Derrick Williams was fast asleep in the apartment he had been living in for about a month (which was leased by a friend/Uncle) when he heard a commotion outside his bedroom. It was the Chesterfield County (Virginia) Police Department, who had just opened the front door and sent in a police K9 to find him and violently attack him. But it was a mistake. He had done nothing wrong. His friend/Uncle’s ex-girlfriend had come by earlier to collect some belongings, saw him asleep in the apartment, and called 911, believing he was an intruder of some sort. Instead of realizing that Derrick was not an intruder, they just went full send with their attack K9, to bite first, and ask questions later. Now a lawsuit has been filed. But the cops are asking for qualified immunity, claiming they did nothing wrong.
An innocent Kentucky man was shot dead by the London, Kentucky police after they raided the wrong house, surprising him at night during an impromptu search warrant execution, looking for a “Judge’s” missing weedeater. So far, authorities have released almost no information. But here’s what we do know so far, and it doesn’t look good at all…
George Henderson spent 29 years serving in the military with 6 overseas deployments. He retired in 2018 after his head injuries and PTSD began to worsen. He was then diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which led to him going missing on December 6. The State of Tennessee issued a Silver Alert. Mr. Henderson was located a day later, 10 miles away, in nearby Guthrie, Kentucky. Unfortunately, when that happened, a Guthrie police officer punched him unconscious. They have circled their law enforcement wagons, claim no wrongdoing, and apparently continue to prosecute this American hero.
Dallas Campbell walked into the police department in Hazard, Kentucky a free man, doing his best to keep a notoriously untrustworthy police agency (at least that’s what I learned watching the “Dukes of Hazard”) honest. Unfortunately, he left in handcuffs, the victim of a false arrest. But he had a small YouTube channel, and 12 days after he posted the video of his arrest, the Hazard Police Chief was fired.
In Sharp County, Arkansas, Sheriff Shane Russell showed up at a family’s front door, following allegations from a neighbor that they had been revving their engines earlier (on their own property). Sheriff Russell, flanked by other police officers, did not have a warrant. But he didn’t let that stop him.
UPDATE: Two Sheriff’s deputies (Deputies Philpot and Cobb with the Dunklin County Sheriff’s Office) responded to a woman lying on the shoulder of a highway. The woman tells the deputies she was fleeing domestic violence. After talking for nearly 18 minutes, the woman, who very clearly appears to be drunk, asks the deputies for a ride away from the pitch black highway. The deputies talk it over and decide they don’t want to.
They tell her to just keep walking. The woman pleads with the deputies to take her to a gas station. But they leave her and tell her to keep walking down the dark road. She was hit by a tractor trailer 13 minutes later. Since posting the original video on this, I spoke with the woman’s sister, who gave me some additional information and evidence…
A special agent with the Lake County Narcotics Agency has resigned following an internal investigation into an incident of alleged unlawful detention at a Medina County Township bar in April. Daniel Lajack, 48, submitted his immediate resignation on Dec. 2, just weeks after being notified of potential disciplinary action for his involvement in a controversial encounter with a legal immigrant. Lajack also served as a federal task force officer for the Drug Enforcement Agency, before being removed shortly after the April incident became public.
Two Sheriff’s deputies (Deputies Philpot and Cobb with the Dunklin County Sheriff’s Office) responded to a woman lying on the shoulder of a highway. The woman tells the deputies she was fleeing domestic violence. After talking for nearly 18 minutes, the woman, who very clearly appears to be drunk, asks the deputies for a ride away from the pitch black highway. The deputies talk it over and decide they don’t want to. They tell her to just keep walking. The woman pleads with the deputies to taker her to a gas station. But they leave her and tell her to keep walking down the dark road.
13 minutes later, the woman was hit and killed by a tractor trailer. The truck’s dash cam appears to show her purposefully sitting in the middle of the dark road. The State of Missouri is now seeking to discipline both deputies for reckless disregard of a woman who was clearly in need. But according to their lawyer, they did nothing wrong.
UPDATE VIDEO:
Excerpts from the police report that I discuss in the video:
Here the officer explains that they left Michelle Anders on the side of the road with instructions to keep walking, and that eventually she’d “end up in Kennett.”
Here the officer claims that Anders “did not appear to be intoxicated,” which is clearly contradicted by his own statements in the bodycam, as well as by the footage itself, showing Anders to be obviously unstable, confused, slurring her words and acting erratically.
Just below the original police report is a “supplemental” report describing being called back to the scene after Anders was hit and killed by a tractor trailer.
This is an excerpt of the disciplinary complaint against the officers by the Missouri Dept. of Public Safety.
In the Eighth Circuit (applicable in Missouri), as elsewhere for the most part, police officers are generally required to act where they have probable cause to believe that a vulnerable person might walk into danger or commit suicide. If there is evidence suggesting immediate risk or danger, officers must intervene in a manner that is objectively reasonable to prevent harm, or they could face liability for deliberate indifference to a known risk. SeeGraham v. Barnette, 5 F.4th 872 (8th Cir. 2021).
The Oklahoma City Police Department has once again been caught on video violently slamming an innocent citizen to the ground. Last time it was the elderly Vietnamese man. This time, it’s a young girl who was shoved to the ground and arrested following a 4am noise complaint. But unlike the officer in my last video, this cop has been criminally charged. Why would this officer be charged, while the other officer, who seriously injured an elderly man, has not been charged?
Yet again, police officers pulled over an innocent driver, subjecting the individual to the so-called “felony stop” or “high risk stop,” which is the process wherein they treat an innocent American citizen as if they were a terrorist serial killer, forcing the person to get out of their car, walk backwards, and so on, all occurring at the barrel of a loaded gun. This time the victim was a teenage girl in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The taxpayers shouldered the burden of the $250,000 settlement for the obvious police misconduct that occurred. However the police department has “no comment” for the community that employs them. And the city itself doesn’t even bother to say “no comment.”
Here’s the blog post where I last ranted about the unconstitutionality of these “high risk stops” based solely on computer (or human) mistakes about a car being stolen, along with some links to prior videos I’ve done involving similar situations. Therein I list numerous instances of this occurring to innocent people across the country, including Aurora, Colorado, Raymore, Missouri, Fairfax, Virginia, Norwalk, Connecticut, as well as Lehi, Utah (which is what the blog post and video from that post was about).
It all boils down to this: without more, police officers should not be aiming firearms at people. Reasonableness is the key. Aiming guns based on clerical entries and government policy is rarely going to be reasonable. Doing so should be based on actual perceived threats presented by the persons with whom they’re dealing. Here, the officers actions of handcuffing the teen at gunpoint could not have been reasonable, and thus they would most likely be found to be unconstitutional by the courts (which is why they settled).
