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Mark John Geragos is an American criminal defense lawyer and the managing partner of Geragos & Geragos, in Los Angeles.
Austin Police Department (APD) is the principal law enforcement agency serving Austin, Texas. As of fiscal year 2022, the agency had an annual budget of $443.1 million and employed around 2,484 personnel, including approximately 1,809 officers. The department also employs 24 K-9 police dogs and 16 horses. As of 2023, Robin Henderson is the current interim chief of police.
On October 29, 1984, Eleanor Bumpurs was shot and killed by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The police were present to enforce a city-ordered eviction of Bumpurs, an elderly and disabled African American woman, from her New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing unit at 1551 University Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx.
Sean Bell, an unarmed African American, was shot and killed by undercover New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers in the borough of Queens on November 25, 2006. Bell and two of his friends were shot when both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers fired a total of 50 rounds. Bell's friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, were severely wounded. The incident sparked fierce criticism of the New York City Police Department from members of the public and drew comparisons to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter, first- and second-degree assault, and second-degree reckless endangerment; they were found not guilty.
Kathryn Johnston was an elderly woman from Atlanta, Georgia who was killed by undercover police officers in her home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a 'botched' drug raid. Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant. Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers' heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her. None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to friendly fire from each other's weapons.
In the United States, a no-knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement to enter a property without immediate prior notification of the residents, such as by knocking or ringing a doorbell. In most cases, law enforcement will identify themselves just before they forcefully enter the property. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find may be destroyed between the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area, or in the event where there is a large perceived threat to officer safety during the execution of the warrant.
Oscar Grant III was a 22-year-old Black man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Responding to reports of a fight on a crowded Bay Area Rapid Transit train returning from San Francisco, BART Police officers detained Grant and several other passengers on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station. BART officer Anthony Pirone kneed Grant in the head and forced Grant to lie face down on the platform. Officer Johannes Mehserle drew his pistol and shot Grant. Grant was rushed to Highland Hospital in Oakland and pronounced dead later that day. The events were captured on bystanders’ mobile phones. Owners disseminated their footage to media outlets and to various websites where it went viral. Both protests and riots took place in the following days.
On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall.
Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones was a seven-year-old African American girl from Detroit's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team. The Team was targeting a suspect in the apartment a floor above Jones' on May 16, 2010. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident.
Antonio Buehler is an American educator, entrepreneur, and activist known for his work on police accountability and his pursuit of a more widely recognized constitutional right to photograph, film and document the public activities of police. In 2012, Buehler was arrested in Austin, Texas, for video-recording police after he allegedly witnessed a woman being abused by officers. After the arrest, Buehler co-founded the Peaceful Streets Project, an organization that trains the public to record police activity. Buehler has been arrested a total of seven times, has had twelve criminal charges filed against him, and has had dozens of criminal investigations initiated against him.
James Matthew Boyd was an American man who was fatally shot by Albuquerque Police Department officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the evening of March 16, 2014. A resident of a nearby subdivision called police at 3:28 p.m. to report that a man had been camping on the mountain behind his house for the previous month, a violation of local regulations. Two Open Space officers were the first to respond. They approached Boyd as he lay under a sheet of plastic; Boyd, mentally ill with a diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder, became irate, wanting to know why the "raid" was occurring. When an officer tried to pat him down, he produced two pocket knives, threatening the officers with them. The caller watched the confrontation from his second-story window and later testified that Boyd threatened the officers.
United States v. City of Portland was a lawsuit filed by the United States Department of Justice against the City of Portland, Oregon on December 17, 2012, alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional use of force by the Portland Police Bureau against individuals with actual or perceived mental illness.
On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.
On April 4, 2015, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Michael Slager, a local police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Slager had stopped Scott for a non-functioning brake light. Slager was charged with murder after a video surfaced showing him shooting Scott from behind while Scott was fleeing, which contradicted Slager's report of the incident. The racial difference led many to believe that the shooting was racially motivated, generating a widespread controversy.
The killing of Ramarley Graham took place in the borough of the Bronx in New York City on February 2, 2012. Richard Haste, a New York Police Department officer, shot Graham in the bathroom of the latter's apartment. The 18-year-old Graham was in possession of marijuana when Officer Haste tried to stop him on the street. Graham fled to his grandmother’s house, and went into the bathroom to flush the marijuana. Officer Haste forced his way into the building, kicked down the front door and then broke down the bathroom where he shot Ramarley Graham to death. Haste could be seen on surveillance cameras smiling and laughing with the responding officers and detectives—the same men who would later testify they had told Haste that Graham had a gun. Haste claimed to believe Graham had been reaching for a gun in his waistband, but no weapon was recovered.
On September 14, 2013, Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former college football player for the Florida A&M University Rattlers was involved in a car crash. When police arrived, he ran towards them and was shot by police officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but the jury deadlocked and he was not retried. Police dashcam footage of the incident was released to the public.
The killing of Greg Gunn occurred on the morning of February 25, 2016, in Montgomery, Alabama. Gunn, a 58-year-old African-American man, was shot and killed near his home after fleeing from a stop-and-frisk initiated by Aaron Cody Smith, a white police officer. Smith was charged with murder and indicted by a grand jury in 2016. The case came to trial in late 2019 following a change of venue to Ozark, Alabama. Smith was found guilty of manslaughter, and, in January 2020, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
On May 30, 2020, James Scurlock, a 22-year-old black male protester, was fatally shot by a 38-year-old bar owner, Jacob "Jake" Gardner. The shooting took place during George Floyd protests in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Old Market area of the city. Scurlock had been among the thousands of protesters who flooded the city's downtown area.
References
- 1 2 Smith, Jordan (9 August 2013). "APD Shooting Called 'Accidental'". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
- ↑ "Attorneys hired in APD shooting death". The Williamson County Libertarian Party. July 31, 2013. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- 1 2 Smith, Jordan (September 27, 2013). "Jackson's Parents File Suit". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ↑ Newton, Noelle (March 21, 2014). "Parents of Larry Jackson Jr testify before grand jury". Fox 7 News. Retrieved August 17, 2015.[ permanent dead link ]
- ↑ Dunbar, Wells (May 12, 2014). "Austin Police Detective Indicted in Larry Jackson Jr. Shooting Death". KUT. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ↑ Patrick Tolbert, Sophia Beausoleil (August 7, 2014). "City settles with Larry Jackson's children". KXAN. Archived from the original on August 5, 2015. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ↑ "TEXAS v. KLEINERT". October 29, 2015. Retrieved December 31, 2022.
