Mihir Zaveri and Sandra E. Garcia

<h1>The mayor of Phoenix apologized Saturday after videos showed that police officers in the city who had been responding to a report of a shoplifting had drawn their weapons, shouted expletives and threatened to shoot a man in the face in front of his young children.</h1>

Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement that she was “sick” over what she had seen in the videos.

“It was completely inappropriate and clearly unprofessional,” she said. “There is no situation in which this behavior is ever close to acceptable. As a mother myself, seeing these children placed in such a terrifying situation is beyond upsetting.”

The episode has drawn widespread attention as police encounters with civilians have faced heightened scrutiny, which is increasingly augmented by videos captured by bystanders on cellphones or by officers’ body cameras.

Dravon Ames and Iesha Harper of Phoenix, the couple seen in the videos, said officers had violated their civil rights and engaged in brutality during the episode, according to a notice of claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — that their lawyer sent to the city.

The lawyer, Thomas Horne, a former Arizona state attorney general, said the officers’ actions had been “traumatic and utterly unjustified.”

A day before the mayor released her statement, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams posted a video to the Police Department’s Facebook page saying she had been “disturbed by the language and the actions of our officer.”

“I do want you to know that I expect our employees to maintain their professionalism and proper training at all times,” said Williams, who asked that the officers be taken off the street and placed on desk duty.

On Sunday, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, said in a tweet that the officers’ actions were “indefensible.”

“We want and expect law enforcement to protect and respect, not target and intimidate,” she said. “We need stronger, independent police oversight and bias training, to root out and prevent abuses.”

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the union that represents officers, did not respond to emails Sunday.

No charges were filed in connection with the episode, which started at a Family Dollar store. What preceded the events is in dispute. Neither side could even agree on when it had happened: The notice of claim said it had been May 29, and police said it had been May 27.

Two videos of the encounter show officers yelling. Shouting expletives, they tell Ames to get his hands up. An officer can be heard saying that he’s going to “put a cap” in Ames’ head. As Ames exits the vehicle, an officer presses him against the pavement and handcuffs him, then pushes him against a police vehicle.

The footage shows another officer pointing his firearm toward the car as the couple’s 4-year-old daughter exits the car from the back seat, followed by Harper, who is carrying her 1-year-old daughter in one arm. An officer yells at her to put the child on the ground and then grabs her arm.

The Police Department said on Facebook that the episode began after a store manager had alerted an officer to a possible shoplifting occurrence and had said that those being sought were getting into a car. The department said officers had found the couple’s car a mile from the store.

The department said Ames had admitted he had stolen a package of underwear that he had thrown out of the car window and had said he was also driving with a suspended license.

Horne disputed the police account and said officers had been alerted by an “anonymous alleged witness” that the couple had been shoplifting and had followed them to the apartment complex without their patrol car sirens on.

The notice of claim said the couple had not realized until they were back at their car that their 4-year-old daughter had walked out of the store with a doll.

The couple had been driving to their babysitter’s home when a police car pulled in behind them, according to the notice. Once the couple was in the parking lot, an officer had walked up to the driver’s side with a gun drawn, Horne wrote, adding that the officer then opened the door and began to shout at Ames.

A second officer pointed a gun at Harper, who had been sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side and who was “pregnant, which was obvious from her appearance,” Horne wrote.

The door to the car was malfunctioning and the couple could not get out of the car, the notice said. The officer walked around the car with his gun drawn and dragged Harper and her daughters out of the car by the neck, according to the notice.

The store did not press charges, Horne said. An employee at the store declined to comment Sunday, and said a manager was unavailable.

Horne said Ames had denied telling the police officers that he had stolen underwear.

The mayor said she was calling for a community meeting Tuesday in which the police chief was expected to answer questions from the public.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/us/phoenix-police-brutality-lawsuit.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Police video made her 'sick,' Phoenix mayor says in apology

Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement that she was “sick” over what she had seen in the videos.

In recent months, the problems at the jail, the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, have coalesced into a crisis that has resulted in lawsuits, an FBI investigation and charges against multiple corrections officers.

According to the announcement, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will begin sharing inspection reports more widely with local prosecutors and administrative judges. DeWine said he also planned to add to the staff of the department’s Bureau of Adult Detention.

“We have increased the number of people who work in our inspection department,” the governor said Saturday, referring to the detention bureau. “That section just did not have enough people in it when I took office,” added DeWine, a Republican who took office in January. “That is a bigger issue than just Cuyahoga jail.”

But DeWine wants to put a “spotlight” on the Cuyahoga corrections center. In his announcement, posted Friday, DeWine said he had directed the detention bureau to conduct inspections of the Cuyahoga County jail at least every 30 days. Ohio jails are inspected for “essential” state standards annually.

“While we do not have any power or authority to run the jail and we do not desire to run the jail, by keeping the spotlight on the jail with these frequent inspections, we are hopeful it will lead to a permanent change in the culture,” DeWine said Saturday.

Cuyahoga County officials could not be reached for comment.

The jail faced renewed scrutiny last week after Cuyahoga County released a jarring surveillance video to The Plain Dealer that showed two corrections officers repeatedly punching an inmate who was strapped to a chair. The Plain Dealer, which covers northeast Ohio, identified the officers as Timothy Dugan and Cpl. Nicholas Evans, and the inmate as Terrance Debose.

In the video, Debose is wheeled into a room with his arms strapped to his chair, a blanket over his lap and a covering over his mouth. Debose can be seen speaking to Evans.

Evans then leans over and begins swinging multiple times at Debose’s face. Dugan also walks over and punches Debose in the face.

The two men face charges including felonious assault, unlawful restraint and interfering with civil rights, according to the Ohio attorney general’s office. Court records show that both officers pleaded not guilty in April.

Brian Rothenberg, a spokesman for the United Auto Workers Region 2B, a labor union that represents corporals working in the jail, declined to comment on “pending legal matters.”

Adam Chaloupka, a lawyer for Dugan, said he expected to argue the case in court in July.

“The video is what it is: It is evidence,” Chaloupka, of the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said Saturday. “We can’t run from the video; it doesn’t mean there’s enough evidence,” he said, adding that the prosecution has to prove that the assault was a felonious assault, as opposed to a simple assault.

“They need to prove serious physical harm,” Chaloupka said, adding that Dugan has had a clean disciplinary record in the 19 years he has worked at the jail.

The problems in the jail have been long-standing, said David Malik, a civil rights lawyer for a former inmate of the jail who is suing Cuyahoga County.

“There have been effective policies in place, and prisoners and inmates have more or less been fairly well protected from harm,” Malik said. “The problem begins to change when new political administrations come in and policies that were enforced are no longer enforced,” he said.

DeWine said he considered the correctional officers’ behavior “unacceptable.”

“This goes back to training and discipline, and there should be no tolerance for that type of behavior,” DeWine said.

The developments continue months of troubling news about the Cuyahoga County jail. In October, a Cleveland Municipal Court judge said he would release people charged with low-level crimes instead of sending them to the jail to be held on bail, citing safety concerns.

“Six deaths means the jail is unsafe,” Judge Michael Nelson said at the time. “You shouldn’t die before we see you in court.”

A review of Cuyahoga County jail facilities conducted for the U.S. Marshals Service that was published in November raised questions about the deaths of several inmates and found that inmates were not getting enough food and were held in cells far exceeding capacity (a cell designed for two people, for example, held 12). Some federal detainees are held in the jail, the report said.

An inspection by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction released in February said the jail had failed to comply with 84 state standards. Inmates had been denied hygiene products, clean linens and visitation hours, according to the state’s report.

The state inspected the jail again this month and found it was still not compliant with 66 standards. A statement from DeWine’s office released Thursday said that “additional legal action may be taken should this jail fail to demonstrate significant improvements.”

“My purpose is to make sure that we stay right on this and that we keep the pressure on Cuyahoga County and keep the jail in better shape,” DeWine said.

David Dustin, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Cleveland office, confirmed Friday that the FBI was investigating possible civil rights violations at the jail, but he declined to provide further details, citing the continuing investigation.

Amid deaths and violations at jail in Cleveland, governor to increase oversight

Amid mounting accusations of civil rights violations and unsafe conditions at a jail in Cleveland where several inmates have died, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio announced plans last week to increase state oversight of local jails.

The circumstances of the killings — the bodies were found less than 1 mile apart, in a part of Sumner County about 50 miles northeast of Nashville — largely remained a mystery, and a motive remained unclear.

Authorities said the man, Michael Cummins, 25, was taken into custody Saturday night after a search that lasted hours. He was found in a creek bed and cornered by more than a dozen officers about 1 mile from one of the killing scenes, officials said.

They said Cummins was shot in the leg by one of the officers. They did not provide any further details about the encounter, or about what information led them to seek him in connection with the killings.

Cummins’ wound was not believed to be life-threatening, and he was taken to a hospital, where he remained as of Sunday afternoon.

Authorities said they knew Cummins was related to at least some of the victims. Their names had not been released as of Sunday night.

“It is up in the air as far as his relation to everybody,” said Ray Whitley, Sumner County district attorney general, on Sunday. “No way to know for sure.”

Scant details were offered about the killings themselves, even as the body count grew Sunday.

Authorities received the first report of a possible crime Saturday, and found four bodies at a home on Charles Brown Road near Westmoreland, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. Another person was found there with a critical injury and was taken to the hospital, officials said.

Police then found the body of a woman at a home on Luby Brown Road. And as investigators processed the first crime scene on Charles Brown Road on Sunday, they found two more bodies.

One of the seven people killed was a 12-year-old girl, Whitley said. The sexes of the remaining five were not publicly released. Officials said Sunday they were still trying to identify them.

“We think they all occurred yesterday,” Whitley said Sunday about the killings. “That’s what I think. The bodies haven’t even been moved yet, so everything is suggested.”

Referring to the woman found dead at Luby Brown Road, Whitley said that Cummins “went to her house and stole her car — before he did that, we assume he killed her.”

Whitley said officials had not recovered a weapon. “I think everybody assumed that it was shooting, but that might be a false assumption,” he said without elaborating.

He also said investigators had not yet interviewed Cummins, who was scheduled to undergo surgery before being formally charged.

He said Cummins had a criminal record, but it contained nothing of a violent nature. He declined to be more specific.

“We’ve never had this many deceased people in a criminal case before,” said Whitley, who has been district attorney general for 30 years. “It’s pretty shocking to everybody.”

Asked if officials expected to find more bodies, he said: “I hope not.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="4cd8f407-074f-3045-a84b-f409a075a70b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/tennessee-murders-michael-cummins.html">The New York Times</a>.

Man is in police custody after 7 people are discovered killed in rural Tennessee

Officials in Tennessee said they took a man into custody Saturday in connection with seven killings at two homes in a rural, wooded part of the state.

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Mihir Zaveri and Sandra E. Garcia

Articles written by the author

Police video made her 'sick,' Phoenix mayor says in apology

Amid deaths and violations at jail in Cleveland, governor to increase oversight

Man is in police custody after 7 people are discovered killed in rural Tennessee