n officer first visited Allen’s home at 10:20 p.m. on Saturday, but there was no answer.

Gastonia police then contacted the Gastonia Fire Department and Gaston Emergency Medical Services at 11:30 p.m. and a “decision was made to enter the house, concerned that he may be inside in need of emergency assistance,” Helton said.

According to the chief, Gastonia police Officer Josh Lefevers announced himself before coming through the backdoor of the home, but Allen was pointing a gun at officers when they entered.

“He was challenged to lower the gun down,” Helton insisted. “The gun was pointed in the direction of the officers, and a shot was fired that fatally wounded him.”

The shooting left Allen’s family demanding answers.

“(He) probably woke up, someone’s breaking in on me, so when you’re by yourself you try to protect yourself,” Allen’s brother-in-law, Robert Battle, told WSOC.

Otis Thompson, a friend of Allen’s, said that his first reaction would have been to “grab a gun too.”

“You kicked the man’s door in,” Thompson remarked. “He’s disoriented and he’s in his own house, privacy of his own home.”

Sister Mary Battle said that she understood that police were probably frightened, but she pointed that her brother “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Helton told reporters that the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation had been asked to investigate the shooting. The Gastonia Police Department followed its standard procedure for officer involved shootings and placed Lefevers on administrative leave.

A Texas Grand Jury failed to indict a cannabis grower over the death of a police SWAT team officer, after his defense successfully argued that he believed he was being burgled during a police raid.

Burleson County Sgt. Adam Sowders was shot dead in the early hours of December 19th, 2013, by Henry Goedrich Magee, while executing a search warrant on the man’s home. Law enforcement claimed they believed Magee had large amounts of “marijuana” in his property, as well as illegal firearms.

A jury heard how the SWAT team may have failed to make their presence known before bursting in to the house, and Magee immediately fired at the intruders, killing Sgt. Sowders in the process.

Remarkably the other officers did not return deadly fire and Magee was apprehended. No illegal firearms were uncovered, but they did find a small number of cannabis plants, which the defendant claims were for personal use.

He was indicted on both drug and weapons charges, despite his guns being legally owned, because in the presence of illegal drugs weapons automatically become an accessory to the crime.

The jury however would not indict him for the death of Sgt. Sowders because they could not be convinced that he was aware the intruders were law enforcement.

A Kensington police detective was suspended earlier this week after allegedly having sex with a prostitute who stole his gun, badge, and ammo from a Reno hotel room while he slept.

In late May, Sergeant Keith Barrow allegedly paid $70 to have sex with a prostitute while he was off duty.

Barrow woke up to find his badge, two clips of ammunition, and his gun missing.
Barrow was never cited, and returned to work. He wasn’t suspended until earlier this week.

“It’s a career breaker, and it’s a really negative blot on somebody’s record. On the other hand, seems like if you’re paying somebody $186,000 a year there ought to be some accountability,” Mike Emery said.

Barrow’s stolen gun was later recovered by Reno police after the prostitute’s pimp shot himself in the leg with that gun.

It’s unclear how long Barrow’s suspension will last.

A woman attempted to rob a bar in La Crosse, Wisconsin, but was thwarted by a customer with a taser. The police are making sure justice is served and have arrested the woman.

They arrested the man with the taser, too. That's because it's against the law in Wisconsin to carry a taser without a permit.

The incident took place in the early morning hours at King's Korner bar. A former employee pointed a gun at the bartender and demanded the money in the cash register. But customer Jeff Steele brandished his taser at the burglar, and she ran off. She was apprehended shortly thereafter.

Steele didn't actually use the taser, according to the batender. Still, he will face a felony weapons charge, according to WKBT:

Steele is being charged with possession of an electronic weapon, which is a felony, because he doesn't have a concealed carry permit for his Taser.

"You can have it in your home and on your private property without a concealed carry permit, but you do need to keep a concealed carry permit to carry it out in public," said Officer Lisa Barrix, with the La Crosse Police Department.

"When I bought it off the Internet it said basically that it's legal to have in the state of Wisconsin, but didn't go into any depth on it, so I assumed that it was legal to carry around, otherwise why would you buy one to leave it at home? How is it for defense then?" Steele said.

Barrix says because Steele tried help he wasn't immediately taken to jail.

What a great message—exercise your Constitutional rights and defend someone from a potentially violent crime and you won't be taken to jail immediately.

For his part, Steele claims he ordered the taser online and didn't know he was only allowed to keep it in his home. He lives in a rough neighborhood, and if he can't leave his house with the taser in tow, it defeats the entire purpose.

I hope he learned his lesson. About helping people. And protecting himself.

A former Philadelphia police officer has been sentenced to one day in prison followed by six months of house arrest in what authorities called the improper detention of an Iraq War veteran last year.


Thirty-three-year-old Kevin Corcoran was acquitted of charges of false imprisonment and official oppression last fall but convicted of obstruction of justice, a second-degree misdemeanor.


Prosecutors said Corcoran drew criticism and some people began filming him after he allegedly made an illegal turn. They said Corcoran cuffed one of them, Roderick King of Lansdale, and drove him around before eventually releasing him.

Prosecutors sought a three-month minimum sentence, but Common Pleas judge Robert Coleman on Friday called the incident an aberration amid Corcoran's 10-year career. Corcoran was suspended from the force and later lost his job.

Indiana: Traffic Cops May Not Open Pill Bottles
Indiana Court of Appeals rules that traffic cops may not look through the pill bottles of motorists without legitimate suspicion.

Judge Terry A. CronePolice have no business looking through the pill bottles belonging to a motorist stopped for a routine traffic violation. That was the conclusion of a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals, which last month reversed Antonio Garcia's conviction on drug charges because an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police officer violated the state constitution.

At around 9pm on August 6, 2012, Officer Philip Robinett saw a white Chevrolet Trailblazer that did not have its headlights on. The SUV pulled over and parked on the side of the street without signaling. Officer Robinett hit his lights and ordered Garcia to get back in the car. Garcia is not a US citizen, so he was arrested for driving without a license. A frisk revealed that Garcia had a pill bottle in his pocket, and the officer could not resist taking a look inside.

"Every time I've either -- I've located either some type of illegal substance or -- unless it is a pill that is properly prescribed," Officer Robinett testified. "That's the only time I've seen it to where the substance inside this cylinder is a legal substance."

The container held half a pill with markings indicating it was hydrocodone, a painkiller for which Garcia had no prescription -- a class D felony. Under federal case law, Officer Robinett's search would be considered valid, but Indiana offers greater protection to its residents.

"The degree of concern, knowledge, or suspicion that a criminal violation had occurred with respect to the pill vial was low prior to opening the container," Judge Terry A. Crone wrote for the three-judge panel. "Although there could be situations in which the police find an unfamiliar object on a person through a search incident to arrest that may justify further investigation, that situation did not occur here. There is no evidence in the record that Officer Robinett had any concern or suspicion that the container held anything that threatened his or the public's safety."

Prosecutors admit that they would not have had enough evidence to go to a judge and seek a warrant to open the container, as there was no reason to suspect Garcia had illegal drugs.

"There was no need for law enforcement to preserve evidence relating to the offense for which Garcia was arrested," Judge Crone wrote. "Also, there were no circumstances unrelated to the reason for the arrest that led Officer Robinett to suspect that Garcia was impaired, had engaged in any illegal drug use, or was involved in any illegal drug dealing."

Because the search was unreasonable, the court dismissed the drug possession charge.

Police may not violate constitutional rights to obtain a drunk driving conviction, but the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) can. The North Carolina Court of Appeals came to that conclusion last week in reinstating the driver's license suspension of Myra Lynne Combs.

On January 6, 2013, Mount Airy Police Officer David Grubbs wrongly stopped Combs, who was behind the wheel of a blue SUV. An anonymous caller reported seeing a blue Ford Explorer weaving on Highway 52. Officer Grubs saw Combs, but her driving was just fine. She neither weaved nor committed any traffic violations. Officer Grubbs decided to stop her anyway once she had reached her destination.

Combs smelled of alcohol, and she was unable to pass the standard battery of field sobriety tests. Combs refused to undergo a breath test. Although she was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), the Surry County District Court tossed the criminal case because the officer violated the Constitution in stopping her illegally. The North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), however, was unwilling to let Combs off the hook. It revoked her driver's license based solely on the illicitly obtained evidence. The DMV argued that the exclusionary rule does not apply to a civil proceeding. Combs argued that this was unfair. The trial judge told the DMV it could not base its action on illegal evidence, but the appellate court disagreed.

"Combs's argument poses a fair question: how can law enforcement use evidence that was suppressed because of a Fourth Amendment violation to later revoke her driver's license?" Court of Appeals Judge Richard Dietz asked. "The answer, according to several published decisions of this court, is that the exclusionary rule -- a bedrock principle of criminal law -- does not apply to license revocation proceedings."

Since the three-judge panel accepted the evidence obtained as a result of the traffic stop, it concluded that the DMV had sufficient evidence that Combs refused to submit to a breath test, the penalty for which is license suspension. Combs may have good reason to seek further review of her case, as the appeals court was quoting itself in arriving at its decision.

"Our Supreme Court has not yet addressed this issue, but this court has," Judge Dietz wrote.

The district attorney in Brooklyn has secured his fourth indictment against a cop in as many months. Peter Liang of the New York Police Department (NYPD) was indicted on a charge of manslaughter for shooting and killing Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a public housing project in Brooklyn. According to local news reports Liang and his partner weren’t sure exactly where the building they were patrolling was, and they had in fact been ordered not to patrol stairwells but to stay on the street, in the courtyards and when in the buildings, in the lobby only.

Liang did not call for medical assistance for at least six and a half minutes after shooting Gurley, opting to text his union representative first instead. The NYPD has maintained from the beginning that the shooting was accidental, and the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association said the same after news of the indictment broke. “It’s a tragic, tragic, tragic case,” Ed Mullins said. “I’m sad that he was indicted. I don’t know exactly what transpired in that hallway, but I believe it’s a truly accidental incident.”

Liang remains on the payroll even as he’s being arraigned tomorrow. He was placed on “modified duty” after the shooting but until his indictment he was exempt from being investigated by internal affairs.