April 2, 2014

feel safer yet ... pedestrian beaten up by police framed w/2 felonies.

http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/ronald-jones/

Officer Antkowiak begins the encounter by ordering Mr. Jones to the front of his police cruiser. Jones complies and places his hands on the hood. For no apparent reason, Antkowiak began to place Jones in handcuffs. When the officer aggressively wrenched Mr. Jones’ arms behind his back, he spun around, as if to try and understand the cause for the arrest.
Officer Antkowiak escalated the violence by slamming Jones backward onto the hood and placing him in a chokehold. The unhinged officer had placed a hand around his victim’s neck.
As the struggle continued, the pair tumbled off of the hood onto the concrete street. Soon after, more officers arrived and began to repeatedly kick the 62-year-old man.

snip

Officer Antkowiak’s report was filled with lies. He had claimed the encounter began when he witnessed Mr. Jones throw a beer can at his car. The video later showed that was not true.
Dallas Officer Matthew Antkowiak says he’s “not sorry for doing his job.”
The officer claimed that he had been choked and kicked by Mr. Jones. The video showed that it was Jones who was the recipient of the choking and kicking.

snip

Antkowiak exaggerated his story to the point of saying that Jones lifted him off the ground by his neck and made him dizzy.
Before the stop was over, cops conspired to shut off one of the dash-cameras. Conveniently, officers then produced a crack pipe from under a squad car and claimed it belonged to Mr. Jones. Police claimed Jones was intoxicated.
The officers’ version of the events was accepted as truth, and the dash-cam evidence was kept under wraps. Ronald Jones was charged with two felonies: aggravated assault of a public servant and cocaine possession. Jones sat in jail for 15 months as a trial loomed.

snip

Finally, Jones’ lawyer arranged for the release of the dashboard camera video. On the day which he was scheduled to go to trial in 2011, prosecutors finally dropped the charges. Evidently Jones had been allowed to sit in jail for over a year without the prosecution glancing at the primary piece of evidence. But what was the police department’s excuse?
Even though the entire arrest was a sham, the department backed its officers. Chief David Brown said they could find “no evidence of excessive force.”
Antkowiak resigned from the department in 2012 due to unrelated health issues, 3 years after the incident.
Finally, in March 2014, Ronald Jones’ lawsuit resulted in a $1.1 million settlement for his false imprisonment. Jones is now 66 years old.
“Am I angry about the way this all went down? Damn straight I am,” Antkowiak said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to back into a corner and say, ‘I’m sorry for doing my job.’”
Antkowiak is now the CEO of a private security company and helps to train police officers.

more at the link.

long story short: cop is dispatched to an area to look for 2 white men fighting. sees old black man, attacks him and lies about it
tries to disconnect the dash cam and his buddies show up and kick
this old black man and magically produce a crack pipe and state
that they found it on him. good thing his lawyer got that dashcam
video released. and the DA and cops never looked at the video
just took the nice police officers word for it.
and this jackass now helps TRAIN Dallas cops.