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Listen to the Bone-Chilling 911 Call That Has Police in One State on High Alert [+video]

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history-of-police-lights-and-sirens-the-terrifying-duo-that-scares-away-criminals-42394_1As police patrol Aurora, Colo., this week, they do so wondering who among the people they see is the caller who used the 911 emergency line Sunday to issue threats against police.

“It’s time that you guys know we are no longer playing around with the police departments. Aurora and Denver, we are about to start striking fear shooting down all cops that we see by their selves,” said the caller. “This will go for the sheriff’s department. You guys are evicting innocent people. Let us catch you by yourself and it’s shots fired.”

A warning sent to Denver-area law enforcement agencies on Monday said the caller was using a disconnected Cricket cell phone. The male caller appeared to be attempting to disguise his voice, or may have used a recording, the warning said.

Four hours after the chilling call, Aurora officers were called to a scene, then shot at. It remained unclear Tuesday whether the incidents were related.

“Because of that, we are vigilant in what we do,” Aurora Police Association President Bob Wesner said. “Officers will be riding two people to a car so that we can keep officers safe on the street.”

“I’m not surprised by the call. People make threats to police all the time, but very rarely do we get anything involving folks wanting to shoot at the police,” Wesner said. (Read more from “Listen to the Bone-Chilling 911 Call That Has Police in One State on High Alert” HERE)

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University of Cincinnati Officer Indicted in Shooting Death of Driver [+video]

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A University of Cincinnati police officer was indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in what a prosecutor called “a senseless, asinine shooting” during a minor traffic stop. It was the first time such a charge had been leveled against an officer in the city.

The Hamilton County prosecuting attorney, Joseph T. Deters, released a much-anticipated video of the shooting of Samuel DuBose, and described it as providing crucial evidence that the officer had lied about being dragged by DuBose’s car.

A grand jury, Deters announced, had indicted Officer Ray Tensing for murder, punishable by life in prison, and voluntary manslaughter.

“It was a senseless, asinine shooting,” Deters said at a news conference in Cincinnati, using stark terms to denounce the July 19 episode, Tensing’s statements about it, and the 25-year-old officer himself. “This office has probably reviewed upwards of 100 police shootings, and this is the first time we’ve thought, ‘This is without question a murder.’

“He wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder,” Deters said. “He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This was, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop.” (Read more from “University of Cincinnati Officer Indicted in Shooting Death of Driver” HERE)

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Police Officer Soothes Toddler With Lullaby After Deadly Car Crash

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When a paramedic handed police officer Nick Struck a weeping toddler soaked in gasoline at the scene of a deadly car crash in Brighton, Colorado, his fatherly instincts kicked in.

Struck did the same thing he does when his own 2-year-old daughter is upset. He began to softly sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Somewhere in one of the lullaby’s verses, a bystander snapped a photograph of Struck and the child. Her family’s white SUV lies upside down in the grassy field behind the two. A paramedic is seen treating another passenger in the background.

Struck, holding the barefoot girl on his hip, points at something outside the frame. The child holds the fingers of one hand in her mouth, and clings to Struck’s shoulder with the other . . .

That image whipped through online social networks, rendering Struck a heartfelt hero. (Read more from “Police Officer Soothes Toddler With Lullaby After Deadly Car Crash” HERE)

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Judge’s Law Clerk Resigns After Saying Trooper’s Death Was ‘Not Sad,’ but the Dead Deer He Hit Was

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The callous New Jersey law clerk who said last week’s death of a state trooper was “not that sad” and instead mourned the deer he hit has resigned from her job.

Leslie Anderson, who worked for the Middlesex County Superior Court, came under fire last week for posting multiple Facebook comments blaming New Jersey State trooper Anthony Raspa for his own demise.

The 24-year-old trooper died on-duty last Saturday after his patrol car hit a deer and careened off Interstate 195, veering into trees.

“Not that sad, and certainly not ‘tragic.’ Troopers were probably traveling at a dangerously high speed as per usual,” Anderson wrote . . .

Anderson resigned Wednesday after initially being suspended with pay for two weeks pending an internal probe, a New Jersey Judiciary spokeswoman said. She was hired in August 2014. (Read more from “NJ Law Clerk Resigns After Saying Trooper’s Death Was ‘Not Sad,’ the Dead Deer Was” HERE)

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Teen at Pool Party: We Didn’t Have to Listen to Cops Because ‘They Called Us Names’ [+video]

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Appearing with her godfather on “Hannity” Tuesday, a girl who attended Friday’s pool party where a police officer drew his weapon on a group of teenagers in McKinney, Texas, tried to excuse the behavior of the teens in the video.

“He started cussing at us first,” Ladariene McKever told Hannity. “No one’s going to listen to him if [he’s] calling us names for no reason.”

Her comments demonstrate a troublesome attitude among certain communities, where disobeying the police is considered acceptable under various circumstances . . .

The claim that the teens in in the video resisted arrest and refused lawful orders simply because the cop used foul language is sadly illustrative of a culture that has been conditioned to distrust and disrespect authority. (Read more from “Teen at Pool Party: We Didn’t Have to Listen to Cops Because ‘They Called Us Names'” HERE)

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Retired NYPD Detective Clashes With CNN Commentator During Tense, Face-To-Face Debate on Police [+videos]

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Former New York Police Department detective Harry Houck clashed with CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill on Wednesday as they debated alleged wrongdoing committed by police officers.

Hill was visibly shocked when Houck claimed that officers are arrested when they do something wrong, “like the officers in Baltimore.”

“You’re saying every cop who has done something wrong is arrested? That’s your honest belief?” Hill asked, looking the ex-cop right in the face . . .

[the heated discussion initiates at about 5 minutes in the below video]

“You’re telling me that every cop in America who has done something wrong [has been arrested]?” Hill shot back, adding that it’s “absurd” to think all officers who have committed a crime have been investigated or arrested . . .

The discussion initially centered around the now-concluded investigation into the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, who was fatally shot by a police officer while holding a toy gun. (Read more from “Retired NYPD Detective Clashes With CNN Commentator During Tense, Face-To-Face Debate on Police” HERE)

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Iris Scanners, Widely Used by US Military, Could Be Coming to a Police Department Near You [+video]

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military-iris-scannerIris scans could become part of a routine traffic stop, thanks to technology being developed by researchers at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University that can grab an image from a distance of 40 feet. The technology would allow police to take an image the second a driver glances into the rear-view mirror.

“It’s no different than a camera taking a picture of you,” said Marios Savvides, a research professor at CMU’s computer engineering department and the director of the CyLab Biometrics Center. “You could be anywhere within a 6- to 12-meter radius and it will find you and zoom in and capture your iris.”

The technology would be a major development for iris biometric scanners, which have been hampered for years by accuracy at long distances. But adoption also would create legal questions by relying on technology that’s similar to the local license plate databases that have been in use in Virginia, California and other municipalities.

“It could be used surreptitiously,” said Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is monitoring the development of the technology. “That could lead to the ability of law enforcement officers to collect a person’s biometric information without their knowledge.”

The U.S. military has been using iris scan technology for more than a decade in the Middle East, in part to help determine who is authorized to enter military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers in combat zones often take a snapshot of an individual 6 inches from their face, at which point the data is uploaded to a wide-ranging database that includes everything from scar information and mug shot images to height and eye color data. (Read more from “Iris Scanners, Widely Used by US Military, Could Be Coming to a Police Department Near You” HERE)

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U.S. Split Along Racial Lines on Backlash Against Police, Poll Finds

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Photo Credit: WSJ

Photo Credit: WSJ

Americans are bracing for a summer of racial disturbances around the country, such as those that have wracked Baltimore, with African Americans and whites deeply divided about why the urban violence has occurred, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

A resounding 96% of adults surveyed said it was likely there would be additional racial disturbances this summer, a signal that Americans believe Baltimore’s recent problems aren’t a local phenomenon but instead are symptomatic of broader national problems.

When asked to explain recent events in Baltimore and other cities that have seen confrontations between police and members of the African-American community, blacks and whites viewed the situation differently.

Asked to choose between two possible explanations for recent events, 60% of blacks said they reflected “long-standing frustrations about police mistreatment of African Americans.” Some 27% of black respondents said the disturbances were caused by people who used protests over an African American man dying in police custody “as an excused to engage in looting and violence.”

But among whites, the balance of opinion flipped: 58% said people were seizing an excuse to loot, while 32% said the events reflected long-standing frustrations with police. (Read more from “U.S. Split Along Racial Lines on Backlash Against Police, Poll Finds” HERE)

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We’re Not Seeing More Police Shootings, Just More News Coverage [+video]

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download (1)It feels like every week, a name is added to the list: another man, often black and unarmed, has died at the hands of police.

The headlines make it feel as if the country is experiencing an unprecedented wave of police violence, but experts say that isn’t the case. We’re just seeing more mainstream media coverage, and for a variety of reasons.

Let’s be clear: That’s just each expert’s sense of things. We rely on hunches because real numbers don’t exist, likely because no one thought it important to keep a tally until recently.

Chat with a publisher or editor at one of the country’s African-American newspapers, and she or he can tell you they’ve been covering these cases for a long time . . . .

“What is being exposed nationally is something that’s been troubling us in Philadelphia as African-Americans,” he said. “Yes, we have written about it. We’ve talked about it. This is the African-American experience, and for some reason non-African-Americans don’t believe it.” (Read more from “We’re Not Seeing More Police Shootings, Just More News Coverage” HERE)

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Police Shoot Pregnant Woman in Stomach With AR-15 [+video]

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downloadThe footage in this story shows the fatal shooting of Jeanetta Riley. Riley, 35, was killed by Sandpoint, Idaho police after they were called to a hospital where she had been treated for mental health problems.

The department has cleared its officers “of any criminal wrongdoing,” claiming that they followed all proper procedures when they chose to use an AR-15 rifle on the mentally ill, pregnant woman who was holding a knife.

The officers could have used less-than-lethal weapons, like a taser, but instead they chose not only a firearm, but an AR-15 when they approached her outside of Bonner General Hospital.

The police can be heard on the video telling Riley to show her hands . . .

She does not charge or approach the officers. They clearly are in no immediate danger. They clearly had no need to shoot at that point, and were far enough away that they had time to react to any true aggressive moves by the woman . . . [T]hey just killed her with an automatic weapon designed for wartime use. All that, and the cop had the weapon set for an auto three round burst, not even just single shots. (Read more from “Police Shoot Pregnant Woman in Stomach With AR-15” HERE)

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