The Legal Arena

A Washington police officer who is responsible for training other officers was caught on video physically abusing a 15-year-old girl, then claiming she had attacked him.
The charges never stuck and now Tacoma police officer Jared Williams is being sued.
Williams was in full uniform and working an off-duty security job at Tacoma Mall when he spotted two teenagers riding their bicycles through the parking lot on May 24, 2015.

Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Donna Watts was just doing her job on October 11, 2011 when she tried to pull over an off-duty Miami police officer in a patrol car, who was driving 120 mph down I-95.
But Fausto Lopez continued speeding down the highway, refusing to pull over for several miles.
Not knowing why Lopez would not pull over after being “lit up,” Watts had him exit the vehicle at gun point.
It just got crazier and weirder from there.

Despite a coroner’s report that determined a man died of heart disease at the exact moment he was being beaten by sheriff’s deputies in California, Kern County agreed to a $3.4 million settlement with the man’s family this week.
The autopsy, however, was always questionable considering the Kern County Coroner reports to the Kern County Sheriff, whose deputies attacked David Sal Silva in a horrific beating caught on video.
Deputies also confiscated cameras from witnesses after the beating.

A Georgia cop admitted to being a hit man for a violent criminal gang called the Gangster Disciples, using his position as a law enforcement officer to tip off fellow ganger members about a planned police raid on a bar frequented by the gang.
Vancito Gumbs, who was forced to resign from the DeKalb County Police Department in October because he was involved in illegal drugs, was one of 32 people listed in an indictment unsealed in a federal court in Atlanta Wednesday.

A New York City Copwatch activist is suing the NYPD for $1 Million in two separate lawsuits stemming from two arrests for recording them in public where they ended up deleting his footage.
Jose LaSalle, 46, filed the second lawsuit Friday for his arrest in September 2015. The first lawsuit was filed in 2014 for an arrest in September 2013. He is asking for $500,000 from each lawsuit.

Having already received a $7,500 settlement for a wrongful arrest involving the recording of police in public , an Oregon man was surprised when a jury found him guilty for the same arrest Tuesday.
But Judge Stephen Bushong did not allow any mention of November’s settlement to be part of the trial.
Instead, the six-person jury heard testimony from several police officers that Fred Marlow IV was interfering with their investigation by standing on the property of his apartment complex recording them blasting their way into a home using flash grenades in September 2014.

A former Miami cop accused of fondling a woman in the back of his patrol car escaped armed kidnapping and sexual battery charges Monday but now faces charges for buying $60,000 worth of cocaine from a confidential informant.
In 2011, Luis Hernandez picked up the 44-year-old victim from police headquarters to transport her to the Miami-Dade County jail after she was arrested following a bar brawl.
But instead of taking her to the jail, he drove her to a parking lot and told her, “I’m going to help you.”

A New York City police officer who downed several beers and whiskeys before getting into his car, driving down the street and stopping at a traffic light before stepping out and shooting two random strangers in another car was sentenced to nine years in prison this month.
Brendan Cronin told police he was “on the job” when he was arrested a half-mile away that fateful evening on April 28, 2014.

The city of Cleveland will pay $6 million to the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot and killed by police while playing in the park with a pellet gun.
The settlement comes with the stipulation that police did nothing wrong in shooting the boy within one second of pulling up to the park, even though he was not even holding the pellet gun at the time.

A federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of a plaintiff in a case against an officer who admitted a man’s dog didn’t pose a threat before he shot and killed it.
Austin police officer Daniel Walsh said Shiner Bock, the dog, “was just kinda walking at me, he wasn’t, he didn’t, I mean . . .’before breaking off the end of his sentence,” an officer at the scene heard him say, according to the lawsuit.