Courthouse Files

A 55-year-old Oregon woman who pulled over to the side of the road to observe a police stop was found guilty of interfering with a police officer last week.
Keely Meagan was merely observing, not physically interfering nor verbally interfering, but the judge said she had pulled over in an unsafe area, which is why he handed down his guilty verdict Thursday.
However, Meagan had pulled up behind two cop cars and the car they were pulling over on the side of an interstate near an exit ramp on September 8, 2016.

An NYPD cop with “an odd fetish” slipped his finger into a man’s anus and wiggled it around after confronting the man inside a bodega for having a bulge underneath his shirt.
The bulge turned out to be a cellphone on a belt holder.
But even after NYPD officer Febres realized it was nothing but a phone, he proceeded to stick his ungloved hands inside John Hidalgo’s pants, penetrating his anus with his finger and fondling his penis and testicles.

Just over a week after Daniel Shaver’s parents filed a lawsuit against the Arizona police department that shot and killed their unarmed son, his widow also filed a lawsuit.
This one for $75 million in damages.
Laney Sweet filed her lawsuit Tuesday against the Mesa Police Department, including Philip “Mitch” Brailsford, the cop who killed her husband with an AR-15 with the words, “You’re Fucked” inscribed on it.

Newly released video shows five heavily armed California cops storm a convenience store with a police dog  before shooting and killing a mentally ill man who was legally blind.
The store surveillance video, which contains no audio, contradicts the police version of events that claimed James Hall “advanced” towards them with a knife.
Instead, the video shows Hall cowering in the corner of the convenience store after cops had sicced their dog on him.
The video then shows one of the Fontana cops opening fire on him, then about ten cops swarming the body.

A Texas cop was facing six months in jail for illegally entering and searching the car of a PINAC reporter who had been unlawfully arrested for recording in public.

St. Louis police pulled a car over for making a U-turn, forcing a passenger out of the car, handcuffing her, then pulling her pants and underwear down as an officer probed her vagina for drugs with gloved fingers.
No drugs were found inside Kayla Robinson’s vagina, but she was still arrested on two counts of drug possession because she had already handed them a bag of weed.
But Detective Angela Hawkins believed Robinson had crack cocaine that she was not handing over. And the award-winning officer was sure the crack was hidden inside her vagina.

Two California men who spent seven months in jail for conspiracy to commit murder based on rap lyrics and Facebook photos that made no reference to actual murders filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Police Department Tuesday.
Police based their arrests on allegations that Brandon Duncan and Aaron Harvey were Facebook friends with suspected gang members they grew up with, using an obscure law that does not ever appear to have been used in California before the 2014 arrests.
But there was no evidence that either committed any murders or were actual gang members.

The Arizona cop who shot and killed an unarmed man begging not to be killed as he was forced to crawl towards cops in a hotel hallway was sued this week.
Philip “Mitch” Brailsford, who was fired from the Mesa Police Department after killing Daniel Shaver last year, is still awaiting trial for second-degree murder.

A South Florida deputy who left a man paralyzed after confusing a cell phone for a gun had his personal items seized Saturday, including his car, clothes, television, furniture, golf clubs, fishing rods and computer, after his agency refused to pay the victim $200,000 – a fraction of the $22.4 million a federal jury awarded him last year.
Federal marshalls seized Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin under court order after Sheriff Ric Bradshaw refused to pay a dime towards the settlement.

A Louisiana jailer has been sued for repeatedly sexually abusing a 15-year-old inmate and threatening to harm her mother if she didn’t obey his commands.
During the girl’s seven month stint in the juvenile tier of the St. Bernard Parish Juvenile Detention Center, Deputy Eddie Williams subjected her to constant harassment, ordering her to disrobe and masturbate in certain places so he could view video of her via the jail’s remote security camera.