police overkill

So when the cops kill your dog, even when you've done nothing wrong, even if the pup was harmless, it's "sorry" the officer felt "threatened" and there's little you can do about it. It's just an animal, after all.

But put a badge on a dog?

During an elaborate memorial, Ringo the police dog received a final send-off Friday befitting canine aristocracy.

A motorcade of 30 police cruisers rolled slowly beneath a giant American flag stretched between fire department ladder trucks.

A floral arrangement spelling out the dog's name was put across the windshield of the cruiser in which the Belgian Malinois traveled with his human partner, Anderson County Deputy Rick Coley.

Taps played softly outside the Clinton Community Center, where more than 100 people gathered to pay their respects.

Among the mourners: some 50 law enforcement officers - Clinton police, Anderson, Scott and Campbell County deputies, state troopers and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officers.

A multimedia slide show with pictures of Ringo in action, training and posing with his master or just cavorting, was flashed on the center's Great Room wall.

Is this really necessary?

A last-minute deal with the state's most powerful law-enforcement agencies may rescue a bill known as "Rachel's Law" that sought to tighten oversight for the use of confidential informants.

Law-enforcement groups had targeted it for defeat, complaining that its requirement for written contracts, approval by defense attorneys and consultation with prosecutors and probation officers would have put informants at greater risk, scaring away their most valuable law-enforcement tool.

"Why create more policies and restrictions when we already have them," said Santa Rosa Sheriff Wendell Hall. "This will end confidential informants."

"This would end law enforcement," warned Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell.

The measure (SB 604) by Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, is named after 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman, a recent Florida State University graduate when she was killed last year working as an informant in an undercover drug sting for the Tallahassee Police Department.

Facing several drug charges, Hoffman wore a wire and was given $13,000 in cash to buy drugs and a gun from two suspected drug dealers on May 7. Her body was found in the woods in Taylor County 36 hours later.

Members of the Florida Police Chiefs Association and the Florida Sheriffs Association packed the meeting room when the Senate Criminal Justice Committee held a workshop on the measure.

More from reddit:

Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell is a lying sack of shit. If you watch the 20/20 video he embarrasses the shit out of himself trying to defend his departments actions.

Caught with a little over 5 ounces of marijuana and 6 ecstasy pills, the TPD lies to her and gets her to try and buy 1,500 ecstasy pills, 2 ounces of coke and a handgun from 2 men she had never met before. All this was arranged without her lawyers knowledge at the TPDs insistence.

Please watch the video for all the details. Some of my friends were very close to her and her death is a real tragedy that could have been avoided.

Not to mention they gave her $13,000 to buy all of that. What 23 year old girl has that much money for all of that crap?
The suspects figured it out on the spot and the Tallahassee police didn't follow them when they changed the location of the deal (to the middle of the woods).

It's hard to believe that police would want to use a 23 year old girl instead of a fully-trained and experienced under-cover officer but in this day and age, police can get away with anything. Why risk the lives of their own officers when they can use and throw away a little girl.

In January 2007, a SWAT team in Lima, Ohio, shot and killed Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old mother, during a drug raid at the home of her boyfriend, Anthony Terry. When the unarmed Wilson was shot, she was kneeling on the ground, complying with police orders. She was holding her 1-year-old son, Sincere, who was also shot, losing his left hand. A subsequent investigation revealed that Officer Joseph Chavalia heard another officer shooting Terry's two dogs, mistook the noise for hostile gunfire, panicked, and fired blindly into the room where Wilson was kneeling. Chavalia was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but acquitted.

...

A Denver Post investigation found that in 80 percent of no-knock raids conducted in Denver in 1999, police assertions that there would be weapons in the targeted home turned out to be wrong. A separate investigation by the Rocky Mountain News found that of the 146 no-knock warrants served in Denver in 1999, just 49 resulted in criminal charges, and only two resulted in prison time. Media investigations produced similar results after high-profile mistaken raids in New York City in 2003, in Atlanta in 2007, and in Orlando and Palm Beach, Florida, in 1998. When the results of the Denver investigation were revealed, former prosecutor Craig Silverman said, "When you have that violent intrusion on people's homes with so little results, you have to ask why."

Lima police apparently aren't as concerned. When told of the Lima News investigation, police spokesman Kevin Martin said, "That means 68 percent of the time, we're getting guns or drugs off the street. We're not looking at it as a win-loss record like a football team does."

Even worse is that the cops don't care.

Hiebing, 54, a longtime season ticket holder who had notbeen drinking, was ejected from Camp Randall stadium during the Oct. 11 game against Penn Stateafter she was discovered sitting in a stadium aisle, with her seat occupied by someone else. Authorities said a taser was used to subdue Heibing.

"She was lying on the ground face down and she was still kind of squirming, so they tasered her," Dahmen told 27 News. "On the back of the calf."

"I was shocked. I couldn't believe it, it was just really (a) scary sight." Dahmen said a police officer initially threatened Hiebing with pepper spray when Hiebing refused to leave the stadium seating area.

Reminds me of the time I went to a concert. Someone was in my seat, so I stood in the aisle. I had to spend 30 minutes explaining to security that I would have loved to sit in my seat and actually had a ticket on me. Thankfully, I didn't get tased.

St. Louis County police will begin patrolling the streets of St. George starting next month, county officials said Friday.

The city will become the 17th to contract with the county. St. George officials voted unanimously in favor of the five-year contract for 24-hour police service, according to St. Louis County police.

St. George is the town of about 1,500 where a man in 2007 recorded a police officer's tirade on a commuter lot near Interstate 55. The video, posted online, briefly put the south St. Louis County community in the spotlight.

The tape caught a St. George sergeant yelling, berating the motorist and threatening to arrest the man on fictional charges. The man said he put a video recorder in this car after previous run-ins with police. The sergeant was later fired.

Robbie Tolan and his cousin were returning to Tolan's home in the mostly white Houston suburb of Bellaire in the early hours of December 31, when they were approached by officers who suspected the SUV they had just gotten out of was stolen.

Tolan's parents, who own the SUV, came out of the house to explain the situation. An altercation ensued and Tolan's mother was thrown against the garage door by an officer. According to Tolan's uncle, "Her son was on his back at the time, and he raised up and asked, 'What are you doing to my mom?' and the officer shot him -- while he was on the ground."

"WE WON'T rest until we have honored Oscar Grant by winning justice for his family and ending police brutality in Oakland."

Those were the words of Dereca Blackmon, one of the principal organizers of a rally and march of nearly 1,000 people on January 7 to protest the murder of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III early on New Year's Day by police on an Oakland transit station platform.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle fired a bullet into Grant's back as the father of a 4-year-old girl lay on his stomach, his hands cuffed, according to a lawyer for the Grant family. The bullet went through Grant's body, ricocheted off the concrete station platform, and punctured his lungs.

Rodis promptly filed a $250,000 claim against the city, former Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr., and two officers at the scene alleging false arrest, excessive force, and the negligent infliction of emotional stress, among other things. He later offered to settle the suit for $15,000, but the City Attorney's Office refused to accept the deal.

Five years and innumerable legal bills later, the case just keeps getting worse for the city -- even before it lands in front of a jury to determine if indeed the police should compensate Rodis.
"Part of my mind was saying ... 'I'm not going to argue. I'm not going to resist,'" Rodis said of the arrest. "I put my hands behind my back but I'm thinking 'This has got to be a mistake. Somebody here has to have some sense.'"

Rodis was suffering from minor allergy symptoms on Feb. 17, 2003, when he headed to a Walgreens on Ocean Avenue he'd been going to for 20 years. It was located near his Ingleside home and a law office he's had in the neighborhood since 1992.

He picked up some cough syrup, Claritin, toothpaste, and a few other things. The total came to $42 and change, so he tried to pay with a $100 bill.

"I just happened to have it in my wallet," Rodis said.

The drugstore clerk used a counterfeit detection pen to be sure the bill was legit. It was, according to the marking, but the bill was printed in the 1980s before watermarks and magnetic strips were used to help stop counterfeiting.

The young clerk was unfamiliar with the bill's design and called a manager to be sure. He too used a counterfeit pen to confirm that it was real. But the manager told Rodis he was still going to call the police, fearing it was fake. That's when things turned surreal. Two officers showed up and almost immediately placed Rodis in handcuffs before trying to ascertain if he'd actually attempted to defraud Walgreens.

"They made no effort to determine what the situation was ... they just assumed," Rodis said. "When she said 'Put your hands behind your back,' I thought I was in some Twilight Zone episode."

Early on New Year's Day, Oscar Grant was involved in a scuffle with an older man he hadn't previously met. The fighting continued and when the train reached Fruitvale, BART police stopped the fight and took Grant and several others into custody. The officers were armed with stun guns as well as sidearms. Three BART officers then proceed to place Grant face down to handcuff him, then one of them stands up, draws his weapon and shoots him in the back.

Graphic video of the incident.

Justin Volpe - the cop involved in one of the most sensational police-brutality cases in city history - has asked for a commutation of his 30-year prison sentence from President Bush.

The 36-year-old ex-cop, who notoriously used a broomstick in a precinct station house to sodomize victim Abner Louima, has sent a formal request - along with a small mound of letters of support - to the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney, which handles referrals to the president for rare reductions of sentences.

Volpe has been behind bars for about 12 years without chance of parole. He is set to be released from a Minnesota federal prison in 2025.