Stabbing suspect Alexander McDonald has been charged with one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of torture, to which he pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Thursday in Los Angeles. Bail was initially set at $2 million and raised to $4.1 million.

No charges have been announced against the three deputies involved in the shooting, who are all longtime officers with the Sheriff's Department. The deputies were removed from patrol after the shooting but were expected to return to full duty next week, according to officials.

Fung said a state police investigation found it was Capt. Stephen Antonucci who ordered patrol officers to hand out more than 100 parking tickets.

All of the tickets were handed out in wards 1 and 3 after those council members voted against a new police contract.

Antonucci was the police union president, in addition to his management position.

"It has become clear to me that a member of the police union should not also hold the management rank of captain with the police department. In my opinion, this creates a conflict between labor and management," Fung said.

Fung said Antonucci faces at least seven charges of violating police conduct. He was suspended with pay. Officials said he is entitled to a hearing under the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights.

The ticket blitz came to light after the NBC 10 I-Team requested overnight parking ticket records from November.

The investigation revealed 106 tickets were written in the three days following the contract vote, but 18 tickets on the day before the vote.

State police said the patrolmen who wrote the tickets followed orders they were given.

A family outing to an airplane museum turned into a horrific nightmare as young children watched their mother and grandmother yanked out of their minivan and forced to their knees at gunpoint.

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They finished up without incident, hopped in the family minivan, and headed home. They were just outside the base when they were pulled over by “security forces.”

Alice Hill said the stop was terrifying. She immediately witnessed officers coming out of their vehicle with guns aimed at them.

“My grandchildren are screaming,” Alice told WKRC. “I mean they are hysterical, they saw the gun.”

Wendy and Alice were both ordered out out of the front seats at gunpoint and pulled to the street. They were forced to their knees.

“I felt like I was in Mexico, or someplace third world… where they force someone to their knees before they shoot them in the back of the head,” Alice recalled to Dayton Daily News.

The mom and grandma were not only handcuffed and kneeling, but also remained “held down” by burly officers by force.

Wendy explained her reaction: “We didn’t do anything! Are they going to shoot? I was honestly terrified.” She said that the scariest moment was when the security forces started treating the van — which contained only her children — as “full of hostiles.”

“My 5-year-old daughter is asking, ‘Is grandma going to get shot?’” Wendy remembered.

The family was detained for hours. At some point they were told that officers believed their car was stolen. But that wasn’t true. Hours later they were told the real reason for their detainment: their walk around the parking lot.

As grandma Alice and 8-year-old Aaron walked around the parked cars, someone dialed 9-1-1 to report a suspicion of car burglary. Based on no evidence whatsoever, the gun-wielding enforcers gave the innocent family a traumatizing experience they will not soon forget.

The base commander tried to smooth things over with an apology and an offer to let the kids meet the security forces. But that doesn’t seem appealing to the children, who now have a fear of government agents instilled in them which usually isn’t formed until later in life.

“My son doesn’t trust police officers now,” Wendy Hill said. “He views them as the bad guy.”

The New York Post and the head of a New York City police union are upset that an accused drug dealer with a prior record may walk due to “a technicality.”

Judge Jack Weinstein voided evidence against Shakeel “Blam” Wiggins last week because an NYPD cop didn’t properly fill out a search-warrant application that turned up the weapon as well as a handgun and a cocaine cache last September, court papers say.
The ruling will likely allow Wiggins, a prior felon, to walk . . .

“New York City police officers put their lives on the line to get these illegal weapons off the street,” Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association boss Patrick Lynch said of the ruling. “There are some technicalities — like if the premise is a single- or multiple-family dwelling — that are so insignificant that suppressing the evidence actually subverts justice and public safety.”

So what was that technicality? The cop who filled out the search warrant didn’t specify which unit in a multi-family housing unit was to be searched. Consequently, the cops raided the wrong residence, which caused them to kick down the door and terrorize an innocent family. Someone could have been killed. It’s happened before. Hell, it’s happened before in New York.

The requirement that the location on a search warrant be specific isn’t “a technicality.” It’s a core principle of the Fourth Amendment. The entire reason we have a Fourth Amendment goes back to the general warrants the British crown issued to English soldiers in the streets of Boston in the 18th century. Those warrants, called writs of assistance, allowed British troops and inspectors to raid private residences in search of untaxed goods and illegal imports. The warrants permitted searches of any residence. These violations of private homes that required no probable cause stirred anger and resentment, and helped turn Boston into a hub of revolutionary fervor.

The dash cam video taken from a traffic stop in January 2013, shows Roseen’s truck being pulled over by Idaho state trooper Justin Klitch.

Within just a couple of minutes of being pulled over for “failing to signal properly,” Trooper Klitch asked Roseen about why his eyes are “glassy” and then asks, “When’s the last time you used any marijuana sir?”

Roseen replies, “I have not used marijuana in my entire life!”

Despite the 70-year-old repeatedly denying that he was transporting marijuana, Klitch and other officers repeatedly searched the vehicle at the scene. Roseen was even detained as another officer drives his truck to a nearby police station for an even more thorough search of the truck.

No marijuana was found and Roseen was released several hours later.

We showed the video to several people today.

“This is harassment. I would turn around and sue the police department personally,” said Heather O’Hop.

Roseen has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he was pulled over and searched because of his Colorado license plates.

“It’s a terrible call, it’s ridiculous and to say it’s profiling is an understatement,” said Andrew Moist.

“Profiling I don’t know, but definitely he picked on that fellow,” said Edward Poterereiko.

“Here’s an example of what not to do,” said Metro State Criminal Justice professor Joseph Sandoval. “You may have had a basis for stopping him in the first place but beyond that, what do you have? A Colorado plate?”

Attorneys for Roseen argue the only thing illegal in this traffic stop, were the actions of law enforcement.

A New Haven cop who claimed he was in fear for his life when he arrested a priest for video recording him as he bullied an Ecuadorian immigrant in a convenience store was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday, indicating that justice prevails every once in a while.

Even if the cop was allowed to retire with a full pension.

The 2009 incident, which went viral, opened a federal investigation against David Cari and several other officers, revealing that they were engaging in an ongoing harassment campaign against the immigrants living in that community.

But it was only because Father James Manship filed a federal complaint after his charges were dropped two weeks after his arrest.

And it was only because it was all caught on video.

A review of Oakland City Attorney lawsuit data and hundreds of federal and state court cases has found that since 1990, Oakland has spent $74 million dollars to settle at least 417 lawsuits accusing its police officers of brutality, misconduct and other civil rights violations.

Oakland spends more on civil-rights police lawsuits than nearly any other California law enforcement agency, with multimillion-dollar settlements coming directly out of funds that could go to libraries, police and fire services or road repair.

Supporters of the Oakland Police Department say that high number is a reflection of the city’s willingness to settle at any cost. But Oakland Police Beat’s analysis found that the City of Oakland has successfully defended itself against many lawsuits it considers to be unfounded.

Our investigation found that more than 500 officers were named in those lawsuits. At least 72 of those officers were named in three or more of the suits. Settlement amounts per lawsuits range from $100 to the nearly $11 million paid out following the so-called Riders scandal, where more than 100 plaintiffs accused officers of beating, kidnapping and planting evidence on suspects.

Historically, the number of OPD-related lawsuits filed against the city varies from year to year. But over the last three years the number of cases settled dropped, leaving some — like Oakland civil rights attorney Jim Chanin — cautiously hopeful that long-sought-after reforms are beginning to impact the Oakland Police Department.

The Oakland Police Department was given advance opportunity to preview our findings and respond. It has not done so. This story will be updated if that occurs.

ILLINOIS — A man was startled to receive a text message from a strange number chastising him for using his cell phone while driving.



After admittedly taking a phone call during his daily commute, the driver received an unsolicited text message from a number he had never seen before. It read: “Get off the phone when you are driving!”

The sender then provided an identity of “Illinois State Police Officer Robinson #54367.”

Police State USA was alerted to this strange new enforcement technique directly from the driver, who wished to remain anonymous. After interviewing the driver and seeing the message directly on his phone, there is little to doubt about his story.

(Police State USA) (Police State USA)
Illinois is a state that bans the use of all electronic communication devices while driving. However, this unorthodox enforcement method draws questions about what technologies the police are using to limit distracted driving.

Some are wondering whether the incident was the result of the State Police using a “Stingray,” a mobile device which can be used to track location data of nearby cell phones. The suitcase-sized device costs around $400,000 and has been recently acquired by 125 police agencies and 33 states, according to USA Today. For some time, the feds have been issuing grants to agencies across the country for troves of military hardware and surveillance equipment.

The full capabilities of the Stingray remain a mystery, and police agencies have refused to fill in all the details. We know that the device tricks nearby cell phones into believing it is an actual cell phone tower, causing data to be fed into the police surveillance device. That allows police agencies to capture location data and numbers dialed for calls and text messages from thousands of people at a time. The tracking capabilities are said to have a high degree of accuracy.

Another theory is that the Illinois State Police have a database of cell phone numbers that are be associated with license plate numbers. Many would find this intrusive in its own right.

Whichever it is, the state certainly seems to be taking extraordinary measures against people’s freedom to hold conversations while driving — something that is not even restricted in many other states, including some of Illinois’ neighbors.

Today, the ACLU and ACLU of Utah filed an amicus brief in support of a Utah paramedic whose Fourth Amendment rights were violated when police swept up his confidential prescription records in a dragnet search. Law enforcement’s disregard for basic legal protections in the case is shocking.

The United Fire Authority (UFA) is Utah’s largest fire agency, with 26 fire stations in communities surrounding Salt Lake City. Last year, some UFA employees discovered that several vials of morphine in ambulances based at three fire stations had been emptied of medication. Suspecting theft, they called the police. At this point, one would expect police to interview firefighters and paramedics with access to ambulances at those three stations and try to draw up a reasonable list of suspects. But one detective had a different idea.

Within a day or two of receiving the theft report, a detective with the Cottonwood Heights Police Department logged into the Utah Controlled Substances Database and downloaded the prescription histories of all 480 UFA employees. The database tracks patients’ prescriptions for medications used to treat a long list of common medical conditions, and the records can reveal extremely sensitive health information. But unlike some other states, Utah doesn’t require police to get a warrant before accessing this private data. The detective took advantage of this loophole and obtained a great deal of confidential information without going to a judge or demonstrating any individualized suspicion.

Even after scooping up the prescription histories of every UFA employee, the detective still couldn’t figure out who might be behind the morphine theft. Instead of stopping there, however, he went on a new fishing expedition through the records, looking for anything he deemed suspicious. He read through the prescription histories of hundreds of firefighters, paramedics, and clerical staff, learning what medications they took and revealing private facts like whether they suffered from an anxiety disorder, chronic pain, insomnia, or AIDS. He identified four people whose records seemed to indicate dependency on opioid painkillers, and convinced a prosecutor to charge three of them with prescription fraud. One of them, paramedic Ryan Pyle, filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the warrantless search of his prescription records violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The ACLU is now weighing in on his side.

One by one, five police officers took the witness stand at the Skokie courthouse late last month for what would typically be a routine hearing on whether evidence in a drug case was properly obtained.

But in a “Perry Mason” moment rarely seen inside an actual courtroom, the inquiry took a surprising turn when the suspect’s lawyer played a police video that contradicted the sworn testimony of the five officers — three from Chicago and two from Glenview, a furious judge found.

Cook County Circuit Judge Catherine Haberkorn suppressed the search and arrest, leading prosecutors to quickly dismiss the felony charges. All five officers were later stripped of their police powers and put on desk duty pending internal investigations.

Charges have been dismissed against the Massachusetts man who was arrested for wiretapping earlier this year after openly recording a cop in public, but that doesn’t mean police will return his phone anytime soon.

It just means they will open a second investigation as to how George Thompson’s footage mysteriously disappeared while the phone was in the evidence room of the Fall River Police Department.

Police are insisting that Thompson deleted his own footage remotely, so they’ve hired an outside company to prove this.


But the company they contracted, Ken Bell and Associates, is owned by a former cop and self-described “training consultant” who lists all kinds of expertise on his website, ranging from “motivational talks,” “mentor training,” “street gangs,” “teacher-staff training” and “stress management.”

But nowhere on his website does it state his company has any specialized skills in forensics when it comes to deleted video from a smart phone.

However, Fall River Police Chief Daniel Racine is under the impression that Ken Bell and Associates is “a private and external forensic investigation company that specializes in computer and cell phone forensic investigations,” according to his press release announcing the dismissal of charges against Thompson.

The truth is, Racine knows his own cops deleted the footage, but he figures he’ll prolong the facade of justice while sending a few taxpayer dollars towards a man who makes a living consulting law enforcement agencies around the country.

The Bay State Examiner attended Friday’s hearing in which Thompson’s charges were dropped, then attempted to interview Fall River Mayor William Flanagan, Racine’s supervisor, to see if he would initiate an investigation into the police department to see who tampered with the phone.

But as you can see in the video above, Flanagan provided the typical canned response, which most likely got him elected, stating that he supported the way the chief was handling the investigation, even though he admitted he was clueless about the details of the case.

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