The New Haven Independent has published some disturbing pictures of Tomas Torres who says that police raided his apartment looking for drugs and immediately punched him in the face, stomped on his head, and then laughed at him as they tore apart his apartment. They found no drugs and charged him with no crimes. He was left with bruises and an apartment that was completely trashed.
When asked about the raid, Lt. J. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police, denied that he had any record of state police action anywhere in New Haven on Wednesday and said the account sounded suspicious.
However, Lt. Jeff Hoffman, who oversees the city’s Tactical Narcotics Unit, confirmed the raid and said that Torres resisted detention when police pulled him back in from a window. After finding no drugs, the officers let him go to the hospital where they doctors determined that his arm was fractured.
Torres is looking for a lawyer and is likely to find some interest given the significant injuries and condition of the apartment. This is a common complaint from citizens who have had their apartments “tossed” by police. While police departments often note that there is a process for property damage claims, the process is often long and bureaucratic. Moreover, small damages like trashing the apartment or walls are difficult to establish and even more difficult to secure damages for in this process.
In this case, Torres says that he did not hear an identification of the officers — a standard practice in a “knock and announce.” Unless police have a no knock warrant, they are supposed to clearly identify themselves. Torres said that he thought drug dealers were breaking into his apartment. The degree of bruising and injury would seem to reflect a significant level of force. Of course, the police need to be heard on the allegations of resistance by Torres. However, the allegations clearly warrant further investigation given these pictures and the medical records. What is also notable is that Torres was not charged with assaulting police officers — a charge that is often filed with limited physical contact.
For citizens in the underclass, such raids are well-known but usually out of the sight and mind of mainstream media. These pictures (if found to be legitimate) offer a rare glimpse into the results of some raids.
Source: New Haven Independent
Thanks for the dinner update… Few details, but enough that I’m salivating… Yum…
anon nurse,
As an aside from another thread … dinner was absolutely marvelous. Seven courses, three wines … it took 31/2 hours to enjoy. It was the best present we have ever given each other.
I’m with lotta and anon nurse on this one.
Until police officers who do this are fired and imprisoned, this will continue to happen. -Bette Noir
BN,
True. But as Jill indicated, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Still, I wish it would… We need to get the bullies and authoritarian types out of law enforcement. Again, it’s not likely to happen, but it should…
Well said, Jill. I agree that, in general, the police won’t be arrested for their crimes. Only the most egregious crimes will get the attention of the public — a case in point: the murder of Kelly Thomas in Fullerton, CA this past summer. ( Regarding our police state (which isn’t yet obvious to some), you wrote: “It does that through psychological mechanisms such as propaganda and it reinforces silence through actual physical violence.”
I would modify your statement by adding “psychological violence”, through harassment, defamation, mail-tampering, vandalism, sneak ‘n peek searches, and by taking away any sense of privacy that one might have once enjoyed, which clearly has, as Professor Turley has said, “a chilling effect”…
Lottakatz, I agree that the war on drugs is “only an excuse to terrorize citizens.” Almost any excuse will do these days, it seems. The gov has its goons and thugs (including informants and snitches) working the streets of America, but these street “games” are run beneath the radar…
This is not the America that we want to be our legacy… It may already be too late, but it will certainly be too late, if we do nothing.
————–
The War at Home: Militarized Local Police Tap Post-9/11 Grants to Stockpile Combat Gear, Use Drones
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/27/the_war_at_home_militarized_local
anon nurse and Bette Noir,
I agree with you both but I do not think police will be arrested for their crimes. It would take a different type of citizenry than we currently have in the US to force the return of the rule of law.
Right now both the majority of people in the US agree on the following:
1. a president may torture
2. a president may kill American citizens on his/her own say so
3. people may be indefinitely imprisoned without trial
4. people may have all their communications monitored
5. the US should be a global, military empire
6. it is fine that 1/2 of our people are in poverty or near the poverty level
7. the banking industry may continue to commit criminal acts with impunity, right now the total stolen lies at at least 23 trillion-this is acceptable
8. the rule of law and the Constitution do not matter
9. the abuse of protesters is acceptable
I say the majority of people agree that the above items are acceptable because the majority of people will vote for candidates who hold these positions. If they did not on some level countenance these positions, they could not vote for candidates who are currently or will in the future implement these policies.
Because the political/corporate/military class understands that they have the backing of the majority of our population, they will continue these policies. There will be no arrests, only an increasing amount of police state powers brought against anyone who dissents. In the meantime, the majority of the population will consent to police state powers used against dissenters and they themselves will make certain, in their own way, to silence the dissenters, including the dissent inside their own conscience (at least those who have one).
Until police officers who do this are fired and imprisoned, this will continue to happen.
Citizens who speak up will be taught a lesson. Citizens as a whole will be taught the lesson that resistance is futile and that anything can happen to you at any time. -Jill
And it’s so much worse than many realize…
The police continue to take their cues from the thugs and goons at the top.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/snapshots_of_washingtons_essence/singleton/
Excerpt:
Americans love to think that they are so very informed as a result of the robust, free press they enjoy, while those primitive, benighted Muslims are tragically manipulated and propagandized by their governments. Yet here we have an extraordinarily consequential “vast drone/killing operation,” and while those in the Muslim world are well aware of what it is and what it does and debate all of that openly and vigorously, Americans are largely kept in the dark about it. That’s because: (a) the U.S. Government shields it all in secrecy (hiding it from nobody except their own citizens); (b) the U.S. media generally avoid highlighting the innocent victims of American violence; and — most of all — (c) this is all now enshrined as bipartisan consensus, with the GOP consistently approving of any covert government aggression that kills foreigners, and Democrats remaining mute because it is their leader doing it.
That’s why this Post article provides such a vivid snapshot of what Washington is and how it works.Americans love to think that they are so very informed as a result of the robust, free press they enjoy, while those primitive, benighted Muslims are tragically manipulated and propagandized by their governments. Yet here we have an extraordinarily consequential “vast drone/killing operation,” and while those in the Muslim world are well aware of what it is and what it does and debate all of that openly and vigorously, Americans are largely kept in the dark about it. That’s because: (a) the U.S. Government shields it all in secrecy (hiding it from nobody except their own citizens); (b) the U.S. media generally avoid highlighting the innocent victims of American violence; and — most of all — (c) this is all now enshrined as bipartisan consensus, with the GOP consistently approving of any covert government aggression that kills foreigners, and Democrats remaining mute because it is their leader doing it. That’s why this Post article provides such a vivid snapshot of what Washington is and how it works. (end excerpt)
“Cities that broke up Occupy camps now face lawsuits over free speech, use of force
By davidswanson – Posted on 26 December 2011
By Associated Press
Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities’ mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.
Lawyers representing protesters have filed lawsuits — or are planning them — in state and federal courts from coast to coast, challenging eviction orders and what they call heavy-handed police tactics and the banning of demonstrators from public properties.
Some say the fundamental right of protest has been criminalized in places, with protesters facing arrest and charges while doing nothing more than exercising protected rights to demonstrate.
“When I think about the tents as an expression of the First Amendment here, I compare it to Tahrir Square in Egypt,” said Carol Sobel, co-chairwoman of the National Lawyers Guild’s Mass Defense Committee.
“Our government is outraged when military forces and those governments come down on the demonstrators. But they won’t extend the same rights in this country,” she said. “They praise that as a fight for democracy, the values we treasure. It comes here and these people are riffraff.”
A handful of protesters began camping out in September in a lower Manhattan plaza, demanding an end to corporate excess and income inequality, and were soon joined by scores of others who set up tents and remained around the clock. Similar camps sprang up in dozens of cities nationwide and around the world, but patience wore thin, and many camps — including the flagship at Zuccotti Park and in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore. — were forcibly cleared.
Public officials and police unions have generally defended moves to break up the camps, citing health and safety concerns. They also said that responding to problems at Occupy encampments was draining crime-fighting resources.
Protester lawsuits are now beginning to wend their way through the legal system, and attorneys say more are likely on the way.
The National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California sued the Oakland Police Department in federal court in November, saying police and other agencies violated demonstrators’ Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force — including “flash-bang” grenades — against demonstrators who posed no safety threat. The suit says officials also violated their First Amendment rights to assemble and demonstrate.
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on Wednesday announced an independent investigation into the police response.
In Austin, Texas, this week, a federal judge has been hearing the case of two Occupy protesters who were arrested and later barred from City Hall under a policy their attorneys call overly broad and say amounts to a ban on speech. The Texas Civil Rights Project says around 106 people have been banned since the protests began, in some cases for up to a year. The policy says a criminal trespass notice may be issued for “unreasonably disruptive” conduct.
Yvette Felarca is among those suing campus police and administration officials at the University of California, Berkeley, after officers forcefully dispersed a group of Occupy protesters and others rallying for public education last month.
Felarca, a middle school teacher and organizer with the civil rights organization By Any Means Necessary, which filed the suit, says she was standing, arms linked with other demonstrators’, before a line of police officers who moved in after some tents were set up on a lawn. She said she was chanting and yelling when a police officer hit her in the throat with his baton. She said she was also hit in her ribs, abdomen and back and watched others bear repeated blows.
“The brutality was absolutely designed to chill the speech of students in the movement and literally try to beat and terrorize our right to criticize, to think critically and to act on that criticism,” Felarca said.
The university has called it “disconcerting” that the suit contains “so many inaccuracies.”
Sobel, of the National Lawyers Guild, said a lawsuit is also planned in the case of the pepper-spraying by campus police of peaceful protesters at the University of California, Davis, video footage of which went viral.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the lawsuits an important check on police power. She noted that authorities haven’t been uniformly excessive around the country, but pointed in New York City to mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge — which are under litigation — as well as the pepper-spraying of several women and the dark-of-night breakup of Zuccotti Park.
She said that her group has been concerned for years about police tactics, but that the response to the Occupy movement shines a light on them in a way that “engages and offends a new sector of the public.”…” read the rest at warisacrime.org
REALLY?
” Lt. Jeff Hoffman, who oversees the city’s Tactical Narcotics Unit, confirmed the raid and said that Torres resisted detention when police pulled him back in from a window. After finding no drugs, the officers let him go to the hospital where they doctors determined that his arm was fractured.”
Fractured how?
Lotta,
You are right. It was a terrorism scene. I hope the injured citizen is able to extract a large sum from the city and the police. Maybe money loss will deter this illegal activity if the government won’t stop them.
These actions should be linked to other uses of excessive force. The actions of TSA, the FBI, unnamed, presumably mercenary thugs hired to suppress dissent in NYC, they are all related. As Lottakatz points out, these actions terrorize ordinary citizens. The level of violence and destruction is well out of proportion to any action necessary.
Given that the coordination of the police state goes straight to the top of the govt. we can see this has nothing to do with “law” enforcement. For a police state to function it must instill fear in its citizens. It does that through psychological mechanisms such as propaganda and it reinforces silence through actual physical violence.
Notice that police have made destruction of people’s homes and property “routine”. It wasn’t an accident that police ripped through tents, libraries, kitchens and medical tents at OWS camps. It is the same tactic that the military uses to suppress civilians in our wars of empire, these tactics now, along with military weapons, return to be used on our civilians.
The govt. is so completely delegitimized that propaganda alone can no longer serve its purpose of controlling the citizenry. Citizens who speak up will be taught a lesson. Citizens as a whole will be taught the lesson that resistance is futile and that anything can happen to you at any time. It is the one lesson I hope people will stand against. It will take great courage.
Well, of course cash has no name on it so it would be a simple matter for a cop to pocket the cash and no one is the wiser. Any complaint from the victim of this crime would have been dismissed as warrantless as he has no proof. Once the cash is gone; so is the victims ownership of it.
My question which i did not see an answer to is: Did the cops have a warrant at all?
Either way this mad persecution of citizens because of drugs has gone way too far. Actually it was way too far when they began it. Such a waste of money and such a judgemental and self-righteous attitude for a government to take toward a “Free” people.
I will stop now. This admittedly makes me so angry that if i go on; this comment could only degrade into namecalling and ranting.
What Pietro said. What the others said too.
Hmmm… Cops looking for drugs… I thought most had their own stuff… What would have been interesting is if they found cash but no drugs… Would they confiscate the cash…
Sue the individual officers, the superior officers, the City for municipal liability, under 42 U.S.C.A. Section 1983 for civil rights violations and under Section 1985(3) for conspiracy to deprive him of his civil rights under the 4th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution –said civil rights may include his damages to personal property for items smashed and to damage to his person including emotional distress and mental anguish (dont need an expert for mental anguish), and , oh yes, budding young lawyer of any age who has not set foot in federal court, attorney fees pursuant to Section 1988. Jury trial demand at the top of the newsletter filed in federal court. See if you can interest the landlord in being a plaintiff as well. State law supplemental claims for each tort imaginable and it does not stretch the imagination to sue for trespass, theft, assault, loss of reputation. Bring home the bacon. In summation to the jury request that they use all due respect for the law and to “toss” the defendant individual officers and the superior officers when considering punitive damages (can not get to the City of New Haven for punitive damages but you will get to them if you get the individuals tossed by the jury). Hire me as a consultant and will crap shoot the effort, do the filing papers, interrogs, and come in for the trial, second chair or first depending on your feelings about the matter, for a mere 25% of the actuals and puns and dollar for dollar on amount billed and obtained for the attorney fee award, plus plane fare.
“When asked about the raid, Lt. J. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police, denied that he had any record of state police action anywhere in New Haven on Wednesday and said the account sounded suspicious.”
I followed the link and saw the pictures, that wasn’t a police action, it was an act of terrorism. That kind of treatment is outrageous. Mr. Vance must have a short memory, that’s the second case of drug-related state action resulting in a complaint in the last 2 months according to the linked article, if you read that story it’s pretty outrageous also.
The war on drugs is only an excuse to terrorize citizens.
This is just too hard to believe – smart cops would have brought some drugs with them so they could be sure of finding some drugs there.
Plus, his name is ‘Torres’ there must be some drugs there.
OY!
Did the police video the raid, perhaps?