Crapaganda.com

“Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public.”

Yes, there are bad cops everywhere, but the corrupt, racist, and violent New Orleans police department — in which officers engage in rape, arson, kidnapping, bank robberies, and murder, and citizens are arrested for little or no reason, held without charges for months, and routinely brutalized and tortured — is a different matter altogether. It is little exaggeration to say that the NOPD has become a criminal gang terrorizing the city’s residents. The New Statesman reports:

Something terrible lies at the heart of New Orleans – a rampant, widespread and apparently uncontrollable brutality on the part of its police force and its prison service. The horrors of its criminal justice system from decades before Hurricane Katrina and up to now lie somewhere between, with little exaggeration, Candide and Stalin’s Gulags.

Spit on the sidewalk here, and you may be arrested – New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the United States – and if you’re poor and black and can’t pay bail, you will enter a place where any protection under the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is stripped away. You will wait weeks or months to be charged, whether innocent or not, and in the meantime you will be subjected to foul, overcrowded jail conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence and the brutality of the deputies who guard you.

On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.

The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using “unnecessary and unreasonable force”; that it is “largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers” and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. “NOPD’s mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations,” the report says, “was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects.”

Source: DisInfo.com

All charges have been dropped against a Chicago-area man, who was charged last month with reckless driving and resisting arrest, after a police dashboard video showed the arresting officer beating him until he collapsed. That officer has now been charged with aggravated battery and is on administrative leave pending disciplinary action.

The incident occurred on March 28, when Ronald Bell was driving home after an evening out with friends. Officer James Mandarino allegedly saw Bell spin his tires before heading down a side street and followed the car until it pulled up outside the residence Bell shares with his brother’s family.

Mandarino ordered Bell and his passenger, Nolan Stalbaum, out of their car. He then tasered Stalbaum and ordered Bell to kneel on the ground. Even though Bell complied, Mandarino began striking him repeatedly with his baton, resulting in a concussion and multiple contusions.

In the video below, Mandarino can be seen beating Bell as Bell’s brother Stacey runs outside and attempts to argue with the officer. “He always had his hands in the air … and then (the officer) just started going to town on him, beating the hell out of him,” Stacey Bell told the Chicago Tribune.

“I told him he didn’t have to do this,” Bell explained to the Chicago Sun-Times. And he just said, ‘I told him to get down.’ He might have had a bad night or something going on in his personal life because he lost control.”

Both men were charged with multiple misdemeanors, but the suspicions of a Streamwood Police Department official were aroused the next day after seeing a booking photo of Bell with his head bandaged. The official checked the police reports and found the dashboard video of the unprovoked attack.

In announcing the felony charges against Mandarino, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez called the dashboard camera “a wonderful tool” and said of the alleged beating that it was “not only disturbing. It’s outrageous. It’s unacceptable.”

Now all charges against Bell and Stalbaum have been dropped and Mandarino is out on bail awaiting disciplinary action. “We’re elated,” Stacey Bell said. “If he loses his badge and loses his job and goes to jail, then I’ll feel vindicated.”

This video is from Sun-Times, broadcast April 15, 2010.