In 2007, Richmond, California was America's 9th most dangerous city. Desperate for a different approach to law enforcement, new police chief Chris Magnus fired bad cops, suspended all stop-and-frisks, and improved community relations. City Hall also launched an experimental program that identifies residents most likely to commit serious crimes and provides them with a mentor and a monthly stipend of $300-$1,000. Richmond's homicide rate has since dropped by 66%--the lowest in 33 years. Officer involved shootings also declined to less than one a year.

A deaf man was just shot by Volusia County sheriff’s deputy Joel Hernandez and the excuse the killer cop gave boils down to the fact that he was talking too loud.

Now Deputy Hernandez is under investigation for fatally shooting Edward P. Miller on Saturday afternoon, police sources say.

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Darice Podgorski-Beneddix, 44, an employee at Fryer’s, reported to Daytona police officers that the elder Miller “was being rude and yelling at her.”

The elder Miller said he “may have been yelling due to him being hard of hearing however in no way was he trying to be rude.”

Employee Erik Stewart, 51, told Podgorski-Beneddix that the younger Miller “had a gun holstered on his right side hip.”

Podgorski-Beneddix then called for police assistance “out of fear for their safety,” according to the report.

Officers determined the younger Miller had an up-to-date concealed weapons license to carry the gun, and it was returned to him.

The report goes on to state that the Millers were told that if they come back with the “correct amount of money,” their vehicle would be returned to them.

KSN has confirmed with that the man in the video is a deputy with the Harper County Sheriff’s department, and that he has since been suspended. Deputy Vance Williams is now apologizing to the community.

“I unfortunately used language that I should never have used,” said Deputy Williams. “I apologize to our community, to our county, commissioners, and to our sheriff. He would never condone that behavior.”

Facts About Academy Recruits

Twenty-five basic law enforcement academies from 16 states took part in the research by administering and collecting 1,016 confidential questionnaires completed by academy recruits. The findings included that:

· 79% said that a law enforcement Code of Silence exists and is fairly common throughout the nation.

· 52% said that the fact a Code of Silence exists doesn’t really bother them.

· 24% said the Code of Silence is more justified when excessive force involves a citizen who’s abusive.

· 46% said they would not tell on another officer for having sex on duty.

· 23% said they wouldn’t tell on another cop for regularly smoking marijuana off duty.

Facts About Current Officers

The sampling of current officers was comprised of 2,698 fulltime officers from twenty-one different states. A total 1,116 of the 2,657 officers asked to complete a confidential questionnaire, did so. This equates to a response rate of 42 percent. An additional forty-one officers provided confidential interviews. The following facts were revealed.

• In response to “Please describe the first time you witnessed misconduct by another employee but took no action,” 46 percent (532) advised they had witnessed misconduct by another employee, but concealed what they knew.
  
  
• In response to the question “At the time of the incident occurred, what did you think would happen if you revealed what had taken place?” the five reasons listed most often were: I would be ostracized (177 times); the officer who committed the misconduct would be disciplined or fired (88 times); I would be fired from my job (73 times); I would be “blackballed” (59 times); the administration would not do anything even if I reported it. (54 times)
  
  
• 73 percent of the individuals pressuring officers to keep quiet about the misconduct were leaders.
  
  
• Eight percent (40) of the 509 officers who admitted to intentionally withholding the information about officer misconduct were upper administrators. The upper administrators of the average American police department comprises only five percent of the agency.
  
  
• The average age of an officer who covered up an incident for the first time was 31.4 years of age.
  
  
• The average years of experience when they first took part in the Code of Silence was 8.2 years.
  
  
• 449 of the 532 officers were male, while 74 were female.
  
  
• Of the 532 who confessed they had participated in the Code of Silence, 252 were pressured to keep quiet by the officer(s) who committed the misconduct and 118 felt pressure from uninvolved officers. The remaining 162 officers advised they covered up the incident even though they were not pressured.
  
  
• Excessive use of force was the most frequent situation over which the Code of Silence occurs, with 217 were excessive use of force circumstances.
  
  
  The five most frequently offered solutions for controlling the Code of Silence from the 532 officers who confessed to taking part in it were: Conduct good ethics training (listed 46 times); More consistent accountability (listed 20 times); Ensure open communication between officers and leaders (listed 16 times); Provide an anonymous reporting system (listed 14 times) and Protect whistleblowers (listed 10 times).

A South Carolina police chief says he will not release the name of an officer who fatally shot a 19-year-old man in a Hardee's parking lot, insisting the officer acted in self-defense.

While the attorney for the teen's parents disputed the officer's account, Seneca Chief John Covington reiterated Friday the department considers the officer a victim of attempted murder.

"We feel that releasing his name may possibly subject the officer and family to harassment, intimidation or abuse," Covington said in a written statement released to the media.

Zachary Hammond was shot twice about 8:20 p.m. on July 26. According to a police report, he had driven a 23-year-old woman to the parking lot after an undercover officer arranged to buy marijuana from her. The woman was not injured. She was charged with simple possession of marijuana and released. A phone listing for her was out of service Saturday.

Covington has said the undercover officer pulled up beside Hammond's car to buy the drugs, and the officer in uniform was coming up to help with any arrests when Hammond drove his car toward the lawman.

But the attorney for Hammond's parents, Eric Bland, contends that explanation is false. He says a private autopsy, conducted Thursday, showed Hammond was shot from behind, and that his car was not moving. He said Hammond was unarmed and at Hardee's on a date.

Claudette Terry told Viteri she was moving into a home on Pineglen Drive in May when officers stopped by to check on a man sitting in her driveway, a man Terry said was a friend.

"My son opened the door the dog ran out and kind of stood by me where the other officers were," she said. "He didn't bark, growl or anything."

Terry explained she was already speaking to two other officers when a third officer, Walter Dennard, walked up. In his incident report, Dennard said the family's 5-month-old lab-pit mix ran and lunged at him.

Witness Brandon Smarr said that's not true.

"He just took a step back and he just shot at the dog," Smarr said. "And then he started laughing afterward."

"The dog was shaking on the ground," Terry said. "And he walked up to the dog and shot it a second time. He walked closer and shot it a second time."

Terry said at first she wondered if anyone else was hit by the bullets.

"When the gun went off, my son went down in the yard crying. I looked thinking my son may have been shot," she said.

The puppy named 8-Ball was friendly, according to friends, and well-loved, especially by Terry's daughter.

Officer Dennard's file showed several use of force complaints, including a suspension for Tasing a suspect in the neck. But Terry is the one facing charges for not having her dog on a leash or showing rabies paperwork.

A Clayton County police spokesperson said the Office of Professional Standards is conducting an internal investigation and they cannot comment in the meantime.

But the following is indisputable: The officer shot Lily, just 10 feet away from Boling, killing the dog instantly. A bullet ricocheted against the Bolings' house and a neighbor emerged, frantic that a person had been shot.

Lily "went up to him and we had no fear, no concern because it was a police officer," Boling said. "It happened within just minutes, seconds."

This was one of about 280 dog shootings that happened that year in Texas. In the past five years, more than 1,000 dogs have been shot by Texas law enforcement, according to data from the Texas Humane Legislation Network. Not all police departments keep track of canine shootings so an exact number cannot be easily determined.



After the shooting, the Bolings learned there was no mandatory training for officers on how to handle interactions with dogs. They resolved to change that. Now, thanks to a law they pushed for, all law enforcement officers — from sheriffs to park rangers to police — will spend at least four hours in a classroom and interacting with dogs to learn how to peacefully handle encounters.

On May 4, 2015 Nadir Soofi and Elton Simpson drove from Phoenix to Garland, Texas to carry out a terror attack against conservatives hosting a Mohammed cartoon contest. When they arrived on scene, they were immediately shot and killed by police after opening fire outside the building.

It turns out Soofi purchased his gun under the Holder Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious back in 2010. As a reminder, Operation Fast and Furious was a program that ran from 2009-2010 in which federal agents purposely allowed the sale of thousands of weapons, including handguns, AK-47s and .50-caliber rifles, to known drug cartels. Agents deliberately allowed weapons to be trafficked and lost in Mexico. Now, Barack Obama's bloodiest scandal has hit home once again. Richard Serrano at the LA Times has the incredible details:

A gay man died in a Texas jail after officials failed to give him his prescribed medicine.

On March 13, Jesse Jacobs—who was serving a 30-day sentence for driving while intoxicated—suffered a seizure and was rushed to the hospital from the Galveston County Jail. He was pronounced dead in the emergency room.

Jacobs, 32, was detoxing from Xanax, which he’d taken for a decade to treat anxiety. He brought his Xanex with him when he checked into jail on March 6, but jail staffers did not administer it while he was incarcerated.

“I’m angry,” says Jacobs’ father, Jesse Sr, from KTRK-TV. “Because as far as I’m concerned, they executed my son just as sure as if they put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.”

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The Galveston County coroner’s office declared Jacobs died from a seizure, but the jail was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Behavioral psychologist who trains law enforcement officers to shoot first and deal with the consequences later is profiting mightily when they go to trial and he is called upon to testify on their behalf, reports the New York Times.

Relying upon his own research — that an editor for The American Journal of Psychology calls “pseudoscience” — Dr. William J. Lewinski offers seminars to law enforcement departments around the country, telling police officers they can be shot by a suspect within a quarter of a second should the suspect be armed.

Should an officer go to trail, or face a grand jury indictment, Lewinski is there to defend their actions for $1,000 an hour.

While a string of high profile incidents involving police shooting unarmed suspects has roiled the country, Lewinski continues to tell cops that they can’t wait to act or they may end up dead.

According to attorneys who have faced off with him in court, Lewinski is consistent in his opinion that police acted properly, even when videos and forensics evidence say otherwise.

“He won’t give an inch on cross-examination,” explained Elden Rosenthal, a lawyer who represented the family of James Jahar Perez, killed in the 2004 Portland police shooting. Rosenthal added that attorneys defending cops can count on Lewinski to help their client’s case, saying “They know that he’s battle-hardened in the courtroom, so you know exactly what you’re getting.”

According to attorneys, Lewinski is adept at giving long and winding answers to questions put to him, creating doubt within the minds of jurors and leading them to believe that the officer truly believed he or she was imminent danger of being shot or assaulted.

In the past several years, Lewinski has offered his expert testimony in a multitude of nationally watched cases, including the shooting of Oscar Grant in Oakland, immortalized in the film Fruitvale Station.

Lewinski is currently assisting in the defense of two Albuquerque police officers charged with the murder of a homeless man accused of camping illegally.

Because Lewinski — who received his doctorate from the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, an accredited but alternative Cincinnati school — published his private research in police magazines instead of behavioral science journals, fellow psychologists say that his conclusions are questionable since it his work has not been peer-reviewed.

Despite that, law enforcement agencies from sheriff’s departments to the Justice Department are willing to pay the doctor thousands of dollars for clinics and seminars on use of force.

Said John Burton, a California lawyer who specializes in police misconduct cases, “People die because of this stuff. When they give these cops a pass, it just ripples through the system.”

A former Orange County deputy at the center of a WUSA9 caught on camera investigation now faces felony charges, and the man he arrested has been set free.

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The Orange County deputy charged Fitzgerald with three felonies after pulling him over in 2014 for flashing his bright beams.

Orange County officials will not disclose under what conditions he left the department, but he hasn't been a deputy since 2014.

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The former deputy, 37-year-old Carl Story, arrested Fitzgerald for refusing to sign a summons and threw him onto a four-lane highway claiming Fitzgerald was resisting arrest.

At the moment, it turned from a traffic violation into a felony that could have sent Fitzgerald to prison for 16 years.

Authorities charged Fitzgerald with assaulting police, but experts who reviewed the video at the request of WUSA9 said the grainy dash cam video did not show evidence that anyone assaulted police.

Based upon Deputy Story's claim that Fitzgerald's forehead damaged the hood of his car and that the deputy and another officer were injured throwing Story onto a four-lane highway, prosecutors charged Fitzgerald with multiple felonies.

The twist in the four-month long investigation came Friday, one week after Fredericksburg attorney Marcel Jones agreed to represent Fitzgerald without charge.

Jones took the case after seeing the WUSA9 investigation that uncovered missing audio on the only known working camera, cameras that should have been there but were not, and cameras that may have recorded parts of the arrest but were never released.

Virginia courts will appoint attorneys to defendants without resources to hire an attorney, but there's a catch.

Although Fitzgerald qualified, Virginia requires people like Fitzgerald to pay for their court-appointed attorneys themselves if they are found guilty.

Until the past week, Fitzgerald had run out of money and run out of hope.

"If it wasn't for you guys, man, I mean you changed my life," Fitzgerald said to the WUSA9 investigative team upon leaving court a free man. "On behalf of my family we thank you so much."

He credited WUSA9 and Jones with his release.

Kelowna RCMP has launched an internal investigation after one of its members pulled over a motorist who accused the Mountie of distracted driving. The exchange was caught me on tape.

My friend took this on her smartphone and posted it on Twitter. I texted her and she said the woman had gotten in a car accident and called the police to come to the scene. This man showed up and she left the car to talk to him, but as she began walking, he drew his gun and shouted at her."

Police officers from the NYPD's 25th precinct in East Harlem New York over heard an argument between a shop keeper and a patron. When they approached the shop keeper and asked for his ID, the man informed them that he would provide his identification as soon as he finished "closing up".

While on his way to close the last section of his store, after closing the first section, the shop keeper was grabbed by one of the NYPD officers. When he resisted the officer's attempt to restrain him, another officer can be seen arriving on the scene, immediately grabbing the man by the head, and dragging him down to the ground.

Once on the ground, the man was engaged by 7 officers attempting to handcuff the suspect. As the growing crowd began to verbally protest to the man's apparent assault, an unidentified officer can be seen grabbing his pepper spray, aiming it at the crowd, and threatening to use it on the non-combative audience.

The man is quickly hurled into a waiting police cruiser and driven to the precinct. All the officers involved in the incident disappear from the location in less 30 seconds once he is removed.

The event took place on E 124th and Lexington, in front of the Bottle Recycling Center which is located next to the Rainbow clothing store in East Harlem.