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NYPD

No Federal Charges Against Officer Who Shot Ramarley Graham

March 9, 2016 Lia Eustachewich, www.nypost.com , , ,
By Lia Eustachewich for New York Post - A federal grand jury will not be convened to weigh criminal charges in the police-involved shooting death of Bronx teen Ramarley Graham, officials announced Tuesday in closing the 2012 case. US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office had been investigating since 2014 whether Graham’s civil rights were violated – but concluded there was “insufficient evidence to meet the high burden of proof required for a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.”

In Dangerous Precedent, NYPD Moves To Make Resisting Arrest Felony

February 16, 2016 Staff, www.mintpressnews.com , ,
By Staff of Mint Press News - On Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton urged state legislators to consider increasing the penalty for resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. The change, he argued, would help New Yorkers “get around this idea that you can resist arrest. You can’t.” It would also give cops an easy way to turn victims of their own worst impulses into the worst class of criminal. In theory, a resisting arrest charge allows the state to further punish suspects who endanger the safety of police officers as they’re being apprehended...

The Consequences For Eric Garner’s Videographer

February 15, 2016 Luna Olavarría Gallegos, www.indypendent.or , ,
By Luna Olavarría Gallegos for The Indypendent - “Yeah, I knew what I was recording, but I didn't think he was going to die.” This is how Ramsey Orta responds when I ask him what was going through his head when he shot the video of Eric Garner’s death. Orta tells me that just a week before, he had filmed a video of his friend getting beat up by the cops on the same Staten Island block where Garner was choked by Officer Daniel Pantaleo. It has been eighteen months since the world watched the scene unfold through Orta’s cellphone and just over a year since a grand jury declined to indict Officer Pantaleo, and still, Orta is not able to keep the incident in the past...

NYPD Has Secretly Been Spying On Cell Phones Since 2008

February 12, 2016 Ryan Grenoble, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
By Ryan Grenoble for The Huffington Post - The New York Police Department has secretly tracked cell phones more than 1,000 times between 2008 and 2015, documents obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union show. The documents, released only after an inquiry under the state's Freedom Of Information Law, or FOIL, reveal for the first time the NYPD owns and uses Stingrays. Stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, are devices that mimic cell phone towers, then collect information from phones that attempt to connect to them. That information allows police to pinpoint a person's location.

Officials Outraged: Report NYPD Kicking People Out Of Homes

February 10, 2016 Sarah Ryley, www.propublica.org , , , ,
By Sarah Ryley for ProPublica and the New York Daily News - A wide swath of public officials are calling for change in response to a Daily News and ProPublica investigation about the NYPD’s use of an obscure type of lawsuit to boot hundreds of people from homes. The cases are happening almost exclusively in minority neighborhoods. Several city council members said they were considering amendments and other reforms to safeguard abuses. Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson said the statistics included in the story are “shocking.”

Leaked NYPD Union Docs: City Agrees To Cover Up Police Abuse

February 9, 2016 George Joseph, www.theguardian.com , ,
By George Joseph for The Guardian - Contracts between police and city authorities, leaked after hackers breached the website of the country’s biggest law enforcement union, contain guarantees that disciplinary records and complaints made against officers are kept secret or even destroyed. A Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts obtained from the servers of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) found that more than a third featured clauses allowing – and often mandating – the destruction of records of civilian complaints, departmental investigations, or disciplinary actions after a negotiated period of time.

Manslaughter Charge Dropped For Son Of NY Cop

February 8, 2016 Keegan Stephan, www.photographyisnotacrime.com , ,
By Keegan Stephan for PINAC. New York City - Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance this week dropped the manslaughter charge against the ex-con son of a well-connected NYPD family who was caught on video driving onto a sidewalk while texting before striking and killing an outspoken civil rights activist, then fleeing the scene on foot and evading police for more than two months, all while he was on parole after serving a three-year prison stint on drug charges. The victim was Charity Hicks, the policy director for the East Michigan Environmental Action Council and a well-known activist in the struggle for environmental justice in Detroit, especially the struggle for access to clean water.

NY Board Finds Cop Used Excessive Force Against Occupier

January 29, 2016 Keegan Stephan, www.theatlantic.com , , ,
By Keegan Stephan for PINAC - The Civilian Complaint Review Board, the New York City agency that investigates cases of NYPD misconduct, has substantiated complaints of a police sergeant using a chokehold on a Black Lives Matter protester that I caught on video in August of last year. The banned maneuver, which contributed to the death of Eric Garner, sparking Black Lives Matter demonstrations in New York City, was deployed during the arrest of two protesters at a “People’s Monday” action, a weekly demonstration that highlights cases of police brutality from around the country, and which has regularly been met with police brutality.

Documents Uncover NYPD’s Vast License Plate Reader Database

January 28, 2016 Mariko Hirose, www.huffingtonpost.com ,
By Mariko Hirose for The Huffington Post - With these stories firmly in mind, the New York Civil Liberties Union's latest license plate reader discovery is all the more chilling. Last year, we learned that the NYPD was hoping to enter into a multi-year contract that would give it access to the nationwide database of license plate reader data owned by the company Vigilant Solutions. Now, through a Freedom of Information Law request, the NYCLU has obtained the final version of the $442,500 contract and the scope-of-work proposal that gives a peek into the ever-widening world of surveillance made possible by Vigilant.

NYPD Kelly’s Emails Deleted Before He Left Office

January 2, 2016 Stephen Rex Brown, www.nydailynews.com , , ,
By Stephen Rex Brown for Daily News - Press delete. Then repeat. Most of former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s emails on his desktop computer were deleted at the end of his tenure despite an order they be preserved for a high-stakes class-action suit alleging a summons quota system within the department. New filings in Manhattan Federal Court show the city backtracking in an ongoing fight over Kelly’s missing electronic correspondence. “The majority of former Commissioner Kelly’s locally stored emails were inadvertently deleted at the conclusion of his tenure,” city attorney Curt Beck wrote to Manhattan Federal Judge Robert Sweet.

Lawsuit Aims To Stop NYPD From Targeting Free Speech

September 15, 2015 Christopher Robbins, www.gothamist.com , , ,
By Christopher Robbins in Gothamist - A new lawsuit filed in federal court last week aims to challenge a reality evident to anyone who has attended a large political gathering in Lower Manhattan over the past decade: lawful behavior is no safeguard against being arrested. The lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made around the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September 2012, when the NYPD "should have known that members of its police force would encounter individuals engaged in expressive speech activity." Instead, the NYPD continued to arrest and harass protesters for seemingly no reason other than that they were protesting. The lawsuit asserts that this is part of a "pattern, policy, and practice of the NYPD misapplying the disorderly conduct statute to peaceful protesters in New York City."

Court Of Appeals Keeps Eric Garner Grand Jury Secret

August 3, 2015 Edward McAllister, www.reuters.com , , , , ,
By Edward McAllister in Reuters - A New York state court on Wednesday declined to release details of a grand jury investigation that led to a police officer being cleared of wrongdoing in the death of Eric Garner after his chokehold arrest in Staten Island in July last year. Lawyers for civil rights groups and New York's public advocate office in June called for the release of the grand jury minutes including transcripts of testimony, exhibits and details of certain grand jurors to better understand the decision not to charge officer Daniel Pantaleo for Garner's death. Garner was black and Pantaleo is white, and the case caused widespread protests last year. The lawyers did not establish a compelling reason for disclosure of the minutes, the appellate division of New York State's Supreme Court said on Wednesday.

Eric Garner Family Reaches Settlement Of $5.9 Million

July 13, 2015 Kelly McLaughlin, www.dailymail.co.uk , , , , ,
By Kelly McLaughlin in The Daily Mail - As the family of Eric Garner awaits closure a year after the father-of-six's untimely death, the police officer who put the 43-year-old in a fatal chokehold said that he can't wait to get back on the job. Though he's been stripped of his gun and is receiving death threats, 30-year-old Daniel Pantaleo wants to keep working for the New York City police, his lawyer said. 'The unbelievable part is this has not soured him one bit on doing law enforcement,' his lawyer Stuart London told the New York Daily News. 'It hasn't diminished his desire to help the citizens of this city.' Garner's widow, however, is enraged that there is even a possibility Pantaleo could get his job back.

The Fight Over Eric Garner Grand Jury Records Continues

June 17, 2015 Christopher Mathias, www.huffingtonpost.com , , ,
By Christopher Mathias in Huffington Post - Nearly a year after Eric Garner died at the hands of police, an appeals court Tuesday heard oral arguments over whether to unseal records from the grand jury investigation into his death. A panel of four justices with the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court grilled lawyers from three civil rights groups, as well as a lawyer from the office of New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, over why there might be a “compelling and particularized” need to release the records. Despite video evidence showing New York Police officer Daniel Pantaleo putting Garner into a prohibited chokehold during an arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes in Staten Island last July, a grand jury in December declined to indict Pantaleo.

NYPD Considers Amnesty For 1.2 Million, Arrested Too Many

May 26, 2015 Jackson Marciana, www.countercurrentnews.com , , , ,
The New York Police Department is being forced to acknowledge they have arrested far too many people for victimless crimes. Now, the department admits they will have to do something about it. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has publicly accepted the fact that “millions” have been convicted of crimes that they should never have been jailed for. The new controversial proposal suggests the City of New York grant amnesty to over 1 million citizens who have open warrants for low-level, clearly victimless offenses. The prison industry warns that this will “cause crime to skyrocket,” but what they seem more worried about is the bottom line for their for-profit, tax-payer-funded prison schemes.
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