Police officers were caught on video violently assaulting a teenager while arresting him, only to later admit that he had not broken any laws.
The post WATCH: Cops Ruthlessly Beat Innocent Teenager, Causing Traumatic Brain Injury, Then Let Him Go appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Dekalb County, GA — The three days Omar Malcolm spent in the DeKalb County Jail could pay off in a sum of up to $1.5 million, pending a settlement with the former police investigator who arrested him. Alexander Vots, the detective who was working a shoplifting case at a Verizon store, arrested Malcolm in what has proved to be a painful incident of incompetence.
In January 2016, Malcolm was one of two employees at a Verizon store who took down two would-be shoplifters and recovered a swiped IPad. Nearly a full year later, Vots was done with his investigation and was sure he had identified his robber.
After lifting fingerprints from the iPad, the detective had a suspect, none other than Malcolm himself. Yes, that’s right. The detective lifted the employee’s fingerprints and came to the conclusion he was the thief, in spite of surveillance video that proved otherwise.
Adding insult to injury, Vots convinced Judge Lindsey Jones to sign an arrest warrant for Malcolm, who was subsequently arrested on Dec. 10, 2016. He spent the next three days in jail for a crime he did not commit but actually prevented.
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In January 2017, after Malcolm’s attorney came into possession of the security footage that showed his client was telling the truth, the young man’s criminal case was dismissed.
Judge Jones was the first to apologize. He told Malcolm, “Mr. Omar, I’m going to apologize to you…I’m the judge who signed the warrant to have you arrested.” He explained to Malcolm that a simple phone call to the store could have ruled out the young man as a suspect. But that call was never made.
READ MORE: YAHOO! News Equates Filming Cops with Wanting to Kill Them
Now, Vots is in the hot seat for violating Malcolm’s civil rights. He has since left the police department and cannot be reached for comment. But the former detective is the only defendant listed on Malcolm’s newly filed federal civil rights lawsuit for $1.5 million.
Robert James is one of Malcolm’s civil attorneys. James used to be DeKalb County’s district attorney. “Imagine spending days in jail for a crime, not only that you did not commit, but risked your life to prevent,” said James, adding, “It’s a miscarriage of justice. This should not have happened under any circumstance.”
J. Max Davis, Malcolm’s other attorney discovered why he thinks Vots made such a life-changing mistake. Davis asked Vots to provide video footage from the attempted robbery, and the detective sent him a video from the week prior to the one with which Malcolm was in the middle.
“It was time-date stamped the 16th of January,” Davis said. “It showed two different employees, a different situation. It was the same store, but it was clear in the corner that is was from 1-16-2016.” The actual attempted shoplifting crime which Malcolm prevented took place on 1-23-2016.
“I realized everything Omar had told me was absolutely true, and my heart sank,” Davis said. “It’s been a very tough ordeal for Mr. Malcolm. He’s handled it with dignity.”
In other words, the detective arrested a store employee based on video footage from a crime which took place a full week before the one which Malcolm prevented. Instead of receiving a commendation from the police department, he was arrested.
READ MORE: Two Cops Suspended After Almost Shooting Each Other in Fight Over Who Can Run Faster
Davis now intends to hold the former police officer accountable for his actions. He described the interaction he had with Vots when he discovered the truth. “When I asked him if he ever verified that Omar was an employee of Verizon, he said, ‘Let me call you back."” Davis said. “Just a little more work, just one phone call, and this wouldn’t have happened.”
“I spent 20 years working with police, and I have a lot of respect for law enforcement,” James said. “Our job is to hold someone accountable when they do not act as they should, law enforcement or otherwise.”
Malcolm spoke with an 11Alive reporter and commented about his time in jail and the ordeal of being accused of a crime he not only didn’t commit but one he actually prevented.
Las Vegas, NV — Kenya and Henry Brian Rodriguez were playing video games and watching TV with their two friends Jordhy Leal and David Madueno when all of the sudden cops rushed into their home, held them all at gunpoint, killed the family dog, and unlawfully arrested them and their father. After going to the wrong home, murdering the family dog, and kidnapping and terrorizing innocent children, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department still maintains that they did everything by the book.
Now, because of America’s cruel system of ‘justice,’ the officers responsible were never held accountable and it is the taxpayers who are taking responsibility. On Monday, in spite of saying they did everything by the book, the LVMPD Fiscal Affairs Committee approved a settlement to the family for the abuse.
The incident happened on Oct. 24, 2009, and it has taken nearly 8 years for the family to receive even a drop of justice. According to the lawsuit and the arrest records, the children and family had done nothing wrong when police barged in that fateful day.
Around 4:30 in the afternoon, police received a 911 call from a witness who claimed he saw two white males looking into the windows of homes in his neighborhood. The children and the adults in the home were all Hispanic — not white.
Sgt Jay Roberts and officer Michael Dunn of the LVMPD responded first and were then followed by a slew of their colleagues who swarmed the residence of Jesus Sandoval and Adriana Rodriguez — the parents of the children.
READ MORE: Mother Claims 6-year-old Beaten By Police at School
According to the lawsuit, what happened next was nothing short of negligent terrorism.
Roberts looked through an open bedroom window and saw “three young males” who were “younger than 18 to 20,” and were “about 14, 15.” Roberts conceded that the boys—Henry, then 18, who lived at the house, and his two friends, David, then 15, and Jordhy, then 16—“did not match” two of the three metrics that Schouten had given him: the number of suspects or the age of the suspects.
In spite of realizing that these young boys were not the suspects police were looking for, Roberts and his fellow officers escalated the situation anyway. According to the lawsuit:
Roberts pointed his gun at the head of one of the boys through the bedroom window, and gave the boys conflicting commands, telling them “don’t move,” “[l]et me see your hands,” and “turn the music down.” Roberts told Jordhy to turn down the music, which Jordhy tried to do, and then told him, “I told you don’t move, I could shoot you” or “I’ll f* * *ing shoot you.”
According to the lawsuit, all the children did their best to comply with the crazed officer’s conflicting commands but admitted they may not have heard them all as the music was playing and he yelled so many of them.
As Roberts was holding innocent children at gunpoint, his partner Dunn entered the room through a sliding glass door — also with his gun drawn. Both officers admitted in the lawsuit that their commands could have created confusion.
READ MORE: Yearbook Photo Prank Lands Teen in Jail with 70 Criminal Charges -- This is School in a Police State
After the situation briefly calmed down, Roberts ordered the children out of the bedroom. At this point, Henry asked police if he could put away the family dog, Hazel — before letting cops into the rest of the home — he was denied.
What happened next is nothing short of terrifying, especially considering these were children, not some hardened criminals. According to the lawsuit:
As the boys exited the bedroom, Hazel slipped in front of Henry and Jordhy, but continued to walk behind David, according to David’s testimony. Dunn shot Hazel in the face, twelve inches from David, and in the direction of Henry and Jordhy. The officers ordered David and Jordhy to the floor, handcuffed them, and brought them outside. Henry was ordered outside, but was not cuffed until later, as he was carrying Hazel, who was bleeding to death. The boys testified that the handcuffing and other treatment by the officers caused them pain.
Not until they had arrested all the children and killed their dog did the officers even ask if the kids had a right to be in the home.
After Henry called his father, Jesus Sandoval, he came rushing home to find his son covered in blood. He was horrified and thought police had shot his son. However, it was Hazel’s blood.
Cops then attacked Sandoval, who’d just had back surgery and was in severe pain, and put him in handcuffs. After they slammed him into the cruiser, Sandoval was detained in the patrol car for 25 to 30 minutes, still “screaming in pain,” before officers responded to his requests for medication, according to the lawsuit.
READ MORE: Disturbing Body Cam Footage Shows an Alleged Cop Calling a Dog Over and Then Killing It
According to the court records, none of the family members or the boys were cited or charged with any crime, and Dunn testified that the boys committed no crime. The officers eventually “just left.” Dunn admitted that if he or Roberts had asked basic identifying questions, the entire incident would not have happened.
None of the officers involved in the case were held liable for any of the damage they caused. However, the taxpayers will now be robbed of $200,000 — an insultingly low amount for the family — to pay for these incompetent and abusive officers.
Houston, TX — A high school teenager found out the hard way what ‘fitting the description’ looks like in a police state. However, because he was unafraid of filming the police, the rest of the world can see what that feels like too.
Andrew, who is a high school student at Davis High School in northern Houston, was out for a jog last month when he was targeted by Harris County deputy Clark who thought he ‘fit the description’ of a man who just robbed a Walgreens.
Andrew posted the video of his interaction to YouTube with the following description:
Just doing my daily jog after school then this old geezer begins to follow me but does not honk at first. So I started recording for my safety. After he handcuffed me and stopped the video from recording he put me inside his vehicle and made me answer all his question, what’s your name, where do you live, what school you go to. Then on his radio they add another description that the suspect was wearing a blue sweat shirt and black pants….I had on a black hoodie with blue shorts……
“What are you running for?” asks the cop as he gets out of his patrol car with his taser drawn.
“I’m jogging,” says Andrew.
“Well, we just had a robbery down there and you kind of match the description,” the deputy responds.
When the deputy asks Andrew for his name, he first declines. However, he then says, “my name is Andrew.”
“Have a seat on the ground or I’m going to light your ass up,” the deputy responded. “You’re not complying. No ID, investigating a robbery, you’re running from that area.”
“I’m just jogging,” Andrew said.
The deputy proceeds to lie to Andrew and tell him that it is against the law for a 17-year-old not to carry an ID.
“Seventeen is an adult,” says the uninformed deputy. However, according to Texas law, 18 is the “age of majority,” at which point residents are legally considered adults. Only if Andrew would have emancipated himself would he be considered an adult.
As he continues the false arrest of this innocent teenager, the deputy radios in to dispatch to inquire about the description of the original suspect. Remember, the deputy already claimed that Andrew fit the description. However, when we hear the conversation the deputy had with dispatch, it becomes clear he had no clue what the suspect looked like.
“He should be wearing a blue sweatshirt,” the dispatcher says.
“Do I have a blue sweatshirt on?” the teen asks. “No, thank you. I do not.”
“He’s got a blue sweatshirt on,” the deputy replies to the dispatcher.
“It’s a black …,” the teen asserts.
When the deputy asks Andrew what high school he goes to, he refused to answer — at which point the handcuffs came out.
By the time Andrew said ‘Davis high school,’ the deputy was moving in for the arrest, noting that he was being ‘uncooperative.’
At this point, the video ends as deputy Clark confiscates his phone and puts Andrew in the back of the car.
According to Andrew, after the phone cut off, he was held in the back of the squad car as Deputy Clark attempted to justify his wrongful detainment — for jogging. However, he could not dispute the dispatcher’s description.
Then, without saying anything, deputy Clark opens the door, uncuffs Andrew and drives away. No words, not even an ‘I’m sorry’ were uttered by the deputy as he pulled off, according to Andrew.
As Andrew points out, he was actually running toward the store that was allegedly robbed. “Who runs back to the scene of a crime?” Andrew asked. However, all this information was irrelevant to deputy Clark.
Sadly, ‘jogging while black’ seems to be a detainable offense in America. Last year, father of three, Corey Dickerson was out for a jog one night when Talladega, Alabama’s finest decided they needed to harass him.
In that video, Dickerson was resting from a hard sprint when officer Price of the Talladega police department decided to detain him.
The officer in that video begins his ‘fishing’ expedition by firing off random questions at Dickerson, in a likely attempt to get him to self-incriminate. But Dickerson is no fool.
Houston, TX — Ross LeBeau, of Houston, was recently cleared of drug charges after he was arrested for possession of Methamphetamine. It turns out that LeBeau was actually in possession of kitty litter, not meth. However, this made no difference to the cops who kidnapped and caged him for it.
Considering that there was nearly a half pound of the substance in his vehicle, the police thought that they had conducted the bust of the century. They even put out a press release with LeBeau’s mugshot to brag about the bust, after two faulty field tests determined that the substance was crystal meth. While LeBeau spent 3 days in jail, the kitty litter was sent to a forensics lab for further testing, and it was ultimately discovered that the substance was not meth.
“They thought they had the biggest bust in Harris County. This was the bust of the year for them,” LeBeau said.
“I was wrongly accused. I’m going to do everything in my power to clear my name,” he added.
Attorney George Reul pointed out that the department’s entire field testing system may be compromised.
“Ultimately it might be bad testing equipment that they need to re-evaluate,” attorney George Reul said.
Cases like this are nothing new, in fact, we report on them on a regular basis.
According to the national litigation and public policy organization, the Innocence Project, at any given time there are an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 innocent people currently locked in cages in U.S. prisons.
Couple this staggering number with the number of people locked up for non-violent drug possession and the United States looks more like the Gulag of the 1930’s than the Land of the Free.
But how can so many innocent people be locked up, how does the state present evidence, that it doesn’t have, to get a conviction? Well, the folks at the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the U.S., Marijuana Policy Project, made a short video that explains just how easy it is for police to turn an entirely innocent person into a criminal.
During the short video below, the researchers demonstrate how easy it is for police to generate a false positive during a field test for drugs.
The group tests over the counter Tylenol PM in a police test kit for cocaine — the test kit says the Tylenol is cocaine.
The group also tests the most popular chocolate in the world, Hershey’s chocolate, for marijuana, it also tests positive.
Perhaps the most disturbing test was when the group put absolutely nothing into the field test kit, and they received a positive result.
The implications associated with wrongfully accusing and then claiming to have evidence of an individual in possession of an illegal substance are formidable — to say the least. Most people are simply unaware of the fact that police test kits are a crapshoot.
According to Forensic Resources:
The director of a lab recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for forensic science excellence has called field drug testing kits “totally useless” due to the possibility of false positives. In laboratory experiments, at least two brands of field testing kits have been shown to produce false positives in tests of Mucinex, chocolate, aspirin, chocolate, and oregano.
In spite of these recommendations and multiple examples of innocent people being incarcerated for their error, police departments across the country continue to employ the use of these “totally useless” kits.
On May 8 of this year, Gale Griffin and her husband Wendall Harvey, who’ve been driving trucks together for the last seven years were wrongfully charged with possession of cocaine. They were targeted by incompetent cops who used criminally ineffective drug test kits on a white powdery substance found inside the couple’s truck. The kit identified the substance as cocaine. But it was not cocaine. It was baking soda Griffin used for stomach problems. However, they were caged for months while the reckless cops ignored their pleas of innocence.
Also this year, Alexander Bernstein of Brooklyn was jailed and had his life ruined after cops mistook soap for cocaine.
Wenonah resident John Cokos recently settled a lawsuit against the Gloucester County police department for $35,000. The lawsuit comes after an arrest for drug possession because the officer claimed that his crackers were crack rocks.
In October, college student John Harrington was thrown in prison after police, with one of these field drug test kits, tested sugar, and came up with a false positive for cocaine.
“Really, I’m really in jail right now for powdered sugar, ” John Harrington thought after it happened.
We’ve also seen the case in which police mistook Jolly Ranchers for meth and jailed an innocent man. Love Olatunijojo, 25, and an unidentified friend purchased Jolly Ranchers at the It’Sugar candy emporium in Coney Island in June of 2013. Several blocks away, cops stopped and searched the friends and mistook the candies for crystal meth. Olatunijojo was then thrown in jail.
In August, we reported on the story of a man who was held in prison for over four months because police falsely identified salt as crystal meth.
And the list goes on…
What does it say about police departments across the country who knowingly use test kits that will implicate innocent people in a crime that they did not commit that will land them in jail?
It is bad enough that the state will kidnap, cage and kill people when they possess a substance deemed illegal by the state. But, when they kidnap, cage and kill people because of their own negligence involved in testing someone’s personal items — they stoop to an entirely new low.
