Free Republic

Witnesses: Tasered boy posed no threat July 31, 2005 BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter A 14-year-old boy who went into cardiac arrest after he was zapped by a Chicago Police stun gun had not threatened police or anyone else before he was shocked, four eyewitnesses to the February incident say. The developmentally delayed boy was sitting on a couch in a juvenile home and was not attempting to harm anyone, the witnesses claim in sworn court depositions obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. After the boy went into convulsions and fell to the floor, the officer who used the Taser allegedly...

A family says on a quiet May evening members of the Utah County SWAT team erroneously invaded their Springville home and roughed them up without cause. The next day, the Chidester family, including Lawrence, his wife Emily and their adult son Larry, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Utah County and six SWAT team members. According to court documents, the Chidesters say the SWAT team arrived on the street outside their home May 25 at approximately 10:30 p.m. They say the officers then proceeded to man-handle them in the execution of a search warrant -- albeit for the wrong...

Loving Big Brother by William Norman Grigg July 26, 2005   The killing of Jean Charles de Meneze by London police, who wrongly suspected Meneze of being a suicide bomber, demonstrated the folly of giving police a license to kill on the basis of suspicion. Yet some neoconservatives "love" this and other Big Brother policies. The July 22 shooting death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of plainclothes London police left Fox News commentator John Gibson swooning with admiration."I love the way the Brits have 10 million cameras sticking up the nose of every citizen...

Man who was shot by deputies during a Harbor Gateway shootout gets $70,000 for his injuries. A roofer mistakenly shot by sheriff's deputies during a chaotic gunbattle in Harbor Gateway last year has been awarded $70,000. The county Claims Board approved the settlement on Monday for Ricardo Oliva, who was holding a mop while working atop a building. Deputies suspected he might be a sniper preparing to shoot them. "He was very lucky and gives daily blessings to himself and his family that his life was spared," said Oliva's attorney, Steven Lerman. "He is a good guy and was basically...

Robert Guerrero may have died because he wouldn’t come out of a closet.The small-time crook had been looking to steal some electricity. When he tried to illegally reconnect a neighbor’s electrical meter at the North View apartment complex near the Fort Worth Stockyards last November, someone called the cops. And when the officers arrived, someone else pointed them to the closet in Apartment M where he was hiding.Guerrero, 21, wasn’t a violent criminal. His rap sheet was littered with convictions for things like misdemeanor theft and burglary of a coin-operated machine. Normally, theft of electricity won’t even get you arrested...

An Aurora Police officer is facing disciplinary action after an incident in which he pulled his gun on another motorist during an off-duty altercation on the highway. It started with a lane change on I-225. That's the part everyone agrees on. What everybody doesn't agree on is whether or not the officer - who was off-duty, out of uniform and driving his personal car - should have pulled his gun on the other driver. "I put my signal on and started to merge lanes when my fiancee tells me that there's car over there," said Parker Bell. Bell admits he...

Letter To Editor Criticized Use Of Tasers, Sheriff's WeightORLANDO, Fla. -- Orange County's sheriff may have broken the law when he used driver's license records to track down a woman who wrote a newspaper to criticize his staff's use of Taser stun guns and described him as too fat for basic police work, critics say.Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary had his aides use the records to get the address of Alice Gawronski so he could send her a scathing letter, which some say violated federal privacy law. It is illegal to access a driver's license database to obtain personal information,...

NEW YORK -- A Long Island man was ticketed in Brooklyn for selling Girl Scout cookies with his 13-year-old daughter. Hoi Louis was in Williamsburg delivering the cookies with his daughter over the weekend. Louis said it was his old neighborhood, before he moved to Bethpage, and he and his daughter have been selling Girl Scout cookies there since his daughter was in first grade. At 4:50 p.m. Saturday a police captain and a uniformed officer pulled up to their van as they were unloading cookies. Louis said the captain from the 94th Precinct ticketed him for selling cookies without...

By Tony Plohetski AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Saturday, March 05, 2005 Four dispatchers suspended in addition to five officers. At 7:09 p.m. on Feb. 18, Austin police officer John Lengefeld heard a radio transmission that a Northeast Austin nightclub was on fire. The seven-year department veteran, according to documents released Friday, said he immediately thought of the song "Disco Inferno" and sent a message from his patrol car to fellow officer Josue Martinez that said "burn baby burn." Martinez replied 37 seconds later: "Hey ... LOL (laughing out loud). Those were my exact thoughts." So began more than two hours of computer...

AURORA, Colo. -- Aurora police are reviewing a weekend incident in which a man accused of stealing salad from a Chuck E. Cheese salad bar was hit with a stun gun twice by officers. The incident began at 4:05 p.m. Sunday when officers were called to the restaurant at 145005 East Exposition on a report of a larceny in progress. Police talked to the Chuck E. Cheese manager who told them that a customer had refused to show proof that he had paid for food. The manager said the man was seen "loading" his plate at the salad bar. The...