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A Fairfax County police spokesman, a 15-year member of the force, has been charged with possessing child pornography that was uploaded to the Internet from a computer at his home, police said.

Officer William “Bud” Walker, 49, of Fairfax was arrested at police headquarters Wednesday afternoon and charged with two counts of possession of child pornography following an investigation, police said.

Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. said at a press conference Wednesday night that it "gravely upsets" him to inform the public about Walker's arrest.

"At this time, this criminal investigation has not revealed any activity involving children from our community," Roessler said. He added that the children seen in the pornography have not been identified.

Walker was regularly seen on television and was quoted in the newspaper, providing information about police cases in the county. Police said in a news release that Walker held a “visible position of public trust.”

County detectives began their investigation April 6 after being contacted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In July 2014, the center received a tip from a blogging site, Tumblr, that child pornography had been uploaded through its servers, according to a search warrant. Between April and June 2014, Tumblr reported, one image and one GIF — a looped video clip — were uploaded from an Internet address in the county. The images showed pubescent males...

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Police officers in the City of Stockton, California says its officers are not to blame for firing over 600 rounds into a disabled SUV, hitting an innocent hostage more than 10 times.

It all happened after armed bank robbery suspects took off in the SUV with a hostage. The police knew this much, but it didn’t cause them a moment’s pause when they unloaded magazine after magazine full of rounds into the vehicle, suspects and hostage.

Now, the family of Misty Holt-Singh, the hostage who was riddled with bullets, is considering filing suit against the City of Stockton and the Stockton Police Department for how they handled the July 17th robbery and high speed chase.

They have four more months to decide, but attorney Gregory Benthly says that they are “forcing the Singhs’ hand.” Bentley indicated that a claim would be filed, but he did not specify when.

“The city has refused to accept responsibility for its actions,” Bentley explained in a statement. “Stockton police officers fired over 600 bullets at a disabled vehicle with full knowledge that Misty was inside… of the bullets that struck Misty, every single one was fired from a member of the Stockton police.”

An investigation into the massive police shooting revealed that 34 police officers shot at the suspects and hostage, violating “numerous standard police protocols in their response,” Bentley explained. Officers are instructed to engage the robbers after they leave the bank, rather than while the robbery is in progress.

Kelly Huber, an employee at the bank, added that even the hostage-taking was a result of police negligence. Officers were not prepared to contain the robbers when they interrupted the robbery.

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30-year-old Sean Reardon was stopped by police as he drove his Chevy Suburban near 5th and Main Streets in Chico, when, after getting out of his car, he was tackled to the ground and ‘hog tied’ by the two police officers before being beaten with a baton as he lie in the road.

The disturbing footage shows Reardon being hit multiple times with the baton before being taken to a hospital.

“Pull him over!” one officer shouts to the other as he reigns down baton blows to Reardon’s rib cage.

Reardon says he was in ICU for 4 days and suffered multiple broken bones, including ribs, his nose and sternum.

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The police just lie and lie. This is why people don't trust them or respect them any more. First thing out of the Arsenal police officers mouth is I can not take pictures of the arsenal. Then he goes into how it is illegal. Why must they do that? How about say Hi sir how are you? Did you want to speak with Mr. John B. Synder he is the Arsenal public affairs representative. But no go right into ordering someone around and then intimidate them first. Then the city of Watervliet Police try their hand at lying. Oh and don't forget to ask me for ID. And when that doesn't work go into more intimidation tactics by calling for more police to arrive. After I walked away from them 2 more Watervliet cars drove by to meet up with the other Police. Now at the end of the video I find them all around my car. I didn't try to hide my car because my name is on CopBlock.org with this video, I am now well known in Troy which is on the other side of the river from Watervliet. But they try to intimidate me more by having 3 patrol cars around my car and they still are trying to get a good picture of me. And listen to the Watervliet officer Langlais say he doesn't know if there are gangs in Watervliet or if there are any missing persons and finally he has nothing better to do then watch me. So if you are a resident of Watervliet remember that they lie and waste your tax dollars because they don't know of any crime to solve and have nothing better to do then follow and watch a law abiding citizen out taking pictures.

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I first went to the Colonie Police station to do a 1st amendment test. On the surface they did great Sgt. Dinuzzo came out and said its fine film, and even asked if I needed anything. Well he is a liar and can not be trusted. Its a shame you can't trust the police any more. In the second half of the video I happen to come across 2 patrol cars going into Price Chopper and I stopped to see what was going on. While advising the occupants in the car of their rights Officer Matthew R. Overocker steps in to make sure they don't know their rights and thinks that it's not my place to tell them.Now they violated the 4th amendment on the passengers in the car through intimidation. And at the same time Sgt. Dinuzzo orders Officer Nicholas R. Morgan to run my plate. Now they knew who I was but they wanted to intimidate me and hope that my motorcycle was missing something, too bad for them I am all good. Police at their finest, intimidation, rights violations and un-trust worthiness. After the police left I had a chance to speak with the people in the car and the driver told me that the police said I called in the complaint on them. They can't help but lie. My guess is they didn't want me to talk with them. While sitting and talking Colonie PD kept circling the parking lot and sitting near by watching us. Just more intimidation on their part. This tells me the stories I have heard about Colonie PD is true and I need to keep a better eye on them.

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A fired Phoenix police detective is asking for his job back in the wake of an investigation into alleged police brutality.

“I just tasted the blood,” said 18-year-old Patrick D’Labik, remembering the moment Detective Kevin McGowan stomped D’Labik’s back, sending his face into a convenience store floor.

“As soon as I spit, I realized my teeth was out,” D’Labik said.

McGowan told police internal affairs investigators that he stomped D’Labik’s back because he was not obeying commands.

The incident, in late December of last year, began when McGowan stopped D’Labik, who was walking near 38th Street and McDowell Rd.

McGowan wanted to ask D’Labik if he had any information about a homicide suspect.

D’Labik, who feared the officer would discover the marijuana in his pocket, ran.

McGowan caught up with D’Labik in a convenience store. A surveillance video without audio shows McGowan, gun drawn, approaching D’Labik. D’Labik, who had his hands up, begins to get on the ground. When he is in a “push up” position, McGowan stomps him in the upper back. That sent D’Labik’s face into the floor. He lost several teeth.

“There was no need for it at all,” D’Labik said. “It makes me angry and it still makes me angry.”

The Phoenix Police Department fired McGowan, a decision the detective is appealing through the City’s Civil Service Board.

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A Metropolitan Detention Center officer is accused of raping an inmate inside the District Courthouse while she was cuffed and shackled. Enock Arviso is now a former MDC officer, charged with rape and in custody at his former workplace.

The victim’s attorney worries there may be more victims out there.

“She was completely vulnerable, being cuffed both at the wrists and at the ankles, unable to get away from him,” said attorney Nicole Moss. “After it was over with, he just carried on his normal business. I’m worried he’s done this before and there are other victims out there.”

Bernalillo County deputies say on Monday, Arviso took the victim out of a courtroom to the back elevators that are used by inmates. He raped her once he had her by herself and away from cameras, according to the criminal complaint. Arviso denied the incident but later gave deputies a piece of paper which read, “This is an amended statement … I did have sex with inmate on 4/13/15.”

According to the complaint, Arviso injured the victim, causing trauma and bleeding. Moss says the victim was concerned about retaliation if she reported it to another MDC officer, but found a phone to call a hotline for inmates.

“She’s a very brave woman for doing this,” Moss said. “She actually was very scared about coming forward, but she found the strength and she reported it.”

Moss is concerned other officers knew or suspected what happened, but kept quiet.

“This woman and other inmates, these are our family members,” she said. “These are community members. She’s a mother. She’s a daughter.”

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He’s made headlines for using a taser on his partner – and he’s been caught on camera during an aggressive arrest. Now Highland Park police officer Ronald Dupuis is making headlines once again.

A new lawsuit has been filed against him – this time 2 women are accusing him of locking them up for 4 days without ever charging them with a crime.

Whether it’s an arrest caught on camera, shooting himself in the leg, or having to be rushed to the hospital after a police raid – Sgt. Ronald Dupuis just can’t stay out of the spotlight.

Now he’s accused of locking up Rhianna Turner and her domestic partner Kera Hill – without any evidence of a crime – for four days.

“My clients are completely terrified by any law enforcement,” says their attorney, Robert Morris.

Morris filed the lawsuit against Dupuis and the City of Highland Park. He says his clients’ constitutional rights were violated.

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Dupuis is currently under investigation for how he arrested a carjacking suspect earlier this year. And he’s no stranger to lawsuits. He’s been sued – and filed his share of cases in federal court as well.

He’s worked at seven different police departments and came to our attention when he used a taser on his police partner in Hamtramck back in 2005. A jury did not convict him in that case, but Morris says there’s a definite pattern here.

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Oakley, Michigan, is not a hotbed of crime. But if that should change, it seems well placed to cope, because the village is believed to have a police force numbering almost 150 people, or one officer for every two residents.

One, Robert James Ritchie, does not live in Oakley. A Detroit-area native better known as the rapper Kid Rock, he applied to join the village’s small army of reserve police officers, according to an attorney, along with many prominent Michigan professionals and businesspeople and a football player for the Miami Dolphins.

“A small blip on the map, the little village of Oakley, with less than 300 residents, has got dozens and dozens of no-show secret police officers,” said Philip Ellison, a lawyer who is representing the family who own Oakley’s tavern in lawsuits attempting to force transparency from village leaders about the scheme.

Ellison said the singer was one of the names on a document released to him which he is not allowed to make public in full.

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Williams later left a message for Vander Plaats, stating, "I'm going to f------ kill you. And it's not going to be awesome. I mean, it's going to be like little body parts in a fireplace kind of death and that's really going to suck."

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Some Ave Maria students are disappointed after a Collier County investigation showed their deputies didn't do anything wrong while arresting students.

We showed you cell phone video students shot during a controversial arrest near campus back in September. Students say the deputies were swearing at them and used violence during the arrest.

In a video, you can hear swearing and see deputies using force to put students in handcuffs. But in the report, Collier County says there was no wrongdoing.

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As for the four students arrested, their charges have been dropped.

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A Missouri prosecutor on Friday dismissed charges against a Kansas City police officer indicted in February by a grand jury for the non-fatal shooting of a 37-year-old man last summer.

The dismissal comes amid heightened attention to police shootings after a murder charge against a North Charleston, South Carolina police officer and the decision by a grand jury last November not to indict a Ferguson, Missouri officer who fatally shot an unarmed man.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said an investigation and legal analysis found that evidence no longer supported the charges against 31-year-old Jacob Ramsey.

A state grand jury charged Ramsey with first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of Anthony Contreras last June.

Kansas City police said Ramsey was making a warrant check when Contreras ran from a house. Police said he feared he was about to be shot and fired at Contreras, critically wounding him.

A plea of not guilty was entered for Ramsey in February. Baker said on Friday she could not carry the charges forward.

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Several officers attempting to make an arrest at the wrong house quickly turned their incompetence into a deadly situation.

As police were trying to force their way into the wrong home, they irresponsibly let the home owner’s dog loose.

When the dog ran out, he was naturally in an excited state. The dog jumped on a frightened lieutenant but didn’t cause any harm. Then one NYPD officer, with absolutely no regard for his surroundings pulled out his service weapon and fired his gun at point blank range.

As the incident unfolded, a crowd had gathered, some of the people in the crowd had their cameras rolling. One video captured this reckless shooting first hand, from only several feet away.

Luckily for this dog, this officer was a horrid shot. Also lucky were the people in the crowd who managed to avoid being hit by any of the bullet fragments as they ricocheted off the concrete.

“No, no you wrong. You wrong. You’re dead *expletive* wrong for that,” a person in the crowd yelled after the officer shot.

“It didn’t’ dawn on me it was a gun…you almost shot me,” said Jason Holley, an eyewitness explained how a spark from the ricochet hit the man behind him

“Are you serious? There are kids out here,” another witness said.

“You’re at the wrong house,” another person yelled.

The name of the officer who endangered the lives of all around him has not been released and it’s unclear whether or not he will face any discipline.

According to WABC, police acknowledged they tried to make the arrest at the wrong home.

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A man injured after being arrested by the Baltimore police died today, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Freddie Gray had to undergo a double surgery on three broken vertebrae and an injured voice box on Tuesday, after he was released by the police. He died today after days of remaining in a coma.

The 27-year old was arrested last week for an undisclosed violation. The police said that he was restrained on the ground by an officer during the arrest, but appeared to be fine when he was taken to the district station. However, a cell phone video shows that the arresting officers used force that some may seen as “brutal.”

Protests have broken out in his neighborhood since Gray was sent to the hospital.

“What happened to Freddie was unnecessary and uncalled for,” the Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant of the Empowerment Temple said to protestors on Saturday. “All of those police officers involved need to be held accountable and answer for what they did, and need to be terminated from their positions,” he urged.

The case is pending a review by a “blue-ribbon” panel commissioned by the police.

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San Antonio, TX–The family of Jesse Aguirre, 37, who was killed by San Antonio police just over two years ago have filed a lawsuit against the city and eight police officers involved in his killing. Recently released dashcam footage captured the final moments of the tragic event that left a boy without his father.

Named in the suit are officers Cristina Gonzales, Roberto Mendez, Jennifer Morgan, Bettina Arredondo, Ronald Haley, Benito Juarez, Robert Encina, and SAPD spokesperson Douglas Greene.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Aguirre’s son and widow states that Aguirre’s civil rights were violated when the officers ended his life.

Aguirre had been in a car accident. He was intoxicated and high on cocaine when he attempted to leave the scene of the crash in an “excited delirium” after his girlfriend decided to break up with him. The police allege that he was driving a stolen vehicle and arguing with his girlfriend when he crashed into a fence.

The department alleges Aguirre resisted arrest when officers caught up with him and cuffed him. They claim four officers were needed to subdue him. The department told his wife that he died from cardiac arrest, and it wasn’t until she received the autopsy report that she found out that wasn’t exactly the case. The lawsuit alleges that the police suffocated him to death.

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On Tuesday, April 14, a man was grabbed and detained by police in Lawrence who were trying to stop him from exercising his First Amendment right to record them in public.
John Carattini was walking down a street when he spotted three people seemingly being detained by two plainclothes police officers. He began recording with his camera and walked past them, giving no indication that he planned to stick around and continue recording. After passing the officers, one of them called out to him and ordered him to come back.

The officer asked if Carattini was recording them and demanded that he turn over his camera as “evidence” (according to the Department of Justice, police generally need a warrant to seize a camera as evidence). The police officer then immediately escalated the situation by grabbing the camera.

The camera was mostly covered up from this point on, making it difficult to tell what was happening, but the police can be heard saying that they had detained Carattini and taken his camera because he walked down the unsecured sidewalk. The officer told Carattini that he was “interfering” with an investigation (there is no such charge as “interfering with police” in Massachusetts). Carattini tried to explain that he was just walking to the store. The video ends abruptly, seemingly cut off by the police.

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Miami-Dade Police officer Jonathan Lang faces a charge of discharging a firearm from a vehicle as well as aggravated assault with a firearm and tampering with physical evidence related to the July 2014 incident.

Lang was off-duty and driving on the Florida's Turnpike when authorities say he fired a weapon into a vehicle driven by a Miami-Dade Corrections worker.

The Florida Highway Patrol trooper investigating the incident believes there was an effort to hide the gun allegedly used.


In the surveillance video, first obtained by NBC 6, a white Mazda SUV that authorities say was being driven by Lang arrives at an tow truck lot in South Miami-Dade just two hours and 35 minutes after Lang signed a document giving the investigating FHP sergeant the legal consent to search the vehicle.

And just 11 minutes later, a man wearing a baseball cap shows up and the lights flash on the car. FHP officials said it indicates he had the remote, and he quickly opens the passenger door, grabs something and exits.

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A citizen with a camera caught a Georgia cop viewing porn on his patrol car computer while appearing to be on duty, posting the images online where they are now going viral.
The officer from the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department was parked outside a hotel where he was viewing a site on what is likely a department-issued computer, showing a naked woman performing oral sex on a man.


The photographer posted the images on Imgur on Monday, then linked to them from Reddit under the username Goatlips, where they were titled NSFW.

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“We’ve had incidents where people have videotaped us and it requires unbelievable restraint. Typically during times where things can be a little chaotic,” said South Gate police Capt. Darren Arakawa. “We really have to convey we’re living in a different environment now where police action is scrutinized and a lot of video is surfacing. We simply tell our officers to assume they’re being recorded out in public at all times.”

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On Sunday Beatriz Paez, 34, recorded video of deputy marshals as they detained a group of people in her neighborhood. Someone else in turn was recording her, on the video that ended up on YouTube and sparked the U.S. Marshals Service investigation.

“The U.S. Marshals Service is aware of video footage of an incident that took place Sunday in Los Angeles County involving a Deputy U.S. Marshal. The agency is currently reviewing the incident,” officials said in a statement.

“There is no situation in which an officer can intentionally grab and destroy a camera being used to lawfully record law enforcement,” said Hector Villagra, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “The officer’s conduct is a blatant and deliberate violation of the Constitution and his duties as an officer to abide by the law.”

In the video, Paez is shown standing on the sidewalk aiming a cellphone toward two men standing a short distance away, wearing black shirts with tactical vests reading “Police” across the back. As the men stand with their backs to the woman, she can be heard saying “You are making me feel unsafe, and I have a right to be here” and “You need to stay away from me, I don’t feel safe with you closer to me,” among other statements.

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A volunteer sheriff's deputy plans to vacation in the Bahamas while facing a second-degree manslaughter charge in Oklahoma, his attorneys told a judge Tuesday, drawing immediate criticism from the family of the man he killed.

Robert Bates pleaded not guilty during the hearing in Tulsa district court. The 73-year-old former insurance executive has said he confused his handgun for a stun gun when he shot Eric Harris after the suspect ran during a sting investigation involving gun sales.

Bates' lawyers told the judge that Bates, a reserve deputy with the Tulsa County sheriff's office, and his family planned to take their previously planned vacation ahead of his next court date in July.

"It's really not an issue," Corbin Brewster, one of Bates' attorneys, said in an interview after the hearing.

Harris' family criticized the trip, saying it sends a message "of apathy with respect to the shooting and Eric's life."

"At a time when we are still mourning the death of a loved one that he shot down in the street, Mr. Bates will be relaxing and enjoying his wealth and privilege," the family said in a statement released Tuesday.

Bates was charged after the sheriff's office released video of the shooting, in which Bates is overheard apologizing for shooting the suspect.

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Held:

1. Absent reasonable suspicion, police extension of a traffic stop in order to conduct a dog sniff violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures. A routine traffic stop is more like a brief stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, than an arrest, see, e.g., Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 330. Its tolerable duration is determined by the seizure’s “mission,” which is to address the traffic violation that warranted the stop, Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 and attend to related safety concerns. Authority for the seizure ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are—or reasonably should have been—completed. The Fourth Amendment may tolerate certain unrelated investigations that do not lengthen the roadside detention, Johnson, 555 U.S., at 327–328 (questioning); Caballes, 543 U.S., at 406, 408 (dog sniff), but a traffic stop “become[s] unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete th[e] mission” of issuing a warning ticket, id., at 407. Beyond determining whether to issue a traffic ticket, an officer’s mission during a traffic stop typically includes checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance. These checks serve the same objective as enforcement of the traffic code: ensuring that vehicles on the road are operated safely and responsibly. See Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 658–659. Lacking the same close connection to roadway safety as the ordinary inquiries, a dog sniff is not fairly characterized as part of the officer’s traffic mission.

In concluding that the de minimis intrusion here could be offset by the Government’s interest in stopping the flow of illegal drugs, the Eighth Circuit relied on Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106. The Court reasoned in Mimms that the government’s “legitimate and weighty” interest in officer safety outweighed the “de minimis” additional intrusion of requiring a driver, lawfully stopped, to exit a vehicle, id., at 110–111. The officer-safety interest recognized in Mimms, however, stemmed from the danger to the officer associated with the traffic stop itself. On-scene investigation into other crimes, in contrast, detours from the officer’s traffic-control mission and therefore gains no support from Mimms.

The Government’s argument that an officer who completes all traffic-related tasks expeditiously should earn extra time to pursue an unrelated criminal investigation is unpersuasive, for a traffic stop “prolonged beyond” the time in fact needed for the officer to complete his traffic-based inquiries is “unlawful,” Caballes, 543 U.S., at 407. The critical question is not whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the officer issues a ticket, but whether conducting the sniff adds time to the stop. Pp. 5–8.

2. The determination adopted by the District Court that detention for the dog sniff was not independently supported by individualized suspicion was not reviewed by the Eighth Circuit. That question therefore remains open for consideration on remand. P. 9.

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Less than two weeks after a video went viral, showing several Southern California deputies beating, punching and kicking a man as a news copter recorded it all from above, San Bernardino County agreed to a $650,000 settlement.

It was a speedy settlement for what may appear to be a whopping amount, but a jury trial would likely have resulted in even a larger payout considering the country seems to have finally acknowledged there is a serious problem with police abuse in this country.

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Five years after shooting a seven-year-old girl to death while on duty, Joseph Weekley has rejoined the Detroit police.

While filming with an A&E crew in 2010, Officer Joseph Weekley led a SWAT team of officers into a Detroit residence in search of a murder suspect. The cable network wanted footage for its homicide detective show, “The First 48.”

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Officers announced their arrival by detonating a flashbang grenade. Weekley entered the home with an MP-5 submachine gun. Then he shot and killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a child sleeping in the living room with her grandmother under a “Hannah Montana” blanket.

According to Weekley, however, he didn’t realize he had fired the gun that ended Stanley-Jones’ life. Weekley left Stanley-Jones’ body in pursuit of a housemate he believed to be responsible for the killing. The housemate was in an adjacent room, and unarmed.

Weekley explains he was able to shoot and kill a child without noticing it by blaming Stanley-Jones’ grandmother, Mertilla Jones. Weekley believes Jones slapped his submachine while he was in the house, causing it to fire and kill her granddaughter.

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On April 2, 2015, Weekley resumed a position with the Detroit police force. The Detroit Police Chief told George Hunter of the Detroit News that Weekley will be serving in a “limited duty capacity” and not “in the field.”

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Mark Baker was about 150 yards away from the emergency room doors, from getting the help his dad wanted for him.
Instead, at a pharmacy across the street from the hospital near downtown, police stopped and arrested Baker that March night. He was drunk, trespassing and refused to leave the store, police said.

The 25-year-old was suicidal, so the Jacksonville jail staff stripped him and placed him naked in a cell with another inmate.

That other man also was naked. And he had been accused of a sex crime.

Baker’s cellmate raped him, once that night and again in the morning.

Baker and 108 other inmates have reported sexual assaults — everything from being raped to being groped against their will — while in the custody of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office since 2005. Last year, the Sheriff’s Office hit a 10-year high — 19 reported assaults of 31,000 inmates.

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George Perrot has spent almost 30 years in prison thanks to a single hair. It was discovered by an FBI agent on the bedsheet of a 78-year-old woman who had been raped by a burglar in her home in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1985.

Perrot, then 17, was put on trial, despite the absence of physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. There was no semen. There was no blood. And so there was no way to conduct a conclusive DNA test.

Even the victim testified that the defendant looked nothing like her attacker: he had a short haircut and was clean-shaven, while Perrot had a long shaggy mop, a moustache and a goatee beard.

But there was that strand of hair. At a key stage in the 1992 rape and burglary trial, an FBI agent named Wayne Oakes took the witness stand, describing himself to the jury as an expert in hair and textile fibers – as would so many of the agency’s trial witnesses, in condemning hundreds of people to long prison sentences.

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“In 10 years, it’s extremely rare I will have known hair samples from two different people I can’t tell apart,” the self-proclaimed expert bragged.

The FBI agent’s conclusion in front of the jury was emphatic: “The hair found on the sheet exhibits all the same microscopic hair arranged in the same way as the characteristics present in the known hair from [Perrot]. I conclude that the hair was consistent with coming from the defendant,” he told the court.

That testimony, based on a single hair, was so strong, so wrapped in the certainties of science, that it wiped out all doubts and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case – indeed, it eviscerated the presumption of innocence.

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In July 2013, the FBI admitted that the foundations of what it called “hair comparison evidence” – a technique that its agents had used in hundreds of criminal cases nationwide and spread through the training of state-based detectives potentially through tens of thousands of other cases – were scientifically invalid. A preliminary review of the FBI’s follicular flaws found that:

Microscopic hair analysis could not scientifically distinguish one individual to the exclusion of all others.
Statistical weight could not be given to comparisons to suggest a likelihood that the hair derived from a specific source.
Expert witnesses should not cite the number of hair analyses they had conducted in the lab to bolster the idea that they could definitively state that a hair belonged to a specific individual.
All three errors were made by Agent Oakes in front of Perrot’s jury.

Over the past few years, advanced understanding in the science of hair types has left hair analysis, as a forensic tool, in tatters. Today’s consensus by real experts is more straightforward than ever: there is nothing that can credibly be said, by FBI-approved analysts or anyone else, about about the frequency with which particular characteristics of hair are distributed in the human population.

In other words, microscopic analysis of hair – the very analysis that put George Perrot and so many people behind bars – is virtually worthless as a method of identifying someone. It can only safely be used to rule out a suspect as the source of crime-scene materials or in combination with the vastly more accurate technique of DNA testing.

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The results, first reported by the Washington Post, concluded that an astonishing 26 of the 28 FBI agents who had provided testimony as expert witnesses at trial based on microscopic hair analysis had made statements to juries that were known to be false. Their erroneous evidence was found in a full 90% of the trial transcripts the team has studied.

The government has identified almost 3,000 cases in which FBI agents may have given testimony involving the now-discredited technique. So far only about 500 of those cases have been been reviewed.

Some 268 of those involved FBI examiners providing expert evidence in court that pointed to the guilt of the defendant – of which 257, or 96%, included false testimony.

Most shockingly, at least 35 defendants received the death penalty, 33 of which were the subject of false FBI testimony. Nine of the prisoners were executed and five died from other causes on death row.

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A federal jury awarded $2.3 million to a Baltimore man who was held in solitary for 15 months after he was arrested for rape and branded by city police as the "Charles Village Rapist" before forensic evidence cleared him of those charges.

Marlo Humbert, 51, filed a $10 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2011 that named former Mayor Martin O'Malley and several arresting officers. The suit alleged that a pervasive culture tolerating mass arrests and public hysteria over several attacks in Charles Village led to his detention.

The jury ruled unanimously, finding that three city police officers violated Humbert's Fourth Amendment right to be free from malicious prosecution. He was awarded $800,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.

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A terrified mother in Fairfield on the ground in handcuffs, just moments after her son had been kidnapped.

Her husband recorded the altercation on Monday morning, and now the family is demanding an explanation from Fairfield Police.

The Guzman family says they were treated like criminals instead of worried parents after their son became the center of an Amber Alert. They’re happy to have their son home, but they’re saying police made a terrible situation worse.

The video shot by Paul Guzman picks up as Fairfield Police decide to take an emotional Suzanne Guzman to the ground.

The Fairfield mother had called the same police officers to her home after her car was stolen from her driveway with her 8-year-old son, Broc in the back seat.

“The cop grabbed her and and they dragged her down here too around the corner, where they slammed her to the ground and handcuffed her,” he said.

He says Fairfield Police officers insisted on first searching their home, something he says Suzanne stopped them from doing until Paul returned to corral their dogs.

“We have two dogs and one of them would bite somebody that they didn’t know coming into the house,” he said.

The video shows the officer trying to explain what is standard procedure.
Paul says regardless, they were treated like criminals.

“As soon as they got here we felt like we were being treated like we had done something to our son,” he said.

Eventually the suspect would abandon the car with Broc asleep in the back seat. Guzman says he doesn’t believe it was the cops who helped find his son.

“It wasn’t the Fairfield PD that we give credit to for finding him, it was my buddy putting it on social media,” he said.

Fairfield Police released a statement defending their actions, saying Brock’s mother was stopping them from searching the home.

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A family has been devastated after returning to their home to find that their beloved 7-month-old dog had been killed by police.

The Rios family was moving into a home that had been vacant for quite some time. The “see-something, say-something” neighbors quickly called the police to report the suspicious activity of a family moving things into a home.

Police, with apparently very little research, decided to enter the home to look for the supposed burglars. Instead of burglars, however, they found the family pets.

According to WSB-TV, the officer said the dog rushed toward him. He said he backed up and then began circling around. The officer said that’s when the pit bull dove at him and bit at his pants and leg. The officer says he fired two shots and his partner fired a shotgun.

The Rios family did nothing wrong, they had committed no crime, yet their dog was killed by police and they have no recourse. Police said that the shooting was entirely justified because the dog tried to bite the officer. They also stated that there will be no internal investigation.

“I don’t know why they did this to me. Now I’m afraid to go back to the house,” said Karen Rios.

In the Land of the Free, police can go into your home, shoot your dog and call it “protecting and serving.”

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Pictures obtained exclusively by FOX 5 show D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier's cruiser sitting in a handicapped spot.

The photos were taken Monday night. Lanier was at a community outreach meeting at the Sixth District police station. Chief Lanier denies that she was in the car, which is labeled cruiser number one.

Typically, parking in a handicapped spot gets you towed, plus a $250 ticket. However, nobody ticketed the chief's cruiser.

The spot in question, which is marked by two signs, is for resident Brenda Ganey. She lives nearby with her disabled daughter. Ganey did not know that the chief was in her spot, but if she had known, she would have complained.

"I am very vocal about them being in my spot. I go over there and ask them to move, because basically-- if you were there, they gonna give you a ticket. If a friend is there, they will tell them, I'm gonna give you a ticket," said Ganey.

Chief Lanier's spokesman, Lt. Sean Conboy, sent a statement to FOX 5, "I have spoken with the Chief of Police. She rode over with a coworker to the Sixth District station for a community meeting. I also spoke with the officer operating Cruiser 1. He was clear, the only time the cruiser occupied any part of a handicapped space was when he was backing into the legal space."

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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Beach’s police chief talked to the media Monday about the investigation into video of a January traffic stop. The citizen video, that went viral on Facebook, shows a teenage passenger being pepper sprayed and stunned before being arrested.

Around 9 p.m. January 10, Courtney Griffith was driving a vehicle with Brandon Wyne and another friend as passengers. Griffith said they were returning to her home on Darnell Drive when her car was surrounded by police. That’s when Griffith start recording the traffic stop on her cell phone.

Police officers told Griffith she and her friends were not being arrested, but were being detained for the smell of marijuana. The situation escalated when Wyne wouldn’t get out of the car. He told police he was going to wait to get out of the car until his mother arrived because he was a minor — that’s something Police Chief Jim Cervera said Wyne could not do.

“We have to contact the parent, if we are going to interrogate a juvenile, that is, we read the juvenile his or her constitutional guarantees, then we are supposed to contact a parent,” Cervera said. “To tell a juvenile to be removed from a vehicle, we don’t call parents.”

When Wyne refused to exit Griffith’s vehicle, officers pepper sprayed him and then shot him with a Taser. He then told the officers he would get out of the car, but before he could, he was stunned again.

At Monday’s press conference, Cervera confirmed police stunned Wyne three times — twice inside the vehicle and once outside. He said the officer’s use of the Taser violated the Virginia Beach Police Department’s excessive force policy.

“Up to the Taser, everything was in policy. Once the taser was utilized, it was outside of policy,” Cervera said.

Gary Byler, the attorney representing 17-year-old Wyne, said both the use of the Taser and the pepper spray was excessive.

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The final moments of Ervin Leon Edwards’ life were spent facedown on the floor of the West Baton Rouge Parish Jail.

Dragged into an isolation cell and surrounded by about half a dozen law enforcement officers, Edwards sometimes struggled with them. At other times, he appears to be lying still, according to recently obtained video footage of the incident.

At one point, while Edwards apparently resisted attempts by officers to restrain him, a Port Allen police officer shocked Edwards with a stun gun. Not long afterward, the inmate quit moving, the footage shows.

The officers then slowly backed away from him and exited the cell. Except for a few peeks through a window of the cell’s door, about 10 minutes go by on the video before deputies and officers returned to the cell to check on him. Edwards, lying still on his stomach, doesn’t appear to move at all during that time frame.

For corrections and use of force experts who reviewed the video footage, that 10-minute gap without checking on Edwards looks like a critical error.

“The fact that the subject appeared unresponsive, perhaps unconscious on the floor as the officers withdrew from the cell, should have resulted in an immediate request for medical intervention and a quick determination of whether there was a pulse or breathing,” said Greg Meyer, who retired several years ago as a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department and is recognized nationally as a use of force expert. “If not, CPR should have been started immediately.”

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Immunity does not shield a police officer after the man he pepper-sprayed and left handcuffed in an open lane of traffic was hit by a car and left brain damaged, the 6th Circuit ruled.

The April 16 decision affirms the finding of lower court that Jeffrey Kamerer, a police officer in Wells Township, Ohio, did not have reasonable suspicion to search and arrest two men sitting on a guardrail on Christmas night 2011.

Jimmy Coil - whose estate filed the lawsuit - and boyfriend Barry Starcher were walking home when Officer Kamerer approached them in his police cruiser and asked for their names.

The two men hesitated, and Starcher says Coil turned for home, at which point Kamerer allegedly jumped out of his cruiser and screamed, "You better do what the f[**]k I tell you when I tell you! You're going to give me your f[**]king name or I'm going to put you on the ground!"

Starcher says Coil gave Kamerer a prescription bottle to confirm his ID, and once again began to walk home.

At that point, Coil was allegedly pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed.

Starcher says he was pepper-sprayed next, and remembers "opening his eyes and seeing Kamerer running back to the road and getting hit, along with Coil, by an oncoming SUV."

Coil suffered a traumatic brain injury in the wreck and now requires round-the-clock medical care.

Kamerer - whose testimony on the incident varied greatly from that of Coil - broke several bones and spent over a month in the hospital.

The officer claimed Coil threw the pill bottle at him, became combative and charged "like a football player" after being asked for an ID.

A federal judge in Columbus denied Kamerer's request for qualified immunity after concluding that a jury could find the officer lacked standing to approach the men.


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"Officer Kamerer took Coil into custody," Sutton wrote. "He then left him facedown, pepper-sprayed and handcuffed, in the middle of a lane open to traffic. Why he felt the need to leave him in the middle of the street in such a state is difficult to fathom. The area was dark. Coil wore dark clothing. Kamerer had not turned his police car's regular or flashing lights on. If Coil remained there for any appreciable amount of time, the risk that Coil might get struck by a passing car was painfully obvious."

Sutton had little patience for Kamerer's argument that he was unsure of whether he had placed Coil in the grass beside the road.

"The obvious difference between asphalt and grass, together with the officer's failure to check on Coil for over two minutes after he had restrained Starcher, would allow a jury to infer deliberate indifference to the risk he had created," the opinion states.And while the panel commended Kamerer for attempting to pull Coil from the road once he realized his mistake, it ultimately concluded the act "does not eliminate the possibility that the officer behaved recklessly, as opposed to negligently, in handcuffing Coil facedown in the street."

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On February 9, a dog was taken to the animal emergency room in Denton County. The dog had been "injured," according minutes from the Denton County Commissioners Court, "while deputies of the Denton County Sheriff's Office performed their patrol duties."
In a closed session, the Denton County Commissioners agreed to pay a $5,395 bill from the emergency room for treating the dog. All Denton County Judge Mary Horn would say is that the dog didn't belong to the sheriff's department. "It was an individual's dog," said Horn. She wouldn't answer other specifics about the hospital bill. "I'm not at liberty to discuss it because it was an executive session item."

So how does one cause over $5,000 worth of injuries to an animal? By shooting it.

The Denton County Sheriff's office says that officers were responding to a call when a dog charged them. One of the officers fired in self-defense, says the sheriff's office. "The dog charged the officer, and the officer defended himself and fired," Sandi Brackeen, the spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, writes in an email. The dog was treated for the gunshot wound and released back to the owner, she says.

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