Category Archives: US policing

Jayland Walker’s family receives $4.8m from city of Akron over killing by police

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Grand jury declined to indict eight officers who fired 94 bullets at 25-year-old Black man in 2022

The family of Jayland Walker, a Black man killed when eight police officers fired 94 bullets at him after he shot at least one round out his car window, will receive a $4.8m settlement from the city of Akron, the mayor’s office said on Monday.

A grand jury declined to indict the officers last year, but Walker’s family accused the officers in a federal lawsuit of using excessive force and participating in a “culture of violence and racism” within Akron’s police department.

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Former county sheriff Jim McDonnell named new Los Angeles police chief

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McDonnell will head force of nearly 9,000 officers amid rising discontentment over public safety among residents

Former Los Angeles county sheriff Jim McDonnell will lead the Los Angeles police department (LAPD), taking charge of the force of nearly 9,000 officers as discontent grows among the city’s residents over public safety even as violent crime numbers drop, the mayor announced on Friday.

Mayor Karen Bass, who had the final say after a civilian board of Los Angeles police commissioners vetted McDonnell, said her selection of a veteran law enforcement officer was based on a need to reduce crime and make every neighborhood safer. Bass met with hundreds of LAPD officers and community leaders before making her decision.

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US opens civil rights investigation into Mississippi sheriff’s office after torture of Black men

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Six Rankin county officers known as ‘Goon Squad’ were convicted for hours-long attack involving racial slurs

The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff’s department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.

The justice department will investigate whether the Rankin county sheriff’s department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke.

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Massachusetts police recruit dies after boxing training exercise

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Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, died in hospital one day after suffering ‘medical crisis’ in defensive tactics training

A Massachusetts state police recruit died a day after he became unresponsive and suffered a “medical crisis” during a defensive tactics training exercise, authorities said.

While authorities would not elaborate, the Boston CBS affiliate WBZ reported that Enrique Delgado-Garcia was mortally injured during a boxing exercise that was a standard part of the police academy which he was attending. He was knocked out for nearly 10 minutes after absorbing a blow to the head, the outlet reported, citing sources familiar with details about the recruit’s death, which occurred less than a month before he was set to graduate from the training academy.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Police officer who dragged NFL player Tyreek Hill from car had problem record

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Danny Torres, 27-year veteran who forcibly arrested Hill in Florida on Sunday, suspended for total of about 50 days

The police officer who detained NFL player Tyreek Hill in Florida had racked up six suspensions and multiple reprimands before his encounter with the Miami Dolphins wide receiver, records from his agency show.

According to employee records reviewed by NBC, Danny Torres, the Miami-Dade police department officer who forcibly arrested and handcuffed Hill last Sunday, has a tainted disciplinary record that includes being suspended for as many as 50 days between 2014 and 2019.

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Bodycam shows police dragging NFL star Tyreek Hill from car before season opener

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  • Miami receiver was detained before game on Sunday
  • Player says he followed orders given by officers

New video surfaced on Monday showing police officers forcefully removing Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill from his car and throwing him to the ground during a heated traffic stop before his team’s home opener on Sunday.

The Miami-Dade Police Department said it was releasing the available bodycam footage while continuing to investigate the incident. Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump posted a clip from the footage on X.

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Three ex-Memphis officers charged in killing of Tyre Nichols to stand trial

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Trial for Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith Jr, and Demetrius Haley begins on charges linked to 29-year-old’s 2023 death

The federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in the killing of Tyre Nichols begins Monday.

Ex-officers Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith Jr, and Demetrius Haley will stand trial for federal civil rights and conspiracy charges in connection to Nichols’s death, according to an announcement from the Department of Justice last year.

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Dallas police officer killed and two wounded in apparent ambush

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Suspect, 30, killed in shootout with police after officials say he opened fire on officer sitting in patrol car

The Dallas police chief said on Friday that a man intentionally set out to shoot police when he killed an officer sitting in his patrol car and wounded two others in a late-night ambush that set off a highway chase and ended with officers fatally shooting the attacker.

The shooting on Thursday night brought fresh anguish and anger in a city where a gunman’s ambush on police in 2016 killed five officers.

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Florida police officer charged with manslaughter over Black airman’s killing

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Eddie Duran charged over death of Roger Fortson, who was shot multiple times when he opened apartment door

A Florida sheriff’s deputy is facing a charge of manslaughter with a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of a US air force member who opened his apartment door while holding a gun.

The former Okaloosa county deputy Eddie Duran was charged on Friday in the 3 May shooting death of senior airman Roger Fortson, assistant state attorney Greg Marcille said. That is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

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Trump attacks Kamala Harris and ‘Marxist left’ in speech to police

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Ex-president falsely claims US is in grip of violent crime wave, and vows to shield officers from legal accountability

Donald Trump has pledged to shield police officers from legal accountability if he is re-elected as president after falsely claiming the US is in the grip of a wave of violent crime that he blamed on the Black Lives Matter movement and migrants crossing the Mexican border.

Speaking to police officers in Michigan on Tuesday, the former president sought to pin responsibility for the imagined crisis on his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, who he characterised as among “Marxist district attorneys” with a record of being anti-police and pro-criminal during her term as the DA in San Francisco in the 2000s.

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Gun owned by infamous LA officer found amid $1m robbery investigation

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Two men charged with robbing luxury watch had firearm of Christopher Dorner, who killed four people and died in 2013

Authorities are investigating how a gun registered to an infamous Los Angeles police officer ended up at the Airbnb of two men recently charged in the robbery of a $1m watch in Beverly Hills.

Investigators discovered the weapon earlier this month after they connected the Airbnb to a vehicle involved in another Beverly Hills theft, authorities said. The weapon was registered to Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police department (LAPD) officer who killed the daughter of a former LAPD captain and her fiance as well as two others over nine days in 2013 before dying in a dramatic standoff with law enforcement. Dorner had felt he had been wrongly fired by LAPD, and accused the department of racism and corruption.

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Ohio officer indicted in fatal shooting of pregnant Black woman

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Ta’Kiya Young had been suspected of shoplifting when Connor Grubb and another officer approached her car

A police officer in Ohio was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges on Tuesday for the 2023 fatal shooting of Ta’Kiya Young, a pregnant Black woman who had been suspected of shoplifting, authorities said.

Young, who was 21, had been suspected of stealing bottles of alcohol from a store last August when Connor Grubb, a Blendon township police officer, and another officer approached her car, the Associated Press reported at the time.

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Ex-Kansas police chief who raided local newspaper criminally charged

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Gideon Cody, former Marion police chief, is also accused of persuading a potential witness to withhold information

A former Kansas police chief who led a raid last year on a weekly newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice and is accused of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct.

The single charge against Gideon Cody, the former Marion police chief, alleges that he knowingly or intentionally influenced the witness to withhold information on the day of the raid of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher or sometime within the following six days. The charge was filed on Monday in state district court in Marion county and is not more specific about Cody’s alleged conduct.

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Illinois sheriff whose deputy killed Sonya Massey announces retirement

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Massey’s father and state’s governor had called for Jack Campbell to quit after his officer shot Massey in her home

An Illinois sheriff who hired the deputy charged in the death of Sonya Massey announced on Friday that he would retire, five weeks after the deputy fatally shot the 36-year-old Black woman in her home.

The Sangamon county sheriff, Jack Campbell, who won the office in 2018, said politics stood in the way of his effectiveness as sheriff and suggested he and his family had received death threats. Campbell, a 30-year veteran of the department, had previously said he did “not intend to step down”.

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‘I told them’: police body-cam reveals warning days before Trump shooting

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Local police said they told Secret Service the building the 20-year-old opened fire from needed to be secured

In the chaotic aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last month, a local police officer told a fellow officer he had warned the Secret Service days earlier that the building where the 20-year-old gunman opened fire needed to be secured.

“I [bleep] told them they needed to post guys [bleep] over here,” the officer said in police body-camera footage released by the Butler township police department, with expletives bleeped out. “I told them that [bleeped expletive] Tuesday.”

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Illinois governor calls for resignation of sheriff whose deputy killed Sonya Massey

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JB Pritzer calls on Jack Campbell to step down over ‘failures’ that led to Sean Grayson fatally shooting Massey

JB Pritzker, Illinois governor, has called for the resignation of the sheriff whose deputy fatally shot Sonya Massey in her home last month after the Black woman had called 911 for help.

Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that the sheriff, Jack Campbell, should step down.

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One Florida sheriff’s deputy killed and two wounded in ‘ambush’ inside a house

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Two suspects were killed and a third was injured when police stormed the house to rescue a deputy trapped inside

A Florida sheriff’s deputy was killed and two other deputies were wounded while attempting to reach the first officer in what police called an ambush shooting inside a home.

The three deputies were shot at a house in Eustis, Florida, on Friday night, Peyton Grinnell, the Lake county sheriff, said during a news conference at the scene.

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Sonya Massey’s mother called 911 and asked police not to hurt daughter before shooting death

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Donna Massey told a dispatcher: ‘Please don’t send no combative policemen that are prejudiced’

Two emergency response calls were made from the home of Sonya Massey, the Black woman who was shot in the face by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy after she called 911 for help, in the days leading up to her death, according to records released Wednesday.

In a third call, Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, reports that her daughter is suffering a “mental breakdown” and tells the dispatcher: “I don’t want you guys to hurt her.” She adds that she fears the police and asks that no officer who is “prejudiced” be sent.

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Illinois officer charged with killing Sonya Massey had history of ‘bullying’

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Sean P Grayson worked for six law enforcement agencies in four years, with allegations of abuse of power and lying

As vigils for Sonya Massey take place across the US this weekend, a history of unethical and aggressive behavior by the officer who shot her, Sean P Grayson, is emerging. Grayson’s disciplinary file includes accusations of bullying behavior and abuse of power, according to CBS News.

Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two living outside Springfield, Illinois, had called 911 when she thought a prowler was lurking outside her home on 6 July. Grayson and another officer from the Sangamon county sheriff’s office were dispatched and arrived at her home. Instead of helping Massey with a possible intruder, Grayson shot her in the face after she moved a pot of water from her kitchen stove at their request.

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Kamala Harris calls Sonya Massey family to give ‘heartfelt condolences’

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James Wilburn, father of Black woman shot dead by Illinois police, says vice-president ‘let us know she is with us 100%’

Vice-President Kamala Harris on Friday called the family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy in her Illinois home, according to Massey’s family members, who spoke to NBC News.

Massey was killed on 6 July after she called the Sangamon county sheriff’s office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney for her family and Illinois state police.

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