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Rebecca Kavanagh @drrjkavanagh.bsky.social Profile picture
Rebecca Kavanagh @drrjkavanagh.bsky.social
@DrRJKavanagh
Public Defender and Writer. Sydney ✈️ NYC ➡️ DC/Baltimore. she/her. Views my own. “I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.” James Baldwin
12 subscribers
Oct 1 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Remember this case?

So it turns out the cop - Matthew Farwell - has just been federally indicted for murdering Sandra and staging it to look like a suicide. Matthew Farwell, his twin brother William, and Robert Devine, all Stoughton MA cops, ran the department's Police Young Explorers Program.

All three sexually abused Sandra from the age of 13 when she joined. bostonglobe.com/2024/09/01/met…
Sep 21 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
NYPD have released BWC from Sunday's shooting.

It shows cops follow Mr. Mickles onto the subway. He has a knife but he doesn't threaten them with it.

At any time they could have stopped following him. Instead they fire a hail of bullets into the train.

nydailynews.com/2024/09/20/see… The whole video is linked above.

It's not each cop's entire BWC. It's a 17 minute NYPD PR video where the incident is narrated from NYPD perspective and snippets of BWC and other video are included. Image
Apr 5 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This is horrific but not extraordinary.

In 2022, Lynda Espinoza's 16-year-old daughter was murdered; 2 weeks later cops killed her 13-year-old son. TX then removed her other children claiming the deaths "while in her custody demonstrated negligence & possible danger to others."

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Image The police shot and killed her son Andre Hernandez Jr during a pursuit of an allegedly stolen car. A cop fired into the moving vehicle as it was driving away from him The child immediately got out of the car and put his hands up. He died in hospital.

nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m…
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Jun 1, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
NYC DOC Commissioner Louis Molina lied when he said Joshua Valles, 31, who was incarcerated on Rikers Island, died of a heart attack on Monday with no foul play or official wrongdoing suspected.

In fact an autopsy revealed Mr. Valles died of a skull fracture. Image Mr. Valles, who had no criminal record, was being held on $10,000 bond on a burglary charge. That's a non-violent offense and he was only able to be held, under rollbacks to NY's bail reform laws, because he also had a pending petit larceny case.

gothamist.com/news/federal-j…
Jun 1, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
CW: Afghanistan War Crimes

Australian soldier Ben Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed Afghan man off a cliff and then ordered him shot; shot a teenage prisoner point-blank in the head; and gunned down a disabled man, whose prosthetic leg SAS soldiers later used to drink beer. SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smi... Today, he lost his defamation case against three major Australian newspapers who reported that Roberts Smith killed six prisoners while on duty in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.

washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/…
May 21, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Sheldon Thomas spent 19 years in prison wrongfully convicted of murder after cops knowingly used a photo of a different Black man (with the same name) in a photo array and a witness identified him. His judge, then an appeal court, said it didn't matter because they looked alike. Image Sheldon was just 17 when he was arrested and charged with murder.

He is pictured on the right. The photo of the person cops placed in the photo array is on the left.

nytimes.com/2023/03/09/nyr… Image
May 19, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Last October, Krieg Butler, a 36-year-old White man got out of a red pick up truck, opened fire on Sinzae Reed, a 13-year-old child, killing him, then fled the scene.

Today a grand jury indicted Butler on charges of improper handling of a firearm and tampering with evidence. Image We don't know what charges the DA presented to the grand jury. We do know that when cops arrested Butler on murder charges the day after he killed Sinzae and his bond was set at $1 million the DA immediately dismissed the charges and he was released.

capitalbnews.org/sinzae-reed-kr… Image
May 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This says Daniel Penny will be arraigned in *Criminal Court* tomorrow.

This means he hasn't been indicted yet (if he had been, the arraignment would be in Supreme Court).

Manhattan DA still has the option to present more serious charges, including murder, to the grand jury. That can happen in cases like this where a DA wants to do something but hasn't decided exactly how much, for instance, in the Amber Guygor case. She was originally charged with manslaughter in the killing of Botham Jean, then that was upgraded to murder.
May 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
You can receive a sentence of probation on this charge. In New York, Manslaughter in the Second Degree is classified as a Class C Non-Violent Felony.

A person can receive a non- incarceratory sentence, usually of probation.

The maximum sentence is an indeterminate term of 5-15 years in prison.
May 10, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
A reminder that the DA originally charged 2 Black teenagers with the 1st degree murder of Fanta Bility (carrying a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty) even though he knew these cops were the ones who shot & killed her.

The cops were sentenced to probation on Friday. Image The three Sharon Hill Police Officers, Brian Devaney, Sean Dolan, and Devon Smith, shot into a crowd of people outside a high school football game.

They killed 8-year-old Fanta, injured her 12-year-old sister and two other people.
inquirer.com/crime/fanta-bi…
May 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
St Louis' elected (and first Black woman) prosecutor Kim Gardner will resign from office on June 1 after Missouri Republicans said they would otherwise pass a bill giving the state control of the city prosecutor's office. Image "I can neither enable nor allow the outright disenfranchisement of the people of the City of St. Louis." @StLouisCityCA wrote in her resignation letter.
missouriindependent.com/2023/05/04/emb…
May 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The New York Post and other tabloid press regularly publish the names of people alleged to have committed crimes (including children).

But they've *chosen* not to identify the person who killed Jordan Neely in the subway, even tho they know who he is. Maybe they can explain the rationale for the different treatment?
Apr 27, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This @nytimes obituary of Carolyn Bryant is beyond problematic.

Carolyn Bryant didn't just lie to her husband about Emmett Till making a pass at her, she identified Emmett to him the night he was murdered and she was likely present when he was killed.

nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/… Reading the obit it's hard to reach any conclusion other than @nytimes is trying to absolve Carolyn Bryant of responsibility for Emmett's Till's murder.

This piece by @MississippiCIR sets out the facts as to Carolyn Bryant's involvement.

mississippicir.org/news/heres-the…
Apr 26, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
A Virginia judge has ruled that human embryos "may be valued & sold & thus considered goods or chattels" based explicitly on pre-civil-war laws that defined enslaved people as property.

The case arose from a dispute between a divorced couple, a White man & Asian American woman. Honeyhline Heidemann, the p... This article by @TamikaYNunley sets out all the facts.

While married, Honeyhline & Jason Heidemann underwent IVF & froze two embryos.

When they divorced, Ms. Heidemann petitioned the court to divide custody of the embryos & her former husband objected.

washingtonpost.com/made-by-histor…
Apr 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Haven't read one Barry Humphries obituary that's mentioned his relationship with Australian artist Donald Friend.

Humphries often visited Friend in Bali & later described Friend's sexual abuse of Indonesian boys as young as 10 as "benevolent pedophilia."

smh.com.au/national/tribu… That was in the forward to Friend's diaries, in which he goes into explicit detail about his abuse of children in both Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Apparently not a problem for Humphries.

abc.net.au/news/2016-11-2…
Oct 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
LAPD officer Houston Tipping died after a training exercise during which he was beaten & slammed to the ground by other cops. Now his lawyer says at the time he died he was investigating a gang rape by 4 cops, at least one of whom was part of the exercise. The officer's death had been ruled accidental by the coroner.

abc7.com/lapd-officer-h…
Sep 25, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
MA cop Matthew Farrell raped Sandra Birchmore from the age of 13 when she joined the Police Young Explorers Program.

At the time of her death last year, by apparent suicide, she was pregnant with his baby. He was the last person to see her alive. Sandra Birchmore, age 13, with Police Officer Robert Devine. A new Internal Affairs Report says Matthew's twin brother William, and their supervisor Robert Devine, also had "multiple inappropriate physical encounters" with Sandra - and in fact that William was trying to pimp her out - from the time she was a child.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/22/met…
Sep 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
While we're talking about Cleveland, the Cuyahoga DA is *right now* re-trying two men who were imprisoned for 15 years before a court overturned their convictions.

The men are accused of shooting at police officers and were originally sentenced to 96 and 46 years in prison. Kenny Phillips and Michael Sutton The two men, Kenny Phillips and Michael Sutton, were just 17 and 18 when they were arrested for attempt murder, accused of shooting at police.

There was no evidence linking them to the crime.
uc.edu/news/articles/…
Sep 24, 2022 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
Conditions in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County Jail are so horrific that at one point a judge refused to send people there, releasing everyone charged with crimes without bail.

Wardens and guards have been criminally prosecuted for beating and killing people. Hard to see the humor. Criminal charges were brought against jail staff after Cleveland.com subpoenaed video footage of horrific incidents of abuse within the jail in 2019.
Sep 15, 2022 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
BREAKING: The DOJ has indicted former KSK cop Roger Golubski for civil rights violations.

Golubski terrorized and sexually assaulted a staggering number of Black women over 35 years, and framed a Black teenager for murder after the teen's mother rejected his sexual advances. Golubski was arrested by the FBI this morning and will appear in court this afternoon.

Golubski's reputation for terrorizing KSK Black women was known for decades, but it was only under @KristenClarkeJD that a criminal investigation began three years ago.
justice.gov/opa/pr/former-…
Sep 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
On June 11, Christian Glass called 911 for help after he crashed his car in a ditch.

CO cops arrived but instead of helping him, & despite him trying to reassure them he was no threat by making a heart sign with his hands, they smashed in his window, tasered him & shot him dead. Image All Christian needed was help to get his car out of the ditch. He had not committed any crime.

denverpost.com/2022/09/13/chr…