A Ramsey county (MN) sheriff’s deputy is on “paid suspension” this week after he was captured on video beating his K-9 partner.

Brett Arthur Berry a Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputy faces criminal charges after he was caught on surveillance cameras abusing his K-9 partner at a Carlton casino.

The Carlton County Sheriff’s Office says 48-year-old Brett Arthur Berry was at Black Bear Casino on June 14 for a canine training and certification event.

Two undercover police officers must pay more than $430,000 to two brothers they falsely arrested for selling cocaine, a federal judge ruled.

Brothers Jose and Maximo Colon had spent an hour-and-a-half at the Delicias de Mi Terra nightclub in Elmhurst, N.Y., on Jan. 5, 2008, when plainclothes Officers Henry Tavarez, Steven Anderson and Alan Figueroa arrived, according to a U.S. Magistrate Judge's 47-page Report and Recommendation.

According to the report, Det. Miguel Caraval showed up later that night, pressed the bothers against the wall and told them they were under arrest.

The Colon brothers said no one told them what they were charged with at the police precinct, where they were fingerprinted, photographed and strip-searched.

Security footage later showed that the brothers never spoke to the officers, and the charges were dismissed.

Roughly a year later, they sued New York City and the officers in the Eastern District of New York, for civil rights violations.

The city paid the brothers $150,000 apiece to settle their case weeks before it was slated for trial.

At one hearing, city lawyers indicated that three of the officers may have planted evidence by "flaking" cocaine on the brothers, according to a court memo.

Figueroa paid the brothers a nominal $166.66 each for their settlements, and charges were dismissed against Caraval.

The remaining officers, Tavarez and Anderson, did not respond to their complaints, and were slapped last week with default judgments of roughly $210,000 each.

A memorandum explaining the penalties describes the fallout of their false arrests.

At the time, the Colon brothers applied for alcohol, cigarette and lottery licenses for a store, which were rejected because of the charges against them.

After newspapers reported their arrest, the brothers said, they were ostracized in their community, and their store closed...

Broward Sheriff's deputy Franklyn McCurrie, convicted of causing a fatal accident by racing to the scene of a non-emergency, was sentenced Thursday to just under 10 years in prison.

Former Broward Sheriff's deputy Franklyn McCurrie has been convicted of vehicular homicide stemming from an on-duty 2010 crash that killed 14-year-old Cara Catlin.

McCurrie, 27, was found guilty in April of vehicular manslaughter and two counts of reckless driving in the January 23, 2010, death of Cara Catlin, 14, a freshman at Northeast High School in Oakland Park. Broward County Judge Dennis Bailey denied a defense request to free McCurrie on bond as he appeals the conviction.

The sentencing came after an emotional two-and-a-half-hour hearing, during which McCurrie issued a dramatic apology to the Catlin family.

"I will tell you it was not my intent by any means to hurt your daughter," he said to Catlin's father, seated about 10 feet away. "It was a very tragic accident, and my heart goes out to you."

He described trying to help Catlin after the accident. "And then our eyes connected, and I'll never forget," he said. "There's not a moment that goes by that that pain and agony and frustration doesn't come up. Life is precious."

Minutes earlier, Catlin's father, Duane Catlin, chastised McCurrie for fighting the charges for more than five years.

"He abused the judicial system, dragging this out that long," Catlin said. "We'd like to mourn."

Before he imposed his sentence, Bailey questioned the sincerity of McCurrie's repeated expressions of remorse, noting that McCurrie continuously referred to the crash as a tragic accident but never admitted he was responsible for causing it.

"He has yet to say, 'This crash was my fault,'" Bailey said.

McCurrie faced up to 15 years in prison, but prosecutors only sought 117.3 months, the minimum recommendation considering his lack of criminal history and ties to the community.

Prosecutors said McCurrie was driving his patrol car to provide support for a traffic stop in Oakland Park on the night of the crash. He was traveling at 89 mph on Dixie Highway and Northeast 56th Street when his car collided with a Honda Civic driven by Catlin's stepsister, Heather Meyer, then 21, according to trial testimony. The patrol car's lights and sirens had not been activated.

The speed limit was 40 mph.

McCurrie was a rookie at the time, and he lost his job shortly afterward.

McCurrie will be one of the first Florida cops to do hard time for speeding and killing.

A 2012 Sun Sentinel investigation found officers exceeding the speeding limit had caused 320 crashes and 19 deaths in a seven-year period. Only one officer went to jail — for 60 days.

Rick Wershe had an unusual job as a 14-year-old. Police were paying him to get close to drug dealers and then tell them when shipments were coming in. It was a job that led Wershe to sell drugs and land in prison for more than 27 years.

“They showed me some pictures and asked me who this person was, who that person was. I basically identified them and they said they would be in touch,” Wershe told Local 4 Defender Kevin Dietz.

His father, also a paid informant, gave permission for police to recruit his son.

...

Over two years, Wershe said he was given approximately $30,000. He used the money to buy clothes, jewelry and even cars -- despite the fact that he wasn’t even old enough to drive.

His relationship with police worked out until Wershe turned 15 and was shot by a suspected drug dealer.

“I was shot and I never went back to school,” Wershe said.

After the shooting, Wershe said police stayed away from him for a while. But they soon returned with a plan to send him to Las Vegas.

...

Wershe’s trip to Las Vegas, and the information be subsequently provided to investigators, led to the bust of a major drug operation. But suddenly, Wershe said, police again stopped coming to him.

“They turned their back on me. I was a 17-year-old kid. I was addicted to the money,” Wershe said.

Without the cash flow from police, he started selling drugs on his own. It lasted a year before he was convicted of having 8 kilos of cocaine, and sentenced to life in prison. Police called him a drug kingpin and he was tagged with the nickname “White Boy Rick.”

Scott Burnstein is an author and true crime historian. He has researched Wershe’s case for years.

“I don’t use the word tragedy or injustice lightly, but I use it emphatically when I’m talking about Rick Wershe,” Burnstein said. “I honestly believe that this is the prostituting of our youth, and then just throwing them in a cage and throwing the key away.”

Burnstein said he feels that Wershe’s reputation far exceeds the actual person, and what he was doing during those teen years.

Rick Wershe documents

“I think it’s a true tragedy … an injustice. A wrong needs to be righted,” Burnstein said.

Wershe is now 46 years old. He was eligible for parole more than a decade ago, but so far, he has not been given a hearing by the parole board.

“They got me involved in this. I was a kid. I made a poor decision. Should I be paying for it 27 years later? I don’t think so,” Wershe said.

The rookie NYPD cop who shot and killed Akai Gurley in a stairwell last year waited almost 20 minutes to report the shooting, refusing to call for or provide medical assistance, as he bickered back and forth with his partner about who should be the one to call their sergeant.

Meanwhile, Gurley lay bleeding on a stairwell with a bullet wound to his chest, still breathing, while his girlfriend ran to a neighbor for help, according to a new document presented this week in the manslaughter trial of New York City police officer Peter Liang.
The statement of facts, presented by the district attorney in rebuttal to a motion from Liang’s defense attorney that the case be dismissed– offers the most detailed account of the shooting to date, describing the rookie officer being more concerned about keeping his job than keeping Gurley alive.

In the minutes after the shooting, Melissa Butler, never having been trained in CPR before, kneeled over her boyfriend, applying pressure to the wound and administrating CPR as her neighbor remained on the phone with the 911 operator relaying instructions.
The cops, despite being trained in CPR and required as police officers to administer it when needed, stepped around them as they made their way down the stairs, still arguing about who should call the sergeant.

“Hurry up and call,” NYPD police officer Shawn Landau told Liang.

“What’s the address?” Liang asked his partner.

Liang finally reported the shooting at 11:19 p.m., almost 20 minutes after the shooting, estimated to have taken place a little after 11 p.m.

And five minutes after the neighbor had already called 911.

During that time, Liang also texted his union representative in a desperate attempt to save his job.

MAYS LANDING, New Jersey — A former Atlantic City police officer convicted of improperly making thousands of dollars through a program intended to help the community is now headed to prison.

Atlantic County prosecutors say 41-year-old Michael Jones received two sentences Wednesday totaling 11 years. He also must pay $12,760 in restitution.

Jones was convicted last month on official misconduct, theft by deception and tax charges. He was then forced to forfeit his job.

Prosecutors say Jones paid about 20 percent of the normal rent at Stanley Homes Village, where he was supposed to reside as part of a live-in police officer program.

But they say he instead rented out the apartment and lived five blocks away.

Jones had served on the Atlantic City force for 12 years.

A pair of Detroit police officers who were indicted as part of a federal probe into the city's scandal-plagued narcotics unit have been named in a civil lawsuit, alleging the cops wrongly detained a Detroit resident after illegally searching his home with a warrant based on false statements.

The lawsuit, filed in November by Anthony and Elaine McCallum, initially named two Detroit Police Department officers involved in the raid. But an amended complaint filed Thursday added Lt. David "Hater" Hansberry and Officer Bryan "Bullet" Watson, among several others, as additional defendants.

In April, Hansberry and Watson were indicted on accusations of stealing drugs, extortion, and carrying out fake arrests.

The McCallums say officers executed a search warrant in 2013 on their home that was based on false statements given by a Detroit law enforcement official in a sworn affidavit, according to the complaint.

The officers — "particularly [Sgt. Stephen] Geelhood and Watson" — physically assaulted Anthony and threatened Elaine "for no reason," according to the complaint. It's unclear what role Hansberry played, but the complaint says the officers named as defendants "executed the search warrant in bad faith, knowing that the information requesting the warrant was false."

Upon entering the couple's home, the officers assaulted Anthony McCallum, handcuffed and arrested the 47-year-old "without probable cause," and wrongfully pursued prosecution, according to the complaint.

As a result of the April 2013 search, Anthony McCallum was charged with intent to deliver and manufacture marijuana, intent to deliver and manufacture less than 50 grams of cocaine, firearms possession by a felon, and felony firearms, court records show — but all charges were eventually dismissed when issues surrounding the warrant arose.

McCallum was convicted in 1997 of assault with intent to commit sexual penetration, according to the Michigan State Police sex offender registry.

The issues surrounding the raid of the McCallums home began from the onset.

Police obtained the search warrant based on an affidavit signed by Officer Amy Matelic, according to a court transcript from an Aug. 8, 2013 hearing on the charges brought against Anthony McCallum, who initially plead not guilty on each count.

In the sworn affidavit, Matelic — who's also named as defendant in the complaint filed Thursday — stated she received a tip from a confidential informant that cocaine was being sold and stored within McCallum's home. The informant provided tips in the past that led to arrests and generated cases in 3rd Circuit Court and 36th District Court, according to the transcript.

The problem? According to the transcript, Matelic had no direct conversation with the informant or personal knowledge of the tip; another officer, Gil Hood, actually received it. But, for unclear reasons, Hood didn't sign the affidavit.

...

Sometimes exercising your right to be free from unlawful search and seizure is a dangerous proposition. Some cops assume that a citizen taking a stand for their own liberty is a challenge of their authority. In many ways they are correct, but one common denominator in all abuses of authority is the escalation of force by those wearing badges.

The scenario was no different today outside of the Addison, Texas police department where I was forcefully taken to the ground, handcuffed, and assaulted for committing no crimes as seen in the video.

Full Story: http://bit.ly/1RAA8Te

State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman Tuesday announced the guilty plea of Troy Police Officer Brian Gross for purposefully revealing to at least one suspect that law-enforcement agencies conducting a joint investigation into a Capital Region drug ring planned to execute search warrants.

Gross pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of official misconduct and one misdemeanor count of divulging an eavesdropping warrant before Rensselaer County Court Judge Andrew G. Ceresia.

As part of a plea agreement, Gross is expected to be sentenced to three years of probation, to resign from the Troy Police Department, to agree to never seek employment with a law enforcement agency, to pay $5,500 in restitution to the State Police, and to complete 100 hours of community service.

“A police officer’s violation of the public trust is a serious matter,” said Troy Police Chief John Tedesco. “Today’s plea by Brian Gross dishonorably ends a once promising career.”

...

A missing 15-year-old girl was found safe early Thursday morning in Las Vegas along with a police officer in his 30s with whom she reportedly left Turlock voluntarily, according to police.

...

Morgan, who is a police officer with an Oklahoma police department, was taken into custody in Las Vegas, Turlock police said. Morgan has been placed on administrative leave with the Kiowa Police Department.

The Turlock Police Department thanked everyone involved in the 22-hour investigation that found Alexis safe.

Morgan was arrested on a fugitive warrant about 8 a.m. at the Treasure Island Hotel on the Vegas strip. He and Alexis had a room together, Las Vegas police said.

Morgan now faces extradition to California, where he faces kidnapping charges.

No one disputes that in 2012, a high-performance engine part was taken from a DEA-seized vehicle and installed on a West Palm Beach cop’s personal pickup.

But was it stolen? That’s a mystery that has consumed the efforts of three law enforcement agencies, which have weighed the word of a former cop-turned-auto-shop owner against a flamboyant former manufacturer of a synthetic marijuana known as “Mr. Nice Guy.”

At stake is the career of a West Palm Beach police officer and the reputations of the mechanic and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA already has removed the officer, Sean Meyers, from a DEA task force and he has been on paid leave since January.

At a time when police are criticized for not rigorously investigating their own, the DEA, the State Attorney’s Office and West Palm Beach police have invested hundreds of man hours trying to find out if a lone officer took advantage of his position to steal a $430 auto part.

The DEA and local investigators wrote in reports that they had enough evidence to show Meyers stole the part, but they chose not to charge him. West Palm Beach police are still investigating.

But interviews and records could point to an entirely different conclusion: that the entire incident was an innocent mistake.

...

He was sentenced to a year in prison.

His pickup truck, seized by the DEA during his arrest, was returned to him as part of his plea deal.

Harrison believes if the roles were reversed, police would have charged him with a crime.

But to Bill Griffin, who owns the auto shop that installed the part on Meyers’ truck, the entire controversy has been overblown.

Griffin, a former West Palm Beach officer and personal friend of Meyers, called the multiple investigations into a $430 auto part “the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” his recorded interview with state attorney’s investigators shows.

Griffin told The Palm Beach Post that he thought he was trying to do the right thing by moving the part because it saved the DEA money.

“I don’t feel — I never did, I never will — that I did anything wrong,” he said.

...

Everything started about three weeks after Harrison was arrested in July 2012, when investigators at the DEA told the jailed Harrison that his diesel Chevy Silverado had been broken into while on the DEA’s lot. His windows were broken and his stereo, subwoofers and a DVR that was storing video footage from four cameras inside the vehicle were gone.

The agents believed the DVR could have captured drug deals and that Harrison had arranged to have the truck ransacked, an accusation Harrison denies.

The truck was so damaged that Meyers, who was on the DEA task force at the time, had it towed to Griffin’s shop.

When Harrison was out on bond awaiting sentencing, he learned his truck had not been restored to its previous condition.

After he got out of prison last year, his mechanic noticed that the high-performance air intake was missing. The part was designed to blow cold air into the engine to generate more power. In its place was an original GM part.

But the vehicle identification number on the mystery part didn’t match the VIN for Harrison’s truck.

Harrison traced the VIN to a Chevy Silverado owned by Meyers. He didn’t know Meyers, but found that the officer was assigned to the DEA task force and had made headlines in 2005 when he was one of 13 officers suspended for using steroids.

Outraged, he asked his lawyer to send his findings to the DEA, which opened an investigation and got a search warrant for Meyers’ truck. They found Harrison’s air intake under the hood.

Meyers, according to the records, confirmed that it had been installed by Griffin. He did not respond to a request for comment.

...

To see if the problem was with the computer or with Harrison’s high-performance intake, he wanted to swap the intake with a factory one. He looked around the repair lot for a similar truck and saw Meyers’ pickup, which was in for some custom work.

Bowe was only going to swap the parts temporarily, to identify the problem. But the factory intake from Meyers’ truck solved the problem — Harrison’s truck started up just fine.

He also realized that Meyers’ truck could handle the high-performance intake.

Swapping the parts was a creative, low-cost solution that resulted in a final bill of about $800. Griffin said he was under pressure to keep repair costs low because DEA agents have to get approval for expensive repairs.

...

A 3-year-old pit bull named Prada struggled to walk down the stairs in her front yard. Her owner said she was tied up beside his house last Wednesday, along with her puppies, when a neighbor said police chased a suspect who was arrested at the adjoining house.

"The officer told him to stop. He shot at the dude. The dog ran to the end of the chain when she heard the shot. When she ran to the end of the chain, she had no place to go. When she didn't have no place to go, when she reached the end of her destination, she turned to run back towards where the officer was going back under the house," said neighbor Michael Walker.

Prada's owner, Robert Alexander, said he had to pay $200 to get his dog back after the emergency repairs. He said it will cost several thousand dollars more for surgery to repair a badly damaged back leg.

In February 2014, Drug Enforcement Administration task force officers at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport seized $11,000 in cash from 24-year-old college student Charles Clarke. They didn't find any guns, drugs or contraband on him. But, according to an affidavit filled out by one of the agents, the task force officers reasoned that the cash was the proceeds of drug trafficking, because Clarke was traveling on a recently-purchased one-way ticket, he was unable to provide documentation for where the money came from, and his checked baggage had an odor of marijuana.

...

Two local agencies were involved in the seizure of Clarke's cash: the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport Police, and the Covington Police Department, which is the home office of the DEA task force officer who detained and spoke with Clarke. But according to the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties group now representing Clarke in court, 11 additional law enforcement agencies -- who were not involved in Clarke's case at all -- have also requested a share of Clarke's cash under the federal asset forfeiture program. They include the Kentucky State Police, the Ohio Highway Patrol, and even the Bureau of Criminal Investigations within the Ohio Attorney General's office.

Recently promoted to Sergeant, Adams Lin is seen in a photograph while on duty as a deputy. But it's a 2013 dash cam video of Lin that has attracted nationwide attention.

The video shows Lin trailing Dontrell Stephens for an alleged bicycle violation. Moments later, Lin opens fire on Stephens who was unarmed at the time, holding nothing but a cell phone.

Lin can be heard on the video moments later talking to another deputy.

“I told him get on the ground, get on the ground.”

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office and the State Attorney’s Office cleared Lin of any wrongdoing from that shooting, but a closer look at his internal affairs file shows a deputy with a tendency to use force.

Lin's history of using force seemed to escalate over time.

There was just one in '05, two more in '06. By 2007 (5) incidents in 12-month period triggered an alert for his supervisors that he was a deputy to monitor.

His alerts continued, use of force incidents continued through the Dontrell Stephens shooting.

Several use of force incidents prompted internal reviews and citizen complaints. In all of them, he was cleared.

In fact, Lin's only write-ups were for not showing up to court and last year, he received a written reprimand for improperly processing evidence.

Prior to being hired by PBSO in 2004 and years before the shooting of Dontrell Stephens would be broadcast around the country, Lin, a former military police sgt. was praised for his outstanding performance during a stint with Operation Enduring Freedom.

Lin’s promotion to sergeant started this past weekend. Meantime, he remains at the center of a legal fight from the Dontrell Stephens shooting.

As a result of that shooting, Stephens is paralyzed from the waist down.

A federal judge has just ordered the government to return $167,000 it took from a man passing through Nevada on his way to visit his girlfriend in California. The officers really wanted that money, too. They used two consecutive stops to jerry-rig some probable cause… even though at that point they thought they were only dealing with $2000. From the original stop forward, the entire situation was deplorable, indisputably showing that everyone involved was more interested in taking (and keeping) a bunch of cash than enforcing laws or pursuing justice.

The order is a jaw-dropping read. It begins with the flimsiest of "reasonable suspicion" and heads downhill after that. Straughn Gorman was driving across Nevada in his RV when he was pulled over for a "left-lane violation" -- driving too slow in the passing lane. (This itself isn't actually a moving violation, but the Supreme Court's Heien decision has ensured that law enforcement needn't be slowed by actual knowledge of the laws they're supposed to be enforcing.)

...

Monroe smelled money and he wasn't about to let $2000 travel across his state without being apprehended. So, he called the Highway Patrol and told dispatch his suspcions, stating that the only way the vehicle could be searched was with the use of a drug dog. Dispatch called Deputy Doug Fisher and informed him that Gorman did not consent to a search and that he "might want to follow up on the information." Here we have two different law enforcement entities basically colluding to perform a search simply because one entity experienced a refusal. The court isn't impressed.

On top of this, Monroe called Deputy Fisher directly to "relay his suspicions." He also inflated the amount of money Gorman had admitted to be carrying with him -- from $2000 to $5000. Fisher left the Sheriff's Office ostensibly to perform a "roving patrol," but soon decided to park himself on the side of the highway in order to catch Gorman when his RV passed by. Fisher pulled the RV over after it "crossed the fog line" a few times.

Having been stopped for a second time in under an hour, Gorman was understandably annoyed. He told Fisher the same thing he had told Monroe during his twenty-minute stop earlier. Fisher ran the same records checks and received the same lack of anything actionable. Despite this, Fisher pushed for a canine search.

...

First off, two different law enforcement officers performed consecutive stops, with the second stop being predicated on the "suspicions" generated by the first. This is something law enforcement cannot do.

On top of that, the government -- when arguing for its "right" to take money just because -- claimed the two stops were entirely unrelated.

Note the phrase "after it became evident." This wasn't evident at first. Deputy Fisher hid this fact from the magistrate judge when requesting a warrant over the phone and lied about what Gorman had actually told him.

These lies -- kindly called "omissions" by the court -- sadly wouldn't be enough on their own to suppress the evidence obtained by the search. But the application of the Supreme Court's Rodriguez decision (officers can't unnecessarily prolong stops to perform [often dog-assisted] fishing expeditions) does call for suppression.

But Deputy Fisher wasn't the only one lying. The State's Attorney's office also lied to the court.

But, as pointed out earlier in the order, Doug Fisher wasn't assigned to traffic patrol and wouldn't have just been "monitoring traffic" if he hadn't received a call from dispatch about Gorman's RV, as well as a direct call from Trooper Monroe himself.

On top of the deceit at all levels, there were problems with the search itself. The drug dog alerted on a rear compartment. But rather than search that area, the deputies searched the entire vehicle.

The court sums it up succinctly while ordering the government to hand over not only Gorman's original $167,000, but attorney's fees as well.

Police responding to race-related protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer made a series of missteps, including antagonizing crowds with attack dogs and military-style tactics, according to a U.S. Justice Department report.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, is a draft summary of a document the department plans to release in the coming weeks evaluating law enforcement actions. A Justice Department representative said the "after-action assessment ... will convey the findings and lessons learned."

...

The Justice Department draft report, which covers actions over the 17 days following the shooting, found that police lacked effective protocols, were not adequately trained, struggled with communication and coordination, and made mistakes that sometimes heightened tensions.

The use of dogs for crowd control during the Ferguson protests incited fear and anger in the crowd, according to the report, while the use of teargas on people without warning was also a problem.

In addition, police were inconsistent in using force and making arrests, and some officers removed their nameplates to evade accountability for their actions, the Justice Department said.

The report also criticized police for positioning snipers atop armored vehicles to monitor the crowd through rifle sights, saying the tactic "served only to exacerbate tensions."

It found that law enforcement agencies set a negative tone with the media by initially offering limited public information about Brown's shooting. The report also said police inhibited protesters constitutional right to free speech.

In all, the report lists 45 findings along with recommendations for improvements.

It's impossible to understand what the officers involved in the chase were thinking. Last Wednesday, Detroit cops pursued a man identified as parole absconder Lorenzo Harris into a Detroit neighborhood. Before the chase was over, two children were killed — Makiah Jackson, 3, and Michaelangelo Jackson, 6 — and three more were seriously injured, hit by Harris' Camaro. He's been charged with their deaths.

Harris has a substantial criminal history, records indicate, and officers said they saw a gun in the car. When the deadly crash was over, no gun was found. Police are still investigating, but from the information available, it appears the chase may have been conducted in violation of the department's policy, which says public safety takes precedent over apprehension of a suspected criminal; in fact, a supervisor tried multiple times to end the chase.


...

According to the policy, officers can chase if they have probable cause to believe a felony – and not just fleeing and eluding alone – "has been, is being or is about to be, committed." It also says they can pursue if officers see offenses that pose such a danger to the public that they outweigh the hazards of pursuing the fleeing vehicle.

The officers reported that, before the pursuit, they saw someone in the car with a gun.

But no gun has been found, Craig said.

...

There is no consolation for the death of a child. For those who loved Makiah and Michaelangelo, this wound will never heal. That police were involved — reports suggest the cop car "tapped" Harris' Camaro, sending him up onto the sidewalk where the Jackson children played — makes it worse.

But let's place this in context: Michigan has more deadly police chases than almost any other state in the nation. Last year, two people died each month, on average, in police chases, according to statistics examined by Free Press reporters. Worse, the numbers show that while the frequency of police chases has fallen, the number of chase-related deaths has increased: In 2005, there were 887 crashes involving police chases. Thirteen people died. In 2014, there were 555 crashes. Twenty-seven people died.

A family is suing the New York Police Department for more than $32 million after a bodybuilder was shot by police after they asked him to smash through a door for them last September.

Rafael Laureano, 51, was killed by a round fired by police who had asked him to break through the door of a friend's home because she was being assaulted by an ex-boyfriend, according to the suit filed with the Brooklyn Supreme Court.

The suit claims the woman, Katarzyna Russo, was hunkered with her two children in the bathroom of her Midwood apartment, while the ex, Francisco Carvajal, 47, was hacking through the locked door with two knives.

When Laureano burst through the door to the apartment, Carvajal came at him and the officers present, who opened fire, discharging a total of 18 bullets, nine of which struck Carvajal, who was killed.

One of the bullets fatally struck Laureano, a father of four, in the neck, the lawsuit alleges.