutal government crimes and demand that people exercise their Second Amendment rights against those police criminals.
Horseshtt = if you did your homework you would know that was the law enforcement of the time and why our Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment into the Constitution.
Wrong - we can get our O.A.S. on Monday, Tues, Wed., Thurs. or Friday - the third banking day before month end, whereas welfare is always on Wed.
If my memory serves me correctly I believe Watts was a day or so PRIOR to Obama's reign.
Are you absolutely sure? My sister lives in Calgary and she gets her O.A.S. the same day I do.
This one is different there are people in the streets community folks
trying to stop the violence and i applaud them for that
trying to stop the violence and i applaud them for that
Citizens lining up to protect Baltimore police.
Uh-oh. Somebody called out the men.
That should about be the end of it.
Curfew lifts after calmer night in Baltimore
Curfew lifts after calmer night in Baltimore - The Washington Post
Yep, sure enough.
huh?
British Tax Collectors were not equivalents to todays police officers. Geez.
Get a clue.
Actually, they were working from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, composed eleven years earlier. If you look at the VDOR, you'll see that it's much more philosophical than responsive to the needs of the here-and-now (there-and-then?) It's effectively a statement on the organization of defense. And as always, reflecting EagleSmack here, applying late-eighteenth century principles to twenty-first century problems without a studied examination of changed circumstances is foolish.
Bullshyte...
Welfare isn't taxable income...OAS and CPP are taxable income...
I have been paying income tax for 55 years
Here's a question I'm sure you will not answer because you won't find it on socialist tv:.... RT news...
Are you or have you ever in your life paid income tax?????
Bear in mind that welfare isn't taxable.....