Free Republic

Deputies sign handcuffs used in take down, give them to Trump PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Martin County deputies who helped arrest a man suspected in Sunday's attempted assassination of Donald Trump had an opportunity to meet the former president at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. Sheriff William Snyder also attended the meeting along with Chief Deputy John Budensiek.... "I'm still here," Trump said to them. During the visit, all of the deputies who apprehended Ryan Routh, 58, of Hawaii, signed the handcuffs and gave them to Trump....The deputies were also invited to stay to have lunch... [video clip and still photo...

The Riverside County Sheriff's Office is investigating the circumstances that led to the arrest of a French Valley woman in the early hours of July 4. The arrest is the subject of a video containing profanity circulating online showing a deputy refusing to leave the woman's residence despite her requests. According to the video, a minor answered the door after the deputy rang the bell. Captions in the video say the minor closed the door after seeing the deputy, only for the deputy to open the door and let himself in. [snip] "Now that I'm inside your house, I own...

Criminals opened fire on at least 134 police officers during routine traffic stops from 2021 through 2023, federal data show. Now, an equity commission convened by the Biden-Harris administration wants to spend $20 million on a pilot program that would deploy unarmed cops to conduct traffic enforcement. The Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity, an Obama-era body revived by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last year, said in a report released this month that cops don’t need to carry guns or tasers with them when out on the streets enforcing traffic laws. The commission, whose membership includes an activist who once said...

NEW - Whistleblowers tell me law enforcement personnel were in fact STATIONED to the roof the day of the Trump rally, but abandoned it, citing the heat. They also say law enforcement were supposed to be patrolling the building, but opted to stay inside instead

BUTLER, Pa. — Channel 11 news uncovered dramatic new details Monday in the moments leading up to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. According to multiple law enforcement sources, Thomas Crooks was spotted by law enforcement on a roof nearly 30 minutes before shots were fired that injured Trump, killed a former fire chief, and injured two others in the crowd.

Officers should have known that handcuffing a compliant 10-year-old is unnecessary, the court ruled. In an unpublished opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that shields government officials from civil suits in cases where the rights they allegedly violated were not clearly established by prior case law. The doctrine protects a wide variety of abusive officials from legal consequences and makes it harder for victims to hold them accountable. Citing previous rulings holding that handcuffing a complaint child surrounded by adults constituted excessive force,...

Thanks to a tip from a friend, I came across a recent story from citizen journalist Tony Seruga that was highly suspect, and very concerning—uniforms, cruiser decals, and radios from the New York Police Department were disappearing, in significant numbers.Now, Seruga is reporting that the missing law enforcement gear and supplies isn’t a mystery that’s exclusive to the Big Apple, but apparently happening across the nation:While I have hundreds of long time trusted contacts between NYPD and LAPD, I am getting messages from LEOs across the U.S. that uniforms, equipment, cruisers (even a SWAT truck) have turned up missing in...

Three Donald Trump supporters were arrested outside Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan Thursday. The group was reportedly told not to go into the street while they unfurled a giant Trump "law and order" flag in the street. In footage captured by Oliya Scootercaster for Freedomnews.tv, the group was heard chanting "let them go," as police arrested the three.

A retired Nashville-area police officer alleges that a psychologist who treated [the] shoot[er] in the 2023 Covenant School massacre referred her to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center psychiatric department before the killings. The claim was made by Tuesday by retired Metro Nashville Police Department Lt. Garet Davidson. He said that shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, who took her own life on the day of the killings, was referred to the medical center for treatment after she had fantasies about violence, according to a report from the Tennessee Star.

A man with a history of targeting cops has been arrested after fatally hitting a Utah police officer with a semi-truck. He has over 20 previous counts of targeting cops. Michael Aaron Jayne, 41, has been arrested after being accused of killing a police officer in Utah over the weekend. Jayne has a long rap sheet of targeting cops with 17 counts of assaulting correctional officers and making criminal threats while in prison as well as attempted murder of other law enforcement in Oregon. During a traffic stop over the weekend, Jayne fled a traffic stop when he was on...

A sheriff's office in southern Colorado has settled a lawsuit with a 71-year-old man who deputies allegedly tased 35 times in 2022 for $1.5 million. Kenneth Espinoza, of Trinidad, was in his truck when Las Animas County sheriff's deputies pulled over his son. Espinoza was asked to pull his vehicle behind the deputies' cars but was almost immediately detained and eventually tased while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car a number of times. Two of those deputies were fired in September 2023. One of the attorneys representing Espinoza said when the deputies were fired that this was "the...

VALLEJO, Calif. -- The ordeal of Denise Huskins, whose kidnapping from her boyfriend’s Northern California home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement, is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, “American Nightmare.” Here’s a look at the facts of the case, which captivated the country: THE KIDNAPPING On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into the home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had...

Courtney Price was at home on Wednesday taking care of her one-year-old son, Waylon, when they experienced a terrifying and traumatic altercation with local law enforcement. What should have been an ordinary day took a turn for the worse when SWAT officers broke into the home, searching for a suspect. [snip] Price explained that the officers kept her outside for 35 to 45 minutes while her son “was laying in his swing, covered in glass, covered in smoke, choking, gasping for air.” [snip] Upon arriving at the hospital, she was told that her son had pneumonia but did not believe...

Civil liberties advocates have long argued that “geofence” search warrants are unconstitutional for their ability to ensnare entirely innocent people who were nearby at the time a crime was committed. But errors in the geofence warrant applications that go before a judge can violate the privacy of vastly more people — in one case almost two miles away. Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an “alarming error” in a geofence warrant application that “resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco.” The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law...

BROOKSVILLE, Fla. (TND) — A tip "regarding the possible possession of child pornography" at a home in Florida ended with the arrest of a man who used to be a corrections officer and then worked for Walt Disney World. Detectives in Hernando County, north of Tampa, got the tip last Saturday and then identified the suspect as Michael David Foster. On Wednesday, they executed a search warrant and “seized a flash drive and a few SD cards that had been located in a book bag belonging to Foster. Then, they said after his arrest, “Foster admitted to ownership of the...

Qualified Immunity is a controversial legal principle that “protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a ‘clearly established’ statutory or constitutional right.” The bottom line for those of us who believe in civil liberties is that Qualified Immunity makes it very difficult to hold public officials accountable, especially police officers even in cases of horrific brutality, and it’s grating to think that this doctrine was invented by the Supreme Court in 1967. There’s a tension between the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment, and Qualified Immunity....

Former NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell stepped down amid a steady stream of New York’s Finest beating her to the exits, according to troubling new data obtained by The Post. Through June 30, 648 officers quit before retiring this year — a 22% spike from 2021, when 530 left, and an 87% rise from 2020, when 347 quit, NYPD pension data show. The concerning “voluntary quits” — combined with NYPD recruiting problems leaves the 34,000 uniformed officers “at least 1,200 short,” the police union said. “Cops are being squeezed from every direction. They are working inhumane amounts of forced overtime. The...

Farmington Police confirm 3 civilians are dead and 2 officers were injured in an active shooting incident. Police say there are multiple civilian victims in the shooting. Police confirm that one suspect was confronted by officers and has been killed. The officers who were shot are being treated for their injuries at San Juan Regional Medical Center. Police say Dustin Avenue from Ute Street to Apache street is closed as they investigate the incident.

San Bernardino County paid a $1.1 million ransom to hackers who infiltrated the Sheriff's Department computers, officials acknowledged Friday. Last month, the department admitted a hack encrypted many of its files, disrupting systems and blocking access to data. County officials told ABC News on Friday that the county carries insurance for such attacks and its share of the ransom came out to just over $511,000. After negotiating with the hackers, the insurance company and county agreed to pay to restore the system to its full functionality and secure data.

Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who accidentally killed Daunte Wright when she mistook her firearm for a stun gun during a traffic stop, is set to be released from prison Monday, records show. Potter, 50, has served 16 months at the Shakopee Minnesota Correctional Facility and will serve another eight months on supervised release. A shocking new booking photo shows the former Brooklyn Center police officer's deterioration behind bars.