Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Unbelievable. He wasn't speeding and was using cruise control when he was pulled over. Cop lets him go with a verbal warning. Turns out the cop was live-streaming on Tik Tok and showed the guy's drivers license. A little later he receives a message on Facebook that tracked him from the Tik Tok feed.

The guy filed a complaint with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, the investigation resulted in the officer being suspended for two days without pay. Now the guy is suing for emotional distress, invasion of privacy, etc.

A two day suspension? That's a firing offense IMO, to violate someone's privacy like that. Either management didn't think it was worth firing over, or the union blocked it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/man-claims-cop-pulled-him-over-just-to-stream-a-traffic-stop-on-tiktok/

This is an amazing story.

In 1986, there was a Chicago arson building fire in which two people died. Two others escaped the fire. It was believed to be a gang revenge attack. An 18 year old, John Galvan, was pointed to as a suspect and arrested. And handcuffed and viciously beaten by detectives until he confessed. No physical evidence or witnesses linked him to the crime scene, family said he was home an hour before the fire and slept until late morning. He was convicted and sent to life in prison.

The arson fire was found to be a classic: gasoline splashed against the side of a building and a light cigarette. Except there were inconsistencies with the findings.

In 2007 on prison TV John saw the MythBusters 2005 episode where they bust a bunch of Hollywood movie and TV tropes. The particular one of interest was the gasoline splashed against a wall and lit with a cigarette. And the guys could not do it. The reason is that they couldn't get the right stoichiometric ratio, that is, enough concentration of explosive gas plus a lit flame. As it happened, John's attorney from The Innocence Project watched the same episode at the same time and was equally gobsmacked.

In 2007, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms conducted an exhaustive series of tests replicating the MythBusters experiments to try to reach a scientific conclusion. And they got the same results: you can't do it.

John and his attorney began a new series of filings and eventually gained new hearings. And with more work, they were granted new trials with the confession suppressed - two others were convicted along with John. Eventually the prosecutors decided not to refile the charges and they were dismissed and they were released from prison. After 35 years served.

The detective who beat John, Victor Switski, retired in 2001 and is living in Florida. The other two could hear John being beat and yelled at by Switski from the next room.

https://innocenceproject.org/discovery-channel-mythbuster-john-galvan-wrongful-conviction-innocence/

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6359

7 AM. The guy finds a police SWAT detail at his apartment door with a battering ram and pry bar and a warrant. He lets them in, is immediately handcuffed (suffering a wrist injury affecting his design work), and is whisked off to a police station. Never told what is going on. His wife is getting out of the shower, told to sit on the couch wrapped in a towel. She's never told what they're looking for. Eventually they either find, or they tell her and she shows them the receipt for a recently purchased iPhone X. They radio the police station, husband is brought home in a patrol car without ever telling him why he was detained. Cops leave.

Turns out they bought the phone at the same store that was robbed on the X's release day. 300 phones were stolen from a UPS truck, and apparently this guy's electronic serial number mistakenly matched one of the units reported stolen. So someone at Apple or somewhere down the line screwed up.

Regardless, SFPD screwed up BIGLY. This was a knock and talk situation, two detectives could have resolved this with an interview. The manpower alone exceeded the cost of a $1200 phone, and the settlement these people will get from suing SFPD will be a lot higher than that.

Link contains an autostart news video, and the article that accompanies is a transcript of the video.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/01/18/sf-man-recounts-harrowing-mistaken-arrest-iphone/

"I'll tell you what will happen. They'll have a trial. The white jurors will see it one way, and the black jurors another."
—Geraldo Rivera on Michael Brown shooting

Though I hate agreeing with Geraldo, he's fundamentally correct. Here's the core of the problem: very few people have complete information on what happened, we certainly don't. In some cases grand jurors have the ability to ask for specific information, that may or may not be the case here. I recently found out that after Brown had been shot that a nurse who wanted to attempt CPR on him was denied by the police. That's a pretty serious allegation.

One thing that we do know is that the Ferguson Chief of Police deliberately tried to muddy the waters by releasing the liquor store robbery footage on the same day as a portion of the autopsy report was released.

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if the officer does not get indicted by the grand jury. They will look at the appropriate laws, police rules and regulations, the training the officer took, etc. In the end, he might walk. Which will bring in the question of whether the Feds can indict him for violating Michael Brown's civil rights, such as was done in the Rodney King beating.

I'm very curious about the 'suicide by cop' that happened a few days ago four miles from where Brown was killed. A person with a knife is dangerous, if they have a knife out and are within 10' of you and your gun hasn't already been drawn, you're going to get cut before you clear leather. So the officers might have been totally within their rights and policy to shoot him. But one of the officers was still in the patrol car in the passenger seat when he stated shooting, apparently the dead man was leaning in to the car window. If he was that close to the police, why didn't they back up the car to get some distance to give them some room to move tactically? Doesn't make sense. If they'd had some space, they might have been able to use tasers, assuming they'd been issued them. Have one cop with a gun, one with a taser.

But almost any police shooting is a pretty chaotic situation. I have my doubts that the shooting of Michael Brown was a justified shoot, but I don't have the evidence.


ETA: the Thursday night Rachel Maddow Show showed footage recorded by a bystander in the suicide by cop incident (available online). My wife showed it to me. The police said that he had the knife in an overhand position and attacked them. He didn't. The police pulled up in an SUV, the one on the passenger side stayed near the door like he could get behind it for cover. The driver moved further left to flank the suspect. The suspect looked behind him twice, my wife thinks he was checking to make sure there were no bystanders behind him.

And then he was dead. Each officer fired six shots, at least nine hit and were fired in something like three seconds according to the news report. And yes, having been a firearms enthusiast, that's totally doable. And then they rolled the body over and handcuffed it. (Maddow did not show the actual shooting as that is NBC policy)

Apparently the two officers had tasers. They had plenty of time to have used them, which they could do fairly safely by having one officer pull the taser and attempt to subdue the suspect while the other keeps his gun trained. But they didn't, and now he's dead. Just over 30 seconds elapsed between the arrival of the police unit and the death of the man.

*sigh*

I think paraphrasing John Donne here would be appropriate:
"I am a part of mankind, therefore any man's death diminishes me.
So send not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."