Police Misconduct

Police Misconduct The Legal Advocacy & Education Commission is made up of lawyers, paralegals and law clerks dedicated to helping first time offenders facing felonies.

We also advocate for and focus on victims of police misconduct and their families.

Los Angeles police have killed two people, including a 14-year-old girl trying on new outfits, after opening fire inside...
05/16/2022

Los Angeles police have killed two people, including a 14-year-old girl trying on new outfits, after opening fire inside a clothing store.
A stray bullet hit the teen as she was in a changing room with her mother trying on dresses for a birthday party.
Police say the shooting came after reports of shots being fired by a man inside the store. The suspect was shot dead, but no gun was found.
The state's Department of Justice is currently investigating the shooting.
The incident took place late on Thursday morning, around 11:45 local time (19:45 GMT), at a Burlington department store in North Hollywood amid a throng of holiday shoppers.
Witnesses and store employees told local media that a man was acting erratically inside the store and smashing display cases.
Teenagers charged after police fatally shoot girl
Police said a 911 caller reported hearing arguing inside the store and suggested shots may have been fired. They also say they received reports of a possible active shooter on the scene.
A fire department official told reporters that officers had arrived to find "an individual who was in the process of assaulting another" on an upper level of the store, prompting them to open fire.
The suspect died almost instantly. A heavy bicycle lock was found near his body, but no gun was recovered.
Officers then found a hole in the nearby wall of a dressing room behind the suspect, and the teenage girl dead inside. On Friday, the LA Country Coroner's Office identified her as Valentina Orellana-Peralta.
She had been trying on dresses for a quinceañera - a coming-of-age tradition that originated in Latin America celebrating a girl's 15th birthday - a police source told the LA Times.
Local media also shows a woman with a bloodied face - who appears to be the assault victim - being taken away from the store in an ambulance.
The man who was shot by police has not yet been publicly named.
On Thursday night, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore promised a "thorough, complete and transparent investigation" into what he called a "chaotic incident".
"I am profoundly sorry for the loss of this young girl's life and I know there are no words that can relieve the unimaginable pain for the family," he said.
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As part of its review, the department is expected to release video of the incident, including from officer-worn body cameras and Burlington security cameras.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said he would conduct an independent investigation and refer his findings to a team of special prosecutors.
A state law passed in July mandates that all fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians be investigated by the state's Department of Justice.
More Info: https://police-misconduct.org/

At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the pa...
05/16/2022

At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade, an investigation by USA TODAY Network found.
More Info: https://police-misconduct.org/

On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shoots and kills Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, ...
05/16/2022

On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shoots and kills Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Protests and riots ensue in Ferguson and soon spread across the country.
There are many different accounts of the incident, including the testimonies of Wilson and of Brown's friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown at the time. Many details differ, but most accounts agree that Wilson saw Brown and Johnson walking in the street, demanded they get on the sidewalk, then stopped his police SUV in front of them in order to confront them. He and Brown had an altercation through the open window of the car, during which Wilson fired twice. Brown and Johnson tried to leave, Wilson exited his car to pursue them, and at some point Brown turned back around to face Wilson, who then fired 12 shots, six of which hit Brown.
Wilson claimed he fired in self-defense as Brown charged him, which Johnson denied. A witness claimed that Wilson warned Brown he would open fire, and that Brown responded with "Don't shoot!" before he was killed, although that was not corroborated by ballistic and DNA evidence and other witness statements.
The community immediately reacted with rage at the news of 18-year-old Brown's death. The shooting ignited long-simmering tensions between the majority-Black population of Ferguson and the local police, who were mostly white. Though public opinion was sharply divided, the protests and riots and the response by Ferguson's heavily militarized police demonstrated the extent to which the relationship between racial minorities in America and the police had frayed.
Read More: https://police-misconduct.org/

The 2020–2021 Minneapolis–Saint Paul racial unrest are a wave of local civil unrest, comprising peaceful demonstrations ...
05/16/2022

The 2020–2021 Minneapolis–Saint Paul racial unrest are a wave of local civil unrest, comprising peaceful demonstrations and riots, against systemic racism towards black Americans, notably in the form of police violence. The Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in U.S. state of Minnesota experienced prolonged unrest in 2020 and 2021 largely as a cultural reckoning on topics of racial injustice. A number of events occurred beginning soon after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. The vast majority of protests over Floyd's murder were characterized as peaceful events, however, Minneapolis–Saint Paul experienced widespread rioting, looting, and property destruction over a three-night period in late May that resulted in $500 million in property damage—the second-most destructive period of unrest in United States history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Local protests sparked a global protest movement about police brutality and racial justice, and had an effect on state and local policies, local economic conditions, and the well-being of residents. Unrest over Floyd's murder continued throughout 2020 and 2021 as protesters sought justice for Floyd and made broader calls to address structural racism in Minnesota and residents reacted to other incidents, with many protest events part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement. While some demonstrations were violent and generated controversy, protesters from varying backgrounds came rallied against what they perceived as the normalization of the killings of innocent black lives. (en)

Former Chicago police officer Jason Van D**e is a free man. Van D**e served less than half of his nearly seven-year pris...
05/16/2022

Former Chicago police officer Jason Van D**e is a free man. Van D**e served less than half of his nearly seven-year prison term for the 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald.
Van D**e is white. McDonald, 17, was black. It is a case that roiled the city, caused widespread protests and sparked court mandated police reforms after a blistering report by the U.S. Department of Justice. Among the reports findings: Chicago Police routinely used excessive force and violated the rights of people of color.
It was Oct. 20, 2014, when a Chicago police responded to reports that a black teenager carrying a knife was breaking into cars. Laquan McDonald had slashed some tires of a truck and was being followed on a southwest side Chicago street by a numbers of police officers waiting for a unit with a Taser.
Jason Van D**e and his partner were among the the last officers to arrive. Van D**e got out of his car, and within seconds, he shot McDonald 16 times — many of the bullets striking McDonald after he lay crumpled on the ground.
Initially, Van D**e had argued McDonald was a threat and he was fearful of being attacked. A graphic video from a police dash cam, released via court order a year later, contradicted that story. It showed McDonald walking away from police, knife in hand.
here are nearly 1,000 fatal police shootings a year. Most are deemed justified and it's rare for police officers to be prosecuted for police related killings. Some high-profile cases, like the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the shooting of Laquan McDonald, are among the exceptions.
In both those cases, video played a crucial role in the officers' convictions. A jury found Jason Van D**e guilty of 2nd degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.
More: https://police-misconduct.org/

According to the Washington Post police shootings database, although African-Americans make up less than 14% of the popu...
05/16/2022

According to the Washington Post police shootings database, although African-Americans make up less than 14% of the population, they accounted for almost 24% of over 6,000 fatal shootings by the police since 2015.
The number of overall fatal shootings has remained relatively steady, with police killing about 1,000 people in the US annually since 2015.
Further research shows the rate that police fatally shoot unarmed black people in the US is more than three times as high as it is for white people.
Studies have shown that black people are more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops by police.
One of the most recent, a 2020 study by Stanford University, analysed 100 million traffic stops by police departments across the US, and found black drivers were about 20% more likely to be stopped than white drivers.
The study also found that once stopped, black drivers were searched up to two times as often as white drivers, although they were statistically less likely to be carrying illegal items.
Read More: https://police-misconduct.org/

Three years and few day after Javier Ambler II died in custody, a grand jury in Austin has indicted deputies who chased ...
05/16/2022

Three years and few day after Javier Ambler II died in custody, a grand jury in Austin has indicted deputies who chased the Black father for a minor traffic violation that ended in a deadly encounter.
Former Williamson County sheriff's Deputies J.J. Johnson and Zach Camden are charged with manslaughter after they chased Ambler, 40, in a 2019 pursuit that started because he failed to dim his headlights, and then used Tasers on him repeatedly while he gasped that he could not breathe and had congestive heart failure. Ambler died minutes later.
"What we know is that Javier Ambler was a father, a brother, a son and a member of our community, a person of color," Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said. "He died after deputies repeatedly Tased him ... after he let them know that he could not breathe and that he was dying."
The indictments mark the latest and most significant turn in the investigation into Ambler's death, which gained national attention and raised questions about the influence of reality TV on American policing. Ambler's family and attorneys believe that a partnership between "Live PD" and the Williamson County sheriff's office encouraged deputies to forsake sound policing practices to play to the cameras.
Read More: police-misconduct.org

The 16-year-old girl had a turbulent life in Ohio’s foster care system and was swinging a knife at a woman when a police...
05/16/2022

The 16-year-old girl had a turbulent life in Ohio’s foster care system and was swinging a knife at a woman when a police officer fatally shot her last year.
A grand jury has voted to bring no charges against the white police officer who shot and killed Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, as she swung a knife at a woman during a raucous dispute last year in the front yard of her foster home in Ohio.
The decision not to charge the officer, Nicholas Reardon, was announced on Friday by prosecutors. It brings a close to a case that led to protests in Columbus, Ohio, and scrutiny of the foster care system that had shuffled Ma’Khia between at least five homes in two years.
The shooting attracted national attention in part because Mr. Reardon shot Ma’Khia just 15 minutes before Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe, was convicted of murder. When police officers, in the moments after the shooting, told Ma’Khia’s younger sister, Ja’Niah Bryant, to go back into the foster home she had shared with her sister, the verdict was the first thing she saw on a television.
Body camera video of the shooting showed that Ma’Khia had been swinging a steak knife at a 22-year-old woman outside the house when Mr. Reardon fired four shots, killing Ma’Khia.
Investigators working for the Ohio attorney general investigated the case and gave their findings to the local prosecutor’s office in Franklin County, Ohio, in July. Citing conflicts, the district attorney hired two special prosecutors, who said in a statement on Friday that grand jurors had voted against any indictment.
It was unclear what options the grand jurors had been presented with; the special prosecutors said in their statement that police officers were justified to use deadly force when the officer or another person was in imminent threat of serious harm.
Read More: police-misconduct.org

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