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Saturday, December 27

Well, it would appear that the attitude cops now have about being better than anyone else isn't only held twward young black street kids. Anyone who opposes them is fair game!

 Former Buffalo Cop Fights For Pension After Exposing Brutality

Cariol Horne 19 year veteran


In 2006, Cariol Horne was a 19-year Buffalo police department veteran. She rushed to assist another officer on a domestic violence call. When she arrived, she was shocked to see another officer abusing the suspect and what happened next changed her life forever. The suspect was already cuffed, but that didn't stop the arresting officer from attacking:
"He was handcuffed in the front and he was sideways and being punched in the face by Gregory Kwiatkowski," explained Horne.
That was just the beginning:
"Gregory Kwiatkowski turned Neal Mack around and started choking him. So then I'm like, 'Greg! You're choking him,' because I thought whatever happened in the house he was still upset about so when he didn't stop choking him I just grabbed his arm from around Neal Mack's neck," said Horne.
From there, Officer Kwiatkowkski turned his attention to Cariol Horne:
"He comes up and punches me in the face and I had to have my bridge replaced," said Horne.
Cariol Horne was fired and denied her pension after a 19-year career. She's lost every appeal and her case is now being reviewed by the City of Buffalo Common Council.
As for Officer Kwiatkowkski?
Officer Kwiatkowski was forced to retire from the police department after he was suspended for choking another officer on the job, and in a separate incident, punching another officer when he was off the clock.
In May 2014, Kwiatowkski and two other officers were indicted on federal civil rights violations against black teen suspects.
Kwiatowkski is accused of holding down one of the teens and shooting him with a BB gun. 

Let's hope the City of Buffalo Common Council does the right thing and restores Cariol Horne's full pension.

You can learn more and see WKBW's interview with Cariol Horne here.

Tuesday, December 23

Perhaps This is Why They Don't Want Cameras?

   

A lot of people (myself included) wonder why on earth the police departments of this country would NOT want to use lapel cams or other means of filming each encounter they have with an alleged criminal. It seems like it would put a halt to all of this debate about whether or not people, especially black males, are being 'profiled' or 'targeted', and we would no longer have these major protests and demonstrations going on all over the country. Perhaps this is one reason:


     A New Mexico police officer was wearing a lapel camera which was filming as the officer entered a vacant apartment on an upper floor of the building. As he entered he appears to stumble, and as he explains "I fell down, and I guess my trigger finger went down at the same time."  (NBC News Channel Video, 0:26 seconds in)

     Back to my statement that perhaps this is one reason why police departments are loathe to adopt personal cameras on their uniforms, let's indulge in a moment of supposition. Two officers, partners, go into an empty apartment ostensibly looking for someone they are chasing. One officer stumbles, falls, gun goes off, shooting and killing someone in the apartment downstairs who, coincidentally(?) happens to be a drug dealer in the neighborhood that was suspected of killing a police officer, but has not been charged because of the usual stuff, witnesses against him who either recant or disappear, evidence in police custody which is somehow damaged or stolen, etc. (If you've watched any of the crime shows on television in the last 10 years you know exactly what I'm talking about! lol) Now, although to some that would seem a wild and completely farfetched, out of the realm of possibility theory, actually it isn't; after all, I came up with it, right? So these two cops (or perhaps only one of them) go into the vacant apartment; through some means (perhaps the second one is outside watching the windows) and he lets the first one know where the occupant is in the apartment. The officer inside then shoots down through the floor into the apartment below, hopefully hitting the occupant. Even if he doesn't kill him though, it could be made to  seem a warning by the police to the dealer. It could be explained away as the accidental discharge of a firearm, case closed. With a lapel cam however, it would be a little more difficult to successfully pull it off, since the lapel cam could not only show the movements of the officer, it could tell what was said at the time. In this video you've got him talking on his radio to other officers, asking about the outcome of the shot; I'm sure the conversation would have gone quite differently if the situation was as I've theorized! This is perhaps  one of the things that police departments are considering when they debate the issue of lapel cams.

     Now I'm not saying that all police departments are harboring 'bad' cops in their midst who might be subject to go off in a fit of rage and beat someone to death while wearing the cam; what I am saying is that cops stick together. They stick up for one another, they 'cover each other's backs', they protect their 'brothers'. If there is any possibility of an officer losing his temper and perhaps bringing a subject 'down' a little too forcefully, they do not want to take any chances that an incident will be recorded, not by one of their own. So we get all these excuses and justifications and rationales for why police departments should not be required to use them, and we get more and more people brutally punched, kicked, beaten, and killed, and more and more officers being acquitted by grand juries. It just seems to me that it would be an easy way for officers to prove their own innocence and their victim's guilt, IF that is the case.  


As always, this post is strictly the opinion of the author, and does not in any way represent Blogger.



 

Is It Really White Cops vs Black Youth? Or Is It 'Blue Uniforms' Against Black Youth?

     Of course 'Blue Uniforms' is not meant literally, since not all of them wear uniforms; it's just a descriptive phrase that has been used to mean cops for as long as I can remember. (So we're talking half a century here, folks.)
     I have to admit, after reading this story I'm not sure if the world has actually gone this far out of its collective mind, or if there are those who are trying hard to make themselves look innocent by making others look guilty... Somehow it just doesn't seem like it can be true to me, or could it be that I just don't want to believe that in my lifetime I'm actually seeing something like this? Could I just not want to believe that "an officer of the law", a member of those hired "to protect and serve" could yell "Film this then!" after hitting the boy so hard that he was knocked unconscious? Forget the fact that these 'officers' were black; the issue here, IMO, is that these people are supposed to be members of the force that we should be looking to for help, and for protection! We should not have to worry about if we get stopped for a ticket are we going to get tased, or pulled out of the car and beaten up because we didn't answer clearly enough, or quickly enough! To make matters worse, it seems that elderly age,  physical disability, or an inability to understand instructions (non-English speaking), these things make no difference at all.


NYPD Officer Allegedly Knocks Out Cigarette-Smoking Teen

The officer reportedly thought that 17-year-old Marcel Hamer was smoking marijuana.


      By:
Posted:
     A Brooklyn teenager was allegedly knocked out by a New York City police officer for smoking a cigarette, the Brooklyn Paper reports. Video footage captured on a cellphone shows the plainclothes officer punching Marcel Hammer, even as he lay on the ground in a gutter trying to protect his face,    saying, “It’s just a cigarette, sir.” 

     “Do you wanna get f--ked up?” the officer asked the teen.

     “Yeah, get it on film,” the officer says to Marcel’s friends.

      According to the Brooklyn Paper, Marcel was walking home from school with his friends when a police officer emerged from a police van and said Marcel was smoking marijuana. The friends started to run, but Marcel eventually stopped. When the officer caught up with him, he knocked Marcel to the ground, according to the news site.

     The actual blow that rendered the teen unconscious is not fully visible in the footage, but Marcel’s friends can be heard protesting in the background. Soon, according to the paper, another undercover cop comes on the scene, helping the first officer handcuff the seemingly unconscious teen.
The incident, which occurred on June 4, according to the Brooklyn Paper, is reportedly being investigated by the New York City Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

     According to the boy’s family, the 17-year-old has suffered memory loss, dizziness and headaches ever since the assault. “He is always complaining of headaches, and he cannot remember things,” his mother, Mary Hamer, said. “He used to be pretty sharp, and now I am helping him.”

And so another one is lost.
                       

Monday, December 22

Calling all Web Geeks, (meant affectionally) HELP!!!

     I was perusing the Web the other day, just going from site to site, looking for interesting new items, and I decided to Google this blog. (As I do sometimes when I'm curious as to how it's ranking in the Search results.) Oddly enough, today I came across a few instances of 'Live From Bikini Bottom' that I had never seen before, and they were not just mentions of the Sponge Bob cartoon! Some were obviously places where posts had been shared; some were ranking sites, where the site ranked a lot of sites (it would appear at random) and then published it's findings. One though I couldn't figure out, so I went to it. 
     The name of the site is "Top Alternate". When I clicked on the link, at the top of the page was "Top Alternate" and then a search box. The entire name of this blog (including @blogspot.com) was in the search box. What followed was a page of the "Top 17 List of livefrombikinibottom.blogspot.com alternatives".
    Now, I am pretty well-versed when it comes to different programs and software, but this is a new one on me! What are blog "alternates"??

     Here is the first link on the page: 

Top alternate of livefrombikinibottom.blogspot.com