Prosecutors will not file charges against three Los Angeles police officers who fatally shot an unarmed, disabled veteran on live television after a car chase.

Brian Newt Beaird, a 51-year-old disabled National Guard veteran, was struck by 13 bullets in downtown Los Angeles on the night of December 13, 2013.

Local news stations carried live pictures of the high-speed police pursuit and its bloody aftermath.

One of the people who watched Beaird go down in a hail of bullets was his father.
The City Council has approved payment of $5 million to Beaird's family to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit.

"I want to go pee," pleads Laclair.

"You're not going to go pee," Ramirez answers. "You're not supposed to pee here."

Moments later, the Fort Lauderdale cop reaches back and smacks Laclair across his face.

The officer then accuses the man of "trying to fight me," which the video clearly shows did not happen.

After placing Laclair in handcuffs, Ramirez proceeds to deliver a lecture: "I tell you what to do and you do it. It's that simple," he says.

The video has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and eventually got around to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Officials say Ramirez has been placed on paid administrative leave as an investigation is conducted.

Laclair was arrested for trespassing. He was released Monday.

riday morning in September 2010, Gary Glass steered his Mercury Mariner along the curves on Rutland Road in Davidsonville, past horse farms and McMansions, toward a gym in Gambrills.

On his way, the retired accountant nearly collided with a Ford Escape. But he blew his horn and kept driving.

Moments later, Glass spotted a flashing blue light behind him. It was the Ford. He pulled over. A man walked out of the SUV, leaving two small children inside, approached Glass, showed a gun and demanded identification.

The 17-minute traffic stop — and the citation in which Anne Arundel County Police Officer Mark Collier said Glass was following him too closely — started a legal battle that has raged for four years and counting.

Glass, 60, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Collier violated his civil rights in a false arrest. The Davidsonville man is seeking $5 million in damages.

Sun Investigates
Sun Investigates
In a succession of suits filed in state courts, Glass also alleges that county officials are improperly withholding records that would help him prove his complaint.

Now a confidential settlement in the federal lawsuit is due to go before a county panel on Tuesday. And the judge who presided over a four-day trial last month on one of the state lawsuits is expected to issue a ruling soon.

In court papers, Glass has accused Anne Arundel County leaders, police officials and the state's attorney's office of violating the Public Information Act by denying him the records he has sought. He has filed complaints against county lawyers and judges with the state's Attorney Grievance Commission.

Officer William Escobar, who was fired Wednesday, was charged with two counts of battery and two counts of perjury.

olice Department officer knee a handcuffed suspect in the stomach as he was turned around and about to sit down in his downtown holding cell.

The new video is at the center of yet another excessive force lawsuit against the department.

Officer Peter Delio is accused of kneeing 40-year-old Robert Liese so hard, that it ruptured the suspect's spleen, which then had to be removed.

A judge has ruled that there is probable cause for police in Starke, Florida, to seize $190,028.21 in cash from Packers defensive tackle Letroy Guion, and to seize the new truck Guion was carrying the cash in.

According to First Coast News, the judge wrote in a decision that Guion was traveling in a known drug area and that Guion “carrying such a large amount of money itself is strong evidence that currency was intended to be furnished in return for drugs”.

It may be true that most people carrying that kind of cash on them are involved in nefarious activities, but Guion is not like most people. Guion has a job that legitimately pays him $1 million a year. And Guion reportedly has proof via bank statements that the money comes from cashing his Packers paychecks. If Guion is cashing his paychecks and carrying thousands of $100 bills around with him, that makes him foolish with his money, but it doesn’t make him a criminal. And concerns about police abusing civil asset forfeiture laws are real.

78-year-old grandmother Mary Poole was brutally assaulted and pepper-sprayed by a police officer when she attempted to deliver cupcakes to her grandchildren at school.

The children’s parents are in the midst of a divorce and custody battle, so Mary wanted to do something nice for the children. She decided to deliver a gift in a neutral setting.

“I hadn’t seen my granddaughters for some time and I wanted to see them, and so I baked some cupcakes and bought some cookies for my granddaughters’ classroom,” Mary said.

When she arrived at the school she was met by a rude Clovis Unified police officer who told her that she was not allowed to visit the children because there was a restraining order against her. In reality, there was no restraining order against her and no legal reason to keep her out of the school.

The officer was either lying or was totally mistaken about the situation.

Mary obeyed the officer and left the school. She then pulled over to call her son and tell him what happened. While she was on the phone, she was again approached by the officer who became immediately confrontational. As with most police encounters, he refused to hear any explanation that she attempted to give him, but instead demanded immediate obedience.

When she tried to explain her situation, the officer became violent with her. Next he pepper-sprayed the woman in the face twice during the confrontation, as she was struggling to free herself from the attack. The officer must have seen her struggling for safety as a sign of resistance.

...

The officer’s attack left Mary seriously injured with several broken bones and a dislocated shoulder.

When all was said and done Mary was taken to the hospital and left with more than $180,000 in medical bills.

Mary Poole filed a lawsuit this week, alleging police brutality and elderly abuse.

Derik Carson Kumagai, 41, plead guilty on Monday to the charges of accepting a $20,000 bribe when he was a police detective in 2013. Kumagai and co-defendant, Saykham Somphoune, admitted to soliciting and accepting $20,000 from a suspected drug trafficker in return for ending a federal investigation and arranging for the suspect to be a confidential informant. Kumagi previously plead not guilty when he was arrested in March of last year.

According to court records, in April of 2012, federal agents started investigating a Fresno group that was growing marijuana and exporting it to other states. Somphoune was one of the people being investigated.

In October and November of 2013, Kumagi and Somphoune met with and told the suspect about the investigation, and offered to get it closed for $60,000.

November 6, 2013, Kumagi accepted a $20,000 bribe from the suspect.

March 2014, Kumagi was arrested and released from jail by a judge.

Kumagi faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced on May 4.

In a startling report from the Guardian, details have been revealed about Chicago police detaining American citizens at “black sites.” These sites are similar to those used by the CIA around the world to interrogate/torture alleged terrorists.

The stunning revelation of the Chicago Police Department operating what amounts to an off-the-books interrogation facility is threatening, to say the least. The facility apparently operates outside the bounds of the U.S. Constitution, and its discovery exposes the very real and present danger of the threat posed by the police state to American freedom and liberty.

Housed in a warehouse on Chicago’s west side, Homan Square has long been the home to secretive police work. Attorneys as well as protesters, tell a tale of being systematically being denied their constitutional rights.


Read more at Secret Police Facility “Black Site” Discovered Inside America, Detaining & Torturing Americans | The Free Thought Project

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Tuesday that "the unequal nature of the relationship" between African Americans and police "must not be denied," and that "many of the worst parts of Black history would have been impossible without police," including slavery.

Today we filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of University of Massachusetts-Amherst student Thomas Donovan. The case is against Town of Amherst police officers, who Mr. Donovan alleges assaulted and falsely arrested him for videotaping police activity at the 2014 “Blarney Blowout,” an annual informal student celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and the arrival of spring.

Click here to read the complaint.

At the event, which took place March 8, 2014, Mr. Donovan saw multiple police officers using what appeared to excessive force making an arrest. Mr. Donovan used his smartphone to record the arrest. Although Mr. Donovan was standing 20-30 feet from this scene, behind a chain link fence, an Amherst police officer in full riot gear approached him and demanded that he stop recording. When Mr. Donovan refused, another officer pepper sprayed him in the face.

A few seconds later, Amherst police sergeant Jesus Arocho tackled Mr. Donovan, knocking the phone out of his hand. The phone continued to record from the ground and captured another Amherst police officer repeatedly stomping on the phone in a failed attempt to destroy it. Video of the incident is available here:


Click here to read Arocho’s arrest report. Arocho’s arrest report falsely states that Mr. Donovan approached the police officers making an arrest, that he refused orders to leave the area, and that he was pepper sprayed “as he began to close the distance between himself and the officers.” The video shows these statements are not true. All criminal charges were later dismissed.

As a result of the charges, UMass suspended Mr. Donovan for a semester. The university lifted the suspension after its investigation cleared Mr. Donovan of any wrongdoing. Mr. Donovan, now in his final year of undergraduate studies, said: “I have the utmost respect for police officers who conduct themselves with integrity, but officers who blatantly disregard the law and are willing to arrest innocent civilians to cover up their own misconduct must be held accountable.”

Donovan’s attorney, David Milton, said, “Recording the police is a basic First Amendment right. Police officers should be trained to assume they are being recorded whenever they’re on duty. This case shows the futility of police efforts to squash the public’s exercise of the right to record police.” Mr. Milton, along with Howard Friedman and the ACLU of Massachusetts, represented Simon Glik in the landmark 2011 lawsuit Glik v. Cunniffe, in which the federal appeals court in Boston affirmed that recording police officers is protected by the First Amendment.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, seeks money damages for violations of Mr. Donovan’s rights under the federal Constitution and Massachusetts civil rights law. The lawsuit is called Thomas Donovan v. Jesus Arocho, et al. (C.A. No. 15-30031).

DENVER - Over nine years, one officer of the Denver Police Department has accumulated 40 complaints but was never punished for more than two days. Now, the city is considering an $860,000 settlement for complaint No. 12 -- a case in which the officer was never disciplined at all.

Denver has already settled another case involving the same officer for $225,000 in 2011.

Officer Shawn Miller is temporarily assigned to work a desk job as the city takes the formal step of presenting the proposed settlement to city council for approval.

"The warning signs were being flashed at us," said DPD spokesman Matt Murray. "The problem is what we did with them after we got the warning signs."

Miller was hired by the department in 2005, but this is the first time that police have made public the internal affairs files covering his 40 complaints.

Of the 39 complaints investigated so far, 17 cited excessive force -- including the complaint that will likely cost taxpayers $860,000.

That settlement was proposed just a month after the end of 2014, a year during which the City of Denver paid out more than $9 million in settlements for abuse cases.

"Because he gets 39 complaints doesn't automatically mean he's going to get disciplined," Murray said. "What it should automatically mean is that the department is doing something proactive to change that behavior."

Ten times between 2007 and 2010, Miller's behavior resulted in an automatic performance review. In 2009, he was reviewed for three or more use of force complaints received in a period of three months. The same pattern triggered a review in 2010.

Records show that supervisors recommended the department did not need to respond to Miller's performance.