The news that a school security guard chose to wait outside while an active shooter killed students inside has shocked many, but he is not the first in his position to harm students instead of helping them.
The post The Florida Officer Is Not Alone—5 Times School Cops Hurt Kids—While Refusing to Help Them appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A man who sparked a massive manhunt for killing a police officer in November of 2015 has just been found not guilty after claiming he acted in self-defense.
The post Man Found Not Guilty for Killing a Police Officer, Claiming He Acted in Self Defense appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The Body Cam footage of a nurse being violently arrested by a police officer in Salt Lake City while other officers on the scene watched and aided the arrest went viral on Friday. The internet watched in horror as a nurse followed the orders from her supervisors and refused to break the law—and a police officer responded by throwing a temper tantrum because he was told “No.”
However, while this incident was caught on video and spread like wildfire when it was released, it is not uncommon, and it does not apply solely to medical professionals. Police officers also have a history of targeting and abusing first responders rendering aid to citizens in life-threatening situations.
When Capt. David Wilson, a veteran firefighter with 27 years of experience, arrived at the scene of a nasty car accident in Hazelwood, Missouri, in May 2003, he parked his truck and went to work. As he was attending to the victim, he was approached by a police officer who seemed to care more about the position of the truck, than about the survivors of the crash.
When Wilson ignored orders from Officer Todd Greeves to move his vehicle, Greeves became agitated, and decided to take matters into his own hands. Greeves arrested the firefighter, and kept him detained by a patrol car for 23 minutes until a supervisor told him to let Wilson go. Wilson filed a civil rights lawsuit, and received $17,500 in damages.
A similar instance occurred in March 2014 when a volunteer fireman in New Roads, Louisiana, was rendering aid to a woman who passed out in her home. He was the first one on the scene, and when police arrived, instead of asking about the state of the patient, they demanded that the fireman move his truck. When he did not comply, the officer arrested and detained him for nearly 15 minutes.
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READ MORE: Because of People Taking Action, the Rate of Cops Being Charged for Murder Has Increased 5-Fold
In February 2014, when Jacob Gregoire, a veteran firefighter with 12 years of experience, was responding to the scene of an accident in Chula Vista, California, he was also ordered to move his truck. Gregoire ignored the commands from a California Highway Patrolman, and he was arrested and detained on the side of the highway for 30 minutes.
In response to the incident, Chula Vista Fire Chief Dave Hanneman called CHP’s behavior “ridiculous” and the firefighters’ union president John Hess praised Gregoire’s actions. “He made all firefighters look good. He was there to protect the citizens and he was willing to take a stand to do that,” Hess said.
In the same way that power-hungry police officers have gone after firefighters rendering aid to the victims of car accidents, they have also gone after paramedics and emergency medical technicians who did not follow their orders.
In 2009, Oklahoma State Patrolman Daniel Martin pulled over an ambulance for failing to yield to his patrol car. The ambulance was in the midst of rushing to a hospital with a sick woman in its care.
When the driver of the ambulance, Maurice White, stood up to Martin, the patrolman responding by assaulting, choking and then arresting White, while a sick patient waited in the back of the ambulance, in need of emergency medical care.
Another police officer used the chokehold method when he got into a confrontation with an EMT in Portsmouth, Ohio, in February 2017. While the emergency medical technicians were preparing to move a man into an ambulance, after he was knocked unconscious during a fight outside of a bar, he suddenly regained consciousness.
READ MORE: Cop Who Beat Man in Viral Video, Caught on Video AGAIN—Attacking Handcuffed Teen Girl
Police on the scene responded by intervening and deploying a taser on the startled man, and when one of the EMTs stood up the police sergeant, he assaulted the technician, putting him in a chokehold.
A sheriff’s deputy also decided to interfere with an ambulance rushing a patient to a hospital Jackson, Kentucky, in June 2016. The ambulance driver claimed the deputy gave no reason for the stop, and the only reason the driver could come up with as to why the deputy would interfere was because he was the owner of a competing ambulance company.
When a police officer in San Diego, California, decided to go after an EMT and a paramedic at a 7-11 convenience store in April 2014, the surveillance tape was their saving grace.
Officer Anibal Solis claimed he heard EMT Derek Shubin call him a “F—king Nazi,” and he naturally grabbed Shubin and punched him. Paramedic Steve Cogle then intervened and put Solis in a chokehold. After Cogle let Solis out of the chokehold and tried to diffuse the situation, the officer proceeded to attack him.
A former paramedic in St. Paul, Minnesota, found herself on the receiving end of similar treatment in April 2017, when she stopped to render aid to a man who was bleeding on the street. As soon as an officer arrived, the paramedic cautioned him not to touch a portion of the man’s shirt that was soaked with blood. The officer responded by punching and later arresting the paramedic for attempting to help.
One of the most commonly used arguments for supporting police officers is that they risk their lives daily in order to save the lives of others. This same description can be used for firefighters, doctors, nurses, paramedics and emergency medical technicians.
READ MORE: Innocent Deaf Man Imprisoned for 6 Weeks Because the Jail Never Provided Him with Interpreter
However, when police officers adopt an “It’s my way of the highway” mentality, and they abuse medical professionals and first responders who do not listen to their commands, they not only take away from their own credibility, they also risk the lives of individuals who are already in an emergency situation.
“Is this patient under arrest?” Alex Wubbles asks the officer, being instructed by legal counsel on the phone.
“Nope,” the officer says.
“Do you have an electronic warrant?” She asks, searching for a way to legally comply with the officers.
“No,” The officer admits bluntly, getting annoyed.
The police did not have a warrant. The police did not have probable cause. The man was not under arrest. The unconscious patient could not consent.
The nurse, Alex, printed out the hospital’s policy which the Salt Lake City Police Department agreed to. She showed it to the officers. She clearly and calmly listed the three things which would allow her to give the police the blood sample: a warrant, patient consent, or a patient under arrest.
The police had none of these things.
“Okay, so I take it, without those in place, I am not going to get blood?” The Officer Jeff Payne is heard saying behind his body cam.
The legal counsel on the phone tries to tell the officer not to blame the messenger, and that he is making a big mistake.
Then, the officer attacks the nurse, Alex Wubbles. He drags her outside, and handcuffs her, while she cries.
“What is going on?!” She says exasperated, wondering why they are doing this to her.
She couldn’t just break the hospital policy and put her job in jeopardy because some police officers illegally told her to. She couldn’t simply collude with the lawbreakers–the police–and illegally hand over a blood sample on behalf of an unconscious patient.
That would have opened her up to lawsuits and job loss.
The officers were, in fact, breaking the law. They had no legal right to demand blood from an unconscious patient who could not consent.
The man they wanted blood from was a truck driver who had struck a vehicle being pursued by the police. It is unclear why they would even need a blood sample from the victim.
But none of these legal facts stopped the police from placing the nurse under arrest.
Wubbles was handcuffed and placed in a police vehicle. She was never actually charged.
You could chalk this up to one crazy officer, Detective Jeff Payne with the Salt Lake City Police.
But then his supervisor showed up to the scene. While the nurse was handcuffed in the cruiser, the supervisor started to lecture her.
“There are civil remedies,” he said, telling her she should have broken the law when the officer told her to. Of course, this ignored the fact that she would have been caught up in the civil action against the officers!
It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone as the Supervisor lies and says the nurse was obstructing justice. All the nurse wanted was a warrant signed by a judge, the legal requirement to execute a search! And yet not just Officer Payne, but his Supervisor insist that she should have given them what they wanted, without a warrant.
Listening to the Supervisor’s justification is a real trip. He repeatedly says, things like, “If you already have a sample, we can just go get a warrant, but all I’m hearing is no, no, no.”
What? Yes, go get a warrant! That is what you have been repeatedly told by the nurse and hospital staff!
You can tell from the video she is not some anti-cop crusader. She was legitimately trying to do her job and follow the law to the best of her ability. Before she is arrested, you can tell she is worried and uncomfortable, trying her best to keep the situation calm and professional.
And then the police handcuffed and dragged a crying nurse out of the building to intimidate and harass her further.
She is a strong woman. She stood up to their bullying and lies and did not give in. Despite the best efforts of the police, she would not help them violate the Fourth Amendment rights of her patient.
Police should not be able to just handcuff people and drag them to a car as an intimidation method. Payne should be fired and charged with assault.
The supervisor should also be fired, for continuing to harass that poor woman after learning quite clearly that his officer was attempting to break the law. These people are a threat to the public.
But all too often Police Cheif’s and other officers line up behind their disreputable colleagues.
And that is why people have such a problem with the police. Fire the bad officers, and maybe the good ones can take the public spotlight.
But if the police treat nurses like this, surrounded by hospital staff, how can we expect them to treat the rest of us?
This is the Salt Lake City Police Facebook page if you would like to leave a friendly note.
Jackson, MI — Freedom of speech, in the land of the free, is not guaranteed. Despite the wording of the First Amendment, claiming that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” there are countless laws across the country designed to do exactly that. However, even when there aren’t archaic anti-speech laws on the books, police will all too often deprive people of their freedom — for practicing their freedom.
For saying, “fuck you” to a police officer in Jackson, Michigan, Tracy Leroy Smith was beaten, kidnaped, jailed and tried. What started as a neighborly feud over dog poop quickly escalated thanks to a police officer’s lack of Constitutional knowledge.
The incident happened in 2015 when officer Thomas Tinklepaugh, with the Jackson police department, was investigating a complaint about a dog pooping in a vacant lot. Smith apparently fit the description of a person allowing his dog to poop in a lot.
As FOX 47 reports, Tinklepaugh first talked with Smith’s wife, Michelle Barlond-Smith. Tracy Smith admits he was profane, repeatedly saying “f— you” to the officer while his wife asked him to “Be nice.” Tinklepaugh asked him to stop swearing in front of children and threatened to charge him with being disorderly. Smith responded by saying “f— you” three more times at which point he was arrested.
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According to the lawsuit, a video shows Tinklepaugh “slam” Smith onto the hood of the police vehicle and then violently take him to the ground causing serious injury to Smith. Smith later went to the emergency room to be treated for his injuries, according to the suit.
READ MORE: "Whoops, My Bad", Cop Accidentally Fires Rifle Inside a Family Courthouse
According to the lawsuit, Smith was originally only charged with disorderly conduct. However, Smith says the charges were changed to Assaulting-Resisting-Obstructing an officer once Tinklepaugh realized the Michigan Court of Appeals had thrown out the state’s obscenity law in 2004.
According to FOX 47, the 12th District Court found there was no probable cause for an arrest and refused to bind Smith over for trial on the felony charge. The 4th Circuit Court and the Court of Appeals later shot down the prosecutor’s attempt to establish probable cause by arguing that Smith interfered in the investigation into the dog poop by interrupting Officer Tinklepaugh’s conversation with his wife. Those courts also rejected the prosecutor’s argument that probable cause could have been based on Smith’s words being loud enough to violate Jackson’s noise ordinance.
Now, two years later, instead of the officer responsible for arresting a man for his freedom of speech, it will be the taxpayers who are held accountable in the form of a lawsuit.
Should Smith have been polite to the officer? Of course. However, being an asshole is not illegal and a person’s right to nonviolent speech should never be removed.
In the land of the free, a person can be kidnapped and thrown in a cage for arbitrary sounds made with their mouth that cause harm to no one.
Aside from this being clearly asinine, it’s well-established by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.
In Cohen v. California, the U.S. Supreme court upheld a citizen’s First Amendment right to wear a jacket to court that read “Fuck the Draft,” the court held:
“For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.”
What’s more, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in City of Houston v. Hill, that police must tolerate even more abusive speech than an average citizen. The court concluded that “in the face of verbal challenges to police action, officers and municipalities must respond with restraint,” and added that, “the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers.”
READ MORE: Noam Chomsky Exposes the "Propaganda Model" Used to Control the U.S. Population in 6 Minutes
Here at the Free Thought Project, we feel there are no such things as ‘bad words’ but, rather, certain words some people don’t like to hear.
The arbitrary nature of government enforcing laws that dictate what vocabulary a person can use is as ridiculous as it is tyrannical. Sadly, it remains a part of society.
Telling people what words they can and can’t say to ‘protect’ others is chilling. Freedom of speech does not come with terms and conditions as words alone, less the obvious yelling “fire” in a movie theater, cannot cause physical harm.
Have we learned nothing from history?
Jackson, KY – Most people may see nothing wrong with a town councilman becoming a police offer, but what if that councilman cop also owns an ambulance company, and begins pulling over competing ambulances—then does he have too much power?
The answer is still “No” in the city of Jackson, Kentucky, despite the fact that the taxpayer-funded Kentucky Association of Counties is now paying a $26,000 settlement to Emergency Medical Technician Jason Crigger.
Crigger filed a lawsuit against Breathitt County Special Deputy and Councilman Steve McIntosh, claiming that McIntosh had no legitimate reason to pull over the ambulance he was driving in June 2016.
“Never gave me a reason that he pulled me over….Never accused me of any traffic violations or anything of the sort. It appeared to me he just pulled me over to try to threaten and intimidate us,” Crigger said.
This accusation is just the latest in a series of alleged conflicts of interest Crigger claims McIntosh has in his official positions as an officer of the law, a businessman and a town councilman.
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Mountain News WYMT reported that when one of its reporters attempted to talk to the Jackson city councilman, he refused to be recorded on camera. He did reportedly say that he had good reasons for pulling Crigger over—but refused to say what those reasons were.
Jay Arrowood, owner of Arrow-Med Ambulance, Inc. told reporters he believes that the city needs to “jerk this guy’s badge.”
The two competing ambulance companies have been locked in a series of legal battles. McIntosh is suing Arrow-Med in another lawsuit that alleges the company had defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of more than $1 million.
READ MORE: Cop Involved in Quadruple Murder and Cocaine Conspiracy Kills Himself as Feds Try to Arrest Him
At the time McIntosh pulled Crigger over, there was a patient riding as a passenger who had just undergone dialysis and was being transported back home. Arrowood didn’t appreciate the officer’s actions and remarked:
“Mr. McIntosh needs to work on improving his own service versus trying to put our service out of business,” Arrowood said. “If you’ll pull an ambulance over for no reason, hindering patient care, there’s nothing that you won’t do.”
Crigger is suing for damages related to his “humiliation and suffering, punitive damages against McIntosh and an injunction preventing anyone acting in concert with McIntosh to stop interfering with Arrow-Med,” according to Mountain News.
Predictably, Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons told Mountain News he was not aware of any wrongdoing on behalf of his deputy. However, Arrowood says the harassment has been going on for years.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, altercations between police officers, EMTS, and even fireman are nothing new. In 2009, Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Daniel Martin pulled over ambulance drive Maurice White, choked him, and proceed to arrest him.
White objected to being pulled over while transporting a passenger in need of emergency medical care. But that didn’t stop Martin, and his superiors took his side. Not only was Martin allowed to keep his job with the OKHP, but he was later involved in another scandal where he showed an inappropriate photo to another officer.
Having a police officer who is also a town councilman is a conflict of interest enough for a sheriff who’s worth his weight in salt to deny employment. But having an officer who owns a competing ambulance company, who then pulls over his competition is a blaring display of both police corruption and political corruption. If Sheriff Clemons is truly concerned with maintaining the public’s trust, he may need to revisit his decision to keep such an officer on the force.
READ MORE: VIDEO: Cyclist Unlawfully Accosted & Charged by a Tyrant Cop -- But He Fought Back and Won!
In the case of Jackson, Kentucky, while Crigger will receive a $26,000 settlement, the burden to pay the bill is on the taxpayers—not McIntosh, who still remains in his capacity as a sheriff’s deputy.
New York, NY — Disgraced NYPD police officer Gerard Benderoth, 48 — nicknamed “White Rhino” from his days as a strongman competitor, was being arrested by the FBI Wednesday when he pulled out a pistol and put a bullet in his head.
Benderoth was under arrest for his role in a quadruple homicide and massive cocaine conspiracy of which he was alleged to be a part of and involved at least one other New York cop.
According to the New York Post:
Officers had tried earlier Wednesday to grab Benderoth at his ranch home in Stony Point in Rockland County, where he lived with his wife, Amy, and their four children.
Not finding him there, agents caught up with him one town south and some 15 minutes away, on windy Rosman Road.
Seeing flashing lights behind him, Benderoth called his former colleagues at the Haverstraw Police Department.
“Why are you pulling me over?” he asked, according to sources.
But Haverstraw cops told him it wasn’t them.
Realizing that he couldn’t rely on his fellow cops to let him off, Benderoth apparently went into panic mode. He then stopped his SUV in front of a church near a school, grabbed his pistol, and shot himself in the head before the FBI could make it to his car.
Benderoth’s entire role in this conspiracy is unknown. However, as a source told the Post, the fact that he killed himself likely means he was in fairly deep.
“If this guy put a bullet in his head rather than go and talk to them, he must have been in deep,” a police source told the Post.
READ MORE: This Sadistic Cop Game Happens A Lot. But This Time it was Caught on Film
“While conducting a law enforcement vehicle stop this morning, FBI agents and task force officers approached a man who was the only occupant of a stopped vehicle,” the FBI said in a written statement.
“During the approach, the man drew a handgun and shot himself. He died of the self-inflicted wound.”
Benderoth was alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy with another New York cop, Nick Tartaglione, of Otisville, who the Free Thought Project helped to expose last year.
In December, Tartaglione was arrested after authorities discovered the bodies of four missing men on buried on his property. Tartaglione was arrested on murder charges and for his role in a massive cocaine trade, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said in a press release in December. And now, it seems, Benderoth was also deeply involved.
“While all murders tear at the fabric of our communities, when the alleged perpetrator of a gangland-style, quadruple homicide is a former police officer, that strikes at the heart of civilized society,” Bharara said. “As alleged, Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor police officer, participated in the senseless murder of four people in a bar in Chester, New York.
“These four men had not been seen or heard from since the day of their alleged murder. We hope that today’s arrest brings some measure of comfort to the victims’ families and loved ones,” Bharara said.
The murder, which took place back in April, involved four men. According to authorities, two of the murdered men were involved in the cocaine deal that went south while the other two men happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
READ MORE: 7 Preposterous Lies and Scams Police Unions Used in 2015 - that the Public Believed
While his exact involvement in the conspiracy remains a mystery, Benderoth, who is survived by his four children and wife, must have had something weighing very heavy on him to pull the trigger. Perhaps Tartaglione was rolling over on all those involved in exchange for a lighter sentence and, perhaps, Benderoth knew this.
The father of Dallas police officer Patrick Zamarripa — a Fort Worth native who was one of five officers killed in downtown Dallas in July — is suing Black Lives Matter, among other groups, alleging that its organizers incited a “War on Police” that led to his son’s death.
Enrique Zamarripa filed a 43-page lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Monday, seeking damages of up to $550 million.
“While Defendant Black Lives Matter claims to combat anti-black racism,” the lawsuit said, “the movement has in fact incited and committed further violence, severe bodily injury and death against police officers of all races and ethnicities, Jews, and Caucasians. Defendant Black Lives Matter is in fact a violent and revolutionary criminal gang.”
