Tag: police accountability

‘No one is above the law.’ Former New Haven police chief admitted to stealing at least $10,000, city officials say

The city of New Haven is freezing a police bank account used to fund its confidential informant program after former police chief Karl Jacobson admitted to stealing thousands of dollars from it.

City officials shared new details about the investigation Wednesday.

The scandal began on Monday, when a group of assistant chiefs questioned Jacobson about discrepancies in withdrawals from the city’s confidential informant fund.

Mayor Justin Elicker says the former police chief admitted to stealing $10,000 from the city, but the amount could actually be more.

“Everything I’ve heard from everyone is just how shocked they are,” Mayor Elicker says. “I want to make it clear: we do not know how much money was taken.”

Jacobsen oversaw the account as assistant chief.

Despite calls for him to relinquish control when he was promoted to chief, city officials say Jacobson continued to make authorized routine withdrawals of $5,000 each month from the account to pay confidential informants.

“What the chief had done was basically make it where he would be the sole holder of the money,” acting police chief David Zannelli says, “and what he would say to us commonly is that he was doing that to protect us from any kind of liability.”

The preliminary investigation uncovered two extra $5,000 withdrawals were made by Jacobson at the end of 2025: one in November, and another in December.

Mayor Elicker was originally going to place him on administrative leave, but Jacobson said he was retiring instead.

The confidential informant program has been paused as state investigators work to find out if any other city bank accounts were affected and if any other police officers were involved.

“No one is above the law, and we are all held accountable,” acting police chief David Zannelli says. “We will move forward as a police department.”

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2 ex-NYPD cops sentenced for sexually assaulting passed-out woman, as survivor details trauma: ‘I feel nothing but anger and rage’

Two former NYPD cops were sentenced to probation for sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman after a night out at a Bronx bar — as the survivor of the heinous crime urged others to report their stories, no matter the title of their assailant.

Julio Alcantara-Santiago, 40, and Christian Garcia, 32, were sentenced on Friday at Bronx Supreme Criminal Court after taking a plea agreement for the assault that unfolded on July 9, 2023.

Alcantara-Santiago appeared nervous in an orange blazer and pinstriped pants as he was sentenced to six years of sex offender probation.

Garcia sported a two-piece navy suit and glasses as he accepted one year of probation and was ordered to complete a behavioral treatment program.

On the night of June 8, 2023, the unidentified woman went out with co-workers at Zona De Cuba lounge in Grand Concourse, according to a victim impact statement she read aloud to the courtroom.

After going up to a rooftop area of the establishment and having some drinks, the next thing she recalled was waking up to being sexually assaulted by two men in a stranger’s home.

“The next thing I remember is slightly waking up in someone’s home. And then what hurts more is that I see two men over me and feel hands in certain parts of my body,” she said.

“I start to make movement so that the men can stop. I’m terrified and scared that if I say something or if they notice that I’m awake while they’re doing certain things, they will harm me or even kill me,” she told the courtroom.

She said she continued to lie there and fell asleep, and woke up the next morning, realizing she was still in the strange apartment near the lounge.

After desperately calling her sister and best friend for help, she escaped the home and decided to go to a local Bronx hospital to be evaluated. There, she was given a rape kit and spoke to multiple police officers, the victim said.

The two officers were arrested in April 2024 after surveillance footage helped connect them to the crime. Both cops were suspended without pay, the NYPD said at the time.

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No criminal charges for Hawaii Island police officer in the death of K-9 police dog

There will be no criminal charges filed against Hawaii Police Department Officer Sidra Brown, the handler of K-9 Archer, the narcotics detection dog that died Sept. 4 after being left unattended in a police vehicle in Kona.

Archer was a 6-year-old narcotics detection dog.

The Dept. of the Attorney General said, “After careful consideration of the evidence associated with this case, examination of the scene, and possible applicable law, our office has declined to prosecute this matter due to insufficient evidence of a crime.”

Hawaii has both misdemeanor and felony charges for animal cruelty. First- degree animal cruelty is a Class C felony punishable by five years imprisonment.

Officer Brown was reassigned to another position while the police department continues its own administrative investigation.

The police department told the paper that it will now have heat detectors in patrol cars with K-9’s as well as collars that will be connected to the officer’s cellphone to monitor the dogs’ health at all times.

Warnings from the collar would be sent to its handler if it’s in distress.

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This Tennessee Man Spent 37 Days in Jail for Sharing an Anti-Trump Meme. He Says the Cops Should Pay for That.

In the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, his admirers were offended by online messages that denigrated him, condemned his views, and in some cases even celebrated his death. The people outraged by that commentary evidently included Nick Weems, sheriff of Perry County, Tennessee, who used the powers of his office to strike back at Kirk’s detractors.

As Reason‘s Joe Lancaster reported in October, Weems arranged the arrest of a Kirk critic, Henderson County resident Larry Bushart, on a flagrantly frivolous criminal charge. Because Bushart was unable to cover the staggering $2 million bond demanded for his release (which would have required him to “pay a bondsman at least $210,000,” Lancaster noted), he spent 37 days in jail before the district attorney for Perry County dropped the charge against him after the case drew widespread criticism.

Bushart’s arrest for constitutionally protected speech violated the First Amendment, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) argues in a federal lawsuit against Perry County, Weems, and Jason Morrow, an investigator in the sheriff’s office. The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, says the defendants also violated the Fourth Amendment by arresting Bushart without probable cause. And because they pursued a malicious prosecution, FIRE argues, they should be liable for punitive as well as compensatory damages.

“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” says Bushart, whose career included 19 years at the Jackson Police Department, five years at the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, and nine years at the Tennessee Department of Correction. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”

Weems was irked by Bushart’s response to a candlelight vigil for Kirk that was scheduled for the evening of September 20 on the lawn of the Perry County Courthouse—an event that the sheriff himself had promoted on Facebook. That day, Bushart saw a post about the vigil on the “What’s Happening, Perry County?” Facebook page. Commenting on that message, Bushart shared eight anti-Kirk memes, including one highlighting a comment that Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, made the day after the January 2024 mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

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Minnesota Cop Who Fabricated a Sex-Trafficking Ring Won’t Be Held Accountable

A police officer had a woman jailed for over two years on false charges in connection with a bogus sex-trafficking ring. But the officer, Heather Weyker, cannot be sued, because a court ruled in July that she was acting under color of federal law.

For years, Weyker, an officer in St. Paul,
Minnesota, gathered evidence, cultivated witnesses, and testified under oath in connection with an interstate sex-trafficking ring run by Somali refugees. She did all that while allegedly fabricating the very ring she was investigating. Her efforts resulted in 30 indictments, nine trials, and exactly zero convictions.

In 2011, Hamdi Mohamud, then just 16 years old, found herself arrested after a woman named Muna Abdulkadir attacked her and her friends at knifepoint. Inconveniently for Mohamud, Abdulkadir was crucial to Weyker’s bogus investigation.

After a call from Abdulkadir—during which she reportedly informed Weyker she had carried out a knife attack and was worried her arrest was imminent—Weyker advised other members of law enforcement
that Abdulkadir was a federal witness. She had information and documentation, Weyker noted, that Mohamud and her friends were out to intimidate Abdulkadir.

“The first part was true, but everything else Weyker said was false,” summarized
Judge David Stras for the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 8th Circuit. “There was no ‘information’ or ‘documentation’ that anyone was trying to intimidate Abdulkadir. Nevertheless, based on what Weyker told him, Officer [Anthijuan] Beeks arrested Mohamud and the others for witness tampering.”

The government would dismiss those trumped-up charges, but only after Mohamud spent 25 months in custody.

Mohamud sued—and succeeded. A federal court in 2018 declined to give Weyker qualified immunity, finding it was already clearly established at the time of her arrest that Weyker’s alleged misconduct violated the Fourth Amendment.

Two years later, however, Mohamud’s luck soured on appeal. Though the 8th Circuit conceded that Weyker’s sex-trafficking investigation was “plagued with problems from the start” (the trial judge found, for example, that she fabricated information and lied multiple times under oath), the court said she was, in fact, immune.

That wasn’t because she was entitled to qualified immunity. Rather, although Weyker was a St. Paul police officer, she had been cross-deputized on a federal task force to carry out the investigation. That gave her the legal protections afforded to federal law enforcement—a much higher bar for alleged victims to clear.

Lawsuits against federal employees are subject to the Bivens doctrine. Named after the landmark 1971 Supreme Court case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the ruling allowed a man to sue the federal agents who conducted a warrantless raid on his home and then strip-searched him at a courthouse.

But the Supreme Court has made it almost cartoonishly difficult for plaintiffs to make use of their very good decision. In 2017, the Court ruled in Ziglar v. Abbasi that Bivens claims against federal agents can survive only if they clear a two-pronged test.

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Forfeiture fight delivers victory to savings account owner

Forfeiture schemes abound across America. Government agents have been known to see money in a traveler’s luggage, take it and keep it.

But it could be that the tide is turning, with the latest ruling from the Texas First Court of Appeals that reversed a civil-forfeiture judgment in Harris County.

The decision ordered the state to return to Ameal and Jordan Davis a total of $41,680.

The ruling confirmed, “Harris County’s evidence was legally insufficient to prove the cash was intended to be used to purchase a controlled substance—confirming that private property, including cash, cannot be taken on mere suspicion.”

“Cash is not a crime,” said Arif Panju, managing attorney of the Institute for Justice’s Texas office. “Today the First Court of Appeals entered judgment for Ameal and Jordan and ordered their life savings returned. That’s a decisive win for due process and a sharp rebuke to civil forfeiture based on hunches.”

The fight dates to 2019 when the Davises decided to pursue the dream of owning their own trucking business. They saved money from jobs, tax refunds, and by keeping expenses low—eventually accumulating more than $40,000, enough for Ameal to rise from truck driver to truck owner, the IJ said.

When Ameal was ready to buy his truck, driving from Natchez, Mississippi, toward Houston, he was stopped by police officers in Harris County. They took his cash and released him.

“Although the government’s forfeiture case involved no drugs or drug dealers whatsoever, and Ameal was never charged with any crime, the county nevertheless pursued civil forfeiture. After a six-day trial, a jury found the money was intended to be used to possess a controlled substance at some point in the future; the trial court entered judgment for forfeiture,” the IJ said.

However, the appeals ruling said the state’s evidence failed.

There was no evidence of any “substantial connection” between the money and the alleged and undefined “drug offense.”

“This ruling makes clear that the government can’t take people’s property without evidence of a crime,” said James Knight, attorney at the Institute for Justice. “Ameal and Jordan fought back, and today’s decision restores what was theirs and strengthens protections for everyone who carries cash.”

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‘Handsome’ Hawaiian police dog dies after being left in hot car by handler

A Hawaiian police dog died in a hot car when its handler abandoned her animal partner “for an unacceptable period of time.”

Archer, a 6-year-old Belgian Malinois-German Shepherd mix, died in a police vehicle on last Thursday after his handler Sidra Brown forgot about the drug sniffing pup in the car, the Hawaii Police Department announced in a press release.

“Archer was not just a police dog, he was a partner, protector, and a member of our police family,” Interim Police Chief Reed Mahuna wrote in the release. “This was a preventable tragedy.”

The crime-fighting canine worked alongside handler Officer Brown in “numerous operations,” according to the department’s website.

The department is conducting a comprehensive review of its K9 policies and procedures.

A profile on the department’s website said Archer enjoyed “being handsome and eating mangoes.”

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P’Nut The Squirrel’s Owners Sue New York For $10M After Raid, Decapitation

The owners P’Nut – a beloved squirrel that was seized and euthanized by the state of New York are suing for $10 million in damages over the death of their pets, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York Court of Claims.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation staged a five-hour raid on the home of Mark Luongo after an anonymous complaint was lodged against the P’nuts Freedom Farm, where internet sensation Peanut the squirrel was taken into custody along with his sidekick, Fred the raccoon – before the state euthanized both animals ‘in order to test for rabies.’

DEC officials claimed that P’Nut but an agent through thick leather gloves during the raid, necessitating both the squirrel and raccoon be decapitated and tested for rabies. The state later admitted that both tests were negative, and have never apologized nor returned the bodies of the pets. 

According to court documents, P’Nut and Fred’s execution were “not due to a fear of rabies,” but a “senseless act of violence” and “obscene demonstration of government abuse.” 

This lawsuit comes on top of a previous suit filed by Longo and Bittner on June 27 in Chemung County Supreme Court against the City of Elmira and 36 individuals from various levels of state and local office – and seeks unspecified damages via jury trial. 

The couple claims they’ve suffered emotional trauma and financial losses since losing their star squirrel – who had appeared all over social media (including OnlyFans !?), according to both lawsuits. 

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Cop ignored dying man in back of hot police car, watched TikToks and sent ‘intimate’ texts instead: lawsuit

An Oregon cop allegedly left a mentally ill man to die in the back of a hot police car while the officer watched TikToks and texted about “snuggles,” according to a lawsuit.

Nathan Bradford Smith, 33, died of heat stroke aggravated by meth use during a July 2024 arrest when Coos Bay police officers allegedly left him in a parked patrol car to watch TikToks and send intimate texts instead of getting him medical help, according to a lawsuit filed by Smith’s family Wednesday.

The lawsuit blasts the city of Coos Bay, and Officers Benjamin Martin, Tristan Smith, and Wesley O’Connor for ignoring signs of obvious medical distress in Smith, accusing them of negligence and “deliberate interference.”

Smith, who had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was picked up by cops after multiple police encounters where he was found smoking methamphetamine and later speaking “quickly and incomprehensibly,” according to the lawsuit obtained by The Post.

At roughly 5 p.m. July 7, officers found Smith wearing a heavy coat and rain pants on the ground outside a Motel 6, the lawsuit detailed.

“One of the 911 callers indicated they were concerned for Mr. Smith’s safety,” according to the lawsuit. “Another caller indicated that Mr. Smith was on the ground ‘flailing around,’” the lawsuit said.

Smith was struggling to breathe as he was handcuffed by Martin, Smith and O’Connor while still on the ground, according to a state police officer who reviewed the body camera video of the incident.

He was barely able to get in the police cruiser, and his eyes were closed as he gasped for air, the lawsuit said.

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‘Din’t get cracked’: Watch female police officer threaten to ticket ‘everyone’ because she didn’t have sex last night

A female police officer in the Houston area is now under investigation after posting a video on TikTok in which she threatened to give everyone a ticket because she did not have sex the previous night.

Harris County Constable Precinct 5 Deputy Jennifer Escalera was in uniform as she recorded herself writing on a notepad.

“Din’t get cracked last night so everyone is getting a ticket…” Escalera indicated in her now-deleted video.

Although she blurred portions of her uniform, the officer left her name tag visible.

“Our administration is aware and internal affairs has opened an investigation. We have no other comment at this time,” the constable’s office said.

The New York Post reported: “The female cop’s TikTok account features several posts showing her in uniform. She also posts about being a mom.

“One of the posts shows Escalera getting ready ‘to work as a female Police Officer’ as the text across the screen reads, ‘contemplating if I really need this job, knowing that I do.'”

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