Excessive Force

The Township Committee last night unanimously rejected a recommendation to fire Sgt. Dale Baranoski on charges he improperly kicked a motorist during an arrest. Instead, the committee suspended him, beginning today, for 30 days without pay. The committee decided that Baranoski, a 12-year veteran of the department, used excessive force against motorist David Caceres during an arrest March 23. Two other complaints stemming from the incident - that Baranoski filed a false incident report and gave a false statement to an internal affairs officer - were dismissed by the committee.

The gestures came from David Meredith. The words came from an interpreter for the deaf. And yesterday, the verdict came from a federal jury in Camden, which found that a New Jersey state trooper now assigned to protect Gov. Kean used excessive force on Meredith four years ago. "I lost my balance. I turned around, lost my balance, landed on my knees. They beat me up," the interpreter said, relating Meredith's testimony to the jury last week. Meredith said, through her, that he had seen a fist coming toward him. "My eyes were closed," he said.

MANAMA, Bahrain - With Bahrain's king watching, the chief investigator asked to investigate his government's crackdown gave a blow-by-blow reckoning Wednesday of torture, excessive force, and fast-track justice in attempts to crush the largest Arab Spring uprising in the Gulf. Investigator Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni also said there was no evidence of Iranian links to Bahrain's Shiite-led protests. That was a clear rebuke to Gulf leaders, who accuse Tehran of playing a role in the 10-month-old showdown in the Western-allied kingdom.

A relative of a Virginia man injured in a scuffle with two state troopers Thursday charged yesterday that the officers used excessive force in making the arrest. The man, Raymondo N. Harris, 29, was arraigned yesterday on charges of assault, resisting arrest, drug possession, driving while intoxicated and obstructing justice. He appeared in court with his wrists shackled to the armrests of a wheelchair. A scar on his left temple had been sewn shut with 30 stitches. His half-brother, Leonardo Knight, said that a catheter had been inserted into Harris' bladder because he is unable to pass urine.

It has been six days since the city police were videotaped in broad daylight kicking and beating carjacking suspect Thomas Jones at 26th and Oxford Streets in North Philadelphia. Three units of the Police Department, the District Attorney's Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice have begun their separate investigations. While the national and world publicity for Philadelphia has been mostly bad, calm prevails in the town itself. In the confrontation with police last Wednesday, Jones, who is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs well over 200 pounds, allegedly shot at police, stole a patrol car and attempted to escape capture twice.

In a rare ruling favoring prisoners, the Supreme Court yesterday concluded, 7-2, that the use of excessive force against an inmate may be unconstitutional even though it does not cause serious injury. The majority opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, suggested that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment could apply to relatively minor beatings by guards as well as prison abuses that leave no telltale marks, such as hanging inmates by their thumbs, choking them or exposing them to extreme heat or cold.

It's been more than 15 years since a Philadelphia police officer was successfully prosecuted in federal court for civil rights violations, and now a new case is in the works. Louis Lazarde, 31, a five-year veteran of the force before he was fired two years ago, was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury here for using excessive force and falsely arresting two North Philadelphia residents outside a bar in 1989, and for lying at their trial. Neither Lazarde nor his attorney could be reached for comment.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. It's a cute little fire-prevention ad-campaign idea former heavyweight boxing champ Smokin' Joe Frazier has been tossing around recently with city fire officials. But these days, it could also describe Smokin' Joe's smoldering indignation over his treatment by police officers and damaging comments by Police Commissioner John Timoney surrounding Frazier's April 7 arrest on drunken driving charges. Frazier, 54, was found not guilty last month in Municipal Court.

Greg Campbell was a young man in Chester County who was still trying to find his way in life, still living at home with his parents on the outskirts of Kennett Square. The worst trouble he ever had was house arrest related to smoking pot. Then, on Aug. 21 last year, Campbell, 22, found himself being chased by police in Philadelphia's Port Richmond neighborhood. While driving a friend's car, he allegedly hit three vehicles and refused to stop until he crashed into an iron fence, allegedly pinning an officer.

The bitter and long-running dispute over whether a police beating contributed to Moises DeJesus' death almost two years ago is now in federal court. Lawyers representing DeJesus' mother and his seven children yesterday sued the city and nine Philadelphia police officers for an unspecified sum. The suit alleges that police used excessive force to subdue an obviously ill DeJesus, who was in the throes of a cocaine overdose. The suit also contends that police intentionally gave DeJesus a rough ride to the hospital, a practice that is allegedly known in the department as a "nickel ride," and is "deliberately designed to cause physical and emotional injuries.

Three Bucks County sheriff's deputies were fired Tuesday, and face charges of lying to grand jury that is also investigating a fourth deputy, sources said today. County Sheriff Edward "Duke" Donnelly declined to comment on personnel matters. The fired deputies are Dave Prudish, James McAndrews and William Kline, a source said. They testified in a state grand jury probe of Deputy Gary Browndorf. The investigation led to Browndorf being charged with using excessive force while making an arrest.

The mother of a man shot to death by police last February at the end of a stolen-car chase in North Philadelphia filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Thursday against six city police officers. The Common Pleas Court lawsuit by Carolyn Moses, mother of Jamil Moses, was announced at the Center City law offices of Paul J. Hetznecker. Hetznecker called for an independent probe of the Feb. 8, 2011, encounter in which Moses, 24, was shot to death after police boxed in the car in which he was a passenger at 23d Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

LONDON - British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Bahrain's king Monday to quickly implement changes recommended in a scathing report into human-rights abuses during the Arab nation's uprising. A special commission, authorized by Bahrain's Sunni rulers, last month outlined the harsh treatment of antigovernment protesters as state security forces tried to put down the largest of the uprisings to hit the Persian Gulf. Its 500-page report documented the use of torture, excessive force, and fast-track trials by the government.

MANAMA, Bahrain - With Bahrain's king watching, the chief investigator asked to investigate his government's crackdown gave a blow-by-blow reckoning Wednesday of torture, excessive force, and fast-track justice in attempts to crush the largest Arab Spring uprising in the Gulf. Investigator Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni also said there was no evidence of Iranian links to Bahrain's Shiite-led protests. That was a clear rebuke to Gulf leaders, who accuse Tehran of playing a role in the 10-month-old showdown in the Western-allied kingdom.

CAIRO - A former high-ranking security official testified Thursday that forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak were ordered to use excessive force to crush protests in the early days of a revolution that would later topple the president. The police general's testimony said the order came from then-Interior Minister Habib Adli, an accusation that suggests the highest levels of the Mubarak government plotted the crackdown that killed more than 800 people between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11. It was unclear whether Adli called for firing live ammunition.

The city will pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed in the death of a man shot by police responding to New Year's Eve gunfire. Bryan Jones, 20, was picking up his teenage nephew from a friend's house when gunfire erupted nearby. The pair were trying to escape down a rear alley when Jones was shot. Officer Steven Szczepkowski said he fired after seeing one person with a gun and a second, Jones, reaching for his waistband. The family sued the city. A federal judge refused to throw out the lawsuit, ruling in February that a jury could find that the officer used excessive force and acted with willful misconduct.

LOS ANGELES - The New Orleans Police Department has engaged in a wide-ranging pattern of misconduct including the excessive use of force and unconstitutional arrests, the Justice Department announced Thursday. In a lacerating report that followed an investigation requested by local officials, the Justice Department found the department had failed to adequately protect the city. There have been complaints about the department for years, but the difficulties reached a crescendo when unarmed people were shot amid the tumult of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Albert Lane III was off his medication. Suffering from a mental illness, he didn't answer when his brother called his name. He lay on his bed, holding a knife. "He was just staring at the wall," said his brother, Derrick, 35. "He wasn't acting threateningly. " At some point Tuesday, their mother, Cheri, called Camden police because her son had been "acting threateningly with a weapon," the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. Albert Lane, 33, was fatally shot at least eight times in his home Tuesday as he approached police in a threatening manner with the knife, authorities said.

A LITTLE girl, in pink from head to toe, got a free ride on her daddy's lap as a nurse pushed his wheelchair into the lobby of a Camden hospital one recent, rainy night. James Black's kids have learned to cope with their father being in the hospital for the last three weeks. They found the bright side to his wheelchair and no longer cry or gawk at his bite and scratch marks on his body or his severely swollen head, the deep scar on his scalp and the helmet he has to wear to protect it. But Black, 39, is afraid that his 3-year-old daughter, 6-year-old son, and his wife, Michelle, will never forget, and never fully cope with what happened to him during an altercation with a Lindenwold police officer and his K-9 German shepherd on Oct. 7. "I feel like I'm being punished," said Black, his leg and hands trembling as his kids played on the carpet in a waiting room at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center.

One mild summer evening, Emil Van-Otoo was standing on the front porch of his uncle's house in West Philadelphia, waiting for the man to answer the door, when a police cruiser pulled up. The two patrol officers were conducting a routine traffic stop, their target a 24-year-old male neighbor who had apparently blown past a stop sign. But over the next few minutes, Van-Otoo would become their primary focus, going from bystander to central player in what he contends was an act of police brutality.