The lawyer for the family of Bryce Masters said Tuesday that the teen went into "full cardiac arrest" after Independence police used a Taser on him during a traffic stop.

Masters, 17, was stopped at about 3 p.m. Sunday near East Southside Boulevard and Main Street. Police said it was a routine traffic stop where they determined that the license plate on the vehicle matched a plate wanted for a traffic warrant.

The officer, who was later identified as Officer Tim Reynolds, tried to arrest the driver during the traffic stop, but Masters refused to exit the vehicle, police said. Police said the officer warned the teen that he would use a Taser.

The officer and teen struggled behind the teen's vehicle, and a Taser deployed, police said. Masters fell to the ground.

"They turned him over and he was just blue," said friend Abigail Edwards. "How do you not know someone is sitting there not breathing?"

An ambulance was called to the scene. Masters was transported to a hospital, where he remains in critical, but stable condition.

The family's attorney, Daniel J. Haus, said Masters was brought out of a medically induced coma early Tuesday. Haus said the teen is responding to stimuli and his family remains "guardedly optimistic," but the family said it's too early to know what his long-term prognosis will be.

"All that anyone can hope for is that he gets better," said Edwards.

His family said his brain was not getting enough oxygen.

"Minutes with the brain not getting oxygen is a bad thing," said Dr Stephen Thornton, an emergency room doctor who is not affiliated with the case, but reviewed the family's statement. "The question is going to be how long was he down without circulation to his brain and then him being a young guy, that is actually in his favor."

He said it's rare for a Taser to cause heart problems, but it can happen.

"Because of the lungs and the skin, the electricity will generally follow the path of least resistance, which is not into the heart, which is why we don't normally see heart problems," he said. "But if one if one of the hooks went too deep, and it got into just the right place, it is certainly possible."

He said the type of aggressive work that doctors did to help Masters can stop some of the long-term damage. He said doctors have become better at treating these types of situations.

Masters' friends said they wonder why the officer felt the need to use the Taser at all.

"I know he is not, like, a tough kid. He doesn't act tough. There was no way there was a struggle," said David Martes. "I just know Bryce."

The Kansas City Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating allegations of excessive use of force by Independence police.

A federal grand jury has indicted a former Independence police officer who used a stun gun last fall to subdue a 17-year-old driver who nearly died during the encounter.

The four-count indictment unsealed Friday stems from an FBI investigation into whether Timothy N. Runnels used excessive force after he pulled over Bryce Masters of Independence on Sept. 14 at East Southside Boulevard and Main Street.

The indictment charges Runnels with two counts of deprivation of Masters’ constitutional rights, based on force Runnels allegedly used, and two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly making a false report and giving false statements afterward to investigators.

Runnels entered not guilty pleas during his first court appearance late Friday afternoon. His attorney, J.R. Hobbs, said Runnels denies the allegations.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah W. Hays set a tentative trial date of May 4 and released Runnels on his own recognizance.

...

The indictment said Runnels continuously deployed the stun gun while Masters was on the ground and not posing a threat to the officer, and that Runnels deliberately dropped Masters headfirst onto the ground while the nonthreatening teen was handcuffed.

It also said Runnels knowingly filed a false police report and omitted details to Independence police about the force he used.

...

“This was evident during the traffic stop itself, the nebulous reasons for the contact, and by the lack of adequate medical care thereafter,” the statement said. “Bryce was exercising his right to politely ask questions regarding his detention.”

The family said the teen did not have a warrant for his arrest, and the car he was driving was properly registered to his parents and did not have a warrant associated with it.

...

Glenn Smith, the Texas sheriff who has been tasked with investigating the death of a 28-year-old black woman found hanging in her jail cell mere days after a controversial traffic stop, has a history of discipline in prior law enforcement positions over cases of alleged racial bias.

Smith, who was chief of police for the Texas town of Hempstead before running for the position of Waller County’s sheriff seven years ago, was one of five police officers accused of racism and police brutality following the arrest of Cory Labba, then a 35-year-old man who claimed Smith had assaulted him during his arrest.

Michael Wolf Sr., the mayor of Hempstead at the time, acknowledged Smith had been “unrestrained” but said the assault was nothing more than a mere push and that Labba had “no bruises and he was not physically abused in any way whatsoever.”

Hempstead’s city council voted to suspend Smith without pay for two weeks after reviewing videotapes of the January 2007 encounter. One year later, the same city council dismissed Smith following a vote of “no confidence,” something Smith attributed to “small town politics.” Activists said the dismissal was due to numerous mistaken drug raids and the sheriff’s policy of strip-searching African-American suspects in public.

Mere weeks after his dismissal, Smith ran on the Republican ticket for the position of Waller County’s sheriff. He easily defeated his challenger in 2008 and has held the position ever since.

The video, which was posted Sunday on YouTube, is under review, according to a police spokesman.

A Target employee had called police after she got into an argument with Brissett when he requested a receipt after returning bottles, according to the criminal complaint.

Cops said he was arrested after he was asked to leave the store when they arrived.

The video of Officer Devin Sparks repeatedly hitting Michael DeHerrera of Denver with a department-issued piece of metal wrapped in leather, picking him up roughly and slamming a car door on his ankle has prompted Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal to push for the firing of Sparks and Corporal Randy Murr.

Rosenthal, who monitors police internal investigations, maintains Sparks and Murr are unfit for the force because they didn't tell the truth about the April 4, 2009 incident. Rosenthal also believes the use of force by Sparks was excessive. The Denver City Council earlier this year agreed to pay $17,500 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by DeHerrera alleging excessive force.

DeHerrera, in interviews, has described police as beating him unconscious. He said he woke up in a hospital bed, with stitches in his head, and a swollen head. He said he later was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome.

"The video was so important because it showed everything that happened, regardless of reports or what's filled out," DeHerrera said in an interview. "The video speaks more than any of those words can."

He added: "I don't swing. I don't blade. I'm on the phone. The only thing I hold onto is my phone. When I go down, I'm out, and that's when he continues to 'get my compliance.'"

The incident was filmed by the police department's own High Activity Location Observation video surveillance system. Video released to the news media by the department shows DeHerrera doing nothing but talking on his phone with his father, a sheriff's deputy in Pueblo.

Rosenthal, in a report to be released on Monday, labels as "pure fiction" the police report from Sparks that describes his force as justified because DeHerrera "spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist."

Safety Manager Ron Perea, who oversees the police department and has final say on discipline, has rejected Rosenthal's argument that the officers should be fired. He suspended Murr without pay for three days for submitting an "inaccurate report." Sparks also lost three days pay.

"The video, when viewed in isolation, seems to portray the subject officers as overly aggressive for the situation," Perea said. "There is no audio and it appears that there is a man on the phone ignoring but not being overtly aggressive towards the officer when the officer takes him down. The video, however, does not tell the entire story."

Perea said a witness said DeHerrera pushed another officer moments earlier and that Sparks feared DeHerrera was about to strike him. Other witnesses disputed that DeHerrera had pushed anyone.

"While it is clear from the HALO camera that he is on the phone and does not appear ready to hit the officer, from the officer's position he was confronting someone already known to have assaulted one officer who then pulled his arm back at the shoulder with a closed fit," Perea wrote.

DeHerrera was talking on the phone with his father at 12:14 a.m., when the incident occurred. The police had taken into custody DeHerrera's friend, Shawn Johnson, then 24, after he used a women's restroom and was ejected from a nightclub. DeHerrera said he feared for his friend's safety and was asking for advice from his father, a Pueblo sheriff's deputy.

Both Johnson and DeHerrera were charged by police with interference and resisting arrest. Assistant City Attorney Vince DiCroce moved to dismiss the charges after reviewing the video "because there is no likelihood of conviction."

The clash between Rosenthal and Perea follows Perea's hiring in June to replace the former safety manager, Al LaCabe. LaCabe and Rosenthal took a similar approach to discipline decisions and rarely disagreed on how to handle an officer's actions.

As he was being booked into the Sarasota County jail, an officer tossed peanuts into Randy Miller's mouth as if feeding a dog or an animal at the zoo.

Miller, intoxicated and handcuffed, was unable to catch them with his mouth. Several fell to the ground.

Minutes later, Miller slumped out of his chair and began eating the peanuts off the booking room floor. Sarasota Police Officer Andrew Halpin, who had thrown the nuts at Miller's mouth, kicked them with his boot toward Miller so he could better reach them on the floor.

A source familiar with Miller's July 18 arrest says Halpin was giving the homeless man "dog commands" during the incident.

The Herald-Tribune obtained a copy of the booking video Monday through a public records request, after learning of what happened to Miller.

Neither the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office nor the Sarasota Police Department were aware of Halpin's actions until contacted by the newspaper on Monday.

Police Chief Bernadette DiPino watched the booking video Monday morning, and suspended her officer immediately.

"Based on the actions in the video, I immediately initiated an internal investigation on Officer Halpin," DiPino said. "I'm disappointed in what I observed in the video, and placed the officer on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation."

Quebec's police ethics commission has ruled a Montreal police officer used intimidation and showed disrespect when he threatened to tie a homeless man to a pole outside a metro station.

Video shows Montreal police officer threatening panhandler
Police officer's threat to homeless man called an 'exception'
The incident happened in January 2014 on a day when temperatures hovered around –35 C.

Cellphone video posted to YouTube by a passerby shows officer Pierre-Luc Gauthier reprimanding a disheveled man who had been asking people for change. The man was dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt.

The officer tells the man he has to calm down and find a place to warm up. Then he tells the man he will tie him to a pole for an hour if he gets another complaint about his panhandling.

In its decision released Monday, the tribunal ruled Gauthier's threat was "excessive" and an "abuse of authority," regardless of his motivation.

Gauthier's partner, Vincent Marcotte, was also reprimanded for not stepping in to intervene.

NEW HAVEN >> A New Haven police officer has been arrested and charged with stealing several hundred dollars from a local restaurant.

Officer Bobby Jones, 34, allegedly stole as many as two envelopes containing payroll cash from the restaurant, according to a release Thursday from police spokesman Officer David Hartman. Hartman declined to provide the name or location of the business, as well as the owner’s name, saying it was not being revealed at the insistence of the business owner.

The case began Monday, after police Chief Dean Esserman received a phone call from the restaurant’s attorney, who said he needed to discuss suspected criminal activity by an officer. On Tuesday, the attorney arrived at police headquarters and presented video evidence of Jones allegedly stealing the cash, Hartman said.

Jones appears in the video on two occasions, one time in uniform and on duty, and another in plain clothes and off duty, Hartman said. He met with investigators Tuesday and provided a statement on the allegations.

It was an hour before midnight on July 22 when a cop knocked on the door of local Black Lives Matter activist Patricia Cameron. She was asleep at home with her 8-year-old son. The officer called out her name and asked her to come outside. Cameron wasn't dressed, so the cop told her to put on some clothes— he had something for her to sign.

...

Two weeks prior, the single mom, local political activist and EMT had organized an Independence Day public burning of a Confederate flag in a local park as a form of peaceful protest. Online, photos had been spreading of accused killer Dylan Roof posing with Confederate flags before police say he carried out his attack on nine black parishioners in a Charleston, SC church. In announcing her plans days before the event, Cameron told a local alt-weekly reporter the demonstration was “simply us getting together and reiterating the fact that black lives in fact matter.” She'd alerted the local police department about what she'd planned to do, tagging them in a post on Facebook, though a police spokesperson says the department never saw it. The police chief had also gotten an anonymous e-mail about the event. (Weeks prior, the county sheriff's office had been on alert when a local biker club held a pig roast to protest the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.)

...

Now, nearly three weeks later, an officer was standing in Cameron's hallway asking her to sign an arrest summons that accused her of arson. She was not formally arrested and taken to jail. “I was confused,” she says about how it all went down, especially so late at night— and so long after the very public incident.

...

As for why it took nearly 20 days for the cops to contact Cameron, Saglimbeni said the police had conducted a “pretty extensive investigation” after seeing video of the flag burning. While officers might have known the demonstration was happening that day, a large structure fire nearby attracted their attention, and no police were at the park when the flag went up in flames. Trying to identify all the people involved also took time, she said, and the police wanted to make sure they had everything in order.

Under state law, fourth degree arson in Colorado is when “a person who knowingly or recklessly starts or maintains a fire or causes an explosion, on his own property or that of another, and by so doing places another in danger of death or serious bodily injury or places any building or occupied structure of another in danger of damage.”

The charge can be a felony or a misdemeanor; Cameron was charged with the later.

“The situation posed a risk of danger to the property and citizens of Manitou Springs, as there were multiple people in the area,” reads a July 22 news release from the Manitou Springs Police Department. The release states the department “strongly supports citizens who wish to employ their first amendment rights,” but “would urge those who employ those rights, to do so in a safe manner.”

According to the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys Advisory Council (APAAC), "an asset forfeiture practice that supplements other law enforcement activities provides an opportunity that is unique among governmental agencies—the direct augmentation of the agency's budget through the performance of its designated function." It's understandable that cops and prosecutors would be excited about this opportunity to beef up their budgets by taking people's stuff. But as the ACLU of Arizona emphasizes in the lawsuit it filed last week on behalf of a woman whose pickup truck was swiped by the Pinal County Sheriff's Department, giving law enforcement agencies a direct financial stake in forfeitures creates perverse incentives that undermine performance of their designated functions by encouraging them to target people based on their seizable assets rather than the threat they pose.

APAAC itself acknowledges the corrupting potential of civil forfeiture in a training slide titled "Don't Ruin Forfeiture for All of Us" that copies the form of ads for DirecTV:

• When your bosses can't find any money in their budget they get depressed.
  
• When they get depressed they tell you to start doing forfeiture cases.
  
• When you start doing forfeiture cases you go to a Forfeitures seminar.
  
• When you go to a Forfeitures seminar you feel like a winner.
  
• When you feel like a winner you go back to your jurisdiction and just start seizing everything in sight.
  
• When you just start seizing everything in sight you screw things up and lose everything.
  
• When you screw things up and lose everything you ruin forfeitures for all of us.
  
• Don't ruin forfeitures for all of us. Get the purpose of this seminar and follow an educated, ethical and professional forfeiture practice.

It's not completely clear what counts as screwing things up in APAAC's book. The examples it cites include a police chief and five officers in Romulus, Michigan, who "allegedly spent more than $100,000 in forfeited drug money to buy booze, marijuana, prostitutes, lavish trips and a tanning salon for the ex-chief's wife." I assume APAAC also would frown on using forfeiture money to pay off student loans or living rent free in a seized house for five years while using public money to cover the utilities, as two Oklahoma prosecutors recently were caught doing. But what about the home security system that Pinal County Attorney Lando Voyles (the lead defendant in the ACLU suit) bought with forfeiture money, or his forfeiture-funded donations to local sports leagues and other community organizations, which may attract favorable publicity and generate good will but have little to do with the designated function of the county prosecutor's office?

The use of forfeiture money for purposes more directly related to law enforcement is troubling too, especially given how dependent agencies have become on seizures to pay for personnel costs and equipment. "When the economy tanked and we lost a good part of our budget," Chris Radtke, chief of the administrative bureau at the Pima County Sheriff's Department, told a Tucson TV station in 2013, "we could absolutely not survive without [forfeiture money]." In response to a 2013 APAAC inquiry, Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer reported: "All of my [forfeiture] funds are used to supplement the salaries of my employees and office operating expenses. This use of my [forfeiture] funds has become necessary to avoid furloughs and/or layoffs as the county has cut back on staffing due to budget cuts." The ACLU, which collected those quotes, also notes that the Arizona Department of Public Safety's bomb squad, SWAT team, and hazardous materials unit seem to be entirely dependent on forfeiture funds.

The problem here is twofold. To the extent that law enforcement agencies fund themselves, they are less accountable to legislators and other overseers. And to the extent that forfeiture money pays for legitimate and necessary law enforcement expenses, agencies are always looking for assets to seize. In fact, taking them at their word, their very existence may depend on legalized theft.

Ohio prosecutor is refusing to release body camera video from the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man during a traffic stop — but top officials are suggesting that the video disputes the campus police officer’s claims of self-defense.

Officer Ray Tensing, of the University of Cincinnati police department, shot and killed 43-year-old Sam Dubose during a routine traffic stop July 19 near campus.

Tensing stopped Dubose about 6:30 p.m. because he did not have a license plate on the front of his car, in apparent violation of Ohio law, about a half-mile from campus in Cincinnati’s historic Mount Auburn neighborhood.

The officer claims Dubose would not show his driver’s license and instead produced a bottle of alcohol and refused to get out of his vehicle.

Tensing told 911 dispatchers that he fired one shot, fatally striking Dubose in the head, because he was “almost run over” during the traffic stop, but the officer said in the incident report that he was “dragged” by the vehicle.

Multiple media outlets have sued Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters to force the release of body cam video of the incident recorded by Tensing — but the prosecutor flatly stated that he would not do so without a court order until he has presented the case to a grand jury, which could happen this week.

“Unless I’m ordered to by the Ohio Supreme Court, and I doubt I will be, they’re not going to get it,” Deters said.

But Cincinnati’s police chief said he had seen the video, and he said “the video is not good.”

“It’s not a good situation, I think that’s clear, and it will become evident once that video is shown,” said Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, of Cincinnati police. “We’re just trying to do our best to be prepared for whatever might come out of it.”

The city manager said he had not seen the video, but he told WLWT-TV that the contents had been described to him.

“It was not a good situation,” said City Manager Harry Black. “Someone has died that didn’t necessarily have to die, and I will leave it at that.”

The University of Cincinnati has suspended off-campus police stops and will hire an independent external reviewer to examine the campus police department’s policies, procedures and practices.

A man who apparently was double-parked at a store buying fried chicken before he was pulled over in the parking lot of an apartment complex in New York City was dragged out of his car by NYPD cops who began beating him in front of a crowd of outraged witnesses.

People will predictably say that we don’t know for sure what happened in the moments before three cops pulled the man out of his car and began beating him.

But neither did the NYPD cop who ran up out of nowhere and tried to jump over other officers to get his punches in right after the 1:30 mark.

A professional cop would have run up and tried to ensure the growing hostile crowd of witnesses did not intervene with the arrest.

But cops have that pack dog mentality where they will run up and start punching, even if they have no clue about the situation. And especially if it is obvious the person being beaten is already under control.

The video was uploaded Tuesday night to Facebook by Stephanie Genaro. The cops were from the department’s 47th Precinct in the Bronx.

The man recording, who was in the back seat when the driver was pulled out, explains after the 2:45 mark that the incident began when the driver was double-parked at a store to buy some chicken, but was told to leave by a store employee.

Words were exchanged but the driver left, only for the cops to pull him out of a the car in the apartment complex.

We will update this when we receive more information.

Three young adults were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning after mistakenly knocking on the door of a New Jersey State Trooper and fleeing the scene.

Early Saturday morning Sparta Police and the New Jersey State Police were involved in a search for one of the men in the area of West Mountain Road. According to people close to the investigation, three young adults, after leaving a graduation party, attempted to go to a friend’s house nearby.

A source said, they mistakenly went to the next door neighbor’s home. After repeatedly ringing the doorbell and loudly knocking on the door, the homeowner, a state trooper, came to the door. When he opened the door and shouted at them, the three men ran away.

The three got into a vehicle and the officer fired three gun shots as they attempted to flee. The car became disabled approximately one half mile from the original scene. Two of the men were apprehended at the vehicle. The third, Matthew Mayer fled, according to local sources.

A neighbor said she was awoken to the “pop, pop, pop” of the gunshots.

A large search began, according to residents of several of the West Mountain Road neighborhoods. The state police dispatched a helicopter “which searched with a bright spotlight,” according to an area resident. Search teams combed the area on foot, with canine units and in patrol vehicles. One homeowner said their home and property were searched, another said the police officers came to their home and questioned them about Mayer. It is not clear if there were any other homes searched in relation to this investigation.

The two men, John Baker-Marasco, and Jesse Farcorn, were taken to the Netcong Trooper Barracks for questioning and processing.

Mayer was eventually found and arrested. He was also taken to the Netcong Trooper Barracks. It is not clear what charges, if any, have been brought against these men.

The Sparta police said the state police are conducting the investigation. Officer Kelly at the Netcong Trooper Barracks said information about the investigation would have to be obtained “from Trenton.” Detective Doug Porter of the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office said he was not on the scene and since the state police were heading up the investigation, “our office would defer to the State Police” in making a statement.

The Media Relations officer Trooper Spies initially said Sparta was handling the investigation. She then said information had to be obtained from the Attorney General’s Office. The State Police Media Relations office said they cannot comment on possible charges made against the three men since the attorney general’s office is conducting the investigation.

The Press Office of the attorney general’s office had not responded to inquiries by the time of publication.

The Sussex County Sheriff’s office had also not responded in time for publication.

An Albany-area police officer is facing sodomy charges over allegations that he had sexual relationships with two teenage girls, and engaged in sex acts at two cemeteries and the parking lot of an elementary school.

Watervliet Police Officer Joshua Spratt, 34, is an Iraq war veteran and a married father of three. He served on the force for 10 years, and spent the past two as a resource officer at Watervliet High School where his job was to promote student safety. By all accounts, he was a model cop, the Albany Times Union reports.

On Monday, all that changed when Spratt was brought before the state Supreme Court, and pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment.

Spratt is accused of using his position working closely with students to pursue relationships with the girls. The allegations include four counts of third-degree criminal sex act for having oral sex with one of the girls, who was 16. He also faces misdemeanor charges of child endangerment and official misconduct, since the second girl was 17 and legally allowed to consent in New York State.

The acts allegedly took place at cemeteries in Watervlet and Menands, on third avenue in Watervliet, and in the parking lot of Watervliet Elementary School between February and April of this year.

"There's three victims, only one that legally we can pursue on the criminal sex act and that's the individual who is under the age of 17," DA David Soares told CBS 6 Albany. The third student is a 17-year-old witness, according to Soares.

Watervliet Schools Superintendent Dr. Lori Caplan told ABC News 10 that the accusations were an "egregious betrayal of trust". She said rumors about Spratt's alleged trysts came to her attention near the end of the school year.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board has concluded that an NYPD sergeant used excessive force when he shoved a handcuffed 14-year-old boy through the plate-glass window of a hookah bar in the Bronx, the Daily News has learned.

Sgt. Eliezer Pabon now faces formal disciplinary charges and a departmental hearing in the May 17, 2014, incident that nearly killed young Javier Payne.

The CCRB’s administrative prosecution unit, which handles the most serious cases substantiated by the board, is overseeing the Pabon matter, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson declined to file criminal charges against the sergeant or present the case to a grand jury because a glazier told prosecutors that the window was not shatter-resistant and may have been previously compromised by cracks.