Free Republic

TOTTENVILLE (WABC) -- The New York Medical Examiner has ruled Eric Garner died from a chokehold used by a police officer during his arrest for selling untaxed, loose cigarettes last month, calling it a homicide. The autopsy found that Garner, 43, died as a result of compression of neck, compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police. Mayor Bill de Blasio released the following statement. "On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest sympathies to the family of Eric Garner ... My administration will continue to work with all involved authorities, including the Richmond County...

SAN ANTONIO -- Three San Antonio Police officers are being investigated for possibly using excessive force, after a May 20 incident in west San Antonio left a man with injuries to his face, skull and neck. Roger Carlos was in the 10600 block of Westover Hills Boulevard taking photos of a building that will soon be home to his wife's medical practice, when he was approached by three officers around 2:30 p.m. The officers were identified as an undercover drug task force officer and two SAPD SWAT members. According to an SAPD incident report released to the I-Team, the officers...

STUNNING DEVELOPMENT: DC Police Chief Lanier just told force not to arrest a person who can legally carry a gun in DC or any state.More -- DC police chief using guidance from AG -- grants full reciprocity for all open and concealed carry from others states.

La Joya (KNVO) — It was a terrifying situation in a Texas border town as authorities exchanged gunfire with a murder suspect. Border patrol agents were under fire as they tried to arrest a man in La Joya, on the Rio Grande River near the Gulf of Mexico. Two law enforcement officers were shot, but both are expected to recover. Authorities said the man was wanted for a murder in Edinburg. He was also believed to be a member of the notorious "Texas Syndicate" prison gang. The gunman had barricaded himself in an apartment and fired at sheriff's deputies and...

Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is covered by the taxpayers. Their unions are among the strongest in the country. No, I’m not talking about public-school teachers. I’m talking...

The number of cops killed nationwide in the line of duty was up 31 percent during the first six months of this year. A new report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund shows California leading all states with eight police officer deaths, followed by New York, Florida, Texas and Virginia with four each. Fund Chairman Craig Floyd says there's been a 37-percent increase in traffic-related incidents and a 56-percent increase in officers killed by gunfire, five of them in ambush-style attacks. Craig blames those attacks, including the one earlier this month on Jersey City police officer Melvin Santiago...

The weird story of the Florida police station with two Klansmen officers just took a weirder-er turn: the ex-wife of one of the officers accused of joining the Ku Klux Klan has turned around, saying his former boss actually told him to go undercover in the first place. Ann Hunnewell, the ex-wife of Officer George Hunnewell, was working as a secretary at the Fruitland Park Police Department when her boss approached her and her husband with an unusual assignment: as she told the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, he wanted the two of them to infiltrate the local Klan to...

Albuquerque police’s new chief says the latest officer involved shooting that killed a homeless man in the foothills is justified. But new video police released Friday is raising a lot of questions about how it all played out. The release came Friday as APD’s first press conference since the shooting. http://krqe.com/2014/03/21/apd-officer-involved-shooting-was-justified/ Read more at

Dallas Northington spent nearly eight years working for Target in loss prevention, roaming the stores and scanning the surveillance cameras. In an episode at the Leesburg Target store in May that he said was typical, a man was allegedly captured twice on video shoplifting, and Northington responded as he said he always did: He called the Leesburg police, made a report and provided them the videos of the two incidents. But the man in the video may have been a Fairfax County sheriff’s deputy, Northington said he soon learned. And within days, two things happened: The deputy retired from the...

<p>Instead of honoring the officer, the memorial was for his suspected killer. "Rest easy," ''Thug in peace" and "See u on the other side" friends wrote about  Lawrence Campbell, who police say ambushed Officer Melvin Santiago early Sunday as he responded to an armed robbery call at a 24/7 pharmacy.</p>

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey (AP) — A gunman who killed a rookie officer responding to a report of an armed robbery at a drugstore early Sunday never tried to rob the store and instead lay in wait for police, telling a witness to watch the news because he was "going to be famous," authorities said.

“Today was a horrible day for Jersey City,” said Jersey Mayor Steven Fulop who held a press conference this morning at the Jersey city Medical Center announcing the death of Officer Melvin Santiago. Santiiago was pronounced dead at the Jersey City Medical Center after being shot while responding to a report of an armed robbery at the Walgreen’s store at Communipaw Avenue and Kenndy Boulevard early this morning, Fulop said

The police department in Tucson, Ariz. has released raw video footage from the camera police officer Joel Mann was wearing when he brutally pummeled a female student who was walking innocuously just off the campus of the University of Arizona. The newly-released footage – and other, cell phone-taken video of the same incident from a different perspective – was taken on Saturday, March 29. Tucson police had deployed in full pseudo-military riot gear in case students and fans damaged any property after the Arizona Wildcats men’s basketball team lost an overtime thriller to the Wisconsin Badgers. (VIDEO: TYRANNY IN TUCSON:...

A California trooper has been filmed brutally beating a woman on the side of a highway - but authorities claimed he simply stopped her for her own safety. A passing motorist recorded the unidentified California Highway Patrol officer as he punched the woman at least 11 times in the head along the 10 Freeway in Los Angeles on Tuesday. On the video uploaded to YouTube, the woman can be seen trying to protect herself by putting up her hands but she does not appear to resist the trooper. 'The most animalistic, most brutal way to subdue someone is to pound...

A man was shot and killed after he snatched a two-year-old girl out of a shopping cart and held her hostage in an Oklahoma grocery store. The surveillance video shows the dramatic moments as wanted felon Sammie Wallace grabs a two-year-old girl inside the store in Midwest City. The man grabbed the child from the shopping cart for no apparent reason and then began to hold a knife to her throat as he began to ramble and make crazy, incoherent demands. As her mom screams for help, other shoppers call 911 and begin surrounding Wallace. Officers spent 30 minutes negotiating...

TEMPE, Ariz. (CBS Las Vegas) - An Arizona State University English professor is claiming self-defense against a campus police officer who slammed her to the front of a police car last month. Dr. Ersula Ore was walking near campus when she was stopped by an officer while crossing College Avenue near Fifth Street. “The reason I’m talking to you right now is because you are walking in the middle of the street,” Officer Stewart Ferrin said in a video recording obtained by KTVK. “Let me see your ID or you will be arrested for failing to provide ID.” “Are you...

Illinois State Police says he is above the law.

The Pentagon has donated hundreds of MRAP vehicles to police departments nationwide. Snip: Historians looking back at this period in America’s development will consider it to be profoundly odd that at the exact moment when violent crime hit a 50-year low, the nation’s police departments began to gear up as if the country were expecting invasion — and, on occasion, to behave as if one were underway. The ACLU reported recently that SWAT teams in the United States conduct around 45,000 raids each year, only 7 percent of which have anything whatsoever to do with the hostage situations with...

A video uploaded online shows a woman pulled to the ground, handcuffed and placed in the back of a patrol vehicle after she asked a San Diego deputy to identify himself during a traffic stop. The video shows San Diego Sheriff's Department deputies walking toward Bana Mouwakeh's silver Volkswagen on October 11 of last year, 10 News reported. Mouwakeh is heard saying to Deputy Agustin Rosas Verion, 'I want your full name.' She grabs his traffic vest in order to see his ID tag. ...As I was explaining to Mouwakeh the citation, she reached out the driver's side window, grabbed...

A small Wisconsin town's chief of police, who admitted to investigators that he harassed a tea party protester by signing him up for online dating, porn and other accounts, is now under criminal investigation and suspended from his job. Tim Keleman, chief of police in the Town of Campbell, near LaCrosse, told the investigators that he just wanted to get back at the man he said was causing much distraction and hassle for the town by suing over the town's ban on signs and banners from a pedestrian bridge where the tea party wanted to send its message. Greg Luce,...