and none of you bother to blow the whistle to "friendly" media outlets?
There's no such animal...and do you value your job? Fire Chief and Police Chief appointed by Mayor.
First thing you are taught, keep your mouth shut and don't speak to media. Fire and police spokesman handle all incident communication to the media...and the public gets the spin.
Doubts cast on witness's account of black man killed by police in Walmart
Alleged to have threatened customers, John Crawford, 22, was having a phone conversation while holding an unloaded BB gun
When Ronald Ritchie called 911 from the aisles of a Walmart in western Ohio last month to report that a black man was “walking around with a gun in the store”, he said that shoppers were coming under direct threat.
“He’s, like, pointing it at people,” Ritchie told the dispatcher. Later that evening, after John Crawford III had been shot dead by one of the police officers who hurried to the scene in Beavercreek, Ritchie repeated to reporters: “He was pointing at people. Children walking by.”
One month later, Ritchie puts it differently. “At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody,” the 24-year-old said, in an interview with the Guardian. He maintained that Crawford was “waving it around”, which attorneys for Crawford’s family deny.
Ritchie told several reporters after the 5 August shooting that he was an “ex-marine”. When confronted with his seven-week service record, however, he confirmed that he had been quickly thrown out of the US marine corps in 2008 after being declared a “fraudulent enlistment”, over what he maintains was simply a mixup over his paperwork.
Crawford, 22, turned out to be holding an unloaded BB air rifle that he had picked up from a store shelf. After Ritchie said Crawford appeared to be “trying to load” the gun, the 911 dispatcher relayed to an officer that it was believed the gunman “just put some bullets inside”.
The Crawfords’ attorneys told the Guardian that they had learned the preliminary findings of an autopsy were that he was shot in the back of his left arm and in his left side, supporting their claim that he was turned away from the police officer who shot him.
They have pleaded with Mike DeWine, Ohio’s attorney general, to release the store’s surveillance footage of the shooting to the public. Having viewed it, they say that it disproves Ritchie’s version of what led to the deaths of both Crawford and a 37-year-old woman who collapsed and died in the ensuing panic.
“It was an execution, no doubt about it,” alleged Crawford’s father, John Crawford II. “It was flat-out murder. And when you see the footage, it will illustrate that.”
DeWine has said that releasing the footage would be “playing with dynamite” and prevent any trial from being fair. He has assigned a special prosecutor from the neighbouring Hamilton County to handle the case. A grand jury will begin hearing evidence on it later this month. A Beavercreek police spokesman said in a statement: “Preliminary indications are that the officers acted appropriately under the circumstances.” Following the opening of a federal inquiry into the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Crawfords’ attorneys have also urged the Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the Ohio incident, only the second fatal police shooting in Beavercreek’s history. A white officer has been placed on administrative leave following Crawford’s shooting.
The attorneys said that they would also be lodging a complaint with DeWine after Ritchie told the Guardian that he, too, was shown the surveillance footage by officials in the attorney general’s bureau of criminal investigation, who are investigating the shooting. “That is very improper,” said attorney Michael Wright, who said that Ritchie’s statement on what happened should have been based only on what he remembered seeing.
Ritchie said that he had also become aware of past criminal allegations against Crawford, which were dropped. He declined to say if he had learned this from DeWine’s officials. Asked four times by the Guardian whether they had told the witness about Crawford’s court record, a spokesman for DeWine declined to comment.
Police: Knife wielding man forced girlfriend to call 911 and accuse an imaginary black man
OCEAN SPRINGS, MS (WLOX) - A man is behind bars in Ocean Springs and his girlfriend is recovering from her injuries all thanks to witnesses who saw the woman being attacked and took action to help her.
Just before 3pm Wednesday afternoon, police received a 911 call from a woman on Gibson Road who said she had just been attacked in her own home. She described her attacker as a black man, and said her boyfriend, Austin Hurless, chased him off.
But while the victim was talking to police, so were her neighbors who told dispatch what they saw happen. According to them, the attacker was a white man, and he was seen with a knife in his hand dragging a woman out of the house by her hair. They even yelled at the man and told him they were calling police.
Investigators believe that's when Hurless pulled the victim back into the house and forced her to call 911 and tell police she had been assaulted by a unknown black man. As for the knife, police said Hurless threw it over a fence near a pond on the property before they arrived.
The victim was taken to Ocean Springs Hospital by ambulance to be treated for her injuries. Once at the emergency room, she told detectives Austin Hurless had beaten and choked her with his hands, and placed a sheet over her head. And she said he threaten to kill her with the knife if she told police what actually happened.
Hurless is charged with felony domestic violence, and making a false police report. He was being held at the Ocean Springs Police Department awaiting an initial court appearance.
Investigators said Hurless is also under investigation for other crimes in Ocean Springs, unrelated to the domestic violence charge.
Doubts cast on witness's account of black man killed by police in Walmart
Alleged to have threatened customers, John Crawford, 22, was having a phone conversation while holding an unloaded BB gun
When Ronald Ritchie called 911 from the aisles of a Walmart in western Ohio last month to report that a black man was “walking around with a gun in the store”, he said that shoppers were coming under direct threat.
“He’s, like, pointing it at people,” Ritchie told the dispatcher. Later that evening, after John Crawford III had been shot dead by one of the police officers who hurried to the scene in Beavercreek, Ritchie repeated to reporters: “He was pointing at people. Children walking by.”
One month later, Ritchie puts it differently. “At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody,” the 24-year-old said, in an interview with the Guardian. He maintained that Crawford was “waving it around”, which attorneys for Crawford’s family deny.
Ritchie told several reporters after the 5 August shooting that he was an “ex-marine”. When confronted with his seven-week service record, however, he confirmed that he had been quickly thrown out of the US marine corps in 2008 after being declared a “fraudulent enlistment”, over what he maintains was simply a mixup over his paperwork.
Crawford, 22, turned out to be holding an unloaded BB air rifle that he had picked up from a store shelf. After Ritchie said Crawford appeared to be “trying to load” the gun, the 911 dispatcher relayed to an officer that it was believed the gunman “just put some bullets inside”.
The Crawfords’ attorneys told the Guardian that they had learned the preliminary findings of an autopsy were that he was shot in the back of his left arm and in his left side, supporting their claim that he was turned away from the police officer who shot him.
They have pleaded with Mike DeWine, Ohio’s attorney general, to release the store’s surveillance footage of the shooting to the public. Having viewed it, they say that it disproves Ritchie’s version of what led to the deaths of both Crawford and a 37-year-old woman who collapsed and died in the ensuing panic.
“It was an execution, no doubt about it,” alleged Crawford’s father, John Crawford II. “It was flat-out murder. And when you see the footage, it will illustrate that.”
DeWine has said that releasing the footage would be “playing with dynamite” and prevent any trial from being fair. He has assigned a special prosecutor from the neighbouring Hamilton County to handle the case. A grand jury will begin hearing evidence on it later this month. A Beavercreek police spokesman said in a statement: “Preliminary indications are that the officers acted appropriately under the circumstances.” Following the opening of a federal inquiry into the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Crawfords’ attorneys have also urged the Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the Ohio incident, only the second fatal police shooting in Beavercreek’s history. A white officer has been placed on administrative leave following Crawford’s shooting.
The attorneys said that they would also be lodging a complaint with DeWine after Ritchie told the Guardian that he, too, was shown the surveillance footage by officials in the attorney general’s bureau of criminal investigation, who are investigating the shooting. “That is very improper,” said attorney Michael Wright, who said that Ritchie’s statement on what happened should have been based only on what he remembered seeing.
Ritchie said that he had also become aware of past criminal allegations against Crawford, which were dropped. He declined to say if he had learned this from DeWine’s officials. Asked four times by the Guardian whether they had told the witness about Crawford’s court record, a spokesman for DeWine declined to comment.
White woman claims black men stole her car and kidnapped her son
(from earlier)
According to police officers were advised that a female had stopped her vehicle, a maroon 1991 Honda Accord at Given and Highland when her vehicle was approached a two Black armed male suspects.
Police said the suspects forced the victim out of her vehicle and drove off with her car and child inside.
It was a scary scene Saturday night as Memphis police came out in full force to locate a missing six-year-old boy.
His mother told police two men stole her car with her son inside. About an hour later, police determined Chastity Forte was not telling the truth and found her son safe in the arms of a family member.
Around 8 p.m. Saturday, police surrounded the corner of Treadwell Street and Given Avenue. Forte said two men with guns forced her out of her maroon Honda and drove away with her son sitting in the back seat.
James Moore says the carjacking happened just around the corner from of his house. Moore knows Forte and was good friends with her late husband.
Moore also knows the six-year-old and described him as a nice kid.
"And it scared me to death. I didn't know what was going on," said Moore.
Moore says police came to his house Saturday night because Forte told investigators that she and her son had been visiting his house about 30 minutes before the carjacking.
"That's what the mother told them, well she said she had just been here before this happened," said Moore. "No sir, we hadn't seen her since the funeral."
Moore told police that it has been about six months since he last saw Forte and her child.
Visiting Moore was not the only lie Forte told police. When they found her stolen car abandoned, they saw no evidence that a six-year-old had been inside.
Police located the boy in Brighton, Tenn., safe with his aunt.
"The whole time, he was never in the car," added Moore. "I think she needs help and so does the child."
As of Sunday evening, Chastity Forte remains at Jail East, charged with filing a false report. Forte is scheduled to appear in court Monday morning.
I'm skeptical of the report out of West Point, Miss., that a black mob beat up two white men to exact some kind of revenge for a white police officer killing an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. I know that it comes at a risk for me to say that the story sounds embellished - if not completely fictionalized - but I'm going to take that risk: It sounds made up.
I don't doubt that something happened. After all, Ralph Weems IV, a Marine who had served in Iraq, was reported in fair condition at a Tupelo hospital Sunday. A relative told the Associated Press that Weems had had brain surgery and was in a medically induced coma. But the reported sequence of events that preceded Weems' hospitalization sounds like Susan Smith, sounds like Charles Stuart. That is, the story sounds like some of the legendary hoaxes starring black monsters.
Smith was the white woman in South Carolina who drowned her kids and then told police a black man separated her from them in a carjacking. Stuart was the Boston man who said a black carjacker killed his pregnant wife. If I'm proved wrong, I'll admit it, and if a group of black men just up and attacked these white men, they ought to be punished, but it's hard to believe this story as it's being reported.
David Knighten, a friend of Weems who served in Afghanistan with the Air Force, told the Associated Press that they stopped at Waffle House in West Point about 1 a.m. Saturday but that outside he was warned by a polite stranger that it wasn't a safe place for white people. The black people inside were reportedly angry about Michael Brown being killed in Missouri.
It sounds made up that people in a small town 418 miles away would be violently angry over Brown's killing, and it also sounds made up that people in a small town 418 miles would choose to express such anger by keeping a Waffle House free of white folks.
But back to Knighten's story:
When he entered the restaurant, he said, he found his friend arguing with other men. The police showed up. Knighten says he showed them his .45 caliber handgun and his concealed-carry permit. Police made everybody leave.
At about 2 a.m., Knighten says, he and Weems were on their way to Weems' house but decided to stop at Huddle House. The parking lot was nearly empty. But, Knighten says, the pair soon realized that they had been followed by more than 20 people.
That sounds fishy, too.
"I do remember racial slurs being yelled from the crowd." -- a victim of an allegedly racially charged attack in Mississippi Saturday
According to an Internet report from a television station in nearby Columbus, Weems and Knighten had argued at the Waffle House with "as many as seven men." But, according to the story Knighten tells the AP, at Huddle House they were confronted with a crowd three times larger.
Knighten said he exited a restroom at Huddle House to find Weems surrounded. There was some shoving, he said, and a security guard ordered everyone out. Weems apparently exited first and by the time Knighten was able to make his way through the crowd, he says he saw Weems down on the ground being kicked. "I do remember racial slurs being yelled from the crowd," he said.
That gives an extra element of perfection to the story: black people, mad about Michael Brown, multiply in size and hop from one all-night diner to another, pounce upon two veterans and yell out racial slurs while they're beating them.
It's also notable that all throughout the night, Knighten kept discovering his friend in trouble. By the time he walked into Waffle House, Weems was arguing with men. By the time he exited the bathroom at Huddle House, Weems was surrounded. By the time he walked outside the Huddle House, Weems was on the ground being kicked.
By the time police arrived, Knighten said, the vicious mob had left. Knighten told the AP that he has broken bones in his face, a cut over his left eye and a blood clot in his right. A spokeswoman would only say that Weems was in fair condition. I don't know if that contradicts his relative's report that he had had brain surgery, but if "fair condition" can include a medically induced coma, then the phrase has no real meaning.
Though I'm not a fan of hate crimes, they do exist, and police have the authority to give certain crimes that label. It's notable, then, that Tim Brinkley, the police chief in West Point issued a statement saying, "This does not appear to be a hate crime. We are investigating this as an aggravated assault. It's very early in this investigation but thus far the evidence and statements suggest that a verbal altercation turned physical and somebody got hurt."
According to that statement, the police are reviewing surveillance video and trying to find the owner of a car that left the scene before police arrived.
Again, Weems' injuries seem to attest to the report that something happened, but the allegations that he was harassed, stalked and beaten by black people mad about Michael Brown's killing seems like an old story with new details plugged in.
UPDATE: I said above that Knighten's report of more than 20 attackers at Huddle House seemed fishy given the television web site's report of "as many as seven" people fussing with them at Waffle House. When Brinkley, the police chief, spoke to the Associated Press Monday, he said he expects an arrest soon. As for Knigthen's report of more than 20 attackers, the chief said, "From what we have seen from surveillance video and from what other witnesses say, it doesn't appear it's going to be nearly that many." Score one for skepticism.
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