War on Drugs

Dashcam video shows police sexually assaulted Texas woman, lawyer says

  • August 17, 2017
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The attorney for a black woman subjected to an invasive and lengthy roadside strip search by Texas police has released a dashcam video of the incident that he says shows her treatment was a form of rape. “When you stick your fingers in somebody without their effective consent, that’s rape in any state that I know of,” said Sam Cammack, an attorney for Charnesia Corley. Cammack made the video public after two Harris County deputies, Ronaldine Pierre and William Strong, were cleared of official oppression by a grand jury earlier this month. They are still with the sheriff’s department. Cammack…

Chris Hedges | The Origins of Our Police State

Elizabeth, New Jersey – JaQuan LaPierre, 22, was riding a bicycle down a sidewalk Sept. 5 when he noticed a squad car pulling up beside him. It was 8:30 on a hot Thursday night at the intersection of Bond Street and Jackson Avenue here in Elizabeth, N.J. LaPierre had 10 glass vials of crack cocaine—probably what the cops were hoping to find—and he hastily swallowed them. He halted and faced the two officers who emerged from the cruiser. “We are tired of you niggers,” he remembers one of the officers saying. “We’re tired of all this shooting and robberies and…

Chilling Tale in Duterte’s Drug War: Father and Son Killed in Police Custody

  • August 20, 2016
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MANILA — Even amid the slaughter of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, the killings of Renato and Jaypee Bertes stand out. The Bertes men, father and son, shared a tiny, concrete room with six other people in a metropolitan Manila slum, working odd jobs when they could find them. Both smoked shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine that has become a scourge in the Philippines. Sometimes Jaypee Bertes sold it in small amounts, relatives said. So it was unsurprising when the police raided their room last month. They were arrested and taken to a police station where, investigators say,…