Atlanta-area police officer fatally shoots unarmed, naked African-American

n Atlanta-area police officer fatally shot a naked and apparently unarmed African-American who was reportedly acting erratically at his apartment complex, authorities said. Monday’s shooting follows a string of incidents, including the slayings of unarmed black men by police in Missouri and New York City, that have put law enforcement across the country under heightened scrutiny over the use of lethal force, especially against minorities, the poor and the mentally ill. An officer with the Dekalb County police responded to a caller who said a man was “acting deranged, knocking on doors, and crawling around on the ground naked,” around 1 p.m. local time, county police chief Cedric Alexander told reporters. The officer, who was white, encountered the man in the parking lot of the complex without any clothes on, Alexander said according to a recording of the conference published online by local broadcaster Fox5. The man ran at the officer, who backed up and ordered the person to stop before shooting him twice, Alexander said.

Alexander said he could “reasonably assume” the person was possibly suffering from mental illness. “We have already, as many departments have begun to do, look at how do we expand our mental health training,” Alexander said. “It appears that we’re seeing more and more of these cases across the country in which police are engaging with those who may be in distress.” Alexander declined to identify the victim, but the New York Times reported that he was 27-year-old Anthony Hill. Alexander said the officer, who had been with the department for seven years, was equipped with a taser at the time of the shooting. Hill is at least the third African-American since last Friday who was or appeared to be unarmed when killed by police. Police near Denver last Friday fatally shot an unarmed man who was a wanted fugitive.
On the same day, an officer in Madison, Wisconsin fatally shot a biracial 19-year-old, prompting some 2,000 students to march in the state’s capital on Monday.

Alexander said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation would take over the probe of the incident.


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/atlanta-area-police-officer-fatally-shoots-unarmed-naked-african-american/

U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation:
Joint Police & Law Enforcement Training

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/homeland.html

Oh for goddness sake.

The clouds of tear gas, flurries of projectiles and images of police officers outfitted in military-grade hardware in Ferguson, Missouri, have reignited concerns about the militarization of domestic law enforcement in the United States.

But there has been another, little-discussed change in the training of American police since the 9/11 attacks: At least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California – have traveled to Israel for privately funded seminars in what is described as counterterrorism techniques.

For some, dispatching American police to train in a foreign country battered by decades of war, terror attacks and strife highlights how dramatically U.S. law enforcement has changed in the 13 years since al-Qaida airplane hijackers crashed into New York’s World Trade Center. In many places, the image of the friendly cop on the beat has been replaced by intimidating, fully armed military-style troops. And Israel has played part in that transition.

As these trips to Israel became more commonplace, the militarization of U.S. law enforcement also was driven by the creation of various homeland security initiatives and billions of dollars of surplus military-grade equipment donated to local departments through the 1033 program after 9/11.

Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, described the tactics he sees American police use today as “a near replica” of their Israeli counterparts.

“Whether it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice,” Syed said. “Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT team in sight or right around the corner.”

The law enforcement seminars in some ways resemble other privately funded trips to Israel, such as the birthright trips for Jewish young adults and programs for politicians, educators and other professionals. Stops on the law enforcement tours include not just the Western Wall, but also West Bank border checkpoints, military facilities and surveillance installations.

Participants speak highly of the experience. Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer called Israel “the Harvard of antiterrorism” after taking part in a 2005 trip sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Capt. Brad Virgoe of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in California called the 2013 session he took part in an “amazing experience,” recalling visits to checkpoints in Eilat at the Israeli-Egyptian border and in the West Bank near Bethlehem.

Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have sent police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains on fully paid trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories to observe the operations of the Israeli national police, the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli Border Patrol and the country’s intelligence services. Tax documents from the Jewish Institute show the organization spent $36,857 on the trips in 2012.

The U.S. program began less than a year after 9/11, when the Jewish Institute brought nine American police officials to Israel to meet with Uzi Landau, Israel’s public security minister at the time. Participants represented the New York and Los Angeles police departments, the Major County Sheriffs' Association, the New York and New Jersey Port Authority police and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority police.

Recently, the seminars drew attention during the Ferguson protests because the former chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, who retired in January, had participated in a 2011 trip to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.

Israeli security forces’ history of training police in counterinsurgency tactics predated that trip. In Mexico’s Chiapas state, Israeli military officials have been training police and military to combat the Zapatista uprising since 1994. The most recent Israeli training mission to Chiapas took place in May 2013.

Topics covered have included preventing and responding to terrorist attacks and suicide bombings, the evolution of terrorist operations and tactics, security for transit infrastructure, intelligence sharing, and balancing crime fighting and antiterrorism efforts. The training also touches on ways to use Israel’s counterinsurgency tactics to control crowds during protests and riots.

Virgoe told CIR that he and his Israeli counterparts frequently discussed protests and crowd control methods.

“Around Bethlehem, they deal with it on a daily basis,” he said. “Rock throwing, it happens all the time, and they've become very proficient at dealing with large crowds on a moment’s notice.”

Virgoe also recounted the Israeli national police’s efficiency in dealing with hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who poured into Jerusalem for the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in October.
counter-insurgency rally
Demonstrators protest the Anti-Defamation League's Israel training trips for U.S. police in front of the group’s office in San Francisco.
Credit: Ali Winston for CIR

The head of the Maine State Police, Col. Robert Williams, joined a trip sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League in early 2013. Speaking to the Bangor Daily News after his return, he noted that his Israeli counterparts had decades of experience in dealing with protests and he was impressed with their ability to suppress demonstrations.

“They call it riots and we call it civil unrest,” Williams told the newspaper.

San Diego Assistant Police Chief Walt Vasquez was on the same October 2013 trip as Virgoe and described a week of travel and training with the national police, Israel Defense Forces and intelligence officials. Vasquez also recalled “lots of discussions about crowd control” tactics. He was intrigued by a demonstration of the extensive surveillance camera network that covers Jerusalem.

Crowd control training provided by Israeli authorities to American law enforcement officials disturbs Human Rights Watch researcher Bill Van Esveld, who studies Israel and Palestine.

In Israel, “in a majority of cases, you’re seeing demonstrations that start with rock-throwing and devolve into tear gas, rubber bullets and sometimes live rounds being fired at people who are throwing stones,” he said.

Van Esveld added that his research has shown the risks for law enforcement are not as high in Israel, where he said officers and soldiers frequently disobey orders governing lethal force against demonstrators and rarely face discipline or other consequences.

“It is very rare that you get a soldier or policeman thrown in jail for killing or injuring someone – in practice, there’s a lot of looking the other way,” he said.

Israel’s use of less-lethal munitions in crowd control received international attention in 2009, when American activist Tristan Anderson was struck in the face with a high-velocity tear gas canister during a West Bank demonstration against Israel’s border wall. His skull was shattered, leaving him in a coma for months. Now, he uses a wheelchair.

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, said the seminars reflect a militarized mindset diametrically opposed to traditional police-community relations in the United States.

“If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population,” said Khalidi, a longtime critic of the Israeli occupation.

He pointed out a fundamental difference between the American and Israeli justice systems: Jewish residents fall under Israeli criminal law, but Palestinians are subject to Israel’s military justice system. Khalidi said Americans are learning paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics from the Israeli military, border patrol and intelligence services, which enforce military law.

The most tangible evidence that the training is having an impact on American policing is that both countries are using identical equipment against demonstrators, according to a 2013 report by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and photographs of such equipment taken at demonstrations in Ferguson and Oakland and Anaheim, California.

Tear gas grenades, “triple chaser” gas canisters and stun grenades made by the American companies Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. were used in all three U.S. incidents, as well as by Israeli security forces and military units.

Footage shot by activist Jacob Crawford in Ferguson last month revealed law enforcement used a long-range acoustic device that sends out high-pitched, painful noises designed to scatter crowds. Israeli forces first used such devices in response to West Bank protests in 2005, according to the B'Tselem report.

David Friedman, the Washington, D.C., regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, organized the dozen Israel seminars hosted by his organization for law enforcement leaders. For logistical reasons, he said, participation has been limited to “the highest levels of law enforcement.” However, Friedman confirmed that the University of Wisconsin’s police department participated, and news coverage as well as news releases from his organization show other smaller agencies and campus police began participating in the mid-2000s.

Last year, the league brought American law enforcement to meet with Palestinian police in Bethlehem for the first time.

Friedman declined to reveal how much the seminars have cost his group. The main focus is on strategies and tactics, he said, but the Israeli officials are not “giving guidance or instruction on these matters.”

Friedman emphasized that counterterrorism is the focus of the seminar, though he acknowledged that crowd control does figure into the training, with Israeli officials showing footage and presentations from protests and demonstrating the equipment they use.

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the American Jewish Committee did not respond to interview requests about the law enforcement training seminars they sponsor.

http://www.revealnews.org/article-legacy/us-police-get-antiterror-training-in-israel-on-privately-funded-trips/

Seriously this is why far left wing extremism is as dangereous as far right.

       

LAST month down in Sydney, police officers shot and killed a mentally deranged woman who was standing on the side of a main arterial road and waving a large carving knife at the world in general...

AFTER Pepper spray and Tasers had little effect on her, one of the four cops drew his 40 cal. Glock and shot her dead at close range, and then claimed afterwards that he thought she was going to attack one of them..
 
UNFORTUNATELY for those police involved there, photo's and video clips of that scene show that those police weren't actually close enough as to be in any danger !  
Needless to say, NSW police bosses are claiming that it was a good and righteous killing - while the Police Association goes on with the usual claptrap about the Police having every right to defend themselves - even if they're not in any imminent danger..

WHAT I'VE been wondering about over the past few weeks, is why NSW police are apparently no longer expected to deploy their batons ~ despite many officers carrying telescopic batons on the Batman Utility belts, and virtually many police vehicles having a baton sitting in the front passengers footwell...    

Senators Criticize Growing Militarization of Local Police Departments
Democrats, Republicans Question Federal Programs Giving Military-Style Gear to Local Law Enforcement

WASHINGTON—Senators on Tuesday criticized federal programs that outfit police departments with military gear, saying they waste funds and sow mistrust between law enforcement and the communities they police.

At a hearing called to examine what critics call police militarization, members of the Senate's homeland-security committee expressed deep skepticism toward some equipment used by local police departments.

The issue has gained new attention in the wake of the police response to protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the killing of an unarmed black teenager by police. The Obama administration is reviewing federal programs that equip local departments.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) singled out a one-man police department in Michigan that she said had received 13 assault weapons. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) criticized the 14,000 bayonets the Pentagon distributed to local law enforcement across the country for reasons he said he couldn't fathom.

"Giving military-grade weapons to every police force and every officer comes with costs," Ms. McCaskill said. "Officers dressed in military fatigues will not be viewed as partners in any community."

Billions of dollars of excess military equipment and funding to buy other gear has flown to local police departments over the past two decades. At first, Congress approved such programs as a way to help departments outgunned by drug gangs. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the flow increased as lawmakers spent more money to help police prevent terrorism.

Now, many members of Congress think such programs may have gone too far.

"It's hard to see a difference between the militarized and increasingly federalized police force we see in towns across America today and the force that Madison had in mind when he said 'a standing military force with an overgrown executive will not long be a safe companion to liberty,' " said Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) on Tuesday, referring to one of the Founding Fathers.

Officials testifying from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice defended aspects of the programs, but said they are cooperating with the Obama-initiated review. They said they were simply providing what Congress had authorized or what state and local departments said they needed.

Pressed by Mr. Coburn about why police can buy battle dress uniforms similar to military fatigues with Department of Homeland Security funds, an official from the department said local officials had asked for it.

"We certainly can review the types of uniforms that our responders are requesting but they have advised us, in the building of capabilities to fight terrorism, that this type of dress would be useful," said Brian Kamoie, the assistant administrator for grant programs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Senators took aim in particular at the Defense Department's provision of 617 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles to small police departments. As the U.S. has drawn down forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hulking vehicles have been finding their way to smaller and smaller towns. Police departments generally don't receive training in how or when to use them.

The sheriff's department in Payne County, Okla., has received two of the vehicles. At the hearing, senators, apparently citing Justice Department statistics, said the department only had one full-time sworn officer and suggested it was an extreme example of over-arming the police.

In an interview, Payne County Sheriff R.B. Hauf said he has 40 full-time sworn officers under his command. He plans to use one of the vehicles only to provide parts to the other, which he has deployed once. Mr. Hauf said that in April a man violated a court order, barricaded himself in a house and threatened to shoot any police that showed up. Officers believed he had weapons, so they drove the vehicle onto the lawn and communicated with him from the safety of the vehicle using its public-address system. The situation was resolved peacefully, he said.

Previously, he said, the closest such vehicle was two hours away, in Oklahoma City or Tulsa.

"I hope it stays inside of a building its whole life and we don't have to use it," he said. But "my county has never been able to provide our guys with the level of safety naturally that an armored vehicle can do."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/senators-criticize-militarization-of-local-police-departments-1410287125


So far is doesn't seem to be happening to our police, but at the slightest sign of it, I hope the whole country stands against it. In America it happened by stealth and without the agreement of the American people, and it is them that it is being used against.

Lone Wolf wrote:        

LAST month down in Sydney, police officers shot and killed a mentally deranged woman who was standing on the side of a main arterial road and waving a large carving knife at the world in general...

AFTER Pepper spray and Tasers had little effect on her, one of the four cops drew his 40 cal. Glock and shot her dead at close range, and then claimed afterwards that he thought she was going to attack one of them..
 
UNFORTUNATELY for those police involved there, photo's and video clips of that scene show that those police weren't actually close enough as to be in any danger !  
Needless to say, NSW police bosses are claiming that it was a good and righteous killing - while the Police Association goes on with the usual claptrap about the Police having every right to defend themselves - even if they're not in any imminent danger..

WHAT I'VE been wondering about over the past few weeks, is why NSW police are apparently no longer expected to deploy their batons ~ despite many officers carrying telescopic batons on the Batman Utility belts, and virtually many police vehicles having a baton sitting in the front passengers footwell...    

Have to agree with you, the whole ethos of police forces seems to be changing.

Seriously is this a debate forum or a spamming forum.
Can we have some debate please moderation team.

Some Police are poor aome are excellent in fact the majority of Police forces are very good, this is evident by the fact they solve crimes. The sad fact is there are bad elements within any forces that can take their political views.
The point though about this thread is people unarmed being shot by the Police and where excessive force is being used by some.

collect fines more like it when was the last time the majority of police did real police work like solving crimes,
issue traffic fines while waiting for you free Big Mac then attend scene of robbery 12 hours after the event to give and report number to victim they can use for their insurance, issue victim fine if they can find anything to fine them with.

well the liberalist IS te biggest friend of the police...since the liberalist belives entirely in think like I do or you deserve to be eliminated as a danger to the hive mind....

That said of course the BEST way is for people in the affected communities to show the cops they are NOT welcome....

REFUSE to serve them in your shop...etc....

but its NOT just the cops...the SYSTEM is rotten to the core.....

that's true it is the system more than the individual.

More and more politicisation of police rather than just focusing on the core laws.