Tag Archives: Excessive Force

U.S. Justice Department investigating Memphis police

Important Takeaways:

  • The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into whether the Memphis Police Department has an unconstitutional “pattern or practice” of using excessive force and racial discrimination, department officials announced on Thursday.
  • Earlier this year, the Justice Department agreed to join city officials and other agencies in a review of the Memphis Police Department after its officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, in the Tennessee city in January.
  • “City and police department leaders recognize the need to scrutinize the police department’s practices to prevent such incidents from ever happening again,” Clarke said
  • Federal investigators will also examine reports that officers may be involved in racial discrimination by disproportionately stopping Black people for minor violations in the majority-Black city, such as a broken tail light on their car.
  • The Justice Department has investigated other police departments, including the Minneapolis Police Department following the 2020 murder of George Floyd
  • Last month, the Minneapolis officials agreed to federal oversight of its police force by the Justice Department after it was found to have a practice of violating people’s civil rights.

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U.S. Supreme Court again protects police accused of excessive force

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted requests by police officers in separate cases from California and Oklahoma for legal protection under a doctrine called “qualified immunity” from lawsuits accusing them of using excessive force.

The justices overturned a lower court’s decision allowing a trial in a lawsuit against officers Josh Girdner and Brandon Vick over the fatal shooting of a hammer-wielding man in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

They also overturned a lower court’s decision to deny a request by Union City, California police officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas for qualified immunity in a lawsuit accusing him of using excessive force while handcuffing a suspect.

The brief rulings favoring the police in the two cases were unsigned, with no public dissents among the justices. They were issued in cases that were decided without oral arguments.

The qualified immunity defense protects police and other government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances, permitting lawsuits only when an individual’s “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights have been violated.

The decisions on Monday indicate that the justices still think lower courts are denying qualified immunity too frequently in excessive force cases involving police, having previously chided appeals courts on that issue in recent years.

Reuters in 2020 published an investigation that revealed how qualified immunity, with the Supreme Court’s continual refinements, has made it easier for police officers to kill or injure civilians with impunity.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court widens ability to sue police for excessive force

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday expanded the ability of people to sue police for excessive force, ruling in favor of a New Mexico woman who filed a civil rights lawsuit after being shot by officers she had mistaken for carjackers.

The 5-3 decision allowed the woman, Roxanne Torres, to pursue her lawsuit accusing New Mexico State Police officers Richard Williamson and Janice Madrid of violating the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on illegal searches and seizures even though she had not been immediately detained, or seized, in the incident.

The court determined that in order to sue for excessive force under the Fourth Amendment, it is not necessary for a plaintiff to have been physically seized by law enforcement.

“We hold that the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is not subdued,” conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.

Roberts was joined in the decision by the court’s three liberals and one of his fellow conservatives, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Three other conservatives justices dissented. The newest justice, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, did not participate because she had not yet joined the court when the case was argued in October.

In a dissenting opinion, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch said a “seizure” under the Fourth Amendment has always been defined as “taking possession of someone or something,” and he criticized the court’s contrary conclusion.

“That view is as mistaken as it is novel,” Gorsuch wrote.

The case will now return to lower courts, where the officers could seek to have the lawsuit dismissed on other grounds including the legal doctrine called qualified immunity that protects police and other types of government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances.

In the 2014 incident, four officers arrived at an apartment complex in Albuquerque and approached Torres, who was sitting in a car. Torres said she fled when she saw people with guns approaching, thinking she was going to be carjacked. Madrid and Williamson fired 13 shots between them, hitting her twice in the back as she drove away in her car.

Torres continued driving but was arrested the next day after being treated in a hospital for her wounds. She was convicted of three criminal offenses, including fleeing from a law enforcement officer.

After Torres sued in a federal court in New Mexico in 2016, the judge dismissed the case, saying there could be no excessive force claim because a “seizure” had not occurred. The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion in 2019, prompting Torres to appeal to the Supreme Court.

There is heightened public scrutiny of police conduct in the wake of protests in many cities last year against racism and police brutality. Rulings by the Supreme Court in other cases over police powers are due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court rejects case over ‘qualified immunity’ for police

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a chance to review the scope of a legal defense called qualified immunity that increasingly has been used to shield police accused of excessive force, turning away an appeal by a Cleveland man who sued after being roughed up by police while trying to enter his own home.

The justices declined to hear the appeal by Shase Howse, who said he was slammed to the ground outside the house where he lived with his mother in a poor and mostly Black neighborhood, struck in the back of the neck and jailed after police deemed his actions suspicious. Howse, who was 20 at the time, is Black. The police involved in the 2016 incident are white.

Qualified immunity protects police officers and other types of government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances, allowing lawsuits only when an individual’s “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights have been violated.

Police use of force has been closely scrutinized following the May 2020 death of a Black man named George Floyd after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck.

The U.S. House of Representatives last Wednesday passed policing reform legislation that among other provisions would eliminate the qualified immunity defense for law enforcement. The legislation, supported by most Democrats and opposed by Republicans, faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

Howse’s case was featured in a Reuters investigation into qualified immunity published in December. The investigation illustrated how the endorsement of this defense by courts has denied Black Americans recourse to justice under a law enacted 150 years ago specifically to protect them from abuses by state and local authorities in the post-Civil War years.

Howse sued two police officers, Brian Middaugh and Thomas Hodous, accusing them of excessive force in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The officers said they used only the force necessary to subdue Howse.

The Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 granted the officers qualified immunity, ruling that no “clearly established” precedent showed that their actions were unlawful.

In May 2020, a Reuters investigation revealed how qualified immunity, under the careful stewardship of the Supreme Court, has made it easier for police to kill or injure civilians with impunity by shielding them from lawsuits, even when courts determine police actually violated a person’s constitutional rights.

Law enforcement professionals and some U.S. conservatives have argued that qualified immunity is essential for police to make quick decisions in dangerous situations without fear of lawsuits.

In recent months, the Supreme Court has signaled a potential softening of its approach to qualified immunity. In two cases the justices allowed inmates to sue prison guards who had been granted immunity by lower courts from accusations that they violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

New York police lacked training, used excessive force during summer protests, city investigation finds

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Police Department used excessive force during the wave of protests across the city this summer against police brutality and racism, according to a report published on Friday morning by New York City’s Department of Investigation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio asked for the investigation in May as social media became deluged with cellphone videos showing police officers dousing protesters, elected officials and journalists with chemical irritants, shoving and hitting them while they struggled on the ground and, in one instance, driving police vehicles into them.

The report said the NYPD’s response was excessive in part because most police officers involved had not received “relevant training” in policing protests.

“The NYPD’s use of force and certain crowd control tactics to respond to the Floyd protests produced excessive enforcement that contributed to heightened tensions,” the Department of Investigation said in the executive summary of its 111-page report.

The daily New York City protests were a prominent part of what quickly became a nationwide and international movement prompted in part by anger over George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in her Louisville home by white police officers during a botched raid.

De Blasio, who repeatedly defended his police department’s conduct during the protests, said he agreed with the report’s findings.

“It makes very clear we’ve got to do something different, and we’ve got to do something better,” he said in a video statement released by City Hall.

The report concluded that the city’s unusual system of three distinct, sometimes overlapping agencies conducting oversight of the police department had caused problems. It recommended that the city create a single independent police oversight agency.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea in a statement called the summer a “difficult period” and thanked the Department of Investigation for “20 logical and thoughtful recommendations that I intend to incorporate into our future policy and training.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Homeland Security chief says department is reviewing complaints excessive force used in Portland

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reviewing “a number” of complaints that its agents used excessive force against anti-racism protesters in Portland, Oregon, though so far no one has been disciplined, the department’s acting head said on Thursday.

Acting Secretary Chad Wolf testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about the federal response to long-running protests in Portland, where state and city officials complained that the presence of federal officers inflamed protests.

He did not say how many complaints were being reviewed or provide any specifics of what had been alleged.

Largely peaceful protests have been held across the United States since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man, while in Minneapolis police custody. Protests in cities, including Portland, have at times erupted into arson and violence, and federal officers sent into the Northwestern city have repeatedly clashed with crowds targeting the federal courthouse there.

Wolf denied that federal officers had cracked down on peaceful protesters, saying they had faced repeated overnight violence around a federal courthouse that became the focus of protests. Officers reported 277 injuries, he said.

“In no way are we doing anything on peaceful protests,” Wolf said.

He said that DHS believed there was “some coordination” between participants in Portland protests, who he said included “violent opportunists,” anarchists and members of the far-right Boogaloo movement, and he said Antifa activists had used online messaging to encourage violence. He said federal agencies had “very, very little” intelligence from inside the violent protest movement.

The House Intelligence Committee this week launched its own investigation into DHS’s intelligence office, including its actions in Portland, and its involvement in other anti-racism protests across the country.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)

Hong Kong reopens after weekend of clashes, protests

By Jessie Pang

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s businesses and metro stations reopened as usual on Monday after a chaotic Sunday when police fired water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters who blocked roads and threw petrol bombs outside government headquarters.

On Sunday what began as a mostly peaceful protest earlier in the day spiraled into violence in some of the Chinese territory’s busiest shopping and tourist districts.

Thousands of anti-government protesters, many clad in black masks, caps and shades to obscure their identity, raced through the streets, engaging in cat-and-mouse tactics with police, setting street fires and blocking roads in the heart of Hong Kong where many key business districts are located.

The demonstrations are the latest in nearly four months of sometimes violent protests. Protesters are furious over what they see as creeping interference by Beijing in Hong Kong’s affairs despite promises by Beijing to grant the city wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms denied in mainland China.

Dozens of university students rallied peacefully on Monday afternoon urging authorities to listen to public demands. Dressed in black, some of them donning face masks, students sang “Glory to Hong Kong” a song that has become a rallying cry for more democratic freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese hub.

At Baptist University hundreds of students also marched to demand the university’s management offer support to a student reporter arrested on Sunday.

The initial trigger for the protests was a contentious extradition bill, now withdrawn, that would have allowed people to be sent from Hong Kong to mainland China for trial.

The protests have since broadened into other demands including universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into allegations of excessive force by the police.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland – including a much-cherished independent legal system.

89 ARRESTS IN WEEKEND VIOLENCE

Kung Lui, a third-year university student majoring in sociology, said the protests would continue until all five demands were met. “The protests have revealed lots of social problems and proved that democracy and freedom are the core values of Hong Kong people.”

Police on Monday said 89 people were arrested over the weekend after “radical protesters” attacked two police officers on Sunday evening, hurling petrol bombs, bricks, and threatening the safety of the officers.

Nearly 1,500 people have been arrested since the protests started in June.

Authorities moved quickly to douse the fires and police fired volleys of tear gas to disperse them, including in the bustling shopping and tourist district of Causeway Bay.

At least 18 people were injured, three of them seriously, during Sunday’s violence, according to the Hospital Authority.

The protests have weighed on the city’s economy as it faces its first recession in a decade, with tourist arrivals plunging 40 percent in August amid some disruptions at the city’s international airport.

By Sunday evening, the running battles between anti-government protesters and police had evolved into street brawls between rival groups in the districts of Fortress Hill and North Point further east on Hong Kong island. There, men in white T-shirts – believed to be pro-Beijing supporters and some wielding hammers, rods and knives – clashed with anti-government activists.

On a street close to North Point, home to a large pro-Beijing community, a Reuters witness saw one man in a white T-shirt sprawled on the ground with head wounds.

Hong Kong media reported that groups of pro-Beijing supporters had attacked journalists.

Police eventually intervened and sealed off some roads to try to restore order, and they were seen taking away several men and women from an office run by a pro-Beijing association.

Democratic lawmaker Ted Hui was arrested for allegedly obstructing police, according to his Democratic Party’s Facebook page, as he tried to mediate on the streets in North Point.

(Additional reporting by Twinnie Siu; Writing by Farah Master; and James Pomfret; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Mark Heinrich)

U.N. cites systematic use of excessive force in Venezuela crackdown on dissent

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights attends a news conference on Venezuela at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations on Wednesday said Venezuela’s security forces had committed extensive and apparently deliberate human rights violations in crushing anti-government protests.

The actions indicated “a policy to repress political dissent and instil fear”, the U.N. human rights office said in a report that called for further investigation.

It called on the government of President Nicolas Maduro to release arbitrarily detained demonstrators and to halt the unlawful use of military courts to try civilians.

More than 1,000 people were believed to remain in custody as of July 31, among more than 5,000 detained in street protests since April, it said. Detainees are often subjected to ill-treatment, in some documented cases amounting to torture.

“Credible and consistent accounts of victims and witnesses indicate that security forces systematically used excessive force to deter demonstrations, crush dissent and instill fear,” it said in a report following initial findings issued on Aug 8.

Security forces have used tear gas canisters, motorcycles, water cannons and live ammunition to disperse the protesters, it said.

Venezuelan security forces and pro-government groups are believed to be responsible for the deaths of 73 people since April, while responsibility for the remaining 51 deaths has not been determined, the U.N. report said.

The overall toll of 124 includes nine members of the security forces that the government says were killed through July and four people allegedly killed by protesters, it said.

Some protesters have resorted to violent means, ranging from rocks to sling shots, Molotov cocktails and homemade mortars in protests against Maduro and shortages of food and other basic goods, it said.

Maduro has said Venezuela was the victim of an “armed insurrection” by U.S.-backed opponents seeking to gain control of the OPEC country’s oil wealth.

But as the political crisis deepened, the use of force by security forces has progressively escalated, the report said.

“The generalized and systematic use of excessive force during demonstrations and the arbitrary detention of protesters and perceived political opponents indicate that these were not the illegal or rogue acts of isolated officials,” it said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein warned in a statement that amid the economic and social crises and rising political tensions, there was a “grave risk the situation in Venezuela will deteriorate further”.

The government must ensure that investigations begun by the state prosecutor Luisa Ortega — who was removed from her post this month after accusing Maduro of eroding democracy – continue and are scrupulously impartial, Zeid said.

Venezuela held nationwide armed forces exercises on Saturday, calling on civilians to join reserve units to defend against a possible attack after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that a “military option” was on the table for the crisis-hit country.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Black Lives Matter sues for court oversight of Chicago police reforms

FILE PHOTO: Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson arrives at a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

By Chris Kenning

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Members of Black Lives Matter and other groups sued the city of Chicago on Wednesday, seeking to force federal court oversight of reforms to the police department, which has been accused of using excessive force against minorities.

The lawsuit, filed by civil rights attorneys in the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois, came after Mayor Rahm Emanuel backed off a pledge to let a federal judge oversee reforms.

The lawsuit asks the court to ensure reforms will halt what it described as the ongoing use of excessive force, physical harassment and targeting of minority youth and a reliance on overly aggressive tactics by Chicago police.

“Chicago has proven time and time again that it is incapable of ending its own regime of terror, brutality and discriminatory policing,” the lawsuit said. “Absent federal court supervision, nothing will improve.”

In January, a federal investigation found Chicago police routinely violated the civil rights of people, citing excessive force and racially discriminatory conduct.

That followed protests sparked by the fall 2015 release of video showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald a year earlier.

After the probe’s findings were released, Emanuel committed to a consent decree, a court-ordered reform agreement.

Earlier this month, he said Chicago was discussing an agreement with the Justice Department that would include an independent monitor instead of court oversight.

In an interview with Reuters, Emanuel said a consent decree with the Justice Department is not an option because Attorney General Jeff Sessions does not favor them to impose reform.

Chicago has pushed ahead with reforms including enacting new rules on use of force, provided two-thirds of the Chicago police force with body cameras and is hiring 1,000 new officers, Emanuel said.

Emanuel indicated he still has questions about the role of any outside monitor. “If you have an outside monitor, what are their authorities and their abilities?” he asked.

Edward Siskel, the city’s top lawyer, said on Wednesday that the larger need for reform was npt in question.

But the shift away from using court oversight drew criticism from Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and activist groups. A plaintiffs’ attorney in Wednesday’s lawsuit said the city could enter a court-decree with the plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs include six individuals along with groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago and Blocks Together.

Kevin Graham, president of Chicago’s police union, in a statement objected to the lawsuit’s characterization of the department and said his offers are doing a phenomenal job in extremely dangerous circumstances.

(Additional reporting by David Greising; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Lisa Shumaker)