PINAC News Top 3

Sparks flew from batons as they swung down on Alejandro Rojo’s skull and onto the pavement over and over.
The 22-year-old man is lucky to be alive.
And it was all caught on camera.
A woman identified only as “Sandra” recorded the California cop Tuesday night repeatedly beating a man in the head with his baton after responding to a call at a CVS pharmacy about a man acting strange, rummaging through medical supply boxes, “possibly ingesting medicine.”

Co-written with Maya Shaffer

For the first time in more than a year, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office has been prompted to take action against government officials who have violated the state’s public records law.
That’s good news, but it’s also the latest reminder that Massachusetts state officials treat transparency as a joke.

A video recently uploaded to Facebook shows Texas deputies responding to a call about males fighting in the parking lot of a Whataburger burger joint and then arresting a pair of female teenagers inside who had nothing to do with the fight.
Bexar County sheriff’s deputies arrested one girl as she was sitting down to a meal of chicken strips and fries, throwing her food on the floor.
They then arrested her friend after she walked up and placed a hat on her handcuffed friend’s head.

Two Massachusetts police officers denied a teenager access to his anti-seizure medication, causing him to experience “a potentially life-threatening series of seizures that required hospitalization,” according to a civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday.

In the ensuing moments after Oklahoma police pepper sprayed an 84-year-old woman after kicking her door down without a warrant to arrest her son for running a stop sign, one cop tells another cop that “we can spin it” in order to justify their questionable tactics.
But Muskogee police are having a tough time spinning the incident considering it was all caught on body cam video.

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.

A Colorado mom said she was trying to do the right thing when she called police on her son, telling them he had an outstanding felony warrant and informing them where they could arrest him.
Denver police showed up and killed him.
Now Tobi Ferguson is having second thoughts about calling police on her 21-year-old son, Michael Ferguson.

A Texas cop illegally detained and handcuffed a PINAC correspondent for video recording before secretly scanning his fingerprints on a portable device without his consent while his hands were cuffed behind his back.
Now the Harris County Constable’s Office is refusing to provide PINAC details on this mysterious device that was used to scan David Warden’s fingerprints without his permission.
The incident took place on August 17 as Warden was conducting a First Amendment audit from a public sidewalk outside a chemical plant in Houston.

Eurie Stamps, 68, a grandfather and retired Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority worker, was not suspected of any crime when police assaulted him inside his home and shot him dead shortly after midnight on January 5, 2011.
Now, more than five years later, Stamps’ family has reached a settlement with the town of Framingham, which to this day employs Stamps’ killer.
Details of the settlement, which was made Friday, have not yet been made public.
But the one thing that is clear is that Stamps is one of the countless victims of the government’s war on drugs.

The three off-duty Chicago cops were apparently drunk when Obed “OJ” DeLeon walked into a taco joint late one night and began complaining about a driver who had left a Camaro blocking the entrance to the parking lot.
“Yeah, that guy’s an asshole for parking like that,” DeLeon told another two men he did not know, whom were also waiting in line to place an order.
Overhearing DeLeon’s comments was the owner of the car, Jason Orsa, one of the three cops sitting at a nearby table with a fourth friend.
“What if I’m an asshole?” Orsa replied.