SLIDELL, La. (Victoria Price, CBS12/WKRC) -- The Slidell Police Department was criticized for 'shaming' a homeless man who was arrested and found with $800 in his pockets on Facebook

Police posted a photograph on Facebook of the homeless man, identified as 59-year-old Franklin Jones, who in the photograph, appears to be handcuffed in front of a police car on May 21st.

Slidell Police said: "This guy thought it would be ok to urinate on the side of the road at Gause and I-10. Nope! Not ok! He'll be spending the night at the Slidell City Jail."

Hundreds of angry comments then appeared on the photo post.

The next day, the agency posted a picture of a pile of money that read: "Homeless Man Found With Over $800 Cash."

Police then fired back at the original photo post.

Slidell police then went into a long explanation of "Jones has been begging for money for a year and has refused offers of employment but chooses not to work because he makes a better living by begging people for money."

Critics have responded in support of the post, while others blasted police for publicly shaming the man.

Police say Jones was arrested because he reportedly had "too much alcohol, stole a shopping cart, urinated on the side of the road in front of multiple people including a mother and her children."

The Slidell Police Facebook posts have since been made unavailable for viewing.

When there's a mental health issue, that's when pointing a camera at them is very dangerous.

We're trying to do the right thing.

You have no shred of decency...

"Where's your humanity?"

On the basis of alleged evidence that was never properly booked by the Sheriff’s Office or proven to exist, McNelis was arrested and charged with drug trafficking. Two days later, as he prepared for an emergency shelter care hearing for his high school-age daughter Andromeda, McNelis was confronted by a deputy (identified as “Officer Rodarte” in court documents), who demanded that he surrender custody of the girl. If he proceeded with the hearing, McNelis was told, he would be arrested for “child endangerment” and “felony injury to a child.”

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In his affidavit requesting a search warrant, Deputy Craig claimed to have received an anonymous tip that there were “a half-dozen” marijuana plants growing outside McNelis’s home. In December 29, 2009, Craig reportedly conducted a “trash pull” outside the residence that yielded no evidence of a crime. A second “pull” allegedly carried out after midnight on the morning of January 6 supposedly turned up an unspecified amount of material he identified as “marijuana trimmings” on the basis of a field test.

“How much stuff was there?” Craig was subsequently asked by internal affairs investigator John Lewis.

“I really don’t know,” Craig replied.
“Did you take any pictures of any of this stuff?” Lewis inquired.
“No, I did not,” Craig admitted.
“You didn’t send it to the ISP [Idaho State Police] forensic lab, correct?” persisted Lewis.
“That’s correct,” Craig responded, explaining that “I felt that there was no need to. It was a small quantity, field test was positive.” For the same reason, Craig continued, he didn’t bother to tell his patrol supervisor about his discovery at the time.
Not only did Craig not bother to document his alleged discovery, he didn’t confirm that the trash through which he had rummaged had actually belonged to McNelis. Among the items he claimed to have found was an unremarkable “white envelope” addressed to Brian McNelis.
“I don’t know if it was junk mail or a bill,” Craig explained to the internal affairs officer. “I didn’t look at it.”

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Roughly a year after the raid on McNelis’s home, Judge Timothy Hansen of Idaho’s Fourth Circuit Court ruled that the search warrant was invalid, which led to dismissal of the charges against McNelis. In a Memorandum and Order issued on April 15, 2011, Judge Hansen found that Deputy Craig had “knowingly, intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth” incorporated false statements into his affidavit. Judge Hansen reiterated that finding on August 8 in response to a plaintive motion to reconsider filed by the Ada County Prosecutor’s office.

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Not surprisingly, Lewis found that Craig had committed “errors” and omissions, but declined to rule that the detective had submitted a false report. Shortly thereafter, Craig’s boss, former Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney, notified the deputy that he would be suspended “without pay for one day or the equivalent of eight (8) hours” on the following September 30 as punishment for “administrative violations.”

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Ada County spent more than a half-million dollars in their futile effort to defeat McNelis’s pro se civil rights lawsuit. Without the benefit of legal training or tax subsidies, McNelis spent a considerable seeking redress for “irreparable damages” to family relationships (beginning with losing custody of Andromeda), his business, and his personal reputation.

Untutored in law but armed with an agile mind and an invincible determination to pursue justice, McNelis stood alone against the Ada County government – represented in court by a panel of five well-paid government attorneys – and won. The jury that ruled in McNelis’s favor – acknowledging the injuries that had been inflicted on him and his family through the dishonesty and corruption of Deputy Craig and the agency that employed him – awarded the victim damages in the amount of a single dollar.

Sgt. Anthony Dandurand and Travis Thomas took James Reiner to jail and sent Dana Reiner, who was in labor, to Franciscan St. Anthony Health hospital in an ambulance after a traffic stop in January 2012 on Ind. 2, just east of Clay Street near Lowell, U.S. District Court records show. James Reiner was booked into jail on probable cause felony resisting law enforcement. But no formal charge was ever filed.

The couple didn’t immediately pull over for Dandurand, who claimed in a police report he chased them for 5 miles but later admitted in court filings that he activated his emergency lights and in-car video camera about 1.1 miles from where James Reiner stopped his 1994 Lincoln Town Car.

Dana Reiner gave birth to daughter Abigail within minutes of arriving at the hospital in Crown Point, though her doctor paused the delivery twice to turn Abigail and unwrap her umbilical cord from around her neck. Dana Reiner said the doctor told her that her baby would have died had she given birth on the side of the road.

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"The court does not think a reasonable officer, after realizing (as Officers Dandurand and Thomas did soon after handcuffing James) that plaintiffs were en route to the hospital to have their baby, would have continued to detain them, much less have kept James under arrest and taken him to jail for the night. To the contrary: such conduct, at that point, violates the clearly established guarantees of the Fourth Amendment," Magistrate Judge Paul Cherry wrote.

Cherry dismissed the lawsuit in May after the Reiners, who lived in DeMotte when Abigail was born, and the defendants reached a settlement. The Reiners and their attorney, J. Michael Loomis, said they could not comment on the terms of the agreement.

James and Dana Reiner said they wanted to make clear they support police. They have family members and friends who work in law enforcement, and police play an important role in society, they said.

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However, the magistrate judge did allow several of the Reiners’ federal and state law claims, including illegal seizure of person, excessive force, false arrest, assault, battery and false imprisonment, to remain to the extent they alleged wrongdoing after the officers knew Dana Reiner was in labor.

The continued detainment of the couple became unlawful after the officers learned Dana Reiner was in labor, Cherry wrote, and any further use of force was objectively unreasonable.

James Reiner can be heard shouting his wife was in labor shortly within minutes of where the video from Dandurand’s car begins.

“You pull over. I don’t care. You pull over,” an officer responded.

About 20 seconds later, Dana Reiner shouted, “I’m in labor. My water broke.”

An officer immediately told her he was calling an ambulance.

About 30 seconds passed before Dana Reiner said, “I don’t need an ambulance. I just need my husband.”

The officer replied, “You need an ambulance. He’s going to jail.”

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After an ambulance arrives more than 20 minutes after the video starts, the officers can be heard discussing a previous crash in which a man was seriously injured and an ambulance took more than 20 minutes to arrive.

James Reiner said what disturbs him the most is the behavior of all the officers at the scene.

“They ask, ‘Do you want me to pull the tape? I know how to pull the tape.’ So they’re talking about destroying evidence. The problem is that there is no oversight. There’s zero,” he said. “There’s nobody randomly pulling tapes to make sure that they’re being professional. And that’s done in every profession.”

...The video, posted below, includes footage from both Playford and Nance’s cameras as well as audio clips from Nance’s recorder from the night he was shoved and arrested.

It begins with Playford interviewing Nance about the incident until sirens can be heard in the background, which was when Nance lifts his own camera to begin recording Playford.

“Something going on?” Playford asks as a police car pulls up behind him, his camera pointing at Nance.

“Yeah, you’re the star of the show,” Nance responds, capturing the surreal scene on his own camera.

Playford turns around and acknowledges the cop, but then turns to face Nance again to continue his interview.

But the cop walks up with his gun drawn, ordering Playford to remove his hand from the bag. A potentially deadly situation considering this is the same agency that recently killed a man for holding a pen.

As more cops and deputies move in to handcuff and frisk him, Playford accuses them of violating his Constitutional rights.

The original cop responds by saying, “Well you know the number for our internal affairs. You can call them and complain again,” indicating he is familiar with Playford.

The cop then pauses for a moment and says, “It’s not a big…” and trails off, as if thinking better of finishing that sentence while being recorded.

And he’s right. It’s not a big deal in the eyes of internal affairs. Cops in this country know their internal affairs departments are almost as toothless as citizen review boards. Even the U.S. Department of Justice doesn’t seem to faze them much, as we’ve seen with departments in cities like Portland, Seattle, Baltimore, Albuquerque and Miami.

At one point there are as many as eight law enforcement officers from both agencies involved in detaining and frisking Playford.

Playford, who has a long history of altercations over the right to record with both agencies, believes the sheriff’s department called police – rather than dispatch its own deputies – because they knew he did not have a rifle in the case.

But they just wanted to make life difficult for him as they have done so many times in the past, he said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.

The San Diego deputy ended up handcuffing Playford and frisking him before opening the rifle case and discovering a tripod.

One of the officers at the scene was San Diego Police Lieutenant Kevin Mayer, a former public information officer who knows Playford.

“He should have diffused the situation,” Playford said.

As someone who’s no stranger to these types of situations (in his own words, “If you only knew how many guns I’ve had pointed at me for standing on street corners, it’d blow your mind”), Playford had some stern words for the officers in the end.

But who can blame him at that point?

“San Diego as a whole has a complete breakdown in its criminal justice system,” he said. “It goes as high as the U.S. Attorney for the Southwest United States and trickles down to the FBI in this city, all the way down to both the San Diego police and sheriff’s departments.”

The San Diego cop claimed he was trespassing, but California law is clear, which means the entire pretext for the detainment was false:

(c) This section shall not apply to any of the following persons:

(1) Any person engaged in lawful labor union activities that are permitted to be carried out on the property by state or federal law.

(2) Any person on the premises who is engaging in activities protected by the California Constitution or the United States Constitution.

Playford, who works for a company called American News and Information Services, which sells video footage to local television news stations, has a pending lawsuit against the San Diego Sheriff’s Department over its insistence that he needs department-issued press credentials in order to do his job. Below is a video message from Ed Peruta, president of the company, discussing the recent incident.

The city of San Diego’s Police Department was dropped from that lawsuit.

Nance also works for the same company, responding to scenes when Playford is unable to do so. In 2013, they were both held at gunpoint for recording outside a power plant. That video is also below.

Over the summer, Playford had an altercation with a San Diego paramedic, in which he has filed a letter of intent to sue.

Contact the San Diego Police Department at 619-531-2000 or 858-484-3154. Or leave a comment on their Facebook page.

A Bronx mother was forced to abandon her learning-disabled son when an NYPD officer arrested her last year near Bryant Park for selling $1 chocolate bars as part of a school fundraiser, a new lawsuit charges.

Bernadette Roberts is suing the police officer and the NYPD, accusing the officer of breaking department rules by letting her 15-year-old son wander Midtown alone for hours in frigid weather after her arrest for selling the candy — a common method parents use to raise school funds.

Roberts, 49, said her son — whose name is being withheld because of his age — was using the bathroom at a nearby Duane Reade pharmacy when officer Stephanie Hlapatsos arrested her for selling candy without a license and hauled her away before he returned.

Roberts’ son suffers from an anxiety disorder, attention-deficit disorder and learning disabilities. His mental and emotional capacities in many areas are of a child half his age, the lawsuit says.

Not knowing what happened to his mom, the teen walked city streets in search of her until police at the Midtown South Precinct stationhouse allowed his mom to phone him.

When Roberts finally reached her son by cellphone, he was sobbing.

“He was hysterical, crying, “Where are you? What happened? I can’t find you. I’m looking all over the place for you,” Roberts told city lawyers during a preliminary hearing in 2014 after she filed a notice of her intent to sue the NYPD.

Roberts and her son filed the actual lawsuit last week in Manhattan Supreme Court.

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Roberts and her son, a special-needs student at a Bronx school, were at Bryant Park on Feb. 1, 2014, to sell World’s Finest Chocolate bars to raise money for him to be an exchange student in Korea through the nonprofit Youth for Understanding.

The teen left his mother at one point to use a bathroom at a nearby Duane Reade on 42nd Street. The lawsuit says that Roberts gave her son explicit instructions on how to return to the same spot, including pointing out landmarks to help orient him.

While the teen was gone, Hlapatsos, dressed in plain clothes, approached Roberts and inquired about buying one of the sweets. When Roberts told her the price, she was arrested, according to court records.

Roberts asked Hlapatsos to let her wait for her son to return, but the officer dismissed her request, according to the lawsuit.

“Officer Hlapatsos responded that if [her son] too had been selling candy on the street, he had probably also been arrested,” the lawsuit said.

Roberts was taken to a barricaded section in the middle of the street where other officers were. After about eight minutes, she was driven to Midtown South Precinct stationhouse, according to court records. She was gone before her son returned.

After a few hours in a holding cell, Roberts was allowed to call her son, who came to the stationhouse. She said the experience left them both shaken.

“I have never been booked, fingerprinted, handcuffed or anything like that ever in my entire 47 at the time going on 48 years,” Roberts said at her preliminary hearing.

“So it was quite traumatic for myself and for my son.”

The charge against Roberts was eventually dismissed, according to her lawyers, Jeffrey Vanacore and Paul Cohen. The lawyers declined to comment on the case.

The NYPD declined to comment on pending litigation. The city Law Department said it will review the allegations but declined to comment on the case.

Roberts, who lives in Morris Park, did not respond to a request for comment.

Hlapatsos has been previously accused of making a bad bust.

In 2014, the city paid $13,000 to settle another lawsuit against the officer.

In that lawsuit, Marie-Rose Goba, a street vendor selling mangos, sued the city after Hlapatsos arrested her for not being licensed. The vendor was licensed, according to court records.

In September, 2014, 49-year-old Mickey Donohue allegedly led Deputy Paul Pfeifer on a high speed chase in a stolen car. He had just been released from a 14-year stint in prison, when the chase ensued.

The dashcam video shows Pfeifer arriving on scene and immediately hitting the suspect repeatedly with his department-issued flashlight. Backup arrives, but the hitting continues.

This is just once of three time the 14-year veteran deputy has been sued for allegedly using excessive force -- in all three cases, he is accused of using his flashlight as a baton.


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First lawsuit: September 27, 2007 -- 25-year-old Solomia Treschuk, was a senior at Sacramento State University. She was attending her fiance's birthday barbecue, when Pfeifer responded to a noise complaint. When no one answered the door, deputies climbed over the fence to detain the barbecue attendees. Court documents state Pfeifer said he hit Treschcuk with his flashlight on the legs four times as she resisted arrest. Treschuk said she was hogtied, beat all over her body. This case was settled in 2009 after the County of Sacramento paid Treschuk $20,000 in damages.

Second lawsuit: September 8, 2014 -- Donohue case (mentioned above). The investigation is still pending.

Third lawsuit: December, 2014 -- Pfeifer was caught on cell phone video repeatedly hitting 51-year-old John Reyes with his flashlight after Pfeifer said he resisted arrest. Reyes suffered a broken nose and several bruises and lacerations to his face and skull. The investigation is still pending.

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Pfeifer was placed on paid leave since the Reyes incident. He has since been promoted to detective.

Some members of a St. Paul church are concerned about what they describe as the forceful arrest of a 15-year-old, who said he was standing up for his mother when he said an officer talked to her disrespectfully.

A crowd gathered around the officer and shouting ensued during the arrest at a church picnic in a Frogtown park Sunday. The officer said the teen was kicking and pulling away when he was trying to handcuff him, according to a police spokesman. Police cited him for disorderly conduct and arrested his mother on suspicion of obstructing legal process.

A fellow church member, Alex Weston, used a cellphone to record video of some of the incident. He said he wants to draw attention to a case he regards as police misconduct and to seek answers.

St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith "has seen the video, he's aware of the situation, he's aware of the community concern around it," said police spokesman Steve Linders. The department is "reviewing what happened leading up to what was caught on video, what happened during the part that is on video and what happened afterward."

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The incident began when police responded about 12:20 p.m. Sunday to a report of a 14-year-old being assaulted by four other juveniles with sticks, Linders said. An officer cited an 11-year-old for assault and was going to release him to his mother, when his older brother began yelling and swearing at the officer, Linders said.

The officer regarded the boy's actions as disorderly conduct and was arresting him for that offense, Linders said.

Tyree Tucker, the 15-year-old who was cited and released, had some visible scrapes on his face and elbows on Monday.

Tucker's 11-year-old brother, Tyrell Tucker, said they had been attending the picnic for their church, St. Paul Fellowship. Another child, whom Tyrell thought was from the neighborhood and not part of the gathering, tried to hit him with a stick and threatened to kill him, Tyrell said. Tyrell said he grabbed a thin stick and whacked the boy with it to protect himself.

Police arrived and were going to take Tyrell away. Instead, the officer took him back to release him and told his mother, Edna Waddle, she needed to sign something, Waddle said.

"He said, 'Just get your (expletive) kid and get out of here,' " Waddle said, adding that she was flabbergasted. "He was like, 'What kind of (expletive) mother are you? You've got your fat (expletive) up at the (expletive) picnic table eating at the buffet when your son just assaulted somebody.' "

Tyree Tucker said he responded along the lines of, "Don't say that to my mother. You're an officer. We're going to get your badge number and have a complaint pulled on you." Tyrell said his brother also called the officer, "You dumb bastard."

The officer told Tyree Tucker he was under arrest, and the boy said he responded, "I'm not because I didn't do anything. ... You can't put your hands on me," and moved away from the officer.

Tyree Tucker, who is under 5 feet 3 inches tall and slender, said the officer slammed him against a tree and onto the ground.

The officer had his arm around Tyree Tucker's throat and was telling him to put his arms behind his back, his brother said. Tyree said his brother had already done so with one hand, but could not with the other because the officer was twisting it.

Tyree Tucker and his family say he never touched the officer. In the video, Johnston can be heard shouting repeatedly, "Put your hands behind your back!"

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Waddle, of St. Paul, was released from jail Monday pending further investigation; she has not been charged. In the video, she appears to grab at her son's arm twice while the officer is trying to arrest him.

Waddle said she is planning to contact a lawyer and file a complaint over what happened Sunday.

Tyree Tucker is biracial and identifies as African-American, and the officer involved is white, said Waddle, who is white. The officer did not say anything to them of a racial nature, but she suspects race may have been at play in what happened.

Weston had continued recording on Sunday, as more officers arrived. The video shows people in the crowd shouted at police, including using profanity. One woman was saying, "How dare you hurt him like that! ... He's a child."

Linders said the police department is looking into all aspects of what happened Sunday. The department reviews every case in which officers use force and this one will be reviewed, too, he said.

Weston said he is considering filing a complaint with the police department about what happened.

"I think this incident touches on broader issues," he said. "If it happened in a vacuum, it wouldn't be as significant, but people I talked to in the neighborhood were concerned about an ongoing pattern of over-policing. I hope this can be a starting point for the community to have a dialogue with police."

A COURT has found a police officer was acting outside his duties when he pushed a man up against a car and choked him on the Gold Coast.

Luke Cole, 34, was charged with serious assault after Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley claimed Mr Cole pushed him over a roadside guard rail at Robina following a heated scuffle in November last year.

But this afternoon in the Southport Magistrates Court, the charge against Mr Cole was dismissed.

Magistrate Kerry Magee told the court she considered aspects of Snr Sgt Hurley’s story lacked credibility or were implausible.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Department in Boston is currently under fire, after video of an officer hitting an unarmed black woman with a baton on a bus went viral Friday. When witnesses — the majority of whom were black — attempted to de-escalate the situation, the unnamed officer pulled his gun on them.

In a video uploaded to Facebook by the group Mass Action Against Police Brutality, the officer repeatedly strikes the unidentified woman, yelling “Back up, back up, shut the **** up!” The woman scuffles with the officer as bystanders yell for him to stop and for the woman to calm down. As people on the bus approach the officer, imploring him to stop, he pulls out his gun and points it towards them. Witnesses yell at him to drop the gun, as the woman tries to push the officer’s baton away and he stands with his finger on the trigger.

When backup arrives to help subdue the woman, who lashes out against the first officer, a gun is drawn on her again. When the woman is finally cuffed, one of the officers pulls her hair.

MBTA Police Lieutenant Richard Sullivan later said the woman was first approached for a theft, and that the officer used force because the woman was aggressive.

“If you saw the video in the beginning, the officer asks that woman to step off the bus so he can conduct an investigation. She refused to do so, and became actively non-compliant and assaultive,” he said. Sullivan wouldn’t comment on the officer’s decision to pull out his gun.

An investigation is pending, and the officer has been placed on administrative duty.

“This is the state of police brutality and violence,” the Mass Action Facebook group wrote, when it posted the video Friday. “For Black people it’s always guilt until proven innocent.”

This is not the first time MBTA Transit Police have drawn criticism this year. Eight months after an officer was heralded for saving a man from falling onto the train tracks in a subway station, a video circulated of the officer punching the man in the face. A photo of the man shows a bruised face and a closed black eye. When the original story about the officer’s heroic deed was first reported, transit authorities edited the video to exclude the use of force.

Three prison officials were arrested this week after they were implicated in a scheme to use prison labor for their own personal gain. The prison employees, Robert Hill, Stephen Binkley and Roy Napper have been accused of establishing a shell corporation that sold items made by inmates under their direction.

The business “Stand Firm Designs” was reportedly marketed as a “Christian-based organization,” according to ABC News. The men are charged with official misconduct and inmate labor violation and are already free on a $1,000 bond.

The plot was exposed by former inmates Larry Stephney and Charles Brew who were forced to work on projects for the prison without any compensation. The former inmates said that they were forced to make a variety of random objects, including bird houses, dog beds, games and sports memorabilia.

While this type of situation is typical for inmates in American prisons, it is usually the prison corporation or state agency in charge that benefits from the free labor. However, in this case, the prison employees cut out the middle man and ran their own personal sweatshop for the inmates.

A deputy in a helicopter giving chase opened fire, hitting the SUV several times.

The wounded driver jumped from the moving car and ran a short distance before collapsing and dying by the side of the road, the statement said.

Police say they are awaiting autopsy results to reveal whether the man died from gunshot wounds or from leaping from the vehicle.

Police spokeswoman Jodi Miller said officers decided to open fire because the driver was threatening public safety.

The driverless SUV crashed head-on into a Dodge Durango injuring three people, one of whom remains in hospital, police added.

According to the Dickson County Sheriff’s Office, Gregory Herrell’s family called police asking deputies to conduct a welfare check on Herrell. Reportedly addicted to painkillers, Herrell appeared at his mother’s house on Friday morning looking for money when he ended up arguing with his mom and daughter. Twenty minutes after receiving the call, two deputies arrived at his mother’s residence at 10:50 a.m.

As one deputy went around the back of the house, the other deputy knocked on the front door and began speaking with Herrell’s mother. While his mom tried to explain to the deputy that Herrell had a shotgun but that it was unloaded, the second deputy shot Herrell in front of his mother and daughter.

“My sister was there in the living room with my father when he got shot. And the officer shot him because one knocked on the front door and the other officer walked around the back door and shot him when he was sitting on the couch, and my grandmother was telling them that the gun wasn’t loaded,” Herrell’s son, Garrett Herrell, told WSMV-TV.

At the request of the District Attorney’s office, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has taken over the investigation into the police shooting. The TBI violent crimes response team has been called in, and the Bureau has begun questioning witnesses.

“During an interaction with that individual, one of the deputies discharged a weapon,” stated TBI spokesperson Susan Niland. “We don’t know at this point what precipitated that. That is going to be part of our investigation.”

Although deputies claim that Herrell was reaching for his unloaded shotgun, witnesses and the TBI do not support the allegation.

“When the officer seen it, I guess it was taped up, I mean, an old 40-year-old shotgun, and you know, they say he went for it, but his sister and mother said he didn’t, so I’m not sure. But they shot three times with an AR-15 and he’s dead at the hospital right now,” said family friend Jason Wall.