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- Hot and fresh from The Intercept: The National Security Agency (NSA) has its own search engine containing billions of records that it shares with a dozen agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). More and more, it’s becoming clear that protecting our privacy means more than just reining in the NSA.
- First, a reminder that the Miami-Dade Police Department once choked a boy for giving an officer “dehumanizing stares,” and arrested Carlos Miller of Photography is Not a Crime, among other folks, for filming police on the job. Now, with cameras catching cops behaving badly all the time, what a damn coincidence that the local police union is fighting Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s $1 million plan to equip 500 officers with body cameras. This, according to the police union’s letter, “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations.” Considering that complaints against police also go down when body cameras are in use, there is no sensible reason—other than protecting bad cops—for a police union to object to this plan.
- On August 19, an LAPD officer and “professor of homeland security” published a disturbing editorial in The Washington Post about obeying police orders. Officer Sunil Dutta probably didn’t write the headline (“I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.”) but it does sum up what is a creepy piece. And it doesn’t bode well that a cop who wants to share his opinion seems to have the exact same opinion as the ones screaming at protesters and media in the streets.
- An ongoing lawsuit contains some disturbing allegations about one of the two Ferguson police officers who detained Huffington Post and Washington Post reporters as they sat in a McDonald’s on August 13, a day of continuous protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The civil suit accuses Officer Justin Cosma, then a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, of accosting a 12-year-old boy at the preteen’s own mailbox, accusing him of running on a highway, and then throwing him on the ground, choking him, and “hog-tying” him. The boy was taken to a hospital, but only the refusal of the local DA to prosecute prevented the officer from being charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly tweeted that “Officer Cosma was actually the nicer of the two cops who took me into custody.”
- Bystanders in a Greenville County, South Carolina, Walmart thought local deputies used excessive force during their arrest of Sandon Matthew Sierad, who was acting erratically and reportedly refusing arrest. Police Tasered him twice and then one of them hit Sierad 20 times in the back or shoulder, provoking angry cries from witnesses, some of whom spoke to local news afterwards. Video from the scene shows that the man does not appear to ever actively resist, though Master Deputy Jonathan Smith says that disturbing footage was the end of a half-hour confrontation with Sierad, who had been (presumably) drunkenly trying to break into a cash register in the store, and had also reached for a deputy’s knife. As of Monday, the deputy who punched Sierad is on administrative leave. Meanwhile Sierad is charged with “resisting arrest with assault/injury, assault and battery third degree, breach of peace, and disorderly conduct.”
- Two Fairfield, California police officers are accused of using a law enforcement database to check out potential lady-friends. Officers Stephen Ruiz and Jacob Glashoff looked up women on dating sites and then made sure the intriguing ones were kosher by checking the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System for criminal records. The officers did all of this while on the clock. They remain on active duty while the investigation takes place.
- On August 21, Oklahoma City Police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw was arrested for reportedly sexually assaulting six different women.
- The blue wall also crumbles in the face of social media idiocy. On Friday, Glendale, Missouri, police officer Matthew Pappert, who has been serving in Ferguson during some of the protests there, was suspended for some truly disturbing Facebook posts about the people outraged over the shooting of Michael Brown. One post: “These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night.” Another: “Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them." And another: “Great, thugs and white trash all in one location.”
- Meanwhile, Ray Albers of the St. Ann, Missouri, police department was indefinitely suspended without pay last week due to the fact that he pointed his semi-automatic weapon at protesters in Ferguson and said, “I will fucking kill you.” More accountability which would have never, ever happened if the incident wasn’t captured on film.
- Speaking of small progress in policing, VICE’s good cop of the week is over in Hawaii. After watching the mess in Ferguson, Kauai Police Chief Darryl Perry wants every officer on his force to have body cameras. The only downsides to this plan are that officers will be able to turn off the cameras, and that they will be purchased with asset forfeiture funds. Nevertheless, any chief who is this adamant on bringing in body cameras is moving in the right right direction and gets to be our Good Cop.
