a Summerville, South Carolina student was suspended from Summerville High School and arrested by police after he wrote a fictional story about killing a dinosaur with a gun for a class writing assignment. Last Tuesday, 16-year-old Alex Stone was asked by his teacher to write a paragraph describing himself, followed by another sentence in the style of a Facebook status. Stone attempted to take a comedic approach to the assignment.

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Aylor is fighting the disorderly conduct charge and is attempting to appeal Stone’s week-long suspension from school.

It began simply enough. Commuting home from my work at Reno's alt-weekly newspaper, the News & Review, on May 18, 2012, I drove past the aftermath of a police shooting—in this case, that of a man named Jace Herndon. It was a chaotic scene, and I couldn't help but wonder how often it happened.

I went home and grabbed my laptop and a glass of wine and tried to find out. I found nothing—a failure I simply chalked up to incompetent local media.

A few months later I read about the Dec. 6, 2012, killing of a naked and unarmed 18-year-old college student, Gil Collar, by University of South Alabama police. The killing had attracted national coverage—The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN—but there was still no context being provided—no figures examining how many people are killed by police.

I started to search in earnest. Nowhere could I find out how many people died during interactions with police in the United States. Try as I might, I just couldn't wrap my head around that idea. How was it that, in the 21st century, this data wasn't being tracked, compiled, and made available to the public? How could journalists know if police were killing too many people in their town if they didn't have a way to compare to other cities? Hell, how could citizens or police? How could cops possibly know "best practices" for dealing with any fluid situation? They couldn't.

The bottom line was that I found the absence of such a library of police killings offensive. And so I decided to build it. I'm still building it. But I could use some help. You can find my growing database of deadly police violence here, at Fatal Encounters, and I invite you to go here, research one of the listed shootings, fill out the row, and change its background color. It'll take you about 25 minutes. There are thousands to choose from, and another 2,000 or so on my cloud drive that I haven't even added yet. After I fact-check and fill in the cracks, your contribution will be added to largest database about police violence in the country. Feel free to check out what has been collected about your locale's information here.

The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.

It's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. What evidence? In attempting to collect this information, I was lied to and delayed by the FBI, even when I was only trying to find out the addresses of police departments to make public records requests. The government collects millions of bits of data annually about law enforcement in its Uniform Crime Report, but it doesn't collect information about the most consequential act a law enforcer can do.

I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agencies—almost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency. And these are the people in charge of enforcing the law.

The second biggest thing I learned is that bad journalism colludes with police to hide this information. The primary reason for this is that police will cut off information to reporters who tell tales. And a reporter can't work if he or she can't talk to sources. It happened to me on almost every level as I advanced this year-long Fatal Encounters series through the News & Review. First they talk; then they stop, then they roadblock.

Take Philadelphia for example. In Philadelphia, the police generally don't disclose the names of victims of police violence, and they don't disclose the names of police officers who kill people. What reporter has time to go to the most dangerous sections of town to try to find someone who knows the name of the victim or the details of a killing? At night, on deadline, are you kidding? So with no victim and no officer, there's no real story, but the information is known, consumed and mulled over in an ever-darkening cloud of neighborhood anger.

Many Gawker readers watched in horror as Albuquerque police killed James Boyd, a homeless man, for illegal camping. Look at these stats, though (I don't know if they're comprehensive; I believe they are): In Bernallilo County, N.M., three people were killed by police in 2012; in 2013, five. In Shelby County, Tenn., nine people were killed by police in 2012; in 2013, 11.

Who the hell knew Memphis Police were killing men at more than double the rate the cops were killing people in Albuquerque? But when I emailed the reporter at the Memphis Commercial Appeal to track the numbers back further, I got no response. I bought a subscription, but haven't been able return to research in that region. (Why don't you help me out? Just do a last name search here before you dig in.)

There are many other ways that bad or sloppy journalism undermines the ability of researchers to gather data on police shootings. Reporters make fundamental errors or typos; they accept police excuses for not releasing names of the dead or the shooters, or don't publish the decedents' names even if they're released; they don't publish police or coroner's reports. Sometimes they don't show their work: This otherwise excellent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article claims there were 15 fatal shooting cases involving law enforcement agencies between January 2007 to September 30, 2011—but provides few names and dates for further research efforts.

And that list doesn't even get into fundamental errors in attitude toward police killing—for example, the tendency of large outlets and wire services to treat killings as local matters, and not worth tracking widely. Even though police brutality is a national crisis. Journalists also don't generally report the race of the person killed. Why? It's unethical to report it unless it's germane to the story. But race is always germane when police kill somebody.

This is the most most heinous thing I've learned in my two years compiling Fatal Encounters. You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men. You know who dies in the least population dense areas? Mentally ill men. It's not to say there aren't dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police.

And if you want to get down to nut-cuttin' time, across the board, it's poor people who are killed by police. (And by the way, around 96 percent of people killed by police are men.)

But maybe most important thing I learned is that collecting this information is hard. I still firmly believe that having a large, searchable database will allow us not just better understanding of these incidents, but better training, policies and protocols for police, and consequently fewer dead people and police. But normal people don't much care about numbers. Trolls intentionally try to pollute the data. Subterranean disinformationists routinely get out fake numbers. I try to take advantage of the public passion when when an incendiary event happens, like the death of Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, Eric Garner or Michael Brown. Or when a Deadspin writer decides to get involved. My girlfriend calls this "riding the spike." I call it journalism. Or maybe, obsession.

Family members of a teen who was shot at least 24 times by police in Ottawa, Kansas said this week that the 18-year-old was unarmed and suicidal when he was gunned down.

Brandy Smith told KCTV that police were there when her nephew, 18-year-old Joseph Jennings, had tried to kill himself with pills last week.

“Tonight is the night goodbye everyone!!!!! It was truly a good ride! And I’m sorry for who I might of hurted (sic) and people that I may of offended, But I love all my family and I hope you don’t hold this against me,” he reportedly wrote on Facebook before trying to overdose.

About 10 minutes later, Jennings swallowed 60 pills. And Smith said two officers took him to Ransom Memorial Hospital.

Jennings survived, and was released from the hospital two days later. But only three hours after that, he was on a “suicide mission” when he walked to Orscheln Farm and Home, according to his aunt.

Smith recalled that around six officers responded, and two of them had helped save Jennings’ life by taking him to the hospital after his overdose just days before.

“It was like six — six officers, and one cop yelled, ‘Bag him!’ And they bagged him,” she said. “And he kind of puffed up a little bit, and then they bagged him two more times, and then like 16 shots rang out, and they shot him. And he fell to the ground.”

Jennings was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Smith said that she was only feet away from Jennings and did not see a weapon.

Police officers in Forney, Texas, were looking for a man reportedly driving with a gun out his window when they pulled over Kametra Barbour driving with four young kids earlier this month. A call reported four black men waving a gun out of a beige or tan Toyota. Barbour was also black, but that appears to be the only thing she had in common with the reported suspects. She was driving a burgundy red Nissan Maxima, she told the local ABC affiliate WFAA. And the four children she was driving home that night were younger than ten years old.
The officers realized within about a minute they had pulled over the wrong vehicle and de-escalated, when Barbour’s six-year-old son Ryan walked out of the car with his hands up, in a chilling image captured by dash cam video that evokes the “Hands up, don’t shoot” refrain that emerged after Michael Brown’s death.

GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. -
An arrest Saturday led to some witnesses thinking the arresting officers went a little far.

In a video sent to 7 On Your Side, you can see a man lying on the floor of the Walmart on Whitehorse Road and the deputies attempting to arrest him. Witnesses from the scene felt the officer's actions went too far, but the Greenville County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident.

According to Greenville County Master Deputy Jonathan Smith, deputies responded around 1:00pm Saturday to a call about an intoxicated man outside the Walmart.

He said the first deputy arrived to find the man acting erratic outside the store. The deputy approached the man and tried to speak to him. The man apparently kept repeating "I'm 911" to the deputy before walking away inside the store.

Smith said the second deputy arrived and the decision was made to enter the store and arrest the man. He says the man was resisting enough that a deputy had to use a taser in order to arrest him.

Smith said the man was taken outside the store and transported to a Greenville hospital. Smith said the man is undergoing evaluation to determine if he was under the influence of alcohol or other substances.

Several videos have surfaced of the incident on the internet. Smith says they are reviewing them and will comment further at a later time.

The identity of the man has not been released yet.

A St. Petersburg police officer was fired Thursday after a review board said he used excessive force during an arrest when he threw a suspect to the ground. Officer Kenneth Pienik then tried to hide dashcam video of the arrest, according to a report released by SPPD. This is the dashcam video released by the department.

Virginia State Police First Sergeant Geoffrey Lewis says the deputy did what he needed to do to protect himself.

But Carico says his dog, who has never bit anyone, didn't deserve to die. Now all he has left of De'Ja is a shell casing and a burial site just a few feet away from where she was shot.

Virginia State Police say the deputies made multiple verbal commands for Carico to call off the pit bull. When De'Ja continued to charge, the deputy fired at the animal.

Teachers and students at Cal State San Marcos were put on lock down Wednesday morning as dozens of militarized law enforcement agents stormed the campus.

The police were responding to reports of a suspicious person armed with a gun on campus. An order was issued to students and teachers telling them to barricade themselves inside their current locations.

From Twitter:
CSUSM Police @CSUSMpolice Follow
You are instructed to shelter in place lock and barricade at your current location. More information coming soon.
9:00 AM - 20 Aug 2014
125 Retweets 38 favorites

“They immediately … the doors locked and then they took all the chairs and all the tables and barricaded the doors,” said junior James Collins. “People were kind of freaked out and you could tell that there was a nervous tension.”

After the unarmed students and staff hid in fear for over 30 minutes, the alleged ‘gunman,’ realizing that he fit the description, ‘to a tee,’ turned himself into police.

When SWAT approached the ‘shooter,’ 17 year staff member, Bill Craig, he was immediately ‘disarmed.’ As it turns out, his deadly weapon was an umbrella.

A Grant Park police lieutenant let his brother’s daughter move in with him so he could “straighten out” the teen, then proceeded to have sex with her on a “daily basis” when she wasn’t cooking his meals, doing his laundry, or shopping for lingerie and shoes, a Will County prosecutor said.

Stephen Nardi, 45, started having sex with his 15-year-old niece within three weeks of her moving in with him in June 2010, said Assistant State’s Attorney Peter Wilkes.

Nardi, who was arrested by agents from the Illinois State Police and fired from his job with the Grant Park Police Department Tuesday, appeared in bond court Wednesday afternoon.

Already coping with the never-ending plethora of lurking dangers that keep cops fearing for their lives, the president of the Miami-Dade Police union is outraged that the county mayor now wants cops to start wearing body cams, a move he says “can cost that officer his or her life.”

John Rivera, president the Police Benevolent Association, also said the introduction of body-mounted cameras “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations.”

Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald's earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.

According to a lawsuit filed in 2012 in Missouri federal court, Justin Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, approached a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mailbox at the end of his driveway in June 2010. Cosma was an officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office at the time, the lawsuit states. The pair asked the boy if he'd been playing on a nearby highway, and he replied no, according to the lawsuit.

Then, the officers "became confrontational" and intimidated the child, the lawsuit claims. "Unprovoked and without cause, the deputies grabbed [the boy], choked him around the neck and threw him to the ground," it says. The boy was shirtless at the time, and allegedly "suffered bruising, choke marks, scrapes and cuts across his body."

The 12-year-old was transferred to a medical facility for treatment, but the lawsuit says Cosma and the other officer reported the incident as "assault of a law enforcement officer third degree” and “resisting/interfering with arrest, detention or stop."

Jefferson County prosecutors "refused to issue a juvenile case" against the young child, the suit says.

The allegations against Cosma were made in September 2012, shortly after he was introduced as a new officer at a Ferguson City Council meeting. Jefferson County is south of Ferguson.

Captain Ron Arnhart of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, who is a candidate for sheriff, did not respond to The Huffington Post's request for comment on the circumstances of Cosma's departure. Neither Ferguson police spokesman Tom Zoll nor Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson responded to requests for comment.

A dispatcher at the Ferguson Police Department said she would relay a message to Cosma, who was out in the field on Sunday afternoon.

Richard R. Lozano, the lawyer representing the young man in the lawsuit, declined to be interviewed due to the pending claims against Cosma and the other officer. He said he anticipates a trial date early next year. However, Lozano did provide a statement.

"The lawsuit alleges that Justin Cosma and Richard Carter, two deputies with the Jefferson County, Missouri sheriff's department in 2010, assaulted my client during an encounter on my client's driveway while his mother was inside their house. My client was 12 years old at the time, shirtless and was not suspected of any criminal behavior. He was checking the mail. The deputies approached my client and the encounter quickly escalated. My client was restrained, choked, thrown to the ground and hogtied by the two deputies. He suffered scrapes and choke marks to his neck. No charges were ever brought against my client. It is my understanding that Justin Cosma is currently an officer with the City of Ferguson," Lozano wrote.

...

"AG Holder is in St. Louis Today. I should go in early and punch him in the nose for so many different reasons." - Tweet by Sgt. Mike Weston, Velda City Police

The Pentagon is pushing back against the notion that their 1033 program is 'militarizing' local police forces. But officers there acknowledge that some police departments have misused some equipment more suited for combat.

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“These guys are idiots – riding around on the top of armored trucks looking like rednecks on a country drive, pointing their weapons at unarmed Americans,” said one Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give his opinion on the matter.

“Don’t tell me that’s militarization – our troops would never do that stuff, even in a war zone,” he says. “And why are they riding around in woodlands camo in a city? That kills me.”

A Missouri police officer involved in maintaining security in troubled Ferguson was put on administrative leave Friday after a video surfaced showing him railing about the Supreme Court, Muslims, and his past -- and perhaps, he said, his future -- as "a killer."

The officer, Dan Page of the St. Louis County Police Department, became something of a familiar face to many earlier this month when video showed him pushing back CNN's Don Lemon and others in a group in Ferguson. At the time, CNN was reporting on the large-scale and at times violent protests calling for the arrest of a white Ferguson police officer who shot and killed African-American teenager Michael Brown.

...

In his rambling remarks on the video, he talks about what he describes as a draft replacement for the U.S. Constitution, the "four sodomites on the Supreme Court," and a visit to Kenya "to our undocumented President's home." He refers to Barack Obama as "that illegal alien who claims to be our President."

Page frequently references violence, including nine combat tours in the Army, during which he did "my fair share of killing."

Speaking about Muslims, he says pointedly: "They will kill you."

On domestic disputes, he opines: "You don't like each other that much, just kill each other and get it over with. Problem solved. Get it done."

On urban violence, he predicts that "when the inner cities start to ignite, people are going to start killing people they don't like."

And lastly, Page says, "I personally believe the Lord Jesus Christ is my savior, but I'm also a killer. I've killed a lot and, if I need to, I will kill a whole bunch more."

"If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me."

Belmar, the head of the St. Louis County police department, said all the talk about killing was especially disturbing to him.

"As a police chief, that's something I'm not going to be able to endure," Belmar said.

I am the girl in the video and will tell y'all what happened so that those of you who ignorantly think I did something wrong (ahem, Cheyenne Nelson) will understand the bigger picture here. First, this occurred in Charleston, South Carolina. This self-proclaimed officer was cruising on the interstate in the left land, impeding traffic. When I had the chance, I passed him in the right lane, and flipped him a friendly bird as I went by. Evidently, this upset him immensely, because he sped up, began tailgating me, and then flipped his lights on. He was in an unmarked car - could have been his personal vehicle, for all I know - and had a female in the passenger seat. He pulled me over, not because he had reason to, but simply because he "could" - this is evident by the first comment he made when he approached my car ("Are you being smart with me?!" Really, dude?). I asked him repeatedly if I was being detained. When he confirmed I was not, I left, as I was legally free to do so. Our basic constitutional rights protect us from these types of unreasonable stops. And just so everyone is aware, after this occurred, I contacted every police/sheriffs department in my area, whether they had jurisdiction or not, and inquired about this officer, and not a single department knew who he was. Clearly, this idiot was off duty, outside of his jurisdiction, and pulled me over simply because he thought he could. While I have all the respect in the world for officers, and appreciate what they do for us on a daily basis, I will not tolerate abuse of power - and neither should you.