All 14,000 Members of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 have joined officers in New York and Los Angeles in calling for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films.

“Tarantino has shown through his actions that he is anti-police,” the group’s president, John McNesby,said in a statement. “Mr. Tarantino has made a good living through his films, projecting into society at large violence and respect for criminals; he it turns out also hates cops.”

The statement comes after Tarantino participated in an anti-police brutality rally in New York City last weekend. “When I see murders, I do not stand by, I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers,” Tarantino told a crowd of protesters on Sunday. The event was organized by a group called #RiseUpOctober, which cites the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Grey, and Eric Garner as lives “stolen by police” on its website.

“The powers-that-be continue to unleash their cops to kill and brutalize and the courts continue to exonerate these killers,” reads the site. “No more!”

After Tarantino spoke during the march, which occurred four days after New York City Police Department officer Randolph Holder was murdered, Police Benevolent Association president Patrick J. Lynch slammed the Oscar-winning director as a “cop-hater.”

“The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls ‘murderers’ aren’t living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies – they’re risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem,” Lynch said in a statement. “New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous Cop Fiction. It’s time for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films.”

“We fully support constructive dialogue about how police interact with citizens. But there is no place for inflammatory rhetoric that makes police officers even bigger targets than we already are,” added Los Angeles Police Protective League president Craig Lally in his own statement on Tuesday. “Film director Quentin Tarantino took irresponsibility to a new and completely unacceptable level this past weekend by referring to police as murderers during an anti-police march in New York.”

Tarantino has not responded to the calls for boycott, but #RiseUpOctober posted 18 defenses of the director on its site from people such as Dr. Cornel West, actor Peter Coyote, and the National Coalition Against Censorship, as well as family members of men and women affected by police brutality.

Tarantino’s next film, The Hateful Eight, arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

Two police chiefs from major metropolitan cities are lamenting the way journalists report on race relations and law enforcement.

“I think one of the great myths is that there is some kind of breakdown between the people at the grassroots and their police,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

“It’s a false construct,” Flynn said.  “It’s a canard.  The reality is that our officers are out there day after day protecting our communities.”

“There are thousands of police actions that go well everyday you never hear about because they went well,” added Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

“Nobody talks about that sort of thing,” Ramsey said.  “That’s why police are here to begin with.  It really does distort the view of what is going on in policing.”

Flynn and Ramsey’s remarks come amid a summer of increased violence against police officers.

“Fox News Sunday” reported that 24 police officers have died nationwide in attacks against law enforcement since 2015 started.

Ramsey argued on Sunday that the media is focusing more on race relations rather than the actual causes of criminal activity.

That narrative, he charged, is complicating the issue of violence for police departments and the communities they serve.

“There are lot of issues behind crime in our neighborhoods,” he said.  “If you’d don’t address the drivers of crime, this is not going to result in anything at all that’s positive.”

Ramsey additionally called on members of the Black Lives Matter movement to exercise restraint when questioning the real issue of police abuse.

“We do have officers that engage in misconduct,” he said.  “[But] if all you want to do during a meeting is scream and shout, you’re not going to get very far.  It certainly doesn’t help.”

“We’re not sure we’ve just got a spike or a real change phenomenon,” Flynn added of this summer’s rise in violent crime.

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.

UPDATE @ 6/27/2015 4:01 AM: New surveillance video released by SEPTA police shows a police officer grabbing a man by the throat and choking him while he holds an infant. Video available below:

PHILADELPHIA — A video was posted to social media websites today that appears to show Philadelphia police officers harassing a man for not paying the train fare for his infant daughter.

In the video, police approach a man who is sitting on the bus holding his daughter. The officers can be seen leading the man off the bus and away from a crowd of progressively more vocal onlookers.

Officers press the man up against a wall while he is still holding his baby, twisting his arm behind his back. A person off camera says, “He’s still got his daughter in his hands!” shortly before half a dozen police crowd the man, obscuring the vision of the camera.

The same voice says, “Yo, let him drop his daughter!” as the young girl can be heard crying. An officer wielding a club ushers the person recording the scene away, and another officer starts pushing them, barking “That way.”

The person who uploaded the video, purportedly the mother of the 16-year-old who recorded it, wrote an accompanying message in a Facebook post:

So, this is the bullshit my son witnessed yesterday coming home from work. Dude’s crime? Paying $2.25 for the El, but carrying his daughter on his shoulders and not paying for her. Look at how small she is, and how he is treated by Septa & Philadelphia police, over $2.25!!! I thought Septa had a policy of allowing fareless riders the courtesy? I wish they would put hands on me while holding my kids!!! This police ‘entitlement’ mentality, which often leads to brutality, has got to stop!

TruthVoice attempted to contact the Philadelphia Police department, but they could not be reached for comment on the issue. A report from Philadelphia Magazine says that Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Stanford told them officers “were called in to assist with crowd control and that all of the police involved with the man directly were SEPTA police.” Stanford told the magazine he is unaware of any charges being filed against the man.

A video of the encounter is available below:

A Warminster police cruiser parked outside the apartment where Marie Zienkewicz, 89, was accidentally shot and killed by police

WARMINSTER, Pa. — A family is set to receive $650,000 after successfully suing Warminster police for fatally shooting an 89-year-old woman.

Marie Zienkewicz was shot and killed in February 2013 while Warminster police attempted to apprehend an intoxicated man, Andrew Cairns, who was in an apartment above Zienkewicz.

The Philadelphia suburb will cover the expenses of the lawsuit, and is also slated to provide its police officers with more training, and to donate books in Zienkewicz’s memory to the local library.

Police say Cairns had earlier fired his gun during a dispute with his girlfriend, and had barricaded himself in his apartment for several hours before being taken into custody.

Cairns’s girlfriend, Deborah Silva, had gone to Zienkewicz’s apartment to escape. As Zienkewicz opened her door and reached out to allow Silva inside, police say an officer mistook her for Cairns and fired at her through a door, killing her.

Cairns was held responsible for the death and is now serving 14 to 30 years in a state prison. The police officer who shot and killed Zienkewicz was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.

An officer standing over the body of Brandon Tate-Brown, shot dead by police at a traffic stop on December 15, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia prosecutor has refused to reopen an investigation into the death of an unarmed man shot by police officers after the police department recanted their original story that the man attempted to reach for a gun.

District Attorney Seth Williams declined to prosecute officers for the slaying of Brandon Tate-Brown, an unarmed man who police originally said reached into his car to grab a loaded handgun. The police department has since changed their version of events, admitting their original account was false.

The original story given by police was that Tate-Brown reached into his rental car to grab a loaded handgun, but it has since come out that Tate-Brown was in fact behind the car when Officer Nicholas Carrelli shot him. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey excused the inconsistency by saying his office was pressured to quickly provide a statement without necessarily getting the facts straight.

Williams reportedly waited six months after receiving the false report to make his decision not to prosecute, but has not commented on the fact that police initially provided false statements to the prosecution. Williams insisted his office thoroughly investigated the events, but determined what happened was “tragic, but not criminal.”

“Tate-Brown had a gun in the car with his DNA on it, tried to get it on more than one occasion, and was shot because he put two Philadelphia police officers and everyone else who was at the scene that evening in danger,” said Williams, without addressing the inconsistent story given by police.

Tate-Brown’s mother, Tanya Brown-Dickerson, says her son was fleeing police after they began beating him during a traffic stop, after which point he was shot in the back. Surveillance footage and witness statements, released after months of delays, corroborate Tanya Brown-Dickerson’s version of events, but have not been acknowledged by the prosecutor.

The police officers who killed Tate-Brown and reported the false story, Heng Dang and Nicholas Carrelli, have been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, and are still employed by the Philadelphia Police Department.

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

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)

If you want access to encrypted data on a drug dealer’s digital device, you might try to break the crypto—or you might just try to break the man.

According to testimony from a police corruption trial currently roiling the city of Philadelphia, officers from an undercover drug squad took the latter route back in November 2007. After arresting their suspect, Michael Cascioli, in the hallway outside his 18th floor apartment, the officers took Cascioli back inside. Although they lacked a search warrant, the cops searched Cascioli’s rooms anyway. According to a federal indictment (PDF), the officers “repeatedly assaulted and threatened [Cascioli] during the search to obtain information about the location of money, drugs, and drug suppliers.”

Cascioli kept $800 of cash in his nightstand, which he told the cops about. The officers allegedly “took money from [Cascioli’s] nightstand and used it to purchase pizza” for themselves.

Cascioli, who gave an interview last October to the Philadelphia Daily News, said the cops wanted much more cash. (The trial has largely focused on allegations that members of the squad shook down drug suspects for money and valuables.) “I’m going to f—ing break your face if you don’t tell us where the f— money is,” Cascioli recalled one officer saying. Another allegedly urinated on some of his possessions. The government claims that the officers also roughed up Cascioli, punching him in the stomach.

After a few hours of this, which involved an attempt to lure one of Cascioli’s suppliers to his building, the officers focused on Cascioli’s Palm Pilot, which they (correctly) believed contained the information they wanted. But Cascioli wouldn’t provide the password. He claims that police then tried to extract the password through intimidation.

Cascioli says [Officer Thomas] Liciardello asked him a question: “Have you ever seen Training Day?”

When Cascioli said yes, Cascioli says Liciardello looked him in the eyes and said: “This is Training Day for f—ing real,” and then instructed officers Norman and Jeffrey Walker to take him to the balcony.

According to Cascioli and the indictment, Liciardello told them to “do whatever they had to do to get the password.”

Out on the balcony, Cascioli says officers Norman and Walker lifted him up by each arm and leaned him over the balcony railing.

In his testimony at trial this month, Cascioli provided more details, under oath, about what happened that night. The Palm Pilot, he said, contained records on his $400,000 stash, which he had split for safekeeping between the home of his brother and the home of a friend. When the cops allegedly took him out to the balcony, Cascioli said he truly feared for his life.

“They started to lift me a little,” he said. “My feet were off the ground.”

He said he was afraid. “I thought they were going to drop me” over the railing. Cascioli said he then gave up his password.

Officer Thomas Liciardello, accused of being the ringleader of a corrupt undercover unit.

Given that Cascioli was in fact a significant drug dealer, his testimony might sound dubious. (Indeed, the head of Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police last year told a local paper that Cascioli’s account “sounds ludicrous. This isn’t a Lethal Weapon movie.”)

But last week, one of the cops who had done the threatening took the witness stand to corroborate Cascioli’s account. Jeffrey Walker, who was arrested in an FBI corruption sting back in 2013, admitted that he and another officer had in fact leaned Cascioli over his balcony to elicit the password.

According to the indictment, the night only ended when officers “stole personal items belonging to M.C. valued at approximately $8,000” before leaving for good.

The whole crazy case is a reminder that strong passwords are excellent tools for protecting your information from distant Internet predators. But when the predators have you alone in a room, the real question isn’t about the strength of your password but about how much pain and fear you’re willing to endure before giving it up.

BRIDGETON, N.J. — What started as a peaceful protest against police brutality and unaccountability outside the Cumberland County Courthouse in New Jersey ended in the arrest of two people, following a suspected provocation by police. On Saturday, Feb. 28, police armed with AR-style rifles arrived at the protest and ordered the demonstrators, who gathered on public grounds, to disperse.

Protestors gather outside the Cumberland County Courthouse in Bridgeton, N.J.

The protest was organized by the National Awareness Alliance, a civil rights group based in Salem County, N.J. The stated intent for the demonstration was to unite families in the surrounding area to demand justice for loved ones injured or killed by police. The demonstration started at the intersection where Bridgeton police officer Braheme Days shot and killed Jerame Reid, 37, of Bridgeton, on Dec. 30, 2014. It was the fifth demonstration demanding justice since Reid’s death.

The half-mile march of approximately 200 protesters was led by Reid’s mother, Sheila Reid. Also among the protesters were Tanya Brown Dickerson, whose son Brandon Tate-Brown, 26, was killed by police in Philadelphia on Dec. 15, Regina Ashford, the mother of Kashad Ashford, 23, killed by police in Rutherford, N.J., on Sep. 16, and Ikea Coney and her 17-year-old son Darrin Manning, who were victims of a vicious attack by police in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Moments before the police attacked the crowd of demonstrators, a Jeep driven by a New Jersey state police officer barked commands that that the crowd leave the area. When the protesters refused to disperse, an SUV came from behind the Jeep and drove straight into the crowd, striking a man. The man responded by kicking the tire of the SUV, which immediately prompted dozens of police vehicles to descend upon the demonstration. Police arrested the man who was struck by the SUV and made no attempt to apprehend the driver involved in the vehicular assault.

Protest organizers were quick to denounce the attack as a provocation by police designed to silence Sheila Reid, who was preparing to speak when the assault occurred. The attack came minutes after Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly addressed the protesters. Demonstrators reported that they had spotted police equipped with paramilitary gear on the roof nearby restaurant, taking photographs of the rally.

Police in New Jersey have a history of attempting to silence recent protests. In February, Bridgeton police officers broke up a demonstration and violated the rights of four protesters by issuing citations for violating a city ordinance requiring people to walk only on sidewalks.

A Recent History of Deadly Police Stops in Philadelphia and New Jersey

Officer Braheme Days moments before murdering Jerame Reid

On Dec. 30, 2014, Jerame Reid was the passenger in a car which was pulled over by police for allegedly failing to completely stop at a stop sign. The murder was recorded by a dashboard camera of a police vehicle, and showed Reid was unarmed and had his hands in the air when Bridgeton police officer Braheme Days shot and killed him. In response to the murder of the unarmed man, Officer Days has been placed on paid administrative leave while the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office allegedly investigates the murder. Since Days shot and killed Reid, he has also been accused in a $25 million lawsuit of coercing a New Jersey woman into having sex with him in order to avoid a shoplifting charge. The alleged rape happened days before Officer Braheme Days murdered Reid. Officer Days has yet to be charged with a crime.

15 days prior to Reid’s murder, on Dec. 15, 2014, Philadelphia police shot and killed Brandon Tate-Brown after detaining him for allegedly driving with his headlights off. Tanya Brown Dickerson, Tate-Brown’s mother, spoke at the recently attacked protest and noted that many fatal encounters with the police start with “routine” traffic stops. Tate-Brown also noted that the lights of her son’s car appeared to be on when the police killed him, standing contrary to the police’s claims.

Police alleged that Tate-Brown was attempting to reach a stolen gun they claim was visible on the passenger’s side console of the car. Video of the killing captured by a police patrol car shows minutes of Tate-Brown struggling and being assaulted prior to fleeing the vehicle altogether, at which time he was shot in the back of the head. The officers who killed Tate-Brown have yet to be identified or charged with a crime for the incident.

Kashad Ashford was shot and killed by police while a witness claims he was unconscious on Sep. 16, 2014 in Rutherford, N.J. Ashford was driving a stolen SUV when Rutherford police attempted to pull him over, and gave chase when Ashford failed to do so. Ashford crashed the SUV into a guardrail, which the passenger says left Ashford unconscious. Officers dispute this claim with their own, in which they say Ashford backed the SUV into police cruisers at a high speed with only several feet to do so, while the officers were still in their vehicles, causing them to fear for their lives and shoot him in self-defense. The police story was also contradicted by a resident at the scene who said the cars had stopped moving prior to officers firing their weapons. The officers responsible for killing Ashford have yet to be identified.