Courthouse Files

Daniel Shaver may have had a few drinks in him when he was ordered out of his Arizona hotel room at gunpoint by a group of six screaming police officers last January.
The Mesa police officers were barking all kinds of orders; each one with a different demand, telling him to get down on his hands and knees and crawl towards them, to place his hands over his head, to sit on the floor and cross his legs in front of him.

The South Carolina state trooper who pulled a man over for a seatbelt violation, demanding his identification – then shooting the man after he reached into his truck for his identification – pleaded guilty today to assault and battery charges.
Sean Groubert faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the Washington Post.

A Maryland man convicted by a judge last year on questionable charges after a sheriff’s deputy accused his girlfriend of breastfeeding their unrestrained baby in the passengers’s seat as he pulled into a gas station had the conviction reversed on appeal last month after taking the case before a jury.
But the Charles County Sheriff’s Office is still refusing to return his girlfriend’s phone that recorded the incident.

The Project Veritas Action Fund, a conservative nonprofit known for releasing undercover videos, filed a federal lawsuit last Friday seeking to overturn aspects of the Massachusetts wiretapping law, which criminalizes secretly audio recording conversations.
Stephen Gordon, a spokesperson for Project Veritas, provided the following statement:

On February 6, 2016, Charles “Chris” Harrell was walking down the street drinking coffee while Cincinnati police officer Baron Osterman followed him on a bicycle. Harrell began recording Osterman with his cell phone, alleging that Osterman was racially profiling him.
Osterman’s actions in the video appear to validate Harrell’s allegation when Harrell, likely distracted by recording Osterman, crosses against a “Don’t Walk” signal on a street that is clearly free of all vehicular traffic, leading to Osterman stopping him for the minor pedestrian traffic violation.

A Pennsylvania police officer who was already facing criminal charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old is now accused of raping two additional women, including one while handcuffed.
All three females say Connellsville police officer Ryan Reese arrested them on drug charges, using his position as Fayette County Drug Task Force supervisor to coerce them into sex.

A New Jersey Crime Lab technician was suspended with pay, after he was found writing down results of suspected marijuana, before the tests were even completed, throwing 7,827 criminal cases into doubt, damaging confidence in the workings of that state’s criminal justice system.
Criminal charges have yet to be filed against Kamalkant Shah, but falsifying even a single test would be grounds for indictment.

PINAC reported back in April of 2013 about Jonas Correia who was arrested in Massachusetts for recording Northampton police arresting alleged “unruly bar patrons” outside of a downtown bar.
The city of Northampton has since settled a civil rights claim in the amount of $52,000.
Video of the incident was taken by an attorney and bystander who accused police of arresting the man because he was black.

Detroit police shot and killed a man’s dog chained up legally at his home for ‘no reason‘, now the deteriorating city’s taxpayers will pay the price.

Donald Trump loves to brag about the number of people he has sued over the years, but he doesn’t say much about his losing legal battle with disgruntled former students of Trump University.