November 5, 2014 2:09 PM
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An
anti-police brutality protest Wednesday shut down a stretch of Hollywood
Boulevard, police said.
More than 100 protesters took
part in the march along Hollywood near Cahuenga Boulevard around 1:45 p.m,
according to LAPD Media Relations.
Some protesters were seen
wearing masks and carrying signs. The protest was believed to be linked to
other “Million Mask March” protests in dozens of cities across the U.S. and
internationally.
Some LAPD officers were seen in
images posted to social media lined up outside the Dolby Theater.
Various other protests were
recorded in Washington, D.C., London, Argentina, and other locations.
Police closed down a section of
Hollywood Boulevard to traffic and urge drivers to avoid the intersection near
Las Palmas.
NYPD officers charged after
video catches teen getting pistol whipped
DA says cops "hit a
defenseless unarmed young man in the mouth and attacked him."
by David Kravets - Nov 7 2014,
12:
"The video speaks for
itself, doesn’t it?" Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said
Wednesday about a brief video recording that led to two New York Police
Department cops being charged in connection to the pistol-whipping assault of a
16-year-old Brooklyn boy. The boy, who was arrested for marijuana possession,
ended up with broken teeth and bruises.
The officers charged in
Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday are David Afanador, 33, and Tyrane Isaac,
36, both nine-year veterans.
The 82-second video of the
teen's August 29 beating—widely available on the Internet—was captured by a
local Crown Heights business. The tape shows the boy running before eventually
stopping and raising his hands, after which he is pummeled and taken to the
ground.
Thompson, the district
attorney, told the New York Daily News that the two officers, who remain free
and are scheduled to appear in court next month, "hit a defenseless
unarmed young man in the mouth and attacked him while he tried to
surrender." The cops' attorney, Stephen Worth, said there's more to the
tape than meets the eye. "We’ve tried these cases in front of juries and
we won these case in front of juries and I expect this to happen here as
well," the New York Daily News quoted him as saying.
The officers' indictment
follows a nationwide string of police brutality incidents caught on tape, some
of which have had severe repercussions for the arresting officers. As the
surveillance society blossoms—with the growth of surveillance cams, mobile
phone cameras, and YouTube—the authorities can no longer turn a blind eye to
police brutality.
A Staten Island grand jury, for
example, is considering police brutality charges in connection to the death of
a New York man who died while police arrested him for selling unlicensed
cigarettes in July. Immediately following 42-year-old Eric Garner's arrest, the
NYPD said the victim "went into cardiac arrest and died." But footage
captured from an onlooker's mobile phone told a different story. As several
offers subdued Garner, one allegedly using a choke hold, he is overheard
yelling, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe."
In September, a South Carolina
highway trooper was charged with assault and battery in connection to the
unprovoked shooting of a motorist pulled over for a seatbelt violation—an
incident that was videotaped by the officer's own dashcam.
Police misconduct in general
has hit the limelight following the August 9 shooting death of an unarmed
18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
That incident—which was not
videotaped—sparked massive protests and widespread calls from politicians and
the public for police to wear body cams. Ferguson police started using them a
month after the shooting, as have other departments. The Minneapolis Police
Department announced Friday that it had begun deploying the devices.
