Prosecutors claim that a newly released and enhanced video showing the death of Tamir Rice indicated that “the 12-year-old boy reaching for his pellet gun moments before he was fatally shot by police.”

The slightly clearer still images will be presented to a grand jury that will decide if patrolman Timothy Loehmann or officer Frank Garmback should be charged over the death of Tamir last November.

The two videos do not appear to show any new substantive movement but an annotation on one of the clips suggests Tamir moved his hand towards his waistband in the instant before he was shot, according to the prosecution.

This combination of still images taken from a surveillance video and released Saturday, Nov. 28, 2015, by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, shows Cleveland police officers arriving at Cudell Park on a report of a man with a gun. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, Nov. 22, 2014, after he reportedly pulled a replica gun at the city park. The enhancement by a California video expert will be presented to a grand jury that will decide if then-rookie patrolman Loehmann or his training officer should be charged criminally for Loehmann killing Rice. (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office via AP)

The still images were taken by a security camera at Cudell Recreation Center. They show different angles than video of the incident previously released.

Police officials initially said that Loehmann, 26, yelled three times at Tamir to raise his hands, a claim witnesses have denied and no footage has shown.

The images back up later claims that the officer shot Tamir within two seconds of jumping out of a car.

The young boy had been holding a pellet gun moments before police arrived.

He was shot once in the torso and died on the operating table a day later.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said the new footage was released in the ‘spirit of openness’. 

‘Once again … we are not reaching any conclusions from these or other isolated bits of evidence,’ McGinty said. ‘Individually they are simply pieces of a complex puzzle.’

Loehmann and Garmback, 47, were responding to a call about a young man waving and pointing a gun outside the rec center. A 911 caller had also said the gun might be a fake and the man could be a juvenile, but that information was never relayed to the officers.

A friend told deputies he had given the pellet gun to Tamir hours before the shooting with the warning to be careful because it looked real, according to court documents.

He said he had taken the gun apart to fix it and been unable to reattach the orange cap that goes on the barrel to indicate it isn’t the .45-caliber handgun it is modeled after.

A grand jury has begun evaluating evidence to decide whether criminal charges should be filed against two white police officers in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy carrying a pellet gun outside a recreation centre.

The head of Cleveland’s largest police union told The Associated Press on Tuesday that officers were subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury last week and on Monday.

The Nov. 22, 2014, killing became a flashpoint in the wake of other deadly police encounters with young black males across the country.

Tamir was playing with a borrowed airsoft gun, which shoots nonlethal plastic pellets, when someone called police. The gun bore a striking resemblance to a real firearm, in part because its tell-tale orange tip had been removed.

Footage recorded by a surveillance camera showed then-rookie patrol officer Timothy Loehmann shooting Tamir within two seconds of a patrol car skidding to a stop just feet from the boy. Questions remain about whether Loehmann told Tamir to raise his hands before firing two shots, one of which struck Tamir.

Henry Hilow, an attorney who accompanied the officers to the grand jury, declined to comment.

Subodh Chandra, an attorney for Tamir’s family, issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing McGinty for not telling Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, that prosecutors had begun presenting evidence to the grand jury.

Chandra and other Rice family attorneys have been calling on McGinty to allow a special prosecutor to take over the case.

Last year, prosecutors obtained an indictment charging white Cleveland patrolman Michael Brelo with voluntary manslaughter for his role in the deaths of two unarmed black people killed in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire after a lengthy, high-speed chase. Brelo was the only one of 13 officers who fired their weapons the night of Nov. 29, 2012, to be charged criminally. Prosecutors argued that the car’s occupants, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, no longer posed a threat when Brelo fired the final 15 rounds.

A judge acquitted Brelo at trial in May.

That case helped prompt a U.S. Justice Department investigation that concluded Cleveland police too often use excessive force and violate people’s civil rights. The city and the DOJ reached an agreement earlier this year on a police department reform plan.

It is has been nearly one year since a police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice while he was playing with a toy gun in a neighborhood park in Cleveland, Ohio. Criminal charges have yet to be brought against either of the officers involved in the killing: the shooter, Timothy Loehmann, and his partner, Frank Garmback.

This weekend the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office published on its web site two supposedly independent reports which both conclude that the police murder of Rice was “objectively reasonable.”

The reports are transparent efforts to deny the obvious. Surveillance videoshows that the police officers rolled up to the young boy in their squad car and opened fire in less than two seconds. Rice, who was struck once in the stomach, was left by the officers to bleed on the ground without any first aid for at least four minutes. He died the next day at the hospital.

The reports, prepared by a former FBI agent and a current district attorney at the request of the prosecutor, Thomas J. McGinty, were presented to a secret grand jury that has been impaneled to decide whether or not to bring charges against Loehmann and Garmback. The outrageous decision by McGinty to selectively release reports favorable to the officers has all the markings of an attempt to whitewash the crime and condition public opinion for an exoneration.

The likelihood of Rice’s killers being charged with a crime and put on trial is extremely low; if they are brought to trial, the odds of a conviction are even lower.

While police killings are a more than daily occurrence in the United States, with most going unreported in the media, prosecutions and convictions are extremely rare. A report by the Washington Post earlier this year found that, over the past decade, only 54 officers have been charged for a fatal shooting. Of these, only 11 have been convicted. In the last three years alone, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by police.

Among the most notable exonerations in recent months was the decision by a judge in May to acquit another Cleveland, Ohio police officer, Michael Brelo, of manslaughter charges in the deaths of two unarmed individuals who were killed in a barrage of more than 130 rounds fired into their car. Last month, a local prosecutor announced that Pasco, Washington police officers would not be charged for gunning down an unarmed immigrant worker, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, in February.

These actions followed the decisions not to charge Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, and Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who choked Eric Garner to death in July of the same year.

The latest developments in the Rice case fit into a definite modus operandi of the ruling class as it seeks to tamp down social discontent in the face of unrelenting police violence.

After a police officer commits a horrific killing, public outrage finds expression in mass protests in which justice is demanded in the form of a trial and conviction. Democratic Party politicians make disingenuous statements of concern for the deceased and promise to make serious changes that will rein in the police violence. Finally, efforts are made to prepare public opinion to accept the exoneration of the killer cop, and the killing goes on.

In instances where protests threaten to escape the control of the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations, the state has responded with brutal repression—as in the military-style lockdowns in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown and in Baltimore, Maryland this spring after the killing of Freddie Gray.

The Obama administration has played a key role in this process. The administration has given the green light for police killings to continue apace, refusing to bring civil rights charges in multiple cases and intervening on behalf of the police in every police brutality case brought before the Supreme Court. While there has been talk about addressing the militarization of local police forces, nothing in fact has been done to limit the military grade equipment held by police departments, including combat rifles, armored vehicles and drones.

At the same time, the protests and popular anger over police violence have been actively channeled behind the Democratic Party through the intervention of groups like Black Lives Matter and other proponents of identity politics. The function of these organizations has been to obscure the fundamental class questions at stake, insisting that the issue of police violence is entirely a matter of racism.

They claim that police violence can be opposed by appealing to the Obama administration or hiring more black police officers. They ignore the fact that the majority of victims of police violence in the US are white, and that the regularity of police killings is not altered by the racial composition of either the police or the politicians who preside over them.

In fact, the unending series of police killings has much deeper roots. It is the festering sore of a society riven by social inequality, presided over by a ruling class that wages unending war abroad and is increasingly utilizing the methods of war to deal with social tensions within the country. The police are a critical instrument of the corporate and financial elite in the defense of its social system, capitalism.

If one conclusion can be drawn from the experience of the last year of police killings and protests, it is that the Democratic Party and the purveyors of racial identity politics have proven to be a dead end for the working class in the fight against police violence.

Young people are angry and outraged by an increasingly unbearable situation and are looking for a way to fight. They understand that a society that seeks to justify the police murder of a child and hundreds of others is morally bankrupt and completely irrational.

The experiences with police violence and the response to mass protests over the last year have made it clear to a growing number of youth and workers that the fundamental question of police violence is one of class. As one worker in Ferguson recently told the WSWS, “It’s not about black or white, it’s about rich or poor and everybody that’s at a certain income level, we need to get together.”

To fight against police violence, this widespread class sentiment must be given conscious political form. Opposition to the brutality of the state must be connected to the growing struggles of workers of all races, throughout the country and internationally, against the relentless attack waged by the corporations and the banks. It means the political unification of the entire working class, on the basis of a revolutionary and socialist program, against the Democratic and Republican parties and the capitalist system they defend.

Niles Williamson for https://www.wsws.org

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The FOX 8 I-TEAM has reported that the city of Cleveland will finally determine what internal punishments will be issued to the 13 police officers who fired 137 shots and killed two suspects after a long and massive chase in 2012.

We’ve confirmed papers have started going out to the officers outlining administrative charges.

A grand jury indicted Officer Michael Brelo. He reloaded his weapon multiple times, and he jumped on the hood of the suspects’ car. But in May, a judge cleared him of manslaughter charges, in part, saying Cuyahoga County Prosecutors did not prove Brelo fired the fatal shots.

Media has also learned the 13 officers getting hit with internal charges will have hearings in the near future before the Cleveland safety director. That means, if found guilty of any administrative violations, the punishment could be at least a suspension of ten days. The safety director also has the power to fire the officers.

Brelo , who is currently on unpaid leave, has a hearing in front of Director of Public Safety Sept. 14. He is facing numerous charges including violating division training protocol by leaving his zone car and firing his service weapon while running out in the open.

He was acquitted on manslaughter charges in May. Union officials said Brelo should be brought back to work, and insist he was doing what he had to do that night to save his life.

“We have anticipated the issuance of departmental charges against out 13 offices who have not yet faces discipline for their role in this chase. Our attorneys are reviewing each administrative charge for accuracy and appropriateness as we prepare to answer these charges during upcoming hearings with the Safety Director,” said Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Steve Loomis.

Cleveland police killed Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams after a chase that started in downtown Cleveland, and it didn’t end until it got to East Cleveland. The chase involved dozens of police cars from multiple departments. It began when an officer thought he heard a shot from that car. No gun was ever found with the suspects.

Cleveland previously issued disciplines to many officers for the chase.

by Virgil Vaduva

Update (August 6, 2015):

Representatives from Ohio Students Association have contacted me and have denied any association with the individuals behind the e-mails sent to Jim Anderson. As of right now, nobody has taken any responsibility for the statements made in the e-mails sent to Jim.

Original story: 

A clear pattern of discrimination and exclusion has been emerging within the last few days regarding the organization Black Lives Matter. It started with the organization attempting to schedule an event at the same time and location as other organizations and immediately attempting to put in place rules limiting attendance, excluding members of Anonymous, members of Cop Block and members of Ohio Open Carry, all organizations which oppose police brutality and work hard to further liberty.

These actions and attempts to control the narrative and attendance to the one year anniversary demonstration of John Crawford’s shooting by Ohio police have stirred up quite a debate in various circles, prompting individuals that would otherwise work together to further the cause of liberty to take sides based on political views and other opinions.

Black Lives Matter, the George Soros funded organization, is now on full attack against Anonymous, a de-centralized organization which has been attempting to participate in exposing police brutality throughout the world for years.  The attempt on the part of BLM to limit speech and control the message at public events is not new and I have documented a number of instances where bigotry is on display by members and leader in Black Lives Matter.

Just today an activist and journalist named Jim Anderson based out of Columbus, Ohio contacted me to inform me that he was told by members of BLM that he was “too white to attend a police brutality protest.”

As early as November 2014 the leaders of Black Lives Matter Columbus have contacted Jim and demanded that he cancels his event against police brutality due to conflict (as they scheduled it after he did) and informed him that no members of Anonymous are welcome to any of their public events.  Furthermore Guy Fawkes masks were banned and white people were told not to attend and were not welcome at any planning meetings. These tactics are identical to the tactics BLM is attempting to use to intimidate white attendees in Beavercreek, Ohio planning to attend the one year anniversary protest of the John Crawford shooting on August 5, 2015.

Screenshots of e-mail exchanges between Jim and representatives from BLM and Ohio Student Association show what appear to be outright and unapologetically bigoted attitudes towards police brutality supporters simply because of their association with Anonymous or simple due to their skin color.

When Jim inquired about the confusion generated by the exclusion of Anonymous members, he was told that Anonymous members lack “revolutionary-ness” (sic) and can be threatening to people of color. The insensitivity of the language used to describe Anonymous is astounding. The BLM leaders are attempting to describe Anonymous members as violent, unaccountable individuals who show up at protests in order to intimidate people of color.

This is not the first time members of Black Lives Matter have excluded whites from their events. In an event scheduled in Dayton, Ohio early in 2015 several messages went out indicating in essence that “no whites are allowed” at their events and that white people are not welcome to participate or take part in police brutality protests. When an outraged community pointed out the bigotry of these demands the request made on Facebook were deleted and BLM leadership pretended they never happened.

In a recent video allegedly recorded in Cleveland, Ohio, another white journalist who attended a BLM meeting to support their cause was assaulted, pushed, cursed at and grabbed before he had a chance to leave the public property he was on.

When asked about the bigoted remarks, the organizers defended the behavior by claiming this was a “private” meeting, however the meeting is clearly out in public on what appears to be public property.  Not only that, but the journalist was clearly in the process of leaving, as he was asked to do, when he was assaulted and threatened. You can watch the video here.

Talis Gage, a leader in Black Lives Matter compares Anonymous members with the KKK in a Facebook post

In a more recent event, a Black Lives Matter leader did not mince words when he outright stated that “the mask is the new sheet” when criticizing Anonymous for attending some BLM events.  He stated:

“Sometimes I wonder if the mask is the new sheet and are they in cahoots with each other I know I know there is some black mask anon members but like the old days you had house negros and field negros and we are not that far from those times. I have associated in all these diff groups but I can’t say I trust them.”

Additional BLM members followed with more inflammatory comments against Anonymous:

“Both anonymous masks and guns endanger people of color…”

All these comments were removed when I warned them that I was taking screenshots, as the story would be hard to believe otherwise.

I am aghast at the idea that Anonymous is being compared with one of the most despicable and racists groups in the world, the KKK, which has lynched, burned and executed people simply because of the color of their skin. Furthermore, Anonymous has shown incredible support for the black community on the issue of police brutality. Several prominent investigations by Anonymous have led to exposing internal e-mails and comments from NYPD and Baltimore PD showing extensive racism among police officers.

When members of Anonymous contacted the BLM leaderships to inquire about the public event scheduled in Dayton Ohio in April, they were told in very clear terms, “It’s an event that’s not for anonymous members.”

The ingratitude shown by Black Lives Matter and the outright disregard for any desire to cooperate with people and groups which have supported them for the past year is very disturbing, to say the least. Exclusion, discrimination and bigotry appears to be alive and well throughout the BLM organization, and is dishonorable to police brutality causes where black Americans have been targeted by police throughout the country.

I am unsure how to encourage BLM leadership to resolve this problem, or even if they are willing to solve the problem or eliminate bigotry from their midsts, but if you want to contact BLM, you can do so by going to their website and writing them a message about the serious problem they are creating by attacking groups of people which have been supportive of the cause of police brutality well before BLM even came into existence.

Words don’t break bones, but they should certainly prompt someone to step back and reconsider their support for such organizations.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

Tanisha Anderson, 37, who died while in police custody

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department is launching an investigation into the November death of a woman who died while in custody of the Cleveland police.

Tanisha Anderson, 37, was killed on November 13 while two police officers, Scott Aldridge and Bryan Myers, held her in a prone position on the ground. Anderson was not armed at any time during her encounter with police.

Police say they came to Anderson’s residence after her family called for assistance. Anderson, who is bipolar, was reportedly “disturbing the peace.” Police say Anderson struggled when they attempted to force her into their patrol car, and claim that she tried to kick the officers. It was then that Aldridge and Myers decided to force her to the ground and forcibly restrain her, eventually causing her death.

Cuyahoga County Sheriff Cliff Pinkney spoke about the investigation at a press release on Tuesday.

“As with any investigation, our detectives will do an impartial and thorough job,” Pinkney said, adding that he won’t give “an artificial timeline” for the investigation to be completed. His announcement comes after seven months of waiting for those seeking justice in Anderson’s death.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A judge in Cleveland ruled Thursday that probable cause existed to charge two Cleveland police officers in the death of a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, but also said he did not have the power to order the arrests without a complaint being filed by a prosecutor.

This week, a group of activists and community leaders asked the Municipal Court to have the officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, arrested under a little-used Ohio law that allows “a private citizen having knowledge of the facts” to start the process by filing an affidavit with a court. They argued that the widely seen video of an officer killing Tamir had given nearly everyone “knowledge of the facts.”

On Thursday, Judge Ronald B. Adrine issued an order saying that probable cause existed to charge the officers, and “this court determines that complaints should be filed by the prosecutor of the City of Cleveland and/or the Cuyahoga County prosecutor.” What weight the order carries with the prosecutors is unclear.

The ruling puts prosecutors in a difficult position, deciding whether to bring charges in a high-profile case when a judge has already said that probable cause exists to do so.

In a statement, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, said the case, “as with all other fatal use of deadly force cases involving law enforcement officers, will go to the grand jury.”

Ultimately, Mr. McGinty said, any decision to file charges will rest with the members of a grand jury.

The petitioners argued that the statute allowed ordinary citizens to bypass the police and prosecutors, and force arrests; if they showed probable cause that a crime had been committed, they said, then the court had no choice but to order the officers arrested.

But the judge said there was a conflict between the law and the rules laid down by the State Supreme Court, so he could not issue warrants without a prosecutor’s complaint.

In his ruling, the judge found that probable cause existed to charge Officer Loehmann, who fired the shots that killed Tamir, with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide or dereliction of duty. The judge also ruled that probable cause existed to charge Office Garmback, who drove the police car, with negligent homicide or dereliction of duty.

Tamir was fatally shot in November while he played in a park. A 911 caller had reported that the boy was waving a gun that was “probably fake.” When officers arrived, they pulled their car into the park, next to the boy. Within two seconds, Officer Loehmann had shot Tamir in the abdomen. The gun, it turned out, was a lifelike, airsoft-style gun, which fired plastic pellets.

The Rev. Jawanza K. Colvin, a Cleveland pastor who filed affidavits in the case, said that the findings of probable cause showed that residents could have their concerns taken seriously by the courts.

“It is a step, and it is a step that tells those who have continued to work for justice in the criminal justice system that all lives do matter,” Mr. Colvin said.

A lawyer for the Rice family, Walter Madison, said Tamir’s relatives were “overwhelmed” by the findings and “cannot believe that the system has actually worked in their favor.”

“Albeit a small step toward justice, it is a step nonetheless,” Mr. Madison said.

“The order said that warrants should be filed, and I think that puts the onus on another set of public servants to listen to the people,” Mr. Madison said. “I think anything but an indictment at this particular time calls into serious question the county prosecutor and the appearance of impropriety.”

 This story originally written by Richard Pérez-Peña for the New York Times

Four days after being acquitted for shooting two unarmed people to death, Cleveland Police Officer Micahel Brelo became involved in a physical dispute, and is now facing assault charges.

According to the criminal complaint, Brelo punched his brother, Mark Brelo, in the head, face and body.

A warrant for Brelo’s arrest was filed Tuesday in Rocky River Municipal Court, according to documents found on the Rocky River Municipal Court.

From the complaint:

“On or about May 27, 2015, … Michael J. Brelo did knowingly cause or attempt to cause physical harm to Mark R. Brelo, to wit: by striking/punching Mark R. Brelo in the head, face, and body. Probable cause was established through interviews with Mark R. Brelo and Michael J. Brelo and observing visible injuries to Mark R. Brelo.”

A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge acquitted Michael Brelo of manslaughter on May 23 in for shooting and killing two unarmed Cleveland residents — Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

Brelo is still employed by the Cleveland Police Department, but has been placed on administrative leave.

Police union attorney Patrick D’Angelo, who represented Brelo during his previous trial, at first declined to comment on the Brelo’s more recent charges, but went on to offer what he believes may be a potential excuse:

“I don’t represent him or his brother, nor do I know the facts. I believe it may all relate to some unresolved, emotional conflict issues over a period of time between two brothers.”

Brelo is expected to turn himself in. A court date for the charges has not yet been set.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo, who shot and killed an unarmed couple, was found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter this Saturday.

The judge ruled in the police officer’s favor, following charges that stemmed from a one-sided shootout that took place on Nov. 29, 2012. The shootout resulted in police killing two unarmed people.

Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell acknowledged that Brelo fired lethal shots at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, but that Brelo was not solely responsible because he was not the only officer who shot at the couple.

O’Donnell also ruled that Brelo was not guilty of the accompanying felonious assault charge because he believed he was legally justified in using deadly force.

Brelo was one of 100 police officers who participated in a 22-minute chase, and one of 13 who shot at the vehicle that contained Russell and Williams.

The prosecution pointed out that when other police stopped firing their weapons, Brelo got on top of the vehicle’s hood and continued shooting, straight down at Russell and Williams, killing them both, and argued that Brelo’s actions were unreasonable.

The defense countered with Brelo’s claim that he “feared for his life,” as he shot down at the two from the vehicle’s hood, and that he believed Russell and Williams had a gun, despite no shots being fired by either. No gun was found in possession of the couple or anywhere in their vehicle.

Five more police supervisors involved in the deadly shooting have been charged with dereliction of duty. The date for that trial has not been set.

Najee Rivera admits he panicked on the night two white Philadelphia cops pulled over his motor scooter in El Centro de Oro, a Latino ghetto in the city’s Fairhill section.

“To be honest, I was afraid,” Rivera said. “I saw them get out of their car with nightsticks. I heard one of them call me a spic. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I took off. I shouldn’t have, but I was scared of them.”

With good reason. A private security camera captured what happened next:

As Rivera puttered along at perhaps 25mph, the police car raced up alongside him. The cop on the passenger side leaned out the window and clocked Rivera on the back on the head with his truncheon, knocking him off his scooter to the pavement. Officers Kevin Robinson and Sean McKnight bounded from the car and began clubbing Rivera as he lay wailing. They hauled him to his feet, slammed him against a building and then drove him back into the sidewalk.

When the beating was over that night, May 29, 2013, Rivera’s wounds required 38 surgical staples to his head and 18 stitches to his face. His nose was broken, an ear was gashed and the orbital socket of his right eye, swollen and plum-colored, was fractured.

The felonious assault on Rivera, then 21, was covered up by Robinson and McKnight with the familiar police-report narrative: The perp was resisting and the cops felt endangered, so they used “necessary force.” The truth came to light in February, when Rivera’s girlfriend, a South Philly nurse named Dina Scannapieco, revealed the smoking-gun security video. The cops were suspended and charged with aggravated assault.

Rivera’s story represents a broader trend in police violence that has been largely overlooked in the recent headline examples, from Cleveland to South Carolina, Baltimore to San Bernardino, Calif. Many of the most appalling examples of police brutality seem to spring from an officer’s rage when a citizen has the audacity to flee. Too many police officers can’t resist a pursuit—on foot or in a patrol car—even though they’ve been schooled repeatedly on the narrow parameters for permissible chases.

Pissing Off Police

“It’s called contempt of cop or POP: pissing off police,” says Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist and leading expert on police violence and pursuits. “These guys have a sworn duty to catch the bad guys, and that becomes an overwhelming instinct when someone runs from them. They’re going to try to catch them.”

And when they do, bad things often happen. Nothing seems to transform an otherwise reasonable police officer into a crazed beast faster than someone who flees.

“The psychology of pursuits is a very important factor in so many of these brutality cases, but no one seems to want to pay much attention to it,” says Gregory Gilbertson, a former Atlanta cop who teaches criminal justice at colleges in the Seattle area.

It’s impossible to know how many examples of police violence begin with pursuit rage since the U.S. declines to compile statistics on shootings and assaults by cops. As a result, no one can thoughtfully analyze the genesis of these events, much less make recommendations for how they can be minimized. But a growing record of anecdotal examples—many substantiated by police dash-cams or video shot by witnesses—suggests a pattern.

In one of the more bizarre recent examples, two deputies delivered blows and boots to the head and groin of Frank Pusok, 30, who led law enforcers on a long pursuit by car and on horseback in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, Calif. after Pusok stole a horse. The April 9 beating was captured on video by a news helicopter. Pusok had surrendered and was spread-eagled on his belly when the beating commenced. Each of 10 deputies could not resist getting in a lick or two as they arrived, long after the suspect was handcuffed. They’ve been suspended and may face criminal charges. The county paid Pusok a preemptory settlement of $650,000.

That assault was five days after the shocking shooting death of Walter Scott, 50, who lumbered away from Officer Michael Slager following a run-of-the-mill traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C. Slager fired eight shots, five of which hit Scott in the back. A brief recorded conversation between Slager and a police supervisor after the shooting hints at a crucial component of police pursuits.

“By the time you get home,” the supervisor said, “it would probably be a good idea to kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened. You know, once the adrenaline quits pumping.”

“It’s pumping,” Slager said, laughing nervously.

All About Adrenaline

I asked Sam Walker, an emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska Omaha and expert on police misconduct, why cops turn psycho during pursuits.

He replied, “Adrenaline, adrenaline and adrenaline, compounded by a failure of the department to adequately train its officers to think about the department’s policies that are designed to curb instincts and impulses and to act rationally and carefully.”

“Police officers engage in these chases then say, It was just my adrenaline,” adds Seattle’s Gilbertson. “Please. You are trained to contain your emotions. That is part of your job—to make rational decisions and judgments while under stress.”

“I think most cops view running from them as a crime, even though intellectually they must know it’s not because they have been told in training, or should have been told,” Gilbertson says. “When someone runs, too many officers seem to really believe that they have a right to chase them down and use whatever force is necessary to subdue them.”

In fact, case law and widely accepted police protocols (based on research by South Carolina’s Alpert dating to the 1980s) strictly limit permissible pursuits, both on foot and in vehicles, to those involving suspects in violent felonies or those who may present imminent risk to the public or police.

This is from a primer on auto pursuits by the International Association of Chiefs of Police:

High speed pursuit driving creates enormous civil liability exposures for police officers and agencies and can result in criminal prosecution of police officers as well. Few areas of police work involve higher stakes. The need to conduct some high speed pursuits is obvious to most. Equally obvious is the need to protect the public (and police officers themselves) from unnecessary risks created by indiscriminate high speed chases.

Gilbertson says most pursuits are “totally unwarranted” and “indicate a lack of good order, discipline and supervision in the field.”

“We’ve known about car-pursuit dangers for decades now, and foot pursuits may be even more dangerous,” he says. “And yet most police pursuits still start with minor infractions or an officer’s suspicions. It’s crazy.”

“None of these cases ever begins with an officer saying, I’m going to go out and kill somebody,” Alpert told me. “But the process is the same. You get ramped up, you get excited, and you get yourself deeply invested emotionally in a pursuit. You think what you’re doing is right, you believe what you’re doing is right, but it turns out not to be right.”

‘Grumpy and Frustrated’

Cops involved in a chase can feel a sense of “righteous indignation,” says Rodger Broome, who spent 17 years in law enforcement in Utah and now teaches at Utah Valley State University in Orem and volunteers as a reserve officer.

“You might be thinking, This person is going to kill me and take me away from family,” Broome says. “So, yes, some of us do tend to take it personally, like, You’re not going to make an orphan out of my kid.”

Certain officers can’t resist acting out with physical retribution.

“Sure, you’re probably a little grumpy and frustrated with the guy when you catch up to him,” says Gilbertson. “An officer will personalize or internalize the fact that they were running from me. Well, it’s not personal. They are running from the law, running from a uniform, for whatever reasons they might have. We might not think it’s a legitimate reason, but that’s not necessarily our business. They have their reasons. That’s their prerogative.”

Whether it was adrenaline, righteous indignation or group-think, police in Cleveland personalized a chase on Nov. 29, 2012. It begin with an unconfirmed report that someone had fired a shot near police headquarters in the city.

Officers “believed” the shot had come from a car driven by Timothy Russell, 43, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A long, perilous police pursuit began, reaching speeds of 110mph. By the time the chase ended 25 minutes later, 62 police cars and 104 of the 277 Cleveland cops on duty that night had joined in.

When Russell finally stopped, 13 officers fired a fusillade of 137 bullets into his car. One officer, Michael Brelo, climbed atop the car’s hood and fired 49 shots. Russell was hit 23 times and his passenger, Malissa Williams, 24 times. Both were killed. No weapon was found in the car, and no evidence linked Russell to the report of the shot.

Brelo, 31, a five-year police veteran and an ex-Marine who had served in Iraq, went on trial for manslaughter this month. He was awaiting a verdict this week. His union president has called him a hero. Meanwhile, Cleveland has agreed to pay the victims’ families $3 million.

The rest of this article is available on alternet.org

This story written by David J. Krajicek for AlterNet