Free Republic

PORTSMOUTH — A Kensington man was found guilty of criminal threatening for holding an open pocket knife at his side while asking two people who were walking behind him at midnight, "Why are you following me?" The pair walking behind Dustin Almon, 28, of 27 Wild Rose Lane, were state Liquor Enforcement cops, both in plain clothes without any indicators that they were members of law enforcement, according to testimony during a Thursday Portsmouth District Court trial. Both were also carrying concealed handguns and Tasers, they testified. One of them, Officer Anthony Cattabriga, said he was walking behind Almon on...

PHOENIX (CN) - A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer's partner saying, "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?" The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting. In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of...

In 2007, Shreveport police officer Wiley Willis arrested 38-year-old Angela Garbarino on suspicion of drunken driving. While in custody, as captured on the video below, Garbarino began arguing with Willis about what she said was her right to make a phone call. About a minute later, Willis walked over and turned off the video camera. When the camera returns back on, Garbarino was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. She was later photographed with severe facial injuries that looked to have come from a beating. Willis’ attorney stated that she tripped and fell while the...

The FBI since the September 11 attacks has forged ties with a number of Muslim groups linked to a secretive organization that calls for the methodical takeover of the United States. HUMAN EVENTS has obtained an eight-page memo written by Washington Field Office officials which celebrates the way the FBI, whose mission is law enforcement, has created these "partnerships." Critics, some within the FBI, say the bureau is increasing the statue of groups whose long-term ideological goal is to bring Islamic law to America through jihad, or struggle. A former agent told HUMAN EVENTS the bureau is dealing with the...

When the government accuses a doctor of running a "pill mill," prosecutors portray every aspect of his practice in a sinister light. Prescribing painkillers becomes drug trafficking, applying for insurance reimbursement becomes fraud, making bank deposits becomes money laundering and working with people at the office becomes conspiracy. When Siobhan Reynolds thinks a doctor has been unfairly targeted for such a prosecution, she tries to counter the official narrative by highlighting the patients he has helped and dramatizing the conflict between drug control and pain control. But now the government has turned its reinterpretive powers on Reynolds, portraying the pain...

This is a video of an old man (the likes of which actually built this country) at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. From what I understand, the old guy asked if the people in front of him were even from NH- he implied the congresswoman packed the small venue with supporters/friends. He is then dragged away by guys in black- what uniforms are the officers wearing?

JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

LAVONIA, Ga. (ABP) -- Members of a Southern Baptist church in Northeast Georgia want answers about the police-shooting death of their 29-year-old pastor in a drug-sting operation gone wrong. Jonathan Ayers, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, Ga., died during the night of Sept. 1, hours after being shot by undercover police officers outside a gas station where he had just gotten money from an ATM machine. The Stephens County Sheriff's Office initially identified the shooting victim as a suspect involved in a drug transaction. Later officials clarified that drug enforcement agents were not investigating Ayers, but a...

Plainclothes officers shot and killed a small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said. Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn't targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers. Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman...

ERICHO, Ark. (AP) -- It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

Woah!... This was the scene outside Rep. Jim Moran's town hall meeting on Tuesday night. Today's Hope and Change... Officer Cheeks tells some town hall protesters to put away their signs or he'll "charge them with trespassing or whatever he wants." This video was taken on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at Rep. Jim Moran's (D-VA) Town Hall meeting on Obama Deathcare (Howie Dean was there too) held at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA.

Excuse the vanity but you guys MUST hear this. As you know if you have read any of my posts, I use to be an attorney. Well, my friendly local police department just made a HUGE MISTAKE and I can assure you they will pay for it. I post it here, not for sympathy but to show just how eroded our rights have become.

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...

GLENROCK, Wyo. - A 76-year-old Wyoming man shot with a Taser by police while driving an antique tractor in a small-town parade says it hurt but he's OK. Retired truck driver Bud Grose of Glenrock told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he has a heart condition but didn't require any medical attention. Investigators say police in Glenrock used a Taser on the man after he disobeyed orders. They say the tractor may have hit a car. Two officers were placed on paid leave and state agents are investigating, but the police chief says it doesn't...

<p>WHEN AGNES LAWLESS and three friends were inside a Lukoil convenience store in the Northeast at 3 a.m. last August, they'd all but forgotten the fender-bender in which they'd been involved moments earlier.</p> <p>There was little damage, and the other driver had left the scene, near Northeast Philadelphia Airport.</p>

CHICAGO (AP) - The Cook County state's attorney's office says an off-duty Chicago police officer charged in a fatal hit & run was not given a Breathalyzer test for almost four hours after his arrest. The tests showed that Officer Richard Bolling had a blood-alcohol level of 0.079. That's just under the 0.08 legal limit. A Chicago police spokesman says the department wouldn't comment on the test. The 39-year-old Bolling is charged with reckless homicide, DUI and hit & run after allegedly striking and killing a 13-year-old boy riding his bicycle on the South Side early Friday. Relatives of the...

The union representing Los Angeles police officers is pressuring the owner of San Diego’s main newspaper to change the paper’s editorial stance on labor issues or to fire its editorial writers. The feud is rooted in the recent purchase of the San Diego Union-Tribune by Platinum Equity, a private Beverly Hills firm. Platinum relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems around the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies. As League President Paul M. Weber views it, that makes the...

Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about. As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down. Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened...

Back in 2005, a WalMart worker in Pennsylvania reported 59-year-old Donna Dull to local authorities after Dull dropped off some film that included shots of her three-year-old granddaughter in and just out of the bath. Dull was arrested—roughly, she says—and charged with producing and distributing child pornography. The charges were dropped 15 months later when a Pennsylvania special prosecutor overruled the local DA. Only Dull, her attorney, and police and prosecutors have apparently seen the photos, which are now under seal. She's now suing. In this follow-up article from the York Daily Record, state officials seem to be trying to...

MILWAUKEE - Outdoorsman, gun enthusiast and NRA member Ben Auer believes Wisconsin Attorney General JB Van Hollen just made it easier to carry a gun in public. “He looked at our right and he confirmed it,” Auer told TODAY’S TMJ4 reporter Tom Murray. Van Hollen told prosecutors in a memo that simply carrying a firearm should not result in a disorderly conduct charge. “A number of different district attorneys from around the state requested our opinion on this issue,” Van Hollen said. “When you have people who openly believed that carrying a firearm in and of itself was disorderly conduct,...

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Chief of Police Ed Flynn is hopefully going to be out of a job soon. This is a good thing. Take a deep breath and read this excerpt from a recent Associated Press release. MADISON (AP) — Milwaukee’s police chief said today he’ll go on telling his officers to take down anyone with a firearm despite Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s finding that people can carry guns openly if they do it peacefully. Please take the time to read the entire piece (JPFO copy) This is very important information for any gun owner. Chief Flynn then goes on...

California may be going to pot - literally. Marijuana would be grown and sold openly to adults 21 and older under legislation introduced this morning by a San Francisco lawmaker. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said the cash-starved state could generate more than a billion dollars by taxing pot growers and sellers. Ammiano predicted that the public would support loosening marijuana laws that require substantial public funds to enforce. "I think there's a mentality throughout the state and the country that this isn't the highest priority," he said. "And that maybe we should start to reassess." Before California could legalize...

George Orwell, call your office !If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then city mayors follow a very close second.  In fact, it occurs to me they may be the spiritual offspring of the aforementioned liaisons.  Whenever there is loose change or unclaimed dollar bills laying around, mayors can smell them a mile away and if a Sugar Daddy offers free cash, they never stop to question what the vigorish might be.  The urban emperors, suburban commissars, the hack and the highbrow, the Republican and Democrat, the apolitical and amoral, the exurban apparatchiks all assemble to line dance down Pennsylvania Avenue like ladies of the...

"They hit the door right here and the door flew open," says Mike Hasenei, standing outside his Elkridge home. His wife, Phyllis, was watching television with her 12-year old daughter when members of the Howard County Police Tactical Team came through the door. "They had guns pointed at us. You have 25 guys coming in here all dressed in black and all that we saw were their eyes, and they're screaming 'Hands in the air!'" Members of the team were acting upon a tip that an assault rifle, magazines and hollow-point bullets stolen from a marked police car the night...

More than a month after Sam Salter wound up in the Ramsey County jail for two nights, the 40-year-old adjunct college instructor from Hudson, Wis., is still fuming. "You feel totally helpless," he said. At the end of a New Year's Eve traffic stop on Interstate 94 in St. Paul, State Patrol Sgt. Carrie Rindal rammed Salter's 2001 Toyota Sienna van, causing $1,500 damage to his vehicle, and arrested him at gunpoint while his three children, ages 2, 3 and 6, sat in the van. His wife had to pick up the kids as he was taken to jail. Rindal...

Collateral raid damage In January 2007, a SWAT team in Lima, Ohio, shot and killed Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old mother, during a drug raid at the home of her boyfriend, Anthony Terry. When the unarmed Wilson was shot, she was kneeling on the ground, complying with police orders. She was holding her 1-year-old son, Sincere, who was also shot, losing his left hand. A subsequent investigation revealed that Officer Joseph Chavalia heard another officer shooting Terry’s two dogs, mistook the noise for hostile gunfire, panicked, and fired blindly into the room where Wilson was kneeling. Chavalia was charged with involuntary...

Slideshow: Oakland Train Station Shooting OAKLAND, Calif. – The transit officer who shot and killed an unarmed man may have mistakenly pulled his service pistol instead of a stun gun, his lawyer said Friday.

Boston police are investigating allegations that officers who were assigned to guard the home of a homicide suspect remained inside his apartment, watching television and resting on the couch even before detectives obtained a search warrant. On Tuesday night, seven hours after Christopher Jamison, 23, allegedly shot Anthony Perry, 22, in Jamaica Plain, officers went inside his Roxbury home and ordered his mother to leave. After police looked through the apartment to be sure no one else was present, at least two officers remained inside most of the night without a warrant, said Ozell Hudson Jr., a Boston-based lawyer representing...

Seconds after BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, police immediately began confiscating cell phones containing videos that have yet to see the light of day. In fact, the only videos that have been seen by the public were filmed by people who managed to leave the scene before police confronted them.In one instance, police chased after Karina Vargas after she stepped on the train, banging on the window after the doors closed and demanding her to turn over the camera. The train sped away with Vargas still holding her camera.Her video, which did not show the...

A new bill is being introduced called, Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, which would require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera's phone. It would also prohibit such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone. While its a good gesture, I do not believe having such a law would deter criminals from hacking their camera phones to take pictures in inappropriate ways. Also, the real criminals would not even use a camera phone but would probably use other devices such as...

A Chicago Police officer pleaded guilty today to a civil rights violation for beating a 60-year-old man who was handcuffed and shackled to a wheelchair. ">snip<"

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has a simple, blunt message for hunters in Wisconsin: When a DNR warden asks you to give up your legal firearm, do so, plain and simple, no matter what. What's more, that goes for all citizens, the agency has asserted. Citizens with firearms, the DNR argues, should always do exactly what law enforcement officers tell them to do, regardless of the circumstances of the situation. To which one former hunter education instructor for the department has an equally simple and blunt response: The agency's directive is unconstitutional, plain and simple, and citizens don't have...

PHOENIX, AZ -- Brutis the cat is back home with his owner after going through a bit of a pickle. He had been stuck in a neighbor's tree for nine days, according to the owner. And the cat's owner says a police officer may have been partly to blame. The cat got away from his owner, Michael, last Sunday at a home near 12th Street and Bell Road. When Michael finally tracked Brutis down, he was stuck in the branches, two stories in the air, on his neighbor's property. The neighbor is a Phoenix police officer. Michael had tried to get the cat...

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on. As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me." Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men...

Update - 12/13/08 - the trial date we hear has been postponed to a later date. If someone disagreed with you about an article or story you published and then complained to the police who came into your business and arrested you for disorderly conduct, would that incident be newsworthy? What if the police arrested you for disorderly conduct while you were exercising any other constitutionally protected right because someone did not want you to exercise your right? Would you want to tell the people of Wisconsin how fragile it is to exercise their rights? Once arrested, do you think...

With the help of CIA spotters,the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying drugs, in many cases without warning and within two to three minutes of being sighted, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday. It is the first public disclosure of the number of planes shot down between 1995 and 2001 as part of the Airbridge Denial Program,a CIA counternarcotics effort that killed an innocent American missionary,Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter in 2001. A State Department investigation into the incident at the time said the Peruvian fighter jets forced another...

Swat Team conducts food raid in rural Ohio December 4, 2008 See also Community Policing, http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/Community-Policing.htm and Training an army of world servers http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/1-service.htm Home http://www.crossroad.to/index.html "Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement. The 1980s and 1990s have seen marked changes in the number of state and local paramilitary units, in their mission and deployment, and in their tactical armament." –Cato Institute. http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/#paramilitary "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve...

Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general will not sit well with advocates of Second Amendment rights — Holder has consistently championed stronger gun-control measures. As deputy attorney general in the Bill Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001, Holder “was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control,” according to The Volokh Conspiracy, a Web site that focuses on the legal system and the courts. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three-day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" by anyone...

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) - A North Carolina sheriff's official has apologized for plunging a funeral into chaos when undercover agents tried to arrest the dead man's son—and used a Taser on him in the process. It happened as the coffin was being loaded into a hearse. The officers planned to quietly arrest pallbearer Gladwyn Taft Russ III, The Star-News of Wilmington reported Wednesday. Relatives said two deputies dressed in coats and ties grabbed Russ and kneed him in his back before Tasering him. One deputy's gun fell out of its holster. Russ' sister, Taffy Gause, said when she got out...

BATFE Adds Theft to Its Crimes Friday, October 17, 2008 Coloseum Software Corporation has developed software that will help dealers record all of the information that is unconstitutionally required by the federal government -- and to keep that information in a way that insulates them from bogus prosecutions at the hands of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (aka The Gang). The document that is most often involved in "gotcha" injustices is the Form 4473 which all customers must fill out when buying from a licensed federal firearms dealer -- a requirement that is yet another unconstitutional imposition...

Keovongsa Siharath was arrested in Henry County on charges he punched his stepfather. Jeffrey Churchill was charged with assault in an altercation with a woman in a mall parking lot. All three are now officers with the Atlanta Police Department. More than one-third of recent Atlanta Police Academy graduates have been arrested or cited for a crime, according to a review of their job applications. The arrests ranged from minor offenses such as shoplifting to violent charges including assault. More than one-third of the officers had been rejected by other law enforcement agencies, and more than half of the recruits...

All officers involved were fired or quit The raid on Russell's Tire Shop had the look of a successful garden-variety drug bust. Acting on an informant's tip, police stormed the building on North Galvez Street and hauled out three suspects, a bag of heroin, a quarter-ounce of crack cocaine and more than $4,000 in cash. Police say they found the evidence in plain sight. But 11 months after the August 2002 bust, prosecutors dropped the charges. And this June, attorneys for the city offered the men accused of dealing the drugs $85,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged the four...

The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff's Department (that's them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle "The Peacemaker," and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it's generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will "save lives."

Dem cops cuff, stuff Christian girls Sidewalk chalk messages challenged Obama's moral positions ****************** Posted: August 29, 2008 12:30 am Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2008 WorldNetDaily DENVER – Two teenagers who had been given city permission to write their messages protesting Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's support for abortion on public sidewalks during the Democratic National Convention this week were shoved to the sidewalk, cuffed and arrested for doing just that. [SNIP] "I was peacefully sidewalk chalking when I was forcefully pushed to ground by a police officer from behind," Jayne White, 17, described. "As I was being...

Two off-duty female cops yelled, "We are the police!" - and then pistol-whipped a Bronx man in what authorities call a case of road rage. NYPD Officers Michelle Anglin, 37, and Koleen Robinson, 24, were charged with assault, gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon for the Williamsbridge beatdown. It took 25 staples to close the gash in Marlon Smith's head, authorities said. Smith, 35, had pulled up alongside Robinson's black Suburban with his driver's side car door wide open as the two cars sat near E. 218th St. and White Plains Road at 5p.m. Friday. "Close the door,...

Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight. The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs. And, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children. Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point...

Fire captain writes a ticket, tells woman to watch her mouth -snip- And now a 28-year-old single mother must go to court if she wants to fight a ticket for using profanity. On Aug. 4, as local residents prepared for deteriorating weather conditions, Kathryn "Kristi" Fridge made a last-minute stop at the Wal-Mart at FM 1764 and Interstate 45 with her mother and 2-year-old daughter. Finding the batteries shelf bare, she expressed her displeasure and disbelief to her mother. "I was like, 'Dang.' I looked at my mom and said, 'They're all ----ing gone," Fridge recalled. Suddenly, Capt. Alfred Decker,...

WEST PALM BEACH, FL (NBC) - A south Florida police officer has resigned and two others have been suspended after they are caught on tape hitting and kicking a handcuffed suspect. The video paints a disturbing picture. An incident back in late May involving three West Palm Beach police officers following an oxycodone robbery at a CVS. Officers Jason Zangara, Louis Schwartz, and Kirk Graham all became the target of a internal affairs report. West Palm Beach Police Chief Delsa Bush says "in this particular case having the video I chose to substantiate the charge of the use of excessive...

A grand jury will decide whether to bring murder charges against a police officer. A grand jury in rural Louisiana considers Tuesday whether to bring murder charges against a Taser-wielding police officer in what may become a seminal case in the hotly debated history of stun guns. No US jury has ever convicted a police officer in connection with a death related to use of an electroshock weapon. But the number of deaths in which the guns have played a role has been growing, along with their use in law enforcement agencies. Now, the coroner in Winnfield, La., has found...

Prince George's County police Chief Melvin C. High said yesterday that a suburban Washington mayor and his wife were "innocent victims of drug traffickers"....