"Once marijuana is legalized in Canada, how will police test for pot impairment?"
CBC Comedy sketch comedy series 22 Minutes humorously imagines what a pot sobriety test might look like, cookie dough and all. Read the rest
In 2009, after a successful public records lawsuit, the Invisible Institute received data on complaints against Chicago Police Department officers since 1988 -- the complaints often list multiple officers, and by tracing the social graph of dirty cops over time, The Intercept's Rob Arthur was able to show how corruption spread like a contagion, from senior officers to junior ones, teaching bad practices ranging from brutality to falsifying evidence to torture to racism to plotting to murder whistleblowing cops. Read the rest
Polk County, Iowa—Des Moines—is 4.84% black and 88.34% white. But a community group there claims that of one police officer's 282 traffic stops and bookings, 100% of the drivers were black and 0 percent white. So this dashcam footage of one of his stops there was no surprise to the locals.
Montray Little was pulled over by officers Kyle Thies and Natalie Heinemann despite video showing no obvious traffic violations. Little and his passenger, Jared Clinton, are accused of having drugs in the car and acting like they have a weapon as well. Little is handcuffed and Clinton is taken out of the car while they and the vehicle are searched. No drugs or weapons were found. Police did find an open bottle of alcohol which they had the men dump out.
Kyle Thies is the problem officer: "Can I be honest with you? It smells like marijuana in the car and I can see shake on the ground and your buddy's giving me the idea that he's got a gun. That's what I think. I dunno, just he way you're holding yourself, that's why I'm nervous." Read the rest
In the below video, Redondo Beach police officer Kyle Lofstrom pops the weasel and police dog Ammo responds accordingly.
"I can’t tell if this means he likes his new toy or hates it," Lofstrom posted on the K9 team's Instagram.
(via Laughing Squid) Read the rest
Last week, a Florida woman (because of course she’s from Florida) was caught rolling around in a stolen SUV. There was a chase! There was a crash! In an effort to escape her police entourage, 46-year old Jennifer Anne Kaufman left the other occupants of her pilfered ride behind and took off on foot. As she fled across a farmer's field, Kaufman could likely hear the sirens of the prowl cars that had been chasing her. The helicopter that the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office called in to help hunt her down? No way she’d have missed that.
Kaufman did not, however, account for the cows.
Rural crime is a serious issue: everyone’s gotta do their part, even livestock.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, after the cows and Seminole County Sheriff’s deputies took Kaufman and her pals, who were good enough to stick around, into custody, they had a chance to search the stolen SUV and discovered "…more than a gram of cocaine, a crack pipe, syringes and a metal spoon."
That’ll do cows. That’ll do.
Yeah, I know that it's more likely that the cattle were either curious or expecting to be fed by a human tromping through their field. But honestly, in a world so full of hate, violence and unspeakable dangers, I need to believe that, when faced with a situation like this one, a cow can be relied upon to rise up and mete out justice, that we all might sleep just a little bit easier. Read the rest
One of two teen boys who kicked and beat a Sikh man in Manteca, California, turned out to be a local police chief's own son.
Read the restTyrone McAllister, 18, the son of Union City, California, police Chief Darryl McAllister, was one of the two arrested, police in the city of Manteca, California, said.
The other suspect was identified as a 16-year-old boy whose name was withheld because he's underage. The two were taken into custody Wednesday for investigation of attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon, Manteca police said.
After NYPD Sgt. Richard Blake shot Thavone Santana in the face during a confrontation, we were told a terrifying story of being threatened and mugged early Thursday on the mean streets of Brooklyn. Unfortunately for Blake, a nearby video camera captured him drawing his gun, shooting someone who was trying to move away from him, then dropping a knife near his unconscious body.
Blake paces back and forth, then appears to pat down Santana’s pockets. He then appears to take a sheathed knife from his own back pocket, the New York Times reported, slides it from its sheath and drops it next to Santana’s crumpled body. He then pauses for a moment and retrieves the knife, the video shows.
The New York Police Department said Thursday that Santana was in stable condition.
“The video captures actions that raise serious questions and require further investigation,” Detective Sophia Mason, a department spokeswoman, told The Washington Post in a statement. Blake was placed on administrative duty, the department said. The Times reported that he was stripped of his badge and service weapon.
Santana is in intensive care. Locals say the men were in an ongoing dispute over a woman. Blake, the New York Daily News reports, was recently suspended from the force after "punching his girlfriend in the face." What a charmer. Read the rest
Thwarting Darwinism, or, more likely, a pair of earbuds, a cop from the Perth Amboy Police Department in New Jersey, hauled ass to save a man from being smooshed by a train--and it was all caught on the officer's body camera. Why anyone, unless they were in some emotional distress, would decide that walking down a set of train tracks oblivious to an oncoming locomotive was a good idea is beyond me. Fortunate for the fella in the video, the police officer that came to his rescue was in good enough physical shape that he was able to sprint with the 20 pounds of gear that most cops wear, without slowing him down. Read the rest
A criminal mastermind in Vancouver, Washington thought that he'd help himself to the bounty of – I dunno, locks? doors? finger puzzles? – goods that an escape room business had on hand. He ended up, you guessed it, trapped in an escape room and unable to break free. In a fit of panic and defeat, he called 911 for help. Read the rest
That'd be a no. Read the rest
On April 18th, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, announced that changes would be made to the country’s social security system: workers would be forced to pay more but would receive fewer benefits, despite their increased contributions. Understandably, people were pissed. They staged peaceful demonstrations. Then came the not so peaceful ones: the outrage the nation’s citizens felt over the changes to a system they had paid into the whole of their working lives, spilled over into resentment for the Nicaraguan government as a whole.
Since then, 300 civilians have died.
On July 14th, Nicaraguan police and pro-government paramilitary types trapped a group of student protestors inside of a church and commenced firing on those inside with military-grade arms. The whole, bloody, terrifying show was captured on video and in Twitter posts from inside of the church. One young man named Gerald, was from the city of Masaya. He was in Managua, Nicaragua's capital, attending university. Gerald was shot in the head—dead at 20 years old. His last rites delivered by a priest who was trapped in the church with him. Those trapped in the church have since been allowed to go free. Its said that there is at least one other dead and several wounded as a result of the incident.
Daniel Ortega’s been in office as the President of Nicaragua for 11 years. To get there, he ran for the position from 1990 until 2007. It was with a promise to improve the lives of the poor, to end the rampant corruption that infected Nicaragua’s political elite. Read the rest
Oregon State Representative Janelle Bynum, who is running for reelection, was canvassing in Clackamas County when one of her constituents called the police. Why? According to Bynum's Facebook post, the resident thought she was acting suspiciously "going door to door and spending a lot of time typing on (her) cell phone after each house."
She praised the deputy who responded for being professional, and said she asked him if she could meet the woman who made the call, but she was not available.
"The officer called her, we talked and she did apologize," Bynum said, without specifying the race of the caller.
Electric scooter sharing services are exploding on the west coast, but after users drop them wherever, they eventually need to be recharged. This fella got a little too ambitious for the cops in "catching" wayward scooters for recharging. Read the rest
Last month, three gentlemen were arrested in Lebanon, Maine for trying to steal a 25-foot-long shed from a foreclosed property. They had tied the shed to the back of their pickup truck and were tugging it down the road when cops arrived. I'd guess there was no high-speed chase. According to the Portland Press Herald, police also busted one of them for meth and prescription pills that didn't belong to him. Other charges for the men include unauthorized taking or transfer, reckless conduct, and criminal mischief. (via Weird Universe) Read the rest
Raimundo Atesiano was chief of the Biscayne Park Police Department in 2013, and he was proud to boast about his department's 100% clearance rate for burglaries -- but according to federal prosecutors who just indicted him, Atesiano conspired with two of his officers to frame a 16-year-old child for unsolved burglaries so that they could impress local officials. Read the rest
This bear smartly checked out a couple cops suspiciously loitering in their car on the side of the road. Reportedly the officers were just eating their lunch. This time. Read the rest
