According to the Advocate, Megan Dixon, Few’s fiancée, said this weekend that Few had a previous run-in with Greenhouse. A former high school classmate of Dixon, Greenhouse had started messaging her on Facebook and had come by the house Few and Dixon were sharing at the time.

“I told Chris, and Chris confronted him about it and told him, ‘Next time you come to my house I’m going to hurt you,’ ” Dixon said.

Now that we know Few told Greenhouse to leave his fiancée alone, we can establish an alleged motive for the stop. Could it be that Greenhouse and the three other officers involved in the stop were abusing their authority to harass a man for being protective of his fiancée?

We’ve certainly seen far worse reasons for police officers to pull people over. However, this time, an officer’s alleged abuse of power ended with the death of an innocent child.

On Monday, Jeremy Mardis was laid to rest in Mississippi. As members of his family watched the tiny casket get lowered into the ground, their hearts were heavy with grief.

This grief, while incredibly real and horrendous, could have also been prevented. Greenhouse and Stafford had an atrocious history that should have ended their careers in law enforcement far before they were able to murder a child. But they were not fired. Instead, their issues were ‘resolved’ and they were allowed to continue their tyranny.

The fault for the death of Jeremy Mardis does not end with Greenhouse and Stafford. Everyone who’s been complicit in allowing these proven violent and rapacious maniacs to keep their badges is culpable of aiding and abetting murderers.

Police deserve the benefit of the doubt when using deadly force against a dangerous driver. The US Supreme Court on Monday gave a pass to a Texas state trooper who gunned down a fleeing motorist wanted for a misdemeanor probation violation on March 23, 2010.

Tulia, Texas police officers went to a drive-in restaurant with a warrant in hand to arrest Israel Leija Jr, but the 24-year-old did not want to be caught. He took off in his Pontiac Grand Am at speeds of up to 110 MPH on Interstate 27. During the eighteen-minute pursuit, Leija twice called from his cellphone to warn officers to back off, or he would shoot them. Texas state police set up spike strips in the hopes of forcing Leija to stop.

Before he hit the spikes, Trooper Chadrin Lee Mullenix had other ideas. The underperforming trooper had recently been warned by supervisors that he needed to be more proactive. So he set himself up on an overpass, and as soon as Leija came into view, he fired six shots down into the Grand Am with his police-issue Bushmaster M4. Leija was hit four times and killed. The car rolled violently into the side of the road.

"How is that for being proactive?" Trooper Mullenix said to his colleagues.

Leija's family sued, arguing the trooper's actions were reckless and excessive. The courts that considered the case argued over whether Trooper Mullenix was entitled to immunity for his actions. A district judge and the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals said no, because Leija did not present any immediate threat on the empty road. The high court disagreed, deciding that the trooper did not violate clearly established law by pulling the trigger, because a murky legal question must be decided in favor of the police.

"The fact is that when Mullenix fired, he reasonably understood Leija to be a fugitive fleeing arrest, at speeds over 100 miles per hour, who was armed and possibly intoxicated, who had threatened to kill any officer he saw if the police did not abandon their pursuit, and who was racing towards Officer Ducheneaux's position," the high court majority wrote. "Qualified immunity protects actions in the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, arguing Trooper Mullenix went "rogue" by acting without permission from his supervisor. Since the shots were fired less than 30 yards from the spike strips, nothing was gained from shooting first.

"Whatever threat Leija posed after his car was stopped existed whether the car was stopped by a shot to the engine block or by the spike strips," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "By sanctioning a 'shoot first, think later' approach to policing, the court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow."

Los Angeles County supervisors agreed to pay $8.85 million to the family of Alfredo Montalvo, an unarmed motorist shot and killed by sheriff's deputies after a brief pursuit in 2009.

The payout is the largest in at least a decade for the county in an officer-involved shooting, county records show.

Deputies in an unmarked car began tailing the 29-year old father of two on suspicion of drunk driving after he rolled over a curb while leaving a Circle K in Lynwood. Montalvo didn't pull over and the tail turned into a pursuit, with multiple marked sheriff's vehicles joining. The chase ended when Montalvo crashed into two parked cars, wedging his own car between them.

The family's attorney, John C. Taylor, said Montalvo, who was not drunk according to the toxicology report, reversed so he could open his door and comply with the deputies' orders to get out of the car. Deputies said Montalvo gunned the engine violently and repeatedly, ramming into one of about 10 law enforcement vehicles that had him surrounded. The deputies, who had their guns drawn, fired 61 times.

Former Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley cleared the deputies of criminal responsibility in 2009, saying they fired in self-defense.

In 2012, a civil jury determined the deputies used unreasonable force, awarding Montalvo's wife and two children $8.76 million.

Sacramento police officer convicted of raping a 75-year-old stroke victim in her senior living apartment has been sentenced to life in prison, court records show.

Prosecutors said Gary Dale Baker, 52, entered the woman’s apartment at least three times from 2010 to 2012, raping her twice as she suffered from a stroke-related inability to speak.

He was convicted in July of nine charges relating to the case, including rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery and burglary.

The woman, now 77, was recovering from a stroke in a senior living complex in South Sacramento when the attacks began, prosecutors said.

She struggled to communicate to her family what had happened, and initially, even though DNA evidence confirmed the rape, investigators were not able to link it to any known suspects, prosecutors said.

But in late 2012, after Baker attempted a third assault, a Sacramento police detective suggested that the woman’s family install a motion-activated camera.

When Baker came back again, police officers reviewing the footage immediately recognized him as Baker, then an active officer on the Sacramento police force.

He was arrested and fired from the department.

“You tarnished the badge for police officers everywhere,” Sacramento Superior Court judge Ernest Sawtelle said as he sentenced Baker, the Sacramento Bee newspaper reported on Wednesday. “For your crimes, you will be sentenced to life in prison.”

Sawtelle called Baker’s crimes “unspeakable,” the newspaper said.

Sacramento County jail records show that Baker remained in custody Wednesday, with no listed release date. A request by his attorneys for a new trial was denied on Tuesday, records show.

On Monday evening, an American Airlines flight from Miami, Florida to Barbados was boarded by a paramilitary police unit wielding assault rifles, who demanded that passengers put their hands on their heads as they were forced off the flight.

Large sectors of the airport were effectively placed under lockdown during the operation. The gates of terminal cafes and restaurants were closed, leaving patrons locked inside by iron bars as police SWAT teams decked out in body armor and toting assault rifles swept through the terminal.

Photos and videos posted to social media documented the egregious violation of passengers’ constitutional right to be free of unwarranted searches and seizures. “There were very large machine guns, body armor, all of that,” one passenger told a local CNN affiliate. “Very, very frightening.”

Some 70 flights were delayed and nine were diverted as a result of the lockdown, which shut down two concourses for almost three hours.

Officials claimed the cause of the lockdown was a breach in procedure by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which allowed a passenger who had been flagged as having a suspicious carry-on bag to board the plane. A TSA spokesman added that “in the process of transitioning other passengers to an adjacent screening lane, standard procedures were not adhered to and the passenger was allowed to depart the checkpoint and proceed into the terminal.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation later admitted that the passenger was a dentist, and that the “suspicious” bag he had been carrying contained nothing more than fillings and other dental supplies.

TSA spokesman Mike England said that the lockdown was conducted “out of an abundance of caution” as federal officials “worked with airport operators to direct gate operations to cease while the passenger was located.”

He added that once the dentist was apprehended, “a manual inspection was conducted and law enforcement officers determined conclusively that neither the passenger nor his carry-on bag posed a threat.”

The incident took place amid the conspicuously growing incursion of militarized police, and even the military, into daily life in American cities. Even as the lockdown in Miami was occurring, flights at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) were being diverted over populated sections of Los Angeles to accommodate secret military exercises taking place near the city.

...

While many of these incidents are presented by officials and the media as merely accidents or overreactions, they are in fact part of a systematic campaign to condition the US population to accept paramilitary tactics and violations of constitutional rights. Under conditions of growing poverty and social inequality, the ruling class can offer no response to opposition to its policies outside of turning to police-state methods traditionally associated with military dictatorships.

When asked today if she saw anything on a video that justified 16 blows to motorist Floyd Dent’s head, former Inkster Police Chief Vicki Yost responded with one word: "No."

Her testimony came during the police brutality trial of former Inkster police Officer William Melendez. He is accused of assaulting Dent on Jan. 28 during a traffic stop captured on dashcam video. The video has been repeatedly played throughout the trial in Wayne County Circuit Court.

Yost was called as witness by the defense Monday. During cross-examination today, Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Donaldson asked her if she knew something was wrong when she first saw the video.

On May 4th, 2013, police responded to a call about a man acting strangely at a Super 8 Motel. Just one hour later, that man, who was unarmed and in shackles, would be dead.

On that fateful night, 46-year-old Linwood “Ray” Lambert met police at the door to his hotel room in apparent mental distress, claiming that he saw people buried in the ceiling.

Instead of arresting Lambert, police decided to take the delusional man to the hospital. Since Lambert was not suspected of committing a crime, he was only being transported by police for medical help. The officers cuffed Lambert’s hands for the ride, but assured him, “we’re not locking you up, we’re going to the ER.”

However, upon arriving at the hospital, things would quickly turn fatal.

When the cruiser arrived at the hospital, Lambert, in an obvious hallucinatory and mentally deranged state, kicked out the back window of the cop car and tried to run into the hospital.

Police immediately began tasering the handcuffed man.

One officer ordered Lambert to “stay down” while another, Officer Bratton, said, “Every time you get up, I’m going to pop you.”

Lambert can be heard then pleading with the officers, “I didn’t do nothing.” The officers demand that Lambert lie down, stay down, get on his belly, and roll over – while warning they will taser him again.

“I’m going to light you up again – roll over, roll over, turn over!” Bratton says.

Lambert remained on the ground, saying OK, but the officers continued to taser him repeatedly. Lambert was then placed in leg shackles.

After Lambert is in shackles and calm, the officers continue their assault. “I’m going to hit you again,” Bratton tells him.

Tired and out of breath Lambert says to the police, “I just did cocaine.” He is then placed under arrest for disorderly conduct.

Lambert pleads to the officers, “Why are you trying to kill me, man?,” and asks them to stop the tasing, saying, “don’t do it, please don’t do it, please officers.”

However, the officers would not listen and kept tasing him, even after he was placed in the back of the squad car and shackled.

In a just a few minutes, three cops would hit Lambert with their tasers a total 20 times, according to the device reports issued by Taser International.

For a total of 87 seconds, Lambert had 50,000 volts running through his body — a level capable of inflicting serious injury or death, according to federal guidelines. It is surprising that he did not die half way through this assault.

One hour after the first ride to the hospital, Lambert was pronounced dead.

“I can’t say what I was thinking, it was awful,” Lamber’s father, Linwood Lambert Sr., recalled. “You wouldn’t do any human or any species like that. I don’t think anyone could hate someone that bad to inflict pain such as what they did,” he said. “I don’t see anything that he did in that tape,” he added, “that would provoke them to do what they did.”

Despite having only trace amounts of cocaine in his system, “less than 0.01 mg/L,” which is not typically enough to cause an overdose, the autopsy report claimed that Lambert, indeed, died from cocaine intoxication.

“Having a level of 5 mg/L or higher would be more consistent with death due to cocaine intoxication,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist and emergency medicine specialist at NYU.

The family’s attorney, Tom Sweeny says this autopsy finding was a result of police not telling the medical examiner how many times they tasered Lambert.

“There’s a reference in the coroner’s report to tasing,” he said. “There’s no reference to the fact that Mr. Lambert was tasered multiple times, by multiple police officers at the same time while he was in the back of a police car, and subsequently died shortly after that,” he said.

According to MSNBC, Virginia State Police conducted an investigation of the incident. A State Police spokesperson, Corrine Geller, told MSNBC State Police “initiated the investigation at the request” of South Boston Police Chief James Binner, and it “turned its findings over” to two prosecutors “for final review and adjudication.”

The original prosecutor, Halifax County attorney Tracy Quackenbush Martin, has been investigating the case since 2013. “The investigation remains open,” she told MSNBC this week.

Two years have passed since Lambert’s death, and none of the officers involved in the tasering have faced a single charge.

On May 4th, 2013, police responded to a call about a man acting strangely at a Super 8 Motel. Just one hour later, that man, who was unarmed and in shackles, would be dead.

On that fateful night, 46-year-old Linwood “Ray” Lambert met police at the door to his hotel room in apparent mental distress, claiming that he saw people buried in the ceiling.

Instead of arresting Lambert, police decided to take the delusional man to the hospital. Since Lambert was not suspected of committing a crime, he was only being transported by police for medical help. The officers cuffed Lambert’s hands for the ride, but assured him, “we’re not locking you up, we’re going to the ER.”

However, upon arriving at the hospital, things would quickly turn fatal.

When the cruiser arrived at the hospital, Lambert, in an obvious hallucinatory and mentally deranged state, kicked out the back window of the cop car and tried to run into the hospital.

Police immediately began tasering the handcuffed man.

One officer ordered Lambert to “stay down” while another, Officer Bratton, said, “Every time you get up, I’m going to pop you.”

Lambert can be heard then pleading with the officers, “I didn’t do nothing.” The officers demand that Lambert lie down, stay down, get on his belly, and roll over – while warning they will taser him again.

“I’m going to light you up again – roll over, roll over, turn over!” Bratton says.

Lambert remained on the ground, saying OK, but the officers continued to taser him repeatedly. Lambert was then placed in leg shackles.

After Lambert is in shackles and calm, the officers continue their assault. “I’m going to hit you again,” Bratton tells him.

Tired and out of breath Lambert says to the police, “I just did cocaine.” He is then placed under arrest for disorderly conduct.

Lambert pleads to the officers, “Why are you trying to kill me, man?,” and asks them to stop the tasing, saying, “don’t do it, please don’t do it, please officers.”

However, the officers would not listen and kept tasing him, even after he was placed in the back of the squad car and shackled.

In a just a few minutes, three cops would hit Lambert with their tasers a total 20 times, according to the device reports issued by Taser International.

For a total of 87 seconds, Lambert had 50,000 volts running through his body — a level capable of inflicting serious injury or death, according to federal guidelines. It is surprising that he did not die half way through this assault.

One hour after the first ride to the hospital, Lambert was pronounced dead.

“I can’t say what I was thinking, it was awful,” Lamber’s father, Linwood Lambert Sr., recalled. “You wouldn’t do any human or any species like that. I don’t think anyone could hate someone that bad to inflict pain such as what they did,” he said. “I don’t see anything that he did in that tape,” he added, “that would provoke them to do what they did.”

Despite having only trace amounts of cocaine in his system, “less than 0.01 mg/L,” which is not typically enough to cause an overdose, the autopsy report claimed that Lambert, indeed, died from cocaine intoxication.

“Having a level of 5 mg/L or higher would be more consistent with death due to cocaine intoxication,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist and emergency medicine specialist at NYU.

The family’s attorney, Tom Sweeny says this autopsy finding was a result of police not telling the medical examiner how many times they tasered Lambert.

“There’s a reference in the coroner’s report to tasing,” he said. “There’s no reference to the fact that Mr. Lambert was tasered multiple times, by multiple police officers at the same time while he was in the back of a police car, and subsequently died shortly after that,” he said.

According to MSNBC, Virginia State Police conducted an investigation of the incident. A State Police spokesperson, Corrine Geller, told MSNBC State Police “initiated the investigation at the request” of South Boston Police Chief James Binner, and it “turned its findings over” to two prosecutors “for final review and adjudication.”

The original prosecutor, Halifax County attorney Tracy Quackenbush Martin, has been investigating the case since 2013. “The investigation remains open,” she told MSNBC this week.

Two years have passed since Lambert’s death, and none of the officers involved in the tasering have faced a single charge.

An enormous cache of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation’s prisons and jails. The materials — leaked via SecureDrop by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of inmates — comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. The calls span a nearly two-and-a-half year period, beginning in December 2011 and ending in the spring of 2014.

Particularly notable within the vast trove of phone records are what appear to be at least 14,000 recorded conversations between inmates and attorneys, a strong indication that at least some of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications — calls that never should have been recorded in the first place. The recording of legally protected attorney-client communications — and the storage of those recordings — potentially offends constitutional protections, including the right to effective assistance of counsel and of access to the courts.

“This may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history, and that’s certainly something to be concerned about,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “A lot of prisoner rights are limited because of their conviction and incarceration, but their protection by the attorney-client privilege is not.”

Yesterday our office was retained to represent an individual who had just had his house raided and had ultimately been arrested by a member of the DEA. Neil and I are what we like to call “Criminal Offense Attorneys,” so we took the offensive.

I immediately went over to the Police Department where our client was being held. I walked into the department and spoke to the woman at the front desk. I was cordial with her, despite the fact that she was on a personal call and told me to hang on (keep in mind that this was the woman sitting in at the front desk of a police department.) She put her finger up and while on the phone, she mouthed at me “gimme a minute.” I waited patiently. After about two minutes she finally hung up the phone and asked what I wanted. I gave her my client’s name and asked if he was being held there. She made a phone call and said “yes.” I then asked to speak with my client. She told me “No.” I responded that I didn’t understand. I explained that I was his lawyer, that we had been retained, that they were holding my client without charges, without a bond, and without allowing him access to a lawyer. She replied, “I’m not getting in the middle of this. I’ll get the Sergeant.”

A few minutes later, the Sergeant stepped out from a back office. I started from the beginning. I handed him my Bar card, my business card, and my license and told him that I was an attorney, that I was retained to represent the person they were holding, and that I just wanted to speak to my client. He told me “No. You can’t see your client. He’s being held by the DEA and we have nothing to do with him.” I asked him for the name of the DEA agent and he said he would have to find out. He disappeared into his office and closed the door. Several minutes later he came back out, gave me the DEA agent’s name, and told me that the DEA agent was in the field and could not be reached. I responded that I would wait in the lobby until he was able to reach the DEA Agent.

Over the next SEVERAL HOURS I waited patiently in the lobby. Numerous times over those several hours, I asked to speak with the Sergeant so that I could gain more information. I inquired why I was being prevented from seeing my client (“I don’t have permission from the DEA Agent”), I asked for the name of the Assistant US Attorney assigned to the case (“I don’t know that information and I can’t get a hold of the DEA Agent”), I asked for the contact information for the DEA Agent (“I cannot give you that”), I asked for a specific time that the DEA would return (“I don’t know”), and I requested that the DEA Agent call my cell phone (“He’s in the field and can’t call you”). At every turn, the Sergeant attempted to thwart my attempts to talk to my client. Nevertheless, I repeatedly informed him that any questioning that occurred after I had arrived was unlawful, illegal, and coercively conducted, and that any information received was illegally obtained.

Was I being persistent? Definitely. Was I being annoying? Probably. Was I going to leave that Department without seeing my client? Absolutely not.

Eventually, after about 3.5 hours of waiting, I asked the Sergeant for the name and phone number of the DEA Agent’s superior at the Department of Justice. The Sergeant disappeared into his office again and came back out five minutes later. Somehow he had magically been able to get a hold of the DEA Agent and was told that the Agent would be at the Department in 30 minutes. I sat back down, patiently waiting.

A half hour later the DEA Agent walked in. I introduced myself and explained that I simply wanted to talk to my client for a few minutes. He told me that they were still investigating and that I could not see my client. I persisted. I asked him to provide me the legal authority he had that would allow him to prevent me from meeting with my client. He couldn’t give me any. I again asked to see my client. This time he changed his reason: “You can’t because there is nowhere in this building to visit with your client.” I explained that I would meet with him anywhere – I didn’t care which room or which building. He knew he was trapped.

At that point I demanded to see my client. I informed him that he was under arrest, that he was not free to leave, that he was being held indefinitely and that if I was not permitted to see him, I would have to get a judge involved. At that moment he knew that I wasn’t leaving without seeing him – and he got angry. He immediately accused me of being “disorderly” and “harassing” the police officers at the department. I responded that those were serious allegations that he could not back up. I told him that there were several cameras in the lobby and pointed them out, and that I had been 100% cordial with everyone at the Department. He looked up at the cameras and realized that he had made a mistake. I again demanded to see my client and told him that I wasn’t leaving the Department until I was allowed to do so.

A short time later, Neil called me and informed me that the Agent had agreed to let me see my client “in an hour to an hour and a half.” I waited patiently in the lobby. Ninety minutes later, I met with my client (in a room labeled “visitation” – remember when there wasn’t a room in existence for me to meet with my client?).

All of the other lawyers that walked in asking to see their clients were told “no” and they accepted it and left. I wasn’t going to be turned away that easily. It was a small battle, but I persisted and won.

As for the allegations that I was “disorderly” and “harassing”? Lucky for me, all of my interactions in that lobby were recorded. Otherwise, the Agent might have gotten away with those false allegations.

– Colin

As the video begins, an officer can be seen attempting to force a man out of his house. When the man asks the officer if he can exit of his own accord, the officer simply replies “no” and continues to needlessly struggle with the non violent man.

Within seconds, more officers arrive and proceed to struggle with the man and attempt to place him in different arm and head locks all while the man is insisting that he is not resisting and trying to comply with the officers’ demands.

As soon as the officers wrestle the man from his home, they immediately throw him to the ground and begin violently assaulting him. When a child comes out to see what is going on, one of the officers proceeds to forcefully shove him back.

Officers then unnecessarily tase the man while he appears to be on his knees and is continuing to stress that he is trying to obey their orders. After tasing him, officers then unleash another volley of fists to the man’s head.

While the officers continue to escalate the situation and the scene becomes more chaotic, a dog comes out and begins barking at the officers. Instead of attempting to de-escalate the growing tensions, the officer that initially made contact with the man decides to continue his melee by maliciously kicking the tiny canine.

When neighbors begin exiting their apartments to witness the officers’ actions, police further escalate the already hectic situation by attempting to bully and intimidate the uninvolved bystanders.

The Austin Police department is already facing public scrutiny from an incident that took place just last week. As the Free Thought Project previously reported; on Friday, November 6th, several Austin Police officers were caught on video horrifically brutalizing two men for the crime of walking across the street.

A Secret Service officer assigned to the White House was arrested after he was caught in a sting sending naked pictures of himself to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl from Delaware, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.

Lee Robert Moore turned himself in to the Maryland State Police Barracks on Monday, the same day the complaint was filed against him in the U.S. District Court for Delaware.

The complaint details a series of online chats between Moore, 37, and a Delaware State Police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl from Delaware. Moore is alleged to have sent naked photos of himself to the undercover officer and requested to meet in person to have sex.

When he turned himself in, Moore waived his Miranda rights, according to the complaint, and agreed to an interview with law enforcement. In the interview, he said that he sent some messages while on the job at the White House and admitted to sending messages to what he believed was an underaged girl and other underage girls on a mobile messaging service.