Lawsuit: SWAT Officers Dragged 10-Year-Old from Bathtub, Made Him Stand Naked Next to 4-Year-Old Sister, Terrorized Family

14 police officers with helmets and facemasks and assault rifles stormed in, family says.

Photo Credit: Salajean/Shutterstock.com

July 26, 2013  |  

 

Pittsburgh SWAT officers must face claims that they raided a family's home, violently dragged a child from the bathtub, and "terrorized" them at gunpoint, a federal judge ruled.

Georgeia Moreno and her family  sued Pittsburgh, its police chief and 14 police officers in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

The events unfolded as Georgeia, her husband, William; and her stepfather, Mark Staymates were watching television in their living room as Georgia's sick mother, Darlene, slept upstairs at 7 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2010. They suddenly heard a loud explosion and saw bright lights, "as if grenades were going off," the complaint states.

Pittsburgh Police SWAT officers wearing helmets and facemasks then broke and "stormed through" the front and back doors of the home, according to the complaint.

     Those officers allegedly never identified themselves, pointed assault rifles at the family, shouted obscenities and destroyed their property.
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Pittsburgh SWAT sued for 'terrorizing' young family at gunpoint

Baltimore Police Major Attending UN “Peacekeeping” Course

The New American

A major with the Baltimore Police Department will be attending a United Nations “Police Commanders Course” (UNPCC) in Sweden next week that is raising eyebrows among Americans — especially considering the UN’s history and highly controversial agenda. The three-week course is aimed at teaching officers from around the world about “peacekeeping” operations, interpretation of UN “mandates,” how to work effectively with international military forces, and more, according to the official program outline.

The UN training course, which starts on Monday and runs until April 26, is being handled in partnership with the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation and the Armed Forces International Center. According to a Swedish police website outlining the scheme, trainees will be focusing on, among other components, the alleged importance of considering the UN Security Council resolutions. Participants will be learning about “intercultural leadership,” too, using many of the same training programs offered to so-called “UN military officers.”

Also on the agenda is learning about “human rights” as defined by the international organization. Under the UN concept, rights are granted (and therefore can be qualified or withdrawn) by government. This concept is diametrically opposed to American traditions of unalienable rights endowed by God and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Another primary focus, the course outline explains, will be “concepts of gender mainstreaming.” The UN has formally stated that the ultimate goal of “gender mainstreaming” is “to achieve gender equality.”  

Other primary elements of the UN commander training include “the tasks, the role and the responsibilities of a leader in an integrated peacekeeping operation” and understanding “concepts and approaches relevant to democratic policing.” How decisions can affect a country occupied by UN “peacekeepers” while empowering others to “translate vision into results” are cited as key focuses of the program as well.-[Full Article]

NYPD Opens Branch in Israel

AL-Monitor

The New York Police Department opened its Israeli branch in the Sharon District Police headquarters in Kfar Saba. Charlie Ben-Naim,  a former Israeli and veteran NYPD detective, was sent on this mission.

You don’t have to fly to New York to meet members of the police department considered to be the best in the world — all you have to do is make the short trip to the Kfar Saba police station in the Sharon, where the NYPD opened a local branch.

Behind the opening of the branch in the Holy Land is the NYPD decision that the Israeli police is one of the major police forces with which it must maintain close work relations and daily contact.-[Full Article]

Milwaukee police accused of performing illegal body cavity searches

MSNBC

Seven officers and a supervisor at the Milwaukee police department have had their badges taken away after allegations surfaced that police have been conducting body cavity searches on suspects with no authority to do so.

Reports of officers arresting suspects then subjecting them to cavity searches first surfaced in local media in March. On Monday, after getting access to a police report, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that officers allegedly performed these searches on a routine basis.-[Full Article]

Tasered to Death: Should all be afraid of cops?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4z-G0ExRN8

Published on Apr 28, 2012 by RussiaToday

In the US - there's also strong concern over how far and with how much immunity, police can push their sweeping powers. A recent human rights group report blamed law enforcement officers for tasering 500 people to death over the last decade. And Tim Cavanaugh, managing director of Reason dot COM, says for Americans, the first reaction to police is fear, rather than trust.

Defense Department to further militarize U.S. law enforcement with hundreds of military robots

(Image credit: U.S. Navy)

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

Last year I reported on the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, wherein local law enforcement agencies can obtain surplus military hardware through a website, only having to pay to pick up the equipment.

Now, according to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), law enforcement will be even further militarized through the use of hundreds of military robots acquired by the Department of Defense over the past decade.

According to the head of the eastern team of DLA’s disposition services office, Dan Arnold, the older and more heavily used items will likely be robots for explosive ordnance disposal and surveillance, although some of the hardware is nearly brand new and never been deployed overseas.

According to National Defense, Arnold said to the attendees of the GovSec conference in Washington, D.C., that these robots are just one instance of the surplus equipment that will likely become available as the conflict in Afghanistan supposedly winds down.

Read more »

Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

New York Times

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.  - [Full Article]

Grandpa-shooting Arizona officer has five previous kills under his belt

MSNBC


The Arizona police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man while he held his baby grandson has been involved in at least five previous fatal shootings, police said.

The officer, James Peters of the Scottsdale police, was on administrative leave Thursday after he killed John Loxas, 50, with a single rifle shot to the head Tuesday. Loxas' 9-month-old grandson, who was in his arms, was unhurt.

"There were at least three officers in position to engage the suspect," Sgt. Mark Clark, a spokesman for the Scottsdale police, told NBC station KPNX of Phoenix. "At least one of the officers thought he saw something in the suspect's hands."

KPNX reported that Peters has now been involved in seven shootings in the past 10 years, six of them fatal. The Arizona Republic reported Thursday that the city of Scottsdale agreed to a $75,000 settlement in 2009 with the family of one of the people Peters had killed; the city denied liability...[Full Article]