A former police officer accused in the videotaped beating of a man in the French Quarter after Hurricane Katrina was acquitted Tuesday by a judge who heard the case without a jury.
"I didn't even find this a close call," said District Judge Frank Marullo. Tim Donaghy, is that really you?
Robert Evangelist, 37, had been charged with beating Robert Davis, 66, during an arrest videotaped by an Associated Press Television News crew the night of October 8, 2005, about six weeks after Katrina. Evangelist, who elected to have his case heard by Marullo without a jury, pleaded not guilty to second-degree battery and false imprisonment. Marullo acquitted him of both counts.
Marullo watched videotapes of the beating and its aftermath and he noted that Davis could be seen struggling on the tape for several minutes. What, he wiggled a finger or something? Heinous! The officers' lives were clearly in danger!
"This event could have ended at any time if the man had put his hands behind his back," the judge said. Hard to think of doing this kind of thing when you're getting your face broken, but who cares?
Evangelist and Lance Schilling were fired after being accused of the beating. Schilling killed himself June 10.
A third officer, Stuart Smith, was accused of a misdemeanor charge of simple battery against Associated Press producer Richard Matthews. Marullo threw out that charge because prosecutors improperly used a statement he made to police, said Smith's attorney, Eric Hessler. What, judge couldn't think of a lesser offense maybe?
Smith served a 120-day suspension and remains on the force.
The officers said Davis, who had returned to New Orleans to check his property, started a confrontation after they stopped him on suspicion of being drunk. Davis, who was booked with public intoxication but never charged, said he hadn't been drinking. So what if he did? He's obviously not physically violent. Irritating maybe, but not violent.
Davis testified Tuesday that he was headed to buy cigarettes in the French Quarter when he asked a police officer what time a curfew took effect that night. Before the officer could answer, a different officer cut him off, Davis said.
"Those were ignorant, unprofessional and rude officers," Davis recalled saying as he walked away from the policemen. He's probably right. I've met a few myself. They have more than their share of egomaniacs.
Moments later, an officer grabbed him from behind, threw him against a wall and punched his face, Davis testified. His assailant uttered a racial epithet during the attack, he said. I suppose the felony takedown for a 60+ year old unarmed nonviolent man is SOP in New Orleans?
"I don't remember very much after that point," Davis said.
Why the hell not? Other than having your face beaten in, I mean.
Franz Zibilich, one of Evangelist's attorneys, said his client "acted appropriately and well within police standards." If this is true, I worry for the future of this country. This is way over the top and beyond comprehension. The only people it might make sense to are judges, lawyers, and defendants with no judgement, reference points, or morals.
Might be a true statement given the Nawlins po-lice.
Dr. Frances Smith, who treated Davis at an emergency room, testified that he suffered facial fractures. Davis said he still feels lingering physical effects from the attack. So does the rest of the US, believe me.
This case has absolutely got to be appealed. I don't care if he was moving, he wasn't on the offensive, and the police could have ended it by simply putting the cuffs on the guy instead of beating his head into the sidewalk. They had absolute control of the situation and decided to criminally aggravate it instead of just cuffing the guy. One guy felt a need to vent and force the guy into total submission and the rest followed suit for some reason. There is a reason that one policeman tried to confiscate that tape. Why don't the police try to confiscate tape in a similar fashion when they are doing something truly heroic? I guess humanity and common sense weren't a part of their training. Or understanding. These guys should be weeded out before they even hit the academy.
This entire situation is a farce from the beginning to the verdict. It's guys like these that don't deserve to wear the blue uniform, and it's judges like these that don't deserve to wear the robe. That this could happen here in the US is mind boggling, and to have a US judge back it up is chilling. There is a problem here and I hope it is taken care of because if the police theoretically could go ape like this and provoke a situation anytime they want and have it stick. Why did they feel the need to slam him to the ground and beat him so hard that all he could do was try to cover himself? By then the guy was just running on instinct and trying to survive - a very natural reaction to a situation that should not exist. I despise societies where the legal system is corrupt and the police do this kind of thing. Now it's developing right here in our own back yard . . . .
#1
The judge is probably an ex-prosecutor. Robed ex-defenders are known to acquit guilty criminals. Justice should be blind to all but the facts. It isn't.
#2
Did you see the video?
The guy just kept fighting, you can't cure stooooopid.
After Katrina hit, I'd say the cops were just about as wound up as they could be, and for good reason.
Not the time to go screwing with them. I don't buy the story of the unprovoked attack for one second, he was more than likely being irrational and got his head busted for it.
#3
They also cleared a doctor down there for giving hot shots to 4 of her patients to put them down during the hurricane.
I think the plan is to acquit all the locals, combine all the charges and indict Bush...
#4
Yeah, I saw the video. Review it for yourself. Please take careful note of how Mr. Davis was doing nothing worth mentioning at first and the cops decided it was in the interest of public safety to bash his head against the wall about a dozen times. Strictly following police procedure the whole time, I'm sure. /sarc.
He didn't deserve to have his face punched in just because he is wiggling around a bit due to a "fight or flight" reaction that the police intentionally provoked by beating his head against a wall. There were four of them. If they could free up one hand long enough to pound on the guy's face they should have used it to cuff him. Everyone standing around was pretty much pi$$ed off at the police. Both black and white. The police were aggressive with the bystanders because they needed to be to keep them off the police who were being a$$holes. The guy on the horse was doing his best to shield the action from being captured by the camera. The police aggressively tried to confiscate the video of the event even to the point of beating the reporter with the camera. What odds would you give that it would still be around today had they succeeded? I didn't think so. One of the police involved committed suicide supposedly because of this. Mr. Davis was not aggressive or violent, just upset by unprofessional police behavior. He only got a bit resistant after they tried to beat the crap out of him because he didn't show them the proper "deference" so they thought they would teach him a lesson. And I don't give a flying fuc& what the circumstances are the police are there to serve and protect, not beat the crap out of some guy so they can "vent" their frustrations. Apparently it wasn't so bad for these guys or they wouldn't have had the extra energy to beat on the guy.
And I didn't know being obnoxious in response to being provoked was a punishable offence. I guess the judge got that wrong, too.
#4
I have heard some non nice things about Detroit products. Let's talk about the Ford Pinto and let's talk about General Motors whpo was sentenced to pay gazillions of dollars because in order to save ten bucks per car they had knowingly equipped their cars with a fuel tank who caught fire even in relatively minor traffic accidents. The GM people had calculated that teh savings would be larger thanthe sums GM would have to pay to the victims (They were wrong but that is not the point).
(CBS 11 News) DALLAS Several explosions and a large fire rocked an industrial company near downtown Dallas Wednesday morning.
The business, Southwest Industrial Gases, Inc., is a welding supply company. It went up in flames at about 9:30 a.m.
Dallas Fire officials tell CBS 11 the fire started when a truck in the back of the business caught fire. The flames then spread to the rest of the building.
Several tanks of material believed to be acetylene fuel could be seen exploding and throwing large pieces of shrapnel throughout the area. Acetylene is used in welding.
Joel Lebovitz, who was in the area when the first explosions happened, said, "An unbelievable amount of shrapnel was flying through the air."
Field investigator Jim Kerlin of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality noted acetylene fuel burns clearly, so its smoke is not more dangerous than smoke from other fires. However, he noted there may be some concern based on materials the fuel could set on fire.
The scene was located near the I-30 and I-35 interchange. Both highways and many other roads in the area were closed. Traffic was backed up for miles in several directions. You can find alternate routes in our Traffic Section.
Police were evacuating within a half-mile radius of the blasts.
As of 10:23 a.m., two people had been taken to the burn unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
By 10:30, the flames had consumed a large part of the business. Aerial video from Chopper 11 showed much of the building in charred ruins. Video from Chopper 11 also showed shrapnel and debris littering the area around the business, several parts of which were still in flames.
Stay with cbs11tv.com for the latest information as this story develops.
Posted by: BA ||
07/25/2007 12:49 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Keep in mind that in the Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen gas cylinders will replace gas tanks. In order to get the range up, the pressure and capacity will have to be much higher than that used in acetylene gas bottles.
#4
Keep in mind that in the Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen gas cylinders will replace gas tanks. In order to get the range up, the pressure and capacity will have to be much higher than that used in acetylene gas bottles.
Fortunately, industry standards will probably allow us to avoid current design restrictions for regular compressed gas cylinders. The existing industrial tanks have an exit orifice the diameter of a pencil. This means that in a catastrophic failure anywhere up to a few thousands pounds of pressure can end up venting through such a narrow constriction.
Facilities managers I've worked with often have spoke in hushed and awed tones about how gas cylinders that toppled and had their regulator mounts cracked off abruptly turn into high-pressure jet engines that proceed to fly through such mere obstructions as people, curtain walls, vehicles and so forth, often never to be found ever again.
New designs for vehicular hydrogen fuel tanks will most likely incorporate special safety release ports andnecessarilyincredibly strong composite materials in their construction. Thin wall high-strength alloys with vacuum barrier insulation and carbon-fiber cladding spring to mind.
A gas station in Dömitz, Germany got some publicity in the German tabloids this week after a woman strolled in to buy cigarettes. Now, that in itself is not newsworthy. What is, however, is that the blond, tattooed woman was buck-freaking-naked, save for a pair of gold stiletto heels and a bracelet. After casually going about her business inside the station's convenience store, she walked back out, climbed into the passenger seat of a waiting Ferrari F430, and drove off. The employee inside the shop was unfazed, telling reporters, "I wasn't surprised. She's come in naked before. She's a very nice woman." Her birthday-suit shopping trip was caught on camera by another customer at the filling station, and those pictures made it into the German tabs, where nudity is not an obstacle. This kind of stuff never happens around us when we run into the Mobil for a cup of coffee.
What can a person say about this faux Indian? Oh, yeah, the Justice of Roosting Chickens.
The University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to fire Ward Churchill on Tuesday evening, prompting the promise of a lawsuit from the embattled professor.
The Board of Regents passed a motion to accept the recommendation from CU President Hank Brown to fire Churchill from his position in the Ethnic Studies department. The measure passed with an 8 to 1 vote. The vote was made just after 5:30 p.m. and Cindy Carlisle was the dissenting vote. The move came after academic committees found in 2006 that Churchill was guilty of academic misconduct, including plagiarism.
#3
This ain't over yet. My bet is he still comes out with a large sum of tax payer funded money. Lefty's like their money, especially when it come from THE MAN!
#4
He's a faux Indian, alright, which is bad enough, but what do you say about the REAL Indians who continue to back him?
Churchill is a pantload of gigantic proportion, and the fact that it's taken this long to fire the dungheap is clearly an indictment of our state sponsored higher education system. I mean, what kind of idiot would want their child to take a class from this guy?
The sick thing is, while the rest of us go to work every day, he'll probably be laying around the house smoking dope and bedding all kinds of moonbat co-ed tail while living off the 12 months of severance. Twelve months of severance for lying, plagiarizing, and calling WTC victims little Adolf Eichmanns!
#6
Don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass, f***tard--we just had it polished.
Posted by: Dar ||
07/25/2007 10:44 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Raging Bullsh-t
We are re-running Ann Coulter's Feb 9, 2005 article in honor of Churchill's firing. --The Editors
My favorite part: Churchill has gone from claiming he is one-eighth Indian "on a good day" to claiming he is "three-sixteenths Cherokee," to claiming he is one-sixty-fourth Cherokee through a Revolutionary War era ancestor named Joshua Tyner. (At least he's not posing as a phony Indian math professor.) A recent investigation by The Denver Post revealed that Tyner's father was indeed married to a Cherokee. But that was only after Joshua's mother - and Churchill's relative - was scalped by Indians.
Read the rest to learn what a nasty piece of crap that is Ward Churchill.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2007 13:15 Comments ||
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Strictly *not* War on Terror, I know, but such a nice story!
Marge Simpson, a romantic at heart, would surely approve. The French pair who have dubbed Marge and Homer for 18 years fell in love while playing the Simpsons, America's longest-running and arguably best-known animated sitcom.
And the happily-married French couple who voice the purple-haired housewife with the pearls and her buffoonish beer-bellied mate again lend their voices to the French-language version. Valerie's gruff-voiced rendition was a hit. "I had to force it so much at first that sometimes I couldn't even speak." She never imagined at the time that her voice-over duo with then husband-to-be Philippe Peythieu as Homer, laid-back father of Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie, would last 400 episodes.
"It's fun, we have a good time, the series is still just as popular as it ever was," said Philippe.
An Islamic holiday camp in the Vosges mountains in eastern France has been shut down due to concerns children were being subjected to a punishing religious routine, officials said Tuesday. The camp, organised by a Turkish group from the city of Nancy, was ordered to close because of "overly present cultural practices," according to an administrative official in the town of Epinal. "We had information allowing us to believe that children were being physically threatened," said local youth and sports official Frederic Roussel.
The 96 children taking part have been sent home to their families, in line with a July 13 ruling by the local prefecture, confirmed on appeal on July 18. The Nancy Turkish Cultural Centre was denied authorisation to hold a second camp next month.
A probe was opened early this month after a child called the local police to complain of "physical constraints" at the camp, such as being forced to wake up at night to pray. The subsequent inquiry found the camp environment "excessively rigorous, verging on disciplinarian", focused on the "intensive and compulsory practice of Turkish religion and culture" and lacking in other educational or leisure activities, according to court documents. "These practices are an attempt on the physical integrity of the minors placed in care of the association," the court ruling said.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
07/25/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
Great !! This is progress. Thank goodness for you Sarkozy.
I'm your Uncle Ali, and I welcome you to Jihad Holiday Camp.
The camp with a difference; always mind the fatwa.
When you come to Jihad, terror is your dawa.
Hello mullah, hello muttawa
Here I am at, Camp Jihada
Camp is pious, Im just saying
And they say well have some fun once were done praying
I went hiking with Ali Balbeks
And his backpack was full of Semtex
You remember Hakeem Heyder
He got lashes for not eating all his dinner
All the Shiites hate the Sunnis
And they both think, the Kurds are loonies
The mullah wants no, Omar Khyams
So he reads to us from something called the Koran
Now I dont want, this should scare ya
But the imams are preaching terror
You remember Jibril Wazi
Now he wants to go and be a kamikaze
Take me home, oh Madaar Pedar
Take me home, I hate Jihada
Dont leave me out in, Sadr City
Where I might get blown to pieces, itty bitty
Take me home, I promise I will be holy
Thinking pure thoughts, only them solely
The imam forbids me to say
Ive been here one whole day
Dearest Pedar, darling Madaar
Hows my precious little baraadar?
Let me come home, if you miss me
I would even let Aunt Sophie hug and kiss me
Wait a minute, theyve stopped praying
Try this vest on, the mullahs saying
Seventy virgins, gee thats better
Madaar Pedar, kindly disregard this letter.
Maybe the White House should roll out "Old Blood and Guts" the next time it tries to explain why the U.S. is fighting in Iraq.
A video posted on YouTube features the well-known scene from the movie "Patton," with George C. Scott standing in front of an enormous American flag.
This time, however, the famous World War II general isn't urging his troops to defeat the Nazis on the eve of the Allied invasion of France this version features the voice of comedian Mike Kaminski delivering a Patton-like explanation of why the U.S. is fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, against Al Qaeda, and the danger posed by an Iran possessing nuclear weapons.
#3
In the age of smart bombs, some have forgotten: you win wars by killing in large numbers. Patton knew it:
"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with just sitting back and taking it! My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket!
War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours! Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!"
#5
Good timing > KOMMERSANT - besides telling/warning the Brits to "change thier minds" on the current diplomatic row, PUTIN also says the now junked CFE Treaty was not based in reality. Article > Putin reportedly claims US-Western antagonism agz Russia is proven by the fact that nearly all of post-Cold War eastern Europe has joined NATO. HOWEVER, Putin IMO subtleldy hints at Russia's right to expand its military influences-options in the post-Cold War post-CFE Baltics + East Europe [vv proposed GMD missle bases in Eastern Euro, etc.] due to many of these smaller Nations-States not "ratifying" the CFE either.
#1
Just detractors trying to prevent Barry from setting the record at home. Of course, it may have been some Code Pink folks trying to shut down Pelosi's mansion. They've just about had all they can handle.
#7
Downtown SF power is delvered by a single dedicated line coming up the penninsula. It serves no other market.
We had a similar blackout when I worked there in the late nineties, and there was no backup or fail safe line. Doesn't sound like they got around to getting one.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A former police officer accused in the videotaped beating of a man in the French Quarter after Hurricane Katrina was acquitted Tuesday by a judge who heard the case without a jury.
An Islamic holiday camp in the Vosges mountains in eastern France has been shut down due to concerns children were being subjected to a punishing religious routine, officials said Tuesday. The camp, organised by a Turkish group from the city of Nancy, was ordered to close because of "overly present cultural practices," according to an administrative official in the town of Epinal. "We had information allowing us to believe that children were being physically threatened," said local youth and sports official Frederic Roussel.
