Tag Archives: Traffic Stop

Civil Liberties, Featured, Police Accountability, US, Videos

Video: Houston Police Officer Shouts “Pretend Like We’re Going to Shoot You” In Traffic Stop

Leave a comment

An investigation into the activities of the Houston Police Department is reportedly underway following the release of a video that revealed an officer ordering a woman to put her hands up “like we’re going to shoot you” during a traffic stop involving three additional individuals.

In the video, a police officer officer using a loudspeaker can be heard shouting “Hands up! Put your hands up! Over your head! Pretend like we’re going to shoot you!” at a woman during the encounter.

Bystander Denee Harris, who recorded the video, questioned why a police officer would give such an order.

An officer can be seen in the video seizing a crutch from one of the vehicle occupants and tossing it onto the ground. Later on, an officer is shown driving the vehicle away from the scene.

Details of the initial stop have not yet been clarified.

Harris recorded just over six minutes of video which can be seen below.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Police Accountability

Cincinnati Officer Indicted For Murder After Body Camera Reveals False Report

Video 28 Comments

University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing was indicted for murder on Wednesday in the shooting death of Samuel DuBose, after body camera footage contradicted Tensing’s account.

Tensing, 25, pulled over DuBose, 43, for a missing license plate on the front of his car on July 19. Following the shooting, Tensing told his fellow officers that he fired his gun because he feared for his life after his hand got caught on DuBose’s car, and he thought DuBose would run him over.

“I think I’m OK,” Tensing said after the incident, according to his body cam recording. “He was just dragging me. I thought I was going to get run over. I was trying to stop him.”

However, the footage from Tensing’s body cam appears to directly contradict his story. At a news conference on Wednesday, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters noted that while DuBose did put his keys in the ignition of the car, it did not start rolling until after Tensing pulled out his gun, shot DuBose in the head, and then fell backwards.

“It is our belief that he was not dragged,” Deters said. “If you slow down this tape you see what happens, it is a very short period of time from when the car starts rolling to when a gun is out and he’s shot in the head.”

CNN noted that while Tensing left the scene with another officer to go to the hospital to get checked out, the footage from the body cam “shows no one rendering aid to DuBose.”

Deters called the incident “totally unwarranted,” and said he believes Tensing’s false report was his way of “making an excuse for a purposeful killing.”

[quote_center]“I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make – totally unwarranted,” Deters said. “It’s an absolute tragedy in the year 2015 that anyone would behave in this manner. It was senseless.”[/quote_center]

Deters also noted that while “people want to believe” that DuBose, who was unarmed, “had done something violent towards the officer,” video footage from the scene shows that he did not. “I feel so sorry for his family and what they lost, and I feel sorry for the community, too,” Deters said.

Following the shooting, The Guardian noted that in addition to Tensing giving his account of events to other officers arriving at the scene, two of those officers repeated Tensing’s version, claiming he was dragged by DuBose, and one of the officers “claims to have witnessed it occurring.”

The Associated Press reported that during Tensing’s arraignment on Thursday morning, where he pleaded “not guilty” to charges of murder and involuntary manslaughter, “people in the courtroom audience erupted into cheers and clapping” when Tensing’s bond was set at $1 million.

Featured, Police State, US

Dashboard camera video shows New Jersey man shot by officers

200 Comments

New video footage has been released showing the fatal shooting of a New Jersey man by police officers during a traffic stop.

The video comes from the dashboard camera of officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley. In the video, we see the officers begin a routine traffic stop on a Jaguar, but then, orders are ignored, guns are drawn, and shots are fired, and the result is the death of one man.

Jerame Reid, 36, was in the passenger seat of the vehicle which was driven by Leroy Tutt at the time of the traffic stop. At first, the officers approach the vehicle and inform both people in the car they were being pulled over for failing to stop at a stop sign.

After informing the vehicle why they were being stopped, Days pulls his weapon out and tells the occupants, “Show me your hands.” According to CBS News, Days informs Worley of a gun in the vehicle’s glove box, and Days appears to reach in the vehicle and remove the weapon.

Both officers are seen with their weapons still raised, and Tutt places both of his empty hands out the window. Days continues to shout at Reid not to move and warning him, “I’m going to shoot you.” Reid then reportedly says, “I’m getting out and getting on the ground.”

Once the passenger side door opens, Reid steps out and his hands appear to be empty, and both officers fire at least six shots, killing Reid.

The officers then tell Tutt to get out of  the car,which he does, and the officers proceed to handcuff and take him into custody.

Several witnesses at this time can be heard shouting at the officers and other squad cars begin to pull up to the scene. One witness, Tahli Dawkins, told NBC Philadelphia, “He had nothing in his hands… He had his hands up trying to get out of the car, one on the door was getting out like this and he just started shooting him.”

“The video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person,” Walter Hudson, chairman and founder of the civil rights group the National Awareness Alliance, said, according to the AP. “He complied with the officer and the officer shot him.”

A firearm was recovered from the scene, according to the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, but because this is an ongoing investigation, they refused to comment further.

Both officers are on paid administrative leave while the investigation takes place.

The video can be seen here.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Police Accountability, Police State, US

Supreme Court rules an officer’s misunderstanding of a law is protected

100 Comments

A Supreme Court ruling on Monday found police officers who pull over a car for a traffic stop can search and seize the vehicle, even if the officer does not have a full understanding of the law used to pull the vehicle over.

The ruling comes after Nicholas Heien, a North Carolina resident, was pulled over in 2009 on the premise of a single broken taillight.  After being pulled over, the officer searched the vehicle and found a baggie of cocaine, and the officer then arrested Heien.

However, North Carolina law only requires one working taillight, so when the officer pulled over Heien, it would appear he had no legal right to do so.

The case was brought up to a North Carolina appeals court who, according to VOX, agreed the stop was unlawful.  The case was then heard by the state’s highest court and the Supreme Court, who both ruled in favor of the officer, saying even if the officer does not know the technical aspects of a law, a search and seizure is still constitutional.

“This Court held  that reasonable mistakes of law, like those of fact, could justify a certificate of probable cause,” reads the Court’s ruling.  The vehicle search, therefore, does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as was argued by Heien, which protects citizens from unlawful searches and seizures without probable cause.  The Court said, “a search or seizure may be permissible even though the justification for the action includes a reasonable factual mistake.”

Ultimately, the Court found the Fourth Amendment requires officers to act reasonably, but not perfectly, since officers are human and make mistakes as well.  Chief Justice John Roberts said, according to the AP, an officer’s mistake of fact can rightly justify a traffic stop and therefore that misunderstanding can also satisfy the Constitution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only member of the Court to disagree with the decision, saying an officer’s mistake or misunderstanding of a law, “no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”

US

Shock: NM Police Fire at Van with 5 Kids After Traffic Stop Escalates

372 Comments

The video is pretty shocking.  A mother from Tennessee and her five kids were reportedly on an educational field trip through New Mexico when her van was pulled over by New Mexico State Police.

The video, which has appeared on LiveLink shows the officer explaining to the woman, now identified as Oriana Ferrell, that she was going 71 mph in a 55 mph zone.  The officer tells Ferrell to turn off her van while he runs her information.  Ferrell doesn’t do as she is told.  Instead, she drives away.

The officer follows and pulls her over again.  This time, he begins telling Ferrell to get out of the vehicle. According to Albuquerque TV station KRQE, “The officer begins telling Ferrell ‘Look I’m going to ask you one more time to get out of the vehicle and then I am going to pull you out, OK?’”

At one point Ferrell’s 14-year-old son gets out of the minivan and starts walking towards the officer, but backs off when the officer goes for his Taser.  The 14 year-old gets back in the van while the officer continues his struggle to get Ferrell out of the minivan.  At one point you can hear Ferrell telling the officer,  “You see my children. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just trying to take them to the Rio Grande.”

Once she finally exits the van, Ferrell is told to turn around and put her hands on the van.  She doesn’t want to be arrested and attempts to go back into the vehicle.  As she and the officer begin to wrestle, the 14 year-old comes back and this time rushes the officer.  The boy and the cop have a short tussle. The officer draws his Taser again while the boy runs back into the minivan and closes the door.

Now comes the moment, when we have to ask the question… for all the issues here and clearly there are many, do the officers escalate the situation far beyond where it should be for a traffic stop.  As backup officers pull up, the original officer pulls out his baton and smashes one of the rear windows of the van as the family screams.

Ferrell attempts to get away, and the minivan speeds off while another officer actually draws his gun and fires three shots at the fleeing vehicle, which again, has five children inside.  Ferrell leads State Police on a high-speed chase into Taos before giving herself up in front of a hotel.

Both Ferrell and her son were arrested.  Ferrell was also charged with child abuse and yet, is not a fair question to ask… wasn’t the officer firing shots at that van the one creating the most danger?

At BenSwann.com we have taken some heat for being hard on police.  We are hard on them, but that is in part because we believe that the police, the armed and trained individuals on the scene should be the ones to help bring down the level of tension, aggravation and danger, not to increase it.

Give your thoughts in the comment section below.