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Houston, TX — Police in Rosenberg are taking a proactive approach to prevent vehicle break-ins by breaking into cars. Yes, you read that correctly.

According to Rosenberg police, it’s the season for theft and stealing. “Burglars are always watching, waiting for that chance to make the right move,” Officer Tim Kraus tells KHOU.

“They want easy targets,” says Asst. Chief Tracie Dunn.

So the solution that Rosenberg police have come up with to deal with this theft is to patrol shopping center parking lots and attempt to get inside privately owned vehicles.

“You can see all this stuff back there, it’s easy for someone to smash the window and grab it. Right here, I can get my hand in and open the door. We want to stop stuff like this,” as he reaches into a locked car and opens the door, setting off the alarm.

After the officers attempt to break into these vehicles, they are leaving little green report cards on how the car could have been more secure.

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The policy, which began last month, called for all visitors to the DSS facility on Ulster Avenue to present identification to the deputies who run the metal detectors and perform bag checks at the entrance. IDs were checked against a statewide database of active warrants. Those found to be wanted by the law were detained and, if the arresting agency asked, taken into custody. During the 20 business days that the policy was in effect, 30 people were arrested after their name popped up on the warrant list. The majority of the arrests were for low-level misdemeanors and probation violation warrants. The program netted its first felony-level arrest last week when a Kingston man wanted for allegedly selling crack cocaine to an undercover cop was caught when he showed up at the DSS building.

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n the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.

Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.

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Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period.

A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.

Saturday’s shooting, which occurred after an officer responded to a trespassing call, remains under investigation.

Nearly all of the fatal shootings by police have been deemed by county prosecutors to be justified. Only one — the 2012 shooting of Danielle Willard by West Valley City police — was deemed unjustified, and the subsequent criminal charge was thrown out last month by a judge.

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“Black people who kill black people go to jail,” Dyson said. “White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail.”

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“White police officers wouldn’t be there,” Giuliani said, “if you weren’t killing each other.”

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The principal of East Side Community HS invited the New York Civil Liberties Union to give a two-day training session last week on interacting with police.

The 450 kids were coached on staying calm during NYPD encounters and given a “What To Do If You’re Stopped By The Police” pamphlet.

NYCLU representatives told kids to be polite and to keep their hands out of their pockets. But they also told students they don’t have to show ID or consent to searches, that it’s best to remain silent, and how to file a complaint against an officer.

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A witness who recorded the August arrest on his Samsung Tablet tells Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne police not only seized the videotape over his objections, but when they returned it to him, the file was missing.

With the help of an electronic cloud, the witness recovered the 55 second video clip and provided a limited-use copy to FOX31 Denver for its investigation.

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The videotape shows Evans holding down the suspect’s legs. A burly undercover officer can be seen bear-hugging Flores, lying on his side on the asphalt parking lot. Flores has his hands pinned behind his back.

Officer Jones can be heard yelling at Flores to “Spit the drugs out! Spit the drugs out!”

When Flores fails to open his mouth, Jones punches him with a closed fist six times in the face.

The videotape shows the suspect’s head bouncing off the pavement as a result of the force. FOX31 Denver also obtained exclusive pictures of Flores inside an ambulance a short time later, which show obvious trauma to his head and face.

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While Officer Jones is punching Flores, the videotape captures the loud sounds of a woman screaming in Spanish for police to stop. A few seconds later, a visibly pregnant woman approaches the area where the officers are on top of Flores. Officer Jones reaches out and sweeps her feet out from under her. It appears on video, the woman, 25-year-old Mayra Lazos-Guerrero, falls hard on her stomach and face.

Officer Jones reported to a superior he thought the woman was going to kick him.


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t is apparent from the videotape at least one of the officers sees Frasier. The word “camera!” can be heard on tape shortly after Jones punches Flores.

Frasier tells FOX31 Denver, officers on scene threatened him with arrest — demanded he turn over all photos and videotape to them, then seized his tablet over his objections.

“When he took it, I said ‘Hey! You can’t do that. You need a warrant for that!’ and he said ‘What program did you take the video with? Where is that?’” Frasier told Halsne in a recorded interview.

Frasier says police ignored his objections and dug through his personal photos without obtaining a court order.

Frasier: “The first officer that comes up to ask me about my witness statement brings me to the police car and says we could do this the easy way or we could do this the hard way.”

Halsne: When they said we can do this the easy way or the hard way, how did you take that?

Frasier: “It was taken as ‘you can either cooperate and give us what we want or we’re going to incarcerate you.’”

Although official police reports mention an officer thought Frasier took video, there is nothing written about taking, searching, or possessing his tablet. That’s something Frasier swears occurred.

By the time the officer returned his tablet, Frasier tells Halsne, the video file was gone.

“I couldn’t believe it. My heart dropped. I know I just shot that video, like it’s not on there now?”

After Frasier got home, he tells FOX31 Denver he synched his tablet with his electronic cloud. Within a few moments, the video file reappeared. Frasier says it’s “possible” both he and the police officer who looked through his tablet “missed seeing” the clip inside his Tablet files. However, Frasier suspects, in reality, the clip was deleted either with intention or by mistake.

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TO ALL PITT BULL AND ROTTWEILER OWNERS:

PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THE VILLAGE OF MOREAUVILLE IS ENFORCING THE ORDINANCE THAT WAS PASSED ON OCTOBER 13TH, 2014 THAT BANS PITT BULLS AND ROTTWEILERS WITHIN THE CORPORATE LIMITS OF MOREAUVILLE, LA.

YOU ARE HEREBY GIVEN NOTICE THAT YOU HAVE UNTIL DECEMBER 1, 2014 TO REMOVE YOUR PITT BULLS OR ROTTWEILERS FROM YOUR PREMISES. IF YOUR PITT BULLS OR ROTTWEILERS ARE NOT REMOVED BY THIS DATE, YOUR ANIMALS WILL BE IMPOUNDED AND TRANSPORTED TO A VETERINARY CLINIC FOR FURTHER DISPOSITION. YOU WILL ALSO BE FINED FOR VIOLATING THE ORDINANCE.

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A man is facing a felony menacing charge after two western Colorado sheriff's deputies say he pointed a banana at them and they thought it was a gun.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports 27-year-old Nathan Rolf Channing, of Fruitvale, was arrested Sunday.

According to an arrest affidavit, Mesa County deputies Joshua Bunch and Donald Love said they feared for their lives even though they saw that the object was yellow. Bunch wrote in the affidavit that he has seen handguns in many shapes and colors.

He wrote that Love was drawing his service weapon when Channing yelled, "It's a banana!"

The deputies say Channing told them he was doing a trial run for a planned YouTube video and he thought it would "lighten the holiday spirit."

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According to a 2006 report by USA Today, “In an analysis of disciplinary cases against Florida cops from 1997 to 2002, the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that officers with only high school educations were the subjects of 75% of all disciplinary actions. Officers with four-year degrees accounted for 11% of such actions.”

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A Buffalo cop facing two years in prison for kicking a man in handcuffs in an incident captured on video was handed probation today on the condition that he will serve as a role model for other officers inclined to beat citizens.

John Cirulli also threatened to arrest the man who had video recorded the incident if he did not delete the footage, but that tidbit apparently wasn't part of the charges the 31-year-old was facing.

Cirulli, who resigned from the force shortly after video of the April incident went viral, admitted he took the man's phone, checked it for a recording and handed it back when he found nothing.

But that was only because the man who recorded the incident handed the cop a different phone that did not contain the recording, fooling the cop into thinking nothing had been recorded.

Thanks to that experience, Cirulli is now an authority on the "dangers of civil rights violations" and is working with the FBI in providing training sessions to other cops on what not to do.

Evidently, this is something that is not addressed in the police academy.

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Corpus Christi PD Chief Simpson released a statement adding, "Based on the news stories aired locally and on the internet, it was brought to our attention that an Officer had requested Ms. Espinosa to delete the video that was recorded. We viewed the entire dashcam video and found the conversation between Officer Lockhart and Ms. Espinosa. It was discovered that Officer Lockhart did request that the video be deleted. Officer Lockhart took full responsibility for his statement on the video and was formally disciplined for those actions. A memo, to the entire department, will follow on Wednesday regarding Texas Penal Code Sec. 38.02 'Failure to Identify' and our commitment to transparency by allowing citizens who wish to photograph or record our officers in a public space."

There were no specifics provided on how the officer was disciplined.

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The Salinas Californian reported that Soloman said the Monterey Bay officer managed to calm the student and get him to sit down before his colleagues from Marina reached the scene.

But the other officers used their Tasers on the student after their college colleague left the room to fulfill the student’s request for a glass of water. The campus officer subsequently refused to follow an order to use his own Taser on the student. The student was treated at a local hospital for superficial cuts but was not seriously injured.

Rodriguez’s department later issued a “failure to act” complaint against the campus officer, accusing him of not engaging in a “highly agitated situation.”

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Police shootings are only one function of living in one of the most heavily policed societies in the world. Any movement to roll back this creeping overcriminalization is going to have to look beyond criminal prosecutions of individual police and take in the big picture.

The first step to controlling the police is to get rid of the fantasy, once and for all, that the law is on our side. The law is firmly on the side of police who open fire on unarmed civilians.

The lethal use of police force typically sets off an internal police investigation to determine if departmental regulations were violated. The regs and the law are not the same thing. Case in point: the chokehold that NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo used to strangle Eric Garner, suspected of selling loose cigarettes, on Staten Island last July. (The grand jury bill on that case has still not been decided.) The chokehold is not prohibited by law, but it is by departmental rules. The violation might earn a departmental censure of some kind, from loss of vacation days to getting fired, but they tend to be radically mild, when not nonexistent.

What about internal affairs investigations? On television they are aggressive, dogged, uncompromising. In real life they tend to insulate the police from serious external sanction.

Civil suits for monetary damages require a lower standard of proof than criminal cases, but these suits are not a slam-dunk for victims of cop violence, either. The same jurisprudence that grants wide leeway to law enforcement still holds. Last March, one victim’s family lost a federal civil suit for wrongful death and civil rights violations brought against police officer Nicholas Bennallack for fatally shooting a fleeing and unarmed drug suspect. The jury believed the cop’s claim that he opened fire out of fear for his life.

What about all the times when excessive force suits get settled out of court? It turns out that massive payouts don’t deter police misconduct for one straightforward reason: neither individual officers nor police departments are responsible for coughing up the cash. The union covers the officer’s lawyer, and research from Joanna Schwartz of UCLA Law School found that governments, not individual officers, paid out 99.98 percent of the damages. Settlements and damages aren’t paid by the police department, whose budget will waltz by untouched, but typically out of the general municipal budget.

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Nowhere could I find out how many people died during interactions with police in the United States. Try as I might, I just couldn't wrap my head around that idea. How was it that, in the 21st century, this data wasn't being tracked, compiled, and made available to the public? ..How could cops possibly know "best practices" for dealing with any fluid situation? They couldn't."

The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.

It's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. What evidence? In attempting to collect this information, I was lied to and delayed by the FBI, even when I was only trying to find out the addresses of police departments to make public records requests. The government collects millions of bits of data annually about law enforcement in its Uniform Crime Report, but it doesn't collect information about the most consequential act a law enforcer can do.

I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agencies—almost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency. And these are the people in charge of enforcing the law.

The second biggest thing I learned is that bad journalism colludes with police to hide this information. The primary reason for this is that police will cut off information to reporters who tell tales. And a reporter can't work if he or she can't talk to sources.

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Police in Beloit are launching a new effort to reduce gun violence in which they're asking city residents to volunteer to have police search their homes for guns.

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"Gun violence is as serious as the Ebola virus is being represented in the media, and we should fight it using the tools that we've learned from our health providers,” he said.

Jacobs said he hopes some searches will result in the discovery of guns they didn't know were in their own homes. He said that there’s also a chance they’ll find guns linked to crimes.

“That's really what we're looking for,” he said. “Maybe we'll find a toy gun that's been altered by a youngster in the house — and we know the tragedies that can occur there on occasion.”

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