NYPD Illegally Raids House of Man They Brutalized For Throwing Gay Pride Party, Days Before Court Date (Please Read & Reblog)
A gay Brooklyn man is being targeted and harassed by the NYPD after filing a lawsuit against the officers who raided his home without a warrant and beat him unconscious.

It was early Sunday morning and Jabbar Campbell was hosting a gay pride party when two officers appeared at his house responding to a noise complaint. The officers told the party goers, some who were dressed in drag, to keep it down and left soon after.

10 minutes later, another group of police officers appeared. This time they tried to gain access to the building and began banging on the door with their flashlights.

One officer reached for the building’s surveillance camera (bottom gif.) and turned it towards the wall, blocking the view.



“I noticed them turning the security camera and I got scared,” Cambell said, according to the New York Post.

Campbell opened the door after a few moments only to be ‘bum-rushed’ by the cop. Two officers put Campbell in a shoulder lock while “5 to 7” cops beat him with their fists, flashlights and batons yelling “fag”, “homo” and “asshole” at him until he lost consciousness.

“They said, ‘Stop resisting arrest.’ I said, ‘I am not resisting.’”

But the cops beat him up anyway, he said.

“I blacked out. I was concerned for my life,” said Campbell.

The NYPD then arrested Jabbar and questioned the party goers who witnessed the beating, asking them if they were engaging in “gay orgies” and “screwing each other.” They told the officers they weren’t and they also denied that Campbell was resisting.

Police charged Jabbar with resisting arrest and possession of drugs, allegations that Campbell insists are lies, which must be so because the police later dropped the drug charges after the reported on the story.

The NYPD transported Campbell to Kings County Hospital where he received 9 stitches and was diagnosed with a concussion.

http://covenesque.tumblr.com/post/45064854815

Over the weekend the Portland Press Herald reported on and released a video of Capt. Shawn Welch at the Maine Correction Center pepper-spraying a restrained inmate in the face and leaving him in distress for more than twenty minutes while he repeatedly pleaded that he could not breath. The inmate was reportedly recovering from a self-inflicted wound and on several medications for bipolar disorder and depression at the time when officers in protective gear placed him in a restraining chair for medical personnel to examine his wounds.

After he was physically restrained in the chair, he struggled as guards pinned his head under an arm, at which point Welch used a pepper spray canister intended for multiple subjects at a 18 to 20 feet range to spray the inmate in the face at close range. Welch was initially fired by the institution’s supervisor, but reinstated with a 30-day suspension by Maine Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte.

Spurred by the leaked video, the Chairman of the Maine Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee is now seeking a review of the incident in the context of use of force by the Maine Department of Corrections – but the Maine Department of Corrections appears more concerned about finding the source of the leak. Citing the privacy of the inmate, they launched an investigation to find out who released the video to reporters, with Associate Commissioner Jody Breton saying the facility “certainly will be tightening up security — where (information) is stored, who has access.”

Judy Garvey of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition told the Portland Press Herald she believes the department has their priorities wrong:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/21/1757021/leaked-video-of-captain-pepper-spraying-restrained-inmate-riles-maine-officials/

As hearings are under way to investigate New York City’s stop and frisk policy, one police officer is testifying that he was told by superiors to target young black men between the ages of 14 and 21.

Stop and frisk is a method of searching people in which a cop is able to stop someone he or she suspects of a crime, and is able to frisk that individual if they feel that there is some justification. New York City policy made 685,724 stops as part of the policy in 2011 alone. In total, they have made over 5 million stops, and 85 percent of those stopped were black or Latino.
Officer Pedro Serrano, in court to testify yesterday, played a covert recording he’d obtained of an interaction with his superior where he was told the race of people to target, though not that he should stop everyone of that race:

Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.
“He meant blacks and Hispanics,” Officer Pedro Serrano, who made the secret recording, testified Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?” Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.

“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

During cross examination, City lawyer Brenda Cooke got Serrano to admit that McCormack never said he wanted Serrano to stop all blacks and Hispanics.

“Those specific words, no,” he told her.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/22/1761621/black-men-stop-frisk-recording/