Crime

Investigation found that officers excessively used deadly force, unnecessarily used Tasers and chemical sprays, and used unwarranted force against mentally ill people

The U.S. Department of Justice has told the Cleveland police department to conduct an internal shake-up after a federal probe found its officers systematically and routinely used excessive and unreasonable force.

A 21-month-long investigation into the practices of the Cleveland Division of Police concluded Thursday that officers excessively use deadly force, unnecessarily utilize tools like Tasers and chemical sprays, and use unwarranted force against people who are mentally ill.

The report is a damning portrayal of a department that has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and others within Cleveland for years over its conduct.

(MORE: Attorney General Eric Holder Plans ‘Institute of Justice’ to Address Protest Concerns)

The federal government began investigating the department in March 2013 after the officer-related shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams following a high-speed car chase. On Nov. 29, 2012, more than 100 Cleveland police officers were involved in trying to apprehend Russell and Williams, both of whom were black and unarmed. Officers eventually fired 137 shots at the car. Almost all of the officers who fired were white.

The department has come under scrutiny again in recent days after a black 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, was shot dead on Nov. 22 by a white police officer in a Cleveland park, who apparently mistook a toy pellet gun for a real firearm.

Cleveland police have agreed to an independent monitor who will oversee a series of reforms within the department.

A grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the death of an unarmed black man

The word doesn't mean the same thing to medical examiners

New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner on July 17 when he grabbed him by the neck and, with other officers, threw him to the ground and pinned him there. But did he commit homicide? And if so, was it a crime?

Everyone from Charles Barkley to Judge Andrew Napolitano has weighed in with an opinion on the matter. The resulting confusion has the potential to take the hard, painful question of equal justice in America and make it harder and more painful.

The key to clearing up the confusion is to understand the difference between two uses of the word “homicide” and to focus not on the medical cause of Garner’s death but on Pantaleo’s behavior.

On Aug. 1, a New York City medical examiner determined that the cause of death in the Garner case was “homicide,” specifically the neck compressions from the Pantaleo’s chokehold and “the compression of [Garner’s] chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police,” according to spokeswoman, Julie Bolcer.

But “homicide” in this context doesn’t mean what you think. It’s one of five categories medical examiners use to label causes of death and it indicates that “someone’s intentional actions led to the death of another person,” says Gregory G. Davis, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. The other four labels are suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined, Davis says.

So in a medical examiner’s report “homicide” just means one person intentionally did something that led to the death of someone else. It doesn’t mean the death was intentional and it doesn’t mean it was a crime.

Criminally negligent homicide, on the other hand, is a class E felony in New York State. Someone who commits it can go to jail for around one to four years. A lot of things are class E felonies in New York State, like arson, computer trespass, auto stripping and residential mortgage fraud.

Was Pantaleo criminally negligent in killing Garner? He was, according to New York State law, if he failed “to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk” that Garner would die from his actions, and that failure was “a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.”

Nobody should dispute that Pantaleo committed homicide—that fact was determined Aug. 1. Was Pantaleo’s behavior a gross deviation from the standard of care that a police officer should take when confronting an unarmed father of six whom he suspects may have been selling cigarettes illegally? Napolitano and many others who have watched the video of Garner’s killing think Pantaleo’s behavior was criminally negligent. The Staten Island grand jury apparently did not.

As to the confusion about the different uses of “homicide,” why don’t medical examiners try using a different word to indicate someone has killed someone else so that it doesn’t get mistaken for a legal judgment?

“There are only so many words that we have,” says the National Association of Medical Examiner’s Davis.

Richard Combs was formally charged over the 2011 shooting of Bernard Bailey

—TheA white former police chief in South Carolina was formally charged in the 2011 shooting death of a black man in a town hall parking lot Wednesday, the same day a New York grand jury declined to indict a white NYPD officer in the death of a black Staten Island man, sparking widespread protests.

A South Carolina grand jury indicted Richard Combs, an ex-police chief who fatally shot 54-year-old Bernard Bailey during a confrontation near town hall. Combs was the only officer in Eutawville, S.C., a population of about 300 people.

(MORE: Behind the Video of Eric Garner’s Deadly Confrontation With Police)

According to the Associated Press, Combs attempted to arrest Bailey in May 2011 after he went to the Eutawville town hall about a broken-taillight ticket given to his daughter. The two got into a fight and Combs shot Bailey while he was in his truck. In 2013, Combs was indicted for misconduct in office, a lesser charge.

The indictment comes after recent decisions by grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City in which white officers were involved in deadly confrontations with two unarmed black men, Ferguson’s Michael Brown and Staten Island’s Eric Garner.

Both grand juries decided there was insufficient evidence to convict the officers involved. Combs’ lawyer questioned the timing of the murder charge and claimed that prosecutors were merely trying to piggyback off national outrage over the deaths of Brown and Garner.

The NYPD has a strict definition

On Wednesday, a grand jury in New York decided not to indict an NYPD officer in the death of an unarmed black man during his arrest for selling loose cigarettes in his Staten Island neighborhood.

Video footage of the incident shows Eric Garner being subdued by several officers, with NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo apparently wrapping his forearm around the man’s neck — a move that has widely been described as a “chokehold.” Garner can be heard in the video saying “I can’t breathe.”

In grand jury testimony, Pantaleo says he merely used a maneuver that had been taught to him in police academy. According to the New York Times, Pantaleo says he hooked his arm under one of Garner’s arms as he wrapped his other arm around Garner’s body.

But was it a chokehold? Here’s the precise language the NYPD Patrol Guide uses to describe the maneuver, which it has banned for two decades:

“A chokehold shall include, but is not limited to, any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air.”

That definition is generally the same one used in martial arts or other combat sports.

Despite the ban, chokeholds are still widely used by police officers in New York City. According to the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, dozens of chokehold complaints are filed every year. So far this year, more than 100 have been filed. The high water mark was in 2012, when about 250 complaints were lodged.

The department has since deleted the offending social media posts

The St. Louis Police Department tweeted “Kids will be Kids?” Thursday morning in a post about the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer while playing with a toy gun, inciting backlash and explanation by the author of the post.

The tweet, which was deleted within hours of being posted, said, “Kids will be Kids? On November 22nd 2014, a Cleveland Police Officer shot 12 year old Tamir Rice who had his…” and then included a link to a St. Louis County Police City of Fenton Precinct Facebook post about Airsoft pistols.

The Facebook post, which has also since been deleted, contained advice for parents of children with toy guns, saying “Your children should have rules for ‘toy’ guns that mirror the rules of a real weapon… Warn them that these ‘toys’ do look like real guns and could result in the police getting called on them.”

People on Twitter reacted with horror to the original tweet.

The officer who wrote the post, Aaron Dilks, explained to Mediaite, “I too was a kid, and I too would have done the same thing as Tamir Rice did. I was allowed to go play with guns, and have BB guns — we didn’t have Airsofts at the time. The point of the ‘kids will be kids’ is that’s what kids will do…The point of putting [the post] out was to educate and make sure something like this doesn’t happen in the city of Fenton or in our area.”

About Rice’s death, Dilks said, “It’s a tragedy. It’s a shame that a child got shot. I guess that’s all I should probably say about it.”