On July 28, 2014, I was filming police activity in a public space when I was ordered to leave the area. Where I was filming from was over 135 feet away and well out of the direction the police/sheriff were conducting their business. I decided to comply and leave the area anyway. The problem with following their order was that in order to comply, I would have to leave the way that I came, which actually put me closer to their activity than I felt comfortable being.

While leaving, I continued recording. The police and sheriff employees on scene seemed to take exception to this and started yelling at me to leave. I pointed out that I was, in fact, leaving. Continuing my forward progress but documenting the incident was the only way I could get this activity on video. I am not sure how fast I was expected to walk, but it evidently was not fast enough for Mr. Hall, from King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO.)For some reason he felt it necessary to draw his Taser, use physical force, and arrest me for "obstructing."

Approximately 5 months have passed since this day and I was getting tired of not hearing anything about official charges, a court date, or the condition of the video card that was removed from my camera by Mr. Hall. Some friends from Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) and I decided to make calls and send emails to KCSO and obtain Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. After making these calls, we learned that no charges were ever officially filed with the courts until after we started contacting them. In fact, because I asked for their use of force/use of Taser policies, I learned that NOW they had decided to add a charge of "resisting" to my obstructing charge. It is also through these requests that I was able to obtain this video. My actual memory card is still in custody of KCSO.

Why would KCSO wait 5 months to officially file this case with the courts? Why, when Mr. Hall clearly stated I was arrested for obstructing, would they add resisting? Why would they only add resisting after I demanded their use of force/use of Taser policies?

Some truly hate what I do. Some don't see the need to film police. Others understand perfectly why it is so important. Like it or not, filming police is totally legal and supported by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Law enforcement sometimes HATE cameras they are not in direct control of. Is it necessary to draw a Taser and be ready to shock a person who makes you angry but is breaking no laws? Is it necessary to use force on a person who is not resisting in any way? Why wait almost half a year to file a supposedly simple case? Why only decide to file charges AFTER being called out? Is it normal practice to add charges simply because you have been questioned?

NOTE: After about the one minute mark, my camera has been knocked out of my hand and is dangling on it's own, while tethered to my wrist. What remains on the video is just dialogue during my arrest.

Angry [police] union leaders have ordered drastic measures for their members since the Dec. 20 assassination of two NYPD cops in a patrol car, including that two units respond to every call.

It has helped contribute to a nose dive in low-level policing, with overall arrests down 66 percent for the week starting Dec. 22 compared with the same period in 2013, stats show.

Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame.

Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300.

Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241.

Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63….

The Post obtained the numbers hours after revealing that cops were turning a blind eye to some minor crimes and making arrests only “when they have to” since the execution-style shootings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

...

Consider all the families that haven’t been separated. There would have been around 400 drug arrests during this period last year. With only about 60 arrests since the de facto strike, that’s thousands of family members who wouldn’t be separated as their fathers, mothers, or kids are thrown in jail or felonized and forced into unemployment.

If the NYPD were to continue this non-policing month after month, it would mean millions of jobs saved, millions of families not destroyed, and billions of dollars saved by Americans.

If New York City is any indication, we would be better off without this institution.

Police in Tooele County, Utah shot and killed a US military veteran and Purple Heart recipient early Sunday morning. US Army Sgt. Nicholas McGehee, 28, was fatally wounded on his front lawn after allegedly pointing a handgun at police who responded to a 911 call placed by the veteran's wife.

According to Utah's Deseret News, the police report on the incident says McGehee and his wife were arguing when officers arrived responding to her call, which was reportedly made because McGehee had injured his foot on broken glass.

Tooele County Sheriff Frank Park said in a statement that McGehee came out of his house carrying a shotgun, then returned indoors and emerged again carrying a handgun, which he pointed at the officers — a deputy and a highway patrol officer. The deputy fired three shots, although it's unclear how many times McGehee was struck.

"The deputy gave him verbal commands to put the gun down, and he didn't," Park said. "[McGehee] raised the gun, aiming at the deputy, and the deputy shot him."

The police report has come under scrutiny because the deputy who fired the fatal shots was wearing a body camera, but it was turned off. The deputy — whose name has not been made public — has reportedly been placed on administrative leave. The sheriff said the camera was off because medical calls are not recorded under the department's protocol, and the situation allegedly escalated too quickly for the officer to switch it on.

NYPD Officer Pedro Serrano began taping his superior officer Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack after he was given a poor performance review. Serrano alleges it was the result of him not meeting his summonses quotas and he wanted evidence to show he was being unfairly treated.

Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.
[...]
“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?” Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.
[...]
“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

The tape and testimony are a part of a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy. The NYPD's defense was able to get Serrano to admit that McCormack didn't say "allblacks and latinos." So there's a victory for people who still want to believe that the policy wasn't out and out racist.

Once Kwiatkowski pulled Mack out of the home, assisted by ten police officers who had responded to the call, Horne said the arresting officer began choking the suspect.

“Gregory Kwiatkowski turned Neal Mack around and started choking him. So then I’m like, ‘Greg! You’re choking him,’ because I thought whatever happened in the house he was still upset about so when he didn’t stop choking him I just grabbed his arm from around Neal Mack’s neck,” said Horne.

According to Horne, Kwiatkowski responded to her by punching her in the face.

“He comes up and punches me in the face and I had to have my bridge replaced,” said Horne, who said she then tried to defend herself only to have other officers pull her away from Kwiatkowski, injuring her shoulder in the process.

Following the incident, Horne was fired and charged with obstruction for “jumping on officer Kwiatkowski’s back and/or striking him with her hands.”

However, in a sworn statement regarding the incident Kwiatkowski said, “she never got on top of me.”

Despite that, Horne lost every appeal and with her 19 year career over, losing her pension in the process.

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—The city's police department has opted to pay $75,000 to a man who sued them after the department wrongly arrrested and imprisoned him for nearly a year.

Jose Granados-Joya alleged in a lawsuit that officers arrested twice as many people as they should have after a fight in February 2011, and gave false testimony to a grand jury later that year, keeping him in prison for eleven months.

An NYPD officer turned himself in after recognizing himself in a surveillance video, released by the NYPD after he allegedly attacked a female subway conductor.

The unnamed officer “allegedly bear-hugged the female Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker, and then choked her, after she tried to grab his cellphone,” reported CBS New York.

Though the officer turned himself in after recognizing himself in the footage from December 23rd, he has a different story: according to him, “the woman cursed at him after he asked her a question, and grabbed his phone to prevent him from taking her picture.”

The woman was taken to the hospital for minor injuries and was released.

A Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy was wearing his uniform when he stole from a Walmart in Coral Springs on two separate occasions, according to an arrest affidavit obtained Wednesday by Local 10 News.

BSO spokeswoman Dani Moschella said Theodore Parrish turned himself in Tuesday afternoon.

According to the report, Parrish stole miscellaneous merchandise worth $176.14 on five days in November and December.

Vallandigham died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, at the age of 50, after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen with a pistol. He was representing a defendant in a murder case for killing a man in a barroom brawl at the Golden Lamb Inn. Vallandigham attempted to prove the victim, Tom Myers, had in fact accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol from a pocket while rising from a kneeling position. As Vallandigham conferred with fellow defense attorneys in his hotel room at the Golden Lamb, he showed them how he would demonstrate this to the jury. Selecting a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put it in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened, snagging the loaded gun on his clothing and unintentionally causing it to discharge into his belly. Although he was fatally wounded, Vallandigham's demonstration proved his point, and the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was acquitted and released from custody (to be shot to death four years later in his saloon). Surgeons probed for the pistol ball, thought to have lodged in the vicinity of his bladder, but were unable to locate it, and Vallandigham died the next day of peritonitis. His last words expressed his faith in "that good old Presbyterian doctrine of predestination".[64]

Here are the facts. There were 126 on-duty deaths reported among all officers in 2014. There are approximately 1 million sworn officers between federal, state, county and local government entities (and another couple of million employees who are not sworn; that is, they are not officers and do not have arrest powers, such as dispatchers and clerks.)

This is a rate of fatality of 12.6 per 100,000. Sounds bad, right?

Wrong.

If you're a logger, you have a fatality rate ten times that of a cop.

A fisherman? Almost ten times -- 117 per 100,000.

A pilot? 53.4 per 100,000. Yes, really -- it's about four times as dangerous to fly a plane or chopper than be a cop.

The guy who puts your roof on? 40.5 per 100,000 -- about three times as dangerous.

How about iron workers -- you know, the guys who put up the buildings you work in? Yeah, those dudes. Three times the risk of a cop in dying, most from falls, being crushed by heavy materials or welding accidents.

Your garbage man has a risk of death twice that of a cop. Why? He gets hit by cars or crushed by heavy equipment (yes, it would suck to get caught in that trash compactor in the garbage truck!)

How about the lineman that repairs your power lines? Slightly less than double the risk of a cop, and of course the means by which they die are falls and electrocution, mostly.

Truck drivers? Close to double the risk, most from traffic accidents.

Farmers? Same risk, roughly; getting caught in a combine is a ****ty way to die.

Or you could just be a construction laborer. Your risk in that profession is materially higher than that of a cop (17.3 .vs. 12.6) as well but nobody cheers for you. Never mind that without said laborers you wouldn't have a house or an office to work in.

So let's cut the crap, eh? Being a cop isn't particularly dangerous as occupations go.

Investigators said 30-year-old Robert Earl Lawrence became disorderly as he attempted to turn over a stray animal about 12:30 p.m. to the Dothan City Animal Shelter when an employee told him he could not leave without showing identification.

...

Employees called police, who attempted to arrest Lawrence after they said he refused to calm down.

Police said Lawrence struggled with the arresting officer, who then shot him in the abdomen.

Lawrence died about 9:50 p.m., authorities said.