A South Carolina deputy has been fired and charged after a dash camera recorded him punching teenager Jeremy Laquan Rucker, 18, in the face. What is curious is that there is no word on action taken against the other officers who assisted former deputy Brian Tollison.
Rucker is accused of initially resisting arrest, but the police admit that he soon relented. Yet, the tape shows one deputy appearing to hold Rucker and Tollison beats him. The full video also shows deputies taser and kick Rucker.
Tollison is charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. Rucker is charged with drug possession and resisting arrest.
Greenville seems to have a serious problem in controlling its own officers. Another officer was fired after releasing a dog that attacked another officer, click here.
Obviously, a tort action is likely to result in liability in such a case for battery. While the police department will claim a rogue employee defense, the other officers in the video will make that hard to sustain.
For the video, click here.
For the full story, click here.
Vlad:
You missed my point. I am waiting for Obama & you TWO PERCENTERS HERE:
America waits with bated breath the LEFT”S and Obama’s expected swift and merciless condemnation of Russian tactics! PS: we won’t really hold our breath because the 2 percenters here, no matter what, still will ALWAYS consider America the world’s WORST violator of human rights…………
Reminds me of a recent case in Lima, OH.
LIMA, Ohio — A veteran Lima police sergeant was acquitted Monday on charges he was negligent when he shot an unarmed woman to death and wounded her 1-year-old son.
Joseph Chavalia, 52, was found innocent of negligent homicide and negligent assault, both misdemeanors, stemming from a Jan. 4 drug raid at Wilson’s Third Street home in which Tarika Wilson, 26, and her son, Sincere, were shot.
The jury deliberated for about three hours.
The verdicts followed 3½ days of testimony in Allen County Common Pleas Court, including an account of the raid by Sergeant Chavalia.
He told the jury that as he climbed the staircase of the house with another SWAT team member directly behind him, he saw a shadowy figure duck in and out of a doorway at the end of the dark hallway at the same time he heard gunfire.
Sergeant Chavalia said he was “absolutely, positively” certain he was being fired at, and he returned fire even though he could not see the person he was shooting at.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080804/NEWS03/278571422
I was shocked when they came back with an acquittal. Apparently the jury found just cause for the officer to fire at a woman kneeling on the ground holding a baby. The whole situation is disgusting.
Russ, you apparently are ignorant of the current events of which you speak.
The US has in fact condemned the Russian aggression in Georgia. In fact President Bush condemned it as recent as today, specifically condemning the civillian loss of life.
Pretty freaking ironic huh?
Russ is a coward.
As a ‘foreigner’, I couldn’t care less who wins a “democratic election” when the country is give a choice between two millionaires, but the Black candidate is the bad guy in a story about rednecks killing a Black guy. I guess you feel that ‘sum upiddy folks don no there place’.
(I’m actually pulling for McCain a little).
This is only a story because a Cop was even charged. White Police Officers beat and/or kill a minority, isn’t that what page 36 of most US newspapers is for?
The US received howls of criticism for its targeted strikes on insurgents who deliberately hid among civilians in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Even Barack Obama criticized American tactics in the latter, saying that all we were doing was “air raiding villages and killing civilians”. Israel got the same criticism during its war with Hezbollah, which also hid among civilians.
So when will we hear criticism from Obama, MoveOn, and the rest of the critics over these tactics by Russia? Georgia is fielding a uniformed army, clearly identifiable and operating under command of the state. Why does Russia need to bomb civilian centers under these conditions?
Update: Here’s the video of Obama ripping American tactics in Afghanistan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLlyjGjeZIY
America waits with bated breath the LEFT”S and Obama’s expected swift and merciless condemnation of Russian tactics! PS: we won’t really hold our breath because the 2 percenters here, no matter what, still will ALWAYS consider America the world’s WORST violator of human rights…………
Russ,
Just read your last two comments and I was wondering whether you think Citizen Kane was a better movie than Casablanca. While you’re at it what do you think about synthetic vs.regular motor oil? Now to really get down to essentials, do you prefer white bread or whole wheat?
Rafflaw & Gyges tried to engage you in a discussion on the topic and you respond with non sequiturs, referring to Obama, and using ignorant examples to boot. The topic was police brutality, which you seem to approve of and support. When engaged, rather than defend your positions you post two comments attacking Obama. The inescapable conclusion is that you’re a troll. Now unless you’re getting paid to troll, what mystifies me is what pleasure do you get out of doing it?
Russ,
As interesting as those two horribly reasoned asides might be (Obama is wrong for wanting to change America because America has needed change), it would be nice if you answered the challenges to your earlier statement.
Where exactly does personal responsibility figure into this whole issue? How is it childish for Raff to want to discuss the issue? What was up with your badly thought out attempt to discredit global warming?
Russians bomb Georgian city
Posted at 11:40 am on August 9, 2008
Wouldn’t this constitute a war crime? The Russians dropped bombs on the city of Gori today, killing civilians, while announcing that they had taken the capital of South Ossetia back from Georgia.
Russian air attacks over northern Georgia intensified on Saturday morning, striking two apartment buildings in the city of Gori and clogging roads out of the area with fleeing refugees.
Russian authorities said their forces had retaken the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, from Georgian control during the morning hours. They reported that 15 Russian peacekeepers and 1,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict.
Georgian forces shot down 10 Russian combat planes over the last two days, according to Alexander Lomaya, secretary of the Georgian National Security Council.
Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, called the attack on Gori a “major escalation,” and said he expected attacks to increase over the course of Saturday. He said some 16 Russian planes were in the air over Georgian territory at any given time on Saturday, four times the number of sorties seen Friday.
The US received howls of criticism for its targeted strikes on insurgents who deliberately hid among civilians in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Even Barack Obama criticized American tactics in the latter, saying that all we were doing was “air raiding villages and killing civilians”. Israel got the same criticism during its war with Hezbollah, which also hid among civilians.
So when will we hear criticism from Obama, MoveOn, and the rest of the critics over these tactics by Russia? Georgia is fielding a uniformed army, clearly identifiable and operating under command of the state. Why does Russia need to bomb civilian centers under these conditions?
Update: Here’s the video of Obama ripping American tactics in Afghanistan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLlyjGjeZIY
America waits with bated breath the LEFT”S and Obama’s expected swift and merciless condemnation of Russian tactics!
August 8th, 2008 4:24 PM Eastern
What Is Obama Talking About?
By Betsy Newmark
High School History and Government Teacher/Blogger
Occasionally, Obama has indicated that he has a weak sense of American history. He didn’t seem to know that the Cold War was not a time when the world was standing as one. He didn’t know the history of presidential summits and seems to think that FDR and Truman met with our nation’s enemies. He didn’t know how the Nuremberg Trials worked. And I’m not even talking about his mistake that Americans liberated Auschwitz.
But I think his remark when the little girl asked him why he decided to run for president and he gave this response.
“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”
As you watch the video, it’s clear that he formed his words carefully and was thinking about how to answer the little girl.
I’m wondering when is the time that Obama thinks that we were what we could be. It couldn’t have been when we had slavery. So that takes us to 1865. It couldn’t be when we had states divided by terrible Jim Crow laws that segregated society and disenfranchised an entire race. So that takes us to the mid-1960s. It probably wasn’t when we were divided and torn apart by the Vietnam War and racial violence. So that takes us to the 1970s. I doubt that it was when we were suffering devastating stagflation and seeing our hostages being paraded in front of the cameras. So that takes us to 1980. We’re left with the Reagan-Bush years. Is Obama yearning for Morning in America? Many conservatives remember that period with nostalgia; does Obama share that feeling? No, certainly not the 1980s, that decade of greed.
Or is he talking about the Clinton years? Was that the time when we were what we could be? Why then run against Hillary Clinton? And that was a time when we were supposedly being divided by bitter partisanship. Is he yearning for the time when the Republicans controlled Congress? The days of impeachment? Or is he thinking about when we had our heads in the sand regarding the growing development of Al Qaeda terrorism? If that was the one period in our time when we were what we could be, then wouldn’t he have wanted to put that team back in the White House? And we know that he isn’t talking about the Bush years. So what was he talking about?
This matches up with some of the things his wife has said. His wife thinks that we are a “downright mean” country.
Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”
We can narrow down when that better time was as far as his wife is concerned. She says it’s gotten worse over her lifetime and she’s 44. I’m still trying to figure out when in the past 44 years she thinks that it was better. Ed Morrissey reminds us of some other remarks that Michelle Obama has said that indicated her dislike of this country. It now seems that her husband shares some of that disdain. Or does he? She’s also said that this is the first time in her adult life that she is proud of America because America had the good sense to vote for her husband. So does she think that we’re now being what we could be? Or was her childhood during the 1960s and 70s that time when America was so good. It’s all very confusing.
As Jennifer Rubin says, this remark wasn’t a gaffe, but a theme.
But really, it is not just a matter of an off-the-cuff remark. (By the way can you imagine that if Joe Biden is selected as VP he might actually be the less gaffe-prone of the two?) That gloomy assessment and glum world outlook is essential to his message. Remember: if the country is not in dire straits then no ordinary, experienced politician will do. We have to throw away the playbook, take a leap of faith and elect the One Who Is Like No Other. So of course everything must be worse than before — why else would we need Him?
You know, this wasn’t a tough question. She was asking him why he wanted to be president. Ever since Roger Mudd flummoxed Teddy Kennedy, candidates have known how to answer that question. He could have talked about the challenges that our country faces and how he wanted to lead us to a better tomorrow. He was given an opening to talk about how much he loves this country and wants to serve it. If he had to return to his usual solipsism, he could have talked about how proud he is to be the first candidate of a mixed racial heritage to be nominated by a major political party and how far we have come from our grim racial history and how he is looking forward to leading the country as we continued our progress.
Many liberals supporting Obama’s campaign probably don’t see anything wrong with Obama’s reply. But those aren’t the people he needs to convince. If he’s worry about those bitter, clinging voters who voted for Hillary in the primaries, this sort of talk isn’t going to win them over.
And I hope that one day, some reporter, or maybe just another seven-year old child, will ask him. When exactly were those golden, halcyon days? What are all those qualities that he believes represent what we can be and what we once were? And when exactly was that period in American history when we satisfied all those criteria? I hope that those journalists or townhall participants at Obama events who will be trying to think of what questions to ask Obama if they get the opportunity will consider asking him when we were what we could be and if we were waiting for the change that we would be today back then? It all is very confusing, but I’m sure that he can deconstruct it for us.
It reminds me of people who continually whine that fifty years ago or more we never had the number or severity of tornadoes we see now so of course global warming is happening.
Of course common sense tells you there were neither the number of people, the cameras, reporters, or communication devices to report on tornados.>>
Russ,
I know this is a legal blog, but I can’t let this slide by. There are many ways to determine weather patterns in the past other then direct observation. Plant growth patterns, soil samples, geographic formations all can be used to draw conclusions from.
But that’s a little unnecessary, all you would need to find a pattern is records from several locations. I don’t have a guess as to how many or how far a part they would have to be, but the theory is sound. It would work for the same reason that polls don’t have to call everybody in the country to get a good idea of how the American people feel. Since the time period you’re talking about is recent (only the 1950s) one could simply look at town records and newspapers. Town locations don’t change, and very few people are so unobservant as to not see a tornado passing near enough to a town to be within modern city limits. So all you would need to do would be to look at the number of reported incidents for several locations to see what the average trend is.
LJM,
I think you hit the nail on the head. It seems personal responsibility has only been a claim by the Republicans. They don’t practice what they preach.
When you have 300 million people in a country that has is being protected by a stressed out police force because of welfare families, illegals, drugs, and people like you that think the world owes them a living, of course you are going to have issues with a protection force.
Ahhh, I see. Police brutality is caused by drugs, illegal aliens, and poor people. It’s not really anything to do with cops who think they’re above the law and superior to civilians.
So, basically, conservatives believe in “personal responsibility” except when it comes to the police. And you believe in fewer government powers except when it comes to authority. Sweet, sweet, authority. You realize, of course, that blind loyalty to government authority is a traditional socialist quality? You pinko commie, you! 😉
Susan,
I lived through the Civil Rights era and witnessed the beatings and high pressure hose techniques and police dog taunting that went on against blacks, but it seems that we are seeing a new wave of beatings and lately, taserings in large numbers. Even when you factor in the cameras and the subsequent new coverage or internet coverage, it seems to be increasing. Michael Spindell might be right in suggesting that the media fear mongering coupled with the possible fact that people may be getting de-sensitzed to the violent responses by some police officers. Maybe it is the same reaction some people have had to the admission of the Bush Administration
that they tortured detainees. I sometimes get the response that if the President thinks torture will keep us safe from the “evil doers”, then they are all for it. Notwithstanding that it is illegal and immoral.
Russ,
What can I say to you that you might actually understand? If you read my posting I asked if it was just the multitude of cameras now that is catching them more. I will respond to your insults for the last time. Bringing up an issue for discussion is far from childish, but I guess you don’t understand that concept. As to what you stated, even someone like you understands the pressures the police force is under, but they cannot be allowed to go beyond the line of professionalism and when they do, they must be dealt with fairly and completley. By that I mean they cannot be allowed on the force after an incident like this(if found guilty) and their fellow police officers that actively assist in the beatings or in a coverup must also be separated from this position of authority. When they are allowed to resume their duties it only enforces their sense of arrogance. I don’t think anyone,except the neocons don’t want the police officers to earn a proper living. As to your other, off-handed insult that I am one who thinks the world owes a living to, my first reaction is to lash out, but that wouldn’t be professional or reasonable. I will suggest that you may want to try acting like a professional here and it just may make you a better person. Maybe there is still hope for you. No charge for that advice by the way.
Rafflaw,
As Susan said and as you already know, it has been going on for a long, long time. A long standing tension in our country, since its’ start, has been whether the powers that be actually respect the Bill of Rights. I think that almost 3 decades of faux-conservative dominance has created a mindset in the public that criminals are coddled and the police are hamstrung in doing their jobs.
Many police have bought into the rhetoric and feel put upon by the laws restraining their actions. The faux-conservative meme gives them permission to act out when they feel their authority is being tested and gives juries the rationale for not punishing illegal behavior by police. Add the satiation of “Cop Shows” on the TV, which present stereotyped “bogeyman” villains and the overuse of force seems reasonable and necessary to a majority of the public.
rafflaw; your inquery about “What is it with all of these police brutality stories” is a pretty childish question.
It reminds me of people who continually whine that fifty years ago or more we never had the number or severity of tornadoes we see now so of course global warming is happening.
Of course common sense tells you there were neither the number of people, the cameras, reporters, or communication devices to report on tornados.
When you have 300 million people in a country that has is being protected by a stressed out police force because of welfare families, illegals, drugs, and people like you that think the world owes them a living, of course you are going to have issues with a protection force.
It could be worse, you could have to have cash lying around to give to the police just to get them to come to your home in the event of a problem like happens in so many parts of the world, including Europe.
Susan,
I had forgotten about the “boot camp trial” case. I can only hope that the juries will understand that some of these police are out of countrol.
Rafflaw, I think this kind of police brutality, particularly by white officers on black “suspects,” has been going on for a very long time, and the white officers hardly ever face dismissal or criminal charges for their despicable actions. But even cameras catching the action doesn’t necessarily lead to a conviction. The Florida “boot camp trial” last year, where seven officers and one nurse were acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing in the death of teenager Martin Lee Anderson, is proof that video evidence isn’t always enough to convict. And juries who are convinced that “law enforcement is NEVER wrong” will always acquit.
What is it with all of these police brutality stories? Is it just that there are more cameras now and they are being caught more? The city better start putting their spare change in the piggy bank because these officers just cost the city a bundle. Tasered and beaten? Wow.