A video showing a police officer in Illinois appearing to use pepper-spray on two teens in handcuffs at police headquarters in Alton, a city about 25 miles north of St. Louis, has prompted a state investigation.

The video, dated Jan. 26, 2015, shows two teens sitting in a holding area at the Alton Police Department. It was aired Tuesday by KMOV, a television station in St. Louis.

An officer walks in, says something, and then raises what appears to be a can of pepper spray and sprays both teens.

One of the teens then twitches and shakes for several minutes.

“It was infuriating to me to see an officer coming in and spraying one of these kids, who was handcuffed,” said James Gray, president of the Alton NAACP.

The officer was identified as Vince Warlick by the local newspaper, the Alton Telegraph.

Gray showed the video to KMOV after receiving it in the mail. Gray said he does not like the way Alton police Chief Jason Simmons is running the department. Simmons’ future will soon be decided by the Alton Board of Aldermen, who will choose whether to re-appoint him.

“He’s up for re-appointment, but I do not think he should be reappointed. He has to know about this and, if that happened, how many more things happened that they haven’t sent to me?” Gray said.

On March 21, 2014, Awad says agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested him at gunpoint as he walked out of a convenience store near Central Avenue and Juan Tabo Boulevard.

“As I was walking out, somebody was walking in and he says, ‘Hey Mo!’ and I turned around to see who it was and he put a gun to my chest and said, ‘U.S. Marshal. Don’t move,'” he said.

He didn’t move, except to put his hands up.

Federal court records show Awad was charged with trafficking an illegal chemical compound meant to mimic spice, a synthetic version of marijuana. He was, the agents told him, facing up to 20 years in prison.

A $5 buy

Awad didn’t know it at the time, but the agents did not have an arrest warrant. Also unbeknownst to him was what they did have: a video captured two years earlier by an undercover Albuquerque Police Department detective that showed someone selling a $5 packet of the substance to the detective from behind the counter at a Southeast Albuquerque smoke shop; and the business license for the shop, Curly and Moe’s, which showed Awad as the owner.

But it was not Awad selling the tiny container of suspected spice in the video, according to public records, interviews and a KRQE News 13 analysis of internal video.

“I swear, I was not around there at that time … the whole year,” Awad said in an interview with News 13 at his new home in Kennisaw, Ga., just outside Atlanta.


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Nevertheless, Awad said he spent a couple of days in custody at the DEA office in Albuquerque, then a few more at the Sandoval County Detention Center. After he was indicted, he spent nearly six hellish months in federal custody at the Torrance County Detention Facility waiting for his case to move along. He couldn’t bond out because of his ties to the nation of Jordan, where he once visited in 1998 for a funeral.

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“It was clear. It was not him,” Johnson told News 13. “The physical stature, the physical features, the voice — very different voice.”

She showed it to Awad.

“He looked at me. He looked at the video. And he said, ‘Miss Johnson, that’s not me,'” she said. “I looked at the laptop and I looked at him, I looked at the laptop and I looked at him, and I said, ‘Oh my God. It’s not you.’ I can’t describe the reaction on his face. It was … It was (as) though he wanted to cry.”

It took Johnson a couple weeks to convince prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office that the man in the video was not Awad. In fact, it was one of his brothers, Bilal Awad.

There is a mild family resemblance between the two men, but they are starkly different in appearance.

So, the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to drop the charges against Mohammad Awad. Prosecutors pursued a case against Bilal Awad, but eventually dropped the case against him, too, citing “the current state of the evidence, as well as serious health concerns of the defendant.” Bilal Awad recently lost a leg to a medical condition that he’s still battling. There is apparently no other charge stemming from the years the DEA pursued illegal activity at Curly and Moe’s.

Now, Johnson is suing the U.S. government on Mohammad Awad’s behalf. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court, alleges negligence, false arrest and false imprisonment. It seeks $5 million in damages.

The DEA refused to comment for this story. Local agency spokesman Eduardo Chavez cited in a brief email to News 13 the agency’s longstanding practice of not publicly discussing cases that are the subject of pending litigation.

The lawsuit comes at a time of local and national turmoil for the DEA,.

He’s seen helping the deputies to remove his clothing and his shoes. At one point, he even playfully pats one of the deputies on the back; something a child might do.

Most of the deputies in the room seemingly laugh it off as an innocent autistic man being silly because he’s drunk. This was apparent by the lack of restraints on Dehmann.

However, Deputy Chase Wright was not enjoying Dehmann’s shenanigans.

Three cameras recorded Dehmann’s last moments. Their footage shows deputies helping the drunken man into the Mount Vernon Jail, then talking to him as they collect his belongings. At one point, Dehmann tries to hug a deputy but is rejected, slumping his shoulders in disappointment.

Wright has been placed on administrative leave as Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation conducts an inquiry.

A teenager shot by a Zion police officer Saturday died of two gunshot wounds to the back, Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd announced Monday. Justus Howell, 17, was shot twice, with one bullet penetrating his heart, spleen and liver, and the other entering his right shoulder, according to a coroner’s news release on the autopsy.

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His mother, LaToya Howell, said Justus wanted to go to medical school to be a surgeon.“Justus was a young man murdered by Zion police,” she said. “As he was fleeing from police, they killed my son. He couldn’t have been a threat if he was running.”

What happens when a white guy walks down the street with a AR-15 versus what happens when a black guy walks down the street with same gun and same laws. I'm in shock!

ree Baltimore police officers were accused of theft in two separate investigations — including two charged after being caught on video looting a store during the unrest that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

According to the Baltimore Sun, correction officers Tamika Cobb and Kendra Richard were suspended without pay after footage showed them exiting a local convenience store holding Slim Jims and Tostitos chips on April 25.

That same day, riots broke out in the city after six hours of peaceful protests calling for charges to be filed against the officers who arrested Gray earlier that month. Six officers were later charged in connection with Gray’s death.

Both Cobb and Richard were assigned to corrections facilities downtown, near the site of the unrest. They face charges of burglary and theft, and bail was set for each of them at $35,000.

"You do realize you're towing an ambulance while he's helping out elderly citizens."

By 2:00 am on May 8, Kris Massey of Lakeland, Florida had already had the worst kind of day. Sometime between 1:30 and 2:00 at least two people attempted to force entry into his home while he and his roommate were present.

The would-be home invader fired a shotgun blast through the front door that left 47 pellets in Massey’s right hand. When the Polk County Sheriff’s Department arrived, Massey’s ordeal should have been over.

It wasn’t.
The two responding officers, Sheriff’s Deputy Colletti and Detective Kurt Karakash, claimed they “smelled pot”.

Three minutes after the officers reached Massey’s home, an ambulance arrived to take Massey to the hospital. The officer’s priorities quickly became clear. Serving Massey by getting him needed medical help and protecting the community from the shotgun wielding home invader took a back seat to the “Drug War”. The ambulance sat for around 30 minutes while the officer’s questioned Massey about the “pot smell”.

Even after Massey was taken to the hospital and treated for his gunshot wounds, the officers continued to hound him with questions. Massey says that he was grilled for about five more hours while on painkillers and that at one point, his heart rate spiked up to 168 beats per minute because the officers kept asking him the same questions, “are you a drug dealer, etc” all because his apartment “smelled like pot”.

Massey told the officers he wanted to file a complaint against them. Suddenly the officers had a new priority more important than even the drug war… they needed to cover their butts.

Sometime around 7 a.m., Massey was taken back home. The sheriff’s deputies searched the entire home, and questioned his roommate while Massey was told to wait outside. They found no drugs of any kind. When they let Massey back into his home, the deputies launched what appears to be their Cover Your *** operation, better known as CYA.

Detective Karakash claimed that Massey bumped into him in the doorway “on purpose” which constituted an assault on an officer.
The video below shows how Massey was handcuffed and coerced into a confession while still on painkillers. Massey at this point had been shot, drugged, held and questioned for hours until his heart rate skyrocketed, accused of being a drug dealer, forced to wait as his home was ransacked by the officers, handcuffed, and threatened with charges for “assaulting an officer”.

To say that Massey’s confession was done under duress is putting it mildly. Massey still maintains he did not purposefully bump the officer.

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A San Antonio police officer was arrested on theft-related charges Wednesday night for the second time in eight days.

SAPD spokesman Sgt. Javier Salazar said in a statement that the officer is a three-year veteran who works with Central Patrol.

Although police would not identify the officer, David Nieto, 31, was listed on the Bexar County Central Magistrate Office arrest list as of 11:07 p.m. Wednesday.

The record shows he was arrested at 6 p.m., facing a charge of destroying/concealed writing, otherwise known as retail fraud.

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