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Update 3:18 p.m. Monday

The deputy, who accidently fired his gun in the Knox County Detention Facility, resigned Monday shortly before noon.

In a letter to Sheriff J.J. Jones, James Blankenship, 39, wrote that he's resigning for personal reasons.

On Friday, Blankenship accidently fired a bullet into the pavement causing shrapnel to fly up and hit officers Kevin Potter, Patrick York and Marty Cruze.

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A Brooklyn jury awarded $560,000 Tuesday to an ex-con who claimed NYPD plainclothes cops falsely arrested him for illegal gun possession.

Leroy Davis, 34, who had previously been acquitted of the criminal case in Brooklyn Federal Court, convinced a civil jury the charges were bogus and that the NYPD must pay.

The defendants, Sgt. Gary Calhoun and Police Officers Javier Velez and James Lukeson, had contended that Davis dropped a black plastic bag when he made eye contact with their unmarked patrol car on Oct. 2, 2009, in Bushwick.

The cops said they recovered a 9-mm. handgun and 18 bags of crack cocaine. But Davis’ lawyers, James Neville and Michael Lumer, argued the cops had recovered the contraband from an informant.

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Americans, it seems, have had enough police militarization, with the latest Reason-Rupe poll finding a full 58 percent of respondents believing that the use of drones, military weapons, and armored vehicles by local police departments as already going “too far.” That includes a full 60 percent of both Democrats and Tea Partiers. Opposition is under 50 percent among non-Tea Party Republicans.

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Noel Jackson Guzman, 27, said he was watching a fight in February 2009 when Officer Brian Jay threw him down and kicked him. Guzman said the kick ripped ligaments and damaged a nerve, leaving him with a permanent condition known as 'foot drop.'

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An appeals court in Texas ruled last week that police may obtain a search warrant based on the prediction of a future crime.

Officers in Parker County took Michael Fred Wehrenberg and some associates into custody in summer 2010, after watching his home for about a month as part of a drug investigation.

A confidential informant told police that Wehrenberg and others were “fixing to” cook methamphetamine, and investigators searched the house while he and his friends stood outside in handcuffs.

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In one of his last acts as police chief, Chuck Harmon on Tuesday made significant changes to the policy that dictates how and when officers are allowed to fire their weapons.

Officers now must be able to see who they are shooting at before firing, said Harmon, who also stiffened penalties for policy violators.

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EL PASO, TX — An American woman was humiliated and sexually assaulted for hours when she tried to re-enter the United States at a checkpoint manned by U.S. border patrol agents. Suspecting she had drugs inside her orifices, the federal agents detained her, chained her to a table, and subjected her to a series of invasive and traumatic cavity searches, finger penetration, scans and X-rays… all without a warrant. She was then billed for the “services.”

The incident took place last year and has recently been brought to light by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The victim is described as a petite 54-year-old U.S. citizen, identifying herself only as Jane Doe to protect her anonymity as a sexual assault victim. She is married and resides in Lovington, NM. She was traveling to visit a close family friend in Juarez, Mexico, who was recently deported. The lawsuit states that she makes the trip to visit him about once per month. This time, her return trip back into the United States at the Cordova Bridge near El Paso is not one she will ever forget.

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"The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection."

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The lawsuit, filed yesterday by the ACLU chapters in Texas and New Mexico, says the plaintiff, a 54-year-old New Mexico resident identified in the complaint as Jane Doe, was crossing the bridge between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso after visiting a family friend last December when she was chosen at random for "additional screening." This "secondary inspection" involved a pat-down during which an agent "inserted her finger in the crevice of Ms. Doe's buttocks"—a rather startling incursion inasmuch as the agents at this point had no basis to suspect that the woman was carrying contraband. But they were just getting started.

The agents instructed the plaintiff to stand in line with other people who had been selected for additional screening and walked a dog past her. According to the lawsuit, the dog handler "hit the ground by her feet, but did not hit the ground by any of the others in the line," and "the dog responded by lunging onto Ms. Doe and landing its front paws on her torso." Why did the dog do that? "Because Ms. Doe did not possess any contraband," says the complaint, "the dog either did not alert or the response was not a proper alert." Yet this possibly manufactured and in any event erroneous alert was the basis for all that followed.

First the agents strip-searched the plaintiff, examining her anus and vagina with a flashlight. Finding nothing, they took her to the University Medical Center of El Paso, where they forced her to take a laxative and produce a bowel movement in their presence. Again they found no evidence of contraband. At this point one of their accomplices, a physician named Christopher Cabanillas, ordered an X-ray, which likewise found nothing suspicious. Then the plaintiff "endured a forced gynecological exam" and rectal probing at the hands of another doctor, Michael Parsa. Still nothing. Finally, Cabanillas ordered a CT scan of the plaintiff's abdomen and pelvis, which found no sign of illegal drugs. "After the CT scan," the complaint says, "a CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] agent presented Ms. Doe with a choice: she could either sign a medical consent form, despite the fact that she had not consented, in which case CBP would pay for the cost of the searches; or if she refused to sign the consent form, she would be billed for the cost of the searches." She refused, and later the hospital sent her a bill for $5,000, apparently the going rate for sexual assault and gratuitous radiological bombardment.

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PHOENIX (CBS5) -
A shootout between Phoenix police and some burglary suspects back in March is coming back into focus now that we know one of the officers who pulled the trigger may have been intoxicated.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board voted this week to start investigating the case. Though the police department justifies the officer's actions in engaging fire, what he did prior is cause for concern.

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