Re: Copwatch : These Streets Are Watching 'Government killed one of their own': Iraq war vet and father of two shot 71 times in own HOME by SWAT team Jose Guerena, 26,survived two tours of duty in Iraq as a marine, only to be gunned down in a hail of 71 bullets in his own Tucson, Arizona home, while his wife and four-year old son hid in a nearby closet. Mr Guerena's wife, Vanessa, said she heard her husband moaning as he lay dying, his body struck by 60 of the bullets. Ms Guerena told ABC News: 'I saw his stomach, all the blood on the floor'. Shot dead: Jose Guerena, 26, had served two tours of duty in Iraq as a marine, but he died in his Tucson home after being hit by 60 bullets from a SWAT team Family man: Mr Guerena is survived by his wife, Vanessa, and sons Joel and Jose. Vanessa and Joel hid in a closet, where they could hear the shooting Seeking closure: Vanessa Guerena hopes to clear her late husband's name by proving that he was not involved in drugs, the stated reason for the raid She said her goal now is to 'clear his good name'. Ms Guerena said their son Joel keeps asking about his deceased father, 'Is he a bad guy?' The Tucson SWAT team responsible for the May 5 house shooting defends its actions, saying the team was conducting a multi-house drug investigation based on a search warrant when they saw Mr Guerena aiming an assault rifle at them. At first, the SWAT team had said Mr Guerena fired first, but then they retracted that statement, saying he had left the safety on. The Pima County Sheriff's Office declines to say whether any drugs were found in the house, claiming the investigation is ongoing. At a press conference Thursday, SWAT team lawyer Mike Storie claimed weapons and body armour were found in the home, as well as a photo of Jesus Malverde, who Storie called a 'patron saint drug runner'. In a statement, the sheriff's office criticized those questioning the team, saying, 'It is unacceptable and irresponsible to couch those questions with implications of secrecy and a coverup, not to mention questioning the legality of actions that could not have been taken without the approval of an impartial judge'. Opened up: The Pima County SWAT team fired off 71 bullets, 60 of which struck Mr Guerena. They say he pointed an assault weapon at them Crime scene: The Guerena's home in Tucson, where they saw gunmen early in the morning on May 5 On the night of the raid, Ms Guerena said her husband was asleep, after having worked a night shift at the Asarco copper mine. She said she then saw the armed SWAT team outside her youngest son's bedroom window. Reyna Ortiz, 29, a relative of the family, told reporters: 'She saw a man pointing at her with a gun. She yelled, "Don't shoot! I have a baby!"' Ms Guerena alleges that she thought it was a criminal assault, since two members of her sister-in-law's family, Cynthia and Manny Orozco, had been killed last year in their Tucson home. Ms Guerena said she shouted for her husband, who told her to take young Joel and hide in a closet. After the shooting, Ms Guerena says she emerged from the closet. 'They came into the house to get me,' she told ABC reporters. She told a 9-11 operator: 'They were... going to shoot me. And I put my kid in front of me', according to ABC. Crying, she also told the operator: 'He's on the floor! Can you please hurry up?' Ongoing investigation: Pima County officials decline to say if they found any drugs in the home, but say they did find weapons and body armour Found: Police say they also found a photo of Jesus Malverde, who they called a 'patron saint drug runner' When she encountered the SWAT team, 'the only thing I told them was take care of him, take him to a hospital,' Ms Guerena told ABC. An ambulance reportedly arrived in a few minutes, but medical personnel were not allowed inside to see Mr Guerena for an hour and 14 minutes, the family's attorney, Chris Scileppi, told ABC News affiliate KGUN. In contrast, it took responders only 12 minutes to address Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in Tucson in January, according to Mr Scileppi. Mr Storie defended the SWAT team's actions, saying, 'They still don't know how many shooters are inside, how many guns are inside and they still have to assume that they will be ambushed if they walk in this house'. Critical: Guerena family lawyer Chris Scileppi said: 'The pieces don't fit. I think it was poor planning, overreaction and now they're trying to CYA' Medics barred: Mr Scleppi claims paramedics were kept outside the home more than an hour, while Mr Guerena lay inside dying Mr Scileppi accused officers of 'circling their wagons'. Mr Guerena served two tours of duty in Iraq, until he left the Marines in 2006. ABC interviewed his former commander, Sergeant Leo Verdugo, who told them he 'definitely pulled his weight'. 'I have a hard time grasping how something so tragic could happen', he told the network. The Guerena's oldest boy, Jose, turns 6 Tuesday. Ms Ortiz told ABC, 'He went to school, came back and never saw his daddy again. He's asking, "Why did the police kill my daddy?" 'We were so worried when he was over there fighting terrorism, but he gets shot in his own home. The government killed one of their own', Ms Ortiz said. Mr Guerena is to be buried in his Marine dress blue uniform. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1Na07Tfqq
Re: Copwatch : These Streets Are Watching Eighth Grader Executed for Scaring a Cop Between March 2006 and November 2010, Officer Daniel Alvarado of San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District Police was suspended four times. Four times he was informed by supervisors that he faced “immediate termination.” For some reason, when it came time to fire Alvarado, his superiors just couldn’t bring themselves to pull the trigger. Alvarado displayed no similar scruples on November 12, 2010, when he murdered 14-year-old Derek Lopez, who had just taken part in a brief scuffle with another student. Owing to his own troubled past, Lopez was a student at the Bexar County Juvenile Justice Academy. At around 4:30 PM on the fatal day, Lopez sucker-punched a 13-year-old classmate at a bus stop. “He just hit me once,” the student later recalled in a sworn deposition. “It wasn’t a fight. It was nothing.” Unfortunately, Alvarado happened to be prowling the intersection in his patrol car, and witnessed the trivial dust-up. “Freeze!” Alvarado shouted at Lopez, who bolted from the scene. Alvarado, in his mid-40s, briefly gave token pursuit before relating the first of several self-serving falsehoods. “I just had one run from me,” wheezed the winded tax-feeder. “I saw an assault in progress. He punched the guy several times.” (Emphasis added.) A supervisor instructed Alvarado “not [to] do any big search over there” in pursuit of the assailant. “Let’s stay with the victim and see if we can identify [the suspect] that way.” Rather than doing as he was ordered, Alvarado bundled the “victim” — who was probably more terrified of the armed functionary than of his obnoxious classmate — into the patrol car and went in pursuit of Lopez. Lopez vaulted a nearby fence and hid in a backyard shed containing Christmas decorations. The homeowner saw the intrusion, and a neighbor flagged down Alvarado’s patrol car. The officer drew his gun “when he came up the driveway,” recalled the homeowner. Within a minute or so, a single gunshot resonated through the neighborhood. When asked by the horrified homeowner what had happened, Alvarado — who reportedly looked “dazed or distant” — replied that Lopez “came at me.” “The suspect bull rushed his way out of the shed and lunged right at me,” the timorous creature later claimed in an official report. “The suspect was literally inches away from me, and I feared for my own safety.”(Emphasis added.) Alvarado was lying, of course. An autopsy revealed “no evidence of close range firing [on] the wound,” and no gunpowder stains were found on the victim’s bloody t-shirt. By this time, the boy who had taken the punch at the bus stop had called his mother via cell phone. She arrived shortly after Alvarado had gunned down Lopez. “At one point, the mother told a witness, `He shot him? Why did he shoot him? He didn’t have to shoot him,” reports the San Antonio News-Express. Alvarado, who four times was on the cusp of being fired for insubordination, disobeyed a direct order on November 12. He falsified key details of the shooting in his official report. A 14-year-old boy was gunned down execution-style for the venial offense of engaging in an adolescent scuffle, and for compelling an overweight middle-aged badge-polisher to run a few hundred yards. According to the San Antonio Police Department, this is all perfectly acceptable: The department ruled that the murder of Derek Lopez was a “justified” shooting. Although he’s been removed from patrol duty, Alvarado remains on the force, albeit in a tax-subsidized sinecure. Although he had repeatedly been threatened with termination for sloppiness or defiance in carrying out administrative duties, Alvarado faces neither criminal prosecution nor professional censure for murdering a 14-year-old boy. Apparently, insubordination in carrying out office functions is a much graver matter than insubordination that results in the needless death of an adolescent Mundane. Despite the fact that this incident involved two teenage boys who attended a special school for troubled juveniles, parents should understand that students in practically any government-run “educational” institution can fall prey to sudden — and potentially lethal — police violence. “Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that increasingly have come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning,” observes investigative reporter Annette Fuentes in her infuriating and valuable new book Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse. Federally subsidized “zero tolerance” policies growing out of the “War on Drugs” have created what Fuentes and other critics of the system call the “school-to-prison pipeline”: “If yesterday’s prank got a slap on the wrist, today those wrists could be slapped with handcuffs.” As the case of Derek Lopez illustrates, a childish prank could be treated as a capital offense, with summary execution carried out by a corrupt cop who doesn’t have to endure so much as a slap on the wrist.
Re: Copwatch : These Streets Are Watching Just leaked footage of Mr Guerenas actual murder in Tucson! [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP0f00_JMak&feature=player_embedded[/video]
2 New York cops rape a drunk woman and are acquitted Kenneth Moreno, Franklin Mata Acquitted: NYPD Cops Acquitted Of Rape, Charged With Misconduct (UPDATE) NEW YORK -- Two New York City police officers were acquitted Thursday of raping a drunken woman they'd been called to help, but were convicted of official misconduct. Officers Franklin Mata and Kenneth Moreno look stunned, but remained stolid after hearing the verdict. UPDATE: The Daily News is reporting that the NYPD has fired officers Moreno and Mata after being charged with official misconduct. "The guilty verdict reached today involved a violation of the officer's oath of office and merits immediate termination," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. ORIGINAL POST: They were called to help a drunken woman get out of a taxi in 2008. The woman testified that she passed out and awoke to being raped in her apartment. Moreno told jurors he lay alongside her in her bed for a while, but they didn't have sex. Mata was accused of acting as a lookout. He said he was napping in the living room while the others were in the bedroom. During the trial, prosecutors told a stunning story of police misconduct and a perverse abuse of power. The officers acknowledged a number of missteps - including Moreno making a bogus 911 call - but said they weren't crimes and the rape allegation was a product of the woman's muddled memory. Mata, 29, and Moreno, 43, have been suspended until a police department review after their trial. The woman, a fashion product developer who's now 29, had gotten very drunk while out with friends celebrating her impending promotion and move to California. A cab driver called police for help getting her out of his taxi around 1 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2008. The officers didn't tell dispatchers where they were as they repeatedly returned to her apartment - to check on her at her request, they said. Indeed, Moreno, a police officer for 17 years, admitted he invented an excuse for one of the visits by calling 911 with a phony report of a homeless man sleeping in a nearby building's lobby. Her blood-alcohol level was three or more times the legal limit for driving, and she acknowledged during days of testimony that her memory of the night was spotty. But she said she acutely remembered the rape, and other vivid snippets - police radio chatter, flashlights, the same man's voice urging her to drink water in her bathroom and later asking her if she wanted him to stay in her bedroom - made her certain that her attacker was an officer. "I couldn't believe that two officers who had been called to help me had, instead, raped me," said the woman, who has sued the city seeking $57 million over the incident. After consulting prosecutors, she secretly recorded a conversation with Moreno a few days later. He alternately denied they had sex and seemed to admit it, particularly by saying twice that he'd used a condom when she asked him: Woman: Did you use a condom? Moreno: Ma'am -- Woman: I'm sorry but I'm completely freaked out -- Moreno: Ok. Woman: -- about getting pregnant or anything. Moreno: Ok ma'am, you're not going to get pregnant because nothing happ...yes Ma'am I used a condom. You don't have to worry bout being pregnant. You don't have to worry about getting any diseases. Ok? Alright. Alright. Moreno told jurors he was just "telling her what she wanted to hear" because she had suggested she'd go into the stationhouse where he worked and make a scene. No DNA evidence was collected in the case, and experts debated whether an internal mark found during an examination of the woman could be interpreted as a sign of rape. Moreno said he was only trying to console and counsel the woman about drinking during his series of visits, as he shared his own struggle with alcoholism some years before, killed a cockroach in her bathroom, made plans to have breakfast with her and sang to her a verse of Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." On the last visit, Moreno said, he suddenly found himself fending off drunken advances from the woman. "I told her, `There's another time for this. Not tonight.' ... I kind of had her by the shoulders, and I said, `We're not doing this,'" he told jurors. But, he said, he wound up in her bed after she fell and got stuck between her bed and a wall and needed to be freed. He said he stayed there with his arms around her for a time, out of sympathy, but kept his uniform on and didn't have sex with her. Mata, a police officer for about five years, acknowledged during his testimony that he couldn't be sure what had happened between the two while he was snoozing on the woman's sofa. But he said he didn't believe Moreno had raped the woman because "Ken wouldn't do something like that." He was charged with rape under state legal principles that hold an alleged accessory as responsible for a crime as the main defendant.
Cop To Citizen: "If You Take My Picture Again, I'm Going To Fucking Break Your Face" A police officer from the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority in Buffalo walked up to a citizen who was filming him and threatened to "fucking break" his face. The cop said he was speaking "not as a police officer, but as a person." The only problem is, the sonofabitch was in full uniform with a police dog in tow. The incident took place Thursday in the Square in downtown Buffalo after a fight had broken out. No further details are available at this point. But the video speaks for itself. [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHPeWkU9a8&feature=player_embedded[/video]
Like with the Anonymous thread there really is no need to start multiple threads about police abuse of power...lets keep them all under this Copwatch thread then they are easy to find and reference...
Montreal police open fire and kill an homeless man On Tuesday, June 7th, the SPVM opened fire on a man rooting through the trash during a busy rush hour, and ended up killing the man and a bystander. In the past five months, Montreal area police have shot on seven people, causing serious injury or death in all cases. As is often the case, the police keep a tight seal on information about these shootings, refusing to disclose more than summary details about the situation. Police violence is not an accident- it's business as usual. Since 1987, the SPVM has killed 47 people, and the police continue to beat, arrest, injure, and harass people every day. Stories of police brutality and impunity are everywhere, and not because of a few bad apples. We've seen time and time again that they do not make our lives or our streets any safer. The police are paid and trained to be brutal in their protection of property, the rich, and business-as-usual of capital and profit at any expense. The problem is not that some cops kill people. The problem is the police, and that’s why we fight to push them further and further out of our lives. Yesterday's shootings cannot be separated from the larger context of increasing austerity measures and strengthening social control, of new prisons, tougher laws, and ballooning surveillance technologies. The spreading of repressive measures and the intensifying of social control demand our response.Time and time again, the police and the state have shown us that they will only take us seriously when we bring our anger to the streets, just as people showed their rage after the killing of Fredy Villanueva in Montreal North in 2008. These are perhaps the more acute examples of reactions to the police and the world they defend, but it doesn’t-- and shouldn’t-- take a police killing for people to retaliate. Until there are no police patrolling the streets, arresting our loved ones, and hassling us at every turn, we will fight the police, their cages, and the world of domination they seek to protect. We don’t forget, we don’t forgive.
Police repression/brutality is a very different subject than Copwatch i'm not really confortable with the idea of merging everything together, especially when this is a "news" topic i think the information will be lost and have less visibility if we put it in another topic... maybe we should create a new forum called "news" and post every political news into it ?? it was already planned since at least 1 year to have a "news" section but i never had the time to work on it... maybe we should start with 1 forum just for news, and post a new topic for all new release ? it's just my opinion, maybe we should ask other members if they prefer to have a lot of different topics, or put it all together inside only 1 topic
Well all of it relates to police misconduct/abuse..we could separate the posts from Copwatch and just call it "Police Brutality" or something like that, if we put all of these stories together it creates a very strong database of brutality, misconduct, and murder by the State that can always be referenced in one place....if you scatter the stories and create a new thread every time they will be lost in the thousands of threads...look back over these three pages and you'll see that there are multiple resources as well as stories of police behaving like State mafia and the more we add to it the bigger case we have to act against them for newbies....just my thoughts.
Police Tapes Reveal Name of Officer Who Shot Charles Hill Lawyer calls BART policeman and his partner "excellent officers with unblemished records" By Zusha Elinson on July 25, 2011 - 4:20 p.m. PDT The BART police officer who shot and killed Charles Hill is James A. Crowell, who has been on the force for 18 months, according to police recordings and a person familiar with the investigation into the shooting. Myron Lee, a six-year veteran, was the other BART police officer on the scene when Crowell shot Hill after a 25-second confrontation on the Civic Center platform, according to those same sources. Both officers are back at work after taking three days of administrative leave, BART spokesman Linton Johnson. BART police have refused to identify the two officers involved in the July 3 shooting, citing the ongoing investigations. BART placed a black bar over Crowell's eyes in the surveillance video of the incident it released last week. In recordings of police calls released to The Bay Citizen Friday, fellow BART police personnel show great concern for the two officers, who are named repeatedly, in the moments after the incident. In one call, a BART police employee asks who Crowell is. “He’s one of the newbies,” the dispatcher responds. “Holy shit,” the man says. Much is still unclear about what led Crowell to shoot Hill, a homeless man known for drinking and yelling. The surveillance video shows Crowell getting off the train, putting on gloves and, suddenly, backing up, drawing his gun and firing three times. Related None Officer Who Shot Charles Hill Was A ‘Newbie,’ Police Tapes Reveal Video BART Officer Killed Man 25 Seconds after Arriving on Scene None Ammiano Calls For Hearing on BART Police Hill cannot be seen in the video, but BART police Chief Kenton Rainey said Thursday that Hill suddenly raised a knife with a 4-inch blade over his head in a threatening manner and didn’t drop the weapon when ordered to do so by the young officer. Rainey would not say how far Hill was from Crowell at the time of the shooting. A witness told The Bay Citizen earlier this month that Hill was “definitely” not “running or lunging” at the officers when he was shot. Lee is only seen in the beginning of the video. According to Rainey, Lee suffered a minor cut on his arm from a liquor bottle that Hill tossed at the officers. It is unclear what Lee was doing when Crowell fired the shots. Harry Stern, a lawyer for both officers, said they acted correctly. “They’re both excellent officers with unblemished records,” said Stern. “They responded to a really standard call, which immediately went sidewise, and they reacted in keeping their training and applicable standards.” Stern said that both of his clients voluntarily submitted to interviews with BART internal affairs and the San Francisco Police Department, which is investigating the shooting as well. Rainey has consistently backed his officers and the actions they took, saying “the notion that you have to be stabbed, beaten or shot before defending yourself is false.” According to BART police, Hill was armed with two knives. Rainey said Thursday that the officer who shot Hill was the one in danger, not the other officer or any member of the public. Rainey said that neither of the officers had been involved in a shooting incident before. Deputy Chief Daniel Hartwig called both of them “productive” police officers. According to the Bay Area Newspaper Group’s Public Employee Salary database, Lee has a pay and benefits package worth $164,518 and a base salary of $85,428. Crowell’s total pay and benefits package is worth $80,945. His base salary is $42,477, an entry-level salary at the BART police department. Johnson would not confirm or deny the names of the officers, saying, "In an investigation where there's a potential personnel issue, we don't release the names. Once we do the investigation and we are satisfied there is no personnel issue, then we release the names." http://www.baycitizen.org/bart-police-s ... -who-shot/
Seattle Anarchists Attacked by Fascist Pigs http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/2011 ... ation.html http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/2011 ... ation.html The next day there was a noise demo outside of the jail. http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/2011 ... ation.html
Seattle Anarchists Attacked by Fascist Pigs A housewarming party was broken up by the SPD people were attacked with shovels and other weapons. Seven were arrested on assault charges, the next day there was a noise demo and 16 more were arrested and held without charges... http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/825 http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/813 http://www.indybay.org/police/
Police Beat Homeless Man To Death! On July 5 ,Six police officers used extreme force to beat homeless man Kelly Thomas, for suspected robbery in Downtown Fullerton. Thomas Kelly was a homeless man by choice, and was diagnosed schizophrenic at age 20. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/2 ... 11419.html Article http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2011/wa ... ng-victim/ Pictures of Kelly Thomas after the beating (Warning:Graphic) Email the City Council and demand justice NOW! Council@ci.fullerton.ca.us
The Police use brutality everyday. They just get away with it because they are the police. Most cops who commit police brutality get away with it because they are the law.
Fullerton Cop Allegedly Bragged About Brutally Beating Homeless Man Kelly Thomas Mike Riggs | August 2, 2011 The savage police beating of schizophrenic homeless man Kelly Thomas gets more bizarre and upsetting by the day. On Friday an anonymous man claiming to be a police officer called the John and Ken Show on KFI AM to express his and other cops' anger at what happened to Thomas. The caller claimed that a street camera controlled by a police dispatcher showed one cop beating Thomas with the butt of his Taser until blood splattered on his arms, and then dropping his knee on Thomas's face and neck. That same caller called the show again yesterday, this time disguising his voice. According to Carlos Miller, the caller alleged: ...that it was [a] one-eyed officer doing the beating....He said the quality of the surveillance camera is so good that it could pinpoint the freckles on a person’s chest once it is zoomed in. He said the district attorney’s office is choosing to not release the video. He also said most of the officers know the identities of the officers involved and many are not happy with what took place. He said they were turned off by how the one-eyed officer bragged about the beating and many officers have not been happy with his “heavy-handed tactics” from before the incident. Five of the six officers who took place in the beating remain on active duty. The sixth is on some type of medical leave. The one-eyed officer has been transferred to the undercover gang unit, the caller said. Friends for Fullerton's Future has identified the one-eyed cop as Jay Cicinelli, who was discharged from the LAPD after a suspect shot him in the eye in 1996, blinding him. Cicinelli was 26 and fresh out of police academy. According to the LA Times trial dispatch from 1998, a letter from Cicinelli's mother was read aloud at the sentencing of Cicinelli's shooter, who received life in prison for attempted murder. Here's what she said: "Mr. Jimenez, you have taken Jay's eye, his face is disfigured, you have damaged his arms, his legs and his stomach, his job is gone and his dream of being a police officer is gone." If Cicinelli was involved in Thomas' death, and gets convicted for that involvement, I'm guessing Thomas' parents--one of whom is a former police officer--will be reading a similar letter. http://reason.com/blog/2011/08/02/fulle ... dly-bragge [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYJi3lgXLBU&feature=player_embedded#at=160[/video]
On July 10, 2011 Kelly Thomas died in the UC Irvine Medical Center. Kelly Thomas was in pain, and was not going to make it so his parents removed him from his life support. This may have been the most violent cop killing I have ever seen.
My aunt knew Kelly Thomas and is really upset and heartbroken over his death. Fuck this 'involuntary administrative leave' that those sons of bitches got. Let me and five of my buddies take some clubs and tasers to those filthy pigs' domes. Because that would be real justice. Fuck The Police.
