A 13-year-old boy is accused of chucking a snowball at a Chicago police officer - who immediately hit back with a felony charge against the teen.

The unnamed 8th grader says he wasn't even the student who tossed the chunk of ice around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, earning the boy a charge of aggravated battery to a peace officer.



Read more: Chicago boy charged with a felony for throwing snowball at cop, says he didn't do it - NY Daily News

...when he learned about the police chief’s decision to discipline Seattle police officer John Marion with “training,” instead of a one-day suspension as was the original action against the officer.

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Holden says Marion was let off too easy, and argues that the officer could have been ordered to go through more training, in addition to the one-day suspension.

“Training is not a punishment,” said Holden. “Training is what we should be doing no matter what. What police officers do is punish people who do wrong, and we need the same standards for them as they give us.”

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But interviews today reveal that is not what Chief Bailey did—and people at theSeattle Times, SPD, and City Hall suggest that Bailey knew he was misleading city officials. Bailey informed the SPD’s discipline office on Tuesday that he actually eliminated the misconduct verdict, thereby leaving Officer Marion’s record unblemished.

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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray on Monday called it a mistake to reverse the finding of misconduct against a police officer who got into an argument with a newspaper editor last summer.

The admission comes after days of back-and-forth about what an appropriate punishment for Officer John Marion should be.

Officer Marion had been ordered to serve a one-day suspension for an incident involvingThe Stranger’s Dominic Holden, during which he was caught on tape telling Holden he would come to his place of work to bother him. The discipline came with a finding of misconduct that would have gone on Marion’s personnel file.

Last week, the department came under fire after it was reported that newly-appointed Interim Police Chief Harry Bailey had reversed the finding of misconduct against Marion, instead ordering him to undergo additional training to help change his behavior.

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Without a doubt, the media played a huge role in this reversal but even more so, the people who not only read and commented on his columns, but shared them through social media sites to the point where it just became way too embarrassing for the mayor and chief.

I hate witnessing stuff like this and not being able to do anything about it. This man committed no crime. He paid his bus fair but the officer wasn't giving him the chance to prove himself. All this is unnecessary!

The following incidents are cautionary tales for anyone who still thinks that they can defy police officers, even if it’s simply to disagree about a speeding ticket, challenge a search warrant or defend oneself against an unreasonable or unjust charge, without deadly repercussions. The message they send is that “we the people” have very little protection from the standing army that is law enforcement.

For example, Seattle police repeatedly tasered seven-months pregnant Malaika Brooks for refusing to sign a speeding ticket. While Brooks bears permanent burn scars on her body from the encounter, police were cleared of any wrongdoing on the grounds that they didn’t know that tasering a pregnant woman was wrong.

Eight Los Angeles police officers fired 103 bullets at two women in a newspaper delivery truck they mistook for a getaway car during a heated manhunt. The older woman was shot twice in the back and the other was wounded by broken glass. The women were offered a $4.2 million settlement for their injuries, while the officers were reprimanded for acting inappropriately, “retrained” and put back on the streets.

During the course of a routine investigation, a group of Los Angeles police officers beat, punched, and tasered Kelly Thomas, schizophrenic, homeless and suspected of vandalizing cars, until he was brain dead. The two officers charged for their role in the beating were acquitted and will face no time in prison. A third officer who was supposed to be charged will also walk free.

New York City police, pursuing a man who had reportedly been weaving among cars in Times Square, fired into a crowd, shooting a 54-year-old woman in the knee and another woman in the buttocks. Although the officers faced no repercussions for their reckless behavior, prosecutors charged the suspect with felony assault on the grounds that he was responsible for the injuries caused by the police.

Chicago police arrested, beat, and sodomized with a gun Angel Perez, pushing in his eye sockets, driving his elbows back into his head, and sticking a gun into his rectum, all in an effort to “persuade” him to be a drug informant. All of the officers remain in active duty, patrolling the streets.

Houston police shot and killed Brian Claunch, a mentally ill double amputee, who had refused to drop a ballpoint pen. The police officer was cleared of any misconduct and remains on the force. Curiously, in the last six years, the Houston Police Department has yet to find a single police shooting unjustified. Between 2007 and 2012, the HPD officers injured 111 civilians while fatally shooting 109 people.

This phenomenon we are experiencing with the police is what philosopher Abraham Kaplan referred to as the law of the instrument, which essentially says that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the scenario that has been playing out in recent years, we the citizenry have become the nails to be hammered by the government’s henchmen, a.k.a. its guns for hire, a.k.a. its standing army, a.k.a. the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

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A senior at Northeast High School in Clarksville, Tenn. has been suspended for 10 days and faces a multitude of additional punishments including criminal charges because school officials found a knife belonging to his father inside his father’s car.z_arrested_fishing_knife000

“They called on the intercom that we had a random lockdown search,” Duren-Sanner told WTVF.

The car he drove to school was randomly chosen for a search.

“I was, like, ‘Sure, no problem.’ I didn’t have anything to hide,” he explained. “And he said, ‘Do you have anything that we might need to know about?’”

Duren-Sanner mentioned that his dad chews tobacco, so there would likely be snuff in the car.

The blade on the knife is longer than three inches. Consequently, school officials consider the knife a dangerous weapon.

Duren-Sanner tried to explain that the knife belonged to his father, the owner of the car, but to no avail.

School officials immediately suspended the senior for 10 days.

The student’s father is a commercial fisherman who works on the West Coast. The father left — wait for it — a fishing knife in the car.

He will not be allowed to return to school when that 10-day period is up. Instead, Duren-Sanner must attend an alternative school full of alternative school students for 90 days after the suspension ends.

On top of all this punishment, he faces weapons charges thanks to the sheriff’s department, which concluded that the knife was effectively in the boy’s possession.

“Guilty until proven innocent,” Duren lamented. “It’s part of this zero tolerance policy.”

He has maintained a 3.0 grade point average. He is part of the ROTC program. He hopes to obtain scholarship help to attend college, but that’s in serious jeopardy now.

To Austin attorney Daniel Betts, driving while intoxicated can sometimes be what he calls “an opinion crime.” Law enforcement must decide, sometimes within only a matter of minutes, whether a person is intoxicated and should go to jail -- or be allowed to simply drive way.
On the night Austin police arrested his client, they made the wrong choice, he says – his opinion bolstered by a voluntary breath and blood test showing Larry Davis wasn’t intoxicated when he was arrested Jan. 1, 2013. He tested 0.00 on a Breathalyzer – the lowest possible reading -- and the blood test, which took months to be tested, came back negative.
“My reaction was just shock that it happened,” Betts said of the arrest, after watching a police dash cam video and reviewing the evidence.
The arrest meant Davis spent a day in jail, and he was left with a criminal case looming over him for more than a year. Because he was declared indigent at the time, the county picked up his legal fees of a few hundred dollars.
Police stand by their decision to arrest Davis. They contend it is still possible he was intoxicated with a drug, including marijuana, that may not have shown up in the blood test.
Police say the case highlights a judgment call they have to make often; yet defense lawyers, including Betts, say it shows how overzealous Austin police can be in making DWI arrests.

KING CITY, Calif. — Police officers in a Central California town took part in a scheme in which cars belonging to poor Hispanic people were impounded, towed and later sold or given away for free to some officers when the car owners couldn't pay the fees, authorities said Tuesday.

Four officers — including the recently retired police chief and the acting chief in King City — have been arrested, and two others were also arrested Tuesday on unrelated charges, Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo said.

"There has been a significant breakdown in the internal leadership of the King City Police Department," Flippo said. "It also appears to me that some officers have dishonored their badge."

MOORE, OK -- A family's night at the movies on Valentine's Day turned into a horror show when a husband and father was beaten to death outside a cinema by police officers.

Things had not gone smoothly for the Rodriguez family -- who reside in Norman, OK -- due to a dispute which took place between Mrs. Nair Rodriguez and her 19-year-old daughter, Luinahi. Mrs. Rodriguez says her daughter had been lying to her so she slapped her during the argument, which took place outside the Warren Theater during the early hours of February 15th.

A bystander reported the incident and got the government involved. A bad situation would soon turn horribly worse.

Mrs. Rodriguez had stormed away from her daughter, upset at what had happened. Luis went after her to calm her down. That's when several Moore Police officers approached.

Luinahi and Nair both witnessed what happened next. They say Luis, age 44, tried to bypass the officers as they were attempting to ask him for identification. Luis didn't want his wife to drive away while she was angry, so he continued towards her.

That's when Mr. Rodriguez was taken down, and beaten to death by five officers. His family witnessed him getting pummeled with fists, knees, and pepper spray until he was bloody and lifeless.

"Five guys got on top of him, beating him ruthlessly. On the head-- just pow, pow, pow. Even with knees," Luinahi tearfully explained.

Mrs. Rodriguez pulled out a cell phone to record the incident. "I'm recording because this is too much," she says.

Her video began after the brutal beating was over, and only captured the moments when Luis was already on the ground, being pressed into the cement by five men, and then loaded onto a stretcher.

Even though the man is on the ground, motionless, officers tell him to "calm down," as he suffers under the weight of several police officers. They handcuff him with ease and slowly roll him over, revealing his battered appearance. He cannot sit up under his own strength.

"Papa? Are you OK?" asks his wife of 22 years. Then a stretcher rolls out and the gravity of the situation sets in. "Is he OK?! He doesn't move! You killed him! You killed my husband!"