Police
Police body camera shows officer assaulting pregnant woman
Body camera footage shows a police officer harass, humiliate and assault pregnant mother following an altercation with a driver at her daughter’s school
Body camera footage shows Barstow, CA police officer harass, humiliate and assault a Black pregnant woman and mother Charlena Michelle Cooks following an altercation with a driver at her daughter’s school.
Officer Assaults Pregnant Woman
The ACLU alleges the arrest was wrongful and the wrestling to the ground of an eight months pregnant black woman after she got into an argument with a white woman outside a school in Barstow, California.
“I’d say it’s pretty horrifying because the parent is dropping off her second-grade daughter (and) got into altercation with another parent,” Jessica Price, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said of the video, posted online by the group. The women were upset with each over a driving dispute.
“A lot of people are going to look at this and going to say there is some level of racial profiling and bias going on here,” Price said.
CNN reports, the city of Barstow, however, said police acted properly in the January arrest of Charlena Michelle Cooks of Barstow, though a charge of resisting arrest against her was dropped.
“It is apparent that Ms. Cook actively resisted arrest,” the city statement said.
An investigation into the incident started on Tuesday after the ACLU posted the video online and issued a news release about the incident.
In an interview with CNN, Cooks, 29, said the officers treated her “like an animal, like a monster, like I didn’t exist, like I was not human.”
The video shows separate statements by the two women to police, and each accused the other of being threatening in a dispute about how each was driving in a parking lot. The women provide dramatically different accounts to the police officer.
“I felt like he took her word over mine automatically,” she said. “He automatically assumed I was guilty.
“I’m really scared,” Cooks added, crying. “I’m trying to move out of Barstow now, like tomorrow.
“I was in unbelievable pain,” said Cooks, who moved to Barstow in July. “I felt they killed my baby already.
I work so hard to provide for my family. This is not an issue I wanted. I was just dropping my child off at school for the day,” said Cooks, a retail clerk.
Cook was dropping her daughter off at the time.
Cooks’ pregnancy resulted in the birth on March 30 of a full-term girl, Olive, two months after the police incident. The baby is healthy, the mom said.
Cooks’ attorney, Caree Harper, described the video as “another outrageous beating of yet another undeserving citizen in this country.”
“It’s clear that the treatment of the blond complaining female was different than the treatment of my client,” Harper said.
“Constitutionally speaking, she’s done nothing wrong,” Harper said.
Cook was initially charged with resisting arrest but the charge was later dropped.
The ACLU posted the video in connection with a news release about the settlement with Barstow and its Police Department in the case involving the arrest of two brothers.
“We feel it’s a very important teaching tool on what not to do on the police officer’s part,” Price, a representative of the ACLU said.
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Police
Family of Black girls handcuffed by Colorado police, held at gunpoint reach $1.9 million settlement
The family of four Black girls who were wrongfully detained and held at gunpoint by Aurora, CO police have reached a settlement with the city.
Family of Black girls held at gunpoint reach settlement
Finalized on Monday, the families will collectively receive $1.9 million.
The settlement marks the latest payout the City of Aurora has been forced to make over officers’ excessive use of force.
In 2021, the city paid a $15 million settlement to Elijah McClain’s family, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine.
The incident
In August 2020, four Black girls, ages 6, 12, 14 and 17, were held face down on the ground and put in handcuffs in a nail salon parking lot, crying and screaming, as officers towered over them.
Brittney Gilliam, the mother of the 6-year-old, was driving that Sunday morning with her relatives, because they were going to get their nails done together.
Wrongfully detained
But before they made it in the salon, Gilliam was detained after officers mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen S.U.V.
Police had mistakenly believed Gilliam was driving a stolen car.
And a simple second step police failed to take, resulted in the family being wrongfully detained.
Officers didn’t type in the plate number in a second database to show them the make of the vehicle. If they had, authorities said, the officers would have realized that the plate number was registered to a motorcycle in Montana.
Black girls and mother held at gunpoint traumatized
Dozens of bystanders watched the ordeal unfold, and video footage of the incident went viral, sparking protests over racial injustice, citing excessive force on Black Americans.
After the video went viral, Aurora police had apologized for their grave mistake, but the emotional trauma had already happened.
The Aurora Police Department said its officers are trained to draw their weapons before telling passengers to exit the vehicle and ordering them to lie on the ground, The Post reported.
Officers who held Black girls at gunpoint
One of the two officers who drew their guns and handcuffed members of the family was initially suspended.
However, he and the other officer that pulled his firearm remain on the police force, the New York Times reports.
To date, no officers were fired or charged in connection with the incident.
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Police
2023 saw a record year of killings by police in U.S.
The number of people killed by police in the United States reached a new high in 2023, according to new research.
The number of people killed by police in the United States reached a new high in 2023, according to new research.
2023 police killings increased dramatically
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, dockets deaths at the hands of police officers. Last year, it recorded the highest number of killings since its national tracking began in 2013.
Statistics explained
The data reported that police officers killed 1,329 people in 2023, representing nearly a 19-percent increase over the 11-year span.
Nearly 90% of those killed were fatally shot, according to Abdul Nasser Rad, managing director of research and data at Campaign Zero, who runs Mapping Police Violence.
There were only 14 days without a police killing last year and on average, law enforcement officers killed someone every 6.6 hours, according to the report.
Meanwhile last year, the number of people killed by gunfire and officers killed in the line of duty declined, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There was an increase in the number of police officers shot.
The newly released data suggests a grim reality and a systemic crisis, with an average of about three people killed by officers each day, with slight increases in recent years. In 2022, 1,250 were killed by police.
The data also reported that Black people were about 2.8 times more likely to be killed by officers than their white counterparts between 2013 and 2023.
Recording police misconduct
For decades, many Americans have suffered various forms of brutality and injustice at the hands of “bad” law enforcement officers.
When a civilian puts in a complaint against the officer only a small percent of complaints result in the officer being disciplined —partly because the accusations are hidden.
Half of the battle is knowing who the “bad” law enforcement are and proper action being taken.
Missin Peace, a national police misconduct database that collects formal civilian complaints against law enforcement, helps fill that void.
In 2022, we had a conversation with the creators, who urged those who filed a complaint against an officer, to upload it on their website as well.
While there is still much work to do, it’s a start.
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Police
14-year-old boy with autism tased by police in what family says was case of mistaken identity
An Illinois family is demanding answers after their 14-year-old autistic son was tased by police in what they maintain was a case of mistaken identity.
An Illinois family is demanding answers after their 14-year-old autistic son was tased by police in what they maintain was a case of mistaken identity.
14-year-old autistic boy tased by police
In an interview with WLS Chicago, the family says that the teen, Avarius Thompson, suffered injuries, including a fractured hip, during an encounter with Dolton police on the morning of Nov.
Police’s incident report
According to the Dolton Police Department’s incident report, Dolton police were assisting police in the nearby neighborhood of Riverdale in the search for four Black males who had fled from a crashed, stolen vehicle, two of whom were allegedly carrying rifles and a handgun.
Dolton officers spotted two subjects, one of whom matched the description of a suspect sought in the incident, in a nearby backyard and pursued them, according to the incident report.
An officer pursuing Avarius ordered the teen to stop before tasing him, according to the incident report.
The incident was captured on the officer’s body-camera footage.
“Hands up! Hands up!” a Dolton police officer can be heard yelling in the body-camera footage as he runs toward Avarius with his Taser extended. After the teen jumps over a fence, the officer deploys the taser, the footage shows.
Avarius attempts to get up when the officer deploys his Taser again a few seconds later, the footage shows.
“Don’t move. Don’t move,” the officer says. “You move, you’re going to get some more.”
Avarius’ father, Eric Thompson, told WLS that the footage was “frightening.”
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Unheard Voices Magazine LLC is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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