After voting against a new police contract, Councilmen Steve Stycos and Paul Archetto say their wards were targeted by a rash of tickets in retaliation.

An internal investigation is underway at the Cranston Police Department after allegations that police officers were ordered to aggressively issue tickets in wards represented by City Council members who voted against a new police contract last month.

A vigil for a teenage boy who died mysteriously in police custody erupted on Thursday night in Durham, NC. Police in riot gear fired tear gas into a crowd filled with friends and family of 17-year-old Jesus Huerta, who was killed by a gunshot wound to the head while handcuffed from behind in the back of a Durham police patrol car on November 19.

According to a statement last week by Jose Lopez Sr., Durham’s police chief, the gunshot wound that killed Huerta was self-inflicted. Huerta is the third young man of color to die in a shooting that involved Durham police in the past four months.

Following the arrest last year, Sorensen, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, stated, “I knew the law. I knew that it was legal for me to carry. My rights were trampled on.” He even tried to warn the police that their actions were in violation of the law, to which an officer suggested he “hire an attorney.”

Sorensen did just that and received nearly $24,000 because of it.

In 2010, a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis set out to test the reliability of drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The team assembled 18 police dogs and their handlers and gave them a routine task: go through a room and sniff out the drugs and explosives.

But there was a twist. The room was clean. No drugs, no explosives.

In order to pass the test, the handlers and their dogs had to go through the room and detect nothing.

But of 144 runs, that happened only 21 times, for a failure rate of 85 percent.

A jury awarded Michael Troso $500,000, half which the city must pay, the other half which Wheaton must pay, who incredulously, is still employed by the Atlantic City Police Department, despite the liability he has proven to be.

For years in the state of Florida LEO's have been ticketing motorist who warn others of speed traps by flashing their high beams. This is despite the fact that flashing high beams to warn of speed traps is not illegal.

A judge even issued a court order back in 2005 telling the Florida Highway Patrol to stop ticketing motorist for flashing high beams to warn of speed traps because it is a form of communication,thus it is an activity protected by the first amendment.

Despite and in defiance of the court order FHP records show that over 10,000 citizens have been illegally cited for flashing their highbeams since 2005. As a result of this illegal behavior there is a class action lawsuit against the FHP,and other law enforcement agencies.


Apparently the word has gotten out to LEO"S to stop illegally ticketing motorist for flashing their highbeams. Not taking the word of law enforcement P.R.O.'s I decided to go see if LEO's are still engaging in this illegal behavior for myself in what I call SPEED TRAP CRASHER!

I was stopped by Officer Valerio of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. At first contact Officer Valerio is quick on his feet and does fine. However, when Officer Valerio returns after running my ID, things get a little sketchy.

A Green Bay lawyer has posted on Facebook a video from a police car dash cam that he says shows Green Bay police “kicking one subject to the ground and then repeatedly punching another after they have him pinned to the ground.”

Cole White represents NeeGee Cloud, 21, of Green Bay, whom White says is the man seen apparently receiving body punches from a Green Bay officer.

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White’s client was arrested Nov. 6 in Green Bay and charged with resisting arrest and possession of a marijuana pipe in the incident. White says the video shows no sign of Cloud resisting anybody.

Conner Guerrero says he noticed somebody sneaking around his yard at night and assumed it was burglars.

“Just trying to enjoy my evening. All the sudden, I see a flashlight shining through my doors…” said Guerrero. “I'm thinking this could be a dangerous situation for me.”

“I come over to my door and I slap it to say hey someone is in this house and they're not going to let you come in here,” he told KREM-TV. “Right as soon as I opened this door, and it's dark outside - it's very dark and all I can see is a pistol.”

A man yelled “Sheriff’s office” and told him to come out of the house.

“I'm wondering why the hell there is a gun being pointed at me right now! They directed me to take a knee, well both knees,” he said. “The gun [was] still drawn.”

Deputies reportedly said Guerrero was trespassing and didn’t live there. Not until they looked at his I.D. did they realize Guerrero did live there and they had the wrong home.

Instead of apologizing, one of the deputies told Guerrero, “You’re lucky I didn’t f--king shoot you.”


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But officers were responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle, not a burglary.

The Dallas Police Department’s second-in-command has acknowledged he mishandled a case in which two officers were accused of lying about the circumstances of a major drug bust.

First Assistant Chief Charlie Cato said last week that he should have more thoroughly looked into allegations that Officers Jon Llewellyn and Randolph Dillon concocted their account of what led them to a marijuana grow house in South Dallas.

The police sergeant who initially reported concerns over the officers’ story, Sgt. Michael Maness, was eventually transferred to an undesirable overnight patrol shift after his supervisors determined he had initially failed to act on Llewellyn and Dillon’s information.
Maness’ representatives contend, however, that police officials, including Cato, should have paid more attention to Maness’ allegations.

Cato is on temporary assignment to City Hall as an interim assistant city manager. He has long been viewed as a possible successor to Chief David Brown.

In a telephone interview with The Dallas Morning News, he agreed he should have delved deeper into Maness’ complaints.

“Obviously, in hindsight … I should have asked more questions,” Cato said. “On its surface, I looked at this as about the decision to transfer him, and the transfer was about him not responding. My assessment of the situation was inaccurate.”

Llewellyn and Dillon were fired this year and charged with aggravated perjury and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. Their cases are pending. Prosecutors have dismissed at least 80 criminal cases connected to the officers.

Brown lightly punished Deputy Chiefs Andrew Acord and Ches Williams in March for not requesting an internal affairs investigation once they became aware of the allegations against Llewellyn and Dillon. They were ordered to get counseling.

But Cato — who also became aware of the allegations against Llewellyn and Dillon and did not request an internal investigation — did not face any punishment.

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Sponsors of the bill, HB 384, presented their amendments as a mere “re-codification” of the state’s forfeiture law. While some of the changes to Utah’s forfeiture laws might appear minor, they have significant consequences.

Take the state’s new statute on attorney’s fees. Previously, state law provided that “the court shall award a prevailing party reasonable attorneys’ fees and other costs of litigation reasonably incurred by the owner.” So if an owner won a civil forfeiture case, the government would have to pay for his or her legal expenses.

But HB 384 replaced “shall” with “may.” Before, the government was obligated to pay attorney’s fees when it lost a civil forfeiture case; now it’s optional. Even worse, the bill added a new cap on the amount of attorney’s fees: They “may not exceed 20 percent of the value of the property.”

The bill also undermined an important safeguard against property seizures. Before HB 384, state law required prosecutors to meet a strict deadline for filing court papers seeking to keep the seized property. If they didn’t, the forfeiture could not proceed and the law provided that any prosecutor who missed the deadline “shall promptly return the property to its owner.”

But here again, “shall” was replaced with “may.” Now an innocent owner’s property can potentially be held indefinitely by the government, even when prosecutors miss key filing deadlines.

A Ross County, Ohio, woman was shot and killed in an apparent accidental discharge of a deputy's weapon during a December 11 drug raid. Krystal Barrows, 35, becomes the 39th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year.