There is an interesting development in the case of North Augusta (S.C.) officer Justin Craven in the alleged murder of 68-year-old Ernest Satterwhite. Despite public disclosure laws, the police are refusing to release the videotape because they describe it as shocking and disturbing. Some would argue that that is precisely why it should be available to the public.
Craven tried to pull over Satterwhite for suspected DUI and followed him home after Satterwhite refused to pull over. However, the dashboard camera reportedly captured Craven running up to Satterwhite’s car on his driveway and fired several shots through the closed door. While he said that Satterwhite tried to grab his gun, prosecutors concluded otherwise and charged him. However, he was not charged with murder. The grand jury did not return a voluntary manslaughter charges (which would have come with a potential 30 year sentence). He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of misconduct in office and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle.
SLED Chief Mark Keel said that releasing the video would hamper the officer’s right to a fair trial. Accordingly, freedom of information requests were denied. Yet, agencies are supposed to give specific reasons for withholding videotape like undermining efforts to arrest a suspect. One of those reasons is generally not embarrassing or public reaction.
At the same time, the city reached a $1.2 million settlement with the family but required them to sign an agreement not to disclose it to anyone else.
For his part, Solicitor Donnie Myers says that he will not release the film until after it is used in court because “the premature release of the video to be used at trial … would be harmful, unfairly prejudice the pre-trial opinions of potential jurors, prejudicial to the defendant and not in the interest of justice.”
This could make for an interesting challenge by the media. Any court or prosecutor could refuse virtually any videotape out of concern for its influence on a trial. How would such an exception be measured? In the meantime, as a matter of great public importance, the community would be denied the clearest evidence of the alleged misconduct of its police department.
What do you think?
Source: Big Story
In the town next to me a police officer was let go for raping a woman on the hood of his police car after he offered her a ride home after an accident. Turns out it wasn’t his first force.I think he was simply let go. The Palm Beach Post had a hard time of getting even this information from the county public records.
It just seems that in recent years, (well, actually since the boys starting coming back from Iraq and getting preferred for jobs in police departments)
criminal and thuggish behaviour among the police has become rampant.
This officer was killed today. Maybe you can think of a reason to hate him.
The Coeur d’Alene Police Department is profoundly sorrowful to confirm the death of our fellow officer Sergeant Greg Moore who passed away from his injuries from a gun-shot wound at 5:50 pm today.
Words cannot adequately express the level of mourning we feel for Sergeant Moore’s family and our law enforcement family.
We appreciate all of the kindness our community has shown to our officers, and the thoughtful prayers said for Sergeant Moore. We wish to express our sincerest gratitude to the dedicated, professional, emergency first responders, and medical team and staff at Kootenai Health that cared for Greg in an effort to save him.
Please respect the privacy of his family at this time while they tend to funeral arrangements.
Sergeant Greg Moore was a highly respected member of the Coeur d’Alene Police Department who faithfully served his community for the past sixteen years. Among his numerous accomplishments he was honored and awarded the Police Star for bravery and professionalism earlier this year.
Sergeant Moore began his law enforcement career as a Deputy Sheriff for Asotin County Washington in December of 1997 and stayed with that agency until March of 1999. In April of 1999 he began his distinguished career with the Coeur d’Alene Police Department. He quickly ascended to leadership positions as a Police Reserve Officer Coordinator, a Field Training Officer, a School Resource Officer, and in 2012 he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Sergeant Moore had many special skills and training certifications including as a Post Certified Instructor in Arrest Techniques, Instructor for Communications, and he was a member of the Hostage Negotiation Team.
In 2007 he was named Kootenai County Top Cop by the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council for his efforts in DUI enforcement. Sergeant Greg Moore was a mentor and trusted friend to his fellow officers at Coeur d’Alene Police Department. He lived his life with honor, dedication and loyalty as a public servant to the citizens of Coeur d’Alene. Even more importantly he was a dedicated husband and father of two wonderful children.
No further comment will be made tonight
John Whitehead commenting on the financial costs to taxpayers: “…the ones who rarely ever feel the pinch are the officers accused or convicted of wrongdoing, “even if they are disciplined or terminated by their department, criminally prosecuted, or even imprisoned.” Indeed, a study published in the NYU Law Review reveals that 99.8% of the monies paid in settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases never come out of the officers’ own pockets, even when state laws require them to be held liable. Moreover, these officers rarely ever have to pay for their own legal defense.
For instance, law professor Joanna C. Schwartz references a case in which three Denver police officers chased and then beat a 16-year-old boy, stomping “on the boy’s back while using a fence for leverage, breaking his ribs and causing him to suffer kidney damage and a lacerated liver.” The cost to Denver taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $885,000. The amount the officers contributed: 0.
Kathryn Johnston, 92 years old, was shot and killed during a SWAT team raid that went awry. Attempting to cover their backs, the officers falsely claimed Johnston’s home was the site of a cocaine sale and went so far as to plant marijuana in the house to support their claim. The cost to Atlanta taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $4.9 million. The amount the officers contributed: 0.
Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, a police officer was convicted of raping a woman in his police car, in addition to sexually assaulting four other women and girls, physically abusing two additional women, and kidnapping or falsely imprisoning five men and boys. The cost to the Albuquerque taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $1,000,000. The amount the officer contributed: 0.
Human Rights Watch notes that taxpayers actually pay three times for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: “once to cover their salaries while they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through payments into police ‘defense’ funds provided by the cities.”
Still, the number of times a police officer is actually held accountable for wrongdoing while on the job is miniscule compared to the number of times cops are allowed to walk away with little more than a slap on the wrist….”
Great link Jane.
Wow Jane, it’s even worse than we thought.
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/231/5/4/some_animals_are_more_equal_than_others__by_gasketfuse-d5bq5r1.png
John Whitehead – “…Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren’t even aware that police officers have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing, 14 states have already adopted LEOBoRs—written by police unions and being considered by many more states and Congress—which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.
In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations: questioned unmercifully for hours on end, harassed, harangued, browbeaten, denied food, water and bathroom breaks, subjected to hostile interrogations, and left in the dark about our accusers and any charges and evidence against us.
Not only are officers given a 10-day “cooling-off period” during which they cannot be forced to make any statements about the incident, but when they are questioned, it must be “for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41765.htm
Jason, I’m up for it anytime, lol.
Shall we talk about nurses neglecting and abusing patients in nursing homes, or no? It’s a problem that seems to never be resolved, no matter the amount of education provided.
Socrates was kicked out of Athens in 399 BC. Stupid police.
Apparently self-knowledge was not sufficient for a good life.
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/category/the-cops/police-abuse/
The latest in police abuse. No lack of cases, sadly.
1942? Didn’t the Japanese kill a lot more people in 1942 than the police did? Do you hate Japanese people?
1942. This is clown car level of thinking. Gotta go to 1942 to prove your hatred for cops. Well good for you. You win. You are the most hatery of cop haters. The trophy is yours. Take a victory lap.
http://policeabuse.com/index.php/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/10-services
Oh look , PI’s who investigate police abuse.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2015/05/a_bloody_history_of_police_brutality_in_baltimore.html
“Look back to 1997, when Christian Parenti explained that “police violence is soaring.” “By mid-August of [that] year Baltimore police had already shot more than 70 civilians,” he added. It was the dawn of the “zero tolerance” era.
And violence broke out in March of 1980 when “an off-duty police detective, without warning, shot and paralyzed a 17-year-old black youth,” the Associated Press reported. “The officer later said he thought the youth, Ja-Wan McGee, was going to rob a pizza parlor, but young McGee was taking a cigarette lighter out of his pocket.”
Look back even further to August 1978, when the Baltimore Afro-American broke a story about a trio of white cops. They issued black teenager Derek Copeland “a green pass giving the youth permission to walk neighborhood streets”—“similar,” the paper observed, “to the one issued by the South African government led by John Vorster.”
And the seeds of violence were there on the early morning of June 27, 1969, when Helen Smith sat on a stoop with Donald Best. Patrolman Alvin Nachman approached with his dog, and an order: “Hold the noise down.” No neighbors had complained. The dog attacked Smith first, and the officer maced her as she tried to fight off the animal. She got 75 stitches, and Best got 32 “to close the dog-bite wounds in his side and hip,” the Afro disclosed. “Both Mrs. Smith and Mr. Best were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. They were both forced to spend the night in jail after treatment for their wounds.”
But violence had hit Baltimore five years earlier. Raymond Petty drove there from Halifax, Va., to visit his sister Hazel in June 1964. She was ill and the outlook was not good. Raymond Petty was in a mild car accident after arriving. His brother Louis was at the scene; the cops arrived. The Afro described how policemen bludgeoned Louis “although they had arrested him illegally, and continued to beat him in a patrol wagon while transporting him to the police station.” He was dead two days later.
And before that, in 1956. There were five police killings in four months. Patrolman Charles Fennell shot Harry Boyd Jr. in the back on June 25. Patrolman Walter Mina Jr.’s bullet wounded Robert Harper in the leg on July 7. The blood drained from Harper’s injury until he died. On Aug. 15, Sgt. Albert Heck killed 24-year-old Frank J. Williams. Patrolman Benjamin Ledden opened fire on Sept. 19—in self-defense, he insisted—terminating Donald Jackson’s life at 23. Patrolman Marshall V. Brewer took out 14-year-old Benjamin Brown with a rifle he “didn’t know was loaded.” Of these five policemen, only Brewer was suspended.
Those were just the 1956 shootings. The Afro’s Elizabeth Murphy Oliver wrote of her visit to the Northwestern police station that September. What she saw shattered her. She “hoped it was a dream.” It wasn’t. She had witnessed “a policeman beat a man and drag him roughly on the floor while the victim writhed and rolled in agony.” Vernon Johnson “was still sobbing and holding his eye” when it ended. “Blood was dripping from somewhere.” Oliver “wondered how an eye could run blood,” as she watched Johnson’s tears fall, “mixed with blood.” The Afro visited Johnson a week later. “His eye is still closed. He doesn’t sleep much, and his chest hurts when he breathes.” But 1956 was hardly the beginning of police brutality.
No. In February 1942, Patrolman Edward Bender shot his second black victim, Thomas Broadus, as he fled. His friends rushed over to take him to the hospital. Bender blocked them, and Broadus died in the street before “scores of persons,” according to the Afro.”
And so on……
Objection your honor,1 plus 4 is assuming a fact not in evidence.
He/she/transgender just keeps peeing on both legs, and proving “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” And I mean a LITTLE knowledge. LOL!.
Boy, the VA is some kinda mess, innit? All those veterans being denied services, being lied to, being put on secret lists. Dying while waiting for medical services.
Thank heavens for the nurses who are whistleblowers.
Oh. Wait.
http://www.policemisconduct.net
Interesting coming from the Cato Institute. They seem to have a daily rundown on police misconduct.
LOL. Someone who is in a manic phase is making my case by searching archives frantically. As I point out often, there is probably no one here who knows cops better than I. MichaelH, trooperyork and I have gone toe to toe on this subject. I think they tend to revere cops and I’ve said it directly and bluntly to them. Michael has not spoken w/ me for some time, I surmise for that reason. That I would be blunt and direct w/ people should surprise no one who knows me. But, ideologues don’t understand that.
I call out bad cops all the time. I KNOW just how bad they can be. What I know would shock the haters here. Just how racist they can be. Just how corrupt they can be. Just how plain mean they can be. But, I DON’T HATE cops like the haters here. I have credibility. I call out bad cops. I defend good cops. I also know just how heroic, selfless, kind and brave cops can be. Those are the vast majority of cops. I call out cop haters, and I call out those who are blind defenders of cops. An even handed, legitimate, knowledgeable person on this subject. That’s me! An even more intense search of the archives will corroborate this. So, knock yourselves out, haters. LOL.
The only aspect that is disconcerting to me is just how pandering JT is to the haters. There’s gotta be a back story to this. It seems personal.
Back in the pre internet days I would get quarterly reports in the mail from the Dept. of Regulation and Licensing on disciplinary actions. Year in and year out the leading disciplinary action was RN’s stealing drugs from patients. LPN’s/Nurse’s Aides not as much because they don’t have the requisite education and the same security clearance for drug access like RN’s. Dentists and pharmacists were also up there in drug theft/abuse.
Mmmm…comments have gone missing. Not at my request.
Pretty sure every abortion clinic has a nurse assisting the physician. Lots and lots of lives taken.