Police officers in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, are lawyering up after the city council voted to rescind medals of valor handed out to the SWAT team in 2013.

What did the SWAT team do to earn those valorous medals? They stormed into the home of 107-year old Monroe Isadore, shot him to death—and then successfully dodged a state investigation of the incident.

Nearly three years after the incident, the city council voted unanimously this month to revoke the medals. As of Monday, however, the police force has yet to return the medals and is seeking legal counsel to challenge the city’s decision, according to local TV station KATV.

“I don’t understand the rationale, I don’t understand why anyone would want a medal, who can you show it to? Oh, I have a medal of valor, well were you in the war? No, I killed a 107-year-old man…you know…who would want that?”Councilwoman Thelma Walker told KATV, the local ABC affiliate.

Walker sponsored the resolution, which said conferring medals and awards “in the aftermath of such a sensitive and emotionally charged event is unconscionable and reprehensible and should not be sanctioned by the City of Pine Bluff.”

Awarding those medals seems to have been done in secret. Isadore’s children were unaware the medals even existed until the city council voted to rescind them, and the city won’t say how many were actually given or who made the decision to award them, according to KATV.

Asked about the city’s decision to revoke the medals, Pine Bluff Police Chief Jeff Hubanks told the Pine Bluff Commercialthe department was “going to talk to an attorney” and declined further comment.

It’s unclear whether the city has the legal authority to strip the medals. City Attorney Althea Hadden-Scott told theCommercial that the council resolution is not binding and lacks enforcement authority.

Isadore was killed on September 8, 2013. Police responded to a call and found him in his bedroom with a gun—his family later said he was upset about being moved to an assisted living community.

After safely evacuating two other people from the house, the cops used negotiation tactics and smoke bombs in an unsuccessful attempt to get Isadore to surrender.

When that failed, they called in the county SWAT team. When SWAT officers broke down the door to Isadore’s bedroom, he fired at them and they returned fire, killing him.

Although the shooting might have been justified since Isadore reportedly fired at the cops first, it appears that police escalated the situation to a point where a violent ending was nearly unavoidable. It was not a hostage situation and Isadore was not a threat to anyone but himself, at least until officers forced their way into his room. Was sending in a SWAT team to use deadly force against a 107-year old man really the best option available?

It’s doubtful that any answers will be forthcoming. Nearly three years later, even with awareness of police violence at higher levels, it’s unlikely that there will ever be a full investigation of the circumstances that led to Isadore Monroe’s death.

The officer who killed Isadore was placed on paid leave, and his or her name was never released to the public. The state police declined an invitation to investigate the incident and subsequent attempts by Isadore’s family to have the shooting investigated went nowhere.

(Lawyers’ fees for the cops are being covered by the local Fraternal Order of Police, so the police are not costing taxpayers anything by refusing to comply with an order issued by the local government that, theoretically, controls them.)

But even if accountability is out of reach, is it too much to ask that police officers not be feted like they returned home from a war zone after gunning down a confused centenarian?

Isadore’s daughter, Paula Aguilar, told KATV that she doesn’t think the honors were deserved. “I looked up `valor,’ and I’m like, `No, that doesn’t fit to what they did to my dad.”

Published by Reason.com

“Black people have been killed by the police at a tragically disproportionate rate, beyond the bounds of anything that would justify it.”

That sounds like a quote from a contemporary Black Lives Matter activist. But those words were written back in 1974 by American criminologist Paul Takagi. Takagi, an expert in police use of force and community policing, proposed an idea that still seems radical more than 40 years later. “Perhaps,” he said, “the only immediate solution at this time is to disarm the police.”

There’s a broad consensus in the US today that local police forces need to be demilitarized. In the summer of 2014, the country watched as citizens protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were confronted by local law enforcement SWAT teams bearing body armor, military grade rifles, and armored vehicles. The spectacle helped prompt president Barack Obama’s administration torestrict transfers of military weaponry to local police departments.

Ending police access to armored vehicles is one thing. Taking guns out of the hands of the police is another issue altogether. In fact, Obama’s restrictions on military equipment aside, most of the official responses to police brutality and violence today have involved providing police with new kinds of equipment, from Tasers to body cameras. The conversation always seems to be about how to give police more gear, not less.

An uphill battle

The idea of taking guns away from police is likely to receive a highly skeptical response, even from people concerned about the problem of excessive force. In a nation with so many millions of guns on it streets—both legally and illegally–asking police officers to give up their own weapons presents a logistical and practical quandary.

“There is simply too much violence being committed by criminals with firearms to even consider an unarmed police force in the United States,” Louis Hayes, a working police officer who also trains fellow officers as part of the Chicago-based Virtus Group, tells Quartz. “I doubt there is a community, a city, a local government, or a police union in the entire nation that would seriously consider disarming its protectors.”

Yet there is some evidence that disarming the police might be less dangerous that it sounds. According to statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of the 27 law enforcement officers murdered in 2013 in the line of duty, only 6 were able to fire their weapons at assailants. Another two were killed after their firearms were stolen and used against them. (Note: several dozen other officers diedwhile on duty during this time, the majority from car accidents.) In many cases, it seems arming officers isn’t a black and white issue of officer safety. Especially since the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report reportsthat 461 people were shot and killed by police in 2013.

International precedents

Then there is the global precedent. Other nations have had success in disarming police. In England and Wales, where officers generally do not carry firearms, police didn’t kill anyone between March 2012 and March 2014. In comparison, New York City police shot and killed 16 people in 2012 alone. It’s worth noting that London armed more police officers in the aftermath of November’s Paris attacks—but 92% of the city’s 31,000 officers still won’t carry guns. The goal, according to a statement by police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, is to “make sure that our firearms response continues to come from a group of highly specialist and highly skilled officers.”

The UK has much tighter gun control laws than the US, which means that police in the US are more likely to confront situations involving citizens bearing firearms. But Iceland is a different matter. According toGunPolicy.org, an international database hosted by the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, an estimated one-third of Iceland residents own guns, making the country 15th worldwide in gun ownership per capita. Nonetheless, police in Iceland routinely patrol unarmed. There is only one recorded incident of a suspect shot and killed by police in the country’s entire history.

“This practice is rooted in the belief that arming the police with guns engenders more gun violence than it prevents,” Oddson says. “Currently, police officers are only armed with extendable batons and pepper spray on their person [. . .] Arming police officers with guns runs the risk of striking fear in the hearts of the public and undermining the great public support the Icelandic police has enjoyed thus far.” Oddson noted that public trust in police is about 80% in polls, although it did drop slightly recently following news that some police departments had secretly acquired firearms from Norway. (The guns have since been returned.)

According to Oddson, police in Iceland operate “by consent, rather than through the explicit threat or use of force. The effectiveness of any police force to protect and serve the public depends to a great extent on having the consent of the people. And having police officers that are not armed with guns helps remove barriers between the police and the public and builds trust on both sides.” Given the low rates of gun crime and violent crime in Iceland, and virtually nonexistent police shootings, Oddson concludes, “the practice of not arming police officers with guns in Iceland has worked remarkably well.”

Respecting the officer, not the holster

Of course, Iceland is a small, homogeneous country that’s very different from the US. But its success in reducing violence through disarmament still seems worth considering. Gregory Smithsimon, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, argued in a recent article at metro politicsthat arming police tends to feed violent interactions in marginalized communities. “Police demand respect, civilians resent disrespect, and interactions become confrontations that escalate into mistreatment, abuse, and violence,” Smithsimon writes. Pointing to the example of St. Louis police officer Darren Wilson, Smithsimon notes that the addition of weaponry can accelerate confrontation. “Wilson could have continued on his way,” he says. “But the gun on his hip gave him the possibility to escalate with Michael Brown.”

Guns enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance. Guns aren’t just a danger in and of themselves. They enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance, rather than one founded on respect, trust and consent. That philosophy affects every police interaction, even those that don’t involve actual shooting.

“Even if disarming the police only reduced police shootings and not other police homicides, it would be a historic improvement,” Smithsimon tells Quartz. “But I suspect that taking guns out of the equation in police officers’ everyday interactions would improve police-civilian relations, like the kind that Eric Garner experienced repeatedly.” Garner sold loose cigarettes on the street in New York and was frequently hassled by police. In July 2014, he was killed when officers put him in a choke hold.

Mutual de-escalation

Policing in the US needs to change. But even if mass disarmament is a political and legal impossibility right now, there are other options. As a first step toward changing law enforcement philosophy, Smithsimon that suggests police departments consider disarming officers when they are not working. Studies have shown that much police misconduct occurs while police are off duty. There are plenty of incidents in which off-duty police recklessly fire weapons, sometimes with deadly consequences.

“US police wearing their gun all the time has an important ideological effect,” Smithsimon tells Quartz. “It makes police feel like they are never civilians, never normal people, that they’re always cops, and that they’re never safe without a gun. I don’t think that’s the most productive frame of mind for civilians who are charged with keeping our cities safe and calm.”

Hayes, the police officer from Chicago, suggests that another possible step could be for some jurisdictions to introduce “unarmed non-sworn positions, commonly called Community Service Officers.” Hayes tells Quartz that these types of officers could handle “many of the lower risk, non-emergent calls that burden so many police force.” Such a solution would require substantial changes in staffing and training—but with such a radically broken system, radical solutions may be necessary to reduce the risk of unnecessary police shootings.

“America is moving more and more rapidly toward a garrison state, and soon we will not find solace by repeating to ourselves: ‘Ours is a democratic society,’” Paul Tagaki wrote in 1974. These words have proved prophetic: In many respects, the US has transformed itself into a garrison state. Undoing that transformation will be difficult. But we can start by taking steps to re-train, and in some cases even disarm, our vast police force.

You can follow Noah on Twitter at @hoodedu. We welcome your comments at [email protected].

by Virgil Vaduva

Ian Murdock was an icon in the Linux world. As a founder of Debian, a popular Linux distro, creator of apt-get, a Linux tool used daily by millions of users, and a speaker and developer, Ian Murdock’s life was cut short by a bizarre series of events which unfolded on Twitter just a few days ago, in the last week of 2015.

The entire ordeal started on or around December 28, 2015 when Ian posted several tweets alleging that he was sexually abused and beaten by police after being falsely arrested and accused of assault. Immediately after the revelations police denied that Murdock was ever under arrest, however I was able to dig up arrest records for him in California.

It appears that Murdock’s arrest was not a made-up incident or an illusion as others have previously claimed and that he was indeed recently arrested and then bonded out out the San Francisco County Jail for $25,000. Earlier on December 26, someone called the police alleging that Murdock was attempting to break into a house on the same block where he lives. Police claim that he was drinking and he was fined and released for treatment for abrasions sustained after a struggle with the police.

Several hours later the police again showed up after he was knocking on the door of a neighbor. At that time, he was arrested and released later.

After his release, Murdock tweeted that he was sexually abused by a jail guard and beaten by police twice. Eventually he tweeted that he is going to commit suicide, with the most bizarre tweet of them all, “@jacksormwriter wants me dead”

Nobody knows who @jacksormwriter really is. The same person behind that account also had accounts named @writershorde and perhaps even @jackstormwriter. All these Twitter accounts have been either disabled or deleted since Murdock’s death.

The story of Murdock’s death is by no means over. There are a lot of unanswered questions about what actually happened, what was the role of the police in the story and why they beat and assaulted him in jail as he claimed. Perhaps getting to the identity of @jacksormwriter may be another step towards understanding what really happened and why.

Murdock was a brilliant man, part of my own generation of people who have seen the Internet being created, Linux being born and the world being changed by new ideas shaped by people like him. The world always is worse off when people like him are gone.

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.

Quentin Tarantino continues to stand by anti-police comments he made earlier this fall in a new interview, saying he “completely rejects” the “bad apples” argument that only a small number of police officers behave inappropriately on the job.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Monday (and in an interview with Howard Stern last week), the Hateful Eight director put the blame for some instances of police brutality on the “institutional racism” of the profession.

“I completely and utterly reject the bad apples argument,” the director told EW. “Chicago just got caught with their pants down in a way that can’t be denied. But I completely and utterly reject the ‘few bad apples’ argument. Yeah, the guy who shot [Laquan McDonald] is a bad apple. But so are the other eight or nine cops that were there that said nothing, did nothing, let a lie stand for an entire year.”

“And the chief of police, is he a bad apple?” Tarantino continued. “I think he is. Is [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel a bad apple? I think he is. They’re all bad apples. That just shows that that’s a bulls*** argument. It’s about institutional racism. It’s about institutional cover-ups that are about protecting the force as opposed to the citizens.”

Tarantino created a firestorm of controversy in October when he participated in an anti-police brutality rally in New York City, where he said: “I am a human being with a conscience. And when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have the call the murderers the murderers.”

Tarantino’s comments sparked calls for a boycott of the director’s upcoming Hateful Eightfrom some of the largest police associations in the country, including the NYPD, LAPD, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National Association of Police Organizations.

Last month, Fraternal Order of Police executive director said his group’s 300,000 members had an economically damaging “surprise” planned for Tarantino before the Christmas Day release of his film. But the director told EW he only had “natural human trepidation” before the New York and Los Angeles premiers of Hateful Eight, and that, rather than frighten him, the police association’s threats proved his point.

“As far as getting my point across, the cops response to it has made my point for me in so many ways,” he said. “They look really bad. Civil servants, even rhetorically, shouldn’t be threatening private citizens. They sounded like bad guys in an ’80s action movie.”

The Hateful Eight opens this week in select theaters before opening wide on New Year’s Day. Variety reports that a screener of the film intended for Academy voters has leaked on the Internet and had already been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times in a 24-hour period.

Protesters demand police accountability during a march on Chicago Police headquarters on Sept. 16, 1999.

(In March 1999, The Chicago Reporter published a story about the record-number of police shootings of civilians in 1998. Chicago Police officers shot 71 people that year; 15 died.  In comparison, police shot 50 people in 2014; 18 died, according to the Independent Police Review Authority. We are republishing this story because the number of officer-involved shootings in 1998 and the Chicago Police Department’s response resonate today in the wake of new concerns about police violence against civilians. — Susan Smith Richardson, editor and publisher)

Chicago police officers shot 71 people in 1998, the highest annual total in the decade, according to data from the Office of Professional Standards, the civilian arm of the Chicago Police Department that investigates police misconduct allegations. Fifteen of those people died from their wounds.

Between 1990 and 1998, police recorded 505 shootings, including 139 deaths, OPS records show. The largest number of fatalities — 21 — occurred in 1994.

Of the 139 fatalities, 115 occurred when police shot other people, including 82 black victims, 16 Latinos, 12 whites and two Asians. Police died from self-inflicted wounds in 24 cases — 16 involving suicide by white male officers.

“The greatest majority of shootings occur when an officer is put in a defensive position, defending himself or another individual,” said Patrick Camden, deputy director of news affairs for the police department. “The question should be, ‘Why has the number of citizens who decide to pull guns gone up?’”

But some shootings raise doubts, particularly about relations between blacks and police. The Feb. 4 shooting of 22-year-old Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, received national attention. New York City police shot at the man 41 times; no weapon was found at the scene.

“Police are out of control in the African- American communities,” said Standish E. Willis, a Chicago civil rights lawyer who represents four families involved in fatal police shootings. He recommends that an independent, community-based board review police misconduct, discipline officers and make recommendations.

“The community is inflamed by this issue,” said Nehemiah Russell, an activist against police brutality and principal of Cabrini-Green Middle College, a Near North Side alternative school at 880 N. Hudson Ave. “If these matters are not addressed in our communities, it could lead to a race riot.”

Last month, U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Chicago) asked President Bill Clinton to appoint a federal task force to investigate incidents of police brutality and misconduct. “Progress has come like an old man’s teeth — few and far between,” Davis said.

In April alone, six Chicagoans were killed by police, including four blacks in one week, according to reporters from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office:

• April 1: Gregory Beck, 17, was shot in the 5100 block of North Long Street after an officer said he fired at him.
• April 2: Ernest Hopkins, 27, was shot during a failed drugs-for-weapons police sting operation in a McDonald’s parking lot 1t 7832 S. Western Ave.
• April 3: Tyrus Ellis, 33, died after being shot by police during a car chase in which he allegedly tried to run over an officers.
• April 5: Michael Russell Hamilton, 21, was killed by police at 500 W. Oak St. Police said he refused to lay down his weapon.

Police could not provide information on the status of OPS investigations into these cases.

Illinois law permits officers to use deadly force in self-defense or to protect lives. In 1996, 15 of the 17 shooting deaths were ruled justifiable, according to the most recent data available from the FBI, which tracks crime nationwide. Ten of the 15 involved black victims, and 13 involved white police officers.

The circumstances surrounding some shootings, however, remain contentious — and fraught with political overtones. Police say 18-year-old Chad Edwards was shot by Officer Raymond Wilkes on Feb. 17, 1998, and died Feb. 21. Police say they were responding to a call of a possible burglary when Edwards, an African- American living at 6110 S. Washtenaw Ave., burst out of a closet in a neighbor’s home holding a pair of pliers. He was shot in the head.

While he was hospitalized in critical condition, police charged him with criminal trespassing and aggravated assault, court records show. OPS ruled the shooting justifiable.

But according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by his mother, Tanya Edwards, her son and his girlfriend were visiting the neighbor’s house with permission when police entered unannounced. Edwards was shot when he went to the doorway to investigate the noise — unarmed and wearing no pants.

Last month, the family of Brennan King, a 21-year-old father of three who was shot by police on Nov. 27, filed a $5 million civil rights lawsuit against the city. King, a Cabrini-Green resident, had a record including aggravated assault against a police officer, mob action and drug possession, court records show.

Officer Peter Kelly shot King after chasing him into a stairwell of a Cabrini high-rise at 660 W. Division St. King “turned around with a box cutter and cut Officer Kelly multiple times,” according to the police account provided to the medical examiner.

Investigators found six used shell cartridges from Kelly’s gun near the stairwell. Willis, representing King’s family, said the box cutter explanation was fabricated and that a witness heard King begging for his life.

OPS is still investigating the case; Kelly remains on duty, Camden said.

“Brennan is really missed. He was my namesake,” said his aunt, Brenda King. “He was changing a lot. He had lost his mother, brother and was taking care of two cousins.”

By Danielle Gordon for The Chicago Reporter

The federal government came under fire this year from activists, media outlets, and officials for not keeping a comprehensive database that tracks the number of fatal law enforcement encounters in the U.S. Mentally ill adults who were shot and killed by police, according to a new report.

One in every four fatal police encounters involves an adult with untreated, severe mental illness, according to an analysis published Thursday by the Treatment Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit focused on mental illness.

The report’s authors analyzed the data that does exist—a combination of anecdotal reports collected by citizens, FBI data, and data culled by news organizations.

In October, following years of criticism, federal officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice said they would create comprehensive programs to track police shootings of civilians. Based on the numbers that are available until those resources are created, the authors suggest that specifically focusing on reducing encounters between law enforcement and people with severe mental illness could be “the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States.”

It’s a problem that seeks an urgent solution: This year alone, a project by The Guardian has tracked fatal police shootings of 1,063 civilians. Of those people, 207 were unarmed. Mentally ill people are especially vulnerable to these encounters, in part because police are not trained to act as mental health practitioners, and because treatment for the mentally ill is lacking, according to the report.

“What we need to do is treat the person before the police are ever called,” report coauthor John Snook told USA Today. “This is a mental illness, but we respond by calling the police and arresting a person.”

The report’s authors, as well as other advocates, refer to this as the criminalization of mental illness, and it’s the same factor that results in one in every five prison and jail inmates having a severe untreated mental illness. One of the best ways to address the problem, according to the report, is to prevent people with mental illness from deteriorating to the point that the police are called. This could be achieved by increasing the number of hospital beds available to chronic psychiatric patients, and expanding the use of outpatient treatment for individuals who have frequent contact with law enforcement, the report says.

More than 2,800 police departments in 46 states have implemented Crisis Intervention Training programs that partner mental health practitioners with police to better prepare them for these encounters, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Still, more than 10,000 other police departments don’t use such programs.

To bridge the gap, the report’s authors say mandating the collection of data on police shootings, and on the status of mentally ill adults in general, is a crucial step. If policy makers can better identify the role of mental illness in police shootings, they will be better equipped to make funding decisions that support the mentally ill, relieve police of a role they aren’t outfitted for, and save taxpayer money.

By Rebeca McCray for takepart.com

NEW YORK – JULY 09: KRS1 performs at the DJ Cassidy Belvedere sponsored party at Cipriani July 9, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Donald Bowers/Getty Images for Belvedere Vodka)

Vibe.com covers KRS-One.

As racial tensions continue to be at an all-time high following the recent bailout of Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot and killed Chicago teen Laquan McDonald, KRS-One discussed police brutality, racism, politics, and the intertwinement of the previous three in a new interview with CNN.

The rapper, known for detailing longstanding racist institutions and the struggle of the oppressed in his music, told the news outlet that though 22 years have passed since the release of his single “Sound of Da Police,” the condition of race relations and police brutality in America has not improved.

“Things have gotten worse because we have an African-American president and it seems like racism in the United States is overflowing,” he said. “This is the problem with the United States, there’s no leadership.”

The Bronx native, real name Lawrence Parker, said that this lack of management is obvious because a true leader recognizes that employing the term “police brutality” to describe the excessive use of force is oxymoronic.

“A leader would say, ‘Police brutality is an oxymoron, there are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal, you’re no longer police,’” he explained. “So, what we’re not dealing with police. We’re dealing with a federally authorized gang,” he finished.

KRS-One also discussed the upcoming presidential election and said that the candidates who seek residency in the White House are leaving behind the African American population and its hip hop subculture by “never coming to the hood.” The rapper said that the candidates are hoping that the political “ignorance” of voters will help them win the election.

“You have to be educated to vote,” KRS said. “And if you don’t know your country’s history, how the economy works, what the law is, you’re not an educated voter. This is what a lot of these candidates are actually banking on. They’re banking on the ignorance of the American citizenry.”

The police beat, harass and abuse you, then offer you some money in a settlement on the condition that you keep quiet about what happened to you, or the city can sue you for defamation and take away your money.  This is what is known as a nondisparagement clause, and cities such as Baltimore are using this tactic to silence police brutality victims, and in the process, suppress the voices of the oppressed and manipulate the poor.

As was reported by Julia Craven in the Huffington Post, Baltimore uses nondisparagement clauses, which are designed to prevent alleged victims from sharing details on their experience and the officers involved.  The state of Maryland does not require these clauses in such contracts, but rather the city of Baltimore has decided to incorporate them into 95 percent of police settlements. Nondisparagement clauses are commonly used among private parties in contract negotiations, but they raise eyebrows when used in contracts involving a citizen and a city government.

“Generally, the commonplace area you see nondisparagement agreements is in the general contracts between consumers and sellers,” Michael Smith, a civil litigation lawyer based in Los Angeles, toldHuffington Post.

“The city does it to keep people who have beaten up by the police silent,” said Ben Jealous, former president of the NAACP.

Jealous said these clauses create an environment that makes it easier for more such cases to spring up.

“It protects officers who are prone to violence and ends up costing the city more money at the very least — not to mention a trail of victims across the city,” he added.

The case of Ashley Overbey demonstrates the inherent problems with nondisparagement clauses in police misconduct cases.  On April 30, 2012, Oberey claims she was thrown to the ground, beaten, tasered and charged with assault by police during what was supposed to be a police investigation into a robbery at her apartment.  The city of Baltimore settled with her for $63,000, on the condition that she keep quiet about her mistreatment, and would not drop the seven criminal charges against her until she settled.  Online criticism of Oberbey and claims by whites that she made up the story to collect the money caused her to respond, triggering the nondisparagement clause and leading to the city seizing half of Overbey’s settlement.

Other cities such as Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis and Colorado Springs include the nondisparagement clauses, while the city of Minneapolis has chosen not to do so in the name of openness and transparency.  Susan Hunt, the mother of Darrien Hunt, 22, who was fatally shot by Utah police last year with four bullets to the back, rejected a $900,000 settlement that would have barred her from discussing the case.  She characterized the deal as a “gag order” and “hush money” that would not have allowed her to speak the truth regarding what happened to her son.  However, for many struggling victims and families from economically depressed communities, the money is dangled over their heads and rejection is not an option.

Such agreements are criticized for their vagueness, and do not specify whether they cover the victim speaking about the offending officer’s involvement in other cases, or speaking negatively about the police department in general. The $6.4 million Freddie Gray settlement did not include this type of agreement because the incident had already been widely covered in the media.

Baltimore paid $12 million in police misconduct cases between 2010 and 2014.  Cities throughout the nation are paying an ever-increasing amount to settle police misconduct lawsuits, with the ten largest cities paying $248.7 million last year, including allegations of shooting, beating and wrongful imprisonment, a 48 percent increase from 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal. Further, these cities have paid $1.02 billion over the past five years, which jumps to $1.4 billion when property damage, car collisions and other police incidents are included.

By David Love for atlantablackstar.com

A police officer who fatally shot a man in a downtown Milwaukee park will receive duty disability pay.

Christopher Manney filed a claim saying the shooting and aftermath caused him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The disability retirement pay usually amounts to about 75 percent of an officer’s salary – and it’s tax free. The Journal Sentinel reports Manney’s gross salary was about $71,000.

He shot 31-year-old Hamilton in April after responding to a call of a man sleeping in a downtown park. His family said Hamilton suffered from schizophrenia and had recently stopped taking his medication. Manney said Hamilton resisted when he tried to frisk him. The two exchanged punches before Hamilton got hold of Manney’s baton and hit him on the neck, the former officer has said.

Police Chief Edward Flynn fired Manney in October, saying the officer correctly identified Hamilton as mentally ill but ignored department policy and treated him as a criminal by frisking him. Manney appealed. Tensions had mounted ahead of Chisholm’s decision, fueled by anger over the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.

Milwaukee Country District Attorney John Chisholm said at a news conference that his job wasn’t to evaluate whether Manney adhered to policy but whether he applied the correct amount of force in that situation. He said witnesses reported Manney gave Hamilton verbal commands to stop.

The city’s Annuity and Pension Board approved the claim based on a review by a panel of doctors.

Prosecutors ruled the shooting justified, but Manney was fired for failing to follow department protocol in his approach to Dontre Hamilton at Red Arrow Park in April 2014. Manney said Hamilton grabbed his baton and attacked him with it, and the officer shot him.

Quentin Tarantino became an enemy of the NYPD and other cops who viewed his siding with anti-police brutality protesters as a slap in the face. The film director was rumored to offer statements that he was apologizing and stepping away from the controversial protests, but it appears that was entirely untrue.

The chatter around Tarantino began after he appeared in New York last month at a rally in Washington Square Park. Tarantino delivered statements that NYPD police chief Bill Bratton took seriously to heart.

The response to Tarantino’s speech at the rally had police unions and other figures painting him as someone who hates cops and Tarantino sat down with the Los Angeles Times to fully clear the air.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Tarantino said his remarks at the rally last month were aimed at police officers who have been involved in unwarranted shootings of civilians.

“What they’re doing is pretty obvious,” he said of his critics. “Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”

This tension between Tarantino and the police comes at a time where he’s promoting his upcoming film, The Hateful Eight. The Times suggested that the controversy might have an impact on sales of the film. Still, Taratino is doubling down with his support of the protestors against police brutality.

“I have a 1st Amendment right to protest against police brutality as I see it. And I’m not backing down from that,” Tarantino said.