Dallas Police Rule Change Gives Officers 72 Hours To Get Their Stories Straight After Shooting Citizens

from the "Accountability-is-for-bullet-riddled-civilians dept"
Techdirt

The Dallas Police Department can't seem to get its officers' statements on shootings to agree with recordings of the incidents. So, it's doing what any forward thinking law enforcement agency would do -- changing the rules.

Any Dallas officer involved in a police shooting — whether the officer fired a weapon or witnessed the gunfire — will now have the right to remain silent for 72 hours under a new department policy.

And even before they give a statement about the shooting, the officers can watch any available video before they give a statement.

Very convenient. This policy change, which was ushered in under the cover of the Thanksgiving holiday, will help ensure that DPD officers don't find their statements directly contradicted by the inconveniently unblinking eye of the camera, as happened just recently.

On October 14th, Dallas police officer Cardan Spencer shot a mentally ill man four times in the stomach. According to Spencer's partner, Christopher Watson (who wrote the report), the man (Bobby Gerald Bennett) moved "in a threatening manner" towards him and the other officer. Watson's statement even went so far as to say Bennett "lunged" at them. A statement released by the DPD a few hours after the shooting claimed the situation "escalated."

A surveillance camera caught the entire confrontation on tape. Less than 20 seconds pass before Spencer opens fire. See if you can catch a glimpse of the "lunge" or the "escalation."

Bennett never lunges. He doesn't do anything more threatening than stand up from the chair he was sitting in. Four bullets later, Bennett is on the ground. Somehow, being shot four times by a DPD officer is "aggravated assault," a charge the DPD pressed (it was later dropped) while Bennett was still in critical condition.

As a result of this, Spencer was fired and Watson suspended for making false statements. But this was only after Bennett's mother took the video to the media. Before she did this, DPD Chief David Brown watched the video and claimed his own officer's statement trumped his lying eyes.

"The unfortunate thing here is that Officer Watson's statement really overrode what the video showed," Brown said. "We had not at that point determined if the video captured the entire incident, or if the video had not been altered in any way. We put a lot of credibility on officer's statements until we have other evidence to prove otherwise."

Not so much anymore. Former DPD officer Cardan Spencer may be facing assault charges for shooting Bennett. Perhaps the saddest aspect of this whole debacle is the fact that Bennett's mother called the police because she was afraid her son (who has mental issues and was off his medication) might hurt himself.

As this has caused the DPD considerable embarrassment (not the least of which is the chief claiming a recording of the shooting is less trustworthy than statements given by an officer later suspended for making false statements), the only solution was (apparently) to buy time for officers to fix their narratives should inconvenient recordings surface.

Supposedly, this 72-hour waiting period is better for memory. Chief Brown refers to research by Alexis Artwohl which indicates recall of traumatic events increases over time. Immediate statements may be less accurate. That may be, but this report has been available since 2002 and there hasn't been a large shift in policies regarding police shootings across the nation. This looks like nothing more than someone finding the justification they need to install an insular policy that will allow bad cops to be even worse. This gives shelter to liars by allowing them to craft a plausible narrative that can't be undone by a single surveillance video.

This also doesn't explain why police insist on questioning suspects and eyewitnesses immediately after a criminal incident. But Artwohl has an explanation.

Artwohl, the memory expert, said officers treat civilian witnesses differently because officers won’t always be able to find the person again. That usually isn’t true of officers, she said.

Unsurprisingly, attorneys for the Dallas Police Association "applauded" Chief Brown's application of an additional layer of paint to the thin blue line. Anything that makes it easier to defend cops who are threatened by people standing motionless is a win for the PD's lawyers.

Defense attorney Mark Bennett flips the scenario to show just how outrageous this policy would be if it was applied to anyone else.

As a result of this incident, the Dallas Police Department changed its policy regarding gang-related shootings. Instead of pressing gang members for statements immediately after shootings, police officers will advise them that they have seventy-two hours to get together and make up a story, and will provide them, during that time, with any video the police can find, so that they can conform their stories to the video.

It makes no sense, does it, that police policy should not just permit but encourage members of a criminal street gang who witness a gang-related shooting to take three days to talk to each other and their lawyers and review the facts that are beyond dispute before making a statement?

It makes sense only if the police want the perpetrators of such shootings to walk free. The idea would be farcical if the criminal street gang were anything other than the police.

It's a farce, alright. The DPD has just ensured no one will trust the narratives constructed by its officers. And every citizen who's been paying attention will know to hang onto their recordings for at least 72 hours, rather than see it twisted into "evidence" that keeps bad cops employed.

Westboro Baptist Church Protesters Blocked At Fallen Soldier's Funeral; plan to Picket Memorial for Shooting victims in CO

(I try not to hate because it's wasted energy, but hate is what fuels these Westboro Baptist Church morons. They are the scum of the earth. Protesting the funerals of fallen soldiers. And now, we know how to drive them off. Cowards will always turn tail. --jef)

 ++++++

The Huffington Post  |  By Mollie Reilly Posted: 07/22/2012

A planned protest by the Westboro Baptist Church was overshadowed Saturday when thousands of supporters gathered at the funeral of a fallen soldier to block the radical church's effort.

Thousands of people in red shirts formed a "human wall" around the Columbia, Mo. church where 21-year-old Army Specialist Sterling Wyatt's funeral was held. Wyatt was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month.

Westboro Baptist Church, an independent Kansas-based church known for its extreme ideology and widely condemned demonstrations, had indicated plans to picket the funeral. When Tori Smith, an acquaintance of Wyatt's, got wind of the protest plans, she decided to organize a small group of supporters to counteract the church's negative actions. Word of Smith's plans spread quickly, drawing thousands to the church on Saturday morning.

According to KBIA, the "red wall" was highly effective in fending off the small group from Westboro, who reportedly left the church area early in the afternoon.

The Columbia Daily Tribune relayed details on the outpouring of support:

Several times, Wyatt's parents, Randy and Sherry, and brother Chandler, came out of the church before the 1 p.m. service to greet and hug attendees. 

"Thank you so much," Sherry Wyatt said on one occasion, holding a bouquet of red roses.

"The outpouring of love has been overwhelming," said Judy Baker, a close family friend. "It's so great to live in a community that is willing to honor the fallen. … This is what Americans are made of, and to see it on display is an experience I'll never forget."

Baker said her son summed it up when he said Columbia typically feels like a small city, "but today it feels like a town with everybody coming together," she said.

Westboro Baptist Church frequently pickets military funerals around the country, based on the group's belief that deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment for the United States' tolerance of homosexuality. Last year, the group announced plans to "quadruple" their protest efforts following a Supreme Court decision that ruled such demonstrations are protected by the First Amendment.

Earlier this month, a counter-demonstration similar to the one at Wyatt's funeral proved equally effective. Students at Texas A&M University dressed in maroon t-shirts and formed a circle the funeral service for a fallen soldier. Westboro protesters never arrived at the event, according to reports.

+++++

(I hope the Westboro fuckers get the same treat ment for this sickening plan of theirs too.--jef)

Westboro Baptist Church Threatens To 'Super Picket' Aurora Prayer Vigil For Batman Shooting Victims 
 The Huffington Post  |  By Laura Hibbard Posted: 07/22/2012 

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church appear to be on their way to protest a prayer vigil for victims of the Aurora massacre, according to tweets from members posted by Examiner.com.
Using the hashtag #ThankGodForTheShooter, Examiner.com reports members tweeted out their plans to "super picket" the candle lit prayer service, saying "God is at work in Colorado."

Fred Phelps Jr @WBCFredJr

Hi ho Hi ho, to Colorado we go! #godsenttheshooter! #americaisdoomed! #godisyourenemy! #godkillingyoursoldiers! examiner.com/article/westbo…

Almost immediately, members of the community launched a campaign on Reddit and Facebook to form a "wall of love" around the memorial service to block the group from getting close.

Church member Fred Phelps Jr. said these efforts would be in vain:

@WBCFredJr WBC in Colorado to conquer yet another "wall", just like yesterday in Columbia. #andthewallcametumblingdown! http://t.co/NeTmqnfg

Earlier this morning, the Denver Comic Con released a statement on their Facebook page urging patrons of the convention to assist in forming a human barrier in front of the service.
“If you volunteered for Denver Comic Con 2012, or any other Con, and are planning to attend tonight's vigil, please consider wearing your volunteer t-shirt. I'm asking my DCC volunteers to be prepared to help form the barrier, should Westsboro show up."

(And as it was described in the previous article, the Westboro liars conquered no walls. They scurried away like the cowardly roaches they are . and lied to themselves like they do about their ridiculous opinions of god. If there's a hell, it has a special place for people like these.--jef)

Norway Mourns 92 Victims After 'Hell on Paradise Island'

(I have 4 friends who live in Oslo--all of whom are safe, thankfully. But I freaked whenI heard about this. I don't know what the families of those people must endure, it has to be just awful.--jef)

Friday, July 22, 2011 by Agence France-Presse
by Pierre-Henry Deshayes and Charles Onians

OSLO, Norway --  Police said they were questioning a man on Saturday over the massacre of 92 people in a killing spree that Norway's prime minister said had turned an island paradise into hell on earth.

As harrowing testimony emerged from the summer camp where scores of youngsters were mown down, Norway was struggling to understand how a country famed as a beacon of peace could experience such bloodshed on its soil.

"Never since the Second World War has our country been hit by a crime on this scale," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told journalists as police searched for more bodies on the idyllic Utoeya island.

"Many of those who have died were friends. I know their parents and it happened at a place where I spent a long time as a young person... It was a paradise of my youth that has now been turned into hell."

The latest death toll from the island massacre stood at 85 and seven people also died in an earlier explosion which ripped through government buildings in Oslo. Police confirmed on Saturday that the blast was the result of a car bomb.

However the toll could still rise as police said four or five people were still missing from the island. A mini-submarine was deployed to aid the search operation, along with Red Cross scuba divers.

While there was no official confirmation of the suspect's identity, he was widely named by the local media as Anders Behring Breivik.

National police commissioner Sveinung Sponheim said said that investigators were still trying to establish if a second shooter was present on the island, as suggested by certain witness accounts.

The blond-haired Behring Breivik described himself on his Facebook page as "conservative", "Christian", and interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, the reports said.

On his Twitter account, he posted only one message, dated July 17, in English based on a quote from British philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to a force of 100,000 who have only interests."

He is an "ethnic" Norwegian and a "Christian fundamentalist," police spokesman Roger Andersen said, adding that his political opinions leaned "to the right".

The head of the populist right-wing Progress Party (FrP) confirmed Behring Breivik had been a party member between 1999 and 2006 and for several years a leader in its youth movement.

"Those who knew the suspect when he was a member of the party say that he seemed like a modest person that seldom engaged himself in the political discussions," Siv Jensen said in a statement on the party's website.

Anti-fascist monitors meanwhile said Behring Breivik was also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi Internet forum named Nordisk, which hosts discussions ranging from white power music to political strategies to crush democracy.

The attacks on Friday afternoon were western Europe's deadliest since the 2004 Madrid bombings, carried out by Al-Qaeda.

While there had been initial fears they might have been an act of revenge over Norway's participation in the campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya, the focus shifted when it emerged the suspect was a native Norwegian.

Seven of the victims were killed in the car bomb which seared through landmark buildings including Stoltenberg's office and the finance ministry.

It is thought that the car-bomber then caught a ferry to nearby Utoeya wearing a police sweater.
On arrival, he claimed to be investigating the bomb attack and began opening fire with an automatic weapon. The shooting spree last for an hour-and-a-half.

Witnesses described scenes of horror among the more than 500 people attending the youth camp. Some who tried to swim to safety were even shot in the water.

Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, a 23-year-old who swam to safety, said people had initially thought it was some kind of joke before she and her friends realized their lives were in danger.

"We ran and ran. The worst thing was when we found out the shooter was dressed as a policeman. Who could we trust then? If we called the police, would he be the guy would come to our 'rescue'?," she wrote on her blog.

She and her friend Matti swam towards the mainland as the gunman fired into the water. After a while, a boat picked them up and brought them to safety.

"We are just ordinary young people. We are involved in politics. We want to make the world a better place," she wrote.

Stine Haheim, a Labour party lawmaker who was on the island, said the gunman had carried out his killings methodically.

"He was very calm. He was not running, he was moving slowly and shooting at every person he saw," she said.

Stoltenberg, as he visited some of the survivors, spoke of his own anguish at the massacre on an island to which he was a frequent visitor. He had been due to give a speech on Saturday to the camp, organized by his Labour party.

The prime minister said he had been deeply moved by speaking to youngsters who had told him how they swam to shore under a hail of gunfire, in some cases helping friends who had been shot.

Norwegian police said they feared there could also be explosives on the island. According to a spokeswoman for a farming cooperative, the suspect bought six tonnes of fertilizer -- which can be used to make bombs -- in May.

There was widespread international condemnation with US President Barack Obama saying the attacks were "a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring."

The Norwegian capital is a well-known symbol of international peace efforts and home to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway's Utoya Island (pictured below)

Reefer Madness Forever

Califano Tries to Pin Tucson Shootings on Pot
By FRED GARDNER

"Marijuana's Role in the Tucson Shooting" was the extremely misleading headline on an article by Joe Califano that the Huffington Post ran Jan. 21. Why is that supposedly liberal site disseminating propaganda by a leading Drug Warrior? There is no evidence that marijuana had any "role" in the Tucson shooting. Readers who only glance at the story will assume otherwise.

Califano begins by blowing politic kisses towards Barack Obama and John Boehner. Then he changes tone to sneer at "the thousands of pundits, left and right, arguing about the meaning of the tragedy in Arizona," who missed a lesson "as important as any other lesson to come out of this tragedy. It's about the relationship of marijuana use to psychotic illness."

After another shot at commentators preoccupied with laws that allow automatic weapons and super-size ammo clips, Califano makes his pitch: "I haven't seen press reports or talking heads discuss their concern about how easy it has been for this mentally ill young man to get marijuana. And there has been no mention of the potential of marijuana to spark latent psychosis and exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental illnesses."

Califano cites a study in "the British Medical Journal Lancet [The M and the J should be lower case, since he's referring to a piece in the Lancet. Califano or the staffer who writes his stuff must have vaguely remembered a publication called the British Medical Journal and conflated the two] and two other studies suggesting that using cannabis leads to psychotic breaks. Califano does not allow that these studies are considered inconclusive at best by many psychiatrists, including Lester Grinspoon, whose textbook on Schizophrenia has been the standard text.

Califano quotes reports that Loughner once used marijuana; but he ignores other reports that Loughner quit three years ago and that his drug of choice was Salvia Divinorum. Califano wants the question settled: "If the police have any of the hair shaved from Loughner's head, they can easily find out if marijuana was in his system at the time of the shooting. They may even be able to do so from hair that grows back in."

It seems like an easy test to rig if one were so inclined. And we know Joe Califano of old, he has few qualms about manipulating the facts. The following is from O'Shaughnessy's report on the Prop 215 campaign (the ballot initiative by which California voters legalized the medical use of marijuana on November 4, 1996):

In the final weeks of the campaign some leading drug warriors from Back East -stunned that the people of California were on the verge of rejecting a lifetime of their propaganda-decided to step in. Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, flew out to Los Angeles on Tuesday, Oct. 28 to warn Californians that they did not understand the open-endedness of Prop 215. Califano had hired two pollsters to query 800 residents over the weekend. He must have been very confident of the outcome because arrangements for his press conference were made before the questions had been asked. "It was a push-pull," explains Paul Maslin, a San Francisco pollster. This is a type of survey in which the questioner, after getting an initial response, provides additional information and then asks again, evoking a changed response. Califano announced at his press conference that 46 percent of the respondents supported Prop 215 when first asked, but only 36 percent after its inherent looseness had been pointed out to them. Califano's goal in commissioning the poll, according to Maslin was to make voters think that the "no" side still had a realistic chance on Election Day and to minimize any bandwagon effect that would magnify the "yes" vote.

Flash-forward to the Huffington Post, Jan. 21. Califano concludes: "we should be asking this question: Is Jared Loughner an individual whose psychosis was prompted or exacerbated by the use of marijuana? Whether or not he is, it is important for the press and parents to see this horrendous incident not only as a teaching moment about the easy availability and dangerous potential of automatic weapons, but also as a teaching moment about the easy availability and dangerous potential of marijuana to spark and exacerbate psychosis and schizophrenia in individuals with latent mental illnesses.

"The missing story line in existing news reports and television chatter shows is about the terrible trinity of easy availability of guns, easy availability of marijuana and mental illness. The question for all of us, especially parents of teenagers, to ask is this: Is the media's failure to acknowledge this tragic trinity due to its tendency to overlook or underplay the dangers of marijuana use?

"Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Founder and Chair of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Carter Administration, and served from 1965 to 1969 as chief domestic affairs assistant to president Lyndon B. Johnson."

At which time one of his top aides, a Harvard honors grad and future corporate CEO, used to roll amazingly perfect joints with hospital corners. Califano never thought his aide was impaired at work because he wasn't.

Outgrow CBD Opportunism

It's very tempting for those of us who are talking up the medical potential of Cannabidiol to emphasize the absence of psychoactive effects in such a way as to imply that CBD is the good cannabinoid, as opposed to THC, the bad cannabinoid. That is a shortcut to acceptance that we consider opportunistic at best, unethical at worst. Countless scientists have spent countless millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars trying to establish the harmful effects of high-THC marijuana, and they heaviest they could come up with is bronchial irritation.

To explain what we mean by "CBD opportunism" we quote from an article in the New Scientist by Lady Amanda Neidpath of the Beckley Foundation, a British charitable trust "that promotes the investigation of consciousness and its modulation," and Paul Morrison, a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

It's lack of balance that makes skunk cannabis do harm. The effects of cannabis on mental health have attracted much attention over the years. As far back as the 19th century it was recognised that cannabis could induce a transient psychosis which mimics the symptoms of schizophrenia. Despite this, until the last decade or so, most psychiatrists regarded cannabis as essentially benign.

This is the reverse of the truth. "Most psychiatrists" in the UK and the US are Prozac purshers who have accepted cannabis Prohibition without a peep.

...The type of cannabis taken is an important factor. Street cannabis has indeed changed over the years. So-called "skunk" does contain higher than normal concentrations of the main psychoactive compound, a molecule called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What is less well known is that another constituent, cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content.

CBD has been bred down to trace amounts not just in skunk but in virtually all strains grown for psychoactivity.

The elimination of CBD may play a key role in the development of psychosis. Laboratory studies have shown that pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people.

At what doses? Which studies? This is Reefer Madness 2011.

In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect, at least in animals. Studies in humans, though few in number, have produced similar findings.

The elimination of cannabidiol from skunk may play a key role in the development of psychosis. In one human study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/npp.2009.184), Sagnik Bhattacharya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in London used functional MRI brain scanning to study the effects of THC and CBD on the brains of healthy volunteers. They found that THC and CBD acted in opposition; in brain regions where THC increased neural activity from a baseline, CBD decreased it, and vice-versa.

In a further experiment, a group including one of us (Morrison), in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation, compared the effects of a mixture of synthetic THC and CBD (to mimic traditional cannabis) with THC on its own (to mimic skunk). The aim was to find out if CBD offered protection against the psychotic effects of THC. Healthy volunteers were given the molecules intravenously for two sessions.

Two synthetic molecules don't "mimic traditional cannabis," and people don't shoot cannabis. What does this experiment have to do with the real world? Niedpath and Morrison conclude,

The evidence supports the idea that nature knows best, and that the reintroduction of CBD would be beneficial. Two molecules are better than one.

But the whole plant is better by far.