Civil Rights At Play

Taking a page from law enforcement, University of Missouri professor Melissa Click told investigators she was in fear for her life when she assaulted a student journalist, calling for some “muscle” to have him removed because she was under the impression that he was packing a gun and could have pulled it out on her.
She also claimed she found Mark Schierbecker “suspicious” because his camera was too small.

The city of Miami is set to ratify a federal monitoring agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which will run for the next four years covering its 1,300 member force, protecting the Magic City and it’s more than 500,000 residents, which can be seen below.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc. turned down the FBI’s demand using a 1789 federal ordinance to build a “backdoor” into iPhones allowing law enforcement to defeat encryption as he explained in a “Customer Letter” this morning posted to the company’s website.
Apple’s letter kicks off the highest profile defense of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment we are likely to see in our lifetimes.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance this week dropped the manslaughter charge against the ex-con son of a well-connected NYPD family who was caught on video driving onto a sidewalk while texting before striking and killing an outspoken civil rights activist, then fleeing the scene on foot and evading police for more than two months, all while he was on parole after serving a three-year prison stint on drug charges.

Two U.S. Marshals are coming under fire after slamming their van into a woman’s car, pointing a gun at her and then, after realizing she was recording them, taking off like nothing ever happened, proving they are held to even lesser standards in Puerto Rico.
Raquel Vélez, who recorded the video, says to make matters worse, the incident took place in front of a federal prison. She wasted no time in reporting the U.S. Marshals (one of them apparently is known as “Agent Rivera”) and highlighted how she could not believe they pointed a firearm at her when she had done nothing wrong.

In an odd turn of events, a 16-year-old was charged with a DUI in Washington after a Spokane police officer ran a red light, crashed into the teenager and then blamed him for the accident.
Officer Seth Killian, who has been awarded countless accolades throughout his law enforcement career, was distracted and ran a red light on December 8 crashing into the teenager’s vehicle.
He even admitted to being at fault in the moments after the crash.
“I screwed up, man,” a distraught Killian is heard telling another officer in a conversation captured on his body cam.

Less than a year into the job, a Delaware cop was arrested for making terrorist threats against a citizen, who was only trying to help another citizen file a complaint against police.
“I’m going to call my boys and have them come and lock you up,” Wilmington police officer Julian Michel told the victim, threatening to arrest him for disorderly conduct.
“I’m going to kill that motherfucker,” Michel threatened, pointing at the victim. “I’m going to shoot you.”

So last week, a video of a frisky cop mistaking a man’s penis for a deadly weapon had gone viral on Imgur, a short video with no audio that generated laughs, comments and compliments, but revealed no background.
The bizarre footage showed a shirtless, shoeless man being heavily patted down – groin area and all – as his hands are behind his back.

It only took a couple of hours for the video to go viral; a bizarre confrontation between a student journalist and a communications professor during a protest at the University of Missouri last November.

Local media reports that Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Sheriffs have nothing better to do than investigate an NFL player for allegedly “taunting” one of their police dogs at a football game this past Sunday between the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers in Heinz Field.
The report is so bizarre, that it sounds like the plot of an NFL Films blooper reel.