Free Republic

A Hillsborough sheriff's deputy who said he had always wanted to spend his life in law enforcement used a Taser on his wife then held his service pistol to her head before he was arrested and held for mental evaluation, deputies say. Carlos Thomas Tanner, 38, a 10-year veteran of the sheriff's office, was arrested at his Dover home about 1:45 a.m. Monday. He is charged with felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor battery-domestic violence. Tanner was taken in under the state's Baker Act because he threatened to harm himself if he were arrested, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie...

SAN JUAN -- A Mission police officer has been suspended indefinitely after a Saturday morning arrest for allegedly driving an unmarked police car while drunk, officials said. This is at least the third arrest on suspicion of driving while intoxicated for Officer Martin Flores Villarreal, 40, of Mission, and at least his second while driving an unmarked Mission police car, according to court records and Trooper Johnny Hernandez, a local spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. The first two charges, in 2004 and 2006, were both dismissed, court records indicate. Villarreal is suspended from the department indefinitely and...

Hundreds of cases could be dropped Prosecutors say they will throw out pending cases in which 2 police officers facing charges played a major role. By Gary L. Wright gwright@charlotteobserver.com Mecklenburg prosecutors say they'll dismiss a “substantial” number of criminal cases made by two police officers now facing drug conspiracy charges. District Attorney Peter Gilchrist said Friday he'll dismiss any pending cases in which Charlotte-Mecklenburg officers Jason Ross and Gerald Holas played a crucial role. Gilchrist might also agree with defense lawyers to set aside some convictions if it can be shown that the cases substantially hinged on the two...

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - Exclusive video obtained by Action News 5 shows a Memphis police officer beating a suspect at 201 Poplar in an apparent case of police brutality. The video, recorded February 12th, shows Duanna Johnson in the booking area at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center after an arrest for prostitution. The tape clearly shows a Memphis police officer walk over to Johnson - a transsexual - and hit her in the face several times. "Actually he was trying to get me to come over to where he was, and I responded by telling him that wasn't my...

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged a South Carolina state trooper with striking an African-American man with his patrol car, while videotaping the incident with the cruiser's dashboard camera, NBC News reported.

In yet another in the series of "guess the missing party label" we once again present the case of imprisoned former Broward County (FL) sheriff, Ken Jenne. As we have seen before, the South Florida news media is extremely reluctant to apply a party label to the disgraced Jenne, who was convicted of mail fraud and tax evasion while in office, despite the fact that the Broward sheriff  office is most most important political post in the county. A hint as to what  is Jenne's political label is the fact that if he had been a Republican, we would have seen that fact...

Among the thousands of drivers who have been issued $40 fines after being nabbed by Montgomery County's new speed cameras are scores of county police officers. The difference is, many of the officers are refusing to pay. The officers are following the advice of their union, which says the citations are issued not to the driver but to the vehicle's owner -- in this case, the county. That view has rankled Police Chief J. Thomas Manger and County Council Member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), who chairs the Public Safety Committee. "You can't have one set of laws for police officers and...

DETROIT - A former federal agent who pleaded guilty to faking a marriage to gain U.S. citizenship and improperly searching FBI databases was sentenced Tuesday to pay $975 in fines and other fees, but will serve no prison time. U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn said Nada Nadim Prouty, 38, "erred in judgment" 19 years ago when she lied to enter the U.S. in 1989 from her native Lebanon, but has provided "exemplary service to the country" as a federal agent. Cohn also signed an order revoking Prouty's citizenship, but Prouty's attorney Thomas Cranmer said after the hearing she will...

A former top State Police official who killed himself left behind a detailed suicide note focusing on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe of the Dirty Tricks Scandal and feared an ongoing investigation of ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer's involvement with prostitutes, The Post has learned. Recently retired State Police Inspector Gary Berwick, who hung himself in the garage of his home on Thursday, wrote a wide-ranging and sometimes rambling suicide note, sources said. The letter zeroed in on his close relationship with former acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton, a key figure in last summer's political espionage scandal who was dumped after...

ADMITTED TO AFFAIRS BEFORE PROBE Associated Press May 2, 2008 -- Gov. David Paterson said Friday that he admitted past marital affairs in part because he feared an "out-of-control" element in the state police that he says was investigating politicians. The Democrat, who took office in March after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer amid a prostitution scandal, had already called for an investigation into lawmakers' claims that a state police unit was keeping tabs on elected officials. At that time, though, he wouldn't say if he believed there was such a unit and the state police union said it doubted...

COLUMBUS (AP) — Gov. Ted Strickland has asked the state Highway Patrol to fire two troopers who engaged in a prank involving a costume that resembled a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Strickland said today that the behavior by the troopers from the Sandusky post could not be tolerated. A patrol report says trooper Craig Franklin is pictured in a Jan. 20 cell phone photo wearing a white cone on his head, a white paper mask and a white cloth. Trooper Eric Wlodarsky forwarded the cell phone photo. The state's public safety director had recommended firing. However, a union contract provision...

Today's New York Post reports that new Governor David Paterson has authorized Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to launch a criminal probe into the New York State Police. The allegations to be investigated include illegal leaks of information statewide, politically motivated investigations and looking the other way while former Governor Eliot Spitzer repeatedly patronized high priced prostitutes. If this is how the state's police operate, no wonder Hillary has expressed interest in running for governor if her presidential bid fails.

March 31, 2008 ALBANY - The scandal-scarred State Police is suspected of harboring a renegade unit that for years has secretly compiled personal information on top New York officials - possibly including Gov. Paterson, The Post has learned. The governor got a whiff of the existence of such an illegal, politically directed operation after being told by several lawmakers that the State Police targeted them for unjustified traffic stops and "interfered in their personal lives," a senior Paterson aide told The Post yesterday. The explosive information - supplied to Paterson by both Democrats and Republicans - suggests that the Dirty...

The prostitution ring that ensnared New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer stunned officers at SAPD. For some, the big surprise wasn't that a federal wiretap captured a governor arranging to meet a call girl. No, the shock was how much prostitutes were charging: $1,000 to $5,500 per hour. "That's crazy," one cop said. "Who could afford that?" Court papers say a number of wealthy men met with Emperor's Club prostitutes in New York, Washington, London, Paris, Miami, and Los Angeles. Spitzer, an affidavit says, paid $4,300 in cash. "Amazing," said a second officer. "Makes you wonder what the girl did in...

A government official in Goa has accused Indian police of trying to cover up the murder of a British girl. Scarlett Keeling, 15, of Bideford, Devon, was found dead on a beach last month. Police initially said she had died after drinking too much. Local man Samson D'Souza, 29, has been charged with rape but not with murder. Goa's Tourism Minister Francisco X Pacheco has stated that Indian police deliberately covered up Miss Keeling's murder. He told the Reuters news agency: "This is a clear case of murder and it has gone out of proportion because police tried to cover...

Police Officer Faces Charges In K-9's Death 8:39 am EDT March 10, 2008 MIAMI -- A Miami K-9 officer is expected to surrender Monday morning to face animal cruelty charges for allegedly allowing his police dog to starve to death. Investigators said the 4-year-old bloodhound named Dynasty weighed 33 pounds when she died in November, though she had weighed almost twice that 10 months earlier. Officer Rondal Brown was relieved of duty while the investigation was pending. His attorney said it's "utter nonsense" to claim the officer intentionally harmed or killed his police dog. Brown has spent most of his...

Los Angeles Police Department investigators routinely fail to fully investigate citizens' complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information in ways that help exonerate the officers, according to a report to be released today. The 34-page report by the Police Commission's inspector general raises questions about the department's ability to police itself, adding to still-unresolved problems highlighted in previous reports. The audit, which is expected to be presented to the civilian Police Commission today, examined how 60 complaints filed against officers in recent years were handled by the officers' supervisors and investigators in the department's internal affairs...

PHILADELPHIA - City prosecutors struggled in a high-profile case this week to get fearful witnesses to stick to their stories, finding a deeply entrenched "code of silence" at work even in the slaying of a 5-year-old girl. In an example of witnesses "going south," or recanting testimony, four key witnesses in the Sept. 25 drive-by shooting of Casha'e Rivers took the stand in city court and withdrew statements they previously gave police. In the most striking reversal, a witness whose statement was videotaped by police one day after the slaying told the judge he had just told police what they...

HONEST KPD personnel have turned over police documents that prove corrupt police have conspired and targeted PINKERTON in an attempt to make PINKERTON a victim of malfeasances' and conspiracy to maliciously prosecute. Pinkerton has posted these files on his website.

A fight erupts among acquaintances, words give way to violence and a bystander is fatally shot amid a crowd of onlookers. For investigators, solving the crime would seem simple enough: question witnesses, identify the gunman and make an arrest. But in this particular case, the killing of a security guard two weeks ago outside a recording studio in Brooklyn, detectives have run into a stubborn wall of silence. Among scores of witnesses, including the rap artist Busta Rhymes and a half-dozen hip-hop celebrities who were present at the filming of a video at the studio, the lack of cooperation has...