Month: May 2015

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LAPD kills unarmed #BrendonGlenn at Venice Beach

Los Angeles (CNN)The fatal shooting of an unarmed man this week by Los Angeles police is drawing controversy after the police chief quickly questioned whether the killing was justified.

“Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that, and I have not seen those extraordinary circumstances at this point,” Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday.

Beck made that remark after viewing a videotape of the incident, which occurred Tuesday night near Venice Beach. Police aren’t releasing the video, Beck said.

The victim was identified as Brendon K. Glenn, 29, and an autopsy is pending, said Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office.

Source: www.cnn.com

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San Francisco D.A. George Gascón Expands Racial Bias Inquiry Into SF Police Department

First came disclosures of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by officers of San Francisco’s Police Department. That was followed by the discovery that sheriff’s deputies had been gambling on forced fighting matches between inmates at a city jail.

Then on Thursday, the San Francisco district attorneyGeorge Gascón announced that he was expanding the investigation of the city’s police and sheriff’s departments to examine whether those agencies have a deep-seated culture of systemic bias that has led to unlawful arrests or prosecutions.

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Source: goodblacknews.org

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Witness to Michael Brown shooting sues Ferguson and Darren Wilson

A witness to a police officer’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was wrongly stopped and fired on during the encounter on a city street.

The lawsuit, filed last week by Dorian Johnson, claims that the officer, Darren Wilson, fired at him and Brown as they ran away from him on Aug. 9. The lawsuit claims Wilson targeted him without probable cause.

“Officer Wilson acted with either deliberate indifference and/or reckless disregard toward” Johnson, the lawsuit says.

The suit also cited many of the Departmet of Justice findings, arguing that the city and former Police Chief Thomas Jackson “facilitated, encouraged and/or instigated” biased police behavior, including the “excessive force” used against Brown and Johnson.

 

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Source: www.msnbc.com