National Police Misconduct NewsFeed November 11-15

$71,031,500: This is how much the cops have cost their communities so far in November 2010....and the months not over yet


We need a national conversation about the police, who are now a national problem.


Barberton Ohio has settled a lawsuit for $5,250,000 to a man who claimed police withheld exculpatory evidence that would have prevented him from being wrongfully imprisoned for for 7 years when he was convicted for murdering and raping his mother-in-law and raping his 6-year-old niece. He was freed after DNA evidence showed it was the neighbor’s boyfriend who did it instead.


A Montgomery County Maryland cop was fined $185 for speeding when he hit a 12-year-old kid with his cruiser and left him with severe brain damage and paralyzed from his neck down. That case was also in our recap yesterday as it cost the county $400,000 in a civil suit settlement.


Cook County Illinois has settled a class action lawsuit for a stunning $55,300,000 sum for which the bulk will go to anywhere from 250,000 up to about 400,000 people who were improperly strip searched at jail, many of which were stripped and then verbally degraded by guards and deputies in groups as large as 100 at a time. The current sheriff blames the former for the practice and says he solved it by using the same scanners the TSA uses to see through the clothes of airline passengers… welcome to prison-air.


Denver Colorado has settled a lawsuit for $140,000 to a mother and her three children who were injured when a cop hit their car with a police cruiser he was speeding in without his lights or siren activated.


Roswell New Mexico has settled a lawsuit for $1,000,000 to the family of a man who died from positional asphyxia after being tasered and peppersprayed when police took him into custody for an involuntary mental health evaluation


Wichita Kansas has settled a lawsuit for $925,000 to a man who had to be hospitalized for 6 weeks due to internal bleeding and respiratory failure after a cop threw him onto the trunk of a car for questioning the arrest of another man.


Ventura County California has settled suit for $87,500 to a man who was cleaning a county building when he was injured by a police dog that picked up his scent while it was being trained at the same time in that building.


Whitley County KY has lost a $6.28 million jury award to a man who was pistol whipped & beaten by a deputy for buying a gun the deputy’s son stole from him.


Cuyahoga County OH has settled suit for $1.5 million to a man who was shot in the face when he opened his door at the same time as a SWAT team was preparing to raid his home.


Moss Point MS has settled a lawsuit filed by the ACLU for $50k to a man & his sister who were beaten, tasered & peppersprayed during a warrantless search of their home.


Riverside County CA settled a lawsuit filed by the ACLU for $99k to black barbers who claimed that deputies used code enforcement checks as a pretext to perform illegal searches of their shops and that it was a form of racial profiling since other salons weren’t targetted.