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Here we go again with yet another senseless police murder of a helpless person, Tyre Nichols, who was mercilessly beaten to death at the hands of five rogue police officers of the Memphis, Tennessee Police Department on January 7, 2023.  According to Nichols' mother, Rowyaughn Wells, Tyre was two minutes away from his home when he was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation, which, when it was all said and done, resulted in the five officers inflicting a fatal beating on Tyre.  After the incident, Nichols reportedly "complained of having a shortness of breath" and was transported by ambulance to Memphis' St. Francis Hospital in critical condition.  He died three days later.  One of the attorneys for the family said "He was a human piñata for those police officers." and said that "It was unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for 3 minutes."  The family said they saw the police kick, pepper spray and use a stun gun on their son all while Nichols repeatedly asked, “What did I do?” 

On January 20, the Memphis Police Department announced that it fired the five police officers following an investigation into Nichols' death.  Reportedly, a grand jury indicted the five officers and each was charged with "second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravating kidnapping, resulting in bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping involving the possession of a weapon official misconduct through unauthorized exercise of power, official misconduct through failure to act when there is a duty imposed by law, and official oppression".  Reportedly, an independent autopsy, completed by a forensic pathologist hired by the family's attorneys, found that Nichols suffered from "extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating".  https://abcnews.go.com/US/tyre-nichols-timeline-investigation-death/story?id=96695791.  This is a movie we have seen far too many times already, and quite frankly, the people are tired of the reruns.  The question now is, what are we as a society going to do about this rampant ongoing problem —if anything?

The George Floyd saga should have resulted in serious police reforms, but it didn't.  And now we have yet another travesty that should have never happened, and wouldn't have happened, if we, as a country, actually had a government that was serious about fixing the problem —but we don't.  What we have is a government that actually exacerbates the problem in a lot of different ways.  For starters, the first thing that should happen is that the doctrine of qualified immunity for police should be eliminated.  Most people have heard of it, but most people don't realize that qualified immunity is not a law, it is a judicial doctrine conjured up by the Supreme Court that other courts choose to follow simply designed to help rogue police escape liability for their wrongful and disgusting actions.  It is a legal shield that allows a police officer to not be civilly (financially) liable if they violate someone’s civil rights.  Congress could end it, or change it, but it doesn't want to because it would step on the toes of the people in power who are interested in protecting rogue police —at all costs.  That is the plain and simple of it.  Police love the idea of qualified immunity because it basically gives them license to violate peoples’ rights in many different ways without much worry about any legal repercussions to them.  Believe it or not, the five officers who collectively murdered Tyre Nichols will have the doctrine of qualified immunity available to them in the inevitable lawsuit that is sure to come, and I would be very surprised if their lawyers don't utilize it as a legal defense —that should tell you something about how bad of a doctrine it is, and why it should be eliminated.  And to be quite honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a judge grants qualified immunity to those officers who murdered Tyre Nichols utilizing this ridiculous doctrine.  Judges are notorious for passing out qualified immunity to bad police officers during civil rights litigations as if they were giving candy to a baby.  They do it all the time.

Another thing that would be quite helpful in police reform would be to have a national database where all police departments would have to list the number of and the type of misconduct complaints that have been submitted against each officer in their respective departments.    Police departments, even during civil rights litigations, have their unsavory lawyers fight against efforts to have the misconduct records of the corrupt police disclosed.  While there are certainly a lot of honest and hard working police officers on all departments across the country, nevertheless, there are tons of bad apples in police departments all over the country that are being protected by their governmental employers —they don’t want the people to know they have dangerous police who may injure or kill you.  This must change.  Since police departments are allowed to have dangerous out of control rogue police who are hurting and killing innocent people, then the people —the taxpayers— should have a right to know who they are.  Just as there are laws that require that the identities of sexual predators and child molesters be made public to safeguard the people, so too should there be laws that require that the identities of corrupt and dangerous rogue police who have a history of injuring and killing innocent people be made public so people can safeguard themselves from these psychopath cops that have permeated the country with the blessings of their municipal employers and afforded protections by corrupt judges.  On May 20, 2021, I did an interview with Lakeshore Public Radio where I spoke about the need for the elimination of qualified immunity and the need for a national database identifying who the rogue police are in all of the police department in the country.  https://www.lakeshorepublicradio.org/local-news/2021-05-20/regionally-speaking-thursday-may-20-2021.

Another contributing aspect to the societal problem of out-of-control rogue police that is never discussed, but yet a significant factor as to why there are so many people getting hurt or murdered by police, is because of the infestation of judges in the state and federal courts who protect rogue police and basically give them a license to wreak havoc against the citizenry.  Police department officials, officers within the departments, and police unions, know that generally speaking, judges are friendly to police —let's call a spade a spade here and not sugarcoat it.  I myself was a victim of several police brutalities back in the day in Indiana, and I saw firsthand how judges went out of their way to protect rogue police.  I wrote about this corruption in my book Motion for Justice: I Rest My Case.  https://www.amazon.com/Motion-Justice-Rest-My-Case/dp/1662473427/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536738363&sr=8-3.  Based on my own personal experiences, I'm not at all surprised that rogue police are out there doing what they are doing to people such as what these animals just did to Tyre Nichols.  You see, police generally know that judges have their backs, and it emboldens them to know that they can pretty much do what they want, and they certainly do what they want —we saw that with George Floyd and with many before and after him, and now with Tyre Nichols.

As we speak there is a serious issue of case fixing and cover up going on at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago that the Administrative Office of the United States Courts is trying to cover up with the blessing of the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, in order to protect rogue police and in order to protect a federal court of appeals judge who had an appellate decision fixed to protect rogue police.  After Judge Richard A. Posner retired from the Seventh Circuit after nearly 36 years on that court, because of his disenchantment with the other judges at the Seventh Circuit, he decided to come clean and disclosed to me that a judge, Michael S. Kanne, persuaded him to fix a decision of an appeal I had against the Valparaiso, Indiana police —Kanne was not on the panel, but Judge Posner was.  Judge Posner disclosed to me after he hired me to work as his executive director of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se's that he allowed himself to be pressured by Kanne into throwing the decision in favor of the police.  When I submitted a judicial-misconduct complaint against Kanne, the chief judge, Diane S. Sykes, and her confederates, dismissed the complaint without issuing a ruling on the merits, even though Kanne did not submit an on the record denial of having the decision fixed, and even without interviewing Judge Posner.  I filed a petition for review to the Judicial Conference of the United States in Washington, D.C., and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts refuses to provide a status of the petition and have done nothing other than sweep it under the rug.  I reported the case fixing and cover up to Chief Justice John Roberts and he has chosen to look the other way.  Attorney General Merrick Garland has chosen to turn a blind eye to the case fixing and cover up as well.

The decision that was fixed by Kanne, as disclosed to me by Judge Posner, and covered up by the Seventh Circuit and the judicial minions above, centered around the shenanigans that were done by the trial judge, James T. Moody, at the civil rights trial when Moody refused to let me show the jury an order by a state court judge, Mary R. Harper, who had ruled that the Valparaiso police did not have probable cause to stop, detain, and arrest me.  Moody also wouldn’t allow me to play the tape recording of one of the false arrests to the jury where the Valparaiso police were laughing and one cop even said “I’m goin’ to get the son-of-a-bitch. F--- him.”  Had Moody allowed the jury to hear the tape recording, the jury would have right then and there known what was going on.  But Moody didn't want the jury to know, and the Seventh Circuit ruled that while I “correctly” stated the tape recording was included in the pretrial order and that the Valparaiso police failed to object to its inclusion as required by the rules, that nevertheless “even if the tape was improperly excluded” that it was “harmless error”.    Moody also disallowed me to show the jury the evidence of many corrupt activities of the officers of the Valparaiso Police Department including evidence of many police brutalities against citizens —and that also was perfectly fine with the Seventh Circuit.  And Moody refused to let me put a former Valparaiso police officer, Jon Cooros, on the witness stand who had direct inside knowledge and information about what was taking place by the Valparaiso officers who were scheming to arrest me, take my freedom from me, and who had brutalized me, but Moody wouldn't let this officer testify which corruptly prevented the jury from knowing about all of these police perversions.  Moody's refusal to allow me to put this officer on the stand was so outrageous that the Seventh Circuit miscreants were afraid to even mention it in their corrupt decision, even though it was one of the most important aspects of the appeal.  This is the type of judicial nefariousness that emboldens rogue police to do what they are doing to people such as what was done to George Floyd, and the many before and after him, and now Tyre Nichols, the police know they can count on these types of misfit judges such as James T. Moody who might as well been sitting at the defendants' table with the rogue police and their lawyer at the trial, and the misfit judge of the Seventh Circuit, Michael S. Kanne, who had the appellate decision fixed according to Judge Richard A. Posner —and swept under the rug by the chief judge of the Seventh Circuit, Diane S. Sykes, and her compadres, and likewise swept under the rug by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The judicial hierarchy doesn't want the public to know about how it protects police corruption.  This will all be exposed in my upcoming book Rogues in Black Robes which will be launched in March.  The public will then know the truth about how corrupt the judiciary is and how far it will go to protect dirty cops.  When judges ride shotgun with rogue police, we as a country are in big trouble, and make no mistake about it, the judges are riding shotgun with rogue police, and we as a country are in big trouble.