|
|
|
| NEWS > 29 June 2007 |
Other related articles:
UK: Lying police officer caught punching off-duty soldier eight times on CCTV faces jail
A police officer is facing jail after assaulting an off-duty soldier as he arrested him and then lying under oath to cover up his actions.
Special Constable Peter Lightfoot, 40, was captured on CCTV striking Mark Aspinall's head on the ground, rubbing his face in the tarmac and hitting him with his police helmet as he was restrained during an arrest.
He claimed that Mr Aspinall, 24, who was then a Lance Corporal with the Royal Mechanical engineers, had been struggling violently as he and two other officers tried to arrest him after he was ejected from a nightclub for being drunk.
<... Read more
|
 Article sourced from
|
|
TVNZ - New Zealand
29 June 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
|
|
Brazil: Slum dwellers slam pol
Residents of a besieged Rio de Janeiro slum have accused Brazilian police of indiscriminately killing innocent youths during an assault against drug traffickers holed up in its maze of streets.
Security forces and gangsters battled for five hours with guns, grenades and armoured cars in the Alemao favela on Wednesday in the biggest and bloodiest offensive against traffickers in the crime-swept city this year.
Police killed 13 people and six bystanders were wounded. Six more corpses were found in an abandoned car overnight.
Authorities said the dead were all traffickers. Witnesses saw blood-soaked corpses of young men dressed in typical favela attire of shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops lying in alleys.
Residents told human rights workers several of the victims were innocent bystanders and the police had also looted shops and houses. Among the dead were three youths under 16 years of age, including a handicapped child, they said.
"We believe the residents and we are going to take legal measures against the authorities," Joao Tancredo, president of the Rio lawyers' association human rights section, told reporters when he visited Alemao on Thursday.
"At most eight of the dead were involved in trafficking. The others were innocent. Police did intelligence work, investigating arms caches and drug selling points, and afterwards there was a massacre. That's what happened."
Authorities insist their actions were justified. At a meeting later on Thursday with rights groups, the state security chief promised to investigate the claims.
Many favelas are controlled by drug gangs who sell cocaine and marijuana to Rio residents - often using teenagers as look-outs, sellers and even gunmen.
About 1,350 police and troopers from a special security force took part in the Alemao raid on Wednesday.
On Thursday, scattered gunfire crackled in the favela and security forces searched people and vehicles at its entrances. Schools remained closed but many shops had reopened.
The violence also stoked concerns about public safety during the Pan American Games starting on July 13, which will bring 5,500 athletes and about 800,000 tourists to the city.
Rio is also a venue for the global Live Earth concerts on July 7. Officials hope the events will showcase the oceanside city's fabled charms instead of exposing its rampant crime.
The state government played down links between the operation and the Pan American Games.
But Luiciana Garcia, a co-ordinator with the Global Justice rights group, said: "We've seen police violence intensify a lot in poor communities in the run-up to the Games."
Police have surrounded Alemao, home to 100,000 people, since May 2 and before Wednesday's assault about 30 people had been killed in sporadic shootings.
Activists said police actions only fuelled the bloodshed.
"A radical policy change is needed or the situation will get totally out of control," said Paulo Mesquita of the Human Rights Watch group. "They say they are worried about Rio's image but this massacre is what really affects the image."
Rio has one of the world's highest murder rates. At least 1,800 people were killed in the first four months of 2007 in the city of 11 million people.
A warden at a children's recreation centre, shut after no one showed up on Thursday morning, said living in the Alemao favela was almost unbearable. "Everybody wants to move out of here. I want to go back to my home town," he said.
|
| |
 EiP Comments:
|
|---|
|
| |
* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
 |
Ethics in Policing, based in the UK, provide information and advice about the following:
Policing Research | Police News articles | Police Corruption | International Policing | Police Web Sites | Police Forum | Policing Ethics | Police Journals | Police Publications |
|
| |
|
