From [HERE] All of the above. That's who is to blame for the City of Detroit's repeated failure to adopt federally mandated reforms at the Detroit Police Department, several people involved in the effort said Thursday in an unusual forum at Wayne State University.

They blamed the administration of ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for failing to get behind the reforms, police executives for resisting them and a federal judge for failing to crack the whip when the efforts stalled soon after they began in 2003.

"The initial reaction of the city was tremendous resistance," Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Levy, the Justice Department's point person on the reforms, said in her first public criticism of the department in the seven-year reform effort. "We shook hands, and we began to fight."

Ron Scott, of the Coalition Against Police Brutality -- which pushed for the reforms to curb excessive force, mistreatment of prisoners and mass arrests of homicide witnesses -- faulted U.S. District Judge Julian Cook for refusing to let his group become a party to the legal proceedings to keep up pressure on the city to comply.

"We felt we were stepchildren to something we pushed for," Scott said. "We're the victims, and we're not involved in the process."

From [HERE] and [HERE] SEATTLE -- The Seattle city attorney and King County prosecutor have declined a request by family members of slain woodcarver John T. Williams to convene a grand jury. 

The family had called for a grand jury hearing to consider criminal charges against former Seattle police officer Ian Birk in Williams' shooting death. 

In declining the request, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg reiterated his previous reasoning -- that state law provides police officers more protection against criminal prosecution for homicide than it gives to ordinary citizens. 

Satterberg added even though the Seattle Police Department's Firearms Review Board found Birk had "erred in several ways leading up to the shooting of Mr. Williams," he could not prove Birk acted with malice. 

 Henry, a 20-year-old student at Pace University, was killed by Mt. Pleasant (NY) Police in October as he sat in his car with his friends. He was unarmed. 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – Prosecutors sought Wednesday to dismiss charges against four teammates of a Pace University college football player arrested after he was fatally shot by a police officer.

Convicting the four teammates of slain student Danroy “D.J.” Henry would “not serve the ends of justice,” prosecutors with the Westchester County district attorney’s office wrote in a motion filed in Mount Pleasant Town Court. Three teammates of the slain Pace University athlete are accused of misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct and obstruction. They are Joseph Garcia of Floral Park, N.Y.; Yves Delpeche of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Daniel Parker of Lauderhill, Fla. A fourth teammate, Joseph Romanick of Slidell, La., is charged with criminal mischief, a felony.

The facts are that, without a claim he had broken any law and as one of four seized as part of the F.B.I.'s wider ''Idaho probe,'' Mr. Kidd was arrested, strip-searched, shackled and jailed for 15 days -- handled like a suspect, not a witness. Against him and others, the Justice Department used the statute, Mr. Kidd's lawyers inferred and others must as well, ''to detain and investigate suspects for whom the government lacked probable cause of wrongdoing, and not to secure testimony.''

The government contends that Mr. Ashcroft didn't have to intend to use Mr. Kidd as a witness to detain him because the then-attorney general's motivation was irrelevant. But to the former prosecutors, it is ''settled understanding'' that the statute has ''no other legitimate purpose'' except to hold a witness for testimony.

Do you suppose if Mr. Stamps had been a wealthy, politically connected, white man the police chief, elected officials, State Police and medical examiner would be participating is this systemic governmental cover-up? [MORE] 

From [HERE] and [HERE] and [HERE] FRAMINGHAM  There are new details in the January shooting death of a Framingham grandfather. Officials say a swat officer accidentally fired his rifle, killing the man.

Investigators say Officer Paul Duncan pulled the trigger after tripping during a search of the home of 68-year-old Eurie Stamps. At the time, police were conducting a drug raid at the home where Stamps lived. Investigators say officer Duncan lost his balance and accidentally fired the shot that killed Stamps. Police were looking for Stamps' stepson when the accident happened. Officer Duncan will not face any charges, but is on paid leave as the investigation continues.

Duncan's family  is now pushing for a civil rights investigation into his death. An attorney for Stamps family says he doesn't buy the police's story. 

“I don’t think it’s right,” said Adia Boston, Stamps’ niece by marriage. “I think he should be suspended, at a minimum. There should be job loss, if not jail. That wasn’t an accident. . . . It shouldn’t be an accident if it’s the SWAT team. They’re supposed to be trained.”

FALL RIVER, Mass. (WPRI) - Police brutality claims are launched by friends and relatives of a Fall River man, who died while being served a drug warrant last week. Fall River and Massachusetts State Police are investigating last Friday's death of 22-year-old Dennis Mendez. Police forced their way into his 4th Street apartment Friday afternoon to arrest Mendez. 

His girlfriend, Tanya Gonzalez, admits Mendez swallowed crack cocaine.

Keila Lebron, Mendez's sister, says that's not what killed him.  She claims officers immediately began beating him, and that Mendez lost consciousness. Mendez was taken to St. Luke's Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The state medical examiner is conducting an autopsy.

Civil rights attorney John Burris, who was hired by Woodfox's family for a lawsuit against the city over the shooting, called it "the worst police shooting I have ever been involved in" outside of the killing of Oscar Grant III, of Hayward. Grant was shot and killed by a BART police officer.

Burris had called for criminal prosecution against Jimenez and said he is horrified and disappointed by the decision to bring him back to the force. However, he acknowledged that little remains in the way of legal recourse.

Jimenez had also shot and killed another unarmed man seven months earlier, which Burris said shows "a propensity to shoot first and ask questions later" and "raises questions about his emotional stability."

"I know the deck is stacked in favor of the police, but this is such an egregious shooting," Burris said.

"He should not be rewarded for killing two people in such a short time and be welcomed back with open arms."

From [HERE] and [HERE] Every month since her brother was shot and killed by police last year, Priscilla Johnson has gone back to the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood where he died to hand out fliers, begging for anyone who saw something to come forward.

What his family knows, gleaned largely from media reports, is that Dennis Gregory was a bystander who was shot by detectives who were aiming for his friend Glenn Brooks. And they know from the autopsy that Gregory was hit four times in the back.

What they didn’t know is that Gregory was acting as a confidential informant that night and that it was his call to police to report that Brooks had a handgun that summoned them to the scene in the first place . The revelation is contained for the first time in court documents filed in federal court late last month and obtained by The Baltimore Sun.

It’s the biggest breakthrough yet in the family’s quest to understand the events of that night. Calls to detectives and visits to police headquarters have gone unacknowledged, and they’ve found little cooperation from the neighborhood.

[See Entire 19 minutes and 38 seconds of the traffic stop]

From [HERE] and [HERE] Last week, the Dallas Police Department used its Facebook page to show dash-cam footage from January 27 in which Officer Quaitemes Williams is seen kicking and pepper-spraying Rodarick Lyles, who'd been pulled over by another officer for driving with a suspended license. It shows Officer Williams punching a handcuffed Lyles with his fist and using a flashlight to beat the unarmed man.  Williams kicked Lyles in the head and sprayed pepper spray into his face. He also shocked Lyles with a Taser. Williams was fired last week, then promptly arrested on an official oppression charge and taken to Dallas County Jail.  He was then later released on a $1,000 bond. [MORE] Officer Hiram Soler, who'd initially stopped Lyles, was suspended for 10 days for entering inaccurate, false or improper information on a police report.

In a lawsuit filed in federal district court, Mr. Lyles argues his constitutional rights were violated and he has endured pain and suffering. Lyles and his family spoke out in a news conference.

Lyles and his mother, Ella Flowers,  think race was a factor, and they said it's a problem Dallas police need to face head-on. Flowers said, "they called him bad names, the n-word. You know they say words don't hurt you? Yes, they do. That messes with him at night. He jumps up. He can't sleep."The complaint alleges the officers did indeed use racial epithets and that one officer said to another after the beating, "You got your stripes tonight." 

From [HERE] A judge abruptly declared a mistrial in the wrongful death case of a Compton teenager who was shot by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy in 2009 after the attorney for the teenager's family announced he had a videotape that allegedly contradicted sworn statements made by the deputy.

The video was not played in court. But the attorney for Avery Cody Jr.'s family said it shows Deputy Sergio Reyes touching Cody's body after he shot the youth, even though Reyes said in sworn statements that he never touched Cody's body. A copy of the new video was reviewed by The Times on Friday.

The grainy, shaky footage appears to show a deputy, who cannot be definitively identified as Reyes but has a similar frame and skin tone, standing over Cody's body. The deputy in the footage, taken by a passerby, appears to briefly bend down twice to touch the body. It is unclear whether the deputy actually made contact with Cody's body or what exactly he was doing.

John Sweeney, the family's attorney, announced the existence of the video in court Wednesday — the first time the judge or defense attorneys had heard about it.

Evidence in trials typically needs to be shared with the opposing side in advance, and in the Cody case, the judge declared a mistrial Wednesday because the video hadn't been submitted to the defense and was mentioned in front of the jury, attorneys said.

As Officer Jackson threw punches, his father tried to put his hands in front of his face, Espina Jacome said.

His father fell, and when he tried to get to his feet, Jackson took the metal police baton from his belt and struck Espina in the head, the face, and on his back and one of his legs, Espina Jacome testified.

Mooney asked whether Espina ever hit or tried to hit Jackson. "He couldn't do anything. How could he hit anyone, he couldn't even see," Espina Jacome testified. "He had no way of defending himself. [Jackson] was hitting my father very hard."

With one baton blow, Jackson knocked Espina down a set of stairs that led to the basement, Espina Jacome testified. Jackson continued striking Espina, and then the door to a basement apartment opened, Espina Jacome testified.

From [HERE] and [HERE] and [HERE] The most significant development in many months concerning the shooting death of a 7 year old girl during a police raid last May occurred Thursday- the Michigan State Police submitted an arrest warrant request to the Wayne Prosecutor's Office for a male suspect.

Since it has long been established that the fatal bullet was fired by one Officer Joseph Weekley, the MSP has apparently found probable cause to believe that Weekley's shooting of the girl, Aiyana Jones, was unjustified and therefore criminal. Weekley has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.

Aiyana Jones was a casualty of a police raid on an east side duplex during the early morning hours of May 16, 2010. The Detroit Special Response Team, whose raid targeted murder suspect Chauncey Owens, arrested him in a different part of the duplex that morning. The raid was being filmed for the A&E cop reality series The First 48.

The coalition said more than one person should be charged. Ron Scott said the department has become "militarized" and that it has a "mindset that treats citizens as enemy combatants."

The coalition intends to seek documents related to the investigation and said it wanted answers to numerous questions, including learning who planned the raid, who gave the order to throw the grenade and who agreed to let the film crew go along.

"It was a production, a film production," said Sandra Hines, a coalition member. "Their concern wasn't police work; it was how they would look on 'First 48.'"

Jones' parents, represented by Southfield attorney Geoffrey Fieger, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit that claims the police department engaged in a cover-up of the causes of her death. Fieger, who claimed he's seen a video recording of the shooting, also has sued the television show.

From [HERE] and [HERE] A civilian police oversight panel voted Friday to conduct a parallel investigation into one of last summer’s fatal shootings by Miami police, an unprecedented move that could make all records related to the case public — and exactly the kind of action law enforcement feared when it fought a decade ago against the creation of the public authority. The chief has until March 14 to produce documents, which are now under subpoena. Also, in 120 days, the panel will issue a report to Miami's commission.

The unanimous decision by Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel orders Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito to turn over all records related to the July 5 shooting death of DeCarlos Moore, the first of seven black men shot and killed by Miami police over a seven-month period. Moore, who had no weapon, was killed during a traffic stop after disobeying an order and returning to his car.

The CIP, a controversial board with subpoena power, was created with overwhelming public support in a November 2001 referendum on the heels of a slew of bad police shootings and attempted cover-ups. Traditionally the panel has waited until prosecutors close out investigations into possible police misconduct before beginning its own investigation. The Moore shooting investigation remains open.

From [HERE] The D.C. Attorney General's Office used invalid alcohol breath test results when bargaining with defendants who then pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated charges.

For the past year, the city has struggled to get its alcohol breath analysis program in order. In February 2010, it was found that the breath analyzers were producing inaccurate results -- a problem internal police documents suggest could extend back a decade. In March 2010, the District replaced the breath analyzers. The chief toxicologist refused to sign off on their validity, documents show, but the police department continued to use them in the field. The Attorney General's Office stopped using the results as evidence during trial, though continued to use the results during plea bargaining.

"They flat out did it," attorney Bryan Brown told The Washington Examiner. "There could be in excess of 100 cases."

From [HERE] and [HERE] A former University of Houston basketball star says he suffered a concussion when a police officer hit him over the head with a nightstick unprovoked and threatened to kill him.

Michael Young's accusation comes during a period of intense public scrutiny of the Houston Police Department after the release of two videos showing HPD officers beating African-American men.

"Mr. Young has come forward because he does not want this man to be on the police force to hurt somebody else," said Young's attorney, Reginald McKamie.

Young was a member of the famed Phi Slama Jama basketball squad at UH in the 1980s that included future Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. He had a brief NBA career with the Suns, Clippers and 76ers, and now serves as director of basketball operations at UH.

From [HERE] BALTIMORE — The trial of a Baltimore police officer charged with shooting an unarmed man to death outside a nightclub has been postponed a second time.

Officer Gahiji Tshamba (juh-HAHJ-ee t-SHAHM-bay) had been scheduled for trial Monday, but online court records show it is now set for May 31. He's charged with first-degree murder in the June slaying of 32-year-old Tyrone Brown,  a 32-year-old Marine who has served two tours of duty in Iraq -- was shot at 13 times at close range, from his department-issued handgun, hitting Brown with six shots. He died a short time later.

Tshamba is being held without bail. Tshamba's attorneys don't dispute that he shot Brown but say he was acting as a police officer. They say Tshamba saw Brown grope a woman and decided to intervene, and the situation escalated from there.

From [HERE] The Daley administration has agreed to pay $3 million to the family of a 23-year-old unarmed man gunned down by Chicago Police in a 2003 shooting captured by a CTA surveillance camera.

If not for the video, widely viewed on YouTube, City Hall and police officer Alvin Weems might never have admitted that the shooting of Michael Pleasance at the CTA Red Line’s 95th Street station was not justified.

At the time, Weems was trying to break up a fight in which Pleasance was a mere bystander.

The Police Department initially maintained that the victim struggled with Weems for the officer’s gun. Only after the victim’s family sued and a judge ordered the CTA video released did the city and the officer change their stories.

The video shows Weems, dressed in plainclothes, arriving at the L platform with his gun drawn. The officer pulls a young man out of the fight as Pleasance stands off to the side pointing and apparently trying to talk to the officer. The video then shows Weems raising his gun and shooting Pleasance in the face.

The City is close to approving a $350,000 settlement to the family of a mentally disabled jail inmate who died in 2009 after being forcibly taken to a safety cell after reportedly causing a disturbance.

The Board of Supervisors rules committee Thursday forwarded the settlement to the full board for final approval. The mother of 31-year-old Issiah Downes had filed a $50 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the city, naming Sheriff Michael Hennessey and several jail supervisors and deputies.

Downes suffered from schizophrenia, and days after his arrest in March 2009 said he wanted to kill himself, and tried to gouge his own eye out, leaving him blind in that eye.

In the jail on the night of Sept. 7, 2009, in response to Downes’ loud complaints about the televisions being turned off in the unit, several deputies began transferring him to an administrative segregation cell. The Sheriff’s Department said Downes had become verbally disruptive and resisted the move.

Geri Green, the attorney for Downes’ family, alleged in the lawsuit that Downes had been complaining he could not breathe as deputies used forceful restraint procedures that involved placing their weight on his back and neck. Downes stood 6 feet tall and weighed more than 300 pounds.

From [HERE] A day after the announcement that a special grand jury had declined to indict him, a man at the center of a chaotic police-shooting case in Harlem recalled being struck by a barrage of gunfire last August as officers broke up a block party.

“It was like being hit with a machine gun,” the man, Angel Alvarez, 24, told reporters on Thursday at a news conference at his lawyers’ office in Manhattan. “I have 27 holes in my body.”

His lawyers added that four bullets are still lodged inside him.

“No expert marksman could have pulled that off,” said Seth Chandler, one of Mr. Alvarez’s lawyers. “It’s a miracle he’s alive.”

Mr. Alvarez, whose lawyers say he plans to sue the police, was released on Wednesday after six months in custody. He was arrested in August after he fought with a man, Luis Soto, during a block party that turned deadly. The police accused Mr. Alvarez of shooting at them as they had advanced on the fight. Four officers fired a total of 46 rounds. Mr. Soto was fatally wounded in the encounter.