An Anne Arundel County police officer shot and killed a family's dog Saturday while investigating a burglary in Pasadena, officials said.

Police said the officer — a one-year veteran of the force who was not identified — was canvassing a neighborhood looking for witnesses around 4 p.m. Saturday. When the officer went to a home in 900 block of Lombardee Circle, the dog — a male Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Vern — "confronted" the officer in the front yard, police said. The officer then fired his weapon twice, killing the dog, police said.

Tim Reeves — one of Vern's owners — said he had been in the basement of his Pasadena house setting up for a Super Bowl party when his girlfriend called him from upstairs, saying she'd seen a police officer in the front yard.

"I said to him 'How can I help you, officer?'" Tim Reeves said. "He looked at me and said 'I unloaded on your dog. Your dog attacked me, and I killed it.'"

The police have been unable to solve any of these cases, which gives them one of the lowest case solving rates in the country. The national average for case clearance (a charge being laid) is 64%, the average in Jennings, Louisiana is 7%.

The families of the victims, fed up with the lack of performance by the police, have since hired Private Investigator, Kirk Menard.

Menard has investigated the final resting place of each of the victims and the disturbing circumstances tied to each one. “This all points to something very local,” Menard said. “Someone right in the center of this if you go by geographical profiling. That’s it’s someone right in the center of this area, who knows this area.”

“I think we have more than one killer here,” he said. “All the victims knew each other. They all ran in the same circles. All of the same names keep popping up. I think there are multiple people involved.”

The lack of arrest in the killings, along with the unscrupulous history of the Jennings Police has led to concerns of the townspeople suspecting that the police are involved in these murders.

Drivers and passengers in the Atlanta, Georgia area are coming forward after feeling sexually violated by police. People pulled over for minor traffic stops or registration checks are shocked to find out that the alternative to going down to the station meant officers sticking their bare fingers into underwear, touching the genitals.

For the record, not even the most broadly written, police-state favorable laws are supporting these actions. Yet, the police are confidently acting on them as though they "have permission" and have the right within the confines of law. There isn't even "probable cause" in the report below.

Eyewitness News has learned the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is suspending its controversial "field deputy" program.

On his first day as interim sheriff, John Scott is suspending the civilian field deputy program and launching an official inquiry into possible misuse of county funds following an Eyewitness News investigation.

"There are concerns, so Sheriff Scott needs time, and that's why he has the inquiry being conducted, so that he knows where he's going to take it from here," said L.A. Sheriff's Captain Mike Parker.

The news comes one day after an Eyewitness News investigation raised questions about the $171,000 salary of retiring Field Deputy Michael Yamaki.

Yamaki was a senior civilian advisor to former Sheriff Lee Baca. Yamaki had no sheriff's department office, no phone line, and appeared to spend work days at the exclusive Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. Yamaki is also a longtime friend of Baca and loaned him $20,000 in his first campaign for sheriff. Eyewitness News filed a Public Records Act request asking for Yamaki's work calendars and a description of his job. We were told that neither of those things exists...

But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.

Well, Indiana has taken action to “recognize the unique character of a citizen’s home and to ensure that a citizen feels secure in his or her own home against unlawful intrusion by another individual or a public servant.”

This special amendment is no revolutionary new thought, only common sense.

Self-defense is a natural right; when laws are in place that protect incompetent police by removing one’s ability to protect one’s self, simply because the aggressor has a badge and a uniform, this is a human rights violation. Indiana is leading the way by recognizing this right and creating legislation to protect it.

Of course cops have already begun to fear monger the passage of this bill, “If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he’s going to say, ‘Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property,’ ” said Joseph Hubbard, 40, president of Jeffersonville Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 100. “Somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law.”

Instead of looking at the beneficial aspect of this law, which creates the incentive for police to act responsibly and just, Hubbard takes the ‘higher than thou’ attitude and is simply worried about himself.

How about questioning the immoral laws that you are enforcing in the first place? Or how about sympathizing with the innocent people whose pets and family members have been slain, due to police negligence?

(i) A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to:

(1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force;
(2) prevent or terminate the public servant's unlawful entry of or attack on the person's dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or
(3) prevent or terminate the public servant's unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in the person's possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the person's immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the person has authority to protect.

(j) Notwithstanding subsection (i), a person is not justified in using force against a public servant if:

(1) the person is committing or is escaping after the commission of a crime;
(2) the person provokes action by the public servant with intent to cause bodily injury to the public servant;
(3) the person has entered into combat with the public servant or is the initial aggressor, unless the person withdraws from the encounter and communicates to the public servant the intent to do so and the public servant nevertheless continues
or threatens to continue unlawful action; or
(4) the person reasonably believes the public servant is:

(A) acting lawfully; or
(B) engaged in the lawful execution of the public servant's official

duties.

(k) A person is not justified in using deadly force against a public servant whom the person knows or reasonably should know is a public servant unless:

(1) the person reasonably believes that the public servant is:

(A) acting unlawfully; or
(B) not engaged in the execution of the public servant's official duties; and

(2) the force is reasonably necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person.

(KTVI) – It was a victory for drivers Monday and the use of flashing headlights to warn about police speed traps.

A federal judge’s ruling in St. Louis could have ramifications across the U.S.
Flashing headlights has become a universal symbol meaning “slow-down police radar ahead.”
U.S. District Court Judge, Henry Autrey, of St. Louis issued a preliminary injunction ordering Ellisville Police to halt the policy.

He ruled flashing your headlights was free speech, protected by the First Amendment.
“If you’re at the gas station on the corner and someone says ‘hey be careful over there, there’s a speed trap’, that’s protected speech. You can’t be ticketed for that. This is no different,” said Tony Rothert, an attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union.

Ellisville dropped the case long ago, but Elli did not.

The ACLU joined him in filing suit against Ellisville.

In November of 2012, Ellisville Police pulled over Michael Elli, a retired West County resident who hadn’t been accused of a moving violation for more than 35 years, and cited him for flashing his headlights. A judge later told him the standard fine for it was $1,000.
“In our view that’s speech that’s protected by the First Amendment and it’s also good for the public because it tells people to slow down, to use caution. That’s never a bad thing,” Rothert said.

George Restovich, an attorney for the City of Ellisville, said the ruling was a moot point for Ellisville Police.

“They specifically took action by way of the chief of police to address this; to say that we will not arrest individuals, we won’t even stop individuals and we certainly won’t prosecute individual. I believe there were maybe 5 tickets that were issued in a similar fashion in the past decade,” Restovich said.

Rothert said he’d heard from people across the country about this case and Autrey’s ruling stood as the prevailing law of the land.

Autrey did not rule on Elli’s claim for modest damages in the case.

...Flores said he implored him not to because he has an electronic spinal device to treat a previous injury to his hand.

When the stun gun was used, Flores says it caused a seizure. "When I was seizing they told me, 'Stop it. Quit resisting,'" he says.

The attorney for Blue Island, Patrick Ward, tells a different story. He says Flores was the aggressor and shoved the sergeant with two hands, causing him to stumble backward.

He says Flores didn't tell officers about the electronic device until after the stun gun was used.

"Their actions were justified," Ward says.

Flores' attorney, Tim Fiscella, says his client was incapable of harming anyone because he had the disability and he had been injured from the crash that night.

There are also questions about how the police department handled this case. When Bailey asked Ward what kind of internal investigation was done after the incident, he answered: "There was no additional investigation."

CBS 2 called a handful of other police departments, including Chicago, and each requires an internal review after the use of a stun gun, to make sure it is justified.

Sources tell CBS 2 Blue Island police did not follow their own policy of documenting the use of force - a step that would've triggered an internal investigation. Ward did not return CBS 2's calls about this detail.

On the night of the incident, police officers arrested and charged Flores with resisting arrest, battery and assault, but Flores was cleared of all charges. He is now suing the Blue Island Police Department and is hoping they re-examine their stun-gun policies.

Flores says this whole experience has scarred him. "I break down a lot," he says.

OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) — Oregon City police forcefully defended two police officers' decision to leave a fallen fellow officer on the ground near a suspect for 90 minutes in November.

Oregon City Police Chief Jim Band said Monday that the two initial responding officers believed police officer-in-training Robert Libke was dead, and a third officer who arrived later also believed Libke died instantly. It wasn't until a SWAT team arrived and witnessed Libke move his arm that they switched from a recovery mission to a rescue mission.

A SWAT team physician said Libke would likely have died regardless of the 90-minute delay.

Band said Monday, at the release of the department's investigation into Libke's death, that it's unclear whether the officers who initially saw Libke lying injured would have acted differently if they knew he was still alive.

If you pay for a good or service, don’t you expect some benefit in return?

If you walked into a McDonald’s, ordered a burger, saw it rang-up on the register, and gave them your money, you’d expect within a minute or two to have a burger, right? If five-minutes went by you might point-out to an employee that your order had yet to be filled, right? If a longer-than-average time went by you may even be comped some extra food as a way to lessen any ill-will that may have developed from the lackluster service.

Such deliverables – the supply of a good or service paid for, or even adequate customer service, are entirely void from policing as it’s currently structured.

Not only are police “customers” told to pay “or else” (talk about perverse incentives), but courts (proving just who they serve) have ruled that police employees have no obligation to provide you, as an individual, any good or service.

A King County Sheriff's deputy involved in confrontation with a Seattle journalist last year has been fired.

Deputy "K.C." Patrick Saulet was fired for dishonesty and abuse of authority, according to a termination letter dated January 30.

Saulet threatened to arrest Dominic Holden during a July 30 confrontation. Holden, an editor at The Stranger, was riding by the International District light rail station when he saw a group of officers surrounding and speaking loudly to a young black man. Holden used his smartphone to photograph the scene, which triggered a barrage of threats and sarcastic comments from two of the officers involved.

BART Police attempt to intimidate and harass us after we videotaped Ringling Bros. Circus loading elephants into their circus train.

Members of a Des Moines family say they were terrorized in their own home by Ankeny police.

Sally Prince is afraid to stay in her own home. “I’ve been so traumatized. I don’t sleep at night,” Prince says.

On Thursday, Ankeny police executed a search warrant looking for someone they suspected of using stolen credit cards to buy clothes and electronics.
The whole search was caught on surveillance video.

Ankeny police tell us they knocked first, but the video shows one officer pounding on the side of the house and seconds later, officers use a battering ram to force their way in.

The video also shows an officer destroying a security camera outside the home.

Two people in the house were arrested on unrelated charges, and the family says none of the items listed on the warrant were found.

Prince’s son, Justin Ross, was in the bathroom when police burst in, and he was carrying a gun that he has the legal right to carry. “I stood up, I drew my weapon, I started to get myself together to get out the door, I heard someone in the main room say police. I re-holstered my weapon sat back down and put my hands in my lap,” Ross recalls.

“This is over property purchased with a stolen credit card,” Prince adds. “It doesn’t make any sense to go to such extremes for something that simple.”

Two of the people there had no criminal history. Justin Ross was honorably discharged from the Army recently. The third person does have an arrest record, but the most serious charge was theft and that charge was dismissed.

The family says they would have answered the door if police had just knocked.
Ankeny police executed the warrant in Des Moines because the alleged theft took place in Ankeny, but the suspects live in Des Moines.

Ankeny police say they do not have a written policy governing how search warrants are executed. They’re not commenting further because it’s an ongoing investigation.