Police Misconduct Blog

Call it pandemic paranoia, but a Walmart security guard seems to have grossly overreacted to a lone customer’s decision to ignore the store’s COVID-19 protocols and use the closest entrance, rather than walking far out of his way to enter the store. The guard’s request for...

Between 2008 and 2019, 7,571 inmates died in the U.S.’s largest jails. Of these, 4,998 were people arrested on minor charges who never had their day in court. Those are the findings of a Reuters investigation into fatalities in the country’s 500 biggest jails. These jails had a minimum...

The two U.S. Park Police officers who shot and killed motorist Bijan Ghaiser in November 2017 were charged with manslaughter by a Fairfax County, Virginia grand jury. The Ghaiser family issued a statement reading that, “Our heavy hearts are a little lighter tonight.” They add that too...

The largest settlement in the Oregon Department of Corrections’ (“DOC”) history, $2.7 million, was awarded to the brother of a man who suffered for weeks while prison medical staff ignored him. His half-brother, Stephen Brown, filed the lawsuit.
In January 2018, Oregon State...

Many city K-9 units average one dog bite every three years. In Indianapolis, the average is every five days. That is the highest police dog bite rate in the nation’s 20 largest cities.
Between 2017 and 2019, dogs in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD)’s K-9...

A man whom Charlotte-Mecklenburg County police saw eat a large amount of cocaine died while in custody. The officers did not try to get medical help for him, left him unattended in violation of department regulations, and failed to respond to his calls for help.
Harold Easter, 41, was taken...

In one of the largest settlements of its kind, the family of William Green, shot six times by a Prince George’s County police officer, will receive $20 million from the county. Green was killed on January 27 by Corporal Michael A. Owen Jr.
At the time, Green, 43, was handcuffed and...

On September 4, Golda Barton called 911 regarding her 13-year-old autistic son, Linden Cameron. The Salt Lake City boy was going through a mental crisis, and she wanted police to deescalate the situation.
Instead, after police arrived at the home, one officer shot Linden 11 times, leaving him...

Miles Hall, a mentally ill Black man, was shot by police in July 2019, even though law enforcement had been repeatedly warned he suffered from mental health problems. The city of Walnut Creek has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Hall’s family for $4 million.
Just a year...

The country is currently focused on the systemic brutality against minorities found in so many police departments. While the headlines concentrate on the latest outrage, there is yet another factor to consider that affects all of us.
That is the often huge financial settlements received by...