The Anatomy of Public Corruption

Showing posts with label Fatal Shootings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fatal Shootings. Show all posts

Couple reached out to East Bay police, terrified their son would be killed by a cop. He died in police custody anyway

Couple reached out to East Bay police, terrified their son would be killed by a cop. He died in police custody anyway

Parents of Jacob Bauer filed a wrongful death suit Thursday

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OAKLAND — In the spring of 2018, it was clear to Pleasanton residents John and Rose Bauer that the mental health of their adult son, Jacob, was quickly deteriorating. He was normally genial, outgoing, and attentive, a “computer nerd” who’d worked for Bay Area tech companies for years, his mother said.
But lately, Jacob Bauer had been paranoid — to the point that he complained passing airliners were spying on him — and prone to verbal outbursts. By June 2018, he was in “crisis mode,” his parents said, and they grew concerned for his well-being. They didn’t think he would harm himself; they were worried he’d have a fatal encounter with the police.
“Because of all of the stories you seen in the paper, all of these things that you hear that (police) do not give them time and distance, they deploy their SWAT team tactics, and then it’s too late,” Rose Bauer said in an interview Thursday.
Despite precautions the Bauers took — mentioning to officers during four face-to-face meetings that their son was mentally ill yet “harmless,” writing a card for him to give to police saying he had a mental illness and for them to call a lawyer the family had retained, and reaching out to local mental health facilities, only to be told there was no bed space — their fears were realized. Jacob Bauer died in police custody on Aug. 1, 2018.
Pleasanton police say they were taking Bauer into custody after he caused a disturbance at a local grocery store, that he resisted and tried to bite officers and that he went unresponsive while they were placing him in a restraint device. A lawsuit filed by the Bauer family Thursday morning tells a much different story: that police caused Bauer’s death by assaulting him, hitting him with a baton and stomping on him several times.
And a private investigator hired by the family says he watched a passer-by’s cell phone video of the incident that backs up the family’s account, showing officers use a Taser on Bauer — hitting him in the chest or neck — and stunning him at least three or four times while he screamed in pain. At another point, the investigator wrote, the video shows police hitting Bauer with a baton and stomping on his chest.
An attorney for the city of Pleasanton did not immediately respond for a request for comment on the suit.
Gary Gwilliam, a civil rights attorney hired by the Bauer family, put Bauer’s death in the context of several other officer-involved deaths around the Bay Area, all involving mentally ill subjects who were either shot or died while police were attempting to restrain them. He cited the recent fatal shooting of Miles Hall, a Walnut Creek resident shot by two local officers who were responding to a call about Hall having a mental breakdown. Hall allegedly waved a large metal bar at police before they shot him.
“These are people who are mentally ill, they’re not criminals. They shouldn’t be treated like criminals,” John Bauer said in an interview Thursday.
The county coroner’s report determined that Bauer died of “acute methamphetamine toxicity,” which his family also disputes. They hired their own forensic pathologist who independently reviewed Bauer’s death and found that he had been asphyxiated, writing the officers’ restraint as well as meth use contributed to Bauer’s death.
“They are supposed to get training at the police department as to how to deal with people like this, yet here we see once again another outrageous example of the police department not responding to someone who was mentally ill,” Gwilliam said.
The last day of Bauer’s life, he left his home around 2:30 p.m. to get something to drink at a Raley’s a few blocks away. Once there, he began screaming, then left the store. A concerned manager called police, thinking Bauer needed help, Gwilliam said.
Officers contacted Bauer a short distance from the store. There, they attempted to detain him. A police news release says Bauer resisted for five minutes, and that he bit and scratched the officers. During the ensuing struggle, he went unresponsive, was taken to a local hospital, and pronounced dead, police said.
Days earlier, Bauer’s parents had their last of four meetings with an officer, where they expressed concern that their needed help for his mental illness. They said the officer told them Bauer needed to hit rock-bottom before they could help him, and encouraged them to evict their son. At a prior meeting, an officer who identified himself only as “Mike” assured them that if their son did have an encounter with police, it would be resolved peacefully, Rose Bauer said.
“My life will never be the same. Jacob was a very big part of my life…He was always helping me, he was always there for me,” Rose Bauer said. “He was witty, he was funny, he was generous. All that is gone now. Every day I have to wake up and remind myself that he’s dead, no longer in my life, just my memories.”
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OBIT: Charles Burns



CONCORD — A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit over the 2013 death of Charles Burns, shot and killed by two Concord officers after they showed up at his Antioch house to arrest him.
Details of the agreement have not been made public, but they are expected to be released if the Concord City Council approves the settlement during a closed session hearing on Feb. 27. Both sides of the suit have said they anticipate the council’s approval.

Sketches from the autopsy of Charles Burns, 21, which show the path of thebullet that entered through the top of Burns' skull and lacerated his cerebellum and brainstem.
Sketches from the autopsy of Charles Burns, 21, which show the path of the<br />bullet that entered through the top of Burns’ skull and lacerated his<br />cerebellum and brainstem. 

There are questions about what happened the day Burns was killed. The city of Concord’s official account — partially based on the testimony of a disgraced ex-K9 officer — is that Burns somehow lifted his head from the ground after suffering a gunshot wound to the top of his skull that experts say would have killed him almost instantly.
Attorneys for Burns’ family — who filed the suit in 2014 — say that the 21-year-old was shot several times as he stood with his hands raised, then fell to the ground, was mauled by a police dog, then shot in the head a final time as he lay motionless on the pavement. Both Concord officers who shot Burns testified he was running with at least one arm at his waistband when they opened fire.
In November, a judge threw out legal claims against the city of Concord, its police chief, and other defendants, but allowed the suit to proceed against six Concord officers, including Detectives Chris Loercher and Francisco Ramirez, the officers who shot Burns, and former K9 Officer Matthew Switzer, who released his dog onto Burns during the incident.
Attorneys for both sides, as well as city officials, declined to comment on the pending settlement.
Burns was shot on May 10, 2013, by officers in a Contra Costa drug task force coming to arrest him and others on suspicion of trafficking meth, following a lengthy investigation. Burns’ family has denied he was selling drugs.
Police attempted to pull over a truck containing the driver, Bobby Lawrence, and Burns, a passenger, on the 2700 block of Barcelona Circle in Antioch. The car pulled away a short distance, collided with a police car, and then Burns jumped out and tried to run away.
At that point, Loercher began firing his gun, and Ramirez, hearing the shots, fired twice at Burns. They testified that they believed he was reaching for a gun as he ran, but it was later determined Burns was unarmed. Attorneys for the city of Concord say all 11 shots were fired in a single volley.
Burns’ attorneys, though, say they have confidential witnesses — described only as neighbors in the area of the shooting — who dispute the city’s account and say there was a pause between gunshots.
The day Burns was shot, one woman who spoke to an ABC 7 reporter described the shooting as “boom, boom, boom, nonstop.” Another area resident told a KRON 4 reporter that he heard, “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, then a delay, then a pop again.”
Burns was struck 10 times, including wounds to his chest and back, and one shot that entered through the top of his skull and traveled down towards his neck, cutting his brain stem and cerebellum, according to the coroner’s report. It is a wound medical experts say would have made voluntary movement impossible almost instantly.
Switzer testified in a pretrial hearing that he heard only a single volley of shots, and that he parked his car, exited, cleared with his sergeant that a K9 was needed, and ran to the scene. He said that he saw Burns lift his head off the ground, so he released his dog, who bit Burns for 10-15 seconds.
But Switzer, an officer who joined the force in 2001, has potential credibility issues. He lost his job the year following the Burns shooting, after it came to light he had been using his status as an officer to gain entry to peoples’ homes and steal prescription drugs from them. He was charged with five criminal counts, including burglary, and took a plea deal in May 2014 that required he serve six months in jail.
Last year, the city of Concord paid $150,000 to settle a suit by a man who claimed Switzer had used his dog to “maul” him. The settlement did not require the city of admit liability.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lauren Beeler reviewed the claims against Switzer. In allowing the suit against him to proceed, she noted there was evidence that Burns could have moved in a way to suggest he was reaching for a weapon when Switzer saw him, but there was also evidence indicating Burns posed “little if any threat” to officers when the K9 bit him.
“A jury could reasonably find that when Officer Switzer deployed his dog, Mr. Burns had already been shot multiple times, was incapacitated and dying on the street, and no longer posed a threat…(and) the police nonetheless deployed a dog on him that attacked him for 10 to 15 seconds,” Beeler wrote. “Drawing all factual inferences in Mr. Burns’s favor, the court cannot say as a matter of law that Officer Switzer’s deployment of his dog and the force the dog applied to Mr. Burns was reasonable.”
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Gun that killed Pittsburg officer also used in fatal Modesto shootout


Gun that killed Pittsburg officer also used in fatal Modesto shootout 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:17 a.m., June 11, 2003
PITTSBURG – The gun that killed Pittsburg police inspector Ray Giacomelli in April is the same weapon his suspected killer fired in a fatal shoot-out with police, according to ballistics tests.
Contra Costa Sheriff's Lt. Dan Terry said Tuesday the .40-caliber Glock handgun that killed Giacomelli was the same weapon used by Earl Foster Jr. during the firefight with police in Modesto.
Foster fled there after Giacomelli's slaying in Pittsburg on April 15. Investigators found Foster at a strip mall pay phone in the Central Valley city two days later.
A shootout ensued after Foster began firing at police, Terry said.
Foster died of multiple gunshot wounds; he was hit 22 times, according to an autopsy released Tuesday by the Stanislaus County coroner.
Law enforcement officials throughout northern California had launched a massive manhunt to locate Foster.
The 46-year-old Giacomelli was killed while investigating the homicide of Eric Louis Huffman, the brother of Foster's girlfriend who was found slain April 7.
Both Giacomelli and Huffman were shot in the face. Police have said Foster is the only suspect in Huffman's slaying.

 
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The Danville Building Inspector Incident - Winning Public Entity Cases With Brute Force and Attempted Murder


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The Danville Building Inspector Incident One day I got a call from my counsel Sage Sepapi with news that he too had been beaten under nearly identical circumstances of ligation about to be brought against the Town of Danville.
Within months my counsel went out of his way to get out of representation. When Chris Butler's testimony against Stephen Tanabe oozed about insurance fraud, arson and other events it was clear as day that Police Officers and DA investigators
had been lying to me for years and my collection of over 100 police reports were part of larger criminal operation coming within Contra Costa County.

November 2011 Bennett/Nordoff/Bryden Meeting During the Chief Bryden held in the office of Walnut Creek City Manager Ken Nordoff who heard my allegations that I'd been attacked again. This critical meeting set a benchmark linking
The Danville Building Inspector Incident to CNET Arrests, but other incidents were raised that link to least one murder in San Ramon CA.

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