Ah, another weekend has come and gone and time yet again for another weekend review of the police misconduct reports our National Police Misconduct News Feed captured on Saturday and Sunday, April 10 and 11 of 2010.

• Farmers Branch Texas police have been accused of racial discrimination after allegedly arresting an Hispanic man for public intoxication and assaulting an officer… after he saved his neighbor from a house fire.  The man claims that officers arrested him after he became angry that firefighters refused to help while he suffered from smoke inhalation after the rescue and when officers shoved his son… police claim he pushed one of them while drunk. This story actually came out earlier this month but a reader let us know we missed it… Thanks!

• Sidney Nebraska has settled one of two lawsuits filed by two women who were injured by an officer, who allegedly wasn’t paying attention while responding to a call, rear ended one vehicle and sent it spinning 100 feet into another car. The suit was settled for an undisclosed sum as part of a non-disclosure agreement within the settlement agreement. The other woman’s lawsuit is in the discovery phase and the officer resigned while under investigation after the accident.

• A Florida State Trooper died of a self-inflicted gunshot after he allegedly shot his wife to death during a domestic dispute. Police were called to the home by the trooper and apparently the shooting had happened before they arrived. Authorities say there were no red flags and the trooper had no record of complaints. Frankly, I don’t like to record these kinds of cases because they seem more tragic than anything else… but it is an instance of domestic violence and part of the statistical information this project gathers is meant to determine if domestic violence rates for police are higher than the norm as many people suggest they are. The couple had two sons, neither was home at the time.

• The Page County Virginia sheriff’s department is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a man claiming he was falsely charged and imprisoned after he was victimized in a type of extortion scheme by a police informant who had the help of the sheriff and other deputies. The informant bilked the man of 0ver $13k by telling him his ex-wife was involved in drugs and that he could save his son from her if he came up with the money. He alleges he was arrested after he complained about the scheme. He’s also suing the jail after he had two surgeries due to a MRSA infection he suffered while imprisoned. The former Page County sheriff is now in prison after being convicted for  racketeering.

• A Rutland Vermont police officer who was shown in a video released earlier this week repeatedly shooting a shackled detainee with pepper-ball rounds is now the subject of a state criminal investigation. The police chief there claimed he didn’t see anything criminal about what happened, but the chief has been under fire already for failing to suspend another one of his officers who was under investigation on possession of child pornography allegations. The article cited above claims the rate of police misconduct in Vermont is 1%, however our 2009 statistical data indicates it was actually more than twice that at 2.2% and the rate, based on the first three months of this year, appears as if it will be the same this year at this pace.

• Two Prince George’s County Maryland police officers have been accused by witnesses of using excessive force on man who refused to leave a pizza shop where he was allegedly trying to get a job. Police and the shop owner claim the man was high and wasn’t rational. But witnesses say he didn’t seem to be a threat when officers beat and maced him outside the shop. The man claims he wasn’t on drugs and is demanding the results of the drug test he was given after his arrest when officers had him committed to a psych ward late last month after the arrest, but those were not released to him. He was not charged over the incident.

• Terrebonne Parish Louisiana has settled a lawsuit for $300,00 to four female Houma Louisiana Police Department employees who claimed that the police chief there had sexually harassed them. The article doesn’t specify why the parish was liable for what Houma’s police chief did but the chief has been on paid leave since the allegations first came out in 2008 and is planning to take a medical retirement soon.

• A Longboat Key Florida police officer was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 24 months of home detention after pleading guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges. The female police officer pulled a gun on a woman with children in her car when she pulled into the officer’s driveway in order to turn around after picking the children up from school in September of 2009. The officer was fired in October after an internal investigation.

• A Montgomery New York police officer has been sentenced to probation in a plea deal for his role as a lookout while on-duty for a theft ring that included another officer while they stole auto parts. He was convicted on reduced charges of official misconduct in the deal because he testified against the others.

• The Portland Oregon police union president has admitted to being involved in two instances of road rage against the same family in January while an internal investigation into the incidents is ongoing. A local station got a hold of the 911 tapes and, during an interview, the officer told reporters that he’s embarrassed about the whole thing and would like to apologize.

That’s it for this weekend, stay safe out there!

Sorry about being a bit later with this recap than usual, Friday was pretty hectic and today will be too. I’m still working on our Q1 statistical report but it’s taking a while because of my schedule at my day job.

(We use the police misconduct reports captured by our news feed to generate statistical data, see here if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

So far the numbers seem to suggest that over $50 million was spent on police misconduct lawsuit settlements and judgments over the first three months of 2010 and there were over 1,500 law enforcement officers and over 80 law enforcement leaders involved in those reports we captured.

In any case, here are the 21 reports of police misconduct that our National Police Misconduct News Feed captured for Friday, April 09, 2010:

• A Springfield South Carolina police officer received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to theft charges for using the town’s credit account to fuel his personal car to the tune of $191.

• An Assumption Parish Louisiana sheriff’s lieutenant has been placed on paid administrative leave after officers preparing for a drug trial discovered that evidence in that case appeared to have been mishandled. The sheriff called for an external investigation by state police.  When we see something like this it tends to indicate that someone stole some drugs or money from evidence, but not always… something to keep an eye on.

• Two Springfield Michigan police officers have been accused of beating & tasering a domestic violence suspect and then shooting his dog while the suspect attempted to hold the dog back and protect it. This one is a case of he said vs cops said as there weren’t any independent witnesses and no video, so it’s not likely to result in anything.

• An unknown number of NYPD police officers have been accused of brutality in an incident that injured four men and left one of them with a broken leg that was untended for hours because cops allegedly denied him medical care. However, in this case, the victims claim to have video.

• An Altamonte Springs Florida police officer and his wife were arrested on federal drug and firearms charges. According to officials the couple were accused of running a grow operation and dealt oxycontin and marijuana. Authorities also allege that the couple had been threatening informants and, in the original report which has since been redacted, planned to kill a narcotics officer.

• A Scranton Pennsylvania police detective has plead guilty to stealing over $8,400 from evidence. The evidence came from a drug bust in 2001 but police didn’t discover the missing evidence until last year when they opened an envelope that was supposed to contain cash but only discovered some rolled-up wads of paper.

• A Chicago Illinois police officer who was working with a security detail at a White Sox game has been named as part of suit filed against the White Sox by jail guard who claims he was beaten and falsely arrested at White Sox game. Apparently security was called to address a rowdy fan but were pointed to the wrong person, when the guard tried to tell the officer they had the wrong fan the cop allegedly attacked and detained the guard. Charges were dismissed when video of the incident came out.

• A Beeville Texas police sergeant has been placed on paid leave after he was arrested on possession with intent to distribute prescription drugs charges. The chief is defending the officer at the moment and says “He is a good officer, not a troublemaker…”  Funny how police never say nice things like that about other suspects.

• A Pensacola Florida police officer who made headlines last year when ran over and killed a 17-year-old boy on a bicycle after trying to taser him while chasing him in a police cruiser has been given an 80 hour suspension as a result of that incident. No charges came about in the case that began because the officer thought the teen looked suspicious.

• A Longmont Colorado police officer was sentenced to probation in a plea deal that reduced felony charges to a misdemeanor drug possession charge. He was accused of stealing prescription pain killers from his own wife in order to apparently pay off an informant.

• Two Decherd Tennessee police officers have resigned after they were suspended without pay while investigated for leaving a police K9 in a crate on the back of a police pickup truck for over 24 hours. The dog was found dead of apparent dehydration from being left in the heat… no word on whether they will face charges for assault on an officer.

• A Grand County Colorado deputy has been fired in a strange case that also involved former jail guard and a firefighter. Apparently the group was in a bar after hours when the owner brought out a gun and they had a little game of target practice inside the bar that resulted in a number of rounds going through the walls and into an adjacent business. Apparently discharging firearms within town limits where they were at is illegal.

• A US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent has been arrested for his role in a faked drug buy operation that also involved a Tulsa Oklahoma police officer that resulted in the conviction of a father and his daughter. Both had served about a year of their sentences in the case when the conviction was overturned when the fake sting was uncovered. Authorities are now reviewing about 100 other cases for potential problems and the Tulsa officer is on paid vacation leave.

• The now-former Van Meter Iowa police chief is the subject of a criminal investigation for allegedly overcharging for car inspections and failing to inspect cars properly when he performed the inspections. Apparently the state licenses people to inspect salvaged cars for stolen parts at a fixed rate before they can be sold and the chief did these inspections as a side job. Weird.

• The Lynbrook New York police chief has been suspended for 10 days for interfering with an investigation into a dispute he had with his girlfriend. Unfortunately the only link to this story is to a pay site, nobody else covered it. This actually happens a lot in the New York city area, not sure why this pay-per-view news site has a lock on the news there.

• A Los Angeles County California police officer was arrested on suspicion of an on-duty sexual assault that occurred earlier this month on an undocumented immigrant who was groped by the officer during a traffic stop. The officer isn’t a deputy since he works for a department that is responsible for law enforcement in county parks and other areas.

• A Fulton County Georgia deputy was arrested on federal corruption, firearms, & drug charges for allegedly offering protection to drug traffickers while they engaged in drug buys in exchange for thousands of dollars.

• An Oneida County New York deputy is facing face disciplinary action for violating policy when he accidentally shot a judge with his taser in the judge’s court chambers while he was adjusting it. Apparently only one barb hit the judge so he didn’t get hit with a full shock, but it’s apparently against policy to pull a taser unless you intend to fire it.

• A Jackson County Missouri deputy has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl while he was in uniform and on-duty.

• A Spring Lake North Carolina police officer was sentenced to 19 months in jail in a plea deal after a corruption sting caught him stealing money during a staged drug bust. The Spring Lake police department was only just recently reactivated after it was actually disbanded when that agency’s arrest powers were suspended on allegations of corruption and malfeasance last year.

• The Escondido California police department is the subject of a lawsuit alleging that officers fatally shot a woman who was a passenger in a stolen car. Apparently the police had asked the woman to be in the car in an effort to bust her boyfriend after she reported him for stealing a car. The police opened fire on the car after it rammed a police car that had boxed him into a parking lot, even though both the suspect and the innocent woman were unarmed.

Well, that’s it for now folks, stay safe out there!

Well, as I hoped, today was more like a typical weekday for our National Police Misconduct News Feed in that there were 23 reports of police misconduct that were captured today. But, things may not be back to normal for long I’m afraid. It seems as thought I might be assigned to do another on-site project and this one would last for 6 weeks, so that would have a significant impact on the news feed and subsequent statistical reports that rely on data gathered from the news feed.

Hopefully that won’t come to pass, but as of right now things aren’t looking good… we’ll see.

Anyway, here are the 23 police misconduct reports (plus 2 that I accidentally omitted from yesterday’s report) that were published today, April 08, 2010:

• In an update to a previously covered story, it seems that a Lowellville Ohio police officer who was charged with stalking, public indecency & gross sexual imposition was the subject of complaints from 5 different women, not just two as previously reported.

• At least two New Orleans Louisiana police officers are now the subject of an FBI investigation into a highly-publicized 2008 bar brawl that occurred between black RTA workers & white cops where one person was falsely arrested after cops apparently planted a gun on him, but none of the officers were charged and the city was forced to rehire at least one of the officers who was fired over the incident. This is in addition to the numerous other federal investigations going on into the department that include the Danziger bridge investigation that has resulted in 3 convictions so far.

• A Lake County Colorado deputy has been suspended for one week without pay and may yet face criminal charges after he tasered about 30 children during a high school career fair. Apparently the officer decided it would spark interest if he offered to demonstrate how a taser worked on kids interested in a law enforcement career. Many suffered burns from the taserings and one was briefly hospitalized.

• A number of Merced County California deputies have been accused of excessive force in a complaint filed by a home owner who alleges he was grabbed from behind and then kicked in the face by deputies searching his home on an arrest warrant for his brother. All this was apparently sparked when he complained about deputies breaking into his locked gun rack after he agreed to unlock it for them. He was arrested for assaulting an officer even though his daughter, who was there, claims he didn’t even have a chance to resist, let alone attack a cop.

• A Golden Beach Florida police lieutenant has been convicted of false imprisonment, kidnapping and battery in a domestic violence incident involving his wife where neighbors called the cops after seeing him throw his wife around like a rag doll and then drive off while holding her down in his car with their kids in the back seat. All this because she questioned him over some numbers for women that she found on his cell phone.

• A Phoenix Arizona police officer was tasered by Scottsdale AZ cops who responded to reports of a bar brawl only to face the allegedly drunk off-duty cop who started swinging on the officers. The officers found out afterward that the tasered man was a fellow cop… even though they insist that wasn’t why they didn’t arrest him.

• A Bexar County Texas deputy was sentenced to probation in a plea deal over a felony deadly conduct charge. The deputy reportedly fired shots at a repo man when he saw him towing his car. The shots missed him but hit a neighbor’s car and home, where children were inside at the time. He was also ordered to attend anger management classes and permanently turn over his law enforcement certification for that state.

• A former Miami Beach Florida police officer has filed suit against that police department on allegations that he suffered weeks of racial abuse and slurs as an Arab-American before he was fired without cause a mere two weeks after he was hired.

• A Stoughton Massachusetts police detective was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine for lying to FBI agents during a corruption probe involving officers receiving stolen televisions and gift cards.

• A Columbus Ohio police officer was suspended for 30 days for tasering a handcuffed detainee with a 22 second jolt which is nearly 5x the recommended length of time for a continuous application. However, the department claims that the extended shock was the result of a malfunction with the taser that caused it to reboot while being used.

• The Hurricane Utah police department has been named in a wrongful death suit filed by the family of a man who died after being tasered on the side of the highway while naked. The man was suffering from a psychological condition at the time but the suit claims that he wasn’t posing a threat and was beginning to cooperate when the officer tasered him. The suit also claims that his wife was mistreated at the scene and then forced to drive to the jail where she was detained while her husband died in the hospital.

• Three Miami Florida police officers were arrested as part of a corruption probe that resulted in a total of 8 arrests of various city employees. Two of the officers were charged for abusing their authority in their off-duty jobs as security at an apartment complex where they intimidated tenants into paying rent on time by making an example of one tenant by arresting him on false charges. The third officer was arrested on allegations of identity theft for stealing a bank card from an accident victim and then using that bank card to steal $460 from the victim’s bank account.

• A Carrollton Illinois police officer has been placed on paid leave while state police consider whether to investigate him at the request of the department. Officials are refusing to release any information about what prompted the suspension or referral of the case to state police.

• An Aurora Indiana police officer has been charged with child solicitation after he was caught in an online sting operation by an Ohio police officer who was posing as a minor on an internet chat site where the Aurora officer allegedly solicited the officer for sex.

• A Roseburg Oregon police officer has been sentenced to 3 months in jail for misdemeanor harassment as part of a no contest plea deal after originally being charged with third degree sexual abuse for molesting a 17-year-old girl.

• A Minnesota State Trooper was arrested on drunk driving charges after testing .112 in an off-duty highway accident that injured another driver.

• A Surry County Virginia deputy was named in a lawsuit alleging that he planted drugs on a business owner in order to arrest him on false charges. The suit alleges that another deputy searched the area and didn’t find anything when the deputy in question then planted a packet of cocaine and spread powder on a table and floor. The charges against the man were later dismissed and he was exonerated, but not before having to file bankruptcy and being ostracized from his church because of the high-publicity arrest.

• A Cranston Rhode Island police officer has resigned over allegations he had on-duty threesomes with a woman and a second police officer, who also lost his job over the allegations, on multiple occasions in secluded areas of local parks and woodlands. Officials expressed their frustration over the tens of thousands spent to hold formal “Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights” hearings in the process of firing the officer only to have him resign right before they were finally allowed to fire him.

• A Weatherly Pennsylvania police officer has plead guilty to corruption of a minor charges for having about 170 phone sex conversations with a 15-year-old girl.

• A US District Court judge has ruled (site requires registration) that a reality TV crew may share liability in a civil rights violation case after a woman was forced into a staged perpwalk for cameras by Naperville Illinois police so that the TV crew for an A&E reality tv show called “Female Forces” could get video footage of the woman, without her consent, being walked from a cruiser in handcuffs while her pants were falling down. We can only hope that this might put a damper on all those “Taser Time” cop shows out there.

• A Philadelphia Pennsylvania police officer is the subject of a lawsuit claiming that he assaulted and fired several shots at two men outside of club while he was drunk. Apparently the officer, who couldn’t find his car while drunk, kicked the tail light of another car and when the men got out of the car the officer threatened to kill them, threw them to the ground, and fired several shots, according to the suit. On man was grazed by a bullet and both say they are only alive today because the cop was too drunk to aim straight. This isn’t the first time this officer was accused of threatening to shoot people without just cause.

• The now-former police chief of Gaylord Minnesota has been found guilty of official misconduct for planting a bug in the chamber of commerce office because he was trying to catch the commissioners violating open meeting laws since he allegedly thought they were meeting in secret to talk about him.

• In one story I missed yesterday, King County Washington narcotics detectives were accused of smearing human feces on walls of a medical pot advocate’s home while they were searching it after a shoot-out he had with suspects who broke into his home. The activist claims he had the excrement tested and it is human and DNA tests excluded him and his family as sources, but there’s no word on whether the detectives offered any DNA to exonerate themselves from the allegations.

• Finally, in another missed report, a Logan County West Virginia deputy was sentenced to 3 months of home confinement and a $500 fine after convicted on domestic battery charges.

That’s it for today folks, stay safe out there.

Well, today’s news feed was worse than yesterday with only 9 reports captured on our National Police Misconduct News Feed. Hopefully I won’t have to go on-site for work tomorrow and can spend more time manning the news feed. I feel really bad about not being able to keep it updated like I usually can.

Though, one good thing happened today in that we had over 2,000 visitors thanks to Radley Balko mentioning the site over at The Agitator. Thanks Radley!

In any case, even though it’s well under a half of the stories that would usually be reported on a typical Wednesday, here are the police misconduct reports recorded for today, April 8, 2010:

• New Orleans Louisiana police sergeant Michael Hunter plead guilty to charges of obstruction and misprision of a felony for his role in the Danziger bridge shootings and subsequent cover-up that has seen two other officers plead guilty so far. The difference with today’s plea was that it was the first by an officer who was present during the shooting incident that killed two and injured four in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina… therefore it was accompanied by descriptions of what really happened, contrary to the cover story concocted after the fact:

Hunter, 33, said a New Orleans police sergeant fired an assault rifle at wounded civilians at close range after other officers stopped shooting and after it was clear that the police were not taking fire. He also says he saw another officer in a car fire a shotgun at a fleeing man’s back, although the man did nothing suggesting he was a threat to police. That man, 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who was severely mentally disabled, died of his wounds.

As part of his plea, Hunter also acknowledged taking part in a conspiracy with colleagues to conceal the circumstances of what he considered an unjustified shooting. At one point, in a meeting with other officers, a supervisor said “something to the effect of, we don’t want this to look like a massacre,” the court document says.

“I don’t think you can listen to that account without being sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up,” said U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance after the factual basis was read aloud in the still courtroom by prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein, deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

• Several Canton Georgia police officers have been accused of using racial slurs and wrongfully arresting a store owner of Iranian decent in a lawsuit filed by that store owner. The officers apparently got angry and arrested the man for contempt of cop because he didn’t want to drive from an hour away at midnight to show the impatient officers his surveillance tapes. Those same surveillance tapes, oddly enough, that the officers forgot about captured them as they ranted about wishing they had their tasers and then showed them arrest the store on charges of assault and obstruction when he walked toward the shop to show them what they wanted. The charges were later dismissed by the prosecutor and the officers were disciplined with…. written reprimands.

• In Los Angeles County California a $350,000 sexual harassment judgment against a former sheriff’s sergeant shows that even cops can be victims of police misconduct too. According to the suit, sergeant Charles Dery harassed a fellow deputy by asking him if he ever had oral sex with another man and, in a separate incident, slipped his finger into the other deputy’s underwear and touched his ass. Dery was no stranger to having issues with other deputies since he was demoted once before for punching one of his coworkers.

• Three Baltimore Maryland police officers were ordered to pay $7,400,000 to the family of a man who died two weeks after his back was broken from being tossed around in the back of a police van while cuffed. The jury in the civil suit found the officers negligent for arresting him instead of giving him a citation for urinating in public and grossly negligent for what happened in the van. I can say from personal experience that it’s a common practice in most areas for cops to not strap cuffed suspects into transports and for them to take sharp turns in order to “teach suspects a lesson.” While the officers are still on the force, it’s not been decided whether they will be bailed out by the city or if they’ll have to pay from their own pockets.

• 4 Midland PA cops were sued by a couple claiming they were falsely arrested & tasered on own porch for objecting to the rough arrest of a non-resisting drunk man that they witnessed in a neighbor’s yard.
• A Camden NJ police officer was arrested on official misconduct & harassment charges for having his ex-wife arrested on false charges during their custody battle.
• A North Las Vegas NV police officer who was already on paid leave over a suspicious shooting incident where he claimed his badge stopped a bullet is now under investigation for an alleged hit & run accident.
• A Lansing MI police officer was suspended while under investigation on allegations of inappropriate use of LEIN police network.
• And a Leighton AL police officer was arrested on charges of indecent exposure in an unspecified incident involving a female cop during a shift change.

That’s it for today, stay safe out there.

As I hint at from time to time, my work as a technical writer often makes it difficult to continue work on this project. While I had always hoped to find a grant or some sort of funding that would allow me to shift my day job to a part time basis of sorts. But, that just didn’t work out since there aren’t any organizations out there who are willing to support this kind of extensive research into police misconduct.

This week is one of those times where my day job really has a negative impact on the project. On a normal weekday I’m able to track about 20+ new reports to put on our news feed, which also go into our database for statistical tracking. Today I only tracked 13 since I couldn’t check for new reports on a regular basis due to my work. We have to do searches for stories hourly or risk reports falling off the search result pages and since I couldn’t do any detailed searches until 6:00pm, we probably missed several reports… which means our stats will be off for this month.

It may not seem like a big deal to most, but it’s disheartening for me to think about there being victims out there who aren’t counted as it makes me feel like I’ve personally let those people down, that I’ve let their suffering go unnoticed. After all, what got me through going through what I went through as a victim of misconduct was to promise myself that I would do whatever I could to make something good come from I went through… that I would use what I went through to help others somehow.

So, I apologize that I’ve not lived up to that promise this week.

With that said, here are the 13 reports of police misconduct that were captured in our National Police Misconduct News Feed on April 6, 2010:

• A North Carolina Highway Patrol 1st sergeant has been placed on paid administrative leave for undisclosed reasons. As I’ve discussed before, several states have provisions in their FOIA laws that exclude police records from public disclosure… reports like this are the result. Did the officer do something bad? Is what he’s shown he’s capable of doing pose a risk of public harm? We have no way of knowing because law enforcement in this state is more concerned with covering up misconduct than protecting the public from potential harm.
• In Toledo Ohio, the police union there has apparently instigated a case of “blue flu” which is a sort of work outage that is one step away from a full-out strike accomplished by a large percentage of employees calling off sick. The police chief says this is illegal and has started an internal investigation into the walk out while the union is looking into the possibility of calling for a full strike, which really would be illegal. The dispute is over the latest contract negotiations.
• The Harris County Texas sheriff has fired his sheriff’s major who was in charge of the internal affairs division. The firing was allegedly the result of an investigation into undisclosed violations.
• A Somerville Massachusetts police officer who is already the subject of a federal civil rights suit over allegations that he beat a 15-year-old boy with a nightstick or flashlight while he was cuffed in 2006 has been fired for unspecified reasons. It’s unknown whether those reasons had anything to do with the civil suit.
• A Tucson Arizona police detective has been indicted on 6 felony counts for illegally accessing police database for personal use. No specifics in this case have been released yet.
• A Portland Oregon police sergeant who was involved in the questionable 2006 death of a man who suffered 16 broken ribs when tackled by cops on allegations of urinating in public is now under investigation on allegations that he pulled a gun and threatened a motorist in a case of road rage. Portland has been in our police misconduct news feed way too often lately.
• Two Desert Hot Springs California police sergeants have been arrested on federal charges on allegations that they tasered handcuffed suspects in separate incidents. One officer allegedly tasered a cuffed man and tasered then peppersprayed a cuffed woman while the other officer is accused of tasering another cuffed male suspect, all in separate incidents.
• A New York City NY police officer has been arrested along with six other people as part of scheme to steal tax refund checks from the mail through falsified returns.
• A Collier County Florida deputy has been fired over his strange scheme to win his way back into his estranged wife’s heart by having her kidnapped then rescuing her from the teens he sought to recruit in his plot.
• A Montgomery County Ohio deputy has plead guilty to unlawful sexual contact with teenage boy. He faces 18 months in prison over the charges. He apparently met the young boy through Craigslist.
• An Altamonte Springs Florida police lieutenant has been suspended for 1 week after he lost a thumb drive full of information on confidential informants when he allegedly left the device on his bumper then took off.
• A federal ATF agent in Arizona has allegedly shot his wife to death then fatally shot himself in a murder/suicide bid. Three children who were apparently the couple’s children fled the home upon hearing the gunfire and reported what happened to the neighbors, who called the police. No word on what might have caused the shootings.
• A Wilton Connecticut police officer has been placed on 6 months leave for having a sexual relationship with a police explorer. Explorers are high school students who volunteer to be interns of sorts at local police and fire departments as a sort of job training program. This explorer was apparently just over the age of consent in that state though.

That’s it for today… unfortunately tomorrow will probably be the same for my ability to track reports, I apologize for that.

Once again its time for an installment of the NPMSRP National Police Misconduct News Feed Daily Recap where we review the reports of police misconduct that our news feed captured for the day. But before I get into it I did want to talk about these daily reviews first.

You know, since I started publishing these daily reviews of police misconduct in the news the number of site visits have increased an average of 100 views per day. However, it just doesn’t seem like this has translated into any actual support for the project per se.

Why do I say that? Well, even though views are up, interaction with the site is way down. Only a handful of the same people actually comment on any posts and we’re not really seeing much movement on how many people follow the feed. In fact, since the beginning of April only 6 different people have commented here, but I’ve had to filter out 216 spam comments. (almost seems like it would be more efficient to do away with commenting here).

So, while readership is up, it hasn’t translated into anything meaningful for the project. In fact, I’m worried it may harm the project more than anything. The time I’ve been wasting reposting the reports I put on the news feed each day (2-3 hours a day) could be better spent by working on things like the NPMSRP Q1 Statistical Report or other reports… such as how the sexual assault rates for police match up to civilian sexual assault crime rates and how the rate of sexual assaults involving children appear to be worse for law enforcement officers than the general public. Additionally, new visitors may confuse this effort as nothing more than a news aggretator like the now-defunct BadCopNews used to be when this project is intended to be a lot more than that.

A case in point made itself apparent over at Radley Balko’s “The Agitator” blog today where readers there made it painfully clear that they didn’t even know this project exists and that it has resulted in several very detailed police misconduct maps. That really made me question how effective this project is when those people, people who are pretty engaged on the issue of police accountability, don’t even know what we’re doing here and all the great data we produce.

In any case, just something to think about as you read through the 23 reports of police misconduct that we captured in our news feed for April 6, 2010.

• Los Angeles County California is close to settling a lawsuit for $275,000 to a woman who claims that she was raped and sexually abused by a deputy while she was restrained in a courthouse holding cell. The sheriff’s department is not saying how the deputy was disciplined over the incident but insists that there was disciplinary action taken in the case, but it doesn’t appear as though any criminal charges were filed.
• A Los Angeles County California deputy has been accused of forcibly groping woman he pulled over for speeding. While the report seems to waffle on whether the assailant really was a deputy, which is fair given all the reports of impersonators lately, the sheriff’s department has indicated that there was a real patrol car involved in the incident. Wonder if it’s the same one from the first story?
• 3 Los Angeles County California deputies were suspended without pay after they were charged with assault for badly beating an inmate because he allegedly disrespected a jail guard. The deputies fractured his cheekbone and injured his ribs, ear and face, then left him in a cell for the next shift to deal with in 2006. The case was made when a deputy who witnessed it and agreed to a cover up was forced to admit the incident when he took a lie detector test as part of a pre-employment screen for another police department. The charges were filed in September but only just now leaked out.
• A Lowellville Ohio police officer was suspended without pay after he was arrested on charges of gross sexual imposition, menacing by stalking & public indecency. It appears as though, according to the article, he had some unspecified type of “forcible sexual activity” with one woman (most people call that rape) then stalked her and her friend.
• A Baton Rouge Louisiana police officer is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the family of man who was left left brain damaged after that officer hit him as he was running away from a traffic stop. The man was unarmed at the time and the officer cuffed him after running him over, then waited about 11 minutes for an ambulance to show up. Police justified the incident by claiming that they later discovered that he had drugs hidden in a body cavity.  The officer was not disciplined or criminally charged as the department said he follow procedure… though I don’t know of many law enforcement agencies where vehicular assault is part of the use of force continuum.
• A Milwaukee Wisconsin police detective was chewed out by a judge for destroying evidence prior to his decision to dismiss the case against a man who was shot in his car under questionable circumstances. The detective signed off to have the car destroyed and then continued to play along like the car was in evidence when prosecutors and the defense asked about it. This one was an interesting story, with some additional twists beyond the potential acts of misconduct alleged to have occurred.
• An unspecified number of Memphis Tennessee police officers are accused of using excessive force while arresting a mother and her son that they suspected of “cruising”. The pair says they have several witnesses who back their story that they were just leaving a game they had gone to when officers pulled them over, pulled the son from their SUV and pepper-sprayed him. All because an officer thought they were cruising… I don’t know many moms who go cruising the strip with their adult sons, do you?
• A number of Sutter County California deputies were sued by man who claims he was mauled by one of their police dogs while he was in a deep sleep caused by the pain medication he was on. A female witness was removed from the room while the attack allegedly occurred and the man says he was cuffed and then attacked again. He was left with serious ligament and muscle damage as a result of the attack but the sheriff’s department claims their officers did nothing wrong.
• A Fresno California police officer is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed man who was shot to death after he crashed into a parked van. The department claims the officer was justified in shooting the man because he didn’t comply with orders to step out of the car, but apparently some witnesses there claim the man didn’t comply because he wasn’t conscious.
• A Trenton New Jersey police officer has been suspended without pay after he was arrested in an unspecified domestic violence incident involving a woman.
• A Greenville South Carolina police officer plead guilty to a federal civil rights violation & another charge for abusing homeless people. he’s the second Greenville cop who has plead guilty to charges as a result of a federal probe into allegations of abuse towards homeless people.
• An Atlanta Georgia police officer who made headlines when he shot an unarmed man in face may face being fired soon. Not because of the shooting incident that he still faces criminal charges for, but for a domestic violence incident that he has plead no contest to that occurred after the shooting incident.
• A Tallahassee Florida police sergeant has resigned after an internal investigation found that he lied to investigators and exhibited conduct unbecoming in an unspecified incident.
• A Jefferson Parish Louisiana deputy has been accused of unnecessarily shooting dog after he entered a fenced in yard without a warrant while responding to a shots fired call. He entered the yard upon seeing a potato launcher which was the source of the shots fired call. The owner said he came out after he heard the first shot and begged the officer to stop, telling him the dog wouldn’t bite. The officer allegedly looked at the man, then fired a second shot that hit and killed the terrier mix. The dog’s owner says he would have answered the door and told the deputy what he was doing since he thought a potato cannon, that he built based on videos he saw on YouTube, was legal.
• A Fort Worth Texas police officer is under investigation after injuring two teens with bullet fragments as a result of firing two shots at a dog that barked at him during a traffic stop. The owner was the man stopped by the cop in his driveway and he claims that the dog was just barking and, after the first shot missed, the dog was running away when the cop fired a second shot that hit the dog, which is currently being treated.
• A Mount Vernon New York Police officer was suspended after arrested for interfering with a police investigation and breach of peace in a bar incident involving woman where he tried to stop cops from questioning her when they were called to respond to the unspecified incident.
• Two Martinsville Indiana police officers have been suspended without pay now that they are facing a disciplinary hearing after an investigation found that they violated policy by tasering and slapping a 10-year-old child who was acting out.
• The Versailles Pennsylvania police chief is taking flack after he was accused of leaving a 72-year-old woman stranded at a hardware store parking lot with her groceries after he impounding her car for expired tags. While he claims that she could use the hardware store’s phone to call for a ride, the woman claims that she was just left there without a way to get home.
• A Sarasota County Florida sheriff’s detective was arrested for doctor shopping. He apparently illegally obtained nearly 400 painkillers by going to multiple doctors after agreeing each time that he wouldn’t seek additional pills from other doctors.
• Nashville Tennessee is planning to settle a lawsuit for $250,000 to a woman who was wrongfully arrested based on a faulty warrant. Apparently there were failures to identify the flaw on two separate occasions and, as a result of those failures, the woman’s arrest was broadcast on television as part of coverage of a warrant sweep going on at the time and she spend several hours detained before the error was found.
• An Apopka Florida police officer was arrested for violating the terms of her bond issued as a result of a previous arrest. The violation? She violated an order to stay away from her husband that she had shot at in her alleged bid to commit murder/suicide during a dispute.
• A Muskogee Oklahoma police officer has been placed on paid leave after he was arrested for driving under the influence. He tested over 3x the legal limit at .26 and was released by a city judge on his own recognizance after a 6 hour stay in jail.
• And finally, three Puyallup Washington police officers are the subject of a lawsuit filed by three men who claim that they were harassed and forced to leave a pier that they were fishing from in a case of alleged racial discrimination. The officers allegedly rattled off a list of crimes they could charge them with for fishing there and told them it was illegal, but after they left they stuck around the parking lot and noticed the cops left several other white people alone who were also fishing off the same pier… the three men happened to be black.

Well, that’s it for today, and maybe for a while since I won’t be able to keep the feed updated over the next couple of days. We’ll see what happens… stay safe out there!

Since, at least so far, the votes overwhelmingly indicate a strong aversion to hearing my voice while still indicating that readers want me to keep publishing these reviews of the reports we cover in our National Police Misconduct News Feed each day… here’s the recap of the stories the news feed captured this holiday weekend.

As I mentioned earlier, weekends are normally slow for the news, but weekends where there’s a holiday are pretty much dead for news… So that’s why there are only 7 reports to talk about this weekend.

First, a Westminster California police officer was arrested on allegations of kidnapping, carjacking, and forcible rape for allegedly forcing a female restaurant worker to drive him someplace at gunpoint where he raped her and then left. However, he also left his gun behind in her car which is how he was found out. The details are really sketchy on this one right now, but California state corrections officer was also involved somehow, but apparently did not take part in the rape itself.

An Albany New York police officer was suspended after he was apparently arrested for criminal mischief, criminal trespass and harassment in an incident involving his girlfriend. However, this one is strange in that there are other reports floating around saying that his girlfriend was arrested on criminal mischief charges for ransacking the officer’s home and that the officer was arrested for reckless endangerment & trespassing. This would be the officer’s second arrest in five years, his previous was for DUI.

An Anderson County South Carolina deputy got into a bit of trouble for telling someone that he’d like to shoot a man in the head because he continually called to complaint about drug activity in his apartment building. The deputy apparently admitted to it during an investigation and offered to apologize to the man in order to clear the internal investigation but when he did so he only said he was sorry that there was a misunderstanding and that he was misquoted… not quite the apology the man expected and he’s not happy after he agreed to let it drop with an apology to be nice, but the county says it was good enough for them and closed the case anyway.

2 Saint Paul Minnesota police officers were rehired after they were fired due to investigations finding policy violations relating to their misdemeanor convictions in separate cases. One of the officers was involved in a high-profile bar fight and was convicted for disorderly conduct for it and the other was convicted on two hunting-related violations. The police union filed a grievance over the firings and the city quickly caved, overruling the police department and forcing the rehires. Department officials weren’t happy because the rehires not only cause credibility problems with the public, but the officers themselves may have trouble testifying in cases now because of their own records.

A Williamson County Tennessee deputy was arrested after allegedly starting a bar fight by assaulting a waitress and causing over $500 in damages in the process. The deputy was later arrested at his home over four hours later on charges of misdemeanor assault and felony vandalism.

A Seymour Connecticut police patrol sergeant was arrested on charges of risk of injury to a minor and third-degree assault in an unspecified domestic incident allegedly involving his son.

Lastly, New York City NY is facing yet another lawsuit by a student who was arrested and frog-marched out of a school for a relatively minor school infraction. This student, a 12-year-old girl, was marched out of school handcuffed and detained at a precinct for several hours… because she doodled on a desk with erasable markers. So now her family is suing the city and the police department for excessive force, saying the arrest and humiliation were excessive in comparison with the actual alleged infraction. The city is facing other suits over similar incidents with students, including a class action suit filed by the NYCLU.