“Now you see my fists?” Fullerton police officer Manny Ramos asked Thomas while slipping on a pair of latex gloves.

“Yeah, what about them?” Thomas responded.

“They are getting ready to fuck you up,” said Ramos, a burly cop who appears to outweigh Thomas by 100 pounds…

The cops keep telling him to put his hands behind his back and lay on his stomach, but they are both laying on top of him, making it impossible to even breathe, much less move.

As the video continues, one of the cops can be seen kneeing him.

“Please, I can’t breathe,” Thomas pleads as the officers keep telling him to put his hands behind his “fucking back.”

The cops keep telling him to “relax” to which he responds, “I can’t, dude.”

More cops eventually arrive and a little more than four minutes into the video, they start tasing him.

And a little after five minutes into the video, as three cops are piled on top of him, beating him, tasing him, one cop looks up at another cop who just arrived on the scene and says, “help us.”

At one point he yells out, “Dad, they are killing me.”

Even after seven minutes into the video, when six cops are on top of him and all Thomas is doing is crying for his father, they keep telling him to “relax.”

Kris Buchele says he saw a Culpeper Town Police officer shoot 54-year-old Patricia Cook to death in the  Epiphany Catholic School  parking lot at around 10 a.m. Thursday, February 9. 

Buchele is a carpenter who was working on the house next door. He says he heard loud arguing outside and looked through a window where he had a clear view of the school parking lot. Cook was in her Jeep Wrangler .

State police say Cook rolled up the window, catching the officer’s arm inside, and then dragged him.

Buchele says it didn’t happen that way.  He describes an encounter which looked and sounded like the officer shooting a person a point blank range,  not because he feared for his life, but because the woman did not obey his order to stop rolling up the window. 

“He was right next to the vehicle.  He had one hand on the door handle and one hand on his weapon.  And she was rolling the window up.  And they were exiting out of the parkng lot. 

The window was half way up he said ’stop or I’ll shoot.’   I really didn’t think he was going to do it.  But she got the window all the way up and that’s when he shot.  And then she took a left out of the parking lot here and he stepped out in the street and fired five more times,” said Buchele. 

Buchele says the officer was not dragged and that he shot her before she drove away.  He says he didn’t have his arm caught because the officer’s left hand was on the door handle and right hand was holding a weapon.   Also, he says he distinctly saw her roll up the window all the way before the officer shot out the glass and killed her.

“I’m angry, frustrated, sad, and fighting back  tears right now, ” said Gary Cook, Pat’s husband of eight years.  He  doesn’t understand why a police officer would shoot his unarmed wife multiple times.

They can do anything to anyone without consequence. I hate police. I’m not even going to pretend otherwise any longer. If you belong to an organization where members routinely murder civilians and the people in charge cover for them, you are a bad person.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has urged a federal court to side with a Howard County man in a lawsuit over his cellphone being seized by Baltimore police at the Preakness Stakes after he filmed officers making an arrest.

The federal attorneys say the lawsuit “presents constitutional questions of great moment in this digital age.” They asked U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg to rule that citizens have a right to record police officers and that officers who seize and destroy recordings without a warrant or due process are violating the Fourth and 14th amendments.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which is representing the plaintiff, Christopher Sharp, said it believes this is the first time the Department of Justice has weighed in on the topic of recording police.

”The right to record police officers while performing duties in a public place as well as the right to be protected from the warrantless seizure and destruction of those recordings, are not only required by the Constitution,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a “statement of interest” filed Jan. 10 in the case. “They are consistent with our fundamental notions of liberty, promote the accountability of our governmental officers, and instill public confidence in the police officers who serve us daily.”

Police officers engaging in violence in the course of their duties should have no expectation of privacy. Their actions on-duty should be constantly monitored and gone over with a fine toothed comb- that’s the only chance we have of stopping their abuse of authority.

Incredible footage emerged from downtown Oakland last night - not of basic law enforcement efforts to maintain public “health and safety” as the police have been claiming - but of a war zone in which police shot tear gas, bean bags, wooden dowels, flash grenades, and rubber bullets at protesters.

Rather than using the weaponry once in a final effort to subdue the crowd, officers reportedly used them over and over again in what @OccupyOakland describes as a “relentless” assault on the thousands of activists gathered near City Hall.

“The city remains committed to respecting free speech as well as maintaining the city’s responsibility to protect public health and safety,” Oakland police said in a statement Tuesday. 

The “safety” concerns are the usual complaints levelled at the Occupy movements: sanitation issues, improper food storage, graffiti, litter, and vandalism, although OPD added accusations of fighting, assaults, and “threatening/intimidating behavior.” Yes, you read that correctly. OPD is accusing the protesters of using “threatening/intimidating behavior.”

(Source: thecamprobber)

A federal judge has threatened Denver with $5,000-a-day fines if city officials don’t make “substantial progress” toward handing over police excessive-force documents that are the subject of a lawsuit.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane had already scolded the city in a previous order for failing to turn over the documents, which detail how the city handled excessive-force complaints made against officers in the past eight years.

The attorneys for a man who claims police wrongfully roughed him up are seeking the documents to try to prove their allegation that Denver police condone a culture of abuse…

Kane wrote in a Monday ruling denying the delay that the city and its attorneys “have chosen to invest their time and effort in meritless attempts to obstruct the discovery process. I will not tolerate persistent evasions of discovery obligations in this case.”

He then reiterated a threat to fine the city $5,000 for every day after that deadline the city was not in compliance. In last week’s ruling, he ordered the city to pay the attorneys’ fees that the plaintiff in the case, Jason Graber, incurred while his lawyers responded to the city’s most recent motions.

The DA, of course, denies any obstruction and claims it’s a logistical problem. It’s about time that the judicial system steps in to curb the abuses of our police enforcement, and I’m glad that Judge Kane isn’t relenting. There’s no excuse for not complying with a court order in an excessive force case, and even if you’re not just buying time to settle or destroy the evidence it certainly appears that way to the citizens of Denver.