The Blue Line

The family of a man who fell off a police boat while handcuffed and allowed to drown by the Missouri state trooper operating the boat will receive a $9 million settlement, attorneys announced Thursday.
And there is still a chance the cop will be convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Brandon Ellingson, a 20-year-old college student from Iowa who had been arrested for boating while intoxicated.

Five months after agreeing to pay a $45,000 settlement to a man they arrested for recording them tasering a man on his front porch, the Allentown Police Department is being sued again.
This time, by the man they tasered and tortured that night.

An award-winning California cop crashed his patrol vehicle into a parked car and utility pole Thursday, then refused to step out when ordered to do so by responding officers, putting the car in reverse and speeding off with flashing emergency lights, a broken windshield and a dangling passenger side mirror.
The incident was caught on video by shocked bystanders as more than 1,000 homes and businesses were left without power.

A Maryland cop searching for a shooting suspect described only as a “black man with a hoodie and jeans” ended up pouncing on a black man with a hoodie and jeans walking down the street, slamming him to the ground and handcuffing him while another officer punched him in the face.
Turns out, the man was an off-duty cop.
Now Washington D.C. police officer Robert Parker Jr., 28, is claiming racial profiling.
However, the Prince George’s County police officer who accosted him is also black, if that makes any difference. The officer who punched him is white.

They were so sure of themselves, these California cops who raided a marijuana dispensary last year, terrorizing customers while wearing masks, forcing them to the floor at gunpoint, then disabling surveillance cameras inside the shop to ensure their crime went unnoticed.
But the Santa Ana cops failed to remove a hidden camera, which caught them eating marijuana-laced snacks while mocking a handicapped woman.

Nobody at the Broome County Jail in New York is saying much about the two inmates who have died in less than a month.
In fact, the local district attorney’s office said it was not even aware of the latest death this week until contacted by the media.
And even then, Broome County District Attorney’s Chief Investigator Jason T. Ellis didn’t seem to really care.

“If your heart isn’t in this job, either step down or step out,” Austin Police Chief Hubert “Art” Acevedo said to his top brass during a private meeting on August 10 where he expressed his anger over the way his cops treat minorities, urging his commanders to push new community-friendly styles of policing to their officers – or lose their jobs.

Philadelphia cops were arresting two men on a darkened street for disorderly conduct aka “contempt of cop” when one of the men being arrested called out to a passing bicyclist, asking him to record the interaction.
The cyclist, Jean-Jacques Gabriel, wasted no time in stopping his bike, pulling out his smart phone and video recording on Facebook Live.
The cops then began harassing him with their usual bullying routine; accusing him of obstructing traffic, even though Gabriel was standing across the street on his bicycle in a bike lane.

An award-winning Pennsylvania state trooper awaiting trial for exposing his penis to a woman as part of a $20 discount on police memorabilia committed suicide Thursday.
Eric Zona, a 19-year veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police, was found dead in a wooded area, according to CBS Pittsburgh.
The 46-year-old cop was scheduled to go to trial on misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure and open lewdness on October 31.

For the price of $70,000, Punta Gorda police officer Lee Coel can claim he did nothing wrong by allowing his dog to attack and maul a man for riding his bicycle at night without lights.