Allen Bullock, the 18-year-old seen in photos smashing in a police car with a traffic cone, turned himself in after being encouraged by his parents. But now he is being held on $500,000 bail, an amount his parents cannot afford, The Guardian reports.

Bullock faces charges of rioting and malicious destruction of property, among other criminal counts, after turning himself in at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center with his stepfather, Maurice Hawkins, at his side.

According to Hawkins, who saw footage of his stepson on Saturday, the teen agreed to turn himself in after his stepfather told him that the police would “find him, knock down our door and beat him” if he didn’t, The Guardian notes.

However, no good deed goes unpunished, and Hawkins now believes that they are making an example of the teen. “By turning himself in, he also let me know he was growing as a man and he recognized what he did was wrong,” Hawkins told The Guardian on Wednesday. “But they are making an example of him, and it is not right.”

“As parents, we wanted Allen to do the right thing,” Bullock’s mother, Bobbi Smallwood, said. “He was dead wrong, and he does need to be punished. But he wasn’t leading this riot. He hasn’t got that much power.”

Hawkins noted that the proposed amount is higher than that placed on some accused murderers in the city. “Who could afford to pay that?” the stepfather asked.

“If they let him go, he could at least save some money and pay them back for the damage he did,” his mother agreed.

The eight misdemeanor charges Bullock face are his first as an adult, with rioting carrying a maximum of life in prison. The Guardian, however, says that his parents believe that four to eight years is a more likely sentence. Bullock, who was convicted of minor offenses as a juvenile, was working in city sanitation under a program for people in juvenile probation, The Guardian notes, earning more than $15,000 a year.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/04/balt_teen_encouraged_to_turn_self_in_by_parents_held_on_500_000_bail_faces.html

WEST JORDAN, Utah — A man has filed a lawsuit against the West Jordan Police Department that alleges his rights were violated when a police K9 was dispatched and subsequently injured him, but police said they stand behind their actions.

“I didn’t dare to move. I put my hands up and froze. If I would have blinked, I thought I was going to get shot,” said Lee Hoogveldt, recalling an incident which played out in his home on March 24, 2013.

His attorney, Robert Sykes, filed a civil rights lawsuit in Federal Court on Thursday, and he provided the media with copies of body camera video showing Hoogveldt being attacked by a police dog.

“At the time and place this force was used, there was no justification at all to sic a police dog on somebody,” Sykes said.

The video shows Hoogveldt seated on a sofa after police enter his home. After numerous commands from officers, he raises his hands in the air seconds before a dog named “Pyro” lunges at his face, bites, and holds on for about 15 seconds.

Hoogveldt is then pulled into a nearby room by another officer. The video shows large amounts of blood covering his face. Seconds later, Hoogveldt is face down, and as officers work to get him handcuffed, the dog bites him in the buttocks.

http://fox13now.com/2015/04/30/man-sues-west-jordan-police-over-injuries-suffered-in-k9-encounter/

People watching developments in Baltimore -- where rioting and protests followed the April 19 death of Freddie Gray -- are now turning their attention toward Baltimore City's State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the chief prosecutor for the city. On Friday, Baltimore police officials are expected to present Mosby with results of an internal investigation into the death.

After reviewing the report, Mosby -- who will soon mark four months on the job -- will ultimately decide whether any or all of the six police officers suspended in connection with Gray's death will face criminal charges.

Mosby -- who at age 34 became the nation's youngest chief prosecutor when she took office in January -- was raised in inner-city Boston and grew up in a police household, the Daily Beast reported. Both of her parents and one of her grandfathers were police officers.

Prior to her election as Baltimore's state's attorney, Mosby won the endorsement of a city police union. But she has not been coy about advocating on the behalf of families who have sought answers in previous police-involved deaths of Baltimore residents.

After her predecessor decided not to bring charges against officers whose tussled last year with a Baltimore man named Tyrone Wright -- a case that ended with Wright's death -- Mosby said she would be "more transparent" in how she arrived at decisions in police-involved cases. “This family waited nine months to know how their loved one was killed,” Mosby said during her campaign for the elected office.

But despite that statement, Mosby has been a vocal supporter of the police, a stand fraught with political risk in a city with Baltimore's history of police brutality allegations. “It is my genuine belief, despite what we might all want to think, what we might want to believe, the police officers in this city are doing their jobs,” she said. “I repeat, the police officers in Baltimore city are doing their jobs and taking bad guys off the street.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/who-marilyn-mosby-baltimore-city-states-attorney-decide-if-officers-are-charged-1903068

In an aggressive posture designed to tamp down on early signs of unrest, the police arrested more than one hundred people in Manhattan on Wednesday night as protesters marched in a show of solidarity with demonstrators in Baltimore protesting the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed 25-year-old black man who died after being injured while in police custody this month.

One officer was injured when a bottle struck him on the chin, the police said.

Some protesters stopped traffic on Houston Street in Lower Manhattan while others blocked the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Another group marched uptown to Times Square and Hell’s Kitchen, where, later in the night, a police van filled with marchers who had been arrested sat idling in traffic.

The rally began in Union Square at sunset to denounce the death of Mr. Gray and to criticize the tactics of the police in both Baltimore and New York City, where the use of force has been a charged issue since the death of Eric Garner, a black man, following a confrontation with officers on Staten Island last year.

“It’s all about solidarity,” Carmen Perez, a director of a group that advocates criminal justice reform, Justice League, said during the Union Square rally. “We’re here to spread the message of peace from Baltimore’s initial protests.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/nyregion/hundreds-march-in-manhattan-to-protest-the-death-of-freddie-gray.html?_r=0

As many as 60 teens were roaming Charleston streets attacking pedestrians and drivers early Sunday, witnesses told police dispatchers in 911 calls released Tuesday.

All the teens were black, according to witnesses, and all but one of the people attacked were white. Still, it’s unclear if the attacks were racially motivated or sparked by the unrest in Baltimore, which followed the recent shooting death of Walter Scott, a black man, by a white North Charleston police officer.

Investigators haven’t yet determined a motive, according to Charleston Police Department spokesman Charles Francis.

James Johnson, who was at the forefront of local protests after Scott’s shooting death, said he had not heard any explanation for the teens’ behavior.

“The Walter Scott incident is fresh in their minds, and then there’s Baltimore,” he said. “But there’s no telling. It could be just spur of the moment. I’m hoping we can find out. Whatever it is, we’ve got to go to the root of the problem so it doesn’t happen again.”

The teens came out of a party at the YWCA on Coming Street about 12:30 a.m. and hit the streets. Groups not associated with the YWCA rent the facility.

The motto of the YWCA is “Empowering Women and Eliminating Racism.” The organization sponsors the annual local celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolence.

Garcia Williams, the YWCA’s director, did not return several messages asking if she had learned anything about why the teens broke out in violence after the party or who organized the event. Dot Scott, the leader of the Charleston chapter of the NAACP, said she had not heard anything to explain why the teens went on a rampage but was shocked by it.

“I have no idea whatsoever,” she said. “It just seems unusual that folks would attack people that way. It’s atypical.”

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, earlier this week, lawmakers, police officers and other supporters gathered at the state capitol to celebrate Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Amid praise for those who wear the badge, state Rep. Dom Costa (D), former chief of the Pittsburgh Police, suggested he would introduce legislation to protect police officers -- not from physical harm, but from getting their feelings hurt by citizens.

Following comments by state Sen. John Rafferty (R), who spoke about criminal targeting of police and encouraged attendees to support his resolution to recognize 2015 as the “Year of the Law Enforcement Officer,” Costa discussed another supposed threat to police.

"This nonsense that is going today on where police officers are being taunted by people and being provoked, let's face it we’re all human beings, and eventually that emotion will break. And that’s what they’re trying to do," he said, according to Raging Chicken Press, seemingly speaking about anyone who would verbally challenge police. "So, what I’ve talked to some of my colleagues and the senator [Senator Rafferty] is that we have a bill about taunting a police dog. It’s illegal. There should be out that you can’t taunt a police officer because you’re going to get those emotions up. [We] are looking at that bill to put it forward in the House, and I am sure the Senate will follow. Or at least support that bill."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/dom-costa-taunting-police_n_7127652.html

The final moments of Ervin Leon Edwards’ life were spent facedown on the floor of the West Baton Rouge Parish Jail.

Dragged into an isolation cell and surrounded by about half a dozen law enforcement officers, Edwards sometimes struggled with them. At other times, he appears to be lying still, according to recently obtained video footage of the incident.

At one point, while Edwards apparently resisted attempts by officers to restrain him, a Port Allen police officer shocked Edwards with a stun gun. Not long afterward, the inmate quit moving, the footage shows.

The officers then slowly backed away from him and exited the cell. Except for a few peeks through a window of the cell’s door, about 10 minutes go by on the video before deputies and officers returned to the cell to check on him. Edwards, lying still on his stomach, doesn’t appear to move at all during that time frame.

For corrections and use of force experts who reviewed the video footage, that 10-minute gap without checking on Edwards looks like a critical error.

“The fact that the subject appeared unresponsive, perhaps unconscious on the floor as the officers withdrew from the cell, should have resulted in an immediate request for medical intervention and a quick determination of whether there was a pulse or breathing,” said Greg Meyer, who retired several years ago as a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department and is recognized nationally as a use of force expert. “If not, CPR should have been started immediately.”

More: http://theadvocate.com/news/12134862-123/video-raises-questions-about-inmates

Discovered from: http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/04/man-arrested-for-sagging-pants-dies-in-jail-cell-after-several-guards-pile-on-top-of-him/

According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court in February 2014 on behalf of Edwards’ only son, Ervin Edwards was with his girlfriend at a gas station near Port Allen on Nov. 26, 2013, when the couple got into a “minor argument.”

By the time West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies responded, the argument was over, the lawsuit says.

Nevertheless, deputies began to question Edwards about his “sagging” pants, the suit says, and before long Edwards was being arrested.