Thread: Man killed by LAPD had criminal alien record

Man killed by LAPD had criminal alien record

By Associated Press March 4, 2015 12:29 pm



LOS ANGELES (AP) -- U.S. immigration authorities were forced to release a foreigner later shot to death by police on Los Angeles' Skid Row after he served prison time for bank robbery because no country would take him, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.

France issued travel documents for a man identified as Charley Saturmin Robinet but rescinded them in 2013 after determining it was an assumed name, according to the officials, who had knowledge of the case and spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.

The man later told authorities he was from Cameroon and gave a different name, but officials from the African country didn't respond to repeated attempts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reach them.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that immigration authorities cannot detain people indefinitely just because no country will take them. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the government would need a special reason to keep someone in custody after six months if deportation seemed unlikely in "the reasonably foreseeable future."

Robinet, as he was known to authorities, was in immigration custody in September 2013 when a federal judge in California ordered him to a halfway house. The man had no place to stay and no permanent address.

The man had served roughly 13 years in prison and spent six months in the halfway house before he was released in May 2014, said Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would not comment on the man's immigration history.

The confrontation that led to the man's death was recorded on a bystander's cellphone and viewed millions of times online. Authorities said the man tried to grab a rookie officer's gun before three other officers shot him.

A law enforcement official identified the man police shot Sunday as Robinet, 39. The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly and talked to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

But Axel Cruau, the consul general for France in Los Angeles, said the man stole the identity of a French citizen and was living in the United States under an assumed name. He had applied for a French passport in the late 1990s to come to the United States to pursue an acting career.

"The real Charley Robinet is in France apparently living a totally normal life and totally unaware his identity had been stolen years and years ago," Cruau said.

Using that name, the man was identified as a French national in 2000 when he was convicted of robbing a Wells Fargo branch and pistol-whipping an employee in an effort to pay for acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

That arrest spurred the consulate to provide the man with support, but as he was nearing his release from prison in 2013, officials found another Robinet in France with the same birthdate and discovered the one in the U.S. was an impostor, Cruau said.

The man identified himself as Keunang to immigration authorities after France rejected him, according to the two U.S. officials.

It was not clear if the man's true nationality was yet known.

While in federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota, the bank robber known as Robinet was assigned to the mental health unit, and federal officials said medical staff determined he had "a mental disease or defect" that required treatment in a psychiatric hospital, documents show.

Foreigners are typically deported after completing criminal sentences but the Supreme Court ruling forces immigration authorities to release people if identity and nationality cannot be established or if countries refuse to take them.

Under the terms of the man's release, he was required to provide reports to his probation officer each month, Deputy U.S. Marshal Matthew Cordova said. When he failed to do so in November, December and January, a federal warrant was issued Jan. 9.

U.S. probation officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment Tuesday, and it was unclear what efforts they made to find the man.

Leaders at Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row said he had been living on the sidewalk outside their shelter for six to eight months.

Though multiple videos and two officer-worn cameras captured the shooting, exactly what happened is unclear.

Video showed the homeless man reaching toward a rookie officer's waistband, police Chief Charlie Beck said. The officer's gun was later found partly cocked and jammed with a round of ammunition in the chamber and another in the ejection port, indicating a struggle for the weapon, the chief said.

Beck said the officers had arrived to investigate a robbery report and the man refused to obey their commands and became combative.

The four officers are on paid leave, which is customary in such shootings.

http://www.gopusa.com/news/2015/03/0...-alien-record/

Man shot by police on Skid Row is identified

By ELLIOT SPAGAT and TAMI ABDOLLAH, Associated Press | March 5, 2015 | Updated: March 5, 2015 7:39pm


Photo By Uncredited/AP

• This February 2000 photo provided by Ventura County Sheriff's Office shows Charley Saturmin Robinet after his arrest for robbery. Robinet was killed Sunday, March 1, 2015, after a confrontation with police. Authorities say he tried to grab a probationary officer's gun and three officers fatally shot him. The three officers who fired their weapons in a videotaped struggle that left a homeless man dead were veterans of the Skid Row beat who had special training to deal with mentally ill and other people in the downtrodden area, police leaders said.
  

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities have identified a homeless man who was shot to death by Los Angeles police during a Skid Row confrontation.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office said Thursday the man was 43-year-old Charly Keundeu Keunang and that he died from multiple gunshot wounds.

He was listed as being indigent and homeless.

Authorities have said Keunang, a native of Cameroon, stole the identity of a French citizen named Robinet and came to the United States, where he was sent to prison under the false name after robbing a bank.

Police investigating a Skid Row robbery report shot and killed Keunang on Sunday. Police say he tried to grab an officer's gun.
The shooting was captured on video.

http://www.chron.com/news/us/article...-s-6116191.php

I don't understand how we can spend the amount we spend on immigration control through DHS and have people who can't reach someone in another country's government to process a deportation order. I mean doesn't Cameroon have an Embassy in the US and Consulate Offices throughout?

Here's their Embassy Address in DC, right off of Connecticut Avenue:

1. Embassy of the Republic of Cameroon, Washington, DC
   
   
2. Embassy
   
3. Address: 3400 International Dr NW, Washington, DC 20008
   Phone:(202) 265-8790
   Hours:
   Open today · 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
   
   And, I believe they have Consulate Offices in California and Texas.
   
   So just because someone doesn't respond to a letter or request doesn't mean you just sit back and wait to hear from them. You call or show up and ask to speak to the person in charge.
   
   
   
   
   

Why some immigrants with criminal convictions aren't deported

Leslie Berestein Rojas

March 06, 05:00 AM

A man now identified as Charly Leundeu Keunang was sentenced to 15 years in prison in connection with a bank robbery in Thousand Oaks in 2000. VENTURA COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE




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Two years before he was shot by police on Skid Row, the man now identified as Cameroonian immigrant Charly Leundeu Keunang was released from prison and was up for deportation.

But unlike other immigrants convicted of violent offenses, Keunang was not deported, but rather remained in the United States. The reasons are complicated and unusual, but Keunang is not alone among convicted persons who face ouster but wind up staying for a variety of reasons.

Defense attorney Steve Cron remembers Keunang as the man he defended 15 years ago. He especially remembers the crime, a violent bank robbery in Thousand Oaks.

“It was a takeover robbery where guns were used, and there were three people involved, and there was a high speed chase," said Cron, who back then was appointed by the court to defend the suspect who went by the name Charley Saturmin Robinet and claimed to be a French citizen. "It just struck me that if ever there were a case where someone would get deported because of a felony conviction, this would be the type of crime that would lead to deportation.”

Cron was shocked to learn this week that his former client wound up on Skid Row after his release in 2013. Criminals convicted of violent offenses typically are deported once they serve their time. But there are exceptions.

Some countries — for example Cuba — don't accept U.S. deportees because of a lack of diplomatic relations. Others have inconsistent acceptance policies. Some immigrants are deemed stateless if the nation he or she was born in no longer exists.

And sometimes U.S. officials simply run into roadblocks.

“If the federal government cannot get travel documents for that person and does not get the cooperation of the foreign government accepting or issuing travel documents for that person, then the United States is essentially stuck with that person," said Bill Ong Hing, who teaches immigration law at San Francisco State University.

Keunang's case was a complicated one. French officials initially agreed to take him back — but then discovered he was a citizen of Cameroon.

U.S. officials tried to deport him to Cameroon, but say they received no cooperation from the Cameroonian government when they tried to obtain travel documents for him.

Had to let him go

In the end, they let him go.

A 2001 Supreme Court decision, Zadvydas v. Davis, limits the amount of time U.S. immigration officials can detain a foreign national with a final deportation order if there is no country that will accept them.

"Per the Supreme Court ruling, after 180 days of detention, if the actual removal cannot occur within the reasonably foreseeable future, ICE must release the individual," wrote U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice in a statement.

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The Zadvydas case involved two plaintiffs, a Lithuanian-German man and a man from Cambodia. Both had committed deportable offenses in the United States, but the U.S. could not get clearance from foreign governments to deport them.

"The Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. government could not hold or detain those individuals indefinitely," Hing said, "and had to at least give them a right to a hearing to prove that they either were not a danger to the community, or were a danger to the community."

Federal officials say, in that case, the bar for keeping people detained is very high, and that convicted criminals are routinely released under the Zadvydas rule.

The practice has drawn its share of critics, including several Republican lawmakers who have tried to overturn it.

In Keunang's case, he wound up on the street, after initially landing in a halfway house once he was released from ICE custody in November 2013.

Non-deportable immigrants who are released may apply for work permits, according to ICE. Keunang applied for one, federal officials confirmed, but his request was turned down.

Keunang was on an order of supervised release from ICE, in addition to his probation. He was next scheduled for a check-in March 5.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included a misspelled version of Charly Leundeu Keunang's first name, which was shared with KPCC by the county coroner's office. The coroner has since sent out a correction, and the story has been updated accordingly.
This story has been updated.

http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiameri...victions-aren/

Originally Posted by Judy

So just because someone doesn't respond to a letter or request doesn't mean you just sit back and wait to hear from them. You call or show up and ask to speak to the person in charge.

And if they don't respond, you inform them that the consulate has been shut down and that they no longer can remain in the United States. Having to return to their, uh, own country shall we say, will get their attention.

Like the Mexicans and Central Americans, the Cameroonians treat us with contempt, because in their eyes we are contemptible weaklings.
******************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Originally Posted by vistalad

And if they don't respond, you inform them that the consulate has been shut down and that they no longer can remain in the United States. Having to return to their, uh, own country shall we say, will get their attention.

Like the Mexicans and Central Americans, the Cameroonians treat us with contempt, because in their eyes we are contemptible weaklings.
******************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

And on some levels we really are weaklings. The hardest word in the English language is "no". Americans by nature want to accommodate everyone, make everyone happy, keep the peace, avoid conflict, which is why maintaining the domestic tranquility of our nation is part of the Preamble to the US Constitution and one of the single most important responsibilities of our government. Yet, those in our government have no problem whatsoever telling Americans no jobs, no money, no loan, no college, no guns, no privacy, no right to life after you're born, and can't say yes 'um enough or fast enough to illegal aliens to jobs, money, loans, college, tax credits, welfare, guns, privacy, and life after you're born for them, while Americans wait in a space not even on this government's radar until it's time to pay for everything, asking "What about US"?