The officers began to question Faith about his cats on his property. Faith, who is legally blind, was not forthcoming. When the officers threatened to write him a ticket, Faith responded, "Well, write me a ticket or get the f**k out." However, things escalated when the officers threatened to “take care of” some of Faith’s cats. Faith answered, “No, you ain’t touching none of my cats,” and told them he’d pay the ticket when he received his paycheck.

At this, officer Cruche told Faith they were taking him to jail. Faith wrapped an arm around a post in his front yard and reached for a phone. Seeing this as an obstruction, officer Cruche pulled out his Taser.

He writes, “I deployed the Taser to Faith's left side arm. During the attempt to control Faith's arm, I realized the Taser was not having a meaningful affect.” The Taser had, in fact, a “meaningful affect,” but not on Faith. Officer Cruche had shot his partner, police chief Rodriguez. Rodriguez, shot in the forehead, was bleeding. Officer Cruche then attached another probe cartridge to the Taser and shot himself. Faith was then also shot.

Faith was then taken into police custody after receiving treatment at a hospital. He was given a summons for breach of peace and "interference with a peace officer causing injury." Eventually the charges were dropped and Faith was reunited with his cats.

Faith, who is already legally blind, lost his vision completely for an hour and half. He has since sued the police department for violating his constitutional rights.

Last week, a police officer for the San Marcos Police Department in Texas was jailed for knocking a woman’s teeth out during an illegal arrest on May 29.

James Angelo Palermo, 40, was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant.

Warrington, Florida (PNJ) -- Escambia County deputies climbed through the window of a Warrington couple's home in search of a suspect, despite having no search warrant, and shot two dogs, one of which died.

Cristina Moses, 32, and her fiancé, Travis Nicholas, 22, on Tuesday recounted what they said was a horrific scene that included one of about a half-dozen deputies shooting the dogs in the couple's bedroom after awakening the couple at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday and dragging them to the hallway.

A little girl was confiscated from her loving parents because they smoked marijuana, and given away to a foster mother who put her into a coma and killed her. Alexandria Hill, age 2, succumbed to her injuries after being “thrown to the ground.”

“We never hurt our daughter. She was never sick, she was never in the hospital, and she never had any issues until she went into state care,” said Joshua Hill, the girl’s natural father.

Hill says that his daughter was put in to more than one dangerous foster home.

SWAT teams and similar law enforcement tactics are an integral part of effective policing. In the battle against violence, gangs, and terrorism, they are law enforcement’s most potent weapon, and over the years have saved many innocent lives.
The FBI, which has earned the reputation of the world’s best trained, most professional, and most effective law enforcement agency, has used SWAT-type tactics since the Al Capone days, often stopping crime and criminals in their tracks.

But SWAT teams at the IRS? The Fish and Wildlife Service? EPA? NOAA (they predict the weather)? They all are reported to use them, often to enforce obscure and unintelligible regulations. Each time they do, it makes it more difficult for the FBI and urban police departments to effectively fight real crime.

In one outrageous example, a couple of weeks ago nine agents from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, together with four deputy sheriffs, all armed with assault weapons, raided the Society of St. Francis in Kenosha, Wisconsin to retrieve an abandoned baby deer named Giggles (you cannot make this stuff up). After shooting the defenseless fawn, the officers carried it out in a body bag. “It is just our policy,” explained the head of the assault unit.

It is no wonder that there’s been a growing pushback against the so-called “militarization” of the police in general and SWAT teams in particular. The editorial page of the Ogden Standard-Examiner—published in a Utah community where two such notorious incidents have occurred in recent years—has warned against “late-night, high-adrenaline police procedures leading to the increased possibility of violence.”

A couple of things going on in America are dramatically increasing the possibility of violence in these situations, which in the process undermines public support for legitimate law-enforcement tools. The first is the use of SWAT teams to serve search warrants on nonviolent offenders, enforce evictions, and otherwise get involved in cases where the use of force is unlikely to be necessary.

The second is the growing use of SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics by government agencies that have no business employing such methods. As mentioned, these include the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the National Fish and Wild Life Service, the National Park Service, and, perhaps the worst of all, the hated Internal Revenue Service.

The last thing this country needs is gun-toting government bureaucrats with battering rams as they carry out a liberal agenda. Not only is this level of force entirely inappropriate for such government agencies in a free society, but it is almost certain to empower untrained amateurs to make huge mistakes with deadly consequences.

Consider the case of Kenneth Wright. In 2011, an Education Department Inspector General’s Office SWAT team broke down his door because of unpaid student loans. Wright was at home with his young children. He was grabbed by the throat, dragged out of the house wearing his boxer shorts, and handcuffed.

Wright’s children, aged three, seven, and eleven, were then placed in a squad car while the government conducted a search of his home. “All I want is an apology for me and my kids and to get a new door,” Wright said later.

The Education Department, using predictable bureaucrat-ese, later argued that the Inspector General’s Office is semi-independent, so it wasn’t really their SWAT team that conducted the search. They also claimed the issue was more complicated than unpaid student loans. But the bottom line was a government entity not involved in law enforcement broke down the door of a man with no prior criminal record early in the morning while his children were at home.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan, who chairs the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, came back from a May tour of a federal facility concerned about what he saw: IRS agents training with semi-automatic weapons.

“When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability,” Duncan was quoted as saying by Politico. “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?”

“I think Americans raise eyebrows when you tell them that IRS agents are training with a type of weapon that has stand-off capability. It’s not like they’re carrying a sidearm and they knock on someone’s door and say, ‘You’re evading your taxes,’” he added.

The IRS was unapologetic. In a statement, the agency said, “As law enforcement officials, IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agents are equipped similarly to other federal, state and local law enforcement organizations. Special Agents receive training on the appropriate and safe use of assigned weapons. IRS Criminal Investigation has internal controls and oversight in place to ensure all law enforcement tools, including weapons are used appropriately.”

That would be the same IRS implicated in improperly scrutinizing the applications of Tea Party-aligned nonprofits groups; the same IRS that is hiring 18,000 new agents to enforce the obscure and Byzantine provisions of Obamacare. How many Americans would feel comfortable with AR-15-wielding IRS auditors digging through their files and roaming around the streets?

This is big government, Obama-style big government, and hardly what the framers had in mind.

Not long ago, five LAPD officers came to my apartment in the middle of the night, pinned me to the ground, and handcuffed me, sort of by accident. Before they left, I forgot to get a card or a phone number from them, so instead I'm writing this open letter and hoping they read it.

...

2) So this is why no one on COPS is ever wearing a shirt.

I misjudged you based on your appearance, meth head. It turns out we are the same.

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

WEST VALLEY CITY — Two West Valley police detectives were not legally justified when they shot and killed Danielle Willard during an undercover drug investigation.

...

Cowley told investigators that he fired his weapon after Willard backed up her car into him and because he believed Salmon had been hit by the vehicle and was down. But Gill said the evidence doesn't support those statements that he fired from the rear of her vehicle or that Salmon had been hit. He said Cowley later admitted that he didn't see Salmon get hit, just that he could no longer see him.

...

Gill said Cowley could not have been behind Willard's vehicle when he fired his two shots but was likely to the side of her vehicle. That means he wouldn't have been hit by her car as she backed out and his life was not in jeopardy when the shots were fired.

Police forces around the world have had the problem that when their officers get a bit carried away and start pepper spraying tied captives there is someone on hand filming the event on their mobile phones.

While six police lay into prone grannies on the floor with long batons, the pictures can be on the net in seconds, meaning supervisors have to answer embarrassing questions.

But they may not need to fear scrutiny much longer - Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, whenever they like.

In a repudiation of a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy, a federal judge has found that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms.
Related

In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.

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Me being harassed by the Colorado Springs Police Department in a Kohl's parking lot after an issue with my Kohl's credit card not working. I have been in the parking lot for 15 min talking with Kohl's Credit customer care on my cell when all of a sudden 3 Officers approach me demanding "How are you today, Hands" They claimed to have a complaint about a suspicious man carrying a gun around, they asked for my ID when I requested a law that requires such compliance with a demand for id I was forced into detainment, when I requested probable clause their reply was avoid-ant and suggested I agree and find it suspicious someone would open carry a firearm in a lawful manner, after 45 min, of wasting my time, getting me soaking wet, intimidating me, threatening to have my friends vehicle towed, having my friends bronco soaked and all of the contents either ruined or soaked, they convinced Kohl's to trespass me and told me to leave. Kohl's management or staff never approached me nor did they suggest open carry was not allowed. They have no visible signs as statute mandates that would forbid my entry nor did they request I leave as statute mandates. After further review I found that Kohl's never made such a call or complaint and that CSPD libeled me and convinced Kohl's to trespass me.

In a state that allows an individual the right and liberty to open-carry to be disarmed, harassed by and libeled by the very individuals charged and given oath the duty to uphold that right, to without probable cause, take into custody, detain, disarm and kidnap me and create a later cause to justify this behavior, makes me sick, these individuals have violated numerous laws of which the most severe being 18 USC SS 242, for a lack of a better word treason.

after the whole ordeal CSPD told Kohl's I was crazy and had me trespassed.... well if you are trespassed anywhere in the state you cant conceal carry.

First thing I saw was a violation of Arizona v. Gant. The subject was detained in handcuffs, unable to reach and weapons or evidence in the vehicle. Therefore it was unlawful for the officer to search both sides of the vehicle.

"I think the officers should sue the family for putting the officers lives in danger, making detectives work past the time they were suppose to get off, the gas it took for them to get to the scene, the bullets used, the hospital bills, the equipments needed for forensics, and making me work the channel instead of reading my hot sexy book...LOL."