Splinter: Police Corruption vs. the Presumption of Nobility

Just another isolated incident! Nothing to see here, move along citizen. I SAID MOVE ALONG!

CHICAGO — An off-duty Chicago police officer convicted of pummeling a female bartender half his size was sentenced Tuesday to two years probation and anger management classes for the videotaped attack that appeared worldwide on the Internet and cable news channels....

Earlier this month, the judge rejected Abbate's claim he acted in self-defense and convicted him of aggravated battery. A tavern security video shows a drunken, 250-pound Abbate punching and kicking the 125-pound Karolina Obrycka as she tended bar in February 2007. The altercation happened after she refused to serve him more drinks.

The video captured a lot of attention as another example of misconduct by Chicago police. Then-Superintendent Phil Cline suddenly announced his retirement shortly after the video surfaced and former FBI official Jody Weis was appointed to the spot with an order to clean up the department's image.

Abbate acknowledged during the trial that he was drunk during the incident. But he said Obrycka pushed him first as she tried to remove him from behind the bar. Obrycka said during the hearing that she continues to suffer psychological wounds, often has nightmares and has trouble trusting people, including her husband.

Obviously, when a tiny 125 pound woman pushes a drunk cop, it sets off his contempt of cop reflexes, and justifies his pummeling her senseless. Two years probation! Well, and the anger management. I have to mention that, otherwise it would be like forgetting Poland

 

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Yes indeed the cops are not acting. I meant to say it looks like the guy who thought of this had staged his part, like he was making a DIY documentary. It doesn't matter, in fact I think it was ingenious and brave to try it.

And if you notice most of the cops are twice his size. They have a right to ask him for his ID, but it was sadistic the way they used that to provoke a reaction from him. In the car when he was holding it but not extending his arm they were demanding that he reach out the window and hand it to them. This was bizarre, like each person was reluctant to reach toward the other thinking their arm might be snapped off.

And the guy looked very timid, young, just asking for information, not at all like the thugs they would need to reserve that aggression for. They are completely out of control, obviously thinking no one is watching, but showing their unbridled animal instincts in the body language you mentioned.

It reminded me of the video of a person in a wheelchair who got attacked by US cops in a police station. Instead I found this which is probably worse. The victim was charged with felony assault and the cop with misdemeanor assault. Charges were dropped against them both. Justice served.

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[video=youtube;TohbY-tHhMw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohbY-tHhMw[/video]

 

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And Things Have Only Gotten Worse Since

This One Still Smarts

You have to understand. Two police officers were videotaped by a security camera accosting, assaulting, and then planting evidence on a black man in a wheelchair. Nigh a decade ago, we in the Seattle area still haven't forgotten.

On May 23, OPARB turned in its report to City Attorney Tom Carr's office. Two weeks later, the city's legal department advised board members that they could be held liable if the report was released—because, the city's attorneys said, the report reaches outside the scope of OPARB's investigative powers. OPARB's Holmes asked city council president Richard Conlin to indemnify board members from potential lawsuits; Conlin turned him down.

This isn't the first time OPARB has been at the center of controversy. In 2007, a report by the panel that had not received final approval from the city's legal department was leaked to the media. The report detailed how OPARB believed Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske had interfered in an internal investigation of two officers who were accused of beating and planting drugs on a wheelchair-bound man in January 2007.

OPARB's current report reportedly reopens those wounds, addressing the controversy surrounding the January 2007 arrest and the accusations lobbed at Chief Kerlikowske. And although neither OPARB nor the city would share details on the report, any further discussion of alleged misconduct by the police chief would undoubtedly reignite the controversy that plagued Kerlikowske and the department for months after OPARB's last report came out. So there's plenty of incentive for the city to keep the report buried.

As the current OPARB struggles to get its report released, council public safety chair Tim Burgess is assembling a new, seven-member OPARB, which will take over next September. Burgess would not comment on the current board's legal situation, but did say upcoming legislation should put any debate over OPARB's powers to rest. "The future board will be able to act knowing full well that the city will protect them individually and as a board as they carry out their responsibility as they do their work," Burgess says.

OPARB's Holmes does not believe the board did anything outside of its duties and is frustrated that the city is holding its report in limbo. "Not a single police officer is named [in the report], not a single disciplinary measure is suggested, and no officer could be disciplined after the release of this report," Holmes says. "Under those circumstances, why wouldn't you allow the report to be released? If we've got such a great department, what are we afraid of?

(Spangenthal-Lee)​

It should be mentioned that Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, previously a reporter for The Stranger, a weekly alternative newspaper oft-criticized for its critique of Seattle governance, presently writes for the Seattle Police Department.

I don't know, some might find that significant. Or not.
____________________

Notes:

Spangenthal-Lee, Jonah. "Oversight Under Wraps". The Stranger. July 3, 2005. TheStranger.com. April 9, 2014. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/oversight-under-wraps/Content?oid=612042

Seattle Police Department. "Jonah Spangenthal-Lee". SPD Blotter. (n.d.) SPDblotter.Seattle.gov. April 9, 2014. http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/author/spangej/

 

There is a problem with US Police training.
Certainly in Albequerque, where people have recently rioted over police shootings.
The training eliminates common sense, and substitutes it with instantaneous trained reactions.
It is similar to that used by the army, for use with troops in enemy combat areas.
The natural human instinct, for most people, is not to shoot people, but the training overrides that reluctance.
The person so trained will shoot first, and think about it later.
If you or I had that training we would do the same.
The result is that innocent people get shot, and the shooter ends up with mental health problems.
The training does nothing to reduce the effects of guilt and trauma.
The use of military-style gear further alienates people from their police and vice versa.

There is some person, or group of people, who have decided that this is a good way for police to behave.
They should be found, and picketed.



Given a rash of questionable police shootings in Albuquerque and beyond,
the camper shooting is now bringing even more pressure on police to change their training and tactics,
particularly to include more precise threat-gauging and offering more options to de-escalate tense situations........
.............But police experts also note that police across the country have begun to question if the average 400 “officer-involved shootings” a year is too high, and whether the mix of outdated training and the expansion of military-style gear and tactics even into small town police departments has become a more fundamental problem in modern-day police departments.


http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justic...shooting-as-police-rethink-use-of-force-video

@Tiassa
You might be interested in the video.
It is about "missing" evidence.
This is a particularly vile example of bad policing. Public abhorrence is building, and it could cause a change in direction.

 

I've just found this article drom the UK Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/08/jonathan-fleming-cleared-brooklyn-killing-25-years

Quotes:

A man who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder was freed Tuesday and cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation.

And prosecutors' review produced a hotel receipt that Fleming paid in Florida about five hours before the shooting — a document that police had evidently had since they found in Fleming's pocket on arresting him, Mayol and Koss said.

My bold. Not nice.

 

Sad.
No amount of compensation would make up for losing freedom for one third of your life.

We used to have the same problem in the UK in the 70s and 80s.
It was called "fitting up".
They selected who they wanted to convict for the crime, and then concocted the evidence to suit.
The cynical rationale was that the person had probably done some other crime for which they hadn't been convicted.

Our policing now is much improved, not perfect of course but it is possible to change things for the better.
Key changes are:
getting police to regard their job as public service rather than law enforcement;
losing targets for convictions, and replacing them with indexes of public satisfaction;
making sure recruitment weeds out high testosterone semi-criminals;
making the force match the public profile in terms of ethnicity.

The last one is the most difficult.