US Anti-Police Protests and Riots Thread III

[Neutraligon]

Anyone seen the #Justice4Ariel stuff?

I have no idea what that is referring to.

Essentially a in 2019, a black woman who is partially blind was pulled over...supposedly for being intoxicated. She then had rapid-fire commands at her that she was either unable to or did not reply to fast enough to satisfy the offices, so she was taken to jail. At no point was a breathalizer administered. Once in jail, she was held down and tased 5-7 times (no info as to why) and once again an officer used his knee on neck to hold her down. She fell unconscious for a time and no medical people were dispatched to help her. When she woke up she found herself missing her jacket and pants. When she called out for help she was ignored for hours. When police finally did come back, she was told to strip by a female officer in front of a male officer. When she requested for privacy or for the male officer not to be present, she was forcibly full stripped by the female officer, male officer, and a 2nd male officer who came to provide assistance. She was then left for a time in the cell naked before the male officer returned with what looks like either a blanket or the suicide clothes they have in those jails.

I am not going to link the videos available in that cell

[Western Sayville]

Black Lives Matter can f**k off, no body gives a s**t and anybody that does should be lined up and shot

[Uiiop]

Black Lives Matter can f**k off, no body gives a s**t and anybody that does should be lined up and shot

So under your logic that includes you.

[Kowani]

Maine abolishes civil asset forfeiture

In a massive win for property rights, due process, and civil liberties, Maine last week became the fourth state in the nation to end civil asset forfeiture.

In civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement officers seize someone’s property if they suspect the property was involved in a crime—without ever convicting or even charging the owner with a crime. (This is distinct from criminal asset forfeiture, where someone has been convicted of or at least charged with a crime.)
[...]
At the state level, the push to end civil asset forfeiture has received even more full-throated, bipartisan support. For example, Maine’s new law passed unanimously in the state senate and by a massive margin in the state house of representatives. The reform became law last Tuesday, despite the fact that Gov. Janet Mills never signed it, because it had been sitting on her desk for ten days. Even if Mills wanted to veto the legislation, it passed both chambers with more than a two-thirds majority, and thus her veto could have been easily overridden. The Pine Tree State now joins North Carolina, Nebraska, and New Mexico as the only states that require a criminal conviction before someone’s assets can be taken.

What makes Maine’s legislation particularly appealing is that it also ends the state’s participation in the federal government’s disturbingly named Equitable Sharing Program. This loophole allows local and state law enforcement agencies—even in states where civil asset forfeiture has been outlawed—to partner with federal agencies on civil forfeiture cases. The local agencies get to keep around 80 percent of the proceeds from the seizures, creating a monetary incentive for police to enter into this partnership and circumvent state law.

[Comerciante]

I have no idea what that is referring to.

Essentially a in 2019, a black woman who is partially blind was pulled over...supposedly for being intoxicated. She then had rapid-fire commands at her that she was either unable to or did not reply to fast enough to satisfy the offices, so she was taken to jail. At no point was a breathalizer administered. Once in jail, she was held down and tased 5-7 times (no info as to why) and once again an officer used his knee on neck to hold her down. She fell unconscious for a time and no medical people were dispatched to help her. When she woke up she found herself missing her jacket and pants. When she called out for help she was ignored for hours. When police finally did come back, she was told to strip by a female officer in front of a male officer. When she requested for privacy or for the male officer not to be present, she was forcibly full stripped by the female officer, male officer, and a 2nd male officer who came to provide assistance. She was then left for a time in the cell naked before the male officer returned with what looks like either a blanket or the suicide clothes they have in those jails.

I am not going to link the videos available in that cell

Our brave police officer protecting us from the partially blind locked in a cell!

Feeling really safe now.

[Grinning Dragon]

Maine abolishes civil asset forfeiture

In a massive win for property rights, due process, and civil liberties, Maine last week became the fourth state in the nation to end civil asset forfeiture.

In civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement officers seize someone’s property if they suspect the property was involved in a crime—without ever convicting or even charging the owner with a crime. (This is distinct from criminal asset forfeiture, where someone has been convicted of or at least charged with a crime.)
[...]
At the state level, the push to end civil asset forfeiture has received even more full-throated, bipartisan support. For example, Maine’s new law passed unanimously in the state senate and by a massive margin in the state house of representatives. The reform became law last Tuesday, despite the fact that Gov. Janet Mills never signed it, because it had been sitting on her desk for ten days. Even if Mills wanted to veto the legislation, it passed both chambers with more than a two-thirds majority, and thus her veto could have been easily overridden. The Pine Tree State now joins North Carolina, Nebraska, and New Mexico as the only states that require a criminal conviction before someone’s assets can be taken.

What makes Maine’s legislation particularly appealing is that it also ends the state’s participation in the federal government’s disturbingly named Equitable Sharing Program. This loophole allows local and state law enforcement agencies—even in states where civil asset forfeiture has been outlawed—to partner with federal agencies on civil forfeiture cases. The local agencies get to keep around 80 percent of the proceeds from the seizures, creating a monetary incentive for police to enter into this partnership and circumvent state law.

Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be struck down nation wide as unconstitutional, wish more states would end this bullshit practice.

[New Visayan Islands]

Black Lives Matter can f**k off, no body gives a s**t and anybody that does should be lined up and shot

We know who you are, and we are not amused. I strongly suggest you take *** one day off for trolling *** to read, review, and reflect on the Rules. If you wish to appeal, you may file a GHR.

Thanks!
NVI

[Lanoraie II]

Maine abolishes civil asset forfeiture

In a massive win for property rights, due process, and civil liberties, Maine last week became the fourth state in the nation to end civil asset forfeiture.

In civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement officers seize someone’s property if they suspect the property was involved in a crime—without ever convicting or even charging the owner with a crime. (This is distinct from criminal asset forfeiture, where someone has been convicted of or at least charged with a crime.)
[...]
At the state level, the push to end civil asset forfeiture has received even more full-throated, bipartisan support. For example, Maine’s new law passed unanimously in the state senate and by a massive margin in the state house of representatives. The reform became law last Tuesday, despite the fact that Gov. Janet Mills never signed it, because it had been sitting on her desk for ten days. Even if Mills wanted to veto the legislation, it passed both chambers with more than a two-thirds majority, and thus her veto could have been easily overridden. The Pine Tree State now joins North Carolina, Nebraska, and New Mexico as the only states that require a criminal conviction before someone’s assets can be taken.

What makes Maine’s legislation particularly appealing is that it also ends the state’s participation in the federal government’s disturbingly named Equitable Sharing Program. This loophole allows local and state law enforcement agencies—even in states where civil asset forfeiture has been outlawed—to partner with federal agencies on civil forfeiture cases. The local agencies get to keep around 80 percent of the proceeds from the seizures, creating a monetary incentive for police to enter into this partnership and circumvent state law.

Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be struck down nation wide as unconstitutional, wish more states would end this bullshit practice.

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

[Vassenor]

Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be struck down nation wide as unconstitutional, wish more states would end this bullshit practice.

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

And thus the police should just be able to seize your car and charge you far more than it's worth to be able to get it back.

[Grinning Dragon]

Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be struck down nation wide as unconstitutional, wish more states would end this bullshit practice.

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

Yes it really should and your example isn't what this is addressing.

[Lanoraie II]

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

And thus the police should just be able to seize your car and charge you far more than it's worth to be able to get it back.

Nice strawman. I have many issues with towing but this isn't what civil asset forfeiture is about. You'd know this if you knew anything about police work, which you don't lmao

[Lanoraie II]

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

Yes it really should and your example isn't what this is addressing.

Okay, then please explain to me what it's addressing because that's exactly the law that allows police to seize weapons used in the commission of a crime.

[Grinning Dragon]

Yes it really should and your example isn't what this is addressing.

Okay, then please explain to me what it's addressing because that's exactly the law that allows police to seize weapons used in the commission of a crime.

Shit like this
I understand at times when a tool is used in the commission of a crime, but to use this as a catch all, fuck no. Perhaps cops outta do their fucking job instead of making short cuts and infringe upon enumerated negative rights.

[Vassenor]

And thus the police should just be able to seize your car and charge you far more than it's worth to be able to get it back.

Nice strawman. I have many issues with towing but this isn't what civil asset forfeiture is about. You'd know this if you knew anything about police work, which you don't lmao

Oh right I forgot we live in a fantasy world where police never abuse their powers for gain.

Claimants challenge forfeitures in just 3 percent of cases in New Jersey. Prosecutors count on winning default judgments. Between January and June of 2016, claimants went to court in only 50 of the over 1,860 cases initiated by county prosecutors in the state. Those 1,860 cases involved more than $5.5 million in seized cash, 234 cars, and even a home.

It’s no accident so few people fight back. Most seizures take place in heavily policed, low-income communities. Of the 10 cities with the highest frequency of seizures in New Jersey, eight are among the poorest in the state, falling within the bottom quartile in median income rankings.

Often, just the court filing fees are prohibitive, let alone the cost of hiring a private attorney. Public defenders in New Jersey are generally barred from representing their clients in civil matters, and most legal services providers don’t offer free assistance in forfeiture cases. The combined costs of litigation frequently exceed the value of the seized property, so mounting a challenge is a losing proposition from the start.

A claimant who can overcome these financial barriers, however, quickly faces an uphill legal battle. The government only needs to prove by a preponderance of the evidence — “more likely than not” — that assets are linked to criminal activity in order to permanently seize them, delivering a windfall to the initiating law enforcement agency. This standard applies even if claimants are never criminally charged or criminal charges against them are dismissed.

If I stopped you on the street, took the money from your wallet, and asked you to tell me exactly where, when, and how you got every dollar, could you? When challenging the seizure of their property, claimants have to justify every cent to their name. Accordingly, claimants face the exceedingly difficult task of proving a negative: that their money was not connected to a crime.

Several clients I worked with didn’t have bank accounts, making them particularly vulnerable to cash seizures. Police and prosecutors treated their possession of a large sum of cash as evidence of a crime. But carrying a few hundred dollars at a time isn’t against the law and it isn’t a smoking gun. For many, it’s a month’s rent, a week’s wages, or a loan from a family member.

One client of mine, Andrew,* was stopped by police outside his home in Newark. A pair of officers had arrested someone for buying a small amount of marijuana a few blocks away. When they called for backup, the officers shared a description of the seller: a Black man in dark clothing. The responding officers determined Andrew fit that description.

Andrew had no drugs or paraphernalia, but he did have about $750 with him. When we provided the prosecutor with proof that he had received a monthly Social Security payment of $780 just five days prior, the prosecutor asked skeptically, “And then it turned into cash?” Apparently, this alchemy — the kind an ATM or bank agent performs — was more far-fetched than Andrew’s innocence.

[Vassenor]

For another example:

Police in Tennessee Legally Steal a Veteran’s Car Because of His Son’s Alleged Misdeeds

On Sept. 18, 2017, Lewis Cain, a disabled Vietnam veteran living in Nashville, Tennessee, woke to a flashlight shining in his eyes.

It was officers from the Mount Juliet Police Department, who had arrived at Cain’s home with an arrest warrant for his son. Cain himself had not been accused of any crime, and the police had no warrant to enter his house or remove property from his home.

Yet the officers later asked for the keys to Cain’s car. Confused but wishing to cooperate, he handed them over. When he objected, police told him that they were allowed to take his car.

Then they opened his garage door and drove away in his 2009 BMW.

The police allege that Cain’s son used Cain’s car to drive to a few locations where drug deals took place. However, this does not give them the right to take the car — Lewis Cain himself is an innocent property owner with no connection to any alleged criminal activity, and the police knew that the car belonged to Cain and not his son. Police clearly violated Cain’s constitutional rights when they took his car without a warrant or a hearing.

“I took an oath to defend our Constitution when I served in the military,” he says. “I have the highest respect for law enforcement, but the Fourth Amendment has to mean something. Police officers can’t just take people’s property for no reason.”

The seizure was part of a practice known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agencies to seize an individual’s cash and property simply by asserting that they believe the property is connected to illegal activity. Oftentimes officers seize property without ever pursuing criminal charges against the property owner.

Law enforcement has a strong incentive to use — and even abuse — civil asset forfeiture because the proceeds from this practice go right back into their budgets. In Tennessee, the practice nets law enforcement agencies millions of dollars every year.

Unfortunately, Mr. Cain’s case is another example of the way Tennessee’s overly broad asset forfeiture laws invite, and even incentivize, abuse by law enforcement. While it is important for law enforcement to have adequate resources to protect public safety, these resources should not be obtained by picking innocent people’s pockets or taking their property.

Originally intended to target drug kingpins, the current civil asset forfeiture system actually harms legitimate property owners. While some asset forfeitures are validly connected to criminal activity, many others are not.

In fact, 87 percent of federal forfeiture proceedings between 1997 and 2013 were civil cases, not criminal. The median forfeiture amount in Tennessee is $502 — hardly a “kingpin” level haul. And there’s no research indicating that asset forfeiture reduces crime. To the contrary, when law enforcement is focused on profit rather than public safety, they aren’t serving the public interest. This defies the stated purpose of asset forfeiture.

Meanwhile, the deck is unfairly stacked against the innocent property owners caught up in this broken system, who essentially bear the cost of going to court and the burden of proving their innocence.

In January, the ACLU of Tennessee filed a petition with the Department of Safety, arguing that the seizure without a warrant violated Cain’s Fourth Amendment rights and that the officers had purposefully misrepresented Cain's son as the owner of the car in police reports, despite evidence that the son was not the owner. The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security agreed to voluntarily dismiss the case and return the vehicle to Cain.

But we also want to make sure that the Mount Juliet police know that they can’t do this again. This week we filed a federal lawsuit on Cain’s behalf. The lawsuit asserts that the actions of the police violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects innocent property owners like Cain from unreasonable searches and seizures. Cain’s due process rights were also violated, as he was not given notice of a fair hearing prior to the seizure of his vehicle.

Outside the courtroom, we have also been working for five years with organizations from across the political spectrum — including the Beacon Center of Tennessee and Right on Crime — to demand reform of Tennessee’s civil asset forfeiture system.

Recently some incremental legislative progress has been made in our state. More data on the practice is now being collected and reported. And as of October 2018, property owners must be given reasonable notice of forfeiture warrant hearings and the burden will be on the seizing officer to prove that the property is subject to seizure — instead of property owners having to prove that their property is not associated with a crime.

But we still have a long way to go. Ultimately, we would like to see seizures tied to actual convictions and placement of seized assets into a general fund rather than law enforcement coffers. These reforms would disrupt the profit incentive and ensure that forfeiture is used as it was intended — to target criminal activity, not innocent civilians like Lewis Cain.

So theft of a car belonging to a third party who's only connection to the alleged offence is being related to someone who had yet to be found guilty of said offence.

[Ifreann]

Civil asset forfeiture laws need to be struck down nation wide as unconstitutional, wish more states would end this bullshit practice.

No, it really shouldn't. If someone breaks into your home and stabs you with a knife you own, that knife should be confiscated and sent to a lob. Try and think next time before you make such ridiculous claims, thanks.

What you're describing is not civil asset forfeiture, it's evidence collection. If the police need my knife as evidence in a trial then they'll be able to get a warrant to take it, assuming I don't just let them take it, and I'll get my knife back when they're finished with it. If the police use civil asset forfeiture to take my knife, then my knife will belong to the police force, and they'll get to keep it forever, or sell it if they want to raise some money, and they won't need a warrant or anything more than a suspicion that the knife was used in a crime.

[Page]

Civil asset forfeiture is nothing more than armed robbery by the state's official gang.

[Kowani]

Philidelphia Police Homicide Unit implicated in pattern of manipulating evidence, coercing witnesses, and beating and raping suspects

It was 1984 and Franklin Lee was locked up at a Philadelphia jail awaiting trial for serious crimes, including a rape he admits to and a murder he denies any part in.

Lee made a desperate decision — one with consequences he says he is still trying to atone for today.

It started, he said, when homicide detectives Ernest Gilbert and Larry Gerrard sent a wagon to bring him down to the Police Administration Building. “We went in an interrogation room. They came in with four or five files. And they said, ‘If you will help us, we can help you.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ They said, ‘We are trying to clean up these homicides.’”

He said the detectives, part of the Special Investigations Unit specializing in cold cases, told him they were “cleaning the books.”

They asked him about a neighborhood man, Willie Stokes: Did Lee know anything about Stokes shooting up a dice game four years earlier and killing a man named Leslie Campbell?

“I said, ‘I don’t know nothing about that.’ And they said, ‘That’s not what we want.’”

As Lee would later testify, the detectives instructed him to fabricate a statement claiming Stokes bragged about the murder. In return, he said they offered a lenient sentence — and an unusual way to make his jail stay more enjoyable. The deal, according to Lee: regular visits to the Police Administration Building, known as the Roundhouse, where Lee could have sex in interview rooms. The women could freely bring drugs and money, he said.

He took the detectives’ offer. And when his girlfriend soured on the unseemly setup, a detective brought in a sex worker, he said. “They gave me condoms.”

Lee is one of at least a dozen people who have claimed in affidavits, testimony, or Inquirer interviews that the same Philadelphia homicide detectives, who have since died, facilitated sexual encounters in the Roundhouse to induce cooperation — a scheme some lawyers have termed “sex for lies.”

While police, prosecutors, and judges have found such claims incredible, new admissions from informants obtained by The Inquirer describe a pattern of misconduct in the Homicide Unit in that era. Stokes is one of at least six men still in prison due to testimony from those jailhouse informants, much to Lee’s shame. Philadelphia has counted 22 homicide exonerations in just over three years — but none involving cases as old as these, all dating from the early ’80s. “They don’t want to go back that far, because they know what [Police Commissioner Frank] Rizzo and all them done,” said Major Tillery, one of the men who have raised the allegation. Lawyers argue it’s part of a pattern of manipulating evidence and coercing witnesses that continued for decades. They trace that through line from the 1970s, when confessions were sometimes obtained using violent interrogation tactics, up to the 2000s, when dozens were convicted based on work by Detective Philip Nordo, who is now charged with raping suspects and manipulating investigations.One man who raised a “sex for lies” claim involving the same two detectives was released in 1990 after he attributed his own murder confession to sexual coercion. At a post-conviction hearing, three women testified they’d had sex with the man, Arthur Lester, at the Roundhouse, according to a Superior Court opinion, which also cited visitor logs.

“We find that the police’s offer of sex constituted a provocation powerful enough to coerce Lester to cooperate,” the court opined.

The DA’s Office did not contest the allegations in that case but has adamantly rejected similar claims in the years since. A spokesperson said the office could not comment on the cases, because they either had pending petitions or were not under review. A Police Department spokesperson had no information on the allegations but noted “the Department has taken steps to ensure the integrity of investigations remain intact.”

Detective Gerrard was quoted at the time in the Daily News as laughing off Lester’s allegations: “That’s a lie. He’d have to have been doing it with the captain. He’s guaranteed to get AIDS and everything else you can catch if that’s what he did. Nothing but dirt and metal chairs in those rooms.”

The “sex for lies” allegation was raised again in a 1997 hearing for an unrelated case, in which three co-defendants sought to prove detectives’ inappropriate treatment of jailhouse informants. The girlfriend of a known informant — Anthony Singleton, who had given statements about Stokes and others — testified about the trysts. “He said he got that privilege for testifying,” she told the court. The prosecutor asked if perhaps instead she had merely brought in a dinner for Singleton. “No,” she testified. “I was dinner.” As for Lee, he expected only a seven-year prison sentence when he testified against Stokes at his preliminary hearing.

But afterward, Lee said, his mother shamed him. “You don’t even know that boy,” he recalled her saying. “Why are you doing that?”

At trial, Lee recanted. “The police made me make this statement,” he testified. “They said if I didn’t cooperate with them, they would talk to Judge [Albert] Sabo and hang me.” The prosecutor, John DiDonato, responded by introducing Lee’s cooperation agreement into evidence, according to the transcript. “You know right now we are going to go back before Judge Sabo and say, ‘Judge, he reneged on his deal with us. He admitted to lying on the stand and he should get the maximum.’”

Then, according to the transcript, DiDonato ripped the cooperation agreement. (DiDonato did not respond to interview requests.)

Nine days after Lee recanted, he was charged with perjury. The criminal complaint reads: “False statement — Defendant stated Willie Stokes told him he killed Leslie Campbell.”

Instead of the lenient sentence, Lee received a minimum of 35 years in prison. That included 3½ to seven years for perjury. He was paroled in 2019. Singleton, who had implicated Stokes in a statement, also changed his mind and refused to testify, according to an undated written statement. At Singleton’s sentencing, the prosecutor emphasized that he had reneged on his offer to cooperate. The judge sentenced him to 40 to 80 years in prison. Singleton died in jail behind what these cops did,” Lee recently said.

At trial, Stokes felt a flood of relief after Lee recanted. The prosecution’s case now hung on two imperfect eyewitnesses: one who failed to identify Stokes, and the other who placed Stokes at the scene holding a gun but not shooting.

“That was the whole trial,” Stokes said by phone from prison. “I thought they was going to let me go.”

Instead, he was convicted of first-degree murder.

“I never seen the streets since,” he said. [...] At the time, however, Philadelphia detectives were known to go to great lengths to close cases. In the mid-1970s, Philadelphia judges were tossing out one in five homicide confessions because of improper tactics, including brutal interrogation-room beatings. An Inquirer exposé shed light on the worst abuses, leading to federal charges and a Department of Justice investigation.

“New systems went into effect,” said Leon Lubiejewski, a homicide detective then. “There was audiotaping then videotaping of confessions. Then we had the six-hour rule, that you can only have the defendant for six hours before arraignment.”

For a few years, case clearance rates plummeted — from 91% in 1976 to just 60% in 1980.

Then, they rebounded. Michael Diamondstein, Stokes’ lawyer and a former prosecutor, said these 1980s cases demonstrate that abuses continued. In Stokes’ case, he described a nesting doll of constitutional violations, from Lee’s concealed perjury charges to evidence the prosecutor illegally struck Black people from the jury pool.

“It is an unfortunate reality of the history of Philadelphia that allegations of inappropriate conduct by Philadelphia police officers and detectives have been routinely ignored,” he said. If detectives shifted tactics from stick to carrot, several snitches said access to sex was a highly motivating carrot.

“They did that for me, too,” said Michael Griffin, who was jailed for robbery charges in 1984. He said he truthfully testified against a codefendant, but access to sex was a strong inducement. The practice was an open secret, according to Craig Jackson, who was jailed in Holmesburg Prison. He said he witnessed detectives escorting Singleton, Lee, and others. “They would pick guys up from the county jail and take them down the Roundhouse to have sex in exchange for false testimony of people they wanted to get off the street.”

As the drug trade took hold in North Philadelphia, unsolved murders piled up for the cold-case detectives.

They believed some of the slayings were connected to the Black Mafia, making them extraordinarily difficult to crack.

“If you talk about the ’70s, there were no informants about Black Mafia. No one would cooperate,” said Sean Patrick Griffin, a criminal justice professor at The Citadel and the author of several histories of the organization. “People not only didn’t trust the cops, but also were incredibly fearful of Philly’s Black Mafia.”

That appeared to change with the use of jailhouse informants. As Gerrard would testify years later, “There was a whole group from the neighborhood up there who were telling on each other about the murders. There were, I don’t know, maybe eight, 10 unsolved murders that we cleared at that time.”

One man, Emanuel “Manny” Claitt, was in prison with eight or nine pending cases, he said in a 2016 affidavit, when he was given a choice: Face a life sentence, or get lenient treatment and the chance to meet four of his girlfriends at the police headquarters or in hotel rooms. (Roundhouse visitor logs document at least one of those meetings.)

Claitt became a valued witness, describing a web of Black Mafia violence. His statement cracked the 1976 cold-case murder of Joseph Hollis in a North Philadelphia pool room. A second man was shot in the attack but survived and quickly identified the killers as “Ricky” and “Dave.” It’s not clear what became of that lead.

Instead, four years later, Claitt identified the shooters as William Franklin, who police said owned the pool room, and Major Tillery, whom police labeled “the East Coast Speed King” and placed atop the city’s first-ever “Most Wanted” list. Claitt also said Tillery firebombed two houses.

Both men have maintained their innocence. In a statement and a video made before his death in 2020, Claitt said it was all lies.

Claitt alleged prosecutors coached his testimony, in concert with Detectives Gerrard, Gilbert, and Lubiejewski. Claitt said that when he tried to recant, Lt. Bill Shelton threatened to frame him for another murder.

Shelton, Gerrard, and Gilbert are all deceased. Attempts to interview Lubiejewski about the case were unsuccessful.

Letters from prosecutors offer a window into Claitt’s favored status. They repeatedly sought to lift parole detainers and bail, citing Claitt’s importance to the prosecution of Tillery, Franklin, and others.

“None of these cases could have been brought to trial without Mr. Claitt’s statements,” Assistant District Attorney Leonard Ross told a judge at a 1981 sentencing hearing. “The two homicide matters as well as the bombings, although we basically knew who was involved, Judge, we had no hard evidence to present to a court until Mr. Claitt made his statements.”

Ross declined an interview request.

Claitt waited decades to come forward, he said in his affidavit, because he feared retaliation by police or prosecutors. He served just 18 months, plus probation, for a series of violent crimes. “In exchange for my false testimony, many of my cases were not prosecuted,” he said.

He also said detectives enlisted him to recruit another jailhouse informant: Bobby Mickens.

“I was put in a police van to ride alone with Mickens,” Claitt said, “… to make it clear to Mickens that he really had no choice except to testify against Major Tillery.” In an interview, Mickens, 69, said that by the time of that van ride, detectives had already unsuccessfully tried to coerce his cooperation. It was Claitt who convinced him, telling him Tillery had snitched first. He said Claitt advised, “‘Don’t let him set you up. If anything, you turn it back around on him.’ And that’s what I did.”

Eight years after Hollis’ murder, Mickens accused Tillery. According to Mickens, whose sworn affidavit was filed in court, Detectives John Cimino and James McNesby brought their case file into the room, fabricating statements for him to sign.

“I followed up on what Manny said to me in the police van,” Mickens said, “and that’s how I got caught up in this web of lies with the police.”

As an added incentive, he said, the detectives let him meet a girlfriend in an interview room with paper over the two-way mirror. “They let you do your thing, whatever you do. You could hug and kiss, intimacy, or you could just talk.” Like Claitt, Mickens alleged that prosecutors were in on the fabrication. He said in the affidavit that Assistant District Attorney Barbara Christie “scripted and rehearsed” his testimony.

She didn’t promise a specific sentence, he said in an interview. “She just said I’d be all right. ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll be home soon.’”

Christie, reached by phone, said she did not recall having worked on Tillery’s prosecution, but in any case could not comment on office matters. Transcripts show she argued the case for the Commonwealth. Cimino is deceased. Attempts to reach McNesby were not successful.

In a filing this year, Assistant DA Samuel Ritterman called Claitt’s and Mickens’ statements unbelievable claims by “career criminals.”

“Even if all of these police and prosecutors had the requisite level of malice to fabricate their entire case,” the prosecutor wrote, “they would also need the creative abilities of the very best novelists.”

After Mickens testified, he was sentenced to 2½ to five years for rape and robbery — but released on parole.

He said it wasn’t until years later that he realized the meeting with Claitt was a setup: “I started looking back, and these guys are doing life sentences for something I did. That wasn’t right.”

Franklin has served 41 years. Tillery has done 36.

“There was never no evidence, no fingerprints, no weapons, no ballistics,” Franklin said. Tillery, 70, became a renowned jailhouse litigator — and a lightning rod who served close to 20 years in solitary confinement.

In 1987, he drafted a lawsuit about prison conditions at the State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh that forced a $30 million renovation. He obtained another settlement after alleging First Amendment retaliation for medical grievances. More recently, he designed a seniors’ program being piloted at a state prison in Chester.

His early prison career was also rife with allegations summarized by one federal judge as “numerous challenges to procedure, attempted orchestrated assaults against staff and inmates, and organized gambling, in addition to a long history of gang-related criminal activities.” Tillery denies much of that.

Franklin, a 74-year-old grandfather, is fighting for a few years with his family, he said. His wife died in February, after four decades of prison visits.

“He’s been a consistent part of our lives since we were born,” said Gina Gibson, one of four daughters. “We want our dad home.” Since Arthur Lester was released in 1990, no other case has been overturned based on a sex-for-lies claim.

Yet, the allegation has repeatedly been raised in court.

In 1997, three men convicted of the 1982 drive-by shooting of Fred Rainey in North Philadelphia — Andre Harvey, Russell Williams, and Howard White — presented the claim regarding the key witness against them, Charles Atwell. Atwell didn’t accuse them until nine months after the murder, when he was jailed on aggravated-assault charges. Detectives have acknowledged that Atwell, while incarcerated, was able to repeatedly meet with his girlfriend at the Police Administration Building. After he testified, the DA’s Office dropped the charges against him. But Atwell and the prosecutor denied any undisclosed benefits.

Among those who disputed that were Archie Scott, a man who gave a statement to Harvey’s investigator saying that he witnessed Rainey’s murder; that Harvey, White and Williams were not the killers; and that detectives offered both him and Atwell sexual favors to manipulate their statements.

At the 1997 hearing, a former girlfriend of Atwell’s, Maxie Harris, testified that she and Atwell were permitted intimate visits at the Roundhouse.

Atwell’s nephew, Douglas Atwell, backed up that claim, adding that Atwell had asked him to deliver 40 packets of PCP there. He testified he turned the drugs over to Detective Gerrard — and afterward inadvertently walked in on Atwell and Harris having sex.

Gerrard denied receiving drugs, or ever leaving Atwell and Harris alone in a room. “He would have been cuffed to the chair and the door would have been open,” Gerrard testified.

Two years after the 1997 hearing, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Genece Brinkley ruled that Atwell and Gerrard were credible, while the other witnesses were not.

Atwell did not respond to interview requests. Craig Jackson, the man who was locked up with Lee, Singleton, and Atwell, said Atwell is in a difficult position.

“He had the cops threatening to put cases on him if he didn’t testify,” he said. “They just made people part of their little chess game.”
Douglas Atwell, a teenager then, said it took him decades to understand the context of the strange visit. “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have spoke up,” said Atwell, 54.

Harvey, 58, is a grandfather now, and an organizer with the antiviolence group Real Street Talk. Williams, 63, has developed heart problems. White, 72, has stage four prostate cancer. Harvey’s daughter, Sonya Barlow, 41, said she’s visited almost every Sunday since she was a child.

After the hearing in 1997, she was convinced the revelations would set him free.

“You couldn’t tell me my dad wasn’t going to be home for my 12th-grade graduation. When that didn’t happen, I cried for two weeks straight.” Mickens testified in four cases altogether, he said in an interview. Claitt said in his affidavit he gave information in seven cases. The extent of cooperation by Atwell and others — and what benefits they received — is not apparent from publicly available court records.

At least seven states have passed laws regulating jailhouse informants, creating databases tracking their use and the benefits the informants received, or requiring cautionary jury instructions. State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Philadelphia Democrat, introduced legislation in Pennsylvania, but the bill has yet to receive a hearing.[...] But overturning cases involving even discredited informants remains difficult, said Harvard law professor Alexandra Natapoff, author of Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.

Often, courts find even undisclosed benefits aren’t sufficient to overturn a conviction, Natapoff said. In her view, the law has not caught up to the growing understanding of the problem: “The more we learn about the serial quality of jailhouse informant unreliability, the greater the need for the law to adjust so that we can revisit old convictions that we now know to be based on unreliable testimony.”

In Stokes’ case, he found a new avenue into court after discovering paperwork linking Lee’s perjury conviction to his preliminary hearing testimony, not his recantation. In June, the DA agreed to a hearing. If granted, it would be Stokes’ first evidentiary hearing since 1989.

At that hearing, Francis Dinkins — the sole surviving victim of the 1980 shooting — testified that Stokes was innocent. Dinkins said he had told police that. But, he said, detectives assaulted him. Eventually, he testified, “I did sign a statement under force.” He said after he refused to testify against Stokes detectives warned him to stay away from the trial.

Since then, Stokes also received an affidavit from the only witness who placed him at the scene with a gun.

That man, Darryl Hargrove, said he remembered little except that police hauled him out of bed for questioning around 3 a.m. He said he didn’t see the shooting but walked up as people were scattering, contradicting his trial testimony.

“He shouldn’t be in there,” he said of Stokes.

Stokes, 59 now, has spent his adult life incarcerated. He still prays to come home in time to spend some good years with his mother, Gloria Williams, who turns 80 this month.

“We’ve been waiting 40 years,” his sister Renee Stokes said, “so we’ll see what happens.”

this is a series of long investigative articles, with a database here if you want to read more

[Omniabstracta]

As it turns out, actual mental health professionals are indeed way better at dealing with mental health issues than police. Shocking.

A New York City pilot program that dispatches mental health specialists and paramedics instead of police for certain nonviolent emergency calls has resulted in more people accepting assistance and fewer people sent to the hospital, early data shows.

It's one of a number of programs underway around the country trying to address police violence and systemic racism following George Floyd's murder by providing alternatives to sending law enforcement to respond to emergency calls involving issues such as mental health or drug and alcohol crises.

In June, New York City started its Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-HEARD, to provide more targeted care for those struggling with mental health issues and emergencies such as suicide attempts, substance misuse and serious mental illness.

During the first month of the pilot program, B-HEARD teams — consisting of fire department paramedics and social workers — responded to calls in northern Manhattan, which includes parts of Harlem and receives the city's highest number of mental health emergency calls.

From June 6 to July 7, B-HEARD received roughly 16 mental health calls each day in this zone.

In 95% of cases, people accepted care from the B-HEARD team, data from the city shows. That's compared with 82% for traditional 911 response teams, which include police.

Additionally, 50% of people treated by B-HEARD were transported to the hospital for more care, a far lower number than the 82% who are transported to the hospital with traditional 911 response.

The city said that 911 operators routed 138 mental health emergency calls — 25% of the number of calls during the pilot period — to B-HEARD and expect that number to grow to 50% in the coming months.

"This is great news. A smarter approach to public health and public safety. A smarter use of resources. And the evidence — from Denver to New York — shows that responding with care works," U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., tweeted.

New York's program is modeled after a successful, decades-old program in Eugene, Ore., known as Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS. Other similar programs have launched in California, Colorado, Georgia and Montana.

In Minneapolis, where police killed Floyd last summer, the city will start sending out civil crisis response teams instead of police to certain mental health calls next month.

Mental health-related calls accounted for 22% of cases in which on-duty police used lethal force and killed someone, according to data from 2009 to 2012 from 17 states where data was available.

[Page]

As it turns out, actual mental health professionals are indeed way better at dealing with mental health issues than police. Shocking.

A New York City pilot program that dispatches mental health specialists and paramedics instead of police for certain nonviolent emergency calls has resulted in more people accepting assistance and fewer people sent to the hospital, early data shows.

It's one of a number of programs underway around the country trying to address police violence and systemic racism following George Floyd's murder by providing alternatives to sending law enforcement to respond to emergency calls involving issues such as mental health or drug and alcohol crises.

In June, New York City started its Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or B-HEARD, to provide more targeted care for those struggling with mental health issues and emergencies such as suicide attempts, substance misuse and serious mental illness.

During the first month of the pilot program, B-HEARD teams — consisting of fire department paramedics and social workers — responded to calls in northern Manhattan, which includes parts of Harlem and receives the city's highest number of mental health emergency calls.

From June 6 to July 7, B-HEARD received roughly 16 mental health calls each day in this zone.

In 95% of cases, people accepted care from the B-HEARD team, data from the city shows. That's compared with 82% for traditional 911 response teams, which include police.

Additionally, 50% of people treated by B-HEARD were transported to the hospital for more care, a far lower number than the 82% who are transported to the hospital with traditional 911 response.

The city said that 911 operators routed 138 mental health emergency calls — 25% of the number of calls during the pilot period — to B-HEARD and expect that number to grow to 50% in the coming months.

"This is great news. A smarter approach to public health and public safety. A smarter use of resources. And the evidence — from Denver to New York — shows that responding with care works," U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., tweeted.

New York's program is modeled after a successful, decades-old program in Eugene, Ore., known as Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS. Other similar programs have launched in California, Colorado, Georgia and Montana.

In Minneapolis, where police killed Floyd last summer, the city will start sending out civil crisis response teams instead of police to certain mental health calls next month.

Mental health-related calls accounted for 22% of cases in which on-duty police used lethal force and killed someone, according to data from 2009 to 2012 from 17 states where data was available.

Almost anyone but police will do significantly better with mental health crises because almost anyone but the police doesn't feel entitled to inflict extreme and potentially lethal violence on anyone making them even slightly nervous.

I will repeat what I've said many times before: If you live in the United States and someone you care about is suicidal or in a mental health crisis, do not call 911 unless you know for a fact that your city does not send police to respond to these calls, you will put them in greater danger (and honestly, you'll probably put yourself in greater danger too).

[Postauthoritarian America]

Police invited to just 10% of National Night Out events in Minneapolis

This is what "defund the police" looks like.

[Kowani]

Police invited to just 10% of National Night Out events in Minneapolis

This is what "defund the police" looks like.

...is it really tho

like they're not gonna kill less people or plant fewer bags of evidence 'cause they didn't get invited to a pizza party

[Postauthoritarian America]

Police invited to just 10% of National Night Out events in Minneapolis

This is what "defund the police" looks like.

...is it really tho

like they're not gonna kill less people or plant fewer bags of evidence 'cause they didn't get invited to a pizza party

Fewer police -> more community-based / service-oriented "policing" -> fewer cops at pizza parties. That's how I make it anyway. It's heartening to see this kind of reaction so soon after the George Floyd killing. Nearly makes up for the predictable scheissturm after a suburban human rights commissioner called out a known Islamophobe proto-fascist who for some unknown reason was allowed to organize a pro-cop rally.

[Conservative Republic Of Huang]

Police invited to just 10% of National Night Out events in Minneapolis

This is what "defund the police" looks like.

...is it really tho

like they're not gonna kill less people or plant fewer bags of evidence 'cause they didn't get invited to a pizza party

It's a promising sign of shifting social attitudes at least.

[Kowani]

...is it really tho

like they're not gonna kill less people or plant fewer bags of evidence 'cause they didn't get invited to a pizza party

Fewer police -> more community-based / service-oriented "policing" -> fewer cops at pizza parties. That's how I make it anyway. It's heartening to see this kind of reaction so soon after the George Floyd killing. Nearly makes up for the predictable scheissturm after a suburban human rights commissioner called out a known Islamophobe proto-fascist who for some unknown reason was allowed to organize a pro-cop rally.

what an arcane logical process

...is it really tho

like they're not gonna kill less people or plant fewer bags of evidence 'cause they didn't get invited to a pizza party

It's a promising sign of shifting social attitudes at least.

this is very true