Michigan police officers won’t face federal charges in the fatal shooting of a homeless man during a confrontation over stolen coffee.
Federal authorities, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, announced Tuesday that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge the six Saginaw police officers.
“After a thorough investigation, federal authorities have determined that this tragic event does not present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to lead to a federal criminal prosecution of the police officers involved,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
Police were called on the afternoon of July 1, 2012, to investigate a report that a man had stolen a cup of coffee from a convenience store.
Officers found 49-year-old Milton Hall, a homeless Saginaw man who was armed with a pocket knife and a known history of mental illness.
During the confrontation in a parking lot, police fired their weapons 47 times at Hall, striking him 11 times and killing him.
Prosecutors also declined to charge the officers in the state’s investigation, saying Hall acted aggressively as he wielded the knife.
Racist police acting as judge and prosecution? What else is new?
A Brooklyn man claims that “vicious, wicked and cold-hearted” cops forced him to rap an entire song in exchange for his freedom – but only if the rhymes were up to their discriminating standards.
The 28-year-old aspiring hip-hopper “was thus compelled to perform a rap song for his freedom,” the complaint states.
Shingles was at the Brooklyn home of a pal when a crew of cops – including at least one officer under investigation for other illegal entries – demanded access to perform a search, the suit states.
Homeowner Donyale Kitchens refused to allow them in until they produced a warrant. The cops agreed to come back later with the paperwork and Kitchens left, the suit states.
But the plainclothes crew eventually convinced a building super to give them keys to her pad, according to the suit.
Once inside, the officers handcuffed Shingles and two other men while they searched the apartment, the suit states.
But the cops abruptly decided to break for a musical interlude after learning that Shingles was an aspiring rapper.
“The defendant officers then told the plaintiff Quinshon Shingles to show them some “spits and bars,” specifically to perform a rap song, and that if he was ‘hot’ they would let him go,’ the suit states.
With his freedom on the line, Shingles burst into his verses – and passed the test.
“Apparently satisfied with the plaintiff Quinshon Shingles rap performance, the defendant officers indeed released him and allowed him to leave the subject premises,’ the suit states.
The search did not turn up any illegal items, the suit states.
Kitchens and Shingles are suing the NYPD for illegal search and false imprisonment for an undisclosed sum
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly paid a visit Saturday to the father of Avonte Oquendo and expressed regret for saying he feared the missing 14-year-old autistic boy was dead.
“He was very nice to me,’’ Daniel Oquendo told The Post. “He apologized.’’
Kelly assured the family the search would continue for Avonte, who walked out of his Long Island City, Queens, school more than three weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since.
On Thursday, Kelly told WABC/Channel 7: “Unfortunately, we are not hopeful that we’re going to find this young man alive, but we are continuing our search.’’
The pessimistic comment infuriated the boy’s family, prompting the commissioner’s visit.
A family of a Dallas-area man wants to know why cops showed up and shot 52-year-old Bobby Gerald Bennett, especially after their official description of the incident is proven wrong on a surveillance video.
The police report read that officer Cardan Spencer shot Bennett as he walked towards him with a “knife raised in an aggressive manner.”
But the video shows that Bennett was standing still with both arms at his sides when he was struck in the abdomen by a single bullet. Bennett is currently in intensive care due to the gunshot wound.
The original story, based on the police report, can be read here. The Dallas News articles says that the officers asked Bennett to show his hands, but he allegedly told them “you all are going to need more officers out here.”
Bennett began walking toward officers with the knife raised, police said. One of the officers on the scene fired four times, striking Bennett once.
Police said Bennett’s mother told them he had been off his antipsychotic medications for several months.
Bennett was arrested and faces an aggravated assault to a public servant charge. His bond hasn’t been set.
The surveillance video shows that Bennett clearly did nothing that would merit an aggravated assault charge.
The woman shot dead by a Brooklyn cop after she crashed a stolen car was part of a violent crew who police say forced a man into his home at gunpoint, robbed him and shot him as he ran away.
Shantel Davis, 23, took a bullet in the chest during a wild struggle with police after she tried to drive away from the smashup on Church Ave. and E. 38th St. in East Flatbush on Thursday, cops said.
No gun was found on Davis. Her rap sheet — which included robbery and drug busts — shows she was no stranger to run-ins with the law.
Davis was due in court Friday on charges stemming from an attack on April 23, 2011 — when she and a band of brutes allegedly held a man hostage as they robbed his Clarendon Road apartment, court papers show.
The heist netted cash, video games and jewelry, the documents show. But the thieves threatened to take 29-year-old Ralph Ragoobar to East New York and torture him for more loot. He managed to break free and started running down the street, court papers show.
That’s when Davis’ crew opened fire, striking the fleeing man three times in the back and once in the leg. He survived the wounds.
“I was shot five times,” Ragoobar told the Daily News. “I just want to move on with my life.”
Davis and two others were later booked on charges that included kidnapping, attempted murder and weapons possession.
Davis was out on $25,000 bail when two narcotics cops saw her blow a red light at E. 48th St. and start speeding westbound down Church Ave. about 5:35 p.m. Thursday, cops said.
The two plainclothes officers — who sources identified as Detective Phillip Atkins, 44, and Police Officer Daniel Guida, 27 — began to follow Davis in their unmarked car as she sped through a series of red lights before she crashed, cops said.
Davis was driving a 1998 Toyota Camry that she allegedly stole the week before. Armed with a pistol — and just a block away from her E. 52nd St. home — Davis approached the car’s owner, Vilma Craig, 57, and told her to hand over the keys, sources said.
“She had the gun pointed at me,” Craig told the Daily News Friday. “She took my car, my pocketbook and everything in the car.”
It was not clear whether the two cops knew the car was stolen when they approached Davis after she wrecked it.
The 5-foot-6, 185-pound Davis slid into the passenger side of the car in an attempt to flee, cops said.
After a brief struggle with Guida, Davis hopped back in the driver’s seat and tried to drive away.
Atkins, holding his service-issued Smith & Wesson 9-mm., began to grapple with the frantic woman and tried to stop her from putting the car into gear.
But Davis managed to put the car in reverse and hit the gas. During the struggle, Atkins fired one shot, hitting Davis in the chest and killing her.
A new report focusing on the Canine Special Detail of the LA Sherriff’s Department (LASD) has uncovered a vast increase in the number of minority individuals bitten by police dogs since 2004.
And in the first six months of this year, every single victim of a bite by a LASD dog was African-American or Latino.The data was published in a new report by the Police Assessment Resource Centre (Parc), a Los Angeles-based non-profit organisation, devoted to “advancing effective and accountable policing”.
According to Parc records, the number of Latino individuals bitten by LASD canines went up 30 per cent between 2004 and 2012, from 30 to 39 bites. The number of African-Americans bitten increased by 33 per cent over the same period.
Meanwhile, police dog bites caused injuries at a much higher rate than alternative deterrents such as batons, tear gas and even guns. “Large swathes of LASD’s jurisdiction, encompassing generally affluent areas with smaller minority populations, had few [canine] deployments or bites,” the Parc report states.
“Crime rates are lower in these areas, but the stark disparity leads us to wonder why canine deployments seem to occur disproportionately in less affluent areas with larger minority populations.” During the period covered in the report, the largely black or Latino areas of Century, City of Industry, Compton, Lakewood and South LA/Lennox suffered more dog bites than all of LASD’s other 21 districts combined.
On Friday, Jack Lamar Robersonwas shot dead by police inside his own home after overdosing on his diabetes medication. His 8-year-old daughter was in the home at the time.
Now, the family of the Georgia man is claiming that the cops weren’t within their rights and instead of offering assistance, they killed Roberson without asking any questions.
The case is dredging up the same sentiments as the killing of an unarmed Jonathan Ferrell, the young man who was shot to death by North Carolina police after he crashed his vehicle.
Roberson’s story began when his fianceé, Alicia Herron, called 911 because she noticed Roberson acting erratically after taking pills to control his blood sugar. But instead of sending paramedics, the dispatcher sent police officers to their home.
Officers with the Waycross Police Department said that upon entering the home, Roberson started toward them “aggressively armed with two items used as weapons.” But Herron disputes that claim, saying that the scene played out like a “silent movie.”
“They just came in and shot him. He didn’t say nothing, the police didn’t say nothing, anything, it was like a silent movie. You couldn’t hear anything, all you could hear were the gun shots go off and I seen them going into his body and he just fell down.”
She and Roberson’s mother also said that he was not carrying a weapon, despite the police report.
“We had no weapons in this house whatsoever,” Roberson’s mother, Diane Roberson, said to the Florida Times Union. “My gentle lamb … He kissed me every morning, made me breakfast in bed, and they said he had two weapons.”
Herron denied he was armed too: “He didn’t have nothing in his hands at any time or period at all before they came, any time while they were here, anything,” she said to First Coast News.
Charity groups in Raleigh, North Carolina are criticizing local police over what they call a sudden enforcement of a local ordinance prohibiting them from feeding the homeless.
“The police are caught up in a system,” Rev. Hugh Hollowell told WRAL-TV on Sunday. “The police work for the mayor and the City Council, who is ultimately responsible to the developers who spend lots and lots of money to revitalize downtown.”
Hollowell attracted attention to the police’s activities on Saturday after his group, Love Wins Ministries, was barred from its weekly food distribution at a local park, Moore Square, for the first time in six years.
“No representative from the Raleigh Police Department was willing to tell us which ordinance we were breaking, or why, after six years and countless friendly and cooperative encounters with the Department, they are now preventing us from feeding hungry people,” Hollowell wrote on the group’s website. “When I asked the officer why, he said that he was not going to debate me. ‘I am just telling you what is. Now you pass out that food, you will go to jail.’”
Another charitable group, Human Beans Together, told WRAL it was also forced out of the park. When it relocated to a nearby parking lot to continue, police also stepped in before the owner arrived and allowed them to remain on the premises while they negotiate a long-term solution.
She must have done something terrible, right? Her crime? Failing to pay a $150 fine. Oh yea, and she’s black.
“The amount of force used was abominable,” the woman’s attorney, Cade Bernsen, told Yahoo News.
The incident was captured by security cameras at the Jasper, Texas, police headquarters.
Keyarika “Shea” Diggles, 25, was brought to the jail on May 5 for an unpaid fine, according to Bernsen. He said she was was on the phone with her mother trying to arrange to get the $100 owed when Officer Ricky Grissom cut off the call.
There’s no audio on the video, but Diggles and Grissom were apparently arguing when Officer Ryan Cunningham comes in behind Diggles and attempts to handcuff her. When she appears to raise her hand, Cunningham grabs Diggles by the hair and slams her head into a countertop. The officers wrestle Diggles to the ground before dragging her by her ankles into a jail cell.
“She got her hair pulled out, broke a tooth, braces got knocked off … it was brutal,” Bernsen said.
Diggles was charged with resisting arrest for arguing with the officers, a charge dropped on Monday, according to Bernsen.
Cunningham, reached by phone Monday afternoon, hung up on a Yahoo News reporter. A message left for Grissom was not immediately returned.
Katrina Tisdale (pictured) was arrested and charged on Monday with misusing 911, when she reportedly called twice so she could get a refund from her drug dealer, reports the Smoking Gun.
When St. Petersburg, Fla., resident allegedly purchased drugs from her unnamed female drug dealer, she spent her last $50 on cocaine and marijuana only to realize that she’d be penniless until her next social security disability check arrived.
According to published reports, Tisdale tried to get her last $50 back, but was entirely unsuccessful, so she allegedly resorted to calling police to see if they could exercise some form of bully tactics to get her money back.
But when Tisdale revealed her whereabouts to the 911 dispatcher, officers arrived at her location and put cuffs on her. The 47-year-old woman was then taken to the Pinellas County jail, where she is currently being held on a $100 bond.
Meanwhile, Tisdale’s latest scrape with the law isn’t the first. She has been arrested on numerous occasions over the last few years, with six of them being cocaine possession-related.
Apparently, Tisdale has a peculiar affinity for using 911 to report incidents that could be categorized as idiotic. Case in point, in a mid-2011 conviction, she told police that she had been robbed by her drug dealer.
I have to admit, I am not like every other teenager/college student who works some part-time job at a big chain supermarket or fast food restaurant. No, those are all too boring, they all lack thrill, and are so unoriginal that I’d just blend right in with the crowd. You see when I’m not here contributing to Ezkool or playing video games, I’m out promoting for a club. There’s no polite way to say it so I just will be blunt…I promote for a “Gentlemen’s” Club. While it might not pay so well, perhaps $80-$100 a week, it has provided me with some of my most interesting nights out I’ve ever had. Take Sunday night for example as it was the oddest night I’ve had.
I’ve always loved being “different”
My night started by getting the same old flyers from my promoter, Gucci (yes like the brand), at the club I promote for. I walked into as usual looking around and once again looking completely out of my element but whatever. I asked the bouncer where my promoter is and he pointed right up the stairs and up I went. I took a seat at the bar right next to him as we just decided to chat about whatever for a little.
“Hey Gucci, Babe. You want a drink? How about you Jeremy Lin?” asked the bartender. We both passed and just went talking about business; I was supposed to hit a place called The Palace tonight and with that information I was out on my way with a bag of 300 plus flyers.
I can totally see how I look like Jeremy Lin
I got to The Palace around midnight and just went about putting flyers on cars and talking to whoever I saw walking right on by; I soon found myself in the parking lot right across from The Palace. A previous night handing out flyers taught me that promoting in front of another club is a big “no-no” and this night was no different. A police officer approached me asking what I was doing, though I’m sure he had a very good idea exactly what. Thankfully the rowdy crowd outside the door of the club got his attention as he told me to just buzz off and he quickly ran back. I can happily say that every car in that lot had a flyer from me on it by the end of the night.
I continued on just putting flyers on the cars in the area until I ran into a woman outside her house smoking.
“What are you handing out child?” She asked.
“Flyers” I responded noticing she was missing some teeth. “For a club I promote for. Did I put one on your car by accident?”
“Oh no my car’s out back. Hand me one and go about your way”. I gladly complied and just went on back to my car and on my way home.
Of course to top it all off, a visit from my town’s Police Department. Keep reading!
I was about ten minutes from home when I realized I still had a nice amount of flyers left to hand out. I’d hate to bring stuff like that home especially after I’ve busted my butt tonight so I decided to go to an apartment/condo complex near my home. It was around 1 am, I had parked my car and started walking around the area putting flyers in-car windows. A woman walking her dog approached me as I was near the end of my stroll; I gave her dog a good scratch on its head and looked at her. Oh..my..gosh the look she gave me was as if I had just committed a horrible crime in front of her and smiled. On that note I quickly finished placing the last flyers and got back into my car, next thing I know I’m greeted by two police cruisers.
“Hey there! Can you just hold up turning your car on for a second?” Asked one officer as he drove up right beside me. “I just have a few questions to ask you.”
I sunk in my chair and prayed I wasn’t in some sort of trouble. He calmly asked me as to what business I had out at that time of night to which I explained to him my job, his partner went to go check out the cars to see if my story checked out.
“Yep. It’s all legit” He told his partner. “So what club are you even promoting for?”
“Hi-Beams sir.” We had a friendly conversation about the club and even the officers past experiences there. Before they sent me on my way I asked them who had called them on me.
“Oh some woman said she saw you while she was walking her dog. She thought you were checking door handles or something.” I laughed the entire way home.
It was past 2am when I finally got to lie down in my bed from an odd but eventful night. I didn’t like having the police called on me, but it was a key part to a very interesting night.
A police sergeant from Cape Canaveral, Florida has been fired after it was discovered he brought two shooting targets resembling Trayvon Martin to a training session last week.
Officer King
According to WFTV two officers saw the targets in the back of Sgt. Ron King’s vehicle and they informed the Chief of the Port Authority Police.
King was allegedly bringing the targets to a firearms training session in Cocoa, Florida at Brevard Community College.
The sergeant, who has been on the force since January of 2011, was on duty at the time.
He had purchased the two targets from the internet. It is not clear if they were used during the training session.
After an investigation from internal affairs, King was fired on Thursday.
John Walsh, the CEO of Cape Canaveral Port Authority, spoke to WFTV and apologized to Port Canaveral and the family of Trayvon Martin.
‘It’s something that we’d never want the Port Authority to be involved in and we truly apologize to the families for the pain that they even had to hear about something like this and had to relive their son’s death again.’
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