The child suffered no significant injuries. Both officers have been placed on administrative duty while the Tuesday confrontation is being investigated.

Martinsville Police Chief Jon Davis said he believed the two officers could have restrained the 94-pound boy without using force. Davis said the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department was investigating and an internal review was planned on the officer’s use of the stun gun.

“We need to look at it a lot closer because it’s not really made for 10-year-olds,” he said at a news conference.

Assistant Police Chief Dan Riffel said he spoke with the boy and his mother on Wednesday and that the boy’s only injuries were marks on his upper arm where he was shocked by the stun gun. Officials declined to identify the child.

The officers arrived at the house to find the boy out of control, hitting and kicking his caretakers, according to police. He also wouldn’t obey the officers before they used force, they said.

Davis said the confrontation occurred on the porch of the house while other children were inside. Police had been called to the day care once before in recent months about the same child, he said.

The chief said Officer Darren Johnson, who has been with the department almost three years, used the stun gun, while Capt. William Jennings, a 36-year veteran, slapped the child.

The officers couldn’t immediately be located for comment; they didn’t attend the news conference and no home telephone numbers were listed in their names. The Associated Press sent messages to their Police Department e-mail addresses.

A woman who answered the door Thursday at the home day care declined to comment.

Mayor Phil Deckard said officials in the 12,000-person city about 25 miles southwest of Indianapolis wouldn’t tolerate unnecessary force by police officers.

“We also have to look at officer safety and what prompted that, and that’s the purpose of our internal investigation,” he said.

Source:www.courierpress.com

Police, in a criminal complaint on the incident, say “closed fist strikes” were used by the undercover police officers, but only to subdue the teenager as he tried to get away.

His mother said she plans to file a civil rights claim against the officers.

Terez Miles said her son, Jordan Miles, who is black, thought his life was in jeopardy when three white men jumped out of a car on the night of January 11 as he walked not far from his home.

“My son tried to run thinking his life was in jeopardy,” Terez Miles said. “He made three steps before he slipped and fell.” After that, she said, the police used a stun gun and beat him, pulling out a chunk of his hair.
The case is being investigated, [the Pittsburgh mayor is] closely monitoring it. He’s met with the chief.

The criminal complaint says the officers, considering Jordan Miles’ appearance suspicious, got out of the car and identified themselves as police. He tried to flee, fell, and then struggled to escape.

The officers “delivered 2-3 closed fist strikes to Miles’ head/face with still no effect,” and then a “knee strike to Miles’ head causing him to momentarily stop resisting,” so that he could be handcuffed, the document says.

Miles’ mother said the officers did not identify themselves as police to her son, a viola player and student at the city’s Creative and Performing Arts High School.

The complaint says the police officers believed Miles was engaged in criminal activity and possibly armed with a “large heavy object.” The object turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Miles was charged with aggravated assault, loitering, resisting arrest and escape.

A hearing in the case was scheduled for Thursday, but it was unclear whether the officers involved showed up, said Miles’ attorney, Kerry Lewis. The judge postponed the case until February 18.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is “taking this very seriously,” said his press secretary, Joanna Doven. “The case is being investigated, he’s closely monitoring it. He’s met with the chief.”

The three officers were taken off plainclothes duty and were back in uniform, she said.

Terez Miles contends the officers used too much force.

“My son is 150 pounds and 5-foot-6. There’s no need for this degree of violence and brutality for someone of this stature,” she said.

Lewis said Jordan Miles has no criminal record.

from: cnn.com

All charges were dropped yesterday against a disabled truck driver whose severe beating at the hands of a baton-swinging cop on the Lower East Side was caught on video.

“I feel beautiful,” said Michael Cephus, 47, as he left Manhattan criminal court talking with his lawyer on the phone about suing for malicious prosecution.

He sustained a cracked knee cap and multiple bruises last July 4, when Officer Maurice Harrington hit him 10 times with the metal baton on Delancey Street, the video shows.

Cephus, accused of assaulting the cop, had faced up to 15 years in prison. Harrington, under investigation, is on modified, no-gun work status, officials said.
see more videos

“Without that video, it would have been a whole different story,” Cephus said, thanking the two anonymous bystanders who slipped the film to his friend – before they, too, were arrested for disorderly conduct.

“We’d really like to talk to them,” said Cephus’ lawyer, Steven Orlow.

from: nypost.com

Walk away from it all with $17,242.46.

Not a bad deal, right?

That’s exactly how much Adam Tavss, a former Miami Beach cop, earned from taxpayers when he quietly resigned from the police force in late November amid an indefinite suspension over a failed drug test.

Family members of the two men Tavss shot while on duty last June are fuming that city rules didn’t prevent the wayward officer from earning his full payout from unused vacation and sick time and from his pension fund.

“It’s wrong all the way around,” says Samer Shehada, whose brother, Husein, was shot and killed by Tavss. “I’m happy he’s not a police officer anymore, but he shouldn’t be earning money on the way out.”

Det. Juan Sanchez, a Miami Beach PD spokesman, declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations into the shootings.

Ramiro Inguanzo, director of human resources for the City of Miami Beach, says the payouts are standard for any police officer. “Legally, you’re entitled to be paid for unused time, even if you’re terminated for cause,” he says.

Tavss’s fall from grace began June 14, when he confronted Samer and Husein — tourists from the Washington, D.C. area — outside Twist nightclub on Washington Avenue in South Beach. A surveillance video captures the two brothers raising their arms and turning toward Tavss, who then blasts Husein to death.

Police later said the brothers were looking to pick a fight and that they appeared to have weapons under their shirts. But no guns were found at the scene.

Four days later, Tavss was back on duty. Before his first shift was over, he shot dead Lawrence McCoy Jr., a 28-year-old semi-homeless man who allegedly stole a cab and drove the wrong way on the MacArthur Causeway. Tavss said McCoy was armed, but again, no weapon was found at the scene.

Miami Beach PD stood behind Tavss, a 34-year-old with three years on the force. But his credibility took a hit when his personnel file showed that a female colleague accused him of using cocaine at a Christmas party in 2007.

Then, in September, Tavss failed a drug test for marijuana. Chief Carlos Noriega suspended the officer indefinitely.

On November 20, Tavss, who earned a $56,833.66 salary, submitted his resignation. When he left, he picked up $3,092.34, before taxes, for 80 unused hours of annual leave and 51 hours of sick time. Another $14,150.12 came from his pension fund.

Lawyer John Contini, who represents the McCoy and Shehada families, says Tavss’s resignation won’t stop a civil suit against the police department for the deaths.

“The Miami Beach PD… failed to run a proper background check, failed to properly train him, failed to supervise him, [and] failed to discipline him,” Contini says. “Firing one trigger-happy cop won’t cut it.”

Adds Autumn Romero, McCoy’s sister: “We want criminal charges.”

Tavss’s lawyer, Gene Gibbons, didn’t respond to a call or an email requesting comment.

from: miaminewtimes.com

Two federal lawsuits each seek more than $10 million on behalf of two 12-year-old boys who allege a Kankakee police officer shocked them with a stun gun during an in-school demonstration.

The lawsuits were filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Urbana. Police officials in Kankakee placed the officer on administrative leave after he allegedly used a stun gun on students Tuesday as part of an unauthorized demonstration of the device at Kankakee Junior High School.

The lawsuits name the police officer, the city of Kankakee, Kankakee School District 111 and two teachers.

The boys’ attorney, James Rowe, says they also want the officer — identified in the suit as Lonnie Netzel — fired and criminal charges filed in the case. Teachers Teresa LaReau and Jessica Labon are also named.

Rowe alleges that the shockings were racially motivated.

“Shocking two 12-year-olds with a taser gun for no reason is reprehensible and criminal,” said James Rowe, the lawyer representing Alta Young and Stella Bender, the boys’ mothers, in a statement. “This was abuse, and it was perpetrated upon students of color and only students of color.”

Another mother, who asked to remain anonymous because she didn’t want her son to suffer a backlash from the school district, said her 12-year-old son witnessed the incident and that it occured in a special needs classroom for learning and behaviorally challenged children.

“All the children in the class have some sort of learning or behavior disorder,” the concerned parent said. “My son has Tramatic Brain Injury, if that gives you an example of what the makeup of the kids are in that class.”

The Kankakee school district has not confirmed this information.

She said her son told her that the first boy screamed and said, “why did you do that?”

The officer responded: “You volunteered.”

The second boy fell down over a chair and the third boy laughed.

“Now my son is scared of police officers.”

The Netzel allegedly Tased a few students in the finger a week earlier, and allegedly has a history of intimidation. He is a 19-year-veteran of the Kankaee police force who has worked as a school -resources officer for years.

In one of the more gruesome incidents detailed in the lawsuit, Netzel allegedly laid out sheets of newspaper and asked a boy to sit on it before being Tased, in case he defecated or urinated.

Kankakee School District 11 Superintendent Colleen Lange said in a statement that the school board is conducting a full investigation into the alleged incident.

from: nbcchicago.com

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,” Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.”

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

From: boingboing.net

Story with pics and vids HERE –