Off Duty Lansing Cop Chokes Teen and Threaten to Kill Him…For Being on His Lawn

Another out of control cop. This one off duty. Black teens sit in his front yard to tend to one of them who had been injured. White cop comes out tackles one of them starts choking him and threatening to kill him.

Guess the only good thing is he didn’t have his gun so he could have shot both kids and had the County Prosecutor get him off with an all white, Trump voter jury.

Off-Duty Officer Pins Black Teen To Ground For Being On His Lawn

Another teen filmed the video and begged the officer to let them go.

Police officers in the Village of Lansing, Illinois, are investigating an incident involving an off-duty police officer who was filmed holding a black teenager to the ground and threatening his life for being on the officer’s lawn.

Another minor filmed a portion of the Saturday confrontation, which was later shared on Facebook, where it went viral. The roughly 90-second video, seen below, contains explicit language throughout.

In it, an adult man straddles the teen and puts his hand around his neck. The man can be heard scolding the teen for coming onto his property and says, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Andrew M. Stroth, a civil rights attorney who is representing the teen’s family, identified him as 15-year-old Jordan Brunson and identified the teen who recorded the incident only as Aaron, also 15.

Later in the video, the off-duty officer tells Brunson that he is “trying to figure out what’s going on and you guys are acting stupid.”

When Brunson tells the man that “he is not involved in this,” the man says, “I don’t give a fuck who is. Do you understand that?”

“Why are you doing this to me then?” Brunson asks, to which the man replies, “Because your friend is being a fucking idiot,” apparently referring to Aaron.

A woman named Ann Falls, who claims to be related to Brunson, shared the video Monday on Facebook. It has been viewed nearly 4 million times.

The Lansing Police Department confirmed to the Northwest Indiana Times that officials had been investigating the incident before video of the confrontation was uploaded to the internet. The confrontation was related to a larger fight that had broken out among about 30 juveniles earlier in the day, police said in a statement Tuesday.

Brunson told Chicago news station WGN-TV that he was trying to help his friend who had been injured in a fight and went to sit on the officer’s porch.

“I was examining him,” Brunson told the news station. “I was going to go tell his grandmother.” Brunson also said that the man never identified himself as a police officer.

When asked about the officer’s confrontation of the teens, a spokesperson for the Lansing police directed HuffPost to statements released Monday, which said the off-duty officer “became involved when he was approached by two other subjects involved in the fight.”

“One of the juveniles had visible minor injuries, and the other was temporarily detained for further investigation until the arrival of on-duty officers,” the statement said.

The off-duty officer had found a backpack containing a baseball hat and a BB gun in his backyard, then he saw the injured 15-year-old on his property, according to the police’s statement Tuesday. The teen told the officer that he had been in a fight with several black male juveniles.

A black 15-year-old (Brunson, who is not identified by name in the police statement) then reportedly approached the injured teen and the off-duty officer on the officer’s property. According to police, the officer told both teens to stay put until police arrived, but they refused, “resulting in the off-duty officer physically detaining one of the juveniles.”

Stroth, whose law firm investigates police brutality, called the officer’s actions unwarranted and excessive, and said the earlier fight between the teens was unrelated to the officer’s treatment of Brunson.

“The video speaks for itself. It’s yet another example of a white officer using excessive and unreasonable force against a 15-year-old black boy,” Stroth told HuffPost. “Based on eyewitness reports and the video, Jordan did nothing to provoke the unwarranted and excessive force used by the police officer.”

Stroth told HuffPost that police had not filed any charges against either boy. Lansing police have not released the name of the officer, who is still on active duty, Police Chief Dennis Murrin told the Northwest Indiana Times.

Brunson’s family has not pressed any charges against the officer, though Stroth’s law firm is conducting its own investigation into the incident.

 

House Intelligence Member – “80,000 Voter Records Hacked in Illinois”

As I said to our resident Trumpazoid… The issue is a bit bigger than “spearphishing”.

House Intel Committee member: Russian hackers may have accessed over 80,000 Illinois voter records

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said Monday that Russian operatives hacked into the State Board of Elections last year to view voter database files, a potential move toward trying to make voters distrust the state and federal election system.

Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, also warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” over executive privilege between President Donald Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court as part of multiple investigations into possible collusion between agents of the Russian government and Trump’s presidential campaign.

Quigley’s declaration of Russian involvement in the hacking of the state elections board marked the first time the country had been definitively identified as behind the attack last year, though it had been widely suspected.

“The Russians hacked into the Illinois State Board of Elections,” Quigley said after a meeting with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.

“They got into the database,” he said. “I believe they’re on the doorstep to hacking into our voting systems. That is my educated guess.

“I’m not saying I know they’ll do this, (but) think about what you could do. You could check and say, ‘Oh no, all these people already voted, or these people voted absentee.’ Once you get into that, then there’s all kind of mischief,” Quigley said.

The Democrat, who represents the North Side and north and west suburbs, said the intelligence committee should look at classifying election systems as a “target” that should be hardened and given federal resources.

Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the State Board of Elections, said no voter information had been manipulated by hackers. The identification of 3,000 voters was viewed, and hackers may have viewed up to 80,000 more. Those 80,000 received letters letting them know that their driver’s license number or last four digits of their Social Security number may have been seen.

Menzel said the state elections board does not tabulate votes, something that occurs in each of the state’s 102 counties and seven special local election boards. Any toughening of tabulation would involve those local election officials. Menzel said that the manipulation Quigley theorized about would have minimal effect on balloting compared with normal human error at local precincts.

“A lot of election administrators would like more resources and more help, but what kind of help is he talking about? What kind of hardening of things? The election administrators would not be happy with a pile of additional unfunded mandates,” Menzel said.

As for the House Intelligence Committee investigation, Quigley said, “I am concerned we will face a constitutional crisis,” adding it was something he was not saying lightly.

 

Evanston Police Violently Arrest Un-resisting Black Man With No Evidence of Crime

Here we go again. More Trumpazoid cops arrest black Phd candidate…For allegedly “stealing” his own car. Before asking him for ID, asking him for the title of the car – or any evidence.

This is wild animal pack behavior.

Cops violently arrest black man suspected of stealing car — that turns out to be his own

Evanston Police released a dash cam video on Wednesday of a 2015 interaction between an officer and a black engineering doctoral candidate accused of stealing his own car.

On October 10, 2015, a woman called the cops on Lawrence Crosby—who was working on his own vehicle—to report that a black man appeared to be breaking into a car and stealing it, Fox Chicago reports.

“Hi somebody’s trying to break into, somebody’s trying to break into a car,” she told the 9-11 dispatcher, later adding, ”I think the person just got into the car.”

Crosby was driving towards the Northwestern University campus when police pulled him over. His car was equipped with its own dash cam video, and on the recording Crosby can be heard telling someone he suspected he was being followed.

Police pulled him over in a church parking lot, where Crosby was violently detained for stealing his own car.

“On the ground, on the ground, down on the ground—down on the ground, turn around,” police said as several officers swarmed Crosby and forced him to the pavement. He was charged with resisting arrest and disobeying an officer.

Evanston Alderman Brian Miller—who’s running for mayor—told Fox Chicago he’s furious with what’s shown on the video, saying it should be a “wakeup call” for the police department.

“I understand being a police officer is a tough job, but we need them to exercise judgment in their day to day operations,” Miller said “And in this situation, within ten seconds of Mr. Crosby getting out of his car with his hands in the air, he was tackled, he was kneed while he was standing up, then he was punched repeatedly by multiple officers, for allegedly stealing his own car. Our police officers need to be better than that.”

A judge threw out the criminal charges against Crosby. He filed civil rights lawsuit against the Evanston Police Department.

This is the police department denial…

 

Wrongful Justice…Is No Justice At All

Yet another case of 5 black men convicted of a rape and murder they didn’t do…

The Dixmoor 5 – In this case, 5 innocent teenagers (*Dixmoore Five*) were convicted of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews. DNA excluded all of them. The DNA found on and in this young girl belonged to Willie Randolph, a convicted rapist. In 2011, his DNA was matched to the DNA left at the crime scene, and he has yet to be charged with the murder of this innocent girl. He is a convicted sex offender, and is in prison for that a some other charges. Three were 14 and two were 16 when convicted (Sound familiar?)

The five men spent a collective 80 years in prison

The State knew 5 years ago that these men were innocent, and the identity of the real murderer…But did nothing. Losing a $40 million lawsuit to the 5 wrongly convicted in 2012, still didn’t move the state forward. Ain’t it funny how fast Justice can convict someone wrongly …But to correct an error takes years?

Sex offender to be charged in 1991 rape, murder of Illinois teen after men known as ‘Dixmoor Five’ had wrongly spent time in prison

A 58-year-old sex offender will be charged in the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old suburban Chicago girl after men known as the “Dixmoor Five” had wrongly spent time in prison for the brutal crime.

Willie Randolph will appear in bond court on Thursday afternoon on charges of murder, kidnapping and predatory criminal sexual assault in the death of Dixmoor teen Cateresa Matthews. He is already serving a three-year sentence for drug possession in an Illinois state prison, but was to be released in a few weeks, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The “Dixmoor Five” reached a $40 million settlement with Illinois State Police two years ago after they were cleared of all charges in Cateresa’s death. They spent a decade or more in prison before DNA evidence pointed to Randolph, and not them.

The DNA evidence against Randolph was discovered five years ago, according to the Chicago Tribune, but authorities did not bring charges against the sex offender until now.

“I kept meeting with them and meeting with them, and they said they were investigating,” Cateresa’s mother Theresa Matthews told the Tribune on Wednesday. “They said, ‘We don’t have enough evidence.’ And I said, ‘What more do you need? You have the DNA.’ It just didn’t make any sense.”

Randolph had recently made statements in prison to incriminate himself, and he made them “with much bravado,” a law enforcement official told the newspaper.

Cateresa vanished late in 1991 after leaving her grandmother’s home, and her body was found three weeks later, according to the Tribune.

The real killer

 

BLM Translates Into Political Power in Midwest Elections

It has been obvious for a while with the lockstep cooperation between corrupt Police elements and City/County/State Prosecutors that the only way to begin moving the system towards any semblance of fair and accountable to the community is to remove the current set of thoroughly corrupt District Attorneys who use their position to derail Justice.

That effort bore some fruit last night…

Black Lives Matter movement see series of victories in midwest elections

The protest movement that formed in response to deadly shootings of African Americans saw oustings of prosecutors in Chicago and Cleveland on Wednesday

The protest movement that formed in response to deadly shootings of African Americans by police won a remarkable series of political victories in the American midwest on Wednesday night, including its first oustings of prosecutors in major cities.

In successive upsets, Democratic primary challengers in Chicago, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio, wrested the party’s nomination from sitting prosecutors who came under sharp criticism for their handling of the fatal shootings of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice.

The electoral wins were declared just hours after the town of Ferguson, Missouri – where nights of unrest followed the killing of a black 18-year-old by a white officer in August 2014 – buckled under pressure to accept federal oversight of its criminal justice system.

With 96% of votes counted in Cook County, Illinois, challenger Kim Foxx was trouncing the two-term state’s attorney, Anita Alvarez, by almost 30 percentage points. “The stakes in this race were very high,” Foxx, an African American former prosecutor, told a victory rally. “This race is not so much about saying goodbye. It’s about turning the page.”

Alvarez was targeted by demonstrators after the emergence last November of video footage showing Laquan, 17, being shot 13 times by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke while walking away from a confrontation in 2014. Despite Alvarez bringing murder charges against Van Dyke, she angered protesters by waiting more than a year to act while city authorities fought to prevent the release of the dashcam recording to the public.

The win by Foxx, who pledged on Wednesday to repair what she called the county’s “broken criminal justice system”, was celebrated by activists who campaigned against Alvarez intensely, some organising on social media under the hashtag #ByeAnita.

Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color Of Change, said Alvarez’s departure promised to halt “nearly a decade of corruption and over-prosecution in our communities”. In a statement, Assata’s Daughters, a campaign group made up of black women and girls, declared: “Chicago Black youth have kicked Anita Alvarez out of office.”

In Ohio, meanwhile, Cuyahoga County prosecuting attorney Timothy McGinty was unseated by Michael O’Malley, a former deputy county prosecutor. O’Malley, currently the safety director for the city of Parma, led McGinty by almost 10 percentage points with 95% of precincts reporting.

McGinty last year led a contentious and drawn-out grand jury inquiry into the fatal police shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy who was playing with a toy gun in a park in November 2014. In December last year, McGinty announced that no charges would be brought against Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, who shot Tamir within seconds of arriving at the scene in response to a 911 call.

Tamir’s family and protesters expressed disgust over the handling of the case by McGinty, who confirmed in December that he had personally recommended to the grand jurors that they not prosecute the officers involved. Throughout the inquiry, McGinty steadily released information that cast the officers in a favourable light, including reports he had commissioned by private consultants that made questionable claims about Rice’s conduct in his final moments.

O’Malley said on Wednesday that he would work to “restore some type of confidence” to the office, according to Cleveland’s Fox 8 News. “I truly believe that over the last three or four weeks people started hearing the message that my campaign team was putting forth, and it was that this county needs to rebuild confidence in the criminal justice system and they need an individual who is willing to work to do that,” O’Malley said.

Earlier in the evening, city councillors in Ferguson had voted unanimously to approve the so-called “consent decree” pushed on them by the US Justice Department following a scathing report that alleged systematic racism in the St Louis suburb’s policing and courts system.

The attorney general, Loretta Lynch, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the townlast month, when it initially rejected the oversight deal, raising a series of objections. However, councillors and the mayor voted to accept it under pressure from protesters and after assurances from federal officials over how much the oversight process was likely to cost city funds.

“Our number one goal is to not only move the city but the entire region forward,” Mayor James Knowles said in a statement after the decision. “We have heard the concerns of the community and we’re looking forward to working with our citizens.”

Following the vote, Knowles, a part-time leader lambasted by protesters for more than 18 months, was photographed shaking hands with Michael Brown Sr, whose son Michael was fatally shot in August 2014 following a struggle with white Ferguson officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury declined to bring charges against Wilson, sparking further unrest.

 

“White Student Union” Attacks Black Student Union at U of Illinois

Proving once again, racism isn’t just in the imagination of black students…

‘White Student Union’ challenges Black Lives Matter at University of Illinois

A Facebook page ostensibly created for an audience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign called “Illini White Students Union” has drawn fire after it characterized the national Black Lives Matter movement as “terrorism.”

Created Wednesday after a protest sympathetic to Black Lives Matter, the page declared itself “for white students of University of Illinois to be able to form a community and discuss our own issues as well as be able to organize against the terrorism we have been facing from Black Lives Matter activists on campus,” as the Daily Illini reported.

The page did not last long in its original incarnation, but was taken down after three hours. It has since been revived here.

“We recognize the right to free speech, and we encourage you to exercise that right when you see examples of racism, discrimination or intimidation on our campus,” Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson, who called the page “extremely disturbing,” wrote in a message Thursday to the student body.

In an anonymous message to the News-Gazette, the page’s administrator discussed Black Lives Matter.

“We feel they disrupt student daily life and activity far too much,” the message read, saying that movement “marginalizes” white students. “… We are in the United States and not Africa and we don’t desire to have an African flag on campus.”

The current page is bare bones — just a few links to news stories about the controversy with an image of a statue on campus. The “about” section dedicated the page to “White Pride and a safe place for White students,” according to the News-Gazette, though that page appeared to have changed.

A recent post was a clip from the 1998 film “American History X,” in which Edward Norton plays a white supremacist. In the clip, billed as “revelant to all Ferguson news,” Norton’s character denounces the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

“It’s a bunch of people grabbing any excuse they can find to go and loot a store, nothing more,” Norton says. “… Lincoln freed the slaves what, like, 130 years ago. How long does it take you to get your act together?”

While this was certainly eyebrow-raising, the original page was even more provocative.

“Feel free to send in pictures you take of any black protestors on the quad so we know who anti-whites are,” one message read, as FOX 55 reported….Read the Rest Here…

 

 

Fox Lake — Police Officer Suicide?

This one burst onto the news scene about a week ago, I blogged on it in “A Good Officer Falls“. It seemed at the time to be the case of a murder of a Police Officer.

Turns out that the policeman in question may not have been shot by the “three suspects he was pursuing”…

He may not have been murdered at all. Other sources are reporting that Lt Gliniewicz was only shot once, and that the coroner has refused to state where.

There is still more evidence to process, which may definitively prove things one way or another.

Illinois officer’s death may have been a suicide, evidence suggests

Illinois police are looking into the possibility that a Fox Lake officer’s death was a suicide, according to reports.

Fox Lake Lt. Charles (Joe) Gliniewicz, 52, was found mortally wounded after reporting he was chasing down three suspects with vague descriptions on Sept. 1. His death sparked a massive manhunt with 400 officers, but no arrests have been made and the suspects have not been found.

Authorities said they are investigating the case as a homicide. The Lake County Coroner, Thomas Rudd, said he couldn’t say whether it was a suicide, an accident or a homicide without further evidence.

“Every theory is being looked at,” Lake County Sheriff’s detective Chris Covelli told the Chicago Tribune. “Nothing has been eliminated at this point.”

Unnamed sources close to the investigation said evidence is mounting that the fatal shot was self-inflicted, according to the Chicago Tribune and Fox News.

Gliniewicz was shot twice, with one bullet hitting his Kevlar vest and the other bullet piercing his chest from a downward trajectory, sources told Fox News. Shell casings were found about 100 feet apart from each other near the body, which was found face-down.

His service weapon was found close to his body, which appeared to have no self-defense wounds, sources said. Ballistics and gun residue test results are expected to determine whether Gliniewicz was shot with his own weapon.

Police are also awaiting DNA tests to see if some found at the scene matches that in a criminal database.

Authorities discounted some of the reports claiming suicide was a possibility, claiming a disgraced retired cop served as one of the anonymous sources. They said Joseph A. Battaglia, 54, threatened police to rule the death a suicide and may have given reporters false tips.

But investigators have been clashing, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Detectives, who have been tight-lipped throughout, called out Rudd for releasing information that could jeopardize the investigation last week. On Monday, they held a meeting with one of his employees without Rudd’s knowledge.