Pennsylvania State Trooper Ryan Luckenbaugh was arrested and charged Friday. He’s accused of brutalizing skateboarder Chris Siennick during an arrest in May of last year on Harrisburg’s Restaurant Row.

We informed Siennick of those charges Friday at his home in Midtown Harrisburg and he had a one-word, skateboarder response.

“Awesome,” Siennick said.

No one answered the phone or the door at Luckenbaugh’s Upper Allen Township home Friday.

But the court paperwork does speak of an act so disturbing other police blew the whistle.

The affidavit says that Siennick was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and sitting on the corner of Second and Locust Streets when Luckenbaugh kicked him in the face, “causing his head and body to recoil backwards.” The actual impact was not caught on video because it occurred below the camera, but responding Harrisburg police officers witnessed the kick. When state police investigators asked them about it, they did not protect their fellow policeman. They said “the kick was neither reasonable nor justified given the circumstances,” according to the affidavit.

“I’ll agree with that completely,” Siennick said. “And I’m glad they spoke out against it.”

Luckenbaugh’s partner that night was Trooper Michael Trotta. He was not charged in the incident, but he was fired by PSP last year for undisclosed reasons. Siennick said Trotta was also abusive during the arrest.

“He was talking a whole bunch of crap to me the entire time it was going on,” he said. “It was really a disempowering experience.”

Luckenbaugh faces three misdemeanors (2 counts official oppression, 1 count simple assault)  and a summary offense (harassment). Siennick wishes there was a felony charge but the Dauphin County DA’s office tells ABC27 News that the evidence didn’t support it. Luckenbaugh is now suspended without pay and if convicted would be removed from the State Police.

“Somebody that’s gonna abuse the power that we give them to protect us, they don’t deserve it,” Siennick said.

Siennick admits to flipping off police after they called him a slur as they cruised past him around 2 a.m. on May 16. The affidavit said Siennick was belligerent and yelled profanity at the officers as they attempted to arrest him. But the troopers claimed that Siennick had thrown an object at their patrol car and had spit at them as the reason for their initial pursuit of him. The affidavit said there is no evidence that either of those things happened.

“I didn’t spit at their car. I didn’t throw anything at the car,” Siennick said. “That’s something they really tried to stick in with my initial arrest record. It didn’t make any sense then and it doesn’t make any sense now.”

Siennick hopes to make dollars and cents for his trouble. He’s pursuing a federal civil lawsuit and says the criminal charges will aid his case. After being hit with a Taser, pepper spray and a boot, Siennick faced numerous charges and spent three weeks in Dauphin County prison. When the DA’s office saw video of the incident, it immediately released Siennick, dropped all charges and recommended that State Police investigate the troopers involved.

Martina White and Dom Costa are the sponsors of the bill

The Pennsylvania House approved a bill Tuesday that would prevent officials from identifying police officers while they are being investigated for firing their weapons or using force.

Lawmakers voted 162-38 for a proposal that also mandates release of the officer’s name if he or she is charged with a crime. If the investigation does not produce charges, the names can be released if doing so would not be expected to create a risk of harm to them or their families.

“This is not about protecting our police officers from bad publicity, it’s about protecting their lives and their family,” said the sponsor, Rep. Martina White, R-Philadelphia. “In today’s atmosphere and instant communication methods, we need to abundantly be cautious so as not to jeopardize our law enforcement.”

Opponents said the bill did not directly address a number of issues, including what would happen when someone violates the ban, and warned its secrecy could foster distrust between police and the people they serve.

“To mandate a veil of secrecy when an officer discharges a firearm or uses force? No, that would be a step in the wrong direction that would further damage the relationship between the general public and law enforcement,” said Rep. Russ Diamond, R-Lebanon. He also argued that withholding names would expose all officers on a force to public suspicion and that the bill would remove discretion currently enjoyed on a department-by-department basis.

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Montgomery, said she failed in efforts to amend the bill to add a 60-day period after which the officers could be named.

She said the “risk of harm” wasn’t defined and wondered if it could apply to reputational or economic risks.

Rep. Dom Costa, D-Allegheny, said that within hours of his participation in a shootout as a Pittsburgh police officer, his life and family were threatened.

“We’re making way too much of this,” he said. “Does anyone in here have a bullet in the base of their brain? I do, from the line of duty.”

Police officers have “the power of life and death” and so should be subject to a high level of scrutiny, said Rep. Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia.

The bill was sent to the state Senate for its consideration.

Reason Magazine did a great write-up on this horrifying story.

A man with autism is being held on $100,000 bail for talking to some children.

The man, Daniel Lee, 26, of Wayne, Pennsylvania, spoke to a group of three siblings—ages 8, 9, and 10—last week, asking them about their school and telling them he was on his way to a cabin in the woods. It’s unclear if he told the kids he wanted them to join him or not. (News accounts differ: See this and this.)

He walked off then found and talked to the kids again 20 minutes later near Wayne Elementary School, whereupon the children’s mom saw him and called the police. The police found the man in just two minutes.

Why so fast? My guess is because he was not a crafty creep trying to elude the authorities. He is a man with a disability that makes it hard for him to interact like a “normal” man around kids, which apparently means never interacting with them at all and instead running in the opposite direction screaming, “Get away! I hate kids! I am not a predator!”

Now, WPVI reports (see video below),  Lee is in jail, “charged with Attempting to Lure Children into a structure, which is in reference to his statements about a cabin, corruption of the morals of a minor, and harassment.”

Corruption of morals? Really? How, exactly? He doesn’t seem to have said anything salacious. And police say that at no time did Lee make any physical contact or even attempt to make physical contact with the children. Yet here’s how the news anchor played up the story:

The big story on Action News tonight is word of an attempted luring at a Radnor Township school and police have a suspect in custody.

My God, they make it sound as if the kids just barely escaped a depraved menace. As Lee’s mom explained to the reporter—and police—Daniel has autism, and sometimes likes to talk to kids.

But, WPVI reports, “The police say…they can’t take any chances.” After all, here’s a grown man, living at home, with a part time job at a movie theater. Why cut him any slack?

A psychiatric evaluation will be performed on Daniel, and if it’s determined that his parents are not making up their son’s diagnosis, perhaps the charges will be dropped.

But shouldn’t the charges be dropped for anyone facing such an accusation? Is it really a crime to talk to kids about a cabin in the woods if you never touch or attempt to touch or grab them? Wouldn’t that make it a crime to read “Little Red Riding Hood” to a kid who isn’t your own?

Daniel’s mom said that she will teach Daniel that what he did was wrong. Who will teach the police that it’s wrong to throw a man in jail when he clearly has special needs and hasn’t done anything more than talk to some neighborhood kids?

Jonathan Derpenda shaking hands with the mayor of Williamsport, Gabriel Campana, shortly after being hired

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — A former Williamsport police officer who killed a man by crashing his cruiser into the side of another vehicle in 2014 will receive no jail time.

Former Officer Jonathan Deprenda, 34, entered a guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter on Thursday, and was given a sentence of only five years probation and an order to pay his victim’s funeral expenses.

Deprenda fatally crashed his cruiser into the car of James Robinson while he was travelling at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour in the oncoming traffic lane of a 35 mile per hour zone, according to a report by WNEP. The collision caused Robinson’s vehicle to crash into a house and catch fire.

According to a report from PennLive, the Williamsburg police immediately placed Deprenda on paid administrative leave and waited approximately 10 months to terminate his employment. Deprenda could file an appeal to overturn the decision.

Robinson’s family told local reports at the sentencing that they have chosen to forgive Deprenda.

“I raised my kids to forgive those who do things against you, and it’s something James would have did. So I had to forgive him,” said Robinson’s mother Nancy. “I forgive him because the love of God I have showed me the errors and let it go.”

A Roscoe woman who was falsely detained last year by Donora police on a warrant seeking the arrest of a man is suing the Borough of Donora, the local police chief and the officer who brought her to the station that day.

In the five-count lawsuit filed Friday in Washington County Court, attorney Dennis Popojas alleges that Donora police officer Robert Dorcon and Chief James Brice violated Kerri Hoover’s civil rights to due process by bringing her in on the warrant Feb. 20, 2014.

Brice was named in the lawsuit because his position carries a responsibility to train officers in the execution of arrest warrants, Popojas said.

Dorcon stopped her car at 9:15 a.m. and informed her that he had a warrant for her arrest.

The bench warrant signed in December 2013 by District Judge Mark Wilson sought Kerry Hoover of Coal Center, the plaintiff’s cousin, for failure to appear in court on a traffic violation, and it described the suspect as a 39-year-old man who is 6 feet tall and weighed 250 pounds, the record states.

“There are wild disparities between the description laid out in the warrant and the person, my client, who was picked up that day,” Popojas said.

Kerri Hoover, 27, insisted to Dorcon she didn’t have an arrest record and was told by Brice he “knew how to read a warrant,” the lawsuit alleges.

It further claimed Brice didn’t verify her identity or review Dorcon’s actions that day.

She eventually was released 2 1/2 hours later to her father.

“Chief Brice knew or should have known that the plaintiff’s arrest was clearly erroneous as he failed to match the fugitive’s description in any appreciable way except for the last name,” Popojas said in the lawsuit.

Popojas notified Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane in August of his client’s intention to sue over the error. Pennsylvania law requires a notice be filed with the attorney general when someone plans to sue over such incidents.

Donora Police Department was also notified of Kerri Hoover’s decision to sue and has since tried to intimidate her and “persuade the plaintiff from taking action,” the lawsuit stated.

The lawsuit also alleges the arrest intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Kerri Hoover and borough police officers need to be trained on how to execute arrest warrants.

Donora’s solicitor, Justin Walsh, could not be reached Friday.

Written by Francesco Sacco and Scott Beveridge, staff writers for the Observer-Reporter

From top left to right, Philadelphia Police officers Thomas Liciardello, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman; from bottom left to right, officers Brian Reynolds, John Speiser and Michael Spicer

PHILADELPHIA — A report from The Philadelphia Inquirer claims six police officers who were acquitted after being accused of corruption have now been reinstated to the police force.

According to the report:

Mark McDonald, the mayor’s press secretary, said the former narcotics officers – Michael Spicer, Thomas Liciardello, Brian Reynolds, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman, and John Speiser – will get $90,000 in back pay and have their original badges returned.

McDonald said five of the officers would be assigned to districts and would not return to the Narcotics Field Unit. Norman will be assigned to the impound lot.

James J. Binns, who represented Spicer in the federal case, initially said his client and another officer, who was not charged, would receive promotions under the arbitrator’s ruling. Binns said later Friday that he was wrong and that promotions were not part of the arrangement.

When Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey fired the six officers, he called the case “one of the worst cases of corruption I have ever heard.” He told reporters that the officers’ badges would be destroyed.

Spicer’s trial in particular sparked public outrage, as Spicer was accused repeatedly over the years of intimidation and misconduct. In 2008, Spicer was suspected of stealing drug money and planting evidence, and in 2010, Spicer was accused of throwing a suspect from the third story of an apartment building. He was acquitted of all charges.

The report goes on to explain some of the far-reaching consequences of the accusations the officers faced:

Prosecutors alleged the men routinely beat and robbed drug suspects. The allegations prompted dozens of civil rights lawsuits, causing the reversal of nearly 450 drug convictions.

Philadelphia’s decision to reinstate the officers comes amid more accusations and an internal investigation into police misconduct and use of excessive force. TruthVoice reported Friday about an internal investigation prompted by a video of an April incident that shows nearly two dozen police officers repeatedly hitting and applying electric shocks to Tyree Carroll, who was restrained and unarmed. The report and video have since garnered national attention. (Video available below:)

In addition to the legal troubles it has faced recently, the Philadelphia Police Department has been widely criticized throughout the year following findings that its officers have shot someone roughly once a week for the past eight years. Over 390 people were shot, many of whom were reportedly unarmed.

Neill Franklin

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Retired Maj. Neill Franklin oversaw more than a dozen drug task forces that used civil asset forfeiture laws to seize millions in property.

But by the late 1990s, even Franklin, who worked for the Maryland State Police, began to think something was wrong with the system.

Franklin was reviewing paperwork from a case on the Eastern Shore. Police had seized a man’s car, and it was suspected the car was used in drug deals. But the owner was never charged with a crime.

The man wanted the car back so he could get to work, and police agreed to return it — as long he paid storage and administrative fees of a couple hundred dollars, says Franklin. It cost nothing to park the car on a police lot.

“Basically, we held this guy’s car for ransom and then made money off of giving it back,” said Franklin, who is now fighting for national civil asset reform as executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which opposes the War on Drugs.

Franklin visited the Pennsylvania state Capitol on Wednesday ― about 20 years after he first saw the problems with civil asset forfeiture ― and joined a diverse coalition calling on lawmakers here to reform the system.

While law enforcement officials argue civil asset forfeiture is a vital tool to strip drug dealers and other lawbreakers of the resources they use to commit crimes, the practice has come under increasing scrutiny across the country. Critics argue it’s an affront to the constitutional right to due process and that it’s used to pad law enforcement budgets.

Pennsylvania law allows police to seize cash, cars and even homes if they believe they’re connected to a crime. Prosecutors can file for the property’s forfeiture and obtain — even if the owner has never been charged or convicted of a crime.

Law agencies keep the proceeds, giving them a financial interest in using the law. In one case, a prosecutor in Pennsylvania doled out staff bonuses with the proceeds.

A Missouri police chief also once referred to forfeiture money as “pennies from heaven” that can be used to buy “a toy or something that you need.” Watchdog.org last month reported the Mississippi city of Richland funded its $4.1 million police station with forfeiture money.

The practice is problematic in Pennsylvania, too, said the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. It released a report this week that found the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office takes and keeps some 100 homes, 150 vehicles and about $4 million in cash each year.

Looking at cases from 2011 to 2013, the ACLU found almost a third of the instances of cash forfeiture involved money owned by people not convicted of a crime. More than half the time fewer than $200 in cash was at stake, meaning it made little sense for owners to hire an attorney or take off work to go to court to get it back.

Because civil asset forfeiture petitions are civil cases filed against the property itself, owners aren’t guaranteed an attorney, as they are in criminal cases. Molly Tack-Hooper, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, called it a “fundamentally broken system,” though reform could be on the way.

State Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, has proposed legislation that would require a conviction before property could be forfeited. It would require that proceeds of forfeiture go into a general government fund, versus funding budgets for police and prosecutors. A companion bill is expected in the state House.

Police could still seize property suspected of being used in a crime under Folmer’s law, ACLU lobbyist Andy Hoover said, but they would need a conviction to keep it.

Still, law enforcement agencies have vehemently argued against the reform, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office responded tersely to the ACLU report in a statement.

“The district attorney’s office continues to improve and streamline its forfeiture program, especially when it comes to adding additional protections for property owners,” the statement read. “But, unlike the ACLU, we are not willing to ignore the true innocent parties here – the underprivileged residents of drug-plagued neighborhoods. They deserve the equal protection of the law and they are entitled to expect the justice system to shut down drug houses and take guns and cash out of the hands of criminals.”

Louis Rulli, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who supervises a legal clinic that has helped low-income people facing forfeiture proceedings, said the justice system sometimes takes more innocuous things — a child’s piggy bank, for instance.

Law officers took the bank while searching the home of a woman never charged with a crime, Rulli said. It took more than a year for attorneys to reclaim the piggy bank and the $91 inside, Rulli said.

“That’s why most people give up. That’s why this law needs to be reformed,” he said.

Another Pennsylvania horror story — the case of an older Philadelphia couple facing the loss of their home after their grown son was accused of selling marijuana from the porch — was included in an August story in The New Yorker.

Titled “Taken,” the article led to reform – just not in Pennsylvania. A Montana lawmaker, Democratic state Rep. Kelly McCarthy, read the article and introduced a bill requiring a conviction before property could be forfeited — police there once kept $16,000 seized from an out-of-state farmer who came to buy tractor parts.

Law enforcement howled over McCarthy’s bill, even though the legislation still allowed police to seize property suspected of being used in a crime. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed the bill anyway, and it will become law later this year.

“I’ve probably bought myself a lifetime of busted tail lights,” McCarthy said.

The Montana lawmaker looks at Pennsylvania and wonders whether the founding fathers who once called the Keystone State home envisioned a thing such as civil asset forfeiture.

“You think they sat around and thought, ‘Hey, one day these guys will be taking a toaster to court?” he said.

McCarthy hopes U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, is successful in his ongoing quest to change the law, a push that also closes a loophole allowing states to use federal law to pursue forfeiture.

The federal government has already installed some limitations on civil forfeiture; New Mexico has joined Montana in reforming the practice.

Those actions have heartened Franklin, the former narcotics investigator who continued to use civil asset forfeiture even while questioning the case of the car held ransom. The practice designed to hamstring drug kingpins during the days of Ronald Reagan isn’t so virtuous, he said.

“This practice has now morphed into something evil, something more devastating to the average citizen,” Franklin said, calling for a conviction requirement. “That’s justice, that is our responsibility and that is in line with our Bill of Rights.”

Story by Andrew Staub for the PA Independent

Philadelphia police officers shot at 394 suspects between 2007 and 2013–a rate of one shooting per week–according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) shoots more of its residents than Chicago, Los Angeles and even New York, a city five times its size.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who was appointed to chair President Barack Obama’s “Task Force on 21st Century Policing,” requested the Justice Department investigation in 2013, at a time when fatal shootings by police multiplied even as violent crimes diminished.

Among its 48 findings and 91 recommendations, the report concluded that: Training of PPD officers is insufficient and contradictory; most officers involved in shootings aren’t interviewed until three or more months after the incident; and communities don’t trust the police. “Incidents involving discourtesy, use of force and allegations of bias by PPD officers leave segments of the community feeling disenfranchised and distrustful of the police department,” the report’s authors observe, corroborating the lived experience of too many Philadelphians.

The 394 officer-involved shootings between 2007 and 2013 killed 88 people and injured 180. Fifty-nine of the victims were unarmed. Police shot unarmed victims for two main reasons, according to the report: “threat perception failures” and physical altercations. Police were more likely to shoot unarmed Black victims after misidentifying a non-threatening object and were more likely to shoot unarmed white victims during a fight.

Of the 540 officers who shot at suspects in the seven-year period, only five lost their jobs. Twenty-one received some sort of “official reprimand,” and 18 were suspended for a day or more.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IN A city where Blacks and whites each make up approximately 45 percent of the population, 59 percent of officers who fired their weapons were white and 80 percent of shooting victims were Black. The Justice Department investigators concluded in their report that the data show no racial bias or disproportionality in Philadelphia policing. “Significance testing indicates that most differences across suspects’ racial groups are not statistically significant,” the report claimed.

The report takes “a closer look at race,” but only as it pertains to a small subset of shootings: Cases where victims were unarmed, and “threat perception failure” (TPF) was cited as the reason for shooting.

In these cases, which represent just 29 out of the 394 shootings, Black and Hispanic officers had a higher TPF rate than white officers. But of the total number of shootings, the disproportionality is obvious: Most of the officers shooting are white, and most of those shot at are Black. By focusing on just 29 of the 394 shootings, the real trends are obscured in order to elevate a less troubling narrative.

What’s more, focusing on the race of the officers assumes that racism could only be a factor in cross-race encounters. This assumption reduces racism to a sentiment between individuals, rather than a systemic phenomenon of disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people who stopped, arrested and extrajudicially executed, regardless of the race of the officers involved.

Black cops are subject to the same training, culture and systemic pressures as their white counterparts. And beyond the front line of beat cops and detectives, a multiracial coterie of public officials–including Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, Mayor Michael Nutter and Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, and on up to the U.S. Attorney General and president of the U.S.–oversees a criminal “justice” system where brutality and racism run rampant.

Asked about the fact that 80 percent of people shot by cops are Black, Commissioner Ramsey told the press conference: “Well, about 85 percent of our homicide victims are African American. About 85 percent of people who do the homicide are African American. So that’s right in the ballpark. Listen, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m Black myself, so I’m not real proud of the fact that we have a disproportionate amount of crime occurring in African American communities.”

Translation: Blacks are shot at more because they commit most of the crimes–oh, and by the way, I’m Black, so this statement can’t be racist. Ramsey essentially plays “the race card,” but in reverse.

The truth is that we don’t know who commits more crime because cops over-police Black and Latino neighborhoods, while letting violations of the law slide in communities where whites are the majority. An ACLU investigation conducted in Philadelphia this year discovered that 80 percent of all police stops and 89 percent of frisks, or searches, are of minorities. In 95 percent of searches, no contraband was discovered.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE FEDERAL government has offered up several reports in recent months, each partially validating the conclusion reached by people around the country that too many Black lives are callously discarded at the whim of the police. The Justice Department investigation of Ferguson, the interim report of the presidential task force and now the Feds’ report on Philadelphia all center on the theme of “repairing community trust.” But is there any trust to repair?

Philadelphia police have a long record of corruption and abuse. More than 40 years ago, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission completed the Report on Police Corruption and the Quality of Law Enforcement in Philadelphia, which concluded that, “police corruption in Philadelphia is ongoing, widespread, systematic, and occurring at all levels of the police department.”

In 1979, the federal government filed a lawsuit against the Philadelphia mayor, top city administrators and 15 high-ranking police officials, alleging that a “pervasive pattern of police abuse in Philadelphia” effectively denies basic constitutional rights to Philadelphia residents, and has a disproportionately severe impact on Blacks and Latinos.

In 1985, police dropped explosives onto a home occupied by members of the MOVE organization, leaving 11 dead and 250 homeless when the resulting fire was left to burn, destroying an entire city block.

Just since 2008, the city has paid out over $40 million in settlements to plaintiffs in more than 600 police misconduct lawsuits during Ramsey’s tenure as Mayor Nutter’s police chief. There are no glory days of harmonious race relations between police and the policed to hearken back to. As Angela Davis explained in a Guardian interview, there has been one continuous line of racist police violence from slavery to the present day.

The movement that have erupted in response to the racist murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and others have signaled to the federal government that the police lack legitimacy among broad sections of the population, not just on the revolutionary fringe. These reports are a sign that the government wants to fix this growing ideological problem by sending the message: “We’re on it. Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

After the Justice Department came out, Mayor Nutter immediately promised to adopt the federal recommendations, and he has since appointed a civilian oversight board to implement them. But the question remains whether these reforms will have any meaningful effect–or if they are merely window-dressing to cover up a a system that is rotten to the core and needs to be dismantled.

Originally published on SocialistWorker.org (the original site was specified as socialistworker.com and later the error was rectified)