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Dallas Police Officer Arrested for Drunk Driving
An off-duty Dallas police officer was arrested early Wednesday morning and charged with driving while intoxicated and failing to stop and render aid. Senior Cpl. David Aguilar hit another car in his Toyota Tacoma pickup truck at Custer Road and Plano Parkway in Plano, Texas, then fled the scene. Police picked Aguilar up about five miles away. The other driver was hurt although his injuries were minor, according to police. As of Wednesday afternoon Aguilar remained in Plano County Jail. Aguilar is now on administrative leave.
It’s chilling to think that a 12 year veteran police officer would drink and drive, let alone leave an injured person at the scene of a car accident. Although drivers who leave the scene are usually trying to dodge responsibility for their part in the accident, consequences always end up being much worse than if they had just stuck around. Thankfully the other driver only suffered minor injuries, but the negligence of the officer in this case is appalling.
Information provided by Dallas Injury Lawyer Mark A. Anderson, who can be contacted at 877-294-1115 or online by clicking here.
Posted by Mark A. Anderson
http://www.dallasfortworthcaraccidentlawyer.com/2009/08/dallas_police_officer_arrested_1.html
Huntington Beach Police Officer's Domestic Violence on Wife
October 14, 2009
Posted In: Assault and Battery , Criminal Defense , Domestic Violence , Felony
By Michael L. Guisti on October 14, 2009 8:00 AM | Permalink
HUNTINGTON BEACH - A Huntington Beach police officer, James Roberts, has been charged with domestic violence for assaulting his ex-wife. The wife now is suing the Huntington Beach City for police officers ignoring and covering up the case.
The police officer was arrested Sept. 2 and charged with assaulting and abusing his ex-wife. There were17 felony counts of domestic violence and assault and battery charges again him. She also filed the claim against the Huntington Beach city officers who have been allegedly trying to cover up this case.
Domestic Violence is a serious crime and it involves violence or threats upon another person. Under California Penal Code sections, Domestic Violence or Domestic Abuse involves charges such as: Spousal Abuse ( PC 273.5 ); Assault ( PC 240-241); Battery ( PC 242-243 ); Criminal Threats ( PC 422); Threatening phone call ( PC 653 ); Intimidating a witness or victim ( PC 136).
Domestic Violence can be charged as either a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on the seriousness of the case and the prior criminal records of the defendant. Domestic violence or domestic abuse with serious Injuries usually is charged as felonies.
Domestic violence is one of the most aggressively prosecuted crimes. The penalties for domestic violence can be severe, and it carries heavy punishment. The Court usually also issues a restraining order to make sure defendant stay away from the victim.
If you have been arrested for domestic violence, you need to seek an experienced Orange County criminal defense attorney immediately so that your rights can be protected. Our domestic violence attorneys have successfully defended clients in Orange County (Santa Ana, Fullerton, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Tustin and Westminster), Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino.
How an experienced Orange County Criminal Defense Attorney can help you in your Southern California Domestic Violence defense ?
At Law Offices of Michael L. Guisti, our experienced Southern California Criminal defense attorneys are committed to protect your rights and freedom and we will put our experience to work for you. We have handled hundreds of domestic violence cases and our attorneys are capable of getting the charges reduced or dismissed.
If you are facing domestic violence charges or any other crimes, you need to contact us immediately at 714-530-9690. Call us to set up a free consultation with our most experienced criminal defense lawyer to discuss your case further.
http://www.orangecountycriminallawyerblog.com/2009/10/huntington-beach-police-office.html
LAPD officer arrested in Austin on suspicion of sexual assault had history of misconduct allegations
April 6, 2009 | 6:09 pm
A Los Angeles police officer was arrested over the weekend in Travis County, Texas, for allegedly forcing himself on a motel employee while she was retrieving a crib for his child, authorities said today.
Silvio Sam Filipovich, 43, was taken into custody Friday night at the Mountain Star Lodge motel just outside Austin, Texas, and was booked on suspicion of attempted sexual assault. He was released after posting $20,000 bond, said Travis County Sheriff's spokesman Roger Wade.
Filipovich was "not on active duty," and was "on an extended leave" at the time of the reported incident, according to a source familiar with the case who said he was not authorized to discuss the case because it was a personnel matter.
According to authorities, Filipovich allegedly had asked a female motel employee for a crib for his infant child about 10:30 p.m. Friday. He then allegedly pushed her into a closet and tried to fondle her breasts and genitals before she fought him off and called for help.
Filipovich could not immediately be reached for comment.
Records obtained by The Times show that the 21-year veteran LAPD officer had a history of misconduct allegations leveled against him.
The records, which date back to 1995, show that department officials had recommended discipline of more than 100 days for alleged offenses by Filipovich that include trying to improperly convert an on-duty contact into a social relationship, making a discourteous remark and being discourteous during traffic stops.
In one case, records show, department officials alleged that while off duty, Filipovich "inappropriately exposed [his] penis in a public place." It was unclear from the records what, if any, discipline he received.
-- Andrew Blankstein
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/lapd-officer-arrested-in-austin-on-suspicion-of-sexual-assault-had-history-of-misconduct-allegations.html
Officer Accused Of Taking Drugs From Evidence Room
POSTED: 12:45 pm EDT October 1, 2009
UPDATED: 12:56 pm EDT October 1, 2009
LYNDHURST, Ohio -- A former Lyndhurst police office was indicted Thursday on charges of drug possession, tampering with evidence, and theft in office.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office said Robert Colombo, 40, stole drugs from an evidence room and replaced them with rock salt.
The evidence was confiscated from a vehicle involved in a crash on May, 19. Lyndhurst officers responded to the scene, found heroin and arrested two people.
They officers returned to the station to book the suspects. At the station, Colombo took the evidence to log it into the evidence room but instead replaced the evidence, investigators said.
Colombo was found the following day at his Summit County home with heroin. BCI conducted the investigation.
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/21171818/detail.html
Officer arrested; citizenship questioned
He is suspected of taking on identity of dead cousin years ago
By John Diedrich of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: May 31, 2007
A Milwaukee police officer was arrested Wednesday by federal immigration agents on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant who assumed the identity of his dead cousin a decade ago, officials said.
The officer, who has lived and worked under the name Jose A. Morales since he was a teenager, was arrested by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz confirmed Wednesday.
A spokeswoman from Immigration did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday night.
"When the Milwaukee Police Department was made aware of these allegations, we worked in concert with federal authorities on this investigation," Schwartz said.
Morales, 24, was suspended after his arrest, Schwartz said. He will continue to be paid, per state law.
Morales was hired five years ago as a police aide, a program that came under fire during the investigation of the beating of Frank Jude Jr. and was later overhauled.
Morales became a patrol officer in December 2004 and was most recently assigned to second shift at District 2 on the south side, Schwartz said.
The U.S. attorney's office began reviewing the case Wednesday, said Michelle Jacobs, first assistant U.S. attorney.
"The case is under consideration by our office and a decision on charging will likely be made" today, Jacobs said, adding that if Morales is charged, he would appear in federal court today.
If Morales is charged or just deported, there will likely be fallout within the criminal justice system, based on the history of other police officers who have been charged with crimes. Prosecutors typically drop any case that an accused officer is a witness in and sometimes old cases can come up for appeal, if the officer was a key witness.
Officials did not say how Morales came to the attention of federal authorities.
It is suspected that he, as a teenager, took on the identity of his dead cousin. By doing that at such a young age, he created a trail of fingerprints and other identification that ultimately allowed him to join the department, Schwartz said.
"We do everything we can during the background check when people apply to be police officers, but in this case when it has been going on so long, it would be really difficult to discover it was going on," Schwartz said.
Changes to program
Since Morales was hired, the police aide program has been overhauled after a disproportionate number of its graduates landed in trouble. Officials found some aides lied, didn't work hard and failed to be physically fit.
The program, which grooms teens to become police officers, has been restructured with stronger oversight, closer evaluation of aides, a new uniform and additional required college credit, the department said.
The background check, which is the same for aides and officers, also has been strengthened after officials found that some of the officers accused in the Jude beating had questionable backgrounds. Now, the chief plays a larger role, personally reviewing all applications.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29401339.html
On Tuesday (20/10), a former TSA screener at Philadelphia Airport (PHL) admitted stealing from hold baggage. The screener had been seen by a loader removing a laptop from a suitcase and hiding it behind an explosives detection machine. A search by TSA management discovered four computers and a games console hidden behind the machine. He will be sentenced later.
http://www.aviationsecuritynews.com/Pages/26th%20October%202009.html
Woman Finds Officer in Her Bed
By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 1, 2009
A U.S. Capitol Police officer was arrested Sunday morning in Arlington County when a woman came home and found him passed out drunk in her bed, police said. The two had never met.
The officer, Thomas Patrick McMahon, 34, was charged with unlawful entry. Police say they are perplexed as to why McMahon picked the apartment, in the 1000 block of North Randolph Street, to sleep. He lives in Reston.
"I don't know if it looks similar to his apartment in Reston or what," said Arlington police spokeswoman Crystal Nosal. "Thankfully, nobody was hurt."
When officers arrived at 1 a.m., McMahon was still sleeping, Nosal said. Police think he walked into the apartment through the front door.
McMahon, a Capitol Police officer since 1998, is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the criminal charges, said Kimberly Schneider, a Capitol Police spokeswoman. Schneider said the agency will also conduct an investigation.
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His arrest was first reported on WUSA-9.com.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/30/AR2009093004586.html
Attica Correctional Officer Arrested
Posted on Friday, 2 of October , 2009 at 3:01 pm
BATAVIA—A correctional officer at the Attica Correctional Facility has been arrested for allegedly defrauding the state Insurance Fund.
James S. Gibbs, 33, of Batavia, has been charged with third degree grand larceny, third degree insurance fraud, first degree offering false instruments for filing and a violation of the Worker’s Compensation law.
State Police said the charges were the result of an investigation which revealed, that during the winter of 2008 through the summer of 2009, while collecting full disability compensation from an on duty injury, Gibbs received wages while actively plowing driveways and sealing parking lots in the City of Batavia.
Gibbs was arraigned in the City of Batavia Court and remanded to the Genesee County Jail in lieu of $10,000.00 bail. 10-2-09
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/10/02/attica_co/
MC Corrections Officer Arrested on Drug, Gun Charges
Written by MC Prosecutor's Office Wednesday, 14 October 2009 15:44
Newsbrief - Law and Order
FREEHOLD, NJ - On Tuesday, October 13, 2009, Todd Messinger, 40, of East Brunswick, N.J., was arrested by Detectives from the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office and the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office and charged with numerous crimes, including third degree Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance, second degree Possession of a Firearm While Committing a Drug Offense, and three counts of second degree Official Misconduct.
The arrest resulted from a joint and cooperative investigation which was conducted by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office, the New Jersey State Department of Corrections, and the Freehold Township Police Department. The joint investigation followed an internal investigation which was initiated by the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office and then referred to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office. The joint investigation revealed that Messinger, who is employed by the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office as a County Corrections Officer assigned to the Monmouth County Correctional Institution, had made plans with another individual pursuant to which Messinger was going to bring roxycontin, a controlled dangerous substance, into the Monmouth County Correctional Institution with the intention to distribute the roxycontin to an inmate.
Concerted action by the various agencies who were involved in the investigation resulted in Messinger being arrested before his plans could be fully implemented, and before any controlled dangerous substances actually entered the Monmouth County Correctional Institution. Messinger was arrested while wearing his uniform and carrying his duty firearm as he was accepting delivery of what he believed to be the roxycontin a short distance from the Monmouth County Correctional Institution just after he completed his shift.
Messinger is charged with third degree Conspiracy to Possess a Controlled Dangerous Substance, third degree Conspiracy to Possess a Controlled Dangerous Substance with Intent to Distribute, third degree Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance, third degree Possession of an Imitation Controlled Dangerous Substance with Intent to Distribute, second degree Possession of a Firearm While Committing a Drug Offense, and three counts of second degree Official Misconduct.
If convicted, the maximum potential custodial sentence for each of the third degree crimes is a State Prison term of up to 5 years. If convicted, the maximum potential custodial sentence for second degree Possession of a Firearm while Committing a Drug Offense is a State Prison term of up to 10 years. The crime of Possession of a Firearm While Committing a Drug Offense is subject to the “Graves Act,” which requires the imposition of a period of parole ineligibility of at least 3 years. If convicted, the maximum potential custodial sentence for each of the second degree Official Misconduct charges is a State Prison term of up to 10 years with a mandatory 5 year period of parole ineligibility.
Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Joseph P. Quinn set bail for Messinger at $560,000. Messinger posted bail shortly after his arrest, and he was released. Following his arrest, Messinger, who has been employed by the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office for approximately 9 years, was suspended without pay.
Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno stated, “The Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office will not tolerate unethical or illegal conduct by any of its employees.” Sheriff Guadagno further stated, “The integrity of the 650 dedicated men and women who serve in the Sheriff’s Office must be and remain above reproach.”
Monmouth County Prosecutor Luis Valentin stated, “Corrections Officer Messinger violated his sacred oath to uphold the laws of this State and by so doing violated the trust of this community and brought negative attention to a fine law enforcement agency that played a major role in bringing an end to his criminal conduct.”
Despite these charges, every defendant is presumed innocent, unless and until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, following a trial at which the defendant has all of the trial rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and State law.
http://www.ahherald.com/index.php/Law-and-Order/mc-corrections-officer-arrested-on-drug-gun-charges.html
Warsaw officer arrested in domestic dispute, fired
Published: October 24, 2009 3:00 a.m.
Michael Zennie
The Journal Gazette
A Warsaw police officer is free on bail after Fort Wayne police arrested him early Friday on a charge he hit his wife.
Warsaw Police Chief Perry Hunter said he fired Joseph Klaehn, 31, of the 1600 block of Echo Lane in Fort Wayne, after learning of the arrest.
Klaehn’s wife told police early Friday that he slapped her across the face at least twice after an argument. A friend of Klaehn’s wife called officers and urged her to file a police report. The couple’s two small children were asleep at the home during the assault, police said.
When officers went to Klaehn’s home and arrested him, he denied hitting his wife, a police report said.
Klaehn joined the Warsaw Police Department in March and was scheduled to go to the police academy in January. He was still a probationary officer, so the department can fire him immediately instead of waiting for public safety board proceedings, Perry said.
Klaehn was formerly an Allen County confinement officer. He was booked into the Allen County Lockup about 3 a.m. on a single count of domestic battery. He was released on $2,500 bond.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20091024/LOCAL07/310249937
Police: Cop Asked For Jail-Cell Sex Act
17-Year Veteran Arrested, Suspended, Being Fired
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia police say a male officer has been suspended for 30 days with intent to dismiss for allegedly asking a female prisoner to perform a sex act.
A Friday-night news release from Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey states that Officer Malaika T. Mebane, of the 39th District, was arrested earlier in the day by the department's Internal Affairs Division.
According to police, it was in the early hours of Friday morning when another on-duty officer assigned to the 35th District cell block spotted Mebane in an unoccupied jail cell facing a female prisoner, who was seated on a bench.
Police said the female officer immediately notified supervisors.
Supervisors in the 35th District detained Mebane, a 38-year-old and 17-year force veteran, held the cell room as a possible crime scene and contact internal affairs. The female prisoner was taken to a secure area.
Police said the district attorney's office was consulted, interviews were conducted, and the prisoner stated that Mebane asked her to perform oral sex on him.
According to police, Mebane was charged with attempted indecent deviate sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, attempted institutional sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual assault, indecent assault and unlawful restraint.
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/101609_Police_Officer_Accused_Of_Jail_Cell_Sex_Request
Major police raid targets L.A.’s notorious Avenues gang
Under the cover of darkness this morning, about 1,200 heavily armed officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and several other agencies launched a major assault on the Avenues gang, hoping to deal a blow to one of Los Angeles’ most notorious criminal groups.
Warrants in hand, teams of officers departed a massive command center in Elysian Park around 3 a.m. and descended on dozens of homes in search of 54 alleged members or associates of the Avenues gang who were wanted on an array of federal charges related to the gang’s extensive drug dealing, unsolved murders and other crimes.
Within hours, 44 of the men and women were in custody, according to LAPD Capt. Kevin McClure, who is overseeing the operation. The others remained at large and are being sought. Among the arrested was Tammy Armstrong, a state corrections officer accused of aiding members of the gang currently incarcerated. Several weapons were also confiscated.
With more than three dozen other suspects already in custody on unrelated crimes, the operation aimed to bring fresh criminal charges against 88 Avenues members or associates, a significant share of a gang that is believed to have about 400 members.
Some suspects were sought elsewhere in the city and in other counties, but the sweep focused on Glassell Park and other neighborhoods in the northeastern reaches of Los Angeles — the center of Avenues territory since the gang first surfaced in the 1950s.
There were no reports of officers encountering violent resistance. San Bernardino County sheriff’s officers shot two aggressive dogs they encountered at one location, police said.
More typical of the morning was the scene that unfolded on Estara Street in Glassell Park. LAPD SWAT team members quietly surrounded a home in search of a pair of brothers, Norberto and Roberto Salazar. Using a bullhorn, a SWAT officer ordered the occupants out of the house. Several dazed looking women carrying small children wrapped in blankets emerged and were taken aside for questioning. They were followed shortly by Norberto Salazar, who was walked down the street in stiff plastic handcuffs and wearing baggy white shorts and a white tank top.
On the street corner, beneath a sign advertising check cashing at the El Ranchito meat market, Salazar spoke quietly with detectives for several minutes before being led away to a waiting car. He is accused of directing other Avenues members to commit several violent or drug-related crimes. His brother, who is accused in a beating of a man, was not found at the house.
The operation culminated a yearlong investigation of the gang that had been headed jointly by a unit of LAPD detectives that specializes in gang-related homicides and a DEA task force. The group turned its focus on the Avenues in the wake of the August 2008 slaying of Juan Abel Escalante, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Escalante, 27, was gunned down outside of his parents’ Cypress Park home early in the morning as he headed to work as a guard at the Men’s Central Jail.
LAPD detectives led the murder investigation into the killing because it occurred within city boundaries. Within days of the shooting, agents from the DEA task force, which had previously investigated the Avenues, came to detectives with information they had gathered that indicated members of the gang may have been responsible.
That tip led to the arrest in December of two Avenues members in connection with the murder. Months later, a third member was taken into custody, and charges were brought against a fourth, who remains a fugitive. In the course of investigating the Escalante killing, however, the LAPD detectives and DEA agents delved into the inner workings of the Avenues and began compiling evidence related to a host of other alleged crimes.
Some of the information was collected during interrogations of Avenues members and others from the neighborhood who had been arrested by a special team of 54 uniformed gang officers deployed in the area. Much of the incriminating information, however, came from the suspects themselves as DEA agents secured approval from federal judges for an array of wiretaps that allowed them to listen in on gang members’ phone conversations.
“They could have just stuck with Escalante,” McClure said. “They could have said, ‘We got what we came for,’ packed it up and moved on to something that would have been easier. This operation was not a result of me telling them they have to do this. It is a result of this unit saying, ‘There is more here, let’s keep going.’”
Over the course of the investigation, cases were built against Avenues members for their alleged roles in six other unsolved murders and four attempted murders, police said. The bulk of the charges, however, involve extortion and other crimes that Avenues members and associates allegedly committed as part of the gang’s extensive drug trafficking in the area, police say. Most of the Avenues members and associates included in the indictment are being charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows prosecutors to pursue more serious prison sentences.
At a planning briefing last week with representatives from the agencies involved, there was little question as to what had kept the group motivated.
With the auditorium at LAPD headquarters filled with a few hundred officers, a recording was played of the phone call Escalante’s wife made to a 911 dispatcher after discovering him in the street. “If anyone has any doubt about the rationale or reason behind this operation, it was this,” a detective said.
During a final briefing at the command post this morning, however, LAPD Cmdr. Pat Gannon reminded the officers, “This is not about payback. This is about us being professional, doing our jobs and putting people behind bars.”
After several weeks of painstaking planning, the sweep went off without any major problems. Once taken into custody, suspects were transported back to the command post, which took on a surreal quality as the day’s first light revealed dozens of handcuffed men and women being processed in an assembly-line fashion in the middle of a sprawling parking lot dotted with hundreds of police vehicles and catering trucks to feed hungry officers.
The Avenues gang, named for the avenues that cross Figueroa Street, has a long, ugly history dating back at least to the 1950s, when it was linked to many shootouts and killings. It is thought by some that the group’s origins can be traced back to some of the hundreds of families displaced from Chavez Ravine, now home to Dodger Stadium, and the Rose Hill area.
The group’s insignia, which many members have tattooed on their bodies, is a skull with a bullet hole in it and wearing a fedora. Various cliques of the Avenues claim Highland Park and parts of Cypress Park, Glassell Park and Eagle Rock as their territory. It is linked closely to the Mexican Mafia prison gang, which demands that the Avenues and other Eastside gangs send up a share of the taxes they collect from low-level drug dealers and others selling goods on their turf.
Today’s sweep is hardly the first time law enforcement has taken on the Avenues. In 2002, the city attorney won an injunction against the gang, making it illegal for members to congregate throughout much of Highland Park, Glassell Park, Cypress Park and Eagle Rock. A few years later, federal prosecutors won hate-crime convictions against Avenues members for the killings of three black men between 1995 and 2000.
Government attorneys argued that the Avenues launched a campaign of violence to force black people out of the Highland Park area in the 1990s and targeted the men simply because of their race. In 2007, the city used a narcotics-abatement lawsuit to shut down the home of a family at the center of the Avenues’ Drew Street clique.
At the time, then-City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo called the house the gang’s “mother ship.” In February of last year, the gang re-erupted into the city’s public consciousness when police said Drew Street members gunned down a man as he stood on a curb holding his 2-year-old granddaughter’s hand.
They brazenly took on police in a running gun battle, firing at officers with an AK-47 assault rifle in broad daylight. Most recently, in June 2008, the DEA task force that came to LAPD detectives with information on the Escalante killing conducted a similar, but smaller, operation to the one carried out today. That investigation named 70 defendants.
At the time, LAPD officials assured residents of the area that they would work to keep the gang from reclaiming control of the neighborhoods. Drug activity and violence in the area has slowed considerably in recent months, police said, but considering the size of today’s operation, the gang has maintained a commanding presence.
More than last year’s sweep, today’s operation struck deeper at the guts of gang, targeting higher-level members who play central roles in running the day-to-day operations of the gang. Most prominent on the list of suspects taken into custody was Rudy Aguirre Jr. Aguirre had established himself as a crucial bridge to the outside for several of the gang’s leaders in Pelican Bay State Prison, said Christopher Brunwin, the assistant U.S. attorney leading the effort to prosecute those arrested.
“The roots of this gang and others like it run so deep that the idea of completely eliminating it is not a realistic goal,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck. “But eliminating its ability to operate as a criminal enterprise is realistic. We have taken a big step in that direction today.”
http://californiacorrectionalcenter.blogspot.com/2009/09/state-corrections-officer-arrested-in.html
Birmingham Police Officer Arrested
By Corinne Alcazar
Published: October 13, 2009
BIRMINGHAM-The Birmingham Police Department reports today that allegations of insurance fraud were brought against a Birmingham Police Officer.
Officials From the Aflac Insurance Company obtained five warrants for Theft 1st degree against the officer.
The officer involved is Rowena Gadson, 42, of Birmingham.
Gadson has turned herself in and has posted bond. Gadson served with the Birmingham Police Department for 15 years and was assigned to the Detective Division.
After receiving the information, Gadson was terminated by Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper.
No information has been developed to indicate that any other officers were involved in these illegal activities.
http://www2.nbc13.com/vtm/news/local/article/birmingham_police_officer_arrested1/100128/
Officer Arrested for Attempting to Help Inmate Escape
Posted On: October 12, 2009 by Shouse Law Group
Hollis Sallahudin, a corrections officer at North Las Vegas Detention Center, was arrested for allegedly trying to help an inmate escape from the jail. She’s been placed on paid administrative leave and was charged with aiding a prisoner to escape and forgery by tampering with computerized data.
Aiding a prisoner to escape (NRS 212.100) with the use of a deadly weapon is a category B felony in Nevada, carrying one to six years in prison and maybe a $5,000 fine. Where no deadly weapon is used, as seems to be the case in Sallahudin’s case, it’s a gross misdemeanor, carrying up to a year in jail and maybe a $2,000 fine.
North Las Vegas Detention Center is a large jail with nearly 1,000 beds. In addition to holding inmates arrested for misdemeanors in North Las Vegas, the North Las Vegas Detention Center also houses inmates from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States Marshal Service, and overflow from the Clark County Detention Center.
Posted by Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorneyhttp://www.las-vegas-criminal-defense-blog.com/2009/10/officer_arrested_for_attempting_to_help_inmate_escape.html
Married Calexico police officer arrested for hitting girlfriend outside bar
CALEXICO CA --- A Calexico police officer faces a felony domestic violence charge after he was arrested over the weekend for allegedly punching his girlfriend in the face and stomach outside a bar where he was confronted by his wife who came looking for him, a Calexico Police lieutenant said Monday.
Juan Garcia, 41, posted bail following his arrest Saturday night at the Calexico Police Station, said Lt. Gonzalo Gerardo. Garcia's wife, Gabriela Guadalupe Leyva Garcia, 34, was also arrested for allegedly hitting her husband's girlfriend, Gerardo said. Leyva Garcia has also posted bail.
The girlfriend, 29, who Gerardo declined to identify, was treated and released at El Centro Regional Medical Center for injuries to her lower jaw and stomach.
Juan Garcia, a five-year veteran of the Calexico Police Department, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of his case, Gerardo said.
By SILVIO J. PANTA, staff writer
Silvio Panta on October 05, 2009
http://www.ivblogz.com/quicknews/2009/10/married-calexico-police-officer-arrested-for-hitting-girlfriend-outside-bar.html
TAMPA CRIMINAL BLOG: Florida Beach Officer Arrested While On-Duty For Sex Crimes
Posted On: October 21, 2009 by David Haenel
A Volusia County beach patrol officer was arrested while on-duty for alleged sexual contact with an underage girl as reported by the Bradenton Herald on their website. Robert Tameris, 44-years-old, is accused of beginning a sexual relationship with a girl who he met while she was sunbathing at the beach. The girl’s age was reported to be 16 at the time they met.
According to reports, the two began a sexual relationship in 2007 and the officer is alleged to have recorded the pair having sex without the girl’s knowledge. Investigators set up a call between Tameris and the girl in which he reportedly acknowledges the sexual relationship. He was charged with unlawful sex with a minor.
If you have been charged with a sex crime in central Florida and need qualified legal representation, please do not hesitate to contact Criminal Defense Attorney Darren Finebloom at 1-800-FIGHT-IT (1-800-344-4848) to discuss the matter or visit our website FightYourFelony.com. Also you can contact Darren via email or by stopping in any of our four central Florida office locations.
http://www.floridacriminaldefenseattorneyblog.com/2009/10/tampa_criminal_blog_florida_be.html
Barrow detention officer arrested
Posted by Kristi Reed
Thursday, October 29. 2009
A Barrow County detention officer was arrested today by Barrow County Sheriff’s Office narcotics deputies.
Jeremy Robert Haney, 30, of Bethlehem, was arrested after purchasing a small quantity of hydrocodone from an undercover deputy. Haney was arrested without incident.
Detention center administrators learned of Haney’s suspected drug activity and worked with narcotics agents to conduct an undercover operation. Within 24 hours of receiving the tip, the Sheriff’s Office had investigated and arrested Haney.
Haney is charged with purchasing a controlled substance, conspiracy to purchase a controlled substance and violation of oath of office. He is currently in custody and being held at an undisclosed location.
Haney has been employed at the Barrow County Detention Center as a detention officer for the past year and a half. His duties included inmate supervision. Haney’s position did not involve regular contact with the general public.
Sheriff Jud Smith said his agency is committed to providing excellent law enforcement services to the citizens of Barrow County and out of county guests.
“We hold our employees to the highest of standards and will not tolerate any criminal activity whatsoever,” he said.
More information will be released as it becomes available.
http://www.barrowjournal.com/archives/1903-Barrow-detention-officer-arrested.html
CHP officer arrested on child cruelty, spousal abuse charges
October 4, 2009
The Associated Press reports that California Highway Patrol Officer Richard Joseph Handwork was arrested Friday at the CHP office in Yuba City. The 44-year-old Yuba City resident is suspected of inflicting corporal injury to a spouse or cohabitant and of willful cruelty to a child. He made bail and is on "administrative duty," according to the wire report, while the allegations are being investigated. Click here for the AP story picked up by The Bee.
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/the_state_worker/2009/10/chp-officer-arrested-on-child.html
Longboat Key police offcer arrested after pointing gun
By Anthony Cormier
Published: Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 3:53 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 3:53 p.m.
SARASOTA — A Longboat Key police officer was arrested after she pointed a gun at a woman and her children near Southside Elementary School Wednesday, an arrest report says.
Patricia Ann Beardsley, 51, was booked into the Sarasota County Jail Wednesday afternoon on a felony count of aggravated assault with a firearm.
The incident began as parents were picking up their children from Southside at 2:30 p.m. One mother, Jill Campbell, had three of her children in the car and pulled into Beardsley’s driveway to make a Y-turn.
When she did, officers say Beardsley approached the car with a 9 mm pistol, pointing it inside the vehicle and screaming at Campbell.
One of the woman’s children screamed and ducked into the back seat. When police arrived, Beardsley denied pointing a gun at the family, saying it was only a cell phone in her hand. Another witness, however, told officers that Beardsley had a gun.
Beardsley had called 911 moments earlier to report people parking in her driveway, the report says. Beardsley, a 10-year veteran of the force, has been suspended from duty.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090917/breaking/909179963?Title=Longboat-Key-police-offcer-arrested-after-pointing-gun
Cop [Suspended] - accused of pulling gun at haunted house
Accused of pulling handgun at a chain-saw wielding man
Oct . 27, 2009
ESSEX, Md. - An off-duty Baltimore city police officer delivered the fright of a lifetime to a haunted house employee, pulling a gun on the chain-saw-wielding man at the end of his act, authorities said Monday.
Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, was charged with assault and reckless endangerment for pointing his service handgun at the worker, who was dressed as Leatherface, the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Baltimore County police said.
The employee, Mike Morrison, followed Janik and several other people up a staircase Sunday night at the end of the haunted house tour in a bid to get "one last scream" out of them, police said.
When the group exited into a parking lot, Janik pulled his gun and pointed it at Morrison from less than 10 feet away, according to police and Morrison, who said he dropped the chain saw, put his hands up and backed away. The saw had no chain.
Only then did Janik identify himself as a police officer, said Morrison, who retreated into the building.
"I started shaking pretty bad," he told The Associated Press.
Another employee of the House of Screams called police.
According to charging documents, Janik smelled of alcohol and told police two different stories about what he did with the gun. First, he denied drawing the weapon, but later he said he pointed it at the ground.
Morrison and two other witnesses told police that Janik pointed the gun at Morrison's chest.
Janik had no listed number and a voice mail for his attorney, Shaun Owens, was not immediately returned.
A security guard had been following Janik's group, which included his 9-year-old daughter, through the haunted house because Janik appeared to be drunk when he arrived, House of Screams owner Tony Sapanero said.
Morrison said Janik's daughter appeared to be disturbed by his act, in which he pretends to cut one woman in half and disembowel another with the chain saw.
Janik was suspended with pay after police commanders learned of what happened and could be without pay after a hearing Tuesday morning, city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
City police officers are required to carry their service weapons while off duty within city limits and can carry them at their own discretion outside the city, Guglielmi said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33486517?GT1=43001
Duke police officer arrested for rape
Webster Delenn Simmons Duke officer charged with rape
Posted: Oct. 27, 2009
Updated: Oct. 28, 2009
Durham, N.C. — A Duke University police officer has been arrested and charged with raping a woman in Dothan, Ala., over the weekend.
Webster Delenn Simmons, 37, of Rougemont, was arrested Monday after the alleged attack was reported. He was charged with first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy.
The 34-year-old victim went with Simmons to a bar on Friday night, Houston County Sheriff Andy Hughes said. The victim bought every drink but her last, which Simmons bought. Hughes said Simmons possibly laced the victim's drink with drugs.
Hughes said the victim remembers leaving the bar. When she woke up early Saturday, she was being raped in Simmons' car. She was gagged and handcuffed.
After executing a search warrant, authorities found two pair of handcuffs, a ball gag, a thick white rope, an unknown power source with wires attached to a nail, a whip and flog, and what looked like medical tubing.
Authorities suspect Simmons may have committed other sex crimes, Hughes said.
“We are certainly cooperating with the officials in Alabama. We really don't have any indication there's been another crime, but we will continue to cooperate with them or any other agency as we need to,” Duke University Police Chief John Dailey said.
Simmons, who had no criminal record, was hired by Duke last December.
“It's disturbing to hear any serious allegation about any law enforcement officer because they represent all of us in law enforcement. So clearly it is concerning,” Dailey said.
Simmons was being held under a $120,000 bond Tuesday at the Houston County Jail in Alabama. He has been suspended with pay pending further investigation, university spokesman Keith Lawrence said.
“Clearly this is one individual who does not represent the good work and the dedication of the 173 other employees that we have at the department,” Dailey said.
Prior to his work at Duke, Simmons was a master officer with the Raleigh Police Department from 1998 to 2007.
Duke police said they will conduct their own internal investigation of Simmons.
http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/6292066/
TPD officer arrested after being found drunk on job
The officer was arrested on Friday, suspected of being drunk on the job
By Arielle Berlin
Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 8:54 p.m.
TOLEDO, OH -- A Toledo Police officer has been relieved from duty after a firefighter allegedly found him drunk on the job.
Police Chief Mike Navarre confirms that Officer James Breier was arrested Friday afternoon. Officers arrested him when they saw probable cause that he was intoxicated.
Breier has been placed on temporary paid leave while the investigation is being handled by Internal Affairs.
http://www.toledoonthemove.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=367496
I'd call this Murder
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/041750.html
NEVER Seek “Help” from the State’s Armed Enforcers
Posted by William Grigg on November 1, 2009 08:03 AM
Niles Leo Meservey, a 51-year-old resident of Stanwood, Washington, was drunk and belligerent when he slumped into the seat behind the steering wheel of his Corvette last June 10.
Meservey had been cut off by the bartender after he had inflicted his unwanted attention on a couple of women at a nearby club, briefly dragging one of them onto the dance floor.
Several people were worried about the prospect of the intoxicated man attempting to drive home when he clearly presented a risk to himself and others. One of them, Trisha Tribble, called 911.
“We’re really concerned about a guy leaving the parking lot of Chuckwagon [Inn] on Evergreen Way — in a white Corvette, he’s extremely intoxicated,” Tribble told the dispatcher.
Several officers from the Everett Police Department soon arrived; among them were Troy Meade, an 11-year-veteran, and Officer Steven Klocker. Meade arrived at about 11:39 PM; Klocker reached the scene a little less than five minutes later.
At the time Officer Meade arrived, Meservey was hedged in by cars on either side of his Corvette, and cut off by a parking lot fence in front of him. Meade pulled up behind Meservey’s car, effectively boxing him in.
Joanne Hancock, who was smoking outside the Chuckwagon Inn when the police arrived, went inside to tell others concerned about Meservey that “They’ve got him!” The news prompted a small group of people to go outside to watch the arrest.
By the time Klocker arrived to provide “backup,” Meade had spent perhaps five minutes trying to convince Meservey to get out of the car. Klocker would later report that Meade’s tone and attitude toward the intoxicated man were “belligerent,” and that he “used language which made him [Klocker] uncomfortable because of the nearby civilians.”
“I don’t know why the f**k I am trying to save your dumb ass,” Meade snarled at Meservey, according to Klocker’s account.
Both Meade and Klocker withdrew their portable electro-shock torture devices (more commonly called Tasers). Meade, who was closest to the driver, shot Meservey with his Taser through the open driver’s side window, inflicting two separate strikes — one five seconds long, the other six seconds’ duration.
“Why in the f**k did you do that?” muttered the drunken man, who — predictably enough — didn’t want to stick around for any more abuse. He reached for his keys and started the car, but he had nowhere to go: It lurched over a concrete curb and ran into an unyielding chain-link fence.
Bear in mind, once again, that Meservey was entirely boxed in. It was possible, albeit with some difficulty, for Officer Meade to reach through the window and seize the car keys, rather than escalating the situation by using potentially deadly force.
But Meade’s pointless escalation didn’t stop with the two Taser strikes.
After Meservey’s brief attempt to drive away, Meade — according to the official police account — took up a position near the left rear wheel of the Corvette, and pulled his gun.
“Time to end this,” bellowed Meade, according to Klocker. “Enough is enough.” From a distance of six to seven feet, Meade fired eight shots into the car, murdering Meservey.
When several other police officers arrived a few minutes later, Meade was seen pacing back and forth near the murder scene.
“I’m out of it,” he exclaimed to one of the new arrivals. “I want my Garrity.”
The “Garrity Rule” — adapted from the 1967 Supreme Court ruling Garrity v. New Jersey, which involved a ticket-fixing scandal — triggers an enhancement of the right against self-incrimination that only the government’s armed enforcers enjoy: Any statements made after the magical Garrity incantation is uttered can only be used for the purpose of a departmental investigation, not for criminal prosecution.
Klocker, who witnessed the entire incident, pointed out to investigators that when Meservey’s body was pulled from the car, the prongs of Officer Meade’s Taser were still firmly embedded in his shoulder.
“I’m thinking as I ‘m dragging him … why didn’t we [shock] him again?” Klocker told investigators. If escalation had been “necessary,” Klocker thought, Meade would have used the Taser again, or resorted to pepper spray. “I would never have shot [Meservey]… I don’t think we had reached that level of force yet,” Klocker concluded.
What seems obvious to someone not indoctrinated in the state’s view of discretionary killing is this: There was no reason to use force of any kind in this situation, beyond the minimal amount necessary to take the keys away from Meservey. Once that was accomplished, the intoxicated man had nowhere to go, and it would have been a matter of patiently waiting for him to leave his car, or fall asleep.
Rather that choosing an approach of that kind, Meade (who was involved in a prior lethal shooting a few years ago) went up the escalation ladder very quickly — vaulting from confrontational and abusive language to lethal violence within a matter of minutes.
Meade did provide an ironic service of sorts by offering such a compelling display of the fact that citizens face the risk of lethal violence in every encounter they have with law enforcement personnel. Making that point was obviously not worth the price of a man’s life.
Meservey’s daughter has filed a $15 million wrongful death claim against Everett. Meade has been charged with first-degree manslaughter and placed on paid vacation (aka “administrative leave”); unlike a private citizen charged with lethally shooting an unarmed man six times in the back, Meade is loose on his own recognizance.
Meade’s attorney defends the murder as the result of a “split-second decision” (it wasn’t, as we’ve seen) and predicts, with tragically justifiable confidence, that the officer will be acquitted in court. It’s entirely likely that Meade wouldn’t have been indicted if it weren’t for rising public concern over recent police shootings in Everett.
Trisha Tribble, who called 911, was mortified by the death of Meservey, whom she described as “this drunken guy, [who] was obviously out of his mind.”
“There was no reason for him to die,” she commented after the slaying.
And that was the trouble with Tribble’s actions the night of June 10: Any time we seek “help” from the state’s armed enforcers, we’re effectively inviting them to use lethal force.
Charges Dropped Against Cop Caught Having Sex With Cows
KTLA News
4:44 PM PDT, September 24, 2009
MOUNT HOLLY, NJ -- A former police officer accused of having a moonlight tryst with a group of cows will not be facing animal cruelty charges after all.
As it turns out bestiality is not a crime in New Jersey.
Former Moorestown police officer Robert Melia Jr. was charged last year with sexually assaulting three girls.
During the investigation, police say they found a video in the man's home that showed him sexually molesting cows.
According to prosecutors, Melia Jr. dropped his trousers and let the animals taste his genitals on a Southhampton farm in 2006.
Superior Court Judge ruled Wednesday that prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence to jurors that proved that Melia's alleged actions in fact tormented the cows.
"I'm not saying it's okay," Judge Morley said in court after dismissing the charges.
"This is a legal question for me. It's not a question of morals."
Melia and former girlfriend Heather Lewis remain charged with molesting the three girls.
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-cow-cop,0,7485962.story
FOLLOW-UP: Alabama judge not guilty of sexual abuse of inmates
Attorney Robert Clark said former Judge Herman Thomas was found not guilty on several charges and the judge in the case granted a directed verdict of acquittal on all the other counts.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/26/alabama.judge.inmate.sex/index.html?eref=rss_us
Naturally if you did this (Spanked People) on any other job you'd be guilty.
FOLLOW-UP: Dolton cop in beating case has troubling history
October 8, 2009
A Dolton cop caught on camera allegedly breaking a 15-year-old special needs student's nose for failing to tuck in his shirt has a troubling history that includes killing a man in a case of disputed self-defense.
The officer is now in an Indiana jail on an unrelated rape charge.
Christopher Lloyd, 38, was identified today by his father, Charles Lloyd, and Dolton Mayor Ronnie Lewis as the officer who in May was videotaped by a school security camera scuffling with 15-year-old, 140-pound Marshawn Pitts at the Academy for Learning in Dolton.
An attorney hired by Pitts' parents released the videotape earlier this week, calling the incident an "unprovoked attack" on a vulnerable child. The tape, which has no audio, appears to show the officer slam Pitts against a locker, wrestle him to the ground and pin him.
christopher_lloydcaption.jpgBut speaking Thursday, Charles Lloyd said he had seen the tape and discussed the incident with his son, who he said was "just trying to do his job as a police officer and is completely innocent."
"My son said, `Sir, you need to tuck your shirt in,' and this boy said `**** you, I'm not gonna tuck my shirt in, you can't make me,'" Charles Lloyd said.
"That boy struck my son in the eye and broke his glasses -- he had a history of behavior issues," he alleged.
Christopher Lloyd was arrested last month and charged with sexually assaulting a woman he knew at her home in Hammond, his father said.
According to Lake County, Ind., court documents, he held a pillow over the woman's face while sexually assaulting her Sept. 14 and had previously threatened her with a knife.
Lloyd, who's being held in lieu of $110,000 bail, faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted of rape, criminal deviate conduct, criminal confinement and sexual battery, said Diane Poulton, spokeswoman for Lake County's prosecutor.
A lawsuit filed by his ex-wife, Nicole McKinney, last summer alleges he gunned down her new husband Cornel McKinney in front of their children outside their home on the 6100 block of South Langley Avenue on Feb. 17, 2008.
A Robbins police officer at the time, Lloyd was suspended following the shooting but eventually found work with Dolton police in January, his father said.
Though an autopsy shows he shot McKinney 24 times, the lawsuit alleges, he was not charged because Chicago police accepted his explanation that he'd acted in self defense.
Chicago police spokesman Veejay Zala said details of the investigation into McKinney's death could not immediately be found Thursday, but McKinney's attorney, Rahsaan Gordon, said the latest series of allegations against Lloyd showed he shouldn't have been employed as a police officer.
"At some point, people in positions of power need to protect the public," Gordon said. "You have to ask why he was hired."
Lewis denied any impropriety in Lloyd's hiring, saying that the Indiana rape case was "not my problem" and that he hadn't heard of Lloyd until the incident at the Academy was brought to his attention last week. Lloyd was terminated following the incident, Lewis said on Wednesday.
Dolton Police Chief Robert Fox declined to comment, citing pending lawsuits.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/10/dolton-cop-in-beating-case-faces-unrelated-rape-charge.html?obref=obnetwork
The Worst Way To Get Rich
MARION, Ohio (AP) -- An Ohio sheriff's deputy who committed suicide last week pretended for years that he had cancer while scamming his family and colleagues out of thousands of dollars in charitable donations to pay for phony medical bills, authorities said Wednesday.
Marion County Deputy Sheriff Joe Russell, 39, shot himself in his home on Sept. 30. An autopsy showed that he was healthy and did not have cancer.
"This was a fraud. This was a con," Sheriff Tim Bailey, who learned of the autopsy results on Tuesday, said at a news conference outlining details of the investigation.
Russell had fabricated notes from doctors to help pass off a story about how he was fighting cancer in his lungs, brain and testicles, Bailey said. Investigators also believe Russell shaved his eyebrows and head, used tanning beds to make himself appear red from cancer treatments and once told others he was receiving treatments at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore when he really was staying with a friend.
"His concern was only for himself, not his wife, not his young daughter, not his friends," Bailey said following the news conference. "He conned his very close personal friends. He ran this ruse through the community. This is sick."
Co-workers had donated more than 75 days in unused sick leave and vacation time to Russell so he could get treatment. He also received about $20,000 from a Fraternal Order of Police fundraiser in 2007.
Bailey said he had been suspicious about his constantly sick deputy, who used about 57 days of sick time over the past five years, but medical privacy laws prevented him from delving into the matter.
Investigators are looking into whether Russell used his county sick pay under fraudulent conditions, and his county and sheriff's association insurance policies as well as pay due for unused vacation and sick time and holidays have been frozen, Bailey said.
"If there is money due back to the county, to the taxpayer, we're going to try to recover that," he said.
Russell became a full-time deputy in September 2004, performed well on the job and was liked by co-workers and others in the county building where he worked, Bailey said. He began the cancer scam around late 2005, the sheriff said.
Russell lived with his wife and two daughters in Delaware, about 20 miles north of Columbus. His wife told investigators she also believed her husband had cancer and didn't know about the con until last week, Bailey said.
http://www.askmen.com/sports/news/43_the-worst-way-to-get-rich.html
FOLLOW-UP: AZ COPS lie again on the cover-up that ensued.
***
Phoenix PD issues statement about homeowner shot by police
Reported by: ABC15.com staff, wire reports
Reported by: Katie Fisher
Last Update: 10/07 8:55 pm
Man shot by Phoenix PD files $5.75 million claim
PHOENIX – The Phoenix Police Department issued a statement Wednesday addressing a September 2008 incident that led a Phoenix homeowner to sue the city and its police department.
Tony Arambula is seeking $5.75 million in damages for himself and his family after he was shot by police on September 17, 2008 after officers responded to a call about an intruder inside his central Phoenix home.
Phoenix Police Spokesperson Tommy Thompson said in a press release issued Wednesday that officers responded to a call at Arambula's Phoenix home, but "after entering the residence, one of the officers mistakenly shot the armed home owner."
The press release goes on to say that the "department has been honest and forthright from the very onset of this incident. No attempt has been made to conceal the truth or the facts surrounding it."
Thompson also acknowledges Arambula's lawsuit and says his department will not be making any further statements as the litigation process takes its course.
The claim, filed by Phoenix attorney Michael Manning on behalf of Arambula, names the city, its police department, the officer who shot Arambula and two other officers.
Phoenix police declined to comment on the shooting or the pending claim.
The night of the shooting, Arambula said an intruder had broken into his home.
Arambula called 911 and told police he was holding the intruder at gunpoint.
As officers arrived, Arambula's wife Lesley said she told them her husband was inside the house holding a gun on the intruder.
"I told them my husband was inside, he was the one with the gun," she said Tuesday.
The officers entered the house with a shout of "Police!"
Almost immediately afterward, Phoenix police Officer Brian Lilly shot Arambula in the back.
Three more shots were fired at Arambula, one hitting him in the arm.
The incident was recorded during Arambula’s 911 call, made available earlier this month.
Listen to the call.
The claim said that when Arambula fell to the floor, Lilly shot him two more times.
That's when Arambula told Lilly he'd shot the wrong man.
In his Internal Affairs interview, Lilly admitted firing at Arambula without any verbal warning, according to the claim.
Arambula said he did everything he was supposed to do in that situation.
"I would have loved if they would have told me to get on the floor and drop to my knees," Arambula said. "To not have given me any opportunity to not get shot, it's confusing. I pray that this never happens to another family."
http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/central/story/Phoenix-PD-issues-statement-about-homeowner-shot/sLWUCAu1I0eVLymRsuVjJg.cspx
Cop Caught On Camera Beating Special Education Student Marshawn Pitts (WATCH)
A south suburban Chicago police officer was caught on a security camera beating up a high school special education student, CBS2 reports.
Marshawn Pitts, 15, was walking down his school hallway when he says a Dolton, Ill. police officer went from berating him for his untucked shirt to slamming him to the ground and beating him.
"The officer was in his face because he didn't have his shirt tucked in," Pitts' attorney told CBS 2's Davis Savini. "That's the officer put in that school to protect these kids, and instead of doing that, this officer is literally assaulting this kid."
Neither school nor Dolton officials responded to CBS 2 about the story.
Former Alabama judge indicted on inmate sex charges
By Ashley Broughton
(CNN) -- A former south Alabama judge is accused of checking male inmates out of jail and forcing them to engage in sexual activity including paddling, according to officials and court documents.
Former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas denies all the charges, his attorney says.
Former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas denies all the charges, his attorney says.
Former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas was arrested Friday after a grand jury returned the indictments against him. He was released on $287,500 bond later Friday.
The indictments total 57 counts, and the charges range from ethics violations to kidnapping, extortion, sex abuse and sodomy. If convicted on the most serious charge -- kidnapping, a Class A felony -- Thomas faces a prison sentence of 10 to 99 years in prison, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said Monday.
But Thomas' attorney, Robert Clark, said Friday the accusations against the former judge amount to "a high-tech lynching."
"Did you ever think of the fact that this is the only black circuit judge we've ever had in Mobile County and that the right-wing Republicans have gotten rid of him?" Clark said at a news conference, portions of which were posted on the Web sites of CNN affiliates WKRG-TV in and WALA-TV.
"This is racism at its very finest."
Thomas was arrested during that news conference; footage shows police walking up to Thomas, tapping him on the shoulder and leading him into the adjacent jail building without handcuffing him. Later Friday, Clark was threatened with arrest after refusing to leave Tyson's news conference, according to CNN affiliate reports.
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"The South hasn't changed all that much," Clark, described by the Mobile Press-Register as "a longtime and flamboyant fixture of the Mobile defense bar," told CNN on Monday.
He said Thomas denies all the charges, and he questioned the credibility of the alleged victims. "Everybody that's listed in the indictment is either serving life for murder or some other horrible crime." Some have already recanted, Clark said, adding, "None of this is new stuff." He pledged he would "fight till the last dog falls."
Meanwhile, the Alabama State Bar said its disciplinary commission suspended Thomas' law license Monday.
The indictment returned Friday, posted on WKRG's Web site, offers few details of the alleged offenses but makes several references to Thomas forcing people to expose their buttocks "to paddling and/or whipping."
The posted indictment had names of the alleged victims blacked out. But each of the nine alleged victims was in Mobile County Circuit Court on charges ranging from criminal mischief to murder, according to the Press-Register, which cited court records.
One of the inmates, according to the newspaper, went before Thomas on multiple occasions and faced several felony charges. He was sent to prison for a short time, but Thomas ordered him released early, according to the Press-Register. He was sentenced in federal court and later released and has since been accused of murder and attempted murder.
During Thomas' judgeship, he had a storage room furnished like an office near his eighth-floor chamber at Mobile's Government Plaza, the Press-Register said. Several criminal defendants have alleged, in affidavits and in court, that Thomas asked to paddle their buttocks in the room, and some said he suggested sexual encounters there, according to the newspaper.
Thomas resigned from the bench in October 2007 just before being scheduled to stand trial before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary on ethics violations charges. The complaint, dismissed after Thomas' resignation, accuses him of "extrajudiciary personal contact" with some defendants but does not refer to any sexual contact.
Asked about Clark's allegations of racism, Tyson told CNN, "In this case, as in every case, we try to react to the law and facts, and that's all. Anything else is outside our authority. I can assure anybody that's interested that this is not being pursued for some racial agenda."
Thomas' bail carried three conditions, Tyson said -- that the ex-judge have no contact with males under the age of 21, that he have no contact with the complaining witnesses or their families, and that he surrender his passport.
All the Mobile County Circuit judges have recused themselves from Thomas' case -- standard procedure for a case involving another judge, Tyson said. A judge from another county is being brought in to oversee the case. An arraignment date has not been set, Clark said.
But on March 9, another Mobile County Circuit judge barred Thomas from his courtroom. Judge Joseph S. Johnston wrote in an order that during Thomas' tenure on the bench he "used his office to threaten criminal defendants with jail time, penitentiary time and probation revocations if they did not engage in sexual acts with him."
Johnston attached to the order, under seal, a disc "containing the interviews of three criminal defendants who were subjected to the treatment described above," the order said.
Clark appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, saying Johnson's suspension order "cites allegations and innuendo and rumors." He said Monday the high court hasn't weighed in on the matter.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/31/inmate.sex/index.html
The Look From The Rear
Posted by SHG at 9/26/2009 7:22 AM
It seemed like Anthony Arambula did everything right. A man breaks into his Maricopa County home and runs into his son's bedroom. He sends his wife and kids outside, then gets his gun out of the closet and holds the burglar at bay. He calls 911. But what happened after that wasn't quite what he had in mind.
From Courthouse News:
Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas' window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers.
Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator - twice when he was on the ground.
The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, "You just killed ... you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there."
Darn it. Cops hate when that happens. No, not because they pumped 6 bullets into the wrong guy, but because they could get in big trouble. Cops hate getting into big trouble.
Tony Arambula didn't die, however. Instead, he sued. In a rather interesting complaint, more along the lines of melodramatic chatting than legal description, one detail makes the cops' efforts to cover up their mistake exceedingly difficult. It seems that the 911 call was still being recorded as Lilly was busy shooting. And still recording after he stopped and realized his mistake.
According to the complaint, Lilly can be heard on the 911 tape telling Coutts, "We fucked up."
Lilly says on the tape that he did not know where Anthony's gun was when he shot him and that he "opened fire because he heard loud noises and saw someone who looked like he might be the 'Hispanic' male they were pursuing" before getting to the Arambulas' house, according to the complaint.
But we all look like Hispanic males from the rear.
If things were bad after Lilly put six bullets into Tony, they got worse as the cops were left to figure out what to do about it.
Sgt. Coutts was quick to commence the cover-up of their terrible mistake. Sgt. Coutts asked Office Lilly where Tony's gun was at the time Officer Lilly had opened fire on Tony. Officer Lilly admitted that he did not know where Tony's gun was: 'I don't know. I heard screaming and I fired.'"
Lilly later told a police internal affairs investigator that Anthony had pointed his gun in his direction, "in the 'ready' position," the complaint states. But Anthony Arambula says he was facing away from the officers, who could not have even seen his gun.
The complaint continues: "Still not knowing that he is being recorded n the 911 tape, Sgt. Coutts interrupted Officer Lilly's admission and apology with his assurance that the cover-up would commence: 'That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?'"
And it goes on and on, with the cops dragging Tony Arambula outside the house by his shot leg onto gravel in the backyard, where he was put on display for his wife and children. He was placed on the "hot hood" of the squad car and driven down the street writhing in pain.
Later, they tried to get the gun dealer who sold Tony the weapon to go along with their pretense that the gun may have been illegal, but the dealer refused to play ball. Then detectives tried to pin drug warrants on Tony from other states that he's never been to, but the details didn't match.
It's so much easier when you shoot the wrong guy and just put a throw-away in his hand to justify it. It's harder when you shoot the homeowner. And it's really hard when the 911 recording catches it all. And you thought it was easy to be a cop.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/09/26/the-look-from-the-rear.aspx?ref=rss
NJ Cop Robert Melia Taped Having Sex with Cows
By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, Child Abuse, Creeps, Police bungling, Sex crimes, Stupid Criminals, bizarre
Friday, Sep. 25 2009 @ 8:32PM
Robert Melia is also charged with molesting three girls
To paraphrase the late Hunter Thompson, "When the going gets weird, the weird go to New Jersey." That's the only way to explain the case of Moorestown policeman Robert Melia. Last year, he and his former girlfriend, Heather Lewis, were arrested for sexual assaulting three young girls over a five-year period.
While this may be depraved enough, detectives found what a true degenerate Melia is after they searched his home. On his computer they found a video of a girl being sexually assaulted. They also found video of Melia -- get this -- having sex with cows.
Since beastiality is not technically a crime in New Jersey, investigators charged Melia with animal cruelty. And this, believe it or not, is where our story gets even weirder. Under state law, a prosecutor must prove the animal was tormented to in cruelty cases. Which led to a rather unusual argument in the court room...
Police say Heather Lewis also molested the three girls
Burlington County assistant prosecutor Kevin Morgan was left to assert that forcing a cow to give you a blowjob -- especially a young, innocent calve, which is what Melia fancied -- fit the definition of cruelty. "I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man's penis in the mouth of a calf is torment," he told the judge. "It's a crime against nature."
But that's when Judge James J. Morley went a little weird on his own. He waxed philosophically about the mental powers of cows, noting that they couldn't actually talk -- a breakthrough observation -- and thus had no way of expressing whether they liked giving degenerate cops blowjobs or not. And given that the jury had no way of reading the five cows' minds -- yes, Melia is a serial cow rapist -- there's no way the prosecution could prove the cows were tormented.
Melia walked.
He's still facing charges for molesting the three girls, but he's likely beat his biggest legal hurdle. It's bad enough to be sent to the pen as a child rapist. But being a cow rapist would certainly preclude membership invites from the finest Aryan gangs. They do have their standards.
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/09/nj_cop_robert_melia_taped_havi.php
SWAT Team caught playing a suspect's Nintendo Wii in his house
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQmPPw5hMgw
Did California police use a Taser on an unarmed, legless man in a wheelchair?
Why did police Taser wheelchair-bound Merced, Calif., resident Greg Williams?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/nation/story/75729.html
By Victor A. Patton | McClatchy Newspapers
MERCED, Calif. — The Merced Police Department's Internal Affairs Division is investigating whether an officer twice used a Taser on an unarmed, wheelchair-bound man with no legs.
The man who was Tasered, Gregory Williams, 40, a double-leg amputee, spent six days in jail on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest, but the Merced County District Attorney's office hasn't filed any charges.
Williams is black, and the two main arresting officers are white, but it's unknown whether race played any role in the incident.
Williams, who was released from jail on Friday, said he was manhandled and Tasered by police, even though he said he was never physically aggressive toward the officers and didn't resist arrest.
Williams said he was humiliated after his pants fell down during the incident. The officers allegedly left him outdoors in broad daylight, handcuffed on the pavement, nude below the waist. Williams said the Sept. 11 arrest also left him with an injured shoulder, limiting his mobility in his wheelchair.
A handful of residents in Williams' apartment complex said they witnessed the incident and supported Williams' charges. A short video clip, shot by a neighbor and obtained by the Sun-Star, shows Williams sitting on the pavement with his pants down, his hands cuffed behind his back.
A Merced police report, written by the responding officers, says that police tried to reason with Williams before the arrest, to no avail. The officers wrote that Williams was uncooperative and refused to turn his 2-year-old daughter over to Merced County Child Protective Services, among other allegations.
In the report, police also say a hostile crowd gathered as the officers tried to perform their duties.
The Merced Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the matter, saying he can't discuss it because the investigation is internal. Both the officers remain on duty.
Between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Sept. 11, Williams said, he and his wife, 28-year-old Demetrice Shaunte Phifer, were arguing when a marked Merced Police Department patrol car arrived at the couple's studio apartment.
While one officer spoke with his wife, Williams said, another officer arrived and ordered him, "Go back to your house!"
Williams, who had his 2-year-old daughter Ginni in his lap, said he rolled his wheelchair back to his apartment.
The officer, who's identified in the police report as John Pinnegar, approached him in the doorway of his apartment. Pinnegar said that his wife had accused him of striking her, which Williams denied.
Shortly afterward, police Sgt. Rodney Court and a worker with Merced County Child Protective Services entered the room, Williams said. "I'm trying to tell him nothing happened. We were just having an argument," he said.
Pinnegar grabbed William's 2-year-old daughter from his lap, handing her to the CPS worker. "I said, 'What are you doing? I haven't done anything!' " Williams said.
Williams said Pinnegar unholstered his Taser, jammed it into his rib cage and shocked him twice. Williams said he fell from his chair onto his stomach on the ground outside his doorway.
While he was down, Williams said, Court put his knee on his neck, and one of the officers then cuffed both of his wrists. At some point after he fell out of his chair, Williams said, his shorts slid down his legs.
With his hands cuffed behind his back, Williams said, he was unable to pull his pants up. He said police left him for five to 10 minutes in that position on the pavement, with his private parts showing as neighbors and onlookers watched.
Williams, a lifelong Merced resident who's married with three children, said that both his legs were amputated in 2004 after he was diagnosed with deep-vein thrombosis that led to gangrene in both legs.
Doctors amputated both his legs below the knees when he was 34. Now only withered stumps of skin hang where his lower legs once were. He lost his job as a truck driver and now supports himself and his family from a Social Security disability allotment of $1,004 a month.
To read a fuller account of this story, visit www.mercedsunstar.com.
Cops Handcuff, Assault Man For Posting Obama Joker Flyers
http://www.eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=7408&title=Cops_Handcuff__Assault_Man_For_Posting_Obama_Joker_Flyers&vpkey=70d2f22398
FOLLOW-UP: Agent Provocateur
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2td3g_spp-cops-caught-trying-to-incite-vi_news
Police Abuse Series-Filing a Complaint on a Officer - Consistently abusing their power in a series of arrests
"I axed him specifically what the incident was about, can't help you if I don't know what the incident about."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1YvwTHKuQQ#t=45s
Exclusive: Officer accused of soliciting minors brought down by ‘KopBusters’
By Stephen C. Webster
Published: September 15, 2009
Updated 13 hours ago
A former police officer who worked for over a dozen departments in Texas is behind bars Tuesday, held on numerous felony charges including engaging in organized criminal activity, promotion of prostitution, solicitation of minors and two counts of attempting to possess child pornography.
Activist and filmmaker Barry Cooper, who is producing a reality show called “KopBusters,” aided officers with the Combine Police Department in drawing the man out into the open, ultimately helping wrap a three-year investigation in the process.
Until late last month, Michael Meissner, 39, was chief of police in Little River-Academy, Texas, a town so small that it only had one officer. He resigned his post after residents of the small town packed city hall with complaints about his behavior, according to local reports.
Meissner called the town “a good stepping stone for me,” reported Temple Daily News, which noted that the former officer held 18 different law enforcement jobs over the last 14 years. The “gypsy cop,” said Dallas television station WFAA, “seemed to operate under his own rules, spending much of his time working off-duty security jobs 60 miles away in Dallas.”
Prior WFAA reports “found that Meissner had used a phony college diploma for certification and failed to let his employers know that he had been arrested twice,” the network added.
Combine police were initially probing Meissner over suggestions that he had misused official information to retaliate against another man. However, when they looked at Meissner’s text messages and e-mail, they claim to have discovered something much worse.
“When the affidavits are released, the public is going to be shocked,” said Cooper, speaking to reporters outside Meissner’s home. “The conversation and the lewd conduct he’s been involved in with high school boys. As an ex-police officer, it makes me sick that we’ve got a guy running around here in a badge, that the public is supposed to trust, and he’s using that uniform to breach the trust of the younger citizens in the community. It’s horrible.”
Two of Meissner’s neighbors additionally told RAW STORY they had repeatedly seen various teenage boys entering and leaving the residence.
“Man, I’m just glad police are doing their job, they’re heroes,” said next door neighbor Brenda Lambert. “Anyone that messes with children needs to be taken care of.”
“We don’t regret hiring him or letting him go,” Little River Mayor Ronnie White told the Daily News when Meissner resigned last month. “We will find another officer.”
Tactical officers, who had set up a staging area just one street from Meissner’s Arlington, Texas home, raided the residence at approximately 1:45 p.m. on Monday, but the suspect was gone.
He was arrested later that evening after returning to his home. Meissner actually called Cooper to warn that his that his home had apparently been raided. Cooper then called police and relayed Meissner’s location.
A judge has set Meissner’s bond at $1.5 million.
Cooper says he was in this instance an undercover journalist and police informant, who had befriended Meissner under the false pretense that he wanted to use KopBusters for the purpose of clearing his name.
For the man whose living is paid for by a DVD series on how to grow, sell and smuggle marijuana without being detected by the police, he certainly seemed to have a natural rapport with the officers on-scene.
Outside Meissner’s home in Arlington, Texas (Alexander Rutledge/KopBusters.com).
One of them even asked Cooper how his former law enforcement mentor in Odessa was doing.
“Oh man, he was a legend back in my day,” he replied. “Unfortunately, he planted meth on an innocent woman and I had to bust him.”
After officers kicked in Meissner’s door and cordoned off his home, the front yard became what seemed to be Cooper’s first campaign stop in what he says is a serious run for Texas attorney general. He even put on a suit before heading to the location with reporters and his camera crew in-tow.
“Within a short time, we hope to have a corrupt police chief in jail for seven felony warrants [for] harming kids,” he told reporters. “I acted as a undercover journalist-informant, they listed me as the informant on the arrest affidavit. I befriended this officer and made him believe that I was his friend and that I wanted to clear his name. The truth was, I was relaying all that information to the Combine police department.”
Cooper continued: “As an ex-narcotics officer, I’ve experienced corruption and seen it myself. My wife suggested that I use my experience to go and start busting corrupt police officers instead of citizens. That’s when we formed ‘KopBusters,’ a reality TV show. We’re hoping to have 13 episodes up on [...] TV very soon. I feel [passionate] about my job, and we’re using these stings so I can win Texas attorney general in 2010, because in that position I can expose police corruption even further, take their salaries and begin paying police officers six-figure incomes … The one’s that deserve it.”
Cooper showed up to the raid wearing a suit, as if campaigning (Stephen C. Webster).
Steve Allen, police chief in Combine, Texas, called Cooper’s brand of law enforcement activism an “excellent resource.”
“Police officers need all the help they can get,” he said. “There’s a lot of things, for example, [Barry] may have drawn him out of the woodwork for us — something that we couldn’t do that he did. So, I think [KopBusters] is an excellent resource and tool for us.”
In December, Cooper and his team of lawyers and investigators staged a sting on the Odessa, Texas police department, setting up a fake marijuana grow house and baiting officers to raid it without proper legal authorization. It was the first of what Cooper promises to be many future operations against allegedly dirty police.
This video was captured by a cameraman with Barry Cooper’s KopBusters on Sept. 14, 2009.
Video:
Forced Catheterization Used In DUI Case
Suit Claims Police, Hospital Acted Improperly
POSTED: 8:59 am EDT September 3, 2009
LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. -- An Indiana man has filed a lawsuit claiming that police forcibly withdrew blood and urine from his body during a drunken driving arrest, WLWT-TV reported.
According to the suit, police arrested Jamie Lockard, 53, on suspicion of drunken driving in March.
A Breathalyzer test showed he was under the legal limit, but Officer Brian Miller doubted the findings.
Lockard and his attorney claim in the suit that police took him to Dearborn County Hospital and forced him to submit to a urine and blood test.
Police said they obtained a warrant, but Lockard's attorney said his client was shackled to a gurney and had a catheter inserted against his will.
"It has to be executed reasonably," said attorney Doug Garner. "No one would say this is reasonable behavior. It's reprehensible that anyone could think that this is appropriate."
The blood test showed that Lockard's blood-alcohol level did not exceed Indiana's legal limit, police said.
Garner said the police officer did not apologize, but instead charged Lockard with obstruction of justice.
"He took it too far. He thought he could do whatever to me," Lockard said.
The suit names the Lawrenceburg police department and Dearborn County Hospital, in addition to Miller and Dr. Ronald Cheek.
"I would hate for this to happen to someone else," Lockard said. "It was the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me, ever."
http://www.wpbf.com/health/20703731/detail.html
It Has Come to This! Your Wife, Sister, or Mother will be Next
This is unbelievable... Stark county sheriff's department - Hope Steffy - Forcible strip search of victim in 911 call
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJndS8k_ZBM
Mints Believed To Be Crack Land Man In Jail
Posted: 5:27 pm EDT August 17, 2009
Updated: 11:30 am EDT August 19, 2009
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were crack and arrested him.
May told Eyewitness News they wouldn't let him out of jail for three months until tests proved the so-called drugs were candy.
May said he was just minding his business, driving home from work, when a Kissimmee police officer pulled him over near 192.
"I don't know how it occurred," he said.
May was pulled over for an expired tag on his car. When the officer walked up to him, he noticed something white in May's mouth. May said it was breath mints, but the officer thought it was crack cocaine.
"He took them out of my mouth and put them in a baggy and locked me up [for] possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence," May explained.
The officer claimed he field-tested the evidence and it tested positive for drugs. The officer said he saw May buying drugs while he was stopped at an intersection. He also stated in his report May waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily admitted to buying drugs.
May said that never happened.
"My client never admitted he purchased crack cocaine. Why would he say that?" attorney Adam Sudbury said.
May was thrown in jail and was unable to bond out for three months. He didn't get out until he received a letter from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney's Office that test results showed no drugs were found.
"While I was sitting in jail I lost my apartment. I lost everything," he said.
While May was behind bars, the Kissimmee Police Department towed his car and auctioned it off. He lost his job and was evicted. Now May is suing the city for false arrest and false imprisonment. He wants to be compensated for the loss of his car and job.
May's attorney and the city of Kissimmee discussed a possible settlement last year, but failed to reach an agreement.
http://www.wftv.com/irresistible/20435114/detail.html
Mom in minivan tasered twice in Salina traffic stop; camera captures deputy's rough roadside arrest (VIDEO)
by John O'Brien / The Post-Standard
Thursday August 13, 2009, 3:33 AM
In January, an Onondaga County sheriff's deputy pulled over Audra Harmon, who had two of her kids with her in her minivan. A routine traffic stop escalated quickly.
The deputy, Sean Andrews, accused her of talking on her cell phone. She said she could prove him wrong.
He said she was speeding. She denied it and got out of the van. He told her to get back in. She did, then he ordered her back out.
He yanked her out by the arm, knocked her down with two Taser shots and charged her with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. His rationale on the disorderly conduct charge: She obstructed traffic when she got out of the van. The speeding accusation: going 50 mph in a 45-mph zone.
The scene along Hopkins Road in Salina on the afternoon of Jan. 31 was captured by a camera on the dashboard of Andrews' patrol car. Harmon, 38, says the video is proof of police brutality.
She plans to sue the sheriff's office today, claiming Andrews was improperly trained in the use of his Taser. It's not supposed to be used to take down people who pose no threat, she said.
Andrews, 37, a deputy for four years, was taken off road patrol after the arrest and will remain in a new assignment until an internal affairs investigation is finished, Sheriff Kevin Walsh said. Walsh declined to comment because the case is under litigation. Andrews also would not comment. He makes $49,095 a year.
Harmon was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and going 50 in a 45 mph zone. The district attorney's office dismissed the charges a month later -- after watching the videotape, said her lawyer, Terrance Hoffmann. The prosecutor could not be reached for comment.
In his report on the arrest, Andrews makes no mention of Harmon threatening him or using foul language. He said she refused his request to get back in her van, then refused to get out when he said she was under arrest, the report said. Harmon refused to comply with his commands to put her hands behind her back to be cuffed, Andrews wrote.
Here's Harmon's description of that day:
Harmon, a school bus driver for 11 years, was returning home from shopping and picking up her son Casey, 15, from wrestling practice. He was in the front passenger seat. Harmon's daughter Brandi, 5, was in the back seat. Harmon was driving on Electronics Parkway in the left lane and had to slow down to get into the right lane behind Andrews' patrol car so she could turn onto Hopkins.
Andrews made the turn ahead of her, then immediately pulled off to the side of Hopkins Road and let Harmon pass. He quickly turned on his flashing lights and pulled her over.
Andrews told Harmon he'd seen her using her cell phone while she was driving. In the video, he makes a phone gesture with his hand. She told him she'd been driving with her right hand on her cheek, but that she hadn't talked on the phone for at least two hours. She says she offered to let him look at the phone to see for himself. He declined.
Andrews said he also clocked her going 50 mph in a 45 mph zone. No way, Harmon recalls telling him.
"I want you to show me the tape," she told him.
"You'll have to take that up in court," he responded, according to Harmon. He told her the evidence was in a box in his patrol car, and started walking back toward it. Harmon followed. That's when he told her to get back in the van.
She says she didn't refuse the order but told him once more that she wanted to see his proof. Andrews drew the Taser and pointed it at her.
"Mom, get back in the car," she recalls her son telling her. A witness, Staci Santorelli, was across the road at the Shoot 'n' Score soccer center and heard Andrews tell Harmon she was under arrest. Harmon also says she remembers Andrews at some point telling her she was under arrest.
"I just wanted to get back in my car where I was safe and where my kids were," Harmon says. Andrews told her to get out.
"But you just told me to get in," she says she told Andrews. She heard her daughter crying, "Mommy! Mommy!"
"I was not getting out of that car," she says. "I was scared to death." She gripped the steering wheel with both hands as Andrews grabbed her by the arm and pulled. Harmon stands 5-foot-4. Andrews is 10 inches taller. After some tugging, he got her out.
She and Andrews stood facing each other for a few seconds, talking. He had the Taser pointed at her.
"I kept saying, 'Don't do this in front of my kids,'" she says.
Andrews fired the Taser, but it only gave her a small jolt, apparently because it hit her winter clothing. She started to get back in the van. Andrews pulled her back, opening her front to him before he fired again. This time, Harmon dropped to her knees.
The Taser probe, like a little arrow with a fish hook, stuck in Harmon's upper left chest. The jolt shook her.
Andrews pushed her to the ground face-first and handcuffed her in the eastbound lane of Hopkins Road. The number of witnesses across the street was growing, Harmon says.
"Are you OK? Do you need help?" Santorelli and her father yelled, according to Santorelli's statement to deputies.
"I'm not OK, and I do need help," Harmon responded. As Andrews picked her up and escorted her to his car, Harmon pleaded with the witnesses.
"Please come get my kids!" Harmon remembers yelling. The witnesses said they couldn't do that, but they asked Harmon for her home number so they could call her husband. She gave it to them.
"I wanted these strangers to get my kids, because at that point I thought they'd be safer with strangers," Harmon says. The kids sat in the car for about 40 minutes until their father arrived and took them home, which was about 500 yards away, she says.
Harmon said she wants to teach police a lesson: It's OK to admit you're wrong. She said Andrews manufactured the speeding charge once he realized she didn't deserve a cell phone ticket. Andrews had not clocked her with a radar gun. Instead, he said in a report, he calculated her speed by following her for "several seconds."
"I want the public to know these police officers apparently aren't being trained well enough to know when it is justified to use a Taser," she said.
John O'Brien can be reached at jobrien@syracuse.com or 470-2187.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/mom_in_minivan_tasered_in_traf.html
Demoted Belle Glade deputy brags on Facebook about beating: 'I know the areas that hide the marks well'
By MICHAEL LaFORGIA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sgt. Brent Raban wore a badge and carried a gun issued by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, but he didn't think of himself as a crime fighter.
Instead, the seven-year sheriff's office veteran considered himself a punisher on the mean streets of Belle Glade, and he bragged in Internet postings about his prowess in battering the people he arrested, according to an internal investigation released Monday.
Update: Glades deputy who bragged about beatings given 'last chance' deal but subordinates were fired
Sgt. Brent Raban wearing his camouflage skullcap emblazoned with the word 'PUNISHMENT.'
Together with two subordinates, Deputies Gregory Lynch and Michael Woodside, Raban would work the streets of the county's western communities, sometimes sporting a camouflage skullcap emblazoned with the word "PUNISHMENT," the investigation determined.
In a region long suspicious of law enforcement, the trio would confront people on street corners and was known to barge into bars, grabbing patrons' drinks and sniffing them for liquor - which was prohibited in some drinking holes, investigators said.
The behavior, which the deputies alluded to in Internet postings on the Facebook social networking site, which they often updated while on duty, earned a demotion for Raban and cost Lynch and Woodside their jobs.
It also led to a criminal investigation, though Chief Assistant State Attorney Paul Zacks ultimately decided not to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence.
"During his time in Belle Glade for calendar year of 2008, Sergeant Brent Raban, through his actions and writings, has shown a general disregard for the PBSO mission as well as for his responsibilities as Road Patrol Supervisor," internal investigators noted, before finding him in violation of 11 department rules and regulations.
Lynch and Woodside each were found to have broken four department rules and recommended for firing.
Screenshots of Raban's Facebook page figured in the investigators' findings.
In a prominent place on Raban's page, the former sergeant typed, "It's not crime fighting ... It's dealing out PUNISHMENT!"
Questioned by internal affairs investigators, Raban said the statement was inspired by his fondness for Batman and The Punisher comic books and had nothing to do with his work as a deputy sheriff.
In other places on his Facebook page, Raban crowed about dealing harshly with the people he arrested, writing in one instance that he roughed up one suspect. "But like a good batterer," he added, "I know the areas that hide the marks well."
"It was a comment I made in extremely bad taste," Raban told investigators later. "It was meant as a joke."
In another instance, he lamented that he was losing his cool because he had gone 14 days without hitting someone.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/07/28/0728punishment.html?imw=Y
87 year old elderly woman with cane and limp slammed hard by police at Walmart, cracks her head open
Ex-Rep. Jefferson convicted of corruption
From Paul Courson
CNN
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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- Former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana was convicted Wednesday on 11 of the 16 corruption charges against him in a case that included the discovery of $90,000 in his freezer.
Former Rep. William Jefferson arrives at U.S. District Court with his wife, Andrea, on June 9.
Former Rep. William Jefferson arrives at U.S. District Court with his wife, Andrea, on June 9.
A federal court jury convicted Jefferson on four bribery counts, three counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud and one count of racketeering. He was acquitted on five other counts including wire fraud and obstruction of justice.
Jefferson, a 62-year-old Democrat, was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 4, 2007, about two years after federal agents said they found the cash in his freezer. Authorities said the cash was part of a payment in marked bills from an FBI informant in a transaction captured on video.
Jefferson had pleaded not guilty. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 150 years in prison, with sentencing tentatively set for October 30.
After the verdict on the fifth day of jury deliberations, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis turned down a prosecution request for Jefferson to be taken into custody, ruling that he posed no flight risk.
The verdict showed that "no person, not even a congressman, is above the law," said U.S. Attorney Dana Boente of the Eastern District of Virginia. Asked what might have turned the case in the prosecution's favor, Boente said: "We always thought that a powerful piece of evidence in this case was $90,000 in a freezer."
A stern-faced Jefferson emerged from the courthouse with his lawyer, Robert Trout, who said the verdict would be appealed.
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* Indictment (U.S. v. Jefferson)
"We're very disappointed that the jury disagreed with us," Trout said.
Asked how he was holding up, Jefferson smiled briefly and answered, "I'm holding up," before walking away.
Jefferson was accused of using his congressional clout between 2001 and 2005 to solicit and receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for himself and his family in exchange for promoting products and services in Africa, especially Nigeria, and elsewhere.
The information on the cash discovered in Jefferson's Washington home in August 2005 was revealed in an affidavit used to obtain a warrant to search Jefferson's office in May 2006. Descriptions from the heavily redacted affidavit and pictures of the open freezer show bills wrapped in foil and tucked into frozen food containers, including a box for pie crusts and another for veggie burgers.
FBI agents told a judge the money was part of a $100,000 payment delivered by an informant in the bribery investigation, which led to guilty pleas by a Kentucky businessman and a former Jefferson aide.
Jefferson, who graduated from Harvard Law School, represented Louisiana's 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of the New Orleans area He held office for 18 years, or nine terms, before he lost his House seat to Anh Joseph Cao in the December 2008 election.
"This is a difficult day for the people of New Orleans and Louisiana, but now we can turn the page on a negative past to focus on a positive future," Cao said. "My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Jefferson and his family during this time."
As a representative, he served on the House Ways and Means Committee's subcommittee on trade and on the Budget Committee, and he co-chaired the caucus on Africa Trade and Investment as well as the caucus on Nigeria.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/05/us.rep.trial/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Pregnant mother tasered at baptism party
By David Edwards and John Byrne
August 3, 2009
A child’s Virginia baptism ended up being a real shocker.
Responding to a noise complaint in Prince William County, police sought to quell the assembled crowd — who they said were making too much of a racket — by firing a Taser at the child’s grandfather and at the pregnant mother of the baptized child.
The officers said they placed a call to the homeowner, who they said was intoxicated and refused to reduce the volume.
The homeowner, 55, is a church family counselor and bible study teacher. His son, Edgar Rodriguez, claims he was Tasered three times after producing his ID for police. The elder Rodriguez was arrested for public intoxication in his own backyard.
The two say police used excessive force to quiet down “a backyard party.” A home video of the scene shows a relatively tame event.
The pregnant mother of the baptized child was also Tasered in the back after officers averred she was assaulting a police officer, and is now being held separate from her family by Customs and Immigration Enforcement.
This video is from Fox 55, broadcast August 1, 2009.
Video: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/03/grandpa-pregnant-woman-tasered-at-baptism-party/
Penis pump judge gets 4-year jail term
8/18/2006 2:50 PM
Former Oklahoma district judge Donald Thompson, shown in this June 29 photo, was found guilty on four counts of indecent exposure. The jury recommended a sentence of one year in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count..
The Oklahoman file photo via AP
Former Oklahoma district judge Donald Thompson, shown in this June 29 photo,
was found guilty on four counts of indecent exposure. The jury recommended a
sentence of one year in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count..
BRISTOW, Okla. (AP) — A former judge convicted of exposing himself while presiding over jury trials by using a sexual device under his robe was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.
Donald Thompson had spent almost 23 years on the bench and had served as a state legislator before retiring from the court in 2004. He showed no reaction when he was sentenced.
At his trial this summer, his former court reporter, Lisa Foster, testified that she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times during trial between 2001 and 2003. Prosecutors said he also used a device known as a penis pump during at least four trials in the same period.
Thompson, 59, was convicted last month of four felony courts of indecent exposure for incidents that took place in his Creek County courtroom.
Thompson, a married father of three grown children, testified that the penis pump was given to him as a joke by a longtime hunting and fishing buddy.
"It wasn't something I was hiding," he said.
He said he may have absentmindedly squeezed the pump's handle during court cases but never used it to masturbate.
Foster told authorities that she saw Thompson use the device almost daily during the August 2003 murder trial of a man accused of shaking a toddler to death. A whooshing sound could be heard on Foster's audiotape of the trial. When jurors asked the judge about the sound, Thompson said he hadn't heard it but would listen for it.
Police built a case against the judge after a police officer testifying in a 2003 murder trial saw a piece of plastic tubing disappear under Thompson's robe. During a lunch break, officers took photographs of the pump under the desk.
Investigators later checked the carpet, Thompson's robes and the chair behind the bench and found semen, according to court records.
Carmelia Brossett, a senior probation officer for the state Department of Corrections, said in a presentencing report that Thompson refused to undergo psychosexual testing.
"Thompson's denial of the offense would likely present difficulty, if not inability for treatment providers to provide meaningful and beneficial sex-offender treatment," she said.
The jury recommended a sentence of one year in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count. The jury foreman has said it was the jury's intent that Thompson serve the full sentence.
Judge C. Allen McCall denied a defense motion asking that Thompson be allowed to remain free pending an appeal. Thompson was also ordered to pay a $40,000 fine.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-18-judge-sentenced_x.htm
911 caller in [Harvard] Gates case contradicts officer
She denies telling him that she saw 'two black males with backpacks'
A police report said the caller described the possible burglars as "two black males with backpacks" — leading some commentators to vilify the caller as racist since it turned out Gates was entering his own home.
But the 911 recording released by police showed that Lucia Whalen never said two black men were involved. She did not describe their race, acknowledged they might just be having a hard time with the door and said she saw two suitcases on the porch.
"I was called racist and I was a target of scorn and ridicule because of the things I never said," she said. "The criticism hurt me as a person, but it also hurt the community of Cambridge."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32203737/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/
In other words, the cops do what they do best, lied.
Tyranny is government denial of our Natural Rights. They are defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The world is changing. People must speak up. Please share your stories of police abuse.
Judicial malfeasance, and other governmental violations are of interest.
CPS cases, illegal roadside check points, brutality cases, all violations of Posse Commitatus, etc.
http://oathkeepers.org/oath Any officials who take offense here please visit Oath Keepers.
http://gunowners.org/ They are your rights, hold on to them.
http://www.copblock.org/ A decentralized project supported by a diverse group of individuals
united by their shared goal of police accountability..
BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA&NR=1
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