Legal Decisions

A Michigan man faces 40 years in prison for the alleged rants he posted on Facebook encouraging friends to “kill all white cops,” apparently becoming frustrated after watching several police videos spread across social and news media showing white cops disproportionately killing unarmed black men.
“It was a tirade of hate and violence specifically directed toward police, encouraging people to kill police,” Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said during a press conference.

One South Florida cop forced a woman to perform oral sex on him before raping her on the hood of his car under threat of arrest.
The second cop ordered the woman’s female friend to punch him in the genitals, which is what got him off.
Now Franklin Hartley and Thomas Merenda, who have since by fired from the Lauderhill Police Department, have to pay the women $6.2 million after a federal judge ruled against them in a civil trial last week.

The footage was so persuasive, it took jurors less than ten minutes to return the murder indictment against a Georgia cop last week.
“He clearly lied and had there not been any cameras in the car he possibly would have gotten away with it,” Grand Juror No. 7 told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Atlanta police officer James R. Burns had told investigators an unarmed black man was trying to kill him with his car on June 22, which made him fear for his life.

A North Carolina cop who tasered an unarmed man to death earlier this year was indicted by a grand jury on manslaughter charges Tuesday.
The incident took place on March 3 when Kenly police officer Jesse Craig Santifort tasered Alexander Warren Thompson after a high-speed car chase through two counties that ended when Thompson wrecked his vehicle.
Santifort claims Thompson came charging towards him, which was when he tasered him four times.
“Central, I have tased him,” Santifort reported to dispatch, according to an audio recording.

It was 2012 when Indiana police entered a home without a warrant and shook awake a sleeping 18-year-old high school student, punching him six times, then tasering him before dragging him outside and stuffing him into a patrol car.
Handcuffed in the back of the car, DeShawn Franklin demanded to know what he had done wrong.
A South Bend police officer told him he had matched the description of a man they were looking for, specifically, he had the same hairstyle; dreadlocks.

Kentucky Judge Olu Stevens was ordered to serve a 90 day suspension without pay on Monday; all for insinuating that prosecutor Tom Wine supported racial divides.
Judge Stevens faced possible removal from the bench if he contested the suspension.

An Ohio cop narrowly avoided being sent back to prison for having sex with a 14-year-old boy after the state supreme court ruled in his favor last week, stating that a law barring cops from having sex with minors was unconstitutional.
In the 4-3 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court determined the law violated the state’s Equal Protection Clause of both the U.S. Constitution and the Ohio Constitution because it imposed a higher standard on cops than it did for the general public.

Despite the fact that a witness said Jermaine McBean never pointed a gun at a South Florida deputy who ended up shooting and killing him, a Florida judge took the word of the deputy when he dismissed manslaughter charges against him on Wednesday, basing his decision on the state’s “stand your ground” law.
The decision means that Broward County sheriff’s deputy Peter Peraza will be spared a possible 30-year sentence.

Body camera footage released Wednesday shows an Arizona cop responding to a shoplifting call wasted no time before shooting a Navajo woman five times in the chest after she approached him with a small pair of medical scissors.
“She had a pair of scissors that she used to cut her hair’s split-ends,” David Villaescusa, Loreal Tsingine’s cousin who helped raise her since she was ten, told nativenewsonline.net.

Already having been accused of murdering a prostitute, East Cleveland Police Detective Randy Hicks was drunk when he and another cop pulled Arnold Black over, accusing the 45-year-old Ohio man of possessing a kilo of cocaine because he was driving a truck similar to a known drug dealer.
When Hicks found no cocaine, he punched Black in the face two times while officer Jonathan O’Leary held him up, telling Black he was angry at having left the bar where he had been pounding drinks with friends.