A legally blind man is speaking out after saying he was injured when a Little Rock Police officer slammed him to the ground.

"I had just got off of work," said Eric Wilson. It was just before 4:00 Monday, June 1st.

Wilson left his job at Lighthouse for the Blind. He missed his bus so he started to walk home along 65th St.

Around that time, LRPD says they got a call about someone fitting Wilson's description who was running away from or chasing someone and who appeared to be afraid.

"Hey, come over here and talk to me," the officer can be heard saying on dash camera video.

Wilson is legally blind and says he only sees shadows. He says he didn't know who was calling him.

"I could have possibly been getting robbed," Wilson said. "I didn't know what was about to happen."

The officers tell Wilson to put his hands behind his back, and then he's taken to the ground.

In a police report, an officer said Wilson "pulled away violently causing me to lose grip," and that he was "afraid that Wilson would strike myself or my partner with the handcuff."

But Wilson and his lawyer Reggie Koch say that's not what the video shows.

"When they tell him to 'come over here,' he walked towards them," Koch said. "When they tell him 'take your hands out of your pockets,' he takes his hands out of his pockets. What more do they want?"

The officers also said they saw a black handle hanging out of Wilson's pocket, but that turned out to be a clock that reads Wilson the time.

"Why would I get thrown to the ground?" Wilson questions. "If anything [the officers] should have been trying to help me."

That night, Wilson says he went to the hospital with back pain and was diagnosed with a strained lumbar.

Wilson has filed a formal complaint with the Little Rock Police Department. An agency spokesman said the department would not comment until an investigation into the complaint is complete.

Sgt. Jason Halifax said that an officer had pulled over a driver for an unrelated traffic stop at Merle Hay Road and Aurora Avenue just after 10 p.m. A few minutes later, another car pulled up alongside so close that the officer couldn't open the car door.

The driver of the other vehicle got out and danced around, Halifax said, before getting back in his car at 10:17 p.m. and driving south on Merle Hay.

Police followed. The pursuit was low-speed, about the speed limit, and lasted about two minutes.

At Urbandale Avenue, about a mile south, the driver did a U-turn and stopped abruptly, Halifax said. A police officer swerved to miss the car, stopping in front of the vehicle, as another police vehicle pulled up.

Halifax said the driver of the other car got out and moved toward the police car that had just arrived. The officer in that vehicle opened fire and shot the driver in the torso. The man was declared dead at a hospital.

Halifax said he didn't know whether the driver had been armed. No weapon was recovered at the scene. Police weren't immediately sure whether the man had a weapon at the hospital.

Nobody involved has been identified. Halifax said he couldn't say how many shots were fired.

Filming a traffic stop. Being cuffed and arrested while cop is telling me I'm not even being detained. All charges were dropped 4 months later at arraignment.

two Woodford County Deputies pulled over their vehicle for no stated reason. While cordial, the deputies still attempted to violate their 4th amendment right by asking to search their vehicle.

Ryan Keith Bolinger, 28, of West Des Moines, died at the scene from a single gunshot to the torso. Police and witnesses said he led two officers on a slow chase through northwestern Des Moines Tuesday evening that ended with Bolinger exiting his vehicle and coming toward the squad car.

"He was walking with a purpose," Sgt. Jason Halifax of Des Moines Police said following a press conference Wednesday on the shooting.

Senior Police Officer Vanessa Miller, a seven-year veteran, fired the round that killed Bolinger. Miller was assisting Senior Police Officer Ian Lawler, also a seven-year veteran, in the pursuit of Bolinger's vehicle after a bizarre confrontation involving an unrelated vehicle stop that Bolinger interrupted.

A New Jersey state trooper's slowing patrol car was struck from behind Wednesday morning by another state trooper on Interstate 78 West in Hunterdon County as they came to the aid of a motorist broken down in an eastbound lane, police said.

The rear-end crash happened at 7:27 a.m. as they neared the median at mile marker 14.7 in Union Township, Lt. Brian Polite said from state police headquarters in West Trenton.

state police crash1 crop
Two New Jersey State Police troopers on Wednesday are in the median of Interstate 78 in Hunterdon County after a crash involving two state police vehicles. (Courtersy photo)

One of the troopers suffered a shoulder injury, Polite said.

A police supervisor was called out to investigate the "relatively minor" crash, Polite said, which is standard operating procedure in accidents involving troopers.

The troopers were responding "to an active incident" involving a broken down car "in a very hazardous location" in an eastbound lane of travel, Polite said.

While one trooper was treated at a hospital and then released, both troopers returned to duty by late morning, Polite said.

Police are not naming the troopers at this point, Polite said.

Three narcotics officers from Chicago and one officer from the nearby town of Glenview have been charged with lying under oath during a hearing in March 2014.

Glenview Officer James Horn, Chicago Sgt. James Padar, Chicago Officer William Pruente, and Chicago Officer Vince Morgan are facing felony charges of perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. The charges were announced on Monday by Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

The charges stemmed from court testimony given by officers regarding a June 2013 traffic stop in Glenview that led to a drug-related arrest. Joseph Sperling, a Glenview resident, was pulled over near his home by Pruente after failing to use his turn signal, according to Pruente’s testimony. Pruente also testified that he smelled marijuana from inside the car as he waited for Sperling to provide his license and insurance information.

Pruente then stated that Sperling admitted to having a small about of marijuana with him. Pruente said he ordered Sperling to step out of his car and stand next to the trunk. Close to a pound of marijuana in a backpack was in plain view in the backseat, according to Pruente’s testimony.

Pruente said that while the other officers stood watch, he performed a vehicle search and found the marijuana before handcuffing and arresting Sperling. Officers Horn, Padar, and Morgan each provided testimony to corroborate Pruente’s claims.

But as a fifth officer was providing similar testimony backing up the statements of Pruente, Sperling’s lawyer surprised the courtroom by showing a police video that Goldman had subpoenaed. The footage shown directly contradicted the testimony from all five officers.

The video, taken from a Glenview Police vehicle camera, showed that Pruente did not wait for Sperling to hand over his license as he had sworn under oath, but had immediately opened Sperling’s car door upon his approach by unlocking it through the driver’s side window and making Sperling step out of the car. The video also showed Sperling was frisked, handcuffed and led back to the police vehicle before police began searching his car.

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The cities of Chicago and Glenview paid $195,000 total to Sperling in a federal lawsuit settlement prior to the charges against the officers being filed.

An agreement between the U.S. Justice Department and Cleveland police establishes a model for searches and seizures to ensure that police encounters are free of constitutional violations.

More than five months of negotiations between federal and city officials resulted in a 105-page consent decree that addresses numerous concerns raised in a Justice Department report that blasted Cleveland's police department.

Searches and seizures were not part of the federal investigation and only briefly mentioned in the report released in December, but officials said they found troubling patterns in this area that they couldn't ignore.

Mayor Frank Jackson cited in an interview Monday decades worth of complaints from citizens who say police stopped them unfairly. Given the magnitude of the problem, city officials chose to address even though it was not one of the formal complaints lodged by federal officials.

"If you listen to the community and what they're talking about, you can't ignore the fact that it was a major concern," Jackson said. "If it could be supported by data or not was not relevant. You address the concern."

New policies have been agreed upon to protect citizens' constitutional rights and to ease some of the tension between police and the community.

Governor Markell's Office released the following statement to Action News:

As an avid cyclist and governor of the third most Bicycle Friendly State in America, the Governor knows keeping bike lanes clear is critical to the safety of everyone on the road. He understands the concerns being expressed regarding yesterday's incident in D.C., in which a State Trooper assigned to protect the Governor idled his vehicle in a bike lane while waiting for him to exit an event. Law enforcement officers must sometimes block lanes of traffic in order to do their job effectively and the Delaware State Police will be looking at how the officer handled this situation. The Governor appreciates all that our law enforcement officers do and trusts the Delaware State Police will handle their response to the incident appropriately.

Police spokesman Sgt. Richard Bratz said in a statement Wednesday that the agency is aware of the video of a division member and an internal investigation will determine if there was any policy violation.

hen Natasha McKenna was in police custody at the Fairfax County, Virginia, jail in February, the mentally ill woman was restrained by six deputies who, unable to subdue her, shocked her with a Taser. She died several days later. But as the Washington Post reported recently, when the Virginia medical examiner’s office ruled on the cause of death, the conclusion was that a rare and mysterious syndrome known as “excited delirium” had actually killed her, and not the Taser or the extreme force used by six officers against a woman suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who weighed just 130 pounds.

“Excited delirium” is the name given to a condition in which a person, either as a result of mental illness or protracted use of stimulants such as cocaine or methamphetamines, becomes extremely violent; hyperaggressive; and is often found naked, agitated, incoherent, feverish, and displaying extraordinary strength. The phenomenon is reported most often in police encounters, requiring, on average, four officers to restrain the suspect. In approximately 10 percent of cases, according to the literature, the person with excited delirium may die suddenly. The heart or breathing simply stops. So when someone dies in that agitated state and no other cause of death is found, the medical finding is that excited delirium was the cause. It accounts for approximately 250 deaths in the United States each year, with one expert speculating that about 800 cases occur each year nationwide.

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The obvious problem is this: What do we make of a syndrome that seems to occur almost unerringly when a police officer is choking, hog-tying, or stunning with a Taser someone with a mental illness or drug addiction? And why do many experts dispute that the diagnosis even exists? While excited delirium is used to explain a significant number of deaths occurring in police custody, the term has not been recognized as a genuine mental health condition by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, or the World Health Organization. Excited delirium—which sounds, to the naked ear, something like “crazy-craziness”—is not found in the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, either. Yet medical examiners and police departments keep claiming it as the cause of death of people in custody. In 2014, the International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a white paper that tried to bridge the gap, concluding, “Despite what it is called or whether it has been formally recognized, it is a real clinical concern for both law enforcement and the medical communities.” But is it a real medical phenomenon? Is it a convenient way to blame the victim, as civil liberties and prison reformers claim? Or is this a genuine syndrome that occurs largely in fights between the mentally ill and the cops? Now more than ever, when suspicious deaths in police custody are making headlines, should we consider excited delirium an illness or a cover for police abuse?

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Perhaps the final paradox of the excited delirium craze is that it may be leading to better police procedures in the long term. Whether excited delirium rests on junk science pushed by Taser International or is a legitimate diagnosis of a genuine disease, some police departments have begun to enact more effective law enforcement training. As Storey notes, cops in Dallas are being trained to call an ambulance when they come across a person displaying symptoms of excited delirium, and they are asked to defuse the situation with suspected mentally ill persons “by slowing things down, and using the suspect’s first name and trying to avoid the use of force.” By training cops to see excited delirium as a medical emergency instead of a fight to the death with a hulking superpredator, the police may be learning to better handle these crises using nonlethal force.

After Randy Escobedo died in police custody, the San Diego Police Department retrained its officers to ensure that suspects were never detained face down, and suspects were monitored after their arrests. In British Columbia, as a result of the Braidwood hearings, a cop is prohibited from deploying a Taser unless “the subject is causing bodily harm or the officer is satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that the subject’s behavior will imminently cause bodily harm.” In Toronto, a hospital has partnered with two downtown police divisions to create a “mobile crisis intervention team”—a police officer and a mental health nurse—to deal with emergencies involving emotionally disturbed people. If a diagnosis of excited delirium, whatever it is, works in the long term toward treating mental health crises as mental health crises rather than crimes, perhaps it’s a step toward more humane and safe policing.