ABC – Every police patrol in the Northern Territory will be armed with at least one Taser by the end of the year. Police Commissioner John McRoberts says the stun guns are a useful tool for police and he wants every patrol to be armed with at least one of them. “This is not something the community should be concerned about,” he said. Read article
Detroit News – An autopsy being conducted today is expected to shed more light on the injuries a Livonia man suffered after being Tasered by a city police officer. Michael Sheldon Ford, 50, was jolted with the stun gun early Aug. 14 after police said he refused to lie on the ground as ordered. According to police, Ford was waving “what appeared to be two knives, one in each hand,” at an officer who responded to the Purlingbrook Apartments on Eight Mile. Read Article
BBC – The federal police force in Mexico says it has sacked almost 10% of its officers this year for corruption, incompetence or links to criminals. Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers had been fired. More than 1,000 others were facing disciplinary action and could also lose their jobs, he added. In a separate development, a shoot-out between troops in Veracruz state and a suspected drugs gang has left six gunmen and one soldier dead. Read Article
Globe and Mail – Potential health risks of taser stun guns must be independently studied, says the latest Canadian Medical Association Journal in a sardonic editorial that blasts the manufacturer for intimidation tactics. Taser International funds much of the research it cites to support taser safety while challenging and sometimes suing those who raise concerns, it says. “Tasers are perfectly safe and have never, ever killed anyone,” writes Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, an assistant professor, researcher and specialist in respirology at the Toronto Western Hospital. We know this because Taser International . . . says so, claiming ‘the taser . . . cannot stop the heart.’ And Taser International is an honourable and, for most of its existence, very profitable company. Read Article
Epoch Times – The Falun Dafa Information Center released a statement on Aug. 27 reporting that the Chinese police abducted a woman who died eight days later while in police custody. Yan Pingjun of Heibei, China is a 45-year-old Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioner. According to the center, “Falun Gong is a traditional-style Buddhist “qigong” practice, with roots in the Chinese heritage of cultivating the mind/body for health and spiritual growth.” It is now practiced in over 100 countries. Read Article
AP — Insurgents killed eight Afghan policemen in a raid Thursday on a checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz, the provincial police chief said. Abdul Raziq Yaqoubi said police suspected the raid was carried out by militants from Russia’s restive Chechnya region who are active in the surrounding province, also called Kunduz.
More than 10 militants took part in the attack, two or three of whom were believed to have been wounded when the police fought back, Yaqoubi said. Read Article
BBC – There has been angry reaction to the shooting dead of an Afghan policeman by Spanish forces at a base in western Afghanistan. Spanish officials say the man was taking part in a training course when he opened fire on his instructors, killing two officers and an interpreter. Read Article
CNN – Gunmen attacked two checkpoints manned by members of Iraq’s Awakening movement in towns north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing a local leader of the movement and seven other people, Iraqi police said. Another attack killed a police officer in Falluja, west of the capital late Thursday, police there told CNN. But most of the dead were in Dali Abbas, a village about 100 km (63 miles) north of Baghdad. Read Article
New York Times – Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday in a demonstration of their ability to strike at will, offering their counterpoint to American aspirations of bringing the war in Iraq “to a responsible end.” In attacks in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in northern Iraq, insurgents deployed their full arsenal: hit-and-run shootings, roadside mines and more than a dozen car bombs. The toll was in the dozens, but the symbolism underscored a theme of America’s experience here: Its deadlines, including the Aug. 31 date to end combat operations, have rarely reflected the tumultuous reality on the ground and have often been accompanied by a wave of insurgent attacks. Read Article
Daily Mail – A pathologist in the case of the newspaper seller who died after being struck by a policeman during the 2009 G20 riots was facing fresh questions last night after he changed the wording of his post-mortem report, undermining attempts to prosecute the officer involved. Dr Freddy Patel revised his findings a year after carrying out the first examination of Ian Tomlinson’s body. In his initial assessment, he reported that he had found three litres of ‘fluid blood’ in Mr Tomlinson’s stomach. Read Article
News Journal – A family member and a friend of Adam Disalvo say he was fragile since his mother’s death four years ago, and that a falling out with a girlfriend drove him to use drugs the night before he struggled with deputies. Thursday evening, the 30-year-old Disalvo died at Florida Hospital in Daytona Beach. A day before his death, a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy stunned Disalvo three times in Ormond-by-the-Sea, sheriff’s officials said. Deputy Brad Schindelheim remains on the job while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates the incident and the Sheriff’s Office conducts a use-of-force review. Read Article
CNN – Two opposition leaders and a human rights activist were detained in Russia on Sunday after taking part in rallies marking the country’s National Flag Day, the Interfax news agency reported. Those detained were identified by Interfax as Solidarity opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, and Mikhail Shneider; and the leader of the Movement for Human Rights, Lev Ponomaryov. Nemtsov and Shneider are accused of “intentionally provoking police officers,” Moscow Police Department spokesman Viktor Biryukov said, according to Interfax. Read Article
BBC – Human rights activists have accused Kenya of secretly sending four terror suspects to Uganda after the World Cup bomb blasts in Ugandan capital Kampala. Kenya’s Muslim Human Rights Forum said this was a violation of Kenyan law. The group’s chairman, Al-Amin Kimathi, also said FBI agents interrogated three of the suspects illegally. The US embassy said the US was aiding the investigation but did not comment on the role of the FBI. Nairobi has so far not commented on the affair. Read Article
Washington Post – The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, demanding records about the detention in the United Arab Emirates of a U.S. citizen who claims that the U.S. government colluded in his arrest and torture. Naji Hamdan, a naturalized American of Lebanese origin, was arrested in the U.A.E. in 2008 and eventually convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 18 months in prison by a court in Abu Dhabi. He was released almost immediately because of time served in pretrial detention. Read Article
CNN – Police corruption and abuse are rife in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. The New York-based group issued a 102-page report Tuesday saying that “widespread corruption in the Nigeria Police Force is fueling abuses against ordinary citizens and severely undermining the rule of law in Nigeria.” “Good policing is the bedrock for the rule of law and public safety,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The long-term failure of the Nigerian authorities to address police bribery, extortion, and wholesale embezzlement threatens the basic rights of all Nigerians.” Read Article
Associated Press – American Civil Liberties Union lawyers filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the FBI, CIA and other federal intelligence agencies, accusing them of detaining and torturing an American citizen later convicted on terrorism charges in the United Arab Emirates. The lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California seeks information about the treatment of Naji Hamdan, an American of Lebanese origin who was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in August 2008. The ACLU accuses U.S. agencies of colluding with United Arab Emirates security forces, which kept Hamdan in a secret prison in Abu Dhabi without charging him with a crime until an earlier lawsuit by the rights group prompted his transfer to an official prison. Read Article
AFP – The Philippines’ independent rights body launched a probe into the national police amid public outrage over a cellphone video showing an officer torturing a naked man. The graphic video, which ABS-CBN television said it obtained from an unidentified informant, shows the officer in civilian clothes beating the man with what appears to be a stick. A rope appears to be tied to the victim’s penis, which the torturer yanks in between blows to the body. “This is very disturbing. They treated him worse than an animal,” said Coco Quisumbing, chairwoman of the country’s Commission on Human Rights, who has reviewed the clip. “This is the very first time that this happened (actual torture caught on video) and it is groundbreaking. Read Article
Vancouver Sun – A time-lapse prison video of a drunk man being strapped to a chair in his cell by police officers has the B.C. Civil Liberties Association demanding that RCMP not tie intoxicated prisoners to chairs. In January of this year, Williams Lake resident Lloyd Gilbert called police to report a robbery, only to be taken into RCMP custody because he was deemed too drunk to be left alone safely, said the BCCLA. In the video, Gilbert is seen pacing around and climbing onto a sink. After speaking to him, officers then bind him to a chair with leather straps across his chest. Gilbert is left sitting on the chair for three hours and 20 minutes, during which time he urinates on himself. Officers come in to check on him twice. Read Article
ABC – The Northern Territory coroner says it was “inappropriate and premature” for police to fire a Taser several times at an incoherent and agitated man who died shortly afterwards. But coroner Greg Cavanagh has dismissed a call by the deceased man’s family to ban the use of Tasers, saying “despite any inherent risks” they are preferable to the use of deadly force with guns. Read Article
WSPA – The funeral for a Greenville man, who died after being tased multiple times by police, was held Friday. 39-year-old Andrew Torres died after police officers showed up at his Greenville home to have him mentally committed. Torres’s family says Andrew suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Greenville Police say they tased the man after he tried to attack officers. Read Article
AP — Gunmen killed five Iraqi security personnel Saturday, including a pair of sleeping policemen who were shot and set on fire, amid persistent debate over whether Iraqi forces can protect the country as U.S. troops leave. The early-morning shootings at Baghdad checkpoints demonstrated insurgents’ aim to weaken confidence in the government and aggravate sectarian tension as all but 50,000 U.S. troops head home by the end of August. Read Article
Chicago Sun Times – Chicago Police officers have nearly quadrupled their use of Tasers since the department equipped every beat car with the electric-shock weapons earlier this year, according to new figures released by the Independent Police Review Authority. The agency, which reviews complaints of police misconduct, tracks every use of a Taser. In the second quarter of 2010, the devices were discharged 285 times by Chicago cops — up from 74 in the first quarter of 2010 and 39 in the fourth quarter of 2009. Only a few of those Taser discharges resulted in an allegation of police misconduct, the police oversight agency noted. Read Article
AFP — Seven policemen were among eight people killed near Baghdad and in north Iraq, including four who died in a fierce gunfight in a Sunni neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital, officials said on Saturday. Read Article
RSF – At least 38 demonstrators were arrested in the cities of Kelantan, Selangor and Penang on 1 August during attempts to stage candle-lit vigils to call for the Internal Security Act’s repeal. In Selangor and Penang, the police dispersed the protesters before the vigils could even get under way. The police response was disproportionate. The demonstrators only wanted to make their demands heard and used no violence at any time. They were nonetheless chased, beaten and arrested. Read Article
Washington Post – A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Friday that police cannot use a Global Positioning System device to track a person’s movements for an extended time without a warrant, clearing the way for the Supreme Court to decide the privacy impact of the new surveillance technology in products such as cellphones and vehicle-navigation systems. Read Article
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