A Houston man has been cleared of a drug charge after authorities realized he'd been arrested for possession of kitty litter.

"They thought they had the biggest bust in Harris County," Ross LeBeau said. "This was the bust of the year for them."

A traffic stop in early December led to the discovery of almost half a pound of what deputies believed to be methamphetamine.

The deputies arrested LeBeau and sent out a press release, including a mug shot, describing the bust.

According to authorities, the arrest was due to deputies finding a sock filled with what they believed to be methamphetamine. It was actually kitty litter that LeBeau kept in his car to reduce fog in his windows.

After the arrest, LeBeau was fingerprinted and booked into a jail where he spent three days before being released.

The problem came after two field tests, performed by deputies, came back positive for meth.

Later a third test was conducted by the county's forensic lab which revealed that the kitty litter was not a controlled substance. The case was later dismissed.

The food was allegedly blocking a sidewalk, so, instead of asking the owner move it, or merely confiscating it from a non-compliant owner and giving it to a food shelter, the government’s decision was to put it in a landfill.

But owner Mohammad Ullah, a 52-year-old father of six who lives in Brooklyn, claimed the officers never gave him a chance to move the boxes of fruit.

“The cop came and told me to move, so I started moving the boxes,” he said. “Son of a bitch sits in his car and calls sanitation, then they come and take everything. He was watching me move the boxes and he still called men to take it away. It was like a robbery. I lost $8,300 of merchandise in one day.”

Ullah said he had just purchased the fruit the day before.

“It was all fresh,” he explained. “They threw out 52 boxes of fresh cherries — those were $3 a pound! There was lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, grapefruit, Chinese pears. But the worst was the oranges. Everyone here wants the Mandarin oranges, and they’re all gone.”

Did you know you could get fined for heating up your car? One man's parking ticket has gone viral, with thousands of views after he was ticketed for heating up his car in his own driveway.

Taylor Trupiano says he's still shaking his head over a parking ticket he got on his own property.

"I thought it was some kind of joke at first, and then I was thrown back by it," he said. "I was really surprised."

The ticket was for leaving the keys in the ignition with the motor running and no one around. Trupiano said he was only doing something many people in Michigan do during the winter.

"I was in and out in probably about 7-8 minutes," he added. "So in that amount of time he ran up here, gave me a ticket and by the time I got out he was nowhere to be seen."

Frustrated with the ticket, he posted a photo on Facebook where he racked up thousands of comments and shares.

The Roseville Police Department ticket comes with a $128 fine. There is no state law against leaving your car turned on and unattended, but dozens of cities across Michigan have local ordinances.

"We have five to ten cars stolen this way every winter," Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said. "It's dangerous, and of course it drives everyone's insurance rates up. It drives our crime rates up."

Many of the ordinances will allow you to use a remote start because the vehicle is locked.

Berlin tells 7 Action News they will not apologize and in fact, he encourages his officers to enforce this law.

"It's common sense. We can't warn everybody of the law there is. Common sense says you don't leave your car running unattended," Berlin said.

The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.

The cityposted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city's police department.

The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”

The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents.

Per the county’s count, homicides rose 54% in 2016 over 2015 when Chicago had 528 deaths determined to be homicides.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for victims of homicide in Chicago with 725 decedents being felled by at least one gunshot wound.

African Americans also bore the brunt of the violence in Cook County, which includes Chicago. They accounted for 710 of the county-wide total of 915 (88% of which occurred in the city). Men comprised 90% of the homicide victims in the county.

More than a dozen Arlington police officers surrendered their peace officer's licenses to avoid criminal charges for falsely reporting traffic stops, according to the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office.

Five of the officers, Dane Peterson, Dace Warren, Brandon Jones, Chris McCright and Chris Dockery, were indicted by a Tarrant County grand jury last week for Tampering with a Governmental Record.

The DA's office said Wednesday the charges against those five officers were dismissed after they agreed to give up their licenses and that they consider the cases closed.

Those five are among 16 officers in Arlington who were placed on leave last year after supervisors discovered records of traffic stops that never actually occurred.
...

Police (City of Orange, CA) shoot, kill homeless man who had fallen to the ground. He had a knife attached to the back of his belt. PD: "He was threatening to light himself on fire, and so we had a responsibility to try to save him." (Rubber bullet 0:56. Real bullet 01:00)