Bryant Heyward had about two seconds to drop the 40-caliber handgun in his hands before a Charleston County Sheriff's deputy fired his weapon twice, critically wounding the man.

Heyward wielded the gun as he tried to defend his home and his life from a pair of intruders who had left the area before deputies Keith Tyner and Richard Powell arrived at the Hollywood home.

Powell and Tyner circled around the small Hollywood home where Heyward stepped out of a utility room on the back side of the home. Tyner shouted twice at Heyward, "Show me your hands!"

Before he finished the phrase the second time, Tyner fired his weapon twice, hitting Heyward in the neck. Heyward remains at Medical University Hospital where family attorneys say he is unable to speak or move his legs. They say the 26-year-old man is paralyzed.

In the ambulance ride to MUSC, Heyward told a detective that he should have put down his gun.

"I should have put the gun down but I didn't," Bryant Heyward told the detective inside the ambulance. "He thought I was the crook and shot."

A day later, attorneys retained by Bryant Heyward's family said their client's statement inside the ambulance show the quality of character he has by not wanting to blame anyone but ultimately, they said, his statement doesn't prove it was a justified shooting.

The attorneys said Monday shortly after the release of the video that they were still watching all of the footage provided by the sheriff's office and would not make a statement until later this week.

The sheriff's office released three discs Monday with approximately five hours of footage from Powell and Tyner's dash cams.

As they exited I-255 at Telegraph Road, Janet Akers honked her horn when a black Dodge Ram was heading into her lane. She explains, “To let him know, hey, you’re coming over to hit us, and then he backed down, got behind us, and honked and honked and honked, all the way through the intersection.”

Akers gestured to the driver of the truck to pull over in this parking lot, so she could explain why she honked in the first place. Then, she says, “His wife jumped out of the truck. She came over, started yelling at me.” At the same time, Janet Akers recalls the driver got out of his truck and approached their vehicle, armed with a gun.

Donald Akers says, “He held the gun first, I didn’t know if he was going to shoot us or what. But instead, he hit me right across the nose with it. Broke my nose, my sinus cavities, broke my teeth.” Once that happened, Janet Akers admits she fought back. Bystanders broke up the fight.

She then called 911, and took some photos to document the scene. “So the police came, and went over directly to them. And were talking to them, laughing, joking around,” recalls Janet, “We feel like they knew him right off the bat.”

Her husband adds, “[Officers] told us he was an off-duty police officer. That’s exactly what they told us.”

The Akers say Donald wasn’t offered medical treatment right away, and only their car was searched. “They never searched that guy’s truck. He had the gun,” Donald says.

According to St. Louis County Police, this is still an active investigation, so the report, including names of those involved, is sealed.

The St. Louis County Counselor will determine whether charges will be filed, and against whom. Janet Akers is concerned about what will happen next. She says, “I’m scared. I thought they were going to shoot my husband, and I was really scared for that.”​

RICHMOND, Va. — A puppy is back home Monday after her owners said she was shot by a Richmond police officer outside the family’s Southside home Friday.

“All of a sudden I heard two gunshots like pow, pow. And I said, ‘Wait a minute that’s right at my back window,'” said Timothy Crumpler, “Elsa’s” owner.

Blood stains line the sidewalk where Timothy Crumpler found “Elsa” shot in the paw.

“I was sitting upstairs in my room and I just heard the gun shots — pow pow. [There was] so much blood everywhere. I asked someone, ‘What happened? They said, ‘They shot your dog, they shot your dog,'” said Taquella Smith, Crumpler’s daughter.

Cell phone video shows “Elsa” moments after the shooting that RPD confirmed that they are investigating, but cannot comment on until the investigation is complete.

...

Elsa’s owners say investigators told them the dog came out from underneath an abandoned home next door to them and attacked an officer, but they are disputing that.

“If you shot him all the way next door you gonna find something, a blood trail leading back to where I seen him at,” said Crumpler.

The family drove Elsa to a Carytown veterinarian after they said Richmond Animal Control refused to take her. They claim they waited for RAC for an hour after “Elsa” was shot.

The dog’s gunshot wounds to her paw required a $3,000 surgery the family says they can’t afford. Therefore, they left her at the vet over the weekend to figure out what to do.

The family called WTVR CBS 6 News for assistance. After the vet tried to have RAC take custody of the dog, “Elsa” was then released without payment to her owner.

Orlando drivers who have been ticketed for speeding may be able to have their tickets dismissed.

According to an investigation done by WINK-TV in Fort Myers, Florida, a number of sheriff's departments and police stations across the state are using a radar gun which is not listed on the state's approved radar gun list.

"This is going to cause significant problems for the Orlando Police Department, and for prosecuting cases going forward," said Matt Morgan, attorney at Morgan & Morgan.

...

According to the investigation, Python II guns shoot at an angle of 15 degrees, but Florida's Administration code states that guns cannot shoot at an angle greater than 12 degrees. The three degree difference allows the gun to shoot a wider range, thus increasing the possibility of hitting multiple cars at once, or mistaking wrong speeds for different cars.

"You will see some of the cases resurrected from the dead," Morgan explains. "You will have people come forward and challenge tickets they got in the past, claiming the 'gun was defective,' and their case should be overturned."

Morgan adds that the ramifications for using defective devices could have major impacts.

Officer Mike Wells of the Frankfort Police Department resigned on Monday, after being implicated in selling anabolic steroids to one of the main figures in the high-profile Wild Turkey bourbon theft ring. Wells was a DARE officer, whose ironic job was to educate children on the dangers using drugs.

The crime ring is allegedly responsible for more than $100,000 in bourbon thefts, including ultra-rare Pappy Van Winkle, Kentucky.com reported. So far 18 barrels of Wild Turkey have been recovered, as well as 25 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle.

A search warrant filed on Tuesday names Wells as a person of interest in the thefts.

So far, nine people have been indicted in relation to the heists, which have been going on since at least 2008. One of the key players in the ring was Gilbert “Toby” Curtsinger, whom call logs show called Wells three times as his home was being raided.

Text messages have also been recovered between Wells and Curtsinger in which they appear to be making plans for a steroid transaction. “It appears Mr. Curtsinger is placing his anabolic steroid order with Mr. Wells, who will then order the steroids online. Mr. Curtsinger ends the conversation with, ‘Give me a total, and I’ll hook up with ya.’ Mr. Wells responds, ”K, will do,’” the warrant says.

Police are generally loyal to other police to the point where they will even try to justify their peers murdering children, but the thin blue line went right out the window for Wells, nearly immediately.

The harassment conviction of a Bethel man who was slammed repeatedly to the ground during an arrest last summer has been dismissed.

The rough arrest of Wassillie Gregory last July was captured by a security camera at the Alaska Commercial Co. store in the heart of Bethel. The video surfaced publicly in April when attorney Sean Brown filed a document in court to rescind the conviction. Gregory wasn’t represented by a lawyer when he pleaded guilty last year to harassment related to his encounter with the police officer, Andrew Reid, who since has been fired from the police force.

Magistrate Judge Bruce Ward on Monday approved Gregory’s request and ordered the criminal case be dismissed. District Attorney Michael Gray did not oppose the dismissal.

Law enforcement officials in Washington state will now be required to get a warrant before deploying a stingray, according to a bill that was signed into law by the governor on Monday after unanimously passing both houses of the state legislature.
Washington’s law, which takes effect immediately, is not the first in the United States, but it may impose the most stringent requirements.

A handful of states, including Virginia, Minnesota, and Utah have similar laws on the books. Washington’s, though, imposes extra requirements that compel police to describe the technology and its impact in detail to judges—presumably despite any nondisclosure agreement that those agencies may have with the FBI and the dominant manufacturer of the devices, Harris Corporation. Both the FBI and Harris have previously refused to respond to Ars’ direct questions.

Dozens of New Yorkers complained last year that NYPD officers lashed out at them after they pulled out video cameras to record a police search or confrontation despite their legal right to do so, according to data obtained by NBC 4 New York's I-Team, prompting a review by the independent agency overseeing police misconduct claims.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board investigated 42 cases over a six-month span in 2014 where civilians videotaped police, according to a meeting report. In 27 of those cases, the complainant accused police of acting inappropriately in response to being videotaped. The investigation was prompted primarily by a rash of similar anecdotes, and no historical comparative data exists.

The law is very clear that officers should not interfere with a person videotaping a police interaction, as long as the individual is not hindering their law enforcement work. Officers also may not deliberately block the person’s view of what’s happening in order to obstruct the recording.

Jason Disisto is among the dozens who complained last year about how he was treated for recording a police encounter. He says he thought something was off when he saw an officer walk up to his friend on the street and search her pockets, so asked a bystander to borrow a cellphone.

As Disisto went to switch on the phone's video camera, the police officer searching his friend jumped on him and tried to grab the phone, according to surveillance video. Officers pushed him into the back of a police car, placed him under arrest and tossed the phone out the window before driving off.

"I was shocked. I was scared, shocked. I had a whole bunch of feelings all mixed up," Disisto said.

...

All the money – $16,000 in cash – that Joseph Rivers said he had saved and relatives had given him to launch his dream in Hollywood is gone, seized during his trip out West not by thieves but by Drug Enforcement Administration agents during a stop at the Amtrak train station in Albuquerque.

An incident some might argue is still theft, just with the government’s blessing.

Rivers, 22, wasn’t detained and has not been charged with any crime since his money was taken last month . . .

It happened, Rivers said, to him on April 15 as he was traveling on Amtrak from Dearborn, Mich., near his hometown of Romulus, Mich., to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of making a music video. Rivers, in an email, said he had saved his money for years, and his mother and other relatives scraped together the rest of the $16,000.

Rivers said he carried his savings in cash because he has had problems in the past with taking out large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

Rivers was the only passenger singled out for a search by DEA agents – and the only black person on his portion of the train, [attorney Michael] Pancer said.

In one of the bags, the agent found the cash, still in the Michigan bank envelope.

“I even allowed him to call my mother, a military veteran and (hospital) coordinator, to corroborate my story,” Rivers said. “Even with all of this, the officers decided to take my money because he stated that he believed that the money was involved in some type of narcotic activity.” . . .

“These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers said in his email. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

The really galling thing about forfeiture is that the government officials who engage in it don’t even attempt to hide how unfair it is.

Sean Waite, the agent in charge for the DEA in Albuquerque . . . said that in general DEA agents look for “indicators” such as whether the person bought an expensive one-way ticket with cash, if the person is traveling from or to a city known as a hot spot for drug activity, if the person’s story has inconsistencies or if the large sums of money found could have been transported by more conventional means.

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Waite said. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

People who turn in their drugs to the Gloucester Police Department and ask for help won’t be arrested, they’ll be rehabilitated.

Additionally, the department will start using money seized from drug dealers to provide addicts’ families and pharmacies with Narcan free of charge. The life-saving drug, if administered at the scene, can reverse an overdose.

Chief Leonard Campanello announced over the weekend that any “addict” who walks into their department with drugs and paraphernalia will not be criminally charged.

A disturbing report has surfaced according to which a police department in New Orleans has not fired more than a dozen officers who have been charged with rape and child pornography.

The charges have occurred within the last year, but it appears that the officers who were charged are still patrolling neighborhoods with loaded guns and are not being convicted.

It is appalling that we are told these people exist to “protect us,” even though they are the same ones being charged with such sickening crimes.

In several cases the officers were not fired but rather placed on something the police are calling “emergency suspension.”

According to a report by the WDSU I-team, these “emergency suspensions” are limited in time and before you know it, the officers charged are back at work again.

One particularly egregious example involves Officer Bradley Wax, who was charged with 38 counts of possessing child pornography.

The crime was so serious that if Wax had not been a police officer, he would have faced more than 500 years in prison upon conviction.

The New Orleans Police Department assured the public that Officer Wax would be disciplined.

We found cases in Palm Beach County that appear to show the State Attorney’s Office backing deputies, when the evidence doesn't.

October 10, 2010

Dash cam video shows 17-year-old Jeremy Hutton, who has down syndrome, stopping at the intersection of Royal Palm Beach and Okeechobee Boulevard in the van he took from his mom.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Franqui can be seen pulling around Hutton. Hutton then clips the deputy’s cruiser. The deputy fires.

“I watched the driver, he turned the wheel and started coming right at me," described Deputy Franqui later that night during a video-taped walk thru with investigators.

"I was in fear he was going to hit me," said Deputy Franqui.

PBSO and the State Attorney’s Office concluded the shooting was justified.

Case closed, until…

"I don't think anybody knew or anticipated that they were going to get caught by a traffic camera," said Stuart Kaplan, the Hutton’s civil attorney.

“This case is one of the most egregious, one of the most disturbing cases that I have pending in my office," explained Kaplan.

That's because traffic camera video from the intersection, Kaplan says, shows an entirely different story.

“The traffic camera clearly shows that Jeremy Hutton apparently was driving away from the deputy but actually turned his vehicle as far to the left as possible to completely try and avoid hitting this deputy so it’s completely inconsistent to what was told by the deputy, it's appalling,” said Kaplan.

The State Attorney’s Office, which investigates to determine if an officer who shoots should face criminal charges for it, mentions the video in its final report but not what it shows.

"The deputy was not in any danger,” said Kaplan.

“The role of the State Attorney’s Office is to really be there as a separate independent eyes and ears and to conduct an investigation and be the checks and balance,” said former Assistant State Attorney, Elizabeth Parker. She explains why that’s not the way it always works.

"Really what they do is they just read the reports, they look at what the sheriff's office provides to them," she said.

“They’re working in conjunction with the sheriff’s office sharing the information and everyone is really on the same page.”

It's a system, she explains, built on relationships.

“Prosecutors work with the sheriff's office every single day. You can't have a contentious relationship and be productive and a prosecutor,” she said.

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Chesapeake, Va. – A former Chesapeake Police officer accused of using excessive force on an elderly woman in 2014 is getting a second chance.

The Chesapeake Police Department has rehired Joel Ayala-Acevedo just five months after he was fired for the incident, which cost the city $50,000.

Ruth Davenport, 71, filed a lawsuit against the city in November of 2014 for $500,000. She claims two police officers Joel Ayala-Acevedo and Anthony Echevarria were at her house to serve a search warrant for her son when one officer grabbed her by the arm, pushed her into a wall and threw her to the ground.

Davenport’s lawyer S.W. Dawson says he was confident he and Davenport would have won the $500,000 dollar lawsuit if it went to trial, but both Davenport and the city agreed to settle for $50,000.

Back in November, Chesapeake Police did tell us Officer Joel Ayala-Acevedo was no longer with force, but they wouldn’t tell us if he resigned or if he was fired.

The woman had walked up to the scene where the man was sitting on the beach with his dog being questioned by a male and female cop. She asked them if he was free to go or being detained.

The male cop told her it was none of her business, so she directed her statements at the man with the dog, suggesting he ask the cops if he was being detained or not.

That was when the female cop moved in to arrest her, telling her she was being arrested for obstruction.