Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey should have prosecuted a sheriff’s deputy for attacking a shackled inmate in a courtroom, a judge ruled Friday evening.

Still, Denver District Court Chief Judge Michael Martinez stopped short of calling for a special prosecutor or ordering Morrissey’s office to press an assault charge against the deputy. Legally speaking, he ruled, it’s too late.

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In response to Padilla’s recent petition, Martinez scrambled this week to schedule the review hearing for Friday — the third anniversary of the attack and the day the statute of limitations for a felony charge would have expired.

Judge Martinez – as well as the activists and community watchdogs who filled his courtroom — had expected Morrissey to appear in person to explain why he hadn’t pressed charges against Lovingier. A gauntlet of TV journalists waited outside the courtroom for Morrissey to show up.

But he didn’t. His office explained that, shortly before it learned Thursday that the emergency hearing would be held Friday, Morrissey had flown to Montana to attend a wedding.

“He didn’t know about it,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Jackson told the judge.
In his boss’s absence, Jackson explained the decision not to prosecute Lovingier. For one thing, he said, Waller has a long criminal history and habit of trying to intimidate sheriff’s deputies – including, as Lovingier has told it, “growling” like a bear at deputies before being escorted that day into court.

Jackson said he believed Lovingier’s account that Waller had lost his balance while speaking with the judge and that Lovingier helped “ease Waller to the ground.” Hitting the courtroom wall, Jackson said, “was sort of a confluence of momentum that occurred.”

Jackson said he took the word of three other sheriff’s deputies who witnessed the incident and said Lovingier did nothing wrong.

When questioned by Judge Martinez about the extent of his investigation, Jackson acknowledged that he never questioned Waller or Judge Burd, who viewed Lovingier’s handling of the case as excessive.

Jackson said the forehead laceration Waller suffered in the attack didn’t qualify as a serious bodily injury – an essential factor for a felony assault charge. Had Waller been a woman, Jackson said, the injury might have been prosecution worthy.

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Morrissey hasn’t prosecuted any law enforcement officers for on-duty excessive force incidents – including killing – in his 10 years in office. In recent months, community activists organized an unsuccessful effort to recall him and many looked to this hearing as a chance for him to finally be held accountable.

“Like the judge said, it’s a hollow victory,” said State Rep. Beth McCann, a former prosecutor who’s running to replace Morrissey.

Cooks was charged with resisting arrest for refusing to show ID (which is not a crime). Those charges were dropped.

Still, the city is saying the officers did nothing wrong.

“The Barstow Police Department continues to be proactive in training its officers to assess and handle interactions with emotionally charged individuals while conducting an investigation, for the protection of everyone involved,” the official statement on this incident says.

“This incident was in no way racially motivated, as implied by the ACLU,” it continued. “Barstow is a racially diverse community, as is our Police Department, and we affirm our Police Department’s commitment to protect and serve all of our residents.”

An Oklahoma man said he was beaten black and blue by a Purcell police officer.

Chris Barger said he was dropping off a friend at an apartment complex when a police officer pulled over and shone a spotlight through his window.

Police said Barger got out with his hand in his pocket, and that's when the scuffle began.

It’s not an easy night for Barger to talk about.

“I just started screaming for someone to help me, and he began hitting me even harder and faster,” Barger said.

Barger suffered a broken nose and severe bruising after the incident Monday night.

It began when he was sitting in his car at 7th and Taylor.

“He begins to shine his light in my car window repeatedly and, after a while, I decided maybe I should get out of the vehicle and ask the officer what the problem is,” Barger said.

A police report showed the officer pointed his gun at Barger, and Barger put his hands up. Then, Barger said, the officer put his gun back and put him in a headlock.

Barger tried to pull away.

“By the time he threw me on the ground and hit me a couple times with his elbow, at that point, I was like this isn’t a police officer, this is just some guy here to kill me,” Barger said.

Another officer got there and arrested Barger for assault and battery on an officer.

The police report showed Barger knocked off the officer’s glasses.

“I was flinching every time one walked by me ever since in the police station,” Barger said.

Barger spent the night in jail for the first time in his life, where he said the other inmates showed him compassion.

“They brought me chairs and helped me sit down. They were better than the police were to me," Barger said. "It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. The police are supposed to be the good guys."

Wednesday, the police chief said he had not talked to the officer involved but, from what he understands, the officer didn't do anything wrong.

He did say an internal investigation is not out of the question.

Barger is due in court Friday and does not have a criminal record.

Montgomery County dispatchers got three phone calls Wednesday morning, all from the scene.

The first was a woman calling around 3:00 a.m. worried about a man trying to break in.

Caller: Someone is trying to break into my house
Dispatcher: Can you see someone or hear someone, what’s going on?
Caller: Someone is banging on the door.

The dispatcher follows protocol and asks the caller questions for several minutes.
Then appears to end the call saying…

Dispatcher: Keep an eye out for the officer and call us back if you hear anything else.

About an hour goes by and help has not arrived. The woman decided to take matters into her own hands, fatally shooting the intruder.

22-year-old DeBrandon Dickerson, of Detroit, was trying to get inside an upstairs window at the house on Richmond Avenue, when the woman shot him and called 911 for the second time that morning.

Caller: Someone broke into my home, I shot one.
Dispatcher: Someone broke into your house and you shot them?
Caller: Yes.

This time, the dispatcher remained on the line until help arrived.

A third call came in from a family member of Dickerson who found him with the gunshot wound to the chest.

2 NEWS learned it took Dayton Police more than an hour to respond to the initial call from that area. Captain Matt Haines with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office says each call is classified based on priority level. Priority one being the highest and priority nine being the lowest. Each level standing for a number of things.

Haines says the first call from the woman calling about the intruder was a priority three (suspicious persons call), which by policy means a two person crew will come when available.

The second call was classified as a priority one (shooting), which Haines says Dayton Police responded to within minutes.

2 NEW’S reporter Maytal Levi asked Captain Haines if the first dispatcher was supposed to remain on the line until help arrived. He said there is no policy in place that says that.

“I don’t believe it is fair to say that our employee “hung up” on the caller. However, our investigation will attempt to determine whether or not the initial phone call was handled properly by the call taker, if the incident was appropriately handled by our dispatcher responsible for Dayton Fifth District,” said Captain Matt Haines, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

According to Dayton Police at the time of th shooting there were seven officers and one sergeant on duty, all were working other calls.

The force told the Star in 2013 that Ebdon was disciplined for discreditable conduct, but wouldn’t disclose his penalty.

A recent court case has now filled in the blanks, with a Superior Court judge taking the rare step of saying that Ebdon “committed several criminal offences in the course of his duties.”

Durham police spokesman Dave Selby told the Star last week that Ebdon would not be available for an interview. He is not facing any criminal charges.

“Const. Ebdon continues to work for us,” said Selby. “Although I can’t discuss any internal personnel files, I can say any court ruling or comment by a justice that we become aware of is taken seriously and reviewed.”

Toronto police committed “egregious wrongful conduct” after they planted loose heroin on the centre console of a drug suspect’s car to create a pretext for searching the vehicle, a judge has found.

In January 2014, Toronto police arrested Nguyen Son Tran in the city’s Chinatown after finding 11 grams of plastic-wrapped heroin tucked behind the steering column of his car. But Ontario Superior Court Judge Edward Morgan ruled last week that officers never had the right to search the car in the first place and the officers knew that, so they scattered a small amount of loose powder in a visible location next to the driver’s seat.

“I conclude from all of this that the loose heroin was placed on the console of the Toyota by the police after their search, and was not left there by the defendant prior to the search,” Morgan said as he stayed the charges against Tran.

Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash said Thursday an internal investigation is underway by the Professional Standards Unit.

When a paramedic from Northeast Fire Protection District went to the Pine Lawn jail last September to check out an inmate with abdominal pain and bleeding, he told police officers and jailers the inmate needed to go the emergency room, according to his report.

The paramedic wrote that a police officer had started paperwork for the release and the inmate had changed into his street clothes to get ready to board the ambulance. But then a police supervisor canceled the release. The inmate, Bernard Scott, 44, who was being held in lieu of $360 bail for traffic cases, was ordered to change back into his jumpsuit and led back to a holding cell.

Before leaving the station, the paramedic tried one more time.

“PD again advised by EMS that pt should be transferred to ED for further medical attention,” his report said. But the answer was still no.

Just 14 minutes later, the jail had to call another ambulance. Now Scott was unconscious, his muscles stiff. He was aggressive, difficult to pin down and his posture indicated possible brain damage, an EMT’s report said.

Police officers disclosed five minutes after the second ambulance arrived that they had found Scott hanging by his neck from a shoelace tied to his cell door.

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Scott survived. In an interview on Thursday, Scott said he was in a coma for more than 11 days and hospitalized almost three weeks. He said he doesn’t remember trying to hang himself and doesn’t think he would do that.

“Why would I hang myself?” he asked. “I was in on traffic tickets.”

The incident in scandal-plagued Pine Lawn led to an internal review that went nowhere. Police officers and jail workers submitted statements that contradicted each other and the paramedic’s report. An examination of available public records by a Post-Dispatch reporter found no documented effort to sort out discrepancies.

Despite a new Connecticut law that holds police officers liable for arresting citizens for recording them in public, New Haven police officers did just that last month when they arrested a young man for recording them in public, charging him with interfering.

But the video shows they were the ones interfering with Mykel Armour’s right to record.

However, New Haven police officer K. Malloy (first name likely Kyle) tried to justify the harassment by claiming they had received “a call for loitering.”

But the video also shows there were numerous other citizens in the area – who were not recording – and were not ordered to hand over their identification for suspicion of loitering.

Besides, they did not even charge him with loitering, but with interfering, which is one of those contempt of cop charges police use when they do not want to be recorded.

The truth is, they just wanted to send him a message to think twice about recording cops in public – something they have done regularly over the years, which is why the department was pressured into introducing a general order reminding officers that they are not allowed to arrest citizens for recording in 2011.

"Not this, we're going to send to our guy in the Anti-Terrorism Unit."

To U.S. Border Patrol Agent Florez, "We're guessing he's somebody that likes to try to get law enforcement in trouble by uh,", "I mean, obviously all these cameras are what they are.", "Yeah, he's got a lot of money in cameras."

"I don't think this person should ever have a badge or a gun again," Blake, 35, said a day after surveillance video of the arrest outside a Manhattan hotel - and details about previous complaints over the officer's use of force - became public.

"I don't think it's too much to ask," he said.

Blake, who had been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world before retiring after the 2013 U.S. Open, was misidentified by a cooperating witness as being part of a scheme to sell fraudulently purchased merchandise when he was tackled, police have said.

The arresting officer, James Frascatore, who has been with the NYPD for four years, has been named in several civil rights lawsuits alleging excessive force. He has also been the subject of four civilian complaints - an above-average number for NYPD officers, according to complaint data.

"I think that that kind of police officer tarnishes the badge, which I have the utmost respect for and I believe that the majority of police officers do great work and they're heroes," Blake told the AP. "So this person doesn't ever belong in the same sentence with the heroes that are doing the right kind of police work and keeping the public safe."

A retired Chicago police officer is charged with threatening to harm a coroner and other officials who are investigating the fatal shooting of a northern Illinois officer unless they categorized that death a suicide, authorities said Sunday.

Joseph A. Battaglia, 54, was arrested at his suburban Chicago home on Saturday on two counts of felony disorderly conduct and remains behind bars at the Lake County Jail on $100,000 bond, Lake County Sheriff's Office said. The Oak Lawn man is due in court again Tuesday.

The Sept. 1 shooting death of Fox Lake Police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz prompted a massive manhunt for potential suspects. But the county coroner, Dr. Thomas Rudd, said last week that he couldn't rule the death a homicide, an accident or suicide.

Gliniewicz, a 30-year police veteran who was nearing retirement, radioed he was chasing three suspects before the shooting, but no suspects have been arrested.

Battaglia allegedly threatened Rudd and his staff and task-force investigators in a telephone call Friday. In a statement announcing the allegations Sunday, the sheriff's department didn't offer other details, including Battaglia's possible motive.

A Pennsylvania man has filed a civil rights lawsuit against three Town of Warwick police officers, saying he was unlawfully arrested and prosecuted for having a painkiller prescription filled at a pharmacy.

Joseph Quattrochi’s lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, also names the Town of Warwick and the Town of Warwick Police Department as defendants.

The three officers – Michael Moon, Jason Brasier and Felix Oresto – are being sued individually and in their official capacities.

The allegations stem from a July 3, 2014 incident when Quattrochi, a Tamiment, Pa., resident, came to pick up the painkiller, oxycodone, from the Apple Valley Pharmacy in Warwick. The prescription, written by Dr. Carl Anderson, had been dropped off a couple of days earlier.

According to the lawsuit, a pharmacy employee had contacted Warwick police and reported that the prescription was illegible and not properly filed.

After Quattrochi left the pharmacy with the medication, he was stopped by the three officers and arrested for forgery and unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Quattrochi told the officers that the prescription was not a forgery and was given by his doctor, the lawsuit says, but he was taken to town court, arraigned and denied bail.

According to the lawsuit, Quattrochi spent six days in jail and was released July 9 without bail. All charges against him were dismissed Sept. 5.

The lawsuit says the three officers had a duty to contact Dr. Anderson or take other steps to determine if the prescription was genuine.

By arresting and prosecuting Quattrochi, the lawsuit says, they deprived him of “his constitutional right to be free from false arrest under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.”

Warwick police did not return phone calls for comment.

James Gerstner, deputy supervisor for Warwick, said the town has received the lawsuit and had forwarded paperwork to its attorney and its insurer.

Quattrochi is seeking unspecified monetary damages and attorney fees.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have been accessing personal medical files without a warrant, generating a backlash from doctors and privacy advocates who say the practice is intrusive and unconstitutional — and have taken the agency to court.

“It’s just not right,” Texas attorney Terri Moore said.

The controversial record searches are part of the government’s effort to crack down on illegal “pill mills” and prescription drug abuse. But they’ve set up a clash over privacy rights, and a legal battle is now playing out in the 5th and 9th Circuit appeals courts. Lower courts have issued conflicting rulings to date, with one backing the DEA and another demanding the agency get warrants if it wants to look at patient records.

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Further, critics say the agency has “tricked” doctors into handing over documents by showing up with state medical board officials for searches and not identifying themselves, in turn giving the impression they’re with the board.

Mari Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, did not deny in a 2014 congressional hearing that the DEA did this on numerous occasions. She said the board often conducts joint investigations with the DEA, and “what they [DEA] do is up to them.”

A Brooklyn construction worker claims that an NYPD cop stole $1,300 from him in Coney Island last year after he intervened in an illegal stop and frisk, according to a Brooklyn federal court suit.

Lamard Joye was preparing to meet his wife to celebrate her birthday when he saw several officers surrounding Terrell Haskins in September of last year, papers state.

The cops confronted Haskins claiming that he fit the description of a suspect who was wearing a hoodie and had exited a nearby building. But Haskins countered that he wasn’t wearing one and hadn’t been at the address. He was eventually pepper sprayed after objecting to the stop.

After Joye approached the scene advised Haskins to “give them your arms,” Officer William Montemarano “pushed Lamard against a fence, went into Lamard’s pocket and removed Lamard’s cell phone and approximately $1,300 in cash,” the suit states.

When Joye demanded his cash back, Montemarano pepper sprayed him, according to court papers.

Joye’s sister, former West Virginia University basketball player Lateefah Joye, approached Montemarano and demanded his badge number before the cop blasted her with pepper spray, the suit states.

The siblings were never arrested or charged and Haskins had disorderly conduct charges dropped, according to the suit,

“Lamard’s money was never returned,” the case states.

The three plaintiffs are suing the city, Montemarano and several other unnamed officers for a slew of civil rights violations.

“The suit will be reviewed,” a city Law Department spokesman said.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has declined to press criminal charges against a Denver police officer who shot and killed a Native American man in July. The man, Paul Castaway, holding a knife to his own throat and threatening to kill himself, was walking toward officers when Officer Michael Traudt fired three shots into Castaway's midsection. Along with a nine-page report explaining his decision, Morrissey on Monday released surveillance footage of the shooting.

The shooting spurred protests in Denver this summer, as Castaways' family disputed the initial police account that claimed Castaway, 35, came "dangerously close" to officers with a knife. At the time, they said officers didn't have to shoot him, and he was clearly mentally ill and in need of help. Prior to releasing the video publicly, Morrissey had shown it to members of Castaway's family, who said it showed him holding the knife to his throat—not pointing it in the direction of the police.

Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Joshua White, 31, was arrested on Friday night following an incident of alleged child abuse. After an initial investigation, White was charged and taken to the county jail where he was placed on bond, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

White is placed on administrative leave and relieved of all law enforcement duties. The suspension from duty will remain in effect until a complete and thorough administrative review on the incident is concluded, the press release stated. An internal investigation will also ensue after criminal charges are concluded.

According to White’s arrest report, the incident was believed to take place around or on Thursday in which a witness claimed White had grabbed a four-year-old child by the neck and began "banging the child’s head on a hard surface multiple times with enough force to allow for bruising on the victim’s forehead," the report stated.

When questioned by an SRSO investigators at his residence, White reportedly said he would talk with the deputy about the incident, however before questioning began White invoked his right to counsel, according to the report.

Based on statements from the victim and the witness, including the findings of a forensic exam conducted on the child, the investigating deputy and department supervisors determined abuse had taken place.

White is facing once count of a third degree felony charge of child abuse without great bodily harm. His bond was set at $5,000 per statute, according to the sheriff’s office.

On August 28, 2015, I was taken into custody by the Beaverton Police. My Probation Officer filed a warrant for my arrest because I failed to "Abide by his directive" which was: Don't film the police. He and I weren't seeing "eye 2 eye" on that particular directive and he suggested that we take this in front of a judge so the judge can decide if it was a lawful order. On 9/9/15, I appeared in court to facee the judge who then signed off on the directive, making it official. So I can no longer film or photograph the police until May of 2016.

The War on Cops is a grossly inaccurate response to recent police killings which are on track for another year that will rival the safest on record. Gunfire deaths by police officers are down 27 percent this year, according to the Officer Down memorial page, and police killings in general are at a 20-year low, given current numbers for 2015. Police deaths in Barack Obama’s presidency are lower than the past four administrations, going all the way back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Not a single iota of evidence supports a War on Police, but it has become a battle cry among some in the academy.

Over 80 percent of police departments in the United States are facing issues with low recruitment numbers. As an Iraq War veteran I sought to solidify my chance of employment working in law enforcement by attending a local police academy. I enjoyed serving my country as military police and will do such now as a sworn police officer back home.

What are they telling us in a post-Michael Brown academy? The culture of police brutality is infrequently addressed, but what is continually mentioned is the notion that there is a War on Police. By whom? Depends on whom you ask.

Some instructors blame the Obama administration, which has provided extra funding to police departments to hire Iraq War veterans such as myself. Others, citing news organizations and politicians, try to pin it on the Black Lives Matter movement.

How are they attempting to substantiate this? By highlighting a few high-profile police killings in the past few months, especially the tragic, execution-style death of a Texas sheriff at a gas station. Many activists tried to tie the accused murderer, Shannon Miles, to the Black Lives Matter movement in the immediate aftermath as a motive. He had no ties to the movement.

Miles, however, had been previously declared mentally incompetent.

“The Obama administration and Eric Holder are undermining the police. We have officers dying left and right and he’s dicking off in Alaska,” says one of my instructors, referring to the president’s trip to Alaska last week.

Our instructor is likely trying to warn us to take heed of the dangers of the job, and not expect to be thanked by politicians for doing it. But he has made the government and the people we’re meant to serve out to be boogeymen in the process.

Bad guys have been shooting cops for years, but this is neither a new nor growing phenomenon. A whole generation has grown up knowing the phrase “**** the police” as a song lyric, a response to the mass incarceration culture spawned from a War on Drugs that numbers show disproportionately and unfairly targets black Americans.

I understand as a law enforcement professional—and as someone capable of fairly reading mountains of data—that the Drug War has been unfairly used as a tool of oppression against the black community. It is why the American public overall has shown they have less confidence in police in recent times.

But there is no War on Police. This Us vs. Them mentality still prevails even in fresh academy cadets. Perhaps some of these people will become future jackbooted, truncheon-wielding oppressors. Or perhaps they will encounter the reality that betrays the fear they are taught.