YORK COUNTY, S.C. — Two police officers who live in York County were arrested Friday on child neglect charges after their baby boy was hospitalized with seizure-like symptoms and a neck injury.

Former York Police Cpl. Robert Jeff Taylor, 45, is charged with abuse to inflict great bodily injury on a child and unlawful neglect of a child, according to the State Law Enforcement Division.

Chester Police Sgt. Audrey Schurig, 36, is charged with unlawful neglect of a child.

The couple was arrested by Charlotte Mecklenburg authorities after a SLED investigation requested by Rock Hill Police.

ohn Arendale and Bonnie Eshleman were sound asleep when the sound of a commotion outside their front door, followed by two loud, firecracker sounding pops, roused them from their bed to see what was happening.

Eshleman looked out her kitchen window and saw as many as five Coconut Creek police officers standing around a man on the ground. The firecracker sound she heard was the shot discharged from the Tasers fired by two of the officers into the man, who appeared to be writhing in pain.

“He was yelling, `Baby, baby, baby. They’re going to kill me,” she recalled to CBS4’s Jim DeFede.


From another window in their condo, Arendale watched the officers, as well. He said as they attempted to handcuff the man, one of the officers yelled at him, “Don’t move or I’ll break your [expletive] arm.”

Arendale said as they lifted the man up, he tried to run, but only got a few steps before he was hit with two more rounds from the Tasers. The man collapsed. Arendale said the man complained, “I can’t breathe.”

A few minutes later the man appeared dead.

“When he stopped moving that’s when they realized he wasn’t breathing,” Arendale said.
Eshleman and Arendale were witnessing were the final moments of 39-year-old Calvon Reid’s life. Reid’s death following an encounter with the Coconut Creek police sparked controversy this week when police were accused of trying to cover up what happened by claiming all details surrounding the incident were “confidential” and the public did not have the right to even the most basic information. At one point the department refused to acknowledge the death by citing federal privacy statutes on healthcare records.

It's the same firearm carried by police officers across the country, but seconds before firing, Ellis pulled out an orange slide and snapped it onto the weapon. A metal sphere now hung in front of the muzzle.

When he fired, the bullet buried itself into the sphere, sending it hurtling toward a target downrange.

“It knocks the person down. It's going to break some ribs,” said Ellis, chief executive of Alternative Ballistics, the maker of the device. “It's going to feel like a professional baseball player swung a hammer and hit you in the chest.”

But it's unlikely to kill.

After a year of controversial police killings that have inflamed cities across the country, police departments have embarked on an urgent search for new tools that can spare lives while protecting their own.

Journalism student Coulter Loeb tried to photograph Philadelphia police officer George Gaspar Jr. as the latter tried to shoo an overnight camper from the city’s Rittenhouse Square. Gaspar claims Loeb interfered with his duties as a police officer, so he arrested Loeb, cuffed him and charged him with disorderly conduct. Loeb sued, claiming that the arrest violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Despite the fact that every court to rule on the matter has now determined that there is a First Amendment right to record on-duty police, and that according to the American Civil Liberties Union, Philadelphia police have a history of wrongful arrests in this area, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Yohn Jr. dismissed Loeb’s free-speech claim this year, finding that such a right isn’t yet clearly established in the Third District. (Welcome to the world of qualified immunity, where the police are only required to follow “well-established” laws.)

Rather than negligence or any other charges, the police are claiming that Officer Hill “slipped” and shot Autumn instead of killing her pet dog.

As a result of his decision to start shooting, an innocent woman is now dead.

One can imagine how the 4-yr-old child must have felt as his mother was gunned down and killed by the officer.

Officer Hill received administrative leave with pay after the fatal shooting.

There are no reports that he has been fired.

The tragic case has made many think twice before involving police in family affairs.

You start arguing with your spouse, when someone decides to get the police involved — the next thing you know there’s a cop in your yard firing bullets at your pet dog and shooting your spouse to death.

I was released that same night with NO CHARGES, but LOST my job.

An officer, responding to reports of a suspicious person, shot and killed an unarmed man who was running around in a metro Atlanta apartment complex naked.

The officer fired two shots when the man charged at him, said Cedric Alexander, the public safety director of DeKalb County.

But given that the man was not carrying a weapon, the police department immediately turned over the case to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations for an independent probe.

"What I have requested here [is] a result of what's going on currently across this country as it relates to police shootings," Alexander told reporters.

The officer was white; the deceased man was African-American, Alexander said.

A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy has surrendered at jail Monday for an off-duty incident where police say he shot another man in the leg.

Kevin McClernon, 51, surrendered at the Broward Main Jail at 2 p.m. on a felony charge of aggravated battery with a firearm, and two misdemeanor charges of using a firearm while under the influence of alcoholic beverages and culpable negligence, according to the Sun Sentinel.

The town of Woodworth, Louisiana is in hot water. Police officers were caught on dashcam video shaking down innocent motorists during a traffic stop, and the state’s second highest court wants the city to pay for it. On Wednesday, the Court of Appeals in favor of Patricia Parker’s lawsuit against the town.

At 6am on January 4, 2009, Parker was in a pickup truck driving her colleagues, Rufus Smith and Gracie Jackson, to work at the Methodist Center. As she drove on Coulee Crossing Road, Officer David R. Godwin decided to follow. Dashcam video shows Parker obeyed the speed limit, signaled before turning and committed no violations. So Officer Godwin pulled her over.

“The reason I stopped her is because the vehicle turned down Methodist Parkway about six in the morning, and it was still dark,” Officer Godwin testified. “And the Methodist Parkway is some buildings back there. Also, at that time there was a deputy and his family that lived back there. So I stopped her to see what -– what was going on and why they was going back there.”

Parker’s driver’s license came up suspended on a computer check, but she had paperwork to show that she had paid the fine for a ticket and her license was active and valid. Officer Godwin wrote her $1060 worth of tickets, anyway, and would not allow her to phone someone to pick up the truck and drive it a short distance down the road to the Methodist Center. Officer Godwin had the vehicle towed for $193, bringing the total charges, with fees, for the stop to $1580. The town would not release the truck until that amount was paid in full.

Parker attempted to appeal to the judge in her case, showing proof that she was properly insured and her license valid. That judge was Mayor David C. Butler, who forced her to pay a $215 ticket, then re-filed all of the original charges. On June 3, 2009, the town issued an arrest warrant for Parker. She was arrested in front of her children on August 31, 2009 and jailed for 25 days.

Parker sued for false arrest, and the three-judge appellate panel agreed that she deserved compensation because the traffic stop was illegal.

“The issue is simple,” Judge Sylvia R. Cooks wrote for the three-judge panel. “Can a police officer conduct an investigatory stop and detain citizens otherwise legally operating motor vehicles on the public highways or private roads in this state solely because past crimes or suspicious activities have occurred in the area where motorists are traveling? The answer is not even close: ‘No.’ There simply is no ‘check-em-out’ exception to this constitutional prohibition.”

The court borrowed the words of Parker’s lawyer, Edward Larvadain Jr, to blast the conduct of the town’s police force.

“‘These officers have been doing wrong so long, they have begun to believe that wrong is right,'” Judge Cooks wrote. “We could not say it better. Officer Godwin’s testimony demonstrates that he genuinely believes he has a right to make these ‘check-em-out stops’ and that this is normal procedure for the police officers of the town of Woodworth.”

The court upheld the award of $30,000 in compensation to Parker, plus all court costs, while suggesting the amount was insufficient.

A New York man who coincidentally shares his name with the luxury sports car manufacturer was pulled over for speeding and suspicion of driving while intoxicated back in 2009, reports the New York Post.

Police impounded the 2003 Ferrari Modena, and kept it, despite the owner’s fight to get his car returned. A a Suffolk County judicial officer ruled in favor of the police, according to court papers, saying they had probable cause to keep the Ferrari.
Forfeiture proceedings followed, and the man had to surrender the title to the car in 2012 as part of a settlement. The vehicle was later auctioned off for an undisclosed sum by the county.

He then took his case to federal court, claiming the car was worth $110,000 and the county had no right to sell his property. A judge agreed, and a jury has now awarded him $95,000.