Free Republic

The Banning Police Department's acquisition of a surplus Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and their subsequent crash of the vehicle in Arizona was three months ago, but an acting police commander and the city's spokesman said Thursday they could not comment because there's a personnel investigation under way. It remained unclear this week whether city council members were consulted publicly or privately about acquisition of the 18-ton armored truck before the Sept. 16 crash on Interstate 10 in Buckeye, west of Phoenix, which has resulted in a claim of more than $42,000 against the City of Banning.

The University of the Incarnate Word is a highly-rated Catholic college in San Antonio, Texas. It is hardly a hot bed of campus violence. When senior Robert Cameron Redus was pulled-over last Friday by campus police for “erratically speeding,” it is unlikely he had any clue of how tragically the stop would end. The campus police department contends Redus, an honors student set to graduate in May, grabbed the officer’s steel baton during a struggle. Not in dispute, however, is that Redus was shot five times by the officer, at close range, leaving him dead and the University scrambling to...

A bloody beating by police that left a California homeless man dead began when one of the officers on trial in his death snapped on a pair of latex gloves and told him, "Now you see my fists? They're getting ready to f*** you up,'" a prosecutor said Monday. Opening statements by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and defense attoneys Michael Schwartz, defense attorney for Jay Cicinelli, and John Barnett acting for Manuel Ramos, each painted a very different story of the night a violent confrontation occurred between police officers and Kelly Thomas. A 33-minute video of the July...

Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers. "It just doesn't seem right that you can be forced off the road when you're not doing anything wrong," said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North...

Sonoma County law enforcement officials promised a crowded community forum on Thursday that they will eventually answer the many questions surrounding the shooting death of Andy Lopez, but declined to discuss details of the case. “I can assure you that once the decision is made, it will be a very public decision and my hope is that everybody understands the reason for my decision,” said District Attorney Jill Ravitch ... “But until that time, there may be information you're not made aware of, and that's the nature of an investigation, so that the integrity can be protected,” she said. Assistant...

This morning we showed up at Moore Square at 9:00 a.m., just like we have done virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the last six years. We provide, without cost or obligation, hot coffee and a breakfast sandwich to anyone who wants one. We keep this promise to our community in cooperation with five different large suburban churches that help us with manpower and funding. Today officers from Raleigh Police Department prevented us from doing our work, for the first time ever. An officer said, quite bluntly, that if we attempted to distribute food, we would be arrested.

The use of a stun gun on a person who is in danger of falling is not allowed to be used in Phoenix, Arizona. But that didn’t stop officers from extricating a man from his roof by giving him a thorough tasering, followed by a choke drag face-down in order to “rescue him.” The father of the victim was a former detective who believes the police went too far. 44-year-old Michael Angel wasn’t violent when he got up on the roof. Phoenix police arrived and initially tried to get him down, but then they suddenly rushed him and began tasering...

A 14-year-old Mississippi boy, his male police officer lover and two other men have been arrested in a twisted plot to murder the teen's father, bury the body in a shallow grave and destroy the evidence, authorities and family members say. Blake Thompson allegedly lured his father Kenneth Thompson, 53, into a trap in Pike County, Mississippi, with the help of Greg Fortenberry, 26, and LeJerrious Perkins, 17, on Sunday. When Mr Thompson arrived, the three suspects slashed his throat, killing him, according the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Blake, a teenage runaway, then enlisted the help of 25-year-old Jasper Pittman,...

This past week I was over on Officer.com trying to convince some hot-headed, patriot-hating young cops that the Constitution is actually the law of the land. I failed. One of them refers to open carriers as “attention whores.” I was denounced as a traitor to law enforcement for insisting that gun owners actually have rights that LEO’s are legally and morally bound to respect. It got me thinking about the great gulf that separates the law enforcement profession that I knew as compared to the one that exists today. I never thought I’d be one of those geezers that says,...

The City of Leander, Texas, has announced that it will not pay the veterinary bill for a dog who was shot by a Leander Police officer after the police came onto the property of James and Renata Simmons on June 17. When the officers entered, the Simmons’ German Shepherd, Vinny, came running around the side of the house and was shot by one of the officers who felt the dog was a threat to their safety. It turned out that the officers were trying to execute a warrant at the wrong address in Liberty Hill. Vinny needed extensive veterinary...

NORMAN — Six years ago, a Noble family lost their 5-year-old son, Austin Haley, to a former police officer’s stray bullet. They recently found out the same officer has since had his record expunged, and the family is now on a mission to change the law allowing that to happen. In 2007, former police officer Paul Bradley Rogers and his former supervising officer, Robert Shawn Richardson, responded to a neighbor’s call about removing a snake from a birdhouse. The snake was believed to be poisonous, so Richardson told Rogers to shoot the snake, but Austin was struck in the process....

We need police to catch murderers, thieves and con men, and so we give them special power -- the power to use force on others. Sadly, today's police use that power to invade people's homes over accusations of trivial, nonviolent offenses -- and often do it with tanks, battering rams and armor you'd expect on battlefields. In his book "Rise of the Warrior Cop," Radley Balko recounts the rise of police SWAT teams (SWAT stands for Special Weapons And Tactics) armed with heavy military equipment. SWAT raids began as rarely used methods of dealing with violent situations, like hostage-takings. But...