Woman calls police for noise, they kill her.

[Forever_frost]

http://www.startribune.com/source-witness-in-justine-damond-fatal-shooting-recorded-part-of-incident-is-cooperating/435912753/

Witness in Justine Damond shooting steps forward; source says part of encounter was filmed

A witness who was nearby when Justine Damond was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer has been located and is cooperating, according to state investigators.

The witness, who was seen bicycling east on W. 51st Street immediately before the shooting and who stopped and watched officers perform CPR “has been cooperative and provided an interview today,” according to a news release from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

A source with direct knowledge of the investigation said the witness filmed part of the encounter.

The agency asked anyone else who may have witnessed the Saturday night shooting to contact the BCA at 651-793-7000.

The BCA made a plea for the witness to come forward on Tuesday, after revealing preliminary evidence based on a four-hour interview with officer Matthew Harrity. Officer Mohamed Noor, who shot and killed Damond, still has not provided a statement to investigators, the BCA said.

“Officer Noor’s attorney has not provided any update about when, if ever, an interview would be possible,” the agency said. “Under the law, the BCA cannot compel the testimony of the officer.”

Noor’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Damond, 40, a spiritual healer from Australia, was shot by Noor after police responded at 11:30 p.m. to a 911 call she made about a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her southwest Minneapolis home.

Harrity told Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators they were driving south through the alley between Washburn and Xerxes avenues S. with the squad lights turned off. At the moment they reached the end of the alley toward 51st Street he heard a “loud sound” and that Damond approached the driver’s side window of the squad car “immediately afterward.” Noor, who was in the passenger seat, fired past Harrity through the open driver’s side window, striking Damond in the abdomen. She died 20 minutes later.

The BCA said forensic testing continues while evidence is being examined, while the agency continues to brief Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, whose office will make the decision on whether to charge Noor. The BCA noted that it is common for prosecutors to request follow-up information when reviewing a case.

No further updates are planned until the case is forwarded to the county attorney, the agency said.

Public data in the investigative file will be released when the case is closed.

[Sgt Beavis]

I don't believe the officer's 5th amendment right should be taken away but not cooperating with their internal affairs investigation should be grounds for immediate dismissal.

He should be charged with murder. Minnesota might actually do the right thing this time since the races of the killer and victim are reversed.

Yea, I said it. Minnesota is just as racist at Louisiana.

[svauto-erotic855]

King Jason seems aight, but even he refers to the common folk as " His citizens". I do not believe police see themselves as citizens.

I do not find that term offensive in anyway. If anything he is acknowledging his responsibility to the citizens in his area of assignment.

[fitzwell]

I don't believe the officer's 5th amendment right should be taken away but not cooperating with their internal affairs investigation should be grounds for immediate dismissal.

He should be charged with murder. Minnesota might actually do the right thing this time since the races of the killer and victim are reversed.

Yea, I said it. Minnesota is just as racist at Louisiana.

Yep. First thing the Somali did was lawyer up. Relations between the police union & the city are strained at best, & the Mayor of Minneapolis isn't helping things a bit. She's up for re-election, hence the firing of the current chief of police, ( that had no business in that position).

As far as the officer in question being charged, I wouldn't hold my breath. Minneapolis may be racist, but when the Mayor gives the "state of the city" address at a Mosque, the tables are turned in a most disconcerting way.

If the roles were reversed, White cop, Somali yoga instructor, BLM would be screaming for the officers head on a stick, & Mayor Hodges would be providing bottled water & porta-cans for the people burning down city hall. As things are, the local media is trying their very best to downplay this situation. The only people screaming are this victims relatives, and that is far from the lead story on the local news front.

I do my very best to stay out of Minneapolis......

[Big Dad]

http://www.keloland.com/news/article/news/in-minneapolis-fake-sign-warns-of-easily-startled-police

[GhostTX]

Mohamed Noor’s training was “fast tracked” so Minneapolis could “add diversity” to PD

Mohamed Noor is the Minneapolis police officer who recently shot and killed an innocent, unarmed, law abiding woman named Justine Damond, after Damond had called 911 to report that she had heard a possible sexual assault taking place near her home.

Officer Moor has not offered any explanation for his actions. He is not claiming self defense.

Instead, officer Noor is asking that his privacy be respected, as if somehow, it’s a violation of privacy for people to want to know why a police officer shot and killed an innocent, unarmed person.

Anyway, the Star Tribune is now reporting that officer Noor’s police training had been “fast tracked” so the city could “add diversity” to its police force.

I’ve got a better idea: instead of “fast tracking” and “diversity,” let’s have “high standards” and “excellence.”

The liberals who support affirmative action, and especially those who support affirmative action in the hiring of police officers, ought to rethink their support of this ridiculous policy.

“Excellence” should always take precedence over “diversity.”
...

https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/minneapolis-police-officer-mohamed-noors-training-was-fast-tracked-so-the-city-could-add-diversity-to-its-police-force/

[Forever_frost]

http://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-face-questions-about-noor-s-fast-track-training/436057173/

Fast-track training put officer Mohamed Noor on Minneapolis police force

The former police chief stood by the training of officer Mohamed Noor, who shot and killed Justine Damond. But not everyone is sold on the process.

By Jennifer Bjorhus Star Tribune JULY 23, 2017 — 9:24AM

, ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this May 2016 image provided by the city of Minneapolis, police officer Mohamed Noor poses for a photo at a community event welcoming him to the Minneapolis police force.

Minneapolis made a significant financial investment in Mohamed Noor.

The officer who fatally shot Justine Damond graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. The seven-month training is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement.

The Minneapolis program covers tuition at Hennepin Technical College and pays trainees a $20-an-hour salary with benefits while they work to get licensed. After that their salary bumps up.

More than a year into the job, Noor, 31, rose from a beat cop’s obscurity to international headlines after shooting Damond, a 40-year-old spiritual healer from Australia, after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault behind her southwest Minneapolis home. When she approached the driver’s side window of the squad car, Noor, who was in the passenger seat, fired across his partner in the driver’s seat, killing Damond.

Since then the MPD has been dogged by questions about Noor’s experience and training. On the night of the shooting, he was paired with officer Matthew Harrity, who had been a cop for about one year.

Some law enforcement professionals say the cadet program and others like it are exactly what policing needs — a way to attract more diverse people with broader life experiences. The average age of the more than two dozen aspiring officers in Noor’s cadet class was around 30. It included a former firefighter pushing age 50.

Justine Damond was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer.

STEPHEN GOVEL
Justine Damond was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer.
Before heading into law enforcement, Noor worked in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. He has a degree in business administration, management and economics from Augsburg College.

Former police chief Janeé Harteau, who resigned late Friday, stood by Noor’s training last week.

“We have a very robust training and hiring process,” Harteau told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. “This officer completed that training very well, just like every officer. He was very suited to be on the street.”

Not everyone is sold on the fast-track training. In Minnesota, the more traditional route to a job as a peace officer includes a two- or four-year degree in criminal justice or a related field. The state is unique in its educational requirement for officers, although Wisconsin has a similar requirement.

James Densley, who teaches criminal justice at Metropolitan State University, said he thinks too many cadet programs are “all tactics and no strategy,” overemphasizing assessing threats and conducting tactical protocols.

“The cadet program is rigorous, no doubt, but it is also an immersive paramilitary experience, taught by practitioner faculty without advanced degrees, and I suspect it leaves students with a limited view of the profession,” Densley said.

Critics of police training across the United States have called it long on command and control and short on instructing common sense approaches to slowing down confrontations and defusing hostile situations.

Nontraditional routes

The Minneapolis Police Department has struggled in recent years with a shrinking pool of applicants for job openings. A pension change that spurred a wave of retirements among peace officers statewide in 2014 dropped the Minneapolis police ranks to their lowest total in nearly 30 years, and the department was faced with hiring nearly 100 officers. It currently has about 872 sworn officers. This year the city of Minneapolis appropriated $1 million for training cadets, as well as a couple of dozen recruits with police backgrounds.

An MPD spokeswoman said the agency does not rely more heavily on its well-established cadet program for hiring. The program is simply “another pathway” to attract candidates. Some suburban police departments see the cadet programs as a way to add diversity to their police forces.

Kellie McElroy Hooper, dean of workforce education at Hennepin Technical College, said the school runs the academic portion of the MPD’s cadet program in Brooklyn Park under a contract with the city of Minneapolis. The MPD cadet class runs for 18 weeks, 40 hours a week, and contains the same content as the longer two-semester program plus the needed prerequisite courses.

The school runs similar cadet programs for the Department of Natural Resources and the State Patrol.

Expanding on the idea, a number of suburban police departments including St. Louis Park and Bloomington, have started their own cadet programs called Pathways to Policing, which will also be taught at Hennepin Technical College.

Nate Gove, head of the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST Board), which controls police training and sets learning objectives for the schools, said the nontraditional routes are no less rigorous in Minnesota than the traditional ones. The learning objectives are the same, he said, and include teaching and modeling de-escalation techniques.

“They still have to meet the learning objectives before they get signed off to take the exam,” Gove said. “There’s not some difference in that.”

The POST Board’s Peace Officer Licensing Examination includes 275 questions and takes about two to three hours to complete.

Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 from an accelerated cadet program.

Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 from an accelerated cadet program.
After the academic portion of the program, cadets head off to MPD’s police academy, which covers everything from physical training to writing reports, community policing and defensive driving.

Upon graduation new officers are then on probation for one year, half of which is spent in the department’s six-month field training program, where they are watched by a senior officer.

When asked on Thursday whether Noor did well in his field training, Harteau said, “He absolutely did.”

“We have a very robust field training officer program which, I’ve been told by the training officers, he did well,” Harteau said. “There was no indication there would be any issues.”

[Forever_frost]

http://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-face-questions-about-noor-s-fast-track-training/436057173/

Fast-track training put officer Mohamed Noor on Minneapolis police force

The former police chief stood by the training of officer Mohamed Noor, who shot and killed Justine Damond. But not everyone is sold on the process.

By Jennifer Bjorhus Star Tribune JULY 23, 2017 — 9:24AM

, ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this May 2016 image provided by the city of Minneapolis, police officer Mohamed Noor poses for a photo at a community event welcoming him to the Minneapolis police force.

Minneapolis made a significant financial investment in Mohamed Noor.

The officer who fatally shot Justine Damond graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. The seven-month training is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement.

The Minneapolis program covers tuition at Hennepin Technical College and pays trainees a $20-an-hour salary with benefits while they work to get licensed. After that their salary bumps up.

More than a year into the job, Noor, 31, rose from a beat cop’s obscurity to international headlines after shooting Damond, a 40-year-old spiritual healer from Australia, after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault behind her southwest Minneapolis home. When she approached the driver’s side window of the squad car, Noor, who was in the passenger seat, fired across his partner in the driver’s seat, killing Damond.

Since then the MPD has been dogged by questions about Noor’s experience and training. On the night of the shooting, he was paired with officer Matthew Harrity, who had been a cop for about one year.

Some law enforcement professionals say the cadet program and others like it are exactly what policing needs — a way to attract more diverse people with broader life experiences. The average age of the more than two dozen aspiring officers in Noor’s cadet class was around 30. It included a former firefighter pushing age 50.

Justine Damond was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer.

STEPHEN GOVEL
Justine Damond was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer.
Before heading into law enforcement, Noor worked in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. He has a degree in business administration, management and economics from Augsburg College.

Former police chief Janeé Harteau, who resigned late Friday, stood by Noor’s training last week.

“We have a very robust training and hiring process,” Harteau told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. “This officer completed that training very well, just like every officer. He was very suited to be on the street.”

Not everyone is sold on the fast-track training. In Minnesota, the more traditional route to a job as a peace officer includes a two- or four-year degree in criminal justice or a related field. The state is unique in its educational requirement for officers, although Wisconsin has a similar requirement.

James Densley, who teaches criminal justice at Metropolitan State University, said he thinks too many cadet programs are “all tactics and no strategy,” overemphasizing assessing threats and conducting tactical protocols.

“The cadet program is rigorous, no doubt, but it is also an immersive paramilitary experience, taught by practitioner faculty without advanced degrees, and I suspect it leaves students with a limited view of the profession,” Densley said.

Critics of police training across the United States have called it long on command and control and short on instructing common sense approaches to slowing down confrontations and defusing hostile situations.

Nontraditional routes

The Minneapolis Police Department has struggled in recent years with a shrinking pool of applicants for job openings. A pension change that spurred a wave of retirements among peace officers statewide in 2014 dropped the Minneapolis police ranks to their lowest total in nearly 30 years, and the department was faced with hiring nearly 100 officers. It currently has about 872 sworn officers. This year the city of Minneapolis appropriated $1 million for training cadets, as well as a couple of dozen recruits with police backgrounds.

An MPD spokeswoman said the agency does not rely more heavily on its well-established cadet program for hiring. The program is simply “another pathway” to attract candidates. Some suburban police departments see the cadet programs as a way to add diversity to their police forces.

Kellie McElroy Hooper, dean of workforce education at Hennepin Technical College, said the school runs the academic portion of the MPD’s cadet program in Brooklyn Park under a contract with the city of Minneapolis. The MPD cadet class runs for 18 weeks, 40 hours a week, and contains the same content as the longer two-semester program plus the needed prerequisite courses.

The school runs similar cadet programs for the Department of Natural Resources and the State Patrol.

Expanding on the idea, a number of suburban police departments including St. Louis Park and Bloomington, have started their own cadet programs called Pathways to Policing, which will also be taught at Hennepin Technical College.

Nate Gove, head of the state Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST Board), which controls police training and sets learning objectives for the schools, said the nontraditional routes are no less rigorous in Minnesota than the traditional ones. The learning objectives are the same, he said, and include teaching and modeling de-escalation techniques.

“They still have to meet the learning objectives before they get signed off to take the exam,” Gove said. “There’s not some difference in that.”

The POST Board’s Peace Officer Licensing Examination includes 275 questions and takes about two to three hours to complete.

Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 from an accelerated cadet program.

Mohamed Noor graduated in 2015 from an accelerated cadet program.
After the academic portion of the program, cadets head off to MPD’s police academy, which covers everything from physical training to writing reports, community policing and defensive driving.

Upon graduation new officers are then on probation for one year, half of which is spent in the department’s six-month field training program, where they are watched by a senior officer.

When asked on Thursday whether Noor did well in his field training, Harteau said, “He absolutely did.”

“We have a very robust field training officer program which, I’ve been told by the training officers, he did well,” Harteau said. “There was no indication there would be any issues.”

[Forever_frost]

Yeah, 20ish months ago, this what that guy was doing

Before heading into law enforcement, Noor worked in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. He has a degree in business administration, management and economics from Augsburg College

[FunFordCobra]

Read that someone came up to the back of the squad car and slapped it, that's when the ninja shot the Aussie.

[Chili]

Yeah, 20ish months ago, this what that guy was doing

Before heading into law enforcement, Noor worked in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. He has a degree in business administration, management and economics from Augsburg College

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Every new cop was doing 'something' different a few months before starting.

[Forever_frost]

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Every new cop was doing 'something' different a few months before starting.

Simple. He was fast tracked through a program and had no background in anything even tangentially related to criminal justice or law enforcement. This fast tracking put him in the position where a woman lost her life because numbnuts couldn't keep his finger off the trigger and fired past his partner where he could have killed his partner too. THEN it'd have been "Someone opened fire on us."

That entire program needs looked at

[Chili]

Simple. He was fast tracked through a program and had no background in anything even tangentially related to criminal justice or law enforcement. This fast tracking put him in the position where a woman lost her life because numbnuts couldn't keep his finger off the trigger and fired past his partner where he could have killed his partner too. THEN it'd have been "Someone opened fire on us."

That entire program needs looked at

That's not what you referenced. You referenced that 20(ish) months ago he was in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. My contention is that pretty much every new cop was doing something totally different 20 months prior. It has no relevance.

Now, everyone is making a big stink about him being fast-tracked.. Ok, I can get behind that a little more but... He only had 7 months of training. How much training does DPD get? Two more months? I refuse to believe that an additional 2 months of training would have changed the outcome here..

[kingjason]

That's not what you referenced. You referenced that 20(ish) months ago he was in commercial and residential property management and managed a hotel. My contention is that pretty much every new cop was doing something totally different 20 months prior. It has no relevance.

Now, everyone is making a big stink about him being fast-tracked.. Ok, I can get behind that a little more but... He only had 7 months of training. How much training does DPD get? Two more months? I refuse to believe that an additional 2 months of training would have changed the outcome here..

Depends on what they are talking about. If you do Academy plus field training usually you are looking at 9 months or so in Texas for a newb, maybe a year. In Lancaster 17 weeks was a whole hell of a lot of training after the 5 month academy, current city, not so much. But you just can't keep everyone in training for years until they get some calls. I bet he is in a hopping city though so that should not have been an issue. Sometimes common sense is hard to beat into people.

[Forever_frost]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/26/woman-slapped-police-car-before-minneapolis-officer-fatally-shot-justine-damond-search-warrant-says/?utm_term=.a7d57a99039e

In the moments before a yoga teacher was fatally shot by Minneapolis police, a woman slapped the officers’ patrol car while it drove through an alley, according to a search warrant application filed this week.

Though the information in the warrant is vague, it could explain the “loud sound” that reportedly startled Officers Matthew Harrity, the cruiser’s driver, and Officer Mohamed Noor, who was in the front passenger seat, just before Noor shot 40-year-old Justine Damond. Harrity described the noise to investigators.

[Timeline of Justine Damond shooting]

The warrant to search the area near the incident, obtained by several local media outlets, does not specify whether the woman who reportedly slapped the car was also the shooting victim, 40-year-old Australian native Damond.

Damond, who moved to Minneapolis in 2015 to be with her fiancee, was killed just before midnight on July 15 — an incident still shrouded in mystery because the investigating agency, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, has released few details and it was not captured on camera.

“Upon police arrival, a female ‘slaps’ the back of the patrol squad,” according to the search warrant filed by the BCA, reported MPR News. “After that, it is unknown to BCA agents what exactly happened, but the female became deceased in the alley.”

The two had responded to 911 calls from Damond at around 11:30 p.m. reporting a possible sexual assault in the alley behind the woman’s home in a nice Minneapolis neighborhood. Damond, according to the 911 transcripts, called when she heard a woman either having sex or being raped, The Washington Post previously reported.

“I think she just yelled out ‘help,’ but it’s difficult,” Damond said, according to a police transcript of the call.

Damond called again eight minutes later when authorities still hadn’t arrived, worried they had gone to the wrong address.

[Australian woman fatally shot by Minneapolis police called 911 twice to report hearing a possible rape]

It’s unclear what exactly happened next, but Harrity told BCA investigators that Damond approached his side of the vehicle right after the loud noise. Noor, sitting in the passenger seat, fired his gun across his partner’s body and through the driver’s side window, striking Damond in the abdomen.

The officers attempted CPR, but 20 minutes after she called 911, Damond was dead.

Authorities found no weapons at the scene.


There has been international outcry in the weeks since, prompting rallies in Minnesota, beachside vigils from Damond’s family in Australia and the resignation of the Minneapolis police chief over concerns that her officers — including Noor and Harrity — had not been properly trained.

Noor has declined to speak with BCA investigators, but an attorney for Harrity, Fred Bruno, hinted in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune last week that the officers may have believed they were being ambushed.

“It’s certainly reasonable to assume that any police officer would be concerned about a possible ambush under these circumstances,” Bruno told the Star Tribune.


A fake street sign is mounted on the same pole as legitimate ones at a Minneapolis intersection on July 23. (Erin Adler/Star Tribune via AP)
Last weekend, several bright orange metal signs appeared in the Minneapolis region, bolted to already existing street signs with a message mocking Harrity’s “startled” comment: “WARNING: TWIN CITIES POLICE EASILY STARTLED.”

The signs featured a cartoon police officer with guns in both hands, firing in opposite directions. The signs were later removed.

The signs were just one of several acts of protest in the weeks since Damond’s death. The day after she died, hundreds of neighbors, community members, political candidates and police reform advocates gathered outside Damond’s home to celebrate her life and demand transparency from police.


Officials, including Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, were quick to condemn the lack of video evidence from the shooting. Both officers wore body cameras but never turned them on, and the dash camera on the patrol did not capture the incident.

That fueled outrage from community members and groups like Black Lives Matter, which advocated for police body cameras to prevent the mystery that often accompanies officer-involved shootings with conflicting narratives. The Twin Cities region was already jarred by two other fatal police shootings of black men from the area, Philando Castile and Jamar Clark.

In his first interview since Damond was killed, Don Damond, the man she was to marry in August, told the New York Times last week that he initially thought it was the alleged rapist who had shot her. Justine had called him that night when she heard the screams outside. From inside a casino in Las Vegas, he told her to call 911.

Once police arrived, they hung up, Don Damond told the Times. He told her to call him back, but the rest of the night his texts went unanswered.


“I have played this over in my head over and over,” Damond told the Times. “Why didn’t I stay on the phone with her?”