---

Two people were shot yesterday afternoon by a Columbus police officer who opened fire after a door was slammed on his hand at a South Side home.

Brian Bates, 44, was charged last night with felony assault on a police officer, whose name hasn’t yet been released. Police say that Bates pinned the officer’s hand in the door.

Bates, of the East Side, was hit in his neck by the officer’s bullet, which also passed through his cheek.

...

One of the two officers knocked on the back door, and Bates answered. Weiner said that Bates slammed the door on the officer’s hand.

The officer yelled repeatedly, “Let me go!” but Bates held the door shut.

The officer pulled out his gun with his free hand and fired multiple times through the wooden door. At least three bullet holes were visible in the door.

Police said at least nine others were inside the house when the shooting occurred; no one else was injured.

Neighbors say they saw police escorting people out of the green duplex, which is west of the Parsons Avenue intersection.

Weiner said the officer fired his gun because he was in a “vulnerable position.”

---

---

Al Avignone, defense attorney for Madsen, says the video has been edited and only tells part of the story.

"In the United States of America we judge people on the whole story like we should," Avignone said. "The entire story is not on those five minutes. So the public is not seeing the entire story."

---

---

At some point Jeremy began trying to film the encounter to protect himself.

Officer Padilla reacted by kicking Jeremy to the ground; and as the kick smashed into Jeremey’s testicle, it was so hard that it literally caused his testicle to break apart, according to reports. Jeremy has since lost the testicle due to the incident.

Jeremy thought that he had captured the abuse on his phone.

But that’s when Officer Pablo Padilla reached into Jeremy’s car and grabbed his phone away.

Officer Padilla’s own lapel camera then captured him going through the footage on Jeremy’s phone and deleting the part where he kicked Jeremey to the ground.

After playing the footage in court, a judge has now decided that Officer Padilla was indeed tampering with evidence.

---

---

Officer Clorenzo Griffin has been a police officer in Miami for four years.



He was a hardcore advocate for the US government’s War on Drugs.

His reason for becoming a cop was so that he could “counsel children,” he said, “about the dangers of drugs.”

Surprisingly — or perhaps expectantly, depending on how you look at things — Officer Griffin has been caught speeding with 24 pounds of marijuana packed into his car after he was involved in a drug deal.

It began in the parking lot of a motel in Yuba City, California.

Although he was supposed to be off-duty at the time, Officer Mack was fully decked out in his police gear, sources say.

At the Best Western Inn parking lot on Highway 99, Officer Griffin and two of his accomplices were supposed to meet a dealer and pay for marijuana, but instead used guns to rob the dealer and take off with all of the marijuana.

---

---

Chief Richard L. Castle said in a statement that Glans was suspended without pay after officials were alerted to the footage of his encounter with Fitch and Roberts.

---

---

---

---

A Saratoga County sheriff's sergeant abruptly resigned Monday as he was charged with official misconduct and harassment after a video was posted on the Internet over the weekend that purportedly captured him slapping a man whose car he wanted to search.

---

---

A Charleston police officer is expected to resign after he threw a homeless man’s backpack into the Elk River during a confrontation in August, according to several sources close to the investigation. The man’s backpack contained a laptop that had the only photographs he had of his late wife, the sources said.

Patrolman Brian Lightner has been suspended with pay since Sept. 9 — about four weeks after an incident that resulted in the arrest of Andrew Joel Hunt, 26, of Charleston on disorderly conduct and public intoxication charges. The charges against Hunt were dismissed on Oct. 28, according to documents on file in Charleston municipal court.

The backpack and laptop were recovered from the river by the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office dive team, according to several officials, who agreed to speak anonymously about the allegations against Lightner.

---

---

• One city attorney called his legal documents a “masterpiece of deception” and has won 96 percent of his forfeiture cases.
• An assistant district attorney takes property, even from owners who have been acquitted, because “people are not found innocent, they are found not guilty.”
• One government official doesn’t want to disclose information about civil forfeiture, because it might become a “bullet-point for people that are trying to fight the program.”
• A prosecutor teaches other attorneys how to take property from innocent people. He even offers this piece of advice, “IF IN DOUBT…TAKE IT!”

---

---

A traffic stop along Interstate 40 is raising new questions about your constitutional rights. Among the questions: what happens to your right to say "no" to a search when police are looking for cash?

The traffic stop occurred west of Nashville, along a stretch of interstate in Dickson County that's become well-known for a controversial practice known as "policing for profit."

For three years, our investigation has documented how drug interdiction agencies in that area target out-of-state drivers. Those agencies fund their operations under a state law that lets them seize cash from drivers based on the suspicion that it's drug money.

"It seems like Nazi Germany, you've got to have the paperwork and the proper authorities to come through Tennessee," said San Diego resident Ronnie Hankins.

---

---

POULSBO, Wash. -- A new Youtube account is pushing local police agencies to reconsider their use of body-mounted cameras.

Despite considering officer accountability a top priority, police say records requests from that new website may make the programs too expensive and too invasive.

Poulsbo Police have been wearing body cameras for about a year, and the department says the results have been good.

"It ensures accountability for the officers," said Chief Al Townsend, "but it ensures accountability for the people the officers are encountering, too."

It's the same thing for Bremerton police, who finished a six week pilot project this summer and expect to receive funding to start a regular program in 2015.

"We had a great experience," said Bremerton Police Chief Steve Strachan. "The video that we had was very very good and we would like to go full steam ahead."

But last month reality hit, in the form of a new YouTube user website, set up by someone under the name, "Police Video Requests." The profile says it posts dash and body cam videos received after public records requests to Washington state police departments. There are just a couple of police videos there posted within the past week.

People can set up user accounts and if there are enough subscribers and page views they can make money -- think of crazy animal videos. But in this case, it's videos of people the police have stopped or interacted with for one reason or another.

It doesn't sit well with local police departments.

"They're just using it to post on the internet," said Chief Townsend, "and I suspect it's for commercial purposes."

In September, "Police Video Requests" anonymously asked Poulsbo PD for every second of body cam video it has ever recorded. The department figures it will take three years to fill that request. And Chief Townsend believes it is a huge privacy concern, as officers often see people on their worst days.

"People with mental illness, people in domestic violence situations; do we really want to have to put that video out on YouTube for people? I think that's pushing it a little bit," he said.

Now the city of Poulsbo says it may have to suspend or even end its police body cam program. Bremerton PD is, at least temporarily, shelving its plans to start up its own body cam program because of the blanket requests received by Poulsbo and other agencies in the state.

"In a perverse way," said Chief Strachan, "this is driving us the opposite direction of where we should be."

Both departments say they have no problem with legitimate video requests from either the media or people with police complaints. But they don't want someone making money by posting police videos that could be an invasion of privacy.

Both departments also plan to ask the state legislature during it's upcoming session to amend public records laws to specifically prohibit these types of blanket video records requests.

---

---

A Vancouver man who called 911 to report a suspicious car on Halloween was fired upon several times — and hit by one round in the leg -- by law enforcement officers who mistook him for an armed suspect, the Vancouver Police Department said Tuesday.

---

---

The woman’s boyfriend, Victor Stephens, 54, challenged the police on their handling of the incident, saying that the use of lethal force was excessive and that the situation could have been resolved through non lethal means. Stephens said:

“Me and her, we had an argument. Glass was being broke, so I called the police to escort her out,”

Police were called at approximately 11:45 pm by Stephens to escort his girlfriend from his property. When officers arrived, Stephens was in a separate hallway in the house away from where the incident occurred and she was pronounced dead at the scene. There were 5 other people at the house.

“They said ‘freeze’ and the next thing I know I heard (gunshots),” Stephens said.

---

---

---

---

“Walk over here. Show me your hands,” Ziegler can be heard saying immediately after he exits his vehicle. Similar commands from other officers are also heard.

“Show me your hands!” Ziegler says more forcefully.

“F- you!” Jeanetta Riley says.

Officers can be heard telling her to drop the knife.

“Bring it on!” she says.

Officers again order her to drop the knife.

“No!” she says.

Additional orders to drop the knife are heard as gunfire erupts.

---

---

---

---

"Two New York police officers have been charged with assaulting a teenaged boy during his arrest in Brooklyn, prosecutors said on Wednesday, an unusual case in a city where prosecutions of police for excessive are rare.

After a brief chase on a Brooklyn sidewalk in August, Officers David Afanador, 33, and Tyrane Isaac, 36, can be seen in surveillance video footage hitting Kahreem Tribble, 16, even after he put up his hands in apparent surrender, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said in a statement.” *

---

---

---

---

Prosecutors say in January 2013, officers in a covert location directed an arrest team to detain a man observed making a hand-to-hand drug deal. Officer Steven J. Slack allegedly placed the wrong person under arrest and was informed by the observing officers that he had the wrong person, but wrote up arrest documents for the man anyway, prosecutors said in a statement.

No explanation was provided for why prosecutors believe Slack knowingly pressed forward with arresting the wrong man, and no details were provided about where the arrest occurred or the outcome of the man's case.

Slack, who joined the police department in 2006, faces charges of misconduct and perjury, and was charged through a criminal information, allowing him to avoid arrest. Attempts to reach Slack for comment were not successful.

---

---

The lead detective in a high-profile teen “sexting” case from last summer, in which Prince William County authorities sought to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old teen to compare with the evidence, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the teen’s attorney for making critical comments about the investigation in The Washington Post.

Media and police experts said they had not heard of a case where a detective sued a defense attorney for defamation, and that he may have a difficult time overcoming the attorney’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

---

---

TULSA, Oklahoma - Tulsa Police said a man surrendered to officers after they used pepper balls to end an hour and a half standoff in the parking lot of Woodland Hills Mall early Friday.Officers said a security guard noticed a man with a handgun on his lap sitting in a Dodge Charger parked on the west side of the mall next to Dillards at about 1:30 a.m. The security guard called for police.

Officers surrounded the car and knocked on the car's windows but got no response. Police said they secured the area and after about a hour, officers fired pepper balls at the car. Again, the man, identified as Stephen Scyffore, 23, of Tulsa did not respond to commands to exit the car.

After waiting 15 more minutes, officers fired pepper balls into the Dodge Charger. Police said that is when Scyffore, claiming he had been asleep, got out of the car and was arrested.

"When we got him out of the car, he didn't appear to be on any drugs or anything. Claims he was sleeping the whole time. Never heard the announcements," said Tulsa Police Cpl. Mike Hanley.
"This particular situation we used pepper balls which was very effective, non-lethal. Never got hit with a ball, just got the effects of the pepper itself, which again, that worked."

Police said Stephen Scyffore claimed he had fallen asleep waiting for his girlfriend to get off work at the mall.

---

---

It began when Nala, a small 7-yr-old shar-pei became missing on Saturday from her home.

It turns out that Nala had gotten out of the house accidentally, and a neighbor captured her.

The neighbor who was keeping Nala took care of her but remarked that Nala was frightened and didn’t know wheres she was.

The neighbor said that Nala just wanted to go home, and that it became difficult to feed her because she was so scared.

Because Nala was scared, she began snapping at the neighbor, and that’s when the neighbor called animal control.

“It’s not Nala’s fault,” said the neighbor. She was simply scared because she was in an unfamiliar place and she snapped from the fear.

he neighbor suffered no serious injuries and believed that Nala would be safe once she was held by animal control.

Shortly after the call to animal control, police officers showed up to the home and used a restraining pole to squeeze Nala’s neck.

It’s when they got Nala alone and completely restrained that the unthinkable happened.

Officer Jeffrey Bolger was looking at Nala, and at one point was heard saying, “I’m going to gut this fucking thing,” according to reports.

Moments later, Officer Bolger pulled out a knife.

He then approached Nala, who was being held down by another officer, Thomas Schmidt, and pressed the knife up to the dog’s throat.

---

---

Officers arrested all three of them as a fourth man recorded the incident on his cell phone.

They released two of the men after they signed tickets promising to appear in court, but the third man – Tannie “T-Man” Burke – was handcuffed and led to the back of an unmarked car, where he had trouble finding the door.

“He’s blind, dumb*ass,” says the man videotaping the arrest. “If you don’t tell him he’s walking to the car, how the hell is he going to know?”

The 21-year-old Burke has been legally blind since birth, the station reported, with no vision at all in his right eye and just a general sense of shapes and lights in his left eye.

He said he’s comfortable getting around his block in the daytime but does not venture far at night.

Burke said officers drove him around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes before dropping him off after dark in a vacant lot in South Dade – about a mile from his home.

Burke told the station that police complained throughout the drive about his stepfather.

“They said, ‘Your stepfather got a lot of mouth — you know we don’t like that,’” he said.

He said he told officers he was blind, but they didn’t seem to care and dropped him off in an area without streetlights or houses after making him sign an arrest form he couldn’t read.

Police had taken his cell phone, so Burke said he started walking home with one foot in the road and the other on the weed-choked curb strip to keep him from straying into traffic.

Eventually, he found a street that was lit and a stranger agreed to help him get home.

“Forty-five minutes to an hour later he comes walking through the door all sweaty up,” said his stepfather, Marvin Armstrong. “I was like, ‘How’d you get out?’”


Burke and his family filed a complaint with the police department, which handed the case over to its internal affairs unit.

Burke told the station he’s never been convicted of a crime, but he has been arrested twice and detained at least a dozen other times.

---

---

A former Boston police lieutenant-turned-academic slammed the law enforcement response in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings on Capitol Hill yesterday, saying civil liberties were ignored in the tense search for the suspects that brought the city to a halt.

Tom Nolan, now a criminology professor at Merrimack College, spoke during a panel on the militarization of police hosted by the American Constitution Society that I moderated.

“What we saw in that aftermath was the unilateral suspension of the United States Constitution, and particularly the Fourth Amendment,” Nolan said.

He said the house-to-house searches and use of military equipment in the April 2013 manhunt for Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, unprecedented in recent U.S. history, “was violative of the Constitution and we failed to object.”

He noted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was ultimately apprehended not through door-to-door searches but when a resident spotted him in a boat and called 911.

“When you fail to object to what is going on now, we forfeit our right to do so in the future,” Nolan said. “Ferguson brought that into the glare of the public spotlight.”

Former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis called Nolan’s assertion “outrageous.”

“The comparison (to Ferguson) is actually insulting,” said Davis. “There have been no complaints filed, so the claim that there was some sort of constitutional violation is unsupported. It just isn’t logical.”

Davis noted police were seeking men suspected not only of killing three marathon spectators, but also executing an MIT police officer and engaging in a gunfight, with explosives, that critically injured an MBTA cop.

“They were throwing bombs at us,” Davis said. “The amount of force used by police had to be commensurate with the resistance that they are facing.”

---

---

A former Maryland police officer convicted in a shooting that paralyzed a handcuffed suspect from the waist down was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison, far less time than prosecutors had requested.

Former District Heights police Sgt. Johnnie Riley, 44, was sentenced in Prince George's County Circuit Court. He could have faced up to 45 years in prison, and prosecutors asked for a 20-year sentence.

Prosecutors say Riley shot a handcuffed man in the back in September 2012 after the man got out of a police cruiser and ran away. The injured man, Kalvin Kyle, was paralyzed from the waist down. Riley had pulled Kyle over on suspicion of driving a stolen motorcycle.

---

---

hree Columbus Police officers were involved in a crash in west Columbus Friday morning.

This happened around 7:30 a.m. on Hague Avenue at I-70 West, near the Columbus Police Training Academy.

Police said three cruisers full of police academy recruits were heading from the training academy to Cooper Stadium for riot training.

The cars were traveling in a convoy when the first car stopped short on Hague Avenue just outside the academy. Officers said the second and third cop cars slammed into each other. According to CPD, the third driver was ruled at fault.

No one was injured.

Hague Avenue was closed for more than an hour due to the crash, but it is now back open.

The recruits were headed to Cooper Stadium for riot training. That also did not go as planned. An instructor released tear gas which drifted over an elementary school.

---

---

---

---

Bill Swan was on his tractor when he noticed a utility crew attempting to dig on his property and approached them to tell them to vacate his property. The workers then called police, according to KCTV 5.

When officers arrived they yanked Swan off the tractor and took him to the ground leaving him bloodied and with broken ribs.

Officers of course claim that Swan was a threat to them, and that he attempted to back his tractor into a police cruiser and then tried to leave the scene. They claim they gave him verbal and hand signals to stop but he refused and attempted to run the officers over.

“Police got there and told him to get off his tractor, he was on his own property, and said, ‘I don’t have to get off my tractor,’” said Bill’s grandson, Tim Swan, according to Fox 4.

According to Mrs. Swan, her husband suffers from hearing loss and most likely couldn’t hear the commands to exit the tractor.

“Sometimes I have to get right in his face and talk to him,” Libby Swan said.

One of the officers was able to get on the tractor and shut it off. Police claim that Swan then became violent and swung at officers and attempted to get the officers firearm out of its holster.

The claim that Swan went for an officers gun should ring alarm bells, as this is often a claim officers make after beating someone in an attempt justify their use of force.

Swan was then taken to the police station where he was booked for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a police officer.

Libby Swan has a very difficult time believing that her husband provoked the incident as described by law enforcement and no longer feels that she can trust her local police.

---

---

Police, Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies, county firefighters and California Highway Patrol officers were called about 12:30 p.m. after a deputy who was serving as campus security called for backup after having food thrown at him while trying to stop a fight, authorities said.

A helicopter also was sent to the school.

"As you were walking to class, you saw cops in bulletproof vests. So that was kind of shocking," said student Zach Burg, 17.

A video on the website of the Santa Maria Times appeared to show a deputy striking a girl during a struggle with a group of girls. A photo showed a deputy, his back smeared with cheese sauce, kneeling over a boy on the ground.

A sheriff's statement said that after the girl had resisted the deputy, her friends surrounded him and pushed and hit him.

"In the process of defending himself, he shoved the females away and one of the suspects was knocked to the ground," the statement said.

Four boys and two girls were arrested and booked on suspicion of various charges including resisting arrest and assault on a school employee, the statement said.

---

---

he Polk County School District suspended a principal Tuesday and changed rules for lockdown drills following a controversial drill held at Jewett Middle Academy Magnet on Thursday.

The incident drew national attention and public criticism after weapon-carrying officers checked darkened, locked-down classrooms, frightening students and parents who hadn't been told it was only a drill.

"I very much regret that this occurred," Superintendent of Schools Kathryn LeRoy said Tuesday evening during a School Board meeting.

A Winter Haven Police Department spokeswoman said last week that one officer involved in the drill had a loaded handgun out while checking a classroom and the another officer had an unloaded AR-15 rifle with no magazine, and both were pointed toward the ground.

Some students told parents that officers pointed guns at them.

LeRoy said Jewett Principal Jacquelyn Moore was suspended Tuesday pending an internal investigation.

---

---

A Missouri homeschooling family is suing a sheriff and another officer who forcibly entered their home without a warrant, Tasered the father, pepper-sprayed the mother and put their children in the custody of social service workers.

A court already has ruled that the actions of Sheriff Darren White and Capt. David Glidden of Nodaway County, Missouri, violated the U.S. Constitution, resulting in the dismissal of charges of child endangerment and resisting arrest against the couple, Jason and Laura Hagan, of New Hampton.

---

---

Prattville High student claims he was wrongfully detained and sprayed with mace by a Phenix City police officer during the final minutes of Prattville's playoff football win last Friday over Central-Phenix City.

Cameron Rader, a 17-year-old senior at PHS, said the officer claimed that Rader had pushed him. Rader said when he denied touching the officer, the man shoved him backward into a walkway.

"I had my back to this officer talking to a girl who was standing behind me," Rader said. "The cop yells at me — 'Hey son' — and tells me, 'Push me one more time.' I told him I didn't push him, and he like freaked out."

A video of the incident, filmed by another student standing behind Rader in the stands, was sent to Rader — and shared among several Prattville students — and provided to the Montgomery Advertiser by Rader's attorney.

That video picks up just as Rader is being shoved back through the crowd. Rader can be seen briefly trying to get out of the officer's grasp — he says he pushed the officer to get him away from his throat and to defend himself.

After a brief pause in which the two are separated, the officer comes back at Rader, shoves him back through a crowd of students to a railing, and as the teen is standing with his hands by his sides, the officer sprays something into his face.

"I was telling him to get his hands off me, to stop touching me, and then I asked what I did," Rader said. "You can see that on the video. I have my hands by my side. I'm being compliant and he keeps pushing me. That's when he maces me. I couldn't breathe. It was in my throat and nose and the fumes were burning my eyes. And it hurt for a long time."

---

---

The oncoming vehicle was an unmarked provincial police car driven by a 29-year-old on-duty SQ officer. He was travelling at 122 kilometres per hour — more than twice the speed limit. He was not responding to an emergency.

Firefighters had to use the jaws of life to extract the boy. He died from his injuries five days later in hospital.

---

---

mmissioners agreed to pay $75,000 Tuesday to settle a lawsuit brought by a teenage girl stopped by a Fort Lauderdale officer she feared was a "crazy psycho" who would rape and kill her.


The girl, described in the lawsuit as a 15-year-old, straight-A Fort Lauderdale High student at the time of the May 2010 incident, was stopped by Officer Leo Arena near her Coral Ridge home as she was walking home. The suit filed in federal court last year claimed excessive use of force, false imprisonment and battery.

Police Chief Frank Adderley said Tuesday that no disciplinary action was taken against Arena because the victim and her father did not file a complaint with police. The Sun Sentinel is not publishing the girl's name because of her age at the time of the incident.

---

---

Hazard Police Charged Whitesburg Police Chief Tyrone Fields with a DUI after responding to a 911 call around 1:00a.m. Sunday. They say he was passed out and unresponsive in the front seat of his car at the Hazard Taco Bell drive-thru.

Because of Fields' condition officers took him to the hospital, instead of jail.

---

---

A former City Council analyst socked the legislative body and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito with a whistleblower lawsuit Wednesday alleging his free-speech rights were violated because he was fired over accusing Police Commissioner Bill Bratton of fudging numbers about how often cops use excessive force.

---

---

Monday, Kane County Coroner Rob Russell released his findings, which concluded Joshua Paul died Aug. 18 of a lacerated portal vein in his liver, which was complicated by cirrhosis due to chronic alcoholism.

...

The Daily Herald attempted to obtain the arrest report from Carpentersville police and video of Paul's arrest as well. The village refused to release the information, but Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office ruled a month ago that the documents were public records and should be released. The village has continued to defy the ruling, in violation of state law, Madigan's office said.

Carpentersville spokesman Dave Bayless said the village intended to turn over the records once the state police investigation concluded, but backtracked Wednesday.

"The village is eager to provide the information and continues to stand by its commitment to do so," Bayless wrote when asked about the documents and video. "However, it has been asked by Kane County (state's attorney's office) to hold off on providing the info until it deems this done."

A spokesman for Kane County State's Attorney Joseph McMahon said the office does not comment on "pending inquiries."

A public records request to the state police for the same arrest reports and video was also denied. An appeal to Madigan's Public Access Counselor is pending, despite the earlier ruling that the documents and video should be released.

---

---

Civil asset forfeiture is a controversial practice in which government authorities can seize private property if they suspect it was used in a crime.

In that vein, Las Cruces has a city ordinance that allows officials to seize vehicles from those who repeatedly violate DWI laws or related restrictions. But the city's ordinance, modeled after one in Albuquerque and established in 2006, is viewed by many as more narrow than those in other cities where homes have been seized.

In discussing the Las Cruces ordinance in Santa Fe, Connelly said it usually nets the city older cars of little cash value. That's why, Connelly explained in an anecdote to a crowd of law enforcement personnel and attorneys, police were excited when they had a chance to seize a newer luxury car during a stakeout from a man appearing to be drunk.

We always try to get, every once in a while, like maybe a good car," Connelly said at the conference, online videos show. " ... This guy drives up in a 2008 Mercedes, brand new. Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like 'Ahhhh.' And he gets out and he's just reeking of alcohol. And it's like, 'Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.'"

He also talked about more expansive programs elsewhere, saying city attorneys "could be czars."

Civil asset forfeiture opponents say Connelly's anecdote prove that such laws are inherently corruptive.

Connelly's words "capture the essence of what is wrong with the civil forfeiture process," said Brad Cates, a longtime attorney now living in Las Cruces.

...

He recently wrote an editorial in the Washington Post, explaining his position in detail and referring mostly to federal and state laws that allow authorities to confiscate cash from motorists.

"Carefully crafted city statutes are less troubling," Cates said in a phone interview Wednesday. "However, the same fundamental issues are raised."

Cates said asset forfeiture initiates a convoluted process that's "not in tune with our criminal justice system." He also said that when police use forfeiture money to fund their own departments, it creates an appearance of impropriety.

Garza said in a recent newsletter to City Council that the program has seized 2,135 vehicles and provided $1.2 million for programs aimed at reducing DWI.

The ordinance ensures "the cost is covered by those who created these safety concerns," Garza's newsletter said.

---

---

It's no joke. A tax assessor in Davison Township, Genessee County, Michigan ( suburban Flint) said she needed to go inside homes to do her job. She was emboldened by the Michigan Tax Commission which is encouraging such inspections but the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation says the practice violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment on search and seizure.

---

---

“It don’t matter to me. What’s gonna happen?” says officer Williams to assert his ‘above the law’ power.
Ferriday, LA — A couple of ‘good-ole-boys’ were driving down Highway 425 in Ferriday, Louisiana when they saw trash being thrown out of the passenger’s side window of a police cruiser.

The two concerned citizens decided to follow the patrol car driven by officer Lee Williams of the Ferriday Police Department, and let him know that they did not approve of this littering.

When they confronted Williams, he became immediately confrontational, defensive, and arrogant.

“It don’t matter to me. What’s gonna happen?” says officer Williams to assert his ‘above the law’ power, basically telling the duo that he can litter and it doesn’t matter.

---

---

The Santa Rosa Police Department has been temporarily closed while authorities execute a search warrant inside.

The Texas Rangers and the Cameron County District Attorney's Office both raided the police department around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Investigators are remaining tight-lipped at this time but confirmed they are executing an "evidenciary search warrant" inside.

---

---

He was a 42-year-old police officer with a clean record, yet he led a young girl down a terrible path after befriending her.

Cleveland police officer Charles Locke is the man who slapped handcuffs on serial killer Anthony Sowell in 2009. Now his notoriety comes after admitting in court he had sex with a 15-year-old girl and videotaped it.
"In one of these videos, he's actually wearing his uniform," assistant county prosecutor Chris Schroeder told the judge at sentencing.

The videos Locke took were far too graphic to play in court, let alone play in a courtroom where her family sat. His sentencing was emotional, showing through the victim's father's address to him.

"That's my 15-year-old daughter, bro. For real, man. That's my family, man."

Locke spent a lot of time with the girl, some of it at a rec center, other times in his car or police cruiser, which triggered the girl's mother to question him months ago.

"Is there anything other than you mentoring my daughter going on here? Because you knew you would lose your job if it was."

A counselor read from the victim's writings:

"I trusted him a lot. My mood now changes too much. I'm depressed. I'm sad, mad, and sometimes happy."

The internal affairs officer who investigated the case also spoke in court.

"Our badge has been disgraced. Our brothers and sisters in blue have been disgraced," said Sgt. Carl Hartman.

Locke protested.

"This is not who I am. This is not me at all," he said.

Locke claimed he was overworked, in a fog, and didn't understand what he was doing.

At one point, the victim's grandmother reached her limits, shouting "enough," as Locke called the relationship with the teen "an emotional thing."

Locke was sentenced to 19 1/2 years. He had been on unpaid suspension since his arrest in July.

Now his days of wearing a badge are over for good.

---

---

Here, the detectives had far exceeded the scope of their right to generally inquire about the information received from the anonymous tip at the time they smelled the marijuana. When the detectives initially reached the house, they knocked on the front door for a “couple [of] minutes” but received no human response. They only proceeded to the back of the house because they heard barking dogs, and believed that an occupant might not have heard the knocks. However, the detectives could not determine from which direction the dogs were barking. There was no evidence of any vehicles on the property, persons present, lights illuminated in the residence, or furniture in the house, and the detectives believed that no one resided there. Accordingly, the sound of barking dogs, alone, was not sufficient to support the detectives’ decision to enter the curtilage of defendant’s property by walking into the back yard of the home and the area on the driveway within ten feet of the garage. See Florida v. Jardines, __ U.S. __, __, 185 L. Ed. 2d 495 (2013) (noting that a law enforcement officer without a search warrant may merely “approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave”).

As a result, when the detectives smelled the odor of marijuana, their purported general inquiry about the information received from the anonymous tip was in fact a trespassory invasion of defendant’s curtilage, and they had no legal right to be in that location. Accordingly, the subsequent search of the residence based, in part, on the odor of marijuana was unlawful. Thus, the trial court did not err by granting defendant’s motion to suppress.

---