Get ready to read A LOT of stories like this after the federal government forces the Fairfax County Occupation police force to wear body cameras

4 drunk driving cases dismissed after officer failed to record sobriety tests

By Justin Jouvenal 

A judge has dismissed four drunk-driving cases initiated by the same Fairfax County police officer after he failed to record sobriety tests using his cruiser’s audio and video systems, according to attorneys and court filings.

Attorneys argued that the failure violated police orders and deprived their clients of potentially exculpatory evidence in each case. In some cases, attorneys said defendants’ accounts of the stops varied from those provided by Officer L.F. Martinez.

“When you’ve got this type of equipment, it’s there for everyone’s protection,” said Eric Clingan, a lawyer who handled one of the cases. “It protects the police as much as the citizen.”

Dashcam video of Martinez’s stop of Clingan’s client Dec. 8 shows the officer standing next to the man’s car in the Fair Lakes area. The officer opens the man’s door, and the man follows the officer across the camera frame and then off-screen, where the sobriety test was to be performed. Court filings say the audio recording system was also turned off.

Later, the man was charged with refusing to take a sobriety test and with his second DWI within 10 years. The Washington Post is not naming the man because charges against him have been dismissed.

Under Fairfax County police general orders, officers are required to test their audio and video recording equipment before a shift and utilize both during traffic stops. Officers are also encouraged to film sobriety tests.

Martinez could not immediately be reached for comment. Fairfax police declined to discuss the specific cases that were dismissed or the judge’s ruling. But county police spokesman Don Gotthardt noted that “there is no specific requirement that the officer conducting a sobriety stop keep the subject within view of the camera.”

Clingan said the officer testified that he moved suspects off camera to perform sobriety tests in some instances to find level ground. He also testified he was reluctant to leave the suspects alone to swivel the camera in the proper direction to film the tests.

Attorneys said there were disagreements between the defendants and Martinez about factual matters, but there was no evidence that the officer intentionally conducted the tests out of view of the camera.

“The fact that the client’s versions differed so much from officer’s versions was probably a deciding factor for the court,” attorney Justin J. Weiss said. “However, it was clear that the court found a pattern of inadvertent failure to follow proper procedures with the audio and dashcam.”

Why won’t Fairfax give answers in 2009 police shooting?

Letters to the Editor

My son, David Alan Masters, was killed by Fairfax County police on Nov. 13, 2009, while at a traffic light in Fairfax County. Officer David A. Ziants, who had been following my son for about a mile, reached into the rear window and fired; one shot killed David almost instantly. David was unarmed. Mr. Ziants told investigators he thought he was chasing a car thief.

Last week, Fairfax County released a dashboard-camera video of the incident. Two officers in another police cruiser were present at the shooting. They reacted with shock at Mr. Ziants’s actions: “The [expletive] you doing, dude?”

The video, released almost six years after the shooting, is the first information released by Fairfax County authorities. Countless requests for investigative reports under the Freedom of Information Act have been rejected by the police and the county. What are they afraid of six years after the event?

Mr. Ziants was fired for improper use of deadly force. But why has he not been prosecuted? Why have the reports not been released? I am calling for an end to this conspiracy of silence concerning the death of my son. I am calling for justice.

Barrie Masters, Sanford, Fla.

Philadelphia's Osage Avenue police bombing, 30 years on: 'This story is a parable'

On 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police moved in to arrest four members of a radical black liberation group called Move – but a bungled raid left 11 people dead. Alan Yuhas revisits the only aerial bombing carried out by police on US soil

Six adults and five children were killed in the raid.

By Alan Yuhas

Alan Yuhas @alanyuhas

Sodden from the spray of fire hoses, terrified by the thousands of bullets fired above and the teargas floating into the cellar below, 13-year-old Michael Ward was hiding under a blanket when a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the roof of his west Philadelphia home.

The raid killed six adults and five children, destroyed more than 60 homes and left more than 250 people homeless. It stands as the only aerial bombing carried out by police on US soil.

The 30-year anniversary of the bombing of Osage Avenue will be commemorated without Ward, who was one of only two survivors of the disastrous assault. Instead professor Cornel West, author Alice Walker and others will give speeches and protesters will march down the crumbling, mostly abandoned block where the bombing took place, drawing ties between police brutality and institutional racism then and now.

On 13 May 1985, police moved in to arrest four members of a group called Move, a mostly black, radical organization that believed in shedding technology and “manmade law” in favor of “natural law”. After years of antagonism with police, Move had fortified a rowhome on Osage Avenue as their headquarters. They boarded up walls, built a bunker on the roof, and broadcast their anti-police ethos through a bullhorn, night and day.

Neighbors in the predominantly black, middle-class neighborhood complained about the profane tirades and how Move’s children rifled alongside rats through the house’s compost and garbage. Then district attorney Ed Rendell authorized arrest warrants and mayor Wilson Goode sent in police.

“Were we wanted for rape, robbery, murder? No, nothing,” Ramona Africa, the only living Move survivor of that day, told the Guardian. Africa linked the bombing to the recent police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray: “These people that take an oath that swear to protect, save lives – the cops don’t defend poor people, poor white, black, Latino people. They don’t defend us, they kill us.

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“All you have to do is look at the rash of police murders and the cops not being held accountable,” she added. “That should really alarm and outrage people, but the thing is that it’s happening today because it wasn’t stopped in ‘85. The only justice that can be done is people seeing this system for what it is.”

Hundreds of officers, several fire trucks and a bomb squad arrived that day, with military-grade weapons in tow. They first tried to flush out the house with firehoses. A team then blew holes in the walls to funnel in teargas, but no one budged.

“Then they just began insanely shooting, over 10,000 rounds of bullets, according to their own estimates,” Africa said. “That didn’t work, and that’s when they dropped the bomb on us, a rowhouse in an urban neighborhood.”

“The story is a parable of sorts; it’s a parable of how the unthinkable comes to happen,” said Jason Osder, the director of the documentary Let the Fire Burn. “It’s a tragedy. In my opinion everyone who was an adult in the city failed that day. Move failed, the police failed, the neighbors failed those children in some ways. Collectively, the whole city failed.”

Osder noted that police still remembered an officer killed in an altercation with Move seven years earlier, and that leadership was unwilling to risk any officer’s life. “Fear is real regardless of how illegitimate it is, and police felt that they are the wounded party.

“And on the other side people have been beaten and arrested, who fear that the justice system is rigged – not an unreasonable thing to think in 1985 or 2015.”

Eventually police tried to break the siege by bombing the bunker, which they feared would allow Move to fire on them with impunity.

“There was a real opportunity there for cooler heads to prevail,” Osder said. “But they decided it needed to be over.”

The bomb missed and started a fire. Africa and Ward – then called Birdie Africa – only fled the cellar an hour or so later when the fire had spread downstairs.

“That’s when we tried to get our children, ourselves, our animals out of that inferno,” she said, “but every time we tried to come out and we were hollering to come out the police opened fire.”

Much of what happened during the assault is disputed, including whether police shot at people who were trying to flee the house, despite the review commission that later investigated the disaster.

Officers have since described the scene as one of surreal chaos. “There’s so much fire and smoke,” former officer Jim Berghaier told Philadelphia Magazine. “We can’t tell what’s gunshots and what’s windows popping.

“It was like fantasy. Like he came out of fire,” Berghaier said, referring to Ward stepping out through the flames barefoot.

Firefighters refrained from dousing the blaze even as it spread to neighbors’ homes, a point that outrages Africa still: “How is it they could pour 40,000lbs of water per minute on us when there was no fire, but when there is fire all of a sudden they can’t use it?”

Since 1985 it’s changed, absolutely. But progress? I don’t know. Keep on it

Taking responsibility for the episode but declining to dole out specific blame, Goode only said “there was a decision to let the fire burn”.

The commission’s final report denounced the city from top to bottom. Police tactics were “grossly negligent” at best, the report found, and outrageous at worst: “Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable.” Police would not have done so, the commission noted with only one dissenter, “had the Move house and its occupants been situated in a comparable white neighborhood.”

Africa was convicted on riot charges and served seven years in prison; in 1996 she and other plaintiffs won a total $1.5m settlement from the city. Ward was placed to his father’s custody and died in 2013 after years of therapy for the bombing and his experiences with Move.

The commission recommended grand jury investigations, but no one was ever prosecuted. Goode was re-elected in 1987 and Rendell eventually became mayor. Berghaier quit the force shortly after the raid.

Race, class and the status of police and officials all came into play, Osder said, noting the relatively high proportion of black officers in the force and that Move’s black neighbors despised the group. “It’s absolutely about race every single day of the week,” he said. “But there are other dynamics too. The details matter, and you have to get into them.

“We have echoes of Ferguson and Baltimore and haven’t solved these problems, but every incident is unique. This country is very complicated. It’s certainly better than it was 200 years ago, and than it was 100 years ago. Since 1985 it’s changed, absolutely. But progress? I don’t know. Keep on it.”

A recent Justice Department review of Philadelphia’s use of force – requested by current police commissioner Charles Ramsey in 2013 – found systemic, unresolved deficiencies similar to those analyzed by the Move commission in 1986, said Greg McDonald, the attorney who was deputy director and legal counsel for the commission.

“I was struck how many DoJ recommendations were right out of the assessments from the commission, and not just the police but the city government and services,” McDonald said, listing some shared findings: “Federal authorities supplying military equipment to urban police departments, the lack of preparation and training.

“We’ve got a lot of real tinderboxes in large cities now. Move was certainly not a normal neighborhood problem, but the police reaction to it was so overdone that it reminded me of the way that police actions taking place at a much smaller scale are also overreactions.”

This has nothing to do with the police and everything to do with animals cracking me up

Laugh, damn you

We thought that cartoon was funny. Now laugh goddamn it!

Rules

School

Your going to be late for school

No, I don't know why he's doing this either....my guess is he's fuck'n idiot.

Getting away with murder...again

(CNN)

The killer cop, Matt Kenny has had “use of force” issues since 2011. He was exonerated in the fatal shooting of a 48-year-old man in 2007, in what the records said was a "suicide by cop" incident. Kenny, now 45, kneed a domestic violence suspect in the torso during a 2011 arrest, and kneed another man and pinned him to the ground in 2013.

Police officials say that on the night of the shooting, Kenny was called to an apartment over reports that Robinson had been jumping in front of cars and assaulting people.

After hearing some commotion, Kenny forced his way into the apartment and was attacked by Robinson, according to police. Kenny responded by pulling out his gun and shooting Robinson, police officials say.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Robinson’s friends and family members have said he took hallucinogenic mushrooms and was behaving erratically the day he was killed. They reject the idea that Robinson was a threat to Kenny when he was shot, the newspaper reports.

 Officer Matt Kenny of the Madison Police Department will not face charges over the shooting of 19-year-old Tony Robinson, District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said today.

"I conclude that this tragic and unfortunate death was the result of a lawful use of deadly police force and that no charges should be brought against Officer Kenny in the death of Tony Robinson Jr.," Ozanne said.

"My decision will not bring Tony Robinson Jr. back," Ozanne told reporters. "My decision will not end the racial disparities that exist in the justice system, in our justice system. My decision is not based on emotion. Rather, this decision is based on the facts as they have been investigated and reported to me."

Robinson, an unarmed biracial man, was fatally shot by Kenny on March 6 in Madison, Wisconsin, setting off days of protests in the city. His death came amid lingering tensions over the killings by police elsewhere of other unarmed African-Americans that seized national attention

Deputy gave less than two seconds before firing...and the punk will get away with it too...watch and see.

Dashcam Video Shows Police Responding to 9-1-1 Call, Show Up and Immediately Shoot the Victim

By Cassandra Fairbanks on May 12, 2015

Hollywood, SC– Newly released dashcam footage captured a disturbing scene as Deputies Keith Tyner and Richard Powell of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the home of 26-year-old Bryant Heyward, who had just been the victim of a home invasion.  Heyward had fended off the two intruders who were threatening his home and his life, only to be critically shot and paralyzed by those who he had desperately called for help.

On May 7, Heyward frantically called the police to report two men attempting to break into his home.  After calling the police, he called his brother, who informed him that there was a gun in his bedroom.  The suspects shot at Heyward twice, and he returned fire, nobody was harmed, but the intruders were successfully chased off.

“I didn’t want to shoot but I had to,” he said.

After arriving on the scene, the officers saw Heyward, who was still holding the weapon, and screamed “show me your hands, show me your hands.” Immediately following the demand, one of the officers began shooting at the innocent man- less than 2 seconds after initiating contact.

Heyward is still hospitalized, unable to speak or move his legs, his family told ABC that he is now paralyzed.

Heyward’s shooting was the 17th officer-involved shooting in South Carolina this year. Last year, there were 42 officer-involved shootings in the state.

In April, a woman successfully defended herself after her estranged husband broke into her mother’s home and attempted to kill her.  When the police that her mother called arrived at the home, they shot her.

In February, a mother of two called 9-1-1 to report intruders and the police showed up and killed her.

In October, a black teen with white parents was assaulted by police in his own home because they believed he was a robber.

In September, a man called 9-1-1 to report vandals in his home.  The police showed up and killed him.

Only in the Washington DC area would local government decide that the best way to solve a government created problem is to bring in more government.

Only in the Washington DC area would local government decide that the  best way to solve a government created problem is to bring in more government.

That’s exactly what Sharon Bulova is doing in creating a toothless tiger-publicity stunt called the Police Commission which Bulova and the Board of Supervisors slapped together after the John Geer killing became yet another international black eye for Fairfax County.  (Yep…the Geer killing made the news in Europe, Asia and Australia)

Sadly, the investigation into the killing began only after a United States Senator from a different state forced the Board of Supervisors County to investigate the killing…..and they did……they leaped into action by ASKING the cops if they would consider investigating themselves and then, essentially, apologized for asking.

In the real world when you don’t do your job you get fired. In the real world when you kill people, there’s an investigation. In the real world when a man dies, somebody pays hell….but not in Fairfax County where the politicians elected to serve and protect the people instead  fear, protect and serve the cops and the cops kill innocent every twenty to twenty five months….and get away with it.

We need to start firing people and should start with the Board of Supervisors because we elect and pay the Supervisors to keep things in check and they haven’t done 

that….repeatedly. Instead of governing correctly, when the arrogant occupation force that is the Fairfax County Police kills unarmed citizens, the Supervisors write a massive seven figure check from public and no one is fired and no one goes to jail.  And now as the election grows closer and the bodies pile up, we suddenly have a massive police committee we don’t need that is empowered to do nothing.

To justify their needless committee the Supervisors claim they’re using the committee to examine use of force.  Creating a panel on use-of-force by the Fairfax County Police isn’t needed largely because, although the problem exists, it just barely exists. The Fairfax County Police killing innocent and unarmed citizens is an anomaly and always will be. The department handles thousands of calls a year and rarely gets involved in gun play and when they do, it’s almost always the bad guys who start shooting first.

Factually, the Fairfax County Police are, comparative to other forces of the same size, a sparkling example of what urban policing should be.  (To see a bad example of urban policing look at San Diego, San Jose, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago which will pay out HALF- BILLION this year in police brutality suits.

 The Fairfax Police department seems to oversee itself well enough and when it doesn’t, it gets in trouble. (See the Polsi killings, the Sean Lanigan frame up, the Geer killing and the guy they shot to death for stealing a fake tree……yeah, that actually happened)  

As for transparency, what freedom of information doesn’t get released, the courts will order released. The Geer case has proven that. And again, the Geer case is an abnormal occurrence in the day to day activity of the Fairfax County Police, which, for the most part, does a better than average job of staying in touch with citizenry. 

The cop’s near artistic stonewalling is generally done in high profile court cases under the advice of legal counsel because it’s an ugly but legitimate legal tactic used regularly in the justice system and especially helpful when dealing with a department instead of an individual. We can’t take that ploy from the cops because I want the right to stonewall in court. I don’t want that taken away from me. We can’t have one set of laws for the cops and one for the rest of us. ……although, if you think about it, it’s sorta what we have now anyway isn’t it?

But overall, the cops don’t get away with much. It’s a fact in some part due to the power of the press. Most of the local media has done an admirable job reporting the recent abuses by the Fairfax County Police. 

On that subject, there are also several members of the media on the Bulova’s idiotic committee ….well, one of them is an television news representative which is sort of like a news organization but with attention-deficit issues,….but anyway, is it ethical for members of the media to be part of a board like this? 

 If it isn’t ethical it’s certainly uncomfortable and a little dangerious too. Nobody wants the press having coffee and donuts with the cops on a committee formed to keep anything bad from happening to the cops…the only ones who benefit from stuff like that are the cops.  Look, America doesn’t expect a damn thing out of the press except this; when the reporters show up, the politicians and bureaucrats should get nervous. As long as that happens, the free press is doing its job and right now, that doesn’t look like what’s happening here in Fairfax County.   

There are 12 cops and/or retired cops on this useless committee. In fact, half of the committee, fifteen members, are presently employed by the Fairfax County government or retired from the Fairfax County government ……do really you think they’re going bite the hand that feeds them or change anything at all?

And look where this thing is going…..….I mean putting Hairy Raorererer-er-er on the committee?  Wasn’t he one of the primary architects of the insular arrogance that has brought the Fairfax County Police to the wrong kind of international attention? 

Come on people…..a vampire IS NOT going to solve a robbery at the blood bank.

Look, we DO have solvable problems within the Fairfax County Police Department but we DON’T have systematic problems within the Fairfax County Police Department. Corruption within the ranks is virtually none existent and always has been. Brutality against citizens, entrapment and theft…… although they no doubt happen…..are rare. 

So why do we need….God help us…yet another powerless window dressing committee?

In a way it doesn’t really matter. This committee, whose true purpose is to save Sharon Bulova’s career, will rubber a stamp a lot of things, take photos, eat a lot of donuts at our expense  and eventually disappear. A few months later a cop will gun down another unarmed citizen, the Board of Supervisors will cut another massive check to the family, we’ll make international news again and then the citizens will demand Police oversight. And while police oversight is a grand idea, factually it doesn’t work. Check the national stats. There are about 200 civilian oversight committees around the US. Most are a joke and many others have been disbanded because they are ineffective and highly politicized like this monster incubating in Fairfax County.

Police oversight simply hasn’t worked nor does helicopter-intrusive committee work either.   

You know what does work?

Body cameras work.

They are the kryptonite of punk cops everywhere.

Put cameras on them and be done with it.

We need to do this….we need to force every hood on the force to wear a camera. It’s a simple choice that boils down to this; keep on dolling out multi-million dollar checks to the dead guys family or spend a hell of a lot less the money on body cameras.

The concept of body cameras is simple. Stop the cops from saying or doing something stupid BEFORE they do it.

Forming a committee to talk about what stupid things the cops did AFTER they did it is just dumb, well it’s government worker-think ,which I suppose is basically the same thing.

Body cameras will put a quick end to the arrogance killing by the Fairfax County cops and it will put even a quicker end to the common perception that the FCP is staffed by a bunch of lazy punks with an attitude problem.

As I said before, the other way to solve this issue is to fire the people who hire the cops, the “I wasn’t aware there was a police problem” members of the board of supervisors….like Sharon Bulova. The fact is that had the Board of Supervisors acted on the issue of the cops shooting unarmed citizens several years ago, this wouldn’t be a problem today. 

Fire the people who hire the cops and watch how quickly things change.

Bring in competent leaders FROM OUTSIDE THE DC AREA to run the department. 

We predicted several years ago that under chief what’s-his-face…the bald guy who loves wearing that ridicules hat, that nothing would change but we were wrong.

Things did change.

They got worse.

Bring in a new police chief and new public safety director from outside the Fairfax County government Lifers club.

Bring in a police chief from the outside who is honest and relentless in seeking true attitude change. Create an office of internal affairs whose goal is not to protect the police department at all costs…that’s what we have now…..but one that will protect both the police department from unreasonable complaints and protect the citizens from unreasonable policing practices. 

When a complaint is filed against a cop the complaint should not be removed from the cops file after 60 days as it is now. Rather the complaint should stay there for the length of the cop’s employment with the county.

Do we really need the expense of a Royal Fairfax County Police Navy for the Potomac?  How about the Royal Fairfax County Police Air Force?  Which is better for the county…..more roads, less traffic, smaller class room sizes and more teachers or the cops having a fleet of helicopters and boats to toy around with?

Disempower. Do the cops really have to go around scanning thousands license plates? Cut back the cop’s remarkably generous budget of $217 million dollars. If we’re going to pay the cops that kind of money at least require them to get an AA degree in criminal Justice.

Transform the cops from an occupation force…….87% of the cops live outside the county, hence the punk attitude….and turn them into a local police force by forcing them to live in Fairfax County.  It’s a good idea because when there’s a chance one of these punk cops could run into the civilians they smart-mouthed at the local Safeway, the transformation from thug to police officer will be swift.  The excuse that cops can’t afford to live in Fairfax County is a bald faced lie.

Back to Bulova’s pointless committee.

Who are these civilians on the committee?  Are they qualified to judge whether a cop followed a department's rules governing use of force? Do civilians have any training to understand what the cop faces? Do they have any real world insights into an Officers split-second decision involving life or death?

The answer is no. Only cops have that ability and there comes a time when we simply have to trust the police to police themselves. So let the cops watch over the cops and allow the judicial system, a free press and the unflinching eye of a body camera watch over everyone else. That will work. That will correct the problem.

What won’t work, what won’t correct the problem, are a group of publicity seeking panjandrums in need of an ego boast and well-meaning citizens poking around in complex area they don’t fully understand.  Policing IS NOT a part time gig and while we need to keep an eye on the Fairfax County Police that doesn’t mean we need to  create a pointless babysitting committee so Sharon Bulova can keep her job.