A Taos man claims he was falsely imprisoned and is suing several New Mexico State Police officers as well as the county jail after spending 31 days behind bars before seeing a judge.

Anthony Vargas, 51, was arrested June 26 on a warrant charging him with trafficking a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance.

The Ranchitos Road resident’s saga began one day earlier when he was riding in a vehicle stopped by state police officers on State Road 522 near the Old Blinking Light.

State police officers cited the driver for an improper turn and spoke with both men about their activities that evening.

The officers also reportedly asked and received permission to search the vehicle. Officer Alexander Bennett reported finding three small bags in the glovebox, each containing what he suspected to be cocaine.

Both Vargas and the vehicle’s driver denied knowing anything about the bags. The vehicle’s driver was arrested on charges of possession of a controlled substance and trafficking a controlled substance while Vargas, the passenger, was released, according to court records.

But Bennett obtained a warrant for Vargas’ arrest the following day, charging him with the same offenses.

Vargas was arrested June 26 and booked into the Taos County Adult Detention Center.

A criminal complaint — a sworn statement containing the facts, the common name of the offense charged, and statutes — was not filed until July 27.

Vargas was not taken to see a judge until that day.

But New Mexico law states a defendant must be arraigned no later than four days after an arrest on new charges.

“Because a criminal complaint was not filed, Anthony Vargas spent 31 days in jail without being arraigned, without a preliminary hearing and without being charged,” attorney Alan Maestas said in a civil complaint filed Sept. 17.

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The lawsuit filed on Vargas’ behalf names Officers Bennett and David Saiz, who was training him, as well as their supervisor, Lt. Edwardo Martinez. The lawsuit also names the Taos County Adult Detention Center, which Vargas’ lawyer claims was negligent in protecting him.

In six counts, the lawsuit alleges false imprisonment and unlawful seizure, personal and bodily injury by the jail, violation of due process, negligent supervision by the state police, unlawful seizure and malicious prosecution.

Police may have threatened to call child protective services if a Lansing woman didn’t answer questions without her attorney present shortly after a drug raid in July in Lansing’s north side, according to court records.

Victoria Roe, 25, was at home with her 14-month-old child when police, acting on a search warrant, made a forced entry. Police found about 1,444 grams of cocaine, $6,960, four handguns and scales that tested positive for cocaine residue during the raid, according to testimony. The street value of 1,400 grams of cocaine is between $140,000 and $210,000. The price varies on the quantity sold.

Roe’s remarks to police cannot be used in her prosecution, 54A District Court Judge Hugh Clarke ruled Thursday. But he also ordered her and her co-defendant, Donald Hicks Jr., bound over to trial in Ingham County Circuit Court on drug and weapons charges and denied a defense motion to suppress evidence found during the search.

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After reviewing the incident, the Hammond family’s attorney, Eric Bland, asserted that Hammond was shifting his car into park when someone shouted that Hammond had a gun. According to an affidavit signed by Morton, Hammond’s vehicle did not begin moving until after Tiller’s bullets tore into his body. Although Chief Covington insisted that Hammond was not shot from behind, an autopsy report conducted by medical examiner James Fulcher, M.D., revealed that two bullets struck Hammond in the back of his left shoulder and his left side.

Last month, a witness came forward who reportedly saw an officer planting evidence beneath Hammond’s body after the shooting. In a letter to the FBI, the witness also recalled seeing Seneca police officers lifting the teen’s dead hand and high-fiving Hammond after the incident.

After repeatedly begging investigators and prosecutors to release the footage of their son’s death, Hammond’s parents previously filed a plea with the state Supreme Court requesting state Attorney General Alan Wilson to take over the case. The pleading argues that 10th Circuit Solicitor Chrissy Adams is a potentially biased prosecutor due to the fact that she routinely works with the Seneca Police Department. While refusing to file criminal charges against Tiller, Adams continues to suppress the audio and dash cam footage that could possibly exonerate their deceased son.

On Monday, the family’s attorney filed a federal lawsuit against the Seneca Police Department, Chief Covington, and Lt. Tiller in order to subpoena the dash cam videos and police depositions. After suppressing the footage for over two months, Adams appears complicit in a possible police cover-up where witnesses and autopsy reports dispute the officer’s account.

By releasing the videos to Hammond’s family, Adams could either prove Tiller’s innocence or implicate him in their son’s murder. Her decision to withhold the footage does not bode well for Tiller’s defense.

A Black teenager was pepper-sprayed by police in his North Carolina home after he was mistaken for a burglar.

Ricky and Stacy Tyler are outraged that their foster son, 18-year-old DeShawn Currie, was treated like a criminal after a neighbor called the authorities on the teen, accusing him of breaking into the Tylers' home, which they had just moved into in July.

The Tylers said that while they are still getting to know their neighbors, they were hurt that they would assume their son was a burglar. They also have three other young children.

The teen’s mother left the side door to their home unlocked so that he could get in after getting off from school early. But to Currie's surprise, three officers walked into the house.

"They was like, 'Put your hands on the door,'" the teen told ABC-WTVD. "I was like, 'For what? This is my house.' I was like, 'Why are y'all in here?'"

Currie said the officers pointed out pictures of the Tylers’ three younger children--who are white--on the mantle, assuming he was not a part of the family and didn't belong there. An argument reportedly ensued and the teen said one of the officers pepper-sprayed him in the face.

After a year of living with the Tylers, the teen says he’s comfortable with his new-found family, but that the recent incident is unsettling.

"I had moved into my room, and I'm feeling like I'm loved. And then when they come in and they just profile me and say that I'm not who I am. And that I do not stay here because there was white kids on the wall, that really made me mad,” he said.

The officers accused Currie of being threatening and belligerent, and argued that they pepper-sprayed him because he would not follow the their instructions. In a statement, the department also point out that the neighborhood had recently experienced criminal activity.

Their two nephews were the targets of the raid and were arrested at the home, but police charged only one of them with drug crimes. He eventually pleaded guilty to a single charge: possession of drug paraphernalia.

In the lawsuit’s narrative, members of the DSP’s Special Operations Response Team entered a bedroom to find Lisa Hayes on a bed and Ruther Hayes cleaning her with a sponge bath. Lisa Hayes’s wheelchair was in the room; five other family members in the home had already told officers that Lisa Hayes could not move her legs.

But with weapons pointed at Lisa Hayes, the police officers used profanity and “shouted at her to do that which she could not: stand up,” the lawsuit says.

When Ruther Hayes tried to cover her with a sheet, the lawsuit says, officers pushed him down, punched him repeatedly and hit him twice with a stun gun. After the raid, Ruther Hayes was detained and charged with resisting arrest. The charges were later dropped.

Cerebral palsy makes speaking difficult and means Lisa Hayes relies on a wheelchair. In an interview, she said the raid made her fearful of even entering her mother’s home, where the raid took place.

“I feel not only degraded, humiliated; I feel like they didn’t treat me as a human being,” Hayes said Sunday. “I relive that day when they came in on me and them yelling at me to get up when they knew that I couldn’t get up.”

Joshua Lyne, of Des Moines, was trying to protect his home when he fired six rounds into the shadows where he thought a burglar was crouched along his garage in the 300 block of East Diehl Avenue at 12:22 a.m. Tuesday.

In police reports, Des Moines officers say they responded to reports of a possible burglary and shots fired when they came in contact with Lyne.

Police say Lyne told the officers that he grabbed his .44 caliber handgun after his wife woke him up saying she had heard a noise outside.

Lyne said he stood at his backdoor, staring at what he thought was a person standing in the darkness near his garage, police say, before yelling to the figure that he was “legal” – an allusion to the fact that he was licensed to carry a firearm.

Police reports say Lyne claims that the figure took off and he fired six rounds – but wasn’t sure if he hit the person.

In response to the gun owner exercising his right to protect his property, the officers reportedly seized Lyne’s handgun – which was in his front shorts pocket – and confiscated his state permit to carry weapons.

Police say the firearm had one bullet loaded in the chamber and seven left in the magazine. They cited Lyne with a misdemeanor charge of “discharging a firearm in city limits.”

Castle Doctrine is part of American common law derived from the English system. Under English law, a man’s home was his castle. In the home and on ones own property, under British rule and in present-day America, individual rights are supposed to be ‘nonnegotiable.’

Iowa does not currently have a castle law under the modern political definition of the castle doctrine, which usually refers to “stand your ground” laws. Current law does however, protect citizens by not requiring retreat from aggressors within their home or place of business.

The law provides civil immunity to persons who injure aggressors in defense of themselves, but does not provide civil immunity to persons who injure aggressors in defense of another.

The incident serves to illustrate the reality of diminishing civil-liberties in the United States and comes on the heels of multiple recent incidents in which individuals have been criminally charged for defending against intruders.

A Brazilian referee is undergoing psychological evaluation after pulling out a gun while officiating a soccer match in the city of Brumadinho last weekend.

Gabriel Murta, the referee who is being questioned, pulled a handgun out after players from the Amantes de Bola team allegedly slapped and kicked him for not issuing a red card to the opposing team.

Murta reportedly went to the locker room to retrieve the weapon, returning it to the field and waving it around. Giuliano Bozzano of the Referees’ Association says Murta felt “threatened,” and used the gun in self defense.

Murta, who also serves as a police officer, potentially faces a lifetime ban from the league and will undergo psychological evaluation on Tuesday for the shocking incident.

At 1:20 PM, a younger white male operating a dark sedan stopped on Erial Road and captured photos of the front of the school with a phone. The vehicle appears to have a missing front driver’s side hubcap.

At 1:30 PM, an older white male operating a small red vehicle, possibly a Ford, drove onto the property and circled the rear lot. The vehicle then drives onto the front lot, the male driver exited the vehicle, and appears to be capturing several photos of the school. An unknown passenger was also observed inside the red vehicle.

If you have any information or can identify the vehicles or the occupants, contact the Gloucester Township Police Department’s main number at 856-228-4500, or call our GTPD Anonymous Crime Tip Line: 856-842-5560.

A Missouri woman sued the small-town mayor she says sent police and other city employees to harass her after she began regularly flipping him off.

Tina Warren filed a federal lawsuit last week against Bill Kirkpatrick, the mayor of Piedmont, accusing the elected official of retaliating against her for her one-finger political expression, reported the Riverfront Times.

The mayor directed city workers to remove Warren’s water meter and ordered Piedmont police to pull her over and order her to stop a petition drive against rising water bills, the suit claims.

Kirkpatrick also persuaded Wayne County Sheriff Dean Finch, two deputies and a state police narcotics officer to search her home three weeks ago for drugs, according to the suit.

That search turned up no evidence of illegal drugs.

Warren began “expressing her disgust” with the mayor after her water service went out for six days in April 2014, and she stopped to question city workers.

She claims Kirkpatrick told her to get back in her car and “go down the f*cking road,” so she began flipping off the mayor each time she encountered him.

Warren said city workers removed her water meter July 7, and she went to City Hall to ask why.

“You flipped us off,” a city employer says in a video she recorded of the encounter.

Workers agreed to replace the meter after a police officer intervened and Warren assured them she was flipping off the mayor, not maintenance workers.

City officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, filed Sept. 24 by the American Civil Liberties Union, but the city attorney denied Kirkpatrick would order workers to tamper with the water meter.

The city attorney said Warren should direct her anger at developers who improperly installed water lines, and he suggested the woman was frustrated because her protest had failed to stop water costs from increasing.

The ACLU, however, said Warren was being punished for her political expression — which attorneys argued was protected under the First Amendment.

“The mayor and police cannot use their power to intimidate individuals who communicate in ways that some may find offensive,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri.

The controversial cop who said he was thrown in a psych ward for blowing the whistle on a quota system in the NYPD settled his case Tuesday for $600,000.

Adrian Schoolcraft had sued the city for a whopping $50 million in 2010 for his alleged unlawful detention at Jamaica Hospital.

He said his brothers in blue waged a campaign of harassment against him after he blew the whistle on cops using arrest quotas and fudging crime stats at the 81st Precinct covering Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Schoolcraft’s claims against the hospital and two doctors still stand.

The case is to go to trial in Oct. 19, though that schedule could change in light of the deal.

The settlement includes backpay and benefits from Oct. 31, 2009 — the date Schoolcraft was hauled to Jamaica Hospital — through the end of 2015, filings show.

A source said the backpay and benefits will make Schoolcraft's settlement in excess of $1 million and that it’s highly likely he will retire from the force.

He remains suspended without pay.

Schoolcraft had said his own brothers in blue barged into his Queens home and declared him an emotionally disturbed person on Halloween 2009 because he’d blew the whistle.

The alleged architect of his detention was Stephen Mauriello, his commanding officer at the 81st Precinct who is now a deputy inspector.

Mauriello’s attorney Walter Kretz his client wasn’t happy about the settlement because he wanted the whole story to be told at trial. Schoolcraft secretly recorded Mauriello discussing crime stats.

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Several videos have recently emerged depicting an off-duty cop attacking innocent people and threatening them with a loaded gun in their faces. Instead of waiting for his fellow officers to locate the suspect, this rogue cop began assaulting innocent residents while refusing to even show his badge.

On September 24, surveillance video captured an off-duty cop approaching a small group of men and immediately hitting one of them in the head with the butt of his gun. As the innocent 20-year-old man drops to the ground with his hands up in the air, the enraged officer kicks him before turning around and walking away.

Moments after beating down the wrong person, the cop was caught on cellphone video crossing the street and detaining another innocent bystander at gunpoint. As the second unarmed man sat on the curb with his hands up, the officer turned to someone off-screen and demanded, “Who the **** is it?”

As bystanders repeatedly ask the off-duty officer to show his badge, the cop ignores them while pointing his gun at the compliant young man on the curb. After a woman arrives to apparently stop the officer, he immediately begins chasing down another unarmed person. The witness recording the incident follows the cop repeating, “I’m recording him.”

“Aw, shut up,” the cop responds.




“Yeah. You going to jail,” the cameraman replies. “You didn’t show no badge!”

The video ends with the officer attempting to grab a third unarmed victim by the throat.

“He was saying, ‘I just want to know who fought with my son, who stabbed my son,'” a witness told ABC7. “He was just going crazy.”

According to witnesses, the off-duty cop’s son had been stabbed in a fight earlier that night a few blocks away. Instead of allowing his fellow officers to investigate the incident, the unidentified cop went rogue attacking anyone standing outside while aiming a gun in their faces.

The 20-year-old man seen being kicked on camera has retained an attorney and plans on filing a complaint with the prosecutor’s office and with federal agents. According to police, the officer in the videos remains on active duty.

altimore police officer shot and wounded a man after he reached into his pocket to show the chapstick he was carrying.

John Rau was with his brother Monday night when he was stopped by police Major Byron Conaway, although the police department has not said why, reported WJZ-TV.

“All the guy said was, ‘What’s your name, sir?’ and I was like, ‘For what?’ and then he jumped out of the car with his gun and told me to put my hands up,” Rau said. “(The officer asked), ‘What you got in your hand?’ I had a cigarette in one hand, and I just put my hand in my pocket, because I was just putting chapstick on, and I said 10 times, ‘It’s chapstick, only chapstick, officer.”

Witnesses said the officer, who is black, shot the 40-year-old Rau, who is white, in the thigh when he reached into his pocket.

“You see the man walking across the street, the truck pulled right in front of him, pulled past him,” said a witness who did not want to be identified. “He jumped out the car, said, ‘Get on the ground.’ The man kept continuing walking. The police ran around the car with a gun in his hand and shot him. Nothing else was said, just ‘Get on the ground.'”

Ronald Birmingham, Rau’s brother, said Conaway threatened to shoot him, too, when he tried to assist his wounded brother.

“The officer clearly stated to me, ‘I got a bullet for you too,’” Birmingham said. “I said, ‘My brother’s bleeding,’ (but) he said, ‘Back up,’ and he kept pointing the gun and me and pointed the gun at my brother.”

Rau, who was not carrying a weapon, was hospitalized and is expected to recover from his wounds.

“If I wouldn’t have moved, I’d have been Freddie Gray — I’d be dead,” Rau said.

Police said the officer immediately rendered aid and applied a tourniquet, but Rau’s family angrily disputes their claims.

Dianna Warren, Rau’s sister, said Conaway stood over her wounded brother and held him at gunpoint until an ambulance arrived.

“He missed my brother’s artery by so much over that,” Birmingham said, holding up his brother’s chapstick. “There’s no way you can mistake this for a weapon.”

Rau had been on his way to meet Warren’s teenage son to walk the boy home from art class.

“How do you explain that to a 13-year-old?” Warren said. “He’s asking me, ‘If police stop me, should I run?’ I don’t want my child to run, but…”

Conaway, a 16-year veteran, was placed on administrative leave and has 10 days to make a statement to investigators.

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The newspaper also obtained police reports from Hopewell Township Police under the state’s Open Public Records Act showing Hearns had been arrested three times on charges of simple assault and marijuana possession for fighting and bringing drugs to school prior to his near-fatal encounter with officers on Louise Lane near Calhoun Street.

Avilucea recorded the conversation with the AG’s investigators and informed them he was unwilling to cooperate with their investigation when the detectives asked to meet with him.

“I’m protected under New Jersey shield law as a journalist, and I’m not going to reveal my source on that,” Avilucea told the investigators, according to the recording.

Stemmer responded that he wanted to see if Avilucea was “interested in cooperating. If anything changes, you can give us a shout back.”

The newspaper has refused to identify its source on the mugshots despite pressure from investigators.

Last week, the newspaper learned from multiple sources the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, responding to demands from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and civil rights activists, had launched an investigation into the police leaks. The newspaper is aware that investigators visited at least one Mercer County law enforcement agency. It is believed those investigators seized computers as part of the probe.

Mercer County Acting Prosecutor Angelo Onofri previously told The Trentonian he was troubled about whoever provided the police records to The Trentonian.

Activists banded together at a news conference outside of the newspaper’s Perry Street office, demanding Mercer County police agencies investigate the source of the police leaks.

They sent letters to the heads of seven county law enforcement agencies demanding action be taken against the officer or officers who leaked the information.

Trenton Police Lt. Stephen Varn confirmed last week his department received the letter and had opened an internal affairs investigation.

Mashpee police are investigating allegations that schools Superintendent Brian Hyde entered a house uninvited Tuesday morning to look for proof a teen trying to re-enroll at Mashpee High School lived at the address.

“I felt so helpless, harassed and violated,” said Marilyn King, who said Hyde went through her daughter’s things on the second floor of the family’s newly purchased house on Windsor Way while a police officer sat in a car outside.

“I was so upset. I said, 'We’re not doing anything wrong,'” said King, who said her daughter Isabel, 17, was sent home from high school crying shortly afterward.
“Who would do that to a student?” she asked.

“It was awful,” said Malee Tratt, of Plymouth, an independent nurse contractor who happened to be at the house on an insurance assignment.

She said Hyde, who arrived in a black Suburban accompanied by the police car, “just walked right past the grandmother” who opened the door and headed upstairs to the bedroom that King said belonged to her daughter.

Tratt said she could hear Hyde opening and closing drawers. “I’ve never seen a school go to this length because a child is in school,” she said.

Mashpee Police Chief Scott Carline said School Resource Officer William Cuozzo also went to the house at Hyde’s request but was in his car when Hyde entered the house.

“I don’t have a criminal complaint yet, although I do anticipate one,” Carline said. “We’ll do a full and thorough investigation as to what happened.”

King said she has been trying since late May to re-enroll her daughter at the high school.

King said Isabel had attended school in Mashpee since the fourth grade but left in November after King got divorced and the two of them moved to Florida.

Isabel said she finished her junior year at Okeechobee High School and hoped to re-enroll at Mashpee High School as a senior.

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The teen went to the school that day and printed out proof of the house sale from the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds website, King said.

King said her buyer’s agent also called the school to confirm the closing, and Town Clerk Deborah Dami spoke to school officials as well.

On Monday, Isabel went to Mashpee High to deal with school records and course placement, said King, a home-health worker originally from the Philippines whose first language is Tagalog.

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A high school guidance counselor then called and arranged a meeting for this morning, King said. “I said, 'I’ll be there.'”

Right after she hung up she saw Hyde walking up to her house. He looked “like a detective,” King said.

Hyde said, “‘I need to see if she lives here. I need to see where is her bedroom. And I want to see the clothes,’” King said. “And he went upstairs. I was shocked. I was dumbfounded.”

All Hyde found was a set of drawers and grocery and beach bags full of clothing because Isabel’s bedroom has not been set up yet, King said. She said Isabel and her grandmother are temporarily sharing a room downstairs with her.

After looking around upstairs, Hyde went out to get the police officer, whom King said she allowed into the house.

Hyde announced that Isabel would be sent home because he was not persuaded she lived there, said King, who believes Hyde is being vindictive because she spoke to a reporter.

But Hyde, who refused to answer a reporter’s questions on the phone or in person Tuesday, said by email that it was school policy for every new student to receive a home visit.

“The purpose is not just to verify residency but to meet our new parents/guardians,” he said.

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