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In a speech that lasted almost 30 minutes, Judge Vonda Evans of Detroit laid into 47-year-old William Melendez, the former Inkster, Michigan, police officer caught on video beating an unarmed black man in January 2015. Melendez was sentenced to 13 months to 10 years in prison Tuesday for his role in the attack on Floyd Dent, a 58-year-old black auto worker, that occurred during a late night traffic stop in the struggling Wayne County suburb last winter. "The one image [from this trial] that stood out to the court was looking at Mr. Dent in his cell, shaking his head...

Let me say up front that I know this will be unpopular. But I can't help the uneasiness that I feel toward law enforcement lately...and I have some good reasons. Gone are the days of Officer Friendly, the neighborhood cop who knows everyone and is looking out for the community's best interest. It seems that lately, police officers end up terrorizing those they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Clearly, not all police are acting this way, but it sure seems the police state is ramping up. I have a high respect for police officers who respect the law....

Proving to be unstable, combative and petty, an FBI agent interjected himself in a family custodial dispute on behalf of his girlfriend and her estranged husband, who was two hours late in dropping off their baby. But FBI Agent Gerald Rogero’s intrusive attempts at heroism led to him assaulting and threatening to shoot the 15-year-old son of the estranged husband’s girlfriend. He then threatened the teen’s mother with arrest when she tried to intervene

Police in St. Paul, Minnesota, have put an officer on leave while investigators try to figure out if he's responsible for a Facebook post urging drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — and how to get away with it. "Run them over. Keep traffic flowing and don't slow down for any of these idiots who try and block the streets," said the post attributed to RM Roth. "Since they are trying to block the street and/or cross where there is no crossing you should not be charged with anything." Andrew Henderson saw...

The Metropolitan Police officer who was arrested Monday on domestic battery charges was arrested four years before on similar charges, but that case was dismissed, the Clark County district attorney's office confirmed Wednesday. James Burt, 41, was taken into custody Monday on suspicion of domestic battery by strangulation and kidnapping involving his girlfriend, an arrest report shows. In 2011, he was arrested on two counts of domestic battery, coercion with force and kidnapping involving his then-wife. They divorced about a year later. That first case was dismissed less than six weeks after he was arrested. "What it looks like on...

MESA, Ariz. (KSAZ) - A woman has been arrested after telling police she beat a 16-year-old teen after finding him in bed with her teenage daughter inside her Mesa home on Thanksgiving.According to court documents, Jeanette Woods found the boy in her 16-year-old daughter's bed after the two had consensual sex. The two teens had fallen asleep when the boy says he awoke to Woods yelling at him and punching him in the face just after 1 a.m.The boy says Woods was straddling him and repeatedly punching him in the face and body. The boy eventually broke free, but Woods...

HEMPSTEAD, Tex. The state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the Chicago-area woman who three days later was found hanged in her cell at the Waller County jail, has been indicted on a perjury charge, a special prosecutor said here Wednesday. The charge against the Texas state trooper, Brian T. Encinia, is a Class A misdemeanor, and was announced at the end of a day of grand jury deliberations. The charge carries a possible penalty of one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, prosecutors said. The charge stemmed from a one-page affidavit that Trooper Encinia filed with jail officials justifying...

Las Vegas police Monday outlined a handful of missteps, including miscommunication from the U.S. Marshals Office, that led up to the moment two Metro officers shot and killed an unarmed fugitive holding a cell phone in front of a west valley home on New Year's Eve. Eighteen minutes before the shooting, Metro knew nothing about the fugitive, Keith Childress. Though the agency often works with U.S. Marshals to catch fugitives, Metro had its eye on the Strip that afternoon, where about 1,000 officers were working with the Nevada National Guard to secure the area for celebrations, Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said....

San Diego police officer Browder killed a man who initially he said was unarmed. After viewing this video, he changed his story and claimed the man was holding a knife, which he wasn't.

EXCERPT: Noel Aguilar was killed by Los Angeles County deputies Albert Murad and Jose Ruiz in 2014 who claimed that they shot him after he tried to grab one of their guns. They also alleged Aguilar had a loaded weapon. Now footage of the incident, dropped off anonymously at the attorney's office for the suspect's family, appears to show the two officers shooting Aguilar while he was lying face down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him. Attorney for the family, Humberto Guizar, said the video is 'clear evidence of an execution... Guizar also claims footage shows one...

A northwest suburb of Chicago has agreed to pay $875,000 to a woman who accused a police officer of using excessive force after a DUI arrest.

CHICAGO — How do you make sure police officers are held accountable if most of their full disciplinary records are no longer available? That question is at the center of what might be the next big battle brewing over police accountability across the country, and specifically in Chicago. The recent release of videos showing deadly shootings of black citizens by white police officers in Chicago has many demanding police accountability and has led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the patterns and practices of the Chicago Police Department. And now, there is a legal fight over the destruction...

A California police officer will not face criminal charges after he shot a DUI suspect.

The women were teenagers and grandmothers. Most were living on the margins. All of them were black. And during a month-long trial that became a symbol of police predation, they formed a bleak parade of 13 witnesses who accused a former Oklahoma City officer of using his badge to coerce sex acts and rape. On Thursday, after 45 hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Daniel Holtzclaw, 28, on five counts of rape and 13 other counts of sexual assault, including six of sexual battery. The convictions included four for first-degree rape, which carries a possible sentence of life in prison....

Gray protests Statement from officers in Freddie Gray case ruled admissible Trial dates for officers charged in Freddie Gray death set Baltimore, Freddie Gray family reach $6.4M settlement By Jason Hanna, Mark Morgenstein and Ray Sanchez CNN Baltimore police Officer William Porter, one of six officers charged in the April death of Freddie Gray, took the stand at his own trial Wednesday, and said there were no signs that Gray — eventually found to have broken his neck in a police van — needed immediate medical attention. "I didn't call for a medic because after talking to Mr. Gray he...

As a parade of San Francisco cops questioned the police commission last night about why the city might not trust them to view footage from the body cameras they’d soon be required to wear on duty, five of their colleagues were across town, shooting an allegedly knife-wielding man. It was a hell of a night all around. The shooting happened roughly an hour before the commission meeting, calling Police Chief Greg Suhr away from City Hall. There was plenty of blue on display without him, though: Cops were lined up around the bend trying to convince the commissioners to see...

McDonald runs towards one police cruiser while brandishing a knife, a 2nd cruiser rolls up, cop steps out walks towards McDonald and proceeds to shoot him 16 times.

The single image of LaQuan McDonald for the past six months has been that of a 17-year-old African-American teenager dressed in a red graduation cap and gown. Beyond the fact that he was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer the night of October 20, 2014, only a few facts about the remainder of his life have been reported. /See video at link)

Police say footage of an officer-involved shooting contributed to prosecutors’ decision to press charges. All of it was filmed. The police chase of an SUV after dark on a weeknight. The shots fired. The driver, struck in the head. His son, 6 years old, shot dead in the front seat. The fatal shooting of Jeremy Mardis in Marksville, Louisiana, on Tuesday was captured on a body camera worn by one of the four police officers present at the scene. And it was that video footage that led in part to the decision to charge two of them with second-degree murder...

NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana investigators are combing through evidence in the shooting death earlier this week of a 6-year-old autistic boy after authorities charged two law enforcement officers in the shooting. Modal Trigger Col. Mike Edmonson, in a late night press conference Friday, said the two officers were being booked on charges of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in the Tuesday shooting death of Jeremy Mardis and the wounding of his father, Chris Few, in the central Louisiana town of Marksville. -snip- Speaking of the body camera footage that was recovered from the officers, he said: "It is the...