Police shoot and kill teenager

Albany, New York

Albany police say 19-year-old Nacream Moore of Albany, a parolee who served time in state prison on an attempted armed robbery conviction, was a suspect in a home invasion when two officers tried to get him out of a car during a traffic stop Thursday night and ended up shooting him to death when, according to the police chief, Moore pulled out a handgun during a struggle. Moore was shot at 441 South Pearl Street around 10:20 p.m.

One woman, Willisa Marshall, said she was the driver of the car Moore had been in and that the car was parked when the officers approached it. She says she did not see Moore pull out a gun. She said police grabbed Moore to get him out of the car and "tussled with him" for about a minute, then had him face down on the sidewalk and shot him in the back, then turned him over and shot him in the head. She said she heard "more than five" shots. She also said Moore was shot in the chest.

"The officer's partner," said Police Chief Steven Krokoff, "who had disengaged at that point, witnessed it (a gun) and had no choice but to use deadly physical force."

Chief Krokoff made that statement to a roomful of people Krokoff had invited to watch what appeared to have been set up as a news conference. After a few questions from reporters, Krokoff began to entertain questions from the crowd - but it quickly turned into an avalanche of accusations and insults. Krokoff said a grand jury would look into what happened and promised "transparency". He said transparency was the reason he arranged the news conference in the way he did - an effort "to be as inclusive as possible."

"Please, for our community - and it's ourcommunity," Krokoff implored, "allow me the opportunity to find out the answers you are asking. It's time for us to start getting rid of the anger, getting rid of the rage and let's work together. I'm here to work with you. I want you to work with me."

He lost control of the room and walked away from the lectern, where Moore's family, including his mother, Davina Woodard, had been standing quietly next to him.

Later, the chief met with just reporters for a traditional news conference, where he said Moore had been shot three times in the torso, not in the back and not in the head. He says the two officers involved, Jason Kelley and Gregory Mulligan, are on leave, which is routine after such a shooting.

US police fatalities up 13 percent in 2011 to 173

GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press

(AP) - One Oregon police chief was killed when a man allegedly took the officer's gun and shot him in the head. A policeman in Arizona was fatally shot when he went to a suburban Phoenix apartment complex to help a probation officer. And two South Dakota officers were killed in a shootout after a traffic stop.

The number of fatalities from departments across the country caused by firearms made 2011 one of the deadliest years in recent history for U.S. law enforcement.

Across the nation, 173 officers died in the line of duty, up 13 percent from 153 the year before, according to numbers as of Wednesday compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

The nonprofit group that tracks police deaths also reported that 68 federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire in 2011, a 15 percent jump from last year when 59 were killed. It marks the first time in 14 years that firearms fatalities were higher than traffic-related deaths. The data shows that 64 officers died in traffic accidents, down from the 71 killed in 2010.

Craig Floyd, the group's chairman, blamed the rise on budget cuts to public safety departments. He cited surveys by police groups that showed many cut back on training and delay upgrading equipment, and referenced a Department of Justice report issued in October that said an estimated 10,000 police officers and sheriff's deputies have been laid off within the past year.

"I'm very troubled that these drastic budget cuts have put our officers at a grave risks," he said. "Our officers are facing a more brazen cold-blooded element and fighting a war on terror, and we're giving them less training and less equipment they need to do their jobs safely."

It's the second year in a row the number of officers killed in the line of duty has grown. In 2009, the death toll dipped to 122 in a 50-year-low that encouraged police groups even though the year seemed to be an aberration. Otherwise, the number of police deaths has topped 160 five other times since 2000. It routinely topped 200 in the 1970s.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the deaths a "devastating and unacceptable trend" and said the Justice Department was determined to reverse the numbers. He said the office is supporting new training regimens and programs, one of which reimbursed departments with more than $23 million for about 80,000 new bulletproof vests. Those vests, he said, saved the lives of 16 officers in the last year.

"I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year's increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power — and use every tool at our disposal — to keep our police officers safe," Holder said.

The police deaths were spread across 41 states and Puerto Rico. The largest number of fatalities was reported in Florida, where 14 officers were killed, followed by Texas (13) New York (11), California (10) and Georgia (10). The New York City Police Department and Puerto Rico Police Department, which both lost four officers, were the law enforcement agencies that reported the most deaths.

Meanwhile, one city saw its first ever police death in the line of duty. In Bismarck, N.D. — a city of 60,000 residents and about 100 sworn officers — 32-year police veteran Sgt. Steven Kenner was fatally shot. Kenner had been responding to a domestic disturbance call.

The number of firearms-related fatalities, which have risen 70 percent since 2008, was particularly alarming to analysts. Of the 68 deaths, 14 took place while the officer was attempting an arrest, nine occurred during a domestic disturbance call and five were ambushes, according to the data.

One of the victims, Rainier, Ore., Police Chief Ralph Painter, was shot once in the head during a Jan. 5 struggle with a suspect who was accused of taking Painter's pistol from his belt. Glendale, Ariz., Officer Brad Jones was shot in August after a fight with a suspect being sought by a probation officer. And the two officers in South Dakota, James McCandless and Nick Armstrong, were killed in August after conducting what Rapid City authorities have said was a routine traffic stop.

The glimmer of good news in the report was the falling number of traffic-related fatalities involving law enforcement officers, the lowest since 2005. Floyd said revamped policies adopted by some departments on police chases and a revived focus on road safety helped bring down the number of those deaths.

"It's perhaps the most preventable death for law enforcement," he said. "Better training and better awareness of the dangers of traffic safety will help to spare more police lives as we move forward."

Mexico: police kill two Guerrero students at protest

Guerrero, Mexico

Two Mexican students were killed by police gunfire around noon on Dec. 12 as police agents and soldiers attempted to disperse protesters blocking the Mexico City-Acapulco highway near Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero. The victims, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College in the nearby village of Ayotzinapa, and they had joined about 500 other students and their indigenous supporters to demonstrate for improvements at the school.

Some 300 security agents were sent to remove the protesters, who were blocking a well-traveled highway on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a popular holiday for Mexican Catholics. The agents—including state troopers, members of the state Attorney General's Office, federal police and some soldiers from the Mexican army—used tear gas on the protesters, who responded by throwing rocks and some molotov cocktails. The shooting began after one of the firebombs landed at a filling station near the protest and set a gas pump on fire. In addition to the two students killed, one other protester was hospitalized with serious injuries, and more than 20 were arrested. The buses that the students came in were hit in the shooting, along with a truck.

Gen. Ramón Arreola Ibarría, who headed the contingent of state troopers at the scene, denied that any agents were armed, and Guerrero attorney general Alberto López Rosas immediately charged that the students were responsible for the shooting. One student, Gerardo Torres Pérez, was arrested for allegedly firing an AK-47 automatic rifle.

By the end of the day more than 200 Mexican human rights organizations and other nonprofit groups had placed the blame on the security forces, which have a long record of abuses in Guerrero. The federal government's Public Security Secretariat (SSP) announced on Dec. 13 that according to its analysts at least some of the gunfire came from a state Attorney General's Office agent dressed as a civilian. Most of the detainees were released on Dec. 13. Gerardo Torres was freed in the evening; he said that after he had been arrested, federal agents and agents from the state Attorney General's Office beat him and took him to a vacant lot, where they forced him to fire an AK-47 five times.

Guerrero officials announced on Dec. 13 that Gov. Ángel Aguirre Rivero had removed Attorney General López, Public Security Secretary Ramón Almonte Borja and Gen. Arreola from office. (La Jornada, Mexico, Dec. 13, Dec. 14; AFP, Dec. 13 via Univision)

The students from the Ayotzinapa teachers' college had been demanding a meeting with Gov. Aguirre, who they said had failed to keep four appointments. They were seeking resumption of classes, which had been suspended since Nov. 2 because of a dispute, and an increase in the student body from 140 to 170 for the 2011-2012 school year. Mexico's 16 rural teachers' colleges, which were mostly established by the center-left government of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), have suffered from neglect and budget cuts. The problems at Ayotzinapa have been ongoing for decades, according to alumni who joined current students and other activists at a protest march in Chilpancingo on Dec. 16. The marchers insisted that they weren't satisfied with the dismissal of the attorney general and the public security secretary. "There's no one more guilty than Gov. Aguirre, who gave the order for the removal of the protesters," said Daniel Gómez Ruiz, a student leader at Ayotzinapa. (LJ, Dec. 13, Dec. 17)

Aguirre was elected governor last January as the candidate of a coalition that included the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the small leftist Workers Party (PT) and the social democratic Convergence party. Previously he had been a leader in the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which dominated Guerrero politics for decades, often through violent repression. Aguirre was interim governor from 1996 to 1999 as the handpicked successor of the PRI's Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, who was forced to leave office in the aftermath of a June 1995 massacre by state police of 17 unarmed members of the leftist South Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS) at Aguas Blancas near Acapulco.

Vegas police kill disabled veteran

Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas police say a patrol officer fired seven shots with a military-style AR-15 assault rifle into a car during a fatal standoff with an unarmed veteran.

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Police released a summary Friday of the events leading up to the shooting just before 1 a.m. Monday that killed 43-year-old Stanley Lavon Gibson at a northwest Las Vegas apartment complex. The shooting has led to calls for a federal investigation of police department practices.

One officer fired the fatal shots "almost immediately" after another officer fired a beanbag shotgun at the window of Gibson's vehicle.

Police say they wanted to break the window so another officer could use pepper spray to get Gibson out of the car, which was pinned with its tires spinning between patrol cruisers.

In a lengthy press release, the Las Vegas police department did not explicitly say the officers shooting was a mistake, and key questions remain unanswered.

Police did not say why an officer felt he needed to shoot into the vehicle, who devised the plan or whether officers knew that Gibson was lost, confused and unarmed. The department's statement said that, Jesus Arevalo -- the officer who shot the rounds -- and another officer have not spoken to department homicide investigators and that "many facts are yet to be discovered."

Gibson was shot in the back of the head and died at the scene.

County police kill driver who rammed patrol car

December 3, 2011

Miami-Dade police on Saturday shot and killed a man who fled the scene of an accident, then intentionally reversed and crashed his truck into an occupied patrol car.

The man was driving a Toyota Tundra that collided with a Kia Optima at Northwest 37th Avenue and 17th Street around 4 p.m., police said. The Tundra driver drove away from the scene, and was pulled over by an officer after running a stop sign. The driver of the Kia then told the officer the driver of the Tundra hit him, and the driver of the Tundra sped off, police said. A chase ensued. At 36th Street and 27th Avenue, the Tundra reversed into the pursuing police car, totaling it, although the officer who was driving was unhurt.

The chase culminated at Northwest 47th Street and 32nd Avenue. Witnesses said they heard screeching tires and saw a police car bump the Tundra off the road, spinning it around, and a second squad police car hitting it as well. Several other police cars swarmed and blocked the Tundra in.

“I was standing about six feet away, and I heard a big crash,” said Horace Washington, 59, who lives on 47th Street. “At least 10 cops. Five seconds after the crash they all had guns drawn.”

Washington said the cops quickly formed a half ring around the back of the truck, but one officer, the one who originally bumped the Tundra, stepped forward.

“He didn’t tell him to get up, didn’t tell him to put his hands up or nothing.”

Washington said the officer stepped up to the drivers side window of the car and fired five or six shots in quick succession into the vehicle, from two feet away.

“He didn’t say get out or anything he just started shooting,” said Willette Washington, 64, who was on her porch when the shooting happened.

After the incident police blocked off the surrounding area. According to them, there was no indication the suspect had a gun.

“I’m not aware of a gun,” county police spokesman Detective Roy Rutland said. “The only weapon I’m aware of is a 4,000-pound vehicle.”