Madison police last week roughed up a 57-year-old Indian citizen who was walking on the sidewalk outside his son's home, leaving the older man temporarily paralyzed and hospitalized with fused vertebrae.

"He was just walking on the sidewalk as he does all the time," said his son, Chirag Patel, this morning. "They put him to the ground."

No crime had been committed. Madison Police on Monday issued a statement saying the department had suspended the officer and were investigating the use of force in this case. The police statement wished the man a "speedy recovery."

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But Sureshbhai Patel does not speak English, this being only his second trip to the United States. He had arrived less than two weeks ago.

The statement by Madison police refers to a "communication barrier." Chirag Patel said his father speaks only Gujarati, and some Hindi.

Sherrod says the Sureshbhai Patel told the police officers "no English" and repeated his son's house number.

The police statement says the officer attempted to frisk the man.

"The subject began putting his hands in his pockets," reads the police statement. "Officers attempted to pat the subject down and he attempted to pull away. The subject was forced to the ground, which resulted in injury."

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"This is just one of those things that doesn't need to happen," said Sherrod, saying the police escalated to violence without cause and left Patel lying bleeding from his face, paralyzed and in need of paramedics. "That officer doesn't need to be on the streets."

Sureshbhai Patel was taken by ambulance to Madison Hospital. Hospital staff called his son at work at 9:42 a.m. on Friday. Chriag Patel found his father at the hospital unable to move his legs and with limited motion in his arms.

From there, due to swelling in the spine, Sureshbhai was transferred to Huntsville Hospital for surgery to fuse two vertebrae. He remains hospitalized. Chirag said his father can now move his right leg a little bit, but the left remains paralyzed. He said his father can raise both arms, but cannot make a tight grip.

He said his father had no health problems prior to this incident.

Chirag Patel hopes his father will regain full motion, but he said he was told this would involve lengthy therapy. He is uncertain when his father will be able to leave the hospital.

Sherrod, a civil rights attorney from Florence, has recently handled several cases involving law enforcement in Madison County. He said the Patel family will sue, but has not yet filed.

More than a dozen witnesses watched as Pasco police shot and killed a man Tuesday night near a crowded intersection by Fiesta Foods, a popular grocery store.

A cellphone video of the shooting posted to YouTube showed officers shooting the man outside Vinny’s Bakery and Cafe on Lewis Street as he ran away.

Police did not release the man’s identity Tuesday night. It’s unclear in the video if he was armed and police say they are unsure if a weapon was found at the scene.

Witnesses say the man picked up a rock and appeared like he wanted to fight officers who responded to a disturbance call about 5 p.m. near Fiesta Foods. One witness told the Herald the man threw a large rock at a passing vehicle shortly before police arrived.

Police tried to shock him with a Taser, but it had little effect on him, said Ben Patrick, who was just yards away in the grocery store parking lot with his family when the shooting happened.

“The guy was trying to pull the Taser (prongs) out of his arm,” he said.

The man was carrying a rock and may have tried to throw it at police, witnesses said. The grainy video shows him coming at officers on 10th Avenue, then turning and running as police fired several shots. He crossed the intersection onto Lewis Street while three officers chased him.

The man ran about a half block down Lewis Street before officers fired several more shots. The exact moment when he is shot is blocked by a vehicle in the video, so it’s unclear if he turned around to face officers. They appeared to handcuff him as he lay on the pavement after he was shot.

The video of Tillotson’s arrest was seen 1.4 million times on YouTube and the charge against her has been dropped. Police Chief Greg Suhn gave a half-hearted public apology during a meeting of San Francisco’s Police Commission as he attempted to defend Sgt. Brian Stansbury’s behavior.


“While I appreciate Chief Suhr’s apology, I am concerned that he continues to support Sgt. Brian Stansbury’s actions,” Tillotson said in a statement. “My client, a young African American man, was left without the benefit of advice of counsel. The right to counsel is not a formality. It is a shield that protects ordinary people against intimidation, bullying, and overreach by law enforcement.”Tillotson has not commented on whether she would file suit against the SFPD.

A 14-year-old boy was shot Monday night by an off-duty Baltimore County police officer working security at an apartment complex in Randallstown, police said.

The shooting was accidental, and the teen suffered non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

"There was one shot fired. He received injury to the shoulder area. He was taken to an area hospital, where he is expected to survive. Injuries are not life threatening," Baltimore County Police Cpl. John Wachter said.

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The officers saw and heard movement inside the apartment, and the teen came out onto a balcony, police said. An off-duty officer told investigators he was pointing his gun toward the balcony when it accidentally went off.

The shot came from a gun privately owned by the officer and approved by the police department for him to carry. Baltimore County police said it was an accidental discharge.

Apparently the off duty officers saw movement inside the building. Police said one of them was on the front steps. He didn't have a flashlight. His hand was on his gun, but the weapon remained in its holster. The officer involved in the shooting was on a muddy hill with a flashlight in one hand and his gun in the other. Investigators said he told an on-duty officer that the weapon fired.

"He accidentally discharged his weapon when someone came out of a sliding glass door on the second floor apartment onto the balcony," Wachter said.

this angle is shocking

"Hundreds of officers in the Miami area have downloaded the app, which lets users provide real-time traffic information and identify areas where police are conducting speed enforcement. The local NBC affiliate says the officers are flooding Waze with false information on their activity in an attempt to make the app's information less useful to drivers. Disclosing the location of police officers "puts us at risk, puts the public at risk, because it's going to cause more deadly encounters between law enforcement and suspects," Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, tells the news outlet."

When a major snowstorm hit the east coast two weeks ago, two entrepreneurial teens in New Jersey were ready.

Until they ran directly into a real force of nature: government nannies.

Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf, both 18-year-olds from Bound Brook, N.J., were going door-to-door in their neighborhood Jan. 27, handing out homemade flyers that offered snow-shoveling services. School had already been canceled for the next day, when a winter storm was expected to bury their portion of the Garden State under several inches of cold white powder.

But their offer of a free exchange of services for cash caught the attention of the local police force.

According to local news reports, the cops told the kids they weren’t allowed to solicit business by going door-to-door without a permit from the local government.

WARREN – A township police officer found a weapon in the trunk of a car that he pulled over but the prosecutor will not be able to use it as evidence because the cop overstepped his bounds and violated the suspect's rights, a state appelate court ruled.

The decision Monday, affirming a Superior Court judge's decision to suppress the gun as evidence, could mean that that second-degree illegal gun charge against Devin Henderson, 20, of North Plainfield, will be dropped.

The criminal proceedings following the 2013 arrest raises questions about how township police handled what began as a traffic stop for alleged failure to use a turn signal and for having a view obstructed by an air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror.

The traffic stop lasted about 43 minutes.