A naked schizophrenic man, in dire need of mental health help received a police response instead which consisted of tasers, baton blows, boots and fists.
The post Disturbing Video Shows How a Naked Man In Need of Mental Health Help is Treated in a Police State appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Cops across the country routinely participate in a program in which they travel to Israel to receive training in policing tactics. To prevent the militarization of their police force, the city of Durham has banned this practice.
The post Durham Becomes First City in US to Ban Cops From Going to Israel for ‘Military-Style’ Training appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The body camera footage has been released from an incident in which police shot and killed a man "armed" with a screwdriver.
The post WATCH: Police Publicly Execute Mentally Ill Man ‘Armed’ With a Screwdriver appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Philip Brailsford went from spreading love in the Mormon church to gunning down an unarmed innocent father of two for no reason. What happened?
The tactics used by police to deal with suspects who are armed with knives have been used for decades, but have never been scientifically tested.
When a police shooting occurs, people often argue that the officer involved should have used a taser as a less lethal option—but some of the main points that are rarely discussed are how often police misuse tasers, and how many victims die as a result.
An investigation conducted by Reuters revealed that more than 1,000 people have died as victims of police tasers since 2000. Not only did the investigation find that tasers have a lethal power that is not being recognized by the company that manufactures the weapons, or by the departments that issue them, it also discovered that many of the victims are suffering from mental health problems.
“In the most detailed study ever of fatalities and litigation involving police use of stun guns, Reuters finds more than 150 autopsy reports citing Tasers as a cause or contributor to deaths across America. Behind the fatalities is a sobering reality: Many who die are among society’s vulnerable—unarmed, in psychological distress and seeking help.”
In one example, police in Ontario, California, were called to address a disturbance at a home involving an unarmed man with mental health issues. Three officers arrived, and instead of taking the 57-year-old man to the hospital, as his wife requested, a veteran officer hit the man with a taser twice—once directly to the chest—and the man died as a result. Reuters noted that this is not an isolated incident.
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Ken Wallentine, former chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General, told Reuters that “cops have been turned into mental health workers on the street,” and he fears that “some police training and some police practices have allowed the crowding out of persuasion and the Taser has become the default tool.”
According to the American Psychiatric Association, 1 in every 100 police calls involves a person with a mental health disorder, and as the investigation found, police officers often do not have the proper training to calm the situation, so they resort to using a taser on the subject, which can have detrimental, or even fatal consequences.
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Peter Eisler, one of the reporters conducting the investigation, told PBS NewsHour that his team was surprised to find that there were more deaths from police tasers, there was more litigation surrounding the incidents, and there was a more significant financial burden on the public than they had expected.
“The weapons themselves are not regulated, not as they’re sold to police,” Eisler said. “You know, they’re not a medical device. They’re not regulated by the FDA. They’re not a consumer product, so they’re not regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. So, Taser itself has done a lot of the—did a lot of the early testing on these devices, and one of the things that we found was that those tests were not necessarily as thorough or as solid as taser may have led police to believe.”
Eisler noted that as time went on and more research was conducted, it was discovered that the taser has the ability “to change the rhythm of the heart in a way that could lead to a fatal cardiac arrest.”
“Taser says that these weapons have been studied and that they’re overwhelmingly safe. Taser’s position is that the risks to the heart are more theoretical. The company does not concede that there has ever been a death direct — a cardiac-related death directly attributable to a taser. What we did was we looked at as many autopsy reports as we could collect on the 1,000-plus cases we identified, and we ended up getting around 750 autopsies. And we found that in at least 150-plus of those autopsies, the medical examiner, the coroner, attributed the death either in whole or in part to the taser, or listed the taser as a contributing factor to that death.”
As this investigation reveals that police are killing an alarming number of people with tasers and that many of those victims suffer from mental health issues, it serves as a reminder that there needs to be an overhaul in the way police are trained to deal with the citizens they claim to serve—especially those citizens who have mental health disorders and are often targeted and abused by the law enforcement officers they are taught to trust.
READ MORE: This Journalist Made All of these Cops Look Ridiculous by Schooling them on His Rights
Oklahoma City, OK — Police officers assaulting or even killing deaf people for being unable to hear their commands is a tragic reality. Pearl Pearson Jr. has learned that reality the hard way. For nearly seven minutes, Pearson, 64-years-old at the time and diabetic was beaten and arrested by police officers as they yelled at him to stop resisting.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers, Eric Foster and Kelton Hayes were the two officers that were involved in what an affidavit claims was a 7-minute altercation.
When the original incident happened on January 3, 2014, police refused to release the video. However, weeks later, after the media frenzy died down, police quietly released the dashcam. The disturbing video shows troopers yelling at Pearson and drag him from the vehicle.
He was dragged from the vehicle in spite of the fact that he did everything he was supposed to as a deaf driver, according to his family.
According to Pearson’s family, Pearl pulled over and rolled down his window expecting an officer to ask for this identification. An officer struck him in the face before Pearl had the chance to do anything.
The photos of his swollen and bruised face clearly show the result of the police action.
After Pearson was beaten by police, he was arrested and charged with resisting arrest. He was thrown in jail, and, according to his family, an interpreter was never provided while Pearl was under the care of law enforcement — not during the booking, hospital, or time at the jail was an interpreter provided — even though Pearl requested one.
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Pearson was sitting in a jail cell, battered and bruised, and had no idea ‘why.’
Pearson has no criminal record, and in fact is a father to a police officer, his son-in-law is also a cop. In 2015, Pearson was given an award for his amazing service to the community for working with people with disabilities.
Finally, after 3 years of holding it over his head, the District Attorney’s office decided to drop the charges. However, they dropped the charges, not because they thought the cops were in the wrong, and not because they thought Pearson was innocent. In fact, neither of the cops involved in beating a deaf man for being unable to understand them has faced any discipline at all. The sole reason the case was dropped was because the trial cost was too high.
Pearson, who learned sign language during segregation, learned a different way of communicating other than the traditional American Sign Language (ASL). He needs a translator for court officials to understand him. Because the cost of translators was so high, the DA decided to toss the case out.
The DA announced this week, that Pearson would no longer face the charges.
“It is the District Attorney’s responsibility to be a good steward of the taxpayer’s money,” District Attorney David Prater wrote. “Though it is important to prosecute matters to promote public safety and assure that the State of Oklahoma’s laws are enforced, the financial burden placed on the State to prosecute a matter is a legitimate consideration; especially as in this case, the matter is a misdemeanor.”
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Below is the video of this glaring incompetence.
