The Blue Line

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.

Indiana cops shot and killed a man with a knife, claiming he was “advancing” towards them, making them fear for their lives.
But a body cam video shows the man holding holding his hands up, then taking two steps forward and stopping about 30 feet away from the officers, who were positioned behind their cars.
Daniel Wooters then pointed at them, possibly with the knife in his hand but it’s difficult to tell in the video.
And that was when three Evansville police officers fired 11 shots at the man.

A man having a medical emergency while driving ended up veering off a highway and landing in a ditch, slumping over on the passenger seat and alarming witnesses who rushed to help, then called 911, figuring he would receive the proper care.
Not a chance.
Instead, Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers arrived on the scene within five minutes and began yelling at him to “put your car in park,” according to a video recorded by a witness.
When the man did not immediately comply, the cops busted out both the driver side window and the passenger side window.

The gun used to shoot a Philadelphia cop earlier this year in an incident described as a “terrorist attack” was stolen from a fellow police officer three years earlier.
Philadelphia police officer Leon Pearson told investigators he fell asleep while drunk in his home, then woke up to find his gun missing.
He also said there was no sign of forced entry and nothing else was missing.
That gun ended up in the hands of Edward Archer who used it to shoot Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett as he was driving his patrol car on January 7.

A Texas deputy who shot and killed an unarmed man in April gave the usual spiel to justify it, claiming he had smelled marijuana, claiming that the driver was reaching for something and then claiming that the driver had grabbed his gun.
And as usual, a grand jury bought the story, finding no reason to indict Harris County Constable Precinct 5 Deputy R. Felix on Wednesday, clearing him of any wrongdoing.

For two grams of marijuana, a Florida SWAT team stormed into a home and shot an unarmed man dead Tuesday, ending a month-long drug investigation on the 22-year-old man they had just killed.
Hillsborough County sheriff’s officials said SWAT team members perceived Levonia Riggins to be an “immediate threat.”
They were also sure to release a previous mugshot, painting him as a man who could not stay out of trouble with the law, even though it had been more than a year since he was last arrested.
However, his friends said he was just a man who enjoyed getting high.

It’s been four days since Chico police arrested a pair of women in Northern California in a video that has gone viral and the story has been reported by at least four local media sites.
However, with the exception of one news site, The Orion, none of those sites have mentioned the fact another phone that recorded the incident has gone missing.

An award-winning San Francisco cop was sentenced to 14 months in prison Tuesday for conducting an illegal search on a hotel room, then falsifying a police report to make it seem as it was a legal search.
Defense attorneys argued that Arshad Razzak, who spent 19 years on the force,  was never trained in how not to violate the rights of citizens.
The 44-year-old cop was also not trained in common sense because it was as surveillance video that led to his conviction.

The San Francisco police union berated San Francisco 49er quarter Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the National Anthem to protest against police violence – accusing the NFL player of demonstrating a “lack of sensitivity” towards police officers by painting a “false narrative” with “misinformation that lacks any factual basis.”
Talk about projecting.
Martin Halloran, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, also said it was not fair for Kaepernick to accuse police of contributing to the “racial divide” in this country.