Clearwater Police officer Jason Lambe was arrested last week for trapping his ex-girlfriend in her home for several days after stealing her phone, shoving her, and threatening to kill her. He is now charged with domestic battery, false imprisonment, tampering with a witness, resisting arrest, and assaulting a law enforcement officer. Lambe was released on a security bong and resigned from the Clearwater Police Department (CPD) to avoid termination proceedings. According to media reports, Lambe arrived at his ex-girlfriend's home on Sunday and argued with a man she was with until he left. Then he took her phone, shoved her when she tried to get it back, and threatened to kill her. The abuse went on for several days with her children in the home. She later told officers that she was afraid Lambe might hurt her kids. However, Lambe did let her leave the house once to take her kids to school on the condition that he go with her. Pinellas County deputies arrived at the home at about 2 AM the following morning and claim that Lambe pointed a weapon at them weapon them for which Lambe was tased, but Lambe pulled out one of the prongs and was able to run away. Lambe was only able to run a short distance before being taken into custody. In many states one can be convicted of assault simply by threatening someone with a weapon under what is called "reasonable apprehension of harm." Under that standard intentionally placing a person in reasonable fear of bodily harm with threatening words or gestures can be enough to sustain an assault charge. Then if physical contact is made the offense becomes battery. Lambe appears to be charged with assaulting his fellow officers by placing them in reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm, to wit: pointing a gun at them. According to jail records, Jason Lambe is a 41 year old white male standing 5' 7" tall and weighing in at 160 pounds. He is bald with brown eyes. He has a tattoo of a the Statue of Liberty with a gun. Public records list one Jason J. Lambe as a resident of Tampa, Florida the same age. We believe those records are for this Jason Lambe. He is a registered Republican whose only prior run ins with his peers have been for minor traffic infractions. #jasonlambe #kidnapping #threats #assault #domesticviolencesource https://copblaster.com/blast/47742/clearwater-officer-jason-lambe-arrested-for-trapping-ex-girlfriend
Amos 5:24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! JUST HOW STRONG are the forces arrayed against police reform and how far are they willing to go? In April 2019, Keith Humphrey was appointed police chief in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Southern city with a fraught history of racial division. Among the growing number of Black police chiefs, Humphrey came in with a mandate from the new mayor to implement reforms and curtail abuses. Almost as quickly as he set about to do that work, the citys old guard, the police union, and even cops under Humphreys own command struck back. The aim, to many observers, was simple: to oust Humphrey. #kingsportpolicereform
We are called by God to speak up against injustice and oppression, and choosing to be silent when we should talk against it is just plain wrong. Silence Against Wrongdoing Means Supporting It There's a saying that goes, "silence means 'yes'." In this case, being silent and preferring not to speak up against wrongdoing actually means being "not in opposition to it" or "not being against it." In short, if we won't speak against wrongdoing, it means we are tolerating it, and in essence, supporting it. God of course doesn't want that. He said in Leviticus 5:1 that "If you are called to testify about something you have seen or that you know about, it is sinful to refuse to testify, and you will be punished for your sin." He will hold all those who should have spoken the truth against wrongdoing accountable for not saying what they should have. A former Kingsport police officer will spend 35 years in prison for his involvement in a national child pornography ring. The Western District of Louisiana court clerks office tells us that Richard Chandler was sentenced on April 5 to 420 months in federal prison. Chandler pleaded guilty in January to engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. #kingsportpoliceofficerinvolvedwithchildporn
Washington Post (June 23, 2016), (op-ed by senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) https://ift.tt/34eFMNX #policeaccountability
As we approach the oneyear anniversary of George Floyds murder by Minneapolis police, Congress stands at a crossroads: It can deliver the real reform it has repeatedly promised by overhauling qualified immunity, or it can settle for a package of largely meaningless window dressing that leaves untouched our indefensible policy of nearzero accountability for police. From a purely policy standpoint, the choice is a nobrainer. As explained below, its good politics as well. To briefly recap, there is bipartisan agreement that American policing stands in desperate need of reform, particularly with respect to excessive force, racial disparities, and accountability. Acknowledging the ongoing crisis of public confidence in police, Congress has spent the past year working to identify key problems and assessing proposed solutions. In the course of those discussions, a single issue has come to predominate: qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a judgemade defense that enables police and other government officials to escape liability for violating peoples rights unless there happens to be a preexisting case with nearly identical facts in the relevant jurisdiction such that the misconduct at issue was clearly established. This has enabled cops to escape liability for everything from stealing property while executing a search warrant to savaging an unresisting suspect with a police dog. And while the Supreme Court could in theory fix the mess it made with its unwarranted foray into judicial policymaking, that seems increasingly unlikely. Thus, it is up to Congress to decide whether to fulfill the promise of our nations preeminent civil rights law, colloquially referred to as Section 1983, which provides that state actors shall be liable to the person injured for the deprivation of any rightnot merely those the judiciary deems clearly established. To their immense credit, a diverse array of legislators have recognized the pathology of qualified immunity and have remained laserfocused on the need to repeal or substantially reform it in order to ensure proper police accountability. Not surprisingly, some members of law enforcement recoil at the prospect of real accountability and have deployed a number of strategies to defeat the push to overhaul qualified immunity. Essentially, those strategies involve a proposal to offer up an attractive basket of largely meaningless window dressing in exchange for kicking the qualifiedimmunity can down the road and leaving untouched our current policy of nearzero accountability for law enforcement. Policymakers should reject that offer and the baseless propaganda with which it has been promoted. Perhaps the single greatest sticking point right now is the perception that the lawenforcement community is united in its opposition to qualified immunity reform. Not so. Indeed, just last week, the Major Cities Chiefs Associationan organization of 79 police chiefs, commissioners, and sheriffs representing the largest cities in the United States and Canadareleased a statement that embraces a major overhaul to qualified immunity that would result in the elimination of the clearly established law standard and effectively gut the doctrine as a defense for rightsviolating police. Adding the MCCAs support for qualifiedimmunity reform to that of other police organizations, including the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, means that it is no longer possible to say that the law enforcement community is unanimous in its opposition. By contrast, civil rights organizations across the ideological spectrumfrom the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund to the Second Amendment Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom are united in seeking to ensure real accountability by repealing or substantially reforming qualified immunity. That confluence of support from civilrights and law enforcement organizations ought to translate into 60 votes in the Senate. Notably, some Members have expressed concern about the impending anniversary of George Floyds death on May 25 and a desire to have a piece of legislation that Congress can send to the Biden White House for review and comment. But the best way to honor George Floyds memory is not to meet some arbitrary deadline but instead to ensure the sort of genuine accountability that might have seen his killer, Derek Chauvin, removed from the police force before he murdered anyone. As noted, the window dressing being proposed by members of the lawenforcement lobby in exchange for caving on qualified immunity may look pretty, but it will have little realworld impact and certainly wont address the most significant sources of public disillusionment with police. And the reason for that is simple. If, as they have proposed, police agree to dial back chokeholds and noknock raids but then simply disregard those new policiesas former NYPD officer Daniel Panteleo did when he killed Eric Garner with a forbidden chokeholdhow are they going to be held accountable? Even the proposal to hold departments, rather than rightsviolating police themselves, liable for misconduct falls short because it destroys individual incentives to respect peoples rights and prevents victims from seeking redress from the person who harmed them. That is simply not the way to revive public confidence in police and assure people that police will be held to (at least) the same standard of accountability as the rest of us. Make no mistakethis is a time of crisis for American policing and for our criminal justice system writ large. To perform their vital functions properly, those institutions must have the confidence and support of the public. But they do not, nor, according to record numbers of Americans, have they earned it. This is not a time for halfmeasures, window dressing, or rearranging the chairs on the deck of the ship. Americans have made clear that they demand real reform and real accountability from police. Fortunately, the path to real accountability is short and simplesimply repeal the illegitimate, judgemade doctrine of qualified immunity and embrace the ineluctably clear text of Section 1983, which provides a federal remedy for the deprivation of any right. #kingsportpolicecorruption
KINGSPORT POLICE DEPARTMENT CORRUPTION AND MISCONDUCT DOESNT STOP AND GOES TO THE TOP Most people would agree that police officers shouldnt be punished for split-second mistakes in judgment. Thats why the Graham and Garner tests for whether or not an officers use of force amounts to a constitutional violation require an analysis of whether that use of force was reasonable with regard to the particular circumstances the officer was in. But qualified immunity goes beyond Graham and Garner with its maddeningly arbitrary clearly established law requirement. In effect, clearly established law adds a separate, completely illogical burden of proof to constitutional torts cases: proving the existence of a prior case with functionally identical facts. To illustrate how this works, consider the case of Amy Corbitt. Officer Vickers, in pursuit of an unrelated criminal suspect, showed up in Amy Corbitts yard where children were playing. After making everyone lie down on the ground, Officer Vickersunder no provocation whatsoevershot at Amys dog, missed, and hit her child instead. Very clearly, Officer Vickers use of force was unreasonable under the tests of Garner and Graham. But since there wasnt a prior court case where an officer shot at a harmless dog, missed, and then hit a child, Officer Vickers was granted qualified immunity and Amy Corbitt wasnt allowed to take him to trial for the injury to her child at all. The theoretical justification for this absurd outcome is that without the clear guidance of existing case law, public officials would not be able to discern what conduct is permissible under the plain text of the Constitution. There are a lot of flaws with this reasoning, but a new article from Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor and leading scholar of qualified immunity, has identified a particularly damning one: police officers dont study clearly established law at all. Professor Schwartz combed through 284 Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit cases involving excessive force claims, and then compared them to the actual training received by California police officers. What she found: 95% of agencies rely on the same company to develop the use-of-force guidelines in their policy manuals, which teach officers the reasonableness tests of Graham and Garner but provide scant or no instruction on the subsequent holdings that form the body of clearly established law. The other 5% fare little better. Likewise, Californias POST trainingrequired by all California law enforcement officerssticks firmly to Graham and Garner and barely mentions any of the 284 cases that create the body of clearly established law. This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Screen-Shot-2021-05-06-at-2.22.46-PM.png The full article goes on to examine police training in far greater detail, including in-service police training and police training courses available at community colleges. Professor Schwartz conclusion is that the clearly established law standard serves no meaningful purpose in educating officers about the appropriate use of forceand that the arbitrary standard of qualified immunity should be eliminated. Her article thus provides solid empirical support for what was already a commonsense intuition: police officers never learn clearly established law. As Judge James Browning of the District of New Mexico wrote in a 2018 opinion: The Supreme Courts obsession with the clearly established prong assumes that officers are routinely reading Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit opinions in their spare time, carefully comparing the facts in these qualified immunity cases with the circumstances they confront in their day-to-day police work. It is hard enough for the federal judiciary to embark on such an exercise, let alone likely that police officers are endeavoring to parse opinions. It is far more likely that, in their training and continuing education, police officers are taught general principles, and, in the intense atmosphere of an arrest, police officers rely on these general principles, rather than engaging in a detailed comparison of their situation with a previous Supreme Court or published Tenth Circuit case. It strains credulity to believe that a reasonable officer, as he is approaching a suspect to arrest, is thinking to himself: Are the facts here anything like the facts in York v. City of Las Cruces? As weve argued in the past, eliminating qualified immunity wouldnt change the fact that Garner and Graham protect police from the consequences of good-faith mistakes made in dangerous, volatile encounters. Now we know it would also bring the state of the law in line with what officers are actually being taught about the legal boundaries of the use of forcewhich is almost exclusively Graham and Garner. #kingsportpolicemisconduct
A New York Times article published last week explores the recent uptick in attrition within police forces. Public confidence in police fell to 48% last year, a 27year low, and police have reported that the loss of confidence has made it more difficult to do their jobs. Now, the fallout has hit retention rates, as police forces struggle to keep officers committed to a difficult profession that has undergone a reputational fall from grace. The article ends with an officer describing her feelings about her relationship with the public as akin to being dumped without knowing why. Its a striking analogy, and the sentiment is likely shared by many police officers. A survey of police officers from 2017 revealed that just over twothirds of officers felt that highly publicized incidents of police violence were isolated incidents. Its not hard to see how good cops feel theyve been judged guilty by association. But one solution to this problem is simple: Stop protecting the guilty officers. Consider the headline of the Minneapolis Police Department press release issued hours after George Floyds death: Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction. If not for the bystander footage and overwhelming public response, would Derek Chauvinwho already had 17 complaints against him before he murdered George Floydhave been held to account for his actions? Compare George Floyds case to the death of Tony Timpa in 2017. Timpa called police during a mental episode that left him scared for his life. The officers held Timpa down, kneeled on his back, and mocked him as he screamed help me between agonal breaths. He was declared dead 14 minutes later. Tony Timpas case made the local news, but it never reached a national profile. The officers mounted a vigorous legal defense to his familys civil rights lawsuit, asserting the judgemade defense of qualified immunity, which requires plaintiffs to identify a preexisting case with nearly identical facts. The trial judge held that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed the case because there was no binding authority from either the Supreme Court or the Fifth Circuit holding that prone restraint is a violation when performed in the manner of Defendants restraint of Timpa. Every single one of the officers kept their jobs, including the one who joked that Tony needed to wake up for school as the police watched him die. The lesson from the George Floyd and Tony Timpa killings is this: While police departments are loath to get rid of the proverbial bad apples, they sometimes prove responsive to overwhelming public pressure. And there are few things in criminal justice that garner more universal support among the public than the need for stronger accountability for police officers: Over 96% of Americans support changing management practices so officers are actually punished for misconduct, and 98% would support preventing officers responsible for multiple abuses of power from continuing to serve. All too often, however, police departments take the opposite approach. A survey of over 323,000 allegations of police misconduct in New York, for instance, revealed that less than 3% of the complaints resulted in any kind of penalty for the officers. Only 12 of those penalties (less than .0004% of the complaints) were terminations. The most benign explanation for the kneejerk reaction of police departments to hide abuses of power is that the departments, recognizing that they need the publics trust to operate, seek to avoid censure for bad acts in the most efficient way possible: by covering them up. But papering over a crumbling foundation cannot cure the cracks underneath. As departments allowed bad cops to surviveand thriveAmericans took notice. And while things may have reached a breaking point with the death of George Floyd last year, the reality is that confidence in American police has been trending downwards for nearly half a decade. We cannot expect this situation to change if policing does not change, and one way to change officer behavior is to completely eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity. Letting citizens enforce their rights against police would reduce the question of how police police themselves to a straightforward financial decision. If officers with track records of misconduct werent immune from lawsuits for the damages they caused, its highly unlikely that police departments would remain eager to keep them on the forcebecause theyre usually stuck with the bill. (And no, this would not mean police officers are exposed to lawsuits for splitsecond mistakesit would mean police are no longer immune from being sued for use of force thats unreasonable under the circumstances). What will not work is for police departments to continue relentlessly defending the proverbial bad apples while assuring citizens that they represent only a small fraction of all cops on the job. This strategy may have helped delay the collapse of American confidence in police, but we are well past the breaking point now. The right way to rebuild public trust is to ensure that bad cops like Derek Chauvin are consistently held accountable for misconduct, and not just when they are caught on a video that happens to go viral. Police cannot do their jobs effectivelyor happilywithout public trust. And make no mistakewe need effective police with good morale and strong community rapport. But in order to get there, the bad cops have got to go. David McMillan, a research intern with the Cato Institutes Project on Criminal Justice, contributed to the development of this piece. David holds a bachelors degree in philosophy from The College of New Jersey. He is currently pursuing his MPP from the University of Edinburgh as a Saint Andrews Society Scholar. #kingsportpolicecorruption
(FORMER OFFICER) Kingsport Mayor Dennis Phillips says Police Chief Gale Osborne is accused of official misconduct in an email from that officer. The email was sent to Kingsport City Officials and District Attorney Barry Staubus. They showed us the email and says it claims the police chief used city personnel, equipment and facilities to move and house personal belongings from the chief's rental property. Phillips asked Staubus to conduct an independent investigation. They tell us the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is also looking into the accusations. We tried to contact Chief Osborne but were told he is out of town. We will continue to try and get his reaction to the accusations. #kingsportpolicecorruption
Horne admitted to laughing- A 19-year veteran of the Kingsport Police Department is appealing his firing over the handling of beer confiscated from minors. According to testimony at a Wednesday hearing, Cpl. Tim Horne was one of several officers who responded to a party where there was underage drinking. Officers confiscated nearly four full cases of beer. Horne admitted to laughing at a comment that the beer should be given to another officer, although he denied making the comment, according to the Kingsport Times-News. Later the beer was given to the other officer and Horne approved a report stating it had been destroyed. Horne's attorneys argued that firing him was an overreaction. The department should decide his fate next week. #kingsportpoliceofficerhorne
After allegedly having multiple correctional actions taken by the department, may include having his patrol car taken , a longtime Kingsport Police Department officer pleaded guilty to patronizing prostitution in Sullivan County court on Monday after investigators said an undercover camera caught a prostitute performing a sex act on him while on duty #kingsportpolice #kingsportpolicecorruption
While off duty, Kingsport Police Officer Daniel Horne was confronted by a complete stranger for his physical behavior disciplining a child via pulling and pushing her, hitting her chin and chasing her down the isles after she walked away from him crying. He charged the man for simple assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct after he destroyed many displays and pallets of goods throwing the concerned citizen around. The woman the concerned citizen was with, screamed at him to leave him alone, he was was helping a child, get off him! He looked up at her with almost demonic eyes and screamed SHUT THE HELL UP OR ILL BEAT THE FUCK OUT OF YOU!, multiple times. This lunatic has mental issues, he is unsafe to the public and was recently put in charge of protection of the elderly in Kingsport. He serves at a church and is running for commissioner of Kingsport. The manner at which his force was used was nothing short of evil. The looks in his eyes while screaming at the man and the woman was indescribable. Pure void of the world around him, as if he was in a different world. He is dangerous. Make no mistake. A wolf in sheeps clothing. Protect our children, protect our women and protect the citizens of Kingsport TN by making in known that abusing children and women is NOT OK! Just because you had a badge gives you NO RIGHT, Mr. Horne! SIGN THE PETITION HERE https://ift.tt/3u8btDz #danielhorne #kingsportpolice #policeviolence
The federal civil rights trial against three Minneapolis Police officers that did nothing while fellow officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for 9 1/2 minutes began today. Officers Tou Thao, Thomas Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng are accused of depriving George Floyd of his constitutional rights under color of law. Officers Thao and Kueng are accused of failing to intervene when Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's neck, but Lane is not facing that charge. All three of them are charged with failing to provide Floyd with medical assistance which he was legally entitled to. Prosecutors face an uphill battle because Chauvin has already been convicted of the murder, so they have to prove that what the others did not do rose to the level of a criminal offense. It often is not enough to simply prove that someone failed to act because criminal intent must also be proven. Criminal intent requires that specific intent to violate Floyd's civil rights be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Failure to Intervene Officers Thao and Kueng both engaged in activities that substantially assisted Chauvin while his knee was on Floyd's neck. Kueng actively held Floyd's legs. Thao was actively stopping people on the sidewalk from intervening. The need to intervene should have been apparent to both of them long before Floyd took his final breath. We are not sure exactly how long someone must kneel on another's neck for the danger of death to become obvious to a reasonable officer in their shoes. It could be as little as 2 minutes, but probably not more than 4 or 5 and certainly not 9 1/2. Whatever the cutoff point is we are certain that Chauvin had his knee on Floyd's neck a lot longer, so these two officers will have difficulty claiming they didn't realize anything was wrong. The question then turns to their intent. We know that Thao and Kueng failed to intervene, but we don't know why. For all we know they may have wanted Chauvin to kill Floyd or their brains farted simultaneously leading to a mutually innocent failure of thought. Prosecutors have the burden of proving that they willfully violated Floyd's right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment by failing to intervene (see https://ift.tt/3ryOmil). A person's conduct can be called "willful" if it it constitutes "open defiance or in reckless disregard of a constitutional requirement." We believe that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck long enough for the danger to become apparent to any reasonable officer in their shoes at which point the decision not to intervene could only be made with at best a reckless disregard of the constitutional requirement to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Thomas Lane is not charged with failing to intervene. Lane does not appear to have actively assisted Chauvin in ways that the others did. Lane also tried to intervene by urging Chauvin to move Floyd, but Chauvin shot him down. Lane was also a rookie. If any of these three officers deserve any leniency it would be Lane due to him being the lowest ranking officer on the scene and actually trying to do something after every other officer did nothing at all. Failure to Provide Medical Care All three officers are charged with willfully depriving Floyd of liberty without due process by failing to provide medical care. The defense is likely to argue that their clients only had 9 1/2 minutes to make up their minds and that they eventually called for an ambulance. We think it might be difficult for prosecutors to prove criminal intent with regards to failing to call for help. We think that Floyd's fate was sealed before 9 1/2 minutes had passed and calling an ambulance after that would not have likely changed the outcome. Conclusion We hope that these officers are held accountable to the fullest extent allowed by law. Unfortunately, the fullest extent allowed by law in this case does not appear good enough to get George Floyd real justice. We fear that even if these three are not acquitted that their sentences will be so short that the Floyd family will feel the sting of getting slapped in the face far longer than these officers experience consequences for their actions. To learn more about these defendants including background check information visit: https://ift.tt/2MxMqmn https://ift.tt/3eDuanD https://ift.tt/2MaJ88h #touthao #thomaslane #alexanderkueng #georgefloyd #civilrights
Bill Carr if the Greenville Sheriffs Department has had many affairs over the years, as stated by the official complaint filed, has threatened the life of two with the use of a rifle if this ever got out. He has a trial date coming up for an entire list of misconduct using deadly force. #billcarr #billcarrgreeneville #greenecountysheriffsdepartment
This person will call the cops on you for anything, he calls the cops on all his sisters boyfriends, he loves to file false police reports , and he does it all drunk. #marcusmoore
Everyone be careful of this piece of shit. He will rob you first chance he gets. Nothing is safe around this junkie not even his children. He'll set you up and pull a gun on you. If he really cared for his children he wouldn't constantly put them at risk one of the worst users and abusers I know. Met me in Churubusco one time and pulled a gun on me. Rob you then call the cops when you go to their house. #bolyard #bitch #ripoff #snitch #loser #punk #junkie
Correctional officer Javier Gomez was arrested for child molestation at Corcoran State Prison earlier this month. Gomez is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a victim under the age of 16 back in 2017, but the crimes were not reported until December of last year. During a search of his home an unregistered rifle was discovered. Gomez now faces charges of participating in an act of sexual penetration with another person under 16 years old, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor under the age of 16 and being in possession of an unregistered assault weapon. He was booked on $240,000 bail and released on bond. Gomez's employment status with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is not known to us at this time. In the mugshot above some might say that Gomez looks like a deer caught in the headlights, but we think he looks more like a sex offender that just set foot on a prison yard when he recognizes someone that knows what he's in for. When all is said and done he will probably have to do time. Life behind bars is exceptionally hard for child molesters and former law enforcement in general, but a former correctional officer in for a sex crime will experience the worst of both world, especially in California. He will probably be kept on 23 hour lockdown and kept separate from all other inmates. His time will be similar to what one would expect if put in disciplinary segregation, but with a little bit of commissary available. According to public records, Javier D. Gomez is a 40 year old resident of Kingsburg, California. He is listed as the property owner of 2855 23RD CT KINGSBURG, CA 93631 with a purchase date of August 2018. We are exempting Gomez from our usual courtesy of censoring home addresses of law enforcement personnel because he is charged with a sex crime involving a minor. Please do not use this information for any unlawful purpose. #javiergomez #corcoranstateprison #childmolestation #sexoffenders
Jason Jones died last month due to injuries he suffered after being set on fire by a Catskill police officer in what appears to be a tragic accident. Jones was in the lobby at the Catskill Police Department (CPD) when he took off his shirt, covered his body in hand sanitizer, and began walking around the room. Officers were then seen issuing commands to Jones which he did not appear to comply with, one officer pointed his taser at Jones, Jones continued his non-compliance, the officer fired the taser, and Jones burst into flames. Then every officer fled the lobby rather than try to put out the fire. This case could be the result of failure to train on the part of the CPD, incompetence on the part of the officers, or both. What This Case is Not This case is not a murder or an otherwise intentional killing. It seems pretty clear from the footage that the officer never intended to light Jones on fire, so the questions then turn to who is responsible for this accident, was the responsible party reckless or negligent, and did their conduct rise to a level capable of overcoming qualified immunity. Who is Responsible? The answer to this question depends primarily on who screwed up and if more than one party screwed up who screwed up the worst. Did the officer screw up worst by firing the taser or did the department screw up worst by failing to train officers not to use tasers on people covered with flammable hand sanitizer. As the expert in the video embedded below this article points out, officers are trained not to use tasers on subjects covered with some flammable liquids, but that training typically focuses on gasoline, natural gas environments, and other encounters with materials commonly known to be flammable. The expert also said, "in most taser trainings we don't talk about sanitizers being that obvious flammable liquid." If the CPD never told their officers not to use tasers on subjects covered with hand sanitizer then failure to train is the moving cause primarily responsible for Jones catching on fire. Unfortunately, mere lack of proper training alone is not enough to hold a municipality liable. To hold a municipality liable you must show that the failure to train amounted to deliberate indifference. For example, this author is currently pursuing a claim against a local municipality in federal court and prevailed at summary judgment on several issues, but lost when trying to link an injury to a custom. The judge in that case explained the elements of a failure to train claim as follows: "To prevail on a Monell claim, Plaintiff must demonstrate that (1) he was deprived of a constitutional right; (2) the municipality had a policy or custom; (3) the policy or custom amounted to deliberate indifference to Plaintiffs constitutional right; and (4) the policy or custom was the moving force behind the constitutional violation. Mabe v. San Bernardino Cnty., Dept of Pub. Soc. Servs., 237 F.3d 1101, 1110-11 (9th Cir. 2001). " - Jennifer Zipps, United States District Judge (see Sullivan v. Multnomah County et. al. page 16 https://ift.tt/3nc0lQK) It should be fairly easy to prove that Jones was deprived of a constitutional right and the municipality had a policy or custom of using tasers which failed to include proper training pertaining to sanitizer if in fact proper training was not provided, but it would be difficult to prove that the policy or custom amounted to deliberate indifference. To prevail on a deliberate indifference claim against a municipality's policy or custom one must prove that "in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees, the need for more or different training is obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in violations of constitutional rights, that the policy-makers . . . can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need." Clement v. Gomez, 298 F.3d 898, 905 (9th Cir. 2002) (citing Canton, 489 U.S. at 390)", Sullivan v. Multnomah. Under this standard the Jones family would need to prove that the likelihood of a taser setting someone with hand sanitizer on their body on fire is such that the need to train officers not to use tasers on them was obvious and the inadequacy was so likely to result in a violation of constitutional rights, that the policy-makers can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need. The rarity of this incident weights in the department's favor. This is the first time we have ever heard of a taser lighting someone on fire or their body being engulfed in flames by burning hand sanitizer, but apparently that is just because we were not paying attention. A brief trip to the search engines revealed several cases of large fires being caused by hand sanitizer and government agencies taking prophylactic measures: - In May 2020, CNN highlighted the ban on hand sanitizers in correctional facilities. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) considers it contraband due to its alcohol content because inmates might drink it or use it to start fires. Many state prisons have the same policy, but several others including New York do not. However, hand sanitizer was banned there until recently. This shows that it was common knowledge in the law enforcement community that hand sanitizer is a fire hazard (https://ift.tt/2LecKRT). Could this mean that department's like the CPD should have connected the dots between the risk of hand sanitizer fires and the ability of a taser to cause one? That is not an argument likely to overcome qualified immunity; - Later in May 2020, a Texas woman caught on fire from lighting a candle after using off-brand hand sanitizer. News coverage of the case included a statement from the CDC saying that fire incidents related to hand sanitizer is very low (https://ift.tt/3qjvUee). Stories like this support the defense that the fire risk of hand sanitizer is so low that failure to know about it or include it in training for others could not rise to the level of deliberate indifference; - In October 2020, a teenager suffered serious burns after throwing part of a bottle of hand sanitizer into a fire pit (https://ift.tt/3nhAqrS); - In 2021, a car erupted in flames when a man smoked a cigarette after using hand sanitizer. Media coverage of the case included a warning that the Mechanical Contractors Association of America sent to workers about the danger of using hand sanitizer and touching metal surfaces before the liquid evaporates due to static electricity because it can ignite the vapor from the hand sanitizer (https://ift.tt/3uHuFoZ). There are other examples of hand sanitizer causing fires resulting in injury online, but not many. We think that the combination of hand sanitizer being a relatively new addition to the correctional environment, the fact that we couldn't find many examples of tasers causing fires, and none of those examples involved hand sanitizer all weigh in favor of qualified immunity. Failure to Render Aid As we mentioned earlier, we have found examples of tasers causing fires and the expert in the video below admitted that officers are trained not to use tasers in environments with obviously flammable materials. We think that the officers choosing flee the lobby rather than try to put out the fire is a bigger liability for the department than causing the fire in the first place. Police officers are first responders that are supposed to be properly trained to put out small fires just in case they arrive on the scene of a fire before the fire department. A properly trained officer should have tried to smother out the flames rather than flee, so we think either the department failed to properly train the officer or they consciously disregarded the danger to Jones by fleeing the room. Other Examples of Taser Fires: - In 2015, a California man was killed by federal agents after his car exploded. The cause of the explosion was believed to be a spilled gas can inside the car ignited by the taser. The victim's family sued the federal government for among other things not helping (https://ift.tt/3GjtqlJ); - In 2017, an Oklahoma man died after covering himself in gasoline and getting tased. The description of that incident sounds eerily similar to this one which supports the theory that police departments should treat hand sanitizer like gasoline from now on (https://ift.tt/33kliTn); - In 2018, French police set an unarmed black man on fire with a taser. Audio suggests that the officers think someone sprayed flammable gas. The officer that set the victim ablaze quickly rushed to his aid and helped put out the fire with his hands (https://ift.tt/3fi6hnI); - In 2019, a man in Weed, California was set on fire by a police taser. Media coverage indicates that the officer knew the victim to be covered in a flammable liquid. This case led to criticism of police training (https://ift.tt/3HZGHA6); - In 2019, a Philadelphia Police officer set an unarmed black man ablaze outside a popular restaurant with a taser. The incident in too place during the early morning hours when the restaurant usually serves drunks stumbling in from nearby bars needing to soak up the booze before going home, for that reason we suspect the victim may have spilled a drink or two on his pants before getting tased. The victim had also been on the pavement right before, so maybe a vehicle had leaked flammable liquid there. In that case the officers didn't try to put out the fire either, but the victim put it out himself after just a couple seconds (https://ift.tt/3HXRawg); - In 2019, a suicidal Arlington man was set on fire after covering himself in gasoline. One officer holstered his taser and said that tasing the victim would set him on fire, but two others deployed their tasers anyway. An investigation by the media revealed that the company which manufactures tasers warn against using them around flammable materials, but the police department training manual did not. They also investigated other departments and found that many fail to prohibit taser use in flammable situations (https://ift.tt/3Fhw4a7); Law Enforcement Knows of Fire Risk It is common knowledge in the law enforcement community that tasers can cause fires. Since the risk of fires resulting from taser use should be obvious to any law enforcement policy-maker then failing to train officers to put out such fires would constitute the conscious disregard of a risk which a reasonable person in the policy-maker's shoes should have known. If the CPD does not train officer to put out taser fires then they should be liable for the death of Jones. If the officers were in fact trained to put out taser fires and just ran away out of cowardice then they should held liable. Any first responder properly trained to put out small fires consciously disregards the risk the fire poses to the victim if they choose to flee rather than smother out the flames. The question would then turn to whether the officers are liable in an official or individual capacity. The argument for official capacity would be that the officers were deliberately indifferent to the Jones' safety in the course of their official duties. The argument for individual capacity would be if the officer's conduct fell outside the scope of his employment, so the CPD could potentially argue that the officers were trained to put fires like that out and therefore fleeing was not part of their job. However, police departments stick together and often have insurance policies covering judgments against officers in their individual capacities, so often the outcome for the plaintiff is the same. Conclusion Jason Jones should be alive today. There is no question about that. The question is whose fault this is and why. We think the answer to that depends on a thorough review of department policies and training procedures involving taser use when flammable materials are present. Due to the prevalence of taser policies that do not address flammable liquids at police departments across the country and the rarity of hand sanitizer fires we believe that the officers were likely poorly trained for this scenario. We do not know the identities of the officers at this time. If you know who they are please contact us. The video below is a news broadcast with an expert, but it does not contain the whole video. You can watch the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGJ6gDMWL9s #jasonjones #taser #failuretotrain #fire #manslaughter
Former Lancaster City Police officer Jayson Drouillard was arrested recently for sending sexually explicit videos of himself to a woman on Facebook. The charges he now faces include disseminating explicit sexual material, indecent exposure, lewdness, and harassment. Drouillard was already no longer employed by the Lancaster City Bureau of Police at the time of the incident. The LCBP received a complaint on December 4, 2021 that an underage female had received two sexually explicit videos from Drouillard in addition to several texts he sent on different days. Officers preserved the footage after concluding that the videos were taken in Drouillard bathroom. The case was turned over to the Lancaster County DA and charges were filed on the 20th. According to public records, Jayson J. Drouillard is a 43 year old resident of Marietta, Pennsylvania. #jaysondrouillard #facebook #harassment