The Blue Line

One year after the city of Chicago fired a police review investigator for finding several police shootings unjustified, the city continues to dish out millions of dollars in police brutality settlements, including $18.6 million so far this year.
The most recent settlements were approved last week; three cases totaling $4.72 million, including the last of 25 lawsuits stemming for a rogue cop named Jerome Finnigan.

The North Miami cop who shot an unarmed caretaker who had his hands in the air while trying to kill his autistic companion for holding a toy truck was named “Officer of the Month” in September 2013 and in October 2014.

A Texas cop pulled a school teacher over for speeding, then violently threw her to the ground within seconds, later claiming she was “reaching for the front passenger side of the vehicle,” which, of course, made him fear for his life.
But the dash cam video shows Austin police officer Bryan Richter simply flew off the handle.
What else is new?

It took less than 24 hours for a police union president to spin the story of how a North Miami police officer shot a man with his hands in the air.
The cop was actually trying to kill the autistic man holding the toy truck in order to prevent him from killing his caretaker with the toy truck.
At the time, the cop was still under the impression that the toy truck was a gun, so he wasn’t taking any chances.

Oregon police are facing scrutiny on social and news media after a video posted to Facebook last week showed five Ashland police officers piling on top of a homeless autistic man because he had the nerve to inform them they were violating federal law by harassing and ticketing his friend for having a disability service dog in public.
Ashland police charged the man who goes by “Redwood” with disturbing the peace, interfering with an officer and resisting arrest, which are charges commonly used by police in contempt of cop cases across the country.

Almost two weeks have passed since the shooting of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and police continue to stall the release of video from officer body cameras as well as the Triple S Food Mart surveillance cameras, the latter which they seized without a warrant.

A Texas woman who stepped out of her apartment to record police trying to enter her neighbor’s apartment ended up assaulted by an officer who claimed he was only doing it for her safety.
Rosenberg police officer Adam Vasquez told her since she was already a victim of assault, he had the right to assault her again.
But the woman, Sydney Tawater, insisted she was not a victim of assault. At least not until she was assaulted by the Texas cop.
She insists she was only trying to record the officers, which is her First Amendment right.

A Florida sheriff’s deputy seized a man’s phone without a warrant after arriving with Department of Children and Families workers to seize a woman’s children, who were also apparently seized without a warrant.
Shortly after they arrived at her Fort Myers home on July 11, the deputy allegedly punched Jasmine Aguilera’s friend, Waldemar Suarez, then spun her around so she wouldn’t witness her children being taken by the state.

An Alabama grand jury refused to bring charges against citizen journalist Keith “Bama Camera” Golden for posting a video of his encounter with the Wetumpka Police Department,  which led to his arrest after hundreds of viewers called the department to complain.

Georgia cops were looking for a man named Michael Clay when they approached a man named Patrick Mumford, ordering him to state his name.
Mumford, who was sitting inside a car parked in a residential front yard minding his own business, was taken aback by the surprise visit from a group of police officers, so he asked why they were asking for his name.
But Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan officer Sharif Lockett made it clear that he was not going to ask again, so Mumford told him his name was “Patrick.”