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A police officer in Fort Worth was taken off patrol Monday after video surfaced showing him pepper-spraying passing bikers from the side of the road. WFAA reports that a force spokesman admitted "pepper-spraying drivers is not a department-endorsed tactic" and confirmed an investigation was underway.
News 8 spoke Monday to Jack Kinney, the man who recorded the video with his helmet camera, and Chase Stone, who edited the video and posted it to Facebook. They say a group of about 200 motorcyclists were traveling up northbound U.S. 287 in Fort Worth Sunday afternoon when a Fort Worth police officer pulled over one of the motorcycle group's "safety vehicles," which is a vehicle that follows behind bikers in case of an incident.
In the edited video, which slows down and zooms in at one point, so viewers can see more clearly, the officer appears to spray something directly into oncoming traffic as he exits his vehicle. The bikers say it was pepper spray.… "His intent was to hit the bikers for sure, there’s no doubt about it," Stone says.
The emerging defense appears to be "people were complaining about the bikers weaving," as if pepper-spraying them at speed is going to make the roads safer. Read the rest
Sensitive electronic files from America’s biggest police union were posted online this week after a hacker breached the Fraternal Order of Police website. The ill-gotten dump includes officers' names and addresses, message board posts bashing Barack Obama, and details of eyebrow-raising contracts made between the union and city authorities.
Two of the most prominent makers of body-worn cameras for cops and first responders are fightin' it out over patents.
In a now-viral police killing video captured in San Francisco, a 26-year-old man stands up against a wall as a group of police officers aim their guns at him. Mario Woods, 26, was then shot to death, execution-style.
Officer Jenchesky Santiago, of the Prince George's County, Maryland, police force was convicted of first-degree assault and misconduct in office. Santiago threatened a man, while holding a gun to his head, apparently to impress his friends. His police chief was less impressed and is recommending Santiago be fired.
Via the Washington Post:
Alsobrooks said that Santiago repeatedly asked the men what they were doing there, even after they explained that Cunningham lived in the house.
Santiago told them they were parked illegally — which prosecutors said was not true — and Cunningham said he would get out of the car and go inside.
Alsobrooks said Santiago then backed up, parked his cruiser and ran to Cunningham at the door of his home, where Santiago pulled out his gun.
“I was shocked. At the instant he pointed the gun to my head, I was shocked,” Cunningham said. He said that he was so dumbfounded that he found it hard to move quickly, and at first he simply repeated what was happening to his cousin, who was still nearby .
In the video, Cunningham says, “He put a gun to my head. He put a gun to my head,” before freezing in place for a long moment with Santiago’s weapon in his face.
Witnesses, including Cunningham, told investigators that Santiago allegedly uttered a threat that was not caught on video. Alsobrooks said the threat was: “We’re PG police, and we shoot people."
A New York man who spent a month in jail after Pennsylvania state police mistook homemade soap he was traveling with for cocaine has filed a lawsuit.
I loved watching the 1986 comedy TV series "Sledge Hammer!" as a kid. David Rasche's portrayal of San Francisco's most aggressive, least sensitive, and completely absurd police detective, the titular Sledge, is fantastic.
Between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2014, Los Angeles County district attorney records show at least 375 people were shot by on-duty officers. No officers have been prosecuted for any of those shootings.
About one in four of those people were unarmed.
Law enforcement officers in LA fatally shot Black people at triple the rate of White and Latino people, relative to population.
That's the lede from Southern California Public Radio KPCC's important, interactive investigative report on “officer-involved shootings” in LA, and there's a lot more to be upset about in those numbers, too.
Here's a 30-second peek into our analysis of #LACounty #OfficerInvolved shootings. Explore: https://t.co/pR6yqNL0QF pic.twitter.com/2mFqc5DEOa
— 89.3 KPCC (@KPCC) November 10, 2015
A police officer in Arkansas sparked a manhunt and investigation when he claimed he'd been shot during a traffic stop by a “Hispanic man in his 30s.” Turns out that was total bullshit. David Houser, 50, was arrested Tuesday after finally admitting to his colleagues that it never happened, there was no traffic stop, and no scary brown guy. The cop just shot himself, and apparently by accident.
Spoiler: Native Americans.
A police officer in the Northern California city of Rohnert Park was caught on video pulling his gun on a resident who was recording the cop on his cellphone.
An explosion last weekend at a National Institute of Standards and Technology lab in Gaithersburg, MD threw a blast-shield 25 feet. Investigators found "pseudoephedrine, drain cleaner, and a recipe for meth" in the wreckage. Read the rest
In 2009, Colorado police officer Mark Magness broke an innocent man's arm during an illegal fireworks investigation. Magness pled guilty, but the police department didn't fire him.
