In the early afternoon of July 16, 2012, a frightened mother called the North Port Police Department to report that her 18-year-old son could be suicidal.

“My daughter ... found a noose hanging in the garage,” the working mother told the police dispatcher. “I’m afraid he might try to hurt himself.”

North Port responded by sending police K-9 handler Keith Bush, the current leader of a unit that has won regional and national awards at police dog contests, but that has also come under scrutiny at home for unleashing its dogs on juveniles, unarmed suspects and at least one suicidal citizen who was not charged with a crime.

On this day, before he or any other officer reached Jared Lemay’s home, Bush sent a message to fellow K-9 handler Michael Dietz: “COME GET UR BITE.”

Minutes later, records show, Bush messaged Dietz again: “IM GONNA TAKE UR BITE IF U DONT HURRY UP.”

Lemay, who was found unarmed and hiding in a trash can in his garage, was bitten in the face and back by Dietz’s dog, a Belgian Malinois named Cammo.

In police photographs, Lemay’s face is criss-crossed with streaks of blood. Deep puncture wounds mar his cheeks.

After Lemay was taken to the North Port emergency room, another North Port police officer messaged Dietz commending him on K-9 Cammo’s first bite.

“CONGRATS,” Officer William Carter wrote.

...

Charles Mesloh, one of the nation’s leading researchers on police K-9 uses of force, called Bush’s messages to Dietz “horrifying” and said they should invite a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the North Port Police Department.

Andrea Flynn Mogensen, chair of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida’s legal panel, said the messages show what appears to be a premeditated attack on Lemay by police and an excessive use of force.

A must watch video! Watch Fort Myers Police Department with Lee County Sheriff Department make a traffic stop. That turns into a bodily rectum search, as four to five officers hold him down. As a officer cuts his boxers off and put on glover to enter his rectum. Listen for his cry for mercy while his arms is bend up as a officer goes inside his rectum. NOW SHEIRFF MIKE SCOTT AND CHIEF DENNIS ED MAY HAVE SOME EXPLAINING TO DO FOR THE ACTIONS THATS BEEN CARRIED OUT IN OUR COMMUNITY! THIS IS UNEXPLAINABLE!

Florida statute 901.211

“No person arrested for a traffic, regulatory, or misdemeanor offense, except in a case which is violent in nature, which involves a weapon, or which involves a controlled substance, shall be strip searched unless:

(a) There is probable cause to believe that the individual is concealing a weapon, a controlled substance, or stolen property; or

(3) Each strip search shall be performed by a person of the same gender as the arrested person and on premises where the search cannot be observed by persons not physically conducting or observing the search pursuant to this section. Any observer shall be of the same gender as the arrested person.

(4) Any body cavity search must be performed under sanitary conditions.

A San Juan police officer has been suspended after he was caught on video using "excessive force" against a man in handcuffs.

San Juan police confirmed that the video obtained exclusively by CBS 4 News is from a body camera worn by one of its officers. The video is currently being used as evidence in an ongoing internal investigation.

"It's going to be a lengthy investigation, but we want to make sure that the public is aware of the fact that that's the whole reason body-worn cameras were installed here in San Juan. To look at these incidents from a different perspective - an independent perspective," said San Juan police Chief Juan Gonzalez.

This is the first time the department has had to utilize the body cameras to address possible misconduct on behalf of one of their officers.

"The original call was that they were checking up on a runaway. Obviously, it turned into a violent situation and officers responded to back up that officer," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said that the suspect was taken into custody on Monday night for resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer.

The officer, who has been identified as J.P Galindo, however, doesn't show up to the scene until after the suspect had already been subdued, handcuffed and walking with other officers to be taken to the police department.

"As chief of police, I expect that the officers report the actions of other officers and that's what was done. That's why (Galindo) was immediately suspended."

Galindo, a six year veteran with the department, was suspended with pay for using excessive force Tuesday morning, pending the outcome of the internal investigation.

"I got zero tolerance for that type of behavior and I think it's important for us to take appropriate action. We've been consulting with other state agencies and the district attorney's office as well to see how we proceed with this case," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez told CBS 4 News that this is not the first complaint made against Galindo.

A sheriff’s office and a District judge are demonstrating just how low the state can go in stealing cash and property from innocent people. For these enforcers of the drug war, even the minor burden of proof needed through Civil Asset Forfeiture is too much trouble.

The Frontier, an investigative group in Tulsa, found that District Judge James Caputo and the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office skirted the law to direct even more of the citizens’ assets into department coffers.

“Though judicial assignments are supposed to be random, the same criminal judge has been assigned to hear more than half of the civil cases in which the sheriff’s office sought to seize cash and guns from citizens through an unclaimed property law, an investigation by The Frontier and NewsOn6 has found.

Tulsa District Court policies regarding judicial assignments and transfers were not followed in several of the cases, which involve cash, guns and other property seized by the sheriff’s office from hundreds of citizens.

Courthouse records show the sheriff’s office tried to ensure that most of the cases would be heard by District Judge James Caputo, a former deputy whose daughter works at the sheriff’s office. Though judges are supposed to be randomly assigned per courthouse policy, Caputo’s name was printed on the petitions filed by the Sheriff’s Office.”

Using a provision of Oklahoma law Title 22, the sheriff’s office sought to take possession of “unclaimed property or money in Sheriff’s possession.” It can then keep the cash and sell the property, using the loot “for the purchase of equipment, materials or supplies that may be used in crime prevention, training or programming.”

However, the seized property is most often obtained through searches and arrests, and should be treated as civil asset forfeiture, according to an attorney representing 14 people with claims against the sheriff’s office. But Judge Caputo is mum on this topic.

“When asked whether the cases should have been filed as individual forfeiture cases, Caputo abruptly ended the interview.

“’You know what? We’re done,’ he said.”

Even property obtained from burglaries is fair game. Several victims of burglaries have written to request the return of their property, but are unsuccessful because the sheriff’s office did not match a name to the item.

This failure to add owner names to the records of seized cash and property, which allows it to be classified as “unclaimed property,” is no accident.

“A July 2013 court filing for the disposal of property ‘whether stolen, embezzled or otherwise obtained’ is missing an exhibit list that is supposed to contain the items being considered for seizure, along with the name and address of the each last known owner.
When asked where the exhibit list was for the case, a court clerk searched the file and computer system and said: “Sometimes they come in from the sheriff’s office without one.

…Several other files contain exhibit lists that only contain case numbers and property room numbers — no name and address for the last known owner of the property in question.”

The sheriff’s office has not supplied information on how much income is generated from the “unclaimed property” scam. Under this law, citizens have only 10 days to claim their property or cash. Even when the owners show up in court to claim their cash and property, the court often says they have no proof and sends them walking.

Judge Caputo has overseen five cases on behalf of the sheriff’s office, and is intending to hear his sixth, where the sheriffs seek to keep $170,000 in cash and hundreds of guns owned by more than 900 people.

Caputo admits that someone from the sheriff’s office came to him for help clearing out the property room. Caputo says that he got permission from former, now-deceased, presiding judge Carlos Chappelle to handle the cases, although he has no documentation of such.

...

The eleven-year-old girl shrieked in horror as the shower curtain was ripped away, leaving her exposed to the view of a large male stranger. Her sense of violation was compounded by the threat of immediate, violent death: The marauder was wearing body armor and aiming an assault rifle at the naked, terrified child. Downstairs, the offender's comrades were ransacking the house and barking profane orders at the traumatized child's family. Sterling Harrison, her 19-year-old brother, was sitting in front of a game console when three of the invaders burst into his upstairs room, bound him, and shoved him down the stairway. Her terrified siblings - one thirteen years of age, the other seven - were corralled and imprisoned at gunpoint in the living room along with the rest of the family.

The invaders were police, of course. Nobody in the home was suspected of committing a criminal offense. No evidence of criminal misconduct was found. The SWAT raid was carried out after 10:00 PM, in violation of municipal ordinances. The rationale for this act of state terrorism was the drug-related arrest, nearly two weeks earlier, of Mordsen Box, the 11-year-old girl's estranged father, who hadn't resided at the address for several months.

This after-dark military raid took place at a residence located less than three miles from the White House. Thirteen days before the raid, Mr. Box was arrested by Metro D.C. Police after five ounces of marijuana were found following a pretext traffic stop. Officer Taylor Volpe, who conducted the stop, claimed - falsely, according to the family's lawsuit against the MPD - that the rear license plate of Box's car was partially obstructed by a plastic cover. Once the stop was underway, Volpe - in keeping with his indoctrination as an opportunistic road pirate - asked if there was "anything illegal" in the vehicle. Like countless others in similar situations, Box made the tragic mistake of answering a question the officer had no right to ask.

He stated that he wasn't "aware" of anything illegal in his car, and that Volpe could carry out the search "if you have to.""OK, so I can look?" Volpe reiterated, inducing the intimidated driver to make his consent explicit. Within seconds the officer had found the marijuana, which was confiscated along with $180 in cash that was found in Box's wallet. His expired driver's license listed 1054 Quebec Place NW as his home address.

...

A Bartow Police Department officer is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Polk County Sheriff’s Office deputies on Tuesday arrested officer Randy Velez, age 27.

Velez’s wife reported to the Bartow Police Department that her husband told her he had sex with a 15-year-old girl.

At the request of the Bartow Police Department, PCSO detectives conducted an investigation.

During the investigation and post-Miranda interview, investigators say Velez confessed to having sex with the girl.

He was charged with one count of Lewd Battery and one count of Lewd Molestation.

Velez was booked into the Polk County Jail on Wednesday morning.

The US Supreme Court gave law enforcement ability to stop and interrogate motorists without individualized suspicion through drunk driving roadblocks set up according to a few simple requirements. Kentucky's high court last week chastised the state police for setting up a driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) roadblock without bothering to meet the requirements, or "recommendations," laid out in the 2003 Kentucky v. Buchanon case. On Thursday, the high court made those recommendations mandatory.

The justices made the decision in the context of a DUI checkpoint set up on Kentucky Highway 68 in Gravel Switch on February 2, 2008. Although no officer witnessed Billy *** driving impaired that evening, the motorist was ordered to perform field sobriety tests. After *** failed, he was booked for DUI. He subsequently appealed his conviction on the grounds that the roadblock failed to meet the bare minimum standards set by high court precedent.

No signs were placed indicating that a DUI checkpoint was in progress, and the media were not given any notice that checkpoints might happen. The troopers who blocked traffic failed to wear "safety vests." These failures raised concerns among the high court justices.

"If law enforcement is permitted to continue conducting indiscriminate seizures of individuals at a roadblock without any basis in suspicion, we must ensure that officers do not abuse this privilege," Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr wrote for the court. "It is implicit in our analysis that without proper planning and notice, roadblocks are susceptible to the type of discretion and intrusion the Fourth Amendment exists to forbid. It is unclear to us here whether those discretion-limiting procedures were adequately performed."

Police officers are supposed to set up roadblocks with approval and guidance from their supervisors. Here, troopers called their sergeant who gave approval over the phone as the roadblock was being set up. Trooper Nathan Rhodes, the officer in charge of the roadblock, arrived twenty minutes after the roadblock began. Even though the justices considered this level of oversight "cursory," it was enough. The same cannot be said for the requirement of advance notice. The majority did not believe merely having troopers in uniform with marked cruisers sufficiently informed the public about what was taking place.

"In circumstances where the practices and procedures employed by law enforcement are constitutionally ambiguous, it is our duty to protect individuals against the risk of potentially unreasonable seizure without any suspicion of wrongdoing," the chief justice wrote. "Though we do not require rigid compliance with the Buchanon guidelines, we cannot continue to soften the edges of what is constitutionally reasonable."

The failure to display advance warning signs and wear safety vests was enough to render the roadblock unconstitutional. A copy of the decision is available in a 250k PDF file at the source link below.

On January 30, 2015, a health food store in Henderson called the police after a disgruntled customer, attempting to return some protein powder, allegedly threatened to rob them. The store described the suspect to police as a black male wearing a black and tan t-shirt who left in an SUV.

As police responded to the call, they quickly stopped the first person they saw, who happened to be Arturo Arenas-Alvarez. Arenas-Alvarez had just pulled up in the shopping center to do some shopping when police drew their weapons and demanded he put his hands in the air and step toward them.

Arenas-Alvarez did not appear to understand why multiple armed men were pointing their guns at him, so one officer asked him in Spanish to approach the vehicle.

Before Arenas-Alvarez makes it all the way to the vehicle, officers realized they had the wrong guy.

“That’s not him, dude. That’s not a black man in a black shirt,” one officer said to another.

However, they continued the detainment.

Officers begin to assure Arenas-Alvarez that he will be fine. “They thought that you were involved in a robbery. You don’t look like the person, so it’s OK now, OK?” one officer said. However, nothing could have been further from the truth.

As officers were telling Arenas-Alvarez that he’ll be okay, Sgt. James Mitchell can be heard on the radio telling the officers, “Stand by a couple of minutes. K9-1 is about two minutes out.”

During the display of gross incompetence of mistaking Arenas-Alvarez for a black man in a black shirt, Arenas-Alvarez’s 17-month-old daughter, Ayleen was strapped into her car seat in the SUV.

Before Arenas-Alvarez could communicate to the officers that his infant daughter was in the car, the “two minutes” had passed and Sgt. Mitchell arrived with his Belgian Malinois. Almost as soon as he exited the vehicle, Mithcell released the K-9 into the SUV of an entirely innocent man and his daughter.

“My baby,” Arturo Arenas-Alvarez can be heard pleading with officers in broken English. “I’ve got my baby.”

An officer then yelled out, “There’s an infant in that car! There’s an infant in that car!”

But it was too late. By the time the cops realized that their immediate escalation to violence was unnecessary – the damage had been done.

Ayleen’s blood curdling and heart-wrenching screams of agony can be heard on the dashcam. The 4-year-old dog, Doerak, was ripping into the baby’s flesh. By the time the dog let go of the infant, her right arm had been mauled. She was left with nine puncture wounds and abrasions.

After the incident was over, Mitchell can be heard blaming his fellow officers for releasing the dog.

“God damn, guys, you gotta f**king tell me!” he yelled. But Mitchell didn’t give the other officers any time to tell him before letting loose the dog.

“The last forearm, the guy didn’t have anything left but bone,” Mitchell can be heard telling other officers in an apparent attempt to downplay the severity of what he just did.

On the dashcam one officer can be heard saying that their response to this incident of mistaking a man and his daughter for a completely different looking man was “solid” and it could’ve been much worse.

“All that happened was totally solid. Just a sh*tty set of circumstances that all rolled into — what could’ve been much worse. So just get that whole timeline out there,” the officer said.

After the incident, Mitchell and Doerak were taken off the street as a routine practice, similar to that of officer-involved shootings. However, since then, Doerak and Mitchell have been released back to regular duty.

For the purposeful mauling of their infant daughter, the city of Henderson agreed to pay the family a whopping $13,000 to settle their claim. But the family is unable to get the $8,537.69 (amount after legal fees) without a court order.

Below is the horrifying video of the incident which illustrates the sheer violent and unaccountable nature of police in the US.

Grand juries are built to be a tool of prosecutors. They don’t hear from both sides in a case, like a trial jury would. They hear only from the prosecutor, who decides what evidence and testimony is presented.

That’s why the old saying goes that a grand jury will “indict a ham sandwich” if a prosecutor tells them to — because the prosecutor calls the shots. That saying, however, assumes the prosecutor wants to prosecute and, ultimately, secure a conviction.

The Rice case strongly suggests that the opposite is also true — grand juries will let the sandwich walk, if that’s what the prosecutor wants. In this case, McGinty used the grand jury as more of a sounding board for an exoneration of the potential defendants, rather than as a review of possible charges against them.

[White people see black boys as older, bigger and guiltier]

His 70-page report reads like defense counsel brief, not a neutral assessment of potential charges. (It even has headings like “Officers Loehmann and Garmback’s subsequent statements are consistent with the evidence in this case” and “The incident conforms to the Cleveland Police Department’s active shooter policy.”)

This approach — using the grand jury to review arguments on behalf of potential police defendants, not to prosecute them — fits the model of several recent inquiries of police shootings.

...

Just last week, Texas prosecutors announced that a grand jury declined to charge any Waller County jail officials in the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old woman who was arrested after a routine traffic stop caught on video and was later found dead in her cell. Jail staff said they discovered her hanging by a belt, an apparent suicide. Her family maintains that the circumstances are suspicious.

Prosecutors convened the grand jury to consider potential charges against the jail staff but then said they already concluded that her death was a suicide.

Which makes no sense.

If Bland killed herself, there is no crime to charge. The grand jury should have no charges to bring, and nothing to review.

If prosecutors believed she was killed, then they should have presented those charges to the grand jury. But the Texas prosecutors gave away their game by saying, essentially, that they asked jurors to consider potential charges for a crime they say didn’t happen. If that sounds hard to follow, it is, because the prosecutors are obfuscating on purpose.

...

These cases have exposed the failures of this model, however, for both citizens and officers alike. In instances of clearly justified police shootings, there’s no good reason that officers should face an automatic grand jury review of potential charges. As Americans, we ask police to risk their lives and sometimes take the lives of others — there’s no policy rationale for making their jobs more litigious simply because a prosecutor wants a uniform rule or political cover. We don’t need a grand jury, for example, to review the effective work of the officers who killed the San Bernardino shooters.

At the same time, prosecutors have an obligation to vigorously pursue potential crimes, no matter who commits them. It breeds mistrust and cynicism if the public believes prosecutors apply a different process and set of standards depending on the identity of a suspect.

Our founders put grand juries in the Constitution so that citizens could check overzealous prosecutors. As the Supreme Court noted in 1992, the purpose of a grand jury is to confirm that there is some “basis for bringing a criminal charge.”

In that 8-to-1 decision, the court explained, “It has always been thought sufficient to hear only the prosecutor’s side” before jurors give a green light for a prosecutor’s proposed charges. It is a historical oddity that today some prosecutors are using grand juries to present the defense’s side and avoid any charges at all.

These are the shocking injuries suffered by an innocent black teenager when a cop bludgeoned him with a flashlight.

The teen was injured after a chase by Grand Rapids, Michigan, police officer Sean McCamman, and his parents have now launched a lawsuit against the force.

The officer then hit the boy with the bulb end of the flashlight, and pictures show blood pouring from his head and stitches on his scalp after the incident in June 2014.

...

The boy, referred to as DB, was standing in a group of five and the officer chased him after vague reports of a black male carrying a gun, according to the lawsuit.

The officer caught him trying to scale a fence, threw him on the ground face-first and then started to bludgeon him with the flashlight.

He was charged with resisting and obstructing a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon after prosecutors argued that a gun found nearby belonged to him.

DB, who was just 15 at the time, was later cleared of all the charges, after the judge ruled the officer did not have reasonable grounds to suspect him of a charge, in March.
The teenager was cleared of the gun charges two months later.

His lawyers - Heath and Joshua Blanchard of Miel & Carr - are now claiming that the officer used 'unreasonable and excessive force'.

Former Deputy LAPD Chief of Police Stephen Downing explains why a law meant to target drug kingpins was harming everyday people since only 13 percent of seizure victims were ever charged with a crime - December 30, 2015

Since 2010, police in the state of Georgia have shot and killed 184 individuals, with every instance officially deemed a justified use of force. A contrary new investigation reveals that nearly half of those 184 suspects were either unarmed or were shot in the back by police. Can every single of these incidents truly be considered reasonable uses of force?

A truly impressive, in-depth investigative report from the Atlantic-Journal Constitution and Georgia’s Channel 2 Action News teams reveals the deeply troubling nature of police shootings in Georgia, and indeed, might be viewed as a microcosm of the issue of police abuse nationwide, showing the underlying propensity shared among law enforcement to use lethal force with little or no hesitation. Moreover, it shows that even under questionable circumstances, officers walk away free of any responsibility.

Speaking to the Atlantic-Journal Constitution, a lawyer who has handled a number of cases dealing with officer-involved shootings says it is simply not true “that officers are just looking for a reason to shoot someone.” While that argument may be true, it’s also reductionist; it ignores undeniably clear trends propelled along by, among other factors, racism and abuse of the mentally ill.

A north shore police officer was arrested Monday (Dec. 28) for allegedly stealing $1,600 from Hispanic men during several traffic stops. Laquinton Banks, 25, who had worked for the town of Independence Police Department for five months, was booked with committing hate crimes for targeting the Hispanic motorists, State Police said.

The investigation began Dec. 23 after the police department received a complaint that Banks had used his position to steal money from motorists, State Police said. The department placed Banks on leave and contacted State Police to investigate the allegations.

Troopers confirmed that Banks stole a total of $1,600 from non-English speaking men during four separate traffic stops, State Police said.

In addition to the hate crime charges, Banks was booked with felony theft and malfeasance in office at the Tangipahoa Parish Jail.