Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label justice system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justice system. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

SCOTUS


Kinda lost in the hubbub swirling around the court's fucked up decision to overturn the Colorado Supremes' ruling that Trump is disqualified from holding office, is the fairly simple fact that both the Colorado Supreme Court and now SCOTUS have let Judge Wallace's finding of fact stand.

ie: Donald J Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States of America.


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

It Pays To Be Watchful


2. Defend an institution.
Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

The Judiciary is holding - for now. Do we need to reiterate how it's important to pay some little bit of attention, and to show up and vote, so we can get fewer of these fuckin' goon-friendly wingnuts appointed to the courts?

Remember: Every shitty thing authoritarians do is legal, because once they come to power, the first thing they do is to set about altering the legal system so they can claim to have the law on their side - usually as a matter of dire necessity due to whatever "emergency" they've ginned up to scare people into supporting them.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
            --Donald Trump, Dec 2022 



Goon-friendly judge
Cormack Carney


Saturday, April 01, 2023

What They Won't Do


Now here's a headline:
The Far Right Is Calling For Bloody ‘Civil War’ After Trump’s Indictment

Like most of us (I think), I recognize this as potentially very dangerous, but just too silly to believe it'll come to anything more than some really shitty people doing some really shitty things, as they try to show somebody (fake lord knows who) what great "patriots" they are, while actually proving what a buncha gullible fuckin' rubes they've always been and continue to be.

I'm not trying to minimize anything here - the shitty things some of these dipsticks will do are likely to be truly shitty. Americans will die.

Plutocrats will keep working to destabilize American democracy, and they'll always have a receptive audience because there's always a double-digit segment of people who just want trouble.

Watching an old western movie on TV - about a thousand years ago - the usual bar fight scene unfolds, and I asked my dad how come a couple of drunks start trading punches, and suddenly you've got 30 guys throwing furniture and beer mugs, and generally trashing the whole joint?

"Because some of these jokers got nothin' better to do. They're always waiting for a chance to prove they can scrap - just for the hell of it. They think bustin' their knuckles on some other joker's head is how you go about bein' a man."


Minutes after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York, his supporters flooded social media and extremist message boards with violent and racist threats against the officials prosecuting Trump, as well as bloody civil war.

“This cannot go unpunished,” one member of the rabidly pro-Trump message board The Donald wrote on Thursday night. “The DA needs to pay dearly.”

“None of this will stop unless there is blood in the streets,” another poster wrote.

In Trump’s own statement, the former president called the indictment a “political persecution” and referred to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “hand-picked and funded by George Soros,” and stated that Bragg is “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work.”

His far-right supporters mobilized quickly online to echo these comments. Through their vitriol, and calls for war, some supporters also promoted a narrative where Trump’s indictment was actually going to help him win victory in 2024. In some cases, supporters falsely said the indictment was simply a ruse to distract everyone from the shooter in Nashville earlier this week.

“The whole trans terrorist thing must have been polling badly so they decided to indict Trump based on the testimony of a lying jew and lying whore,” one influential neo-Nazi account on Telegram wrote, alongside an AI-generated image of a tattooed, topless Trump in a prison yard.

While Trump supporters did not publicly make specific plans for protests or violence, there were numerous examples of violent rhetoric in response to Trump’s indictment, including calling for violence against Bragg, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and law enforcement.

On platforms like The Donald, where all five of the top pinned posts on the homepage on Thursday night related to Trump’s indictment, commenters openly called for violence that was largely racist in nature.

Under a post with a photo of Bragg captioned “FAT PIECE OF SHIT!” another user commented: “There once was a time when he would have been lynched for much less.”

“Can’t we put a bounty on Bragg’s head? Time to fight lawlessness with lawlessness,” one user wrote. In response, someone said: “Hey man a lot of us are thinking the same thing, but if I said what should really happen I'd be charged with ‘terroristic threats.’” Another added: “The unjustified prosecution of President Trump is state terrorism. Respond to terrorism with terrorism.”

When one member of The Donald pointed out that the New York Police Department has ordered all officers to report for duty on Friday morning as a precautionary measure,” another user, while talking about the day after the indictment, commented: “Hopefully, it will be remembered as a day of slaughter.”

There were also many users calling for civil war on the platform. “Yeah. I’m down with just getting 1776 round 2 over with. The build up is infuriating,’ one user wrote in response to the news, while another added: “They want you pissed. Looks like WW3 could be off the table for now, so onto plan B: civil war.”

Some users laid out more detailed plans, discussing militias and boycotts and tax avoidance, while another simply wrote: “War.”

The threats of violence, found on a wide variety of platforms ranging from Trump’s own Truth Social to more mainstream platforms like Twitter, notorious message board 4chan, and The Donald, were located by VICE News and researchers from Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan group that tracks extremists online. And though there are no specific plans detailed right now, users on The Donald played a significant role in the planning, incitement, and coordination of violent events on January 6, 2021.

It’s also not just anonymous users on fringe message boards who are using incendiary language to incite anger about Trump’s indictment.

“The political Rubicon has been crossed. There's no going back from this,” Charlie Kirk, a right-wing talk show host, wrote on Truth Social. One of Kirk’s followers responded writing: “There is only one way back & that is WAR!”

Also on Truth Social, Pizzagate conspiracist, right-wing troll and organizer of the Stop the Steal movement, Jack Posobiec simply wrote: “Are you ready” to which many followers replied: “Let’s go.”

Ali Alexander, the Stop the Steal organizer, also posted a video of himself reacting to the news: “You want to raise me an indictment? I’ll raise you a civil war, I’ll raise you a World War 3, I’ll raise you a cap in your ass.” before claiming that “all of these are metaphors.”

On Fox News, sports columnist Jason Whitlock called for men to prepare for what’s coming. "I hope every other man out there watching this show, I hope you're ready for whatever's next. If that's what they want let's get to it,” Whitlock told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The host himself also weighed in, responding to another quest on his show who claimed the country was becoming an authoritarian state, by saying: “Probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s. And I think most people know that.”

The New York Young Republican Club issued a statement on the indictment that concluded with the line: “President Trump assured us that he was our retribution. Now we must return the rejoinder: our victory will be the joint vindication that our great President Donald J. Trump and our American people both deserve. This is Total War.”

However, though many Trump supporters openly called for violence, members of The Donald also cautioned against protests of any kind, claiming the FBI was simply “baiting” people “to do something.”

“Everyone is too scared to get J6ed,” one user wrote, referencing arrests surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

This claim was echoed by far-right disinformation superspreader Alex Jones, who claimed the “deep state” was looking to provoke Trump supporters into a “summer of rage or a civil war” or stage false flag events that would be blamed on Trump supporters. He urged Trump supporters not to take the bait. “We don’t want violence, we want a cultural revolution,” he tweeted.

On 4chan, an anonymous user commented: “Garland should be assassinated.”

On Telegram, neo-Nazi groups were sharing a note that compared the current situation in the U.S. to the build-up to the Spanish Civil War. “Today's indictment of Trump, the Transgender terrorism, the massive recession we are plunging into, countries of the world gravitating commercially/politically away from the United States, and the general Communist agitation happening at every level of the government is simply part of the perfect storm which is likely to cause a calamity that we have yet to come to know,” a post shared by a neo-Nazi active club wrote on Telegram, advocating for followers to create chaos rather than plan specific violent attacks.

Other Nazi figures, unsurprisingly, tried to agitate followers to action. The former leader of a neo-Nazi group designated a terrorist organization in multiple countries declared that this indictment makes the “GOP look spineless,” and urged that the “right must embrace militancy.” He gave his followers a warning that “Trump being thrown in prison will signal the Left's total victory in its multi-generational battle to infiltrate and usurp power in [the] USA. It will require nothing less than a revolution by patriots to reacquire any degree of political agency.”

And in some spaces, like in pro-Trump conspiracy communities like QAnon, the reaction to his indictment has been almost entirely positive. Influencers in the movement have claimed that the imminent arrest is what they have, in fact, been waiting for all along, and means that Trump will eventually be able to arrest other politicians like Hillary Clinton. Some users are claiming that the indictment will be positive forTrump’s election chances as well.

This claim was backed up by the notorious pro-Trump Twitter troll known as Catturd, who tweeted: “President Trump just won 2024.” a post that has been viewed over 1.2 million times and shared widely on other platforms.

“There is NOTHING that will UNITE the MAGA movement on all sides like [them] indicting Trump, NOTHING,” one prominent QAnon influencer wrote on Telegram. “There are MANY who didn’t know who they would be voting for in 2024, who now know FOR SURE after today.”

Friday, March 24, 2023

Waiting


Kathleen Parker is one of the pimpiest of the ideology pimps, so every now and then, she inadvertently gets one right. Which is how she stays in business. As deliberately wrong as she can be, sometimes she stumbles and tells the truth. AKA: The Classic Beltway Gaffe.

So we can file this one under "Even A Blind Hog Roots Up An Acorn Once In A While".


Opinion
Waiting for a Trump indictment has become an arresting comedy

With apologies to Samuel Beckett, waiting for Donald Trump to be arrested is a bit like waiting for Godot to show up. Only in today’s comedy, Trump never shows up for an event that never happens.

Which allows ample time to consider whether this is good, or bad, for Trump.

Keep in mind it was Trump and not Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who announced that he’d be arrested Tuesday. Then Wednesday came and then Thursday, and the would-be defendant was still on the campaign trail.

The specificity of his doomsday prophesy should have been a hint that he was fundraising rather than girding for a confrontation with a new archenemy. Within short order of posting about his dreamed-for arrest, Trump’s campaign raised $1.5 million. Not a bad take for an election-denying, rabble-rousing loser. Not to put too fine a point on the matter.

No one expects Trump to be handcuffed or perp-walked, though he doubtless would prefer such a show. He would be fingerprinted, however, photographed for a mug shot and swabbed for New York’s state DNA database.

And to think it all began with an adult-film star and hush money.

To refresh your memory, Stormy Daniels allegedly had a fling with The Don long before he was The Prez. Concerned that she might spoil everything if Americans found out, especially in the wake of his infamous boasts about assaulting women, Trump allegedly directed his sidekick attorney Michael Cohen to pay her off. More shocking than the deed itself was the cheap thrill he took Daniels for. Only $130,000 in exchange for the presidency? She should sue for something, though I can’t think what.

According to Cohen, who testified before the grand jury, he paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, with his own money, and Trump reimbursed him for legal fees. (Trump denies everything, including the alleged tryst.) Because the payment was aimed at helping Trump win the 2016 election, Bragg might contend, as prosecutors in the Cohen case did, that the money should have been declared a campaign contribution. Trump did not report the payment, needless to say.

For his part, Bragg may be out of his league. Given Trump’s record of deceptions and antagonisms, not the least of which was his role in inspiring the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, one would think it not much of a challenge. But Trump’s record also includes countless lawsuits, which he files with the gleeful frequency of a parking-ticket scribbler in the District of Columbia. He loves lawsuits and must be pretty good at the racket — or at least at hiring lawyers who are.

When Trump essentially bragged that he’d be arrested Tuesday, it seems he was merely staging a puppet show. He wouldn’t be arrested unless he wanted to be. Once an indictment is issued, all he has to do is quietly turn himself in. But where’s the fun in that? The puppets were the however-many who crowdfunded his next foray on the hustings.

And the arrest? We wait.

Bragg’s case centers on the idea that the Daniels payoff was far above the $2,700 allowed for individual campaign contributions. By not disclosing it, Trump may have violated federal tax rules that apply to political campaigns.

Of course, some might think, So the man had a night out and wanted the broad to keep her trap shut. (Speaking gangster here.) Nobody’s knees got busted. What’s the big deal?

Well, the United States of America got a little bruised. Never mind the utter seediness of Trump — election laws exist to protect us from thugs and criminals, some of whom wear nice suits and, apparently, own tanning booths. But it seems questionable whether Bragg has a solid indictment — and more’s the pity. It’s worth noting that Cohen, who pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to eight counts, including criminal tax evasion and campaign finance violations, received a three-year prison sentence.

Democrats and other anti-Trumpers have long hoped a criminal conviction would preclude the former president from ever holding public office again. Would that it were so. No law says someone can’t run if indicted. Trump could even serve as president, assuming he’s not in prison.

In 2016, Trump famously told the audience at a Christian college: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Whether this remains true isn’t clear. As of Wednesday, his “favorable” rating was at 41 percent, unfavorable at 54.8 percent. These numbers have been relatively constant the past two years.

I suppose it’s possible Trump could enjoy some time in penitential seclusion, depending on sentencing if convicted, but I wouldn’t bet the family goat on it. More likely, if he’s indicted at all, Trump will glory in the injustice of Bragg’s folly, raising millions more for another run at the presidency and emboldening his base to save America from traitors.

His arrest could happen any day now. . . . Or, like Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, we could wait forever for Trump to have his day in court.

Friday, January 13, 2023

Today's Oy


We are the stoopid country.

In what has to be the absolute epitome of elitist bullshit, we've decided corporations can be tried for, and convicted of, and punished for their crimes as if they are in fact people - but somehow the people who benefit greatly from the illegal operations of those corporations just kinda skate by.

To be sure, Weisselberg isn't skating - even a few months at Riker's Island is a possible life sentence for a 75-year-old - but these decisions, and the way the law apparently works, makes it look like he's just the patsy on this caper, and the company gets barely a slap on the wrist, having been ordered to pay a lousy million-six for 15 years of fraud.

Fifteen years

And excuse me, but what about the guy whose name is on the letterhead? 

Can somebody please tell me - what's the fuckin' point here?


Donald Trump's company to be sentenced for 15-year tax fraud

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Friday will learn how the company that bears the former U.S. president's name will be punished after being found guilty of scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years.

A New York state judge will impose the sentence after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.

The sentencing comes three days after Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Trump's family for a half-century and was the company's former chief financial officer, to jail for five months after he testified as the prosecution's star witness.

Trump's company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty, but has said it plans to appeal. No one else was charged or faces jail time in the case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, which brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump's business practices.

Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the expected penalty a "rounding error" that offers "zero deterrence" to others, including Trump.

"This is a farce," he said. "No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence."


The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.

Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James accusing him and his adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump of inflating his net worth and the value of his company's assets to save money on loans and insurance.

Bragg and James are Democrats, as is Bragg's predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.

At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trump's company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.

Trump himself signed bonus checks, prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg's luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO's grandchildren.

"The whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real," Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.

Weisselberg's testimony helped convict the company, though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation into Trump.

The Trump Organization had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable.

Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City's notorious Rikers Island jail.

State law limits the penalties that Justice Merchan can impose on Trump's company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count.

Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Tuesday, September 06, 2022

It Gets Worse

Trump is always shopping for a sympathetic judge - and to be clear, there's generally nothing wrong with that, except when it gets real fuckin' obvious that there's something really fuckin' wrong with it.



Legal scholars criticize judge's 'laughably bad' ruling in favor of Trump 'special master' request

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday granted former President Donald Trump's request for a third-party "special master" to review the more than 11,000 documents federal agents took from his Mar-a-Lago residence under a search warrant on Aug. 8, separating out any that may violate attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

Cannon, nominated by Trump in 2020 and confirmed after his electoral defeat, also ordered the Justice Department to stop using the documents for investigative purposes in its criminal probe of Trump's handling of highly classified government documents. She allowed a parallel intelligence community review of potential national security harm from the storage of top secret documents in a non-secure private club.

Legal scholars called Cannon's ruling unprecedented, in the sense that it goes against decades of court precedent — especially expanding the special master role to include executive privilege potentially claimed by a former president over the executive branch, for government-owned documents the Justice Department argues Trump had no right to take or keep.

This was "an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation," University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tells The New York Times. "Enjoining the ongoing criminal investigation is simply untenable," agreed Paul Rosenzweig, a George W. Bush administration official.

"To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier," Duke University law professor Samuel Buell tells the Times. "Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he's getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged."

Former Attorney General William Barr was more blunt. "I think it's a crock of sh-t," he told the Times on Friday. "I don't think a special master is called for." He made similar comments to Fox News, arguing that a special master is a "waste of time" and the FBI appears totally justified in seizing the documents.

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the DOJ is "examining the opinion and will consider appropriate next steps in the ongoing litigation." If the department appeals Cannon's ruling, the appeal would be heard by the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, where six of the 11 active judges are Trump appointees.

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Power Is All

We grant an awful lot of power and authority to government, so we have to be able to rein it in - to put a check on it - so it doesn't just run over us when any kind of lynch mob gets up a head of steam.

And sometimes we get a good look at the real damage that power can do when we allow cops and elected law enforcement entities to stick it out to the bitter end, as they try to prove somebody guilty who had nothing to do with the crimes, but everything to do with some "law-n-order" freak willing to fuck people over to save face.

You may recall that Donald Trump figures in this sorry episode that points up how shitty our "justice system" can get.

NYT: (pay wall)

Sixth Teenager Charged in Central Park Jogger Case Is Exonerated

Steven Lopez had a robbery charge linked to the 1989 attack cleared from his record.


A forgotten co-defendant of the Central Park Five, who, like them, was charged with the rape of a jogger in a case that shook New York City and the nation, had a related conviction overturned Monday in downtown Manhattan.

The case against the Five — teenagers of color who were innocent of the 1989 sexual assault on a white woman but who were convicted on the basis of false confessions that the police elicited — continues to shape attitudes surrounding racism in the criminal justice system, the media and society. But the story of the sixth man — Steven Lopez — had previously been all but ignored.

Mr. Lopez, who was arrested when he was 15, struck a deal with prosecutors just before his trial two years later to avoid the more serious rape charge, instead pleading guilty to robbery of a male jogger.

Like his peers, he went to prison; collectively, the group served close to 45 years. Soon after the true assailant in the Central Park rape was identified in 2002, the authorities overturned the rape convictions against the five men. They have gone on to win a $41 million settlement from New York City and become the subjects of films, books and television shows.

The story of Mr. Lopez, now 48, is far less well-known.

His robbery conviction was tossed out and the indictment dismissed in State Supreme Court by the chief administrative judge, Ellen N. Biben. It was the first exoneration under the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who vowed during his two years on the campaign trail to bolster the work of the office’s wrongful conviction unit.

“We talk about the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five, but there were six people on that indictment,” Mr. Bragg said before the hearing.

A lawyer for Mr. Lopez, Eric S. Renfroe, addressed his client directly during the proceeding. “It is truly painful to see how this system failed you,” he said.

Mr. Lopez could be heard saying only two words in court — “thank you,” to Judge Biben — and declined to comment afterward.

In an interview, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana, two of the Central Park Five, voiced their support for Mr. Lopez, who has not been in contact with them, or the three other members: Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, and Antron McCray.

“It’s only right that he’s exonerated,” Mr. Santana said. “He’s due that.”

A Signed Confession

Mr. Lopez was 15 when he was arrested and charged with the rape of the jogger, the 28-year-old investment banker, Trisha Meili. Mr. Lopez also faced charges linked to the robbery of a male jogger in the park that same night, April 19, 1989.

According to the review of his case conducted by the Manhattan district attorney’s post-conviction justice unit, Mr. Lopez had been arrested in Central Park after a series of assaults, including that of the male jogger who was thrown to the ground and beaten.

The police held the teenagers at a precinct for hours and hours, pushing them on the details of what had happened in the park. The teens, who were between 14 and 16 years old, said they were led to blame each other for the crime.

Revisiting the Central Park Jogger Case

Five teenagers of color, known as the Central Park Five, were wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in 1989 in a case that shook New York City and the nation.Exoneration: The convictions against the five men were overturned after the true assailant was identified in 2002. They would later win a $41 million settlement from the city.
‘When They See Us’: In 2019, a Netflix mini-series retold the story of the case, depicting the excruciating toll that persecution and incarceration had on the five boys.
Looking Back: In a series of conversations with The Times, the Central Park Five discussed the fateful events of the case 30 years later.

Mr. Lopez was in a holding cell for about 20 hours before he was questioned. His parents, who were not native English speakers, were present, but no translators were provided. After nearly two and a half hours of questioning, a detective wrote out a statement that Mr. Lopez and his father signed.

The statement placed Mr. Lopez at the scene of the attack on the male jogger. But despite aggressive questioning, Mr. Lopez refused to say he had been involved in the assault on Ms. Meili.

While a number of the other teenagers, questioned under similar duress, said that Mr. Lopez had committed crimes against both the male and female jogger, there was no forensic evidence tying him to the attack on the male jogger, who did not identify Mr. Lopez as one of his assailants. Forensic investigators, however, identified a hair found on Mr. Lopez’s clothing as possibly belonging to the female jogger. (Later, it was determined that the original investigation’s analysis of hair strands was unreliable.)

Ms. Meili had been badly beaten and left for dead. Details of the crime horrified New York City and inflamed racial tensions. Mr. Lopez and the other five boys were charged with rape. (Ms. Meili remained anonymous for more than a decade following the attack before identifying herself; she has objected to the settlement and believes that more than one person attacked her. She could not be reached Monday for comment.)
Convictions and Exonerations

The teens arrested that night, all of whom were Black or Hispanic, were treated as symptoms of a city descending into crime-ridden chaos. They were condemned by the police, prosecutors, the media and a famous real estate developer, Donald J. Trump, who placed full-page ads in the city’s newspapers calling for the death penalty. They were often called “beasts” or a “wolf pack,” as if they were not human.


Trump has never apologized, never retracted any of his statements, and never issued any kind of clarification.
He's consistently gaslighted on the subject, basically shrugging it off as if it never even happened.

“They wrapped their arms around us and looked at us as the pariahs,” Mr. Salaam said. “Wanting, really, for us to be lynched.”

Their trials came the year before the brutal beating of Rodney King. Police misconduct and coercive tactics were not the front-burner issues they are today.

It was decided that the six teenagers charged with the rape would be tried in three separate proceedings. Mr. McCray, Mr. Salaam and Mr. Santana were convicted on Aug. 18, 1990. Mr. Richardson and Mr. Wise were convicted on Dec. 11, 1990. All five maintained their innocence throughout.

A month later, as his trial was scheduled to begin, prosecutors offered Mr. Lopez a plea bargain in which he would plead guilty to first-degree robbery in exchange for having the rape charge dropped. Mr. Lopez agreed and was sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in state prison.

In February 2002, DNA evidence indicated that an uncharged suspect, Matias Reyes, had attacked the jogger. Mr. Reyes, who was serving time for a separate rape and murder, confessed to the crime.

That year, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, moved to have the rape convictions thrown out over the objections of police leadership. In the litigation that followed the exoneration of the Central Park Five, it emerged that a number of those who had been prepared to testify against Mr. Lopez disavowed their previous statements about his guilt. One said that he had only named Mr. Lopez after being told the name by police detectives.

In 2014, the Central Park Five received $41 million from New York City. Once, the five teenagers had represented to many people a city that was on the verge of spiraling out of control. But their story came to symbolize the overreach of the justice system, the gullibility of the media and American society’s deeply ingrained racism toward Black and brown youth.
The Forgotten Man

Until Monday, Mr. Lopez had been a forgotten element in their story. He was not featured in the 2012 documentary that Ken Burns made about the case, and no actor playing him appeared in Ava DuVernay’s 2019 television dramatization of the case, “When They See Us.”

Mr. Lopez’s story was overlooked, in part because he pleaded guilty. (Another defendant, Michael Briscoe, pleaded guilty to assaulting a third jogger; his conviction stands.) He served more than three years of his sentence and did not appeal his conviction.

Instead, nearly 20 years after the exoneration of his co-defendants, and having spent two years working with Mr. Renfroe, Mr. Lopez quietly reintroduced himself to the Manhattan district attorney’s office in February 2021, asking that his conviction be reviewed. The following month, the office began its review.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Bragg made the revamped unit a central tenet of his campaign, and upon taking office he recruited Terri S. Rosenblatt, well known in New York legal circles for her work on criminal defense and civil rights cases, to lead it.

Ms. Rosenblatt said that Mr. Lopez’s exoneration was notable as an example of something that happens too often: an innocent defendant, pleading guilty.

“We talk about wrongful trial convictions a lot, but there can be guilty pleas that are wrongful too,” she said.

Mr. Santana agreed: “We know now that the system is flawed and it needs to be fixed,” he said.

Mr. Bragg, who in January became the first Black Manhattan district attorney, was a 15-year-old teenager living in Harlem when the Central Park case first began to make headlines. He recalled relating effortlessly to the experiences of the young men, saying that he had played basketball and had ridden the bus past the same park where the events that led to their arrests took place.

Mr. Bragg was a friend of Ken Thompson, who was the first Black Brooklyn district attorney and who, before his death in 2016, became known for the work of a unit that reinvestigated questionable convictions.

Mr. Bragg stressed that, in times of public concern about safety — as was the case in 1989 and as is the case again today — exonerations like that of Mr. Lopez could help restore faith in the legal system.

“I am beyond humbled to be in a position to really replicate that work,” he said.

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen - getting our panties all knotted up because of Merrick Garland's memo.


Or maybe Garland is inoculating DOJ from charges of "political motivation" by reiterating the department's commitment to being apolitical - so when they finally get down to it (and the memo may actually portend to something imminent), they can point back to the memo and countervail those accusations.

Not that any of this is going to cut any ice with "conservatives", but process does matter.

And believe me, I get frustrated as fuck with what seems like a really slow pace. But while I wish Mr Garland would pick it up a little, I have to believe he's the guy who can do what we need done.

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

People Are Watching

It seems not to do a whole lot of good, but Americans are in fact coming to the realization that we live in a place that's too fucked up in too many ways.


Doctor who treated victims at parade shooting says the dead had "wartime injuries"


Dr. David Baum, who treated victims in the Highland Park shooting on Monday, described some of the horrific injuries he witnessed.

Baum and his wife were at the parade, and their grandson was a participant. When their family ran away from the shooting, the doctor ran toward the scene.

Baum said some of the dead were "blown up."

"The horrific scene of some of the bodies is unspeakable for the average person. Having been a physician, I've seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally — some of the bodies — it was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets. There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable," he told CNN.


Speaking as parade-goers' belongings could be seen abandoned at the scene in the background, Baum said the suburban community in Illinois will never be the same.

"I grew up here, and I moved back here with my wife. We raised our kids here. My daughter and my son-in-law moved here because they were concerned about gun violence and carjackings in the city when they had their son. And now people are, you know, they're scared to take their kids to nursery school. But what I saw was just families' lives forever changed because they were walking down with their kids and their scooters and somebody who shouldn't have had access to a high-powered rifle got up on a rooftop and decided to do what he wanted to do," Baum said.

Robert E. Crimo III, identified by police as the person suspected of shooting and killing six people and wounding dozens of others at the July 4 parade, was arrested on Monday hours after the shooting.

"You know, to me, you can't drink until you're 21, but I still do not know why this country allows an 18-year-old to have a weapon that was meant for war. And the injuries ... that I saw — I never served — but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade," Baum continued.

Debra Baum said people were killed within 30 seconds.

"Today, it's just hitting me more how sad I am. And I'm also thinking we all have to change our behavior until this gets under control. I'm not going to a parade anymore. I'm not going to a sports event. I'm afraid for my grandson to go to school. We all have to change our behavior and not do the things we love to do because of this situation," she said.

"I don't think the average person has to see a body eviscerated or a head injury that's unspeakable ... to understand what the problem is with this country," Dr. Baum said. "And the problem with this country is the failure to recognize that every week, you all are going to a different community with a different Uvalde. And Uvalde was in Highland Park in a small way. I mean ... what happened in Texas is horrific. What happened here is horrific. The fact that my kids and my grandson and all of these other kids from this community who are nice community members were walking down the street on scooters in their wagon, that's all they have to know. They don't have to see what I saw. ... The people who were gone were gone instantly," he said.

So, some asshole with a gun kills 6 and sends 30 others to the hospital when he opens fire on a 4th of July parade, he leads the cops on a merry little chase, and they nab him without much incident.


Meanwhile, another black man is gunned down.

In this case, yes, Walked had a gun and the dumbass did apparently take a shot at the cops as he was trying to escape. One shot.

But when he lit out on foot, the cops fired 90 rounds, hitting the guy 60 times, and then they found he was unarmed, having left his gun in his car.

Sky News - Jaylon Walker shot 60 times


We have cops who are more than happy to support gun rights - many buying the whole deal about 2nd amendment and how an armed citizenry is necessary to a free state and blah blah blah - so we have guns out the ass. Which means we have law enforcement officers who are prepared for war, and hit the streets expecting to be a gunfight at some point in their careers - many of whom go looking for the trouble - sometimes causing the trouble - they're supposed to be trained to prevent.

And all of that is on top of the gut-wrenching continuation of a "justice system" badly skewed against anyone other than white males.


USAmerica Inc, you are nine kinds of fucked up.

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

The System Holds


Our little experiment in self-government is bending eight ways from Sunday, but it ain't broke yet.

One thing that stands out: The Trump Gang went after political opponents on some very sketchy grounds - legal, but technical and nit-picky.

The people they "busted" may have done some questionable things, but they mostly stayed within the law. 

On the other side, it's pretty obvious that Trump and his goons operated outside the legal boundaries, always hanging out it smarmspace, playing the loophole game, or flat-out denying the legitimacy of the law itself when they've been caught.

Daddy State Awareness, Rules 7 and 7a
The law is my sword, but not your shield.
The law is my shield, but not your sword.

Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny, point #3
Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.


Sussmann acquitted on charge brought by special counsel Durham

The jury acquitted him on a charge that he lied when he allegedly denied he was acting on behalf of any client in alerting the FBI to claims that a secret server linked Trump and a Moscow bank


The first courtroom test for Special Counsel John Durham ended in defeat Tuesday as a federal jury found a Democratic attorney not guilty of making a false statement to the FBI related to allegations of computer links between Donald Trump and Russia.

The jury deliberated for about six hours before acquitting Michael Sussmann, 57, on the single felony charge he faced: that he lied when he allegedly denied he was acting on behalf of any client in alerting the FBI to claims that a secret server linked Trump and a Moscow bank with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During a two-week trial in federal court in Washington, Durham’s prosecutors argued that Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and an internet executive when he took two thumb drives of data and white papers on the purported link to FBI General Counsel James Baker about six weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

Sussmann’s defense said the case was flawed on a variety of grounds, including that prosecutors could not prove with certainty exactly what the cybersecurity lawyer and former federal prosecutor said to Baker.

Sussmann’s attorneys also stressed that there was no evidence the Clinton campaign authorized Sussmann to go to the FBI, although he and researchers working for Clinton appeared to have spent an extensive amount of time dealing with the server allegations and were actively encouraging The New York Times to write about the issue in the closing weeks of the presidential race.

In the courtroom, Sussmann showed no evident reaction to the not guilty verdict, although he was masked as most trial participants have been throughout.
A prosecutor asked that all 12 jurors be polled and they all confirmed the acquittal.

After U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper gaveled out the trial, Sussmann’s two lead attorneys, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, embraced.

In a brief statement outside the courthouse shortly after the verdict, Sussmann thanked his lawyers and said he views the not guilty verdict as a vindication.

“I told the truth to the FBI and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today,” Sussmann told reporters. “Despite being falsely accused, I believe that justice ultimately prevailed in my case.”

Sussmann’s defense team declined to address the crowd of reporters and cameras at the court, but issued a written statement blasting the prosecution.

“Michael Sussmann should never have been charged in the first place. This is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overreach. And we believe that today’s verdict sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice,” Berkowitz and Bosworth wrote.

Durham, who was not a member of the trial team but was present in the courtroom throughout, left the courthouse quietly and later issued a written statement expressing disappointment in the verdict. His prosecutors had described the evidence of Sussmann’s guilty as “overwhelming.”

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” the special counsel said.

Several jurors declined to comment on the deliberations as they left the courthouse, but the foreperson spoke briefly with reporters and stressed the burden that the prosecution faced in the case.

“The government had the job of proving beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said, declining to give her name. “We broke it down...as a jury. It didn’t pan out in the government’s favor.”

Asked if she thought the prosecution was worthwhile, the foreperson said: “Personally, I don’t think it should have been prosecuted because I think we have better time or resources to use or spend to other things that affect the nation as a whole than a possible lie to the FBI. We could spend that time more wisely.”

Shortly before the verdict was returned Tuesday morning, the jury sent Cooper a note asking if they had to agree unanimously on the grounds for their verdict. The judge replied that they had to agree on the basis for a guilty verdict, but they could acquit even if jurors differed about which of the various defense theories they accepted.

Following Sussmann’s outreach in 2016, the FBI concluded that the evidence Sussmann presented didn’t support the notion of a link between Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Some agents assigned to the investigation found that the hints of such contacts found in domain name system records were actually caused by a marketing email server sending out spam message, but during the trial, Sussmann’s defense called the FBI’s probe “shoddy” and at least one agent involved conceded it was “incomplete.”

Trump’s aides denied any such link, and a computer security firm hired by Alfa Bank also concluded that the allegations were unfounded.

It’s unclear how the high-profile courtroom setback will impact Durham’s ongoing probe or his ability to bring future charges in his broad investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. Some Durham supporters have praised his pursuit of Sussmann as providing a useful vehicle to publicly air the involvement of the Clinton campaign in efforts to publicize the purported server link and for releasing evidence suggesting that some technical experts who advanced the allegations harbored doubts about them.

However, Justice Department policy generally bars prosecutors from using a criminal case to lay out a broader narrative unless they believe they have the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence needed to get a conviction.

Senior Justice Department officials have been vague about what level of supervision is in place over Durham’s probe, which former Attorney General Bill Barr gave special-counsel status a few weeks before the 2020 election. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the department is adhering to regulations governing the special counsel’s autonomy, but has declined to elaborate.

Some potential witnesses who declined to testify at Sussmann’s trial and were involved in handling of the server allegations cited concerns that Durham might try to prosecute them.

Durham’s probe, which began in May 2019, has produced two other criminal cases.

Last fall, Durham brought a broader, five-count felony case against a Russian-born researcher for allegedly feeding false information to the FBI in the Trump-Russia probe. The researcher, Igor Danchenko, has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial in October in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

In 2020, Durham obtained a guilty plea from a former FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, to a charge that he deliberately altered an email used to obtain secret-court surveillance warrants against Carter Page, an energy analyst who had formerly served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

Clinesmith conceded altering an email he received and forwarded, but insisted that he believed the information he inserted was true. Durham’s team urged that Clinesmith receive between three and six months in prison, but a judge sentenced him to one year of probation instead.

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

About Those Cops


All those clear-eyed pragmatic management-by-the-numbers guys need to wake the fuck up and look at what their support for a kick-ass-and-take-names approach to law enforcement is actually getting us, compared with what it's costing us - just in terms of dollars and ROI.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The hidden billion-dollar cost of repeated police misconduct

More than $1.5 billion has been spent to settle claims of police misconduct involving thousands of officers repeatedly accused of wrongdoing. Taxpayers are often in the dark.

About 8:30 one Thursday evening in Detroit, Tony Murray was getting ready for bed ahead of his 6 a.m. shift at a potato chip factory. As he turned off the final light in the living room, he glanced out of his window and saw a half-dozen uniformed police officers with guns drawn approach his home.

As the officers banged on the door, Murray ordered Keno, his black Labrador retriever, to the basement. As Murray let the officers in, one quickly pushed him to the floor and at least two others ran to the cellar, he said. “Don’t kill my dog. He won’t bite you,” Murray pleaded. The sound of gunshots filled the house. Keno’s barking, the 56-year-old recalled, morphed into the sound of “a girl screaming.”

Officers searched Murray’s home for nearly an hour, flipping his sofa and emptying drawers. Outside, Murray approached the officers standing by their vehicles. One handed him a copy of the search warrant, which stated they were looking for illegal drugs. Murray noticed something else: The address listed wasn’t his. It was his neighbor’s.
Tony Murray, 56, sits on his porch. In 2014, police raided Murray’s house and fatally shot his dog, Keno. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

Months after the 2014 raid, Murray, who was not charged with any crimes, sued Detroit police for gross negligence and civil rights violations, naming Officer Lynn Christopher Moore, who filled out the search warrant, and the other five officers who raided his home. The city eventually paid Murray $87,500 to settle his claim, but admitted no error by police.

That settlement was not the first or last time that Detroit would resolve allegations against Moore with a check: Between 2010 and 2020, the city settled 10 claims involving Moore’s police work, paying more than $665,000 to individuals who alleged the officer used excessive force, made an illegal arrest or wrongfully searched a home.

Moore is among the more than 7,600 officers — from Portland, Ore., to Milwaukee to Baltimore — whose alleged misconduct has more than once led to payouts to resolve lawsuits and claims of wrongdoing, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Post collected data on nearly 40,000 payments at 25 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff’s departments within the past decade, documenting more than $3.2 billion spent to settle claims.

The investigation for the first time identifies the officers behind the payments. Data were assembled from public records filed with the financial and police departments in each city or county and excluded payments less than $1,000. Court records were gathered for the claims that led to federal or local lawsuits. The total amounts further confirm the broad costs associated with police misconduct, as reported last year by FiveThirtyEight and the Marshall Project.

The Post found that more than 1,200 officers in the departments surveyed had been the subject of at least five payments. More than 200 had 10 or more.

The repetition is the hidden cost of alleged misconduct: Officers whose conduct was at issue in more than one payment accounted for more than $1.5 billion, or nearly half of the money spent by the departments to resolve allegations, The Post found. In some cities, officers repeatedly named in misconduct claims accounted for an even larger share. For example, in Chicago, officers who were subject to more than one paid claim accounted for more than $380 million of the nearly $528 million in payments.

The Post documented nearly 40,000 payments involving allegations of police misconduct in 25 departments, totaling over $3 billion. Departments usually deny wrongdoing when resolving claims.

Response from the police department: “We will decline to comment on civil litigations,” said Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department.

The Post analysis found that the typical payout for cases involving officers with multiple claims — ranging from illegal search and seizure to use of excessive force — was $10,000 higher than those involving other officers.

Despite the repetition and cost, few cities or counties track claims by the names of the officers involved — meaning that officials may be unaware of officers whose alleged misconduct is repeatedly costing taxpayers. In 2020, the 25 departments employed 103,000 officers combined, records show.

“Transparency is what needs to be in place,” said Frank Straub, director of the National Police Foundation’s Center for Mass Violence Response Studies, adding that his organization has called for departments nationwide to publicize cases with settlements. “When you have officers who have repeated allegations … it calls for extremely close examination of both the individual cases and the totality of the cases to figure out what’s driving this behavior and these reactions and to see if there is a pattern in an officer’s behavior that triggers these cases.”

Defenders of police have a different view.

City officials and attorneys representing the police departments said settling claims is often more cost-efficient than fighting them in court. And settlements rarely involve an admission or finding of wrongdoing. Because of this there is no reason to hold officers accountable for them, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police labor union with more than 364,000 members.

“If there’s never been a finding of guilt or anyone’s fault, why put that in an officer’s record?” Pasco said. “That would be such a glaring omission of due process where in the legal system in the United States, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

The Post reached out to scores of officers named in claims that led to payments. Some were no longer working for the departments. Most had no comment or, like Moore, did not return phone calls.
Lynn Christopher Moore, right, now an officer at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, takes notes during roll call at the Pontiac, Mich., substation in June 2020. (Clarence Tabb Jr./ Detroit News)

Two officers in Boston who had the highest number of claims settled have since retired. But both said the allegations — ranging from excessive force to wrongful arrest — did not accurately portray their work while on the force.

Paul Murphy, who was named in four lawsuits totaling about $5.2 million in payments, said he “tried to do the best he could” as an officer. But he added, “sometimes things happened.” He declined to elaborate.

Gerald Cofield was named in three lawsuits that totaled about $306,000 in payments. Cofield said he wished the city had fought the claims instead of settling because he believed city attorneys would have won, and his name and reputation would have been cleared. “We are not the bad guys these lawsuits paint us to be,” he said.

One Detroit officer said he wished the city had fought the lawsuits because he believed the cases had no credibility and those making the allegations had been armed or resisting arrest. “It’s called the Detroit lottery,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not received permission to speak publicly. “People have been convicted and are in prison filing lawsuits knowing they can get paid.”

Multimillion-dollar settlements regarding allegations of police misconduct often generate headlines. Minneapolis paid $27 million to the family of George Floyd, and Louisville paid $12 million to Breonna Taylor’s family.


Those cases are the exception: The median amount of the payments tracked by The Post was $17,500, and most cases were resolved with little or no publicity.

Many of the officers who had the highest number of claims against them were participating in task forces targeting gangs, drugs or guns, records show.

Pasco said he is not surprised that these officers would be the subject of multiple lawsuits, given the assignments. And given, he said, that the nation has become a “litigious society.”

“It’s the cost of policing,” he said. “That’s the reason crime, until recently, has declined.”

New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone accounted for the bulk of the overall payments documented by The Post — more than $2.5 billion. In New York, more than 5,000 officers were named in two or more claims, accounting for 45 percent of the money the city spent on misconduct cases. In New York, four attorneys who have secured the highest number of payments for clients separately said the high rate of claims is because of poor training, questionable arrests and a legal department overwhelmed by lawsuits.

In Philadelphia, six officers in a narcotics unit generated 173 lawsuits, costing a total of $6.5 million. In 2014, those officers were federally charged with theft, wrongful arrest and other crimes but eventually acquitted at trial. Some 50 additional lawsuits are pending, many alleging misconduct dating back more than a decade, said Andrew Richman, a spokesman for the city’s legal department.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., officials paid out $25.6 million in the past decade: One-third of that was generated by 54 deputies who were the subject of repeated claims.

The data provided by cities included no demographic information about the people who filed the claims. But Chicago attorney Mark Parts, who has handled scores of lawsuits against police, said most of his clients have been Black or Hispanic.

“The folks who are aggressively policed and confronted by officers in the course of their daily lives are people of color,” Parts said. “I have found the majority of those whose rights are repeatedly violated are African Americans and Hispanics.”

In the D.C. region, more than 100 officers have been named in multiple claims that led to payments.

In Prince George’s County, Md., 47 officers had their conduct challenged more than once, resulting in at least two payments each accounting for $7.1 million out of $54 million paid within the decade. Two in five payments involved an officer named in more than one claim. The totals are skewed by a $20 million payment to the family of 43-year-old William Green, who was fatally shot while his hands were cuffed behind his back in the front seat of a police cruiser.

Cpl. Clarence Black was the subject of four settled cases, the most in the department. In 2010, the county paid $125,000 to a husband and wife who alleged Black assaulted them. In 2013, a Temple Hills family received $60,000 after alleging Black and four other officers illegally entered their home. In 2014, a woman got $10,000 after alleging Black punched her shoulder. And in 2019, a man collected $190,000 after alleging that Black illegally handcuffed him as he retrieved a bottle of water.

Black, a former officer of the year who joined the force in 2002, was indicted in August on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of misconduct in office after being accused of assaulting a driver during a traffic stop in Temple Hills. Black’s attorney did not return calls requesting comment. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in July.

In the District, 65 officers have been named in repeated claims, accounting for $7.6 million of the more than $90 million in claims paid — the fifth-highest overall of the 25 cities surveyed. That total includes $54 million paid on four claims involving officers who were named in no other cases.

Officer Fredrick Onoja was the subject of five cases that led to payments from 2014 to 2019 totaling $116,000, the most of any officer on the force. Five Black men separately sued Onoja accusing him of wrongful arrests and harassment. They alleged that the 44-year-old Onoja — who has been on the force since 2011 — fabricated evidence against them in the 5th District neighborhood he patrolled.

Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesperson, said Onoja had been “disciplined” for his actions, but declined to elaborate. Onoja, through the department, declined to comment. In a statement, Sternbeck said the department investigates allegations against officers made in lawsuits. “If the investigation sustains misconduct, the department takes appropriate action, ranging from retraining to termination, depending on the nature of the misconduct sustained,” he wrote.

In Fairfax, the county settled seven cases, totaling $6.1 million. Two of the cases involved five officers and led to $5 million in payments. Only one officer was named in more than one claim.

Officer Hyun Chang, who has been with the department since 2010, was the subject of a claim that resulted in a $750,000 settlement in 2018 with the family of a 45-year-old autistic man who died in 2016 as he was subdued by Chang and another officer. According to police, the victim, Paul A. Gianelos, of ­Annandale, Va., became combative as the officers tried to return Gianelos to his caretakers. A Virginia medical examiner determined Gianelos died as a result of a heart attack related to the restraint.

In 2014, Chang was one of a dozen officers named in a $190,000 settlement after a Hispanic woman charged the officers with excessive force, false arrest, unreasonable search of her home and racial profiling. He did not return requests for comment through a Fairfax police spokesperson.

In general, the government officials in many of the cities who were interviewed said the decisions to settle claims are made on a case-by-case basis.

In Chicago, officials “evaluate cases for potential risk and liability, and to take appropriate steps to minimize financial exposure to the city,” said Kristen Cabanban, spokesperson for the city’s Law Department.

It is often cheaper to settle a case than pay attorneys’ fees “that in many cases dwarf the actual damages award,” said Casper Hill, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis.

Even when payments are covered by insurance claims, taxpayers ultimately still pay as those claims drive up the cost of the insurance.

The Post found that few cities publicize their payments or make it easy for the public to identify the officers involved. Of the 25 cities surveyed, four reported tracking payment information. The others declined to answer or said they were unaware of any city department that did such tracking.

Minneapolis, Palm Beach County, Fairfax County and Detroit were among the few places that recorded payments by officers’ names in the records provided to The Post. Portland organized cases by the officers’ badge numbers.

Most cities reported payments by the name of the person who filed the claim or, if the case led to a lawsuit, the number assigned in court. The Post identified the officers involved in tens of thousands of cases by reviewing individual claim summaries and court records.

There are disincentives to such tracking, legal and policing experts said.

“If an officer has multiple lawsuits, then the city is in jeopardy of negligent retention,” says Stephen Downing, a retired deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police Department and current adviser with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a criminal justice reform group. “Few cities want to risk retaining that information to avoid being part of an even more costly lawsuit.”

Policing experts also noted that prosecutors rely on officers to testify in criminal cases; settlement tracking could be used by defense attorneys to challenge an officer’s credibility.

The $10,000 air freshener


In Portland, Officer Charles B. Asheim, 40, was the subject of three payments costing the city $40,001. The city spent more than $90,000 in legal fees fighting those three claims and $250,000 defending three other claims involving Asheim that resulted in no payments, according to Heather Hafer, a spokeswoman with the city’s Office of Management and Finance.


In 2014, Marqueeta Clark and her then-boyfriend, Jahmarciay Barr, were leaving Barr’s aunt’s house on their way to the movies in Barr’s blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice. At the time, Clark was a 19-year-old early-childhood education major at Western Oregon University, and Barr was a 20-year-old community college student and UPS employee.

As the couple drove along the highway, they saw a police cruiser heading in the opposite direction.

Seconds later, Clark said, they noticed the cruiser make a U-turn and begin to follow them. Barr stopped at a traffic light with the cruiser behind them. When the light turned green, as they pulled away, the cruiser’s lights came on and police pulled them over.

Asheim, an officer with the gang unit, told the couple they were stopped because Barr had changed lanes without using his turn signal, Clark said. She said she disputed the claim, telling police she could hear the blinker’s ticking.

Then Asheim, she said, one of three officers at the scene, told the couple that police had pulled over the car because there was a green, pine-tree air freshener dangling from the car’s rearview mirror. The air freshener, Asheim told them, obstructed the driver’s line of sight and created a driving hazard, she said.

Barr, still seated in the car, grew angry and refused to cooperate with Asheim when the officer asked for his driver’s license and registration, she said.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Clark said she begged the officers to allow her to reach into the glove compartment to pull out Barr’s documents. But Asheim refused and continued to argue with her boyfriend, she said. “In my head, I was thinking these gang task forces are going to treat us as gang members. … I was terrified,” she said.

Asheim then pulled Barr through the driver’s side window and placed him in handcuffs, she said.

In his official report, Asheim gave a different account: He wrote that he and his colleagues unhooked the driver’s seat belt, opened the door and forced Barr to stand up outside the vehicle. Asheim added that Barr accused police of stopping him because “he was Black.” The officers, according to Asheim’s report, “calmly and simply” explained the reason for the stop, but the boyfriend “continued screaming.”

Asheim also noted that Barr was becoming more “threatening and unpredictable,” and that he threatened to “kick our f---ing ass.”

Clark denied that Barr threatened the officers. “I remember watching Asheim laughing at us. It was really humiliating, embarrassing and frustrating.”

The officers searched the car and found nothing illegal, according to the police report.

Police arrested the couple. Clark was charged with interfering with a police officer and disorderly conduct. Barr, who could not be reached for comment, was charged with failure to carry and present his license, disobeying an officer and disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty to failure to carry and present a license and was ordered to pay $250 in fines. Prosecutors dismissed the other charges against him.

Clark chose to fight her charges. Eventually, the judge dismissed the case.

Still, Clark remained furious. She and Barr sued the city, alleging that the stop by Asheim — who is White — and his two colleagues was part of a pattern of racially discriminatory police tactics. “I really wanted people to know how the majority of the Black community was being treated by police,” she said. “It was never about the money for me.”

Growing up in Portland, Clark said being stopped by police and having guns drawn was “the norm for us.” She said that she and her boyfriend were stopped by police about a half-dozen times in a four-year period.


In 2017, the city agreed to settle their claims, eventually paying Clark and Barr $5,000 each. Officials did not apologize or admit wrongdoing.

They were among the city’s 89 payments for alleged police misconduct during the past decade. Of the more than $7.5 million spent, nearly half of it has involved officers named in more than one claim.

“What Asheim did, stopping people for having an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, was the practice of the gang enforcement team,” said Gregory Kafoury, Clark’s attorney. “These officers were driving around and obviously looking for Black faces.”

Kafoury said he has represented dozens of people in lawsuits against Portland officers, the majority of his clients people of color.

“Historically, officers who are sued are never penalized, even when the city has to pay large settlements or verdicts for their misconduct,” Kafoury said. “The officers who are the most brutal and the most dishonest tend to move up in the ranks because they are seen as trustworthy and they are admired for their physicality. And that culture gets strengthened as these types of bullies move up and control the culture of the police department.”

Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland police spokesman, denied Kafoury’s assertions. “Our promotions process is extremely competitive and thorough and includes a 360-review in most ranks, taking in the candidate’s discipline record, commendations, community engagement and more,” Allen said.

Asheim has been with the force for 13 years and is a detective, Allen confirmed. He declined to answer questions about Asheim or the cases that led to settlements. Allen said he forwarded The Post’s request for comment to Asheim, who has not responded.

‘I’ll never forget him’


Early one evening in March 2014, Gregory Williams, 34, was walking to buy cigarettes at a gas station on the west side of Chicago. A man rushed up behind him, hit him on the head with a gun and pushed him against a fence, Williams said. He thought he was being robbed.

The man, however, was a Chicago police officer in plain clothes.

An unmarked police car pulled up. Inside was Officer Armando Ugarte — who from 2010 through 2020 would be a subject of 16 payments totaling more than $5 million for claims that included excessive force and wrongful arrests.


That night, Ugarte and two other officers told Williams, a father of two and student at Strayer University, that they were arresting him for distributing a controlled substance: heroin. They drove Williams to a precinct called Homan Square, a former Sears and Roebuck warehouse that police used as an interrogation site.

While he was handcuffed, Williams said, Ugarte and the other officers pressed him to identify heroin dealers. When he said he could not, he alleges that they grabbed him by his neck, put him in a chokehold, threw him to the floor and punched and kicked him.

“I’ll never forget him,” Williams said about Ugarte.

In the arrest report, Ugarte wrote he had purchased drugs from Williams as part of a “controlled buy” that night while working undercover. Williams was charged with two counts of felony manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance.

At the time, Williams had been on parole for less than a year following a conviction for heroin possession. He said he believes this is why the officers targeted him to be an informant or face a return to prison.

After a year in jail, Williams went to trial. In court, Ugarte and two other officers testified that they had purchased heroin from Williams. But there were no other witnesses or evidence, according to the lawsuit. The jury acquitted Williams.

While in jail, Williams lost his personal assistant job with the Chicago Department of Human Services and dropped out of Strayer University, where he was pursuing a degree in business administration. “They took all that away from me because I wouldn’t work for them. I wouldn’t be a snitch,” he said.

In 2018, he filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Ugarte and the five other officers and their supervisor had violated his civil rights through unlawful search and seizure, excessive force and malicious prosecution. “I don’t think they really understand how hard it is coming from that place, coming out of prison,” he said.

After more than two years of hearings and lengthy court filings, the city settled the case in 2020 for $85,000, but denied any wrongdoing.

In records provided to The Post, Chicago officials had not recorded Ugarte’s name with Williams’s settlement. The Post identified him as an officer involved in the case through Williams’s attorney, the amount and date of the payment and court records.
Williams and his attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, outside a courthouse in Chicago in September. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)

Williams’s attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, said the case was the second one she had handled involving Ugarte. In 2017, the city paid $88,500 to a man she represented who also alleged that Ugarte wrongfully arrested him and was part of a team of officers that fatally shot a dog in front of a 12-year-old child.

“This same team of officers was busting into people’s homes and killing dogs. In front of kids,” said Hamilton, who began her career as a prosecutor and now focuses on police misconduct and whistleblower cases. In the past five years, Hamilton said 95 percent of her clients who have sued Chicago police for excessive force or wrongful arrests have been Black or Hispanic.

“Why are they still working?” Williams asked. “There’s no punishment. They can do what they want. There are no repercussions behind it.”

The Post’s analysis found Chicago had the highest rate of misconduct claims involving officers named in multiple cases. More than 70 percent of the city’s roughly 1,500 payments over the decade involved at least one officer with repeated claims.

Ugarte, 47, was “relieved of police powers” in October and reassigned to the department’s alternative response section, according to Anthony Spicuzza, a police spokesman. The division handles non-emergency calls. Spicuzza declined to answer questions about Ugarte’s work or the payments involving him. Ugarte joined the force in 2005, according to the Citizens Police Data Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that tracks information about officers, including use of force, complaints and awards.

Ugarte did not return a Post reporter’s calls. Spicuzza did not respond to requests for a response from Ugarte. “Due to a pending investigation, we will not comment further,” Spicuzza said.

Poor communication


In Detroit, after receiving questions from The Post about the repeated payments involving Officer Moore and the raid at Murray’s home, police officials said they have begun to use the city’s claims data to monitor which officers are repeatedly named in lawsuits, to determine if they need additional training or should be reassigned or removed from the force.

Christopher Graveline, director of the professional standards unit for Detroit police, said his department as of September is working closely with the city’s legal department to identify officers with more than two lawsuits or claims and make sure they are “flagged” in the department’s risk management system.

Since The Post started asking the city about its repeat officers in September, 13 officers have been “flagged” for being sued multiple times and have been subject to “risk assessments,” according to a department spokesman.

“There wasn’t a good communication between the city law and police department. We weren’t being aware of settlements and potential judicial findings touching upon our officers,” Graveline said.

Graveline, who oversees internal affairs, said the department was often unaware of findings in civil cases, including determinations that officers had withheld evidence.

From 2010 to 2020, Detroit made 491 payments on behalf of officers, totaling nearly $48 million, records show. More than half were on behalf of officers with more than one claim.

In addition to the 10 payments on claims involving Moore in that time, The Post also documented three before 2010 and one in 2021. During Moore’s 23 years on the force, Detroit paid 14 claims arising from his police work.

Moore was part of the city’s narcotics unit, a division that conducts many search warrants, Graveline said.

Graveline declined to comment on Moore’s lawsuits but acknowledged other officers in the unit were not named in as many lawsuits. “That’s one of the reasons we are taking steps to actively identify officers with similar patterns with multiple lawsuits,” he said.

During a deposition in the lawsuit following the search of Murray’s home, Moore testified that he had always intended to raid that residence. He said the wrong address on the warrant was a typo.

Moore said an informant told him about drug dealing at Murray’s home. Moore also noted in his report that police found two tiny bags of marijuana during their search, which Murray disputes.

In a separate report, one of Moore’s colleagues wrote that he shot Murray’s Labrador because the dog charged them and was “showing teeth and growling.” Also in the report, the officer misidentified Murray’s dog as a “grey pit bull.”

“We are not just going into these houses killing people’s dogs for no reason. That would be ridiculous and absurd,” said Moore, who was in the house when his fellow officers killed Keno. “Unfortunately, I’ve killed quite a few dogs. I would say I’ve killed over 10, 15 animals in the course of my career.”
When police began banging on his door, Murray sent his dog, Keno, to the basement to stay out of the way. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

In response to questions from Murray’s attorney, Kenneth Finegood, Moore testified that while he was with the drug unit, he had been the subject of internal investigations “once or twice a month.” Moore, 49, also said he had never been found guilty of the accusations, which he said happened “constantly” when he was in narcotics.

Personnel records obtained through a public records request show Moore joined the department in 1996 and has received seven awards or commendations.

The records also show that Moore was reprimanded for failing to fill out a use-of-force report during a 2010 arrest and was suspended for five days for “willful disobedience of rules or orders” during a 2015 police chase. An investigation determined that Moore failed to notify the dispatcher of the initial traffic stop and then failed to broadcast the speed of the vehicle being pursued. The suspension was later overturned in arbitration.

Moore left Detroit in 2019 and is now an officer at the nearby Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, according to Detroit police and the sheriff’s department. The sheriff’s department did not answer follow-up questions.

Since Moore’s departure from Detroit, allegations about his conduct when he was an officer have continued to cost the city financially.

Last year, Detroit officials settled a man’s claim that Moore and three other officers tackled and injured him in 2016 as he stood on his front porch. Police said they were searching for a shooter who allegedly fit his description, according to the lawsuit. The city settled for $150,000.

Detroit reached a second settlement concerning Moore in 2020 when the city paid $10,000 to resolve a claim by two men who alleged that Moore and other officers illegally handcuffed and searched them in 2016.

During the encounter, Moore and his colleagues confiscated $579 from one of the men, according to the complaint.

Moore wrote he searched the man and found six Baggies of a “leaflike substance.” Police arrested the man on drug-related charges and towed his friend’s car.

The car’s owner had to pay $350 to retrieve his vehicle from the impound lot, the suit alleged.

In addition to the drug charge — which was later dropped — Moore gave the man a citation for loitering, a misdemeanor offense. Moore wrote the man was in a “known narcotics location.”

The man, according to the lawsuit, was standing in the driveway of his home.


Cuz I write the report