NEWSPOLICE ABUSE

In just a few days, more than 65,000 people have joined the campaign led by UC Davis student David Buscho, calling for the immediate resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi after student demonstrators were brutally pepper-sprayed while peacefully sitting on the ground.

David was one of the students who was pepper-sprayed. In an interview about the incident, he recaps what it was like for he and his girlfriend to be pepper-sprayed:

"I had my arms around my girlfriend. I just kissed her on the forehead and then he sprayed us. Immediately we were blinded," Buscho told The AP. "So I was sitting their blind, suffocating. My girlfriend was writhing in pain. I wanted to touch her but my hands were covered in pepper spray."

John T. Williams was given just four seconds to comply with an order to drop the legal knife he was carrying for his trade before he was shot and killed by Officer Ian Birk last August -- one, two, three, dead. But even though the Seattle Police Department is expected to rule that the officer's decision to pull the trigger was unjustified, King County prosecutors are announcing they will not be pursuing criminal charges over the fatal shooting.

Such is one of the perks of wearing a uniform, it seems: you can kill a man in a shooting that even your own employers won't stand behind, and the worst that can happen is you'll lose your job – though even that hasn't happened yet.

A 50-year-old Native American, Williams was well known in Seattle for his skill as a woodcarver. When Officer Birk shot him dead on August 30 of last year, he was merely crossing the street with a wooden board and the 3” knife he used to carve – not only did he not commit an offense deserving of death, he didn't break any law. And according to eyewitnesses, he never rushed Officer Birk or so much as adopted an aggressive posture, contrary to the police department's initial claims.

Grand jury proceedings examining the death of Pace University student Danroy "DJ" Henry concluded Monday, with jurors announcing that they believed the officer responsible for Henry’s death did not commit a crime. Though the Henry family and supporters held out hope they would hear otherwise, the decision ultimately came as no surprise.

“Our faith was never in DiFiore (the local District Attorney), it was in God," Mr. Henry said at a press conference. "But we were hoping she would surprise us.”

The overwhelming lack of surprise was based on the knowledge that the closed-door proceedings that had been going on for the past few weeks were tainted by close, interdependent professional relationships and couldn’t possibly result in an unbiased outcome. Mr. Henry compared it to a family investigating the guilt of their own brother, not likely to end with an indictment.

It has been seven months since Zac Champommier was shot and killed by plain clothes police. His mother still hasn’t received an official report on the events of that fateful night, nor has she been told the name of the person who pulled the trigger. In a case where there seems to be a lot of finger pointing and little real accountability, another promising young man is gone and another mother is in mourning, asking why.

Zac Champommier was 18, an honor student and a self-proclaimed “band geek." He had recently graduated high school and was preparing to enter college in a few months. On the night of June 24, he went to meet a new friend and see a movie. They were to meet in a Studio City parking lot, behind a Chipotle. But when Zac showed up, he saw his friend being rushed by a group of seemingly-aggressive men.

Some have surmised Zac became scared and attempted to leave the lot; others say he drove toward the group as if to intervene. But in the end, one man would be hit by Zac’s car and Zac would be shot dead.

What Zac didn’t know at the time was the group of men confronting his friend, Douglas Ryan Oeters, were all law enforcement. The officers, including members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), DEA and LA County Sheriff’s Department had just executed a search warrant and were hanging out in the parking lot “debriefing." According to the officers, they saw Oeters walking around the lot, looking in cars, and believed he was casing them for theft. Oeters contends he did look in a white car because he thought Zac had beat him to the lot.

A report from Hawai'i's state auditor recently turned up some disturbing news: prisoners in the state are regularly held past the end of their sentences.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new in Hawai'i; the state paid more than half a million dollars in 2002 to 180 prisoners who had been held too long. But it's disappointing to see the practice continuing. A new lawsuit alleges that nine more prisoners were held past their sentence completions and -- even more troubling -- the state auditor's report examined 985 prisoner records at Hawai'i's Halawa prison and found 280 prisoners whose release date had passed. Even one day over a sentence is too long.

Hawai'i has had a prison overcrowding problem for years, perhaps in part because the state's facilities are full of non-violent offenders who shouldn't be there. Because the state doesn't have enough cells to house all of its prisoners, it has been sending thousands of them to private facilities on the mainland. About 35 percent of the state's prisoners are housed on the mainland -- most at an Arizona facility run by our old friend, the Corrections Corporation of America.

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in federal prison on Friday, nearly two decades after he was fired from the department for his role in torturing more than a hundred suspects, almost all of them black and many of them completely innocent.

Burge’s four-year sentence drew understandable anger from many, especially among those directly affected by his actions, who are tired of seeing racial injustice punished with a slap on the wrist. Although I can never know what it felt like to fall victim to Burge’s torture, and although I’m a white boy from the suburbs who has no idea what living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s felt like, I want to make a challenge those angry with Burge’s sentence.

First, four years is not a slap on the wrist. It’s not an acquittal, and it’s twice as long as sentencing guidelines recommended. Too often, serious misconduct like Burge’s doesn’t even draw an investigation, let along charges and convictions. This measure of justice took too long to come, but it should mean something that it came at all.

He was their “golden child” says Angella Henry, mother of slain Pace University student Danroy “DJ” Henry Jr. He was the child that did everything right, from his academics, his devotion to family, his health, sports, and church, there was nothing that could have foretold his demise. He always made the right choices and even the night of his death, he chose Finnegan’s to hang out because he knew it was a “safe” crowd.

When I spoke with Mrs. Henry, she said she knows it could have been anyone’s child. But it wasn’t. It was hers.

The grand jury began viewing evidence last week behind closed doors. She says that’s one of the hardest things, being kept in the dark. Though Danroy, DJ’s father, will testify, that is the only time a family member or even their attorney will be present during the grand jury. This fact paired with the knowledge that the same police department under investigation took part in gathering evidence for the investigation has the Henry family and supporters questioning just how fair the proceedings will be.

Mrs. Henry wants people to know what they’ve been through, expecting truth and transparency, and then realizing it wouldn’t come easy. She wants them to know that the police didn’t call to tell her DJ had been shot; it was a nurse, and only after specifically being asked did she tell them it was a police officer on the other end of the gun. When they arrived at the hospital, no department official was there to greet them or discuss what happened. In fact, Danroy had to call the police himself and ask to be seen. The police department was actually planning a press conference about the shooting before anyone had even spoken to the family.

“We live in this country. We pay taxes," Angella says, trying to convey to me the utter disbelief they continue to struggle with in regards to the handling of their son’s death.

What are the chances that a suspect could be accused of armed rape and even possibly false imprisonment, found to have left DNA on the victim, and get off with a misdemeanor charge? Well they are pretty good if that suspect is a police officer in San Antonio.

Former San Antonio Officer Craig Nash will be spending a year in jail, a far cry from the sentence he could have faced if rape charges were filed. But in another case of special privilege behind the badge, Nash was offered a chance that most “regular folks” don’t get in similar circumstances.

Early last year a transgendered prostitute came into a police station stating she had just been raped in the back of a police car. She had been picked up by Officer Nash, cuffed in the squad car, and told to lie down in the back seat as he drove to a remote location. Once there she was forced to commit sexual acts on Nash before he took her back into town and dropped her off near a school. She immediately caught a bus to the police station. A rape kit would later show Nash’s DNA present on the victim.

Although prosecutor Trey Banack stated that a "police officer who is a criminal does not deserve mercy from the system he protects," it was his office that negotiated a extremely merciful plea agreement with Nash, wherein the corrupt cop agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of official oppression and the prosecutor agreed to not pursue a felony charge. Oh, and they agreed not to pursue charges in another case where Nash was accused of raping a citizen back in 2008.