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| NEWS > 06 September 2007 |
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Civil rights organizations cal
Local and state leaders of the NAACP, the Hispanic Organization for Progress and Education, and the Missionary Baptist State Convention of Tennessee called for an end to alleged “police brutality and misconduct” in Rutherford County Monday morning.
From the steps of the Murfreesboro City Hall, Gloria J. Sweet-Love, President of the Tennessee Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the time for unprofessional conduct in Rutherford County law enforcement is over.
“We have waited on the scales of justice to tip equally for far too long,” she... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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International Herald Tribune -
06 September 2007
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Mount Kisco Police Department,
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New York officer charged in de
WHITE PLAINS, New York: A suburban police officer was charged with manslaughter Thursday after a drunken, homeless Guatemalan immigrant was found dying four miles (6.4 kilometers) from where the officer had answered the man's emergency call less than an hour earlier.
The indictment did not specify what actions by Mount Kisco Officer George Bubaris are alleged to have caused the death of Rene Perez, who was found unconscious on a road in neighboring Bedford the night of April 28.
Westchester County prosecutor Janet DiFiore said only that Bubaris "restrained Rene Perez and exposed him to a risk of serious physical injury and recklessly caused his death." Perez had internal injuries, the medical examiner said.
The officer's attorney, Edward Hayes, questioned how prosecutors could show the officer caused Perez's death, arguing that Perez was a longtime alcoholic who slept outdoors and was frequently sick.
Bubaris, 30, pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter, unlawful imprisonment and official misconduct, and the judge gave him a day to raise$100,000 (€73,158) bail.
Federal authorities are also investigating the case.
Perez, 42, was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had a long record of being drunk, getting arrested and making emergency calls. The night of April 28, he called police from a Mount Kisco coin laundry, complaining of stomach pain.
Bubaris and two other officers went to the laundry, but Bubaris called in that no further action was necessary, according to police records. Forty minutes later, Perez was found four miles (6.4 kilometers) away and unconscious. He died shortly afterward at a hospital.
Earlier that day, Perez had been taken by Bedford police officers to Mount Kisco, where he usually spent the night. Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America, alleged that officers in Mount Kisco and in Bedford routinely "dumped" vagrants, including immigrants, across each other's borders.The case involved bias, he said, and U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia has opened a federal investigation.
Garcia said Thursday that after the state's prosecution of Bubaris, the evidence would be reviewed "to determine whether a federal civil rights case is warranted."
Perez left a wife and daughter in Guatemala.
Hayes called the indictment "political" and said the lack of a first-degree manslaughter or murder charge showed the weakness of the prosecution's evidence. "They'll never get him for manslaughter," he said outside court.
Prosecutor Michael Hughes said in court that Bubaris' suspected crimes were "troubling and disturbing because they occurred while he was a police officer on duty."
The manslaughter count is punishable by as many as 15 years in prison. Bubaris and the two other officers who responded to Perez's call remain on modified duty.
Mateo applauded the indictment and called the case "one extreme example of the tension that many immigrants feel as they move into new communities across the state, communities that are not always welcoming to people of a different color or language."
The friction created by large influxes of immigrants in Westchester County has led to recent court cases alleging police bias against immigrant day laborers and voting rights violations against Hispanics. Several municipal officials have expressed frustration with the failure of the U.S. Congress to come up with a national policy on the rights of illegal immigrants.
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