Police
London Police Under Fire After Teen Is Left With Severe Injuries During Traffic Stop
An investigation is under way after a 15-year-old suffered severe injuries when he was slammed off his bike during a police stop near London.
An investigation is under way after a 15-year-old suffered severe injuries when he was slammed off his bike during a police stop near London.
Terrell Decosta Jones-Burton was knocked unconscious after he was allegedly “charged” by an officer as he cycled along the road near his home in Bermondsey, south London.
Dramatic footage shows an officer pursing Terrell then “rugby tackle” him from his bike before the teenager’s head smashes into the doorway of a chicken shop.
Police say officers were responding to reports of a mobile phone robbery 20 minutes earlier. The female victim had given officers a description of the suspect who fled on a bicycle.
Terrell’s family is fighting back saying he is innocent and a victim of police brutality. Terrell’s mother posted an image on social media of her son in King’s College hospital with a bloody face showing him with a split lip.
His family said the 15-year-old also suffered broken teeth, a broken jawbone and bleeding on the brain after having a seizure in the ambulance taking him to hospital.
Ms Jones, 35, a carer, said her son, a Year 11 Bacon’s College student, had not been in trouble with police before.
‘Police brutality on young black boys has to stop,’ Terrell Jones-Burton’s mother said
Writing on Facebook, she said the teenager “is not a thug” and had been on his way home from local shops with friends when he was approached by officers accusing him of involvement in a mugging.
“He has no criminal record and no involvement with the police,” Ms Jones wrote, using the hashtag #JusticeForTerrell.
The mother says she had spoken to her eldest son by phone minutes before the incident occurred. She said as soon as she got in the ambulance, it looked like his face was shattered.
“I get in the ambulance and all I can see is his face just shattered, just completely disfigured. He looked like a dead person, that’s how bad he looked, Jones said, “I almost didn’t recognise him. I burst into tears.”
“He was rushing to get home so he wouldn’t be grounded for the next week. They got out of the car and slammed him against the shop, she added.
“It’s outrageous. He looks like a grown man, but he’s my little boy. It was a case of mistaken identity.”
Witnesses described the moment when Terrell was approached by police around 9:27pm on Southwark Park Road.
Witness Bogdan Sadowski, 52, said the officer was very aggressive.
“The boy’s head slammed into the door and he was out cold. I thought he was dead.”
An IPCC spokesman said they are now investigating the incident.
“The Met made a mandatory referral to the IPCC which is now investigating the incident. IPCC investigators were deployed to the scene and attended post incident procedures.”
According to reports, the incident comes as the Met is facing a series of controversies after the deaths of young black men who died after being stopped by police.
Five officers are facing a misconduct investigation after Edson Da Costa, 25, died in hospital in June after he was stopped in drugs search. A post mortem found a number of packages lodged in his throat.
Weeks later Rashan Charles, 20, died after being chased by police and restrained on the floor of a shop in Dalston. A package was also removed form his airway.
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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