Police in Arizona initially said Dean Lawrence Knudsen approached them with a gun while making threats making them fear for their lives which is why they had to shoot and kill him.
But body camera footage released this week shows the 56-year-old man was holding a vape pen in one hand and a cell phone in the other hand with both hands over his head.
The incident took place on March 27 after Knudsen called 911 threatening suicide which led to three Maricopa police officers responding to his address.
“Nobody is listening to me,” he told the dispatcher. “I’m about to put a bullet in my head.”
Knudsen then hung up and the dispatcher called him back.
“I’m not looking to hurt any cops, ok,” he says to the dispatcher.
But he was hoping they would take his life, judging by his actions and conversation with the dispatcher.
Maricopa police officer Carmen Nylander fired the shots that killed him while another officer, Timothy Nye, fired his taser.
Nye, in fact, went from holding his service gun upon arriving on the scene to holding a taser after seeing Knudsen’s hands in the air.
But Nylander who was closer believed him to be wielding a gun.
The Maricopa Police Department went along with the lie and told local media that Knudsen was killed as he approached them with a gun making threats.
They went along with the lie for a month until releasing portions from the body camera footage on Tuesday along with audio from the 911 call.
But missing is the footage from Nylander’s camera which police say was not activated at the time.
A Michigan man who volunteered his time to play the bad guy in a police training exercise ended up shot in the abdomen by an auxiliary police cadet Sunday afternoon.
Ben Shotts is recovering at a local hospital as Michigan State Police investigate the incident.
The man who shot him was training to become an auxiliary police officer for the Taylor Police Department in southern Michigan. Auxiliary police officers are volunteers who serve as backups to certified police officers in emergency situations, according to the agency’s website. The program created in 1962 has been suspended in the wake of Sunday’s shooting.
The name of the cadet who fired the shot has not been released.
The incident took place in Hamilton Park in Taylor, a community park open to the public that includes trails, picnic tables, baseball and soccer fields and a petting zoo.
Participants in the training exercise were supposed to either use fake orange guns or at least ensure real guns are cleared by removing every bullet. That did not happen in this case.
Shotts told local media that he was playing the bad guy in a police ambush scenario but the exercise had already ended when he was shot.
“And the scenario was over, we were all kind of smiling and laughing because he learned, ‘Wow I almost got killed, we’ve got to get it together.’ and I turned around and I just heard boom,” Shotts told Fox 2 Detroit.
“And I realized, ‘Oh my God: the cadet that was backing him up in this scenario, just shot me.’”
The incident is reminiscent of an incident that took place in Florida in 2016 in which Punta Gorda police officer Lee Coel shot and killed a woman named Mary Knowlton, a 73-year-old retired librarian who enrolled in the citizen police academy to show her support for police.
Coel was charged with felony manslaughter with a gun and was sentenced to 10 years probation with no jail time. Knowlton’s family ended up receiving a $2 million settlement.
Shotts said he plans on filing a lawsuit but first needs to raise money for medical expenses which is why his fiancee has launched a fund raiser on Go Fund Me. Watch his interview with local media below.
Kentucky sheriff’s deputy Nick Hibbs had been on the job less than a month when he shot and killed a man who had fallen asleep or passed out in the driver’s seat of a car parked on a quiet road on the outskirts of Louisville late one night last year.
The Bullitt County sheriff’s deputy claimed the man in the car tried to run him over, making him fear for his life.
But body camera video that surfaced earlier this month shows Eric Kessler was not only driving away from Hibbs but had already passed him when the deputy fired several rounds as we was driving away.
One bullet struck Kessler in the back of the head, another in his spine.
“He tried to run over me,” Hibbs claimed to dispatch in the moments after the shooting, according to his body camera footage.
Kessler was a 20-year-old father of a toddler when he was killed. His family has filed a lawsuit on behalf of his daughter, who just turned three years old. Hibbs remains employed by the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office more than a year after the shooting.
Eric Kessler was very close to his daughter which is evident by the multitude of photos of the two of them included in the lawsuit.
The incident took place on January 31, 2021 after a citizen called the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office to report an abandoned car parked in the middle of the road.
Bullitt County sheriff’s deputy Maurice Raque III responded to the call and discovered Kessler in the front seat of the car with his eyes closed and his arms at his side. He was holding a phone and there was no evidence of drug or alcohol use nor did he spot any weapons in the car.
The deputy spent almost 13 minutes knocking on the window but Kessler would not wake up. At one point, he called for paramedics about an “unconscious male in the car” and continued knocking on the window, never once indicating that Kessler was dangerous and threatening.
But deputy Hibbs arrived on the scene before paramedics along with two other deputies, Eric Burdon and Terry Compton, who began escalating the situation.
“I think that might be Eric Kessler,” Hibbs said, pointing his flashlight through the window. “He carries a gun and shit.”
Raque tells him he does not know if it is Kessler and doesn’t seem very concerned but Hibbs continues to insinuate that Kessler is dangerous.
“Is that Kessler, I’m pretty sure that’s Kessler,” Hibbs continues. “He carries a gun and shit so just watch it.”
The deputies eventually break the passenger window which is when Kessler stirs awake, finding himself surrounded by men with guns and flashlights ordering him to put the car in park.
The video shows he starts the car, then backs up, striking a deputy’s car behind him before veering left to avoid striking the deputy’s car in front of him. Hibbs is standing to the right of the car and not in its direct path.
Hibbs fires eight times as the car drives away from him. The car ends up plowing through a fence and barreling over a creek before crashing against some trees. The video shows Raque falling into the creek as he is running towards the car in the moments after the shooting.
None of the other deputies fired their guns but the video shows Burdon chasing after the car, trying to strike it with a sledgehammer.
“I threw my hammer at the vehicle and then heard gun shots. I moved away from the vehicle and saw the vehicle go around Deputy Compton’s cruiser,” Burdon wrote in his report following the shooting, according to the lawsuit.
Bullitt County Sheriff Walt Sholar told local media the incident is being “investigated” by Kentucky State Police which issued a press release the day after the shooting stating the following:
The preliminary investigation revealed the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office received a call of a vehicle parked in the middle of the roadway around the 1600 block of Cedar Creek Road near the Jefferson County line. After deputies arrived, they located a passenger car parked in the roadway. At some point while deputies tried to get the suspect to exit the vehicle, the suspect took off, striking a deputy’s cruiser and nearly striking deputies on foot. It was at that time a deputy fired his weapon striking the suspect.
According to the lawsuit, Hibbs had already worked for the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office from July 2013 to November 2014 which was when he was either terminated or asked to resign while he was under investigation for reasons that are not stated.
He was hired by the Pioneer Police Department in August 2016 despite warning signs, the lawsuit states:
In September of 2015, during the preliminary screening of Defendant Hibbs’ by the Pioneer Village Police Department which utilizes information derived from the LESI Personal History Questionnaire and Psychometric testing results to evaluate a prospective applicants suitability for a job in law enforcement, noted Deputy Hibbs “may be sensitive to criticism and/or display unusually strong needs for status and recognition.”
In a June 7, 2016, applicant interview questionnaire with Pioneer Village Police Department; when asked to explain your feelings toward the use of deadly force, Deputy Hibbs responded that if it’s to protect himself or others it is “no problem.”
Deputy Hibbs started school at the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice on or about November 14, 2016, and left on or about May 19, 2017.
Defendant Hibbs was hired by the Pioneer Village Police Department on August 1, 2016, and left December 31, 2020.
While employed by the Pioneer Village Police Department and on August 12, 20217, a female citizen complained that Defendant Hibbs had no reason to pull her over and was rude when interacting with her.
While employed at Pioneer Village Police Department and on January 9/10 2018 Officer Hibbs assisted Shepherdsville PD in a pursuit averaging 55-80 mph. Indiana State Police deployed a stop stick disabling the vehicle.
While employed at Pioneer Village Police Department and on August 11, 2019 another citizen filed a complaint against Hibbs stating he was rude and cussed him out. Hibbs was given a verbal warning and told to “act in a more professional and courteous manner.”
While employed at Pioneer Village Police Department and on January 08, 2020, Hibbs was told if he did not follow what was ordered per Pioneer Village Chief of Police, he would be subject to disciplinary action.
Deputy Hibbs is an avid hunter.
Deputy Hibbs has a record of being careless such as being intoxicated in public places.
The lawsuit which you can read here accuses the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office and the deputies of excessive force, improper training and violating the state public records law for not releasing the body camera footage in a timely manner among other things.
“It could have ended peacefully,” Zack McKee, the attorney representing Kessler’s family, told local media.
“The Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office has policies and procedures and the policies and procedures is that you cannot use deadly force in a situation like that.”
Off-duty Michigan cop Chad Vorce was insistent that the Black teen he had just profiled and stalked and threatened with a gun last year be charged with felonious assault, even after it became clear the 17-year-old boy was doing nothing more than delivering newspapers in the cop’s neighborhood.
But the DeWitt police officer ended up being the one charged with felonious assault earlier this month along with felony firearm possession and official misconduct after a lengthy investigation by the Michigan Department of Attorney General.
Vorce also ended up losing his job at the DeWitt Police Department last year where he had worked for 18 years, a law enforcement agency made up of less than 50 officers, serving a municipality of less than 5,000 just outside of Lansing.
Vorce, however, appealed the termination and was reinstated by an arbitrator who determined that all he needed was a little “sensitivity training with regard to racial and other related protected characteristics.”
But Vorce returned to work as a city employee at the same pay rate but with no law enforcement duties because his law enforcement certification became inactive upon termination, according to the Lansing State Journal.
He was in the process of getting re-certified as a cop when he was charged with the three felonies on April 7.
The incident took place on January 14, 2021 at around 7 a.m. as Vorce was driving his son to school when he noticed a white van driven by the Black teen and immediately deemed it suspicious because cars had been stolen from that neighborhood a month earlier.
He began following the van and noticed it would make frequent stops, furthering his suspicions.
The teen, Alexander Hamilton, told police he was in the van placing newspapers in plastic bags in order to deliver them to subscribers when Vorce pulled up alongside him.
“Hey, are you lost or something,” Vorce asked Hamilton.
“No, I’m just doing me,” Hamilton responded and continued bagging the newspapers.
Vorce told investigators he placed his truck in reverse to try and read the license plate number on the white van but the van drove off so Vorce began to follow him.
Realizing he was being followed, Hamilton told investigators he then placed the van in reverse in order to tell the driver he was delivering newspapers since it had not become evident to him.
But that made Vorce fear for his life, believing he was going to be rammed, so he also placed his truck in reverse to move away from the van, then hopped out of the truck with his gun drawn, ordering the teen to “stop! stop!”.
“He tried to ram me,” Vorce told the dispatcher as he continued following the van. “I’m going to go shots fired if he does it again.”
Hamilton told investigators that he was in fear for his life upon seeing an angry man with a gun ordering him to step out of the van, so he drove out of the neighborhood and pulled into a Sunoco gas station where he began driving in circles around the pump in order to draw attention to the man he believed was trying to murder him.
Vorce followed him to the gas station and pulled his truck in front of the van, stepping out once again with his gun drawn, threatening to shoot and kill the teen. Two witnesses said Vorce’s behavior was very unprofessional, according to internalreports.
That was when Michigan state police officer Luke Shafer arrived, the main investigating officer, who said he encountered Vorce and Hamilton yelling at each other.
“When I see a Black guy in my neighborhood, I think you’re doing stuff like this,” Vorce was telling Hamilton, referring to cars being stolen from his neighborhood.
Vorce then tried to pressure Shafer into arresting Hamilton on charges of felonious assault, claiming the teen had tried to ram him, an allegation which Hamilton denied.
Neither Shafer nor the two sergeants he called that morning were inclined to arrest Hamilton on felony charges, according to footage from Shafer’s dash camera which you can view below.
“You’re not taking anybody to jail,” said Michigan State Police Sergeant Brian Beuge. “I don’t care how much pressure DeWitt city puts on you, this officer.
“As far as I’m concerned, he pushed it too far.”
Nevertheless, the teen spent 38 minutes handcuffed in the back of a DeWitt police car, an officer who responded to the scene despite it being out of his jurisdiction.
Vorce continued playing the victim by sending an email later that morning to the Lansing State Journal, the newspaper that employed Hamilton, trying to get him fired by accusing him of smoking marijuana while working, an allegation which had not been brought up earlier.
This morning at approximately 709 am I noticed a suspicious vehicle stopped in the roadway in front of my residence, (Shadybrook Ln, Dewitt). I asked the driver if he was lost. He responded, ” I’m just me doing me.” I promptly called 911 for the suspicious activity and followed the vehicle. We have had recent stolen vehicles and larceny from automobiles in our neighborhood. The driver fit the description of the accused. While following the vehicle it attempted to ram my vehicle several times. (Side note- I am a police officer and am trained in suspicious activity and felonious assault.). I drew my weapon and Identified myself as a police officer and told him to stop. The driver drove to a gas station at Airport Rd near Clark Rd. The driver started driving recklessly around the parking lot until PD arrived. The driver smelled of marijuana and was uncooperative with PD. The driver identified himself as an LSJ delivery driver, something he should have told me at first contact. I have decided to not press charges on felonious assault but I would like if he were put on a separate route for my safety and the safety if my family.
That email was a violation of the police department’s social media policy and was a factor in his termination, according to the internal affairs report and his termination letter.
Hamilton’s attorney, Dustyn Coontz, filed a lawsuit against Vorce and the city of DeWitt on April 8, the day after Vorce was charged, which you can read here.
Watch the video below of the conversations between Michigan state police officer Luke Shafer and his two sergeants about how to handle the “predicament” of an off-duty cop out of his jurisdiction threatening to shoot and kill a teenager delivering newspapers.
A Connecticut state trooper turned himself in Tuesday after he was charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing a man more than two years ago following a high-speed pursuit with a man in a stolen car.
Connecticut State Trooper Brian North said he was in fear for the lives of fellow officers because the man driving the stolen car had a knife while sitting in the driver’s seat.
But investigators determined the shooting of Mubarak Soulemane on January 15, 2020 was not justified.
According to the 133-page investigative report by the Connecticut Office of Inspector General which you can read here:
Stated briefly, the investigation establishes that, at the time Trooper North fired his weapon, neither he nor any other person was in imminent danger of serious injury or death from a knife attack at the hands of Soulemane. Further, any belief that persons were in such danger was not reasonable. I therefore find that North’s use of deadly force was not justified under Connecticut law.
Soulemane, 19, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 14, his mother, Omo Mohammed, told investigators. On the day of the shooting, he had gotten into an argument with his brother and left the house.
His mother who was out of the country that day said he normally would take medication in the morning and at night but it did not appear he did so that morning.
His girlfriend who had never seen him in that condition described him as being “erratic, paranoid and disorganized,” the report states.
Later that day, Soulemane entered an AT&T store, inquiring about buying a phone but the store clerk found him to be “acting mentally disturbed and strange,” the report states. The clerk also noticed he was holding a kitchen knife but not threatening anybody with it.
At one point, he tried to steal an iPhone from a display but was escorted out of the store by employees who then called police.
Soulemane left the store and called an Uber but when the driver arrived, he got into the back seat and told the driver to “drive, drive, drive!”
He then attempted to steal the driver’s phone and eventually carjacked the Hyundai after the driver pulled into a gas station, stepped out of the car and drew his firearm. But he did not fire it because he saw Norwalk police officers had arrived on the scene, who then began the pursuit.
Norwalk police ended its pursuit at some point as Connecticut state police took over. A little more than 30 minutes after the carjacking, the cops had forced the Hyundai to stop by boxing it in.
Police say that Soulemane was sitting in the driver’s seat with the seat reclined and his eyes closed. His hands were on his lap.
This is how North described his actions to investigators, according to the report.
“After giving instructions to Tpr. Jackson to go to Taser, I put my left hand back on my pistol and reactivated my flashlight. I could see that the suspect was wearing a black winter jacket, which I know would likely cause the Taser to be ineffective. I could see also that Tpr. Jackson was in close proximity to the suspect, which could also cause the Taser not to induce NMI. I continued to provide lethal cover in case the suspect escalated the situation. I continued to monitor the suspect and noticed that his hands still appeared to be empty in his lap. The suspect was not moving at this time. Knowing this, I continued to provide lethal cover because I know Tpr.
Jackson only had his Taser out, and the West Haven Officer only had a baton in his hands. After multiple strikes of the baton on the window, I believe about five or six strikes, the window shattered. As soon as the window shattered, I saw the suspects eyes open wide. I also saw the West Haven Officer’s head had dropped below the roofline of the suspect vehicle, and it appeared to me that he was going to enter the car to remove the suspect. I know through my training and experience, when a suspect refuses to comply and law enforcement officers force entry into a vehicle through a window, the immediate response is to move in and pull out the suspect. The suspect quickly sat straight up in the driver’s seat. As the West Haven Officer was trying to enter the suspect vehicle, the suspect quickly moved his right hand and went straight for his right front pants pocket.
I heard someone yell out, “He’s reaching. He’s reaching.” I am unsure which officer on scene was the one yelling. At this moment, I remember thinking to myself, I do not want to shoot the suspect based only on furtive movement. The suspect continued to make furtive movements, was reaching into his right front pants pocket, appeared to be pulling something out, and quickly looked to his right in the direction of the West Haven Officer and Tpr. Jackson. I immediately became concerned for the safety of both the West Haven Officer and Tpr. Jackson, as Tpr. Jackson only had his Taser out, and I did not believe that the West Haven Officer had his weapon drawn. At this point, I felt my field of vision narrow, focusing on watching the suspect’s hands. Immediately the suspect, using his right hand quickly removed a silver colored object from his right pants pocket.
As the suspect raised his right hand from his right front pants pocket with the object still in it, I recognized the object the suspect removed from his pocket to be a fixed blade knife. The knife had a silver colored serrated blade that was approximately four inches long. The suspect held the knife in his right hand, in a closed fist at a 90 degree angle with his body. The knife was held with the tip of the blade facing upwards towards the roof of the suspect vehicle, and the serrated edge facing towards the front of the vehicle in the direction of the front windshield. While the suspect held the knife in his right hand, he began to abruptly move in the driver’s seat. I quickly took my eyes off the suspect and looked in the direction of Tpr. Jackson and the West Haven Officer.
I saw Tpr. Jackson quickly advancing towards the open passenger window and I could not see the West Haven Officer anymore. This led me to believe that the West Haven Officer had already begun to enter the suspect vehicle to take control of the suspect. I immediately looked back at the suspect and saw that he still had the knife in his hand, and was making furtive movements. The suspect was moving and holding the knife in an aggressive manner, and appeared to me to be preparing to attack either Tpr. Jackson or the West Haven Officer. Based on these circumstances, I believed that Tpr. Jackson and the West Haven Officer were at imminent risk of serious physical injury or death, and could have been stabbed in the neck or face as they attempted to enter the vehicle and remove the suspect. As a result, I discharged my duty firearm to eliminate the threat.
“I discharged my duty pistol, a Smith and Wesson M&P 2.0 9mm, several times aiming for center mass on the suspect in an effort to stop the threat. At the time, I was unsure how many times I had discharged my duty pistol. After discharging my firearm, I immediately activated my portable radio and Broadcast, “Shots fired.” I then looked into the suspect vehicle, and I could see the suspect was still moving. I then yelled, “He’s got the knife. Drop the knife. Drop the knife.” The driver’s side window was shattered. I crouched down to look through the hole in the shattered glass of the window. I then yelled out, “It’s out of his hands. It’s on his lap.” I could see the suspect was still moving at this time, but noticed the knife was now on his lap. Then I used my pistol to remove some glass so I could see clearly into the suspect vehicle. I continued to maintain lethal coverage until I knew there was no longer a threat. I immediately noticed that the suspect’s head was back on the headrest, and he was looking up at the roof of the vehicle.
At this point, the knife was on the suspect’s lap a couple of inches away from both of his hands. I quickly reached into the vehicle with my left hand, removed the knife, and placed it on the hood of the suspect vehicle. I told officers on the passenger side of the suspect vehicle, “I got the knife. It’s on the hood. Pull him out.” Knowing that I had retrieved the weapon from the suspect, and that there was no longer a threat, I instructed the other officers on scene to pull the suspect out of the vehicle knowing that we needed to immediately render first aid.”
North was released on a $50,000 bond and is due back in court on May 3, according to the New York Times. Watch the video below.
A video going viral on social media showing cops in New York detaining an 8-year-old boy accused of stealing a bag of chips worth $3 is sparking debate as to whether the cops acted too aggressively towards the child.
Syracuse police say the boy was never handcuffed or charged with a crime. Instead, he was driven to his father’s house along with his two brothers who were also accused of stealing.
The video was recorded by a man named Kenneth Jackson who posted the video to his Facebook page where it has been viewed more than 51,000 times as of this writing.
Jackson, 37, said he was doing errands in the area when he saw the cops snatch the boy off a bicycle, causing the bag of chips to burst open and spill all over the ground.
“If he stole some chips, I’ll pay for them,” Jackson told the cops manhandling the child who was crying.
Syracuse police published a statement on Facebook stating that the boy was never charged or handcuffed and was taken to his father. They also said they will further investigate the incident by reviewing body camera footage.
And commenters to the Facebook post were divided over the police response to the alleged shoplifting incident.
Some commenters like Hasan Stephens said the incident was a clear example of systemic racism in the criminal justice system.
This makes the officers look real bad. Smh. Not just the act, but the response. Everyone is focused on whether or not he was placed in handcuffs. It’s the lack of community service (pun intended). We are to accept a lack of professionalism across the board because of the power dynamics? Smh.
And… the power dynamics are only as such because of systemic racism. Public servant means just that. However, we never seem to be able to actualize and experience that. Outsiders to a system that on paper is supposed to protect and serve us. It feels more like it serves those that don’t look like us and protects them from us. All across America, there are communities where the police know little “Johnny” and escort him home to be chastised by his parents WITHOUT the force of manhandling him.
While other commenters like Jacquelyn Burns defended the police and blamed the boys’ parents for failing to teach them not to steal.
Good job Syracuse Police!!! This punk in his brothers have been a menace to the north side of Syracuse I’d like to know why the parents aren’t being held responsible for these juvenile delinquents. At least CPS should be involved in their lives on a daily basis poor parenting skills at your finest.
And other commenters like Noelle AJ believes the incident exposes a much larger problem like poverty and hunger.
I’m just curious, what if instead of police intervention this child received social supports that determines why he stole food or provided for his needs? Many people are quick to want to punish, but never ask why this happened. This child will be forever influence (good or bad remains to be seen) by this interaction. I think we can do better.
But the one issue that nobody can deny is the video exposes a huge distrust towards police officers which has resulted in citizens whipping out their cameras to record questionable incidents without fear.
And that ultimately is a good thing because it creates more transparency into the actions of police.
For days, Frank Tumm had been yelling at his neighbors, Dyma Loving and Andriana Green, calling them “hookers” before they responded by calling him a “faggot.”
Tumm responded by pulling out a shotgun and threatening to shoot them. The women responded by calling 911.
Miami-Dade police arrived and tackled Loving, falsely arresting her on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence.
But police body cameras exposed the lie, resulting in charges being filed against Miami-Dade police officer Alejandro Giraldo as well as the false charges against Loving being dismissed.
On Thursday, a jury convicted Giraldo on felony official misconduct and misdemeanor battery, according to the Miami Herald.
Giraldo is facing up to five years in prison. A sentencing date has not been scheduled as of this time.
The incident took place on March 5, 2019 after several Miami-Dade police officers responded to their 911 call about a man threatening them with a shotgun.
The cops listened to their story and asked why they had not called police days earlier after the man had called them hookers. They then demonstrated why cops should only be called as a last resort.
According to the lawsuit filed by Loving against the Miami-Dade Police Department, specifically mentioning Giraldo and another cop named Juan F. Calderon:
The body camera and cell phone videos show that after Officers Giraldo and Calderon arrive at the scene, they immediately begin to aggressively interrogate Ms. Loving and Ms. Green. The first question he asks the two is “which one of you called him (Frank Tumm) a faggot?” which Ms. Green responded with “I did, after he called me a hooker.” Officer Giraldo then asks who used the derogatory term first. Ms. Green then lets Giraldo know that Tumm had been calling her names “over the past few days” and Officer Calderon asks why she had not called the police before. Ms. Green then stated, “Why would I call the police for him (Tumm) calling me names?” followed by “but this time he pulled out a freaking gun.”
Ms. Green then tells the officers that there are cameras around that would have captured what happened.
Giraldo then asks, “where are they,” in reference to the cameras.
Ms. Loving responds by pointing the officers to the direction of cameras, and then says, “yall (in reference to the officers) need to do something.” Giraldo then responds in an aggressive manner by telling Ms. Loving “you need to chill out or you will be arrested,” as he quickly approaches with handcuffs and speaks directly in her face.
Ms. Loving then stated, “I had a gun pointed in my face, I just want to call mykids.”
Body camera worn by Officer Giraldo and Ms. Green’s cell phone did not capture any acts of disorderly conduct by Ms. Loving or an attempt at resisting arrest by Officer Giraldo.
The police narrative fell apart after Green posted a cellphone video days after the arrest, exposing the lie. The story was picked up by the media including PINAC resulting in charges against the women being dismissed as well as the cop being placed on suspension.
Less than two weeks later, police released body camera footage of the arrest. They also arrested Tumm, the neighbor with the shotgun, on two counts of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
However, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office never formally filed the charges, resulting in no further action being taken against Tumm, according to online court records.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office never filed formal charges against Frank Tumm.
Less than two months after the false arrest, Giraldo was charged with one count of felony official misconduct and one count of misdemeanor battery and Loving had file her lawsuit.
Calderon, the cop who assisted Giraldo with the false arrest, was never charged.
In August 2020, Calderon shot and killed a man, claiming he was in fear for his life after the man came charging towards him with a machete. However, the Miami Herald posted a surveillance video that showed that was not exactly the case.
New surveillance video, as well as interviews with a neighbor and law enforcement officials, shed new light on last Friday’s shooting — when the department claimed the 27-year-old Hernandez “charged towards” Miami-Dade Police Officer Juan Calderon while armed with a machete.
The video, taken from a neighbor’s surveillance system, doesn’t appear to show a full-steam charge, but rather Hernandez turning toward Calderon after being shot with a Taser stun gun by another officer. The neighbor told the Herald that Hernandez, who was partially paralyzed and dragged his leg when he walked, was blocked from going back inside his home. “He turned back because he had nowhere to walk, they tasered him, he drops the machete and then he gets shot,” said the neighbor, who asked she not be identified for fear of retaliation.
It does not appear as if Calderon was ever investigated over the discrepancies in that report.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle issued the following statement on Facebook, not making any mention of the other cops who went along with Giraldo’s fabricated arrest.
“While the vast majority of officers are good, honest, and hard-working individuals who place their lives on the line for us each and every day, there are some who are not worthy of carrying the badge. The excessive and unnecessary use of force in this case and the subsequent altering of Ms. Loving’s arrest report, is unacceptable.”
Read Loving’s lawsuit here. Watch the video of her arrest below.
The second video below is a CBS Miami interview with Giraldo shortly after his arrest in 2019 where he talks about how much he loves being a cop and “working with the community.”
A Jacksonville sheriff’s officer shot and killed a dog Monday after ordering its owner to open the gate to the back yard to see if the dog would come out.
Once the gate was open, the dog named Lucy ran out the gate and rushed up to the officer and gave him a “playful nip,” according to News4Jax.
The Florida cop who has been identified as Carl Limpskin responded by pulling out his gun and firing but missing, according to the dog’s owner, Kimberly Barus.
The dog got scared after the first shot and attempted to run away but the cop fired several more times until the dog had died.
That was when Barus’ son, Jonathan Kyle Barus, “went after” the cop, resulting in him being arrested on a misdemeanor charge of assault on an officer. Kimberly Barus said she had to pull her son away to keep him from being shot by the cop.
The incident was captured on the cop’s body camera but the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is not releasing it because it is “under investigation.”
According to the Barus family, a teenage boy who lives in the neighborhood opened the gate to their backyard for “reasons unknown,” startling Lucy and another dog to start barking at the teen.
Upon hearing the barking, Kimberly Barus walked out the house into the front yard and noticed the teen standing on her car. She told local media that the gate was open but the dogs had remained inside the yard.
She said she walked back in the house to get her husband which is when the teen hopped off the car and began running away.
The teen’s mother called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, claiming her son was being chased by her neighbor’s dog but the Barus family denies the dog ever chased him.
When the cop arrived, the gate was closed and the dogs were in the back yard but he ordered her to open the gate which is when the dog ran out towards him, making him fear for his life.
The shooting took place in front of several family members, including Kimberly Barus’ 9-year-old granddaughter.
This is how Barus’ daughter, Brandy Benfield, described the incident on her Facebook page:
Yesterday, a boy attempted to enter my moms fence in the rear of her home for reasons unknown. In doing so he startled her dogs who obviously scared him when they began to bark. Said boy and his mother apparently made a call to the sheriffs office to report that a dog was chasing him trying to attack. An officer with JSO came out, and instead of getting my moms side of the story, asking any questions or acknowledging the fact that her fence is closed and has NO TRESPASSING signs he demanded that she open her gate. He reached towards one of her dogs, Lucy, who snapped but DID NOT bite him. He immediately opened fire, to which the dog ran around the house(AWAY FROM THE OFFICER) to get to the front door. He continued to shoot, hitting her 3 times and killing her. All of this was witnessed by my 9 year old niece.
All of this tragedy could have been avoided had this officer asked questions about the situation to begin with concerning why this boy was attempting to enter her fence at 6:30 am wearing a mask!! He also had no right whatsoever to ask her to open the fence, nor open fire on a dog who was running from him, not attempting towards him.
The family has since launched a petition on Change.org seeking to get the cop fired.
This horrible tragedy should have never happened and has completely traumatized my children as they witnessed what he did. This man is a trigger happy scared individual that should not be allowed to continue his job as an Officer of Law! Lucy was a big baby that we adored and my kids played with daily. We watched in horror as an individual took her life with absolutely no remorse!
On Monday evening, the same day of the shooting, Kimberly Barus posted on her Facebook page that her other dog, Peaches, took off running after the shooting and had gone missing. It is not clear from the post and the comments if the dog had been found.
Grand Rapids police in Michigan released four videos of the shooting death of Patrick Lyoya, an unarmed 26-year-old man who was shot and killed earlier this month following a traffic stop.
But only one of those videos provides a clear angle of the shooting which is posted below. The rest of the videos can be seen in a lengthy video of today’s press conference linked below.
The incident took place on April 4 after a cop pulled Lyoya because the license plate on the car he was driving was not registered to the car.
The video shows Lyoya, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, stepping out of the car and appearing confused as to why he had been pulled over.
The cop tries to explain, then asks for his driver’s license and Lyoya tells him it is inside the car. The cop whose name has not been released tells him to retrieve the license and Lyoya opens the car door and speaks to a man in the passenger’s seat.
But then Lyoya begins to walk away from the cop, prompting the cop to grab hold of him, sparking a short pursuit and struggle in the front yard of a house.
The cop pulls out his taser and deploys it but Lyoya grabs on to it to keep from being tasered. The cop then pulls out his gun and shoots him in the head as the passenger in the car records.
Lyoya’s family has retained attorney Ben Crump who issued the following statement.
“Patrick Lyoya immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to pursue the American Dream and provide a better and safer life for himself and his family. Instead, what found him was a fatal bullet to the back of the head, delivered by an officer of the Grand Rapids Police Department. The video clearly shows that this was an unnecessary, excessive, and fatal use of force against an unarmed Black man who was confused by the encounter and terrified for his life. It should be noted that Patrick never used violence against this officer even though the officer used violence against him in several instances for what was a misdemeanor traffic stop. We demand that the officer who killed Patrick not only be terminated for his use of excessive force, but be arrested and prosecuted for the violent killing of Patrick Lyoya.”
The videos were released earlier today in a press conference in which Grand Rapids Police Chief said the case is being investigated by Michigan State Police. Watch the full press conference here which includes all the videos, including dash and body camera videos as well as a security video from a home and the video recorded by Lyoya’s passenger.
Inge Berge made it clear from the get-go that he was recording when he walked into the superintendent’s office in Gloucester, Massachusetts to purchase five tickets to a school play in which his middle school daughter was performing.
But Gloucester Public Schools Superintendent Ben Lummis and his secretary said they did not want to be recorded and refused to speak to him unless he turned the camera off.
He ended up speaking to an assistant superintendent named Gregg Bach who did not mind being recorded, then posted the video to his Facebook page, feeling positive about the interaction with Bach.
But later that day he received a letter from Roberta Eason, director of human resources for the district, accusing him of felony wiretapping and threatening him with legal action if he did not remove the video.
More than a month later, the video not only remains on his Facebook page but Berge has filed a lawsuit against the School Committee of Gloucester and three employees, accusing them of violating his Constitutional right to record public officials in public.
The incident took place on March 3, 2022 while Berge was trying to buy five tickets to the school play after he had been informed the school was limiting seating to fill only half the auditorium due to covid restrictions.
Berge was told that 125 seats were available after the school limited seating to only 175 tickets. He was hoping the school district would make an exception to allow his family to see the girl perform.
He had been discussing the issue on his Facebook page and planned to upload the video for his friends and followers.
“I’m filming this, I’m doing a story on it,” Berge told Delisi after walking into the office, who then became irate over the fact he was recording.
“I’m not going to be filmed,” she said. “Can you shut that off. I’m not going to be filmed.”
Delisi scattered into the superintendent’s office as Lummis came to the doorway, telling him to stop recording.
“You do not have my permission to film me right now,” Lummis said before closing the door.
Eventually, Bach stepped out and spoke to him and seemed promising about allowing him to purchase the five tickets.
But not only did they refuse his request, they threatened him with a law that does not apply in this case because he never made it a secret that he was recording, according to the lawsuit filed by Marc Randazza, the First Amendment attorney representing him.
On March 3, 2022, Inge Berge entered the office of the Superintendent of Gloucester Public Schools, Ben Lummis. He went there to discuss an issue wherein Gloucester Public Schools were limited seating capacity at school events purportedly for the purpose of public safety, despite all statewide COVID-19 mandates in Massachusetts having been lifted. These restrictions were making it difficult to purchase tickets for him to attend his daughter’s middle school play.
The Superintendent’s office is a public building that is accessible to the general public.
At the time Berge entered the building, there was neither signage nor any other indication that video recording or photography was restricted, not permitted, nor even discouraged.
At all times, Berge held his camera out in the open, and it was obvious to all parties that he was filming. He also verbally confirmed that he was filming.
When Mr. Berge entered the building, he was directed to Executive Secretary Stephanie Delisi and began to speak with her. He began this conversation by stating “I’m filming this, I’m doing a story on it.”
At no point did anyone inform Mr. Berge that filming was not permitted, although two individuals did protest that they did not personally wish to be filmed. These individuals then retreated to private office areas, and were not filmed after that point.
The lawsuit also states the school is accusing Berge of violating the federal law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which is supposed to protect the privacy of student education records but that does not appear to be the case here.
The video in question remains on Berge’s Facebook page where it has been shared 16 times as of this writing.
Read both the lawsuit and the letter sent to him by the district. Watch the video below.
It’s been more than a month since a Miami police officer shot and killed Antwon Cooper with a single gunshot to the head after the 34-year-old man tried to run away from a traffic stop.
Police say he had a gun but his family denies that. And the body cam video released so far does not show him holding a gun.
The incident took place on March 8, 2022 and Cooper’s family has retained lawyers and vows to file a lawsuit.
The body cam video released is from Miami police officer Gonzalez who had pulled Cooper over for displaying an expired temporary tag, ordering him to step out of the car after discovering Cooper did not have a drivers license.
The video shows Cooper handing over an identification card along with a copy of the car’s registration before stepping out. The video also shows the cop patting him down before Cooper attempts to run away with the cop trying to grab on to him to keep him from running, ensuing a struggle.
A single gunshot is then heard and the struggle ends.
The cop who fired the shot has been identified by the Miami Herald as Sergeant Constant Rosemond who had arrived on the scene during the traffic stop.
Rawsi Williams, an attorney representing Cooper’s family, was told by police the sergeant was not wearing a body camera which would probably have given us a clearer view of the struggle between the first cop who had pulled him.
The Miami Herald reports that the cop who was patting him down said “gun” before Cooper took off running but it sounds more like he was saying “yo! yo! yo!” as Cooper starts running away but it is debatable (What do you hear around the 16-second mark in the video below?).
Miami police said they recovered a gun at the scene but Miami police also has a history of planting guns on people they have shot and killed.
Williams, the attorney representing the family, stated the following about the incident on her website:
Officer Gonzalez exits his vehicle and approaches the red vehicle Mr. Cooper is driving, going straight to the driver’s window which Mr. Cooper lets down. At the time of the stop Officer Gonzalez does not make Mr. Cooper aware of the reason for the stop, but a non-confrontational exchange occurs between Officer Gonzalez and Mr. Cooper wherein Officer Gonzalez requests Mr. Cooper’s license and registration.
Mr. Cooper provides the registration but states he doesn’t have his license. Officer Gonzalez instructs Mr. Cooper to exit the vehicle. Mr. Cooper complies. Officer Gonzalez initiates a pat down and Mr. Cooper tries to run. Officer Gonzalez grabs Mr. Cooper. There’s a short tango-2-step of Mr. Cooper still trying to run and Officer Gonzalez still trying to hold Mr. Cooper by the shirt and at some point by the hair because Mr. Cooper has very long dreads, They are not fighting, punching, or hitting one another, nor is Mr. Cooper fighting, punching, kicking, hitting Officer Gonzalez, brandishing a gun or any weapon. There is no gun or any weapon in Mr. Cooper’s hand at any time during this tango-2-step or the entire encounter, including when the SGT later drives up on the scene. Mr. Cooper is trying to run while Officer Gonzalez grabs his dread when the SGT arrives, exists his vehicle, and shoots Mr. Cooper in the side of the head with the bullet exiting the other side of Mr. Cooper’s head while simultaneously yelling “get down.” Mr. Cooper never saw it coming.
That same SGT does not render aid per Law Enforcement involved in this case, although he remained on the scene for hours.
The facts and implications put out by Miami PD keep changing in attempts to exonerate the Officer. That is why the facts are always limited, only in favor of the officer, or illogical without any evidenced corroboration. Initially it was implications that the officer initiating the stop shot Mr. Cooper. That was not true. It was the Sergeant. Then and now it continues to be that “a gun was found on the scene.” Yet, they omitted that at NO time did Mr. Cooper ever have a gun in his hand at any point during this encounter or draw a gun or do they have any footage of a gun in Mr. Cooper’s possession. In fact, Miami PD is still trying to identify the source of the gun they found on the scene several feet away from the incident which they keep showing in pictures without any context, because they know that at no time was any gun used in this encounter between Mr. Cooper and Officer Gonzalez. The only gun used or shot by anyone on that scene was from the SGT to kill Mr. Antwon “Twon” Cooper!! Further, Miami PD keep releasing information regarding Mr. Cooper’s criminal past to justify the SGT’s wrongful killing. However, neither the SGT nor Gonzalez knew Mr. Cooper’s identity at the time of the killing because Mr. Cooper didn’t have his license when Officer Gonzalez stopped him. The truth is just the SGT wrongfully and unlawfully killed this man like a dog in the street and didn’t even care enough in his humanity nor have the professionalism in his profession to render aid! The other Officers who responded after the SGT killed Mr. Cooper because Officer Gonzalez then called out a “shots fired” for backup are the Officers who rendered aid.
The shooting is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Watch the video below. Miami police have not said whether the cop car had a dash camera that would provide another angle of the shooting.
A Miami-Dade politician succeeded in creating a new paid holiday for county employees in order to “honor” law enforcement officers.
“Unfortunately, there’s been an anti-law enforcement movement that, in my eyes, has not been called for,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz during a county commission meeting last week.
“We have to support what they do. They put their life on the line for you.”
Diaz’s outdated rhetoric is more suited for an era before cameras exposed law enforcement for the dysfunctional institution that many of us know it be, a culture of coercion and corruption that some of us would opt-out of as taxpayers if given the opportunity.
But last week, the 13-member county commission did not hesitate to approve the bill which will give all county employees a day off except for first responders whom the bill is supposed to be honoring. Those employees will be paid extra, costing taxpayers an extra $1.8 million, according to the Miami Herald.
And it shows just how clueless and out-of-touch these politicians are, still clinging to the belief that cops must be worshipped on the basis they are employed by the government to enforce laws, many that are unjust, not to mention the number of laws designed to generate revenue for the government.
“Young people, in the past, they used to say: I want to be a police officer,” Commissioner Rebeca Sosa told the Herald. “Now they say no, because they are not respecting them.”
In the past, young people formed their opinion of police from Hollywood shows and government rhetoric that painted cops as “heroes” willing to sacrifice their lives for strangers, a myth these politicians are still trying to peddle with this holiday.
But these days, young people develop their opinions of police from unedited videos taken on the streets in cities and towns throughout this country that show cops killing citizens over the most minor infractions when those people do not grovel to their every order and demand.
Thanks to technology, we now know that cops treating citizens as enemy combatants is the norm rather than the exception. We now know that “officer safety” supersedes the safety of citizens. And we know that cops are hardly held accountable for their abuse or even crimes committed in the line of duty, especially after uttering the magic words of “I feared for my life.”
We see it every day on videos recorded by citizens which is why cops fought so hard for so many years to keep people from recording them back before everybody had a camera on their phone which is when public opinion of police began changing, especially among young people.
Diaz, being a politician and friend to the cops probably doesn’t see it that way because he is the government not to mention when he was pulled over for suspicion of DUI a few years ago, he did what most cops do and refused to submit to a breathalyzer, knowing it would lead to his acquittal which it did.
Under Florida law, a person refusing to submit to a breathalyzer will have their driver license automatically suspended for a year. But Diaz obtained a waiver available to first-time offenders that allowed him to drive to work and do errands, the Miami Herald reported.
After a jury acquitted him in September 2016, Diaz told local media the reason he refused to take the breathalyzer was because he did not trust the devices used by cops to measure one’s blood alcohol content.
And that may be a valid point but why hasn’t he as a politician made more of an effort to address the issue to ensure other citizens do not get falsely accused of DUI?
For those of us who are not friends with the cops, it will always be about escalation to the point of death, if necessary.
It’s not about to serve and protect but to comply or die as we saw in a video last month showing California Highway Patrol officers smother a DUI suspect to death after he refused to submit to a blood test.
Police and politicians like to claim it’s all “safety” for the community but it’s really about control which is why so many politicians place cops on a pedestal since they seek control as well.
The bottom line is, there is nothing to respect about civil servants sanctioned by the state to murder you over petty infractions, especially when those infractions were designed by pandering politicians like these to generate revenue for the government.
The cop appreciation holiday will be observed on Friday, May 13 during “National Police Week” with the closure of county parks, buildings and offices and other services so it is going to be an added inconvenience for residents not employed by the county.
But the police union is happy and that is all that matters to these politicians.
“You guys made history today,” said Steadman Stahl, president of the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, according to the Miami Herald, in reference to Miami-Dade County becoming the first municipality in the country to pass such a law.
It was 6:48 a.m. when Minneapolis police entered an apartment and shot and killed a man named Amir Locke, who had been sleeping on a couch wrapped in a blanket when he was jolted awake by the cops pointing guns at him.
Police say they were in fear for their lives because Locke had a gun in his hand but Locke was not only a licensed gun owner, he was not even named in the warrant.
And the limited body camera video released by police indicates he probably had no idea they were cops because they killed him within ten seconds of entering the apartment while shining a bright light in his face and yelling overlapping commands of “show your hands!” and “get on the ground!”.
Police say they had to kill him because he failed to obey commands. But the video shows he never really had a chance.
On Wednesday, prosecutors cleared the cop who shot him, Mark Hanneman, of any wrongdoing on the basis that cops breaking into a home to serve a warrant have more of a legal right to defend themselves than residents inside the home believing they are being robbed.
Locke, 22, had been visiting his cousin whose girlfriend was living in the apartment. Neither the cousin, Marlon Speed, or his girlfriend, Tatyana Henderson, were listed on the warrant. Both were sleeping in a bedroom while Locke slept on the couch when police entered the apartment using a key given to them by the building manager. Locke was one week away from moving to Dallas to begin a music career when he was killed.
The prime suspect on the warrant was Mekhi Camden Speed, Marlon Speed’s 17-year-old brother and Locke’s cousin, who was suspected in a homicide that took the life of a man named Otis Elber on January 10 in St. Paul in what witnesses say was a drug deal gone bad.
St. Paul police determined that Mekhi Speed lived in the Bolero Flats apartment complex in Minneapolis, the twin city that neighbors St. Paul in Minnesota, so they teamed up with Minneapolis police to obtain search warrants for three apartments in the building which they said were connected to the suspect.
But Mekhi Speed was not in any of the apartments they raided on February 2. In fact, he would not be arrested until six days later in Winona, a city more than two hours away from Minneapolis.
No-knock policy change
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office acknowledge that Locke would probably still be alive today had police not conducted a no-knock raid. And Minneapolis city officials have vowed to make changes in departmental policies to curb the use of these warrants.
However, they said the same thing in the wake of the George Floyd murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, only for an innocent citizen to be killed in a no-knock raid less than two years later.
Minneapolis police can no longer apply for or execute unannounced search warrants, even when assisting other law enforcement agencies, according to a special order released by Mayor Jacob Frey on Tuesday.
In the latest effort to address the use of no-knock warrants after the police killing of Amir Locke this winter, the new policy states that Minneapolis officers serving a warrant must announce their presence and then wait 20 seconds during the daytime, or 30 seconds at night, before entering, unless under “exigent circumstances.” The policy defines “exigent circumstances” as when in hot pursuit, to prevent imminent harm or provide emergency aid, to prevent imminent destruction or removal of evidence and to prevent the imminent escape of a suspect.
And this is how the Minneapolis Star-Tribune described the previous policy change on November 25, 2020:
Minneapolis police officers will face restrictions on entering a person’s home unannounced under a new policy banning most “no-knock” search warrants, the latest attempt by city leaders to reform police practices in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.
The change would, for the first time, establish clear expectations for MPD officers before crossing the threshold of a home. Surprise police raids have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and most recently came under harsh criticism after police in Louisville, Ky., fatally shot Breonna Taylor in her home last March.
St. Paul police, the agency leading the investigation into homicide suspect Mehki Speed, initially applied for a “knock and announce” search warrant for the three apartments in question but Minneapolis police refused to assist them unless it was a “no-knock” warrant for “officer safety” reasons on the basis the suspect was considered armed and dangerous.
Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over the Derek Chauvin trial in 2020, approved the warrant without question on February 1 which you can read here.
The warrant allowed cops to enter apartments 701, 1402 and 1403. They first entered the two apartments on the 14th floor using keys obtained by building management, encountering other residents but not the prime suspect, according to the investigative report compiled by both the Hennepin County Attorney’s office and the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.
The cops then took the elevator down to the seventh floor and used a key to enter apartment 701 which was where Locke was visiting his cousin.
Family members say Locke worked as a Door Dash driver and had a concealed weapons permit and no criminal record. They say he carried a gun to protect himself while doing food deliveries.
We will never know what was going through his mind when he was awakened by screaming men with guns but we can assume he was probably in fear for his life which was why he grabbed his gun.
But that made Minneapolis police officer Mark Henneman fear for his life as well as he explained in his followup report which was included in the investigative report:
In this moment, I feared for my life and the lives of my teammates. I was convinced that the individual was going to fire their handgun and that I would suffer great bodily harm or death. I felt in this moment that if I did not use deadly force myself, I would likely be killed. There was no opportunity for me to reposition myself or retreat. There was no way for me to de-escalate this situation. The threat to my life and the lives of my teammates was imminent and terrifying.
Hennepin fired three times, then pounced on Locke and began wrestling with him.
Marlon Speed, the cousin sleeping with his girlfriend in the bedroom, said the first thing he heard were the gunshots followed by shouts of “police,” according to the report.
Marlon Speed reported that he heard gun shots then he heard Police. Marlon described, “I had just rolled over, just rolled over, probably was fittin to drink some water…all I hear is boom. (making gun noises) then they said police. That’s exactly how it went. They ain’t come in, they ain’t knock, they ain’t say police, or nothin. They just came through the door and got to shootin. And said police.” Marlon further reported, “They ain’t say shit, they just walked in, shoot their fuckin guns, they damn near shot me and her. She jumped off the bed under the fucking blanket, had to tell her she can’t do that shit. They woulda shot her ass, she came up from under the blanket with nothin in her hands.
Tatyana Henderson, the girlfriend, said she heard shouts followed by gunfire but was unable to make out what they were shouting and did not realize they were cops until they barged into their bedroom with guns drawn.
Henderson described, “I was in my bedroom. So me and MARLON was in our bedroom…And then his cousin was sleeping on the couch. And then we heard like yelling. Like I don’t, I just thought somebody…like ran into my apartment or something. And then like gunshots went off. And I’m like, on my God. So then we kinda like jumped on the floor…Then that’s when we seen like officers running in…Like with guns and everything. I’m like okay.” Henderson reported that the door to the bedroom was closed as this incident was occurring. Henderson described that it sounded as if someone was breaking in. Henderson said that the first time she realized it was the police was when officers entered the bedroom.
The entire operation turned out to be a failure because not only was an innocent citizen killed but the man they were looking for was nowhere to be found that day.
Nevertheless, the law protects cops in these situations, the investigative report noted.
Here in Minnesota, the legislature has enacted Minn. Stat. § 609.066 provides peace officers with the authority to use deadly force under certain circumstances, which may exceed circumstances in which the general public would be so authorized.
The decision
The county attorney’s office goes into great detail as to how they arrived at their decision to not charge Hanneman but also acknowledges that he should still be alive today, according to their synopsis of the investigation.
Amir Locke’s life mattered. He was a young man with plans to move to Dallas, where he would be closer to his mom and – he hoped – build a career as a hip-hop artist, following in the musical footsteps of his father.
He should be alive today, and his death is a tragedy. Amir Locke was not a suspect in the underlying Saint Paul criminal investigation nor was he named in the search warrants. Amir Locke is a victim. This tragedy may not have occurred absent the no-knock warrant used in this case. County Attorney Freeman and Attorney General Ellison met with the Locke family this morning and once again send their deepest condolences to them during this incredibly difficult time.
After a thorough review of all available evidence, however, there is insufficient admissible evidence to file criminal charges in this case. Specifically, the State would be unable to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt any of the elements of Minnesota’s use-of-deadly-force statute that authorizes the use of force by Officer Hanneman. Nor would the State be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal charge against any other officer involved in the decision-making that led to the death of Amir Locke.
On Wednesday, the Hennepin County Attorney released the investigative report along with an “expert report” by a former cop named John “Jack” Ryan which is filled with redactions.
But the investigative report mentions that several cops were wearing body cameras but only less than a minute of footage has been released which you can see below.
Zachary Cook already had a history of abusing dogs when he was caught entering his girlfriend’s apartment without permission and killing her dog earlier this year, according to Missouri prosecutors.
The woman arrived home on January 14 after working all night and discovered her dog dead. When she reviewed the video footage from her Ring doorbell camera, she saw her boyfriend who was a Lawrence County sheriff’s deputy entering the apartment the night before while she was at work by using a code to open the door.
The woman had given Cook the code to open the door to enter the apartment but she never gave him permission to enter her home when she was not there, according to the Springfield News-Leader.
The camera recorded the dog making high-pitch whining and crying noises while he was inside. The dog then went silent after Cook was seen leaving the apartment.
The woman took the dog’s body to a specialist for an autopsy who determined the dog had been abused with multiple broken ribs and lacerations to the liver as well as blood in the dog’s abdominal cavity.
The woman said she already had her suspicions because her dog would become afraid whenever Cook was around, whining and hiding and urinating uncontrollably. She had also caught him inside her apartment without permission a month earlier and noticed that her dog’s eyes were red.
Cook told her he had spanked the dog because it had urinated on the floor, then given the dog a bath so soap probably got into its eyes but the woman was worried the dog had a hemorrhage in its eyes, according to local media which reviewed the court records.
The woman called Springfield police who searched through Cook’s phone and discovered online searches he had made about the Missouri animal abuse statute and inquiring whether shock could kill a dog.
A Missouri judge granted an order of protection to the woman on February 14, prohibiting Cook to come within 500 feet of her, according to online court records.
But a warrant for his arrest on charges of burglary and animal abuse was not issued until March 16, records indicate. That was when the 24-year-old man resigned from the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the Springfield News-Leader, a previous girlfriend suspected Cook had killed her dog after it died under “suspicious circumstances” but charges were never filed in that case.
Prosecutors say that Cook has a history of this type of behavior. In court documents asking that Cook be held in jail as the case moves forward, they wrote that Cook’s previous girlfriend’s dog had also died under suspicious circumstances and she believed Cook was responsible, though it does not appear Cook was ever charged.
The Greene County Prosecutor’s Office wrote in court filings that animal abuse is a form of domestic violence. They cited a survey that 71 percent of battered women reported that their partner had hurt or killed one or more of their pets.
“Offenders may physically harm the animal to psychologically punish the victim or to remind the victim that the abuser can assert physical force to maintain dominance and control,” prosecutors wrote.
And that raises the question as to whether Cook had been protected by police in the previous case because it was only in December 2019 that he had been hired by the Kansas State Highway Patrol but then quietly became a Lawrence County sheriff’s deputy at some point thereafter.
That not only means Cook most likely took a pay cut but also had to attend the police academy in Missouri in order to be certified as a law enforcement officer in that state, even though he had already done so in Kansas less than three years ago. His Linkedin page, in fact, still lists him as a Kansas state trooper.
The starting salary for a Kansas state trooper is $21.65-an-hour which comes out to almost $44,000-a-year.
And while there is no salary listed for Cook in Missouri, there are various salaries listed for several other Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies and they all make less than that, including one deputy who has obtained the rank of colonel so it’s doubtful if Cook was being paid more than that.
So let’s not be surprised if it turns out Cook had been allowed to resign from the Kansas State Highway Patrol to avoid animal abuse charges, only to re-surface in Missouri to do the same.
And Cook is hardly alone.
Last month we wrote about a former Virginia cop named Richard Chinappi III who was sentenced to a year in jail for torturing and killing his girlfriend’s dog in a drunken rage.
Also last month, a New York corrections officer was arrested on charges of killing his girlfriend’s dog.
Cook faces three counts of burglary and three counts of animal abuse, including a felony charge of torturing and/or mutilating an animal while it was still alive. He has pleaded not guilty and is out on bond. His next court date is April 12.
Missouri police say Eli Crawford fired multiple rounds at them during a standoff that lasted three hours before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life.
By the time police entered the mobile home from where Crawford had been firing shots, they found the man’s two-year-old daughter, Clesslynn Crawford, dead from a single gunshot wound.
On Monday, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced she had been shot by a Joplin SWAT police officer, according to KWCH.
The incident took place on March 26 after several Missouri law enforcement agencies, including the Baxter Springs and Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, responded to a call of domestic violence at the home.
Taylor Dawn Shutte, the mother of the toddler, had called 911 about an ongoing domestic abuse situation with the girl’s father.
Eli Crawford, 37, opened the door when police arrived but then quickly shut it when realizing it was the police. Moments later, the toddler re-opened the door and her mother ran outside.
However, Eli Crawford shot her multiple times which sparked the lengthy standoff in which police say he fired off more than 90 rounds.
More law enforcement agencies arrived to assist in the standoff, including the Kansas Highway Patrol, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Joplin Police SWAT team.
It is not clear how many rounds were fired by police at this time but one round fired by a Joplin police officer struck the girl.
The Joplin Police Department issued the following statement, according to KDFI:
This is a horrific outcome to what had already started as a very tragic incident. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the families involved and the surrounding community. We ask that you pray for the victims and everyone involved.
The Joplin Police Department is actively cooperating with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation as part of the ongoing investigation.
The cop who fired the shot has not been identified but has been placed on paid administrative leave.
The main question that has not been answered is how many shots were fired by police during the standoff knowing there was a 2-year-old girl inside?
From what has been reported so far, it would not be surprising if the cops were ordered to withhold their fire which is how they were able to determine which cop fired the fatal shot that struck the girl.
An Arkansas sheriff’s deputy who resigned last year after claiming “the current political climate” did not allow him to do his job was seen on body cam video repeatedly punching a suspect who had his hands in the air.
It took another cop at the scene to pull Hot Springs County sheriff’s deputy Chris Winberry off the suspect which only further enraged the deputy.
“Let me f*cking go or I’m gonna f*ck you up a lot harder,” Winberry told the Malvern police officer whose name has not been released.
The Malvern cop then proceeds to taser the man and order him to stop resisting.
Once they had the man in custody, the Malvern police officer is talking to another officer at the scene, describing how he had to pull Winberry off the suspect whose name has also not been released.
“Winberry comes through the door and just went the f*ck off on him,” he says, according to the body camera footage.
“I mean, beating the f*ck out of him. I was trying to get Winberry off of him basically.”
But another cop overhearing this conversation orders the Malvern cop to stop talking.
Winberry is being investigated by the FBI over that incident as well as an additional five cases of alleged excessive force, according to KATV, the Arkansas news station that last month obtained the body camera footage from the incident described over.
Winberry was proud after taking a Facebook quiz that indicated his personality matched the personality of the Terminator.
The incident took place on December 4, 2020 as the Hot Springs County Sheriff’s Office and the Mavern Police Department were entering a home to arrest a man who was found hiding underneath a pile of clothing.
Winberry resigned August 27, 2021 after the FBI launched an investigation into his actions.
“With the current political climate that’s effecting myself and family, I don’t feel like I can hold my position any longer,” he explained in his resignation letter, according to the Malvern Daily Record.
At this time, there are still many unanswered questions, including:
What is the name of the Malvern police officer who pulled Winberry off the suspect?
Was he retaliated against for trying to prevent police abuse?
Who is the cop who ordered him to stop talking about the incidenet?
What is the name of the suspect and why was he being arrested?
What are the details of the other five excessive force incidents that reportedly took place between February 2020 and August 2021 that are being investigated by the FBI?
KATV reports there is more video and audio evidence from the other cases that has not been released yet but they are working on it. Watch the video below.
Georgia state trooper Jacob Thompson claimed he was in fear for his life when he shot and killed a 60-year-old man named Julian Lewis after trying to pull him over for a broken taillight in 2020
But his story quickly fell apart when dash cam video showed he shot the man in the head within two seconds after forcing the man’s car into a ditch using a PIT (precision immobilization technique) maneuver, according to testimony from a state investigator.
On Thursday, Lewis’ widow, Betty Lewis, agreed to a $4.8 million settlement from the state of Georgia, the largest settlement of its kind in Georgia since 1990, according to The Augusta Chronicle.
However, dash and body cam from the incident still have not been released to the public but those who have seen it say it leaves little doubt that Lewis was killed in cold blood.
Nevertheless, a grand jury last year declined to indict Thompson on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault after presumably watching the video. He had been fired and charged one week after the incident.
However, Thompson, who was named Trooper of the Year in 2019, is still being investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The federal agencies launched the investigation in September 2021, three months after the grand jury’s decision.
“We think that the prosecutors, the public should know why the state has resolved this matter in this historic way and they should release the body cam footage, the footage from the video, all footage should be release. the taxpayers should know what we all know, that Julian Lewis was murdered,” said Mawuli Mel Davis, an attorney for Lewis’ family.
The incident took place on August 7, 2020 when Thompson attempted to pull over Lewis for a broken taillight on a rural road in Screven County, about 60 miles northwest of Savannah.
Police say Lewis refused to stop, leading Thompson on a pursuit through several rural roads.
“It is believed that Lewis was attempting to drive toward a more familiar area where he knew other people would be present — a practice commonly taught to people who may feel vulnerable in isolated areas where there is nobody else present to witness events,” attorneys for the Lewis family told WXIA-TV.
Attorneys who have viewed the dash cam video say that Lewis using his turn signals and was pointing to a house down the street trying to tell the cop he planned to pull over in that location, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Thompson, who was 27 at the time, eventually forced Lewis’ car into a ditch with the PIT maneuver but then claimed to have been in fear for his life when Lewis revved up his car engine, making him believe he was about to be run over.
“It appeared to me that the violator was trying to use his vehicle to injure me,” Thompson wrote in his report, according to USA Today.“Being in fear for my life and safety, I discharged my weapon once.”
However, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Agent Dustin Peak testified during last year’s grand jury hearing that the dash cam video contradicts Thompson’s report, testifying that Thompson shot him within two seconds of stepping out his vehicle while Lewis had both hands on the steering wheel.
Peak also testified that it would have been impossible for Lewis to have been revving his engine because the car battery became disconnected after Thompson’s PIT maneuver, according to the Associated Press.
“He was a kind soul. He was a people person. He would take his shirt off for you,” said his widow, Betty Lewis, during a rally in 2020.
Before he became the poster child for mandatory steroid testing for cops, Christopher Pullease was commemorated by his chief for all the participation awards he had won over a two-decade career at the Sunrise Police Department in South Florida.
“He’s a seven-time recipient of the ‘officer of the month’ award, he’s received four outstanding unit awards and he’s received in excess of more than 40 department commendation letters,” said Sunrise Police Chief Anthony Rosa in a ceremony that took place in December 2020 and posted to YouTube that same month.
“And I’m proud to be promoting Chris Pullease to the rank of sergeant.”
But Chief Rosa has been singing a different tune ever since Pullease, 46, was exposed on body camera earlier this year placing his hands on the throat of a female cop who was trying to keep him from pepper spraying a handcuffed man who had been arrested for assault.
“I find this behavior to be disgusting,” he told WSVN. “I think the video speaks for itself.
“I find it to be inappropriate and unprofessional, because what he did is he escalated the situation when calm was actually required.”
The chief’s comments, of course, enraged the police union for daring to hold cops accountable.
“We are extremely displeased with Chief Rosa’s unprofessional conduct during this investigation,” Union President Steve Negron wrote in a letter to the Sunrise City Commission and city manager, according to WSVN.
Meanwhile, Pullease remains on paid administrative leave as internal affairs conducts its “investigation” which is now in the uncomfortable position of deciding which cop to protect; the younger, female cop following state law and departmental policy or the older male veteran cop taking the law into his own hands.
Let’s not be surprised if they decide the female cop was “obstructing” an investigation when she ran up to Pullease from behind as he was threatening to pepper spray the handcuffed man and pulling him backwards in an attempt to prevent him from doing that.
However, the female cop who is 28 years old and has been on the force less than three years was abiding by a new state law called “duty to intervene” that went into effect on October 1, 2021, less than three months before the incident.
An act relating to the excessive use of force by law enforcement officers; requiring a law enforcement officer to intervene when another officer is using or attempting to use excessive force under certain circumstances; providing criminal penalties; requiring a law enforcement officer to render aid to a victim of excessive force under certain circumstances; requiring a law enforcement officer to report the use of excessive force by another officer; providing penalties; requiring a law enforcement officer to report the commission of a criminal offense by another officer while on duty; providing criminal penalties; providing an effective date.
Chief Rosa says the female cop was also abiding by a departmental policy that requires officers to intervene in cases of police abuse but the union president says have received “no training” in how to handle such a situation.
The incident took place on November 19, 2021 as Sunrise police were arresting a man named Jean Similien who was accused of assaulting people at a local business.
The videos show the cops were having trouble trying to get him into the backseat of the car when Pullease pulled up.
However, the man who was already handcuffed agrees to get into the car just as Pullease walks up.
“Alright, I’m getting in,” he says as he places his legs inside the car.
But Pullease already has his pepper spray canister in his hand.
“Watch out, motherf*cker!” he says as he leans his body into the backseat of the car.
“Hey, look at me! Look at me! Look at me! You want to play f*cking games? You’re playing with the wrong motherf*cker!”
“Do what you got to do, man,” responds Similien. “You gonna mace me? Mace me.”
“Look at me, motherf*cker. You wanna play fucking games? You wanna be disrespectful with my fucking officers?
“I will remove your fucking soul from your fucking body!”
“Do what you gotta do,” responds Similien as the female cop runs up behind Pullease and pulls him back.
“What the f*ck? Don’t ever fucking touch me again! Get the fuck off me!” Pullease yells at the female cop while shoving her backwards with his hands on her throat.
A few moments later, he orders all the cops at the scene to turn their cameras off which would probably a more accurate example of obstructing an investigation.
The incident was kept under wraps for two months until local media began asking questions after receiving a tip. That led to police releasing the video without audio. Last week they released the video with audio.
In a normal world where cops are expected to follow the same laws as the rest of us, Pullease would be facing felony charges of battery on a police officer but veteran cops like him have long learned the laws do not necessarily apply to them.
Broward County’s public defender Gordon Weekes wrote a letter to Chief Rosa in January stating that his office has more than 400 pending cases of people arrested for felony battery on a police officer, according to local media.
“And those individuals are not given the same bit of patience. They’re not given the same bit of deference. They’re not scrutinized with respect to whether the facts support the charge or not. If any one of us would have engaged in that type of conduct, we would have been arrested immediately on site.”
James Madison Audits on YouTube who had been requesting the video for months was kind enough to send us the unedited footage which we compiled in a video below. Watch his analysis of the incident here.
New York State Trooper Anthony Nigro IV said he shot and killed an unarmed man after a high-speed pursuit because the man was “reaching” and putting the car into reverse, making him fear for his life.
But body cam video released last week (when slowed) shows that James Huber was reaching for the gear selector.
However, the courts have long given the benefit of the doubt to cops in situations where they have to make a “split second decision.”
Nevertheless, New York State Attorney General said her office is investigating the shooting and released the body cam videos last week.
The incident took place on February 12 when police say they spotted Huber “driving erratically” on an interstate highway, police told local media at the time.
They say he refused to stop when they tried to pull him over so they pursued him at speeds reaching 100 mph before he struck a police car and exited the interstate which is when they ended the pursuit.
However, they spotted him about an hour later in downtown Buffalo sitting in his car while idling on a street, talking to some pedestrians
“Get the f*ck out!” Nigro yells as he steps out his patrol car with a gun in his hands.
“Go away,” Huber responds and turns his head away from Nigro and reaches for the gear selector.
Nigro has one hand on Huber’s hoodie and the other holding his gun as he repeatedly tells him to “get the f*ck out!”
But Huber is refusing, repeatedly telling him “nope.”
Two gunshots ring out and Nigro falls backwards. Seconds later, Huber’s car can be heard crashing.
Then as Nigro gets up and runs towards the crash – ordering a witness to go way in the process – we see that Huber’s car is on its side on what looks like like some sort of exit ramp.
“Ah, you dumb ass,” Nigro says to himself in reference to Huber as he walks up to the crashed car with his gun drawn.
A couple of minutes later, another cop appearing to be a supervisor arrives and orders him to turn off his body camera.
Huber, 38, was likely on his way to the Peace Bridge rally that day in support of Canadian truckers protesting against vaccine mandates, Cary Arnold, the mother of Huber’s daughter and his lifelong friend, told the Buffalo News.
“Jimmy had a huge heart and would give anyone the shirt off his back. He will truly be missed and always loved,” Arnold told Erie News Now last month.
Watch the video of the shooting below. The three videos released by the attorney general’s office can be viewed here. One video is of the shooting and the other two are from inside Nigro’s patrol car during the pursuit.
It’s been more than a month since New Jersey cops shot an unarmed man named Jajuan Henderson who had been doing nothing more than retrieving a bottle of ice tea from his baby mother’s car – leaving the 29-year-old man paralyzed from the waist down.
But Trenton police have yet to explain why they confronted Henderson in the first place.
On Friday, the Union County Prosecutor’s Office released four body cameras from the four officers at the scene but at no point in any of those videos does an officer provide Henderson a legitimate reason as to why he needed to provide them his identification and step out of the car.
Instead, the videos from February 12 show the cops hopping out of a dark unmarked car and confronting Henderson who was sitting inside the car in a parallel parking space with a car in front of it and a car behind it.
The cops were dressed in dark tactical uniforms with SWAT patches on the sleeves. At least one of the cops wore a mask on his face.
“Put the window down,” one of the cops repeatedly tells him while banging on the window with other cops flashing their lights into the car.
Henderson told them they had no probable cause to harass him and refused to open the door or window and provide his identification.
One of the cops then used his baton to repeatedly strike the car window, shattering it.
Evidently fearing for his life, Henderson started the car and attempted to make a getaway, striking both the car in front it and behind it before one of the cops opens fire. One of the bullets struck Henderson’s spine and left him paralyzed.
He was initially charged with four counts of aggravated assault but those charges have been dismissed, according to NJ.com.
He is still facing resisting arrest and obstruction charges but received no citations in relation to the initial stop/detainment whatever reason that may have been.
The full names of the cops have not been released but they have been referred to in a lawsuit filed by Henderson by their initials, M.G., C.H., J.C., and J.L.
Read the lawsuit here and watch the shortened, edited video below. The four unedited videos can be viewed here.
After a night of heavy drinking, Jose Mendoza wandered into the common area of an apartment building to wait for a friend who had invited him to spend the night at his place.
But he ended up walking into the wrong building and was shot in the face by a nervous cop who claimed Mendoza was trying to break into his apartment.
Mendoza survived the shooting but is now partially blind. And he remains incarcerated on felony home invasion charges with no bond since the shooting last year – despite existing video evidence that supports his story over the cop’s story.
Last month, his attorney filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago and the cop, Iwan Smith, who was “relieved of police powers” in June 2021 for unspecified reasons, according to NBC Chicago.
His attorney, Thomas Glasgow, told NBC Chicago that the Cook County District Attorney’s Office is blaming a prior DUI arrest for keeping him incarcerated with no bond or trial for his false arrest.
The incident took place on March 31, 2021 after Mendoza made earlier arrangements to spend the night at a friend’s apartment. He had worked all day, then got drunk and was still wearing his work clothes from XFiniti Digital Cable TV when he staggered into Smith’s building, thinking it was his friend’s building.
Surveillance video shows him milling around the common area for about ten minutes, including sitting on a short set of stairs. He then climbs those stairs and tries a doorknob of an apartment to the right just out of view from the camera believing it to be his friend’s.
After finding the door locked, he leans against a wall outside the apartment and squats down to continue waiting for his friend.
However, Smith was inside watching television with his girlfriend and heard somebody trying to open the door so he retrieved his service pistol from a safe in the closet and opened the front door to his apartment.
Mendoza stood up from his squatting position as soon as the door opened, expecting to see his friend, but was quickly shot in the face. He then collapsed in the doorway but Smith kicked him and he fell a few feet away.
Smith closed his apartment door and told his girlfriend to call 911 as Mendoza bled out while trying to stand but failing, slipping and falling into a growing pool of blood. At no point did Smith try to determine if Mendoza was armed nor did he ever attempt to render him aid.
Jose Mendoza is blind in one eye and remains incarcerated after mistaking a cop’s apartment for his friend’s apartment.
The cops arrive six minutes after the call and Smith greets them at the door to the building with his badge and gun but places the gun down on the floor to allow them to pick it up.
“Did he have a weapon on him,” a cop asks him.
“No, he didn’t have no weapon,” Smith responds.
Smith then proceeds to tell them a story about Mendoza trying to force his way inside his apartment.
“He knocked on my door and when I approached to open it, he pushed it in and I tried to hold it and he forced his way in.”
But the video evidence contradicting his story has been publicly available on the website of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability since November and nobody at the Cook County District Attorney’s Office seems to care.
Glasgow police in Kentucky first claimed they encountered Jeremy Marr after he had broken into a home but then he suffered a medical episode when they tried to arrest him so they rushed him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Then a video surfaced on Facebook (which has since been made private) showing three cops repeatedly tasering and kneeing on the 35-year-old man while piling on top of him which led to a lawsuit against the cops, so city attorneys adjusted the narrative to say that Marr had become “combative” and that the cops were only trying to “calm the suspect and de-escalate the situation.”
But they didn’t release the body cam footage until a year after the incident and only after Kentucky State police cleared the cops, Guy Turcotte, Hayden Phillips and Sergeant Cameron Murrell, of any wrongdoing. Not surprisingly, the video contradicted everything that police and city attorneys had been saying all along.
On Monday, a judge rejected a motion from the city seeking to dismiss the case on qualified immunity, allowing the lawsuit against the cops to proceed. At least for now.
At this stage of the litigation, it would be inappropriate for the determine whether any claims are precluded by qualified immunity without affording Plaintiffs the opportunity to conduct discovery, and, thus, the motion will be denied on this basis.
The incident took place on April 14, 2020 after the cops responded to the home of an elderly woman named Evie Tharpe who had called 911 after a highly agitated Marr walked into her home through an open garage door.
“I’d never seen him before in my life,” Tharpe told WCLU Radio. “And I said, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Get out of here!’ It scared me to death.”
But she realized he also appeared to be scared because he kept repeating “please don’t let them kill me.”
“I said, ‘I’m not killing you, and they’re not going to kill you,’” Tharpe said. “’They’re just going to come get you.’”
Marr was already out of the house by the time the first cop pulled up and seemed ready to cooperate, walking towards the officer with his arms raised, offering to hand him the knife in his pocket. But the cop told him to keep his hands out of his pockets and he did.
“Please don’t let them hurt me,” he repeatedly told the cop who assured him nobody was going to hurt him.
But he became even more agitated when they tried handcuffing him so they took him to the ground and piled on top of him.
The cops then tasered him about ten times over the next three minutes while kneeing him, placing their full body weight on him while ordering him to “put your hands behind your back.” He was pronounced dead by the time they got to the hospital.
An autopsy conducted by the state determined Marr’s cause of death to be “Agitated / Excited delirium complicating acute methamphetamine.” And a toxicology report determined him to have methamphetamine in his system, according to WBKO.
While the video shows he was paranoid and delusional which are common symptoms from somebody on methamphetamine, it is reasonable to believe he would not have died had the cops not tortured and tasered him for three minutes.
Read the full statement by Glasgow City Attorney Matt Cook before watching the video.
On the morning of April 14, 2020, Glasgow Police Department was dispatched to a residence in response to a call from an elderly female resident who stated that an unknown male had entered her home without permission. Upon arrival at the scene, the suspect responded that he was carrying a knife and appeared erratic, agitated, and paranoid. The responding officers attempted to calm the suspect and de-escalate the situation. The suspect, Jeremy Marr, did not comply with police commands; Mr. Marr also became combative and resisted arrest. Mr. Marr was eventually subdued with non-deadly force and handcuffed. Mr. Marr subsequently experienced a medical event and emergency medical personnel attended to him and transported him to the hospital, where he later passed away.
We are confident that the evidence will show that the responding Glasgow police officers acted appropriately in response to Mr. Marr’s actions and that the claims asserted in the lawsuit are not well taken. Both the Kentucky State Police and the Special Prosecutor found no wrongdoing by the Glasgow officers. The Plaintiffs’ lawsuit will be aggressively defended.
Hemingway police officer Cassandra Dollard had already been fired twice before as a cop when she shot and killed a man after slipping and falling and fearing for her life because he had “something in his hands.”
That something turned out to be about four or five dollar bills, according to the attorney representing the man’s family.
Now Dollard is facing voluntary manslaughter charges for the shooting death of Robert Langley Jr. on February 6, who was unarmed when he was shot trying to crawl out of a car after it had crashed following a high-speed chase.
She was also terminated, raising the question as to why she was even hired in the first place considering her dismal employment record.
Earlier this week, State Law Enforcement Division released dashcam footage from that night after refusing to do for more than a month.
The video shows Dollard attempting to pull Langley over for failing to come to a complete stop at 1 a.m. But Langley speeds off, sparking a pursuit of more than 100 mph before Langley loses control and winds up in a ditch.
At one point, Langley is trying to crawl out of the car through the passenger’s side but the cop is pointing her gun at him, ordering him to remain in the car.
Then she slips and falls as Langley continues crawling out of the car.
“Don’t you come out!” she says before firing a shot, striking him in the chest.
“You had something in your hand, sir. What was in your hand?” she continues to ask him as he can be heard groaning in pain.
Later in the video she is inside the patrol car on the phone with a supervisor, explaining what had taken place.
“He’s got something in his hands, I don’t know what it is,” she tells him.
“I fall, I say, ‘stay in the car,’ he’s coming out the car so at this point, I don’t know what he got in his hand but he keeps coming out the car on me.”
The 52-year-old cop was arrested only days after the incident and is facing two to 30 years in prison on the voluntary manslaughter charge.
Robert Langley Jr. leaves behind 10 children and one grandchild.
Dollard who has been a cop in South Carolina since 1992 was hired by the Hemingway Police Department in September.
She was fired from the South Carolina Department of Public Safety in 2014 for “alleged violations of two policies related to discipline,” according to WBTW. She was also fired from the Johnsonville Police Department for “for poor performance.”
“They were negligent in hiring her,” said Bakari Sellers, the attorney representing Langley’s family, told WBTW.
“The state was negligent in certifying her. It’s a shame Robert had to die for her to lose a job she never should have had.”
Langley leaves behind 10 children and a three-month-old granddaughter.
“I don’t know what she was thinking,” his sister Nicola Langley told WBTW.
“I don’t know what was going on, but if she knew him, she would’ve known there was nothing to worry about. My brother’s not violent. Not evil. Not any of that.”
It was only last week that we saw the shocking way the California Highway Patrol treated a DWI suspect who refused to submit to a blood test, piling on top of him and smothering him to death to obtain the blood sample.
Now we have a dashcam video that shows off-duty Pasadena Police Sergeant Michael Gligorijevic running away from a CHP officer investigating him for DUI, prompting a manhunt in the Southern California low desert in the dead of night – only to end up with a slap on the wrist.
The video from July 11, 2020 was obtained by Pasadena journalist James Farr after a 10-month investigation and shows the cop known to fellow officers as “Big G” trying to talk his way out of a field sobriety test, telling the CHP cop that nobody is driving and that nobody is going to submit to a field sobriety test.
California Highway Patrol officer Adam Annett initially encountered Gligorijevic standing next to a jeep on the side of the road. The jeep was running and another off-duty Pasadena cop, Lieutenant Sean Dawkins, and Gligorijevic’s underage daughter was there as well. Dawkins appeared to be pumping air into a tire.
Annett said he could smell the alcohol right away but when he asked Gligorijevic who was driving, the cop pointed to Dawkins. However, Dawkins immediately said he was not driving.
Gligorijevic then admits he is the owner of the jeep and hands over his drivers license with some business cards indicating he was a cop.
At one point, Annett asks Gligorijevic if he is carrying a gun and the Pasadena cop tells him he is carrying a gun. But when Annett tries to remove the gun from him, Gligorijevic tells him to back off.
“Stop bro, the guns right here dude. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. We’re not going to come close to doing this,” he tells the CHP cop.
Gligorijevic then tells him he is going to place the gun in his car and walks to the vehicle and places the gun in the passenger seat before walking back and telling Annett once again he is not going to submit to a field sobriety test.
Annett wrote in his report that he began to fear for his life but was evidently able to control that fear without pulling out his gun.
“At this point, Gligorijevic handling the firearm put me in a vulnerable position and made me uncomfortable.” Gligorijevic left the right door open, allowing access to the gun to both Passenger #1 and Passenger #2.”
At another point in the video, Gligorijevic is allowed to walk away from Annett and reach into the back of his jeep for a bottle of water which he starts drinking. He also begins claiming that the real driver of the car “left” the scene.
Eventually Gligorijevic walks away for a third time before running off into the darkness.
“I still have your ID, you get that, right,” Annett calls after him.
The video then shows a group of ten cops with flashlights searching for him in the low desert shrubbery on a winding road called San Francisquito Canyon Road but they never found him.
Annett wrote in the report that the search was called off after 20 minutes and that his request to call in a helicopter or police dogs was denied.
Gligorijevic ended up pleading guilty to Penal Code 148 in December 2020 which is California’s version of resisting arrest or obstructing justice. He was allowed to enter into a diversion program where his record was wiped clean as long as he did not get in any trouble over the following six months, according to L.A. Progressive.
The 17-year veteran remains employed as a sergeant with the Pasadena Police Department where he made more than $300,000 in 2020.
The initial dashcam video posted by Farr on Conversation.Live is almost ten minutes long and captures mostly audio because it is dark and the faces of the individuals are blurred. Several times throughout the video the conversation between the cops is drowned out by dispatcher’s voice blaring inside Annett’s car. And some of the edits appear choppy.
Farr first broke the story in December 2021 on Pasadena Black Pages after receiving a highly redacted supplemental report written by Annett which was dated July 30, 2020, almost three weeks after he supposedly filed the original report on July 11, 2020.
“The question is, where is the original report?,” Farr asked in his original article.
Thanks to his persistence, that report can be read in his followup article from last week which can be read here.
Door Dash delivery driver Delane Gordon was 300 feet from his delivery destination when he was pulled over by a Collegedale police officer who accused him of speeding earlier this month.
Gordon, 28, said the officer’s tone and attitude made him fear for his safety so he asked the cop to call a supervisor. But that made the cop’s attitude worse.
“Sir, I feel uncomfortable; please get your supervisor,” Gordon told the cop as he began recording.
“I don’t give a shit what you feel like. I said get out,” responded the cop before tasering him.
The video lasts only 49 seconds and shows the cop trying to pull Gordon out of the car, then tasering him as he yells out in pain.
He ended up going to jail on charges of obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and speeding. It is not clear at this time if the Door Dash delivery was ever made.
The incident took place on March 10 and it is now “under investigation” by the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office as well as the Collegedale police internal affairs division, according to News Channel 9.
Ryan Wheeler, an attorney representing Gordon, said his client was scared because he had never been arrested before and believed the cop was too aggressive for a traffic stop. His next court date is April 20.
The cop whose name has not been released was wearing a body camera but police say they will not release it until after the investigation is completed – which is usually a sign that it will not make the cop look good.
Watch the video below along with a portion of the press conference with his attorney.
Seventeen-year-old Hunter Brittain had spent the night trying to fix the transmission in his truck in order to make it to work that morning when he took the truck for a test drive on a rural state highway in Central Arkansas last year.
It was 3 a.m. on a Wednesday and he was hoping to make it to his construction job by 6 a.m. Joining him was his buddy, Jordan King, 16, who had been helping him with the truck’s transmission.
They had driven a mile down the road and were on their way back to the body shop where they had been working when a Lonoke County sheriff’s deputy pulled up behind them and turned on his emergency lights.
They started laughing because right at that moment, smoke started to fill the cabin of the truck and they found it funny, according to a police interview with King. He also said they both opened their doors to let the smoke out after Brittain had pulled off the highway and come to a stop in a parking lot with the cop pulling in behind them.
But then Brittain realized the transmission was still not working because he was unable to put the truck into park which is why the truck started rolling backwards with no way for him to stop it from inside.
Brittain hopped out the truck and tried to reach into the bed for a can of antifreeze to place it behind the rear tire to keep it from rolling into the cop car but that made the deputy fear for his life.
Davis opened fire, killing the 17-year-old boy with a bullet to his neck. It was only then he noticed the can of antifreeze that Brittain had pulled from the bed of the truck. No guns were found on either teen.
“He wasn’t complying,” testified Davis through tears last week, claiming he had ordered the teen to get back into his car and to show his hands, according to KAIT 8.
“I thought he was going to kill me.”
On Friday, a jury convicted Davis on negligent homicide after acquitting him of manslaughter, a much more serious charge. He was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
Negligent homicide is a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one year while manslaughter could have sent him to prison for up to 10 years, according to WKBN.
The first witness to testify in last week’s trial was King who said all he heard was the gunshot, no warnings or orders from the deputy. Then he saw his friend laying facedown on the ground.
Soon another deputy arrived and ordered him to the ground handcuffing him and dragging him around. He remained cuffed in the back of a patrol car for three hours, according to ABC 7.
Another witness who was at the body shop working on the transmission waiting for them to return from the test drive also testified he heard no commands from the deputy before he heard the gunshot.
The truth would have been captured on Davis’ body camera had he bothered to turn it on but he did not turn it on until after he had shot the teen which is why he was fired within a week for violating departmental policy, according to KARK.
The misdemeanor conviction means that Davis will be able to work in law enforcement again upon his release which concerns members of Brittain’s family.
“I was not happy,” said Brittain’s grandmother and guardian, Rebecca Payne, according to THV 11. “All I wanted from day one is for him to get a felony where he could not be in law enforcement again and carry a weapon. That’s all I asked for.
“Now, what’s gonna happen? Are people gonna have to fear for their life again? Once he gets back? You know, he’ll go back to force.”
The family now plans to file a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office claiming that Lokone County Sheriff John Staly knew that Davis was supposed to be on medication that night which would have kept him calm but instead allowed him to work without taking the medication. The type of medication has not been specified.
“We have a sheriff who allowed Michael Davis to go on the streets without medication that was supposed to prepare him to be in the right state of mind when he came into contact that night with Hunter Brittain and as a result of the failure of leadership, we have a dead child,” one of the attorneys for the Brittain family told the Daily Citizen.
It was near 11 p.m. on a Friday night in February 2020 when Independence police officer Tanner Philip spotted Justin Layton walking on a sidewalk on the other side of the street.
Philip was in his patrol car driving westbound and had a green light at an intersection.
Layton, meanwhile, was walking across the street in the same intersection but eastbound on the opposite side of the road.
Philip said that Layton was crossing the street while the pedestrian stoplight displayed a red hand and the words “don’t cross,” according to the petition he filed against the city last month which is the first step in filing a lawsuit against a municipality.
He also claimed that Layton was “hiding his face” as he crossed the street which made him more suspicious but Layton was wearing a hoodie because it was 27 degrees out with wind gusts of 14 mph.
Philip made a u-turn and pulled up behind Layton with his light’s flashing but Layton continued walking without acknowledging him which angered the cop.
The cop eventually stops his car and confronts Layton, tackling and tasering him, placing him in a chokehold as more cops arrive to pile on top of him to assist with what they call “pain compliance” tactics.
By the time they handcuff him and try to stand him up to walk him to the patrol car, he collapses because is unable to stand so the cops have to lift him up and carry him.
He was charged with interference and possession of a controlled substance which was nothing more than the Briviact he takes for his epilepsy which according to the claim, is a result of having been beaten by Independence police on a previous occasion.
Court records show Layton filed another lawsuit in 2008, accusing two Independence police officers of brutally beating him after responding to a disturbance at a home, leaving him with several broken bones in his face, according to the lawsuit. Court records say that case was dismissed with prejudice in 2014.
Layton filed his latest petition on February 6 accusing Philip and the other cops of having detained and beaten him without probable cause.
Less than a month later, Philip was named “Officer of the Year,” according to a post on the Independence Police Department’s Facebook page which stated the following:
Officer Tanner Philip of the Independence Police Department has displayed, on multiple occasions, exemplary service while responding to calls involving individuals who have been identified as struggling with a mental health crisis.
Before he was sentenced to prison for groping, fondling and sexually assaulting more than 20 women during a two-year span, San Diego County sheriff’s deputy Richard Fischer was one of six deputies who contributed to the death of a man who had called 911 for help.
That man, Lucky Phounsy, had called 911 on April 13, 2015 after going more than three days without sleep, leading to him having paranoid delusions that someone was out to harm him and his family, according to the lawsuit filed by his family.
But as we’ve seen many times in the past, deputies wasted no time in escalating the violence against him because they are only trained to hurt, not help.
The lawsuit states he was at first relieved to see the first two deputies arrive but he became frightened and confused when they tried to handcuff him. Then they started tasering him.
Soon, more deputies arrived, including Fischer, and they all piled on top of him, hog-tying him and placing a sock over his face, then placing him facedown in the ambulance.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Phounsy’s heart had stopped beating and he had stopped breathing. Hospital staff were able to restart his heart but the lack of oxygen to his brain had done its damage and he died a few days later.
This week, a jury awarded Phounsy’s family with an $85 million verdict – reportedly the largest police abuse verdict in the history of San Diego County, according to the Times of San Diego.
However, had the San Diego Sheriff’s Department fired him for his actions in the death of Phounsy, he would not have been in a position to sexually assault more than 20 women over the next two years, resulting in more than $4 million in settlements.
After all, the incident involving Phounsy took place in April 2015 and the sexual assaults allegations against him did not begin until November 24, 2015 when the first woman filed a complaint against him, alleging he had sexually assaulted her in July of that year.
Over the next two years, an additional 20 women came forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting them. Read a timeline of the allegations here.
Fischer at first denied the allegations, claiming to be the victim instead of the predator, telling local media in 2018 that “these false allegations are extremely hurtful and disheartening.”
He was sentenced to 44 months in prison in December 2019 but was then released in May 2020 because of “custody credits” he had already served, according to NBC San Diego.
And he remained free for 19 months until December 2021 when prosecutor admitted it was a “clerical error” that led to Fischer’s release. He was sent back to jail and is expected to remain in prison until March 2023.
The San Diego Sheriff’s Department is expected to appeal the jury’s verdict of $85 million.
The California Highway Patrol spent two years trying to keep a disturbing video under wraps that showed them killing a man after he refused to provide a blood sample.
But the video was finally released on Tuesday after a federal judge ruled against the CHP earlier this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The victim, Edward Bronstein, had been arrested for DWI on March 31, 2020 by CHP officers who transported him to a police station and demanded he submit to a blood test.
But he was refusing to provide his arm to be injected which angered the cops. His family said he was afraid of needles.
“You are bringing the fight to this, not us,” one of the cops says.
“I am not bringing the fight at all,” Bronstein replies.
“Then have a seat and provide your arm,” the cop says. “This is your last opportunity. Otherwise you’re going facedown on the mat and we’re going to keep going.”
“I can’t do it,” Bronstein replies. “Not willingly.”
That was when several cops made good on their promise, forcing him facedown on the mat and piling on top of him and placing their knees into his back.
“I’ll do it willingly! I’ll do it willingly!” Bronstein begins pleading.
“Too late,” a cop tells him.
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” he repeatedly says but a cop only tells him to “stop yelling.”
The cops eventually obtain their blood sample but by then, Bronstein has stopped moving or speaking.
“Wake him up,” a cop tells the others.
But he never did wake up after the cops spent several minutes calling his name and slapping his face and eventually pumping his chest.
Michael Carrillo, an attorney for the Bronstein family, said the cops should have stopped after hearing say he was unable to breathe.
“Not one officer took the action to pull the others off of him, pull him to the side, do something to give him air,” Carrillo told the Los Angeles Times. “When they finally flip him over, he’s lifeless.”
Blinded by jealousy and empowered by his badge, Georgia sheriff’s deputy Winford “Trey” Adams III shot and killed a man he falsely believed to be having an affair with his wife back in 2019.
He then called 911 crying, telling the dispatcher that he was going to kill himself.
“I can’t go to jail for the rest of my life,” said the then-32-year-old law enforcement officer.
“I’m a deputy sheriff with Madison County. I can’t go to jail for the rest of my life.”
On Monday, the 34-year-old former deputy was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to felony murder and one count of aggravated assault in the shooting death of Benjamin Lloyd Cloer, a 26-year-old man who was nothing more than friends with his wife.
“My wife was cheating on me, and I couldn’t take it,” he told the dispatcher in the 911 call. “I didn’t shoot her, I shot the guy. I couldn’t stop myself.”
But last year before accepting the plea deal, Adams attempted to use his Blue Privilege to quash the indictment against him by claiming he was only looking out for the safety of his wife when he shot her friend and co-worker four times in the back as he tried running away.
However, the judge denied the request, according to Classic City News, a local news site out of Athens.
“This Court finds there was no evidence presented that Defendant was acting in his official capacity as a sheriff’s deputy and no evidence presented which would suggest that Defendant was acting in the performance of his duties as a law enforcement officer during the incident in question.”
Adams was off-duty and out of uniform when he stalked his wife, Charlotte Adams, on November 10, 2019, using a smartphone tracking app to follow her to Cloer’s house after she told him she was meeting with some friends after work. Cloer, in fact, was hosting a cookout for his friends from work and Charlotte Adams had been the first to arrive, according to his father.
This was Adam’s Facebook cover photo, according to the victim’s father. Adams and his wife are standing second and third from left. The other men appear to be cops but have not been identified.
Adams had eight guns in his truck when he pulled up to Cloer’s house, spotting his wife though the window sitting on the couch with Cloer. He carried three guns on him when he barged into the home and pointed a gun at his wife and her friend.
He was choking his wife, calling her a “cheating bitch” as Cloer tried to run out the door when he opened fire, killing him. Cloer ran outside and collapsed in the neighbor’s front yard. Both Adams and his wife called 911.
“My friend is bleeding out,” Charlotte Adams told the dispatcher, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “His name is Lloyd Cloer. He’s just my friend. This was a misunderstanding. My husband doesn’t understand he’s just my friend.”
But responding paramedics were unable to access Cloer as he lay dying in the yard because Adams kept them at bay during an armed standoff with police that lasted about 20 minutes, according to a Facebook post by his father, Steve Cloer, in a Facebook group dedicated to memorializing his son.
“I’ve always loved you even though you didn’t love me,” Adams can be heard telling his wife in the 911 call.
Cloer was a graduate student who was only three weeks from obtaining a master’s degree in artificial intelligence at the University of Georgia in Athens and was planning on pursing a doctorate’s degree in the same subject.
His father who has been very active in ensuring Adams faced justice wrote the following about his son in Classic City News last year.
Benjamin is described by his friends and those who knew him well as someone filled with compassion and caring for others. He had an innate empathic ability to feel when someone was in need. Many people have described him as being “an old soul.” He was always there to lend an ear and help his friends when they had any kind of problem. People looked to Benjamin for comfort and advice, and he never avoided helping someone in need. He was admirably without prejudice of any kind and accepted everyone equally. These types of personal qualities were the type of thing that he considered the true treasures of life. He intentionally instilled these qualities in himself, continually seeking to improve on them. He went Above and Beyond in every aspect of his life for the ultimate purpose of serving his fellow man. His personal mission for his life was to make the world a better place for mankind, and often he did this one person at a time, but he had much bigger plans for the future in this regard.
Benjamin was considered a genius by many, but his genius was the result of an immense amount of hard work, effort and dedication. Those that knew him well didn’t necessarily identify him as a “genius”, but more commonly as someone of compassion, empathy with an unselfish willingness to help others in need. Above all, Benjamin was a genuinely good person. He was the kind of person the world needs. The loss of Benjamin not only impacted his family, friends and those that knew him, but perhaps thousands or even millions of people who may have benefited from the brilliance of this young man.
Adams will be eligible for parole in 30 years. Listen to the 911 call below.
Sometimes cops go so overboard with their thuggery that even their fellow cops are taken aback which is exactly what happened in this video after a Miami cop named Miguel Hernandez grabbed a woman by her neck from the back of his patrol car and slammed her down on the concrete, leaving her unconscious.
“What the hell!” yelled a Miami cop named Rivera, kneeling down to check on the woman while looking up at Hernandez.
Several bystanders also yelled at Hernandez and looked ready to intervene.
“That’s a female, bro!” one of several men yelled as they approached the cops.
The video cuts out as Hernandez is calling for paramedics.
The woman, Julissa Burgos, who was 20 years old at the time, was charged with assault on a police officer and criminal mischief. But both charges were eventually dismissed, according to court records.
The incident took place on November 27, 2020 but the video only surfaced this week because the Miami Civilian Investigative Panel will review the video and the arrest during a public hearing this afternoon at 5:30 p.m. at Miami City Hall, according to the Miami Herald.
Burgos had been sitting on the sidewalk in front of a gas station prompting the owner to call police and have her removed. Hernandez was the first cop to arrive and ordered her to leave.
However, as Burgos was walking away, she turned her cigarette off on the rear side door of Hernandez’s patrol SUV, leaving an ash stain about an inch-long, sending Hernandez into a rage.
“You’re going to go back to my car and clean it,” he kept saying after he chased after her across the street.
The ash stain on Hernandez’s patrol SUV.
She was sitting on the sidewalk and both Hernandez and Rivera began grabbing on to her to detain her.
“Don’t touch me!” she repeated but they eventually stood her up and walked her back across the street as she continued resisting, resulting in the cops taking her down and twisting her arms behind her back.
They eventually got her into the back of the patrol car and she is crying and appearing to be having a panic attack. She also appears to spit.
Seconds later, Hernandez grabs her by the throat and slams her down on the ground.
Hernandez’s supervisor, Sergeant Carlos Mendez, initially defended his actions as being “reasonable and within state laws,” but the sergeant’s supervisor, Lieutenant Rodolfo Beltrand, did not approve of the report and sent it back to him that same day, according to Herald.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office began investigating, resulting in Hernandez resigning in June 2021 as well as relinquishing his police certification.
Mendez ended up retiring two months later in August 2021 so the Civilian Investigative Panel says it will likely close the case in tonight’s hearing after exonerating Beltrand because he did the right thing.
The investigative panel only has the power to make recommendations to the police chief as to whether an officer needs to be disciplined. And Miami’s police chiefs have historically refused to abide by the panel’s recommendations.
The investigative panel began in 2001 after a series of shootings and scandals rocked the department. The Miami Police Department is now on its eighth police chief since 2001 so it’s not a very stable job.
Last year, the Miami City Commission voted to terminate Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo after six months on the job after he accused the commission of interfering with his goal to reform the long-troubled agency.
Acevedo, who also served as police chief in Austin and Houston, filed a lawsuit against the city of Miami in January, accusing city officials of retaliating against him for being a whistle-blower.
Ryan Gadison had just pulled into the driveway of his fiancee’s home when two cops pulled up behind him in a patrol car with lights flashing.
The Hemet police officers were part of a gang task force and began peering into his car with flashlights before telling him that they had pulled him over for not having a front license plate. One of the cops asked if they could search his car.
But the 33-year-old man said no, believing they had no probable cause. The cops responded by pulling him out of the car and handcuffing him.
The cops then handcuffed both his fiancee and her mother for doing nothing more but recording and asserting their rights to be free from search and seizure. They then began beating the family dogs who were chained up with their batons because they were barking furiously.
The incident took place on March 31, 2021 and despite the excessive violence inflicted by the cops, charges were never filed against the three victims.
On March 3, California attorney Toni Jaramilla filed a lawsuit against the Hemet Police Department on behalf of the family.
The lawsuit states that Gadison had just gotten off work and was driving his 2020 Dodge Challenger down the street to see his fiancee and children when the cops drove past him coming from the other direction.
Realizing the car was missing a front license plate, they made a u-turn and began following him, pulling up behind him with their lights flashing as he pulled into his fiancee’s driveway.
After they had pulled him out and began handcuffing him, the mother of his fiancee, Monett Hereford, 54, began recording from more than ten feet away in her front yard, separated by the open car door of Gadison’s Dodge Challenger.
But a cop walks up to her and began shoving her backwards, accusing her of “obstruction.”
“You’re violating my rights because you’re on my property,” Monett tells him as he was walking away.
The video shows him pausing at that remark and turning to look towards her as if wanting to beat her for pointing out the obvious truth but he continues to walk away.
But a few seconds later, another cop walks up to her and slaps the phone out of her hand and slams her against the car, handcuffing her tightly to cause pain and injury, according to the lawsuit.
The cops then start searching through Gadison’s car, claiming he had a suspended drivers license but found nothing illegal.
“Do you guys have a search warrant to be going through the car?” his 29-year-old fiancee, Mariah Hereford, asks.
The cops responded by knocking the camera from her hands and body slamming her. One cops jammed his fingers in her mouth and pulled upwards like hooking a fish, causing her to scream out in pain as the four children she shared with Gadison cried and pleaded with the cops to stop.
Police then turned to the two family dogs which were barking furiously and began beating them with their batons – even though they were chained up and posed no threat to the cops.
“I think they killed the dogs,” a woman recording from next door says.
Fortunately the dogs survived but were left traumatized and injured, according to the lawsuit.
Mariah Hereford’s injuries.
According to the city of Hemet website, “the Hemet/San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force is committed to creating safe and secure neighborhoods free of violent crime and gang activity.”
But the video shows they were the ones acting like a criminal gang that night.
Below is an excerpt from the lawsuit:
DEFENDANTS’ outrageous conduct towards PLAINTIFFS included, among other things:
(a) forcibly removing GADISON from his vehicle, detaining and placing him in handcuffs, and roughly pinning him against his vehicle;
(b) swatting at MONETT, striking her phone from her hand; violently throwing her up against GADISON’s vehicle; placing her in severely tightened handcuffs; painfully shoving her hands unnaturally upward against her back with the objective of causing physical pain; having male officers needlessly and forcibly grab and probe MONETT’s vaginal area, rather than allowing a search to be performed by female offices; and roughly shoving MONETT into a squad car; and
(c) striking MARIAH’s phone out of her hand; knocking her to the ground; roughly grabbing her hair, yanking her head back and repeatedly slamming her face against the ground while yelling “shut the fuck up!”; having an officer hook his fingers under MARIAH’s jaw to yank her up from the ground, restricting her airway, causing her to choke and lose consciousness several times; then detaining and arresting MARIAH by placing her in severely tightened handcuffs, aggressively shoving her into a squad car and taking her to jail.
All of this HPD conduct occurred while four young children cried and screamed in agony, helplessly watching their mother, father and grandmother beaten and treated like animals, and their dogs beaten like their parents and grandmother. As PLAINTIFFS experienced the harm inflicted on them, they also felt helpless in protecting their children from the fear, harm and insecurity created by the spectacle of HPD officer engaging in unfettered acts of violence and excessive force.
It was with much fanfare that Richard Chinappi III arrived at the Richmond Police Department in 2017, one of 18 new recruits hired to address a rise in crime as well as a high turnover rate within the department.
His photo was prominently placed at the top of a Richmond Times-Dispatch article, one of four cops holding their right hands up as they swore an oath to the Constitution after completing a 31-week program at the police academy – a ceremonial gesture that means nothing once they hit the streets as we have learned in the 15 years running this site.
But as usual, local media treated the event as a godsend to the community, describing the cadets as heroic saviors to protect the people from the evils of the world.
“You have chosen a career of service,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney told the new recruits without a hint of irony, according to the news story. “Service is what this job is all about.”
The once promising cadet was four years into the job when he killed his fiancee’s beagle, Lola, in a drunken rage, then concocting a wild story about a bear attack.
On Friday, the 27-year-old man was sentenced to five years in prison on a felony animal cruelty charge along with six months for filing a false report about how the dog was killed, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
However, Judge Paul Cella suspended 54 months of Chinappi’s sentence so he will only serve a year.
The incident took place October 19 resulting in his fiancee’s father calling the Powhatan County Sheriff’s Office about a bear attack in the home his daughter shared with the cop.
When deputies arrived, they found blood splattered throughout the kitchen and evidence that someone had tried to clean it all up with bleach. They also found a highly intoxicated Chnappi.
Chinappi told deputies that he had been in the bathroom when Lola began barking which was when he realized a bear had entered the home because he had left the door open.
He told deputies he grabbed a shotgun and fired at the bear but the bear carried the dog off into the woods.
But deputies found no evidence to support the story such as footprints or markings to suggest a bear had been in the home.
When deputies told him the story did not add up, he then said he shot the dog by accident while shooting at the bear because the shotgun blast traveled through the bear, striking the dog behind it.
He said he had buried the dog in the woods near the home but when deputies recovered the dog’s remains and had them examined by a veterinarian, they learned Lola had been shot at close range.
In January, he was charged with two additional misdemeanors for sending threatening or profane messages to his former fiancee and is scheduled to appear in court on those charges on March 30.
Chinappi remains on unpaid administrative leave but his law enforcement certification was revoked last month.
It’s been more than a month since Felix DeJesus was last seen being handcuffed by a pair of New Jersey cops who were responding to call that he was drunk and bothering women at a bodega.
But the Paterson Police Department is refusing to release the body cam videos from those officers that may offer clues to his disappearance, claiming that it is part of an internal affairs investigation.
Paterson police told DeJesus’s family that two officers – whose names have not been released – detained him on February 2 but did not take him to jail or charge him with a crime.
Instead, the police department with a long history of corruption says it dropped the 41-year-old man off a few blocks away on the corner of Preakness Avenue and Front Street, which is about a block from the Passaic River where family members fear he may have drowned.
Paterson police referred all questions to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office which took control over the police department’s internal affairs division last year because it did nothing to address the widespread corruption within the department. The prosecutor’s office confirmed the investigation into the missing man but offered little details.
“Felix DeJesus was not arrested or charged with any offense on Feb. 2 (and) no use of force report has been filed with Mr. DeJesus as the subject on that date,” Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Peter Foy told local media.
The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office took over the internal affairs department in April 2021 after the FBI arrested two officers for beating a man for no legal reason, then lying about it to cover for themselves.
That incident took place on December 14, 2020 when Paterson police officers Kevin Patino and Kendry Tineo-Restituvo pulled up in an unmarked car and confronted 19-year-old Osamah Alsaidi who was walking down the street with his hands in his pockets.
Patino was indicted in January 2022 on one count of conspiracy against rights by depriving a man of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by law enforcement officers; one count of deprivation of rights under color of law; and two counts of falsification of records in connection with that incident. The other cop, Tineo-Restituvo, is still under investigation.
The FBI also arrested another eight Paterson police officers between 2018 and 2020 for making unlawful traffic stops in order to steal money and drugs as well as beating people and filing false reports.
Seven of those cops have pleaded guilty and two have already been sentenced, Roger Then and Ruben McAusland, the latter who was selling drugs from his patrol car. McAusland was also convicted for beating a hospital patient while Then recorded.
Former cop Then has already served his six-month sentence while McAusland is serving a 66-month sentence.
The five who have pleaded guilty, Jonathan Bustios, Daniel Pent, Eudy Ramos, Frank Toledo and Matthew Torres remain free because they are expected to testify against their supervisor, Paterson Police Sergeant Michael Cheff.
Cheff pleaded not guilty and has yet go to trial because it keeps getting postponed due to the pandemic, according to prosecutors.
Cheff who was arrested in January 2019 is still collecting an annual salary of $136,960 “under provisions of the Paterson police union contract covering officers accused of crime,’ the Paterson Press explained.
Since none of above-mentioned cops were properly investigated by internal affairs, the New Jersey Attorney General last year handed over control of the division to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office.
“The people of Paterson deserve a police department worthy of their trust,” said Attorney General Grewal. “They deserve to know that allegations of misconduct are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. With today’s action, the Prosecutor’s Office will ensure that happens. I applaud Prosecutor Valdes for taking this important step.”
“The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office will continue to work with the Paterson Police Department to enhance greater delivery of services and greater accountability,” said Prosecutor Valdes. “We look forward to an expansive analysis of the needs of the department, from infrastructure to police practices to personnel. There is no better place to continue the important work of reform and restoration than the Internal Affairs Unit.”
But for the family of Felix DeJesus who was better known as “Joel,” there is still very little transparency or trust considering they did not even learn he had been taken into police custody until after they had reported him missing when the owner of the bodega told them as they were posting flyers throughout the neighborhood with his name and photo.
“If they didn’t do anything wrong, why can’t we get the footage?’ Giovanni DeJesus, the missing man’s brother, asked the Paterson City Council Tuesday night, according to the Paterson Press.
Alecia Nelson was buying some snacks for her child’s third-grade class at the Family Dollar store in Richmond Monday when a cop walked in and began staring at her along with the store’s manager.
Nelson, 33, finished paying for her items and asked the men why they were staring at her.
Richmond police officer Graham Lang told her he needed to speak with her.
But Nelson told him she had nothing to say to him and attempted to walk past him with her items.
That was when the cop grabbed her from behind and body slammed her. Twice, according to witness Joshua Carter who recorded the incident and posted the video to YouTube where it has gone viral.
The burly cop ended up bashing his own head against a gumball machine, leaving a bloody gash on his forehead. And that is likely why he charged Nelson with felony assault on an officer – considering he failed to produce any evidence she had shoplifted anything.
At one point, Nelson handed her purse to another woman but Lang followed the friend outside the store and snatched the purse from her. He then took it back into the store and started rummaging through it but did not find any stolen merchandise.
The cop also assaulted Carter as he was recording who was verbally berating him for attacking a woman who had broken no law.
Carter, in fact, used to work at that same store and was even on friendly terms with at least one of the detectives who responded to the scene.
Carter told local media that a customer had told the manager that Nelson had been shoplifting items so the manager called police without bothering to confirm the allegations.
Nelson who was paying for her items when the cop walked in was probably not aware that a customer had accused her of shoplifting (if the manager’s story is true).
And she knew she had not stolen anything, so she walked past the cop rather than allow herself to be profiled without just cause which is her Constitutional right.
But cops can’t stand when citizens do not bow down to their unlawful orders which explains the violent response from the cop.
The Richmond Police Department issued the following statement to NBC 12:
“Officer Lang arrived and was alerted by management that the larceny suspect was at the point of sale. Officer Lang attempted to conduct lawful detention of Ms. Nelson by giving verbal commands regarding the need to detain her for further investigation,” RPD said in a release.
“In response to her noncompliance and physical resistance, the officer used force to gain compliance, and that force is presently being investigated to include video footage that precedes the video being circulated on social media at this time,” RPD said in a release.
A former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy accused of raping a 14-year-old girl multiple times over a 20-month period will serve no prison time after striking a plea deal with prosecutors last week.
Brian Beck, 47, will also not have to register as a sex offender – making him the second cop this week to avoid having to do so despite serious sexual assault allegations against him.
Beck had been a Shelby County sheriff’s deputy since 2004 when he was indicted by a grand jury in 2018 on two charges of rape by force or coercion and two counts of sexual battery by an authority figure.
The charges also led to him losing his job. The victim was a family member and the alleged assaults took place when he was off-duty.
But the plea deal allowed him to plead guilty to felony aggravated assault – which is not a sex crime.
Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said it would have been unethical to indict the former deputy on actual sex crime charges.
“Given the totality of evidence, we ethically could not proceed to trial on the indicted offenses. The decision was made in consultation with the victim,” she told local media last week.
However, Weirich did not elaborate on what she meant by the the “totality of evidence” – which evidently was not an issue when she took the case before a grand jury in 2018 and had him indicted.
Since then, Beck’s trial was delayed more than 20 times, frustrating the victim and her family. Prosecutors blamed the delay on the pandemic.
“It’s five years,” said the victim’s father, speaking anonymously. “I mean, she needs closure.”
The father says the case has been pushed back time and again over the past three years.
A report date, which is a short hearing that would determine if a trial is necessary and needs to be scheduled, was set for May 18, after being reschedule over 20 times, but was pushed back once again to February 28, 2022.
“I mean, there are damages, you know, major damages and unhappiness,” the father said. “She just needs some closure. She just needs to see movement of the ball, that’s what she needs to see.”
In last week’s plea deal, Beck was actually sentenced to four years in prison but the sentence was suspended. He was also placed on three-year probation and will not be allowed to carry a gun or work as a law enforcement officer.
Five months before Maine police officer Michael Rolerson became internationally notorious as the porcupine killer, he turned his aggression towards an 80-year-old woman by brutally attacking her, then arresting her on false charges that she had assaulted him.
On Friday, the woman, Glennis Lane, filed a lawsuit against Rolerson, who was fired from the Rockland Police Department in October 2020 for killing the porcupines along with another cop named Addison Cox who also killed porcupines they encountered on the side of the road during their shifts.
Both cops were sentenced to jail for killing the porcupines but got off relatively easy because both are combat veterans, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Rolerson who served in the Afghanistan War as a U.S. Marine blamed his aggressive actions on the PTSD he suffers from as a result from the war.
But it was that combat experience that excited the Rockland Police Department in 2017 when it hired him as you can see in the screenshot below.
Rolerson had been on the job for two-and-a-half years when he arrested a man named Robert Jackomino for operating a vehicle without a license on May 21, 2020.
Lane, who is Jackomino’s mother, pulled into his apartment complex after he had already been transported to jail and found his car parked about 100 feet from its usual parking pace with the cop car behind it.
Rolerson told Lane that her son had been arrested and that he was going to have the car towed.
But Lane asked the cop if she could simply drive the car into its usual parking space to avoid the hassle and expense of having to retrieve the car from a towing company.
However, Rolerson told her she would not be allowed which is a violation of department policy, according to the lawsuit, which states the officer is supposed to give the owner of the car the option of having it towed with the company of their choice or to simply leave it in its current spot with the doors locked as long as it is in a safe and legal spot.
“You’re not taking the truck,” Rolerson told Lane, according to the suit.
But Rolerson began climbing into the truck anyway to park it which infuriated Rolerson who walked up behind her and grabbed her by both arms.
Rolerson then proceeded to “batter, manhandle and otherwise use unnecessary force towards Ms. Lane, causing multiple visual injuries and bruises,” the lawsuit states.
He then handcuffed her very tightly and drove her to jail on charges of assault and refusing to submit to arrest,” which were eventually dismissed.
One month after that arrest, Rolerson was driving his patrol car with another cop in the passenger seat when he spotted a porcupine on the side of the road.
He stopped the car and stepped out to beat the porcupine to death with his retractable baton, according to the Portland Press Herald.
“I got him,” he allegedly told the other cop with a smile on his face who was recording and posted the video on Snapchat to a group of officers, a platform where videos disappear after they are viewed.
Rolerson also admitted to pepper spraying the animals before beating them to death.
It was not until late August when an officer reported the incidents to superior officers which is what led to both cops getting fired and charged with felony animal cruelty two months later.
However, the felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and both cops pleaded guilty.
Rosenor who admitted killing 11 porcupines received a 270-day jail sentence in July 2021 with all but 20 days suspended, according to KIRO 7.
Cox who said he killed three porcupines because he had looked up to Rosenor was sentenced to 90 days in jail with all but 10 days suspended. Cox was allowed to serve his time on weekends and Rosenor was supposed to start serving his time in January.
Without spending a day in the police academy, Michael Boyes was handed a badge and a gun and allowed to kill a man experiencing a mental health episode in Oregon two years ago.
The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office then claimed that the Sandy police officer had shot and killed a 58-year-old retired law enforcement officer named Douglas Diamond because he had shot a deputy trying to detain him.
And even after it was determined that it was Boyes who had shot the deputy while shooting at Diamond, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office still insisted that Boyes only fired after Diamond pulled a gun.
But a lawsuit filed last week claims that is a lie.
The truth is the sheriff’s deputies and cops from the Sandy Police Department had no legal basis to detain Diamond in the first place because he had committed no crime and was showing no signs of aggression, according to the suit which you can read here.
But Clackamas County Sheriff’s Sergeant Sean Collinson chose to escalate the incident and Sandy police allowed Boyes to work as a cop despite his lack of training which is the only reason Diamond ended up dead, the lawsuit states.
Diamond with his two daughters, Chelsea, left, and Desiree, right.
The incident took place July 3, 2020 after Diamond’s family called 911 concerned for his safety because he had made statements that he wanted to take his own life. Family members told dispatch that Diamond was a retired Washington County sheriff’s deputy and would likely be armed.
Initially, three Clackamas sheriff’s deputies arrived at the RV park where Diamond was living in a mobile home, including a deputy named Gabriel Adel who was trained in crisis intervention and hostage negotiation.
Diamond was standing outside his home with his hands in his pockets when the three deputies walked up. Adel ordered him to remove his hands from his pockets but Diamond refused.
At that point, Adel radioed his sergeant, Collinson, to suggest they leave the scene because the only reason they were dispatched was to see if he was still alive and they just determined he was alive.
But Collinson who was across the county ordered them to stay put until he got there, ordering Adel “not go give any ground unless he had to,” the lawsuit states.
Sergeant Sean Collinson from a 2017 Coffee with a Cup event. (via Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page)
On the way to the scene, Collinson asked the Sandy Police Department to send a “less lethal shotgun operator” to the scene.
Sandy police officer William Wetherbee responded to the scene with Boyes who had already been working as an officer for three months despite not having attended the police academy.
Collinson told the two cops that he was going to order Diamond to remove his hands from his pocket but if he refused, then Wetherbee was to shoot him with the less lethal shotgun.
Boyes was to provide “lethal cover” in case things went wrong, the lawsuit states.
Meanwhile, Diamond was telling Adel and the other deputies at the scene that he was going to go back inside his home and drink a beer and watch TV which was something that Adel was encouraging him to do.
The incident was close to winding down when Collinson approached the home with the two cops, agitating Diamond who asked Adel to tell them to back off. Adel told them to back off but they either did not hear him or ignored him, the lawsuit states.
Instead, Collinson began ordering Diamond to remove his hands from his pockets. When Diamond ignored his commands, Collinson directed Wetherbee to shoot him with the less lethal shotgun.
Sandy police officer Wetherbee shot three times but Diamond remained standing so Collinson began tasering him.
However, that failed as well because Diamond was wearing a heavy sweatshirt, not allowing the probes to connect to his body.
That was when Collinson charged towards Diamond, grabbing him in a bear hug.
At that point, Collinson spotted a gun inside Diamond’s pocket and began yelling, “gun! gun! gun!.”
Boyes then opened fire, killing Diamond and wounding Collinson in the arm.
The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office then claimed on Twitter that Diamond was killed after shooting the deputy in the arm. That was followed by a press release two weeks later in which they admitted the deputy was shot by a cop.
But the press release still insisted that “Diamond produced a semi-automatic handgun, pointing it at the Clackamas County sergeant,” which is why he was killed.
And the press release made no mention that Boyes had not even attended the police academy which he eventually did in November 2020.
Oregon state law allows cops to work for 90 days before attending the academy but Boyes had already worked more than 100 days at the time of the shooting, according to the Oregonian.
The Sandy Police Department deleted this photo it posted on its Facebook page in April 2020, welcoming Michael Boyes to the police department before he had attended the police academy.
The South Florida cop who used his badge to intimidate women and girls into performing sex acts on him over several years pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors Friday after accepting a plea deal that will spare him a lifetime in prison.
Former Hialeah police officer Jesus “Jesse” Menocal is now facing a maximum three years in prison. He will be sentenced next month.
The 34-year-old man who comes from a family of cops will also not have to register as a sex offender nor forfeit his right to carry a gun as he would have under the original felony charges which included kidnapping.
That means he will be able to continue working as a firearms instructor at his family’s company, Menocal International Training – even though he is no longer allowed to work as a police officer, according to the Miami Herald.
Menocal pleaded guilty to depriving women of their civil rights under color of law by sexually abusing them, according to the press released issued by the U.S. Department of Justice. He also admitted to sexually assaulting four women during Friday’s hearing.
At the change of plea hearing held today before U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams, Menocal admitted that he kissed a woman and caused her to touch his exposed penis; had a second woman, who was in psychiatric crisis, perform oral sex on him; and coerced a third woman, who was walking alone at night, into submitting to oral and vaginal sex. While not directly related to the offenses to which he pleaded guilty, Menocal also admitted to bringing a fourth female into a Hialeah Police Department building and ordering her to remove her shorts and underwear, causing her to expose her buttocks to him. Menocal admitted that he was on-duty and in uniform during all of these acts, abusing his official authority.
But the press release does not mention it, one of his victims was a 14-year-old girl whom he forced to perform oral sex on him and another was a 17 years old, the “fourth female” in the above description.
The press release also does not mention that one of his alleged victims, a 30-year-old woman named Suzie Betancourt, who had reported him to internal affairs in November 2015 for sexually assaulting her, died a mysterious death after claiming he had threatened to kill her if she ever dared report him.
Betancourt died five months after filing her complaint when she fell out of a moving car, an incident ruled an accident but her family believes there is more to the story.
But Menocal escaped accountability for years because he was protected by his department who even gave him a raise after several women had accused him of sexually assaulting them.
He was also protected by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office as well who refused to prosecute him after only interviewing one of his four alleged victims.
It was not until the FBI arrested him at the Hialeah Police Department in December 2019 that he began facing accountability.
Prior to that, he had bragged that he had sex with a female internal affairs detective in exchange for protecting him from the rape allegations.
“You can’t kill a beast, you can’t knock me down,” Menocal said, according to the documents obtained by the Miami Herald. “I’m a beast.”
Menocal, who is out on bond, will be sentenced May 12.
Loveland police officer Austin Hopp was apparently trying to impress his girlfriend when he dislocated the shoulder of a 73-year-old woman with dementia who had been picking flowers on the side of the road when he first confronted her two years ago.
After all, it was only seconds after Loveland police officer Daria Jalali arrived to the scene to assist with the arrest that Hopp jerked the woman’s arm up behind her back so hard that you can actually hear a popping sound on his body cam footage.
He was very proud of that popping sound, bragging to Jalali about it later at the station after they both had turned off their body cameras and bumped fists; their actions and words captured by the overhead security camera which would help build a criminal case against the cops.
The woman, Karen Garner, spent six hours handcuffed to a bench in a jail cell without medical treatment while the cops sat outside the cell laughing and joking, watching the body cam footage of the arrest, Hopp relishing in the sound of her shoulder dislocating.
It was June 26, 2020 and Hopp was on top of his game, a married power-tripping cop who had just moved in with Jalali after a year on the job; his wife filing for divorce the following month.
Despite a witness complaining to Hopp’s sergeant about abusing Garner that day, he was well-protected within the department because his supervisors did not see anything wrong with brutally beating an elderly woman with dementia.
It wasn’t until Garner’s family filed a lawsuit in April 2021 and their lawyer, Sarah Schielke, posted videos from the incident on YouTube – sparking national outrage – that the officers began to be held accountable for their actions. Both cops resigned that same month and were criminally charged the following month.
On Wednesday, Hopp accepted a plea deal where he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault to avoid trial. He is facing two to eight years in prison, according to the Gazette. He will be sentenced on May 5.
Jalali, who was charged with failure to intervene, failure to report the use of excessive force, and official misconduct, has a court hearing next month.
Their relationship lasted until February 2021 when neighbors told the Daily Mail Hopp had moved out of the home he was sharing with her. Neighbors also said he would frequently speed through the neighborhood in his patrol car and they even complained about it, but nothing was ever done.
Videos from the incident show his sergeant, Phil Metzler, trying to intimidate the witness who had complained about Hopp’s behavior, telling the man that Garner outran Walmart security after attempting to shoplift, accusing him of interfering with the arrest for simply observing the arrest.
Sergeant Metzler also claimed the witness was placing himself in danger because Garner could have been a violent murderer.
But it was obvious to most everybody outside the police department that the real criminal was Hopp.
Garner’s family accepted a $3 million settlement in September 2021 but were not happy with the plea deal, which reduced the seriousness of the charges from a maximum 30-year sentence to a maximum 10-year sentence.
The lawsuit states that Garner had simply forgotten to pay for the merchandise because she suffers from dementia. It says she attempted to pay for the items, including a Pepsi, t-shirt, candy bar and cleaning wipes but was refused.
She then walked off and the store called police who found her walking on the side of the road picking wildflowers.
“I’m going home,” she kept telling Hopp as he abused her, accusing her of “fighting” him.
Her family said her condition became much worse after the incident and that she no longer recognizes family members.
Cody Greenland was already having a bad day after he was evicted from his home last year when he was confronted by Utah police who beat and tasered him in a parking lot of a Target store, falsely claiming he had been “fighting” them.
American Fork police were responding to a call of a man trying to break into cars in the parking lot but all Greenland was trying to do was place some personal items inside his girlfriend’s car who was inside the Target shopping.
However, the car was locked and he did not have a key and when he tried calling his girlfriend to come out, she did not answer so he decided to wait.
But he was soon confronted by the cops who pulled up, one of them who wasted no time in grabbing his wrist without bothering to ask him questions, once again taking the word of a random citizen without doing due diligence to find out if there is any truth to the allegation.
Body cam footage shows that Greenland got down on his knees and raised his arms, complying with the first cop’s orders when another cop pulled up and stepped out of the car and came charging at him from behind.
American Fork police officer Derek Thomas Cannon struck Greenland from behind as if making a football tackle. He then began punching him in the face.
The other cops then jumped in and began repeatedly tasering him, ordering him to place his hands behind his back while piling on top of him and smashing his face into the asphalt.
The two screenshots below show how Greenland is complying with the cop on the right when he is struck from behind by Cannon. The video is below.
The incident took place on April 17, 2021 and Greenland was charged with drug possession and interfering with an arrest, which were eventually dropped because it was an unlawful arrest. Earlier this week, he filed a federal lawsuit against the officers.
According to the lawsuit which you can read here, Greenland had been evicted earlier that day and had called his mother to pick him up and drive him to the Target to meet his girlfriend.
He used his mother’s phone to call her but she did not answer so he decided to wait next to her car after his mother had driven off. At one point, he walked into a nearby Dollar Tree store and purchased a Mountain Dew and some snacks which he had in his hands when he was confronted by police.
American Fork police released two body cam videos that are each almost 30 minutes long but there are huge gaps in the video missing audio without an explanation. But the portions we can hear are very damaging to the cops’ version of the incident.
The portion where he is first attacked contains no audio but we can see he is surrounded by three cops, including one who is motioning him to get down on the ground which is when Greenland gets down on his knees with his hands in the air.
That was when Cannon pulls up and attacks him.
“I could feel officer Cannon coming,” Greenland recalled the events from that day in a press conference Monday.
“I could hear his equipment on him jiggling and I could feel something coming. I don’t know if you’ve ever been tackled without pads or anything — I got hit in the spine by his knee. It like knocked the wind out of me instantly. All I could think of was to tell them, ‘Stop!’ ‘Don’t!’ And try and protect my face because he was instantly punching me in the head and face.”
The video shows that after beating and tasering him for more than a minute, the cops finally managed to handcuff him, leaving Greenland’s face bloodied.
That was when Cannon noticed a woman recording from a few feet away and asked her to send him her footage.
“I’m so sorry what you guys have to deal with,” the woman tells the cop, apparently not witnessing how the cops had attacked him.
“It’s just work … this is normal for us,” he says.
Cannon then walks back to Greenland who is handcuffed and lying on his stomach and complaining about being beaten.
“You were fighting with us, bro,” Cannon tells him.
“You did not comply, that is why you got fought with,” Cannon responds.
In their police report, cops claimed he had “assumed a defensive fighting stance” and “would not obey officers’ commands,” according to KSL. But the videos shows us that is a lie.
Watch the edited video below and the two unedited videos here and here.
Charion Lockett was sitting in the front seat of his car in the driveway of his house when he was shot and killed by Houston police serving an arrest warrant last month.
Police say they opened fire after the 27-year-old man opened fired at them first.
But body cam video shows he probably was not even aware they were cops.
After all, not only did the cops first pull up in an unmarked car, they never announced themselves as officers.
And not only was Lockett a licensed gun owner with a clean criminal record, he had earned a master’s degree in criminal justice and was planning on entering law school, according to family members, which does not exactly fit the profile of a man who needed to be taken down with a surprise raid.
On the other hand, the man who instigated the warrant, an old high school classmate of Lockett who accused him of aggravated assault with a weapon back in November, has an extensive criminal record, according to ABC 13, which does not make him the most credible victim. His name has not been released.
But Houston police took him at his word when they asked a judge to sign a warrant in December which was rejected. But they tried again last month and the judge signed the warrant.
The incident took place on February 7, 2022, just over three years after Houston police participated in a botched raid that resulted in two innocent people dying and two officers convicted on felony charges.
And like the previous incident, this one took place under questionable circumstances in how police obtained the warrant, acting solely on an unfounded accusation from an unreliable source without further investigation or due diligence.
Raising further questions is the allegation from Lockett’s mother, Shanette Lewis, that Houston police had called her earlier that day to inform her her son had a warrant which she said was the first her family had learned about it.
Lewis said her son also received a call that morning, about an hour before he was killed, accusing him of having missed a court date on February 4 which she says he did not know about.
“He’s a little shaken up,” attorney Tim Foley who is representing Lockette’s family, told the Associated Press.
“He goes and sits in his car, which according to mom is what he does on a regular basis. He sits in his car and he meditates and he prays.”
The fallout from the 2019 botched raid which was not caught on camera resulted in Houston police officers having to wear body cameras when conducting raids. Houston police also introduced a policy requiring body camera footage to be released to the public within 30 days in incidents resulting in death or injury.
As a result, Houston police released several body camera videos from the raid, allowing us to see with our own eyes what took place that day.
One video shows a cop riding passenger in the unmarked car opening his door and sticking his gun out when two gunshots can be heard, presumably from Lockett’s gun even though it is not visible in the video.
The plainclothes cop pulls his gun back into the car for a split-second after hearing the shots before sticking it out the door again and firing several times.
Seconds after the shooting, a marked police SUV pulls up and both cops begin firing. More cops arrive afterwards, most in unmarked cars.
Lockett was killed in the doorway of his house trying to run inside for safety.
“He’s down, he’s down,” says Houston police officer Deven Inocencio, the plainclothes cop who first opened fire.
“What did he shoot at?” another officer asks moments later.
“He shot at us in the Lincoln,” responds Inocencio.
In other words, Lockett had no idea he was shooting at police because the marked SUV, the second cop car to pull up to the scene, arrived seconds after the shooting started.
Watch the edited video below or all the unedited videos here.
Charion Lockette had a master’s in criminal justice and was planning on entering law school.
A former North Carolina police chief was arrested last week after attempting to stage his suicide in order to avoid facing criminal charges committed while on-duty.
Anthony Spivey, who was resigned as police chief from the Chadourn Police Department last year after he was arrested on more than 80 felonies, did not attend a court hearing Monday.
His attorney told the judge that he had gone missing and may have even taken his own life, according to WECT.
But he was arrested Thursday morning while hiding in a creek behind his aunt’s apartment complex in Horry County, South Carolina – about 30 miles south of where police say he attempted to stage his suicide.
Now Spivey is facing more charges in addition to the long list of charges he had already been facing, including destroying evidence, embezzling state property, trafficking in opium and obstructing justice, according to the News & Observer.
But beginning in 2019, he began stealing guns and drugs from the evidence room at the police station and selling them to his friends and family. He was arrested in April 2021, accused of stealing the following from the evidence room, WECT reported.
$32,186.51 in cash
Two handguns and a rifle
367 doses of Xanax
1 dose of hydrocodone
131 doses of Percocet
26.5 oxycodone
1 Oxycontin
1 ecstasy pill
2 clonazepam pills
3 Suboxone doses
2 doses of MDMA
1 dose of alprazolam
47 doses of methadone
.48 grams and .62 grams of cocaine
3 buprenorphine strips
10 doses of amphetamine
11 “white pills” stamped “L484”
Pill bottle containing prescription pills
18 “green” pills
Two months later, he was accused of embezzling $8,000 that was meant to go to a family whose child was battling leukemia, according to WECT.
He had resigned in April 2021 and was hired by an auto repair shop but then was arrested again in December 2021 for stealing two catalytic converters.
Also arrested last week was a couple accused of helping him stage the suicide, Dean and Debbie Sasser, charged with obstruction justice.
Dean Sasser who is reportedly a father figure to Spivey, lent the former chief his truck last week to go on a fishing trip.
The truck was found empty by a river along with a boat that was also empty. Inside the truck was a suicide note, prompting police to send a dive team into the river to search for his body.
“It didn’t really hit until I saw my truck and I saw the boat where it was located,” Dean Sasser told the News & Observer last week before his arrest.
“He had left a letter in the truck to all of us…saying his goodbyes. It’s devastating.”
Activists are demanding the resignation of the Des Moines Police Chief after a video surfaced showing three cops dressed in riot gear assaulting a man and appearing to steal his phone before allowing him to walk away.
The video was obtained by Just Voices, an activist group based in Iowa which posted it on social media last week. It was recorded from a security camera and contains no audio.
The time stamp on the videos indicates it was recorded at 2:48 a.m. on May 31, 2020 and shows a lone man walking on a sidewalk with a black object in his right hand and holding it close to his face as if he were speaking on the phone.
The man stops walking when noticing the cops walking towards him from across the street.
He is standing on the sidewalk with his arms slightly spread, showing no resistance, when one of the cops shoves him to the ground and a black object falls to the sidewalk.
The cop then picks up the object but does not return it to the man.
The video shows the cops allowing the man to walk away but he no longer appears to be holding the black object in his hand.
Earlier that evening, demonstrators had gathered to protest against the choking death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. It was one of dozens of protests taking place across the country.
Earlier today, Just Voices organized a press conference with other local activist groups and listed the following demands in response to the video, according to the Des Moises Register.
A third-party investigation of the Des Moines Police Department by the Polk County Attorney’s Office.
An independent community review board to investigate discriminatory, racially motivated and abusive tactics.
The firing of Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert.
“That’s not OK,” Just Voices founder Harvey Harrison told the Register.
“It’s not OK for anybody, including Des Moines police officers in full military uniform, what appears to be militarized garb to come up, knock a person down on the street and apparently pick up their cell phone, which what it appears they did, put it in their pocket and walk away. That’s not OK.”
Earlier this week, 19 Austin police officers were indicted for their abusive actions towards the George Floyd demonstrators during the same time frame of May 2020.
Raleigh police officers responded to a Wingstop fast food restaurant Friday night after receiving a call of a disturbance between employees and customers who were throwing chicken wings at each other.
The irate customers were claiming they had been shortchanged on their order through Door Dash and were demanding a refund, according to the 911 call, obtained by WRAL News.
But the customers had left by the time the North Carolina cops arrived so they ended up focusing on a man who had nothing to with the melee; a customer who had walked into the Wingstop to order food without any apparent knowledge of what had taken place moments earlier.
But Raleigh police claimed Mekhi Lucky “matched the description” of one of the men involved so they decided to arrest him – despite witnesses, including the Wingstop manager, insisting he was the wrong man.
Lucky, a 24-year-old Black man, made headlines in 2017 for his unique appearance after his mugshot went viral, revealing him to have one brown eyes and one blue eye, resulting in him signing a contract with a modeling agency.
A video recorded by a Wingstop employee shows three cops wrestling him down, including one officer who placed a knee to his neck.
The video shows Wingstop manager Lucretia Godwin recording and repeatedly telling the cops not to arrest him so they arrested her on two felony counts of assaulting an officer. One of the cops slapped the phone out of her as she was recording, shattering it.
Earlier in the evening before cops had arrived, Godwin had shoved the irate customers out the door and even exchanged punches with one of the men so it is unlikely she would suddenly defend the customers from arrest.
But not only did Raleigh police ignore her when she repeatedly insisted they were arresting the wrong man, they ended up arresting her on two felony counts of assaulting an officer.
“They’re making it seem like I did something to them, but they were assaulting me though,” Godwin told WRAL News.
“They were mad because I was recording them.”
Police also arrested a woman named Alexandra Henley on assault charges after she turned herself in later that evening but it is not clear at this time exactly what role she played in the melee.
A 16-year-old employee was also arrested but police have not released the juvenile’s name but we can assume it is the one who recorded the video and was also telling cops he was the wrong man.
Lucky was charged with resisting an officer but the evidence shows he was resisting an unlawful arrest.
A 16-year-old girl was riding a minibike through a residential neighborhood in Southern California when she was stopped by Rialto police who were caught on video spinning her to the ground and placing a hand on her neck while trying to arrest her.
Rialto police say the girl was riding at an “unsafe speed” but minibikes generally don’t travel faster than 25 mph which is the general speed limit on most residential streets.
Nevertheless, minibikes are not street legal in Rialto or in most places in the U.S. so police had a reason to stop her.
But did one of the cops have a reason to spin her to the ground, then place his knee on her body and his hand on her neck?
Considering the Rialto Police Chief has already apologized to the girl’s family, it does not appear as if they will try to justify this one.
The video was recorded from across the street and begins as two cops each have their hands on one of the girl’s wrists.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” one of the cops tells her.
The girl is in distress and turns to the man recording and begins to tell him to get her brother when one of the cop spins her to the ground.
The girl tries to get back up but the cop piles on top of her.
“Did you just try to bite me?” the cop yells as the girl cries and he places his hand on her neck.
“Call my brother,” she repeatedly tells the man recording.
A second video then shows the cops shoving the girl into the back of a patrol car.
Rialto police initially charged the girl with assault on an officer but that was before local media picked up the story and began asking questions.
Rialto Police Chief Mark Kling
Since then, Rialto Police Chief Mark Kling issued the following statement in a press release:
The juvenile was stopped for riding an illegal street pocket bike and traveling at an unsafe speed on a residential street. During the investigation the juvenile refused to identify herself, including where she lived and provided false information about her age. Because officers could not prove her identity, or release the juvenile to her parents with a citation to appear in juvenile court, she was arrested. A brief snapshot video was recorded by a bystander and posted to social media platforms. The video clip has now been reported by several media outlets. Chief Mark Kling said, “I have personally viewed officer body worn camera footage and although the video depicts the juvenile resisting officers, we are investigating the officer’s decision to trip the juvenile to the ground and later placing his hand on the juvenile’s throat during the arrest. After preliminary review of the incident, I have requested an independent investigation by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigations to determine if the officer’s use of force options were lawful. I have also ordered an internal affairs investigation into the officer’s actions. Our investigation will determine if department policies, rules or procedures were violated. Per department directives, confirmed violations of policy will lead to disciplinary action.
Chief Kling concluded with, “We apologize to the juvenile’s family regarding these unfortunate circumstances. At a time when our police department strives to build community relationships, we certainly fell short in this encounter. We look forward to building rapport with this family now and in the future.”
The girl’s name has not been release but a woman who is apparently the girl’s mother has been posting videos from the incident on Tik Tok under the hashtag #freeshayla2turnt, including a few from a hospital bed showing the girl being treated.
Another video shows the girl in a car with a cast on her right arm after leaving the hospital.
A Michigan police detective responding to a call about three men recording in public ended up suspended after assaulting one of the men.
Utica Police Sergeant Greg Morabito pulled up to the scene in an unmarked SUV and attempted to question the men recording but they shut him down immediately, telling him they were not going to talk to him.
That naturally prompted Morabito to declare they were going to answer his questions even though he was never able to articulate a crime he suspected them of committing – meaning the men were under no legal requirement to answer his questions.
The men not only refused to comply with his orders, they began belittling him with profane insults which furthered angered him.
After a few minutes of arguing with the men where at one point, he responded to their insults with his middle finger, Morabito was persuaded by other officers at the scene to get back into his car.
“I’m coming for your job, c_cksucker,” said Steve Jones, who runs the Fricn Media YouTube channel.
“Come for it!” responded Morabito, who then stepped out of the car and charged towards Jones.
“You think you’re the only one who’s come for my job before?” the cop said before knocking the phone out of Jones’ hands.
Morabito then got into the unmarked SUV and drove away, and the three auditors drove to the police station to file a complaint against him.
That was when Morabito arrested Jones on a charge of disorderly conduct, which is a go-to contempt of cop charge officers use when no actual crime is being committed.
The video went viral, resulting in the suspension of Morabito, according to The Detroit News.
“The City of Utica takes these issues seriously and an investigation into the incident has been initiated,” Deputy Chief Matthew Kaluzny wrote in a statement.
When I launched this site in 2007 after I was beaten and arrested by Miami police, I never expected to be continuing to run this site 15 years later.
But as some of you know, that initial arrest sparked a seven-year legal battle between myself and the cops in Miami who arrested me an additional three times for photographing cops or security guards in public.
Then there was the issue of citizens from around the country getting arrested for the non-crime of recording cops in public which started becoming more of an issue as more people began owning smartphones and learning they had the right to record in public.
At the time, the media was not reporting on these incidents so PINAC began reporting on these stories until the media finally caught on.
As the site grew, I ended up quitting other jobs I had at the time to focus full-time on PINAC. At the time, Facebook was encouraging me to grow the Photography is Not a Crime page by charging me to promote the stories we wrote which helped grow our page.
But Facebook ended up turning on PINAC when they started restricting our reach to only ten percent of the total readers who chose to follow our page which continues today and it is an obvious attempt to destroy our business in order to appease the government into not regulating them.
The podcast is our attempt to get around Facebook’s heavy hand as I explain in detail on the episode.
But the main event of this episode is an interview with Shawn Randall Thomas, a New York City man who began conducting First Amendment audits in 2004 before they were even called First Amendment audits.
Thomas, who has been arrested numerous times for the non-crime of recording police in public, is now suing the New York City Police Department after he was unlawfully arrested for walking into a police station and handing the cops an affidavit without identify himself which is not a crime.
But what is a crime is that one of the cops who arrested him was a retired cop who had no authority to make an arrest which is why the NYPD then tried to cover the arrest up by pretending it never happened, perhaps unaware that Thomas had recorded the entire incident.
Thomas was also involved in the ACLU’s original lawsuit against Homeland Security which affirmed that we had the right to record or photograph federal buildings before he was dropped as a plaintiff because he was considered a “troublemaker” for having the gall to use his camera to test law enforcement’s knowledge of the law which is what are now called First Amendment audits.
In this episode, which kicks off a series of episodes where I will interview activists and police abuse victims, Thomas talks about how he first became an activist after he was repeatedly harassed by the NYPD under its unconstitutional stop and frisk program.
Listen to the podcast below. Below the podcast is the video of his latest arrest and here is the lawsuit.
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Fourteen-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta was preparing for the biggest party of her life when she was shot and killed by an LAPD cop inside a department store dressing room while shopping with her mother last week.
Moments ago, Los Angeles police released video footage from the shooting along with recordings of the 911 calls. The 35-minute video is below in its entirety.
Police say the cop was shooting a man outside the dressing room when one of the bullets entered the dressing room and struck the girl in the chest while she was trying on a dress for her quinceañera, the traditional coming-of-age celebration in Latin American culture when a girl turns 15.
Her family had just moved from Chile to California in search of a better life, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Also killed was the 24-year-old man, Daniel Elena Lopez – who did not have a gun – but what police described as a “very heavy lock” which police say he may have been using attack a woman.
The shooting took place at around 11:45 a.m. Thursday at a Burlington store in North Hollywood when the store was filled with last-minute Christmas shoppers, drawing criticism because LAPD has killed more than twice as many people this year compared to earlier years.
The shooting also drew comparisons to a 2018 incident in which LAPD cops shot and killed a Trader Joe’s manager named Melyda Corado while trying to shoot at another man who had shot at them.
With less than a week before the year ends, LAPD have shot at 37 people in 2021, killing 18 of them, according to Newsweek.
In 2020, LAPD shot at 27 people, killing seven. The year before, LAPD shot at 26 people, killing 12.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore has attributed the increase in shooting deaths to an increase in interactions with people with mental illness who are armed, according to the San Bernardino Sun.
However, it was only last year that the LAPD issued a “use of force tactics directive” stating that “before discharging a firearm, officers shall consider their surroundings, background, and potential risk to bystanders to the extent reasonable under the circumstances.”
Domingo Garcia, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, issued the following statement last week:
“It is indefensible that trained Los Angeles police officers could open fire in a crowded store at the height of Christmas shopping without first knowing for sure if (the suspect) was armed.”
Despite a tearful apology on the witness stand, jurors convicted former Minnesota cop Kim Potter on manslaughter charges for the death of Daunte Wright Thursday, a 20-year-old man she shot and killed after confusing her gun for a taser.
Potter, 49, was convicted on both first and second degree manslaughter charges, according to USA Today. The decision was announced moments ago after four days of deliberations when observers were speculating it would end in a mistrial.
She was taken into custody after the verdict. Her sentencing has been scheduled for February 18. Her attorneys are trying to get her released on a $100,000 bond, according to Mediaite.
She had resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department within days of the shooting after 26 years on the job.
The difference between the gun and taser she was wearing that day.
The incident took place on April 11, 2021 while Potter was training a rookie cop named Anthony Luckey.
Luckey, 26, spotted Wright driving a white car with an expired registration and an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror which is a crime in Minnesota. He was also using his turn signal “inappropriately,” Potter testified, meaning he was in a left turn lane with the right turn signal blinking.
Potter testified that she normally would not have pulled the car over since it was difficult to update car registrations during the pandemic but part of the training process is to ensure the rookie cop make “numerous contacts with the public throughout the day.”
Wright had a misdemeanor warrant for his arrest which was when he was ordered out of his car. At first, he complied but then tried to get back into his car and drive off.
“Taser! Taser!” Potter yelled while pulling out her gun and shooting Wright to death.
Read more background on the case in our article from Wednesday. Watch the video below of her tearful testimony along with footage of the shooting where she broke down in tears moments after pulling the trigger.
