A McKinney, Texas police officer has been suspended after video emerged of police violently attacking black youth who were attending a pool party in a Dallas Fort Worth neighborhood.

A local woman who sued the city of North Las Vegas over the shooting death of her dogs and won is now speaking out.


After seven long years, Louisa Thurston finally feels like she got some justice for her two dogs, her pit bull blue and her beloved mastiff Bruno.

"He wasn't a bad dog, he didn't deserve to die but he didn't go down in vain. I mean we won the case and that is all I promised," Thurston says with tears in her eyes while talking about Bruno. He was her favorite.

The city of North Las Vegas paid $25,000 to settle Thurston's federal civil rights lawsuit.

"It was never about the money, it was about holding these cops responsible for what they did," says Thurston.

She filed it after North Las Vegas SWAT officers shot and killed her dogs in 2008. They were serving a high-risk search warrant at her home, looking for her estranged husband, who was wanted on armed robbery charges. He wasn't home at the time.

"The way they treated me, like I was the armed robber, slamming me in the cupboards and profanity. You know my dogs sat there wiggling their tails," explains Thurston. "The minute I got outside they shot them."

Officials with the North Las Vegas City Attorney's Office say despite the settlement, the city is not admitting fault or liability. They maintain the police department and all of the police officers named in the case acted appropriately in the situation. That res pose makes this a bittersweet victory for Thurston.

"I just want it to stop, that's all, I mean I know how I felt and how I still feel, I mean it still brings..." Thurston pauses as she starts to cry. "I don't want anyone else to have to go through that, it was terrible.

Officials with the city attorney's office say they decided to settle to save the city the cost of an expensive trial. But they feel they would have won had they gone forward.

I verbally objected to an unconstitutional search of my vehicle in Electra, Texas. Police officers Matt Wood and Gary Ellis maliciously responded by issuing me two false citations.

I got a copy of the dashboard-camera video at the pretrial hearing.

It showed all.

City attorney Todd Greenwood demanded I give my copy of the evidence back, and tried to have me arrested when I refused.

Todd Greenwood then compared rural Texas to the movie Deliverance, and warned me “What’s written down in the Constitution is one thing, and the real practice is another.”

All charges dropped. Section 1983 anyone?

Mitchell “Brad” Martinez, 35, of Vero Beach, Florida, died late Tuesday evening after being placed on life support following an eight-minute ride to Indian River County Jail on Friday.

Investigators have yet to explain how he died.

But by all accounts, the Florida man seemed to had been in good health prior to entering the van following a court appearance in which a judge ruled he had violated his probation relating to a 2013 aggravated assault case, resulting in the judge revoking his bond.

Following the hearing, he was loaded into a transport van and placed in a holding area directly behind the driver, away from seven other inmates due to the fact that he was wearing his street clothing.

At some point during the 3.7-mile ride from the courthouse to the jail, Martinez became unresponsive.

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When the van arrived at the Indian County jail, Martinez was in cardiac arrest. He was immediately given medical attention and transported to the hospital where he was placed on life-support in the intensive care unit.

Friends and family noticed marks that appear to be approximately the width of a seat belt around his neck and took to Facebook to share the photos, creating a page called Justice for Brad Martinez to demand answers. Besides that tragic photo, other photos posted on the page reveal a perpetually smiling man who enjoyed boating and the company of friends and family.

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A Minneapolis police officer with a history of brutality complaints was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on nine separate criminal counts for alleged assaults on four men in two separate incidents at Minneapolis bars.

Patrol officer Michael Griffin, 40, has been the subject of 22 complaints, only one of which has been sustained by the Minneapolis Police Department.

Griffin is charged in the indictment with depriving the men of their civil rights, falsifying reports and committing perjury in testimony in two lawsuits filed against him.

The suits resulted in $410,000 in payouts by the city to the litigants and their attorneys.

The allegations are among the most serious federal charges brought against Minneapolis police officers in recent years.

“Police officers cannot use their shield as a weapon against innocent civilians,” U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said in a statement.

Ryan Kaess, Griffin’s St. Paul attorney, said Wednesday that Griffin had not broken the law. “My client steadfastly maintains his innocence of all charges,” Kaess said. “He intends to vigorously defend himself against these false accusations and is confident that when all the facts are presented to a jury he will be found not guilty.”

Off-duty Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Sergeant C. Bradley Shivers shot his neighbor's dog in the head Friday afternoon after the dog wandered into his backyard through a hole in the fence.

Posts began appearing all over Facebook Friday night as the owner of the dog sought what she viewed as justice against the killing of her dog.

Sgt. Shivers was the one who called police, and he explained to on-duty officers that the dog, named Goose, had ran into his backyard through a hole in his fence while he and his family were around the pool.

According to police, Sgt. Shivers told officers he promptly found a rake and attempted to run the dog off. He said he'd had several run ins with the animal and a rake usually did the trick.

However, according to Sgt. Shivers, the dog would not 'back down' and kept circling his pool, barking with aggression.

After that, Sgt. Shivers ran into his home and retrieved his agency-approved personal Glock .27 with JSO-issued rounds inside. Before opening fire, Sgt. Shivers told police that he tried to scare the dog off again with a rake.

At this time, Sgt. Shivers slipped in the soft dirt around his pool deck and fell, according to police. Sgt. Shivers then told police the dog lunged at him - and he opened fire, hitting the dog in the head.

Just after the shot was fired, Goose's owner, Chelsea Pavish, 23, came over to Sgt. Shivers's backyard.

Pavish took her pet to St. Francis Animal Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

"We heard the shot… I feel sick, concerned… helpless," Pavish said.

Pavish said that she originally got Goose, a basset hound mix, from the city shelter four months prior to the shooting.

Pavish claims there are problems in Sgt. Shivers's narrative of the events, wondering how, if the dog was so aggressive and such a threat, he could run inside and find a gun before trying to shoo it away with a rake. She was not a witness to the shooting, however.

Pavish claims she's never had any problems with Sgt. Shivers in the past. Pavish blamed Sgt. Shivers saying the officer had a broken fence that he neglected to fix.*

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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports eight out of 10 times that police shot into vehicles, officers were found to have violated department policy with the most common disciplinary action against them being only a simple reprimand.

Based on Internal Affairs documents gathered from civil litigation and interviews with attorneys, police, and community members, the Inquirer concludes Philadelphia tax payers have had to shell out over $5.8 million for police shootings involving moving vehicles over the last 13 years.

Officials have repeatedly attempted to curb the problem by narrowing the circumstances in which officers can fire their weapons. They have had little success.

In 2001, then-Commissioner John F. Timoney ordered police not to shoot fleeing people if they didn’t present a threat of imminent death or serious injury to officers or others.
Timoney also strengthened rules on shooting at cars so officers could not open fire unless occupants were threatening their lives with some deadly force other than the vehicle.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey introduced new rules in May 2014 after two undercover officers shot and critically wounded a pizza deliveryman, an incident still under investigation by the district attorney.

Ramsey prohibited officers from firing at a vehicle unless they themselves were under fire. But since then, police have shot people inside moving vehicles at least four times, wounding three.

In March, the Department of Justice made 91 recommendations to reduce police shootings in Philadelphia after Ramsey had requested a federal review in 2012.
The report found, among other things, that Philadelphia police took more than 250 days to complete the average shooting investigation. Police should try to complete the shooting investigations in 30 days, the Justice Department advised.

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Multiple sources are reporting that earlier today, in uniform and in public, two BPD officers were involved in a physical dispute that landed one in the ER. Sources and witnesses from the scene are reporting that two officers were involved in a verbal altercation that nearly turned deadly when one officer got into his police car and ran the other one over.

Bayonne Local has obtained an anonymous description of the police report. Details in the report are sketchy at best, but that is expected since a Police Captain is involved in an alleged assault of his subordinate:

At about 9:15AM, by the Turnpike Extension construction, on-duty Police Captain Anthony Larino was in a verbal altercation with an unnamed officer working off duty. Details of the altercation are minimal at this time, but at some point officer Larino’s unmarked police car ended up running over the unnamed officer. The officer was dragged for about 15 feet, according to witnesses, it appeared to be done deliberately. The car is a brown unmarked Buick police car that can usually be seen parked outside Larino’s business, Vital Signs.

Larino was recently suspended for assaulting a Bayonne resident in his father-in-law’s place of business, Russell Auto Body.

Bayonne Local is on the scene and will keep you posted with details and statements as they emerge. No information is being released from the hospital at this time, but one officer has been admitted to the ER.

The New York City Housing Authorities are urging employees and maintenance crews to wear orange vests, similar to those worn by construction workers. While the official story says it’s to better identify workers, some argue that it’s actually about handling trigger-happy police officers.

"There was one gunman with a handgun and they chose to turn this house into something that resembles Osama Bin Laden's compound."

Leo Lech is more than a little upset, and he is not afraid to express it with colorful language.

After all, the house he purchased for his son now has gaping holes where it once had walls and windows. Past the exposed studs and insulation of the condemned structure, you can see artwork on the wall of a 9-year-old boy's bedroom.

"In any civilized nation ... this is the act of paramilitary thugs," he says he told the chief of the Greenwood Village Police Department.

The chief, Lech said, brushed it off.

The damage was inflicted by police and SWAT officers who were working to capture Robert Jonathan Seacat, a suspected 33-year-old shoplifter who allegedly barged into a random home Wednesday afternoon, and opened fire on police when they tried to arrest him a short time later.

The incident began Wednesday afternoon, when he was allegedly spotted shoplifting in Aurora. Seacat then drove to a nearby light rail station, where he ditched his car and ran.

Eventually, he ran into Lech's house on South Alton Street in Greenwood Village, where the 9-year-old boy was inside. Police dispatchers and the child's mother, who is engaged to Lech's son, talked the child out of the house.

The boy was unhurt, but the standoff was just beginning.

Seacat wasn't taken into custody until Thursday morning. The SWAT team said it used chemical agents, flash-bang grenades and a "breaching ram" to end the nearly 20-hour standoff.

"There was obviously some kind of explosive that was fired into here," Lech said, showing 7NEWS anchor Anne Trujillo the cavernous hole in the wall that used to protect the boy's bedroom.

Those holes are visible in nearly every room on the second floor.

A neighbor, who says the SWAT team used his home as a base of operations, points out that whatever the police used to blast the holes sent debris flying.

"When they used the explosives to blow apart the side of this house here, they broke our windshield," the neighbor said.

"There are holes just like this one all through the back of the house too," Lech said. "They methodically fired explosives into every room in this house in order to extract one person. Granted, he had a handgun, but against 100 officers? You know, the proper thing to do would be to evacuate these homes around here, ensure the safety of the homeowners around here, fire some tear gas through the windows. If that didn’t work, you have 50 SWAT officers with body armor break down the door."

Lech estimated roughly that his plan would have caused $10,000 in damage, as opposed to the $250,000 in damage he believes he is facing.

"This is an abomination," he said. "This is an atrocity. To use this kind of force against one gunman."

Lech explains that he had owned the home for two years and rented it to his son. It is now uninhabitable and may need to be completely leveled.

His insurance will pay for the structure, but Lech's son did not have rental insurance and the possessions inside are therefore not being covered.

"There was an engagement ring in there that would have been John's great-great grandmother's. It survived two World Wars, OK, but it didn’t survive the American police paramilitary operation."

The civilian review panel found that Cruz feared for his life and therefore was within police policy guidelines to use lethal force.

Taylor had his hands in his baggy sweatpants, leading Cruz to believe he had a gun, according to the report released to the Tribune. The shooting was recorded on the officer’s body camera.

District Attorney Sim Gill had earlier found that Cruz was not in violation of police policy when he killed Taylor because the officer feared for his life.

Cruz saw three men in the store parking lot. He could see the hands of two men but Taylor’s hands were not visible as he turned and began walking away from Cruz.

Cruz ordered Taylor to stop and remove his hands. Taylor took several more steps and then stopped and turned toward the officer. Taylor pulled his hands out of his pants and raised his shirt when he was shot.

“From the officer’s point of view, he believed one of the three was reportedly armed,” the report stated. “And when first contact is made, one of the three began to walk away from the scene.”

- See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/graph....qOc9Bh8y.dpuf

A New York judge has dismissed the case against Adam Rupeka, a man from Troy who raised his middle finger in the direction of a cop — and who got pepper sprayed in the face, assaulted, handcuffed, and detained in return, the Saratogian reports.

On Thursday, City Court Judge Jeffrey Wait dropped all charges against Rupeka, which stem from a traffic stop earlier this month by Saratoga Springs police officer Nathan Baker.

Baker has reportedly been on administrative leave since supervisors learned of his May 16 attack on a citizen who had committed no crime. Still a member of the force, Baker is now suspended without pay pending a disciplinary hearing to take place within the next 30 days. The Saratogian reports that Police Chief Greg Veitch “will be seeking Baker’s termination.”

Rupeka says he will pursue a civil case against Baker, and is weighing legal options regarding action against the department.

Earlier this month, Rupeka — who works for CopBlock, police transparency advocate — was driving “near the Hampton Inn in downtown Saratoga Springs,” with two running cameras set up in his car. As he passed by, Rupeka flipped off a cop to test whether the officer would respect his first amendment right to free speech.

The officer, who happened to be Baker, did not.

In a WNYT video clip of the incident, Baker approaches Rupeka’s car after pulling him over, and demands the citizen’s license and information. Through an open driver’s side window, Rupeka tells Baker he will do that, if Baker can “articulate what crime I’ve committed.”

Baker articulates, “Step out of the vehicle,” as he removes a can of pepper spray from his pocket and begins shaking it. “You’re under arrest for disorderly conduct,” Baker says, and sprays burning liquid directly into Rupeka’s face.

Commanding Rupeka again to “step out of the vehicle,” Baker grabs Rupeka’s arm, and twists it backwards out the window.

“You gonna comply?” Baker demands, twisting Rupeka’s arm farther upward and back. Rupeka, whose head is pressed against the steering wheel at this point, grits his teeth and emits a painful groan: “I can’t.” The officer twists the driver’s arm still more until Rupeka relents, and exits the vehicle with Baker still pulling on his arm.

The video clip ends with Baker putting Rupeka in handcuffs and escorting him away from the vehicle.

Baker charged Rupeka with disorderly conduct, having an obstructed view, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration.

BART police Sgt. Tom Smith, frustrated that his department had rejected his requests for more training or the use of its SWAT team during high-risk searches of homes, told his wife that if anything happened to him, she should “sue the s—” out of the agency, her attorneys said Monday.

Specifically, Smith told his wife — fellow BART Officer Kellie Smith — that she should file a lawsuit naming Deputy Police Chief Ben Fairow, whom he said had routinely denied his requests for more training and for tactical teams. Last year, the sergeant was shot and killed — accidentally, authorities said, by a fellow officer who suddenly encountered him as they searched a small Dublin apartment.

The lawsuit Kellie Smith filed on Friday came a day after she wrote a letter to the BART board of directors and Police Department managers, saying the litigation came only after her attempts to “confidentially address my concerns” failed. A veteran of the force for nearly 20 years, she said she wrote the letter “with deep regret and a heavy heart,” noting that she has “deep loyalty to BART PD and its officers.”

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says Fairow “denied training and denigrated officers when training and/or involvement of tactical teams were discussed,” saying that it was all “bull—” and that officers were “pussies” because they had “training like this in the police academy.”