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Video: Cops Arrest Jogging Woman Because She Couldn’t Hear Them

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Photo Credit: Chris Quintero / My Fox Austin ScreenshotMembers of the University of Texas-Austin community are outraged that cops arrested an unnamed jogger who ignored police orders because she was wearing earbuds and couldn’t hear them.

The arrest happened at an intersection near the UT campus. Cops had been camped out at the intersection, issuing dozens of citations to people for jaywalking.

They planned to ticket a jogging woman, and ordered her to stop. But she was wearing earbuds and couldn’t hear them.

The officers chased the woman down and grabbed her arm from behind. Not knowing what was happening, the woman pulled away from the officer. This meant that she was resisting, and the woman soon found herself sitting on the ground in handcuffs.

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Police: Homeless Seeking Shelter from Cold in Subways to Be Kicked Out

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Photo Credit: DNA/Stephanie Keith
The NYPD and the MTA plan to clear homeless men and women out of the subway system after a skyrocketing number of people have sought shelter there from the brutally cold winter, police officials said.

The plan, which is set to begin before dawn on Monday, comes amid an upswing in homeless people in the subway system during the exceptionally cold winter. There were more than 1,800 people living on the subways in 2013, up from 1,000 in 2009, according to the city’s annual HopeNYC street survey.

Starting Monday at 3 a.m., teams of transit workers, NYPD officers and emergency medical technicians will go to the E train stations at Jamaica Center and at the World Trade Center, officials said.

Each time a train pulls into one of the two stations, teams will check each car, and take all the homeless people inside to either a shelter or hospitals, officials said.

The trains will then be cleaned for the morning rush hour.

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Woman Dragged to Jail for Recording Cop (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND“Get off of me! You are breaking the law!” shouts a South Florida woman as a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy enters her car and drags her out, all because she was recording her traffic stop on Interstate 95.

Now, the police agency is facing serious legal action for alleged battery, false arrest and false imprisonment.

The saga of single mother Brandy Berning began last March when she was driving alone in the HOV carpool lane, which is designed for vehicles carrying more than one passenger during rush hour.

She was pulled over by Broward Sheriff’s Lt. William O’Brien, who told Berning about her traffic infraction. That’s when she then informed him she was recording audio of their conversation on her cell phone.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you I was recording our conversation,” Berning said on the recording.

Read more this story HERE.

‘Catch Me If You Can’: Wanted Biker Taunts Cops With Extreme Video

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsPolice in San Antonio are on the hunt for a motorcyclist who taunted the department in a video posted to Facebook. Authorities say Alberto Rodriguez is the biker who was filmed weaving through rush-hour traffic on I-35 at speeds of over 100 mph.

He posted the video to his Facebook page along with the caption “catch me if you can,” and it has now made its way to police. The video was reportedly shared thousands of times since it was posted last May.

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Police Disable ‘Crude Attempts’ at Explosive Devices after 3 Die, Including Gunman, in Maryland Mall Shooting

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A gunman fatally shot two people at a shopping mall in suburban Baltimore before taking his own life, authorities said Saturday.

Howard County (Md.) Police issued a statement late Saturday saying that they had tentatively identified the gunman at the Mall in Columbia, but were not releasing a name because investigators were still following up on leads. The statement also said that police had found two “crude devices” that appeared to be attempts at improvised explosives. Both devices were disabled.

Police said the gunman killed two employees of a skate shop called Zumiez on the upper level of the mall, which is located in a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, before turning the gun on himself.

The victims were later identified as Brianna Benlolo, 21, and Tyler Johnson, 25. Police said it wasn’t clear if the shooter and victims knew each other.

Benlolo’s grandfather, John Feins, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a 2-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son’s birth.

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Cops Bloody Old Man — for Jaywalking

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Photo Credit: G.N. Miller/NY Post

Photo Credit: G.N. Miller/NY Post

Cops bloodied an 84-year-old man and put him in the hospital Sunday when he jaywalked at an Upper West Side intersection and didn’t appear to understand their orders to stop, witnesses said.

Kang Wong was strolling north on Broadway and crossing 96th Street at around 5 p.m., when an officer told him to halt because he had walked against the light.

Police were targeting jaywalkers in the area following the third pedestrian fatality this month around West 96th Street.

Wong, who lives a block away, appeared to not understand the cop, the witnesses said.

“The guy didn’t seem to speak English. The cop walked him over to the Citibank” near the northeast corner of 96th and Broadway, said one witness, Ian King, a Fordham University law student.

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U.S. Supreme Court to Weigh Cell Phone Searches by Police

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST

Photo Credit: REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether police can search an arrested criminal suspect’s cell phone without a warrant in two cases that showcase how the courts are wrestling to keep up with rapid technological advances.

Taking up cases from California and Massachusetts arising from criminal prosecutions that used evidence obtained without a warrant, the high court will wade into how to apply older court precedent, which allows police to search items carried by a defendant at the time of arrest, to cell phones.

Cell phones have evolved from devices used exclusively to make calls into gadgets that now contain a bounty of personal information about the owner.

The legal question before the justices is whether a search for such information after a defendant is arrested violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches. The outcome would determine whether prosecutors in such circumstances could submit evidence gleaned from cell phones in court.

Digital rights activists have sounded the alarm about the amount of personal data the government can now easily access, not just in the criminal context, but also in relation to national security surveillance programs.

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Shot Show: Police Officers Explain Why Millennials Make Terrible Cops

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Police departments across the country are struggling with staffing shortages as a result of a weak economy, hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and cutbacks to salaries, benefits, and retirement incentives.

According to Police Chief Magazine, “Such difficulties spurred 7,272 applications to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program, requesting $8.3 billion to support more than 39,000 sworn-officer positions. Altogether, both the supply of and demand for qualified officers are changing in a time of increasing attrition, expanding law enforcement responsibilities, and decreasing resources.” The problem is not new, either. The Anniston Star reported in December 2013:

Since the late 1990s the nation has seen a decrease in the number of people interested in becoming police officers. A 2006 article on police officer recruitment published in Police Chief Magazine said an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies had positions they could not fill. A separate report, Hiring and Keeping Police Officers, published in 2004 by the National Institute of Justice said 20 percent of agencies experienced officer weakness as a result of recruitment and fiscal problems.

One particular question being discussed by the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) at the annual National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show in Las Vegas this year is how local law enforcement can recruit and retain quality individuals to their departments’ SWAT teams. An NTOA seminar on this question was well attended by SWAT team officers from all over the country, from cities including Chicago, Santa Barbara, Washington D.C., and Palm Beach.

As baby-boomers in departments look toward retirement, issues surrounding differences among officers who grew up as Generation X-ers or Millennials appear to be surfacing. Veteran SWAT officers within the group of attendees say that too many new recruits look at SWAT as a “stepping stone” or “résumé builder” to other areas of law enforcement, so finding new recruits who are willing to stay on SWAT teams for the long haul is becoming more difficult.

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Officers Acquitted in Homeless Man’s Death

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Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Two former California police officers were acquitted Monday in the death of a homeless man after a violent struggle with officers that was captured on surveillance video.

It was a rare case in which police officers were charged with a death involving actions on duty.

Former Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos was acquitted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Former Cpl. Jay Cicinelli was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.

Cincinelli embraced his lawyer and put his face in his hands as the verdict concluded.

Outside court, Kelly Thomas’s parents condemned the verdict.

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Family Demanding Answers after Police Fatally Shoot Mentally Ill NC Teenager (+video)

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Photo Credit: NBC

Photo Credit: NBC

North Carolina prosecutors promised Monday to get to the truth — “wherever the truth leads”— in the death of a mentally ill teenager whose family claims police shot him in cold blood over the weekend.

Keith Vidal, 18, of Boiling Springs Lakes, was shot and killed Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

At least three law enforcement agencies responded after the family called for help just after noon, saying Vidal was in the midst of a schizophrenic episode.

Vidal was declared dead of a gunshot wound at a hospital.

Jerry Dove, chief of the Southport police, one of the responding agencies, said at a news conference that Detective Byron Vassey, a nine-year veteran of the department, had been placed on administrative leave. He wouldn’t say whether Vassey was believed to be the officer who fired the shot.

Vidal’s family showed up at the news conference — to which they said they weren’t invited — carrying placards, demanding justice and insisting that their son posed no threat when he was shot.

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