Tag Archives: Police

Two French Police killed in attack claimed by Islamic State

Police vehicles at the scene where a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville

By Chine Labbé and Simon Carraud

PARIS/LES MUREAUX (Reuters) – A suspected Islamist attacker stabbed a French police commander to death outside his home and later killed his companion, a policewoman, in an attack claimed by Islamic State and denounced by the government as “an abject act of terrorism”.

The assailant, a 25-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was jailed in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan and had been under security service surveillance, including wiretaps, at the time of the attack, police sources said.

The attacker filmed part of the assault live on the social network Facebook, according to David Thomson, a journalist specialized in radical Islamists. In his Facebook message, he linked the attack to the Euro 2016 soccer tournament now under way in France, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”

The attacker, named by police and justice sources as Larossi Abballa, knifed the 42-year-old commander repeatedly in the stomach on Monday evening.

He then barricaded himself inside the house in Magnanville, a suburb some 60 km (40 miles) west of Paris, taking the man’s 36-year-old partner and their three-year-old son hostage.

Police commandos shot Abballa dead when they stormed the house after negotiations failed but they found the woman, a secretary at a police station in a nearby suburb, killed with a knife, a source close to the investigation said.

The boy was unharmed but in a state of shock.

“An abject act of terrorism was carried out yesterday in Magnanville,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency government meeting, before visiting Les Mureaux, where the police commander worked.

President Francois Hollande said the killings were “undeniably a terrorist act” and that the terrorist threat in France was very high.

Police searched Abballa’s home and other locations on Tuesday and detained two people close to him for questioning, a police source said.

The killings came as France, which has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State gunmen and bombers killed 130 people in Paris last November, was on high security alert for the Euro 2016, which began last Friday.

Police are under “extreme pressure” and “close to burn-out,” the head of FO labor union Jean-Claude Mailly told France 2 television.

ISLAMIC STATE

Islamic State claimed the attack. “God has enabled one of the caliphate’s soldiers in city of Les Mureaux near Paris to stab to death the deputy police chief and his wife,” an official broadcast on its Albayan Radio said.

If it is confirmed that the group was behind the killing, it would be the first militant strike on French soil since the multiple attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium in Paris in November.

Details started to emerge on the profile of the attacker. Abballa was born in the nearby town of Meulan and lived in Mantes-la-Jolie, where he had set up a fast food outlet in April, documents from the Versailles court showed.

He was given a three-year prison sentence in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan. His name appeared in a separate ongoing investigation into a man who went to Syria, but he was not considered a threat, a source close to the probe said.

“He wanted to do jihad (holy war), that was clear,” Marc Trevidic, a former anti-terrorism judge who was in charge of the 2013 investigation told Le Figaro newspaper. But he was seen as having a minor role in that case, he said.

Abballa had also been convicted three times on charges of aggravated theft and driving without a license, a source close to the investigation said.

“Many things are being analyzed,” a justice source said, including messages posted on social networks.

Thomson, an RFI radio journalist specialized in Islamic radicalism, wrote on his Twitter page that Abballa had filmed himself on Facebook live during the attack.

With the couple’s boy behind him he said: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him,” Thomson wrote.

Islamic State’s claim of responsibility came after the Islamist militant group said it was responsible for the shooting that killed 49 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Marc Joanny, Matthieu Rosemain, Richard Lough in Paris and Muhammad Yamany in Cairo; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Paul Taylor and Dominic Evans)

France hit by rail strike, demo by weary police

A police car burns during a demonstration against police violence and against French labour law reform in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – Strikes by French railway and port workers halved train services and prompted cancellation of ferry links to Britain on Wednesday as labor unions sought to force President Francois Hollande’s government into retreat on labor law reforms.

After weeks of protests in which hundreds of their number have been hurt, police held a rally of their own to vent frustration over the stresses of near daily clashes with violent youths on the fringes of the anti-reform movement.

As they did so, a crowd chanting “police everywhere, justice nowhere” surrounded a police patrol car, which went up in flames after the police officers inside fled the scene, a few hundred meters from where their colleagues were rallying.

The public prosecutor’s office said after the incident it was opening an inquiry into attempted homicide.

Wednesday’s rail strikes, set to run until Friday morning, reduced high-speed and inter-city services by 40 to 50 percent, also heavily disrupting local and suburban commuter lines, the SNCF state railway company said.

Strike turnout, the SNCF said, was about 15 percent, lower than in previous stoppages.

Brittany Ferries announced mass cancellations of connections between Britain and northern France, where port workers joined the industrial action.

Truckers maintained blockades set up on Tuesday in a bid to strangle deliveries in and out of fuel and food distribution depots.

At issue is one of Hollande’s flagship reforms a year from a presidential election – law changes designed to make it easier for employers to hire and fire staff and to opt out of cumbersome national rules in favor of in-house accords on pay.

Hollande says the change will encourage firms to recruit and combat an unemployment rate that has remained above 10 percent.

The 61-year-old leader has said he will not consider running for re-election if he fails to make inroads against joblessness. Critics say the reform will totally undermine the standards of protection enshrined for decades in national labor law.

“ANTI-COP HATRED”

The plan, which pollsters say is opposed by three in four French people, has provoked weeks of often violent protests.

It has also increased pressure on police who were already stretched by extra duties following last November’s deadly militant Islamist attacks on France and are also gearing up for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament that kicks off on June 10.

Condemning what it described as mounting “anti-cop hatred”, the Alliance police union called for Wednesday’s rally in the Place de la Republique, a central Paris square that has seen regular skirmishes in past weeks between riot police and youths hurling petrol bombs and paving stones.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot banned a counter-protest by a group that accuses the police of brutality.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the police and said 350 of them had been injured in standoffs that had produced 1,300 arrests in just two months.

Further strikes and protests are planned for the rest of the week in what labor unions, along with a youth protest movement called Nuit Debout or Night Rising, hope will prove a big enough show of force to make Hollande reconsider.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; Editing by Andrew Callus and Gareth Jones)

Netanyahu Vows to Control Violence Day before “Day of Rage” Attacks

Hours after a teenage Israeli boy was stabbed and in critical condition on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed parliament and angrily accused Israel’s Arab lawmakers for helping incite the weeks of violence.

In past meetings, lawmakers from the Joint (Arab) list have walked out when Netanyahu has stood at the podium. Netanyahu has called for an investigation of several members of the Joint (Arab) list, including MK Hanin Zoabi. Netanyahu claims that she, among others, supports Palestinian acts of terror against Israelis.

“She said to a Hamas magazine just two days ago that the actions of individuals isn’t enough and there needs to be a real intifada,” he went on. “This is unbelievable, honored colleagues. A member of Knesset in Israel calls for wholesale terror attacks against Israeli citizens, and there’s nothing more justified than opening a criminal investigation against her.”

Netanyahu called out to the Arab citizens of Israel, asking them to “kick out the extremists among you.”

While Netanyahu did take action in parliament, many are putting Israel’s Prime Minister under heavy criticism for failing to stop the violence. An opinion poll this week showed that 70% of the public is unhappy with his handling of the situation.

The escalation of violence in Israel began a month ago with a rumor that Israel planned on taking over the Temple Mount, a holy site to both Muslims and Jews. Since then, the violence has spread from the Temple Mount to the Old City, West Bank, and Gaza Strip.

Despite the increase in security, the random nature of the stabbings have made it difficult for Israeli police to stop the attacks. Many of the attackers have been teenagers who are not affiliated with militant groups. Seven Israelis have been killed in stabbings, a shooting, and a stoning attack, while 27 Palestinians have been killed. Out of the 25, 10 were attackers.

It doesn’t seem the violence will stop any time soon. Reports say that on Tuesday, a Palestinian man armed with knives and a gun killed at least three people and wounded others in a wave of attacks in Jerusalem. Palestinian groups declared Tuesday a “Day of Rage.” Within an hour, another Palestinian man stabbed and wounded four other people in Raanana according to Israeli police.

The increased stabbings has raised speculation that Palestinians may be attempting another uprising intifada, showing how the citizens are frustrated over their leadership’s failure of achieving statehood.

Police reported that Netanyahu has scheduled a meeting at 3:00 p.m. to discuss new operational plans.

California Governor Signs Bill to Tackle Racial Profiling Issue

The “Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015” was signed into law by California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday. The new law is a step toward combating the nationwide issue of racial bias in law enforcement.

The new law forces police and law enforcement to record demographic data from each stop and make the information public. The information they need to collect includes: time, date, location of the stop, search, seizure, the characteristics of each officer involved in the stop, a description of all persons detained during the stop, language barriers, and the perceived or voluntarily disclosed race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or religion of the person.

Members of Black Lives Matter and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) gathered for the signing of the bill, shouting “This is what democracy looks like,” “Justice, if we don’t get it, shut it down,” “Fight back,” and “Black lives matter,” according to Breitbart News.

Law enforcement officials condemned the act stating that it will add more documentation and paperwork, keeping them from being out in the community.

“It’s a terrible piece of legislation,” said Lt. Steve James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. and the national trustee for the California Fraternal Order of Police. “We have contact with the public all the time that requires no documentation, no paperwork,” he said. “Now, the amount of time we have to spend doing documentation and paperwork has gone up. The time doing menial tasks has gone up.”

Lt. James added: “There is no racial profiling. There just isn’t,” he said. “There is criminal profiling that exists.”

Lt. Craig Lally, president of the union that represents Los Angeles police officers, called the new law “another one of these feel-good laws” that will be impossible to enforce.

“Sometimes when people get pulled over they claim it’s because they are black, or Hispanic or white,” he said. “Unless you can get into the officer’s mind when he’s doing that traffic stop, there is no way to prove it was because of race — unless he or she admits it…. It is impossible to look at statistics and prove racism.”

Supporters of the bill celebrated the move by California legislation. Studies have shown in the past unarmed black men are more likely to die by police gunfire than unarmed white men.

Rosa Aqeel, the legislative director of PICO California, a faith-based advocacy group that lobbied heavily for the law’s passage, stated the new law would allow officials to quantify data in order to see if racial profiling is happening within law enforcement agencies.

“It creates a set of actual data that will allow us to see where racial profiling is happening,” Aqeel said, describing police officials who deny that racial profiling occurs as out of touch with reality.

“All I can say: Thank God this bill got signed and we’ll be able to look at the data and see what’s really going on,” she said. “We should all want to see the data so we can see how pervasive the problem is.”

“This will provide additional data,” Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies at Cal State L.A., said of the new law. “If I were law enforcement I’d think of it as an opportunity to demonstrate that I wasn’t racially profiling, that we have a fair and equitable system. The resistance to it signals to me and many others that there is a lot of racial profiling going on.”

The new racial profiling law was one of 13 criminal justice bills that the governor signed over the weekend. Other legislation now requires police officers who wear cameras to follow specific rules on the storage and usage of their videos so it is not mishandled. Another law now requires police agencies to issue annual detailed reports on all cases in which officers used force that results in death or serious injury of the perpetrator.

Shooting at Umpqua Community College, 13 Dead and over 20 Wounded

A shooter opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon Thursday morning killing 13 people and wounding more than 20.

The unidentified suspect was killed in a gunfight with Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies.

At about 10:38 AM, the 911 center received a report of a shooting at Umpqua Community College. Police immediately responded.

Governor Kate Brown said the shooter was “a 20-year-old male.” She expressed her “profound dismay and unimaginable heartbreak. Our top priority now is the medical treatment of the victims and the security of the campus.”

Umpqua is a two-year school with about 3,300 full-time students and 16,000 part-time students. It started offering classes in 1961.
In audio of the emergency call, a dispatcher is heard saying that at the college’s Snyder Hall: “Somebody is outside one of the doors shooting through the door. A female is inside the computer lab. We do have one female that has been shot at this time.”

Our prayers are with the families of the victims in this horrible tragedy.

Gunman Opens Fire at Ferguson Protest

A gunman hidden within a group of black protesters shot at St. Louis County police officers on Sunday night following a protest about the death of Michael Brown one year ago.

One of the protesters was shot by police after he fired “a remarkable amount of gunfire” using a stolen handgun according to St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar.  

“We cannot continue, we cannot talk about the good things that we have been talking about, if we are prevented from moving forward with this kind of violence,” he said.

Belmar insisted the people conducting the violence were not protesters.

“They were criminals; they weren’t protesters,” Chief Belmar said of the groups exchanging gunfire. “Protesters are the people out there talking about a way to effect change. We can’t afford to have this kind of violence, not only on a night like this, but any point in time if we’re going to move forward in the right direction.”

The gunfire began as Ferguson’s acting police chief, Andre Anderson, was speaking to reporters.  The gunman fired at police who pursued him following the initial volley of shots.

“The weekend’s events were peaceful and promoted a message of reconciliation and healing,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement. “But incidents of violence, such as we saw last night, are contrary to both that message, along with everything that all of us, including this group, have worked to achieve over the past year.”

Gunman Killed in Nashville Area Movie Theater

A gunman has been killed after opening fire inside a Nashville, Tennessee area movie theater.

A spokesman for the Nashville Metro P.D., Don Aaron, told reporters on the scene that man came to a showing of the movie “Mad Max” at the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in Antioch with a gun and a hatchet.  The gunman wounded one person with the hatchet and people stormed out of the theater.

A police officer entered the theater from the projection booth.  As the officer was clearing the theater, the gunman opened fire on the police officer.  The officer returned fire as he backed out of the room and held the gunman in place until a SWAT team arrived on the scene.

When the SWAT team arrived and engaged the shooter, he returned fire and then was shot dead by the police.

Aaron told the press conference that two backpacks were found at the scene that belonged to the shooter and the bomb squad was dealing with the bags.

The incident is the second theater shooting at a movie theatre in two weeks.  On July 23rd, a shooter killed 2 and wounded 8 before killing himself inside a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Police See Wheelchair Bound Man Trying To Mow Lawn; Take Over The Job

Three police officers in Kalamazoo, Michigan took a break from enforcing the law this week to mow the lawn.

And no one in the community is complaining about it.

Officer Joe Hutson discovered a man in a wheelchair trying to mow his lawn.  Officer Hutson radioed his partner, officer John Khillah, asking him to bring a second mower and weed trimmer and then took over the mowing job from the wheelchair bound man.

Officer Khillah brought the mower, trimmer and a leaf blower from the nearby Public Safety Station #2 along with Sgt. Ken Skibbe.  The three men then mowed, trimmed and took care of the lawn trimmings for the homeowner.

“We are showing people our officers are committed to a service-oriented style of policing,” Capt. Jim Mallery said in an interview with the Kalamazoo Gazette last month.

The KPD reported the man’s lawn was “manicured to perfection” on the department’s Facebook page.

Italian Police Seize $2 Billion From Mafia

Italian police announced a huge step forward in their fight against organized crime in their nation.

A police sting against the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, the crime syndicate which controls much of the cocaine trade across Europe, seized assets worth over 2 billion euros or over $2.2 billion American dollars.

“[This is] a serious blow to the ‘Ndrangheta,” Italy’s interior minister Angelino Alfrano told the BBC.

Police seized at least 1,500 betting parlors, 82 gambling websites, 45 Italian companies and 11 foreign companies under the mafia’s control.  Six of those companies were in Malta according to investigators.

“[The suspects] recycled an enormous amount of ‘dirty’ money through the use of gaming accounts assigned to willing or unwitting people,” a police statement read.  “They bypassed the laws governing this sector, accumulating significant profits that were then reinvested in the acquisition of new companies and licences to further expand their activities.”

It’s the second major seizure by police in the last two weeks.  Two weeks prior, they seized more than 1.6 billion euros in assets from five men suspected of links to the mafia.

Officer Buys Diapers, Shoes for Mom of 6 Caught Shoplifting

When Sarah Robinson of Kansas City, Kanasa was caught shoplifting at a Walmart store after running out of diapers for her 2-year-old daughter, she feared going to jail and the loss of her family.

“My heart just dropped. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was horrible. I thought I was going to jail,” said Robinson.

Instead, she ran into an angel wearing a badge.

Officer Mark Engravalle of the Roeland Park Police Department arrived at the Walmart after answering the shoplifting call.  As he spoke to Robinson, the officer noticed that some of her children were not wearing shoes.  It led him to ask about her situation rather than what she was doing inside the store.

“He noticed [what she stole] were necessities like diapers, shoes for the kids, some clothing,” John Demoss, Roeland Park public information officer, told ABC News. “He asked her what the situation was, and she broke down crying.”

Officer Engravalle had to do his job but instead of arresting and taking Robinson to the station, he gave her a citation for misdemeanor threat.  Then he walked back into the Walmart.  He bought diapers, baby wipes and clothes for the children.

“The officer had two children of his own, and he thought of his two kids,” Demoss said. “He thought it was the right thing to do.”

“He couldn’t have been nicer to my girls,” Robinson said. “And then I got a call the next day saying they wanted to help us further and help us get a place to live.”

Two local radio stations then stepped up to raise items for the family.  One station collected over $6,000 in items for the family.