Police
Chavis Carter : Police Release Video in Arkansas Shooting
Police video recorded the night a young man was fatally shot in a northeast Arkansas patrol car while his hands were cuffed behind his back hasn’t resolved questions about whether he shot himself in the head as officers said.
Police video recorded the night Chavis Carter , a young man who was fatally shot in a northeast Arkansas patrol car while his hands were cuffed behind his back, hasn’t resolved questions about whether he shot himself in the head as officers said.
Jonesboro police released footage to The Associated Press and other news organizations under a Freedom of Information Act request this week. They released more footage Friday amid questions about why the first batch of video appeared to end before the officers found Chavis Carter, 21, slumped over and bleeding in the back of a patrol car on July 28 as described in a police report. Police have said officers had frisked Carter twice without finding a gun.
The second batch of video occurred after Carter was discovered, police said.
“There’s still nothing in there about what actually happened with Chavis,” Benjamin Irwin, a Memphis-based lawyer representing Carter’s family, said Friday before the second batch of video had been released.
The internal police investigation into the shooting has not yet been completed. The FBI has said it is also monitoring the case.
Sgt. Lyle Waterworth, spokesman for the Jonesboro police, said Friday morning that he hadn’t yet seen the video his department released the night before. Hours later, amid questions about the dashboard camera video, he agreed to release more footage that he said occurred after Carter was discovered.
No other dashboard camera video exists, he said, but additional video was retrieved during a forensic exam of Carter’s phone. He said that remains part of the active investigation and wouldn’t be released yet.
To explain stops in the video, he said the camera system in both patrol cars is controlled automatically with an emergency light bar and siren system.
“After the light bar is turned off the camera system ends its recording,” Waterworth said in a statement. He didn’t respond to email and phone messages seeking further comment.
The second batch of video begins as what looks like light from a police car flickers on a stretch of road. A dog barks and a white SUV turns around a little ways down the street.
An unseen man curses shortly after he says, “He was breathing a second ago.” An ambulance pulls up and someone, perhaps the same man, says, “I patted him down. I don’t know where he had it hidden.”
Later, someone instructs the others to leave everything as it is.
The video goes on to show an officer cordoning off the area with police tape. Two people can be seen looking on, but they leave after interacting briefly with an officer.
Chavis Carter is not shown in that video.
The first batch of video begins when an officer pulls up to a white pickup truck on a dark street in Jonesboro, about 130 miles northeast of Little Rock. He talks to the driver, Carter and another passenger. Police say the officer stopped the truck after someone reported a suspicious vehicle driving up and down the road.
Another officer arrives and searches Carter, who police say initially gave a different name. The officer doesn’t appear to find a gun as he pats Carter down, though something else falls to the ground as the officer shines a flashlight toward Carter.
The officer leads Carter, who is not yet handcuffed, toward the patrol cars and then out of the frame. A police report said Carter was placed in the second patrol car without handcuffs, though the video doesn’t show that.
Meanwhile, the other officer searches the driver and remaining passenger, who then stand in front of the first patrol car. The officer who searched Carter asked them where the rest of the marijuana was because he found some on Carter.
The driver and other passenger are handcuffed and led out of the frame, too.
Eventually, they appear without handcuffs and the officers let them leave.
They keep Carter, who had an arrest warrant out of Mississippi. Court records show it had to do with a drug-related case.
The video ends after the truck drives away and the officers talk about leaving.
“See ya later,” one of the officers says. It sounds like he opens the car door and then the audio cuts out. The police car’s blue lights continue to flash for several seconds, lighting a nearby bush.
Chavis Carter was shot in the head, though police have refused to give more specifics.
Police said in a statement that they’re still waiting on a complete autopsy report, forensics and toxicology results from the state crime lab.
Police
Family of Black girls handcuffed by Colorado police, held at gunpoint reach $1.9 million settlement
The family of four Black girls who were wrongfully detained and held at gunpoint by Aurora, CO police have reached a settlement with the city.
Family of Black girls held at gunpoint reach settlement
Finalized on Monday, the families will collectively receive $1.9 million.
The settlement marks the latest payout the City of Aurora has been forced to make over officers’ excessive use of force.
In 2021, the city paid a $15 million settlement to Elijah McClain’s family, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine.
The incident
In August 2020, four Black girls, ages 6, 12, 14 and 17, were held face down on the ground and put in handcuffs in a nail salon parking lot, crying and screaming, as officers towered over them.
Brittney Gilliam, the mother of the 6-year-old, was driving that Sunday morning with her relatives, because they were going to get their nails done together.
Wrongfully detained
But before they made it in the salon, Gilliam was detained after officers mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen S.U.V.
Police had mistakenly believed Gilliam was driving a stolen car.
And a simple second step police failed to take, resulted in the family being wrongfully detained.
Officers didn’t type in the plate number in a second database to show them the make of the vehicle. If they had, authorities said, the officers would have realized that the plate number was registered to a motorcycle in Montana.
Black girls and mother held at gunpoint traumatized
Dozens of bystanders watched the ordeal unfold, and video footage of the incident went viral, sparking protests over racial injustice, citing excessive force on Black Americans.
After the video went viral, Aurora police had apologized for their grave mistake, but the emotional trauma had already happened.
The Aurora Police Department said its officers are trained to draw their weapons before telling passengers to exit the vehicle and ordering them to lie on the ground, The Post reported.
Officers who held Black girls at gunpoint
One of the two officers who drew their guns and handcuffed members of the family was initially suspended.
However, he and the other officer that pulled his firearm remain on the police force, the New York Times reports.
To date, no officers were fired or charged in connection with the incident.
Police
2023 saw a record year of killings by police in U.S.
The number of people killed by police in the United States reached a new high in 2023, according to new research.
The number of people killed by police in the United States reached a new high in 2023, according to new research.
2023 police killings increased dramatically
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, dockets deaths at the hands of police officers. Last year, it recorded the highest number of killings since its national tracking began in 2013.
Statistics explained
The data reported that police officers killed 1,329 people in 2023, representing nearly a 19-percent increase over the 11-year span.
Nearly 90% of those killed were fatally shot, according to Abdul Nasser Rad, managing director of research and data at Campaign Zero, who runs Mapping Police Violence.
There were only 14 days without a police killing last year and on average, law enforcement officers killed someone every 6.6 hours, according to the report.
Meanwhile last year, the number of people killed by gunfire and officers killed in the line of duty declined, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There was an increase in the number of police officers shot.
The newly released data suggests a grim reality and a systemic crisis, with an average of about three people killed by officers each day, with slight increases in recent years. In 2022, 1,250 were killed by police.
The data also reported that Black people were about 2.8 times more likely to be killed by officers than their white counterparts between 2013 and 2023.
Recording police misconduct
For decades, many Americans have suffered various forms of brutality and injustice at the hands of “bad” law enforcement officers.
When a civilian puts in a complaint against the officer only a small percent of complaints result in the officer being disciplined —partly because the accusations are hidden.
Half of the battle is knowing who the “bad” law enforcement are and proper action being taken.
Missin Peace, a national police misconduct database that collects formal civilian complaints against law enforcement, helps fill that void.
In 2022, we had a conversation with the creators, who urged those who filed a complaint against an officer, to upload it on their website as well.
While there is still much work to do, it’s a start.
Police
14-year-old boy with autism tased by police in what family says was case of mistaken identity
An Illinois family is demanding answers after their 14-year-old autistic son was tased by police in what they maintain was a case of mistaken identity.
An Illinois family is demanding answers after their 14-year-old autistic son was tased by police in what they maintain was a case of mistaken identity.
14-year-old autistic boy tased by police
In an interview with WLS Chicago, the family says that the teen, Avarius Thompson, suffered injuries, including a fractured hip, during an encounter with Dolton police on the morning of Nov.
Police’s incident report
According to the Dolton Police Department’s incident report, Dolton police were assisting police in the nearby neighborhood of Riverdale in the search for four Black males who had fled from a crashed, stolen vehicle, two of whom were allegedly carrying rifles and a handgun.
Dolton officers spotted two subjects, one of whom matched the description of a suspect sought in the incident, in a nearby backyard and pursued them, according to the incident report.
An officer pursuing Avarius ordered the teen to stop before tasing him, according to the incident report.
The incident was captured on the officer’s body-camera footage.
“Hands up! Hands up!” a Dolton police officer can be heard yelling in the body-camera footage as he runs toward Avarius with his Taser extended. After the teen jumps over a fence, the officer deploys the taser, the footage shows.
Avarius attempts to get up when the officer deploys his Taser again a few seconds later, the footage shows.
“Don’t move. Don’t move,” the officer says. “You move, you’re going to get some more.”
Avarius’ father, Eric Thompson, told WLS that the footage was “frightening.”
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