-Bear Peak
...................................................................................................................

Municipal payouts to families of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott of N. Charleston, LaTanya Haggerty of Chicago and Jonathan Ferrell of Charlotte, among others:
9-9-15

there's little evidence that the financial penalties lead to any kind of reform in police departments, says Schwartz, who examined more than 9,000 cases, dated 2006-2011, in 81 jurisdictions around the country. "Part of what I find troubling is that police departments aren't [suffering] any financial sanctions for increased payouts. Nor are they enjoying any benefits from reducing payouts," she says. "Their budgets are really very strongly insulated from the financial effects of their actions." Just 0.02 percent of dollars to plaintiffs in police misconduct suits were paid by the offending officers themselves.
Police departments, therefore, are under no direct pressure to change, says law professor Kami Chavis Simmons, director of the Criminal Justice Program at Wake Forest University....
The vast majority of incidents of alleged police abuse never result in a payment to victims or families, let alone the national attention given to the cases of Gray, Garner, Tamir Rice in Cleveland or Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri -- all African-American males who died in altercations with police. Victims in small communities might find it hard to get a lawyer to take their cases, Simmons says, since it would require a local attorney to take on an entire police force – along with the political and professional backlash that might engender.
Civil cases of police misconduct are unusually hard to prove, says Carol Sobel, a Santa Monica, California-based lawyer who specializes in cases of police accountability. Most case are in federal court, and the rules are stricter than they are for criminal cases, she explains, with a plaintiff-victim needing a unanimous verdict from a jury. The defense "only needs one [juror] to say, the officers were doing the best they could, that they shouldn't substitute their judgment for the police's" to stifle a claim, Sobel says.
Lawyers for the city or town have far more resources at their disposal, and many ways to drag out a case, adds Terry Gilbert, a Cleveland attorney who has spent decades representing police brutality complainants. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/09/police-settlement-cases-rare-and-rarely-deter-misconduct
......................................................................................................
The settlement with Garner's family won't require the city to admit liability for his death. The unarmed black man died after police placed him in a chokehold last year. http://www.npr.org/2015/07/14/422800610/new-york-will-pay-eric-garner-family-5-9-million-to-avoid-lawsuit
...................................................................................................

The relatives of an unarmed black man who died after being put in a white police officer's chokehold said Tuesday that the nearly $6 million settlement they reached with the city wasn't a victory as they continued pressing for federal civil rights charges.
"The victory will come when we get justice," Eric Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, said a day after the $5.9 million settlement was announced.

"Justice," added one of Garner's children, Emerald Snipes, "is when somebody is held accountable for what they do." http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-eric-garner-police-chokehold-case-settlement-20150713-story.html
...................................................................................................................

The Tamir Rice case shows how prosecutors twist grand juries to protect police

The grand jury process didn't fail this time. It worked exactly how prosecutors wanted it to — that's the problem. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/29/in-tamir-rices-case-the-grand-jury-process-was-turned-upside-down/

........................................................................................................................................................
Ever since his 2006 victory, Kleine has relied on the officers of those unions to help him convict everyday criminals. Omaha officer Alvin Lugod, for instance, was called to appear as a prosecution witness a dozen times, according to records released by Kleine’s office.
Yet when Officer Lugod was facing possible criminal charges himself in February for fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back, Kleine saw no reason to step aside. Instead, the prosecutor oversaw a secret grand jury process that declined to indict his colleague.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/ties-that-bind-conflicts-of-interest-police-killings
....................................................................................................................................................

But cellphone and surveillance footage show Ross catching up to (Freddie) Gray as two bike patrol officers push his friend face-down on the sidewalk. Gray's arms and legs are bent behind his back.
Ross paces back and forth and asks a neighbor to get the badge numbers of the officers. "Why the [expletive] are you twisting his leg like that?" he asks.
As police load Gray into the van, Ross and others begin to retreat, and the vehicle drives off. When it stops a block away, the bystanders run over.
Ross borrowed a cellphone to record the stop at the intersection of Baker and Mount streets. It would turn out to be the last footage of Gray while he was still conscious.
In that video, Gray lies face-down and motionless in the van, his legs hanging out the back. Police fasten irons on his ankles and load him back in, head first. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/freddie-gray/bs-md-freddie-gray-friends-20151113-story.html
...................................................................................................................................................