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Two Albuquerque Police Department detectives created the dangerous situation that led to the death in April 2011 of a mentally ill, 27-year-old man in his own backyard when they tried to confront him with a warrant over a road rage incident, a judge ruled Tuesday.

State District Judge Shannon Bacon, who rejected claims by the officers that they were acting in self-defense when they shot Christopher Torres, awarded more than $6 million to Stephen Torres, Christopher’s father and personal representative of the estate – exceeding the $4 million requested by attorneys for the Torres family.

However, the payout will be limited to $400,000, the maximum allowed under the state Tort Claims Act.

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HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -
A Hauula man has sued the Honolulu Police Department over the use of excessive force and claims the department withheld key evidence that would have kept him out of jail.

Thirty-year-old Jonah Kaahu's violent arrest on Aug. 22, 2012 was captured on video by friends and patrons at Giovanni's Shrimp Shack in Haleiwa.

"It ruined my life," Kaahu said. "These guys have so much power, they can go around and do whatever they like and it's nothing to them that they can ruin people's lives."

Kaahu was held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center for nine months before Circuit Judge Ed Kubo tossed his case last year due to police misconduct.

The judge found that police withheld more than 500 pages of documents, including witness testimony and cell phone videos of the beating taken by friends and tourist visiting Giovanni's.

"(Kaahu's) motion was granted in part as to the HPD officers accused of crimes of violence and dishonesty," Kubo's order said. "(Kaahu's) due process rights were violated, resulting in prejudice."

Prosecutors had charged Kaahu with terroristic threatening, assault against a police officer and criminal property damage.

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A jury found former District Heights police officer Johnnie Riley guilty Tuesday on charges that he shot an unarmed, handcuffed suspect who was running away from him in the back.

Riley was found guilty of both first and second-degree assault and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime.

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Patricia Ratz's pit bull, Baby Girl, was more than just a dog.

Rescued by Ms. Ratz before she could be euthanized by Animal Care and Control, the 2-year-old was a loyal companion and friend and a playmate to Ms. Ratz's kids.

So after Baby Girl was fatally shot and killed by police in a tragic incident in Travis' Schmul Park last year, Ms. Ratz sued the city, seeking to deter further pet killings, her lawyer said.

Ms. Ratz recently settled the suit in Brooklyn federal court for $21,500, court records show.

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Toronto police, at the direction of an Ontario Superior Court judge, have released an internal video which for more than two years the force denied existed, in a case involving the arrest and detention of a paraplegic man who claims he was assaulted by officers and urinated on while in custody.

Udhbirprasaud ​(Joe) Bhikram was arrested on Jan. 28, 2009, and charged with uttering death threats — charges which he successfully fought and had thrown out.

But for years he has been fighting through formal complaints and freedom of information requests to obtain a copy of a police video, claiming he was assaulted during his arrest, neglected at the station when he fell from his wheelchair onto the floor of a holding cell, and then berated and urinated on by one officer.

Police staff swore affidavits in 2012 insisting the video recording had been erased.

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Bhikram has more recently filed a small claims lawsuit against one Toronto officer, and last week Deputy Judge J.D. Burnside adjourned a settlement conference demanding the Toronto police provide Bhikram "with the video in question."

Toronto police searched again and immediately produced copies of a video, but there are numerous breaks in the recording, where time stamps show significant gaps in images of events in the cells.

The gaps are due to motion-sensitive cameras, said Mark Pugash, spokesman for the Toronto police. Pugash told CBC News that in 2012 when Bhikram originally made a freedom of information request for a copy of the video, staff within the police privacy office made inquiries but were told by police staff at 52 Division "there was not a recording."

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Three years after he was shot by a sheriff's deputy in Riverside County, a convicted robber has won a $7.8 million judgement against the county.

An anonymous federal jury returned the verdict in favor of William Howard on Wednesday in United States District Court in Riverside, according to the Los Angeles Times. It took them about three hours to decide.

Howard, who was shot in the face as he was hiding from deputies in 2011, also suffered a stroke and arterial damage because of the shooting and is still in a wheelchair as he's partially paralyzed, his lawyers told the Press Enterprise.

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Conroe PD Sgt. Jason Blackwelder was sentenced to five years probation Wednesday after being found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of 19-year-old Russell Rios by a jury of his peers Tuesday.
Until his manslaughter conviction, Blackwelder had an unblemished reputation, having worked as a public servant since he was 16 years old. Blackwelder held positions as both a volunteer and paid firefighter, emergency medical technician and eventually a police officer.
That was the point his defense team wanted the jury to consider Wednesday in issuing a punishment for the guilty manslaughter verdict handed down the day before.

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The case concerns KOMO 4 television making three requests relating to dash-cam videos and logs of dash-cam footage in 2010 under the state's Public Records Act. KOMO sought the records as part of a series about SPD using excessive force and biased policing, which were the subject of a federal investigation and subsequent settlement to reform the police department. SPD refused to cough them up, making a series of bizarre, implausible claims about being unable to locate the records and having "no documents." The SPD eventually claimed they had a three-year window in which to withhold the video footage (but then, the SPD automatically erased dash-cam footage after three years). In the meantime, the SPD released the videos to a citizen, belying claims the records were nonexistent or impossible to find.

The court found today that the SPD violated public records laws by refusing to release a "list of retained videos" and that two of KOMO's requests "should have been granted." However, the court agreed, police departments can withhold a record if it is relates to pending litigation. The City of Seattle must pay KOMO for attorney's fees (in addition to the dough the city flushed away on this case).

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In a police report, Officer N.B. Danford wrote that he drafted a probable-cause warrant to search for cocaine at the house. The “no-knock” warrant was signed by Tarrant County Magistrate Cheyenne Minick at 3:35 p.m. Thursday, according to the report.

A copy of the warrant provided to the Star-Telegram by Darden’s relatives said a suspect might be concealing cocaine, materials used to package and prepare drugs for distribution, electronic and written records, cash and weapons.

Police reports list five people who were arrested:

• Jerome Orlando Cook, 25, suspected of possessing 1 to 4 grams of a controlled substance and 2 to 4 ounces of marijuana.

• Hunter Rutledge, 22, suspected of possessing less than 2 ounces of marijuana. Police also found that Rutledge was wanted on two warrants from other jurisdictions.

• Lonnie Turner, 27, accused of evading arrest and detention. Turner also had a warrant.

• Donald Raynell Virden, 29, and Brandy Matthews, 29, both with class C warrants from Fort Worth.

Matthews, who identified herself as Darden’s cousin, said she has an unpaid ticket for talking on a cellphone while driving in a school zone.

Randle said Darden weighed more than 300 pounds and was a chronic asthmatic who had trouble breathing. During an interview at the house, she pointed to a “breathing machine” and an ampul of a clear liquid she described as albuterol nitrate, which she said her son used often to help him breathe.

A police report listed items seized at the address: ammunition, a white powdery substance, a green leafy substance, capsules containing a brown substance, three telephones and a credit card.

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At approximately 11:30 p.m. on April 26, 2014, my son and I were returning home from a trip to Subway when I temporarily pulled over on the shoulder of a rural two lane road (Will Robbins) to retrieve an old cellphone that had fallen from the vehicle's console. I had been there approximately 20-30 seconds when Officers Randy Johnson and Mike Fulco activated their emergency lights and approached my vehicle. Although I was safely and completely off the main roadway, I apparently had also unknowingly stopped on a portion of a side street (Pecan). It was late at night, very dark and scarcely any traffic at all. For an accurate record of the encounter and our own safety, I immediately began recording with my new cell phone. This video shows only the first few minutes of a 2 ½ hour roadside encounter with Officer Randy Johnson because I was forced to step out of the vehicle shortly after the recording started. As the video shows, the initial few seconds of the encounter seemed uneventful and appeared to be initiated out of a concern for our safety but quickly escalated into a bizarre fishing expedition once Officer Johnson spotted a small cooler in the back passenger side seat of my vehicle. After politely stating I had nothing illegal in the vehicle and refusing to consent to a search of its contents, Officer Johnson became engrossed with searching the cooler despite having any reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe that it or my vehicle contained anything illegal inside. Simply because I exercised my rights and would not consent to a search, I was subjected to malicious harassment by Officer Johnson for a total of 4 1/2 hours culminating in a retaliatory arrest on a minor traffic offense of Obstructing Traffic, forced by the officer to post a $1,000 bond and having my vehicle towed.

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